There have been widespread protests about Canberra's use of remote Pacific camps for asylum-seekers (AFP Photo/Peter Parks) Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sought to allay concerns Monday that a deal to send refugees from remote Pacific camps to the United States could be scuppered by President-elect Donald Trump. Canberra on Sunday announced a "one-off" arrangement that would see an unspecified number of the 1,600 boatpeople held in offshore processing centres on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea settled in the US. But with the political novice, who campaigned to ban Muslim migration, due to take office on January 20, the head of a prominent US anti-immigration think-tank warned: "This is the kind of thing the Trump administration will nix on Day 1." "I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either," Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival." Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia by boat to detention facilities on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru. They are blocked from resettling in Australia even if found to be refugees. Australia's arrangement with the Obama administration followed Turnbull in September saying he was ready to take more refugees from Central America. Officials from the US Department of Homeland Security are due to arrive in Australia soon before heading to Nauru to determine who will be eligible for the US move. While Turnbull spoke to Trump by phone soon after the shock election win last week, he said he did not bring up the refugee issue. "Until January 20 when Donald Trump is inaugurated, the president is Barack Obama and we deal with one administration at a time," he told Channel Nine. "And you dont discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration." Asked if he was confident a president who wants to put up a wall between Mexico and the US to keep people out would honour the commitment, Turnbull was non-committal. Story continues "We have a very long history of cooperation with the United States where we, in matters of this kind, are able to pursue our mutual and our respective humanitarian and national security objectives," he said. He added that those granted resettlement would be part of Washington's annual refugee quota and "they are simply managing the mix of their refugee intake just as we are". Refugees who are offered the US option but reject it would be offered a 20-year Nauru visa, while future boat arrivals will not be eligible. Australia has long sought to stem waves of boat migration by people from war-torn Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, using harsh policies including turning back the vessels, and strict secrecy about operations on the high seas and at the remote camps. Although the current conservative government has largely managed to stop the arrivals, conditions in the camps have been widely criticised, with the issue becoming a political headache. Convenience food business Greencore soared as it revealed plans to buy US group Peacock Foods. Peacock makes frozen breakfast sandwiches and meal kits for kids in the US, generating around 800million in revenue a year. Greencore, which makes sandwiches, soups and desserts, will pay 594.3million for the company. Chief executive Patrick Coveney said the acquisition would transform the firm's US business. He said the two businesses had the same strategy and values of 'making products that consumers love'. Analysts at Jefferies said the move could quadruple Greencore's US sales. Convenience food business Greencore soared as it revealed plans to buy US group Peacock Foods Currently the region accounts for around 15 per cent of the firm's sales. The deal is to be part funded by a 439.4million rights issue (where shares are offered at a special price to existing investors). Shares soared 9.5 per cent, or 27.8p, to 319.7p. The FTSE 100 finished up 0.3 per cent, or 22.75 points, at 6753.18. Commodity firms continued to struggle amid lingering doubts about Opec ability's to secure a deal to cut oil production. The price of the black stuff was down another 2.5 per cent taking it below $44 a barrel. Metal miners continued to suffer as gold fell a further 0.5 per cent, it's now at a five-month low of $1,217 an ounce. Polymetal International was the greatest faller on the day, down 4.9 per cent, or 41p, to 795.5p while Randgold Resources lost 2.4 per cent, or 140p, to 5815p. Asset manager Majedie took advantage of the metals rout to top up its holding in Hummingbird Resources. Majedie bought 18.5million shares in the Aim-listed gold miner, taking its stake up to 5.4 per cent. It is now the fourth largest shareholder in the business. Third-largest is Odey Asset Management, which has a 6.1 per cent holding. STOCKWATCH - DEWHURST Dewhurst makes electrical components and control equipment such as push buttons, key pads and displays for lifts. The firm had struggled in the first half of the year and reported a 24 per cent fall in profits back in June and concerns about Brexit. Yesterday it said a recovery had continued through the summer and the fourth quarter of its financial year, with the weaker pound providing a further boost to overseas earnings. Dewhurst said it expects to report revenue exceeding 47million in the full year to September 30. Shares gained 3.8 per cent, or 25p, to 675p. Hummingbird is due to pour gold from its flagship mine in West Africa next year, where it hopes to produce 132,000 ounces in its first full year. Shares fell 5 per cent, or 1p, to 19p. Support services outfit DCC advanced as it revealed operating profit was up by a third. The business reported operating profit of 117.8million in the six months to September 30, up from 88.4million a year ago. DCC is involved with sales, marketing and business support across four divisions: energy, technology, health care and environmental. Yesterday it revealed it had added French natural gas marketing business Gaz Europeen, and Irish pharmaceutical marketing business Medisource to its group. The acquisitions cost 96million and 27million respectively. DCC shareholders saw a 12.5 per cent increase in their interim dividend to 37.2p a share. The group said full year operating profit will be significantly ahead of expectations. Shares leapt 2.8 per cent, or 170p, to 6205p. Venture Life Group makes personal care products for the ageing population such as mouthwash and face cream. Shares in the firm had dipped last week when chief financial officer James Hunter revealed he was leaving the company. But a trading update yesterday turned the tide. Venture said it expects to report record revenue of no less than 14million in 2016, an increase of 50 per cent on 2015. It said the acquisition of UltraDEX toothpaste and mouthwash products had made good progress and an advertising campaign for the brand at London railway stations had led to an increase in revenue. The product will launch in Malaysia in January. Shares climbed 2.7 per cent, or 1.5p, to 56.5p. Transport service provider 21st Century Technology had another contract win to announce yesterday. Last week the group revealed a contract renewal with Arriva UK buses. The AIM-listed company will provide real-time passenger information and bus systems for OFJ Connections Gatwick Airport in a deal worth around 1million. OFJ supplies transportation services at airports as well as for corporate customers, schools and universities. The pound's fall since Brexit means small businesses doing business overseas face a different trading environment. Expert Bivek Sharma, head of KPMG Small Business Accounting, takes a look at what they need to consider. The prospect for the pound looks fairly bleak at the moment. Sterling has lost 20 per cent of its value since the referendum vote, taking it at one point to a 31-year low against the US dollar. This means that SMEs doing regular work overseas are facing a whole new set of trading conditions. Silver lining? Luxury British goods companies like Burberry benefit from the weak pound From the outside, British business as a whole appears to be weathering the drop in the pound surprisingly well. This is because the UK's biggest listed companies - those in the FTSE 100 - derive an average of 75 per cent of their revenue from outside the UK. Given the dramatic fall in the pound, this means the money they earn in other currencies becomes more valuable when translated back to sterling. Unfortunately, on the other end of the spectrum, few small businesses enjoy this luxury, and many are struggling to protect themselves from currency fluctuations. Politicians have been quick to point to the falling pounds boost to exporters, but in reality the picture is less clear cut. The UK imports more than it exports, and many small businesses do both. Even those that export heavily are often involved in global supply chains, for example importing commodities and widgets, before turning them into higher value products to sell on. The added challenge here is that import prices change quickly, while a shift in currency can take time to filter through into rising export demands. So the weak pound means little to celebrate for those with outgoings in euros or US dollars - but there are ways of tipping the balance in your favour. David and Goliath: Smaller companies outside the FTSE may struggle with the weak pound What is the direct impact of volatile sterling on my business? Look at your exposure to changing currency rates are you paying invoices in euros or dollars? With currency relationships fluctuating so much, there can be a considerable difference in the rate from day to day. This means that if you wait until the thirtieth day to pay up you may well get burnt with a bad rate. If market watching isnt your forte, you may want to consider hedging products, which give an element of guarantee with currency exchange rates. Some businesses owners are already getting wise to this and the British Chambers of Commerce has reported a boom in sales of its hedging product in the last quarter. The pound has fallen substantially against the US dollar (left) and euro (right) over the past six months and volatility is expected to continue How does this affect relationships with suppliers and supply chains? Examine your supply chains and costs carefully. If you havent already done so, now is the time to map out every touch point, taking into account third party suppliers and the costs and currencies involved. Consider how your competitors may be affected by the falling pound too. If you are not exposed, but competitors are, there may even be the option to gain competitive advantage by growing your market share. If you are losing your margin in a market, you may need to consider whether its worthwhile seeking alternatives. Can you source products from the UK, or seek opportunities in other countries? Marmite moment: Unilever and Tesco bickered over costs as a result of rising export prices Take heed from the recent Marmite standoff, in which Tesco briefly pulled Unilever products from its shelves after the latter tried to negotiate a price hike based on rising import costs. Try to work in partnership with suppliers. Open and honest conversations about spreading the cost of reduced margins can go a long way in avoiding an uncomfortable situation. Lost business for a small firm is lost business for their supplier, so trying to find a solution that works for both is in everyones interest. Time for change? Analyse your pricing strategy Is it time to change my pricing strategy? Every small company is different and some will be affected more than others by the weak pound. Likewise there are huge variations in how easily a businesss pricing strategy can change without losing customers. If you are selling a luxury British product to a wealthy customer base, then increasing the price to allow for exchange rate differences may not be a big deal. However, most markets are a little more sensitive, so SME owners may need to look at smarter ways to automate and streamline production and delivery to reduce the cost of sale. Substituting lower cost materials, eliminating waste and negotiating favourable terms for quicker payments are all options worth considering. What does a weak pound mean for my employees? Those small businesses with employees based in mainland Europe are likely to face an additional issue. Workers living on the continent currently paid in sterling may feel considerably poorer right now. Likewise, SMEs that pay European-based workers in euros may find their costs are going through the roof. In both cases consider the immediate and long-term implications before taking any action. Switching currencies may be worth considering. For example, paying staff in euros rather than pounds may offer freedom from a permanently pound-dominated wage (useful if the pound ends up recovering a little against the euro). Other options include thinking about whether you can afford to increase wages or offer other non-financial benefits. Are there any benefits for my business? The decline in sterling certainly has benefits for exporters, as it becomes cheaper to buy UK products abroad, increasing their appeal. In a similar vein, UK small companies may start to look more attractive to overseas investors and potential buyers which means those looking for acquisition or a buyout could find the timing just right. By Ralph da Costa Nunez For the first time, there are more than 100,000 homeless students in New York Citys public and charter schools. Last year the homeless student population rose 22 percent from the prior school year. Whether you notice them or not, homeless children attend almost every school in every district and in all our backyards. Almost one out of 10 schoolchildren is homeless and one out of eight has been homeless at some point in the past five years. Some school districts have up to 18 percent homeless students. We have a city full of blameless children in unstableoften unsafeliving conditions. Two-thirds of homeless children will stay that way for longer than one school year. The trauma and stress of homelessness negatively impacts children long after they regain a permanent address. They need support services to keep up in school, and special educational needs to be identified and addressed as early as possible. They need health care, social work interventions and other long-term investments to insure a better future as productive tax-paying New Yorkers. Homeless children are an indicator of the explosion in family homelessness. In recognition of National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week, the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness is reissuing its community snapshots of family homelessness to embolden New Yorkers to take a look at their backyards. You can view them at www.ICPHu sa.org . Even a quick look will demonstrate that homelessness is a local issue that affects every neighborhood in New York City. Family homelessness is a pervasive problem that is increasing at an alarming rate. Mayor de Blasio is putting resources toward addressing the problem, as had Mayor Bloomberg before him. And yet the number of families entering shelter climbs every day and the homeless student population rose by 22 percent amid news that the Great Recession is finally in the rear view mirror. How can we stem the growth of family homelessness? We must reframe the solution away from housing and toward education and employment. A typical homeless parent is a young, single mother with two children, most of whom are under the age of 5. Only about half the parents have a high school diploma, and fewer than half work during the time they are in shelter. At some point they receive a rental subsidy voucher and leave with few skills for success. Is it any wonder that roughly half return to shelter? Many publicly funded programs are focused on getting homeless families into some sort of housing as quickly as possible. Its a good start, but for many it is akin to giving them a fish but not teaching them to fish. Good intentions, while important, will not cure the problem. Compassionate New Yorkers who hate to see taxpayer money wasted can understand that the children from their communities who are homeless, while invisible to most, are expensive and represent a loss of human and community potential. We hope ICPHs community snapshots will be a starting point for conversation, common-sense solutions, and a call for clear leadership on this issue that is, yes, right in your backyard. Ralph da Costa Nunez, Ph.D. President Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Gina Martinez In an effort to help women find new job opportunities, the Center for the Women of New York held its annual job fair and panel discussion at the Sheraton Laguardia Hotel last Friday. The panel featured successful women who have excelled in different fields of work. Sande Dunn Yules, special representative for the United Federation of Teachers; Andrea Ormeno, director of the Womens Business Center; Lisa Boily, economist, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; ; Chickie Bucco, owner of an advertising media consulting company; Nancy Rojas, vice president of marketing and development at United Adult Ministries; and Mallory Trachenberg, program analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor Womens Bureau, took turns at the podium to talk about their personal and professional journeys. The panel was moderated by Roz Liston, editor of TimesLedger Newspapers,a sponsor of the event. The panelist discussed their career paths and how they ended up in their current professions. They told audience members there is not just one path to success and that they should try multiple things before they find their passion. The women gave advice to the audience, which included a group of female students from Thomas Edison High School in Jamaica. They came with their coding teacher, who said her female students were more motivated and ambitious than the male students. Bucco told the girls it is fine to start from the bottom and build your way up I believed that it was OK to be a secretary, she said about her approach to the job market years ago. Because thats what you had to do. You can get into a company and if youre a secretary you can see whats going on and how you can get where you want to go and open doors for you. The teenage girls of Thomas Edison High School were asked what their career plans were in the future. While one girl said that taking coding workshops helped solidify her love of computers, another said she thought she liked computers until she started taking computer workshop. Im glad I had the shop experience and computer networking because I realized I have no interest in computers, she said. However, I do want to go to college and pursue law and minor in business and one day own my own firm.I want to go to Binghamton University because they have great programs, and hopefully I can become a lawyer. Panelist Rojas, who works with seniors at United Adult Ministries, talked about her background of non-traditional work. Rojas graduated from Aviation High School in Flushing one of eight girls in a class of 457 in 1989 as a licensed mechanic. She told the young girls she had tough time in school, but she kept up her grades. I can do anything a man can do, she said. Rojas worked part time at a senior residence while she attended the Vaughn College of Aeronautics, with the goal of ultimately managing an airport like LaGuardia. She worked her way up at the residence and ended up falling in love with the job. Theres so much opportunity for young people, she said, I dont regret the choice I made. Just look at your passion. Whatever it is youre doing if you put in your effort and your time and energy, youre going to make money, but for me it was the passion. Passion is really important. The womens center, founded by Ann Jawin, has offices in Borough Hall and plans to expand to a building at Fort Totten in Bayside. After the panel there were workshops that specialized in resume preparation and job interviews. There was also a reality dress-for-success- fashion show with a fashion expert who offered advice on dressing professionally. 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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh's central bank hopes to retrieve $30 million more of the $81 million stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve in February, two bank officials said on Monday. Hackers used stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to try to send three dozen SWIFT messages to transfer nearly $1 billion from its Fed account. They succeeded in transferring $81 million to four accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila. Most of the money was laundered through casinos in Manila. On Friday, Philippine authorities began the process of handing over $15.25 million to Bangladesh. "We are hoping to get back around $30 million which remains frozen," Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit, told Reuters. A Bangladesh team was likely to visit the Philippines at the end of the month to accelerate the process, he said. "We are expecting to get a favourable verdict from Philippines Supreme Court as it has already been proved that $81 million is our money," said another Bangladesh Bank official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to talk to the media. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Nick Macfie) Each season in the Capital Region brings its own slate of annual events. In the slideshow above, you'll see just a few of the family-friendly community events that take place every November and December. Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Ballston Lake Halloween was a fairly typical night at the front desk at the Albany police downtown station. Then two women walked in with a puppy they reported was tossed out of a moving car on Central Avenue. Shaking and scared, the tiny pitbull mix looked to have a severely broken leg. As the women tried to calm the black pup, desk patrolman Jon-David Hill called animal control. "They told me they couldn't do anything for him and would have to put him down," said Hill. That wasn't the answer Hill wanted to hear. He took the frightened puppy to the 24-hour Capital District Veterinary Referral Hospital in Latham. "They made him comfortable for the night and told me that he would need to do surgery the next day," said Hill. But when he came back the next morning, the hospital said that the leg injury was an old one. The veterinarian also said the leg couldn't be surgically repaired. It would have to be amputated. "I was told he would have a better quality of life if his leg was amputated," said Hill. By then, he had named the pup Jack, as in jack-o'-lantern, a nod to the night he was found. "So they amputated." Two weeks later, Jack is settled into his new home with Hill, moving around quite well on his three legs, playing ball and romping with Hill's sister's German shepherd mix. "I think he was abused for a long time," said Hill. "He's afraid of most people. But once he gets to know you, he's all over you. He's lovable, so friendly." He's a typical puppy, getting into mischief. He chewed open his bottle of pills. Hill rushed him to the vet again, worried he would overdose. The vet forced the puppy to throw up and Jack expelled a corn cob. The amputation surgery was costly. So far, Hill has racked up an $4,000 bill. His sister Leah created a gofundme site named "Jack's surgery/amputation fund" to pay for medical bills. The site had collected $800 as of Sunday evening. The Albany police animal abuse unit is investigating Jack's case. The women were not able to describe in detail the car or the person who tossed Jack out the window, so Hill is not hopeful they will be found. He is hopeful, however, about Jack's future. He said he doesn't care how many legs the dog has. "I just want to give him a chance," Hill said. "He deserves it." wliberatore@timesunion.com 518-454-5445 @wendyliberatore A weeklong enforcement effort will target drivers who fail to move over when they come to emergency scenes. New York's Move Over law requires drivers to slow down and safely change lanes when approaching police cars, firetrucks, ambulances, tow trucks, construction and maintenance vehicles stopped along the roadway. First passed in 2011 to protect law enforcement and emergency services personnel, the law was expanded to include a range of emergency and hazard vehicles. State Police Troop T, which patrols the Thruway, will conduct an enforcement detail through Friday, targeting motorists who fail to move over for emergency vehicles, tow trucks and maintenance vehicles. In a pair of recent cases, two people were killed by drivers on the Thruway. Tow truck operator James Homkey of Canajoharie died Oct. 10 assisting a disabled vehicle in Montgomery County. Ronald C. Deming of Little Falls was killed Oct. 28 while working as a heavy equipment operator for the Thruway Authority in Herkimer County. A public service announcement will air on cable TV and at Thruway rest stops. Troopers, Thruway staff and tow truck operators also will promote the campaign at service areas by handing out flyers and talking to drivers about the importance of the law. Message signs across the state will display reminders, and posters will be hung at Thruway service areas in support of the campaign. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Washington In the year of the outsider, Reince Priebus was the face of the Republican establishment. Yet the Republican National Committee chairman would come to earn the trust and confidence of President-elect Donald Trump, who on Sunday named Priebus as his chief of staff, along with flame-throwing media executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. The position puts Priebus at the power center of the new Trump administration. The 44-year-old Wisconsin political operative will help guard access to the president-elect, guide policy and political decisions, and if past practice holds true, will often be, along with Bannon, the last person Trump consults before making major decisions. Priebus has no governing experience in Washington. Yet his extraordinary ability to build and maintain relationships with his party's power brokers and grassroots sets him apart from other prospective chiefs of staff. The affable and slow-talking Priebus maintains a particularly close relationship with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is also from Wisconsin. At the same time, Priebus may have been almost as popular among the Republican National Committee's 168 members, who represent many different factions of the GOP and come from every state in the nation. Anti-Trump protests Immigrants, their advocates and others opposing a Donald Trump presidency continued to protest Sunday, speaking out against the president-elect's support of deportation and other measures. Organizers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like "Hate won't make us great," and chanted, "We are here to stay." More than 1,000 people joined the march that started mid-afternoon and extended into the evening. It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country, and even throughout the world. Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Several hundred protesters Sunday marched around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." In Los Angeles, a few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting "Love trumps hate!" Newburgh In this chronically struggling city along the Hudson River, residents beset by poverty, high crime and boarded-up homes now have an entirely new worry that their tap water may have exposed them to a chemical linked to cancer. State officials recently launched an ambitious effort to offer blood tests to Newburgh's 28,000 residents after the chemical PFOS used for years in firefighting foam at the nearby military air base was found in the city's drinking water reservoir at levels exceeding federal guidelines. "The fact that I've been drinking that water for years, and my daughter's been drinking and bathing in it, that's shocking to me," says Stuart Sachs, an artist who moved here from Brooklyn 14 years ago. "My daughter is 11. What diseases is she going to have to look forward to? It's scary." PFOS, or perfluorooctane sulfonate, has been linked to cancer, thyroid problems and other serious health issues. Results of the blood testing, expected to be released early next year, won't tell people whether they're actually at increased risk for any specific health problem, but will show how their exposure compares to others. Similar testing has been done in several smaller communities with water contaminated with PFOS or its close chemical cousin, PFOA, which is used in nonstick and stain-repellent coatings. About 1,500 people were tested near an air base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and found to have slightly elevated levels of the chemicals. In the rural villages of Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh, where plastics plants are being held liable for PFOA in public and private wells, tests of about 3,000 residents that began in February have found PFOA blood levels as high as 500 times the national average. New York's Department of Environmental Conservation has identified nearby Stewart Air National Guard Base as the source of the PFOS, suspecting the chemical, used for years in firefighting emergencies and drills, got into a stream leading to the city reservoir. Free blood tests are being offered through Nov. 19 to any resident who makes an appointment at one of seven clinics. But getting people tested in Newburgh presents special challenges. More than a third of residents live in poverty and more than 46 percent of households speak a language other than English at home. November 14, 2016 Unified communications as a service provider 8x8 (News - Alert) Inc. has doubled down on its commitment to the channel with the introduction, and ongoing support, of what it calls Channel 2.0. This expanded channel program is aimed at helping 8x8 partners transition from selling on-premises based solutions to cloud-based communications, explains Carlos Roman, head of global partner marketing at 8x8. Todays news includes the unveiling of new components to the 8x8 partner program, as well as the addition of some new partners, the expansion of relationships with select existing partners, and information about new customers. New with Channel 2.0 are the 8x8 PartnerConnect Portal, sales and technical training and certification, marketing and demand generation support, and sales enablement tools. Channel 2.0 creates a single, unified experience for the channel, says Roman, which is important as more of 8x8s customers go global. The new portal provides one place where partners can register deals, share pipeline, access sales and marketing collateral, and get support. Roman says 8x8 didnt have a single portal platform across the globe prior to Channel 2.0, so businesses in different regions had different experiences. The new 8x8 PartnerConnect Portal is available today in Australia, Canada, and North America. It will be available in the U.K. starting at the end of 2016. The training aspect of Channel 2.0 features university-like curriculum from which partners can pick and choose the courses and specializations they want to pursue online. Thats available starting this month. For post-sales, 8x8 is offering certification for partners so they can do their own deployments and day two support in an effort to increase their margins and build loyalty with their customers. In the past, says Roman, all channel partners depended on 8x8 for deployment. The post-sales deployment and technical support will be available in January. The integrated marketing and demand generation, Roman says, involves 8x8 helping partners with account planning, creating telemarketing initiatives, and once the lead is qualified passing the ball back to the partner. In the past 8x8 provided some content and gave it to its partners to execute, Roman says; now, with Channel 2.0, it provides all that as a one-stop shop. All of the above assets are available primarily in the English language, but Roman says 8x8 is working to localize these platforms and resources, especially in the European Union. In addition to the new Channel 2.0 features, 8x8 today announced new partnerships with Great Outcomes in New Zealand (which provides contact center solutions), and LANtelligence (which traditionally sold premises-based solutions but is now expanding to deliver cloud solutions), PERRY proTECH (a managed services provider), and Telarus (News - Alert) (a large master agent) in North America. 8x8 is also expanding its partnerships with Avant and Intelisys into the U.K., and Exsel Group into Scotland. Prior to working with 8x8, Exsel predominantly focused on selling mobile technologies with over 75 percent of our revenue from this market, said Tom McDonald, managing director at Exsel Group. Partnering with 8x8 has had a big impact on our product mix, and our team has great confidence in the high quality, reliability, and security of 8x8s global cloud communications solutions. Their industry-leading technology enables us to have more solutions-led conversations with our customers and truly differentiates us from the competition, allowing us to enter new markets. We receive an unprecedented level of support and have a true partnership with 8x8. Today, 75 percent of our new business comes from cloud communications services. 8x8 is also using today as an opportunity to highlight the recent wins of several high-profile customers, which have come in via the channel. That includes GameStop Corp. and Romanos Macaroni Grill, both of which are well-known businesses here in the U.S., as well as international customers Auto Customs, Gerber Technology, On Q Financial, and phoenixNAP. In fact, 8x8 said 16 of its top 25 deals in fiscal 2016 came through the channel. Thats 150 percent more than in fiscal 2015. Edited by Alicia Young [November 14, 2016] ADIB Moves to NCR's Voice-Guided ATMs to Improve Accessibility for the Visually Impaired NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR), a global leader in omni-channel solutions, announced today that Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), the country's leading financial institution, will transform its 20 ATMs with NCR's voice-guided technology, assisting visually impaired customers to easily and securely navigate ATM transactions without additional assistance. The new ATMs will be available to customers in December 2016. As part of the agreement, NCR will also upgrade the ATMs with Emirates ID card readers that will allow ADIB customers to reset their EIDA PIN at the ATM - a requirement for the country's eGovernment initiative - without having to visit a physical bank branch. Philip King, ADIB's Head of Retail Banking, commented, "In line with the Central Bank's commitment to the visually impaired, we are pleased to be partnering with NCR in our efforts to better meet the needs of visually impaired customers, and to empower them to take control of their transactions and have secure access to our ATM services. ADIB continues to look for ways to utilize innovative technology to bring convenience and flexibility to our customers' everyday banking transactions, and deliver a superior customer experience every time." NCR ATMs are equipped with unique software and hardware features to ensure that executing standard ATM transactions is simple for the visually impaired, including reading aloud on-screen messages that provide complete orientation and makes the transaction easier to navigate. An important security feature of this ATM is that it provides the person an option to blank out the screen as a safety mechanism to avoid shoulder surfing by any by-stander trying to access customer data during the transaction. "This is the first of its kind of project in the UAE capital and a bank-wide digitization initiative, in line with the Central Bank's commitment to visually impaired cardholders," said Wael El Aawar, managing director for NCR in Sadi and Gulf. "NCR ATMs are designed as per Access for All (AFA) standards and comprises accessible key pads, voice-guidance technology, Braille stickers and multi-lingual capability that allows visually challenged customers to securely execute standard ATM transactions such as withdrawals, deposits and payments without any help." Approximately 98% of all ADIB's cash transactions are conducted though ADIB's ATMs, which also offer other services including utility bill payments, money transfers and charity donations. ADIB was also first to introduce the region's first biometric ATMs in cooperation with the Emirates ID Authority. About ADIB ADIB is a leading bank in the UAE with more than AED 120 billion in assets. Its 900,000 customers benefit from the third largest distribution network in the UAE with 88 branches and more than 770 ATMs. The bank also offers world-class online, mobile and phone banking services, providing clients with seamless digital access to their accounts 24 hours a day. ADIB provides retail, corporate, business, private banking and wealth management solutions. The bank was established in 1997 and its shares are traded on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX). In the UAE, the Bank has more than 2,300 employees and remains one of the leading banks in the recruitment, development and promotion of local talent in all the markets in which it operates. The bank has one of the highest Emiratisation ratios with more than 43 percent of the bank's workforce being UAE Nationals. ADIB has presence in six strategic markets: Egypt, where it has 70 branches, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Sudan, Iraq and Qatar. Named "Best Bank in the UAE" by The Financial Times' (News - Alert) The Banker publication, ADIB has a rich track record of innovation, including introducing the award-winning Ghina savings account, award-winning co-branded cards with Etihad and Etisalat (News - Alert) and a wide range of financing products. About NCR Corporation NCR Corporation (NYSE:NCR) is the global leader in omni-channel solutions, turning everyday interactions with businesses into exceptional experiences. With its software, hardware, and portfolio of services, NCR enables more than 550 million transactions daily across retail, financial, travel, hospitality, telecom and technology, and small business. NCR solutions run the everyday transactions that make your life easier. NCR is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, with over 30,000 employees and does business in 180 countries. NCR is a trademark of NCR Corporation in the United States and other countries. Web sites: www.ncr.com, www.ncrsilver.com Twitter (News - Alert): @NCRCorporation Facebook (News - Alert): www.facebook.com/ncrcorp LinkedIn (News - Alert): www.linkedin.com/company/ncr-corporation YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/ncrcorporation View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005522/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Chasing the Edge of Science: Caltech, Liqid and Kingston Technology at SC16 Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, recognizes its ongoing relationship with the Caltech team working on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to facilitate their collaborative research efforts in high energy physics. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005718/en/ Kingston along with its technology partner, Liqid, are working with Caltech on more efficient ways to process data. (Photo: Business Wire) Behind the exciting discoveries at the LHC such as the Higgs boson particle, are massive sets of data that need to be distributed globally, shared and analyzed at unprecedented rates. These data sets are used by a global network of several thousand researchers, scientists and engineers across laboratories and universities to calibrate the equipment and prepare physics experiments. When scientists analyze the data, they typically look at a few billion events at a time, and deal with datasets that range from a few to about 50TB in size, drawn from multi-petabyte data stores. Kingston sees its advances in NVMe SSD technology, jointly developed with Liqid Inc., as being able to saturate the major network links interconnecting research facilities, typically in the range of 100 gigabits/sec (Gbps) per link, when used together with the Caltech team's high throughput applications which are being highlighted at the Caltech exhibit at SC16. "In 1998 we first tackled the problem of how institutions collaborating in the Large Hadron Collider physics program - and in particular my high energy physics experiment called the Compact Muon Solenoid - would handle the problem of going from the masses of data that we acquire, process, analyze and distribute to getting the physics results and making physics discoveries," said Harvey Newman, Professor of Physics at Caltech. "Among roughly 170 sites, the amount of data under management by the LHC experiments combined is now about 400PB. And talking in terms of the data transported across networks, it was nearly an exabyte in the last 12 months." The Caltech team, which originated the worldwide grid concept supporting the LHC program and is the leading science team in terms of developing high throughput applications for data transfer over wide area networks, also focuses on using GPUs in conjunction with machine learning to rapidly process scientific datasets. Working with its technology partner 2CRSI, Caltech quickly identified the forthcoming Liqid Powered Kingston DCP1000 as a candidate to deliver high IOPS for local computation as well as high throughput for data transfers. The Caltech team led by Professor Newman demonstrated delivering 100Gbps data rates between storage systems using only 2 NVMe add-in cards in a single 1U 2CRSI rack server and scaling linearly to drive 200Gbps of data using fur NVMe add-in cards. "Organizations like Caltech validate the ongoing need for next-generation storage solutions," said Alain Wilmouth, CEO of 2CRSI. "As a technology aggregator, we are very pleased that Kingston delivered an NVMe form factor that meets the requirements for a compact, high performance solution." "Caltech is continuously pushing the envelope, and through this collaboration we see the ongoing need for advances in next-generation storage solutions," said Ariel Perez, SSD Business Manager, Kingston. "Our partnership with Liqid allows us to continue delivering innovative, cost effective NVMe solutions to enable scientists to efficiently tackle their current and future research initiatives." 100Gbps and 200Gbps solutions featuring Liqid Powered Kingston NVMe drives and the solutions from 2CRSI are being displayed at Caltech's booths #2437 & #2537 at Supercomputing 2016 (SC16) in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kingston can be found on: YouTube (News - Alert): http://www.youtube.com/kingstontechmemory Facebook (News - Alert): http://www.facebook.com/kingstontechnology Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/KingstonTech Instagram: https://instagram.com/kingstontechnology/ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/kingston Google (News - Alert)+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+kingston/posts About Liqid Liqid is a data center innovation company that develops disruptive system solutions for the bare-metal cloud, enabling hyperscale agility at any scale. Gone are the days of slow, static, and capital intensive infrastructure changes. Liqid OS managed PCIe-based fabrics deliver over 90% resource utilization and 85x better operational efficiency. Liqid delivers a fluid and dynamic approach to disaggregate, provision, create, deploy, and delete bare-metal machines and the associated compute, network, and storage elements through policy-driven automation and orchestration. This allows organizations to adapt to technological and business changes in real-time, enabling them to fully maximize the opportunities in today's digital economy. For more information, contact our team at [email protected] or visit www.liqid.com. Follow Liqid on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. The Caltech and Partner Teams Founded in 1984, and working in support of the LHC program since 1994, the Caltech Network Team within the Caltech LHC HEP group is a worldwide leader in scientific network development, production, and operations. The Caltech team is collaborating with university teams from Michigan, UT Arlington, Vanderbilt, Victoria in Canada, UNICAMP and the State University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, and laboratory groups engaged in network development from the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Fermilab, and Brookhaven National Lab. The team is working with many network partners as well, including DOE's ESnet, Internet2, CENIC, Florida Lambda Rail, MiLR and other leading US regional networks, BCNET in Canada, leading exchange points including Starlight, AmLight, NetherLight, and CERNLight, along with GEANT, SURFNet and other European research and education networks, as well as the RNP national network and the ANSP (Sao Paulo) regional network in Brazil, on novel network system development and optimization projects focused on LHC and related applications for the last 15+ years. About Kingston Digital, Inc. Kingston Digital, Inc. ("KDI") is the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the world's largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Established in 2008, KDI is headquartered in Fountain Valley, California, USA. For more information, please visit www.kingston.com or call 800-337-8410. Editor's Note: For additional information, evaluation units or executive interviews, please contact David Leong, Kingston Digital, Inc. 17600 Newhope Street, Fountain Valley, CA (News - Alert) USA 92708, 714-438-1817 (Voice). Press images can be found in Kingston's press room here. Kingston and the Kingston logo are registered trademarks of Kingston Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. All other marks may be the property of their respective titleholders. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005718/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] CI&T Named Winner in 2016 Acquia Engage Awards NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CI&T, the digital technology agency empowering Agile Growth for the world's biggest companies today announced it has been selected as a winner for the 2016 Acquia Engage Awards in the Financial Services category for its work with Commonwealth Financial Network. The Acquia Engage Awards recognize the amazing sites and digital experiences that organizations are building with the Acquia Platform. "Receiving the Acquia Engage Award for Financial Services is an immense accolade for CI&T and reinforces our commitment to providing the most advanced technology solutions to each of our partners," said Bruno Guicardi, president of CI&T. "This recognition from Acquia and the expert Drupal communities solidifies CI&T's position as a leader in digital technology solutions." CI&T partnered with Acquia to leverage its Acquia Cloud Site Factory tool and build a totally revamped digital platform for Commonwealth, providing a new UX and mobile friendly web experience to more than 800 financial advisors. CI&T's extensive knowledge of Drupal and Acquia Cloud Site Factory was key to defining and implementing a robust architecture, therefore leveraging the foundation needed for rapid development and value activation. In addition to its win with Commonwealth, CI&T was honored as a finalist in the Commerce, Health Sciences and Healthcare categories. "Acquia's partners and customers are working tirelessly to raise the bar and drive the future of digital. Together we're helping organizations develop elegant solutions that inspire and engage audiences and drive significant vlue for their businesses," said Joe Wykes, senior vice president of global channels & eCommerce at Acquia. "This year's winners are working closely with Acquia to not only execute on today's opportunities, but to also lay the groundwork for success in the world of tomorrow. The breadth of submissions was inspiring, and continues to affirm that Acquia partners and customers are setting the new precedent for exceptional digital experiences." More than 150 submissions were received from Acquia customers and partners, from which 13 were selected as winners. Nominations that demonstrated an advanced level of visual design, functionality, integration and overall experience advanced to the finalist round, where an outside panel of experts from the Drupal and web content management communities selected the winning projects. The full list of winners for the 2016 Acquia Engage Awards are posted to Acquia's website. About CI&T CI&T is the digital technology agency empowering Agile Growth for the world's biggest companies by leveraging advanced technologies including Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Machine Learning/AI, Social, Mobility. For over 20 years, CI&T has been a trusted partner in helping global businesses such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart and Motorola build, manage, and transform the enterprise through the right combination of next generation technologies. With over 2,000 Digital Business Experts and Engineers in the USA, Brazil, UK, Australia, Japan, and China, CI&T is big enough to handle the needs of Fortune 100 clients while remaining agile, lean and able to move bold ideas to market fast. For more information, visit www.ciandt.com. About Acquia Acquia is the leading provider of cloud-based, digital experience management solutions. Forward-thinking organizations rely on Acquia to transform the way they can engage with customers -- in a personal and contextual way, across every device and channel. Acquia provides the agility organizations need to embrace new digital business models and speed innovation and time to market. With Acquia, thousands of customers globally including the BBC, Cisco, Stanford University, and the Australian Government are delivering digital experiences with transformational business impact. For more information visit www.acquia.com or call +1 617 588 9600. Media Contact: Zella Panossian Illume PR 1-310-452-4446 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cit-named-winner-in-2016-acquia-engage-awards-300361512.html SOURCE CI&T [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] COO of iTutorGroup, Jerry Huang, Spoke at EdTechXAsia Summit World's education leaders gathered on Nov 8-9 in Singapore at EdTechXAsia Summit to discuss the future of education in the 21st century. Jerry Huang (News - Alert), Chief Operating Officer of iTutorGroup, a global leader in online education, spoke on personalized learning in context of enhancing students' performance and moving the education space forward faster. Jerry Huang states, "One of the biggest challenges facing education is the ultimate efficacy of learning programs. At the end of the day, the learner wants to achieve the result they had hoped for which is where personalized learning comes in. With the help of big data analytics, we are able to match the right student with the right teaching consultant and digital content which ultimately increases student's learning performance and progress." As part of this year's focus on 21st Century education and skill, Huang spoke about personalized learning and how iTutorGroup is contributing to the transformation by helping students enhance their performance. Huang continued: "Our award-winning products domore than just change the way people learn; they are also changing the way people communicate and share information. Our platform drives live human-to-human interactions worldwide which enables anybody to connect with teachers, experts, classmates, and colleagues across the globe." EdTechXAsia brought together an elite group of global education technology players, innovators, investors, startups and more. Joining Huang as a speaker at the conference were Dr. Janil Puthucheary, Minister of State of Singapore; Sir John Vincent Cable, Former Secretary for Business Innovation and Skills for the United Kingdom; Victor Hu, Global Head of Education Technology for Goldman Sachs; and Dr. Barbara Kurshan, Executive Director of Academic Innovation, Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. About iTutorGroup iTutorGroup is the global leader in online education providing individualized, personalized learning experiences to hundreds of thousands of students & business professionals in countless subject matters through its network and sourcing of experts and teachers in thousands of centers, institutions and cities around the world. We do this by leveraging big data analytics and utilizing advanced algorithmic matching between students, classmates, teaching consultants and digital content. Since its inception in 1998, iTutorGroup has grown into the biggest online platform driving live human-to-human interactions worldwide. iTutorGroup leads the revolution of education and live interaction with its human-to-human platform and service model. With iTutorGroup, anybody can learn anything from any device, anytime, 24-7. iTutorGroup's award-winning education products include vipabc, TutorABC, vipabc junior and TutorABCJr for English-language learning, TutorMing for Mandarin Chinese language learning, and LiveH2H - a robust, global and open platform for live interactions and experts-on-demand. To learn more about iTutorGroup and its products, visit www.itutorgroup.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005004/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Ethernet Alliance SC16 Panel Shows Ethernet is in the Driver's Seat The Ethernet Alliance, a global consortium dedicated to the continued success and advancement of Ethernet technologies, today announced it is hosting a "Birds of a Feather" panel on the 2016 Ethernet roadmap at SC16 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Ethernet Roadmap session will be held from 5:15 - 7:00pm MT on Tuesday, November 15, 2016. WHAT: With a 44 percent share of supercomputers on the June TOP500 list, Ethernet continues to be the leading high-performance computing (HPC) interconnect technology in the industry segment. Led by Ethernet Alliance Chairman, John D'Ambrosia of Huawei (News - Alert) Technologies, expert panelists Greg McSorley of Amphenol Corporation, David Chalupsky of Intel Corporation, and David Rodgers of Teledyne LeCroy, Inc. will address Ethernet's latest developments and roadmap, and why it remains a dominant supercomputing technology. Discussion topics include the recent completion of 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 5GbE, and 25GbE standards, and work currently underway on specificaions for 50GbE, 200GbE, and 400GbE. Additionally, the panel will explore next-generation FlexEthernet (FlexE) link aggregation at speeds of 75 to 500Gb, and new optical module form factors. WHEN & WHERE: The Ethernet Roadmap will be held from 5:15 - 7:00pm PST Tuesday, November 15, 2016, in room 155-C of the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah. WHO & WHY ATTEND: Anyone interested in learning more about updates to Ethernet's expanding roadmap and its critical role in HPC, such as data center architects and engineers, researchers, media, and analysts will benefit from attending this presentation. Printed copies of the Ethernet Alliance's (News - Alert) 2016 Ethernet Roadmap will also be made available to all session attendees. To follow all of the latest Ethernet Alliance SC16 news and events, please follow #EASC16 on Twitter (News - Alert). For more information about the Ethernet Alliance, please visit http://www.ethernetalliance.org, follow @EthernetAllianc on Twitter, visit its Facebook page, or join the EA LinkedIn group. About the Ethernet Alliance The Ethernet Alliance is a global consortium that includes system and component vendors, industry experts, and university and government professionals who are committed to the continued success and expansion of Ethernet technology. The Ethernet Alliance takes Ethernet standards to market by supporting activities that span from incubation of new Ethernet technologies to interoperability demonstrations and education. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114006010/en/ [November 14, 2016] Express Scripts Canada Director Named 2016 Top 25 HR Professional MISSISSAUGA, ON, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Anthea Gomez, Director of Human Resources and Corporate Services at Express Scripts Canada is one of Canada's top 25 HR professionals, according to Canadian HR Reporter. Nominations were judged by the Canadian HR Reporter editorial team who was looking for HR professionals who have made significant contributions to their organization and profession within the past 12 months. "At Express Scripts Canada, we are driven by a belief that we can and do make a difference in the world around us and no one embodies this belief more than Anthea," says Michael Biskey, President of Express Scripts Canada. "Her efforts to enhance workplacediversity and build a corporate culture that supports the goals of both our employees and the organization are second to none. We are very proud of her accomplishment." In her role at Express Scripts Canada, Anthea oversees all leadership and organizational development, change management and employee relations. She understands the importance of staying current in her profession and has her Certified Human Resources Executive level designation. Anthea's dedication to her profession extends far beyond the office. Beyond her work responsibilities, she also supports efforts to eliminate discrimination against women, serves on several boards of directors and currently mentors internationally-trained HR professionals. About Express Scripts Canada From its corporate headquarters just outside Toronto, Express Scripts Canada transforms the way organizations and employees think about and participate in their drug benefit plan. Express Scripts Canada provides pharmacy services to thousands of Canadian patients. Through its proprietary consumer intelligence, clinical expertise, and patients-first approach, Express Scripts Canada promotes better health decisions for plan members, while managing and reducing drug benefit costs for plan sponsors. Express Scripts Canada is indirectly owned by Express Scripts Holding Company. SOURCE Express Scripts Canada [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] bernie sanders Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday lamented Hillary Clinton's failure to appeal to the white working-class voters who helped propel President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. The Vermont senator and former 2016 presidential candidate told "CBS This Morning" that "a lot of people think the Democratic Party is not standing with them." "I think that there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business," Sanders said. "It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from." Sanders did say Trump shouldn't overestimate his mandate, given that Clinton won the popular vote. Yet the Vermont senator acknowledged that Trump was successfully able to appeal to white working-class voters by tapping into a deeper frustration with economic stagnation that many voters blame on elected officials. "What he did is tap the angst and anger and hurt and pain that millions of working-class people are feeling," Sanders said. Some figures on the left, such as Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have offered an olive branch to Trump since his upset victory last week, noting the deep dissatisfaction with Washington's leaders that boosted Trump's candidacy. "It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo," Sanders wrote in a The New York Times op-ed article on Friday. But he has also cautioned Trump over the real-estate mogul's inflammatory rhetoric, writing that he was "deeply distressed to hear stories of Americans being intimidated and harassed in the wake of Mr. Trump's victory." "There is no compromise on racism, bigotry, xenophobia and sexism," Sanders wrote. "We will fight it in all its forms, whenever and wherever it re-emerges." NOW WATCH: FORMER WALL STREET EXEC: Trump's presidency 'may be one of the best things that's ever happened for feminists' More From Business Insider [November 14, 2016] Fitch Affirms Evangelical Homes of Michigan at 'BB+'; Outlook Stable Fitch Ratings has affirmed the 'BB+' rating on the following bonds issued on behalf of Evangelical Homes of Michigan (EHM): --$23,910,000 Michigan Strategic Fund series 2013; --$10,470,000 Economic Development Corporation of the City of Saline (MI) series 2013. The Rating Outlook is Stable. SECURITY The bonds are secured by a pledge of unrestricted receivables of the Obligated Group, a mortgage on the revenue-generating property and structures on the three campuses, and two separate debt service reserve funds. KEY RATING DRIVERS MODEST LIQUIDITY: Liquidity metrics remain mixed relative to 'BB+' peers but are adequate for the rating category with a solid 5.2x cushion ratio and a light 35.8% cash to debt. CONSISTENT OPERATING PROFITABILITY: Operating profitability has been consistent since fiscal 2012 with operating ratio averaging 97.8% and net operating margin averaging 5.5%, respectively, and equal to 98.2% and 5% in fiscal 2016, comparing adequately with Fitch's below investment grade median of 5.7%. STRONG OCCUPANCY: Strong and consistent occupancy is a key credit strength. Independent living unit (ILU), assisted living unit (ALU), and skilled nursing facilities (SNF) occupancy has averaged 93%, 97%, and 93%, respectively, since fiscal 2012. LIGHT DEBT BURDEN: EHM's debt burden remains light with maximum annual debt service (MADS) equal to 4.6% of fiscal 2016 revenue. The light debt burden allowed for solid revenue-only MADS coverage of 1.3x in fiscal 2016. INCREASED CAPITAL SPENDING: Capital spending is expected to increase over the next four years. Projects include renovation of EHM's Sterling Heights rehabilitation facilities and construction of a new retirement community in Farmington Hills, MI. The Farmington Hills project will likely involve the issuance of new debt in 2018. HIGH EXPOSURE TO SKILLED NURSING: With over 70% of revenue generated from SNF services, Fitch believes EHM is more vulnerable to occupancy fluctuations and reimbursement changes than communities with higher proportions of ALUs and ILUs. RATING SENSITIVITIES SUSTAINED OPERATING PERFORMANCE: Fitch expects that occupancy levels and operating performance will be sustained, providing consistent cash flow and coverage metrics without materially impacting unrestricted liquidity. EXPECTED DEBT ISSUANCE: Fitch will assess the impact of the expected debt issuance in 2018 on EHM's overall credit profile as details become more certain. CREDIT PROFILE Headquartered in Farmington, MI, EHM operates two skilled nursing facilities, a rehabilitation center (the Redies Center) and a retirement community (Brecon Village). Additional operations include home care and home support, senior housing, hospice care and memory support services in southeastern Michigan. Primary operations are located in Saline, Sterling Heights, Ann Arbor and Farmington, MI. Effective August 29, 2016, EHM changed its name to EHM Senior Solutions to reflect its broadened scope of operations from primarily operating nursing homes in 2008 to its current operating platform. The obligated group accounted for 98.8% of consolidated revenue and 99.4% of consolidated total assets in fiscal 2016 (April 30 year-end). The figures cited are for the consolidated entity (except for the interim period, which is obligated group only). Total operating revenues equaled $54 million in fiscal 2016. CONSISTENT OPERATING PROFITABILITY Operating profitability has been generally consistent since fiscal 2012 with operating ratio and net operating margin averaging 97.8% and 5.5%, respectively, and equal to 98.2% and 5% in fiscal 2016. Profitability remained consistent in the three month interim period ending July 31, 2016 (the interim period) with a 96.6% operating ratio and 6.9% net operating margin. Fitch expects operating profitability to remain at levels consistent with historical performance. STRONG OCCUPANCY EHM's consistent operating profitability reflects its consistently strong occupancy levels. ILU, ALU (including memory care) and SNF occupancy averaged 93%, 97% and 93% since fiscal 2012, respectively and equaled 95%, 97% and 89% at July 31, 2016. Occupancy rates reflects EHM's solid reputation and the benefits derived from being the only rental community in its service area, which is beneficial given the service area's demographics. LIGHT DEBT BURDEN EHM's debt burden remains light with MADS equal to 4.6% of fiscal 2016 operating revenues. The light debt burden allowed for solid revenue-only MADS coverage of 1.3x in fiscal 2016 and 1.8x in the interim period, exceeding Fitch's below investment grade category median of 0.7x. EHM expects to incur additional debt to fund certain capital projects as described below. Fitch will assess the rating impact of the project on EHM's credit profile as plans become more certain. MODEST LIQUIDITY Unrestricted cash and investments decreased 7% year-over-year to $13.1 million at July 31, 2016. The decrease was primarily due to the acquisitions of a 31-acre property in Farmington Hills, MI, and the former hospital in which the Redies Center is located. Despite the decrease, liquidity metrics remain adequate for the rating category relative to debt with 35.8% cash to debt and 5.2x cushion ratio, exceeding Fitch's below investment grade medians of 34.9% and 4.4x, respectively. However, days cash on hand remains weak with 94 days compared to Fitch's below investment grade median of 256 days. In addition, liquidity would be lower if not for a $2.8 million draw on a line of credit at July 31, 2016, which funded a portion of the acquisition costs. Fitch will monitor the impact of increased capital spending plan on liquidity metrics. INCREASED CAPITAL SPENDING Capital spending is expected to increase over the next four years as EHM pursues certain strategic initiatives including the development of a new retirement community in Farmington Hills, MI. Capital spending averaged $2.1 million (94.6% of depreciation) between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2016, but increased to $4.3 million (699% of depreciation) in the interim period. Total capital spending in fiscal 2017 is expected to exceed $5 million. The increased capital spending in iscal 2017 reflects the renovation of EHM's Sterling Heights rehabilitation facility and acquisitions of the former hospital in which EHM's Redies Center is located and the 31 acre property in Farmington Hills, MI. The acquisition of the former hospital cost $1.2 million and will eliminating approximately $600,000 in annual lease expense while generating approximately $120,000 in annual lease revenue from existing tenants. The Sterling Heights rehabilitation project will increase the facility's number of private rooms and is expected to cost $1.8 million, which is expected to be funded by an equity contribution and philanthropy contributions. Additionally, EHM plans to build a new retirement community on the Farmington Hills property. The project is expected to begin in 2018 and cost $40 to $50 million, of which $25 to $30 million will be funded by an expected debt issuance in 2018. Fitch views the capital projects favorably as they should strengthen EHM's competitive position and diversify operations while increasing revenue and profitability. However, the projects, particularly the new retirement community, expose EHM to execution risk. Fitch will assess the impact of the increased capital spending on liquidity metrics and the expected new debt issuance on EHM's overall credit profile as details become more certain. HIGH EXPOSURE TO SKILLED NURSING Skilled nursing services account for approximately 75% of consolidated revenues. Fitch believes EHM's relatively high exposure to skilled nursing makes it inherently more vulnerable to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement changes, and to relatively higher rates of attrition relative to communities with higher proportions of assisted and independent living units. DEBT PROFILE EHM had $36.7 million of total debt outstanding at July 31, 2016, including the series 2013 bonds and a term loan. The debt is 100% fixed rate and EHM is not counterparty to any swaps. MADS is level and equal to approximately $2.5 million. Additionally, EHM maintains a $2.8 million line of credit of which $2.8 million was drawn at July 31, 2016. DISCLOSURE EHM covenants to provide quarterly disclosure within 45 days of each fiscal quarter end and annual disclosure within 120 days of fiscal year-end. Disclosure is provided through the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's EMMA website. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. 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Due to the relative efficiency of electronic publishing and distribution, Fitch research may be available to electronic subscribers up to three days earlier than to print subscribers. For Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea only: Fitch Australia Pty Ltd holds an Australian financial services license (AFS license no. 337123) which authorizes it to provide credit ratings to wholesale clients only. Credit ratings information published by Fitch is not intended to be used by persons who are retail clients within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114006357/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Florida Agency Network Completes SOC 1 Type 2 Assessment Reports TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Florida Agency Network (FAN), the largest network of title agencies in Florida, has completed a rigorous third-party examination of its policies and procedures under the Service Organization Controls (SOC) 1 Type 2 standards, demonstrating its commitment to data security and privacy at all levels of its operations. The demanding third-party examinations were administered by the professional IT assurance and compliance staff at 360 Advanced, a respected national Qualified Security Assessor, HITRUST CSF Assessor and Certified Public Accountant firm based in Tampa, FL. Developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Trusted Service Principles (TSP) Framework is based on criteria geared towards technology and cloud-based computing systems, and the SP Framework is comprised of five standards by which a practitioner is required to examine and report on when analyzing the security of a candidates system. Companies that complete annual SOC 1 assessments are able to demonstrate a substantially higher level of security assurance and operational visibility as compared to those companies without an assessment. The assessment focuses on the internal controls impacting customers and the protection of their non-public personal information (NPPI). Through its partnership with Premier Data Services, FAN is able to avail itself of a SOC 2, Type 2-assessed hosted environment with co-location backup and the most rigorous security controls in the industry. Premier Data Services is able to provide security measures as they relate to non-financial controls of an organization such as its IT network and processes, as well as protection of confidential data. As an IT/MSP, Premier Data Services specializes in compliance and security, overseeing its clients infrastructure and network solutions, and ensuring their software systems are not only healthy, but also optimized for performance. Having the SOC 1 Type 2 assessment completed puts us in the top one percent of agencies to reach this standard in our industry, said Andrea Somers, Compliance Officer for FAN. She added that, Successfully completing the rigorous assessments provides FAN with a competitive advantage. Lenders are asking more frequently for standards of protection for consumers NPPI. ABOUT FLORIDA AGENCY NETWORK The FLORIDA AGENCY NETWORK (FAN) is made up of a network of title agencies that have formed a strategic alliance to provide shared back office services, pooled resources, and greater geographic coverage throughout the State of Florida. Resources of FAN include multiple on-staff attorneys, access to private title plant and ancillary services, IT company, centralized processes & post-closing, agency administration, compliance management and financial oversight. Powered by multiple national underwriters, FAN offers residential, commercial, builder, lender and investor services, experienced escrow staff, personalized customer service, offices throughout the State of Florida, and much more. For more information, please visit http://www.FLagency.net. For more information contact: Aaron M. Davis, CEO Florida Agency Network 813-754-4440 [email protected] Contact: Eric Ratcliffe [email protected] 866.418.1708 ext.710 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] France Brevets Licenses NFC Patents to HTC Regulatory News: Inside Secure (Euronext:INSD), at the heart of security solutions for mobile and connected devices, today announced that France Brevets granted to mobile phone company HTC (News - Alert) a worldwide patent license under their NFC Patent Licensing Program for use in HTC's products. The NFC Patent Licensing Program, fully managed by France Brevets and their affiliate' NFC Technology LLC, offers NFC patents from both Inside Secure and Orange (News - Alert), as well as patents acquired by France Brevets and patents owned by NFC Technology LLC. Commenting on this license, Didier Patry, CEO of France Brevets said, "this new license under the NFC LP is confirming the progress of our licensing program." This new license comes after the one signed with LG in 2014, Sony in March 2016 and Samsung (News - Alert) on May 2016. The parties did not disclose full financial details of the license agreement granted to HTC. About Inside Secure Inside Secure (Euronext Paris - INSD) is at the heart of security solutions for mobile and connected devices, providing software, silicon IP, tools and know-how needed to protect customers' transactions, content, applications, and communications. With its deep security expertise and experience, the company delivers products having advanced and differentiated technical capabilities that span the entire range of security requirement levels to serve the demanding markets of network security, IoT security, content & aplication protection, mobile payment & banking. Inside Secure's technology protects solutions for a broad range of customers including service providers, content distributors, security system integrators, device vendors and semiconductor manufacturers. For more information, visit http://www.insidesecure.com. About the NFC Patent Licensing Program France Brevets manages and leads the efforts under the NFC Licensing Program in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. France Brevets' affiliate, NFC Technology LLC, leads the NFC Licensing Program in the United States. The NFC Patent Licensing Program gives NFC-enabled device manufacturers access to the patents of INSIDE Secure, a leader in embedded security solutions for mobile and connected devices, and the NFC patents of Orange , which include both essential and implementation-specific approaches for NFC, and also other patents acquired by France Brevets and NFC Technology, LLC. The licensing program addresses multiple categories of NFC device manufacturers, such as those making smartphones, feature phones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, TVs, and smart meters which will offer a wide range of services such as mobile payment, transit, access control, customer retention programs and also ticket office. Details are available upon request from France Brevets ([email protected]) About France Brevets Created in March 2011, France Brevets is the first investment fund fully dedicated to patent promotion and monetization in Europe. Funded with 100 million, France Brevets deploys resources to execute patent and licensing strategies that best serve the interests of the patent holders and partners of France Brevets partners. The main sector focus of France Brevets is Information Technology and Communication at large, Aeronautics and Space, Alternative Energy, Chemistry, Materials, and Life Sciences. www.francebrevets.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005030/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] HEMIC Selects Guidewire Products With Cloud Delivery Through PwC Hawaii Employers' Mutual Insurance Company (HEMIC), Hawaii's largest provider of workers' compensation insurance, and Guidewire Software, Inc. (NYSE:GWRE), a provider of software products to Property/Casualty (P/C) insurers, today announced that HEMIC has selected Guidewire InsuranceSuite, Rating Management, and Client Data Management as its policy administration, underwriting, rating, client data management, billing, and claims management platform. The company has also selected Guidewire DataHub and InfoCenter as its data management and analytics solutions, Guidewire Account Management Portal for Policyholders and Gateway (News - Alert) Portal for Agents to enhance the digital experience of its policyholders and agents, and Smart Communications for customer communications management. Guidewire is a reseller of Smart Communications, a Guidewire PartnerConnect Solution and Ready for Guidewire program member. HEMIC will be accessing the Guidewire products in a private cloud, with implementation, ongoing services, and support provided by PwC, a Guidewire PartnerConnect Consulting Premier member. HEMIC selected Guidewire Core, Data, and Digital products, as well as PwC's InsuranceCloud solution offering, to provide an integrated foundation that offers a holistic user experience, transforming how they do business and enhancing their commitment to serving their agents and policyholders with superior customer service. The company will be implementing all of the products at the same time, running new business and converting renewals, as well as all historical and open claims, onto the new systems. "The advanced capabilities of Guidewire's Core, Data, and Digital products will help our organization reduce expenses and enhance efficiency and service to our customers," said Regina Harris, Vice President, Underwriting, HEMIC. "We felt that a hosted, managed services approach would be the best one to take to enable our agents to focus on their core competency: providing our policyholders with the very best insurance and service we can offer, while easily offering self-service capabilities as an additional option for our policyholders." "We were looking for a vendor that could provide all the systems we needed. After an intensive evaluation process, we selected Guidewire because we wanted a fully itegrated and configurable suite of products to improve operational effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service," Harris continued. "Guidewire's product maturity and market share, as well as their responsiveness and industry knowledge, were important factors in our decision-making process. We were also impressed by the out-of-the-box functionality of the Guidewire products and are planning to implement as much of that functionality as possible." Guidewire's portfolio of products and PwC's InsuranceCloud solution offering will enable HEMIC to: Enhance operational efficiency and productivity throughout the organization by standardizing policy administration, billing management and claims handling processes on a cohesive technology platform; Provide deeper insight due to better data and analytics; Increase customer satisfaction and lower overall expense ratio by offering lower cost self-service options to policyholders and agents; and Reduce time to value and increase business agility by leveraging cloud technology to minimize custom development and to implement multi-phased approaches to bring new products and product enhancements to market more quickly. "We are honored that HEMIC is putting their trust in PwC and leveraging our PwC InsuranceCloud Solution offering to implement, host and manage HEMIC's core system," said Marc Gallo, Partner, PwC. HEMIC selected PwC as an implementation partner based on their workers' compensation experience, Guidewire expertise, the quality of the proposed team and their long-term commitment to the AASCIF community. "HEMIC is the latest customer to leverage technology and flexible deployment models in order to enhance what they do best - provide a great experience for their policyholders, agents, and employees," said Ken Shapiro, Group Vice President, Americas Sales, Guidewire Software. "We applaud the company's commitment to helping ensure their ability to compete in the rapidly changing insurance marketplace, and we look forward to working with them and PwC on this project." About Hawaii Employers' Mutual Insurance Company (HEMIC) HEMIC is the State of Hawaii's leading workers' compensation insurance company, caring for more than 6,000 businesses and 75,000 workers across the Hawaiian Islands. Rated "A" for financial strength by A.M. Best, HEMIC is a mutual insurance company and has returned more than $28 million dollars in dividends to its policyholders over the past ten years. An expert in safety, HEMIC helps employers prevent workplace injuries as well as care for injured workers. To learn more about HEMIC, please visit www.Hemic.com. About PwC US At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. PwC is a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 208,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us www.pwc.com/US. About Guidewire Software Guidewire delivers the software that Property/Casualty (P/C) insurers need to adapt and succeed in a time of rapid industry change. We combine three elements - core operations, data and analytics, and digital engagement - into a technology platform that enhances insurers' ability to engage and empower their customers and employees. 260 P/C insurers around the world have selected Guidewire. For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com. Follow us on twitter: @Guidewire_PandC. NOTE: Guidewire, Guidewire Software, Guidewire ClaimCenter, Guidewire PolicyCenter, Guidewire BillingCenter, are registered trademarks of Guidewire Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005325/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] It's a Movement Moment: Caregivers Gain Influence as America Ages, New Results from 2016 Voter Polling Data and Survey Show It's a fact: caregiving for people living with disabilities has become the defining shared experience for tens of millions of adults in the United States. In bipartisan election-eve and election-day polling, voters from both parties said they strongly believe family caregivers would benefit from several changes. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005406/en/ Forty-one percent stated that families would benefit from changes in three areas: financial help, easier access to care workers and in-home services, and making housing suitable for people with disabilities. In terms of specific support for a single policy, 20 percent said they would benefit most from financial help, 20 percent said they would benefit most from easier access to care workers and in-home services, and 11 percent said they thought family caregivers would benefit most from making housing suitable for people with disabilities. These results are being presented today at the America CARES Forum in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Altarum Institute and Caring Across Generations. The Forum was designed to launch a substantial and continuing movement that will amplify the voices of tens of millions of caring Americans across the country. Attendees completed pre-Forum surveys on policy preferences, rating 20 policies for family caregivers and care workers. The top five most strongly supported policies among policymakers, experts, advocates and activists are: 1) Ensuring that housing is adapted, safe, and suitable for older adults and people with disabilities; 2) Creation of a comprehensive and frequently updated repository of resource referrals for social and supportive services; 3) Implementation of assessment and support of family caregivers within Medicare, Medicaid, and Dept. of Veterans Affairs' programs; 4) Creation of employer incentives through tax credits and other means that promote flexible workplace policies (e.g., compressed work weeks and teleworking); and 5) Expansion of community-based programs offering comprehensive medical and long-term services and supports such as PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) for Medicare beneficiaries. When asked to rank policy preferences for potential federal action,the policies most often ranked number one were flexible workplace incentives for employers and improving care worker benefits, including an increase in pay to $15 an hour. Policies ranked highest for action at the state level were creation of a better resource referral system for social supports and services, and improving care worker pay and benefits. Among those working in policy, the top-ranked federal priority was a publicly financed state or federal insurance program to assist older and adults, individuals with disabilities and their families to pay for long-term care. Slides and data can be found here. Affordability for long-term care is surfacing as a clear and growing challenge for families. Coinciding with today's Forum, Caring Across Generations also issued new recommendations for a bold new, state-based, long-term care services and supports (LTSS) benefit that would go a long way towards helping those most feeling the caregiving squeeze experiencing the high cost of care: family and professional caregivers and middle-class families. The full paper and analysis, Preparing For the Elder Boom: A Framework for State Solutions, was developed by a group of academics, advocates, and policy experts convened by Caring Across. "Being a family caregiver today is way too difficult," said Anne Montgomery, Deputy Director of Altarum's Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness. "We don't even identify caregivers in medical records, and there's no easy way to find reliable assistance at home for your parent, your spouse, and anyone else you love if they need ongoing care. Caregiving is part of life and we embrace that -- but we all need help to do it well. We need an actual system of long-term care, and that doesn't exist. At the Forum, we're building a movement to better understand what we can accomplish rapidly -- and to insist on more attention from policymakers." "It is time to not only create a substantial movement to amplify the voices of tens of millions of caring Americans across the country - but also to put forth and start acting on solutions," said Josephine Kalipeni, Director of Policy and Partnerships for Caring Across Generations. "We cannot wait for a crisis to spur our leaders into action. The good news is states can start working now to develop a new care system that works for all of us." More information and ways to participate in building family caregiver and care worker issues into policy agendas at the local, state and national levels can be found here. And to join the America CARES movement, add your voice with many others, and get information that you can use to launch parallel initiatives in your own area, please contact us at medicaring.org. Altarum Institute (www.altarum.org) integrates objective research and client-centered consulting skills to deliver comprehensive, systems-based solutions that improve health and health care. Altarum employs over 450 individuals and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with additional offices in the Washington, D.C., area; and Portland, Maine. About Caring Across Generations Caring Across Generations is a national movement of families, caregivers, people with disabilities and aging Americans working to transform the way we care in this country. By harnessing the power of online and grassroots organizing and culture change work, we are shifting how our nation values caregiving and calling for policy solutions that enable all of us to live well and age with dignity. For more information, please visit caringacross.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005406/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] MagnaChip to Offer 0.13 micron EEPROM based RF-CMOS Technology for Wireless Applications SEOUL, South Korea and SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation ("MagnaChip") (NYSE: MX), a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, announced today that it now offers 0.13 micron EEPROM- based RF-CMOS technology. This RF-CMOS process was developed using a P-type substrate, which is tailored specifically for wireless applications. The primary purpose for developing the 0.13 micron EEPROM based RF-CMOS technology is to support Smart Wireless MCU products, which frequently use BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) as the main wireless communications technology. BLE, also called Bluetooth Smart, is a Bluetooth technology that transmits and receives low-power and low-capacity data, reaching a radius of 10 meters using the 2.4GHz frequency range. To satisfy this market need, MagnaChip has developed a process applicable for Smart Wireless MCU products with embedded RF devices in the 0.13 micron EEPROM process. MagnaChip's technology, which consumes less power, makes it suitable for various applications that utilize Smart Wireless MCUs, such as smartwatches, smart remote controllers, toys, beacons, wearables, 3D glasses and sensor hub wireless chargers. Furthermore, MagnaChip's RF-CMOS technology includes the necessary components such as RF-CMOS devices and passive devices including EEPROM IP. The EEPROM IP is also usable up to 64K bytes of high density. Also, RF modeling for CMOS, HR resistor, MIM capacitor, MOM capacitor, varactor diodes and inductor components was completed for the RF design, and the 4-micron-thick metal process was developed for the RF design. In particular, low Vt N/PMOS was developed to improve the transistor's RF performance. To capitalize on the many beneficial features, such as efficient power consumption and wide usability, MagnaChip has been developing various RF-CMOS technologies and will begin full-scale mass production in 2017. MagnaChip is offering RF-SOI and also RF-CMOS processes, which demonstrates that the company has made significant progress in becoming an RF process specialty foundry. Due to increased usage of Smart Wireless MCU products in smart homes, the MCU market is expected to show significant growth in the near future, according to industry observers. YJ Kim, MagnaChip's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We are pleased to offer our 0.13 micron EEPROM based RF-CMOS technology for applications in the Smart Wireless MCU market. Our goal is to continue to develop competitive processes and IPs to serve growing markets and to diversify our technology portfolio to meet the many application-specific needs of our foundry customers." About MagnaChip Semiconductor MagnaChip is a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products for high-volume consumer, communication, industrial and computing applications. The Company's Display Solutions, Power Solutions, and Foundry Services Groups provide a broad range of standard products and manufacturing services to customers worldwide. MagnaChip owns a portfolio of more than 3,500 registered and pending patents, and has extensive engineering, design and manufacturing process expertise resulting from its 30-year operating history. For more information, please visit www.magnachip.com. Information on or accessible through, MagnaChip's website is not a part of, and is not incorporated into, this release. CONTACT S : In the United States: Bruce Entin Entin Consulting Tel. +1-408-625-1262 [email protected] In Korea: Chankeun Park Director of Public Relations Tel. +82-2-6903-3195 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/magnachip-to-offer-013-micron-eeprom-based-rf-cmos-technology-for-wireless-applications-300361077.html SOURCE MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Ohio Schools Join Statewide Challenge to Fight Opioid Abuse Ohio is facing a major opioid overdose crisis. And as many Ohio families fight opioid abuse, the impact cascades into the learning environments in Ohio schools. Today, the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio STEM Learning Network are announcing a program to help schools better prepare for this crisis. This year, several Ohio science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) schools will complete design challenges aimed at understanding and eliminating Ohio's opioid crisis. A design challenge is a multi-week project in which students learn by creating new solutions to real-world problems. Design challenges offer an approach to problem-based learning that can go deep into content areas while offering students a wide range of questions to consider. Throughout the year, the Ohio STEM Learning Network will post resources and events to support schools in organizing local design challenges that will help in the fight against opioid abuse. A page on the Ohio STEM Learning Network website, www.osln.org/design, provides templates and early guidance on creating a design challenge. The network also is hosting two free informational webinars on design challenges in November. The Ohio Department of Education is supporting the effort with public appearances by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria and amplifying these opportunities through the department's communications channls. "Real-world challenges offer students powerful opportunities to lock in learning," said DeMaria, superintendent of public instruction. "With this challenge, Ohio students will put their learning to the test to help solve a critical challenge facing our state." All Ohio schools are welcome to participate. Schools interested in participating should visit www.osln.org/design and register to receive information about support and promotion opportunities. Several Ohio STEM Learning Network schools already have started planning design challenges fighting opioid abuse. Participating schools include: Bio-Med Science Academy Dayton Regional STEM School Global Impact STEM Academy Geauga iSTEM Early College High School Metro Early College High School Metro Institute of Technology Northwestern Local High School Reynoldsburg eSTEM Academy Reynoldsburg (HS) 2 Academy Academy Reynoldsburg STEM Middle at Baldwin Road STEM Academy of Lawrence County at Collins Career-Technical Center The Ohio STEM Learning Network, managed by Battelle, was created as a public-private partnership in 2008. Today, more than 30 STEM schools and seven regional hubs make up the network. "Ohio created this network of schools to serve as a catalyst for field testing promising ideas in education," said Aimee Kennedy, vice president of education, STEM learning, and philanthropy at Battelle. "In classrooms across the state, students will be mastering the content they need while laying the groundwork for a drug-free future." About Battelle Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries. For more information, visit www.battelle.org. About the Ohio Department of Education The Ohio Department of Education oversees the state's public education system, which includes public school districts, joint vocational school districts and charter schools. The Department also monitors educational service centers, other regional education providers, early learning and child care programs, and private schools. The Department's tasks include administering the school funding system, collecting school fiscal and performance data, developing academic standards and model curricula, administering the state achievement tests, issuing district and school report cards, administering Ohio's voucher programs, providing professional development, and licensing teachers, administrators, treasurers, superintendents and other education personnel. The Department is governed by the State Board of Education with administration of the Department the responsibility of the superintendent of public instruction. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005218/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] SES Government Solutions is Awarded BBG Managed Services Contract SES (News - Alert) S.A. (Euronext Paris:SESG) (LuxX:SESG) announced today that SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, was awarded a managed services contract to support the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The service will support the Broadcasting Board of Governors in broadcasting US Government civilian content across the world via SES satellites. The single Firm-Fixed-Price Task Order will service some of the existing BBG's satellite capacity requirements. SES GS will provide high quality satellite solutions and possesses the agility to reach BBG's distribution hubs, news bureaus, and international audiences via satellite and terrestrial connectivity. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005075/en/ SES Government Solutions is Awarded BBG Managed Services Contract (Photo: Business Wire) The contract for these SES GS managed services includes a one-year base period, with four one-year option periods for a total value of approximately USD 15 million over the period of performance. Under this new agreement, the BBG has employed a new model for purchasing COMSAT as a managed service, which effectively obviates having several disparate contracts for each part of their broadcasting infrastructure. The agreement was executed using the US Government's Custom COMSAT Solutions (CS2) contract vehicle, allowing federal agencies to build large, complex, custom end-to-end satellite solutions. "This type of innovative buying practice serves as an example of how agencies can benefit from cost savings while addressing their SATCOM needs," said Pete Hoene, President and CEO of SES GS. "We are proud to support the BBG using SES's cost-effective, reliable, scalable and secure global network, which is optimized for high definition audio and video broadcast programming." The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent agency of the federal government that oversees all US civilian international media. Its mission is to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. Follow us on: Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/SES_Satellites Facebook (News - Alert): https://www.facebook.com/SES.YourSatelliteCompany YouTube (News - Alert): http://www.youtube.com/SESVideoChannel Blog: http://www.ses.com/blog SES Pictures are available under http://www.ses.com/21472913/Our_Pictures SES White papers are available under http://www.ses.com/18681915/white-papers About SES SES (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: 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 SES Government Solutions SES Government Solutions, a subsidiary of global satellite operator SES, is exclusively focused on meeting the satellite communications needs of the U.S. Government. Leveraging more than four decades of experience in the government SATCOM market, SES Government Solutions offers robust and secure satellite-based communications solutions. Supported by SES's fleet of over 50 satellites offering comprehensive global coverage, SES Government Solutions provides highly reliable fixed and on-the-move capacity. Further information can be found at www.ses-gs.com. About the BBG The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency, supervising all U.S. government-supported, civilian international media, whose mission is to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. BBG networks include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). BBG programming reaches an audience of 226 million in more than 100 countries and in 61 languages. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005075/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Smart IOPS' Data Engine SSD Powers GIGABYTE's Fastest NVMe-Based Servers SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Supercomputing Conference SC16 (Booth 3447 and 344) Smart IOPS, Inc. an innovative flash storage leader, announced its latest collaboration with GIGABYTE Technology to use Smart IOPS' Data Engine solid state drives (SSDs). By leveraging Smart IOPS' low-latency Data Engine PCIe Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe1) SSD, GIGABYTE will offer NVMe-based servers with the fastest random read and write performance currently available. GIGABYTE's rackmount servers using a single Data Engine SSD achieve 1.7 million IOPS and 6,800 MB/s random read bandwidth, making them GIGABYTE's fastest NVMe-based servers available. GIGABYTE will be demonstrating this latest offering at the SC16 conference booth #344. "We are excited to deepen our partnership with GIGABYTE to differentiate their leading-edge enterprise systems by using our portfolio of enterprise PCIe SSDs," said Ashutosh Das, President and CEO, Smart IOPS. "Our partnership to collaborate on new NVMe-based server technology solutions will undoubtedly revolutionize computing in the years ahead." "By working with Smart IOPS, GIGABYTE is demonstrating our commitment to being at the forefront of technology, and recognize the importance of NVMe-enabled SSDs," said Etay Lee, GM, GIGABYTE. "This cooperation enables us to offer a new range of high speed solutionsto meet the increasing latency demands on SSDs created by new enterprise and data center applications." GIGABYTE will offer Smart IOP Data Engine SSDs as an option on all standard Intel-based servers. For pricing and availability information, connect with the company and its partners through http://b2b.gigabyte.com and/or social media. About GIGABYTE GIGABYTE, headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, is known as a global leading brand in the IT industry, with employees and business channels in almost every country. Founded in 1986, GIGABYTE started as a research and development team and has since taken the lead in the world's motherboard and graphics card markets. On top of Motherboards and Graphics cards, GIGABYTE further expanded its product portfolio to include PC Components, PC Peripherals, Laptops, Desktop PCs, Network Communications, Servers & Datacenter systems and Mobile Phones to serve each facet of the digital life in the home and office. Everyday GIGABYTE aims to "Upgrade Your Life" with innovative technology, exceptional quality, and unmatched customer service. Visit http://b2b.gigabyte.com for more information. About Smart IOPS, Inc. Smart IOPS is an innovative leader in storage solutions whose TruRandom technology creates new possibilities for flash technology to have a profound impact on current and next generation data center applications. Powered by TruRandom, Smart IOPS SSDs substantially increase IOPS and bandwidth to remove the I/O storage bottleneck that plagues the modern data center. Smart IOPS' flash storage solutions enable Cloud Service Providers (CSP), High Performance Computing (HPC) and enterprise data centers to confidently deploy I/O-intensive applications with greater reliability and SLA, at a fraction of the cost of other flash-based storage products. Visit the company website at www.smartiops.com for more information. 1NVMe and NVM Express are a trademark of NVM Express, Inc. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-iops-data-engine-ssd-powers-gigabytes-fastest-nvme-based-servers-300361094.html SOURCE Smart IOPS, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Super Technologies Celebrates 17 Years Business Via DIDX UK DID Expansion Super Technologies, Inc. shares the celebration of 17 years serving voice over Internet, MVNOs and MNOs, CLECs, contact centers, and other cloud and mobile communications companies via its award-winning service DIDX.net, the oldest, largest wholesale direct inward dialing (DID) phone number marketplace. DIDX.net announces that all 35,000 world-renowned, Internet-based telecommunications company members are invited to take advantage of the exclusive and limited time offer of 100 United Kingdom DID phone numbers at $50 per month with zero set-up fee. Recently 200 new area codes of UK DID were added, totaling 627 now available. Ali Muhammad states, "DIDX.net enables the capability of call forwarding via direct inward dialing to VoIP, SIP, mobile phones, and other types of phones and devices over any network. UK DID is among the top ten phone number purchase areas in number of DIDs on average per purchase on DIDX.net, so we chose to celebrate our almost two decades of service by offering great deals for customers in the UK area." Telecom and tech-related engineers and developers of companies that need to use and/or buy DID phone numbers at a wholesale level are able to access and integrate DIDX.net range of efficiencies and data conducive to the operation of many types of applications such as for tourism, transportation, call centers, online gaming, and international nonprofit such as religious or educational networks. Example API features include retrieval of country code, NPA-NXX and rates, DID and vendor quality level assigned, and service details such as channel-based, minutes-based and whether regulatory documents may be required. "Resellers who use the DIDX marketplace, where hundreds of reliable wholesale level vendors make available DID for sale, are able to easily and quickly provision UK DIDs as well as DID phone number in 65 countries in real-time. They complete one agreement and interop that makes their systems compatible to all. Resellers are able to show all these DID for purchase by their customers through our API without buying them in advance," Suzanne Bowen, co-founder of Super Technologies, Inc. who provides the DIDX.net service. Meet with the DIDX.net team at ITEXPO Florida in person February 8 - 10, 2017 in Fort Lauderdale, FL and also at GSMA Mobile World Congress February 27 - March 2, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Sign up for both empowering technology and communications must-attend industry events at http://www.itexpo.com and https://www.mobileworldcongress.com/. Sign up to get started with DIDX at http://www.didx.net today. As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] TigerRisk Adds Pat Denzer to Its List of Elite Brokers TigerRisk Partners LLC, the risk/capital management and strategic advisory firm, today announced that Patrick J. Denzer has joined the firm as a Partner. In his new role, Mr. Denzer, a well-known and highly respected reinsurance industry veteran, will focus on client management and strategic development. "Pat is one of the most experienced and able reinsurance brokers in the industry. His extraordinary record of accomplishment speaks for itself," said Rod Fox, CEO of TigerRisk. "I am glad we've now got him on our team." Tony Ursano, President of TigerRisk and CEO of TigerRisk Capital Markets & Advisory, added, "Pat's insightful understanding of client needs and proven talent for strategic thinking will make him an invaluable asset." Mr. Denzer was most recently Chairman Americas of Guy Carpenter. Previously he was President and CEO of John B. Collins Associates, one of the five largest US reinsurance brokers at the time it was acquired by Guy Carpenter. While at Collins, Mr. Denzer was responsible for develoing and executing strategy as well as managing client relationships. He joined Collins as an Assistant Vice President in 1989. By the time Collins was sold in 2009, Mr. Denzer had helped grow revenues from $5 million to $80 million. "I have always admired TigerRisk's devotion to client advocacy, their highly analytical approach supported with the latest technology, and their commitment to innovation and creativity," said Mr. Denzer. "I am looking forward to working with such industry luminaries as Jim Stanard, Rod Fox and Tony Ursano." Mr. Denzer attended the University of Minnesota and serves on numerous for-profit and non-profit boards. He and his wife and two children live in Minneapolis. TigerRisk Partners is a privately held reinsurance broker and risk/capital management advisor founded in 2008 by Jim Stanard, founder and former CEO of Renaissance Re, and Rod Fox, former CEO of the U.S. operations of Benfield. TigerRisk Capital Markets & Advisory (TCMA), a broker dealer registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a member of FINRA and a member of SIPC, is a wholly owned subsidiary providing clients strategic advice on mergers, acquisitions, capital markets products and transactions. Headquartered in Stamford, CT., TigerRisk has offices in New York, Bermuda, London, Hong Kong, Minneapolis, Chicago and Raleigh. For more information visit TigerRisk.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005384/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] UnitedHealth Group to Host Military and Veterans Career Fair in Texas; Seeking to Hire More Veterans and Their Spouses UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH): WHAT: UnitedHealth Group will host a Military and Veterans Career Fair Thursday, Nov. 17, from 5 to 8 p.m. in San Antonio, with the goal to hire veterans and/or their spouses for jobs in Texas. The career fair is a one-day event where transitioning military and veterans, and their spouses can meet with UnitedHealth Group recruiters, veteran employees and business leaders. There will be stations set up for seminars on networking, resume writing and interviewing skills. This event is free to attendees. UnitedHealth Group has more than 2,000 job openings in Texas, in addition to nearly 2,000 telecommuting (i.e. work from home) positions, and aims to fill these positions by the end of the year. The open positions encompass all types of careers at all levels: technology, clinical, business operations, finance, network management, sales and marketing, customer service, health care operations, administrative professionals and sales support. Interested candidates can learn more and register for the job fair at https://careers.unitedhealthgroup.com The UnitedHealth Group family of businesses is committed to hiring military veterans. In partnership with Veterans Jobs Mission, the leading private-sector solution addressing U.S. military veteran unemployment, UnitedHealth Group encourages military veterans who are interested in a position to learn more and/or apply for a job at https://careers.unitedhealthgroup.com Interested individuals can also use UnitedHealth Group's online Military Skills Translator to help convert military experience into opportunities available at UnitedHealth Group. WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 17; 5-8 p.m. WHERE: The career fair will take place at Texas A&M University-San Antonio Campus; Central Academic Building, Vista Room; One University Way; San Antonio, Texas, 78224. Attendees can follow the signage from the parking lot directing participants to the Vista room. CONTACT: Will Holman UnitedHealth Group 952-979-5862 [email protected] About UnitedHealth Group UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) is a diversified health and well-being company dedicated to helping people live healthier lives and helping to make the health system work better for everyone. UnitedHealth Group offers a broad spectrum of products and services through two distinct platforms: UnitedHealthcare, which provides health care coverage and benefits services; and Optum, which provides information and technology-enabled health services. For more information, visit UnitedHealth Group at www.unitedhealthgroup.com or follow @UnitedHealthGrp on Twitter (News - Alert). Click here to subscribe to Mobile Alerts for UnitedHealth Group. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005124/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] WISeKey creates a Joint Venture company "WISeKey Argentina" for the development of cybersecurity in Latin America. WISeKey International Holding (WIHN, a company listed on the Swiss stock exchange) through WISeKey ELA (its Spanish company headquartered in Bilbao), AC Investment & Consultant S.A. and Trend Technologies S.A. reached an agreement to form a Joint Venture for the creation of a new company WISeKey Argentina, with the objective of extending WISeKey's global presence in Argentina. WISeKey's global expansion during recent years has focused on the development of joint ventures with strategic partners on a national level, which has permitted WISeKey to deploy their information technology security and the Internet of Things in emerging economies in India, Brazil, China and now Argentina. These joint venture companies are developed in these countries with strategic partners that pave their way into the market providing important clients and contracts that are facing a high growth demand for cybersecurity solutions such as, digital identity and privacy, secure mobile communication, secure cloud computing, the Internet of Things, secure semi-conductors, BlockChain and other innovative technologies offered by WISeKey. The new joint venture will expand current operations in Argentina with the possibility of extending into other Latin American countries as well. The WISeKey alliance with its new partners creates a synergy between leading companies whose values and product portfolio provide state of the art technology and cybersecurity services. This initiative also contemplates that the company offer its services and solutions from a highly secure data center located in the region. The partnership includes a strategic investment in WISeKey Argentina, representing a 49% ownership to the new partners and a 51% share for WIHN. WISeKey's presence in Argentina is a result of the creation of a joint venture that entails the development of a Root of Trust and a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for WISeKey Argentina, including a globally trusted Certification Authority within a security strateg framework. The Public Key Infrastructure is the center of all of the initiatives that provides the necessary security (encrypted and digital signatures) for electronic transactions. Carlos Moreira, Founder, President of the Board of Directors and CEO of WISeKey International Holding, said: "The economic perspectives for Argentina are very positive, and this joint venture will permit WISeKey to respond to the market dynamics quicker. Our company will be in the best condition to establish its technology in the region and accelerate its growth." Daniel Corrado, future President and CEO of WISeKey Argentina, said, "this joint venture will provide WISeKey a platform in Argentina to expand its market leading products into this high growth market with a consolidated focus, integrating technologies and local services to offer solutions to national clients. The association of WISeKey with its new partners exploits both companies capabilities allowing us to broaden the offer of cybersecurity services in the quickest and most efficient manner, substantially increasing revenues and profitability." About WISeKey WISeKey (SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading cybersecurity company and has been selected as a World Economic Forum Global Growth Company. WISeKey is currently deploying large-scale Internet of Things ("IoT") digital identity ecosystems and has become a pioneer of the "4th Industrial Revolution (News - Alert)" movement launched this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos. WISeKey's Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT") integrates wearable technology with secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, and empowers IoT and wearable devices to become secure transactional devices. The RoT serves as a common trust anchor, which is recognized by the operating system and applications, to ensure the authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of on-line transactions. With the cryptographic RoT embedded on the device, the IoT product manufacturers can use code-signing certificates and a cloud-based signature as a service to secure interactions among objects and between objects and people. WISeKey has patented this process in the USA as many IoT providers currently use it. Disclaimer: This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005056/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 13, 2016] Landmark Study Demonstrates Pfizer's Celebrex (Celecoxib)Has Similar Cardiovascular Risk As Compared To Prescription Doses Of Ibuprofen and Naproxen Results of the landmark Prospective Randomized Evaluation of Celecoxib Integrated Safety vs. Ibuprofen Or Naproxen (PRECISION) demonstrated similar rates of cardiovascular risk in patients treated with prescription doses of celecoxib, ibuprofen and naproxen who had a clinical diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA) or rheumatoid arthritis (RA), were at high risk for cardiovascular disease, and required daily treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to control symptoms of arthritis. In addition, patients treated with celecoxib experienced significantly fewer gastrointestinal events as compared with those receiving prescription doses of ibuprofen or naproxen. The PRECISION trial helps to refute the assumption held by many physicians that naproxen treatment results in better cardiovascular outcomes as compared to other NSAIDs, including celecoxib. It is important to note that given the trial's design - prescription doses and chronic use in patients with cardiovascular risk factors - no inferences are possible regarding the safety of intermittent use of low-dose, over-the-counter NSAIDs. The results of the PRECISION study were presented today at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans by Dr. Steve Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic and principal investigator of the PRECISION trial. In addition, the results were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. PRECISION was a prospective, long-term non-inferiority trial of 24,081 patients designed to assess the cardiovascular safety of Celebrex (celecoxib) versus prescription strength doses of ibuprofen and naproxen in patients with chronic pain from OA or RA. The trial, designed in 2005 based on discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was funded by Pfizer but directed independently by the Cleveland Clinic and governed by an executive committee composed of cardiology, gastroenterology, and rheumatology specialists. "We are pleased with the results of this landmark study. Questions about the cardiovascular safety of prescription NSAIDs have persisted since the withdrawal of Vioxx (rofecoxib) from the market in 2004," said Ian Read, chairman and chief executive officer of Pfizer Inc. "The study demonstrated that patients treated with prescription doses of celecoxib, ibuprofen or naproxen had similar rates of cardiovascular events and dispels the long held perception of excess cardiovascular risk associated with long term use of Celebrex." The primary objective of PRECISION was to assess the effects of celecoxib (100-200 mg twice daily) compared to prescription strength doses of ibuprofen (600-800 mg three times a day) or naproxen (375-500mg twice a day) on the first occurrence of cardiovascular (CV) death, non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) or non-fatal stroke in subjects with OA or RA and who have established cardiovascular disease or risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Pre-specified secondary objectives including assessments of additional cardiovascular endpoints, significant gastrointestinal events, renal events and arthritis pain improvement will be published at a later date. All subjects were provided with esomeprazole, a proton pump inhibitor, to be taken once daily as a gastro-protective agent. Patients also had the option of continuing low-dose aspirin for additional cardio-protective effects regardless of their CV risk. Top-Line Results: The final PRECISION trial results provide statistically strong evidence that cardiovascular risk with approved doses of celecoxib is not greater than that of prescription doses of ibuprofen and naproxen. The study showed that patients with chronic arthritic conditions and CV risk factors taking celecoxib experienced numerically fewer cardiovascular events as compared to patients receiving prescription strength doses of ibuprofen and naproxen. More specifically, a primary endpoint occurred in 2.3 percent of patients receiving celecoxib as compared to 2.5 percent for patients receiving naproxen and 2.7 percent for patients receiving ibuprofen. In addition, regarding secondary analyses, significantly fewer GI events occurred among patients treated with celecoxib as compared with those receiving prescription doses of either ibuprofen or naproxen. More specifically, serious gastrointestinal events occurred in 1.1 percent of patients receiving celecoxib as compared to 1.5 percent for patients receiving prescription doses of naproxen and 1.6 percent for patients receiving prescription doses of ibuprofen. The gastrointestinal safety findings were observed despite providing all patients enrolled in the study with a proton pump inhibitor to reduce stomach acids. In addition, the secondary endpoint involving renal events occurred with a lower frequency in patients treated with celecoxib as compared to prescription doses of ibuprofen. "NSAIDs are an important treatment option for millions of arthritis patients around the globe. The results of the PRECISION study underscore the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal safety of Celebrex for the long-term treatment of chronic arthritic conditions," said Freda Lewis-Hall, M.D., chief medical officer and executive vice president of Pfizer Inc. About Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis: Arthritis is a chronic, progressive medical condition characterized by inflammation, swelling and pain in and around the joints. The two most common forms of arthritic disorders are OA and RA. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arthritic conditions affect more than 50 million adults in the US and are a leading cause of disability. Today, more than 80 percent of OA patients have limited mobility and 25 percent of patients are unable to perform daily tasks. NSAIDs: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDS) are among the most widely prescribed medicines in the world due to their effective anti-inflammatory and pain relieving properties which enable patients to function more normally. However, there have been concerns over the chronic, long-term use of prescription NSAIDs because of potentially serious gastrointestinal (GI) complications such as major and minor bleeding, ulcers, and perforations. GI complications resulting from prescription NSAID use are among the most common drug side effects in the United States due to the use of these medications for chronic pain management in conditions such as OA and RA. Important Celebrex (celecoxib) Safety Information All prescription NSAIDs, like CELEBREX, ibuprofen, naproxen, and meloxicam, increase the risk of heart attack or stroke that can lead to death. This may happen early in treatment and may increase with increasing doses of NSAIDs and with longer use of NSAIDs. CELEBREX should never be used right before or after a heart surgery called "coronary artery bypass graft" (CABG). Avoid taking NSAIDs after a recent heart attack, unless your healthcare provider tells you to do so. You may have an increased risk of another heart attack if you take NSAIDs after a recent heart attack. NSAID medications, like CELEBREX, cause an increased risk of bleeding, ulcers, and tears (perforation) of the esophagus, stomach, and intestines, at any time during treatment, which can occur without warning and may cause death. Prescription CELEBREX should be used exactly as prescribed at the lowest dose possible and for the shortest time needed. Do not take CELEBREX if you have had an asthma attack, hives, or other allergic reactions to aspirin, any other NSAID medicine, or certain drugs called sulfonamides. Before you take CELEBREX, inform your healthcare provider of any medical conditions you may have and of all of the medications you take, including prescription or over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, or herbal supplements as they may increase the risk for serious side effects. Tell your doctor about all of your medical conditions, including if you: have liver or kidney problems have a history of ulcers or bleeding in the stomach or intestines have high blood pressure or heart failure have asthma are pregnant or plan to become pregnant-CELEBREX, and other NSAIDs should not be taken in late pregnancy (after 29 weeks) are breastfeeding or plan to breast feed CELEBREX can cause serious side effects, including: new or worse high blood pressure heart failure liver problems including liver failure kidney problems including kidney failure low red blood cells (anemia) life-threatening allergic reactions life-threatening skin reactions Other side effects of NSAIDs, including CELEBREX are stomach pain, constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Get emergency help right away if you have any of the following symptoms: shortness of breath or trouble breathing, chest pain, weakness in one part or side of your body, slurred speech, swelling of the face or throat. Discontinue CELEBREX at first sign of skin rash, or blisters with fever. Click here for full prescribing information, including BOXED WARNING and Medication Guide. Working together for a healthier world At Pfizer, we apply science and our global resources to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. We strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products. Our global portfolio includes medicines and vaccines as well as many of the world's best-known consumer health care products. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world's premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, we collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 150 years, we have worked to make a difference for all who rely on us. We routinely post information that may be important to investors on our website at www.pfizer.com. In addition, to learn more, please visit us on www.pfizer.com and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at @Pfizer and @PfizerNews, LinkedIn, YouTube and like us on Facebook (News - Alert) at Facebook.com/Pfizer. DISCLOSURE NOTICE: The information contained in this release is as of November 13, 2016. Pfizer assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this release as the result of new information or future events or developments. This release contains forward-looking information regarding CELEBREX (celecoxib) and the results of the PRECISION study, including their potential benefits, that involves substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Risks and uncertainties include, among other things, uncertainties regarding the commercial impact of the results of the PRECISION study; the risk that clinical trial data are subject to differing interpretations, including by regulatory authorities; the uncertainties inherent in research and development; and competitive developments. A further description of risks and uncertainties can be found in Pfizer's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015 and in its subsequent reports on Form 10-Q, including in the sections thereof captioned "Risk Factors" and "Forward-Looking Information and Factors That May Affect Future Results," as well as in its subsequent reports on Form 8-K, all of which are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov and www.pfizer.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005054/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 13, 2016] Vesca to be First Out in Japan with Verifone Engage Offering Enhanced Payment Services and Solutions to Merchants Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a world leader in payments and commerce solutions, has partnered with Vesca, a leader in providing payment and marketing solutions as a service in Japan, to offer enhanced and secure payment services and solutions to merchants in the country. The partnership will bring together the technology portfolio and geographic strengths of the two companies, to enable financial institutions, retailers and various industry verticals to benefit from innovative payment solutions. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005012/en/ While a cash-based economy in which cards and other forms of payment amount to comparatively little volume, the local EMV liability shift deadline and the Olympic Games Tokyo coincide in 2020 giving Japanese merchants the opportunity to install the capability to accept multiple payment forms. To bring enhanced world payment standards to Japan, Vesca will offer the Verifone Engage V200c countertop and P400 PIN pad to provide increased speed and security, and an interactive user interface. These devices meet Japan's EMV requirements and enable merchants to personalize the customer shopping experience with targeted offers and loyalty programs for additional revenue streams at the point of sale (POS). "What matters most to Japanese merchants today is business growth and consumer loyalty," said Thad Peterson, senior analyst at Aite Group. "Nations around the world are progressing towards becoming cashless economies, and it has become imperative for them t adopt the latest in technology that can best support this change and help businesses become more efficient. As Japan prepares for some major changes in the near years, Verifone, with its engaging payment solutions and value-added applications, is well suited to meet the needs of businesses across sectors and the country at large." "This partnership will bring end-to-end advanced payment services and solutions for Japanese merchants as well as in-depth market expertise," said Mr. Makoto Yoshida, chief executive officer of Vesca. "Furthermore, we plan to create unique segment-specific features by collaborating with our extended ecosystem of clients and partners." Vesca will introduce the new Verifone solution which will include end-to-end payment services such as estate management, payment gateway and merchant consoles. With commerce-enabled devices from the Verifone Engage family, merchants in Japan will have the flexibility to accept Sony FeliCa, the local contactless smartcard payment option, and a wide range of internationally accepted payment methods including card, payment apps and wallets. "With Vesca as our strategic partner, we are offering Japanese merchants, particularly in dominant sectors such as retail, food and hospitality, access to the best technology solutions and services available," said Steve Aliferis, president of Verifone Asia Pacific. "We are aligned on the goal to continue to spur the growth of new payment and commerce solutions that will enhance opportunities for merchants and experiences for consumers as Japan incorporates more cashless options." 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 payment solutions in Japan, 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 Vesca Vesca is the leading provider of payment and ID marketing solutions as a service. Vesca provides the secure and flexible payment management platform partnering with innovative companies worldwide, located in Tokyo, Japan. About Verifone Verifone is transforming everyday transactions into opportunities for connected commerce. We're connecting payment devices to the cloud, merging the online and in-store 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 who 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 | (NYSE: PAY) | @verifone View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005012/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Arkk Solutions win FinTech Company of the Year at the Custodian Risk Global Awards 2016 LONDON, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Arkk Solutions, market-leading providers of regulatory reporting software and services, won the hotly contested title of FinTech Company of the Year at last night's Custody Risk Global Awards. An innovative developer and vendor of regulatory reporting software, Arkk Solutions have offices in London, New York, Dublin, and Belfast. The Global FinTech Company of the Year Award reflects their continued growth and investment in their mission to simplify regulatory reporting. "We are delighted to win this award," says Andy Gent, Director of Arkk Solutions. "It is a testament to all the hard work and commitment from our development team along with our sales, marketing, and customer care teams. The confidence in our products from our ever growing customer base underlines a successful 2016, whch has grown our user base across both investment firms and third party service providers." This year the Custody Risk Global Awards combined the Custody Risk Americas Awards and Custody Risk European Awards and add Asian coverage. The ceremony focused on the increasing interconnectivity in the worlds of custody, fund administration, and securities services. Winners were announced last night Thursday, November 10, 2016 at the Le Meridien Piccadilly, London. The Awards were selected by a judges' panel of experts and celebrated the work of Hedge Funds, Custodians and Technology firms who made outstanding contributions to the industry in 2016. "Our aim has always been to support the investment community in their navigation of increasingly arduous regulations. By focusing on user experience and great customer support, we believe that we are working true to our aim," adds Andy Gent. Arkk Solutions works with customers in 14 countries and facilitates the validation and conversion of date for customers filing under the AIFMD, COREP, Solvency II and Form PF regimes. Their international customer base spans a range of global investment managers, banks, and fund administrators. About Arkk Solutions: Arkk Solutions is one of the UK's most established RegTech companies striving to make financial reporting simple. Established in 2009, the Shoreditch-based firm was one of the first vendors to be recognised by HMRC for their iXBRL tax and accounts product, which is the chosen solution for many leading companies in the UK. Arkk's client base spans 14 countries world-wide and receive Arkk Solutions' high-quality tools and world-class customer support. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Aldec Adds Largest Xilinx UltraScale to Latest HES Solution for FPGA Simulation Acceleration, Emulation, and Prototyping to Be Unveiled at SemIsrael 2016 Aldec, Inc., a pioneer in mixed HDL language simulation and hardware-assisted verification solutions for system and ASIC designs, will unveil the latest HES-DVM software package for emulation and simulation acceleration on HES-7 and custom, in-house high speed prototyping boards at the SemIsrael Expo. Aldec distributor, Advanced Semiconductor Technology (AST), will be on hand to demonstrate the new solution at the event to be held in Airport City, Israel on November 15, 2016. The latest release of HES-DVM delivers a setup flow for Xilinx (News - Alert) UltraScale FPGA technology and support for a new HES board: the HES7XUS1320BPX containing three XCVU440 devices on a single PCB with an estimated capacity of 79 Million ASIC gates, an optimal choice for emulation and prototyping of mid-size SoC designs. For larger designs, the system can be scaled up with a backplane that can interconnect up to four boards to provide capacity of 316 Million ASIC gates. With HES-DVM, the same prototyping board can be reused for simulation acceleration or co-emulation with Virtual Models. The connection with simulators or virtual platforms is based on Accellera's standard SCE-MI that is a transaction level interface. This HES-DVM release adds support for SV-Connect which was introduced in the latest revision of SCE-MI 2.3 to facilitate integration of Function-based transactors with SystemVerilog or UVM testbench. With SV-Connect the C source code for DPI-C functions is generated automatically to save time and increase productivity of verification engineers. "Verification of complex SoC ASIC designs often implies conflicting requirements. While software engineers require a design prototype running at high clock frequency, hardware designers continue to ask for more and more debug probes and controllability. This is the reason why design houses kept separate platforms - FPGA prototyping for software developers and big-box emulation for hardware verification engineers," said Krzysztof Szczur, Hardware Verification Product Manager. "Aldec's HES-DVM is the only solution to such inefficient duplication of hardware resources. Based on our customers' feedback, we have added the capability to create one design implementation that combines emulation and prototyping clock domains to satisfy the requirements of all teams within a SoC project." The latest release of HES-DVM also enables connecting free running and asynchronous clocks to the design implemented in FPGA, a big step forward that enables harmonious co-existence of emulation comprising of comprehensive debugging capabilities and prototyping that achieves significantly higher clock ratios. Availability HES-DVM 2016.10 is available now. To learn more or to evaluate, please visit Aldec Distributor AST at Booth #38 at the SemIsrael Expo, contact [email protected], call +1 (702) 990-4400, or contact our worldwide distribution partners. About HES-DVM HES-DVM is a fully automated and scalable hybrid verification environment for SoC and ASIC designs. Utilizing the latest co-emulation standards like SCE-MI or TLM and the newest FPGA technology, hardware and software design teams obtain early access to the hardware prototype of the design. HES-DVM is used in labs worldwide for tasks including simulation acceleration, emulation, hybrid virtual prototypes, co-emulation, in circuit emulation, and software validation at MHz speeds. Learn more about Aldec Hardware Emulation Solutions. About Aldec Aldec Inc., headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, Design Rule Checking, CDC Verification, IP Cores, Requirements Lifecycle Management, DO-254 Functional Verification and Military/Aerospace solutions. www.aldec.com Aldec is a registered trademark of Aldec, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005028/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] EventTracker's HoneyNet Managed Security Service Puts Deception Network Technology in Reach of Any Enterprise COLUMBIA, Md., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EventTracker, a leading provider of comprehensive and co-managed SIEM solutions, today announced EventTracker HoneyNet, a managed security service that enables any-sized enterprise to add a deception network layer to its cybersecurity defenses. Forensic analysis of data breaches points to how long it takes to detect attacks and how current cybersecurity layers miss them: On average, attackers are active approximately 200 days in a network before detection More than 75 percent of all network intrusions are traced back to compromised credentials Almost all victims had up-to-date antivirus, which failed to detect or stop attacks The majority of the breaches were identified and reported by third parties, not by internal security systems These facts make the case for EventTracker HoneyNet very compelling, because it provides a deception network that detects attackers early while simultaneously slowing them down: a two-pronged counterattack, which is powerful and effective. As hackers attempt to map the network, they trigger the virtualized lures, which detect the suspicious activity, provide false data to attackers and alert network administrators to the threat. Furthermore, deception delays the attacker and forces the attacker to waste time discerning what is real on the network. EventTracker HoneyNet is a comprehensive solution that includes both technology and managed services for implementing, operating and monitoring to achieve rapid time-to-value and a high level of effectiveness. By delivering deception as a service, EventTracker enables enterprises to get results instantlysafer networks, better endpoint security, earlier detection of intrusion and threat intelligence that is relevant and specific to their own environments. Decoy networks are low cost and deliver high value, but configuring, maintaining and onitoring costs and complexity have put them out of reach for resource strapped IT teams, said A.N. Ananth, co-founder and CEO of EventTracker. Technology is only 15 percent of what you need. Our managed service is a complete solution with everything needed to make this highly effective approach feasible for the small and mid-market enterprise. Without services, most enterprises cannot get to the outcomes they want from a deception network. A honeynet, essentially a collection of honeypots, contains virtualized decoys that mimic desktops, servers, printers and other technology present in the network. Attacking hackers sniffing around a network looking to expand out from their beachhead cannot differentiate between decoy machines and the real thing. Decoys are maintenance-free until someone touches them, but at that point, any interaction can be presumed to be hostile. Integrated with the EventTracker Console, HoneyNet alerts network administrators of the suspicious activity and provides them with a situation awareness view of their network. The result is a very high-signal, low-noise solution that can help to uncover both internal and external threats and prevent alert fatigue. More critically, while other threat intelligence feeds offer information about global attacks, EventTracker HoneyNet delivers threat intelligence specific to the local environment. Available as on-premise or cloud-based managed services, the EventTracker platform is a comprehensive suite of tools for threat detection and response that comprises SIEM, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection, behavior analytics and other defense in-depth capabilities within a single management platform. For more information, visit http://www.eventtracker.com/honeynet/ or schedule a demo. Tweet This: [email protected] HoneyNet #ManagedSecurity Service Puts Deception Network Tech in Reach of Any Enterprise http://bit.ly/2fDTJGw Resources EventTracker YouTube EventTracker Case Studies About EventTracker EventTrackers advanced security solutions protect enterprises and small businesses from data breaches and insider fraud, and streamline regulatory compliance. The companys EventTracker platform comprises SIEM, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection, behavior analytics, a honeynet deception network and other defense in-depth capabilities within a single management platform. The company complements its state-of-the-art technology with 24x7 managed services from its global security operations center (SOC) to ensure its customers achieve desired outcomessafer networks, better endpoint security, earlier detection of intrusion, and relevant and specific threat intelligence. The company serves the retail, hospitality, healthcare, legal, banking and financial services, utilities and government sectors. EventTracker is a division of Netsurion, a leader in remotely-managed IT security services that protect multi-location businesses information, payment systems and on-premise public and private Wi-Fi networks. www.eventtracker.com. Twitter: @logtalk. CONTACT: EventTracker Deb Montner, Montner Tech PR (203) 226-9290 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] SHARE For Cures Announces Funding Support From Cancer Treatment Centers of America WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- SHARE For Cures, a Washington, DC-based non-profit focused on accelerating disease research through consumer data-sharing, today announced a contribution from Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national network of five hospitals that serves adult patients who are fighting cancer. Just one month ago, as part of the White House's Cancer Moonshot Initiative, SHARE For Cures launched its data-sharing platform, along with a study aimed to gather a better understanding of the real-world use of novel cancer immunotherapy drugs. SHARE For Cures' new SHARE platform allows individuals to easily and securely gather their clinical, wellness, lifestyle, and patient-reported data. For the study, the SHARE platform also collects information about cancer immunotherapy use, side effects and benefits. Once gathered, the data will enable researchers to better understand how these new therapies are being used outside of clinical trials, as well as the health impact of these specific drugs on real-world patients. "We are thrilled with the success of our platform and the accrual rates our study is achieving in such a short period of time. The generous contribution from CTCA allows us to accelerate our plans to broaden the reach of our platform in oncology, as well as this study," Co-Founder and President Joshua Mann said. "Cancer Treatment Centers of America commends the novel approach SHARE For Cures has taken to acelerate cancer research, and we are happy that we could help support their admirable work in pursuit of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative's goals," said Maurie Markman, MD, President of Medicine and Science at CTCA. In addition to CTCA, financial support for the SHARE platform has been provided by the Connecting Care Fund at St. Joseph Hospital Foundation. The data exchange within the SHARE platform is powered by Human API. About SHARE For Cures SHARE For Cures is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a mission to empower everyone to use their individual health, wellness, and lifestyle data to advance medical research and save lives. Through the development of its SHARE platform, SHARE For Cures aims to make it possible for more researchers to access the critical information they need to better understand, prevent and cure disease. Learn more and donate to help expand the platform to everyone at www.shareforcures.org. About Cancer Treatment Centers of America Cancer Treatment Centers of America Global, Inc. (CTCA), headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla., is a national network of five hospitals that serves adult patients who are fighting cancer. CTCA offers an integrative approach to care that combines advancements in genomic testing and precision cancer treatment, surgery, radiation, immunotherapy and chemotherapy, with evidence-informed supportive therapies designed to help patients physically and emotionally by enhancing their quality of life while managing side effects both during and after treatment. CTCA serves patients from around the world at its hospitals in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tulsa. Consistently rated among U.S. hospitals that deliver the highest quality of care and patient experience, CTCA provides patients and their families with comprehensive information about their treatment options and encourages their active participation in treatment decisions. For more information, visit cancercenter.com, Facebook.com/cancercenter and Twitter.com/cancercenter. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/share-for-cures-announces-funding-support-from-cancer-treatment-centers-of-america-300361793.html SOURCE SHARE For Cures [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Clinical Genomics Announces Appointment of Michael Dugan, M.D. as Chief Medical Officer BRIDGEWATER, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clinical Genomics, a private company developing evidence-driven diagnostic tools for colorectal cancer, today announced the appointment of Michael Dugan, M.D. as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Dugans addition to the leadership team will strengthen the Company as it prepares to make Colvera, a blood-based test for colorectal cancer (CRC) recurrence monitoring, available later this year. We are excited to welcome Dr. Dugan as CMO. His appointment comes at an important time as we approach the launch of Colvera, said Lawrence LaPointe, Ph.D., President and CEO of Clinical Genomics. Dr. Dugans extensive experience in developing and launching novel diagnostic tests make him uniquely suited to help us realize our near and long term goals. We are confident that his demonstrated track record across the entire product development continuum will bring value to our team. Dr. Dugan brings more than 20 years of executive-level experience in healthcare management, clinical development, market evaluation and laboratory operations to Clinical Genomics. Previously, he served as President and CEO of MCDXI Medical Diagnostics, where he led clinical evaluation, strategic development and clinical education efforts for several companies introducing novel diagnostic ests, platforms and related products to market. Dr. Dugans previous roles include Senior Vice President of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs at Exact Sciences, Medical Director at Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute and Vice President and Laboratory Director at Specialty Laboratories, Inc. He holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Notre Dame, an M.D. from the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and completed postgraduate training in pathology and laboratory medicine at Yale University and UCLA. About Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Colorectal Cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide, accounting for more than 600,000 deaths each year. When diagnosed early, before cancer has spread, the relative five-year survival rate for CRC is 90 percent, but only approximately four out of 10 CRC cases are detected early. Among individuals undergoing surgical treatment for CRC, recurrence occurs in 30 to 40 percent of all cases, the majority of which present in the first two to three years following initial diagnosis and treatment. About Clinical Genomics Clinical Genomics is a privately held biotechnology company committed to reducing the impact of colorectal cancer (CRC) through early detection of disease and clinically actionable, evidence-driven recurrence monitoring tools. With a broad intellectual property portfolio consisting of more than 20 patents, Clinical Genomics, via its wholly-owned subsidiary Enterix Inc., currently offers the user-friendly, patient-preferred CRC screening InSure FIT assay, a fecal immunochemical test that detects blood in the stool. InSure is also marketed as a lab-based test in Australia and other countries (ColoVantage Home). Building on an established history in the field of CRC screening and diagnosis, Clinical Genomics developed a sensitive and specific blood-based circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) test for colorectal cancer based on methylated DNA from two genes, BCAT1 and IKZF1. The Company plans to offer this two-gene test for recurrence monitoring later in 2016. Clinical Genomics has offices and laboratories in Bridgewater and Edison, New Jersey and Sydney, Australia, and operates as an FDA-registered and TGA-licensed manufacturer and a NATA-accredited laboratory. For more information, please visit www.clinicalgenomics.com. Media Contact: Danielle Lewis, Lazar Partners (212) 843-0211 or (917) 907-4239 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] China Eastern Airlines and Kaligo Travel Solutions Launch TravelEdge Loyalty Hotel Platform SINGAPORE, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaligo Travel Solutions, the leading innovator in travel rewards technology, in partnership with China Eastern Airlines, one of the world's 10 largest airlines by passenger volume, today announced the launch of a new loyalty hotel platform for 32 million Eastern Miles members worldwide. Powered by Kaligo's TravelEdge accrual & redemption technology, the new platform enables Eastern Miles members to earn and redeem Eastern Miles points instantly at 465,000 properties globally. It's the first such fully integrated hotel loyalty product available to consumers in the vast US$ 620B Chinese travel market. "We are seeing a clear loyalty trend in China, where large rewards programs are quickly gaining momentum. The TravelEdge accrual & redemption platform is a perfect fit for modern Chinese travellers who are becoming increasingly rewards conscious," said Kyle Armstrong, CEO of Kaligo. "Based on a recent market study of loyalty programs, it's estimated that hotel redemptions already represent over 500B miles burned globally on an annual basis, and we're excited to see this proposition starting to take off in China." Zhilin Wei, General Manager, China Eastern Airlines E-Commerce Co.,Ltd., said "We continuously strive to strengthen the value of the Eastern Miles program for our members by offering new travel redemption options which are proven to increase customer engagement. Our members will now be able to instantly earn and redeem their points for hotel bookings all over the world with a simple and easy-to-use e-commerce experience. We're only just getting started. Our objective is to continue to accelerate the 20% YOY growth in our membership and, as an innovative partner, Kaligo enables us to achieve this with the TravelEdge platform." The new China Eastern hotel platform allows members to choose from over 465,000 hotels and resors worldwide using a quick and easy-to-use desktop or mobile website with end-to-end servicing in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English. Members can use money or points to book hotels with instant confirmation. The most celebrated loyalty programs around the world turn to Kaligo's TravelEdge technology to accelerate revenue growth and delight customers. Across hotels, cars, cruises and activities, the TravelEdge accrual & redemption suite can be quickly integrated into a brand's web or mobile presence. Using the latest e-commerce design principles and a localized experience across 22 languages, the platform consistently achieves market-leading conversion rates for its partners. With no up-front integration costs and deployment timeframes averaging 4-8 weeks, TravelEdge has set the standard when it comes to risk-free commercials and speed-to-market. For more information about Kaligo Travel Solutions and the TravelEdge suite, please visit www.kaligosolutions.com. About Kaligo Travel Solutions: Kaligo Travel Solutions is operated by Kaligo Pte Ltd, the global leader for innovative travel and loyalty technology. Established in Singapore in 2014 with offices across APAC, Europe and the Americas, Kaligo Travel Solutions enables 50+ of the world's leading loyalty programs to drive engagement through rewarding travel experiences. With core product lines and expertise in e-commerce, small business, financial services, white label accrual & redemption platforms and cutting-edge API solutions, Kaligo enables the world's leading loyalty programs to drive spend, engagement and retention. For more information, please visit www.kaligosolutions.com or contact media relations at [email protected]. About China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited has its headquarter located in Shanghai. As one of the three major airlines in mainland China, it flies a fleet of more than 500 long-haul and short-haul aircraft with an average age of less than seven years, China Eastern serves nearly 80 million travelers annually and ranks among the world's top 5 airlines in terms of passenger transportation volume. As an official member of SkyTeam, China Eastern has extended its flight network from Shanghai to 1064 cities in 178 countries via close cooperation with SkyTeam member airlines. Members of Eastern Miles can participate the mileage accumulate and redeem program, enjoy member benefits and use any one of the 564 VIP lounges across the world within all 20 SkyTeam member airlines. China Eastern has been striving to become a superexcellent aviation service integrator to win "staff devotion, customers' loyalty, shareholders' satisfaction and public trust". As the end of 2013, China Eastern has been rewarded the "Golden Ting Award" by China Capital Market Annual Conference 2013, been recognized as one of the 50 most valuable Chinese brands by WPP and been ranked among the top ten of FORTUNE China CSR Ranking 2013In the past three years, China Eastern gains more than 10 billion profits, which ranks among the top state-owned enterprises with respect to ROA and therefore been rewarded the "Golden Phoenix Award" by China Capital Market Annual Conference 2011. With the concept of "World-class hospitality with Eastern charm", China Eastern will create splendid travel experiences for global customers with an "accurate, delicate and precise" service quality. Website: www.ceair.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] AARP and Frank Abagnale Launch Effort to End the Tech Support Scam WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With U.S. consumers falling victim to the "technical support scam" in greater numbers than ever before, the AARP Fraud Watch Network today launched an initiative to raise awareness of the scam and educate consumers about how they can protect themselves. A survey released last month by Microsoft found that over the past year two-thirds of consumers have experienced the tech support scam, in which fraudsters pose as technicians from one of the major computer companies. AARP's effort to educate consumers includes online content, advertising and media appearances featuring renowned security expert and Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. "If you or someone you know receives a call or an email from someone identifying themselves as a technician with Microsoft, Google, Apple or some other well-known technology company, it is likely to be a scam. Just hang up the phone," said Abagnale. "The large computer firms never make proactive calls or send email to provide unrequested technical support." Executing the scam via telephone, email or even pop-up ads, the scammers inform a targeted person that a virus or some other security problem has been detected on the victim's computer, and offer to make a repair. Instead, their goal is to gain control of the computer, access personal files and passwords, and obtain credit card information to charge the consumer for the supposed repair or a warranty program -- which proves to be worthless. The Microsoft survey indicates that 20% of the people surveyed around the world continued with a potentially fraudulent interaction after the first contact. This eans that the victim downloaded harmful software, gave the scammers access to their computer, visited a scam website, or provided a credit card or other forms of payment. Interestingly, of the victims who continued interacting with the scammers, half were millennials (ages 18-34). Thirty-four percent were between ages 36-54, and 17% were age 55 or older. Abagnale advises consumers never to give control of their computer to a third party, nor to provide a credit card number to pay for unsolicited repair services or warranty programs. For more tips about how keep yourself safe from technical support scammers, visit the new Fraud Watch Network web page at: www.aarp.org/TechScams. The site includes detailed descriptions of how fraudsters execute their scams, video and other content, and a list of recommended "Dos and Don'ts" when dealing with a suspected fraudster. An educational booklet, published by Microsoft and the FWN, can also be downloaded from the site. Abagnale, who was named AARP Fraud Watch Ambassador in 2015, has been associated with the FBI for more than four decades, and has advised and consulted with hundreds of financial institutions, corporations and government agencies around the world. Abagnale's story was told in his best-selling book, Catch Me if You Can, and in the 2002 movie of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. The AARP Fraud Watch Network was launched in 2013 as a free resource for people of all ages. The website provides information about fraud and scams, prevention tips from experts, an interactive Scam-Tracking Map, fun educational quizzes, and video presentations featuring Abagnale. Users may sign up for "Watchdog Alert" emails that deliver breaking scam information, or call a free helpline at 877-908-3360 to speak with trained volunteers. About AARP AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of nearly 38 million that helps people turn their goals and dreams into 'Real Possibilities' by changing the way America defines aging. With staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, AARP works to strengthen communities and promote the issues that matter most to families such as healthcare security, financial security and personal fulfillment. AARP also advocates for individuals in the marketplace by selecting products and services of high quality and value to carry the AARP name. As a trusted source for news and information, AARP produces the world's largest circulation magazine, AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to political campaigns or candidates. To learn more, visit www.aarp.org or follow @aarp and our CEO @JoAnn_Jenkins on Twitter. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438807 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438823LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aarp-and-frank-abagnale-launch-effort-to-end-the-tech-support-scam-300362211.html SOURCE AARP [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Huawei and University of Waterloo Partner for World-class Research and Innovation Partnership marked by visit of Waterloo's President to Huawei Campus in Shenzhen, China SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider today welcomed Feridun Hamdullahpur, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waterloo and a senior-level delegation of representatives to its global operations headquarters in Shenzhen, China. In support of the visit, Huawei and the University of Waterloo announced they have signed an agreement on a strategic research partnership that will serve as a framework for existing and future investment. "This is an exciting day for Huawei's R&D collaborations as we join together with the University of Waterloo" said Sean Yang, President Huawei Canada. "The University of Waterloo is one of the world's leading research institutions, and this partnership reflects our long-term commitment to Canada, and the thriving ICT ecosystem in the Waterloo Region." "Today we build on our strategic partnership with Huawei, that includes a research and development office in the David Johnston Research and Technology Park at aterloo," said Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of Waterloo. "This formalized partnership brings together one of world's top innovation universities and one of the world's most innovative companies, positioning us for some exciting research opportunities in the future." The research collaboration agreement between Huawei and the University of Waterloo will establish a framework for partnerships in a wide range of R&D initiatives, including cloud computing, next generation communications, data management and data analytics. It builds on a number of ongoing research initiatives in 5G-related project areas between Huawei and the University, and will help to further build a base of skilled students able to ensure Canada's competitiveness in leading-edge communications technology initiatives. Over the next three years, as part of the partnership agreement Huawei plans to invest $3 million dollars to develop further research projects. About the University of Waterloo University of Waterloo is Canada's top innovation university. With more than 36,000 students we are home to the world's largest co-operative education system of its kind. Our unmatched entrepreneurial culture, combined with an intensive focus on research, powers one of the top innovation hubs in the world. Find out more at uwaterloo.ca About Huawei Technologies Huawei is one of the world's leading ICT and Communications companies. With 178,000 employees in over 170 countries worldwide, through continued investments in Research & Development, Huawei is recognized as one of the world's most innovative companies. Huawei has been operating in Canada since 2008, and employs over 700 people. The Huawei Canada Research Centre opened in 2009, and now employs over 400 engineers at research facilities in Ottawa, Markham and Waterloo. In March 2016, in partnership with the Province of Ontario, Huawei Canada announced a 5-year, $500m plan to accelerate investment and job creation in 5G-related research initiatives. SOURCE University of Waterloo [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Geographic Farm Integrates with Top Producer's Market Snapshot to Bring Real Estate Agents Another Powerful Tool for Converting Leads, Building Trust, And Branding Themselves as Local Market Experts PHOENIX, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Geographic Farm continues to expand on its services designed to help real estate agents dominate their markets by offering seamless integration with Top Producer's Market Snapshot, providing a truly turnkey, fully automated CRM funnel that's proven to increase conversions and inspire loyalty. Market Snapshot syncs with more than 800 MLSs to generate accurate, real-time, hyper-local market reports tailored to a contact's specific criteria. The system's best-in-class market information is the perfect complement to Geographic Farm's line of lead-generation and conversion products, helping agents create real value, stay relevant, and keep contacts engaged with the freshest MLS data on their local market. Leads generated by Geographic Farm are automatically added into the Market Snapshot system to create ongoing, deeply detailed, highly relevant market reports that include new listings, price changes and sales as they happen. Agents can send reports to new leads in less than 2 minutes, by smartphone, tablet or desktop, as well as choose from a variety of automated, custom alerts to set up client-specific drip campaigns that notify contacts of relevant market activity and keep them informe with up-to-the-minute information. All Market Snapshot reports are agent-branded, helping to position the agent as the go-to real estate expert in the client's local area. When clients are ready to act or have questions, they can contact the agent with a call, an email, or the click of a button. For more information click here to view the Top Producer blog post. "There's no better way for an agent to build trust and stand out as an authority on the local market than by giving clients the quality, accurate data they need to make decisions confidently," says Jeff Campbell, Geographic Farm CEO. "Integration with Market Snapshot is one more way Geographic Farm is helping real estate agents gain a competitive edge," adds Matthew Morrison, Geographic Farm Sales Manager. "It's a completely turnkey way to deliver comprehensive, relevant CRM content that's proven to get results." About GeographicFarm GeographicFarm is a new concept in turnkey, cost-effective real estate business development ? a 360 marketing and media company dedicated to helping real estate agents grow their brands, improve business and increase their bottom line. We make lead generation and conversion consistent, automated and effective, so real estate agents have more time to focus on closing sales and earning commissions! About Top Producer Top Producer is North America's leading provider of marketing and lead generation systems for real estate professionals, offering a full range of leading-edge, integrated contact management, lead generation, lead incubation, postcard marketing and web marketing solutions. Media Inquiries: Matthew Morrison Telephone: (480) 658-0675 Email: [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161101/434818LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/geographic-farm-integrates-with-top-producers-market-snapshot-to-bring-real-estate-agents-another-powerful-tool-for-converting-leads-building-trust-and-branding-themselves-as-local-market-experts-300362221.html SOURCE GeographicFarm [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Orthobond Appoints New Chief Executive Officer and New President and Chief Operating Officer NORTH BRUNSWICK, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orthobond Corporation, a privately held medical device and biopharmaceutical company, announced that Charles S. Ryan, JD, PhD, is joining the company as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors; Marc Burel, will serve the company as President and Chief Operating Officer and will continue to serve on the Board. Dr. Ryan joins Orthobond from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), where he was Vice President and General Counsel. Dr. Ryan also served for over a decade at Forest Laboratories (acquired by Actavis plc in July 2014), a specialty pharmaceutical company in New York, as its Senior Vice President & Chief Intellectual Property Counsel. Mr. Burel joined the company in 2008 and has served in several leadership roles during his tenure with the company. He has spent his career in the medical device industry and has lead teams in various companies including ProMed, Inc. and Osteotech. "Orthobond is at an important juncture in its history, with major advances recently with our platform technology and the compay beginning to advance the commercial efforts in the organization. We are delighted to have Charles and Marc lead the organization to execute the strategic plan of the company," said Dr. Gregory E. Lutz, MD, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Orthobond Board of Directors. "Charles is a seasoned executive in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and has excelled in two companies that launched several products, creating significant shareholder value. Marc has worked extensively in the medical device industry and has built a strong reputation in bringing innovative technologies to this industry. Together they complement each other and create a leadership team capable to negotiating several important transactions." "Orthobond has a promising platform technology with several important therapeutic applications in the medical device and biopharmaceutical industries. The current initiative, to create antimicrobial surfaces to help reduce bacterial colonization associated with medical metallic and polymeric implants using proprietary phosphonic acid linker molecules bound to antimicrobial agents, continues to show promise in addressing iatrogenic contamination following the introduction of a surgical implant into a patient," said Dr. Ryan. "Our dedicated team of scientists at Orthobond are committed to improving the lives of patients through the advancement of the company's platform technology," said Mr. Burel. About Orthobond, Inc. Orthobond Corporation is a privately held medical device and biopharmaceutical company with a proprietary non-polymer technology licensed from Princeton University to enhance the surface characteristics of medical grade substrates. This unique attachment chemistry can be customized to improve the performance of metallic and polymeric implants, instruments and ancillary components developed by our partner companies. Orthobond is currently focused on using this technology to create antimicrobial surfaces to reduce bacterial colonization associated with medical implants. The platform technology has applications in the biopharmaceutical markets as well, including attaching specific molecules such as proteins, peptides or small molecules to a surface. Contact: Charles S. Ryan [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Top 5 Vendors in the Global Commercial Charbroilers Market From 2016 to 2020: Technavio Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global commercial charbroilers market report. This research report also lists 13 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape According to the report, the global commercial charbroilers market is expected to post a CAGR of more than 4% during the forecast period. The market is driven by the demand for charred grilled food among consumers, which has led many restaurants, hotels, and catering units to invest in charbroilers. The leading players are trying to differentiate their product offerings based on key parameters like source of heat, consistency in heating, and number of burners and controls. Efficiency in the heating process is the main area of focus for manufacturers and is the major means to upgrade offerings in the market. Manufacturers are offering commercial charbroilers in different shapes and sizes. Many charbroilers available in the market come with adjustable grates which can be adjusted depending on the type of food and load volume. "Most of the leading market players are making efforts to minimize their carbon footprint and are focusing on introducing energy-efficient charbroilers with enhanced features like sensors and controllers for optimal production efficiency," says Arushi Thakur, an industry expert from Technavio. According to Technavio, there is a global increase in the number and frequency of consumers dining out and a subsequent increase in the number of foodservice establishments offering charbroiled food. This is likely to propel the growth of the market during the forecast period. Moreover, quick service restaurants (QSRs) such as Carl's Jr. and Burger King too, are actively increasing their geographic presence and they are also known for their burgers with charbroiled patties. Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=54352 Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Technavio research analysts identify the following key vendors: Bakers Pride Bakers Pride is a part of the Standex Food Service Equipment Group and specializes in offering a wide range of equipment for the commercial foodservce industry. Some of the equipment offered by the company include deck ovens, conveyor ovens, countertop ovens, and under-fired charbroilers. The company is focused on entering strategic alliances with foodservice dealers that own commercial showrooms or engineering departments and can actively promote the company's products to end-users. The company also focusses on providing support to its dealers by distributing product manuals, catalogs, promotional literature, POS materials, and giving sales leads. MagiKitch'n MagiKitch'n offers commercial kitchen equipment such as charbroilers, griddles, and portable fryers. The company has a strong sales and service network across the US and Canada. In addition, it also supports the Commercial Food Equipment Service Association (CFESA), an industry leader ensuring customer satisfaction. The company is increasing its focus on offering customizable solutions to cater to the diverse operational needs in many commercial kitchens. For instance, its Focus series charbroilers come with many options and accessories to be a proper fit for different menus. Southbend The company is one of the global leaders in providing commercial kitchen equipment like convection ovens, broilers, restaurant ranges, and fryers and pasta cookers. The company sells its products mainly through its sales representatives in the US, Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska, Mexico, Latin America, Spain, MEA, and Australia. The company is focused on offering comprehensive service program for the foodservice industry, to ensure that its charbroilers are functioning properly. Vulcan The company is a division of the ITW Food Equipment Group and is one of the global leaders in the manufacturing of commercial cooking equipment. Its product portfolio comprises of fryers, ranges, ovens, griddles, charbroilers, steamers, kettles, and braising pans. The company has a strong geographical presence and is focused on offering energy-efficient commercial kitchen equipment that provides precision performance. Some of the organizations with which the company is associated include Food Service Technology Center, National Restaurant Association, Foodservice Consultants Society International, and Foodservice Equipment Distributors Association. Wells, Bloomfield The company supplies numerous types of commercial cooking equipment to end-users like family-owned restaurants, fast food chains, and hotels. Some of the commercial FSE offered by the company include convection ovens, floor fryers, countertop refrigeration, countertop griddles, countertop charbroilers, and waffle bakers. The company focuses strongly on product development and research activities to bring new products to the market and enhance its existing product portfolio. Browse Related Reports: Global Smart Appliances Market 2016-2020 Global Food Enzymes Market 2016-2020 Global Coil Coatings Market 2016-2020 Do you need a report on a market in a specific geographical cluster or country but can't find what you're looking for? Don't worry, Technavio also takes client requests. Please contact [email protected] with your requirements and our analysts will be happy to create a customized report just for you. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005784/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Arno Therapeutics Reports Third Quarter 2016 Financial and Business Update Arno Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQB: ARNI), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of therapeutics for cancer and other life threatening diseases, today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 and provided an update on recent clinical developments for its lead compound, onapristone. Q3 2016 and Recent Highlights: On November 4, 2016, Arno completed the second closing (approximately $425,250) under its August 2016 private placement of common stock and common stock purchase warrants. An additional $250,000 investment from this private placement remains to be completed. After the financing is completed, total gross proceeds from the August 2016 private placement will be approximately $2.95 million. On September 30, 2016, Arno sold AR-67 preclinical and clinical data package to Vivacitas Oncology for total gross proceeds of $500,000. This transaction follows Arno's strategic plan to focus its efforts and resources on its other development candidates. Arno continued to enroll patients in the second stage of its Phase I/II trial of onapristone in men with advanced, castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) who have failed treatment with abiraterone or enzalutamide. The Phase II portion of this study is actively recruiting and is designed to evaluate onapristone in combination with Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) in patients with CRPC. After the Data Review Committee (DRC) reviewed the interim data of the full dose 50 mg twice daily onapristone in combination with abiraterone acetate, the DRC recommended to continue accrual to the next predetermined protocol assessment point. Accrual is ongoing at the UK and recently opened US investigative sites. "We are making good progress with the enrollment into CRPC study. The data review committee has reviewed the data from the ongoing study and agreed to continue with enrollment at the higher onapristone dose levels of onapristone plus abiraterone acetate Phase II cohort and the US investigative sites are open and recruiting patients," said Alex Zukiwski, MD, Chief Executive Officer of Arno Therapeutics. Third Quarter 2016 Financial Results For the three months ended September 30, 2016, Arno reported net loss of $3.8 million, or $0.09 per share, which includes non-cash expense of $2.0 million related to the increase in derivative liability of common stock warrants, and $1.0 million of non-cash stock based compensation expense. Adjusting for these non-cash items, which resulted in an expense of $3.0 million, the Company reported a net loss of approximately $0.8 million, or $0.02 per share, on a non-GAAP basis. Adjusted third quarter 2015 net loss was approximately $1.9 million, or $0.10 per share, on a non-GAAP basis, which includes the same non-cash adjustments as third quarter 2016. On a GAAP basis, third quarter 2015 net loss was $0.7 million, or $0.03 per share. The primary factors for the $1.1 million year-over-year improvement in adjusted (non-GAAP) net loss in the third quarter of 2016 compared to the third quarter of 2015 were reduced spending of $0.4 million on onapristone's clinical trials and non-clinical research activities, lower compensation expense of $0.1 million and receipt of final proceeds of $0.4 million from the sale of AR-67 preclinical and clinical data package. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, Arno reported net loss of $9.7 million, or $0.23 per share, which includes non-cash expense of $1.8 million related to the increase in derivative liability of common stock warrants, and $2.9 million of non-cash stock based compensation expense. Adjusting for these non-cash items, which resulted in an expense of $4.7 million, the Company reported a net loss of approximately $5.0 million, or $0.12 per share, on a non-GAAP basis. This compares to an adjusted non-GAAP net loss for the first nine months of 2015 of approximately $7.8 million, or $0.38 per share, when considering the same non-cash adjustments as for the first nine months of 2016. On a GAAP basis, the first nine months of 2015 net loss was $7.5 million, or $0.37 per share. The primary factors for the $2.8 million year-over-year improvement in adjusted (non-GAAP) net loss in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the first nine months of 2016 were reduced spending of $1.2 million on onapristone's non-clinical research activities, lower compensation expense of $0.8 million and total gross proceeds of $0.5 million from the sale of AR-67 preclinical and clinical data package. Cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2016 totaled $2.1 million, compared to $0.1 million as of December 31, 2015. In combination with the capital raised by the Company in August 2016, the current level of cash resources is expected to fund the Company's planned operating activities into January 2017. Non-GAAP Measures Arno believes it prepared its consolidated financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (GAAP) and pursuant to accounting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In an effort to provide investors with additional information regarding Arno's results and to provide a meaningful period-over-period comparison of Arno's financial performance, the Company sometimes uses non-GAAP financial measures as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The differences between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled in schedule below. In presenting comparable results, the Company discloses non-GAAP financial measures when it believes such measures will be useful to investors in evaluating Arno's underlying business performance. Management uses the non-GAAP financial measures to evaluate Arno's financial performance against internal budgets and targets. In addition, management internally reviews Arno's results excluding the impact of certain items, as it believes that these non-GAAP financial measures are useful for evaluating Arno's core operating results and facilitating comparison across reporting periods. Importantly, Arno believes non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, and not in lieu of, GAAP financial measures. Arno's non-GAAP financial measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. About Onapristone Onapristone has the potential to be the first approved anti-progestin for oncology indications and provide chemotherapy-sparing treatment to cancer patients who express a specific biomarker, as detected by a companion diagnostic under development. Onapristone is an oral, anti-progestin hormone blocker that has been shown in previous clinical trials to have anti-tumor activity in patients with breast cancer. Onapristone appears to have a unique ability to block the activation of the progesterone receptor, which is believed to be a mechanism that may inhibit the growth of breast, endometrial and other tumors. The activated form of the progesterone receptor (APR) has the potential to function as a biomarker of anti-progestin activity. About Arno Therapeutics Arno Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative products for the treatment of cancer and other life threatening diseases. Arno has exclusive worldwide rights to develop and market three innovative anti-cancer product candidates. These compounds are in clinical or preclinical development. For more information about the company, please visit www.arnothera.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. These statements are often, but not always, made through the use of words or phrases such as "anticipates," "expects," "plans," "believes," "intends," and similar words or phrases. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the potential of onapristone as a treatment of CRPC, statements regarding the timing, progress and anticipated results of the clinical development of onapristone, statements regarding the expected proceeds from the Company's August 2016 private placement, statements regarding Arno's available cash resources, as well as Arno's strategy, future operations, outlook, milestones, future financial position, future financial results, plans and objectives. Arno may not actually achieve these plans, intentions or expectations and Arno cautions investors not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Actual results or events could differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements we make. Various important factors could cause actual results or events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements that we make. Such factors include, among others, risks that we will not obtain the capital necessary to fund our operations in a timely manner, if ever, or on acceptable terms, that if we are unable to obtain additional capital, we may be required to cease our ongoing clinical development activities, that the results of clinical trials will not support our claims or beliefs concerning the effectiveness of onapristone or any of our other product candidates, that we will be able to successfully develop a diagnostic to identify APR tumors, regulatory risks, and our reliance on third party researchers and other collaborators. Additional risks are described in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. Arno is providing this information as of the date of this press release and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Arno Therapeutics, Inc. Condensed Statements of Operations (Amounts in thousands, except per share data) Three Months Ended September 30, (Unaudited) Nine Months Ended September 30, (Unaudited) 2016 2015 2016 2015 Revenue $ - $ - $ - $ - Operating expenses: Research and development 1,116 1,793 4,716 6,915 General and administrative 1,116 1,082 3,651 3,801 Total operating expenses 2,232 2,875 8,367 10,716 Loss from operations (2,232 ) (2,875 ) (8,367 ) (10,716 ) Interest income/(expense), net 1 - (11 ) 6 Other income/(expense), net (1,618 ) 2,195 (1,322 ) 3,197 Net income/(loss) $ (3,849 ) $ (680 ) $ (9,700 ) $ (7,513 ) Net income/(loss) per share - basic and diluted $ (0.09 ) $ (0.03 ) $ (0.23 ) $ (0.37 ) Shares used in computation of net loss per share - basic and diluted 44,706 20,409 41,692 20,409 Balance Sheet Data (Amounts in thousands) September 30, 2016 (Unaudited) December 31, 2015 Cash and cash equivalents $ 2,124 $ 67 Total assets $ 2,356 $ 361 Current liabilities $ 1,527 $ 4,231 Accumulated deficit $ (102,995 ) $ (93,295 ) Stockholders' deficit $ (5,714 ) $ (8,624 ) Reconciliation Between Reported (GAAP) and Adjusted Net Loss (Non-GAAP) (Amounts in thousands, except per share data) Three Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 Net income/(loss), as reported (GAAP) $ (3,849 ) $ (680 ) Adjustments for reconciled items: Change in fair value of derivative liability, non-cash 2,011 (2,199 ) Stock based compensation, non-cash 1,025 934 Adjusted net income/(loss) (non-GAAP) $ (813 ) $ (1,945 ) Net income/(loss) per share - basic, as reported (GAAP) $ (0.09 ) $ (0.03 ) Adjustments for reconciled items: Change in fair value of derivative liability, non-cash 0.05 (0.11 ) Stock based compensation, non-cash 0.02 0.04 Adjusted net income/(loss) per share - basic (non-GAAP) $ (0.02 ) $ (0.10 ) Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 Net income/(loss), as reported (GAAP) $ (9,700 ) $ (7,513 ) Adjustments for reconciled items: Change in fair value of derivative liability, non-cash 1,791 (3,186 ) Stock based compensation, non-cash 2,947 2,857 Adjusted net income/(loss) (non-GAAP) $ (4,962 ) $ (7,842 ) Net income/(loss) per share - basic, as reported (GAAP) $ (0.23 ) $ (0.37 ) Adjustments for reconciled items: Change in fair value of derivative liability, non-cash 0.04 (0.15 ) Stock based compensation, non-cash 0.07 0.14 Adjusted net income/(loss) per share - basic (non-GAAP) $ (0.12 ) $ (0.38 ) View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114006238/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Panasonic Healthcare Introduces Large Volume Ultra-Low Temperature Freezer Panasonic (News - Alert) Healthcare Corporation of North America has introduced a large capacity upright ultra-low temperature freezer developed for long-term storage of biologicals and critical samples. Marketed as the VIP Series MDF-DU900VC-PA, the new -86C freezer is designed for pharmaceutical, biotech, medical research and life science institutions where the accumulation of current and prior research is adding to an exponentially increasing demand for biopreservation. The freezer will be useful in biobanks and biorepositories where frozen samples are maintained for short-term as well as long-term investigation. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114006599/en/ Panasonic VIP Series MDF-DU900VC-PA -86C ultra-low temperature freezer. (Photo: Business Wire) Powered by Panasonic Healthcare-designed refrigeration compressors, the MDF-DU900VC-PA employs a time-proven refrigeration system which has demonstrated better than 99% uptime throughout the life cycle of the entire VIP Series of upright cabinets. Unique system cooling functions within the cascade refrigeration circuit use the same energy twice to cool the preserved product and the compressors, a process that minimizes compressor stress and extends compressor life. The MDF-DU900VC-PA represents an engineered balance of storage volume, cooling capacity and energy management designed to place reliability at the orefront of freezer performance. Concurrently, the microprocessor-based controller uses integral predictive maintenance data points to provide constant supervision of freezer functions, and data acquisition with communications and remote monitoring functions. A high-visibility touchscreen control interface mounted at eye level displays critical operating information in a bright color LCD display. The freezer cabinet is based on the Panasonic Healthcare VIP Plus insulation profile, a thin-wall composite of vacuum insulation panels layered with high performance, CFC-free foam, creating maximum internal volume per ft.2 ratios. Capacity is 672 2" boxes or 448 3" boxes in a compact 10.79 ft.2 footprint. Freezer access and frost mitigation are managed through an Advanced Frost Control system with a multifunction EZlatch door handle (patent pending). EZlatch simplifies one-handed door opening and closing, and assures integrated performance of the cabinet door, multi-point door gaskets and micro air breaks around the face of the cabinet to restrict moisture migration and to reduce frost associated with temperature differentials as much as 116C (212F). With the addition of the 29.8 cu.ft. freezer, the Panasonic Healthcare VIP Series product line now includes six sizes. For more information, visit www.panasonic-healthcare.com/us/biomedical/ultra-low-freezers. About Panasonic Healthcare Co., Ltd. Incorporated in 1969, Panasonic Healthcare is a global company that develops, manufactures, sells and services medical equipment and solutions. Through its three core businesses for InVitro Diagnostics devices, Medical IT, and Laboratory and Medical Support devices, the company contributes to the wellbeing of society by creating new value propositions for all people who wish for better health. For further information on Panasonic Healthcare, please visit http://www.panasonic-healthcare.com/global/. About Panasonic Healthcare Corporation of North America Panasonic Healthcare Corporation of North America is a subsidiary of Panasonic Healthcare Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, and offers laboratory equipment and services to biopharmaceutical, life sciences, academic, healthcare and government markets. For information call Panasonic Healthcare Corporation of North America at 800-858-8442 or visit http://www.panasonic-healthcare.com/us/biomedical/. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114006599/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Two candidates seeking NLCS Board District 2 seat In this year's general election, two candidates are seeking election to the district two seat on the NLCS board: Adam Parsley and Michael Patton. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at his election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Hillary Clinton suffered a stunning loss in the presidential election against Donald Trump and she can chalk it up to a handful of votes in surprising battleground states. Just more than 227,000 votes split among a series of key swing states would've turned the loss into a massive Electoral College win. And breaking the numbers down even further, roughly 107,000 split between Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin states that hadn't gone red in decades would have launched her to victory as well. Within Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, just 14 counties made the difference between a President-elect Clinton and reality a President-elect Trump. Discounting Florida, that number drops to eight. If she had swept the four, Clinton would have won a 307-to-231 victory in the Electoral College, and even without Florida, she would've secured a 278-to-260 win. Instead, Trump seems likely to secure more than 300 electoral votes (pending Michigan's final results). Here's a look at where it went wrong for Clinton: Pennsylvania The Keystone state had voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1988. That ended early Wednesday morning. Four northeastern Pennsylvania counties played a monumental role in making that happen. Northumberland, Schuylkill, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties saw a drastic change in their vote totals from 2012 to 2016. In 2012, they combined to provide President Barack Obama 18,561 more votes than Republican nominee Mitt Romney. This time around, voters in those four counties cast 63,917 more votes for Trump than Clinton. That was a difference of 82,478 votes between Clinton and Obama. Clinton lost Pennsylvania by 68,236 votes, according to The New York Times. Screen Shot 2016 11 13 at 2.33.08 PM Florida Delegate-rich Florida, the third-largest prize on the map, saw a massive increase in voter turnout for the 2016 election in comparison with 2012 despite an overall national downturn in voters showing up to the polls. Story continues Hurting Clinton was the vote in six west-central Florida counties. Pasco, Hernando, Citrus, Sumter, Pinellas, and Levy counties cast 38,685 more votes for Romney in 2012. In 2016, those counties cast 158,945 more votes for Trump a difference of 120,260. Clinton lost the state by 119,770 votes. Michigan It just came down to one county. Wayne County, the state's most populous and home to Detroit, was the center of Clinton's probable loss in the Wolverine State. In 2012, Wayne County offered 595,846 votes for Obama and 213,814 for Romney. Trump received a few more votes than Romney, as he's currently at 228,324, according to The Associated Press. But Clinton fell almost 80,000 votes behind Obama at 517,022. In total, the advantage she held over Trump in the county was 93,323 fewer votes than Obama enjoyed over Romney in 2012. And she is currently losing the state by fewer than 12,000 votes. Screen Shot 2016 11 13 at 2.21.20 PM Wisconsin No Republican had won at the presidential level in Wisconsin since 1984. Add another traditionally blue state to Trump's belt. Three counties played the biggest part in that result and they're all in the southeastern corner of the state. Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha counties saw a dip in both the Republican and Democratic vote totals in 2016. But Clinton suffered more. In 2012, those three counties offered 430,313 votes to Obama and 239,248 to Romney. By early Wednesday morning, votes in those counties totaled 367,262 for Clinton and 208,736 for Trump. That led to a difference of 32,539 between Clinton's and Obama's advantages over their opponents in those counties. Clinton lost Wisconsin by 27,257 votes. NOW WATCH: Trump goes on a tweetstorm less than 48 hours after promising to be more 'restrained' on Twitter More From Business Insider As the world continues to come to terms with the result of the recent US presidential election, it seems the culture that many say bred the result in the first place is out in full force. At least, thats what Sydney electronic duo Flight Facilities reckon is going on. The ARIA Award winners took to their official Facebook page on Friday to share their thoughts on the outcome of the election, which saw Donald Trump named as Americas next leader in place of Hillary Clinton, whom many, even official pollsters, assumed was a lock to take out the White House. In the post, the duo call the election one of the greatest reality checks of our time and suggest that perhaps the new online echo chamber culture in which we are seldom exposed to differing opinions and delete, ignore, insult or pigeonhole them when we are, effectively created President Trump. Instead of kicking, screaming and insulting, maybe its time to stop, look around, and look inward as to exactly how this has happened. Protesting and rioting in response to a democratically held election, undermines the fabric on which a great country was built, they write. Sometimes things dont go the way we want them to. Thats life. But if we live by the mentality of turning to violence and intimidation when things dont go our way, why should we expect our adversaries to take the higher ground when it does? Theres a cultural divide that has taken place, and the world is trying to point the finger, yet nobody wants to look at themselves. Weve created a pop-culture, internet generation. A generation of people who have lost the ability to challenge their own preconceptions. We pick our friends on Facebook. We choose who we follow on Instagram. We select who to follow on twitter. And then delete, ignore, insult or pigeonhole anyone who differs from us, instead of asking Why?' The post was reminiscent of a video shared by British satirical character Jonathan Pie that same day. A clip that has since gone viral and accrued some 20 million views and 173,000 likes on Facebook and been shared almost 301,000 times. However, despite the thoughtfulness behind the post, and the many good points made, many have slammed the duo for the missive, accusing them of having an uninformed and incredibly privileged take and reminding them that protest is a fundamental part of democracy. Democracy also gave us Mike Baird but youve happily supported the Keep Sydney Open protests, one commenter wrote. Why are the Sydney lockout laws somehow more important than the rights of millions of American women, POC, and LGBTQ people? Its easy for white, straight men to shout their opinions at the world, but that doesnt mean they always should, they continued, echoing the sentiments of many in the comments section. Interesting PR move, guys. Sticking your necks in something you think you understand, but clearly dont. Bye, another commenter wrote. Perhaps if you saw the young, heartbroken, minority groups crying in the streets like I did You would have thought twice about posting this status. Currently it does nothing but cement the fact that you are white males with no understanding of how hard life really can be. Perhaps volunteer here? Donate money? Actually educate yourself. This does nothing. However, some wrote in support of the duo. This commentary is brilliant, read one response. People need to engage themselves in the entire dialogue before spitting fire. I understand how people feel hurt and betrayed by the outcome of this election, but the majority of voters on the other side didnt cast their vote with the intention to damn America and its citizens. Sure there are Trump supporters who are absolutely nuts, beyond racist but Ive also seen hateful, unjust rhetoric from countless Hillary supporters. There will always be rotten apples. You can check out Flight Facilities full post and make up your own mind below. Ask yourself: are Flight Facilities indeed being myopic and not seeing the bigger, grimmer picture or does the wave of hate just prove their point? Henry Rollins, the busiest and angriest man in show business, is a noted fan of Australia. Having toured frequently since the 90s, Rollins a professed fan of our record labels, our bands, our people, and our way of life. And this admitted Australia-phile has now issued a warning to all the citizens of the country he loves and admires so much: stay the hell away from America, at all costs. Writing in Rolling Stone, Uncle Hank has issued a solemn lament for the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump become the 45th President of the United States. No need to fret, I am willing to bet that the President-elects most ardent fans will never visit Australia, Rollins writes. I wonder if they could find it on a map. Yes. These are some very angry and often extraordinarily coarse people and they are now in control. As a friend and fan of Australia, I warn you to stay away from the USA for quite some time. It is not the place it claims to be, the rocker, writer, actor, documentarian, and spoken-word artist adds. It is good advice to heed the wise words of Maya Angelou: When people show you who they are, believe them. The USA has chosen Donald Trump. This is who we are. You really dont want a piece of this. I dont. Note to Prime Minister Turnbull: America is no longer the ally you may have once thought it was. The man soon to be in charge has no clue as to what the job he has just been elected to entails. Do not feed your military into whatever conflict this man initiates. What happened to America can happen to any country. It is of the utmost importance to not only vote whenever possible, but to inform yourself as best you can and hold any and all elected officials to the highest possible scrutiny. America just tied a rock around its neck and threw itself into a river. Do not follow. You can read Uncle Hanks full missive via Rolling Stone right here. Adelaide quartet The Coconut Kids have just released a new song and video Un De Plus, a melancholy response to the Paris attacks that took place last November. Delivered entirely in French, the track was inspired by the experience of band member Julian Ferguson, who was staying in Brussels at the time with a French friend Nicolas Pradalie, who helped to write the lyrics. I was actually in Brussels at the time of the attacks, staying with a good French friend, says Julian. We penned the words the morning after the attack when everything was a bit numb. The rest sort of came naturally when back in Adelaide. The band use a instruments ranging from ukulele and mandolin to brass and violin to make their own brand of French-influenced folk, hence the aforementioned connection. Having released their debut EP in June, the band have supported the likes of The Cat Empire and Michael Franti. Along with its reflective clip, directed by Oliver Delvecchio of Eat Sleep Empire, the track serves as the debut release from new label Straight From The Art started up by The A&R Department a gorgeous place to start. Youll be able to catch The Coconut Kids playing at NSWs Folk In Broke festival on Saturday Nov 2, SAs Cheese Factory on Dec 11, and even their own recurring mini-fest The Coconut Club on Saturday Dec 17. New York Times Talk 1st Draft On The Prez: Obama Policies, Vision Face Reckoning With History Huff Post Seyz Adios To Undocumented: Trump Says Hell Immediately Deport Or Imprison Up To 3 Million Undocumented Immigrants Politico Reports Life After Hillary: Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, is gaining in support for Democratic National Committee chairman. Trump Nation Heckles The Opposition: Comedian Wanda Sykes booed for mocking president-elect... The Electoral College Is No Joke: When People Laughed At The Idea Of Trump Actually Being Elected President! Kansas City Moonshine: The brightest supermoon in almost 70 years rises tonight National Catholic Reporter Keeps The Faith: Pope Francis reminds Donald Trump not to forget the poor We posted our crappy super moon photo only to inspire TKC Sunday readers to get out there and see the real thing . . .Also, we don't do this often but here's a look at some of the best national links we're checking tonight . . .More in a bit . . . TKC Reader: Planned Parenthood Tonight a reader from our blog community provides a well-researched, thoughtful and insightful perspective on a longstanding debate that could come back into play over the next few years.Here's a perspective to conclude Sunday night posting and in fairness to both sides offering unique insight beyond the typical content usually featured in this culture war debate. Checkit:You recently had, and if got me to thinking about this contentious issue again. Here are some of the facts I reviewed, along with my own thoughts and questions. If you determine that your readers are interested in this, I'd like to see their own thoughts in response. Thanks for providing a forum for people to express themselves.When it comes specifically to the organization known as Planned Parenthood (PP), the political debate is largely due to the purposeful use of misleading rhetoric on both sides.--------Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), or Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health services both in the United States and globally. A member association of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), PPFA has its roots in Brooklyn, New York, where Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. in 1916. In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which changed its name to Planned Parenthood in 1942. Planned Parenthood is made up of 159 medical and non-medical affiliates, which operate more than 650 health clinics in the United States, and it also partners with organizations in 12 countries globally. The organization directly provides a variety of reproductive health services and sexual education, contributes to research in reproductive technology, and does advocacy work aimed at protecting and expanding reproductive rights.PPFA is the largest single provider of reproductive health services, including abortion, in the United States. Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S. In their 2014 Annual Report, PPFA reported seeing over 2.5 million patients in over 4 million clinical visits and performing a total of nearly 9.5 million discrete services including 324,000 abortions. The organization has a combined annual revenue of US$1.3 billion, including roughly US$530 million in government funding such as Medicaid reimbursements. Throughout its history, PPFA and its member clinics have variously experienced support, controversy, protests, and violent attacks.Planned Parenthood receives over a third of its money in government grants and contracts (about US $528 million in 2014). By law, federal funding cannot be allocated for abortions (except in rare cases), but some opponents of abortion have argued that allocating money to Planned Parenthood for the provision of other medical services allows other funds to be re-allocated for abortions.A coalition of national and local pro-life groups have lobbied federal and state governments to stop funding Planned Parenthood. As a result, federal and state legislators have proposed legislation to reduce funding levels. Eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Utah have enacted such proposals.--------Most of those who have a serious problem with (PP), center their opposition on the provision of abortion services and the government (taxpayer) funding of that service. You can see from the above financial disclosure that government funding accounts for approximately 40 percent of (PP) revenue, though not all of that is related to abortion services.So, let's look at abortion, and ask why is there the need to enter a woman's body and terminate a pregnancy. We won't get into a discussion of when life begins, and what constitutes the taking of a life. Likewise, for this discussion, let's exclude the minority of procedures involving underage girls, the mentally handicapped, genetic abnormalities, and cases of rape or incest. So, we're talking about the majority of 324,000 abortions performed by (PP) in the United States. Eighty-four percent of Planned Parenthood health care patients in the U.S. are age 20 and older. Why would an adult woman become pregnant and wait until a fetus was forming in her uterus before deciding that she's not ready to bear a child?In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 26% of abortions in the United States were known to have been obtained at less than 6 weeks' gestation, 18% at 7 weeks, 15% at 8 weeks, 18% at 9 through 10 weeks, 9.7% at 11 through 12 weeks, 6.2% at 13 through 15 weeks, 4.1% at 16 through 20 weeks and 1.4% at more than 21 weeks. If these statistics are accurate, you can see that most women do act quickly when discovering that they've become pregnant. An American study in 2002 concluded that about half of women having abortions were using a form of contraception at the time of becoming pregnant. Inconsistent use was reported by half of those using condoms and three-quarters of those using the birth-control pill; 42% of those using condoms reported failure through slipping or breakage. The Guttmacher Institute estimated that "most abortions in the United States are obtained by minority women" because minority women "have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy." So, is it accurate to state that most abortions are the unintended result of ignorance and poverty? Is there a fitting analogy to the incidence of other things like obesity, smoking, gambling, and substance abuse?Roughly 16% of Planned Parenthood clients are teenagers. PPFA is well known for providing services to minorities and the poor; according to PPFA, approximately four out of five of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Given that each patient receives about three services on average, the percent of abortions provided out of the total services provided -- 3.4 percent -- may not clearly represent the importance of abortion to PPFA. Each year, 12 percent of PPFA's patients gets an abortion, which is expensive when compared with other services.Now, I find these numbers quite interesting. According to Planned Parenthood in the U.S., for every 100 patients (men, but primarily women) seen in their facilities (3 services on average per patient) they perform 300 total services. And if abortions account for 3.4 percent of all services, then (0.034 X 300 = 10.2 abortions per every 100 patients). This equals an annual patient abortion rate of 10.2 percent. Yet, Planned Parenthood says that 12 percent of clients get an abortion each year. This would imply that a small percentage of (PP) patients are receiving multiple abortions annually. And because we don't have the data, we're not factoring out the small percent of male (PP) patients, who obviously can't be in the abortion cohort.Doesn't it all really boil down to education? A clear-thinking rational woman does not get pregnant if it's not in her best interests. As soon as someone can solve the human problems of ignorance and inconsistency, we will have solved the abortion debate.#############You decide . . . The arrival of Barack Obama in Greece on Tuesday marks the fourth visit of a U.S. President in the country, 17 years away since the last one The arrival of Barack Obama in Greece on Tuesday marks the fourth visit of a U.S. President in the country, 17 years away since the last one. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first American President who visited Greece. Eisenhower came to Greece for two days, December 14-15, 1959, as a stop in his peace and goodwill tour that included visits to 11 countries. The Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was in effect and international conflicts were in progress, such as the one between Pakistan and India at the time. The nuclear war threat was looming large, and the U.S. President was making an effort to create awareness and called on international leaders to unwind and work toward peace. Eisenhower was received with great enthusiasm by citizens of Athens. According to newspapers of the time, one million people rushed to the streets to see the first ever American president who visited the country. Greeces royal couple Pavlos and Frederica, Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, cabinet members and the leadership of the Greek Armed Forces met with Eisenhower and talked about the importance of a good relationship between the two allies and the contribution of U.S. financial aid in rebuilding the country after WWII and the Greek Civil War. Tense Greek-Turkish relations over Cyprus On July 19-20, 1991, the Greek-Turkish relations were tense over the Cyprus issue and U.S. President George Bush visited Greece as a mediator, prior to his trip to Ankara. He met with Konstantinos Karamanlis, who at the time was President of the Republic in the Konstantinos Mitsotakis administration. Bush, however, disappointed the Greeks saying that the invasion of Cyprus by the Turks was different from that in Kuwait by the Iraqis, since the Persian Gulf War was recent. Yet, the U.S. President praised the Greeks for their support in the Gulf War and spoke with the Greek cabinet for further defense and economic cooperation. The Bill Clinton visit in Athens was not as peaceful, though. In fact it was quite the opposite, marred by destructive riots, vehement anti-American demonstrations, vandalisms, injuries and arrests. The visit was only months after the bombings on Serbia by NATO air forces. NATO launched the air strikes against Serbia, because the latter refused to sign the agreement on Kosovos future. According to Human Rights Watch, 500 civilians lost their lives during the bombings. There was a lot of anger in Greece at the time, and Clinton, or any U.S. President for that matter, was persona non grata in Athens. It was November 19, 1999 when the U.S. President landed in Athens coming from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Istanbul. The reason of his visit was, again, Greece-Turkey relations and the Cyprus issue. The American president had talks with the President of the Republic Kostis Stephanopoulos, who underlined the intransigence of Turkey, requesting respect for international law and stressing that Turkeys claims over islands and islets of the Aegean should not even be expressed, as the only real problem is to define the limits of the continental shelf. During the meeting with Prime Minister Costas Simitis, the American President said that the differences between Greece and Turkey should be brought before the Hague Tribunal or another mutually acceptable body and that Turkey cannot become a European Union member as long as the Cyprus issue is not resolved. Read more here. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Energy Minister Yiorgos Lakkotrypis is expecting reports on the third energy licensing round in Cyprus EEZ in the coming weeks Energy Minister Yiorgos Lakkotrypis is expecting reports on the third energy licensing round in Cyprus EEZ in the coming weeks, he said on Monday. Contracts for the third round are expected to be signed in the beginning of 2017, he told the Parliamentary Committee on Finance. Lakkotrypis has said that Exxon Mobil, Qatar Petroleum, ENI, and TOTAL have all expressed their interest in the third licensing round, which is indicative of the outlooks in Cyprus EEZ. The Minister added that the drilling planned in block 11 will be important in seeing the geological make-up of Cyprus EEZ. He mentioned that block 11 has similar geological structures to Egypts Zohr field. In the meantime, Lakkotrypis said that after the failed attempt to extract natural gas for Cyprus needs, the natural gas company of the island (CyGas) has been asked to prepare a study on the structures for imports and liquefaction. He added that one of the problems with the structures was that they were created for countries larger than Cyprus. Source: CNA RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Ivana Trump has asked her former husband for a job Ambassador to the Czech Republic Ivana Trump has asked her former husband for a job Ambassador to the Czech Republic. The president-elects 67-year-old ex-wife, who divorced him in a blaze of tabloid headlines in 1992, suggested she would be the right person to represent America in the country of her birth. I will suggest that I be Ambassador for the Czech Republic, she told the New York Post. That is where Im from, and my language, and everybody knows me. Im known by the name Ivana. I really did not need the name Trump. Im quite known all around the world not only in America. Ivana said she had no regrets about not becoming First Lady, suggesting her own home in New York was much better than the White House. She also wished Melania, Mr Trumps third wife, well, saying: I dont have envy for Melania because she has to start to pack the clothes and everything. Source: telegraph.co.uk Read more here. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright:Christopher Peterson License: CC-BY-SA Indian engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) showcased its power transmission and distribution (PT&D) expertise along with its multidimensional engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) capabilities in power infrastructure across the Gulf countries. Organised under the patronage of Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh Al Sada and hosted by the Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa), GCC Power 2016 was held under the theme Towards Energy Efficiency at Hotel Sheraton in Doha. The show, organised by GCC-Cigre, brought together policy makers, transmission and distribution industry professionals, technology leaders and delegates across GCC countries. At the exhibition, L&Ts offerings were showcased in a 24-sq-m stall across the domains of power transmission and distribution with specific emphasis on landmark infrastructure projects executed in Qatar and GCC to highlight its role as a major EPC player, said the Indian construction group. Ravindran, executive vice president and head of PT&D Middle East, Bruno Dubois, the head of PT&D Qatar, along with Amareswara Rao, the head of PT&D Oman along with Deepak Nayak, the head of PT&D UAE, and other key team members in Qatar, briefed visitors on the products, it stated. A key highlight was the visit of Mohammed Saleh Abdulla Al Sada, Qatar Energy Minister, to the stand along with Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, the president of Kahramaa, said L&T in its statement. The others who were present included Ali Said Nasser Al Hadabi, the chief executive of Oman Electricity Transmission Company, Jassem Al Nouri, the under secretary of MEW Kuwait, Ahmed Nasser Al Nasr, the director of technical affairs, Kahramaa and officials of the National Grid (Saudi Arabia), Transco (UAE) Ministry of Energy, AADC and Muscat Electricity Distribution Company. The three-day conference covered panel discussions, presentations and plenary sessions on energy efficiency, it added.-TradeArabia News Service GFH Capital, a subsidiary of Bahrain-based GFH Financial Group, has announced a key investment in AMA Group, one of the largest educational institutions in Asia, for its growing operations in the kingdom and beyond. It will be made in the form of a Sharia compliant convertible Murabaha facility, said a statement from the company. The AMAs educational operations cover basic education from pre-schools to Grade 12 to post-secondary training to collegiate and university programs and post-graduate degrees. It spans across the globe from the Philippines to Hong Kong, Macau, Xiamen in China to Nigeria to Oman, Iraq, Jeddah and in Bahrain in the Gulf region. The group also has various other business interests ranging from information technology, banking, real estate and agriculture. AMA operates an international university and a school and a training institute in Bahrain. The AMA University, the largest private university in the kingdom, was established in 2002 and offers undergraduate and graduate programmes in the fields of finance and business administration, computer science and mechatronics engineering. The university has the distinction of being the first and only ABET accredited private university in the kingdom. ABET is the leading global accrediting body in applied sciences, engineering, computing and technology with accreditors from Harvard, MIT and similar institutions. AMA International School, which started its operations in September 2004, is a leading K-12 learning facility. The school is the first in Bahrain to integrate robotics in the curriculum and has recently started offering the IB Diploma Program with the approval of the IB World School. The School incorporates an American and Cambridge curriculum paths and this is further enhanced by the world-renowned Great Explorations in Mathematics and Science (GEMS) programme of the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. On the investment, Hisham Alrayes, the managing director of GFH Capital, said: "We are delighted to announce the investment in AMA. The Group has built its reputation for excellence and the continued growth of its various businesses, particularly in the field of education, is a testament to the group's commitment to quality and the growth prospects for this investment." In addition to supporting GFHs ongoing efforts to develop strong income yielding opportunities for our shareholders and investors within the GCC region and in partner nations, we are also committed to investing in sectors that support growth and sustainable development in the region with education being a key focus, noted Alrayes. Dr Amable R. Aguiluz V, the Special Envoy of the Philippine President to the GCC and the founder-owner of AMA, said: "We look forward to working together with GFH and leveraging their investment experience and know-how in order to further expand our operations, including the delivery of world-class educational services." "AMA has already established strong foundations and market recognition for excellence and we are confident that with GFHs support, resources and networks, we will succeed in further raising the bar and our capacity to serve an ever growing clientele from both within Bahrain and the broader GCC and Mena regions, as well as the Philippines," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Egypts New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) has recovered the lands given to five companies for solar energy projects in Banban and Aswan, said a report. These companies had withdrawn from implementing the project. A total of 5-sq-km of land has been recovered from Abdul Latif Jameel Company, Enel Green Power, Cairo Solar, Orascom Telecom, and Triangle, added the Egypt Daily News report. These companies were expected to launch solar power plants in Banban as part of the feed-in tariff project, it said. Moreover, sources added that the NREA will pay the dues of the five companies next week. Each company provided a letter of guarantee worth $750,000 for the lands, in addition to EGP16,500 ($992.96) for the roads and traffic infrastructure works. Sources explained that last week, representatives of the five companies completed the delivery of the lands in Aswan, similar to the process that took place when they received the lands straight after signing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to utilise them for the implementation of the projects. The sources noted that the five companies obtained their dues from the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) regarding the agreement to split costs and the projects letters of guarantee. Nine companies have withdrawn from the implementation of the feed-in-tariff projects, including Italian Enel Green, French Neon, Saudi Arabian Abdul Latif Jameel, Egyptian Cairo Solar, Spanish Dama, Canadian Solar, Innovation Unlimited Egypt, Emirati Adenium, and Egyptian Orascom Telecom. Ireland-based Aubren, a manufacturer of innovative cooling products, has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabias Al-Babtain Power & Telecommunication to distribute its Aubren DAQS range of innovative IT cooling solutions in the kingdom. Al-Babtain Power & Telecommunication is an international company which is engaged in providing turnkey solutions for telecoms, broadcast, defence, security and other integrated networks across various countries namely Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Yemen. The announcement was made during the Enterprise Ireland trade mission to Saudi Arabia and the UAE led by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan TD, said a statement from the company. The Aubren DAQS range offers innovative, highly energy efficient cooling solutions for telecom/IT applications. The designs are built upon free air cooling principles, incorporating highly efficient EC fan technology, it asid. Flanagan said: As Enterprise Irelands trade mission will demonstrate, the opportunities for innovative Irish companies to build partnerships and increase their sales to the Middle East region are real and tangible. Aubren is a great example of what is possible for Irish companies in this dynamic market, and I wish them continued success for the future, he added. Aubrey Nuzum, managing director at Aubren, said: We are continually looking to expand our market reach and this agreement with Al-Babtain, a highly respected solutions provider, gives us access to the huge potential offered in the Saudi Arabian market. The agreement allows us to move forward together on a number of ongoing activities with mobile network operators in the kingdom who are determined to reduce their Opex costs. The idea that free cooling cant be used in climates with high ambient temperatures is a myth, he said. Recent changes to Ashrae guidelines allow equipment to operate at higher temperature and humidity conditions and our solutions can provide up to 35 per cent reduction in energy usage, whilst increasing the life of existing cooling equipment, he added. Fares Hamdan, business development manager, Al-Babtain LeBlanc, said: Our company is particularly excited to be bring the Aubren cooling solutions to the Saudi market where there is becoming a sharp focus on initiatives to reduce the energy consumption across the mobile telephone networks and several of our key clients have already undertaken to carry out detailed trials with the technology. Joe Breslin, regional director, South Europe, Middle East, Africa and India at Enterprise Ireland, said: Irish companies, with Enterprise Ireland assistance, have been hugely successful in growing their exports to the GCC member states. Last year, exports of Enterprise Ireland backed companies to the region increased by 12 per cent to over 507 million ($547.3 million). Aubrens agreement with Al-Babtain demonstrates the clear opportunities that exist for innovative and ambitious Irish companies in the region. Enterprise Irelands teams in Ireland and the Middle East will continue to work closely with Aubren as they scale their business in this important market, he concluded. TradeArabia News Service Qatar Petroleum said its affiliate Ocean LNG Limited has signed a deal to provide 1.3 million tons per annum of LNG to Brazil based CELSE-Centrais Eletricas de Sergipe (CELSE) from 2020. The shipments will be for use at CELSEs Porto de Sergipe power project near Aracaju, in the Brazilian state of Sergipe. Qatar Petroleum President and CEO Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said: This is the first SPA to be entered into by Ocean LNG, making it the first supplier to deliver LNG to Brazil under a long-term contract. It represents another step towards enhancing our position as a global LNG leader and extending our reach to all markets. Brazil is an important LNG market and we are proud to contribute to meeting Brazils gas demand. We look forward to a long-term relationship with CELSE and its shareholders, and to work together to meet Brazils energy needs, he added. CELSE CEO Eduardo Malan said: This is an important milestone in the development of the Porto de Sergipe power plant. CELSE is proud to partner with LNG industry pioneers Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil and their newly formed Ocean LNG joint venture as its long-term fuel supplier. Ocean LNG Limited is a joint venture company owned by a QP affiliate (70 per cent) and an ExxonMobil affiliate (30 per cent), and has an established branch office in the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) in Doha to manage and undertake its activities. TradeArabia News Service Dubai World Central (DWC) is now gaining ground in the region as a popular airport for passengers with traffic surging 161 per cent in the third quarter, new data showed. According to a report issued by operator Dubai Airports today, DWC welcomed 191,950 passengers during Q3 compared to 73,466 passengers recorded during the corresponding period in 2015. The year to date traffic totalled 602,228 passengers, up 112 per cent compared to 283,455 recorded during the first nine months in 2015. Passenger traffic at DWC is mainly driven by flydubai, one of Dubais two flagship carriers which in addition to its operations at Dubai Internationals Terminal 2, operates 35 weekly flights to five destinations from DWC. Qatar Airways and Wizz Air are the two other major carriers carrying out scheduled passenger operations from DWC. A total of three passenger carriers operate an average of 140 flights weekly to 10 international destinations from DWC, which is also home to 32 scheduled cargo operators that connect the airport to as many as 107 destinations around the world. During the third quarter DWC handled 215,556 tonnes of freight compared to 219,131 tonnes handled during the corresponding period in 2015, down 1.6 per cent. The year to date cargo as at the end of September reached 645,698 tonnes, a contraction of 2.5 per cent compared to 662,143 tonnes recorded during the first nine months of 2015. Aircraft movements in the third quarter totalled 8,679 compared to 9,137 movements during the same period last year, a decrease of 5 per cent. Year to date aircraft movements in September reached 28,877 down 3.8 per cent from 30,003 movements recorded in the first nine months of 2015. Commenting on the results, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, said: We are very happy with the way passenger traffic has been growing at DWC. But this is only the beginning. By the end of next year the airport will see tremendous growth as it becomes the new home for flydubai. The project to expand the annual capacity of the passenger terminal at DWC from 5 million to 26 million passengers in underway and on track to be completed by the third quarter of 2017. - TradeArabia News Service Indonesia has confirmed its official participation in Expo 2020 Dubai in a letter from the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, addressed to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. The letter was delivered to Reem Al Hashimy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation, and Director General, Bureau Dubai Expo 2020, by the Ambassador of Indonesia to the UAE, Husin Bagis. This confirmation signifies the latest milestone in the deepening relationship between the UAE and Indonesia. As the first Southeast Asian nation to publicly confirm its participation, Indonesias agreement also represents progress made by Expo 2020 Dubai in engagement with Southeast Asia, a key region for international outreach. Indonesia is the worlds fourth-largest nation by population, underscoring its significance as a market. Al Hashimy said: Expo 2020 Dubai is a chance for the UAE to build stronger bonds with Southeast Asia and the entire world and we are thrilled that Indonesia will be participating. The ties between the UAE and Indonesia are deep and we hope to build on that relationship further in the coming years. With the fourth largest population in the world and a growing and vibrant middle class, Indonesia is an exciting addition to the World Expo. Bagis said: Indonesia and the UAE enjoy a rich history of connection - through trade, commerce, diplomatic relations, and a shared culture and heritage. We are delighted to announce our participation in Expo 2020 Dubai, whose core theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future reflects our own belief that collaboration and cooperation can help forge a better world. Indonesia will proudly join Expo 2020 Dubais prestigious platform, which will facilitate both the creation of partnerships and the exchange of knowledge and expertise in order to address the global challenges of the 21st century. Indonesia and the UAE enjoy strong trade and tourism links. Bilateral trade reached Dh11.75 billion ($3.19 billion) in 2015, and tourism between the two countries is growing. Emirates and Etihad both have direct flights to the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta, and Emirates launched its daily service to Bali in 2015. - TradeArabia News Service Dubai International Airport suspended its operation on October 29 due to unauthorized drones intruding the airspace. The closure lasted about 90 minutes and triggered hundreds of passengers waiting. "Emirates is making all efforts to ensure minimal disruption to passengers, and assist affected passengers. Emirates regrets any inconvenience caused but the safety of our passengers and crew is of utmost importance and will not be compromised," the spokesperson said in a report by Gulf News. To prevent the same incident to happen again, the airport is now deploying a "drone hunter." The device is a remote-controlled aircraft that attaches into rogue drones. It will monitor the direction of the drone back to their owners. It will give a go-signal to Dubai police who will follow up and investigate. Under civil aviation law in the UAE, the fine for trespassing using a drone is Dh100, 000 or imprisonment for up to three years. In an article of The National, Adel Al Redha, Emirates' executive vice president and chief operations officer said, "Flight diversions and extensive holding are costly. Financial aspects aside, there is huge inconvenience to passengers. It has a negative effect on Emirates' reputation. Sending an aircraft to an alternative airport and managing delays to arrivals or departures is not as straightforward as it sounds." Over 400 drones have been registered with the General Civil Aviation Authority for commercial purposes such as real estate, oil and gas industry and agriculture. Presently drones can be bought from retailers all over UAE. On the other hand, Abu Dhabi banned the selling of drones last year because of the risks posed to the aviation industry. "The challenge that we are facing is people are not aware of the requirements. Several incidents have happened in the UAE caused by individuals who are not familiar with our requirements and they fly the drones," Mohammad Al Dossary, director of air navigation and aerodromes department said in an interview. Several same incidents were recorded, one of which happened on June 11 when Dubai Airport operation was stopped for 69 minutes and 22 flights were diverted to neighboring airports like Fujairah airport, Al Maktoum International and Sharjah airport. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Many people have always dreamt of going for a vacation in Europe. Why wouldn't they? I mean, Europe just has so much to offer. It is definitely a continent that is blessed with so many beautiful sights and places to explore, as well as various islands that travelers can check out. People would normally place in their travel bucket lists good old-fashioned cities like Paris, Rome, London and Barcelona since that is what Europe is known for - having a very sophisticated, historical and highly cultural vibe. This normally translates to museums, art galleries, sometimes even actual ruins which you can see in Greece. But it almost never translates into islands: with warm sunny beaches filled with smiling locals as well as an expansive view of the sparkling turquoise sea that can be admired while lying in the sand, sipping a refreshing drink on hand. On the contrary, there are some pretty well-known islands which many tourists flock to; like Santorini, Mykonos and Crete in Greece, Majorca and Ibiza in Spain as well as Ischia and Capri in Italy. However, if you're looking for something such as an underrated island getaway, then this list is definitely for you. Here are five underrated but equally beautiful islands which should serve as your next getaway: 1. Gozo (for more information, go to: visitgozo.com) For the type to like spelunking along coves and coastal caves, along with going diving and snorkeling then Gozo is the island they should explore. Gozo is known as Malta's little cousin since it only comes second largest in its archipelago. Aside from the postcard-worthy views, the place has the historical aspect covered too. According to Stuff, "Main town Victoria throws in a handsome cathedral and castle combo, while the megalithic Ggantija temples are at least 5000 years old." There are also a number of beaches and some prominent luxury resorts too. Azure Window, an exceptional natural feature is highly recommended as a spot worth seeing. However, going here deserves the extra struggle as compared to its larger neighbor. But if the peace and quiet is something a traveler craves, then going to Gozo is most definitely worth it. 2. Mainland (visitorkney.com) The Orkney Islands which is located in the north-eastern tip of Scotland is lesser known compared to the Western Isles which have some of the most amazing sceneries. However, that should not stop people from seeing what Orkney Islands have in store for them. The largest island in the Orkney cluster is Mainland. If you're a history nut like I am, you are going to love this place. According to Angela Nightingale of EscapeHere, "Many of the attractions like the settlements at the Brough of Birsay show what Viking culture was like centuries ago. There are even older settlements from Neolithic times such as the famous Skara Brae. The island also contains diverse wildlife including many seabirds." Activities that can be done in the island range from seeing Highland Park, a whisky distillery or go diving in one of the world biggest natural harbours, Scapa Flow where tourists can find seven sunken German World War I ships. 3. Naxos When people think of Greece, they usually range from the stunning views of the sea to the iconic houses of Santorini and most especially, Greek mythology. In the Aegean Sea, another spectacular island could be found aside from the already famous Santorini. Naxos is an island that is considered to be the largest in the Cyclades cluster of islands. Greek mythology buffs are going to want to visit this island because so many ancient ruins are found all over Naxos. The entrance of Portara, or commonly known as the temple of Apollo is still standing and it is a sight you'll definitely want to see. Crispi Tower, which is part of an old Venetian castle, can also be found here. 4. Formentera (formentera.es) For the type of traveler who is incredibly into everything chill, then Formentera is the island they should go to next. The Balearic Islands of Spain are composed of Menorca, Mallorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The other three are usually the go-to islands, people prefer to go here to stay in and vacation while Formentera is usually overlooked unless they went there for a day trip from Ibiza. There is a small amount of things to do here but if you're just looking for a proper place to lounge around by the sea with no frills whatsoever, then Formentera is the definite island of choice. 5. Elba Villa Dei Mulini, a luxurious house in Elba, Italy once housed a famous political personality: Napoleon. When Napoleon was banished, he was sent to Elba and to this day, the island still honors that heritage. Aside from that little piece of history, Elba also delivers picturesque views with its cove beaches (which can be accessed by going down a set of stairs from the road) as well as wine estates and olive plantations, which the island is known for. from Hellas Greece: Top 10 Islands in Europe See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Napa is one of the most famous wine regions in the world. It has the most unique wineries, so visiting the place is a must for travelers. Napa has been quoted as an amazing place with rolling blond hills and the sunny climate. It is a perfect place to spend a leisurely afternoon sipping for free at favorite Napa spots. Having a game plan in visiting Napa is a must. Here's what you need to know: Firstly, you can experience the perfect American burger stand that serves locally-raised turkey burgers while drinking wine at the heart of Napa, popularly known as the "Gott's Roadside". According to news report by The Star, from Gotts' Roadside, you may stride the pretty town of St. Helena since shops are there. Instead of spending too much in buying Manolo Blahniks, you may look for 1325 Main St, where Orin Swift's tasting room can be found with great deals offered. Next, you can also head to the centrally located Silverado Resort and Spa, to have an ultimate relaxation and enjoy value for money deals. Once there, go to Louis M. Maritini, where wine tasting. Acoording to the Star, this is "where it all began for Napa," as described by The Star. Meanwhile, Travel and Leisure also listed down some of the dynamic food and wine tasting destinations in the country, as follows: Aside from Gott's Roadside, many tourists go to French Blue and La Condesa; while Gaudiesque Quixote Winery and Hess Collection Winery are wineries favorites. French Blue It is a new American spot on Main Street. It is designed and owned by local architect Howard Backen. This restaurant serves American food with the help of Chef Philip where his sources are from local like berries from a farm. Some of the favorite foods ordered are baked blueberry pancake and strawberry shortcake which are served for breakfast and dinner, respectively. La Condesa La Condesa is a cantina which upstairs dining room recalls an old hunting lodge. It blends out Tecate-battered shrimp tacos and exotic ice creams like avocado coconut curry, honey rosemary and offers hard drinks that are around 200 tequilas and 30 mezcals at the bar. Gaudiesque Quixote Winery Gaudiesque Quixote Winery is a must-try winery in the Stag's Leap District, north of Napa. An Austrian artist named Friedensreich Hundertwasser designed the place in the 1990s. Tourists are offered with the famous Petit Syrahs and Cabernets. Hess Collection Winery Hess Collection winery is another must-try place to visit in Napa. It has outstanding Cabernets and Chardonnays. As per Travel and Leisure, it features works of Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, and Andy Goldsworthy in a 1903 stone winery. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 A Danish backpacker, Johnny Bonde, 27, was accidently attacked by a 2.5 meter long freshwater crocodile on November 4 at West Australia. He had a series of deep cuts in his right arm after the encounter. He was walking along Lakeview Drive just outside of Kununurra at almost 9 p.m. when he saw something floating in the water. Curious of what he has seen, he wanted to get a closer look to get a good photo. It was dark and when he leans closer to the bank he fell and body-slammed the alligator. "I was on this little hill along the bank and I wanted to get a bit closer because it was dark and I wanted a good photo. Next thing I know I'm sliding down the bank and then I just toppled over and landed straight on top of the croc. He got a pretty good grip on me and shook me around a bit. There was just splashing and I could feel a bit of pain in my arm; it wasn't that bad though, I was more shocked than anything," he said on an article of The West Australian. He was travelling with his girlfriend at that time. The couple went to Kununurra District Hospital where Bonde was treated for several deep lacerations in his forearm. He stayed a few days in the hospital for series of checkups and medications. Lake Kununurra is located in the Ord River valley. It is a freshwater man-made reservoir where freshwater crocodiles and 21 different varieties of fish can be found. The lake is known for recreational fishing and boating. Following the incident, on November 6, a saltwater crocodile was shot dead by Department of Parks and Wildlife in Lake Kununurra. It was the first time in several years that a salt water crocodile visited the area. Freshwater crocodiles are harmless than the salt water species. Authorities said that they haunted the predator for four months but was never trapped. The lake is popular with swimmers, water-skiers and boaters. And for their safety, it is the best possible thing to do. "It's certainly of a size that's deemed a threat to any person, whether it be a child or an adult, in particular if you're in the water," DPaW Officer Matt Byers said in an interview by ABC News. "A three-metre animal is a deadly animal." See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 A lawyer named Dan Gillaspia, who is also a travel hacker, has recently managed to rack up a whopping 15,578 dollar suite on a Singapore Airline flight from Tokyo to Singapore for only 130 dollars. With his trusty 45 credit cards and well-detailed spreadsheets, he has accumulated miles and rewards for his next adventures using various tricks, which he shares in his website, UponArriving, where he also discusses the latest updates in credit cards, airline and hotel award programs and other travel guides and tips, according to the Insider. According to Stuff, Gillaspia paid 130 dollars from his pocket to ride on a 15,578 dollar suite on Singapore Airlines, with addition of 100,000 miles from his two credit cards. He and his partner were even upgraded to the 21,000 dollar suite. As they arrived, the flight attendants greeted them by name. "You knew right away that this was going to be a special flight," said Gillaspia. The cabins of the plane they rode were designed by French luxury yacht designer, Jean-Jacques Coste. "It's got this cosy, train cabin feel to it, with these interior shades, wood grain, and diamond stitched leather," he said, complementing the cabin's beautiful design. "It's amazing. You don't feel like you're on a plane, really." During the ride, Gillaspia even experienced his first caviar and even praised the service, saying that Singapore Air was the best out of any airline. "You feel like royalty the entire time, especially when they pull out the double bed and you're able to sleep like you would in a hotel," he said. Paying only 130 dollars for a luxurious suite with private bathrooms and Ferragamo toiletries, the whole experience felt so unreal to them. "You almost feel guilty, like you snuck in or something" said Gillespia, who then managed to get over with the imposter syndrome. "When you're lying there in your first-class suite drinking champagne, you're not going to feel too bad about it." See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Japan's highest peak, Mount Fuji, has been covered with snow for the first time this season. It's the most recent initial snowcap on record as it did in 1956 as it came 26 days later than average. Japanese weather officials say that the snow was detected at around 6:20 AM, Japan time, on October 26. The Japanese' highest mountain has been adored as a holy mountain that gained popularity among artists and common people. According to Japan Guide, the easiest way to view Mount Fuji is from the train trip between Tokyo and Osaka. The best view of the mountain can be appreciated from around Shin-Fuji Station on the right-hand side of the train. The temperature of the 3776-meter Mt. Fuji on the mountaintop at 7 AM was minus 7.1 degrees Celsius, based on reports by NewsOnJapan.com. . You are already fortunate if you will be able to get a clear view of the mountain because it is often blocked by the clouds and poor visibility. Japan Guide added that the visibility of the mountain is better during colder seasons than in summer which is more preferably in the early morning and late evening than the middle of the day. Japan Guide reported that climbing Mount Fuji makes life more memorable. Although the mountain may look more beautiful from afar than close up, but the climbing experience are equally rewarding for mountain hikers across the globe. For Mt. Fuji hikers, the official climbing season is on early July to mid September which is also the time when the trails and mountain facilities are open. At this period, the mountain is free of snow, weather is warm, there is easy access by public transportation and the mountain huts are open during this period as per Japan Guide. Moreover, the key challenge of the climb is the fact that it is physically strenuous, plus the more you gain altitude, the thinner air, as well. Thus, visitors without hiking experience are advised to have an orientation during the official climbing season. Japan Guide also cautioned visitors that if there is snow on the mountain, proper mountaineering equipment and skill is required. It is noted that from October to around mid June, climbing to the summit is highly dangerous due to life-threatening winds and weather conditions of snow and perils from avalanches. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Canada's immigration website crashed on Tuesday night which made it inaccessible to visitors during the US election vote. Officials have confirm that the cause was higher than the normal level of traffic. It has been reported that this might have been caused by US citizens exploring their options following Donald Trump's victory. The site went down at around 10:30 pm ET on Tuesday, and it was inaccessible after that. "The Government of Canada is committed to secure and reliable IT infrastructure to ensure high-quality services to all users, " a spokesperson told the BBC. CNN reported, about 9 ET Tuesday evening, the number of major key states in the election - including Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida could all swing to Donald trump's favor. Even Virginia has since been won by Clinton and Florida by Trump. The problem was widely commented and made countless jokes about people fleeing the country over the results have been circulated in social media. Google even recorded a spike in the search topic immigration to Canada that may not have come to a surprise. In this political situation, this could bring Canadians and Americans closer together putting their difference aside. In the past, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of Trump's Critic in the past. Major differences between Trump and Trudeau are their views on the refugee crisis in Syria. Trudeau said last year that, "Muslims are the greatest victims of terrorist acts around the world. Painting ISIS and others with a broad brush that extends to all Muslims is not just ignorant, it's irresponsible." According to USA Today, reports: "Trudeau plans to allow 25,000 refugees to resettle in the nation by February, with up to another 25,000 by the end of 2016, giving priority to women, children, families and persecuted groups such as lesbians and gays." Canada's policy stands a contrary view on US where trump banned Muslims into their country. Website, unfortunately, still unable to accessible Tuesday afternoon. As Canada's shared services continues to work to resolve the issue. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Kusadasi is located on Turkey's Aegean coast, on a bay. The large marina and the peninsula of Guvercin Adasi (Pigeon Island) is the highlight for an ancient fortress. It also has an active marine hub that was founded since 3000 B.C. Aside from its history, town, ladies beach, and nearby attractions, where should you stay in this promising place? Here are three among the most favorite staycation hotel sites in Kusadas, Turkey. Hotel Kismet According to the blog site Wandering Educators.com, Hotel Kismet is a winner on several accounts. It is located on a peninsula itself, so there are views from every angle. There is a terrace that entices all times of the day, a small play area for kids in the yard, and a lovely outdoors dining area, with a full buffet each night and an unparalleled view of the Kusadasi marina. The site conveyed that while there is a surfeit of accommodation options in Kusadasi, Dr. Jessie Voigts can only recommend Hotel Kismet mainly for its beauty, location, mouthwatering food, relaxing rooms, and most especially its insurmountable view. Ramada Resort Kusadasi & Golf Ramada Resort is one of the top hotels in Kusadasi, Turkey, as per TripAdvisor in terms of ranking. The hotel accommodations boast the breathtaking ocean views. The hotel features complete amenities like the indoor and outdoor heated pools, sundeck, hot tub, fitness center, jogging track, spa and tour desk. Guests can also enjoy free breakfast buffet and free Wi-Fi. Amara Sealight Elite Based on Luxury Hotels Guide, another sought-after hotel in Kusadasi is the five-star Amara Sealight Elite. The hotel is in Kusadas in the region of Aegean Region, 4.8 kilometers from Kusadasi Marina. What separates the hotel from other 5-star hotels in Turkey is that Amara Sealight Elite Hotel is the first affiliate of one of the leading establishments of France "Maison Phelippeau" Relais Thalasso. The hotel boasts its spa center and a private beach area. Ladies Beach is 2.3 kilometers from Amara Sealight Elite, and Kusadasi Bus Terminal is 2.6 km away. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 British Airways is said to be providing Wifi for their short-haul flights. Not just any Wifi, but it's said to be the "fastest wifi" up in the air. With the speed of up to 70 mbps, passengers will be able to watch movies through Netflix, tweet, post a status and would possibly be able to use Skype or Facetime. Now, passengers will be able to kill boredom by enjoying a movie and browsing the internet as they stay in the airplane. According to a report by Daily Mail and Telegraph UK, The parent company of British Airways, which is the International Airline Group, established a deal with Gogo (Chicago-based). By 2019, it was said that 90 percent or 137 of British Airways' planes would have Wifi onboard. The implementation of this plan is presumed to start this coming 2017. While most American airlines like Delta Airlines already have Wifi on some of their aircrafts, as of now, only long-haul flights of British Airways have Wifi. With these plans instituted, The International Airline Group will be the first European airline to apply this kind of technology. Aside from that, British Airways is also planning on replacing their service drinks and foods into Marks & Spencer snacks. As said by Mr. Willie Walsh, the International Airline Group's chief executive, "Global connectivity is something they demand and we are providing high-quality connections with innovative technology solutions to improve the travel experience". Although the internet speed might not be as fast as those at homes, British Airways still wants to address the needs and wants of their customers. As technology develops overtime, it is also important for businesses, including airlines, to be able to cope up with these kinds of development. Since the market or passengers prefer to transact with airlines that provide a better up-to-date service, keeping up with the trend is one of the best approach to please the market. Who knew Wifi could be available 30,000 feet above the ground. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 American Cruise Lines revealed about the ongoing construction of their new vessels. They are making three new ships to add to their existing cruise lines. The American Cruise Lines is a US based cruise that offers up to 35 river cruises. As seen in their website, they offer cruise to the Mississsippi River, New England, Pacific Northwest & Alaska, the Southeast and other special themed cruises. According to Breaking Travel News and Cruise Industry News, the American Cruise Lines' new ships will be built by Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, MD. The ship set to be delivered first is the American Constellation which could carry up to 170 passengers and will soon be made available this May 2017. The second ship is set to be finished during 2018, which could also carry 170 passengers. However, the third ship is leading a series of new modern riverboats and could carry over 195 passengers. Now, the making of the third ship is starting through the fabrication of steel. A statement given by the cruise line is "American Cruise Lines has always chosen to build new ships, as it considers refurbished boats unable to meet guest expectations for comfort, spacious stateroom, and modern amenities". With great features such as large private balconies and floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors along with lots of modern amenities, the cruise line hopes to exceed the expectations of European river travelers in the United States. As the construction of the new vessels is nine weeks early, and the first ship is now being built with large sliding glass doors and bathrooms with marbled tiles. The cruise is said to be delivering more details of the new and much awaited riverboats. As Timothy Beebe, the vice president of American Cruise Lines put it "American Cruise Lines ships are the newest and most environmentally friendly in America". With all these new features and amazing news about the new cruise ships being constructed by American Cruise Lines, being able to ride on these vessels and cross into different rivers will surely be worthwhile. So are you ready to ride on these new crafts? See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 London is one of the most visited cities in the world, offering visitors so many activities--from nightlife to markets, from street art to museums. This city could get a bit overwhelming at first, with all the attractions waiting to be explored, but fret not--there are also a wide array of apps ready to make things easier. Scour the streets of London and make the most of your time with the help of the following apps: 1. CityMapper This app is the answer to all route and transport-related questions. It can even measure the calories you burn while walking! CityMappe London aids users to figure out complicated bus stops and train transit lines just by entering your current location in the search bar. Even if you don't know the exact location, just type a name of a landmark near you, like a restaurant or a museum, and the app will simply guide you through different suggested routes. 2. Street Art London App Searching for Banksy? Street Art London App helps graffiti fans to search for public space artworks spots scattered in the streets at the city. You can also search by typing the name of your favorite street art artists and the app will tell you the locations of pieces by using GPS. The app is constantly updated for graffiti that are continually being discovered by London street art experts. 3. Museum of London Streetmuseum App If you barely know the story of the streets in London and are interested to know the history of the museums you see, this app tells you everything you need to learn. Simply choose a destination in the London map or use GPS to locate an image. Hold your phone up the streets of London and compare the past and present through your phone and actual surroundings. 4. Frugl If you're tight on budget and still want to have a taste of London by eating, watching a film, and drinking, Frugl gives you the best and cheap deals to purchase. The app is constantly updated to add the latest free events, concert, sample sales, and a lot more. 5. Hype "From early morning till deep into the night, Hype has you covered. Whether you're after a quiet cup of tea on the canal, or a warehouse party with your friends, we're here to help," so says Hype's website. "We'll never send you to a rooftop when it's raining, we'll never suggest coffee at 10:00PM. You can always give us a shout directly on the app if you need anything." Hype informs you to the latest happenings and hot spots around the city. Spend your weekend on one of their recommended places and you will certainly have a good time. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The variety of restaurants in Honolulu are perfect compliments of their Hula dancers and fire-breathing shows. Their Aloha spirit is truly imbibed in their food and you can feel it by having a taste in these famous eateries. 1. Helena's Hawaiian Food One of the oldest eateries in Honolulu that best describes the food of Hawaii, the restaurant offers the classic recipes of founder Helena Chock. The eatery has been under the supervision of his grandson Craig Katsuyoshi since Chock passed away in 2007. This places serves the best grilled marinated pipikuala. Their menu also includes kalua pig, lomi salmon, short ribs and luau squid. 2. Rainbow Drive-In One of the famous places in Oahu for locals and tourists, Rainbow Drive-In offers a variety of plate lunches that will definitely fill you to the brim. Have your macaroni salad on the side and choose your meat in an assortment of steak, chicken, or BBQ. 3. Roy's Waikiki Beach Founder Roy Yamaguchi is one of the awardees who received the James Beard Award for Best Pacific Northwest Chef and since then has expanded his restaurant to over 30 more branches. He offers delicious local Hawaiian dishes like mekajiki and moi. 4. Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha Specializing in shave ice, HOPA offers a variety of flavors to cater for those who have sweet tooth. They offer strawberry, lilikoi, pineapple, milk, chocolate and many others. They are dedicated to "Malama Honua" which translates to care for the Earth thus their business is eco-friendly. 5. Eat the Street Eat the Street is a congregation of food trucks that are now dominating the eatery scene of Hawaii. This is a weekly street food hub where friends can gather and share a wide variety of dishes. Tourists are more than welcome to join the fun, too! See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Treehouses do bring with them a certain sense of nostalgia that is highly likely associated with memories of childhood. They might be seen as something that is a permanent fixture while growing up or something children continually asked from their parents to build and have it serve as a playground within the confines of their very own backyard. However, it seems that these treehouses once reserved for children are now made more appealing to adult travelers as well. Though creating a hotel amidst the treetops isn't fairly new: ever since the mid-1980's, Ariau Amazon Towers Hotel in Brazil has been giving its guests the opportunity to discover the jungle canopy from the comforts of their rooms. However, the idea has now flourished and today, they can be found all over the world. Treehouses were given the luxurious treatment and placed in locations offering humid weather and thus paved the way for these lavish treehouse hotels which offer great satisfaction for vacationing travelers. Nikki Ekstein for New Zealand Herald listed five tree-house hotels - all of them either new or developed recently where travelers can not only make their childhood fantasies come true, but also spend their adult vacation in someplace incredibly unique. Secret Bay in Dominica The island offers four splendid hand-built villas which overlooks the water; not only are they beautiful, they are also incredibly earth-friendly too. According to Ekstein, "Little by little, the property - a pioneer in sustainable design and marine conservation - has expanded, keeping its footprint light and its wow factor high." Recently, two duplex villas were added and these are placed hanging atop the forest canopy. Aside from having a "hammock sofa" on its deck, there is also a fully stocked kitchen, a private pool and an on-demand chef for you to enjoy. If that's not enough, visitors can also have the team arrange a one-man jazz concert to happen on their very own patio. Playa Viva in Juluchuca, Mexico Playa Viva is a little eco-retreat found on the Pacific coast of Mexico, just 35 minutes south from Zijuatanejo. Quite recently, a cylindrical treehouse was opened up as a sort of experiment. Since the resort's endeavor is to have "less than zero" footprint, the use of creative architecture is needed. The place was such a hit thar owner David Leventhal as well as ArtisTree Homes, a Califonia-based crew chose to build another half dozen houses. Papaya Playa in Tulum, Mexico Papaya Playa is already very popular enough in its hometown in Tulum, Mexico. It is known for being well designed with 85 casitas which feature a thatched roof. However, it seems that the hotel's treehouse, which is available for the holiday season and only the first with several more to follow, will be its most popular room yet. Aside from recycled wood, the houses are also made of Zapote, a wood that is sourced locally. The inspiration for these houses came from ancient Mayan structures; which is the reason behind its sphere shape. It offers not only a gorgeous view of the Caribbean Sea as well as a meditation room, but also access to the hotel's kiteboarding school and spa which is just nearby. Acre in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico Acre, which is found in San Jose del Cabo in Mexico, is pushing boundaries due to the opening of its treehouse hotel. Currently, it is composed of 12 "stick boxes" on stilts. While these houses may seem pretty compact or on the smaller side, they are however capable of meeting every traveler's needs: from queen sized beds to an outdoor shower which are secluded by palm trees. Hoshinoya in Bali, Indonesia While Bali is pretty much a tourist destination all on its own, it seems that Hoshinoya is going to contribute significantly to its allure. Hoshinoya in Bali is just about to be opened to the public and it aims to be on top, quite literally.According to Ekstein, the resort is going to have "a series of seven postmodern, open-air 'cafes in the sky' that hover over Ubud's wild vegetation." The rooms on the other hand, are found on the ground level and can be seen in front of a long lap pool. Great service can be expected from the team behind Hoshinoya, since it is run by Hoshino Resorts; a 102 year old company which is known for making exquisite ryokans all over Japan and operate based on the standard of intuitive hospitality or "omotenashi". For other treehouse hotel recommendations, check out Damon Tabor's article for Travel + Leisure. Here he listed down about 15 of the coolest treehouse hotels all over the globe. For travelers who wish to experience a kind of travel which do away with the usual, then staying in one of these magnificent treehouse hotels is something you should give a shot in. from Ephigenia Stamate: Amazing and Beautiful Tree House Hotels See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Hillary Clinton was said to have taken a break from politics after the late United States Presidential Elections. As the results of the US presidential elections came out, Donald Trump gained more votes that Hillary Clinton and so Clinton conceded the election to trump last Wednesday. As reported by Complex and Travel and Leisure, Hillary Clinton was seen for the first time in public after conceding to Trump last Wednesday. She went on a hike with her husband, Bill Clinton, in Chappaqua, New York last Thursday. During her hike, she happened to meet a young mother named Margot Gerster along with her young daughter, Phoebe. Gerster, her daughter and Hillary Clinton posed for a photo together. It was said that Bill Clinton was the one who took the photo. Gerster posted her picture with Mrs. Clinton with the tag #imstillwithher pointing out the "I'm with her" slogan of Clinton's campaign. Gerster said "I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking Phoebe with me to vote for her". She also added "She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk". Gerster also wrote a Facebook status after posting the picture. However, the status which was about how heartbroken she was after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the Presidential Election, was removed. These posts and photos by Margot Gerster became so popular online that it went viral. According to her, "It was a very dark day yesterday, I just feel like the fact I ran into Hillary while I was trying to clear my head, was sort of like a hopeful sign. I hope the picture brings hope to people who need it." See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 There's something about Boracay, Philippines that makes you keep going back for more. From its beautifully pink sunset, to its cool powdery white sand beaches, vibrant community, and tropical Boracay weather, one visit is simply never enough. This is why according to CNN, Boracay is been one of the best beaches in the world, though when you look at its marvelous photos, it's quite easy to see why. But how can you make the most of your Boracay trip? Know Your Area Well Most of high-end and pricey Boracay hotels are located at the Station 1 while mid-range hotels and hostels are located at Station 2 and most budget hotels and hostels are in Station 3. Most of the night activities are mainly located at Station 2 and 3; so if this is something that you prefer, then you can book your hotels in this area. If you want a place where you can get a peaceful sleep at night, away from the loud music and crowd and you don't mind walking 15 to 20 minutes along their white sand beaches to reach your party or food destination, then Boracay hotels at Station 1 is your best bet. You can also check Trivago and other booking sites to get your best deal on these hotels. Peaceful and Scenic Beaches If you're tired of the usual white sand beaches, you can head over to the Diniwid Beach or the Puka Beach. It's only one short ride away! The iconic Spider House is definitely a must try. It's located in Diniwid Beach, which a bamboo hotel that you can access through a spiral staircase and it's beachside view by going through a cave. When going to Spider House during peak season to see one of the best sunsets that Boracay has to offer, you have to travel there early on in the afternoon since seats are quite limited. The Puka Beach is also another must-go beach in Boracay Island. You can access this through boat or through land via tricycle, which is a modified motorbike that can carry up to 4 to 6 passengers. Puka Beach is quiet and picturesque and is a complete opposite from the somewhat crowded main beach. So, if you want to spend a relaxing day at the beach with an unhindered sunset or sunrise view this is for you. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Vacation Agent Magazine A version of this article appears in print in the November 2016 issue of Vacation Agent Magazine. Subscribe VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - November 14, 2016) - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES ExGen Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EXG) (OTC PINK: BXXRF) ("ExGen") is pleased to announce today that, subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval, together with Konnex Resources, Inc. ("Konnex") a wholly owned subsidiary of ExGen, it has entered into a letter agreement with Phoenix Global Mining Ltd., a private British Virgin Islands based mining company focused on base metals development ("Phoenix") to amend (the "Amendment") the Option Agreement on our Empire Mine Project ("Empire Mine Project"), first announced by ExGen on July 21, 2015 (the "Original Option"). Phoenix and ExGen have been engaged in multiple discussions over the past several months to revise the Original Option to facilitate Phoenix's current plans to complete an IPO and list Phoenix's shares on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange during the first quarter of 2017 (the "Phoenix IPO"). The Amendment allows Phoenix to acquire 80% of the common shares of Konnex, ExGen's wholly owned subsidiary which holds the leases to the Empire Mine Project, on the following terms and conditions, including a term requiring the return of the Konnex common shares to ExGen in certain circumstances: Project Participation Upon the deposit by Phoenix of US $1,000,000 into the Konnex bank account (discussed below under Project Expenditures by Phoenix), 80% of Konnex's common shares will be transferred to Phoenix ExGen to retain a 20% carried interest until commencement of mine construction ExGen to be granted a 2.5% net smelter returns royalty for all metals on the Empire Mine Project (the " 2.5% NSR ") 30-mile area of interest, which applies to both ExGen's 20% carried interest and the 2.5% NSR If any of the cash or share payments, or project expenditure requirements, both as described below, are not completed as required pursuant to the Original Option as amended by the Amendment, or if the Original Option is terminated, then the 80% of the Konnex common shares will be returned to ExGen without ExGen paying any consideration Story continues Cash and Shares ExGen was paid a cash payment of US $50,000 on signing the Original Option (PAID) ExGen was issued 5,000,000 common shares of Phoenix on signing the Original Option (ISSUED) ExGen was paid a cash payment of US $50,000 within 60 days of signing the Original Option (PAID) ExGen was paid a cash payment of US $50,000 on signing the Amendment (PAID) ExGen was issued an additional 5,000,000 common shares of Phoenix (substantially pursuant to the Original Option terms) and an additional 1,300,000 common shares of Phoenix on signing the Amendment (ISSUED) As of the date of the Amendment ExGen holds 16.6% of the ordinary shares in issue of Phoenix ExGen to be paid a cash payment of US $100,000 on the earlier of the Phoenix IPO date or by March 31, 2017 ExGen to be paid US $100,000 on each anniversary date of the earlier of the Phoenix IPO or March 31, 2017 (the "IPO Anniversary Payment") until the completion of a bankable feasibility study on the Empire Mine Project The IPO Anniversary Payment increases 100% to US $200,000 for any payment where during the prior 12 months period the minimum expenditures on the Empire Mine Project has not been met (please see below for minimum expenditure requirements) Project Expenditures by Phoenix Phoenix to have deposited a minimum of US $1,000,000 into the Konnex bank account by the earlier of the Phoenix IPO date or by June 30, 2017 Phoenix to spend the US $1,000,000 on the Empire Mine Project within 12 months of deposit into the Konnex bank account Phoenix to fund all Empire Mine Project property maintenance and sustaining costs of Konnex Phoenix to spend a minimum of US $500,000 on the Empire Mine Project every 12 months until completion of the bankable feasibility study Deal Protection and Corporate Structure Should Phoenix sell its 80% interest in Konnex prior to the commencement of commercial production, ExGen shall have the right but not the obligation to either sell its 20% interest in Konnex on the same terms as Phoenix. Alternatively, ExGen may elect to have any acquiring party fund all of ExGen's pro rata share of project capital costs by way of loan from Konnex, with interest payable by Konnex, without dilution to ExGen's 20% joint venture interest Within 15 days of signing the Amendment, Jason Riley shall be invited to join the board of directors of Phoenix as ExGen's representative Within 15 days of signing the Amendment, Konnex shall reorganize its board of directors to comprise a total of 5 directors, with Phoenix to appoint 3 out of the 5. The 30 mile area of interest was structured to provide ExGen with the upside exposure to any potential regional exploration success on the Empire Mine Project. The Amendment is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. Mr. Jason Riley, CEO of ExGen commented: "We are excited about the dual focus of AP Pit development and deeper sulphide exploration that Phoenix has decided to pursue on Empire. This will be the first serious follow up on the high grade potential in the deeper sulphide zone at Empire since the US Bureau of Mines work in 1942. As the largest shareholder of Phoenix at 16.6%, we are also pleased at the progress they are making towards an IPO in Q1 next year." ABOUT THE PHOENIX TEAM The Phoenix team has previously built two companies from development through to production, Nelson Gold in Tajikistan, an 80,000 oz/annum gold producer (source: Nelson Gold financial statements and Northern Miner 8/31/98) and Oxus Gold's Amantaytau Goldfields in Uzbekistan, which produced more than half a million ounces of gold and almost 2.5 million ounces of silver in its first 6 years of production (source: Oxus Gold plc June 30, 2007 financial statements). Its principals have practical hands-on experience in precious and base metals exploration and mining, as well as being successful in project generative work, globally sourcing new projects for exploration and development for mid tier and major copper, gold, and iron ore producers. Phoenix Chairman, Mr. Roger Turner, has an extensive mining career spanning over 40 years, including running multiple TSX and AIM listed companies and mining for copper in Granisle BC, Hudbay Minerals in Manitoba, Falconbridge in Uganda and for Rio Tinto Technical Services in London. Mr. Turner commented, "We are excited to be taking on the development of the Empire Mine in Idaho and working with the local community to build a wealth-creating future for all stakeholders. Our next step will be to complete an update of a 1997 resource calculation to NI 43-101 standards. There are an additional 67 drill holes to add to the 1997 resource which was originally based on 220 holes. Most of these holes targeted the surface oxides but a few intersected the underlying sulphide zone. These results, combined with the results of an underground drilling and sampling programme carried out by the US Bureau of Mines (USBM, predecessor to the US Geological Survey) in 1942 make this an exciting project." "Should the technical feasibility and economic viability of the project be established, there are two major objectives. Firstly, to achieve early production from an open pit SX-EW project producing cathode copper as well as gold and silver from the near-surface oxide resources and secondly, to fully understand and develop the sulphide resources below the oxides. This potential is apparent from the deeper drilling and the work carried out in 1942 by the USBM. We are confident that with staff, stakeholder, community, and advisor support we will turn our vision of Empire into a highly profitable major mine." ABOUT THE EMPIRE MINE PROJECT The historic Empire Mine is reported to have produced 694,000 tonnes with recovered grades of 3.64% copper, 1.65 g/t gold and 53.9 g/t silver from underground workings during the period 1901 to 1942. Head grades were between 6% and 8% copper. Review of more recent documents shows that the Empire Mine produced an additional 115,500 tonnes from 1943 intermittently to 1973, with recovery grades of 2.27% Cu, 1.11 g/t Au and 23.76 g/t Ag. The property is classified as a polymetallic copper skarn. The mineralization is represented by a vertical zone (5 to 15 metres wide) of higher grade copper-gold-silver sulphide mineralization located within and below a larger zone of lower grade copper-oxide mineralization. Previous work on the property has encountered oxide and sulphide copper mineralization over a strike length of 1,200m, a width of 6 to 70m and to a depth of more than 300m. The old underground mine was accessed by ten adits which are spaced vertically at 100ft intervals, from the 200 foot level to the 1100 foot level. An underground drilling and wall-rock sampling programme was carried out by the US Bureau of Mines (USBM) in 1942. The following table shows the results from their sampling of certain stopes on the 300, 700, 800 and 900 levels (*): Stope Length Assay Location in metres % Cu gm/T Au gm/T Ag 300Level 8.8 3.47 0.27 113.83 700Level 7.2 1.36 0.62 15.77 800Level N 15.2 1.22 1.13 11.67 800Level S 10.7 1.56 1.95 36.00 900Level 10.7 0.94 0.45 15.43 Examples of channel sampling on the oxide-dominated 300 level are as follows: Sample Width Assay Number in metres % Cu gm/T Au gm/T Ag 327 1.5 3.00 0.17 162.86 328 1.5 4.59 0.17 114.86 329 1.5 5.31 0.34 137.14 330 1.5 1.63 0.17 66.86 331 1.5 2.10 0.34 90.86 332 1.5 1.26 0.17 61.71 333 1.5 1.70 0.17 72.00 334 1.5 2.00 2.57 30.86 335 1.5 1.31 1.37 49.71 336 1.2 4.40 0.51 109.71 337 1.2 0.74 4.80 77.14 338 1.1 1.15 1.71 72.00 339 1.2 2.82 1.03 89.14 The following table summarises the documented results of the USBM's drill holes that have intersected mineralization below the near-surface oxides: Meters Hole and Cu Au Ag WO 3 Level From To Intersection % gm/T gm/T % B2 L1000 0 4.3 4.3 2.6 0.1 19 0.044 B10 L1000 0 15.9 15.9 2.9 3.1 32 B11 L1000 0 9.3 9.3 2.1 1.6 24 B12 L1000 0 6.7 6.7 2.0 1.5 24 B13 L1000 0 2.7 2.7 2.5 1.8 28 B16 L1000 0 13.8 13.8 1.6 0.3 22 B17 L1000 0 12.8 12.8 2.1 0.4 22 B23 L800 0 7.4 7.4 3.1 5.5 43 B28 L1000 0 17.6 17.6 3.1 2.3 44 The same USBM report also states that the following samples were taken from a 55-ton shipment of ore from the 1000 foot level in 1942 (*): Assay % Cu opt. Au opt. Ag % WO 3 4 samples 3.28 0.240 1.75 4.28 Carload 2.45 0.105 1.35 2.08 The presence of tungsten (WO 3 ) at depth could be a major factor in the future of the Empire Mine Project. (*) Source:- Farwell, F.W and Full, R.P. 1944. Geology of the Empire Copper Mine near Mackay, Idaho: USGS Open File Report 44-17. The full report can be found on the internet at https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr4417 Note: all copper values are total-copper %. Emphasis is given to this historic underground work by numerous records which show the gradual increase in sulphide copper content vs oxide copper with depth. There are no documented exploration results from the deeper workings of the mine other than those of the USBM; their results offer very attractive targets for future exploration via surface drilling and/or underground access. Furthermore, some of the higher-grade zones detected by the USBM may still be in-place. The potential for deeply-seated polymetallic sulphide mineralization is currently an important focus of exploration at the Empire Mine Project. Surface exploration on the property by several exploration companies between 1964 and 1975 resulted in the drilling of 151 holes mostly within the area referred to as the Atlantic-Pacific (AP) Pit. Surface mining of the AP Pit in ~1974-75 was based on drilling completed by Behre Dolbear in 1972. The AP pit is currently the focus of exploration as a potential low-strip-ratio open pit with production of SX-EW cathode copper. Cambior Exploration USA Inc. explored the property from 1995 to 1997, and drilled 47 diamond drill holes (7,350m) mostly within the AP pit. Their goal was to generate a copper resource estimate. The Cambior historical estimate was divided into two components, a precious metal bearing oxide copper resource and a copper-zinc style of mineralization. Cambior reported a "drill-indicated", near surface, oxide copper estimate of 18.23 million tons grading 0.49% copper, 0.19% zinc, 13.5 g/t silver (0.44 oz/t) and 0.51g/t gold (0.015 oz/t) with an additional 9.65 million tons of material grading 0.29% copper and 0.31% zinc with no precious metals. The work completed by Cambior is historical in nature and does not comply with National Instrument ("NI 43-101") standards. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current resource estimate under NI 43-101, the work completed by Cambior has not been verified by ExGen and ExGen is not treating the historical estimate as a current resource estimate. The "drill indicated oxide resource" terminology used by Cambior does not follow the terminology outlined in Section 1.2 and Section 1.3 of NI 43-101 and can therefore not be categorized under NI 43-101 guidelines. A considerable amount of additional diamond drilling, assaying, confirmation of the extent and grade of the mineralization reported in the core holes used in the historical estimate, density measurements, updated metal prices and additional metallurgical testwork would be required to either upgrade or verify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource that complies with NI 43-101. Cambior also carried out preliminary metallurgical testwork on the mineralization from the Empire Mine Project. Results from the leach tests conducted by METCOM Research of Tucson Arizona, suggested recoveries of 75% to 80% for both copper and gold with 50-60% from silver and zinc from 100 mesh material. The METCOM work contemplated a flow sheet using sequential leaching of copper by sulphuric acid followed by neutralization of the pulp and precious metal recovery through cyanide leaching. Due to low commodity prices and financial commitments elsewhere, Cambior relinquished the property in 1999. Between 2004 and 2011, Trio Gold Corp. ("Trio") and Musgrove Minerals Corp. ("Musgrove") completed an additional 67 core and reverse circulation holes (for a total of 8,383m) as an in-fill drilling program to complement Cambior's drill effort. To review the drilling results for these drilling campaigns please see the news releases filed by Trio and Musgrove on www.sedar.com. Phil van Angeren, P. Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and verified the technical mining information provided in this release. About ExGen Resources Inc. ExGen, formerly Boxxer Gold Corp, identifies projects and has a strategy to aggregate them during the current market downturn and fund exploration through joint ventures and partnership agreements. This approach significantly reduces the technical and financial risks for ExGen, while maintaining the upside exposure to new discoveries and potential cash flow. The company intends to build a diverse portfolio of projects across exploration stages and various commodity groups. ExGen currently has 6 projects in Canada and the US. For more information on ExGen please visit our website at http://exgresources.com or contact ExGen Resources Inc. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains certain forward-looking information. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking information and such information involves various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information in relation to: the Original Option and the Amendment on the Empire Mine Project including, without limitation, the transfer of the 80% of the Konnex common shares to Phoenix and the earning of the Original Option by Phoenix, future cash payments by Phoenix to ExGen, Phoenix common share payments and NSR payments in relation to the Original Option, the Amendment and the Empire Mine Project, and possible exploration and development expenditures on the Empire Mine Project; the exploration and production potential of the Empire Mine Project, the ability to bring the Empire Mine Project onto production and the potential mining methods for the Empire Mine Project; the additional exploration, assaying, confirmation, metallurgical, and other work required to upgrade or verify the historical work on the Empire Mine Project; the timing and ability to prepare a NI 43-101 resource calculation; future exploration and development plans on the Empire Mine Project; the timing for exploration and drilling on the Empire Mine Project; the timeframe within which the Empire Mine Project can be advanced; the Phoenix IPO including the completion and the timing for completion of the Phoenix IPO; and the potential return to ExGen of the 80% of the Konnex common shares potentially issued to Phoenix. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. There can be no assurances that the Original Option or Amendment will result in the exploration of the Empire Mine Project or that the development of the Empire Mine Project will occur, and if development occurs, that such development will result in a producing mine. In the forward looking information contained in this news release, ExGen has made numerous assumptions, based upon practices and methodologies which are consistent with the mineral industry. In addition, ExGen has assumed: the continued market acceptance of its joint venture partnership model; the ability of ExGen to raise future equity financing, if needed, at prices acceptable to ExGen; ExGen's current and initial understanding and analysis of the Empire Mine Project; the ability of ExGen or third parties to discover viable exploration targets and the results of exploration on the Empire Mine Project; the ability of Phoenix to explore and develop the Empire Mine Project; the cost of exploration, including sampling, drilling and assaying, on the Empire Mine Project, the costs of developing the Empire Mine Project and the costs and the ability of Phoenix to produce a feasibility study; the ability of Phoenix to complete the Phoenix IPO in a timely manner; and ExGen's general and administrative costs remaining constant. While, ExGen considers these assumptions to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause ExGen's observations, actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Known risk factors include, among others: there is no certainty that the Option will result in significant exploration of the Empire Mine Project or development of the Empire Mine Project into a producing mine; uncertainties relating to interpretation of drill results and the geology, continuity and grade of mineralization and uncertainty as to the actual results of exploration and development or operational activities; uncertainty as to the availability and terms of future financing; uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals; ExGen may not be able to comply with its ongoing obligations regarding its properties; the early stage development of ExGen and its projects, and in particular, the Empire Mine Project; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; capital market conditions and market prices for securities, junior market securities and mining exploration company securities; commodity prices; competition; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; accidents and other risks inherent in the mining industry; lack of insurance; delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals; changes in legislation, including environmental legislation, affecting ExGen; conclusions of economic evaluations; and lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals. A description of additional assumptions and risk factors used to develop such forward-looking information that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in ExGen's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although ExGen has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. ExGen does not undertake to update any forward-looking information except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Enchante Hotel Barge offers Chartered Culinary Cruises (TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - November 11th, 2016 - European Waterways has announced the launch of a new Culinary themed charter cruise for 2017 aboard the spacious 8-passenger Enchante, a stylish double-decker hotel barge cruising the renowned Canal du Midi in Southern France. Enchante features a demonstration galley that allows guests to see first-hand the culinary skills of the on-board master chef, who expertly prepares gourmet meals using fresh, locally grown ingredients. Culinary Cruises will be available throughout the year from March to October and European Waterways is offering 10% off charter prices for all March May 2017 departures. Enchante cruises the canal between the picturesque villages of Salleles-d'Aude and Trebes, located in the heart of the famed Languedoc vineyards. In addition to cooking demonstrations on board, Culinary Cruises feature expert wine and food pairings for every meal and a wide assortment of regional cheeses. Excursions include truffle hunting in the Minervois hills and a visit to a farm famed for its special Petit Gris variety of escargot. Guests will also visit an olive oil press and a goat cheese farm for private tastings, and enjoy several off-shore lunches, including one at a canal-side culinary school where they will do the cooking themselves to enhance the experience. Under the guidance of a master chef, our Culinary Cruises introduce guests to some of the wonderful gastronomic experiences that have always attracted visitors to the South of France, said Derek Banks, managing director of European Waterways. We are sure they will prove popular and are currently developing similar itineraries on other hotel barges in our fleet that will take full advantage of the epicurean traditions of each region. Culinary Cruises aboard Enchante start from $38,790, with the 10% off. Prices include all gourmet meals, fine wines, open bar, daily escorted excursions and local transfers. For more information about pricing, cruise schedules and to request a brochure, visit gobarging.com or call Toll Free 1-877-879-8808. Follow European Waterways on Facebook and Twitter. You can also view their Youtube channel. ### The historic concert will take place at the Plaza de la Catedral square on November 26, 2016. Packages include VIP seating and backstage passes and are available at placidodomingo.enjoycubaluxury.com (TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - November 14th, 2016 - For the first time in History, the world famous Spanish tenor, conductor and arts administrator Placido Domingo will be performing a live concert in Havana, Cuba. Set to take place on the 26th of November at the magnificent Plaza de la Catedral square in Havana, the concert is one of the most anticipated events in Cuba for 2016. Enjoy Cuba Group is proud to announce exclusive travel packages for those who dont want to miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. The luxurious VIP packages include: - VIP seating with backstage passes to the concert - Flights - Accommodation at 4* and 5* hotels with breakfast - Transfers - And, Visa among other things Some of the renowned Hotels offered are part of this luxurious trip to Cuba are: the Hotel National de Cuba, Iverostar Parque Central, Memories Miramar and Tryp Havana Libre to name a few. A Cuban Thanksgiving celebration can also be added as part of your package. For more information, visit: http://placidodomingo.enjoycubaluxury.com or contact Enjoy Cuba Group at sales3@enjoycuba.es or call 786 245-8990. About Enjoy Cuba Group: Enjoy Cuba Group is a travel agency specialized in travels to Cuba. With a team of professionals with more than 15 years in the industry, the agency has facilitated the tour operations of high profile clients such as Madonna and the production crew of the movie The Fast and the Furious. Enjoy Cuba Group guarantees your accommodation in luxury homes, apartments and villas. We ensure you transport and organize events and excursions throughout the island. For more information, visit www.enjoycuba.es. About Placido Domingo: Jose Placido Domingo Embil, born 21 January 1941 known as Placido Domingo, is a Spanish tenor, conductor and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and Russian in the most prestigious opera houses in the world. Although primarily a lirico-spinto tenor for most of his career, especially popular for his Cavaradossi, Hoffmann, Don Jose, and Canio, he quickly moved into more dramatic roles, becoming the most acclaimed Otello of his generation. ### Tribune News Service Amritsar, November 14 A youth was attacked and critically injured by several armed persons in the Kirpal Colony area, falling under the Sadar police station, here last evening. He later succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in the late evening. The deceased, identified as Manjinder Singh, had returned from Malaysia and was going to change currency along with his brother Chand Masih when they were attacked. The accused suspected that Manjinder and his family were helping his cousin to elope with their cousin sister and solemnize their marriage against the wishes of their family members. Manjinder had returned from Malaysia, as his wife was pregnant and expecting a child in the next few days. The police have registered a case under Sections 302, 307, 379-B (2), 427, 120-B, 148 and 149 of the IPC in this connection. They have booked around seven persons while no arrest has been made so far. Among those booked include Sahil alias Shalu, Kulit Singh, George Masih and Rahul, all residents of Kirpal Colony and three unidentified persons. SHO, Sadar police station, Sukhwinder Singh Randhawa said the accused were at large and raids were being conducted to arrest them. He said the body was handed over to the family after a post-mortem examination. Sunil Masih, the brother of Chand Masih, stated to the police that he, his elder brother, Chand Masih, and Manjinder Singh were going to exchange Malaysian currency on a motorcycle. He said when they reached a narrow lane, the accused armed with swords and sharp weapons surrounded and attacked them. Sahil shouted, Catch them and teach them a lesson for helping Raja (their cousin) for eloping with their cousin. Tribune News Service Karnal, November 14 Ahead of Israel President Reuven Rivlins visit, Chief Secretary (CS) DS Dhesi inspected the Indo-Israel Centre of Excellence for Vegetables in Gharaunda here today. Rivlin, who arrived in Mumbai today, will visit the centre on November 18 and inspect the projects being carried out by the two countries. Dhesi today inspected all sections of the centre and directed the faculty members to make all arrangements for the dignitarys visit. Earlier, accompanied by Director General Horticulture Dr Arjun Singh Saini and others, the Chief Secretary reached the centre at around 11 am. The Chief Secretary remained at the centre for around two hours. He seemed to be satisfied with the preparations and progress at the centre. Dhesi said the President of Israel would plant a sapling on the premises of the centre. Reuven Rivlins visit would usher in a new era of cooperation in the field of agriculture, he said. Mukesh Ranjan Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 14 There is an assessment by the security agencies that demonetisation has started impacting terror activities, especially in the Valley, where nearly Rs 3,000 crore of hawala money in circulation is of no use now. Sources in the security establishment believe that the move would lead to a major shift in the terror infrastructure management and change the character and nature of terror funding in the country. They also claim that the four-month-long unrest in the Valley, sparked by the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani by security forces in July, is receding and expected to end as the cash inflow has halted. Intelligence inputs have always been there that politicians and separatist leaders are being funded through hawala transactions to fuel protests in the Valley, sources said. According to several estimates by agencies, Pakistan has been pumping in Rs 800-1,000 crore annually for the separatist groups alone. 30 per cent of this fund is paid to the beneficiaries in US dollars in bank accounts abroad. Half of the 70 per cent funds used to be paid in original currency and the remaining in fake Indian currency, an intelligence official said. Between 2013 and 2016, 17 cases were registered and 37 persons were arrested in terror-funding cases in J&K, mostly in hawala and FICN cases, sources added. Intelligence officials said that lack of hawala money inflow would also hit the activities of the Maoists and other insurgent groups in the northeastern states. Jammu, November 14 Pakistani troops on Monday resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts in four sectors along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which two persons, including a jawan, were injured. There have been unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistani Army in Sunderbani and Naushera sectors of Rajouri district and Pallanwala sector of Jammu district, a defence spokesman said. Pakistani troops used 82mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons on Indian positions from 1440 hours in these sectors, he said. A 67-year-old resident, Mangat Ram, was injured in Pakistani shelling in Khour area in Pallanwala sector, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. Pakistani troops also resorted to firing along LoC in Khadi area of Poonch district, according to reports. One jawan was injured in the firing in Poonch. The defence spokesman said the Indian troops gave "befitting reply" to Pakistani firing. The violations of the ceasefire came after a lull of a few days on the border. The 2003 India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement has virtually become redundant with a whopping 286 incidents of firing and shelling along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops that resulted in death of 26 people, including 14 security personnel, since the surgical strike on terrorist launch pads in PoK. PTI New Delhi, November 14 Allaying fears of shortage, the Finance Ministry on Monday said there is enough cash in the system and delivery channels are being augmented across the country to help cash-starved citizens. Giving details of the high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi late last night, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said it was decided to activate all channels for dispensing cash. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) With regard to rural areas, he said the cash holding limit for 1.2 lakh banking correspondents (BCs) has been increased to Rs 50,000 and banks have been given flexibility to increase this limit on case to case basis. It has been also decided to provide cash multiple times to the BCs, so that rural population is served. Besides, supply of cash to 1.3 lakh branch post offices would be enhanced so that public can get banknotes. Together, these 2.5 lakh delivery points, mostly in rural areas, would be able to give bigger quantum of cash to the public, he added. For the urban population, Das said recalibration of ATMs has already started and they will start dispensing the new Rs 2,000 currency notes from today or tomorrow. However, he clarified that the higher cash withdrawal limit of Rs 2,500 is only for recalibrated ATMs. Additionally, a large number of micro-ATMs will be deployed to help people withdraw cash through debit cards. To mitigate their hardship, the RBI has started distributing high security Rs 500 notes from yesterday. PTI New Delhi, November 14 The Congress and seven other opposition parties on Monday met to formulate a joint strategy to corner the government over various issues, including demonetization, that have caused inconvenience to the people ahead of the Winter Session of Parliament beginning November 16. Leaders of TMC, RJD, JD-U, CPI, CPI-M, JMM and YSR Congress met the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad in his room in Parliament House and discussed the strategy on how to unitedly take on the government in view of the hardships faced by the common man after the demonensation of high-valued notes. #WATCH Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U),JMM, CPI, CPI(M) and other opposition parties hold meeting ahead of Parliament winter session pic.twitter.com/RF11sl2jzV ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 The meeting saw archrivals TMC and CPI(M) coming together on a common platform against the government. Among those who were present included Sharad Yadav (JD-U), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), Sudip Bandopadhyay and Derek O'Brien of TMC, CPI's D Raja, Prem Chand Gupta (RJD), Sushil Kumar (JMM) and M Rajamohan Reddy of YSR Congress. Besides Azad, Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and the party's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma were present. Opposition SP, BSP and AAP that have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. A senior Congress leader said some of the opposition leaders could not attend the meet as they were not in town, but maintained that they were part of a united opposition. PTI New Delhi/Mumbai, November 14 With banks struggling to cope with the rush to get alternative currency, the government has extended the use of old defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees and purchases from co-operative stores till November 24. The government also extended suspension of toll on National Highways across the country till midnight of November 18. While withdrawing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from the night of November 8-9, the government had allowed use of the old currency at government hospitals, railway ticketing, public transport, airline ticketing at airports, milk booths, crematoria/burial grounds and petrol pumps for 72 hours. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) This list was later expanded to include payments for metro rail tickets, highway and road toll, purchase of medicines on doctor prescription from the government and private pharmacies, LPG gas cylinders, railway catering, electricity and water bills and ASI monument entry tickets. (Read: Banks closed today; queues get longer outside ATM kiosks) As banks struggled to give alternate currency, the deadline was extended by another 72 hours. That deadline was to end at midnight tonight, but has now been extended till November 24, official sources said. More relaxations Defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes valid for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees till November 24. No toll on National Highways across the country till midnight of November 18. No parking charges at airports till November 21. Banks to waive ATM charges on all transactions November 10 to December 30. Old currency can also be used for purchases at consumer co-operative stores like Kendriya Bhandar with valid ID proof as also for paying court fee. But payments towards utility bills will be restricted to only individuals or households for arrears and/or current bills. No advance payments will be allowed. Charges on ATM transactions waived till Dec 30 In yet another move to lessen woes of people facing cash crunch, the RBI on Monday directed banks to waive ATM charges on all transactions done by savings bank customers till December 30. The waiver will be applicable on transactions done by a customer through his or her own bank ATM as well those of other banks. "It has been decided that banks shall waive levy of ATM charges for all transactions (inclusive of both financial and non-financial transactions) by savings bank customers done at their own banks' ATMs as well as at other banks' ATMs, irrespective of the number of transactions during the month," the central bank said in a late evening notification. The waiver is applicable on transactions done at ATMs from November 10 till December 30, 2016. In August 2014, the number of mandatory free ATM transactions for savings bank account customers at other banks' ATMs was reduced to three transactions per month in the six metro centres (Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad). A customer was permitted at least five free transactions per month for use of own bank ATMs. Banks could charge up to Rs 20 (plus service tax, if any) beyond the permitted transactions. Parking charges at airports suspended till Nov 21 The government also extended the suspension of vehicle parking charges at all airports till the midnight of November 21. According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the move to extend the suspension is expected to facilitate the smooth movement of passengers. Earlier on Monday, the government had extended the suspension of the fee collection at all the toll plazas on National Highways till November 18. Even the Indian Railways has said it will accept the demonetised currency notes as payment for ticketing and catering purposes till November 24. Agencies New Delhi, November 14 In anticipation of the huge demand for lower currency notes, ahead of the demonetisation move, the Reserve Bank of India had asked banks to set up Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. On November 2, six days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a television address to the nation that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes would become illegal from midnight of November 8, the RBI had asked banks to recalibrate 10 per cent of its ATMs to exclusively dispense Rs 100 notes. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) How many banks complied with this directive is not known. However, the long queues at ATMs and the resultant chaos all across the country would imply that the directive may have been ignored. In its circular DCM(CC)No 1170/03.41.01/2016-17 issued on November 2, the apex bank said "in keeping with the objectives of Clean Note Policy and to ensure that genuine requirement of members of public for Rs 100 denomination bank notes are met, the banks should increase dispensation of Rs 100 bank notes through ATMs." Stating that as a pilot project, 10 per cent of the ATMs in the country would be recalibrated, the RBI said "as the process involved in configuring the requisite number of machines is not complex, the banks are required to complete the exercise within 15 days" and report compliance. The RBI had also moved as early as May this year to provide incentive for setting up ATMs which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. In a circular on May 5, the Central bank promised to pay 50 per cent of the cost of such ATMs up to Rs 2 lakh. IANS London, November 14 A 15-year-old Indian-origin boy hanged himself to death allegedly after being bullied in a school in the city of Leicester in the East Midlands region of England. Brandon Singh Rayat died in August but his mother, Mina Rayat, decided to speak out today at the start of National Anti-Bullying Week. "I begged doctors to hospitalise him because it was all too much. I told them he wanted to kill himself," she told 'Leicester Mercury' newspaper. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) "Although Brandon received help, he was never detained. His anxiety got worse so that it became a complete phobia. He wouldn't leave the house in case he bumped into anyone from school," the 44-year-old added. A full inquest into Brandon's death will take place in January. He was found hanged in his bedroom with a scarf on August 9, after several failed suicide attempts, including drinking bleach as well as slashing his wrists. The teenager became suicidal after his schoolmates started calling him a "paedo" and a "faggot" as part of prolonged cyber attacks. He stopped attending Judgemeadow Community College in Leicester last November. Mina, a hair and beauty therapist who lives with her 41-year-old husband Raj, a shop worker, said: "We feel totally let down, by both the school and by the doctors. Those boys who were his friends once have killed him. They have taken his life away and they have ruined our lives. There is a hole left in our hearts and there was no need for it. He deserved better treatment. I wouldn't want any other parent to go through what I've been through." James McKenna, principal of Judgemeadow Community College, said: "The whole school was extremely saddened by Brandon's death, and our thoughts remain with his family. It wouldn't be appropriate to comment in detail in advance of the coroner's inquest, but we can say that Judgemeadow takes the welfare of its pupils very seriously and does not tolerate bullying in any form." A spokesperson for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, which runs mental health services, said: "We were deeply saddened by the tragic death of Brandon Rayat, and extend our sincere sympathies to the family once again. We met with the family immediately after Brandon's death, and their comments are reflected in the robust serious incident investigation which we have carried out." The report will be shared with the family in preparation for the inquest in January. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment further until that inquest has taken place. In the meanwhile, we remain committed to offering appropriate support to the family at this difficult time," the spokesperson said. PTI New Delhi, November 14 Friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and is not a relationship we should be hiding, said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. In a wide-ranging interview to PTI, the Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo-Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Rivlin said his country was proud to stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on murmurs in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Rivlin said, Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe that India is proud of its friendship with Israel. Again, this is not just a friendship of leaders and governments. It is a friendship between people in all walks of life, in all fields of study, in all areas of trade. This is not a friendship we should be hiding. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out, at the very forefront of building a better world for Israelis, for Indians, and for all peoples, he said. In reply to a question on Indias continued support for an independent Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital, Rivlin said, Friends may not always see eye to eye on everything, and as friends we can agree to disagree with respect and understanding. Israel understands and indeed shares Indias desire to see a just and lasting solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians. But no solution that may ever be found has a chance of success lest we work now to build confidence between peoples, the President said, and asserted that Israel and Palestine needed to work towards direct negotiations. Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday on key bilateral and regional issues. On the long-pending FTA, negotiations for which were launched nearly five years ago between India and Israel, Rivlin said it is a tool that could have huge impact and boost the partnership. As the two sides built and cultivated the growing partnership, there was a need to seek ways to help business sectors to work together in an inviting environment, Rivlin said. We need to supply them with the tools that will ease their way and will provide them incentives. An FTA is a tool that can have a huge impact and boost the partnership. Both Israels Ambassador in India, and Indias new Ambassador to Israel are playing an important role in this, which is a matter in progress and I hope we can see it signed in the near future, the President said. He also asserted that his visit was a chance not only to reaffirm Israels commitment to continue building on all that has been achieved in the past 25 years of diplomatic relations, but to look at ways the two countries could work together to stretch even further the boundaries of innovation and imagination. Importantly, this visit will focus on three areas of this cooperation, namely agriculture, water and education. These three areas in particular highlight what our two great nations are engaged insowing the seeds for the future, he added. During his meeting with Modi, Rivlin will reiterate his countrys invitation to the Prime Minister. PTI New Delhi/Kolkata/Lucknow, November 14 With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi on Monday defended the action as one which has brought sound sleep to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as "insult" to people. As a belligerent Prime Minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging BJP leaders had prior information about the impending decision. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Pummeling the Congress and other parties which are criticising demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left yesterday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. Don't mislead people... I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing Emergency," he said addressing a rally in Ghazipur, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad High Court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. #WATCH: Some ppl praise the step on your face but behind your back they fan sentiments says PM Modi #DeMonetisation pic.twitter.com/SgaKBGSwMk ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 14, 2016 He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. Opposition unites ahead of Parliament session The November 8 decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliament's winter session with representatives of eight parties -- Congress, TMC, JD(U), RJD, CPI, CPI(M) and YSR (Congress) -- discussing the matter. (Video below) #WATCH Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U),JMM, CPI, CPI(M) and other opposition parties hold meeting ahead of Parliament winter session pic.twitter.com/RF11sl2jzV ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 The SP, BSP and AAP, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue, gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the "crisis" situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawati's BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. "By and large there was a decision that we will work together. In such cases, it is not like will be led by a, b or c or whether we should meet the President at the start of the session, in the middle or the end," Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said after the meeting. The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. "Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Daring Modi to make public the bank details of the party at the central and state levels, Surjewala alleged that a BJP functionary O P Jha had deposited Rs 1 crore in party account in West Bengal in currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 on November 8, shortly before the Prime Minister announced their demonetisation. Mamata Banerjee, who has been in touch with various parties on the issue, including arch rival CPI(M), slammed Modi for his remarks that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. PM's 'garland of notes' remark irks Maya BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Modi's "garland of notes" remark, unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on the Prime Minister, saying he cannot tolerate that a "dalit ki beti" is presented such a garland. "He (Modi) has accepted garland of notes many times. But if a 'dalit ki beti' is offered such a garland, it does not become palatable for the Prime Minister, it reflects his cheap mentality," she said at a hurriedly convened press conference in Lucknow hours after Modi made the remark at a BJP rally in Ghazipur. "In order to divert people's attention from his failures, Modi levels baseless allegations against his poltical opponents which is condemnable...allegations on policy matters are different but personal ones should not be made...he cannot tolerate that a dalit ki beti is presented garland of notes," she said, adding one cannot digest what Mayawati wears. Mayawati said an undeclared "Bharat Bandh" was prevailing in the country where all economic activity has come to a grinding halt due to demonetisation. "Our party welcomes from the heart any strong action for it (against black money) but the present government in the garb of checking black money and corruption has forced the people to face immense hardships," she said. Mayawati was offered a garland of currency notes at a party rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury also sought to pick holes in the demonetisation drive, claiming that Prime Minister's stated objectives including those of tackling corruption will not be achieved with the steps taken. "You discontinued Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes. But, replaced it with that of Rs 2,000. Nobody is able to use that note," Yechury said as he flashed a Rs 2,000 note he withdrew from an ATM in Parliament premises to tell reporters that he has not been able to spend it over the past five days. "Also terrorists don't use cash, such funding is done through electronic transfers. The government should rather implement the law which was brought after 2008 terror attack in Mumbai," he suggested. Modis kadak chai has become poison for poor: Kejriwal Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, one of the most strident critics of Modi, demanded that the measure be rolled back. "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur Modi said, "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." PTI Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 14 Ahead of the winter session of Parliament, battle lines were firmly drawn between the government and the Opposition on demonetisation today with both sides drafting a strategy to corner the other. Setting the stage for stormy proceedings, NDA allies, including the Shiv Sena, backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move urging him to take the "crusade against corruption forward" even as the Congress-led Opposition met to discuss ways of raising the decision in Parliament, and sought discussions on the subject during a meeting Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan chaired. "There is no question of a rethink on demonetisation. It will be known in Parliament as to who stands with the hoarders and black marketers and who stands with people working to cleanse corruption," Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said after the PM chaired a meeting of NDA partners. The PM told the meeting that the move had generated "phenomenal enthusiasm" among people who now have hope that things can change. Akali Dal's Naresh Gujral told The Tribune: "The PM spoke of witnessing tremendous enthusiasm among people wherever he went. He said the response to demonetisation was phenomenal even though people are encountering initial difficulties. The PM asked us to communicate better on the decision. He called it transformational and said it had inspired hope among people that things can change." The Opposition camp, meanwhile, struggled for a united response to demonetisation in its preliminary meeting today. Held in the chamber of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, the meeting brought rivals TMC and Left together along with JDU's Sharad Yadav, RJD's Prem Chand Gupta and representatives of the JMM and YSR Congress. Leaders of NCP, SP, BSP and DMK were absent today with Azad saying another meeting will be held tomorrow ahead of the government's all party assembly at 4 pm. Before that the Congress will hold its internal parliament strategy meet at party chief Sonia Gandhi's house tomorrow morning. As the government declared it will use the forum of Parliament to explain the nuances of demonetisation to people, the Opposition was still debating how best to question the move and its implementation. There were also divisions in Opposition camp on strategies. TMC's move to take a delegation to President Pranab Mukherjee against the decision for example did not generate much enthusiasm in the Opposition meet today. CPM's Sitaram Yechury said the issue must be raised in Parliament first while Azad raised questions on the timing of the visit saying: "The question is not who leads the delegation. The question is when to go." On ways of mitigating people's hardship too, Opposition leaders were not ready with a unified response. While the TMC wants blanket withdrawal of the decision, CPM says it will ask for Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes to be permitted as legal tender for white transactions till December 31. Asked if any common ground was reached today, Azad said: "There was consensus that everyone is against black money but everyone is also against the way the government implemented demonetisation move. It leaked information to the ruling party and the rest came to know of it two hours ahead of the announcement." Congress, TMC and Left leaders have given notices for adjournment of question hour in both Houses to discuss the matter. Islamabad, November 14 Pakistan on Monday said seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC, prompting it to summon the Indian envoy here to warn that India's "belligerent" attitude may lead to a "strategic miscalculation". (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the Army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale this afternoon and condemned the "unprovoked ceasefire" violation by the Indian forces on the Line of Control (LoC). The Foreign Secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the Working Boundary, especially in the last two months, a statement said. He emphasised that this "belligerent attitude" of Indian forces was a "serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation", the statement added. The Foreign Secretary asked the Indian High Commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted him as saying. He underlined that the Armed Forces of Pakistan do not initiate fire, but will always respond in a befitting manner, if fired upon, the statement said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned Indian High Commissioner. Pakistan on November 10 summoned Bambawale to the Foreign Office to protest over alleged ceasefire violations and use of artillery by the Indian forces. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the world's attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. Army chief General Raheel Sharif ordered troops to "effectively" respond to firing by India. PTI Rachna Khaira Tribune News Service Jalandhar, November 13 Following the Centres demonetisation move, foreign currency is in high demand in Doaba region. Precious metals, mainly gold, too went out of stock and a majority of the jewellers kept their outlets shut for the fifth consecutive day. A US dollar priced at Rs67.25 on Sunday was sold between Rs92 and Rs100 on the black market against old currency notes. A Euro priced at Rs74 was sold up to Rs95, while a Canadian Dollar costing Rs51 was sold for Rs75. The British pound priced at Rs90 was sold at Rs120 in exchange for old currency notes. What would the forex dealers do with old currency notes? According to chartered accountant Nitin Gupta, A major share of the old currency notes has already been put in the process, while a part of it has gone to Middle East companies, British Virgini Islands and Maldives knows as tax havens through hawala transactions. The black money sent to these countries will be brought to India as legal money by industrialists who have business interests in these countries. A Jalandhar-based foreign exchange dealer said demonetisation had fuelled hawala transactions. Hawala commission has gone up to 30 to 40 per cent depending on the amount of money to be transferred. Since, it will take time to get the money back, the hawala operators are asking for a time of up to two to four months to return money, said the money exchanger. Chandigarh, November 14 Thousands of devotees thronged gurdwaras across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh on Monday to offer prayers on the occasion of Gurpurab--the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. The holiest of Sikh shrines Harmandar Sahib, popularly known as the Golden Temple, in Amritsar and other gurdwaras elsewhere saw religious fervour to the fore on Gurpurab. Thousands of people, from various faiths, reached the Golden Temple complex on Monday morning to offer prayers marking the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism. The shrine complex was decorated with lighting. Hymns were rendered at the holy shrine and hundreds of other gurdwaras across the region to mark the occasion. Tight security arrangements were made around all leading Sikh shrines in Punjab. At other gurdwaras in cities, towns and villages, hundreds of people were seen coming to offer prayers. Langars (community kitchen), were arranged at most gurdwaras. Over 2,000 devotees, mostly Sikhs, went to neighbouring Pakistan to celebrate Gurpurab at Nankana Sahib, 100 km from Lahore, at the birthplace of Guru Nanak, who was born there in 1469. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Though around 3,000 visas were issued by the Pakistan embassy to devotees to visit the shrine, about 1,000 people opted out following recent tension between the countries and currency crunch due to demonetisation. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal greeted people on Gurpurab and urged them to follow the Guru;s teachings and maintain peace and harmony. IANS GS Paul Tribune News Service Amritsar, November 14 Pakistani famous non-vegetarian dishes, articles and fashion line may not be part of the annual edition of the Punjab International Trade Expo (PITEX) scheduled at Amritsar from December 8 to 12. The chances of Pakistani traders, industrialists and chefs participation in PITEX appear to be bleak due to the ongoing border tension. The situation aggravated further today with Pakistan claiming that seven of its soldiers were killed in the cross-border firing. The Pakistani pavilion is amiss at the India International Trade Fair (IITF), which commenced at New Delhi today. PITEX the five-day much-awaited trade and cultural bonanza is organised in collaboration with the Punjab government as the host state. It is part of PHD Chambers endeavour to give boost to business activities in the region. Pakistan has been a regular participant along with exhibitors from countries like Afghanistan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Iran, UAE, South Africa, Australia, Afghanistan and Nepal. Earlier, the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry that had been organising PITEX in Amritsar for the past one decade, had scrapped the idea of holding the Pakistan Show in Chandigarh two months ago due to continuous ceasefire violations along the Line of Control. PHD Chamber officials said PITEX would be held as per schedule this year too with representatives from various countries. The representation of Pakistan would solely be dependent on the prerogative of the Indian government. Dr Parveen Rathee, Regional Director of the PHD Chamber, said a communique was received recently from the Rawalpindi Chambers that the Indian government had sought some additional information about the Pakistani aspirants who intend to be part of PITEX. We received Pakistani applications which were forwarded to the designated ministries and departments. Though we have already received the political clearance for Pakistan, we cannot say anything about its actual participation. The process of visa and other requisite formalities are still underway. It is sevidently an issue of national security. Its the ministry which will take the final call in this regard, he said. Rathee confirmed that the Chandigarhs show was avoided due to disturbance at the J&K borderline. Count them down but not out. With the defeat of State Question 779, which proposed to raise the state sales tax by 1 cent for education, some supporters say their voices will be even louder at the Capitol next year. State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister was among them. I will be back before state lawmakers this next legislative session, fighting for kids and a regionally competitive wage for teachers one that reflects their work as highly trained professionals who change the lives of nearly 700,000 students every day, Hofmeister said. The outlook, however, is somewhat bleak in the short term because of state budget pressures. After two revenue failures last fiscal year, appropriations for common education were trimmed 2 percent. General revenue fund collections are down 9.5 percent ($130 million) in the first three months of the fiscal year compared to last, according to the state treasurer. A revenue failure is a very real possibility again this year. Other agencies that deliver core services, from corrections to human services, will also be seeking more funding. But teachers here remain among the lowest paid in the country, and, at least anecdotally, many have been leaving the state. Some were holding out hope for SQ 779 to signal a tide changing. Jessica Pierce is one of them. The high school biology teacher in Walters vowed to leave Oklahoma for higher pay elsewhere if the measure failed. On Tuesday night, Pierce said the votes outcome may drive her to look for a new job out of state next year, even though she doesnt want to. I love my state, and I dont want to abandon my students. But I also have to think about my own children, she said. Pierce blamed the loss on a poorly written proposition. If it had been like a half-a-cent tax, and only going to teacher salaries, I think we would have had a better chance, she said. But with it being a full percentage and with it split with other departments, I think that hurt us. People have been burned out, she continued. We passed the lottery, we passed the casinos, and schools are still hurting. No words of regret Public statements by leaders who backed the sales tax have not been marked by hindsight and regrets. On Tuesday night, University of Oklahoma President David Boren, who led the campaign supporting the tax, said in a written statement, While the results did not come back in our favor, weve succeeded in starting a conversation across Oklahoma about education and the need for adequate funding. We wont stop fighting to improve funding for our schools, Boren added. We wont stop fighting for our children. Our work is not done. The failure of the proposal came as a shock to many. Proponents were well-organized and well-funded. A political action committee to support the measure, Oklahomas Children, Our Future, had raised $4.2 million by Sept. 30. While many city leaders opposed the tax, early polling showed support hovering around 60 percent. Schools had cut their budgets and dozens went to four-day weeks. The pro-779 group pumped out TV, print and digital ads up until Election Day. In the end, the gamble failed. And in the process, college and universities, which stood to get 19.25 percent of the tax revenue, suffered a 16 percent cut in state appropriations this year. Some observers said it was a direct hit from the Legislature because of the penny-tax effort. Agreement on pay hike If there is one thing to build on for proponents, it is that both sides seemed to agree teachers deserve a raise. Oklahomans want money to get to the classrooms, said Estela Hernandez, vice president of engagement for Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which opposed the tax and whose affiliated organization, OCPA Impact, sued to keep the proposal off the ballot. Oklahomans just werent willing to have their taxes raised to the highest in the nation to achieve that teacher pay raise. There are wiser and more effective ways, she said. OCPA has proposed trimming what it views as wasteful spending, such as wind energy credits and certain school administrative costs as a way to find more revenue for teacher pay. Teachers havent had an across-the-board salary increase in eight years. At $44,921, Oklahoma ranks 49th in the country in average teacher salary among states and the District of Columbia, according to National Education Association data. The figure represents total compensation, including paid health and retirement benefits. State Sen. David Holt, R-Oklahoma City, said 779s failure should be interpreted as voters demand for a better proposal, not a rejection of a teacher pay raise. I will absolutely introduce new ideas in the 2017 session to support a $10,000 pay raise, he posted on Facebook. I understand anyone who has skepticism about the Legislatures ability to deliver, but I can only speak for myself, and addressing teacher pay will continue to be my number one priority Holt in January presented a $400 million plan to fund teacher raises by overhauling tax breaks, consolidating school districts and diverting a portion of future budget growth to education, but the bill did not pass. We will be relentless Educator groups such as the Oklahoma State School Boards Association and Professional Oklahoma Educators made similar promises about aggressively pursuing a pay hike. We will be relentless in securing a pay increase for teachers this session, said Ginger Tinney, Professional Oklahoma Educators executive director. And I do think our legislators will give that to teachers. I dont know if it will be packaged the same as the state question. I dont see higher ed getting a chunk. We will put every ounce of strength into achieving that goal. Hofmeister, who didnt publicly endorse the sales tax until late October, is asking for an additional $282 million for the Education Departments budget to give teachers a $3,000 salary boost and add four days of instruction to school calendars. Although she is now under a cloud of criminal charges for alleged campaign violations, she has pledged to fight the charges and press ahead with her plans aimed at improving education. Gov. Mary Fallin considered calling a special session of the Legislature this summer to address teacher pay as an alternative to the state question, but the plan received a lukewarm reception and was scrapped. In a statement Tuesday, Fallin said she will revive the issue in the upcoming session. The voters have spoken, and Ill be meeting with our new legislative leaders to discuss a course of action on the issue of teacher pay raises, Fallin said. NOWATA Instead of beginning his jury trial Monday, Cesar Rios surprised prosecutors and entered a blind plea to all counts against him in connection with a gunfire-filled pursuit that injured an Oologah police officer 18 months ago. Rios, 24, faces up to life in prison on four of his six counts, according to District Attorney Kevin Buchanan. His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 20. Roxanne Mendoza, 21, already had accepted a plea agreement in the case and is slated to enter it in court on Friday, Buchanan said. Rios, Mendoza and Alejandro Arturo Garcia all were charged with three counts of shooting with intent to kill, discharging a weapon while using a vehicle, possessing a firearm while committing a felony and causing great bodily injury while attempting to elude police. Garcia, 23, was arraigned in October. As the alleged driver, he faces additional charges of causing great bodily injury while attempting to elude police, leaving the scene of an accident involving injury, and two counts of running a roadblock. The 50-mile highway pursuit began when Talala Police Officer Steve Pales pulled over a Chevrolet Tahoe on May 28, 2015, on U.S. 169 for speeding, authorities said. Oologah Officer Charles Neill arrived for backup, and Garcia sped off when officers reportedly told him to turn off the vehicle because he didnt have an Oklahoma drivers license. Gunshots shattered Pales windshield, and later shrapnel from gunfire to Neills windshield struck Neill in the side of the head, causing him to roll his cruiser on the side of the highway. Neill was released from a Tulsa hospital the following week, according to police. Rios and Mendoza were apprehended just north of the Oklahoma-Kansas line. Stop sticks punctured the Tahoes tires in South Coffeyville. Garcia stole a pickup truck and took its driver hostage, authorities allege, with the chase eventually ending near Liberty, Kansas, in a shootout between Garcia and a Montgomery County sheriffs deputy. Garcia was captured by a tactical team the next morning as he hid in a house he broke into after the gunfight. Garcia was sentenced in July in Kansas to life in prison without the possibility of parole for more than 31 years after a jury convicted him of attempted capital murder of a sheriffs deputy and associated crimes. Oklahomans passed sweeping alcohol law changes on Nov. 8. They now have nearly two years to wait for those changes to actually be the law of the land. In the meantime, legislators plan on fine-tuning what voters did on Election Day, regulators are seeking more funding to handle the coming changes and businesses will adapt to a new competitive landscape. The new alcohol laws dont take effect until Oct. 1, 2018. With the passage of State Question 792, an accompanying measure, Senate Bill 383, goes into effect. The nearly two-year lag is intentional. The plan, legislators who wrote the bill said, was to allow time to work out unforeseen issues and allow dry Oklahoma counties the chance to react to the bill themselves. State Sen. Stephanie Bice, R-Oklahoma City, said one reason for the time between passage and the changes taking effect is to let the 18 remaining dry counties in Oklahoma decide whether they want to remain dry. We needed to give those counties enough time to have a vote, Bice said. State Rep. Glen Mulready, R-Tulsa, and Bice said besides issues not yet apparent, some topics such as Sunday sales, accompanied minors in stores and extended hours could be considered by the Legislature. Mulready said he had language drafted for Sunday sales this year but took it out to make the bill more palatable to voters and because liquor store owners seem divided on the prospect. Casey Karney, who helps run Aspen Liquor, 2201 W. Washington St. in Broken Arrow, wasnt too keen on the potential for Sunday sales when he spoke with the World last week. He was among the few people in his business who were in favor of State Question 792. At the end of the day, its not if. Its when, Karney said of the law change. Under the new law, the virtual monopoly that liquor stores had on selling wine and strong beer goes away, while their ability to be the only retailers that sell spirits will be maintained. The new law creates three types of license for retailers wine, beer and spirits. Grocery and convenience stores will be allowed to have wine and beer licenses, allowing them to sell something other than the 3.2 beer they sell now. Retailers, particularly Wal-Mart, plowed support and money into the campaign. Tulsa-based convenience store chain QuikTrip gets to add craft beer and wine to its shelves in 2018, but says it is not going to be a huge boost for business. Spokesman Mike Thornbrugh said 3.2 beer is already 85 percent of the market share in Oklahoma. With 3.2 replaced with the full-strength version of the national brands, he said, the place where QT can add market share is with craft beer and selling great brands such as Marshall. Reasors, the local grocery store chain, doesnt see it as a big boost, either. Im not sure if it will be a big jump. There will be a potential for additional sales for us, said COO Brent Edstrom, Its a convenience issue. Its easier to pick up the cabernet with steak or chardonnay for the salmon. Liquor stores expect to lose business, and their industry group, the Retail Liquor Association of Oklahoma, plans to sue on 14th Amendment grounds, which concerns equal protection under the law. Mulready said the liquor stores are right about being treated differently: They get a retail spirits license. Karney said Aspen Liquor has planned for losing about a half-million dollars in sales and expects about 50 percent of the stores statewide to close. But, he said, Aspen is treating it as an opportunity. Owners have remodeled the Broken Arrow store to make it more inviting, in part, because of the competition. He said they started planning to install coolers earlier this year SQ 792 and its legislative companion allow for coolers. For QuikTrip, Thornbrugh said the company could be ready for the law changes shortly and understands the lag time is for legislative fixes. Edstrom said his chain will work on plans for the next year to 16 months, and inventory will depend on the demographics around the stores. While the changes may reshuffle the spending mix among retailers, it adds a good deal to the Alcoholic Beverage Law Enforcement Commissions responsibilities. Director Keith Burt said he plans to ask the Legislature for more funding to add agents because of the added responsibility. Under the old laws, 3.2 beer was regulated by the Oklahoma Tax Commission and treated as a food item. The distinction between 3.2 will be lifted, and regulating the three types of licenses will fall solely to ABLE. Burt said the law changes will add thousands of new licensees, and thats why ABLE needs the funding. Preachers across the nation talked to their congregations this week about Tuesdays shocking upset victory of President-elect Donald Trump. I dropped into a couple of Tulsa church services Sunday morning, and this is what I heard: Bishop Ed Gungor, speaking at Sanctuary Church, Jenks, said, We live in this world, doing our best to represent what should be represented, but at the end of the day, we live by faith, irrespective of the contingencies that go on around us. God is saying, Im bigger than whats going on in your world. Were going to smile at the future, and believe that no matter what happens, up or down, right or left, God is good. And his people are wholesome, and love him, and will be the salt and light of the world. We dont whine, we dont speak evil. When evil is prevailing, we stand with God and we trust God. The Rev. Hess Hester, Southern Hills Baptist Church, said people of faith should let nothing come between them and their relationship with God, or with their Christian brothers and sisters, Not money, not my possessions, and not my political views. Be careful about pointing fingers. We cannot allow political differences to divide us. Policies and platforms are only there to inform our voting preferences. We must let the Word of God alone, first and foremost, be the foundation of our lives. He (God) is leading the way in a great opportunity, to lead to the healing of our community, the healing of our state, the healing of our nation. If we will live our lives full of truth and love with the joy of the Lord as our strength. We will lead the way to healing if we remember that we are people who love and serve Jesus first. We are citizens first of the Kingdom of Heaven. We must constantly choose that which unites us, and not that which divides us. Jesus promises that all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Loving our neighbor does not mean that we compromise the truth. The Rev. David Wiggs, Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, said he briefly addressed the election after preaching about trusting in God, and trusting that God is leading us into the future. At the end of the sermon I added a line about whether or not your candidate won, our trust is in the Lord, and I left it at that. Ive got people all across the political spectrum, so I typically do not address hot button issues from the pulpit, Wiggs said. The Rev. Paul Daugherty, pastor of Victory Christian Center, a racially diverse congregation and one of Tulsas largest, devoted an entire message to the subject on the day after the election, which he called, A Christians Post-Election Guide. Daugherty said the congregation prayed for the future and present presidents. He gave his people five points on how to deal with the election: 1. Stay in peace. Dont respond with anger, pride or violence. Be a strife stopper. 2. Stay in prayer, whoever is in office; 3. Stay in love. Love neighbors, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, people who do not vote; 4. Stay focused on Jesus. Dont get sidetracked by politics and arguments; 5. Stay in honor. Respect all people, all racial groups, left or right. Dont dishonor people in conversations or on social media. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the denomination, a sharp opponent of Trump, wrote that the campaign has been demoralizing and even traumatizing for most of the country. Many of us have deep differences with our new president, but we must pray that he will succeed in leading our country with wisdom and justice. The sort of conservatism that many of us had hoped fora multiethnic, constitutionally-anchored, forward-looking conservatismhas been replaced in the Republican Party by something else. On the one hand, theres a European-style ethno-nationalist populism, opposed by an increasingly leftward progressive movement within the Democratic Party. In both of these movements, moral concernscertainly personal character and family stability questionsare marginalized. We now have a politics of sexual revolution across the board. This means that conservative evangelicals are politically homelesswhether they know it or not. The most important lesson we should learn is that the church must stand against the way politics has become a religion, and religion has become politics. We are not, first, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or progressives. We are not even, first of all, the United States of America. We are the church of the resurrected and triumphant Lord Jesus Christ. OKLAHOMA CITY A state lawmaker says he will introduce a measure next session to provide for a $10,000 teacher pay raise. Voters on Tuesday defeated State Question 779, which would have increased the sales tax by 1 percent to pay for a $5,000 teacher pay raise and fund common education, higher education and CareerTech. I think it is really important that the Legislature not take out of Tuesdays defeat of 779 that the people of Oklahoma dont want a teacher pay raise, said Sen. David Holt, R-Oklahoma City. I think the statement was they want the Legislature to do its job and come up with a better plan. We will not have the future we want for this state if we let go of the teacher pay issue. It simply cant be something that we walk away from. State Question 779 was brought to a vote through the ballot initiative process and championed by University of Oklahoma President David Boren. It failed by a vote of 59.4 percent against to 40.6 percent in support. The voters have spoken, and Ill be meeting with our new legislative leaders to discuss a course of action on the issue of teacher pay raises, Gov. Mary Fallin said. Holt introduced a similar teacher pay proposal last year that did not secure approval. Holt said his measure will include funding mechanisms. Several ways of increasing revenue were floated last year, he said. They included expanding the sales tax to items that are taxed in other states but not in Oklahoma, he said. He said expanding the sales tax is totally different than increasing it. Last session, Fallin proposed a $3,000 teacher pay raise, but it failed to secure legislative approval. Holt doesnt think a $10,000 increase is too much. We are so far behind the regional and national average, Holt said. He said his plan likely would use a phase-in approach until the full amount is reached. I think that the governors office will work closely with the House and Senate to develop a plan, said Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger, Fallins chief budget negotiator. There are a lot of discussions occurring within the building and outside of the building to try to come up with some better options than we saw in 779 for a pay raise. Many cities and towns opposed the sales-tax increase because it would hamper their ability to fund future projects. In addition, critics said it hurt lower-income residents more than the middle and upper classes. I think that there is going to have to be recognition that there has to be new recurring revenue put on the table, Doerflinger said. Expanding the sales tax to services is one option, he said. Doerflinger said the failure of State Question 779 doesnt mean voters dont think teachers need a raise. I think one of the signs being sent in that measures failing is that the voters want to see the Legislature and us collectively do our jobs, Doerflinger said. I think that you will see a desire both in the Legislature and from the governors office to come up with a better proposal for teacher pay than what we saw in 779. Shawn Hime, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, said he was pleased lawmakers were discussing the issue. He said it would cost about $600 million to fund the Holt plan. Lawmakers last year had $1.3 billion less to spend in crafting the fiscal year 2017 budget due to depressed energy prices, tax cuts and an inability to get rid of tax credits and incentives passed in an effort to create economic activity. A smaller shortfall is expected for next year. ABC TV Melbourne offices in Elsternwick are now on the market ahead of staff relocating to the redeveloped Southbank site on Sturt Street. The 6,155 square metre site on Selwyn Street is a 3 minute walk from ABCs Ripponlea Studios in Gordon Street, which will also be decommissioned next year. The Selwyn Street building is mixed use and largely comprises office space, storage and car park. It is home to the Melbourne publicity team and production teams for shows such as Mad as Hell, The Weekly, Hard Quiz, or previously rented by Foxtel for Open Slather. Small areas have been fashioned into makeshift shooting spaces for Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries and Newtons Law, although strictly speaking it isnt built as studio space. Savills Australia is seeking expressions of interest until December 6th. ABC Director of Television Richard Finlayson recently told TV Tonight, the Elsternwick properties will ultimately be sold with the money going to Australian content. Ernie Dingo will feature in a new 3 part series for NITV, exploring the Northern Territorys Uluru, Kakadu National Park and the Great Barrier Reef. In Going Places with Ernie Dingo he introduces us to the traditional owners and other people who live, breathe and work amongst these incredible places. NITV Senior Producer Rima Tamou said, Through the stories of the people Ernie meets, audiences will discover there is even more to these beautiful places than what first meets the eye. Through his warmth and genuine curiosity in people and places, and instant rapport with locals, Ernie discovers little known-facts and hidden secrets from the people who know these amazing places best. NITV Channel Manager Tanya Denning-Orman added: I am so proud of this exciting new series, which showcases some of Australias most stunning locations, while paying tribute to the traditional land owners and others who make these destinations such amazing places to visit. Episode One: Great Barrier Reef Sunday, 4 December at 8pm on NITV Ernie travels to the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of north-eastern Queensland and meets people who have made this beautiful part of the world their home. He catches up with Yindinji elder Gudju Gudju who shows him the mangrove swamps, explaining their importance to the reef as a nursery for the multitude of fish species that inhabit the reef. At James Cook University, Ernie meets Jamie, a toxinologist who is extremely passionate about his work with the deadly creatures that inhabit the ocean. Jamie shares with Ernie his goal to educate the world with his knowledge, with the hope of protecting our oceans and natural environments. Ernie also takes a scuba dive with diving instructor Erin, and finds out what her job and living on the Reef means to her; and he meets couple Gareth, a skipper, and his partner Teresa, also a toxinologist, who are raising a family on knowing and loving the Reef. Sunday night 4 December at 8.00pm on NITV Screening as part of SBS Celebrates Diwali season, Worlds Busiest Railway is a 4 part travel documentary that goes behind the scenes of the supersized Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to reveal how the stations staff and technological systems are stretched to breaking point on a daily basis. Its a revealing journey into the everyday workings of an extraordinary station thats a microcosm of India: congested, vibrant, hot, colourful and dangerous organised chaos supported by a backbone of bureaucracy. With access to control rooms and signal boxes, drivers cabs and engineering workshops, as well as the policemen, porters and dabba wallas who direct, help and feed travellers, this series tells the story of the megacity of Mumbai, its station and its transport challenges. Episode One: As Bombays population swells by tens of thousands each week, the railway and the people whose lives revolve around it struggle to cope with the pressure and the peaktime super- dense crush load. From the train driver to the illegal hawker and the homeless shoe-shine boy, each has a story to tell about this remarkable railway system, often described as the lifeline of India. Wednesday, 16 November at 7.30pm on SBS Playmaker Media is behind a new TV miniseries profiling iconic 60s rock band The Easybeats. Friday on My Mind is one of seven local television dramas funded under the new $20m Made in NSW Fund, announced by the NSW Government earlier this year. The productions will bring $68,319,296 in investment to NSW and create an estimated 3,158 skilled jobs. Screen NSW has invested $3.5 million to attract all 20 productions to NSW. The Made in NSW productions include Monkey, a family action adventure television series based on the Chinese legend Journey to The West produced by the Academy-Award winning See-Saw Films (The Kings Speech); Fighting Season, about Australian soldiers returning from Afghanistan, from the producers of The Sapphires and Cleverman. Director Nash Edgertons debut as a TV series director, Mr In Between, produced by Michelle Bennett, is about a about a charismatic, yet volatile hitman from production company Jungle. Pulse is the new series from producers Kristine Wyld and Antony Ginnane, set in in the life and death world of the cardio-thoracic ward of a major teaching hospital. Both series have also received Made in NSW funding. With the Made in NSW fund we set out to attract high-end, distinctive local TV production to NSW, as well as to support the attraction of significant footloose production. Just six months in, the Fund is having a big impact. It has revitalized local television drama production and has brought big international productions here such as Jackie Chans Bleeding Steel and Animal Logics Peter Rabbit movie, said Screen NSW CEO, Courtney Gibson. In addition to the Made in NSW projects, a further 13 productions have received production investment from Screen NSW including the TV series The Letdown, which sees two female writers Sarah Scheller and Alison Bell working with No Activity and New Girl director Trent ODonnell in the first narrative comedy series produced by Giant Dwarf, the team behind The Chaser and The Checkout. Also funded is animation series The Wild Adventures of Blinky Bill. Production will be spread across the state with the youth-focused multiplatform series Deadlock to be made in the Northern Rivers, Fighting Season to film in Broken Hill and documentary Teach a Man to Fish to film in Manning Valley. Pulse, Fighting Season, on-line comedy series Mustafa Needs a Wife and a fourth series of Janet King are to be filmed in Western Sydney, and the feature film, The Merger, is to be shot in director Mark Grentells home town of Wagga Wagga, Sir David Attenborough has been presented with an award by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, for his outstanding contribution to broadcasting. The Duke took to the stage at the Old Vic Theatre in London to present him with the London Evening Standard Beyond Theatre Award, which recognises excellence away from the traditional platform of live performance. The recipient of this award is a man who has shaped the culture of this country and the way we look at the world, he said. Back in the 1950s he revolutionised the making of natural history programmes for television, beginning a long and happy association with the BBCs natural history unit. But he is best known as a presenter of nature documentaries and as a conservationist, whose memorable romps with gorillas go hand in hand with a deep concern for the natural world. In his acceptance speech Sir David said, In recent years it has become the fashion to do the last minutes of a wildlife show by showing how the programmes are made and not before time. Because at last you can see the credit for those kind of programmes, among not the people who put their faces in front of the camera, or indeed behind it, but the people who actually wield the cameras. Attenboroughs latest series Planet Earth II is currently airing in the UK and will screen in Australia on Nine next year. Source: SKY News, Independent Whether it's your first time here or you're back for a visit, get to where you're going on our campus with maps and info. The Ukrainian army over the last day sustained no losses in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Colonel Andriy Lysenko stated. There were no losses among Ukrainian servicepersons over the past day. One Ukrainian soldier was wounded in an industrial area in Avdiivka, Lysenko said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. iy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin has stated the Ukraine is ready to cooperate with US President-elect Donald Trump and his Republican administration. In an interview with TSN, Pavlo Klimkin said: We will focus on effective relationships with Trumps team, but that does not mean that all ties with the Democrats or any other efforts will be discontinued. It is the efficient bipartisan support that we need. The foreign minister also stressed that the ministry is getting ready for a possible meeting of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with Donald Trump. We will discuss with Trumps team weather the meeting can take place before his inauguration or after it, Klimkin added. As reported, President Petro Poroshenko congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in the U.S. presidential elections and invited him to visit Ukraine. iy PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo said it had reached an agreement with Serbia that will allow it to have its own international telephone dialing code, eight years after declaring independence, in a move that will save millions of euros in payments to foreign countries. The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) is expected to give Kosovo the country code +383 starting Dec. 15, the government said in a statement on Sunday. Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, has been using the codes of Monaco, Serbia and Slovenia. The country of 1.8 million people is recognized by 112 nations but is not a United Nations member due to objections from Serbia, some European Union states and UN Security Council members Russia and China. Under EU auspices, Kosovo and Serbia have been negotiating the issue for years. "Our country will have its own dialing code as other states and it will have full sovereignty for its code," Edita Tahiri, a Kosovo minister and its chief negotiator said. In return, Serbia will be able to register a mobile phone company that will operate temporarily within Serb-populated areas of Kosovo. Kosovo says it has paid about 200 million euros to use other country codes since its war with Serbia ended in 1999. While Serbia does not formally recognise the independence of its former province, it has agreed to hold talks to normalise relations and smooth the passage of Belgrade's path towards EU membership. (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Janet Lawrence) The European Union is ready to cooperate with Russia in some spheres, but its position regarding Ukraine remains principled, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini has stated. You know, the European Union has a very principled position on the illegal annexation of Crimea and the situation in Ukraine. This is not going to change, regardless of possible shifts in others policies, she said at the end of the informal dinner of the EU Foreign Ministers on November 13, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. At the same time, she noted that the EU cooperates with Russia on the issues regarding Iran, the situation in Middle East, peace process in Libya, and the International Support Group for Syria. So, I would invite you to avoid any black and white representations of our relationship with Russia. On one side, there is dialogue and engagement what we call constructive but also selective engagement on some issues; on the other side there is a strong principled position especially on Ukraine and on the other conflicts that we have to our East; and our attention to our Eastern partners is going to stay and stay strong, Mogherini said. iy Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has arrived on an official visit to the Kingdom of Sweden, the presidents press service reports. The program of the visit foresees meetings of President Poroshenko with the Swedish prime minister, the speaker of the Riksdag (parliament) of the Kingdom of Sweden, as well as the leader of the Moderate Party, which leads the opposition Alliance in the Swedish parliament, according to the report. iy President Petro Poroshenko emphasizes that relations between Ukraine and Sweden are at the highest level. He noted intensive and efficient nature of contacts and interaction between the leadership of Ukraine and Sweden and MPs of the two countries. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. The President expressed gratitude to the government of Sweden for significant assistance in the implementation of reforms in Ukraine. Sweden is our reliable partner and friend, Petro Poroshenko said at the joint press conference with Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven. The Head of State emphasized that Sweden demonstrated such position not only at bilateral level, but also supported Ukraine in many international organizations, particularly in the EU Council and the European Parliament. In his turn, the Prime Minister of Sweden emphasized that his country recognized and welcomed the reforms already implemented. ish The European Union supports a decision on early completion of the process for abolition of visa requirements for citizens of Ukraine and Georgia. This has been stated in the conclusions of the European Council on Foreign Relations, an Ukrinform correspondent reports from Brussels. "The EU Council underlines the importance of timely completion of the process of making a decision on visa liberalization for two countries - Georgia and Ukraine," the heads of Foreign Ministries of EU member countries said. In addition, the ministers supported the possibility of opening a visa dialogue with Armenia. ish President Petro Poroshenko emphasizes that Ukraine has completely fulfilled all the criteria to obtain the visa-free regime with the EU. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. We have implemented 144 reforms approved by the Special Assessment Mission of the EU. That is why we must accelerate the provision of the visa-free regime for Ukrainians, Petro Poroshenko said at the press conference in Stockholm in the course of the official visit to Sweden. The Head of State expressed gratitude to Swedish partners for a strong support of this position. The President noted that negotiations with EU leadership had provided all grounds to be optimistic about the introduction of the visa-free regime. ish President Petro Poroshenko expressed gratitude to Sweden, which is co-sponsor of the special resolution on the human rights violation in Crimea. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. We hope that the reaction of the world community to the brutal violation of human rights in Crimea and the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia will be once again demonstrated tomorrow, Poroshenko said at the joint press conference with Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven. The Head of State is content that starting from January 1, 2017, Ukraine and Sweden will work side-by-side in the UN Security Council. ish The approach taken by Australia in transferring refugees and asylum-seekers to open-ended detention in Papua New Guinea and Nauru has caused immense harm to vulnerable people who have sought asylum since 2013. In this context, UNHCR welcomes the announcement today that refugees currently held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea will be relocated under a bilateral arrangement between Australia and the United States. The arrangement reflects a much-needed, long-term solution for some refugees who have been held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea for over three years and who remain in a precarious situation. It is on this basis that UNHCR will endorse referrals made from Australia to the United States, on a one-off, good offices, humanitarian basis, in light of the acute humanitarian situation. The full details of the agreement are not yet known, and UNHCR is not a party to it. UNHCR remains gravely concerned about the fate of all vulnerable individuals in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Appropriate solutions must be found for all of them. UNHCRs endorsement of these referrals under the humanitarian imperative does not alter Australias obligations under international law, including the right to seek asylum irrespective of the mode of arrival. Australia must be part of the solution for refugees and asylum seekers who have sought its protection, and particularly those who have family ties to Australia or special needs. The current policy has failed refugees and asylum seekers who need and deserve safety and care. GENEVA, 14 November 2016 (UNHCR) - UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is delighted to announce that the State of Kuwait has made a significant new contribution to support efforts to protect and assist refugees affected by the Syria crisis. The recent contribution of USD 7,960,000 to UNHCR will be used to support Syrian refugees in Lebanon, providing urgently needed winter assistance to some 25,000 families through the provision of monthly cash transfers via ATM cards. Winter is a particularly difficult time for vulnerable refugees in Lebanon, who must incur additional expenditure to allow them to stay warm, dry, and adequately clothed and fed. For the fourth consecutive year, Kuwait has once again demonstrated its unwavering commitment to addressing the humanitarian consequences of the Syria situation, said Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. With the winter season fast approaching, this timely contribution will significantly support thousands of Syrian refugee families as they brace for the cold months ahead. Since 2013, Kuwait has contributed close to USD 350 million to UNHCR to support the Agency in addressing the critical needs of displaced people across the globe and in particular those affected by the Syria and Iraq crises. Kuwait remains UNHCRs largest donor from the Middle East and North African region. I am personally grateful to His Highness the Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, and the generous people of Kuwait for this important humanitarian gesture, Mr. Grandi added. In addition to hosting three consecutive international donor conferences, Kuwait co-hosted the Supporting Syria and the Region conference, which was held earlier this year in London and during which Kuwait also pledged 300 million USD for the Syria humanitarian response over the next three years. There are some 4.8 million Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR in Syrias neighbouring countries, with Lebanon hosting some 1,017,430. Syrians continue to be the largest refugee population under UNHCRs mandate. For further information: PORT AU PRINCE (UNHCR) A UNHCR-chartered cargo plane carrying emergency relief supplies including shelter materials and solar lamps for 80,000 people arrived in Port au Prince on Monday as the UN Refugee Agency stepped up efforts to ensure vital humanitarian aid reaches thousands of people in Haiti and the Bahamas still reeling from the devastating effects of Hurricane Matthew last month. The people of Haiti are suffering tremendously, said Roland Weil, the UNHCR representative in Haiti, who was on hand for delivery of the fresh relief supplies. Thousands have lost their homes, and many families are living in terribly overcrowded schools and public buildings. UNHCR is doing its part to provide safer and more dignified living conditions to the people of Haiti as they get back on their feet. We will continue to work closely with the Haitian government, our UN sister agencies, and our national partners to ensure aid reaches those who need it most. The airlift includes 16,000 rolls of heavy duty plastic sheeting to provide emergency shelter and more than 8,500 solar lanterns that will enhance the security of vulnerable families currently living without electricity. Set to be delivered to areas most impacted by the hurricane, UNHCRs assistance will benefit some 80,000 people still residing in temporary shelters. UNHCRs delivery is part of a larger, coordinated international aid effort underway for the estimated 1.4 million individuals in need of humanitarian assistance in Haiti. In the Bahamas, UNHCR is responding to the Governments appeal for help by working with the Bahamas Red Cross to provide urgently needed relief, including tarpaulin, plastic sheeting, blankets, hygiene kits, and portable stoves to nearly 7,000 people impacted by the hurricane. The Bahamas Red Cross is most appreciative of the donation received from UNHCR, said Caroline Turnquest, Director of the Bahamas Red Cross. These funds will go towards assisting vulnerable persons impacted by the recent passage of Hurricane Matthew. We thank UNHCR for its partnership, commitment, and support of the work of the Society as together we continue to champion the humanitarian efforts throughout the Bahamas. Relief items locally obtained through the support of UNHCR will be distributed to the hardest hit communities across New Providence, Grand Bahama, and Andros Islands. Hurricane Matthew, a Category Four storm with sustained winds of 146 miles per hour, slammed into southwestern Haiti and the Bahamas from October 4-6, leaving in its wake widespread damage to homes, crops, roads, and buildings, extensive flooding, and forcing many people into temporary shelter. In Haiti, Matthew triggered the largest humanitarian crisis since the deadly earthquake in 2010. In the Bahamas, Matthew was the first hurricane in more than 50 years to directly hit the capital. Residents of both countries urgently need humanitarian assistance, including food, drinking water, shelter, emergency medical assistance, and other basic services, including the restoration of electricity. The right to privacy is crucial for today's digital age since exploitation can come handy with modern devices when abused. It's not about millennial students being weaker than their predecessors. Giving considerations to vulnerable students is one reason why a referendum is being conducted to continue publicizing Exam Result Lists . Despite having divided opinions, it will still be the majority's choice to retain the 300-year old tradition or to let go of it. The voting may be limited to the posting on university bulletin boards and not through social media like Facebook as it is in the old days, says Times Higher Education. "Save the Class List" co-founder, Nicholas Taylor said that final votes by the academics will happen soon. "The outcome of the voting will affect all students and the generations to come. Therefore, this is a historic event. Not the binding kind but the result can determine the sentiments of the majority over the issue. The anti-tradition campaigners argued that the public lists can damage students' welfare, triggers depression and incite bullying. 'Our Grade, Our Choice' campaign calls on students to make their choice to be excluded from the lists without based on preference only - without being required to submit a medical record that they are vulnerable to mental illness. There is, however, a clear division happening with some students arguments the tradition motivates the students to strive harder, as they are counseled according to their progress prior to the examination results. Others say that it's their stress-relief moments and quite helpful in preventing depression. Speaking on behalf of "Save the Class List", Jack Drury, its spokesman discloses to Varsity, the school's organ that whatever the outcome of the voting is, both factions must respect it. The opposite side also continues their campaign win or lose, according to The Telegraph Education. The President-elect Donald Trump's disclosure during the election campaign to make Mexico pay for the Southern wall cannot be undone. It has been instilled in America's young minds despite his attempts to clarify the notion several times. Royal Oak Superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin has no choice but to address the concern after it went viral via Facebook. Lewis-Lakin middle school officials announce that extra efforts will be undertaken to counsel students for better understanding how harsh words and actions affect fellow classmates. However, the school did not mention their strategy in doing so with sensitivity and inclusiveness, says New York Daily News. The video containing "Build that Wall" chants by students has gone viral in Facebook with more than two million views. Only the number of shares is evident via social media and it is not clear if it is attended by numerous students or just an isolated case involving few patrons. The post elicited strong emotions and intensifies the situation as it reaches more families triggering parents to worry about their student's safety. Trump's popular vowing for the United States to let Mexico pay for the construction of the border wall as a policy evolved into other issues like racism. They seem to be imitating a rally in Tampa where the "Build that wall" chant was uttered over the microphone and Trump followed suit. The President-elect describing Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists will be part of the subject for Royal Oak Middle School during a dialogue with students. This incident has hurt many Mexican-Americans in middle school and must be dealt with appropriately to maintain a culture of respect. It is also rumored that the student who uploaded the video is suggested to be expelled. But school authorities are careful not to escalate the event further and also urged affected students to seek assistance", according to the Washington Post. Massive stress-related symptoms among students are obvious in schools after President-elect Donald Trump's historical victory. Colleges need to cope and resorted to providing counseling sessions that are designed to help students ease their serious stress due to the election aftermath. Jointly, students at Cornell University gathered around the campus while mourning the unwanted results of the presidential election.Tissues and hot chocolate were served by the school. Arts and crafts sessions are also offered at Tufts University to free their mind off the devastating election outcome. Some classes were canceled right after the elections anticipating that most students did not go to bed early enough to make it fresh to school - while watching out for the election results on TV. The University of Kansas even announced via Facebook that therapy sessions are offered, according to The Wall Street Journal. The professors this time are also very considerate in refraining from giving examinations to students after complaints of serious stress are received. That would be counter-productive anyway if tests are given to students who are not conditioned to partake in the said exams, says RT Question More. The University of Kansas puppy therapy is a hit. The dogs serve to be the students' psychiatrists and it seems to be working! EIlite private schools in New York even go as far as giving"emergency counseling", which is only used during catastrophes and disastrous incidents. Principal Hamilton Clark of the Avenues expresses the school's respect on the strong feeling of loss, anxiety, and grief and providing their utmost efforts to help students during this bad time. The World School wrote a letter addressed to parents containing the same assurance, according to the New York Post. Upset students were invited at Hofstra University to get involved in the "A Way Forward: A Discussion on the 2016 Presidential Election" campaign organized to give opportunities to bewildered students to express their emotions. Teenagers are very aware of the election outcome. They have divided opinions like adults do. All it take really is acceptance and hoping that someday, everything will fall into place. However, younger children needed to be guided. Create awareness to children that being cynical and sarcastic can only hurt other people when used to express fear and anxiety. The man who won might have a different reputation than other presidents in the past but it does not mean he controls everything in the government , as featured in Forbes. We have the federal system that prevents abuses by the top person in the country. He might have won based on interstate collections of votes but there are many voters around who voted for his rival individually. This should address confusion why people wanted a president who is deemed so negatively. Like what President Barack Obama said; citizens may not agree unanimously about a certain issue, just like families do. Understanding and negotiating a common ground is essential in going forward as a nation. The moment gives an opportunity for parents to make children understand that we are not governed by a single person but by an effective system that stands the test of time. This will take care of the young ones' fears that America will deteriorate under an unlikely ruler, as some people predict. Pro-Hillary Clinton parents can also explain that not all capable people can get the job as president. Her chance to make history as the first ever woman American president might be a failure during the recent election but in the years to come, another great woman will surely give the presidency a shot. This is basically the essence of Clinton's concession speech. A very inspiring message to all the girls around the world. Urging people to achieve own dreams is a noble act. Hillary Clinton inspires people not only during times when circumstances favored her but also during her down period, as per CNN. President-elect Donald Trump and his lawyers have requested for the postponement of the hearing of his fraud case. Apparently, he is citing the excuse of being a "political novice" and the challenges he will face during the transition to the White House. Quartz reported that Donald Trump is facing two different federal lawsuits for Trump University. The for-profit learning enterprise is accused of deceiving students who were eager to learn his real estate secrets. They were asked to pay $1,500 for weekend seminars and as much as $35,000 for mentorship programs. The students admitted that they did not profit from the course. The trial was set to start in 15 days. Back in summer, Donald Trump was able to successfully request that the trial and his testimony be postponed until the election has finished. Now, as he emerged victorious, his lawyers argued that he is too busy to prepare for the trial. They are also requesting that it should be postponed until after he has taken office and that the president-elect be allowed to submit his testimony through videos instead of in person. "The 69 days until inauguration are critical and all-consuming," they wrote. Trump's attorneys also cited a Congressional statute noting that a disrupted transition could be "detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States." According to POLITICO, the motion was filed in federal court in San Diego last Saturday evening. "The President-Elect should not be required to stand trial during the next two months while he prepares to assume the Presidency," Daniel Petrocelli, David Marroso and David Kirman, Trump's attorneys, wrote. "We acknowledge plaintiffs have a right to trial of their claims, but their rights will not be abridged if trial were continued to a date after the inauguration to allow the President-Elect to devote all his time and attention to the transition process." The motion also cited several news and academic articles about the work that is set out for Donald Trump. One is from POLITICO noting that he is "preparing for the vast challenges a political novice will face in assuming the presidency." A man has reportedly threatened to torch a University of Michigan student for wearing a hijab. She was forced to remove her head covering and reported the incident to the Ann Arbor Police Department. The Michigan Daily reported that a female student of the University of Michigan was approached by a man between 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. last Friday. The man told her that, if she would not remove her hijab, he would set her on fire using a lighter. The woman complied and removed her hijab. She then left and reported the threat to the Ann Arbor Police Department. The University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security released a crime alert describing the incident as an intimidation crime. It happened on East William Street near State Street. The suspect was described as a white male, aged between 20 and 30 years old. He was believed to be intoxicated, with slurred speech. "Police officers with both the city and the University Police Department are disturbed by this report of hate crime in our community," UMPD spokesperson Diane Brown said. "Officers are conducting additional patrols of the area and anyone who might have information, who witnessed the incident, or information about the suspect are strongly encouraged to contact the Ann Arbor Police, as they are actively investigating this incident." Twitter user Will Potter tweeted a photo of the crime alert. The investigation is ongoing. Some students asked why the alert was not released sooner since the incident occurred early Friday evening. The alert was sent out on Saturday afternoon. "We were working together on it," Brown said. "The Ann Arbor Police thought they might have had a lede but today since they didn't have it solved, we felt strongly we needed to get this information to our community." She also told The Washington Post that they consider the incident as a hate crime. This is one of the latest reported hostile acts against minority students in campuses since Donald Trump became president-elect. Recently, UPenn black students received hateful, racist text messages. Oct. 26, 2022 U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. Cadets got the unique experience of interacting with and learning from the 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2022 at the U.S. Air Force Academy Sept. 27-29. The National Character and Leadership Symposium sponsored the visit and three days of activities.The 12 mig 29k A Russian navy MiG-29K fighter crashed into the Mediterranean while attempting to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier after operating over Syria, Fox News reports. A helicopter recovered the pilot, whose status is unknown, US officials told Fox. Recent reports and videos suggest that Russia began the Kuznetsov's first combat deployment last week in the Mediterranean to support Syrian President Bashar Assad. Experts agree that the Kuznetsov's deployment to Syria doesn't meaningfully increase Russia's capabilities in the area and that the deployment was done more for propaganda purposes and to showcase Moscow's military hardware, like the MiG-29K, which was featured prominently in a flashy video of the operations aboard the Kuznetsov. The news of the crash could hurt Russia's prospects of exporting the plane to nations like India, Thailand, and China, which also operate MiGs and ski-slope-style aircraft carriers. NOW WATCH: Russia just introduced a new missile nicknamed 'Satan 2' here's a look at their other formidable weapon systems More From Business Insider UW Ecologist Wins Award for Study of How Hunting Affects Horn, Antler Size in Trophy Big Game UW ecologist Kevin Monteith, left, and Ryan Long, assistant professor at the University of Idaho, pose with a moose captured in Sublette County as part of a wildlife research project in which they were involved. (Gary Fralick Photo) University of Wyoming ecologist Kevin Monteith is a recipient, along with five co-authors, of a 2016 Wildlife Publication Award from The Wildlife Society for a study analyzing trends in horn and antler sizes of trophy big game species in North America. Monteith received the award at The Wildlife Societys annual conference Oct. 17 in Raleigh, N.C. The organization gives just four such awards nationally each year to recognize excellence in scientific literature of wildlife biology and management. For the winning study, Monteith and five co-authors analyzed more than a centurys worth of data on trophy animals recorded by the Boone and Crockett Club throughout North America. Horn and antler sizes in several big game species decreased slightly, but significantly over much of the last century. The researchers determined that harvest intensity directed at older animals, which shifted age structures toward younger, smaller males, best explained the declines in horn and antler sizes, rather than genetic-based reductions in size. The analysis of the Boone and Crockett Club data was the first of its kind, and the findings have implications for understanding the role of harvest management in structuring big game populations. The study, Effects of Harvest, Culture, and Climate on Trends in Size of Horn-Like Structures in Trophy Ungulates, was published in 2013 in Wildlife Monographs, a publication of The Wildlife Society. Monteith is an assistant professor of natural resource science at the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, with a joint appointment in the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the UW Department of Zoology and Physiology. The Wildlife Society is a 75-year-old international organization with nearly 10,000 members. Since 1940, the organization has given out annual publication awards to recognize excellence in scientific research, originality of thought and high scholastic standard. Previous awards have gone to the likes of Jane Goodall, Edward O. Wilson, George B. Schaller, Adolph and Olaus Murie, and Rosemary and Peter Grant, all acclaimed wildlife researchers and authors. Monteith also won the award in 2015 for a monograph he and six co-authors wrote about mule deer nutrition. For more information, visit The Wildlife Society website at wildlife.org/wildlife-publication-awards , or contact Emilene Ostlind, Haub School communications coordinator, at (307) 766-2604 or emilene@uwyo.edu. UW Names Interim Title IX, ADA Coordinators With University of Wyoming Director of Employment Practices Oneida Blagg accepting a position at Pierce College District in Washington state, UW Interim General Counsel Tara Evans has appointed Manager of Investigations Jim Osborn as interim Title IX coordinator. Evans also has appointed Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Specialist Janean Forsyth Lefevre as UWs interim Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) coordinator. Oneida has served the university well for many years, and we wish her the very best in her new position, Evans says. I have great confidence that Jim and Janean will provide strong leadership as interim Title IX and ADA coordinators. Blagg, who joined the university in 2012 as director of diversity and employment practices, has accepted an inaugural position as the executive officer of equity, diversity and inclusion at Pierce College District in Lakewood, Wash. Osborn has been with UW since 1999, when he began working as a computer support specialist. He moved to Diversity and Employment Practices in 2008, and became the manager of investigations when the department reorganized in 2015. He will continue to oversee investigations of civil rights discrimination, sexual misconduct and workplace violence. Forsyth Lefevre has been with the university since 2005, working in payroll and as a Human Resources partner for diversity and training in HR before transferring to the Employment Practices Office in 2015. Previously, Forsyth Lefevre served on Staff Senate and the UW Veterans Task force, and she currently is a member of the UW Accessibility Committee. In addition to her duties as interim ADA coordinator, Forsyth Lefevre will be the point of contact for administrative and academic searches. Evans says she intends for Osborn and Forsyth Lefevre to serve in their interim positions until the upcoming search for a chief diversity officer is complete, at which time a determination will be made regarding Title IX and ADA coordinator responsibilities. UW Strategic Planning Listening Sessions Continue This Week Dialogue and listening sessions to help craft the University of Wyomings strategic plan continue this week. Each session focuses on a particular aspect of the university, with discussions led by co-leaders selected by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Kate Miller. Members of the UW community and the public are invited to express their hopes and dreams for the university in those specific areas. Here is the schedule for this week and next. Times and locations, topics and discussion co-leaders are as follows: -- Tuesday, Nov. 15, 9-10 a.m., Engineering Building, Room 3112 -- extended education and lifelong learning; Meg Van Baalen Wood (Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning) and Karen Bartsch Estes (Department of Psychology). -- Thursday, Nov. 17, 2-3 p.m., Engineering Building, Room 3076; diversity, inclusion and internationalization; Cecilia Aragon (Latina/o Studies) and David Messenger (Global and Area Studies). -- Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2-3 p.m., Health Sciences Building, Room 427 -- engagement and outreach, economic development and vibrant communities; Jeff Clune (Department of Computer Science) and Mark Northam (School of Energy Resources). Additional listening and dialogue sessions are scheduled for later in November and in December. Notices will be distributed for the late-November and December sessions, but the schedule may be found on the strategic planning website here: www.uwyo.edu/president/strategic-plans/topical-sessions.html. Separately, Miller and members of UWs Strategic Planning Leadership Council are meeting with individual departments and units (www.uwyo.edu/president/strategic-plans/dept-sessions.html) and colleges (www.uwyo.edu/president/strategic-plans/college-meetings.html) to discuss priorities and strategies that will help shape the future. President Laurie Nichols has approved release time for UW employees to attend the unit and college sessions, and any topical sessions of their choosing. The scheduling of release time should be a collaborative discussion between employee and supervisor to ensure the effective and efficient operation of the unit. The amount of release time should correspond to the length and number of sessions attended. Following the extensive series of campuswide and statewide discussions, the Strategic Planning Leadership Council is scheduled to begin drafting the strategic plan in January, with presentation of a draft to the campus community and stakeholders in March. The revised plan then will be presented at a town-hall meeting for consideration by the governing bodies of Faculty Senate, Staff Senate and the Associated Students of UW. Following approval by the Board of Trustees, the plan will be implemented at the start of the 2017-18 fiscal year, with college and unit plans finalized in fall 2017. A website, www.uwyo.edu/president/strategic-plans/, has been established to inform the campus community and the public throughout the strategic planning process. More details about meeting and session schedules, as well as contact information for the Strategic Planning Leadership Council members and co-leaders for the listening and dialogue sessions, may be found at that site. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. "I guess the next attorney general is going to have to figure that out" Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now vice chairman of President-elect Donald Trumps transition team, said Trump might follow through on a threat to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Asked in ABC News interview if Trump might actually appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton, Giuliani called it a tough question. As a lawyer, I hate to use the 'on the one hand, but the other,' but on the one hand, you don't want to disrupt the nation with what might look like a vindictive prosecution, even though it might not be, he said. On the other hand, you want equal justice under the law, and if she has violated the law - you know, the FBI never completed the [Clinton] Foundation investigation. That's, as far as I know, that's still an ongoing investigation. They completed the email investigation, but not the Foundation investigation. During the second presidential debate, Trump said that, if elected, he would instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton for her use of a private email server as Secretary of State. After a yearlong investigation, FBI Director James Comey said there was no intentional misconduct and recommended that no criminal charges be brought against Clinton. Trump has repeatedly attacked Clinton over the findings of the FBI probe. If Trump followed through on his threat, Trump would be the first sitting president in recent history to use federal power to prosecute a political rival. Giuliani is now among the contenders for the role of Trumps attorney general. I guess the next attorney general is going to have to figure that out. I don't know if that will be me or not, but the next attorney general would have to figure that out, Giuliani said. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com Jere Morehead, UGA's President, did not declare any specific amount set as the target of the campaign, which has already began almost four years ago. It was commonly known to UGA marketers as "Commit to Georgia". Said announcement would not happen for another week since Morehead has to meet several huge donor at a private event held in Atlanta. However, after Morehead has revealed the figures earlier during the campaign's "quiet phase", the receivables are already anticipated to reach above the $1 billion line. Kelly Kerner, UGA's Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, said the campaign, in its first four years of the expected eight-year fund raising period, has already raised a total of $650 million. "This is just the beginning," Kerner added. In each of Morehead's first three years in the position, the university has set new records of fund-raising, as well. This includes the record of $183.8 million during the 2015-16 fiscal year which ended on June 30. Also, during Morehead's administration, UGA has also set new records in terms of pledges and gifts with $126.4 million worth in 2014, $144.2 million from the previous year and then a record $183.8 million in the fiscal of 2016 year, which has also ended last June 30. The University of Georgia, founded in 1785, and commonly referred to as UGA or simply Georgia, is an American public Land-grant, Regional Sun Grant, National Sea Grant, and National Space Grant research university. It is a flagship university that is ranked tied for 18th overall among all public national universities in the 2017 U.S. News & World Report rankings. According to a fact sheet prepared by the university for the Tate Student Center's event on Thursday, with the announcement of the fund-raising campaign's "public" phase, the mission now has three priorities, beginning with "opening doors and removing financial barriers" which means "scholarships and need-based aid to ensure all academically qualified students have access to a UGA education. On the other hand, the second priority, "enhancing the learning environment," comprises campus buildings as well as increasing the university's initiative with regard to "experiential learning", and "solving grand challenges" the world faces nowadays. From the beginning, one the major purposes of the said fund-raising campaign is to increase the number of endowed professorships at UGA, making it its third priority. In the first half of the campaign alone, the donors have already given $107 million for scholarships. This past week pro BMX rider and Las Vegan Ricardo Laguna was honored in his birth town of La Paz, Mexico. The city opened a dirt park for BMX riders named after Ricardo. While he was there for the unveiling and first rides, he also received the key to the city. Authorities Introduce Specialized Decree for Da Nang Vietnamese authorities introduced a special decree in Da Nang regulating investment, finance, budget and decentralized administration in a bid to boost the citys economic development. Authorities in Da Nang will be able to borrow domestic investment funds, via the issuance of local government bonds, under the law and can re-borrow funds the government has borrowed for local lending. These type of loans cannot exceed 40 percent of the local budget revenue or the ratio for the state budget deficit. The government will also prioritize using part of its budget to support public-private partnership (PPP) projects. The Da Nang City Peoples Committee can approve project lists and decide to receive grants for specific projects. The government will give Da Nang 70 percent of initial government funds for cities and provinces to pay outstanding debts in capital construction, infrastructure investment projects, high-tech parks, national defense and security and social safety among others. The above developments will help the city be an industrial, commercial and service center catering to its 1 million strong population. Vietnam and Cambodia Link Deal to Reduce Tariffs The governments of Vietnam and Cambodia signed an agreement on October 26 to reduce import tariffs on several products an effort to boost bilateral trade. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed during the 8th Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Vietnam Summit (CLMV-8) in Hanoi. As per the agreement, Cambodia will allow 29 Vietnamese products to enter the country duty-free. In turn, Vietnam will allow 39 Cambodian products to enter the county, including 300,000 tons of rice annually and 3,000 tons of tobacco in 2016 and 2017. The agreement comes after trade between Cambodia and Vietnam surpassed US$3 billion in 2015 falling short of the targeted US$5 billion. The agreement is expected to help producers and exporters in both countries, further boosting cross-border trade. Freight Services and Related Charges to be Made Public The Ministry of Transport issued a decree to implement the Vietnam Maritime Code of 2015, which will take effect on July 1, 2017. As per the code, shipping operators will have to publicize surcharges of freight services for containerized goods, fees and charges of shipping freight services, and charges for port services. The decree will target containerized goods, while bulk shipments that are not containerized will not be subject to the rule. Businesses are required to publicize fees and charge as regulated in the Law on Prices, however charges of shipping freight services are currently not subject to fee publication rules. In addition, several companies have failed to publicize port service charges causing disagreements between exporters and importers. More than 40 foreign shipping companies operate in Vietnam and are involved in 88 percent of imports and exports of local enterprises. In addition, around 90 percent of Vietnams exports are shipped by foreign companies, which account for 100 percent of containerized goods for European and American markets. Foreign companies involved in shipping should take note of the new regulation which will be implemented next year. About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email vietnam@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. Annual Audit and Compliance in Vietnam 2016 In this issue of Vietnam Briefing, we address pressing changes to audit procedures in 2016, and provide guidance on how to ensure that compliance tasks are completed in an efficient and effective manner. We highlight the continued convergence of VAS with IFRS, discuss the emergence of e-filing, and provide step-by-step instructions on audit and compliance procedures for Foreign Owned Enterprises (FOEs) as well as Representative Offices (ROs). Navigating the Vietnam Supply Chain In this edition of Vietnam Briefing, we discuss the advantages of the Vietnamese market over its regional competition and highlight where and how to implement successful investment projects. We examine tariff reduction schedules within the ACFTA and TPP, highlight considerations with regard to rules of origin, and outline the benefits of investing in Vietnams growing economic zones. Finally, we provide expert insight into the issues surrounding the creation of 100 percent Foreign Owned Enterprise in Vietnam. Tax, Accounting and Audit in Vietnam 2016 (2nd Edition) This edition of Tax, Accounting, and Audit in Vietnam, updated for 2016, offers a comprehensive overview of the major taxes foreign investors are likely to encounter when establishing or operating a business in Vietnam, as well as other tax-relevant obligations. This concise, detailed, yet pragmatic guide is ideal for CFOs, compliance officers and heads of accounting who must navigate Vietnams complex tax and accounting landscape in order to effectively manage and strategically plan their Vietnam operations. PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc addresses the Conference for Overseas Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City on November 13, 2016. Photo: VGP The meeting for overseas Vietnamese (OVs), the first of its kind held specifically for the southern city, drew 500 OVs from 35 countries and territories. It aimed to mobilize OVs resources for HCM Citys transformation to a growth engine of Viet Nam and a major economic and sci-tech hub in Southeast Asia. The Government leader appreciated OVs efforts and contributions to the national development and protection. Viet Nam always opens its arms to OVs to return and contribute their ideas and resources to the national development, he said, adding that the country is proud of the expatriate intellectuals in developed countries who have enjoyed the best conditions to access the worlds advanced technology and knowledge and then assisted the homeland in speeding up development He also described OVs as cultural ambassadors of Viet Nam who help enhance its friendship with other nations. In his speech, PM Phuc applauded efforts calling for OVs contribution to national development. As a result, many overseas Vietnamese companies have partnered with domestic firms to export Viet Nams products and services, or set up businesses in the homeland. A number of expatriates have been involved in research activities, scientific-technological application, education-training, and social projects. Notably, overseas remittances to Viet Nam have been continually rising, reaching US$12.5 billion in 2015, ranking 11th in the world and increasing by over 1.5 times from US$8 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. He underlined the need to optimize the strength of the great national unity bloc, including more than 4.5 million OVs, when talking about the countrys efforts to proactively integrate into the globalization and HCM Citys importance in Viet Nams economic growth. The PM called on all expatriates to join hands in developing a HCM City of civilization, modernity and attentiveness. The Government is push forward with an action program on OV-related works for 2016-2020. Accordingly, ministries, sectors and localities are going to strengthen cooperation and take concrete actions to effectively bring into play OVs resources, helping to realize socio-economic development targets, he added. Also on November 12, PM Phuc and Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh met with outstanding OVs who are experts, intellectuals and entrepreneurs. The expatriates shared their viewpoints and ideas about various issues relating to the national development which were appreciated by the Government leader, who promised to take in all the opinions and task ministries and localities with creating more favorable conditions for OVs to devote themselves to the homeland. What prompts Santomas Vietnam to build its third plant in Vietnam after nearly 15 years of establishment? Santomas Vietnams main activities are manufacturing of precision plastics gear and precision plastic parts for cameras, office automation equipment, automotive unit components, and other electronic consumer products. Among our key customers are Canon, Brother Vietnam, and Kyocera Vietnam. We commenced operations in January 2003, with a low business volume until the end of 2004. We started the first stage of print components and parts business expansion in 2005 lasting until October 2008. The worlds printer demand was in a peak period then, with nearly 90 million inkjet printers in 2007. Our business was slightly affected by the financial crisis of 2008. However, we were able to adjust our business strategy in 2009 and 2010. We entered our second stage of business expansion from 2011 until 2015, during which business profitability has been on an upward trajectory. This year onwards shall be the beginning of our third stage business expansion with our third factory construction set to be completed in June 2017. This plant, located on a 3.4ha area, is bigger than the first and second plants. Vietnam, with a huge population and increasing disposable income, has the potential for enormous demand for automotive components. Thus, in the future our third plant might not only meet the demands of the electronics industry, but also cater to the automotive industry. We will prepare for another expansion in five or 10 years, given this anticipation. Santomas has been in Vietnam for nearly 15 years, and is developing a third plant How do you evaluate the prospects of supporting industries in Vietnam, given the big presence of global manufacturers like Samsung, Canon, Intel, and LG, and the upcoming enforcement of free trade agreements like the Vietnam-EU FTA, as well as the formation of the AEC late last year? Santomas Vietnam is a pioneering foreign-invested support company, having established itself in early 2000. Foreign-invested companies started to come to Vietnam in big numbers from 2006 through 2008. These are the main supporting companies for the big global manufacturers in Vietnam, as they aimed to have made-in-Vietnam parts and components for localisation within a 10-15 year period. Meanwhile, Vietnamese companies started entering the market for foreign manufacturers in early 2012 and are still in the learning stage. It takes 10-15 years of exposure to gain the technical and quality expertise required by the foreign manufacturers. The FTAs and the formation of the AEC are certainly helpful for Vietnams supporting industries in the long term. Electronics is a fast-changing industry in terms of technology. The recent downsizing of some business lines of global firms like Nokia, Toshiba, and Panasonic shows that competition in the electronics industry is tougher than ever. Given that Santomas Vietnam is a parts supplier, how has your firm invested in making innovations to stay competitive? Electronics products require many plastic parts and components. The plastic parts and components are different in precision dimension tolerance and appearance definition. Santomas Vietnam specialises in precision dimension tolerance plastic parts, especially precision plastic gears and plastic parts which require high technical manufacturing processes and moulding tools for their manufacture. Santomas Vietnam has technical expertise, and we are always upgrading our technical know-how and manufacturing process innovation to stay competitive. Your firm plans to list on the Hanoi Stock Exchange. What are the reasons behind this plan and how is the plan being implemented? Santomas Vietnam is currently a public company with an 84.5 per cent stake owned by Santomas Malaysia. We applied to list on the Hanoi Stock Exchange in 2015. We expect we will list starting from December of this year. The intention to list is to provide opportunities for all Vietnamese public investors to access Santomas Vietnams profit growth and investment value growth in the long term. What is your method for making a successful business in Vietnam? The simple method for successful business that Santomas Vietnam has followed is contained in two commitments. Regarding customers, we always provide the best quality products and services at competitive cost. We also ensure an on-time delivery schedule and prompt customer service response. For employees, we offer a stable and long-term employment environment, on-going job training and career development, and encourage employees own ideas and innovative thinking. Donald Trump has sought to strike a conciliatory tone since his election sent a shockwave around the world, announcing he no longer intends to completely scrap Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, Obamacare. (Photo: AFP/Nicholas Kamm) Millions were expected to tune in to Trump's full interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" for clues on how the populist billionaire will govern, and how far he intends to convert his firebrand slogans into hard and fast policy. Since Tuesday's shock election triumph, Trump had appeared to tone down his rhetoric, notably suggesting he might be willing to reconsider a pledge to scrap President Barack Obama's signature health reform. But he made clear in excerpts of Sunday's interview that he still intended to crack down on the undocumented, focusing on people with criminal records. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people - probably two million, it could be even three million - we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. He also said he stood by his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border - although he said it could include some fencing. Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States, many of them Central and Southern Americans long-established in the country. Trump's stance stood in opposition with comments by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Sunday the focus under a Trump administration would be on securing the border, not rounding up immigrants. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Ryan told CNN. APPOINTMENT 'IMMINENT' Since his election on the back of an incendiary anti-immigrant campaign, thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets daily, worried that Trump will put his rhetoric into practice. The billionaire's Trump Tower residence in Manhattan was picketed for four straight days by, with similar protests across the United States. The tower has been a hive of activity as the real estate mogul huddles with his transition team to shape his cabinet - appointments expected to play a crucial role in setting the tone of an administration led by a 70-year-old political novice. Trump faces a colossal task in hammering out cabinet picks and filling hundreds of other top government jobs ahead of his Jan 20 inauguration. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has said the announcement of White House chief of staff - the powerful gatekeeper to the president - is "imminent." Top contenders include Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, who Trump has credited for helping engineer his unlikely election win. 'HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE' Democrats have been despondent in the wake of an election they were certain of winning, but vowed on Sunday to oppose Trump - despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. "Our job now is to hold him accountable," said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. "If Mr. Trump has the courage to take on Wall Street, to take on the drug companies, to try to work forward, go forward to create a better life for working people, we will work with him, issue by issue. "But if his presidency is going to be about discrimination, if it's going to be about scapegoating immigrants or scapegoating African-Americans or Muslims, we will oppose him vigorously," Sanders declared. An ABC News/Washington Post poll out Sunday shows that 74 per cent of Americans accept Trump's election as legitimate, but that number fell to 58 per cent among supporters of his defeated rival Clinton. Trump has shown some willingness to soften his more strident positions. His U-turn on Obamacare - he now says he may simply amend a law he once branded a "disaster" on the stump - was prompted by his White House meeting with the outgoing president earlier this week. He told CBS and The Wall Street Journal he may maintain some of the programme's more popular elements, such as a ban on insurance companies denying coverage because of so-called pre-existing health conditions. Asked by the paper whether he would, as threatened, name a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Trump deflected, saying his priorities were "healthcare, jobs, border control, tax reform." Not long ago Trump was leading crowds in chants of "Lock her up!" HATE GROUPS The Republican has yet to respond, however, to mounting calls to reassure Americans who fear a xenophobic crackdown under his authority. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, tracked more than 200 incidents of election-related harassment in the three days following the vote, with many more allegations emerging on social media. Tens of thousands have signed an SPLC petition urging Trump to clearly distance himself from hate groups. Carolyn Cole Fahimeh Asadi, age 35, says women in Iran are more emancipated than men realize and she has chosen to remain single because she considers herself independent and a free spirit on October 17, 2016 in Tehran, Iran. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS) Photo by Jose Castillo Passengers walk away from a burning American Airlines jet that aborted takeoff and caught fire on the runway at Chicagos OHare International Airport. The fire is was caused by an engine disk that broke apart. 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. Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS Bottles of Cuban Havana Club rum displayed on the bar at the Rum Museum in Havana, Cuba. A Cambodian court on Friday turned down a bail request from four human rights workers and an election official who were jailed earlier this year on corruption-related charges. The Court of Appeals denied the bail request, which was made on a number of grounds, including affects on the defendants health, after a brief hearing. The Anti-Corruption Unit subpoenaed the five defendants Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, Nay Vanda and Lim Mony of Adhoc and Ny Chakrya of the National Election Committee after the key witness in an ongoing case against opposition deputy leader Kem Sokha claimed the men had tried to bribe her to withhold evidence. Sam Sokong, defense lawyer, said the arguments for release on bail had been rejected by the judge and he would therefore appeal the decision at the Supreme Court. The legal team cannot accept the decision, he said. Touch Thaovarith, court spokesman, said if the defendants were granted bail it would obstruct the courts procedure, therefore they must remain in pre-trial detention. The defendants told reporters at the court that the decision violated their rights and was politically motivated. Pheav Mey, Vandas wife, said her husband had grown ill behind bars. She called on the government to check this human rights defender case and to help find justice for them and drop the charges against them, because they did not do wrong. Am Sam Ath, a senior rights worker at local NGO Licadho, wrote on Facebook after the hearing that Cambodian courts rarely offered bail in politically sensitive cases even if they have enough reasons for the court to give them bail. He added that the defendants had been jailed for about seven months, above the legal limit for pre-trial detention of six months. A US federal court on Wednesday ruled that a complaint filed by several Cambodians against two American seafood companies was under its jurisdiction, denying the defendants claim that it was a labor dispute. The law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC filed a complaint on behalf of seven victims, who claim that over the course of two years they were kept in servitude in seafood factories operated by firms that supply to the American companies, under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Defendants Motion is denied with respect to plaintiffs TVPRA claims and granted without leave to amend with respect to plaintiffs ATS claim, Judge John F. Walter said in an order last week. The two US companies named in the complaint are Rubicon Resources and Wales & Co. Universe, while Thai firms Phatthana Seafood and SS Frozen Food were also accused of abuses. Walmart was also named as a buyer of the seafood produced in the factories. The defendants argued that the plaintiffs had failed to present a case for extraterritorial jurisdiction. The lawyer for the Cambodians said the decision was good news because it had defined the case as a human trafficking issue, not a simple labor dispute as argued by the defendants. We're very happy, and looking forward to proving the case at trial, Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told VOA Khmer in an email. The decision is terrific. Moeun Tola, executive director of the Labor Rights Center, called it a positive step. We can call it a crucial victory in the first step for the US court to rule that it has jurisdiction over the case, he said. Therefore, for the victims the light of justice is within reach even though there is no decision on the compensation. They have been waiting for justice since 2012. The Afghan government has asked the United Nations to include the Taliban's fugitive chief in its blacklist of individuals under travel and financial bans and arms embargo. The move, critics say, demonstrates hardening of President Ashraf Ghani's stance about engaging the Taliban in peace talks, and it will likely fuel the insurgency. The Taliban has long demanded, among other things, removal of names of its senior leaders from the U.N. sanctions list before it decides to engage in peace talks with Kabul. "We want the U.N. to add names of terrorists, including Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah, to its sanctions list," an official statement quoted Ghani as telling a delegation of the U.N. sanctions committee in Kabul. The U.N. team of experts is visiting the country to review and help in the efforts aimed at promoting Afghan peace and stability. Warning of bloodshed A former Taliban member, Akbar Agha, has warned that Hibatullah's inclusion in the U.N. sanctions list will mean more bloodshed and will prolong the Afghan war. "Both the government and the Taliban need to take steps that pave the way for a peace dialogue between them rather than complicate and prolong the war," Agha told VOA. The Taliban has expanded and intensified insurgent activities across Afghanistan, particularly since Hibatullah was named its supreme leader after a U.S. drone strike killed his predecessor, Mullah Akthar Mansoor, in May this year. The government is in control of 258 of the 407 Afghan districts, while the insurgent group controls 33 and 116 districts are "contested," according to a U.S. military assessment contained in the latest quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction or SIGAR. Taliban attacks Afghan forces continue to struggle to contain the Taliban attacks, and have lost more than 5,500 personnel while about 10,000 have been wounded in the first eight months of this year. Within the past week, the Islamist insurgency has carried out two spectacular attacks on foreign targets. On Saturday, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up inside the U.S.-run Bagram military base, north of Kabul. The blast killed four Americans and wounded 16 others. A day earlier, the insurgents stormed the German consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, detonating an explosives-packed vehicle to remove obstacles in their way. At least six people were killed and 130 were wounded in that attack, though all German and Afghan staff at the diplomatic facility escaped unhurt. The U.N delegation has also assured Ghani it will help in taking off the names of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other commanders of his insurgent Hezb-i-Islamic faction from the sanctions list. The notorious warlord has recently struck a peace deal with the government to quit violence in return for lifting of U.N. sanctions on him to allow him to return to Afghan politics from years of hiding. Voters in Europes poorest country, Moldova, and the European Unions poorest member, Bulgaria, elected Russia-leaning presidents Sunday. In Bulgaria, Socialist-backed General Rumen Radev, a former air force commander who wants to lift EU sanctions against Russia, won by a wide margin against the ruling center-right GERB Party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva, securing 59 percent of the vote compared to Tsachevas 36 percent. Prime Minister Boyko Borisov resigned his post after the defeat. In Moldova, the staunch pro-Russia leader Igor Dodon, who has in the past threatened to tear up an EU association agreement in favor of a trade deal with Russia, won by a narrower margin. In a second round runoff, Dodon received 52 percent of the vote compared to pro-Europe rival Maia Sandus 48 percent according to the Moldovan Central Election Commission. While the post of president is mainly ceremonial in both countries, the election of candidates who favor closer ties to Russia is significant, says political analyst at the Moscow State Institute of International Affairs Victor Mizin. You cannot ignore the fact that this shows at least a very important, substantial part of the constituencies in both countries is leaning more to the position which is favorable to the major principles or major slogans of Russian foreign policy or just the image of Russia," he says. Leaning back toward Moscow? Both Bulgaria and Moldova are largely dependent on Russian energy exports. They maintain trade relations, despite EU sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine and the ban Moscow imposed on imports of Moldovan wine and other agricultural products after Moldova signed an EU association agreement. The EUs image has been damaged in both countries, where the public perceives economic progress as too slow and sees a failure to tackle corruption by nominally pro-EU leaders. In Moldova, the backlash was particularly pronounced after a billion dollars, 12 percent of GDP, disappeared from banks. Many young people left the former Soviet republic and Soviet bloc countries for better opportunities in Russia and Europe. Those left behind, mostly the older generation, still strongly identify with Russia. And my prediction is that its just the beginning, that more and more candidates who are, how to say, anti-European Union, and that means unfortunately, logically, more pro-Moscow, that well see this trend of more and more of the people of this sort coming to power in the future, says Mizin. Russias Interfax news agency Monday quoted Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia's parliament, as saying the visually powerful' liberal-Atlantic system has now failed in Bulgaria and Moldova. Russias Foreign Ministry said it was too early to call either presidents pro-Russian, but that it counts on Moldova to strengthen neutrality when the next president takes office. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated the new Bulgarian President-elect Radev, saying in a statement he was confident that joint efforts would give new impetus to bilateral dialogue and broaden cooperation in various fields for the benefit of both their peoples. But analysts say the elections are more a reaction to internal problems of governance than a wholesale rejection of the EU in favor of Russia. Balancing act The public in Bulgaria and Moldova is divided between Europe and Russia, says Leonid Gusev of the Institute of International Studies at the Moscow Institute of International Relations: One part wants to be with Russia more and [the] other part wants to have [a] pro-European direction. Striking a balance between East and West will be key for the new presidents to succeed, says Gusev. Especially in Bulgaria because Bulgaria, as you know, is a member of [the] European Union, is a member of NATO," he says. "Even Rumov, during his campaign, also said that Bulgaria will be in these two blocs - in NATO, in [the] European Union. Gusev says president-elect Dodon will face resistance from Moldovas pro-EU parliament if he goes ahead with an earlier call to withdraw from the 2014 EU association agreement, risking visa-free EU entry for Moldovans. I dont think that Mr. Dodon will take away this no visa regime with [the] European Union because I personally saw in Brussels, in Germany, a lot of people from Moldova who work there for a long time," he says. "I think he will try to have balance between connections with Russia and between connections with European Union. Dodon told Russian state media Monday that his election victory was a vote for rapprochement with Russia and for resolving the frozen conflict in Trans-Dniester - the breakaway region of Moldova also known as Transnistria that wants to be part of Russia, and where Moscow has stationed thousands of troops. Some 1,500 people died in a conflict between pro-Russian Transnistrian separatists and the Moldovan government in 1992. Theres no pragmatic and acceptable solution for Trans-Dniester that would satisfy all sides, says Mizin: And, of course, as I understand it, Russia has no intention to withdraw its troops from Transnistria because some people I know in the Russian Ministry of Defense are afraid that it would immediately spark the beginning of, once again, the military conflict there. Political analysts say the ongoing fighting in neighboring Ukraine has left leaders across Moldova, Russia, and the West wary of spreading conflict. Protests continued Monday in the United States against the election of billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump as the country's new president come January. Hundreds of students peacefully walked out of classes at a high school in Los Angeles and one in suburban Washington, following a night of more street protests in major U.S. cities. But the Sunday night demonstrations were smaller than those in the immediate aftermath of the Republican Trump's stunning upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton last week. WATCH: Anti-Trump protest in Washington suburb "I know people weren't prepared for us to win," Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said in New York. But she added, "We should really focus on the will of the people." She called on President Barack Obama and Clinton "to say to these protesters, 'This man is our president.'" Call for national unity Both Obama and Clinton last week called for national unity to give Trump a chance to govern when he takes control of the White House January 20, but have not spoken publicly about the subsequent demonstrations protesting the outcome of the election. The size of the demonstrations in major cities Sunday night numbered in the hundreds of people instead of thousands, as had been the case in earlier protests. In New York, more than 1,000 people marched to Trump's home, the iconic skyscraper Trump Tower in Manhattan. A Chicago building with the same name was the focus for a smaller crowd of protesters Sunday as well. In San Francisco, several hundred people met to protest Trump in Golden Gate Park, and on Sunday night a group marched down the city's Market Street. Across San Francisco Bay, hundreds gathered in the city of Oakland to form a human chain around the 5.5 kilometer Lake Merritt. Hundreds of people also protested in Philadelphia, including a march to the area in front of Independence Hall where the country's founders debated and signed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state seeking to become the country's first female president, and Obama campaigned at the same spot the night before the vote. The demonstrators, many carrying signs saying, "Not my president," and "Love trumps hate," are protesting Trump's plans to deport undocumented immigrants, his lack of belief in climate change, his comments about Muslims and vow to appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion rights. In an interview that aired Sunday night, Trump said Americans have nothing to fear about his presidency. Told that some of his supporters were harassing Latinos and Muslims who opposed his candidacy, Trump said, "I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' If it -- if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: 'Stop it.'" Trump wrote Friday on Twitter that he loves that there are small groups who have a passion for the country and predicted, "We will all come together and be proud!" Still others have criticized those rallying against Trump. A Facebook group about a protest planned for Friday in New York drew such comments as, "You're not accomplishing anything" and "Get a life people." Conway, on NBC's Meet the Press, said Sunday, "I just know that had he lost the election, as everyone I think - including the media - was expecting and these were Trump protesters, everybody's hair would be on fire asking them to accept the election results and do a peaceful transition in our government. He said he'd be the president of people who hadn't supported him, too. And they should think about that and give him a chance." Looking toward future Clinton said in her concession speech last week that those who believe in America must accept the election result and look to the future. "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead," she said. WATCH: Clinton on Trump's election win Anti-Donald Trump protesters marching for a fifth straight day were energized Sunday by the president elect's announcement that he will deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants from the United States, with perhaps more to come. One demonstrator in New York City told CNN: "They're here to stay and we stand in solidarity with them. People don't know what will happen and they're very scared." Others filled the streets again Sunday in other cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia. One group is planning a huge Million Woman March in Washington on January 21, the day after Trump is inaugurated. His crude comments about women during the campaign, along with allegations from some women that Trump inappropriately molested them, are among the issues that have infuriated the protesters. Many also decry remarks made against Muslims; others fear Trump will tear up environmental protection regulations and appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn laws protecting gays and abortion rights. Many of the protesters say they will keep marching right up until Trump's inauguration. Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said Trump deserves people to treat him with an open mind. Close Trump aide and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani called on Clinton Sunday to address the protesters and say they are exaggerating their fears of Trump. Saturday "Bridges, not walls," protesters chanted late Saturday outside Trump International Hotel in Washington, referencing President-elect Donald Trump's promise to build a wall along the southern U.S. border to bar Mexicans who Trump has described as "criminals" and "rapists" from entering the country. On a fourth night of demonstrations around the country since Trump won last Tuesday's election, demonstrators held a candlelight vigil in front of the White House on Saturday evening before marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the hotel where they blocked traffic and belted out other chants, including "We reject the president-elect." Protesters also took to the streets and parks across other parts of the U.S. Saturday, with more than 2,000 people marching from Union Square in Manhattan to Trump Tower, home of the president-elect and where he was meeting with his transition team. Thousands of protesters marched in other major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. Germany's ruling coalition is backing Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the country's next president, succeeding Joachim Gauck, whose five-year term ends in February. On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) agreed to back Steinmeier, Germany's most popular politician, who was nominated by his Social Democratic Party (SPD). The third party in the coalition, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), supported the decision soon after. A 60-year-old political veteran, Steinmeier would likely have enough support to win a vote among the 1,260 delegates from Germany's 16 federal states on February 12. Party leaders have been wrangling for months over whom to nominate as a potential successor to Gauck, a 76-year-old former pastor from former communist East Germany who is stepping down due to his advanced age. While normally very diplomatic, Steinmeier strongly criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during election campaign, saying the prospect of a Trump presidency was a "frightening" one for the world. He warned a day after Trump's election that transatlantic relations would become "more difficult." "I think we must expect that American foreign policy will become less predictable for us and we must expect that the United States will be more inclined to make decisions on its own," Steinmeier said. He also compared Trump to a "hate preacher", saying he had much in common with "fear-mongers" in Germany's right-wing populist AfD party as well as advocates of Britain's exit from the EU. The German presidency is a largely ceremonial role, meant to transcend party politics and serve as a moral standard bearer for the nation. President Barack Obama addressed a wide range of foreign policy and domestic issues Monday during a news conference with reporters at the White House. The president stressed a readiness to "accelerate a smooth transition" for the president-elect. "It's part of what makes this country work," he said. Obama said he asked his team to make sure they finish "what we started" regarding several key issues. He underscored the importance of stabilizing the global economy, and signaling solidarity with global allies of the U.S. He also extended condolences to deceased journalist Gwen Ifill, whose death at 61 after several months of cancer treatment was confirmed Monday. Obama was set to depart later Monday on the final planned foreign trip of his presidency. His advisors expect President-elect Donald Trump will be a primary topic of discussion with other leaders. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said the itinerary with stops in Greece, Germany and Peru is a signal of solidarity to the country's closest allies and a way to show "support for a strong and integrated and united Europe." The only major planned speech during Obama's trip is in Greece, on Wednesday, addressing work that remains to tackle economic challenges there and elsewhere in the world while promoting inclusive growth and combating inequality. Rhodes said Obama will also, in talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, express support for what the Greek people have gone through in response to their economic crisis that brought international bailouts and strict requirements for cutting spending and public services. Berlin leg German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts Obama for talks Thursday. Rhodes highlighted the importance of the relationship, calling Merkel "the president's closest partner over the course of his entire presidency." The leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Spain will also be in Berlin for meetings Friday that are expected to include the ongoing fight against Islamic State, issues related to migration, the situation in Ukraine, and last week's U.S. election. Trump repeatedly has spoken against international agreements reached during Obama's presidency, including the deal to limit Iran's nuclear program, the international climate deal that went into effect last month and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that has not cleared the U.S. Congress. He also defeated Obama's fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton. Ongoing issues Rhodes said to reporters in previewing the trip that no matter the outcome of the election, Obama and the rest of his administration have a stake in seeing the next one succeed, and that the world also has a similar interest. "There are many ongoing issues that we're working on that are deeply relevant to our security that we will want to discuss, and, again, agreements and alliances that have perpetuated over decades under administrations of many different stripes," he said. In terms of the TPP, Obama is expected to meet with the other leaders involved in that deal during his stop in Peru to go over how Trump's election affects the pact and other trade issues. He also has a meeting scheduled with President Xi Jinping of China, which is not part of the TPP. Asia Obama made the Asia-Pacific region a major focus of his foreign policy, and in Peru his main agenda will be talking with leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Trump could decide on a different stance toward Asia, but Rhodes said that because of the region's growth and the number of treaty and trade partners the U.S. has there, he believes it will remain a priority. The outgoing U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change says China and other countries are expected to stay committed to the Paris Agreement, regardless of what the next U.S. administration decides. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said he believes climate change is a hoax, and he pledged during his election campaign to "cancel" U.S. participation in last year's agreement, in which nearly 200 countries agreed to place limits on global greenhouse gas emissions. The Paris Agreement went into effect this month after enough governments formally accepted its terms. At climate talks in Morocco, U.S. Special Envoy Jonathan Pershing said in the coming weeks officials expect personnel from Trump's transition team to arrive at the Department of State and begin planning the shape and thrust of American diplomacy for the next four years. Pershing said in every agreement there are provisions on how a person or country may withdraw from it. "It takes a fair amount of time in this one, he said. The process requires a three-year waiting period, and then a year between notification and action. That's the Paris Agreement process. But I also know there's flexibility for a country, and the new administration may take advantage of that flexibility in its action." Pershing said the new administration could take a better look at the commitment globally, then decide how it can move forward in ways that are consistent with its own policies. The diplomat said he cannot predict the future U.S. involvement in the agreement, but said Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua told him China "intends to move forward.'' "I'm hearing the same from the Europeans. I'm hearing the same from the Brazilians. I'm hearing the same from Mexico, and from Canada, and from smaller nations like Costa Rica and from Colombia," he added. The Paris Agreement on climate change legally took effect November 4. The landmark agreement signed last April in Paris is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, most of which are generated by the use of fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal or natural gas. Alongside China, the United States has been a champion of the agreement. Some experts say Trump could ignore the American emission targets, which they say carry "no penalties." In line with last month's agreement between supporters of Congolese President Joseph Kabila and an opposition faction, the country's prime minister, Augustin Matata Ponyo, announced his resignation Monday. A new government of national unity is expected to be named shortly, even though many opposition members are still against the agreement. The dissolution of the government had been expected since October 18 when Kabila supporters and an opposition faction led by Vital Kamerhe reached a deal for managing the country after December 19, the final day of the president's second and, under the current constitution, final term. The deal stated Kabila can stay in office until the organization of elections which have been provisionally scheduled for April 2018 and Kamerhe's opposition faction will join a government of national unity. A larger opposition coalition, known as the Rassemblement, has rejected the agreement. It is unclear when Kabila will name a new prime minister, but the president will give a rare address to the two chambers of parliament Tuesday. After meeting Monday with the president, Kamerhe, considered a favorite to become prime minister, said his faction and Kabila will manage the country together to organize elections. During the weekend, Kabila met with a U.N. Security Council delegation that urged Congolese political and social actors to work toward consensual and inclusive elections. Lambert Mende, DRC's minister of communications who announced that Mondays press conference would be his last one, had firm words for the U.N. delegation, which asked Kabila about the lack of clarity around the date of the next election. According to Mende, Kabila was surprised to be asked about election dates when that area is the constitutional prerogative of the independent electoral commission. The Rassemblement accuses the president of deliberately undermining the commission to postpone elections. Mende also criticized the delegation's focus on whether Kabila intends to change the constitution to allow him to stand for a third term. Quoting Kabila, Mende said it is curious that such questions about possible third terms are so often put to the president of the DRC, a country where no one has ever considered changing the constitution unlike several other countries in Africa. Mende, still quoting Kabila, also said the president has repeatedly said the constitution, which excludes a third term, will be respected. The Rassemblement accuses the president of planning to remove term limits before the next election. European Union foreign ministers held an informal meeting in Brussels late Sunday to discuss trans-Atlantic relations with the United States under President-elect Donald Trumps administration. Foreign ministers conceded that they will have to continue working on strengthening Europe's role in world affairs until the future of trans-Atlantic relations becomes clearer, depending upon the steps the new U.S. administration will take. The EU's foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, called the emergency meeting in Brussels after Trumps stunning victory Tuesday on stated policies that include questioning Washington's commitment to Europe, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Iran nuclear deal. Mogherini said, however, the EU would stand strong in its support for the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal; two policies Trump has criticized. The European Union and the United States are partners and will continue to be partners for what concerns us in the European Union based on our own values, principles, interests, and also we discussed the need to strengthen the European unity around some key issues that will be even more crucial in the months to come. First of all, the need to work on the multilateral system, for us it's extremely important to work on the climate change agreement implementation, she said. Mogherini said the Iran nuclear deal is a multi-lateral agreement that is also in the interest of Europe. "And on Iran let me tell you very clearly, I've stated this already: This is not a bilateral agreement, this is multilateral agreement endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution, so it's our European interest, but it's also a U.N. somehow interest and duty to guarantee that the agreement is implemented in full for the all duration of the agreement, which is 10 years, she added. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni noted that Trump does not take office until January, and that Europe has its own problems to deal with until then, such as the refugee emergency and economic issues. "I don't think Europe should be worried about Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and the European Union and each single country of the EU will certainly work with him, since the US is our main ally. Europe has to focus on its own problems, and solve the questions and open issues within itself and its citizens. We must work to solve our problems of economic growth, migrations, security. A Europe that is strong and capable of tackling these problems will certainly be able to work well with the United States," said Gentiloni. EU nations are anxious to see how many of Trump's campaign announcements, like isolationist positions on security, his rejection of international trade pacts and refusal to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, might translate into real policy. Given Trump's clear opposition to major trade pacts, EU officials are not certain the massive Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, will have to be renegotiated, if any elements of it will remain in tack. In blunt remarks Friday reflecting the shock and concern among some European leaders at the election of Trump, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Trump poses risks for the relationship between the EU and the U.S. On Wednesday, after Trump's victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk invited him to an EU-U.S. summit to discuss issues including terrorism and Ukraine. The EU foreign ministers meet again formally Monday to discuss strained ties with membership candidate country Turkey, the conflict in Syria and Libya, and defense cooperation with the NATO military alliance. Hate crimes against minorities rose 7 percent in the United States last year, the FBI reported Monday, with incidents targeting Muslims jumping 67 percent. Hate crimes escalated to 5,850 from 5,479 last year, according to the bureau's latest data. By contrast, hate crimes against Muslims jumped to 257 from 154 in 2014. Bias-motivated offenses against Muslims accounted for 4.4 percent of all hate crimes in 2015 and 21 percent of religiously motivated crimes. Anti-Muslim hate crime rose to its the highest level since the September 2001 terrorist attacks and the second highest on record since the FBI started collecting hate crime data in 1992. The increase in anti-Muslim hate crime continued into 2016, with Muslim advocates and experts attributing it to a rise in Islamophobia, a backlash against terror attacks in the United States and Europe and political vitriol during the recent contentious presidential election in the United States. "Retaliatory responses to escalating terror attacks in the United States and France, heightened and widespread anti-Muslim prejudice, and the mainstreaming of it in socio-political circles appears to be the main driver of the significant increase in these hate crimes," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University at San Bernardino. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign rhetoric was widely blamed for the surge in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime over the past year, urged his supporters in an interview on Sunday to stop harassing minorities. "I am so saddened to hear that," Trump said in the interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program. "And I say, 'Stop it.' If it -- if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: 'Stop it.'" The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense motivated in whole or in part by the actual or perceived group status of another, such as race and ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity. Ending the war in Yemen was a "prime topic of discussion" for Secretary of State John Kerry in Oman, according to a senior administration official. Kerry told reporters Monday he held a "very constructive discussion" with Yusuf bin Alawi, the minister responsible for foreign affairs, before also talking about the bloody and desperate situation in neighboring Yemen with Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The absolute monarch and Kerry discussed "the importance of peace talks and getting a framework in place," the official said. "But neither side in past weeks has been willing to stop fighting." The monarch and the U.S. secretary of state "welcomed the road map, including its sequencing, put forward by the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, to end the conflict," said State Department spokesman John Kirby in a statement. Oman is the only Gulf state that is not part of the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The Omani road map, based on an initiative by Kerry, calls for Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi to hand power to a less divisive deputy in exchange for the Houthis withdrawing from Yemen's main cities. "Progress is possible but only if the U.S. can exert enough pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop its aerial campaign in Yemen. This might in turn convince the Houthis and their allies that the international community is serious about wanting to bring an end to the conflict," said Michael Horton, senior analyst for Arabian affairs at The Jamestown Foundation. Previous cease-fires have seen almost immediate violations by all sides in the conflict. Oman as peace broker Oman, with treaty ties to the United States stretching back to 1833, served as a bridge in secret talks between Tehran and Washington that led to last year's controversial nuclear deal between Iran and a group of world powers. Oman has also hosted behind-the-scenes discussions between U.S. officials and the Houthis. Horton told VOA there is "a real risk that Saudi Arabia will view the incoming Trump administration as being less well disposed to the House of Saud and in particular to its war in Yemen. This might mean that Saudi Arabia intensifies its aerial campaign in Yemen before Trump takes office." The tempo of bombings in northwestern Yemen has been reported to have intensified in the last few days. Oman is expected to have a key role in any negotiations, as it is viewed to some degree as a neutral and honest broker. Oman challenges Oman faces its own challenges, and time may be running short. Oman's Sultan Qaboos, a veteran of the British Army, is the Middle East's longest-serving ruler since overthrowing his father in 1970. But the monarch, who turns 76 on Friday, spent most of last year undergoing medical treatment in Germany for an undisclosed illness. The sultan is divorced with no children or brothers, raising questions about who will succeed him as the head of the Busaid dynasty. The conflict in Yemen in the past 20 months has killed an estimated 10,000 people and millions are in need of food with starvation setting in, according to the United Nations. The majority of Yemen's 27 million people are also in urgent need of health services and the country is at risk for a significant cholera outbreak, according to U.N. agencies. "Stabilizing Yemen is critical to regional stability and for U.S. national security," according to Horton of the independent, non-partisan Jamestown Foundation. He asserts the only ultimate beneficiary of a protracted war in Yemen would be the Sunni extremist al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has orchestrated numerous high-profile terrorist attacks in the divided country. A former senior diplomat under President George W. Bush says President-elect U.S. Donald Trump would quickly and unilaterally approve a preemptive military strike against North Korea to take out a standing inter-continental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead. Ambassador Christopher Hill, who led the U.S. delegation to the Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issues a decade ago, said, North Korea needs to understand that there will be a new sheriff in town in Washington. Hill, who currently is the Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, was in Seoul on Monday to address a South Korean government conference on the prospects for peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula. By emphasizing the President-elects willingness to act against a perceived North Korean threat, Hill was trying to reassure friends in East Asia that the U.S. will remain committed to the region under Trump. But Gareth Evans, a former Foreign Minister of Australia who also participated in the conference, said it is actually worrisome to think that Trump would act impulsively against an aggressive but rational adversary who understands a nuclear attack against the U.S. is suicide, and without regard for the possibility that it could trigger a wider conflict. "Where is that going to take us, a preemptive military strike? I mean, that is premised on the assumption that if the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon and have a missile delivery capability, the United States and everyone else is at real risk. But what on Earth is ever going to encourage the North Koreans to use such a missile in that situation?" Evans asked. North Korea has accelerated its nuclear development program this year by conducting two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches. Experts believe that within the next five years Pyongyang will develop the capability to launch a long-range inter-continental missile armed with a miniaturized nuclear warhead. Alliances The surprising U.S. presidential election victory of Donald Trump has raised concern and anxiety throughout Asia that the new president will radically and recklessly alter established U.S. policy on North Korea. As a presidential candidate Trump threatened to pull troops from allies and instead allow them to acquire their own nuclear weapons, if they did not agree to pay more for the U.S. military stationed in their counties. There are over 28,000 American troops in South Korea and close to 50,000 in Japan. Evans said candidate Trump instilled doubt over the U.S. commitment to maintain regional security by sending competing signals that he would take strong measures to confront China on trade while also indicating he may retreat from foreign entanglements. No one knows which way Trump will jump on these issues, including no doubt Donald Trump himself, because hes obviously never studied or thought through any of them, he said. Continuity Hill said moderate Republican foreign policy advisers on Trumps national security transition team, like Mike Rogers, former Michigan congressmen and chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, are prioritizing stability and continuity on North Korea policy in the incoming administration. In the final presidential debate in October, Trump denied he voiced support for allowing allies to acquire nuclear weapons, contradicting statements he made earlier in the year. After the election, the President-elect pledged his commitment to defending the region during phone calls with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His post-election actions reflect a growing appreciation for the U.S. military presence in Asia and the importance of strong alliances with Japan and South Korea, said Hill, to counter both the North Korean threat but also the growing military power of China. I have no doubt that the U.S. administration, the Trump administration, well be able to continue what is really one of our best relationships in the world, he said. Hill also voiced his opposition to the U.S. offering unconditional talks, concessions or engagement with North Korea until the Kim Jong Un leadership agrees to live up to its past promises to halt its nuclear program. However, he concedes that under President-elect Trump, relations with China could suffer over trade and maintaining international cooperation on North Korean sanctions could become more difficult. For the sixth year in a row, the global internet became less free as governments around the world redoubled efforts to limit free expression, ban encryption technologies, and punish users for posting or sharing material deemed unacceptable by national authorities. Those are just a few of the findings of the annual "Freedom on the Net" report published by Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank in Washington, D.C. Freedom House researchers estimate that just over two-thirds of the world's internet users live in nations that actively restrict online activity and that harshly penalize them, including by whippings and imprisonment, for their posts. The survey of 65 nations determined that China, Iran, Syria and Ethiopia were the greatest abusers of internet freedoms, followed by Uzbekistan, Cuba, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. Some nations including North Korea, which has a long record of flagrant human rights abuses were not included. Among the nations that saw the biggest declines were Uganda, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Only 14 nations saw marginal improvements. Just three nations China, India and the United States account for roughly 40 percent of all the world's online users. Government restrictions "No country is perfect," said Adrian Shahbaz, research manager for Freedom on the Net. "We're trying to give a very nuanced evaluation of the problems that every country faces for upholding a free and open internet." Among the factors of the best performing nations, Shahbaz said, were a free and open internet, very high levels of internet penetration, and strong protections for free speech and privacy. New cybersecurity laws in China were partly responsible for that nation's ranking as the worst abuser. Over the last several years, Beijing has made it a punishable offense to "spread rumors" or "endanger national security" online. It has severely cracked down on the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access thousands of blocked websites. Watch video report from VOA's Zlatica Hoke: Report authors also say governments, depending on their priorities, are censoring a wider range of diverse content than ever before. For example, Thailand metes out harsh punishments for "disrespect" of the Thai monarchy based on the one of the world's harshest lese majeste statutes. Many African and Middle East nations ban online content criticizing authorities or discussing LGBT issues. Satiric or light-hearted posts also have come under new levels of scrutiny. Some people have been jailed for creating or sharing images, such as of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with superimposed Mickey Mouse ears or of side-by-side photos comparing Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with "Lord of the Rings" character Gollum. Getting around encryption As circumvention and encryption applications have grown in popularity, so has the targeting and banning of those apps by governments both free and otherwise. Russia, one of the least free countries when it comes to the web, has ordered all digital communications firms to provide state authorities with back doors to encrypted applications and to hold onto users' data for at least six months. Some nations have followed Russia's lead, demanding that internet firms turn over personal information Others have moved to block, ban or alter encrypted apps such as Telegram, Viber, WhatsApp and Skype, as well as encrypted devices such as phones and tablets. In the United States earlier this year, Apple and the FBI were at legal loggerheads over a court order to decrypt an iPhone allegedly used last December in a terror attack in San Bernardino, California. Despite that, the Freedom House report rated U.S. web access as slightly more free, thanks to new legislation that curtailed some of the National Security Agency's data monitoring programs. However, Shahbaz says, there are already some "worrying signs" about how committed the incoming Trump administration will be for maintaining a free internet. "There were some very big gains over the last several years, whether it had to do with the [Federal Communications Commission] ruling on net neutrality or limits on surveillance," Shahbaz told VOA. "We would hope the new administration upholds these decisions made over the previous years and not roll back online freedoms." The Kardashian clan might be getting serious about taking a step back from social media. Kendall Jenner's Instagram account vanished over the weekend, but her 68 million followers on the picture-sharing app can still keep up with her comings and goings via her Facebook and Twitter accounts. Jenner is the 21-year-old half-sister of Kim Kardashian. Kardashian has largely disappeared from social media since being held up at gunpoint in her Paris hotel in a jewelry heist last month. Khloe Kardashian called the robbery "a wake up call'' for the family. Jenner also encountered a scary situation this year. A 26-year-old man was convicted last month of trespassing at Jenner's Hollywood Hills home in August. Jenner testified that she was frightened when the man followed her car into her driveway. Moldova's pro-Russian presidential candidate Igor Dodon has declared victory in Sunday's presidential runoff. With nearly all the votes counted in the former Soviet republic, Dodon, who campaigned on promises to restore closer ties with Russia, earned about 55 percent of the vote, well ahead of pro-European rival Maya Sandu. Final results are expected Monday in the impoverished country of 3.5 million. Speaking to reporters at a late night news conference Sunday, Dodon recognized the strong campaigning of his rival and Dodon said he will be a president of the whole state. Today we can do everything to avoid division in the society. I'll be a president to all Moldavians and for those who vote for you. I will listen to those who voted against me, because since today I'm a president of the whole state," said Dodon. Pro-Moscow Dodon came close to winning the presidency outright in the first round of voting two weeks ago. He has pledged to foster good relations with Moldova's neighbors, Romania and Ukraine. Such appeasement gestures, however, may face stiff resistance in Kyiv by many who object to Dodon's support for Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. For her part, Sandu, a former education minister, used her campaign to urge closer ties with Europe. She also called for the withdrawal of several thousand Russian troops from Moldova's Russian-speaking separatist region of Trans-Dniester. Dodon's victory comes alongside that of nearby Bulgaria's pro-Russian presidential candidate Gen. Rumen Radev, a political novice whose win Sunday prompted center-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to announce his resignation. Moldova, like Bulgaria, has in recent years been plagued with rampant official corruption. Former prime minister Vlad Filat was sentenced earlier this year to a nine-year prison term after a court found him guilty of corruption and abuse of power during his 2009-2013 term as head of government. His pro-European ruling coalition had been linked to the country's most powerful oligarch, Vladimir Plahotniuc, who has long been accused of running the country through bribes and intimidation. Filat was arrested last year during a parliamentary session and later charged for his links to a bank-fraud scheme that included the disappearance from three banks of $1 billion - nearly 13 percent of the tiny country's annual GDP. Filat's successor later lost a parliamentary vote of confidence. They blind-folded me and drove me to an Islamic State judge, 23-year-old Qusay told me as a crowd of displaced civilians gathered around at an IDP camp near Mosul eager to share their stories of life under extremist rule. They beat me with rubber pipes, threatening to kill me. The judge briefly investigated my case, I couldnt tell whether he was from Mosul or where he was from. He spoke classical Arabic, and I was forced to sit with my back to him so I never even saw his face. Qusays offense was trying to flee the caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his jihadist followers, who after they seized Iraqs second largest city two years ago threw Mosul back a few centuries to barbaric medieval-style punishments. Women were stoned to death for adultery. Dissenters and suspected spies beheaded. Locals guilty of minor infractions of the jihadist "moral code" endured public beatings, others endured weeks in jails and reeducation classes. Walk around IDP camps in northern Iraq, like the rapidly expanding one at Khasir, and it isnt hard to hear stories about the brutality of the terror group as it set about to build a state of fear. Mosul residents opposed to the terror group tried their best to stay indoors and parents were determined to keep their daughters inside fearful of a jihadist "offer" of marriage. Qusay said he was lucky he was let go, but warned another infraction would be met with death. The smuggler he paid received a skin-shredding 80 lashes. Talking about the past two years, Qusays older brother Mohammed, aged 49 and father of eight daughters, shivered at the memory of the public events IS militants staged in the Mosul district of al-Zahra in their campaign to terrorize locals into observing the groups interpretation of sharia law and intimidate rivals. Punishment increasing There were a lot of public executions and cutting off of hands, he said. And there was a stoning of a woman for adultery. I didn't go, I couldnt bear to see it, he added. That was risky. Absences were noticed and when the terror group held punishment events, a district would be closed and traffic halted. Locals were commanded to attend. In recent weeks as the caliphate faces a reckoning, losing territory both in Iraq and Syria, punishments have gotten harsher, according to displaced civilians from Mosul. Under pressure from avenging forces IS propaganda teams havent been able to maintain their social media strategy to present the killings to the world. But displaced civilians say there have been crucifixions and the terror group doesn't hesitate to attack those fleeing Mosul. All the punishments have just increased. So an offense that would have got you a beating, now gets death, said Qusay. For Mohammeds daughters, theres relief of having escaped. All of his daughters were well-schooled before the arrival of Daesh, his 21-year-old wants to become an astronomer, and a 16-year-old is eager to be a painter and showed me a few drawings she brought with her when the family made their dash to escape during a lull in fighting. One drawing is of the Eiffel Tower. I would love to see Paris, she said. Not all the camps residents are happy to see and talk to a reporter. Many are wary; others cast hostile glances. Some of the wariness can be explained by an overall fear, the displaced are traumatized and at a loss. Some believe even if the Iraqi military does drive Daesh from Mosul, the militants will return. They don't want to say anything that may get them in trouble later, said a camp resident. Who is trustworthy? But the hostility is another matter. On a camp tour last week a peshmerga general waved his hand and told a group of astonished visiting British lawmakers, They are all Daesh here. An unfair statement, but as some camp residents told me a large proportion, some say even a majority, of their neighbors welcomed IS militants and backed the extremist regime. It is impossible to calculate how many genuinely embraced Daeshs ideology and how many were being opportunistic or collaborating to ensure survival. But as Dindar Zebari, a top Kurdish official said Sunday, it is important to remember what many of Sunni Arabs were subjected to by IS. Sunni Arabs are the victims here, he said in Irbil. He noted the peshmerga face a constant challenge in working out whom to trust in villages theyve retaken and who may still be supporting IS. With the Mosul offensive the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has taken some towns and villages on land that has long been disputed between Irbil and Baghdad. KRG President Masoud Barzani and top Kurdish officials insist villages the peshmerga has captured from IS in the "disputed territories" will remain part of the KRG. For now the peshmerga and Iraqi security forces are cooperating in the fight against IS but some analysts are pessimistic the spoils of war will be divided peacefully, arguing ethnic and sectarian interests will push the Kurds and Arabs to clash. The head of the Biafra separatist movement in Nigeria has written an open letter to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. The movement hopes Trump, who backed British voters' decision to leave the European Union, will also support a push for Biafra to win independence. The letter, sent by a Nigerian activist named Nnamdi Kanu, contains a forceful appeal to the U.S. president-elect. It says Trump's victory placed upon him a "historic and moral burden ... to liberate the enslaved nations in Africa," which it says are trapped in artificial boundaries designed to reinforce colonial domination. Kanu currently sits in a prison in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, charged with treason for supporting a movement calling for territories in southeastern Nigeria to break away and form a country called Biafra. Biafra tried to break away once before in a three-year war starting in 1967 that left at least 1 million people dead, mostly from starvation. Kanu and other activists hope Trump will be sympathetic to a new push for Biafran independence. "[Trump] believes in the inalienable right of an indigenous people to self-determination and he has spoken it, said Clifford Iroanya, a spokesman for the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra organization. He has written it. He has acted it. We believe he will support indigenous people all over the world to self-determine." Disappointed in Obama Iroanya says he was pleased when Trump expressed support for Britain's decision to leave the European Union with a tweet on June 24 that said, "Self-determination is the sacred right of all free people." Biafra supporters say they too have self-determination, and should be allowed to break away from Nigeria. The Biafran movement was disappointed with outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama, who they saw as a supporter of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. "Then we felt that there is no point proceeding with talking to Mr. Obama because it will be like preaching to the choir. He is the backbone of Muhammadu Buhari," Iroanya said. Buhari was the one who ordered Kanu to be held in custody. Buhari, who had a long career in the Nigerian military, fought against Biafran independence when he was a young soldier and maintains a hard line against the Biafra movement. Kanu remains in custody on instructions from Buhari, despite orders from Nigerian courts and a regional West African court to release him. Opposition to war Many Biafra supporters do not want to return to war. Ifeanyi Nsionu was a 6-year-old boy when the Biafra War broke out in 1967. "We really suffered, Nsionu said. We were in a refugee camp. And then they were feeding us in the camp. It was horrible. We had to eat lizards. All these guys that are agitating for this Biafra thing, a majority of them are those who may not have witnessed this war. They do not understand what it is to be in a civil war." Nsionu says reaching out to Trump is not a bad idea, although he doesn't expect the U.S. president-elect to do much for Nigeria. "I did support Trump right from the beginning, he said. I wanted a complete change from Obama's policy. Obama's policy for Africa was not encouraging. I don't know the ideology of Trump now, but I know that Trump will be after America first. By the time he stays the next four years and he must have done what he wanted to do for America, he may begin to see what else is happening elsewhere." Nsionu can only hope that when that time comes, Trump will throw his support behind the Biafra movement. "What about the American election?" asked Abass, a 25-year-old former student from a village near Mosul. He had fled Islamic State militants three days before, and moved into a tent in a camp outside the war zones. It had been more than two-and-a-half years since he stopped going to college after IS militants took over the region, but he was still interested in politics. Like more than a dozen other people, he had gathered around to listen to us interview Ahmed, a grandfather, about what it was like to live in a village under IS. Other people in the crowd were chiming in about the war and the militants as Ahmed spoke, but when Abass jumped in, everyone stopped. Ahmed was next to speak on the issue. "Trump, definitely Trump," he said. "Trump is strong and will sweep in and destroy all terrorists in Iraq." Abass laughed, and said what is more or less the equivalent of "No way man," in Arabic. "Everyone knows Trump hates Muslims." At this, the crowd grew boisterous, arguing among themselves gleefully. The vote in the U.S. was still a week away and in their opinion U.S. leadership is directly tied to the security - or complete lack thereof - of the people. Then-candidate for U.S. president Republican Donald Trump was seen as strong against terrorism, but definitely a racist. Trump's opponent Democrat Hillary Clinton was hailed for not being a racist, but was held responsible for policies in the Middle East that led to the humanitarian crisis unfolding around them. To what degree she is responsible seemed to sway some people to or from her side. "How are you even following the elections?" I asked. No one in the crowd had been out of IS territory for more than a few days. "You said under IS mobile phones are forbidden, satellites forbidden and your televisions were stolen." "Radios of course," answered Ahmed, and then resumed his tale about IS walking into his unguarded town and declaring it would now rule in an Islamic way. Two-and-a-half years later, homeless and heartbroken, their rule was anything but Godly, he said. US Election results It was mid-morning here on Nov. 9 when the election results were called and I was surprised how fast my phone lit up. While my American friends were sleeping, exhausted from being glued to the televised election result shows, friends across the Middle East were starting their day. Zachariah, a Yemeni refugee in Saudi Arabia was the first to send me a Whatsapp message text/emoticon equivalent of chanting, "Trump" in both English and Arabic. As far as he was concerned, a vote for Hillary was a vote for IS. Another friend here in Kurdish Iraq sent word by Facebook, arguing passionately that Trump will be a strong leader against terrorism, and the cacophony of conspiracy theories surrounding Hillary Clinton couldn't all be wrong. Both candidates were lame, he argued, and at least Trump was smart enough to win, even if it was by using anti-Islamic rhetoric. A few hours later back at the refugee camp, which had gone from empty to packed in a matter of weeks, there was little talk of the U.S. election. Security forces at the gates were overwhelmed trying to keep order as aid workers and families tried to get in and out. Driving out of the camp and the military zone that evening, a peshmerga soldier stopped our car at a checkpoint." You're American?" he asked in Kurdish." Who do you support, Trump or Clinton?" My colleague translated, and I asked "What's the right answer?" not wanting to offend the soldier. "Just say you didn't vote," my colleague advised. But before I could answer, the soldier stuck his thumb in the window and pointed up." Yeah, Hillary," he cheered. Pakistan says that unprovoked overnight shelling by India across the disputed Kashmir frontier killed seven Pakistani troops. The incident occurred in Bhimber sector along the Line of Control, which separates Pakistani and Indian portions of the divided Himalayan region, according to a military statement issued Monday. Pakistani troops retaliated and effectively targeted Indian posts, it said, without giving further details. The Pakistan government condemned the deadly attack, adding that 26 civilians have died in recent Indian shelling, while more than 100 have been wounded. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression. The Indian Forces have resorted to escalating tension on LoC (Line of Control) only to detract the world's attention from the grave human rights situation in the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK)", an official statement quoted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as saying. Pakistan has summoned the Indian High Commissioner to the Foreign Ministry to formally protest the killings of its soldiers. The government in New Delhi has not yet responded to the allegation. Locked in clashes India and Pakistan have been locked in intense, intermittent military clashes in Kashmir for weeks but Mondays causalities are the highest troop death toll any side has suffered so far. The skirmishes have also caused civilian casualties on both sides, forcing thousands of villagers near the LoC to flee for safety. The fighting has torn apart a 2003 mutual cease-fire in Kashmir, raising fears the current tensions could escalate into another war between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi, Abdul Basit, has called for the restoration of the Kashmir cease-fire deal and the resumption of a sustained and irreversible peace dialogue to improve bilateral ties. I want to emphasize that war is not the solution to our problems. And I hope you would agree with me that if we have to find a solution to our disputes, we will have to do it only through sustained peace talks, noted Basit as part of a public talk in the Indian city of Lucknow. A wide-ranging dialogue between India and Pakistan to normalize relations remains suspended. New Delhi wants Islamabad to condemn groups allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in India from the Pakistani side. Basit urged India to desist from attaching any preconditions for resuming the dialogue process. Indian officials want Pakistan to expedite the trial of several suspected Islamists linked to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in which 166 people were killed. But Islamabad insists New Delhi has not provided substantive evidence linking the suspects to the carnage in order to further the judicial process. Starwood Capital's Sternlicht says China knows there's a new sheriff in town in Trump China "respects strength," and that could bode well for relations between Washington and Beijing under Donald Trump 's presidency, global investor Barry Sternlicht told CNBC on Monday. Sternlicht, founder, chairman and CEO of the $51 billion investment firm Starwood Capital Group, said on "Squawk Box" that China knows things have changed with the Trump win. "A strong U.S. economy, regardless how it happens, is good for the Chinese," he argued, saying he's optimistic about the American economy under Trump. Following their first post-election talk, Trump and China's president held a telephone call over the weekend, and established a "mutual respect," according to a statement from the president-elect's transition team. Trump was highly critical of China throughout the campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Sternlicht suggested Trump may need to temper that kind of rhetoric if he wants to succeed. "If you want to be great in this country as president, you have to go to the center," he said. "If that happens, he has a chance to be great. In May , during the thick of the presidential race, Sternlicht told CNBC he knows both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton , and could support either of them if they move to the center. Sternlicht said Monday he expects Trump will rely on his advisors. "Everything for Trump, I think for those of us know him, will be about his Cabinet. Donald will delegate. He will go to experts in fields and instincts ... will drive his thoughts." Over the weekend, Trump chose Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to be his chief of staff and Steve Bannon, ex-president of conservative Breitbart News and more recently chief of Trump's campaign, to serve as "chief strategist and senior counselor." Story continues Reuters contributed to this report. More From CNBC A local force of Arab tribesmen in northern Syria has been trained to fight alongside Kurdish fighters who are slowly advancing to recapture Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State, according to Kurdish commanders and tribal leaders. The Arab force, composed of more than 2,000 men, will fight IS under the command of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are in their second week of a long offensive toward Raqqa. "These are young men from Raqqa who will be battling [IS] inside the city when our forces get near there," said Nasir Hajji Mansur, a commander with SDF on the front lines, told VOA Monday. The Arabs are from villages and areas recently cleared of IS north of Raqqa. Many of them come from Raqqa city and fled after IS took over in 2014. They will be wearing the SDF uniforms and using weapons supplied by the Kurds, commanders said. Many villages cleared With the help of U.S. air support, the SDF has cleared dozens of villages in northern Raqqa from IS militants. More than 30,000 SDF fighters are in the operation that likely will take months before nearing the limits of Raqqa, Kurdish military sources told VOA. They are about 30 kilometers away from the IS stronghold. Turkey objects to the Kurdish offensive, however, saying Turkish-backed rebels should take the lead to free Raqqa. Turkey also has voiced objections about the makeup of the SDF, almost two-thirds of which is Kurdish. Some of the most capable and effective of those Kurdish forces are People's Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara regards as a terrorist organization. The inclusion of non-Kurdish Arab tribesmen in the fight for Raqqa is an attempt to mollify fears that a Kurdish-led offensive could escalate tensions with residents, locals say. Raqqa had a pre-war population of about 500,000 people with a Sunni Arab majority, but now it is estimated to have around 200,000 people. There have been tensions between Arab and Kurdish groups in the past in some areas after IS has been cleared out, according to locals and Kurdish fighters. Kurdish troops won't stay "There is an anti-Kurdish propaganda that says the [Kurds] will carry out abuses against civilians in Raqqa," said Mohammed Shlash, an Arab and former member of the city council in Raqqa. But Kurdish military officials say their forces do not plan to stay in the city after Raqqa is freed from IS control. "It makes no sense for us to stay there," Kurdish commander Mansur said. "Once we have liberated Raqqa, a local administration will assume governance." Kurdish forces also need the expertise of Arab tribesmen, whose ancestors have lived in the region for centuries. "Kurds have to make sure they don't provoke the locals," said Qusai Hwaidi, a political activist from Raqqa, who regularly advises tribal leaders. "To do so, they need to have the tribes on their side. Only that will guarantee peace in Raqqa after IS." Meeting in Turkey U.S. military officials met with their counterparts early this month in Turkey to discuss the Raqqa operation and "to find the right mix of forces" to liberate the city, said U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. The U.S. is sure, however, that Kurdish-led forces are capable of leading the charge. "We do believe that they have the expertise," U.S. Col. John Dorrian told Pentagon reporters recently. "They were very successful in developing a plan for the liberation of Manbij," he said of a town in northern Syria freed from IS in August. "And we believe that, certainly, with coalition help, they can do the same in Raqqa." Kurdish forces withdrew from Manbij weeks after they freed the town from IS fighters. "Kurdish forces have liberated other Sunni Arab areas such as Manbij where they were welcomed by locals," said Sadradeen Kinno, a Syrian reporter covering developments in Raqqa. "The Raqqa operation will be similar to that in Manbij in this regard." Bulgaria's Socialist Party candidate has won the presidential election, leading to the resignation of the country's prime minister. Former air force commander General Rumen Radev, a Russian-friendly political novice, won nearly 60 percent of the vote, according to nearly complete results released Monday. Tsetska Tsacheva, the candidate of the ruling center-right GERB party, fell far short in his attempt to become president. Prime Minister Boyko Borisov congratulated Radev and announced his resignation, after what political analysts called a "catastrophic defeat," saying it was clear the ruling coalition had no majority and under the new situation could not make any reforms. Radev is to take office on January 22 for a five-year term. His first job will likely be to call early parliamentary elections next year because of Borisovs resignation. Analysts had speculated that a surprise Radev win could strengthen Russian influence in ex-communist Bulgaria, one of the poorest members of the 28-nation European Union. That speculation had been bolstered by Radev's campaign support for the lifting of Western sanctions against Russia for Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis of 2014. Additionally, many of the country's 7.2 million residents maintain cultural ties to Moscow, which also supplies Bulgaria with much of its energy needs. Prime Minister Borisov's center-right coalition has dominated Bulgaria's political landscape for much of the past decade, with Borisov first elected prime minister in 2009. But halfway into its current four-year term, the coalition government has faced months of anti-corruption protests, as well as pressure to speed up the pace of judicial reforms and anti-graft initiatives. A suicide bomber killed six people and wounded six others Monday near the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. The country's Interior Ministry said security forces killed five other attackers, and that the suicide bomber blew himself up inside a house after being surrounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. It happened in Ain al-Tamer, about 50 kilometers from Karbala. The city is home to a vastly important shrine for Shi'ites, who are considered heretics by the Islamic State group responsible for multiple similar attacks. The bombing also came as Shi'ites prepared to mark Arbaeen, the end of a 40-day mourning period commemorating the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein. While bombings are frequent in Iraq, they are relatively rare south of Baghdad, which accounts for the vast majority of civilian casualties linked to acts of terrorism and armed conflict. President-elect Donald Trump has two words for those assaulting minorities with cries of "White Power" - "Stop it." Trump held his first television interview since winning the contentious and sometimes mean-spirited presidential election last week. He spoke Friday to CBS television's 60 Minutes which broadcast the interview Sunday night. Some Trump supporters have felt emboldened by his tough campaign rhetoric aimed at Muslims and Mexicans. He said he knew nothing about the assaults against minorities since his election and said he "hates to hear that," telling the perpetrators of violence "don't do it." To the thousands of anti-Trump protesters, including those outside his New York City home and office tower, Trump said the demonstrators don't know him. He said he would tell them not to be afraid and that a newly-elected leader has to be given a little time. The tough-talking and sometimes temperamental Trump that millions saw during the campaign appeared to be genuinely humbled by the huge responsibility staring at him. Not a wild man He said winning the election was "enormous" and that it took his breath away. He referred to himself as a "very sober person" and "not a wild man," and that he is not scared about the job he is facing. Trump said he cannot regret some of the vicious comments he made about his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but said he wishes the campaign was softer and nicer and more about policy. He called Clinton "very strong and smart." But after threatening her with jail and leading chants of "lock her up" during the race, Trump now says he has to think about whether to ask a special prosecutor to investigate her handling of emails as secretary of state. He said he does not want to hurt the Clintons. When asked about his meeting with President Barack Obama, Trump said his election is not a repudiation of the Obama presidency, but more of a feeling by voters that all politicians have let them down. He said he and the Republican leadership talked about three issues they want to tackle right away - health care, immigration, and taxes. While he promised to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, he declined to say outright if he would like to see Roe vs. Wade - the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion - overturned. Marriage equality is law But he called marriage equality "the law, it's done" and said it is irrelevant if he personally supports or opposes gay marriage. Trump refused to say how he plans to destroy Islamic State, another one of his major campaign pledges. He said the generals have not done their job. Trump is a billionaire real-estate developer whose name appears on a number of enterprises, inclining resorts and clothing. He said he will refuse to accept a salary as president, but will take $1 a year as a token payment. China's president has offered the U.S. president-elect congratulations on his recent win at the polls in their first telephone conversation. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed Monday to meet "at an early date" to discuss the relationship between the two countries. A statement from Trump's office in New York said, "During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another and President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward." Xi told Trump, according to CCTV, that "the facts prove that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States." "The two sides must strengthen coordination, promote the two countries' economic development and global economic growth, expand all areas of exchange and cooperation, ensure the two countries' people obtain more tangible benefits, and push for better development going forward in China-U.S. relations," CCTV reported. During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Trump was highly critical of China's trade practices and currency manipulations. He said China viewed the United States as a pushover. But much less is known about how Trump might seek to address worsening human rights conditions, Chinas trade practices and geopolitical issues in the worlds second-largest economy. Peter Navarro, said to be one of Trumps top China advisers during the campaign, wrote an article on the website Foreign Policy hinting the two countries' relations might change with the new administration. He said under President Barack Obama, the U.S. refocus on Asia has been a failure. The weak pivot follow-through has invited the Chinese aggression in the East and South China Seas," Navarro wrote, contending a Trump administration would address these issues by pursuing a strategy of peace through strength. Some experts predict Trump will make a few strident anti-Beijing military moves in the area to prove a point and then back off to engage the Chinese economically. He has to flex American muscle, said Eduardo Araral, an associate professor at the National University of Singapores public policy school. He has to tell his domestic constituency he has won back the Philippines that was lost to China. So he needs to show his constituency that he has won where Obama has failed. But Trump has yet to officially define a position on the South China Sea disputes. China has separate maritime sovereignty disputes with Philippines and Japan. The country also accuses the United States of trying to contain its expansion. Economically, during his campaign, Trump targeted Beijings trade practices, threatening to slap 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. Experts said the move would affect first China, ripple across the world and then rebound on the United States. The 45 percent tax would have Chinese exports to the worlds largest economy decrease by 87 percent or $420 billion, according to Daiwa Capital Markets analyst Kevin Lai. A smaller rate, 15 percent or so, Lai said would see a fall in exports by 31 percent and eventually cost China 1.75 percent of its GDP. I dont think it is feasible as a matter of politics, and I dont think it is feasible as a matter of legal authority," Christopher Balding of Perkins University Business School told AFP. Even if it seems that with Trump there is nothing you cant rule out." Meanwhile, right activists and regional political analysts are wondering whether traditional American support for rights could soften at a time when they say the Chinese public needs an advocate more than ever. It seems that these attitudes probably [could] spill over to a generally hostile attitude toward human rights in other countries as well, says Maya Wang, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch based in Hong Kong. It is worrying, given that the U.S. government has been largely a consistent supporter of pressing human rights in China and we fear we might lose an important ally. Hu Jia, a prominent activist, was sentenced to jail for more than three years in 2008 and released before Xi came to power. He told VOA that for many in China, Trump is an unknown quantity. His remarks about foreign policy, religion and rights on the campaign trail and all the other comments hes made dont instill us with confidence, Hu Jia said. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump did not make the maritime disputes in South China Sea a major part of his election campaign and his approach to Asias most expansive sovereignty disagreement is still not clear. Some experts predict, however, that he will make a few strident anti-Beijing military moves in the area to prove a point and then back off to engage the Chinese economically. Trump South China Sea policy People who follow U.S. policy in Asia expect Trump to make a quick show of force. That show might include passage of U.S. naval ships through the 3.5 million-square-km (1.4 million-square-mile) sea to show it is open to all countries despite Chinas claim to the entire body of water, said Sean King, senior vice president with the New York political consultancy Park Strategies. They say a military move would support anti-China campaign remarks by Trump, who ran on the Republican Party ticket, and let him appear tougher than current President Barack Obama of the rival Democratic Party. Some in Trumps camp may see a loss to the United States as the Philippines, a sea claimant and traditional U.S. ally, has moved closer to Beijing since June. He has to flex American muscle, said Eduardo Araral, an associate professor at the National University of Singapores public policy school. He has to tell his domestic constituency he has won back the Philippines that was lost to China. So he needs to show his constituency that he has won where Obama has failed. Trump has yet to roll out a formal South China Sea policy. The United States is not among the six claimant governments, but Obama has used verbal warnings and periodic military movements to check China, the biggest force in the dispute. The New York real estate billionaire said on his campaign website that a stronger U.S. military deployment in the South China Sea would counter Chinese adventurism as Beijing tries to expand its influence. Trump also criticized China for taking disputed islets in the sea and reclaiming land for others. China has reclaimed an estimated 3,200 acres (1,295 hectares). A strong military presence will be a clear signal to China and other nations in Asia and around the world that America is back in the global leadership business, the campaign website said. Economic reality Once Trump has shown initial force in the sea, his government will probably drop military action in favor of a practical business partnership with China, analysts say. Details are scarce as to what Trumps policy approach to the Asia Pacific might look like, and many of his off-the-cuff remarks have sent mixed signals about how the administration might proceed, said Jonathan Spangler, director of the Taipei-based South China Sea Think Tank. Had Clinton won the election, theres little doubt that she would have continued to prioritize the Asia Pacific region. Cabinet an indicator An Asia policy might become clearer when Trump picks policy architects such as the next secretaries of state and defense, King said. China will likely find a business-minded leader like Trump to be easier to influence than a political and ideologically minded leader like Clinton, Spangler forecast. Trump takes a cold view toward free trade, a core part of Sino-U.S. ties today. He has called China a cheater and a currency manipulator. But ultimately he will reach out to the Communist leadership in the interest of American businesses that rely on Asias biggest market and manufacturing base, analysts believe. Exports of American goods to China totaled $113 billion in 2015. That figure made China the third biggest destination for American products after Canada and Mexico, the nonprofit advocacy group US-China Business Council said in a report this year. At the end of the day Trump is a marketing man, Araral says. He wants to make deals. If it brings domestic benefits to the U.S., he will do it. Trump may also cut the military budget as part of a refocus on domestic policy, limiting action in the South China Sea, said Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic affairs professor in Taipei. When Donald Trump ascends to the presidency, he will scale back the military presence in [the] South China Sea for sure, Lin said. Of course Beijing is silently smiling now. China has irritated Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines by passing vessels through their claimed exclusive economic zones of 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) off their coastlines and occupying islets in those zones. Beijing, which claims about 95 percent of the sea that extends from Taiwan to Singapore, began a visible expansion push in 2010 into the tropical body of water prized for fisheries, gas, oil and commercial shipping lanes. "Obamacare is just blowing up," said then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Florida last month, telling his audience that health care costs could rise far past the levels the White House has forecast. By his own estimation, Trump said, "you're talking about 60, 70, 80 percent increases, not 25 percent." Trump went on to say, "Obamacare has to be repealed and replaced, and it has to be replaced with something much less expensive." This line of thought was welcome to congressional Republicans, many of whom have been trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), nicknamed Obamacare, since it was instituted in 2010. Changing position But Friday, Trump, now president-elect, changed his position on the health care plan that pledges to give every uninsured U.S. citizen coverage. After a meeting with President Barack Obama, Trump said he is open to leaving key parts of the Affordable Care Act intact. Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that his 90-minute meeting with Obama -- longer than expected - made him reconsider his call for a total repeal of Obamacare. In particular, he said he might try to keep the provision that allows parents to keep their young adult children on their insurance plans through age 26, and the ban on insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. But experts say the situation requires more than an outright repeal or a cut-and-paste of the health care elements Trump likes and dislikes. "There are 22 million people who would be hurt, who would be without insurance, if the ACA is completely repealed," said Abbe Gluck, professor and faculty director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. "When the rubber hits the road, it's going to be hard for the Republicans to take away 22 million people's health care." Open to some parts of law Gluck told VOA she thinks the Republicans, as well as Trump himself, may be open to preserving some of the existing health care law, once the ramifications of wiping out people's newly acquired health insurance make themselves clear. "It's very hard to take insurance away from someone who has it, especially someone who's never had it before," she said. But the problem with keeping the two provisions Trump says he likes, experts say, is that they are paid for by some other provisions that are less attractive, such as the mandate that all adults in the U.S. have health care coverage. The healthy adults in the system contribute the funds that help pay for the sick people who cannot be denied coverage. Without that mandate, Gluck said Trump will have to find some other source of funds for the insurance companies covering people with pre-existing conditions. "He's going to have to find some way to bring healthy people into the insurance market," she said. "It's too easy to say we're going to repeal the things we don't like and keep the things we do like, because all those provisions were integrated to support each other." Democratic support A complete repeal might not be that easy anyway - the Republicans in Congress have tried more than 60 times in the past six years to vote to defund the program, and have not been successful. Given Democrats' vociferous defense of Obamacare, Trump would need at least 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to ensure victory. What could happen instead, Gluck said, is that a Trump presidency could allow for some tweaks to the existing health care system and maybe even work out some problems. "Everybody thinks there are ways to improve the Affordable Care Act," she said. More than 100,000 people signed up for healthcare the day after the election, according to the US. Department of Health and Human Services, indicating that people were worried that if they didn't sign up now, they wouldn't get to sign up at all. Gluck said that involvement is an indicator that lawmakers constituents would not be happy with a sudden repeal without a replacement in place - a replacement Republicans have not been able to come up with so far. "I think Republicans are looking at how to preserve some of that coverage," she said. "It would be a positive result if that happened." U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has presented a clash of visions with his first White House appointments, naming a consummate Washington insider as his chief of staff and a populist, hard-right insurgent as his chief strategist. Days after his stunning upset victory, the Republican president-elect on Sunday picked Reince Priebus, the party's national chairman and a familiar face in the national capital's political battles, to lead his staff, a reassuring choice for many of the Republican leaders who control Congress. The chief of staff typically controls White House operations, often helping to forge the president's agenda and controlling who gets to see him. At the same time, Trump named Stephen Bannon, his campaign chief executive, as his top strategist, giving his White House a rabble-rousing edge that Trump's most vocal supporters cheered during the lengthy U.S. presidential race. Before joining the campaign in its final months, Bannon headed the Breitbart News website, which he once described as "the platform of the alt-right," an anti-establishment platform that occasionally has been home to white nationalist and anti-Semitic vitriol. I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country, Trump said in a statement. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again. Insider vs outsider Republican lawmakers praised the choice of Priebus, with one Trump critic, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham saying, "It shows me he is serious about governing." But Bannon's appointment drew immediate attacks from some Republicans and those outside the government. John Weaver, a long-time Republican strategist, said on his Twitter account, The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said his group opposes the Bannon appointment because he and "alt-right are so hostile to core American values." Both Priebus and Bannon dismissed any suggestion that they would not work well on Trump's behalf in the White House. "Together, we've been able to manage a lot of the decision-making in regard to the campaign," Priebus told NBC on Monday "It's worked very, very well." Bannon said, "We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda." In Bannon's defense, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway called him a "brilliant tactician" and noted that Bannon served as a U.S. naval officer and has a graduate degree from Harvard, one of the country's most prestigious universities. Conway said that Priebus and Bannon "complement each other. They both have the most important thing: the ear of the boss. Protests Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in major cities to protest Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, shocking to many Americans because pre-election polls suggested the former U.S. secretary of State was headed to election as the country's first female president. But in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" show that aired Sunday night, Trump said of the protesters, "I just don't think they know me." He told those wary of his presidency, "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back." Trump laid out some of his initial priorities for when he assumes power on January 20, saying that he will keep his campaign pledges to deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country who have criminal records, and build a wall along the country's southern border with Mexico to halt the stream of migrants into the United States. He made it clear he plans, as he said during the campaign, to pursue a right-wing agenda, naming Supreme Court justices who are against abortion and favor gun rights. But he said he was "fine" with another Supreme Court decision opposed by many conservatives, one that legalized same-sex marriage. Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul about to hold his first elective office, said he would forgo the $400,000 annual salary U.S. presidents are paid, and take $1 as a token wage. Swedish law enforcement officials interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about rape accusations on Monday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012. "Ecuador has granted the Swedish request for legal assistance in criminal matters and the hearing will be conducted by an Ecuadorian prosecutor," said a statement released by Swedens public prosecutor's office Monday. "A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the statement continued. The 45-year-old Australian national was accused of rape and sexual assault in Sweden in 2010. He has resisted traveling to Sweden because he says authorities may extradite him to the United States, where he faces questions about the leak of more than 500,000 secret files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assanges lawyer welcomed the interview. We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010, 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, he added. Supporters hope for end to ordeal Outside the embassy, Assange supporters gathered as he was inside being questioned by prosecutors. "[Julian Assange] has claimed and been given political asylum which is his right under national and international human rights law. He is willing to answer the questions, Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said. The question we have to ask is why have the Swedish prosecutors taken so long to come here and ask him those questions, even though they were rebuked way back in 2014 by the Swedish courts for the delays and hesitations. They are here now, Julian Assange will answer those questions, and let's hope that will be an end to it, he added. An Ecuadorian prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren led the questioning. Isgren left the embassy along with a Swedish police investigator. Neither official talked to reporters. According to officials, no immediate decision on the future of Assange's case will be made on Monday. But Samuelsson told reporters he had "high hopes" the case will be closed once the investigation is complete. He also criticized not being allowed in the interview room. "I'm not on the list of persons that Ecuador has drawn up and allowed to be present," he told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. "An Ecuadorian lawyer has taken up this question as a formal issue in the introduction of the hearing." Last year, Swedish officials dropped a sexual assault case against Assange after a five-year statute of limitations expired. The 2010 rape allegation carries a 10-year statute of limitation. In September, a Swedish appeals court decided to uphold Assanges arrest warrant. Assange has maintained both sexual encounters were consensual. Reports say even if Swedish authorities agree to drop the investigation, the WikiLeaks founder could still be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain. WikiLeaks has made international news in recent months by leaking tens of thousands of hacked emails from the U.S. Democratic Party as well as from staff members from presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports Yemeni authorities are deporting hundreds of migrants from the Horn of Africa to Djibouti under deplorable conditions. IOM does not assist governments in the forcible deportation of migrants but spokesman Itayi Viriri says the IOM is a humanitarian organization and as such cannot turn a blind eye to the desperation of people who have been expelled from a country such as Yemen and are in need of assistance. Viriri told VOA Yemeni authorities are forcibly deporting migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, who have been languishing in detention in sub-standard conditions with little food, water or medical care. He said a boatload of 82 Ethiopian migrants was unceremoniously dropped off last week in a small coastal town about 30 kilometers from Obock in Djibouti. These people are in a really desperate situation. They are left out in the open and... what we see, I mean the condition of the migrants who are deported basically were in very bad conditions, dehydrated, without enough to eat, barely enough clothes on their backs. Viriri said Djiboutian authorities confirm at least 24 migrants have died in recent weeks due to deportation conditions. In a separate operation, the IOM has taken advantage in a lull in the fighting in Yemen to resume the voluntary return of thousands of stranded Ethiopians and Somalis to their home countries. This long-term operation was temporarily suspended due to airstrikes and ground combat in Yemen. Viriri said 150 migrants, including 118 unaccompanied minors and 31 women, were evacuated from the city of Hodeidah in western Yemen aboard an IOM-chartered boat, which arrived Friday in Djibouti. He said there are plans to evacuate another 600 Ethiopians from Hodeidah at a rate of 150 people every four days from now until the end of December. Additionally, he said the IOM aims to help 2,500 Somalis stranded in Yemens southern port city of Aden return home by boat and plane. The next evacuation from Aden to Somalia, he said, should take place in early December. Zimbabwes liberation war veterans of the 1970s are demanding gratuities of up to $500,000 each backdated to 1980. The war veterans told Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi and War Veterans Minister Retired Colonel Tshinga Dube and his secretary Retired Brigadier General Walter Tapfumaneyi in a meeting at the weekend in Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West province, that they allegedly made an agreement with the government at that time for them to be paid certain amounts of money following the payout of lump sums of $50,000 each. Moffat Marashwa, a former senior committee member of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, asked Sekeramayi to go and remind their patron President Robert Mugabe that he has to pay the gratuities without fail. Marashwa claimed that the payout is part of the deal that was reached by the Chenjerai Hunzvi-led war veterans committee and the government. Sekeramayi and Dube could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the so-called agreement. Sekeramayi noted that he needs to consult the government before making any tangible commitments. Expelled Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association spokesperson Douglas Mahiya confirmed that when they struck a deal with President Mugabe for each war to receive $50,000 there was an agreement that they were to receive $500,000 each back-dated to 1980. War veterans, led by Hunzvi, staged protests against the government in 1997 pressing the state to pay them large sums of money each. Payment of the gratuities, which had not been included in the countrys budget, led to a dramatic crash in the value of the Zimbabwe dollar and an economic downturn. Since the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the United States elections, several jihadist officers have been assassinated not only in East Aleppo, but also in Idlib, al-Raqqah, and in Iraq. For the moment, it is not clear whether these murders are the result of inter-gang rivalry, or if the Obama administration is cleaning up the signs of its crimes before the investiture of President Trump. Since 1978, the United States and Saudi Arabia have been recruiting and organising jihadists against the USSR, then against Russia, in violation of Resolution 2625 and the Charter of the United Nations. During the wars in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Algeria, Chechnya, Iraq, Libya and Syria, more than 1 million people have been killed by jihadists. Computer Science In-Service The Department of Education, in conjunction with the Kusuma Trust and the Gibraltar University, recently hosted a 3-day in-service on Computer Science. Professor Stephen Hailes, Rae Harbird and David White from University College London delivered the course to a first cohort of 22 teachers, representing all local schools. It is expected that other cohorts will follow: 97 teachers have expressed an interest in extending their learning of coding and computational thinking. The course has been prepared and delivered in a way that it will empower teachers to lead initiatives in this field on returning to their schools. During the course teachers discussed and analysed the way ahead in the teaching of Computer Science and the impact that it will have in many aspects of the teaching and learning that is currently happening in our schools. They also explored and fine-tuned skills associated with algorithms, programming and robotics. It has not all been about sitting behind a laptop: the lecturers skilfully brought the programme to life by asking teachers initially to stand in as robots before building them for real and getting them to follow instructions. Donald Trump. Photo: CBS It is so big, it is so enormous, it is so amazing. Thats how President-elect Donald Trump described his Electoral College victory and ascension to the White House to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl Sunday night. In a still sharply divided nation, the words were equally as likely to be heard with glee as sorrow. The CBS newsmagazine interview had been recorded two days prior to its broadcast, on a Friday, two days after Trumps opponent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had called Trump to concede. Wed heard words like that throughout Trumps campaign, and throughout his public life. They were salesmans words, assuring prospective buyers that even though he didnt have all the details of a plan worked out, he was on top of it, dont you worry. How to describe the look on Stahls face as Trump used these words, his best words, his big-league words? At times the expression seemed skeptical. Other times it read as amusement, though maybe it was incredulity held in check by professionalism; in any case, it was indistinguishable from the way she would have addressed a famous athlete, attorney, or inventor of some new process for turning straw into gold or the reverse. He was just another president to her. Shed met so many, and here was another, so lets hear what he has to say, eh? And lets interview his wife and kids, too. Wed just gone through an election, after all. It happens every four years. Its normal. The president sitting across from a CBS News correspondent and shooting the breeze: normal. Normal. The word normalization has been thrown around a lot on social media this weekend, typically by people blindsided or horrified by Trumps victory. Dont normalize this, they said. Dont normalize a man accused of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct; a man who promised to build a wall between Mexico and the United States and make Mexico pay for it; a man who bragged about physically dominating rivals and at times appeared to exhort his followers to commit violence against protesters and reporters. Dont normalize a man whose more extreme followers have harassed and even assaulted women and people of color in the days following the election, and countered reports of harassment and violence by insisting theyre all fake, or that theyre payback for years of hurt feelings and unemployment. Dont normalize the dark spirits that have been unleashed. Dont. But this is what the mainstream media does. People magazine, which mere weeks ago published an article by a staffer who said Trump forced himself on her during an interview, put him on its cover, striding confidently toward the camera in a virtual replay of his slo-mo power walk in the opening credits of his NBC competition show The Apprentice. The magazines editor defended the choice to outraged readers, saying, The story is not a celebration or an endorsement and we continue to stand by Natasha Stoynoff, whose account of being attacked by Trump in 2005 is recounted in this weeks cover story. It was merely an escalation of an impulse that had been decried months earlier, when NBCs The Tonight Show welcomed Trump; host Jimmy Fallon Salacious Crumb to Trumps Jabba the Hutt mussed his weave as if he were an adorable grandfather. Nearly a year ago, that same networks Saturday Night Live booked Trump as a host, essentially letting him affix his name to the show as if it were another hotel or bankrupt casino. One night prior to Trumps 60 Minutes segment, Saturday Night Live seemed to collapse into itself with shame even as it came to terms with having to welcome its new insect overlords. Host Dave Chappelle ended his opening monologue by recounting a BET-sponsored party he attended at the White House, which made him feel proud to be an American and very happy about the future. So, in that spirit, Im wishing Donald Trump luck, he said. And Im going to give him a chance. And we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too. Was this bet-hedging or spin control? Maybe the latter. At CNN.com, Dean Obeidallah, a Muslim-American, posted a piece headlined Chappelle is right: Trump needs to earn our support, putting greater weight on the comics cutting remarks about the president-elect. Now there is a way that Trump could possibly get many not all of those in communities who opposed him to keep an open mind. But it will take more than Trump making a short victory speech, in which he said he wants to be president for all Americans. It will take action. And, to me, that is what Chappelle meant when he said we demand that you give us a chance. But on November 5, Chappelle did an hour-long set at The Cutting Room devoted mainly to ripping Clinton. Sexual assault? It wasnt, he said, referring to the infamous tape of Trump bragging to then-Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about how when youre a star of a show as popular as The Apprentice, you can grab women by the pussy. And when youre a star, they let you do it, Chappelle paraphrased. That phrase implies consent. I just dont like the way the media twisted that whole thing. Nobody questioned it. Saturday Night Live was either oblivious to its own role in the elections outcome or determined to make viewers forget. Kate McKinnon, the casts go-to Hillary Clinton impersonator, performed a solo piano version of Hallelujah, a signature song by the late, great Canadian musician Leonard Cohen, who died one day before the election; Tasteful, sorrowful, and unabashedly self-pitying, the number was the closest that the New York-based variety series has gotten to a hopeless lament. Im not giving up, and neither should you, said McKinnon or maybe it was Hillary the character, maybe both in a climactic, House of Cards-style aside, looking straight into the camera. On 60 Minutes, Trump said a lot of things that seemed like harbingers of the kind of pivot that media analysts and fans of human decency kept anticipating for roughly one full year, and that never arrived. But these tended to dissipate in a fog of ill-preparedness. Trump seemed to have no idea how the Supreme Court works, almost simultaneously promising that same-sex marriage wouldnt be endangered by conservative Supreme Court appointees (or perhaps that he himself had no opinion on the matter?), and trying to reassure those worried about the possible overturn of Roe v. Wade that, were abortion were to lose its constitutional protection, women could just go to another state. (The interview was still being edited when Trumps campaign announced the appointment of former Breitbart news chief and Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon, a white nationalistfriendly journalist accused by his ex-wife of making anti-Semitic remarks, as the administrations chief strategist.) Trump claimed that President Barack Obama who surely never imagined that hed hand the presidency to a man endorsed by the KKK was scheduled to spend 15 minutes with Trump last week but ended up spending 90, focusing on the Middle East and Obamacare, mainly. (Shocker: Turns out the meeting was always supposed to last for one hour.) On 60 Minutes, Trump offered few details of the amazing, incredible, big-league conversation hed had with the president, nor of any specific ideas for legislation or major cabinet nominations. At one point he looked straight into the camera and asked his followers to stop committing violence in his name, but only after repeated prompts by Stahl, and he declined to promise that he would tone down his more incendiary rhetoric after getting sworn in: Sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated. Alec Baldwin, a Clinton supporter and regular Saturday Night Live host, didnt play Trump on this weekends Saturday Night Live, and suggested on WNYCs The Brian Lehrer Show that he might not play him again. Im trying to shed the Donald Trump cloak, he said. Too late; perhaps, like Dr. Stranges heavy cloak, the spirit of Trump chooses you, and after a while its weight feels normal. During the last episode of Last Week Tonights third season, John Oliver dedicated the half-hour to President-elect Donald Trump and saying, Fuck you to 2016. Oliver, who has been a vocal opponent to Trumps political ambitions for a while, felt it was his duty to call out the media for not doing enough to communicate the reality of a Trump presidency. He asked viewers who were worried about particular issues womens health, LGBT rights, protecting the environment to give money to advocacy groups and nonprofits helping these causes. He also requested that everyone do their part to remember that Donald Trumps views are not normal. Unlike other seasons, which ended with a big celebration, this years concluded with Oliver blowing up the craptastic year that has given us numerous celebrity deaths, an escalating Syrian refugee crisis, and a campaign cycle that brought the nation to levels way below rock bottom. HBO has made the full episode available on YouTube, and you can watch it all above. These ladies are certainly firing on all emotional and bitchy cylinders this evening. Every little bit of drama is wrung out of them like a titty-sweat-soaked towel. Before we can get to the room-escape adventure, theres a housewarming party to wrap up. Porsha and Phaedra walk into Kenyas house and Sheree is still cackling like a stunned witch. Porsha explains shes Phaedras plus-one and everyone suddenly has to study the paint on the wall. Could that be steamed milk or ecru? Porsha has some weak compliments for the house: Its got walls and flooring. Kenya rolls in and sees Porsha and she gets stress sweat between her boobs where her jumpsuit is forcing them together. Kenya asks Porsha to come outside and asks her in a pretty measured and reasonable way to leave. Porsha wasnt invited. Unfortunately, Kenya finds it harder to draw such clear boundaries with Matt. Reality-TV producers need to stop giving men with emotionally or physically abusive tendencies access to their female stars. How did Matt just find his way to Kenyas housewarming if she didnt invite him? If she invited him and were all just playing stupid for the cameras, then fine. If not, they know theyre wrong for this. Porsha, Phaedra, and Sheree head out as Matt arrives. He puts his face very close to Kenyas and they go upstairs to talk. Well, they do talk at first and he promises to work to win his queen back. My eyes rolled so hard, I could momentarily see into my own past. Matt doesnt mention anything specific hes going to do and Kenya says one of the reasons shes willing to take Matt back is that its scary to think about starting over with someone new. I wrote, OH LORD, KENYA in my notes. That should tell you everything I feel about this development. They spend the next three days banging. There goes taking things slowly. Cynthia is at home with her gorgeous daughter, Noelle, talking about her impending divorce from Peter. Cynthia is shocked that her daughter noticed that she was unhappy, and Noelle says, Do you have low self-esteem because nobody just sits there and argues over and over? Cynthia breaks down and Noelle comforts her. No jokes here, Cynthia seems to legit be going through a tough time. Thankfully, the episode snaps us right back to tomfoolery as we get a first look at Kandis new baby line, Raising Ace, complete with rocking-horse toilet seats for actual infants. Kandi is not one to let a money-making opportunity pass her by. If she can monetize the tiny human that just came out of her body, by God, she will. Mama Joyce shows up to check on the progress for the Old Lady Gang restaurant. Mama Joyce starts talking about Phaedra, Porsha, and anyone else that pops into her head. Shes the Bianca Del Rio of Atlanta. Phaedra sits down for lunch with Kenya; Porsha sits down to lunch with Sheree. The editors have a field day with this one. Phaedra tells Kenya that some regular dick in her life makes her skin just glow. Porsha and Sheree lament being labeled Angry Black Women with no irony or self-awareness. Kenya wants to know if Porshas anger management means shes cured. Porsha wants to get everyone together for an afternoon of fun, but Kenya is waiting for an invite, preferably delivered by a baby owl on a pillow. Kandi brings Bertha, Nora, and Mama Joyce to check on the progress of the Old Lady Gang restaurant since its still under construction. Bertha, Nora, and Mama Joyce are currently my favorite people on Earth and I would desperately like them to have a spinoff show. They could do anything solve mysteries, take dance classes, just talk about peoples cousins. You know they have 22 hours of material on aint shit cousins. The OLG is excited about getting paid to stand around and pose for pictures and make cakes. As they drive off into the sunset, they scream, YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS! We getting paid! Kenya takes Cynthia and Kandi to get their whole bodies waxed. Any hair under the nose must be removed. After shes made completely smooth, Cynthia goes to get coffee with Peter and hes predictably triflin. He tells her that answering the lawyers phone calls just was not a priority in his life. Peter. He finally realized he had to do something when he went to the hospital and he couldnt call Cynthia anymore. He pulls out his phone and tells the lawyer to send the papers. Theyre both crying. Everyone in the coffee shop is crying. Im crying, although that might be election-related. Its time for the room-escape adventure. Everyone shows up in their workout clothes except for Kenya and Cynthia, who have giant-ass hats or the attitude equivalent of showing up somewhere in a big-ass hat. The teams will be Phaedra, Sheree, and Kandi against Cynthia, Kenya, and Porsha. The brains vs. the dear God are they still screaming at each other?! They split off into the zombie room and Sherlocks library. Both teams press the Clue button 45 imes and neither team manages to escape. Porsha says, Nobody won! Thats right. Nobody won. And Im crying again, this time definitely for election reasons. On the way out, Sheree and Kenya start talking for some unknown reason and tear into each other about how neither of them helped the other during their decade-long home-building process. Kenya storms out and Sheree shouts, Youre shopping at Ikea! Your shit aint finished. Go twirl on some baseboards. Correction: Sheree wins. President The Rock Johnson. Photo: Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage/Getty Images On the one hand, The Rock isnt exactly the hero American democracy needs right now. On other hand, he is here. The actor, who famously spoke at the Republican National Convention, told Vanity Fair at a recent Moana press conference that he wouldnt rule out the prospect of a run for the White House in 2020. It would be a great opportunity to help people, so its possible, he said. This past election shows that anything can happen. Now, given that Dwayne Johnson isnt exactly an expert on national security, international relations, or the economy, we cant help but point out that this is not a good idea. But considering that he probably wouldnt hire a known anti-Semite as a key advisor or promise innumerable violations of both American law and basic decency, you know what, why not vote for him? We cant wait to cover his 2020 race against Democratic nominee Kanye West with whatever shreds of the journalistic apparatus are still available to us. After detours to Negans house of horrors and the Kingdom of Bad Community Theater, we finally return to Alexandria to see what life is like after the deaths of two of their most beloved residents. And were just in time for a visit from the Saviors, whove come knockin to collect their weekly bounty. From the moment Negan arrives at the gate all whistles, one-liners, and villainous swagger you know the Alexandrians are about to have their world flipped upside down. Whats clear by the end of Service is that Rick has a little bit of fight left inside him, but hes nowhere near ready to challenge Negans bloody reign. (A brief detour before we move ahead. Im sure some of you felt a little queasy about the art-imitating-life aspects of this story line: The Alexandrians are now at the mercy of a totalitarian leader who talks tough, has the full support of the gun lobby, and says gross things about women. The scene with Rick and Father Gabe sounds eerily like two Hillary supporters trying to talk each other off the ledge after Election Day. Well get through today, Gabe says. Then well find a way to go forward. How to beat this. Rick isnt convinced: There is no beating this. The priest says he still has faith in Rick. Maybe theyll plan a protest?) Despite tonights special extended episode, there isnt a hell of a lot that actually happens at A-town, aside from Negan making damn sure everyone knows hes a real bastard. How sick is this guy? Lets count the ways. Negan gets uncomfortably close to Rosita, then turns to Rick and smiles: Whew. A lot of suspense there. Negan mocks Ricks camcorder interview with Deanna, dating back to when he first arrived at A-town with his lumberjack beard intact: Shee-at! I would not have messed with that guy. But thats not you anymore. Nope! Negan takes out a zombie, tells Rick he should be thanked for keeping the people of A-town safe, then makes Rick hold Lucille for the rest of the episode. When Negan asks what happened to the sick girl, a.k.a. Maggie, he refers to Glenn as No. 2. Then he explains to Rick why widows give him a psycho boner: Especially ones that look like that. They are special. I love em. Right after their husbands go they are just empty inside. But usually not for long! This rant prompts Rick to squeeze Lucille a little tighter. But hes not ready to revolt just yet. The episode begins with a shot of Rick and Michonne in bed together. To show just how far theyve fallen by the end, Ricks laying out blankets on the floor where their mattress once was. The Saviors took all the beds, but as Michonne discovers, Negan isnt stockpiling furniture he burned them all and left a smoldering pile on the road. Negans taken a shine to Carl as yet another way to screw with Rick. Instead of punishing the kid for turning a gun on his henchmen, Negan applauds his giant man-sized balls. When Father Gabe appears, Negan doesnt show the priest much respect: Ho-lee crap! You are creepy as shit, sneakin up on me, wearin that collar with that freaky-ass smile. (Kinda agree with him on this point.) For a man I once hoped would be zombie food, Gabe is turning out to be a powerful asset. It was his idea to dig a grave for Maggie and fake her death to explain her absence. (Apparently no one cares where Sasha is, or Michonne, whos gone for most of the episode.) The rest of the Alexandrians are scared and confused by the new sheriff in town, and when Aarons beau asks Rick for a plan to get out of this rather lopsided deal, Rick is blunt: There is no way out of this. Let me put this to you as clearly as I can. Im not in charge anymore. Negan is. That doesnt sit well with Spencer, whos decided that the Negan situation is all Ricks fault. He does raise a good point: If they made a deal with the Saviors instead of trying to wipe them out, Glenn and Abraham would still be alive. And Daryl wouldnt be wearing that basic sweatsuit and following Negan around like an abused junkyard dog. But Spencer takes it just one step too far by throwing the Sarge and Glenn in Ricks face. For the first time, we catch a glimpse of the old Rick: You say anything like that again to me, Ill break your jaw and knock your teeth out. You understand me? Rick then takes a page from Negans playbook: Say yes. Theres a sad, tender moment when Rick tells Michonne the story of Shane, his best friend who banged his wife. Although Rick leaves out the part where he killed Shane and Carl killed Zombie Shane, he does drop a major bombshell: He knows that Judith isnt his baby. Its heartbreaking to see him so broken, but his message has the desired effect on Michonne. She understands that above all else, hell do whats necessary to protect the people he loves. Even if that means licking Negans boots. After his butchery in the premiere, I didnt think it would be possible to like Negan at all, despite his knack for a good turn of phrase. (Though it would certainly help if he talked like a normal human being, rather than a character in a Tarantino movie. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy? Really?) But damn it, he is one charmingly evil bastard and a master of mind-fuckery. His parting words to Rick arent subtle: In case you havent caught on, I just slid my dick down your throat. And you thanked me for it. In the end, Daryl is hauled away without saying a word, Enid is still miserable, Michonne is enraged by the sight of the mattress flambe, and Spencer is ready to revolt against Rick. That seems like an unwise choice, especially given how Rosita stashed a gun and found a shell casing that Negan left behind. Would she have the stomach to take Spencer out? And how long will it be before the A-towners learn that the Kingdom (and a big-ass tiger) could join their alliance with Hilltop to take on the Saviors? Im guessing the mid-season finale, at the earliest. But Im in no hurry to get there. elon musk Lost in the madness of the presidential election was a big move by Tesla to address a problem that has plagued the company for years: production delays. It's been said before and it will be said again: Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a much-needed visionary when it comes to the automotive space, but his inability to deliver on the production end is a problem. But Musk is looking to change that by buying a German automated manufacturing company the terms of which haven't been disclosed. It's an encouraging sign of Musk's intention to finally deliver when it comes to vision and product. 'Production hell' Tesla Model X The most notable example of Tesla's production issues is with the Model X, which suffered delays that pushed back deliveries to the second half of 2016. It's an issue Musk has acknowledged himself: "We were in production hell," he said during the company's second-quarter earnings call. "We climbed out of hell in June." Musk even said he has slept in a sleeping bag in Tesla's Fremont factory to personally inspect vehicles as they come off the production line. (If a CEO sleeping in his factory to ensure production is going smoothly isn't a cause for investors to worry, I'm not sure what is.) A little more on the Fremont factory itself: the factory has the capacity to build 500,000 vehicles a year, but is currently only producing a fraction of that. Tesla is maintaining its full-year guidance of delivering 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles by the end of this year. Tesla Model X factory The Fremont factory currently uses 580 giant robot arms to assemble the Model S and Model X cars. But Musk has said he wants to automate more to improve speed, which has so far been lagging. "I think we are ... in terms of the extra velocity of vehicles on the line, it's probably about, including both X and S, it's maybe five centimeters per second. This is very slow," he said in a September interview with Y Combinator's Sam Altman. Story continues Musk said added improvements for the Fremont factory are slated to arrive somewhere near summer 2018. But Musk has a ton to contend with in 2017 to execute on Model 3 production. The Model 3 is Tesla's first consumer-friendly car at a sweet price point of $35,000 before federal tax credits, not including Autopilot add-ons. Tesla's 2016 goal for the Fremont factory is to ramp up production to 100,000 cars, and to eventually get to 500,000 cars for 2018. But keep in mind that there are already roughly 400,000 preorders at this point for the Model 3. Musk said a year's worth of the Model 3 is already sold out. That's not even factoring in production for Tesla's existing models, the Model S and Model X. Musk also said demand is high for Tesla's new 100 kWh battery option for the cars in late October. "I receive daily updates on 100 kWh production because the demand is high and we need to satisfy that demand," he said. Sufficed to say, the Fremont factory is not enough, and that's where the new acquisition comes in. Scaling up tesla gigafactory Tesla is acquiring Grohmann Engineering that it describes as a "world-renowned engineering company in Prum, Germany, which will become Tesla Grohmann Automation." The firm is an important supplier in the automotive industry, developing and manufacturing things like electric powertrains for Mercedes. Grohmann Engineering will honor those contracts while developing systems that automate and scale the production of Tesla vehicles. As mentioned before, Musk has been open about the need to increase automation in if wants to reach its production goals. Acquiring Grohmann Engineering is a major step in that direction. "As the machine that builds the machine, our factories are so important that we believe they will ultimately deserve an order of magnitude more attention in engineering than what they produce," Tesla wrote at the time of the announcement. "At very high production volumes, the factory becomes more of a product than the product itself." Tesla said in that same announcement it began looking for engineering talent in automated manufacturing systems after increasing its output to 500,000 cars for 2018. Tesla will also look to build other factories in an effort to advance its production pipeline. Musk is planning to build a second Gigafactory in Europe that will build both batteries and vehicles, but an exact location won't be determined until next year. Tesla's first Gigafactory is currently being built in Nevada and will build Tesla's battery cells, which are produced in conjunction with Panasonic, and new energy products. When completed it will be the biggest factory in the world in terms of footprint. Tesla will also produce solar cells with Panasonic at a plant in Buffalo, New York originally intended for SolarCity's use. Tesla will only do so if its merger with SolarCity is approved, however. Shareholders will vote on the merger, worth $2.6 billion, on November 17. All of these moves should be seen as an encouraging sign that Tesla could become a true automotive power house for electric cars. Now that Tesla has generated the demand for its newest cars, Musk plans to execute on production. NOW WATCH: Everything we know about the Tesla Model 3 More From Business Insider The Texas Department of Transportation plans to begin a project to upgrade a length of Loop 340 on Monday. The highway will be widened from two to four lanes from the Brazos River to a point just north of the Loop 484-Loop 340 interchange. The project also will extend 1.5 miles east of the interchange along Highway 6. New bridge structures over the Brazos and the Union Pacific Railroad will be built to adjust to the new roadway capacity. Work is planned from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, with some Saturday work possible. Completion is expected in the spring of 2018. Temporary lane closures and traffic delays are expected. Interfaith Thanksgiving service The Greater Waco Interfaith Conference is having a Thanksgiving interfaith worship service at 7 p.m. Monday at Seventh and James Baptist Church, 602 James Ave. The service will include readings and prayers from the Bahai Faith, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Judaism and Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Also featured will be the Youth Choir of Central Texas. Donations of nonperishable food items will be accepted to support area food pantries. For more information, call 424-3170. Genealogy brown bag The Waco-McLennan County Library will present a Who Were the Pilgrims? Are You Related? brown bag lunch genealogy program from noon to 1 p.m. Monday at the West Waco Library and Genealogy Center, 5301 Bosque Blvd. Ann Harder, governor of the Waco Colony of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, will discuss the society. Dottie Tate will speak about the first Thanksgiving. Guests will need to provide their own lunch. For more information, call 750-5945 or visit wacolibrary.org. Waco Homespun Quilters Guild The Waco Homespun Quilters Guild will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Lakewood Christian Church, 6509 Bosque Blvd. Pat Goaley, who has judged many quilting events, will present a program about The History of Textiles. For more information, visit wacohomespunquiltguild.org. BU Campus Orchestra to perform The Baylor University Campus Orchestra will present its annual fall concert at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Jones Concert Hall in Baylors Glennis McCrary Music Building. Titled Images of England and Italy, the concert includes music by English composer John Ireland and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. For more information about the free concert, visit www.baylor.edu/music or call 710-3991. Older driver seminar The Mature Driver Program at Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center, in conjunction with AARP and the Cooper Foundation, will present a We Need to Talk seminar at 6 p.m. Monday in Corbett Auditorium at the medical center, 100 Hillcrest Medical Blvd. The free seminar is geared to help the families and friends of older drivers who may need to limit or stop their driving. For more information, call 202-6541. 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. Waco City Council faces a big night Tuesday as it votes on a $20.2 million contribution for the Brazos Promenade riverfront development project, lets a contract for the east riverwalk and considers special permits for a drug rehabilitation center and several vacation rentals. The council meets for a 3 p.m. work session at the Waco Operations Center, 1415 N. Fourth St., followed by a business meeting at 6 p.m. The TIF Zone board this month recommended helping the public-private Brazos Promenade on University Parks Drive with $8 million in site cleanup costs and $12.2 million in public infrastructure, including utility construction, street and sidewalk improvements, park upgrades and a parking garage. Catalyst Urban Development is planning a mixed-use project with several blocks of stores, restaurants and apartments, as well as a full-service hotel. The total cost of the development is $100 million. The TIF zone funds public improvements in the downtown area through a portion of tax revenues collected from downtown properties. The council also will consider awarding a $4.4 million contract to build a new riverwalk section between Franklin Avenue and McLane Stadium. The project, partly funded by the Texas Department of Transportation, will cost about $1 million more than originally budgeted because of technical challenges of building on piers in the river. This was originally going to be an 80-20 split with the state, but now its almost 50-50, City Manager Dale Fisseler said. Its still a heck of a deal. Its going to connect to the stadium and really open that area up. The $1 million comes from surplus in the citys general fund budget. Mayor Kyle Deaver has said he considers the project important enough to pay the extra amount. Also Tuesday, the council will consider eight special permits for temporary residential rental units and one bed-and-breakfast homestay. The permits are required for homes that are rented online for vacation stays. The permits, which all were recommended by the City Plan Commission, include a multiunit property at 404 Baker Lane that Cameron Park neighbors have opposed. It also includes the old Leo Bradshaw home at 3601 Hillcrest Drive, which Magnolia is renovating. Also up for approval is a transitional shelter II permit for a former nursing home at 1916 Seley Ave. The permit would allow ABODE Treatment Inc. of Fort Worth to operate a 106-bed residential drug treatment center for adults. The council rejected a permit two years ago for another group that wanted to run a residential treatment center for juveniles, after concerns from both neighbors and police. Some neighbors are again expressing opposition. Fisseler said the new applicant has been cooperative in answering the citys questions and appears to have a good track record with other facilities in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He compared the project to the not-for-profit Cenikor Foundations drug treatment facility the city approved several years ago near the old Hillcrest hospital. We had opposition to that at the time, but we havent had complaints since it opened, he said. A cow that was spotted running through Fremantle after it escaped from a cattle ship and jumped into the ocean is still missing. At least two cows were spotted at Bathers Beach in the heart of the CDB in Fremantle on Sunday and at least one off them bolted down as far as North Coogee. Despite a number of sightings of the animal on Sunday afternoon, the cow has now vanished, having evaded rangers from both Fremantle and Cockburn councils. Fremantle Rangers gave up chasing the cow once it crossed into Cockburn council on Sunday night. Bill Veghte Turbonomic Tech veteran Bill Veghte, who's held executive positions at Microsoft and HP and been the CEO of SurveyMonkey, just emerged from his nearly year-long hiatus to announce his full-time job as executive chairman of a startup called Turbonomic. This was surprising news for a bunch of reasons. For one, it's fairly unusual for a startup to hire an executive director from outside the company as a full-time job unless it's part of a bigger management shakeup. For another, Turbonomic has already had a couple of big management shakeups and its ship appears to be sailing well now. Turbonomic turns the $5 billion network management market on its head. It uses a "supply and demand" model to automatically match an app with the exact amount of computing and storage capacity it needs, changing that capacity as the app's needs grow or shrink, with no human intervention needed. That's backwards from how this process typically works, where IT folks sort of guess at how much capacity an app needs, then use performance monitoring software to warn them when they need to tweak things. The company has had a number of management shaekups. Back in 2013, boardmember and VC investor Ben Nye took over as CEO on an interim basis. Then he stayed on permanently and tells us he has no intention of leaving now. Since Nye took over, Turbonomic has been on a tear, Nye said. It's grown from 62 employees to 420, he said, and had 2015 revenue of $44.6 million, according to the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies. Turbonomic currently has about 1,600 customers and has had 25 consecutive quarters of growth, Nye said. Until about four months ago, Nye was both its CEO and a managing partner at Bain Capital Ventures. He's still at Bain as a VC but no longer managing the enterprise software investment practice that he founded. In terms of salary and pay, this was an expensive move, he jokes. "I had to go back to partners at Bain and say, hey listen, I think this is big idea and I think I need to go do this. They were quite gracious. It was expensive economically. If anyone is paying to go to work, believe me, I am," he jokes. Story continues Digging in But he wanted to dig in to the startup for two reasons. First, he felt an obligation to the people he hired as interim CEO, many who came to work with Nye directly. Nye is a five-times Forbes Midas List VC who's backed successful companies like LinkedIn, DocuSign, SolarWinds, and Rapid7. The second is the same reason that he convinced Veghte to join. They are both blown away by the technology created by founders Shmuel Kliger and Yuri Rabover. Ben Nye "W hen someone takes a space you know well and all of the sudden they twist it and show it to you a new way, a little dopamine goes off in your head and you think, oh my god, this is going to be huge," Nye said. "But these guys dont know much about the financial side, or marketing side, and then you say, ok, I can help them with this." He believes Turbonomic is solving a real and urgent need that can help companies save significant money. "The average data center is more than 50% over-provisioned," says, meaning that companies buy and run far more computers and storage than they really need just to make sure their apps work well. For instance, one of the company's biggest clients now uses 775 terabytes fewer of memory and 2500 terabytes fewer of storage in just in two data centers, just by automatically right-sizing its apps, Nye says. Turbonomic also works on clouds like Amazon Web Services and Google. In fact, this kind of automation is the big selling point for Google's App Engine cloud. And Google's automation tech came from a startup called Stackdrivers, a company Nye backed and sold to Google. Looking his children in the eye As for Veghte joining the company, that's another signal that Turbonomic is one to watch. Veghte has been in the tech industry for three decades, cutting his teeth during the early years at Microsoft building products like Windows and Office. Then he ran HP's enterprise business and, as its COO, helped mastermind its split into two companies. He was also briefly CEO at SurveyMonkey, replacing one his friend Dave Goldberg after Goldberg's tragic death. But he quit the CEO job and went back to the SurveyMonkey board early this year, citing a difference of opinion on strategy. google data centers He's spent the last few months traveling the world and checking out everything from startups to VC roles, he told Business Insider, and could have gone anywhere. But, unlike his short-lived CEO role at SurveyMonkey, which was competing in an unfamiliar market, Turbonomic's tech is 100% in Veghte's wheelhouse. And Nye lobbied hard to get him to join. While at Microsoft, he helped to create System Center, the monitoring software that Turbonomic now competes with. Veghte says that this type of old-fashioned software created "a freakin' hairball" out of today's data centers. Turbonomic not only fixes, but can help save the planet by allowing companies to use less data center equipment meaning less energy. After taking time off, he realized he can't fix all the world's problems, but he loves technology and knows how to do build it. "I can make the world a better place by building great technologies that use a lot less carbon emissions, so I can look my children in they eye," he says. NOW WATCH: JACK DANIELS MASTER DISTILLER: This is the real difference between scotch, whiskey, and bourbon More From Business Insider FINEST KIND CLINIC AND FISHMARKET.... Discussing medicine, culture, and the joys of cooking Pansit. 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. Regions Financial Corporation, a financial holding company, provides banking and bank-related services to individual and corporate customers. It operates through three segments: Corporate Bank, Consumer Bank, and Wealth Management. The Corporate Bank segment offers commercial banking services, such as commercial and industrial, commercial real estate, and investor real estate lending; equipment lease financing; deposit products; and securities underwriting and placement, loan syndication and placement, foreign exchange, derivatives, merger and acquisition, and other advisory services. It serves corporate, middle market, and commercial real estate developers and investors. The Consumer Bank segment provides consumer banking products and services related to residential first mortgages, home equity lines and loans, consumer credit cards, and other consumer loans, as well as deposits. The Wealth Management segment offers credit related products, and retirement and savings solutions; and trust and investment management, asset management, and estate planning services to individuals, businesses, governmental institutions, and non-profit entities. The company also provides investment and insurance products; low-income housing tax credit corporate fund syndication services; and other specialty financing services. As of March 01, 2022, it operated through a network of 1,300 banking offices and 2,000 automated teller machines across the South, Midwest, and Texas. Regions Financial Corporation was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Welcome to Weird Science DC Comics, the DC Comics site for the common man and woman. We love comics and hope you do too. Remember, our reviews are only one persons opinion and doesnt mean you have to agree or disagree, just be you. From Jeane's Funeral Service: On Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, the family of James Martin, along with the military honor guard, the Vernon Parish Sheriff's Department, and several other law enforcement agencies, will escort Jeane's Funeral Service from Leesville to Lake Charles. There, they will be met by the Patriot Riders and escorted to William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, to transport Sgt. James Martin's remains back to Leesville. In order to honor Sgt. James Martin's sacrifice to our country, we are asking that the public stand along Highway 171 from Lake Charles to Jeane's Funeral Service at 100 E. Union St. Leesville. The procession should arrive in Lake Charles at approximately 4 p.m. Along the way, fire trucks will display the American flag and the public is encouraged to waves flags as well. Jeane's Funeral Service is giving away flags, so please come by the funeral home to get one. Then, on Friday, Nov. 18, 2016, a motorcade transporting his remains will leave Jeanes Funeral Service at noon traveling north on Highway 171 to Hornbeck High School. Then, the procession will travel south on Highway 171, go past Anacoco High School, and stop at First Baptist Church of Anacoco where visitation will be held from 1 p.m. until 9 p.m. A homecoming and celebration of a true American hero, Sgt. James Edward Martin, who sacrificed his life for our country in Korea, will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016, at the First Baptist Church of Anacoco, 4813 Port Author Ave. Anacoco. Guest speakers will honor Sgt. Martin and present his family with awards including the Purple Heart. Burial will follow in the Mitchell Cemetery where he will receive full military honors and other awards will be given. Sgt. Martin was born on May 23, 1931, in Anacoco, to Felton Glen and Meldredge Peace Martin. He graduated from Anacoco High School and in 1949, enlisted in the U.S. Army. While serving in the 31st Infantry, he died while under attack from the Chinese Army in the Chosin Reservoir. His family was notified on Dec. 3, 1950, that he was missing and on Dec. 3, 1953, he was declared deceased. For years after the announcement of his death, Mrs. Martin would stand on her porch watching to see if he would return home down the road he left. She passed away continually hoping to see him return home. In 2001, his remains were found, but not positively identified until April 2016. After 65 years, his remains will finally be home and will be buried by his parents and other family members. Preceding him in death were his parents Felton Glen and Meldredge Peace Martin, two brothers - Glen and Melvin Martin, and sister - Katherine Martin Jeane. Survivors are his sister - Ruby Beatrice Sewell of Leesville and a host of nieces and nephews. The family requests that donations be made to the Korean Veterans Association or to another charity of your choice. Words of Comfort may be extended to the family at www.jeanesfs.com or on Facebook at Jeanes Funeral Service. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Submit By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 13, 2016 | 08:30 PM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY Two people face methamphetamine charges after an investigation into a suspicious vehicle. The McCracken County Sheriff's Office said deputies were patrolling the area of the Clarks River Road boat ramp Sunday when they found a truck backed into a wooded area. Deputies approached the vehicle and found 28-year-old Jeremy York of Benton and 22-year-old Kimberly Roberts of Paducah asleep inside. Deputies said the couple appeared nervous and could not give a good reason as to why they were parked there. Deputies were granted consent to search the vehicle where they reportedly found suspected methamphetamine along with several syringes. Both York and Roberts were arrested and lodged in the McCracken County Regional Jail. They both face possession of meth and possession of drug paraphernalia charges. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 14, 2016 | METROPOLIS, IL By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 14, 2016 | 01:18 PM | METROPOLIS, IL A southern Illinois man has been arrested on Burglary and other charges after a traffic stop. In a weekly press release, Metropolis Police say a vehicle was stopped last Tuesday, November 8, for improper lane usage, and the driver allegedly gave false identity information to the officer. Police say the man finally admitted he was 27-year-old Jason A. Francis of Golconda, and a computer check reportedly revealed that his driver's license had been suspended and he was wanted on an arrest warrant from Pope County. Francis was arrested, and his vehicle was searched. Officers say a scale and some pills, later identified as Hydrocodone, were found in the vehicle. Police also say a safe was found and it appeared to have been forced open. Items inside the safe did not have Francis' name on them, so an officer was sent to the address, where police learned the home had been burglarized and ransacked. A search warrant was obtained for the trunk of the vehicle, and police say items found there were identified by the victim as their property. A gun was also found in the vehicle. In addition to the arrest on the Pope County warrant, Francis was charged with residential burglary, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, driving on a suspended license, driving an uninsured vehicle, improper lane usage, and possession of a controlled substance. He was taken to Massac County Detention Center. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 13, 2016 | 07:59 PM | LYNNVILLE, KY Five people were injured in a four-vehicle crash Sunday afternoon in Graves County. According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, the collision happened just before 5:00 pm at the intersection of KY 381 and KY 94 in Lynnville. Deputies said a vehicle driven by 62-year-old Gregory Williams was traveling north on KY 381 when he ran the stop sign at the intersection and struck a westbound vehicle driven by 60-year-old Kenneth Darnell of Murray. Williams' vehicle struck Darnell's vehicle in the left side and forced it into the parking lot of the Dollar General Store where it then struck a vehicle driving through the lot, driven by 55-year-old Anna Rollins of Sedalia. Rollins' vehicle was then forced into another vehicle driven by Gary West of Sedalia. Darnell, West and Williams suffered minor injuries but did not seek treatment. One of Williams' passengers, 57-year-old Phyllis Williams, was transported to Jackson Purchase Medical Center for treatment. Rollins was also transported to Jackson Purchase Medical Center for treatment of her injuries. 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. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 14, 2016 | 11:13 AM | MAYFIELD, KY A Calloway County man faces multiple charges after a wreck Saturday near Mayfield. The Graves County Sheriff's Office said 35-year-old Justin Humphrey of Kirksey was traveling on KY 58 East when his vehicle left the road, went into a ditch and rolled over onto its top. A passenger in the vehicle, 34-year-old Kristin Hega, was transported to Jackson Purchase Medical Center for treatment of her injuries. Humphrey was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment, DUI-third offense aggravated, driving on a DUI-suspended license and no proof of insurance. He was lodged in the Graves County Jail. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 13, 2016 | 07:33 PM | PRINCETON, KY Police are investigating after an unidentified body was found this weekend in Caldwell County. According to Kentucky State Police, just after 7:00 am Sunday, Troopers were called to investigate an abandoned vehicle on LR Crow Road in Princeton. Troopers said they found a body that appeared to have been inside the vehicle for an extended period of time. Due to the condition of the body, police said they were not able to make a positive identification. An autopsy has been scheduled at the state Medical Examiners office in Madisonville on Monday. Police said foul play is not suspected at this time. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 14, 2016 | 10:39 AM | NASHVILLE, TN Brush fires in Kentucky and Tennessee have produced enough smoke across middle Tennessee to warn people to stay indoors if they have respiratory issues.The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a "code orange" air quality alert for Nashville and much of the surrounding region in effect all day Monday and Monday night.The most nagging source of smoke for metro Nashville counties has been a large woodland fire just across the state line in Kentucky. Since Sunday, hundreds of Tennessee residents in Davidson, Robertson, and Sumner counties inundated law enforcement agencies about the smoke.Dozens of fires have continued to burn for several days in eastern Tennessee, and in central and eastern Kentucky, where a statewide emergency was declared last week.In Tennessee, 70 fires have burned 13,000 acres, and 8 new fires started over the weekend. At one point last week, the Kentucky Division of Forestry reported 23 fires that have charred 11,000 acres.Burn bans are in effect in at least 45 Kentucky counties. On the Net: Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. One of the citys most unusual restaurant concepts the owners encourage their customers to play board games while they eat and to stay as long as they like has proven so successful its moving to bigger quarters. Early in the new year hopefully some time in January the Across the Board Game Cafe will be relocating from its cosy quarters at 93 Albert St. to a spacious new commercial condominium on the main floor of the nearby Crocus Building at the corner of Bannatyne Avenue and Main Street. At about 4,000 square feet, the new space is more than twice the size of the Albert Street location and will have more than double the seating capacity 130 seats versus 58, co-owner Clinton Skibitzky said. Skibitzky said the extra room will enable him and co-owner Olaf Pyttlik to install a full-sized commercial kitchen. That, in turn, will enable them to expand their menu to include full meals appetizers and things such as pasta, curry, burgers and fries instead of just the soup, sandwiches and salads they were restricted to offering at their smaller, cafe-style operation. Customers will also be able to order a glass of wine with their meal. The partners think the expanded menu will not only generate more revenue but also help attract more customers newcomers and repeat customers who will drop by more often. He noted many of their regular customers had been asking them if they could expand their menu, so thats part of the rationale for doing this. He said they looked at a number of rental properties before deciding to buy a commercial condo instead. They focused their search in the Exchange District. We really wanted to stay in the same neighbourhood, he said, noting they can see the Crocus Building from the front window of their Albert Street cafe. First of all, its been proven that people will come here, and its an area thats trending up. It (their concept) also works here, theres traffic, and theres demand for it here. The Exchange also has become known as a hot spot for unique or unusual shops and restaurants. He added, I think what we have is distinct and a very unique experience unto itself. The Across the Board Games Cafe, which opened in May 2014, is stocked with hundreds of different board games, including some favourites Pyttlik brought with him from Germany when he moved to Canada in 1990. They include games that are socially interactive, ones that are co-operative in nature and ones that challenge the players dexterity. Customers pay a $5 cover charge to play, but theres no limit on how long they can play. Skibitzky said their customers range from college and university students to large families with young children and even grandparents in tow. Its really incredibly diverse. Skibitzky admitted the move to larger quarters comes with risks. Their new space previously held the offices and concert hall for the Manitoba Conservatory of Music and was never designed to be a restaurant, so extensive renovations, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, were required. Its an awful lot of money, Skibitzky said, adding they never would have spent that kind of money if they were leasing the space rather than buying it. They made sure it could be re-purposed as restaurant space before proceeding with the purchase. That was kind of a make-it-or-break-it issue, he added. But this way we have a space I think will be worth a lot more after this upgrade is done. The Across the Board Games Cafe isnt the only Exchange District restaurant thats growing these days. Chosabi Asian Eatery has also gotten bigger, only in numbers rather than physical size. Less than a year after opening its first Chosabi outlet on King Street, Winnipegs Wasabi Group has opened a second outlet. The newest is at 2696 Pembina Hwy. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Co-owners Clinton Skibitzky (left) and Olaf Pyttlik stand in front of the soon-to-be-former location of the Across the Board Game Cafe on Albert St. They will be moving to the Crocus Building (behind them to the left) in the new year. Wasabi co-owner Cho Venevongsa said their fast-casual, sushi-burrito concept has been so successful, it was a no-brainer to open another outlet. Being burritos and sushi, it just comes together naturally. People understand it and its healthy. He said south Pembina Highway is a good location because of its close proximity to the University of Manitoba and to the fast-growing Bridgwater Forest residential community. The area also has a large Asian population. Venevongsa said the Wasabi Group, which also owns three Wasabi sushi restaurants in the city, wasnt sure at the outset if it would open more than one Chosabi outlet. Just like everything else in life, you think, lets start with one and see what happens, right? But now the concept has proven successful, the company plans to open at least two or three more in the city over the next few years. And if it continues to do well, theyd like to franchise the concept and expand it into other cities in Western Canada, he added. Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail or industrial real estate sectors? Let real estate reporter Murray McNeill know at the email address below, or at 204-697-7254. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Fluctuating food prices are changing the way Canadians shop for groceries, says a new national food-retailing study being released today by Dalhousie University. The Nova Scotia university surveyed consumers across the country last month to find out how Canadians are coping with fluctuating food prices. It wanted to get a better handle on which consumer groups feel more vulnerable when food prices fluctuate and how they are reacting to price fluctuations. Among the key findings were 69.9 per cent of respondents said theyre more price-conscious than they were a year ago, and 53.4 per cent said theyve changed the way they grocery-shop. The Canadian Press files Prof. Sylvain Charlebois For example, 59.9 per cent said theyre seeking out deals more often, 56.9 per cent said theyre stocking up more on sale items when they find them, 41 per cent also said theyre now actively looking for alternatives for some food items they used to buy that have become too expensive and 53.7 per cent said they try to shop where the best deals are. Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie and the leader of the food-retailing study, said the biggest surprise for him was while Canadians are more concerned about food prices, few set a budget for how much theyll spend on food. But they do check prices. He said the study also revealed the level of concern about food prices, and how consumers are responding to that concern, also varies from one part of the country to another. For example, residents in Ontario and Quebec were most concerned about fluctuating prices. Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia residents were the most likely to change their food-buying habits because of it. That means things such as checking advertising flyers for deals more frequently, shopping around more for the best bargains and seeking out cheaper alternatives for some products they used to buy that are now too expensive. Prairie respondents, on the other hand, seem less concerned about fluctuating food prices, are less likely to check the flyers or to seek out deals, are less likely to base their meal decisions on whats on sale and less likely to stock up on sale items. Charlebois said that surprises him a little, given the ongoing economic woes in Alberta and Saskatchewan because of weak oil prices and the reputation Manitobans have of being frugal shoppers who dont like paying full price for anything. I was expecting the Prairies to show signs of vulnerability, he said. But I actually do think that people in Manitoba and in the Prairies are more committed to their food habits than in other places in the country. And thats probably why, no matter what happens with food prices, people will keep on buying what they want to buy I actually do think that people in Manitoba and in the Prairies are more committed to their food habits than in other places in the country Prof. Sylvain Charlebois The study also found variables such as gender, age, income and education seem to play a role in determining how Canadians respond to fluctuating food prices. For example, less educated, lower-earning women feel more vulnerable due to fluctuating food prices than any other demographic group. Also, Canadians with annual incomes of $80,000 and $100,000 seem to have been more affected by price fluctuations than other income groups. Charlebois said the latter group may be feeling more vulnerable because financially, theyre stretched pretty thin. Some people who are looking for a higher quality of life are under pressure because maybe they have a young family, theyre paying daycare, theyre paying for lodging at a higher price and maybe theyve bought one or two cars, he added. So you can feel the vulnerability there. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is considering a legal challenge to laws that prevent aboriginal people from hunting on private land, just as Manitoba landowners are seeking greater enforcement against hunters. The AMC maintains two aboriginal hunters from Manitoba should not have been charged for hunting and killing a moose on private property in Saskatchewan last year. The two men, from Pine Creek First Nation in western Manitoba, recently pleaded guilty and were fined $15,000. The settler community needs to understand the limits of notions of private property in treaty lands, Grand Chief Derek Nepinak said in a prepared statement. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Grand Chief Derek Nepinak While the AMC is considering challenging property-ownership laws in Saskatchewan, similar laws exist in Manitoba. The AMC statement comes days after landowners met in Souris in southwestern Manitoba to organize against increased hunting on private property. The group says night hunting on private land is on the rise, to the detriment of wildlife, particularly moose. And the moose population is suffering. Local wildlife groups are opposed to both night hunting and hunting on private land without permission. Night hunting is within an aboriginal persons treaty rights but not on private land as the law currently interprets treaty rights. Night hunting sees hunters use spotlights to shoot wild game after dark. Hunters drive along rural roads, and the animals freeze when the spotlight shines on them. Hunters are often able to make multiple killings in a single stop. Dale McBurney, president of the Hartney Game and Fish Association, said hunting on private land endangers not only the hunters but the lives of people living on the land and their property. Im a hunter-safety instructor. (Night hunting) goes against everything we teach kids: know whats in the background, know what youre shooting at, all those things, said McBurney. However, the AMC believes the indigenous right to harvest wildlife trumps land-ownership rights. The concept of private property is limited by Crown obligations not only to pay taxes on the lands under title, but also to not interfere with indigenous treaty hunters in the carrying out of their vocation of hunting safely. This is guaranteed by treaty, Nepinak said. The provincial judicial-systems actions of intimidating and threatening individuals in the exercise of collective treaty-based rights is unjust and needs to be challenged to the fullest extent of available options due to the detrimental impacts upon indigenous culture, physical health and access to ancestral lands. With regard to night hunting, the AMC refused to condemn it. AMC political liaison Dennis Whitebird would only say indigenous customs have been displaced by federal and provincial jurisdiction. The settler community needs to understand the limits of notions of private property in treaty lands Grand Chief Derek Nepinak McBurney predicted moose will be extinct in southwestern Manitoba within three years without drastic changes. McBurney, a commercial pilot, has been conducting aerial surveys of the moose population in southwestern Manitoba since 1982. McBurney estimates the moose population has dropped by 50 per cent in the past year in the southwest. In the Turtle Mountain area, the numbers have dropped from 248 moose to just 18 in six years, he said. A total of 35 charges for night hunting and dangerous hunting have been laid so far this year in Manitoba, with a number of weapons and 11 vehicles seized. Conservation officers seized an average of five vehicles and charged 14 persons per year in the previous nine years. The Province of Manitoba shares the concerns of all Manitobans regarding the dangers of unsafe and unsustainable hunting and the decline in the provinces moose population, Minister of Sustainable Development Cathy Cox said in a prepared statement. Other provinces have found ways to ban or curtail night hunting. In Saskatchewan, a line has been drawn across the province, with night hunting banned south of the line. bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A civic departments attempt to improve security measures at 12 city pools hit a financial roadblock Monday. Councillors on the innovation committee turned down a request from the community services department for $333,000 to upgrade closed circuit video surveillance (CCTV) because the initiative didnt show any financial benefits and suggested staff should look to the budget process for the funding. This strategy is not about money its about safety, Clive Wightman, director of community services, told the committee. TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The innovation committee has shot down a proposal to install CCTV cameras at city pools. Wightman had made a pitch to the committee for a share of a $1-million fund set aside for innovative capital projects that can either save money or generate revenue. But safety, Wightman learned, didnt meet the criteria. An administrative report supporting the request stated any potential savings from the CCTV upgrades would be seen in reduced investigative time spent by police when following up reports. This is not a program that will drive revenue streams or expenditure savings, Wightman told reporters following the meeting. I understand where the committee is coming from. Perhaps we pushed the envelope a little bit on the ask. The CCTV upgrades are part of an ongoing effort by the community services department to deter the exploitation of children at its facilities through a unique partnership with the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre for Child Protection. The CCCP has provided training to community services staff on how to spot possible child molesters, audited civic facilities for improved security measures and designed new signs that have been placed at city pools. The partnership was the result of questions raised by Coun. Jeff Browaty after a local DJ was convicted in 2015 on sexual molestation charges and admitted placing a recording device at the Pan Am Pool. It was the second time hidden cameras had been discovered in a city swimming pool. In 2012, a tiny camera was found inside a womens staff change room at the Seven Oaks Pool. In addition to the staff training and signage provided by the CCCP, Wightman said the group had also suggested areas at civic pools where better surveillance is needed in common areas and entrances and the department has a detailed plan to install additional cameras and upgrade existing cameras at 12 different pools. Wightman said the CCTV upgrades will be presented to the budget process as a workplace health and safety initiative, adding hes confident the requests will be approved for the 2017 capital budget, even if its not the full $333,000. We can stagger (the rollout of CCTV upgrades) with whatever resources we get, Wightman said. Wightman didnt leave the innovation committee completely empty-handed his department was given $51,360 to install digital video displays at 12 city-managed arenas in an effort to generate advertising revenue. The department had requested $200,000 to install the digital display panels at other recreational and leisure facilities. Last month, councillors on the committee approved six projects at a cost of about $287,000 leaving $713,000 of the $1 million still to be disbursed. The innovation committee Monday also approved $30,000 to the Winnipeg Police Service, which will use the funds to hire a consultant to determine how best to upgrade and modernize its alarm permit renewals. The WPS had originally requested $130,000 for an enhanced online permit renewal process but councillors first wanted independent verification that what the WPS is proposing can be achieved. aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/11/2016 (2179 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Hopes for an end to the 13-day-old strike by University of Manitoba professors were dashed when conciliation ended unsuccessfully on Sunday. A statement by the university late Sunday afternoon said conciliation with the University of Manitoba Faculty Association has ended. The statement also says the university wants UMFA to hold a ratification vote on the universitys current offer before Nov. 16. It is our belief that the UMFA negotiating team will not accept anything the university offers, said John Kearsey, vice-president (external) at the University of Manitoba, in a news release. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Conciliation between the University of Manitoba and its striking faculty failed. They rejected our March offer, intended to allow them to settle before a possible change in government. They rejected our September 13 offer, which provided salary increases of seven per cent over four years. They rejected offers we made during mediation, with a mediator they chose. They rejected offers we made during conciliation. It has been disheartening, to say the least. We are bargaining with ourselves. Given the circumstances, we feel compelled to ask the UMFA negotiating team to present the Universitys offer to UMFA members for a vote. We want this strike to end. Our students want this strike to end. Mark Hudson, UMFA president, said the union has not rejected taking the latest offer to its membership. Hudson said the unions leadership hasnt decided what to do yet now that conciliation has ended so it has scheduled a meeting Monday morning to consider its next step. Were a democratic institution, he said. We need to speak with our executive whether its a good idea to bring (the offer) to our membership or not. Hudson said the universitys last offer was for a single year with no salary increase. Kearsey said the university is hopeful faculty members will accept the offer because 488 of about 1,200 UMFA members are working in the classroom and not on the picket lines. The strike began on Nov. 1. He said if the professors dont get back to work soon the university will have to look at pushing final exams into January and even scrapping Februarys spring break could be considered. The university said the conciliators report is expected to be release early this week. Students are being told to keep checking umanitoba.ca/strikeinfo for updates. kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A former government worker peeked into private health records to find addresses for birthday cards and greetings she wanted to send. Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said Monday the department has wrapped up an internal investigation after discovering 197 health records were inappropriately accessed. There was nothing nefarious about the information breach, Goertzen said, adding the worker has since moved on from her job. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen at the Manitoba Legislature Monday A spokeswoman for the department confirmed the ex-employee used her access to private health records to find addresses for birthday cards. The province also alerted Manitobas ombudsman and directly contacted all 197 people whose information was accessed before the breach was made public. The department apologizes for this incident, a statement issued earlier in the day said. Access to personal health information in Manitoba is strictly limited under provincial legislation. Under the Personal Health Information Act and the Health Departments policies and procedures, employees are authorized to access information only if its necessary to carry out their defined responsibilities, the statement said. In this case, the worker did not have legal access to the information. Penalties include a range of fines up to a maximum of $50,000. Even if a breach is not prosecuted, it may result in disciplinary action. Provincial health-care databases include patient files with doctors visits, medical diagnoses, medical billings, prescription drug records and hospitalizations. The department has boosted its training to make department staff aware of their responsibilities to maintain the privacy of personal health information, the statement said. The province urged individuals who are concerned their personal files may have been breached to contact the ombudsman directly. Every breach is concerning, Goertzen said. People have the right to expect the personal information they give in a hospital or at a doctors office will be exactly that, personal and private. Goertzen, who was attending an event to mark Addictions Awareness Week, said the woman had been a longtime employee in the Health Department. He said the breach was limited to the individuals names and addresses. My understanding of this particular breach is the information was being used, essentially for the addresses. The person may have been looking to update their own personal address book. The province disclosed the breach to caution government workers they cant use their positions to access private information. I dont believe there was a wish to harm anybody but thats not an excuse. But even persons who arent doing things for bad reasons need to know thats a bad thing to do you cant look at other peoples information, Goertzen said. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The day after the United States elected Donald Trump president, my Facebook feed became inundated by people wondering how they were going to explain this to their children. Many of us were surprised by the win Tuesday, and many have spoken with concern about what will happen to those who are different, who may be targeted by the new administration as he ascends to power, particularly with a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Heres my take on what lessons can be learned from the Trump win. First, democracy isnt always fair, but it is the system we have. While electoral reform may be a topic of conversation in both countries, in both the United States and Canada democratic values are important. Trump was elected democratically. Thats sometimes a hard lesson to learn. TED S. WARREN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES A man dressed in red, white and blue sits on a curb last week at a protest against U.S. president-elect Donald Trump in Seattle. Now, there are those who pointed out Adolf Hitler was also elected democratically, which is true. It was only later that Germany fell into the hands of a dictatorship after Hitler targeted communists and socialists to grab emergency powers. Thats the second lesson we can learn from the Trump win. Democracy requires vigilance. Its not something to be left up to government. Its something we must take an active interest in safeguarding. While we take it for granted in both countries, there are still instances in which governments will attempt to encroach on the main tenets of democracy. Our job as citizens is to resist and protest these encroachments and to stand up for those who are targeted. Another duty we have as citizens is to vote. The fact 50 per cent of Americans didnt vote in the presidential election is appalling. Some would say neither candidate provided a reason to vote. That may be a fair assertion, but there were other third-party candidates on the presidential ballot. Not voting gives tacit approval to whoever won, in this case Trump. What we also need to learn is misogyny still plays a major role in our society. Sure, the young women I have taught like to believe that they no longer need feminism; that they will be treated fairly in the workplace and that they arent disadvantaged in any way. Clintons loss tells us that isnt true, particularly as she was pilloried for being too wooden, too unlikable. Clinton was still called a bitch by many people in the United States, too uppity and too full of herself. She rankled the status quo. For sure, womens lives have improved. As New Orleans Democrat Felicia Khan said in a talk she provided to a bunch of Canadians visiting the U.S. prior to the election myself included of course things have got better for women. We can vote, for one thing and there are women being elected to various levels of government in numbers greater than before. But the bottom line is: sexism still remains. The glass ceiling is being cracked by womens heads who are pushed up against it, while they are evaluated by how they look and not by what they do. Telling our kids this means preparing for them to be angry about it and then doing something to change it. Many are saying they cant understand why a woman would vote for Trump, given his public record of misogyny and the growing number of rape accusations. Heres another tough lesson to learn, once and for all. Women arent believed when they say theyve been raped, particularly if they make the accusation against a powerful man. Women themselves sometimes have a hard time believing that, because if they do, then they have to admit their own moments of sexual vulnerability, when they were hugged just a bit too long by their husbands best friend; when their boss lingered too long with his hand on the shoulder; when they woke up from a night on the town in a strange room; when they were frightened late at night walking to their car. Admitting men rape means admitting their own moments of sexual assault. We also need to learn racism isnt going away any time soon. In New Orleans, Cleveland and elsewhere, African-American workers were present at polling stations ready to seek injunctions should a person of colour be denied their legal right to vote. In Canada, many were outraged by the changes to the Election Act that took away First Nations peoples ability to vote during the last federal election. This is systemic racism, and its alive and well on both sides of the border. As citizens, we need to stop pretending it isnt. For all of those, joking or not, who say they now want to come to Canada to escape the Trump regime, theres another lesson to be learned. This, quite simply, is white privilege. For Canadians who are telling people to come up north, remember how upset some people were when Syrian refugees started to arrive in Canada? We have no problem welcoming white people from the United States, but for someone whos brown, the porch light doesnt seem to shine as bright. As for Americans wanting to come to Canada, enjoy that privilege. Poor minorities arent able to pull up stakes and move north just because a racist president is about to take power. On election night, I stood in a room full of privileged white Republicans in Cleveland, gleefully celebrating while their candidates won both at the presidential level and down-ticket. After a while, I had to leave. Their joy was hard to take. I then went to the Democrats party where the mood was very subdued, and the demographic shifted to black, young and less affluent. I thought it was funny that the vote against the Clinton presidency had much to do with her association with elites, while Trump was seen as the man of the people, the downtrodden and the unheard. Thats perhaps the final lesson from this election. In American politics, nothing is what it seems. Shannon Sampert is the Winnipeg Free Press perspectives and politics editor. She was a guest of the U.S. State Department for 10 days as part of the International Visitors Leadership Program. shannon.sampert@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @paulysigh Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Donald Trumps first appointments to his administration, announced on Sunday, moved him a little closer to the mainstream of the Republican party and also maintained his stance as an insurgent against the party establishment. They seemed to set up a permanent struggle within his administration and to leave the world guessing about his policy direction after he takes office in January. Steve Bannon, announced as Mr. Trumps chief strategist and senior counsellor, co-equal with the chief of staff, was brought into the Trump election campaign from the Breitbart online news service, a cheeky right-wing fringe voice that championed white-supremacist causes and frequently snipped at Republican mainstream figures such as Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives. Reinhold Reince Priebus, who will be chief of staff, is a Republican backroom figure and a protege of Speaker Ryan who has never held public office but was credited with strengthening the Republican party in his native Wisconsin. He has been chairman of the Republican National Committee since 2011. He tangled briefly with Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, objecting to the candidates tape-recorded remarks about sexual abuse of women and mildly defending the Muslim parents of a fallen U.S. soldier from Mr. Trumps attacks. EVAN VUCCI / AP PHOTO Steve Bannon As president, Mr. Trump will need the support of Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Mr. Priebus enjoys their respect. Mr. Trump often spoke dismissively, during the campaign, of the Republican establishment and promised to drain the swamp in Washington. The appointment of Mr. Priebus should reassure the denizens of the swamp that he will be kind to them after all. The role of Mr. Bannon is more obscure. He is a picker of fights, a peddler of rumours and a pincher of exposed nerves. During the campaign, he helped sustain Mr. Trumps posture as a champion of the little people who had been forgotten or ignored by the holders of power in Washington. It is far from clear, however, what he can contribute to debate about trade policy, immigration controls, treatment of illegal immigrants or prosecution of the war in Syria. The title chief strategist suggests he might look at the big picture and not take charge of any particular policy area. He may also be relied on to encourage Mr. Trump and tell him what he wants to hear. His advice during the campaign was to let Donald be Donald. Mr. Trump may be eager to keep hearing that advice. Mr. Trump has started backing away from some of his campaign promises. The much-touted wall at the Mexican border will be part wall, part fence. The roundup of illegal immigrants will focus on those convicted of crimes. The special prosecutor assigned to put Hillary Clinton in jail will not be a priority. The main health-insurance reforms enacted under President Barack Obama will be retained, while other parts will be changed. A great deal more backing away lies ahead. Mr. Trump is supposed to renegotiate the countrys trade treaties, revive the economies of rust-belt cities, reduce Americas military role, win its wars and makes its inner-city streets safe while cutting taxes and rebuilding the nations infrastructure. He has given himself two advisers: one to whisper to him the wishes of congressional Republicans, the other to bring him advice from the Tea Party. Uncertainty about his intentions may have a long way to run. CHARGED Nicholas A. Lintvedt, 34, of Alma, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of taking and driving a vehicle without consent. Lintvedt was sentenced to 30 days in jail and placed on probation for two years. Charges of disorderly conduct, driving with a revoked license, inattentive driving, operating left of centerline and bail jumping were read into the court record and dismissed. Faith M. Bauer, 50, of Mondovi, pleaded no contest and was found guilty of resisting or obstructing a police officer. Bauer was sentenced to five days in jail. CHARGED Alexander M. Rud, 30, of Chippewa Falls, had a hearing adjourned to Dec. 7 on felony charges accusing him of fourth-offense operating while intoxicated and fleeing a police officer. Rud also was cited for driving with a revoked license, stop sign violation, unreasonable and imprudent speed and tampering or failure to install a required ignition interlock device. Tyler D. Linna, 22, of Arcadia, pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges accusing him of domestic abuse battery and disorderly conduct. The case was continued to a hearing scheduled on Dec. 7. Linna allegedly bruised a womans arm when he grabbed hold of her during an argument inside his vehicle. Ruth A. Barhyte, 27, of Mondovi, had a hearing continued to Dec. 7 on charges accusing her of battery and disorderly conduct. Barhyte has pleaded not guilty. She allegedly assaulted a woman at a group home in Mondovi on July 15. Joshua F. Deetz, 29, of Mondovi, has a hearing Dec. 22 on felony charges accusing him of domestic abuse strangulation and suffocation and child abuse and misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Troy A. Fitz, 43, of Waterloo, Iowa, had a hearing adjourned to Dec. 7 on a felony charge accusing him of possessing methamphetamine. Fiutz also was cited for speeding and driving with restricted controlled substance. Jodi L. Eggert, 21, of Lewiston, Minn., pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor traffic charge accusing her of second-offense operating while intoxicated. Austin J. Breidung, 21, of Eau Claire, had a hearing scheduled Dec. 7 on a felony charge accusing him of possession with intent to deliver up to 3 grams of amphetamine. Breidung has pleaded not guilty. Frank J. Bertollini, 34, of Mondovi, had an arrest warrant issued Nov. 10 for failure to appear in court as scheduled on a misdemeanor traffic charge accusing him of third-offense operating while intoxicated. Jesse R. Bauer, 24, of Wabasha, Minn., had a conference scheduled Dec. 7 on misdemeanor charges accusing him of battery and two counts of disorderly conduct. Bauer has pleaded not guilty. Jason L. Korpal, 38, of Arcadia, had a hearing adjourned to Dec. 7 on felony charges accusing him of possessing methamphetamine and second-offense possession of marijuana. Aleesha L. Deck, 29, of Independence, had a hearing continued to Dec. 21 on charges accusing her of possessing methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Melissa D. LaCroix, 31, of Rochester, Minn., pleaded not guilty to drug charges accusing her of possessing methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. A hearing was set for Dec. 7. John S. Lawson, 26, of Menomonie, has an arraignment hearing Dec. 7 on drug charges accusing him of possessing methamphetamine and a controlled substance. Madison B. Larson, 19, of Alma, had a plea and sentencing hearing re-scheduled to Dec. 20 on charges of domestic abuse battery and disorderly conduct. James R. Hanson, 37, of Fountain City, had a hearing scheduled for Dec. 7 on a misdemeanor charge accusing him of domestic abuse disorderly conduct. Winona Thursday 6:58 a.m. Three tires were punctured on a vehicle parked on the 700 block of East Howard Street. 7:55 a.m. A bicycle was reported missing from a residence on the 350 block of East Fifth Street. 11:39 a.m. A laptop computer was reported missing from the office at Hardees. 4:57 p.m. A storage unit on the 100 block of Gould Street was entered and items were reported missing. Friday 12:29 a.m. Logan Mitchell Thorson, 21, Winona, was cited for public urination near West Fifth and Johnson streets. 1:36 a.m. Gabriela Louise Marie Guimont, 22, St. Cloud, Minn., was cited for fourth degree drunken driving following a traffic stop near West Fifth and Junction streets. Her blood-alcohol level was .11. 1:50 a.m. Hinton Gavin Clifford Deal, 36, Winona, was cited for driving after revocation and no proof of insurance following a traffic stop near West Wabasha and Winona streets. A passenger in the vehicle, Alyssa Kay Corey, 39, Winona, was cited for providing false name and date of birth to police. She was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Charges of gross misdemeanor providing false name and date of birth to police were referred against another passenger, Autumn Rose Corey, 18, Winona. 8:46 a.m. Shawn Albert Hawley, 39, Winona, was cited for theft after an attendant at a convenience store on the 1650 block of West Service Drive declined a money order in payment for $10.01, whereupon Hawley drove off without paying. 11:04 a.m. Damien Mathew Lampert, 19, Caledonia, Minn., was cited for shoplifting a goose call from Fleet Farm. 11:56 a.m. A window on a vehicle parked on the 250 block of Lafayette Street was broke and a pair of sunglasses reported missing. 1:11 p.m. Jonathan Aaron Joseph Esparzen, 36, Winona, was cited for a loud car stereo. Saturday 1:44 a.m Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance (cocaine) were referred against Justus William Pomeroy, 22, Winona following a traffic stop near East Fifth Street and Mankato Avenue. 1:56 a.m. Charges of felony domestic assault (strangulation) and domestic assault (causing fear, causing harm) were referred against a 15-year-old Winona boy following an incident at a residence on the 700 block of Gilmore Avenue. 7:43 a.m. Charges of violating an harassment restraining order were referred against Nancy Jean Wheeler, 62, Winona, following an incident at a residence on the 1700 block of West Broadway. 3:47 p.m. The rear license plate was reported missing from a vehicle parked on the 1000 block of Sugarloaf Road. 9:50 p.m. A bicycle was reported missing from a residence on the 650 block of Dacota Street. Sunday 12:04 a.m. Charges of gross misdemeanor domestic assault were referred against Richard Wallace Grotjahn, 48, Winona, following an incident at a residence on the 550 block of Mankato Avenue. 1:12 a.m. Isabel Honor Youngbauer, 18, Eagan, Minn., and Nico Leo Gubenko, 18, Winona, were each cited for underage drinking by police responding to a report of a man in a womens restroom at Winona State. Officers found the two together in a restroom stall. 2:02 a.m Jacie Alyssa Lewis, 21, Kasson, Minn., was cited for fourth-degree drunken driving following a traffic stop near West King and Main streets. Her blood-alcohol level was .15. 2:09 a.m. A 20-year-old woman reported being struck in the back of the head by an unknown assailant when she exited her vehicle near Center and King streets. 11:38 a.m Rose Ann Adamczyk, 73, Winona, was cited for shoplifting at Fleet Farm. 3:49 p.m. Charge of gross misdemeanor theft were referred against James Michael Oliver, 31, Winona, after he attempted to shoplift assorted merchandise with a total value of $818.43 from Target. Winona County Friday 10:18 a.m. Deputies served a search warrant at a residence in Lake Village in Goodview. Methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia were recovered. Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) were referred against Nikki Lynne Siegler, 26, Goodview, Tyler Cheyne Sherry, 25, Houston, Minn., and Devon Carlson Zenk, 26, Winona. 1:54 p.m. Curtis John Meires, 50, Eagan, Minn., was cited for trespassing on posted land near Hwy. 61 and Lone Pine Drive. 5:48 p.m A window was broken on a vehicle parked in Rollingstone. BROWNSVILLE The overlook was packed with retired natural resource professionals, from DNR staff to biologists, during Saturday mornings waterfowl and tundra swan viewing excursion. And while the group boasted a wealth of wildlife knowledge, all were eager to point out the real pro in the group: 15-year-old Tony Dodge. Hes got eagle eyes, said Fritz Funk, pointing at Dodge, whose eyes were glued to a telescope binocular overlooking the Mississippi River. Sometimes hell have the scope out and strangers will walk up to him to ask questions, thinking hes one of the naturalists. Dodge was one of 10 youths participating in the outing, organized by KAMO Kids and Mentors Outdoors which offers 70-some members frequent nature-based activities throughout the year, including fishing, archery and farm visits. The local branch of KAMO was founded by regional director Mike Brown, a retired science teacher, with the hope of getting kids exposed to the outdoors. Its so beneficial for kids of all ages to be outside. The benefits play into a lot of issues kids are dealing with today depression, anxiety, obesity, ADHD, Brown said. Its a little foreign for some of them, and its hard to get them out of the house, but once theyre outside they love it they dont want to leave. Brown describes KAMO outings as a mix of observation, safety instruction and education, saying, We have people who are career environmentalists who just love to share their knowledge with the kids. Dodge, a four-year KAMO participant, eagerly soaks up the information the mentors provide, listening intently before going home to research the topics further. Theres a whole lot of variety of birds you can see theyre fun and interesting to watch. The wood ducks are my favorite because they have a lot of different colors and are beautiful to look at, Dodge said. (With KAMO) you get to do outside things you might not do with your family. The group has held more than 30 events already this year and generally visits the Brownsville overlook twice a year. The trip (to the overlook) is something you can count on, Brown said. Its a sure bet there is going to be a pretty big display of migrant birds. Indeed, the shallow water was packed with Canada geese near the shore. A mass of tundra swans settled further out, the adults recognizable from their white feathers and black beaks, while the baby swans, called cygnets, start out gray with pink bills. Up to 45 percent of the eastern population of tundra swans use the area as a stopover point during their fall migration to the Atlantic Coast. They start arriving in late October and stay until the water freezes and generally come closer to the shallow water in mid-November. The have to be able feed in low water so their necks can reach to the bottom and pluck the arrowhead tubers out of the ground, explained KAMO member Jim March, formerly with the DNR. This is really a remarkable spot for bird watching. You see some birds by Goose Island, but this is definitely one of a kind. If anyone wants to learn about birds and waterfowl migration, this is the place to come, Funk agreed. Its an incredible opportunity to see birds close up. If you go out on a boat, youll scare them off. While some of group ventured down to the rocky shore for a closer look, Chelsea Flaten, 9, was content to perch on the base of the tourist binoculars, excited to discover birds she had never seen and learn facts she never knew, a reaction that embodies the spirit of KAMO. For many kids, this is the first time theyve been on the river, Funk said. We just want to get them outdoors and see all the amazing things. MINNEAPOLIS Nine Minnesota men who have been convicted of plotting to join the Islamic State group in Syria are scheduled to be sentenced this week, capping a long court case that shined a light on terrorism recruitment. The men are expected to receive various sentences during separate hearings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Here are some key issues: What is this about? Prosecutors say that starting in the spring of 2014, a group of friends in Minnesotas large Somali community began inspiring and recruiting each other to travel to Syria to join IS. Some succeeded in making the trip, but others didnt. Nine men were prosecuted. Six of them pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which has a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. The other three went to trial, where they were also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder outside the U.S., which carries a possible life sentence. When the trial ended, U.S. Attorney Andy Luger called it one of the most important trials in Minnesota in years because it put a spotlight on ongoing terrorism recruitment in the state. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. Since 2007, more than 22 men have joined al-Shabab in Somalia. The overall investigation into terror recruitment is ongoing. How long will the men go to prison? Thats up to the judge. Prosecutors are asking for lengthy sentences, citing the violence of the Islamic State group and some of the mens persistent attempts to join. But defense attorneys are seeking leniency, saying their clients were young men who felt alienated and caught between two worlds. Prosecutors are recommending the stiffest sentence 40 years in prison and supervision for life for Guled Ali Omar, who was once considered a leader of the group. Omars attorney, Glenn Bruder, is asking for 15 years or less, saying Omar and his co-defendants were the Three-Stooges of international terrorism. Their efforts to abandon the United States were naive, ill-considered and bumbling. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years in prison for Omars co-defendants, and 15 years for four others who pleaded guilty. They are recommending four-and-a-half years and three-and-a-half years for two men who cooperated. Defense attorneys are seeking less time in each case. Sentencing factors In addition to standard presentence investigation reports, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis will consider evaluations done on some of the men to assess their risk for re-engaging in terroristic activities. The evaluations were conducted as part of a program Davis created to give him more information at sentencing and to help devise plans to de-radicalize the men. Davis, who has been at the forefront of efforts to try to reintegrate terrorism defendants into society, will also consider the level of cooperation or substantial assistance each man provided to the government. Community support Defense attorneys submitted letters from community members that highlight the mens characters and ask for leniency. Among them was Ilhan Omar, who recently became the first Somali-American state legislator. Omar wrote that incarcerating the young men for decades would essentially be a life sentence. She said such stiff punishment would cause further alienation and create an environment in which extremism can flourish. Omar asked Davis to consider a restorative approach that focuses on inclusion and rehabilitation. The men speak out In recent weeks, a couple of the men have come forward and said theyve changed. Abdirizak Warsame recently told 60 Minutes that he believes two men whom he helped get to Syria are now dead. I believe I am responsible for their deaths and I think about that every day, Warsame said, later adding that the Islamic State group is total nonsense and, Its not worth your life. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. Since 2007, more than 22 men have joined al-Shabab in Somalia. If two snowy owls ever want to know which individuals are responsible for bringing them to Baraboos zoo, there will be no short answer to their question, Whooooooo? The answer starts with Jerry and Linda Bethke, bird rehabilitators who nursed Aurora and Boris to health. It continues with the national Fish and Wildlife Service, which quickly granted the Bethkes approval to donate their birds to the Ochsner Park Zoo. Dont forget the Greater Sauk County Community Foundation, whose James Irwin Fund supported renovation of exhibit space for the owls. The answer ends with zookeeper Tori Spinoso and her staff, who spent three weeks transforming a bobcat exhibit into the snowy owls new home, which was unveiled Sunday to dozens of visitors. Snowy owls are something weve been looking to get for several years, Parks Director Mike Hardy said. Tori and her crew did a really good job here. The Bethkes took in Aurora in 2013, and Boris a year later. They ran Soaring Eagle Wildlife Rehabilitation from their Prairie du Sac home until health issues got in the way recently. Health issues also afflicted both owls Aurora had eye damage, Boris a broken wing and prevented them from being returned to the wild. The couple decided the Ochsner Park Zoo was the best place for the owls. Were very happy we could place the two snowys here, Linda Bethke said. Her husband said zoo staff and Dr. Joe Kelley of Sauk Prairie Small Animal Hospital will provide excellent care. Theyre going to be in good hands, Jerry Bethke said. Baraboos zoo is the only public zoo in Wisconsin offering a snowy owl exhibit. There are only about two dozen such exhibits in the entire country. The owls will inhabit the former home of a bobcat who now occupies a zoo in Marshfield. Ochsner Park Zoo staff worked on the exhibit daily for three weeks, replacing bars with transparent mesh, and removing trees and a hammock. It took a lot, Spinoso said. The zoo was interested in adding the snowy owls to the great horned and barred owls it already displays. The Bethkes wanted to find a safe haven for the owls, who otherwise wouldve been euthanized. We try to save whatever we can, Linda Bethke said. Theyve been a joy to have. Baraboos oldest church rang in its 175th anniversary Sunday in a way that forced everyone downtown to take notice. Longtime member Virgil Kasper recruited Sunday school students and various ding-a-lings to ring First United Methodist Churchs bell 175 times. They had so much fun, they kept going. We probably had 200 or more, he said. Members spent the morning celebrating their congregations rich history with events including a skit re-enacting the churchs inception, a historical retrospective delivered by Kasper, and a 175-link paper chain created by church youth. Another longtime member, Mark Carlson, impressed upon Sunday school students that when the church was founded in 1841, there wasnt much to be said for a settlement then known as Baraboo Mills. Wisconsin wasnt even a state, he said, and Baraboo was hardly a town. First United Methodist got its start when a circuit preacher visited Baraboo and convinced local families to host services in their homes. Two years later, the congregation began meeting in a newly built school on Seventh Avenue, sharing that building with other denominations. The Methodists built a chapel of their own on Fifth Avenue around 1850, the first church building in Baraboo. In 1898, the congregation moved to its current home at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Broadway. A major expansion in 1990 leveled the neighboring parsonage, creating room for an expansive fellowship hall and church offices. Over the years, the church has become known for meeting community needs. The downtown Baraboo institution has hosted the Baraboo Food Pantry, the Neighborly free store, Boy Scout troops and programs for Ho-Chunk youths. More recently, its members have collected child carriers for refugees and shoes for the needy, and the church as hosted free holiday meals for the hungry. We charge our members to do all the good you can, Kasper said. Also constant at First United Methodist have been features in place for more than a century the red brick buildings exquisite architecture, its stained-glass windows and the 163-year-old-bell that rang a couple hundred times Sunday. Kasper said he hopes Sundays festivities will propel the church into the decades to come. Ill be there, he told the congregation with a smile. How about you? 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 Boasting their most lopsided majority in six decades, state Assembly Republicans have re-elected Speaker Robin Vos and Majority Leader Jim Steineke to lead their caucus, while pledging bigger, bolder changes beyond those made in the last five years. Vos, R-Rochester, the Assembly Speaker since 2013, was unanimously re-elected without a challenge Monday to lead a Republican majority that defied predictions to grow even larger in last weeks election. Steineke, R-Kaukauna, was one of Wisconsins most prominent GOP voices against President-elect Donald Trump during the campaign. He was re-elected to his leadership post, fending off a challenge from Rep. Kevin Petersen, R-Waupaca. Both votes came at the first caucus meeting of Assembly Republicans since the Nov. 8 general election. Steineke hailed the Republican takeover of the federal governmentin the election, cemented by Trumps win. In a press conference, Steineke said he had a message for those who thought Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin were busy the last five years. You havent seen anything yet, Steineke said. Theres bigger, bolder reforms coming. Steineke did not offer specifics. Its likely that the now-GOP-controlled federal government will try to repeal President Barack Obamas health care law and make other changes next year that would force states to take action in response. In recent months, Assembly Republicans have talked about taking action in 2017 to create a new kind of school voucher, shore up state road funding, end the University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze and provide all high school freshmen with a laptop or tablet. Other possibilities include new tax cuts and elimination of the prevailing wage requirements for workers who build roads or government buildings. Assembly Democrats are set to meet Tuesday to pick their leaders. Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca of Kenosha said Monday he will seek that post again. Due in part to Trumps strong showing especially in the rural areas and small towns that have been battlegrounds in recent elections the GOP caucus returned all its incumbents in the election. It gained one seat, in the 92nd Assembly District, where Treig Pronschinske, R-Mondovi, beat Rep. Chris Danou, D-Trempealeau. That gives Republicans a 64-35 edge over Democrats in the Assembly their largest majority since 1957, Vos told cheering lawmakers at Mondays meeting. State Senate Republicans also grew their majority by at least one seat, to at least 20 seats. Republican Patrick Testin of Stevens Point ousted Democratic Sen. Julie Lassa, also of Stevens Point, in Senate District 24. In District 32, Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, is clinging to a 56-vote unofficial win over Republican Dan Kapanke, also of La Crosse. The election will be subject to a recount if Kapankes campaign requests it. Other Assembly GOP leadership posts also were voted upon Monday, with a few new faces emerging. Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, was elected assistant majority leader, succeeding Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown. Knodl, in turn, was elected majority caucus chairman, succeeding outgoing Rep. John Murtha, R-Baldwin. Rep. Romaine Quinn, R-Rice Lake, was elected caucus vice chairman. Those re-elected included: Rep. Tyler August, R-Lake Geneva, as Assembly speaker pro tempore, the chambers procedural chief; majority caucus secretary Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek; and majority caucus Sergeant At Arms Samantha Kerkman, R-Salem. Vos did not indicate Monday which representatives he would appoint from his caucus to the Legislatures 16-member Joint Finance Committee, which leads the budgeting process. Assembly Republicans on the panel the last two years were co-chairman John Nygren, R-Marinette; vice-co-chairman Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield; Amy Loudenbeck, R-Clinton; Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh; Mary Czaja, R-Irma; and Dean Knudson, R-Hudson. A successor for Knudson must be named because he did not seek re-election. Vos Senate counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, made clear at last weeks Senate GOP leadership elections that he would re-appoint all six Senate Republicans to the joint finance panel. Men and women from all branches of the military were recognized in Reedsburg on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Local schools, restaurants and businesses held ceremonies, meals and sales to thank service members for their contributions to the U.S. One of the largest celebrations took place at Reedsburg Area High School, where the student body and public filled the bleachers to hear presentations, listen to musical tributes and see veterans in uniform. Rep. Ed Brooks, R-Reedsburg, was the primary guest speaker. He told students its important for them to carry on the legacy of their grandparents and parents. Brooks echoed former president Ronald Reagan, when he said freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Brooks said tomorrows children should be able to enjoy the same freedoms as past generations, but it cant happen without people who are willing to fight and protect American rights. He said each military branch has a motto capturing the spirit of freedom, dedication and unity. Semper Fi, the motto of the U.S. Marines, means always faithful. Brooks said these men and women remain true to each other and their country. Brooks said the general public understands this trait because everyone is faithful to someone, be it family, friends or neighbors. The Coast Guard lives by Semper Paratus, or always ready. Brooks said search-and-rescue is one of the Coast Guards most recognizable duties. Preparation in time of emergency is what makes them the worlds best at what they do, he said. Like the Coast Guard, average citizens should be ready to step in and help others who are in need, he added. Brooks said hes a former member of the Army Reserve so he takes pride in the organizations motto, This Well Defend. It represents the Armys commitment to protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and boldly announces that it will fight to preserve Americas most treasured freedoms. Air Force members Aim High, which should apply to everyone, Brooks said. No one should be satisfied with the status quo but instead shoot for improvement. Brooks closed with the Navys motto, Non Sibi Sed Patriae, or Not For Self But For Country. Brooks said its very similar to one of Americas most iconic quotes from former President John F. Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Members of the military ask this question of themselves every day, Brooks said. Today we remember the sacrifices of all the men and women who have served our country and we strive to apply those principles that guide their lives to our own lives: Faithfulness, readiness, the charge to aim high, to defend things that matter most to us and of course to do what is best for our country, he said. The local VFW had a special announcement for one Reedsburg Area High School student. Wayne Unrath of the VFW presented its Voice of Democracy award to Grace Calvin. She received a financial reward, but the amount was not announced as shes still in the running for higher prizes. The VFW will announce her full award when the contest ends. According to the VFW, high school and junior high students across the country may submit recorded audio essays about patriotism and democracy for the chance to win scholarships. Around $2 million is awarded nationwide and about 40,000 students enter the contest each year. The national first-place winner receives $30,000. For more information visit www.vfw.org. Thabo Mbeki undermined South Africas constitution by putting his party first Mbeki missed a major opportunity to assert the primacy of South Africas constitution eight years ago. In a recent speech, former South African President Thabo Mbeki decried the failure of parliament to act against President Jacob Zuma after the Constitutional Court had declared him in breach of the constitution. This is after Zuma failed to honour the recommendations of the Public Protectors report on the scandalous expenditure on his homestead in Nkandla. This is most welcome. But Mbekis intervention in favour of constitutional propriety is actually eight years too late. The consequences of the decisions he took on being ousted by his party, the African National Congress (ANC), as State President in 2008 set a precedent and are still being felt today. By choosing not to fight the ANC over his recall, he missed a major opportunity to assert the primacy of South Africas constitution. And the chickens are coming home to roost. It is worth recalling the events of 12 September 2008. On that day, Judge Chris Nicholson ruled in the High Court that there had been executive interference in the independence of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) when it reinstated charges against Jacob Zuma in a case involving alleged corruption 10 years earlier. The NPAs decision was taken after Zuma ousted Mbeki in a bitter contest for the leadership of the ANC at a party conference in Polokwane almost a year earlier. Nicholsons ruling echoed the view of Zumas supporters that the reinstatement of the charges was politically motivated, and had been done at Mbekis behest. The consequences of Nicholsons ruling were felt immediately. With the Zuma faction in firm control of the ANCs machinery, the ruling party instructed Mbeki to stand down as the countrys president just eight days after Nicholsons judgement. Like a lamb to the slaughter, he meekly did what he was told. Yes, he went with dignity, for which he needs to be commended. Yet in so doing, as a loyal and disciplined member of the ANC, he undermined the legitimacy of the constitution. He placed the authority of the party before that of parliament, which under the countrys constitution, is the only body that can remove a South African president from office. What the constitution says In terms of the countrys constitution, the president of the country is elected by the National Assembly from among its members. In practice, this has meant that since 1994 the ANC, as the majority party, has had its leader elected as president following each general election. The exception was when Kgalema Motlanthe succeeded Mbeki for a short period after his resignation in 2008, Zuma having opted to wait to fill the post until after the 2009 election. This procedure is as it should be the majority party chooses, but has to ratify its decision by referring the appointment to the National Assembly. When it comes to the removal of a president, the constitution lays down that such an action requires the National Assembly to pass a resolution to that effect by a two thirds majority. It may only do this on one or more of three grounds: a serious violation of the constitution or the law; serious misconduct; and/or inability to perform the functions of office. It also lays down that anyone removed from the office of president on any of these grounds may not receive any benefits of that office (by which is meant, presumably, the denial to that person of his or her presidential pension). So are we to assume that it was his concern about rands and cents which simply moved Mbeki to resign as president rather than insisting that the party take the matter to parliament? That seems highly unlikely. Love him or loathe him, Mbeki seems never to have been particularly concerned about material issues. But as indicated by the detailed account of the matter by Frank Chikane, director-general in the presidency under Mbeki it seems that the former president chose not to contest the authority of the party because he could not bear to bring upon himself the charge of disloyalty to the party, however harsh he considered its decision. Yet in so doing he did the country a severe disservice. The alternatives There were alternatives. He could have insisted that as it was the National Assembly that had appointed him, he should go back to the National Assembly to resign. Or he could have contested the decision by one of two means. First, Mbeki could have insisted that he would not resign until he had had the opportunity to appeal the Nicholson judgement to the Supreme Court, indicating that were he to have been successful in that, the ANCs justification for removing him would be overturned. Ironically, Mbeki lodged an appeal after his resignation, and the Supreme Court did overturn the Nicholson judgement the following January (2009), exposing the Zuma ANCs cynical ploy for what it was. Second, more dramatically, he could have involved himself in a bruising battle between his own following and the Zuma faction amongst the ANCs MPs. Such an action would undoubtedly have been labelled by his opponents as deeply divisive not least as he might have found himself being backed by the opposition Democratic Alliance. This might eventually have led to his expulsion from the party, something which he was clearly keen to avoid. Pursuit of any one of these paths would have asserted the supremacy of the constitution over that of the party. Naysayers may say that party leaders regularly resign as presidents or prime ministers without such rigmarole when they stand down for party or personal reasons. But South Africa is a newly established democracy and establishing precedents and practices is important. Zuma himself, and the ANC he has perverted, clearly has little regard for the constitution. Former public protector Thuli Madonselas findings about the Nkandla matter, let alone her departing torpedo in the form of the State Capture report, indicate very clearly that he has been guilty, at the very least, of misconduct. Yet Zuma and his acolytes have chosen to ignore this, and are now willing to put their own interests before the long term interests of their own party. As some believe, this may lead on to the ANCs defeat in the next general election in 2019. It is this what makes Mbekis latest intervention so interesting. The former president has now brought his critique of his successor as having endangered the future of the ANC, our democracy and economy into the open. He has now clearly aligned himself with the party elders who are dismayed by the ANCs betrayal of its historically emancipatory role as a liberation movement. It is good, too, that he has placed the responsibility for censuring Zuma, and perhaps dismissing him, into parliament where it belongs. True, any impeachment proceedings of Zuma by the National Assembly would almost certainly be blocked by the ANCs pliant majority of MPs. Against that, however, a parliamentary process would open much more political space for the growing minority of dissidents with the higher ranks of the party to state their case. This would help bring the growing political crisis which is gripping the country to the climax it so desperately needs. Granted, the dominant Zuma faction has no regard for constitutional niceties and would be likely to trample over precedent, even if Mbeki had set one. But this does not negate the fact that the former president missed a major opportunity to assert the primacy of South Africas constitution. Thanks, but no thanks, Mr Mbeki. Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Veeva Systems Inc. provides cloud-based software for the life sciences industry in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The company offers Veeva Commercial Cloud, a suite of software, data, and analytics solutions, which include Veeva customer relationship management (CRM) and Veeva Medical CRM, Veeva CLM, Veeva CRM MyInsights, Veeva CLM, Veeva CRM Approved Email, Veeva CRM Engage, Veeva Align, Veeva CRM Events Management, Veeva Nitro, Veeva OpenData, Veeva Link, Veeva Network, Veeva Crossix, Veeva Data Cloud, and MyVeeva for Patients; and Veeva Vault, a cloud-based enterprise content and data management applications for managing commercial functions, including sales and marketing, and medical content and communications, as well as research and development functions, such as clinical, regulatory, quality, and safety. It also provides professional and support services in the areas of implementation and deployment planning and project management; requirements analysis, solution design, and configuration; systems environment management and deployment services; services focused on advancing or transforming business and operating processes related to Veeva solutions; technical consulting services related to data migration and systems integrations; training on its solutions; and ongoing managed services that include outsourced systems administration. The company was formerly known as Verticals onDemand, Inc. and changed its name to Veeva Systems Inc. in April 2009. Veeva Systems Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Pleasanton, California. 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. Avangrid, Inc., an energy services holding company, engages in the regulated energy transmission and distribution, and renewable energy generation businesses in the United States. The company operates through Networks and Renewables segments. It is involved in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity; and distribution, transportation, and sale of natural gas. The company also operates renewable energy generation facilities primarily using onshore wind power, as well as solar, biomass, and thermal power. It delivers natural gas and electricity to residential, commercial, and institutional customers through its regulated utilities in New York, Maine, Connecticut, and Massachusetts; and sells its output to investor-owned utilities, public utilities, and other credit-worthy entities. In addition, the company generates and provides power and other services to federal and state agencies, as well as institutional retail and joint action agencies; and delivers thermal output to wholesale customers in the Western United States. It owns eight electric and natural gas utilities, serving 3.3 million customers in New York and New England, as well as owns and operates 8.8 gigawatts of electricity capacity primarily through wind power in 22 states. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Avangrid, Inc. is a subsidiary of Iberdrola, S.A. AstraZeneca PLC, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of prescription medicines. Its marketed products include Calquence, Enhertu, Faslodex, Imfinzi, Iressa, Koselugo, Lumoxiti, Lynparza, Orpathys, Tagrisso, and Zoladex for oncology; Brilinta/Brilique, Bydureon/Byetta, BCise, Byetta, Crestor, Evrenzo, Farxiga/Forxiga, Komboglyze/Kombiglyze XR, Lokelma, Onglyza, Qtern, and Xigduo/Xigduo XR for cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism diseases; Bevespi Aerosphere, Breztri Aerosphere, Daliresp/Daxas, Duaklir Genuair, Fasenra, Pulmicort, Saphnelo, Symbicort, and Tudorza/Eklira/Bretaris for respiratory and immunology; and Andexxa/Ondexxya, Kanuma, Soliris, Strensiq, and Ultomiris for rare diseases. The company's marketed products also comprise Synagis for respiratory syncytial virus; Fluenz Tetra/FluMist Quadrivalent for Influenza; Seroquel IR/Seroquel XR for schizophrenia bipolar disease; Nexium, and Losec/Prilosec for gastroenterology; and Vaxzevria and Evusheld for covid-19. The company serves primary care and specialty care physicians through distributors and local representative offices in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. It has a collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to research, develop, and commercialize small molecule medicines for obesity; Neurimmune AG to develop and commercialize NI006; Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop eplontersen, a liver-targeted antisense therapy in Phase III development for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; Proteros Biostructures GmbH to jointly discover novel small molecules for the treatment of hematological cancers; Sierra Oncology, Inc. to develop and commercialize AZD5153. The company was formerly known as Zeneca Group PLC and changed its name to AstraZeneca PLC in April 1999. AstraZeneca PLC was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom. Synthomer plc operates as a specialty chemicals company. It operates through four segments: Performance Elastomers, Functional Solutions, Industrial Specialities, and Acrylate Monomers. The company offers pressure sensitive adhesives, acrylic polymers, acrylic dispersions, saturants, release coatings, and other adhesives; water-based carboxylated styrene butadiene rubber, redispersible powder, flooring adhesive, and additives for construction applications; and impregnation binders, styrene butadiene copolymers, dispersions, polymer binders, and butadiene-based binders for textiles applications. It also provides binders for various carpets; synthetic binders for graphic, packaging, and specialty paper coating applications; paper coating additives and plastic pigments; binders, dispersions, water-based and solvent-borne resins, and other products for various coating applications; foamed bedding products and footwear; elastomeric modifiers for thermoplastics and friction components; reinforcement resins for rubber compounds; and latex for tire cord. In addition, the company offers compounds and aqueous curing pastes for carpets and other applications; acrylic monomers for enhancing the performance characteristics of polymer formulations; antioxidant products; latices for medical examination, clean room, food handling, chemotherapy drug handling, chemical laboratory, and medical device and balloon applications; and nitrile latex, which enhance performance of industrial and fabric-supported gloves. Further, it provides liquid polybutadienes, polyvinyl alcohol suspending agents, polyvinyl acetates, thermosetting resins, butyl ethyl propanediol, and inorganic materials for various industrial applications; and coalescing agents for enhancing the properties of coatings. The company was formerly known as Yule Catto & Co. plc and changed its name to Synthomer plc in 2012. Synthomer plc was founded in 1863 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Ag Growth International Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes grain and rice handling, storage, and conditioning equipment in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company offers storage equipment comprising grain and bolted bins, hopper bins, smooth wall bins, temporary storage equipment, unloads and sweeps, water tanks, fuel tanks; and conditioning equipment, such as mixed flow dryers, fans and heaters, aerations, airaugers, aeration floors, vents and exhausters, stirrings, and accessories. It also provides portable handling equipment, such as portable augers, conveyors, grain vacs, post pounders, seed treaters, and accessories; and permanent handling equipment, including bucket elevators, chain and belt conveyors, enclosed belt conveyors, distributors, feed handling equipment, screw feeders and conveyors, and spouts and connections. In addition, the company offers towers, catwalks, ladders, all-steel buildings, flat storage buildings; batch blenders, bulk scales, declining weight blenders, vertical blenders, micro-dosing systems, mixers, milling equipment; and controllers, hazard monitoring equipment, monitoring and automation equipment, sampling solutions. Further, it provides cleaning and destoners, rice milling and processing equipment, bin unloads, blending and control systems, Liquid and dry fertilizer blending and conveying equipment, turnkey design and build construction solutions for seed and fertilizer facilities, and farm management software. The company markets its products under the AGI, Airlanco, Batco, Brownie, CMC, Compass, Danmare, Ezee-dry, Frame, Grain Guard, Grainmaxx, Hi Roller, Hutchinson, Improtech, Junge, Keho, Mayrath, Milltec, MMS, Neco, PTM, REM, Sabe, Sentinel, Storm, Suretrack, Tramco, Twister, Westeel, Westfield, Wheatheart, and Yargus brand names. It provides its equipment for agricultural commodities. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada. The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various financial products and services in Canada, the United States, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases. It also provides credit cards and payments; real estate secured lending, auto finance, and consumer lending services; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, and advice to retail and institutional clients through direct investing, advice-based, and asset management businesses; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking products and services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to corporations, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,061 branches and 3,381 automated teller machines (ATMs) in Canada, and 1,148 stores and 2,701 ATMs in the United States, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. It has a strategic alliance with Canada Post Corporation. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The following companies are subsidiares of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.: 2235158 Alberta Limited, A.J. Amer Agency, AHC Digital LLC, AIX Limited, AJG Coal LLC, AJG Financial Services LLC, AJG Meadows LLC, AJG North America ULC, AJG RCF LLC, AJGRMS of Louisiana LLC, ARM RE Ltda., AVIATION INSURANCE SERVICES, AVRECO, Ace IRM Insurance Broking Group, Acumus Holdings Limited, Acumus Interco Limited, Acumus Ltd, Adams & Associates International, Adaptive Marketing LLC, Adco General Corporation, Advanced Benefit Advisors, Aequus Trade Credit, Affinity Marketing Group, Ahrold Fay Rosenberg, Aires Consulting Group, Alesco Risk Management Services Limited, Alize Limited, Allied Claims Administration Inc., Alternative Market Specialists, Altman & Cronin Benefit Consultants, American Freedom Carriers Inc., American Security Services Corp., American Wholesalers Underwriting Ltd, Andrew-Anthony Insurance Agency, Anthony Hodges Consulting Limited, Antrobus Investments Limited, AquaSurance, Argentis, Argentis Financial Group Limited, Argentis Financial Management Limited, Argus Benefits, Armstrong/Robitaille/Riegle, Artex (SAC) Limited, Artex Cedar Hill, Artex Corporate Services (Malta) Limited, Artex Corporate Services Limited, Artex Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Artex Holdings (Malta) Limited, Artex Insurance (Guernsey) PCC Limited, Artex Insurance (Tennessee) PCCIC Inc., Artex Insurance Brokers (Malta) PCC Limited, Artex Insurance ICC Limited, Artex Intermediaries Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Bermuda) Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Cayman) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Gibraltar) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Guernsey) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (International) Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (Malta) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Artex Risk Solutions (UK) Limited, Artex Risk Solutions Inc., Arthur J Gallagher (Norway) Holdings AS, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (AUS) Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (Bermuda) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (Illinois), Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. Insurance Brokers of California Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher (Aus) Pty Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (Bermuda) Holding Partnership, Arthur J. Gallagher (Life Solutions) Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Arthur J. Gallagher (U.S.) LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher (UK) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Asesoria S.A.C., Arthur J. Gallagher Australasia Holdings Pty Ltd., Arthur J. Gallagher Brokerage & Risk Management Services LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Broking (NZ) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Financial Services Professionals Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Group Quebec ULC, Arthur J. Gallagher Holdings (UK) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Insurance Brokers Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Latin America LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Management (Bermuda) Limited, Arthur J. Gallagher Real Estate Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services (Hawaii) Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services of Utah Inc., Arthur J. Gallagher School Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Service Company LLC, Arthur J. Gallagher Services (UK) Ltd, Ashmore & Associates Insurance Agency, Atlantic Risk Management Corp., Atrex Insurance (Cayman) SPC Limited, Avantek Pty Ltd, Axe Insurance PCC Limited, BIS Insurance Services, Baker - Tillys employment benefits solutions, Ballard Benefit Works, Bankers Financial Benefits, Barmore Insurance Agency, Behnke & Co. Inc., Bellisle Pty Ltd, Belmont Associates Consultants, Belmont Insurance Holdings Limited, Belmont International, Belmont International Limited, Benefit Development Group, Benefit Management Group, BenefitLink Resource Group, Benefits Planning & Insurance Agency, Benefits Unlimited, Bennett & Shade Co., Bergvall Marine, Bergvall Marine A.S., Besselman & Little Agency, Big Savings Insurance Agency Inc., Blenheim Park Ltd, Blenheim Park Services Limited, Blue Holdings Pty Ltd, Blue Horizon Insurance Services, Blue Water Benefits, BluePeak Advisors, Blueleaf Consulting Pty Ltd., Bluewater Incorporated Cell Insurance Company, Bollinger Inc., Bollinger Insurance Services Inc., Bowen Miclette Britt & Merry of Arkansas Inc., Brendis & Brendis, Brim AB, Broker Benefit Services, Brokerage Professionals, Brown Hobbs & McMurray Insurance, Bultman/Bell Associates Inc., Burkwald & Associates, Burns-Fazzi Brock & Associates, Bushong Insurance Associates, C&B Consulting Group, CGM Gallagher Insruance Brokers (Trinidad & Tobago) Limited, CJM Solutions Inc., CMA Solutions LLC, Cairnstone Financial, California Insurance Center, Capital Bauer Insurance Agency, Capitol Benefits Group, Capsicum CRLA LLP, Capsicum Re Brasil Participacoes Ltda, Capsicum Re Latin America Corretora De Resseguros Ltda, Capsicum Reinsurance Brokers Bermuda Limited, Capsicum Reinsurance Brokers Miami Inc., Carefree Marketing Inc., Carpenter Cammack & Associates, Cashan & Co., Castle Insurance Associates, Centennial Insurance Agency, Charity First Insurance Services Inc., Charles Allen Agency, Charter Lakes Insurance Agency, Chris Schroeder Insurance, Christie-Phoenix, Cintran Claims Canada Limited, Classic Insurance Services, Cleaveland Insurance Group, Cohen & Lord Insurance Brokers, Cohn Financial Group, Coleman Group Holdings Limited, Coleman Holdings Limited, College and University Scholastic Excess Risk Purchasing Group LLC, Commercial Insurance Brokers, Complete Benefit Alliance, Complete Financial Balance, Complete Financial Balance Pty Ltd, Consolidated Casualty Specialties LLC, Construction Risk Solutions, Contego Underwriting Limited, Contego Underwriting Ltd, Continental Excess & Surplus, Convergence Risk Services Ltd, Copper Mountain Assurance Inc., Cornwall & Stevens Co., Corporate Benefit Advisors, Corporate Life Consultants, Countrywide Accident Assistance Limited, Coverdell & Company Inc., Coverdell Canada Corporation, Cowles and Connell, Craig M. Ferguson & Co., Crist Elliott Machette Insurance Services, Crombie Lockwood (NZ) Limited, Davis-Poston & Associates, Denman Consulting Services, Detlefs Johnson & Partners, DiBrina Group, Dickinson & Associates, Discount Development Services L.L.C., Discovery Benefit Solutions, Dodson-Bateman & Co., Donald P. Pipino Co. Ltd., E. S. 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Braband Insurance, Vital Benefits, Voluntary Benefits Solutions, W. E. Kingsley Co. Inc., WM. W. George & Associates, Walker Taylor Agency, Welling Associates, Wesfarmers Insurance - Insurance Brokerage Operations, Western Benefit Solutions, White & Company Insurance, Whitehaven Insurance Group, William Gallagher Associates Insurance Brokers, William H. Connolly & Co., Williams Insurance Agency Inc., Williams-Manny Insurance Group, Winn & Company Insurance Brokers, Wischmeyer Benefit Partners, Woodbrook Underwriting Agencies, Woods & Grooms, WorkCare Northwest, Worksite Communications, Y. S. Liedman & Associates, YOA Capsicum Reinsurance Broker Limited, Zenor Limited, Zuber Insurance Agency, and e3 Financial. Read More ITV plc, an integrated producer broadcaster, creates, owns, and distributes content on various platforms worldwide. It operates through Media & Entertainment, and ITV Studios segments. The Media & Entertainment segment broadcasts various contents on its family of free-to-air channels, including ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITVBe, ITV Encore, CITV, ITV Breakfast, CITV Breakfast, and various related +1 and HD equivalents; and offers television advertising services. It also delivers content through linear television broadcasting, as well as on the ITV Hub, catch up services on pay platforms, and through direct content deals. In addition, this segment offers online advertising, HD digital channel on pay platform, and ITV Choice subscription services, as well as licenses DTT Multiplex A. The ITV Studios segment creates and produces programs and formats that include drama, entertainment, and factual entertainment for its own channels and other broadcasters. 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From cockpit to think tank: W&M student veteran prepares to attain his doctorate Kurt Klingenberger (pictured in Baghdad, Iraq) is currently completing his doctorate in higher education at William & Mary's School of Education. He retired from the Air Force with nearly 30 years of service. Photo courtesy of Kurt Klingenberger Photo - of - Hide Caption Within the classrooms and lecture halls of William & Mary sit a multitude of students from around the world with diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, all striving for the highest levels of educational achievement. Retired Air Force Col. Kurt Klingenberger, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is no different. Among his assignments, Klingenberger served as a National Defense Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, D.C., focusing on research that would change how the Air Force responds to chemical or biological weapons. After nearly 30 years of service in the Air Force, Klingenberger is now on a quest to reach his personal academic goal of completing a doctorate in higher education at W&Ms School of Education. Educational journey Starting off as a second lieutenant after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a degree in international relations, Klingenberger set forth to be the best officer he could. After graduating and establishing myself as an officer, I did a variety of things, said Klingenberger. I was a navigator on an assortment of military aircraft, received my Master of Arts in international relations and economics from John Hopkins University, served as a faculty member at the [Air Force] Academy and served as the chief operating officer of the National Intelligence University. After receiving considerable training in the fields of intelligence, economics and government, Klingenberger felt it was time to receive more in-depth education in military tactics and procedures. In the U.S. military, a small number of officers at the ranks of O-5 and O-6 (lieutenant colonel and colonel in the Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps) attend their respective services war college to study operational and strategic levels of national defense. Klingenberger was among those selected for this type of professional education but with a twist; rather than attending a war college he was given the opportunity to spend a year at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, DC. I was very fortunate to have received this assignment, said Klingenberger. The year I spent as an Air Force fellow at the council in lieu of attending one year at the war college was very fulfilling. Once at the Atlantic Council, Klingenberger was given a task to research situations that impedes the militarys ability to complete its missions. The Air Force required me to do a paper on a subject of my choosing, said Klingenberger. I chose to explore the issue of how military air bases could better cope in a conflict where an enemy used chemical or biological weapons. Questioning assumptions Klingenbergers study looked at this question: What would be the consequences of having deadly chemical and biological agents land on an airbase that houses aircraft, troops and equipment? The old assumption to that question looked like this, said Klingenberger. If a small amount of these chemical and biological agents somehow contaminated personnel and material on the base, then everybody would have to work for hours or even days in heavy protective suits and masks trying to decontaminate the area. This will make it pretty tough for the occupants of the base to do their jobs, therefore reducing overall mission readiness. While working on his paper, Klingenberger found that the subject was similarly being discussed and researched by other nations around the world. I became involved in an international working group that was exploring similar questions about weapons of mass destruction, said Klingenberger. I co-wrote an article with a French navy captain about how to survive a chemical and biological attack so that the mission can continue. Although he did not start the project with expertise in weapons of mass destruction, Klingenberger spent a lot of time talking to experts and examining relevant information so that he could have a better understanding of the deadly effects of the weapons. I made a number of trips to learn more about this topic, said Klingenberger. I volunteered to take a course in chemical defense, which was facilitated by the U.S. Army. The highlight of the class has to be when I had to put on all the proper protective clothing, which includes boots and masks. I was placed in a special chamber that had live and lethal agents like sarin and Venomous Agent X or VX. That really made the prospect of dealing with those types of weapons so much more real. Klingenberger also debated the idea whether the Air Forces approach to combating chemical weapons attacks at the time of the first Gulf War was realistic and had too severe a cost in terms of continuing to do the tasked missions in relation to future conflicts." He argued that the standard procedures for protecting forces in a chemical environment were exceedingly risk-averse to the point of nearly stopping military operations. Maybe, we thought, such an all-exclusive approach was not needed, said Klingenberger. And only individuals actually near the chemicals would have to take such protective measures. During his fellowship, Klingenberger was able to raise the question of whether the Air Force should change its doctrines and procedures that governed chemical-defense measures. His research led him to his next duty station. I was able to get an assignment directly following the fellowship to an Air Force base in Korea, which was a great little laboratory to test some of the ideas I had, said Klingenberger. Military policy makers assumed that North Korea could possibly use chemical weapons. During my year in Korea, we demonstrated that the new techniques effectively dealt with a chemical attack scenario while simultaneously reducing the adverse effects to military personnel. Bringing about change His time in Korea was a proof of concept opportunity for his arguments, which directly changed how the Department of the Air Force deals with chemical attacks. It took me two more assignments back to the Pentagon before I was able to get these new ideas embedded into Air Force doctrine and procedures, said Klingenberger. Now it is the new way of planning and practicing for defense of airbases. Now that he has changed the way the U.S. Air Force goes about protecting its service members, Klingenberger is taking time for himself. Currently, hes working on his educational goals. Since coming to William & Mary, Ive gotten both my masters of public policy and M.B.A. in 2016, which was very challenging he said. But it wasnt too overwhelming, so I decided to go for my Ph.D. Klingenbergers scholarly pursuits go back to his military days. Taking time out of his evenings to go to night school helped him succeed then, just like he succeeded in changing the ways senior Air Force officials do business. At William & Mary, hes ready to take the ''can do'' mentality that helped him with those accomplishments and use it to reach his next goal. I turned down a Ph.D. opportunity while I was in the Air Force, said Klingenberger. Now, the time is right to do this. 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 Photo by Joseph B. Nadeau Richard Fazzio, a veteran of the Normandy invasion, recently visited a restored version of the same type of World War II-era landing craft that he piloted during the assault on Omaha Beach. Known as a Higgins Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel, the boat has been painstakingly preserved by a teacher and students at Chariho Area Career & Technical school. The military historians who oversee the Rhode Island Aviation Hall of Fame say they would like to see the LCVP become a fixture at a future museum based around the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy. Discussions to continue on South Australian waste disposal 14 November 2016 Share South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill has today announced the state's plans to continue discussions on a proposed nuclear waste facility and promised a referendum to restore "bipartisanship and broad social consent" on the issue. Weatherill's comments followed last week's rejection by a Citizens' Jury of proposals that South Australia should store and dispose of nuclear waste. The jury formed part of the state-wide consultation process following the publication of the final report of South Australia's Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission in May, which recommended the government should pursue the establishment of storage and disposal facilities for multi-national used nuclear fuel and intermediate-level waste. In a statement, Weatherill said the "unprecedented" state-wide consultation program had helped guide the government's next steps on the matter. "The Government believes continued public debate about South Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle is important, however an absence of bipartisanship stands in the way of any meaningful progress," the statement noted. The state opposition Liberal Party withdrew its support before the consultation had been completed, removing the bipartisanship the Royal Commission said was critical to the process. "I believe continued public debate about South Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle is important and ultimately it is a matter that the people should decide, not political parties," Weatherill said. "We have listened to the diverse points of view and have tried to carefully balance what we've heard to map out our next steps. We will not pursue a change to our policy, but if the mood in the community shifts and bipartisanship is re-established we will remain open to this question," he added. If broad social consent were to be achieved through a referendum, local Aboriginal people would be given a final right of veto on any future facility, the government said. The public consultation program, described as the largest in South Australia's history, included 17,000 face-to-face conversations, 33,000 online conversations, 4500 online surveys and 11,500 letters, emails and phone calls as well as two Citizens' Juries. A representative survey found 43% of people supported or strongly supported the pursuit of a waste disposal facility, with 37% opposed or strongly opposed and 20% undecided. However, two-thirds of the 350 members of the Citizens' Jury on the issue felt that a disposal facility should not be pursued under any circumstances. The South Australian government is scheduled to deliver its full response to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission in parliament tomorrow. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics IAEA considers Atmea 1 design 'seismically robust' 14 November 2016 Share The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has conducted a seismic review of the Atmea 1 reactor design. This is the first such review it has carried out on a new nuclear power reactor design. A cutaway of a nuclear power plant based on the Atmea 1 reactor (Image: Atmea) At the request of Atmea - a joint venture between France's Areva and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) - the IAEA sent a five-member Site External Events and Design (SEED) review mission to Kobe, Japan. The team assessed the technical methodologies used in the seismic design of the Atmea 1 reactor against IAEA Safety Standards. The Atmea joint venture was established by Areva and MHI in September 2007 to develop, market, license and sell the Atmea 1 reactor design: an 1100 MWe pressurized water reactor combining technologies of both companies. Turkey's second nuclear power plant, at Sinop on its Black Sea coast, is proposed to feature four Atmea 1 reactors. The team concluded the seismic design methodologies used for the reactor are "aligned" with relevant IAEA Safety Standards. Greg Rzentkowski, direct of the IAEA's nuclear installations safety division, said: "The Atmea 1 reactor incorporates many proven technical approaches and methodologies to establish a seismically robust reactor design." The IAEA's SEED review service is designed to assist the member states through the different stages of the site selection, site assessment and design of structures, systems and components against the site specific external and internal hazards. Upon request from a member state, the SEED review service provides an independent review of the site evaluation and the designed safety of the nuclear installation against the demands of the external hazards both natural and human induced and internal hazards. Previous IAEA seismic safety reviews have focused on the early stages of nuclear power projects. "This is the first peer review focusing specifically on seismic safety for a new reactor design," Rzentkowski noted. "This type of review may be beneficial for the IAEA member states, including countries embarking on nuclear power programs, in achieving high-level of seismic safety." Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Russia's Atomtechenergo gets licence for Belarus plant 14 November 2016 Share Russia's Atomtechenergo has received a licence to provide services involving nuclear energy and sources of ionizing radiation in Belarus. The Moscow-based company is a subsidiary of Atomenergoprom, the part of state nuclear corporation Rosatom that unites Russia's civilian nuclear industry. The licence, issued by the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Department of the Belarusian Emergencies Ministry (Gosatomnadzor), will enable Atomtechenergo to work towards commissioning the first and second units of the nuclear power plant under construction in Ostrovets, in the Grodno region on Belarus. Atomenergoprom said on 9 November that Gosatomnadzor had issued the licence on 24 October and that this corresponds to a 2010 Belarus law on licensing nuclear-related activities. It also said it had received a licence in July "to perform fire safety services". It added that its specialists are now preparing to apply for a permit to carry out "industrial safety" work. Operation of the first unit of the Ostrovets plant is scheduled for November 2018 and the second unit in July 2020, to give 2340 MWe net capacity on line. Both are VVER-1200 units. AEM-Technology, another Rosatom subsidiary, announced earlier this month it had shipped the reactor pressure vessel for unit 2. In March, it said it had completed assembly of the internals for unit 1 of the plant. The reactor vessel itself was shipped there in October last year. An intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Belarus specifically on cooperation in the construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus was signed in March 2011. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Chernobyl arch moved into place in historic engineering feat 14 November 2016 Share The process of sliding the arched structure into place to shield the damaged unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant started today, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said. London-based EBRD described the milestone at the plant in Ukraine as "one of the most ambitious projects in the history of engineering". The Chernobyl NSC, pictured earlier this month (Image: EBRD) The arch, called the New Safe Confinement (NSC), is the largest moveable land-based structure ever built, with a span of 257m, a length of 162m, a height of 108m and a total weight of 36,000 tonnes equipped. It will now be moved into its "resting place", the bank said, over Chernobyl's reactor 4 which was destroyed in the accident 30 years ago. "The sliding is done with help of a special skidding system that consists of 224 hydraulic jacks to push the arch 60 centimetres each stroke. It is anticipated that the total skid time will be around 40 hours of operation spread over a period of up to five days," the EBRD said. The NSC was constructed in a clean area near reactor 4 and will be slid over 327m to seal off the unit. It will make the site safe and allow for the eventual dismantling of the aging shelter currently housing the reactor and the management of the radioactive waste within the structure, the bank said. Ostap Semerak, Ukraine's minister of ecology and natural resources, said today's event is "the beginning of the end of a 30-year long fight with the consequences of the 1986 accident". Semerak noted the "immense" international support the project had received. He said: "The fact that more than 40 contributing countries and donor countries united around the goal of protecting humanity from the radioactive consequences of the tragedy is another demonstration that environmental safety remains a priority for global policymakers. And I believe that the transformation of the exclusion zone into a safe area will demonstrate the change in Ukraine's overall environmental policy, too." Igor Gramotkin, director-general of State Specialised Enterprise ChNPP, which is responsible for managing the Chernobyl site, added that the arch is "not just 36,000 tonnes of prefabricated metal", but "36,000 tonnes of our belief in success, of trust in our site, our people and in Ukraine." Vince Novak, EBRD's nuclear safety director, said the NSC project would not have been possible without the support of the over 40 donor countries who are contributors to the Chernobyl Shelter Fund. He said: "The new structure illustrates what is possible in a spirit of determined and coordinated joint effort and thanks to the generous support of EBRD shareholders." The construction of the NSC by Novarka - the French construction consortium formed by VINCI Construction and Bouygues Construction - started in 2012. Because of its vast dimensions the structure had to be built in two halves which were lifted and successfully joined together in 2015. The arch-shaped structure is fitted with an overhead crane to allow for the future dismantling of the existing shelter and the remains of reactor 4. The NSC has a "lifespan" of at least 100 years and will cost 1.5 billion ($1.61 billion), the EBRD said. Nicolas Caille, project director for Novarka said this one-of-a-kind project "shows what is technically possible". On 26 April 1986, the Chernobyl plant suffered the worst nuclear accident in history when a power runaway event wrecked reactor 4. The three remaining reactor units, however, were vital to Ukraine's electricity needs and continued to operate for some years. Unit 2 shut down in 1991, unit 1 in 1996 and unit 3 in 2000. The plant officially entered the decommissioning phase in April last year, following approval by the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine. The first phase of decommissioning is the so-called final shutdown and preservation stage, which is expected to take ten years. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Two South Korean rivers exceed 300 miles in length, the Nakdong, and Han, and these pass through some of the country's largest cities, including Daegu. These two rivers provide water to most of the Koreans and their industries. People fish and irrigate their farms from these waters. Together with other rivers in Korea such as the famous Imjin River and Geum River, the water bodies of Korea have had a significant role in the Korean Peninsula. For the mountainous country of South Korea, these rivers provide the needed fertile alluvial soils for agriculture. Nakdong-gang The Korean Nakdong-gang River is the longest river in South Korea, passing through the major cities of Daegu and Busan. From the Taebaek Mountains, it flows 326 miles to the Korean Strait. The river sources from the junction of the Hwangjicheon and Cahelamcheon stream Dongjeom-dong in Taebaek City. Along the course tributaries such as the Nam, Geumho, and Yeong drain, providing water to the residents of North and South Gyeongsang provinces and small portions of Gangwon, North Jeolla, and South Jeolla. In the Korean history, the river played an important role by providing dwelling places of the people living on the Korean peninsula. Early civilizations such as the Byeonhan confederacy of the 1st Century and the Silla of the 6th Century explored the river for navigation and commercial purposes in the armor and weapon trade. The Nakdong Valley has numerous floodplain wetlands such as the Joonam Reservoirs which provide habitats for rare and threatened species of birds, including the Baikal teal, and white-naped crane alongside many fish, and plants. Water pollution and ecologically-destructive developments such as reclamation of wetlands for housing and industry and construction of the Miyeonji Bridge threaten the river. Han River The Korean Han-gang river arises from the western slopes of the Taebaek Mountains and flows westward across the Peninsula country through Kangwon, Kyonggi, and North Chungchong provinces and the city of Seoul before draining into the Yellow Sea. 200 miles of its 319 miles length is navigable, providing transportation since ancient times most notably the Yi Dynasty (13921910). Civilizations such as the Baekje Kingdom developed along its banks recognizing the Han River strategic location as a primary waterway link to the central western region of Korea with the Yellow Sea and also for the fertile alluvial soils, a rarity in the mountainous peninsula. During the Korean War, South Korean military destroyed the Han Bridge in an attempt to slow the North Koreans. It has a basin of around 10,000 square miles, providing water for agricultural activities along its course, industrial water, and water for general use. In the upper courses, the river is used to generate hydroelectric power. The Han River belongs to South Korea even though some of its tributaries come from North Korea. After years of pollution from the burgeoning industries and urban refuse, it no longer has a central role in trade or transportation. Efforts are underway to clean the river and transform it to a green jewel of the capital. Geum River The Geum River is sourced from the Jangsu-eup area in North Jeolla Province. It flows northwards through the provinces of North Jeolla and North Chungcheong and then changes direction in the Great Daejeon running southwest through the province of South Chungcheong and finally drains into the Yellow Sea in Gunsan city. The Geum River is the third longest in Korea with its 245 miles and has a basin of 3,807 sq miles. Extensive meandering occurs in the upper parts of the river while downstream the river course is gradual with fewer meanders. Tributaries such as the Gap, Miho, Yugu, Unsan, Seokseong, and Nonsan Cheons also join the Geum River. The Geum and its tributaries have formed many small alluvial plains such as the Honam and Nonsan Plains. The river and its tributaries were a means of cultural contact in the prehistoric times through the Three Kingdoms of Korea as transportation routes developed along the west coast to penetrate deep into the interior. The Bronze culture, lasting between 850 B.C. and A.D. 100, flourished along the Geum River. Other kingdoms that rose along the banks of Geum River are the Mahan, Ungjin, and Sabi. Today the river has many dams to facilitate water for agriculture, industry, and general purpose. The city of Greater Daejeon and the industries and farms, and people of South Chungcheon Province depend on Geum and its tributaries. Imjin River The Rimjin River flows from north to south, crossing demilitarized zones to join the Han River downstream of Seoul near the Yellow Sea. The river is around 158 miles long and even though short, and it is home to two major battles sites. Namely, these are the sites of the Battle of the Imjin River in the Korean War of the 1950s and the Battle of the Imjin River in the Seven-Year War in 1592. The Imjin River sources from the Turyu Mountain in Poptong, Kangwon in North Korea and mouths in the Han River in Paju, Gyeonggi South Korea. During the rainy season of Korea, the river's smooth flow changes to a raging torrent confined only by the rocky banks that stand at an impressive height of 75 feet. In the winter, icy winds sweep along the Imjin causing thick ice layers on the river. Today, it is nicknamed the River of the Dead due to the large number of bodies that have floated down it from the north. Territorial Disputes With North Korea Over Major Rivers The Demilitarized Zone has been a major focus of international disputes between North Korea and South Korea for decades. South Korea claims that the Northern Limit Line is a maritime boundary have facilitated periodic incidences with North Korea. Rivers in Korea serve to provide water for agriculture, industry, and domestic use. Water pollution from domestic and industrial waste threatens these rivers. We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. Karolyn Williams By: Mahesh Sarin A teen was arrested on a charge of sodomy after allegedly sexually abusing several women who were under her care in a group home, according to police in Utah. The Lehi Police Department said that they have arrested 19-year-old Karolyn Williams, after being accused of sexually abusing two women at the adult group home, where she was employed. Williams has been charged with 10 counts each of forcible sodomy, object rape and forcible sexual abuse. Williams was booked into the Utah County Jail, and her bail was set at $100,000. According to the criminal complaint, Williams walked into a room at the group home, where she found two women having sex. The two women, aged 19 and 27, live in the group, and they have decreased mental abilities. They are unable to legally consent to sex. Williams was suspended from the group home after the managers learned of the attacks. During questioning, Williams admitted to having sex with the two women. Anthony Coiro By: Mahesh Sarin (Scroll down for video) An elderly man was arrested on a charge of possessing child pornography after allegedly keeping a stash of 4,000 photos and videos depicting child pornography, according to police in Florida. Port Orange police said that they have arrested 76-year-old Anthony Coiro, after admitting to looking at crazy pornography on the Internet. Coiro has been charged with 52 counts of possessing child pornography. He was booked into the Volusia County Jail, and he was denied bail. According to the criminal complaint, after police got a tip about Coiroas activity from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. When police searched Coiroas email, they found numerous child porn photos and videos. Police then seized his electronic devices. Detectives found more than 4,000 photos and videos depicting children having sex with adults. During questioning, Coiro admitted that he was looking at acrazy s**ta on his computer. Coiro insisted that he was not a pedophile, just a alaw-abiding pervert.a Family on a day trip (illustration) By: Wayne Morin A father turned himself in to police after being on the run with his four children for a few years. The childrens mother of Austria, was overjoyed when she was finally reunited with her four children after they were kidnapped by their father six years ago. The father smuggled the children out of the country using fake passports and went to his hometown in Pakistan. The children, who are 9, 11, 13, and 14 years old, were born in Attnang-Puchheim, Austria. When their parents divorced, the children lived with their mother and visited with their father. In 2010, the father told his former wife that he was taking the children on a day trip. However, he never returned the children. He later sent his former wife a fax, saying that he had taken them to Thailand, which turned out to be a lie. An international arrest warrant was issued for the man, who is now 57 years old, but authorities never located him. Last week, the man returned to Austria, with his four children and was immediately arrested at the Vienna airport. The four children, one girl and three boys, were taken to a youth welfare center in Vocklabruck, where they were reunited with their mother. The father is now in police custody. He told police that he bought fake Polish passports for his children six years ago, and he had traveled with them to Hungary, Romania, Turkey, and Iran, in order to reach Pakistan. He found work in Pakistan as an auto mechanic. However, after six years, he decided to return with his children to Austria, so that his children should have better medical care and a better future. A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took There's a big, new mammal at the Tacoma, Washington zoo and he's making quite a splash. The 3,600-pound walrus named "Dozer" made his debut this weekend. Seven zoos around the country have taken in male walruses to encourage breeding. He could be heard making loud sounds, which the zoo officials say are breeding calls. They hope Dozer will soon make a splash with the ladies. Education Secretary Welcomes New Social Enterprise Degree on Visit to Wrexham Glyndwr University This article is old - Published: Monday, Nov 14th, 2016 Wrexham Glyndwr University unveiled a new social enterprise degree and showcased its cutting-edge creative media centre during a visit from Wales Cabinet Secretary for Education. Kirsty Williams spent time with representatives of the Universitys North Wales Business School (NWBS), Students Union and School of Creative Arts on Friday 10 November. Following a tour of the 5million Centre for the Creative Industries, the Minister met with Professors Chris Fortune and Chris Jones, head of NWBS, to discuss the recently-launched BSc Social Enterprise degree. Ms Williams has been journeying around the countrys HE institutions and said she was delighted to learn more about the achievements of Wrexham Glyndwr University. I have spent much of my first six months in post hearing all about the issues facing the education sector in Wales, so I was naturally delighted to learn more about some of the exciting work going on at Wrexham Glyndwr, she said. I was particularly excited to learn more about the practical study the North Wales Business School is carrying out on the work of social enterprises across Europe, together with partners in other countries. I hope the findings will help them internationalise the curriculum for the new BSc Social Enterprise degree intake in 2017 and lead to a rewarding experience for students so they will become socially-engaged, active citizens. During her time in Wrexham, the Minister also spoke to members of the universitys new Students Union, which was named Small and Specialist SU of the Year at the NUS Wales Awards 2016. CEO Sarah Ellis, President Emily Karim and Vice President Travis Davies were on hand to explain their vision for the future, before Ms Williams enjoyed a walk around the Centre for the Creative Industries with Mike Wright and Alec Shepley, head of the School of Creative Arts, which was ranked number one in Wales in the Guardian University Guide. Welcoming the Minister to Wrexham Glyndwr University, Vice-Chancellor Professor Maria Hinfelaar said it had been an opportunity for the institution to demonstrate its commitment to its students, business and the community. I would like to thank the Minister for visiting us today and taking the time to find out more about the amazing work that goes on here at the University, said Professor Hinfelaar. We are growing in stature all the time and are focused on developing ties across the region and beyond, bringing academia together with industry and government, as well as social enterprise and opportunity, so it was positive to be able to share these new developments. Earlier this year, Wrexham Glyndwr University was awarded a 230,000 grant to study social enterprise practices across Europe, with the aim of identifying factors that are significant in their development. Professor Fortune, head of research at NWBS, said the ERASMUS+ initiative will see them work together with partner institutions in Italy, Ireland, Spain, Lithuania and Poland, and thanked the Minister for her support. This EU project will underpin the new BSc (Hons) Social Enterprise degree that is due to be delivered on a full and part time basis from next September, he said. It is a first for Wales and together with the ERASMUS+ project enables the course team to ensure that there is a truly international flavour to the programme and should ensure that its graduates are work-ready and able to make an impact on the ground in terms of developing new social enterprises and making sure existing enterprises are sustainable into the future. The two-year scheme aims to help internationalise the new programmes curriculum but will also develop European links with social entrepreneurs which can only help develop real skills in the students graduating from the new programme. More information about available courses at Wrexham Glyndwr University can be found here. Protests are growing at German universities against the right-wing historian Jorg Baberowski. Earlier this month, only weeks after students at Bremen University protested against an appearance at that institution by Baberowski, students at Hamburg University demonstrated in opposition to an event for Baberowski organised by the Evangelical Academy of the Nordkirche and the Centre for Political Education at the State and University Library of Hamburg. Prior to the event, the General Student Committee (ASTA) at the University of Hamburg, the highest body of the student government, called the protest. The ASTA issued a leaflet titled Right-wing populist researcher on Eastern Europe Professor Baberowski in the library? No university for racism! No platform for right-wing radicals! The statement was distributed by some 30 students to the approximately 60 attendees. It said: Baberowski was not disinvited, although the ASTA urged the University of Hamburg to do so. Therefore, we want to make clear that there is no place for racism at the university! It went on to state that the universitys role is as it states in its general principles, to carry out scholarship in the service of humanity. That means exposing all ideologies of inequality and contributing to a world in which war, inequality and exclusion belong to the past. Like the ASTA in Bremen, the Hamburg student body declared, Baberowski, a controversial teacher at Humboldt University in Berlin, has in the recent period repeatedly justified violent clashes with refugees and attacks on their accommodations. He employs a nationalist vocabulary and advances right-wing populist positions in the political debate on immigration issues. We are protesting against a man who confronts people with pure hatred being allowed to appear on a campus that supposedly seeks to send a message of openness. The statement documents Baberowskis right-wing agitation, citing numerous sources, and concludes: Baberowski is no better than the [ultra-right, anti-immigrant] AfD [Alternative for Germany]. His newspaper interviews read like those of many well known right-wing populist figures who seek to incite socially disadvantaged groups against each other...denounce the dictatorship of public opinion... and praise neighbouring states that have more restrictive asylum and immigration laws. In addition, the statement continues, he has downplayed and legitimised attacks on refugee accommodation centres...fully in the spirit of the [anti-immigrant] Pegida slogan, We are the people. The Hamburg ASTA also criticised Baberowskis research on violence, which at best [can] be described as dubious. Its statement notes that Baberowski calls for a stronger intervention by the state as the most effect way to combat violence. It concludes with the words: We are outraged that the downplaying of right-wing violence is given any space at all. We are responsible for preventing right-wing ideologues from propagating their teachings at this university. It rejects attempts to give a platform to right-wing populists under cover of plurality of opinions or tolerance. Representatives of the Hamburg ASTA told the World Socialist Web Site that Baberowski used his lecture, titled Between fear and fascination: The Soviet Union in the modern century, to promulgate his right-wing positions. Oliver Vornfeld from the Department of Public Affairs said Baberowskis lecture boiled down to a repetition of the theses of Ernst Nolte in the Historikerstreit. Baberowski, according to Vornfeld, subtly indicated that National Socialism [Nazism] in Germany was a reaction to Bolshevism and that its organisational form was taken from the Bolsheviks. (Ernst Nolte was a right-wing German historian who triggered what became known as the Historians Dispute (Historikerstreit) when in 1986 he published a paper justifying Nazism as a logical response to Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. Professor Baberowski defended Nolte in a 2014 article in Der Spiegel, writing: Nolte was done an injustice. Historically speaking, he was right. In the same article, Baberowski cast Adolf Hitler in a favourable light, declaring, Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasnt vicious. He didnt want people to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table.) Vornfeld reported that he raised these issues in the discussion period that followed Baberowskis lecture. He said he questioned the academic validity of Baberowskis lecture and noted that the now-deceased Nazi apologist Nolte had been invited to speak in recent decades only by pseudo-academics and right-wing radicals. Baberowski did not answer him substantively, but accused me of being stupid and said he would not deal with slanders. When another person in the audience criticised Baberowskis reference to Nolte, according to Vornfeld, Baberowski almost lost it and began shouting and intimidating him. Already in 2012, academics in the Osteuropa magazine pointed out that Baberowski was implicitly repeating Noltes positions in his writings on Stalinism, and downplaying the crimes of National Socialism. Benno Ennker, who teaches in Tubingen and St. Gallen, criticised Baberowskis book Scorched Earth for an implicit exoneration of the Wehrmacht. He wrote in response to Baberowskis assertion that the National Socialists could no longer bring the war of annihilation [against the Soviet Union] under control, that Such an exculpationunsupported by evidenceof the ideologically planned extermination policy in the East by situation and circumstances had up to now only been associated with the scandalous Polish historian Bogdan Musial. [1] Christoph Dieckmann from the Fritz Bauer Institute for the History and Impact of the Holocaust accused Baberowski of ignoring the research that has demonstrated the broad consensus within the German leadership and the heads of the Wehrmacht prior to the attack on the Soviet Union to subject millions of Soviet citizens to death by starvation within a few months. [2] A detailed discussion of Baberowskis apologetics for National Socialism is provided in the article Jorg Baberowskis Falsification of History by Christoph Vandreier in the book Scholarship or War Propaganda? (3) Baberowskis behaviour in Hamburg is typical for him. He claims the right to spread his right-wing historical and political positions, agitate for war and against refugees, and even sharply criticise the chancellor from the right. But as soon as someone dares challenge him, the Humboldt University professor portrays himself as the victim of a slander campaign and becomes incontinent with rage. Baberowski is notorious for throwing critics out of his meetings. When the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) group at Humboldt University criticised Baberowskis positions at public meetings and in leaflets, Baberowski described his student critics as crazies and urged that they be banned from the university and criminally charged. In February 2014, Baberowski moved a public colloquium at Humbold University to a secret room and employed a security firm to suppress criticism of a Trotsky biography by the discredited British historian Robert Service. He not only prevented David North, the most well known critic of Service, from attending the meeting, he also blocked specialists in the field such as Mario Kessler and students from Humboldt University whom he suspected would ask challenging questions. Baberowski was apparently unwilling to face criticism from students in Bremen. After protests mounted among students over his use of university facilities, he moved the meeting to the private rooms of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), which had invited him to Bremen. The lecture was guarded by two dozen police and a team of security officers so as to suppress any dissenting voices. While right-wing elements in the state apparatus and media continue to defend Baberowski as he moves ever further to the right, students are no longer prepared to accept the transformation of their universities into centres of war propaganda and militarism. An executive member of the Hamburg ASTA, Philipp Droll, reported to the World Socialist Web Site: We have been through a series of conflicts. For example, once a year a job fair is held at the student centre. The Bundeswehr (German army) wanted to have a stall there, and as a student body we had a long campaign to explain that this was not acceptable. Ultimately, the stall was not set up. When adverts for the Bundeswehr started appearing in the canteens last week, we protested to the student centre and they were stopped. ** References [1] Ennker, Benno (2012): Ohne Ideologie, ohne Staat, ohne Alternative?Fragen an Jorg Baberowski, in Osteuropa, Volume 62, Issue 4, April 2012, p. 112. [2] Dieckmann, Christoph (2012): Die Suche geht weiterStalin, der Stalinismus und das Ratsel der Gewalt, in: Osteuropa, Volume 62, Issue 4, April 2012, p. 131. [3] Vandreier, Christoph (2015): Jorg Baberowskis Geschichtsfalschung, in Wissenschaft oder Kriegspropaganda? Die Wiederkehr des deutschen Militarismus und die Auseinandersetzung an der Berliner Humboldt Universitat, p. 95-132. With the votes of the governing coalition of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), the German parliament last week approved an extension of the countrys military missions in Iraq and Syria. This involves the continuing participation of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) in combat missions as part of the so-called Anti-IS Coalition with other Western countries and regional governments in the Middle East. The motion introduced by the government permits the dispatch of up to 1,200 soldiers, reconnaissance Tornados, tanker aircraft and a naval vessel until December 31, 2017. The mission-related additional costs alone for the German military forces will amount to about 133.6 million. The list of tasks is long: it includes logistics support through aerial refuelling; escort and security of the naval force; sea and air surveillance; the exchange and comparison of situational information with other actors in the international anti-IS coalition; the carrying out of liaison, advisory and support tasks for the HQs of the multinational partners and ensuring the management, linking, protection and support tasks for implementing the deployment of German forces. German soldiers will be deployed on NATO AWACS reconnaissance missions, which fly from Turkey into international airspace over the Mediterranean to gather intelligence on the situation in the region. The planes start out from the Konya base in south Turkey. The Bundeswehr is providing about one-third of the AWACS personnel for NATO. In total, there are currently about 500 German soldiers deployed in the anti-IS operations. Most of them are stationed at the Incirlik base in Turkey, from where they launch Tornado fighter aircraft on reconnaissance flights over Syria and Iraq, providing target data for the bombing missions carried out by the coalition. In addition, a German air tanker is used to supply Bundeswehr and allied planes. German soldiers serving aboard the frigate Augsburg are tasked with accompanying and protecting the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the Mediterranean. The size of the mission area is worth noting. The deployment of German armed forces takes place primarily in and over the area of operations of the terrorist organization IS in Syria, on the territorial area of neighbouring countries, whose respective governments have granted permission, as well as in the Eastern Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Red Sea and adjacent sea areas, according to the draft parliamentary motion. In other words, German troops are involved in a comprehensive combat and war mission in the Middle East, which is escalating the attacks on the metropolis of Mosul in Iraq and the so-called IS-capital Raqqa in Syria. The forces deployed have been expressly granted the right to use military force. Civilians have been repeatedly killed since the beginning of the German mission. This week, the US Army admitted that at least 64 civilians had been killed in 24 coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, between November 2015 and September 2016. The real number is far higher. At the end of October, Amnesty International published a report on 11 different attacks by the US-led coalition, in which a total of about 300 civilians were killed. Other observer groups calculate that well over a thousand deaths are due to Western bombing in Syria. Last Thursday, Amnesty International accused the Iraqi security forces of having abused and killed civilians during their offensive in Mosul. According to information from the human rights group, the incidents occurred south of Mosul. Several residents of the liberated area were tied up or beaten with cables and rifle butts before some were shot. Some bodies were found mutilated or blindfolded. The Bundeswehr is playing an important role in the battle for Mosul. In close proximity to the front, up to 150 German soldiers are training and arming Kurdish Peshmerga units, which are advancing from the north of the city. Germany has admitted to delivering more than 2,200 tonnes of arms, ammunition and other military equipment to the Iraqi Kurds since 2014. As early as last April, Amnesty International accused the Kurdish militias of having looted, set on fire, blown up or destroyed by bulldozers thousands of homes. Niels Annen, foreign policy spokesman of the SPD parliamentary group, who campaigned for the mandate on behalf of the government in parliament, nevertheless had the chutzpah to call the German war effort a humanitarian contribution. He knew no other European country, which had acted in such a way over the recent weeks and months so that the support for the already visible consequences of this offensive ... succeeded, he added cynically. Even in the preparation of this operation, Germany had helped, [so] that refugee facilities were built and that the means were there so that liberated areas had water, that there were health care provisions and that the infrastructure was restored. In reality, the Bundeswehr is not building up the infrastructure let alone health care provisions, but is spreading terror and chaos. This can be seen most clearly in Afghanistan, where the Bundeswehr has been active for 15 years. On Friday, a bomb was detonated in front of the German Consulate General in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing at least six people and injuring more than a hundred. The Taliban described the attack as retaliation for an airstrike by the Western occupation forces on November 3 in Kunduz, which cost the lives of at least 30 civilians, including many women and children. The German forces are responding with brutal counter-violence. After the attack, the Quick Reaction Force was deployed, the NATO Response Force from the Resolute Support mission, which is run from the German field camp at Marmal outside the consulate. Shortly afterwards, German soldiers shot two Afghan motorcyclists who had approached the scene of the attack and who had allegedly not stopped when warned. Instead of pausing and halting the madness of its missions abroad, Berlin is now using the election of the new American President Donald Trump as an excuse to push forward German militarism. In his speech to parliament, Annen appealed, I hope that the Bundestag will make it clear that our country, the Federal Republic of Germany, with the soldiers that we have sent, and with the skills that we want to provide [ ...] is regarded as part of the coalition, that we take responsibility andparticularly in view of the election in the United States and the uncertainty that this election result has causedthat we want to be seen as a reliable partner. This is more important than ever. For tactical reasons, the Greens and Left Party voted against the motion, but agree with the call for a more independent German foreign and military policy. For example, on election night, the Left Party representative in the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, Stefan Liebich, cheered the prospect of a more aggressive German great power politics. Germany and Europe must act more strongly, more independently, more self-assuredly in future foreign policy, said Liebich. The times in which we oriented ourselves to the US were now over. The task now is to strengthen European foreign and security policy. ... We will in future say a louder and clearer No to what Washington wants. Its now time to end the pussyfooting. This does not prevent the Left Party, when necessary, from working closely with the United States to enforce the economic and geo-strategic interests of Germany in the Middle East. On Friday, the pro-Left Party newspaper Neues Deutschland published a propaganda interview with the Peshmerga Brigadier General Hazhar Omar Ismail, the first US-trained Kurdish military cadre. In 2013, he graduated from the Pennsylvania Military College, notes the paper. Now he is closely coordinating the offensive against Mosul with the Western powers. On Saturday morning, anti-Trump protesters assembled in downtown Chicago to denounce Trumps election to the presidency. Several thousand were estimated to be in attendance. The protest, which began on the Eastern side of downtown in Millennium Park, moved throughout the downtown area, looping around busy intersections and commercial areas. Students and youth, along with sections of the middle class, predominated. No unions or labor organizations were present. These organizations are apparently following the lead of the AFL-CIO, which pledged to work with Trump. In general, concerns over basic democratic rights dominated the protests, with signs denouncing sexism, Islamophobia and racism. Posters with written slogans such as Love trumps hate and Not my president were seen lifted in the air. Anti-fascist signs were also seen throughout, with some holding posters comparing Trump to Hitler and others holding signs with the word fascism crossed out. Michael, a public school teacher, told WSWS reporters, Im here because Im a public school teacher and I had students asking me after the election if they were going to get deported. When asked what he thought Trump represents, he said, I think he [Trump] represents a lot of different things for different people. For a very radical fringe group, I think he represents white nationalism. But then for othersI mean I am from Indiana, from a small manufacturing town that voted for him, so I know he also represents peoples discontent with those who lost manufacturing jobs. But, unfortunately, I feel like he was elected for his racist and xenophobic tendencies. In fact, data shows that Trump received fewer votes than they did for any other Republican nominee since 2000. Trump, through demagogic and populist appeals, addressed economic grievances affecting millions throughout the country. Hillary Clintons campaign, based upon identity politics, did not. The sharpest expression of this was the decline in votes for Clinton. The WSWS reporter said the racialist narrative was aimed at concealing the class character of the Clinton campaign, and that all workers, black, white and immigrant, had the same interests. Michael responded, I agree. The economic question is the bedrock of these issues. Jibrail, originally from the Appalachian region, travelled from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to attend the protest. He said, Im here for the future, for my kids, for other peoples kids. I think we dont need to take 10, 15 steps backwards. With a Trump victory only in the Electoral College, and with Hillary winning the popular vote and getting screwed like in the 2000 election, Im looking at some chilling things. Jibrail expressed concern over Trumps xenophobic rhetoric, saying, Im a Muslim, so Im fearful for my mother, who wears a hijab, for my sisters. Ive been reading Twitter feeds of people writing very nasty things against not just Muslims, but women, blacks, Hispanics, and I dont think thats the America I was born into. This is supposed to be an inclusive country and everyone is supposed to be able to be who he or she is. But I feel that Trump and his message made it okay to be a bigot. When asked what he thought about the Democratic Party moving quickly to unite behind a Trump presidency, Jibrail sought to justify their actions, while nevertheless pointing to the real underlying aim. I think they have to do that legally. And I understand that, you dont want civil war in the streets, or for protests like this to actually turn violent, because people feel robbed. A majority of Americans, if they actually voted, didnt vote for Trump; they just didnt go out and vote. So [the Democrats] have to keep with the political system. If President Obama hadnt had a reconciliatory tone, then I think we would be facing something different today. While supporting the actions of the Democratic Party following the elections, Jibrail expressed conflicting views about the record of the Obama administration. I feel saddened. I expected more from 08. But I dont blame him totally. On domestic issues, I think he was stopped for six years by the Republicans and the Tea Party. But on an international stage, I wish he had taken a better approach than drones, bombing US citizens, killing innocent civilians, and wielding power that way. Claire also travelled from Wisconsin, where she is a journalism student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Referring to the Democratic Partys declaration that they would work with Trump, she said, I feel like what choice do we have really? We had a chance I think with Sanders to change the system a little bit more. But this [Trumps victory] is what happened and this is what they have to deal with, so what else are they going to do? Although she had supported Sanders in the primaries, Claire asserted that there had been no alternative to supporting Clinton following Sanders defeat, saying, A third party or a write-in was never going to work. There were a lot of people who were the Bernie-or-bust thing, and I think that was a good sentiment, but a third party was never going to win. So if you didnt want Trump, you had to just go with Hillary. Another protester, David, said, We have at best elected our [former right-wing Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi, and at worst, weve elected something much, much worseand that is terrifying. The obvious worst case comparison is Hitler when were talking about registering Muslims, were talking about a rhetoric of fear, of us versus them, of capitalizing on legitimate economic concerns that have been ignored for, well, a couple generations at this point. But then focusing that through rage, demonizing intellectualism, demonizing the press, threatening to remove those sorts of rights. I mean, the First Amendment aint looking too hot right now. Its a laundry list. By setting up a single database centralizing information on the entire French population behind their backs, Frances Socialist Party (PS) government is giving the state vast repressive powers. Coming amid the state of emergency, it constitutes a fundamental threat to democratic rights, in particular to opposition within the working class to austerity and war. The database, named Secure Electronic Titles (TES), was decreed into existence on October 30. It centralizes the personal and bio-metric data of all holders of passports or national identity cards. It concerns over 60 million people, that is, virtually the entire French population. The official launch of the database took place last Tuesday in the Yvelines area and will be extended across France at the beginning of 2017. The database was prepared in violation of the law, behind the backs of the population. It was first proposed in 2011 at the National Assembly, during a debate on a secure national ID card, and sharply criticized by the National Commission on Information-Processing and Liberties (CNIL). While recognizing as legitimate the use of bio-metric information to identify a person, the CNIL ruled that bio-metric data must be conserved in an individualized data system. The new TES replaces and combines a former TES, which contained passport data, and the National Management Database (FNG), which contained ID card data. It also adds data, including a digital photo of the face, fingerprints, eye data, and physical and electronic addresses. These data are conserved for 15 years (for passports) and 20 years (for ID cards). The TES database violates legal limits on the use of bio-metric data, moreover, since fingerprints and retina scans are indelible and can be used to remotely identify individuals, and not simply authenticate that an individual presenting himself to the state indeed is who he purports to be. In 2012, the Constitutional Council invalidated an attempt to set up a similar database, ruling that such a database would serve not only to authenticate but also to identify individuals. Thus, by creating the TES database, the PS government of President Francois Hollande trampled the recommendations of the CNIL and the Constitutional Councils veto in 2012. Having created the TES by decree, the government will find it easy to modify its functioning to increase its powers, as was the case for the national DNA database. According to Guillaume Desgens-Pasanau, a magistrate and lecturer and the National Conservatory of Arts and Professions (CNAM), once the database of 60 million people is there, one can easily add a search function, for instance. It is quite easy, as it is regulated via a decree and therefore does not require new legislation. Beyond the risk that TES data could be pirated, the police, gendarmerie, customs and the intelligence services, as well as Interpol, will have access to tools that reinforce pre-existing surveillance infrastructure. Speaking to Agence France-Presse (AFP), CNIL President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin described her concerns regarding the TES: It is very clear that we are not dealing with a database whose ultimate goal is to struggle against identity theft This large-scale mechanism raises fears that it can be used for other purposes, not today, but in the coming period. The attacks on democratic rights, the police-state measures, and the pervasive domestic spying set up by the Hollande administration constitute an immense danger for the working class. A government even further to the right than the PS, armed with such powerful surveillance tools, could easily go even further than Hollande in repressing workers opposition to austerity and war. The creation of the TES database is part of a far broader installation of a police state by Hollande after the November 13 terror attacks, committed by Islamist networks mobilized by the NATO powers in their war for regime change in Syria. Police repression of protests against the PS deeply regressive labor law, a few months after the imposition of the state of emergency, exposed the more fundamental objectives of the police state crackdown. Hollande used a vast police deployment to detain hundreds of youth, intimidate high school and university student protesters, and physically crush strikes against his anti-worker policies. The state of emergency went hand in hand with stepped-up attacks by the PS against Muslims and immigrants, with raids on hundreds of predominantly Muslim families in working class areas. The collection of physical information as well as data on peoples political opinions is aimed at allowing police and intelligence agencies to identify and track existing and potential opponents of state policy. The AGDREF-2 database, which contains bio-metric data, including all ten fingerprints for 7 million non-citizens residing legally or illegally in France, can also be used to identify individuals. Given the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim statements from both official and far-right circles, such a database could serve to identify and deport via detention camps immigrants and Muslimsa possibility mooted by far-right journalist Eric Zemmour after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. These are all indications that the TES database is part of a broad construction of a police state in France, aiming to crush working class opposition to the austerity and war policies advanced by the PS. This has been broadly discussed in the ruling class and state circles in the European Union (EU). Writing for the EU Institute for Security Studies, Thomas Ries, the leader of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, called for the growing recourse to military means in dealing with social problems: the percentage of the population who were poor and frustrated would continue to be very high, the tensions between this world and the world of the rich would continue to increase, with corresponding consequences. Since we will hardly be able to overcome the origin of this problem by 2020, i.e., the functional defects of society, we will have to protect ourselves more strongly. This points to the deep crisis of capitalist rule, as the ruling class attacks fundamental democratic rights to confront rising social tensions and working class anger against war and social inequality. Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has publicly called for India to renounce its pledge to never mount a nuclear first strike. Speaking last Thursday at a New Delhi book launch, Parrikar argued that the No First Use policy India has adhered to since proclaiming itself a nuclear-weapons state in 1998 is tantamount to giving away strength. Arguing that surprise and unpredictability are essential elements of military strategy, Parrikar asked rhetorically, Why should I bind myself? Parrikar said India would be better served by keeping its nuclear war options openthat is, by effectively threatening its principal strategic rivals, Pakistan and China, that if war breaks out, India could at any time seek to annihilate them through a nuclear first strike. A written-down strategy like No First Use means youre actually giving away strength, Indias Defence Minister told the launch of The New Arthashatra: A Security Strategy for India, a volume edited by Brigadier General (Retd.) Gurmeet Kanwal, one of Indias premier military strategists. Unpredictability, declared Parrikar, should be built in (to) certain types of policy. He then touted the surgical strikes Indian Special Forces mounted in late September targeting terrorists and their Pakistani protectorsthe first military action New Delhi has publicly admitted carrying out inside Pakistan in more than four decades. Holding the strikes up as proof of the advantage of surprise, he cavalierly boasted that they had laid to rest Pakistani threats to repel an Indian invasion with tactical nuclear weapons. Parrikar claimed he was merely voicing his own thinking and feeling(s) and that the Indian government has not changed its nuclear posture to make it still more threatening and aggressive. Parrikars remarks are, to say the least, reckless and highly provocative. Not only is he the minister in charge of Indias military, but India is in the midst of a war crisis with its arch-rival Pakistan. During this crisis, which continued to rage this past week with more cross-border artillery and machine-gun fire deaths and tit-for-tat allegations of spying under diplomatic cover, Parrikar has been notable for his belligerence. He has repeatedly boasted that the Indian militarys surgical strikes mark a new chapter in New Delhis relations with Islamabad. While not wanting war, India, Parrikar has vowed, will continue escalating its military pressure on Islamabad until Pakistan renounces any logistical support for Islamist militants in Indian-occupied Kashmir, and will do so, even at the risk of precipitating all-out war. Nowhere in the world, conceded an editorial in the Chennai-based Hindu, do high officials voice their private musings on nuclear doctrine at book-launch functions, and with good reason. The possession of nuclear weapons, which can claim tens of millions of lives, imposes an obligation of great reflection and restraint. Expressing grave concern, the Hindu added, Those who use words without care, it could be said, are prone to act without thinking, too. Shortly after Parrikar spoke, Indias Defence Ministry issued a statement reiterating that his remarks were his personal opinion, but otherwise Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have taken no steps to distance themselves from Parrikars remarks. To the contrary, Modi on his return from a three-day trip to Japan went out of his way to lavish praise on Parrikar, declaring him one of the jewels of his government. After many years, Modi told a BJP rally Sunday, the country has got a defence minister who has solved problems of the armed forces which were pending for over 40 years. He has worked tirelessly. Parrikars personal remarks may in fact have been sanctioned by Modi with the aim of laying the groundwork for a change in Indias nuclear posture. In its manifesto for the 2014 national election, the BJP included a one sentence pledge to revise and update Indias nuclear policy to make it relevant to (the) challenges of current times. However, after sections of the media raised concerns that the BJP planned to abandon Indias stated policy of deterrencei.e., that the sole purpose of Indias nuclear arsenal is to deter other powers from making it the target of a nuclear attackthe Modi government announced, in the summer of 2014, that it had no plans to review Indias nuclear policy. At the very least, Parrikars remarks, and the blase attitude of Modi and his government to them, attest to the belligerence that prevails in Indian ruling circles. Islamabad and Beijing will certainly have taken note. Over the past decade both India and Pakistan have rapidly expanded their nuclear arsenals, as part of a larger South Asian arms race that has been fueled by Washingtons aggressive campaign to harness India to its military-strategic offensive against China. As part of that campaign, the US has showered strategic favours on India, overturning the tenuous balance of terror between South Asias rival nuclear-armed powers. Washington has named India a major defence partner, giving it access to the most-advanced US weapons systems, and negotiated a unique status for India within the world nuclear regulatory regime that allows New Delhi to purchase civilian nuclear fuel and technology, although it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While the US justified its 2008 nuclear accord with India with the claim that it concerned only Indias civilian nuclear programme, Washington was well aware it would enable India to concentrate the resources of its indigenous nuclear programme on the development of its nuclear arsenal. Significantly, Ashley Tellis, who as a member of George W. Bushs National Security Council played a key role in the negotiation of the Indo-US nuclear accord, recently argued Washington should abandon its official policy seeking to constrain Indias development of its nuclear arsenal in recognition of its value in countering China. Pakistan, alarmed by its ever-widening strategic imbalance with a US-supported India, has responded by strengthening its longstanding alliance with China and by expanding its nuclear programme, especially the development and deployment of tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons. Islamabad has repeatedly warned in recent years that should India invade Pakistan, or even mass its troops to do so, it will use tactical weapons. In response, India has let it be knownnotwithstanding its No First Use policythat it will consider any use of tactical nuclear weapons as justification for using its strategic arsenal, that is for targeting Pakistani cities for annihilation. The British decision, June 23, to leave the European Union (EU), simultaneous with damaging tax rulings, has raised broad concerns for the future of Irelands low-tax investment strategy and the entire basis of the Irish economy. Brexit also raises the possible imposition of a hard border or passport controls between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It threatens the Common Travel Area, first agreed in 1923, under which there are 30,000 border crossings a day. Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC), forerunner to the EU, on the same day as Britain in 1973, following an 83 percent majority vote the previous year. Membership allowed the Irish bourgeoisie to exploit the republics endemic poverty to provide a low-wage, English-speaking workforce to primarily US-owned transnational corporations seeking access to the European market. On this basis Ireland became known, prior to the 2008 meltdown of its banking sector, as the Celtic Tiger, with annual growth rates above 10 percent. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial collapse, the Irish government imposed billions of euros of austerity measures on the working class, at the behest of the EU-led troika. Over the same period, British and Irish membership of the European trading bloc allowed tariff free export of a large volume of Irish agricultural products to Britain. Overall trade between Ireland and Britain amounts to more than 1 billion a week. Large European subsidies also provided a steady funding stream towards infrastructure projects, to cross-border bodies and agriculture. Both these pillars of the Irish economy are collapsing. Earlier this year, the European Commission demanded that the Irish government collect some 11 billion due in back taxes and up to a further 6 billion in interest from the US tech giant Apple. The ruling followed similar European moves against Starbucks and Amazon and expressed sharply deepening transatlantic tensions. These are likely to escalate following the election of Donald Trump as US president. In response, last week Irelands Fine Gael Finance Minister Michael Noonan formally launched an appeal in defence of the right not to tax the worlds richest corporations. Noonan said he intended to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign member state competence of taxation. The immediate consequence of the Brexit decision, however, is the fall in the value of the British pound against the euro. This has already caused a sharp crisis for Irish agriculture, long before the British government has taken any formal step to trigger the Article 50 EU exit process. Sterling has declined against the euro by nearly 15 percent since June 23, from 1.31 to 1.15, with a comparable increase in the price of Irish exports to Britain. Of 11 billion in food exports from the republic, some 4.4 billion is directed towards Britain; 230,000 workers are employed in the industry. In October, two former holders of the office of Taoiseach (Irish premier), John Bruton and Bertie Ahern, gave evidence at a House of Lords select committee in Westminster. Bruton, once leader of Fine Gael, warned that Brexit threatened to disrupt the food processing industry that operates across the Northern Ireland border. Thirty percent of milk produced in the North is processed in the South, while 40 percent of chicken produced in the North is consumed in the South. Brexit will require some form of tariff reckoning on all such transactions. According to Ahern, a senior figure in Fianna Fail, the British-based supermarket chain Tesco obtains 60 percent of its cheese and 84 percent of its chicken produce from Ireland. The Guardian reported that one in 10 of Irelands mushroom farmers had gone into bankruptcy post-Brexit. Representatives of the Irish meat industry warned that a post-Brexit Britain might strike a trade deal with rivals such as Brazil, which would further undercut the Irish position. A recent survey by the Dublin-based Economic and Social Research Institute reckoned that over 10 years, the impact of Brexit would cause a drop in Irish output of between 2.3 and 3.8 percent. Around 300 attended a conference of an All-island Civic Dialogue in early November. The conference, initiated by current Taoiseach Enda Kenny to discuss the implications of the Brexit crisis, brought together employers, trade unions, non-governmental organisations and most of the major parties on both sides of the border. The conference followed the rejection of a legal challenge against Brexit by the High Court in Belfast. Two challenges were made in separate proceedings. One was by a cross-party group of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and another was by a citizen, Raymond McCord, whose son was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries. The basis of the challenge was that Northern Ireland should be able to veto any change to its constitutional position as a devolved government and the arrangements in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. On October 28, a High Court judge ruled there was nothing in the Good Friday Agreement to prevent the government triggering Article 50. McCord said he would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. Kenny opened the all-island conference, stating that Brexit presents the most significant economic and social challenge of the past 50 years. He reiterated his aspiration to avoid a hard border, but warned the problems this might face because there are those around the European table that take a very poor view of the fact that Britain has decided to leave. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams called for some form of special status for Northern Ireland that would avoid border controls. According to Adams, the Irish government as a continuing member of the EU, has the right, and in our view the obligation to bring forward such a proposal. The conference was boycotted by Northern Irelands Ulster Unionists, who were in favour of Remain, and the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Northern Ireland First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster denounced the conference as full of grandstanding remoaners. A majority of the population of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by a margin of 56 to 44. Foster complained the Irish government was exaggerating the uncertainty around Brexit to poach investors from the North. Contradicting Foster, the head of the Northern Ireland Confederation of British Industry complained that Northern Ireland was particularly vulnerable because its businesses were generally quite small, and traded heavily with the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is annually in receipt of around 260 million in EU farm subsidies. On Friday Fine Gaels Joe McHugh, the republics minister for the diaspora and international development, stated his opposition to moves by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to thwart Brexit. Sturgeons Scottish National Party government is opposed to Brexit on the basis that it threatens access to the EU Single Market. To this end, Sturgeon has held talks with representatives from Germany, France and other EU nations. McHugh said talks over Brexit involving the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland had to take place under the auspices of Westminster. Speaking to Scottish daily the Herald, he said, Its a UK Government position and what I like about their approach is theyre looking to involve the devolved assemblies. I think thats important. Theyre already doing it, its already happening. Last week Sturgeon confirmed that the Scottish government is joining legal action on the side of those opposing Mays plan to trigger Article 50 by the end of March. On December 5, a Supreme Court panel of 11 senior judges will hear an appeal by Mays government to this months ruling by the High Court that she did not have the legal right to bypass Parliament. Within hours of Donald Trumps victory in the US, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly became the fourth world leader to hold a teleconference with the president-elect. The pair agreed to meet on November 17 in New York. The 20-minute phone call and hastily-arranged meeting provide some indication of the nervousness in Japanese ruling circles over the implications of the Trump presidency. In an editorial on Thursday, Asahi Shimbun, one of Japans major daily newspapers, stated: Donald Trumps victory in the US presidential election amounts to a huge political earthquake that will shake the postwar world order to its core. During the election campaign, Trump branded Japan a trade rival and currency manipulator, threatened to withdraw US troops from Japan unless the country paid more for their presence, and suggested that Japan and South Korea should acquire nuclear weapons. Our allies are not paying their fair share, Trump said in a campaign speech in April. In the words of a Japan Times columnist, he accused both countries of freeloading under nuclear umbrella provided by the US. Trump also denounced the Obama administrations Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, which is now dead in the water, thwarting Abes plans to exploit the trade and investment bloc to boost Japans stagnant economy. In a statement, Abe spoke of Japan and the United States as unshakeable allies. During their teleconference, he said he was convinced that America will be made even greater under Trumps leadership. In response, Trump praised Abes economic policy achievements and said he wanted to work with Abe to further strengthen the great partnership between the two countries. These initial conciliatory remarks cannot hide the heightened tensions between the two imperialist powers, which fought each other for control of the Asia Pacific during World War II. Abe may be anxious to avoid an abrupt breakdown of the military and geo-strategic alliance with the US, on which the Japanese elite has relied since the war. But Trumps aggressive America first policy is likely to intensify calls in Tokyo for the further re-militarisation of Japan, a process already instigated by Abe. Abes government had appeared to bank on a win by Hillary Clinton, with whom Abe maintained close ties. He last met her in New York during September while he was attending the United Nations General Assembly. Just before the US election, the government leaked to the media a report that Abe would meet Clinton, as president, in Washington during February. By contrast, Abes administration had little contact with the Trump camp. The only aide of Trump who visited Japan recently was ex-general Michael Flynn, who serves as Trumps military adviser. Just before the US election, two Trump advisers gave some idea of the bellicose military posture that his government will pursue in Asia, particularly against China, despite suggestions that the billionaire will pursue an isolationist foreign policy. In a November 7 Foreign Policy article they criticised President Barack Obamas pivot to Asia as talking loudly but carrying a small stick. They said Trump would beef up the US Navy, and re-asserted it was only fair that Japan and South Korea pay more for US military protection. There is no question of Trumps commitment to Americas Asian alliances as bedrocks of stability in the region, wrote University of California professor, Peter Navarro, and Alexander Gray, a former adviser to US politician Randy Forbes. The article indicted the Obama administration for failing to halt Chinas maritime activities in the East and South China Seas, where Beijing has longstanding territorial disputes with neighbouring countries, including Japan. It declared: The mere initiation of the Trump naval program will reassure our allies that the United States remains committed in the long term to its traditional role as guarantor of the liberal order in Asia. The Asahi Shimbun reported that some Japanese politicians welcomed Trumps proposition that Japan should arm itself with nuclear weapons. Japan has long been steeped in lukewarm water provided by the United States, a member of Abes ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) told the newspaper. This is a good opportunity for Japan to shift to a path to defend itself (without relying on the United States). Since taking office in 2012, Abes right-wing LDP government has already boosted military spending, concentrated war powers in a US-style National Security Council and refashioned military planning to focus on conflict with China. Abe used the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, directed at combating Chinas rising influence, as a means of pursuing this re-militarisation, which was also encouraged by Washington. Japans new military legislation, which came into force in March, allows the countrys armed forces, under the guise of collective self-defence, to fully participate in wars abroad for the first time since the end of World War II. Abes government pushed the laws through parliament during 2015 despite some of the largest anti-war protests in Japanese history. This followed the reinterpretation of the postwar constitution by Abes cabinet in July 2014 to allow such joint military action. In December 2015, the Japanese government also agreed to pay 946.5 billion yen ($US9.19 billion) to fund US bases over the fiscal 2016-20 period. That figure was 13.3 billion yen more than the sum paid in the previous five-year period. A US Defense Department report in 2004 showed that Tokyos share in the overall expenses for US forces in Japan was 74.5 percent in 2002, compared to 32.6 percent for Germany and 40 percent for South Korea. At present, the US bases in Japan, which house almost 50,000 military personnel, are closely integrated into Washingtons preparations for conflict with China. Together with Australia in the south, Japan is a critical linchpin in Americas military and geo-strategic encirclement of China. However, if that alignment were to be breached, including by Trumps threats to pull out the military forces, then ultra-nationalist elements within Japans own establishment could raise their heads. This is a double-edged sword for Washington. As one Asia Times commentator stated: In fact, the Abe administration is likely to welcome (quietly) an opportunity to shore up national defence in response to demands from the Trump administration. Economically, Trumps protectionist policiessuch as his threats of retaliatory tariffs against China and possibly other countriesare likely to hurt Japanese corporations. According to Finance Ministry statistics, Japans total exports to the USits largest export marketstood at 15 trillion yen in fiscal 2015. These could all be endangered by protectionism, notably in the auto industry. Trumps killing off of the TPP is a particular blow to Japan. Bloomberg noted: Trumps win all but doomed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which could have boosted Japanese manufacturers. Abe was counting on the pact as a catalyst for long-promised structural reforms in protected sectors of the economy. The demise of the TPP also strikes at Washingtons authority in Japan and throughout the region, opening the door to Chinas alternative proposal for an East Asian trade bloc, effectively under Chinas sway. Ryo Sahashi, associate professor of international politics at Kanagawa University, warned: If TPP does not happen, the US will lose credibility among its allies and partners in Asia. Protests against the election of Republican Donald Trump continued for a fifth straight day on Saturday in the city of Los Angeles. Some 10,000 marched through downtown Los Angeles. A few dozen protesters were arrested both prior to and after the main march in the early morning and evening. Small protests also took place in the nearby cities of Long Beach and in Hollywood on Sunday morning. While the news media and Los Angeles Police Department estimated the size of the main Saturday protest to be no more than 8,000, aerial photographs show far greater numbers, stretching across tens of city blocks. The protesters chanted Money for jobs and education, not for war and deportation and We reject the president-elect, among others. Strong sentiment in defense of basic democratic rights was present, along with support for immigrants and their families. While protests such as those arising in Los Angeles and across the country against what will be the most right-wing presidential administration in American history are an expression of deep social opposition, the political orientation of many involved is extremely confused and continues to show lingering support for the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left forces that promote illusions in liberalism. Popular among the protesters was a distributed moveon.org petition to abolish the Electoral College, not because of the undemocratic nature of the archaic institution, but to deliver the presidency to Hillary Clinton based on her victory in the popular vote. Another petition was distributed calling for Electoral College members to change their votes to Clinton when they meet on December 19 of this year. Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke to several protesters at the demonstration. Jesse works in a music-recording studio in downtown Los Angeles. I am a child of Mexican immigrants and Im very afraid of what a Trump administration will mean for my friends and my family. I have a close relative who is undocumented and shes also the mother of five children. Why should she be deported? Undocumented or not she makes a great contribution to society. She works long hours, does a great job so that she can raise great children. For me, I know this country always had a lot of problems, but I respect the fact that people had basic rights and I love that about this country. Were going to have to fight for these basic rights. Although Jesse believed that the victory of Trump could be explained by lack of education among rural American voters, he at the same time stated that Hillary Clinton didnt represent a real alternative. Shes a hypocrite, he said. First, shes against gay marriage, then shes in favor. First shes in favor of the Iraq war, then she says she made a mistake. I agree she wouldnt represent our interests either. I think youre right about working people, white, Latino and black, having the same interests, though. We do have to unite, especially now. Lourdes has lived in Los Angeles for nearly thirty years and was accompanied by her niece Barbara, visiting from Brazil. Barbara said, I am very concerned about Trump and a lot of the racist things he said about immigrants and Muslims. I came to the protest because I thought it was interesting and I wanted to spend time with my aunt. Ive never been very political before. I didnt want to say much though because Im not an American citizen, but you are right, the American president has an effect on the entire world. I think the protests here are very hopeful. Lourdes also expressed a desire to fight for basic rights. I have been in this country for almost thirty years and I love it here. We have had basic rights for a long time and I think they are being taken away now. Women may not have a right to basic health care services and I worry that freedom of speech will be taken away under Trump. When asked about whether she thought that things would have been better under Clinton, Lourdes said, I think it would have been different but not better. Everyone is losing jobs and cant make enough money. I agree she lost because she didnt say anything about poor people suffering, and Trump filled in the blanks. I dont know how much your readers know about Los Angeles, but there are very poor people and homeless everywhere you go. It is awful. Im in favor of socialism. We had Lula in Brazil who called himself socialist and promised to do many things for the poor, but he ending up doing the opposite. I think it is the working class that needs to fight for its own political power and like you say, we need to unite internationally. Buddy Totten also attended the march and identified himself as a supporter and campaigner for Senator Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries. Im very upset with the election and Im here to fight the tyranny and fascism and racism of Donald Trump, Mike Pence and his administration. They perpetuated this throughout their entire campaign and they are now in the office. Im here to protest that president Obama has to give over his office to a president-elect thats been officially endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, and Im here to fight racism in our country. When asked about the Democrats conciliatory stance towards Trump, he said, I think a lot of its just posturing. Obama has to say something civilized because he doesnt want to see civil unrestany more than there isin the country right now. I think its all a sham. I campaigned for Bernie Sanders and wanted him to be elected president of the United States. I remember Sanders said, If youre here to put forward a racist agenda, which you are, then were going to stand up and vigorously fight against that. The thing is that I agree with Jimmy Dore [a comedian] when he says that the Democratic Party is a graveyard for progressives. We need a third party alternative, but I dont know what its going to take, but we need to figure it out and we need to figure it out quick. Referencing comments made by former House Speaker and Trump insider Newt Gingrich, Buddy said, Theyre talking about restarting up the Committee on Un-American Activities. So if youre a progressive or a socialist or a communist or a Marxist, or however you politically identify, theyre going to come after you and theyre going to come after you hard in a very organized and intelligent way. We have rise up against that in an equally organized and intelligent way. Douglas Young also spoke with World Socialist Web Site reporters as the march was beginning to wind down. I think people should be treated equally. Its such a regression, thats whats really sad. I think Sanders is amazing. His support was similar to the kind of support and enthusiasm that Trump had, and I think it was a mistake for the DNC to force Hillary on the voters. I would never go so far as to defend Hillary, but at the end of the day I hope she learned something. She seemed embarrassed. When asked about the Democrats falling in line behind Trump, he at first defended Sanders, but then said that he hadnt fully processed it yet. At the end of the day though, we didnt want either of them [Trump or Clinton]. In the aftermath of last weeks elections, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is being promoted by the media as the voice of popular opposition to the fascistic president-elect Donald Trump. Moore has appeared on CNN twice, first with Don Lemon and then on Jake Tappers State of the Union program. A post by Moore on Alternet, entitled Morning-After To-Do List, in which item number one is Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people, has been widely reported and discussed in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Why are the establishment media giving Moore such a buildup? Trumps election is a debacle for the Democratic Party. Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton was unable to defeat the personification of all that is backward and corrupt in American politics and cultureone of the most despised presidential candidates in US historynot because of an upsurge in popular support for Trump, but because of a collapse in support for the Democrats, who are broadly hated for their right-wing, anti-working class policies. Eight years of the pro-Wall Street, pro-war Obama administration, which has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in history, have immensely added to the bitterness and frustration of tens of millions of working people. Broad sections of young people and workers look upon not only the Democratic Party, but the entire political establishment with nothing but contempt. A New York Times poll published before the election found that 82 percent of the electorate said that the campaigns of both Trump and Clinton repulsed them. It is within this context that the Democratic Party is scrambling to preserve its political credibility. From the standpoint of the ruling class, for whom the Democratic Party has served as an essential prop for nearly 200 years, it is a pressing task to somehow keep this political semi-corpse from completely decomposing, so as to maintain the two-party monopoly through which it rules. It fears nothing more than the emergence of an independent political movement of the working class. Hence the need to promote illusions that the Democratic Party can somehow be pushed to the left and made to serve the interests of working people. Moore, who was prominently promoted by the media as an opponent of the Bush administrations foreign and domestic policy, has been recruited for this task. There is a huge element of charlatanry in Moores posturing post-Election Day as the standard bearer of an insurgent movement against the Democratic Party establishment, which he decries in his To-Do List as having failed us miserably. He shifted seamlessly from supporting the supposed socialist Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries to enthusiastically campaigning for Hillary Clintonthe establishment candidate par excellencein the general election. Moore could be heard on multiple radio interview shows in the run-up to the election not only promoting Clinton as the lesser evil to the unthinkable Donald Trump, but hailing Clinton as a genuine progressive whose election would usher in a new period of social reform and progress for working people. In his latest film, TrumpLand, Moore described Clinton as our Pope Francis, someone who will kick ass in Congress. Our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy, he gushed to Politico . Yet earlier this year, before Sanders capitulation to Clinton, Moore warned that Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. Shes a hawk, to the right of Obama. He continued: Hillary Clinton was FOR the war in Iraq, AGAINST gay marriage, FOR the Patriot Actand wants to put Ed Snowden in prison. If Moore had an ounce of political seriousness, he would seek to account for his role in promoting the Democratic campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and before that, US Army General Wesley Clark, who presided over the savage 1999 bombing of Serbia as NATOs supreme allied commander in Europe. As the saying goes, Dont hold your breath. Two political processes are taking place simultaneously in the United States. First, President-elect Trump is rapidly assembling a staff that will direct a government of the extreme right, expressed most significantly in the announcement that Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon will serve as his chief strategist. This places a man with well-known connections to racialist and fascistic organizations in a position of vast power in a future Trump administration. This action is all the more sinister given that Trump, in an interview aired on 60 Minutes on Sunday night, not only stated his intention to proceed with the deportation of three million undocumented immigrants, but also announced that he would stack the courts with open opponents of abortion rights and may seek the prosecution of his opponent in the election, Hillary Clinton. Second, ignoring these developments, the Democratic Party and the media blithely act as if nothing unusual is taking place. They are seeking to normalize a government the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Following Tuesdays election, President Obama told Trump he would do everything we can to help you succeed. Hillary Clinton made a similar pledge, saying she hoped Trump would be a successful president for all Americans. This exercise in political surrender to the extreme right has found its most deplorable and disgusting expression in the response of Bernie Sanders in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Sunday and a subsequent television interview on CBSs Face the Nation. Sanders has gone from proclaiming that he is leading a political revolution against the billionaire class, to capitulating ignominiously to Clinton, to pledging to work with Donald Trump. In the Times piece, Sanders declares: President-elect Trump is right. The American people want change. But what kind of change will he be offering them? Will he have the courage to stand up to the most powerful people in this country who are responsible for the economic pain that so many working families feel, or will he turn the anger of the majority against minorities, immigrants, the poor and the helpless? On Face the Nation, Sanders said that to the extent Trump seeks to create a better life for working people, we will work with him issue by issue. Speaking directly to Trump, he said, You talked about being the champion of the working familiesall right, now produce. Your rhetoric was great, now do something. Sanders entire position is absurd. There is no question as to what Trump represents and the type of government he will lead. He is committed to slashing corporate taxes, eliminating regulations, cutting social programs, intensifying the assault on the working class, vastly expanding the military and destroying what remains of democratic rights. To raise questions as to whether Trump will implement polices to create a better life for working people is to sow illusions while giving Trump time to prepare his reactionary government. Sanders prostration before Trump exposes both his boundless opportunism and the real purpose of his campaign in the Democratic Party primaries. If Sanders were at all serious, he would be warning the working class about the extreme dangers it confronts and making clear that he would neither accept nor collaborate with the incoming administration. He would be pointing to the fact that Trump lost the popular vote as proof that he has no mandate to implement any of the policies he is preparing. Beyond political prostration, Sanders proposed alliance with Trump is connected to a common economic agenda. During his primary campaign, Sanders urged the Democratic Party to adopt the nationalist and protectionist policies of Trump. He blamed the collapse of workers living standards on globalization and trade deals, divorced from any critique of the capitalist system. This was aimed at directing the anger of workers in the United States at workers in China, Mexico and other countries, rather than against the giant corporations that exploit workers in every country. These themes were echoed by the other leader of the left faction of the Democratic Party, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. In a statement released on Wednesday, Warren proclaimed that Trump has promised to rebuild our economy for working people, and I offer to put aside our differences and work with him on that task. In a speech Friday to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Washington, Warren detailed possible points of agreement with the new Republican administration, particularly in opposing trade agreements and promoting economic nationalism. Her comments followed statements by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams that the unions saw a great opportunity, in the words of Williams, to find some common ground with Trump. As this political repositioning is taking place, a third process is underway. In the streets, tens of thousands of demonstrators across the country are making clear that they have no doubt about what Trump represents. However, their anger and outrage find no expression within the political establishment, with top Democrats either remaining silent on the protests, acting to distance themselves, or expressing opposition. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street no less than the Republicans. It is far more concerned with the consequences of stirring up opposition than it is with any tactical differences it has with the Republicans and Trump. One of the basic problems in the demonstrations is that many of those participating still express illusions in the role of the Democratic Party. In fact, the Democratic Partyfrom Obama and Clinton to Sanders and Warrenbears political responsibility for the election of Trump, and it is now making clear that it is willing to work with him in implementing a policy of war abroad and reaction at home. In the coming months, popular anger will grow, as workers, including those who voted for Trump, come to realize what they confront. Opposition to Trump cannot be organized through or in alliance with the Democratic Party, but only in a ruthless and uncompromising break with it and all of its political agents, and with the capitalist system they defend. Protests involving tens of thousands continued for a fifth straight day Sunday in cities across the United States, reflecting broad popular outrage at the election of Donald Trump. The largest demonstration was held Saturday in midtown Manhattan and drew some 25,000 people. Demonstrators began at Union Square in Lower Manhattan and ended up outside Trump Tower in Midtown. As protesters marched along Fifth Avenue they chanted, We reject the president elect! Protests continued Sunday with thousands gathering outside Trump Tower again. Many protesters cited Trumps statements demeaning woman and Muslims as well as his stated plans for the mass deportation of immigrants and the construction of a wall along the US-Mexican border. Others pointed to the popular vote totals, which showed a substantial plurality for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, although Trump gained a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The demonstrations continued despite the groveling statements of leading Democrats, including President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, along with the AFL-CIO president and other union leaders, who promised to work loyally with the incoming Trump administration. While the demonstrations reflected deep hostility to Trump and a social opposition to the government of the far right that he is preparing that will only increase in the months to come, the protesters were influenced by the Democratic Party and liberal and fake left forces that are allied with it based on the promotion of identity politics. These political tendencies are oriented not to the working class, but to a privileged upper middle class layer that is hostile to and fears the development of an independent movement of the working class. Instead, they seek to use the justified anger of workers and youth over Trumps victory to pressure the Democratic Party. Despite this fact, the protests drew the participation of wide layers of the population including workers, young people and professionals. In Los Angeles on Saturday about 10,000 people marched from MacArthur Park and ended at the federal building downtown. The size of the crowd forced police to shut down the off ramps of several freeways. In Las Vegas, Nevada about 1,000 people marched along the Las Vegas strip, with many carrying signs declaring, Not my president. Several protesters were arrested after they blocked traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard following a demonstration at the Trump Hotel. Thousands marched through downtown Chicago Saturday with some heading for Trump Tower Chicago and others marching through the downtown Loop. Police set up barricades to keep marchers from approaching the building. Police arrested 19 people in Portland, Oregon Saturday night after a huge crowd gathered at Pioneer Square downtown. These arrests bring the total number arrested in the city during protests to 62. A protester was shot in an incident that did not seem to be directly related to the anti-Trump demonstrations. Four were detained in relation to the shooting and two were charged. All told, several hundred have been arrested in nationwide protests since Trumps victory in the November 8 US elections. Protests, some sizeable, also took place in Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Washington D.C. and other cities. In Berlin, Germany, hundreds gathered at the Brandenburg Gates, some carrying signs opposing Trump. In Mexico City a group of people gathered outside the Independence Monument. World Socialist Web Site reporting teams spoke to participants at a number of anti-Trump protests across the United States. They explained that the WSWS rejected the explanation promoted in the news media blaming the election of Trump on the supposedly racist white working class. The WSWS teams insisted that Trumps vote among workers was based on his demagogic claim to represent their interests, in contrast to Clinton, whose appeal was pitched to wealthier layers of the middle class based on race and gender politics. In reality, Clinton lost because millions of workersblack, white and immigrantdid not turn up to vote, out of disgust for the warmonger and tool of Wall Street who could not conceal her hostility towards the working class. WSWS reporters spoke to several young people attending an anti-Trump rally at Union Square in Manhattan, New York. Suzanne, age 24, who works in the fashion industry, said, I have not really been following politics until one year ago. During the primaries, Trump was a joke. Now, just yesterday, Obama and Trump meet. It says a lot about Obama that he meets Trump in such a friendly way. It just does not seem to be a real scenario. Hillary Clinton made a speech in which she did not say anything about Trump. She said we should all have faith in America. Zora, age 14, is a high school student. Although, I am not able to vote, I was for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, as was my whole family, she said. I think a civil war is a real possibility. With Donald Trump in office a lot is unpredictable. He just spews out things that he thinks the population wants to hear because there are a lot of angry people in this country. The politicians promise you something and then they dont give it to you. Trumps appeal is that he is not a politician and has new views. I am unsure about socialism, but Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Trump are all for the corporations. There were multiple anti-Trump protests in Washington, D.C. over the course of the weekend. More than 2,000 participants attended an hour-long event in front of the White House Saturday night. Reflecting the influence of pseudo-left groups in the orbit of the Democrats, there were attempts to keep the event apolitical. The gathering was billed as a vigil rather than as a protest, with attendees being encouraged not to bring anti-Trump signs. Despite the efforts of the events organizers, WSWS reporters noticed numerous protest signs among attendees. Several hundred demonstrators broke away from the vigil in order to march throughout the downtown D.C. area, chanting anti-Trump slogans. Many attendees expressed anger toward the prospect of a Trump presidency. WSWS reporters interviewed Felicita, who works in finance. Felicita said she was feeling shocked and disappointed at the prospect of a Trump presidency. When asked for the reason for Trumps victory, she mentioned that people mainly voted based on the issue of jobs. I think Trump is giving them a false sense of hope, she said. Three international students also spoke with the WSWS. Yuri expressed agreement with the idea that social class was the most important issue in the presidential election. I think race and gender were important issues, she said, but it turned out that class was the most important. She noted that only 30 percent of white women voted for Clinton, even though she would have been the first female president. WSWS reporters explained Trump was successful largely because of the anti-working class policies pursued by the Democrats for decades, which had decimated jobs and living standards in wide areas of the country. Yuri stated that Trump was falsely posturing as a friend of workers. Trump is an established capitalist, he doesnt represent middle class and working class people. He succeeded in deceiving them. A WSWS reporting team also spoke with Hamaad, a tech industry worker and a former Bernie Sanders supporter who came to the vigil with his family. He said he was embarrassed at the outcome of the election. There are some people who had economic reasons, like the promise of jobs, but from my perspective you cant ignore his ban on Muslims and calling all Mexicans rapists, he said. Speaking about the economic reasons behind Trumps vote, Hamaad said, Minnesota and Michigan have been Democratic strongholds, but many didnt come out to vote. The platform Hillary had just wasnt strong enough and ignored that portion of the community. In San Diego at least one thousand marched in Balboa Park to protest Trumps electoral victory. The citys proximity to the future wall along the US-Mexico border and heavy immigrant population has aroused strong fears. Cory and Matt came to show their solidarity with the rally, which was organized by the pseudo-left San Diego ANSWER coalition. Cory said, Its never been more apparent that our immigrant brothers and sisters, and those of different religions, need our help now more than ever. Cory expressed disgust with the two-party system and did not show any enthusiasm for Clinton, although he did support Sanders in the primaries. He had sympathy for an independent party of the working class and with the ideas of socialism, saying, Im ready for a socialist. Gisela came to the rally to show her opposition to the selection of Trump, but was also disgusted with the campaign of the Democrats, saying, I think we didnt have any real candidates. When one of the WSWS reporters explained that Clintons defeat was the result of mass abstention on the part of the majority of the population, she replied, It gives you an idea of what the population thinks as a whole. Katya and Meagan were both shocked at Trumps victory, saying, It was so confusing and baffling. They both expressed initial support for Sanders but were upset with his eventual endorsement of Clinton, saying, I was really upset that Sanders lost. I wish Sanders would have said more about WikiLeaks. Its hard to accept that he stopped halfway on his political revolution. I was disillusioned. Over the past week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Liberal-National Coalition have used the outcome of a case under the Racial Discrimination Act to mount a vicious attack on the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and its president Gillian Triggs. In a cynical attempt to divert attention from the ongoing crisis within the governments ranks, they have launched a phony freedom of speech crusade against the Act. Under section 18C of the Act, it is unlawful to do anything that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group of people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin. On Friday last week, the Federal Circuit Court threw out a long-running case against the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and three ex-students who had allegedly contravened that section. The QUT case underscored the anti-democratic character of the Acts provisions that were being used to sue the three students. Their allegedly offensive behaviour consisted in posting Facebook posts expressing their objection to being asked to leave a computer lab reserved for indigenous students. The staff member in charge at the time, Cindy Prior, initiated a formal complaint with the HRC over the Facebook posts, one of which declared: QUT stopping segregation with segregation? When no resolution of the complaint was reached within the HRC, Prior took it to the court, seeking $250,000 in damages from the university and the students. Turnbull, backed to the hilt by the Murdoch media, is now engaged in a frontal assault on the HRC, accusing it of bringing the legal case to court. In an extraordinary attack, he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio on Monday: What the judge was saying to the Human Rights Commission is, Youve been wasting the courts time. Youve been wasting government money. Triggs replied on the ABCs 7.30 program last Monday, explaining that her commission did not bring the case to court, but rather carried out its remit, which was to attempt to conciliate the complaint in an effort to prevent it from becoming a legal battle. She said the Act set a low threshold on accepting a complaint and, if that threshold were met, the commission was obligated to investigate and seek to conciliate the parties. In the event that no agreement was reached, either party could take it to court. Undeterred, the Coalition government ramped up the pressure, announcing on Tuesday a joint parliamentary inquiry into the HRC that would examine its procedures and consider amendments to the Act. Amending or removing section 18C has been a hobby horse of the Coalitions right wing ever since 2011, when Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt was found guilty of racial vilification for having accused fair-skinned Aborigines of taking advantage of indigenous programs. Last month, before the QUT judgment, the Murdoch media found another martyr for the cause, after complaints were lodged under 18C against cartoonist Bill Leak, who had depicted an Aboriginal father, holding a beer and unable to remember his sons name when told by police to control him. The cartoon was clearly a political dog whistle to racist sentiment that Aborigines are drunks who cannot care for their children. In waging their campaign against the HRC and 18C, the government and its media allies are posturing as defenders of free speech. This is a sham, and no one should be taken in by it. In the first place, their aim is not to uphold the democratic right to freedom of speech for all, but to selectively remove any legal obstacle to the inflammatory rants of commentators like Bolt and their open whipping up of racism and xenophobia. Successive governments, Coalition and Labor alike, have made deep inroads into basic democratic rights under the reactionary banners of the war on terror and border protection. The government ministers and media hacks now parading as defenders of the right to free speech, have themselves backed legislation that severely curtails that basic right. * In May 2015, the Coalition government passed the Border Force Act, with Labors support, that made it a crime, punishable by two years in prison, for doctors, nurses and other professionals working inside Australias offshore detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island to divulge information about the horrendous conditions facing refugees in these far-flung hell-holes. * In late 2014, the Coalition, with Labors backing, enacted a new power to jail whistle-blowers for up to 10 years for revealing information concerning anything that the attorney-general had unilaterally deemed a special intelligence operation. * Under the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) passed in November 2014 with bipartisan backing, anyone can be jailed for five years, or groups can be outlawed, for advocating terrorism, even if no terrorist act actually occurs. Terrorism is so vaguely defined that it potentially allows for the prosecution of opponents and critics of the illegal US-led wars in the Middle East. Such laws are only possible because Australia has no bill of rights or constitutional guarantee of free speech or of other fundamental democratic rights. Moreover, the High Court, Australias supreme court, has, in recent years, eviscerated the limited right to freedom of political communication that the courts judges had previously found to be implied by the countrys 1901 colonial-era constitution. Moreover, successive Coalition and Labor governments have joined the US-led persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for the crime of exposing the diplomatic intrigues, provocations, human rights abuses and war crimes of American imperialism and its allies, including Australia. In the case of Assange, Canberra refused to take the most elementary steps to protect the rights of an Australian citizen. The current witch hunt against the HRC is particularly aimed at Triggs, who has already come under intense pressure to resign after criticising the government over its flouting of international refugee law. It was launched just weeks after Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson resigned in protest against the governments attempt to muzzle him. These attacks underscore the increasingly lawless character of the government and its determination to free itself from the formal strictures of official departments and bodies. The broad scope of the campaign against the HRC was highlighted in a comment in Murdochs Australian last Monday by right-wing commentator Jennifer Oriel. Taking her cue from US presidential candidate Donald Trump, she declared it was time to drain the swamp of the human rights industry. Oriel not only called for the repeal of section 18C and the dismantling of the HRC, but also of the state Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Commission, arguing that the Australian people cannot afford the vast system of activism swamping taxpayer-funded minority groups, media, academe and the law. Like Trump, Oriel and the Murdoch media are making a pitch to wide layers of the population whose lives are dominated by the insecurities and distress caused by unemployment, low wages, casual jobs, poverty and the lack of decent health and education services, and seeking to divert their hostility to official politics into a reactionary direction. At the same time, those who defend section 18C and the Racial Discrimination Actthe Labor Party, the Greens, ethnic and legal organisations, and the various pseudo-left organisationspromote the divisive politics of identity based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual preference in order to weaken and divide the working class, and suppress the class nature of the ever-widening social divide. The social base for identity politics lies in layers of the upper middle class for whom the mechanisms of positive discrimination, based on gender and race, have been a useful lever for advancing their careers in academia, the media, the state apparatus and party politics. As the social crisis facing working people has intensified following the 2008-09 global economic breakdown, identity politics has been increasingly promoted to block a unified movement of the working class to defend its common interests against the profit system. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) opposes the Racial Discrimination Act. In unequivocally defending the basic democratic right to free speech for all, the SEP opposes the Act from the left, not from the right. We have nothing in common with the fraudulent posturing of the Turnbull government and its media allies as proponents of free speech, even as they enact laws to muzzle their critics and opponents. Freedom of speech is not something that can be applied selectively, according to whether one agrees or disagrees with the views being advanced. That is why, in 2011, the SEP opposed all thoseLabor, the Greens and the pseudo-leftswho cheered the conviction of the right-winger Bolt as a victory in the struggle against racism. We insisted that the working class could not cede the fight against racism and xenophobia to the capitalist stateits courts, laws and policewhich was itself established on the basis of the genocide of Aborigines and has played the central role in promoting racism ever since, including through the White Australia Policy, which operated for more than 60 years. The SEP warns that while Section 18C is being invoked today against right wingers such as Bolt and Leak, their cases will be utilised in the future as precedents to silence socialist opponents of the political establishment. Under conditions of mounting political economic and social crisis, the ruling elites will not hesitate to exploit the entire battery of anti-democratic laws, developed as part of the war on terror, to suppress the emerging opposition and political radicalisation of millions of ordinary workers and youth. The author also recommends: Australian columnist found guilty of breaching Racial Discrimination Act [7 October 2011] Freedom of speech and the debate over Australias Racial Discrimination Act [10 June 2014] Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced a one-off resettlement deal with the United States that will forcibly remove to the US some of the 2,200 refugees who have rotted since 2013 in Australias prison camps on Nauru and Papua New Guineas Manus Island. At a media conference in the governments Maritime Border Command headquarters, Turnbull declared that Australias naval Operation Sovereign Borders, which organises the interception and turn back of refugee boats, would be boosted to its highest-ever level. In return for taking a limited number of heavily-vetted asylum seekers, the Obama administration will deport to Australia some Central American refugees currently languishing in camps in Costa Rica, having been denied entry to the US. On both sides of the Pacific, some of the worlds most vulnerable people will be denied the basic right to seek protection, while many will face permanent separation from their families. Far from alleviating the horrors produced by Australias offshore detention regime, the new deal will see hundreds of families split up forever, with many detainees, especially single men, unable to reunite with their spouses and children in Australia. It represents an escalation of the anti-asylum seeker policies being enforced worldwide in the face of the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, and further undermines the 1951 Refugee Convention, which recognised a right to seek asylum without being punished, or deported, for doing so. Globally, more than 60 million refugees have fled their countries, mostly because of the criminal wars launched by the US and its allies, including Australia, in the Middle East. At the media conference, where Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton were flanked by four military, naval, border protection and police chiefs, the prime minister boasted that his Liberal-National Coalition government had put in place the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed. No details of the US agreement were disclosed, but Turnbull emphasised that it would apply only to detainees who were classified as refugees under the narrow official test, and to those currently held in the camps. All those excludedeither arbitrarily denied refugee status or already resettled in Nauru or Papua New Guineawill remain indefinitely in limbo. On Manus Island there have been 675 positive refugee determinations out of 1,015 single male detainees; on Nauru there have been 941 out of 1,195 men, women and children. More than 800 of the officially-designated refugees have been supposedly resettled in Nauru or PNG. Most of them are from Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iraq, while others are stateless. Not one extra asylum seeker will receive protection as a result of the swap deal. Turnbull stressed that the arrangement would result in no increase in the annual US refugee quota. Nor will there be any increase in Australias intake as a result of the Costa Rica plan, which Turnbull initially revealed in September. No timeframe has been placed on when the transfers will occur. Turnbull declared they would be conducted in an orderly fashion. This could last many months. US Homeland Security officials will screen the refugees, with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) providing a fig leaf of legitimacy to the process by selecting those to be considered by the US. Some of the media commentary has focussed on whether the incoming Trump administration will honour the pact. The forced removal of refugees from Costa Rica to Australia, however, is in line with Washingtons own anti-refugee policy, under which the Obama administration has deported more than 800,000 people, including more than 40,000 children. Australias border protection policy has not changed, Turnbull emphasised. It is resolute, it is unequivocal. He insisted that an essential component of the arrangement was the proposed lifetime ban on all refugees who attempted to come to Australia by boat. The government is intent on pushing that legislation through parliament by making it a precondition for the refugee swap. To underscore the coercive nature of the plan, Dutton insisted that the Nauru detention camp would remain open forever and that detainees who refused to go to the US, or return to the countries they fled, would instead be handed a 20-year Nauruan visa, leaving them stranded on the tiny Pacific island without any support or aid whatsoever. These comments come after multiple revelations of extreme abuse inflicted on those inside Australias refugee camps. In the past four months alone, there has been a leaked cache of over 2,000 incident reports from Nauru revealing the abuses inside; an Amnesty International report indicting the Australian government for torture of refugees; and a United Nations committee report detailing the profound mental health effects on those inside the camps, particularly children. Despite the reactionary precedent set by the deal, numbers of refugee organisations have applauded it, claiming it will end offshore detention. Likewise, Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten embraced the agreement and reiterated that Labor was on a unity ticket with the government in relation to refugee policy. Shorten even chided the Coalition for blocking a similar plan, concocted by the Gillard Labor government in 2011, to dump asylum seekers in Malaysia. The Greens, who posture as defenders of refugees, also welcomed the swap deal, only complaining of the lack of details. The partys immigration spokesman, Senator Nick McKim, said: After three years, the government has finally admitted that offshore detention is a dead-end. This is totally false. In the course of their press conference Turnbull and Dutton made unambiguously clear that their Liberal-National government would maintain the detention regime, which was reinstituted by the former Greens-backed minority Labor government in 2013. The plan will conveniently elevate Australias military presence in the region, just as Washington pushes for a more frontline role by Canberra in the US pivot to Asia and its confrontation with China. No information was provided at the media conference about the scale of the border protection military escalation, only that Australia would have more assets at sea and aerial surveillance than during any peacetime in history. The military and police chiefs warned of the large threat to Australia that would be caused by small leaky boats filled with people fleeing for their lives, and said the armed forces were ready for any contingency. Turnbull repeated the hypocritical claim, echoed by Labor, that permanently shutting the borders to refugees was aimed at preventing asylum seekers from dying on perilous journeys at sea. The truth is that thousands of desperate refugees are dying around the world, precisely because of the refusal of Western governments to provide them with safe passage. No doubt, this toll is continuing in the waters to Australias north, but being shrouded by a government-mandated blanket of military secrecy. Successive Australia governments have used fraudulent concerns about deaths at sea as a central plank in their criminal policies aimed at deterring refugees. The most notorious example was the October 2001 SIEV X tragedy in which 353 refugees drowned in Australian-surveilled waters. Both the Howard Coalition government and the Labor opposition of the day cynically seized upon their deaths to warn other intending asylum seekers of a similar fate. The Socialist Equality Party (UK) held its Third National Congress in Sheffield from October 28 to October 31. The Congress unanimously endorsed the February 18, 2016 statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International, Socialism and the Fight Against War, and adopted two additional resolutions: For a new socialist movement against militarism, austerity and war, and Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party: The strategic lessons. The following is an edited version of the first resolution, For a new socialist movement against militarism, austerity and war. 1. The Third National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) endorses the February 18, 2016 statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), Socialism and the Fight Against War: Build an International Movement of the Working Class and Youth Against Imperialism! 2. A quarter century has passed since the apologists for capitalism hailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 as the end of history and the final victory of the free market and liberal democracy. Instead, the drive to establish a new world order has succeeded only in creating global disorder: a series of unending wars; entire countries devastated; millions killed, maimed and/or turned into refugees; the re-emergence of fascistic tendencies and the pursuit of brutal class war policies in an age of austerity. 3. Far more rapidly than most people are aware, US imperialism is preparing a direct military confrontation with its geopolitical rivals. At a Future of the Army panel in Washington this October, Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley declared that war between nation states is almost guaranteed... Our army and our nation must be ready. The Atlantic Council think tank urges preparations by the US to fight major and deadly wars between great powers, identified as Russia and China, entailing high levels of death and destruction and the possibility of a nuclear exchange. 4. Plans for a major military escalation in Syria are integral to Washingtons offensive to secure hegemony over the Eurasian land mass. Realising this geo-strategic goal demands the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to semi-colonial status, while the US pivot to Asia is aimed at encircling and neutralising China as an economic rival. Consequently, the entire world has become a tinderbox. With 60 nations presently involved, the Syrian civil war threatens to become the flashpoint for a broader conflagration in the Middle East. At the same time, NATO forces have advanced to the very borders of Russia, while the Far East is an arena for military confrontation between both regional and imperialist powers, such as Japan and Australia. Washingtons showering of strategic favours on India so as to harness it to its anti-China pivot has overturned South Asias balance of terror and greatly exacerbated tensions between India and Pakistanthe rival, nuclear-armed states created by the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent. 5. The US is at the forefront of this eruption of militarism, but the same tendencies are present in every country. Britains June 23 vote to leave the European Union (EU) is a turning point in the resurgence of national tensions that are tearing Europe apart, heralding intensified trade war measures and militarism. Every one of the major European powers is participating in the conflict in Syria, each with their own competing national objectives. All the relations that have existed in Europe since the Second World War have been thrown into question. Whether the UKs special relationship with the US can endure, whether Germany will be content to accept a US hegemony that runs counter to its own interests, and the exact line-up of relations between the major powers on the continent is yet to be determined. But, however events unfold, what is certain is that a new world war is inevitable without the independent intervention of the international working class. 6. The drive to war emerges as a result of the intractable crisis of capitalism as a world system. The fundamental contradiction between the globalisation of production and the capitalist nation state system, based on private ownership of the means of production and class exploitation, is fuelling social and political discontent, destabilising traditional mechanisms of rule, throwing bourgeois politics into a state of upheaval and flux, and preparing a global catastrophe. This danger is made all the more immediate by the deepening crisis of the capitalist profit system, which is the source of war. 7. All efforts to overcome the financial meltdown of 2008through bank bailouts and austerityhave not only failed, they have sharpened class tensions and prepared the way for a new economic crash. According to the International Monetary Fund, total global debt now stands at $ 152 trillion, equivalent to 225 percent of world GDPthe largest debt bubble in the history of humanity. The quantitative easing programmes employed by the US Federal Reserve Board, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan have overwhelmingly benefited the super-rich. The balance sheets of the worlds central banks have risen from $6 trillion in 2007 to $21 trillion today. The collapse of this debt bubble will send entire economies into meltdown. 8. It is in preparation for this that the bourgeoisie is attempting to effect a political readjustment: a pre-emptive strike against what it fears above alla unified struggle by the international working class that challenges its rule. In the United States, the fascistic demagogue and real estate billionaire Donald Trump was able to win the presidential election under conditions where his Democratic Party challenger, Hilary Clintonthe favourite of Wall Street and the military-industrial complexarrogantly dismissed social concerns in favour of the promotion of reactionary racial and sexual politics and attacks on Trump from the right for his stated opposition to waging war on Russia. In Europe, the elevation of fascistic and xenophobic parties such as the National Front in France is accompanied by the promotion of forces such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain as a supposed left alternative. 9. Among workers and youth there exists a powerful desire for peace and social equality that finds no organised expression. The building of a conscious anti-war movement requires that the working class develop a scientific understanding of the objective roots of the crisis, based on a precise assessment of the economic and class interests that are driving the policies of their own bourgeoisie and its rivals. Only then will the working class be able to delineate its independent class interests, in solidarity with its class brothers and sisters the world over, in irreconcilable opposition to the bourgeoisies promotion of national unity as the ideological basis for war. Brexit and the promotion of nationalism 10. This is the fundamental lesson to be drawn from the June referendum on Britains membership of the European Union. The crisis of the global economy following 2008 exacerbated divisions within the ruling elite between those who viewed EU membership as vital to projecting their economic and political interests and those for whom EU moves towards greater integration, under German domination, threatened the City of London and its ability to exploit the new centres of economic growth such as China. It was in a bid to placate anti-EU sentiment in the Conservative Party and counter the growth of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to a referendum on EU membership. The aim was to exploit anti-EU and anti-immigrant rhetoric to channel social discontent in a rightward direction and force concessions from the EU that would block plans for closer economic and political union. Oblivious to the alienation of millions from the existing institutions, the ruling class was shocked when its arguments for a Remain votebased on warnings of financial collapse and economic insecurityhad little traction among those who felt they had nothing to lose. 11. Through its call for an active boycott of the referendum, the Socialist Equality Party was alone in advancing an independent political perspective for the working class. Based on a sober evaluation of the balance of class forces and the lessons of history, especially of Germany in the 1930s, its starting point was to define a policy that upheld the interests not only of workers in Britain, but in Europe and internationally. Explaining that both the Remain and Leave camps were equally hostile to the working class, the SEP made clear its irreconcilable opposition to the EU as an instrument of the major powers in imposing austerity, in facilitating the attack on immigrants through its Fortress Europe policy, and in backing militarism across the continent. But it rejected any support for a Leave campaign dominated by right-wing xenophobes and Thatcherites for whom national sovereignty was a banner for trade war, based on deepening the offensive against working people. 12. Crucially, the SEP warned that the referendum was the most advanced expression of the failure of the post-Second World War project of European unification through which the ruling elites had sought to resolve the fundamental contradiction that had twice in the 20th century plunged the continent into warbetween the integrated character of European and global production and the division of the continent into antagonistic nation states But unity within the framework of capitalism could never mean anything other than the domination of the most powerful nations and corporations over the continent and its peoples. Rather than national and social antagonisms being alleviated, they have taken on malignant forms. The SEP stressed, The EU is breaking apart and cannot be revived. It is only through the creation of the United Socialist States of Europe, established as an integral component of a world federation of socialist states, that the vast productive forces of the continent can be utilised for the benefit of all. 13. Underscoring these dangers, the referendum campaign saw an unprecedented intervention of the Armed Forces and the security services, MI5 and MI6. Both sides proclaimed their commitment to NATO and its offensive against Russia and China: The Remain camp argued that British EU membership strengthened NATO, while the Leave camp declared that plans to create a European Army would undermine the US-led alliance. Cameron described EU membership as essential to combating a newly belligerent Russia, marshalling the support of senior military and security chiefs as well as US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and five ex-NATO secretaries-general. Obama warned that UK membership was vital in keeping the EU open, outward looking, and closely linked to its allies on the other side of the Atlantic, ensuring that NATO meets its overseas commitments from Afghanistan to the Aegean, and to reassure allies who are rightly concerned about Russian aggression. The campaign for a UK exit was backed by a dozen former senior military officers, with Major General Julian Thompson, who led the 1982 Falkland Islands/Malvinas war, describing the EU as a security threat because it includes many members who cannot be trusted due to their close relationship with Russia. 14. The principled approach taken by the SEP delineated a genuinely socialist, internationalist standpoint from both the pseudo-left apologists for the EU such as Left Unity, who joined Labour and the trade unions in supporting Remain, and the Left Leave advocates of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and Socialist Party (SP). The SEP stressed, The biggest political danger in this situation is the mixing of class banners on the basis of the espousal of a supposedly left nationalism. The politically criminal character of this policy was made clear by George Galloway, who appeared alongside UKIP leader Nigel Farage to call on the left and right to march together. As the SEP stated, the advocates of Left Leave are wholly indifferent to the actual forces being strengthened by the Leave campaign. In reality, they are subordinating the working class to an initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, thereby strengthening and emboldening the far right in the UK and across Europe, while weakening the political defences of the working class. Having helped release the genie of British nationalism, they are politically responsible for its consequences. Brexit unleashes a carnival of reaction 15. This warning was prophetic. The narrow 52 percent vote in favour of Leave has been seized on by the most right-wing sections of the Tory Party as an opportunity to complete the Thatcherite social counterrevolution. Cameron was replaced by Theresa May, who campaigned to remain in the EU but has since come forward as a strident advocate of a hard-Brexit. Echoing the spurious claims of the Left Leave pseudo-left, she has described the result as a rebellion by ordinary, working class people against the international elites, and is using it as the basis for invoking patriotism and whipping up British nationalism. Her government has adopted the policies of UKIP in all essentials, including calls to phase out the employment of foreign doctors and nurses in the National Health Service and other vicious anti-immigrant measures. The collapse in sterling has been welcomed by these right-wing pyromaniacs as a means of further slashing living standards. A comment in the London Evening Standard gave an indication of their agenda when insisting, Brexit means this: Work Harder. Ironically, we all will have to learn to be more like immigrants now... If we want British jobs for British workers we are going to have to stop being choosy. 16. Opposition to Brexit continues to enjoy the support of powerful sections of Britains ruling class, as well as the US. A minority position within the Toriesthe desire to ameliorate or, if possible, overturn the referendum resultunites the majority of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) and the Greens. Concerted efforts, backed by legal action, are being made to create the basis for parliament to vote down any agreement triggering Article 50 (which begins the UKs formal exit from the EU) and/or force a second referendum or a general election. The formation of a progressive pro-EU alliance or even a new party is also being discussed. 17. This has been given additional weight by the reigniting of a constitutional crisis that threatens the break-up of the UK. Only two years after the defeat of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the SNP administration has said it will hold a second referendum in the event of a hard-Brexit, and is seeking an alliance with various parties in the devolved administrations of Wales and Northern Ireland to block or limit exit from the EU. Sectarian conflict is also threatened in Ireland. Northern Ireland voted by 56 percent to remain in the EU. The Democratic Unionist Party favours Brexit and the smaller Ulster Unionist Party, which opposed it, says it will defend the all-UK vote. But Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party all support remaining in the EU and are uniting with the Republic of Ireland government in voicing concern over its economic impact and the possibility that a hard border will be reinstated between the north and south. This would also undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and raise the issue of Irelands partition once again, over which a civil war and decades of violent conflict have taken place within the past century. 18. The real measure of this progressive alliance is its encouraging of divisions in the working class, so long as access to the Single European Market for Britains corporations and banks is preserved. Their denunciations of pro-Brexit voters as a mob and the anti-democratic character of attempts to overturn the referendum drive threaten to drive sections of workers into the arms of UKIP and other right-wing elements. Moreover, political success for this bourgeois faction would do nothing to lessen the dangers posed to the working class by nationalist reaction and militarism. There can be no turning back the clock to a supposed golden age of European unity. 19. In their attempts to prevent the growth of anti-EU sentiment in other countries, the major powers have threatened to punish Britain for its votewarning that exit from the bloc means losing access to the Single Market. This has been accompanied by a stepping up of plans by the major European powers for the formation of a European Army and the build-up of its internal security forces. According to policy papers drawn up by Germany, France and Italy, the proposed army must be able to act autonomously if and when necessary all over the world. 20. The issue, however, is who will command such a force. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared that Germany is too big merely to comment on world affairs from the side-lines. But Berlins efforts to assert its hegemony over the continent will only intensify the disintegration of the EU into competing power blocks, North, South and East. Germany is seen as the natural focus of an alliance of the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries. France is flirting with leadership of a southern bloc that includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta as a counterweight to German hegemony, while an eastern bloc centres on Hungary and Poland. 21. What unites the bourgeoisie in Britain with its European counterparts is their agreement on the brutal repression of migrants, the whipping up of anti-Muslim sentiment, strengthening police-state measures at home, and imperialist war abroad. Obscene arguments over who is responsible for sheltering the victims of Western aggression who have been forced to flee their homes and attempt the often-fatal passage to Europe are an occasion for portraying Islam as an existential threat to European civilisation, based on invocations of Christianity or the secular ideals of the Enlightenment. Far right parties have formed governments in East European countries such as Hungary and Poland, while in Western Europe the hard-right Austrian Freedom Party could yet take the presidency. The Alternative for Germany party has adopted an anti-Islamic manifesto for next years German elections, and in France, the National Front of Marine Le Pen is almost certain to go through to the second round in Mays presidential election. Europes official partieswhether nominally conservative or social democraticin turn utilise the growth of the far right to shift their own politics in the same direction. A resurgence of British imperialist militarism 22. In a bid to contain intractable social, political and economic problems for which it has no progressive solution, Britains ruling elite is being driven on a path to war. Even more so than in the past, the bourgeoisie hopes to secure its interests by manipulating international tensions and playing rival powers against one another. Such a balancing act cannot be sustained. The May governments decision to proceed with Chinese involvement in the building of the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor in England follows on from the UKs pioneering role in the Beijing-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. But closer economic relations with China and other rising powers, as a means of counteracting the decline of British capitalism, are incompatible with the UKs historic dependence on the US. 23. This is especially the case under conditions in which the vote to leave the EU has severely undermined the UKs use-value to Washington and therefore its continued ability to punch above its weight on the world arena. The prospect of Germany consolidating its domination of Europe following the UKs withdrawal led to Robert D. Kaplan, an influential member of the US foreign policy establishment and architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, warning in the Wall Street Journal, The returning geopolitical chaos is akin, in some respects, to the 1930s Brexit has undermined a key goal of British geopolitics going back hundreds of years: preventing any one power from dominating the Continent. Yet now Germany is empowered to do just that. Germany could strike a separate bargain with Russia or turn inward toward populist nationalism. Great Britain should reinvigorate its alliance with America. Acting together, the two nations can still project power on the European mainland up to the gates of Russia. 24. The UK is already playing a lead role in ratcheting up tensions with Russia and is in open conflict with Germany and France over plans for a European Army, seeking to use its position as the fifth largest nuclear power in the world, and the second largest contributor to NATOs budget, to provide it with leverage. But its nuclear capability is only operable with US technology and warheads, while the new Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales aircraft carriers, the largest ever built in the UK, will be platforms for US-built F-35 stealth fighters and Apache helicopter gunships. Britains alliance with the US means it will be drawn inexorably even further into military conflicts anywhere in the world. In Europe, it places it in the front line of the US build-up against Moscow, raising the prospect of a confrontation with Germany and the re-opening of the fault-lines that led to two world wars. 25. The ever-expanding burden of this upsurge in militarism will be borne by the working class. In 2016, the government increased military spending for the first time in six years, to a projected 39.7 billion in 2020/21. This does not include the cost of Tridents renewal, the final cost of which is expected to reach 205 billionalmost two years spending on the National Health Service. This is only a beginning. In a letter to Defence Minister Michael Fallon, retiring General Sir Richard Barons called for a massive rearmament of Britains military capabilities, complaining, neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force... could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort. The pro-imperialist politics of the pseudo-left 26. The Brexit referendum confirmed the pseudo-left groups as bourgeois tendencies. In its aftermath, the pro-Remain supporters of Another Europe is Possible are lining up behind demands for parliament to reassert its authority over the terms of Brexit and have taken part, alongside the Liberal Democrats and others, in pro-EU demonstrations. For its part, the Socialist Party calls for a campaign to ensure a socialist, internationalist Brexit based on support for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. But the most degenerate expression of the integration of the pseudo-left into the mechanisms of capitalist rule is their support for militarism and war. There is nothing to distinguish their writings on these issues from that of their imperialist governments. Gilbert Achcar, a member of Socialist Resistance, spoke for a broad section of the pseudo-left groups in a recent attack on the US-Russian ceasefire in Syria. Achcar urged the arming of the pro-Western opposition groups with anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons. 27. The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) does not represent an alternative to the militarist politics of the pseudo-left. An alliance of Counterfire (a break-off from the SWP) with the Communist Party of Britain, it promotes the fatal illusion that the fight against war can be conducted outside of and separate from the class struggle. On this basis, it combines petty-bourgeois pacifist appeals with an anti-American, rather than an anti-imperialist, perspective. Its convenor, Lindsey German, has declared, Weve said for some years that one of our aims as a movement should be to break Britain from following the US in every step of its foreign policy. In 2003, the STWC subordinated the mass protests against the invasion of Iraq to appeals to the United Nations, France and Germany to oppose Washington. Today, the CPB distinguishes itself in being openly pro-Assad and in portraying Russia as a bulwark against both US imperialism and ISIS-inspired terrorism. 28. The SEP rejects the designation by the pseudo-left groups of Russia and China as imperialist states. This false characterisation, torn out of all historical context, is a key means through which they seek to legitimise US and European aggression aimed at subordinating these regions to their direct control. However, our rejection of this designation implies no support for the right-wing capitalist regimes in Moscow and Beijing. The reintroduction of capitalism in both countries was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy. It was the end product of a social and economic counterrevolution that began with the repudiation of the perspective of world socialist revolution and the destruction of Lenins Bolshevik party in a series of bloody purges targeting above all Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition. 29. Representing the interests of a parasitic layer of oligarchs, neither the Russian nor Chinese bourgeoisie have any genuine independence from imperialism and are entirely incapable of principled opposition to the machinations of the US and Europe. Both their diplomatic manoeuvres and military interventions are aimed at securing an accommodation with imperialismsafeguarding their own ability to continue the brutal exploitation of the working classthat is the defining feature of these societies. The admirers of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, their armed forces and nuclear arsenals only disorient the working class, prevent its independent mobilisation and prepare the way for a catastrophic war. 30. The rightward lurch of the pseudo-left is not the product of mistaken ideas or the rotten politics of one or another individual. Such a broad political shift into the camp of imperialism has profound social roots. In 1999, David North, international editorial board chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, wrote: The objective modus operandi and social implications of the protracted stock market boom have enabled imperialism to recruit from among sections of the upper-middle class a new and devoted constituency. The reactionary, conformist and cynical intellectual climate that prevails in the United States and Europepromoted by the media and adapted to by a largely servile and corrupted academic communityreflects the social outlook of a highly privileged stratum of the population that is not in the least interested in encouraging a critical examination of the economic and political bases of its newly-acquired riches. [A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016] 31. The 2007/08 financial crisis, the plundering of societal wealth to bail out the banks and the super-rich, which in turn is dependent on military aggression abroad and austerity at home, has only served to cement the loyalty of the pseudo-left to imperialism. These groups speak for privileged sections of the middle class that want a bigger share of the wealth of the top 10 percent and more influence and power within the corporate elite, the trade union apparatus and the state. The ICFI as the revolutionary centre of opposition to militarism and war 32. Against all forms of middle-class, pseudo-left politics, the Socialist Equality Party bases its perspective on the central and leading role of the working class. The working class must adopt its own strategy to counter the efforts of the imperialist powers to save the capitalist order through war. It must follow not the map of imperialist nation-state geopolitics, but the map of the class strugglebasing its strategy on the unification and mobilisation of its forces internationally for social revolution. 33. The objective conditions for such a struggle are rapidly emerging. The same global crisis that drives the bourgeoisie to impose savage austerity, a turn to authoritarian forms of rule and the re-division of the planet and its resources through military force, also creates the conditions of an eruption of the class struggle. But for this to become a conscious political offensive against the capitalist class and its state machinery demands the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International as the revolutionary, global centre of opposition to imperialist war. 34. The ICFI takes responsibility for building a mass anti-war movement based on four essential precepts: The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class. The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights. 35. To take forward a continent-wide struggle against war, the strategic orientation of the SEP must be the fight for workers governments as part of a United Socialist States of Europe. In 1917, explaining the significance of this demand at the height of the First World War, and just months before the October Revolution, Trotsky wrote: The United States of Europe is the slogan of the revolutionary epoch into which we have entered. Whatever turn the war operations may take later on, whatever balance sheet diplomacy may draw out of the present war, and at whatever tempo the revolutionary movement will progress in the near future, the slogan of the United States of Europe will in all cases retain a colossal meaning as the political formula of the struggle of the European proletariat for power. In this programme is expressed the fact that the national state has outlived itselfas a framework for the development of the productive forces, as a basis for the class struggle, and thereby also as a state form of proletarian dictatorship. Our denial of national defence, as an outlived political programme for the proletariat, ceases to be a purely negative act of ideological-political self-defence, and acquires all its revolutionary content only in the event that over against the conservative defence of the antiquated national fatherland we place the progressive task, namely the creation of a new, higher fatherland of the revolution, of republican Europe, whence the proletariat alone will be enabled to revolutionise and to reorganise the whole world. [Leon Trotsky, The Programme of Peace, 1917, Fourth International, September 1944, pp. 279-86] 36. The SEP will fight determinedly in the working class to oppose all forms of nationalism and xenophobia. It will work to extend and strengthen the class struggles that will erupt by fighting, politically and organisationally, to develop the bonds of international solidarity that are the necessary pre-requisite for the overthrow of capitalism and the securing of genuine peace. At the centre of this work will be the deepening collaboration with our comrades in Germany and France for the construction of sections of the ICFI throughout Europe, above all through the development of the influence and readership of the World Socialist Web Site. The extreme right-wing character of the incoming US administration came into sharper focus on Sunday when, interviewed on the news program 60 Minutes, President-elect Donald Trump declared that he intends to imprison and deport 2 to 3 million immigrants. This followed the announcement earlier in the day of his first two administrative appointeesRepublican Party Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, and, as top White House advisor, the fascist Steve Bannon, previously Trumps campaign CEO and executive chairman of Breitbart News. Trumps appointments and his provocations against immigrants make clear that, despite the fact that he will have lost the popular vote by upwards of 2 million when all the ballots are counted, he intends to press forward with the most right-wing presidential agenda in American history. The groveling of Democratic Party leaders, from President Barack Obama to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as the capitulatory outpourings from yesterdays anti-Trump editorialists such as the New York Times Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, have only strengthened Trumps conviction that he has nothing to fear from such quarters and encouraged him to proceed with his authoritarian agenda. The liberal media has been full of speculation that having secured the presidency, Trump will dispense with his most extreme right-wing positions. But in his 60 Minutes interview, he offered no indication that he would backtrack from his campaigns extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric, which included calls for mass deportations, the banning of Muslim immigrants and the construction of a wall separating the US and Mexico along the two nations nearly 2,000-mile border. What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these peopleprobably two million, it could be even three millionwe are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said. But were getting them out of our country. Theyre here illegally. Trump is evidently referring to Department of Homeland Security data that suggest there are approximately 1.9 million immigrants in the US who have been convicted of a crime and are therefore, technically speaking, eligible for deportation. However, the majority of these criminals are legal and documented immigrants, and many of the crimes for which they have been convicted are minor offenses. Currently, immigration authorities may use discretion to disregard petty crimes, especially in cases where deportation would separate foreign-born parents from US-born children. Trumps plan to rapidly deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants could be realized only through the suspension of due process and the implementation of a massive police operation and creation of what would be, in all but name, a concentration camp system. That this is the implication of Trumps plan was indirectly acknowledged by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who told CNNs State of the Union program that the Republican Party is not planning on erecting a deportation force I think we should put peoples minds at ease. On the contrary, the threat must be taken very seriously. The infrastructure for such a massive police state operation has been developing for eight years under the Obama administration, which deported a record number of immigrants2.4 millionin its first six years, far surpassing the record of the George W. Bush administration. It is estimated that over the course of its full eight years, the Obama administration will have deported 3.2 million men, women and children. Trumps plan is a grave threat to immigrant workers and the entire working class. There are some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, a substantial share of the upwards of 40 million total immigrants. Over two-thirds of all adult undocumented immigrants have been in the US for at least 10 years. If one adds to the figure of 40 million immigrants the US-born children of immigrants, who by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment are US citizens, one reaches a figure of over 80 million, or one fourth of the total US population. Trump also told 60 Minutes that he intends to carry through with his promise to build a wall along the length of the US-Mexican border, which he said could include sections of fencing and existing natural barriers. This reactionary proposal would make the pathways for immigrants to the US more dangerous than they already are, resulting in more deaths in the desert, and, increasingly, in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Interviewer Lesley Stahl did not ask Trump about his proposals to ban Muslim immigrants or threats made on the campaign trail to launch trade war with China and incinerate the Middle East. The interview was largely a promotional event for the president-elect, including a lengthy discussion with Trumps wife and children. The media largely ignored Trumps appointment of a fascist to the position of top presidential advisor. There were, however, scattered statements of protest. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement: President-elect Trumps choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trumps White House. The Southern Poverty Law Center blasted the choice of Bannon, calling him the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill. The organization cited Breitbart headlines, including a call to fly the Confederate flag weeks after fatal shootings at a black Charleston, South Carolina church, and another declaring that political correctness protects Muslim rape culture. The Anti-Defamation League also denounced the appointment of Bannon. Bannons Breitbart News openly solidarizes itself with Europes neo-fascist parties, including the National Front in France, the Alternative for Germany, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain. Reader comments on Breitbart News articles are frequently laced with racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. A recent Twitter analysis found that 31 percent of those using the white supremacist hashtag #whitegenocide follow Breitbart, as do 62 percent of users of the anti-Muslim hashtag #counterjihad. Bannon is a leading figure of the so-called alt-right movement, which includes in its ranks neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations. In a July interview with Mother Jones, Bannon boasted that Breitbart News is the platform of the alt-right, which he called the American version of Frances neo-fascist National Front. Breitbart regularly publishes material by the anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller. Last spring, it published a lengthy defense of the white nationalist movement called An Establishment Conservatives Guide to the Alt-Right. In announcing the two appointments, the Trump transition team took the unusual step of describing Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Hollywood producer, and Priebus as equal partners, effectively elevating the position of Bannon in the Trump White House. Priebuss position, White House chief of staff, is a formally recognized title that has existed for decades. Bannons title, described in the statement as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president, is not, though recent precedent underscores that it will be a politically powerful position. Karl Rove and David Axelrod had similar titles in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, respectively. The appointment of Priebus, who is presented as a mainstream Republican, is meant to provide cover for the integration of Bannon into the White House. Bannon was credited with turning Trumps election campaign in a fascistic direction after he was appointed to replace Paul Manafort as head of the campaign. Another figure widely rumored as a likely Trump appointee is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been a prominent backer of the real estate mogul for months. Asked Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on ABCs This Week program to address the protests that have swept the US in response to Trumps victory, Giuliani responded with the language of dictatorship, equating demonstrations with riots and rejecting the right to peacefully assemble in places not mandated by the police. Now where it goes into violence, I have a zero tolerance for riots, said Giuliani, who is being touted for the post of attorney general in the Trump administration. I, you know, took over a city that had two riots in four years, and I had none. And they knew they couldnt riot on me. And when I saw the people on the street in New York City, I said to myself, youre breaking Giulianis rules. You dont take my streets. You can have my sidewalks. Yet another likely cabinet appointee in the Trump administration, former congressman Newt Gingrich, told CBSs Face the Nation Sunday morning that Trump would be very, very aggressive in his first year in office. Trump should swing for the fences, Gingrich said. In separate interviews, Gingrich and Giuliani both insisted that Trump had a mandate in spite of his defeat in the popular vote. 25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago 25 years ago: Criminal convictions reversed for Iran-contra conspirator Poindexter Five felony convictions against former national security adviser Admiral John M. Poindexter were thrown out by a federal appeals court on November 16, 1991. The highest-ranking Reagan administration official to be convicted on criminal charges in the Iran-contra affair, Poindexter was at the center of the operation involving the sales of Hawk missiles to Iran for funds that were then illegally used to supply the counterrevolutionary Contra forces fighting the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. He was forced to resign when the affair became public in November 1986. Poindexter was convicted in April 1990 on five felony charges of lying, conspiracy and obstructing Congress, five weeks after his trial began. The most serious count was conspiracy with his deputy, Lt. Col. Oliver North, to destroy documents and deceive Congress about both the supplying of arms to the Contras and the sale of weapons to Iran. He was also charged with sending letters to Congress that fraudulently claimed that the Reagan administration was not helping the Contras and directing North to make similar false statements. Poindexters defense was that he was acting under the authority of the White House, but in previous videotaped testimony to the court, Reagan claimed memory lapses and said he didnt know about the diversion of funds. When asked if Poindexter should have informed him of any such activities, Reagan said, Yes, adding, unless maybe he thought he was protecting me. Poindexter never took the stand in his own defense, likely to avoid facing perjury charges resulting from conflicting testimony he gave before Congress under a grant of immunity. He had admitted to personally destroying an official document signed by Reagan authorizing the arms sales to Iran. He also admitted to approving the diversion of funds to the Contras. The same day, a federal judge let former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams off with just two years probation and 100 hours of community service for withholding information from Congress. [top] 50 year ago: Soviet writers protest sentencing of two authors On November 19, 1966, a petition signed by 63 Soviet writers protesting the sentencing of two authors to hard labor was made public in Western Europe and the United States. Andrei D. Sinyavsky and Yuli M. Daniel had been sentenced in February 1966 to terms at hard labor for publishing abroad satirical writings which criticized the Stalinist bureaucracy. The signers of the petition offered to guarantee the good conduct of the convicted writers if the Soviet government agreed not to implement the sentence. The petition, addressed to the Presidium of the 23rd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, rejected the claim that the writings of Sinyavsky and Daniel were anti-Soviet. It declared, The condemnation of writers for the writing of satirical works creates an extremely dangerous precedent and threatens to hold up the progress of Soviet culture. The petition concluded by calling for more freedom for artistic experiment. In a letter addressed to the Union of Soviet Writers and the Stalinist press, literary critic Lidiya K. Chukovskaya bitterly denounced Kremlin toady Mikhail Sholokhov. The author of Quiet Flows the Don supported the prosecution while denouncing the punishment as too lenient. Your speech at the congress, she wrote, can really be called historical. In the whole history of Russian culture I know of no other case of a writer publicly expressing regret as you have done, not at the harshness of a sentence, but at its leniency. The statements were published in the Western capitalist press but were ignored by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Among international authors who petitioned for release of Sinyavsky and Daniel were Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, Lillian Hellman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, Philip Roth, Marguerite Duras and Philip Toynbee. Despite the protests, the men continued to be held at a prison camp 200 miles east of Moscow. Daniel was released after five years; Sinyavsky after seven. [top] 75 years ago: War of starvation against Leningrad On November 15, 1941, beleaguered Soviet Red Army units southeast of Leningrad finally crumbled under the heavy firepower of the German Army, allowing the city of Tikhvin to fall to Hitler, thereby sealing off Leningrad from food shipments. For two months Tikhvin had been the only rail link supplying food and ammunition to the nearly three million people encircled by German troops in the south and Finnish troops in the north. Cargo from Moscow via rail link through Tikhvin would be transferred to boats on Lake Ladoga and shipped to a port that relayed it to Leningrad. But now the loss of Tikhvin, combined with the formation of ice on Lake Ladoga, threatened to starve the city. Hitler rejoiced: Leningrad is doomed to die of famine. The second-largest Soviet city had only one weeks supply of flour and cereals, a two-week supply of fats and no meat. Between September 2 and November 13 food rations had been cut four different times. On November 20, rations were cut a fifth time to starvation levels. Daily bread rations for front-line troops had gone from 800 grams to 500 grams; rear troops, 600 to 300 grams; workers, from 400 to 200 grams (one-third loaf of bread); nonworkers and children, 200 grams to 125 grams (two slices of bread). In November, 11,000 Leningraders died of hunger. Temperatures fell to 20 and 30 degrees below zero, with snow drifts up to six feet deep. In December 52,000 died, despite a counteroffensive by the Red Army which opened an ice-road across frozen Lake Ladoga. In January there were 150,000 deaths. During the two-and-a-half-year siege of Leningrad, an estimated 630,000 to 900,000 members of the civilian population would die as a direct result of hunger from the blockade. [top] 100 years ago: Battle of the Somme ends with over 1 million casualties On November 19, 1916, British and French authorities ended their months-long offensive aimed at routing German troops in the strategically critical region of northern France along the Somme River. The offensive, begun in July and dubbed the Battle of the Somme, witnessed the greatest imperialist bloodshed to that point in history, claiming more than a million casualties. The Allied offensive had seen heavy losses on both sides from the earliest stages of the offensive. On the first day of fighting, July 1, British casualties are estimated to have been 57,470, including almost 20,000 dead after the thousands of troops thrown into battle confronted entrenched German positions. Over the ensuing months, hundreds of thousands more would die in Allied offensives and German counteroffensives, with the battle increasingly devolving into a war of attrition. Commanders on both sides repeatedly sacrificed thousands of troops for the sake of gaining a matter of meters, in protracted trench warfare. The battle saw the use of new weapons of war, including the British deployment of chemical weapons, tanks, and airplanes for reconnaissance and bombing raids. The British decision to end the campaign followed a series of failed attempts to secure a decisive advantage. In late September, Allied forces had launched a major assault on German positions at Thiepval Ridge, with British-led troops firing 60,000 field artillery and 45,000 heavy artillery rounds and hundreds of gas shells. The following month, the Allies initiated the Battle of Ancre Heights, which ended in a strategic stalemate amid harsh winter weather and heavy casualties. On November 13, British forces sought to take advantage of German exhaustion, directly attacking Ancre Valley. The offensive was called off on November 18. A substantial factor in the decision was the mounting opposition to the war among soldiers and the working class at home. At the end of October, anger over mass casualties contributed to the defeat of a plebiscite on military conscription in Australia. Anti-war rallies had been attended by hundreds of thousands. A similar movement was developing against the moves by British authorities to expand compulsory military service. At the end of the carnage, British troops had suffered an estimated 420,000 casualties, with French losses standing at around 200,000. As many as half a million German troops perished or were wounded. [top] In a BBC interview Sunday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for yet another extension of the French state of emergency, until after presidential elections in April-May 2017. Coming just after the election of Donald Trump as US president, Valls announcement points to the accelerating collapse of democratic forms of rule on both sides of the Atlantic. As he demanded that the National Assembly approve the fourth extension of the state of emergency since Valls Socialist Party (PS) imposed it just after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, Valls gave no indication of when, or whether, the French state of emergency would ever be lifted. It would be hard today to end the state of emergency, Valls told the BBCs HARDtalk show. Especially since we will launch a presidential election in a few weeks with meetings and public gatherings. So we must also protect our democracy. Besides, he added, the mechanism of the state of emergency also grants us the ability to carry out arrests and administrative investigations that are effective. So yes, we will probably live for some time with this state of emergency. He cited the July 14 Bastille Day attack in Nice, when an Islamist killed 86 people and wounded 434 by driving a truck through a crowd, as the type of attack the state of emergency was needed to confront. Valls arguments for the state of emergency are a reactionary political fraud. The state of emergency is not an anti-terrorist initiative to defend democracy, but a police-state regime targeting the working class above all. It aims to whip up far-right forces, stimulate militarist and anti-Muslim hysteria, and send police to crush rising opposition in the working class to PS austerity policies, like this springs mass protest movement against the PS despised labor law. The fact that Valls does not foresee any end to the state of emergency only underscores that powerful factions in the ruling class intend for the suspension of democratic rights to be permanent. It is now clear, as even sections of the political establishment have admitted, that the state of emergency does not prevent terror attacks. It clearly proved incapable of preventing the Nice attack, and a parliamentary report this summer overseen by conservative deputy Georges Fenech found that the state of emergency had limited scope as an anti-terror measure. In fact, the state of emergency has not cut off terror networks, because they are key tools of French and NATO war policy. In February 2016after the vast majority of police actions under the state of emergency had taken placethe National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) published an accounting based on Interior Ministry figures. The CNCDH counted 3,824 searches and seizures, 392 assignments to house arrest, but only 29 investigations of terror-related offenses. These included 23 charges for a vaguely-defined offense of apologizing for terrorist actions, i.e., verbally supporting Islamist groups, and only six cases sent on to anti-terror prosecutors. In the meantime, however, thousands of European Muslims are traveling to the Middle East to join Islamist militias that are NATOs main proxies in its war for regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to estimates from the Soufan Group, a private intelligence firm, some 1,700 people from France alone have already traveled to join militias in Syria. A flow of fighters on this scale is impossible without the knowledge and complicity of European intelligence agencies. An examination of the individuals involved in recent terror attacks in Europethe Charlie Hebdo and November 13 attacks in Paris last year, and the March 22 attack in Brussels this yearclearly illustrates this complicity. The leaders of the terrorist commandos were well known to intelligence agencies, often as high-ranking operatives. Yet they were able to cross borders, access tens of thousands of euros, and acquire weapons without hindrance. *The Kouachi brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attacks were removed from surveillance shortly before they carried out the attack, even though they were in contact with top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). *Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the November 13 terror commando, was allowed to travel across Europe even though he was well known to intelligence services as the public face of the Islamic State (IS) militias recruiting efforts on social media. *The March 22 attackers and their targets were identified to Belgian authorities by Turkish, Israeli, and Russian intelligence before the attacks. Nonetheless, they were not stopped, nor was security tightened around their targets. It also emerged after the attack that the location of November 13 accomplice Salah Abdeslam, who was in hiding in Brussels and described in the media as Europes most wanted man until his capture shortly before the March 22 attack, had been known to Belgian police forces the entire time. The French political establishment and media have used lies about the Syrian war and the Paris and Brussels bombings to reorient official politics far to the right, in order to continue imposing policies of war and austerity that have no popular base whatsoever. For nearly two years, the masses have been bombarded with lies, taken from the arsenal of the far right, presenting these attacks not as the outcome of a politically criminal war in Syria, but of Muslim delinquency. The PS used this poisonous atmosphere to divide working people, promote the police and military, ram through billion-euro increases in military spending, and justify repeated police assaults on peaceful demonstrators against its labor law. It led to attacks on democratic rights that are unprecedented since World War II, such as bans of burkini swimwear enforced on French beaches in defiance of court rulings, and Valls attempt this summer to ban peaceful protests by workers and youth against the labor law. Conditions are emerging for even more bitter class battles in France and across Europe. Amid a constant danger of a NATO-Russia war over Syria, with the right-wing The Republicans (LR) and the neo-fascist National Front (FN) rising in the polls, an even more ferociously right-wing regime could easily come to power in France. It would have at its disposal the juridical and technological infrastructure of a police state, built by the PS, to be mobilized against working class opposition to austerity and war. The precondition of any victorious struggle against war and to defend workers basic social rights is to oppose the reactionary fraud of the French state of emergency. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse has joined a chorus of other members of the House members urging Speaker Paul Ryan to find a legislative solution to sa Jason Swendt says he wouldnt want his three daughters to date someone who has treated women Cynthia Cole, a retired Boeing engineer in Bellevue, voted for Trump. She says his supporters are tired of being called bigots, and she wants him to enforce immigration laws. (Lindsey Wasson/The Seattle Times) 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. Twenty-one years have passed since the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. I' covered politics for Yedioth Ahronoth during most of Rabin's political career. Rabin was, of course, at the center of quite a few of the major events of that time. I heard things from him that were both on the record and off. Over the years, I included these things in my articles or books. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter When he was still just a Knesset member, he hosted me in his Ramat Aviv apartment in Tel Avivnot far from where I livedonce every two weeks, on Wednesdays. In those meetings, Rabin was at ease, after having taken a bath, wearing a bathroom and sinking into the armchair in his study and reminiscing about the past. Rabin at his home in Ramat Aviv (Photo: David Rubinger) It was impossible to have a conversation with Rabin without also discussing his forced-partner in the state's leadership, Shimon Peres. Once, Rabin divulged that this was "Leah's responsibility," leading me to understand that it was his wife who kept a file on his rival. When I asked to look at the file Leah was keeping on Peres, Rabin told me to speak to Leah. But that file had never been opened, and it would be interesting to learn where it lies today. On April 17, 1995, when he was the prime minister and defense minister, Rabin agreed to my requestmade through his advisor Eitan Haberto have a series of conversations to fill in the holes in the tale of his political career. The first of these conversations lasted 50 minutes, and we agreed to meet again from time to time. But seven months later, three bullets put an abrupt end to the leader's workand to our conversations. The fight before the war As the IDF chief of staff, Rabin built a glorious army. Many experts view the General Staff under his command as the best the IDF has ever had. The prime minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, was seen as a good prime minister and a good defense minister, but also as one who lacked military experience. In that situation, Rabin served as Eshkol's chief military advisor. The three weeks of wait that preceded the 1967 Six-Day War were accompanied by a complex diplomatic process, but even more so by an open, serious confrontation between the political leadership and the top military echelons. "On top of the busy and hectic daily schedule, I asked to hear what experienced men like David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan"who was Rabin's political rival at the time"and minister Haim-Moshe Shapira had to say," Rabin told me. Rabin (R) with Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat at a mimouna in 1986 (Photo: Michael Kramer) "I expect to find the same Ben-Gurion from his glory days. Someone whodespite his age and distance from the centers of activitystill projects authority. But that's not what happened. He gave me a hard time. He wasn't familiar with the information. Passed terrible criticism on the prime minister during one of the nation's hardest momentsand done so in front of me, a subordinate to the prime minister. He said the big recruitment of reservists was an error. He slammed: 'The state was put in a very grave situation. You shouldn't go to war without a significant partner.' "When I spoke to Dayan, I found a great appreciation for the IDF and a counterbalance to Ben-Gurion's blunt criticism. I wanted to hear from Shapira why he so adamantly objected to a military operation. His opinion was in line with that of Ben-Gurion's. How did I dare go to war when all of the conditions are stacked against us? No other bothered to tell me that Rafi's (Israeli Workers List) secretary general Shimon Peres, sent by Ben-Gurion, suggested to the party leaders that the only way out of the situation was to entrench ourselves until we can find another country to aid us. "In effect, I was made to be the main person to blame for the situation Israel found itself in. I knew the IDF was built well, properly prepared. And there I was hearing, mostly from Ben-Gurion, that this good army that was prepared on our borders was actually an obstacle that dragged us to this escalation. "I was looking for someone to have a heart-to-heart conversation with. Ezer Weizman was, at the time, the number 2 man in the IDF high command. I had a special relationship with him. I asked him to come to my house. Thinking back on it, I think something of the harsh things said to me by Ben-Gurion and Shapira must have registered with me as possible. I told Weizman that maybe I was part of the reason Israel was in this situation. And then, consciously, I asked Ezer, 'Perhaps I should step down?' Had I resigned, Ezer would've received command. But he actually calmed me down. He told me 'Don't think of stepping down. Rest, relax. You'll see, you will lead the IDF to a great victory. "Leah called the chief medical officer, Dr. Elyahu Gilon, who determined I was suffering from exhaustion. He gave me a sedative that made me sleep until evening time the next day. When I went back to work, I had my full strength. I told Prime Minister Eshkol what had happened, and told him that if he thought my resignation was required, I would accept his decision." From the Altalena to the premiership Israel's 17th government, led by Rabin, only lasted for two and a half years. His inexperience was to his detriment. There was no harmony among the government's leading trioRabin, Foreign Minister Yigal Alon, and Defense Minister Peres. In the next election for the 9th Knesset, Likud, led by Menachem Begin, won. Weizman, who was the head of the Likud's campaign, was chosen to serve as a defense minister in Menachem Begin's government. On June 21, 1977, Rabin passed the baton to Begin. "You're asking me how I felt? You can imagine," Rabin told me. "But we must follow the will of the people. I walked Begin to his office which was, until that moment, my office. And in that both he and I followed the will of the people. Rabin in the Knesset on Oct. 5, 1995 (Photo: EPA) "And then, on the way home, the events of the Altalena Affair came flooding back29 years and a day before, on June 22, 1948. I'll repeat to you what I've always said, both verbally and in writing: When my men at the Palmach headquartersclose to where the ship dockedheard Begin was on board, they believed it. And they opened heavy fire, at tremendous intensity, from all weapons, towards the ship. At once, all of the hatred the Palmach and Haganah felt towards the rebels and their leader found a release in the intense fire. We weren't feeling the joy of winning. We were following an order. After we received an order to arrest the commanders of the Etzel, primarily Begin, I headed a company of armored vehicles to follow it. We couldn't find him. "And now, I was passing the premiership on to him. We didn't have a personal rivalry. Many years later I was thinking whether all Begin meant to do was really just enrich his fighters, who are now part of the IDF, with additional weapons and ammunition. What can you do? At the time we thoughtand so we've been toldthat there was a rebellion against the government." A dangerous adventure in Iran The 21st government was formed in September 1984, led by Shimon Peres (who defeated Rabin in the primary election for the party's leadership) as part of a rotation agreement with Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin was appointed the defense minister under both of the prime minister. It was the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, with Jordan serving as the main supply line for weapons and food to Iran. "The tendency was to hope the war continues and that no side wins," Rabin told me when asked what Israel's politcy was to the two warring sides. "Let brother kill brother. When I started the position, there was a situation in which the previous Israeli governmentsled by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamirhave agreed to provide, in indirect ways, arms to Iraneven though they knew this was Khomeini's regime. The arms deals were mostly for different kinds of weapons and mortars, which brought nice profits to the defense industries. It was a time of prosperity for the Israel Military Industries and Soltam Systems. Despite the arms embargo the US and its allies placed on Iran, all sorts of players provided Iran with armsnot just Israel. This was an Arab country, Iraq, fighting against a Muslim non-Arab country, Iran, and almost the entire Arab world supported Iraq. "Yaakov Nimrodi, the former IDF attache to Tehran, and Al Schwimmer, the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries and a recipient of the Israel Prize, proposed to sell Tau missiles to Iran. Imostly Iargued that we were enjoying generous American aid and that according to US law, we couldn't export American weapons and technologies sent to us as the end user. For that reason, I was unwilling to risk the American aid for all kinds of escapades. L-R: Yitzhak Rabin, King Hussein of Jordan, US President Bill Clinton at peace-treaty signing in 1994 (Photo: Yaakov Saar/GPO) "So the three of us (Peres, Shamir and Rabin) sent the Foreign Ministry's director-general, David Kimche, to the US National Security advisor in Washington, Robert McFarlane, to request approval for the deal. Kimche recommended to McFarlane to bring in Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and McFarlane did. Our contact with the Americans was Oliver North, an operations officer in the National Security Council. "Kimche came back with McFarlane's approval, and then we sent some 500 Hawk missiles (to Iran), without launchers because the Iranians already had those from the Shah's regime. At the heart of the matter was the American desire to free four hostages for the weapons. But there was also the question of how were we going to get those missiles back. (The Americans) promised to find a solution somewhere in the CIA/Pentagon/National Security Council triangle. And then Amiram Nir, the prime minister's advisor on terrorism, suggested to me that the Americans take over providing aid to the Iranians, which will get us out of the conundrum of having Nimrodi and Schwimmer getting money from the Iranians... "And so we did. I saw Amiram as the man who really saved Israel's relationship with the United States... had we kept trading (with the Iranians) through Israeli contractorswho also believed this could be an opening for business with Iranthis entire thing would've become an Israeli-American crisis. Everything we invested in this, both weapons and money, we got back. Not only did we not come out with nothing, we even stood to gain. We got Tau missiles that were more advanced than what we sent the Iranians." Rabin in 1994 (Photo: Yaakov Saar/GPO) It's important to note that in addition to Rabin's recollections of the affair, which shook the American administration, many of the other individuals who were involved shared their own memories, and there are significant differences between their versions. Defining victory The things that Rabin said in our conversation on April 17, 1995, on what he learned from the Gulf War resonate to this day when we ask ourselves what are the limitation of Israeli force, what is the ability to endure and what is victory. "The threat analysis showed that the Arab world, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, were going for surface missiles," he said. "Arming themselves with those began in the early 80s. I asked myself, 'What's our response to missiles?' It was clear that a new threat had been created that hadn't existed for Israel since the War of Independence. "In my recollection, there's the following story: In the middle of the 50s, I was a member of the General Staff as the head of the Training Division. The General Staff presented situation reports to Ben-Gurion. When the prime minister asked the commander of the Air Force about the danger of air raids on Haifa and Tel Aviv, members of the General Staff treated it pretty dismissively, meaning that it wouldn't influence the course of the war. "Then Be-Gurion got angry and said a sentence that is engraved in my memory to this day: 'I was in the German blitz on London; you weren't. I don't want to put the Israeli home front to the London test.' That's what is engraved on my memory. L-R: Yitzhak Navon, Shimon Peres and Rabin at a Labor Party conference in 1984 (Photo: David Rubinger) "Then, in the threat analysis, I said what our response would be. In my view, as for the Iraq-Iran missile war, we went to the Americans and said, 'We're not big; give us rockets, the ones that you call tactical, and for us they're strategic.' Thus began the development of the Arrow missiles. "The Gulf War proved to the Arab world that the home front is the Achilles' heel of the State of Israel." "The scuds, we know, weren't a precise weapon for military purposes, but it did wake up the home front. We didn't know what the impact of an awakened home front on the endurance abaility of the country and on the soldiers' ability to fight on the front line, and we had to give responses, both offensive and defensive. This describes a dangerous war. "I asked myself after that war what the difference was: We had to achieve victory not in 42 days, since Israel couldn't allow itself an intensive month-and-a-half-long war. We had to achieve victory in less time, between two weeks and three. A long war is necessarily fraught with the danger of losing to those against whom we'll have to have an all-out war, now or in the future. Shimon Peres (L) and Rabin in 1994 (Photo: AP) "For me, winning means breaking the enemy's force in a manger that will cause him to ask for an immediate ceasefire, with our having a strategic threat against him and his not having one against us. There's no other victory in a conventional Arab-Israeli war." Conclusion I had a lot to ask the prime minister, and I was impressed that he wanted to break down so many issues from so many fields. But after 50 minutes, Rabin had another meeting that he had already set with Channel 2. We said goodbye. His handshake was, as usual, limp. We agreed to additional meetings. "Eitan will schedule," he said to me. But the Jewish assassin's bullets ended the historic collection of information from the mouth of a man whose honor is deeply ingrained in Israel's collective national memory,. MANILA - The Philippines police will push ahead with the purchase of 26,000 assault rifles from a US supplier, the police chief said on Monday, following an about-face by President Rodrigo Duterte, who previously said the deal would be scrapped. Duterte had a week ago expressed anger at "fools" and "monkeys" in Washington seeking to block the deal and said he would cancel it himself. But Duterte's police chief said he revoked that decision, apparently after Republican Donald Trump's surprise win in the US presidential election. "(The president) told me to continue the deal," Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Dela Rosa, told a news conference. US President-elect Donald Trump vowed Sunday to move aggressively on a conservative agenda in filling Supreme Court vacancies, cracking down on immigration and cutting taxes, but also sought to reassure worried Americans they have nothing to fear from his presidency. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Setting aside the strident tone of his campaign, the 70-year-old Trump assumed a gentler manner in his first television interview since his shock election, saying he was "saddened" by reports of harassment of Muslims and Hispanics, and telling the perpetrators: "Stop It." The interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," which was taped Friday and aired in full Sunday, offered Trump an opportunity to reintroduce himself after an ugly, name-calling campaign and surprise victory that sparked protests in cities across the United States. Trump interviewed on 60 Minutes "I just don't think they know me," the billionaire real estate mogul said at one point, of the thousands of protesters who have massed in streets below his Trump Tower headquarters with signs that read "Not our president." Told that many Americans are scared of his presidency, Trump said: "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back." Conservative agenda On the issues, however, Trump made it clear he intends to aggressively push a right-wing agenda, pledging to name justices to the Supreme Court who are anti-abortion and pro-gun rights. "The judges will be pro-life," Trump told CBS. "In terms of the whole gun situation," he added, "they're going to be very pro-Second Amendment." He will have an immediate opportunity to fill a vacancy on the court left by the death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obama's attempt to fill the seat was blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate. On immigration, Trump reaffirmed his signature campaign pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico, although he conceded parts of it may be just a fence. And he said as many as three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or incarcerated. X "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers," he said. "We have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," he said. Conciliatory notes He left the door open, however, on the fate of the millions of other hard-working immigrants in the country illegally. "After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that you're talking about who are terrific people," he said. Immigration, he said, was one of three top legislative priorities he has discussed with House Speaker Paul Ryan, the others being action to undo Obama's signature health care reform and a bill to cut taxes and simplify the tax code. Trump with his wife, Melania, and children during the 60 Minutes interview Trump had previously indicated he would keep some aspects of Obamacare, including a ban on insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. There were other conciliatory notes as well. He signalled that he would not seek to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. "It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean its done," Trump said when asked if he supports marriage equality. "And I'm -- I'm fine with that," he added. Anti-Trump demonstrations in Philadelphia (Photo: Reuters) He also confirmed he would forego the $400,000 salary that comes with the office of US president. "I'm not going to take the salary. I'm not taking it," he said. "I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year," he added. Conspiracy-mongering Earlier Sunday, Trump made his first high level appointments, naming anti-establishment firebrand Steve Bannon his top strategist and top Republican Reince Priebus his White House chief of staff. Republican Reince Priebus, Trump's chief of staff (Photo: MCT) The choices suggested Trump, a political novice, intends for his new administration to preserve the populist edge that won him the White House, tempered by political pragmatism. Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, is a seasoned political operative with close ties to Ryan, the House speaker. President-elect Trump with US President Obama at the White House (Photo: MCT) But Bannon, the campaign chairman in the final months of the Trump campaign, is CEO of the right-wing, conspiracy-mongering Breitbart News website known for withering attacks on the Republican elite. It has also likened abortions to a "Holocaust," railed against Muslim immigrants, and once advised female victims of online harassment to "just log off" and stop "screwing up the internet for men," illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child. In the "60 Minutes" interview, Trump made no promises to tone down his own rhetoric as president. "I don't want to be just a little nice monotone character," he said. Anti-Trump demonstrations in Texas (Photo: MCT) Newt Gingrich, a member of Trump's inner circle, said he would advise the president-elect to "swing for the fences." "This is a city which if you don't shove it as hard as you can while you have momentum, it will just surround you. I mean, the swamp doesn't want to be drained. And the swamp will just suck you in if you let it," he said on CBS's Face the Nation. Anti-Trump demonstrations in New York (Photo: AFP) Despondent Democrats are vowing resistance -- despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. "Our job now is to hold him accountable," said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. Anti-Trump demonstrations continue in US, abroad Meanwhile, immigrants, their advocates and others opposing a Trump presidency continued to protest Sunday, speaking out against the president-elect's support of deportation and other measures. Organizers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like "Hate won't make us great," and chanted, "We are here to stay." Anti-Trump demonstrations in New York (Photo: AFP) More than 1,000 people joined the march that started mid-afternoon and extended into the evening. It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country, and even throughout the world. Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Several hundred protesters Sunday marched around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." Anti-Trump demonstrations in Philadelphia (Photo: Reuters) In Los Angeles, a few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting "Love trumps hate!" By nightfall, a few hundred people marched across downtown San Francisco's main street, blocking traffic at an intersection when they held a sit-down protest. Elsewhere in California, about 800 people marched through Sacramento and thousands others formed a human chain around the nearly 3.5-mile perimeter of Oakland's Lake Merritt. Rallies in Oakland have at times become unruly, but those who came to the lake held hands and chanted, "We reject the president-elect." Anti-Trump demonstrations in New York (Photo: AP) In Oregon, protesters marched through Portland again Sunday night following a gathering of anti-Trump demonstrators earlier in the evening. Television footage showed dozens of chanting but peaceful marchers moving through downtown streets. Sunday night's protest came after police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during downtown protests. Demonstrations also took place internationally. On Saturday, a group of Mexicans at statue representing independence in Mexico City expressed their concerns about a possible wave of deportations. One school teacher said it would add to the "unrest" that's already in Mexico. About 300 people protested Trump's election as the next American president outside the US Embassy near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, Oregon, a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Sunday that a bill proposal to limit muezzin noise in Jerusalem "would drag the area to catastrophe." He also noted the Palestinian Authority will seek the help of the UN Security Council and other international institutions to stop the passing of the bill. The Palestinian Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs Youssef Ideiss added that the bill threatens to drag the region into a religious war over the violation of the freedom of worship, adding it "will not change the religious reality, rather only make the Muslims more committed to their holy places." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Sunday that a bill proposal to limit muezzin noise in Jerusalem "would drag the area to disaster." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved the legislation proposal by Bayit Yehudi MK Motti Yogev and Yisrael Beytenu MK Robert Ilatov to ban mosque muezzins from announcing prayer times via loudspeakers in the streets. The proposal will now go to the Knesset for a preliminary reading, following which it will go back to the Knesset's committees to continue the legislative process. Palestinian President Abbas (Photo: AFP) The proposal comes on the heels of demonstrations by residents of the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev who emulated a muezzin call in front of the Beit Hakerem residence of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to protest ongoing disturbances caused by Muslim calls to prayer emanating from the Shuafat, Beit Hanina and A-ram neighborhoods. Yogev said the early-morning calls to prayer, mainly from mosques, disturb the sleep of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs alike. In his opening statements during Sundays ministerial meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also voiced his broad agreement with the complaints of the residents in which the calls to prayer are blasted. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation will discuss discuss a proposed bill today to restrict the noise level of the public address system of houses of worship in Israel, he said. Both Muslims, Jews and Christians suffer from this. I cannot count the number of times that civilians have approached me from all strands of Israeli society who complain about the choice and the suffering which is caused by the excessive noise from houses of worship. The proposal caused anger in the Palestinian Authority. In similar comments to Abbass, Palestinian Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs Youssef Ideiss said that the bill threatens to drag the region into a religious war over the violation of the freedom of worship, adding it "will not change the religious reality, rather only make the Muslims more committed to their holy places." Palestinians praying outside the al-Aqsa mosque (Photo: Reuters) The Palestinian Authority is seeking the help of the UN Security Council and other international institutions to stop the passing of the bill. Former Fatah spokesman in Jerusalem, Rafat Aliyan, said Israel's intention to bar mosque muezzins from using loudspeakers constituted a religious war and called on all Palestinian factions to fight against the bill. Hamas also commented on the bill proposal, with a statement from the terror group saying: "This is a dangerous development, which constitutes part of the changes made to Jerusalem monuments and mosques in an effort to erase the Islamic identity from the city. This is a forbidden interference in the freedom of worship, which inflames the feelings of all Muslims." Members of Israels Arab community were also quick to criticize the bill, with MK Issawi Freij (Meretz) calling the move anti-Semitic and claiming that it was not motivated by noise concerns, but rather an ongoing anti-Muslim sentiment that has become popular in the current coalition. Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, co-chairman of The Abraham Fund Initiative, also opposed the bill but appeared to accept Yogevs claim that the loudspeakers are disruptive and unfair. Nevertheless, he cited the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa as a precedent for dialogue being the way to address the issue, rather than unilateral legislation. Nobody legislated the issue in Jaffa, but somehow the local residents managed to work it out on their own, through dialogue, Abu Rass said. BAGHDAD - A suicide attack south of Baghdad killed at least six civilians on Monday, Iraq's Interior Ministry said. According to Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, six suicide bombers tried to infiltrate the holy Shiite city of Karbala, but security forces managed to kill five of them. Maan added that the sixth bomber broke into a house where he blew up himself, killing six and wounding six. Hundreds of thousands of faithful Shiites have been walking to Karbala to commemorate the end on Sunday of the 40-day mourning period of the seventh century death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammad's grandson. The city is located is some 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad. No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on Sunni religious extremists who consider Shiites as heretics. The State of Israel has been in control of Judea and Samaria for nearly 50 years now. It has an historic connection to Hebron and Shilo, yet it has been hesitant for 50 years and has not dared touch the sensitive issue of land regulation. Not even in Jerusalem. How does one acquire land in east Jerusalem today? By bringing an approval from the local mukhtar and obtained rights to the land. Its delusional. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Jordan, on the other hand, controlled Judea and Samaria for less than 20 years without any historic or legal affiliation. Jordans occupation of Judea and Samaria was not recognized by the world and was considered an illegal occupation. Nevertheless, King Hussein did not hesitate, and within a short period of time he began reorganizing the lands in Judea and Samaria. In some of the areas, the Jordanian occupation rule managed to complete the move and distribute on paper wide areas for private ownership, sometimes for free, according to its caprices. Amona residents protest evacuation. In most cases, the residents didn't know the land was registered as private (Photo: Gil Yohanan) Since the beginning of the settlement movement in Judea and Samaria, most communities were built on state lands. In other words, they were built on the areas which were not privately owned or lands which King Hussein did not manage to distributed. In exceptional cases, existing communities spread on lands which were registered as privateOfra, for example. Later on, individual outposts were created on private lands Amona , for example. As someone who lived in Amona in the past and who lives in Ofra today, I have said it and I will say it again: It was a mistake. Its a serious mistake to build on land that is registered as private, even if we are talking about a rocky mountains. The settler leaders are also responsible for this failure, but it is mostly the states messengers who were involved in the construction and development of communities on private lands. A mistake must not be repeated twice, and a mistake cannot be fixed with another mistake. A demolition of Amona and of homes in Ofra or in Netiv Haavot is a serious mistake. The residents, who in most cases did not know that the land was registered as private, should not have to pay for the states mistakes. The softened Regulation Bill seeks to fix the mistake in a different way, a way which will benefit the land owners through compensation and prevent damage to the residents. The bill does not seek, under any circumstances, to allow the mistake to continuein other words, to spread to more private lands. It only seeks to regulate what has already been built. Within the Green Line, there is no absolute right to property, and the state is allowed to expropriate land from a private owner for public benefit. Why is this not applied in Judea and Samaria? There is certainly a public need to prevent the demolition of a community like Amona, which has existed for nearly 20 years now. The family of Sgt. Oron Shaul , whose body was captured by Hamas after he was killed in Gaza , petitioned the High Court of Justice (HCJ) on Sunday, asking it to order the prime minister to convene a special team formed to handle the return of their sonas it has yet to meet even once. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Among the members of the special team are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, as well as Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri. Oron Shaul was killed in a battle in Saja'iyya during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge when Palestinian militants fired an anti-tank missile at the armored personnel carrier (APC) he was riding in. Six other soldiers were also killed in that incident. Shaul family staging protest, preventing families of Palestinian prisoners from visiting (Photo: Roee Idan) But while the bodies of the other six were identified Hamas claimed to have kidnapped him and he was declared a fallen soldier whose place of burial is unknown five days later. In June 2016, he was recognized as a captured fallen soldier whose place of burial is unknown "To this very day, and over two years later, Oron has yet to be foundalive or dead. Explicit promises made to the petitioners by senior state officials regarding the measures that would be taken in an effort to return him have been broken one after another," the Shaul family wrote in the petition. "The petitioners also have fundamental reservations regarding the IDF's determination that Oron was killed in battle, which are not part of this petition," the family added. In late June 2016, after the signing of the reconciliation agreement with Turkey which did not address the issue of missing and captured Israelis a ministerial committee decided to establish a special team that would be entrusted with handling the issue. The special team, the petition states, "was meant to create a high-ranked, organized framework to regularly deal with the issue of missing and captive Israelis on the ministerial level. This includes providing a framework for discussion and decision-making vis-a-vis putting pressure on Hamas to help bring to the release of the Israelis it holds captive." Sgt. Oron Shaul "To the petitioners knowledge, this team has never convened and has yet to start fulfilling the important role it was entrusted with, this despite the fact over four months have passed since the decision was made to form it," the petition notes. The Shaul family claims in its petition that "the prolongedand likely intentionaldelay in convening the special team and in beginning its work hurts the efforts to return the missing and captive Israelis, including Oron Shaul." Oron's brother, Aviram Shaul, slammed the prime minister's inaction, saying "Let every Jewish mother who sends her son to Golani know: As long as Netanyahu is responsible for the fate of her son, he would have no problem sending him to battle in a faulty APC. But if that difficult battle goes wrong and her son is taken captive by the enemyhe will henceforth become a nuisance." Aviram Shaul and mother Zehava (Photo: Yariv Katz) "Let's hope the High Court can convince Netanyahu that Golani soldiers must not be abandoned and that they must be returned from captivity after having fought a war that lasted over 50 days," the brother added. GAZA CITY -- Like millions of Syrians, Wareef Hamedo fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security. But in a decision he now regrets, he chose to go to Gaza. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Hamedo's family is among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, ineligible for most social services granted to Palestinians but also unable to travel abroad. "We are trying to get out of Gaza to any European country or where a Syrian refugee can find care," said Hamedo, a chef from Aleppo who is an unofficial spokesman for the Syrian families here. "Gaza was a phase for the Syrians. We came to it because of the conditions that forced us to." Wareef Hamedo with his wife and child (Photo: AP) About two dozen Syrian families also chose to migrate to Gaza after initially fleeing to Egypt. As the situation in Egypt deteriorated, they entered neighboring Gaza through smuggling tunnels. Some managed to leave before the Egyptian army shut most of the tunnels in 2013. But half still remain. Egypt closed the tunnels following the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who had been a close ally of Gaza's Hamas rulers. The loss of the tunnels, along with a devastating 50-day war with Israel in 2014, caused Gaza's economy to collapse. Unemployment has soared, and the cash-strapped Hamas government has failed to provide shelter for the Syrians. "We got many promises, but nothing was made," Hamedo said. While UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees, the main international body assisting displaced Syrians is the UN refugee agency, which has no offices in Gaza. The Palestinian territories also have no official Syrian diplomatic mission, so the families can't renew passports or register their newborns. And because they entered Gaza illegally through the tunnels, they have no way of exiting. With no legal status, work or aid, the Syrians can do little but wait for a miracle to leave. Majed al-Attar wistfully recalled his life in Damascus, where he said he had a spacious home, two cars and a warehouse full of cement and building materials. His expired passport is full of Jordanian, Egyptian and Saudi stamps he collected in his business travels. The house and its surroundings were hit from the air "and everything was wiped out," the 49-year-old said. So, he moved with his wife and child to Egypt in 2012. Abdel Ghani al-Attar, right, and his brother Esam, play at a kindergarten not far from their family house in Rafah (Photo: AP) In the run-up to the 2013 military overthrow of Morsi, things quickly deteriorated, and the options were to join migrants on "the death boats" to Europe or move to Gaza, he said. The second option seemed smarter since his wife is originally Palestinian and had relatives in the Gaza border town of Rafah. In Gaza, al-Attar was displaced again during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, when he had to flee bombing and sleep in UN school shelters for several weeks. "It was a disaster for us," he said. Now unemployed, he cannot afford to buy kindergarten clothes for his son who was born here in 2014. The boy has no official documents or citizenship, only a hospital notification that shows his name and date of birth. Most of the money he earns as a day laborer goes to the rental of a half-finished, sparsely furnished apartment. His wife managed to qualify for some UNRWA benefits, including schooling for the boy, but most benefits are out of reach because al-Attar is not Palestinian. "I regret coming here," he said. "We just hope to get out from here next month or the month after with my wife and children to live in dignity and freedom and with a secure future for them." As Gaza struggles to rebuild damaged homes, over 11,200 families are still displaced after the 2014 war with Israel. That has made it even harder for the Syrian families to find adequate shelter. Amer Foura's family, originally from the southwestern Syrian city of Deraa, has found shelter in a hospital. His wife, Kholoud, a 39-year-old mother of five, has developed muscular dystrophy and is now hooked up to a respirator at Gaza's Al-Wafa hospital. Her husband and children sleep in beds and mattresses in her hospital room. "I have lived in Al-Wafa hospital for about a year and a half," said the husband, who is unemployed. "My only home is Al-Wafa since it's able to provide and take care of me." The Syrians scrape by with menial jobs and occasional donations from local charities. Hamedo, the chef, is full of nostalgia, spending time daily flipping through pictures from his life in Aleppo, where he ran a restaurant called Cafe D'alep. He pointed to a photo of a blond woman. "This was my girlfriend. She died in an airstrike," he said. He enjoyed some initial success in Gaza, opening a restaurant that enjoyed early popularity, but ultimately went out of business because of the weak economy, constant power outages and shortages of cooking gas. He has since married a local woman and last month, they had their first child, a girl. "We just need to get the basics secured in our stay here," he said. President Reuven Rivlin and his wife landed in India on Monday morning for a state visit at the invitation of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee as the two nations seek to advance their bilateral cooperation. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter During the visit, President Rivlin will join President Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in the city of Chandigarh, hold meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and visit several sites of cooperation and joint projects between the two countries. Rivlin greeted by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee (Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO) He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, and lay wreaths on the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi, and at the memorial for Indian soldiers who fell in the First World War in combat in the land of Israel and the Middle East. Rivlin will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials, and with leaders of the Jewish community. Rivlin arrives in India (Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO) "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations," he added. Rivlin arrives in India (Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO) "This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," the president concluded. Rivlin will begin his visit on Tuesday with an official state welcome including an honor guard, after which he will meet with President Mukherjee. Later, he will lay a wreath at the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi, and meet with Prime Minister Modi. Rivlin with wife Nechama in India (Photo: Mark Neiman, GPO) Rivlin is joined on his visit by a large delegation including some 40 Israeli companies from the defense, agriculture and water industries, as well as 15 senior Israeli academics. Heading the business delegation is Shraga Brosh, the president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel. "India represents a great challenge for Israeli manufacturers and this delegation will afford the opportunity to strengthen cooperation and partnership with their Indian counterparts. I have no doubt that this will be a fruitful visit and forge long-lasting economic partnerships which will strengthen and help grow the bilateral trade between the countries," he said. BEIRUT - Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were poised to begin an assault to try to drive Islamic State from the Syrian city of al-Bab, two of their commanders said on Monday, a battle that could also prompt new fighting with Kurdish groups that are competing for the area. Al-Bab is fast becoming a major faultline in the war in northern Syria, bringing Free Syrian Army rebels backed by Turkish armor closer than ever to frontlines held by the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies in nearby Aleppo. "There is nothing between us and al-Bab," said one of the rebels, a commander in one of the groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner taking part in the Turkey-backed Euphrates Shield operation in north Syria that began in August. "If not in hours then in a very few days we will be inside al-Bab," the commander told Reuters, declining to be identified. ATHENS -- Greek authorities are preparing draconian security measures ahead of a two-day visit by US President Barack Obama, including the deployment of thousands of police, road closures and restrictions on protests. Obama is due in Athens Tuesday, before heading to Berlin Wednesday as part of his last major trip abroad. Greek police on Monday announced a ban on public gatherings in central Athens as well as a southern suburb where one of the city's luxury hotels is located, effective several hours before Obama's arrival. At least 3,000 police will be deployed, while major avenues and roads in central Athens will be closed to vehicles and at times to pedestrians. Anarchist and leftist groups are planning protest marches during the visit, while an armed anarchist group has called for "attacks and clashes." BRUSSELS - The European Union said on Monday it would keep pushing to restore ties with Iran in line with last year's nuclear deal, which US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will rescind. Trump has raised the prospect that the United States will pull out of the pact, calling it a "disaster" and "the worst deal ever negotiated" during campaigning for the White House, although he has conceded it would be hard to destroy a deal enshrined in a United Nations resolution. "The European Union reiterates its resolute commitment to the (Iran nuclear deal)," the bloc's foreign ministers said in a statement in Brussels. "The European Union is committed to support the full and effective implementation ... by the lifting of nuclear related economic and financial sanctions and engaging with the private sector and economic operators, especially banks, to promote growth in trade and investment." The High Court of Justice on Monday rejected a request submitted by the government to extend the deadline for the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Amona. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "In this case, as in other cases in the past, we were asked to extend the deadline set in the ruling for the evacuation at the last minute. We can see that any time frame given, as long as it may be, would not be enough," Supreme Court judge Miriam Naor wrote in the court's ruling. "We must be careful; otherwise deadlines set by the court will become a recommendation." "The state's request, which is based mostly on considerations that have already been 'taken into consideration' in the original ruling, constitutes in effect an attempt to change the decision made. This we cannot accept," Naor added. An aerial view of Amona (Photo: Tomerico) In December 2014, then-Supreme Court President Asher Grunis ruled that homes built in Amona were constructed on private Palestinian land, and shall be demolished within two years, with the evacuation date set for December 25, 2016. The state requested last month to postpone the evacuation to allow time to examine alternative solutions for its residents. In its petition, the state claims it is seeking to carry out the evacuation peacefully and without incident, but that it is unable to provide alternative living solutions for residents within the next two months. The state emphasized that if the court rejects the request, it will be prepared to carry out the evacuation by the date set in its ruling. In the court's ruling which rejected the petition, Judge Naor noted that "we must also not ignore the possible repercussions of not carrying out this verdict in such circumstances. The message it would convey is that it is possible to prevent the implementation of verdicts because the state's concern of threats and violence, a message that cannot be accepted in a law-abiding nation." The High Court ruling cited other similar casesof Migron, the biggest illegal outpost in the West Bank, and of the Ulpana Hill, a neighborhood in the settlement of Beit Elboth of which received much shorter evacuation deadlineseight months and a year, respectively. "Furthermore," Naor wrote, "the long time frame given to this evacuation was not made in a void. It reflects past experience, which taught us the government is not quick to carry out rulings ordering the evacuation of illegal construction in Judea and Samaria, and that it more than once failed to meet the deadline set." Children from Amona demonstrate in Jerusalem in favor of legalizing the outpost (Photo: Gil Yohanan) Naor noted that she remains unconvinced that "extending the deadline will bring to an agreed resolution of the matter. It appears an approval of the request will only be used as an opening to submit additional extension requests, with the claim 'we didn't have enough time.' Such a result will render the ruling worthless and cannot be accepted. Even though we do not dismiss the consideration of a peaceful resolution, this consideration is not the most important thing." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Amona situation at the Likud party meeting on Monday, but refused to comment on the High Court's decision. "We are aware of the distress of Amona's residents and are acting in different manners to resolve the problem," he said. One of those ways is by pushing the so-called "regulation bill," which seeks to retroactively legalize any Jewish structures built on privately-owned Palestinian landsas long as they were built with no intention of breaking the lawwhile offering generous compensation to those who prove they are the lands' owners. So far, attempts to legalize their status have not borne fruit. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has criticized the law as "unconstitutional." Despite this, it was approved on Sunday by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and will be raised at the Knesset for a preliminary reading on Wednesday. In its ruling on Monday, the High Court noted that the decision to reject the government's request to extend the deadline for Amona's evacuation was not affected by the Ministerial Committee's approval of the so-called "regulation bill." Settlers are 'a virus' Earlier in the day, opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) raised the ire of Prime Minister Netanyahu when he called Jewish settlers living in illegal outposts in the West Bank "a virus that drags Israel to approve laws (that legalize) theft." Speaking to Army Radio on Monday morning, Herzog expressed his concern that the "regulation bill" would be made into law. "While I understand the families' pain, they were given two years to evacuate," Herzog said. "And look what this virus is doing to the State of Israel. Look how dangerous it is to our democracy and (look at) the fact we need to sacrifice lives over this nonsense." Netanyahu and Herzog at the Knesset (Photo: Gil Yohanan) The opposition leader asserted that "This would be a serious stain on the Israeli law book, as it's a law that legitimizes theft. It's unheard of that a government approves a law that allows taking away the rights of private individuals. Israel is not allowed to act against the law." Prime Minister Netanyahu took to social media to express his outrage at Herzog's comments. "I can't believe Herzog used the term 'virus' in relation to settlers. They are our own flesh and blood, they serve in the IDF, and they contribute to the country. Buji, apologize immediately," Netanyahu wrote, using Herzog's nickname. Herzog responded to Netanyahu with his own post on social media, using the prime minister's nickname: "No, Bibi, this time it won't work. The 'regulation bill' is the virus. A virus that is dangerous to the Israeli democracy and justice system. The settlers are my brothers. My own flesh and blood. And I'll take care of them more than you lie to them." BERLIN - A Syrian man's business was daubed with a Nazi swastika and set on fire in the eastern city of Magdeburg in Germany in the early hours of Monday, local police said. According to police, a witness reported seeing three men smash the glass front of a tanning studio, followed by an explosion and a fire. Officers found a freshly painted swastika and the word "Out" painted on a wall. Magdeburg Police said they were investigating the attack as suspected political extremism. BEIRUT - Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border on Monday as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to President Bashar Assad's advantage with the government tightening its grip on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, sources on both sides and a group that reports on the war said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said headquarters and checkpoints held by the Levant Front had been seized in the fighting, which a Levant Front official said had forced the group to withdraw some fighters from a battle with Islamic State in the nearby city of al-Bab. The fighting in Azaz, some 60 km (35 miles) north of Aleppo, also prompted Turkey, which backs a number of FSA rebel groups, to close the border crossing at Oncupinar. Adjacent to Bab al-Salam in Syria, it is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey. BEIRUT -- Air strikes hit two hospitals in rebel-held territory west of the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, and a number of patients and medics were wounded, a monitor and doctor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said warplanes pounded the town of Atareb overnight and into Monday, knocking the hospital out of service. There were five air strikes on the hospital that destroyed operations and waiting rooms and damaged ambulances in what was the fourth aerial attack on the facility this year, according to the Observatory. From Afghanistan to Algeria, jihadists plan to use Donald Trump's shock US presidential victory as a propaganda tool to bring new fighters to their battlefields. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Taliban commanders and ISIS supporters say Trump's campaign trail rhetoric against Muslimsat one point calling for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the United Stateswill play perfectly into their recruitment efforts, especially for disaffected youth in the West. Photo: AFP "This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands," said Abu Omar Khorasani, a top ISIS commander in Afghanistan. Trump has talked tough against militant groups on the campaign trail, promising to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War." The President-elect later toned down his call for a total ban on Muslim entry to the US, saying he would temporarily suspend immigration from countries that have "a history of exporting terrorism." But he has offered few details on his plans to combat various radical groups, including ISIS, the Taliban and al Qaeda, which represent a wide spectrum of political views. Photo: AP "He does not differentiate between extremist and moderate Islamist trends and, at the same time, he overlooks (the fact) that his extremism will generate extremism in return," Iraq's powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement. Sadr's political reform movement, which commands thousands of followers, is a staunch opponent of the radical Sunni movements ISIS and al Qaeda, and unlike them has not waged or promoted attacks in the West. The United States has seen a handful of attacks inspired by Islamist militant groups, including the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who called a TV station swearing allegiance to ISIS and the killing of 14 people at a San Bernadino, California, social services agency last December. US officials have warned the country will likely face a higher risk of similar attacks as ISIS urges supporters to launch attacks at home instead of joining its fight in the Middle East. Orlando massacre terrorist Omar Mateen (Photo: AFP) "Our leaders were closely following the US election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so," said ISIS's Khorasani, who described President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with at least a little brain in comparison to Trump. Al Qaeda, which has proven resilient more than 15 years after launching the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has yet to comment on Trump's victory. The militant group will likely respond after Trump's first speeches as president, anticipating they will be able to exploit his comments to win support, said Hisham al Hashemi, who advises the Iraqi government on Sunni jihadist movements. "Al Qaeda is known for its recruitment strategy that heavily quotes speeches of the White House and other Western officials," he told Reuters. Propaganda Machine Trump's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements from the militants. Even if Trump tones down his anti-Muslim comments when he takes office in January, analysts say his statements during the campaign trail were enough to fuel the militants' propaganda machine. "Militants will still use those quotes," said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. "The key thing militant groups, particularly Islamic State and al Qaeda, depend on for recruitment purposes is convincing Muslims in the Western world that the West hates them and won't ever accept them as part of their society." Photo: Reuters A senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan said the group, whose resurgence is undermining efforts to end America's longest war, had kept track of all of Trump's speeches and anti-Muslim comments. "If he does what he warned in his election campaign, I am sure it will provoke Muslim Ummah (community) across the world and jihadi organizations can exploit it," said the militant leader, who declined to be identified because of strict Taliban policy that only its official spokesman can make statements. Shortly after Trump's victory, several jihadist sympathizers took to social media to declare this as an opportunity for their cause. "The dog Trump's victory in the US elections is a gold mine for Muslims not a setback if they know how to use it," tweeted @alhlm200, who regularly posts statements in support of ISIS. ERBIL -- A mixed Kurdish and Yazidi armed force said on Monday it had dislodged Islamic State (IS) militants from five Yazidi villages west of Mosul in an offensive that began on Saturday. It coincided with a larger, ongoing Iraqi government and Kurdish offensive to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, from ISIS with aerial support from the US-led military coalition. Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias are also in the Mosul campaign, battling ISIS to the west of the city. Amona residents called an emergency gathering Monday evening during which they appealed directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the High Court of Justices rejection of a request submitted by the government to extend the deadline for the evacuation of the illegal outpost in the area. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter We, residents of Amona turn directly and personally to you prime minister. The lives of the residents of Amona, 42 families, (including) young children are in your hands. The hand which will evacuate Amona on the first night of Hanukkah is yours, said Avichai Boaron, who is heading the struggle against the evacuation, in reference to the date in December on which the evacuation is set to commence. For us it is extremely simple and clear. If we remain in Amona after December 1, if Amona is (legalized) you and your coalition (are worthy) of a medal of honor...There is no one to blame and no one to accuse. The responsibility is first and foremost yours. After, and only after, the responsibility lies with your ministers, he continued. Emergency meeting for Amona (Photo: Roi Yanovsky) Boaron also said that if the prime minister stood true what he described as his mission the residents would salute him. However, he threatened, if you dont regulate (sic.) the lives of the children here, we will stand here as a wall together with many thousands from all across Israel who will gather here on the day of the evacuation, in Gods city, a wall which we will create in the coming days in order to do all within our power so that Amona will not fall for a second time. Addressing the prime minister once again, Boaron said that the residents never had any faith in the High Court and therefore do not blame it for its decision. It is in your hands to save Amona or, God forbid, destroy it. We were not surprised by the decision by the High Court of Justice. We didnt pin our hopes in it which is why we are not coming to it with complaints or allegations. You, prime minister, are the first commander and will decide the fate of Amona. Palestinian owners of plots of land in the settlement of Amona have expressed reserved satisfaction at the High Court of Justices rejection of a request submitted by the government to extend the deadline for the evacuation of the illegal outpost in the area. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter I am 50 percent optimistic because of the decision by the court and 50 percent pessimistic because of the decision by the Israeli ministers to approve the Regulations Bill, Ibrahim Yakub from Ein Yabrud told Ynet, one of the owners of land in Amona. On the one hand I was very happy to hear the decision of th court but on the other hand, yesterday I was extremely frightened because of the decision of the ministers. Their decision gave legal validity to harm Palestinian land. Abd al-Rahman Salah Yakub added that he had not yet lost hope that the land will be returned to him. I hope that at the end of the day the legal rules will prevail. There is no law forcing a man to sell what belongs to him. I will only sell the land if it is my free desire to do so, Yakub said. Abd al-Rahman Salah, the mayor of the village of Silwad near Amona, is also one of the petitioners against the appropriation of the land. He expressed confidence that the Supreme Court decision will be respected and Amona will be evacuated by the end of 2016. "We don't want problems and we don't want riots. We are peaceful people and all we want is to cultivate the land that belongs to us and make it bloom. We don't wish to burn or destroy, but to sow, that is all. I believe that after the evacuation we can get to the land and cultivate it once more." The fact that the Regulations Bill states that Palestinian landowners will be compensated to the amount of 125% of the land's worth does little to console the petitioners. "There is one thing that is more important than money and that is the connection between the land and its owners," explained Yakub. "I can imagine it like a connection between a mother and child. A mother will never give up her child in exchange for money, it is not at all comparable, and as such, we will not give up on the land." Amona The mayor of Silwad was even more adamant saying, "Even if they offered us three billion, we would still not agree. It is entirely against our principles." Yakub made it clear that he believes one day he will return to his land. "I know that today the land isn't in the same condition it was when it was settled, nor is it in the same condition it was when I first walked on it in 1997. We need to cultivate it in order for it to be ready for sowing, but there is no such thing as impossible, because with the help of hope and desire, everything can return to normal." The petitioners argue that not only is it their land, but they also farmed and cultivated it in the past, with the help of the Civil Administration, which examined aerial photos from the 80s. The photographs were submitted to the court for the civil suit in which the petitioners were attempting to claim damages for the illegal use of their land. The court ruled in their favor and required the government to pay NIS 300,000 in damages. For their part, the settlers claim that the area that was built upon is jointly owned and was acquired in 1995, but could not prove this claim. Furthermore, there was a suspicion of forged documents attempting to strengthen this claim. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit criticized government ministers on Monday evening for their efforts to pass the so-called " regulations bill " which would legalize Israeli outposts in the West Bank including Amona, which is set to be evacuated in December Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter I share the idea that a country struggling against terrorism is required to operate within the law, Mandelblit said. This is also true of other legal issues such as the attempt to arrange settlement construction. Avichai Mandelblit (Photo: Gil Yohanan) Mandelblit said that while he endeavors to assist the government in implementing its policies and in finding legal solutions to complex problems including sometimes preventing the evacuation of homes which were planned under state authority and which had been in existence for years, these solutions will always be on the border of the law. Indeed, Mandelblit had already stated last week, prior to the Regulations Bill vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, that the bill was legally untenable. There can be no legislating if it is harmful to the High Court of Justice. When the High Court of Justice rules that the state is required to demolish illegal homes, it is for the state to carry out the ruling as is stipulated, he noted. It is the responsibility of the state to respect the ruling of the High Court. It is easy to accept a ruling that is consistent with our position but we need to accept the ruling of the court even when it isnt consistent with our positions, he continued. Shortly before speaking, Amona residents called an emergency gathering during which they appealed directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defy the ruling. Education Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday that the election of Donald Trump has helped create an opportunity for Israel to abandon its stated commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The remarks by Bennett reflect sentiment among those he represents that Trump's election could usher in a new era of relations with the United States. While the two countries remain close allies, relations were sometimes tense between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because of their vastly different world views. Bennett last week welcomed Trump's election, predicting that "the special relationship" with the US would grow stronger and noting that the Republican campaign platform had no mention of a Palestinian state. "The era of a Palestinian state is over," he declared at the time. Speaking to foreign reporters on Monday, Bennett was more cautious, citing an order by Netanyahu for his Cabinet not to talk about the election in public. But he made clear that he will push his own government to rethink its commitment to Palestinian independence. Naftali Bennett (Photo: Amil Salman) "The combination of the changes in the United States, in Europe and the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything," Bennett said. "It's no secret that I think that the notion of setting up a Palestine in the heart of Israel is a profound mistake," he added. "I believe that we have to bring alternative new ideas instead of the Palestinian state approach." Though Bennett said he didn't know whether Trump would support that view, he said it's critical that Israel now clearly define its own vision. "My expectation is not from anyone abroad," he said. "After many years, the Israeli government has to decide what do we want." Bennett's comments were also an indicator of the pressure Netanyahu could soon face to abandon his commitment to the "two-state solution" favored by Obama and the international community. For two decades, the international community has been pushing for a negotiated peace deal that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Stripareas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel however, has argued that the the lands were captured in a defensive war and consider the lands disputed. President-elect Donald Trump After opposing Palestinian independence for most of his career, Netanyahu reluctantly endorsed the idea shortly after Obama took office in 2009. But critics, including Obama, have said that continued Israeli settlement on these territories have undercut this goal, and the Obama administration has at times questioned Netanyahu's commitment to seeking peace. Netanyahu on the other hand has consistently argued that the Palestinians remain committed to Israel's destruction in its entirety and not merely the demolishment of settlements. Moreover, he has charged that the ongoing intense incitement in Palestinian society is the main obstacle to peace rather than the settlements. Bennett has repeatedly called for annexing parts of the West Bank and granting the Palestinians in other parts expanded autonomy, with new roads, office parks and economic opportunities, with Israel retaining overall security control. Israeli hard-liners welcomed Trump's election last week, noting the strong support for Israel in his campaign platform and the many pro-Israel officials who advised him during his campaign. Their spirits were further boosted after a Trump adviser, Jason Greenblatt , told an Israeli radio station last week that his boss doesn't think West Bank settlements are an "obstacle to peace." Following Greenblatt's comments, Cabinet Minister Ofir Akunis, a close Netanyahu associate, called for a renewed wave of settlement construction. But such sentiments may have been premature. Trump's unpredictability has raised concerns that he might change his attitudes once in office. Over the weekend, for instance, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would like to help broker a solution to the conflict "for humanity's sake." In an interview with "Israel Today," a free daily owned by Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson, Trump said he believed his administration can play "a significant role" in helping the Mideast parties reach an agreement. Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that he would soon be meeting Trump. He ordered his Cabinet and lawmakers to avoid speaking to the media about the election while the incoming US administration formulates its policies. WASHINGTON -- The Kremlin says that Russian President Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump have agreed in a phone call to work to improve US-Russian relations. The Kremlin says that Putin expressed readiness to establish a "partner-like" dialogue with Trump's administration. In the US, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway declined comment to reporters when she was asked about any calls from world leaders that Trump has received. The Kremlin says that Putin and Trump agreed that US-Russian ties are "unsatisfactory" and spoke for joint efforts to normalize them and engage in a "constructive cooperation on a broad range of issues." The Kremlin adds that they also agreed on the need to combine efforts in the fight against the No. 1 enemy -- international terrorism and extremism." The Kremlin says they discussed the settlement of the Syrian crisis in that context. MINNEAPOLIS -- A federal judge has sentenced a Minnesota man who was part of a conspiracy to join ISIS in Syria to 10 years in prison. Zacharia Abdurahman drew the harshest sentence of the three defendants who appeared before US District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis on Monday. While Abdurahman pleaded guilty, he did not cooperate with the government against the other members of what Davis called a "terrorist cell." Asked why he chose not to cooperate, Abdurahman said he wasn't willing to testify against his former friends. He said he's a man of principal. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence. Davis told the defendant he was giving him less partly because his parents have become active in the campaign against terrorist recruiting in Minnesota's large Somali community. 301st Fighter Wing Airmen return home 301st Fighter Wing members, families and friends welcome more than 100 Airmen home from Afghanistan Nov. 9, 2016, at Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, Texas. Airmen deployed in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel, which focused on maintaining security and stability in the deployed region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Melissa Harvey) Start Your Adventure is the Air Force Reserve Command Recruiting Services slogan to draw in potential new Airmen. But if someone is already a part of the Air Force Reserve, they can share their adventure through the Get 1 Now program. The 403rd Wing Recruiting Office has been diligent in spreading the word about the Get 1 Now program. So diligent, in fact, that they won the AFRCRSs Share Your Adventure Award for having 10 accessions through the Get 1 Now program, the most in Air Force Reserve Command. The award was presented by Lt. Gen. Maryanne Miller, AFRC commander, and Chief Master Sgt. Ericka E. Kelly, AFRC command chief, Oct. 27 during the AFRCRS Deployment Readiness Training at the Doubletree by Hilton hotel in Orlando, Florida. Senior Master Sgt. Dominique Hogan, 403rd Wing recruiting flight chief, said that one benefit of the Get 1 Now program is that the encouragement to join the Air Force Reserve is coming from someone who can share their direct experiences because theyre already serving. It comes from the heart when it comes from a reservist, Hogan said. She also added that when the information and encouragement come solely from a recruiter, there can sometimes be a perception that the recruiter is selling the Air Force Reserve. With the Get 1 Now program, its just two people discussing potential opportunities. It also gives Air Force Reserve members an opportunity to give back and share the good experiences that theyve had, said Master Sgt. Tavores Royster, 403rd Wing recruiter. It also helps us recruiters because reservists generally know what it takes to join, and they dont send us people that they know arent qualified. How the Get 1 Now program works is that if a reservist meets someone who is interested in joining the Air Force Reserve, they can enter their name and contact information at http://get1now.us or download the Get 1 Now app on their smartphone. Once the information has been submitted, the potential recruit can be prequalified and contacted by an e-recruiter, then the information is passed to a recruiter in the local area. Master Sgt. Paul Martin, who has used the Get 1 Now program to help several people join the Air Force Reserve, said, The main reason is because that is the simplest and fastest way to get a recruiter to see them, because all their information is there and its tracked. If we can get all reservists on board with Get 1, itll allow us recruiters to fill these critical positions, Hogan said. Just like every Airman is a wingman, every Airman is also a recruiter. There are dozens of open positions at the 403rd Wing, particularly in the aeromedical evacuation and maintenance career fields. Those interested in starting their adventure with the 403rd Wing and Air Force Reserve can visit http://www.403wg.afrc.af.mil/About/Recruiting.aspx for more information. Arizona News Phoenix, Arizona - Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the Phoenix Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today the first successful prosecution of a state level Terrorism charge in Arizona. A judge sentenced 18-year-old Mahin Khan to 8 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack at a Motor Vehicle Division office in Maricopa County. Khan will be placed on lifetime probation after his release from prison. Justice was served, we prevented a terrorist attack in Arizona, said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. We have a duty to do everything we can to protect our community from extremist acts. Id like to thank our partners at the FBI & the JTTF for their diligent work on this case. Mahin Khan is another young individual in the U.S. who was inspired to commit acts of violence. This case illustrates the evolving nature of the terrorist threat today," said Michael DeLeon, Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Office. We want the community to know that this case is an example of the successful collaborative efforts among the JTTF, FBI, state and federal partners. The partnership that exists between these agencies is essential as we join together with a common goal, to protect the city and its citizens from those who wish to do us harm. In October 2016, Mahin Khan pled guilty to Terrorism, Conspiracy to Commit Terrorism, and Conspiracy to Commit Misconduct Involving Weapons. Khan was indicted in July 2016 after an investigation by the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force. The charges stem from an investigation into Khans repeated communication and conspiracy with an individual whom he believed to be a fighter with ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) to obtain weapons including pipe bombs or pressure cooker bombs, and to commit an act of terror in Maricopa County. Arizona News Tucson, Arizona - Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced a jury found Jesse Ryan Swaffar guilty of 10 counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor. A Tucson Police Department investigation found thousands of videos and pictures of child pornography on Swaffar's computer. On April 7, 2015, the Tucson Police Department received a 911 call from Swaffars girlfriend who claimed she found child pornography on Swaffars computer. TPD seized multiple computers and hard drives from Swaffars residence. A full forensic examination found thousands of pictures and videos of child pornography that had been organized into folders and stored on various electronic devices, including an encrypted hard drive. Swaffar was arrested and indicted on 10 counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor. The victims in the pictures and videos were under 15 years of age. Before he was indicted, Swaffar, 34, was in the Air Force stationed at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. He was discharged from the Air Force when the Tucson Police Department began its investigation. Swaffar will be sentenced on December 1, 2016. The Arizona Attorney General's Office is prosecuting this case. Arizona News Tempe, Arizona - Governor Doug Ducey, Thursay announced that ADP will open a new location in Tempe, Arizona in the spring of 2017. This new office will create up to 1,500 new jobs and the company will invest more than $33.75 million in the Tempe community. ADPs decision to significantly expand its Arizona workforce demonstrates that industry-leading companies are confident they can create large numbers of jobs in our state and find the best candidates to fill them, said Governor Ducey. Not only does Arizona offer an exceptional talent pool for employers to choose from, it offers a lifestyle that attracts and retains the skilled workers that companies like ADP require. ADP is a comprehensive global provider of cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions that unite HR, payroll, talent, time, tax, and benefits administration. The company is a leader in business outsourcing services, analytics, and compliance expertise. ADP serves more than 650,000 clients of all types and sizes around the world. We are excited to tap into Tempes diverse talent pool, said Debbie Dyson, corporate vice president, Client Experience and Continuous Improvement at ADP. The associates we hire in Tempe will help us continue to deliver the very best service experience our clients around the world have come to know and appreciate. The new Tempe office is key to our overall Service Alignment strategy and supports our goal of providing an exceptional experience for our clients and associates, said Dinora Sanchez, senior vice president, Global Business Transformation at ADP. We look forward to welcoming approximately 1,500 Tempe-areas residents to our ADP family. Partners in this effort include Governor Duceys Office, the City of Tempe, the Arizona Commerce Authority, and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. We are thrilled to welcome ADP to the City of Tempe. The 1,500 new jobs will contribute to Tempes diverse economy and be part of the great things happening in downtown Tempe. ADPs decision to locate in Tempe is in large part because of our comprehensive and growing transportation network, deep sense of community, and our vibrant urban environment, said the Honorable Mark Mitchell, Mayor, City of Tempe. ADPs expansion in Tempe is an excellent addition to Arizonas thriving advanced business services sector, said Sandra Watson, Arizona Commerce Authority President and CEO. This growth is driven by the quality of our talent, as well as the advantages Arizona offers to businesses in terms of operating costs, light regulation and low taxes. I congratulate ADP on their impressive growth and look forward to supporting their continued success in Arizona. The more than 200,000 square foot building in Tempe offers ADP the space to meet their growth needs, said Chris Camacho, president & CEO, Greater Phoenix Economic Council. We worked closely with our partners to showcase why Greater Phoenix is a high value place for ADP to scale, including the walkability and urban vibrancy of Downtown Tempe and access to a large talent pool at ASU that will allow ADP to ramp up their operations this spring. About ADP (NASDAQ: ADP) Powerful technology plus a human touch. Companies of all types and sizes around the world rely on ADPs cloud software and expert insights to help unlock the potential of their people. HR. Talent. Benefits. Payroll. Compliance. Working together to build a better workforce. For more information, visit ADP.com. About the Arizona Commerce Authority The Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA) is the states leading economic development organization with a streamlined mission to grow and strengthen Arizonas economy. The ACA uses a three-pronged approach to advance the overall economy: recruit, grow, create recruit out-of-state companies to expand their operations in Arizona; work with existing companies to grow their business in Arizona and beyond; and partner with entrepreneurs and companies large and small to create new jobs and businesses in targeted industries. Visit azcommerce.com for more information. About the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) A true public-private partnership, GPEC is the regional economic development organization for Greater Phoenix. Working with its 23 member communities, Maricopa County and more than 170 private investors, GPEC attracts quality businesses to this dynamic region. By creating a high-performance economy through capital investments and jobs, Greater Phoenix companies enjoy a business climate where they can compete and thrive in today's global economy. Since 1989, GPEC has worked to achieve an economically sound and sustainable region. For more information, visit www.gpec.org. About Tempe, Arizona Tempe, Arizona is the urban center of the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area. The city is home to Arizona State University, the famous Mill Avenue District and Tempe Town Lake. www.tempe.gov Arizona News Phoenix, Arizona - Each Veterans Day, we pay tribute to the men and women who risk their lives to protect our country in defense of American values. Standing in a moment of silence, sharing stories about our heroes in uniform, and praying for their safe return mean everything. But we owe them a debt that can never be repaid, so its also important that we honor these men and women with our actionsnot only supporting them overseas but when they come back home, too. That means giving members of the military the tools they need to find career opportunities, helping them pursue an education, and making their lives easier as they start anew as civilians. Over the past two years, we have: Invested in programs that connect veterans to eager employers Offered certifications to universities that offer unique services Made it easier to gain academic credit for military service Provided tax relief to military families who survive their loved ones Streamlined government to improve customer service for veterans Arizonas population knows what it means to serve. Were home to more than half of a million veterans, and were proudly represented by a number of courageous veterans in Washington, D.C., like Senator John McCain, an American hero who served in the Vietnam War, and Congresswoman Martha McSally, the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat in United States history. Well keep doing everything we can to make Arizona the best state in the nation for veterans to live, work, and recreate, easing the transition from military to civilian life in honor of the sacrifices they have made (and continue to make) for our nation. Getting Veterans Back On Their Feet With New Career Opportunities One of the most important things we can offer a veteran when he or she takes off the uniform is a job. Governor Ducey The Annual Average Unemployment Rate For Veterans In Arizona Was 3.7 Percent In 2015Only One Year Earlier, It Was 5.7 Percent. (Employment Situation Of Veterans2015, United States Department Of Labor, 03/22/16; Employment Situation Of Veterans2014, United States Department Of Labor, 03/18/15) In March 2015, We Officially Launched The Arizona Roadmap To Veteran Employment In Order To Connect Veterans To Career Opportunities. The Arizona Department of Veterans Services and the Arizona Coalition for Military Families hosted a summit to officially launch the Arizona Roadmap to Veteran Employment. (Event Recap: Arizona Roadmap To Veteran Employment Summit, Arizona Coalition For Military Families, 03/27/15) The Statewide Program, Funded In Part By The Governors Office Of Youth, Faith, And Family, Connects Service Members, Veterans And Their Families To Employment, Training And Resources. (Laurie Merrill, Arizona Programs Help Vets Find Jobs, Arizona Republic, 05/22/16) In Its First Year, From June 2015 To May 2016, The Program Saw A Number Of Great Achievements: 341 direct contacts with job seekers 2,100+ people reached through outreach efforts 2,400+ people trained in veteran service programs outside of the navigator network 42 Arizona Veteran Supportive Employers, a new designation for companies that offer specific services to veterans In June 2016, The Successful Program Was Renewed With A Second Annual Summit. The second Arizona Roadmap to Veteran Employment Summit will take place at the Arizona PBS studio on June 17, 2016. This event is part of a statewide initiative to connect service members, veterans and their family members to employment opportunities, training and resources. (Arizona PBS To Host 2nd Arizona Roadmap To Veteran Employment Summit, Arizona PBS, 06/17/16) Veteran Supportive Employers In Arizona Include Salt River Project, Arizona Public Service, DHL Express, And Many OthersPlus Several State Agencies Under Governor Ducey. (Roadmap AVSEs, Arizona Coalition For Military Families, Accessed 11/11/16) In April 2015, Arizona Passed Legislation Allowing Private Employers To Give Employment Preference To Veterans, Which Makes It Easier For Members Of The Military To Find Jobs. (House Bill 2094, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 04/06/15) In November 2015, Governor Ducey Proclaimed A New Veteran Employment Month In Honor Of Our Military Veterans . . . And The Businesses In Arizona Who Hire Them. (Governor Doug Ducey Declares November Veteran Employment Month, Office Of The Arizona Governor, 11/04/15) KTVK: Governor Ducey Pushes Arizona Businesses To Hire Military Veterans. (Governor Ducey Pushes Arizona Businesses To Hire Military Veterans, KTVK, 11/04/15) GOVERNOR DUCEY: One Of The Most Important Things We Can Offer A Veteran When He Or She Takes Off The Uniform Is A Job. GOVERNOR DUCEY: In addition to our gratitude and support, one of the most important things we can offer a veteran when he or she takes off the uniform is a job, an opportunity to benefit in the civilian workforce. Hiring a veteran is a win-win situation. They bring valuable skills, knowledge, experience, discipline, and leadership to the employers who hire them. (Governor Duceys November 2015 Message On Veteran Employment, YouTube, 11/02/15) In May 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation Making It Easier For Those Currently Serving In The Arizona National Guard To Be Appointed As Peace Officers. Senate Bill 1212 expanded eligibility for appointment to Peace Officer status to veterans who have served as a law enforcement officer in any branch of the United States Armed Forces or as a special agent of a military criminal investigative organization within the United States Department of Defense. (Senate Bill 1212, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/11/16) The Chairman Of Arizonas Veterans Advisory Commission Said That He Hopes The Legislation Will Be Used As A Model For The State Licensure For Military Veterans Coming Out Of The Service With Training And Experience In Law Enforcement. Chairman Rustand hopes that SB1212 National Guard; Peace Officers appointment will be used as a model for the state licensure for military veterans coming out of the service with training and experience in law enforcement. (Meeting Minutes Of The Advisory Commission, Arizona Department Of Veterans Services, 05/12/16) Helping Veterans Enhance Their Lives Through Education About 16,000 Veterans Currently Attend Post-Secondary Classes In Arizona. (Arizona Department Of Veterans Services Education Division, Accessed 11/11/16) All Of Arizonas Four-Year Universities Are Officially Certified As Veteran Supportive Campuses. The Arizona Department of Veterans Services has certified several other educational institutions as veteran supportive campuses, including Mesa Community College, Phoenix College, Rio Salado College, and others. (Veterans Supportive Campus, Arizona Department Of Veterans Services, Accessed 11/11/16) Veteran Supportive Campuses Have To Offer Several Services To Student Veterans In Order To Be Certified. The Arizona Revised Statutes state that veteran supportive campus means offering a campus survey of student veterans to identify the needs, issues and suggestions of veterans . . . peer mentoring and peer support programs for student veterans . . . outreach strategies to local military bases and more. (Arizona Revised Statutes, Accessed 11/11/16) All Of Our Four-Year Universities Are Also Included In The Newest Military Times Rankings Of The Best Colleges For Veterans Released One Week Ago. (Best For Vets: Colleges 2017, Military Times, 11/01/16) Arizona State University Established An Interdisciplinary Center To Study Veterans Wellness In 2015 And This Year Hosted Orientation Meetings For New Student Veterans. (New ASU Center To Study Veterans Wellness, ASU Now, 02/27/15; Pat Tillman Veterans Center Hosts Orientation For Students With Service Experience, ASU Now, 08/05/16) University Of Arizona Offers Free Tutoring To Student Veterans By Student Veterans And This Year Hosted A Summer Program To Help Veterans Transition Into College Life. (Veterans Education & Transition Services Educational Components, University Of Arizona, Accessed 11/11/16; Amanda Martinez, UA To Host Summer Program For Student Veterans, Arizona Public Media, 01/21/16) Northern Arizona University Specifically Recruits Veterans Through The W. A. Franke College of Business Veteran Student Center While Its Veteran Success Center Is Helping Veterans To Transition Into College Life. (The W. A. Franke College of Business Veteran Student Center, Northern Arizona University, Accessed 11/11/16; Corina Vanek, NAU Student Veterans Work To Ease Transition From Military To College, Arizona Daily Sun, 11/11/15) In March 2015, Governor Ducey Issued An Executive Order Renewing The State Council On The Education For Military Children To Help Meet Unique Education Needs Of Children In Military Families. (Executive Order 2015-03, Governors Office Of Education, 03/12/15) GOVERNOR DUCEY: We Need To Ensure That Children Of Military Families Experience The Best Arizonas Education System Has To Offer. GOVERNOR DUCEY: Military families give so much to our country and our state, and we need to ensure that children of military families experience the best Arizonas education system has to offer. (Governor Doug Ducey Appoints Council To Help Meet Unique Education Needs Of Children in Military Families, Governors Office Of Education, 04/05/16) In May 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation Making It Easier For Veterans To Gain Academic Credits For Their Service In The Military. Senate Bill 1267 requires community college district governing boards and the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) to create policies to award academic credit to current or former members of the United States Military. (Senate Bill 1267, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/17/16; House Summary Of Senate Bill 1267 Arizona State Legislature, Accessed 11/11/16) In May 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation Establishing The Post-9/11 Veteran Education Relief Fund, Which Awards Financial Assistance To Help Qualified Military Veterans Pay For Tuition. (House Bill 2033, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/17/16) The Legislation Also Establishes An Advisory Committee To Oversee The Distribution Of These Monies. (House Bill 2033, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/17/16) In November 2016, Governor Ducey Proclaimed It Arizona Student Veteran Month In Honor Of The 16,000 Veterans Who Are Attending Post-Secondary Courses In Arizona. (Proclamation: Arizona Student Veteran Month, Governors Office Of Education, Proclaimed September 2016) Making Life Easier For Veterans When Theyre Home This Week, Three Arizona Cities Were Ranked In The Top 15 Cities In The United States For Veterans To Live. (2016s Best & Worst Places For Veterans To Live, WalletHub, 11/07/16) Our State Is Leading The Nation With Veterans Courts, Which Specifically Cater To Veterans Who Have Made Mistakes And Whom Court Officials And Prosecutors Believe . . . Deserve A Second Chance. They're here because they served in America's military forces, and court officials and prosecutors believe they deserve a second chance. With more military men and women returning from the battlefield with physical and mental wounds, courts that cater only to veteransfocusing on rehabilitation rather than punishmentare operating across the country, and Arizona is on the vanguard of the trend. (Jim Walsh, Veterans Courts Trending In Arizona, Arizona Republic, 03/17/15) There Are Now 13 Of These Courts In Arizona Helping Veterans Get The Treatment And Understanding They Deserve. (Allie Bice, One Less Battle: Treatment Courts Keep Vets Out Of Jail, In Recovery, Cronkite News, 09/24/16) The Arizona Republic Reported That Phoenix Is Considered By Some To Have The Largest Veterans Court In The Country. (Jim Walsh, Veterans Courts Trending In Arizona, Arizona Republic, 03/17/15) Veteran And Peer Support Specialist: Anyone That Served Their Country, Theyve Got The Potential To Become A Good Person. RAY PEREZ: I think anyone that served their country, theyve got the potential to become a good person, be a good person. Some of us, unfortunately, we make wrong choices in our life and we go down some dark roads and some of us do get lost and dont find our war back home. (Arizona Horizon Veterans Court, Arizona PBS, 10/18/16) In April 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation Allowing Members Of Various State Retirement Plans With At Least Five Years Of Service (Rather Than Ten Years As Previously Required) To Receive Credited Service For Any Military Service Performed Before Their Employment. (House Bill 2019, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 04/05/16) In May 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation To Provide Well-Deserved Tax Relief To Surviving Spouses And Surviving Dependents Of Deceased Members Of The U.S. Military. (House Bill 2153, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/12/16) GOVERNOR DUCEY: We Owe Our Patriots In Uniform, And Their Families, A Debt That Can Never Be Repaid, So This Bill Is Only A Small Token Of Our Appreciation. GOVERNOR DUCEY: We must continually honor the brave women and men whove served and sacrificed in defense of our nations freedomnot only with our words, but with action. We owe our patriots in uniform, and their families, a debt that can never be repaid, so this bill is only a small token of our appreciation. Supporting our military members, veterans and their families will remain a top priority. (Governor Doug Ducey Signs Bills To Eliminate Vehicle License Tax For Families Of Fallen Service Members, Office Of The Arizona Governor, 05/12/16) In May 2016, Arizona Passed Legislation Appropriating $2 Million To Provide Tax Relief To Native American Veterans Whom Were Incorrectly Taxed From 1993 To 2006. (House Bill 2708, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/10/16) In May 2016, Arizona Invested $10 Million In The Creation Of A New Veterans Home In Flagstaff. (Senate Bill 1527, Arizona State Legislature, Signed 05/10/16) City Leaders Stepped Up To The Plate, Flagstaff Donating Eight Acres Of Land To Help Build The Veterans Home. (City Council Regular Meeting Minutes, Flagstaff City Council, 05/19/15; Suzanne Adams-Ockrassa, Rio De Flag Gets Funding And Veterans Home Moves Forward, Arizona Daily Sun, 02/19/16) The Veterans Home Has Been Described As The First Long-Term Care Veterans Facility In Arizona North Of Phoenix. Tuesday night, Flagstaff City Council directed staff to look into what it would take to deed seven or eight acres of the citys cinder and sand storage yard on McMillian Mesa to the Arizona Department of Veterans Services for a 60-bed facility for veterans. If the home is approved by the state and federal government it would be the first long-term care veterans facility in Arizona north of Phoenix, according to city staff. (Suzanne Adams-Ockrassa, Flagstaff Takes First Step Toward Veterans Home, Arizona Daily Sun, 01/08/15) We Always Make Sure That Veterans Can Enjoy Everything Our State Has To Offer: This Year On Veterans Day, Arizona Is Offering Veterans And Active Duty Military Free Entrance To Our Beautiful State Parks. Throughout the year the agency also offers a 50 percent discount on day-use passes for veterans and active duty military as well as free entrance for 100% service disabled veterans. (Arizona State Parks Offer Free Entry To Veterans And Active Military On Veterans Day, Office Of The Arizona Governor, 11/10/16; Fee Schedule, Arizona State Parks, Accessed 11/11/16) The Arizona Department Of Game And Fish Streamlined Government And Made It Easier For Veterans To Recreate. The Arizona Department of Game and Fish reduced the time it takes for disable veterans to get hunting and fishing combination license permits from 38 days to 7 days. (Improving Customer Service, Office Of The Arizona Governor, 10/07/16) Arizona Passed Legislation Allowing The Spouse Of A Member Of The Military Stationed In Our State To Purchase A Game And Fish License. (House Bill 2324, Arizona State Legislature, 05/11/16) Health News Scottsdale, Arizona - The first female U.S. attorney general, Janet Reno, died on Monday, November 7, from complications related to Parkinsons disease. She was 78 years old and had lived with the diagnosis since 1995. Parkinson's disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement. It develops gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. But while a tremor may be the most well-known sign of Parkinson's disease, the disorder also commonly causes stiffness or slowing of movement. In the early stages of Parkinson's disease, your face may show little or no expression, or your arms may not swing when you walk. Your speech may become soft or slurred. Parkinson's disease symptoms worsen as your condition progresses over time. Although Parkinson's disease can't be cured, medications may markedly improve your symptoms. In occasional cases, your doctor may suggest surgery to regulate certain regions of your brain and improve your symptoms. Latest News Phoenix, Arizona - Governor Doug Ducey: "Today (Friday) we honor the brave men and women who have sacrificed so much for us, and the values and ideals we hold most dear as citizens of the United States of America. Today we celebrate our freedomswhich we would not have without the courageous men and women of our armed forces who have endured the perils of war to protect us. From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, from the Aztec Shore to the Arctic Zone, to counting the brave and counting the true, to climbing high into the sun and sails set to the skyour marines, Coast Guardsmen, soldiers, airmen and sailors answered the call of duty, day after day, generation after generation without expectation of praise. Every single one of them knowingly risked their lives to preserve our liberties and defend our values. Arizona is home to 600,000 military veterans. Today we thank them, and their families, for their sense of duty and for their patriotism, which has never wavered, in times of great sacrifice. Your state, and your country, is forever in your debt. Thank you for your service. Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. Washington: Terming outgoing US President Barack Obama as "terrific" who has a "great sense of humour", President-elect Donald Trump has said they did not talk about the bitterness of the recently-concluded election campaign during their meeting but discussed some tough subjects. "I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humour, as much as you can have a sense of humour talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects. We were talking about some victories, also. Some things that he feels very good about," Trump told CBS's '60 Minute' programme. Trump, 70, for the first time met Obama in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, a day after he won the general election. The meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes, but went on for 90 minutes. "This was just going to be a quick little chat and it lasted close to an hour and a half. It could have gone on for four hours. I mean, it was in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. He told me the good things and the bad things," he said, adding that among the bad things is the situation in the Middle East. "I wanted to get his full view. I got a good part of his view. And I like having that because I'm going to be inheriting that in a short period of time," he said. Obama, he said, did not ask him not to repeal his signature health care programme. "He didn't ask me. He told me the merits and the difficulties. And we understand that," he said. Trump called himself a sober person and said this is how he looked inside the Oval Office. "I think I'm a sober person. I think the press tries to make you into something a little bit different. In my case, a little bit of a wild man. I'm not. I'm actually not. I'm a very sober person. "But it was respect for the office. It was respect for the president. I never met him before, but we had a very good chemistry going. It might not be that I agree with him, but I really found the conversation unbelievably interesting," Trump said when asked about his meeting with Obama. The President-elect added that he never had an awkward moment during the meeting. "We never discussed what was said about each other. I said terrible things about him. He said terrible things about me. We never ever discussed what we said about each other," he said. Trump said he does not believe that his victory is a repudiation of Obama's presidency but of "what has been taking place over a longer period of time". "No, I think it's a moment in time where politicians for a long period of time have let people down. They've let them down on the job front. They've even let them down in terms of the war front. We have been fighting this war for 15 years. "We've spent USD 6 trillion in the Middle East. We could have rebuilt our country twice. You look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels and all of our airports are, like, obsolete," Trump said in response to a question. Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US president-elect Donald Trump agreed in a telephone call Monday to meet "at an early date" to discuss the relationship between their two powers, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Monday. Xi told Trump -- who frequently savaged China on the campaign trail and threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports -- that the world`s top two economies "need cooperation and there are a lot of things we can cooperate on", CCTV reported. Xi and Trump "vowed to keep close contact, build good working relations, and meet at an early date to exchange views on issues of mutual interest and the development of bilateral ties", CCTV said. Before his election Trump went as far as calling the Asian giant America`s "enemy" and pledged to stand up to a country he says views the US as a pushover. But he also indicated he is not interested in getting involved in far-off squabbles, and decried the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, which encompasses several other Asian countries and has been seen as an effort to contain China, for costing American jobs. The contrary positions have left a pall of uncertainty over how he will manage the relationship between the world`s two largest economies and its biggest and most powerful militaries. CCTV cited Trump as saying in the call that China was a large and important nation that he was willing to work with, and that he believed Sino-US relations could realise "win-win" benefits. The phrasing the broadcaster attributed to the US president-elect is typical of Chinese diplomacy. Revealed, the NATO slackers: Why Trump is so infuriated by countries spending less than half their fare share on European defence (and we should be too) By Julian Robinson for MailOnline 14 November 2016 Data has revealed the NATO countries who are not spending enough on defence to warrant Donald Trump using US forces to protect them from an attack.The President-elect caused alarm during his election campaign by suggesting Washington would think twice about coming to the aid of an endangered NATO ally if it had not paid its dues.The alliance has set a target for its members of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence - but the likes of France, Germany and Canada are among more than 20 members not meeting the objective, figures show.Even Eastern European NATO members Latvia - bordering Russia - and neighbouring Lithuania are projected to spend less than the target level in 2016.Slovakia and Hungary - both bordering Ukraine - do not meet the 2 per cent recommendation either, according to defenseone Mr Trump provoked alarm earlier this year by saying that the military alliance was created to confront a threat - the Soviet Union - that no longer exists and has called the alliance 'obsolete' and a bad deal for America.He argues that the US gets too little out of decades-old security partnerships like NATO, which is anchored in Europe but traditionally led by America.In an interview earlier this year he said he would look to see whether countries had 'fulfilled their obligations to us' before deciding whether to come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack.The 70-year-old also hit out at EU countries who are not paying their share of the bill for NATO. America picks up more than 70 per cent of the cost.Britain, Greece, Estonia and Poland are the only other four of the 28 members to have signed up to the spending target.But the likes of France (1.8 per cent), Canada (1 per cent) and Germany (1.2 per cent) are not reaching the suggested level of expenditure.Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg spend less than 1 per cent on defence, the statistics show.Portugal, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and Canada all spend between 1 per cent and 1.4 per cent.Meanwhile, France, Turkey, Norway, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia spend between 1.5 and 1.9 per cent of GDP of defence.Yesterday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg issued a stark warning that 'going it alone is not an option' following Trump's stunning US election victory.'We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation,' Stoltenberg wrote in The Observer as he outlined NATO's strengths, amid concerns over the president-elect's position on the US-led alliance.'This is no time to question the partnership between Europe and the United States.'Stoltenberg noted that the only time NATO's self-defence clause - 'an attack on one is an attack on all' - has been invoked was after the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.More than 1,000 European soldiers serving in Afghanistan 'paid the ultimate price' in an operation that was 'a direct response' to the attacks, he added.He said NATO had made possible the 'integration of Europe' and ended the Cold War, adding: 'European leaders have always understood that going it alone is not an option.'The alliance continues to play a key role in fighting terrorism and has responded in recent years to 'a more assertive Russia', Stoltenberg added.He conceded, however, that European leaders must increase their financial contributions to the 28-nation alliance, a demand made by Trump during his campaign. Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday told US President-elect Donald Trump that cooperation was the "only right choice" to bolster ties between the two major powers, in the first contact with the US President-elect who in his campaign had accused China of snatching American jobs. In his first telephonic conversation since Trump won the US presidential election last week, Xi congratulated him on his election victory, state-run CCTV reported. Xi said tangible benefits have been brought to the people of the two nations in over 37 years of diplomatic relations. He said "cooperation has proven to be the only right choice" and reaffirmed that China attaches great importance to relations with the US, and is willing to cooperate with America, the channel reported. Trump said he agreed about US-China relations and hopes for mutual benefits and win-win results. He also expressed willingness to strengthen ties. "The two agreed to maintain close contact and build a good working relationship," it added. Earlier, Xi had congratulated Trump on November 9 soon after his victory and called for cooperation between the two economies to maintain global peace and stability as well as improving bilateral ties shunning confrontation. In his earlier message to Trump, Xi hoped they could work together to boost China-US relations so as to better benefit peoples around the world. While China is the world's largest developing country and the US, the largest developed power, both, as the world's top economies, bear the special responsibility of maintaining world peace and stability and boosting global development and prosperity, and share extensive interests, Xi had said. Also Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi today said China stands ready to further promote its relations with the US on the "new starting point" following Trump's election. Beijing was ready to push forward China-US ties on new starting point, state-run Xinhua quoted Wang, who is currently touring Turkey, as saying. Asked whether China has made contact with Trump's team, Wang told the media in Ankara that China maintains close contact with the US side at various levels. China is willing to continue its cooperation with the administration of outgoing US President Barack Obama, so as to ensure a smooth transition of bilateral ties to the next US administration, Xinhua quoted Wang as saying. Meanwhile, Beijing also stands ready to communicate with Trump's team, so as to cement mutual understanding and expand consensus on bilateral cooperation, Wang said. He said Xi's message to Trump has charted the course for the future development of China-US ties, and China is ready to make joint efforts with the US side to that end, said the minister. During the campaign, Trump had accused China of snatching the jobs of the Americans. He had earlier claimed that Americans are living through the "greatest jobs theft" in the history of the world, saying US companies were moving out jobs to countries like China, Mexico and Singapore. Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has warned international schools from marking non-Islamic occasions such as Christmas and New Year. The ban includes forbidding the schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them, Xinhua news agency reported. The education ministry directed all schools to stick to the academic calendars for exams and holidays. It warned of action against schools that violate the directive. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-conservative state that follows Islamic rules in all walks of life. Baghdad: At least six civilians and six militants were killed on Monday in a suicide attack in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. The attack was carried out by six militants in the town of Ain al-Tamr, ministry spokesman Colonel Saad Maan said in a statement. Iraqi security forces killed five militants, while the sixth reportedly went into a residential building and detonated the explosive device he was wearing, killing six people and injuring another six. Ain al-Tamr was the scene of a similar attack on a wedding party in August, which resulted in the deaths of 18 people. Christchurch: A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed two people and caused "utter devastation" in New Zealand on Monday, with wild weather hampering rescue efforts as darkness fell. The tremor, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the quake-prone South Pacific nation, hit just after midnight near the South Island seaside tourist town of Kaikoura. It triggered a tsunami alert that sent thousands of coastal residents fleeing for higher ground across much of the country. Kaikoura, a town of about 2,000 people popular with international backpackers, was completely isolated, with telecommunications down and huge landslides cutting all access roads. Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said rescuers had to travel in by helicopter to slowly build up a clear picture of the damage. "I think had there been serious injury or suspected further loss of life, then we would have heard about it by now," he told Radio New Zealand. He added: "It looks as though it's the infrastructure that's the biggest problem, although I don't want to take away from the suffering... And terrible fright so many people have had." Brownlee and Prime Minister John Key flew over the affected area in a military helicopter. "It's just utter devastation... Months of (repair) work," Key remarked as he surveyed the landslips that dumped hundreds of tonnes of rocky debris on the main highway. Aerial footage outside Kaikoura showed railway tracks ripped up and tossed 10 metres by the force of the quake, while locals posted pictures of themselves near huge fissures that opened up in roads. One person was believed to have died at a historic homestead that collapsed at the town, while police were trying to reach the scene of a fatality at a remote property north of Christchurch. As hundreds of people prepared to spend the night in evacuation centres, rescue workers were facing deteriorating weather conditions. Heavy rain increased the risk of more landslides and strong winds made clean-up work hazardous. The treacherous conditions temporarily blocked the Clarence River with debris, which then shifted to release a "wall of water" downstream and force more evacuations. The earthquake struck at 12:02am today (local time) and was 23 kilometres deep, the US Geological Survey said. It was felt across most of the country, causing severe shaking in the capital Wellington, about 250 kilometres away. The quake ignited painful memories for residents in nearby Christchurch, which was devastated five years ago by a 6.3 tremor that killed 185 people. Key said he was well aware its impact could have been much worse. Raipur: The Border Security Force (BSF) on Monday said it seized over Rs 5 lakh "unaccounted" demonetised Rs 500 and 1,000 notes from a person travelling in bus in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district. A BSF patrol team apprehended the person in the afternoon following the input about shifting of such money to Maharashtra for changing to new denominations. "We have seized unaccounted cash of more than Rs 5 lakh in demonetised Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. It is suspected that the money was of terror (Maoist) funding and was being carried for change to new denominations," a BSF official said. The BSF team apprehended the person as he failed to justify the presence of the currency notes recovered from his possession, said the official, adding the operation was carried with the local police. Police authorities in Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra were later informed of the seizure, the official said. Sofia: EU member Bulgaria faced an uncertain future Monday after centre-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov quit following the crushing defeat of his presidential nominee at the hands of a Moscow-friendly general backed by the Socialist opposition. Critics fear the surprise win could tilt ex-communist Bulgaria, which has long walked a tightrope between Moscow and Brussels, towards Russia`s orbit -- a trend seen across eastern and central Europe amid rising euroscepticism. Nearby Moldova also looked set to elect a pro-Russian president on Sunday. "The results clearly show that the ruling coalition no longer holds the majority," the premier, who was re-elected in 2014 for a second time, said on Sunday evening. "I apologise to those who supported us. I thought I was doing the right thing." The announcement came shortly after projections showed that ex-airforce chief and political novice Rumen Radev had swept close to 60 percent of ballots. Borisov`s nominee ex-parliament speaker Tsetska Tsacheva obtained just over 35 percent, in what political analysts calls a "catastrophic defeat". "It`s a victory for all Bulgarian people. Democracy has beaten apathy and fear today," Radev told state TV on Sunday evening. The straight-laced Tsacheva meanwhile failed to sway voters disgruntled over the government`s perceived failure to tackle rampant corruption and poverty in the European Union`s poorest member state. Gallup director Parvan Simeonov told AFP the outcome was a "clear protest vote". Despite promised reforms, graft and poverty remain rife in the EU`s poorest member state, while public anger has also grown over thousands of migrants currently stranded in Bulgaria. "Bulgaria needs a new face, someone who defends national interests instead of always saying `Yes` to the European Union and the United States," businessman and Sofia resident Assen Dragov, 39, told AFP Sunday. The Bulgarian president`s role is largely ceremonial but the incumbent is nonetheless a respected figure and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Radev is due to take office on January 22 for a five-year term. His first job will likely be to call early elections in spring next year, after Borisov said Sunday he would refuse to form an interim government. Although GERB remains the country`s top political force, opinion polls indicate it will not be able to obtain an outright majority. National security and preventing a new migrant influx were key points of Radev`s campaign, which saw the general gaining confidence and projecting himself as a fierce critic of the conservative status-quo. His clear support for the lifting of EU sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and ambivalent statements about the EU and NATO have prompted analysts to speculate that he could pursue closer ties with Moscow. "General Radev`s victory represents the unfolding of a pro-Russian scenario in Bulgaria so that the country supports Russian interests in the EU and NATO," political expert Antoniy Galabov told AFP. In his victory speech, Radev reiterated his support for scrapping the sanctions and also praised new US president-elect Donald Trump for "seeking more dialogue" with President Vladimir Putin. "This gives a lot of hope for reducing (the risk) of confrontation, particularly in Syria" where Russia and the US are backing opposite sides in a bloody civil war, Radev said. His victory signals a change of direction from outgoing President Rosen Plevneliev, a strong critic of Moscow. Plevneliev warned Sunday that Russia was trying to "destabilise Europe" by financing anti-EU ultra-nationalists in Balkan states including in Bulgaria. Warsaw: The exhumation of Poland's former head of state was due to begin today, reviving a probe into a 2010 presidential plane crash that has stoked friction with Russia and caused divisions at home. Prosecutors want to check the remains were correctly identified and test for traces of explosives or combustion, as the governing rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party believes a fire may have erupted onboard before the crash. The PiS suspects the crash involved foul play, but Polish and Russian investigators have never found any evidence to support the claim. Local media say 83 of the victims' remains are to be exhumed in an investigation likely to last at least two months. The process is expected to start late today with Kaczynski and his wife Maria. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski's twin brother, then president Lech Kaczynski, was among 96 people -- most of them senior Polish state officials -- who died in the crash in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10 2010. The delegation was heading to a ceremony in Russia's Katyn forest for thousands of Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 -- a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990. Kaczynski and his wife Maria are buried in the crypt of the Wawel royal castle in Krakow where the kings of Poland and Jozef Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence in 1918, are also interred. In March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Polish suspicions as "groundless, biased and having no connection with the real circumstances of this aircraft accident." Moscow has been asked many times to hand over the wreckage and black boxes to the Polish authorities, but each time has said it will only do so when its own inquiry is finished. Poland's previous liberal government -- headed at the time by Donald Tusk, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's arch-rival -- blamed bad weather and errors by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers. But the PiS-led government, which came to power in November 2015 after eight years in the opposition, rejected those conclusions as a coverup and launched its own investigation. Only 10 per cent of Poles approve of the decision to exhume the bodies, according to a survey conducted by the IPSOS pollsters published in October. Last month, more than 200 relatives of 17 of the 96 victims wrote an open letter to President Andrzej Duda, saying they felt "abandoned and distraught in the face of a cruel and heartless act" of exhuming the remains. Paris: A French reporter was expelled from Turkey after being detained near the Syrian border in the country's southeast, his employers said. Olivier Bertrand "has arrived in Paris (CDG airport) and is in good shape", said Isabelle Roberts, head of online news media Les Jours. Bertrand was detained on Friday in Gaziantep province, where he was working on a series of planned stories on post-coup Turkey. Turkish news agency Anadolu said earlier that Bertrand was being held in the northwest and would likely be expelled in the evening. It said he had been detained for failing to seek proper accreditation. But it also described him as writing articles "favourable" to those allegedly behind the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Sunday said his detention was "deeply shocking, unacceptable". Other French media and internet users also threw their weight behind calls for Bertrand's release. "In a democratic country, Olivier Bertrand would have been able to continue reporting without being expelled by a government which has things to hide," said Christophe Deloire, general secretary of the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). His arrest came the same day that Turkey detained the board chairman of opposition daily Cumhuriyet, which has faced an intensifying crackdown since the failed coup. Islamabad: The Pakistani Army on Monday said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in firing allegedly by the Indian troops across the Line of Control. In a statement, the Pakistani Army said that seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late Sunday night. It added that the Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts effectively. Last week, Pakistan Foreign Office had said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. Notably, the Indian troops have foiled 61 Pakistan abetted infiltration bids both on LoC and IB since September 29, the day the Army had conducted surgical strikes along the Line of Control to eliminate terror launch pads in the PoK. (With PTI inputs) Aizawl: An Assam Rifles jawan allegedly clubbed his five-year-old son to death and seriously injured his 31-year-old wife at Seling village, about 40 km from here, police said on Monday. The incident took place when 36-year-old Thangboi, who was on leave, returned to his home in the village. He is posted in Tripura, police said. His son Isaac Lalremruata, who sustained multiple injuries including head wounds, died on the way to a nearby primary health centre, they said. Thangboi's wife Rosy Lalnunsangi was rushed to Aizawl and is being treated at the civil hospital where doctors stated her condition as critical. The accused was caught by local people and handed over to the police at Bawngkawn police station here, they said. Labour MP Jo Cox 'murdered for a political cause' Who was Jo Cox? Jo Cox was a self-proclaimed "proud Yorkshire lass" whose work for charity took her around the world and whose political success led her to Westminster. The 41-year-old mother-of-two was elected as MP for Batley and Spen in the 2015 election and increased Labour's majority there to 6,051 (from 4,406 in the 2010 election). She described herself as "proud and humbled" to be the Labour MP for the place where she was born. Mrs Cox first worked in politics after graduating from Cambridge University in 1995, but then built a career working for charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the NSPCC. She was described by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as "a much loved colleague, a real talent and a dedicated campaigner for justice and peace." Jo Cox was a self-proclaimed "proud Yorkshire lass" whose work for charity took her around the world and whose political success led her to Westminster.The 41-year-old mother-of-two was elected as MP for Batley and Spen in the 2015 election and increased Labour's majority there to 6,051 (from 4,406 in the 2010 election).She described herself as "proud and humbled" to be the Labour MP for the place where she was born.Mrs Cox first worked in politics after graduating from Cambridge University in 1995, but then built a career working for charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the NSPCC.She was described by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as "a much loved colleague, a real talent and a dedicated campaigner for justice and peace." BBC News14 November 2016Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death for a "political and/or ideological cause", the Old Bailey has heard.Thomas Mair, 53, allegedly murdered Mrs Cox outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, on 16 June.He shouted "Britain First" as he carried out the attack and researched a "far right" online publication in the weeks leading up to the killing, jurors were told.Mr Mair, from Birstall, denies murder.The court heard 41-year-old Mrs Cox was to hold a surgery in a library after visiting a local school and care home when she was attacked.She was killed just a week before the EU referendum and had campaigned for the Remain side.Prosecutor Richard Whittam QC said: "As she arrived she was brutally murdered by one of her constituents, this defendant, Thomas Mair."It was a cowardly attack by a man armed with a firearm and a knife."Jo Cox was shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds. During the course of the murder Thomas Mair was heard by a number of witnesses to say repeatedly 'Britain First'."Mrs Cox was killed "in what was a planned and pre-meditated murder for a political and/or ideological cause", Mr Whittam added.Jurors were told that 77-year-old Bernard Carter-Kenny was also injured as he tried to save Mrs Cox.Items found at Mr Mair's home showed he had "strong political and ideological interests," Mr Whittam said.The court heard he used computers to look up websites at the same library where Mrs Cox was due to hold her surgery.In May he accessed the Wikipedia page of an online publication called the Occidental Observer - a "far-right" publication "that covers politics and society from a white nationalist and anti-Semitic perspective", the prosecutor said.Jurors heard in the days leading up to the killing he also looked at Twitter and Wikipedia pages for Mrs Cox and went on to view information on former Foreign Secretary William Hague.And he viewed websites on Nazi material, the death penalty in Japan, political prisoners and the human liver and spinal column.Finally, on the eve of the attack, prosecutors say Mr Mair researched right-wing politicians as well as the Ku Klux Klan and civil rights activists killed by its supporters.Jurors were shown CCTV footage of the defendant making his way along the road after leaving his home on the day of the killing.The court heard Mrs Cox arrived for her surgery with her manager Fazila Aswat and senior caseworker Sandra Major at 12:50 BST.Mr Mair attacked the Labour MP two minutes later in what the prosecution described as a "dynamic, fast-moving and shocking incident", jurors were told.They heard that passerby Shelly Morris reported hearing "a loud bang like a popping sound" and a "loud piercing scream".She said she saw a man with a large steak knife with a jagged blade which he wielded in a "stabbing motion".The court was told Ms Aswat saw Mr Mair approach the MP from behind and stab her before shooting her with the gun.He continued to attack Mrs Cox and Mr Carter-Kenny with the knife before firing again at the politician.The prosecution said Ms Aswat allegedly heard the defendant shouting "This is for Britain. Britain will always come first."Mr Mair denies Mrs Cox's murder, grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon - a dagger.The trial is expected to last for up to three weeks. Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday heard opinion of people from different walks of life on the new liquor law in the state and said a joint sitting of the two houses of the state legislature would be called for a wider debate on prohibition. "After discussion with you all, a joint sitting of the two houses of the Bihar legislature would be called for a wider discussion on the new liquor law," Kumar said at "Lok Samvad" programme where he heard the opinion of 40 select persons from different walks of life. "We want more discussion on prohibition which has yielded good result," the CM said. Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, Excise and Prohibition minister Abdul Jalil Mastan, senior ministers Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, state police chief P K Thakur and Principal Secretary of Excise department Amir Subhani were present during the closed-door intercourse. The 40 select people, including lawyers, journalists, retired police personnel, doctors and professionals expressed their opinion as how to make the new Bihar Excise Act, 2016, which was notified on October 2 last, more effective. During the discussion, the CM categorically said there would be no compromise with the ban on liquor, spiced and domestic as well as Indian Made Foreign Liquor. Kumar said he wanted suggestions from people who had described the prohibition law as "draconian and a Talibani law" and alternative against stringent provisions. Kumar said that more than 16,000 people had been prosecuted under the liquor law, 80 per cent of whom were involved in illicit trade of alcohol. New Delhi: BJP Parliamentary Party Executive, comprising top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, will meet on Monday to chalk out its strategy for the Winter Session starting on Wednesday with the opposition keen to target the government over issues like demonetisation and OROP. The saffron party believes that the demonetisation of Rs 1000/500 currency notes has generated a positive public mood but inconvenience caused to the masses, who have been queueing up for hours outside banks and ATMs for cash, has become a handy issue for the Congress, the Left, TMC, SP and BSP among others. "We have nothing to hide or to feel apprehensive about issues like demonetisation and OROP," a party leader said, claiming that a debate on the currency issue will help it in upcoming assembly polls. In a clear indication of the party's line in Parliament, Shah had attacked opposition parties, saying they were against an exercise which has rattled those dealing in black money, fake currency, narcotics and such activities. Congress has sought suspension of business on day one of winter session to discuss the demonetisation issue. TMC Chief Mamata Banerjee too has expressed willingness to work with arch rival CPI(M) on the Centre?s demonetisation of high-value currency notes. She called CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury today, urging him to wage a "united fight" against the BJP and its "anti-people policies". Tirupati: The queue in Indias richest temple, Sri Venkateshwara temple in Tirupati, has thinned but the collections have gone up after the demonetization move by the Central government. This has forced authorities at the temple in Tirupati to install another collection box or hundi. News18 quoted a source in Tirumala Tirupati Devesthanam Board, which runs the temple, as saying that rise could be on account of rich devotees dumping Rs 500 and Rs 1000, which are no longer legal tender, into the donation box. There is no ban on devotees dropping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes in the hundi. The government has not instructed us to do that. Second, whatever the devotees offer is a personal thing. They do it secretly and no one questions them or keeps track of them. It is a matter of their faith. There is no way we can prevent them from doing that, he told the media house, requesting anonymity. The trustee added that there had been a small drop in the number of visitors since last week. On an average one lakh people visit the temple every day. There is a decline in that. May be around 25-30%, he was quoted as saying. But TTD is not accepting the old currency notes for other services at the temple. The devotees are asked to pay only in new currencies or in the denomination of Rs 100 and below. Credit and debit card swiping machines have been installed at the temple for the smooth transaction of daily proceedings. At the same time, TTD board is helping those in need on account of the cash crunch and has doubled free water and food counters. On the other hand, as per the report, Kollur Mookambika temple in Karnataka, is also seeing dwindling devotee inflow. Temple chief priest Manjunath Adiga told News18, the number has gone down in the last one week. We are now getting a few devotees. The demonetisation is the main reason. It is a government administered temple. There can be no scam. Whatever we get goes into the account of the temple. Every paisa is accounted for. If we still get old denomination currencies, we will deposit them in the banks." However, Mathura's Sri Krishna Temple has requested devotees not to drop scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes in its hundis. Poor are having a sound sleep, the corrupt are upset: PM Modi Meanwhile, pummelling the Congress and other parties which are opposing demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," PM Modi said in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. Stating that he understood the inconvenience being faced by people due to demonetisation, PM Modi compared his action to a new whitewash which gives out pungent smell, but is necessary. "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich," he said at BJP's parivartan yatra rally in Ghazipur. The PM recalled that Congress governments had imposed Emergency, stifling rights of the people and the media, and had banned 'chavanni' (25 paise coins). "Under which law did they ban 'chavanni', it is another thing that they could not move beyond 'chavanni'. You took the step as per your stature and we did what matched ours," he said taking a swipe at the Opposition party, as per PTI. He added that there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The Prime Minister said he knew he was up against the powerful but vowed to continue his "fight for the poor, farmers and villagers". "I know what all I will have to bear as those who have their coffers full are very strong people. They have the strength to buy governments. They have the power to topple and can spoil the future (of anyone) but should I be afraid of such people? Should I shun the path of honesty and run away. It is with your blessings that I have taken up such a big fight," he said. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: With Centre's demonetisation move aggravating the problems being faced by the common man, a united Opposition is ready with a plan to corner the BJP-led NDA government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reports on Monday said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is leading the Opposition charge against the Centre this time on the demonetisation issue and has reportedly taken all major political parties including Congress, SP, BSP on board. Mamata had also met President Pranab Mukherjee over the demonetisation issue and given the support other parties, including Congress, the TMC hopes to escalate the issue against the government during the Parliament's upcoming winter Session. In view of the Opposition demand for a comprehensive debate on the issue, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has called an all-party meeting today to discuss the demonetisation issue. Ahead of winter session of Parliament Lok Sabha speaker calls all-party meet, PM @narendramodi to attend the all-party meeting Doordarshan News (@DDNewsLive) November 14, 2016 PM @narendramodi to also attend BJP & NDA meeting ahead of all-party meeting Doordarshan News (@DDNewsLive) November 14, 2016 Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yesterday made a fiery speech in Goa addressing the issue of demonetisation, which had further set the stage for a stormy Winter Session of the Parliament commencing from November 16. Deputy leader of Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has already given a notice for adjournment motion under Section 267 to suspend the business of the Upper House to discuss this issue of demonetisation and the problems being faced by common man in detail. "PM is misleading people. It is the BJP leaders who thrive on black money. We want to discuss this matter in Parliament at length. We will hold government to account," said Sharma while talking to a TV news channel. The senior Congress leader, however, added that all major political parties are against the menace of black money. JDU leader KC Tyagi stated that though they support central government's move to ban Rs 500 and 1,000 currency note but are now worried for salaried class people, farmers, housewives and poor. "Central government should have taken the Parliament and other political parties into confidence before initiating this step. Modi government should have made adequate preparations to roll out demonetisation scheme and should not have subjected common people into unprecedented hardships. We will demand that the house should suspended all business and discuss this issue," said CPI leader D Raja. TMC MP Derek O'Brien also gave a notice for adjournment motion under Section 267 in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha to discuss demonetisation issue. However, minutes after PM's speech, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee announced on Twitter that she spoke to the President. "I briefed him about how common people are suffering because of demonetisation. I thank him for agreeing to meet reps (representation) of political parties on Nov 16 or 17 where we will brief him in detail on the grim situation," the TMC chief stated in her two tweets. Her tweets highlighted that Opposition will be once again presenting a 'united' picture before the nation on the issue of demonetisation. The West Bengal Chief Minister is slated to reach Delhi on Tuesday, and coordinate with Congress and other parties for the audience with the President. Importantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also held meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation late on Sunday night. The meeting at Prime Minister's residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, I&B Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Power, Coal and Mines Minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the Finance ministry. New Delhi: With a section of Opposition parties looking at ways to corner the government over the sudden decision to scrap Rs 500/1000 notes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Monday, gave clear indications that he will not buckle under any pressure in his fight against black money and corruption. At a meeting of BJP parliamentary party, PM Modi said the country has welcomed demonetisation and firmly ruled out a rollback. The PM told the gathering that the party and government should not buckle under Opposition pressure and go ahead full throttle. Opposition trying to sabotage the move, the PM added. BJP president Amit Shah, ministers Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley and BJP patriarch LK Advani were among those who attended the meeting held at the Parliament. The Prime Minister said that BJP should not be defensive about the decision in the Parliament when it reconvenes for the winter session on Wednesday. Later a meeting of NDA parties was chaired by the Prime Minister to take feedback on the fallout of the sudden demonetisation move. All NDA parties unanimously supported the Prime Minister and lauded the bold step taken by him. Briefing the media after the meeting, union minister Ananth Kumar said, All partners of NDA, in one voice, welcomed the decision taken by Prime Minister Modi to weed out black money, fake money and corruption from the country. They also praised the visionary and dynamic vision of the Prime Minister, Kumar added. There was a discussion on taking initiative taken by the government to its logical conclusion; government to address the nation on this issue through Parliament, Kumar said. His cabinet colleague Venkaiah Naidu said, Mood of the nation is in favour of Modi government; everyone agreed that it is a historic decision; temporary pain for larger gain. "PM thanked all parties and said this credit will not go to him personally but goes to all parties that are standing firm with the government," Naidu said. Almost at the same time when PM Modi was meeting the BJP top brass and NDA partners, leaders of a number of political parties also gathered in the Parliament to strategise on Opposition's response on the issue. Senior leaders of the Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U), CPI, CPI(M) and some other opposition parties were part of the meeting. The meeting comes amid West Bengal Chief Minister's hectic efforts to unite the Opposition against the government over the demonetisation move. After the respective meetings of NDA and the Opposition, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan convened an all-party meeting to discuss the agenda before the Parliament in the Winter Session. New Delhi: The foreign media has hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent decision to demonetise high-value currency notes, with the Singapore-based The Independent comparing him to the nation-state's founding father Lee Kuan Yew while the Forbes said despite obvious chaos, it is working. Titled Modi does a Lee Kuan Yew to stamp out corruption in India, the The Independent web portal described the move as dramatic and said, From making up his mind to rolling it out on Nov 8, a new Lee Kuan Yew is born in India. It will be reflected in the legacy of this prime minister. The theindependent.sg further said that the sudden move by the Indian prime minister has brought new respect for him. PM Modis admiration for Lee is no secret. When Lee passed away last year, the Indian prime minister in his tributes described Lee as the lion among leaders. A far-sighted statesman and a lion among leaders, Mr Lee Kuan Yews life teaches valuable lessons to everyone. News of his demise is saddening. In this hour of bereavement, our prayers are with Mr Lee Kuan Yews family and the people of Singapore. May his soul rest in peace, the news portal quoted Modi as saying in a tweet message. The Forbes in an article titled Indias great bank note switch appears to be working $30 billion in Rs deposited in banks said that a move of this magnitude bound to create obvious chaos, but so far it looks it is working. The article praised the government's demonetisation move as rather well done, a clever plan. The New York Times quoted an expert as saying that it was a wise move. The plan, top secret until Mr. Modis announcement, was hailed by financial analysts as bold and potentially transformational for India. It is also a high-stakes experiment, the article said. The Washington Post has reacted positively, calling it an ambitious move and in keeping with his election promise to crackdown against black money. It said that black money in India is estimated to total from $400 billion to more than $1 trillion. China's state-run Global Times in an op-ed termed the decision to demonetise high-value currency notes as startling and bold, and said India may look at ideas from Chinas crackdown on corruption. Modi means well and his decision was made based on the reality in India, since most illegal business in the underground economy is cash-only, and 500 and 1,000 rupee notes constitute over 80 percent of all cash circulation in India. Nevertheless, we can hardly count on the new rule to fully root out corruption, it added. Raipur: A Maoist militia commander was today gunned down in an exchange of fire with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said. The skirmish took place in the wee hours between District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the jungles of Dornapal Police Station limits, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (Anti-Naxal operations), Jitendra Shukla, told PTI. Acting on a specific input about?the presence of a group of armed ultras in the forest between Arlampalli and Medwahi villages, around 500 km from here, a squad of DRG was dispatched to the location late last night, he said. When the DRG party reached the target area in the early hours, they came under heavy fire from Maoist which led to gun-battle between both the sides, the ASP said. However, ultras soon fled from the spot. During the search, the body of a naxal clad in 'uniform', a country-made rifle, some 12 bore live ammunition, wire, and other items were recovered from the spot, he said. The killed Maoist has been identified as Vanjam Nanda, a very active Militia commander against whom at least 12 warrants issued by various courts in grave naxal offences were pending, the ASP said. Nanda had served as the head of Janatana Sarkar group Maoists in Arlampalli, Medwahi, Tonguda and Toyapara villages of the region, he said. New Delhi: "Thank you bhaiyya," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, acknowledging a group of journalists who congratulated him for the demonetisation decision of his government. As soon as the Prime Minister arrived at the Parliament Library Building here to attend a meeting of BJP ahead of the winter session of Parliament beginning Wednesday, some reporters congratulated him for withdrawal of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes with the aim of tackling corruption, black money, counterfeit notes and terror financing. He acknowledged it by saying "thank you bhaiyya" with a smile. The Prime Minister was in Uttar Pradesh earlier in the day. Ghazipur: PM Narendra Modi on Monday in a fiery speech in Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur district spoke on a number of issues including bad governance by Congress to black money to Pakistan. Here are his top quotes:- Won't let honest people suffer - "You voted me to power to curb corruption; why I should not take strong steps to curb the menace of corruption." - "I will never take any step which may hurt honest citizens." - "Jo samaanye nagrik ko takleef ho rahi hai uski mujhe bharpoor peeda hai." (I am pained by the inconvenience faced by the people but crackdown on black money a strong step taken in public interest) - "Yes, those against me are strong people. But, I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity." PM salutes Ghazipur, targets Pakistan "I salute this land (Ghazipur) which gave birth to Vir Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in 1965 war." - "Our enemy is printing counterfeit notes across the border." PM uses Nehru's birth anniversary to target Congress - "Today, on Pandit ji's birthday I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family PMs never did. It's my tribute." - "In 1962, Ghazipur MP told Pandit Nehru about dire state of poor in Purvanchal, then Pandit ji formed a committee." - "After Pandit Nehru passed away, many PMs came and went but that committee report is still lost in files." - "During Emergency, Indira Gandhi shut down papers; Congress stopped 25 paisa coin, now they are protesting the note ban." - "What did the Congress do for 19 months during the Emergency? They made this nation a prison and arrested so many people." - "Demonitisation is my gift to Nehru." Crop Insurance Scheme "We have brought a very comprehensive crop insurance scheme for the farmers." (Humne pehli baar aisi Fasal Bima Yojana di hai jisse kisan par pehle ke mukabale kam bojh padega) Demonitisation: Crackdown on black money - "Today, rich people are taking sleeping pills while poor citizens are sleeping peacefully." - "Hindustan mein dhan ki kami nahi hai, lekin dhan kahan pada hai vo samasya hai (India has no death of money but where it is lying is the real problem) - "Poor are supporting note ban while some who had stashed black money are criticising it." - "Some people never say anything in your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you." New Delhi: Friendship between India and Israel is at work "day in, day out" and is not a relationship "we should be hiding", said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Rivlin arrived today on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. In a wide-ranging interview to PTI, the Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo- Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Rivlin said that his country was proud to "stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy". "Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil," asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on "murmurs" in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Rivlin said, "Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe that India is proud of its friendship with Israel. "Again, this is not just a friendship of leaders and governments. It is a friendship between people in all walks of life, in all fields of study, in all areas of trade. This is not a friendship we should be hiding. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out, at the very forefront of building a better world for Israelis, for Indians, and for all peoples," he said. In reply to a question on India's continued support for an independent Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital, Rivlin said, "Friends may not always see eye to eye on everything, and as friends we can agree to disagree with respect and understanding. "Israel understands and indeed shares India's desire to see a just and lasting solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians. But no solution that may ever be found has a chance of success lest we work now to build confidence between peoples," the President said, and asserted that Israel and Palestine need to work towards "direct negotiations". Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow on key bilateral and regional issues. On the long-pending FTA, negotiations for which were launched nearly five years ago between India and Israel, Rivlin said it is a "tool" that can have huge impact and boost the partnership. With respect to Immigration there are two things Trump will NOT do. He will not build a Wall.. although he's likely to put up some fencing. He will not deport 11 million Illegal Aliens in the country.. which would be catastrophic to the agricultural, building and hospitality industries. Any circumspect analysis of the influx of illegals at the level they have been for the last 30 years shows it has 2 causes. 1. NAFTA, which destroyed rural Mexican agriculture and built the shanty towns of the Maquilladoras for millions of labourers, working for subsistence wages, without any job security or the ability to support their families on the U.S. border. That essentially drained off all potential of developing a nationally based industrial economy for Mexico, which could anchor their population. 2. The ideological wars against 'Communism; of Nixon, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush in Central and South American which killed hundreds of the thousands and displaced millions of others and left economic ruin in their wake. Simply rescinding NAFTA and reorienting American Foreign Policy to national goals will do immeasurably more than a Wall could ever do. There seems to be some kind of consensus developing for handling Illegal Immigrants. That will allow them the legal status similar to that of 'Guest Worker'.. without threat of deportation providing they obeyed the law... BUT importantly.. with NO clear path the Citizenship. The only route to that would remain that of the Landed Immigrant.. which would could only be applied for by foreign residents. This system would not reward illegal immigrants at the expense of those who had followed the law and hadn't jumped the cue in entering the country. You have to understand the the BIGGEST difference between Trump and that mediocre NeoCon dumbbell Ronald Reagan is that Trump is NOT a petty ideologue and intellectually inept. He is above all a Pragmatist.. and someone not interested in vindictive and futile action. (The same reason he won't prosecute Hillary Clinton) Begusarai (Bihar): Two women were killed today and four others injured when Vaishali Superfast Express hit them at Barauni Flag railway station of Begusarai district. The two women and four others alighted from Kamla inter-city fast passenger at the station and were standing near a track, Barauni GRP SHO Alok Pratap Singh said. The Barauni-New Delhi Vaishali Express was passing through that track and it hit the six, leaving two of them dead on the spot and four others injured. The deceased have been identified as Dharmshila Devi (35) and Girija Devi (55), both residents of Phulwaria village here, Singh said, adding the four injured have been admitted to a nearby private clinic. The six were returning to their village after taking a holy dip in the Ganga at Bachhwara Jhimatiya ghat in the district on the occasion of Kartik purnima. The bodies have been sent for postmortem. Marrakech: Wasting food is akin to being a "carbon criminal", Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said on Monday while calling for making a lifestyle of minimum carbon footprint a movement of the future. Dave, who is here to take part in the Conference of Parties (CoP22), also released books on 'Low Carbon Lifestyle' and 'Lifestyle for minimum Carbon Footprint' at the India Pavilion. "Wasting food is akin to being a 'carbon criminal'. #COP22," Dave tweeted. "Let us make a lifestyle of minimum carbon footprint a movement of the future. Winds of change always start from self & from within. #COP22," he said in a series of tweets. Giving his message on Children's day, Dave said they should take only as much food as they want in their plate. "My message to Children on Children's Day today -- 'Take only as much food as you want in your plate'," he said. Earlier in the day, he said India wants a broad outline or roadmap for the implementation of the Paris agreement to be finalised at the crucial climate change conference. The CoP22 started on November 7 and will go on till November 18 as nations continue their work on strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, with the central focus on enhancing ambition, promoting implementation and providing support. Jammu: The 548th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji, the founder of Sikh religion, was celebrated with religious fervor and gaiety across Jammu region on Monday. Several functions were organised in Gurudwaras across the region to celebrate the day which is also known as Gurupurab. The main function in Jammu was held at Guru Nanak Dev Gurudwara at Bibi Chand Kaur Samad in the city where thousands of devotees paid their obeisance to the Guru. People from different faiths also went to the Gurudwaras to pay their obeisance to the first Sikh Guru. Special pandals and langars (community kitchens) were also organised on the occasion. "I have come here to pay obeisance to Guru Nanak Devji on his 548th birth anniversary. The message of the first Sikh Guru is clear which teaches us universal brotherhood, peace, remembering God all the time, earning by honest means and sharing with those who are less privileged," Surjeet Kaur, a resident of Raina Colony, said. Srinagar: A youth, who was critically injured after being hit by a security vehicle here last week, died at a hospital here following which locals clashed with security forces, officials said. Rizwan Ahmad (21), a resident of Bagwanpora locality of Noorbagh, was hit by a CRPF vehicle while he was riding a motorcycle at Parimpora a week ago. He was undergoing treatment at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) Soura where he succumbed to his injuries this morning, they said. The officials said a large number of people assembled at his residence after hearing the news of his death and later took out a funeral procession towards Martyr's graveyard at Eidgah in downtown Srinagar. His body was laid to rest at the graveyard but clashes erupted as angry mourners shouted slogans demanding stern action against the erring personnel, they said, adding, police fired teargas shells and used batons to chase away the protesters and restore law and order. No one was injured in the clashes which lasted for quite some time, the officials said. They said an FIR already stands registered at Parimpora police station against the erring driver. Srinagar: Thousands of students on Monday appeared in the annual board examinations in unrest-hit Kashmir. The annual board examinations are an acid test for the PDP-BJP coalition government which announced the schedule for examinations despite opposition from various quarters, including the student community. There was a significant increase in movement of people and transport across the Valley as the annual board examinations began today, officials said here. About 484 centres have been set up for about 48,000 candidates for Class 12 examination across Kashmir division. Massive security arrangements are in place for the smooth conduct of the examinations. However, there were no restrictions on the movement of people anywhere in the Valley, the officials said. Along with the heavy rush of vehicles, shops were also open in areas like civil lines and outskirts of the city as well as in few of the rural areas in other districts of Kashmir. Inter-district cabs were also plying on different routes, the officials said. Also Read: Kashmir unrest: J&K govt orders reopening of 174 schools along IB, LoC Many vendors had put up their stalls along TRC Chowk-Batamaloo axis through Lal Chowk city centre, while banks were also open across the Valley and witnessed the rush of customers. However, many shops, fuel stations, and other business establishments in other areas of the Valley were shut due to a separatist-sponsored strike. Schools in the Valley went on a two-week summer holiday on July 1 but could not resume functioning due to the unrest which was triggered by the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani along with his two associates in an encounter with security forces in a village in Kokernag area of south Kashmir's Anantnag district on July 8. Also Read: Will punish those who burnt schools: Mehbooba Mufti The unrest has left 85 persons dead and thousands injured while hundreds of people including students were booked under Public Safety Act (PSA) for participating in the protests. The official decried the burning of schools, saying it should not have happened. As many as 32 schools have been targeted by unknown persons since the unrest began in Kashmir on July 8. The government has also decided to hold separate examination for Class 10 and 12 in March next year if they fail to appear in already scheduled exams in November but the students had to attempt 100 percent of the question paper. (With Agency inputs) Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday formally launched the World Bank funded mega US $250 million Jhelum-Tawi Flood Recovery project which would give a massive push to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of infrastructure post 2014 floods in the State. The project was conceptualised and pursued by former Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed in the aftermath of devastating floods of 2014 and was formally launched today after completion of all formalities. Launching the project, the Chief Minister said alongside the political agenda, development of Jammu and Kashmir as a model state is the cornerstone of her government. "Sayeed had a political and developmental vision for J&K to make it a model state in the country which he pursued vigorously. The vision of the late leader would be fulfilled by the State Government with all seriousness," she said. Mehbooba reminded the jam packed audience of stakeholders that when Sayeed, her father, took over in 2002 as the Chief Minister he rolled out his political and developmental agenda and started working for its implementation and during the same tenure he persuaded and got Asian Development Bank assistance for funding the urban development projects in the State and after taking over in 2015 convinced the World Bank to fund reconstruction of critical developmental infrastructure in the State. The Chief Minister said Sayeed wanted to develop Jammu and Kashmir as a world class place befitting to the peace loving and hospitable nature of its people so that it becomes a show window not only within the country but in the world as well. Mehbooba said she intends to undertake developmental revolution in the state not only as her wish but as a mission to fulfill the dream of her father which he had visualised for the State. The Chief Minister said she would personally be monitoring the works under the project and also the commitments and assurances made by Sayeed. "To fulfill the dream of making a prosperous Jammu and Kashmir we would not only seek more and more funding from the Centre but also see how investment and expertise from countries around the globe can come to the State," she said. While many countries specialise in one or the other sector she would like investment and expertise flow to the State in critical developmental sectors for achieving this unparallelled feat, she said adding today's launch of the World Bank project is a step in this direction. Jammu: After withdrawal of Rs 500/1000 notes, there has been a decline in violence instigated by separatists in the Kashmir Valley, ANI quoted MHA sources as saying. Meanwhile, terming the demonetisation move as a "financial surgical strike", BJP on Monday said it has put a nail in the coffin of separatism and militancy in Kashmir and that the situation in the valley would never be the same again. "Militancy and separatism in Kashmir will never be the same after the financial surgical strike by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The well-timed and extremely well-executed move on blocking currency of high denominations by the Union government has put a nail in the coffin of separatism and militancy in the state," BJP's Jammu and Kashmir chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi said. He said it was a matter of common knowledge that the unrest in the valley was sustained by "fake currency and hawala money" from across the border. With the withdrawal of high denomination currency notes, money flow to Kashmir will be effectively stopped, which will ensure peace in the region, he said. Also Read - Demonetisation: No question of rollback, will go ahead full throttle, says PM Modi "The correction in system carried by currency reforms will be here and more anticipated reforms of the central government will ensure that in future, nobody will be allowed to run business of terror and blood in this land of peace," he said, as per PTI. Sethi said that though people are at present facing some difficulties because of the shifting of system, this is being done for larger interest of nation, which is being welcomed by public at large. State BJP has called upon public to stand with historical reforms being executed by Central government for larger benefits of coming generations and peace and progress of nation, he added. "The amount of money, which will become available to the government as unclaimed amount, will be huge enough to sustain unprecedented developments projects in country," he said. "The system as being implemented will make corruption and black-marketing in the future almost impossible," he claimed. (With Agency inputs) Jammu: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Monday called upon India's women to come forward and contribute in rebuilding the nation and taking it to new heights. "The women force (Matri Shakti) apart from serving their families, should come out and work for the country and the society, which will lead to the nation to the new heights and rebuild the nation," Bhagwat said while addressing a women conference here today. "Women should come forward and take part in the programmes for the welfare of the society. They should start from their homes to create mini-India and work for the society without getting distracted by anybody. They should start from their homes," he said. "Till India's 'matra shakti' (women power) turns active and comes forward, India will not be able to achieve its potential and pristine glory. Our matra shakti can act as a guiding force to the world," said the RSS supremo. Because of the guidance of womenfolk, entire world is making progress and a country cannot be taken to new heights without the contribution from the women force, he said. "The society is composed of 50 per cent of the females and it is because of that the womenfolk are most important component in the progress of the society. There is no possibility of change of destiny of a country, society and family without the change of the destiny of the womenfolk," Bhagwat said. He said that no comparison should be held between women and the men folk. "It should not be projected that men are superior or women are superior, but both working together for the welfare of the society are supreme", he said. "It is important to educate womenfolk because a mother is the basic teacher to her children and women have taught and inculcated sense of sacrifice among the children and the society in the country," he said. Ranchi: Security agencies in Jharkhand are on high alert and are keeping a close watch on moves by Maoist guerrillas to turn their unaccounted money, collected in the form of levy, into "white". On November 10, police arrested Nand Kishore, a petrol pump owner from Bero on the outskirts of Ranchi. He was carrying Rs 25 lakh cash and going to deposit the money in the bank. Police intercepted him and later arrested him. During interrogation, Kishore admitted that the money belonged to the banned Maoist organization, People`s Liberation Front of India (PLFI) supremo Dinesh Gope. Kishore was to deposit the money in his account in the name of petrol and diesel sales. In Jharkhand, Maoist guerrillas collect Rs 150 crore to Rs 200 crore in the form of levy, police said. "Maoists collect 5 to 6 per cent levy from development, infrastructure, mining and other sources. This money is used by the Maoist organisations and a large amount also goes to Maoist leaders. The levy is collected in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The levy money is also used to purchase arms and other things," a police officer involved in the Maoist operations told IANS. He revealed that due to heavy collection of levy, around seven Maoist organisations are "flourishing". These Maoist organisations operate in different districts he added. After the demonetisation of Rs 500/Rs 1,000 notes on November 8, Maoists are using their white-collared network to turn their black money into white, the police officer said. Police sources say that contractors, petrol pump owners, mining area contractors, officials, and leaders falling in Maoist bastion areas have been put under close watch. Police sources said the police headquarters has recommended a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to assess the assets of 10 Maoist guerrillas who are learned to have earned "huge money" in the form of levy from two coal projects - Piparwar and Amprapali. "The demonetisation is a big setback for the Maoists. We are keeping close watch on transactions of the money of Maoist guerrillas. We have activated our network to gather information of Maoist guerrillas` transactions. We will also seek the help of Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate (ED)," M.S. Bhatia, IG operations and police spokesperson, told IANS. Ranchi: Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das on Monday said his government's aim is to free the state from extremism and crime. Though crime has been controlled, it should be rooted out, Das said while addressing programmes of parade and Jharkhand Police Alankaran Samaroh on the eve of Jharkhand foundation day here. The chief minister announced that 10,000 police personnel and 2,500 assistant police would be recruited next year. Stating that the assistant police personnel would be deployed in extremist-hit areas, Das said they would get Rs 10,000 per month and their services would be confirmed after three years. The government would construct residential school for the children of police personnel in Ranchi, according to an official release. Likening peace and prosperity as two wheels, Das said both were required for development. The government was working to modernise the police force, he said, adding infrastructure was also being improved. To provide employment to the youth, investments were required, Das said and added Rs 24,000 crore proposals were already there. For investments peace was necessary and investments increased following prevailing of peace in Jharkhand. Das appealed to the police to pro-actively assist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign against black money. The chief minister honoured the families of martyrs and gave away prizes to the police personnel. State Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma, Additional Secretary N N Pandey, DGP D K Pandey, CM's Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar were among senior officials present at the programme. PLATTSMOUTH A Cass County man will spend time on probation and serve a jail sentence for having multiple images of underage girls on his laptop computer. Murray resident Shawn W. Owens, 39, appeared in Cass County District Court Monday morning for sentencing on two charges. Owens entered a plea earlier this year to one Class IIIA felony count of attempted possession of a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct of a child. He also entered a plea to one Class II felony charge of attempted generation of any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct. The state originally charged Owens with 13 felony-level counts in the case. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss ten Class IIA felony charges and one Class ID felony count as part of a plea deal. Cass County Sheriffs Office authorities began investigating Owens in 2015 after he told a person at his church that he had compiled images of an underage female relative. Authorities learned Owens had left his phone in the bathroom of his house while the victim was undressed. The phones camera generated video images of the victim bathing. Investigators later interviewed Owens about the incident. He told authorities he was addicted to pornography and had viewed photos of multiple young girls on his computer. Investigators discovered 32 images and five video files on his laptop. Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox told the court Monday that a local doctor was able to verify the ages of 25 of the girls in the photos. The doctor said 18 images were of girls under the age of 16. An additional seven images were of girls under the age of 18. Cox told the court he felt Owens had tried to downplay the serious nature of the incidents. Cox said he was troubled by several statements Owens had made during the pre-sentence investigation phase of the case. He recommended a jail sentence because Owens had multiple images on his computer and both charges were felony-level offenses. Im a little bit concerned that the defendant is not taking full responsibility for what he has pled guilty to, Cox said. Defense attorney John Berry Jr. told the court his client had been attending counseling sessions for the past year. He said Owens had self-reported his actions and was ashamed about his behavior. He also said Owens had not been producing large amounts of pornography but had been browsing websites with sexually explicit images on them. He asked the court to issue a probation sentence. Interim Judge Paul Korslund said he felt Owens was remorseful for engaging in pornography. He said he also took into consideration that Owens had reported his actions and had voluntarily sought treatment. Korslund said there needed to be some jail time included in a probation sentence because of the serious nature of the offenses. Korslund ordered Owens to spend 90 days in Cass County Jail. Owens will begin his jail term immediately and will receive credit for three days already served. Korslund also ruled Owens would spend 60 months on probation. Owens will be placed on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry and must abide by all sex offender registry conditions as part of his probation. Owens will not be able to visit any internet sites unless he receives pre-approval from probation officials. He must give authorities full access to all of his computers and electronic devices for random searches, and he will be barred from using any type of social media platforms in any circumstances. He is prohibited from contacting the underage female relative by written, electronic or verbal means. Owens must also complete a cognitive behavior program, pay all court costs and abstain from all alcohol during the next five years. Kochi: Kerala High Court on Monday rejected the anticipatory bail application of a local CPI(M) leader, who has been named as an accused in a criminal case, and directed him to surrender. Justice P Ubaid asked petitioner Zakir Hussain, who has been booked on the charge of threatening a man over a business deal, to surrender before the investigating officer within a week. The Judge directed the police to produce Hussain before the magistrate court after interrogation and said the magistrate should consider his bail application in accordance with law. Hussain, whose whereabouts were not known since registration of the criminal case against him, had moved the high court after a sessions court dismissed his anticipatory bail application. A case under non-bailable section has been registered by police on a complaint sent to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan by victim Jube Poulose of Ernakulam here. In his complaint, Poulose had alleged that he was forcibly taken to a place by a gang, where Hussain threatened him with dire consequences over the business deal. CPI(M) has removed Hussain from the post of party's Kalamassery Area Secretary. However, he has been retained as member of the party's district committee. Delhi: A 38-year-old property dealer was shot dead while his wife critically injured in southwest Delhi's Bijwasan area when two men barged into their house and started firing indiscriminately. Prima facie, it appears that the victim Rana was shot dead because of a property dispute, police said, adding that they suspect that the killers were hired to kill him. Today, around 4.15pm two unidentified youths barged inside Rana's house on the pretext of showing interest in renting a room in his house. When Rana, who was suffering from paralysis, came out with the help of his wife the duo fought with him and later, they started firing indiscriminately at the couple. The two youths fled from the spot. After Rana's sister-in-law raised an alarm and gathered people, Rana and his wife Lalita were rushed to AIIMS Trauma centre. Rana was declared brought dead and his wife's condition is said to be critical. Rana's body has been sent for autopsy. Police said that Rana had a property dispute regarding his house. Police said that they have zeroed in on the accused and are likely to arrest them soon. Police is questioning Rana's family members and colleagues to know if he had personal enmity with anyone. CCTV footages from the area are also being scanned to gain clues in the case. Chennai: DMK`s MK Stalin, Leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly, on Monday criticised Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for not expressing even words of comfort to people suffering cash crunch but focussing on their votes instead. In a statement issued here, Stalin referring to Jayalalithaa`s statement issued on Sunday, said at a time when common people in the state are not able to buy their daily essentials due to currency crunch there is nothing in the Chief Minister`s statement alleviating the people`s problem or even providing some words of comfort. Jayalalithaa on Sunday said she had a "rebirth" because of prayers of the people and urged the AIADMK to work for the party`s victory in upcoming by-elections. She said she was waiting to resume normal work after getting well soon. The 68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with fever and dehydration on September 22 and is yet to be discharged. Jayalalithaa in a signed statement urged the AIADMK activists to work hard so that the party candidates won in the November 19 assembly by-elections in Aravakuruchi, Thanjavur and Tiruparankundram constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Nellithope in Puducherry. Political parties in Tamil Nadu have welcomed the central government`s move on November 8 to withdraw legal tender status of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. However, they said that people should not be put to trouble in the process. Stalin had earlier welcomed the central government`s move to demonetise 500 and 1,000 rupee notes if it really helped to uplift the country`s economy. Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s election promise of depositing Rs 15 lakh in each Indian`s bank account by recovering the black money stashed overseas, Stalin had said that the promise is yet to be fulfilled. Similarly, PMK leader and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss welcoming the demonetisation move added that black money stashed outside the country should be brought back within a short period. He said demonetisation is only one move in attacking black money and it cannot eradicate black money from the system. AIADMK`s spokesperson C.R. Saraswathi said the central government should take steps to ease the trouble faced by the common m Ghazipur: Setting the tone for BJP's poll campaign in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday addressed a rally at Ghazipur in the Uttar Pradesh "The state played a key role in giving us an absolute majority. I salute this land (Ghazipur) which gave birth to Vir Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in 1965 war," PM Modi said while addressing the rally. "I had come here in May 2014, that time I had come to seek your support and you placed your faith in me. It's my privilege to be here and get blessings of the citizens of Ghazipur," Modi said. PM Modi also lauded the state for its contributions to the country and said, "Uttar Pradesh has given many prime ministers to the country. I am the ninth Prime Minister from Uttar Pradesh. Both Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and I share Uttar Pradesh's legacy. More than 5,000 jawans have come from this great state." Modi also remembered country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary and said, "Congress didn't follow what Nehru said. In 1962, Pandit Ji formed a committee after Ghazipur MP told him about the dire state of poor in Purvanchal. Many PMs came and went after Pandit Nahru passed away but that committee report is still lost in files. Today on Pandit Ji's birthday I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family PMs never did. It's my tribute to India's first Prime Minister." Acknowledging the hardship being faced by people in India post the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, PM Modi said, "Theres no shortage of money in India, the problem lies in where the money is. I am aware of the hardship people are facing because of the move, but I assure you that the move was necessary for the larger interests of the nation." "I know it's difficult and I salute the people for standing in a queue for long hours. Today, poor are sleeping in peace while rich are running around in search of sleeping pills, that's power of your vote. This move has taken away the power of the rich and poor people can now sleep peacefully," he added. Modi also appealed to the people to support the demonetisation of high currency notes, asking them to bear the pain for 50 days to help the government deliver the 'India of your dreams'. "Pained by the inconvenience faced by common people but your inconvenience won't go in vain. The move will support poor. Give me 50 days and I will fulfill all my promises without fail," he said. The Prime Minister said he was ready to face the consequences of his decision. "I know that I have taken up a fight with some forces. They may not spare me, they may ruin me because their loot of 70 years is in trouble. But it does not bother me," he said. Adding that there were politicians who were wearing currency notes and now are trying to spread rumours among the people on demonetisation, Modi assured the people that days of graft were now over. "Do not pay heed to rumours, every single rupee earned honestly by you will always remain yours, till your brother is alive," Modi said in an emotional tone. Launching a scathing attack on Congress for opposing the demonetisation move, PM Modi said, "You imposed an emergency and turned the country into a prison for 19 months just to save Indira Gandhis parliament seat. During those 19 months, you made this nation a prison and arrested so many people." "It is surprising that people in Congress, their lawyer leaders are asking me under which law have I banned these currency notes, I want to ask them under which law did they ban the 25 paise," the PM said, while adding how a person did something which befitted his or her stature. "You never went beyond 25 paise and we have done what was of our standing. You (Congress) exhorted money in 1972 and now you are protesting against the government for combating the issue of black money," he said. In an obvious reference to Pakistan, PM Modi said that the enemy nation was infusing fake currency in India to promote terror activities. "Our enemy is flooding our nation with these counterfeit notes. We need to put an end to this," he said. Before addressing the BJP's Parivartan Yatra rally at the RTI ground here, PM Modi laid the foundation of new rail and road bridge over Ganga connecting Tarighat and Mau and doubling of Ghazipur city-Ballia rail line. He also flagged off a new weekly express train between Ghazipur and Kolkata. Besides, he also dedicated the newly built perishable cargo centre at Ghazipur Ghat station on the occasion. This is his first public address in Uttar Pradesh after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) kicked off the 'Parivartan Yatra'. The BJP has started Parivartan Yatras from Saharanpur, Lalitpur, Ballia and Sonbhadra districts. After crossing through all the Assembly constituencies, it will culminate in Lucknow on December 24 with a rally, which will be addressed by the PM Modi. Besides highlighting the failures of the Uttar Pradesh government, the BJP is highlighting the achievements of the Modi government at the Centre during the yatra. Allahabad: Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment and Republican Party of India (A) president Ramdas Athawale on Sunday said that his party was mulling fielding actress Rakhi Sawant against Mayawati if the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo contests the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections. "Mayawati has, for quite some time, been shying away from herself fighting polls, be it for the state Assembly or the Lok Sabha. We would like to see if she is going to change that this time. If she does, we would field Rakhi Sawant who is our women's wing president, from the very seat the BSP chief chooses for herself," Athawale told reporters here. Meanwhile, Athawale added that his party was hoping to contest the upcoming Uttar Pradesh polls in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Union Minister said his party was "an integral part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and hence we would like to fight the upcoming Assembly polls in alliance with the party which is our senior coalition partner." "But if such an alliance does not materialise, RPI will go ahead and field its candidates in more than 200 out of 403 Assembly segments of UP. "We think it is necessary since Dalits of Uttar Pradesh have been feeling shortchanged by the BSP and they are yearning for an alternative", Athawale said. Tracing its origins to the Scheduled Castes' Federation of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, the RPI came into being in the late 1950s and wields considerable influence among the Dalits of Maharashtra. However, it has been riven by factionalism leading to the formation of several splinter groups. In the recent past, Athawale has succeeded in bringing together all these splinter groups under the banner of RPI (A) with the exception of the faction led by Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar. (With PTI inputs) Varanasi: Laying emphasis on promoting the Bhojpuri language worldwide, Mauritius Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth on Monday said here efforts were being made by his country to confer the language a heritage status. "Mauritius will soon send a proposal to UNESCO urging it to include Bhojpuri language in the heritage list so that due respect could be given to our Bhojpuri language," he said. Asserting that a lot of work was already going on in Mauritius to promote the language, the Prime Minister said, "The Bhojpuri language was even being taught to students in our schools with an aim of promoting it." Jugnauth and his wife Sarojni today visited the Bhaisasur Ghat in the city on the eve of Dev Deepawali. On a question that terrorism was being spread in the name of religion, he said it was not right to link religion with terrorism because "religion is purely associated with leading a peaceful life". He also paid floral tributes to the martyred Indian soldiers here at the ghat. United Nations: Eleven Middle East and North African countries are accusing Iran of sponsoring "terrorism" and constantly interfering in the internal affairs of Arab nations, sparking tension and instability in the region. In a letter to the UN General Assembly circulated today, the 11 countries cited Iran's support for Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon which has sent fighters to support the Syrian government. They also accused Iran of supporting "terrorist groups and cells" in Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere. They reiterated a statement by Bahrain's foreign minister in September that the only way forward is for Iran "to comprehensively change its foreign policies and end hostilities." The letter, organised by the c, was signed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, among others. District of Columbia: US President Barack Obama said Monday that he had urged his successor Donald Trump to reach out to those Americans left upset or fearful by the Republican billionaire`s surprise election win. "I emphasized to him that, look, in an election like this that was so hotly contested and so divided, gestures matter," Obama said, after protests in several US cities. "I did say to him, as I`ve said publicly, that because of the nature of the campaigns and the bitterness and ferocity of the campaigns, it`s really important to try to send some signals of unity, and to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign." The US president also called on the Democratic Party to "compete everywhere" in future elections and said Trump`s win emphasized the importance of exercising one`s right to vote. "I don`t know how many times we have to relearn this lesson, because we ended up having 43 percent of the country not voting who were eligible to vote, but it makes a difference," he told a press conference. Washington: Governments around the world have stepped up efforts to block or censor social media and messaging applications, in a new blow to internet freedom, a watchdog group said today. The Freedom on the Net report by the activist group Freedom House said online freedom declined in 2016 for a sixth consecutive year amid new restrictions on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp in addition to social networks. "Popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been subject to growing censorship for several years, but governments are now increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram," said Sanja Kelly, director of the study. Messaging apps have become increasingly popular tools for activists, and many of them can offer encrypted communications which make it more difficult for the users to be monitored, the report noted. "The key reason for the block of these apps is preventing users from disseminating news during periods of unrest," Kelly said. The report said 34 of the 65 countries assessed in the report have seen internet freedom deteriorate since June 2015. Some of the notable declines were in Uganda, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador and Libya, while online freedom improved in Sri Lanka and Zambia and in the United States, due to the passage of a law limiting collection of telecommunications metadata. Freedom House said 67 per cent of internet users live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family is subject to censorship. Governments in 24 countries limited or blocked access to social media and communication tools, up from 15 in the previous year. Even some democratic governments have been targeting applications that use encryption features seen as a threat to national security. WhatsApp faced restrictions in 12 of the 65 countries analysed, more than any other app. "Although the blocking of these tools affects everyone, it has an especially harmful impact on human rights defenders, journalists, and marginalized communities who often depend on these apps to bypass government surveillance," said Kelly. China was the world's worst offender for a second year, according to the report, followed by Syria and Iran. Freedom House criticised a new Chinese law that allows for seven-year prison terms for spreading rumors on social media, a charge often used to imprison political activists. It said some users in China belonging to minority religious groups were imprisoned for watching religious videos on mobile phones. Washington: President-elect Donald Trump is considering a woman and an openly gay man to fill major positions in his administration, history-making moves that would inject diversity into a Trump team. The incoming president is considering Richard Grenell as United States ambassador to the United Nations. If picked and ultimately confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post. Grenell previously served as US spokesman at the U.N. under former President George W Bush's administration. At the same time, Trump is weighing whether to select the first woman to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee. On his short list of prospective chairs: Michigan GOP chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, the former sister-in-law of Trump critic and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. "I'll be interested in whatever Mr. Trump wants," McDaniel told The Associated Press today, adding that she was planning to seek the Michigan GOP chairmanship again. Appointing a woman to the top tier of his team and the first female GOP chief would appear to be an effort to begin to mend ties with women, who he antagonised frequently during the campaign. The appointment of Grenell could begin to ease concerns by the gay community about Vice President-elect Mike Pence's positions on same-sex marriage during his time as Indiana governor. The personnel moves under consideration were confirmed by people with direct knowledge of Trump's thinking who were not authorised to publicly disclose private discussions. They stressed that the decisions are not final. Brussels: EU ministers approved a common defence plan despite sharp differences over how far it should go, as Donald Trump's election win stoked fears about Washington's commitment to European security. Trump's campaign threat to think twice about defending NATO allies unless they up their defence spending has driven calls for the European Union to press ahead on its own, despite objections from Britain. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini insisted the plans -- to boost the bloc's ability to respond to external conflicts, help partner countries build their defence capabilities and protect EU citizens -- would not undermine NATO. "It's not about a European army, it's not about creating a new European Union SHAPE-style headquarters," Mogherini said after talks with foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, referring to NATO's own military HQ. Britain has long opposed any such moves as undermining NATO, but after its shock June Brexit vote, France and Germany jumped in with plans to boost defence cooperation that have now gained extra urgency with Trump's election victory. Mogerhini said the bloc was working on the issue long before the US vote and that it would "continue to do this in strong partnership with NATO". The meeting's final statement made no mention of a possible EU military headquarters in Brussels, but said they had asked the bloc's foreign policy service to develop a "permanent" system for coordinating civilian-military measures. The issue exposed a rift between the bloc's two biggest military powers, France and Britain, which is set to leave the EU in two years after the Brexit vote in June. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the defence plan was an "essential step forward" for Europe to show it can take defence decisions on its own in an "increasingly uncertain world". But British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon meanwhile bluntly told the EU to stop "dreaming". "Instead of planning expensive new headquarters or dreaming of a European army, what Europe needs to do now is to spend more on its own defence, that is the best possible approach to the Trump Presidency," Fallon said. British foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, said earlier that Trump's election offered a "moment of opportunity" and the EU should wait to see what he wanted. Moscow: A Russian warplane has crashed into the Mediterranean after takeoff from the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier off the coast of Syria, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday. The pilot of the MiG-29 jet is said to have ejected, The Guardian reported. Combat Aircraft magazine, which first reported the crash, said he was picked up by a Russian navy helicopter but there was no confirmation of his condition. It said wreckage of the aircraft was being also being recovered from the site. The planes was one of four MiG-29 fighter-bombers on the Kuznetsov and if it is confirmed lost, it would detract from what was intended to be a display of Russian naval might in the Mediterranean in support of the Russian war effort in Syria. There are also about a dozen Su-33 fighters on board that have recently been upgraded so they can carry out better-targeted strikes on targets on the ground. According to Thomas Newdick of Combat Aircraft, some of those Su-33 planes carried out airstrikes on Monday, marking the first time aircraft from the Kuznetsov had taken part in bombing in Syria, and the first time the Kuznetsov has been in combat since its launch more than 30 years ago. Military officials briefed the Moscow press on the day of the US presidential election that a large-scale air offensive was imminent using cruise missiles, carrier and land based aircraft, but that onslaught never materialised. Diplomats in Washington suggested the announcement may have been intended to unsettle Americans as they went out to vote. The loss of the plane would be a serious one for the Russia military. The newly built MiG-29KUBR version is one of Russia's most modern warplanes, and they are in short supply, as are pilots to fly them. Michael Kofman, of the Washington-based Center for Naval Analyses, said that by his estimate, the Kuznetsov now only has three MiG-29s left and only three pilots capable of flying them. "This is bad publicity for what was supposed to be a show of capability," Kofman said. "As many Russians feared, this could become an embarrassment." Riyadh: Saudi Education Ministry has warned international schools from marking non-Islamic occasions, such as Christmas and New Year, the media reported on Monday. The ban includes forbidding those schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them, Xinhua news agency reported. The ministry directed all schools to stick to the academic calendars for exams and holidays. The ministry warned of legal steps against violated schools that could reach to termination of the license. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-conservative state that follows Islamic rules in all walks of life. London: Swedish officials today questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for over four years, over sexual assault charges. The 45-year-old Australian national has been living in the embassy for more than four years after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador amid fears he will be extradited to the US and questioned over the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by his controversial website. Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long said, "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years," he said. After years of stalemate, representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and Swedish police officers agreed to be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadorian official based on a previously approved set of questions. A DNA sample will also be taken from Assange if he gives his consent. The results of the interview will be transcribed and reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren was photographed entering the embassy but it was made clear that she would not be giving any press interviews during her stay in London. A statement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorean legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview". Today's interview at the embassy follows a long-drawn legal and diplomatic wrangle between Ecuador and Sweden before prosecutors consented to interview Assange in London, and then until the two sides agreed arrangements. Assange denies Sweden's allegation of rape dating back over six years. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of Assange's responses during the questioning, but not put any fresh questions. Seoul: South Korean prosecutors on Monday questioned two former key presidential aides over allegations they helped a shadowy confidant of President Park Geun-Hye meddle in state affairs and secretly visit her office. Park has been engulfed by a scandal that centres on Choi Soon-Sil, who is accused of using her personal ties with the president to coerce local firms to donate millions of dollars to non-profit foundations Choi then used for personal gain. Choi, 60, is also accused of interfering in state affairs to the extent of nominating officials and editing Park`s speeches even though she has no official title or security clearance. Ahn Bong-Geun and Lee Jae-Man, who served as Park`s key advisors until last month, are accused of helping Choi to visit the presidential office. They also allegedly reported state affairs or leaked confidential documents to her. TV news footage showed the pair separately entering the Seoul prosecutors` office on Monday morning as they were mobbed by reporters. The two, who served as Park`s aides for decades, were described by local media as "doorknobs" to the president who wielded enormous power over policymaking. Two other presidential aides have been arrested in the snowballing influence-peddling scandal. Choi, whose father was an elusive religious figure and a longtime mentor to Park until his death in 1994, was arrested earlier this month for abuse of power and fraud. The scandal has sparked nationwide fury with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to call for Park`s resignation and mocking the president as Choi`s "puppet". A mass rally held in Seoul on Saturday drew one million people, according to organisers, making it the largest public protest in the South for nearly three decades. Park also faces allegations that she helped Choi extract money from local companies including Samsung and Hyundai. Prosecutors are seeking to formally question her this week. If she agrees, Park will become the first South Korean president to be probed while in office. Under South Korea`s constitution, the incumbent president may not be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason. But many argue the sitting president can be investigated by prosecutors and then charged after leaving office. Caracas: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has urged his US counterpart Barack Obama to revoke an executive order that labelled his country a security threat. "It is an atrocity that I hope Obama corrects before he leaves office," Maduro said on Sunday, reiterating his government`s willingness to improve diplomatic ties with the US. In a message directly addressing the US head of state, Maduro said, "In spite of the arrogance, aggression and negative legacy, you, President Barack Obama, can garner the admiration and respect of Venezuela, if you have the courage to sign a decree revoking that infamous executive order that claims our beloved country is a threat," Xinhua news agency reported. The South American nation will also formally request the White House revoke the decree during an upcoming meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, so Obama "can leave with a message of peace for Venezuela", said Maduro. While ties between the two countries have been sour since Venezuela`s socialist party first came to power some 15 years ago, the 2015 decree calling the South American country "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the US", marked a particular low point. A day after the US presidential election on November 8, Maduro spoke with Kerry to request the two countries establish a "positive agenda" with which to work when the administration of President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January 2017. Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke on the phone on Monday evening and agreed on the need to normalise ties between Washington and Moscow, the Kremlin said. The Kremlin also said that the two politicians agreed to "make provisions for a personal meeting." The presidential transition team in Washington said in a statement that it was Putin who called Trump to "offer his congratulations on winning a historic election." The Kremlin said that Putin and Trump noted "the extremely unsatisfactory state of Russian-US relations at present" and "declared the need for active joint work to normalise them." Putin wished Trump success in carrying out his campaign promises, the Kremlin said, and expressed his readiness to "create a dialogue of partnership with the new administration on the basis of equality, mutual respect and non-intervention in each other`s domestic affairs." They "agreed on the need to unite efforts in the struggle with the enemy number one: international terrorism and extremism," the Kremlin said, adding that in this context they discussed the "issues over resolving the crisis in Syria." Trump`s team meanwhile said more generally that the pair discussed "the threats and challenges" facing both countries as well as economic issues and "the historical US-Russia relationship that dates back over 200 years." Trump told Putin he is looking forward to "a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia," the Washington statement said. In a telegram of congratulations sent the day after Trump`s victory, Putin "expressed hope for mutual work on bringing US-Russia relations out of their critical condition as well as on working out outstanding issues on the international agenda," the Kremlin said. Putin later said that "Russia is ready and wants to restore full-fledged relations with the US." Putin has tacitly supported Trump during the campaign, while Trump repeatedly flattered and praised the Russian leader and said he was willing to work with him. Bollywood has faced a number of upheavals and transformations, but one remarkable change in the recent times is the experimentation with techniques and themes.

The early years had a lot of restrictions in terms of presentation, handling and theme of the movie from the directors point of view. They could not take up challenging horror or action sequences because it demanded special effects, the result was a gapingly scant collection of horror flicks, and in the name of action the viewers had to do with adoring Dharmendras power-packed fists that floored the villains in one thunderous punch and a the roar: "Kuttey! Mein tera khoon pee jaunga!!!(along with a legendary dishum in the background).

There were some potential substitutes like Dara Singh, who promised some drum-centric-music-enhanced (read overshadowed) action sequences, where an army of goons was hurled about in all directions by him. Then we had Amitabh Bachchan in the Angry Young Man avatar and after him the action mantle fell to Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan, Suniel Shetty, and Akshay Kumar. With time, action sequences became considerably better, with slow-motion punches adding to the overall action effect of the pow-wow.

In the same era, Hollywood churned out a hair-raising thriller-horror The Wind (1987). This movie became hugely popular due to the sheer simplicity with which the horror was built-up. It was chilling, scary, violent and gripping. It used no effects other than some high voltage fans to create the windstorm in a deserted village. And its background music was self-effacing, yet adding to the chill.

A novelist (Meg Foster) retires to a crumbling villa in a village to complete her book, and is hounded by the caretaker, who has a fancy of killing with a scythe pretty dumb and cliched storyline. No extraordinary props, no high-tech, hard-to-get gadgets that were a dream for our Bollywood procurers. Nico Mastorakis created a timeless and ingenious example of making viewers start in dread. It was frightening for an adult then; it still is for his son now.

Recently, we have seen an explosion of new age technologies giving our cinema an unusually updated look. (They have even mastered The Matrix 3-D effect after copying it in n number of movies!). Drona, Krrish, A love Story-2050 are all effects-based flicks, using the latest technologies. Even animation has reached its adolescence and films like Roadside Romeo are at par with regular feature films. Sometimes the animated characters look plastic but new-age children are used to it so they dont mind much. After all, they practically live in a world overflowing with polymer.

Of course, there has never been a dearth of romance in Bollywood. (The audience gets a chance to let their imagination run amok, fuelling Bollywood gossip). They actually started with a good guy in white kurta-pyjama (not the night-dress, it was the over-loose dress of those times!) serenading his lady love, looking at the metaphoric Moon, without a glance at that well made-up, simpering, dupatta-biting lass standing beside him. That was love. Then they held hands (and a leaf or a branch) and danced, then they hid behind trees in gardens (with a close-up of two flowers!), then they let the lass dupatta slip, then it disappeared altogether. But now our directors have a wide variety of romantic options from bed-scenes to kisses landing smack on the mouths.

Almost all versions of romance seem to have been exploited in the present cinematic period, but we can always expect from creative directors, who always discover a new kind of romantic instance for youngsters to moon about.

Having exhausted the expected lot of genre, Indian cinema is also extending shoots towards parallel cinema. Out of league movies are rising in number, and doing good business despite targeting a niche-audience. The success-secret is the capitalistic metropolitan approach of distributors. They make a movie for one segment of audience; take the urban thinking ones. Then they release it only in PVRs, multiplexes that charge a ten to twenty percent more than the small-town halls. They earn as much on selling a hundred tickets as they would in a small place selling a thousand. The film is a success - the trend becomes popular. Bheja Fry, Slumdog Millioanaire and A Wednesday become a rage!

Talking of A Wednesday, the horrifying attacks in Mumbai, and before that the sporadic incidents across the country have sent shock waves through Bollywood. The upper class has been hit this time, so, the fight against terrorism has spread across all the sections of society. Only a few days have passed, and the inspiration has hit the scriptwriters and filmmakers hard. In a recent Bollywood news update, twenty titles based on the Mumbai attacks have been submitted for approval. Another burst of trend changers? Welcome to contemporary Bollywood! The Fremont Fire Departments new aerial engine, Truck 152, is going into official service Friday following an 11 a.m. dedication ceremony at the Fire Station, 415 E. 16th St, information released by the city of Fremont says. This milestone in the departments history represents years of planning to select the right vehicle with features to help firefighters serve the community effectively and safely. Fremont-based Rosenbauer Aerials worked with the department to design and build the truck that was delivered Oct. 7. Since that time, the truck has been featured at the departments open house on Oct. 9 and exhibited at the Oct. 25 Fremont City Council meeting. Firefighters completed training on the new technology and features, and are prepared to take the engine out on calls. The need to replace the old aerial, a 1985 model, was identified about seven years ago, released information says. Thirty years is considered old for an emergency vehicle and at that age, length of service and outdated technology come into play. Todd Bernt, fire chief, formed a truck committee in October 2013, appointing two representatives from each of the departments three shifts. They worked to select the best model to protect the community as well as remain in service for 30 years, like the old truck. Committee members collected data from a number of companies, and three firms brought demonstration trucks to the station for inspection. Reaching out to similar-sized fire departments was also part of the process, such as viewing the City of Yorks new aerial. Chief Bernt noted that one of the biggest challenges in the selection process was finding the right-sized truck to fit inside the stations 12-foot doors. Rosenbauer, a company that manufactures 30 different sizes of trucks, was one of two firms with vehicles fitting the door-height requirement. Rosenbauer, headed by CEO Rob Kreikemeier, won the bid. Designing the new aerial engine has not been quick or simple. Emergency vehicles are highly customized, unlike choosing between the deluxe or standard model car, and there are many feature options. Prioritizing new features and determining how the technology would adapt to future needs helped the committee establish a specification list, said members Richard Osterloh and Alan Atkinson, both firefighter/EMTs. They explained that features were selected to provide longevity, economy and high-tech safety. Long-lasting galvanized frames and ladders will resist corrosion. The stainless steel pipes and valves are more durable, reducing maintenance costs. The 100-foot remote-controlled ladder has video feed at both the nozzle and pump handle. These features allow one firefighter to operate the ladder and control the direction of the water that exits at the rate of 2,000 gallons per minute. This task required two sets of hands with the old aerial because the ladder could only be operated from the ground. With the advantage of automated features, firefighters can be more effective in extinguishing a fire. That benefit frees up others to perform additional work on the fire scene. Other new features include a Stokes basket (litter or stretcher for rescuing a person), eyelets to rig and anchor a rope, a computer mount for a CAD system, wireless headsets and enhanced lighting. The ladder can also be used on parapet wells. Full assembly occurred in stages. First, Rosenbauer manufactured the trucks front end, cab and wiring in Wyoming, Minn. Then the truck travelled to Rosenbauers facility in Lyons, S.D., where the Fremont committee viewed the addition of the pump and body. Rosenbauer Aerial in Fremont added the ladder and then the truck returned to South Dakota for completion. A Rosenbauer employee drove the finished product back to Fremont. Its the firefighters and their experience that make this engine and the new equipment such an asset to the community, released information says. A crew of nine firefighters serve on each of the departments three shifts: A, B and C. Each shift works 24 hours and is off (but on call) for 48 hours. While on duty,firefighters live in the stations dormitory, consisting of two-person living quarters. They spend a great deal of their time maintaining the equipment. Bunker gear (heavy fire-retardant clothing) is washed in a high-capacity extractor to remove soot and smoke. They perform daily chores in the morning, take turns cooking, conduct truck and building maintenance, do lawn work, participate in training and present fire prevention activities in the community. The workout room provides equipment for fitness training. When disaster strikes, firefighters are prepared to respond with three ambulances, three engines and the aerial. They use the Aerial, the first locally-produced vehicle in the Departments fleet, for all commercial calls because it offers more capabilities. The truck committee and Kreikemeier had the advantage of communicating in person instead of across the miles. Rosenbauer has clients worldwide and produces about 100 elevated aerial products per year. Working locally on this custom project provided the benefit of seeing the $930,000 engine progress from the planning stages to completion. We had the unique experience of working side by side with the committee, Kreikemeier said. It was a pleasure to work with them and walk through the custom aspects to help them achieve the needs they had. Mutual effort is what makes it a custom design. Kreikemeier and his wife, Pam, established Fremonts R.K. Aerials in 1988 with only three employees and a 5,000 square-foot building. Since that time, Kreikemeier joined with Rosenbauer and now employs 75 at a 40,000 square-foot facility on south Broad Street. The development of the company occurred because we have been fortunate to have good employees who made that growth happen, Kreikemeier said. Today Free blood pressure screenings, 8:30-10 a.m., Fremont Malls main entrance. The screenings are provided by Fremont Health. U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberrys office open, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 641 N. Broad St., Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Supportive Singles, 12:30 p.m., Kentucky Fried Chicken, Fremont. For more information, call 402-721-9019 or 402-459-0692. After School Chess, 4 p.m., Keene Memorial Librarys large meeting room, Fremont. Kids of all ages are invited to the library to learn how to play chess. Operation Christmas Child relay center, 5-7 p.m., First Lutheran Church Mission Center, Fremont. Operation Christmas Child is a worldwide childrens project of Samaritans Purse that collects and delivers gift-filled shoe boxes to needy children in more than 130 countries. For more information or if you need assistance with shoe box drop-off, call First Lutheran Church at 402-721-2959 or Charlotte Young at 402-719-1753. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Taco Tuesday, 5:30-7 p.m., Fremont Eagles Club. Everyone is welcome. TOPS 58, 6-7 p.m., St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Fremont. Weigh-ins are from 5:30-6 p.m. For more information, contact Nancy Wit at 402-727-6745. Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 6:30 p.m., Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 540 W. Eighth St., Wahoo. Narcotics Anonymous It Works Group, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door. Al-Anon meeting, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club front room, Fremont. This support group is for families and friends of alcoholics. Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 8 p.m., United Faith Church, 218 W. Gardiner St., Valley. Wednesday American Red Cross blood drive, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Midland Universitys Hopkins Arena, Fremont. To make an appointment to give blood, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Teen games (ages 13-18 years) and Get Your Tech On For Tweens (ages 9-13 years), 4-5 p.m., Keene Memorial Library, Fremont. Operation Christmas Child relay center, 5-7 p.m., First Lutheran Church Mission Center, Fremont. Operation Christmas Child is a worldwide childrens project of Samaritans Purse that collects and delivers gift-filled shoe boxes to needy children in more than 130 countries. For more information or if you need assistance with shoe box drop-off, call First Lutheran Church at 402-721-2959 or Charlotte Young at 402-719-1753. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Fresh Hope Support Group, 7 p.m., Trinity Lutheran School, 16th Street and Luther Road, Fremont. The support group offers faith-based help for those with mood disorders and for loved ones trying to understand. For more information, call David and Wray Lynn Trost at 402-480-1777. Narcotics Anonymous Library Group, 7 p.m., Keene Memorial Library East Building, Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Thursday Alcoholics Anonymous big book study, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Parkinsons support group, 10-11 a.m., Caring Senior Service, 1010 N. Bell St., Fremont. Storytime, 10-10:30 a.m., Keene Memorial Library auditorium, Fremont. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Fremont Kiwanis Club, noon, Fremont Golf Club. LEGO party for ages 3-10 years, 4-5 p.m., Keene Memorial Library, Fremont. Operation Christmas Child relay center, 5-7 p.m., First Lutheran Church Mission Center, Fremont. Operation Christmas Child is a worldwide childrens project of Samaritans Purse that collects and delivers gift-filled shoe boxes to needy children in more than 130 countries. For more information or if you need assistance with shoe box drop-off, call First Lutheran Church at 402-721-2959 or Charlotte Young at 402-719-1753. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Hamburger night, 5:30-7 p.m., Fremont Eagles Club. Everyone is welcome. Narcotics Anonymous It Works Group, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church East Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door. WinItBack, 6:30 p.m., Keene Memorial Library, Fremont. Ideas and suggestions for moving forward with the group will be discussed. The public is invited. For more information, call Doug Wittmann at 402-317-1270. Bingo, 7 p.m., Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8223, 742 N. Main St., North Bend. Everyone is welcome. Civil Air Patrol, 7 p.m., 1201 W. 23rd St., in yellow hangar at Fremont Airport. Fresh Hope Support Group, 7 p.m., Fremont Healths Health Park Plaza, Room 5. The faith-based support group is for those suffering from mental illness or family members and/or caregivers. Storytime, 7-7:30 p.m., Keene Memorial Library auditorium, Fremont. Tally Ho Toastmasters, 7-8 p.m., Midland Universitys Anderson Building, Ninth and Clarkson streets, Fremont. Everyone is welcome to learn skills in communication, self-confidence and leadership. For more information, call Jan at 402-720-5526. Alcoholics Anonymous big book study, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont. Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 8 p.m., First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 201 N. Davis Ave., Oakland. Housing price growth in Sydney remains stronger than any where else in the country due to the welcoming accompanying spurt in jobs along with improved economic conditions. But the substantial cost of housing in Sydney makes it a less desirable location for people to live here. The price boom of 2012-2016 will result in many young families considering alternatives to Sydney, especially when it comes time to upgrade to a bigger house. Also read: Aussies in these states take the longest to save a first home deposit Overseas migration typically attracts the headlines as the key factor in population growth and price growth, but what is often overlooked is the impact of interstate migration on the demographic composition of the states and territories. Yes net overseas migration added 180,000 people to the Australian population, but some 350,000 people moved between states and territories in 2015. Victoria recorded the highest overall population growth rate of all states and territories at 1.9 percent, adding an extra 114,900 people to the population with net overseas migration the main contributor to growth in Victoria, adding 62,800 people to the population over the year. The remainder of Victoria's population change was explained by natural increase (+37,600) and net interstate migration (+14,500). NSW's was 1.4 per cent, adding 103,000 over the year ending March 2016, but NSW had 90,000 interstate arrivals over the year and around 100,000 who left. The exodus is underway. Also read: Could we really have double digit property growth again next year? The change in interstate migration over recent years has increasingly seen a shift from Queensland as the destination to Victoria due to its substantially more affordable housing costs and job prospects. The recent change has been driven by the working age population, in particular between 20-29 years old. It follows that this mobile demographic will eventually buy their first home in Melbourne rather than Sydney. Story continues The latest CoreLogic data showed annual growth in Sydney home prices remains just shy of 11 percent and growth remains close to 10 percent in Melbourne. But there are big difference in prices. Sydney's $920,000 to Melbourne's $665,000 for houses. Sydney's $690,000 to Melbourne's $495,000 for apartments. Sydney units have regularly been more expensive than Melbourne houses and Sydney median unit prices have consistently been higher than Melbourne median house prices since early 2012. Also read: Which Aussie city offers the cheapest rent? It was telling that the latest CoreLogic release confirmed Sydney's price growth was strong across both houses and apartments. Detached Sydney house prices were up 10.9 percent compared with units at 9.1 percent highlighting the lively supply/demand dynamic that exists across the Sydney region. In Melbourne however there is a substantial difference in growth rates between houses and units, with house values up 9.6 percent compared with a 5.2 percent increase in unit values over the past year. Brisbanes housing market has shown a even larger spread, with house values up 4.7 percent compared with units which have had a 1.4 percent fall in unit values over the year. Cameron Kusher at CoreLogic believes outside of Sydney and Melbourne, cheaper housing alone was proving not enough to attract people to these cities as they lacked a strong economy with decent employment prospects. Also read: Building vs buying a new home: top tips you need to know So the young families aren't leaving the city in favour of seachange and treechange lifestyle locations. Indeed Melbourne had the largest overall population growth of all Greater Capital Cities up by 91,600 people, or 2.1 percent to $4.5 million, followed by Sydney up 83,300 to 4.9 million in 2014-15. Greater Sydney's population grew by 1.7 percent in 2014-15, which accounted for 80 percent of the total NSW growth, with Waterloo, in inner Sydney, having the largest increase, up by 3,100 people. [Mark Su poses in front of his tiny home.] Just 50 kms outside of Toronto live Mark Su and his girlfriend in a fully self-contained 310 square foot home that set him back a mere $30,000. The environmental consultant didnt pay a dime for labour as he built his tiny house solo, an expense that saved him in the neighbourhood of $30,000. Their cozy house-on-wheels sits on a plot of land that the couple rents from a trailer park in Stouffville. Rent, water and other utilities cost them less than $400 a month. One of big reasons I did this is because I didnt want to be tied down with a mortgage, says Su, 28. I didnt want to live a stressful life. We also really like the sustainability aspect and the minimalist idea of just living with what you need. [The entranceway is tight but inviting.] Despite the tight quarters, Su and his girlfriend say they live quite comfortably in their tiny home, which boasts a bathtub, a spare bedroom that doubles as a TV room and a composting toilet. The pair has entertained as many as 10 guests within its 28-by-8.5 feet walls. People have lived in small spaces for centuries. Think shanty, lean-to and yurt. But only recently have we given the lifestyle a name. The tiny house movement, which espouses that living with less is better, has been around for a while in Canada, longer in the U.S. Tiny homes typically run from 100 to 500 square feet. Given the lack of affordable housing in Toronto and Vancouver, it makes sense that it would fuel interest in pint-sized housing. In the first year after launching Live Tiny Canada, the website received 250,000 visits, about 85 per cent of which were from Canadian locations. [The small kitchen has everything you need.] People are really looking to hop on board, says Matt Standen, founder and editor of LiveTiny.ca. I think we will see this movement catch on in Canada. But right now people are waiting because no one wants to do the dirty work. Standen is referring to the work involved in bending political will in favour of tiny homes. Currently, building codes and zoning bylaws dont generally support these dwellings. In Vancouver, for example, the minimum size a dwelling can be is 398 square feet. Tiny homes in Vancouver arent eligible to receive a building permit as they do not meet the citys requirements for electrical and plumbing systems. Story continues But that doesnt mean the small house movement is non-existent on Canadas west coast. In fact, laneway homes are growing in popularity with Vancouver issuing permits for 2,422 such homes since the program began in 2009. Built on pre-existing lots that open onto the back lane or alleyway, these homes are 550 square feet on average, one-and-a-half stories with one or two bedrooms. [Theres a desk for getting work done and a small staircase leading up to the sleeping area.] The city of Toronto is not as laneway housing friendly and handles applications on a case-by-case basis, according to the Toronto Star. City concerns centre on whether lanes are wide enough for servicing and access by garbage, fire and emergency vehicles. Other considerations include privacy, parking, outdoor space and costly connections to the main street for water, power and sewage. Standen and his partner are planning their tiny home, a 24 by 8.5 foot mobile home that they will park on a piece of property they own in Owen Sound. Their goal, like many tiny house fans, is to ultimately live off the grid, which means becoming completely self-sustainable thanks to solar panels, propane heat and a digging a well for water. Standen has budgeted $22,000 for the project and expects it will cost about $40 a month to operate. Standen, 35, believes the lifestyle really appeals to millennials, who are attune to living a highly mobile existence thanks to technology. Tiny living gives them the freedom to connect and disconnect as they please, he says. [The bathroom is cozy but its got everything youd expect to find in one.] Standen and other tiny-house advocates are working to push for changes that will pave the way for smaller homes in cities without having them relegated to mobile-home parks and remote rural lots. Natalie Brake of Tiny House Listings Canada is representing British Columbia on a nationwide board put together to push for the legalization of tiny homes. The 37-year-old Victoria resident says the new board will take a page from the U.S., where the tiny house movement is more advanced. Were literally in a housing crisis and tiny houses are a response and a solution, she says. But those who laud tiny homes as the perfect antidote to the affordable housing crisis are simply masking a much bigger problem, according to Michael Stewart of Rabble.ca. Stories like these spread the falsehood that consumers have a say in how their neighbourhoods, communities, and cities are planned while the evidence repeatedly shows that our urban agendas are set by developers, Stewart writes. Laneway houses, microlofts, tiny houses these are individuated solutions to social problems that require social fixes. Montrealers opposed to Quebec's new welfare reform law took to the streets Saturday night to protest the controversial legislation. The law, passed Thursday, gives the government the power to cut the monthly cheque for some first-time social assistance recipients from $623 to $399. The cut would affect those deemed capable of working but who refuse to enlist in government-run programs to help them find a job or get more training. Employment Minister Francois Blais said the goal is to get more people into the workforce. When the new measures were proposed earlier this year, the government said they could save the province an estimated $50 million a year. Opposition parties and organizations working with Quebec's poor and homeless have criticized the new law, saying the government is looking for savings at the expense of the province's most vulnerable citizens. They fear the new measures could end up forcing more Quebecers into the street. "This is a huge step backwards for human rights in Quebec for anyone who is needing to access benefits," Cathy Inouye, a community organizer at Project Genesis in Montreal's Cote-des-Neiges district, said in an interview after the bill passed. "The welfare rate is already extremely low." When Tarek Bin Yameen looks into the eyes of young Syrian refugees, he sees himself. Today he's a second-year medical student at the University of Toronto, but he wasn't always so lucky. Bin Yameen spent the first half of his life in Yemen. When a civil war broke out there in 1994, his family suddenly found themselves internally displaced, trading the risks of being bombed for the risks of a refugee camp. The conditions were dismal. Within a span of week, a cholera outbreak killed 40 people. Few received the necessary vaccines. Bin Yameen made it out alive. So when he met six-year-old Hanaan, whose family arrived in Canada as refugees from Syria, he knew he had to help. 'Money we didn't have' He met the little girl while assisting her privately-sponsored family, and soon realized she was suffering from a condition called strabismus. Untreated, Hanaan could eventually go blind. "When I thought about that little young girl, I began wondering how many children here have eye conditions that are undiagnosed?" "Even though they had federal health coverage, they never accessed eye care treatment," Bin Yameen told CBC Toronto, adding that language and transportation barriers put eye care out of reach for the family. That was the case for Gullistan Abdo and her family when they fled Syria for Turkey, then Canada. "We could access [medical care], but we had to pay money which we didn't have," she told CBC Toronto, speaking in Arabic through a translator. Stories like Abdo's inspired Bin Yameen to offer free vision clinics to Syrian refugees, and this summer, launched a pilot together with St. Michael's Hospital and non-profit group Mes Amis. Some clinics were held at Prism Eye Institute in Brampton, which donated clinical space and medical equipment. Equipped with translators and specialists, the clinics provide families with an initial eye exam. If the refugees need glasses or a specialist appointments, they get them on the spot. Story continues 'Survival mode kicks in' The demand was overwhelming. A hundred and eighty refugees turned out for eye exams. So they held another, and another. The program has already treated nearly 500 refugees, Bin Yameen says. "The Arabic is always a difficult thing for people to find. They can go to the clinics by themselves but they can't always articulate, you know, what their issues are. So having the translators here has been a really big plus," Mes Amis executive director Julie Mahfouz told CBC Toronto. Like Bin Yameen, Hanaan's family was lucky. They were soon connected with a specialist in the U.S., where she'll go for an operation. But as Bin Yameen knows all too well, not everyone shares that good fortune. "I can relate to that because when you are in that condition, just survival mode kicks in. You just want to get a roof over your head, you want to get some food, you want to get some clothes," he told CBC Radio's Fresh Air. "Going to see a doctor is not your major concern." 'Paying it forward' Three more eye clinics are scheduled to roll out in the coming months, reaching as far as the Kitchener-Waterloo area. As he worked to examine patients today, Bin Yameen's mind travelled back to the camps where he found himself all those years ago. "When I see these newcomers in Canada, when I see the children, they remind me of my own personal experiences that I had as a kid." "This country gave me an opportunity to come here and study here and I'm paying it forward," said Bin Yameen. He hopes the children he's helping can eventually do the same. NEW ORLEANS, LA -When an adult gets an annual physical, physicians commonly check the levels of fat cells, known as triglycerides, in their blood stream. Triglycerides are a type of fat, or lipid, which are consumed when you eat, and are normally stored in fat tissue to be used later as an energy source. However, some people accumulate fat in the blood that should otherwise be stored in the fat tissue, causing high triglycerides. Extremely high triglycerides can lead to inflammation of the pancreas - pancreatitis - and moderate elevations are associated with higher risk for heart disease such as atherosclerosis. Today at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2016, Richard Dunbar, MD, an assistant professor of Translational Medicine and Medical Genetics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, will present early data from a study which evaluated the use of a new injectable biologic drug therapy for reducing triglyceride levels. "In this study, we tested a new approach for lowering triglycerides using an injectable drug that inhibits a specific protein which enables high triglycerides - Angiopoietin-like 3 (ANGPTL3). As expected, suppressing AngPTL3 resulted in a profound drop in triglyceride levels, as compared to a placebo," said Dunbar. "Encouragingly, the kinds of drops we saw appear to push beyond the boundaries of what is usually experienced with current oral medications." Researchers conducted this phase I, first-in-human, placebo-controlled, double-blind study to test the safety and efficacy of the injectable biologic drug, Evinacumab, an investigational monoclonal antibody specifically engineered to inhibit ANGPTL3. Results from 41 participants, 32 of whom received Evinacumab and nine the placebo, showed the biologic therapy was well-tolerated by participants with only mild adverse events being reported, including headaches in seven participants. Triglyceride levels were monitored for at least five months following the injection, with the maximum reduction seen on day four. Six doses were tested, and in the top three dose-groups, triglycerides were lowered by 64 to 73 percent. "Current medications such as fibrates or prescription fish oils effectively lower triglycerides, but leave much to be desired, each only lowering levels by 20 to 50 percent," Dunbar said. "Validating a drug that lowers triglycerides well beyond that range would undoubtedly take us to the next level, particularly since it could be combined with current oral medications for those patients with extraordinarily high triglycerides who often can't achieve safe levels with our usual medications. A similar approach has been taken for lowering certain cholesterol with the advent of PCSK9 inhibitors, which utilize a similar monoclonal antibody mechanism." Dose-dependent reductions in cholesterol were also observed, most notably cholesterol from low-density lipoproteins (LDL), which is thought to contribute significantly to atherosclerosis - plaque buildup and the narrowing of the heart's arteries. Curiously, the drug also lowered cholesterol from high-density lipoproteins (HDL) - the "good" cholesterol - consistent with the drug's mechanism targeting the AngPTL3 protein. "Though the preliminary results give us a lot of hope that we could significantly improve triglyceride management, there is still a lot of work to be done to validate this approach," Dunbar said. "If all goes well and if this therapy makes it into clinical practice, the implications of this research are twofold. In the short term, profoundly lowering triglycerides may render hospital admissions less frequent in patients prone to pancreatitis, while long term, lowering triglycerides and associated cholesterol could also help reduce the risk of certain heart disease." While the team notes it is gratifying to see more attention being paid to triglycerides, the 'other' bad lipid, and that these early results are promising, more research is needed in order to evaluate the safety and efficacy across a larger patient population, particularly with multiple doses. ### This study was funded by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which also provided the biologic. This study will be presented on Monday, November 14, 2016 at 2:30 PM (CST) in room 211-213. Editor's note: Dunbar has consulted for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which helped to design the study protocol. Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania(founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise. The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 17 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $409 million awarded in the 2014 fiscal year. The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine. Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2014, Penn Medicine provided $771 million to benefit our community. DENVER, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Pulse Beverage Corporation (Pulse) (OTCQX:PLSB), makers of Natural Cabana Lemonades/Limeades and Coconut Waters, and PULSE Heart & Body Health functional beverages, today provided its Q3 Report and Outlook. Business Highlights for Q3-2016 to Date: During Q3-2016 Pulse continued its strategic decision to move from a direct store delivery distribution system (DSD) to a hybrid system of 75 of its strongest Class A DSDs and 20 wholesalers, concentrating placements into high volume cold box sets. During this time Pulse eliminated a number of weaker, non-performing DSDs in certain geographical areas in order to move its distribution to a warehouse direct to wholesaler system. This decision was made to reduce overhead associated with the effort to manage a direct store delivery distribution system. Pulse rationalized the number and placement of salespeople in the field. The overall effect was a reduction of $437,000 in overhead during the nine months ended September 30, 2016 compared to 2015. Fixed overhead has been reduced to below $80,000 per month going into Q4-2016. The decrease in net sales and gross profit during Q3-2016 was planned in order to grow sales from a more profitable fixed overhead base. During Q3-2016 Pulse reduced freight-out and costly promotional programs which increased gross profit and contribution margins. During Q3-2016 we provided an additional $107,495 to fully allow for a doubtful account in Mexico. We expect to partially recover this account receivable in the future. We also wrote-off a $40,000 financing fee during Q3-2016. During Q3 Pulse introduced its newest private label product, Citrus Tree, which is Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade formula in a 16.9oz glass bottle in four flavors: Natural, Strawberry, Tropical Mango and Cherry Limeade. This new product is a private label brand sold through Acme Markets, a division of Albertsons, a 176 store supermarket chain in New York and Philadelphia metro areas having a population of more than 40 million. Pulse has sold more than 5,000 cases to date since its introduction. Robert E. Yates, CEO of Pulse, said, We are in the midst of a major thrust in the American Northeast and are thrilled to bring on Citrus Tree to help broaden our reach into the American Northeast, a highly populated and influential region. In September, 2016 Pulse announced that 57 Tom Thumb supermarkets, a Division of Safeway Dallas/Ft Worth and 44 Randalls supermarkets, a Division of Safeway Houston, as well as 90 Albertsons supermarkets in the Dallas/Ft Worth metroplex area are all carrying Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade and Coconut Water in 182 upscale supermarket stores. Additionally, Pulse secured listings for its 20oz Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade in 64 PriceRite supermarkets found in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Parley Sheya, VP and National Sales Manager of Pulse, said, These high end supermarket stores are an exciting addition for us as they are busy upscale competitive stores. Revenue associated with these listings will start to be fully realized starting in Q4-2016 and fully realized during 2017. During October, 2016 Pulse secured placement of Natural Cabana Lemonade/Limeade in 340 Walmart Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets in the States of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and West Texas. The sets will be completed by the end of October. As part of the Walmart rollout Pulse adds KeHE Distributors LLC to assist in the distribution of its products into Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Northern California. The KeHe network includes 17 North American warehouses and 470 trucks with daily routes serving nearly half of the top 100 retailers from coast to coast. Additionally, Pulse secured listings to sell Natural Cabana Coconut Water through 29 Dierbergs Markets, one of the dominant grocery store retailers in the St. Louis area and through Stater Bros Markets, a 169 store supermarket chain in Southern California. Pulse will be placed in the high traffic cold box produce section of Stater Bros Markets. Bob Yates, CEO of Pulse, said, When we team up with major retailers like Walmart, consumers easily find our prominently displayed products thereby increasing revenue and earnings for our shareholders; we estimate annual sales from this new listing of over $1,000,000. Mr. Yates went on to add, KeHE will help us with other major retailers we were not able to get to with our existing distribution network. Our effort over the last few months in moving to a hybrid distribution system has allowed us to reduce our overhead costs which will move us towards profitability sooner. The full effect of our overhead reductions will be fully realized in 2017. We continue to be pleased with the overwhelming success of our new coconut water. We are confident in the marketing strategies and the delivery/execution of our new strategic growth plan into 2017 and we look forward to communicating with our shareholders as these growth plans unfold during the remainder of 2016. About The Pulse Beverage Corporation The Pulse Beverage Corporation is an emerging beverage company that offers beverage brands that are great tasting, good-for-you, refreshing, low-calorie natural drinks. Pulses line of beverages provides consumers with high-quality, healthy alternatives at a reasonable price. For more information, please visit: www.pulsebeverage.com or email info@pulsebeverage.com. Follow Pulse Beverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/drinkpulsebev. Become a Pulse Beverage Facebook Fan at https://www.facebook.com/PulseBeverageCorporation. Forward-Looking Statements http://ir.pulsebeverage.com/forward-looking-statements Swedish English Finnish Helsinki, Finland, 2016-11-14 13:30 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MUNKSJO OYJ, STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 14 November 2016 at 1.30 p.m. CET Notice of Munksjo's Extraordinary General Meeting Notice is given to the shareholders of Munksjo Oyj (the Company or Munksjo) to the Extraordinary General Meeting to be held on Wednesday, 11 January 2017 at 1:00 p.m. (EET) in the Helsinki Hall of the Finlandia Hall, Mannerheimintie 13 e, Helsinki, Finland (entrance M3 from Mannerheimintie and K3 from the Karamzininranta -street). The reception of persons who have registered for the meeting and the distribution of voting tickets will commence at 12:00 noon (EET). Registration for the meeting is requested to be made no later than 12:45 p.m. (EET). A. Matters on the agenda of the Extraordinary General Meeting At the Extraordinary General Meeting the following matters will be considered: 1 Opening of the meeting 2 Calling the meeting to order 3 Election of persons to scrutinize the minutes and to supervise the counting of votes 4 Recording the legality of the meeting 5 Recording the attendance at the meeting and adoption of the list of votes 6 Resolutions relating to the Combination Munksjo announced on 7 November 2016 the combination of Munksjos and Ahlstrom Corporations (Ahlstrom) business operations through a statutory absorption merger of Ahlstrom into Munksjo pursuant to the Finnish Companies Act (624/2006, as amended) (the Companies Act). As a result of the merger, all assets and liabilities of Ahlstrom will be transferred without a liquidation procedure to Munksjo, and Ahlstrom will be dissolved (the Combination). The shareholders of Ahlstrom will receive new shares in Munksjo as merger consideration in proportion to their existing shareholdings. The purpose of the Combination is to create a global leader in sustainable and innovative fiber-based solutions, with leading global positions in the main product areas decor, filtration and release liners. The combined company will be better positioned to serve customers and will have a strengthened position in the value chain through increased size. Through the Combination, a strong and well-established platform will be created with multiple growth opportunities through a broadened customer base, a widened geographical footprint and expanded product and service offerings. Together, the companies will be able to serve a broad range of end-market segments with complementary product and service offerings, which creates potential for innovation within new customer-focused solutions. The two companies have complementary geographical footprints, as Munksjo has strong market positions in Europe and South America and Ahlstrom has strong market positions in Europe, North America and Asia, which opens up new geographical growth opportunities through coordination of the product portfolios and distribution and logistics networks. The combined company will have a more diversified revenue and earnings base through this wider geographic footprint and broader product offering and is expected to have a strong financial position and cash flow to support the combined companys strategic growth ambitions. The increased size and strengthened capital base also gives potential for increased financing options and lower cost of debt. Furthermore, the Combination offers employees enhanced career opportunities, supporting the combined companys ability to attract and retain top talent. The Combination is expected to create significant value for the stakeholders in the combined company through synergies resulting from the coordination of the operations of the two companies. In order to complete the Combination, the Board of Directors of Munksjo proposes that the Extraordinary General Meeting would (i) resolve on the statutory absorption merger of Ahlstrom into Munksjo, including the approval of the merger plan and the amended Articles of Association of Munksjo in the form appended to the merger plan, (ii) authorise the Board of Directors of Munksjo to resolve on the payment of funds from the Companys reserve for invested unrestricted equity as a return of equity in the total amount of maximum EUR 0.45 per each outstanding share in the Company (representing a maximum total amount of approximately EUR 22,842,711 after excluding the treasury shares held by the Company) to the shareholders of Munksjo prior to the completion of the Combination and, further, after consultation with the Shareholders Nomination Boards of Munksjo and Ahlstrom, that the Extraordinary General Meeting would (iii) resolve on the number, remuneration and election of the members of the Board of Directors of Munksjo, all as further set out below. Existing shareholders of Munksjo representing in the aggregate approximately 39.6 percent of all the shares and votes in the Company have undertaken that they will attend the Extraordinary General Meeting and vote for the proposals of the Board of Directors. The following proposals of the Board of Directors of Munksjo form an entirety that requires the adoption of all its individual items by a single resolution. The proposed changes to the Articles of Association of Munksjo, the number of members of the Board of Directors of Munksjo, the composition of the Board of Directors of Munksjo and the remuneration of the Board of Directors of Munksjo will become effective upon the registration of the execution of the merger. 6 a) Resolution on the merger For the purpose of the completion of the Combination, the Board of Directors of Munksjo and Ahlstrom approved on 7 November 2016 a merger plan, which was registered with the Trade Register of the Finnish Patent and Registration Office on 7 November 2016. Pursuant to the merger plan, Ahlstrom shall be merged into Munksjo through an absorption merger, so that all assets and liabilities of Ahlstrom shall be transferred without a liquidation procedure to Munksjo in a manner described in more detail in the merger plan. The Board of Directors of Munksjo proposes that the Extraordinary General Meeting resolves on the merger of Ahlstrom into Munksjo in accordance with the merger plan and approves the merger plan. The amendments to Munksjos Articles of Association, as set out in the merger plan and below, will be approved as a part of the merger. Section 1, the first sentence of Section 2, Section 4 and Section 6 of the Articles of Association of Munksjo are proposed to be amended to read as follows: 1 The name of the Company is Ahlstrom-Munksjo Oyj. The domicile of the Company is Helsinki.; 2 The Companys field of business is to engage in the manufacture, converting and sale of fiber-based solutions and products and in other related or supporting activities.; 4 The Board of Directors of the Company shall comprise a minimum of four (4) and a maximum of twelve (12) ordinary members.; and 6 The Company shall have one (1) auditor, which shall be an audit firm authorised by the Finnish Patent and Registration Office. The shareholders of Ahlstrom shall receive as merger consideration 0.9738 new shares of Munksjo for each share owned in Ahlstrom, that is, the merger consideration shall be issued to the shareholders of Ahlstrom in proportion to their existing shareholding with a ratio of 0.9738:1. In case the number of shares received by a shareholder of Ahlstrom as merger consideration would be a fractional number, the fractions shall be rounded down to the nearest whole number. Fractional entitlements to new shares of Munksjo shall be aggregated and sold in the market and the proceeds will be distributed pro rata to Ahlstroms shareholders being entitled to receive fractional entitlements. Any costs related to the sale and distribution of fractional entitlements shall be borne by Munksjo. Based on the number of issued and outstanding shares in Ahlstrom on the date of this notice, a total of 45,376,992 new shares in Munksjo would be issued to shareholders of Ahlstrom as merger consideration. 6 b) Resolution on the number of members of the Board of Directors The Board of Directors of Munksjo, after consultation with the Shareholders Nomination Boards of Munksjo and Ahlstrom, proposes that the number of members of the Board of Directors shall be eleven (11). 6 c) Resolution on the remuneration of members of the Board of Directors The Board of Directors of Munksjo, after consultation with the Shareholders Nomination Boards of Munksjo and Ahlstrom, proposes that the members of the Board of Directors of Munksjo to be elected for a term of office commencing on the date of registration of the execution of the merger and expiring at the end of the first Annual General Meeting of Munksjo following the date of registration of the execution of the merger be paid the following remuneration: to the Chairman of the Board of Directors EUR 80,000 per year; to the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors EUR 50,000 per year and EUR 40,000 per year for the other members of the Board of Directors. The Chairman of the Audit Committee shall receive EUR 12,000 per year and the ordinary members of the Audit Committee EUR 6,000 per year each. The Chairman of the Remuneration Committee shall receive EUR 6,000 per year and the ordinary members of the Remuneration Committee EUR 3,000 per year each. Travel expenses are proposed to be reimbursed in accordance with the Companys travel policy. The annual remuneration of the members elected hereunder shall be paid in proportion to the length of their term of office. 6 d) Election of members of the Board of Directors The Board of Directors of Munksjo, after consultation with the Shareholders Nomination Boards of Munksjo and Ahlstrom, proposes that Peter Seligson, Elisabet Salander Bjorklund, Sebastian Bondestam, Alexander Ehrnrooth, Hannele Jakosuo-Jansson, Mats Lindstrand and Anna Ohlsson-Leijon, current members of the Board of Directors of Munksjo, be conditionally elected to continue to serve on the Board of Directors of Munksjo and that Hans Sohlstrom, Jan Inborr, Johannes Gullichsen and Harri-Pekka Kaukonen, current members of the Board of Directors of Ahlstrom, be conditionally elected as members of the Board of Directors of Munksjo for the term commencing on the date of registration of the execution of the merger and expiring at the end of the next Annual General Meeting of Munksjo following the date of registration of the execution of the merger. All the nominees are considered independent of the Company and of the significant shareholders of the Company, except for Alexander Ehrnrooth, Peter Seligson and Hans Sohlstrom. The nominees have given their consent to the election. The nominees have indicated that if elected they will elect Hans Sohlstrom as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Peter Seligson and Elisabet Salander Bjorklund as the Vice Chairmen of the Board of Directors. CVs of the proposed Board members are available on the Companys website at www.munksjo.com/egm. 6 e) Authorisation of the Board of Directors to resolve on the payment of funds from the reserve for invested unrestricted equity The Board of Directors proposes that the Extraordinary General Meeting authorises the Board of Directors of Munksjo to resolve, based on the audited financial statements of the Company for 2015, by one or several resolutions, on an extra payment of funds from the Companys reserve for invested unrestricted equity as return of equity in the total amount of maximum EUR 0.45 per each outstanding share in the Company (representing a maximum total amount of approximately EUR 22,842,711 after excluding the treasury shares held by the Company after excluding any treasury shares held by the Company) to the shareholders of Munksjo prior to the completion of the Combination. The return of equity shall be paid prior to the registration of the execution of the merger. The authorization shall be valid until the close of the next Annual General Meeting of Munksjo. 7 Closing of the meeting B. Documents of the Extraordinary General Meeting The aforesaid proposals of the Board of Directors relating to the agenda of the Extraordinary General Meeting as well as this notice are available on the Companys website at www.munksjo.com/egm. Other documents, which according to the Companies Act shall be kept available for the shareholders, will be available on the above-mentioned website as from 11 December 2016, at the latest. The proposals of the Board of Directors and the other documents mentioned above are also available at the meeting. Copies of these documents will be sent to shareholders upon request. The minutes of the meeting will be available on the above-mentioned website as from 25 January 2017, at the latest. C. Instructions for participants in the Extraordinary General Meeting 1. The right to participate and registration Each shareholder, who is registered on 29 December 2016 in the shareholders register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd., has the right to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting. A shareholder whose shares are registered on his/her personal Finnish book-entry account is registered in the shareholders register of the Company. A shareholder, who wishes to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting, shall register for the meeting by giving prior notice of participation on 5 January 2017 at 4:00 p.m. (EET) at the latest. Such notice can be given: on the Companys website www.munksjo.com/egm, by email to yhtiokokous@munksjo.com, by mail to Munksjo, EGM, Etelaesplanadi 14, 00130 Helsinki, Finland, or by phone during office hours from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EET) to +46 (0)10 250 10 54 In connection with the registration, a shareholder shall state his/her name, personal identification number, address, telephone number and the name of a possible assistant or proxy representative and the personal identification number of such proxy representative. The personal data given to Munksjo is used only in connection with the Extraordinary General Meeting and with the processing of related registrations. Pursuant to Chapter 5, Section 25 of the Companies Act, a shareholder who is present at the Extraordinary General Meeting has the right to request information with respect to the matters to be considered at the meeting. 2. Proxy representative and powers of attorney A shareholder may participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting and exercise his/her rights at the meeting also by way of proxy representation. A proxy representative shall produce a dated proxy document or otherwise in a reliable manner demonstrate his/her right to represent the shareholder at the Extraordinary General Meeting. When a shareholder participates in the Extraordinary General Meeting by means of several proxy representatives representing the shareholder with shares at different book-entry accounts, the shares by which each proxy representative represents the shareholder shall be identified in connection with the registration for the general meeting. Possible proxy documents should be delivered to the address above before the last date of registration. A template for a proxy is available at the Companys website mentioned above. 3. Holders of nominee registered shares A holder of nominee registered shares has the right to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting by virtue of such shares, based on which he/she on the record date of the Extraordinary General Meeting, on 29 December 2016 would be entitled to be registered in the shareholders register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. The right to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting requires, in addition, that the shareholder on the basis of such shares has been registered into the temporary shareholders register held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. at the latest by 5 January 2017 by 10:00 a.m. (EET). As regards nominee registered shares this constitutes due registration for the Extraordinary General Meeting. A holder of nominee registered shares is advised to request without delay necessary instructions regarding the registration in the temporary shareholders register of the Company, the issuing of proxy documents and registration for the Extraordinary General Meeting from his/her custodian bank. The account management organization of the custodian bank has to register a holder of nominee registered shares, who wants to participate in the Extraordinary General Meeting, into the temporary shareholders register of the Company at the latest by the time stated above. Further information on these matters can also be found on the Companys website mentioned above. 4. Participation in the Extraordinary General Meeting for shareholder whose shares are registered in Euroclear Sweden AB A shareholder, whose shares are registered in the register of the Company's shareholders maintained by Euroclear Sweden AB, shall, to fulfill the requirements to attend the Extraordinary General Meeting note the following: (i) the shareholder has to be entered in the register of the Company's shareholders maintained by Euroclear Sweden AB on 29 December 2016, at the latest, and (ii) the shareholder must contact Euroclear Sweden AB and request temporary registration in the shareholders' register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. Such request shall be submitted to Euroclear Sweden AB on a designated form available on the Company's website www.munksjo.com/egm. The request must be received by Euroclear Sweden AB on 29 December 2016, at the latest. A shareholder whose shares are nominee registered in the register of the Company's shareholders maintained by Euroclear Sweden AB, shall, in order to fulfill the requirement (i) above temporarily register his/her shares under his/her name in the register. A shareholder who wishes such temporary registration must contact his/her custodian bank well in advance before 29 December 2016 and ask the custodian bank to temporarily register the shareholder in the register of the Company's shareholders maintained by Euroclear Sweden AB. 5. Other instructions and information On the date of this notice to the Extraordinary General Meeting, 14 November 2016, the total number of shares in Munksjo amounts to 51,061,581 and said shares have 51,061,581 votes in total. Stockholm, 14 November 2016 MUNKSJO OYJ The Board of Directors Notice to Shareholders in the United States The new shares in Munksjo have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act) or under any of the applicable securities laws of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States. The new shares in Munksjo may not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States (as defined in Regulation S under the Securities Act), unless registered under the Securities Act or pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and in compliance with any applicable state securities laws of the United States. The new shares in Munksjo will be offered in the United States in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act provided by Rule 802 thereunder. Munksjo and Ahlstrom are Finnish companies. Information distributed in connection with the Combination and the related shareholder votes is subject to disclosure requirements of Finland, which are different from those of the United States. The financial information included in this notice has been prepared in accordance with accounting standards in Finland, which may not be comparable to the financial statements or financial information of United States companies. It may be difficult for Ahlstroms shareholders to enforce their rights and any claim they may have arising under the federal securities laws, since Munksjo and Ahlstrom are located in non-U.S. jurisdictions, and all of their officers and directors are residents of non-U.S. jurisdictions. Ahlstroms shareholders may not be able to sue Munksjo or Ahlstrom or their officers or directors in a court in Finland for violations of the U.S. securities laws. It may be difficult to compel Munksjo and Ahlstrom and their affiliates to subject themselves to a U.S. courts judgment. Ahlstroms shareholders should be aware that Munksjo may purchase Ahlstroms securities otherwise than under the Combination, such as in open market or privately negotiated purchases at any time during the pendency of the proposed offer. Mountain View, CA, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WSO2 today announced that the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) is using the 100% open source WSO2 integration platform to power its transnational data exchange. The platform enables information to be shared easily across some 300 government agencies within the five countries forming the EUU: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The exchange was created by WSO2 partner CROC, one of the largest integrators in Russia. The full case study can be downloaded at http://wso2.com/casestudies/eurasian-economic-union-relies-on-wso2-based-integration-platform-to-foster-economic-collaboration-between-nations. Integrating nations into a single economic bloc is a complex task, particularly as large amounts of data must be shared across nations. This data is key to decisions regarding customs processes, regulation of pharmaceuticals, agriculture, markets and monopolies and more. By enabling secure, cross-border data exchange across the EEU, CROC has enabled each of the nations within the Union to function as an integrated part of a larger economy, as well as help implement regional law and policy decisions. The new case study from WSO2 discusses the business and technology considerations CROC faced in designing the transnational data exchange, along with an overview of the resulting solution architecture. It also examines the integration platform within the exchange and the factors leading CROC to use WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (WSO2 ESB) as the technology to power it. The case study then reviews key benefits that CROC and the EEU have realized. These include on-time project completion, the ability to exceed performance goals, the ease of exchanging data, and the flexibility to integrate diverse systems The entry of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to the EEU was facilitated by the WSO2-based integration platform, since it allowed the countries to exchange customs and tax data. Significantly, the flexibility of the platform also has allowed the Union to launch state-to-state data exchange processes without the need for new development, said Alexey Smirnov, head of the Integration Solutions Practice at CROC. Using WSO2 middleware, we have the confidence that we can meet the technical challenges of integrating the EUU with other governments and agencies around the world. Through its transnational data exchange, the Eurasian Economic Union is demonstrating how government institutions can effectively overcome the complexities of sharing data and services using enterprise-class open source software, said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder, CEO and chief architect. We are excited by CROCs success in using our open source WSO2 ESB to implement the exchanges integration platform and enable a new level of collaboration among EUU countries. About CROC CROC has been working in the IT market since 1992 and today is one of the top 10 IT companies and the top three consulting businesses (Expert Rating Agency, 2016) in Russia. CROC is the Number 1 IT service provider in Russia (PAC, 2015), a leader in IT outsourcing (TAdviser, 2015), application management (PAC, 2015), BI, ERP solutions and e-document management systems (TAdviser, 2015) and telecommunications (Expert Rating Agency, 2016). CROC regularly ranks among the top three Russian IT service providers to the finance (RIA Rating, 2015), government (PAC, 2015), transportation (CNews, 2015), energy (TAdviser, 2016) and retail (CNews, 2016) sectors. For more information, please visit www.croc.com. About WSO2 WSO2 empowers enterprises to build connected businesses and accelerate their pace of innovation with the industrys only lean, fully integrated, and 100% open source enterprise middleware platform. Using WSO2s platform, enterprises have all the functionality to build, integrate, manage, secure and analyze their APIs, applications, Web services, and microserviceson-premises, in the cloud, on mobile devices, and across the Internet of Things. Leading enterprise customers worldwide rely on WSO2s platform and its robust performance and governance for their mission-critical applications. Today, these businesses represent nearly every sector: health, financial, retail, logistics, manufacturing, travel, technology, telecom and more. Visit http://wso2.com to learn more, or check out the WSO2 community on the WSO2 Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. ### Bend, Oregon, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Signal Bay, Inc. (OTCQB: SGBY) a Life Science company and the market leader in cannabis testing and laboratory services is pleased to announce that the Company has been uplisted and approved for trading on the OTCQB Marketplace for early stage and developing U.S. and international companies. The company has also engaged and appointed Christian Carnell, CPA as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). "With this successful uplist the company is now strategically positioned on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace. We believe that the increased transparency, reporting standards, management certification and compliance requirements of the OTCQB that are representative of our commitment to our shareholders will result in greater liquidity and investor awareness of the Companys business model" stated CEO William Waldrop. "This is a validation of the companies continued progress in achieving milestones set out in our business plan" continued Mr. Waldrop, "The Merrill Lynch Research Report High POTential on Cannabis Life Science companies published in 2015 identified Signal Bay as a "leading provider" of cannabis lab testing services and opened a lot of eyes in the retail and institutional investor communities to our potential and we are confident this uplist will bring an even deeper level of investor interest and awareness that will benefit the company and our shareholders in the long term". Signal Bays new CFO, Christian Carnell, holds a Bachelors degree in accounting from the University of Utah and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed through the state of California. He has over ten years of experience in auditing, accounting and financial reporting and has previously worked with over fifty public issuers providing accounting, financial statement preparation and other general business services on a contract basis. Mr. Carnell stated It is a tremendous opportunity to join Signal Bay at such an exciting time. I'm looking forward to helping Signal Bay succeed in the next phases of its growth initiatives and supporting the already tremendous leadership team in place. About Signal Bay, Inc.: Signal Bay, Inc. is the Oregon-based Life Sciences company. Through its three subsidiaries: Signal Bay Research, Signal Bay Services and EVIO Labs; the Company provides research, consulting services, and analytical testing services to the legal cannabis industry. The Company's EVIO Labs division operates state-of-the-art testing facilities and offers accredited testing methodologies performed by a qualified team of scientists to ensure the safety and quality of the nation's cannabis supply. Learn more at http://SignalBay.com or the company can be reached directly @ 1-888-544-EVIO. This news release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in Section 27(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements may contain certain forward-looking statements pertaining to future anticipated or projected plans, performance and developments, as well as other statements relating to future operations and results. Any statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be considered to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "may," "will," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "intends," "goal," "objective," "seek," "attempt," or variations of these or similar words, identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements by their nature are estimates of future results only and involve substantial risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to risks associated with the uncertainty of future financial results, additional financing requirements, development of new products, our ability to complete our product testing and launch our product commercially, the acceptance of our product in the marketplace, the uncertainty of the laws and regulations relating to cannabis, the impact of competitive products or pricing, technological changes, the effect of economic conditions and other uncertainties detailed from time to time in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available at www.sec.gov or https://signalbay.com/investors. 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 Pakistan says seven of its soldiers have been killed by Indian shelling in the disputed region of Kashmir. The soldiers were killed overnight in the Bhimber sector on the de facto border in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the Pakistani military said on November 14. Pakistani troops responded to the "unprovoked" Indian firing, the army added. An Indian Army officer said India's troops "retaliated" to Pakistani fire. The officer added that there were no casualties on the Indian side. Both countries routinely accuse the other of resorting to unprovoked firing and shelling. Tensions between the two nuclear armed neighbors have been rising since India accused Pakistan-based militants of launching an assault on an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir in early September that killed 18 soldiers. Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947. Both claim the disputed Himalayan territory in its entirety and have fought two wars over it. Based on reporting by Reuters and Dawn Important stuff you won't get from the liberal media! We do the surfing so you can be informed AND have a life! 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. The Armenian authorities wish to fill the budget before the elections, and they bring up the army needs as a reason. Zaruhi Postanjyan, who heads the opposition Heritage [Party] National Assembly Faction, on Monday stated the aforesaid at Parliament. She noted this commenting on the bill, pursuant to which 1,000 drams (about US$2) shall be deducted from peoples monthly salaries in Armenia, and for the lives and health of the members of the countrys military. In her words, the Armenian society is proposed to pay for the army itself, so that no one would refuse to do so. But in reality, as per Postanjyan, the authorities simply want to fill the budget, and they seek more convenient reasons to this end. The [parliamentary] elections are coming soon, and this means there is a lot of work to be done, Heritages MP added, with sarcasm. Afghanistan and Pakistan figured prominently on the foreign policy agendas of two U.S. presidents during the past 16 years. George W. Bush launched the United States longest war in Afghanistan in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His successor, President Barack Obama, spent most of his eight years in office trying to bring that war to an end. Still more than 8,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan, and Washingtons aid and support are vital for keeping Afghan institutions and the state they constitute and serve functioning. Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid says President-elect Donald Trump has said little on Afghanistan during his 18 months on the campaign trail, which makes it difficult to read or even speculate on his strategy. Afghanistan doesnt seem to be on his agenda. He doesnt know about it -- as to what is going on there, Rashid said. But he is now confronted by the fact that the U.S. troops are on the front line and he has to have a policy on Afghanistan. In an optimistic sign for Kabul, Afghanistan-born former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad is being touted as one of possible picks for Trumps secretary of state. Nonetheless, the 15-year war in Afghanistan is overshadowed by several ongoing crises such as the complicated struggle against the Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, immigration, climate change, and Washingtons relations with Russia, China, and other major powers. Going by his campaign rhetoric, Trump has cast himself as an isolationist who has publicly questioned U.S. spending on the war against terror in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East region where seemingly intractable conflicts continue to fester. The issue of terrorism and security threats, however, is likely to preoccupy the Trump presidency and might entice him to pay close attention to Afghanistan and perhaps more to its eastern neighbor Pakistan. During his campaign, Trump said he would keep 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan because of Pakistans nuclear arsenal. I would stay in Afghanistan. Its probably the one place we should have gone in the Middle East because its adjacent and right next to Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, he told Fox News in April. So I think you have to stay and do the best you can; not that its ever going to be great, but I dont think we have much of a choice, he said. Rashid, who has followed Washingtons role in the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the early 1980s, says Trump is likely to tap into a lot of international frustration with Islamabad because of its perceived support for the Afghan Taliban and the fact that so many Taliban leaders are still based in Pakistan. In recent years, Pakistans alleged support for the Haqqani network, the Talibans deadly military arm, has provoked criticism from both major U.S. political parties. Trump is likely to be more tough in arm-twisting Islamabad to give up its alleged support for the jihadists. He will be quite tough on Pakistan -- perhaps tougher than the Obama administration, Rashid noted. Pakistan should expect a lot of pressure, not only from the U.S. but also from Europe and the West in general. Rashid says Trump is expected to further strengthen Washingtons mushrooming relationship with Pakistan archrival, India. Cooperation between New Delhi and Washington has grown exponentially in the economic, political, and economic spheres in recent years. Remember that India is a huge destination for American investment also, and that is something that will interest Trump very much, Rashid said. So we are seeing a real shift toward India, which I think will be much more marked during Trumps time. Islamabad is keen to counter allegations that its supports extremist groups. Last week, Pakistans foreign office said that the recent killings of Haqqani network leaders in Afghanistan show that allegations that Islamabad is aiding the group are misplaced. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quick to offer Trump his congratulations. Our deep-seated conviction is that a strong partnership between the two countries remains critical to promoting and sustaining peace, security, and stability in the wider region, he said. fg/ YEREVAN. The tenth annual NATO Week, which will be held until Friday, kicked off Monday in Armenias capital city of Yerevan. Several Armenian officials, German Ambassador Bernhard Matthias Kiesler, and head of the NATO Liaison Office in the South Caucasus, Ambassador William Lahue, delivered opening remarks at the event. In addition, the NATO Secretary Generals Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, James Appathurai, addressed the NATO Week participants with a pre-recorded message. He noted that science and cybersecurity will be discussed within the framework of this event. Appathurai also stressed that Armenia and NATO have such a format for cooperation, and this is the Individual Partnership Action Plan. He added that this cooperation is placed on a major foundation, and that they are also guided by the priorities of Armenia. YEREVAN. An information rallycomprising events in capital city Yerevan as well as in Syunik, Vayots Dzor, and Gegharkunik Provinceswill be held within the framework of NATO Week in Armenia. German Ambassador Bernhard Matthias Kiesler stated about the aforementioned at Mondays kick-off of NATO Week in Armenia, in Yerevan. In the diplomats words, it is important not to be limited only to the capital city, and therefore respective work needs to be done also in the provinces of Armenia. Ambassador Kiesler noted that NATO Week is important in terms of discussing crucial matters yet again, and that these discussions should not be limited to experts alone. In his words, NATO Week is a good opportunity for raising awareness of Armenia-NATO cooperation, and the German embassy in Armenia stands ready to contribute to this process. The German diplomat added that they also work toward setting up an Armenia-NATO trust fund, which is very important project because it will help Armenia fulfill its obligations. YEREVAN. The National Assembly of Armenia on Monday ratified the decision on the countrys joining the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Treaty on Interstate Intelligence. A total of 109 MPs voted for, two deputies voted against, and one MP abstained from voting on this document, which was signed in 2010 in Moscow. When introducing this agreement at Parliament, the First Deputy Chief of Police of Armenia, Hunan Poghosyan, stated, however, that the intelligence data, which Armenia exchanges with the associates in the other CIS countries, will be inaccessible to the Azerbaijani law enforcement, should these data harm the interests of Armenia. YEREVAN. The situation at the line of contact of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict needs to be stabilized. German Ambassador Bernhard Matthias Kiesler on Monday noted about the above-said within the framework of NATO Week in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. Reflecting on the most recent escalation of tension at the conflict zone and its potential impact on the Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs talk at the forthcoming Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council meeting in Hamburg, Germany, the ambassador noted that Germany has not changed its position on the avenues for resolving the Karabakh conflict. In this connection, Kiesler stated that the situation at the line of contact needs to be stabilized and the ceasefire needs to be restored. The diplomat added that Germany welcomes any idea and suggestion that will contribute to the stabilization of this situation. YEREVAN. NATO-Armenia partnership has been strong, and will remain so because it is based on Armenias national interests, and it contributes to the security of the country. Ambassador William Lahue, Head of the NATO Liaison Office in the South Caucasus, stated the aforementioned at Mondays launch of NATO Week in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia. In his words, NATO works with partner countries on matters of mutual concern. Lahue added that this organizations relations with partners are anchored in voluntary cooperation. He noted that, aside from numerous projects, NATO also exchanges information of mutual interest with Armenia. The diplomat of this organization said they also have discussed the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), and that NATO certainly is aware of the impact of such conflicts on Armenia. William Lahue added that although his organization is not an active participant in the Karabakh peace process, it endeavors to provide political support to the institutions that work toward establishing peace in the region. STEPANAKERT. The president of Azerbaijan has three avenues for participating in a teatime in Stepanakert, the capital city of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh). Davit Babayan, the NKR Presidential Spokesperson, noted about the aforementioned reflecting on the aggressive statements by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, who recently visited the line of contact. As per Babayan, the Azerbaijani leadership has an obsession with drinking tea in the capital city of Artsakh. In this connection, we would like to recall the parableabout teathat has been confirmed with the truth of time, [and] which the Azerbaijani authorities should learn, he added. The first possibility [of their drinking tea] is what is now. Drinking tea sitting in Baku, and pledging Karabakh a quick liberation; we can say this is tea with the sweetness of illusions. Second, Azerbaijan recognizes the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, opens an embassy in Stepanakert, [and] organizes a teatime during its opening ceremony. [And] the third possibility is drinking tea at the camp of the prisoners of war. At that time everything will end as it shall end. The leadership of Azerbaijan shall remember this parable, and make a choice. Turkey was vocal in its support for Azerbaijan during clashes in April 2016 in Nagorno-Karabakh, says the report on Turkey issued by the European Commission. Commission Staff Working Document also highlights Turkey's relations with the South Caucasus. Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan agreed to sign a trilateral military cooperation agreement in May 2016. The 2009 protocols on normalisation of relations with Armenia are not yet ratified, the document reads. The report indicates serious allegations of human rights violations and disproportionate use of force by the security forces in Turkey, as well as no progress in aligning the legal framework on elections and political parties with European standards. The authors note that the adoption in May of a law allowing the immunity of a large number of deputies to be lifted and the ensuing detentions and arrests of several HDP Members of Parliament, including the two Co-Chairs, in November is a matter of grave concern. Jeff Badger and Pat Thompson, assistant vice presidents of business banking at Clear Lake Bank & Trust, completed the 2016 Iowa Bankers Associations Commercial Lending School held in Ankeny. The one-week school is designed to prepare commercial lenders who have not been exposed to formal commercial lending education or lenders who want to broaden their commercial lending knowledge to serve effectively and profitably as commercial loan officers. A graduate of Briar Cliff University, Badger began his career with Clear Lake Bank & Trust in 2016 with 11 years of business banking experience. Thompson also joined Clear Lake Bank & Trust in 2016. A graduate of South Dakota University, he has more than 25 years of financial services experience. Established in 1934, Clear Lake Bank and Trust is a locally owned, full-service bank with four offices in Clear Lake, Garner and Mason City. * * * Dale and Judy Mills, innkeepers of the Cupola Inn, were recognized as Iowa Lodging Associations Innkeepers of the Year at its annual Stars of the Industry awards banquet on Nov. 6. The Mills have been innkeepers for 19 years, ever since renovating a cattle shed into guest rooms on their farm three miles southeast of Mason City. The Cupola Inn sits on the banks of the Winnebago and has four guest rooms. Every morning a hot breakfast is delivered to each guests room. The Mills have been members of the Iowa Bed & Breakfast Guild since 1998. *** Courtney Kronemann of Town & Country Insurance Inc. in Osage participated in Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co.s Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) Academy Oct. 2627. CSRs learned about Grinnell Mutual products and how to use company systems. Grinnell Mutual is the 114th-largest property-casualty insurance company in the United States and the largest primary reinsurer of farm mutual companies in North America. * * * Jim Rube retired from Sukup Manufacturing Co. on Nov. 4 after 29 years of service. He worked on floor supports, welding and for the last 17 years as the west building supervisor. A reception was held Nov. 4 and he was presented a plaque as well as several gifts. His plans for retirement are to go fishing and to spend time with family and friends. Sukup Manufacturing is a family-owned grain storage, drying and handling equipment manufacturer in Sheffield. Sukup products are sold throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as in over 50 foreign countries. * * * Hy-Vee Inc. recently gave $100,000 to Meals from the Heartland its largest donation ever to the nonprofit after getting at least 100,000 people to build awareness about the benefits of families eating one more meal together each week. In recognition of National Family Meals Month, Hy-Vee announced a major charity donation challenge in September to get families back around the dinner table. For every family that posted a photo of eating a meal together on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or for every person who shared the message on their social media sites and used the hashtag #HyVeeFamilyMeals, Hy-Vee pledged to donate $1 to Meals from the Heartland, up to $100,000. With this donation, Meals from the Heartland will be able to provide more than 500,000 meals to those in need of food. Meals from the Heartland is made up of volunteers from businesses, schools, churches and community organizations who package meals for delivery to malnourished people in the Midwest, across the United States and around the world. The EU Foreign Affairs Council welcomes progress in negotiations of a new framework agreement with Armenia and looks forward to consideration in due course of the possible opening of a visa dialogue. This is mentioned in the Council conclusions on the Eastern Partnership. During a meeting on Monday, the EU Foreign Affairs Council discussed current multilateral and bilateral relations with the six Eastern Partnership countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. Ministers had an exchange of views on the implementation of the Partnership and possible deliverables to be achieved in 2017, notably with a view to the next Eastern Partnership Summit in November 2017 in Brussels. The Council calls for renewed efforts to promote the peaceful settlement of conflicts in the region on the basis of the principles and norms of international law. The resolution of conflicts, building trust and good neighbourly relations are essential to economic and social development and cooperation. The EU remains committed in its support to the territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of all its partners. The Council recalls the EU's role in conflict resolution and confidence building efforts in support of the existing agreed formats and processes. The Council also looks forward to the next Eastern Partnership Summit to be held in November 2017 in Brussels, and will revert to this matter before the summer. The Summit will review the results delivered by the Eastern Partnership since Riga and will discuss the way forward in further strengthening cooperation between the partner countries and the EU as well as among the partners. The document also says that strengthening the economic and trade dimension of the Eastern Partnership will assist in the further deepening of economic integration with the EU. The Council also reaffirmed that interconnectivity is a key area of EU engagement within the EaP. Energy interconnections, uninterrupted supply of gas and the sustainable use of energy resources, including through exploring the untapped potential of energy efficiency, play an important role in diversifying energy sources and bolstering the resilience of partner countries. YEREVAN. - After the April war any issue related to the army is solved very fast, which should continue this way. Spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, said the aforementioned at the discussion in the Media Center on Monday, referring to the scandalous '1000 AMD to the Army' initiative. ''It turns out we are against the form of this initiative, but not against its content and thus we can't solve this strategic issue because of the form. And this in case we realize that the issus related to the army are solved very quickly, which should continue that way. Even if we raise an issue of ideal administration in the army, preventing any supplier and general from making abuses, the means will, of course, not be sufficient for solving this issue. Who said that everything is ideal in the army now and that only this issue is left? There have been occasions of distrust in the army, but they were unjustifiably multiplied in the Facebook reality. There are no multi millionaire generals in the country at all, I'm saying this officially. These talks were launched in Facebook reality. I think currently the governance transparency proposed by the fund is very well, I can imagine no better way of doing this. I represent not only this agency but also the guys, who stand in the trenches and believe in this initiative,'' he said. Hovhannisyan also noted that '1000 AMD to the Army' initiative can seriously attract contract servicemen to join the armed forces. Attorney Avetik Ishkanyants, for his part, noted that there is no nation-army confidence now, which is very important. ''This confidence doesn't emerge through adopting laws and binding them: it should emerge through other methods, and then the society will make payments upon its own initiative.'' On November 10, the Armenian Government approved the bill, under which any working citizen of Armenia should pay 1000 AMD monthly to the fund of servicemen's assistance. Pursuant to the bill, the families of those dead and servicemen with disability group I will receive non-recurrent 10 mln AMD (group II will receive 5 mln AMD), which will be followed by monthly payments during 20 years. The payment for officers, warrant officer and privates (dead and included in disability group I) will constitute 300,000, 250,000 and 100,000 AMD per month respectively. Those included in disability group II will get 200,000, 150,000 and 100,000 AMD per month respectively. NORTHWOOD Members of the Mitchell County and Worth County boards of supervisors recently met to discuss potential engineering costs of a joint natural gas pipeline. The boards reviewed two engineering proposals, which included the design as well as preliminary work required to make the project shovel ready. The approximately $16 million to $20 million project would consist of either 6- or 8-inch pipe that would begin just south of Joice in Worth County and continue on 400th Street north of Grafton before diverting another mile north and ending in St. Ansgar. The gas line could hook into a Northern Natural Gas line, receiving natural gas from Canada. However, the initial challenge facing the boards is how the two counties will pay for the estimated $800,000 to complete the needed design and prep work before construction could begin. Two bids were received at the meeting: $800,000 from Montana-Dakota Utilities and $260,000 from Black Hills Energy. David Yexley of Montana-Dakota Utilities, a division of MDU Resources Group Inc., laid out the plan the utility company would use to move the counties to shovel ready status. He estimated the preliminary costs at approximately $800,000 during an August meeting. Black Hills Energy attended that meeting, according to Mitchell County Supervisor Stan Walk, and sent back a much lower bid. We believe Black Hills Energy left things off the table in order to get the low bid, Walk said. We (the two boards) decided we were not going to take the low bid and then be faced with a bunch of change orders. Before we know it, the low bid could be higher than the highest bid. Walk said the boards were going to ask Black Hills to resubmit an all inclusive bid by the next joint board meeting, scheduled for Jan. 24, 2017. The boards also will ask a representative of Montana-Dakota Utilities to appear at the same meeting. According to Walk, once the bid is let for the project, design and prep work could take seven to 10 months to complete before construction would begin. I wouldnt expect construction to even begin until 2018, Walk said. The Turkish authorities should decide on their own whether to maintain the rapprochement policy with the EU or not. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has been set for German presidency, said the aforementioned in an interview with Bild, TASS reports. ''We can't decide for the Ankara government whether to finally close the door leading to the EU and turn away from the Western world or not,'' he said. ''This is Ankara's zone of responsibility: if it decides to again institute capital punishment, this will be a clear indication that it intends to finally close its 'European files,''' Steinmeier added. In his words, the German Government constantly states that the 'mass arrests, sackings and attacks in the press and opposition in Turkey cause serious concern.' ''At the same time, Turkey is too important to us even by virtue of the close human ties between the two countries to allow ourselves interrupt the dialogue in this difficult time,'' he stressed. ''In the foreign policy we are not Jedi Knights, who can create reality by a laser sword: we must move by the difficult path of dialogue,'' the Foreign Minister concluded. YEREVAN. - President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on Monday attended the solemn ceremony dedicated to the 20th anniversary of introducing the local self-government system in Armenia. In his speech, the President congratulated those present on this occasion, noting: ''20 years ago, on 10 November 1996, the first elections of community leaders and city council took place. Thereby a new and democratic self-government system, which was fundamentally different from the previous one, was introduced in Armenia. During that period we often moved forward by the methodology of experiencing, since our own historic tradition in this area was interrupted long ago. We oftentimes filled this gap thanks to the support of the international community. In this context, I'd like to thank the diplomats and representatives of international organizations present for the diverse support provided to us. Armenia's membership to the Council of Europe especially contributed to the establishment and improvement of the self-government system. The key pledges of our progress in this area were the approximation of our legislation with the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and its efficient application. Today we can note with satisfaction that the local self-government system in Armenia has not only been established, but also proved its vitality. When I say that the local self- government system has been established, I don't mean that we have no shortcomings in this area. This doesn't mean that the leaders of all our communities are a success or that that there are no derelictions. This means that the system has indeed been established, and we should constantly work towards improving it." "Today it is not enough to record the existing issues and problems and report them to me, the Prime Minister or Minister of Territorial Administration. Part of this function is successfully carried out by media and NGOs. Apparently, our citizens have more expectations, and those who are not able to find answers to the day-to-day issues of their fellow citizens and villagers will simply waste the confidence vote of the community residents. The Government and the local self-government bodies should organize their work as serious and reliable partners. For many years we have invested significant means for the proportionate development of our country. Serious investments are made in the direction of developing the capacities of the provinces and social infrastructures. But the community leaders should rule out consumer's psychology here. Those who work efficiently will get more support." We are especially careful to the border communities, which for decades live and struggle with honor in the conditions of shelling. This is a special direction of our work, which is in the center of my attention and direct control. We have already established a number of privileges for these communities. Investment programs have been implemented and new production centers and workplaces have opened there." ''Administrative and territorial reforms, which have already been launched, are also in the center of our attention. The enlargement of communities is not an end in itself. It is necessary to form local self-government authorities, which will be able to become efficient partners in carrying out the changes initiated by us in the sphere of public administration, promoting decentralization. We will also continue attaching importance to the competitive formation of the pivotal institute of the city council, raising the accountability of its activity. ''Strong community, strong family, strong state this is our formula for powerful Armenia,'' the President concluded. How to Protect Your Business from Counterfeit Money Its not easy to turn a profit in any business, but its a lot harder if you end up selling your products for worthless currency. Counterfeit money is the scourge of many businesses, especially those that do high volume retail sales, and operate in conditions that have muted lighting (like a bar or restaurant). How big is the problem? The U.S. government seized $261 million of fake currency in 2011. That is a staggering sum, and in some ways the problem is getting worse. The rise of digital printing technology has helped counterfeiters make more accurate versions of currency cheaply and easily. They can make copies of bills that are uncannily accurate, and if passed under the right circumstances they can be hard to detect. Businesses that get stuck with them have to report a loss, and its almost impossible to get restitution from the counterfeiters, who are usually long gone by the time anybody discovers their nefarious work. Some retail businesses try to limit their losses by refusing to take any denomination higher than a $20 bill, but as many of them have found out, if you get burned enough times with $20 bills you can lose a lot of money even with that precaution. You can be sure that million dollar figure contains a lot of small denominations. So, what can be done? Smart businesses know that the first line of defense is to train your employees to recognize a counterfeit bill when they see it. There are certain telltale signs even with the best digital printing job, and here are the ones to look for. The portrait. The first thing to look for is if the portrait stands out from the background of the currency. Its hard for counterfeiters to create this effect, and many times a fake bill will have a portrait that blends in with the background. The seals. The two main seals, of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, should be clear, distinct and sharp. If they are blurred, its the sign of a fake. The serial numbers. The serial numbers in the bottom right of the front of the bill should be the same green color as the Treasury seal. The size and spacing of the numbers can be a challenge for counterfeiters, but a more common mistake is that they will print multiple fake bills with the same serial numbers. The borders. The borders of the bill should be clear, sharp, and unbroken. Sometimes the borders on a phony bill will be blurred, because the ink bleeds. The color. Because counterfeiters dont always use starch-free paper, a phony bill will turn blue or black when tested with an iodine-based counterfeit detector pen. The starch in the paper reacts to the iodine, turning the ink blue or black. A genuine bill will turn yellow when tested this way. The texture. This is probably the most common method of detecting fake currency. If you run your fingers along the surface of a genuine bill, the texture should be raised, not smooth. If the bill is smooth to the touch, its probably a fake. The watermark. This is another easy way for an ordinary person to identify a counterfeit bill. With genuine bills, you can see a shadow of the portrait when the bill is held up to the light. Thats the watermark. Counterfeiters often cant duplicate the watermark, or they will sometimes have the wrong watermark on the bill (e.g., theyll have the shadow of Lincolns portrait instead of Jeffersons). The paper. Again, this is another thing that counterfeiters have a hard time duplicating. Real U.S. currency has tiny red and blue fibers embedded in the paper, and if you look closely you can see them. Counterfeiters sometimes manage to put the fibers on the surface of the paper, but they are usually unable to get them embedded. Smart stores will train employees to take their time and really examine a bill if they suspect a counterfeit. Criminals will often try to hurry an employee, or distract them, to get away with passing the fake bill. If employees take the time to examine the bill carefully, they will often be able to spot a counterfeit. Even the most diligent employee will sometimes get fooled, however, and thats why companies are increasingly relying on technology to help their businesses spot phony bills. Besides the iodine based detector pens, there are other options. They include: Watermark lamps. They shine a bright light to illuminate the embedded watermark. The employee still has to know what to look for in a watermark for this device to be effective, however. UV lights. The UV light activates an embedded color security strip on the bill that is only visible under the UV black light. This can be very effective; however it also requires some knowledge of currency denominations and their currency strips. Magnetic ink scanners. These machines are simple scanners that detect if the ink on a bill is real or counterfeit. They are easy to use, but can be fooled sometimes. Multi test scanners. These machines put a bill through multiple tests, and are the most advanced and efficient counterfeit currency detection devices on the market. They are almost completely foolproof, and can spot a multitude of counterfeiting techniques. They can be expensive, but for a high volume retail business, they more than pay for themselves in preventing losses from counterfeiters. The machines come in a variety of styles and sizes, from small, portable ones to hybrid versions that are also currency counters. Counterfeiting is as old as money itself. The Greeks and Romans had counterfeiters among them, and the problem got so bad in the U.S. after the Civil War that the Secret Service was formed to fight it. There will always be people who try to beat the system by passing phony currency, but smart businesses will stay one step ahead of them with the latest technological safeguards. Alex Reichmann is a currency counterfeit detection expert and the owner of ITestCash. Helping businesses protect themselves against counterfeit currency started as a family affair, with Alexs grandfather contributing to the creation of the Dri Mark counterfeit detector pen. Reichmann can be reached at www.itestcash.com Save MASON CITY | The United Way of North Central Iowa has awarded a $10,000 grant to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque to benefit its mental health counseling program. Catholic Charities provides affordable, professional mental health counseling for any individual, couple or family in need who cannot afford these services. Eighty percent of clients served by Catholic Charities do not have insurance. They pay on an income-based sliding fee scale. Last year more than 180 clients in the United Way of North Central Iowa services area received mental health counseling by Catholic Charities, which provides services to anyone regardless of faith background or ability to pay. To speak with a counselor or to set up an appointment in the Mason City office, call 641-424-9683. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sought to allay concerns Monday that a deal to send refugees from remote Pacific camps to the United States could be scuppered by President-elect Donald Trump. Canberra on Sunday announced a "one-off" arrangement that would see an unspecified number of the 1,600 boatpeople held in offshore processing centres on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea settled in the US. But with the political novice, who campaigned to ban Muslim migration, due to take office on January 20, the head of a prominent US anti-immigration think-tank warned: "This is the kind of thing the Trump administration will nix on Day 1." "I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either," Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival." Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia by boat to detention facilities on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru. They are blocked from resettling in Australia even if found to be refugees. Australia's arrangement with the Obama administration followed Turnbull in September saying he was ready to take more refugees from Central America. Officials from the US Department of Homeland Security are due to arrive in Australia soon before heading to Nauru to determine who will be eligible for the US move. While Turnbull spoke to Trump by phone soon after the shock election win last week, he said he did not bring up the refugee issue. "Until January 20 when Donald Trump is inaugurated, the president is Barack Obama and we deal with one administration at a time," he told Channel Nine. "And you dont discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration." Asked if he was confident a president who wants to put up a wall between Mexico and the US to keep people out would honour the commitment, Turnbull was non-committal. "We have a very long history of cooperation with the United States where we, in matters of this kind, are able to pursue our mutual and our respective humanitarian and national security objectives," he said. He added that those granted resettlement would be part of Washington's annual refugee quota and "they are simply managing the mix of their refugee intake just as we are". Refugees who are offered the US option but reject it would be offered a 20-year Nauru visa, while future boat arrivals will not be eligible. Australia has long sought to stem waves of boat migration by people from war-torn Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, using harsh policies including turning back the vessels, and strict secrecy about operations on the high seas and at the remote camps. Although the current conservative government has largely managed to stop the arrivals, conditions in the camps have been widely criticised, with the issue becoming a political headache. He was also fined $24,000. A Singapore court on Friday jailed a former banker who handled Swiss bank BSI's relationship with state investor 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) for 18 weeks for forgery and failure to disclose suspicious transactions. Yak Yew Chee, who worked as a senior vice president at BSI Singapore, was also a private banker for Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, who was described by Singapore authorities as a key figure in the money laundering investigation linked to 1MDB. Yak pleaded guilty to four of seven charges at Singapore's state court. He was also fined S$24,000 (13,497 pounds). Read more here from Reuters. More From Singapore Business Review It wants to refocus on Japan market. Genting Singapore announced that Algona, a direct wholly-owned subsidiary, entered into a conditional sale and purchase agreement with Landing International Development Limited (LIDL) to dispose of its 100% interest in Callisto Business Limited (Callisto) for a consideration of approximately US$420 million (equivalent to S$588 million). Furthermore, Genting International Resorts Management Limited (GIRML), an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, entered into a conditional sale and purchase agreement with LIDLs directwholly-owned subsidiary, Landing Singapore Limited (LSL), to dispose of GIRMLs 50% shareholding in Autumnglow Pte. Ltd. (Autumnglow) for S$1. Callistos wholly-owned subsidiary, Happy Bay Pte. Ltd., owns 50% of Landing Jeju Development Co., Ltd., (Jv Co) which is developing an integrated resort in Jeju, Korea. Completion of the Disposals will occur simultaneously and is expected to be in Q1 2017, conditional upon LIDL having obtained their shareholders approval for the Disposals. The US$420 million cash consideration for the Callisto Disposal is derived based on an agreed premium to the Groups aggregate contributions to the JV Co of US$380.76 million. The aggregate consideration will be paid in two tranches, with US$220 million payable on completion and the balance (secured by a charge over the shares of Callisto) payable within six months thereafter. The Group is comfortable in delivering healthy performance at Resorts World Sentosa. The Group has narrated its shift to focus on different market segments, and has been developing strategies to improve offerings to the affluent target markets. These strategies, including the Groups brand repositioning and development of new facilities, will help it grow within its home base in the near term. Recent news reports from Japan are encouraging with regards to the advancement of the process to debate and pass the Integrated Resort Promotion Bill. The Group is optimistic that this Bill will be enacted in the near future. Story continues "When this happens, significant resources will need to be devoted to position the Group as a strong candidate for the bidding process," it said. This opportunity is of significant value to the growth of the Group. In implementing the Groups medium term corporate strategies and taking into consideration the above, the Company has decided to dispose of its 50% interest in the JV Co. The aggregate consideration represents a 10% premium to the Groups contributions to the JV Co. More From Singapore Business Review An OECD survey conducted last year found that Singapore has the smartest students in the world. The countrys 15-year-olds competed with children from 76 countries in tests that measured their abilities in maths and science. The local students proved that the city-states education system produces the best results. Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECDs education assessment program says that when the worlds education ministers meet, everyone listens very closely when Singapores representative speaks. According to the OECDs report, the standard of education in a country is a powerful predictor of the wealth that countries will produce in the long run. Source: BBC So, what is Singapore doing that gives its students the ability to perform so well in maths and science? One reason is definitely the Singapore Model of education, a system that has been in practice for over the last three decades. The Singapore model A report in the Financial Times explains that Singapores education system is focused on teaching students skills that help them get jobs. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says, "In Singapore, we try to train people for the jobs they can fill. When our students graduate they find jobs straightaway. Maths and science receive special attention. Even students who opt for humanities in the A-levels are required to continue studying maths or at least one science subject. Source: Shutterstock Source: Shutterstock The Singapore model of education got its start in the 1980s when a group of teachers from the city-state visited several countries, including Canada and Japan to learn about different teaching methods. Subsequently, they developed a system that eschewed memorising lessons and instead focused on problem-solving skills. The changes that were made in the teaching system were influenced by Jerome Bruner, an American educational psychologist who had authored the seminal book, The Process of Education. Bruner held that any subject can be taught to any child at any stage of development if teachers adopt the correct approach. Story continues One unique feature of Singapores educational system is a limited number of subjects are taught at the primary level. But the subjects are studied in detail so that students gain a greater degree of knowledge about them. This is in sharp contrast to the practice followed in the US where the range of subjects is wider but coverage is relatively narrow. Singapores teachers play a key role Source: Pixta Source: Shutterstock Source: Pixta[/caption] The government has devised specific career paths for teachers as it understands that not all of them have the same set of goals. When a Singaporean opts to adopt teaching as a profession, there are three different career tracks that can be followed. Teaching Track this route allows for the professional development of teachers and provides them with the opportunity to gain an understanding of the method and practice of teaching. Those who follow this option can aspire to become a Principal Master Teacher. Leadership Track an individual who chooses this path specialises in administrative jobs and ultimately takes up a leadership position in a school. The Leadership Track is also designed to allow a person to work in Singapores Ministry of Education. Senior Specialist Track those who want to develop deep knowledge and skills in a particular subject can choose this option. This approach has resulted in the countrys teachers focusing on gaining highly specialised skills in their chosen fields. The system is flexible and allows teachers to switch between different tracks. In many other countries, a practice of pushing senior teachers into administrative or management roles is followed. However, this is often counterproductive. The OECDs Andreas Schleicher says, In other school systems we make the best teacher a poor administrator. UK to emulate Singapores model Source: Shutterstock Source: Shutterstock The OECD study ranked UK 20th compared to Singapores first position. This has prompted the UK to announce a scheme that will have 8,000 primary schools in the country adopting the approach that Singapore follows. This scheme, which will cost 41mil, will initially train 700 teachers in maths mastery. Students will use textbooks such as Inspire Maths and Maths No Problem, which are modelled on similar material used in Singapore. Singapore is now shifting its focus to providing a more balanced education Source: Pixabay Source: Pixabay The nations schools have been paying greater attention to the all-round development of students in recent years. This is in contrast to the earlier practice of concentrating solely on the academic curriculum. Students are encouraged to participate in outdoor activities and schools lay special emphasis on developing their emotional and physical health. But the OECDs Andreas Schleicher says that although the steps that have been taken in this direction will help to provide a balanced education, more needs to be done. He says that the country should also concentrate on developing curiosity, creativity, and leadership in its students to complement their academic prowess. (By Ravinder Kapur) Related Articles - Which Industries Pay Most for Postgraduate Degree Holders? - SkillsFuture Make It Work For You - Employment trends in Singapore UP votes for next president tomorrow The University of the Philippines (UP) will vote tomorrow for its next president, who will succeed Alfredo Pascual whose six-year term ends in February next year. The 11-member UP Board of Regents, the highest policy making body of the university, will select the next UP president during a special meeting at the Diliman campus. They will choose among six nominees, who are expected to face the regents prior to the election. The nominees include UP Diliman College of Law dean Danilo Concepcion, UP vice president for administration Gisela Concepcion and former UP vice president for public affairs and Commission on Higher Education (CHED)commissioner Prospero de Vera. Also nominated are former UP Diliman College of Engineering dean and Department of Science and Technology Undersecretary Rowena Cristina Guevara, UP vice president for research and development Benito Pacheco and former UP Diliman chancellor Caesar Saloma. Malacanang recently appointed lawyers Frederick Mikhail Farolan and Angelo Jimenez as members of the board. Farolan and Jimenez replaced regents Magdaleno Albarracin and Georgina Encanto, who were both appointees of former president Benigno Aquino III. The third Aquino appointee Gizela Gonzales-Montinola remains a member of the board. Other members of the board include Pascual, CHED chairperson Patricia Licuanan as well as Sen. Bam Aquino and Rep. Ann Hofer, who chair the Senate committee on education and the House committee on higher education, respectively. Completing the Board of Regents are Ramon Maranilla, Philip Ian Padilla, Raoul Manuel and Alexis Mejia. Janvic Mateo US President-elect Donald Trump is a man Britain and the European Union can do business with, British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Monday, amid sharp EU divisions over the tycoon's upset election win. "Donald Trump, as I've said before, is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain but it can also be a good thing for Europe," Johnson said as he arrived for an EU foreign ministers meeting, having snubbed special talks on the issue the night before. "I think we all need to wait and see what they come up with, but I think we should regard it as a moment of opportunity," he added. Trump's shock election win has sparked deep fears in Europe after his campaign-trail rhetoric appeared to cast doubt on US security commitments to NATO. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called a special dinner late Sunday to discuss the EU's response but Johnson refused to attend, saying it would send a wrong signal to the new president. Mogherini said after Sunday's talks she looked forward to a "very strong partnership" with the Trump administration, but warned that the EU could not just simply wait to see what he came up with. "For the moment it's not a wait-and-see attitude we can afford having because the world goes on, Europe goes on, crisis goes on, but also opportunities we can take go on," she said. Mogherini is pushing a new Global Strategy to give the EU a real defence policy, but Britain and several other EU member states oppose her plans because they believe they will undercut US-led NATO which has guaranteed Europe's security since 1949. Johnson told reporters that increased EU defence cooperation and spending was positive, but it should not come at NATO's expense. "It's important when you're setting up these EU structures that they should be complementary with NATO," he said. "You shouldn't undermine the fundamental security architecture that's looked after us for the last 70 years." Bulgaria risked plunging into fresh political turmoil Sunday after a Moscow-friendly general backed by the Socialist opposition won the presidential run-off, beating the handpicked nominee of centre-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov by a whopping margin. Ex-airforce chief and political novice Rumen Radev swept just over 58 percent of the vote to parliamentary speaker Tsetska Tsacheva's 35 percent, exit polls showed. Borisov earlier threatened to step down if his pro-European Union candidate failed to win. "We will not participate in any way in the government if we lose today," Borisov said earlier on Sunday. Observers say the general's victory might tilt ex-communist Bulgaria, which has long walked a tightrope between Moscow and Brussels, towards Russia's orbit -- a trend seen across eastern and central Europe amid rising euroscepticism. Nearby Moldova also looked set to elect a pro-Russian president on Sunday. The straight-laced Tsacheva has failed to sway disgruntled voters seeking to punish the government over its perceived failure to tackle rampant corruption and poverty in the European Union's poorest member state. "I voted against Borisov because I don't think that he's honest and he hasn't really done anything to improve our lives," said 52-year-old Zora Kardachka, a dry cleaner. The Bulgarian president's role is largely ceremonial but he or she -- Tsacheva would be the first woman in the position -- is nonetheless a respected figure and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Pro-Russian candidate Igor Dodon on Monday emerged as winner of Moldova's hotly disputed presidential runoff, branded an East-West tug-of-war. With 99.9 percent of ballots counted, Socialist Party chief Dodon had 52.3 percent of the votes, according to the electoral commission, with pro-European rival Maia Sandu on 47.7 percent. "We have won, everyone knows it," Dodon told a press conference overnight. But Sandu said on Monday that she does not accept the outcome of the vote in the impoverished ex-Soviet country. "These elections were neither proper nor free," she said at a press conference. "We faced lies and manipulation, the use of dirty money, administrative resources and mass media against us." Some 1,000 people gathered on the central square of the capital Chisinau to protest against the result, an AFP correspondent at the scene said. The demonstrators decried the "rigged elections", calling on the foreign minister and electoral commission leadership to resign over their failure to ensure that all eligible Moldovan nationals residing abroad could vote. Protesters shouted "We need a European president!" and "Jail Dodon!" as police stood by. The full results are expected to be announced later this week. - Ties with Moscow - Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny nation of 3.5 million people is caught in a political tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow respected the results and congratulated the winner. Dodon had come out top in the first round of voting on October 30 with 48 percent ahead of Sandu, a centre-right former education minister who worked for the World Bank, with 38 percent. Dodon -- who served as economy minister under a communist government between 2006 and 2009 -- has called for deeper ties and boosting trade with Moscow. Sandu meanwhile had urged a path towards Europe, calling for the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the Russian-speaking separatist region of Transdniester, which broke away in the early 1990s after a brief civil war. Moldova signed an historic EU association agreement in 2014, and half of its exports now go to the bloc. The move was bitterly opposed by Russia, which responded with an embargo targeting Moldova's crucial agriculture sector. "Close ties united us with Moldova before but then the scope of our relations slid," Peskov told journalists on Monday. "But Russia has always been and remains committed to maintaining ties with Moldova." Both candidates criticised the vote as badly organised, highlighting the shortage of ballot papers for overseas voters. More than 4,000 Moldovan and international observers were on hand to monitor the vote. Turnout was 53.4 percent, the electoral commission said. - Corruption scandals - The vote comes as a Moscow-friendly general also claimed victory in ex-communist Bulgaria's presidential election on Sunday, prompting Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to announce his resignation as his nominee was dealt a crushing defeat. Speaking at a polling station on Sunday, Dodon had described his campaign as "against the oligarchs, against those who have robbed our country and want to destroy it". Moldova has been rocked by corruption scandals and political turmoil in recent years. In 2014, $1 billion (920 million euros) mysteriously disappeared from three banks, prompting huge street protests and the arrest of former prime minister Vlad Filat, who has since been convicted of corruption and abuse of office. A recent report published by Transparency International called the country "the regional launderer for money of dubious origin". Moldova's current Prime Minister Pavel Filip, who has served since January, is pro-European and introduced political changes including the direct presidential vote. Filip on Monday called for Dodon to keep the country on a pro-European path. "The association agreement with the EU and the reforms are irreversible and relate to national interests," Filip wrote on his Facebook page. "It is important to cooperate for the success of key reforms, which are essential to the country's modernisation." As of yesterday, President Duterte planned to push through with his trip to Peru to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, Malacanang said, even as it admitted that things can still change. Duterte on Friday said he would rather skip the APEC summit in the Peruvian capital of Lima because he hated long flights. But he said Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. had convinced him of the need to be present at the event, where 20 other heads of state are expected. Even Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar could not give a definitive answer when asked yesterday whether Duterte would attend the summit. For now, it is confirmed, for now. It can change tomorrow. We dont know what will happen tomorrow. Maybe there could be other activities that could just spring up and activities that are more important than activities in Peru, Andanar said. I dont know. But for now, tuloy po ang Peru (the trip to Peru will push through), he added. There have been speculations that Duterte has reservations about attending the APEC meet because he does not like to see outgoing US President Barack Obama, who has been critical of his anti-drug war. The Philippines and the US has had a rocky relationship since Duterte assumed office in July due to differences over his brutal crackdown on illegal drugs. Duterte has accused the US of interfering with the Philippines affairs and has declared that he would separate himself from the superpower in terms of security and the economy. Duterte eventually clarified that he is not cutting ties with Washington but is merely pushing for a more independent foreign policy. While Andanar could not categorically say whether Duterte is going to Peru, some officials of the Presidential Communications Operations Office are now in Lima. Foreign affairs officials are also scheduled to hold a pre-departure press briefing on the Peru trip in Malacanang today. Story continues Its all about meeting the different leaders of the world. And, also being present in the activities that were arranged by the APEC and Peru. With regard to other activities, outside of it, I dont see any in the list that was forwarded to me. And if ever there will be other activities, I will let you know, Andanar said. If Duterte decides to attend the APEC summit, he would be travelling to Peru via New Zealand. Andanar said a stopover in New Zealand would allow the President to take a rest. I think the stopover will just be not more than 24 hours or it is really just a stopover to take a rest because you know, its difficult to travel more than 24 hours going to Peru, Andanar said. Its just literally a two-hour stopover. And you can just imagine the toll (it will take) on the Presidents body and the rest of the contingent. Also, we have to consider the jetlag and the time zones that you have to adjust to, he added. Andanar could not say if Duterte would have other activities in New Zealand. Things change, activities change. We dont know if there will be an activity with the Filipino community or with other officials of government of New Zealand and it remains to be seen, he said. No complaints Andanar said Duterte is not complaining about his job despite his hectic schedule and taxing foreign trips. There was never a statement from the President that hes complaining. Its just the body. When the trips and the long hours when they take their toll, its beyond a persons control, he said. When we get sick, its just really our body telling us that, Hey, its time to rest. But the President never complained. In fact, all of the trips, all of the activities are being planned by the President. And the President gives go-signal to all of these future events that he will be attending. Duterte said the President and the members of his Cabinet have a 25 hours and eight-days a week job. We cannot complain. We took this job. We accepted the challenges and the role, and we are up to it. In terms of rest, in terms of vacation, you really have to plan those things, Andanar said. There is a scene in the movie Network in which television newscaster Howard Beal, who is slowly losing his mind, goes on the air and rants about all the ills of the country. He tells viewers if they agree, to go to their windows, open them and shout, Im as mad as hell, and Im not going to take this anymore. Last Tuesday night, millions of Americans figuratively went to their windows, opened them, and shouted they were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Donald Trump turned out to be the perfect solution for the mad as hell electorate. Tip ONeil, the speaker of the house of a generation past, used to say, All politics is local and that was demonstrated in North Iowa by how many incumbent Democrat officeholders, supposedly secure in their positions, were unceremoniously booted out by the voters. How did it happen? Cerro Gordo County Supervisor Jay Urdahl, ousted after 28 years in office, said the answer is one word: Trump. He and fellow supervisor Phil Dougherty, with 16 years on the board, both lost to smart, energetic, capable opponents, Tim Latham and Chris Watts. But the winners chief qualification this year is that they werent Democrats already in office. The county Board of Supervisors typically doesnt get much attention from the public. It is made up of three elected officials who meet every Tuesday morning at the courthouse. Their agenda is not exciting: Roads and bridges and drainage ditches and, oh yes, manure management. Sounds like the lyrics to a sad, bad country song. But the board is also responsible for a multi-million dollar budget that is used to take care of the roads and bridges and drainage ditches and for the general health and welfare of county residents. The election results will have a profound effect on the conduct of county government. Heres why: It is a three-member board. That means there will be a 66 percent turnover of board members in January. It is likely that no other government entity in Iowa will top that much of a changing of the guard. The total years of experience on the board will go from 46 to 2 years. Casey Callanan, the only board member not up for re-election, was elected just two years ago. He will now be the senior member of the board. One of the first tasks of this inexperienced board will be to approve the budget for the next fiscal year. Its greatest asset will be Heather Mathre, the budget manager, who has been through this process many times. Incidentally, one of the provisions of the budget will be pay raises for elected officials as recommended by the Compensation Board. In their campaigns, Watts and Latham each called for a pay freeze for supervisors. This will be the first time in at least a generation that the board will be made up of three Republicans, although political affiliation hardly plays a role in county government. A point of reference: Democrat Urdahl was first elected in 1988. Latham and Watts campaigned on a platform of change and are sure to hit the ground running. We wish them success. Urdahl and Dougherty have given a good portion of their adult lives to public service. We thank them and wish them well. Is Singapore really the mecca of startups in Asia? What is happening in the west is happening in Singapore. People stay within safe zones of not pissing anyone off and dont say what needs to be discussed. For all the politically correct rhetoric about Singapore supporting startups or new businesses, the reality for 95 per cent of us is really dismal. Society shuns and laughs at us, friends and family want to dissociate from us, and the gatekeepers who control access to startup programs and investment funds will not support anything that goes against the grain of whats the in-thing right now (typically IOT, on-demand services and fintech). Its ironic when you think they keep preaching about thinking out of the box and reimagining realities and being the first to innovate. Shouldnt we already realise that whats happening in the USA with the left establishing a toxic culture of sweepingly silencing, invalidating and delegitimising anything that they find unacceptable is also happening here in Singapore? You dont realise whats lost until a Black Swan event happens Trump got elected and everyone starts missing Bernie Sanders. The Tories happened, Brexit happened. All outcomes in the west that before their time of occurrence were unthinkable. When are we ever going to learn that weve got to have to start addressing the massive echo chamber that we live in? When do we allow people to stand for what they really feel instead of always dismissing their (unpopular) opinions? This comment by Ian Loon in this article is especially salient: Often startups get shot down because the stakeholders dont believe in new solutions. They always want to stick within their comfort zone, with companies like Facebook and Google [t]he industry is relying a lot on Google and Facebook to innovate the media experience that were delivering. People of influence and clout would say one thing but practise just the opposite. They preach about having to be innovative but when it comes down to it, they themselves continue to stay in their comfort zone, playing the same game Google and Facebook basically forced upon the throats of media companies in the USA, their potential limited by these platform overlords. Story continues The stories pertaining to this stark reality are an elephant in the room, clear for all to see, yet everyone in Singapore resigns themselves to the same plight befalling these US companies, including Mediacorp and SPH. Its not just about exposure and visibility of content its about real revenues being taxed to fulfil distribution goals. Everyone falls back to appease short term exposure goals but in reality their business is encumbered for the long haul, directly and systematically. Theyre picking the low-hanging fruit instead of building ladders to reach higher. Recently, an established Singaporean business owner suggested that if Fessup cant make it in Singapore, then dont think about the world. This is the kind of resistance Ian Loon of NextTechNow talked about people want to stay within their comfort zone and set limits on the potential realities I imagine. By people, I dont just mean established businesses I also point fingers at an emergent culture emanating as a whole across the startup ecosystem and Singapore in general. People wont commit before you reach escape velocity If theres anything wrong about the validation recognition process in Singapore, its that anything that hasnt yet accumulated into a big ball of quantifiably large metric demand gets immediately dismissed as being unworthy of further interest or investment. Elsewhere in the social sciences we understand that quantitative ways of verifying the validity of a hypothesis doesnt always reflect whats really happening. Sometimes, knowing you are on to something is derivative of ethnographic observation the kind of qualitative epistemology that happens largely in the social sciences and humanities. Business folk dont recognise this . I even meet people who were trained in social science who dispute this manner of validating the worth of an anonymous app like Fessup. So you mean Im going to ignore the spontaneity of the back and forth replies on Fessup? Im going to disregard loyal users who use the app everyday because the app provides them a distinct experience they would be hard pressed to find elsewhere because their numbers are small? Do note that Reddit communities do not represent actual offline communities or reflect the way society is organised offline like Fessup does. Cultural Malaise: getting Singaporeans to download your app is like asking them to buy insurance Theres this overwhelming culture of equating anything that dares to be different to mediocrity. For example, I imagine a vast weak ties network for people who dont already know each other on Fessup, an anonymous app that is divorced from the usual expectation of what Facebook offers in terms of socialisation and stigmergy. I imagine an anonymous collective hive mind by default, rather than a network with individuals identified by default: Individual entities Collective entities Identified by default Anonymous by default Thats completely alien to investors and one of them I had the misfortune to interact with (more than once) when I was pitching at Ideasinc and SITF Awards kept telling me that the above cannot apply to an Asian culture, as if it is an untouchable and unmalleable sacred thing. Yet we see anonymous apps like Everytime and Dcard in Korea and Taiwan. Were shortchanged just because investors and support programs cannot recognise that all major innovations in the last decade brought about massive social impact. Facebook and messaging apps changed how we talk to people we know; Airbnb made the supply of temporary residences more liquid; Uber made getting a taxi incredibly frictionless. And here we are dismissing a startup because we find the prospect of running afoul of the establishment here terribly unnerving. If you dont dare to promote yourself, who would? Your friends, your family? They wont. Their first intuition would be: what would my friends think of me if I associate with such mediocrity with such a dismal following? Yet every great project starts off with a dismal following! In fact, early rejection by incumbents might as well be a heuristic predicting later recognition as being truly revolutionary . Just look at how people treated Alibaba, Snapchat and AirBnB in their early days. Your first genuine supporters are usually strangers, people who would adopt your solution because they believe in it for the same reasons as you do. Why should that be the case? Why cant our friends advocate for us instead of just fire and forget Facebook likes (sometimes they even refuse to give a like yeah most of my likes are legit organic). A friend even commented that he would only consider me a legit entrepreneur only after I made my first legit paycheck startling because whats so difficult in being part of a bandwagon after the bandwagon has been established? Why should social media in Singapore be about Facebook and Instagram all the fucking time? My Korean friends laugh at us when I tell them we dont have our own social networking brands like the Koreans have Kakao. We just use Zuckerbergs stuff. Manifest cultural malaise saps founders of happiness Most founders and creative people I know suffer from depression. We live from day to day sapped of the happy chemicals necessary for mental wellness because of a culture that penalises different ways of thinking. The depression also manifests itself in physiological ways such as bleeding from acid reflux and a bowel system turned topsy turvy. I personally go through a minimum of two hours attending to a physiological manifestation I dont have to contend with if the people around me were more supportive. When would we learn from experiences elsewhere and correct this predicament afflicting our most creative minds? To my fellow entrepreneurs (or really anyone at all who face the same cultural roadblock): do you have grievances you would like to share? Why not support our Thunderclap? Im starting a campaign for startup stories: contribute your stories here if you are from Singapore: https://fessup.sg/communities/blk71. - Herbert Eng is founder at Fessup.sg, an app that lets users share stories and engage anonymously. Download Fessup to contribute your stories anonymously! The views expressed here are of the authors, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asias tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here. Image Credit: flynt / 123RF Stock Photo The post How Singapore dismisses startups the same way an intolerant Left betrayed the USA appeared first on e27. With Hong Kong and Singapore leading the charge in fintech innovation in the region, governments and corporations in other markets can take a leaf out of their playbook As two countries with high stature in the global financial sector, Singapore and Hong Kong are equally renowned for pushing the envelope of financial technology (though not in equal measure). New business models and products leveraging on emerging tech have come into focus. In Singapore, for example, the ecosystem has produced startups such as Fundnel, a collaborative investment platform; and CoinPip, a blockchain remittance platform. Banks, corporations and the governments in both markets have been proactively supporting fintech startups both early stage and mature develop and fine tune their products, in order to validate their business models for market readiness. Emerging markets looking to jumpstart their countrys fintech sector need to take a leaf out of these success stories and adapt and localise these lessons into their own markets. Here are what Singapore and Hong Kong are doing right. Ample government support Most startups are cash-strapped and are highly dependent on external funding to keep their lifeblood running. And governments are never in more need of fresh ideas to get out of a sluggish economy and stave off stagnation than they are now. Hence, both countries have been generous in pouring investments as well as other resources into this sector. Last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) pledged a funding of S$225 million (US$164.2 million) spread over five years to ratchet up innovation in the local fintech industry. Beyond monetary assistance, it also providing an accommodating environment to test-trial new technologies. MAS has therefore become the first regulatory agency to create a sandbox environment to test various aspects of fintech including digital and mobile payments, authentication and biometrics, blockchains and distributed ledgers, and Big Data. Story continues The Singapore government is also partnering with local universities to equip a new generation of financial IT professionals with the most relevant and up-to-date fintech skillsets. Also Read: Fintech, insurtech and institutions in Asia a match made in heaven? This has manifested in the form of a collaboration with Singapore Management University (SMU) in 2013, which, together with the MAS and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) now renamed as Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) launched an academy called the Financial IT Academy @SMU (FITA), for this purpose. The government is also setting in place a comprehensive and stringent regulatory framework to facilitate the smooth integration of new financial products such as Bitcoin into the broader market. This includes, for example, giving the legal green light to equity crowdfunding. For Hong Kong, the government is also beginning to stir up a fintech revolution, though not at the same level as Singapores. In September, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) launched a collaboration with the Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) to set up a Fintech Innovation Hub to equip fintech startups with the necessary resources to grow their products. It will also establish a sandbox environment, Fintech Supervisory Sandbox, similar to MAS, providing fintech startups with a test bed to trial their groundbreaking products before launching them in the real world. Also Read: FMAS to boost fintech skills among tertiary students through MOU with 5 polytechnics Earlier this year, the government launched an initiative called InvestHK to bring foreign fintech startups, with a focus on blockchain, e-payment, cybersecurity, and regulatory framework verticals, to its shores. To facilitate this process and raise awareness, InvestHK will be holding fintech events, as well as competitions. A conducive environment for corporations and startups Both Hong Kong and Singapore are reputable for their safe and conducive business environments especially tax and regulatory laws favourable to foreign companies. Thus, these countries have had their work cut out for them, in terms of attracting multinational banks and financial corporations as well as startups to set up shop. With relatively less red tape and legal quandaries to deal with, corporations can instead focus on delivering and pushing new innovative products. In Hong Kong, Accenture has set up a fintech innovation lab. And, last year, SuperCharger fintech accelerator was launched, with the backing of large companies like Standard Chartered, Baidu, and Ernst & Young. Among its alumni is a Hong Kong-based startup, Neat, which was interestingly enough, founded by British entrepreneurs. Its e-banking solution allows users to set up a bank account in 10 minutes, with secure fingerprint scans and facial recognition. In Singapore, not only is there a plethora of fintech accelerators and activities such as the PayPal Incubator, fintech startup pitch days, and festivals. Many e-payment companies have sought the country as their first port of call in the region, which in part, is also driven by the Lion Citys huge appetite for e-commerce. Also Read: How e-payment tech is helping businesses to scale Braintree, a global e-payments for e-commerce provider, is a subsidiary of PayPal. Its service allows customers to pay seamlessly with their preferred payments method, and in their preferred currencies. It is available to merchants in over 46 markets, allowing them to accept over 130 currencies and every major alternative payment types such as Apple and Android Pay. Additionally, it also provides the tools for startups to create secure, seamless and elegant one-touch payment experiences within their apps or on their websites. A final word Singapore and Hong Kong may be at different stages of fintech readiness, but both markets exhibit the right conditions for fintech to germinate. Unlike some emerging markets where high levels of corruption pose obstacles that prevent or discourage financial institutions from setting up, the two aforementioned markets have a low barrier to entry, making them ideal locations for fintech startups to innovate and roll out their products. Image Credit: feelart / 123RF Stock Photo Disclosure: This article was produced by the e27 content marketing team, sponsored by Braintree. The post How Singapore and HK are accelerating the growth of their fintech ecosystems appeared first on e27. Prosecutors were questioning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London on Monday, the latest twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, due to be present while Assange faced a grilling by an Ecuadoran prosecutor, entered the embassy behind the famous Harrods department store shortly before 1000 GMT, an AFP photographer said. Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson said the questioning is expected to last several days at the embassy where the founder of the secret-spilling website has been holed up for four years, refusing to come out over fears he could be extradited to the United States. "I am very hopeful," Samuelsson told Sweden's TT news agency. "Objectively, there is no doubt that everything happened as Assange said it did." Assange, a 45-year-old Australian, sought refuge in the embassy in June 2012 after Sweden sought his arrest over allegations of rape and sexual assault. He has always denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated. The former computer hacker insists his sexual encounters with the two women, who he met on a 2010 trip to Sweden, were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he could be extradited over WikiLeaks' explosive release of 500,000 US secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. - 'Time for a trial' - A small group of protesters gathered outside the embassy to greet the prosecutors, waving banners reading "Free Assange" and "You Won't Stop WikiLeaks". "Freedom Loving People of the World Say Thank You Ecuador!" read another banner hung under the balcony from which Assange has sometimes addressed supporters. But Elisabeth Fritz, the lawyer for Assange's alleged victim, said: "My client has been waiting six years for justice... It is time for this to go to trial." She added in a statement: "We are expecting that the prosecutor will announce charges after this questioning and that these charges lead to a trial in a Swedish court." A Swedish police inspector was also due to attend the questioning and investigators planned to take a DNA sample from Assange, subject to his agreement. The grilling has been delayed in the past because of diplomatic disagreements between Ecuador and Sweden, making this the first time Assange has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Speaking through his lawyer, Assange has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. - Petition for Trump 'pardon' - In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on President-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" -- an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 17,700 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. Later on Monday WikiLeaks said Samuelsson had not been summoned to attend Assange's questioning, blaming Sweden for "irregularities with procedure". "For the first time since August 2010, Mr. Assange was finally able to give his statement in relation to this allegation. "He has done so in part to ensure the Swedish authorities have no further excuse not to discontinue their preliminary investigation," WikiLeaks said in a statement, adding that Assange fully cooperated with the process. The grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Trump defeat Clinton in a stunning upset. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the Clinton leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states. Bench is an online bookkeeping service for small businesses. Its founder, Ian Crosby, started out keeping books for a technology company during college. It didnt take long before his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and he realized that much of what was involved in bookkeeping could be automated. He also recognized that, at the time, there was no single nationally-trusted provider and no standardized way of keeping books. It was then a light bulb turned on in his head: If he could sell his services at a fixed price in a manner that was more efficient, the customer would be much better off. Bookkeepers dont get more efficient, Crosby said in a telephone interview with Small Business Trends. They get eight to ten clients and then tap out. Before Bench, there was no way to make the process scalable and more efficient. Bench Value Proposition Thanks to his experience working with the tech company, Crosby was able to build a highly-efficient proprietary bookkeeping software platform. But the difference that Bench provides is not based on the software itself or the bookkeepers skills (in fact, businesses dont just get one bookkeeper but an entire team of them) but on the efficiency of the process that results from a combination of the two, according to Crosby. Everything is put into a measurable standardized process, which we follow to the letter, he said. Its no different than an automotive assembly line. That is not to suggest that Bench lacks in personal service. According to Crosby, the team of bookkeepers takes the time to explain to customers how reports work, to help them thoroughly understand their financial position. We also do things like show them how to set up back office operations and how to invoice, he said. Our goal is to ensure that every experience a customer has with Bench is a positive one. Bench Bookkeeping Services Bench provides bookkeeping, plain and simple. That includes the monthly financial statement preparation (balance sheet, P&L, cash flow, etc.) and year-end financials. The company focuses on small businesses, many of which have never used a bookkeeper before (50 percent of Benchs clients fall into that category.) And the company reflects that orientation in its pricing. This starts at $125 per month. Also, Bench provides the first month of bookkeeping free, with no obligation. Bench does not provide tax-related services, however. Instead, the company prepares a document for tax professionals that contains all the information needed to complete tax returns. Bench Bookkeeper Qualifications Although a degree in accounting is not required, applicants must have a math-related college degree to qualify as a bookkeeper. They also go through a rigorous month-long certification program to train them on Benchs unique process and software. All bookkeepers work in Benchs offices, located in Vancouver, British Columbia. No offshoring or outsourcing is allowed, something about which Crosby feels strongly. There are quality problems that arise when you offshore services, he said. It may be cheaper to use offshore or outsource, but we make up the difference with efficiency. Getting Started With Bench To get started, Bench clients log into the software platform and input their banking, payroll, merchant account (if applicable) and credit card information. Typically, getting set up on Benchs system takes only a few days. We pull directly from the source, so you dont have to touch it or think about it, Crosby said. We dont want people to have to learn how to use our service. If thats the case, were not doing our job very well. We take keeping up with financials off your plate so you can get on with doing business. Visit the Bench website to learn more or to try the companys services. No matter what business youre in, choosing a first-rate office is important. When your work location allows you to focus on tasks, meet clients with confidence, and project a professional image all at the same time, its easier to achieve results that can help you take your business up a notch. However, choosing an office isnt just a matter of taking the nearest available real estate space. Many factors need to be considered for your property investment to pay off and lower the chances youll pick a space that doesnt fit your needs to a T. For that, you can refer to the tips below. Tips for Finding an Office Space Plan Your Business Needs to the Last Detail By knowing your business needs inside and out, you can narrow down your office space options in no time. Before you decide to bring your business to the nearest center of entrepreneurial activity, ask these questions first: What are the tools, equipment and peripherals you need, at the least? How many employees do you have, if any? How much space do you need to accommodate your equipment and employees? What other amenities, other than the bare essentials, should the office be able to accommodate? Does the office have a space where you can meet clients and other visitors? Is the office conducive to work? Is it free of noise, glare and unpleasant smells? If not, what can you do to make it better? Do you foresee having to expand your space? If so, when do you expect it to happen? Can you afford to pay for the office, regardless of your level of income and expenses? Your benchmark value should be the difference between your lowest projected income and highest projected expenses. Is the location as accessible as possible for you, your employees, your partner companies and your target clients/customers? If its challenging to answer these questions at the moment, try to visualize what your business will be like once its up and running. After all, a TD Bank survey says that 76 percent of business owners credit their success to the use of visualization techniques. One technique you can use is the mind map. Essentially, the mind map starts with one central idea that branches out into several interrelated ideas. For example, you can write the word business on a board, encircle it, draw lines emanating from the circle connected to phrases like location, employees and equipment and so on and so forth. The idea is to make a clear yet comprehensive visual model that helps you pin down every possible consideration for choosing an office space. Mobilize Your Real Estate Team ASAP Of course, purchasing office space isnt like plucking SPAM off a Wal-Mart shelf and checking out with the cashier. You have documents to prepare, papers to sign and landlords to negotiate with. It can be hard to handle all this, unless you have a team of experts to help you. In particular, a real estate broker who specializes in corporate properties can be invaluable. Because they have a thorough understanding of your business needs, brokers can connect you with the owners of properties most suitable to your needs. Plus, if youre lucky to land a tenant broker, you can cut back on costs since those types of brokers are typically compensated by landlords. Youll also need a lawyer whos experienced with real estate matters. A lawyer can help you iron out any kinks in your lease contract, and ensure that the terms and conditions are as favorable to you as possible. Speaking of which Consider Leasing Unless you have millions of dollars in extra cash, it wouldnt be practical to purchase your own property outright. Thats why most startup owners prefer to lease instead. Aside from lower upfront expenses, leasing also lightens the pressure to compensate for your property investment ASAP. The cost of an upfront purchase can take at least seven years to recoup, while a lease contract can last from two to three years. Essentially, leases grant you more flexibility in case your business grows faster or slower than anticipated. Lease payments can also be used as tax deductions, which translates to lower expenses during the life of your business. Be aware that there are different types of leases you can take advantage of, as follows: Net Lease. Aside from your monthly rent, you also pay a portion of expenses such as taxes, insurance and maintenance. Double Net Lease. Your lease is equal to the sum of your rent, taxes and insurance. Triple Net Lease. Your lease is equal to the sum of your rent, taxes, insurance and maintenance. Gross/Fully Serviced/Fixed Lease. Your landlord pays most or all of your operating expenses, though a portion of these may be passed on to you as a load factor. Again, be sure to consult a lawyer for any vaguely worded provisions in your lease. These contracts are often skewed heavily in the landlords favor, so its important every term and condition is clear to you. Consider Shared Office Spaces You dont have to shoulder the lease by yourself. If there are other tenants who lease the same office space, you can divvy up your expenses with them. And if those tenants are engaged in businesses complementary to yours, you can also establish strategic partnerships that will benefit everyone involved. Have a Backup Plan Its possible that, even after careful consideration, your choice of office space may not be the best one after all. To offset any frustrations you might have with that arrangement, choose up to five possible offices that meet most or all of your criteria. Any more than five and youll end up with what is known as analysis paralysis, or the inability to make decisions due to the overabundance of choices. With these tips, you should be able to construct a general plan for choosing an ideal office space. Republished by permission. Original here. Award World Affairs Council Honors Blackboard for Global Commitment to Education The World Affairs Council-Washington, D.C. has honored Blackboard with a Global Education Award, recognizing the ed tech companys commitment to education worldwide. The annual World Affairs Honors Global Education Gala will be held March 29, 2017. Blackboard and four other honorees will receive awards that exemplify the mission of the council, which is to empower educators and students to effectively compete, communicate and lead in this diverse, multicultural nation and worldwide. Blackboards chairman, CEO and president, Bill Ballhaus, will attend and accept the award. We greatly appreciate the recognition from the World Affairs Council of our work to help institutions and learners around the globe overcome their challenges and achieve success, Ballhaus said in a prepared statement. At Blackboard, we are passionate about education and understand the profound difference it can make in individuals lives and in society as a whole. In a separate statement, the World Affairs Council-Washington, D.C. provided some context for the award given to Blackboard: The Global Education Award is our apex annual award for a corporation, foundation or organization that demonstrates global best practice in its international market sector. Each year, the award is presented to a global corporation, foundation, nonprofit or educational institution that is an international exemplar in the development, advancement and delivery of worldwide programs that advance global education, international affairs and global communications. Blackboard reaches more than 100 million users in 90 countries, a representative from Blackboard said Monday. The other honorees include Marymount University, recipient of the Educator of the Year Award; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, recipient of the Global Communications Award; and the Republic of Colombia, recipient of the Distinguished Diplomatic Service Award. Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, will deliver the keynote address and accept the Global Ambassador Award. The World Affairs Council-Washington, D.C. is pleased to award Blackboard with the Global Education Award for its dedication to helping bring millions of people around the world closer to the knowledge they seek, said Pat Gross, the councils co-founder and chairman of the 2017 Honors Gala, in a statement. We share a joint commitment to creating an environment where all individuals can explore the world beyond the classroom and achieve their academic goals. To learn more about the Washington, D.C. chapter of the World Affairs Council, visit the nonprofit organizations website. More information about Blackboard is available on that companys website. Happy Schedulin Sunday! This week is all about Thanksgiving Turkeys and decomposing numbers and making 5! And as always you can download my lesson plans by clicking the image below! The staches will be using my Thanksgiving Research Creation to learn about turkeys and Thanksgiving. We will start off with our schema map by recording our schema about turkeys. The staches will add to the schema map all week long as we learn about Thanksgiving turkeys! We will do a tree map about turkeys! Then we will label a turkey! Each student will do these adorable turkeys from Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade! Sight Word Turkeys! We make these adorable turkeys to assess our sight words! I love this project because its such a cute assessment thats fun for the kids but it also helps them see how important our sight words are. We talk about how we are thankful for the words we read! These turkeys are available in my Gobble Gobble creation! We will also make our infamous paper plate turkeys! These guys are so famous that they have been featured on Yahoo.com! This week we introduce decomposing numbers and making numbers to 5. Start by using red and yellow counters to make 5. Do this whole group using large red and yellow counters made from craft foam! We then do some independent practice! Click this image to see more of our making 5 lesson and get the free recording sheet! After we practice making 5, we introduce number bonds! We do giant number bonds on the floor whole group practice. And then we use our giant paper number bonds for independent practice! For more decomposing number ideas and FREEBIES, click on the image or click here! We are also continuing with word family bootcamp! This week were learning IG and IP words! We will make circle maps then we build words. Finally we write word family words! For Foodie Fun Friday were eating turkey claws (candy corn) and turkey droppings (Reeses Pieces)! For Mad Science this week were making butter! Well talk about liquids and solids and then we will make our own butter and eat it on bread! And thats our week!!!! Thanksgiving Turkeys Freebies! Turkey I Have Who Has Numbers To 20 Thanksgiving Books! Here are the resources were using this week! Join Our Newsletter Subscribe to get our latest content by email. Success! Thank you for joining our newsletter. You will not receive a confirmation email. Press Release Project part of modernization of line connecting Wonju and Gangneung in preparation for Korea hosting a major international sporting event in 2018 KRNA to deploy LTE-R technology for modernization of communications network supporting mission-critical services, such as signaling at speeds of up to 250 km/h 14 November, 2016 Espoo, Finland - Nokia has been selected by the Korea Rail Network Authority (KRNA) as a supplier for the world's first LTE-R mobile broadband network to support railway operations and employee services. The network will be deployed on a railway line between Wonju and Gangneung as part of preparations for the major international sporting event being hosted by the country in 2018. KRNA is responsible for the development and maintenance of railway infrastructure in South Korea as well as a number of other countries. The communications network for KRNA will be based on LTE-R technology, a version of 4G LTE technology that is being developed to meet the mission-critical service requirements of railway operators. The network will support both operational and maintenance services on a high-speed commercial railway line operating at speeds of up to 250 km/h. KRNA's LTE-R network will provide secure, reliable, high-speed connectivity between trains, stations and other railway facilities between Wonju and Gangneung. The network will also be designed to interoperate with other LTE networks supporting public safety and maritime operations as well as legacy VHS (very high frequency) and TRS (trunked radio system) radio networks. This project is intended to serve as a model for future LTE-R deployments, and help further define LTE-R standardization efforts. For this project, Nokia will supply radio access network (RAN) base stations (eNodeBs) along with Nokia NetAct(TM), the first major virtualized network management software for mobile networks. NetAct delivers best-in-class applications for the railway operations and employee services management of KRNA. It also delivers advanced assurance capabilities as part of Nokia's comprehensive, multi-domain Service Assurance program, which provides closed-loop automation to drive greater network agility and optimization. Nokia systems integration and deployment services will help to establish the new LTE-R network. Andrew Cope, head of Korea at Nokia, said: "South Korea has been a world leader in the use of mobile broadband technology to make public services of all kinds safer, more efficient and reliable. With a thirty-year history in the delivery of GSM-R mobile networking technology for railways, and as a pioneer in the development of LTE-R solutions, we are pleased to partner with KRNA to bring these cutting edge capabilities to the country as they prepare to host one of the world's premier sporting events." Resources Connect with Nokia: Subscribe to receive information on specific areas of interest Website Blog LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Instagram Periscope YouTube Glassdoor About Nokia Nokia is a global leader in the technologies that connect people and things. Powered by the innovation of Nokia Bell Labs and Nokia Technologies, the company is at the forefront of creating and licensing the technologies that are increasingly at the heart of our connected lives. With state-of-the-art software, hardware and services for any type of network, Nokia is uniquely positioned to help communication service providers, governments, and large enterprises deliver on the promise of 5G, the Cloud and the Internet of Things. http://nokia.com Media Enquiries Nokia Communications Phone: +358 10 448 4900 Email: press.services@nokia.com Storyful There were no long faces to be seen as a horse literally walked into a bar in an Irish town on October 31, amid joyous celebrations to welcome home US Grand National winner Hewick.The seven-year-old horse was led into The Pint Depot in Bagenalstown, County Carlow, by his trainer John Shark Hanlon on his return from the US, where he scooped $155,000 in prize money. Hanlon bought the champ for just 850 ($844), Irish media reports said.Video shows Hanlon guiding his superstar steed through the doors of the pub, where Hewick lapped up a pint of Guinness.A version of the video on TikTok quickly went viral, clocking up hundreds of thousands of views. Credit: John Hanlon via Storyful Donald Trump has insisted that his proposed wall across the Mexican border will go ahead along with the deportation of up to three million illegal immigrants. Donald Trump The President-elect made his first national television appearance since last weeks shock win to reaffirm his intention to sort out the issue of immigration. Speaking on 60 Minutes, the billionaire businessman said: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. Policies: Donald Trump insists the wall on the Mexican border will be built (Rex) But were getting them out of our country, theyre here illegally. After the border is secure and after everything gets normalised, were going to make a determination on the people that theyre talking about who are terrific people, theyre terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that. But before we make that determination, its very important, we are going to secure our border. InsideGov | Graphiq Trump signalled that the wall could also incorporate fencing on certain sections. Fury: Protests continue to take place against Trumps win (Getty) His comments on the CBS show come as protests in America continue over his dramatic win something that the new President himself mentioned on his Twitter account. He wrote: Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair! The President-elect will officially be sworn in as President on 20 January. Top pic: Getty The raw horror of what unfolded in Paris on the evening of Friday 13 November, 2015 is indelibly etched on France's national memory. A year on, the date, and the names of the 130 dead have been inscribed in stone - set in commemorative plaques unveiled in six locations where the attacks took place. But the letters carved into the new memorials formed the only official words uttered on the first anniversary of the terror attacks. French President Francois Hollande led the vigils at each location, but there was no speech, no sermon and no attempt to give voice to what his nation was feeling. Instead, wearing a grave expression throughout, he made his sombre procession through the city's locked-down streets, surrounded by armed guards. He paused in reflection at each spot, the Mayor of Paris by his side, watched on by silent crowds as he laid wreath after wreath. The final stop was the Bataclan - the historic music venue that will be forever synonymous with the savagery of what took place inside 12 months ago. Ninety people lost their lives there during a murderous two-hour rampage by three terrorists armed with Kalashnikovs and explosives. In the crowd that gathered on this grey Sunday morning, the families of those that died, alongside those who escaped with their lives - but not without physical, mental or emotional injury. The name of each victim was read one by one. Twelve hours earlier the Bataclan had reopened its doors for the first time since the attacks, hosting a concert by Sting attended by more than 1,000 people. His emotive set list fulfilled the hopes of the venue's owners, who had decided to reopen to ensure the 19th century theatre did not become what they described as "a tomb". Their hopes will be realised - music has returned to the Bataclan, and the calendar of gigs being lined up is continuing to grow. But the unveiling of the memorial outside will also be a reminder, as if one was needed, that while this city and this country will move on, it will never forget. The Iraqi army says it has recaptured Nimrud, the site of an ancient city which was devastated by Islamic State. In April 2015 IS released a video after it took control of the area near Mosul in northern Iraq, which showed priceless relics in the 3,000-year-old city being destroyed by militants. The Iraqi military said: "Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division liberated Nimrud town completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings." Nimrud was founded in the 13th century BC and contains one of the most famous archaeological sites in a country dubbed the cradle of civilisation. :: 2015 - Islamic State's trail of historical oblivion When IS captured the city its fighters smashing up ancient artefacts and blew up the Assyrian site. The destruction was part of a campaign by IS against heritage sites under their control that also took in ancient Nineveh on the outskirts of Mosul, Hatra in the desert to the south and Palmyra in neighbouring Syria. IS said shrines and statues were "false idols" that had to be smashed. The United Nations described the act as a war crime, and it is unclear what still remains of Nimrud's ancient ruins. Many of its monumental stone sculptures and reliefs were taken away for display in museums around the world, but some of the bigger structures remained in place when IS took control. Announcing that Nimrud had been recaptured, Iraq's Joint Operations Command (JOC) did not specifically mention the archaeological site, but it is located less than a mile from the town which bears its name. And the Iraqis also say they retook the village of Numaniya, which is on the edge of the ancient city As they push further towards Mosul, Iraqi troops say they are battling waves of suicide car bombers and heavy resistance from IS. :: Hundreds dead in Islamic State 'killing field' near Mosul The advance is continuing on several fronts on what is Iraq's second city, which has been held by IS since 2014. Story continues Special forces hold a handful of urban areas on the outskirts of Mosul, and are planning to advance further in the coming hours. But the advance over the past week has been slow in an effort to avoid casualties. "The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives," said Iraqi special forces Major General Sami al-Aridi. "There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb." On Saturday, suicide car bombers killed a child and injured around a dozen troops and three civilians, officers said. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch says that Kurdish forces advancing against IS have destroyed Arab homes in the disputed areas of Kirkuk and Ninevah provinces, while Kurdish homes were left intact. It says the demolitions took place in disputed areas in northern Iraq which the Kurds want to incorporate into an autonomous region of their own. SOUTH WHITLEY, Ind., Nov. 13, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- This week, Stumps Party introduced a redesigned website, which they expect to improve the shopping experience for professional and amateur event planners. Stumpsparty.com features a simplified site navigation that allows customers to discover any of their 35,000 products in under three clicks. The company, who is celebrating 90 years of business this year, launched this new site redesign to keep up with the needs of their customers in an ever-changing industry. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0ed664d7-5f98-4067-8f83-b57299872209 Matt Wojewuczki, Chief Executive Officer, emphasized that the customer experience was at the forefront when making decisions for the new site. We are improving the layout of our site helping customers find product and solutions faster and providing tools to help plan celebrations for our customers, said Wojewuczki. Other helpful features that the site offers are, making relevant product recommendations, providing a consistent experience across all devices, improving account portal (which helps with tracking orders and viewing order histories), making improvements to the navigation, boosting site speed, and creating more content to inspire and help plan celebrations. The redesigned site is expected to make planning memorable celebrations more efficient. We know our customers are busy, and they shop on multiple devices (e.g. mobile while on the go), and we want to make that as easy as possible, said Wojewuczki. A particularly exciting feature to the company is more advanced options to personalize. One of the most exciting new features is a redesigned personalization engine that continues to provide robust capabilities while being mobile focused, said Bart Robinson, Vice President of Product Management. In its 90 years of operation, Stumps has placed an emphasis on customized solutions for party and event planning. We started 90 years ago, and have made many changes as we have grown and expanded our product offering, said Wojewuczki. This is just one more step in evolution, and is aligned with our passion for making celebrations for our customers as special and unique as possible. Throughout the end of 2016, Stumps Party will be celebrating the milestone with 90 Days of Deals. About Stumps Party Stumps Party started selling personalized prom party favors for prom 90 years ago. Today, the company sells to event planners across the nation and provides innovative solutions for the needs of their customer. With more than 35,000 products available, Stumps Party is the premier destination for exclusive event themes, large format items, and personalized products. ZAGREB (Reuters) - A group of migrants who had marched for two days from the Serbian capital Belgrade were stopped on Sunday at the border with Croatia, a European Union member which said would not allow illegal crossings. Some 150 migrants, reported as being mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, left Belgrade on Friday to walk about 125 km (80 miles) to the Croatian border, demanding free and secure passage to Western Europe. Due to exhaustion and cold weather, some decided to give up the march, media reported. But most of them, arriving at the Serbian border town of Sid, said they would wait until the frontier with Croatia was opened and refused to be accommodated in the reception center. "There is not a single reason why anyone should enter Croatia illegally. Croatian police will protect the border from such attempts," Croatia's Interior Minister Vlaho Orepic said on Sunday after a visit to the Tovarnik border crossing near where a group of migrants was stranded on the Serbian side. According to the U.N. refugee agency, around 6,400 migrants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently registered in Serbia, a candidate for EU membership. Local non-governmental organizations say their number is close to 10,000 and they mostly arrived from Bulgaria and Macedonia. Last month, another group tried a similar march toward the Hungarian border but eventually decided to return to Belgrade. Hungary, another EU member, has practically sealed its borders to migrants. Last year, a total of 579,518 migrants and asylum seekers were registered arriving in Serbia, out of more than a million who made it to Europe by land and sea. A deal between Turkey and the European Union, struck in March, has largely shut off the flow of people reaching Greece and the Balkans. Austria began consultations with Balkan states this month to see what measures can be taken if the deal collapses. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Tom Heneghan) CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's government and opposition on Saturday reached tentative deals in the areas of elections and foreign aid as part of a Vatican-backed dialogue process, though the agreements fell far short of initial opposition demands. Allies of President Nicolas Maduro will consider letting foreign donors provide food and medicine to the crisis-hit country and work towards naming new directors to the national elections authority, which the opposition says favours Maduro. "We agree to promote respectful political action," said ruling Socialist Party Director Jorge Rodriguez, reading from a conciliatory joint statement agreed to by both sides. "The common good is above our legitimate differences." The steady decay of the OPEC nation's economy and a growing political standoff over a referendum on Maduro's rule led both the Vatican and U.S. diplomats to set up a dialogue in late October. The two sides will meet again on Dec. 6, contrary to the opposition's vow to walk away from the talks if the government did not set in motion a recall referendum on Maduro's rule and release more than 100 jailed opposition activists. They will work together to name two new members to the five-member elections board, which last month scuttled an opposition recall effort and escalated the country's political standoff. The government allowing foreign assistance effectively acknowledges the dire situation in Venezuela, where millions are struggling to eat three meals per day. But rather than agreeing to the release of more than 100 jailed opposition activists, the joint statement made a vague nod to releasing detainees - without providing names or numbers. The agreement also involves holding new elections for legislators from the state of Amazonas who were suspended from their posts by a court sentence last year. Maduro critics on Saturday called that an overly generous concession. "I can't stay quiet as I watch the way we give more oxygen to the dictatorship," wrote opposition politician Reinaldo Diaz in a tweet that was retweeted by the official account of hard-line opposition party Popular Will. The dialogue has been hailed in the international community for bringing the two sides to the table. But the talks may break down once the two sides begin serious discussions on the issue of the recall referendum, which Socialist Party officials have repeatedly ruled out (This version of the story corrects quote in paragraph 10 to say 'we' instead 'the government') (Reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) William McKinley woke up to his dogs barking around 5 a.m. Saturday and went outside his Four Hills home to see what was going on. He never made it back inside. Police found the 55-year-old home remodeler stabbed multiple times in front of his driveway in the 1500 block of Soplo Road SE, his father-in-law sitting on his chest to try to slow the bleeding. Paramedics took McKinley to a hospital, where he died. Albuquerque officer Simon Drobik said police think that McKinley confronted two thieves who had broken into his car, and that at least one of them stabbed him. No one had been arrested by Saturday night. A good man was viciously attacked by what I can only describe as a predator, Drobik said. McKinley spent much of his career working at Sandia National Laboratories and a few years ago started a home remodeling company called McJones Homes, his daughter Valerie McKinley said Saturday. She said he was religious and ran a Bible study group out of his home. He was married, and had three grown children and two grandchildren. McKinley graduated from Sandia High School and was well-known in the community he couldnt go to the grocery store without bumping into somebody he knew, his daughter said. He thought every day was worth celebrating, she said. Every day was a holiday, each day was something to give. He loved every part of his life. And he always knew if he died he would go to heaven. Before he died, McKinley told police two men had been trying to break into his truck and fled in a dark-colored Jeep. The assailants were gone when police arrived and they havent been identified. Drobik said investigators are working to find out who they are. Turn yourself in, or we are going to find you, he said. Officers who responded found that a window had been broken out of McKinleys truck. They also discovered that four other cars had been broken into in the Four Hills neighborhood overnight, including McKinleys neighbors car, Drobik said. He asked residents in the area to report any other recent auto burglaries. That might be the one piece of evidence we need to solve this case, Drobik said. Drobik said there is only one way to get in and out of the neighborhood, an upscale area in Southeast Albuquerque, and he asked residents with surveillance cameras to check their recordings taken between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. to see if it shows anything related to the crime. It appears that it was an auto burglary in progress that progressed from a property crime to a violent crime, Drobik said. He said police have been noticing a trend in crimes like this. These property crime offenders are now without hesitation turning into violent offenders, Drobik said. He said police ask victims to be good witnesses and get a license plate number instead of trying to stop a crime. But he said people have the right to defend their property and understands why they do. Its hard not to defend your property, he said. Valerie McKinley says her dad owned a gun and had a concealed carry permit but apparently didnt have the gun with him when he went outside early Saturday. It doesnt seem like he knew there was any danger, she said. I dont get it. I know if he saw someone out there, he wouldnt have come out unarmed. She said her father celebrated Christmas with his family on Friday and had gone to look at Christmas lights with a friend that night. They had planned to go to Costco on Saturday. Everyone was just in shock this morning, she said. I guess were just relying on the comfort that he knew he was going to be with Jesus in heaven. Some Twitter users saw Rape Melania in their trending-topics boxes Sunday after images of a protester holding a sign bearing the phrase during a Saturday-night demonstration in the District of Columbia circulated on the social network. Photos of the chilling banner, taken at an anti-Trump rally outside the president-elects new hotel in the nations capital, drew strong condemnations from Trump supporters and opponents alike. The online conversation almost all of it about the signs inappropriateness placed Rape Melania on a list of trending topics for some, but not all, Twitter users. Twitter customizes trending topics based on who users follow and where they are located. Many Twitter users who saw that Rape Melania was trending criticized the technology giant for not removing it from lists of most-discussed subjects. Responding to a Washington Post inquiry, Twitter emphasized that the phrase trended because people denounced it, not because people advocated sexual assault. Something similar happened in March, when the hashtag #StopIslam trended after a terrorist attack in Belgium. The Washington Posts Caitlin Dewey provided a helpful explanation at the time: As disturbing as this hashtag might appear, however, its actually quite the opposite. #StopIslam is only trending now because thousands of people are criticizing it. The hashtag has been in circulation for at least five years, when it first entered the tea party-Twitter lexicon alongside bigoted mainstays such as #bansharia and #IslamIsTheProblem. It began spiking in Spain early this morning, when some trollish, right-wing Twitter users there began tweeting it. #StopIslam didnt really take off, however, until the backlash against it began. Nevertheless, Trump backers have seized on the Rape Melania sign and the social media trend it launched to cast opponents of the next president as hypocrites whose objections to Trumps campaign rhetoric are now illegitimate. Trumps critics, meanwhile, are stressing that a single protester does not represent all of them. While on the job for Coronado Wrecking and Salvage, Andrew Vasquez directed the loading of steel beams onto a flatbed trailer. A co-worker operating a forklift became concerned the beams werent properly positioned on the forks. Instead of lowering them to the ground, he climbed out of the cab for a better view. As he did so, one of the steel beams slid off and struck Vasquez, pinning him to the ground. He died a short time later in the hospital. According to an order issued by the trial judge, the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau investigated the accident and cited Coronado for violations of various safety regulations. That left the question of compensation for Vasquezs survivors. Because he was killed on the job, his estate collected workers compensation. Workers comp has always been a trade-off. An injured worker (or the estate of a worker killed on the job) is entitled to limited compensation without a showing of fault. In return, the employer is granted immunity from being sued for the accident. But how far does the immunity from suit extend? One New Mexico statute says comp benefits are provided in lieu of any other liability whatsoever. That word whatsoever is comprehensive. Viewed in isolation, the statute can only mean that a worker injured or killed on the job is prohibited from obtaining compensation from any other source. But not so fast! Another statute says: No cause of action outside the Workers Compensation Act shall be brought against the employer or [its] representative, including the insurer. That provision limits the grant of immunity to only a small circle, leaving a wide field of others who might potentially be subject to suit. So which statute is controlling? The inconsistency between those statutes merely begins the complications. New Mexico also has on its books the Mandatory Financial Responsibility Act, which establishes the general rule that all car insurance policies must include coverage for accidents caused by uninsured motor vehicles. Coronados forklift was an uninsured motor vehicle. Andrew Vasquezs personal car insurance policy included uninsured motorist coverage. So did Coronados car insurance. (Coronado had insurance on vehicles other than the forklift, or so the judicial opinions in the case imply.) Vasquez was a beneficiary under both policies. But after drawing comp benefits, was his estate entitled to collect under either policy? Both? Neither? If comp benefits are truly exclusive, such that his estate was prohibited from obtaining compensation from any other source whatsoever, then the answer is obviously neither. But if instead the grant of immunity prohibits claims only against the employer or its representative or insurer, the answer is one or possibly both (depending on whether insurer means workers comp insurer or any insurer). The problem gets even trickier when one considers the purpose behind the uninsured motorist law, which is precisely to provide insurance benefits to those who are injured or killed by the operation of uninsured motor vehicles. People like Mr. Vasquez. How to enforce all these inconsistent statutes at once? Back in 1987, our state Supreme Court simplified the matter by denying that workers comp benefits were exclusive, ruling that an injured worker was entitled to recovery under both comp and the employers car insurance. In response, the Legislature enacted a new statute providing yet a third version of workers comp exclusivity. The new statute says an injured worker is entitled to uninsured motorist benefits so long as the worker paid the policy premiums. In other words, the worker is entitled to what he or she paid for. But, the new statute continued, If the employer paid the premium, the worker or his legal representative may not retain any compensation due under (the policy) and that amount shall be due to the employer. That statutory language couldnt be clearer. But clarity alone doesnt guarantee enforcement in New Mexicos courts. In 1994, our Supreme Court considered the case of a worker injured by an uninsured motorist while on the job. The court pointed out that enforcing the statute as written could potentially allow the employer to recover more from uninsured motorist coverage than it paid out as comp benefits. The employer could profit from its workers injury. That struck the justices as wrong. In another state, judges might have dutifully enforced the statute as written, while pointing out the anomaly, perhaps suggesting the Legislature consider a rewrite. But our justices effectively rewrote the statute themselves, adding a codicil that appears only in the case reports. The justices held that any insurance proceeds in excess of comp benefits go to the injured worker regardless of who paid the premiums the opposite of what the statute actually says. Such was the foggy legal landscape when Andrew Vasquezs estate sued the insurance company that provided Coronados uninsured motorist coverage. The estate claimed that, under the 1994 Supreme Court decision, any amount in excess of the comp benefits should be paid to it even though Coronado paid the premiums. Under the 1994 decision, the estates claim was a strong one, despite being foreclosed by statute. But after consistently zigging in its previous decisions, the Supreme Court last month decided to zag. It held that Coronado Wrecking, not the Vasquez estate, was entitled to any excess insurance benefits. The court didnt overrule its 1994 decision, but drew a distinction between injuries caused by third parties, as in 1994, and by co-workers, as in the Vasquez case. Why entitlement to insurance proceeds should turn on that distinction isnt clearly explained in the opinion. The legal landscape remains foggy, but now the fog has shifted. MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi troops entered a town south of Mosul on Sunday where Islamic State militants destroyed artefacts at a nearby ancient Assyrian archaeological site, while special forces fended off suicide bombers during a cautious advance into the northern city. The push into Nimrud was the most significant gain in several days for government forces, potentially opening up the area for teams to assess the damage done to the famed ruins just outside the town. Troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city and the biggest urban area under IS control, as part of an offensive launched last month. The special forces have advanced the farthest so far, and hold a handful of districts on the citys eastern edge, but their progress has slowed in the face of fierce resistance in dense urban neighborhoods full of civilians. The operations commander said troops took Nimrud, some 19 miles (30 kilometers) south of Mosul, after heavy fighting. It was unclear if they had liberated the nearby 13th-century B.C. archaeological site, which IS destroyed with explosives according to videos they released. The 9th division of the Iraqi army has liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah said in a statement. The late 1980s discovery of treasures in Nimruds royal tombs was one of the 20th centurys most significant archaeological finds. The government said militants, who captured the site in June 2014, destroyed it the following year using heavy military vehicles. Video footage released by the jihadis at the time showed bearded men hammering, bulldozing and ultimately blowing up parts of the ancient Iraqi treasure, ripping down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. They claim the artefacts promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led forces operating the air campaign assisting the operation against IS, said few airstrikes were used near Nimrud, and the advancing Iraqi troops had moved in carefully. Its an important gain, he said, but warned that IS often leaves behind some combatants. As Iraqi forces get closer to Mosul, everything becomes more difficult as they like to leave behind a few fighters to spoil the advance. In Mosul itself, the special forces said they have cleared the Qadisiya and Zahra neighborhoods, and are planning to advance farther in the coming hours. Over the past week they have inched forward slowly, trying to avoid casualties among their troops and civilians as suicide bombers in armor-plated vehicles charge at them from hideouts in densely populated areas. The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives, said Iraqi special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi as he radioed with commanders in the field. There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb, he said. Troops were building berms and road blocks to prevent car bombs from breaching the front lines. Since last weeks quick advance into Mosul proper, they have struggled to hold territory under heavy IS counterattacks. Several suicide car bombers attacked the advancing special forces on Saturday, wounding around a dozen troops, three civilians, and killing a child, officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to brief reporters. The Iraqi armed forces do not release official casualty figures, but field medics have noted dozens of killed and wounded since the operation to liberate the city began on Oct. 17. Civilians are paying a heavy toll in the battle for Mosul, with nearly 50,000 forced from their homes, most living in displaced persons camps. The Norwegian Refugee Council said Sunday that conditions were worsening for non-combatants, especially over the past week. Civilians have told us of horrific stories from inside Mosul, said Wolfgang Gressmann, the groups Iraq director. They have given terrifying accounts of IS moving them from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from house to house, in tactics identical with being used as human shields. Meanwhile, a leading U.S.-based rights group released a report alleging that security forces of Iraqs regional Kurdish government had routinely destroyed Arab homes and even some whole villages in areas retaken from the Islamic State group over the past two years. The Human Rights Watch report said that between September 2014 and May 2016, Kurdish forces advancing against IS destroyed Arab homes in disputed areas of Kirkuk and Ninevah provinces, while Kurdish homes were left intact. It says the demolitions took place in disputed areas in northern Iraq which the Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region over the objections of the central government. Sunni Arab politicians have previously accused the Kurds of seeking to recast the demographics of mixed areas in northern Iraq. The struggle is particularly intense in the oil-rich Kirkuk region. In village after village in Kirkuk and Ninevah, (Kurdish Regional Government) security forces destroyed Arab homes but not those belonging to Kurds for no legitimate military purpose, said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. KRG leaders political goals dont justify demolishing homes illegally. All sides fighting in the battle for Mosul have been accused of human rights abuses, with the worst allegations attributed to IS. Kurdish forces have been accused of destroying Arab homes before, with a report last year by Amnesty International alleging that the peshmerga carried out the attacks in retaliation for what they said was the Arab communities support for IS. Kurdish authorities say they abide by human rights laws and deny having any strategy to destroy homes. But they say some villages in which the population fought alongside IS have suffered extensive destruction because of the ferocity of the battles. There was a large presence of IEDs placed in these areas, said Kurdish official Dindar Zebari, referring to Sundays report. I have to say this was a huge cause of the destruction following the liberation process. Also Sunday, a wave of attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 23 people and wounded 70 others, inflaming already combustive sectarian tensions in the country. Police and health officials said many of the attacks struck Shiites on their way to an annual pilgrimage, with the deadliest bombing taking place in Baghdads northern Shaab neighborhood. There, an explosives-laden car parked near a checkpoint killed a policeman and two civilians, and wounded 12 others. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. The capital has seen near-daily bombings since the Mosul operation began, but no large-scale attacks. Militants frequently target security forces and the Shiite majority as part of its campaign to destabilize the country. ___ Rohan reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad, and Fay Abuelgasim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report. SANTA FE, N.M., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sigma Labs, Inc. (OTCQB:SGLB) (Sigma Labs or the Company), a provider of quality assurance software under the PrintRite3D brand, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB of Finspang, Sweden, a unit of Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE), for PrintRite3D INSPECT to be installed on a metal printer for evaluation and testing purposes. Additional terms of the agreement were not disclosed. It is an honor to announce this new agreement with Siemens for evaluation of our proprietary PrintRite3D quality assurance software, said Mark Cola, President and CEO of Sigma Labs. Well provide statistical process control and assure part quality for burner repairs as well as set the stage for productivity optimization. Siemens plays a leading role in applying additive manufacturing across its highly-demanding gas turbine operations. We are proud to assist them in providing the highest quality 3D printed components for such technology applications, where Siemens is continuously working on further process improvements. We look forward to a close and beneficial partnership together. About Sigma Labs, Inc. Sigma Labs, Inc. is a provider of quality assurance software under the PrintRite3D brand and a developer of advanced, in-process, non-destructive quality assurance software for commercial firms worldwide seeking productive solutions for advanced manufacturing. For more information please visit us at www.sigmalabsinc.com. About Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB (SIT) in Finspang, Sweden, provides the world with gas turbines and gas turbine based solutions for the sustainable and cost efficient production of electricity, steam and heat. The turbines also work as movers for compressors and pumps, predominantly in the oil and gas business. In February 2016 SIT opened a dedicated workshop for additive manufacturing, development and repairs. The facility specializes in making turbomachinery components for high temperature applications, where accuracy and quality are critical to ensure operational performance. Siemens is a pioneer in the use of Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology for the manufacture of high-performance metal parts. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "believes" or "will." These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could adversely affect us, including the risks set forth in Sigma Labs' most recent annual report on Form 10-K. The forward-looking statements in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release. Sigma Labs undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the Albuquerque metroplex are raised outside of New Mexico. Consumer demand for locally grown food is increasing. Besides private citizens, government and private institutions such as public schools, county senior meals programs, county detention centers and hospitals desire to use fresh fruits and vegetables grown in New Mexico in their meal preparation. To help address the need for locally grown food, Cultivating Bernalillo County, an agricultural initiative of the county government, is calling on New Mexico State Universitys Cooperative Extension Service in Bernalillo County to help train future farmers through its Grow the Growers program. Grow the Growers is a farm training, business incubator program where participants will be supported through classroom education, in-field mentoring, intensive internships, business incubation and entrepreneurial nurturing. Ultimately, the individuals in the countys Grow the Growers incubator program will have access to land and water on county agricultural open-space properties to initiate their small-farm operations. Part of Bernalillo County Open Spaces mission is to protect prime agricultural lands, said Lisa Powell, resource specialist with the countys parks and recreation department. Our mission is advanced when the entire community has improved access to year-round locally grown produce, increased economic development opportunities, and preservation of land and water and other cultural resources that would otherwise be vulnerable to commercial development. NMSUs Extension service and the county are joining forces to provide opportunities for individuals desiring to farm professionally in a way that is especially supportive in the first two to three years of starting a new business. We have a demand for locally grown fruits and vegetables, and we have a desire to preserve open space in beneficial use, said John Garlisch, NMSUs Bernalillo County Extension agricultural agent. These factors, along with an aging farming population, are what this project is trying to address. The first step of the program will be an eight-week core competency classroom series coordinated by the Extension agent. While this training is part of the Grow the Growers program, all farmers are invited to participate in the classes, Garlisch said. The classes will address the business side of farming, which is information any grower needs to be successful. The pilot year of the Grow the Growers program begins Nov. 21. The class will meet for eight weeks from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Mondays at NMSUs Bernalillo County Extension office at 1510 Menaul NW. Cost is $10 per class or $50 for six or more classes. Class topics will include various themes centered on business, financial and marketing, as well as growing and production techniques to help producers make decisions and operate a successful small farm business. Full class topics are found on the Bernalillo County Extension website at http://aces.nmsu.edu/county/bernalillo/farmranch/farm-business-training-.html. After successfully completing the core competency course, those wishing to continue on to the in-field phases of the program must complete an application packet to be considered for selection. Once selected, they will participate in an internship with a fruit or vegetable producer. There they will receive hands-on experience and mentoring. Funds from the McCune Charitable Foundation and Thornburg Foundation will provide a program coordinator who will help nurture the participants entrepreneurial operations by helping them reach the institutional market demands. Hopefully, the produce grown by the participants could potentially be sold to the countys meal-serving facilities, Garlisch said. This is just the beginning of one answer to filling the need for locally grown food for the Albuquerque metroplex. A strong majority of Americans accept Donald Trump as the winner of the presidential election last week, but a significant minority of Hillary Clinton supporters say his victory was illegitimate, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey was conducted immediately after Election Day as anti-Trump protests sprang up across major cities, at the end of an acidic campaign in which Trump himself said he may not accept election results if Clinton prevailed. The Post-ABC poll finds 74 percent of all Americans say they accept the election of Trump as legitimate while 18 percent do not. That result parallels a Post-ABC Tracking Poll just before the election, which found 79 percent of likely voters saying they were prepared to accept the outcome of the election regardless of who they support. But while Trump supporters were more reluctant about accepting results before Tuesday 22 percent said they were not prepared to do so an even larger share of Clinton supporters now say they do not view Trumps election as legitimate. A 58 percent majority of Clinton supporters say they accept Trumps election, while 33 percent do not. Questions about Trumps victory are passionate 27 percent of Clinton supporters feel strongly he did not win legitimately. There are sharp racial and gender differences in Clinton supporters acceptance of the results. Only 18 percent of whites who supported Clinton say Trump is not the legitimate winner, identical to the public overall, but fully 51 percent of black, Hispanic and other nonwhite Clinton supporters say Trumps victory was illegitimate. Women who supported Clinton are twice as likely as men to question the legitimacy of Trumps victory, 42 vs. 21 percent. A Gallup poll released Friday asking a slightly different question found a smaller 23 percent of Clinton supporters saying they would not accept Trump as the legitimate president when he is inaugurated in January. In the Post-ABC poll, nearly all of Trumps supporters say he was elected legitimately, 99 percent, also marking a turnabout in confidence from one week ago when only 69 percent said they were prepared to accept the results of the election. While voters intensely negative views of the major candidate they opposed may explain their willingness to question the overall result, another factor may be the unexpected nature of Trumps win and a split between which candidate won the electoral college and popular vote. Polls largely showed Clinton with a small lead in the popular vote nationally as well as an edge in swing states, and several election forecasters giving Clinton at least an 85 percent chance of winning. Trump won by a margin of 290 to 228 electoral votes (with New Hampshire and Michigan still yet to be called), while Clinton holds a 47.8 percent to 47.3 percent margin in the current popular vote count. In a story Nov. 13 about U.S. Muslims reaction to Donald Trumps election, The Associated Press reported erroneously the campus on which a hijab-wearing student told authorities she had been briefly choked by an assailant shortly after the election of Donald Trump. The choking report came at San Jose State University, not San Diego State University. In a separate incident at San Diego State, a woman in a hijab reported being confronted by men who commented about Trump and grabbed her backpack and car keys; but she was not hurt. A corrected version of the story is below: Trumps election leaves American Muslims reeling and scared American Muslims say they are numb and frightened by the election of Donald Trump as president By RACHEL ZOLL AND DEEPTI HAJELA Associated Press On the morning after the election, Alia Ali had a sickening feeling as she headed to her job as a secretary at a New York City public school, her hijab in place as usual. Ali is a Muslim who lives and works in one of the most diverse places in the U.S., and yet the ascension of Donald Trump to the White House left her wondering how other Americans really viewed her. Half of America voted one way and half of America voted the other, and youre like, Which half am I looking at?' she said. You become almost like strangers to the people youve worked with. Is this person racist? Do they like me? Do they not like me? Because thats what this election has done. American Muslims are reeling following the election of Trump, whose campaign was rife with anti-Muslim rhetoric and proposals that included banning Muslims from entering the country and heightened surveillance of mosques across the nation. Now, among many of the 3.3 million Muslims living in the U.S., there is significant fear, along with some reports of harassment; one hijab-wearing student at San Jose State University said her headscarf was grabbed and she was briefly choked by an assailant after Trumps election victory. There are lots and lots of people who arent going out of the house, said Eboo Patel, a Muslim who heads the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based organization that works with colleges and government officials to build interreligious relationships. At New York University late last week, hundreds of people sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a grand staircase of a student center to express solidarity after the word Trump! was scrawled on the door of a Muslim prayer space at the school. Students spoke of friends who wore headscarves or other traditional clothing and were afraid to take public transportation home for fear of being harassed. Sana Mayat, a 21-year-old senior who wears the hijab, said the election made her realize there was a large part of this country that didnt want me here. There is an intense state of anxiety about the future, said Rami Nashashibi, a parent of three and executive director of Chicagos Inner-City Muslim Action Network, which has been inundated with calls seeking support since Election Day. I grappled with the conversation I had to have with my children. The outcome was especially bitter following an unprecedented voter registration drive by American Muslims, including get-out-the-vote sermons at mosques and the creation of a political action committee, Emerge USA, to mobilize Arabs and Muslims. Enas Almadhwahi, a 28-year-old Yemeni immigrant who has been in the U.S. since 2008, became a citizen this year and voted for the first time. To mark the occasion, she brought her 7-year-old daughter, along with some co-workers. At that moment, I was so happy, said Almadhwahi, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works at an Arab-American community organization. The next day, when she told her daughter Trump had won, the girl cried. A friend had told the little girl that if Trump won, it would mean they couldnt talk anymore. Everything feels like its upside down, Almadhwahi said. I still like to hope Trump will change his words about Muslims. Trumps policy plans remain a mystery, but his administration could radically reshape the Justice Department, which has been an ally under President Barack Obama in protecting Muslim civil rights. Trump could also repeal a key Obama program that prevents the deportation of some immigrants, including Muslims, living in the country illegally. Muslims had far from a perfect relationship with the Obama administration. For years, the president kept the community largely at arms-length, sending surrogates to meet with them amid a stubborn misapprehension, fueled in part by his critics, that Obama, a Christian, was secretly Muslim. Many U.S. Muslim leaders were uncomfortable with his foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere, and objected to his program to fight extremism at home, saying the focus on Muslims ignored other threats from right-wing, anti-government extremists. Still, Muslim leaders had built solid ties with many government officials. Now, they face not only the loss of those connections, but potentially a closed door to their concerns. The friends we have are going to be fewer, said Farhana Khera, president of the California-based civil rights group Muslim Advocates, which has represented clients suing over the New York Police Departments surveillance of American Muslims. I think well be very much in a defensive posture. Since the election, mosques and Muslim groups have organized community meetings and conference calls focused on how to move forward. The Indiana-based Islamic Society of North America, the largest communal Muslim group in the U.S., issued a statement inviting Trump to engage with the community, saying many American Muslims are traumatized by the result of the election and the fear of what is to come. The group said there was no immediate response from Trumps office. Sheik Omar Suleiman, resident scholar at the Valley Ranch Islamic Center in Irving, Texas, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an anti-defamation group, distributed suggested sermons for juma, or Friday prayers at mosques, stressing Quranic verses about remaining strong in the face of hardships. Have hope in the people because Allah may turn their hearts toward you, was among the verses they cited. Faisal R. Khan, founder of a youth advocacy and peace organization near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, attended four Trump campaign rallies over the last year, in part to protest but also to speak with the Republicans supporters. Khan lived years ago in the Midwest, where he knew people who had grown resentful over losing Rust Belt jobs, and said he understands what drew so many working-class whites to the president-elect. Khan has created a Facebook page called Talk To Me America, hoping to start a conversation that can combat anti-Muslim bias. Peaceful protest is good, but at a certain point, we have to sit down and talk, he said. At the end of the day, were all human beings. Were all Americans. ____ Zoll is the AP religion reporter. Construction on the first phase of the much-anticipated Titan Development project across from Presbyterian Hospital is on the horizon. While site work already is underway at the 12.5-acre parcel on the north side of Central Avenue, a zoning amendment request to build a 74-unit apartment complex will be considered by the city Environmental Planning Commission on Dec. 8. Like other Titan apartment communities in Albuquerque, it will carry the Broadstone name, according to a company spokeswoman. With city approval, applicant Cedar Investors can pull building permits on 2.2 acres on the corner of Tijeras Avenue and Cedar Street. At full buildout, Titan envisions two multifamily communities, a hotel, and multiple retail and restaurant establishments, according to a city staff report. The market-rate apartments will consist of studio, one- and two-bedroom units, according to the spokeswoman. Once the necessary permits are in hand, company officials will reveal more details, such as the construction schedule, the categories of tenants being targeted and the economic development boost the project will bring. The development will serve the strong housing demand generated from nearby job centers, such as Presbyterian, the new Innovation District, Downtown employers and the University of New Mexico, according to the staff report. The site is one block north of the Albuquerque Rapid Transit Project. Presbyterian is a minority partner in the development being planned, company officials said in an earlier Journal article. Presbyterian officials said the land was acquired over a 25-year span. The health care system had considered it for hospital operations, but was able to build on the hospitals existing campus and at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho. New Mexico Mutual Speaking of an economic boost, an all-New Mexican labor force of about 200 construction workers will be involved in the yearlong project culminating in New Mexico Mutuals new home office on a five-acre site at San Mateo and Balloon Fiesta Parkway NE. We have a great team assembled, said Jim Lloyd, vice president and senior project manager for Bradbury Stamm, the company selected to build the 58,000-square-foot headquarters. He said it will be a boon for the companys construction partners, who will supply large amounts of glass and stone materials that will figure prominently on the facade of New Mexico Mutuals headquarters. The heavily windowed building will allow light and fresh air into the premises. A bike storage facility and a walking trail also will be included. The $17.2 million facility is designed to meet the needs of the workers compensation insurers workforce for years to come. In addition to New Mexico-based Bradbury Stamm, New Mexico Mutual has also retained Architectural Research Consultants, RMKM Architecture and adviser John Pate, an architect with Molzen Corbin, to carry out the job. Steve Sinovic is the Journals commercial real estate reporter. Developers, brokers, architects, lenders basically anyone with a hand in the commercial real estate market may send news tips, high-resolution photos and illustrations to ssinovic@abqjournal.com or call 505-823-3919. In a deal that will create one of New Mexicos largest financial institutions, Sandia Laboratory and Kirtland federal credit unions will merge some time next year, allowing the new partners to grow business lines and geographic reach in an increasingly competitive banking landscape. Its a sign of the times, say bank and credit union officials, hinting that more mergers and acquisitions may be on the horizon bringing economies of scale, enhanced revenue to expand lending and cutting costs through operational efficiencies. News of growth through strategic acquisitions has been front and center lately. First National Bank of Santa Fe, with assets of $1.7 billion and the largest of the states community banks, in July merged with Kansas-based Sunflower Financial. The transaction created a super community bank with 60 offices in five states. Another notable transaction was New Mexico Bank & Trusts acquisition of Community Bank in Santa Fe in 2015. Also that year, Chino Federal Credit Union folded into First Financial Federal Credit Union and U.S. Eagle Federal Credit Union expanded its footprint to Santa Fe when it merged with New Mexico Correctional Employees Federal Credit Union. With combined assets of $3.1 billion, the combined Sandia-Kirtland institution will dwarf the resources of the largest community bank headquartered in the state Los Alamos National Bank, which has assets of $1.4 billion. Community bank executives worry that mergers such as the one between Sandia and Kirtland are another sign that member-owned credit unions, which are nonprofit, are unfairly muscling in on the banks turf. Most banks are in business to keep shareholders happy by generating profits so that stock values increase. And while credit unions pay millions of dollars in property, sales and employment taxes each year, they enjoy a federal exemption on corporate income. Its an uneven playing field, said Jay Jenkins, president of the New Mexico Bankers Association. He said credit union charters originally focused on serving people of modest financial means with car loans, savings accounts and the like. With the move into commercial lending, Jenkins said, You start to look and smell like a conventional bank. He makes the argument that credit unions should perhaps be taxed on their business loan portfolios. Credit unions say diversifying loan products is a natural evolution to help members fund all aspects of their financial lives and grow the New Mexico economy. It brings more capital to the table to invest in New Mexico businesses, said Robert Chavez, Sandia president and CEO. He said merging Kirtlands $760 million assets with Sandias $2.4 billion will enable the newly formed credit union to make an additional $90 million in business loans. It wont be overnight, but we will have that capacity, Chavez said. As for the banks gripes about federal incomes taxes, Marsha Majors, president and CEO of U.S. Eagle Federal Credit Union, said its an advantage credit unions enjoy because their mission is fundamentally different. The focus on returning earnings not needed for reserves to members through lower fees and better rates is our hallmark, Majors said. After payroll and other operating costs, most profit is plowed back into the organization on behalf of members. Demands from consumers for services such as 24-hour call centers, multipurpose websites and mobile banking are increasing every day, she said. All of these things cost money, said Majors. Why the mergers? Credit union mergers arent a new trend, Majors said, but have been going on for decades. Many small credit unions find it hard to comply with the costs of increased regulation and limited cash resources to accommodate a growing base of members and service demands, she said. Hence the urge to merge. No doubt the trend will continue nationwide and in New Mexico, said Majors, adding that, by 2020, there will be 4,000 credit unions in the U.S., down from the current 6,000. Mergers are occurring on the order of one a day, said Majors. U.S. Eagle hasnt ruled out the possibility at some future time, she said. U.S. Eagle, which is the third-largest credit union in the state, with $917 million in assets, has been posting double-digit growth year over year in assets and members, according to Majors. Kirtlands top executive said the credit unions current charter doesnt allow it to make business loans, so the merger with Sandia is a good move on that front. Well also see economies of scale by sharing compliance and regulatory costs, which is a growing expense, said Dave Seely, Kirtlands CEO and president, on uniting the assets, membership and employees under one brand in the next 18-24 months. Under current law, credit unions can make an unlimited number of small-business loans of $50,000 or less. Larger member business loans are subject to an aggregate cap of 12.25 percent of all assets, but SBA-guaranteed loans dont count toward that cap. This leaves substantial room for credit unions to make any type of prudent small-business loan. Other options New Mexicos slow economic recovery has made banking a tougher business than it was before the 2008 financial panic, said Jenkins, who also is president and CEO of Carlsbad National Bank, a $325 million business with three locations in Carlsbad. But small community banks like Jenkins can expand their footprint without mergers. Everyones always looking for a partner, said Jenkins, referring to a common practice of teaming with other smaller community banks to make commercial loans. Some of these packages are on the smaller side about $10 million. But Jenkins said they help banks diversify their loan portfolios by getting in front of new customers in metro markets. And it helps them build relationships with other institutions that share a lending philosophy, such as the one Carlsbad has with Main Bank in Albuquerque. We are primarily a commercial real estate bank, said Main Bank President Alan Shettlesworth, noting that 80 percent to 85 percent of its assets of $120 million are secured by real estate of some kind. Our biggest concentration is in owner-occupied commercial real estate, such as mom-and-pop-owned dry cleaners, restaurants, collision and repair shops, said Shettlesworth. The average loan amount is well under $1 million, he said, adding he doesnt believe credit unions commercial lending expertise on the real estate side is sophisticated enough to make inroads into this business. This is a small town, and this is our sweet spot, said Shettlesworth. By contrast, he said the big national banks are primarily deposit-generating institutions, deploying money collected from New Mexico account holders and funding larger loans elsewhere. Even if someone came knocking on their door, Shettlesworth and his shareholders are not looking to flip Main Bank to a larger player. We are having fun and growing, he said. Nearly 300 people gathered Sunday in solidarity with communities that have been singled out by President-elect Donald Trump throughout his campaign. Organized by Albuquerque Interfaith and attended by leaders from numerous religious congregations, public schools and nonprofits, the event at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church focused on working together democratically to defend members of the community who may face discrimination and attack. Julie Radoslovich, director of the South Valley Academy, a college-preparatory public charter middle and high school in the heart of the South Valley, said that for many families at the school, Trumps election feels like an attack on them and on diversity, and it has brought fear and uncertainty to their lives. That, she said, is evidenced by some of the questions students asked school social workers in the wake of the election: What is going to happen if my parents get taken away? Are we going into foster care? Can he deport people right away, like in January? How does the government find out who has papers and who doesnt? Whats going to happen to America? The event Sunday aimed to foster unity and validate peoples feelings, organizers said. Today, many people in our congregations and schools are afraid, especially those that our president-elect has regularly attacked, said Christopher McLaren, rector of St. Marks Episcopal Church. Right now, the world feels full of hate, unleashed by an unprecedented presidential campaign that shocked and dismayed many with its name calling, bullying behavior, lack of truth telling and outright disregard for a wide swath of our citizenry. As members of Albuquerque Interfaith, we are committed to stand with those being excluded in our city, in our state and around this county. McLaren told those assembled that when you really get to know people and build relationships with them, you begin to realize the transformational truth that we really are all brothers and sisters, and we share a common humanity with all of its concerns, struggles and joys. And when people of good will join together, he said we can build a stronger democracy that cares for all the people who make this country great. University of New Mexico senior Natalia Garcia said she comes from an immigrant family and was attending the interfaith gathering to speak on behalf of my friends and family members who have lived in the United States for many years but do not hold citizenship. With the election of Donald Trump, a whole community has become emotionally unhinged, experiencing fear, sadness, anger and disappointment all at the same time, Garcia told those gathered. They fear having to go back to a country they do not know. The progress we have made as a nation is being dismantled by the words and ideology of people who are fearful of whats different. The company behind the massive Santolina Master Plan could divert up to $500 million in future tax revenue under a plan headed to the Bernalillo County Commission on Tuesday. Commissioners are set to consider approval of a financing tool known as tax increment development districts. Supporters say the districts provide an incentive for developers to build streets, parks and public amenities quickly because they know theyll be reimbursed by taxpayers. And getting the infrastructure built should make it easier to lure big companies considering a move to New Mexico, they say. Opponents, meanwhile, say the districts are simply a subsidy for sprawl development a way for the developer to be reimbursed with public money for work they would otherwise pay for themselves. The proposal before commissioners Tuesday would allow Santolina to divert 45 percent of the new tax revenue generated there for about 50 years, or until the districts have generated $500 million for public infrastructure, whichever occurs first. The company initially had sought a 75 percent diversion, but agreed to the smaller amount. Creation of the districts would have substantial positive economic impacts, according to a county staff report. Thats based on an economic analysis by Impact DataSource, an Austin-based firm. The analysis, based on information submitted by the developer, estimated that building out Santolina which could someday rival the size of Rio Rancho now would generate a net benefit of about $4.7 billion over a 50-year period. The land is owned by Western Albuquerque Land Holdings LLC, which is managed by Barclays Capital Real Estate, a global financial services firm. The districts would cover about 21 square miles on the West Side, generally southwest of Interstate 40 and 118th Street. Theyre part of the Santolina Master Plan, which establishes zoning and guides development in the area. The New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools recently handed out its top annual awards including the 2016 Charter School of the Year to The Academy for Technology and the Classics in Santa Fe. The ATC is 7-12 college preparatory school chartered by Santa Fe Public Schools has posted the highest achievement results in the district and one of the top performing schools in the state in terms of school grade, PARCC scores and ACT/SAT scores, the coalition said in a news release. Others awards given out the conference late last month at the Albuquerque Marriott in Uptown included: The 2016 Charter School Student of the Year was awarded to Spencer Angel, a senior at Digital Arts and Technology Academy in Albuquerque for his work in the DATA Film Program. The 2016 Charter School Teacher of the Year was given to Alison Garcia from Mission Achievement and Success Charter School, credited with a gift for transforming math into an enjoyable subject for seventh grade students. One of two 2016 Charter School Administrators of the Year went to Octavio Casillas, principal of La Academia Dolores Huerta Charter School in Las Cruces, for his contagious excitement and passion for the school. The other Administrator of the Year was Susan McConnell, principal of North Valley Academy in Albuquerque, for an innovative, project-based curriculum. The 2016 Charter School Governing Council of the Year went to board members of Carinos De Los Ninos Charter School in Espanola for its exemplary work and dedication to support students, staff and parents. In addition, the 2016 Charter School Legislative Champion was presented to Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino and Rep. Monica Youngblood from Albuquerque for their work each legislative session in support of New Mexicos charter schools. The Charter School Authorizer Champion went to Public Education Commissioner Carolyn Shearman from Artesia for her amendment work on the Charter School Act. The New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools is the State of New Mexicos only membership organization that serves and supports charter schools. NMCCS is a 501.c.3 Non-profit organization. Currently, NMCCS serves over 23,000 charter students throughout the state. A former inmate who practices Satanism has filed a lawsuit alleging that prison employees violated her constitutional rights by confiscating her religious materials and prohibiting her from engaging in rituals with other inmates. Monica Lujan argues in a civil rights lawsuit that Corrections Corporation of America and three of its employees, along with a state Department of Corrections worker, violated her right to religious freedom, which is protected by both the state and U.S. constitutions. CCA runs the New Mexico Womens Correctional Facility in Grants, where Lujan was housed. Inmates do not shed their civil rights at the prison door, Lujan says in her lawsuit, which was filed last week in state District Court. Lujan, who was incarcerated from August 2013 to August 2016 on nonviolent offenses, alleges that she requested a copy of The Satanic Bible upon arrival and several times after that, but her requests were denied. She also asked permission to associate with and engage in rituals with other Satanists in the facility, but she was told that the Corrections Department prohibited the practice of Satanism. The New Mexico Department of Corrections spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Friday. CCA did not respond to a request for comment. KOAT-TV reported that Lujan was serving time for drug offenses and forgery. She lives in Bernalillo County. Lujan, who has practiced Satanism since she was 13, says in the lawsuit that the religion does not promote a belief in Satan, but is predicated upon pragmatism, skepticism and materialism. She filed a complaint in August 2015 after her requests for The Satanic Bible were repeatedly denied and was told that the satanic materials were not allowed into the facility. Lujan was also berated by chaplain John Compton, a defendant in the case, for her religion and because of her requests, according to the lawsuit. During a search of her belongings in April, Dolly Jaramillo, a CCA employee, found photocopies of The Satanic Bible excerpts, a prayer book and a drawing of a pentagram. Lujan says she told Jaramillo, who is also a defendant in the case, that she practices Satanism and was told that inmates cannot have Satanist literature, artifacts and materials. Jaramillo then allegedly confiscated all of Lujans religious items and nearly all of her belongings, including her clothing, bedding, toiletries, legal paperwork and correspondence with her attorney. When Lujan objected, she was told that she could be placed in solitary confinement, she alleges. Defendants retaliatory actions, based entirely on their disapproval and misunderstanding of (Lujans) religion, the suit says, did not serve any legitimate penological interest. Lujan says she filed claims requesting the return of her belongings, but the facility never responded. She was unable to earn enough money working in the kitchen to replace the items and spent the remainder of her time at NMWCF lacking the bare essentials of personal hygiene, clothing and bedding, according to the suit. Her belongings were not returned upon her release from prison. The suit says the ban on satanic literature and opportunity to associate with other believers, as well as the retaliation she faced by some employees, constitute violations of the state and federal constitutions. Lujan asks that she be awarded compensatory damages, pain and suffering and legal fees. Now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is relying on the science of vaccine efficacy to recommend flu shots over FluMist nasal spray, fewer New Mexico schools are offering flu clinics. Get ready for a serious bump in student sick days or worse. At Albuquerque Public Schools, which is the same district that rightly gave parents a 10-day deadline last year to get kids up to date on vaccines or provide a valid medical/religious waiver, it means just 57 out of 141 schools will have flu clinics, down from 91 last year. Cost isnt the issue, because the vaccines are still free. Its all because the flu vaccine is a shot and not a nose spray. Newsflash: All childhood vaccinations are shots. DTaP diptheria, tetanus and pertussis is three vaccines in one and is administered as a series of five shots. Tdap, its booster, is also a shot. IPV is the polio vaccine, given in a four-shot series. MMR measles, mumps and rubella is a two-shot series. Hib prevents a type of influenza that can lead to meningitis, pneumonia and a severe throat infection and is a three-shot series. HepA guards against the highly contagious hepatitis A liver virus and is given in two shots. HBV is given in three shots to prevent hepatitis B, an infection that can lead to liver cancer and death. PCV, given in four shots, helps prevent meningitis and a blood infection. And the two-shot varicella series helps prevent chickenpox and thus shingles later in life. The New Mexico Department of Health requires students have all 26 of these vaccinations, at the appropriate ages, to attend public school. APS includes this on its website. So why are almost half of the districts past flu-clinic schools dropping out because the vaccine is now in a single shot? More importantly, why are they being allowed to? Perhaps an unconscionable lack of leadership? Or perhaps because APS leads by emphasizing fear over fact. On Thursday, Superintendent Raquel Reedy sent a letter home with students stressing Donald Trumps election win does not change APS mission or values. Yet that mission and those values should put student health first and foremost, above political pandering. Influenza is highly contagious and especially dangerous to the very young, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. Influenza/pneumonia killed 55,227 people in the United States last year, according to the CDC. Cases have already been confirmed in Bernalillo and Valencia counties this flu season. As with all vaccines, herd immunity is essential to preventing outbreaks and protecting the most medically vulnerable. Its why APS required up-to-date shots after anti-vaccers caused a nationwide measles outbreak in 2015. And its why APS should encourage all students get flu vaccinations this year. No matter who is president during flu season. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers. TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Florida Agency Network (FAN), the largest network of title agencies in Florida, has completed a rigorous third-party examination of its policies and procedures under the Service Organization Controls (SOC) 1 Type 2 standards, demonstrating its commitment to data security and privacy at all levels of its operations. The demanding third-party examinations were administered by the professional IT assurance and compliance staff at 360 Advanced, a respected national Qualified Security Assessor, HITRUST CSF Assessor and Certified Public Accountant firm based in Tampa, FL. Developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Trusted Service Principles (TSP) Framework is based on criteria geared towards technology and cloud-based computing systems, and the TSP Framework is comprised of five standards by which a practitioner is required to examine and report on when analyzing the security of a candidates system. Companies that complete annual SOC 1 assessments are able to demonstrate a substantially higher level of security assurance and operational visibility as compared to those companies without an assessment. The assessment focuses on the internal controls impacting customers and the protection of their non-public personal information (NPPI). Through its partnership with Premier Data Services, FAN is able to avail itself of a SOC 2, Type 2-assessed hosted environment with co-location backup and the most rigorous security controls in the industry. Premier Data Services is able to provide security measures as they relate to non-financial controls of an organization such as its IT network and processes, as well as protection of confidential data. As an IT/MSP, Premier Data Services specializes in compliance and security, overseeing its clients infrastructure and network solutions, and ensuring their software systems are not only healthy, but also optimized for performance. Having the SOC 1 Type 2 assessment completed puts us in the top one percent of agencies to reach this standard in our industry, said Andrea Somers, Compliance Officer for FAN. She added that, Successfully completing the rigorous assessments provides FAN with a competitive advantage. Lenders are asking more frequently for standards of protection for consumers NPPI. ABOUT FLORIDA AGENCY NETWORK The FLORIDA AGENCY NETWORK (FAN) is made up of a network of title agencies that have formed a strategic alliance to provide shared back office services, pooled resources, and greater geographic coverage throughout the State of Florida. Resources of FAN include multiple on-staff attorneys, access to private title plant and ancillary services, IT company, centralized processes & post-closing, agency administration, compliance management and financial oversight. Powered by multiple national underwriters, FAN offers residential, commercial, builder, lender and investor services, experienced escrow staff, personalized customer service, offices throughout the State of Florida, and much more. For more information, please visit http://www.FLagency.net. Carmen Esmeralda Rivera Nevarez was a happy child who was full of energy and loved to sing, dance, do her makeup and wear high heels, her aunt, Marisol Navarro, told the Journal on Sunday. She was like any other little girl she wanted to grow up way too fast. Carmen, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at Lavaland Elementary School, died just after midnight Saturday when the SUV she was riding in with her family was struck at high speed from behind by a car. Both vehicles overturned. Carmen, who her aunt said had been wearing a seat belt, was ejected and pronounced dead at the scene. According to the criminal complaint, witnesses told police the vehicle that caused the crash on southbound Interstate 25 near Montano was weaving in and out of traffic lanes as it raced another vehicle and may have hit speeds up to 110 mph. Albuquerque police named Xavier Arthur Nelson, 22, as the driver of the car that caused the crash. Police say they found a bottle of Alprazolam, a sedative, in his pocket during a search. The pill bottle had no label on it, and Nelson refused to make any statements or answer questions, police said. Nelson was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on charges of vehicular homicide and unlawful means of obtaining drugs. He remained in jail Sunday night on a $52,500 bond. Police were still looking for the driver of the car they believe Nelson was racing, possibly in a blue Mustang, according to the criminal complaint. Carmen was in the back seat of the SUV along with her 1-year-old brother, Navarro said. The childs mother, Mayra Nevarez, was in the front seat along with her partner, Francisco Almeida, who was driving. The adults had just come from their job cleaning office buildings. They sometimes took the children with them, Navarro said. Our family is not doing too good, she said, adding that they had just held a viewing for the child in Los Lunas at the home of Carmens father, Jorge Rivera. We are all grieving. Its really hard to lose someone so young and so full of life. You never expect something like this to happen. And it shouldnt have happened, Navarro said, commenting on police reports of suspected racing prior to the crash. He (Nelson) should have been more responsible, she said. Police reported that Nelson did not make a statement at the time and did not seem intoxicated at the scene. Nelsons girlfriend declined to comment when reached by phone Sunday night. A GoFundMe page for Esmeralda Rivera Funeral Expenses is available at gofundme.com. The Journals news partner KOAT contributed to this report. FORT HOOD, Texas The Department of Defense on Monday identified two U.S. soldiers killed in an explosion at a U.S. airfield in Afghanistan. The department said 20-year-old Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt of Tamaroa, Illinois, and 30-year-old Sgt. John W. Perry of Stockton, California, died of injuries inflicted by an improvised explosive device. Two American contractors also died in the explosion Saturday morning. Another 16 U.S. service members and one Polish soldier were wounded. Iubelt and Perry were assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas. Officials at Tamaroa Grade School in the southern Illinois village of about 640 residents said Iubelt graduated in 2011. Administrators said on the schools Facebook page that Iubelt would be remembered for his quick wit and a twinkle in his eye. We are so proud of him for his willingness to leave his family and community to serve our country, the post said. We mourn his loss and the loss felt by his family and friends. One of Iubelts friends, Matthew Doerflein, told KFVS-TV that no one could believe it in such a small community that something like that would happen. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was carried out by a suicide bomber inside the base. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the insurgent group, said the attack had been planned for four months. The Taliban regularly fires rockets at Bagram from outside its perimeter. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier looks likely to take over his countrys presidency next year after garnering the backing of Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Party, the Christian Social Union and his own Social Democrats. With the support of all three major government coalition partners, it seems unlikely that Steinmeier will face a serious rival for the presidents office a largely ceremonial head-of-state role, entrusted largely with maintaining German unity and representing the nation in formal foreign affairs. But Steinmeiers appointment would be especially notable in light of last weeks U.S. presidential election. As foreign minister, Steinmeier was one of President-elect Donald Trumps most vocal critics on the world stage. In August, Steinmeier suggested that Trump was a hate preacher, saying the Republican candidate and anti-immigration parties in Europe make politics with fear, according to Deutsche Welle. He had previously criticized Trumps America first policy, suggesting that the U.S. election campaign season may lack the perception of reality. The foreign ministers candid comments stood in contrast to the approach taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who mostly kept a relatively neutral position throughout the U.S. election. Spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli acknowledged this in August, saying at a news conference that Steinmeier was indeed not neutral on this question, because he thinks that if you follow what Trump is saying, then you need to be really scared about what could become of this world . . . if [Trump] does in fact become president. After Trump was elected, Steinmeier suggested that the results were an earthquake and that people had to struggle to find any clear and coherent foreign policy positions from Trumps statement. Trump isnt the only subject on which the German foreign minister is known to speak his mind. Steinmeier also has been a vocal critic of Britains vote to leave the European Union, calling it a sad day for Europe and Britain and later adding that he was not particularly amused by Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, who had backed Brexit. Steinmeier also caused some controversy within European political circles this summer by warning NATO about saber-rattling against Moscow. Steinmeier is popular at home in one recent poll, 67 percent of Germans said they felt he should play an important role in the future of Germany, four percentage points higher than Merkel. His comments about Trump may have helped his reputation: Just 6 percent of Germans have confidence in Trump when it comes to world affairs, according to the Pew Research Center. If Steinmeier becomes president, it would be a promotion. However, it would also remove a prominent critic of the populism engulfing the world stage. It remains unclear who would succeed him as foreign minister, though Martin Schulz president of the European Parliament, who has taken a more pragmatic stance on Trump has been mentioned in the German press. Merkels party is known to have initially favored putting forward its own candidate for president but after struggling to find anyone suitable decided that it was best to show a unified front ahead of next years federal elections especially considering the gains Germanys own anti-establishment movement, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has made in recent regional elections. The president is not directly elected but is chosen by members of the Bundestag and delegates from state parliaments. The current president, Joachim Gauck, is due to retire and be replaced in February. trump-germany KANSAS CITY, Mo. The living hell of Adrian Jones last year on Earth ended with his emaciated and battered 7-year-old body consumed by pigs. On Monday, one of the adults who inflicted such horrific abuse on the Kansas City, Kan., boy was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Heather Jones, Adrians stepmother, also was sentenced Monday to five years and eight months in prison for two counts of child abuse. District Judge Mike Grosko followed the terms of the plea agreement and ordered the sentences to run consecutively. Jones, 30, pleaded guilty in Wyandotte County District Court last month to a charge of first-degree murder. The boys remains were found last year, and authorities said it appeared he had been fed to pigs on property rented by Jones and her husband. Heather Jones husband and Adrians father, 45-year-old Michael A. Jones, also is charged in the case and is awaiting trial. Chief Deputy District Attorney Sheryl Lidtke said Monday that it was the most heinous crime she has seen in her 27-year career as a prosecutor. He was horribly abused, neglected and ultimately killed, Lidtke said. Im sure his suffering was unbearable. She said he was physically and emotionally abused, confined and essentially starved to death. But on Monday, Lidtke said she wanted to remember Adrian as the curious, energetic boy depicted in a video taken about a year before he died. He was cute as a button, she said. Adrians maternal grandmother, Judy Conway, also spoke Monday about the anguish of enduring the loss of the happy little boy who touched so many people in his short life and was robbed of a future. No one had the right to take all of those possibilities away, Conway said. When it was her turn to speak, Heather Jones cried as she said she was deeply sorry. I have to live with this for the rest of my life, she said. Jones described how she was caught up in an abusive relationship that she still has nightmares about. I didnt have anyone to call. I didnt have any family to help me, she said. After the hearing, Conway said Jones is still blaming her husband for what happened. If she could ask Jones one thing, Conway said it would be why. How could you do such horrible, horrific things to a child? she said. Conway, whose daughter was formerly married to Michael Jones, said that after he was granted custody of Adrian and his siblings, she was not allowed to see them. The children were home-schooled, and Conway said she thinks that prevented her or anyone else from having access to see what was going on. This could have been prevented, she said. If I would have been able to see them, I would have known what was happening. According to court documents, Adrian died sometime between Sept. 18 and Oct. 4 last year. The boys remains were found last November. Police were initially called to the home the day before Thanksgiving 2015 for a domestic disturbance. Michael Jones was arrested and later charged with aggravated battery and aggravated assault in connection with that disturbance. But while on the scene investigating that incident, police learned that Adrian had not been seen for several months and may have been killed. On Thanksgiving Day, police served a search warrant on the property and found human remains in a barn. The remains were later identified as Adrians after DNA testing. Heather and Michael Jones were charged in December with first-degree murder and child abuse. Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman said when announcing charges that the crime scene was one of the worst things police investigators had ever seen. Many of those investigators and police department employees attended Mondays sentencing. 2016 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) Visit The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) at www.kansascity.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. - PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): STEPSONSLAIN _____ WASHINGTON Alabama Rep. Martha Roby was projected to easily win a fourth term in her safe Republican district Tuesday. She did win and comfortably. Just not by Alabama standards. Roby carried less than 50 percent of the vote in the states 2nd District, defeating Democratic state Rep. Nathan Mathis by just 9 points. All the other Republican members of the Alabama delegation either won their districts by more than 30 points or ran uncontested. Both Sen. Richard C. Shelby and President-elect Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 30 points. What was different in Robys case was a write-in campaign, provoked by her last-minute disavowal of Trump, that received 11 percent of the vote. After the release of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, Roby called on Trump to step aside as the GOP presidential nominee, and later suggested the party could replace him with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. The backlash was immediate. The Pike County Republican Women disinvited the congresswoman from speaking at their event. Roby already overcame a challenge from the right this year, when she faced local tea party leader Becky Gerritson in the GOP primary. There was concern heading into Super Tuesday that having Alabamas presidential and congressional primaries on the same day would hurt Roby if the presidential race drove up conservative turnout. But the three-term congresswoman ended up winning that primary by nearly 40 points. Tuesdays write-in votes hadnt been tallied as of the end of last week. But Gerritson may end up being the name many 2nd District voters penciled in. Her supporters rallied around her after Roby withdrew her support for Trump. On a Facebook page her supporters created for the campaign, Gerritson left this message: Pray for Martha (for real) that she would take this wake-up call to heart and be a better listener to her constituents. GOP operatives say its too early to tell whether frustration with Roby for bucking Trump could translate into a primary threat for 2018. For one thing, its not yet clear how Trump performed in Robys district. Presidential results by congressional district havent been calculated yet. And a lot will depend on how the president-elect chooses to work with House Republicans and whether his critics warm up to him once hes in the Oval Office. Since Trumps surprising victory, some of his congressional GOP critics have sounded a conciliatory tone. That includes Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, whose opposition to Trump has already earned him a 2018 primary challenger. Former state Sen. Kelli Ward, a Trump enthusiast who lost a primary bid to Sen. John McCain this year, announced even before the election that she will challenge Flake in two years. Flake signaled a willingness to work with Trump and praised the tone of his victory speech. Ill work with him when we need to but also push back when I need to, Flake told Politico last week, dismissing concerns about his opposition to Trump hurting him in the future. One incoming GOP member of Congress may already have a primary threat on his hands. Rep.-elect Roger Marshall defeated Kansas Republican Tim Huelskamp in a primary this summer. But Huelskamp has already filed with the FEC to run in Kansas 1st District in 2018. During the primary this year, both Huelskamp and Marshall said they supported Trump in the general election. Although Huelskamp, an original supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, seemed less inclined to give Trump a pass when he debated Marshall in June. One thing to know about Tim Huelskamp is I have conservative principles, and Im going to stand on those conservative principles. If you dont have conservative principles, I will work against you, the congressman said. 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved Visit CQ Roll Call at www.rollcall.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ DALLAS The Diocese of Amarillo is investigating a priest who took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar and posted a live video to Facebook and Instagram to warn viewers about Hillary Clinton and urge them to vote for Donald Trump. The Rev. Frank Pavone, who posted the video, is a priest in the diocese and a well-known anti-abortion activist who leads the New York-based Priests for Life. Father Frank Pavone has posted a video on his Facebook page of the body of an aborted fetus, which is against the dignity of human life and is a desecration of the altar, Amarillo Diocese Bishop Patrick J. Zurek told the Amarillo Globe-News. We believe that no one who is pro-life can exploit a human body for any reason, especially the body of a fetus. The Diocese of Amarillo deeply regrets the offense and outrage caused by the video for the faithful and the community at large. The action and presentation of Father Pavone in this video is not consistent with the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Accompanying Pavones 44-minute video was this appeal on Facebook: 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. Words are not enough in this heated election campaign, Pavone says in a shorter version of the video posted on Instagram. America will not reject abortion unless America sees abortion. As you decide whom you are going to cast your vote for, spend a few moments looking at this child. I show him to you today to urge you to vote pro-life. Pavone joined the Amarillo Diocese in 2005. He was suspended in 2011 by Zurek over concerns of Priests for Lifes use of financial donations, according to the Amarillo Globe-News. The Vaticans Congregation of the Clergy ruled against Pavones suspension, but said that he would need to receive permission from Zurek to participate in future anti-abortion events. Despite the brief suspension, Pavone has remained in good standing as a Catholic priest. He has previously been a chaplain of the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ at Prayer Town, Texas. 2016 The Dallas Morning News Visit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ MINNEAPOLIS Jocelyn Hernandez dressed in all black on Wednesday morning as she faced an uncertain future. An Obama administration program for young immigrants brought to the country as children allowed Hernandez, a North Hennepin Community College sociology student, to work, drive and plan for a career as a teacher. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end the deportation reprieve program part of a tougher stance on illegal immigration that he made a centerpiece of his campaign. After his victory, Minnesota Latinos and other immigrants worry about pledges to step up deportations, build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and crack down on employers who hire unauthorized workers. The elections outcome also dimmed hope for a state proposal to grant drivers licenses to residents without legal status and for national immigration reform that would open a path to citizenship. Meanwhile, Trumps election heartened Minnesotans who want to see tougher immigration enforcement. Key questions remain about what a Trump administration can do and will do about immigration, said Virgil Wiebe, an immigration law expert at the University of St. Thomas. At this point, theres a bit of wait-and-see, he said. But I think we should take Trump at his word and prepare for a more aggressive stance. More than 282,000 Latinos live in Minnesota, or about 5 percent of the states population. An estimated 58,000 of them are among more than 90,000 immigrants living without legal status in the state, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Hernandez, 19, was 10 months old when her parents crossed the southern U.S. border and made their way to Minnesota. She shared her immigration status with few friends until she qualified for Obamas 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Almost 6,000 immigrants in Minnesota have benefited from the program, including some from Africa and Asia. Thanks to DACA, Hernandez got a drivers license. She landed a campus job and an internship at the Metropolitan Council. A younger sister was born in the United States, and Hernandezs parents would likely have qualified for another Obama deportation reprieve program, for parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Blocked by a court challenge, that program is also slated to disappear under Trump. This is just pushing us back into the shadows, Hernandez said. Were going to be in constant fear. Across the metro and beyond, immigrants gathered to process the news and weigh anxious questions. Hernandez helped organize a campus rally Wednesday that drew more than a hundred students, including one who held a sign reading, You cant deport us all. Theres a lot of despair, said Emilia Avalos, head of the nonprofit Navigate, which advocates for DACA recipients and other immigrants. Theres a lot of anxiety for sure. But people are ready to take action. On Wednesday, supporters flocked to Navigates office on the Minneapolis Community and Technical College campus, where some broke down in tears after a sleepless night and others questioned if an end to DACA would affect those already in the program. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) At Church of the Assumption in Richfield, which draws 1,200 for its Sunday Spanish-language services, the Rev. Michael Kueber tried to reassure members. He spoke with children worried their family would need to move back to Mexico. Sebastian Rivera with the local advocacy group Asamblea de Derechos Civiles says many members are worried about Trumps pledge to increase deportations. He has spoken with some who wonder if they should start selling off belongings and saving money, in case it becomes harder to find and keep jobs under a Trump administration. Advocates such as Rivera also worry that Trumps harsh rhetoric he launched his campaign with a speech suggesting Mexico sends rapists across the border will heighten prejudice and discrimination. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) Some in Minnesota, which narrowly backed Hillary Clinton, said Trumps positions on immigration enforcement resonated with them. The Obama administration, which broke deportation records in earlier years, more recently sharpened a focus on removing immigrants with criminal convictions. Dan McGrath of the Twin Cities advocacy group Minnesota Majority said he was troubled by narrower enforcement of laws and by Obamas deportation reprieve programs. You have people in power picking and choosing against whom to enforce the law, and thats tyranny, said McGrath, who supports reforms that would make it easier to immigrate legally. If you break the law, you should face the consequences. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Ruthie Hendrycks lives in New Ulm, where Trump support ran deep, and hosts a weekly radio program criticizing illegal immigration. She says she is confident Trump will improve border security and require employers to join a federal system for verifying workers immigration status. To not enforce our immigration law is a slap in the face of every legal resident who played by the rules, Hendrycks said. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) Rick Aguilar, vice chairman of the Hispanic Republican Assembly of Minnesota, was among almost 30 percent of Latinos who backed Trump based on national exit polls. He said education reform, job security and health care are more important than the issue of immigration. He said he feels for young adults like Hernandez, who use DACA to attend college and find employment. I dont think there is any way we should be getting rid of these kids, Aguilar said. If I ever had anything to say with the Trump campaign, lets not do away with that program. Uncertainty remains about how Trumps campaign promises on immigration will play out come January. In an interview on 60 Minutes Sunday, Trump backed away from support for deporting as many as 11 million people, suggesting he would focus on removing 2 million or 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds. (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Advocates are already springing to action. Groups such as Asamblea are hosting community forums to regroup and discuss next steps. They are planning a series of events to remind immigrants of their rights, including what to do if immigration agents visit their homes or workplaces, and warn them against scammers peddling easy fixes. I dont have time to cry, Rivera said. The one thing everyone kept repeating is, We need to act now.' 2016 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Visit the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) at www.startribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. - PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): LATINOS-FUTURE _____ WASHINGTON As a candidate, President-elect Donald Trump railed against the political money system, saying it offers big donors outsized clout. But the changes he is likely to enable would roll back campaign finance regulations, allowing contributors to give even more. The Republicans victory in the presidential contest has given new hope to opponents of current donation limits and other restrictions, while it has jolted fear into those who want to overhaul political money laws to put ordinary Americans on more equal footing with mega-donors. You can expect the Republicans to be very aggressive in lifting a lot of the regulations that are currently not only on political parties but on the system generally, said James Bopp Jr., an attorney who champions campaign finance deregulation. Everybody agrees the system is dysfunctional, but that is caused by the legal restrictions. Voters not only picked Trump, but they also kept the Senate in GOP hands where the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is an advocate for campaign finance deregulation and for relaxing coordination rules between party committees and their candidates. McConnell led the mostly unsuccessful legal challenge to the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul, which banned so-called soft money from corporations to political parties. But McConnell, whose office declined to comment, may now be poised to win. (The law is named for its Senate champions, Republican John McCain of Arizona and Russ Feingold, then a Democratic senator from Wisconsin.) The McCain-Feingold law was one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in the last 50 years; it was a horrible interference in the First Amendment rights of citizens, said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission appointed by President George W. Bush. Von Spakovsky, who manages the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says hes hopeful that McConnell and Trump, along with a Republican House, will greatly increase the limits on donations to party committees and candidates, or undo the limits altogether. Individual donors can give no more than $2,700 directly to candidates per election in the 2016 cycle. He believes that Trumps aides and advisers, including lawyer Donald McGahn, another former FEC commissioner who advocates for deregulation, reveal where Trump is on the issue. McGahn on Friday was named general counsel of the president-elects transition team. Im very hopeful, von Spakovsky said. All this has progressives rethinking their entire strategy when it comes to campaign money. Had voters elected Democrat Hillary Clinton, they believed she would have ushered in new requirements for political disclosures. Instead of pushing for new federal disclosures, campaign overhaul groups will now step up their focus on state and local ballot initiatives. They also plan to put greater emphasis on working to convince big corporations to voluntarily disclose more of their political spending, a move that has had increasing success. But on Capitol Hill, they will try to limit their losses. There will be a lot of defensive work that will have to happen at the federal level, fending off attacks on regulations that are the last bastions of our campaign finance law, said Lisa Gilbert, who runs the liberal group Public Citizen. Public Citizen and a coalition of other progressive organizations will be on high alert for new riders on any year-end budget packages, Gilbert said, but that may be largely symbolic, since McConnell will have an easier shot of moving measures after Trump moves into the White House. So a victory in the lame-duck for progressives may be short lived. Trumps election and the GOP-controlled Senate also mean that the next justice to the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to be a conservative, along the lines of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Liberals had viewed the vacancy, left by Scalias death on Feb. 13, as an opportunity for a re-do of court decisions such as Citizens United v. FEC, which helped usher in big-money super PACs that can accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals. Bopp said Friday he was filing an appeal to the high court in a case, Louisiana Republican Party v. FEC, that challenges soft money bans in state and local parties. With the prospect of a Trump appointment of a conservative to the court, that case has very bright prospects, Bopp said. Even so, some campaign finance experts say that trying to determine what specific policies Trump would, or would not, support is no easy task. Trump while campaigning for the White House called the political money system broken and said that he knew, as a billionaire and campaign donor, he had greater access to politicians. His supporters may find it surprising then if he were to help loosen the existing restrictions. Public opinion polls show voters of all political persuasions say they favor changes to the system. Theres kind of a conflict between his campaign rhetoric of draining the swamp and what the Republican Congress historically has wanted to do on campaign finance, said FEC Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub. Candidates were actually talking about this issue in this election, including the president-elect. Theres an opportunity for somebody that wants to tackle an issue with a lot of popular appeal. 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved Visit CQ Roll Call at www.rollcall.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ WASHINGTON Democratic members of Congress are calling for President-elect Donald Trump to rescind his appointment of conservative news executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon was among one of the first members to condemn the appointment in a statement Monday. There should be no sugarcoating the truth here: Donald Trump just invited a white nationalist into the highest reaches of the government, Merkley said. Pointing to Bannons leadership of Breitbart News, Merkley accused Bannon for the open and disgusting acts of hatred taking place across the U.S. in the wake of Trumps election. Under Bannons direction, Breitbart News created a news section titled Black Crime and purportedly compared the work of Planned Parenthood to the Holocaust, Merkley said. After running a campaign built on inciting divisions and hate, Donald Trump has claimed he wants to unite America, Merkley said. Yet he has done nothing meaningful to stop the wave of hate crimes and hate speech he has unleashed, and now has brought that strategy right into the Oval Office. Democratic U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee and Jerrold Nadler tweeted their thoughts on the appointment, using the hashtag #NoNormalization. In a terse exchange with reporters on Monday, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended the appointment. The president-elect always gets to pick his team going forward, McCarthy said. The president has the right to select who he thinks is best to be able to move through. McCarthy, reiterating what House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Sunday, said he did not know Bannon. But he said Priebus, who worked closely with Bannon on the campaign trail, said the former news executives public persona did not reflect who he was personally. McCarthy also said Bannon should not be held accountable for all of Breitbarts content. I always believe in giving somebody a chance, McCarthy said. I dont like to pre-judge people from others. (Rema Rahram contributed to this report.) 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved Visit CQ Roll Call at www.rollcall.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. WASHINGTON About 40 people showed up at the office of New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer on Monday to stage a sit-in, calling on him to step aside as a candidate for Senate minority leader and to allow Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to take the position. People here are either going to meet with Schumer or get arrested, said Waleed Shahid, a leader of the group All of Us 2016, which organized the protest. Two staff assistants stared at their computer screens in Schumers Hart Building office, while trying to ignore the sit-in in front of them. The protest began at about 11:30 a.m. The group said they hoped this would be the start of many protests against Wall Street Democrats, whom they blame for Donald Trumps election as president. Our goal is to show the Democratic Party needs new leadership and they failed to protect us, Shahid said. We want Chuck Schumer to withdraw his name. Aside from Sanders, All of Us 2016 would also support Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for minority because she also has repeatedly tried to change the party in a different direction, Shahid said. The group chanted, Forward together, not one step back, and Chuck Schumer grow a spine, our lives are on the line, while holding two large banners, one of which read, Wall St. Democrats Failed Us. Shahid said the group formed about a month before the election. It plans to launch similar protests in the offices of other Democratic senators who dont do everything they can to filibuster Trumps legislation that promotes his hatred or his greed. A lot of us are willing to go to jail, he added. At 12:35 p.m., protesters moved to the hallway outside the office. Capitol Police officers started making arrests about 10 minutes later. 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved Visit CQ Roll Call at www.rollcall.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP alerts investors in Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) to possible accounting irregularities, the securities class action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas and the January 6, 2017 Lead Plaintiff deadline. If you purchased or otherwise acquired securities of XOM between February 19, 2016 and October 27, 2016 and suffered over $200,000 in losses contact Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. For more information visit: https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/XOM or contact Reed Kathrein, who is leading the firms investigation, by calling 510-725-3000 or emailing XOM@hbsslaw.com. Several financial journalists have reported that Exxon Mobil may have materially misstated its oil reserves. For example, on August 19, 2016, The New York Times emphasized Exxon Mobil [would] have to leave much of its oil in the ground, which means the companys valuation of its reserves is off by a significant amount. The New York Times went on to quote New York Attorney General Schneiderman who stated that, if Exxons internal research showed the Company knew of misstatements, there may be massive securities fraud here. The Wall Street Journal also quoted a retired reservoir engineer specializing in reserves accounting who stated that Exxon was particularly reluctant to write down an asset because that removes its value permanently. On October 28, 2016, Exxon disclosed it might write down nearly 20% of its oil and gas assets if energy prices remained low through the end of 2016. That day, The New York Times reported many other petroleum companies have taken big write-offs to reflect a two-year price slump and Exxons potential write-downs could be the biggest accounting revision of reserves in its history. Among other things, were looking at why Exxon may have chosen a different route than its peers who timely recognized impaired assets and wrote their values down, said Hagens Berman partner Reed Kathrein. Accounting rules are quite specific about when assets must be written down. Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Exxon should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new SEC whistleblower program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 510-725-3000 or email XOM@hbsslaw.com. About Hagens Berman Hagens Berman is a national investor-rights law firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices in 10 cities. The Firm represents investors, whistleblowers, workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about the Firm and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com. Read the Firms Securities Newsletter, and visit the blog. For the latest news visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @classactionlaw. MOSCOW The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin has warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Ukraine could siphon off gas intended for European consumers in the coming winter. Putin warned Merkel in Mondays call that the risk of Ukraines unsanctioned draw-off of the Russian gas supplied to European consumers via a transit pipeline could increase during what is forecast to be a cold winter. The Kremlin said the EU and Russia will continue discussions. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Past gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine have led to cutoffs. One standoff in 2009 caused serious disruptions in winter supplies to EU countries. Russias annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine brought relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbors to the verge of full rupture. WASHINGTON Steve Bannon was one of Donald Trumps closest confidants and most determined field lieutenants throughout the presidential campaign; now he has become President-elect Trumps first major post-election political problem. The angry backlash against Trumps announcement that the Breitbart News executive would serve as his chief White House strategist gave dispirited Democrats and other critics of the president-elect a rallying point Monday. Mainstream Jewish and Muslim groups warned that Trump was elevating an enthusiastic promoter of white nationalism to a desk steps from the Oval Office. Republican lawmakers, many of whom have their own reasons for disliking Bannon, were not inclined to defend him. Ive never met the guy, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said on CNN, adding that I trust Donalds judgment. I do not know Steve Bannon, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said as he repeatedly parried questions from reporters at a news conference Monday morning. That reluctance to actively defend Trumps choice came as no surprise. Bannon is, after all, a man who said in a 2004 interview with the Daily Beast: I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of todays establishment. He repeatedly has made clear that he does not exempt the Republican leadership from that desired fate. The fight over his appointment underscored the continued tension between the party leadership and Trump. The president-elect clearly values Bannons strategic advice and relied heavily on him to pilot his campaign in its closing months. But whether Trump can navigate the conflict within the party and what role Bannon plays in doing so could be central to whether the new administration can succeed. All that left Bannon where he has been throughout his career in a bunker exchanging fire with what he derisively calls the forces of political correctness. Only the stakes had suddenly become much higher. The rage that many civil rights activists and leaders of minority groups have toward Bannon has been swelling for years, long before Trump brought him into the inner sanctum of his operation. For many, Bannon personifies the so-called alt-right, which the Anti-Defamation League in a statement Sunday night denounced as a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists. Indeed, Bannons appointment to Trumps campaign this year had drawn praise from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and neo-Nazi organizations. Bannon, who has been fighting multiculturalism and the country club politics of the Republican Party establishment for years, has been aggressively seeking out rumbles since he was a kid in Richmond, Va., growing up in a house not far from where Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine lives. His father, Martin, still lives in the neighborhood. His younger brother, Mike, recently recounted to the local newspaper how he was constantly getting called to the neighborhood pool as a teenager to drag his brother out of a fight. Bannon signed up for the Navy directly out of college, became an officer, left in 1983 for Harvard Business School, then landed a job at Goldman Sachs. His subsequent years in investment banking made him rich, and Hollywood production credits added yet more intrigue to his biography. He picked up something else, as well: His experiences with the self-satisfied nature of Americas financial and cultural elites made him angry, he says. I went to Harvard Business School, worked at Goldman Sachs, he told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2010. I know about elites, I know about the contempt that they hold. They hold the basic heartland of this country in contempt. Bannon became a close friend and patron of Andrew Breitbart, and took over operations of his news organization in 2012, when Breitbart died suddenly of heart failure at age 43. At Breitbart, Bannons antagonisms manifested themselves in coverage that routinely referred negatively to Muslims, inner-city minorities and women, among other groups. Often the facts were suspect, as when Breitbart wrote about an extremely flawed polls finding that more than half of American Muslims wanted Shariah law, or suggested that Hillary Clintons aide, Huma Abedin, might be a Saudi operative. One Breitbart writer declared, America has a Muslim problem, and made clear he was not talking about extremist Muslims, but all Muslims. The headline of one Breitbart story screamed: Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. Another headline referred to William Kristol, the editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard and an opponent of Trumps, as a renegade Jew. Journalist Ben Shapiro, a former writer for Breitbart, described it as a platform for white ethno-nationalism and a cesspool for white supremacist meme makers. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) GOP strategist Kurt Bardella, who said he talked to Bannon almost daily for two years while working as Breitbarts media consultant, described him as the ideological driving force behind Breitbart and its content. He put himself front and center, said Bardella, who parted ways with Breitbart as the site became something he saw as toxic and perpetually malcontent. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) Bannons allies, however, call talk of racism outrageous. On Monday, as the denunciations of Bannon mounted, Breitbart employees quickly signed onto what had all the appearances of a traditional crisis-communications exercise, releasing statements painting Bannon as a sensitive and sympathetic employer even someone who prizes diversity. That portrait contrasts with the one that emerged in court filings. In 2007, during divorce proceedings, Bannons then-wife alleged that he repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks as the couple toured Los Angeles private schools for their daughters. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) She said Bannon had asked the director of the Westland School why there were so many Hanukkah books in the library. He was concerned that the Willows Community School used to be in a temple, she alleged in a court filing. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) In a deposition, referring to Bannons reaction to another prominent private school, she said that the biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesnt like Jews and that he doesnt like the way they raise their kids to be whiny brats, and that he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews. Bannon, who ultimately sent his children to Archer for middle school and high school, has denied ever making any such comments. This is what they will do to anybody who defeats the left, said Joel Pollak, a Breitbart journalist in California who is an Orthodox Jew. There are no Nazis here, no white nationalists here, Pollak said, of the Breitbart newsroom. If our articles appeal to people beyond our core audience, there is nothing I can do about that. We are what we have always been, he said, a voice for conservative movement. (Times staff writers Michael A. Memoli in Washington and Robin Abcarian in Los Angeles contributed to this report.) 2016 Tribune Co. Visit Tribune Co. at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. - PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): TRUMP-BANNON _____ Who is the #realDonaldTrump? The total disparities in how Americans answer this question are as stunning as the results of the election. We might as well be talking about three different personas call them the Three Faces of Donald Trump. The first Donald, in the eyes of those who cast the largest share of the popular vote for president, is a divisive demagogue who threatens our democracy. He scolds our allies and praises our adversaries. Then theres the second Donald, the one his fans view as a change agent who will bring back lost jobs and make America great again. But there is a third Donald in theory at least on whom nervous voters in both camps are desperately pinning their hopes: a cynical opportunist and former Democrat whose ugly slogans were just meant to garner votes. This Donald will now mellow and try to heal the nation (after all, he called President Obama a good man after a visit to the White House). On foreign policy, he will hire smart advisers who will compensate for his lack of experience and his hot temper. Count me a skeptic about Trumps third persona. But which, if any, is the real face of the Donald will determine how America survives the next four years. It will also affect the stability of the world. So let me suggest a few markers to look for in the coming weeks that will indicate which of these three Trumps is really running the show. The first and most obvious: Trumps picks for his closest advisers. Im going to focus on foreign policy, but the first marker applies to domestic policy as well. If he truly wants to pull the nation together he wont appoint the folks who designed a campaign that expressly targeted racial and religious minorities. Prime among them is Steve Bannon, his campaign CEO, who is on leave as chairman of Breitbart, a website that is an online haven for anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and white supremacist provocateurs. Trump has appointed Bannon chief strategist and senior counselor, reporting directly to the president. This could signal the third Donalds kumbaya moment has ended before it began. But beyond exacerbating Americas internal divides, the choice of Bannon will further besmirch our international standing. The campaigns bitter ethnic and racial divisiveness along with Trumps slurs against women astonished our allies and delighted our adversaries. It was cited by Russia and Iran as proof that American democracy was failing. Tehran even broadcast the presidential debates live as proof of U.S. decadence and decline. As this narrative gains traction abroad, respect for our country shrinks ever further. Our allies shocked at the election of a populist who campaigned in full demagogue vein are anxious for reassurance that he will adhere to democratic norms. So are many Americans. Appointing Bannon will stoke their worst fears. Another sign of which Donald is dominant will be his choice for secretary of state and national security adviser. For State, theres talk of Newt Gingrich, a longtime bloviator with no steady foreign-policy moorings. He backed the Iraq war and free trade until he joined the Trump campaign, then totally reversed positions. Gingrich wants to set up a new House Un-American Activities Committee to supposedly go after radical Islamists (and who knows what other Trump enemies). He would be the choice of the first, divisive Trump. Of course, despite his lack of experience, Trump may not be willing to heed any foreign-policy advice, since he says he is his own best adviser. But if Trump Three is open-minded, a better choice for secretary of state would be the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker. He at least knows something about the subject and seems to be levelheaded. This latter quality will be of prime importance, since Trumps choice for national security adviser may be the hotheaded, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, his only senior national security aide on the campaign trail. Flynn, who was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency by President Obama, is an angry man. His new book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, reads like a prescription for all-out war against a long list of countries that he says support our terrorist enemies. Flynns coauthor, Michael Ledeen, has long lobbied for U.S. support for regime change in Iran. With Flynn as key adviser, its hard to tell which Trump would be making foreign-policy decisions, the isolationist Donald or the one who wants to bomb terrorists into instant submission. Seems as if there would be little room for a third, more reasonable Donald, who used all tools in Americas arsenal before starting another war. So Trumps staffing will send a crucial signal. But, when it comes to foreign policy, here are a couple of other markers to watch for to glean whether a third Donald has emerged: Will Trump continue to dis our NATO and Asian allies and to butter up Vladimir Putin? That path will push the alliances to crumble. It will also convince the Russian leader that Trump can be easily manipulated. Will Trump push to abrogate the Iran nuclear deal entirely, as soon as he comes to office? That would free Tehran to fully restart its frozen nuclear program and march right up to bomb-making capability. That would leave us with the choice of accepting a nuclear Iran or starting another, much bigger Mideast war. Or will the third Donald restrain his ego, reassure our allies, and refrain from any radical moves until he better understands the global situation? Well soon see if such a character sea change is possible. But here is the real marker of whether a new Trump is emerging with a more measured, and more informed approach to the world. Will Trump stop his stream of outrageous tweets, which were still flowing as of the weekend? If those missives continue to insult minorities and foreign allies (and to call for jailing Hillary Clinton), youll know the first Trump is the real one and the third one is only a dream. ABOUT THE WRITER Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by email at trubin@phillynews.com. 2016 Trudy Rubin Visit Trudy Rubin at www.philly.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. - PHOTO of Trudy Rubin is available from the Columnist Mugs _____ CHICAGO The American political scene is looking very familiar to Trevor Noah, the Daily Show host said from the stage at Chicagos Music Box Theatre on Saturday afternoon. We already elected our Donald Trump, he said of his South African countrymen and women. We already made this mistake. That would be Jacob Zuma, the two-term president of the country once run by Nelson Mandela. The parallels between him and Donald Trump are ridiculous, Noah said during his Chicago Humanities Festival hour, one of the last events of this years fest. Both men have faced sexual assault allegations, he said. Both faced charges of corruption or fraud and both spoke to the not well-educated and preyed on their fears. In a powerful and impressive way, theyve both discredited the media, he said. A key difference? I dont know what happens when you add in nuclear weapons, Noah said. He saw parallels, too, between the end of apartheid and the election of President Barack Obama. Freedom is actually the beginning of the journey, Noah said. The hard work really begins when you achieve your goal. In South Africa, he said, we started turning on ourselves because who do we blame for this fairy tale that never came to be? The Trump election following two terms for Americas first black president, he was suggesting, is putting U.S. Democrats and progressives in a similar place. Jon Stewart handed over Comedy Centrals The Daily Show to him in September 2015 with advice to make the show that you feel needs to be made, Noah said. And now I know what that show is. I am born of protest, he said, and so in many ways this (the U.S., post-election) is a world that I now fully understand Resistance mode: Activate, he instructed himself. The crowd Saturday was still raw and edgy from Tuesdays election of Trump, and Noah, whose job is to satirize American politics, was welcomed with frequent laughter for his comic lines and applause for his more philosophical ones on race, intolerance and the importance of trying to understand the other. Although just 32, he was a more thoughtful, wise man than the one you might have thought you knew from his somewhat embattled show, which has struggled to win over viewers still pining for Stewart. At Noahs best, the show has brought his outsider perspective to The Daily Show: Early on in the campaign, he was comparing Trump to an African dictator, and Noah made the comparison work. But he has always been an outsider, he said, even in his home country. The event was ostensibly meant to promote Noahs autobiography, which comes out this week, called Born a Crime. His onstage questioner, superb, was Chris Jackson, his editor for the book, published by Spiegel & Grau, a Random House imprint. The onstage interview served the book well. Noah was funny and poignant reading some of it and recounting some of its lessons, which he described as a love letter to his mom, one he didnt realize he was writing until after he had finished the book. He called his mother a hero, a black woman at the end of South Africas apartheid era who made, and maintained, a family with a white man when doing so was, as the book title says, illegal. In public, he said, he would pretend a family friend, light-skinned, was his mother, while his real mother walked behind like household staff; his father once ran from him at a playground so that authorities would not connect the man and his son. This was a book about me, Noah said. Only at the end I realized I was just lucky enough to be in the shadow of a giant, and that giant was my mom. The event also, no doubt, persuaded a lot of people in the sold-out theater to give Noahs version of the show that Stewart made essential political viewing a second chance. He called the media ignorant throughout the Trump campaign, unequipped to read signs that Trump was reaching the people who would elect him. You just said the polls were wrong, he said, speaking to the press, post-election. Yes, but these polls tell us why we were wrong.' Asked what advice he would give Trump, he responded, resign. Its not too late. You can still walk away. Nobody will hold it against you. Seriously, though, he said to Trump, when making policy, think of your daughters, think of your best black friend, if you have one Omarosa will do. Dont be afraid to change. 2016 Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. AMARILLO, Texas Two California men convicted of disrupting a Chicago-bound Southwest Airlines flight have been sentenced to prison. Jonathan Khalid Petras and Wisam Imad Shaker were sentenced Monday after their June convictions in Amarillo, Texas, on charges of interfering with a flight crew and aiding and abetting. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater sentenced the 21-year-old Petras to seven months in prison. The 23-year-old Shaker got five months in prison. Both could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison each. An affidavit says six men boarded Flight 1522 in San Diego last August and were seated together when they became aggressive and used obscene language when denied alcohol. Pilots eventually diverted the plane to Amarillo. Two of the other four were acquitted. Charges against the other two were dropped. SAHUARITA, Ariz. Authorities have released the name of a man who was fatally shot by Sahuarita police in Southern Arizona after he allegedly tried to run over officers. Police say 29-year-old Richard Herrera Jr. was pronounced dead at the scene of Saturday nights incident. Officers responded to a home around 11:15 p.m. regarding a domestic violence incident. As officers arrived on scene, police say Herrera attempted to run them over with a car. A vehicle pursuit then ensued and three Sahuarita police officers were involved in a shooting in the city 15 miles south of Tucson. Sahuarita police have turned over the criminal investigation to the Pima County Sheriffs Department. But police still will be conducting a criminal investigation associated with the original call and an administrative review for the shooting incident. PRESCOTT, Ariz. A California man accused of fatally shooting his father at an Arizona campsite last month has been extradited from his hometown. Authorities say 21-year-old Francis Claude Klettke was arrested during an Oct. 29 traffic stop in Union City, California. Yavapai County Sheriffs officials said Monday that Klettke now has been booked into jail on suspicion of second-degree murder. Its unclear if he has a lawyer yet. Sheriffs officials say the body of 60-year-old Dale Klettke, also of Union City, was found Oct. 27 in some brush near where a witness saw him camping the night before. Investigators say the victim had been shot multiple times and his vehicle was missing. A witness description of a suspect seen in the car closely matched Francis Klettke and that led to his arrest. Federal Department of Finance Bern, 14.11.2016 - The withholding tax agreement between Switzerland and the United Kingdom will be terminated on 1 January 2017. The agreement between Switzerland and the EU on the automatic exchange of information in tax matters will enter into force on that date. On 14 November 2016, Switzerland and the United Kingdom signed a corresponding agreement in London to ensure a smooth transition between the two models. The withholding tax agreement between Switzerland and the United Kingdom entered into force on 1 January 2013. It allowed the regularisation of assets held in Switzerland by UK taxpayers and the taxation of income generated by these assets based on the Federal Council's financial integrity strategy. In accordance with this agreement, UK taxpayers had the option of either paying withholding tax levied directly on their accounts and anonymously transmitted to the UK authorities or opting for voluntary disclosure. However, this model loses its reason to exist at all with the introduction of the automatic exchange of information between Switzerland and the EU as of 1 January 2017, which concerns the 28 member states and Gibraltar. The termination agreement governs in particular the arrangements for transferring the last tax amounts and the forwarding of the last voluntary disclosures to the UK tax authorities. The provisions of the withholding tax agreement will continue to apply for all facts and legal rights that materialised during its period of validity. Switzerland also concluded a withholding tax agreement with Austria which will be terminated when switching to the automatic exchange of information standard with the EU. Both countries signed a corresponding agreement on 11 November 2016. Address for enquiries Anne Cesard, Deputy Head of Communications, State Secretariat for International Financial Matters SIF Tel. +41 58 462 62 91, anne.cesard@sif.admin.ch Publisher Federal Department of Finance https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html 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. ATLANTA, GA, and CHARLOTTE, NC, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- UPS (NYSE:UPS) and Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE:SEE) today announced a strategic partnership to help retailers, e-tailers, and businesses around the world maximize the efficiency of their packaging operations, minimize packaging waste, and reduce annual shipping costs. Our partnership with Sealed Air provides a powerful suite of products and services to businesses operating in the booming e-commerce arena, which is expected to grow at three times the rate of GDP, said Alan Gershenhorn, Chief Commercial Officer, UPS. We are focused on providing the tools, products and services that our business customers need to efficiently, cost-effectively, and sustainably drive their operations forward, while at the same time, continuing to provide convenience, choice, and control to consumers. UPS and Sealed Air have long been united in their missions to enable efficient on-time delivery and returns, provide maximum protection against damage, reduce waste, and lower shipping costs. Previous years of collaboration between both companies have led to this next logical step of expansion with the introduction of several new offerings. As part of the partnership, UPS customers gain access to additional package engineering expertise and services through Sealed Airs Packaging Application Centers, which provide design, testing, and packaging performance analysis for customers from 27 global locations. Additionally, Sealed Air will participate in the UPS Customer Technology Program (CTP), providing packaging systems and materials. CTP is a customer loyalty program that connects small to medium-sized businesses with best-in-class vendors of hardware, software, peripherals and now packaging to help them gain efficiencies across their business and enable growth. E-commerce is perhaps the most important consumer goods revolution of the last 15 years and companies like UPS and Sealed Air have transformed themselves to serve it, said Jerome A. Peribere, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sealed Air. Peribere continued, As industries continually strive for increased efficiency and consumer satisfaction, we have the distinct ability to make an impact: on the environment through the elimination of damage and void waste, on cost efficiency by optimizing package dimension, and on customers through an enhanced at-home experience. According to eMarketer, worldwide retail e-commerce sales will reach $1.915 trillion this year and double-digit growth will continue through 2020 when sales are projected to top $4 trillion. This tremendous growth rate highlights the need for holistic packaging and logistics solutions that enable e-commerce success. Starting in early 2017, customers will be able to experience the new packaging solutions and tour a special Sealed Air showroom at the UPS Supply Chain Solutions facility in Louisville, Kentucky. About UPS UPS (NYSE: UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range of solutions including transporting packages and freight; facilitating international trade, and deploying advanced technology to more efficiently manage the world of business. Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS serves more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. The company can be found on the web at ups.com and its corporate blog can be found at longitudes.ups.com. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS or follow @UPS_News About Sealed Air Sealed Air Corporation creates a world that feels, tastes and works better. In 2015, the Company generated revenue of approximately $7.0 billion by helping our customers achieve their sustainability goals in the face of todays biggest social and environmental challenges. Our portfolio of widely recognized brands, including Cryovac brand food packaging solutions, Bubble Wrap brand cushioning and Diversey cleaning and hygiene solutions, enables a safer and less wasteful food supply chain, protects valuable goods shipped around the world, and improves health through clean environments. Sealed Air has approximately 23,000 employees who serve customers in 169 countries. To learn more, visit www.sealedair.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 concerning the business, consolidated financial condition and results of operations. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by such words as anticipates, believes, plan, assumes, could, should, estimates, expects, intends, potential, seek, predict, may, will and similar references to future periods. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release regarding our strategies, prospects, financial condition, operations, costs, plans and objectives are forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, among others, statements regarding expected future operating results, expectations regarding the results of restructuring and other programs, anticipated levels of capital expenditures and expectations of the effect on our financial condition of claims, litigation, environmental costs, contingent liabilities and governmental and regulatory investigations and proceedings. The following are important factors that we believe could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements: the tax benefits associated with the Settlement agreement (as defined in Sealed Airs 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K), global economic and political conditions, changes in our credit ratings, changes in raw material pricing and availability, changes in energy costs, competitive conditions, Sealed Airs success in the spin of the Diversey Care and related hygiene business, the success of restructuring activities, currency translation and devaluation effects, the success of financial growth, profitability, cash generation and manufacturing strategies and cost reduction and productivity efforts, the success of new product offerings, the effects of animal and food-related health issues, pandemics, consumer preferences, environmental matters, regulatory actions and legal matters, and the other information referenced in the Risk Factors section appearing in each companies most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and as revised and updated by our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. Any forward-looking statement made in this press release is based only on information currently available and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Neither company undertakes the obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. ALTAVISTA, Va., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pinnacle Bankshares Corporation (the Company) (OTCQX:PPBN), the one-bank holding company for First National Bank (the Bank), announced today that its Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.10 per share on November 8, 2016, payable December 2, 2016 to shareholders of record as of November 18, 2016. The cash dividend is equal to the $0.10 per share paid to shareholders last quarter and marks the seventeenth consecutive quarter that a dividend has been declared. Pinnacle previously released its third quarter 2016 earnings on October 25, 2016. Cash dividends paid this year combined with the year-to-date increase in the trading price of Pinnacles stock have provided an attractive total return on investment for our shareholders thus far in 2016, stated Aubrey H. Hall, III, President and Chief Executive Officer for both the Company and the Bank. Pinnacle Bankshares Corporation is a locally managed community banking organization based in Central Virginia. The one-bank holding company of First National Bank serves an area consisting primarily of all or portions of the Counties of Campbell, Pittsylvania, Bedford, Amherst and the City of Lynchburg. The Company has a total of eight branches with two located in the Town of Altavista, where the Bank was founded. Other branch locations include Village Highway in Rustburg, Wards Road near the Lynchburg Regional Airport, Timberlake Road in Campbell County, South Main Street in the Town of Amherst, Old Forest Road in the City of Lynchburg and Forest Road in Bedford County. First National Bank is in its 108th year of operation. This release may contain forwardlooking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forwardlooking statements are not statements of historical fact and are based on assumptions and describe future plans, strategies, and expectations of management, and are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements are generally identifiable by use of words such as believe, expect, intend, anticipate, estimate, project, may, will or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this release may include, without limitation, statements regarding results of operations and future cash dividends. For a discussion of the Companys risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report. Although we believe our plans, intentions and expectations reflected in the forwardlooking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that these plans, intentions, or expectations will be achieved. Our ability to predict results or the actual effect of future plans or strategies is inherently uncertain, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated in such statements. We base our forward-looking statements on management's beliefs and assumptions based on information available as of the date of this release. You should not place undue reliance on such statements, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect developments occurring after the statement is made. TRENTON, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Representing the 1,600 licensed doctors of the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association (NJVMA), Dr. Mike Yurkus calls on the Assembly Agricultural Committee today to oppose a proposed government ban of surgical declawing (A3899), a move that he feared would lead to the increased euthanasia of unwanted cats. A surgical declaw procedure is recommended by doctors as a last resort, as an alternative to euthanasia or abandonment. A recent survey of NJVMA members shows that the average veterinarian performs less than nine procedures per year utilizing advanced pain control methods. "We're the professionals who care for cats and care for the people who love their cats," said Dr. Yurkus. "We're not pro declawing, but we are anti-euthanasia. We want to see cats in loving households and not euthanized or relinquished to shelters where they are 72% more likely to be euthanized. We simply ask that you leave the declawing decision to doctors in consultation with their clients." While the number of feline patients in veterinary practices has increased, the number of declaws has decreased, indicating that veterinarians are educating clients on alternatives to declawing. Surveys of those who choose to declaw their pets show overall satisfaction and an increase in the quality of life for the cats and their owners. Dr. Yurkus also cited neutering as another elective surgical procedure performed under certain circumstances so cats are more accepted and kept from spraying tomcat-scented urine in the home. About the New Jersey Veterinary Medical Association (NJVMA) Founded in 1884 as a professional association representing the states 1,600 licensed veterinarians, the NJVMA is dedicated to advancing the veterinary profession in New Jersey, protecting the health of animals and extending progressive leadership in the research, care, treatment, and welfare of animals. The NJVMA encourages high ethical standards and competence in the treatment of animals and promotes excellence in the professional training and continuing education of doctors of veterinary medicine. The association is a nexus point for all the issues, factors, and organizations that will have an impact on New Jerseys veterinarians. For more information, go to www.njvma.org Nearly half (44.5%) of rurally-based small businesses believe their existing internet speed is not sufficient for their business requirements according to research carried out by Vodafone Ireland. The research highlights the challenges facing rural small business and was published by Vodafone at their panel discussion on Creating Irelands Gigabit Society at National Digital Week 2016 in Skibbereen, Cork. When asked about their plans for growth, nearly two-thirds (62%) of the businesses agreed that faster broadband and mobile phone coverage would enable them to expand their business. However, nearly seven in 10 (69%) said that slow and unreliable speeds prevent them from working efficiently and hold back their potential for growth. In fact, over one in three (37%) said that they would have to relocate to a nearby town or city if internet connectivity was not available. In recognition of a need to invest in and empower local communities through connected technologies, Vodafone has announced that it, in partnership with SIRO, will offer support to businesses and learning hubs around the country. This will be undertaken through a new initiative to provide 1GB broadband connectivity free of charge for the next two years. The initiative could potentially support over 150 businesses. SIRO is the open-access broadband provider delivering Irelands first 100% fibre-optic broadband network to 50 towns nationwide. CEO of Vodafone Ireland, Anne OLeary said, "Insufficient broadband access is one of the critical issues facing Irish businesses and consumers today, particularly for those in rural locations. High speed broadband internet connectivity will mean that businesses can base themselves in any location and compete on a level playing field with some of the biggest organisations in the world." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rennie Sloan, rennie.sloan@cartercenter.org ATLANTAMore than 140 health and corporate wellness leaders will come together Nov. 17-18 to discuss ways to improve mental health and well-being by addressing behavioral health within defined populations such as communities, organizations, and other groups. This years symposium, Widening the Circle of Health & Wellness: The Central Role of Behavioral Health, brings together a diverse group of stakeholders and leaders to address an emerging trend of offering or improving behavioral health programs in primary and medical care settings, the workplace, and community settings. This integration is a shift to focus on improving wellness through prevention and early recognition of behavioral health issues, which leads to better outcomes. This invitation-only event will include formal remarks by former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Michael Botticelli, Director of National Drug Control Policy at the White House. Media interested in attending the symposium should contact Rennie Sloan at rennie.sloan@cartercenter.org by Nov. 16 at 5 p.m. The welcome remarks and plenary sessions will be webcast. For details and more information, see the agenda below. Thursday, November 18 1:00 1:10 p.m. Welcome Thomas Bornemann, Ed.D. Director, The Carter Center Mental Health Program 1:10 1:20 p.m. Opening Remarks Rosalynn Carter Co-Founder, The Carter Center 1:20 2:00p.m. Keynote Paul Summergrad, M.D. Dr. Frances S. Arkin Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry Tufts University School of Medicine 2:00 3:15 p.m. Plenary One - Managing Population Health & Building Cultures of Wellness Moderator: Ray Fabius, M.D. Co-Founder, HealthNEXT Treating Illness vs. Creating Wellness Nico Pronk, Ph.D. Vice President, Health Management and Chief Science Officer Health Partners Recovery and Resiliency in Population Health Sue Bergeson Vice President, Consumer and Family Affairs OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions Managing the Health of Populations vs. Providing Person-centered Care Kyu Rhee, M.D. Chief Health Officer Watson/IBM 3:15 3:45 p.m. Dismissal to Mini-Plenaries John Bartlett, M.D., M.P.H. Senior Advisor, The Carter Center Mental Health Program 3:45 5:00 p.m. Mini-Plenaries Peer support: Leveraging lived experience into cultures of wellness Laysha Ostrow, Ph.D. CEO, Live & Learn, Inc. Mapping childhood trauma as a root cause Nancy Hardt, M.D. Professor Emerita, University of Florida College of Medicine Sheriff Sadie Darnell, B.S. Education Leadership Sheriff, Alachua County, Gainesville, Florida School-based behavioral health interventions Garry McGiboney, Ph.D. Associate Superintendent, Georgia Department of Education Evidence-based strategies to promote mental health and prevent mental illness in families William Beardslee, M.D. Director, Baer Prevention Initiatives Childrens Hospital Gardner Monks Professor of Child Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Nadine J. Kaslow, Ph.D., ABPP Professor and Vice Chair, Emory Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences 5:00 5:30 p.m. Break/Transition to Reception/ Museum Lobby 5:30 6:30 p.m. Reception/Museum Lobby 6:30 8:30 p.m. Dinner/Cyprus Room 7:30 8:15 p.m. Dinner Speaker Life on Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything Victor J. Strecher, Ph.D., M.P.H. Professor and Director for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship University of Michigan School of Public Health 8:30 p.m. Adjourn Friday, November 18 8:00 8:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast/ Ivan Allen III Pavilion 8:30 8:35 a.m. Opening Comments Thomas Bornemann, Ed.D. Director, The Carter Center Mental Health Program 8:35 -8:40 a.m. Introduction of Keynote Speaker Rosalynn Carter Co-Founder, The Carter Center 8:40 9:15 a.m. Keynote Michael Botticelli, MEd. Director of National Drug Control Policy The White House 9:15 10:30 a.m. Plenary Two- The Current State of Integration Efforts Moderator: Glenda Wrenn, M.D. Director, Behavioral Health, Satcher Health Leadership Institute Morehouse School of Medicine ACA update Danna Mauch, Ph.D. President and CEO Massachusetts Association for Mental Health Addressing Social Determinants of Health Within Cultures of Wellness Paul Keckley Ph.D. Managing Editor The Keckley Report Update on Parity Richard Frank, Ph.D. Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics Harvard Medical School 10:30 10:45 a.m. Break 10:45 a.m. Noon Plenary Three Behavioral Healths Role in Population Health Moderator: David Shern, Ph.D. Senior Science Advisor, Mental Health America; Senior Public Health Advisor, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors The Role of Behavioral Health and Wellness in Overall Health Ron Manderschied, Ph.D. Executive Director National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors How Big Should the Reach and Scope of Integration Be? Camara Jones, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. President American Public Health Association Behavioral Health and Wellness Contributions to the Workplace Fik Isaac, M.D. Vice President, Global Health Services (ret.) Johnson & Johnson 12:00 12:35 p.m. Special Address Sandro Galea, M.D., M.P.H., D.PH. Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the Boston University 12:35 p.m. Dismissal to Mini-Plenaries Lei Ellingson, M.P.P., Senior Associate Director, Carter Center Mental Health Program 12:45 2:15 p.m. Mini-Plenaries Behavioral health in a post-conflict society: Building back better The Carter Center Way Janice Cooper, Ph.D. Project Lead, The Carter Center Mental Health Program-Liberia The impact of food swamps on health disparities Carl Bell, M.D. Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry, University of Illinois Trauma, resilience, and mental health: Integrating care to improve outcomes Teresa Cutts, Ph.D. Professor, Wake Forest School of Medicine Rev. Kirsten Peachey, MDiv, M.S.W., D.Min. Director, Congregational Health Partnerships; Co-Director, the Center for Faith and Community Health Transformation 2:15 2:30 p.m. Transition to Closing Plenary Panel 2:30 3:50 p.m. Closing Plenary Panel Moderator: Mary Jane England, M.D. Clinical Professor, Boston University School of Public Health Paolo del Vecchio, M.S.W. Director Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sandro Galea, M.D., M.P.H., DPH Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean Boston University School of Public Health Camara Jones, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. President American Public Health Association Donato Trumato CEO Healthways 3:50 4:00 p.m. Concluding Remarks Rosalynn Carter Co-Founder, The Carter Center 4:00 p.m. Adjourn Editors Note: Learn more about the Carter Center's Mental Health Program. Watch opening remarks and plenaries on webcast on cartercenter.org. Follow the conversation on @CarterCenter and participate using #CarterMH16. "Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope." A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide. The Charity Commission has ordered military charity Support the Heroes to stop fundraising and frozen its assets after opening a statutory inquiry. This is the first time the Charity Commission has used a new power to direct a charity to cease a specified action. This power was among several granted the regulator in the recent Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act. Support the Heroes was one of those featured in a BBC Scotland investigation into wrongdoing by military charities. This is the third investigation in recent weeks into a military charity working with firms owned by the same fundraiser Tony Chadwick. The others are Our Local Heroes and Afghan Heroes. In all cases, the charities have been criticised for channelling a high percentage of their funds to Chadwicks firms, and little to beneficiaries. In the case of Support the Heroes, the charity received 191,000 and paid more than 60,000 to Chadwicks company, Targeted Management. The Charity Commission issued a statement confirming the investigation. The Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Support the Heroes on 10 November to further investigate public concerns about fundraising activities conducted on its behalf, and the management of conflicts of interest and arrangements with a professional fundraiser, the statement said. The Commission has directed the charity to suspend fundraising activities until further notice and issued a freezing order on assets held directly by the charity or on its behalf. The decision to open the statutory inquiry follows on from the Commissions recent preliminary investigation into the charitys activities. A further public statement will be made in due course. NEW HAVEN, Conn., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Woodbridge International, a global mergers and acquisitions firm, is pleased to welcome Goldie Shturman to its team of investment bankers. Based in the Washington, DC area, Goldie Shturman has over 15 years of international investing and consulting experience in emerging markets, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to joining Woodbridge, Goldie was responsible for private equity transactions for the Inter-American Development Banks (IADB) private sector arm in Washington, DC. She has completed transactions in industries such as food & beverage, energy efficiency, education, housing, financial institutions and fund of funds. Earlier in her career, Goldie was a consultant at the Wharton Small Business Development Center and at Zemi Communications. She earned an MBA from UPENNs Wharton School with majors in Finance and Management, an MA in Political Science from Hebrew University, and a BA in International Relations from Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM). Woodbridges entire international team is excited to work with Goldie in serving the M&A needs of middle-market sellers and buyers worldwide. Its a pleasure to join Woodbridge and have the opportunity to give Latin American businesses the global visibility required to attract top-tier foreign investors and strategic buyers, and to reach the value potential that every successful business owner and entrepreneur strives for, said Goldie Shturman. Headquartered in New Haven, CT, Woodbridge International, a global M&A firm, was founded in 1993 and has 13 offices in the U.S. and 24 offices abroad. Our weekly round-up of all the latest movers in the charity sector. Chief executive The Poppy Factory has announced the appointment of Deirdre Mills as chief executive. Mills, who takes up her post on 16 January 2017, started her career in the British Army, before moving into the voluntary sector. Most recently, Mills was a director at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. UCanDoIT, a charity that provides IT training for disable people, has appointed Samantha Barber as chief executive. Barber will replace current chief executive Mary Payne, who is retiring. Barber has worked in the voluntary sector for 20 years and was most recently director of external relations at Stoll a charity providing housing support for veterans. She also worked with Shelter and the Social Care Institute for Excellence. Finance and strategy Simon Bishop has been appointed director of policy and programmes at Plan International UK. Bishop was most recently the special adviser to Justine Greening at the Department for International Development. He was also strategy adviser to The Princes Charities. Bishop is also currently a trustee of two charities: Trade out of Poverty and Project Harar. Non executive Winstons Wish has announced the appointment of Clare Gallie and Mark Smith to its board of trustees. Gallie joins the charitys board having worked as a charitable fundraiser for over a decade. Currently the director of income generation at Tenovus Cancer Care, she was also previously head of UK fundraising at CLIC Sargent. Smith is currently chief executive of Naomi House and Jacksplace, two hospices for children and young adults. He also previously worked for Bernardos, Anthony Nolan and Prospect Hospice. We adamantly oppose this pipeline going through our farm, says a letter signed by Francis and Janice Goebel, as there are no guarantees it will never have leaks or other environmental problems. This only benefits ETP, or Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, and not me, my wife or any public purpose. Before the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota began its months-long, public standoff with Energy Transfer Partners and the Morton County Sheriffs department over the Dakota Access Pipeline, saying that the project put their water supply at risk and that they weren't properly consulted, landowners, environmental scientists, and agricultural experts in Iowa voiced similar concerns about the project. The Goebel family, like other Iowa landowners in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline, wrote letters to the Iowa Utilities Board in July 2015 urging the agency to reject necessary permits there for the project. Our century-plus-old farm was taken care of for four generations and I will do my best to keep it that way, they wrote in their objection. Some of the landowners describe being threatened by Energy Transfer Partners with eminent domain, even before the Iowa Utilities Board granted its approval for the pipeline. The piece of land on my farm which Bakken wishes to condemn has been in our family for over 80 years, Herman Rook wrote to the Iowa Utilities Board. Iowas soil is an irreplaceable resource that should not be subject to irreversible damage from the construction of a pipeline and potential spills after the pipeline would be in use...Use of eminent domain for a pipeline is unfair, says another letter, signed by Catherine Scott. And Iowan farmers Sandra Renegar and Candace Chesney, whose land is also in the path of the pipeline, wrote to the state utility agency that they had been given no information about the project and wouldnt have unless we had shown initiative to seek it ourselves. Researchers and scientists give warning Several months later, in October 2015, the Iowa Utilities Board held a hearing to determine whether they should grant the permits to Energy Transfer Partners. Testimony from experts in land and the environment suggests that the local farmers' concerns werent unfounded. Dr. Erwin Klaas, an ecology professor at Iowa State University who used to work for the United States Department of Interior and then served on his countys soil conversation district, told the Iowa Utilities Board that pipeline construction will immediately and directly affect more than 6,200 acres of land in Iowa, most of it prime agricultural land. Klaas also told the board, according to hearing transcripts, that construction will remove three soil horizons that will be impossible to restore to its original productivity." The temperature of the oil in the pipeline may prevent farmers' soil from freezing, he added,which would subject the land to erosion. Dr. James Hansen, the prominent climate scientist formerly at NASA and currently at Columbia University, who once described the Keystone Pipeline XL Pipeline as game over for the planet, testified in his home state that the impacts of this pipeline would spread much further than the borders of Iowa. While Hansens research has already suggested that humans have pumped too much carbon into the atmosphere to prevent climate change, he testified to the Iowa Utilities Board that much of the damage can still be stopped: Restoration of our climate system, and thus, protection of our childrens future, is still possible if we act with reason, courage, and no further delay." Short on details The immediate environmental impacts of the pipeline construction on Iowan land, according to the experts who testified against it last year, are also unclear because Energy Transfer Partners studies were short on details, they said. Dr. John Doershuk, Iowas State Archaeologist, said that Energy Transfer Partners never consulted with him before seeking permits for the project, and he described their archeological investigations on the route as woefully inadequate. Doershuk, as well as Hansen, Klaas and six other experts provided their testimony against the Dakota Access Pipeline on behalf of Sierra Clubs Iowa chapter, which unsuccessfully organized a campaign to stop the project. In June of this year, despite the objections from landowners and experts, the Iowa Utilities Board gave Energy Transfer Partners the go-ahead to begin pipeline construction on all state land outside the jurisdiction of the US Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates most of the pipeline's route and has already granted approval for much of the project. The utilities board was not swayed by the expert opinions testifying on Sierra Clubs behalf. No, just the opposite, Wily Taylor, the Chair of Sierra Clubs Iowa chapter, tells ConsumerAffairs. Pipeline gains ground By September, Energy Transfer Partners announced that the entire Dakota Access Pipeline project was already 60 percent complete. The 1,172 mile pipeline is supposed to transfer crude oil from North Dakotas Bakken oil fields to Illinois, and is crossing South Dakota and Iowa along the way. I am proud of our work on Dakota Access, CEO Kelcy Warren said in a letter to shareholders at the time, as controversies at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota began attracting national attention. We have designed the state-of-the-art Dakota Access pipeline as a safer and more efficient method of transporting crude oil than the alternatives being used today, namely rail and truck. (Spokespeople for the Energy Transfer Partners have not returned a recent interview request). To be sure, reports and studies do suggest that transporting crude oil via pipeline is safer than rail or truck, where accidents can create lethal explosions. But environmentalists say that pipeline leaks are not uncommon and have more long-lasting consequences. Although an explosion from a rail car is more dramatic, the damage is much less severe and is more restrictive in terms of area, Pam Mackey-Taylor of Sierra Club Iowa tells ConsumerAffairs. Regardless, Sierra Club's goal is to curb fossil fuel dependency all-together, they say, rather than propose alternative methods to transport oil. Feds threaten protesters with eviction On December 4, military veterans plan to arrive at the protest camps in North Dakota to defend the water protectors, as the protesters on the reservation call themselves. The Army Corps of Engineers, coincidentally or not, announced last week that they would evacuate the main protest camp on December 5 and set up a free speech zone further from the construction area. But the federal agencies that have allowed the pipeline to cross through four states have also lent some timid approval to the protesters in recent months. The Corps of Engineers announced on November 14 that they would temporarily halt planned pipeline construction under Lake Oahe, a source of water for the Sioux and now the site of intense protests. That follows an announcement President Barack Obama made this year that he would ask Energy Transfer Partners to "voluntarily" halt construction on federal land near Lake Oahe, which connects to the Missouri River through the Oahe Dam. Whether Energy Transfer Partners has followed that request is unclear. The Corps only says that they expect the pipeline company to follow all federal laws. The pipeline company has not been granted the easement that is required before any horizontal drilling beneath USACE [United States Army Corps of Engineers]-managed federal lands at Lake Oahe can begin, Corps spokesperson Moira Kelley tells ConsumerAffairs via email. The easement necessary for the pipeline to cross USACE-managed federal land at Lake Oahe is currently under review. We expect all parties involved to adhere to federal law. There is no timeline for this review period. A determination is expected in the near future. Consumer-directed health plans, such as HSA-compatible high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), are now the norm among large employers, according to an annual survey of large employers by the National Business Group on Health. Its Large Employers 2017 Health Plan Design Survey found that 84 percent of survey respondents are offering at least one consumer-directed health plan as an option in 2017, with an HSA-compatible high-deductible health plan the most popular design option. In fact, 35 percent of responding employers will offer only consumer-directed health plans to their employees. This means that the millions of American workers selecting their health plans for next year during the fall open enrollment period will likely have the option to select an HSA-compatible HDHP. And, in many cases, it may be their only plan option. Consequently, more workers will need an HSA. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future as employers struggle to contain rising health care costs. More than half (53 percent) of the survey participants reported that implementing a consumer-directed health plan option or offering only consumer-directed health plans was one of their most effective tactics for controlling rising health care costs. The survey found that by 2019, it is possible that nine out of ten large employers will offer at least one consumer-directed health plan. Enrollment in HSA-compatible HDHPs increased 22 percent from 2014 to 2015 among health plans participating in an annual census conducted by Americas Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). In its 2015 Census of Health Savings Account High Deductible Health Plans, AHIP reported that HSA-compatible HDHP enrollment reached 19.7 million in January 2015, the most recent period for which data is available. This double-digit increase in HSA-compatible HDHP enrollment correlates directly to the increase in the number of HSAs. The number of HSAs rose to 18.2 million as of June 30, 2016, a 25 percent increase from the same period last year, according to findings derived from the 2016 Midyear Devenir HSA Research Report. This trend is expected to continue, with Devenir projecting that the number of HSAs will exceed 27 million by the end of 2018. HSA growth is fueling the growth in HSA assets, which reached $34.7 billion as of June 30, 2016, a 22 percent increase from the same period last year, according to the Devenir survey. The survey also found that average HSA balances are increasing, fewer HSAs are unfunded, and more HSA owners are choosing investment options for their HSA assets. Some of the growth in HSA balances results from employer contributions to employee HSAs. The National Business Group on Health survey found that the vast majority of employers that offer HSA-compatible HDHPs make contributions to employee HSAs. Employers use a variety of funding options, such as making an initial contribution to fund the HSA, contributing a predetermined amount each year, or matching employee contributions. The median employer HSA contribution is $600 for self-only coverage and $1,100 for family coverage. Only 15 percent of employers offering an HSA-compatible HDHP do not make any employer contributions to employee HSAs. The growth in the number of HSAs and HSA assets nationally is reflected in the growth at credit unions that offer HSAs to their members. Credit unions offering HSAs reported double-digit growth in HSA deposits last year, according to call report data analyzed by the Economics and Statistics Department of the Credit Union National Association. As of the most recent call report data, credit unions held more than $1.3 billion in HSA deposits, representing nearly four percent of the total HSA market. Credit unions that were early entrants into the HSA market have built substantial HSA portfolios. For many of these credit unions, the size of their HSA portfolioin terms of numbers of accountsexceeds the size of their IRA portfolio. Unfortunately, less than 15 percent of all credit unions offer HSAs to their members. Although there are many reasons why credit unions do not offer HSAs, there are compelling reasons for credit unions to offer them. The continued double-digit growth in the number of HSAs and HSA depositsnationwide and at credit unionscan no longer be ignored and should prompt credit unions not offering HSAs to offer them. Credit unions that offer HSAs benefit from increased revenue through account, transaction, and maintenance fees, deeper relationships with members and small business owners, and potential partnerships with insurance agents and brokers who want to refer their clients to a local HSA custodian. Credit union members benefit from lower account, transaction, and maintenance fees, local account servicing, and having their HSA at their primary financial institution. That is a win for both credit unions and their members. DENVER (Nov. 14, 2016) -- People with diabetes are one step closer to more easily checking their blood glucose levels with a non-invasive device for detecting and monitoring blood glucose levels, which is currently in development. The hand-held breathalyzer device detects acetone, which has been linked to high blood glucose levels in the breath. The research is being presented at the 2016 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting. The meeting is taking place in Denver Nov. 13-17. Although testing technology has improved in recent decades, with the finger stick testing, as many as 67 percent of people with diabetes may not comply because it is invasive and somewhat painful. Yet, lack of blood-glucose monitoring can result in serious diabetes-related complications. For example, if a person's blood glucose is too low, complications can include seizures, loss of consciousness, and even death. If a person's blood glucose is too high, complications can include infections, cardiovascular disease and nerve and kidney damage. "We believe this technology will be a great improvement in the lives of people with diabetes," said Priefer. "It is the first non-invasive medical device for detecting and monitoring diabetes by connecting one's acetone levels with their blood glucose. We believe it is a necessary alternative to the finger-prick approach for people living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes." Ronny Priefer, Ph.D. and his colleague, Michael Rust, Ph.D., both out of Western New England University in Springfield, Mass., have developed a device -- currently the size of small book -- that individuals blow into to check their blood glucose levels. Priefer and his team tested the device in a blind study of 50 people: 26 did not have diabetes, 16 had type 2 diabetes, and 8 people had type 1 diabetes. Using the device in conjunction with the sensor slides, when patients blow into the device, readings are immediately taken. The acetone level is instantly correlated to a blood glucose level, which allows patients to determine how much insulin they need to take when their glucose levels are high. Stage 1 clinical results found clear correlations between blood glucose levels and breath acetone. The only outlier found was in a small number of smokers, whom had higher levels of acetone in the breath due to the combustion of tobacco. Priefer's goal is to have a device by the end of 2017 that patients can bring home and track their blood glucose levels over time. He is also working to make the device even smaller. ### 04M1130 - Diabetes Monitoring: Just a Breath Away! will be presented on Monday, Nov. 14 from 11:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in the Colorado Convention Center - Exhibit Hall E. The 2016 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition aims to improve global health through advances in pharmaceutical sciences, and there will be over 700 exhibitor booths and an estimated 6,500 attendees. The meeting features nearly 245 programming sessions, including more than 65 symposia and roundtables and nearly 2,000 posters. Download the AAPS mobile application for additional information. Editor's Note: All media must provide press credentials to attend this meeting and register onsite at the Colorado Convention Center in the press room 105. To schedule an interview with Ronny Priefer, or for any other press inquiries, please contact Katie Baumer at baumerk@aaps.org or 703-248-4772 or Hillarie Turner at hillarie@vaneperen.com or 301-836-1516 x7. For the most up-to-date program information, please click here. About AAPS: The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) is a professional, scientific organization of approximately 9,000 members employed in academia, industry, government, and other research institutes worldwide. Founded in 1986, AAPS advances the capacity of pharmaceutical scientists to develop products and therapies that improve global health. Visit http://www.aaps.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @AAPSComms; official Twitter hashtag for the meeting is: #AAPS2016. NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 14, 2016 -- Disruptions in sleep may be raising your risks of an irregular heartbeat, known as atrial fibrillation (AF), according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2016. Obstructive sleep apnea, sleep interrupted by pauses in breathing, is a known risk for atrial fibrillation - an irregular heartbeat that can lead to strokes, heart failure and other heart-related complications. But whether there's a relationship between disrupted sleep and atrial fibrillation even when there's no sleep apnea is unclear. Presentation 733: Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco examined three sources of data - each using a different approach - to isolate and confirm the effects of poor sleep on atrial fibrillation. Their analyses of these studies showed that: disrupted sleep, including insomnia, may be independently associated with atrial fibrillation; people who reported frequent night-time awakening had about a 26 percent higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation compared to those who didn't wake up a lot; and people diagnosed with insomnia had a 29 percent higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation compared to those without insomnia. Insomnia meant having trouble falling asleep, not getting enough sleep, or having poor sleep. "The idea that these three studies gave us consistent results was exciting," said lead study author Matt Christensen, currently a fourth-year medical student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Past research has shown a link between poor sleep among people who already had AF. But this study focused on people whose pre-existing sleep disruptions were associated with developing AF later in life. The data sources included the Health eHeart Study - an internet-based cross-sectional study of more than 4,600 people; the Cardiovascular Health Study - an 11-year longitudinal study of just over 5,700 people, of which almost 1,600 (28 percent) developed atrial fibrillation; and the California Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, a hospital-based database spanning five years and covering almost 14 million patients. In all three studies, researchers adjusted for the effects of obstructive sleep apnea and AF risk factors that might also be related to sleep. Some of those factors were age, sex, race, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure and smoking. Diving deeper into sleep patterns and AF Poster 218: In a separate analysis, the same researchers reviewed a subset of the Cardiovascular Health Study to understand the effect of sleep disruptions during different sleep phases without obstructive sleep apnea on atrial fibrillation risks. The analysis showed that having less rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep than other sleep phases during the night is linked to higher chances of developing atrial fibrillation. "By examining the actual characteristics of sleep, such as how much REM sleep you get, it points us toward a more plausible mechanism. There could be something particular about how sleep impacts the autonomic nervous system," Christensen said. The autonomic nervous system plays a major role in controlling heart rate and blood pressure. Another possible explanation for the link between sleep disruptions and atrial fibrillation is that frequent waking puts extra stress on the heart's chambers, said Christensen. Participants in this analysis were also enrolled in the Sleep Heart Health Study. They had a formal sleep study to objectively measure sleep quality. That's another element which strengthened the study's conclusions, said Christensen, as it didn't rely on self-reported data. In this analysis, 1,131 people (average age 77) participated in a study with almost 10 years of follow-up. Researchers measured how long participants slept, how well they slept, how long it took to fall asleep and the patterns of sleep (i.e., how much time was spent in rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep versus non-REM sleep). Then they analyzed the sleep disruptions' effects to control the effects of age, sex, race, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other risk factors. Study authors say the exact link between sleep and how AF develops is still a mystery, but we are getting closer to a clear picture. "Ultimately, even without a clear understanding of the responsible mechanisms, we believe these findings suggest that strategies to enhance sleep quality, such as incorporating known techniques to improve sleep hygiene, may help prevent this important arrhythmia," said senior author of both abstracts Gregory Marcus, M.D., M.A.S., a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Poor sleep is a known culprit for other heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and stroke. So it's important to know how to get a good night's rest. Getting enough physical activity, avoiding too much caffeine, and having an evening routine are good starting tips for sound slumber. Talk to your doctor if you're having trouble with poor sleep. ### Co-authors are Matthew Christensen, B.S.; Shalini Dixit, M.D.; Thomas Dewland, M.D.; Isaac Whitman, M.D.; Gregory Nah, M.A.; Eric Vittinghoff, Ph.D.; Kenneth Mukamal, M.D., M.P.H.; Susan Redline, M.D., M.P.H.; John Robbins, M.D., M.H.S.; Anne Newman, M.D., M.P.H.; Sanjay Patel, M.D.; Jared Magnani, M.D.; Bruce Psaty, M.D., Ph.D.; Jeffrey Olgin, M.D.; Mark Pletcher, M.D., M.P.H.; and Susan Heckbert, M.D., Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the abstract. This study is funded in part by the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Note: Scientific Presentation 733 is 10:50 a.m. CT, Nov. 15, in the Science and Technology Hall. Scientific Presentation 218 is 11:30 a.m. CT, Nov. 14, in Room 338-339. Additional Resources: AHA expert perspective video (via Skype) interview clips (for download/edit) and images related to this news release are on the right column of the release link at http://newsroom.heart.org/news/poor-sleep-may-increase-risk-for-irregular-heart-rhythms?preview=b9899b011cbc131ba149331e38255d00 Video clips with researchers/authors of the studies will be added to the release link after embargo. Sleep Apnea and Heart Disease and Stroke Atrial Fibrillation For more news at AHA Scientific Sessions 2016, follow us on Twitter @HeartNews #AHA16. Statements and conclusions of study authors that are presented at American Heart Association scientific meetings are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect association policy or position. The association makes no representation or warranty as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations are available at http://www.heart.org/corporatefunding. Providence, RI---Leon Simon of Stanford University will receive the 2017 AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research "for his fundamental contributions to Geometric Analysis and in particular for his 1983 paper `Asymptotics for a Class of Non-Linear Evolution Equations, with Applications to Geometric Problems', published in the Annals of Mathematics." Geometry is a branch of mathematics that studies properties of shapes. Analysis is a branch that includes calculus and that focuses on functions and equations that describe change, in particular, differential equations. The two branches interact in the area of geometric analysis, which brings tools from geometry to bear on problems in differential equations, or vice versa. Many of the problems and methods in geometric analysis have their origins in physics, and the ideas developed in geometric analysis have in turn been applied in that field. Simon's prize-winning paper studies singularities that occur in certain types of geometric objects. A singularity may be thought of as a point, crease, or other localized disruption in the smoothness of a geometric object. Simon's approach recasts the original geometric problem as a problem of differential equations, to which sophisticated analysis techniques can be applied. He also shows how his approach can be used to unify and generalize earlier work on related problems. Simon's strikingly original paper has provided powerful tools of far-reaching impact, which have since been applied or adapted to address questions arising in a variety of contexts, ranging from differential geometry to fluid dynamics and superconductivity. "Leon Simon's paper has had extraordinary impact on analysis, geometry and applied mathematics," the prize citation says, noting that hundreds of papers have been written based on the insights contained in the paper. "Without a doubt Simon's ideas will continue to be applied and further developed in future work." Simon is the recipient of an earlier AMS prize, the Bocher Prize, which honors an outstanding contribution to analysis. It was awarded to Simon in 1994 "for his profound contributions toward understanding the structure of singular sets for solutions of variational problems." Born in 1945 in Australia, Leon Simon received his bachelor's degree (1967) and PhD (1971) at the University of Adelaide. He taught at several universities in Australia and the United States before taking, in 1986, his present position as professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Simon was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences (1983), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994), of the Royal Society (2003), and of the AMS (2012). He was awarded a Sloan Fellowship (1975), an Australian Mathematical Society Medal (1983), and a Humboldt Award (2005). He gave an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1983. In the course of his career, he has supervised the thesis work of 18 graduate students. Presented annually, the AMS Steele Prize is one of the highest distinctions in mathematics. The prize will be awarded Thursday, January 5, 2017, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta. ### Find out more about AMS prizes and awards at http://www.ams.org/profession/prizes-awards/prizes. Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, today the American Mathematical Society fulfills its mission through programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life. Children who suffer cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting are more likely to survive, and to have better neurological outcomes, when they receive bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Researchers studying a large U.S. registry of cardiac arrests compared outcomes for two bystander resuscitation techniques, and also recommend improving provision of bystander CPR in minority communities to improve outcomes in children. "Over 5000 children have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest every year in the United States," said study leader Maryam Y. Naim, MD, of the Cardiac Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). "The overall mortality of these arrests remains high, but we know that providing bystander CPR can improve survival. Our study offers more information relevant to saving children's lives." Naim and colleagues report their results today online in JAMA Pediatrics. The research team analyzed a subset of data from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), a large national database of non-traumatic cardiac arrests established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The team evaluated 3900 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in children up to age 18 from 2013 to 2015. About 60 percent of the arrests occurred in infants, 60 percent in females, and about 84 percent in homes or residences. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the arrests were not witnessed. Overall, 440 (11.3 percent) of the 3900 children survived, and the majority of those survivors (354 or 9.1 percent of the 3900) had neurologically favorable outcomes. In 46 percent of the 3900 cases, someone provided bystander CPR, most commonly a family member. Children who received bystander CPR had an advantage in overall survival compared to those receiving no bystander CPR--13.2 percent versus 9.5 percent. They also had better rates of neurologically favorable survival--10.3 percent compared to 7.59 percent in those with no bystander CPR. The researchers also analyzed two types of bystander CPR for 1411 of the total cases in which such data was available, comparing conventional CPR, which includes both chest compressions and rescue breaths, to compression-only CPR. Although both methods are equally effective for adults with out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, the American Heart Association recommends conventional CPR for children. In this study, the first to compare both methods in U.S. children, 49 percent of children who had an OHCA received conventional CPR and 51 percent received compression-only CPR. Importantly, neurologically favorable survival was more likely to occur after conventional CPR than after the compression-only technique. One other finding relates to infants, who suffer the majority of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. In infants, conventional CPR showed higher overall survival, and compression-only CPR had rates of survival similar to no bystander CPR. Finally, the study team found a racial disparity in those receiving bystander CPR. White children were significantly more likely to receive bystander CPR than Black or Hispanic children, similarly to previous findings in adults who receive bystander CPR. "This finding suggests that public health interventions in Black and Hispanic communities should focus on education on how to perform bystander CPR," said Naim. ### Formerly funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CARES is now supported by the American Red Cross, the American Heart Association, the Medtronic Foundation HeartRescue Program, Physio-Control Corporation, Zoll Corporation, and in-kind support from Emory University. Co-authors with Naim were from CHOP, the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Emory University, University of Texas Health Science Center and Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, Colo. Maryam Y. Naim et al, "Association of Bystander Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation with Overall and Neurologically Favorable Survival After Pediatric Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in the United States: A Report from the CARES Surveillance Registry," JAMA Pediatrics, published Nov. 12, 2016. About Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 535-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu A NEW personalised breast cancer programme which will map patients' DNA and RNA to tailor treatment for individuals launches at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. The project, which was launched with 1.1 million funding from Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust (ACT), will analyse the genome and all expressed genes of tumour cells from 250 breast cancer patients to improve diagnosis and tailor treatment. Finding out what genes have become faulty in breast cancer cells will help researchers understand more about how cancer develops and spreads. It will also help doctors choose the best treatment for their patient. Breast cancer patients are treated based on the broad types of cancer, for example, those that are likely to respond to hormone therapies, but it can be difficult to predict how individual patients will respond to treatment. The researchers hope to find out how this personalised diagnosis and treatment programme could be implemented in the National Health Service's (NHS) breast cancer unit in Cambridge and hope that one day this will extend around the UK. Professor Richard Gilbertson, director of the CRUK Major Cancer Centre at Cambridge University, said: "The Personalised Breast Cancer Project is truly ground-breaking. By sequencing the entire tumour genome of women with breast cancer in our clinic and integrating this extensive data with other biological and clinical observations, we will assign patients to optimal therapy, changing the way we treat breast cancer forever." Professor Carlos Caldas, project lead at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: "We already know that there are around 10 different types of breast cancer, as we reported in 2012, and these respond differently to the available treatments. We're looking at ways to predict this response ensuring individual patients get the best treatment for them. We hope that this project will accelerate progress in developing personalised treatment for breast cancer patients." Dr Jenny Longmore, Director of Research at Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust (ACT), said: "ACT is pleased to have been able to support the initiation of this clinical research project with more than 1.1 million of funding from many generous supporters. The project will involve patients from the Cambridge Breast Unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital, and we expect that the outcomes of the research will be valuable to patients both nationally and internationally in years to come." Sir Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK's chief executive officer, said: "Today eight in 10 women with breast cancer survive their disease for at least 10 years. The ability to tailor treatment to individual patients will help ensure this number continues to rise and should help reduce side effects. This project will bring us closer to making personalised medicine a reality in the NHS and beyond." ### Nature is full of parasites--organisms that flourish and proliferate at the expense of another species. Surprisingly, these same competing roles of parasite and host can be found in the microscopic molecular world of the cell. A new study by two Illinois researchers has demonstrated that dynamic elements within the human genome interact with each other in a way that strongly resembles the patterns seen in populations of predators and prey. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters by physicists Chi Xue and Nigel Goldenfeld, (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.208101) are an important step toward understanding the complex ways that genomes change over the lifetime of individual organisms, and how they evolve over generations. "These are genes that are active and are doing genome editing in real time in living cells, and this is a start of trying to really understand them in much more detail than has been done before," said Goldenfeld, who leads the Biocomplexity research theme at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Universal Biology (IGB). "This is helping us understand the evolution of complexity and the evolution of genomes." The study was supported by Center for the Physics of Living Cells, a Physics Frontiers Center at Illinois supported by the National Science Foundation, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology at Illinois, which Goldenfeld directs. Goldenfeld and Xue embarked on this work because of their interest in transposons, small regions of DNA that can move themselves from one part of the genome to another during the lifetime of a cell--a capability that has earned them the name "jumping genes." Collectively, various types of transposons make up almost half of the human genome. When they move around, they may create mutations in or alter the activity of a functional gene; transposons can therefore create new genetic profiles in a population for natural selection to act on, in either a positive or negative way. The Illinois researchers wanted to learn more about how evolution works on this level, the level of whole organisms, by looking at the metaphorical ecosystem of the human genome. In this view, the physical structure of the DNA that makes up the genome acts like an environment, in which two types of transposons, long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) and short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), have a competitive relationship with one another. In order to replicate, SINEs steal the molecular machinery that LINEs use to copy themselves, somewhat like a cuckoo bird tricks other birds into raising her chicks for her while abandoning their own. With help from Oleg Simakov, a researcher at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Xue and Goldenfeld focused on the biology of L1 elements and Alu elements, respectively common types of LINEs and SINEs in the human genome. The researchers adopted methods from modern statistical physics and modeled the interaction between Alu and L1 elements mathematically as a stochastic process--a process created from chance interactions. This method has been successfully applied in ecology to describe predator-prey interactions; Xue and Goldenfeld simulated the movements of transposons within the human genome with the same mathematical method. Their models included a detailed accounting for how Alu elements steal the molecular machinery L1 elements use to copy themselves. Xue and Goldenfeld's results predicted that populations of LINE and SINE elements in the genome are expected to oscillate the way those of, for example, wolves and rabbits might. "We realized that the transposons' interaction actually was pretty much like the predator-prey interaction in ecology," said Xue. "We came up with the idea, why don't we apply the same idea of predator-prey dynamics . . .we expected to see the oscillations we see in the predator-prey model. So we first did the simulation and we saw the oscillations we expected, and we got really excited." In other words, too many SINEs and the LINEs start to suffer, and soon there are not enough for all the SINEs to exploit. SINEs start to suffer, and the LINEs make a come-back. Xue and Goldenfeld's model made the surprising prediction that these oscillations occur over a timescale that is longer than the human lifespan--waves of Alu elements and L1 elements pushing and pulling at each other in slow motion across generations of the human genomes that carry them. "The most enlightening aspect of the study for me was the fact that we could really compute the timescales, and see that it is possible that we could observe these things," said Goldenfeld. "We have a prediction for what happens in single cells, and we may be able to actually do an experiment to observe these things, though the period is longer than the lifetime of a single cell." In a related study, Goldenfeld's laboratory has collaborated with the laboratory of fellow physicist and IGB Biocomplexity research theme member Thomas Kuhlman to visualize the movements of transposons within the genomes of living cells. Using this type of innovative technology, and by studying the history of molecular evolution in other species, Goldenfeld and Xue hope to test some of the predictions made by their model and continue to gain insight into the dynamic world of the genome. ### Two differing blood clot prevention medications are just as safe and effective for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention, a non-surgical procedure to open blood vessels narrowed by plaque buildup, according to a new study. The scientific community has proposed both medications as potentially superior to longer-term anticoagulation treatments for patients undergoing the procedure. The new study by researchers from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City sought to discover which of the two short-term treatment methods --using the drug heparin combined with a short-term (less than six hours) infusion of tirofiban, or short-term periprocedural bivalirudin, another medication that helps prevent blood clots during the procedure -- was more effective. Through this observational study of patients undergoing successful elective percutaneous coronary intervention, the Intermountain researchers found that the risk after 30 days of major bleeding, and one-year risk of death, heart attack and urgent repeat PCI, was low and not significantly different between the two treatment methods. Results of the study will be presented during the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in New Orleans on Sunday, November 13, at 3:45 pm, CST. "Bivalirudin has been considered the gold standard for reducing bleeding during percutaneous coronary intervention, but our study shows heparin plus short-term tirofiban is just as good and possibly better," said Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute cardiologist J. Brent Muhlestein, MD, the lead author on the study. "The results certainly justify a randomized clinical trial to explore identified trends." Researchers studied results from patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention between January 2013 and December 2015. Of the 857 patients enrolled in the study, 402 received heparin plus short-term tirofiban treatment and 455 received bivalirudin. The patients were between the ages of 51 and 78. There was a slight reduction in major bleeding and death with the use of heparin plus short-term tirofiban over bivalirudin alone, but due to the overall low incidence of adverse events, the difference did not reach statistical significance. The 30-day incidence of TIMI major bleeding score was 1.2 percent for patients treated with heparin and tirofiban and 3.1 percent for bivalirudin patients. ### In addition to Dr. Muhlestein, other members of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute research team include Heidi T. May, PhD; Tami L. Bair; Viet Le, PA; Jeffrey L. Anderson, MD; Brian Whisenant, MD; Kirk U. Knowlton, MD; and Donald L. Lappe, MD. The Intermountain Medical Center is the flagship facility for the Intermountain Healthcare system, which is based in Salt Lake City. KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- This holiday season, Farmland is proud to partner with No Kid Hungry to help end childhood hunger in America. For every participating Farmland product sold now through Dec. 31, Farmland will make a $0.25 donation to No Kid Hungry, up to $100,000, to help the one in five children struggling with food insecurity nationwide. $1 can provide a child up to 10 healthy meals. With the help of Farmland and its customers, $100,000 can provide 1 million meals to children facing hunger.1 The holidays are meant to bring joy and celebrate togetherness but, unfortunately, we know that for many this can also be a time of financial stress, said Megan Thomas, senior brand manager for Smithfield Foods. By partnering with No Kid Hungry, we can help to ensure that kids spend less time worrying about their next meal and more time getting into the holiday spirit. Each purchase helps fights hunger. Hunger isnt just a problem for kids during the holidays its something nearly 16 million of them face throughout the year, said Jill Davis, senior director of corporate partnerships at No Kid Hungry. We applaud Farmland for supporting hungry kids who need our help by raising funds that support long-term, sustainable solutions. Together, we can ensure that no child goes hungry. This campaign will mark Farmlands third year of fighting food insecurity during the holidays. Throughout the past two holiday seasons, Farmland donated nearly 200,000 combined pounds of protein to Midwest food banks in Denver, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Kansas City, which provided more than 780,000 servings to local families in need. Participating Farmland product includes everything from Farmland bacon and breakfast sausage to hot dogs and lunch meats. For more information on the campaign, please visit FarmlandFoods.com, @FarmlandFoods or Facebook.com/FarmlandFoods. Farmland is a brand of Smithfield Foods. 1 This amount is based on the individual experiences of grant recipients. Contributions will be used to reach the highest number of children facing hunger in America. Share Our Strength is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. Farmland will donate up to $100,000 to No Kid Hungry from November 13 December 31, 2016. About Farmland Founded in 1959, Farmland is a maker of high-quality, popular consumer goods such as bacon and sausage, and serves retail and foodservice customers. To learn more about Farmland, please visit www.FarmlandFoods.com. Farmland is a brand of Smithfield Foods. About Smithfield Foods Smithfield Foods is a $14 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, Cook's, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Kretschmar, Margherita, Curly's, Carando, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Morliny and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com. About No Kid Hungry No child should go hungry in America, but 1 in 5 kids will face hunger this year. Using proven, practical solutions, No Kid Hungry is ending childhood hunger today by ensuring that kids start the day with a nutritious breakfast and families learn the skills they need to shop and cook on a budget. When we all work together, we can make sure kids get the healthy food they need. No Kid Hungry is a campaign of national anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength. Join us at www.NoKidHungry.org. Dr. Israel E. Wachs, the G. Whitney Snyder Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University, has been named as recipient of the AIChE's top award in chemical reaction engineering. Wachs will be formally recognized with the R. H. Wilhelm Award at the 2016 AIChE Annual Meeting, November 13-18 in San Francisco, CA. AIChE is the world's leading organization for chemical engineering professionals, with more than 50,000 members from over 100 countries. Its Annual Meeting is the premier forum for chemical engineers interested in cutting edge research, new technologies, and emerging growth areas in chemical engineering. The director of Lehigh's Operando Molecular Spectroscopy and Catalysis Laboratory, Wachs' contributions over three decades have been integral to the development of cutting edge research, new technologies and emerging growth areas in chemical reaction engineering. "There can be nothing more central to our profession than reaction engineering," says Mayuresh Kothare, chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Lehigh. "Winning the Wilhelm Award is, therefore, a very special moment for our department, and a fitting way to celebrate Israel's 30 years of pioneering accomplishments in this core area of our discipline." In particular, Dr. Wachs was recognized for "seminal contributions towards development of innovative concepts for molecular chemical reaction engineering of mixed oxide catalyzed reactions by establishing fundamental catalyst molecular structure-activity kinetic relationships." Fueling green energy technologies In one project, Wachs leads a team of researchers from Lehigh and the Stevens Institute of Technology that recently announced major advances in the fundamental understanding of a catalytic reaction that directly converts natural gas into valuable liquid fuels (gasoline, diesel and jet fuel). Natural gas, the researchers say, is abundant and inexpensive--but terribly underutilized. More than half the world's known reserves are classified as stranded due to high cost of transport or lack of efficient remote processing technologies. Moreover, when an oil well is drilled, natural gas is often flared--burned off--or vented into the atmosphere, where it contributes significantly to global warming. Worldwide, more than 140 billion cubic meters of natural gas are flared or vented every year due to this practice, roughly equivalent to 20% of all the natural gas consumed annually in the United States. And methane, the main component of natural gas, traps about 86 times more heat over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide. To leverage 'stranded' gas while protecting the environment, new technologies for natural gas conversion are under development. Wachs' team explores the direct conversion of natural gas into liquid aromatic hydrocarbons in a single step without oxidizing reagents. This 'dehydroaromatization' of methane is achieved using catalysts with molybdenum nanostructures supported on shape-selective zeolites. This technology, say the researchers, offers unique advantages over other methane activation chemistries because it does not require the transportation of reagents to remote locations. The Lehigh-Stevens team believes their published results could help overcome one of the biggest technical obstacles--the rapid deactivation of the molybdenum catalyst. The new technologies will address not only the economic issue of natural gas conversion into liquid fuels and chemical feedstocks but also a significant environmental issue. If the current venting and flaring of natural gas can be eliminated, such a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will by itself more than meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for all the participating countries combined. Pioneering innovation Dr. Wachs' research focuses on the catalysis science of mixed metal oxides (supported metal oxides , bulk metal oxides, polyoxometalates, zeolites and molecular sieves) for numerous catalytic applications (selective oxidation for manufacture of value-added chemicals, environmental catalysis (selective catalytic reduction of NOx and SOx), hydrocarbon conversion by solid acid catalysts for increased fuel energy content, olefin metathesis for on demand production of scarce propylene, olefin polymerization, conversion of methane to liquid aromatic fuels, oxidative coupling of methane to ethylene (the most important intermediate for the chemical industry), biomass pyrolysis for production of liquid fuels, conversion of bioethanol to butadiene for manufacture of green tires (biomass-to-tires), water-gas shift for production of hydrogen and photocatalytic splitting of water for clean hydrogen. His research aims to identify the catalytic active sites present on the heterogeneous catalyst surface to allow establishment of fundamental structure-activity/selectivity relationships that will guide the rational design of advanced catalysts. The research approach taken by the Wachs group is to simultaneously monitor the surface of the catalyst with spectroscopy under reaction conditions and online analysis of reactant conversion and product selectivity with online GC/mass spectrometer analysis. This new methodology has been termed operando spectroscopy and is allowing for the unprecedented development of molecular level structure-activity/selectivity relationships for catalysts. The spectroscopic techniques employed by the Wachs group for determination of the catalytic active sites and surface reaction intermediates are Raman, infrared (IR), ultraviolet- visible (UV-vis), X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XANES/EXAFS), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) and Temperature Programmed Surface Reaction (TPSR). Isotopic labeling of Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen-2), Oxygen-18, Nitrogen-15 and Carbon-13 is also used to track reaction pathways, ascertain rate-determining-steps, and distinguish between spectator species and actual surface reaction intermediates. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has previously honored Wachs with a Clean Air Excellence Award for his catalytic process that converts paper-mill pollutants into a usable, valuable product--formaldehyde--for manufacture of resins used in particle board. The American Chemical Society (ACS) has granted Wachs its George A. Olah Award for achievements in hydrocarbon and petroleum chemistry, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) has previously honored Wachs with the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division Practice Award. He is also recipient of multiple awards from local catalysis societies in Michigan, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. In 2011, he was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the highest honor bestowed by the society. In 2012, he was recognized with a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation of Germany, and the Vanadis Award from the International Vanadium Chemistry Organization. Wachs has published more than 300 highly cited technical articles (H index of >90) and holds more than three dozen patents. ### Related Links: SAN DIEGO - Prenatal exposure to a mother's stress contributes to anxiety and cognitive problems that persist into adulthood, a phenomenon that could be explained by lasting - and potentially damaging - changes in the microbiome, according to new research in mice. When pregnant mice were exposed to stress in the study, it appeared to change the makeup of the bacteria in both their guts and placentas, as well as in the intestinal tracts of their female offspring, researchers at The Ohio State University found. And those microbial changes lasted into adulthood. On top of that, the mice with stressed mothers struggled in tests aimed at gauging anxiety and cognitive health compared with female offspring of mice that were not stressed during pregnancy. And markers of inflammation increased in the placenta, the fetal brain and the adult brain of the offspring while a supportive protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) decreased. "More and more, doctors and researchers are understanding that naturally occurring bacteria are not just a silent presence in our body, but that they contribute to our health," said Tamar Gur, the lead researcher and assistant professor of psychiatry & behavioral health, neuroscience and obstetrics & gynecology at Ohio State. "These mice were more anxious, they spent more time in dark, closed spaces and they had a harder time learning cognitive tasks even though they were never stressed after birth." Gur presented the study on Nov. 14 in San Diego at Neuroscience 2016, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Previous studies have found associations between maternal stress in both animals and people to later mental health and behavioral problems in their offspring. This study could begin to explain what's at play in that relationship. "We already understand that prenatal stress can be bad for offspring, but the mystery is how," said Gur, a psychiatrist who is a member of Ohio State Wexner Medical Center's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. Gur said microbes from a mother's gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts are the first to colonize in a developing fetus (and in newborns). That makes the bacteria an interesting potential explanation of why and how stress before an animal or person is born could prompt mental illness that can last a lifetime. This study is pointing to alterations in the microbes that live in the placenta and outlines changes found in the placentas of fetal mice that had stressed mothers. Gur and her colleagues found significant microbial changes to the placentas of the female offspring of stressed mice. They also found alterations in inflammation and growth factors in the placenta, pointing to changes in how the microbes were influencing important dynamics before birth. And in the female offspring of the stressed mice, the researchers found a lower ability to learn and higher anxiety-like behavior compared to the offspring of non-stressed mother mice. Gur said the team found interesting changes in the male offspring as well, but the details of that part of the study are still in the works. Gur said she wants to know more about the links between the brain and the bacteria that live in the gut, and she and her colleagues have plans to expand their investigation to pregnant women and their babies. Perhaps one day the work will lead to knowledge about how probiotics could help mitigate the effects of stress and the downstream repercussions, but it's too soon now to say if they would have any impact, she said. The stressed mother mice underwent two hours per day for seven days of restraint meant to induce stress. For comparison, the researchers left another group of pregnant mice undisturbed during gestation. Gut bacteria were assessed using fecal samples from the mice. Gur stressed that the message here is not that mothers are to blame should their children suffer mental illness later in life. Rather, she said, this scientific development presents an opportunity to talk more about the importance of mental health in general and during pregnancy. "As a psychiatrist who treats pregnant women, if you're stressed, anxious or depressed, I think pregnancy is a prime time for intervention," Gur said. "And what's good for mom is good for the baby." ### The study was supported by the March of Dimes and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Other researchers who worked on the study were Michael T. Bailey, Lena Shay, Sydney Fisher, Adidti Vadodkar and Vanessa Varaljay. CONTACT: Tamar Gur, Tamar.Gur@osumc.edu Written by Misti Crane, 614-292-5220; Crane.11@osu.edu Scientists at Rice University have discovered that an atom-thick material being eyed for flexible electronics and next-generation optical devices is more brittle than they expected. The Rice team led by materials scientist Jun Lou tested the tensile strength of two-dimensional, semiconducting molybdenum diselenide and discovered that flaws as small as one missing atom can initiate catastrophic cracking under strain. The team's report appears this month in Advanced Materials. The finding may cause industry to look more carefully at the properties of 2-D materials before incorporating them in new technologies, he said. "It turns out not all 2-D crystals are equal," said Lou, a Rice professor of materials science and nanoengineering. "Graphene is a lot more robust compared with some of the others we're dealing with right now, like this molybdenum diselenide. We think it has something to do with defects inherent to these materials." The defects could be as small as a single atom that leaves a vacancy in the crystalline structure, he said. "It's very hard to detect them," he said. "Even if a cluster of vacancies makes a bigger hole, it's difficult to find using any technique. It might be possible to see them with a transmission electron microscope, but that would be so labor-intensive that it wouldn't be useful." Molybdenum diselenide is a dichalcogenide, a two-dimensional semiconducting material that appears as a graphene-like hexagonal array from above but is actually a sandwich of metallic atoms between two layers of chalcogen atoms, in this case, selenium. Molybdenum diselenide is being considered for use as transistors and in next-generation solar cells, photodetectors and catalysts as well as electronic and optical devices. Lou and colleagues measured the material's elastic modulus, the amount of stretching a material can handle and still return to its initial state, at 177.2 (plus or minus 9.3) gigapascals. Graphene is more than five times as elastic. They attributed the large variation to pre-existing flaws of between 3.6 and 77.5 nanometers. Its fracture strength, the amount of stretching a material can handle before breaking, was measured at 4.8 (plus or minus 2.9) gigapascals. Graphene is nearly 25 times stronger. Part of the project led by Rice postdoctoral researcher Yingchao Yang required moving molybdenum diselenide from a growth chamber in a chemical vapor deposition furnace to a microscope without introducing more defects. Yang solved the problem using a dry transfer process in place of a standard acid washing that would have ruined the samples. To test samples, Yang placed rectangles of molybdenum diselenide onto a sensitive electron microscope platform invented by the Lou group. Natural van der Waals forces held the samples in place on springy cantilever arms that measured the applied stress. Lou said the group attempted to measure the material's fracture toughness, an indicator of how likely cracks are to propagate, as they had in an earlier study on graphene. But they found that pre-cutting cracks into molybdenum diselenide resulted in it shattering before stress could be applied, he said. "The important message of this work is the brittle nature of these materials," Lou said. "A lot of people are thinking about using 2-D crystals because they're inherently thin. They're thinking about flexible electronics because they are semiconductors and their theoretical elastic strength should be very high. According to our calculations, they can be stretched up to 10 percent. "But in reality, because of the inherent defects, you rarely can achieve that much strength. The samples we have tested so far broke at 2 to 3 percent (of the theoretical maximum) at most," Lou said. "That should still be fine for most flexible applications, but unless they find a way to quench the defects, it will be very hard to achieve the theoretical limits." ### Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Emily Hacopian, Weibing Chen, Jing Zhang and Bo Li, alumna Yongji Gong and Pulickel Ajayan, chair of Rice's Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering and a professor of chemistry; Xing Li of Rice and Peking University, China; Minru Wen of Tsinghua University, China, and the Georgia Institute of Technology; Wu Zhou of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Qing Chen of Peking University; and Ting Zhu of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Welch Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the National Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation of China. Read the abstract at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201604201/abstract This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2016/11/14/2-d-material-a-brittle-surprise/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews Related materials: Lou Group: http://n3lab.rice.edu Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering: http://msne.rice.edu George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://engr.rice.edu Video: https://youtu.be/uvhyi5TwZXA Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview. ST. LOUIS -- In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can cause the earth's tectonic plates to sink into the earth. John Encarnacion, Ph.D., professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at SLU, and Timothy Keenan, a graduate student, are experts in tectonics and hard rock geology, and use geochemistry and geochronology coupled with field observations to study tectonic plate movement. "A plate, by definition, has a rigidity to it. It is stiff and behaves as a unit. We are on the North American Plate and so we're moving roughly westward together about an inch a year," Encarnacion said. "But when I think about what causes most plates to move, I think about a wet towel in a pool. Most plates are moving because they are sinking into the Earth like a towel laid down on a pool will start to sink dragging the rest of the towel down into the water." Plates move, on average, an inch or two a year. The fastest plate moves at about four inches a year and the slowest isn't moving much at all. Plate motions are the main cause of earthquakes, and seismologists and geologists study the details of plate motions to make more accurate predictions of their likelihood. "Whenever scientists can show how something that is unexpected might have actually happened, it helps to paint a more accurate picture of how the Earth behaves," Encarnacion said. "And a more accurate picture of large-scale Earth processes can help us better understand earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as the origin and locations of mineral deposits, many of which are the effects and products of large-scale plate motions." Plate movement affects our lives in other ways, too: It recently was reported that Australia needs to redraw its maps due to plate motion. Australia is moving relatively quickly northwards, and so over many decades it has traveled several feet, causing GPS locations to be significantly misaligned. Subduction, the process by which tectonic plates sink into the earth's mantle, is a fundamental tectonic process on earth, and yet the question of where and how new subduction zones form remains a matter of debate. Subduction is the main reason tectonic plates move. The SLU geologists' research takes them out into the field to study rocks and sample them before taking them back to the lab to be studied in more detail. Their work involves geological mapping: looking at rocks, identifying them, plotting them on a map and figuring out how they formed and what has happened to them after they form. Researchers date rock samples and look at their chemistry to learn about the specific conditions where an ancient rock formed, such as if a volcanic rock formed in a volcanic island like Hawaii or on the deep ocean floor. In this study, Keenan and Encarnacion traveled to the Philippines to study plates in that region. They found that a divergent plate boundary, where two plates move apart, was forcefully and rapidly turned into a convergent boundary where one plate eventually began subducting. This is surprising because although the plate material at a divergent boundary is weak, it is also buoyant and resists subduction. The research findings suggest that buoyant but weak plate material at a divergent boundary can be forced to converge until eventually older and denser plate material enters the nascent subduction zone, which then becomes self-sustaining. "We think that the subduction zone we studied was actually forced to start because of the collision of India with Asia. India was once separated from Asia, but it slowly drifted northwards eventually colliding with Asia. The collision pushed out large chunks of Asia to the southeast. That push, we think, pushed all the way out into the ocean and triggered the start of a new subduction zone." Their finding supports a new model for how plates can begin to sink: "Places where plates move apart can be pushed together to start subduction." The SLU researchers now want to learn if their model applies to other tectonic plates. "How common was this forced initiation of a subduction zone that we think happened in the Philippines?" Encarnacion said. "I would like to see work on other ancient subduction zones to see whether our model applies to them as well." ### Other researchers on the study include Robert Buchwaldt, Dan Fernandez, James Mattinson, Christine Rasoazanamparany, and P. Benjamin Luetkemeyer. Saint Louis University's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, combines strong classroom and field-based instruction with internationally recognized research across a broad spectrum of the physical sciences, including seismology, hydrology, geochemistry, meteorology, environmental science, and the study of modern and ancient climate change. Students also have the opportunity to work directly with faculty on their research and pursue internships through a growing network of contacts in the public and private sector. Research centers include the Earthquake Center, the Cooperative Institute for Precipitation Systems, the Global Geodynamics Program, the Center for Environmental Sciences, and Quantum WeatherTM. The fusion of academic programs with world-class research provides students with an unparalleled opportunity to explore their interests and prepare for a wide variety of careers after graduation. One in six Ontario patients does not belong to an organized primary care practice TORONTO, Nov. 14, 2016--One in six patients in Ontario does not belong to an organized primary care practice, new research suggests. These patients receive lower quality care and are more likely to be poor, urban and new immigrants, the study says. The Ontario government has invested millions of dollars in reforming the primary care system to improve access and quality of care. Fifteen years ago, most doctors practiced alone and were paid by the visit (fee-for-service). Now, most doctors are part of groups where they formally enroll patients, provide after-hours care, and get some lump-sum payment per year for looking after their enrolled patients (capitation). Joining these new groups was voluntary for doctors and their patients. When reforms are voluntary, there is a risk the most vulnerable in society will be left behind, said Dr. Tara Kiran, a family physician at St. Michael's Hospital, an adjunct scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and lead author of the study. In the study, published today in Annals of Family Medicine, Dr. Kiran and colleagues analyzed Ontario data from 2001 to 2011. They found that patients who didn't belong to these new primary care practices were more likely to reside in an urban area, live in a low-income neighbourhood and have immigrated to Canada in the last 10 years. The study also found that patients left out of new primary care practices were less likely than those who were included to be screened for cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer (52 per cent vs. 66 per cent, 58 per cent vs. 73 per cent and 44 per cent vs. 62 per cent, respectively ), and were less likely to receive recommended tests for diabetes (25 per cent vs. 34 per cent ). In 2011, 2, 376, 248 (18 per cent of) Ontarians did not belong to these new primary care practices. "Some of these people that have been left behind are seeing traditional fee-for-service doctors," said Dr. Kiran. "But others might not want a regular primary care doctor or perhaps couldn't find one and are getting care from walk-in clinics." Dr. Kiran said that patients left behind from these new groups had poorer quality of care even before reforms were introduced and the gaps in quality of care seem to have widened over time. The report follows the Ontario government's introduction of the Patients First Act, a goal of which is to improve access to primary care. Dr. Kiran said there are lessons to be learned from what worked and what didn't during the last round of reforms. She said that new reforms need to specifically reach out to more vulnerable groups of patients to connect them with a primary care provider. "We need to educate new Canadians about what good primary care looks like and how they can access it," said Dr. Kiran. Dr. Kiran said health care leaders should also be reaching out to doctors who still practice alone and finding ways to support them and their patients. "To improve care for all Ontarians, there needs to be specific strategies to reach out to both patients and physicians who are not currently part of an organized primary care practice," she said. ### About St. Michael's Hospital St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in 27 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, care of the homeless and global health are among the hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Centre, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) is an independent, non-profit organization that uses population-based health information to produce knowledge on a broad range of health care issues. Our unbiased evidence provides measures of health system performance, a clearer understanding of the shifting health care needs of Ontarians, and a stimulus for discussion of practical solutions to optimize scarce resources. ICES knowledge is highly regarded in Canada and abroad, and is widely used by government, hospitals, planners, and practitioners to make decisions about care delivery and to develop policy. For the latest ICES news, follow us on Twitter: @ICESOntario Media contacts For more information, or to arrange an interview with one of the authors, please contact: Kelly O'Brien Communications Adviser - Media 416-864-5047 obrienkel@smh.ca Many communities would be better off investing in electric vehicles that run on batteries instead of hydrogen fuel cells, in part because the hydrogen infrastructure provides few additional energy benefits for the community besides clean transportation. That's according to a study in the November issue of the journal Energy by scientists at Stanford University and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). They compared cars that run on batteries versus hydrogen fuel cells in a hypothetical future where the cost of electric vehicles is more affordable. "We looked at how large-scale adoption of electric vehicles would affect total energy use in a community, for buildings as well as transportation," said lead author Markus Felgenhauer, a doctoral candidate at TUM and former visiting scholar at the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). "We found that investing in all-electric battery vehicles is a more economical choice for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, primarily due to their lower cost and significantly higher energy efficiency." "Studies such as these are needed to identify the lowest cost and most efficient pathways to deep decarbonization of the global energy system," added study co-author Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford and director of GCEP. Batteries vs. fuel cells Electric vehicles come in two flavors: plug-in cars with rechargeable batteries, and fuel cell vehicles that convert hydrogen gas into clean electricity. Unlike gasoline-powered cars, battery and fuel cell vehicles emit zero carbon when driven. But deploying them at scale will require a costly new infrastructure for charging batteries or delivering hydrogen fuel. A key question for policymakers is, which transportation technology cuts total emissions at the lowest cost - batteries or fuel cells? Beyond transportation, could hydrogen technology also provide clean energy for heating and lighting buildings, as some research suggests? The new study is the first to address both questions. The researchers focused on California, a leader in electric vehicle transportation. Statewide, battery electric cars are growing in popularity. But only a few manufacturers have begun offering fuel cell vehicles. To encourage wider adoption, the state has awarded more than $92 million for a network of 50 hydrogen-refueling stations by 2017. Currently, neither energy source is entirely emissions free. Some people charge their battery electric cars by plugging into the power grid, which delivers electricity generated largely from carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Likewise, most hydrogen fuel is derived from natural gas through an industrial process that emits carbon dioxide as a byproduct. An alternative device, called an electrolyzer, uses solar-generated electricity to split water into clean hydrogen and oxygen, but the technique is very energy intensive and expensive. Future scenarios In the study, the researchers created future scenarios for the Town of Los Altos Hills, a sunny, affluent community of about 8,000 residents located in Santa Clara County just a few miles from the Stanford campus. "Los Altos Hills is distinguished by an unusually high solar-generation capacity in the county with the highest share of electric vehicles in the state," said Felgenhauer. The scenarios focused on 10 to 20 years in the future, when battery and fuel cell vehicles are expected to be in much wider use, and when solar power and electrolyzers are cost competitive with the electric grid. One scenario for the year 2035 assumed that electric vehicles would constitute 38 percent of the town's vehicle fleet. It also assumed that fuel cell vehicles would be powered by locally produced hydrogen made with the cheapest available electricity, be it solar generated or obtained from the grid. Data about Los Altos Hills was fed to a computational model developed by study co-author Thomas Hamacher, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at TUM. "We provided data on the amount of energy Los Altos Hills needs throughout the day, as well as financial data on the cost of building new energy infrastructures," said study coauthor Matthew Pellow, a former GCEP postdoctoral scholar now with the Electric Power Research Institute. "We included the cost of making solar panels, electrolyzers, batteries and everything else. Then we told the model, given our scenario for 2035, tell us the most economical way to meet the total energy demand of the community." To compare each scenario's costs to its climate benefits, the researchers also calculated the carbon dioxide emissions produced in each case. The researchers also assessed the potential benefits of using the hydrogen infrastructure to store clean energy for use on demand. During daylight hours, electrolyzers can produce hydrogen from surplus solar power that would otherwise go to waste. That hydrogen can be stored and converted into renewable electricity, or used as a clean alternative to natural gas to heat and light buildings. Results The results were definitive. "In terms of overall costs, we found that battery electric vehicles are better than fuel cell vehicles for reducing emissions," Felgenhauer said. "The analysis showed that to be cost competitive, fuel cell vehicles would have to be priced much lower than battery vehicles. However, fuel cell vehicles are likely to be significantly more expensive than battery vehicles for the foreseeable future. Another supposed benefit of hydrogen - storing surplus solar energy - didn't pan out in our analysis either. We found that in 2035, only a small amount of solar hydrogen storage would be used for heating and lighting buildings." While the study focused on one Bay Area town, the results are relevant for many bedroom communities with ample sunlight across California, according to the authors. They hope to analyze larger networks of communities in future studies and examine other factors that could influence consumers' choices when deciding whether to buy a battery or fuel cell car. "Our goal is to provide objective, data-driven analysis to help inform policymakers in California and elsewhere about which technology pathway is likely to be more cost-effective in combating climate change," Pellow said. ### Kigali, Rwanda - Chinese materials scientist Zhao Dongyuan was named winner of the 2016 TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize today [14 November] for his work discovering new materials that are now widely used. The award, one of the most prestigious honours given to scientists from the developing world, was announced in a special ceremony during the yearly General Meeting of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Zhao is a 2010 TWAS Fellow and a chemistry professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His work focuses on mesoporous materials - structures that feature tiny, microscopic holes. Across two decades, his research and nano-scale applications have been used to clean water for drinking and agriculture, improve the capacity and efficiency of batteries, and deliver drugs with pinpoint precision in human bodies. The annual prize includes an award of USD100,000 provided by the Chinese technology company Lenovo, the global leader in consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology that is the largest PC company in the world. "Professor Zhao's body of research exhibits the highest values of scientific inquiry," said TWAS Executive Director Mohamed Hassan. "Materials science requires advanced knowledge of fundamental science. But Professor Zhao develops applications with a direct usefulness in people's lives - clean water, energy and health. Such innovative research is deserving of our Academy's highest honour." "Zhao is a renowned veteran chemist with over 30 years of research experience publishing over 600 scientific papers and winning over 50 research awards," said Lenovo Senior Vice President George He. "Especially in the synthesis and application of mesoporous materials, Zhao and his research team have made great breakthroughs. We are very honoured to present the TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize to him, and look forward to more of his impressive achievements." Zhao said he is gratified by the award, partly because it was an opportunity to highlight his field of research and the vast diversity of potential applications. "It is a great honour to get the award," he said. "I would like to see more applications for developing countries that would economically benefit." A small material with a big impact The nanometre scale - a nanometre is one-billionth the size of a meter - is so small that the mesoporous materials can very precisely manage the movement of chemicals on the molecular level. A water molecule, for example, is about a quarter of a nanometre wide, while a haemoglobin molecule is about five nanometres wide. Perhaps the simplest way to conceive of a mesoporous material is as a filter - a surface full of tiny holes that range from two to 50 nanometres wide. The holes let some substances through, such as clean water, and hold others substances back, such as pollutants. China and other countries had been using mesoporous materials as filters for many years, but Zhao, as a postdoctoral student in the United States in the late 1990s, began discovering new ways to create and use them. Zhao and his colleagues experimented with the materials' shapes and attached them to other materials, taking into account their electromagnetic properties. One use for this discovery has been improving the quality of batteries. When a surface is covered in molecule-sized holes, that increases its surface area by adding the surfaces along the insides of the holes themselves. Since batteries store energy on the surface area of materials that are good at managing electricity, a porous carbon material can store more energy than a non-porous material of the same size. Carbon is highly efficient for holding electricity, and Zhao developed a mesoporous carbon material that is now used widely in supercapacitors in Chinese-made cars and streetlights. And the strategies he has used to combine porous carbon and other organic materials have been adopted by other researchers throughout the field. Zhao also found a way to use mesoporous materials to clean up toxic water that is more precise than simple filtering. A category of toxins called microcystins, which can damage the liver and are suspected to increase the risk of cancer, commonly plague water supplies throughout the world. Unlike many other forms of pollution, microcystins are not caused by industry, but by common algal blooms. People can't just filter the microcystins out. Tools are needed that can attack them where they exist in the water, and that's where Zhao's organic mesoporous materials come into play. They play a key role in another of his inventions - magnetic mesoporous microspheres. These microspheres, tiny balls as little as 300 nanometres wide, function as microscopic couriers for chemicals that can neutralize the microcystins. An organic core made of iron and oxygen uses the magnetic force to hold a chemical in its pores. That core sits behind an equally porous shell of inorganic silica. The microspheres are then sent to a destination, such as polluted water, which disrupts the magnetic force and set the chemical loose through the shell. The pores are an essential reason Zhao's microspheres work. In the iron core, the pores provide an empty space for the chemical to be stored. While the pores in the silica shell provide passageways that the chemical can move through once they're at the destination. Zhao said this technique is currently used to produce high-quality water in various parts of the world, including Shanghai. The microspheres have also been adapted to deliver medicine - for example, injected into a human body to release a drug at the site of a cancerous tumour. Thanks to this long history of innovations, Zhao is now one of the most cited and highly regarded researchers in his field, having published over 600 papers on mesoporous materials, many in elite journals such as Nature, Science and the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He has received an extraordinary number of citations, over 60,000 in all. He has also served as the thesis advisor to 80 PhD candidates at Fudan University in Shanghai and co-founded the Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, a major chemistry and engineering collaboration within China, in 2012. In 2009, he won the TWAS Prize in chemistry. This is the fourth year of the TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize, the successor to the Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize that ran for eight years previously. During its first four-year cycle (2013-2016), the TWAS-Lenovo Prize has focused on recognizing outstanding work in the basic sciences, with the subject area changing each year: physics and astronomy in 2013; biological sciences in 2014; mathematics in 2015; and chemical sciences in 2016. The prize will continue for four more years, honouring work in geology in 2017, engineering in 2018, agricultural science in 2019 and social science in 2020. ### About Lenovo Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$45 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Its portfolio of high quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode YOGA brands), workstations, servers, storage, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Motorola brand), tablets and apps. Join Lenovo on LinkedIn, follow it on Facebook or Twitter (@Lenovo) or visit at http://www.lenovo.com. About TWAS The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries - TWAS - supports sustainable prosperity through research, education, policy and diplomacy. TWAS was founded in 1983 by a distinguished group of scientists from the developing world, under the leadership of Abdus Salam, the Pakistani physicist and Nobel Prize winner. Today, TWAS has some 1,200 elected Fellows from 90 countries; 15 of them are Nobel laureates. The Academy is based in Trieste, Italy, on the campus of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Through more than three decades, its mission has focused on supporting and promoting excellence in scientific research in the developing world and applying scientific and engineering research to address global challenges. TWAS receives core funding from the government of Italy, with additional major funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) administers TWAS funds and personnel. To learn more, visit the Academy's website at http://www.twas.org and follow TWAS on Facebook or Twitter (@TWASnews). The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is being launched today (Monday 14th Nov) at the COP22 climate talks taking place in Morocco. An international, multi-disciplinary research initiative, it brings together leading experts to track and analyse the impacts of climate change on public health. The Lancet Countdown will report annually in The Lancet. With input from 48 leading experts from across the world, some 16 institutions are academic partners of the initiative [1], including University College London, Tsinghua University and the Centre for Climate & Security among others. The Lancet Countdown is engaged in a special collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to promote synergies, collaborate on data sources, and ensure strong engagement with Ministries of Health. With the aim of ensuring the case for action on health and climate change is more widely evidenced and understood, the Lancet Countdown will inform decision-making and drive an accelerated policy response to climate change. It will complement other initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its achievements for climate science. Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: "The health impacts of climate change are already being felt and effecting some of the most vulnerable on our planet. No one is immune or out of reach. Climate action, spearheaded by governments and supported by business, cities, investors and citizens - including health care professionals - goes hand-in-hand with delivering a better quality of life in its own right and as a key pillar of the Sustainable Development Goals." The interrelation of climate change and public health is becoming increasingly clear. The Lancet Countdown builds on the findings of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which concluded that climate change posed both a "potentially catastrophic risk to human health", while conversely being "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century" if the right steps are taken [2]. Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet said: "One challenge of the ongoing global climate crisis is to convey the urgency of our collective predicament and the need for decisive action. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change is being launched today to amass the evidence needed to hold policy makers accountable for their promises and commitments. The research community can make an important contribution to heightening political awareness and accelerating progress to a healthier, low-carbon world. These are the goals of our Countdown on Health and Climate Change." A broader evidence base on interrelated health and climate change trends will notably help demonstrate clear co-benefits of action. An estimated 18000 people die every day due to air pollution exposure, making it the world's largest single environmental health risk [3]. The World Bank in turn estimates it costs the global economy US$225 billion a year in related lost labour income [4]. CO2 and other green house gasses from road transport and fossil fuel energy generation responsible for the bulk of air pollution in the first place, are also a leading cause of climate change. Health and economic co-benefits from addressing climate change - be it mitigation or adaptation - only add to the impetus for action, given that changes to climate take longer to be felt. The Lancet Countdown is partnering with the Wellcome Trust, which is committed to stimulating research on health and climate change. Dr Sarah Molton, lead for 'Our Planet, Our Health' at Wellcome, said: "The Paris Agreement is a step in the right direction, but we must build on this momentum. The Lancet Countdown is an important opportunity to ensure that evidence gets to those audiences that can bring about the changes in policy and practice that we need to protect the health of both humans and the planet." The Lancet Countdown [5] comes at a crucial time for international cooperation and national action on climate change, following ratification of the Paris Agreement and the announcement of the 2030 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As part of this transition, healthcare professionals, governments and countries will have to shift from an understanding of climate change solely as a threat, to one which embraces the response to climate change as an opportunity for human health and wellbeing. The Lancet Countdown is aligned with the SGD process in working to ensure the health challenge posed by climate change is resolved by 2030. Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Head of the Health and Climate Change team at the World Health Organization, said: "The Paris Agreement was a landmark achievement - the challenge now is to meet the targets agreed by world leaders. The WHO is working directly with countries to provide evidence of the specific health risks that each of them faces, and the health opportunities of a resilient, low carbon future - as well as the support that they need to respond to this defining health issue of our time. "The WHO is working with The Lancet Countdown to track progress, and to mobilize support for more ambitious action. When it comes to climate change, when the world drags its feet, the health of our patients all around the globe suffer." The relationship between health and climate change, will be addressed by The Lancet Countdown through in-depth analysis across relevant themes in the context of global, regional, national, and city level trends. The scope of the research, analysis and basis for the creation of the initiative is outlined in detail in an accompanying paper published today in The Lancet. This provides more detail on the principle themes the Lancet Countdown will cover, namely: the health impacts of climate change; health resilience and adaptation; the health co-benefits of mitigation; finance and economics; and political and broader engagement. Academics and policy experts are invited to join the Lancet Countdown, as it undertakes a three month public consultation process on the scope and focus of the initiative, with events planned in London, Marrakech, Lima, Kampala, Beijing and San Francisco. ### NOTES TO EDITORS [1] Full list of participating institutions is: Centre Virchow-Villerme; European Centre for Environment and Human Health; Imperial College London; International Livestock Research Institute; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Sustainable Development Unit; The Centre for Climate & Security; The Grantham Institute; Tsinghua University; Umea University's Centre for Global Health Research; United Nations University; University College London (the Energy Institute; and the Institutes of Global Health, for Sustainable Resources, for Human Health and Performance, and for Environmental Design and Engineering; the Departments of Geography, and of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy; the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research); University of Exeter; University of York; The Lancet Countdown and its partners work in special collaboration with the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organisation [2] 2015 Lancet Commission: Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health http://www.thelancet.com/commissions/climate-change-2015 [3] In 2014, WHO estimated an additional 250000 potential deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 for well understood impacts of climate change http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/134014/1/9789241507691_eng.pdf [4] Air Pollution Deaths Cost Global Economy US$225 Billion, World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2016/09/08/air-pollution-deaths-cost-global-economy-225-billion [5] Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Climate Change and Health, live once the embargo lifts: http://www.lancetcountdown.org/ For more information on the Lancet Countdown, or for interviews with the authors, please contact Jack Fisher, Communications Officer, Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change E) jack.fisher@ucl.ac.uk M) +447432742880 NOTE: THE ABOVE LINK IS FOR JOURNALISTS ONLY; 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/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32124-9/fulltext Seil Collins Media Relations Manager The Lancet journals, 125 London Wall, London EC2Y 5AS Tel: +44 (0) 207 424 4949 / Mob: +44 (0) 7468 708644 seil.collins@lancet.com New research demonstrates the highest plasmon energy ever observed in graphene plasmons and brings graphene into the regime of telecommunication applications WASHINGTON - Graphene's unique properties can be both a blessing and a curse to researchers, especially to those at the intersection of optical and electronic applications. These single-atom thick sheets feature highly mobile electrons on their flexible profiles, making them excellent conductors, but in general graphene sheets do not interact with light efficiently. Problematic for shorter wavelength light, photons in the near infrared region of the spectrum, where telecommunication applications become realizable. In a paper published this week in the journal Optics Letters, from The Optical Society (OSA), researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have demonstrated, for the first time, efficient absorption enhancement at a wavelength of 2 micrometers by graphene, specifically by the plasmons of nanoscale graphene disks. Much like water ripples arising from the energy of a dropped pebble, electronic oscillations can arise in freely moving conduction electrons by absorbing light energy. The resulting collective, coherent motions of these electrons are called plasmons, which also serve to amplify the strength of the absorbed light's electric field at close proximity. Plasmons are becoming increasingly commonplace in various optoelectronic applications where highly conductive metals can be easily integrated. Graphene plasmons, however, face an extra set of challenges unfamiliar to the plasmons of bulk metals. One of these challenges is the relatively long wavelength needed to excite them. Many efforts taking advantage of the enhancing effects of plasmons on graphene have demonstrated promise, but for low energy light. "The motivation of our work is to push graphene plasmons to shorter wavelengths in order to integrate graphene plasmon concepts with existing mature technologies," said Sanshui Xiao, associate professor from the Technical University of Denmark. To do so, Xiao, Wang and their collaborators took inspiration from recent developments at the university's Center of Nanostructured Graphene (CNG), where they demonstrated a self-assembly method resulting in large arrays of graphene nanostructures. Their method primarily uses geometry to bolster the graphene plasmon effects at shorter wavelengths by decreasing the size of the graphene structures. Using lithographic masks prepared by a block copolymer based self-assembly method, the researchers made arrays of graphene nanodisks. They controlled the final size of the disks by exposing the array to oxygen plasma which etched away at the disks, bringing the average diameter down to approximately 18 nm. This is approximately 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The array of approximately 18 nm disks, resulting from 10 seconds of etching with oxygen plasma, showed a clear resonance with 2 micrometer wavelength light, the shortest wavelength resonance ever observed in graphene plasmons. An assumption might be that longer etching times or finer lithographic masks, and therefore smaller disks, would result in even shorter wavelengths. Generally speaking this is true, but at 18 nm the disks already start requiring consideration of atomic details and quantum effects. Instead, the team plans to tune graphene plasmon resonances at smaller scales in the future using electrical gating methods, where the local concentration of electrons and electric field profile alter resonances. Xiao said, "To further push graphene plasmons to shorter wavelengths, we plan to use electrical gating. Instead of graphene disks, graphene antidots (i.e. graphene sheets with regular holes) will be chosen because it is easy to implement a back-gating technique." There are also fundamental limits to the physics that prevent shortening the graphene plasmon resonance wavelength with more etching. "When the wavelength becomes shorter, the interband transition will soon play a key role, leading to broadening of the resonance. Due to weak coupling of light with graphene plasmons and this broadening effect, it will become hard to observe the resonance feature," Xiao explained. ### This project is supported by Danish National Research Foundation Center for Nanostructured Graphene (DNRF103). Paper: Z. Wang, T. Li, K. Almdal, N. Mortensen, S. Xiau and S. Ndoni, "Experimental demonstration of graphene plasmons working close to the near-infrared window," Opt. Lett. 41, 5345-5348. DOI: 10.1364/OL.41.005345 About Optics Letters Optics Letters offers rapid dissemination of new results in all areas of optics with short, original, peer-reviewed communications. Optics Letters covers the latest research in optical science, including optical measurements, optical components and devices, atmospheric optics, biomedical optics, Fourier optics, integrated optics, optical processing, optoelectronics, lasers, nonlinear optics, optical storage and holography, optical coherence, polarization, quantum electronics, ultrafast optical phenomena, photonic crystals and fiber optics. About The Optical Society Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit osa.org/100. Media Contacts: Rebecca B. Andersen The Optical Society randersen@osa.org +1 202.416.1443 Joshua Miller The Optical Society jmiller@osa.org +1 202.416.1435 Research Contact: Sanshui Xiao saxi@fotonik.dtu.dk Forest fire activity in California's Sierra Nevada since 1600 has been influenced more by how humans used the land than by climate, according to new research led by University of Arizona and Penn State scientists. For the years 1600 to 2015, the team found four periods, each lasting at least 55 years, where the frequency and extent of forest fires clearly differed from the time period before or after. However, the shifts from one fire regime to another did not correspond to changes in temperature or moisture or other climate patterns until temperatures started rising in the 1980s. "We were expecting to find climatic drivers," said lead co-author Valerie Trouet, a UA associate professor of dendrochronology. "We didn't find them." Instead, the team found the fire regimes corresponded to different types of human occupation and use of the land: the pre-settlement period to the Spanish colonial period; the colonial period to the California Gold Rush; the Gold Rush to the Smokey Bear/ fire suppression period; and the Smokey Bear/fire suppression era to present. "The fire regime shifts we see are linked to the land-use changes that took place at the same time," Trouet said. "We knew about the Smokey Bear effect -- there had been a dramatic shift in the fire regime all over the Western U.S. with fire suppression. We didn't know about these other earlier regimes," she said. "It turns out humans -- through land-use change -- have been influencing and modulating fire for much longer than we anticipated." Finding that fire activity and human land use are closely linked means people can affect the severity and frequency of future forest fires through managing the fuel buildup and other land management practices -- even in the face of rising temperatures from climate change, she said. The team's paper, "Socio-Ecological Transitions Trigger Fire Regime Shifts and Modulate Fire-Climate Interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA 1600-2015 CE," is scheduled for publication in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Nov. 14. Trouet's co-authors are Alan H. Taylor of Penn State, Carl N. Skinner of the U.S. Forest Service in Redding, California, and Scott L. Stephens of the University of California, Berkeley. Initially, the researchers set out to find which climate cycles, such as the El Nino/La Nina cycle or the longer Pacific Decadal Oscillation, governed the fire regime in California's Sierra Nevada. The team combined the fire history recorded in tree rings from 29 sites all along the Sierra Nevada with a 20th-century record of annual area burned. The history spanned the years 1600 to 2015. However, when large shifts in the fire history were compared to past environmental records of temperature and moisture, the patterns didn't match. Other researchers had already shown that in the Sierra, there was a relationship between forest fire activity and the amount of fuel buildup. Team members wondered whether human activity over the 415-year period had changed the amount of fuel available for fires. By using a technique called regime shift analysis, the team found four distinct time periods that differed in forest fire activity. The first was 1600 to 1775. After 1775, fire activity doubled. Fire activity dropped to pre-1775 levels starting in 1866. Starting in 1905, fire activity was less frequent than any previous time period. In 1987, fire activity started increasing again. However, the frequency of forest fires did not closely track climatic conditions, particularly after 1860. The researchers reviewed historical documents and other evidence and found the shifting patterns of fire activity most closely followed big changes in human activity in the region. Before the Spanish colonization of California, Native Americans regularly set small forest fires. The result was a mosaic of burned and unburned patches, which reduced the amount of fuel available to fires and limited the spread of any particular fire. However, once the Spanish arrived in 1769, Native American populations rapidly declined because of disease and other causes. In addition, the Spanish government banned the use of fire. Without regular fires, fuels built up, leading to more and larger fires. The influx of people to California during the Gold Rush that began in 1848 reduced fire activity. The large numbers of livestock brought by the immigrants grazed on the grasses and other plants that would otherwise have been fuel for forest fires. In 1904, the U.S. government established a fire suppression policy on federal lands. After that, fire activity dropped to its lowest level since 1600. Starting in the 1980s, as the climate warms, fire frequency and severity has increased again. Fires now can be "bad" fires because of a century or more of fire suppression, according to lead co-author Taylor, a professor of geography at Penn State. "It is important for people to understand that fires in the past were not necessarily the same as they are today," Taylor said. "They were mostly surface fires. Today we see more canopy-killing fires." Even in the face of global warming, people can affect the level of forest fire activity by managing the fuel available and other aspects of human land use, Trouet said. "There has to be a consideration of both people and climate to predict and plan for future fire activity," Taylor said. ### The U.S. Forest Service, the George H. Deike, Jr. Research Endowment Fund, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Swiss National Science Foundation funded the research. Researcher contact: Valerie Trouet University of Arizona 520-626-8004 trouet@ltrr.arizona.edu Languages spoken: French, German, Dutch Alan Taylor Penn State 814-865-1509 aht1@psu.edu Media contact: Mari N. Jensen University of Arizona 520-626-9635 mnjensen@email.arizona.edu A'ndrea Elyse Messer Penn State 814-865-9481 aem1@psu.edu Nicht Ihr Computer? Dann konnen Sie fur die Anmeldung ein Fenster zum privaten Surfen offnen. Weitere Informationen A large-scale genetic study has provided strong evidence that the development of insulin resistance - a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and heart attacks and one of the key adverse consequences of obesity - results from the failure to safely store excess fat in the body. Overeating and lack of physical activity worldwide has led to rising levels of obesity and a global epidemic of diseases such as heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. A key process in the development of these diseases is the progressive resistance of the body to the actions of insulin, a hormone that controls the levels of blood sugar. When the body becomes resistant to insulin, levels of blood sugars and lipids rise, increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease. However, it is not clear in most cases how insulin resistance arises and why some people become resistant, particularly when overweight, while others do not. An international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge studied over two million genetic variants in almost 200,000 people to look for links to insulin resistance. In an article published today in Nature Genetics, they report 53 regions of the genome associated with insulin resistance and higher risk of diabetes and heart disease; only 10 of these regions have previously been linked to insulin resistance. The researchers then carried out a follow-up study with over 12,000 participants in the Fenland and EPIC-Norfolk studies, each of whom underwent a body scan that shows fat deposits in different regions of the body. They found that having a greater number of the 53 genetic variants for insulin resistance was associated with having lower amounts of fat under the skin, particularly in the lower half of the body. The team also found a link between having a higher number of the 53 genetic risk variants and a severe form of insulin resistance characterized by loss of fat tissue in the arms and legs, known as familial partial lipodystrophy type 1. Patients with lipodystrophy are unable to adequately develop fat tissue when eating too much, and often develop diabetes and heart disease as a result. In follow-up experiments in mouse cells, the researchers were also able to show that suppression of several of the identified genes (including CCDC92, DNAH10 and L3MBTL3) results in an impaired ability to develop mature fat cells. "Our study provides compelling evidence that a genetically-determined inability to store fat under the skin in the lower half of the body is linked to a higher risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease," says Dr Luca Lotta from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "Our results highlight the important biological role of peripheral fat tissue as a deposit of the surplus of energy due to overeating and lack of physical exercise." "We've long suspected that problems with fat storage might lead to its accumulation in other organs such as the liver, pancreas and muscles, where it causes insulin resistance and eventually diabetes, but the evidence for this has mostly come from rare forms of human lipodystrophy," adds Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly from the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit and Metabolic Research Laboratories at the University of Cambridge. "Our study suggests that these processes also take place in the general population." Overeating and being physically inactive leads to excess energy, which is stored as fat tissue. This new study suggests that among individuals who have similar levels of eating and physical exercise, those who are less able store the surplus energy as fat in the peripheral body, such as the legs, are at a higher risk of developing insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease than those who are able to do so. "People who carry the genetic risk variants that we've identified store less fat in peripheral areas," says Professor Nick Wareham, also from the MRC Epidemiology Unit. "But this does not mean that they are free from risk of disease, because when their energy intake exceeds expenditure, excess fat is more likely to be stored in unhealthy deposits. The key to avoiding the adverse effects is the maintenance of energy balance by limiting energy intake and maximising expenditure through physical activity." These new findings may lead to future improvements in the way we prevent and treat insulin resistance and its complications. The researchers are now collaborating with other academic as well as industry partners with the aim of finding drugs that may reduce the risk of diabetes and heart attack by targeting the identified pathways. ### The research was mainly funded by the Medical Research Council, with additional support from the Wellcome Trust. Reference Lotta, LA et al. Integrative genomic analysis implicates limited peripheral adipose storage capacity in the pathogenesis of human insulin resistance. Nature Genetics; 14 Nov 2016; DOI: 10.1038/ng.3714 Marty McFly's self-lacing Nikes in Back to the Future Part II inspired a UCF scientist who has developed filaments that harvest and store the sun's energy -- and can be woven into textiles. The breakthrough would essentially turn jackets and other clothing into wearable, solar-powered batteries that never need to be plugged in. It could one day revolutionize wearable technology, helping everyone from soldiers who now carry heavy loads of batteries to a texting-addicted teen who could charge his smartphone by simply slipping it in a pocket. "That movie was the motivation," Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, a nanotechnology scientist at the University of Central Florida's NanoScience Technology Center, said of the film released in 1989. "If you can develop self-charging clothes or textiles, you can realize those cinematic fantasies - that's the cool thing." The research was published Nov. 11 in the academic journal Nature Communications. Thomas already has been lauded for earlier ground-breaking research. Last year, he received an R&D 100 Award - given to the top inventions of the year worldwide - for his development of a cable that can not only transmit energy like a normal cable but also store energy like a battery. He's also working on semi-transparent solar cells that can be applied to windows, allowing some light to pass through while also harvesting solar power. His new work builds on that research. "The idea came to me: We make energy-storage devices and we make solar cells in the labs. Why not combine these two devices together?" Thomas said. Thomas, who holds joint appointments in the College of Optics & Photonics and the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, set out to do just that. Taking it further, he envisioned technology that could enable wearable tech. His research team developed filaments in the form of copper ribbons that are thin, flexible and lightweight. The ribbons have a solar cell on one side and energy-storing layers on the other. Though more comfortable with advanced nanotechnology, Thomas and his team then bought a small, tabletop loom. After another UCF scientists taught them to use it, they wove the ribbons into a square of yarn. The proof-of-concept shows that the filaments could be laced throughout jackets or other outwear to harvest and store energy to power phones, personal health sensors and other tech gadgets. It's an advancement that overcomes the main shortcoming of solar cells: The energy they produce must flow into the power grid or be stored in a battery that limits their portability. "A major application could be with our military," Thomas said. "When you think about our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, they're walking in the sun. Some of them are carrying more than 30 pounds of batteries on their bodies. It is hard for the military to deliver batteries to these soldiers in this hostile environment. A garment like this can harvest and store energy at the same time if sunlight is available." There are a host of other potential uses, including electric cars that could generate and store energy whenever they're in the sun. "That's the future. What we've done is demonstrate that it can be made," Thomas said. "It's going to be very useful for the general public and the military and many other applications." ### Contact: Mark Schlueb, UCF News & Information, 407-823-0221, mobile 407-399-8352 or mark.schlueb@ucf.edu America's Partnership University: The University of Central Florida, one the nation's largest universities with more than 64,000 students, has grown in size, quality, diversity and reputation in its first 50 years. Today, the university offers more than 200 degree programs at its main campus in Orlando and more than a dozen other locations. UCF is an economic engine attracting and supporting industries vital to the region's future while providing students with real-world experiences that help them succeed after graduation. For more information, visit http://today.ucf.edu. Aaron W. McGee, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, has received the Disney Award for Amblyopia Research from Research to Prevent Blindness LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Aaron W. McGee, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, has received the Disney Award for Amblyopia Research in the amount of $100,000 from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB). McGee will use the award to investigate approaches for improving recovery from amblyopia, or "lazy eye." Established in 2002, the RPB Walt and Lilly Disney Award for Amblyopia Research is intended to stimulate, strengthen and promote research to improve the diagnosis and treatment of amblyopia. The grant is offered to exceptional ophthalmic scientists - M.D.s or Ph.D.s - with research pursuits of potential significance and promise. McGee is one of two scientists to receive the award in 2016. "Dr. McGee's funding from RPB addresses a major cause of blindness in children - namely, amblyopia. The potential to reverse 'lazy eye' through medical therapy would be a major advance in curing childhood visual disabilities and improve the quality of life for those affected. His research is exciting and has major potential translational clinical impact," said Henry Kaplan, M.D., chair of the UofL Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. Amblyopia occurs in 2-3 percent of children and presents with a number of impairments in spatial vision including stereopsis, or depth perception. Permanent visual deficits may result if amblyopia is not treated during a 'critical period' for development of the visual system that ends in early adolescence. The funded research builds on McGee's previous work investigating how the timing and duration of critical periods in the visual system are determined. McGee will test methods for reversing the loss of depth perception resulting from amblyopia by 're-opening' the critical period in adulthood to enhance the flexibility, or 'plasticity,' of brain circuitry. "Previously, we discovered that a gene encoding a neuronal receptor is essential for closing the critical period for visual plasticity," McGee said. "This award from RPB will enable my lab to explore whether neutralizing this receptor will improve depth perception in the murine model of amblyopia." McGee moved from the University of Southern California to join the UofL Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology in September 2016. The goals of his research program are to identify treatments for low vision and aberrant eye dominance by understanding critical periods for neural plasticity and how experience drives changes in brain function. ### The Disney Award for Amblyopia Research is a two-year award to help the awardee pursue promising scientific leads and take opportunities for which other funds are not readily available. RPB is the world's leading voluntary organization supporting eye research. Since it was founded in 1960, RPB has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to support research into blinding eye diseases by medical institutions throughout the United States. For information on RPB, RPB-funded research, eye disorders and the RPB Grants Program, go to http://www.rpbusa.org. COLUMBIA, Mo. - More than 22 percent of children from ages 12-18 say they have been bullied in school within the last month, while 17 percent of high school students say they have seriously considered attempting suicide within the last year. Research has shown that school principals play a vital role in improving and maintaining physically and emotionally safe schools; however, no training programs for principals currently exist that have been scientifically proven to help improve school safety. Now, school safety experts from the Missouri Prevention Center and the University of Missouri College of Education, have received a $4.1 million grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to study a training program specifically for principals. The program, Safe and Civil Schools Leadership, aims to help principals create and maintain safe learning environments. Keith Herman, a professor in the MU College of Education and co-director of the Missouri Prevention Center, says this work will lead to improved training methods for principals across the country. "We know that principals play a vital role in school safety, but the education system hasn't done a great job of training principals to manage all aspects of school safety," Herman said. "Our goal is to identify a program that improves school safety. By applying scientific methods, we can determine if this program is effective and worth implementing in schools across the country." The NIJ grant will support research of the Safe and Civil Schools Leadership program over the course of four years. The University of Missouri researchers will study the program in 60 middle schools and high schools across the Puget Sound region in state of Washington. "Safe and Civil Schools programs are all about getting evidence-based practices interpreted into educator-friendly language, organized in a practical format and implemented within a sustainable framework in order to promote the behavioral and academic success of all students," said Laura Matson, special services director for the Puget Sound Educational Service District. "We hope this program will provide our administrators with the necessary tools to lead, empower and sustain improved practices related to student behavior and school climate and we are excited to see how this important work can help further promote safety within our schools." The Safe and Civil Schools Leadership program teaches principals how to: collect and use meaningful data to guide decisions about changing a school's climate; create behavior leadership teams who will collect and interpret the data and monitor progress; focus on clear expectations and high rates of positive staff-student interactions; monitor and support student behavior in all school settings (common areas, classrooms, buses, hallways); support teachers in developing effective classroom management strategies. During the study, the researchers will gather baseline data about each school's safety climate, such as physical safety, emotional safety, the rate of bully victimization and other important factors that determine the overall safety rating of each school. Additionally, past research has shown that high rates of tardiness within schools contribute to unsafe school environments. To combat this, the researchers will support principals in implementing an approach based on the same principles of Safe and Civil School Leadership, called START on Time, which has been shown to reduce tardiness rates within schools. This approach includes increasing the hallway presence of adults during passing periods; positive interactions between adults and students, such as greeting students at the door; and positive attention and encouragement for students who arrive on time. The researchers will provide these companion programs for reducing tardiness and improving school leadership at each school and measure the changes in those safety measures after two years compared to schools that did not utilize these programs. "High tardiness rates within schools contribute to less safe school environments," Herman said. "By first reducing tardiness rates, principals will be able to receive buy-in from teachers and students who will be able to see an immediate impact upon the safety of their schools. At that point, they will be well-positioned to implement the other aspects of the Safe and Civil Schools Leadership program, allowing us to determine its efficacy in promoting school safety." Herman says Safe and Civil Schools Leadership is a promising program for improving school safety because it teaches principals how to collect data about student, staff and parent perceptions of school climate and then how to make good, informed decisions based on that data to improve the safety climate. Also, Herman says the program already is well-recognized, has many easily understood features, is well-produced and could be distributed widely if it is proven to be effective. Other University of Missouri researchers involved on this NIJ-funded research grant include Wendy Reinke, professor of educational, school and counseling psychology and co-director of the Missouri Prevention Center; James Sebastian, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy; Francis Huang, an assistant professor of educational, school and counseling psychology; and Aaron Thompson, an assistant professor of social work in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences. ### MIAMI--A new study found that rainfall over land in the subtropics - including in the southeastern U.S. - will not decline as much as it does over oceans in response to increased greenhouse gases. The study challenges our previous understanding of the drying that will occur in subtropical regions and suggests its impact on people living in these regions could be less severe than initially thought. "The lack of rainfall decline over subtropical land is caused by the fact that land will warm much faster than the ocean in the future - a mechanism that has been overlooked in previous studies about the subtropical precipitation change," said Jie He, a postdoc in Princeton University's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and former UM Rosenstiel School graduate student, who was the lead author of the study. In the new study, He and UM Rosenstiel School Professor Brian Soden used an ensemble of climate models to show that the rainfall decreases occur faster than global warming, and therefore another mechanism must be at play. They found that direct heating from increasing greenhouse gases is causing the land to warm faster than the ocean and that the associated changes in atmospheric circulation are driving the rainfall decline over the oceans, rather than land. Subtropical rainfall changes have been previously attributed to two mechanisms related to global warming: greater moisture content in air that is transported away from the subtropics and a pole-ward shift in circulation. While both mechanisms are present, this study shows that neither one is responsible for the rainfall decline. "It has been long accepted that climate models project a large-scale rainfall decline in the future over the subtropics. Since most of the subtropical regions are already suffering from rainfall scarcity, the possibility of future rainfall decline is of great concern," said Soden, the co-author of the study. "However, most of this decline occurs over subtropical oceans, not land, due to changes in the atmospheric circulation induced by the more rapid warming of land than ocean." Most of the reduction in subtropical rainfall occurs instantaneously with an increase of greenhouse gases, independent of the warming of the earth's surface, which occurs much more slowly. According to the authors, this indicates that emission reductions would immediately mitigate subtropical rainfall decline, even though the surface will continue to warm for a long time. ### The study, titled "A re-examination of the projected subtropical precipitation decline," was published in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change. He is currently at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. Funding was provided by NASA. About the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School The University of Miami is one of the largest private research institutions in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940's, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world's premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu. An attack via a burst of electromagnetic energy could cripple vital electronic systems, threatening national security and critical infrastructure, such as power grids and data centers. Nebraska engineers Christopher Tuan and Lim Nguyen have developed a cost-effective concrete that shields against intense pulses of electromagnetic energy, or EMP. Electronics inside structures built or coated with their shielding concrete are protected from EMP. The technology is ready for commercialization, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has signed an agreement to license this shielding technology to American Business Continuity Group LLC, a developer of disaster-resistant structures. Electromagnetic energy is everywhere. It travels in waves and spans a wide spectrum, from sunlight, radio waves and microwaves to X-rays and gamma rays. But a burst of electromagnetic waves caused by a high-altitude nuclear explosion or an EMP device could induce electric current and voltage surges that cause widespread electronic failures. "EMP is very lethal to electronic equipment," said Tuan, professor of civil engineering. "We found a key ingredient that dissipates wave energy. This technology offers a lot of advantages so the construction industry is very interested." EMP-shielding concrete stemmed from Tuan and Nguyen's partnership to study concrete that conducts electricity. They first developed their patented conductive concrete to melt snow and ice from surfaces, such as roadways and bridges. They also recognized and confirmed it has another important property - the ability to block electromagnetic energy. Their technology works by both absorbing and reflecting electromagnetic waves. The team replaced some standard concrete aggregates with their key ingredient - magnetite, a mineral with magnetic properties that absorbs microwaves like a sponge. Their patented recipe includes carbon and metal components for better absorption as well as reflection. This ability to both absorb and reflect electromagnetic waves makes their concrete more effective than existing shielding technologies. It's also more cost-effective and flexible than current shielding methods, Tuan said. Today's shielding technologies employ metal enclosures that require expensive metal panel or screen construction, limiting their feasibility in large structures. Through a research agreement with ABC Group, the Nebraska team modified its shielding concrete to work with the company's shotcrete construction method. The resulting patent-pending product protects building interiors from electromagnetic interference, such as radio waves and microwaves, as well as electronic eavesdropping. The material could protect military, financial or other structures that store critical electronics, such as data servers or aircraft. Shotcrete, a spray-on method of applying concrete, can be used to cost-effectively retrofit existing buildings, a significant benefit to protect existing critical infrastructure and military installations, Tuan said. To demonstrate its effectiveness, ABC Group recently built a prototype structure at its disaster recovery complex in Lakeland, Florida. The structure exceeds military shielding requirements. "The concrete has the ability to provide what we call a multi-threat structure," said Nguyen, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who traveled to Florida to evaluate the prototype building. "The structure has to be able to withstand an attack either by an explosive or an electromagnetic attack or other scheme." Under the licensing agreement, ABC Group has exclusive rights to market the shielding shotcrete product, and its EMSS-Electromagnetic Shielding Shotcrete is now commercially available, said Mauricio Suarez, director of licensing at NUtech Ventures, the university's non-profit technology commercialization affiliate. "Our proprietary construction methods, which incorporate the Nebraska-developed technology, enable us to construct high-strength, blast-resistant structures that exceed military electromagnetic shielding requirements," said Peter Fedele, ABC Group's CEO. "Our prototype building has been well received as a new shielding construction material by leading experts in the EMP community." Tuan and Nguyen continue to investigate additional uses for conductive concrete, including improving de-icing and radiant heating and anti-static flooring applications. As new formulations expand the available applications, NUtech Ventures is helping the engineers apply for patents and navigate additional potential licensing agreements. ### AUSTIN, Texas - Bill Brown, dean of University of Tennessee AgResearch, was honored for the leadership he has provided to the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station and the Southern Region Experiment Station Section (ESS) during the annual meeting of the Association of Public Land-grant Universities. Brown was presented the ESS Excellence in Leadership Award for the Southern Region during a November 13th ceremony in Austin, Texas. The award is presented annually to five individuals who have served their regional associations and the national land-grant system with exemplary distinction. According to Shirley Hymon-Parker, chair of the Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy, award recipients personify the highest levels of excellence by enhancing the cause and performance of the Regional Associations and ESS in achieving their missions and the land-grant ideal. Brown has served as Dean of AgResearch and Director of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station since 2008. In this role, Brown coordinates the research efforts of more than 160 faculty, staff and graduate students, while also overseeing the management of 10 AgResearch and Education Centers. UTIA was also a participating institution in the research project receiving APLU's National Award for Excellence in Multistate Research. The project is titled "Fly Management in Animal Agriculture Systems and Impacts on Animal Health and Food Safety." Additionally, Robert Burns, associate dean of UT Extension, was recognized during the APLU conference as a Food Systems Leadership Institute Fellow. ### Through its mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. ag.tennessee.edu Humans have always been frightened and fascinated by lightning. This month, NASA is scheduled to launch a new satellite that will provide the first nonstop, high-tech eye on lightning over the North American section of the planet. University of Washington researchers have been tracking global lightning from the ground for more than a decade. Lightning is not only about public safety -- lightning strike data have recently been introduced into weather prediction, and a new UW study shows ways to apply them in storm forecasts. "When you see lots of lightning you know where the convection, or heat-driven upward motion, is the strongest, and that's where the storm is the most intense," said co-author Robert Holzworth, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. "Almost all lightning occurs in clouds that have ice, and where there's a strong updraft." The recent paper, published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, presents a new way to transform lightning strikes into weather-relevant information. The U.S. National Weather Service has begun to use lightning in its most sophisticated forecasts. This method, however, is more general and could be used in a wide variety of forecasting systems, anywhere in the world. The authors tested their method on two cases: the summer 2012 derecho thunderstorm system that swept across the U.S., and a 2013 tornado that killed several people in the Midwest. "Using lightning data to modify the air moisture was enough to dramatically improve the short-term forecast for a strong rain, wind and storm event," said first author Ken Dixon, a former UW graduate student who now works for The Weather Company. His simple method might also improve medium-range forecasts, for more than a few days out, in parts of the world that have little or no ground-level observations. The study used data from the UW-based WorldWide Lightning Location Network, which has a global record of lightning strikes going back to 2004. Director Holzworth is a plasma physicist who is interested in what happens in the outer edges of the atmosphere. But the network also sells its data to commercial and government agencies, and works with scientists at the UW and elsewhere. A few years ago Holzworth joined forces with colleagues in the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences to use lightning to improve forecasts for convective storms, the big storms that produce thunderstorms and tornadoes. Apart from ground stations, weather forecasts are heavily dependent on weather satellites for information to start or "initialize" the numerical weather prediction models that are the foundation of modern weather prediction. What's missing is accurate, real-time information about air moisture content, temperature and wind speed in places where there are no ground stations. "We have less skill for thunderstorms than for almost any other meteorological phenomenon," said co-author Cliff Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. "This paper shows the promise of lightning information. The results show that lightning data has potential to improve high-resolution forecasts of thunderstorms and convection." The new method could be helpful in forecasting storms over the ocean, where no ground instruments exist. Better knowledge of lightning-heavy tropical ocean storms could improve weather forecasts far from the equator, Mass said, since many global weather systems originate in the tropics. The study was funded by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Greg Hakim, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, is the other co-author. The Worldwide Lightning Location Network began in 2003 with 25 detection sites. It now includes some 80 host sites at universities or government institutions around the world, from Finland to Antarctica. The latest thinking on how lightning occurs is that ice particles within clouds separate into lighter and heavier pieces, and this creates charged regions within the cloud. If strong updrafts of wind make that altitude separation big enough, an electric current flows to cancel out the difference in charge. A bolt of lightning creates an electromagnetic pulse that can travel a quarter way around the planet in a fraction of a second. Each lightning network site hosts an 8- to 12-foot antenna that registers frequencies in the 10 kilohertz band, and sends that information to a sound card on an Internet-connected laptop. When at least five stations record a pulse, computers at the UW register a lightning strike, and then triangulate the arrival times at different stations to pinpoint the location. The network's online map shows lightning strikes for the most recent 30 minutes in Google Earth. An alternate display shows the last 40 minutes of lightning in different parts of the world on top of NASA cloud maps, which are updated from satellites every 30 minutes. The program is the longest-running real-time global lightning location network, and it is operated by the research community as a global collaboration. Lightning already kills hundreds of people every year. That threat may be growing -- a recent study projected that lightning will become more frequent with climate change. "The jury's still out on any long-term changes until we have more data," Holzworth said. "But there is anecdotal evidence that we're seeing lightning strikes in places where people are not expecting it, which makes it more deadly." On Nov. 19, NASA is scheduled to launch the new GOES-R satellite that will be the first geostationary satellite to include an instrument to continuously watch for lightning pulses. Holzworth will help calibrate the new instrument, which uses brightness to identify lightning, against network data. NASA also funded the recent research as one of the potential applications for lightning observations. "GOES-R will offer more precise, complete lightning observations over North and South America, which will supplement our global data," Holzworth said. "This launch has been long anticipated in the lightning research community. It has the potential to improve our understanding of lightning, both as a hazard and as a forecasting tool." ### For more information, contact Holzworth at 206-685-7410 or bobholz@uw.edu, Mass at 206-685-0910 or cmass@uw.edu and Dixon at ken.dixon@weather.com. Kolkata : An automobile engineer from Bengal has been made a slave and is being subjected to sexual and physical abuse by his Saudi employer in Riyadh for the past seven months. Jayanta Biswas, a 23-year-old engineer from Mamudpur at Naihati in North 24 Parganas district, had sky high dreams when he landed in Riyadh on May 15, after paying Rs 5.35 lakh to three Delhi-based agents. The money was generated from selling off ancestral agricultural land. However, soon he found that the promise of Rs 30,000 monthly salary was a lie. He, along with other youth from Bangladesh and India were confined in a room in the house of Saudi national Naeef Bookme. He used to call me and cry that he and the other boys were beaten up regularly by their employer and no food was being given to them. On further enquiry, he revealed that he was sexually abused regularly, Jayantas elder sister Ria Biswas, 38, told Express. Jayanta had tried to escape confinement in August and turned up at the Indian Embassy but was denied any help there. In the meantime, after Naeef found that Jayanta was missing, he charged him with theft of 10,000 riyals and a police case was filed. Jayanta was arrested on August 9 and jailed till October-end. After his release, Jayanta again went to the Embassy, where this time he was taken seriously and asked to bring a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from his employer to return to India. After his return to his employers house, he was again allegedly tortured by Naeef. His employer is continuously threatening him of death and demanding an additional 3,500 riyals to let him go to India. We are scared as Saudis have a bad reputation of cutting off hands, limbs or ears, said Ria. Jayantas brother Uttam Biswas is tweeting the External Affairs Ministry and Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking her help. Other relatives have written letters to Sushma, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and website madad.com, launched for Indians stuck abroad. If we do not get any response from the government within two days, residents of our locality will launch an agitation demanding the return of my brother, added Ria. After securing an engineering degree from a polytechnic college in Raiganj in North Dinajpur district in 2014, Jayanta worked for six months at a firm in Dehradun, when he was introduced by a friend to agent Muneer Ahmed of Al Hamid manpower consultancy and two other agents H M Sadiq and Tabrez Alam in Delhi. Source : The New Indian Express Huge Hindu Jagaran Manch Rally In Kolkata For Protection Of Fundamental Rights Of Hindus In Bengal Upendra Bharti | HENB | Kolkata : A large number of members of Hindu Jagaran Manch (HJM)- South Bengal and thousands of its Hindu supporters took part in a rally for the protection of fundamental rights of Bengali Hindus as well as denouncing the WB Govts Muslim appeasement supporting the increase of Jihadi elements in Bengal and atrocities upon Hindus in the state in a large scale. The Nov 12, 2016 HJM rally in Kolkata started for College square and converged at Rani Rashmoni Road where the speakers lashed out on WB Govt for its wrong policies tremendously helping the Jihadi elements in Bengal to spread subversive activities and communal riots against Hindus in different places in the state run by a Jihad and Shariah sympathizer Mamata banerjee, the CM of West Bengal. Recently, the many Muslim people of West Bengal assembled in Kolkata under the patronage of some TMC MPs and MLAs like Sultan Ahamed, Siddiqullah Chowdhury, Giasuddin Molla etc where they vehemently opposed the Central Govts policy to introduce an Uniform Civil Code in India. The pro-Shariah convention was held in Kolkata with the support of All India Muslim Personal law Board. Speakers present in todays HJM rally urged all concerned to fight against embedded Islamic terrorism in West Bengal and Hindu persecution as a output of it. The rally welcomed the Central Govt initiatives to introduce the Uniform Civil Code and criticized the ruling party TMC in Bengal to make indulgence and silence on the attack of Bengali Hindus in WB and Bangladesh both. Attacks on Hindus by Islamists, Communists, Congress and Secular elements like TMC have been established as regular practices in Bengal for last 40 years as found from the 34 year long Communist regime up to the current 6 years TMC rule in the state. A five men delegation of HJM also meet the Governor of West Bengal and gave a deputation to him for the burning concerns of Bengali Hindus. Some twenty thousand Hindus attended the protest rally as claimed by the organisation. HJM is now growing fast in south Bengal sensitizing the social and religious issues among the vulnerable Hindus in grass-root level. Source: Struggle for Hindu Existence Voters in Monterey County, California's fourth-largest oil-producing county, passed Measure Z to ban fracking and other dangerous extraction techniques. The measure won with more than fifty-five percent of the vote, despite supporters being outspent thirty to one by oil companies, including Chevron and Aera Energy. Measure Z also phases out toxic wastewater injection and prohibits new oil wells in the county. Monterey is the sixth county in California to ban fracking.We congratulate the people of Monterey County for banning fracking and protecting Californias water, agriculture and public health, said Adam Scow, California director of Food & Water Watch. This campaign proves that everyday people can defeat Big Oils millions, even in a place where it is actively drilling. We look forward to seeing Californians build on this momentum towards winning a statewide ban on fracking.Residents put Measure Z on the ballot after county supervisors in 2015 rejected the unanimous recommendation by the planning commission to enact a moratorium on fracking and wastewater injection.David beat Goliath in Monterey County's stunning victory against oil industry pollution, said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. Despite spending millions, oil companies couldn't suppress this grassroots campaign. This triumph against fracking will inspire communities across California and the whole country to stand up to this toxic industry. Thousands turned out in Oakland on November 9 to protest the election of Donald Trump. Police gathered in the hundreds and even called in mutual aid from neighboring departments. But their presence was not enough to rein in the masses of outraged anti-Trump demonstrators, especially after OPD seriously escalated the situation by prematurely declaring an illegal assembly and attacking the crowd with tear gas and flash bang grenades. In no time, what was once a single unified march spread across downtown, primarily in two main groups, but also smaller groups of a couple of dozen or less. Fires were set, windows were broken, and the town was plastered with anti-Trump graffiti everywhere. Police were powerless to stop it. All it takes is a few thousand demonstrators to call the cops' bluff. (By 6pm, the crowd was packed into the corner of Oscar Grant plaza, filled 14th Street. and began to flow into the intersection at Broadway.)The first anti-Trump protests began in the early morning hours, shortly after election results were announced. In Berkeley and Oakland, hundreds of protesters marched through the streets, spray painting anti-Trump graffiti and lighting garbage fires . Similar spontaneous protests sprang up in Seattle, Portland, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and other cities.Later on November 9, a rally was called for 5pm at Oscar Grant plaza. When the time came, protesters poured into the area, still stunned and processing the idea that the next president of the United States will be a narcissistic demagogue who admits to sexually assaulting women, called for the deportation of millions of immigrants, and proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country. Trump's entire campaign played on themes of white supremacism and nativism, and he won the election by dominating the white vote, primarily white men. People are pissed, and people of color especially are worried about what is to come.Other protests and actions were called for San Francisco San Jose , and cities across the nation.In Oakland, the number present quickly swelled to perhaps three thousand or more (others have pegged the number closer to seven thousand). After speakers expressed their outrage, scoring the election as yet the latest offense in America's long racist history and declaring their intent to resist any and all Trump initiatives protesters moved into the street en masse and headed north on Broadway.The march was alive and vibrant, revelling in its open defiance of the coming Trump presidency. It was one of the largest marches in Oakland in some time. The same flatbed truck which elevated speakers at the plaza led the march throughout downtown. Chants of "Fuck Trump" and "Not My President" rang out, as well as singing, "Which side are you on, my people? Which side are you on? The freedom side!"This reporter only witnessed a couple of relatively minor incidents of vandalism throughout the march, that is until it reached Washington and 8th Streets. That's where police formed a line to prevent the march from proceeding, as they often do when marches head toward their headquarters, even though the building is essentially a concrete fortress and there's not much protesters can do to damage it.Occasionally, marches have forced their way through police lines surrounding the building and marched right past it, or held impromptu rallies at the front doors. A few times, police have willingly stepped aside and allowed marchers to proceed through their sacred zone.Protesters yelled at police to allow them through, but the cops weren't having it. Behind the line on Washington, were motorcycles and dozens of backup officers. Behind the line, cops were pacing around with "less than lethal" crowd control weapons.In under five minutes, with no shoving at the line between protesters and police, no bottles thrown or other assaults on police sensibilities, other than the mere presence of a large march, OPD backed up their sound system SUV down the street and declared the march was an illegal assembly. The SUV was nearly a block away and over the crowd noise, it was barely audible, but from the front of the march it could be heard enough to know what it was.The crowd grew restless. Four brown trash cans were rolled to within a few feet in front of the police line on the sidewalk. A minute or two later, someone set fire to the garbage inside of one of the cans. Almost immediately rather than attempt an individual arrest the first flash bang grenade of several was thrown toward the crowd.A puff of tear gas filled the air after the flash bang exploded. Most people scattered in panic, not even aware of why police might have attacked the crowd so suddenly and without warning. Perhaps only a third of the original crowd remained in the vicinity of Washington Street after the initial flash bang. The rest headed deeper back into downtown towards City Hall.From that point on, it was over for police control of the situation. Flares and bottles were heaved at police. Garbage fires were set all over. Tear gas intermittently permeated the air as protesters were assaulted with further rounds of CS flash bangs. OPD may have protected their headquarters from the march, but they unleashed thousands of angry demonstrators throughout the city.On Washington Street, over the next half hour or so, police slowly pushed their line forward, until remaining protesters in the area had rounded 10th, and were back on Broadway.Separately, others from the original march were already protesting throughout downtown. Groups from several hundred to a couple of dozen to small handfuls engaged in games of cat and mouse with police throughout the night. Police would form lines, move in, sometimes scatter protesters, only to find them reconverged several blocks away.One thought that came to mind that night was the quote from Mao about revolutionaries swimming amongst the fish of the general population. Not that the quote is entirely apt here, but in the days of old, during the early days of the Justice for Oscar Grant movement, for instance, downtown Oakland was a ghost town at night and it was much easier for police to identify and smash on small groups of protesters.Now, however, since downtown is filled with expensive bars for the tens of thousands of gentrifiers who have moved to the city, with drunken foot traffic all over late into the night, police have to step, and drive, a good bit more carefully, lest they injure or offend the wealthier newcomers.It was a wild night. I spoke with Davey D for Hard Knock Radio segment as police munitions were heard exploding in the distance, circumstances unknown. The photographs below capture only a portion of what went down the first night after the election. The action was far too widespread for any single person to document. For instance, the Federal building had a door smashed and a fire set on its threshold, City Hall was damaged, an incendiary device appears to have been thrown into a storefront, and an OPD patrol vehicle was torched.Police cordoned off a half block in every direction from where the police SUV was set aflame. On a night where they pretty much lost control of the entire city, police were able to effectively protect their headquarters and prevent any photographs from being made of the burned out vehicle.Eventually, protests petered out of their own accord as more and more demonstrators left the scene. A NLG legal observer reported six known arrests as the night was winding down, although the final tally was likely higher and others may be arrested in the coming days as police review relevant surveillance footage. Still, it was a far smaller number than had been arrested in other cities, with the total being in the hundreds across the entire country.All it takes is a few thousand protesters to call the bluff of the police. Politicians and police will say the day after an event like this that they lost control because they didn't anticipate the large number of demonstrators. They are loathe to admit the truth to the public.. There is little to nothing they can do. Police can only operate with the consent of those around them. In response to overwhelming numbers, police have the option of conducting unconstitutional mass arrests or illegally escalating their own violence in the hopes of intimidating protesters into submission. Short of that, Oaklanders with strong enough numbers will protest when they want, where they want, and how they want, no permits sought or required. A 17-year-old who crashed a stolen car into the River Liffey at Celbridge while being chased by gardai from a burglary scene has been given one years detention. The court heard the teenager was arrested after being taken from the water but later released on bail because there was no suitable place for him to stay. Within 48 hours he had assaulted a man in his 80s, knocking him to the ground, as he stole the man's car. The teenager, who cannot be identified as he is a minor, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary, dangerous driving and criminal damage to a bridge on April 13, 2016. He further pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a car, assault and driving without a licence or insurance on April 15, 2016. The teen has 11 previous convictions including public order offences, criminal damage, assault and possession of stolen property. Busy night with two cars in River Liffey @ Celbridge (no serious injuries)Tallaght, Nass & Dunshaughlin @ scene pic.twitter.com/quXSXz6yXJ Tallaght Ambulance (@TallaghtAmbo) April 13, 2016 Judge Pauline Codd noted that a probation report before the court outlined that although the accused had initially indicated he was willing to engage with the probation services he later said he had no interest in doing so and his only motivation was a possible reduction in the sentence. The accused boy told his defence counsel, Anne Marie Lawlor BL, that he was in a real bad humour when he met the probation officer who prepared the report. One of the cars in the Liffey. Pic via @TallaghtAmbo. He said he had been on 23 hour lock up for the two days prior to the meeting and was not in the humour for answering questions. He said he was now drug free and was willing to go to a drug counsellor or give urines. Whatever it takes, he told the judge. He said when he was released he was going to stay clean, get back to family life and try to get a job. He told Judge Codd he would fully co-operate and was willing to address his anger issues. Ms Lawlor told the court the accused had ADHD and needed intervention and assistance going forward in his life. She said he was now completely drug free and willing to do whatever was necessary in order to progress his rehabilitation and re-engage with society in a positive way. She said he was remorseful for what had happened to the elderly man Judge Codd noted that under section 96 of the Children Act 2001 any penalty imposed on a child should take the least restrictive form that was appropriate in the circumstances and detention should be a last resort. She said in the first offence it was lucky that neither himself nor a member of the public was seriously injured. She said in the second offence he had preyed on an easy target in the elderly man but noted his guilty plea and expressions of remorse. She imposed a three-year sentence of detention but suspended the final two years. Garda Gerry Smyth told James Dwyer BL, prosecuting, that a homeowner at an address in Lucan was awoken by her neighbour alerting her to the fact she had been burgled. Her neighbour had spotted two men coming from her house and loading a TV into a car. As she spoke to her neighbour she spotted her car being driven down the road in convoy with a second car. This accused was driving a Hyundai while his co-accused drove a Volkswagen Polo. Gardai gave chase to the cars and tried to block them leaving the estate but the Polo crashed into the patrol car. The two cars then mounted the pavement and exited the estate. Gda Smyth said both cars drove towards Celbridge at high speed, with no regard for lanes, traffic signals or lights. The gardai chased the cars for five kilometres before the Hyundai, driven by this accused, drove through a bridge wall and fell straight down into the river Liffey. The second car then followed the Hyundai through the gap in the wall and landed 40 feet down the river. Gardai searched the cars for signs of life but found the defendants gone. They found the co-accused clinging to a pipe nearby and sometime later found this accused in the water suffering from the cold. The boys were arrested and interviewed. This accused was brought before the Childrens Court but as he was unable to go home and there was no place available that day for defendant his age to stay he was released on bail. His co-accused received a two and a half year sentence with the final year and a half suspended earlier this year. Gda Smith agreed with Ms Lawlor that the accused was clearly intoxicated on the night. Garda Graham Doolin said that on April 15th 2016 a man in his eighties had stopped his car outside his home and got out to open the gate. The elderly man said a fella came along on a push bike and jumped into his car. He said the accused man slammed the door into him as he tried to stop him, knocking him to the ground. The accused shouted something and drove off in the car which was later found abandoned The accused was later arrested and told gardai he had blacked out and could not remember what had happened. He said he had taken a large amount of tablets. Gda Doolin agreed that the accused was remorseful for what happened the elderly man. Ms Lawlor said there was a huge amount of negative material in the probation report before the court and her instructions were at odds with the unwillingness to engage outlined in the report. She said the accused was abusing prescribed drugs at the time but was now completely drug free and that could give the court some confidence as he faced into adulthood. A tradition that goes back 145 years to the celebrated days of the Cork Butter Market lies behind Dairymaid, a premium dairy spread made by JDS Foods. The company, a member of Love Irish Food, the Association set-up to promote Irish food and drink brands to consumers, is part of the heritage and fabric of Cork city. It was founded by James Daly, who began trading as a butter merchant in Ballyduff, Co Waterford, in 1871 and moved to Cork In 1885. Shandon Street area, home to the Cork Butter Exchange the worlds largest and most important butter market at that time was the companys new home. The market, which was opened in 1770 and continued trading for 150 years, brought great wealth to the city and became its economic foundation. Wooden caskets called firkins, made of oak, sycamore or good hardwood, were used to bring the salted butter to the market. It was transported on horse-drawn carts from West Cork and Kerry. Routes which were known as butter-roads were used. The butter was exported all over the world through the Port of Cork. At its trading peak in the 1880s it was handling 500,000 casks per year valued at 1.5m. Dalys butter became a local and international favourite. Polar explorer Ernest Shackelton brought a supply with him on his expeditions because its parchment wrapping was deemed ideal for the harsh conditions. The company produced its first dairy spreads at the Firkin Crane in 1905, but the family sold the business in 1989 to Irish Sugar, which became Greencore two years later after being privatised by the Government. James Daly and Sons was acquired in 2001 by managing director Charlie Fleury who saw an opportunity to bring the business back to its roots. The company was later rebranded as JDS Foods Ltd in 2007. Research and development programmes were expanded and new ranges created. Dairymaid was launched in 2014. Now employing 60 people, the company has a turnover of 16m and is in production around the clock at a state of the art plant in Churchfield. The location is only a kilometre or so from the site of the original factory in the Firkin Crane building beside Shandon Bells. Today the company is a leading international supplier of private label dairy and specialist spreads. It also produces a wide range of products for the bakery and food services sector and produces own brands. While the company exports numerous products, Dairymaid which is made with fresh-cream sourced from fully traceable, free roaming, West Cork cows is exclusively made for the Irish market. Charlie Fleury is proud that turnover has increased every year since he took over the business in 2001 and that the workforce has more than doubled. Little did I think when I joined James Daly and Sons as a newly qualified accountant in 1996 that five years later I would be buying the business myself after working my way up to managing director. The business had lost its way in many respects and was focused on supplying bakery margarine and other related products to the bakery sector. All the expertise was there to produce dairy spreads and that was much more in line with its early origins of butter trading, he said. Mr Fleury said quality butter and spreads are important to the Irish consumer who are used to quality and expect it. Being Irish is not just a matter of where we come from or where we are based; its who we are and drives what we do. The Irish have great taste in food, particularly with regard to dairy. We have the best ingredients in the world thanks to all that rain. I think the Irish are much more discerning in products like ours partly due to being used to high- quality dairy ingredients but I think its also got a lot to do with how close we are to our rural roots. A large proportion of the population are only a couple of generations removed from the land so we understand where food comes from. It is for this reason that being a member of Love Irish Food is so important to a brand like Dairymaid. All our products stay true to those origins. Its more than just a stamp to say where something is made. It is a statement that there is something special about Irish food and thats why the Irish love it, he said. Turning to the challenges posed by Brexit, Mr Fleury remains confident that the long trade between Ireland and Britain will continue to be reasonably unhindered, particularly in food. Brexit certainly has our attention but its hard to predict what it will mean for food exporters, he said. Mr Fleury, whose company exports to Britain, said it had to implement price increases to compensate for the fall in sterling. We have been able to do that and maintain all our business there so we are in a good place at the moment. But of course we may well see further falls in sterling. There could be more challenges ahead. That is the nature of trading with the UK and always has been, he said. The man who first started the business, James Daly (1856-1942), was associated with the industrial and commercial life of Cork for over half a century. In 1926, he presented to the city a Victorian wrought-iron suspension bridge to span the River Lee, linking Sundays Well on the northside to Fitzgeralds Park on the south. Named in his honour and popularly known locally as The Shaky Bridge, the iconic landmark is a reminder of the exciting era when Cork was a world renowned butter-making hub just like the Dairymaid brand itself. Mr Trumps nomination as the next US president shocking to many of us in Europe, is music to the ears of laid-off factory workers and farmers in many states and particularly swing states such as Ohio. His apocalyptic tones throughout the election rallies did strike with their experiences on the ground. The Republican president-elect may find it hard to deliver on his threat to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA and impose steep tariffs on imported goods, and cut US corporation tax to 15% in his quest to deliver jobs to the forgotten regions of the US. However, the collateral damage that he may cause in pursuit of his promises is worrying for many businesses that trade with the US. Whatever about Mr Trump being able to follow up his anti-globalisation rhetoric, he will certainly be able to ensure his next trade secretary kills off any further negotiations with the EU on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement and inking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement with Asian countries. Of much greater concern to both US multinationals based here and Irish indigenous businesses exporting to the US, is a threat to impose import tax levies on goods and services entering the US. In Irelands case, we are facing an unprecedented and potentially crippling blow to traders, if a 45% import tariff were applied to our exports to the US. Last year, Irelands exports to the US reached 26bn, covering everything from pharmaceuticals and medical devices to Coca-Cola ingredients and Jameson whiskey. Any tariff will damage this trade, but anything in the order of a 45% import tax would kill off most of this trade. Another threat from the Trump victory is the impact of introducing 15% corporation tax. Ireland has been able to attract many US multinationals that needed a base in Europe to service their growing markets across the EU. A key element of the decision process to locate here, as opposed to anywhere else in Europe, has been our 12.5% tax, well below the 30% average rate across the EU. This lure loses its attraction, if the US brings in a 15% tax rate. Many will argue there were signals the current corporation tax rate of 35% would be cut in time to overcome the perennial reluctance of US global corporations to repatriate their profits back to the US and pay their taxes there. There is no doubt that in an attempt to deliver at an early stage on some of his big promises, president Trump will opt for a dramatic and immediate reduction to the 15% level. The Trump victory with its protectionist agenda, coming on the heels of the Brexit decision, has created widespread uncertainty and is likely to push global trade into a slump. Clearly, Mr Trumps win reflects the heartfelt frustration of many Americans, who were deeply hurt by the recession. But to characterise globalisation as the disease, and protectionism as the cure, is wrong. Irish companies investing in the US have created the same number of jobs in the US as US investments have created here. In all, foreign direct investment into the US from across the globe has created 24m jobs there. If he sees his mandate to reverse globalisation, then Ireland and other open economies will suffer. John Whelan is a leading international trade consultant. The latest accusation, which emerged on social media, centres on the replacement of old water pipes in Castleisland, with Independent TD Danny Healy-Rae claiming Fine Gael and Fianna Fail joined forces in an orchestrated and targeted campaign against him in a series of attacks. He, and not his brother Michael, was being singled out, he added. The latest row began after Fine Gael councillor Bobby OConnell posted on Facebook about new water pipes and old political opportunism. Mr OConnell, who runs the Poets Inn in Castleisland, attacked Mr Healy-Rae and his daughter, councillor Maura Healy-Rae, for sending out notes about being delighted at getting Irish Water to carry out the 250,000 replacement of 700m of pipes on Main St. However, Mr OConnell said it was he who moved matters at council level. But this is nothing new, he continued. Typical political opportunism. Mr OConnell accusedHealy-Rae supporters of being naive, and said Mr Healy-Rae and his daughter shamelessly attach themselves to announcements. Fianna Fail councillor Niall Kelleher supported the post, saying that not a week went by but any work done by any councillor is being claimed by the Healy-Raes. However, Mr Healy-Rae hit back, saying Fianna Fail and Fine Gael had joined forces and were targeting his seat, he said. They dont attack Michael at all, but they think I am the one to be taken out, he said. Mr Healy-Rae believes a campaign is being orchestrated nationally and locally by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael against some Independents. In June, Ms Healy-Rae lost her bid to be appointed mayor of Killarney. With the support of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, the prestigious position went to a rival of the Healy-Raes, the Independent Brendan Cronin. Meanwhile, the funeral practices of the Healy-Raes have also been criticised. This began in the summer, when Fianna Fail councillor Michael Cahill hit out at the Healy-Raes practice of sending bereavement packs. Fianna Fail councillors also complained privately about the number of funerals attended by the Healy- Raes. A row is also brewing over the decision by a council committee to get rid of its book of condolence. In order to streamline votes of sympathy at council meetings, a book was made available at the start of each meeting so members could propose a vote of sympathy. The council executive would then write formally to the family of the deceased, detailing who proposed the expression of sympathy. However, councillors said the Healy-Raes were arriving early to meetings, and filling the book. Councillor Johnny Healy-Rae recently called for the return of the Book of Condolence. A rally was held in Sligo on Saturday to highlight the case of the man, amid calls to the minister for justice to intervene. The mans room mate says he is now so weak that he cannot stand up and his eyesight has been affected. Ahmad Kamal from Sudan, who attended the United Against Racism rally in Dublin, shares a room with the Iranian man at Globe House in Sligo. Speaking in Dublin Mr Kamal, who has been in Ireland for 11 years, said the man is getting medical attention but continues to refuse food and is only taking sips of water. He knows he could die but he is scared because he is wanted by the government in his country, said Mr Kabal. Protesters outside Globe House said the asylum seeker would prefer to die here rather than be sent back to Iran. There is a man dying in there, said one protester who said nobody seemed to care. Fianna Fail TD Marc MacSharry, who has appealed to the Minister Frances Fitzgerald to review the case as a matter of urgency, urged the man to end his hunger strike without prejudice to his case. I have asked the minister look at this case on a human level, said Mr MacSharry who added that there was a process in asylum cases. Nigel Gallagher a local People Before Profit activist, said the man had spent four years in the UK much of it sleeping on the streets. He is afraid that if the Irish authorities send him back to the UK that he will be deported, said Mr Gallagher. Josette Newman of Sligo Diversity, a group which works closely with asylum seekers in Globe House, said she was hopeful that the issue would be resolved. She said the man was being supported by management at the residential centre, was seeing a counsellor every day and was getting medical attention. We are heartbroken that he is on hunger strike for so long. A spokesman for the minister said the department does not make comments on individuals in the protection process and had an obligation under the Refugee Act to protect the identity of those in the process. Providing any information about any person could lead to individuals in the protection process being inadvertently identified which would result in the State being in breach of its obligations in this regard, he added. A spokesperson for Bridgestock, the company which runs Globe House, referred queries to the Reception Integration Agency (RIA). The RIA said it was a matter for the Department of Justice. Mr Noonan last night flew out for a week-long series of meetings in Washington DC and Silicon Valley in California amid increasing concern over how the incoming US presidents corporate tax regime will impact on this country. The trip was scheduled before Mr Trumps election win and officially involves Mr Noonan meeting US Treasury, IM,F and World Bank representatives for an update on the impact of Brexit, after he was unable to attend a previous event as it clashed with the budget. However, the Department of Finance stressed last night that Mr Noonan will also use the trip to highlight Irelands enduring investment appeal in the US and will meet with a number of the large US companies based in Ireland which are facing increasing pressure to return jobs to the US. While a spokesperson declined to name the companies he will meet, US technology and IT powerhouses such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and LinkedIn all have bases here, where they employ thousands of people and are central to ours tentative economic recovery. In a statement last night, Mr Noonan said he is meeting officials and companies to emphasise that, as a common law, English-speaking, and business-friendly jurisdiction, we will continue to be an attractive destination for US companies. News of the Finance Ministers trip which comes just a month before Taoiseach Enda Kenny makes a similar US visit emerged as a close financial adviser to Mr Trumps successful election campaign repeated his view that the incoming US president will slash corporate taxes and force foreign-based US firms to return home. On RTE Radio, Stephen Moore said Mr Trump wants to emulate Irelands 12.5% corporate tax regime and cut the equivalent rate in the US to as low as 15%. We want to emulate Ireland, said Mr Moore. You have one of the lowest, if not the lowest, business taxes in the world. We want to be competitive with Ireland. Were very excited about this idea and we do think a lot of companies that have left the US will come back. They will come back from China, Canada, Mexico, Ireland. We learned it from Ireland. Although Mr Moore has not been appointed to any post-election adviser position as yet, Mr Trump has repeatedly said he will reduce corporate tax from 35% to 15%-20% within 100 days of entering office. In recent days, several Government ministers have moved to calm fears over the potential impact such a move could have on this country, with Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe stressing last week he does not believe jobs will be lost. IDA Ireland chief executive Martin Shanahan repeated the view last Friday, saying he does not expect to see a flood of companies departing, while Central Bank governor Philip Lane similarly sought to downplay concerns. However, despite the positive take being echoed by Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan, who said at the weekend that Mr Trump will be a friend to Ireland, the fact that Mr Kenny and opposition leaders last week backed down on previous accusations of racism and sexism against Mr Trump underlines the concern of his elections potential impact here. Meanwhile, Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell OConnor will travel this week to Japan and China in a bid to encourage fresh investment in this country, while Mr Kenny will meet Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster tomorrow for post-Brexit protection talks. EU foreign ministers also held an emergency meeting last night on the impact of Mr Trumps election. Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he intended contacting Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about the case as a matter of urgency probably in the next week. However, he also said he had been in touch with Sisi twice already. He made it perfectly clear to me that he is not in a position to interfere with the judicial process, that he can only use his presidential pardon powers once the case has been delivered upon. Ibrahim, 20, from Firhouse in Dublin, was arrested while staying with relatives in Cairo in August 2013 during demonstrations in support of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. He faces a mass trial with 493 other defendants on charges that may include murder, which carries the death penalty. Katie OByrne, a London- based human rights lawyer who is working on his case, told RTE Radio it was still unclear exactly what charges Ibrahim faced or what, if any, evidence had been gathered against him. The London team has been denied any direct contact with him and it is unclear whether his Egyptian lawyer is able to meet personally with him. This whole process has been characterised by delay and lack of information and abuse of the fundamental rights of this Irish citizen, Ms OByrne said. Obviously it is not legitimate to hold a mass trial or to continually adjourn it, she continued. He cannot now receive a fair trial. The apparent reason for the latest adjournment to December 13 was the absence of some defendants, but with almost 500 accused, it is feared a full attendance cannot be achieved. I am concerned about this. It seems to be a case of a different issue every time that brings about a postponement of the case, said Mr Kenny. He stressed that the Government had backed an application under Egyptian decree 140 which allows for the transfer home of a foreign prisoner for trial in their own country. There are no signs of the request being approved. Every single shop, bar one, is a local outpost of some foreign-owned multinational chain, each identical to counterparts elsewhere in the world. It could be a street in any of several towns in Ireland; it could equally be a street in Britain or continental Europe. No doubt the developer is happy to bank regular lease payments and the grossly underfunded council wont query regular rate payments, but equally this globalised homogenisation accelerates the remorseless erosion of unique local businesses that help create a genuine sense of place. Citizenry evolves bonds with these local businesses in a way they will never do with a Topshop or McDonalds and can eventually come to see them as institutions. It is especially true of the hospitality sector; for all the sustenance they furnish, they are equally places of social interaction and nothing creates a sense of place like people. Idaho Cafe is one such local, independent establishment. Is it time we began calling it an institution? Lunchtime on a bright if parky day in early November sees us needing warmth and feeding. Idaho takes no reservations but we strike immediate gold with a freshly vacated table by the front door. It must be said, Idaho is small. So small that those seeking the toilet are directed out the front door and around the corner to an adjacent building. Received wisdom when challenged by diminished proportions is to keep it light and bright but in Idaho dark wood panelling and a cheerful clatter of curios only heighten cosy intimacy. More seating than seems logical accommodates more customers than seems possible and at rush hour it is a glorious cacophony. Young office workers mingle with shopping mums bunched up next to ladies who lunch, leaning in to share juicy gobbets of gossip, while random startled tourists bob about on the tide. A granny, central casting right down to the roots of her blue rinse, scrolls through her Twitter feed, a serendipitous embodiment of Idahos melange of funky, fresh innovation and comforting, old world charm. All the while, proprietor/maitre d Richard Jacob and staff wait for the next gap in the bustling human traffic, to dive in or out from behind the tiny counter, delivering drinks, ferrying plates, turning tables. At times, its akin to watching a Fellini film set in an Irish telephone booth. La Daughter is out of sorts. So out of sorts, in fact, it will take all the sorts in the world to restore her to her more usual blithely chirpy self and she is deeply disinterested. Jacob, a consummate professional (formerly maitre d of Jacobs on the Mall when it was in its pomp under chef Mercy Fenton) accepts her truculence with such humility and grace that he might well be soliciting the correct temperature from Cleopatra for her milk bath. He eventually elicits an order for a quesadilla and a cupcake. No 2 Son, primarily put on this earth to eat, is a doddle in comparison. Ill have the soup to start, says he, what is it? It is a healing bowl of earthy vegetables, potato, carrot, parsnip, turnip, with a frisson of fennel. It is there, it is good, it is gone. He then sets about a floury bap with sausages and crispy bacon, begrudgingly allowing La Daughter a mouthful in exchange for her salad. Though I have a further professional eating engagement that very evening, a situation that would normally see me restrict myself to a few small slices of water for lunch, I am sorely tempted by a smoked fish pie. Wholesome and tasty, it is an elemental pleasure. The salad is simple and well-sourced (much of Idahos produce is grown by Richard and chef/partner Mairead in their own rural home), sound absolution for my sin of excess. We finish with sweetness, mostly chocolate-based, and coffee, and while Idaho is a great place to linger for a few hours during the day, it seems cheeky to hog a table at lunchtime so we make our exit. So, is Idaho Cafe an institution? Well, if it is, I, for one, am deeply committed to the place. The tab 33.90 (excluding and tip) The Verdict Food: 7.5/10 Service: 8.5/10 Value: 8/10 Atmosphere: 9/10 Tagline: Funky, fresh innovation combined with comforting old-world charm Idaho Cafe, 19 Caroline St, Cork. www.idahocafe.ie Tues-Thur: 8.30am-5pm Fri-Sat: 8.30am-6pm Buschman 17 Honored as 2016 Lincoln Laureate Associate Professor of Sociology Meghan Burke (left) accompanied laureate Paige Buschman to the awards convocation. Nov. 14, 2016 BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan University sociology major Paige Buschman 17 of Lemont, Ill., has been named a 2016 Student Laureate by the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. The Lincoln Academys Abraham Lincoln Civic Engagement Awards are presented for excellence in curricular and extracurricular activities to seniors from each of the states four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities, and one student from the community colleges in Illinois. Each student recipient receives a Student Laureate Medallion, along with a $1,000 educational grant and a certificate of achievement, at the Student Laureate Convocation. I feel so sincerely honored that President [Eric] Jensen would pick me for the award, said Buschman. Its a little special for both of us considering I am his first laureate. Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology Meghan Burke accompanied Buschman to the awards convocation. Dr. Burke is a fabulous professor, woman, mentor, researcher and human being, said Buschman. She has advised my Eckley research project, which is an extended version of my sociology senior seminar, and has pushed me to do my best in this area, but also in all areas of my work. She has given me sound advice in every corner of life and that has been invaluable to me. Illinois Wesleyan and I are lucky to have a professor like her. At Illinois Wesleyan Buschman is a Lead Sustainability Educator in the Office of Residential Life and member of GREENetwork, Sigma Tau Delta English honor society, Alpha Kappa Delta sociology honor society, and National Society for Leadership and Success. She is president of the IWU Pride Alliance and has served on the executive board every semester except one throughout her career as an Illinois Wesleyan student. This past summer she overhauled SafeZone, which focuses on LGBTQ+ sensitivity training for faculty, staff and students. She was also a co-initiator of establishing gender-inclusive housing on campus. She was selected as a 2016 Eckley Scholar to explore the effects of socialization around issues of gender on sexual assault on college campuses. After graduation from Illinois Wesleyan Buschman plans to enter graduate school pursing higher education administration. She hopes to work in student affairs diversity centers. Provost to Become President at Susquehanna University Jonathan Green Nov. 14, 2016 BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Jonathan Green, provost and dean of the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan since 2011, has been named the next president at Susquehanna University, a private liberal arts university in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Green will remain at Illinois Wesleyan through June, 2017. An immediate search will be launched for his successor. "I congratulate Jonathan on his selection for this presidency and Susquehanna for their wise choice," said President Eric Jensen. "I hope that he finds the role as fulfilling and rewarding as I have here at Illinois Wesleyan. Susquehanna will benefit from his good-natured intelligence and from his insightful grasp of the liberal arts and their importance in the modern world. These traits have served the Titan community well, and I speak for many in thanking him for his efforts over the years." I am so grateful to the many faculty, staff, and students at Illinois Wesleyan with whom I have had the pleasure and privilege to work and learn," Green said. "The things which I most value from Lynns and my time here are the friendships we have formed and the transformational experiences of students we have been fortunate to observe and share." During his time at Illinois Wesleyan, Green noted pride at the progress made in assessment; the expansion of grants and foundations work; strengthened international programs and recruiting; the implementation of lacrosse; and the development of new academic initiatives such as the Design, Technology, and Entrepreneurship major; and the expansion of the School of Nursing. I am looking forward to the work we still have to accomplish together over the next eight months, he said. Prior to joining Illinois Wesleyan, Green was dean of the college and vice president for academic affairs at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Va., where he joined the music faculty in 1996 and held subsequent administrative roles, including appointments as department chair and associate dean. He has remained an active composer and scholar while at Illinois Wesleyan, notably the publication of his seventh book, A Conductor's Guide to Selected Baroque Choral-Orchestral Works, and the premiere of one of his compositions at New York Citys Carnegie Hall. Green received a Bachelor of Music degree from the State University College of New York at Fredonia; a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts, where he was an Ornest Fellow; and Doctorate of Musical Arts in conducting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was a University Excellence Fellow. Barrick Gold Corporation (Barrick) (NYSE:ABX) and NOVAGOLD RESOURCES INC. (NOVAGOLD) (TSX:NG)(NYSE MKT:NG), the owners of Donlin Gold LLC, are pleased to announce the appointment of Andy Cole as General Manager of the Donlin Gold project in Alaska. The owners express their sincere gratitude to Stan Foo, the outgoing General Manager, for his service and dedication to Donlin Gold during his 12-year tenure at the project. Mr. Cole has more than 20 years of experience in permitting, building and operating major gold mines in North America. He comes to Donlin Gold from Barrick where he was most recently Executive Director, U.S.A. responsible for permitting, energy, communications, community relations and corporate social responsibility. Prior to that position, he served in a variety of senior operating roles, including General Manager of both the Goldstrike mine, one of Barrick's largest operations, and the Ruby Hill mine, both located in Nevada. Mr. Cole is well known for his active involvement in local campus and mining education programs and serves on the advisory boards of a number of university engineering and mining programs. Mr. Cole has an engineering degree and a Master of Business Administration. As General Manager of Donlin Gold, he will be relocating to Anchorage, Alaska, and will report directly to the Board of Donlin Gold LLC, equally represented by the owners, Barrick and NOVAGOLD. "Advancing through permitting and preparing for the development of a unique asset like Donlin Gold is a rare opportunity and I'm excited to take on this role," said Mr. Cole. "The project has a track record of engineering excellence and a strong culture of safety, environmental stewardship and community engagement, all values that will remain constant. We believe Donlin Gold can be a model of responsible mine development with the potential to generate meaningful benefits for our Native Corporation partners, Calista Corporation and The Kuskokwim Corporation, and communities throughout Alaska for many decades to come." "Andy's extensive experience and expertise make him an ideal candidate to take this project forward, building on the progress we have made under Stan Foo's strong leadership at Donlin Gold," said Kelvin Dushnisky, President of Barrick. "As we advance through the permitting process, we look forward to working with NOVAGOLD and Andy's team to optimize Donlin Gold, with a focus on maximizing the long-term value of the project for all stakeholders." "Congratulations to Andy Cole on his new appointment and a heartfelt thanks to Stan Foo for the direction he provided in building a solid foundation on which to advance a model project," said Greg Lang, NOVAGOLD's President and Chief Executive Officer. "As we move through permitting, Donlin Gold's path up the value chain will shift toward engineering and, potentially, the development of what is arguably the most important gold project in the world today. My team and I have known and worked with Andy for years, and we can't think of a better person to take this project through the next phases of value maximization. Andy's breadth and depth of experience and talent is well suited to unlock the potential of Donlin Gold for its owners, and continue to build on the strong partnerships we enjoy with the Native Corporations and other stakeholders." The Path Forward The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the "Corps"), Donlin Gold's lead Federal permitting agency, is now reviewing the comment submittals received during the Donlin Gold public comment period for the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in preparation for completing the final EIS. Concurrent with these and other permitting activities, the owners are studying ways to further enhance the project's value and lessen initial capital, such as modular construction techniques, more selective mining methods, automation of certain mining activities and additional value accretive scenarios. These studies have identified opportunities that, in combination with changes in prices of most major input costs, have the potential to increase the overall value of Donlin Gold as the owners consider updates to the project feasibility study completed in 2011. About the Donlin Gold Project Donlin Gold is one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in the world with an estimated mine life of 27 years and an average gold grade per tonne that is more than double the gold industry average. The project's existing gold resources sit on a three-kilometer portion of an eight-kilometer belt of known mineralization, with additional gold targets and exploration upside. As designed to its feasibility study specifications, or in the staged-development scenarios being studied by the owners, Donlin Gold has the potential to be one of the largest gold-producing mines in the industry. The project is located in Alaska, the second largest gold-producing state in the U.S., and enjoys strong support from its native corporation partners, as well as from the state government and its representatives. Toronto, ON / TheNewswire / November 14th 2016. Chilean Metals Inc. ("Chilean Metals," "CMX" or the "Company") (TSX.V:CMX, OTCQB: CMETF, SSE:CMX, MILA: CMX). Chilean Metals has signed a letter of intent (LOI) to joint venture its Bass River project in Nova Scotia with Tejas Gold Company (Tejas). Tejas will have fourteen months after signing of a JV Agreement to earn a 35% working interest in the joint venture. To earn the interest Tejas will be required to pay a non refundable deposit of $25,000 (issuable within 30 working days of signing the LOI), issue 100,000 common shares of Tejas stock (issuable within 30 working days of signing the LOI) and to expend $400,000 in exploration work including drilling on Bass River. Should they spend the $400,000 on or before June 30th 2017, as is currently planned, then a bonus participation of 5% shall be awarded bringing the Tejas participation in the JV to 40%. In addition, Tejas shall pay Chilean Metals a management fee of $5,000 per month over the duration of the work program. "We acquired Bass River from Cogonov Inc. who has had history working successfully with Tejas" , commented Chilean Chairman Terry Lynch. "We believe they will be an ideal discovery partner to work with as we continue on the exciting exploration work started under Dundee and Minotaur as they developed and tested a new concept for copper gold mineralization along the Cobequid Chedabucto Fault system". Bass River Nova Scotia is comprised of 5 licences totaling 222 claims, ground exploration in 2014 and drilling in Q1 2015 at Gamble Lake was successful in identifying a mineralized system associated with felsic volcanic tuffs of the Dalhousie Mountain Formation. Trending northeast, airborne VTEM and magnetics conducted in Q1 2015 was successful in identifying numerous VTEM anomalies including one high priority target along the projected track of the Gamble Lake mineralization. Referred to as the Castlereagh anomaly, VTEM target BRN_VT01 is the largest target delineated in approximately 2000 line kilometers of airborne work conducted in the Cobequids by Cogonov. With a surface expression of 700 x 700 meters, the geophysical data was subsequently modeled by Minotaur Exploration Limited (Australia) who highlighted a subsurface target approximately 300 meters in width. Ground geophysics was recommended to characterize the target prior to drilling. Click Image To View Full Size The program is being managed by Chilean Metals Inc with oversight provided by their Technical Advisory Committee comprised of Dr Tony Belperio, Ph.D., B.Sc, IMM, F.Aus. Dr Belperio is the Executive Director & Exploration Director of Highly recognized Minotaur Exploration Australia. Dr Belperio served as Minotaur's Chief Geologist from 1996 - 2007 and was instrumental in the discovery of Prominent Hill IOCG, in Southeast Australia. He has received the University of Adelaide's Tate Memorial Medal, The Geological Society of Australia's Stillwell Award and AMEC Prospector of the Year Award. Currently, Dr Belperio & Minotaur are concentrating on their Cloncurry Cu-Au discovery and JV with Oz Minerals. Dr Chris Hodgson, Ph.D.,P Eng. Dr. Hodgson has been the Geological Consultant and former VP of Exploration until 2016. Dr Hodgson has had an outstanding career to date, including Amax Exploration, Canamax Resources, Tungsten & Minera Inmet in Chile. Mr Hodgson is credited with the early recognition of the Santo Domingo IOCG deposit in Chile. Ultimately, Farwest developed the project & sold to Capstone for $700M. Dr Hodgson is fluent in Spanish and has been working in mining in Chile for the past 25 years. Ian Pirie, P Geo M. Sc., formerly Chilean Metals Chairman the company is pleased to continue to benefit from Ian's 35+ years of Mining experience where Ian travels included GM for Latin America for Inmet Mining where he was responsible for the acquisition, exploration & development of the Antamina Cu/Zn project in Peru and finishing as VP Projects where he oversaw development of Cobre Las Cruces in Spain and the Cobre Panama project in Panama. Gary Lohman, P. Geo, B. Sc., VP Exploration & Director, Chilean Metals. Committee Chair Gary Lohman has over 30 years experience in both precious metals & base metals exploration within the Americas. He is skilled in most geological, geochemical & geophysical exploration techniques in a wide variety of settings and terrains. Gary's career has taken him on many projects early stages to advanced, in Canada, Mexico, California & Ecuador. In addition to the Bass River announcement the Company is pleased to confirm it has formally closed its private placement, as previously announced, of $805,885 by issuing 5,372,566 common shares at $0.15 per share. Eligible finders were paid cash fees of $35,716 and 240,187 broker warrants. 229,771 broker warrants entitle the holder to acquire one common share at $0.15 until October 24, 2017 and 10,416 broker warrants entitle the holder to acquire one common share at USD$0.12 until October 24, 2017. All securities issued pursuant to the above referenced private placement are subject to a four month hold period expiring on March 2, 2017. The Company also wished to advise that it has agreed to convert $174,013 of currently due debentures into common shares at $0.15 per share through the issuance of 1,160,085 shares, subject to regulatory approval. Finally, with the appointment of new board members and a revised management team, a total of 2,850,000 five year options to acquire the company stock at $0.15 per share were issued under the Company's authorised employee incentive plan to management and board members. About Chilean Metals www.chileanmetals.com/ Chilean Metals Inc. is a Canadian Junior Exploration Company focusing on high potential Copper Gold prospects in Chile & Canada. Chilean Metals Inc is 100% owner of five properties comprising over 50,000 acres strategically located in the prolific IOCG ("Iron oxide-copper-gold") belt of northern Chile. It also owns a 3% NSR royalty interest on any future production from the Copaquire Cu-Mo deposit, recently sold to a subsidiary of Teck Resources Inc. ("Teck"). Under the terms of the sale agreement, Teck has the right to acquire one third of the 3% NSR for $3 million dollars at any time. The Copaquire property borders Teck's producing Quebrada Blanca copper mine in Chile's First Region. Chilean Metals Inc is the 100% owner of four Copper Gold exploration properties in Nova Scotia on the western flank of the Cobequid-Chedabucto Fault Zone (CCFZ); Fox River, Parrsboro, Lynn and Bass River North respectively. Initial targeting and geophysics has been conducted on all properties, At Bass River North, airborne geophysics identified a major VTEM cluster on trend with the Pb/Zn/Ag mineralization exposed at surface and in drill holes to the southwest. Modeling of the airborne data by Minotaur (Australia) identified 3 priority targets recommended for ground based geophysics prior to drilling. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF Chilean Metals Inc. "Terry Lynch" Terry Lynch, Chairman Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. The Qualified Person for Chilean Metals Inc., as defined by National Instrument 43-101, is Gary Lohman, P. Geo., Vice President, Exploration. Forward-looking Statements: This news release may contain certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that CMX expects to occur, are forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Forward-looking statements in this document include statements regarding current and future exploration programs, activities and results. Although CMX believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration success, continued availability of capital and financing, inability to obtain required regulatory or governmental approvals and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - FIORE EXPLORATION LTD. (TSXVF.V) (Fiore or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent with Sociedad Quimica Y Minera de Chile SA (SQM) to acquire a 100% interest in the Cerro Tostado exploration project in Chile, located just south of the main zone of Yamana Golds flagship El Penon Mine. As part of the transaction, Fiore will also acquire two new concession blocks near Fiores existing Pampas El Penon project. A map showing the location of the concessions can be found at (see Figure 1). Tim Warman, Fiores CEO stated, With drilling underway at our Pampas El Penon project, its a perfect time to begin adding to our project portfolio in Chile. Like Pampas El Penon, Cerro Tostado is a project with encouraging geology, located within sight of a major operating gold mine. The project is at a bit earlier stage than Pampas El Penon, so well begin with mapping, sampling and geophysical surveys in order to define drill targets. However, were very encouraged by some of the preliminary drill results obtained by SQM indicating the potential for a high-grade epithermal veins system similar to that at Yamanas nearby El Penon and Mina Florida mines. Cerro Tostado The Tostado project consists of five concessions totalling approximately 1,500 ha located in Region II some 125 km southeast of Antofagasta. The project is approximately 12 km southwest and 8 km east-southeast of Yamanas El Penon and Fortuna mines respectively (see Figure 2), and along strike from the principal veins reported at the Fortuna mine. A large hill, Cerro Largato, forms a north-south elongated outcrop of argillic altered and brecciated rhyolite that intrudes and is in fault contact with porphyritic andesitic units and dacitic to rhyodacitic units towards the east and southeast. These outcropping units are surrounded by gravel and caliche covered areas. Alteration is most intense along the breccia bodies that are spatially related with the dominant N-S and NW-SE structural trends. Associated with the argillic alteration and structural trends are variable intensities of hematite-jarosite bearing veinlets. Previous work by SQM has included geological mapping and sampling, trenching, and approximately 1,937 m of reverse-circulation drilling in 17 holes. The results have confirmed the presence of structurally control silver-dominated mineralization, with highly anomalous levels of silver, arsenic and antimony and anomalous levels of lead and zinc. Pampas El Penon South Concessions The Pampas El Penon south concessions cover an area of approximately 400 Ha and are located approximately 3 km south of, and directly on strike with Yamanas Pampas Augusta Victoria mine. The concessions area also approximately 1 km southeast of Fiores El Penon West concession block (see Figure 3). Fiores land position now surrounds the Pampas Augusta Victoria mine on three sides. Very little work has been conducted in this area, but limited regional rock sampling has found elevated arsenic values. Fiore plans to carry out a detailed mapping and sampling program over these new concessions. Deal Terms Fiore can earn a 100% interest in the Cerro Tostado and Pampas El Penon South concessions by: Spending a total of US$2,247,700 in exploration expenditures over a five-year period, including a US$400,900 exploration commitment in the first year Making total cash payments to SQM of US$1,259,700 over a five-year period, including US$19,000 in the first year Issuing 500,000 common shares of Fiore Exploration to SQM on signing of a definitive agreement Granting SQM a sliding-scale royalty on precious metal production, which at current gold prices would be 2.5%, with a maximum royalty of 5.0% when gold prices exceed US$2,000 per ounce A definitive agreement between Fiore and SQM is expected by the end of the year. Vern Arseneau, P. Geo., Fiores VP Exploration, is the Qualified Person who supervised the preparation of the technical data in this news release. About Fiore Exploration Fiore Exploration is a Latin America focused gold explorer, whose Pampas El Penon and Cerro Tostado gold and silver projects in Chile cover land in the same geological environment as Yamana's flagship El Penon mine. Trevali Mining Corporation ("Trevali" or the "Company") (TSX:TV)(LMA:TV)(OTCQX:TREVF)(FRANKFURT:4TI) has released financial results for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2016. Third quarter ("Q3") EBITDA(1) increased significantly from the preceding quarter to a record $14.8 million, with income from operations of $10.6 million, and the Company posted a net profit of $2.4-million, or $0.01 per share, for the quarter. Q3 marked a major milestone for Trevali as the Caribou zinc mine in New Brunswick commenced Commercial Production. This release should be read in conjunction with Trevali's unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2016, which is available on Trevali's website and on SEDAR. All financial figures are in Canadian dollar unless otherwise stated. Q3-2016 Results Highlights: Record EBITDA (1) of $14.8 million, up 80% from the Second Quarter 2016 ("Q2") of $14.8 million, up 80% from the Second Quarter 2016 ("Q2") Income from mining operations of $10.6 million an increase of 103% from Q2 Net income of $2.4 million or $0.01 per share Record total concentrate sales revenue of $57.5 million, up 99% from Q2 Total cash position of $16.9 million Consolidated Q3 mill throughput of 402,039 tonnes resulting in record quarterly production of 32.4 million payable pounds of zinc, 9.7 million payable pounds of lead and 362,776 payable ounces of silver at site cash costs (2) US$0.40 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq") (3) produced or US$46.73/tonne milled US$0.40 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq") produced or US$46.73/tonne milled Provisional realized commodity selling prices for Q3-2016 production was US$1.03 per pound zinc, US$0.87 per pound lead and US$19.40 per ounce silver at International Benchmark terms under the Company's offtake agreement with Glencore Q3 Santander site cash costs (2) US$0.33 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq") (3) produced or US$36.33/tonne milled, in line with 2016 cost guidance of US$35-38 per tonne milled US$0.33 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq") produced or US$36.33/tonne milled, in line with 2016 cost guidance of US$35-38 per tonne milled Q3 Caribou site cash costs(2) US$0.46 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq")(3) produced or US$58.88/tonne milled "Trevali had a transformative quarter during which we declared Commercial Production at our Caribou zinc mine in New Brunswick," stated Dr. Mark Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO. "While our Santander mine in Peru continues to post strong, consistent results including very significant exploration upside, we are particularly proud of our Caribou team. In summary, Caribou has overcome both technical and exceedingly challenging financial hurdles during the first half of 2016 to successfully commission the operation. This includes posting positive Q3 operational results despite the mine not yet being fully ramped. This is an encouraging indicator of the upside at Caribou as we continue to ramp toward the full nameplate 3,000-tpd operating rate. Caribou has been steadily increasing performance and throughput in Q4 in tandem with strengthening zinc and lead commodity prices." Q3-2016 Financial Results Conference Call The Company will host a conference call and audio webcast at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 15, 2016, to review the Q3 financial results. Participants are advised to dial in 5-minutes prior to the scheduled start time of the call. Conference call dial-in details: Toll-free (North America): 1-877-291-4570 Toronto and International: 1-647-788-4919 Audio Webcast: http://www.gowebcasting.com/8118 Summary Financial Results ($ millions, except per-share amounts) Q3-2016 Q3-2015 Revenues $57.5 $27.1 Income from mining operations $10.6 $1.5 Net income (loss) $2.4 ($3.4 ) Basic Income per share $0.01 ($0.01 ) Consolidated Production Statistics Q3-2016 Q3-2015* Tonnes Mined 397,864 175,560 Tonnes Milled 402,039 197,289 Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 32,384,913 14,848,026 Lead lbs (pounds) 9,718,926 7,785,192 Silver Oz 362,776 285,962 Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 47,333,137 27,473,893 Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.40 $ 0.28 Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 46.73 $ 38.67 *Q3-2015 Production statistics reflect only Santander mining operations Consolidated Sales Statistics: Q3-2016 Q3-2015** Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 30,659 16,694 Lead Concentrate (DMT) 10,439 6,828 Payable Zinc lbs 27,031,229 15,215,705 Payable Lead lbs 9,570,802 7,996,297 Payable Silver Oz 349,366 290,228 Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 43,934,000 $ 20,595,000 Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): Zinc $ 1.03 $ 0.78 Lead $ 0.87 $ 0.73 Silver $ 19.40 $ 14.80 Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 41,618,528 28,143,580 **Q3-2015 Sales statistics reflect only Santander mining operations (1) EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is calculated by considering Company's earnings before interest payments, tax, depreciation and amortization are subtracted for any final accounting of its income and expenses. The EBITDA of a business gives an indication of its current operational profitability and is a NON-IFRS measure. (2) Refer to Non-IFRS Measures in the September 30, 2016 Management Discussion and Analysis. (3) ZnEq Payable Pounds Produced = ((Zn Payable lbs Produced x Zn Price)+(Pb Payable lbs Produced x Pb Price)+(Cu Payable lbs Produced x Cu Price)+(Au oz Payable Produced x Au Price)+(Ag oz Payable Produced x Ag Price))/Zn Price. (4) ZnEq Payable Pounds Sold = ((Zn Payable lbs Sold x Zn Price)+(Pb Payable lbs Sold x Pb Price)+(Cu Payable lbs Sold x Cu Price)+(Au oz Payable Sold x Au Price)+(Ag oz Payable Sold x Ag Price))/Zn Price. (All metal prices are the average realized metal price for the period). (5) Revenues include prior period adjustment. Santander Zinc Mine, Peru Santander Production Statistics Q3-2016 Q3-2015 Tonnes Mined 192,815 175,560 Tonnes Milled 216,551 197,289 Average Head Grades % Zinc 4.61 % 4.45 % Lead 1.08 % 2.11 % Silver - Oz (ounces)/ton 1.26 1.79 Average Recoveries % Zinc 89 % 90 % Lead 84 % 89 % Silver 67 % 77 % Concentrate Produced DMT (dry metric tonne): Zinc 18,403 15,954 Lead 3,745 6,610 Concentrate Grades % Zinc 48 % 50 % Lead 53 % 56 % Ag - Oz/ton 53.1 41.8 Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 16,608,275 14,848,026 Lead lbs (pounds) 4,141,582 7,785,192 Silver Oz 192,431 285,962 Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 23,603,577 27,473,893 Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.33 $ 0.28 Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 36.33 $ 38.67 Santander Sales Summary: Q3-2016 Q3-2015 Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 18,133 16,694 Lead Concentrate (DMT) 3,718 6,828 Payable Zinc lbs 15,947,830 15,215,705 Payable Lead lbs 4,119,533 7,996,297 Payable Silver Oz 188,504 290,228 Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 24,415,000 $ 20,595,000 Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): Zinc $ 1.04 $ 0.78 Lead $ 0.86 $ 0.73 Silver $ 19.42 $ 14.80 Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 22,857,248 28,143,580 For the third quarter Santander continued to operate at steady state 2,000 tonne-per-day nameplate, with daily production commonly exceeding this by approximately 15-20%, and culminating with record quarterly zinc production of 16.6 million payable pounds, plus 4.1 million payable pounds of lead and 192,431 payable ounces of silver. Approximately 216,551 tonnes of mineralized material was processed through the mill with underground mine production of approximately 192,815 tonnes. Q3 cash costs were approximately US$36.33 per tonne and in-line with the 2016 annual cost guidance of US$35-$38 per tonne milled. (Please refer to Non-IFRS Measures in the September 30, 2016 Management Discussion and Analysis). Santander's 2016 production guidance remains at 57-60 million pounds of payable zinc in concentrate grading approximately 50% Zn, 20-23 million pounds of payable lead in concentrate grading approximately 52-55% Pb and 800,000-1,000,000 ounces of payable silver. The Company completed its approximately 11,000-metre 2016 underground Santander drill program at the end of the third quarter. Due to the positive exploration results the Company has increased the drill program by an additional 3,500 metres for Q4-2016. It is anticipated that the program will continue to define and potentially expand the newly discovered Rosa, Fatima and emergent Oyon lead-silver-zinc zones in addition to the Magistral zones that all remain open for expansion at depth. Caribou Zinc Mine, Canada Caribou Production Statistics Q3-2016 Q3-2015 Tonnes Mined 205,049 - Tonnes Milled 185,488 - Average Head Grades % Zinc 5.91 % - Lead 2.62 % - Silver - Oz (ounces)/ton 2.26 - Average Recoveries % Zinc 78 % - Lead 56 % - Silver (in lead concentrate) 36 % - Concentrate Produced DMT (dry metric tonne): Zinc 17,908 - Lead 6,973 - Concentrate Grades % Zinc 48 % - Silver - Oz/ton 4.48 - Lead 39 % - Silver - Oz/ton 21.45 - Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 15,776,638 - Lead lbs (pounds) 5,577,344 - Silver Oz 170,345 - Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 23,729,560 - Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.46 - Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 58.88 - Caribou Sales Statistics: Q3-2016 Q3-2015 Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 12,526 - Lead Concentrate (DMT) 6,721 - Payable Zinc lbs 11,083,399 - Payable Lead lbs 5,451,269 - Payable Silver Oz 160,862 - Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 19,519,000 - Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): Zinc $ 1.03 - Lead $ 0.88 - Silver $ 19.38 - Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 18,761,280 - Trevali declared commercial production at its Caribou Zinc Mine in New Brunswick as of July 1, 2016. As the Company transitioned to commercial production in the third quarter, focus continues on ramping operations towards 3,000-tpd nameplate design levels in addition to exploring longer-term mining opportunities including re-tendering of contractor operations to better reflect the transition from commissioning to commercial operations. Caribou remains on track to produce 37-41 million pounds of payable zinc, 14-15 million pounds of payable lead and 380,000-420,000 ounces of payable silver in H2 (July 1-December 31, 2016). Head grades remain unchanged and are anticipated to be 5.9-6.2% Zn, 2.5-2.7% Pb and 65-70 grams/tonne Ag. Operating cash costs will be a key focus, as the site continues to ramp to full design levels, and are expected to modestly decrease as the Company continues to renegotiate major mining and supplies contracts, as well as normal course operational optimization and efficiency gains as the mine continues to ramp to full production. Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance EurGeol Dr. Mark D. Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO, and Paul Keller, P.Eng, Trevali's Chief Operating Officer, are qualified persons as defined by NI 43-101, have supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release. Dr. Cruise is not independent of the Company as he is an officer, director and shareholder. Mr. Keller is not independent of the Company as he is an officer and shareholder. ABOUT TREVALI MINING CORPORATION Trevali is a zinc-focused, base metals mining company with two commercially producing operations. The Company is actively producing zinc and lead-silver concentrates from its 2,000-tonne-per-day Santander mine in Peru and its 3,000-tonne-per-day Caribou mine in the Bathurst Mining Camp of northern New Brunswick. Trevali also owns the Halfmile and Stratmat base metal deposits, located in New Brunswick, that are currently undergoing a Preliminary Economic Assessment reviewing their potential development. Source: Trevali Mining VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov. 14, 2016) - Scorpio Gold Corporation ("Scorpio Gold" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:SGN) is pleased to report results from Phase 1 of its 2016 soil sampling program in the Keystone-Jumbo project area at its 100% owned Goldwedge property. Scorpio Gold initiated a three-phased soil sampling program and ground magnetic/VLF electromagnetic survey over the Keystone-Jumbo project area in mid-2016. The geophysical survey was designed to assist in structural interpretation of the area and utilized 50 meter line spacing to provide high resolution of structural breaks. The soil sampling program is being conducted at 100 meter sampling intervals to detect anomalous gold mineralization in areas covered by overburden. In the Keystone-Jumbo area, overburden covers approximately 85% of the land position and typically ranges from 0 to 2 meters depth. Phase 1 of the soil sampling program was conducted over the main area of interest that surrounds the historic Keystone and Jumbo mine workings. Geochemical analyses of the 149 samples collected have produced very promising results (Table 1). The original success criterion for this program was considered to be the discovery of a >15 ppb gold ("Au") soil anomaly. For reference, the average crustal abundance in this area is 1-5 ppb Au. Table 1. Phase 1 Soil Sampling Program - Samples Returning 50 ppb Au B Samples (2-80 mesh) C Samples (+80 mesh) Sample ID Au (ppb) Sample ID Au (ppb) GWSS-16-0017B 59.1 GWSS-16-0038C 86.8 GWSS-16-0022B 2640.1 GWSS-16-0042C 63.6 GWSS-16-0038B 132.7 GWSS-16-0058C 191.5 GWSS-16-0042B 75.9 GWSS-16-0070C 83.8 GWSS-16-0052B 409.1 GWSS-16-0078C 59.1 GWSS-16-0058B 216.1 GWSS-16-0079C 63.9 GWSS-16-0069B 62.2 GWSS-16-0081C 153.4 GWSS-16-0070B 85.6 GWSS-16-0082C 138.5 GWSS-16-0081B 457.1 GWSS-16-0098C 117.0 GWSS-16-0082B 101.9 GWSS-16-0106C 75.2 GWSS-16-0098B 97.1 GWSS-16-0117C 60.9 GWSS-16-0099B 83.6 GWSS-16-0132C 75.4 GWSS-16-0106B 90.7 GWSS-16-0117B 231.0 GWSS-16-0124B 50.2 GWSS-16-0132B 2844.7 The Phase 1 sampling results are particularly promising in light of the structural interpretation from the magnetometer survey. Results to date outline a 1,100 meter long soil anomaly that follows a distinct N30-45W trending structural break. This trend sub-parallels the N30W structure mapped in the Keystone pit, which is determined to be the main structural control to mineralization. These data correlate well with Scorpio Gold's surface geological mapping that has identified previously unknown NW trending structures in the same corridor. Documentation of prior exploration work does not recognize these significant structures, and they have yet to be tested despite the decades of prospecting in the region. Step-out soil sampling, additional detailed mapping and modeling is underway in support of actionable exploration targets within the mineralized corridor. Phase 2 of the sampling program (completed) and Phase 3 (ongoing) will cover the remainder of the Keystone-Jumbo project area that was not subjected to ground disturbance during historical mining operations. Results will be released once received and compiled. Plan maps showing the structural interpretation, soil sampling grids and results to date can be viewed in the following links: Sampling Grids & Structural Interpretation: Grids & Structures Phase 1 Soil Samples 50 ppb from B fraction (2-80 mesh): B Samples Phase 1 Soil Samples 50 ppb from C fraction (+80 mesh): C Samples The Jumbo and Keystone deposits are located approximately 4 km southeast of the Company's Goldwedge deposit. The Keystone open pit was mined by Nevada Goldfields in 1990 and reported 5,750 ounces recovered at 0.32 opt gold. The Jumbo underground mine/pit has no historically reported recovered gold ounces associated with it. New Concept Mining reported mineral resource estimates for both the Jumbo and Keystone deposits in May 1997; however, neither estimate is compliant with NI 43-101 and await verification. Soil Samples - B and C Fractions The soil samples are sieved into three size fractions, coarser than 2 mesh (A Sample), 2 mesh to 80 mesh (B Sample) and finer than 80 mesh (C Sample). The A samples were retained as a lithological reference, while the B and C samples were analyzed for both Au and tracer elements. The C samples are considered to be the better indicators for Au mineralization as Au is preferentially adsorbed onto clay minerals and the finer particle size reduces statistical errors and nugget effect. The coarser B samples, while also indicative for Au, are better representatives of geochemical tracer elements such as As, Hg, Sb, as their associated minerals are part of the host rock alteration assemblage that is better sampled using a coarser fraction. Soil samples were prepped at Bureau Veritas in Reno, Nevada and pulps analysed at Bureau Veritas, Vancouver. Both are ISO 9001 certified testing laboratories and operate in compliance with ISO/IEC 17025:2005 standards. Further details are presented in the Company's quality assurance and quality control program for the Keystone-Jumbo project, available at: QAQC-KJ. About Scorpio Gold Scorpio Gold holds a 70% interest in the producing Mineral Ridge gold mining operation located in Esmeralda County, Nevada with joint venture partner Elevon, LLC (30%). Mineral Ridge is a conventional open pit mining and heap leach operation. The Mineral Ridge property is host to multiple gold-bearing structures, veins and lenses at exploration, development and production stages. Scorpio Gold also holds a 100% interest in the advanced exploration-stage Goldwedge property in Manhattan, Nevada, with a fully permitted underground mine and 400 ton per day mill facility. The Goldwedge mill facility has been placed on a care and maintenance basis and can be restarted immediately when needed. Scorpio Gold's Chairman, Peter J. Hawley, PGeo,, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the content of this release. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD SCORPIO GOLD CORPORATION Chris Zerga, President Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Company relies on litigation protection for forward-looking statements. This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on the Company's current expectations and estimates. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "suggest", "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's plans with respect to the exploration of its Goldwedge project. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results implied or expressed in such forward-looking statements, including risks involved in mineral exploration programs and those risk factors outlined in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis as filed on SEDAR. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Eastmain Resources Inc. ("Eastmain" or the "Company") (TSX:ER) is pleased to announce results from an initial 9 drill holes (2,718 m) in a 23-hole (7,500 m) program at its Eastmain Mine Project and Ruby Hill East Property, located in James Bay, Quebec. To view the maps associated with this release, visit the following links: A summary of significant assay results and drilling data are presented in Tables 1 and 2 below. Highlights: EM16-76 (JULIEN): 42.4 g/t Au, 30.2 g/t Ag and 0.53% Cu over 10.5 m, including 219 g/t Au, 153 g/t Ag and 2.54% Cu over 2.0 m which includes 752 g/t Au, 464 g/t Ag and 4.47% Cu over 0.5 m EM16-78 (HILLHOUSE): 6.85 g/t Au over 2.5 m, including10.6 g/t Au over 1.5 m Claude Lemasson, Eastmain President and CEO commented: "The first drill results of the exploration program at the Eastmain Mine Project are very encouraging. We intersected shallow gold/silver/copper mineralization on two separate target areas, and believe these to be potential parallel horizons to the mine trend. In addition, we are seeing continuity between trenching and drilling starting to take shape. The results are especially significant as the new mineralized horizons are within 2.5 km of the historic deposit. With additional drilling and trenching assays pending, we continue to work on tapping into the exploration opportunity at the property." Eastmain Mine Assays from the first 4 drill holes totalling 1,674 m, are from the Julien and Hillhouse targets (FIGURE 1). The two targets are located along the mine trend 2.5 km NW and 1.5 km NW, respectively, from the historic Eastmain Mine deposit. The 2016 Eastmain Mine Project drilling is designed to identify additional mineralized zones along the mine trend, hosting the historic high-grade Eastmain Mine deposit. Exploration work prior to 2014 identified satellite targets, which was followed by additional mapping, overburden stripping and channel sampling conducted in mid-2016. The 2016 exploration program has focused northwest of the Eastmain Mine deposit to date, particularly at the Julien, Suzanna and Hillhouse targets. Julien Target Hole EM16-76 intersected a significant assay of 42.4 g/t Au, 30.2 g/t Ag and 0.53% Cu over 10.5 m within an altered rhyolite unit hosting a mineralized quartz vein with visible gold, at 15 m vertical depth. The unit is 400 m east across dip of the mine trend, in a potential new parallel zone. EM16-76 also intercepted the extension of the mine trend mineralization at 327 m vertical depth. The drill hole is collared 25 m northeast of a quartz-vein outcrop with grab values up to 30.9 g/t Au, 24.9 g/t Ag and 1.12% Cu (see Fiscal Year 2013 Management's Discussion and Analysis). Hillhouse Target Holes EM16-77 and EM16-78 both intercepted shallow mineralization. Visible gold was observed in EM16-78 and returned 6.85 g/t Au over 2.5 m, including 10.6 g/t Au over 1.5 m at a vertical depth of 12.1 m. Hole EM16-78 tested continuity from the mineralized lens discovered in Trench EM16-H2, which returned values of 26.0 g/t Au over 2.2 m including 55.7 g/t Au over 0.7 m (see press release dated October 5, 2016). The mineralization is associated with a massive sulfide layer hosted in mineralized chert and is similar to the Eastmain Mine deposit. Table 1: Eastmain Mine: Summary of Drilling Results Target Drill Hole From To Interval Vertical Depth Gold Assay Silver Assay Copper Assay (m) (m) (m)(1) (m)(3) g/t Au(2) g/t Ag(2) % Cu(2) Julien EM16-75 52.3 52.8 0.5 40.3 0.59 0.29 0.12 Julien EM16-76 15.0 25.5 10.5 15.3 42.4 30.2 0.53 incl. 22.5 24.5 2.0 17.7 219 153 2.54 Incl. 22.5 23.0 0.5 17.2 752 464 4.47 431.0 435.5 4.5 327.0 2.39 1.26 0.02 incl. 434.0 435.5 1.5 328.1 6.50 3.13 0.04 446.0 446.5 0.5 336.8 7.89 2.50 0.28 Hillhouse EM16-77 23.2 24.3 1.1 16.8 1.24 11.0 - 112.3 112.8 0.5 79.6 2.89 1.03 - Hillhouse EM16-78 16.4 18.9 2.5 12.3 6.85 0.98 0.10 incl. 16.9 18.4 1.5 12.3 10.6 1.02 0.09 (1) Intervals are presented in core length; true width will vary depending on the intersection angle of the hole with the targeted zone.Holes are generally planned to intersect vein structures as close perpendicular as possible and true widths are estimated to be approx. 80% of downhole widths. (2) For known mineralized zones, intervals are based on geological observations.Assays presented are not capped. (3) Vertical depth is measured from the surface to the mid-point of the reported interval. The Eastmain Mine Project is located in the south-eastern branch of the Upper Eastmain River Greenstone Belt. It is located within an extensive volcanic formation extending across the property for approximately 10 km on a northwest to southeast trend. The historic Eastmain Mine, a gold-silver-copper, sulphide-rich deposit, consists of three known gold-rich zones, the, "A", "B" and "C" Zones. In 1995, MSV Resources mined 40,000 oz, at a grade of 10.58 g/t Au, and shipped it to Chibougamau for processing. Ruby Hill East Holes RH-16-30 and RH-16-31 targeted the possible source of clustered soil geochemistry anomalies, and holes RH-16-32, RH-16-33 and RH-16-34 were testing the anomalous surface soil values associated with geophysical anomalies. This drilling totalled 1,044 m over five holes to test selected targets at the Ruby Hill East property. No significant assays resulted from this drilling. Table 2: Hole Location Information Target Drill Hole UTM Coordinates Zone 18 Azimuth Inclination Total Length Number East North Elev. Deg. Deg. (m) Eastmain Mine EM16-75 697,222 5,800,681 487 208 -50 516 Eastmain Mine EM16-76 697,297 5,800,606 490 212 -50 651 Eastmain Mine EM16-77 697,807 5,799,665 522 221 -45 282 Eastmain Mine ER16-78 697,935 5,799,562 490 215 -45 225 Ruby Hill East RHE16-30 692,649 5,795,462 541 200 -45 177 Ruby Hill East RHE16-31 692,379 5,795,280 524 200 -45 216 Ruby Hill East RHE16-32 689,337 5,800,502 500 190 -45 231 Ruby Hill East RHE16-33 689,581 5,800,742 510 235 -45 291 Ruby Hill East RHE16-34 689,623 5,800,689 512 237 -45 129 The design of the Eastmain Resources' drilling programs, Quality Assurance/Quality Control and interpretation of results is under the control of Eastmain's geological staff, including qualified persons employing a strict QA/QC program consistent with NI 43-101 and industry best practices. The Eastmain Mine Project is supervised by the Project Geologist, David Frappier-Rivard, P. Geo. Drill core is logged and split with half-core samples packaged and delivered to ALS Minerals laboratory. Samples are dried and subsequently crushed to 70% passing a 2 mm mesh screen. A 1,000 gram subsample is pulverized to a nominal 85% passing 75 micron mesh screen. The remaining crushed sample (reject) and pulverized sample (pulp) are retained for further analysis and quality control. All samples are analysed by Fire Assay with an Atomic Absorption (AA) finish using a 50 gram aliquot of pulverized material. Assays exceeding 5 g/t Au are reassayed by Fire Assay with a Gravimetric Finish. Eastmain regularly inserts 3rd party reference control samples and blank samples in the sample stream to monitor assay performance and performs duplicate sampling at a second certified laboratory. For 2016, approximately 6% of samples submitted are part of the Company's laboratory sample control protocols. This press release was compiled and approved by William McGuinty, P. Geo., Eastmain's VP Exploration and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. About Eastmain Resources Inc. (TSX:ER) Eastmain is a Canadian exploration company with 100% interest in the Eau Claire and Eastmain Mine gold deposits, both of which are located within the James Bay District of Quebec. Clearwater, host of the Eau Claire deposit, is the Company's core asset with access to superior infrastructure in a favourable mining jurisdiction. The Company also owns the historic Eastmain Mine property as well as a pipeline of exploration projects in this new Canadian mining district, including being a partner in the Eleonore South Joint Venture. Source: Eastmain Resources In 1937 Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica," which would become one of the most famous and powerful anti-war artworks in history. Commissioned by the Spanish Republican government, the mural was high-caliber protest art that evoked the enormous suffering caused by the Nazi and Fascist Italian bombing of the Spanish village of Guernica. Decades later, in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono would bring their own protest message to the public through their two-week-long Bed-In for Peace, which protested the Vietnam War. Simple handwritten signs hung behind them that read, "Hair Peace" and "Bed Peace." Later that year they brought a much larger sign to Times Square, renting a billboard that read: "War Is Over! If You Want It." Every social and political movement in modern history yields its own art and protest signs, and it's already clear that the anti-Trump movement is bringing a vast array of angry and creative DIY messages. While "Not My President" is a popular one, there are hundreds more that have been spotted at protests around the nation over the past week. This isn't a good thingit means that Trump has threatened, angered, scared, and disgusted a large section of population which he will now rule. Click through for a look at some of the most trenchant anti-Trump protest signs spotted in NYC over the past few days. (And here's an interview with the "not usually a sign guy but geez" protester, whose sign went viral.) Sierra Metals Inc. (TSX:SMT) ("Sierra Metals" or the "Company") today reported revenue of $40.8 million and adjusted EBITDA of $16.3 million on throughput of 536,553 tonnes and metal production of 3.2 million silver equivalent ounces or 21.3 million copper equivalent pounds during Q3 2016. Sierra Metals had an exceptional third quarter and benefited from the continued rise in metal prices. The Company saw significant improvements in revenue and adjusted EBITDA combined with lower AISC costs in the third quarter. This was largely attributable to the completion of key aspects of the operational improvements program and a return to normalized operations at the Yauricocha Mine in Peru, which had record throughput this quarter. The Company achieved excellent year over year improvement in the third quarter with revenue up 43%, adjusted EBITDA up 708% and the ASIC per silver equivalent payable ounce lower by 19% to US$11.80 at the Yauricocha Mine. Also, the AISC per copper payable equivalent pound was lower by 42% to US$1.90 at the Bolivar Mine in Mexico. The Company continued to benefit from improvements on a quarter by quarter basis (Q3 vs Q2 2016). Revenue was up 11%, adjusted EBITDA was up 209% and the ASIC per silver equivalent payable ounce was 17% lower at Yauricocha and the AISC per copper equivalent payable pound was 21% lower at Bolivar. The Company has continued to focus on the production of higher value ore, reducing costs and optimization programs at all three Mines to improve the production, operating margins and cash flow generation. At the Bolivar Mine in Mexico, the Company had another quarter of record plant throughput in Q3 2016 with a 21% increase compared to Q3 2015. The record throughput and higher recoveries for all metals helped offset the lower head grades encountered for all metals and resulted in a 10% increase in copper equivalent production in Q3 2016 compared to Q3 2015. The Company expects to see improved production with higher throughput, better head grades and higher recoveries into 2017 by concentrating on the development and extraction of higher grade material from known mineralized areas within the Bolivar concession. The Cusi project, also in Mexico, realized a 6% decrease in plant throughput in Q3 2016 over Q3 2015 however, the AISC per silver equivalent payable ounce decreased to $19.22 in Q3 2016 compared to $37.49 in Q3 2015. Higher head grades for gold and lead combined with higher recoveries for all metals (except silver) and the start of zinc concentrate production during Q1 2016 helped offset the decrease in throughput which resulted in a 10% decrease in silver equivalent production. "The Company had a tremendous third quarter, achieving historic record production and realizing significant increases in revenue and cash flow while benefiting from lower operating costs and improved metal prices" stated Mark Brennan, President and CEO of Sierra Metals. "The operational improvements program at Yauricocha has been a great success and when matched with a continued focus on higher value ore production at all three Mines, the Company has witnessed a significant impact on its operating margins and cash flows. This can be seen by a 25% increase in silver equivalent ounce production year over year and an 8% increase over the previous quarter--which was the second highest quarter of metal production in the history of the Company. This resulted in significant increases in revenue and adjusted EBITDA and lower AISC per silver equivalent ounce." He continued "We saw another record quarter of throughput at Bolivar however we encountered lower head grades. We believe that we will see higher metal production as we define and begin accessing higher grade ore zones. At Cusi, silver equivalent production decreased 10% over the same quarter last year however AISC per silver equivalent payable ounce was 49% lower. Sierra Metals continues to have a strong balance sheet and strong liquidity to drive operations. Continual operational improvements and successful brownfield exploration programs will drive substantial resource production growth and reduce costs at all three of the Company's Mines benefitting all shareholders." The following table displays selected unaudited financial and operational information for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016: Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended (In thousands of dollars, except per share and cash cost amounts, consolidated figures unless noted otherwise) September 30, 2016 June 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 Operating Ore Processed / Tonnes Milled 536,553 503,988 452,082 1,516,760 1,407,863 Silver Ounces Produced (000's) 812 780 691 2,179 2,502 Copper Pounds Produced (000's) 6,156 5,245 4,709 17,238 17,701 Lead Pounds Produced (000's) 11,650 10,655 11,026 30,561 34,257 Zinc Pounds Produced (000's) 14,435 14,218 9,332 39,571 32,812 Gold Ounces Produced 2,305 2,197 2,026 6,737 6,864 Copper Equivalent Pounds Produced (000's)1 21,284 19,714 17,002 58,162 59,798 Silver Equivalent Ounces Produced (000's)1 3,201 2,965 2,557 8,748 8,994 Cash Cost per Tonne Processed $ 39.87 $ 40.48 $ 43.26 $ 40.61 $ 39.77 Cash Cost per AgEqOz2 $ 6.71 $ 9.20 $ 10.03 $ 7.97 $ 7.14 AISC per AgEqOz2 $ 12.55 $ 15.22 $ 18.52 $ 14.03 $ 14.48 Cash Cost per CuEqLb2 $ 1.02 $ 1.40 $ 1.51 $ 1.21 $ 1.07 AISC per CuEqLb2 $ 1.90 $ 2.32 $ 2.78 $ 2.12 $ 2.18 Cash Cost per AgEqOz (Yauricocha)2 $ 6.55 $ 9.30 $ 8.68 $ 7.97 $ 6.47 AISC per AgEqOz (Yauricocha)2 $ 11.80 $ 14.27 $ 14.64 $ 13.36 $ 12.39 Cash Cost per AgEqOz (Cusi)2 $ 9.67 $ 10.63 $ 10.60 $ 8.43 $ 7.58 AISC per AgEqOz (Cusi)2 $ 19.22 $ 18.49 $ 37.49 $ 17.04 $ 28.26 Cash Cost per CuEqLb (Bolivar)2 $ 0.94 $ 1.25 $ 2.00 $ 1.17 $ 1.29 AISC per CuEqLb (Bolivar)2 $ 1.90 $ 2.41 $ 3.27 $ 2.18 $ 2.27 Financial Revenues $ 40,757 $ 36,858 $ 28,421 $ 101,355 $ 109,028 Adjusted EBITDA2 $ 16,264 $ 5,265 $ 2,013 $ 25,902 $ 34,252 Operating cash flows before movements in working capital $ 16,870 $ 6,226 $ 1,527 $ 28,106 $ 34,988 Adjusted net income (loss) attributable to shareholders2 $ 5,003 $ 454 $ (3,646) $ 3,490 $ 7,707 Net income (loss) attributable to shareholders $ 1,367 $ (3,440) $ (6,761) $ (7,189) $ (6,219) Cash and cash equivalents $ 27,166 $ 20,564 $ 32,124 $ 27,166 $ 32,124 Restricted cash $ 3,069 $ 4,653 $ - $ 3,069 $ - Working capital $ 9,604 $ 7,936 $ 22,047 $ 9,604 $ 22,047 (1) Silver equivalent ounces and copper equivalent pounds were calculated using the following metal prices: $14.96/oz Ag, $2.25/lb Cu, $0.75/lb Pb, $0.73/lb Zn, $1,113/oz Au. Budgeted Cu price used in equivalent ounce/pound calculations is higher than the Company's realized selling prices during 9M 2016, and thus, has caused CuEqLb cost metrics to be higher than those realized. (2) This is a non-IFRS performance measure, see Non-IFRS Performance Measures section of the MD&A. Q3 2016 Financial Highlights Revenue from metals payable of $40.8 million in Q3 2016 increased by 44% from $28.4 million in Q3 2015. Higher revenues are primarily attributable to the 23% increase in throughput, the increase in silver, copper and zinc head grades, and the increase in recoveries of all metals, except zinc, at Yauricocha; the increase in recoveries of all metals at Bolivar; the introduction of a zinc concentrate from Cusi; and the increase in the prices of silver (31%), lead (11%), zinc (25%), and gold (22%) in Q3 2016 compared to Q3 2015; this was partially offset by a 9% decrease in the price of copper, and lower head grades of all metals at Bolivar. Yauricocha's cash cost per silver equivalent payable ounce was $6.55 vs $8.68 in Q3 2015 and all-in sustaining cash cost ("AISC") per silver equivalent payable ounce was $11.80 vs $14.64 in Q3 2015. The decrease in AISC per silver equivalent payable ounce during Q3 2016 was due to the increase in throughput, head grades, and recoveries which resulted in the increase in silver equivalent payable ounces; cash costs and AISC's have remained consistent, quarter over quarter, but the increase in equivalent metal production has reduced the cost metrics at Yauricocha. Bolivar's cash cost per copper equivalent payable pound was $0.94 vs $2.00 in Q3 2015 and AISC per copper equivalent payable pound was $1.90 vs $3.27 in Q3 2015. The decrease in AISC per copper equivalent payable pound during Q3 2016 was mainly due to the increase in copper equivalent payable pounds from the increase in throughput and recoveries, as well as a reduction in equipment maintenance costs incurred during Q3 2015. Cusi's cash cost per silver equivalent payable ounce was $9.67 vs $10.60 in Q3 2015 and AISC per silver equivalent payable ounce was $19.22 vs $37.49 in Q3 2015. AISC per silver equivalent payable ounce decreased due to the addition of a zinc concentrate in the first nine months of 2016 which increased the silver equivalent payable ounces; the increase in gold and lead head grades which resulted in a higher percentage of payable metal relative to tonnes of ore processed; and a decrease in sustaining capital expenditures related to stope and drift development within the mine as the Company incurred significant development costs during 2015 which are expected to be much lower during going forward. Adjusted EBITDA of $16.3 million for Q3 2016 increased compared to $2.0 million in Q3 2015. The increase in adjusted EBITDA in Q3 2016 is due to the $12.4 million increase in revenue, and decrease in cash costs, at Yauricocha, as well as the reduction in cash costs at Bolivar and slight increase in revenues at Cusi. The increase in revenue at Yauricocha was due to higher throughput, head grades and recoveries, and metal prices, discussed previously. Cash flow generated from operations before movements in working capital of $16.9 million for Q3 2016 compared to $1.5 million in Q3 2015. The increase in operating cash flow is mainly the result of higher revenues generated and higher gross margins incurred. Cash and cash equivalents of $30.2 million (including restricted cash of $3.1 million), and working capital of $9.6 million as at September 30, 2016 compared to $25.1 million, $Nil, and $13.6 million, respectively, at the end of 2015. Cash and cash equivalents have increased by $2.1 million during 9M 2016 due to placement of $(3.1) million into an escrow account classified as restricted cash, the capital expenditures incurred in Mexico and Peru of $(18.2) million, repayment of loans, credit facilities and interest of $(8.7) million, and dividends paid to non-controlling interest shareholders of $(0.5) million; partially offset by $20.0 million of operating cash flows, and proceeds from the issuance of credit facilities of $12.8 million. Included in the $20.0 million of operating cash flows were negative changes in non-cash working capital items of $5.3 million due to the increase accounts receivable as at September 30, 2016. Operational Update During Q3 2016 consolidated silver and copper equivalent metal production increased 25% compared to Q3 2015, and 8% compared to Q2 2016 and was the second highest level of quarterly metals production in the Company's history. The increase was due to record plant throughput, higher head grades and higher recoveries at the Yauricocha Mine in Peru as well as record plant throughput at the Bolivar Mine in Mexico. This was partially offset by a decrease in head grades at the Bolivar Mine and the decrease in throughput, head grades and recoveries at the Cusi Mine. The Company is continuing to successfully work through the operational improvement process at its Yauricocha Mine and has seen improved production and throughput, quarter over quarter since Q4 2015. Despite record production in the third quarter the Company anticipates a one-time reduction in production capacity in November, as a planned 25-day shutdown is completed at the Yauricocha Mine while there is a transition from the current hoist on surface to the new higher capacity hoist located on the 720 level at the Mascota shaft (please see press release dated September 12, 2016). Through extensive planning we have taken steps to mitigate the down time and shortfall including the stockpiling of material on surface to process during the shutdown." Plant improvements completed at the Bolivar Mine during Q3 2016 included the installation of a new vibrating screen and cyclones, which will result in improved recoveries. At the Cusi Mine, the installation of a screening plant, a zinc circuit, and an improved cyclone rack resulted in recovery and grade improvements in the lead and zinc circuits. Mine development at Bolivar during Q3 2016 totaled 1,177 meters. Most of the development was to prepare stopes for the El Fierro deposit on the main levels 753 and 757. El Gallo also saw development to provide further access to mineralization. At the Cusi property mine development totaled 1,101 meters during the quarter to verify the continuity of structures and assist in the development of mining stopes and various veins. The Cusi operations in Mexico mined 57,161 tons of ore with average head grades of: 184.0 g/t Ag; 1.59% Pb and 1.60% Zn and 0.13 g/t. Au. Most of this ore was sourced from the Moctezuma, Contact and San Nicolas veins. The Company began producing a zinc concentrate from the Cusi Mine in 2016 which will continue to enhance the cash flows from the operation. Exploration Update The Company continues with the exploration, development and definition drilling program on the Esperanza ore body from the 1070 level of the Yauricocha Mine. The program continues to realize intercepts at depth (100 meters below previously drilled holes) in two holes drilled at -50 degree angles as well as with five horizontal holes providing evidence of increased mineralization at the 1070 level. Drilling will continue from the 1070 level horizon with additional flat holes to the south as well with additional inclined holes at depth. At the Bolivar Mine 6,244 meters have been drilled at the lower El Gallo zone as well as the Bolivar West and NW fault areas during Q3 2016. At Cusi drilling continues to increase the resource size within numerous different veins. During Q3 2016, 1,239 meters of infill drilling was carried out inside the mine to verify the continuity of the structures and assist in the development of mining stopes Conference Call Webcast Sierra Metals' senior management will host a conference call on Thursday, November 17th, 2016 at 10:00 AM (EST) to discuss the Company's third quarter 2016 financial and operating results. Via Webcast: A live audio webcast of the meeting will be available on the Company's website at: http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1211872/DFF503AADE6C5C83F6E150379312D5BF The webcast along with presentation slides will be archived for 180 days on www.sierrametals.com Via phone: For those who prefer to listen by phone, dial-in instructions are below. To ensure your participation, please call approximately five minutes prior to the scheduled start time of the call. Participant Number (Toll Free Peru): 0800-53-840 Participant Number (Toll Free North America): (877) 201-0168 Participant Number (International): (647) 788-4901 Conference ID: 15486445 Quality Control All production technical data contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Gordon Babcock, P.Eng., Chief Operating Officer and a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About Sierra Metals Sierra Metals Inc. is a Canadian mining company focused on precious and base metals from its Yauricocha Mine in Peru, its Bolivar Mine and Cusi Mine in Mexico. In addition, Sierra Metals is exploring several precious and base metal targets in Peru and Mexico. Projects in Peru include Adrico (gold), Victoria (copper-silver) and Ipillo (polymetallic) at the Yauricocha property in the province of Yauyos and the San Miguelito gold properties in Northern Peru. Projects in Mexico include Bacerac (silver) in the state of Sonora, and La Verde (gold) at the Batopilas property in the state of Chihuahua. The Company's shares trade on the Bolsa de Valores de Lima and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "SMT". Source: Sierra Metals President Park Geun-hye, right, speaks with Choo Mi-ae, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, at the presidential office, Cheon Wa Dae, on Sept. 12. / Korea Times file Scandal-plagued President Park Geun-hye on Monday accepted a proposal by the main opposition party leader for bilateral talks, her office Cheong Wa Dae said, raising hopes for the easing of a political crisis sparked by a corruption scandal involving her close confidante. Park will hold bilateral talks with Choo Mi-ae, the leader of the Democratic Party, on Tuesday. The venue and time of the meeting have yet to be decided. Early in the morning, Choo made an overture to Han Gwang-ok, the presidential chief of staff, to hold talks over the ongoing political deadlock. The proposal followed the weekend's massive rally in downtown Seoul that called for Park's resignation. The Democratic Party, along with other opposition parties, joined the rally where organizers said some 1 million citizens gathered. "I am seeking a chance to talk heart to heart with President Park to discuss public sentiment and find solutions (to the current political deadlock)," Choo said during the party's decision-making Supreme Council session. University students in Seoul to rally over Choi gate' By Lee Kyung-min Students at 15 universities in Seoul will hold rallies in multiple locations today, continuing the public anger shown in Saturday's demonstration where more than 1 million people gathered near Cheong Wa Dae to demand President Park Geun-hye resign over the influence-peddling scandal surrounding her confidant Choi Soon-sil. According to organizers from the participating schools, Monday, at least 400 students from the universities will organize gatherings in four separate locations. Students from Seoul National, Soongsil and Chung-Ang universities will gather near Gangnam Station in southern Seoul, while those from Yonsei, Ewha Womans and Sogang universities, near Sinchon Station, northwestern Seoul. Students from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), University of Seoul and Kyung Hee, Korea, Kwangwoon and Dongguk universities will meet near HUFS gate in northeastern Seoul, and those from Sungshin Women's, Sungkyunkwan and Kookmin universities, by Daehangno, northeastern Seoul. In the name of "Finding hidden power," students from the 15 schools said they decided to continue demonstrating the public frustration exhibited during Saturday's rally. "The name reflects the strong will to firmly voice our opinion and exercise our rights," the organizers said in a statement. "We are ordinary students not affiliated with student councils or political parties. Although we have no experience holding rallies, we thought this is the least we can do to express our feelings." The participants plan to wear masks to protect their privacy. The idea of holding multiple rallies simultaneously at different locations came from an SNU engineering major. In a message he posted on a school community website late last month, he said, "Those who participated in the democratic movement in June 1987 against the then dictatorial regime of Chun Doo-hwan took to the streets of Seoul in broad daylight. If protests are held at various locations such as Gangnam, Sinchon, and Yeouido, more people can join us." Soon after the plan was made public, SNU faculty members and alumni, who earlier issued a statement denouncing the President, raised millions of won to support their movement. While the Saturday rally was organized by major umbrella unions and civic groups, today's rallies were done so by students without any political motivations, the organizers said. "The voice of the people demanding the President's resignation has reached a peak so it can no longer be ignored," they said. "We hope that our rallies, like the ones held in June 1987, would help Park realize the nationwide fury against the leader of the country and finally lead to her resignation." Main opposition Democratic Party of Korea Chairwoman Rep. Choo Mi-ae, second from left, heads to a party meeting at the National Assembly, Monday. Choo is scheduled to meet President Park Geun-hye today to discuss how to resolve the latter's leadership crisis triggered by a scandal involving her confidant Choi Soon-sil. / Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han Independent counsel will probe scandal By Yi Whan-woo President Park Geun-hye and Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairwoman Rep. Choo Mi-ae will meet today over how to normalize state affairs, Cheong Wa Dae and the party said Monday. On top of the agenda will be the fate of Park, who has found it virtually impossible to conduct her presidential duties. The agreement about the meeting, which will take place at 3 p.m. at Cheong Wa Dae, drew strong protests from smaller opposition parties, which claimed that the main opposition party was taking action unilaterally when a unified voice was needed. Meanwhile, the ruling Saenuri Party and the opposition DPK and minor opposition People's Party agreed to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the scandal. They also agreed to hold a separate National Assembly probe. Under the agreement, an independent counsel will be recommended by the two opposition parties and appointed by the President. A team under the counsel will consist of 20 prosecutors and 40 investigators, and have a mandate of up to four months. The Assembly probe will be conducted for two months, and can be extended once by a month. The parliamentary panel will be comprised of nine lawmakers from the ruling party and nine others from the opposition parties. The parties plan to pass bills on the two probes during a plenary session, Thursday. Earlier on Monday, DPK leader Choo proposed a face-to-face meeting with Park to discuss the fallout of the Choi Soon-sil scandal. Cheong Wa Dae then accepted the proposal. This will be the first time that the President will hold a one-on-one meeting with the opposition leader after the country was engulfed by the influence-peddling scandal surrounding her confidant Choi. Choo said she "urgently" proposed the talks, given the severity of public sentiment against the President and growing calls that she should step down, face impeachment or give up much of her power to a prime minister to be picked by the National Assembly. Choo, who has been asking Park to resign, said she "will openly discuss all possible measures" with the embattled President. But leaders of the minor opposition People's Party and Justice Party criticized Choo, fueling speculation over a divide within the opposition bloc. They stated that the opposition side jointly rejected Park's offer last week for talks between her and their leaders. They argued that such an offer is politically-motivated and the President must show sincerity, such as pledging to not intervene in state affairs any longer, as a precondition to meet with them. "Both Choo and Park are equally at fault," People's Party floor leader Park Jie-won, who doubles as the party's interim-leader, told reporters. "And Choo's decision will only lead to a divide within the opposition." Referring to an estimated 1 million protesters during the anti-President rally in Seoul, Saturday, Park also said, "It is right for the opposition to consolidate cooperation for the President to step down in an orderly manner in line with the people's wishes." He called on Choo to withdraw her decision, claiming it would help "Cheong Wa Dae's plan to buy time to distort the truth behind the scandal and allow Park to fulfill her presidency." As an alternative to the meeting, Park Jie-won demanded the President consult opposition leaders and pick a prime minister who is politically-neutral. Justice Party Chairwoman Rep. Sim Sang-jeung also joined the criticism against Choo. "It's true that the DPK is the main opposition, but it doesn't mean the people gave the party a mandate to settle the current political crisis," Sim said in a separate press conference. "The people are awaiting Park's response after sending her an ultimatum on her fate, and Choo's scheduled meeting with the President will only bring confusion to the people." DPK chief spokesman Youn Kwan-suk advocated for Choo saying, "I believe presidents in the past met the main opposition leaders when there were grave incidents." But some DPK members, including Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, opposed this. "It was apparently the wrong decision," the mayor said during an interview with a podcast program. Accusing Park of as a main suspect of the so-called "Choi Soon-sil gate" scandal, he said Choo's offer will "only benefit Cheong Wa Dae while creating a divide within the opposition." Hard-line DPK members are concerned that the meeting will deal a blow to the party if Choo fails to meet public demands over Park's political status. "Choo must ask the President to quit or push her to take equivalent steps, or we, the party as a whole, will pay the price for her unilateral decision," a DPK official said on condition of anonymity. Some observers speculated that the opposition bloc's presidential hopefuls for the 2017 election are interested in capitalizing on Park's leadership struggle as a chance to woo voters and that they are already divided. By Jun Ji-hye South Korea and Japan signed a provisional deal, Monday, to directly exchange military intelligence about North Korea only two weeks after they resumed discussions, according to the Ministry of National Defense. The signing took place despite fierce objections from the opposition parties while public attention is centered on a massive political scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil. The opposition parties vowed to submit a motion soon for the dismissal of Defense Minister Han Min-koo. The provisional deal was signed at the third round of working-level talks held in Tokyo, during which the two countries held a final review of the content of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). "The two sides signed a provisional deal after confirming that there was no differing opinion regarding the content of the GSOMIA," the ministry said in a release. "The two will from now on go through the relevant procedures before formally signing the deal." In Seoul, the issue will be brought in a vice-ministerial meeting and the Cabinet meeting before the ministry seeks to obtain the presidential determination on whether to sign an official deal, the ministry noted. Seoul's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already asked the Ministry of Government Legislation to examine the content. Rep. Woo Sang-ho, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, criticized the ministry, saying, "I want to ask if the ministry is sane when pushing to sign a deal at this time when the nation has been in chaos." He pointed out that the members of the public have already been angry at President Park's unilateral decisions to manage state affairs and consequent failures, but the ministry is again unilaterally pushing for the signing. Once the official deal is signed, the pact would allow Seoul and Tokyo to directly share and exchange intelligence on the North's military activities related to its nuclear and missile programs. Currently, the two indirectly exchange such intelligence through Washington under a trilateral sharing pact signed at the end of 2014. Since reopening the talks Nov. 1 in Tokyo, the second round of discussions took place in Seoul, Nov. 9, during which the two sides reviewed content of the agreement created in 2012. In 2012, the two sides were about to sign the agreement under the Lee Myung-bak administration. However, this fell through at the last minute due to fierce public criticism here over the government's alleged clandestine attempts to sign a sensitive agreement with the former colonial ruler. The ministry is now facing criticism that it has apparently shifted its existing position that it needs to obtain understanding from the public and the National Assembly first to resume discussions with Japan. Defense Minister Han earlier said "conditions" need to become mature first to sign the deal. The ministry had maintained this position, apparently wary of public resistance stemming from the bitter memory of Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonial rule and Japanese soldiers using Korean women as sex slaves. However, Han told reporters Monday that his earlier comment did not mean that the national consensus was a precondition for the deal. "There are a number of matters involving the issue including military necessity, political issues and relations with Japan," he said. "Among them, the ministry determined that military necessity must be a priority." Han also said that pushing for the signing of the agreement now was unrelated to the ongoing political scandal. Regarding opposition parties' move to dismiss him, Han said he will take the consequences. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today LifeStyle The best LifeStyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel LifeStyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Deb Hutton and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand. Get Foxtel 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. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. Veteran Kumawood actor Ebenezer Donkor, popularly known as Katawere has died. The actor died on Monday morning after years of battle with an undisclosed condition. Mr Kofi Andoh, the producer of popular local TV series, Efiewura, in which the late Ebenezer Donkor stared for many years confirmed his death in a Facebook post saying YES IT IS TRUE. AGYA AFARI DIED THIS MORNING , 14th November, 2016. He was found dead this morning after a short illness. May his soul rest in peace The late Ebenezer Donkor had until his demised featured in over a hundred movies having been in the movie industry for over two decades. He has been described my some colleagues as friendly and kindhearted. By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana An ancient stela bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt. By Fabrice Coffrini (OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR/AFP) 14.11.2016 LISTEN Geneva (AFP) - Switzerland will return to Egypt an ancient stela stolen from a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, Geneva's public prosecutor said on Monday. The stone slab bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt. "During an inventory control in the Geneva free economic zone at the end of 2014, the federal customs identified... a granite engraving of unknown origin and alerted Geneva police, who opened a criminal case," the public prosecutor said. Egyptologist Philippe Collombert from the University of Geneva examined the artefact and it was traced to the Isis temple near the towns of Sebennytos and Mansoura in the Nile delta, the statement said. Investigators compared photographs taken by French archeologist Christine Favard Meeks at the site in the 1970s to more recent ones which "established without any doubt that the granite engraving was stolen from" Behbeit El Hagar. The tablet will shortly be handed over to Egyptian authorities. The Iseion was one of the major centres of the Isis cult in antiquity, comparable to those in the temple complexes at Philae and Abydos in Upper Egypt. Isis was venerated as the goddess of health, marriage and wisdom. She was the consort of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and the underworld. Egypt has been campaigning to have many precious artefacts housed in European museums that it considers stolen to be returned, such as the Nefertiti Bust in Berlin. Breman Asikuma (C/R), Nov. 13, GNA - Odeefo Amoakwa Buadu VIII Paramount Chief of Breman Asikuma, has advised Ghanaians not to take the peace and stability the country is enjoying for granted. He called for a high sense of nationalism and the spirit of oneness as the country approached December 7 polls. Odeefo Buadu gave the advised while addressing Divisional/ Sub-Chiefs and Heads of Families who joined him at his palace to celebrate the 'Adea Kesse' festival which was part of activities paving the way for the celebration of this year's Odwira festival of the chiefs and people. The festival on the theme: 'Promoting Citizens Responsibility for Bremanman Development,' will be climax with a durbar on November, 19 He asked the people not to indulge in acts that could disturb the peace of the area and the country as a whole before, during and after the elections. The festival was designed by the ancestors of the people to bring them together to promote the development objectives of the traditional area. As part of the festival there is a week ban on noise making. GNA 13.11.2016 LISTEN By Iddi Yire, GNA Prampram (GAR), Nov. 13, GNA - Reverend David Kwadwo Ofosuhene, the Chairman of All God's Children International (AGCI), has called on all orphan care agencies, to set up ageing out projects that will equip orphans the skills to earn a living. He explained that ageing out implied there were lots of children who due to their plights could not concentrate on their studies, and eventually could not further their education; and so there was the need to organise such projects to equip them to be able to set up their own businesses. Rev Ofosuhene made the call, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, during a clean-up exercise organised by the Hearts of the Father Outreach and supported by AGCI; as part of activities marking the 2016 edition of the Orphan Week Celebration. The initiative aims at creating awareness and sensitising the public on the need to support orphans and the vulnerable in society. He said AGCI had produced an impressive number of graduates through its initiatives; however it had observed that some orphans in the country, due to situations and circumstances suppressed their intelligence quotient (IQ). 'If we do not give them the skills to earn a living, they will involve themselves in social vices," he added. Rev Ofosuhene, who is also the National Coordinator for Orphan Sunday Ghana, said the celebration sought to remind all Christians around the globe to celebrate the love of God; to meet only spiritual or physical needs is incomplete, Christian love seeks to address both, as Jesus did. He said God was vested, deeply and personally, in the plight of orphaned and vulnerable children; and in all who were destitute and defenseless. Rev Ofosuhene said as part of activities marking this year's celebration AGCI, he had visited two orphanages, partnered Aburi Presbyterian Secondary Technical to embark on a walk for Orphans in connection with their 25th anniversary celebration. Rev Ofosuhene said fun games were also organised to honour orphans. He noted that AGCI donated clothes to orphans and vulnerable children. Events lined up for the week celebration include sermons, congregational prayer for orphans, recruit families for fostering/ adoption, prayer for foster parents, among others. Rev Emmanuel Ayittey, House Father at the Heart of the Father Outreach, said the exercise was among its usual monthly activities to keep its environment clean; as orphans helped in weeding, sweeping, changing old mosquito nets, among others. He said the major challenge facing them, had been funding and therefore, called on churches, benevolent individuals and organisations to come to their aid. GNA Kaga Bandoro (Central African Republic) (AFP) - A month after rebels killed dozens of civilians in Kaga Bandoro, residents of the Central African Republic town still live in fear despite the presence of UN peacekeepers in the country and the prospect of nationwide disarmament. Returning to the scene of the massacre for the first time, Sylvie pointed to the ruins of the small home she built in what was a settlement for 8,000 civilians displaced during years of unrest. "That's where I lived for three years," she said, recovering a comb from the scorched ground between the low walls of now roofless huts. On October 12 the predominantly Christian settlement was attacked by remnants of the mostly Muslim rebel "Seleka" coalition, which overthrew the national government in March 2013, only to be dislodged the following January. In apparent reprisal for the death of one of their own, the attackers killed at least 37 people and set fire to the camp. "People were burned on the spot, like two children and a grandmother over there," said site watchman Michel Kenze, near a pump where children were drawing water. After the attack, victims' corpses were left in the open to be eaten by wild pigs and other animals. Thousands of survivors, including Sylvie, fled to set up another camp between a base of the UN's MINUSCA peacekeeping force and the runway of the town's airport. No longer in school A man builds a tent at the newly formed camp for internally displaced people, in Kaga Bandoro, on October 19, 2016 Sylvie now makes ends meet selling peanuts and fritters in a marketplace opposite the MINUSCA base. On the edge of the runway, young girls sing songs and play games. They are not in school. "We had just started the school year on September 19. On October 12, an education inspector was killed. After that, inspections shut down," said an aid worker with MINUSCA. "Civil servants had returned (to Kaga Bandoro), but they went back to Bangui after what happened," said local government official Paul Fradjala, who never ventures far from the UN base. The large country's army, police and government have a very limited presence outside the capital, Bangui. In 2013, Seleka's coup led to the formation of "anti-Balaka" vigilante units, drawn from the Christian majority, which began to target Muslims. Both sides committed widespread atrocities in different parts of the country, even after Seleka was chased from power. "We want peace, we want the armed groups to be disarmed," Sylvie said in her new home, a hut made from plastic sheeting where she stores her few possessions: a notebook, a jerrycan and an old mosquito net. A national programme to disarm fighters in CAR was officially launched a year ago, but in practice little has been done since to actually collect weapons or demobilise combattants. Sylvie no longer dares to visit Muslim traders on the far side of town over a bridge guarded by a few Pakistani UN troops -- members of the MINUSCA contingent accused of standing by as last month's massacre unfolded. The Muslim quarter is busy with shops selling food and clothes, a motel and a garage fixing motorbike taxis. In this part of town, Seleka fighters, along with gunmen from neighbouring Sudan and Chad, rub shoulders with civilians, residents say. "In the displaced persons' camps, there are also armed men among the civilians and MINUSCA sees and knows about them," counters Idriss Al Bachar, a young Seleka leader. Tax on cattle Estonian soldiers of the European EUFOR-RCA operation patrol the streets of Bangui As much as he condemns the October massacre, Bachar is not in favour of disarmament, arguing that the rights and safety of the Muslim minority -- between 15 and 20 percent of the country's 4.5 million people -- are not yet guaranteed. "There is a climate of impunity in CAR, where members of armed groups and militias alleged to have committed appalling human rights abuses and crimes under international law, move freely throughout the country and continue to fuel violence," Amnesty International's Central Africa Researcher, Ilana Allegrozzi said Friday. There is an economic aspect to this impunity, according to Azrak Mahmat, an official in Kaga Bandoro's cattle market. "I pay 11,000 CFA francs ($16) in tax to Seleka for every head of cattle, he said. "When I load my vehicle to go to Bangui, the anti-balaka threaten me as well", he added. In the town's Muslim quarter, Abdelkarim, 56, and his Christian neighbour, Isakho Ndenga, 71, have enjoyed a decades-long friendship that has survived civil war and sectarian violence. Could they be an example for their country? "Inch Allah", the Muslim replies. If God wills it. With the Republican Party securing control of the executive and legislative branches of government in the United States (with the judicial almost certain to follow), climate-change denialists will soon be in charge of environmental policy in the country. As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to withdraw the U.S. from December's Paris Agreement on climate change and dismantle Obama-era environmental regulations, including the administration's Clean Power Plan. To get some perspective on what a President Trump will mean for efforts to combat climate change and the potential repercussions for New York City, Gothamist talked to professor Philip Orton, an oceanography researcher at the Stevens Institute of Technology and the author of a recent paper on the likelihood of New York being struck by another major hurricane like Superstorm Sandy. Like many people in the New York area, he was not pleased with Tuesday's results. What was your reaction to Trump's victory? I was very alarmed and sad at the news. I have been really impressed with Obama's action and his successes and thought it was amazing for an American president to bring together hundreds of countries to sign a treaty of any sort. I thought he created amazing momentum. U.S. emissions had flattened off and now, I think with Myron Ebell as the person who's going to lead the EPA, and the things that Trump has said he's going to do, personally I'm just really sad, and really concerned that it might undo a lot of these things that were done. In terms of my field, anything with the word "climate" on itwe've already talked about changing the name of one of our projects because the federal funding for science is going to be severely threatened right now. I think that will include things such as flood forecasting, things that have to do with weather, and dangers from weather. It won't just have to do with what's going to happen in 50 or 100 years. It can also put people in danger in the near future too. If the Paris Agreement unravels, what do you see as the long-term effects on New York City? If we abandon those commitments and we don't do anything about climate change, then by 2100 we are going to have three to six feet of sea level rise and there will be doubts about the future viability for the city. By 2100, the entire coastline of the United States will need funding every year. And there won't be funding to protect New York City anymore. There's not even funding today to build full protection against Hurricane Sandy-level floods. So when the whole country is looking for that protection, it's going to be a bad world that we live in. The more optimistic way of looking at it is a four-year presidency is just a moment in time relative to the scale of this problem that needs to be solved. We went through eight years of Bush and yet we were on track to actually do a lot with the changes Obama made. Emissions in the U.S. have actually come down. So a little more optimistically, a four-year presidency isn't going to be catastrophic. But sea level rise is sort of a wicked problem, where there's a lot of inertia involved. Warming the planet occurs very slowly, and we've only had a degree Fahrenheit of warming so far since 1900more if you look further back. There's a real delay in the warming. It takes a lot of time. There's a delay in that heat getting into the ocean, and then there's an even bigger delay, further down the line, in melting huge mountains of ice on Antarctica and Greenland. But once you start moving these things, they're impossible to stop. I think a good analogy is that it's like pushing a disabled old car forward on a gentle downslope. It may be hard to actually start it moving, but once it's moving, actually getting in front of it and stopping it is going to be really, really hard. That's the inertia problem of sea-level rise with melting ice. Obviously, coastal resiliency efforts will require a lot of federal moneyare there steps state and city government can take to mitigate the impact of climate change? For mitigating climate change, definitely the states can do things. If Trump gets his way, the states will be in charge. A lot of the states do have plans. You think of Michigan, it's less aggressive than what the Clean Power Plan would've called for, but they still have plans, actually. So that's a good thing. And regions often have plans, like the Northeast has a plan and the West Coast has its own plan, and they can create their own carbon market and things. Sea-level rise scenarios for New York City. In terms of resilience, there are some things that can be done, but in terms of sea level rise it's expensive. Retreat for a city is not very palatable. You don't want to retreat a city; it's already a densely populated area. It's not popular and maybe even a bad idea, at least in the short term. When it comes to sea level rise that's a good question, what can states and cities do without federal funding? It definitely helps to have federal funding. When you talk about three to six feet of sea level rise, what would that look like? If we're talking about a 100-year flood, then we double the 100 year flood zone. That goes well beyond Sandy, so it's a lot more neighborhoods. At that point, a 100-year flood might cross lower Manhattan at Canal Street, for example. If you want to talk about the tides every month, spring tide, full moon tide, every month, then neighborhoods that currently only flood during a bad storm once every five years or 10 years will flood every month. And that includes any place that's fairly low-lying, including a place like South Street Seaport. They would need levees. Storms get more attention than they should in the climate change story. If a neighborhood starts getting flooded by nuisance flooding 10 times a year, just from the tides, that's the end of a neighborhood unless it has protection. When the streets are blocked every month and salt water is getting into the entire neighborhood, there's no way to live somewhere like that. New York city does have a fair amount of elevation. Places like Miami, and Florida in general, are getting sunny day flooding. That's going to impact a lot of places more and more. We require some level of storm surge to get a flood, because we have a little bit of elevation. We build things up higher because we do get storms every winter. Mostly, I'm talking about flooding, but there is also the heat-wave issue. Right now, we have about one 100-degree day every two years. If we look ahead to the latter part of the century, we are talking aboutfrom the New York City Panel on Climate Changeabout 14 to 20 100-degree days at high-end estimates. The heat waves will get dramatically worse. And then if you do mitigate climate change aggressively, maybe we might say you'll get to the 25th percentile of the number of 100-degree days, which is only four. Four versus 14 to 20it's still a heck of a lot more than one every two years. It's a very unpleasant world if you get 20 100 degree days per year. The whole summer would be one long heat wave. Flooding near the Gowanus Canal during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 (Ed Kim/Flickr) Where are the city's resiliency efforts right now? A lot of things are being done. The 14th Street Con Edison facility and transformers that blew up during Sandy because they didn't have high enough protection, that's being protected. Sandy instigated a lot of movement. It's not all visible, a lot of it is infrastructure, protection of subway system, electrical infrastructure, a lot of those smaller things are being done. Which seem like they're more manageable. But then if you want to ask, "Is every neighborhood being protected from another Sandy or sea-level rise, plus a winter storm, in 50 years?" Then I would say those things aren't being done, because that involves tens of billions of dollars more, which they don't have. There are often headlines in the newspaper that say things like, "Global warming is happening faster than we thought." With extant climate-change models, how much is unknown? The science is very strong. But there's big uncertainty stillfor example, with sea level rise. By the end of the century, New York City is looking at roughly two to six-and-a-half feet of sea level rise. That's the uncertainty range. That includes the uncertainty about how humans are going to behave. Are we're going to elect a bunch more Trumps or elect a bunch more Obamas? It also includes the uncertainty about how the system behaves. It's hard to see how mountains of ice are going to melt and accelerate, and that's the big uncertainty. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Omanhene of Suhyen and Mponuahene of New Juaben Traditional Council, Nana Okogyeman Ankomah Balaton, has reaffirmed his endorsement of President John Dramani Mahama for a second term in office. The traditional ruler made the statement in his palace on Saturday when the Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah who was on a campaign tour of some parts of the Eastern region paid a courtesy call on him. Nana Okogyeman, who recently honoured President Mahama in his palace in recognition of the massive developmental projects he has undertaken in his first term of office, reiterated the point that as far as he is concerned, President Mahama has performed creditably well and thus deserves to be retained in power in order to continue with the good works he has started. The Mponuahene of New Juabeng, recalling President Kufuor's opinion regarding the 4-year term of the presidency, said that the former President's plea during his second term bid was that he needed four more years in order to be able to do what he set out to do as president and that the first 4-year term was woefully inadequate for him to have fully execute his vision for the country. He said Ghanaians supported then President Kufuor's position and supported him to achieve his goal of winning a second term. He thus cannot fathom why, after the unprecedented achievement of President Mahama in the way that he has developed the country in the last 4 years, some people are saying that he does not deserve a second term like then Presidents Jerry John Rawlings and John Agyekum Kufuor. Nana Okogyeman said his observation indicates that President Mahama has used the taxpayers' money judiciously and the evidence is there for all who want to be objective to testify about and that any contrary view to the glaring truth can only be borne out of dishonesty. The Chief also called on the his constituents to vote for President Mahama and the NDC parliamentary candidate on December 7. He said the NDC parliamentary candidate of the area has done a lot already to show that when voted into Parliament he would be of great help to his constituents. He called on the people to vote for both President Mahama and the NDC parliamentary candidate on December 7. Attempt by Communication Minister Dr. Edward Omane Boamah possibly to get facts twisted or do some sort of damage control concerning lower court judges demand for salary increment failed over the weekend. Dr. Boamah who was on JOYFM/Multi TVs news analysis programme Newsfile said: Efforts are still being made to address the issue. He however, attributed the delay of the judges demand to a lawsuit at the Supreme Court challenging the presidents power to vary the conditions of service judges affected the implementation agreed service conditions for the lower court judges. But his submission wouldnt stand for moments. He got his facts pigeon-holed by Samson Lardi Anyenini, the host. Samson a lawyer by profession turned the heat on the minister immediately. He told Dr. Boamah: That case has nothing to do with the reviewed service conditions of the lower court judges. See, Abraham Lincoln was right: You can fool some people sometime, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Too much dust had been thrown into peoples eyes and too many lies had been told time and again. Question is: What at all has government been doing for five whole years? Isnt it an indictment on government to have an institution such as the judiciary to go public to say how much a judge earns a month? Its an obvious shame. Its a shame to see our judges wash their gowns and wigs in public. And I think its about time we got crazy busy and hold our governments accountable for some of these lapses. Why must it take half a decade to discuss judges salary and still havent reached finality? Wheres the urgency that drove the president and his cabinet ministers to sign petitions to grant mercy for the Montie Trio court contemnors? Why is there always the urgency to build new roads, increase salaries, or reduce petrol prices during election seasons? Wheres the urgency that doled out monies to prospective voters at the full glance of the world? Wheres it? Where did it go and are we serious as a nation? So, you really want to know a strong nation or a workable institution? A nation isnt strong if its institutions are plagued by---logistics, financial and ethical paralysis. In other words strong institutions make strong nations and nations without these pillars stand to suffer chronic paralysis. Indeed such nations are often wrought by riots, strikes, demonstrations, coups, corruption, civil wars, crime wave, terrorism and other social vices. Certainly there can be no freedom of expression (fundamental human right), there can be no free, fair and transparent elections, and there can be no peace and justice in our societies if we do not build strong and more assertive institutions. If we do not resource these institutions there are bound to be all of the menace above-mentioned-----nothing would work for the expected good and nothing can be achieved because they simply dont work. The responsibility rests on responsible governments. They must ensure that staff in these institutions are well taken care of in terms of salaries, benefits, emoluments, gratuities and what have you. Payment of salaries should not be a problem and must not be discussed at the public domain. Let me give you a heads-up: When you hear that judges demand for salary increments from government has fallen unto deaf ears, it means things are near implosion. It tells you institutions in that system arent working. Not long ago nurses in the country bared their teeth over unpaid allowances. And now its the turn of the judiciary. The lower court judges say they are upset by governments failure to implement salary reviews granted them five years ago. Yes, thats exactly what you just read ---five years (5yrs.). What else could be described as laxity if this doesnt qualify? Spokesperson for the affected judges Mr. Aboagye Tandoh said the lower court judges reviewed service conditions were agreed to, and ratified by the late President John Atta Mills in November 2011. And up to date their efforts to get the Attorney General and the Minister of Finance to address the issue had been unsuccessful. In view of this theyve threatened to go on strike by November 20 if their concerns are not addressed. The judges are believed to receive very low salaries, some far below GHS4, 000 a month. Mr. Tandoh who was also speaking on the Newsfile programme revealed that a recent 10 per cent pay rise for the adjudicating body only benefitted Supreme Court judges the lower judges were excluded. He said if the country cherishes its democracy, its salaries and conditions for the lower courts judges should not be handled in the manner in which this case had been handled. He revealed that unfair attempts are being made to vary the terms of the agreement reached in 2011--something he doesnt believe is justified. According to him a former chief of staff who played a key part in arriving at the terms in 2011 as well as the key persons who participated in deliberations leading to the agreement are still alive and could be contacted to explain the rationale for the terms reached. Mr. Tandoh said many of the lower court judges left lucrative jobs abroad to come and serve their country, adding it is demeaning to offer them meagre salaries and poor conditions of service. Meanwhile, the Judicial Council has intervened in the matter and the affected judges hope that the issue will be resolved before the 20th November 2016, the circuit court judge stated. Perhaps most of you have forgotten what Mr. Tony Lithur said a few months ago. The presidents attorney, Tony had observed something troubling, which in his estimation could affect the ruling NDCs chances of winning any elections or probably dent their relationship with the judiciary. He thought being branded as anti-judiciary party wasnt cool. And so in the wake of the brouhaha (regarding the Supreme Courts ruling of the three media men) Mr. Lithur wrote this: We should avoid the deepening perception that we are against the judiciary in such fundamental way that translates into threat of physical harm. Lets accept its verdict while we take formal steps to take a second bite at the cherry. Fact is when you surround yourself with biblical Ahitophels youre sure to reap havoc. When the sky is blue theyd tell you it is red. And when things are zagging theyd say theyre zigging. The great commission of Jesus Christ admonishes Christians to take up the cross and make disciples of all nations. But is that what we see today? How Jeremiah, Hosea, Malachi, Samuel, Amos, Isaiah in the Christian Bible sacrificed themselves to the service of humanity and God is entirely different from what our men of God are doing nowadays. Likewise, after the earthly life of Jesus Christ, the disciples passed through thorns to make sure the word of God gets to the last person. Contrary, the work of God has become so cheap that every person who takes up the Bible and prophesy for his stomach calls himself a man of God. Simply, no legitimate certificate or legalities are required in setting up a church in Ghana. More importantly, since matters of religion are difficult to ascertain its authenticity, most people are afraid to talk about or question the actions of some Ghanaian men of God. The Christian Bible which serves as a road map to live a good life and a guide to the pastoral work never teaches or advices pastors or preferably men of God to engage themselves in active politics. But what do we see in Ghana nowadays? False prophesies about the impending general elections are circulating here and there as if it's the ultimate part of their calling. The so called men of God in Ghana have reduced the prime aim of the pulpit to political talks giving room for party faithful to insult the sacred. I call them Hungry Pastors", because they just want to be popular in the media but not to make the word of God popular! Currently, our country is politically, socially and economically sick", therefore, the best these pastor can do for mother Ghana is to go on their knees to seek for divine intervention for the nation. Sadly, the likes of Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah, Rev. Agyemang Prempeh, Rev. Emmanuel Kofi Enim, Prophet Dennis Whole Asante, Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi and many others have all lose their pastoral focus. Instead of doing what's expected of them, in their selfish interest, they jump from one media to the other prophesying the likely presidential candidate to win the general elections! What is more painful is that in all their utterances, they attach the name of God to it. Most of their predictions, though, have centered on the flag bearers of the two leading political parties the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). This clearly shows that what these political pastors are saying is not coming from the almighty God. Theyre mere fabrications from their personal reasoning. Because, the general elections are not only about presidential candidates, but parliamentary candidates are also vying for positions. Therefore, every genuine prophesies must cover parliamentary candidates also, but these hungry men of God led by Rev. Owusu Bempah, Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi and Prophet Akwasi Agyemang Prempeh only specialize in the presidential race. This means, whatever they come out to say are only personal fabrications which has nothing to do with the mindset of God. They only prophesy to get the attention of the various aspirants for their selfish gains. In Ghana, one cannot leave out the aforementioned pastors if one samples some of the selfish political thoughts by these notable hungry pastors and prophets. Recently, Prophet Akwasi Agyemang Prempeh of the Springs of Joy Ministries International on Good Evening Ghana, a programme hosted by Paul Adom Okyere, recently said unlike President Mahama, most of the presidential aspirants were double-minded and tried to blend the worship of God with other lesser gods in their quest to win power, which makes President Mahama the favourite candidate to win the upcoming election. Contrary, the founder and leader of the Glorious Word Power Ministry, Rev. Prophet Owusu Bempah, had earlier confidently prophesied that the Presidential Candidate of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, would win the 2016 election. He declared on TV3s show Restoration on March 1, 2016, that What I see is what I say. But some events will occur again and that is what might bring about problems. Similarly, in his latest interview on Okay FM with Kwame Nkrumah Tikesie, he said Ghanaians can burn down his church if NPP loses the general elections! In a report carried by the Ghanaian Times newspaper, the Founder and General Overseer of Word Victory Chapel International, Prophet Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Enim, also prophesied victory for President John Dramani Mahama in the 2016 general election. Claiming that he had earlier prophesied that the 2012 presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, would emerge as the winner in the NPP congress last year, Prophet Enim said God revealed the victory of President Mahama to him through a vision and asked him to make it known to Ghanaians as a sign of Gods endorsement of the President. I want to know if the work of God has now been reduced to only prophesies? Does giving prophesies only prove how powerful a man of God can be? From day one, the politicians whom weve entrusted our resources have failed us. Therefore, Ghanaians are not expecting men of God to fail them too. If the likes of Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah, Rev. Agyemang Prempeh, Rev. Emmanuel Kofi Enim, Prophet Dennis Whole Asante, Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi and others want to engage themselves in active politics, theyre free to do so. However, they should remove the pastoral spectacle theyre wearing! Ghana has reach a point where peace campaign messages must be each and everyones topmost priority, but not falsehood talks by these hungry pastors. If they know how to fast for God to reveal the winning candidate to them, it will be far better if they could fast and pray for the peace of the nation in the impending general elections. For when the nation is at peace, they will get the opportunity to dupe their members with tithes and offerings. If their congregation is in need of their false prophesies, majority of Ghanaians dont need them. These political pastors must put aside the Bible and descend to the streets to do proper campaign rather than the noise theyre making! Ghanaians are not blind to choose in between policies and vote accordingly, for a mere prophesy doesnt win an election. I am tempted to believe that these pastors dont know their Holy Scriptures well. They dont spend time to study the word of God to know the implications or punishment surrounding the giving of false prophesies. The Book of Ezekiel chapter 13:1-9 (NKJV), clearly shows that the Lord has not sent them to prophesy, yet they hope that the word may be confirmed. Adu Sarpeah [email protected] 0241210870/0506140870 UCC Hobart (Australia) (AFP) - Luck deserted Australia in their desperate bid to salvage the second Test with South Africa snaring the vital wicket of David Warner in unfortunate circumstances in Hobart on Monday. Warner, who was seeking redemption after his reckless dismissal in the opening over of the first innings, lost his wicket while at the forefront of Australia's fightback. At stumps on the third day the home side were hanging in at 121 for two, still 120 runs behind the Proteas, who have been in control of the Test since routing Australia for 85 on Saturday. Usman Khawaja was unbeaten on 56, his ninth Test half-century, with skipper Steve Smith not out 18. Warner flung his head back in despair when a ball from Kyle Abbott hit his hip and ricocheted off an elbow onto his stumps when he was on 45. South Africa's batsman Quinton de Kock celebrates his 100-runs on the third day's play of their second Test match against Australia, in Hobart, on November 14, 2016 It gave the Proteas a huge fillip after Warner and Khawaja had recovered the innings with a 79-run stand after the loss of Joe Burns in the first over. Burns lasted just four balls before he was caught behind, tickling at one wide down the leg-side from Abbott. Lightning had struck twice for Australia with fellow opener Warner out to an expansive shot in the opening over in the first innings of the Test. Khawaja played some lovely shots in his vigil, providing great support for his captain Smith, who top scored with an unbeaten 48 in the first innings shambles. De Kock century Australia face a mighty struggle to prevent South Africa, already 1-0 up, from claiming their third successive series in Australia with only next week's day-night third Test in Adelaide still to play. South Africa's players celebrate with paceman Kyle Abbott for his wicket of Australia's batsman David Warner, on the third day's play of their second Test match, in Hobart, on November 14, 2016 South Africa earlier extended their first innings lead to 241 before they were all out for 326 with Quinton de Kock plundering a century and Josh Hazlewood finishing with six for 89. Hazlewood captured three of the last four wickets to fall after lunch for his second best haul after his six for 70 against New Zealand in Adelaide last year to take his tally to 88 Test wickets. Shortly after lunch, Tembo Bavuma was surprised by a rearing delivery to spoon an easy catch to Nathan Lyon at point and give Joe Mennie his first Test wicket for 74. Keshav Maharaj followed shortly after, bowled by Hazlewood for one and Abbott lasted nine balls before he became the speedster's fifth dismissal for three. Vernon Philander was the last man out for 32 off 28 balls, caught behind off Hazlewood. After Sunday's second day was washed out, the Australians chased early wickets but de Kock and Bavuma batted South Africa into a position of strength with a century stand. The swashbuckling wicketkeeper was bowled by Hazlewood just before lunch for 104 off 143 balls with 17 boundaries. His stand of 144 with Bavuma was the highest by a visiting team in Hobart for the sixth wicket. De Kock became only the fourth South African to register 50 or more in five consecutive Tests after he swept spinner Nathan Lyon for four over wide mid-on. He has proven a thorn for Australia in this series following scores of 84 and 64 in the first Test victory in Perth. Some supporters of the Parliamentary candidates of both the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Wulensi constituency in the Northern Region clashed over the weekend at a village called Garikpe in the constituency. The two candidates, the NPP's Thomas Donkor Ogaaja and George Larrir Maabam accused each other of instigating the violence. The attack according to Mr. Ogaaja was triggered by an earlier one on the NDC's campaign van carrying the public address system. He said some people believed to be NPP supporters at Ngambo attacked the NDC's campaign van and destroyed some computers and amplifiers used for campaigns. By: citifmonline.com/Ghana The Christian Journal - Mrs. Rita Korankye Ankrah, wife of Apostle Sam Korankye Ankrah, Founder and Presiding Head of the Royal House Chapel International, has asked Christian couples not to entertain the idea of entering marriages with a two-way ticket because it is not Godly. Mrs. Korankye Ankrah intimated that most marriages are breaking up because people consummate marriages with wrong intentions. She pointed out that most people often look at the easy way out in the marriage, hoping to take flight when tough times begin to surface and advised those yet to marry to disabuse their minds of such thoughts. Speaking at the end of a three-day Latter Rain Conference at the Royal House Chapel in New York, Mrs. Korankye Ankrah, who celebrated her thirtieth-year marriage anniversary, said she did not marry her husband with one eye on the door, because divorce, she thought, was dreadful and ungodly. My parents have been married for more than 40 years and I have been married for 30 years, she said. I went into the marriage because I know I was determined to make it happen, stay through thick and thin. According to her, married couples should try as much as possible not to quarrel over money, because differences in how the account of the home is kept can wreck a beautiful relationship. Highlighting her points in bullet form, she said it was important for couples to be transparent in their finances so as to eliminate doubts and suspicions that might crop up. Mrs. Ankrah told the congregation that in the thirty years of her marriage, she and her husband have never quarreled over money because they trust each other. She advised couples not to use their sojourn in America as a basis to argue over money because the tenets of marriage should be honored anywhere. Touching on the issue of respect, Mama Rita, as she is affectionately called, indicated that when couples lose the respect of each other, the marriage stands the risk of breaking apart and enjoined couples to show respect and affection for each other. Too often, she said, people marry because of some conditions and when reality sets in, they struggle to appreciate themselves for who they are. A mans number one need is respect. You cant negotiate a mans respect. Its non-negotiable, she said. So right from the beginning I respected my husband. I became born again through him. He is my mentor. Directing her attention to the men, Mama Rita said as heads of the house, they need to always show love and affection to their wives to create healthy relationships. Any womans concern, she said, is the love and attention she needs from her husband. Because women go through a lot of changes especially after childbirth, it is important for men to be patient over petty misunderstandings in order to create harmonious relationships. Mrs. Korankye Ankrah, whose speech was often interjected with light jokes, also advised couples to be intimate with each other, share jokes and ease into the simple things essential to the growth of their relationships. You dont have to be too stiff with your spouses. Learn to tell a joke, learn to laugh at each other, thats how you can grow together, she stressed. Life can be stressful and boring; you need someone you can offload to. Appreciate it when the man is cracking a joke; appreciate it when the woman is cracking a joke. I dont have to be thinking about how to form my words if I have to speak to my husband, she said to a loud applause. On children and how their presence could affect the marriage, Mama Rita said as children grow, take up responsibilities and leave the home, it is important for couples to be friends and bond with each other to be able to cope with the day to day activities of the home. Your children will leave you one day but your spouse will be with you forever, she said. Mama Rita wrapped up her message by reminding couples to engage each other in meaningful and constructive conversations and to maintain the respect that exists between the two. One important highlight of the occasion was the official inauguration of the executives of Royal Ladies. The Electoral Commission (EC) has started dispatching ballot papers to various parts of the country for the December 7 elections. The process began on Saturday amidst tight security and monitoring by representatives of the various political parties. First to be dispatched to the Upper West Region were ballot papers for the parliamentary poll. Pictures of the sealed ballot papers somehow managed to get to the social media amidst speculations that they were being smuggled. But the EC and the police came to deny the reports. Initial speculations had it that the police in Wa, the Upper West Regional capital, had intercepted ballot papers from some members of a political party and that the culprits were taken into custody. But Deputy Upper West Regional Commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Shaibu Gariba, told Joy FM that the electoral materials for the 11 constituencies in the region were printed in Accra and brought to Wa. The Electoral Commission later issued a statement, urging the public to disregard completely the speculation, describing it as wicked lies deliberately calculated to cause confusion. A statement from the commission indicated that the printed ballots for the Upper West Region arrived at the regional police headquarters in Wa this morning. Representatives of the political parties in the region were invited to witness the delivery process and confirm their seals on the bag. According to the EC, Some of these political party representatives took these pictures at the Wa regional police headquarters. It, therefore, expressed surprise that the same political party representatives were circulating these pictures with such ludicrous claims, insisting that this is totally irresponsible and unacceptable. The statement pointed out that for the records, the printing process of the ballot was closely monitored by representatives of the political parties on a 24-hour shift basis. There was also a 24-hour police protection of the ballot printing process. Aside that, the statement said, Record was taken of every single ballot printed and at the end of the day, the printing house was closed in the presence of all political party representatives. Every morning, the printing house was not opened unless the representatives of the political parties were present and printing did not start until all the representatives of the political parties were present. After the ballot printing process had been completed, the EC indicated that the ballot papers were packaged and labeled per constituency, and the political parties placed their uniquely numbered seals on the bags. Even the movement of the ballots was closely monitored by the police; and the political parties are duly notified. Later in the day, some ballot papers were also dispatched to the Ashanti Region. Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that they were sent with two trucks with registration numbers GV 461-10 and GV 22 Y, with each carrying a total of 150 and 42 bags of parliamentary ballot papers respectively. In the Eastern Region, the papers, contained in a deep-green rectangular shape bag for each of the 33 constituencies, arrived Sunday morning at the Regional Police Church premises for inspection and sealing by the various political parties, as well as the officials of the EC for subsequent dispatch to the districts. The two main political parties the NPP and the NDC were the only parties present to check the number of ballot papers and their serial numbers for each constituency. Later the constituency executives of the two parties okayed the content, sealed the bags with their unique mechanical plastic seals with security serial numbers. The NPP sealed each bag with a red plastic seal while the NDC and the EC sealed the bags with white and green seals respectively and subsequently dispatched under police escort to all the district police commands. For Affram Plains North and South Districts, the political parties agreed to await for the arrival of the presidential ballot papers, possibly next week to be added due to the distance. The unique plastic pull-trap-security seals make it impossible for the bags to be tampered with unnoticed. By Charles Takyi-Boadu Criminologist Prof. Ken Attafuah says Sunday's violent incident at the residence of Nana Akufo-Addo indicates Ghana may be sitting on 'a keg of gunpowder.' If violence could break out at the residence of the main opposition leader in the presence of the police, then the country is sitting on a keg of gunpowder, he observed. A health walk organised by the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) last Sunday turned violent after it took a route in front of the residence of the NPP presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo. Smashed cement blocks, stones and broken bottles told a tale of clashes between New Patriotic Party and their rival National Democratic Congress supporters. Gunshots were also heard from the scene. Prof. Atafuah said it would be disappointing if allegations of slow police response to violence at the residence of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate last Sunday are confirmed. He said taking into account the proximity of the Nima police to Nana Akufo-Addo Dankwa Addo's residence, the situation should have been quickly diffused. The Nima Police station is less than a minute's walk or a shouting distance from Akufo-Addo's residence. Joy News' Beatrice Adu reported that some of the NPP supporters booed the police for looking on whilst the NDC supporters defaced posters of the NPP Presidential candidate on the wall of the house. Speaking on the clashes on Joy FM's Super Morning Show Monday, the law professor and criminologist said the location of the violence is 'too close for comfort'. He said the failure of the police to respond quickly as alleged created fertile grounds for the NPP to mobilise supporters to protect the premises. Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected] Never judge someone by the way he looks or a book by the way it's covered; for inside those pages, there's a lot to be discovered Stephen Cosgrove. Americans voted last week. From the reactions of many across the globe, one could tell the unexpected had happened. Indeed, the choice of Mr Donald Trump as the next leader of the world's leading superpower is an abomination to many. Well, that is Democracy for you! The people have spoken; and the voice of the people, they say, is the voice of the Bearded Old Man above. I rooted for Secretary Hillary Clinton to win the contest. I rooted for her because I abhor Trump's misogynistic and anti-Islamic stance. I expected her to win, but unfortunately she didn't. Unlike many others, I was not shocked and I would explain why. I was not shocked because of two reasons. The killing of innocent Blacks by the White Police in Charlotte and other counties in America, and the subsequent official cover-ups pointed to the fact that the abhorrence for discrimination against Blacks was a facade. I was therefore suspicious that Trump's hatred for Blacks and other minorities could resonate with the White silent majority, which it did. Also, watching Alan Lichtman, author of Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016 on Al Jazeera woke me up from my slumber. The man insisted that his historically based system of predicting election pointed to a Trump win. His explanation was so convincing that the election of Trump as the eventual winner did not come as a surprise to me at all. Here in Ghana, the two major political parties are shouting their voices hoarse and claiming the Trump victory to be a good omen for them. Of course, who wouldn't want to be associated with success? After all, failure is an orphan, isn't it? But wait a second! Between Hillary and Trump, who was the candidate that adopted the Usain Bolt sign? Was it not Hillary? Has President Ogwanfunu not adopted same? Does Hillary not also belong to the ruling party, which has ruled for the two terms just like President Ogwanfunu? For sure, even a dunce could tell who the Trump win favours here in Ghana. But let's wait and see; December 7 is just around the corner. There is this claim by the Zu-za that the silent majority would win the election for them. I agree about the silent majority determining who wins the election but I doubt if it will go in favour of Zu-za, a very corrupt and incompetent government. If I may ask; who are the silent majority? The silent majority are the suffering majority. They are those who struggle everyday to fend for their families. They are those who struggle to pay their children's school fees and utility bills. They are the workers whose TIER-TWO PENSION FUNDS have been milked by a government of greedy bastards. They are the unemployed graduates who are compelled to endure hardship as a result of the government's incompetence and lack of vision. They are the people who abhor create, loot and share. They are the voters who will vote a president that cannot stoop so low to grant contracts in return for a Ford Expedition. They are the people whose conscience cannot be bought by a corrupt government that goes about sharing goodies! The silent majority are many and the greedy bastards are very few; that is why they would determine who becomes President in 2017. Abusuapanin, after the legal tussle at the High Court and Supreme Court, the dust has finally settled and we now know the chosen seven who would contest the December 7 presidential poll. Conspicuously missing from the list is Dr Hassan Ayariga, a man with two doctorate degrees of equally dubious nature. The man's disqualification has let the obese cat out of the bag. Ayariga did not mince words in telling the whole world that the reason for Madam Charlotte disqualifying him was more personal than professional. I know Ayariga is a joker, but it did not look like he was joking when he said Madam Charlotte was once his Charlie wote, a euphemism for ex-lover. Shocking revelation, isn't it? Do I believe Ayariga? No, I don't but I'm of the conviction that the matter is worth investigating by the security agencies. They just cannot allow such a gargantuan allegation to create fogs in our minds without clearing them. Lest I forget, what has become of the EOCO investigations over PPP's campaign funds? Has the matter been allowed to die a natural death? Or could it be much ado about nothing? As Lawyer Ace Ankomah wrote in a facebook post, When gold rusts then it was Abyssinia all along. Land of jokers, indeed! Yes, ours is but a land of jokers. It is only in such a country that a group of criminals parading as keep-fitters would be allowed to go scot-free after hurling stones at the security detail of a prospective president. If only Nana D's security detail had shot one of them in the thigh to teach them a bitter lesson! What an abufusem! See you next week for another konkonsa, hopefully devoid of abufusem, Deo volente! BY Agya Kwaku Ogboro [email protected] The airwaves provide the best means of determining Ghana's level of degeneration. Last week provided one such instance: it was so bad that those who heard the sabre-rattling by a political activist as he boasted of the many persons he has killed could not avoid being melancholic. It is no longer inappropriate and criminal, it would seem, to threaten to kill and to boast of killing many persons under the circumstances. Unless the police take action on the voice which most Ghanaians heard last week, their image would suffer a further downward spiral. The man who insulted the justice administration system and those responsible for enforcing the law, as it were, did not miss a night away from his home. In other words, nobody invited him from any police station to assist investigation into his boastful killing sprees. There are certainly many unsolved murder cases in the Brong-Ahafo Region, especially in the Asutifi South Constituency, where Naaba Abdulai is the local champion straddling the place with impunity. After all, his brother is a minister in a government which sees nothing wrong with impunity. That is why Naaba is able to do what he claims he does in his part of the region without regard for the law. By such remarks, the Brong-Ahafo police have been rendered useless and the administration of law enforcement at the headquarters level humiliated beyond compare. That is the sickening situation report of law enforcement in the country today. Given the fact that under the current dispensation Naaba would continue to control what he surveys in Asutifi South, how he wants to, we can only express concern about the state of the country today and keep hope alive so that we do not break down. It is amazing, however, that in the face of the glaring degenerative state of our law enforcement system and governance, we are being told to believe that all is well. We dispute the president's position that his tenure is incomparable in terms of quality governance. A tenure in which selective justice rules is not an attribute of good governance; we can bet without a shred of doubt. The appalling state of law enforcement or its docility is a result of bad governance. Unless governance is improved through a replacement or a total overhaul, the situation can only get worse. That is an incontestable fact we would defend any day. There is a reason police officers would overlook breaches of the law by persons presenting themselves as activists of the ruling party: a very smelly reality under the current political dispensation. We wish the Police Administration would issue a statement on the claim by Naaba Abdulai of being a serial killer alongside others because it is as scary as it is irresponsible, even if it is hot air as some would want to describe it. This is not a claim which should be written off. Silence on the part of the police is not an option. It only denotes irresponsibility or suggests acquiescence. As for the president, he might not condemn it because he hardly hears such stuff. Confusion broke out at the Electoral Commission Ashanti regional office after NPP refused to accept the parliamentary ballot papers sent there. NPP regional chairman Bernard Antwi Boasiako who led the challenge said the ballot did not have NPP initials printed on it as the other parties have. He said apart from the logo printed on the ballot paper, there is no indication of the party to which the logo belongs. The ballots for the region arrived in Kumasi last night and the representatives of the various parties gathered to assess them Monday morning. a Luv FM's Erastus Asare Donkor reported that all the political parties have their initials printed under their logo on the ballot paper except the NPP. More soon... Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com Kinshasa (AFP) - Congolese Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo resigned Monday to make way for an opposition figure to take his place following talks aimed at averting a political crisis. "I have offered my resignation as well as those of the members of my government... to respond to the spirit and the letter of the accord," said Matata as he left a meeting with President Joseph Kabila, referring to the deal struck after a political dialogue boycotted by the main opposition parties. Nana Akufo Addo the 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has predicted a reduction in the prices of petroleum products ahead of the forthcoming polls in a desperate move by President John Mahama to hang on to power. We're being told that very soon, they are going to reduce the petroleum (energy sector) levy (on the price buildup of petroleum prices). We, in the NPP, have been calling for a reduction in the levy to bring relief to the people. But, they (Mahama government) said no. Once again, with the election around the corner, he is likely to do that (reduce the prices), the NPP flagbearer said. Nana Akufo-Addo explained that with defeat staring him (President Mahama) in the face, he will do or say anything to keep him in power. After 8 years at the Presidency, he's not prepared to let go because of the perequisites and benefits of office for himself, his family and close associates. He was speaking to students of the Sunyani Polytechnic, at the end of day 2 of his 4-day tour of the Brong Ahafo Region. It will be recalled that on December 23, 2015, the NDC Majority in Parliament rushed through an Energy Sector Levy Bill (2015), under a certificate of emergency, which imposed more taxes on petroleum products. The new levies were strongly opposed by the Minority, which argued that they would impose more hardship on the already suffering Ghanaian. The Energy sector levy meant the imposition of a tax of GH0.05 on diesel and LPG as PSM; GH0.28 on petrol, diesel and LPG as PIS levy; GH0.05 on petrol as PSM; GH0.05 on petrol as recovery margin, GH40.05 on petrol, diesel and GH0.23/kg on LPG as forex under recovery and UPPF at GH0.09 per litre. Recalling President Mahama's decision to restore the allowances of nursing training students, albeit it partially, the NPP flagbearer noted that despite President Mahama's opposition to the restoration of the allowances all these years, he has decided to pay the allowances, with a few days to the elections. This move, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, smacks of desperation and hypocrisy on the part of President Mahama. Touching on the current decline in world crude oil prices, Nana Akufo-Addo stated that many Ghanaians have been left confused by the fact that whilst crude oil prices keep on reducing on the international markets, the price of petroleum prices keep going up in Ghana. On President Mahama's recent claim that the nation's agriculture was in a healthy state, describing those who criticized the state of the country's agriculture as confused, Nana Akufo-Addo retorted by stating that that Mr President, if anybody is confused, it has to be you. Omanhene of the Wassa Amenfi Traditional Area in the Western Region, Tetrete Okuamoah Sakyim II, has asked Vice President Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur to remind President John Mahama to make good his promise to construct a training college in the area. According to the paramount chief, during one of his electioneering campaigns prior to the 2012 general election, President Mahama visited Wassa Akropong and promised the people that if given the nod, he would build a training college in the area. It seems the president has forgotten the promise. So I am informing the vice president to let President Mahama be aware that he owes the people of Wassa Amenfi. The president should let us know whether he will fulfill the promise or not, the traditional ruler remarked. Tetrete Okuamoah Sekyim II made the comment at the celebration of this year's Adimkese festival at Wassa Akropong on Friday. Vice President Amissah-Arthur, who was in the region for a four-day campaign tour, was the guest of honour at the event. He appealed to the government to give the area one of the community day secondary schools and a vocational institute. The Wassa chief however, commended the government for the various developmental projects in the area. In a speech, Vice President Amissah-Arthur criticised the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) over claims that President Mahama's NDC administration is incompetent. He asserted that the NPP has no message for Ghanaians, so activists of the party had resorted to 'unwarranted attacks' on President John Dramani Mahama and the entire administration. The NDC government cannot be described as incompetent, with the massive infrastructural development across the country, he rebutted. Mr Amissah-Arthur mentioned the road construction projects being undertaken by government across the country, expanding electricity to rural areas, construction of hospitals, other health posts and building of new schools as some of the projects by government to develop the country. He pointed out that a government that is doing all these for Ghanaians cannot be described as incompetent and that it is only political parties with no messages that would say so. He disclosed that as a social democratic party, the NDC would continue to introduce policies and programmes that would gear towards empowering the rural folks and make their lives better. From Emmanuel Opoku, Wassa Akropong Gary Guittard, President of Guittard Chocolates Company, in a handshake with Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni Chief Executive of Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni, has assured international chocolate companies that Ghana is set to continue the supply of premium quality cocoa to the world market. With the implementation of the adopted interventions, including free fertilizer distribution, mass cocoa spraying, free distribution of hybrid seedlings, cocoa farms rehabilitation together with other programmes being implemented in the cocoa industry, premium quality cocoa beans would be supplied to the local and world markets. Speaking to some officials of the world's finest chocolate producing companies, including Meiji, Guittard, Choco Roi and several others at the 'Salon du Chocolat' in Paris, France, Dr. Opuni indicated that Ghana will in all earnest continue to be the market leader in premium quality cocoa production. Dr. Opuni assured the chocolatiers that 'the Ghanaian cocoa farmer by virtue of the skill and training in cocoa handling will produce the best cocoa beans that the world major chocolatiers so much love and use as important ingredient in chocolate making. 'Salon du Chocolat Paris 2016 assembled over 100 chocolate manufacturers, cocoa producing countries and chocolate industry players, including manufacturers of chocolate machinery. The display of a variety of cocoa beans by cocoa producing countries like Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mexico, Sao Tome and Principe, Cameroon, Mauritius, Togo and many others was exciting. The exhibitors displayed the finest chocolates in various shapes, designs, flavours and colours to the admiration of the visitors. 'Salon du Chocolat 2016 could best be described as a confluence of creme de la creme of cocoa, chocolate producers and chocolatiers. Upon tasting various chocolates from Ghana, visitors to the exhibition commended Ghana for its unique cocoa tastes and flavours. John Wilson in a handshake with Emmanuel Adu-Sarkodie (in suit) while Andy Okrah, Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister and other members look on admiringly Emmanuel Adu-Sarkodie, Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CDH Financial Holdings, has charged Human Resource (HR) practitioners to push for a law that will incorporate HR report into financial statements of various organizations. He made the call at the 2016 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Institute of Human Resources Management Practitioners (IHRMP), Ghana held at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Teshie, Accra. Mr Adu-Sarkodie, who was speaking on theme, Data Analytics The New Frontier for HR in Ghana,' quizzed Why are companies required by law to report on aspects of their businesses such as the financial and operational activities but we completely ignore report on the human resources within the organization that are essential to the delivery of all these other measures?. Has the time not come for companies to report annually on their human resources through the use of external HR consultants similar to external auditors, who will prepare an annual assessment of the employees of the company and its corporate governance structures on issues such as quality, turnover and investment? Financial performance President of the IHRMP, John Wilson, who presented a report on his three-year stewardship said: We continued with the growth plan under the four thematic areas- Expansion, Visibility, Capability and Culture. On financial performance of the organization, he said the total income increased from GH795,332 in 2014 to GH929,943.09 in 2015. Mr. Wilson said the organization also made a net increase of GH134,611.09, representing 17 percent, adding that the total expenditure of the Institute for the same period also increased by GH114,557.99, (16 percent) to GH822,955.35 in 2015 as compared to GH708,397.36 in 2014. He said the Institute recorded a net surplus of GH106,987.74 in 2015 as compared to 2014 net surplus of GH86,935.14, representing an increment of 23 percent in net surplus. [email protected] By Cephas Larbi People from all walks of life wept uncontrollably when the mortal remains of Confidence K. Baah of Kessben FM and TV was interred at Mampong Akrofoso on Saturday. Family members, workers of Kessben Media, among others, could not hold back their tears when they bid farewell to Confidence at the solemn event. Death Confidence, 36, died in his sleep at Effiduase in the Ashanti region about three weeks ago which generated controversy. The girlfriend, who was the last person to see Confidence alive, was later arrested and questioned by the Effiduase Police, but she has since been granted bail. The actual cause of death of Confidence, a graduate of the Institute of Business Management and Journalism (IBM&J) in Kumasi, has not been made public to date. Last Respects The body was laid in state at the Jubilee Park in Kumasi on Saturday morning for many people, including owner of Kessben Media, Kwabena Kesse and his wife, workers of Kessben FM and TV and media practitioners, to pay their last respects. Some prominent traditional leaders and politicians, especially from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) were also in attendance. Indeed, residents of Kumasi, who thronged the Jubilee Park in their numbers, showed that they really appreciated the splendid work of Confidence in radio broadcast. A section of the mourners told DAILY GUIDE that they did not know Confidence personally but converged on the venue to mourn due to the positive impact he had on their lives through radio for many years. The journalist was survived the wife, Alberta Welbert Confidence and daughter Jasmine Akua Baah Confidence. From I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi Wife of the vice presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Samira Bawumia, insists that the wind of change is blowing across the ten regions of the country and even the NDC can smell it. According to her, she had been visiting all parts of the country to campaign for votes for the party in the past few months and the general feeling of Ghanaians indicated that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot escape defeat on December 7. The strong wind of change is not only in the Ashanti Region, which is our stronghold. The wind of change is blowing hard in all the ten regions of this great country, be it in the big cities or smaller towns. Samira Bawumia, Napo, Wontumi and other dignitaries at the Fulani chief's house The wind of change is so strong that even the NDC people have seen it coming but there is absolutely nothing that they can do now to stop it, Samira stated when she and other NPP stalwarts in Kumasi went to the Fulani chief of Kumasi, Alhaji Ahmed Ahmed, in the Manhyia South Constituency on Friday to pay homage to him. Mrs Samira Bawumia urged the electorate to reject President Mahama and all the NDC parliamentary candidates, stressing that they have crippled the country with their bad policies and programmes for eight years now. She asked what the NDC government can do in four years to transform the country after it had collapsed the country's economy in eight years, indicating that the NDC only wants to retain power and continue with the corrupt practices. Samira noted that the NDC leadership has no message to win votes and so it had resorted to politics of insults and lies, with Nana Akufo-Addo as its main target. She stressed that the NDC would lose the polls. Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh aka Napo, the Manhyia South Member of Parliament (MP), said the NDC would be remembered for deepening hardship and poverty in the state during the last eight years, predicting a resounding electoral victory for the NPP. Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka Wontumi, NPP Ashanti Regional Chairman, reminded the electorate that Nana Akufo-Addo is on the fifth position on the ballot paper so they should vote massively for him. FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi The Chairman of the National Peace Council, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante has called on the Ghana Police Service to immediately investigate clashes that occurred in front of the Nima residence of the New Patriotic Party flagbearer Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Gun shots were fired by the security detail of the NPP flagbearer to ward off supporters of the NDC who were throwing stones and other harmful objects into Akufo-Addos house as they embarked on a health walk Sunday morning. The timely intervention of officers from the Nima Police Station prevented the clashes from turning bloody. The Police service has served noticed that it will investigate and arrest anybody found culpable in the clashes. Speaking on Morning Starr Monday, Rev. Prof. Asante, said the Police must act swiftly to ensure that pocket of clashes happening between the two parties across the country are immediately brought to an end. He also urged the political parties, especially the NDC and the NPP to talk to their supporters as the country approaches the crucial parliamentary and presidential elections on December 7. I will plead with all political parties to speak to their supporters to comport themselvesit's the responsibility of all to ensure there is peace and calm during this period. We only have one nation... Let us try to do the best that we can as a peoplewe have just one Ghana, we need to manage our tensions properly so as to guarantee peace for allall stakeholders should put in their best to ensure our nation remains peaceful." Meanwhile, the Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Cephas Arthur has stated all those who were seen with guns and other ammunition during the clashes will be investigated. Those who were said to possess guns will have to be investigated to see if they possessed them legitimately, he told Morning Starr host Nii Arday Clegg. Supt. Arthur added that the Police Service is doing its best to ensure there is no chaos before, during and after the elections. 14.11.2016 LISTEN A Christian book that lays emphasis on salvation will on Saturday, November 19, 2016 be launched at the auditorium of the Odorkor Official Town Assemblies of God (A/G) at Official Town, Accra. The 224-page book, which will be launched by the Greater Accra Regional Secretary of the Assemblies of God, Ghana, is entitled: The New BirthThe Gateway To Eternal Life. The book, written by the Head Pastor of Fountain of Life Assemblies of God, Manhean, Accra, Reverend Collins Kodjoe, affirms that a person can have eternal/everlasting life only by becoming born-again. In an interview with Today, Reverend Kodjoe disclosed that: The overriding purpose of the book is to clearly and emphatically affirm that a person can have eternal life only by being born-again. He continued that the book also corrects the false impressions people have about salvation, stressing that It helps the reader to understand the Christian concept of the new birth and how to experience it. Reviewing the book, a Senior Lecturer at the Central University, Accra, who is also the Senior Pastor of More Than Conquerors A/G, Accra, Freeman Osei-Tete, described the book as a masterpiece. According to him, the book is crucial for both new converts and Bible teachers. It starts from where we have come from and where we are going, he explained. The New BirthThe Gateway To Eternal Life, Pastor Osei-Tete further indicated, points out the imperfections in man vis-a-viz the perfections of God; describing the deadly plagues on one hand, and the fruits of the spirit on the other. He commended Reverend Kodjoe for showing with biblical authority that it will be too expensive to ignore the salvation message and prescribes what it takes to win the war from within. The Honourable Stephane Dion, Minister of Foreign Affairs, yesterday visited African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he reinforced his support for African-led efforts to address the pressing challenges facing the continent, in particular in the areas of security, governance and the rule of law. Canada strongly supports the AUs work and vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa. During the course of his visit, Minister Dion had a number of meetings with officials of the African Union Commission (AUC), which is the AUs secretariat, including Smail Chergui, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, on conflict prevention and mediation, peace-support operations, governance, human rights and the rule of law. At AU headquarters, Minister Dion announced a $5-million project to support the AUC in areas of mutual priority, including the empowerment of women and girls, good governance, renewable energy, intra-African trade, and addressing the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable. Minister Dion also announced $680,000 in projects to strengthen sub-Saharan Africas capacity to address human rights compliance in criminal-justice measures against terrorism and violent extremism in seven selected African states: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Canada will also provide $250,000 to the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism, which is affiliated with the AU, to address legal issues involved in handling and prosecuting terrorism-related cases in East Africa. Minister Dions first visit to sub-Saharan Africa is an opportunity to highlight the importance Canada assigns to the region, focusing on peace and stability, security and the rule of law. The visit also underlines Canadas commitment to promote inclusive and sustainable growth in Africa, which draws on the potential of the continents women and youth. The dynamism at play today across the continent is calling out for Canadian engagement and support for African governments as they channel that dynamism for the benefit of their people. In a 'tradition of fortune telling by days of birth,' I pick to beef the line: 'And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonnie and blithe, and good and gay;' from the rhyme 'Monday's child is fair of face.' The seven days of the week are all mentioned in the rhyme except the special day Sunday. So we the Sunday-born are special people. A woman born on the Sabbath October 26, 1947 in the United States of America, in Akan an Akosua (Ewe Akoshiwor, Mtantse Esi and Bono Kosua) just missed the presidency of that motherland by a whisker. No matter form in which it is written or spoken, Sunday is Sunday and Sunday birth is Sunday birth, and therefore carries along with it those attributes of the Sunday-born. Courage, boldness, resilience, idealism, empathy, compassion, foresight, activism are all attributes of the Sunday-born. One of her or his major drawbacks, though, is that the Sunday-born suffers not the short-sighted and the mean. There's also no doubt Sunday-born are often controversial. Woman missed out to become UN Secretary-General. In Latin America, the machismos have forced the Brazil one out and they are harassing the Argentinian ex. Meanwhile a Sandinista wife vice-president to husband president has been created. It seems first in the world from my Google search. Woman is yet to rule the most powerful nation in the world. For God's own country, the icon of modern democracy, woman rule continues to be elusive, over 200 years. Coming close remains woman is yet to rule the world. Maybe it would happen sooner than later. In this our motherland, however, it better not happen with the congress mean and incompetent types who have caused judgment debt losses to the state and care less about social protection of children with disabilities and mental patients but more about branding thieving. I had put a lot faith in the CBC 'presidential poll tracker by Eric Grenier. I had been so impressed with his accuracy during the Canadian election of last year October that I totally dismissed the Rasmussen and other very few US same tracker kind. Akosua Clinton's run, albeit unsuccessfully, has reverberated globally. Interacting with friends all over, they have been expressing regrets shared by others they have interacted with, in what may be summed up as consternation. Friend L has been writing: 'Just reaching across continents to commiserate. The whole world is in for a rough ride. No. Not the best. Well see where it goes, but I fear it gives power to the rising racist and mysogynistic sentiments we are seeing here. Well, such sentiments of shock, concern, resilience, etc on social media, in conversations, with colleagues around the globe. It will be interesting to see what this brings.' Friend S: 'I felt ill all evening as the results came in. I didn't think he would be elected. I'm slowly recovering. Everyone at work today was dressed in dark colours and feeling very down. I don't get how opportunity is afforded all to realise a dream when there is so little equal opportunity. The stricture of a glass ceiling in access is so out of tune with the often-cited belief that that 'democratic' system is the greatest feat of humankind governance creation. My hunch had been that email would destroy the November 9 party. The Ga kenkey man made it happen. I am sure if the emails of all men, including the victor were subjected to the Clinton scrutiny, none will survive even to the point she did. They say hers risked public safety because she was a public officer. But compromising public safety seems equally dangerous with the private businessperson who engages a public enemy and doesn't get his transactions scrutinized. Like others not born on Sunday, the Sunday-born does not win all the time. But even without victory Akwasi or Akosua has an impact of an impression, such as winning the popular vote that lasts for the good. It hadn't occurred to me; but now when someone says another is a loser, I would want to know of what, for what, against what and at what expense. Even in her loss, Akosua Clinton still inspires heartbroken little girls all over the world. 'I am a female. I am mixed race. I am a child! And I cannot vote. But that will not stop me. From getting heard. Love is love. And love Trumps hate' (edition.cnn.com). Ways are sunny in the north. A little girl needs sparing from dark clouds gathering in the south. Dark clouds have hung over this motherland for the last eight years. In this motherland, though, little girls, little boys, big women and big men are desperately hoping for change that opens up opportunity by curing thievery and incompetence in public administration. By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh Confusion broke out at the Electoral Commission Ashanti regional office after NPP refused to accept the parliamentary ballot papers sent there. NPP regional chairman Bernard Antwi Boasiako who led the challenge said the ballot did not have NPP initials printed on it as the other parties have. He said apart from the logo printed on the ballot paper, there is no indication of the party to which the logo belongs. The ballots for the region arrived in Kumasi last night and the representatives of the various parties gathered to assess them Monday morning. Luv FMs Erastus Asare Donkor reported that all the political parties have their initials printed under their logo on the ballot paper except the NPP. A close look at the ballot paper, however, reveals New Patriotic Party which forms part of the partys logo, on the printout. -Myjoyonline Blood supply at the Volta Regional Hospital is woefully inadequate to cater for the growing demand for blood at the hospital, Regional Organiser of Blood Bank, Vincent Fekpe, has disclosed. According to him, the situation is not any different in other referral hospitals in the various districts and others which at times depend on the regional hospital for blood supply. The situation is forcing the Ho Municipal and other hospitals in the region that undertake blood transfusion to refer patients to the regional hospital when blood is needed for treatment. Mr Fekpe revealed this in Ho during a blood donation exercise organised by the Rotary Club of Accra-Ring Road Central, in partnership with the Rotary Club of Ho and the National Blood Service. It was under the theme: 'Give Blood, Save A Life'. The exercise is expected to raise not less than 250 units of blood which would be distributed to hospitals in the Ho Municipality that do blood transfusion. Participants were drawn from some second cycle schools in the municipality and the public as well. Mr Fekpe pointed out that the need for blood at the hospitals keeps increasing all the time and it, therefore, behoves the general public to donate blood frequently. The need for blood can happen at any time and nobody has to wait for an issue of blood to arise before they come to donate. Blood is needed all the time and the serious thing is that there are different types of groups, so if we don't collect blood every day or regularly, we will not get blood for some people, he added. Service Projects Director for Rotary Club of Ho, Joseph Dzamesi, said the shortage of blood at the blood banks across the country should be of concern to all, adding that the exercise is part of the club's objective of serving humanity. Maame Kwaaba Stephens, Service Projects Director of Rotary Club of Accra Ring Road Central, said the exercise which had already taken place in seven other regions is expected cover all the 10 regions in the country. She said in all, about 2,000 units of blood are expected to be raised nationwide to stock blood banks in the country. At the end of the exercise, about 270 units of blood were raised. From Gibril Abdul Razak, Ho The Supreme Court will today rule on the suit challenging the delayed declaration of special voting results by the electoral commission. NPP elder Dr. Amoako Tuffour, Ben Arthur and Adreba Abrefa Damoa are praying the apex court to compel the election management body to declare the results of early voting by journalists, security agencies and selected individuals the very day they vote, and not wait until the entire elections are done. According to them, delaying the results, as has been done in the past, is in breach of the constitution and must not be allowed to continue. The plaintiffs are asking a true and proper interpretation of Article 49 of the Constitution and Section 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992; PNDCL 284; the ballots to be cast pursuant to Regulation 23(1),(2),(3)(,(4),(5),(6),(7),(8)(9) and (10) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016; CI.94 by special voters in the December 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections ought to be counted and announced there and then on the date(s) of the special voting; by the Presiding Officers and the results at each polling station; before communicating same to the Returning Officer. They are also asking the court to instruct the EC to comply with the provisions of Article 49(2),(3)(a) and (b) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992 and Section 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992; PNDCL 284 in respect of special voting for the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections and any subsequent public election in the Republic of Ghana. Special voting is held for selected groups and individuals whose responsibilities will make it difficult for them to join the queue and vote on election day such as journalists, security personnel and observers. -Starrfmonline The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has presented the Aermacchi MB-339 decommissioned aircraft to the University of Ghana (UG), School of Engineering Sciences, Bachelor of Science in Aeronautic and Space Science Technology. The aircraft, according to specifications indicated, has a Rolls-Royce Viper MK 632 with a power of 4000IB on a speed of 485 KTS or 570 mph. It covered a total of 1273.50 hours before its last flight in 2004. Air Officer Logistics, Air Commodore AA Appiah, presenting the aircraft on behalf of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Samson Oje, at a brief handing over ceremony at the university to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof Ebenezer Oduro-Owusu, last Thursday described the donation of the aircraft as the evolution of collaboration for the common good of the two institutions and nation. This Aermacchi-339 jet trainer that you see here today is going to form the basis together with our laboratories and workshops at the School of Trade Training (S of TT) at the Air force Base, Accra for the Aeronautical and Space Science Technology programme of the University of Ghana, he mentioned. According to him, it would also serve as instructional equipment for practical training of young and enquiring minds to further push the frontiers of Civil & Military Engineering in Ghana. Prof Oduro-Owusu lauded the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and the Ghana Air Force for the donation, reiterating that that it would go a long way to boost academic work for both students and staff of the newly-introduced School of Engineering and Aeronautics Studies. This is a first in preparation for our proposed programme in Aeronautic and Space Science Technology programme, he stated. He explained that the University of Ghana Council on approving the establishment of the School of Engineering Sciences in 2002 agreed that the establishment would be carried out in two phases. By Solomon Ofori The leadership of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has expressed worry over how the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) as part of their crude and diabolic strategies to achieve the agenda 50-50 projects are buying airtime on some radio stations in the Eastern Region to tarnish the image of the flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwah Akuffo-Addo, in his hometown region. Addressing a press conference with party executives on Friday at Koforidua, Acting National Chairman of the NPP, Freddie Blay, described the move to spread falsehood against the NPP as unacceptable, unethical and an affront to the very regulations governing their operations. The NDC, as gathered, are using their regular political talk show hosts in the persons of Bobie Ansah and Maase Mugabe on two radio stations Eastern FM and Emark FM and their affiliate stations throughout the country to launch attacks on the personality of Nana Akuffo-Addo, as part of its strategy to keep the vulnerable majority in the dark and spread falsehood and propaganda against the NPP and its flagbearer. Freddie Blay mentioned that the party is not against buying or selling air time to the political parties, but to sell all the airtime of the major radio stations from morning to evening for the whole week and beyond the region with the sole aim of denying other parties, especially the NPP, an opportunity to let the public know the truth is not one to be condoned by the NPP or the public. The acting NPP national chairman pointed out that the canon of good journalistic practice demands fairness, objectivity, neutrality and honesty, hence the party expects the radio stations to be professional and work by nationalistic principles, rather than financial gains. We in the NPP will not let the NDC and Mr Mahama get away with it. The people must know, and with the help of the media and all other resources at our disposal, and with the goodwill and interest of the people we will do what it takes to let them know, Mr Blay stated. The acting chairman further added that the dumsor phenomenon caused by the NDC has affected the media programming and budgets, causing them grave losses. He, however, advised the media not to allow the situation to stop their radio stations from upholding professionalism and ethical principles. FROM Daniel Bampoe, Koforidua Ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor and four other prominent Ghanaians have been honoured with membership into the University of Ghana Alumni Association. At the 28th Alumni lecture on Thursday, Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana (UG), Emerita Professor Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, former Director of the Language Centre, UG, Professor John Owusu Gyapong, the former Pro-Vice Chancellor and Current Vice Chancellor of the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, and Mr Kofi Esson, former Chief of Staff at Tullow Oil Ghana Limited, were honoured to become members of the Alumni. Paa Kwesi Yankey, the Chairman of the University of Ghana Alumni Association, said the honorary membership was conferred on prominent members of the society who did not attend the University of Ghana but had in diverse ways served or helped the university to be a go to university. He said the individuals had contributed immensely to the development of the university and, therefore, the need to make them honorary members of the Association. Speaking on the topic: Who is them? Governance in the Educational Sphere, at the Great Hall of the university, Dr (Mrs) Myma Belo-Osagie, the Senior Managing Partner with Udo Udoma and Belo-Osagie, a leading Nigerian Corporate Law Firm, said the importance of education could not be over-emphasised and all must come together to build a solid educational sector for Ghana. She said in order to excel, the children should have access to comprehensive grammar books and well written literature and be taught how to communicate current technological and scientific concepts accurately and clearly. The writing of plays, movie scripts, television scripts, poetry and digital media content in Akan should be encouraged as should research on the language, proverbs and sayings, she elaborated. Dr Belo-Osagie indicated that she was interested in the education that imparts knowledge but is also purposeful in that it seeks to achieve, or support the achievement of, a particular goal or objective. She suggested that in order to better the lives of Ghanaians through economic development, the knowledge coming from, or generated by, the educational institutions must be education that did not only respond to the social, political and economic context of the country but also took cognisance of what the future of the country ought to look like. Marrakech, 14 November 2016 Following the historic announcement on 5 October by the United Nations that the threshold for ratification of the Paris Agreement had been achieved, leaders are now preparing to get down to business at the Sustainable Innovation Forum during COP22, co-convened by Climate Action in partnership with UNEP and the Moroccan Government. Technology transfer and mobilizing finance will be front and centre as countries discuss how to achieve their Nationally Determined Contributions and the modalities, procedures and guidelines that will go with this. An example of this technology transfer can be seen from the recipient of Frost & Sullivans 2016 Ugandan Sustainable Mobility Visionary Innovation Leadership Awards, Kiira Motors who will be a part of the Sustainable Innovation Forum and who are redefining mobility in Uganda with a range of products including Africas first solar bus. Kirra Motors vision extends far beyond standard vehicle manufacturing that seeks to improve the development of the Ugandan automotive industry by catalysing growth through its sustainable mobility solutions. Other technologies across decarbonising energy supply and waste management will also be featured at the leading business summit during COP22, with perspectives from global Climate and Environment Ministers a well as ACWA Power, Vattenfall, Siemens, Coca Cola and others. With recent news that developed countries are on track to provide developing nations with $100 billion a year to tackle climate change by 2020, climate finance will be a crucial component of COP22. The Sustainable Innovation Forum, will convene many of the key investors in Climate Finance from organisations including: International Finance Corporation, European Investment Bank, Global Environment Facility and Amundi, to discuss adopting and mainstreaming innovative green finance products and embedding climate considerations across the entire financial system. Of the expectations of COP22 and Sustainable Innovation Forum this year, Climate Action CEO, Nick Henry commented: Climate change is not just the single largest threat to this planet; it also presents a new $3 trillion green economy which is creating millions of green jobs enabling us to transition to a low carbon economy. The Sustainable Innovation Forum is a key catalyst behind this exploding green economy bringing together Sustainable Innovators, Investors and over thirty Governments and policy makers for a dynamic two days during COP22 . About Sustainable Innovation Forum Convened by Climate Action, November 14-15 in Marrakech and with the official endorsement of the Moroccan Government, SIF16 will unite over 1,000 high-level delegates around topics including renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, climate finance and low carbon innovation in developing regions. SIF16 will take place at the Four Seasons Hotel Marrakech, just outside of the UNFCCC Blue Zone, and is built upon year-round work from Climate Action and the UN Environment Programme. Convening cross-sector participants from the private sector, Government, Investors, UN agencies and international NGOs, a strong focus will be placed on discussions around national climate targets and the drive towards business innovations and solutions that need to be implemented in order to achieve these ambitious goals. Registration for the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP22 is now open, though soon to close. Last years event in Paris received over 6,000 registrations to attend, with over 5,000 following via live stream. Applications to attend are expected to be even higher this year, so registration is strongly advised as soon as possible. Obtain your delegate pass by visiting the website at www.cop22.org Marrakech, November 14, 2016 Today, during the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, local leaders from 7,100 cities announced the collective impact of their actions to accelerate world progress on meeting the commitments of the Paris Agreement and stressed the importance of expanding access to city-climate finance. By taking bold action and tracking their progress transparently, the cities of the soon-to-be Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy -- a coalition created by the Compact of Mayors and EU Covenant of Mayors -- are demonstrating what can be accomplished when cities are empowered and supported to reduce emissions, build resilience and work collaboratively. Cities already account for more than 70% of global energy-related GHG emissions and with urbanization on the rise, it is projected that nearly 66 percent of the worlds population will live in cities by 2050, making cities the epicenter of climate solutions. Through their commitments to the EU Covenant of Mayors and the Compact of Mayors, local leaders are working to build low-carbon resilient cities of the future. They take robust action on climate mitigation and adaptation through sectors such as buildings, transportation, waste and energy -- improving the quality life for their communities while working to achieve a carbon neutral world. Overall, the potential of the 596 commitments made by Compact cities are equivalent to reductions of nearly one billion tonsof greenhouse gas emissions annually by 2030 or 11.6 billion cumulative tons between 2010 and 2030. This represents 26% of what we know is possible globally through direct city action through action by these cities alone. Based on the over 6000 formal commitments the cities of the EUs Covenant of Mayors are projected to have an overall estimated reduction of 240 Mt CO2e i.e. 27% by 2020. These emissions reductions from Covenant cities may represent approximately 31% of the overall EU28 GHG emission reduction targetby 2020 compared to 2005. With a reduction of 23% achieved already in 2014, the Covenant cities are well on pace to reach this goal. [1] The aggregate numbers released by the EU Covenant of Mayors and Compact of Mayors demonstrate the power of cities to contribute to national climate targets--but cities can do even more when they are supported. The reports further demonstrate the importance of improving city-level climate financial access to unlock the potential for city action in areas such as sustainable infrastructure. Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change: "COP21 gave cities a voice in international climate talks for the first time, and that was a big reason for the summit's success. Now, COP22 is a chance to build on that momentum and give cities resources to speed their work.Cities must play a key role for the world to meet the goals set in Paris - and as this report shows, the growing Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy is helping to lead the way." Maros Sefcovic, Vice President of the European Commission: When we look at the impact of city climate action around the world, we can only draw one conclusion: cities are crucial partners in the world's fight against climate change. Cities of the Covenant of Mayors have already achieved an overall reduction of 23% in emissions and, more than ever before, they want to continue on this path. That's why we must build local capacity and strengthenpartnerships across all levels of government, not only in Europe, but at the global scale. That's why we need the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy: to empowercities to take bolder steps in this fight, tochallenge other cities to do the same, and to ensure that leaders from around the world recognize the significance of cities on achieving global climate goals." Mayor Paes of Rio de Janeiro, C40 Cities Chair: Mayors from around the world are making bold commitments to fight climate and tracking their progress transparently through the Global Covenant of Mayors. We are delivering results but our work is just beginninghere at COP22, I am relaunching the C40 Call for Action on Municipal Infrastructure Finance which outlines 6 key actions that national governments and financial institutions can take to support cities in accessing finance to deliver on their ambitions for a climate-safe world. Mpho Parks Tau, President of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and former Mayor of Johannesburg: While the steps we take in local communities around the world are vital to the future of our cities, they are also vital to the future of our planet. Cities are stronger when we work together -- the aggregate impact of commitments made through the EU Global Covenant of Mayors and the Compact of Mayors continues to grow and as an expanded coalition of over 7,000 cities under the Global Covenant of Mayors our impact will be even greater. We call on the international community to support our efforts and recognised them as official contributions to reaching the Paris Agreement. The merger between the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors in January 2017 will form the largest and first-of-its-kind coalition of cities committed to fighting climate change, and will also transform what is possible from the ground up. The Global Covenant of Mayors will increase the tools and opportunities for cities to reduce emissions while increasing climate resiliency and access to clean energy. This coalition aims to advance investments in local sustainability efforts in all sectors, and scale up local action to meet the global challenge of climate change. Cities that set carbon reduction targets and implement changes are the necessary forces propelling the world towards reaching the goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. Through the Global Covenant of Mayors, cities will share a common vision under a single global framework. They will commit to set, measure and be accountablefor achieving their climate goals, ultimately leading to coherent, quantifiable results of their impact on reducing global greenhouse emissions. By informing cities of the next steps beyond ratification, the world can achieve carbon neutrality in this century. To learn more about the aggregate impact of the Covenant of Mayors, click here, for the Compact of Mayors, click here, and to explore the full Global Covenant of Mayors brief, click here. About the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy formally brings together the Compact of Mayors and the EU Covenant of Mayors, the worlds two primary initiatives of cities to assist cities and local governments in their transition to a low-carbon economy, and demonstrate their global impact. Led by UN Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, Michael R. Bloomberg, and European Commission Vice President, Maros Sefcovic, the coalition comprises more than 7,100 cities across 6 continents and 119 countries, representing over 600 million people or 8% of the global population. About the Compact of Mayors The Compact of Mayors is a global coalition of mayors and city officials pledging to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions, enhance resilience to climate change, and to track their progress transparently. The Compact was launched in September of 2014 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, Michael R. Bloomberg. The Compact was activated under the leadership of the global city networks C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and with support from UN-Habitat, the UNs lead agency on urban issues. About the EU Covenant of Mayors Created in 2008 to implement the EU's 2020 climate and energy targets, the Covenant of Mayors has firm commitments of over 6800 cities in 58 countries resulting in Action Plans with an investment of over 110 billion. In 2015, Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete has launched the integrated Covenant of Mayors incorporating also adaptation to climate change and extending it to the 2030 timeframe. Covenant signatories voluntarily pledge action to support implementation of the European Union 40% greenhouse gas-reduction target by 2030 and the adoption of a joint approach to tackling mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The EU Covenant of Mayors is funded by the European Commission and currently operated by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), Climate Alliance, Energy Cities, EUROCITIES and the European Federation of Agencies and regions for Energy. The Supreme Court has dismissed a suit filed by Amoako Tuffuor and other seeking an early declaration of special voting results. President of the five-member panel hearing the case, Justice William Atuguba said a declaration of the results of special voting could prejudice the results of the general elections Other members of the panel are Mr Justice Jones Dotse, Mr Justice Anin Yeboah, Mr Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie and Mr Justice A.A. Benin. The vote is cast by some essential service categories including security forces and journalists. Expect more.... Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com It seems the Vice President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur will have no peace until he answers the 170 questions on the economy challenge posed him by the running mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. This is because Dr. Bawumia went to the Vice President's hometown in Moree in the Central Region looking for him to answer the questions. I hear this is the Vice President Amissah Arthur's hometown is that the case? I have been looking for him. He has 170 questions to answer and he has been running away so tell him I came to his hometown and he should answer the 170 questions. There is nowhere to hide again, he said. Dr. Bawumia made the remark when he was speaking at an NPP national youth rally at Moree in the Abura Asebu Kwamankese on Sunday. Bawumia at a lecture in September painted what he believes is the exact picture of the country's economy under the NDC theme The State of the Ghanaian Economy A Foundation of Concrete or Straw. Dr Mahamudu Bawumia He has since then been pursuing the Vice President for about three months now demanding answers but the latter though has promised to answer the queries at political rallies, he is yet to fully answer the questions. Mahama has destroyed future of Ghana's youth He also at the function took a jab at President John Mahama accusing him of shattering the future of the youth of Ghana. According to him the unemployment rate in the country has reached increasing levels and the economy continues to collapse under his watch making it difficult for the youth and Ghanaians as a whole from surviving. John Mahama came onto the scene claiming to be a youthful president who cares about the youth. He has been eight years in office. After eight years in office what do you have? He has destroyed the future of the youth. He has caused massive unemployment. Teachers cannot find jobs. Nurses cannot find jobs. We have a lot of public health workers who have completed training and are sitting at home, he lamented. Citifmonline The National Peace Council has set November 23, 2016, to organise a high level meeting of political party leaders and other civil society organisation to create awareness for peace ahead of the December elections. The meeting which is being organised in collaboration with the National House of Chiefs will commit the political leaders for peace and tranquility before, during and after the elections. This was disclosed to Joy News by the Chair of the National Peace Council, Prof Emmanuel Asante, Monday. The call for peace follows a weekend of violence by supporters of the two leading political parties- the governing National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party which culminated in the firing of guns and the pelting of stones at the private residence of the opposition party's flagbearer. What was expected to be a peaceful health walk in Accra by supporters of the governing party turned violent with reports of clashes between the supporters of the NDC and private security of the Nana Akufo-Addo. The reports about the cause of the violence is contradictory with the NDC and NPP giving a different account of what happened. Even the police, whose station is sited adjacent to the residence of the NPP flagbearer have not given a detailed account but have started investigations into the matter. The clashes raise concerns about the preparedness of the police to maintain the peace and security in the country. Chair of the National Peace Council believes it is time for people to put their emotions aside and imbibe the values of peace before, during and after the elections. "Our political leaders must speak up against the acts of violence, instead of defending the indefensible," he said. Prof Asante said everybody must do their best to ensure in this year's election. Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah Twelve Labour Unions are planning to embark on a strike over the transfer of their tier two pension contribution this week. The twelve, including the Ghana Medical Association(GMA), representing doctors and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) are demanding an immediate transfer of their pension contributions to their private fund managers. The Chairman of the Forum of Public Sector Labour Unions and Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, Dr Isaac Bampoe told Citi News the unions have given government Tuesday to make the transfer or face their wrath. Our demand was that the second tier should be transferred to our custodian banks but as we speak now, nothing has been doneIf it is transferred tomorrow then we do not have a problem but if not then we will have a meeting on the 16th to decide the way forward.The communique that was issued was very clear that if by 16th nothing happens then we are going to lay down our tools. What we are saying is that the money should be transferred to our custodian banks. We started this fight two years ago, Mr. Bampoe said. Meanwhile the National Labour Commission (NLC) says it has not received any formal notification from the twelve labour unions about their intended strike. The NLC said it will therefore be illegal for them to embark on such an action. As we speak no party has presented that particular dispute for resolution to the National Labour Commission. We have to receive notice from GNAT. We also have to receive notification from the Concerned Teachers before they can take such a decision. By: Marian Ansah/citifmoonline.com/Ghana Follow @EfeAnsah Morocco, in the eyes of many people, is the place where anything is possible. Through a range of policies and actual programs, the Kingdom seeks sustainable human development and decentralization, achieved through participatory democratic methods. Civil organizations are capable of strengthening participatory democracy and creating federations for sustainable development owing to the existence of Moroccan frameworks that encourage this process. To achieve scale, the model of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) - a profit / non-profit hybrid - is to invest strategically in training, seeds and infrastructure, thus enabling local cooperatives engaged in organic agriculture to generate further revenue from this and carbon offsets to finance their own human development projects. Enabling students since 2008 While other vital factors include finance and effective facilitation of participatory meetings, university students constitute a particular group within society that can help catalyze community action and facilitate the planning of their own sustainable projects. They are in a perfect position to gain capacities, perform a management functions within development projects, create jobs and empower themselves and others. Since 2008, HAF has been managing experiential training programs at Moroccan universities to provide students with that life-changing opportunity. Thanks to the National Endowment for Democracy and the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the HAF training Center in Mohammedia with the Faculty of Law, Economics, and Social Science helped create a successful basis for expansion. Programs for students are currently scheduled to take place at locations across the Kingdom including SUP MTI in Beni Mellal and the Center for Human and Social Studies and Research in Oujda. As part of this mission, in October I experienced a day Ill always remember, visiting Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (USMBA), in Fez. I greatly enjoyed speaking with the inspiring people who study and work there and am scheduled to return on November 22nd to talk with students about creating development initiatives in Morocco. The university has 100,000 students, about three percent of whom are international. Its president, Professor Omar Assobhei, and his team are at the helm of a community determined to advance sustainable human development activity. Mostafa Mouslih is president of Volunteer Experts for Development, a non-profit organization that helps build the Universitys programs promoting sustainability. USMBA incubates start-ups and, allied to this, possesses a state-of-the-art, well-utilized research medical lab for genetic analysis. A year ago this month HAF and the university entered into partnership to create the Center for Sustainable Development and Innovation. Its purpose is to promote student and community engagement, acting as a Moroccan and international hub for participatory action and analysis, community consensus, implementation and evaluation. The circumstances in which the partnership agreement was signed with presidents Assobhei and Mouslih were as memorable as my visit that just took place. We set aside a moment during a reception held at the residence of the United States Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco, Dwight Bush Sr., in the presence of Mr. Andre Azoulay, advisor to the King of Morocco. The event itself celebrated House of Life - an interfaith tree nursery and integrated agricultural project of HAF (as well as a commitment-to-action of the Clinton Global Initiative). Launching an endeavor - on this occasion with USMBA - amidst a of moment unity and hope in another context hopefully set things on the best possible footing and serve as a point to consider when planning future significant organizational events An ongoing success story During our first year partnering with USMBA, HAFs Mouhssine Tadlaoui-Cherki led a very well-received training program with 66 students (28 women and 38 men) in identifying and organizing for community priority projects. We assisted workshops for critical analysis of the challenges the students faced in their lives, leading to the creation of a fully-sketched proposed program of community development, including service learning and mentorship for vulnerable youth. This November HAFs Fatima Zahra Laaribi is scheduled to facilitate a four-day empowerment workshop for women of the university utilizing the Imagine approach developed by the Empowerment Institute . The methodology teaches individuals and groups how to transform their limiting beliefs and behavior patterns that are holding them back from their potential in a range of areas - physical, material and spiritual. It helps them direct their creative energies toward achieving what they really want in their own life, working on the premise that it takes courage to dream and knowledge to bring those dreams to fruition. HAF and its community nursery partners have more than 500,000 young trees available for planting this season! At COP 22 on November 17th, HAF is holding a Carbon Auction that will expand the support for trees we can plant and monitor with school communities. At noon on January 16 th , 2017 , HAF and partners throughout the country are holding public tree-planting events to which all are invited. On this day we plan to share 5,000 trees and interactive environmental activities with schoolchildren partnering with the Education Delegation in Ifrane province, where I visited just before coming to Fez. In Ifrane, HAF is also fully dedicated to the success of a community tree nursery planted on land contributed by Al Akhawayn University. With USMBA, our goal is to plant 10,000 trees, many of them with children on January 16th. Moroccos human development model, driven by participation, needs to succeed for itself, and in addition inspire the MENA region and world community. It stands to reason, then, that it is vital to create and fund university programs which build the needed capabilities of students and the public for local planning and management of development. Such programs harness empowerment as profoundly for the students as they do for the communities with whom they learn, research and act to create change. I am reminded from my visits that there is nothing like being present with partners, focusing with them to plan steps to realize their dreams of sustainable development, which are fully achievable. HAF offers fantastic volunteer opportunities in Fez, Oujda, Mohammedia, and Beni Mellal. Could you teach matters of sustainable development in classes at the universities of English as a second language, and at the same time coordinate HAF programs? Professional fulfillment awaits! Please feel free to contact me: [email protected] Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir, a sociologist, is president of the High Atlas Foundation, a Moroccan-U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to participatory development in Morocco. Former Methodist Bishop of Kumasi, Rev. Prof. Osei Sarfo-Kantanka wants police to ban political party health walk until after the December elections. His call follows Sundays incident in Accra where NDC supporters on a health walk clashed with their NPP counterparts near NPP flagbearer, Nana Akufo Addos residence. A similar exercise at Asawasi in Kumasi during a recent tour by President Mahama nearly resulted in violence by for intervention of security agents. Reverend Sarfo Kantanka says such activities can only heighten tension in the country and do little to the electoral fortunes of the parties at this stage of the electioneering. The police can also say that this is the kind of campaigns we can not control but people can go ahead with their own health walk. They can take them to the supreme court but the police can say that they can not control them, he said. Prof. Sarfo-Kantanka charges political party leadership to prevail on their supporters to stop provoking opponents. They should let the peace council have their rest and concentrate on other things rather than always solving disputesdont go and provoke another and let the peace council come in, he added. Nestled on a peninsula overlooking the world's biggest graveyard of ships, the port of Nouadhibou may hold the key to a better future for Mauritania's 3.9 million people, of whom 42% live in poverty. For years, Mauritania's economy ran on the iron ore buried deep beneath its Sahara desert sands. But Chinese demand for iron ore has fallen, and the government is putting more hope in its Atlantic coastal waters, some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. "Mauritania's fishing industry could boost exports and create jobs, but its ports will need to become more competitive," says Mark Assaf, in charge of UNCTADs port management programme, active in some 200 ports around the globe. In 2016, Mauritania became the 34th country to join the programme, aiming to promote Nouadhibou as a door to the world, through which to export its processed fish. Foreign boats may fish in Mauritanian waters, but they currently take their catch elsewhere. Every year, some 1.2 million tons of tuna, shrimp and other fish are caught in Mauritania's waters. But just 5% of this is processed locally. According to industry executives, landing fish in Nouadhibou, Mauritania's only fishing port, is more expensive than in the Canary Islands nearby. In 2013, Mauritania's government launched the free zone of Nouadhibou to improve the port's competitiveness and to attract fish processing industries such as tuna canning. In 2014, it completed an $18-million extension to accommodate bigger vessels. "Upgrading a port needs new infrastructure but also investment in human resources," Mr. Assaf says. "Ultimately, a port's performance depends on the quality of its management." The UNCTAD TrainForTrade Port Management Programme took a first crucial step last month when 11 senior port managers completed a workshop for instructors held at the port of Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. These newly-trained instructors will then deliver the first cycle of training to around 25 middle managers over the next two years, working closely with UNCTAD experts and managers from other ports in the programme. "In the port of Douala in Cameroon, a manager took what he learned from our programme, reorganizing the cargo loading and unloading operations to speed the port's work by 30-40%," Mr. Assaf says. According to World Bank data, delays in ports add roughly 10% to the cost of imported goods, more in many cases than tariffs. For exports the harm is worse. The 22nd Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) kick-started Monday, 7 November in Marrakesh (Morocco). A collaborative partnership between the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union Commission (AUC), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the New Partnership for Africas Development (NEPAD) established the Africa Pavilion in the blue zone of the COP22 village, dedicated to engagement, networking and dialogue. The Pavilion also aims to provide a platform for the voices of the continent to be heard. The Pavilion embodies the united front of an Africa speaking with one voice in articulating its interests given the high stakes of climate change negotiations Over the next two weeks of COP22, the Africa Pavilion will feature a dynamic program of round-tables, conferences and bilateral meetings, where key issues of adaptation and mitigation; green industrialization; agriculture; transport; health; water and sanitation; biodiversity and innovation will be discussed. Both COP21 President and French Minister of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, in charge of international climate negotiations, Segolene Royal and COP22 President and Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Salaheddine Mezouar, visited the Africa pavilion in the early days of COP22. The pavilion is drawing crowds with its unique architecture and interesting features such as living green walls. Several African heads of State and high level officials are also expected to visit the pavilion during the High level week of COP22, and especially on Africa Day, Wednesday 16 November 2016. COP22 is the fourth COP to take place on African soil - the second time in Morocco presenting an important opportunity to place special emphasis on the continents needs and proposals. Africa is among the worlds regions most vulnerable to climate change and its key priorities include ensuring that global ambitions and historic responsibilities regarding means of implementation, particularly predictable financing, to facilitate low carbon climate resilient development are in line with the continents development goals. COP22 is dubbed the COP of action, providing a clear roadmap for the implementation of commitments made in the Paris Agreement which came into force on 4 November 2016. 14.11.2016 LISTEN Three thousand, seven hundred and twelve (3,712) graduands on Saturday 12th November, 2016 graduated from the University for Development Studies ( UDS) to join the workforce of the nation and the international world. The graduating schools included; the faculty of education, faculty of agriculture, faculty of agribusiness, faculty of Renewable and Natural Resources, school of medicine, faculty Health and Allied Sciences. In his opening address,the vice chancellor of the University, professor Gabriel Ayume Teye tasked the graduands to discharge their duties with professionalism when engage anywhere in the world. According to, the school in its efforts to give the world best products has maintained discipline as a key factor in its training. Professor G. A Teye also tasked the graduating students to go into entrepreneurship rather than waiting for white colour jobs. He said eras when employment awaited for graduands is a history now and so the need for graduands to create jobs for themselves and others in society. On his part, president John Dramani Mahama in a speech read on his behalf by professor Kwesi Botciiny told the graduands who are likely to be absorbed by companies, Industries as well government agencies to show transparency and truthfulness to their working environment. And pledged government's continual support to the school so that it serve Ghana and the international world the best of products. He used the occasion to call on students to accept posting to the rural areas of the country to give out their best whenever they are posted during the university's community outreach program. On election 2016, president John Mahama reiterated his commitment to ensuring peaceful electioneering process come December 7. According to him, government for four years now has been preparing for the elections and its confident that, the December pools will be free, fair and transparent. He said adequate investment has been made into the National security in terms of logistics, tools and personnel and called on Ghanaians to be peaceful themselves so the country will be peaceful before, during and after the December pools. Faculty of education established three years ago was adjudged best faculty of year with Mr. Afful Alfred Parker, a nurse anaesthesia from the faculty of Health and Allied Sciences was also adjudged best male graduating Student as well as overall best graduating student for the year 2016 and went home 3000.00 Ghana cedis . Present at the ceremony were; the deputy northern regional minister and parliamentary candidate for NDC for the sagnarigu constituency Alhaji A.B.A. Fuseini, vice chancellor of the school, prof. G. A. Teye, dens of the various faculties, northern regional police commander, DSP Ken Yeboah, family relation and friends of the graduating students, chiefs, religious leaders, the media and general public. 2016 election campaigning has clearly shown Ghanaians the true definition of who we are as a people and how polarised we have become along party/tribal lines. Sadly as it may be, social media has also contributed immensely to this divide because of the falsehoods that is propagated on Facebook/Twitter/Blogging/Instagram etc etc with no gatekeeper ensuring that these falsehoods are debunked in the public domain. Moving forward, it's clear all Political parties in the country agree to the non violence posture which is very necessary for our social economic development as a people, therefore Ghanaians abroad vehemently disapproves of any form of violent skirmishes being propagated by some members of certain political parties and having party members like Titus Glover of the NPP saying on TV (UTV) that NPP members should defensively position themselves so that even anyone slaps them one they should slap that person four times ., that's the danger of desperately wanting change. The cry of the country's largest opposition for change, hold its legitimacy to the fact that its members and the cronies around their flag bearer Nana Akuffo Addo all want to amass wealth just as they assume the current government is supposedly doing , and this leaves undecided voters into asking the million dollar question-- what proves that the Nana Akuffo Addo team is different from the rest of Ghanaians????? An answer to that is NO, but what differentiates the ruling NDC party from those wishing to gain power , is the greed factor and thirst/hunger for greed. All these people around Nana Akuffo Addo only want one thing and one thing only, and that's to amass wealth /buy V8s / Building extravagant houses., etc which sadly is the Ghanaian cancer. So to stop this form political cancer, Ghanaians need to vote for CONTINUITY to ensure that development continues and our mindsets shaped accordingly, because the major agenda of the NDC going into elections is to start holding its own accountable, and Ghanaians would begin to see how the rule of law would work , and the assurance Ghanaians would begin to feel that no one goes scot free . Finally, President John Mahama is assuring Ghanaians that a vote for him would also give the government the mandate to correct the mistakes made amidst the country's developmental transition, for Ghanaians to know that crime does not pay, and all those that are found guilty would be brought to book starting from within Government apparatus to set the stage for subsequent governments to follow suit. Vote for CONTINUITY!! Vote NDC!! EYE ZU !! CONTINUITY itself is Change ! Everyone deserves a second chance to make right where he/she went wrong . A. Dodoo Member NDC HOLLAND Election 2016 At the 2016 meeting, which took place from the 7th to the 9th of November, 2016, The embassy of France in Ghana was represented by Mr Jean-Luc Mure, Head of Coorperation, French Embassy and Mr. Daniel Doe, Campus France coordinator. Two representatives from the University of Ghana Legon and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) also attended the meeting. This year, Rencontres Campus France celebrated the African continent during its meeting held in Paris from the 7th to the 9th of November, 2016. The ceremony, which was opened by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Director General of Campus France and Rector of the Francophone University Agency, witnessed the participation of 140 French universities and tertiary institutions and about thirty African universities, where for 2 days, ideas where exchanged about cooperation programmes on student/teacher mobility and research. Ghanas objectives for participating in this event were to develop exchange programs between universities in Ghana and France, to promote the teaching of French in tertiary institutions and to facilitate bilateral and multilateral agreements. After Jean Marc Ayraults visit to the Ghana stand during the commencement of the program, Beatrice Khaiat, director of Campus France, took the opportunity, in the presence of Ghanas Ambassador to France, to congratulate representatives from Ghanaian universities, the French embassy and Campus France for their active participation in the success of this meeting centred on Africa. She congratulated them for the increase in the number of students from an Anglophone country who were pursuing studies in France (over 200 students in 2016, compared to 140 in 2015). Together with Jean-Paul de Gaudemar, rector of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, Beatrice Khaiat, expressed the desire to participate in the Campus France Ghana fair, in October 2017 where the 4th Rencontres Universitaires France-Ghana will be held as well at the launch of the France - Ghana Alumni site. On November 7-11, 2016 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Republic of South Africa and Namibia non-resident Andrei Molchan visited Windhoek (Namibia) to participate in the international conference Invest in Namibia. The Belarusian delegation also included representatives of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce, the Minsk Tractor Plant and OJSC BelAZ. During the visit, the Ambassador of Belarus met with the President of the Republic of Namibia, Hage Geingob, and the Deputy Prime Minister Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. During the meeting, the sides discussed the state and prospects for the development of bilateral relations. A.Molchan also met with the Minister of Higher Education, Training and Innovation of Namibia, representatives of other ministries and authorities, the Head of the Namibian Chamber of Commerce, the Executive Secretary of the Namibia Chamber of Mines, and the Leadership of the state mining corporation Epangelo Mines and Namdeb. The parties discussed prospects of using the Belarusian equipment and technologies for agricultural mechanization of Namibia, issues of cooperation in higher education and technical training, as well as the collaboration in the areas of exploration and mining. Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Kai Mykkanen will visit Tanzania and Kenya on 1419 November 2016. The two countries are Finlands long-term partners in development cooperation but now they are hoping for more investments and trade with Finland. The Minister will be accompanied by a delegation of 24 Finnish companies and organisations. Trade will not replace development aid but without a strong input from the private sector there is a risk that the UN global sustainable development goals will not be reached. Finland will devote particular attention to reinforcing the private sector in the partner countries because that will create new jobs, tax revenue and sustainable solutions to energy, water and other basic necessities, Mykkanen says. The Finnish delegation will have the opportunity to showcase their solutions to ministers and state institutions in the two host countries. In Tanzania Mykkanen will also attend a forestry investment conference and inaugurate a central control room for electricity supply built in Finnish-Tanzanian cooperation. The Minister will also open a geospatial business event organised by the universities of Turku and Dar es Salaam. In Kenya Mykkanen will attend three events dealing with clean energy, water as well as construction and architecture. In both countries the Minister will also visit Finlands development cooperation projects. Tanzania and Kenya are among the biggest economies in East Africa with an annual growth rate of 47%. Kenya has succeeded in becoming a lower middle income economy, while Tanzania still has the lowest income level. The business environment has improved in both countries partly as a result of development aid. As an old development cooperation partner, Finland has good opportunities to increase trade in the East African market of 170 million consumers, Mykkanen says. The visit is organised together with Finpro, which is part of Team Finland. The companies and organisations in the Ministers Team Finland delegation represent Finnish expertise in forestry, energy, cleantech, water, architecture and geospatial technologies. The following companies and organisations will be represented in the Ministers delegation: Aalto University Adult Education Centre Kouvola Aquazone Oy Arbonaut Ltd Architects Office/Arkkitehtitoimisto Ponkala Oy AUD Office for Architecture and Urban Design Ltd Eltel Networks Oy Fimatec Oy Finnish Agri-Agency for Food and Forest Development Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation Ltd. (FINNFUND) Finnish Water Forum Finnvera Plc Geological Survey of Finland Indufor Oy Kepa, Finnish NGO platform KPA Unicon Oy MAFI Oy NIRAS Finland Sigge Architects Solar Water Solutions Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation/BEAM University of Turku Valmet Technologies Oy Vionice Ltd Wartsila Netherlands B.V. Inquiries: Heini Pulli, Team Leader (Kenya), tel. +358 50 431 7613, Matti Tervo, Desk Officer (Tanzania), tel. +358 40 132 1308, Unit for Eastern and Western Africa, and Pasi Rajala, Special Adviser to Minister Mykkanen, tel. +358 400 464 393. By Josephine Naaeke, Morocco, Marrakech (Courtesy UNFCCC) Morocco, Marrakesh, Nov. 14, GNA - Three international institutions have announced an African Package for climate-resilient ocean economies at the ongoing COP22 in Marrakech. They are the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Bank and African Development Bank. The package, which is in the form of technical and financial assistance, is to mobilise 500-900 million US dollars and implement programmes linked to climate change adaptation and mitigation over the period of 2017-2020. The initiative is to support ocean economies in Africa and build greater resilience of coastal areas to climate change based on the countries' specific priorities and objectives. This was made known at a special Oceans Action Event which brought together high-level participants from around the world to advance oceans and climate change issues and to pledge concrete actions in support of the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal 14, which is to conserve and use the oceans, seas and marine resources sustainably. According to Maria Helena Semedo, the FAO Deputy Director-General for Natural Resources; 'African coastal communities are some of the most affected by climate change'. She said the FAO was fully engaged and ready to be at the heart of those significant developments to work alongside countries and communities to reduce their vulnerabilities, build their resilience, and maximise opportunities emerging from climate change. Laura Tuck, the World Bank Group Vice President for Sustainable Development, said the World Bank was pleased to be a part of the international mobilisation of financing in response to the Mauritius CommuniquA. The package presented could make a significant contribution to meeting the adaptation needs of African countries as they developed their ocean economies. Dr Biliana Cicin-Sain of the Global Ocean Forum, said: 'The Global Strategic Action Initiative on Oceans and Climate, which involves parties, IGOs, NGOs, academic institutions, private sector groups, and local authorities from all world regions, will implement actions identified in the roadmap to safeguard the health of the oceans and the wellbeing of coastal and island populations'. Morocco announced its Blue Belt Initiative aimed at building the resilience of coastal communities and promoting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in keeping with SDG14 expectations. Focus areas will include integrated coastal monitoring systems, sustainable fisheries and aquaculture throughout the entire value chain. Solutions for adaptation and contributions to curbing greenhouse gas are proposed as part of a priority roadmap for implementation. The initiative is supported by an investment plan and capacity building program of 60 million US dollars over the period of 2017-2020, building on the Blue Growth Initiative launched at COP 21 in Paris. COP22 Ocean Action partners have released a Strategic Action Roadmap on Oceans and Climate: 2016 to 2021, which provides a vision for action regarding oceans and climate in the next five years. This addresses six ocean and climate issue areas: the central role of oceans in regulating climate, mitigation, adaptation, displacement, financing, and capacity development. GNA By A.B. Kafui Kanyi, GNA Ho, Nov. 14, GNA - Mr Dele Momodu, the Publisher of the Ovation International Magazine, has asked Ghanaians to make the 2016 General Election 'entertaining'. He said elections ought to be pleasurable and that there was no need for fighting and unnecessary tension. Mr Momodu said this at the unveiling of 'Ghana at Work' special edition of the Magazine in Ho, the Volta Regional capital. He commended Ghana for the success of past elections and urged the citizenry to exhibit same maturity at the December polls to consolidate the country's democracy. Mr Momodu described Ghana as 'the Pride of Africa' and urged the electorate to preach and act peacefully for an event-free and credible election. The edition, aimed at 'celebrating Ghana, focuses on the developmental projects under President John Dramani Mahama'. Hundreds of people who attended the unveiling ceremony, characterised by musical performances, were given free copies. GNA By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA Takoradi, Nov. 14, GNA - The Parent Teacher Association (PTA) of the Takoradi Secondary School (Tadisco) at the weekend handed over an eight-seater aqua-privy toilet facility valued at GH142, 920.00 to the school to ensure a sanitary environment. Mr Julius Mensah, the PTA Chairman, addressing parents, guardians and students at the commissioning of the facility, said the leadership of the PTA realised that the school lacked places of convenience therefore some students defecated in the nearby bush which posed health risk to them. He said the PTA executives negotiated with a building contractor to put up the toilet facility for the school to be paid by instalment. Mr Mensah said the Association would pay GH15, 951.95 per term for a period of three years to the contractor and urged the students and management of the school to take proper care of the facility. Some students who spoke to the GNA expressed their happiness for the project, indicating that the absence of the sanitary facilities affected their academic performance, especially the female students, whenever they experienced their menstruation. They applauded the PTA for a laudable initiative and pledged to take good care of the facility. GNA 14.11.2016 LISTEN Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - The Canadian High Commissioner, Heather Cameron, has launched the Canadian-funded project 'Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Market Development (RUSHING)' in Tamale. International Development Enterprises (iDE Ghana) is implementing the five-year project valued at 10.7 million Canadian dollars. The RUSHING project uses a private-sector-led approach to increase demand for sanitation products amongst the rural population. The project aims to produce and sell over 61,500 toilet facilities and reach over 300,000 people in Ghana's northern regions by increasing people's demand for toilet facilities while supporting local business investment in the sector to meet the demand. A statement issued in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency said access to sanitation facilities was a major challenge in northern Ghana. 'According to 2015 data, only nine per cent of rural Ghanaians have access to improved sanitation and 77 per cent of people practice open defecation. 'Approximately 19,000 Ghanaians die each year from diarrheoa, including 5,100 children under five - nearly 90 per cent of which is directly attributed to poor water, sanitation and hygiene,' it added. The statement said iDE Ghana had just completed the design phase of the project which focused on building an in-depth understanding of targeted communities to ensure that the product would meet the needs of potential customers. Prototypes were tested by rural Ghanaians and the winning toilet design is now being produced by a small local business in Tamale while iDE is marketing the toilets under the brand "Sama Sama". The statement said during the visit the Canadian High Commissioner met with Brian Kiger, iDE Ghana Country Director, and the project team and was impressed by iDE's business model. 'In almost every area of modern life, companies market their products to the consumer. Applying business models to the sale of toilets can help build a supply chain, and a growing local industry, for better sanitation. 'Not only does the development of this supply chain provide Ghanaians with choices, it can help improve health outcomes in communities across Northern Ghana,' the statement said. It quoted Mr Ishawu Abdul Rahaman from Savelugu, a customer of 'Sama Sama' toilet as saying: 'We feel proud as the first family customer of this newly-designed toilet. 'Since its installation in our house, everyone knows that our family no longer needs to relieve themselves in the open. Our purchase has generated a lot of interest from neighbours and friends who now wish to know how to buy a toilet.' For Mrs Aliatu Abdullah, another Sama Sama customer, the new toilet has provided her with a sense of safety as she no longer had to go wandering in the bush at night. iDE designs and delivers market-based solutions in agriculture and WASH to develop lasting solutions to poverty. Their approach rests on designing business models that embrace the poor as business owners, sales agents, producers, and employees, creating a self-sustaining climate of opportunity. GNA By Hallo Benjamin, GNA Accra, Nov 14, GNA - The Kayoro Community in Greater Accra has installed Pio Charles Kolase Awiah as their first chief to help bring the indigenes of Kayoro residing in the area together, to foster unity and to plan development projects for their hometown. Kayoro is along the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, in the Upper East Region. Mr Joseph R. Mumuni, the chairman of Kayoro Development Association, said historical records, however, showed that the people of Kayoro migrated from the Lower Nile Valley in Sudan to Burkina Faso, and later settled at their present location. He said Kayoro was one of the most neglected communities in the Region, so it lacked social amenities such as good roads, educational facilities, public places of convenience, a library and a community centre. Pio Awiah, in an interview with Ghana News Agency, said they needed a Community Day Senior High School in the District to facilitate the attainment of higher education. On the general election, Pio Awiah cautioned the media to be circumspect in their reportage before, during and after the event. He said elections were all about choices and should, therefore, not be characterised by violence, adding that, Ghana needed peace for her developmental progress. The association was formed in Accra four years ago to support developmental projects in the community. GNA To be an Inspector General of Police in Ghana is no mean achievement. One might have gone through all the crooked ways in the police service to reach the position of Inspector General of Police and for that matter should be commended, revered and be celebrated especially when one is about leaving the office for retirement. It's a span of dedicated life, sacrifice and commitment to the police service and the good people Ghana. The risks and near deaths situations that one might have gone through leaves a lot to be desired. One ends up wasting over 30 years of precious life in the police only to be driven away like chicken when it's time to leave office, all because of the way things are done in the police coupled with political machinations and interests. I am still young in the police but as young as I am, I have seen the tenures of 5 Inspector Generals of Police since 2008 that I joined the police service. From Mr. Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong to Madam Elizabeth Mills Robinson, to Mr. Paul Tawiah Quaye, to Mr. Mohammed Alhassan and now to Mr. John Kudalor. One may argue that Madam Elizabeth Mills Robinson only acted and was never an IGP but she still held the office of the Inspector General of Police so it makes no difference. All these Inspector Generals of Police only appeared as their appointments were accompanied by massive media publications and public notices. All of them, apart from the serving Inspector General of Police, they disappeared from the office after their tenures office were over. They left the police on a very quiet note. I am very sure apart from internal hand-over done inside the police headquarters, nothing meaningful is done to bid them farewell. They come to office like heroes and leave the office like thieves in the night. Should that be the case? At least some proper handing over ceremonies should be conducted for these people who served the police service and mother Ghana in diverse ways accompanied by parades conducted in their honour and eventually pulled out from office colourfully, ceremonially and beautifully. A proper send-off ceremony should be conducted for the the out going Inspector Generals of Police to enable them thank the police service and the good people of Ghana for giving them the opportunity to serve them in their capacities as police officers and above all, rise to the highest office of the police service as Inspector Generals. They should be given the opportunity to make amends with the people they might have offended in the course of discharging their duties as police officers particularly their fellow police officers through speeches during their send-offs. They then wish the police service well and ask for prayers from the members of service and loved ones as they leave public life to a private one. The incoming Inspector General of Police then takes over and thanks the outgoing Inspector General of Police through a speech. Elaborate his vision for the police service and what he intends to do to improve the better, and lots of members of the police service. Other distinguished personalities like the president or the vice president could as well as the interior minister also thank the outgoing Inspector General of Police through speeches for the service rendered to the police service in particular and the good people of Ghana in general. At the close of the ceremony, the outgoing Inspector General of Police is pulled from office as he waves members of the police service he is leaving behind and that should be the end for a life well lived in the police service but not the situation whereby outgoing Inspector Generals of police leave the office very disgruntled and care less about whatever that occurs in the police as they go on retirement forgetting that once a police is always a police . As the time they may be leaving the office, there is a political pressure on them to pack bag and baggages to leave at an ultimatum. The incoming IGP is so excited to takeover from the outgoing IGP forgetting that the same thing would be done to him when it's time to leave the office. The last time I took part of pull out ceremony was when DCOP/Mr David Ampa Benin was transferred from the Volta Region as the regional commander to the National Police Headquarters. The ceremony was nicely organized as a parade was conducted in his honour and in attendance were regional minister, security chiefs in the region and other dignitaries. They all delivered heartwarming speeches and bid him well in his new endeavours. We eventually pulled him out of the regional police headquarters and that was the end. In this our democratic dispensation, we cannot change the fact that the president will always appoint the the Inspector General of Police as stipulates by the constitution but we as a service should accord our past IGPs and serving IGPs the needed respect and organise proper transition process for the police service. It is always a case of outgoing IGP not willing to leave the office and the incoming IGP on the heels of the outgoing IGP to leave the office as soon as possible. This has been the days of our lives in the police service. Our heroes are not appreciated and celebrated. God bless Ghana Police Service Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III [email protected] #Ahantadiaries_2016_11_14 Accra, Ghana, 14 November, 2016 Emirates Skywards, the award-winning frequent flyer programme of Emirates airline has signed on The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) as its latest partner, enabling members to redeem Miles for an annual digital subscription to the worlds leading source of business news. This is the first time Emirates Skywards has partnered with a global publication to provide an annual digital membership, which will give Emirates Skywards members unlimited digital access to WSJs world-leading markets coverage and industry scoops. Emirates Skywards members, regardless of tier, can redeem an annual digital subscription to The Wall Street Journal for 20,000 Miles, while Platinum members can receive the same annual membership for free. All Emirates Skywards members opting in will be able to enjoy Wall Street Journal Plus (WSJ+), giving unique access to exclusive events and offers. The latest addition to Emirates Skywards list of partners caters to its diverse group of members and provides even more opportunities to redeem Miles within the lifestyle space. Additional memberships can also be redeemed with Skywards Miles as gift options to be shared with friends and family. Emirates Skywards is in its 16th year and has over 16 million members. In addition to special offers with partner airlines, hotels and retail brands, members also enjoy special access to global sporting, arts and cultural events. Accra, GHANA The United States condemns all political violence in Ghana, especially any violent acts directed at political candidates, their homes or families. While campaigns can be vigorous and sometimes contentious, violence has no place in the electoral process. In the period leading to and following Ghanas elections on December 7, we call on all actors to remain peaceful and respect the democratic process. We encourage all parties to make it clear to their constituents that any violence or attempts to use intimidation to disrupt the democratic process is unacceptable. The United States will consider all options to hold responsible those who incite political violence, including denying or revoking visas. The United States applauds Ghanas tradition of peaceful, democratic elections. The international community is working with the Electoral Commission, National and Regional Peace Councils, NGOs, civil society organizations, the media, the police and others to support Ghanas efforts to hold credible and nonviolent presidential elections. We urge all to participate peacefully in the democratic processbefore, during and after Election Day. The government of the United States does not support a particular candidate or a particular party. We support democracy. We will continue to work with the freely elected government of Ghana, just as we always have. The Amanonehene of Akyem Awisa in the Birim South District of the Eastern of Ghana has called on all Ghanaians to promote and project adolescent health right among adolescents in the country. According to the chief most adolescents have little or no knowledge about their stages of growth and their health rights. A situation which is worrying. He is therefore calling on the Ghana Health Service, the Ghana Education Service, Religious bodies, District Assemblies, social welfare centers not forgotten the media to help safeguard and promote this all important subject matter since a recent research conducted in our area indicates that rights to information on health care is important and highly appreciated. Nana Nuako Oppong Kwakye was speaking at a ceremony at Akyem Awisa to Commission a Herald Foundation Youth Information Center. The Akyem Awisa Youth Center is the third of its kind built in the Eastern Region by the Herald Foundation with support from Umea, Ghana Union, a Swedish sister organization of Herald Foundation. The youth information center is stuffed with playing tools as well as research tools such as draft, Oware, ludu, Computer games and computers with access to internet as well as materials on Adolescent Health Right where the youth in the community can go to play and to learn. The center is to promote studies on health related issues as well as playing and learning grounds for the youth of Akyem Awisa. Nana Nuako Oppong Kwakye who is himself also the director of Herald Foundation said the coming into existence of the youth center is a dream come true for him since it was a pledge he made to the people of the town and he is happy that the dream has been fulfilled. In the July 2012 I was enstooled as Awisa Amanonehene, and that day I promised to create a center for our Youth. Today the 11th day of November 2016 and at this hour, we are all here to witness the promise and at the same time share the story and write a history together. He said. Mr. Mikael Lundgren, President of Umea, Ghana Union- the Swedish sister group of Herald Foundation- expressed his happiness for the completion of the youth center. According to Mr. Lundgren, the youth centers created in Akyem Oda and Akyem Anamase have contributed a lot to the wellbeing and health of the youth in those towns and he is hopeful that same positive response will replicate itself at Akyem Awisa. On behalf of Umea, Ghana Union, Mr. Lundgren presented a portrait of a panorama view from the Swedish mountains, a national park known as Sarek with cold Snowy Winter and a hot tropical summer to the center. According to him, the portrait will be a reminder of the long lasting friendship and cooperation for peoples health and wellbeing. Speaking at the Commissioning, the Member of Parliament for the Akyem Swedru Constituency, Hon. Kennedy Osei Nyarko thanked Herald Foundation for a good job done. According to the MP, the devil finds job for the idle hand, it is therefore timely the coming into existence of the youth center which will keep the youth busy and restrain them from engaging in defiant deals. The MP admonished the youth to make good use of the Center especially the ICT section since ICT is the back bone of the growth of every country now. He advised them to use the internet facilities to research more to broaden their knowledge base in other to be useful beings to the society. On his part, Nana Kwarteng Karikari I, chief of Akyem Awisa reiterated the appeal of the MP for the youth to make effective use of the center. Commenting on the impending general election, Nana Kwarteng Karikari advised the youth to desist from any form of actions that has the potential to foment problems for the country. In attendance during the commissioning were the Chiefs and People of Akyem Awisa, District Chief Executive, the District Director of Ghana Health Service, The District Director of Education, etc Bulgarian Socialist Ally Rumen Radev, a Russia-friendly newcomer to politics, won Sunday's presidential election by a wide margin, exit polls showed, prompting Centre-right Prime Minister Boiko Borisov to pledge to resign. Radev, 53, entered Bulgarian politics on a wave of discontent with the ruling center-right's progress in combating corruption, disappointment with the European Union and concerns among voters over alienating an increasingly assertive Russia. The French far-right party led by Jean Marie Le Pin is also on the ascendancy and they are tipped to perform wonders in their countrys upcoming elections. Now, this comes at the heels of Donald Trump and there's another episode in the offing in Moldova. Tenets of democracy In every society, leaders do emerge at specific periods to render specific service to their country and leave a legacy which could either be seen as positive or negative, depending on who is doing the assessment and through what lens. What is therefore important is the overriding approval by the people whose lives have been positively affected by decisions of these leaders, when they were given the opportunity to serve. The path to attaining this leadership position is also very important; this is because, there are instances where people seeking the highest office of the land, often make promises which they are either not ready to fulfill, or simply do not have the capacity to deliver. For such people, empty talk and baseless aspersions then become their sole delight on campaign platforms, while relegating to the background, the real issues bordering of the peoples welfare. Trumping Trump The rest of the world woke up in shock and awe as USA decided to create a NEW WORLD ORDER by granting Donald J. Trump a stunning victory that many like me find it very difficult to comprehend. Have we any choice? Majority rule simply prevailed for a Trumping Trump Pence leadership regardless of the backlash, scathing attacks, and devastating revelations. Losing an election to a candidate who proved beyond measure to be immeasurably divisive and unpopular as Donald Trump baffles my thinking (I JUST CAN'T THINK FAR) whereas serving as an indictment on the opinion poll, pollster predictions, media hype, influential celebrity endorsement and agonized objective analysts and floating voters for years to come. Suffice it to say, we await the permeating factors that guaranteed this shock wave and once the shock fever passes, we would surely be privy to glimpses of some rational explanation for such reality. Scholarly definitions of politics, elections, poll projection, expert analysis, mass opinion heavily defeated by the seemingly unexpected outcome. The 8year convention Trumps victory has further deepened the believe that incumbent parties rarely hold on to power after eight years (the case of my Ghana) in office. Political allusions point to the very fact that George H.W Bush, following Reagan, was an exception, but politics has become progressively more polarized since those years and symbolically pendulums have a habit of swinging in that regard. Another factor which cannot be left in oblivion is the issue of a disgruntled youth (white majority) who feel immigrants and foreigners alike have taken their places for the rare socio-economic opportunities on the social stratum of the USA. On December 7,2016, Ghanaians will be going to the polls to elect someone to steer the affairs of state for the next 4years.as we speak, the nation is awashed with campaign messages by the various presidential candidates. Coincidentally, developments in America, election-wise, have often reflected on what happens here in Ghana, since the inception of our fourth Republican democratic dispensation. Since the era of President William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton in 1992 when Ghana ushered in the 4th Republican democratic dispensation, no political party in either county has won a 3rd consecutive term of office. Again, within the same time frame, anytime there is a Democratic President in the White House, there has been an NDC President in the Castle; and anytime there is a Republican President in the White House, there has been an NPP President in the Castle [the Jubilee House]. And for baseless propaganda point-scoring, top NDC government officials and their legion of praise-singing assigns, erroneously, went about equating whatever was transpiring in the US electioneering campaign to what is going on here in ghana.at a point in time, the 59year-old John Mahama was being called Obama, for reasons which virtually do not exit. Propaganda gone-wrong The likes of Edward Omane-Boamah, Felix Ofosu-Kwakye and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa were always on radio/tv programs claiming that John Mahama is preaching peace and hope, while their biggest incorruptible nightmare Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is preaching hopelessness because he talks about how our countrys economy has been totally destroyed and state coffers looted by government officials. These afore-mentioned NDC adults with metal teeth have made it their avowed enterprise to always malign Nana Addo, at the expense of selling the so-called miracles performed by their party leader John Mahama. This has gone on for so long that, inadvertently, John Mahama have had the cause to complain about his so-called miraculous works not being trumpeted enough to the hearing of ordinary Ghanaians. The time and energies of these NDC propagandist have rather been wasted on venomous vilification of Nana Addos person, while banking their completely dwindled electoral fortunes in the upcoming December 7,2016 general elections. For instance, on the Wednesday 9th November,2016 edition of OK-FM morning programme, the NDC national organizer/director of operations for NDC campaign-2016, Kofi Adams is on OK-FM desperately linking John Mahama to Donald Trump by claiming that both "emerged from nowhere to lead their political parties and went on to win one-touch victory". In the same interview, Kofi Adams touted the so-called performance of John Mahama and said though Obama did a good job and was very popular, his party has still lost the elections because voters vote for personalities and not political parties. The General Secretary of the ruling NDC party, Asiedu-Nketia said on Tuesday,8th November edition of OK-FM morning programme, that, the Democratic party in America represents the NDC while the Republican party represents NPP, and that, what happens in the American elections, winner-wise, is what will happen here in Ghana, come 7th December, 2016. According credible intelligence some of us have chanced upon, the NDC has actually rdered, from China, massive volumes of paraphernalia [t-shirts, hand-bags, caps, wrist bands, bandanas, aprons etc.] embossed with images of John Mahama and Hillary Clinton, to be distributed to at their campaign rallies with the message that the democrats are their ideological allies so once they have been triumphant in America, the same scenario was going to play out in our upcoming 7th December,2016 general elections. But god being so good, Donald Trump pulled a huge surprise, and this planned propaganda party has suffered a dramatic still-birth. Trump attributes Donald Trump is business-minded, abhors corruption in political officialdom, vowed to protect America's borders, cut taxes, slam the door on potential terrorists and keep out illegal aliens. On the other-hand, NDC eulogizes corruption in political officialdom, opens our borders to allow aliens to flock into Ghana to influence who becomes our president, raises taxes to astronomic levels and opens our doors to al-Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo. Effectively, NDC loves to associate itself with the democrats in America but completely jettison the commensurate integrity and incorruptibility. Following the electoral success of Donald Trump, these loud-mouth NDC propagandists that were all over the place drawing similarities with results of American elections with what was going to happen on 7th December,2016, here in Ghana, they have gone completely silent on their insipid propaganda, quietly licking their wounds and fearing for same fate to befall them. Now, some of us observing from afar, erroneously saw these campaign messages by the man, as 'warmongering' and anti-immigrants but what we didn't understand is the fact that, indeed, Donald Trump was only providing a voice for a genuine pent-up 'anger' in the American system which everyone was scared to talk about, for fear of being demonized. Incidentally, the same scenario is clearly playing out here in Ghana, as 7th December, 2016 fast approaches. Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei E-mail: [email protected] President John Mahama has said his main opponent in the December election, Nana Akufo-Addo, does not understand the realities of governance. According to him, the Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), would not have promised to build a dam in each district, among others, if he really understood politics. Speaking at a meeting with Chief Executives and some business leaders in Accra, the President cautioned voters to be cautious of politicians who make such promises. We need to watch world affairs and the way things are playing out. With Brexit, with the US elections, Trump's surprise win against the polls and to see how this world view will affect America's relations with the rest of the world. I believe that things will set off. Often when you are outside government you have a very simplistic view of things and so you can just say when I come I will do this, I will do that.I will build a wall here, I will build a factory in every district but when you get into office, you realise that the realities are not as easy as you thought it was. It is easier for you to say these things when you are outside government, but when you come in and the reality catches up with you, you realise that things are not that easy Ghana will remain stable after elections President John Mahama also urged businesses not to worry about possible negative outcomes of this year's election. He said Ghana will remain stable after the elections, despite the rhetoric across the political divide. Often when we are getting to an election, the political rhetoric comes up, I urge you not to be frightened that it is going to lead to any blow up. Ghana has a history of peaceful, transparent and successful election; and I believe that this 7th December election under the fourth Republic, is going to be no different. I will play my part as President and Commander in chief, to ensure that we have a stable environment for people to cast their ballot, and I believe that once the elections are over, the people of Ghana who will lead them for the next four years. By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @EfeAnsah Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has condemned an attack on his residence on Sunday calling on the President and police to stop the brutality. The flagbearer in a statement Monday said it was unfortunate that police have looked on unconcerned, and the President of the land has not, on a single occasion, condemned any of these brutal acts by his Ministers. He urged all political parties and Ghanaians committed to promoting peace and interested in taking Ghana's democracy places to work with the party in "securing these end." Ghanaian democrats, no matter their party affiliation, should stand shoulder to shoulder to defend and promote the aims of our democratic Republic that also include standing up against the bully," the statement said. Nana Akufo-Addo assured the President and his army of propaganda warriors "that they would not succeed in their intimidation and deliberate propaganda mongering against the NPP and I. The three-time flagbearer bemoaned the wanton brutalisation of some NPP supporters in other parts of the country by members of the National Democratic Congress adding Unfortunately, these savage attacks against our party activists have gone unpunished, with the perpetrators of these acts walking free." Below is the statement: Below is a copy of the full statement Sunday, November 13, 2016, was a sad day in our nations history. On that day, the Ghanaian people saw a most unbecoming sight: the home of the leader of Ghanas biggest opposition party being attacked by supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress government. One would, ordinarily, have treated it as a one-off spectacle, in spite of the nature of the attack. However, my 4-day tour of the Brong Ahafo Region, has revealed a rather disturbing trend, leading up to this years elections. In Sankore, on Thursday, October 10, I witnessed, at first hand, the open brutalization of NPP members. Prior to my visit, two NPP members had been brutally murdered by NDC thugs. The scars of intimidation and assault by thugs recruited by Hon. Eric Opoku, MP for the constituency and Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, are still evident. In Asutifi South, a few kilometres away, another Minister in President Mahamas government, Hon. Collins Dauda, MP, is also perpetrating violence against his own constituents. Ghanaians heard on the radio comments made by the brother of Hon. Collins Dauda to the effect that he kills people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, these savage attacks against our party activists, have gone unpunished, with the perpetrators of these acts walking free. We have protested the apparently selective manner in which the law is being applied against those perceived to be political opponents of the current government. The police have looked on unconcerned, and the President of the land has not, on a single occasion, condemned any of these brutal acts by his Ministers. Is it then a surprise that NDC footsoldiers have become emboldened to extend these attacks to all parts of the country? For us in the NPP, the peace of the nation, as well as the consolidation of our democratic governance are not negotiable. We urge all political parties and Ghanaians committed to promoting peace and deepening our democracy to work with us in securing these ends. Ghanaian democrats, no matter their party affiliation, should stand shoulder to shoulder to defend and promote the aims of our democratic Republic, that also include standing up against the bully. Let the President and his army of propaganda warriors be assured that they would not succeed in their intimidation and deliberate propaganda mongering against the NPP and I. We shall continue to believe in Ghana. We will muster the necessary courage to defend democratic Ghana and continue in our peaceful quest to win power in 2016 and bring back hope and opportunities to the people of Ghana, irrespective of their politics, creed, ethnicity, region, religion, age, gender or social status. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com President John Mahama has cautioned Ghanaians to be wary of persons who make lofty promises to them especially when they are outside government. He said these promises to the electorate are coming from people who are out of touch with reality. "Often when you are outside government you have a very simplistic view of things and so you can just say when I come I will do this, I will do that. I will build a wall here, and I will build a factory in every district, he said. President Mahama made these remarks when he met sections of the Business Community in Accra, Monday. Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been criticized for his one-district-one-factory and the one-dam-one village promises he made to the electorate. Political opponents namely the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), and Convention Peoples Party (CPP) have said the promises are not feasible. Addressing artisans in Koforidua during his campaign tour of the Eastern Region, CPP flagbearer, Ivor Kobina Greenstreet said the many promises made by the NPP are merely to hoodwink Ghanaians to vote for the party in the elections. He said the NPP would have transformed Ghana when it had the opportunity from 2001-2008 during the erstwhile President John Kufuor's administration. Although he did not mention the name of the NPP leader, President Mahama said most of the promises that have been made by his opponents are not realizable. It is easier for you to say these things when you are outside government, but when you come in and the reality catches up with you, you realize that things are not that easy, he said. He said Ghanaians need to monitor world affairs and the way things are playing out. With Brexit, with the US elections, Trumps surprise win against the polls and to see how this worldview will affect Americas relations with the rest of the world, he said. He expressed confidence that the next NDC government would prioritize job creation and put in measures to improve the economy. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected] Luv FMs Broadcast Journalist, Prince Appiah was among twenty-five journalists selected from 15 African countries to receive training on religious reporting. The training also covered how to cover vulnerable minorities especially in sub-Sahara Africa. The trainees were made up of journalists, editors and bloggers. The four-day training programme, which ended over the weekend aimed at equipping journalists to report effectively on freedom of expression in reporting on religion, conflict and human rights of vulnerable communities. Director of Global Strategy at Religious News Foundation, Brian Pellot explains the training is critical to amplify issues of religion and vulnerable minorities. Mr. Appiahs selection follows recent hotline documentary on gays in Ghana, a report he co-authored with George Nyavor of Joy FM - work which attracted international and local responses. Organised and sponsored by the Religious News Foundation, a professional journalism association in Association with the University Of Missouri School of Journalism and Religious News Service in the US, trainee were given opportunity to network with colleagues and other professionals working on similar stories. The training was supported by the Arcus Foundation and the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Southern Africa and University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) Presidential Candidate says residents of the Central Region who support the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2016 elections have no love for the region. Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom said if the residents are minded by the challenges facing the region, they would support him because he has a better appreciation of the difficulties. I am sad [because] when they talk about poor people in Ghana when you leave out Upper Westthe Central Region is number four, he told residents of Abura in Twi. With 22 days to the presidential and parliamentary elections, the seven presidential candidates have intensified their campaigns across the country. Dr Nduom who has been making up for lost days was brought into the race following a Supreme Court ruling ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) to allow him and other aspirants to effect the corrections on his nomination forms. The PPP leader has been reminding the residents of the need to break away from duopoly of NDC and NPP and give him the PPP the opportunity to improve their situation. He narrated how disheartened he was when he sees oranges rotten by the roadside in Abura. This is unacceptable because the farmers depend on it, he said, adding he would build a factory to process the oranges for the residents to earn from their sweat. Dr Nduom also urged the people to vote for him and the party's parliamentary candidates in the December 7 polls for Ghana to be better and for their lives to be better. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected] The United States government says it will not hesitate to hold responsible those who incite political violence in the run up to the December 7 polls. As punishment for those who engage in these acts, the US says it will will consider all options to hold responsible those who incite political violence, including denying or revoking visas. It further urged all to participate peacefully in the democratic processbefore, during and after Election Day, stressing that The government of the United States does not support a particular candidate or a particular party. We support democracy. Below is a copy of the full statement The United States condemns all political violence in Ghana, especially any violent acts directed at political candidates, their homes or families. While campaigns can be vigorous and sometimes contentious, violence has no place in the electoral process. In the period leading up to and following Ghana's elections on December 7, we call on all actors to remain peaceful and respect the democratic process. We encourage all parties to make it clear to their constituents that any violence or attempts to use intimidation to disrupt the democratic process is unacceptable. The United States will consider all options to hold responsible those who incite political violence, including denying or revoking visas. The United States applauds Ghana's tradition of peaceful, democratic elections. The international community is working with the Electoral Commission, National and Regional Peace Councils, NGOs, civil society organizations, the media, the police and others to support Ghana's efforts to hold credible and nonviolent presidential elections. We urge all to participate peacefully in the democratic processbefore, during and after Election Day. The government of the United States does not support a particular candidate or a particular party. We support democracy. We will continue to work with the freely elected government of Ghana, just as we always have.\ -Myjoyonline A pack of raccoons living in Central Park has become an attraction for tourists and other visitors who are charmed by the cute and (seemingly) harmless creatures. During a recent visit to the park, reporters from the New York Times spotted 22 raccoons clustered near the southeastern edge of the park at 59th Street. The group of raccoonswhich, by the way, is called a gazewas surrounded by tourists and other onlookers who tossed snacks to the animals. And although feeding raccoons isn't illegal, it's dangerous, even if the creatures appear friendly. "Do not feed raccoons or any other wildlife you might encounter in parks!" Sarah Aucoin, the Parks Department's chief of education and wildlife told the Times via email. "Animals are best observed from a distanceit keeps both them and you safe." In 2010, there was a large rabies outbreak among Central Park raccoons. Last year on Staten Island, four cases of rabid raccoons were reported. Although the worst days of the rabies outbreak are behind us, three rabid raccoons have been reported this year, though none were found in Manhattan. Four years ago, a woman was attacked by two possibly rabid raccoons in Central Park, near the pond at 59th Streetthe same place where the gaze can currently be found. Taraka Larson, the woman who was attacked, described the animals as "moving really strangely and having no center of gravity." "I didn't want to startle them, so I stopped and was looking at them and they saw me and they started coming over to me really slowly, and I just froze," she told Gothamist. "They kept getting closer, and they were sniffing my shoes, maybe they were smelling my cat, and I thought they would go away," she said. "And then one of them got on top of my shoes and got under the tongue of my shoe, and then wrapped its claws around my leg and started to gnaw on my leg." She was given 15 shots in her ankle to ward off a possible rabies infection. So maybe don't feed the Central Park raccoons, or any others you might encounter. They're perfectly capable of feeding themselves. The Police have arrested a 26-year-old Burkinabe national for hacking a former Principal of the St. Monica's Training College at Asante Mampong to death. The deceased, 72-year-old Lucy Peprah Tawiah, was murdered on Saturday by her houseboy, Osman Yakubu, at her residence in Abelemkpe in Accra. Three others including two of the deceased's house helps who attempted rescuing Madam Tawiah also sustained machete wounds. The Tesano District Police Commander, DSP Edward Tetteh who confirmed the tragedy to citifmonline.com on Monday said Osman Yakubu murdered the woman without any provocation. Further narrating the facts of the incident, DSP Edward Tetteh said on Saturday, the suspect, Osman Yakubu, used two machetes and a pair of scissors which he had in his possession to commit the heinous crime. Osman Yakubu without any invitation, entered the hall of the deceased's one storey building at Abelemkpe around 9pm on Saturday, wielding the machetes. When he was asked by Micheal Abiesa 24 and Raymond Achinekwa, 23, both house helps of the deceased what he wanted at the hall, Osman, without immediately inflicted deep cuts on various parts of their bodies. He cut Micheal in such a way that he collapsed instantly, the police said. He then proceeded to Lucy Peprah Tawiah's room, inflicted wounds on the nape of her neck, face , head and then stabbed her with the pair of scissors he had with him. A taxi driver, Bonney Djanison who attempted to come to their rescue, following the screams he heard from the house also sustained wounds on his arm, DSP Edward Tetteh added. He said the Police managed to arrest him at the residence after the incident and he is currently assisting in investigation. When citifmomnline.com visited the residence of the deceased at Abelemkpe on Monday morning, it was virtually empty and with most of the tenants unaware of the cold murder of the landlady. By: Pearl Akanya Ofori/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @pearlakanya The United Kingdom (UK) government, has said Ghanaians found to have engaged in election-related violence ahead of the 2016 polls, could face some sanctions within its remit. A statement from the UK said these sanctions could include the refusal or revoking of visas for anyone engaging in or inciting political violence and thus undermining Ghanas democracy. The UK government's warning is in response to the recent clashes between supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). The statement made direct reference to the clahses between the two parties in front of the Nima residence the NPP Flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, during a health walk organised by the NDC. It also followed a similar statement from the United States Embassy in Ghana. Following the tensions, the UK government urged the various parties to ensure that their members avoid acts of violence and instead promote peace. We therefore call on all Ghana's political actors to promote peace, and to respect Ghana's electoral and constitutional processes. All political parties should strongly urge their supporters to refrain from, and indeed actively to condemn, any violence, incitement or intimidation which only serve to undermine democracy, the statement said. Find below the full statement The British Government expresses its concern at recent incidents of political violence in Ghana in the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections on 7 December. We condemn all violent acts by the supporters of any political party, including any occurring as a result of holding electoral campaign events close to the private homes of rival candidates. The UK is a great supporter of Ghana's democracy and of maintaining its electoral record. We admire the open and energetic nature of its campaigns. We believe that violence has absolutely no place in the electoral process. We therefore call on all Ghana's political actors to promote peace, and to respect Ghana's electoral and constitutional processes. All political parties should strongly urge their supporters to refrain from, and indeed actively to condemn, any violence, incitement or intimidation which only serve to undermine democracy. The UK reserves the right to take action against anyone engaging in or inciting political violence, including considering refusing or revoking visas. The UK will continue to work with Ghanaian institutions, including the Electoral Commission, Police, Judiciary, National Peace Council, civil society groups and the media to support Ghana's efforts to hold credible, peaceful and fair elections. The UK remains entirely neutral in those elections. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana The Electoral Commission (EC) has said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) sanctioned the logo it used on the 2016 parliamentary ballot sheets, hence the party has no basis to raise concerns after the printing process. High ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed, a statement from the EC said. The leadership of the main opposition NPP in the Ashanti region has expressed disquiet over the nature of the parliamentary ballot papers that have been dispatched to the region by the EC. The party is worried that the ballot papers do not have the initials of the party, like it does for other political parties. The EC delivered the ballot papers for the 47 constituencies in the Ashanti region today, Monday November 14. However, in a statement to react to the partys concerns, the EC said: For the Parliamentary Notice of Polls and Ballot Sheets, the New Patriotic Party specifically indicated their satisfaction with the logo as processed for printing. During the printing process, not only did the party have its representatives at the printing houses at all material times, high ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed. Below is the full statement: CLARIFICATION: POLITICAL PARTY LOGO ON BALLOT SHEETS The Commissions attention has been drawn to reports in sections of the media suggesting that the Commission had printed a wrong logo for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the Parliamentary ballot sheets. We would like to place on the records that the claim is entirely inaccurate. Below are the facts: 1. All Political Parties participating in this years elections worked closely with the Commissions Directorate of Electoral Services to agree on the acceptable logo for their parties to be printed on the Notice of Polls and the ballots sheets. 2. For the Parliamentary Notice of Polls and Ballot Sheets, the New Patriotic Party specifically indicated their satisfaction with the logo as processed for printing. 3. During the printing process, not only did the party have its representatives at the printing houses at all material times, high ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed. 4. For the avoidance of doubt, we have added the NPPs official logo as it appears on the partys letterheads. It is clear from the pictures that the party uses these two versions of their logo interchangeably. Both do not include the partys acronym as now being claimed. 5. We would like to further place on the record that it is only for the Presidential Ballot that the NPP has specifically requested that its acronym should be added to the logo, and that has been done. 6. Therefore, it cannot be accurate that the Commission committed any design or printing errors as being speculated or claimed. Thank you. Signed: ERIC KOFI DZAKPASU Head of Communications The role of tourism in implementing the Paris Agreement was on the table on the occasion of the 22nd Session of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP22). The International Symposium of the Sustainable Tourism Programme of the United Nations 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP), held during COP 22, discussed how to advance Sustainable Tourism in a Changing Climate. The Symposium aimed at increasing awareness on tourism and climate change-related issues and encourage the sector to engage in actions that reinforce national commitments to the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The tourism sector is both a vector and a victim of climate change and we are fully committed to contribute to reach the objectives set by the Paris Agreement. This event was essential to advance this agenda, especially the discussion on measurement and reporting requirements as a basis for identifying and prioritizing climate action in tourism, said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. "Sustainable tourism creates opportunities and assembles partners to help transform the industry towards low emissions and more efficient and less polluting operations. We must make tourism and every other industry contributor to our climate change action and a sustainable future", said Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, in her video address to the event. The event focused in particular in the need for partnerships with the private sector and the role of sustainable transportation to accelerate climate action in tourism. Climate change can only be addressed if actors from all parts of society - governments, businesses, NGOs and consumers - make a global and broad shift towards sustainable consumption and production patterns. Accounting for 10% of GDP, 7% of the world's exports and one in 11 jobs, tourism is one of the main economic sectors in the world, and as such has to be at the core of this essential transition, said Charles Arden-Clarke, Head of the 10YFP Secretariat. The International Symposium was part of the 3-day COP22 Tourism Side Events organized by the 10YFP Sustainable Tourism Programme and hosted by the Ministry of Tourism of Morocco. The Programme is a partnership led by UNWTO with the Governments of France, Morocco and the Republic of Korea as co-leads, with support of the 10YFP Secretariat at UN Environment, aimed at accelerating the shift towards more sustainable consumption and production. It was followed by a networking event involving financial institutions on sustainable tourism as well as by the Annual Conference on Saturday 12 November, where members of the network exchanged experiences and discussed priorities and next steps in the 10YFP Sustainable Tourism Programme. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Burundi's president has asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a new envoy less than two weeks after the emissary returned from crisis talks in Bujumbura, according to a letter seen by AFP on Monday. President Pierre Nkurunziza said in the letter sent last week that Ban and incoming Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should begin consultations on choosing a successor to British diplomat Jamal Benomar. Last week, Benomar returned empty-handed from talks on the government's decision to suspend ties with UN rights monitors and its refusal to allow the deployment of a UN police force. UN spokesman Farhan Haq indicated that there would be no search for a new envoy. "The special adviser continues his work as mandated by the UN Security Council and with the full confidence of the secretary-general," Haq said. Relations between Burundi and the United Nations nosedived after a report by UN rights experts in September blamed state police and security forces for the violence that has torn apart the country since April 2015. The government responded by breaking off ties with the UN rights office while the parliament voted to pull out of the International Criminal Court, which is already investigating serious crimes in Burundi. Burundi's ambassador to the United Nations said the request was linked to the change in leadership at the world body, where Guterres will take over as UN chief on January 1. "During this transition period between the two secretary-generals, Burundi would not want to be caught off guard by the appointment of a new envoy," said Ambassador Albert Shingiro. "Burundi would like there to be broad consultations between the government of Burundi and the two secretary-generals to consider a successor," Shingiro told AFP. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza announced plans in April last year to run for a third term, which he went on to win. More than 500 people have been killed and at least 300,000 have fled the country. Benomar was appointed in November last year to try to push the government into holding talks with the opposition and to agree to the deployment of 228 UN police to monitor security and human rights abuses. Burundi had initially said it was ready to accept only a few dozen UN police on its territory, but it now maintains that African Union observers can take on the monitoring role. Tanzania's former president Benjamin Mpaka has been appointed by the African Union as a peace mediator, but the government has yet to agree to talks with the opposition. A previous UN envoy, Said Djinnit, resigned in June 2015 amid accusations that he was biased in favor of the government. The Electoral Commission (EC) has dismissed reports that it printed a wrong logo for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the parliamentary ballot sheets. A statement by the Commission Monday signed by Eric Dzakpasu said it worked closely with representatives of the various political parties on the acceptable logo before printing them on the Notice of Polls and ballot sheets. For the Parliamentary Notice of Polls and Ballot Sheets, the New Patriotic Party specifically indicated their satisfaction with the logo as processed for printing, the statement said. NPP Ashanti Regional Chairman, Bernard Antwi Boasiako has refused to accept the parliamentary ballot printed by the EC citing the absence of the partys abbreviation. Copy of NPP letterhead without the abbreviation He said apart from the logo, there should have been an indication as was provided for the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) and Convention Peoples Party (CPP). This has generated debate between NPP Ashanti Regional functionaries and EC officials in the Region. Mr Boasiako is blaming the EC of deliberately eliminating the abbreviation of the party in order to confuse voters in the Region who are known to be supporters of NPP. Copy of NPP letterhead without the abbreviation But the EC said the claim that it committed an error in the design and printing of the NPP logo is inaccurate. During the printing process, not only did the party have its representatives at the printing houses at all material times, high-ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process, it said. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed, it continued. The Commission has provided two copies of letters written to it by the NPP which did have the party's abbreviation to prove its position. Read full statement below: IMMEDIATE RELEASE [ Monday, November 14, 2016] CLARIFICATION: POLITICAL PARTY LOGO ON BALLOT SHEETS The Commissions attention has been drawn to reports in sections of the media suggesting that the Commission had printed a wrong logo for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the Parliamentary ballot sheets. We would like to place on the records that the claim is entirely inaccurate. Below are the facts: All Political Parties participating in this years elections worked closely with the Commissions Directorate of Electoral Services to agree on the acceptable logo for their parties to be printed on the Notice of Polls and the ballots sheets. For the Parliamentary Notice of Polls and Ballot Sheets, the New Patriotic Party specifically indicated their satisfaction with the logo as processed for printing. During the printing process, not only did the party have its representatives at the printing houses at all material times, high-ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed. For the avoidance of doubt, we have added the NPPs official logo as it appears on the partys letterheads. It is clear from the pictures that the party uses these two versions of their logo interchangeably. Both do not include the partys acronym as now being claimed We would like to further place on the record that it is only for the Presidential Ballot that the NPP has specifically requested that its acronym should be added to the logo, and that has been done. Therefore, it cannot be accurate that the Commission committed any design or printing errors as being speculated or claimed. Thank you. Signed: ERIC KOFI DZAKPASU Head of Communications Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com A whopping $100 million was lost to the economy per annum as a result of a strangulating traffic situation at what used to be the Circle roundabout in Accra. That was the revelation from president John Mahama on the night he commissioned an outstanding interchange, a beautiful piece of road infrastructure to replace the Circle Round about. "It is the longest, highest fly over in West Africa," the president declared to an ecstatic crowd of government officials, party supporters, political leaders and the general public. The Circle round about for years connected Accra's major roads to Kaneshie, Achimota, Accra Central, Osu and its adjoining suburbs. However, a journey through Circle was for years an unavoidable nuisance with passengers spending several hours in traffic for journeys they could make in minutes, if not in seconds. The old Circle Roundabout Even though the project was conceived by his predecessor, the late John Mills, the president, John Mahama, on October 2013 began the actual construction work at the Circle round about. Three years down the line and with hard work by the contractors the president commissioned the flyover amidst pomp and celebration on November 14, 2016. Fitting Nkrumah memorial The interchange has a magnificent water park with a dancing fountain, the idea of which was taken from Dubai which would now become a tourist attraction for many, the president said. The site also has an imposing statue of Ghana's first president Dr Kwame Nkrumah which is "a fitting memorial in honour of the greatest Pan Africanist." "Nkrumah's statue will remind people about the man who led the way to our nation's birth," he said. The project is "not just a modern interchange but a convenient place for tourism. The health and happiness of citizens are also important," he stressed adding, that the citizenry can always take a stroll at the water park with the beautiful lighting architecture. President John Mahama said the new interchange will "facilitate easy movement of goods and services" on one of the most busy roads in Accra. He said a lot of jobs were created as a result of the construction of the interchange and a lot more will be created now that the project is over because time which is an important resource has been made available to people. According to him, at least "200,000 vehicles will use the road in a day" with the possibility that traffic will be reduced from two hours to five minutes, a change that will "save millions of cedis in travel time and stimulate business," he added. Police Station Hated not only for its traffic congestion, Circle is also notorious for its petty criminal activities. The president said the new interchange now has a police station that will check criminal activities around the area. There is also a fire service station at hand to respond to fire emergencies, as well as an ambulance station, he added. The president said the Circle interchange is one of many other interchanges the government will build. He cited the Kasoa interchange which he said has reached an advanced stage and will be opened before the end of December 2016. Ghana is rising and greater times are ahead of us, he promised. We will continue to work hard and change lives of Ghanaians. Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah Access bank is now hoping to end its Initial Public offering (IPO) on November 25. This was after it secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to extend the offer which ended last Friday, November 1. Access bank on October 19 begun its IPO to raise GHC104 million to support the banks growth and expansion strategies. Investors were required to purchase a minimum of 100 at GHC4. The extension will now result in the allotment of shares to investors on November 28, the bank is hoping to end the process for allotment on Monday, December 5. The results of the offer will be submitted to SEC and Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) on December 6 and crediting of shares onto the CSD will happen on December 12. Access bank is hoping to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange on Wednesday, December 14, 2016. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com Zarzis (Tunisia) (AFP) - Tunisian authorities have discovered five arms caches in the south of the country near the border with war-ravaged Libya and seized large quantities of weapons, security sources said Monday. Two were found Saturday near the city of Ben Guerdane, a third on Sunday and two more on Monday also in the same region, they said. The interior ministry said the biggest find was made Sunday, in a garage on the outskirts of Ben Guerdane where 50 guns, including 27 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and dozens of missiles were confiscated. Authorities also seized 30 crates of ammunition as well as 12 kilograms (26.4 pounds) of explosives and more than 1,000 tasers, it said. Three suspects, including the owner of the garage, were detained for questioning, the ministry said, adding that a fourth person was arrested after Monday's find. A defence ministry official told Shems FM radio that the arms caches were discovered thanks to information found on the cellphone of a jihadist who was shot dead by security forces last week. The North African country has experienced a rise in religious extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Its security forces have been battling a jihadist movement responsible for killing dozens of soldiers and police officers as well as civilians including 59 foreign tourists. The Islamic State group, active in Libya, has claimed responsibility for several of those attacks. In March, dozens of jihadists attacked security installations in Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya, leaving 13 members of the security forces, seven civilians and at least 55 militants dead, according to official figures. Rome (AFP) - A veteran commander of the Islamic State group who was convicted in Italy of terrorist recruitment has been arrested in Sudan, an Italian lawmaker said Monday. Giacomo Stucchi, a senator who chairs the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's secret services, said Italian intelligence had played a key role in tracking down the jihadist known as Abu Nassim, a Tunisian national who was until recently reported to be leading a group of IS fighters around the port of Sabratha in Libya. "I would like to express my satisfaction over the anti-terrorist operation that has led to the arrest in Sudan of the Tunisian terrorist Moez Fezzani," Stucchi said, using Abu Nassim's real name. Abu Nassim lived in Italy for most of his 20s. He subsequently fought in Afghanistan and Syria before reportedly moving to Libya in 2014. He first arrived in Italy in 1989 to work on building sites. Suspected of trying to radicalise and recruit other Arab immigrants, he disappeared in 1997 and resurfaced in Pakistan, on his way to join the late Osama bin Laden's forces in Afghanistan. He was arrested by US forces in 2001 and held at the Bagram airbase detention facility. From there he was was transferred to Italy in 2009 after prosecutors filed charges of terrorist recruitment related to his previous stay. He was acquitted in 2012 and deported to Tunisia, only to be convicted on appeal in his absence the following year. By then he was already fighting in Syria. Tunisia issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the March 2015 Bardo Museum attack in Tunis, in which gunmen killed 21 tourists and a policeman. Thousands of demonstrators marched in protest against President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, marking the fifth consecutive day of protests in the aftermath of Trump's stunning election. Organized by the immigrant rights group Make The Road New York, along with several other social justice organizations, the march aimed to send the message to the President-elect that his insistence on targeting and deporting immigrants is unacceptable to New Yorkers. "My mom is a Mexican, I'm Mexican-American, and there are plenty of people who are coming here to have a better life and to support their families, and we can't just be turning on them," said Allison Hargrove, 23, of Washington Heights. "The majority of white America doesn't understand the dangers they've just put immigrants in. We need to reject Donald Trump in every way." The march began in Columbus Circle, just outside Trump International Hotel and Tower, before setting off along 59th Street towards Trump's Fifth Avenue tower. There, on Sunday, Trump announced that the white nationalist political operative Steve Bannon, who served as the CEO of Trump's campaign, would be his chief strategist in the White House. Marcia Esparza, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of several books on human rights abuses in Latin America, attended the protest with her son. "As a Latin American, it was not a surprise to me that this was at all possible, because in Chile, where I grew up, we have seen this happen. We've seen this happen in many, many countries," Esparza said. "Trump's tone, his policies, they're all too familiar to me. My advice is practicing as much empathy as possible. Try to remain as conscious as you can of the suffering of other people over the next few years." New York Police Department officers stopped marchers a block short of Trump Tower. There, Make The Road organizer Antonio Alarcon told the crowd, "This is a historic moment for all immigrants and people of color. Our community continues to be under attack. And what do we do when our community is under attack? We fight back." Make The Road and other immigrants' rights groups have called upon local elected officials to loudly condemn Trump, and demanded that they publicly commit to preserving New York's policy of non-cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump has threatened to slash federal funding for New York and other municipalities with so-called "sanctuary city" policies. In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night, President-elect Trump pledged to immediately deport between two to three million immigrants. Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border, spoke to constituents as he marched, while holding a sign that read, "Immigrant Families. Women. LGTBQ. Muslims. We are Sunset Park." "When you're talking about compromising on our immigrant families, we're talking about the people that are keeping our neighborhoods alive, families that have for so long been given hope and opportunity in this city. We're going to do everything in our power in the City Council to make that happen, and maybe even some powers we don't even know we have we're going to be able to exercise," said Menchaca, who chairs the City Council's Committee on Immigration. When asked about Trump's threat to deny federal funding to "sanctuary cities," Menchaca was unfazed. "I dare him to do that," he said. Kinshasa (AFP) - Congolese Prime Minister Augustin Matata resigned Monday to make way for an opposition figure to take his place following a controversial deal that effectively extends the president's term in office. The decision to delay presidential polls until at least late 2017 was part of a deal agreed in October by the government and fringe opposition groups that has been boycotted as a sham by the mainstream opposition. The deal, which followed a "national dialogue", was aimed at calming soaring political tensions. "I have offered my resignation as well as those of the members of my government... to respond to the spirit and the letter of the accord," said Matata as he left a meeting with President Joseph Kabila. The opposition has accused 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. Kabila will address the situation on Tuesday when he speaks to parliament to discuss "the state of the nation", according to a statement read on state media. Vital Kamerhe, who led the fringe opposition bloc that participated in the national dialogue, is the favourite to succeed Matata as prime minister. Following a meeting with Kabila, Kamerhe said that the nomination of a new premier was "imminent" and the formation of a new opposition-led government would be complete within a week. 'Get on board' He added that the opposition groups which boycotted the "national dialogue" could still "get on board at any moment. We are still open". The main dissident coalition Rassemblement (Gathering) -- which has rallied around veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi -- has rejected the deal that followed the "national dialogue" and stepped up its calls for Kabila to leave office by December 19 when his term ends. Tshisekedi's UPDS party said the resignation was meaningless. "The UDPS notes the resignation of Mr Matata," said spokesman Augustin Kabuya, adding that it "will however not resolve the crisis. "The Congolese people don't want a new prime minister to be named but that Mr Kabila quits power" next month, he said. DR Congo has been in a state of crisis since disputed elections in 2011 returned Joseph Kabila to office for a second term The country has been in a state of crisis since disputed elections in 2011 returned Kabila to office for a second term. A 2006 constitutional provision limits the presidency to two terms. Violent anti-Kabila protests on September 19 and 20 triggered by the political instability claimed 53 lives, according to the UN. A UN Security Council delegation in the country has called for a peaceful transition of power following the government's decision to delay elections. Kabila took power in 2001, 10 days after the assassination of his father, the then-president, Laurent Kabila. Joseph Kabila was first elected to a five-year term as president in 2006. He then won a hotly-disputed election against Tshisekedi in 2011. Accra, Nov.14, GNA - The Strategic Communication Africa Limited (Stratcomm Africa), an international agency, has won the United Nations Award for Public Relations (PR) and Sustainable Development at the 2016 International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Golden World Awards. The event, which took place at Doha in Qatar on Saturday, November 5, was aimed at recognising PR organisations that had performed excellently towards the achievement of some of the global goals of the United Nations (UN). Stratcomm Africa took home the UN Prestigious Award for its PR campaign dubbed; 'Colour me W' an initiative championed to accelerate the realisation of the UN Goal on Gender Equality, the number five priority of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The campaign, which seeks primarily to promote economic empowerment among Ghanaian women through the introduction of banking products that met their needs, was funded by Access Bank Ghana limited. Miss Esther A.N Cobbah, the Chief Executive Officer of Stratcomm Africa, who received the Award with her team, said it was going to encourage the organisation to work harder. Miss Cobbah thanked the Access Bank for contributing to the organisation's feat saying the bank had remained committed to helping the organisation grow. Rev. Professor Samuel K. Adjepong, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Stratcomm Africa, said the award bestowed glory on Africa. He said the recognition indicated that Africa had a strong human resource base capable of attaining the heights of the international public relations industry. 'We congratulate management and staff of Stratcomm Africa on the hard work that has earned this prestigious award,' he said. This was the second time an African company had won the UN IPRA award since it was established in 1990. Stratcomm Africa is the first company in the West African sub-region to have won the UN IPRA Golden World Award. GNA By Joyce Danso, GNA Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - Dr Kwame Amoako-Tuffour, a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has asked Ghanaians to be extra vigilant during the special voting and the general polls slated for December 1 and 7 respectively. 'Under no circumstance should anyone and all party members play with this Special Voting. We must protect the forth coming elections so that we do not run into misfortunes,' Dr Amoako-Tuffuor told journalists in Accra. He spoke to Journalists soon after the Supreme Court had dismissed a writ he filed with two others seeking to compel the Electoral Commission to declare results of the Special Voting immediately after the Polls on December 1. In the suit, Dr Amoako-Tuffuor with Benjamin Arthur and Adreba Abrefa Damoah, argued that those who would take part in the Special Voting must not be made to wait until the Election Day before the results of the early voting were announced. Speaking on the dismissal of the writ by the Supreme Court, Dr Amoako-Tuffour said he would not a review of the decision but would hold discussions with his lawyers. 'I respect the decision of the court. I may have different opinions altogether because of the other issues that I am aware,' he said. Dr Amoako-Tuffuor asked Ghanaians to support the courts to dispense justice to move the country's democracy forward. The Supreme Court on Monday declared that the EC cannot declare the results of the Special Voting to be cast on December 1, immediately after the polls. The SC explained that: 'If the results of the Special Voting were declared on December 1, ahead of the general poll on December 7, the sanctity and secrecy surrounding the elections would gravely be prejudiced, and as well prejudice the electoral fairness'. The Supreme Court, therefore, dismissed the writs filed by Dr Amoako-Tuffuor to compel the EC to declare the results of the Special Voting on the same day such votes are cast. The Supreme Court said the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs were inconsistent with the 1992 Constitution. 'The Court cannot grant reliefs that run contrary to the provisions of the Constitution'. In the suit, Dr Amoako-Tuffuor and two other plaintiffs, argued that those who would take part in the Special Voting must not be made to wait until the Election Day before the results of the early voting were announced. However, according to the apex Court, if the results of the Special Voting were declared before the general election on December 7, the results would influence the general poll and 'the integrity of the national elections would be compromised'. The Supreme Court also stated that the plaintiffs had not been able to cite any country, which declared its results of Special Voting on the same day it was cast. The Court said it was imperative for EC to strike a balance between electoral provisions and electoral rights. The Court also explained that ballot boxes of the special voting were kept at sacred and secured places, and ballot boxes protected with EC and other political parties seal. The plaintiffs argued that under Section 23 of C.I. 94 - the law that regulates national elections - was at variance with Article 49 of the 1992 Constitution. Security personnel, electoral officials, journalists, and people who will be working on Election Day are those who normally take part in the Special Voting. On October 27, 2016, Dr Amoako-Tuffuor and the two others filed a suit seeking that those who wanted to take part in the special voting should not be made to wait until the total results on actual polling were declared and that the results should be declared immediately after the polls closed. They argued that section 23 of C.I. 94; the law which regulated the conduct of the Polls, was inconsistent with Article 49 of the 1992 constitution. According to them per the C.I. 94, the Returning Officer shall at the end of the special voting: ensure that the ballot boxes used in the special election were kept in safe custody after the poll had closed. Also, the Officer was to ensure that the ballot boxes were sealed with the seals of the EC and any candidates or party who wished to add their seal. The EC also arranged for the ballot boxes to be opened at the time of the counting of the votes cast on the polling day and the ballot papers counted in the same manner as those contained in the ballot boxes used on the main polling day. The plaintiffs were thus seeking a true and proper interpretation of Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, as against special voting' in CI.94. The plaintiffs were also seeking a true and proper interpretation of Article 49 of the Constitution 'and Section 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992I PNDCL 284.' The Plaintiffs said that presidential and parliamentary elections ought to be counted and announced there and then on the date(s) of the special voting by the Presiding Officers and the results at each polling station before communicating same to the Returning Officer. In addition, they were seeking an order striking down Regulation 23(11) of Public Elections Regulations, 2016I CI.94 as being inconsistent with Article 49(2), (3)(a) and (b) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992 and Section 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992I PNDCL 284. The Accra, Nov 14, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has said government would continue to take tough and bold decisions to help stabilize the economy and to create a better environment for businesses to thrive. Addressing the quarterly Ghana Investment Promotion Centre breakfast meeting of Chief Executive Officers of various companies, President Mahama said a strong and resilient economy was key to the success of businesses. The Presidential Breakfast Meeting with the Ghanaian Business Community afforded both parties the opportunity to have intimate dialogue and to discuss pertinent issues relating to the private sector. He said an unstable economy and business atmosphere was dangerous for the private sector as the uncertainty made planning and decision-making difficult, and this did not augur well for the sustainable growth of businesses. In a speech that touched on areas of government's focus such as electricity supply, macro-economic stability and socio-economic development, President Mahama said efforts to stabilise the economy was showing all the right signals. He said government was working to bring down the deficit, halt the depreciation of the cedi to make it more predictable for the business community to plan and to reduce the debt to GDP ratio, which is on the decline. President Mahama said government target is to bring the public debt to GDP ratio to 40 per cent by 2021 from the current level of about 67 per cent while the wage bill would be brought down to about 49 per cent of total revenue. In this direction, he said, government had put a cap on commercial and non-concessionary borrowing in line with the debt management strategy. On the power crisis, President Mahama said he understood the impact of the crisis on the business community and their contributions to the country's revenue as far as the payment of taxes was concerned. He said while the power situation had improved considerably in line with the investments into the sector, the adjustment in the power sector would soon launch Ghana into an era of over generation, necessitating the need to sell to neighbouring countries or to expand local demand to absorb the increased capacity. President Mahama said government would continue to explore various off-grid options for communities to boost generation capacity. Mr Carl Nelson, Chief Operation Officer GIPC, in his welcome address, said the quarterly Breakfast seminar series are organized to develop dynamic and innovative solutions for the challenges encountered to further enhance government policies. He said the event has been a great platform for business leaders to network with their peers and at the same time it was geared towards influencing government policy formulation at the highest level. GNA Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - Access Bank has increased its business office locations to 47 with the unveiling of its newest branch at the Cargo Centre Village in Airport. The move is to bring world-class banking to customers and cater for the specialised needs of the business community. A statement from Access Bank said with the new opening, the Bank would further deepen its financial inclusion agenda and play a facilitating role for cargo and passenger handling payments at one of the largest cargo hubs in West Africa. Access Bank's presence at the new Cargo Centre Village has been a result of spearheading a public-private partnership with the Ghana Airport Cargo Centre Limited (GACC), a partnership between Air Ghana Limited (AGL) and Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL), and Swissport. Located at the ground floor, the new branch will provide timely financial services for customers and individuals working in and around the mini-commercial city of Airport as well as agencies and businesses including the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), cargo airlines, aviation handling services companies and other related businesses. The Cargo Centre Village branch offers the Bank's full range of personal and business banking products including flexible savings and current account options, bills payment services, e-banking, card services as well as domestic and international money transfer through Western Union, Moneygram, RIA and Cross border Money Transfer. Mr Dolapo Ogundimu, Managing Director of Access Bank said: 'Our presence within the cargo centre enclave demonstrates our unflinching commitment to play a meaningful role in Ghana's development. We see ourselves as major contributors and are supporting businesses to access banking services without having to move long distances.' He said the Bank has embarked on an intelligent expansion across the country from 2014 and is now a truly national bank with presence in all ten regions in Ghana, having opened its Wa branch office about two months ago. 'Between now and next year we intend to roll an additional ten branches in our quest to drive our retail banking strategy and become one of the top tier banks in Ghana by 2018,' he said. Since launching its banking operations in Ghana in 2009, Access Bank has increased its presence to cater for its growing market share, especially in retail banking, as well as to reduce the number of unbanked and underserved segments of the market. In continuation of its strategic goal to become the Most Respected Bank, Access Bank continues to invest in its operations and technology platforms to deliver superior value to customers and other stakeholders. These investments together with its positive growth trajectory, has earned Access Bank various industry awards and recognitions. Recently, the Bank launched an Initial Public Offering (IPO) for the sale of 26 million shares at GH 4 per share as part of plans to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange before the end of 2016. GNA Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - FBNBank Ghana has partnered with eTranzact, an electronic transaction switching and payment processing platform, to provide the bank's customers with a simple, secure and convenient way of paying bills for various services. The partnership is also, among others, meant to enhance customers' experience through convenient banking service. The eTranzact platform provides FBNBank Ghana with the ability to support the collection of bills for and on behalf of service providers such as ECG, DStv, GOtv, Surfline, and Vodafone at any of the bank's branches across the country. Other institutions are Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), MTN, WAEC and Medview Airline. Beyond this, FBNBank Ghana will also be able to monitor all details of payments online and provide absolute security on all transactions. This means payments of subscriptions, utility bills and school fees can be conveniently managed by the bank at all its branches. Mr Gbenga Odeyemi, the Managing Director of FBNBank Ghana, 'FBNBank Ghana thrives on mutually rewarding partnerships and we are excited to have partnered eTranzact in facilitating our customers' access to more products and services, while also delivering on our defined brand promise and customer experience.' He said the FBNBank Ghana is fully committed to its vision of understanding and supporting our customers' busy and modern lives and the eTranzact platform is one of the most important solutions tailored to make their lives easier as we become a one stop shop for the payment of utility and other bills. Mr Odeyemi said the strategic partnership would also provide both FBNBank Ghana and eTranzact the opportunity to 'create shared value through combined risk, funding and resource contributions by way of coordination, cooperation, and collaboration for the purpose of customer satisfaction.' 'We aim to become the Bank of first choice in Ghana with the provision of products and services that meet the diverse needs of our customers. We will continue to leverage evolving technologies in bringing secure, fast and convenient financial services closer to our customers, in line with the Bank's digital banking strategy,' Odeyemi added. GNA By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Accra, Nov. 14, GNA - The Tour Operators Union of Ghana (TOUGHA) has signed a multiple destination agreement concept with South Africa. The concept is aimed at promoting the tourism drive between the two countries, which would enable tourists to tour major cities in the two countries. Mrs Nancy O. Sam, the President of TOUGHA, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at the just ended Akwaaba Travel Market event in Lagos, said the Union for the past two years has been sensitising countries in Africa to do the multiple destination concepts. She said 'it also for promoting each other that when you go to South Africa information desk they will not sell only South Africa but will also showcase Ghana.' 'We are encouraging this destination whereby the monies that come to Africa stays in Africa,' she said. She said 'we all know that Ghana is the gate way to West Africa and if you a serious tour operator or tourism personnel or a country that really want to penetrate into West Africa, Ghana is the country to look at which South Africa has identified.' Mrs Sam said South Africa has identified the potential of flying from Washington to Accra which makes their market very big. She said South Africa has started with Ghana and other countries come on board. The President of TOUGHA said Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana have embraced the concept and believe it was a very good concept for Africans to sell Africa. In recent years, South African Tourism has been consistently engaging with travel agencies and tour operators in both countries with the aim of forging a closer working relationship. This consistent marketing drive and engagements with the trade partners has been made possible through regular road shows and trade workshops in cities like Accra, Kumasi, Port-Harcourt, Abuja and Lagos, Nigeria. GNA The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a suit filed by Amoako Tuffuor and others seeking an early declaration of special voting results. Read below the full transcript of the Judgement. IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF JUDICATURE IN THE SUPREME COURT ACCRA A.D. 2016 WRIT NO.J1/1/2017 14 TH NOVEMBER 2016 CORAM: ATUGUBA JSC(PRESIDING) DOTSEJSC ANINYEBOAH BAFFOE- BONNIEJSC BENIN JSC APPAUJSC PWAMANGJSC BETWEEN DR. KWAME AMOAKOTUFFUOR 1st Plaintiff 204 Lagos Avenue East Legon, Accra BENJAMIN ARTHUR 2nd Plaintiff House No. 4 Kasoa Bypass, Accra ADREBA ABRE FADAMOA H 3rd Plaintiff House No. B 36 Beposo - Wenchi AND ELECTORAL COMMISSION 1st Defendant Sixth Avenue, Ridge-Accra ATTORNEY GENERAL 2nd Defendant Attorney Generals Chambers Ministry of Justice Ministries Accra JUDGMENT ATUGUBA, JSC: FACTS By their writ dated 27/10/2016 the plaintiffs claim as follows: 1. A declaration that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992 special voting as provided for by Regulation 23 of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016; CI.94 is a part of public elections. 2. A declaration that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, and Section 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992; PNDCL 284 the ballots to be cast pursuant to Regulation 23(1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9) and (10) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016; CI 94 by special voters in the December, 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections ought to be counted and announced there and then on the date(s) of the special voting; by the presiding officers and the results at each poling station; before communicating same to the returning officer. 3. A declaration that Regulation 23(11) of Public Elections and Regulations, 2016; CI.94 is inconsistent with Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992. 4. An order striking down Regulation 23(11) of Public Elections Regulations, 2016; CI.94 as being inconsistent with Article 49(2), (3)(a) and (b) of the constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992 and Section 13 of the representation of the People Law, 1992; PNDCL 284. 5. An order directed at 1st Defendant to comply with the provisions of Article 49(2), (3)(a) and (b) of the Constitution of the republic of Ghana, 1992 and Section 13 of the representation of the People Law, 1992; PNDCL 284 in respect of special voting for the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections and any subsequent public election in the republic of Ghana. 6. Any further order(s) which this Honourable Court deems just and equitable. The plaintiffs per their memorandum of issues dated 8/11/2016 have set down the following issues for determination by this court. 1. Whether Special Voting as provided for at Regulation 23 of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016; C.I. 94 is part of public elections as provided for by Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992? 2. Whether Regulation 23(11) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016; C.I. 94 is inconsistent with Article 49 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992?. The defendants for their part have set down one issue to the same effect as the plaintiffs second issue. Issue One Issue one is res ipsaloquitur, since the elections to which article 49 relates are manifestly public elections of which the special vote invoked in this case is a component part. Issue Two This involves the interpretation of article 49 and Regulation 23(11) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94). Article 49 which is same as S. 13 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992 (P.N.D.C.L 284) is as follows: 49. Voting at elections and referenda At any public election or referendum, voting shall be by secret ballot. Immediately after the close of the poll, the presiding officer shall, in the presence of such of the candidates or their representatives and their polling agents as are present, proceed to count, at that polling station , the ballot papers of that station and record the votes cast in favour of each candidate or question. The presiding officer, the candidates or their representatives and, in the case of a referendum, the parties contesting or their agents and the polling agents if any, shall then sign a declaration stating. The polling station, and The number of votes cast in favour of each candidate or question,and the presiding officer shall, there and then,announce the results of the voting at that polling station before communicating them to the returning officer. On the other hand Regulation 23 (10) and (11) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (C. I. 94) are as follows: (10) Subject to subregulation (11) voting at a polling station for special voters shall be conducted in the same manner as voting on polling day. (11) The returning officer shall at the end of the special voting Ensure that theballot boxes are kept in safe custody after the poll has closed; Ensure that the ballot boxes are sealed with the seals of the commission and any candidates who wish to add their seal; And (c ) arrange for the ballot boxes to be opened at the time of the counting of the votes cast on the polling day and the ballot papers shall be counted in the same manner as those contained in the ballot boxes used on the polling day. It is obvious that the expression the poll has closed in the context of sub- regulation (11) (a) refers to the poll of the special voting day and that sub-regulation (c ) is contemporaneous with that of article 49 (2). The plaintiffs contend that the results of the special vote should be declared on the day that vote is taken in accordance with article 49(2). However article 49(2) ties the duty to count and declare the votes cast at a polling station to immediately after the close of the poll . What then is the meaning of the expression the close of the poll,in article 49 (2)?. As contended by the 1st defendant the constitution does not define that expression. However that expression is defined by Regulation (49(1) of C. I. 94 as close of the poll means the conclusion of the poll in all polling stations ofthe constituency including polling stations where the poll has been adjourned; . (e.s) It is clear from a careful consideration of the words At any public election in article 49(1), when read together with the succeeding clauses (2) and (3), that article 49 as a whole relates to the holding of one and the same election and that the results to be declared thereunder relate to all the votes in respect of the election held in each polling station and not to some of them only. This is strengthened by the combined consideration of,inter alia, Regulations 4, 5, 15, 18, 21 and 23 of CI 94.Obviously the results from the special vote are only some of those results of the polling stations of a constituency relating to the election in question. Such fractional declaration of results of one polling station is not contemplated and could not have been reasonably contemplated by the constitution. The Electoral Commission is enjoined inter alia by article 51 to make by constitutional instrument Regulations for the effective performance of its duties. In KwesiNyame-Tease Eshun v. The Electoral Commission and Attorney General, Suit No. J1/24/2016, S.C., dated 27/10/2016, this court held that the Electoral Commission in the exercise of its functions under articles 45(c ) and 51, has a duty to conduct free, fair, transparent and legal elections. Certainly, the fractional declaration of results is not an effective way of conducting elections, which to be effective must be, inter alia, as smooth, easy to track, coherent, complete and expeditious, as possible. It is, therefore, understandable why Regulation 49(1) of C1 94 has defined close of the poll in the manner set out supra. This definition reflects well the letter and spirit of article 49 construed as a whole. That being so, the plaintiffs writ seeks to compel the premature and unconstitutional declaration of the results of the special vote in the manner they contend for. The Supremacy of the Constitution In any litigation the courts and the parties are subject to the constitution. Accordingly this court has no jurisdiction to grant a relief that is contrary to the constitution or any law that is not inconsistent with or contrary to the constitution. As held by this court in Abu Ramadan &Nimako (No. 1) v. Electoral commission & Attorney-General &Ors, (consolidated) (2013 2014)2 SCGLR 1654as stated in Holding (2) of the head-note: (2) A meaningful actualization of the article 42 rights would require, inter alia, that the first defendant Electoral Commission establish credible and reliable structures, systems, processes and procedures for translating the constitutionally-guaranteed rights into reality . Those mechanisms, structures, systems, processes and procedures must be such, as on balance, would guard protect and preserve the sanctity and credibility of the rights guaranteed thereunder. Aperfect electoral system was obviously utopian; hence the notion that the structures should, on balance, not undermine, detract from, dilute, nor whittle down the right to qualify to be registered, the first crucial step that would enable the citizen to vote. Without that, the entrenched right to the franchise would remain an illusion. This applies mutatis mutandis to the duties of the Electoral Commission under articles 49(c ) and 51. Certainly therefore the 1st defendant in actualizing articles 45(c ) and 51 must be constrained inter alia by article 49 which is one of the objects for which the 1st defendants powers are conferred by article 51. See Re Munhumeso and Others (1994)1 LRC 282. Certainly the unjustifiable erosion of any constitutional provision in the exercise of its functions cannot be countenanced. Accordingly in the KwesiNyame-Tease case, supra, this court, holding that regulation 42 of C. I. 94 relating to the constituency collation of parliamentary results is consistent with the letter and spirit of article 49 of the constitution, adopted it mutatis mutandis in respect of the collation of the presidential results also. In the present case, however, the Electoral Commission is confronted with the dilemma of having election officers fully available for the performance of their electoral duties on the polling day of anelection, without prejudice to their rights to vote as well as the excusable absence of registered voters on polling day, without prejudice to their voting rights. As is well known, the special vote is fixed for 1/12/2016 whilst the general election is fixed for 7/12/2016. In order to do so effectively under article 51 of the constitution the Electoral commission has sought, inter, alia in regulations 23 and 24 to work out a balance between the competing electoral rights and the other relevant electoral provisions of the constitution. The resultant practical scenario of its efforts is captured at p. 3 of its publication, GUIDE TO ELECTION OFFICIALS 2016 as follows: 2.2 Custody of Ballot Boxes for Special Voting Ballots cast on special voting day must NOT be counted after the poll. The ballot boxes containing the ballots should be kept in a secured room at a police station in the constituency, and sealed with the seals of the Commission and any candidate/party who may wish to add their seals. 2.3 Counting of Special Voters Ballots On polling day after polling ends at 5.00 p.m. (or when the last voter in the queue at 5pm has voted), the returning officer must retrieve the special voters ballot boxes from the police station and count the ballots in the presence of the candidates or their agents at the constituency collation centre. The results of the count should be recorded separately on both the presidential and parliamentary collation forms EL 23B and EL. 23A respectively in the spaces provided like any other polling station. The results of the special voting ballots should be added to the results from all the polling stations in the constituency before the declaration of the constituency results. The statement of poll and result declaration forms EL 21/22 A and EL 22/22 B should be completed for the parliamentary and presidential elections respectively. See also p. 5 thereof. We believe that this actualization of the powers of the 1st defendant, the Electoral Commission under article 51 of the constitution with regard to the need for special voting, resonates well with, inter alia, articles 42, 49, 23, 296 and 297 ( c) of the constitution in terms of, letter coupled with spirit, and that the relief sought by the plaintiffs is inconsistent therewith, see Tuffuor v. Attorney-General (1980) GLR 634 C.A. (sitting as the Supreme Court). For the avoidance of doubt we would also say that the fears of the plaintiffs regarding the sanctity of the special vote and the absence of the candidates polling agents are unfounded in the face of Regulation 23 (11) and the Guide to Election Officials 2016. We also emphasise that electoral interlocutory declaration of the results of the special vote contended for by the plaintiffs will gravely prejudice the secrecy of the ballots of the easily identifiable voters concerned contrary to article 49(1) of the constitution. It would further prejudice the freedom and fairness of the electoral process, as contended by the 1st Defendant in paragraphs 4.8 and 4.9 of their statement of case as follows: 4.8 The integrity of the national elections can easily also be compromised or even jeopardized. The reason for making this submission is that, once the results of the special voting is declared even before the election, persons who have not yet voted can be influenced thereby. The result of the election will be discussed on every platform and this will influence other voters. 4.9. The various spins that could attend such public declaration of the results of the special voting will not augur well for a transparent electoral process. The backlash will be blamed on these special voters whose only wrong is service to the nation and in so far as the electoral process is concerned ensuring that its integrity is preserved. It will be paradoxical that these selfless citizens whose avowed aim is to promote free and fair elections rather have their actions innocently undermining the very process which they seek to protect. (e.s) The excitement of such prejudice is arrested by the spontaneous counting and declaration of the electoral results required by article 49(2) and (3) as reflected by, inter alia, Regulations 23 and 24 of C.I. 94. The allowance of such prejudice can hardly be the efficient conduct of public elections demanded of the Electoral Commission under article 51 of the constitution. We are glad that no example of the advance announcement of the results of special or early voting in any country in the world could be cited to us by the parties. We are therefore fortified by the global wisdom regarding this matter. Conclusion Before we conclude we wish to acknowledge the sterling contribution of the 1st plaintiff to the development of Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence in this country largely triggered by his celebrated action in Tuffuor v. Attorney-General (1980) GLR 634 C.A. (sitting as the Supreme Court) and its salutary impact on the stability of the Judiciary in Ghana. However for all the foregoing reasons we dismiss the plaintiffs action. (SGD)W.A.ATUGUBA JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT DOTSEJSC I agree (SGD)V. J. M. DOTSE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT ANINYEBOAHJSC I agree (SGD)ANINYEBOAH JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT BAFFOE - BONNIEJSC I agree (SGD) P. BAFFOE - BONNIE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT BENIN JSC I agree (SGD) A. A. BENIN JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT APPAUJSC I agree (SGD)YAW APPAU JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT PWAMANGJSC I agree (SGD) G. PWAMANG JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT COUNSEL EGBERT FAIBILLE JNR. WITH HIM ANNIE EMEFAFIAWOO (MRS) FOR THE PLAINTIFFS. SEAN POKU FOR THE 1ST DEFENDANT. MRS. DOROTHY AFRIYIEANSAH (CHIEF STATE ATTORNEY) WITH HER MRS. ELFRIDADENKYI (PRINCIPAL STATE ATTORNEY), IVY VANDERPUYE (SENIOR STATE ATTORNEY) AND VICTORIA ADORTEY (ASSISTANT STATE ATTORNEY) FOR THE 2ND DEFENDANT. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com - Ex-first lady, Patience Jonathan is in another trouble as anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have traced a whopping $175m to an account linked to Mrs Jonathan -But here is another problem; the money has been withdrawn without traces -The deposits are different from the $15.5million earlier traced to the ex-First Lady which made the agency place No Debit Order on four accounts $175m found in Mrs Jonathans firms bank account Ex-first lady, Patience Jonathan is in another trouble as anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have traced a whopping $175m to an account linked to Mrs Jonathan. But here is another problem; the money has been withdrawn without traces. The deposits are different from the $15.5million earlier traced to the ex-First Lady which made the agency place No Debit Order on four accounts. According to a report by The Nation newspaper, the deposits were found in the account of Pluto Property and Investment Limited, one of the firms linked to Mrs. Jonathan. READ ALSO: How Forbes wealthiest African woman transferred N500 million to Patience Jonathan EFCC detectives discovered that the account was opened on November 30, 2013 by Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited with number 2110002238. The company was registered on January 29, 2013 with RC 1092722. The strange deposits came within 14 months. The deposits are: 21/2/2014$46,500,000; 24/2/2014$31,000,000; 31/3/2015$49,250,000; 1/4/ 2015$49,000,000 The EFCC is probing how the deposits hit the companys account barely two years after it was registered and without executing any major contract. We are suspecting that this is another slush account where government funds were diverted to, a source was quoted. The source said: All the deposits were in cash, a development which showed that it was a pure case of money laundering. On the 21st of February, the account was reported to have recorded a cash deposit of $46,500,000 by the General Manager of Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited , Toru Wonyeng Ibuomo. Three days after(24th of February, 2014), another cash deposit of $31,000,000 was made by the same General Manager. Friday Davies made a cash deposit of $49,250,000 into the same account. The last tranche of $49,000,000 was deposited by Davies on Apri 1, 2015. The report claimed that the EFCC was on the trail of Ibuomo and Davies. We need the two depositors to assist in the ongoing investigation of the payments into the affected account. It is more curious when the bank details did not show evidence of withdrawals. Yet the whereabouts of the cash was unknown. We hope it is not a private banking arrangement to hide slush funds. READ ALSO: Corruption: EFCC, ICPC investigates 25 Jonathans ex-ministers, aides (SEE LIST) It was gathered that the EFCC would probe the likely roles of the former First Lady in operating the account of Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited. In a matter before the Federal High Court, the ex-First Lady admitted that one of her domiciliary accounts was bearing Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited. We are investigating this $175.750million deposits and the extent of the involvement or relationship of the ex-First Lady with the funds. This is a fresh case; it has nothing to do with the $15.5million frozen by the EFCC. Meanwhile, an aide to former president, Goodluck Jonathan, has alleged that the EFCC is mounting pressure on him to incriminate the former first lady, Patience Jonathan, over alleged money laundering. Source: Legit.ng - Babatunde Fashola gave account of his work as minister of power, works and housing - The minister noted that the ministry inherited huge debts - He said important roads were selected to rehabilitation Babatunde Fashola, the minister of power, works and housing has provided an account of the work he has been doing since he was appointed to the position by President Muhammadu Buhari. Fashola noted that 206 road projects were inherited from the Goodluck Jonathan administration and that due to lack of payment spanning two to three years, some of the projects were abandoned. The minister said that although the ministry received a high share of the 2016 budget, it had to contend with debt. Read his statement below: READ ALSO: Lagos-Ibadan expressway to be completed soon - Fashola This ministry as we all know is responsible for civil Works especially the construction of roads, bridges, buildings and other similar civil engineering undertakings. As I mentioned during my briefing on the agenda setting, we had inherited about 206 road projects already contracted out; with outstanding completion costs in the region of N1.5 Trillion. Although the works ministry share of the 2016 appropriation was N260 Billion, which was a lot more than the 2015 budget of only N18 Billion that the last administration left, it is a drop in the ocean against the liabilities that were outstanding to contractors. Our interactions with contractors showed that many of them had not been paid for an average of 2 to 3 years before we resumed, and this explained the stoppage of works, by the contractors, the layoff of workers, and consequently poor condition of many roads. With limited resources against liabilities, with debts already owed, we had to make difficult choices of deciding which of the 206 roads under contract we should start with, and how many. Our choices were informed by the realities of our economy and the size of our resources, We resolved that all roads are economic roads but that some were more urgent and more impactful than others. So our choices were determined by roads that carried the heaviest cargo, to allow farmers, businessman, industries and travelers move their goods and themselves across the country in order to drive productive activity. READ ALSO: Privatisation reversal: Count me out - Fashola Secondly, we chose roads that support our energy sufficiency and put our resources in roads leading to and from petroleum tank farms so that we can move petro, diesel and kerosene across Nigeria. We also chose roads that led to and from our major sea and airports so that maritime business can go on, to drive the economy. See photos of the projects below Source: Legit.ng East Helena School Districts Monday night board of trustees meeting kicks off with a 5 p.m. reception honoring them for being named Montana School Board of the Year. A request for qualifications and proposals will be discussed for a planned facilities bond in the coming year. The district is seeking a firm to help with pre-bond planning and design services for developing an elementary school and modifying an existing facility. The submittal deadline is Dec. 8. In other matters, the board will hear a report on its summer school outcomes, financial audit, and tax recertification. The superintendents evaluation is also on the agenda, as well as reflections on the joint school board meeting last week with the Helena Public Schools board of trustees. The meeting is at East Valley Middle School, 400 Kalispell Ave. N. For more information, visit the districts website at http://www.ehps.k12.mt.us/ Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau vows to launch more attacks on the Nigerian soldiers following the death of Lt. Col. Ali Shekau condemns the king of Saudi Arabia for congratulating Donald Trump on his electoral victory Boko Haram factional leader, Abubakar Shekau, has claimed responsibility for the attack that led to the recent killing of Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali. Lt Col Abu Ali was killed on 4 November in Malam Fatori, Borno State, during a vicious gun battle with the Boko Haram sect. Shekau made the claim in a new audio message on Monday, November 14, according to Sahara Reporter. READ ALSO: 'I'll raise our kids as heroes like their dad' late Col. Abu Ali's wife Though the Boko Haram leader did not specifically mention the name of the name of the gallant officer who was killed in a night attack alongside five soldiers during an exchange of battle with the terrorist on November 4, the sects leader claimed that his faction of Boko Haram is responsible for all the recent attacks on the Nigerian military. READ ALSO: Aisha Buhari cries with family of Late Lt. Col. Abu Ali We are responsible for these recent attacks. We did it and will do more, Shekau said in the audio message. The Boko Haram leader also declared war on the US President-elect, Mr. Donald Trump and condemned the King of Saudi Arabia for congratulating Mr. Trump on his electoral victory. He said the sect would confront, Mr. Donald Trump, once it finishes with outgoing President Barack Obama. Source: Legit.ng CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The moon doesn't get much bigger and brighter than this. Today Earthlings will be treated to a so-called supermoon the closest full moon of the year. Monday's supermoon will be extra super it will be the closest the moon comes to us in almost 69 years. And it won't happen again for another 18 years. NASA says closest approach will occur at 4:21 a.m. MST when the moon comes within 221,523 miles. That's from the center of the Earth to the center of the moon. Full moon will occur at 6:52 a.m. MST, but the Beaver Moon will appear full to the casual observer on the night after the main event. NASA planetary geologist Noah Petro is urging everyone to step outside and soak in the view. "Ultimately, people should be more geared toward just getting outside and enjoying it," Petro said. Supermoons can appear 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter in the night sky. But it takes a real expert to notice the difference. Petro, deputy project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the moon, said Thursday that even he won't be able to see much difference in size and luminosity. What counts, he said, is getting people "talking, thinking and caring about the moon." Weather permitting, it's a sky show the entire planet can enjoy. "Everyone gets to see the moon," Petro said. "It's a great shared resource for all humanity." The last time the moon was so close actually, 29 miles closer was in January 1948. That's the same year the Cleveland Indians last won the World Series, Petro noted, "a big year," at least there. In 2034, the moon will come even closer, within 221,485 miles. That, too, will be a supermoon. The Helena Astronomical Society is holding a free public viewing Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Mount Helena trailhead parking lot. The beauty of the supermoon is in contrast to our landscape -- only then can we see and appreciate that it truly is much bigger than normal, Jeff Ross, society president wrote in an email. Watching any full moon rise over a mountain range through a telescope is a breathtaking sight. Light from the moon rise will brighten as it approaches the top of the mountain. Then a thumbnail of light appears as the Earth rotates and the moon comes into view of the telescope, he said. We first see where the moon will crest the mountain by watching the light from the Moon behind the With clear skies, we are in for a visual treat, Ross said. Visit http://www.helena-astronomical-society.org for more details. The Montana Discovery Foundation is hosting a hike to view the supermoon Monday evening from 7 to 9 p.m. Hikers are asked to meet at 6:45 p.m. at the Barking Dog Trail in Helenas South Hills. Executive director Debbie Anderson recommends bringing sturdy shoes, water and a headlamp. The hike is not overly strenuous, she says, and all ages are welcome. The event does not include any special viewing equipment such as telescopes, but is more focused on enjoying the hike under the bright moon. For more information and to RSVP, call Anderson at 495-3711. The Independent Record contributed to this article. - The prominent cleric says that pro-Biafran supporters cannot achieve independence until they wouldn't be united - He also predicted that President Buhari will free Nnamdi Kanu soon File photo of Nnamdi Kanu Prophet Princewill Iheme has foreseen that President Muhammadu Buhari will soon release the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu. In an exclusive statement for Legit.ng, the prominent man of God also said that president-elect of the USA Donald Trump will not support the Biafra independence. READ ALSO: El-Rufai to challenge Buhari in 2019 - Nigerian man predicts Prophet said: My fellow Nigerians, I'm not afraid to deliver God's message the only thing that can happen to a man is death which is the biological zero point of a man. Every human being must die one day. God revealed to me that President Donald Trump can't give Biafra. The only thing that can give Biafra is unity among the Biafrans. The Biafra agitators are not united so how do you think that Biafra will stand as a country? If all Biafrans unite together as one they will get Biafra before one year. So if you need Biafra there must among Biafrans first. The cleric further added that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary protester who achieved his goal because all the blacks in South Africa supported only him as their leader during the protest. But I have begged President Muhammadu Buhari to release Nnamdi Kanu to reduce tension in Nigeria because his death would cause war. Igbo president cannot give but will cool down Biafra agitators, Boko Haram, Niger delta militants, Fulani attack, he added. Prophet Iheme restated: President Buhari will release Kanu soon. But Donald Trump cannot give Biafra. The man of God, who appears to be an ardent pro-Biafra supporter, many times repeated that only Igbo president would save this country. He was cited as saying that the Igbo tribe should form a strong political party and elect next president. READ ALSO: Prominent prophet reveals why God cursed Nigeria The pastor also earlier predicted that Governor El-Rufai of Kaduna state would become an opponent to Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 presidential election. The Nigerian leader in 2015 media chat has explained that he cannot release pro-Biafra leader because he has two passports and could jump bail and run away to the UK. Source: Legit.ng Its time to weigh in on some emerging narratives (among both pundits and everyday people) that have little basis in fact or are actually counter-factual. On Wednesday morning, I read the argument that Trump ran a great campaign in the sense that he spoke to a part of the populace that was hurting economically, demographically insecure or otherwise ready for his message. Anti-Trumpers cant fault Hillary, Democrats, liberals, moderates or anyone else. They were just swept up in the Trump wave. In the blurriness and shock of Wednesday morning, that sounded plausible. Maybe even persuasive. Then I saw more data. (And I care deeply about the data, whether it supports my ideology and biases or not.) A quick look at turnout data: It seems 2016 was nothing special for the Rep-candidate. It's the Dem-candidate that didn't get the vote out. pic.twitter.com/wby3gta26m D Yanagizawa-Drott (@yanagiz) November 9, 2016 Turnout 2012 Obama: 65.9m 2016 Clinton: 59.1m = -6.8m 2012 Romney: 60.9m 2016 Trump: 59m = -1.9m You tell me what happened Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) November 9, 2016 Both of these tweets deserve some caveats. The graph in the first one doesnt start a zero, so it exaggerates the changes. Thats a warning sign but appropriate here, given the point being made and the closeness of the election. As for the second tweet, votes are still being counted so the 2016 numbers (and the differences, in particular) have changed and will continue to change. As of early Thursday evening, Trumps down from Romney by one million votes instead of two, and Hillary is off Obamas total by roughly six million instead of seven. But my points below should hold. With or without those caveats, the Trump-ran-a-historic-campaign narrative (and the degree of vindication his supporters feel) is not supported by the facts. No, stronger than that. They are contradicted by the facts, at least as we have them right now. Romney (a Republican that anti-Trumpers, including Democrats, now long for) was an incredibly weak candidate. He was not embraced enthusiastically by Republicans. And he was very much viewed as an out-of-touch elitist. Yet, Trumpthis supposed Pied Piper of the anti-elitist working class, producing a swell that swept him into officegot fewer votes than Romney. I expect hell come close to matching Romney, and he may well surpass him. But not enough to change this fact: he did not unearth a wave of real Americans or marginalized, white, working-class Americans or racists Americans. The state- and county-level data (forget exit polls for a moment) do tell a more nuanced story. There was a definite shift of working-class voters and rural voters to the Republican candidate and a shift of (presumably) educated and suburban voters to the Democratic candidate. And some flipped states had higher turnout and some lower. (The conservative National Review posted an analysis looking at a few crucial states that flipped and concluded that Trump 2016 would have beaten Obama 2012 in a hypothetical matchup. Soon after, the writer had to do a mea culpa after discovering hed used bad data. Treat all breaking news analysis, including mine, with a grain of salt. But dominant narratives emerge quickly, and I feel the need to push back now.) The bottom line is that the real story is NOT of a tidal wave of working-class, anti-elitist, anti-globalization voters sweeping the country and world. The real story is a massive decline in the turnout for the Democrats. Progressives should very much worry about the working-class shift and what it portends for their prospects (not to mention, oh, the real concerns and pain of the working class). And many have been. But as a sole explanation of this election? No. Consequential and a big-enough issue on the margins to swing the election? Bigly. But not a revolution that has swept the country. Why has this narrative taken hold? First, it should be a big part of the discussions. Working-class concerns were a significant factor. More importantly, the electoral map shifted and this may point to a long-term shift. (But so do Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, etc.) But again, when one side gets about the same total number of votes and another gets roughly 6 million fewer, when total turnout is this far down, this smaller (for now) working-class shift needs to be put in perspective. Elections are changed on the margins, but there are a lot of margins we could look to. Third-parties, many other demographic groups that (seemingly) didnt vote as expected, voting laws and procedures in the south that could have changed the southern end of the map (a much smaller impact than the midwestern change, but not inconsequential), etc. However, the big swing appears to be Obama voters who didnt vote for Hillary. (Some of them are working-class voters who moved from Obama to Trump, but given Trumps flat totals, there were an equal number of Romney voters who didnt vote for Trump.) Second, this explanation helps a large group of college-educated Americans, including almost all professional pundits, make sense of what happened. This group already viewed Trumps candidacy as outside the norms of healthy politics and politics as usual. They saw Trump as so offensive that he would certainly send droves of people running away from his candidacy. With many prominent conservatives and most prominent moderates denouncing him, the seeming wave of Latino and women voters turning out against him, the polls supporting a poor (if possibly close) showing for Trump and the change in Ohio that was clear early on, the working-class explanation is easy to understand. And it does helps explain Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and others. But a tidal wave? To get to a Romney-esque vote total? Weve got to dig deeper. Some will argue that turnout is always a problem for Democrats, and Obama was unusual in his ability to mobilize voters. Fair enough. But, one, pundits are pushing this tidal wave language because of the change from 2008 and 2012. It feels like a massive change. And, two, it looks like the turnout percentage for this election will be among the lowest in the last century. Its in line with 2000, 1996 and 1988. Hardly, wave or electorate revolution years. You have to go back to the 1920s to see numbers much lower. You cant just chock this up to Obama being an unusual candidate. So stop with the global tidal wave of resentment talk. Dig into working-class Trump voters, but dont miss the very significant demotivated Obama/Democratic voters. Some of the concerns may be the same, but thats a different story. It is a fact that there were Trump voters who, afraid of their friends reactions, kept their support secret. Most of us know some of them. That fact, combined with the surprise results of this election, makes this seem like a plausible explanation of the polling miss (and that miss needs an explanation, but more on that a little later). But we should be highly skeptical of this claim. I cant say this is counterfactual, but theres enough other evidence to say that this just isnt supported by the facts. It is also a fact that there were Hillary supporters who kept their support secret. A coworker of mine who is a feminist progressive and normally has yard signs and bumper stickers was afraid to have either or voice support for Hillary out of fear of the pervasive. Thats an anecdote. Here are the facts. Trump outperformed his poll numbers, going from 42.3% in the average of the last 4-way polls to roughly 47.6% in the election. Hillary also outperformed her polls, going from 45.5% to 47.6%. Does that just mean that there were more Trumpy shy voters than Hillary shy voters, kind of supporting the assertion? No. There are too many other, more plausible explanations. Gary Johnson underperformed by almost two percentage points (the difference in their over-performances) and there was somewhere around six percent of undecideds in the polls. If undecided voters and Johnson supporters broke heavily for Trump (as seems reasonable), that could explain the whole difference. And it doesnt mean this group were shy Trump supporters. We were told over and over again how people werent happy with their choices and they felt like they were choosing between the lesser of two evils. (Can we please retire that tired phrase and concept? Im sick of hearing it, election after election.) It seems more reasonable to assume that many undecideds were actually undecided, torn between two undesirable choices, than to assume they lied to pollsters. Throw on top of this the previously highlighted data, the five-to-six million Obama voters who didnt even show up to vote. You could explain the entire poll miss, and then some, by a sizable number of these non-voters getting past the likely voter screen (in simplistic terms, saying they intended to vote but not). Maybe they thought more about the email scandal and the Comey letters and were discouraged enough to stay home. Maybe they believed the pundits and select pollsters and polling aggregators who predicted a 99% probability of a Hillary win and thought they didnt need to vote. Maybe, living in a red or purple state, they believed their neighbors who predicted a Trump landslide and thought their vote wouldnt matter. Maybe they were West Coasters who thought the election was over when they saw the call for Florida and North Carolina and her struggles in the midwest. Maybe. who knows. We do know that group wasnt comprised of shy Trump supporters (by definition, because they didnt even vote), and we know there were millions of them. Finally, we should be suspicious of this argument in general. Theres a real difference between lying to friends and coworkers, whom you actually know and see regularly, and lying to a pollster. If anything, a shy Trump (or Hillary) supporter should want to lie to their friends while telling the truth to a pollster to bolster their candidate and help normalize their own viewpoint. This shy voter argument was made before this election. I was skeptical then. I was skeptical in 2008 and 2012 when some feared a group of poll respondents were lying to pollsters about supporting Obama but wouldnt be able to vote for a black man in the end. I was skeptical when the shy Bush voter (afraid of elite liberals snobbery toward the anti-intellectual Bush) argument was made in 2004 and 2000. This is not new. But it lacks compelling evidence (theres not much evidence period, and what exists is conflicting and speculative). Im sure some lying to pollsters happens, but not enough to explain this election. Ill cop to being a Silver fanboy. Not because he has some predictive magical powers, but because he does fantastic analysis, explaining that analysisand its potential pitfallsin great detail. Certainly, he missed. But lets put that into context. First, if you just looked at his 71% likelihood of a Clinton victory and walked away confident, you dont understand probabilistic projections. Read the analysis. And understand that a 29% likelihood aint nothing. Even when he showed Trump down at a 16% weeks before the election, he warned against too much confidence in this projection, against the idea that she had this in the bag. He compared it to Russian roulette (with its 1/6 probability of catching a bullet). Would you want to play Russian roulette for the leader of the free world? If you read too much into his bottom-line number, thats on you. Dont do that in the future. Second, Nate is not a pollster. Hes aggregating their data and applying some additional analysis. If they collectively miss, he misses. Third, maybe you werent paying attention to all of the others predicting a much higher likelihood (up to 99%) of a Hillary win. Maybe you missed those who accused Silver of either putting his finger on the scale to make the race appear closer than they knew it was or hamfisting his analysis and making bad adjustments. He pushed back, pointing to the inherent uncertainties in polling in general, the fact that we havent had that many elections (especially with reliable polling) and those data points arent enough to have a high-confidence statistical model, the high levels of third-party and undecided voters in this cycle, the real possibility of a popular vote / electoral college split in Trumps favor, etc. So Silver missed but by less. Still, the data was bad and youre going to ignore the data from here on out. Right? Please dont, at least if youre going to do any prognosticating and analysis. You know who was more wrong than the pollsters? Pundits. Without data, they would have really been all over the place. We need pundits to analyze the data, to talk about what theyre seeing that might show up in the data eventually, etc. But we need polling data as well. We just need to remember its probabilistic. Blind faith in the numbers is also foolish. The use of pollingthe horse race coverage it encourages and its feedback effect on the electorateis another matter. Its a real issue. Nonetheless, Id rather live with that than horse-race-driven pundits without any data. So how were the polls wrong? First, the national polls didnt miss it by that much. Three percentage points isnt a big miss in modern polling. But many state polls fared much worse. Without getting too deep into the weeds, let me try to provide a brief primer. Polling is fraught with all kinds of complications. Even if you understand enough about statistics to grasp sampling error, confidence intervals and the seemingly magical central limit theorem, there are so many complications with election polling that its a wonder that polling routinely gets as close as it does. So lets break this down a bit. First, there is basic sampling error. Most people probably understand the basic idea of a margin of error for an individual poll. When you look at multiple polls, we see a related but different phenomenon (with the same implication as margin of error). If you repeatedly pick, say, 30 people out of 100 and find their presidential preference, youll get a distribution of results that looks like the bell curve. With some confidence interval (say, 95%), the real result (peoples stated intentions if you could actually poll everyone) will be within a small interval of the average of those polls. But theres a chance (5%) that the real result could be anywhere in the tails, high or low. Thats basic statistics, simplified (and a little loose with the terminology). The more polls we have, the lower the chances of this error. We have had fewer polls this cycle (especially quality pollsi.e., those that used solid methodologies, like calling landlines and cell phones). Nonetheless, I think this is by far the smallest factor in the miss. Theres more to polling procedures and opportunity for error than that. Pollsters dont deal with truly random samples. First, you dont have a universe of every registered voter, or even every eligible voter, to randomly sample. Second, you have to have a way to reach them (Do they have a phone? Cell or landline?). Third, they have to pick up the phone and respond. (When do they work? Do they answer calls from numbers they dont know? Do they answer the survey when they find out what its about? Are they more likely to respond to a human than an automated voice?) If any of these issues are unevenly distributed across candidate choices, polls will be off. Pollsters know this, and they have their own models to adjust for these factors. Maybe their assumptions were wrong. I would guess that this played a role, but Im not inclined to pin the bulk of the blame on this. I dont know the details of their models and adjustments, and pollsters will be looking at that to do better. But I dont see 2016 as so different that it would dramatically affect these types of adjustments. Theres also a very simple factor: polls do not measure votes; they measure professed intentions. Humans change their minds, even at the last minute. Generally, I completely discount this factor (as something that could swing an election, anyway). But in an election this unusual with multiple October surprises and even a November one, this may have played a very real role. However, theres one factor that worried me the whole campaign, in part because I understand it least and in part because of these very unusual candidates: the turnout model, aka likely voter screen. Trump claimed he would shake up the map (the map was shaken but see myth #1 before applying active voice) and energize people who hadnt voted before. Anti-Trumpers claimed (or at least hoped) that hed mobilize record numbers of minorities, women and college-educated whites to vote against him. Could the likely voter screen miss them (under- or overestimating their propensity to vote this time)? Given the ambivalence toward the candidates that polls showed and the five-million missing Obama voters, Im inclined to think this was a primary factor in this elections polling miss. If youd like to read more, see FiveThirtyEights analysis and one pollsters thoughts. Well know more after pollsters finish analyzing what happened. The story may change. If youd like to know more about likely voter screens specifically, you can read the gory details from Mark Blumenthal at Mystery Pollster (hes now at SurveyMonkey). If youre bumfuzzled by how the pre-election polling missed the results, the exit polls missed it even more. Yuugely. They were pointing to a Clinton landslide. Exit polls have always been worse than regular polls, and its only gotten worse. Moreover, the finer you slice their results (by race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.), the less reliable they become. So those pointing to the majority (53%) of white women who voted for Trump need to dial it back a notch. The exit polls probably arent 20 percentage points off. So if you expected 75% of white women to vote against him, then yes, the exit polls disprove that hypothesis with a reasonably high level of confidence. However, I have zero confidence that a majority of white women in fact voted for Trump. Setting aside the wonkish analysis, finger pointing is not effective, especially at this early stage. Any group (especially white males) could have changed the results. Its on each of us to get out and vote and, especially if were the finger-pointing type, to convince others by making not just good arguments but arguments that others can actually hear and give serious consideration. But if youre going to finger-point, at least do it on the basis of good data, which is in short supply. County-level (actual) voting data is reliable but it still requires some inferences, and thats not what I see most people referencing. Also, be wary of comparing that data to unrealistic expectations. Not everyone is like you. If youve ever thought, how could any (woman, black person, immigrant, Christian, etc.) vote for (pick a candidate), then you need to check your empathy stores. And by you, I mean me. And pretty much all of us. Now, Ill dial down the objective(ish) wonkish analysis and put on my progressive hat. Cards on the table. Ideologically, Im extremely progressive. Temperamentally and tactically, Im moderate to conservative (I like the progressive who gets stuff done idea, and I believe in strong institutions with a classically liberal view of individual freedom). Empathetically, I struggle but understand where conservatives, evangelicals and Trump (whos neither) supporters are coming from. As a Republican alternate delegate to the Georgia convention at 18, who stood on the floor of the RNC as Reagan gave his last speech to that crowd, who co-founded and co-chaired his College Republican chapter (recognized as the fastest growing in the country at the time) and was trained by an Austrian School economist (the most extreme form of free-market economists there are), I get it. I understand the arguments and concerns. Economic concerns are real. Thats one area where progressives and Trump agree. But the simplistic narrative that this is all about workers out of jobs misses too much. We had (flawed exit poll) data in the primaries showing Trump supporters were economically better off than supporters of the other candidates. Detailed analysis of votes by county show that Trump votes were not correlated with unemployment rates (which, nationally, are quite low, lets remember). But they were correlated with the percentage of routine (farming, manufacturing, administrative and sales) jobs. Note also (not stated in FiveThirtyEights analysis) that those things correlate with education levels and population density. Id also like to see how that correlation has changed from previous elections before reading too much into its effect on this particular election. Nonetheless, economic insecurity was almost certainly a factor. I hope some of the perspectives Ive offered earlier help women and minorities feel better about their neighbors, that there wasnt this huge swell of voters who hate them. I hope the economic narrative helps them with that as well. Regardless, we have to also recognize how demographic uncertainty plays into this. And we need to have that conversation without putting everyones backs up by attaching the labels of racist, misogynist, etc. Technically, academically, pedantically, that may all be correct. But it does not move the conversation forward. It just makes people retreat into defensive positions and confirms that the labeller doesnt understand the labelee. By calling subtle racism what it is, we enable the I have black friends-style arguments. Our conversations have to be more empathetic. Now, one of the truly scary things about this election and its aftermath is how its emboldened not-subtle-at-all racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc.from the school children and frat boys yelling at women, immigrants, gays and others to the card-carrying members of supremacists organizations who have openly talked about armed insurrection and are now celebrating their taking back of the country. This needs to be shut down, loudly, repeatedly and by everyone of good intent, regardless of ideology and candidate preference. The fact that Trumps candidacy and election has emboldened those groups is reason enough for fear and for mourning. For a long time, I actually wanted Trump to get the nomination so that 75% of the electorate could send an unambiguous message to that extreme group of people that no, this isnt your country anymore and you cant have it back. Clearly, I was naive and reckless in my thinking. Further, to everyone who called on Muslims to denounce radical Islamists and everyone who called on Black Life Matters supporters to denounce extremists who targeted police, if you fail to denouncein loud and certain termsthe violence, hatred and aggression of these hate groups, then I dont want to hear from you. And dont tell me about how Im focusing on the extremes. Of course. So were you. And its a heck of a lot more prevalent than terrorists in this country. Dont talk to me about false flag operations. Just condemn the extremists. Loudly and often, not as an aside. Otherwise, youre encouragingaiding and abettingthe worst of us. Trump supporters, you have an especially high burden. Your vote encouraged these groups. Thats not opinion or histrionics. Thats from their own mouths. If you want us sore losers to get over it, youve got some work to do. With no offense meant for my friend and former business partner Nick Purdy, this narrative is too simplistic. It is false, misleading and true at the same time. (However, I do owe Nick and others an apology for my own smugness when it comes to political discussions over the years. Ive followed politics and wonkish policy issues for most of my life, but I tired of arguing or even discussing such things during my college years. For most of my adult life, Ive been too exhausted, burnt out, lazy and insecure for more than the occasional quip, which comes across as dismissive and undoubtedly is). This claim is false in three ways. One, to my oft-repeated first point, there wasnt a swell of Trump supporters offended by liberals smugness. We had a normal amount of people vote for the Republican candidate. Given that, I dont think you can say that smugness led to Trump voters. (Our surprise reaction can be attributed to that. And I suppose you could argue they would have voted for Clinton if we hadnt offended them so much, but thats a tough sell. Smugness doesnt win anyone over. But I dont think it pushed people there.) Two, perhaps a corollary to the previous point, this election was not unique. Were liberals really that much more smug toward Trump and his supporters than they were toward Romney? George W. Bush??? More fearful and strident, yes. But more smug and less empathic? I think thats hard to do in comparison to liberal treatment of W and his supporters. Three, to take seriously the concerns of the Trump voter this myth references, I have to look at economic anxiety, demographic anxiety, national security concerns, concerns over abortion, etc. The smugness-as-causal-factor (i.e., our smugness was somehow more important than their real issues) feels itself dismissive of those Im supposed to empathize with. It is misleading in that the liberal part of the claim is a red herring. Yes, liberals should own up to a certain smugness and lack of empathy. A yuge truckload full of it. So should moderates and NeverTrump conservatives. Most did not see this coming. And I heard as much (if not more) dismissive and angry language from them as from liberals. The warnings of a dangerous megalomaniacal strongman, the Hitler comparisons, the accusations of racism and all the rest were voiced loudly by prominent conservatives, moderates and liberals. If you want to tease out the commonality, point to elites, not liberals. And not (just) media and political elites, but most college-educated folks who live in urban cores or suburban areas. We are the guilty ones. It is true in that lack of empathy is driving a wedge between Americans. If we dont address this, the division will grow, and American civic life will get ugly (uglier). We cant continue down this path, and its right to call out smugness and lack of empathy generally. Lets also talk about smugness and lack of empathy on the part of Trumpists and even many NeverTrumpers (the National Review online has not comported themselves well, post-election). To dismiss those struggling with the election results as histrionic sore-losers, sheeple whove been led astray by the media, is beyond smug. To reference naive, participation-trophy-receiving millennials is dismissive. To call protesters un-American spoiled brats and free loaders upset that they might not get as much free government goods is insulting and displays a hostility and blindness that goes well beyond the absence of empathy. (We dont even have to go to the hypocrisy of this talk coming people who three days ago were still talking about rigged systems and, at the extremes, armed insurrection.) Given my day job, Im going to force myself to be brief on this one. First, if youll permit me a pedantic point, you mean the news media. Game of Thrones has nothing to do with this. Second, it should go without saying that the news media is not monolithic, so youre making gross overgeneralizations. Not all news organizations are alike, and within news organizations, reporters and pundits performed differently. Third, and most importantly, lets use our broad generalizations a little more accurately. Cable news outlets generally performed horribly. They chased ratings, perpetuated false equivalencies, focused on the horse race and scandals (Hillarys emails got more coverage than all of the core issues in both candidates platforms combined? Really?), and so on. But print media largely redeemed itself. While they had some of those problems, outlets like the Washington Post produced some great reporting. Editorial writers at outlets ranging from The Atlantic to The Nation to National Review loudly and eloquently sounded warnings, as did the editorial boards of virtually every newspaper, including those whod never endorsed a Democrat. We need to explore why those warnings werent heeded by more people, but my novella is turning into a novel, so Ill move on. Ive long admired European-style parliamentary systems and wanted more vigorous third parties. As gridlock has gripped our government over the past few decades, that desire has grown. This election (with help from David Frum) has flipped my thinking. First, our system of government has kept dangerous demagogues out of the White House for 240 years. It may have failed now, but thats due to the weakening of the two parties, not an inherent problem with them. The parliamentary system makes a Berlusconi more, not less, likely. It allows Tories to rule for an extended period over a more liberal Britain. It allows the Conservative Party to rule a more liberal Canada for a decade. It enables fringe candidates, and I see the folly in that now. Second, while parliamentary systems do solve the gridlock problem, Im beginning to appreciate gridlock (and not just because Trump is about to assume command). Conservatives certainly appreciated it when Obama was in office, so hold off on shouting at Democratic obstructionists. (I hope Democrats obstruct what needs to be obstructed but, unlike Republicans, dont obstruct legislation that both parties agree helps the country.) But let me speak to my fellow progressives about the gridlock imposed on our policies. One lesson progressives could take from Obamacare is that half-measures dont work, and we should have held out for single-payer. Maybe that could get passed in a parliamentary system. The counterpoint is the lesson Im taking from this election and the ACA backlash: lasting change must be broadly supported. Hearts and minds must be won. (Id also same the same thing to pro-lifers/anti-abortionistsnot the same thingwho long for a Supreme Court ruling that may never go their way.) When I look back over the past century and look for effective change agents, Im looking past tea-partiers and Gingrichs Republican Revolution. They shifted the center of debate, but they only succeeded in gridlock and dividing us, insuring a ping-ponging between parties. The shining examples of social change are FDR and The New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement and the Reagan Revolution. One required packing the court. One required marches and serious upheaval. Two required major economic downturns to set them into motion. But what they all had in common were leaders who set out to change hearts and minds. They valued persuasion over obstruction. They sought to bring along the average American, and their impacts have lasted to this day. Regardless of where you come down on the election, whats going on in its aftermath or what the future is likely to hold, recognize that some of us are in mourning. When someone has a death in the family, most mourners dont want to immediately hear platitudes about how the persons in a better place or how time will heal, no matter how much the speakers or even the mourners believe it. We need space to go through the range of emotions and process it however we need to (short of violence). If you think were being melodramatic or exaggerating what might happen, please keep it to yourself. Certainly for now. For the Trumpists and (some) conservatives: Dont compare our grieving to how you felt after Obamas election. Were not concerned about things as comparatively trivial as a hit to our pocketbooks or the passage of policies we merely disagree with. This is not just about our candidate losing. Many are fearful for their physical well-being. Many think theyve been told that they dont belong and arent wanted in this country (and I dont just mean immigrants). Were not reacting to what others have said about Trump (like yall were about Obama); were reacting to what he said out of his own mouth. And its not just about him. Maybe not even primarily about him. Its about the actual hatred and bigotry and violence hes inspired, that we witnessed on the campaign trail and now in the elections aftermath. This isnt just a story from the media. Weve seen it with our own eyes. We have multiple friends whove been verbally assaulted just in the last three days. If you dont know of anyone like that, maybe you need to get out of your bubble. The stories in these tweets arent a media invention. We know first hand. Maybe most of this will die down. If it is to die down, were going to need your help to shut it down. Time alone is not enough. Please, do NOT tell us to get over it and hang tight. Cant we all just get along? Its going to take empathy on all sides. Its going to take boldness to push back against speech, actions and policies that hurt others. And its going to take extending each other a little grace, even in the face of protests, riots, histrionics, celebrations, misspoken words and more. Be kind. Be graceful. But also be bold in standing up for each other. Through early voting, it looked as though this story was to end with the bad guys chickens spectacularly coming home to roost. Election Day 2016 would be the culmination of a tale in which Donald Trump, from the first minutes of his presidential campaign, sowed the seeds of his eventual downfall, spouting a message of intolerance towards minorities that the United States would ultimately reject. As reports last week revealed the Latino early vote was way upby over 100% in Florida!and with almost every major poll showing a narrow Hillary Clinton win, it appeared this election was set to be about inclusion triumphing over marginalization in a new, more diverse America. After an anxious 18 months, the relief would be enormous, the sense of cosmic justice immensely satisfying. That isnt what happened on Tuesday. Instead, hate and prejudice won out. Not all Trump voters will have thought they were voting from such a foul placefor many, a Trump vote was simply a way of signaling dissatisfactionbut the Trump package was never just about being anti-establishment. His campaign had some vague ideas, but was defined most clearly by racism. This election year, America was given a bad choice, but not a tough choice. It will forever be to white Americas shame that it selected unstable and ethnocentric over the relatively unthreatening More Of The Same. Trumps win is a white triumph. The most prominent beneficiaries of this victory are not anti-establishment types, but white supremacists, David Dukes KKK, and angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (thanks, Aaron Sorkin). Those who voted Trump in protest dont get to act innocent. They saw what Trump stood for, as we all did. A protest vote for Trump by white America was a vote from a place of privilege; a place where it was OK to risk Trumps Hispanophobia, his Islamophobia, his veiled anti-Semitism, because white America was never going to be affected in the first place. Some pundits are trying to break this result down by class and by wealth, painting a picture of a working-class revolt, but the poorest in society voted for Clinton, while the wealthiest and most privileged voted Trump. This was no working mans uprising. It was a whitelash, as CNNs Van Jones put it, a final desperate bid by white America to seem relevant in a country whose racial makeup is rapidly changing. It was white lawmakers putting down the minority vote through strategic voter suppression efforts. Instead of a Latino surge, it was a show of force by white America that decided this election. In the end, it was all about race, but not in the way we thought it would be. Political defeats can leave callouses on the soul. Each time it gets easier to tolerate the pain, but theres also a risk of losing something in that hardening. We might become cynical, lose interest, or give up on ideals that appear unrealistic in such a seemingly severe world. (Take it from someone who railed against Britains Tories, backed Bernie Sanders and voted to remain in the European Union.) It might not feel right now like optimism will survive long in this dark new reality, but there are reasons to be positive today. For one, unlike ours here in the UK, theres a time limit on this fuck-up. Theres no coming back from our vote to leave Europe, America, but in four years you can go back on this decision. And theres good reason to think that you will. You can imagine Trumpa man whos had less political experience than a local government intern on their first day, rememberwill along with fringe Republican extremists like Mike Pence do enough damage in four years to have voters looking for an alternative by 2020 (maybe someone talking about the problems Trump has been talking about, but with actual solutions). Note that Trump already lost the popular vote this year, only winning key states by tiny margins with white voters out in full force. In order to hold onto his current level of support for 2020, Trump will have to actually do a good job as president. Even if he does, the demographics simply dont favor Trump or his gloating cabal of Putinist fascists going forward. It all comes back to the race factor. All the Latino, African-American and Asian-American voters that white America so fears saw what white America just did. They are here, and they are growing. They will live through four years of uncertainty and increased intolerance, and in 2020backed by an ever-expanding band of predominantly liberal younger votersthey will return with a vengeance. The stats show that Trumps America does not represent a vision of things to come. This is a sad, scary time, but we are not seeing the future of the USA herewere witnessing its past thrashing in the death throes. As people stock up for this years Thanksgiving feast, the Helena Food Share team hopes they will bring home an extra turkey or two for their neighbors in need. Organizers of Fridays Turkey Challenge food drive again hope to put 1,500 Thanksgiving meals on local tables this year. The community donated enough money and meat to hand out 1,788 turkeys last year, besting the 1,500-bird goal. This years Turkey Challenge is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. this Friday at Lewis and Clark Library, 120 S. Last Chance Gulch. Organizers will accept the frozen fowl along with donations via cash, credit card and check during the event, and people can also give online now at www.helenafoodshare.com. A $25 donation will cover the cost of one turkey. Miss Montana will be on hand at this years event to help the organizers and mingle with the crowd. Gov. Steve Bullock and his family are also expected to make an appearance, along with some local responders in their emergency vehicles. Food Shares shelves are already stocked with many traditional Thanksgiving sides, and the organization will distribute the main course on Monday to needy families who have signed up. Anyone who still needs a Thanksgiving meal can sign up in person at the Food Share pantry, 1616 Lewis St. in Helena. For more information, call Helena Food Share at 443-3663. Don't Miss Mark Chapman's Free Trading Webinar - Today at 7 p.m.! September 09, 2015 Giovanni Angioni If you are considering to explore the world of online trading and you are ready to learn how to survive this highly competitive industry from one of the most accomplished traders and educators out there, don't forget to join Mark Chapman in today's free webinar at TradingHD. Set to start at 7 p.m. (BST), the webinar is titled "Introduction to Trading Traps" and introduces you to the world of online trading by giving you an overview of some of the most effective strategies you should know as well as by warning you about some of the most common pitfalls to avoid. How to Join The Course? To join the "Introduction to Trading Traps" webinar, simply follow the instructions below: Open the registration page Fill the form Click on 'Register' During the webinar, Chapman plans also to give away a free trading concept, "which I have developed over my years of teaching traders how to become consistent." "This one concept can improve your trading results within a short time, reduce the psychological stress usually associated with trading, and finally provide you with the framework for consistent results." About Mark Chapman and Trading HD Mark Chapman is a successful trader with over a decade of experience and the inventor of the "Trapped Traders(R)" concept. Over the years, Chapman has trained and assisted a vast number of traders establishing himself as one of the top trading experts and educators in the industry. Chapman joined TradingHD in 2015, and the Introduction to Trading Traps free webinar is his first live contribution to the platform. TradingHD is a project created by the iBus Media Group the parent company of PokerNews in cooperation with world-famous hedge fund manager, acclaimed educator, and international TV star Lex van Dam. The site aims to provide investors with the first top-quality online education platform for those looking to truly understand the markets. "For those who want a career in finance, we provide workbooks, exams, and certificates of competence," van Dam said about the site. "For those who want to partake in Continuing Education, we are accredited by a number of professional bodies as well." "What I like about Mark's 'Trapped Traders' concept is that it really does bring the charts to life by helping you understand the psychology behind the price action. The course will let people understand the pain underlying some price movements, and discover how to go about making money when others around are losing fortunes," van Dam continued. By opening an account at TradingHD today, you will get free access to Mark Champan's webinar and get the opportunity to browse through a number of great educational resources created by some of the most accomplished professionals in the world like financial columnist for The Times and former stockbroker for Goldman Sachs Louise Cooper, the founder of the London advisory stock broking firm Deydun Markets Ashwani Mathur, and the founder of Capital Advisory Partners Sven Miserey. For more information about the webinar and TradingHD, please visit www.TradingHD.com. Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! Daniel Maor Leads Final Flight of WPT Montreal November 14, 2016 Anthony Charter The field is set after 300 hopefuls had their last chance to qualify during Sundays Day 1c action of the $2,000,000 partypoker.net World Poker Tour (WPT) Montreal. Another 139 players will carry a stack into Day 2. Bagging the largest stack on Day 1c was Daniel Maor. Across the room, the next event of the 2016 Playground Poker Fall Classic kicked off, the Seniors event. Local legend Bob T bested a field of 145 to claim the Champions trophy and a prize of $4,090. The third and final flight of the WPT Montreal got underway at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning. When registration closed there were 300 entries in the mix, closing off the total field size at 648. That was enough to give the prize pool a boost, officially closing at CAD $2,199,960. The 274 players returning for Day 2 will have their sights set on the top prize of CAD $425,980. While just one will leave with the largest share, 81 places will earn a cash. Daniel Maor finished with the top stack after 10 levels on Day 1c. Maor fired 179,700 chips into his bag, unable to catch either of his Day 1a or 1b counterparts. Ivan Fazal Karim (163,100), online legend Shyam Srinivasan (161,000), Matthew McDonough (160,200) and Dakota Vandine (158,500) rounded out the top five stacks from Sundays action. With their final bullet in the barrel, many notables were able to stave off elimination. A few able to survive include Brian Hastings (141,700), Darren Elias (121,800), 2016 World Series of Poker November Niner Griffin Benger (95,900), Montreal Nationals' Pascal Lefrancois (87,200), Ruben Perceval (66,400) and Mike Leah (61,000). Unfortunately, some were unable to make good with their last chance. Players no longer in the hunt include Ankush Mandavia, Ari Engel, Dylan Wilkerson, Marc-Etienne McLaughlin, Will Failla, Jason Duval and Darlene Lee. Day 2 will kick off at noon Monday inside Playground Poker Club. Play is scheduled for nine 60-minute levels. Event #10: $220 NL Holdem Seniors Tournament The Seniors events at Playground are always well received and create a fun atmosphere for everyone involved. The Fall Classic installment was no different as 145 hopefuls over the age of 50 took a seat. A voice that can always be heard around the room, Bob T took down another title and a first-place prize of $4,090. There were some tough players in the hunt Sunday evening. A few not able to make a deep run were Richard Figiel, Gary Lucci, Arthur W, Prosper [Removed:250], Keith Laflam, Medhat Ramzy and David Cadoch. When the field got down to 16, the remaining players came to an agreement to pay the bubble and Roger Thibault was the first to fall, collecting a prize of $220. The final table was set when Georges Riendeau was eliminated in 11th place. Gail Seagris took the chip lead into the final table and quickly went to work, taking out Kamal Sadaka. Jacque Blais and Rees Ray Scruggs were the next to depart, falling in ninth and eighth respectively. Bob T busted Andre Bilodeau in seventh and then proceeded to open up negotiations to discuss a deal. The final six players reached an agreement on a fair cut of the prize pool, leaving extra bonus cash for the top three finishers and play resumed. Locking up the smallest share, Francecso Maltese hit the rail in sixth. Shelley Rapp and Salvador Villaluz soon joined him, Rapp busting in fifth and Villaluz taking fourth. The final three were now guaranteed some bonus money and it took only one hand to figure it out. With all three players all in preflop and Bob T having his opponents covered, the cards were tabled. Bob T held king-jack while Wayne Campbell had the best hand with ace-ten, dominating Seagris ten-four. The board ran out hitting only Bob T, pairing his jack, and all the chips were pushed his way. Campbell had Seagris covered, earning the extra cash for second place. Here are the final table payouts: Place Name Prize 1 Bob T $4,090.00 2 Wayne Campbell $3,570.00 3 Gail Seagris $5,210.00 4 Salvador Villaluz $3,590.00 5 Shelley Rapp $3,200.00 6 Francesco Maltese $2,470.00 7 Andre Bilodeau $1,230.00 8 Rees Ray Scruggs $930.00 9 Jacques Blais $700.00 10 Kamal Sadaka $525.00 Check out PokerNews daily for a recap of all the action at the Playground Poker Fall Classic. Follow all of the action on the Fall Classic Event Blog. Sharelines Daniel Maor leads after Day 1c of the $2,000,000 partypoker.net World Poker Tour Montreal. Bob T took down the Senior's Event for $4,090 at the Playground Poker Fall Classic. NREP has held a final closing of NREP Nordic Strategies Fund II with an investment capacity of 1.7 billion to be invested primarily in modern logistics, necessity driven retail and residential. The investors in NREP Nordic Strategies Fund II (NSF2) include a broad range of Nordic, European and US blue [] Mark Barsoum draws attention to a frightening experience he had with his Hyundai Tucson while driving to work on Highway 427 in Toronto. He states that the sunroof of the Tucson suddenly shattered, showering the road behind him with a rain of glass shards onto the path of the other drivers. This is not the first such instance of the sunroof shattering as other vehicle owners have also complained of similar situations. While Barsoums sunroof looks like it has been hit by a bowling ball, it was not hit by any object but just ruptured without any external force. Barsoum and his wife did not suffer any injury on account of this shattered glass but were visibly shaken by the noise and occurrence. Barsoum has shown off pictures and video from the dash cams on the front and rear of the 2017 Hyundai Tucson to substantiate his claim and is seeking answers as to why this happened without any warning. Barsoums Hyundai Tucson is just two years old and has completed 40,000 kms when it met with this fate. It had to be towed to the company dealership for evaluation and warranty. However, the dealership has already informed Barsoum that the sunroof, which is priced at $800, is not covered under warranty and hence an insurance claim has been filed. Similar cases have been filed by other Hyundai owners who have also experienced the shattering of the sunroof on their models. However, none of these claims have been proved in court while as on 16th October 2017 there have been 351 complaints filed with Transport Canada with 61 involving Hyundai cars. Other car owners of Nissan, BMW and Ford have also registered complaints of shattering sunroofs with contaminated glass being the possible cause of such accidents. Hyundai has assured its users that safety and security of customers is of paramount importance to the company and all company products are backed by a five year warranty which has benefited many customers in Canada. Source A combination of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and TNF-inhibitors may help slow down spine damage in ankylosing spondylitis, according to new research findings presented this week at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington. Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is an inflammatory form of arthritis that frequently affects the joints of the spine. It's more common in men. People with AS often are negative for rheumatoid factor, but positive for the, [gene or allele -- depending on target audience] Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) B27. Recent research on the effectiveness of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) on patients with inflammatory arthritis has been mixed, so researchers at the University of California, San Francisco in conjunction with several other investigators conducted a study to analyze the direct and interactive effects of a combination of the two therapies on radiographic (X-ray) progression of AS. The study was a multicenter cohort funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "Until 2003, the only drugs available to treat AS were NSAIDs. When the first TNFi was approved in 2003, the disease state changed. Suddenly, we could offer therapies to patients with incredible efficacy," said Lianne S. Gensler, MD, Director of the Ankylosing Spondylitis Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco, and the lead author of the study. Despite the robust clinical response, TNFi could not show the disease progression (by X-ray) slowing down, she noted. "Researchers posited that there was a different mechanism to explain the damage that occurred in AS, and that though we were treating the inflammation, we may not be addressing the ankylosis that appeared to continue. At the same time, several studies came out looking at NSAIDs to see if they could slow down progression, and these results were mixed," she said. "Despite the controversy, as we saw patients on these drugs over the next decade, the clinical experience did not match the 'evidence' that suggested no effect. Patients were not developing the severe damage we had become accustomed to. Based on the controversial data, and having prospectively collected detailed medication data in a longitudinal cohort [PSOAS -- Prospective Study of Outcomes in AS] over 10 years, we were able to ask the research question in a longitudinal manner, not only addressing the effects of TNFi, but also NSAIDs and the relationship between these two medications." The study included 527 AS patients who met the modified New York criteria in a prospective cohort with at least two years of clinical and radiological follow-up. The researchers defined radiographic progression longitudinally, with a 2 modified Stoke Ankylosing Spondylitis Spine Score (mSASSS) unit increase in 24 months. Patients with high mSASSS scores were censored if they could not meet the progression definition over the next follow-up period. They used a longitudinal, mixed-effects, multivariate logistic regression model to find associations with NSAID and TNFi therapy and radiographic progression. The patients in the study were 76 percent male, had a mean age of 42.7 and mean disease duration of 18.45 years. Their baseline median mSASSS score was 5.36, and they were followed for a median of 3.67 years. Seventy-eight percent of the patients used NSAIDs, and 58.4 percent used TNFi drugs. Multivariate results of the study showed that there was significant interaction between TNFi and NSAIDs. When TNFi were used with higher doses of NSAIDs (at least 50 percent of the maximum daily dose), patients had a 70 percent reduction in radiographic progression. "This is the first study to show this relationship and potentially sheds light on why prior study results have been so controversial," said Dr. Gensler. "I think it is important to remember that despite the results, not every patient will progress or warrant this kind of regimen. That said, for those with greater risk, this combination may be especially helpful." The researchers will next analyze another year's worth of data to clarify their findings even more, Dr. Gensler said. "It is also important to remember that this is a cohort of patients being studied, not a randomized controlled trial, so there may be unmeasured confounders and biases with regards to why various medications are used by different patients," she said. "In the future, a randomized controlled trial with a radiographic outcome may allow us to answer the question in the purest way." The following companies are subsidiares of Tenet Healthcare: 45th Street MOB LLC, 601 N 30th Street I L.L.C., 601 N 30th Street II L.L.C., 601 N 30th Street III Inc., AHM Acquisition Co. 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Coral Ridge Outpatient Center LLC, Corpus Christi Surgicare Ltd., Covenant/USP Surgery Centers LLC, CreAtiv Management Company Inc., Creekwood Surgery Center L.P., Crown Point Surgery Center LLC, DH/USP SJOSC Investment Company L.L.C., DMC Detroit Receiving Hospital Premier Clinical Co-Management Services LLC, DMC Education & Research, DMC Harper University Hospital Premier Clinical Co-Management Services LLC, DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital Premier Clinical Management Services LLC, DMC Imaging L.L.C., DeTar/USP Surgery Center LLC, Delray Beach ASC LLC, Delray Medical Center Inc., Delray Medical Physician Services L.L.C., Denville Surgery Center LLC, Des Peres Physician Network LLC, Desert Regional Medical Center Inc., Desert Ridge Outpatient Surgery LLC, Desoto Surgicare Partners Ltd., Destin Surgery Center LLC, Detroit Education & Research, DigitalMed Inc., Dignity/Abrazo Health Network LLC, Dignity/USP Phoenix Surgery Centers II LLC, Doctors Hospital of Manteca Inc., Doctors Medical Center Neurosciences Clinical Co-Management LLC, Doctors Medical Center Orthopedics Clinical Co-Management LLC, Doctors Medical Center of Modesto Inc., Doctors Outpatient Surgery Center of Jupiter L.L.C., EPHC Inc., EPIC ASC LLC, East Atlanta Endoscopy Centers LLC, East Cobb Urgent Care LLC, East Cooper Coastal Family Physicians L.L.C., East Cooper Community Hospital Inc., East Cooper Hyperbarics L.L.C., East Cooper OB/GYN L.L.C., East Cooper Physician Network LLC, East Cooper Primary Care Physicians L.L.C., East West Surgery Center L.P., Eastgate Building Center L.L.C., El Mirador Surgery Center L.L.C., El Paso Center for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy LLC, El Paso Day Surgery LLC, El Paso Urology Surgery Center Curie LLC, Emanate/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Emanuel Medical Center, Emerus BHS/SA NW Military LLC, Emerus BHS/SA Southside LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Hausman LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Kelly LLC, Emerus/BHS SA LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Overlook Parkway LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Schertz LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Thousand Oaks LLC, Emerus/BHS SA Westover Hills LLC, Encinitas Endoscopy Center LLC, Endoscopy Consultants LLC, Enterprise Research Solutions LLC, European Surgical Partners Ltd., Eye Center of Nashville UAP LLC, Eye Surgery Center of Nashville LLC, FMC Medical Inc., FMCC Network Contracting L.L.C., FREH Real Estate L.L.C., FRS Imaging Services L.L.C., First Choice Physician Partners, Flatirons Surgery Center LLC, Fort Bend Clinical Services Inc., Fort Worth Hospital Real Estate LP, Foundation Bariatric Hospital of San Antonio LLC, Foundation San Antonio Borrower Sub LLC, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, Fountain Valley Surgery Center LLC, Franklin Endo UAP LLC, Franklin Endoscopy Center LLC, Frontenac Ambulatory Surgery & Spine Care Center L.P., Frye Regional Medical Center Inc., FryeCare Boone L.L.C., FryeCare Morganton L.L.C., FryeCare Physicians L.L.C., FryeCare Valdese L.L.C., FryeCare Watauga L.L.C., FryeCare Womens Services L.L.C., GAB Endoscopy Center LLC, GCSA Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, GIA/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Gainesville Endoscopy ASC LLC, Gainesville Endoscopy Center LLC, Gamma Surgery Center LLC, Gardendale Surgical Associates LLC, Gastric Health Institute L.L.C., Georgia Endoscopy Center LLC, Georgia Gifts From Grace L.L.C., Georgia Musculoskeletal Network Inc., Georgia North Fulton Healthcare Associates L.L.C., Georgia Northside Ear Nose and Throat L.L.C., Georgia Physicians of Cardiology L.L.C., Georgia Spectrum Neurosurgical Specialists L.L.C., Glen Echo Surgery Center LLC, Golden Ridge ASC LLC, Good Samaritan Medical Center Inc., Good Samaritan Surgery L.L.C., Graystone Family Healthcare Tenet North Carolina L.L.C., Great Lakes Surgical Suites LLC, Greater Dallas Healthcare Enterprises, Greater Northwest Houston Enterprises, Greenville Physicians Surgery Center LLP, Greenwood ASC LLC, Greystone Internal Medicine Brookwood L.L.C., Gulf Coast Community Hospital Inc., HC Hialeah Holdings Inc., HCH Tucson Holdings LLC, HCN EP Horizon City LLC, HCN EP Lee Trevino LLC, HCN EP Northeast LLC, HCN EP Sunland Park LLC, HCN Emerus El Paso LLC, HCN Emerus Management Sub LLC, HCN Emerus Texas LLC, HCN Laboratories Inc., HCN Physicians Inc., HCN Surgery Center Holdings Inc., HDMC Holdings L.L.C., HKRI Holdings LLC, HMHP/USP Surgery Centers LLC, HNMC Inc., HNW GP Inc., HNW LP Inc., HSRM International Inc., HSS Palm Beach Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, HSS/USP Surgery Center LLC, Hagerstown Surgery Center LLC, Harbor Heights Surgery Center LLC, Hardeeville Medical Group L.L.C., Hardeeville Primary Care L.L.C., Harlingen Physician Network Inc., Harper-Hutzel AHP Services Inc., Harvard Park Surgery Center LLC, Haymarket Surgery Center LLC, Health & Wellness Surgery Center L.P., Health Horizons of Kansas City Inc., Health Horizons of Murfreesboro Inc., Health Horizons/Piedmont Joint Venture LLC, Health Services CFMC Inc., Health Services HNMC Inc., Health Services Network Care Inc., Health Services Network Hospitals Inc., Health Services Network Texas Inc., HealthCorp Network Inc., Healthcare Compliance LLC, Healthcare Network Alabama Inc., Healthcare Network CFMC Inc., Healthcare Network DPH Inc., Healthcare Network Georgia Inc., Healthcare Network Holdings Inc., Healthcare Network Hospitals Inc., Healthcare Network Louisiana Inc., Healthcare Network Missouri Inc., Healthcare Network North Carolina Inc., Healthcare Network South Carolina Inc., Healthcare Network Tennessee Inc., Healthcare Network Texas Inc., Healthcare SMG I L.L.C., Healthcare SMG II L.L.C., Healthcare SMG IV L.L.C., Healthcare UC Holdings Inc., Healthmark Partners Inc., Healthpoint of North Carolina L.L.C., Heart and Vascular Institute of Michigan, Hialeah Real Properties Inc., Hickory Family Practice Associates - Tenet North Carolina L.L.C., Hill Country ASC Partners LLC, Hill Country Surgery Center LLC, Hilton Head Health System L.P., Hilton Head Regional Healthcare L.L.C., Hilton Head Regional OB/GYN Partners L.L.C., Hilton Head Regional Physician Network LLC, Hilton Head Regional Physician Network Georgia L.L.C., Hitchcock State Street Real Estate Inc., Holston Valley Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Holy Cross Hospital Inc., Home Health Partners of San Antonio LLC, Hoover Doctors Group Inc., Hoover Land LLC, Hospital Development of West Phoenix Inc., Hospital RCM Services LLC, Houston Northwest Partners Ltd., Houston PSC L.P., Houston Specialty Hospital Inc., Houston Sunrise Investors Inc., Hyde Park Surgery Center LLC, Imaging Center at Baxter Village L.L.C., InforMed Insurance Services LLC, International Health and Wellness Inc., Intracoastal Surgery Center LLC, JFK Memorial Hospital Inc., Jacksonville Endoscopy Centers LLC, Journey Home Healthcare of San Antonio LLC, KHS Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, KHS/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Kingsport Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Laguna Medical Systems Inc., Lake Endoscopy Center LLC, Lake Health Care Facilities Inc., LakeFront Medical Associates LLC, Lakewood Regional Medical Center Inc., Lancaster Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Lebanon Endoscopy Center LLC, Legacy Warren Partners L.P., Leonardtown Surgery Center LLC, Lifemark Hospitals Inc., Lifemark Hospitals of Florida Inc., Lifemark Hospitals of Louisiana Inc., Longleaf Surgery Center LLC, Los Alamitos Medical Center Inc., Lubbock ASC Holding Co LLC, MASC Partners LLC, MH/USP Bay Area LLC, MH/USP Brazoria LLC, MH/USP Kingsland LLC, MH/USP Kingwood LLC, MH/USP Kirby LLC, MH/USP Main Street LLC, MH/USP North Freeway LLC, MH/USP North Houston LLC, MH/USP Richmond LLC, MH/USP Sugar Land LLC, MH/USP TMC Endoscopy LLC, MH/USP West Houston L.L.C., MH/USP Woodlands Parkway LLC, MSV Health/USP Surgery Centers LLC, MVH/USP Surgery Centers LLC, MacNeal Management Services Inc., MacNeal Medical Records Inc., MacNeal Physicians Group LLC, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of San Luis Obispo Inc., Magnolia Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Manchester Ambulatory Surgery Center LP, Maple Lawn Surgery Center LLC, Marion Surgery Center LLC, Mason Ridge Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., McLaren ASC of Flint LLC, Meadowcrest Hospital LLC, Medical House Staffing LLC, Medplex Outpatient Medical Centers Inc., Medplex Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Memorial Hermann Bay Area Endoscopy Center LLC, Memorial Hermann Endoscopy & Surgery Center North Houston L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Endoscopy Center North Freeway LLC, Memorial Hermann Specialty Hospital Kingwood L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Surgical Hospital L.L.P., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Brazoria LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Cypress LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Kingsland L.L.C., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Kirby LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Main Street LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Pinecroft LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Preston Road Ltd., Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Richmond LLC, Memorial Hermann Surgery Center Woodlands Parkway LLC, Memorial Hermann Texas International Endoscopy Center LLC, Memorial Hermann West Houston Surgery Center LLC, Memorial Hermann/USP Surgery Centers II L.P., Memorial Hermann/USP Surgery Centers IV LLP, Memorial Surgery Center LLC, Memphis Urgent Care #1 L.L.C., Memphis Urgent Care #2 L.L.C., Metro Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Metro Surgery Center LLC, MetroWest HomeCare & Hospice LLC, Metropolitan Medical Partners LLC, Miami Surgical Suites LLC, Michigan Pioneer ACO LLC, Michigan Regional Imaging LLC, Mid Rivers Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Mid State Endo UAP LLC, Mid-State Endoscopy Center LLC, Middle Tennessee Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Midland Memorial/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Midland Texas Surgical Center LLC, Midwest Digestive Health Center LLC, Midwest Pharmacies Inc., Midwest Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Millennium Surgical Center LLC, Minimally Invasive Surgicenter LLC, Minimally Invasive Surgicenter of Delray LLC, Mobile Imaging Management LLC, Mobile Technology Management LLC, Modesto Radiology Imaging Inc., Monocacy Surgery Center LLC, Mountain Empire Surgery Center L.P., Munster Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Murdock Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, NICH GP Holdings LLC, NKCH/USP Briarcliff GP LLC, NKCH/USP Liberty GP LLC, NKCH/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., NMC Lessor L.P., NMC Surgery Center L.P., NME Headquarters Inc., NME Properties Corp., NME Properties Inc., NME Property Holding Co. Inc., NME Psychiatric Hospitals Inc., NME Rehabilitation Properties Inc., NS Medical Billing Center L.L.C., NSCH GP Holdings LLC, NSCH/USP Desert Surgery Centers L.L.C., NSMC Holdings Inc., NSN Revenue Resources LLC, NUCH of Georgia L.L.C., NUCH of Massachusetts LLC, NUCH of Michigan Inc., Nacogdoches ASC-LP Inc., National ASC Inc., National Ancillary Inc., National Diagnostic Imaging Centers Inc., National HHC Inc., National Home Health Holdings Inc., National ICN Inc., National Imaging Center Holdings Inc., National Medical Services II Inc., National Outpatient Services Holdings Inc., National Surgery Center Holdings Inc., National Urgent Care Inc., Network Management Associates Inc., New Dimensions LLC, New England Physician Performance Network LLC, New H Acute Inc., New Horizons Surgery Center LLC, New Medical Horizons II Ltd., Newhope Imaging Center Inc., North Anaheim Surgery Center LLC, North Atlantic Surgical Suites LLC, North Campus Surgery Center LLC, North Carolina Community Family Medicine L.L.C., North Denver Musculoskeletal Surgical Partners LLC, North Fulton Cardiovascular Medicine L.L.C., North Fulton Hospitalist Group L.L.C., North Fulton Medical Center Inc., North Fulton Primary Care - Willeo Rd. L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care - Windward Parkway L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care - Wylie Bridge L.L.C., North Fulton Primary Care Associates L.L.C., North Fulton Pulmonary Specialists L.L.C., North Fulton Womens Consultants L.L.C., North Haven Surgery Center LLC, North Miami Medical Center Ltd., North Shore Same Day Surgery L.L.C., North Shore Surgical Suites LLC, NorthPointe Surgical Suites LLC, NorthShore/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., Northridge Surgery Center L.P., Northwest Georgia Orthopaedic Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Regional ASC LLC, Northwest Regional Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Surgery Center Ltd., Novant Health/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Novant/UVA/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Okatie Surgical Partners L.L.C., Old Tesson Surgery Center L.P., Olive Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Olive Branch Urgent Care #1 LLC, Ophthalmology Anesthesia Services LLC, Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Orlando LLC, Optimum Spine Center LLC, OrNda Healthcorp, OrNda Hospital Corporation, Orlando Health/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., OrthoArizona Surgery Center Gilbert LLC, OrthoLink ASC Corporation, OrthoLink Physicians Corporation, OrthoLink Radiology Services Corporation, OrthoLink/ Georgia ASC Inc., OrthoLink/New Mexico ASC Inc., Orthopedic Associates of the Lowcountry L.L.C., Oxford Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, PAHS/USP Surgery Centers LLC, PDN L.L.C., PHPS Inc., PHPS-CHM Acquisition Inc., PM CyFair Land Partners LLC, PMC Physician Network L.L.C., PSS Patient Solution Services LLC, Pacific Endo-Surgical Center L.P., Pacific Endoscopy and Surgery Center LLC, Paley Institute Global LLC, Palm Beach Gardens Community Hospital Inc., Palm Beach International Surgery Center LLC, Park Plaza Hospital Billing Center L.L.C., ParkCreek ASC LLC, Parkwest Surgery Center L.P., Patient Partners LLC, Peak Gastroenterology ASC LLC, Pediatric Surgery Center Odessa LLC, Pediatric Surgery Centers LLC, Physician Performance Network L.L.C., Physician Performance Network of Arizona LLC, Physician Performance Network of South Carolina LLC, Physician Performance Network of Tucson LLC, Physicians Performance Network of Houston, Physicians Performance Network of North Texas, Physicians Surgery Center of Tempe LLC, Physicians Surgery Center of Chattanooga L.L.C., Physicians Surgery Center of Knoxville LLC, Piccard Surgery Center LLC, Piedmont ASC LLC, Piedmont Behavioral Medicine Associates LLC, Piedmont Cardiovascular Physicians L.L.C., Piedmont Carolina OB/GYN of York County L.L.C., Piedmont Carolina Vascular Surgery L.L.C., Piedmont East Urgent Care Center L.L.C., Piedmont Express Care at Sutton Road L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Rock Hill L.L.C., Piedmont Family Practice at Tega Cay L.L.C., Piedmont General Surgery Associates L.L.C., Piedmont Internal Medicine at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Physician Network LLC, Piedmont Pulmonology L.L.C., Piedmont Surgical Specialists L.L.C., Piedmont Urgent Care Center at Baxter Village L.L.C., Piedmont Urgent Care and Industrial Health Centers Inc., Piedmont/Carolinas Radiation Therapy LLC, Placentia-Linda Hospital Inc., Pleasanton Diagnostic Imaging Inc., Point of Rocks Surgery Center LLC, Porter Musculoskeletal Surgery Center LLC, Potomac View Surgery Center LLC, Practice Partners Management L.P., Premier ACO Physicians Network LLC, Premier ASC LLC, Premier Adult and Childrens Surgery Center LLC, Premier Endoscopy ASC LLC, Premier Health Plan Services Inc., Premier Medical Specialists L.L.C., Prince William Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Professional Anesthesia Services LLC, Pros Temporary Staffing Inc., Providence/UCLA/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Providence/USP Santa Clarita GP LLC, Providence/USP South Bay Surgery Centers L.L.C., Providence/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Pueblo Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, R.H.S.C. El Paso Inc., RE Plano Med Inc., RHC Parkway Inc., RLC LLC, Reading Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Reading Endoscopy Center LLC, Reagan Street Surgery Center LLC, Red Cedar Surgery Center LLC, Redmond Surgery Center LLC, Republic Health Corporation of Rockwall County, Resolute Health Physicians Network Inc., Resolute Hospital Company LLC, Resurgens Surgery Center LLC, Rheumatology Associates of Atlanta Medical Center L.L.C., Rio Grande Valley Indigent Health Care Corporation, Riva Road Surgery Center LLC, River North Same Day Surgery L.L.C., Riverside Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Rock Bridge Surgical Institute L.L.C., Rock Hill Surgery Center LLC, Rockville Surgical Suites LLC, Rocky Mountain Endoscopy Centers LLC, Roswell Surgery Center L.L.C., SCNRE LLC, SFMP Inc., SFMPE - Crittenden L.L.C., SL-HLC Inc., SLH Physicians L.L.C., SLH Vista Inc., SLPA ACO LLC, SLUH Anesthesia Physicians L.L.C., SMSJ Imaging Company LLC, SMSJ Tucson Holdings LLC, SRRMC Management Inc., SSI Holdings Inc., Safety Harbor ASC Company LLC, Saint Francis Cardiology Associates L.L.C., Saint Francis Cardiovascular Surgery L.L.C., Saint Francis Center for Surgical Weight Loss L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital Billing Center L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital Medicare ACO LLC, Saint Francis Hospital Pro Fee Billing L.L.C., Saint Francis Hospital-Bartlett Inc., Saint Francis Medical Partners East L.L.C., Saint Francis Medical Partners General Surgery L.L.C., Saint Francis Physician Network LLC, Saint Francis Quality Alliance LLC, Saint Francis Surgery Center L.L.C., Saint Francis Surgical Associates L.L.C., Saint Francis-Arkansas Physician Network LLC, Saint Francis-Bartlett Physician Network LLC, Saint Thomas Campus Surgicare L.P., Saint Thomas Surgery Center New Salem LLC, Saint Thomas/USP Surgery Centers II L.L.C., Saint Thomas/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., Saint Thomas/USP Baptist Plaza L.L.C., Saint Vincent Physician Services Inc., Salmon Surgery Center LLC, Same Day Management L.L.C., Same Day Surgery L.L.C., San Antonio Endoscopy L.P., San Fernando Valley Surgery Center L.P., San Gabriel Valley Surgical Center L.P., San Ramon ASC L. P., San Ramon Ambulatory Care LLC, San Ramon Network Joint Venture LLC, San Ramon Regional Medical Center LLC, Santa Barbara Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Santa Clarita Surgery Center L.P., Savannah Endoscopy Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Schertz Surgery Center LLC, Scottsdale Endoscopy ASC LLC, Scripps/USP Surgery Centers 2 LLC, Seaside Surgery Center LLC, Shelby Baptist Affinity LLC, Shelby Baptist Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Shore Outpatient Surgicenter L.L.C., Shoreline Real Estate Partnership LLP, Shoreline Surgery Center LLP, Sierra Providence Health Network Inc., Sierra Providence Healthcare Enterprises, Sierra Vista Hospital Inc., Sierra Vista Surgery Center LLC, Silver Cross Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Silver Cross/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Sinai-Grace Premier Clinical Management Services LLC, Solantic Development LLC, Solantic Holdings Corporation, South Carolina East Cooper Surgical Specialists L.L.C., South Carolina Health Services LLC, South Carolina SeWee Family Medicine L.L.C., South County Outpatient Endoscopy Services L.P., South Denver Musculoskeletal Surgical Partners LLC, South Florida Ambulatory Surgical Center LLC, South Fulton Health Care Centers Inc., South Plains Endoscopy Associates LLC, SouthCare Physicians Group Neurology L.L.C., SouthCare Physicians Group Obstetrics & Gynecology L.L.C., Southeast Ohio Surgical Suites LLC, Southern Orthopedics and Sports Medicine L.L.C., Southern States Physician Operations Inc., Southwest Childrens Hospital LLC, Southwest Endoscopy LLC, Southwestern Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Spalding Regional Medical Center Inc., Spalding Regional OB/GYN L.L.C., Spalding Regional Physician Services L.L.C., Specialty Surgicenters Inc., Springfield Service Holding Corporation, St. Augustine Endoscopy Center LLC, St. Christophers Pediatric Urgent Care Center - Allentown L.L.C, St. Josephs Hospital Surgical Co-Management LLC, St. Josephs Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, St. Louis Physician Alliance LLC, St. Louis Surgical Center LC, St. Louis Urology Center LLC, St. Lukes/USP Surgery Centers LLC, St. Marys Hospital Cardiovascular Co-Management LLC, St. Marys Hospital Surgical Co-Management LLC, St. Marys Levee Company LLC, St. Marys Medical Center Inc., St. Vincent Health/USP LLC, St. Vincent/USP Surgery Centers LLC, Suburban Endoscopy Center LLC, Summit View Surgery Center LLC, Sun View Imaging L.L.C., SurgCenter Camelback LLC, SurgCenter Clearwater LLC, SurgCenter Development, SurgCenter Northeast LLC, SurgCenter Pinellas LLC, SurgCenter Tucson LLC, SurgCenter at Paradise Valley LLC, SurgCenter of Deer Valley LLC, SurgCenter of Glen Burnie LLC, SurgCenter of Greater Dallas LLC, SurgCenter of Greater Jacksonville LLC, SurgCenter of Northern Baltimore LLC, SurgCenter of Palm Beach Gardens LLC, SurgCenter of Pine Ridge LLC, SurgCenter of Silver Spring LLC, SurgCenter of Southern Maryland LLC, SurgCenter of St. Lucie LLC, SurgCenter of White Marsh LLC, SurgCenter of the Potomac LLC, Surgery Affiliate of El Paso LLC, Surgery Center at Mount Pleasant LLC, Surgery Center at University Park LLC, Surgery Center of Columbia L.P., Surgery Center of Coral Gables LLC, Surgery Center of Okeechobee LLC, Surgery Center of Pembroke Pines L.L.C., Surgery Center of Peoria L.L.C., Surgery Center of Santa Barbara LLC, Surgery Center of Scottsdale LLC, Surgery Centers of America II L.L.C., Surgery Centre of SW Florida LLC, Surgical & Bariatric Associates of Atlanta Medical Center L.L.C., Surgical Center Development #3 LLC, Surgical Center Development #4 LLC, Surgical Clinical Excellence at Desert Regional LLC, Surgical Elite of Avondale L.L.C., Surgical Health Partners LLC, Surgical Institute Management LLC, Surgical Institute of Reading LLC, Surgicare of Miramar L.L.C., Surginet Inc., Surgis Inc., Surgis Management Services Inc., Surgis of Chico Inc., Surgis of Phoenix Inc., Surgis of Redding Inc., Surgis of Victoria Inc., Sutton Road Pediatrics L.L.C., Sylvan Grove Hospital Inc., T1 Security LLC, TENN SM LLC, TFPS IV L.L.C., TH Healthcare Ltd., TH International Services Florida LLC, TLC ASC LLC, TOPS Specialty Hospital Ltd., TOSCA ASC Holdings LLC, TPR Practice Management LLC, TPS VI of PA L.L.C., TSPE LLC, Tamarac Surgery Center LLC, Tampa Bay Joint and Spine LLC, Tempe New Day Surgery Center LP, Templeton Imaging Inc., Tenet Business Services Corporation, Tenet California Inc., Tenet Central Carolina Physicians Inc., Tenet EKG Inc., Tenet El Paso Ltd., Tenet Employment Inc., Tenet Finance Corp., Tenet Florida Inc., Tenet Florida Physician Services II L.L.C., Tenet Florida Physician Services III L.L.C., Tenet Florida Physician Services L.L.C., Tenet Fort Mill Inc., Tenet Global Business Center Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Bucks County L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Graduate L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Hahnemann L.L.C., Tenet HealthSystem Medical Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Nacogdoches ASC GP Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Philadelphia Inc., Tenet HealthSystem Roxborough LLC, Tenet HealthSystem St. Christophers Hospital for Children L.L.C., Tenet Hilton Head Heart L.L.C., Tenet Hospitals Limited, Tenet Network Management Inc., Tenet Patient Safety Organization LLC, Tenet Physician Resources LLC, Tenet Physician Services - Hilton Head Inc., Tenet Rehab Piedmont Inc., Tenet Relocation Services L.L.C., Tenet SC East Cooper Hospitalists L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Gastrointestinal Surgical Specialists L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Island Medical L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Lowcountry OB/GYN L.L.C., Tenet South Carolina Mt. Pleasant OB/GYN L.L.C., Tenet Unifour Urgent Care Center L.L.C., Tenet Ventures Inc., TenetCare Frisco Inc., Terre Haute Surgical Center LLC, Teton Outpatient Services LLC, Texan Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Texas Orthopedics Surgery Center LLC, Texas Regional Medical in Sunnyvale, The 6300 West Roosevelt Partnership, The Healthcare Insurance Corporation, The Healthcare Underwriting Company a Risk Retention Group, The Huron Corporation, The Old Bridge Surgery Center LLC, The Outpatient Center LLC, The Southeastern Spine Institute Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., The Surgery Center at Jensen Beach LLC, The Tresanti Surgical Center LLC, Theda Oaks Gastroenterology & Endoscopy Center LLC, Three Springs ASC LLC, Timonium Surgery Center LLC, Titan Health Corporation, Titan Health of Chattanooga Inc., Titan Health of Hershey Inc., Titan Health of Mount Laurel LLC, Titan Health of North Haven Inc., Titan Health of Pittsburgh Inc., Titan Health of Pleasant Hills Inc., Titan Health of Princeton Inc., Titan Health of Sacramento Inc., Titan Health of Saginaw Inc., Titan Health of Titusville Inc., Titan Health of West Penn Inc., Titan Health of Westminster Inc., Titan Management Corporation, Titusville Center for Surgical Excellence LLC, Treasure Coast ASC LLC, Trinity Health of New England/USP Surgery Centers L.L.C., True Medical Weight Loss L.P., True Medical Wellness LP, True Results Georgia Inc., True Results HoldCo LLC, True Results Missouri LLC, Tucson Digestive Institute LLC, Tucson Hospital Holdings Inc., Tucson Physician Group Holdings LLC, Turlock Imaging Services LLC, Turlock Land Company LLC, Twin Cities Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Twin Cities Community Hospital Inc., UAP Lebanon Endo LLC, UAP Nashville Endoscopy LLC, UAP Scopes LLC, UAP of Arizona Inc., UAP of California Inc., UAP of Missouri Inc., UAP of New Jersey Inc., UAP of Oklahoma Inc., UAP of Tennessee Inc., UAP of Texas Inc., UCC Tucson Holdings LLC, UMC Surgery Center Lubbock LLC, UMC-USP Surgery Centers LLC, USC/Norris Cancer Hospital, USP 12th Ave Real Estate Inc., USP Acquisition Corporation, USP Alexandria Inc., USP Assurance Company, USP Athens Inc., USP Atlanta Inc., USP Austin Inc., USP Bariatric LLC, USP Beaumont Inc., USP Bergen Inc., USP Bloomington Inc., USP Bridgeton Inc., USP Cedar Park Inc., USP Chesterfield Inc., USP Chicago Inc., USP Cincinnati Inc., USP Coast Inc., USP Columbia Inc., USP Connecticut Inc., USP Corpus Christi Inc., USP Creve Coeur Inc., USP Denver Inc., USP Des Peres Inc., USP Destin Inc., USP Domestic Holdings Inc., USP Effingham Inc., USP Encinitas Endoscopy Inc., USP Fenton Inc., USP Festus Inc., USP Florissant Inc., USP Fort Lauderdale Inc., USP Fort Worth Hospital Real Estate Inc., USP Fredericksburg Inc., USP Fresno Inc., USP Frontenac Inc., USP Gateway Inc., USP HMH Surgery Center at Shore LLC, USP Harbour View Inc., USP Houston Inc., USP Indiana Inc., USP International Holdings Inc., USP Jacksonville Inc., USP Jersey City Inc., USP Kansas City Inc., USP Knoxville Inc., USP Little Rock Inc., USP Long Island Inc., USP Louisiana Inc., USP Lubbock Inc., USP Maryland Inc., USP Mason Ridge Inc., USP Mattis Inc., USP Michigan Inc., USP Midland Inc., USP Midland Real Estate Inc., USP Midwest Inc., USP Mission Hills Inc., USP Montana Inc., USP Morris Inc., USP Mt. Vernon Inc., USP Nevada Holdings LLC, USP Nevada Inc., USP New Hampshire Inc., USP New Jersey Inc., USP Newport News Inc., USP North Carolina Inc., USP North Kansas City Inc., USP North Texas Inc., USP Northwest Arkansas Inc., USP OKC Inc., USP OKC Manager Inc., USP Office Parkway Inc., USP Ohio RE Inc., USP Oklahoma Inc., USP Olive Inc., USP Orlando Inc., USP Philadelphia Inc., USP Phoenix Inc., USP Portland Inc., USP Reading Inc., USP Richmond II Inc., USP Richmond Inc., USP Sacramento Inc., USP San Antonio Inc., USP Santa Barbara Surgery Centers Inc., USP Securities Corporation , USP Silver Cross Inc., USP Siouxland Inc., USP Somerset Inc., USP South Carolina Inc., USP Southlake RE Inc., USP St. Louis Inc., USP St. Louis Urology Inc., USP St. Peters Inc., USP Sunset Hills Inc., USP TJ STL Inc., USP Tennessee Inc., USP Texas Air L.L.C., USP Texas L.P., USP Torrance Inc., USP Tucson Inc., USP Turnersville Inc., USP Virginia Beach Inc., USP Washington Inc., USP Waxahachie Management L.L.C., USP Webster Groves Inc., USP West Covina Inc., USP Westwood Inc., USP Winter Park Inc., USP Wisconsin Inc., USP-HMH Surgery Center at Central Jersey LLC, USP/Carondelet Tucson Surgery Centers LLC, USP/SOS Joint Venture LLC, USPI Group Holdings Inc., USPI Holding Company Inc.1, USPI Holdings Inc., USPI Physician Strategy Group LLC, USPI San Diego Inc., USPI Stockton Inc., USPI Surgical Services Inc., Underwood Surgery Center LLC, United Anesthesia Partners Inc., United Real Estate Development Inc., United Real Estate Holdings Inc., United Surgical Partners Holdings Inc., United Surgical Partners International, United Surgical Partners International Inc., Universal Medical Care Center L.L.C., University Surgery Center Ltd., Upper Bay Surgery Center LLC, Utica/USP Tulsa L.L.C., VB Brownsville LTACH LLC, VBOA ASC GP LLC, VBOA ASC Partners L.L.C., VHM Services Inc., VHS Acquisition Corporation, VHS Acquisition Partnership Number 1 L.P, VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 1 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 11 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 12 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 3 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 4 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 5 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 6 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 7 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 8 Inc., VHS Acquisition Subsidiary Number 9 Inc., VHS Arizona Heart Institute Inc., VHS Brownsville Hospital Company LLC, VHS Chicago Market Procurement LLC, VHS Childrens Hospital of Michigan Inc., VHS Detroit Businesses Inc., VHS Detroit Receiving Hospital Inc., VHS Detroit Ventures Inc., VHS Harlingen Hospital Company LLC, VHS Harper-Hutzel Hospital Inc., VHS Holding Company Inc., VHS Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital Inc., VHS Imaging Centers Inc., VHS New England Holding Company I Inc., VHS Outpatient Clinics Inc., VHS Phoenix Health Plan Inc., VHS Physicians of Michigan, VHS Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan Inc., VHS San Antonio Imaging Partners L.P., VHS San Antonio Partners LLC, VHS Sinai-Grace Hospital Inc., VHS University Laboratories Inc., VHS Valley Health System LLC, VHS Valley Holdings LLC, VHS Valley Management Company Inc., VHS West Suburban Medical Center Inc., VHS Westlake Hospital Inc., VHS of Anaheim Inc., VHS of Arrowhead Inc., VHS of Huntington Beach Inc., VHS of Illinois Inc., VHS of Michigan Inc., VHS of Michigan Staffing Inc., VHS of Orange County Inc., VHS of Phoenix Inc., VHS of South Phoenix Inc., Valley Baptist Lab Services LLC, Valley Baptist Physician Performance Network, Valley Baptist Realty Company LLC, Valley Baptist Surgery Center LLC, Valley Baptist Surgery Center Real Estate LLC, Valley Baptist Wellness Center LLC, Valley Health Care Network, Vanguard Health Financial Company LLC, Vanguard Health Holding Company I LLC, Vanguard Health Holding Company II LLC, Vanguard Health Management Inc., Vanguard Health Systems, Vanguard Health Systems Inc., Vanguard Holding Company I Inc., Vanguard Holding Company II Inc., Vanguard Medical Specialists LLC, Vanguard Physician Services LLC, Ventana Surgical Center LLC, Veroscan Inc., Victoria Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., WHASA L.C., Walker Baptist Affinity LLC, Walker Street Imaging Care Inc., Warner Park Surgery Center LLC, Watermark Physician Services Inc., Webster Ambulatory Surgery Center L.P., Wellington Endo LLC, Wellstar/USP Joint Venture I LLC, Wellstar/USP Joint Venture II LLC, West Boca Health Services L.L.C., West Boca Medical Center Inc., West Bozeman Surgery Center LLC, West Palm Healthcare Real Estate Inc., West Suburban Radiation Therapy Center LLC, Westgate Surgery Center LLC, Westlake Hospital LLC, Westlawn Surgery Center LLC, Westminster Surgery Center LLC, Westminster Surgery Centers LLC, White Fence Surgical Suites LLC, Wilmington Endoscopy Center LLC, Wilshire Rental Corp., Windsor Mill Surgery Center LLC, Winter Haven Ambulatory Surgical Center L.L.C., Wisconsin Specialty Surgery Center LLC, and Wymark Surgery Center LLC. Read More Equifax Inc. provides information solutions and human resources business process automation outsourcing services for businesses, governments, and consumers. The company operates through three segments: Workforce Solutions, U.S. Information Solutions (USIS), and International. The Workforce Solutions segment offers employment, income, criminal history, and social security number verification services, as well as payroll-based transaction, employment tax management, and identity theft protection products. The USIS segment provides consumer and commercial information services, such as credit information and credit scoring, credit modeling and portfolio analytics, locate, fraud detection and prevention, identity verification, and other consulting; mortgage services; financial marketing services; identity management services; credit monitoring products; and online information, decisioning technology solutions, as well as portfolio management, mortgage reporting, and consumer credit information services. The International segment offers information service products, which include consumer and commercial services, such as credit and financial information, and credit scoring and modeling; and credit and other marketing products and services, as well as offers information, technology, and other services to support debt collections and recovery management. The company serves customers in financial services, mortgage, employers, consumer, commercial, telecommunication, retail, automotive, utility, brokerage, healthcare, and insurance industries, as well as state, federal, and local governments. It operates in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. The company was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Better Financial Services GmbH, Better Payment Germany GmbH, Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., Chapel Funding, China Recovery Fund LLC, Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Cartera de lnmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Impact Investment Fund I. LP., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Limited, DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Jersey) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios lnteractivos Agrupacicm de lnteres Econemico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB Print GmbH, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services (Jersey) Limited, DB Services Americas. Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB US Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a. r.l., DB Value S.a.r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita SA., DB lmmobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG i.L., DB lo LP, DBAH Capital. LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management 18 Ltd., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a. r.l., DBX Advisers LLC, DEBEKO lmmobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK AS., DI Deutsche lmmobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Shanghai Private Equity Fund Management Limited, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anenima lnstitucien Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico. S.A., Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank Polska Spelka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Societe per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank. Sociedad Anenima Espanola, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur lmmobilien-Leasing mit beschrenkter Haftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.El r.l., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche India Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a. r.|., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities SA. de C.V.. Casla de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Services (Cl) Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. SA., Deutsche lmmobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsches lnstitut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.l., Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, European Value Added I (Alternate GP.) LLP, Fiduciaria Sant Andrea S.r.l., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., German American Capital Corporation, Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer LandstraBe GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Miesbaden LuisenstraBe/Kirchgasse GbR, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF l Manager S.a.r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul lnkasso GmbH, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo lll Initial GP Limited, MEF I Manager. S. a r.|., MIT Holdings Inc., Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgagelT Inc., MortgagelT Securities Corp., OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentIe", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, PADUS Grundstcks-VermietungsgeseIlschaft mbH, PB Factoring GmbH, PB Spezial-lnvestmentaktiengesellschatt mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Plantation Bay. Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank lmmobilien GmbH, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, RREEF, RREEF America LLC., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisers Private Limited, RREEF Management LLC., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables. LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermielungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sharps SP l LLC, Stelvio lmmobiliare S.r.l., Suddeutsche Vermeigensvewvaitung Gesellschaft mit beschrenkter Haftung, TELO Beleiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Umited, VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., lmmobilienfonds BuroCenter Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, lmmobilienfonds Wohn- und Gescheftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, and norisbank GmbH. Read More 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. After 40 years of protections, bobcats in Illinois are running for their lives. Last Thursday, amid heaps of controversy, the first bobcat hunt in the state in four decades began. "The recovery of the bobcat population in Illinois is a conservation success story," a representative for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR) told The Dodo. "Bobcats were placed on the state threatened species list in the 1970s, and that protection and habitat restoration have helped increase bobcat populations to allow for a sustainable hunting and trapping season." Dodo Shows Little But Fierce Pocket-Sized Kitten Grows Up To Be A Wild Woman Bobcats are largely solitary animals - they're so shy that it can be hard to estimate their populations because they prefer to stay out of sight, according to Marc Ayers, Illinois state of affairs director for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). When they're young, bobcats stay close to their mom, who spends the first couple of months nursing the helpless kittens. At around 5 months old, they learn to hunt. Then, at around 8 to 11 months old, the kittens go off on their own. Shutterstock Bobcat populations all across the U.S. were decimated by the early 1900s due to habitat destruction and the value of their fur. With successful protections, their populations started rebounding, which is leading some places, like Illinois, to allow hunting again. Warning: Disturbing images below "Before they were protected in Illinois 1972, bobcats were nearly extirpated from the state due to over-trapping, and their ongoing recovery has been slow," Ayers told The Dodo. "Even without this renewed threat of hunting, bobcats faced additional impediments to their comeback including incidental trapping, vehicle collisions, poaching and impacts from habitat loss. With this new season, they now face the same methods that led to their demise in the first place. " Loosening bobcat protections, the DNR sold 500 bobcat hunting permits by lottery; 6,416 people applied for a permit to kill a bobcat. The hunt, which will last until January, will allow people to shoot bobcats with guns or bows and arrows, chase them down with packs of dogs and trap them in steel-jawed leghold traps. There are apparently no regulations about sparing bobcats who appear to be nursing mothers to litters of kittens. HSUS Calling these hunting methods cruel, animal advocates are also pointing out that the hunt has far more to do with "fun" and making money than actually controlling the population - especially since there hasn't been a proper census to determine exactly how many bobcats there are in the state. According to HSUS, the state has been using bobcat population data collected from 1995 to 2004. And there's money to be made. Bobcat pelt exports from the U.S. have skyrocketed in recent years; In 2014, about 59,000 bobcat pelts were exported to places like Russia and China. A fur coat can be made from about up to 50 pelts and sell for up to $150,000. Born Free USA "The rationale used to defend this hunt was ludicrous for a number of reasons, including the fact that there's never been a statewide population study," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of HSUS, wrote, adding that bobcats pose no risk to public safety. "Illinois' native carnivores - including bobcats - were once abundant, but then were wiped out because of unregulated hunting, predator control and habitat loss," Pacelle said. "After being listed in the state as a threatened species in 1977, bobcats began a comeback and reclaimed some of their original habitat. Unfortunately, the state's trophy hunters and trappers saw this restoration as an opportunity, rather than as a cause for celebration." For the past year, Pizza the bear has been known as the saddest polar bear in the world. Now, he's getting a break from that title - if only temporarily. On Sunday, the Grandview Aquarium in Guangzhou, China, reportedly relocated Pizza to an undisclosed marine park, where his parents live and where he was reportedly bred, so it could upgrade some of the facility's exhibits. Animals Asia "Due to upgrading of exhibition halls, as a testament to urban renewal of Guangzhou, a result of the harmonious collaboration between commerce and tourism, and a witness to urban compassion and hearts of love, Pizza, the 'bear baby' loved by millions of tourists will say goodbye for a short period of time," Grandview announced on Chinese social networking site Weibo, according to a translation provided by Humane Society International (HSI). "To say goodbye to this polar bear prince and at the request of the visitors, we shall hold a great and special farewell party for him." Pizza's plight first sparked international outcry back in January, when Grandview Aquarium opened its doors inside a shopping mall. The attraction is home to hundreds of animals - including Arctic foxes, walruses and belugas - but the polar bear's situation was among the most heart-wrenching. Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Woman Tries Every Day For A Month To Rescue This Dog Maizi/VShine Locked up in a tiny, garishly-painted blue concrete room, Pizza had no access to sunlight and little room to indulge in natural behaviors. His glass-windowed walls looked out onto the visitors' area, where throngs of tourists would blind him with constant camera flashes. Despite global calls for his release, and even an offer from a U.K. wildlife park to rehome Pizza, Grandview refused to back down. Animals Asia But late last month, a new video released by HSI showed the saddest scene yet - the trapped polar bear pacing in his cage, swinging his head back and forth violently and, at points, lying on the floor and obsessively mouthing at a grate. Experts said the behaviors were clear signs of stereotypic behavior - repetitive patterns animals develop to cope with the psychological stress of captivity - and that the bear was literally going crazy inside his unnatural confines. "This is the animal's attempts to cope with stressful, aversive situations such as barren enclosures, boredom and constant disturbance by visitors," Alastair Macmillan, a veterinary adviser for HSI, said at the time. "The conditions in which he is being kept are completely unsuitable, vastly removed from anything approaching his natural habitat, and if something is not done then he will likely slip further and further into mental decline." Maizi/VShine Naturally, HSI is now concerned that Pizza's sudden relocation is a sign that the bear is now too damaged to be put on display - or, at the least, that Grandview is attempting to rein in its bad PR by hiding the animal. "Our video clearly showed that Pizza was suffering, and we warned the mall that soon his decline would be so apparent that it would be difficult to have him on public display," Peter Li, China policy specialist for HSI, said in a statement. "Without a doubt, the mall has had to act due to tremendous pressure from Chinese and international campaigners, but I fear that Pizza's poor health is part of the reason too." Maizi/VShine However, HSI, and the many Chinese partner groups who have called for Pizza's release, are staying cautiously optimistic. If Grandview is telling the truth about the move, then Pizza could possibly benefit from a temporary change of environment. And they're hoping that, with continued public outcry, Grandview could be shut down for good. "It's a good decision, the right decision for Pizza, but it's not the end," Mdm Qin, the director of China's Capital Animal Welfare Association, said in a statement. "We still want to see the aquarium closed once and for all, to see all the animals moved, and we call on the Commerce Ministry to close all shopping mall zoos and aquariums and to prevent these types of zoos from being opened." Maizi/VShine At the very least, they're hoping this could be the end of a very sad year for Pizza. "Pizza the polar bear has endured a life of deprivation and suffering in his small, artificial, glass-fronted room at the shopping mall, so the news that he's getting out at last makes me very happy and relieved for him," Li said. "But we implore the mall to make this a permanent move for Pizza. At last he will feel the sun on his fur, sniff fresh air and see the sky above him." Animals Asia Oliver, a 3-year-old rat who was given up when his owner had to move in 2014, has since served his kind as a rat ambassador. Peggy McCoy Together, he and his brother Jackson visit schools and day camps to teach kids how sweet and smart rats really are. Peggy McCoy "Oliver has been to a kids camp with the local animal shelter every year for three years," Peggy McCoy, of Rescued Rat Adoptions, an organization that helps rescue and rehome unwanted pet rats in Indiana, told The Dodo. When Oliver and Jackson were first brought to the shelter, McCoy said, she knew that "their little lives would make a huge difference to hundreds of people." Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Rescued Animals Melt Into This Woman's Arms When She Sings To Them Peggy McCoy "Both boys always took right to being around strangers and seemed to enjoy every single second of it," McCoy said. But in old age, after a lifetime of love, the rats started to slow down. Jackson passed away last year. But Oliver has been holding onto his life. Peggy McCoy Recently, though, McCoy discovered that Oliver's heart is failing him. So she decided to give him the best possible bucket list adventures during his last days on Earth. Peggy McCoy Oliver has spent time at Lake Michigan looking at the water and basking in the sun. McCoy took Oliver to the park where he ate a banana split sundae. She also got him a nice new bed for him to rest in at home. Peggy McCoy "Rats love to eat so we have been having lazy lazy Sundays on the couch with him enjoying foods I typically wouldn't feed him," McCoy said. This includes a lot of pasta. Peggy McCoy McCoy expects Oliver will pass away in the next few days. If he starts to suffer, she plans to put him to sleep. Peggy McCoy "I have spent every moment possible with him since his heart problem started to surface," McCoy said. Peggy McCoy For wealthy Americans, the outcome of the 2016 election could be lucrative. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton proposed hiking their taxes. Donald Trump, her Republican rival and now the president-elect, proposed the opposite: $6.2 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, according to the Tax Policy Centers analysis, with the top 1 per cent by income getting almost half the benefit. That translates into a 13.5-per-cent boost to their after-tax income, compared to a 1.8-per-cent increase for taxpayers in the middle fifth of incomes. No one knows if Trump can get such big tax cuts for the rich through Congress, even one controlled by the GOP. They could open the gap between the wealthy and everyone else still further, while ultimately widening the U.S. budget deficit and taking resources from other priorities such as health care and retirement. But financial advisers to the wealthy are starting to bet that tax rates will fall as early as next year. And theyre telling clients to make their move before the end of 2016 to maximize the payoff. Rich Americans generally have the most flexibility in taking advantage of these tactics. Youre really only talking to a small percentage of people who can really react to things like this, said Tim Steffen, director of financial planning at Baird. But middle-income taxpayers, including retirees, should also consider taking steps now that might save them extra money in the event of a tax cut. The standard advice from tax planners is to lower your tax bill in any given year by pushing as much income as possible into future years and taking as many deductions as possible for the current year. Sell a stock thats done well in December, for example, and youll owe taxes on those gains in four months, by the Internal Revenue Service deadline in mid-April. Wait until January, and taxes arent due for more than a year. Its the opposite for investments that have done poorly. Taxpayers can harvest losing stocks at the end of the year by selling them and then using those losses in April to lower their bill. The strategy is all the more powerful if tax rates drop. Why finalize the sale of a business in 2016 when theres a chance youll be able to keep more of the proceeds for yourself down the line? This is an exercise we normally go through, said Michael Kassab, chief investment officer at Calamos Wealth Management. It takes on greater urgency this year. Thats especially true if any tax bill passed next year applies to 2017 rather than taking effect in 2018. There are precedents for this: A tax cut in 2001 and a tax increase in 1993 both took effect in the same year they were passed. So consider these seven smart tax moves for rich and middle-income alike and dont miss the last one. Paychecks Salaried employees generally cant tell their employers to wait until January to cut Decembers paycheques. But small-business owners, along with those who earn commissions, may have more flexibility. A consultant owed for work in 2016 might wait until January to bill her clients. Retirement tax breaks Salaried employees can make sure theyre maximizing their contributions to their 401(k)s and other pre-tax retirement accounts in 2016. Even if this means they have less to save next year, the trade-off may be worth it. The tax break on a 401(k) or individual retirement account will be less valuable in future years if tax rates fall. Retirement itself If youre living off a 401(k) or IRA, it might make sense to stop taking money from those accounts through the end of the year, said Peter Schumacher, a CPA who is a vice-president at Cleary Gull Advisors in Milwaukee, as long as you have enough cash to meet your needs. By lowering your distributions from pre-tax retirement accounts in 2016, youll lower your tax bill this year and potentially end up paying a lower rate when you replenish your cash supply next year. Medical expenses Taxpayers can deduct medical expenses if they amount to more than 10 per cent of their income, or 7.5 per cent for taxpayers 65 and older. If youre scheduling an expensive procedure and youre close to your threshold, you might try to get it done before the end of the year, when the medical deduction might be more valuable than in 2017. Property You can get a deduction on your federal taxes for any local taxes you pay. If you have any flexibility in when you pay property taxes or state income taxes, consider shifting those deductions into 2016. The same is true of the mortgage interest deduction. An extra mortgage payment in 2016 might make sense. Charitable contributions Only people who itemize their taxes can deduct charitable contributions, and less than a third of taxpayers fall into this category. The wealthy are more likely to itemize, and to have the wherewithal to carefully time charitable contributions to maximize tax benefits. In fact, wealthy people, especially those who own businesses, have a variety of options for delaying income and maximizing deductions. For example, if a business is planning to buy equipment, it might consider making those purchases this year to boost deductions on their 2016 taxes. Business owners have more flexibility in when they bill clients and pay employees, too. They might fast-forward employee bonuses into 2016, instead of early next year, to lower their taxable profits in 2016. Dont go overboard Taking too many deductions in 2016 could trigger the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, an extremely complicated system designed to limit deductions for well-off taxpayers. Meanwhile, holding on to a winning stock until 2017 may mean you pay a lower capital gains tax rate, but you also risk seeing those gains evaporate if the market crashes between now and then. Let it be an investment decision first, Bairds Steffen said. Youd rather sell a day too early rather than a day too late. SHARE: Canadian childrens eyesight is worsening earlier than previous generations and one third of children with nearsightedness are going without glasses, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) collected data from 166 students at Waterloo Region schools, ages 6 to 8 and 11 to 13, and found that in the younger group, 6 per cent had nearsightedness, or myopia, where objects in the distance appear blurry. This jumped to 28.9 per cent at ages 11 to 13. They also found that 34 per cent of students with nearsightedness were going without glasses or other corrections. Titled Myopia Prevalence in Canadian School Children, the study was based on two rounds of visits with volunteer students. Researchers assessed their eye health at their schools in December 2013. Students found to have nearsightedness 17.5 per cent of all students were then asked to come to a followup visit at the Centre for Contact Lens Research at the University of Waterloo, where more researchers studied their eyes in greater detail. Data was collected until April 2015. Deborah Jones, co-lead investigator on the study and a clinical professor with Waterloos optometry school, said historically, children developed nearsightedness around ages 11, 12 or 13. Now what were seeing is its starting to happen sooner and in a younger age group, she said, noting that while the data is new for Canada, studies in other countries have generated similar findings. Its happening across the world ... It is not clear why. Keith Gordon, vice-president of research with CNIB and a project developer with the study, said the potential danger is that childrens eyesight will continue to deteriorate for longer than previous generations myopia is thought to worsen until age 21 which means Canadians might have poorer eye health in the long term. Ive heard this referred to as a myopia epidemic, he said. Parents of the students were also asked to complete a questionnaire about how much time the children spend outside, the activities they participate in, including computer and video games, and about their families eye-health history. With that information, researchers determined that if one parent is myopic, the child is 2.5 times more likely to develop the condition compared to a child without myopic parents. They also determined that for one extra hour of outdoor time per week, the relative risk of the child developing myopia was lowered by 14.3 per cent. Jones said researchers arent sure why this is the case but other studies back up the finding that exposure to the outdoors is good for the eyes. While the study didnt find any correlation between screen time and nearsightedness, eye experts say too much screen time is indeed linked with poor eye health. (Holding screens) too close for too long at too young an age is not a good thing, said Dr. Barry Thienes, an optometrist and president of the Canadian Association of Optometrists, who was not involved in the study. If you do too much close work your eyes are going to want to try to grow to that environment. He recommends children get regular eye check ups covered under by OHIP for Ontarians 19 and under and that parents limit kids screen time to 15 to 20 minutes maximum over any one hour period. Thienes praised the study, calling it really good solid Canadian data, the first of its kind on myopia in Canadian children. Jones said researchers plan to submit the paper to a peer reviewed journal. Funding for the study came from Essilor Canada and Essilor of America, a contact lens company, which did not have influence over the study or its findings. Support for the study came from the Centre for Contact Lens Research at the University of Waterloo. SHARE: OTTAWALiberal MP Peter Schiefke checks his schedule carefully each week, as one would expect from anyone with a busy job, asking himself one question in particular. Will the timing of a vote in the House of Commons let him make the hour-and-a-half drive to his riding of Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Que. in time to give his 2-year-old son Anderson a bath and then put him in bed? Or, will it mean that he gets home too late for that, but can maybe wake up early, enjoy a couple of hours with his wife, Paula Ruttle, and newborn daughter, Noelle, before dropping Anderson off at daycare and heading back to the House of Commons? You dont want to miss the first walk and the first words and the first everything, said Schiefke, parliamentary secretary for youth to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There has been much recent talk about managing the balance between work and life on Parliament Hill, especially as part of efforts to promote the participation of women in politics, but as modern fathers tend to take a more active role in the daily lives of their children the young dads on the Hill are also looking for ways to manage. I think thats a reflection of a change in mindset that is occurring all across the board, said Schiefke. I think that its a priority for all members of the House of Commons now to try and make the life of a member of Parliament something that is more appealing to all Canadians, whether they be men, women, young, older, he said. We have to make it something that is appealing to them, that they want to do and that this service to the community and to the country doesnt take that huge toll on your family. Because youre just going to be missing out on really good people who want to present as candidates, but they look at it and say, This is just not going to work. The Commons committee on procedure and House affairs began studying ways to make Parliament more family-friendly earlier this year, issuing an interim report in June that made some relatively minor recommendations, such as continuing an informal practice that began soon after the election last year of holding votes immediately after question period instead of in the evenings, and an on-call, flexible child-care service that MPs pay for out of their own pockets. More complicated ideas, such as eliminating Friday sittings, allowing electronic voting and letting MPs take parental leave were left to be considered again sometime down the road. Conservative MP Chris Warkentin said there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Extending the length of sitting days in order to spend fewer days in Ottawa, for example, might help people like him, whose family lives in his Alberta riding of Grande PrairieMackenzie, but would have a negative impact on MPs whose families live nearby because it could mean never making it home until after the kids are asleep. Every MP has to set limits for themselves and carve out time for their family and it has to be done in an intentional way, said Warkentin, who noted this is something that holds true for countless other kinds of jobs across the country. For him, that means making the 10-hour trek home at least every other weekend to spend time with his wife, Michelle, daughters Abigail, 10 and Cobi, 8, and son Kyler, 5. If he stays away any longer than that, Warkentin said he notices his kids are more likely to keep turning to their mother for things instead of to him. Its not only important to be involved in kids big events in their lives, but also the day-to-day, he said. New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie knows all too well what its like to be the child of a politician. His father, Bill Blaikie, was a New Democrat MP from 1979 before Daniel was born until 2008. One thing that made it work, Daniel remembers, is that instead of just being a job his dad did, serving in Parliament was something the whole family believed in. It really is a decision that you have to make as a family, said Blaikie, who has two sons, 3-year-old Robert and infant Noah, with his wife, Janelle, who live in his Manitoba riding of Elmwood-Transcona. To anyone who makes the choice without really thinking about how it will work, Blaikie would say: I think youre gambling with your marriage, frankly, and your relationship with your kids. Blaikie agrees that more and more fathers are considering the impact on family life when it comes to deciding whether or not to run for office, but he also thinks it makes sense that work-life balance on Parliament Hill is still often framed as a matter of improving the lives of female politicians. That really is a barrier for women getting into politics, he said. As much as I am a young father and I want to contribute to the parenting, Im not a breastfeeding mom. SHARE: SYDNEY, N.S.A family of Syrian refugees who built a chocolate business in Nova Scotia had their product sampled by a special sweet-toothed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Tareq Hadhad and his father, Issam, had an unexpected meet-and-greet with Trudeau during his trip to Sydney, N.S., last week. A video of Thursdays encounter shows Trudeau embracing both men and calling the Hadhad family an extraordinary example of the kind of strength and leadership and engagement that comes with bringing new people to Canada. He had been following the story for a while, Tareq said Sunday in an interview. He was so excited. When he came, he knew our names, he hugged us. It was a very, very special thing for us. Tareq said Peace by Chocolate is struggling to keep up with orders since Trudeau turned a spotlight on the Hadhads during a recent address to the United Nations. Issam ran a chocolate factory in Damascus with around 30 employees, according to his son, and shipped sweets to countries all over the Middle East. Tareq says several family members fled to Lebanon after a 2012 bombing destroyed the business his father had built over the course of more than two decades. After three years in a refugee camp, the Hadhads settled in January in Antigonish, where they were greeted by what Trudeau described to foreign leaders as a bunch of big-hearted Canadians. Tareq agrees with the prime ministers assessment. We came here with nothing, he said. We are now in a very welcoming, warm-hearted country and were so proud to be inspiring others. With support from residents and various sponsors, the Hadhads opened Peace by Chocolate two months ago and business has been booming ever since, Tareq said. The aspiring physician said the family wants to give back to the community by hiring locals and the have launched a crowdfunding campaign so Peace by Chocolate can expand operations in time for the holiday season. The name itself has a very strong message, Tareq said. The world now needs peace and the world now needs chocolate. Peace by Chocolate has satisfied at least one sugar craving. The Hadhads gave Trudeau five boxes of maple-leaf-shaped chocolates blending Syrian and Canadian flavours for a rich, nutty taste. Trudeau said in a tweet Thursday that it was nice to meet the family behind the success story heard around the world and to try the Hadhads specialty treats. SHARE: For the past seven days, nearly 230 households in a remote northwestern Ontario community have gone without clean drinking water and proper sewage. There are four ruptures in the main line that delivers water from a treatment facility to houses in North Caribou (Weagamow) Lake First Nation, said Chief Dinah Kanate. North Caribou is a 45-minute flight north from Sioux Lookout. North Caribous water treatment staff have been working around the clock to try to fix the situation. They need to keep water moving through the line for fear of contamination, said Kanate, but she fears the water is unfit for use. Residents are using the water to wash clothes and bathe in. Samples were taken and flown out to health authorities on Sunday. If the pressure is lost, the water will become contaminated, said Kanate. What we have now is young children and adults have rashes. Eczema is flaring. People are complaining of stomach pains. Some kids were jumping in the showers and they are coming out with sores. Parents whose children have the itchy red rashes worry they are due to contaminated water. A similar fear was reported by parents in Kashechewan First Nation on the James Bay coast. They also blamed contaminated water for a spate of skin rashes on young children. In March, federal Health Minister Jane Philpott ruled out dirty water as the culprit, after the water was tested. North Caribous nursing station is currently without water. Kanate said the First Nation contacted Indigenous and Northern Affairs early last week, when 45 homes on the fringes of the community were suddenly without water and sewage capacity. The federal department told them to get bottled water for those homes, but it is nearly impossible to keep up with demand, she said. Where is Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau? He promised we would be working together, Kanate said on Sunday from the band council office. Trudeau is increasingly under fire for promises made to indigenous communities that they feel have gone unfulfilled. In March, Trudeau announced $2 billion would be invested to end boil water advisories and sewage problems in indigenous communities. Nearly 90 water systems in Ontario are under advisories out of 134 such advisories across Canada and most of those are in First Nations communities, according to Human Rights Watch. The U.S.-led group released a report on the crisis earlier this year, titled Make It Safe: Canadas Obligation to End the First Nations Water Crisis. Access to safe, affordable drinking water and sewage is a basic human right, one that indigenous people in the north routinely go without. Many households surveyed by Human Rights Watch reported problems related to skin infections, eczema, psoriasis, or other skin problems, which they believed were associated with water conditions in their homes, the report said. Whether or not a direct causation between exposure to the water provided to their households and these conditions can be established, the water crisis does decrease the quality and quantity of water available for hygiene. North Caribou is now getting water from Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political organization of 49 indigenous communities who live in the Treaty 9 area of northern Ontario. NAN sent up 125 cases of water on Sunday. Alvin Fiddler, NAN grand chief, said there is a team on the ground working to fix the situation and they were digging around the line on the weekend. He said they are also in touch with Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennetts office. Carolyn Campbell, a spokesperson for Bennett, said all parties are working together to solve the crisis. North Caribou First Nation, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada officials are all engaged and working in partnership on the matter, Campbell said. The water system leak has now been isolated, and together we will ensure the system returns to normal as quickly as possible. In the interim, (the ministry) is providing funding for bottled water and other expenses. Kanate wants to call a state of emergency but said she cant do that until the crisis has lasted for 14 days. I was ready to declare on the first day, she said. Water is life. You never know how important it is until something like this happens. Kanate said the community has also lost one of its two water transportation trucks. It is just one problem after the other, she said. SHARE: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent Monday pitching some of the worlds most powerful institutional investors on his countrys economic virtues, urging them to invest in Canada specifically in infrastructure. Trudeaus first brief meeting was with Canadian financial representatives at a swank downtown Toronto hotel where he talked about a $180-billion investment opportunity. Canada has a made very strong commitment to be investing in infrastructure over the next 12 years, Trudeau told the group of Canadian pension funds and financial institutions. We need to make sure that the investments were making are going to bring Canada in the right direction and done as efficiently as possible. He talked about leveraging private capital to make taxpayer dollars go even further the aim being to put the country in the global vanguard when it comes to transit, green and other types of infrastructure. These are the things that we know are going to be a key part of Canadas growth. But in Ottawa, New Democrats vowed to fight every step of the way what they called Trudeaus scheme to privatize public infrastructure. NDP finance critic Guy Caron said private investors would wind up controlling about 80 per cent of roads, bridges, hospitals and other infrastructure built through Trudeaus proposed infrastructure bank, designed to leverage $4-5 in private dollars for every $1 invested by the federal government. And those companies will want a return on their investment of as much as seven to nine per cent, which Caron said will only be realized by forcing Canadians to pay tolls and user fees and will wind up costing taxpayers more than twice as much. They wont do it out of the goodness of their hearts; they will want a return, Caron told a news conference. Theres not a thousand ways to do it. Its through tolls and its through user fees. Trudeau never mentioned privatization during last years election campaign, he added. The Trudeau Liberals were supposed to be for the middle class, they were supposed to be for the little guy. They are now showing their true colours, that of the party of wealthy private investors. Others on hand for Mondays meeting included top executives from the other big banks, insurance company giants such as Manulife and Sun Life, the countrys largest pension funds and asset management firms. Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi also attended, as did their transport and natural resource colleagues. Trudeau and many members of his cabinet were also attending a second meeting later Monday with two dozen representatives of large international pools of capital worth as much as $21 trillion. Those at the table were expected to include representatives of central banks, sovereign wealth funds, insurers and pension funds. Attracting billions in private-sector capital for infrastructure projects is key to the Liberal governments long-term strategy to boost Canadas sluggish economic growth. The investors summit comes just two weeks after Morneau announced plans to launch the infrastructure bank next year, into which the government has promised to pump $35 billion over the coming decade. The government also intends to create a new Invest in Canada Hub for attracting foreign investment and relax some restrictions on investment from outside the country. The summit is being hosted by the federal government but BlackRock Inc., the worlds largest asset manager, organized the event. BlackRocks legendary founder, Laurence Fink, was expected to be among the participants. No specific projects have yet been identified for funding from the bank but Trudeau, Morneau and Sohi were expected to tell potential investors that toll bridges, energy grids and water systems could all be attractive investments for fund managers looking for predictable, long-term returns. Morneau is to take the same message to the United Kingdom later this week. Hes making a speech at the London School of Economics and Political Science on Tuesday and is to speak Wednesday at the UBS European Conference 2016, also in London. Caron noted that Morneaus economic growth advisory council championed the infrastructure bank idea, and at least three of its members BlackRocks Mark Wiseman; Dominic Barton, global managing partner of McKinsey and Company; and Michael Sabia, president of Quebecs powerful pension fund manager, the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec are all in the business of finding good investments with big returns. Their companies stand to make hundreds of millions, maybe even billions out of the returns of this scheme, Caron said. Id like to ask you, is our moral compass so distorted that we dont even care that people can be appointed into powerful government committees and stand to gain from their advice? SHARE: I have this fantasy. That in his middle-of-the-night existential tremors, Donald Trump is seized with dread. Its not a game any more or a quixotic pursuit: I am President of the United States. If he could give it back, would he? Watching the convulsion of recent days across the nation, the anomie hes unleashed, the unprecedented protests that have tilted into riot, might he think of himself as outmatched and singularly ill-equipped to quell a domestic insurgency on the boil, sensing within the marrow of his bones the artifice of the deal with America? Donald, youre fired. In the waning days of the campaign, Trump declared he didnt believe the polls that turned out so epic a failure of data-crunching. Yet every indication from within the demoralized Trump camp was that he did. Losing would have been easier to assimilate, perhaps, than winning. A waste of money, hed mused about a potential rejection outcome, upon arriving at a mid-Manhattan school to cast his own ballot. But whats money to a multi-billionaire? Trump has played Three Card Monte with scrip his entire life. President of America is the loneliest job in the world. Beyond his purported business acumen trailed by a wake of bankruptcies and lawsuits Trump has evinced no skills of persuasion, prudence or tact. Never held elected office, never served in the military (five deferments), never faced or overcome obstacles of class and income and opportunity. Illiterate in the wisdom of sages through the ages. Slumming in the alternate universe of crass reality TV. A phoney autobiographer, master not even of his ghostwritten words. A grubby entrepreneur and now an apprentice in the White House. Civility demanded that President Barack Obama treat his successor graciously when they met in the Oval Office for the first time last week. Should have clocked him, this most crude of galoots who for years baited Obama with racist birther bunkum. Such naked hypocrisy exchanged between these two men, most of it kept behind closed doors because Trump wouldnt allow a media pool to document the historical event until the participants stepped outside, photo-op faces on. Obama had a purring Democratic Party apparatus and a cordial relationship with the outgoing Bush regime to help ease into occupation of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There was no shortage of accomplished governance savants to provide advice and counsel. Trump, the gauche arriviste, has alienated a whole echelon of Republicans, casting them into the inner circle of Washington swamp-hell, an indictment that obviously resonated with voters across all demographic spectrums. There are thousands of jobs that must be filled by a new administration a new West Wing, most crucially a cabinet that can wield authority but precious few of the honourable and adept to draw upon from his loyalist list. In Sundays announcement of Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff, Trump went decidedly establishment. But most of his key devotees are crackpots, acolytes and scoundrels. It beggars the imagination, where a Trump in search of confederates to consolidate his White House will find competent adjutants. Not a one seems capable of curtailing his yips. After a few days of sounding atypically diplomatic and salubrious, the man who will be Americas 45th president was back bashing and bullying on his Twitter pulpit Sunday morning: Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the Trump phenomena. The only thing scarier than an America with Trump as president is an America with Trump as president, Newt Gingrich as secretary of state, Rudy Giuliani as attorney general and Ben Carson as education secretary. Such is the speculation being bruited about, with nobody really having a clue what a President Trump cabinet would look like. He has few allies inside the Republican establishment and a very long memory about perceived enemies. Many of those best-qualified for elite positions tolerated him only from a wary distance; others are now creeping closer for morsels. Thus all the ugly ducklings are coming home to roost, preening their feathers. Only Chris Christie, from the inner cabal circling the Beltway outsider, appears to have been gently jettisoned, demoted as chair of Trumps transition team, replaced by VP-elect Mike Pence. Christie is caught up in the so-called Bridgegate Scandal with many calling for the New Jersey governor to be impeached for, of all things, alleged involvement in politically motivated lane closures of George Washington Bridge three years ago. Gingrich: Serial adulterer, forced to resign as House speaker, target of 84 ethical violations and a $300,000 sanction for using a network of consulting firms, educational institutions and even an inner-city teen charity to promote Republican politicians. Giuliani: Lauded as Americas Mayor for his sure-handed leadership in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks; totally lost his marbles during the presidential campaign, dismissing that grab em by the p---- tape as locker-room exaggeration. Gosh almighty, he who hasnt sinned, throw the first stone here . . . That was no stone; that was a slab. Carson: The retired neurosurgeon described Obamacare as the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery, declared President Barack Obama a psychopath, told an audience that God had helped him ace his chemistry final by providing exam questions in a dream and admitted that hed just made up a bunch of stuff in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, such as being offered a full scholarship to West Point. Not that mendacity, perfidy, malfeasance, misanthropy and sheer lunacy are qualities which preclude individuals from holding high public office or Trump wouldnt be hurtling towards the White House six weeks hence, a populist supernova that turned the American establishment on its ear but apparently heard the keening of a disgruntled country quite clearly. Gingrich, for one, has said pshaw, dont believe all those kooky pronouncements Trump made whilst on the rhetorical stump. A whole whack of it was just shout-outs to the peanut gallery. Like that notorious wall on the Mexico border endlessly yammered about, which the Mexican government would pay for, Trump vowed. Hell spend a lot of time controlling the border, against illegal immigrants, Gingrich assured during a conference call with media last Thursday. He may not spend very much time trying to get Mexico to pay for it, but it was a great campaign device. Oh, that was a wink-wink? Trump was unequivocal during the primary wars about deporting all 11 million undocumented residents. The immediate scoop of illegal immigrants, as estimated during the presidential campaign, fluctuated from 1 million to 6 million. CBC released excerpts from Trumps 60 Minutes interview, which aired Sunday evening. In those comments, Trump doubled down on his intention to initially deport up to 3 million illegal immigrants were getting them out of our country and repeated him pledge to build that bloody wall, though now he suggests it may be more of a fencing in places. Im very good at this. Its called construction. No, its called destruction and desecration of a great country by an un-great barbarian inside the White House gates. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Read more about: SHARE: Days after council approved a major transit agreement that puts Toronto on track to invest billions of dollars in rail projects owned by the Ontario government, some councillors are demanding the provincial transit agency be overhauled to include municipal representatives. Under the terms of the agreement, which council passed last week, the city is responsible for some of the capital and all of the operating costs for Mayor John Torys SmartTrack program and new LRT lines planned for completion over the next decade. Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency for the region, is paying the lions share of new projects, and will own the new lines, as well as wield enormous influence over how theyre built and operated. The agencys board is made up of 14 unelected, provincial appointees, however,which has some pushing for it to be reconstituted to include representatives from the city. The people sitting around the Metrolinx table have absolutely zero accountability, charged Councillor Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches East York). There is a standard principle in public administration and governance: you pay, you say. The more that the municipal government is paying for transit, the greater voice we should have. A spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca said there are no plans to change the makeup of the board, which he said was modeled on those of other large North American transit organizations. Our recent success in reaching an agreement to deliver more transit to the people of Toronto is evidence of a very strong working relationship between the province, Metrolinx and the city, wrote Stephen Heckbert. The agreement includes a number of opportunities for the city to contribute to the work and be a partner. Davis said she was concerned that decisions made by Metrolinx could have major financial implications for Toronto. As one example, she cited the amount the city will have to pay to subsidize LRT operations on Eglinton, Finch West, and Sheppard East. The cost is estimated to be more than $100 million a year if all the projects are completed, but the exact amount will depend on how much fare revenue the city collects. That will be determined by a new regional integrated fare model over which Metrolinx has final say. The city is also responsible for $3.7 billion in capital costs for SmartTrack and the Eglinton West LRT, but once the projects are built, they will be owned by the province. The SmartTrack stations that the city will pay for will be served by Metrolinx GO trains, running on Metrolinx-approved schedules. Were moving towards a period of increasing entanglement between the provincial and city government, and we need a voice at the table, Davis said. TTC chair Josh Colle agrees. While he described the transit commissions relationship with Metrolinx as productive, he said hes believed for some time that the city or TTC should have a seat on the board. He helped organize a joint board meeting between the TTC and Metrolinx in April, but it was largely symbolic and didnt allow for the two boards to vote on decisions. The deal struck last week underscores the need for a more mature partnership, said Colle. Metrolinx president and CEO Bruce McCuaig declined to weigh in on the possibility of altering the makeup of the board, which would require changes to provincial legislation. That is a conversation between the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto, he said. But McCuaig said that the stage gate process built into the transit agreement ensures that the plans for SmartTrack, which is part of Metrolinxs GO Transit regional express rail initiative, cant proceed without approval from council at key decision points. He argued that would provide the city with significant oversight of how the money is spent. Were talking literally on a daily basis with city officials on how were moving forward, so this is a real partnership, he said. The province is committing $7.8 billion to build the LRTs and spending $3.7 billion on regional express rail infrastructure in Toronto that will support SmartTrack. Metrolinx was created in 2006, and originally had municipal representatives on its board. But the politicians were booted off in 2009. At the time the provincial Liberal government said that the boards makeup was slowing progress on transit expansion. Adding Toronto representatives back into the mix wouldnt be simple. In addition to the TTC there are nine other municipal transit operators in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and each would likely want a spot of their own. But according to one of the co-authors of a recent C.D. Howe Institute report on regional governance, major Metrolinx projects like fare integration could be undermined if the agency doesnt change. Part of the reason why Vancouvers referendum on transit funding failed was that people didnt trust that the transit board was transparent enough when it came to deciding how to spend their tax dollars, said Zachary Spicer, an assistant professor in political science at Brock University. The report recommended that Metrolinx add local policymakers to its board to improve transparency and accountability. You need local buy-in, Spicer said. Read more about: SHARE: Toronto saw its first major demonstration Sunday against Donald Trumps surprise presidential election win, a rally that saw hundreds blaming his victory on the rise in the U.S. and Canada of racism, sexism, and intolerance toward the LGBTQ community. There are people here who are asking why the hell are we going to all this fuss about an election that happened in another country, about the president of a country we dont live in, Qaiser Ali, 22, an organizer in Torontos queer and transgender community, told the protest at Nathan Phillips Square, where it kicked off. He later added: we have a duty to resist tyranny wherever it may read its ugly head. No border is holding the spread of this sickness. Carrying a huge sign that read Make Racists Afraid Again a play on Trumps campaign slogan demonstrators marched on Queen St. to University Ave. and north one block to the U.S. Consulate, where they blocked southbound traffic on University. Critics say Trump pandered to bigots and sexists en route to his victory on Tuesday. During the Toronto rally, representatives from aboriginal groups and other minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community expressed anger and concern that their groups will be targeted once Trump takes office in January. Losing a racist friend is so much better than tacitly approving of this rising tide, community organizer Lane Patriquin, 22, told the rally, urging people to call out friends, relatives and coworkers who make intolerant or racist remarks. MORE ON THESTAR.COM Anti-Trump protests head into fourth day as thousands rally, celebrities voice support Anti-Trump protests continue days after victory Anti-Trump anger feeds protests, violence Read more about: SHARE: Mentally ill workers are being systematically denied benefits because of discriminatory and unconstitutional practices at the provinces Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, according to a new complaint sent to Ontarios government watchdog. The 138-page submission obtained by the Star calls for an investigation into the WSIB for its treatment of workers with chronic mental stress injuries due to workplace trauma. Such workers are not currently entitled to compensation even though the boards own independent appeals tribunal has already deemed the policy unconstitutional. It is untenable that this group of vulnerable workers remain excluded from the compensation to which they are constitutionally entitled, the complaint sent to the Ontario Ombudsman says. The complaint was submitted Thursday by three Toronto-based legal clinics, a private practice lawyer specializing in workers compensation, and Ron Ellis, the highly respected retired chair of the WSIBs independent tribunal. The absurdity of the situation and the grim consequences for workers warrant your offices urgent attention, the complaint says. The WSIB did not respond to the Stars request for comment. In response to questions from the Star, Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn said fair benefits for injured workers, including those living with mental stress, were a priority. We are committed to treating injured workers with the fairness, dignity and respect they deserve, and to providing them with the help they need when they need it. We are listening to the concerns being raised regarding this issue, and are currently reviewing legislative options to address it, he said. Under existing legislation governing the WSIB, the board must compensate mental stress injuries resulting from an acute reaction to a sudden and unexpected traumatic event at work. Ontarios Liberal government also recently introduced new laws that make it easier for first-responders to claim compensation for post-traumatic stress disorders. But workers in other professions who develop psychological conditions from long-term workplace issues such as prolonged harassment have no right to compensation at all. Wendy Knelsen says she was diagnosed by her psychiatrist as having chronic post-traumatic stress after what she described as ongoing bullying and harassment by her supervisors at a London-area fire department. She was also tasked with dealing with an investigation into the death of a firefighter, a job she says she received no training for and describes as traumatic. I dont think anything could prepare you when you see your coworkers these tough firefighters breaking down trying to tell their story, and you type every word over and over. Its very hard, she said. But even though her psychiatrist diagnosed her with work-related anxiety and depression, the WSIB denied her claim because it is not required to compensate chronic mental stress injuries. Knelsen says she has spent 10 years appealing the decision, and has still not received an answer. Basically dealing with this system has been horrific, she said. Its intimidating, its difficult to get answers, and they are untrained for dealing with mental stress. The impact is financial, its emotional, and its social, adds John Bartolomeo of the Workers Health and Safety Legal Clinic, one of the signatories of the complaint. Two years ago, a nurse who endured a decade of harassment by her supervisor resulting in anxiety and depression successfully challenged the WSIBs refusal to award her benefits. According to the boards independent tribunal, her constitutional right to equality was violated by the decision to deny compensation, which the board was forced to overturn. Two subsequent rulings on separate appeals in 2015 and 2016 reached the same conclusion. But tribunal rulings are only binding in the specific cases before them so the board has continued its policy of denying benefits for chronic mental stress, according to the ombudsman complaint. That means workers are forced to launch lengthy legal battles to win their entitlements. The cost of mounting a Charter challenge, both financial and emotional, are simply too high for many workers to bear, the letter to the watchdog says, noting that severe backlogs mean it takes years to get a tribunal hearing. That is very stressful, said Toronto workers compensation lawyer Anthony Singleton. People feel very betrayed by the system. They are stuck in the system. The ombudsman complaint also faults government for failing to fix the loophole in its current legislation, arguing the Ministry of Labour is aware that parts of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act have been deemed unconstitutional but has taken no remedial action. According to Ron Ellis, who served for over a decade as chair of the WSIBs independent tribunal and is the author of Unjust by Design. Canada's Administrative Justice System, a government would usually either challenge a tribunal decision finding its legislation unconstitutional or change the law in question. In this case, the Ontario government has done neither. The question is why, says Ellis. It gives the appearance of being a tactical decision to stymie the constitutional challenge process in order to prevent the board having to assume the financial obligations implicit in the chronic stress benefit entitlement. This is the second time this year advocates have demanded an investigation into the WSIB. As first reported by the Star, a group of doctors, lawyers, and labour advocates submitted a formal request for the ombudsman in January to probe the board for ignoring the medical opinions of injured workers doctors. The number of complaints made to the provincial watchdog by ordinary citizens has also jumped by almost 20 per cent over the past year, according to statistics requested by the Star. Knelsen, who was spurred to activism by her own decision, wants to see action from both the board and government. I call it the war within because PTSD really is, she said. Its tearing families apart, forcing them into poverty, some (workers) are killing themselves. And their response is, workers with stress can wait. SHARE: The city of Pickering plans to ask the federal government on Monday to expedite planning and development of the controversial Pickering airport, in what residents say is a stunning reversal of the citys long-standing opposition to the decades old project. Officials says the move is part of a review of the citys official plan. That hasnt been updated since a portion of the federally owned lands, intended for an airport in the east end of the GTA since the 1970s, were added into the Rouge National Urban Park last year. Residents say the language in the motion not only asks for clarity, but shows that the city of Pickering, which has historically opposed the airport, is now asking for the project to move forward. Our concern is that if the motion gets through and gives the impression that Pickering is a willing host, said Mary Delaney, the chair of Land over Landings, a citizens group opposed to the airport. Not only would that not look good, but its patently untrue. While the city has never endorsed plans for an airport, the region of Durham has, Delaney said. The staff report, to be discussed at the Planning and Development Committee meeting Monday evening, states to ensure greater certainty and to remove speculation about the sites future, staff recommends that council request the Federal Government to move forward with the planning and implementation of the airport. It goes on to say: The location of an airport in the City of Pickering is a strategic element necessary to establish a more predictable long-term land use vision for the City. The proposed airport site, although smaller in size, will act as a catalyst for economic growth and job creation in the City. In the early 1970s, the government of Canada acquired 7,530 hectares of land in Markham, Pickering and Uxbridge to build a new airport through a controversial expropriation process that involved booting out thousands of residents. Since then, government officials at all levels have flip-flopped over the years regarding the airport. In the past few years, the recent Conservative government transferred a large part of the lands to Parks Canada to be added to the Rouge Park. Around the same time, the government published notices in the Canada Gazette that it intended to declare a smaller portion of the Pickering lands an airport site. Thats why the city is putting the motion forward said, Regional Councillor David Pickles, who represents ward 3, where the lands sit. I dont think its fair for council or residents to say are you for or against the airport, unless we have more information, he said. The planning department is simply saying, lets get underway with these planning studies, so that the federal government can make a decision on the airport. The motion does not declare support for the project, but for the planning needed to even get to the decision-making stage, he said. Liberal MP for Pickering-Uxbridge Jennifer OConnell said there has been no pressure from Ottawa on the issue. She said the federal government is only halfway through an aviation-sector study that may shed light on the demand and need for the airport in an around Southern Ontario. Another study, commissioned by the previous government, asked UOIT founder Gary Polonsky to look at possible options for the land including an airport; that study has yet to be made public. No one has done a real business case on the need and viability of an airport, OConnell said. The government has made no decisions yet, she said. Any decision that will be made would have to consider a business case and the capacity and demand issue, said OConnell, who was previously on city council. Delaney says residents are also surprised that the issue has come up so soon after the death of Pickering ward 3 councillor Rick Johnson, an airport opponent who passed away in October. She thinks his position should be filled before any decisions are made. But Pickles says theres nothing suspicious about the timing, and appointing a person into the new role wont make much difference. This was an item that was regularly scheduled to come to the planning committee, he said. Nobody swooped in and said this councillor passed away, and lets get it on the agenda. Its been over 40 years . . . and our planning staff is saying, get on with the studies so that we can get on with planning Pickering for many years to come. Right now, the airport is a big question mark. Read more about: SHARE: The mayor and council allies plan to push ahead with promises to outsource garbage collection east of Yonge St. ahead of an updated report on whether it will actually save the city money. Councillor Jaye Robinson, chair of the public works committee and a member of Torys executive, says she plans to request that city staff come back to a January meeting with options for outsourcing including a process that would allow the union to bid for that work. An update from city staff Monday outlined significant changes since the outsourcing debate was deferred last year, including new collection data and a new collective agreement with city workers. Staff requested time to prepare an additional report with that information for January 18. Robinson plans to endorse that request and also push for staff to report on next steps at the same time. We feel its time to stop studying it and get moving, Robinson told the Star. This issues been out there for years. Any decision on outsourcing would need to be approved by council. On Monday, the mayors office referred questions about the plan to Robinson. Though Tory promised to contract out the citys remaining public collection as he faced off against the Ford brothers in the 2014 election campaign, a city staff analysis in September 2015 found privatizing east-end collection may actually cost the city more. At that time, Tory and others challenged the staff report, criticizing their analysis for, Tory said, leaving unanswered questions. The staff report was reviewed by third party Ernst & Young, which found the analysis to be reasonable. The public works and infrastructure committee punted the debate to this fall, giving upcoming negotiations with the union representing city employees, CUPE Local 416, as a reason to delay. Mondays hold-over report from the citys new general manager for solid waste management services Jim McKay requested more time to prepare an additional report for January. McKay took over from the previous head of solid waste, Beth Goodger, who departed shortly after the release of the outsourcing report in 2015. Its becoming a hallmark of this administration that they want their own facts on transit, on public finance and now on garbage, said Councillor Gord Perks, who is critical of Torys mayoralty. If they dont like the facts theyre presented with, they ask the staff to go generate a different set of facts. Its a bad way to govern. Tory has acknowledged that staff had warned him when he took office that the costs savings were not what they were predicted to be during the campaign. That is in part because of increased efficiency in collection in the east after west-end services were privatized, staff have reported. Staff earlier reported there is $11 million in annual savings from the west-end privatization. When staff last analyzed additional privatization they compared existing contracting-out costs to future costs to contract out east-end services. That earlier analysis found public collection for a suburban district in Scarborough could cost $20 million less between 2017 and 2023 than privatized collection costs in a comparable Etobicoke district. Matt Figliano, executive vice-president for CUPE Local 416, said in an email that no new information will change the fact that privatizing waste collection east of Yonge would place quality of service at risk. We ratified a four-year contract earlier this year, and now, theyre threatening to fire the very same people they signed that agreement with. All we are asking for is some decency and respect by the city in exchange for dedicated members who do important work for all Torontonians. Robinson said one of the options she wants the city to consider for outsourcing is managed competition, which she said could allow the union to bid on the work alongside private companies. SHARE: Australia has struck a deal with the U.S. to resettle asylum seekers being held on Manus Island and Nauru. The agreement is a one-off that will be available only to refugees currently in processing centers, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in Canberra on Sunday. The priority will be the resettlement of women, children and families, and would exclude those deemed to be economic refugees, he said. The resettlement deal was struck with the current U.S. administration, Turnbull said, refusing to comment on how it may be affected by the U.S. presidential election victory of Donald Trump, who vowed during the campaign to stop the entry of refugees and other migrants from the Muslim world. Turnbulls Liberal-National coalition won power in 2013 vowing to stop a surge of refugees, some of whom drowned attempting to arrive in Australia by sea, often ferried in rickety boats by people smugglers from Indonesia. While the policy of sending them to Manus Island and Nauru has halted the flow, and cut the number of refugees drowning at sea, it has been condemned by bodies such as the United Nations for breaching human rights. In an effort to deter boat arrivals resuming, Turnbull said resettlement will not be offered to any future asylum seekers. The government will also deploy the largest maritime surveillance and response effort in peacetime to intercept and turn back boats, Turnbull said at a media conference in Sydney on Monday, acknowledging people smugglers may use the resettlement deal to entice asylum seekers to make the dangerous sea journey to Australia. We need to send the clearest and most unequivocal message to people smugglers and their would-be passengers that if they seek to come to Australia unlawfully, they will not succeed, Turnbull said on Sunday. Australias border protection policy has not changed. Refugees who refuse to be resettled will be sent to the remote Pacific island of Nauru. The Australian government is in talks with Nauru to offer a 20-year visa to refugees. Turnbull said people who arent deemed to be genuine refugees should return to their homeland. There are about 1,600 asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guineas Manus Island who are eligible for resettlement. Turnbull declined to say how many would be taken by the U.S. U.S. authorities will conduct their own assessments of the refugees, including health and security checks, to decide who will be resettled. SHARE: MARRAKECH, MOROCCOGlobal temperatures are soaring toward a record high this year, the U.N. weather agency said Monday, while another report showed emissions of a key global warming gas have flattened out in the past three years. The reports injected a mix of gloom and hope at U.N. climate talks in Marrakech this week. Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016, said Petteri Taalas, the head of the World Meteorological Organization. WMOs preliminary data through October showed world temperatures, boosted by the El Nino phenomenon, are 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Thats getting close to the limit set by the global climate agreement adopted in Paris last year. It calls for limiting the temperature rise since the industrial revolution to 2 degrees C or even 1.5 degrees C. WMO said 16 of the 17 hottest years have occurred this century. The only exception was 1998, which was also an El Nino year. Taalas said parts of Arctic Russia saw temperatures soaring 6-7 degrees C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different, he said. Environmental groups and climate scientists said the report underscores the need to quickly reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for warming the planet. Another report released Monday delivered some positive news, showing global CO2 emissions have flattened out in the past three years. However, the authors of the study cautioned its unclear whether the slowdown, mainly caused by declining coal use in China, is a permanent trend or a temporary blip. It is far too early to proclaim we have reached a peak, said co-author Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 per cent this year. That would mean emissions have levelled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. This could be the turning point we have hoped for, said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen. Chinese emissions were down 0.7 per cent in 2015 and are projected to fall 0.5 per cent in 2016, the researchers said, though noting that Chinese energy statistics have been plagued by inconsistencies. Peters said it remains unclear whether the Chinese slowdown was due to a restructuring of the economy or a sign of economic instability, but the unexpected reduction in Chinese emissions give us hope that the worlds biggest emitter can deliver much more ambitious emission reductions. China, which accounts for almost 30 per cent of global carbon emissions, pledged to peak its emissions around 2030 as part of the global climate pact adopted in Paris last year. Many analysts say Chinas peak is likely to come much earlier and may already have occurred. The continued decline of Chinas CO2 emissions, combined with knowledge of structural change in the energy system, does indicate that CO2 emissions from China may have peaked, however a few more years of data is needed to confirm this, said Bill Hare, of Climate Analytics, a separate group that monitors global emissions. Even if Chinas emissions have stabilized, growth in India and other developing countries could push global emissions higher again. Indias emissions rose 5 per cent in 2015, the study said. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States the worlds No. 2 carbon polluter could also have an impact. U.S. emissions fell 2.6 per cent last year and are projected to drop 1.7 per cent this year, as natural gas and renewables displace coal in power generation, the study showed. But its unclear whether those reductions will continue under Trump, who has pledged to roll back the Obama administrations environmental policies, including the Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. Other researchers not affiliated with the study stressed that its not enough for global emissions to stabilize; they need to drop toward zero for the world to meet the goals of the Paris deal. Worryingly, the reductions pledged by the nations under the Paris Agreement are not sufficient to achieve this, said climate scientist Chris Rapley of University College London. RELATED: More climate change coverage on Thestar.com SHARE: LONDONProsecutors were finally able to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Monday about a possible sex crime in Sweden six years ago. They did not comment on the closed-door proceedings at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where Assange has lived for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly to the United States. The long-delayed interview is expected to continue Tuesday and possibly extend beyond that. Assanges version of events, and a possible DNA sample, will shape Swedish prosecutors decision on whether to charge him. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadorean prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police investigator. The Swedish investigation into possible sexual crimes began when two women Assange met in Sweden in 2010 complained to authorities. Some of the alleged misconduct is no longer being investigated by police because of the statute of limitations. Assange is, however, being questioned about the possible rape of one of the women who complained. He has not been indicted or charged but is the subject of an international arrest warrant. Prosecutors say no immediate decision on the future of Assanges case will be made on Monday. They also said no public statements will be made after the questioning. Assanges Swedish defence lawyer, Per Samuelsson, complained that he had been barred from the hearing. Im not on the list of persons that Ecuador has drawn up and allowed to be present, Samuelsson told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. An Ecuadorean lawyer has taken up this question as a formal issue in the introduction of the hearing. WikiLeaks released a statement also complaining about the Swedish lawyer being excluded and said Assange co-operated fully with investigators. Assange has denied wrongdoing and says he fears being extradited to the U.S. because of his WikiLeaks work. It isnt known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the U.S. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well-known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents. One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was launched, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. By then Assange was in Britain, making it harder for Swedish prosecutors to question him. They sought an international arrest warrant for him that was issued in November 2010. Assange surrendered to police in London and was freed on bail, receiving support from a wide range of celebrities including filmmakers Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. He then moved into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, putting him out of reach of British authorities. He has remained in control of WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign in the final weeks of her failed White House run. Civil rights activist Peter Tatchell said outside the embassy that he and others had gathered to show solidarity with Assange and WikiLeaks. He said Assange was being hounded because of WikiLeaks work in shedding light on the terrible things done by the U.S. government and others. Some supporters hoisted pro-Assange banners outside the embassy. Read more about: SHARE: JAKARTA, INDONESIATransgender people and gay activists from across Indonesia have defied a wave of hatred against sexual minorities to crown a Miss Transgender at a national pageant held in absolute secrecy. A handful of journalists were notified just a few hours in advance of the location of the event, held in the capital, Jakarta, to prevent any attempts by Islamic hard-liners to shut down the pageant. And because of the risk of discovery and violence, organizers asked those present not to post anything on social media during the contest. Qienabh Tappii, a 28-year-old representing Jakarta who wore a figure-hugging, iridescent metallic gown, triumphed over more than 30 other contestants Friday night to be crowned Miss Waria Indonesia 2016. She will represent Indonesia at an international pageant to be held in Thailand next year. Waria is the Indonesian word for transgender, a term for people whose sense of their gender is different from their sex at birth. Im very happy, I feel like I want to cry, said Tappii, standing next to a 2-metre-tall gold and red trophy while cradling a smaller one. Tonight is the beginning of my struggle for my rights as a waria, she said. I want waria to be accepted, appreciated and understood in our society, and to be equal with other Indonesians. I will work really hard to achieve it. The successful staging of the pageant was an important morale boost and self-affirmation for a community that is increasingly under siege. Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation, is often held up as practicing a moderate form of Islam. But that reputation for tolerance has been undermined in the past year as the media and religious and political leaders stoked prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, framing them as a threat to the nation. It was in part a backlash against the worldwide advance of LGBT rights, and in particular the success of the gay marriage movement in the U.S. and the high-profile battles there over whether transgender people can use the public bathrooms of the gender they identify with. Indonesias conservatives want to push LGBT people back into the margins of society and deny them legal rights. Its an agenda that has capitalized on low levels of awareness in a society where open discussion of sexuality is often frowned upon. But it also clashes with the traditions of some cultures in ethnically diverse Indonesia that have for centuries allowed space for different genders and sexual identities. If the public knew in advance that there will be such an event, those who use religion as their mask could attack us. Thats why we kept it secret until the last minute, said pageant organizer Nancy Iskandar. The radicals are very arrogant. Im afraid that it could erupt into physical confrontation, Iskandar said. We dont want them to step on us forever. Whats in it for them anyway? Were not doing any harm. Opposition from hard-liners prevented the long-running event, which is organized by Putri Waria Indonesia Foundation and Indonesian Waria Communication Forum, from being held twice in recent years. Indonesias police often side with or look the other way when Islamic hard-liners attack or intimidate LGBT groups, religious minorities, womens rights groups and any cultural events they take exception to. Fitri Pabentengi, a member of the Bugis ethic group, which recognizes five genders, said he travelled from Makassar on Sulawesi island 1,400 kilometres to the east for the pageant. In his community he is bissu, one of the five genders, which roughly corresponds to androgynous. Bissu are traditionally priests or shamans. I came all the way from Makassar to show my solidarity, said Pabentengi. We Indonesian waria have the same feelings, what they feel in Jakarta we also feel it in Makassar. About 200 people filled the small theatre for the finale of the high-energy showcase of idealized feminine beauty. Thirty-four transgender women vied for the title, competing over three days, though four dropped out because they feared the event might be disrupted. Aside from Miss Transgender, there were a slew of other titles up for grabs, including most sexy, most intelligent and most beautiful skin. We want to show that waria can also do positive things, said Miss West Java, Dinda Syariff. People said that we are the scum of the society thats so not true, Syariff said. Read more about: SHARE: Since the finalization of her divorce with Donald Trump in 1992, Ivana Trump has hosted a dating reality show, authored a self-help book on coping with divorce and even made a cameo in the 1996 comedy The First Wives Club, where she famously advised, Dont get mad, get everything. Now, the president-elects ex-wife wants to add another title to her resume: ambassador to the Czech Republic, where she was born in 1949 when the country was still known as Czechoslovakia. Ivana Trump, 67, suggested in an interview with the New York Post that her former husband should appoint her as the U.S. ambassador to her home county. She said she speaks Czech and is well known in her home country - and around the world. I have written three books, and they were translated in 40 countries in 25 languages, she said. Im known by the name Ivana. I really did not need the name Trump. Donald Trump has already given positions to his family members, naming daughter Ivanka, sons Eric and Donald Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner to the executive committee of his transition team on Saturday. If appointed, Ivana Trump would replace the current U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Andy Schapiro, who has held the post since August 2014. The United States has sent an ambassador to the country since 1993, when Czechoslovakia dissolved into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In her interview with the New York Post, Ivana Trump opened up about other topics, including being sued by the New York Times as the paper sought to obtain her divorce documents to find some kind of dirt on Donald. Im not running for president of the United States, she said. Im just a citizen, and I have a right for privacy. I had enough of that. She said she is ready for her ex-husband to take office, noting that the campaign was tough for him because he doesnt like to be moved and traveled. The last 18 months, he traveled as much as he ever has in his life, she said. Thank God he has his private plane, but still, it was brutal. Its not going to get any better; it will get worse in the White House. Read more about: SHARE: In the days after Donald Trumps presidential victory, the words played out in online articles and social media, prompting droves of Internet users to look up their definitions: fascism, bigot, xenophobe, racism, misogyny. The terms were among the top-eight searches on Merriam-Webster on Sunday, less than five days after the election, the online dictionary tweeted. Americans perhaps were trying to make sense of a wave of postelection acts of hate, from the robbery of a Muslim student at the San Diego State University who wore traditional religious clothing, to a black church in Mississippi set on fire and spray-painted with Vote Trump on the wall, to another church in Indiana vandalized with a swastika and the words Heil Trump. While its unclear which groups and individuals are responsible for the acts, at least three organizations have tracked a notable spike in such incidents since the election. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, had counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation nationwide as of Friday. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., told USA TODAY, The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also reported an increase in complaints made to its offices since the election. And the Anti-Defamation League noticed a spike in reports of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti and vandalism in the first two days after the election. In his first extensive televised interview since being elected, Trump told CBS Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes he was saddened to hear Latinos and Muslims have been facing harassment. And I say, Stop it. If it if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it. He also criticized the outburst of protests in cities across the country. But on that same day, the decision was announced that Stephen Bannon would become White House chief strategist. As the Posts Jose A. DelReal reported, Bannon is the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, a voice of the so-called alt-right, a conservative movement once considered fringe, saturated with racially insensitive rhetoric and elements of outright white nationalism. The incidents have caused many to wonder are they a triumphal post-election outburst, or are they a sign of whats to come during Trumps administration? Is the open expression of hate the new reality? Only the wilfully blind can fail to see that president-elect Trump has made racism culturally permissible, wrote Paula Young Lee in Slate, given that attackers often explicitly connect their hateful acts to his leadership. She went on to describe two white men driving a pickup across the campus of Wellesley College, flying a Trump flag and Confederate regalia, laughing and screaming and harassing women of colour and openly queer women, calling one student a dyke. Then they parked in front of the house for students of African descent and jeered at them, screaming Trump and Make America Great again. Indeed, some have called for a more blunt definition of the white nationalist rhetoric playing out in towns, colleges and even middle schools across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt-right as a set of far-right ideologies and groups whose core belief is that white identity is under attack. Scores of people took to Twitter to encourage writers and political leaders to replace the term alt-right with adjectives such as white supremacist, neo-Nazi or fascist. As Americans grappled with how to define and understand this surge in anti-immigrant, pro-white rhetoric, they did not have to look far to find examples of it. Colleges, and particularly elementary, middle and high schools across the country, have proven to be hotbeds for incidents targeting Muslim, black and Jewish students. Though some claim Trumps rhetoric on the campaign trail has triggered white supremacy groups into action, not all of the incidents have directly referenced the president-elect. But they have come in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 8 election, including on Friday at the University of Michigan, where police said a man threatened to set a female student on fire with a lighter if she did not remove her hijab. The universitys Division of Public Safety and Security told the Post they considered the threat a hate crime. In one of several cases involving graffiti of Nazi imagery, police are investigating a series of swastikas scrawled in four dorm rooms at the New School in Manhattan, according to the New School Free Press. The all-female rooms house Jewish students, LGBTQ students and women of colour, the Free Press reported. New School president David Van Zandt condemned what he called actions intended to threaten and express hatred toward some of our students because of their identities, and promised to investigate swiftly and take appropriate action to ensure the security and safety of our students. One of the men, a student at Babson College, later apologized on Facebook, the Boston Globe reported. Im not a racist. Im not a bigot. Im not homophobic, wrote Edward Tomasso, who by them said he was getting death threats. For anyone part of the LGBTQ, African American, Muslim, immigrants, sexual assault victims . . . and other community or individuals impacted by my actions: I can never understand what you are toing through right now. I have perpetuated the fear that exists throughout the world today. That was not my intention and I am deeply sorry that this has happened. On Friday, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered an investigation into an alleged hate crime at SUNY Geneseo, where a resident assistant found a swastika and the word Trump scrawled in a common area of a residence hall, according to the Livingston County News. Breitbart News responded to the reported wave of hate by referring to the incidents as fake and calling out real hate crimes against Trump supporters. Some of the protests have resulted in violent attacks on police, and dozens of arrests, according to the website. And there have been real hate crimes against Trump supporters. It made reference to a man who was viciously beaten Wednesday in Chicago by a group of men and women, who threw the man to the ground and repeatedly kicked him while screaming anti-Trump taunts. A widely circulated photo of a sign spelling out Rape Melania from a rally outside the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, in reference to First Lady-elect Melania Trump, made the rounds on social media, at one point trending on Twitter. An article on Reason.com also questioned the plausibility of the apparent wave of hate crimes, focusing on the case of a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana Lafayette who admitted to police that she fabricated a story about two white men attacking her and physically removing her hijab, the Post reported. While the article acknowledged racist acts were occurring with greater frequency in the days surrounding the election, it downplayed the severity of the incidents, claiming they are a world apart from the hate crimes and violent attacks that many are conjuring up right now. Echoing a common refrain from Trumps rallies, students at Royal Oak Middle School in Michigan were captured in a video chanting build that wall! during their lunch period on Thursday. A since-deleted video of the incident also circulated on Facebook, receiving more than 8 million views at one point, according to Time. On Wednesday morning, Muslim students at New York Universitys Tandon School of Engineering awoke to find Trump! written in black erasable ink on the door of their prayer room, DNAinfo reported. The following day, the students organized a Rise Above Hate rally, with an event on Facebook that listed 750 attendees. A pair of racially charged incidents in western New York have also drawn national attention. Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., suspended two students for hanging a black doll by a noose in an elevator, WBFO reported. In a letter sent to faculty, staff and students published by The Buffalo News, Canisius President John Hurley called the incident extremely troubling on several levels but encouraged people to keep perspective and not paint the entire campus community with a broad brush over the stupid act of one or a few individuals. In nearby Wellsville, N.Y., a softball dugout was vandalized with a black swastika symbol and the words Make America White Again. The response was swift: Citizens painted over the graffiti by mid-afternoon, according to the Wellsville Daily Reporter, and Cuomo put out a statement ordering state police and the Division of Human Rights to investigate the incident. Black freshman students at the University of Pennsylvania were added Friday to GroupMe chats that were used to harass the students with racial slurs and a calendar invite for a daily lynching, In a joint statement, President Amy Gutmann, Provost Vincent Price and Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli called the GroupMe chat vile material. The account itself is totally repugnant: it contains violent, racist and thoroughly disgusting images and messages, the statement read. This is simply deplorable. Three people from Oklahoma including a University of Oklahoma student who has been temporarily suspended were found responsible for the messages sent to the University of Pennsylvania freshmen, school officials said Sunday. More on thestar.com: Despite show of unity, Trumps spending plans could spark a GOP clash Twelve developments since Donald Trumps stunning election victory Priebus defends Trumps hire of Breitbarts Bannon, who has ties to white nationalism SHARE: If there was any doubt about the power of right-wing populism, Donald Trumps victory has dispelled it. The populist right is on a roll in France, Italy, Scandinavia, Holland and Eastern Europe. During Britains bruising debate over membership in the European Union, the populist right best articulated the anxieties of those who felt excluded. And now a right-wing populist is president-elect of the United States. Still, the assumption reigns that Trumpism could never happen in Canada that because of what International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland in another context has called our inherent niceness, Canadians are somehow immune. But a Trumpian figure could win here. We are not immune. There are Canadians being left out of the new economy. The same forces that combine to make work precarious in the U.S. and Western Europe are at play here. And there are similar fears about immigration, security and crime. An Ipsos poll last week concluded that 70 per cent of Canadians disapproved of Trumps victory. But the same poll found that 77 per cent of Canadians would consider voting for a candidate who ran on a Trumpian platform of stricter immigration controls, skepticism over free trade and tough-on-crime measures. It is commonplace in the punditocracy to dismiss Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitchs demand that immigrants pass a so-called Canadian values test before being admitted into the country. But as the Star reported in September, a Forum Research poll found that 67 per cent of Canadians agree with her. So what is it that has kept the darker elements of populism at bay here? Why did Canadians choose sunny Justin Trudeau as their leader while Americans opted for rude and crude Trump? One reason is that for much of the last decade the oil boom kept incomes up in Canada. Inequality grew in the U.S. It narrowed here. The other is that Trudeau, like Trump, successfully presented himself as the change candidate. In both Canada and the U.S. many voters were dissatisfied with the status quo. In both countries, they voted for the person most likely to shake things up. Now the oil economy is in a slump. How long can sunny ways prevail? The Liberals seem to understand that something is going on out there. Im not sure they get how serious it is. We need to deal with middle-class anxiety, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said last week at a session with the Star editorial board and assorted hangers-on. Yet the solution he articulated was standard Liberal boilerplate: First, let the market work its magic; then have government come in and clean up any inequities that remain. He cited the Liberals new child benefit as an example. Indeed, the new program does have much to recommend it. But it doesnt speak to the fundamental economic problems that have fuelled the new populism. Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, while no fan of populism, had a better understanding of its darker side. His strategy was to pander to the baser instincts of his supporters by giving them symbolic victories, such as the elimination of the long-form census, while remaining resolutely orthodox on the things that mattered such as trade. Exactly where the left is on the new populism is hard to gauge. Certainly, Jeremy Corbyn, the much-criticized leader of Britains Labour party, understands whats going on. Trumps election is an unmistakable rejection of a political establishment and an economic system that simply isnt working for most people, he said after the billionaire developer won Tuesdays vote. In Canada, however, New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair responded to Trumps victory by denouncing his campaign as both racist and sexist. In the past, Mulcair has labelled Trump a fascist. All of this, while arguably true, is not very helpful. We know Trump can be objectionable. What we have to understand are the forces that allowed this alleged fascist to so handily win a democratic election. Thomas Walkom appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Read more about: SHARE: Never underestimate how much you are hated. I have always told women this, which some thought a bit over the top, and I secretly hoped they were right. Then President-elect Donald Trump happened to Americans and the world and I now regret having understated the case. I was too distracted by the expected backlash against womens rights once Hillary Clinton became president to see how comparatively tolerable that anger might look to me if Trump won. I had not contemplated he would win. Though some votes are still being counted, the New York Times exit polls are startling. Fully 42 per cent of female voters and 53 per cent of white female voters chose Trump over Clinton. As for the low turnout only about 56.9 per cent of eligible voters actually showed up that deserves another kind of damnation. The grab them by the p---- guy is running things now. He harks back to an older, foully misogynistic era but still one where women at least expected faked public courtesy. Societal norms have been broken, at least the norms we know in Canada. Trump fondles women, threatens them, mocks their appearance, dismisses pregnancy as a workplace annoyance, has contempt for women generally and his current wife and ex-wives specifically and talks about his daughters in the most peculiar terms. When it comes to abortion, he will rule the innards of American women and stack the Supreme Court to rule on abortion laws made by states. Texas will have its way. Wait for the end of Roe v. Wade. Abortion clinics in Canada will see good business. Americans with enough money will come here for help, the same way pregnant women in Northern Ireland take the ferry to England because they fear the harshest jail terms in Europe. Trump was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and he was OK with that. So I dont think women are at the top of his hate list. That ice cream cone is piled pretty high. But theres a lot to gaze at. Who are the Trump women? American women raised in a culture that demeans them are often willing to demean themselves and other women. They ally themselves with malevolent power, not realizing that only good-hearted men and women working together will advance womens rights. Their vote was a sorrow. On Oct. 13, Michelle Obama gave a stunning speech about Trumps views: I feel it so personally, she said. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. That is cruel. Its frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. Those last two words especially ring true. Women rarely say openly how hurt they are, in case it encourages even more hate. They pretend it slides off. Like Sarah Palin calling herself a mama bear, they often try to appear tough in a traditionally masculine way. I have done this myself, as traditionally minded editors seem to expect this of me. But at no time have I ever expected another woman to hide her own hurt. I admire them for admitting to it. I would never betray women as brave as Clinton, even anonymously in the privacy of the voting booth. Female Trump voters needed allies and they chose false ones. Will they ever admit they were betrayed? Its like wanting to be chosen by the brute boys in high school, not realizing they despise you for your acquiescence. I have read countless interviews in which they brush off Trumps contempt and his male supporters loathing of Clinton, the c---, the b----. Remember Trump mocking a disabled man? Thats how he regards women, as subhuman. They may realize that their only friend is paid work, and that feels like running a gauntlet every day. Instead of taking a stand, they turn on those perceived as vulnerable: blacks, Latinos, immigrants and more on the long list of Trump targets. The weak savage the weak and nuzzle up to the bullies. Were tough women, we vote Trump, we dont care. Of course they care. Backing Trump is only a paper badge of courage. President Trump likes winners. He thinks women are wretched losers and will treat them as such. Good men and women are allies in pain right now. Well get through this, but Michelle Obama was right. It hurts. SHARE: Re: What will it take to end the cruelty of solitary confinement? Nov. 8 What will it take to end the cruelty of solitary confinement? Nov. 8 It seems that, in Ontario, even a bombshell revelation of wrongdoing does little to wake the folk at Queens Park from their reveries. As Martin Regg Cohn eloquently points out, our penal system in the year 2016 is still mired in dark age, Dickensian practices, yet when apprised of the situation all we get is political double-talk and baffle-gab. Both the former community safety minister Yasir Naqvi and his successor David Orazietti act with obvious and useless political expediency by announcing the need for further study and, of course, they also pass responsibility for action on to others. Meanwhile, men and women are being held in inhumane conditions for prolonged periods of time (soundly condemned by the UN, which mandates 15 days as a maximum time period) which lead almost inevitably to their destruction as human beings. And why is there no action to make the changes so sorely needed? Has anyone yet been held responsible for young Ashley Smiths death while in custody in segregation? Will any of the guards who watched her die or the senior official who ordered them not to intervene when she was dying be held accountable? Who will pay the price for Adam Capays totally unacceptable suffering during some 1,500 days in solitary? And what of the other estimated 500 souls likely being held in similar conditions for lengthy time periods across Ontario? Time for Premier Kathleen Wynne and her cohorts to demonstrate a little humanity and act swiftly; surely this is cannot be too much to ask. Eric Balkind, Gore Bay The next time a Canadian politician feels the urge to lecture another country on human rights, the name Adam Capay should spring immediately to mind and, at the very least, give them pause. As Regg Cohn suggests, the misuse of solitary confinement in this country shames us all. Ray Jones, Toronto So our Premier wont use the word torture in describing four-plus years of solitary confinement as recognized by every reputable organization that looks at human rights abuses, including Amnesty International. She was quick to label those who protested the same sex curriculum as homophobic. I am sure there were a portion involved that were in fact homophobic; however, the majority had other concerns that she ignored completely. No mincing her words there. Pretty sure the worlds despots dont see their deeds as torture either, so she is in good company. When a dictator like Idi Amin had prison officials torture prisoners we did not blame their prison system, we rightly blamed him. Jack Chiavarini, Milton Heres an idea the jail system might like to ease the pain of solitary confinement. Every solitary cell to be fitted with hangmans noose over a trap door that leads to the sewer, with a convenient button, within reach of the noose, to open the door. Maybe put a five-minute delay between the button and the trap door, so jail staff can come to watch and enjoy. Andy Turnbull, Toronto SHARE: UniCredit (UNCFF) shares were active in European trading Monday amid speculation of a tie-up with France's second-biggest bank and a capital raising effort to boost the Italian lender's flagging balance sheet. UniCredit stock was up by more than 3% in early European trading, recording an intra-day high of 2.41, before paring gains. It is down by more 50% for the 2016 year-to-date. Reuters reported over the weekend that UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank, is planning a capital-raising rights issue that could see it tap investors for 13 billion ($14 billion) in new equity. A second report, published Monday by Italy's ANSA news agency that suggested UniCredit could be contemplating a tie-up with France's Societe Generale (SCGLY) , was quickly dismissed as "market speculation" by a bank spokesperson. UniCredit is set to hold an investor day on Dec. 13 where it will unveil the results of a strategic review that was recently completed by CEO Jean-Pierre Mustier. It is widely expected that Mustier will use the event to announce further disposals as well as a plan of action for the bank's 76 billion pile of bad loans. Analysts have been singling out UniCredit as likely to carry out a rights issue for much of the summer, given its poor performance in European Banking Authority (EBA) stress tests in July and a festering nonperforming loan problem in Italy. "We identify 3 scenarios and conclude a big-bang approach requiring an 11bn capital raise is the optimal way to recapitalize the bank," said Jefferies analyst Benjie Creelan-Sandford in a September research note. Equivalent to almost 20% of gross domestic product, the rising tide of Italian nonperforming loans pushed a number of regional Italian lenders into the arms of administrators in late 2015, leaving investors wary of the Italian banking sector in 2016. It hasn't helped that Monte dei Paschi (BMDPY) , the world's oldest lender, has spent the months since July seeking to put the final touches to its third rights rescue in just as many years. UniCredit emerged from July EBA stress tests with a CET1 capital ratio of 7.1%, well below the 9.1% average for all European banks. So far UniCredit has attempted to repair its balance sheet without tapping investors for new money, instead concentrating on asset sales. It raised more than 1.5 billion from asset sales during the third quarter, including a part of its holding in Poland's second largest bank Bank Pekao, a stake in online broker FinecoBank and a credit card payments business. It still holds stakes in Bank Pekao and FinecoBank, which could be worth a collective 4 billion, and it has placed its asset management division Pioneer Global Asset Management on the block - which has been widely tipped as being worth in the region of 3 billion to 4 billion. EnerSys provides various stored energy solutions for industrial applications worldwide. It operates in three segments: Energy Systems, Motive Power, and Specialty. The company offers uninterruptible power systems applications for computer and computer-controlled systems, as well as telecommunications systems; switchgear and electrical control systems used in industrial facilities and electric utilities, large-scale energy storage, and energy pipelines; integrated power solutions and services to broadband, telecom, renewable, and industrial customers; and thermally managed cabinets and enclosures for electronic equipment and batteries. It also provides motive power products that are used to provide power for electric industrial forklifts used in manufacturing, warehousing, and other material handling applications. In addition, the company offers mining equipment, diesel locomotive starting, and other rail equipment. Further, it provides specialty batteries for starting, lighting, and ignition applications in transportation; and energy solutions for satellites, military aircraft, submarines, ships, and other tactical vehicles, as well as medical and security systems. Additionally, the company offers battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories, and outdoor cabinet enclosures, as well as related after-market and customer-support services for industrial batteries. The company sells its products through a network of distributors, independent representatives, and internal sales forces. The company was formerly known as Yuasa, Inc. and changed its name to EnerSys in January 2001. EnerSys was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania. Badger Meter, Inc. manufactures and markets flow measurement, quality, control, and communication solutions in the United States, Asia, Canada, Europe, Mexico, the Middle East, and internationally. It offers mechanical or static water meters, and related radio and software technologies and services to municipal water utilities. The company also provides flow instrumentation products, including meters, valves, and other sensing instruments to measure and control fluids going through a pipe or pipeline, including water, air, steam, oil, and other liquids and gases to original equipment manufacturers as the primary flow measurement device within a product or system, as well as through manufacturers' representatives. Its flow instrumentation products are used in water/wastewater, heating, ventilating and air conditioning, and corporate sustainability markets. In addition, the company offers ORION Migratable for automatic meter reading; ORION (SE) for traditional fixed network applications; and ORION Cellular for infrastructure-free fixed network meter reading solution, as well as BEACON advanced metering analytics, a secure cloud-hosted software suite that establishes alerts for specific conditions and allows consumer engagement tools that permit end water customers to view and manage their water usage activity. It also serves water utilities, industrial, and other industries. The company sells its products directly, as well as through resellers and representatives. Badger Meter, Inc. was incorporated in 1905 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. TopBuild Corp., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the installation and distribution of insulation and other building products to the construction industry. The company operates in two segments, Installation and Specialty Distribution. It provides insulation products and accessories, glass and windows, rain gutters, afterpaint products, fireproofing products, garage doors, fireplaces, closet shelving, roofing materials, and other products; and insulation installation services. The company also offers various services and tools to assist builders in applying the principles of building science to new home construction, which include pre-construction plan reviews, diagnostic testing, and various inspection services; and home energy rating services. In addition, it distributes building and mechanical insulation, insulation accessories, and other building product materials for the residential, commercial, and industrial end markets. The company serves single-family homebuilders, single-family custom builders, multi-family builders, commercial general contractors, remodelers, and individual homeowners, as well as insulation contractors, gutter contractors, weatherization contractors, other contractors, dealers, metal building erectors, and modular home builders. It operates approximately 235 installation branches and 175 distribution centers in the United States and Canada. The company was formerly known as Masco SpinCo Corp. and changed its name to TopBuild Corp. in March 2015. TopBuild Corp. was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida. The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface. Read More First Horizon Corporation operates as the bank holding company for First Horizon Bank that provides various financial services. The company operates through three segments: Regional Banking, Specialty Banking, and Corporate. It offers general banking services for consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments. The company also underwrites bank-eligible securities and other fixed-income securities eligible for underwriting by financial subsidiaries; sells loans and derivatives; and offers advisory services. In addition, it offers various services, such as mortgage banking; title insurance and loan-closing; brokerage; correspondent banking; nationwide check clearing and remittance processing; trust, fiduciary, and agency; equipment finance; and investment and financial advisory services. Further, the company sells mutual fund and retail insurance products; and credit cards. It operates approximately 500 banking offices in 22 states under the First Horizon Bank brand; and 400 banking centers in 12 states under the FHN Financial brand in the United States. The company was formerly known as First Horizon National Corporation and changed its name to First Horizon Corporation in November 2020. First Horizon Corporation was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The following companies are subsidiares of Dover: APM Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Accelerated Production Systems, Acme Cryo Intermediate Inc., Acme Cryogenics, Acme Cryogenics Inc., Acme Elevator, Advansor A/S, Advansor Dover International (Poland) sp. z o.o., Advansor Germany GmbH, Alfred Fueling Systems Holdco Ltd., Alfred Fueling Systems Inc., Alfred Fueling Systems Intermediate Holdco Ltd., All-Flo Pump Company, Anman LLC, Anthony Equity Holdings Inc., Anthony Holdings Inc., Anthony Inc., Anthony International, Anthony International Foreign Sales Corp., Anthony International Holding Company, Anthony Mexico Holdings LLC, Anthony North Holdco Inc., Anthony Specialty Glass LLC, Anthony TemperBent GP LLC, Audax ECII Blocker Inc., Auto Glanz Solutions LLC, AvaLAN Wireless Systems Incorporated, BELVAC CR spol s r.o., BSC Filters Limited, Belanger, Belanger Inc., Belvac Middle East FZE, Belvac Production Machinery Inc., Blackmer, BlitzRotary GmbH, Blue Bite LLC, Blue Bite LLC, Butler Engineering and Marketing S.P.A., CDS Visual, CDS Visual Inc., CEP Liquidation LLC, CP Formation LLC, CPC Europe Inc., CPI Products Inc., Caldera, Canada Organization & Development LLC, Chief Automotive Technologies (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd., Chippewa Square Captive Insurance Company, Colder Products Company, Colder Products Company GmbH, Colder Products Company LTD, Cook Compression LLC, Cook Compression Limited, Cook-MFS Inc., Cryogenic Experts LLC, DD1 Inc., DDI Properties Inc., DE-STA-CO Benelux B.V., DE-STA-CO FRANCE, DE-STA-CO Shanghai Co. Ltd., DESTACO UK Limited, DFH Corporation, DFS Netherlands B.V., Datamax International Corp, De Sta Co (Asia) Company Limited, De-Sta-Co Cylinders Inc., DeStaCo Europe GmbH, Delaware Capital Formation Inc., Delaware Capital Holdings Inc., Dositec Sistemas SL, Dosmatic U.S.A. Inc., Dover (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Dover (Schweiz) Holding GmbH, Dover (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd., Dover (Shenzhen) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover (Suzhou) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover Asia Trading Private Ltd., Dover Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Dover Business Services EMEA Limited, Dover Business Services Europe S.R.L., Dover Business Services LLC, Dover Business Services Philippines Corporation, Dover CLP Formation Limited Partnership, Dover Canada Holdings ULC, Dover Canada Operations ULC, Dover Corporation Regional Headquarters, Dover DEI Services Inc., Dover Denmark Holdings ApS, Dover EMEA FZCO, Dover Energy UK Ltd, Dover Engineered Products Segment Inc., Dover Europe Inc., Dover Europe Sarl, Dover Fluids UK Ltd, Dover France Holdings, Dover France Participations, Dover France Technologies, Dover Fueling Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Fueling Solutions UK Limited, Dover Germany GmbH, Dover Global Holdings LLC, Dover Holdings de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dover Imaging & Identification Segment Inc., Dover India Pvt. Ltd., Dover Intercompany Services UK Limited, Dover International B.V., Dover International Operations Inc., Dover International Ventures Inc., Dover International ithalat ihracat ve Pazarlama Limited Sirketi, Dover Italy Holdings S.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Finance Sarl, Dover Luxembourg Participations Sarl, Dover Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Services Sarl, Dover Operations South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Dover Overseas Ventures Inc., Dover Pumps & Process Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment UK Ltd, Dover Resources International de Mexico S. de R.L. C.V., Dover Solutions Colombia SAS, Dover Southeast Asia (Thailand) Ltd., Dover Spain Holdings S.L., Dover Switzerland Participations GmbH, Dover UK Pensions Limited, Dover WSCR Holding LLC, Dover WSCR LLC, Dover do Brasil Ltda., Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, Dresser Wayne Data Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Dresser Wayne Fuel Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ECI - IGT Holdings LLC, ECI Holding Company LLC, ECI RegO S. de R.L. de C.V, ECI RegO Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., ECII (Mexico) LLC, EOA Systems Inc., Ebs-Ray Holdings Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Industries Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Pumps Pty Ltd, Em-Tec, Engineered Controls International LLC, Espy, Ettlinger, Ettlinger Kunststoffmaschinen GmbH, Fairbanks Environmental Limited, Fibrelite Composites Limited, Fibresec Holdings Limited, Fibresec Limited, Finder, GAL LLC, GIIER LLC, Gala Industries, Guangdong Tokheim LIYUAN Oil Industry Technology Limited Company, Highland Park Insurance Company, Hill PHOENIX Inc., Hill PHOENIX WIC LLC, Hill Phoenix Costa Rica Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, Hill Phoenix El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Hill Phoenix Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Honduras Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hiltap Fittings Ltd., Hydro Systems Company, Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., Industrial Motion Control LLC, Innovative Control Systems, Innovative Control Systems Inc., Inpro/Seal LLC, JK Group, JK Group S.P.A., JK Group USA Inc., K S Boca Inc., K&L Microwave DR Inc., K&L Microwave Inc., KPS (Beijing) Petroleum Equipment Trading Co Ltd., KPS Fueling Solutions Sdn. Bhd., KPS Hong Kong Holding Limited, KPS UK Limited, KS Formation Inc., KS Liquidation Inc., KSLP Liquidation L.P., Kiian Digital (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Knappco LLC, Knowles Electronics, LIQAL, LIQAL B.V., Liquip, Liquip, Liquip International Pty Limited, MAAG, MARKEM FZ SA, MARKEM-IMAJE Corporation, MIP Holdings Inc., MS Printing Solutions, MS Printing Solutions S.R.L., Maag, Maag Automatik Plastics Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Maag Gala Inc., Maag Germany GmbH, Maag Italy S.R.L., Maag Pump Systems, Maag Pump Systems (US) Inc., Maag Pump Systems AG, Maag Reduction Inc., Maag Service (Malaysia) Sdn. Bdn., Maag Service (Taiwan) Ltd., Maag Systems (Thailand) Limited, Macro Technologies LLC, Malema, Marathon Equipment Company (Delaware), Markem Imaje Center of Competencies Spain S.L.U., Markem-Imaje, Markem-Imaje (China) Co. Limited, Markem-Imaje - Unipessoal Lda, Markem-Imaje A/S, Markem-Imaje AB, Markem-Imaje AG, Markem-Imaje AS, Markem-Imaje B.V., Markem-Imaje CSAT GmbH, Markem-Imaje Co. Ltd., Markem-Imaje GmbH, Markem-Imaje Holding, Markem-Imaje Identificacao de Produtos Ltda., Markem-Imaje Inc., Markem-Imaje India Private Limited, Markem-Imaje Industries, Markem-Imaje Industries Limited, Markem-Imaje KK, Markem-Imaje LLC, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Ltd., Markem-Imaje N.V., Markem-Imaje Oy, Markem-Imaje Philippines Corporation, Markem-Imaje Pty. Ltd., Markem-Imaje S.A., Markem-Imaje S.A. de C.V., Markem-Imaje S.r.l., Markem-Imaje SAS, Markem-Imaje Sdn. Bhd., Markem-Imaje Singapore Pte. Ltd., Markem-Imaje Spain S.A., Markpoint Holding AB, Midland Manufacturing LLC, Midwest Cryogenics Inc., Mouvex, Northeast Services Inc., Northern Lights (Nevada) Inc., Northern Lights Funding LP, Northern Lights Investments LLC, Nova Controls Inc., OK International, OK International Holdings Inc., OK International Inc., OK International Ltd., OPW Engineered Systems LLC, OPW Fluid Transfer Group Europe B.V., OPW Fluid Transfer Solutions (Jiang Su) Co. Ltd., OPW Fluids Group Inc., OPW Fuel Management Systems Inc., OPW Fueling Components (SuZhou) Co. Ltd., OPW Fueling Components LLC, OPW Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., OPW Slovakia s.r.o., OPW Sweden AB, Officine Meccaniche Sirio S.R.L., PDQ Manufacturing, PDQ Manufacturing Inc., PISCES by OPW Inc., PSD Codax Holdings Limited, PSD Codax Limited, PSG (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PSG (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PSG California LLC, PSG Germany GmbH, Petro Vend Sp. z o.o., Pike Machine Products Inc., Pole/Zero Acquisition Inc., Precision Brasil Equipamentos E Servicos Para Postos De Combustiveis Ltda., Precision Service - Servicos De Manutencao E Instalacao De Postos De Abastecimento De Combustivel Ltda., Production Control Services, Pump Management Services Co. LLC, Quantex Arc Limited, Quantex Patents Limited, RAV France, Ravaglioli S.P.A., Reduction Engineering GmbH, RegO (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., RegO Holding GmbH, RegO Products, RegO Valve (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Rego GmbH, Revod Corporation, Revod Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Revod Sweden AB, Robohand Inc., Rosario, Rosario Handel B.V., Rotary Lift Consolidated (Haimen) Co. Ltd., SE Liquidation LLC, SWEP France, SWEP Germany GmbH, SWEP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SWEP North America Inc., SWEP Slovakia s.r.o., SWEP Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Seabiscuit Motorsports Inc., Shanghai RegO Flow Technology Company Ltd., Shine Bloom - ECI A Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI S Blocker Corp., Simmons Sirvey Corporation, So. Cal. Soft-Pak, So. Cal. Soft-Pak Incorporated, Soft-Pak, Solaris Laser, Solaris Laser S.A., Somero Enterprises, Sound Solutions, Sound Solutions, Space S.R.L., Spirit, Start Italiana S.R.L., Superior Holding LLC, Superior Products LLC, Swep Energy Oy, Swep International A.B., Swep Japan K.K., Sys-Tech Solutions, Sys-Tech Solutions Inc., Systech, TQC Quantium Quality S.A. de C.V., TTSI III Inc., TWG Canada Consolidated Inc., TXHI LLC, Tartan Textile Services Inc., The Espy Corporation, The Heil Co., Tokheim, Tokheim Belgium, Tokheim China Company Limited, Tokheim GmbH, Tokheim Group, Tokheim Hengshan Technologies (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Tokheim Holding B.V., Tokheim India Private Limited, Tokheim Sofitam Applications, Triton Systems, Tulsa Winch Inc., UPCO Inc., US Synthetic, Unattended Payment Solutions LLC, Unified Brands, Val TemperBent Glass L.P., Vectron Frequency Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vehicle Service Group LLC, Vehicle Service Group UK Limited, Vos Food Store Equipment Ltd., WSCR Corp., Warn Automotive LLC, Warn Industries, Waukesha Bearings, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Waukesha Bearings Limited, Waukesha Bearings Russia LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems, Wayne Fueling Systems (Rus) Limited Liability Company, Wayne Fueling Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Wayne Fueling Systems Canada ULC, Wayne Fueling Systems Italia S.R.L., Wayne Fueling Systems LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Sweden AB, Wayne Fueling Systems UK Holdco Ltd., Wayne Industria e Comercio Ltda., WellMark, WellMark, and em-tec GmbH. Read More NEW YORK, 14 November 2016 Over 200 prominent writers including novelists, playwrights and poets, have joined a global literary campaign this week, penning tiny stories of around seven lines each to highlight Universal Childrens Day and the injustice so many of the worlds poorest and most disadvantaged children still face. The short story series kicks off UNICEFs commemoration of its 70th year working to bring help and hope to every child. The short stories will be shared by some of the worlds most celebrated writers with their own social media audiences. The First Lady of Finland, Jenni Haukio, introduced the concept, which gained global momentum with writers joining from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. As writers we are able to advocate through the simplicity of storytelling. With this worthy and necessary campaign, we advocate for the protection of the rights of precious children all over the world, said celebrated Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie. The group of writers, whose genres range from fairy tales to fiction, include one the worlds youngest published authors, seven-year-old South African, Michelle Nkamankeng. Written in over 10 languages and varying in style, all stories illustrate that the rights of many children are still neglected. The campaign comes at a time when there are increasing threats to child rights. Over 50 million children have been uprooted from their homes due to conflict, poverty and climate change and millions more are facing unspeakable violence in their communities. Around 263 million children are out of school and last year nearly six million children under five died from mostly preventable diseases. It is shocking to see that the lives of many children are still so heavily impacted by the horror of conflict, inequality, poverty and discrimination. I hope these Tiny Stories can remind the world that we must sustain our commitment to all of these children whose lives and futures are at stake, said Paloma Escudero, UNICEF Spokesperson. Chimamanda Adichie used her Tiny Story to launch the series today, which will run until November 20 - the anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. ### Download multimedia content at: http://weshare.unicef.org/mediaresources Notes to editors: A full list of authors and their Tiny Stories are available throughout the week here (they will also be shared on the authors social media pages): www.unicef.org/tinystories For more information contact: Harriet Dwyer, UNICEF New York, Tel: +1 917 244 2215, hdwyer@unicef.org AUTO INDUSTRY U.S. finalizes noise rules on quiet cars The U.S. government on Monday finalized long-delayed rules that will require quiet cars such as electric vehicles and hybrids to emit alert sounds when moving at speeds of up to 18.6 mph to help prevent injuries among cyclists, pedestrians and the blind. The rules, which were mandated by Congress, will require automakers such as Tesla Motors, Nissan and Toyota to add the sounds to all vehicles by September 2019. The Transportation Department said it expects the rules to prevent 2,400 injuries a year by 2020 and to add the alert sounds to about 530,000 2020 model vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the rules will cost the auto industry about $39 million a year, but the benefits of reduced injuries are estimated at $250 million to $320 million annually. The rules apply to hybrid and electric cars, SUVs, trucks and buses weighing up to 10,000 pounds. At higher speeds, the alert is not required because tire and wind noise adequately warn pedestrians, NHTSA said. Reuters ACQUISITIONS Siemens to pay $4.5 billion for Mentor Graphics Siemens will buy Mentor Graphics for $4.5 billion in its biggest acquisition since 2014. The German engineering company will pay $37.25 a share in cash for Oregon-based Mentor, Siemens said Monday 21 percent above Fridays closing price. Elliott Management, which owns 8.1 percent of Mentors shares, backed the offer, Siemens said. The deal follows Siemenss January purchase of U.S. computer-program-maker CD-adapco, as chief executive Joe Kaeser seeks to grow the digital business as part of a retreat from consumer-oriented products to focus on industrial applications. Mentors software and hardware is used to design electronics for the semiconductor, auto and transportation industries. The company was under pressure from Elliott Management to boost shareholder value. Bloomberg News Also in Business From news services Coming Today From news services Who cant relate to this pickle? Youre an icily beautiful actress who spent six seasons in a gorgeous English castle wearing one fabulous 1920s frock after another in a hit series in which your characters most memorable scenes were the ones spent insulting her not-quite-as-elegant sister. Your character becomes so popular that theres a Twitter account that pretends to be authored by her eyebrows. The series ends and you beg your agent: Get me outta here. Something, anything, so long as its completely different and doesnt involve full-length gloves. And so Michelle Dockerys wish is fully granted, in an astonishing career swerve from Downton Abbey to TNTs intriguing and impressively seedy crime drama Good Behavior, the first two episodes of which premiere Tuesday. Dockery throws herself into the role of Letty Raines a liar, thief and ex-con in North Carolina who sweats long shifts as a waitress and relies on a pleasant-voiced motivational app to keep her off drugs and booze, in between visits with her parole officer (Terry Kinney). Letty is barely hanging onto sobriety, hoping to regain the right to visit her 10-year-old son, who lives under the protective watch of Lettys mother (Lusia Strus). Desperate to raise the sort of cash that will get her back on her feet, Letty commits a quick string of burglaries at a luxury hotel, during which she overhears a muy guapo hit man, Javier (Juan Diego Botto), making final arrangements to murder a clients wife. Struggling to be a better person, Letty decides she doesnt need the death of a stranger on her conscience, so she intervenes. You mean she calls the cops? Gosh, no its television. She disguises herself as a sexy teacher, seduces Javier, then plans to help the intended victim escape. The true accomplishment of Good Behavior, created by Chad Hodge and Blake Crouch (based on Crouchs novel), is that none of this seems as hokey as it sounds. Dockery digs deep and gives a frenetic and often moving performance, clearly relishing the chance to play a damaged and unpredictable (and poor!) person, who, despite her fears of being sent back to prison, would fit in nicely among the general population at Orange Is the New Black, should it come to that. Its no surprise that TV viewers frequently have trouble accepting their favorite actors in new parts. But actors understandably crave variety and challenges in their careers; also they need to stay employed. Despite that, its still hard for fans to let go, especially when it involves a character as memorable as Lady Mary, but Dockery so ably demonstrates versatility here that the least you can do is submit to Good Behavior long enough to get hooked. (That only took me two episodes.) Lettys attempt to do right goes awry and, before she knows it, shes been abducted by Javier and forced to join him on his next hit job, where she must pose as his wife and share his bed. As distastefully abusive as that premise seems, an undeniable chemical spark occurs between Dockery and Botto enough to propel Good Behavior past the glut of stylish but mediocre cable dramas that feature morally ambiguous protagonists. The show also has an uncommon obsession with nailing some small details that, in other shows, tend to inhibit plausibility. Example: On the lam in a stolen Tesla with two bodies in the trunk, Letty and Javier spend a good part of one episode dealing with such issues as lousy smartphone reception and the cars dead-giveaway GPS tracking, to say nothing of the lack of EV charging stations on Southern back roads. Other shows take modern technology for granted, employing it where narratively convenient, but rarely stopping to consider its shortcomings as an accomplice. Good Behavior gets points here for turning product placement into a crisis. Its one problem after another for these two, and theres something enjoyably twisted and confident about the way Good Behavior unfolds as something better than a madcap crime spree or a shallow action-romance caper. Without fully condoning her sins (or her attempt to sustain an American accent), its fair to suggest that Lady Mary has finally found the right man. Good Behavior (two hours) premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. on TNT. Correction: An earlier version of this guide gave the incorrect title for Melissa Ho. She is curator of 20th-century art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, not the Renwick Gallery. This version has been corrected. Ever want to peek at a celebritys gift list? For the curious and those in need of a few holiday ideas we tracked down some of Washingtons tastemakers and trendsetters. We asked them: What do you want for the holidays? What would you like to give? Their answers might surprise you. (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Nick Wass/Associated Press) Kelly Oubre Jr. Washington Wizards forward TO GIVE: I would give an art design kit. Pencils, pens, papers, just things an artist would need. I respect the artistry of a lot of stuff. Just give them the basics to create something simple. You dont even need to go all-out. All an artist really needs is a pen and paper and somewhere to put their ideas. It all started, definitely, before I could afford my laptop I started putting stuff on paper. Royal and Langnickel Sketching and Drawing Artist Set for Beginners, $16.99. amazon.com. TO GET: I want a new longboard. Dont tell my general manager. I have one, but I left it back home. Ive been boarding since high school. I longboarded to school every day down hills in Las Vegas, up hills around the town. I like trying new things and learning. I just fell in love with trying new tricks and just getting the balance right. Dusters x Grateful Dead Bertha 35-inch Pintail Longboard Complete, $219.95. zumiez.com. [Top toys this holiday season for young builders, doll lovers and coders] (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Smithsonian American Art Museum) Melissa Ho Renwick Gallery curator of 20th-century art TO GIVE: I would give this book to any Washingtonian who was foolish enough to miss the extraordinary Robert Irwin exhibition at the Hirshhorn this summer. The magic of Irwins phenomenological art is notoriously difficult to convey in either photographs or words, yet Hankinss cogent prose makes the story of his breakthrough years both accessible and exhilarating. Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change by Evelyn C. Hankins, $35.90. amazon.com. TO GET: I love the classic Californian design of Heath Ceramics. Their pieces are elegant and down-to-earth, and feel great in the hand. I have one of their lidded containers, and it makes me happy every time I see it on the kitchen counter. All the Heath glazes are so beautiful, and this foursome means not having to choose just one. Winter seasonal bud vase set, $104. heathceramics.com . (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Courtesy of Genevieve Villamora) Genevieve Villamora Co-owner of Bad Saint restaurant TO GIVE: Almost everyone I know is obsessed with all the yummy things at Meats & Foods in Shaw. And they have the best swag ever. Id put together a package of their sausages (my faves are the salt-and-pepper chicken, the half-smoke and their bratwurst), along with a T-shirt (the hot dog putting condiments on itself!) and one of their rad new yellow koozies. Half-smokes, brats and salt-and-pepper chicken sausage links, each four for $10. T-shirt, $17. Koozie, $3. meatsandfoods.com. TO GET: On my rare days off, I find that I feel most relaxed when Im at home cooking food for my family. It makes me feel normal, and it reminds me of why I fell in love with food in the first place. Im rarely able to go to the grocery store or farmers market. A CSA [community-supported agriculture] subscription would help keep our kitchen stocked with fresh, seasonal goodies and how cool to get a CSA share from a small farm in the District! Three Part Harmony Farm CSA family share, $400 per 12-week season, $225 for single-member share; price and season length subject to change. threepartharmonyfarm.com. [Holiday gifts for hosts, homebodies and everybody else] (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Scott Suchman) Jason Moran Kennedy Center artistic director for jazz TO GIVE: Id go over to the gift recipients house and cook them the first meal from a Blue Apron subscription while listening to one record on repeat. And that record is Buikas Nina de Fuego. Shes from Spain and has this kind of dark voice. Depending on how each course is framed, then her voice will take on a different character. By the time you get to dessert, youll be so relaxed that you wont talk anymore and just listen. Blue Apron subscription, one week at $59.94 for two people, $69.92 for four. blueapron.com. Nina de Fuego album by Buika, new and used from $3.58. amazon.com. TO GET: Jelly Roll Morton recorded this at the Library of Congress. Its him just talking about music, what it was like in New Orleans at the turn of the century, and all of his crazy tales about life there, from funerals to bar fights to love affairs. He plays music in between telling all these stories. Complete Library of Congress Recordings box set by jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton, new and used from $94.89. amazon.com. (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Kwame Alexander Poet and Newbery-winning author of The Crossover TO GIVE: A childrens book gift basket with some of my faves: Zoe in Wonderland by Brenda Woods, anything by Mo Willems, Debbie Levy and Vanessa Brantley-Newtons We Shall Overcome, and this really cool novel called The Crossover. I Dissent, $13.88. We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song, $15.65. Zoe in Wonderland, $14.21. Nanettes Baguette, $11.24. The Crossover, $10.36. amazon.com. TO GET: Id love to spend one week at Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Va., to just write, go to the spa, hang with my wife while someone watches my kid. Salamander Resort guest room, from $300 a night. Well-Being Massage, $150 for 50 minutes or $220 for 80. salamanderresort.com. [The right gifts to delight the food and drink lovers on your list] (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Goncalo Silva) Sylvia Colella Founder of fashion and lifestyle blog Simply Sylvia TO GIVE: I am a huge fitness enthusiast, and I love encouraging my girlfriends who share my enthusiasm. One thing that keeps me motivated is great-looking workout or athleisure wear, so I enjoy gifting pieces from my favorite brands, like Michi, Alo Yoga and Spiritual Gangster. Im a big believer in supporting local business, so my first stop is always Sarween Salihs impeccably curated selection at S3 Active. Koral Lustrous Legging, $95. Michi Bionic Bra, $95. 1274 Fifth St. NE. s3active.co. TO GET: I love the idea of custom clothing, but while haute couture is not in my immediate future, a CEO skirt from local designer Betsy Garcete Cohen could well be. Its definitely an investment piece, but like a little black dress, a pencil skirt should be a staple in any womans wardrobe. Its an empowering and flattering silhouette that never goes out of style. What makes this piece worth the price is that you get to select the fabric and lining, and the skirt is then made by local tailors based on your measurements. CEO skirt, $499. zophiaonline.com. (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Kevin Allen Photography) Barry Dixon Interior designer TO GIVE: I enjoy giving luxuries one might not buy for oneself. Like beautiful flowers! Everyone loves to have flowers, and there is no better time than a holiday, when they may have visitors. Barbara Hamilton of Ociana has a flower package for six dates of your choice. $175-$550 per arrangement, Washington-area delivery. facebook.com/OcianaGroup. ociana.net. TO GET: Luxurious soaps are a practical luxury. I love Rance soaps and always put a fresh bar in guest rooms. Its an ancient product made for kings and queens of France. My two favorite scents are Le Roi Empereur for men and Josephine for ladies. My maternal grandmother always used these old-fashioned soaps. Her skin smelled like that when she hugged me. The Roi is spicy, and Josephine is a soft floral. Box of six Rance soaps, $68. europerfumes.com . (Prop styling and illustration by Alicia Buszczak/Photograph by David Klaus) (Embassy of Switzerland) Martin Dahinden Swiss ambassador to the United States TO GIVE: I like things to be practical and well thought-out. I would say that is quintessentially Swiss. I would gift someone a Swiss Army knife, a useful gift in many ways: You can use it to cook (knife), to repair (screwdriver), to open (bottle opener) or to smooth (nail file). It is compact, useful and, in the spirit of Swiss design, beautiful to look at. Victorinox Swiss Army Spartan II pocketknife, $16.99. Victorinox Swiss Army EvoWood 17 Swiss Army knife, $54.97. amazon.com. TO GET: The other day I found this very interesting book about American history. As I am an avid reader and highly interested in history and historical events, especially when it comes to the United States, this book caught my attention immediately. Its an intriguing idea to discover and follow the history of America through visual objects. The Smithsonians History of America in 101 Objects, $50. smithsonianstore.com. These answers have been edited for length and clarity. Prices are subject to change. Emily Codik, Maura Judkis, Jura Koncius, Kelyn Soong, Megan McDonough, Kendra Nichols and Timothy R. Smith contributed to this guide. Find more gift ideas from The Washington Post. Stephen K. Bannon helped build Breitbart News Network into the clarion of Donald Trumps anti-establishment political movement with a pugnacious approach that critics have called racist, misogynistic and xenophobic. And then Bannon really went to work for Trump, steering the campaign that made Trump the 45th president. Now, as Trump ascends to the White House, the question is: Where does Breitbart end and Bannon and the new administration they helped midwife begin? [Trump draws sharp rebuke, concerns over newly appointed chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon] Trump on Sunday named Bannon his chief White House strategist and senior counselor, a powerful position that acknowledges Bannons role as the Trump whisperer, the man with the president-elects ear. Bannon, a former investment banker, joined Trumps campaign in August and helped guide it to its stunning upset over Democrat Hillary Clinton last week. Since then, neither Bannon nor staff members at Breitbart have spelled out what their relationship will be after candidate Trump becomes President Trump. But even if Bannon and the website sever all ties, they will face an unusual, and awkward, situation: Bannon would be the former executive of a media organization that openly supported his political patron who will serve the president in a senior capacity while his media organization continues to cover him and his new boss. Breitbart will now go from being the propaganda arm of the Trump campaign to effectively becoming a state-run medium, said Kurt Bardella, Breitbarts former spokesman. They will exist to tell the narrative of the Trump presidency to their audience to ensure their alternate reality they successfully ran on stays intact regardless of the situational reality and condition of this country. There is no separation between Breitbart and the Trump White House. Bannon remains on Breitbarts masthead as its executive chairman, although his day-to-day involvement as its chief editorial strategist (and host of its daily satellite radio program) were mothballed when he officially joined Trumps team over the summer. He also remains chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank that supported the research behind Clinton Cash, by GCI president Peter Schweizer. The book detailed Bill and Hillary Clintons business and philanthropic interests, including the role of foreign governments in supporting the charitable Clinton Foundation. Beyond that, much is unclear. Breitbart News, like Trump, has never made its financial records public, so its not known whether Bannon owns stock in the organization and whether he would sell it to avoid any appearance of a conflict while serving in the White House. Breitbart News Network LLC which is based in Los Angeles but operates a newsroom out of a Capitol Hill townhouse that also serves as Bannons pied-a-terre in Washington is closely held among a few people, including co-founder Larry Solov and the family of the late Andrew Breitbart, its other founder. One of Breitbarts primary financial backers is billionaire hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer, whose daughter, Rebekah, is part of Trumps presidential transition team. The Mercers were reportedly influential in persuading Trump to add Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway to his campaign team. Alexander Marlow, Breitbarts editor in chief, declined to clarify the sites relationship with Bannon in an exchange of emails Sunday. Breitbarts spokeswoman, Alexandra Preate, also would not offer a response. Bannon did not reply to a request for comment. The most obvious change is definitional. Trumps election has transformed Breitbart from a scrappy, even scabrous outsider the scourge of what Bannon and Marlow contemptuously refer to as the establishment into the ultimate insider and defender of the status quo. The outsider role was enormously rewarding for Breitbart, which started in 2008 as an aggregator of wire-service articles selected by Andrew Breitbart and Marlow, then a student at the University of California at Berkeley (Breitbart died of a heart attack at age 43 in 2012; Bannon, then a board member, stepped in weeks later as executive chairman). Since then, and particularly this year, it has grown into the home of the rising Trump movement and its shadowy underbelly, the alt-right that is often synonymous with racism and white nationalism. Last month, it reported that it had reached a new high-water mark for online traffic with 37 million unique visitors, a count that rivals such mainstream news sites as ABCNews.com and CBSNews.com and exceeds LATimes.com. It has also announced plans to expand to sites in Germany and France, adding to its existing international operations in Great Britain and Israel. On Monday, the site continued to stump for Trump with headlines that attacked his now-defeated, and largely powerless, opponents. Clinton Top Aide Huma Abedin Seen Openly Weeping on Streets of New York, read one. Another: Giuliani: Professional Protesters, Not Hillary Supporters, Marching Across the Nation. And another: Meltdown Continues: Wave of Fake Hate Crimes Sweeps Social Media. It also kept up its relentless attacks on immigration and multiculturalism that not only echo Trumps views but also those of Europes far-right political parties, such as Nigel Farages UK Independence Party in Britain and Marine Le Pens National Front. A typical headline on the site Monday: Feds Pull Agents Off Open Border to Process Alien Surge. Bannon was little known outside political circles until he was appointed to Trumps campaign in mid-August. The spotlight was not flattering; reporters unearthed a police report from 1996 in which one of Bannons ex-wives, Mary Louise Piccard, accused him of misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness (Bannon pleaded not guilty and the charges were dropped). Piccard later said in divorce proceedings that Bannon didnt want their daughters to attend an exclusive school in Los Angeles because many Jewish students attended the school and he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews. Another media report disclosed that Bannon and another ex-wife were registered to vote in two places, including at a vacant house in Florida that was scheduled to be demolished a potential violation of election law. The report was particularly ironic, given Trumps claims of rampant voter fraud. All of which may help explain negative reactions to Trumps appointment of Bannon to a senior role in his administration. On Sunday, Republican strategist and CNN and ABC News commentator Ana Navarro tweeted about Bannon: A white supremacist Neanderthal in WH w/Presidents ear is DISGUSTING & TERRIFYING. Breitbarts biggest star is British blogger and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who helped lead the attacks on female video-game programmers in an online troll war that became known as Gamergate. Twitter permanently banned Yiannopoulos in July after he led a wave of racist abuse of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. They were the house organ for Trump and will obviously remain so, said Ben Shapiro, a former columnist and editor at large at Breitbart. Bardella and Shapiro ended their association with Breitbart in March after the site publicly doubted and later rebuked one of its own reporters, Michelle Fields, after an incident at a Trump news conference in Florida. Fields said Trumps then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, had grabbed her arm and yanked her away from Trump as she sought to interview him at the event. Trump and Lewandowski denied Fieldss assertions and, like Breitbart News, disparaged her. But a closed-circuit recording of the event showed that Lewandowski had done exactly what Fields described. Media figures such as Bannon sometimes take an informal advisory role in presidential administrations, but only a few have leveraged their influence over a news organization to gain office or become senior advisers, said W. Joseph Campbell, a media historian at American University in Washington. Among others, Campbell said, were newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who served two terms in Congress, but he failed in his bids to win the presidency or governorship of New York; President Warren G. Harding, who had been a newspaper publisher in Ohio; and President Lyndon Johnson, who owned radio and TV stations in his native Texas. Third-graders at Arlingtons Carlin Springs Elementary School work on a math lesson in September 2014. Carlin Springs Elementary is one of 136 schools statewide that is considered highly segregated. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post) Virginias schools have grown more racially and economically segregated during the past decade, with the number of students attending schools that are considered racially and economically isolated doubling from 2003 to 2014, according to a new report. The number of Virginia schools isolated by race and poverty has grown from 82 in 2003 to 136 in 2014, according to the Commonwealth Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Richmond. The number of students in those schools has grown from about 36,000 to more than 74,000, according to the report, published this month. The report defined an isolated school as one where more than 75 percent of the students are black or Hispanic and more than 75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, an indicator of poverty. [Read the Commonwealth Institutes report] The report offers more evidence that the nations public schools are resegregating. In May, the Government Accountability Office reported that the number of public schools serving primarily poor black and brown students had doubled nationwide. The Commonwealth Institute did not examine outcomes for students in isolated schools in Virginia, but the GAO report found that isolated schools were less likely to offer a full range of math and science courses than other schools, for example, and were more likely to use expulsion and suspension as disciplinary tools. Such schools also have difficulty attracting and retaining teachers, and poor students fare better when they attend school with more affluent peers, according to the report. [On the anniversary of Brown v. Board, new evidence that U.S. schools are resegregating] The peer effects have been shown to have really big impacts on their ability to have good outcomes, said Chris Duncombe, a Commonwealth Institute policy analyst and one of the reports authors. Richmond Public Schools, where about 75 percent of the student body is black and nearly every child qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, had the highest number of isolated schools in Virginia, with 29. But researchers also found isolated schools in affluent Northern Virginia districts. In 2014, Prince William County had 11 such schools, Fairfax County had five, and Arlington had two. Prince William County is the 12th wealthiest county in the entire country and yet you have 11 schools within that school division that have that powerfully negative combination of high poverty and high minority students, said Michael Cassidy, president and chief executive of the Commonwealth Institute. Prince Williams school system works to alleviate the challenges poor students face by sending extra teachers to high-needs schools and providing additional professional development for teachers in these schools, said spokesman Phil Kavits. And he said some of those efforts have been getting results: West Gate Elementary, considered an isolated school, had one of the countys highest pass rates for mathematics. Kavits said that the district considers demographics when it draws enrollment boundaries, but it is difficult to create demographically balanced schools as the number of minority students grows. Hispanic students this year surpassed the number of white students in the district, the second-largest in Virginia. The report reflects the clear challenges that remain in establishing school boundaries in such a diverse area as Prince William County, Kavits said. Alexandria, where more than half of the citys public school students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, had five schools that fell into the isolated category. After seeing rapid growth in its immigrant population, the city is redrawing enrollment boundaries and taking demographics into consideration. Like other school districts, Alexandria sends extra resources some drawn from federal sources to its neediest schools, allowing schools to boost their supplies, hire extra staff and give intensive help to high-needs children. Ingrid Bynum, principal of Patrick Henry Elementary where more than 80 percent of students are black or Hispanic and more than 80 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals said educating students in poverty means meeting basic needs first, such as ensuring children have shoes and underwear and enough to eat at home. With our free- and reduced-meal population being so large, we are having to compensate or take away the barriers that affect children, Bynum said. The schools test scores have soared under Bynum, and its students, despite their challenges, have bested state averages in some subjects. She said she has achieved success by catering education to each childs needs. You have to know every child, you have to know their attendance data, you have to know what type of teacher they work best with, Bynum said. You have to know what their areas of need are. MARYLAND Man jailed in stabbing of his 2 young children Prince Georges police say a 25-year-old District Heights man sexually assaulted a woman in their home Saturday before stabbing his two young children later that night. Christian Dillard is jailed on charges of attempted first-degree murder, assault and related charges in connection with the stabbing, as well as on a separate charge in connection with the sexual assault, police said Sunday. Police said the crimes occurred in the family home in the 1700 block of Dennis Court, which is in the Forestville-District Heights area. The children, both younger than 5, were hospitalized with critical injuries but had stabilized by Sunday afternoon and were expected to survive, according to police. Authorities were called to the residence about 10 p.m. Saturday after the report of the stabbing. Dillard was on the scene when officers arrived, police said, and was taken to a hospital for an emergency evaluation. Upon his release from the hospital, he was jailed at the county Department of Corrections on the stabbing and sexual assault charges, police said. Earlier in the day, police said, Dillard had sexually assaulted a woman living in the family home. He then fled, according to police, who searched the neighborhood unsuccessfully before arresting Dillard later Saturday night. Police said Dillard and the woman he is charged with sexually assaulting had a prior romantic relationship. Faiz Siddiqui Two stabbed at Metro station in Wheaton Two teenagers were stabbed at the Wheaton Metro station Sunday in what Montgomery County police said was not a random incident. The victims were 15 and 16, said Capt. Paul Starks, the spokesman for the county police. Neither suffered a life-threatening wound said Pete Piringer, spokesman for the county fire and rescue service. The attack involved three assailants, Starks said, and was not a stranger-based event. He said police have identified one attacker and think the case could be closed. The attack occurred at a station bus loop. Faiz Siddiqui and Martin Weil THE DISTRICT Serious stabbing near Capitol Hill One person was stabbed and critically wounded Sunday night in a neighborhood just southeast of Capitol Hill. The attack occurred in the 1300 block of K Street SE, police said. Martin Weil Gun seized Saturday in SE near Capitol Hill A man was arrested just east of Capitol Hill on Saturday, and a loaded gun was seized, police said. The incident occurred in the 1500 block of D Street SE, police said. Officials said the man was charged with carrying a pistol without a license. His name was not immediately available. Martin Weil Victim threatened with knife in Northeast An arrest was made Sunday after a dispute in which someone showed a knife and threatened harm, D.C. police said. Officials said the dispute occurred about 12:30 a.m. in the 3200 block of Seventh Street NE. After the knife was shown, the person wielding it told the victim, I will kill you, police said. Officials said Kevin Augustine, 29, of Northeast was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. Martin Weil About 150 Loudoun County residents gathered at the National Conference Center in Leesburg on Monday evening to share their hopes and priorities for future development of the county. The participants discussed topics that included transportation and taxes in the first of four listening and learning sessions organized by the county government to kick off Envision Loudoun, an 18-month process of updating Loudouns comprehensive plan. Three similar sessions will take place in the county this week. This process youre going through tonight is the beginning of essentially a 20- to 30-year vision, Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Ralph M. Buona (R-Ashburn) said to the participants. Its not only about land use. Its about quality of life. Its about economic development. And its about fiscal management. Buona said the current comprehensive plan, adopted in 2001, is outdated. Who would have thought Metro was coming to Loudoun 15 years ago? he said. Could anybody even spell data center 15 years ago? Buona said rural Loudoun would not be a part of the planning process, which will instead focus on urban and suburban areas in eastern Loudoun and the transition area, a swath of land that was zoned to serve as a buffer between eastern and western Loudoun. Greg Dale, a consultant hired by the county to help manage the process, said the comprehensive plan is a policy document that will guide the Board of Supervisors in making decisions on matters such as development applications, zoning regulations and budgeting for schools, libraries, fire and rescue stations, and other facilities. The participants met in small groups to take turns answering the question, What do we need to do to make Loudoun County an even better community in the future? Discussion topics included public facilities, hiking and biking trails, crime prevention, taxes, accommodating population growth and development around future Metro stations. Although some participants were longtime activists or representatives of interest groups, many were individuals attending a community input session in Loudoun for the first time. Several participants interviewed after the meeting said they appreciated the opportunity to weigh in and to hear the priorities of other residents. Laura Fedak, 55, of Ashburn said she brought up her desire to make Loudoun a more bike- and walking-friendly county. I heard people mention green buildings, I heard people mention taxes, the Metro coming in, development and zoning, she said. Id just like to see more connection within the communities and a more urban feel around all the Metro stations, said Jeanee Layman, who lives near Brambleton, a few miles from the terminus of Metros Silver Line. Theres a lot of hodgepodge communities near where I live that are not connected. Id really like to be able to see people bike to the Metro, she added. If I could work close to home, and my kids could bike to school and I could bike to work, I would be thrilled. Trevor Booth, 40, of Aldie said his top issue is to preserve the current zoning in the transition area where he lives. If were going to have future development in the county, we also have to do it intelligently, where its done in concert with an upgraded transportation plan, said Booth, who recently moved with his wife into the Willowsford community from a more densely populated area. The transition area is where I fear that well just continue to expand, he said. Chris Griggs, 45, of Neersville said he was caught off guard to learn that western Loudoun would not be a part of the Envision Loudoun process. It kind of surprised me, because I do think there are definitely things [in rural Loudoun] that need to be considered not just protecting the land, but also growing our economy, our businesses, Griggs said. There is just so much potential out there, and a lot of it is just going to waste, he said. Some of it gets turned into little McMansions. He said there is also a need for affordable broadband service in western Loudoun. Three more community input sessions are scheduled this week: Monday at the Washington Dulles Airport Marriott, 45020 Aviation Dr., Sterling. Tuesday at the Clarion Inn Historic Leesburg, 1500 E. Market St., Leesburg. Wednesday at J. Michael Lunsford Middle School, 26020 Ticonderoga Rd., Chantilly. All sessions will be from 6:30 to 8 p.m. BLOOD DONATIONS Blood drives Monday, noon-5 p.m., Village at Leesburg, 1614 Village Market Blvd., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Dec. 2, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Loudoun County Fire and Rescue, 801 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg, 800-733-2767. Inova Blood Donor Center Mondays noon-8 p.m., Tuesdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Fridays 6 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays noon-4 p.m. Dulles Town Center, 45745 Nokes Blvd., Sterling. 866-256-6372 or inova.org/donateblood. FIRST AID First aid/adult, infant and child CPR/AED (Automated External Defibrillator) Nov. 19, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Medical Office Building, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $85. Registration required. HEARING Disability Resource Center Technical assistance through the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and presentations to businesses, civic groups and schools. Third Tuesdays 2-5 p.m., Workplace, 205 Keith St., Warrenton. Call for an appointment, 800-648-6324; TDD, 540-373-5890. Free. Free hearing tests Age 18 and older. Mondays-Thursdays 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. 703-858-7620. Registration required. Hearing loss, tinnitus and Menieres syndrome support For all ages, including parents of children with hearing loss. First Fridays at 2 p.m., Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2906. Northern Virginia Resource Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Age 18 and older, second Tuesdays 10 a.m., Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. Hearing loss outreach Free referrals. Fourth Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Loudoun County Workforce Center, 102 Heritage Way, Leesburg; third Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Free appointments: 703-430-2906 or nvrcloudoun@aol.com . MENTAL HEALTH Counseling for sexual violence survivors Provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice. 703-771-9020. Crisis Intervention Treatment and Assessment Center Provides emergency mental-health, substance-use and developmental services to individuals in the Loudoun community. Daily from 7 a.m.-11 p.m. 102 Heritage Way NE, Suite 102, Leesburg. Emergency services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 703-777-0320. Crisislink Suicide and crisis intervention. Community education, a volunteer crisis response team and CareRing, a telephone outreach program for the elderly and disabled. 703-527-6016, volunteer@crisislink.org or crisislink.org. Piedmont Chapter, National Alliance on Mental Illness Serves Fauquier, Orange, Madison and Rappahannock counties. Support group, education classes and events for people living with mental illness and their family members. First Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. Fauquier Hospital, 500 Hospital Dr., Sycamore Room A, Warrenton. 571-426-8213. Mental health first-aid A public education program offered by the Loudoun County Department of Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Developmental Services that can help communities understand mental illness, seek intervention and save lives. Go to loudoun.gov/mhfirstaid. Northern Virginia Chapter, National Alliance on Mental Illness A support group, classes and programs for people living with mental illness and their family members. naminorthernvirginia.org. PREGNANCY, PARENTING Adoptive family preservation Adoptive families discuss common experiences; registration required. Third Tuesdays 12:30-2 p.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd. Call 703-941-9008, Ext. 23, or email jmellario@umfs.org . Baby care essentials Nov. 17, 6-8:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $25. Registration required. Birthright of Loudoun County Free pregnancy tests, baby clothing, transportation and support throughout pregnancy, 823 S. King St., Leesburg. 703-777-7272. Bond Between Us A nonprofit organization that offers support to birth parents when children have been placed for adoption. Fourth Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 703-771-7844. Breastfeeding support Mondays 9:30-10:30 a.m., Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. Dad support New and expectant fathers share ideas. First Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6360. For the Childrens Sake A group for separating or divorcing parents to share advice. Four-hour session weekly. Information: 703-391-8599 or fitsfoundation.org. La Leche League Mother-to-mother support and breastfeeding information. 10 a.m. second Wednesdays in Warrenton, 540-351-6103. Third Fridays 10:15-11:45 a.m., call for location, 703-444-7386. Second Fridays 10:15 a.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., 703-829-0349; Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Panera Bread, 43670 Greenway Corp. Dr., Ashburn, email lllashburn@gmail.com. Third Fridays 10:15 a.m., Christ the Redeemer Church, 46833 Harry F. Byrd. Hwy., Sterling, 540-338-4637. Loudoun Fatherhood Program Fathers discuss the joys and challenges of being a parent. Meets every other Saturday for two hours for four months; sponsored by Northern Virginia Family Service. 571-748-2796. Free. Loudoun Nurturing Parenting Program Positive parenting techniques; children attend with parents. Registration required. Call 703-771-3973, Ext. 27, or email nurturingprogram@lcsj.org. Free. Mothernet/Healthy Families Loudoun Program links first-time parents with medical, social and educational resources to give children a socially and physically healthy start in life. Family support workers meet with participants in homes. English-Spanish translation provided. 703-444-4477, Ext. 217 , or inmed.org. New mother support Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 a.m. Inova Loudoun Medical Pavilion, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. Babies welcome. 703-858-6360. Young parent services Support for teenage parents. Loudoun County Department of Family Social Services, 52 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg. Call for times. 703-771-5375. Online childbirth education program Inova Loudoun Hospitals Web-based program uses animation, videos and interactive activities to guide users through the basics of childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for newborns. 703-858-6360 or thebirthinginn.org/classes. Parenting Alone group For parents of school-age children who have lost a spouse or partner to cancer. Second Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call 703-698-2536 or email jennifer.eckert@inova.org . Pregnancy and childbirth support Childbirth Solutions Resource Center, 8393 W. Main St., Marshall. 571-344-0438. SENIORS Exercise equipment Weights, treadmills, bikes and a cardio-glide. Instruction provided. Age 55 and older. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free. Fitness for people 55 and older Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 1-1:45 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. $36, 12-visit card. Eye care LensCrafters staff members will clean glasses and make minor repairs. Second Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2397. Free. Inova Loudoun mobile van Blood pressure checks. Second and fourth Tuesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling, 571-258-3280; first Wednesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Laughing yoga for seniors I mprove flexibility and balance. Thursdays 9:30-10 :30 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free. Loudoun Adult Day Centers For seniors with physical limitations or memory loss, a safe and social environment, therapeutic activities, individualized care and respite for caregivers. Limited transportation. Sliding-scale fees. Weekdays in Leesburg, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 703-771-5334; Purcellville, 571-258-3402; and Ashburn-Sterling, 571-258-3232. Senior Outreach Services Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Senior Center at Cascades. First and third Wednesdays 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. Senior Outreach Services Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Sign up in the Leesburg Senior Center lobby. Second and fourth Thursdays 11 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free. Senior Outreach Services Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Carver Center. First and third Mondays, 12:30-5 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 703-737-8741. Free. Tai chi Stretching and strengthening movements. Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free. Zumba gold class Age 55 and older. Wear rubber-soled shoes and comfortable clothing; bring water and a towel. Tuesdays 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 p.m. Senior Center of Leesburg, 102 North St. NW, Leesburg. 703-737-8039. $24 per month. Zumba For people 55 and older who are learning Zumba for the first time, or those who prefer a lower-impact version. The fitness program combines Latin and international music with dance.Thursdays 11 a.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. $12. SUPPORT GROUPS Al-Anon Service Center of Northern Virginia A volunteer is available 24 hours with information for spouses, family members and friends of problem drinkers. 703-534-4357 or 877-339-8350. Mondays 8 p.m. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 125 W. Washington St., Middleburg, 540-554-2747; Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 877-339-8350; Fridays 8:30 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, 6507 Main St., The Plains, 800-344-2666; Tuesdays 12:15 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, Route 29 N., 540-347-7448; Tuesdays 7 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 p.m. Warrenton Presbyterian Church, 91 Main St., 800-344-2666. Alcoholics Anonymous Various meeting times and locations in Loudoun County. 800-208-8649 or 703-876-6166. nvintergroup.org. Alzheimers caregiver support For those who care for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Fourth Wednesdays 4-5:30 p.m. The Villa at Suffield Meadows, 6735 Suffield Lane, Warrenton. 540-316-3800. Alzheimers caregivers support For those caring for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Second Mondays 7-8:30 p.m. Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-430-9229. galileeumc.org. Alzheimers caregiver support Emotional, educational and social support for family members and friends of people with the disease. Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. Call 703-771-5407 or email lesley.katz@loudoun.gov. Alzheimers caregiver support group Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 540-903-6831 or alz.org. Alzheimers support First Tuesdays 10-11 a.m. Spring Arbor Assisted Living, 237 Fairview St. NW, Leesburg. 540-338-6520. Alzheimers support First Wednesdays 4 p.m. Leesburg Adult Day Center, 16501 Meadowview Ct., Leesburg. 703-771-5334. Alzheimers support Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. Talk About Curing Autism A nonprofit organization educating and supporting families affected by autism. tacanow.org. Autoimmune support Last Thursdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jackson Building, 209 Gibson St., Leesburg. autoimmunesupport@hotmail.com. Bereaved parent support One-on-one counseling is available. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv. Bereavement support For those experiencing loss because of the death of a loved one. Age 18 and older. Third Mondays 1 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-957-1800. Breast cancer support Fourth Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Tower, Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-0588. Breast cancer support For those with new diagnoses or starting treatment. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 5-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Breast cancer support For those who have finished treatment, have had a recurrence or metastatic breast cancer. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Free. Breast Cancer Support Assistance Fund Loudoun County residents who have received a diagnosis or have undergone treatment in the past 12 months are eligible to apply for financial assistance. Areas included are wigs, bras, puffs and prostheses, mammograms and medical bills, food and help with utilities, rent or mortgage, and transportation costs. The Pink Assistance Fund has been established by the Loudoun Breast Health Network. lbhn.org. Cancer support Oncology nurses, social workers and spiritual-care providers offer education and support to patients, families and caregivers. Second Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2273. Cancer support Life with Cancer, for patients, family members and friends. Second Thursdays 7 p.m. Ashburn Presbyterian Church, Room 202, 20962 Ashburn Rd. 703-729-2012. ashburnpresbyterian.org. Caregiver support Provides emotional, educational and social support. Encourages caregivers to maintain their personal, physical and emotional health while caring for people with dementia or other chronic illness. Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 540-903-6831. Caregiver support and resource group Wednesdays 10:30 a.m.-noon (no meeting first Wednesdays), Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv. Caring for Aging Parents Support group. Confidential. Fourth Wednesdays 7:30 p.m., Family Focus Counseling Service, 20-B John Marshall St., Warrenton. 540-349-4537. Chadd parents support For parents of children with ADD/ADHD. Fourth Sundays 3 p.m. KinderCare, 44051 Ashburn Village Shopping Plaza. chadd.nova loudoun@gmail.com . Chronic illness support Tuesdays 10:30-11:30 a.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814 or scsm.tv. Coffee and Conversation Support for those discouraged because of illness, bereavement, caregiving or a loved one in the military. Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Compassionate Friends For parents who have experienced the death of a child. First Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg. 540-882-9707. Creating and Connecting Two-hour art therapy and relaxation workshop for cancer patients. Every other month, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-858-8850. Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of Western Loudoun Saturdays 3 p.m. Purcellville Library, 220 E. Main St., Carruthers Room. Call 703-431-7160 or email kathy@dbsanca.org. Drop-in grief support For those coping with a death. Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. St. Davids Episcopal Church, 43600 Russell Branch Pkwy., Ashburn. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-597-1781. Families Overcoming Drug Addiction Support group. First and third Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. myfodafamily@gmail.com or 540-316-9221. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth and parent support A group in partnership with Metro DC PFLAG. Fourth Sundays 4-6 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Church, 22135 Davis Dr., Sterling. 703-328-6518. Griefshare Open to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Tuesdays through Dec. 6 from 7-8:30 p.m. Purcellville Baptist Church, 601 Yaxley Dr., Purcellville. Call 540-338-0918 or email caring@purbap.org . Workbook, $15. Griefshare Nondenominational seminar and support group. Tuesdays 7:30-9 p.m., and Wednesdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free. Grief support Sponsored by Hospice Support of Fauquier County. Individual counseling available. First and third Thursdays 3:30-5 p.m. Hospice Support Office, 42 N. Fifth St., Warrenton. Registration required. Call 540-347-5922 or email hospicesupport@verizon.net. Grief support Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon, Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Hospice support Free medical-equipment loan facility for Fauquier County residents. Especially needed are donations of wheelchairs, bedside commodes, rolling walkers, electric hospital beds, shower benches and chairs, adult diapers, lift chairs, Ensure and hospital bed mattresses. 540-347-5922. Look Good, Feel Better For women undergoing or emerging from cancer treatment. Every other month, 6:45 to 9 p.m. ,Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-776-2820. Free. Loudoun CHADD support Led by Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Leesburg Town Hall, lower-level conference room, 25 W. Market St. 703-669-2445. Loudoun Intergroup of Overeaters Anonymous Fellowship and support. For locations and times, call 571-420-2012. oa.org. Lyme disease support Fourth Sundays 2-4 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Conference Room A and B, Leesburg. Go to natcaplyme.org or email loudounlymeadvocates@gmail.com. Lyme disease support Third Thursdays at 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com. Lyme disease support Third Thursdays at 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com. Lyme disease support Age 18 and older. First Tuesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. Email charphealy@yahoo.com. MADD Loudoun victim support For those who have been affected by drunken driving. Third Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. 210 Wirt St., Leesburg. 540-338-6491. Man-to-Man Cancer Support Sponsored by Loudoun Cancer Care Center, for prostate cancer patients and their families. Second Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Call 703-858-8857 or email karen.archer@inova.org. Menopause support Third Thursdays 6:30-9 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (second floor, Patient Education Room). 703-858-8060. Multiple sclerosis support Saturdays 10:30 a.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-2826. Multiple sclerosis support Last Sundays 2-4 p.m. Cascades Library, 21030 Whitfield Pl., Potomac Falls. 703-771-4256. Nar-anon family support For those affected by loved ones with addiction. Meaningful Mondays, 7-8 p.m., Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-203-9792; Wisdom Wednesdays 7-8 p.m., St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 37730 St. Francis Ct., Purcellville, 703-606-7125; Serenity Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Leesburg Presbyterian Church, 207 W. Market St., Leesburg, 703-606-7125. Parkinsons support Open to those with Parkinsons disease, their family members and caregivers. First Tuesdays 1:30-3 p.m. Call for Ashburn location. 571-442-8851. Post-partum support Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Cornwall Campus, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. Call 703-909-9877 or email lamckeough@gmail.com. Registration required. Reach to Recovery Home visit program for mastectomy and lumpectomy patients. Temporary prostheses, exercise instruction and encouragement. 703-938-5550. Sexual assault and incest survivors group counseling Services provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice and the Loudoun Abused Womens Shelter are free and confidential. 703-771-9020. Sexual assault survivors empowerment support Sponsored by Sexual Assault Victims Volunteer Initiative. Child care available with 48 hours notice. Mondays; call for times and locations. 540-349-7720. Spiritual support group For cancer patients, family members and friends. Third Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8850. Stroke survivors and caregivers support Second Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon, Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second floor, Patient Education Room. 703-858-6199 or jill.lieb@inova.org. Suicide counseling Third Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Leesburg Town Office, Conference Room 2, lower level, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg. 703-587-1618 or survivorsofsuicidelossleesburg@gmail.com. Womens support Sponsored by Services to Abused Families. Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Confidential location. 540-825-8876. Widows and widowers support Third Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Womens cancer support Woman to Woman, first Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Registration required. 703-858-8850. MISCELLANEOUS Brain trauma survivors brown bag lunch For survivors and caregivers. First Tuesdays, noon-1:30 p.m., Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second-floor Patient Education Room. Call 703-737-3150 or email jberg@braininjurysvcs.org. Free. Child developmental screenings For ages 2-5. Children may not be kindergarten-age-eligible. Sponsored by the Loudoun County public schools Child Find Center. 571-252- - 2180. Cholesterol screenings Weekdays from 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Fauquier Health LIFE Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2640. Registration required. $35. Emergency food supplies Loudoun County residents who are in need can receive a free three-day supply of groceries. Supplies are distributed Mondays through Saturdays by Loudoun Interfaith Relief. 703-777-5911 or interfaithrelief.org. Fauquier free walk-in medical clinic Patients must call Thursdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. to register for the clinic, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Patients are also seen by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fauquier and Rappahannock residents only. Bring proof of address for the first visit. Patients cannot have Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance. Information: 540-347-0394 Tuesdays or Thursdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro Senior Supper Club Nutritious meals and fellowship for people 55 and older. Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro on the Hill, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $5.49. HEROES (Hometown Enabling Relationships, Opportunities and Empowerment through Support) is a program for military families. A trained volunteer provides support to military members and their families, from pre-deployment up to two years post-deployment. Assistance includes financial help, job placement, family care and mental-health services. caring@purbap.org or heroescare.org. Inova Loudoun Hospital Mobile Health Services blood pressure screenings, Nov. 21, 9-11 a.m. William Watters House, 22365 Enterprise St., Sterling; Nov. 22, 9 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling; Nov. 30, 10 a.m.-noon, Lansdowne Woods, 19400 Leisure World Blvd., Leesburg. For information, call 703-858-8818 or go to inova.org/mobilehealth. Free. Loudoun Cares information and referral help line Call 703-669-4636 for help in finding resources for county residents who are dealing with rent eviction, utility cut-offs, needed health care and employment. Motor skill screenings Birth to 21 months. First Thursdays, Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. Call for an appointment. 703-858-7620. Free. Northern Virginia long-term care ombudsman Call 703-324-5861 for help in resolving complaints related to long-term-care facilities. Rekindling Hope for the Holidays This program includes a video, music and refreshments. Facilitated by Susan Amato and Bobby Reynolds. Sunday 3-4:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free. Road to Recovery For cancer patients who need rides to appointments. Call 410-781-6909 or email jen.burdette@cancer.org. Free. Safe sitter classes For girls and boys ages 11-14. First Saturdays except for holiday weekends. 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. To receive a Safe Sitter Certificate, students must pass practical and written tests on babysitting concepts and handling an emergency. Bring a lunch or buy lunch in the cafeteria. $70, includes handbook and snacks during the day. Registration required. Call 703-858-8818 or email charlene.martin@inova.org. Seven Loaves Food Pantry Individuals and families can receive a three-day supply of food, distributed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m.-noon. Go to sevenloavesmiddleburg.org or call 540-687-3489. Surviving the Holidays Teens and adults welcome. Wednesday 7:30-9 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. A non-denominational session. 540-349-5814. Free. Tree of Life Food Pantry Serving western Loudoun County. Food is delivered Wednesdays and Saturdays. 703-554-3595. Compiled by Sandy Mauck TO SUBMIT AN ITEM Email: ldliving@washpost.com Fax: 703-777-8437 Mail: Health Calendar, The Washington Post, 104 Dry Mill Rd. SW, Suite 101, Leesburg, Va. 20175 Sunday, Nov. 13 Trinity vendor fair Vendors include local authors, potters and crafters. 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Trinity Episcopal Church, 9325 West St., Manassas. 703-368-4231. Free. Veterans Day celebration Freedom High Schools Air Force JROTC teaches basic drill commands in honor of Veterans Day. 1-2 p.m. Central Community Library, 8601 Mathis Ave., Manassas. 703-792-8360. Free. Author Jim Hall A discussion of his book The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia. 1:30 p.m. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free. Bingo Proceeds support local veterans. Doors open at noon Sundays with games beginning at 2 p.m. Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Mondays with games beginning at 7:15 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. $15 minimum. Youth Orchestras of Prince William Festive Fall kicks off the orchestras 35th season with pieces including Mascagnis Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana and Bartoks Romanian Folk Dances, presented in collaboration with Dance Etc. A pre-performance reception begins at 2 p.m. Concert begins at 3 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 703-993-7759. hyltoncenter.org. $20; seniors and military $12; age 18 and younger free. Sierra Hull Mandolin player Sierra Hull brings her wistful bluegrass and folk-pop tunes to the Hylton Center. 7 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 888-945-2468. hyltoncenter.org. $25. Manassas Remembers 9/11 First-person accounts of the terrorist attacks from community members, first responders, eyewitnesses and victims. Through Nov. 27. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-257-8452. manassasmuseum.org. Free. Not for Glory: Manassas Veterans and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan This exhibit, produced in partnership with the Freedom Museum, uses first-person narratives to tell the stories of local veterans who served in the countrys most recent conflicts. Through Feb. 19. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free. Twists and Turns An exhibit of mixed media by Lauren Jacobs of Woodbridge and fused glass by David and Dale Barnes of Sterling. Through Dec. 5, Artists Undertaking, 309 Mill St., Occoquan. 703-494-0584. theartistsundertaking.com. Free. Monday, Nov. 14 Job search network group Plus discussion of various topics related to the search process. 1-3 p.m. House of Mercy, 8170 Flannery Ct., Manassas. 703-659-1636. Free. Bingo Proceeds support Dale City Knights of Columbus activities and charities. Doors open at 6 p.m. with games beginning at 7:30 p.m. VFW Post 1503, 14631 Minnieville Rd., Dale City. 703-491-2378. $9 minimum. Tuesday, Nov. 15 Friends of Leesylvania Park Regular meeting, new members welcome. The group raises money and supports park programs such as the Junior Rangers, free youth fishing tournaments and Haunted History hikes. 7:30 p.m. Leesylvania State Park, 2001 Daniel K. Ludwig Dr., Woodbridge. friendsofleesylvania@gmail.com. 703-583-6904. Free. Wednesday, Nov. 16 Prince William Committe of 100 A panel discussion on mental illness and criminal justice. Social at 6:30 p.m. Dinner at 7 p.m. Program at 7:45 p.m. Montclair Country Club, 16500 Edgewood Dr., Montclair. carol.proven01@gmail.com. pwc100.org. Dinner $30; members $25. Program free. Lake Ridge Toastmasters Club Members 18 and older develop their public speaking and leadership skills. 7:30-9:15 p.m. Tall Oaks Community Center, 12298 Cotton Mill Dr., Lake Ridge. 703-491-3020. contact-8913@toastmastersclubs.org. lakeridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $34-$64 membership fee. Paintings by Debra Keirce The Ashburn resident paints miniature realistic pieces, smaller than 25 square inches. Through Dec. 21. Northern Virginia Community College, 6901 Sudley Rd., Manassas. 703-323-3000. nvcc.edu. Free. Thursday, Nov. 17 Woodbridge Toastmasters Club An open-house meeting. Learn effective communication and leadership skills. 7:30 p.m. Ebenezer Baptist Church, 13020 Telegraph Rd., Woodbridge. 703-898-7171. woodbridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $68 membership fee. Friday, Nov. 18 Library used book sale Sponsored by the Friends of Potomac Library. Friday-Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Potomac Community Library, 2201 Opitz Blvd., Woodbridge. 703-792-8330. Free. Occoquan holiday open house Sponsored by the Business Guild of Occoquan, the evening features refreshments, giveaways and shopping throughout the historic town. 4-8 p.m. Mill Street, Occoquan. 703-201-8499. historicoccoquan.com. Free. American Legion dinner The public is invited to dinner with a different special every week. Proceeds support local veterans and the community. 5:30-7:30 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. vapost364.org. $5-$15. Saturday, Nov. 19 Financial Aid Super Saturday The event, sponsored by Stonewall Jackson High School and the Virginia Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, includes financial aid workshops and one-on-one assistance with completing forms. 9 a.m.-noon, Stonewall Jackson Senior High School, 8820 Rixlew Lane, Manassas. 571-598-3003. vasfaa.org. Free. Home buyer seminar Presented by local real estate broker Bob Hummer. 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Strayer University, 13385 Minnieville Rd., Woodbridge. 703-878-4866. military-realestate.com. Free. Water-quality monitoring Collect water-quality data and learn about the quality of the stream, sponsored by the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District. 10 a.m. Deweys Creek, 17119 Waterway Dr., Dumfries. waterquality@pwswcd.org. pwswcd.org. Free. Weems-Botts silent auction fundraiser Sponsored by Historic Dumfries and the Weems-Botts Museum, the celebration includes Jeremiahs Barbeque and a silent auction to benefit the museum. 6:30 p.m. Dumfries-Triangle Rescue Squad, 3800 Graham Park Rd., Dumfries. 703-221-2218. weemsbotts@msn.com. $15. THURSDAY, NOV. 10 7 charged in gang slaying in Manassas Six Manassas men and women as well as one juvenile have been arrested and charged in connection with the fatal October shooting of Edwin Ivan Chicas, 22. The seven, all of whom police say are members of the gang MS-13, were arrested and charged Thursday by Prince William police and agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Police said Chicas was shot Oct. 29 in the 7500 block of Quail Run Lane in Manassas after a disagreement with some of the people who have been charged. Trump win shakes up 2017 race for Virginia governor As most of America was still absorbing the news that Donald Trump had won the presidency, Republican and Prince William Board of County Supervisors chairman Corey Stewart had already declared the victory fuel for his 2017 bid for Virginia governor. Although Stewart contends that he is the front-runner, Trumps loss in Virginia could benefit Republican candidates who kept their distance from the president-elect. That number includes political strategist Ed Gillespie, the best known of the four who have declared so far. The others in the race are U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman and state Sen. Frank Wagner. Cancer cells derived from human lung tissue. American Type Culture Collection was awarded money to develop many more such samples. (Courtesy of American Type Culture Collection ) A nonprofit organization in Prince William Countys Innovation Park was recently awarded a federal contract to help improve cancer research. The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded the $2 million contract to American Type Culture Collection so the organization could distribute a new kind of cancer-cell model to researchers as part of the Human Cancer Models Initiative. The initiative, launched in July, is an international collaboration among the NCI, Cancer Research UK, Britains Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Dutch foundation Hubrecht Organoid Technology. It aims to generate about 1,000 new cancer models that will be used to learn more about the illness and how to fight it. Researchers use the biological models, or cell lines, to discover new genes linked to cancer, test the biological function of genes, and develop and evaluate new treatments, according to the NCI. But scientists would like to have more information on hand than current models can provide. So the initiative will put together a new generation of models that use tumor tissue from patients with a variety of cancers, including rare and pediatric forms, according to ATCC. The models also will include a genetic analysis of the tissue and clinical information about the patients, including their response to treatment. ATCC will receive the models, grow more of the cells for examination and distribute the models to researchers. It also will perform other duties, including monitoring quality control through the manufacturing and distribution process. The cancer institute awarded the contract Sept. 15, and ATCC announced the news last month. The contract is for work on the first 100 of the planned 1,000 cancer models. This is really a pilot study, Joseph Leonelli, vice president of ATCC Federal Solutions, said last week. Mindy Goldsborough, ATCCs chief science and technology officer, praised the aid to research that the modeling initiative will provide. Her organization has collected about 4,000 cell lines, and many of them are from cancer patients. But the researchers she leads dont necessarily know, for example, what medications those cancer patients may have been prescribed. All of that wealth of information we dont have because it just wasnt collected before, she said. And that information is important to researchers, to pharmaceutical companies and, ultimately, to patients, who may benefit from advances such as getting new drugs approved sooner, Goldsborough said. Although ATCC has been awarded contracts with higher dollar values, the one related to the modeling initiative focuses on work that could have a profound impact in the scientific community, she said. Daniela Gerhard, who leads the National Cancer Institute efforts on the HCMI, said the institute figured the best way to move forward was to contract with ATCC, an organization that already had a relationship with the federal government. Gerhard also said the HCMI fits in well with the moonshot initiative to eliminate cancer that President Obama announced in this years State of the Union address. ATCC, which moved its headquarters from Rockville, Md., to Innovation Park near Manassas in 1998, also was recently awarded another contract for NCI work. NCI contractor Leidos Biomedical Research Inc. issued a subcontract that calls for ATCC to manage and operate the NCI at Frederick Central Repository in Frederick, Md. The repository, which has an inventory of more than 15 million biological specimens, is one of the largest in the world and supports NCIs research programs. The subcontract is for up to $32 million over a seven-year period. Other ATCC endeavors include working with the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions influenza division and helping researchers in the battle against infections such as the Zika virus. So its more than just cancer, Goldsborough said of her organizations efforts. About 415 people work at ATCCs headquarters, making the nonprofit one of Virginias largest biotech employers. A father accused of trying to fatally stab his two young sons was on PCP at the time of the incident and has been depressed because of a recent breakup, according to his family. Christian Dillard, 25, of Forestville appeared in court Monday for a bail review hearing one day after police charged him with attempted murder, child abuse and assault. A judge ordered Dillard held without the possibility of release, saying he posed a threat to himself and others. Police and prosecutors said he sexually assaulted a woman with whom he had been in a relationship and stabbed his children, ages 2 and 3, before attempting to kill himself Saturday night. Michelle Mattison, Dillards mother, told a judge that she had been trying to get help for her son for the past two weeks when he became depressed and suicidal. Mattison told a judge he was on PCP at the time of the incident. Christian didnt know what he was doing, said Mattison, who dabbed tissue at her face when her son, wearing an orange jumpsuit, appeared for the court proceeding via closed-circuit television. Christian Dillard, 25, of District Heights is charged with attempted first degree murder, assault and related charges for allegedly stabbing his two children. Dillard has also been charged with sexually assaulting a woman. (Prince George's County Police) Dillards public defender did not address the possible use of PCP during the hearing Monday. Officers were called around 10 p.m. Saturday to a home in the 1700 block of Dennis Court in Forestville for a report of a stabbing, according to police. A woman in the house reported that she heard crying in the basement and that when she went downstairs, she saw that the two children had been stabbed, according to police charging papers. She said she also saw Dillard stabbing himself and trying to slash his throat, the documents state. The woman fled the home with the children to seek help before the boys were transported to a hospital with critical injuries. The condition of Dillards sons had stabilized by Sunday, and they are expected to survive, police said. Ron Porter Jr., Dillards younger brother, said Dillard was a good father who took care of his children but made a mistake. Porter said that his brother did not have a history of mental illness but that a recent breakup with his girlfriend likely triggered problems. He didnt know what he was doing, Porter said. He just lost it. This is not the normal Christian I know, his mother said later. Angela Alsobrooks, states attorney for Prince Georges County, called the incident a vicious assault on two young children as the community continues to confront domestic violence. She said domestic-related homicides now outpace drug-related killings in Prince Georges, to the detriment of families. Domestic violence and child abuse go hand-in-hand, Alsobrooks said. Tristan Schulz, left, is held by his mother Mindy. He was killed when he and his mother were struck by a Jeep in Loudoun County in August. His mother was treated and released from a hospital. (Aliyah Dastour/Alimond Studios) A Virginia man was indicted on a charge of involuntary manslaughter Monday, weeks after the SUV he was driving struck and killed a 5-month-old baby in a stroller, prosecutors said. On Aug. 31 at around 8:10 a.m., John Miller IV was traveling north on Coton Manor Drive and taking a left onto Riverside Parkway in Landsdowne when he struck Tristan Schulz and his mother, Mindy Schulz, who were walking north in a crosswalk at that intersection, authorities said at the time. Tristan was killed, and Mindy Schulz was seriously injured. Miller remained at the scene. [5-month-old boy killed in Loudoun County crash is identified] Now Miller, 45, has been indicted by a grand jury in Loudoun County Circuit Court, where he was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter, one count of reckless driving and one count of failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, prosecutors said. Prosecutors declined to provide details on what led to the crash. In a search warrant filed in September, authorities said a witness reported that the SUV driver had been holding a phone in his left hand as if he was watching or reading something before the crash. The witness also said the Jeep was tailgating the vehicle in front of it, and tried to beat the mother and child through the intersection. John Miller IV (Loudoun County Sheriff) Millers attorney declined comment. [Lost in a split second: Eight pedestrians died on Washington-area roads in a single month.] The incident led to criticism of the intersection where the Schulz and her son were struck. Riverside Parkway, which has a 40 mph speed limit, was widened two years ago and often takes overflow traffic from Route 7. Im an experienced driver and Im nervous about going through it, Jonathan Arnold, who lives in the area, said of the intersection in September. Its a very distracting intersection. Schulz had just dropped her 7-year-old son, Hayden, off at school and was taking a walk to get fresh air when her baby was killed. It hurts at a level so visceral, so primal, that just surviving the pain and darkness of that loss feels insurmountable, Schulz wrote in an email in October. This is what we try to process every moment of every day. Several hundred people protested outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on November 12. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) Free speech advocates told a federal court on Monday that the sidewalk in front of Donald Trumps luxury hotel in the District and nearby Freedom Plaza should not be shut off to demonstrators during his inaugural parade, which will pass both sites. Two months before Trump is sworn in as president, an appeals court in the District considered how close protesters can get to the parade along Pennsylvania Avenue. The case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was filed long before Trump was elected and is the latest chapter in ongoing litigation over National Park Service regulations that determine the location of Inauguration Day demonstrations. But challengers said the case has heightened significance at a time when thousands of people already are protesting Trumps election in cities throughout the country. People are coming to Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day to exercise their free speech rights in opposition to racism, misogyny and bigotry. But the government wants to stage-manage democracy, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the nonprofit Partnership for Civil Justice Fund who argued the case on Monday for the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). Nationwide protests continued for a second night, turning destructive in some cities as thousands marched against Donald Trump's election. Trump tweeted to condemn "professional protesters, incited by the media." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Government lawyers told the court that the Park Service has long set aside space on the parade route for the incoming presidents organization to plan a day of national celebration. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marina Braswell said that protesters will have ample prime alternatives to engage in First Amendment activities along Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan. 20. The government estimates that 84 percent of the sidewalks along the parade route are not off-limits for protest. The Presidential Inaugural Committee, a private entity, is controlled by the president-elect and responsible for planning most of the inaugural celebration activities, including selling tickets to watch the parade. The case was heard by three appointees of President Obama Judges Patricia Millett, Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Sri Srinivasan who had tough questions for both sides. The judges seemed skeptical that the president-elect was not entitled to at least a limited amount of reserved seating for friends and supporters. Its their party. Its their parade. Its their event, Millett said. Verheyden-Hilliard responded that it was not a private party and that the Park Service was giving a private, partisan fundraising organization too much control over the location of demonstrations, stifling free speech on public land. The timing of the courts decision is uncertain. Verheyden-Hilliard said she hopes the court will rule on the constitutionality of the regulations well in advance of Inauguration Day so that all people will have equal access to that space. [Advocates go to court over protest space outside Trump hotel] Court challenges to the location of inaugural protests have been filed every four years since 2001, with differing results. In 2009, after Obama won the election, protesters from the ANSWER Coalition were allowed to use a portion of Freedom Plaza, which they consider a unique, prime location for demonstrating. Four years later, the inaugural committee said the space was off-limits. In addition to Freedom Plaza, the current regulations also reserve for the president-elects committee the sidewalk in front of Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Pavilion in the 1100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue less than a mile from the White House. In January, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman sided with the government, finding that the regulations are a modest restriction of space and still left plenty of other locations for protest. A key issue for the appeals court is whether the actions of the president-elects committee equate to government speech or private speech, which would trigger free speech protections under the First Amendment. Friedman found that the inauguration ceremony and parade are closely identified in the public mind with the U.S. government and therefore government speech. The government decides who sits in those bleachers, Braswell said Monday. The [inauguration committee] is an arm of the president. The appeals court judges questioned how the committees decisions could be characterized as government speech when it is a private entity choosing who sits where along the parade route even before the new president takes office. Pillard described the characterization of it as government speech, a very strange argument especially because the ticketed seating opens to the general public if the bleacher seats are not claimed 10 minutes before the parade begins. Catherine Thomas of Severna Park, center, gets emotional as she greets others Sunday at Episcopal Church of Our Saviour in Silver Spring, Md. Two racist messages were found scrawled at the church serving the Latino community. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Nearly a week after the end of a bitter and divisive presidential campaign, leaders of many Washington-area churches used services Sunday for reflection, healing and to calm the fears of members concerned about what a Trump administration could mean for their futures. Today we stand in wonderment, bewilderment, amazement and ask: What happened? said the Rev. Dr. Marie Phillips Braxton, who offered the guest sermon at the historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in the District. The nearly 180-year-old church, just blocks from the White House, with roots in the anti-slavery movement, has hosted multiple sitting presidents, including President Obama and Bill Clinton. But many said they did not know how to come to terms with Donald Trump as president. [Ive never seen anything like that: Confederate flags at California Veterans Day parade] For millions of Americans, President-elect Trumps campaign will be remembered for its racist overtones and threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, ban Muslims from the United States and to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. The days since the election have been marked by an uptick in racially tinged attacks and threats across the country, along with counter-protests. In Silver Spring, the predominantly Latino congregants of the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour were greeted by hateful graffiti when they arrived for Sunday services. Outside the sanctuary, on the back of a church sign strung between a tree and a telephone pole, someone had printed Trump Nation and Whites Only. The same message was scrawled on a brick wall in an alcove outside the church. [Donald Trump plans to immediately deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants] It touches my heart, said Nilton Diaz, 55, who is from El Salvador and worships at the church. Standing outside near the graffiti and choking back tears, Diaz, who has been in the United States for 33 years, said: I love whites. I love blacks. I love all kinds of people. This is a beautiful country for everybody, because God is for everybody. Mariann Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, who visited the church to celebrate an afternoon mass in Spanish, decried the vandalism during the service and again later, speaking to reporters. We have just concluded our worship services in a church that has been desecrated by violence, she said. Hate speech has covered the signs of this church, and we stand here to say that we are firm in our rejection of such violence. [University of Michigan student wearing a hijab was threatened to be set on fire, police say] All around her, on the churchs driveway and sidewalks, congregants of all ages, from first-graders to grandparents, had written messages of peace in colored chalk: We Love Jesus and God Is Love and Love God, Love All. Budde said: I would call especially upon the president-elect and those who voted for him to separate themselves from acts of violence and hate that are being perpetrated in his name. We believe that the majority of Americans want a nation of peace and of unity across the spectrum of our glorious people. Nearby, at Grace Episcopal Church in Silver Spring, the Rev. Andrew Walter said he had spent the week fielding calls from congregants fearful and upset that Trumps election would provoke more acts of violence. He cited the graffiti at the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, as well as the scrawling of a swastika in the boys bathroom at Westland Middle School in Bethesda on Friday, as among the events that had shaken people. A lot of people are angry, but they are also scared, Walter said. [Middle school administrators find swastikas in a boys bathroom] During service Sunday, Walter addressed the children of the diverse congregation with an affirming message: No matter where you are or where you come from, no matter the color of your skin, no matter your religion, your faith, no matter your political affiliation, you are made in the image of God and God loves you, just the way you are. At many churches, the message was about empowerment and showing solidarity with vulnerable communities. The Rev. Grainger Browning, pastor of the Ebenezer African Methodist Church in Fort Washington, preached a sermon entitled Birth of a Nation, inspired by the recently released Nat Turner biopic, about the slave who led a rebellion. At All Souls Unitarian Church in Northwest Washington, people sat shoulder to shoulder in pews on two levels and rose to applaud as the Rev. Robert M. Hardies called for the church to be a sanctuary for people who are threatened or disempowered by the new administration. Church of the Pilgrims, a Presbyterian Church on P Street, displayed a new Black Lives Matter banner. [Kellyanne Conway: Its up to Clinton, Obama to calm anti-Trump protesters] And at Temple Micah, a Reform synagogue in the District, Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel told a crowded service Friday night that we will return to life after this time of mourning. To be a Jew is to have a long memory, he said. We know history and we know the long term. What have we not endured? At Metropolitan AME, Braxton similarly drew upon African Americans long history of oppression. She told worshipers that God is a compassionate God who had been there throughout slavery and segregation and the civil rights battles of the previous generation and this one. Braxton brought people to their feet as she told them to move from singing the blues to finding hope and looking to ancestors for a spirit of resistance. [As nation seethes, a charged clash on a Metro subway train] Stuff doesnt happen to us; we make stuff happen, she said. Among the visitors at the historic Metropolitan AME were a dozen members of the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. Rabbi Shira Stutman sat at the pulpit with the clergy of the church. She said the first person she texted Wednesday morning after the election was the Rev. William H. Lamar IV, the pastor of Metropolitan AME, with whom she works often on social justice issues. Our words, basically, were, My God. My God, she said. Lamar said that religious leaders of many faiths are organizing now to figure out how to move from prayer and reflection to action in their work. I am not going to dress it up in religious language: This is battle, he said. After the service, Robie Beatty, a lawyer, said that after the political deadlock and disrespect shown to Obama during his presidency and the long and hateful campaign, she was only kind of sorta surprised that Trump won. Black people have endured a lot of struggle; this is just the latest example, she said. Just as she prayed before, she would continue to pray, she said. If we believe in the Lord, we have a way to get through it, she said. Hamil Harris, Valerie Strauss, Sydney Trent and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report. Demonstrators around the country hit the streets on Nov. 9 to protest the election of President-elect Donald Trump. Protests were reported in major cities including New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. (Victoria Walker,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) Demonstrators around the country hit the streets on Nov. 9 to protest the election of President-elect Donald Trump. Protests were reported in major cities including New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. (Victoria Walker,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) What was lost in the election last week? Decency. Humanity. Morality. All the way around. From protesters destroying property in Portland, Ore., to racists destroying a sense of safety in Silver Spring, Md., too many people are undermining the foundation of our country in the aftermath of a polarizing election. And our first order of business is to fix it. Because this is about democracy, really. Donald Trump is going to be our president. And saying #notmypresident is the same as saying #notmyconstitution or #notmycountry or #notmyAmerica. It is our America. All of us. Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. A majority of Americans who voted last week voted for her. (A totally shameful 43 percent of yall stayed home you better not have been at those protests if you did.) But the same Constitution that gives protesters the right to peaceful assembly also created the electoral college that gave Trump the White House. [American women have always had to fight for our rights. We cant stop fighting now.] This is what democracy looks like. And smashing windows in cities, burning flags on college campuses or staging walkouts at high schools wont change that. And shouldnt change that. I get it. It feels good to rage against all that Trump stands for and to show the world we all dont agree with him. But all it does is provide Dave Chappelle solid gold material for his Saturday Night Live monologue. Decent Americans have somehow lost their ability to control all the wrong impulses. 1 of 75 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Protests swell across U.S. in wake of Trump victory View Photos Vigils and protests flare up as opponents of President-elect Donald Trump express dismay with the election results, underscoring the difficult task he faces in uniting a fractured country. Caption Vigils and protests flare up among opponents of the president-elect. Nov. 20. 2016 People participate in an anti-hate rally at a Brooklyn park named in memory of Beastie Boys band member Adam Yauch after it was defaced with swastikas. Spencer Platt/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. Sore losers protesting the democratic process are just as useless as hate-filled winners sneaking around towns painting swastikas and racist graffiti. I want to say that the only difference between the two is that one is ridiculous while the other is dangerous. But thats not totally true, either. The Whites Only graffiti scrawled on an Episcopal church in Silver Spring and the swastikas drawn in a Bethesda middle school bathroom are references to real and bloody horrors in history. So was the swastika used to deface a church in Indiana and the #Whitesonly written on a door in Minnesota. The connective tissue between all the hated? The word Trump, which accompanied most of the vandalism. Indiana even got Heil Trump on the outside of one church. There were the fifth-graders in Ventura, Calif., chanting Build a Wall! and walls in Durham, N.C. defaced with Black Lives Dont Matter and Neither Does Your Vote. Confederate flags fluttered at a Veterans Day parade in Petaluma, Calif. Women in hijabs reported having them yanked off in public, and a disturbing note to a Muslim elementary school teacher in Georgia told her to go hang herself with her headscarf. A student at the University of Michigan was told she would be set on fire if she didnt remove her hijab. These are the deplorable acts that are intended to terrify religious and racial minorities. They must be condemned and not with a dispassionate, timid Stop it, which is what Trump said during a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night. And Trumps decision to appoint his campaign chairman Stephen K. Bannon denounced by critics as a proponent of racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic views as his White House chief strategist was absolutely chilling. Even so, it doesnt justify protesting the outcome of the election itself, which is the beating heart of American democracy. When young people respond by burning flags and walking out of class, they might be making themselves feel better. But remember when President Obama was elected in 2008 and 2012, and it wasnt all rainbows and unicorns? When black families found burning crosses on their lawns, protesters carried signs with nooses and racist caricatures, and mobs burned him in effigy? They were protesting his victory. They probably made themselves feel better in their fellowship of hatred, but they did nothing to change the Obama familys address for eight years. That brings us to the part where protesting the simple fact of our democratic process is dangerous, too. Like the protesters who fought for civil rights or to give women the right to vote or to push us out of war, protest something you can change. Protest Trumps actions and policies. Pressure members of Congress. Work like mad to get rid of the electoral college if youve had it with the system. Support candidates in the 2018 elections who can make real change. You students walking out of class need to hold on to that rage and carry it into adulthood, fight complacency and fight for the system you want. That is what democracy looks like. Trump in the Oval Office? That is what democracy looks like, too. Twitter: @petulad Around the Baltimore Station, Ivan Baylor is known as Bike Man. The 59-year-old Army veteran lives at the converted firehouse in South Baltimore that serves as a drug-addiction treatment center for homeless men, many of them veterans. The nickname comes from his job: Baylor is one of the 10 homeless vets at the Station who were hired by Baltimore-based Corps Logistics, a veteran-owned firm, to install the citys bike-share system that launched two weeks ago. Hes one of four who have been kept on full-time to maintain the bicycles. Its beautiful. Its really special for me, to go out and do something constructive all day, he said. I know the next day I have something positive to do. Ive got a job. Each day, Baylor drives a van around to the programs initial 20 stations to make sure all the bikes work, switch out any that dont, and add or subtract bikes to make sure none of the stations has too many or too few. During the systems roll-out, hes following a pickup truck driven by Corps Logistics owner Jim Duffney, an Air Force veteran and a member of the New Jersey Air National Guard, with a trailer carrying more bikes and a power generator. Duffney said hes grooming Baylor to take the lead on the rounds and eventually work with an apprentice of his own. Other vets work in the programs call center. Thats the goal, Duffney said. You empower them. When Baylor, from nearby Dundalk, returned in 1984 from his second tour overseas in the Army, the heavy machinery specialist was traumatized. Hed never been much of a drinker before, but he found himself waking up regularly stinking of the gin he drank to ward off his loneliness and the gruesome memory of seeing a man hit by a speeding tank in South Korea. After an honorable discharge, Baylor got a job with Baltimore city as a heavy equipment operator, driving bulldozers, dump trucks, forklifts and other construction vehicles. But he was fired in 2008, when he was caught sipping booze on the job. Baylor spent the next seven years in a downward spiral. Hed put on a shirt and tie for a job interview, then pick up a bottle of liquor when he was rejected. In March 2015, he lost his house in nearby Towson and began living with his mother and his sister. Baylors drinking suppressed his appetite, and he dwindled to a gaunt 110 pounds. His memory began to fail, too. His mother would send him to the store to buy groceries; hed return hours later, having forgotten the original errand. Eventually he reached a breaking point. He went to the Veterans Affairs office and asked to be placed in a rehabilitation program. On June 6, 2015, he walked through the door of Baltimore Station. June 5 was my last drink, he said. Duffneys company, with its military-style culture, is a natural fit for the homeless veterans who are doing well at the treatment center, said Baltimore Station executive director John Friedel. Our men relate to him well, he said. For the veterans, working with a veteran-owned business, where the people understand the path and journey these people have been on, is helpful. Working for Corps Logistics provides both autonomy and a familiar support system for the men working to re-enter society from treatment, Friedel said. They transition through our network and our brotherhood to another one thats safe and understanding, he said. The work of repairing bicycles also aligns well with the technical skills veterans often have picked up during their time in the military, Friedel said. Being able to see something from inception to completion, task-oriented work, is something that resonated with a lot of guys, he said. More than a few veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and other mental health problems and drug addiction as they move into civilian life and try to find a job, said Jeffrey Kendrick, executive director for the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training. There can be sexual trauma, physical abuse, mental abuse all sorts of barriers that can prevent a person from being a stable employee, he said. Kendrick commended Corps Logistics for recognizing the homeless veterans potential. Every veteran that comes through your door has a skill, he said. Jonathan Schettino, a psychologist who treats veterans at his private practice in Baltimore, said those with mental illness or drug addiction can have an incredibly difficult time mustering the effort and organization to get and maintain a steady job. Cognitive behavioral therapy, medication and a variety of other treatments can help, he said. Its about getting veterans connected to those resources so they can begin to work on those mental health problems that a lot of them face at disproportionate rates, unfortunately, Schettino said. Before Duffney and Baylor make their daily rounds, Duffney checks his Baltimore Bike Share mobile app, which shows how many bikes are at each station at any given time. He notes which ones are most imbalanced; one of their main jobs is to redistribute the bikes so there are enough bicycles and open spaces at each station. One morning last week, they loaded the bikes into their vehicles from the Corps Logistics lot on Waterview Avenue in the Westport neighborhood and headed for the closest station, at the McHenry Row shopping center. They checked each bike, unlocking it from the station and monitoring the battery life of the onboard GPS systems and Pedelec electric-assisted pedals. Most stations will be hooked up to the citys power grid soon, Duffney said, so they expect to see fewer dead batteries. Duffney sees himself and Baylor as ambassadors for the bike-share program, explaining it to curious passers-by, showing them how to sign up and giving them free trial rides on the new bikes. They struck up a conversation with Alex Kukich, 30, of the Locust Point neighborhood as he passed by at McHenry Row. A minute later, Kukich was on one of the Pedelec bikes, riding it around the block and up through a parking garage to try it out. Its awesome, said Kukich, who works at the video advertising firm Videology. Its fun, its clean, its different. When he returned, Duffney showed him how to sign up for a bike-share membership. Duffney is confident most people who try the bikes once will use them again. We need to sell the product, he said. Once you ride the bike, youre golden. The bike-share program is funded by a $2.36 million city contract with Canadian bicycle manufacturer Bewegen Technologies. Corps Logistics serves as a subcontractor that provides assembly and maintenance services. By the spring, the number of bicycles in the growing system is expected to double to 500. As a result, Duffney said, he expects to increase employment to about 12 to 15 veterans. He also expects the operation to continue to grow as Bewegen launches additional bike-share programs in Richmond and Norfolk, which Corps Logistics will service from Baltimore. Baylor smiles with pride when he sees the bike stations around the city. He laughs when the other men at the Station holler at him: What up, Bike Man? Im back working, he said. Its a real good feeling. NEW YORK (AP) Immigrants and their advocates added their voices on Sunday to those who have been marching and protesting Donald Trump's presidential win. Organizers said the protest in Manhattan was about speaking out against Trump's support of deportation and other measures. Demonstrators carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like "Hate won't make us great," and chanted, "We are here to stay." It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country. Other protests were expected Sunday in San Francisco, St. Louis Philadelphia, Denver and more. On Saturday, demonstrators gathered in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as in smaller places like Worcester, Massachusetts, and Iowa City, Iowa. In Los Angeles, an estimated 8,000 people marched Saturday to condemn what they saw as Trump's hate speech about Muslims, pledge to deport people in the country illegally and crude comments about women. A few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters to protest. Protester Annamarie Davidson said she knows the world is watching and she wants to be "on the right side of history." The 28-year-old says marchers are rallying for the rights of immigrants, Muslims, gay people and other groups she says Trump's campaign marginalized. Protests also were held in Detroit, Minneapolis and others. More than 200 people, carrying signs, gathered on the steps of the Washington state Capitol. The group chanted "not my president" and "no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA." In Tennessee, Vanderbilt University students sang civil rights songs and marched through campus across a Nashville street, temporarily blocking traffic. Several hundred protesters marched around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." Organizers said in a statement that the protest was intended to represent "all those that feel marginalized or threatened by a Trump presidency." Police in Portland, Oregon, said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during anti-Trump protests downtown. In a news release Sunday, the Portland Police Bureau said the protesters failed to obey numerous lawful orders to vacate city streets. Most were cited for disorderly conduct and failing to obey an officer. Police said protesters repeatedly threw road flares and bottles at officers and that a police SUV was tagged with graffiti. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, Ore., a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. Protesters have gathered since Wednesday at Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Police in the city arrested five people downtown during an anti-Trump protest that wound down early Sunday. Four adults were cited for vandalism, and a juvenile was arrested on suspicion of battery on an officer. Demonstrations also took place internationally. A group of Mexicans at statue representing independence in Mexico City expressed their concerns about a possible wave of deportations. One school teacher said it would add to the "unrest" that's already in Mexico. About 300 people protested Trump's election as the next American president outside the U.S. Embassy near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Donna Burt, right, director of the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center, talks to officers about access to her animals near the scene of a fatal shooting of a Stanislaus County sheriff's deputy Sunday. (Joan Barnett Lee/AP) California Sheriffs deputy shot dead by carjacker A Stanislaus County sheriffs deputy was shot twice in the head and killed Sunday while responding to a call about a suspicious car and person, authorities said. A suspect has been arrested. Deputy Dennis Wallace, a 20-year veteran, was shot at point-blank range as he checked on a report of a suspicious car and person near a fishing access spot outside the city of Hughson, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said. The suspect, identified as David Machado, 37, abandoned a stolen van and carjacked an escape vehicle in the city of Keyes, the police department said. Associated Press Alleged student rapist arrested: Police say a University of Alabama student accused of raping a teenage girl in a dorm room has been arrested. Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit Capt. Gary Hood said Sunday that Joseph Tyler Pitts, 19, is charged with first-degree rape. Hood says an 18-year-old student at the college told police she was drinking with Pitts and lost consciousness. Pitts is being held at the Tuscaloosa County jail on a $30,000 bond. Hikers die in accidental fall: Authorities say a father and his teenage son died during an apparent hiking accident near Shaver Lake in Central California. The Fresno County Sheriffs Office said a search and rescue team was trying to recover the bodies Sunday, a day after the two fell off an embankment near Shaver Lake. It says a caller reported seeing the two fall off Saturday afternoon while walking along a hiking trail in an area known as Shaver Rock, on the northeast side of the lake. Deputies and firefighters responded to the area, along with a sheriffs helicopter, but the pair had fallen into a deep canyon and rescue crews were unable to reach the bodies. The department didnt release their names or city of residence. Nine displaced after house fire: Fire officials in Wilmington, Del., said seven children and two adults were displaced because of a house fire. Battalion Chief James Jobes, a fire department spokesman, said the fire began about 5 a.m. at a home on North Franklin Street. No one was hurt, but the occupants were left without a place to stay. Jobes says the American Red Cross is helping them. Associated Press They are a little-known presence in many operating rooms, offering technical expertise to surgeons installing new knees, implanting cardiac defibrillators or performing delicate spine surgery. Often called device reps or by the more cumbersome and less transparent moniker health-care industry representatives these salespeople are employed by the companies that make medical devices: Stryker, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, to name a few. Their presence in the OR, particularly common in orthopedics and neurosurgery, is part of the equipment packages that hospitals typically buy. Many people who dont work in health care dont realize that industry reps are sometimes in the OR, said Josephine Wergin, a risk management analyst for the ECRI Institute, a Pennsylvania nonprofit that conducts research on medical subjects for the health-care industry. A lot of times they are the real experts on their products. Unlike rotating teams of nurses and surgical techs, reps are a consistent presence, experts say, often functioning as uber-assistants to surgeons with whom they cultivate close relationships and upon whom their six-figure salaries depend. Although they dont scrub in, reps are expected to be intimately familiar with the equipment they sell, making sure it is at the ready for the surgeon and poised to answer technical questions. Whos the expert? But how much influence do reps wield, how necessary and costly are their services and does their presence in the OR, which may not be disclosed to patients, raise ethical questions about informed consent? A string of court cases has raised questions about their involvement in surgeries that went awry, dating back to the late 1970s when a New York sales manager who had not graduated from high school tried for three hours to fix a prosthetic hip while one of the surgeons is said to have left the OR. Despite their role, device reps have received little scrutiny, in sharp contrast to drug salespeople, whose role has been the subject of considerable research. Theres so little public awareness of this, said Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor of pharmacology at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and director of PharmedOut, a project that focuses on prescribing and drug-marketing practices. Fugh-Berman is the co-author of a recent study that raises questions about whether surgeons rely too heavily on reps for technical expertise and assistance, to the potential detriment of patients. But the cost of medical devices, an industry with about $150 billion in annual U.S. sales, combined with concerns about conflicts of interest by doctors who must report industry payments as part of the Affordable Care Act, has resulted in increased scrutiny, as hospitals from Savannah to Stanford seek to standardize and circumscribe the activities of device salespeople. Several high-profile lawsuits have played a role, among them a 2006 Ohio case in which a surgeon and a rep were ordered to pay a patient $1.75 million after botched brain surgery. The salesperson had wrongly assured the surgeon that a bone cement was suitable for sealing a hole in the patients skull. In 2003, Endovascular Technologies pleaded guilty to 10 felonies in federal court and paid more than $92 million in criminal and civil penalties for covering up problems including 12 deaths associated with an abdominal device. Doctors had been removing the device using a technique devised by reps that had never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Some hospitals, most notably Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, have largely eliminated reps in orthopedics, buying implants directly from the manufacturer at a substantial discount and training surgical technicians to take their place in the OR. Loma Lindas chief of orthopedics said the hospital has saved about $1 million annually, a savings of about 50 percent on the cost of the devices, without affecting outcomes. I think there is a role for reps, said Lisa McGiffert, director of the Consumer Reports Safe Patient Project. But, she added, when it comes to choosing the best device such as a prosthetic knee can the patient trust that theyre getting the expertise of the doctor or the influence of the rep? The presence of device reps in the OR, she added, also raises questions about the adequacy of consent, if patients are not explicitly informed of their presence. Learning on the fly ECRI recently repeated its recommendation that hospitals obtain explicit written consent from patients if reps are to be present and warned surgeons against learning how to use . . . devices on the fly. How often that happens is unclear, because what happens in the OR tends to stay in the OR. A small 2014 study suggests that reps overinvolvement is not uncommon. A survey conducted by researchers at New Yorks Albany Medical College found that 88 percent of 43 device reps said they had provided verbal instructions to a doctor during surgery, while 37 percent had participated in a surgery in which they felt their involvement was excessive, often because the surgeon lacked sufficient expertise. Twenty-one percent said they had direct physical contact with hospital staff or a patient during an operation, which could violate hospital policy as well as state law. Terry Chang, associate general counsel of AdvaMed, a device industry trade association, points to its code of ethics as well as newly revised guidelines issued by the American College of Surgeons, which state that reps are to refrain from medical decision-making and participating in surgery. But Chang says that reps, who have witnessed dozens if not hundreds of the same procedures, provide an essential benefit for doctors and patients. They are only present at the behest of the physician and only as a trainer, and they provide a live interactive resource. Their value, Chang said, lies in their expertise, which can make surgery faster and more efficient. For a lot of institutions, its a bandwidth issue, he said, echoing a finding in Fugh-Bermans study that some surgeons prefer working with reps because they are more knowledgeable than hospital staff. Gerald Williams, a Philadelphia joint replacement specialist who is president of the 18,000-member American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, agrees. Even if a surgeon is extremely familiar with a device, there are different teams scrubbing in who typically have less familiarity with the procedure and the surgeons process than a rep with whom a surgeon regularly works. Their presence is dictated by the complexity of the surgery, he said. They are probably there close to 100 percent in complicated cases such as spine surgery and joint implants. Williams said he doesnt tell his patients that a rep will be in the room, adding, I dont tell them theres a circulating nurse, either. My patients look at me as being the captain of the ship. I think if I told them about a rep, they would all be supportive of it. While salespeople have been in operating rooms for decades, their participation mushroomed beginning in the late 1990s with the proliferation of total joint replacement operations, said Linda Groah, the longtime executive director of AORN, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses. These days, theres much more control of the reps, she said. They just dont come through willy-nilly. But Jeffrey Bedards 2014 study about their role in the OR makes it clear that in some cases, there may be a chasm between guidelines and actual practice. Bedard, who conducted his research as a graduate student in medical ethics, said it was prompted by his experience as an orthopedic device rep in the late 1990s. He subsequently became a drug salesman and now works in the pharmaceutical industry. Bedard vividly remembers participating in one case involving a patient in her mid-40s. The surgeon, with whom he had not previously worked, refused all preoperative training, including watching a video, on a new $10,000 hip replacement system. He said, Youre going to be there, right? Bedard remembers being asked. To say that the case was a train wreck would be an understatement, Bedard recalls. The surgeon repeatedly cursed at him and at the circulating nurse, who continually monitors the patient and is responsible for ensuring that the proper equipment is available, as he struggled to perform the procedure. I had to hold up the illustrated surgical technique and talk him through the case step by step, Bedard remembered. I was absolutely beside myself. Bedard recalled that when he called his supervisor to report what had happened, my boss said: You just made $1,000 for three hours worth of work. What are you complaining about? Judging by the responses to his anonymous survey, which found that 37 percent of reps said they believed they had been excessively involved in an operation and 40 percent had attended a surgery in which they questioned the surgeons competence, Bedard said little appears to have changed. As a rep, he said, youre paid to sell, to grow your business. Two years ago, Gary Botimer, a joint replacement specialist who is chief of orthopedics at Loma Linda, undertook a radical experiment: He got rid of reps in joint replacement cases. Botimer negotiated a steep discount on the price of artificial joints bought in bulk from a well-known American manufacturer and sent hospital surgical techs to the technical training given to device salespeople. It took me two years to convince the administration to do this, recalled Botimer, who said that one surgeon, who had significant financial ties to a manufacturer, quit. I took a lot of bullets. What we basically did is to take the skill set of the reps and replace it with our own employees, who dont have a conflict of interest, Botimer said. Its very easy to train your own people. We have found that the techs are better than the reps. The rep-less model To lay the groundwork, Botimer said he and other surgeons reviewed the literature to select the best implants as the hospitals standard. After the program was launched in 2014, Botimer said, he and his staff tracked the outcomes of all 500 joint replacement cases for one year to see if the rep-less model was equivalent. No difference in outcomes was detected, he said, but the hospital saved $1 million each year. (While standard implants are used in about 90 percent of cases, Loma Linda surgeons are free to use other devices if they believe doing so is in the patients best interest.) The program has been so successful that it is being extended to other orthopedic surgeries, such as trauma and spine operations, he said. Botimer added that he is fielding inquiries from other hospital systems contemplating a similar move. This is a big change in the culture, and no one makes that change easily, he said. You have operating [room] personnel whove only known one way of doing things, doctors who are afraid to try it and administrators worried that docs would turn on them. Weve spent a couple of years proving to everybody that their worst fears didnt happen. BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS Republicans didnt just win the presidency. They held on to their historic majorities in virtually all levels of governance. They control both chambers of Congress. Theyll have an opportunity to reset the Supreme Court back to its original 5-4 conservative ideological lean (and perhaps make it even more conservative if any of the older liberal justices retire during Trump's presidency). Theyll hold at least 33 governorships, the most since 1922. And results are still trickling in, but it looks like Republicans will also keep control of 69 of 99 legislative chambers. According to population calculations by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, that translates to roughly 80 percent of the population living in a state all or partially controlled by Republicans. It doesnt get much more dominant than that. BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS Things cant get much worse. Even though they gained a handful of seats in the U.S. Senate and House and flipped four statehouse chambers, Democrats are in the minority at almost every level of governance. (See above.) The good news for them is that simply losing the presidency may help them regain control. Its not unusual to see the party locked out of the White House pick up seats in Congress and state government because American voters like a check and balance on power. (This was particularly pronounced during the Obama years, as more than 900 Democratic state legislators were defeated.) But the reality is that there is more bad news than good news for Democrats right now. Come the 2018 midterm elections, Senate Democrats could very well lose seats as they defend their members running for reelection in at least five red-leaning states. Amber Phillips Two young girls ask an Iraqi army soldier for a food package in the liberated Intisar neighborhood Mosul, Iraq, on Sunday. (Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images) IRAQ Militants driven from town near famed ruins Iraqi troops entered a town south of Mosul on Sunday near where Islamic State militants destroyed artifacts at an ancient Assyrian archaeological site, while special forces fended off suicide bombers during a cautious advance into the northern city. The push into Nimrud was the most significant gain in several days for government forces, potentially opening up the area for teams to assess the damage done to the famed ruins just outside the town. Troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, the biggest urban area under Islamic State control, as part of an offensive launched last month. The special forces have advanced the farthest and hold a handful of districts on the citys eastern edge, but their progress has slowed in the face of fierce resistance in dense urban neighborhoods. The operations commander said troops took Nimrud, about 19 miles south of Mosul, after heavy fighting. It was unclear whether they had liberated the nearby 13th-century B.C. archaeological site, which the Islamic State destroyed with explosives, according to videos they released. Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman, lauded the important gain but warned, As Iraqi forces get closer to Mosul, everything becomes more difficult as they like to leave behind a few fighters to spoil the advance. Associated Press BULGARIA Leader resigns after partys election loss Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov announced his resignation after exit polls showed his party losing badly in Sundays runoff presidential election. Surveys by several polling organizations showed Rumen Radev, 53, a former nonpartisan chief of the air force, taking about 58 percent of the vote. Tsetska Tsacheva, 58, a lawyer and member of Borisovs center-right party, had about 36 percent. The new president will have to grapple with a possible rise in migrants from neighboring Turkey and growing tensions between Russia and the West. In the first round of voting, Radev surprisingly finished first with 25 percent of the vote, followed by Tsacheva with 22 percent. Bulgaria, which joined the European Union a decade ago, remains the poorest member of the 28-nation bloc. It also is a NATO member, but many Bulgarians still feel a cultural and historical affinity with Russia. Associated Press BURMA Fierce fighting reported in Rakhine state Burmas government on Sunday reported fierce fighting in the western state of Rakhine, where the army has been conducting counterinsurgency operations since nine police officers were killed in attacks along the border with Bangladesh last month. The fighting, reported in an Information Ministry statement, comes as human rights groups have been accusing the army of abuses against members of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, especially since last months attacks. Recent reports accuse soldiers of killing, raping and burning the homes of the long-persecuted Rohingya. The statement said government troops were ambushed Saturday morning by about 60 attackers armed with guns, knives and spears. It said one soldier and at least six attackers were killed, adding that an army officer died in a later battle against 500 armed men, which ended when two air force helicopters joined the fight. The attackers werent identified, but the army has aligned with Rakhine Buddhists against Rohingya since intercommunal conflict erupted in 2012. Although many Rohingya have lived in Burma for generations, they are widely regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Associated Press Violence kills dozens in northern Syria: At least 11 children were among 23 people killed in northern Syria as pro-government forces kept up their campaign against opposition areas in the countrys north, while rebels shelled a government-held district in Aleppo city. The state news agency said the shelling killed four people. At least eight other people were killed in a suspected airstrike on a crossing point connecting Kurdish-held areas with rebel areas in northern Aleppo province, Kurdish forces said. The violence comes a day after troops repelled a rebel offensive on western parts of Aleppo city launched in October. Pro-Russia candidate wins Moldova election: Igor Dodon, a pro-Moscow candidate for president, won Moldovas presidential election, opening up a commanding lead in the former Soviet republic with nearly all the votes tallied. Dodon had just over 54 percent of the votes, with more than 98 percent of the ballots tallied. His rival, Maia Sandu, an ex-World Bank official who ran on an anti-corruption platform, had nearly 46 percent. Dodon has tapped into popular anger at corruption under the pro-European government. Israeli bill to recognize West Bank outposts is approved: An Israeli committee approved a bill that, if adopted, would legalize outposts built without government permission in the West Bank, territory that Palestinians seek for their future state. It still needs to pass several stages before it can be adopted. The bill was partly meant to stop the evacuation of the Amona outpost. The Supreme Court ruled that it was built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished by Dec. 25. From news services BRITAIN Assange questioned at Ecuadoran Embassy Prosecutors were finally able to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday about a possible sex crime in Sweden six years ago. They did not comment on the closed-door proceedings at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where Assange has lived for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly to the United States. Assanges version of events, and a possible DNA sample, will shape Swedish prosecutors decision on whether to charge him. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadoran prosecutor in the presence of a Swedish prosecutor and a Swedish police investigator. Swedish officials are seeking information related to allegations of sexual misconduct made by two Swedish women Assange met in 2010. Some of the alleged misconduct is no longer being investigated by police because the statute of limitations has run out. Assange is, however, being questioned about the possible rape of one of the women. Assange has denied wrongdoing and says he fears extradition to the United States because of his WikiLeaks work. WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents a few years ago. Associated Press TURKEY Erdogan considers referendum on E.U. European Union foreign ministers expressed fresh concern Monday about Turkeys crackdown on political opponents and the media, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that he might call a referendum next year on whether his country should join the bloc. At talks in Brussels, the ministers struggled to forge a common stance that would balance their desperate need for Ankaras help to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees heading to Europe with deep concerns about rights abuses in Turkey in the wake of a thwarted coup attempt in July. Turkey and the E.U. have been locked in a war of words over Ankaras commitment to democracy and the rule of law amid the ongoing crackdown. E.U. officials say it is time for Turkey to decide whether it really wants to join the bloc, but patience is running out in Turkey after more than a decade of troubled membership talks. Addressing farmers on Monday, Erdogan said, Lets wait in patience until the end of the year and then go to the people. He was responding to reports that the European Parliaments president has said that Turkey could face economic sanctions over the crackdown. Erdogan also accused the E.U. of breaking its promises and supporting Kurdish militants. The E.U. had promised faster membership talks, visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and billions of euros in aid for Syrian refugees living in Turkey if Ankara stopped migrants setting off for Greece and agreed to take back thousands of others. In recent months, top Turkish officials have ratcheted up pressure on the E.U. by warning that the refugee deal will fall apart if Europe does not respect its promises. Associated Press More than 54,000 displaced in Mosul operation: A U.N. spokesman said that more than 54,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the military operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State militants. About three-quarters of the displaced people are being sheltered in camps set up by the United Nations and its humanitarian partners and one-quarter are been housed in host communities, Farhan Haq said. Pakistan warns dispute with India could escalate: Pakistans military said Indian troops fired on its soldiers in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing seven and prompting return fire, as officials warned that the standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals could escalate. The two sides have traded fire repeatedly in recent weeks. The international community should pay attention, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Geo News TV. It can escalate. This could be catastrophic for the region. From news services WE DONT agree with President-elect Donald Trump on much, but we happen to share his view that the Obama administration overreached in trying to rewrite immigration law unilaterally. Still, tough enforcement is one thing; gratuitous cruelty is another. Mr. Trump would be straying squarely into the second category if his immigration crackdown targets youngsters whom Mr. Obama has shielded from deportation since 2012. Under that program, 750,000 undocumented immigrants mainly teenagers and 20-somethings who grew up in America and graduated from U.S. high schools have received work permits and Social Security cards. Most have jobs; they pay taxes, open bank accounts and, for the most part, live productive, law-abiding lives. It would serve no public policy purpose to pursue this cohort of young people, most of whom were brought to America as children by their parents, and are undocumented through no fault of their own. Half have relatives who are U.S. citizens; roughly a quarter have children who were born here. To round them up, or threaten them with deportation, would mean hounding families who have lived here for well over a decade. Most of the youngsters are as culturally American as their U.S.-born neighbors; many are building careers that will contribute to their communities. They make no secret of their immigration status or whereabouts, having registered openly with the government under the Obama administrations program. For Mr. Trump to use that database to target them would be a mistake that would brand his new administration as callous and recast this country as America the Punitive. Mr. Trumps worst instincts on immigration were underscored by news that a notorious hard-liner, Kris Kobach, would serve on his transition team. Mr. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, has been behind countless crusades over the past decade, many of them thwarted in federal courts, to harass and intimidate immigrants. Mr. Kobach vowed Thursdsay that the Trump administration would build that beautiful wall, and theres no doubt Mr. Trump has a mandate to do so. It would be a massive waste of money a $15 billion to $25 billion project that would do nothing to stop visa over-stayers, who represent a third of undocumented immigrants, and relatively little to deter illegal border crossings, already near a 40-year low. No wall is impermeable, and more Mexicans have left the United States than entered since the Great Recession of 2008. And no, Mexico wont pay for the wall. But if Mr. Trump wants to squander taxpayers funds on a symbol, and fight court battles with American border ranchers who oppose federal encroachment on their land well, yes, he has a mandate for that. Likewise, relatively few Americans would oppose Mr. Trumps pledge to deport undocumented criminals; thats also Mr. Obamas policy. Support might decrease if Mr. Trump expands the definition of criminal to include minor infractions. That would strip U.S. industries, particularly in the agricultural sector, of valuable workers who are not easily replaced. Opposition would grow further if he attempted to round up millions of migrants who are law-abiding in everything but immigration status; polls show most Americans would not favor such mass deportation. And surely he would lose most of the country if he goes after the young valedictorians and veterans who in good faith came forward when Mr. Obama offered his first, tailored reprieve. Mr. Trumps victory grants him license for meaningful enforcement, not malice. If your music collection features anything that can be safely called classic rock or oldies, one of the key players in hundreds if not thousands of those songs died over the weekend. Leon Russell died Sunday at age 74. Russell might be known as a session musician who can connect Andy Williams to The Rolling Stones; Gary Lewis and the Playboys to Eric Clapton; Dolly Parton to Glen Campbell; George Harrison and John Lennon to George Jones; Joe Cocker to Kenny Rogers; Harry Nilsson to The Beach Boys; The Byrds to Thee Tractors; and The Monkees to Elvis Costello. He played on hundreds if not thousands of sessions. While The Carpenters had huge familiar hits with Russell songs Superstar and A Song For You, hundreds of performers recorded Russell songs. Among those are Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Foghat, Luther Vandross, Nancy Sinatra, Nazareth, Ray Charles, Robert Goulet, Sonic Youth, Tom Jones, The Temptations, Usher and Whitney Houston. I found Russell while growing up and poring over album credits. When I first heard the song Tight Rope, I found it unlike almost anything I'd heard, and to this day, it's probably still my favorite song of his. But as I thumbed through singles from my pre-teen years, I was surprised to find his name on my 45 of Gary Lewis and The Playboys' This Diamond Ring. I was eventually to learn much more. He was part of the legendary Wrecking Crew, the group of 1960s studio musicians who played on thousands of 1960s recordings. He was featured on songs by The Beach Boys and The Byrds. He was the band leader for the Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, film and album. He was featured at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. And that was all before he truly established himself as a solo musician. He had been scheduled for a March date at Boondocks Pub in Springfield, which would have been at least his third trip to a Central Illinois venue in the last five years. He never stopped touring or playing as long as he was capable. When Ray Parker Jr. played Decatur Celebration, my advance story included a list of dozens of performers with whom Parker had played as a studio musician. Russell's sessionography makes Parker look like he was working part-time. There's no way of calculating how many lives Leon Russell touched and enriched. Al Cannon Jr. is sheriff of Charleston County, S.C. When a Charleston, S.C., patrol officer stopped a young mother outside Walmart after store officials reported that she was shoplifting groceries, her first thought was of her children. Who would watch them if she were arrested? She could not afford the food she had taken for her family let alone a babysitter, an attorney or bail. As the sheriff for Charleston County, I know that if the encounter had taken place a few years ago, she would likely have gone to jail, sending her and her childrens lives into an economic and emotional tailspin. In the past, law-enforcement officers had no alternatives to taking someone to jail for nonviolent offenses such as shoplifting. Fortunately, that was not true in her case. Instead, the officer employed a new approach called cite and release. Rather than jailing the woman for a low-level, nonviolent offense, the officer gave her a citation for shoplifting, instructed her to appear in court at a later date and let her go. She returned home to her children that day instead of spending weeks in jail awaiting trial at no benefit to public safety and to the detriment of her family. At a time of heartbreaking turmoil over police-community relations and rising incarceration, national attention has once again turned to Charleston with the start last week of the trial of a former police officer in the tragic shooting death of Walter Scott. Now more than ever is the time for law-enforcement leaders to acknowledge that serious problems exist in our criminal justice systems and that reform begins with us. Law-enforcement leaders need to develop fair and effective approaches that reflect our commitment to public safety while giving people the best chance to succeed and lead productive lives. That young mothers story is a prime example of the kind of gains we can make and lives we can save when we rethink how our justice systems should work. How we use jails deserves a hard look. I have more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, and I understand firsthand our obligation to protect public safety and the challenges my officers face every day as they work hard to protect us. I also know that the number of people in U.S. jails is high , and that even a brief stay in jail can upend lives and lead to deeper involvement in the criminal justice system. Some people never recover from a stay in jail. And the evidence shows that many of those people did not need to be there in the first place. Local jails intended to hold people who pose a flight risk or threat to public safety are instead incarcerating many who commit nonviolent offenses or are unable to afford bail, negatively affecting the community and the judicial system. In South Carolina, the average daily population in our jails has exceeded capacity since 1989. Most people are there for low-level offenses, not dangerous crimes. Many with mental illness and substance-abuse issues cycle in and out for minor violations. And amid rising homelessness in our community, people who have nowhere to sleep are often jailed for trespassing. We must ask ourselves whether putting so many people in jail for offenses unrelated to public safety is the best use of our justice system and limited resources. These challenges are not unique to Charleston. Across the country, there are nearly 12 million jail admissions each year, and many people remain behind bars and cut off from their families and jobs simply because they cannot afford bail. The problem is particularly acute for women: According to research from the Vera Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundations Safety and Justice Challenge, the number of women in jail is up 14-fold since 1970, and about 80 percent of them are mothers. Recognizing these troubling trends, Charleston is implementing a number of reforms to transform how we use jails that others should consider. We are one of several jurisdictions across the country that sought and received support from the Safety and Justice Challenge to improve local justice systems and safely reduce jail populations. As part of holistic reform efforts, a new legal-defense program for those who are unable to afford counsel will provide an attorney to low-income residents at their initial bond hearings, when judges determine if they can safely be released into the community while awaiting trial. Our cite-and-release program gives my officers more discretion in how to handle low-level offenses in situations when jail is not the best outcome for anyone. In addition, a triage center service launching next year will help officers steer people who are living with homelessness, mental illness or addiction into treatment and other services and avoid incarceration. We should not forget that many law-enforcement officers understand better than anyone where the problems lie in our justice systems. No one on my team wants to take someone to the county jail, away from family and livelihood, without any improvement to public safety. Together, we must do everything we can to find fairer, more-effective approaches to justice. As a law-enforcement leader and a sheriff, I know that jail is not always the answer. Constanze Stelzenmuller is Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer for The Post. Aaand the Leader of the Free World is: . . . Angela Merkel! That, at least, is what you might conclude from a spate of commentary in the U.S. media following the German chancellors finely barbed message of congratulations to President-elect Donald Trump, in which she offered cooperation on the basis of shared values: democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of the individual, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or political views. Shes right. Trumps toxic campaign left few Western values unquestioned, from his threats to reintroduce torture, to summarily deport Muslims or to lock up his opponent, to his disparagement of women, African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities. His nomination of Stephen K. Bannon, co-chair of his campaign and chief executive officer of the alt-right Breitbart News website, to a senior White House position can only deepen German concerns. (Merkels oblique criticism was also rather more elegant than the reaction of her Social Democrat coalition partner, Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who greeted the election winner as the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist movement.) For those looking to Germany hopefully now, there are encouraging signs. After decades of free-riding on U.S. power, it is making a genuine effort to live up to its responsibilities as the de facto leader of Europe. Its spending more on defense, to shoulder more of the burden of Europes defense within the transatlantic alliance. Germany is arming and training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq. Its sending combat units to protect Lithuania , and is about to deploy 650 soldiers to Mali to fight Islamic terrorism. And those are Luftwaffe fighter planes currently scrambling up into Estonian airspace to head off Russian incursions. Berlin has been holding together the European consensus on sanctions against Russia at some cost to German business. Anger at Russias annexation of Crimea and its ongoing aggression against Ukraine is one cause of Germanys more muscular stance. The dramatic arrival of more than 800,000 refugees in Germany last year is forcing it to invest more in stability for the Middle East and Africa. We know that to have peace and prosperity in Europe, we have to do more to protect a rules-based international order. We also empathize with Americans who are war-weary and want nation-building at home. Congress wants allies to contribute more: We get that. The United States may be more worried about China than about Europe: understood. Its been a bit trickier explaining to Washington that American expectations about German hegemony (at least in the sense of Germany identifying with U.S. interests and getting the rest of Europe to fall in line) werent realistic. Berlin doesnt always agree with Washington; Europe doesnt take orders from Merkel. But what mattered was that the Obama White House was willing to work closely with Europe and Germany on a host of issues of common concern, such as standing up to Russia. But now we are faced with the prospect of an elected U.S. president who questions the value of NATO and wants to be friends with Vladimir Putin. His victory was greeted with a roar of encouragement from populists, identitarians and culture warriors all over Europe including Frauke Petry, the leader of the right-wing Alternative for Germany. So Merkels job has just become infinitely harder. She hasnt declared whether she will seek a fourth term in the fall 2017 elections in Germany. Yet the time has passed for her to declare she will not run; it would throw her party into disarray. That makes her the de facto candidate of her Christian Democratic party. It falls to her to apply the lessons of this historically divisive U.S. election to Germany, and to defend Western liberal constitutionalism against the politics of resentment and anger. In this, she will have to learn from Hillary Clintons mistakes, and to address real and legitimate grievances while countering imaginary or manipulated fears. Part of the challenge is accurately distinguishing between the two. And the hardest test of all: Merkel, a supremely rational thinker and a diffident communicator, will have to learn how to defend Germanys place in the European project and the West with passion. Whether the United States remains her partner in this endeavor is now uncertain. So is whether she can succeed against odds that are piling up against her. This much is sure: Should she lose, the loss would not just be Germanys. But dont replace the Statue of Liberty with one of Angela Merkel just yet. cstelzenmueller@brookings.edu The Trump administration will put an end to the 100 years of U.S. global leadership that began in 1918. It will rend the NATO alliance, cede Eurasia to Russia and the Pacific to China, and adopt as the United States best friends populist and authoritarian regimes that despise immigrants and globalization. Or, after a few early scrapes, its foreign policy will slowly devolve into a somewhat ruder version of President Obamas. It will bomb terrorists while trying to extract the United States from the Middle East; mix negotiations with Russia and China with pushback against their aggressions; and berate European and Asian allies about their inadequate defense spending without breaking the U.S. commitment to defend them. It will downplay human rights and may even look for deals with rogue regimes, such as North Korea. You could hear both these predictions in Washington last week, sometimes from the same source, for the simple reason that nobody, probably including Donald Trump himself, really knows what he will do in foreign affairs. The fear is he will drive the world deeper into chaos and start a global trade war, or maybe a real war. The hope is that he will be tamed, as outsiders promising radical change frequently are, by sane advisers, the bureaucracy, Congress and just maybe a sense of the responsibilities of office. We might not know for a while. But two big tests will show us where Trump is going, and the first will come quickly: appointments. The would-be Trump-tamers are fervently hoping he will choose to staff top national security posts with seasoned hands: Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) ; former national security adviser Stephen Hadley; David Petraeus. To do that they must overcome his strong inclination to install eccentric cronies such as Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani or retired general Michael Flynn. Gingrich may be out; journalist David Corn quoted him Sunday as saying he did not want to be secretary of state. But Giuliani, who reportedly wants it, is ignorant of foreign affairs. Flynn, who once sat next to Vladimir Putin at a dinner during a paid speaking trip to Moscow, is suspected of being a Russian stooge. The top appointments matter because they will determine whether scores of Republican foreign policy professionals join or shun the new administration. If they sign up, policymaking may take a relatively conventional course. If not, the White House could resemble the Baghdad Green Zone early in the Iraq War, where eager but clueless political recruits steered the U.S. occupation toward disaster. The other big test will be Trumps handling of Putin. The president-elects creepily consistent defense of the Russian ruler during the campaign Trump denied Moscows interference in the campaign even after he was briefed on it by the CIA remains mysterious. Is Trump simply an admirer of Putins strongman strength, or does he somehow feel beholden to him, because of the hacking of Democratic emails or Russian investments in his businesses? We may still be in the dark when Trump is sworn in. But if he follows up on his suggestion of an early meeting with Putin, we will start to see if the new president is different from Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom started by trying to cultivate the Putin regime. Putin will ask for the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed because of Russias invasion of Ukraine, and for a U.S.-Russia alliance behind the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Will Trump comply? If he does, we will know that the global order is shifting. Thats because Trumps stance toward Russia will shape his relations with key allies in Europe and the Middle East. If he betrays what has been solid Western support for Ukraine, NATO leaders, starting with Germanys Angela Merkel, will be undermined and offended. Smaller nations in Central Europe will rush to make their own deals with Putin. If NATOs recent deployment of troops to deter Russian aggression in the Baltic states crumbles, so will the alliance. In Syria, U.S. alignment with Russia will quickly alienate Americas Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which see the Syrian civil war as a proxy fight with Iran. Trump has been contemptuous of some of those allies. But if he wants to defeat the Islamic State, he will need their help. Israel, too, wants to see the U.S.-Sunni alliance rebuilt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Trump has promised warm relations, will be pressing for tough U.S. action against Iran, including an abrogation of the nuclear pact. Putin, a partner to the deal, will object to that, as will Merkel. No doubt Trump has not even begun to grapple with these complications. He will have to soon. When he does, we will know if U.S. global leadership is headed for more of the slow erosion of recent years or a radical collapse. Read more from Jackson Diehls archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. I recently attended An Evening with Garrison Keillor, benefiting the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference at the Strathmore in Rockville. I went to several live recordings of Prairie Home Companion and listened to the radio show most Sundays. Mr. Keillor deftly captured the disgust and despair liberals are grappling with in his Nov. 10 op-ed, Trump voters will not like what happens next. However, he miscalculated the liberal disposition. A child in my friends fifth-grade class came to school in tears because her parents dont have legal papers; many Americans will likely lose health insurance in the next four years; my parents generation is about to retire in markets that have rarely been less certain. Mr. Keillor suggested he wants to spend the next part of his life being more like the teachers of his school days, who fought in World War II and in Korea, and somehow retain optimism incongruent with the dismay of U.S. politics. This is the privilege of a wealthy white septuagenarian male; he will be okay. He can spend the next four years reading the books on his shelves. The rest of us must fight to preserve the wonder that is American democracy, like the teachers of his school days did. Andrew P. Scott, Arlington In his Nov. 10 Washington Forum column, Trump voters wont like what comes next, Garrison Keillor said that Democrats should take the next four years off, go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses. This approach has a certain hand-washing appeal not my problem now but it does not help us. It does not deal with the problems we have as a country or as individuals trying to live in a free society. It may be true that the federal government will be going in the wrong direction on many issues for the next four years and that this will leave a void in areas Democrats think are important, but the answer is not to sit back and view it all from the sidelines. It means the opposite: Theres work to be done. Our forebears built this country. They chopped out farms, settled the West, built businesses, raised children and fought wars. Certainly we can, in the words of the musical Hamilton, Rise up! and help fill the void left by a Republican administration looking elsewhere. We can reach out to Muslim Americans and bring them into the fold; help disabled Americans, especially our veterans; deal with racial issues in ways other than strict enforcement of the laws; and reduce gun violence. If the government is not prepared to build and safeguard the society we want, we, as citizens of this land and within the law, have the opportunity actually the responsibility to do it. Gary McDavid, Bethesda I enjoyed Garrison Keillors op-ed. It was the only part of the paper that I wanted to read. Mr. Keillor suggested people take a walk and ended his column on a happy note. But I suggest that when people take that brisk walk and stop to smell the roses, they take pictures of the roses to show their grandchildren. The roses, and much else, may be gone by the time they grow up. The government will soon be controlled by people who think that climate change is a hoax, and that theyre smarter than all the climate scientists who say differently. And even if it isnt a hoax, damn the warming, full speed ahead. The planet has entered into another mass extinction, and I would guess that if the human race survives it will be on a much smaller scale. Good luck to all of us. Well need it. David Epp, Derwood I recently attended An Evening with Garrison Keillor, benefiting the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference at the Strathmore in Rockville. I went to several live recordings of Prairie Home Companion and listened to the radio show most Sundays. Mr. Keillor deftly captured the disgust and despair liberals are grappling with in his Nov. 10 op-ed, Trump voters will not like what happens next. However, he miscalculated the liberal disposition. A child in my friends fifth-grade class came to school in tears because her parents dont have legal papers; many Americans will likely lose health insurance in the next four years; my parents generation is about to retire in markets that have rarely been less certain. Mr. Keillor suggested he wants to spend the next part of his life being more like the teachers of his school days, who fought in World War II and in Korea, and somehow retain optimism incongruent with the dismay of U.S. politics. This is the privilege of a wealthy white septuagenarian male; he will be okay. He can spend the next four years reading the books on his shelves. The rest of us must fight to preserve the wonder that is American democracy, like the teachers of his school days did. Andrew P. Scott, Arlington The safety-pin-wearing left is aghast at the realization that President Donald Trump could actually follow through on his promise to cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama on his first day in office. He should do it. Every president reverses some executive actions of the previous president. After President Obama took office in 2009, he revoked a series of executive orders issued by President George W. Bush including Bushs executive order barring federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research; his executive order implementing the Mexico City Policy, which bars funding for international groups that provide abortions; his executive order interpreting the Geneva Conventions with regard to the CIAs detention of captured terrorists; and several Bush executive orders limiting the power of labor unions in dealing with federal contractors, among many others. Obama also used executive orders to reverse Bushs terrorist interrogation policy and order the closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. [Is Angela Merkel the leader of the free world now? Not quite.] Obamas actions were not unprecedented. Bush not only reversed executive orders of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, but in 2002 he actually withdrew the U.S. from a treaty Clinton had signed the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court. The reason Obamas legacy is so vulnerable today is that the 44th president relied more on executive actions issuing not only executive orders, but also a record number of rules, regulations and agency directives to legislate around Congress and impose his agenda. Speaking from the Oval Office, Nov. 10, President Obama said he was "very encouraged" following a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. Trump said the meeting lasted longer than expected and easily could have gone longer. (The Washington Post) After he lost control of the Senate in 2014, Obama announced at his first Cabinet meeting: Were not just going to be waiting for legislation. . . . Ive got a pen and Ive got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward. On immigration, when Obama could not pass his immigration reform to provide amnesty for entire categories of people not here legally, he tried to impose it on the American people though unlawful executive action a move The Posts editorial board called a massive unilateral act that flies in the face of congressional intent. When he could not pass his cap-and-trade bill, he used the Clean Air Act to impose it by executive action, twisting the meaning of the law in a manner that even the New York Times said was stretching the intent of a law decades old and not written with climate change in mind. He took executive actions on everything from gun control and financial regulation to health care and transgender bathrooms. [Trumps most important partner: The intelligence community] Now Trump may use his pen and phone to reverse many of Obamas executive actions. And the lame-duck president can hardly complain. If you rule by executive fiat, then you should not be surprised if the next executive undoes your fiats. Some of Obamas executive actions will be easy to repeal. Trump can, with the stroke of his pen, reverse Obamas orders to close Guantanamo Bay. He can also scrap the Paris Agreement on climate change that Obama signed in September, which is completely non-binding, by simply announcing that the United States will not fulfill its obligations. Obamas executive actions under Title IX denying due process to those accused of sexual assault and requiring schools to allow transgender students to bathrooms that do not match their biological gender are easily reversed. They were issued as guidance that do have any force of law at all, yet the Education Department is enforcing them as if they did threatening universities with loss of funds if they dont comply. Repealing those wont take anything more than Trumps new education secretary simply saying, Never mind. Plus, Obama set a land speed record for major regulations defined as regulations costing the economy $100 million or more imposing more than 600 since taking office. Many of those will be difficult to do undo, because they were issued through notice and comment by the agencies. For instance, the Clean Power Plan from the Environmental Protection Agency, which Trump has promised to scrap, cant be undone with a stroke of the pen. The EPA would have to formally revoke it, which could itself lead to litigation. Thats why its so important for Trump to put good justices on the Supreme Court, so they can not only strike down illegal regulations but also set precedents that will be binding on future presidents as well. If Trump really wants to shake up Washington, he should issue a single executive order on Day One repealing all of Obamas executive orders. Then, he could go back and decide which, if any, to reinstate. Its not just Obamas executive actions that will soon be reversed. His signature legislative achievement, Obamacare, is headed for repeal and he has no one to blame but himself. Obama passed his health-care reform without any Republican buy-in or any effort to reach bipartisan consensus. He controlled both houses of Congress, and so he imposed his will over the objection of every single Republican. Now that Republicans control both Congress and the White House, they have no incentive to preserve the law. From legislation to executive action, the lesson is clear: The value of bipartisan compromise is not just about optics. If you build consensus, then your actions will last. But if you impose your agenda on an unwilling country, it is going to get repealed or reversed when the other party comes to power. There is wisdom in the scriptural admonition to be like a wise man who built his house on the rock instead of the foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. Obama built his legacy on the sand of unilateralism, instead of the rock of bipartisan consensus. And great will be the fall of it come Jan. 20, 2017. Read more from Marc Thiessens archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. President Obama held his first news conference since voters sharply rejected his candidate and his party at the polls last week, reassuring people at home and abroad that Donald Trump was committed to governing in a more pragmatic fashion than his harsh campaign style would suggest. Hes going to be the next president and regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, said Obama, who met with Trump for the first time last week. This office has a way of waking you up. Obama faced reporters crammed into the James S. Brady Briefing Room on Monday before leaving Washington for a week-long foreign trip to Greece, Germany and Peru, where he will meet with more than a dozen foreign leaders with their own set of worries about where the United States is headed under its next president. At moments the president offered advice to his successor that sometimes sounded like a warning. He urged Trump to respect those norms that are vital to a functioning democracy, such as civility and tolerance and a commitment to reason and facts and analysis. For months Obama had accused candidate Trump of breaching those norms during a bitter and contentious campaign. After last weeks shocking election results, Obama struck a more sanguine note. I think hes sincere in wanting to be a successful president and moving this country forward, Obama said. I dont think any president ever comes in saying to himself, I want to figure out how to make people angry or alienate half the country. President Obama said during a news conference Monday that it's "healthy" for the Democratic Party to go through reflection. "When your team loses, everyone gets deflated," Obama said. (The Washington Post) The president sought to reassure U.S. allies, noting that in his conversation with Trump last week, the New York businessman expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships, including the one with NATO. As he visits with world leaders, Obama vowed to let them know that there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America meeting its commitments and defending its allies. Throughout the hour-long news conference, Obama sought to calm and reassure a jittery and divided country, choosing his words carefully and emphasizing unity over division. On many issues the president conceded that he and Trump continue to have competing visions on where to take the country and that his worries about Trumps fitness for office and temperament havent disappeared. Of course I have got concerns, Obama said. He sought solace in the notion that change in Washington usually takes time. The federal government and our democracy is not a speedboat. Its an ocean liner, Obama said. And he expressed hope that on issues such as the Affordable Care Act, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Trump would modify his position. I dont think he is ideological. I think, ultimately, he is pragmatic, Obama said. And that can serve him well as long as he has got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction. President Obama said that his administration "stands ready" to assist President-elect Donald Trump and his staff as they transition to the White House in January. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) The president declined to comment on Trumps highest-profile and most controversial appointment so far senior counselor and chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, former chief executive of the conservative website Breitbart News. Bannon is closely associated with the alt-right movement, which white nationalists have embraced. Without copping out, I think its fair to say that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making if I want to be consistent with the notion that we are going to try to facilitate a smooth transition, Obama said. The president declined to answer a question on whether he still saw Trump as unfit to serve in the Oval Office a criticism he had leveled more than once during the campaign and instead emphasized that he had counseled the president-elect to reach out to some constituencies that had not supported his bid. It is important to send some signals of unity to minorities, women and other groups that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign, Obama said. In a sign of how Obama has been working doggedly to influence Trump to preserve some of his administrations landmark achievements, the president spoke of the need to improve the Affordable Care Act rather than jettison it. He made a passionate case for not forcing children of undocumented immigrants to leave the country. I will urge the president-elect and the incoming administration to think long and hard before they are endangering the status of what, for all practical purposes, are American kids, he said. Going before the media soon after a major election is a rite of passage for the president. In Obamas case, only one of these exchanges has been celebratory. While he could embrace his 2012 reelection victory, both the 2010 and 2014 midterms and now the election of his successor have amounted to serious setbacks. Six years ago, Obama called the Democrats congressional losses a shellacking; in 2014, he declined to characterize the results, saying instead to the American people, I hear you. Obama spent much less time talking about what contributed to Democrats latest losses, which were punctuated by disappointing turnout among some minority groups and a poor showing in rural areas and some key suburbs. But he acknowledged that Democrats need to engage in some reflection about the way they campaign and connect with the American people. I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas dont matter if people dont hear them, he said. We have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere. Much of the presidents hour-long news conference was dominated by questions of his view of Trumps character, temperament and fitness for office. Obama offered careful praise for Trumps ability to galvanize his constituency. Whats clear is that he was able to tap into, yes, the anxieties, but also the enthusiasm of his voters in a way that was impressive, the president said. He observed that Trump was impervious to events that might have sunk another candidate. Thats powerful stuff. But Obama cautioned that Trump would not be able to govern as he campaigned: There are going to be certain elements of his temperament that will not serve him well unless he recognizes them and corrects them. When President Obama arrives Tuesday in Europe, he will touch down in a country at the center of the continents refugee crisis Greece before journeying to one that has helped guide the continents response Germany. The symbolic juxtaposition of the two countries underscores the balance Obama hopes to strike on his last trip to Europe as president. While he plans to buttress Greek efforts to cope with migrants fleeing the battlefields of the Middle East, he must contend with other European Union members desire to keep more refugees out of their countries. That task became more complicated after Donald Trump won the White House, in part by campaigning to severely restrict asylum seekers from entering the United States. The trip to Greece is about trying to address not just the refugee crisis, but to speak to the broader challenges Europe faces moving forward and to recognize that Greece is a front-line state when it comes to both irregular migration and economic recovery, said Charles Kupchan, the National Security Councils senior director for European affairs. In Greece, the primary entry point for Middle Eastern migrants, roughly 50,000 asylum seekers remain corralled in refugee camps and U.N.-sponsored accommodations, most of them waiting for E.U. countries to make good on pledges to resettle tens of thousands of refugees in countries across the wealthy bloc. Germany, meanwhile, was the destination of choice for the majority of arriving asylum seekers, and it is still dealing with a backlog of hundreds of thousands of applications for sanctuary. Refugees warm themselves by a fire near Idomeni, in northern Greece. (Valdrin Xhemaj/EPA) Greek Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas said in an interview Friday that his country expects Obama to emphasize how important it is to manage the crisis and not close your eyes to such a crisis during his stops in Athens and Berlin this week. Its not a Greek problem, its a European problem, Mouzalas said. [Were never getting out of here: How refugees got stranded in Greece] In Athens, the president will use the citys history as the cradle of democracy as the backdrop to talk about the importance of European unity, but it is unclear how his message will resonate at home after an election that suggests Americans are prepared to turn inward. Obama also will advocate additional debt relief for Greece, even as he prods Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to undertake more institutional reforms. But George Papaconstantinou, who served as Greeces finance minister from October 2009 to June 2011, said that with just two months left in Obamas term, his words will have limited influence, especially given Trumps victory. The reality is that this is post-election, so while it is welcome, it does carry less weight than before, Papaconstantinou said. This is not 2010, when he was calling [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel to get involved. This is not the same. I dont think this is going to change anything much in Berlin. Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, said the presidents speech will show the need to recognize the challenges presented by globalization, which are manifested in many recent elections including our own, but will still advocate policies to invest in democratic governance, open markets . . . and combat inequality. A fragile E.U. deal with Turkey and moves by Balkan nations to seal their borders to migrants have reduced last years flood of arrivals to a steady trickle. The number of migrants arriving in Greece each day has fallen from an average of 7,000 a day in October 2015 to 100 now. But the region is still coping with major fallout. The continent remains divided on how to deal with the historic wave of asylum seekers, and some national leaders are arguing that Europe should turn away most of them. Merkel, who last year famously welcomed refugees to Germany, has in recent months faced steep political losses and a growing public backlash. In fact, the rhetoric in Europe today echoes the debate over immigration in the United States, with opponents decrying cultural invasion and security risks from the arriving newcomers. Obama will be retracing the steps (though in far greater comfort) of nearly 900,000 migrants who transited last year from Greece to Germany. Pro-refugee and rights groups called Obamas visit an opportunity to highlight the plight of migrants, particularly the tens of thousands stranded in dire conditions in Greece. We think its a great move. We hope Obama will be bold, said Eva Cosse, Greece specialist for Human Rights Watch. He needs to be blunt about the situation in Greece and the lack of European Union solidarity to help these people. According to a recent report from Amnesty International, many migrants trapped in Greece are living in appalling conditions in unheated camps. An additional 16,000 people are stuck on Greek islands in severely overcrowded camps. The rights groups report said there was no effective system to identify vulnerable individuals, such as pregnant women, elderly people, victims of torture, people with disabilities or unaccompanied children, and many are not being provided with the specialized services they need, putting them at heightened risk. One of the biggest problems is roughly 2,500 unaccompanied minors, some of whom are initially kept in detention by Greek authorities. Roughly half of them, Cosse said, are unaccounted for. Mouzalas said the conditions in the centers are not very good, but we make them better every day. He noted that 400 of the unaccompanied minors have the right to be reunified with family members elsewhere in Europe, but these countries have accepted only 90 of them. Thats a very big focus, he said, referring to unaccompanied minors, adding that younger children are now attending local schools with Greek children. If we had not created these camps, these people would have been in the middle of fields in mud, their children would not be integrated in schools, and their sick would not be in hospitals, Mouzalas added. Still, Yonous Muhammadi, president of the Greek Forum of Refugees, said the global community must act soon or these refugees could be permanently marginalized. If we continue this absurdity like this, it means there is no way for the integration of these people into Greek society, Muhammadi said. While Mouzalas acknowledged that the Greek government was still struggling to handle the influx of migrants, he said E.U. authorities have failed to deliver critical assistance on several fronts. Three years ago, Greece did not have an asylum service; it now has one of Europes largest. But while it has asked other E.U. countries to send more than 400 asylum specialists to Greece, they have dispatched just 30. [Germany used to be the promised land for migrants, but no longer] Karl Kopp, spokesman for the Germany-based refugee activist group Pro Asyl, said he hoped Obama would focus on the plight of migrants as a counterpoint to rising right-wing sentiment against them. He urged Obama to pledge that the United States will take in more refugees but said he recognizes the limits on an outgoing president. Obama wont be able to write the check he would like to write, because he wont be in power for much longer, Kopp said. Faiola reported from Berlin. CHICAGO -- When Kirn Kim was 16, he was part of a group of four teens who killed an honors student who attended their high school in Fullerton, Calif. Kim had been along for a ride with a pal who was known for his big talk and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison for having been a lookout in the murder. Today, 23 years later, Kim is one of an emerging class of individuals -- the formerly incarcerated -- who are struggling to make a life for themselves after they've paid their debt to society. "What happened was a tragedy," Kim told me. "But I was determined to make the best of a bad situation and be that one exception, if I ever managed to get out of prison." To that end, Kim used his time behind bars to earn a bachelor's degree in business and became active in rehabilitative programs where he could counsel and help struggling inmates. After 20 years and two tries, Kim was finally granted parole. He moved back home with his parents and, taking back up with a childhood love of computers, delved into coding and computer programming courses at a local college. But he hit a brick wall when it was time to find work. One of Kim's professors, who had been impressed with his work ethic and high grades, put him in touch with a STEM industry recruiter who told him to just forget it. "He said 'I'm sorry, but, look -- the big companies aren't going to hire you. With your record, your best bet is going to a startup,'" Kim recounted. So he did. Kim found a job with a video game startup. It came to an abrupt end, however, when the company made a move to get licensing for a game they had been developing and were told that if they had someone like Kim on staff, there would be no deal. From there Kim tried for temp work but no one would even interview him. "I signed up at temp agencies but obviously because of the box to check, I couldn't get anywhere," said Kim, referring to the question on most hiring applications that asks if applicants have a criminal record. Checking these boxes almost always leads to an ex-offender's employment application being tossed away. "At one temp agency, the interviewer refused to talk to me so I came back the next day and I just sat there for eight hours waiting, hoping he would give me an interview," said Kim. "But my case was pretty high profile and, being back home, some people actually remembered my case and flat-out told me 'I will not hire you.'" Frustrated, but undeterred, Kim started volunteering at organizations seeking to serve others facing the same challenges and found that he was a powerful role model for both those still incarcerated and those who were back on the outside and looking for ways to not get themselves back in jail. Luckily for Kim, the Ban the Box campaign, which started in 2004 and has since persuaded government agencies in more than 45 cities and counties to remove the question regarding conviction history from employment applications, is making gains. A year ago, the California Endowment, a private foundation focused on health, hired Kim as a communications coordinator. The "Ban the Box Philanthropy Challenge" is now an official campaign sponsored by the Executives' Alliance for Boys and Men of Color and calls on nonprofits to implement hiring policies that don't automatically disqualify applicants because of a conviction or arrest. So far, 47 foundations including the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others have joined corporations like Starbucks, Facebook and Target in giving ex-cons a better chance at making something of their lives after prison. "I'm really appreciative about the fact that the endowment and other organizations are recognizing we do have a place in their organizations and have value to contribute," Kim said about his happy ending. "This movement has opened people's eyes to workers who want to give you their blood and sweat to prove they want something better in life." Ban the Box estimates that one out of four adults in the U.S. has a conviction history. Here's hoping the new Philanthropy Challenge can enable happy endings for them, too. The jewelry stores in Indias biggest bullion market were empty Monday as the nations gold trade reeled from the impact of the ongoing currency crunch. Gold dealers said business, which should have been booming as the country enters its wedding season, has dropped off precipitously since the governments surprise announcement that it was scrapping its larger currency notes and replacing them with new bills. India is the worlds second-largest consumer of gold. In the hours after last Tuesdays bombshell, customers had flocked to jewelers to spend the soon-to-be-scrapped currency before a midnight deadline, bringing bags of money, and paying 67 percent above the going rate for gold, said Prithviraj Kothari, the director of RiddiSiddhi Bullions Ltd. Then they disappeared. People are panicking. They dont know whats going to happen next, Kothari said in his windowless office high above the jewelry souks noisy lanes, where the walls had photos of Kothari posing with Bollywood stars and the prime minister. Somewhere in the bowels of the place was a safe stacked with gold bars. A woman tries on a gold earring at a jewelry showroom during Dhanteras, a Hindu festival associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, in Mumbai in October. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters) For the sixth day, people stood in long bank lines to exchange or deposit old currency notes in the wake of the governments demonetization plan, designed to target counterfeiters and legions of Indians who have undeclared income stashed away, so-called black money. About a quarter of Indias gross domestic product comes from the shadow economy, according to the Finance Ministry, and few Indians pay income taxes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was swept into office with a vow to end corruption asked for the countrys forbearance, couching the move as a fight for the honest citizen against those with cash lying under the mattresses and in the sacks of the corrupt. His government has tried to steer the cash-centric country toward bank accounts and digital payments. The people who have their vaults can shake governments. They are very powerful people. Should I be scared of such people? Modi said at a rally Monday in the state of Uttar Pradesh. No! the crowd roared back. I have your blessings. That is why I have taken on such a big fight, Modi said. Yet the surprise demonetization has caused havoc in the lives of many ordinary citizens, more than half of whom do not have a credit or debit card. ATMs continued to run short of cash, and it will be weeks before they are configured properly to dispense the new bills, officials said. Parents cracked open their piggy banks, the sick deferred medical procedures, and others struggled to find ways to pay tea sellers, auto rickshaw drivers and vegetable merchants who take cash only. Civic offices, hospitals and gas stations were instructed to accept the old currency, but the edict has not always been followed, resulting in some panic, fistfights and even sporadic reports of looting. The resourceful quickly found ways to adapt. Some asked farming relatives to deposit money for them as agricultural income is exempt from tax. Villagers held their places in long bank lines with pairs of sandals. Brides and grooms were given decorated envelopes with cash IOUs. Jewelers said that with the cash shortage and uncertainty, the few people who were buying gold this week were those who had imminent weddings. Income tax officers in Chennai and Pune raided some jewelers suspected of accepting the old currency and issuing forged receipts; other shops pulled down their shutters simply over rumors of raids. Gold has for centuries been considered an auspicious metal in India, an important display of a familys prosperity and a safe investment. Brides are often laden with gold bangles, necklaces and earrings even in the poorest families. But now some weddings are being postponed or scaled down. Pragati Shete, 30, an investment banker, said that she and her family had to buy jewelry for her brothers bride on Saturday $4,400 worth of necklaces, rings and earrings on credit but that they never considered doing without it. Its a tradition we follow, she said. Siraj Ahmed, 49, who owns an event planning company in Mumbai, said the cash crunch had disrupted the lavish weekend wedding of his youngest son, 24, a chef. The family had to beg the family jeweler to accept a postdated check for their hefty buy of jewelry and pass the hat among the wedding guests to pay for the bus to and from the reception. It was the most embarrassing day of my life, Ahmed said. Modis decision is the right one, but the way they did it was wrong. They should have made sure all the ATMs were ready with [lower denomination] bills. In the way it was done, it has created a lot of problems for everybody. Most jewelers said they expected sales to resume within a few months, but overall gold imports more than 900 tons last year, according to the World Gold Council probably will fall this year because of rising prices and more stringent government policies, experts said. Its a tough time for the gold industry, Kothari said. There is a lot of black money in the business, so the government is targeting us with new rules and regulations that make it difficult. The government has already added a new excise duty on gold, prompting a 42-day jewelers strike this past spring, as well as a requirement that anybody buying more than about $3,000 in gold jewelry must show a tax identification card. The government also began a program last year to monetize some of the $1 trillion worth of gold held by Indians by encouraging Hindu temples and private citizens to put their gold stores in banks and collect interest rather than keeping them locked away in vaults. Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report from New Delhi. Read more Panic, anger and a scramble to stash cash amid Indias black money squeeze India wants its rich temples to part with their gold to help the economy Indias ATMs are running out of cash and people are furious Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Donald Trump split open the U.S. electorate in his runaway bid for the presidency. Now his unexpected ascension is propelling wider fissures in Western unity, as European allies sparred Monday about how closely to work with the future American leader. The rifts could make it easier for Trump to divide and conquer European leaders to his advantage. But they also put the United States in the unfamiliar position of exploiting European disunity rather than campaigning for a stiff transatlantic response to challenges as varied as Russia, Iran and the global economy. Most European leaders opposed Trump ahead of his election, worrying that he would upend Western security arrangements that have underpinned European stability for 70 years. But now that he is president-elect, that united opposition is dissipating, as nations make their own, disparate calculations about how to handle his stunning victory. [After Trumps victory, the world is left to wonder: What happened to America?] The approaches to Trump run the gamut: In Britain, leaders appear eager to embrace him in a bid to influence his decision-making. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, has said she looks forward to working with Trump so long as he hews closely to Western values of tolerance. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker complained last week that Europe would waste two years waiting for Trump to learn about the world. These differences are a first sign of how the Western alliance may look under a President Trump: chaotic, unpredictable and more fractured than before. Europe has been struggling to hold itself together after years of economic turmoil, Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea and waves of newcomers fleeing war and economic hardship. Britains June vote to leave the European Union exacerbated the challenges. But Trumps victory, in his own words, is Brexit times five. We should regard it as a moment of opportunity, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters as he joined a meeting of European foreign ministers on Monday after blowing off a dinner here the previous evening dedicated to crisis talks on the Trump election. (Earlier, Johnson said Europeans should quit their whinge-o- rama.) Trump is a dealmaker, he said. Change is in the air, and when people demand change, it is the job of politicians to respond, British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a televised speech Monday, referring to the forces across the West that gave rise to both Brexit and Trump. [Trump called these foreign leaders the day after the election] But other European leaders are taking different messages from the Trump victory. Many have a difficult path to navigate: Embrace Trump too easily and they risk emboldening their own anti-establishment forces at home. But by rejecting him, they could cut off support from their most powerful ally and look out of touch with their own voters, many of whom are concerned about migration, economic stagnation and the downsides of globalization the same issues that many say galvanized the Trump voters. The whole question is whether theyre going to show unity on all of these matters, or whether theyre going to move on this in a bilateral way, each one going to Washington to try to make the best possible deal with the new American president, said Pierre Vimont, a former French diplomat who is a senior associate at Carnegie Europe, a think tank. [President-elect Donald Trump is about to learn the nations deep secrets] European foreign and defense ministers gathered Monday in Brussels for a long-planned meeting to discuss efforts to improve security and defense cooperation. The session was spurred by Britains decision to leave the E.U. and gained new urgency after the U.S. election. But many avoided taking a sharp stand on Trump. French leaders said only that they would move forward with their security plans without waiting for the new U.S. administration to develop its policies. Europe should not wait for the decisions of others. It must defend its interests, that is to say, the interests of Europe, and at the same time affirm its strategic role in the world, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who, like his British counterpart, skipped the Sunday emergency dinner. The snub blamed on a scheduling conflict was a subtle way to downgrade Frances role in the political crossfire. Leaders of Frances Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant National Front party said over the weekend that Trump representatives had reached out to them to work together. The party is surging at the polls ahead of a presidential election next year. [Its going to be Trumps world, and not everybody likes it] Other nations appear eager to use any opening by Trump to ease sanctions against Russia. The Obama administration has pushed unity among the 28 E.U. countries on sanctions ever since Russias annexation of Crimea, but many E.U. diplomats believe that Europe would quickly dismantle at least some of its sanctions if Trump eased U.S. sanctions first. That would be a slap to East European nations, many of which fear Russian aggression, and to Merkel, who has forced unanimity on sanctions at one fractious summit after another. Merkel is also Europes most robust challenger to Trumps rise. In the days since his victory, she and her allies increasingly appear to be grappling with the notion that they may be standing alone in defending the post-World War II Western order, as one partner after another has fallen away. Germany has traditionally shied away from funding a robust military because of its Nazi past. Now leaders are talking about the need to be more self-sufficient for their own security, fearful of dependence on a United States whose instincts they fear. For us, it is clear: Europe needs to take more responsibility for itself, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Monday. Some European leaders appear ready to dismiss Trump altogether. I think that well waste time for two years while Mr. Trump tours a world that he is completely unaware of, Juncker told students in Luxembourg last week. The difference between Juncker and the rest of Europe? As the unelected head of the European Unions vast bureaucratic machine, Juncker faces no voters. Read more: Russias establishment basks in Trumps victory Donald Trumps big foreign policy speech, explained. Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Maj. Elim Saad, right, deputy commander of an Israeli battalion stationed at the Israel-Sinai border, watches from a post at Nitzana overlooking Route 10, because of the perceived threat from ISIS-linked Sinai rebels. (Ruth Eglash/The Washington Post) Below a dusty hilltop near this southern Israeli village, a neat, two-lane highway snakes into the distance across the rugged desert landscape. The most striking feature of Route 10, as the road is designated, is the absence of cars. Under a military security advisory, its entire 113-mile length is almost permanently off-limits to civilian traffic the only stretch of highway in tumultuous Israel thus restricted. The reason: It runs along Israels border with Egypts Sinai Peninsula, which for the past five years has been the scene of a violent insurgency mounted by Bedouin clans against the Egyptian government. In 2014, the Sinai rebels, known as Wilayat Sinai, declared their allegiance to the Islamic State and since then have increasingly embraced the groups extremist ideology. [Suspected Islamic State attack kills 12 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai] Cross-border attacks by the militants and spillovers from their battles with the Egyptian army remain sporadic, but deadly, and Israeli authorities say the threat is growing. The most significant incident occurred in 2011, when eight Israelis were killed in a multipronged attack, including on a passenger bus on the border highway, by militants alleged to have crossed into Israel from Sinai. Israeli soldiers pursuing fleeing attackers entered Egyptian territory, where they opened fire inadvertently, according to Israel on Egyptian soldiers, killing at least five. Since then, Route 10, which runs from a point near the Gaza Strip to one not far north of Eilat, Israels southernmost city, has been opened to civilians only on rare occasions. Last month, during the Jewish high holy days, the army allowed Israelis celebrating the holiday to access the scenic road and visit its renowned nature spots. The road is on Israeli land, and that is why we allow people to drive on it from time to time, said Maj. Elim Saad, deputy commander of the Karakal Battalion, which is stationed along the Israel-Sinai border. We have an army, and its there to protect our civilians. But the army lacks the resources to keep the road open permanently, Saad said, noting that soldiers had to set up and staff lookout posts along the route for the recent operation. The road was closed as soon as the holiday ended. A few days later, a 15-year-old Israeli was killed by gunfire from the Egyptian side. The youth had been helping his father, a Defense Ministry employee, carry out maintenance on the new, high-tech fence that runs along the border next to the road. While both Israel and Egypt say the shots were fired from Egypt, the two sides are still investigating the incident. The Egyptian militarys resources in Sinai are stretched, too, as it battles to contain the Bedouin-led insurgency there. The challenge intensified after the tribes aligned themselves with the Islamic State and received money, training and other resources in exchange. [Egypts upheaval has transformed much of Sinai into a no-go zone] A view from Israels Negev Desert shows the fence Israel has constructed along its border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, adjacent to Route 10. (Amir Cohe/Reuters) Although Wilayat Sinai is focused on its fight with the Egyptian military, it has also spoken in the past about attacking Israel, according to Zack Gold, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Councils Hariri Center in Washington. In addition, the Egyptians and the Israelis allege that it maintains a tactical alliance with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and is Israels sworn enemy. Although Hamas has denied that, many experts say the Sinai rebels support Hamas, helping it acquire and smuggle in arms. No one wants another conflict, Gold said, referring to the tension between Israel and Hamas that has produced three wars in the past decade. But, he added, they say it is just around the corner, and eventually it will happen. A senior Israeli army official agreed that the Sinai militants do not represent an immediate threat to Israel. Their main goal is to get rid of the Egyptians and create an Islamic caliphate in Sinai, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with military protocol. But he also noted the Islamic States greatly enhanced ability to carry out attacks in Sinai and the possibility that it could suddenly turn its attention to Israel. Meanwhile, for Egypt, the battle in Sinai has never been deadlier, with near-weekly reports of armed forces personnel killed in fighting in the region, including four in late October. Although the Egyptians also claim to have killed hundreds of militants in Sinai, the militarys accounts of the battles there including details such as the destruction of three warehouses used to store bombs reveal the Islamic States potent capabilities. The reports have been impossible to verify independently, however, because the government has banned journalists from the area. Egypts Western allies, especially the United States, have voiced concern about the growing Islamic State presence in Sinai. Senior U.S. military and political officials, including Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have traveled to Cairo this year to discuss security there and in the broader region. Egypt has worked increasingly closely with Israel to defuse the Islamic State threat, according to officials from both countries. The Israeli military official said that Israel and Egypt have shared interests now that they are fighting a mutual enemy and that they also respect each others sovereignty. That is one reason Israel prefers to keep Route 10 closed, even though more dangerous roads those running along the border with Syria and Lebanon and through the West Bank, for example remain open. When it comes to Syria or Lebanon, Israel knows how to respond and will not hesitate to attack forces across the border, Gold said. But with Egypt, the modus operandi for responding is more limited. They cannot just fire back when shots are fired because it could end up resulting in the death of an allied soldier, and that would embarrass their Egyptian partner. Sudarsan Raghavan in Cairo contributed to this report. Read more: Four U.S. troops, two international peacekeepers wounded in Sinai blasts Israel, Hamas and Egypt form unlikely alliance against Islamic State affiliate Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Chelsea Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence in a military prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, is asking President Obama, for the second time, to commute her sentence to the time she has already served. (U.S. Army via AP/U.S.Army via AP) Chelsea Manning, an Army private convicted in 2013 of taking troves of secret diplomatic and military documents and disclosing them to WikiLeaks, has formally asked President Obama to commute her 35-year prison sentence to allow an immediate release and a first chance at life. Manning, 29, has served 6 years in federal custody longer than any other person convicted of leaking classified information in U.S. history. In an impassioned statement accompanying her petition for clemency, she accepted full and complete responsibility for her decision to disclose the material. She said she pleaded guilty without the benefit of a plea agreement because she believed the military justice system would understand her motivation for the leak and sentence her fairly. I was wrong, wrote Manning, who is imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. She said the 35-year penalty was far more than she imagined possible unreasonable, outrageous and out of line with what I had done. [Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in WikiLeaks case] Her reason for passing the documents to WikiLeaks was to raise public awareness about issues she found concerning, including the impact of war on innocent civilians, her attorney, Vincent J. Ward, said in a letter accompanying Mannings petition. Ward said that Mannings sentence exceeds even international legal norms. Obama, whom he said has taken admirable steps to provide criminal offenders a second chance through clemency, has the opportunity to right this wrong by commuting Mannings sentence to time served. That, he said, would give her a first chance to live a real, meaningful life. This is Mannings second clemency request. In 2013, a few weeks after her sentencing, she sought a pardon from Obama. It was too soon, and the requested relief too much, Manning wrote in her statement. I should have waited. She said the past three years have enabled her to reflect on her actions, her treatment and on her struggle to adjust to the military as a transgender person. [Chelsea Manning, convicted in WikiLeaks case, hospitalized after reported suicide attempt] The Army kept her in solitary confinement for almost a year before formal charges were brought. It was a humiliating and degrading experience, she said. The treatment was called cruel, inhuman and degrading by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture. Manning, who formerly went by the name Bradley Manning, said she failed to meet the expectations of being a male in the Army and just did not fit in anywhere. Today, she said, she is a far different person. I am not Bradley Manning, she said. I really never was. I am Chelsea Manning, a proud woman who is transgender and who, through this application, is respectfully requesting a first chance at life. Her petition was supported by Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War; Morris Davis, a former military commission prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay; and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and legal commentator. There is precedent for a pardon, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. Samuel L. Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst convicted in 1985 of leaking spy satellite photos to Janes Defence Weekly, was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001, he noted. Morison served eight months of a two-year prison term. President-elect Donald Trump, Aftergood said, has taken a dim view of the media, and his campaign rhetoric suggests he would take an aggressive, law-and-order approach to criminal justice. On the other hand, he said, he spoke approvingly of WikiLeaks as the platform that posted emails hacked from the private email account of Hillary Clintons campaign manager, John Podesta. So he seems to find leaks perfectly acceptable when they serve his interests, less so when they dont, Aftergood said. In September, legal commentators Benjamin Wittes and Susan Hennessey wrote in the legal affairs blog Lawfare that Obama ought to consider clemency for Manning. Unlike the case of Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who leaked agency secrets to the media, they wrote, Manning faced the consequences of her actions by standing trial. Snowden has been living under a grant of asylum in Moscow and said he does not believe he could get a fair trial in the United States. Hennessey, a former National Security Agency lawyer, and Wittes also said that they believe Mannings 35-year sentence is excessive and disproportionate. Read more: In an election that has put American Muslims under the spotlight, three voters from different parts of the country reflect on how the political rhetoric has affected them. (McKenna Ewen,Whitney Leaming,Alice Li/The Washington Post) In an election that has put American Muslims under the spotlight, three voters from different parts of the country reflect on how the political rhetoric has affected them. (McKenna Ewen,Whitney Leaming,Alice Li/The Washington Post) Hate crimes against Muslims spiked last year to their highest level in more than a decade an increase that experts and advocates say was fueled by anger over terrorist attacks and anti-Islam rhetoric on the campaign trail. Law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Muslim incidents in 2015, up nearly 67 percent from the year before, according to FBI data released Monday. That is significant in its own right, but even more so in historical context. The last time the FBI recorded more than 160 anti-Muslim incidents was in 2001, when it reported 481. That was the year that Islamist militants attacked the World Trade Center, killing thousands and sparking a wave of anti-Muslim incidents. Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that he believed the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign was to blame and that he feared there will be more hate crimes this year. Whenever you have one of the nations leading public figures in the person of Donald Trump mainstreaming and empowering Islamophobia in the nation, its the inevitable result, he said. [The postelection hate spike: How long will it last?] A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Hate crimes overall increased about 6.7 percent from 2014 to 2015, but the number of such crimes was still less than it was a decade earlier. Anti-black incidents rose by about 7.6 percent, anti-Jewish incidents rose by about 9 percent, and incidents based on sexual orientation rose by about 3.5 percent from 2014 to 2015. Before and after Trumps election, there were reports of hateful acts across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center, drawing on news accounts, social media postings and direct reports, said it had tallied 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation as of Friday. Last week, a Muslim student at San Diego State University reported that she was robbed by two men who made comments about Trump. Police said they believe she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab. The week before the election, a black church in Mississippi was burned and spray-painted with the words Vote Trump. During his campaign, Trump vowed to have law enforcement conduct surveillance at mosques and called for at least a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States, measures that he suggested might prevent terrorist attacks. Asked on 60 Minutes about reports of supporters harassing Latinos and Muslims, he said: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, Stop it. Notably, the data from 2015 does not show an increase in anti-Latino incidents from the year before. Still, advocates say Trumps rhetoric is at least partly to blame for the spike in other incidents. I dont think theres any question at all that the Trump campaign contributed and contributed mightily to these numbers, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The data available is somewhat limited, analysts say, because law enforcement agencies provide numbers voluntarily to the FBI, and many did not report hate crimes. Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys show a far greater number of hate crimes than what is reported hundreds of thousands each year. The data largely confirms the findings of Brian Levin, a professor at California State University at San Bernardino, who wrote earlier this year about a surge in crimes against Muslims. In an interview Monday, Levin said he attributed the spike to three factors anger after terrorist attacks like those in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris; a generally elevated level of prejudice against Muslims; and the coalescence of a sociopolitical movement that labels Muslims as an enemy. Levin said he found a spate of anti-Muslim incidents in the weeks immediately following the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. After Paris, for example, a Florida man threatened violence at two mosques in two anti-Islamic diatribes. But Levin said he did not expect that those would make 2015 an anomaly. Based on 2016 data in places such as Ohio, Texas, Delaware and New York, he estimated that anti-Muslim hate crimes are either at or above the levels of 2015. Read more: Stop it, Trump tells supporters who are spreading hate. Is it enough? How a major hate-watch group is preparing for President Trumps America By Artashes Khalatyan The key issue of negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh (hereinafter NK) conflict settlement is the status of the disputed region, which must be resolved on the basis of the right of nations to self-determination. In this regard, many experts and politicians point out the mechanism of resolution of the Kosovo conflict as precedential for the determination of the NK status[1]. Truly, with its historical and political context of origination and further development the Kosovo conflict resembles the one around Nagorno-Karabakh, and what is the most important, the UN International Court of JusticeICJ, played a considerable role in the settlement of Kosovo conflict, transforming it from strictly politically negotiable issue to a legal one. This fact is of utmost importance, since legal resolution of an international dispute has formal and definite rules, and hence, it is considered a much more reliable tool for the conflict settlement. The legal mechanism for determination of the Kosovo status is valuable due to the very fact of the element of international judicial control over its resolution. Moreover, the ICJ advisory opinion of July 22, 2010, that recognized the proclamation of independence by Kosovo parliament on February 17, 2008 as lawful, for the first time has issued a valuable legal interpretation (legal doctrine) of the right of nations to self-determination in post-colonial context. Exact legal criteria have also been prescribed, which, in every single case, enable to legally assess lawfulness of an act of declaration of independence and secession by a national community seeking self-determination. This fact makes Kosovo a very important precedent for the Armenian side both in the negotiations and in the context of international legal recognition of NK sovereignty. The normative gist of the advisory opinion of the UN Court on Kosovo case is built upon reasoning on two interrelated issues: 1. Is unilateral declaration of independence from the parent state by the national community lawful under the international law? 2. Which criteria should be met by the act of independence or external self-determination to be considered legitimate according to international law? Pursuant the ICJ, unilateral declaration of independence by a nation or people is not internationally illegal in itself, because the international law does not enshrine prohibition of such an act[2]. Factually, in this case the UN Court has applied the famous Lotus presumptiona well-known principle of international law, inherent to intra-state legal doctrine as what is not prohibited is permitted.[3] It follows that a parent state cannot delegitimize the act of declaration of independence by a national community, performing a cessation from that state through its right to self-determination. Surely, the parent state shall not use force against seceding community, as Serbia did against Kosovo and Azerbaijan did against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan, unleashing ethnic cleansings of Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and elsewhere, and launching military aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, who were striving for their self-determination. Besides that, the UN Court in Paragraph 80 of its advisory opinion has touched upon the correlation between two principles of international law: territorial integrity of states and rights of nations to self-determination. The ICJ states, that the principle of territorial integrity of states concerns relations between the states[4]. Thus, the UN Court has annulled another basis of disputing the secession act by a national community seeking self-determination: the supposed contradiction between self-determination of nations and territorial integrity of states and the dominance of territorial integrity over self-determination. As a result, the ICJ has emphasized the self-executive nature of the principle of self-determination of nations. We are of the opinion that the logic of UN Courts reasoning about the scope of action of the principle of territorial integrity is limited to the international obligation of states not to use force against each other[5]. Such an approach reveals the ICJs inner determination towards legitimation of the principle of self-determination of nations in post-colonial context. This fact is of paramount importance, because the UN Court is one of the basic subjects, contributing to the formation of international law. The ICJ in its advisory opinion is also very informative about which formal criteria unilateral declaration of independence, as an international legal concept, shall meet to determine its being legitimate or not in each case. Analyzing legal arguments of the ICJs advisory opinion in question, the UN Courts legal stance on this issue may be defined in the following way: unilateral declaration of independence is lawful, if it is performed by an organization or body, representing all the people, seeking self-determination, and it shall not be a result or be connected with egregious violations of jus cogens or other norms of general international law by the people, seeking self-determination[6]. Hence, a national liberation movement or other representative body can act as a subject, representing the will of the whole nation, seeking self-determination[7]. Kosovos independence was declared by Kosovos parliament, having a high level of representativeness. However, it was formed under the control of the administration of the UN Mission in Kosovo and within its institutional support. Whereas, the act of Nagorno-Karabakhs declaration of independence has preceded the minimum threshold of democratic legitimation, prescribed by the ICJ, because on December 10, 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region was proclaimed independent by means of direct declaration of peoples will: plebiscite or referendum, which is considered the supreme manifestation of democracy. At the same time, the UN Court has emphasized that the lawfulness of unilateral declaration of independence is conditioned by the fact whether it is a result of or is connected with unlawful use of force or other egregious violations of peremptory norms of international law, i.e. jus cogens[8]. In this context it is necessary to note, that in case of Kosovo it is alleged, that the authorities of the region have primordially organized violence and even ethnic cleansings of national minorities of Kosovo and especially Serbians[9]. By contrast, it is obvious, that the movement for independence of Nagorno-Karabakh was peaceful and legitimate and was subjected to brutal force of Azerbaijan, authorities of which unleashed war against the population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Thus, despite in some sense cagey stance of the ICJ and its reluctance to wholly reveal the inner sense and the application issue of the principle of self-determination of nations, the UN Courts advisory opinion on the Kosovo case is of great importance for post-colonial interpretation of the aforementioned principle of international law and for the elaboration of legal bases of its application. It encourages liberation movements to further their political aspirations and to reach international recognition of their right to self-determination. It especially relates to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. As preceding paragraphs of the article show, Nagorno-Karabakh fully meets the legal criteria and postulates, set forth by the ICJ and, hence, has all the necessary legal and factual bases for having its independence internationally recognized. Accordingly, the UN Courts advisory opinion can become an influential trump for the Armenian side. In this respect it is necessary, that the Republic of Armenia initiated an active diplomatic process in the UN, Council of Europe, OSCE and other international organizations to secure adoption of resolutions and other documents, which will concern the issue of recognition and respect of the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination. Certainly, these documents may refer to the UN Courts advisory opinion on Kosovo, as a strong legal dictum. It is also important to use the ICJs aforementioned judicial act to strengthen the position of the Armenian side in bilateral negotiations with other states on recognition of Nagorno-Karabakhs independence. Besides that, if Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on peaceful settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be held up, the advisory opinion on Kosovo might be a precedential legal basis for the Armenian side to initiate international proceedings in the ICJ for recognition and endorsement of the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination. Improving Security Policy Debates in Armenia (NED) The Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA) [1] See the speech of the senior consultant of the OSCE D. Linch at NATO international seminar Parliamentary Assembly held in 2008 in Baku, https://armenpress.am/arm/news/140135/eahk-i-nerkayacucichy-kosovon-nakhadep-e-hamarum.html, G. NIksy, Kosovo is a precedent for the resolution of the Karabakh conflict 2012, http://www.artsakhtert.com/arm/politics/item/2300 [2] See Advisory Opinion on the Accordance with International Law of Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, p.32, para 84 (I.C.J. 2010) [3] See Burri, Thomas. The Kosovo Opinion and Secession: The Sounds of Silence and Missing Links German L aw Journal. 11(2010):881-890 [4] See Advisory opinion, p. 30, para 80 [5] Not surprisingly the UN Court refers to Article 2 of the UN Charter and Article 4 of the Helsinki Final Act, according to which, states shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (See Advisory opinion, at 30). Moreover, there are much more international legal instruments, which prescribe alike status of the principle of territorial integrity in international relations. (See International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations etc.) [6] See Advisory opinion p.20, para52, pp.30- 31, para 81 and 36-39, para 102-109 [7] See Cassese, Antonio. Self-Determination of Peoples. Cambridge: University Press,1995, pp.165-166 [8] See Advisory Opinion, pp. 30-31, para 81 [9] See A. Bolgari, Comparative Analysis of the Secessions of Kosovo and South Ossetia and Their Subsequent Independence Recognition, Kent State University, 2011, p.53, T. Torosyan, Similarities and Peculiarities of Nagorno-Karabakh and Kosovo conflicts., Yerevan, 2007, pp. 9,12,14 Jewish settler children play next to a road in Amona, an unauthorized Israeli outpost in the West Bank, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah,on May 18. (Oded Balilty/Associated Press) Right-wing leaders in the Israeli government have seized on the election of Donald Trump to push forward assertive new legislation that would legalize Jewish settlements in the West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian land. Believing that the time to act is now, as the U.S. president-elect begins to shape his foreign policy, top Israeli ministers voted unanimously Sunday in favor of a bill that would allow Israeli settlements and outposts that were built on property owned by Palestinians to avoid court-ordered demolitions. On Monday, Israeli politicians dug in for a fight over the legislation, which would retroactively offer legal protection to thousands of homes built both in long-established settlements and in newer wildcat outposts that were constructed on private Palestinian land. Palestinian landowners would be given money or alternative land parcels in exchange for their seized property. Israel considers most of its settlements legal but has acknowledged that some are either built without approval by the military or were erected on private Palestinian lands. The move by Israeli leaders is one of the first concrete responses to the Trump election on the international stage. Trump and his advisers have signaled that the incoming administration will be more supportive of Israel than was President Obama, whose State Department has sharply criticized settlements as an obstacle to peace, even as the White House awarded Israel an unprecedented $38 billion in military aid over the coming decade and has staunchly defended Israel in political forums. [Top Trump adviser says Israeli settlements are not an obstacle to peace] Naftali Bennett, Israels education minister and the leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, said the Trump victory means that the era of the Palestinian state is over, a direct challenge to the official government position of backing a two-state solution. Bennett and his allies view the full legalization of the settlements built on Palestinian land as only a first step. Bennett wants Israel to formally annex the 60 percent of the West Bank where the Jewish-only settlements are located, thereby ending any prospect for a viable Palestinian state. Speaking to foreign correspondents Monday, Bennett said the Trump election and shifting politics in Europe provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything. As for the idea that Israel should wait and see where Trump is going, Bennett said it is important for Israel to declare what it wants. The draft legislation was opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the move childish and irresponsible. Even so, senior members and top ministers of Netanyahus fellow Likud party approved a bill that their leader considers ill-timed and needlessly provocative. Netanyahu finds himself in a tight spot. If the draft legislation is eventually passed by the parliament not a sure bet the Israeli leader fears a wave of condemnation by Europe and the United Nations, where pro-Palestinian voices can insist that the settlers are stealing Arab-owned land with government approval. Netanyahu is also wary of what Obama may do in his last months in office. The outgoing president, many Israelis fear, could formally outline what the Americans consider a fair resolution to the long-running conflict, including the parameters for a future Palestinian state. Obama could do this in a speech or by allowing a resolution to pass in the United Nations. Daniel Friedmann, a former Israeli justice minister, said, Netanyahu really wanted to avoid this. He said the Israeli prime minister could stop it if he really wanted to, but he is not in an easy position, because he does not want the settlers to think that he is the one who threw it out. Netanyahu could still stall or derail the legislation, but the clock is ticking. The first of three readings of the bill is scheduled for Wednesday. The State Department condemned the proposed law, saying it further endangers the prospects for peace. This legislation would be a dramatic advancement of the settlement enterprise, which is already gravely endangering the prospects for a two-state solution, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said on Monday. This only makes clear the choice Israel faces between building more settlements and preserving the possibility of peace. Trudeau added that the State Department hopes the proposal does not become law but declined to say whether the administration plans any response if it is enacted. [State Dept. criticizes Israeli settlement expansion, demolitions] The move to press ahead with the legalization bill was spurred by the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered that a Jewish settlement called Amona be evacuated and demolished because a portion of it was built on privately owned Palestinian land. On Monday, the high court rejected a government appeal for a delay and gave the Israeli military until Dec. 25 to clear the settlement. Demolition orders against other settlements built on private Palestinian land are also looming. Today about 400,000 Jewish settlers are living on 125 settlements and 100 outposts in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on territory that Palestinians want for a future state. Most of the world considers the settlements illegal under international law. The United States calls the communities illegitimate. Israel disputes that. In the past year, the Obama White House and the State Department have condemned settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with sharply escalating rhetoric, openly questioning whether Netanyahu is truly committed to a two-state solution. Shai Ben Yosef, a leader of the Ofra settlement, which also is partly built on private Palestinian land, told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Trumps election removes that excuse of, Oy vey, what are they going to do to us? He added: The person about to move into the White House is a man whose motivation to pressure Israel is much smaller. We can reach agreements with him about legalizing the settlements. Yosef said Netanyahu has often cited Washington as the reason for his insistence that settlements grow slowly, out of fear of upsetting the Americans. With Trumps election, he said, our government needs to drop all those old excuses. [Some Israelis see $38 billion U.S. military aid offer as a failure] As usual, the Palestinians were on the sidelines as their fates were being debated in the Israeli parliament and courts. The Palestinian government condemned the move to legalize settlements built on private Palestinian land as theft. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, vowed that the Palestinians would go to the U.N. Security Council to seek to block the legislations implementation. He called the move a dangerous escalation in the region. The move is not universally embraced in Israel, either. Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition in parliament, said the proposed bill is a serious stain on Israels law books, because it authorizes theft and robbery. There is no precedent, nothing like it, in which the Israeli government authorized a law that allows taking land from private people. Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit warned that legislation contradicts international law and said he wouldnt be able to defend the bill in front of the high court. I think that it is too early and premature for politicians to make statements and I think it is not wise, Israels former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said of the Israelis who think they know what Trumps intentions are toward Israel and the Palestinians. Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report. Read more: Israel wants to bulldoze this ramshackle village, but Europe is providing life support Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news 2016 is on track to be the hottest year in history, and here is how you can help protect our planet If youve been feeling a little toastier than usual lately, youre not the only one. The U.N.s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced Monday that 2016 will very likely be the hottest on record. WMO secretary general and Downer in Chief, Petteri Taalas said, The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016. While high temperatures in early 2016 were likely due to the El Nino phenomenon, a climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean characterized by a warming of ocean water and unpredictable weather, temperatures have remained high throughout the year. Taalas also stated that because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. Once in a generation heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. 2016 has been the hottest year ever recorded... and yet people continue to think global warming is a myth! change needs to happen, and quick Sarah Close (@Sazclose) November 14, 2016 And it is especially important for us residing in the States to take action (even small steps) to help the organizations protecting the environment. President-elect Trump has reportedly been looking for ways to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement as soon as possible. The agreement, which went into force on November 4th, four days before the election, has been ratified by 109 countries. It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the temperature increase. Without the participation of the United States, which accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it will be difficult for the agreement to reach its goals. The report warned that high impact climate events caused by global warming could lead to food shortages, population migration, and widespread conflict. If youd like contribute to organizations working to protect the environment and make sure that Earth remains inhabitable, check out this list from EarthEasy.com, and our list here at HelloGiggles. We can act to protect our planet. The post 2016 is on track to be the hottest year in history, and here is how you can help protect our planet appeared first on HelloGiggles. DNA genes Browse the published research from 23andMe, and you may be amazed by how much the genetic testing startup has discovered in a few years. Send in your spit and take a few surveys, and you'll get an idea of how much more is coming. Since launching in 2006, 23andMe has collected and analyzed DNA samples from 1.2-million customers, with the majority allowing their data to be used in research. Although facing controversy over (past) FDA concerns, (current) partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, and (future) plans to develop its own drugs, the billion-dollar company has always said its mission is to help people access, understand, and benefit from the human genome. Theres no doubt it has made contributions there. One of 23andMes biggest discoveries came this summer with a paper linking 17 genetic tweaks, or SNPs (pronounced "snips"), that appear to be tied to one's risk of developing Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Past attempts to identify genetic connections with depression were extremely limited, largely because other researchers didnt have enough data. "Everyone is recognizing that this is a numbers problem," Ashley Winslow, director of neurogenetics at the University of Pennsylvania, told MIT Tech Review. "Its hard if not impossible to get to the numbers that we saw in the 23andMe study." "My group has been chasing depression genes for more than a decade without success, so as you can imagine we were really thrilled with the outcome," Harvard psychiatry professor Roy Perlis, one of the leading authors of the paper and the Associate Director of the Psychiatric Genetics Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Business Insider. Studies like this could help pave the way to better understanding and treatment of diseases. In fact, 23andMe was also involved this summer in a study focused on the treatment of depression, which linked one gene variant to lower efficacy in one drug. 23andMe is, of course, far from the only group doing research in this field: thousands of genome-wide association studies have been published in recent years. Where the company stands out is in its extensive use of surveys as an easy yet effective way to get data. Story continues 23andMe has "proven that volunteer-reporter phenotypes give much the same results as information collected in more traditional ways," Teri Manolio, Director of Genomic Medicine at the National Human Genome Research Institute, wrote in an email. How much the company has contributed beyond that is a matter of opinion. Manolio said the company has not played a large role so far, though she also said it had probably done more than other personal genomics companies and that it might play a larger role in the future. Peter Visscher, chair of Quantitative Genomics at the University of Queensland, was more positive. "23andMe has been an important player in research involving genome-wide association studies (GWAS)," he wrote in an email. "23andMe has contributed significantly to discoveries of new genes across a range of traits and diseases, including, for example, educational attainment and Parkinsons Disease." He also noted that the company could be a lot more helpful by sharing additional data with researchers. 23andMe has so far discovered hundreds of genetic links to traits, including parts of DNA that relate to freckling, sneezing, hair loss, not liking the taste of cilantro, smelling asparagus in your pee, allergies, asthma, motion sickness, emotional response, age of puberty, bone density, myopia, hypothyroidism, problem drinking, sleep habits, neuroticism, Parkinsons, cancer, and more. The company has also helped establish links between DNA and education attainment, show a wider risk of neurodegenerative diseases, introduce new tech for analyzing Parkinsons and neurodegenerative diseases, and more. Then theres the stuff thats yet to come. 23andMe members are invited to click through hundreds of questions, asking them about everything from narcissism to math skills, nail biting to vocabulary. Many of these traits haven't been tied to genetics yet but could be some day. 23andMe currently provides a lot of genetic information for $199 to customers who send in a tube of spit. Some of that info is just interesting, like how much Neanderthal DNA people carry, where their more recent ancestors came from, and how likely they are to have dark hair, freckles, and a preference for salty snacks. Some of it is medically important, like whether they carry potentially dangerous variants for things like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. Director of Clinical Development at 23andme, Erynn Gordon, told us the company is continually adding more traits to client reports, as well as publishing research. Take misophonia, the genetically linked characteristic of getting annoyed by hearing other people chewing. "I dont think its out yet, but that might be something that you would see in the future," Gordon said. The ability to sing in tune or clap in rhythm? Attractiveness to mosquitos? Difficulty hearing conversations in loud areas? These are all things that 23andMe asks about, meaning they are things the company can begin to analyze, figuring out where genetics matter and how. "Were just scratching the surface of our understanding," founder Anne Wojcicki said earlier this year. What will the company do with all its new info? Good, we hope. NOW WATCH: The pros and cons of drinking protein shakes after exercising More From Business Insider Special Forces The three members of Army Special Forces who were killed earlier this month outside a Jordanian military base were working for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to a report in The Washington Post. The three soldiers with the Fort Campbell, Kentucky-based 5th Special Forces Group were killed while entering a military base in Jordan on November 4. The soldiers, Staff Sgts. Matthew C. Lewellen, 27; Kevin J. McEnroe, 30; and James F. Moriarty, 27, were apparently fired upon by Jordanian security forces at the gate to King Feisal Air Base, where they were deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. According to The Post, the soldiers were working on the CIA's program to train moderate Syrian rebels. It's still unclear what the circumstances were surrounding their deaths. Jordanian military officials said that shots were fired as the Americans' car tried to enter the base, and a Jordanian military officer was also wounded, according to Army Times. Reporting from the Post seems to suggest that an accidental discharge from the Green Berets inside their vehicle may have led to a shootout, which an official called a "chain of unfortunate events." The loss of the three soldiers may be the deadliest incident for the CIA since 2009, when a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team in Khost, Afghanistan. The CIA often "details" special operations units to operate within its paramilitary force, called Special Activities Division. Some notable examples include the use of Army's Delta Force in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and the operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, which was carried out by Navy SEALs assigned to the CIA. It has been particularly rough time for the Army Special Forces community. Besides the three soldiers killed in Jordan, there were two others killed in Afghanistan and another killed during scuba training this month. NOW WATCH: China flexes its military might by unveiling a new stealth fighter jet More From Business Insider You've likely heard about the downsides of social media and how oversharing and unprofessional comments can wreak havoc on your application. But social media can also be a great tool for college-bound students: It enables you to research prospective schools, connect with alumni groups and interact with admissions staff. There are also less obvious ways that you can make Facebook, Twitter and other online connections more productive as you choose a college. Here are three ways college-bound students can use social media to research their school choices. [Discover why high school students increasingly use social media for college search.] 1. Look beyond the obvious accounts: It is all too easy to copy and paste a Facebook profile or a Twitter handle from a college's website. If you simply follow these accounts and move on, however, you may miss useful information. Schools are well aware of the importance of social media. A strong online presence can convince students to apply to their institutions, in part because high school students can connect with future classmates and professors, as well as less obvious resources. As a result, colleges and universities devote time and money to developing their online presence. Part of this outreach includes maintaining separate accounts for academic departments, branch campuses and offices. The official Facebook page for the University of Washington, for example, has more than 330,000 likes. It can be difficult for one student to stand out in this environment, although it can be useful for general knowledge. The university's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Facebook page, in contrast, has 350 likes, and its Twitter account has slightly more than 1,000 followers. If your passion is fisheries science, this is a great way to connect with a highly rated program. Many academic departments and college offices -- such as the admissions office at the University of Wisconsin--Madison -- have their own social media accounts. To locate these subaccounts, try a simple text search for the name of the school and the departments relevant to your interests. Story continues [Connect on social media to show colleges interest.] 2. Follow more of the college's network: Other articles have recommended that you connect with current students at your prospective schools on social media. This is great advice, but it is worth expanding beyond the schools' current students. For instance, locate professors on Twitter who teach interesting classes or conduct groundbreaking research. U ndergraduate research is key to a career in science. Laboratories with active research programs will often have an online presence, and you can gauge how receptive they are to new students. If they ignore your overtures now, this could be a red flag that you will not be welcome as an enrolled student. Students in arts, humanities and preprofessional programs likewise benefit from close contact with prospective instructors. Yes, they are busy -- and you should be brief and respectful in your contact -- but you can assess the openness of academic culture at the college or university. If Greek life, intramural sports, student government or volunteerism interest you, look for their social media presence. If they are difficult to find or inactive, this may indicate that there is not much enthusiasm for these groups at the school. 3. Investigate less common platforms: There are important social media platforms beyond Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn, for example, is the preferred network for professionals. Your prospective schools will likely have a presence there, and it is an excellent platform for finding alumni, faculty and staff to contact. You will also find more substantive posts on LinkedIn, including recent news about the college or university. Some schools also use YouTube to host videos of campus activities. Reddit has forums for nearly every school, and Instagram boasts both official accounts and active student communities. Social media can be an excellent tool for research. Use it well, look beyond the obvious avenues and dig deep. With some work, you can gain a much deeper perspective on schools than their slick advertising copy allows. Brian Witte is a professional SAT tutor with Varsity Tutors. He earned his Bachelor of Science from the University of Washington and holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Kiplinger Vanguard is the biggest fund company in the land, with more than $3 trillion in assets. So chances are high that many retirement savers have access to Vanguard funds in their 401(k) plans. But size is no guarantee of good results. Thirty-four Vanguard funds appear on a list of the 105 most popular mutual funds in employer-sponsored retirement savings plans. No other fund company comes close. Many of those Vanguard funds including index funds, actively managed funds and target-date funds are well suited for retirement savers. (Read more about the best Vanguard funds for your retirement savings.) But some of the popular funds didn't make the cut based on our analysis of the funds' performance and prospects. Here are three Vanguard funds to avoid in your 401(k). You are better off investing your retirement savings in other better-performing funds. SEE ALSO: Best Fidelity Funds for Your Retirement Savings Vanguard Explorer Once upon a time, Explorer was a solid, aggressive small-company stock fund. Now it's "a poster child" for the "watered-down" results that come from funds that have multiple managers, says Dan Wiener, editor of The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, a newsletter. Wiener is referring to Vanguard's penchant for divvying up the assets of a large fund among multiple subadvisers. In this case, Explorer has 14 managers who hail from seven subadvisers. Vanguard believes the different stock-picking approaches of the advisory firms will complement each other and ultimately bolster the fund's performance. But Explorer's results have been subpar. In eight of the past 11 calendar years (including so far in 2016), the fund has trailed its chosen benchmark, the Russell 2500 Growth index (which tracks stocks of 2,500 fast-growing small companies). On a trailing basis, it falls behind, too. Over the past 10 years through October 11, Explorer lagged its bogey by an average of 1.2 percentage point per year. Explorer's multi-manager setup has other problems. For one thing, Vanguard doesn't publish each firm's results separately. Moreover, subadvisers have taken control over a portion of the fund's assets at different times (one firm, Wellington Management, came on as early as 1994; the latest additions, in 2014). Since they all started working as a group in June 2014, the fund has returned 3.9% annualized, trailing the Russell 2500 Growth index by an average of 1.4 percentage points per year. Story continues A better bet, if it is available in your plan, is Vanguard Small Capitalization Index (NAESX). It has outpaced Explorer in seven of the past 11 calendar years (including so far in 2016). As its name indicates, the fund simply seeks to mimic an index--in this case, the CRSP US Small Cap index (CSRP stands for Center for Research in Security Prices). SEE ALSO: 6 Best Mutual Funds for Value Stocks Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities This actively managed fund does what it's supposed to do. It invests in Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, which provide a hedge against rising consumer prices. These bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, pay a modest guaranteed return above the rate of inflation. But the fund currently pays a negative yield in part because of the double whammy of generally low expectations for inflation and the persistently low interest-rate environment. That hasn't prevented manager Gemma Wright-Casparius from generating a positive return for investors, albeit a small one. Since she took over in August 2011, the fund has returned an annualized 1.3%. It's not much, but it beat 88% of funds that invest in inflation-protection bonds. The annual rate of inflation over that time has dropped from 3.0% in 2011 to 0.8% in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our main concern about the Vanguard fund is that it is highly sensitive to changes in interest rates. The fund's average duration, a measure of interest-rate sensitivity, is 8.4 years. That implies that if rates were to rise by one percentage point, the fund's share price would fall by 8.4% (bond prices and interest rates move in opposite directions). By contrast, the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate Bond index, a measure of the broad U.S. bond market, has a duration of 5.6 years. With rates more likely to rise than to fall from today's microscropic levels, this fund looks too risky. SEE ALSO: 7 Best Fidelity Index Funds for the Money Vanguard Windsor II Like sibling Vanguard Windsor (VWNDX), Windsor II invests in bargain-priced large-company stocks. But this fund has over twice as much in assets, and close to three times as many managers. And yet, with 11 managers from five subadvisers at the helm, Windsor II can't manage to outpace its benchmark, the Russell 1000 Value index, which tracks shares of large, undervalued companies. The fund has lagged the index in seven of the past 11 years, including so far in 2016. It's a sorry picture. Over the past 10 years, Vanguard 500 Index (VFINX) and Vanguard Value Index (VIVAX) would have served you better. SEE ALSO: KIP 25: Best Mutual Funds for Low Fees Teens across the country walked out of class last week to protest the presidential election of Donald Trump. "There was a lot of anger about a lot of hatred that students are perceiving from this president-elect," says Sam Pasarow, principal of Berkeley High School in California, where about 1,500 to 2,000 students walked off campus Wednesday morning. About 200 students staged a similar walkout at West Seattle High School following Tuesday's election, says Principal Ruth Medsker. "Their anger and frustration was their ideals didn't line up with who they perceived got into the government," she says. "They needed time to process that." [Find out how high school teachers covered presidential election results.] Teenage activists followed suit at high schools in Arizona and Colorado, local news organizations reported. Pasarow was prepared for a protest since student activism is ingrained into the culture of Berkeley High. But other high school administrators who aren't used to student activism can consider the following advice to manage these events on school grounds. 1. Understand students' free speech rights: While students retain freedom of speech within school grounds, that freedom looks different inside of a school, says Lee Rowland, a free speech attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued schools that censor students unconstitutionally. School administrators may discipline students if their speech is disruptive to the learning environment, Rowland says. "Students have far more rights to speak their mind in the hallways and the cafeteria, than they do, for example, to hold court in the middle of class or to walk out of class, or to hold a demonstration when they would otherwise be in class." School administrators also need to treat all speech equally regardless of viewpoint, she says. "Whether a student happens to be pro-Trump or anti-Trump, they have the same free speech rights, and schools may not discipline students for expressing a particular viewpoint, unless and until that viewpoint crosses the line into bullying or creating a hostile environment for another student." Story continues 2. Ensure students understand the rules and consequences: Rowland suggests school officials support their students' desire to share, but make it clear to students what the rules are for where that speech will not be disruptive. Some students at West Seattle High have protested before, Medsker says. And students are familiar with the attendance policies. While students have the right to peacefully protest, demonstrations are not sanctioned by the district. The students who participated in the walkout were marked absent for their time spent outside of class, she says, and that could have consequences. The district's policy is students may not be able to make up work for unexcused absences, she says, and teachers write their attendance policies in their syllabuses. "If something is important to you, then you understand there might be some consequences for it," she says. "Nobody was suspended, we want our kids in school, learning." 3. Be aware of students with opposing viewpoints: "We need to make sure that we are making space for all opinions and we as educators are not imposing our beliefs on kids," says Pasarow, of Berkeley High. He'd encourage administrators at schools where there is deep division between students to find a way to have safe dialogue -- physically, emotionally and cognitively -- so students can talk about their beliefs and values without being policed by others. Although, he says, this is something Berkeley High -- a highly liberal community -- is working on. [Foster civil discourse in high school civics classes.] 4. Turn protests into a teachable moment: After the walkout at West Seattle High, Medsker invited the students to the school's theater for a mostly student-led discussion before the students returned to class. Medsker framed the discussion by explaining the election results were part of a democratic process and as future leaders they can get involved and influence issues they care about. While Medsker doesn't condone walkouts, empowering students is important to her. "If we teach our students how to use their knowledge to effectively impact their world, we will all be in a better place." Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com. Alexandra Pannoni is an education digital producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com. Romanian anti-corruption officials handed out 50 indictments on Friday in an alcohol industry tax evasion case that allegedly caused more than US$ 140 million in state losses. Romanias National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) said in a statement that it indicted 41 people and nine companies. Prosecutors allege those indicted, including businessmen and officials from Romanias finance ministry and tax agency, engaged in a tax evasion scheme that caused 597.22 million lei (US$ 142.38 million) in state losses. Prosecutors say that, between 2010 and 2014, alcohol producer Murfatlar Romania SA and eight other companies controlled by Romanian "Wine King" George Ivanescu evaded excise and value added taxes by fraudulently claiming deductions. Anti-corruption prosecutors detained 10 people, including Ivanescu, in October for alleged involvement in the case. Another five high-ranking officials were placed under judicial supervision after being suspected of aiding two of the companies in tax evasion. The Romanian town of Murfatlar (Photo: Pmatlock, CC BY-SA 3.0.) occrp.org The strange story of Alexandria Duval got stranger last week when she was arrested again in her twin sisters death. Authorities allege that Duval (nee Alison Dadow) drove her and her sister off a cliff in Hawaii on May 29, injuring herself and killing her twin, Anastasia Duval (born as Ann Dadow). The fatal crash this summer reportedly capped off years of business ventures, bankruptcies and moves for the sisters, who first made a name for themselves as yoga instructors in Florida. Alexandrias attorney has called the murder allegations extreme and cold-hearted. Here are five things you need to know about the case. 1. Alexandria Was Charged with Anastasias Murder Before and Released Soon after the fatal crash, Alexandria was charged in early June with second-degree murder in Anastasias death. Police accused her of intentionally driving the SUV off the road. Almost immediately, however, a judge tossed out the murder charge after ruling there wasnt enough probable cause. We cross-examined them. They presented their evidence and the judge essentially found that there was not enough evidence to sustain the charge, Alexandrias attorney, Todd Eddins, reportedly said at the time. It remains unclear what new evidence may have come to light before Alexandrias second arrest (prosecutors could not immediately be reached). But the Maui News reports that the new murder charge is the result of a grand jurys decision in October. As of Friday, Alexandria was awaiting extradition to Hawaii from Albany, New York, where she was arrested that same day, police said in a statement. She will not enter a plea until she is extradited. 2. Witnesses Allegedly Saw a Fight in the SUV Before the Crash A motive remains unclear in the alleged murder. But before their vehicle plunged 200 feet off a cliff in Hana, Maui, witnesses reported seeing the Duval sisters fighting with each other, with the passenger pulling the drivers hair, officials alleged, according to the Associated Press. Story continues Witnesses told police that two women were arguing in the parked vehicle when the driver apparently drove the vehicle into a rock wall on the side of the roadway and off the sheer cliff, according to the Star-Advertiser. Witnesses also said that they saw the vehicle allegedly accelerate forward and then take a sharp left over the cliff, one prosecutor said. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. 3. Defense Attorney: This Is a Devastating, Heart-Shattering Tragedy Eddins has not confirmed to PEOPLE that Alexandria was driving the SUV at the time of the crash, but he previously said, The sisters had an exceptionally close bond even by identical twin standards. This is a devastating, heart-shattering tragedy for Alison and her family, Eddins said in June. We will explore all avenues to combat a charge that, in our view, is extreme and cold-hearted. (PEOPLE has not been able to reach Eddins for comment following Alexandrias second arrest.) 4. The Sisters Were Well-Known Yoga Instructors The Duval sisters were reportedly born Alison and Ann Dadow in New York state, but they came to prominence as yoga teachers in Palm Beach, Florida, where they ran multiple locations of their yoga studio starting in 2008 and even produced an instructional DVD. Still, they apparently lived beyond their means (and their success), according to one local expert: They were very well respected here for a while, South Florida gossip columnist Jose Lambiet told the Star-Advertiser. But when you get successful, its easy to start overspending. This is Palm Beach. Once you start shopping on Worth Avenue, it can get out of control pretty quickly. Such financial woes may have been at play when the sisters abruptly closed their yoga studios in Florida and moved across the country the first in a series of decisions that would take them, ultimately, to Hawaii and the scene of the summers deadly crash. 5. The Sisters Reportedly Filed for Bankruptcy Several Times and Had New Names After leaving Palm Beach, the Duval sisters appeared in Park City, Utah, where they opened a new yoga studio, according to the Star-Advertiser. They both filed for bankruptcy in 2014, according to the paper, saying they had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Lambiet told the Star-Advertiser the pair traveled to Maui in December 2015. Police said both sisters had Hawaii drivers licenses, with their Duval names, at the time of the crash. But PEOPLE has not been able to confirm if the sisters legally changed their names. Seven college students in upstate New York have been arrested for the alleged hazing of four students who wanted to pledge their sorority, according to reports. Police said the group allegedly blindfolded the students, forced them to eat mud and garbage and poured foul-smelling liquids on the bunch, sending one of the girls to the hospital. Read: 'Deeply Disturbing': Teacher's Aide Arrested for Alleged Child Abuse After Videotaped Fight With Student Police reportedly arrived at the off-campus sorority house at the University at Albany, Alpha Omicron Pi, on a noise complaint call on Thursday morning. According to Pix11, one of the victims told police the students made her to get on the ground and forced her to eat what appeared to be mud while pouring rotten milk and eggs, mold-covered food and a liquid that smelled like urine onto her face. Another student told CBSNewYork that she dropped out of the sorority because of the abuse. They would say like youre worthless, or youre a stupid [expletive].' Some of us got stepped on and theyre all wearing heels, the student told the station. The seven students arrested were 19-year-old Katrina Bergvoy, 19-year-old Heaven Guanco, 19-year-old Monica Vitagliano, 20-year-old of Tereyza Martin, 21-year-old Chinzao Ezekwem and 21-year-old Jessica Raynor. Each was charged with one count of first degree hazing and one count of second degree hazing, according to reports. Read: Teen Kills Himself After Being Bullied for Years at School: 'I Gave Up' Hazing is not only dangerous its against the law, Albany Police Officer Steve Smith told CBS. A spokesperson for the university reportedly said the sorority is not recognized by the school or the national Alpha Omicron Pi organization and hazing is not tolerated. A national spokesperson for the international Greek organization also said they shut down their Albany chapter two years ago, according to reports. Story continues Watch: Teen Arrested For Riding Dirt Bike Over Student's Foot During School Prank Related Articles: How to bet on the Trump White House. Donald Trump's Election Day victory has put several industries in the spotlight, but infrastructure looks to be one of Trump's major areas of focus. Trump has pledged $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over the next 10 years, and infrastructure even merited a mention in his victory speech. Will Trump actually be able to completely keep his promise? Not likely. But an accommodating Congress should be able to pass something that still results in hundreds of billions of dollars spent on new infrastructure and improvements. Because of that, several infrastructure-themed exchange-traded funds are coming into focus. The question is: Which ones are the real winners? PowerShares Dynamic Building & Construction Portfolio ETF (ticker: PKB) When you spend on infrastructure, you spend on the construction companies that build things like bridges, roads, power lines and levees -- basically the kinds of companies held in the PKB. This ETF holds 30 companies involved in several aspects of construction, including materials suppliers like Martin Marietta Materials (MLM), designer/builders like Aecom (ACM) and technical professional services firms like Jacobs Engineering Group (JEC). Note: PKB also is exposed to more homebuilding-focused plays such as KB Home (KBH), so not every holding is a sure-fire Trump win. But this still is a rock-solid way to play a Trump infrastructure spend. Expenses: 0.63 percent (includes 5-basis-point fee waiver) First Trust ISE Global Engineering and Construction Index Funds (FLM) The FLM has the same broad theme as PKB, but it's also a far less direct play on Trump's infrastructure plans due to the global nature of the fund. In fact, U.S. companies are only weighted at just 20 percent of the fund. So yes, you get companies like JEC and Quanta Services (PWR), another PKB holding. But you also hold companies like China Railway Group and French construction firm Bouygues SA. This too should get at least a little bump from Trump, but really, it's better used as just a bet on a broad-based global economic resurgence. Story continues Expenses: 0.7 percent (includes 29-basis-point fee waiver) Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLI) The XLI is something of a cheat here, because it's really a play on two different Trump-centric themes. Yes, it plays on industrials that could see a lift on infrastructure, such as Caterpillar (CAT) and Deere & Co. (DE). But it's also a play on defense stocks -- such as United Technologies Corp. (UTX) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) -- which will also see a significant boost in spending if Trump's plans come to fruition. No shock, then, that XLI jumped 5 percent in the back half of last week. Just note that XLI is muddied up a bit by non-Trump plays including airlines and delivery services firms. Expenses: 0.14 percent iShares Global Infrastructure ETF (IGF) Yes, the IGF has the word "infrastructure" on it. Despite that, and despite having more exposure to American companies (40 percent) than FLM, IGF might not be the best play on a major U.S. infrastructure spend. That's largely because IGF only holds one U.S. industrial, with the rest of America's weight dedicated to energy companies like Kinder Morgan (KMI) and utilities like NextEra Energy (NEE). In fact, you'll notice that while PKB sprang to life after the election, this iShares fund actually dropped, reflecting uncertain markets in Spain, China, Canada and others that have reacted negatively in the wake of Trump's election. Expenses: 0.47 percent iPath Bloomberg Copper Subindex Total Return ETN (JJC) While there are numerous other "infrastructure" funds out there, most are built like IGF and thus aren't really suited to playing an American infrastructure build-out. But you might have more luck playing copper, which has myriad construction uses and typically responds well to large governmental infrastructure spends. Note that copper prices hit one-year highs shortly after Trump won the presidency. The JJC exchange-traded note -- which really is bank debt packaged as a product that simply pays out the returns from front-month copper futures -- is the most popular way to play copper, at nearly $48 million in assets under management. Expenses: 0.75 percent iPath Pure Beta Copper ETN (CUPM) Because of its methodology, JJC must sell its front-month contract and buy the next front-month contract, regardless of price. This can result in the fund being forced to sell contracts for less than the ones it's about to buy -- a problem known as contango. But iPath offers another, newer product in CUPM, which has a more complex investing strategy that can limit the effects of contango. CUPM invests in many different future-month contracts, giving the fund flexibility in when it buys and sells. The pure beta methodology uses price and other signals to determine how it will trade futures contracts. Expenses: 0.75 percent United States Copper Index Fund (CPER) Of the three copper funds highlighted here, CPER is the most direct way to invest in the metal -- but oddly, it's not the "truest." The CPER is not an ETN, but a limited partnership that actually holds copper futures. That means there's some potential for tracking error against the underlying index, versus ETNs, which can literally mimic an index. Also, CPER investors must deal with the K-1 tax form. Still, CPER is at least a more flexible fund than JJC, as its methodology allows it to use two to three different contracts to limit contango. Expenses: 0.8 percent iPath Bloomberg Aluminum Subindex Total Return ETN (JJU) Aluminum doesn't get nearly the recognition copper does for being a construction mainstay, but it's the second-most widely specified metal in buildings (after steel) and can be used in everything from walls to roofs to supporting structures in homes, buildings and bridges. iPath offers a pair of funds -- the JJU, as well as the iPath Pure Beta Aluminum ETN (FOIL) -- that track this metal, and they correspond to their copper brethren. Just a warning: Both are extremely illiquid funds, and JJC only gets the nod here because its paltry daily volume (1,400) is still better than FOIL's (800). Expenses: 0.75 percent More From US News & World Report From Cosmopolitan Unfortunately for all of us who enjoy life on this planet, NASA warns that scientific evidence for climate change is unequivocal. Even more unfortunately, the person who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to transition the Environmental Protection Agency for his administration is a long-time Washington insider who doesn't believe in scientific facts. Here's what you need to know about him: 1. Myron Ebell doesn't think climate change is real. Although there is scientific consensus on global warming, Ebell revels in not believing it. (Or, at least lying about not believing it - he's been in Washington for a longtime so it's surprising he's not part of the #DrainTheSwamp effort Trump promised, and so quickly rescinded on.) 2. Myron Ebell thinks that even if climate change is real, it's a good thing! He wrote an op-ed in 2006 called Love Global Warming." In it, he urged readers to think about the "benefits" of climate change: less severe winter storms and warmer weather means more beach time! 3. Myron Ebell loves to be in the spotlight. The wonk loves to be on your TV spouting his dubious facts, so get ready to see his mug even more often: 4. Myron Ebell is proud to be hated by experts who know climate change is a real thing. As Scientific American points out: In a biography submitted when he testified before Congress, he listed among his recognitions that he had been featured in a Greenpeace Field Guide to Climate Criminals, dubbed a misleader on global warming by Rolling Stone and was the subject of a motion to censure in the British House of Commons after Ebell criticized the United Kingdoms chief scientific adviser for his views on global warming. 5. Myron Ebell's organization is financed in part by Exxon and the coal industry. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, his libertarian advocacy group which vocally opposes the Clean Power Plan, received $2 million from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005, according to Vanity Fair. Story continues 6. Myron Ebell had an early job in Washington helping to hurt endangered animals. He worked for Republican congressman from Arizona, John Shadegg, on an effort to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to make it "more respectful of property rights." 7. Myron Ebell can (and probably will) destroy all the good the Obama Administration has done for the environment. Trump thinks Obamas hard-won and important efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are a "disgrace" and is appointing Ebell to obliterate them. 8. Myron Ebell will be working for a man who believes very dangerous, untrue things about climate change. So, this is basically a dream team, if your dream is to completely destroy the planet. 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 9. Myron Ebell will be fought by Environmental protection groups. Many groups are gearing up to see him in court and they will need our support. We can guarantee him the hardest fight of his political life, said Michael Bruene, executive director of the Sierra Club. He cant change the fact that clean energy is cheaper than dirty fuels and that the climate is changing. The markets and the American people are moving people beyond dirty fuels. Trump cannot reverse this tide. Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like On Nov 14, 2016, Zacks Investment Research downgraded ABM Industries Incorporated ABM to a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Going by the Zacks model, companies holding a Zacks Rank #3 have high chances of performing in line with the broader market in the quarters ahead. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, ABM Industries provides engineering, janitorial, parking, and facility solutions to commercial, industrial, institutional, and retail facilities. The company has developed a platform to deliver an end-to-end service model to its clients by realigning its operational structure to an on-site, mobile and on-demand market based structure. This realignment has improved its long-term growth prospects and provides higher margin opportunities by enabling it to better deliver end-to-end services to its clients across urban, suburban and rural areas. The company further expects to extend its global footprint and strengthen its position in existing markets through both inorganic and organic growth across the industry verticals. The company has embarked on a Vision 2020 Plan that outlines its vision for the next five years. The plan hinges on three primary phases, the first of which is aimed to increase the efficiency of the company through diligent execution of the operating plan and stringent cost-reduction activities. The second phase will focus on driving growth across the realigned verticals through effective realization of the cost savings from procurement, account management and other organizational changes. The final phase of the transformation will include accelerated growth impetus from the vertical alignment and account planning systems with a continuous focus on additional cost savings. ABM Industries strategy entails growth through strategic acquisitions and organic growth while maintaining desirable profit margins. The company has a healthy pipeline of future businesses with strength seen particularly in its government business. The companys comprehensive, strategic and transformative initiatives are focused on driving sustainable profitability by effectively allocating resources to higher margin services and business verticals with a strong competitive edge. Management also reiterated that corporate restructuring initiatives were well on track to yield sustained long-term growth momentum. ABM Industries has further updated its fiscal 2016 guidance and expects adjusted income from continuing operations in the range of $1.70$1.75 per share, up from $1.55$1.65 expected earlier. The increased guidance is primarily due to the recognition of certain discrete tax items and higher-than-expected 2020 Vision savings. ABM INDUSTRIES Price and Consensus ABM INDUSTRIES Price and Consensus | ABM INDUSTRIES Quote However, the companys failure to make new acquisitions on a regular basis may hamper its growth rate. A slowdown in acquisition activity may not only lead to lower revenues, but also lower margins, as revenues associated with acquired operations generally have higher margins than new revenues through organic growth. Furthermore, an acquisition strategy is not without risks, as the integration process can at times be costly and disruptive to the normal course of business operations. Given the low cost of entry into the facility services business, ABM faces intense competition from local and national players. Furthermore, the company faces indirect competition from building owners or tenants, who perform one or more of these services internally in order to cut costs, especially in the areas where external services are subject to sales tax. These strong competitive pressures could limit the companys success rate in bidding for profitable businesses and its ability to increase prices in accordance with the rising costs. We remain encouraged by the inherent growth potential of this stock. Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include Carbonite, Inc. CARB, LogMeIn, Inc. LOGM and Rollins Inc. ROL. Rollins carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), whereas Carbonite and LogMeIn sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Carbonite has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 30% and is currently trading at a forward P/E of 82.9x. Carbonite has a stellar earnings surprise history with an average positive earnings surprise of 235.1% in the trailing four quarters, comprehensively beating estimates in each quarter. LogMeIn has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 22.5% and is currently trading at a forward P/E of 99.1x. LogMeIn has a healthy earnings surprise history with an average positive earnings surprise of 49.7% in the trailing four quarters, beating estimates in each quarter. Rollins is currently trading at a forward P/E of 40.8x. The company has a modest earnings surprise history with an average positive earnings surprise of 2.9% in the trailing four quarters, beating estimates twice. 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 ABM INDUSTRIES (ABM): Free Stock Analysis Report ROLLINS INC (ROL): Free Stock Analysis Report LOGMEIN INC (LOGM): Free Stock Analysis Report CARBONITE INC (CARB): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research LOS CABOS, Mexico Adrian Garcia Bogliano, one of the driving forces of Latin American genre, is moving two TV horror series, U.S.-Mexico border set Ruta 433 (Highway 433) and 20 Minutes Into The Future, a low-fi sci-fi/horror series which Garcia Bogliano describes as a horror version of Groundhog Day. Presented at Los Cabos, Highway 433 and 20 Minutes Into The Future represent the first major push into TV fiction horror by cineastes, Garcia Bogliano in particular, who proved pioneers in the renaissance of modern genre movie production in Latin America some 10-15 years back. Its a good time for genre movie directors to make the move into TV, said Garcia Bogliano. TV series are being asked to be made with a standard close to that of films. The line between cinema and TV is more blurred. There have been series La hora marcada, 13 Miedos but horror has yet to explode on TV, Bogliano added. Highway 433 and 20 Minutes Into The Future could achieve that, not only drawing on the talent of other top Mexican film directors in the case of Highway but also on the traditions of Mexican horror which has become one of its cinemas recent hallmarks, driven by standout auteurs and multiple omnibus projects enrolling the energies of hordes of new directors. Produced by Ale Garcia at Mexico City-based La Palma de Oro Films and show-run by Carla Sierra, Highway 433 is a 13-episode series set on a frontier highway which is a purgatory where people pay for their sins. Each segment turns on a specific case though some characters repeat from one episode to the next, said Bogliano. Crucially, in a world where sensibility to genre and sub-genre is highly prized by aficionados, every episode is to be made in a sub-genre, such as a ghost story, or a slasher, Bogliano said. All directors will be genre specialists, said Garcia, adding that the key with the new TV was to find the key-concept of every project so that it stands out from others. Story continues Currently, Adrian Garcia Bogliano and Gustavo Moheno (Hasta el viento tiene miedo) are attached to direct episodes. A pilot screenplay is completed, said Sierra. She is now working on the treatment of other episodes. Presented at Los Cabos TV Development section, Highway 433 could also be exported as a format, Garcia Bogiano argued. 20 Minutes Into The Future turns on a girl in Canada who is kidnapped when she goes out to jog. 20 minutes later, she wakes up in a wood, in a place she doesnt know, which is in South Mexico. She gets to a village to realise that what seemed 20 minute is in fact three years and that, every day for the last three years, she has appeared in the village to tell the same story, and nobody now takes her seriously, though every time, somebody kills her. Written by Adrian and brother Ramiro Garcia Bogliano, 20 Minutes Into The Future is set up at Salto de Fe Films, the Mexico City-based production company Adrian Garcia Bogliano heads with producer Andrea Quiroz Hernandez. 20 Minutes Into The Future was presented at a Mexico-Canada co-pro meet organised at Los Cabos by Mexicos IMCINE Film Institute and the Canada Media Fund. It is conceived as an eight-episode series, in the line of Stranger Things. People these days talk about series, which have a big social impact. As creators, we have to listen to this, Garcia Bogliano concluded. Related stories Mexico's Panorama Readies Movies with Alonso Ruizpalacios, Kyzza Terrazas, Fernando Frias Michael Rowe Scores Los Cabos Double Win With 'Alicia' 'Little Secret's' David Schurmann Preps 'Dot,' 'Blood Rose' (EXCLUSIVE) Aerosmith will hit the road in Europe next spring for what it's calling a "farewell" tour on its official web site. Following the group's recent tour of South America, the Aero-Vederici Baby! tour will begin May 17 in Tel Aviv, Israel and include 17 dates before wrapping up July 5 in Zurich, Switzerland. The itinerary includes stops at the Sweden Rock Festival on June 8 in Salvesborg, the U.K.'s Download Festival on June 11 in Donington, England, Hellfest on June 17 in Clisson, France, and the Firenze Rocks Festival on June 21 in Florence, Italy. Tickets go on sale November 18. The full itinerary is posted at Aerosmith's official web site. No North American dates have been announced yet for next year. Aerosmith's members began talking about the idea of a farewell tour last year, although guitarist Joe Perry told Billboard earlier this year the idea has been discussed for quite some time. "We've talked about it over the years," Perry says. "Frankly, starting a tour that says 'the final tour' is OK, but to think there's going to be a last Aerosmith gig? That's a little tough for me to wrap my head around." Perry continues: "I mean, we all know our age is creeping up on us, but, man, we've tried to follow the lead of the original blues guys and the early rockers and just keep playing 'til we drop, y'know? We all have different feelings about it. I do have a feeling that there'll be a tour that we'll call the final tour -- but when will it end? That I can't say." Fellow guitarist Brad Whitford echoes Perry's sentiment that Aerosmith may take its time saying goodbye. "We keep talking about what we may call a farewell tour, but based on the Kiss approach, that could go on for three to five years," Whitford says. "We are seriously looking at that, just based on our age and everything." And Whitford isn't entirely sure how it will feel to bring Aerosmith to an end after 46 years and 15 albums, including enduring rock favorites such as "Dream On," "Walk This Way," "Sweet Emotion," "Janie's Got A Gun" and many more. Story continues "It's hard to know," he says. "It'll probably be a bit of relief, one way or another. It's a struggle to get things done with that band. There's so much time wasted, and it can take the wind out of your sails sometimes. For me it's about the music, and we seem to have lost quite a bit of that energy in the Aerosmith camp. Everything turns out to be about something else, and it has nothing to do with the music. That gets old." Perry, meanwhile, says that whatever Aerosmith does, he wants it to be comprehensive. "I would like to do a tour where we really play every place that we've ever played, and maybe some places we never played. And just on that premise, go out and have it be like we did it in the '80s, when we'd be out for a long time and really gain a lot of momentum," he notes. Prior to the South American tour, the past year has mostly been about the band members' outside projects. Frontman Steven Tyler released a country-flavored solo album, We're All Somebody From Somewhere, and toured to support it -- much to the consternation of his bandmates. Perry, meanwhile, released an album and toured with the all-star Hollywood Vampires, while Whitford released a new album with part-time Ted Nugent cohort Derek St. Holmes. Bassist Tom Hamilton played some tribute shows with Thin Lizzy, and drummer Joey Kramer launched a coffee shop in Boston. Aerosmith has announced no plans to release another album. (The group's last studio set, Music From Another Dimension, came out in 2012.) "I'm always writing. There's always songs around," Perry explains. "Doing an album is a whole other issue. I'd like to do it. I think we've still got things to say on [record]. Maybe once we start doing some shows again we'll get inspired and get everyone on the page to do that. We'll see." By Hamid Shalizi KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Ashraf Ghani instructed cabinet ministers sacked by parliament to remain in their jobs on Monday, looking to the Supreme Court to resolve an escalating power struggle. Ghani has quickly intervened to halt parliament's cabinet reshuffle, which he fears could weaken the already fragile Western-backed government and delay state projects. The deteriorating political and security situation, with Taliban insurgents claiming two deadly suicide bombings in the past week, could become a foreign policy challenge for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has said little about Afghanistan. In the last three days, lawmakers dismissed the foreign affairs minister and five others, citing poor performance and budgetary issues. Parliament, which has a constitutional right to sack ministers, is expected to hold votes on eight more. "Until the ruling of the Supreme Court, all the ministers should remain in their positions," Ghani said in a statement after holding a special cabinet meeting. The ministers for finance, urban development and justice have been the only ones so far to have survived confidence votes. "It is our right to decide on the ministers and we expect the government to respect that," said member of parliament Farhad Sediqi. Officials say the removal of ministers would all but paralyze government institutions. "The dismissal of the public works minister is having and will have grave financial implications on our projects," Mehdi Rohani, the ministry's spokesman, said before Ghani's announcement. "In the absence of the minister, the losses will be in the tens of millions of dollars." The power-sharing unity government was brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry after a disputed 2014 presidential election, but has been weakened by infighting between rivals. Kabul was supposed to have overseen fresh parliamentary elections and a constitutional grand council to re-establish political legitimacy. However, a two-year deadline has passed with none of the promised steps taken, leaving question marks over the future of the government at a time when political uncertainty is already being stoked by rising ethnic tensions. After the latest Taliban bombings at the NATO air base in Bagram and the German consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Ghani asked the United Nations on Monday to add the group's new leader to its sanctions list, a further blow to efforts to revive a stalled peace process. (Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's president asked the United Nations on Monday to add the Taliban's new leader to its sanctions list, in a further blow to efforts to revive the stalled peace process. Afghan forces have struggled to contain the Taliban insurgency, with two deadly suicide bombings claimed by the group at the NATO air base in Bagram and at a German consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif in just the past week. "We want the U.N. to add names of terrorists including Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah (Akhundzada) to its sanctions list," President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement after meeting with members of the U.N. sanctions committee in Kabul. Akhundzada was named leader of the Taliban after the death of his predecessor Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in a U.S. drone strike in May. One of the Taliban's main demands for peace talks is for their senior commanders to be taken off the U.N. blacklist that imposes asset freezes and travel bans. The peace process broke down last year almost immediately after preliminary talks began in Pakistan. Since then, there have been various efforts to get it started again, including a series of talks involving the United States, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan, but none has so far had any success. (Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / New Age Beverages Corporation (NBEV) the Colorado-based owner of the XingTea, XingEnergy, Aspen Pure, and the Bucha Live Kombucha brands today announced that they will hold an investor conference call to discuss the Company's third quarter results. The Company will hold an investor conference call on Tuesday, November 15th, at 11:00 AM EST. Participants can register for the conference by navigating to http://dpregister.com/10096855. Please note that registered participants will receive their dial in number upon registration. Pre-registration fields of information to be gathered: Name/Phone/Company and Email New Age Beverages Corporation was formed on June 30th 2016 when Bucha, Inc. acquired the assets of XingTea, AspenPure, and New Age Beverages LLC. This conference call will be the first call whereby the Company will communicate operating performance since the acquisition and merger of its subsidiaries. In addition to discussing operating performance, the Company will discuss progress versus major strategic priorities and progress towards achieving previously identified cost and revenue synergies. About New Age Beverages Corporation (nBev): New Age Beverages Corporation is a Colorado-based, healthy functional beverage company originally founded in 2003 and re-created via the combination of XingTea, Aspen Pure Artesian Water, Bucha Live Kombucha, and New Age Beverages in June 2016. The Company trades under the newly issued symbol NBEV on the OTC exchange. The Company competes in the fast growing healthy functional beverage segments including Ready to Drink (RTD) Tea, Kombucha, Energy Drinks and Functional Waters with the Brands XingTea, Bucha Live Kombucha, XingEnergy, and Aspen Pure. The brands are sold in 46 states within the US and in more than 10 countries internationally across all channels via direct and store door distribution systems. The company operates the websites www.mybucha.com, www.xingtea.com and www.aspenpure.com. Story continues Safe Harbor Disclosure: This press release contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are any statement reflecting management's current expectations regarding future results of operations, economic performance, financial condition and achievements of the Company including statements regarding New Age Beverage's expectation to see continued growth. The forward-looking statements are based on the assumption that operating performance and results will continue in line with historical results. Management believes these assumptions to be reasonable but there is no assurance that they will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. New Age Beverages competes in a rapidly growing and transforming industry, and other factors disclosed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission might affect the Company's operations. Unless required by applicable law, nBev undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. For investor inquiries about New Age Beverages Corporation please contact: Amato and Partners Investor Relations Counsel admin@amatoandpartners.com Websites: www.mybucha.com www.xingtea.com www.aspenpure.com www.drinkmarley.com SOURCE: New Age Beverages Corporation Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist, radio talk show host, and provocateur founder of the popular Infowars website, says President-elect Donald Trump called him last week to thank him and his audience for their grassroots support of his unlikely candidacy. On my way here, Donald Trump gave me a call, Jones said in a YouTube video shot atop Mount Bonnell in Austin, Texas, and published Friday. And I told him, Mr. President-elect, youre too busy, we dont need to talk. But we still spent over five minutes [on the phone], and he said, Listen, Alex. I just talked to the kings and queens of the world, world leaders, you name it. But he said, It doesnt matter. I want to talk to you to thank you and your audience. And Ill be on in the next few weeks to thank them. A representative for the president-elect did not immediately return a request seeking confirmation of Trumps call to Jones. I want to thank you, thank your listeners for standing up for this republic, Trump said, according to Jones. We know what you did early on for this campaign. Last December, Trump appeared on Jones show in a video interview from Trump Tower, and Jones greeted him by saying that 90 percent of his listeners were Trump supporters. Your reputation is amazing, Trump replied. I will not let you down. Jones reputation has been built, largely, on his conspiratorial claims. Among other things, he has suggested that 9/11 was an inside job; no one died in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School; the U.S. government is turning American children gay through their juice boxes; and President Obama and Hillary Clinton are possessed by demons. I never said this, because the media will go crazy with it, Jones told his listeners in mid-October. But Ive talked to people that are in protective details, theyre scared of her. And they say, Listen, shes a frickin demon, and she stinks and so does Obama. I go, Like what? Sulfur. They smell like hell. Story continues Jones has said he shares a common bond with Trump, who has also embraced conspiracy theories on the campaign trail. Notably, Trump for years cast doubt on the authenticity of President Obamas birth certificate. Hes been what you call a closet conspiracy theorist for 50 years, Jones said in July. I think hes been a chameleon in the system, and now he sees the time to strike. In late August, Clinton turned a spotlight on Jones, when she cited him as the source behind some false claims Trump had repeated on the campaign trail. This is what happens when you listen to radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs, she said. Roger Stone, a frequent Infowars guest, was an unofficial adviser to the Trump campaign. Jones also made headlines during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where he held an America First rally outside the convention center. Were identifying the globalists, their program of control, their operations, Jones said at the rally. Once the public understands the paradigm: Its game over! Trumps postelection call, Jones said, proves he is not the average elitist these stuck-up nobodies who believe they control the world, who believe everybodys an idiot. Jones added, This whole criminal multinational enterprise that has hijacked the nation, ladies and gentlemen, is now coming down. _____ Related slideshows: Tens of thousands protest Trumps election victory >>> Donald Trump meets with Obama at the White House and visits the Capitol >>> Protests after Donald Trumps victory >>> Newspapers around the world react to Donald Trumps victory >>> Tears and cheers as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters clash at the White House >>> World reaction to Trumps stunning victory >>> For the second time in less than a year, clothing maker American Apparel filed for bankruptcy protection Monday morning after selling its intellectual property rights, including the name, to Canada's Gildan Activewear for about $66 million in cash. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has arranged $30 million in bankruptcy financing. The acquisition of American Apparel's brand is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Founder and ousted CEO Dov Charney tried and failed to regain control of American Apparel prior to the previous bankruptcy proceeding. Whether he will try again to regain his company is unknown, but such a move is not inconceivable. ALSO READ: The Worst Companies to Work For Gildan will purchase some existing inventory, but the Canadian company said in an announcement of its own that it "will not be purchasing any retail store assets." American Apparel owns about 200 retail outlets. If the bankruptcy court requires American Apparel to hold an auction for its assets and business, the Gildan offer will become the stalking horse bid. If Gildan loses such an auction, it will be entitled to an unspecified breakup fee and other expense reimbursements. In its press release today, Gildan said: The acquisition will create revenue growth opportunities by leveraging Gildan's extensive distribution network in North American and international printwear markets to further increase the brand's penetration in the faster growing fashion basics segments of these markets. In addition, with American Apparel's strong heritage as a consumer brand, the Company will evaluate potential wholesale opportunities for leveraging the brand within its Branded Apparel business. Related Articles VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / American CuMo Mining Corporation (MLY.V) (OTC Pink: MLYCF) (CuMoCo or the Company) announces the signing of an agreement to earn 100 percent interest in eight unpatented mining claims known as the Calida Mine Property located in southeastern Idaho. "We are extremely pleased to add the Calida Mine Property to our portfolio. This is a highly prospective gold, silver and copper property that has significant historic drill results and has the potential of being developed in a relatively short period," said Shaun Dykes, President and CEO of CuMoCo. The Calida claims cover several significant mineralized gold, silver, and copper veins that range in width from 1.5 meters (5 feet) to more than 30 meters (100 feet) and have been exposed on the surface for approximately 4,267 meters (14,000 linear feet). The agreement gives CuMoCo a ten-year option to earn 100 percent interest by making a series of payments. An initial payment of $40,000 US dollars has been made and ongoing payments consist of the following in US funds: -$40,000 on or before 90 days of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before six months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 12 months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 18 months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 24 months of the effective date. -$50,000 every six months until commercial production or ten years. -$1 million at the start of commercial production. The Calida agreement includes a variable buyout price, the Actual Exercise Price (AEP), that is based on the number of ounces of gold equivalent as defined in an independent 43-101 pre-feasibility or feasibility study. The AEP has a minimum price of $10 million dollars for one million ounces of gold equivalent, rising at the rate of $10 million dollars for each one million ounces of gold equivalent to a maximum price of $50 million dollars for greater than five million ounces of gold equivalent. Story continues The property has been extensively explored for the past thirty years. Exploration has included drilling 23 holes in 1983 as well as thorough trenching and sampling. A total of ten mineralized veins have been identified on the property to date. Significant intersections from the drilling are listed below: Hole Vein From To Width From To Width Au Au Ag Ag Cu meters meters meters feet feet feet g/T oz/t g/T oz/t % W-3 Main 84.7 125.0 40.2 278 410 132 5.5 0.160 232.8 6.80 4.30 M-1 Main 94.5 137.2 42.7 310 450 140 5.1 0.150 145.7 4.25 1.30 R-2 Main 65.5 126.5 61.0 215 415 200 4.6 0.133 173.8 5.07 2.22 CA-1 Calida 115.8 125.0 9.1 380 410 30 6.7 0.194 231.1 6.74 4.45 F-1 F-Vein 55.8 57.3 1.5 183 188 5 14.1 0.410 538.3 15.7 0.59 H-3 H-vein 54.9 58.8 4.0 180 193 13 8.6 0.250 256.5 7.48 3.92 In 2009, an independent resource calculation using the historic data was completed which defined a resource of 8,059,304 tons grading 0.168 ounces gold/ton, 6.12 ounces silver/ton and 2.86 percent copper. The 2009 resource is considered an historical resource, as a technical report on the resource was never filed although the calculation was completed. It is the qualified person's opinion that the resource is reliable having been done by a reputable independent third party who verified data and checked assays. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource. The Company is not treating the resource as a "current resource" and does not intend to rely on this resource but will use it as a guide. Examination of available data indicates a target area of at least 100 meters (328 feet) wide, 1500 meters (4921 feet) long and 500 meters (1640 feet) deep that contains gold with copper bearing mineralization. CuMoCo has constructed a three-dimensional model of the veins and has identified a preliminary exploration target of between 8 and 30 million tonnes grading between 5 and 10 grams per tonne gold, 150 to 200 grams per tonne silver and 2 to 3 percent copper. The Company intends to further the exploration and cautions that the target, the potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature as exploration work done to define Mineral Resources as defined by NI 43-101 has been insufficient. It is uncertain if further exploration will result in establishing the existence of Mineral Resources. "It is important for our shareholders to know that we remain completely focused on developing the CuMo Project and advancing its towards production," said Dykes. "Being a significant gold property, the Calida Mine provides an excellent opportunity to add value to the Company for its ongoing negotiations with Chinese or other investors." Shaun Dykes, M.Sc. (Eng); P.Geo (#20044), a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101, is responsible for the review of all scientific and technical information contained in this release. About CuMoCo CuMoCo is focused on advancing its CuMo Project towards feasibility and establishing itself as one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Management is continuing to build an even stronger foundation from which to move the Company and the CuMo Project forward. For more information, please visit www.cumoco.com and www.cumoproject.com. For further information, please contact: American CuMo Mining Corporation Shaun Dykes, President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: (604) 689-7902 Email: info@cumoco.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Forward-looking information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including, but not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such as the Company's ability to successfully negotiate the Definitive Agreement with the Chinese Partners, the Company's ability to move the CuMo Project through development to feasibility and production, and for the Company to become one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Forward-looking information is based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including the result of exploration activities, the ability of the Company to raise the financing for a feasibility study and to put the CuMo project into production, that no labour shortages or delays are experienced, that plant and equipment function as specified that the Court will not intervene with the Company's proposed exploration activities at the CuMo Project, and the ability of the Company to obtain all requisite permits and licenses to advance the CuMo Project and eventually bring it into production. 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 prediction, projection or forecast 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 molybdenum, silver and copper; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents, including the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016. 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. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SOURCE: CuMo Mining Corporation Amex striving for growth This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. In September, a federal appeals court ruled that Amex merchants will no longer be able to discourage consumers from paying with Amex or incentivize them to use a different card, like Visa or Mastercard, with lower fees. Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that the appeals court reconsider that notion, paying more careful attention to the impact that the policy has on merchants alone, according to Reuters. The appeals courts ruling reinstated what Amex calls an anti-steering policy, which means that merchants cant try to avoid Amexs higher fees by pushing customers to pay with another card product through discounts. Amex justifies these high fees because its affluent customer base tends to make higher-value and more frequent purchases, which could help mitigate the additional cost the firms fees pose relative to other card networks. The DOJ is pushing for reconsideration because merchant price competition isnt for Amex to decide, but its unlikely a new hearing will occur. Keeping the policy in place is important for Amex, which likely relies on its high fees to remain competitive in the current state of the industry. Amexs interchange income likely helps fund rewards. Amex has stated that the money it makes from those higher fees helps it offer robust rewards and strong perks to its cardholders a program thats attractive to customers and likely serves as a key acquisition channel for the firm. And rewards are at the forefront of the competitive card industry right now.Increased interest in credit has led to intense competition between networks to acquire customers new to the ecosystem. Rewards are one such tool all four major card networks noted that investing in robust perks without overspending is and will remain a key issue and priority. Its likely that Amex will place an exceptionally high value on these rewards programs, particularly in light of the firms losses related to the Costco sale and its focus on new customer acquisition. It'll therefore try to fight to keep its fee structure and anti-steering policies in place. Story continues Regardless of how this situation plays out, American Express is just one piece of the broader payments ecosytem, which now includes processors, issuers, merchants, acquirers, networks, and more. Evan Bakker and John Heggestuen, senior research analysts at BI Intelligence, have compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends. Here are some key takeaways from the report: 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices. Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play. Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified. In full, the report: Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond. Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers. Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step. Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more. Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem. To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options: Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, youve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the payments ecosystem. More From Business Insider Company Plans to Accelerate the Development of its Approved 1,000,000 Square Foot Cultivation Project in Massachusetts; Regulation in Additional States Provides New Opportunities for Expansion DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / AmeriCann, Inc. (ACAN), a company that plans to develop sustainable, state-of-the-art medical cannabis cultivation properties, intends to accelerate the development schedule for its Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center project and expansion plans for new markets in response to recent election results. Massachusetts voters approved a ballot measure that will make it the first state in the eastern U.S. to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The Commonwealth has had a medical marijuana program that was approved in 2012. According to industry experts, the combined market for both the medical and new adult program could exceed $1.8 billion annually. Company CEO Tim Keogh stated, "The legalization of cannabis for all adults in Massachusetts significantly expands the need for the infrastructure to serve both patients and consumers. With nearly 1,000,000 square feet approved for development, AmeriCann can provide the type of sustainable, energy efficient cultivation facilities that is essential to serve the citizens of Massachusetts." AmeriCann recently completed the acquisition of a 53 acre Massachusetts property from Boston Beer Company (SAM-NYSE) for $4,475,000 cash. The Company plans to develop the property as the Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center (the "MMCC"), which is expected to be one of the largest and most technologically advanced cannabis cultivation facilities in the nation. The MMCC is approved for nearly 1,000,000 square feet of medical cannabis cultivation and processing in Freetown, Massachusetts. The state-of-the-art, sustainable, greenhouse project will consist of multiple planned phases for tenants in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. AmeriCann's engineering team is in the process of finalizing documents for construction. The Company expects to break ground in the first quarter of 2017 and have cannabis in production by fall of 2017. Story continues AmeriCann recently completed a $2 million all equity financing that will be utilized in part for the Company's Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center development and to pursue new opportunities in California, Pennsylvania, Florida and other states. With three national surveys this year showing 60 percent or greater support for cannabis legalization, many experts believe that public attitudes have reached a tipping point. This belief was reinforced with overwhelming voter support for legalization in elections last week. Massachusetts, California, Maine, and Nevada voted to legalize recreational marijuana while Arkansas and North Dakota approved medical cannabis initiatives. Florida voters approved medical marijuana in a landslide with over 71% of the vote. With these election results, medical cannabis is now legal in a majority of the country with 28 states sanctioning the production and sale of cannabis. The respected Wall Street firm of Cowen & Co recently released a research report projecting dramatic growth for the regulated cannabis industry from the current $7 billion nationally to over $50 billion in ten years. About AmeriCann AmeriCann is a publicly traded company that plans to develop and lease sustainable, state-of-the-art medical cannabis cultivation properties. The Company has over 1,000,000 square feet of facilities in the planning and design stages of development. The Company has designed a proprietary line of cannabis infused products which will be branded and licensed to companies in regulated markets. AmeriCann, Inc. is a Certified B Corp, an acknowledgment of the company's commitment to social and environmental ethics, transparency and accountability. AmeriCann became the first public cannabis company to earn this respected accreditation. More information about the Company is available at: www.americann.co. About Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center The Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center is approved for nearly 1,000,000 square feet of medical cannabis cultivation and processing in Freetown, Massachusetts. The state-of-the-art, sustainable, greenhouse project will consist of multiple planned phases for tenants in the Massachusetts medical marijuana market. AmeriCanns Cannopy System uniquely combines expertise from traditional horticulture, lean manufacturing, regulatory compliance and cannabis cultivation to create superior facilities and procedures. The first phase of the project consists of 130,000 sq. ft. of cultivation and processing infrastructure. AmeriCann can expand the first phase to approximately 600,000 sq. ft., based on patient demand. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2015, which the Company has filed with the SEC and which may be viewed at http://www.sec.gov. Contact Information: Corporate: AmeriCann, Inc. 3200 Brighton Blvd. Unit 114 Denver, CO 80216 (303) 862-9000 info@americann.co www.americann.co Investors: Hayden IR hart@haydenir.com (917) 658-7878 SOURCE: AmeriCann, Inc. The red carpet was black. The black wall along the carpet was barren, featuring only the ominous title of Friday night's premiere: Nocturnal Animals. "That's kind of my thing," said the film's director, Tom Ford, wearing a black suit and black framed glasses. "I kind of do black everywhere." Held at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Nocturnal Animals comes as the second film directed by fashion designer/director Tom Ford. The film follows the story of an art gallery owner whose seemingly perfect high-class life is fractured when she begins reading a manuscript for her ex-husband's new novel. The book tells a violent, vengeful story that she interprets as a symbolic threat. Many of the film's stars, including Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon and Isla Fisher, joined fellow castmembers and celebrities on the black carpet Friday night. Read more: 'Nocturnal Animals': Venice Review Before entering the theater, Amy Adams stopped to talk with The Hollywood Reporter. "I knew about him [Ford] as a fashion designer because I value his aesthetic," said Adams, "but I didn't know a lot about him as a person." Additionally starring in the alien sci-fi film Arrival, Adams plays Susan Morrow, the art gallery owner. "The characters are so different. I had to step into two very different worlds." Based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, Nocturnal Animals is split between two narratives. One, the imagination of the book's contents by Susan Morrow (Adams), vividly written by her ex-husband, Edward Sheffield (Gyllenhaal), who places himself as the main character of the brutal story. The other, Morrow's real life with her husband, Hutton (Hammer), and her brief interactions with Sheffield. "This character is extraordinarily sensitive and lost a bit in the world because of that sensitivity," Gyllenhaal told The Hollywood Reporter. "He never really gets to fight back throughout most of the movie." Story continues As professor and writer Edward Sheffield, Gyllenhaal's character endures a violent struggle that is depicted by Morrow's imagination throughout the film. Read more: Tom Ford's Inner Life: A Director's Turmoil, Depression Battles and Staggering Talent Director Tom Ford spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on the black carpet about what this film means to him. "I changed it quite a lot, so the film is different from the book," Ford said. "However the central theme is about finding people in your life who you love, who love you, who believe in you and then hanging on to them. This is a cautionary tale about what can happen if you let those people go." Nocturnal Animals is set for a limited release Nov. 18, a wider release Nov. 23 and a nationwide release Dec. 9. The film was produced by Fade to Black Productions, Focus Features and Universal Pictures. It is rated R. Just before the screening, Gyllenhaal joked with reporters about his fashion style and the election results. "I'm not the kind of person that really cares about how I look. As I stand here in Tom Ford suit," laughed Gyllenhaal. "But I guess now is the time for contradictions and hypocrisy." From Country Living In honor of Veterans Day, a California animal shelter is thanking our troops for their service by waiving the adoption fees if any vets want to bring home a forever friend this weekend. The Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe, CA is hosting the "Animals for Armed Forces 3-Day Event" with the Animals for the Armed Forces Foundation from November 11-13, according to People. "We are really grateful to Animals for Armed Forces Foundation for supporting our belief that orphan pets and military families provide a mutual benefit to one another," Helen Woodward Animal Services Manager Ed Farrelly told the outlet. "The incredible men and women who serve our country protect the lives of our citizens and by adopting, they save the lives of an orphan pet. In return, that pet gives them a lifetime of love, devotion and gratitude." If you're a military family heading to the shelter this weekend, be sure to bring a copy of your military ID, a copy of your DD-214 and driver's license and a copy of your NGB Form 22. You Might Also Like Aviation biofuel Alaska Airlines says it sent a Boeing 737 jet on the first commercial airline flight that was partially fueled by branches, stumps and other leftovers from forests in the Pacific Northwest. The jet took off this morning from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and headed for Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., with its tanks full of a new type of biofuel blend. Twenty percent of the jet fuel came from wood waste that was collected during timber harvests or thinning operations on land owned by Weyerhaeuser in Oregon, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Washington and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes in Montana, plus rejected wood fibers from Cosmo Specialty Fibers in Cosmopolis, Wash. In a typical timber harvest, some of the leftover limbs, branches and stumps are left behind to replenish the land and provide cover. The rest is typically pushed into a pile and burned. Those practices provided an opportunity for the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance, a public-private consortium led by Washington State University. Researchers took advantage of a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to demonstrate a technology that converts the excess waste wood into isobutanol. Like ethanol, isobutanol can be blended with other ingredients to produce engine fuel. Isobutanol is typically more expensive to produce than ethanol, but it makes for a higher-performance fuel thats well suited for aircraft engines. In June, Alaska Airlines started fueling a couple of its commercial jets with a 20 percent isobutanol blend that was produced from non-edible field corn. NARAs forest-based blend brings some additional advantages: The isobutanol is produced from an abundant feedstock that doesnt compete with food production. Forest managers can reduce their reliance on slash pile burning, which in turn reduces air pollution. And if the conversion process takes hold, its likely to give an employment boost to areas that have lost jobs in the timber industry. Story continues Theres an environmental boost as well: Seattle-based Alaska Airlines estimates that using jet fuel produced from sustainable sources can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from commercial jets by 70 percent. Depending on the feedstock and the production process, the emission reduction over the entire fuel production life cycle should amount to somewhere between 50 and 80 percent. This is just one flight today, Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines senior vice president for communications and external relations, said at a pre-flight news briefing. But can you imagine if all of our flights out of Sea-Tac were operating with 20 percent of their fuel sourced from biofuels? That would be the equivalent of taking 30,000 cars off the highways here in the Seattle region. Alaska Airlines isnt the only aerospace company giving a boost to biofuels. For more than five years, the Boeing Co. has been working with an assortment of partners to pioneer sustainable aviation biofuel. Alaska Airlines, Boeing and the Port of Seattle are working toward a long-term goal of powering all flights by all airlines out of Sea-Tac with biofuel. More from GeekWire: Civil rights groups quickly denounced Donald Trumps Sunday announcement that Steve Bannon would be his chief strategist in the White House. Prior to joining Trumps presidential campaign this August, Bannon had been at the helm of Breitbart News, which has taken credit for helping make the platform for the alt-right. Many critics pointed to Bannons role at Breitbart when blasting Trump for picking him to help lead his upcoming administration. In a statement issued Sunday evening, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) slammed the appointment of Islamophobe, White nationalist Bannon. The group said Bannon helped promote a dark and paranoid picture of Muslim Americans through the Breitbart News website and Bannons own radio show. The appointment of Stephen Bannon as a top Trump administration strategist sends the disturbing message that anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and white nationalist ideology will be welcome in the White House, said Nihad Awad, CAIRs national executive director. We urge President-elect Trump to reconsider this ill-advised appointment if he truly seeks to unite Americans. The Anti-Defamation League echoed CAIRs condemnation of Bannons appointment in a statement of its own. It is a sad day when a man who presided over the website of the alt-right a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house, read the Sunday statement from ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Meanwhile, Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit that tracks extremist groups, said that when news of Bannons appointment hit white supremacist websites last night, forums like Stormfront erupted in celebration. In his victory speech, Trump pledged to be the president for all Americans and to bind the wounds of division in our country. Appointing someone like Bannon, who will have the president-elects ear every single day, makes a mockery of that pledge, Cohen continued. Story continues During the presidential campaign, Democrat Hillary Clinton also sought to connect Trump to some of the provocative and caustic stories on Breitbart. Trump hired the head of Breitbart "News" to be CEO of his campaign. Here's a sample of their work: pic.twitter.com/y8loOnkbNu Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016 The alt-right a nebulous coalition of white nationalist bloggers, academics and radio hosts connected by a common desire to protect white American culture from what they perceive as the threat of multiculturalism had been a relatively stable source of support for Donald Trump throughout much of his presidential campaign. Last week, leaders of the movement like Richard Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, celebrated Trumps election as a victory for white Americans. Spencer, often credited as the founder of the alt-right, praised Bannons White House appointment on Twitter: 1/ "Strategist" is the best possible position for Steve Bannon in the Trump White House. Richard ???? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) November 14, 2016 2/ Bannon will answer directly to Trump and focus on the big picture, and not get lost in the weeds. Richard ???? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) November 14, 2016 3/ Bannon is not a "chief of staff," which requires a "golden retriever" personality. He'll be freed up to chart Trump's macro trajectory. Richard ???? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) November 14, 2016 Trump had, on occasion and under pressure, attempted to distance himself publicly from his far-right fan base, but for many, Bannons role as chief strategist seemed to solidify the influence this once fringe movement would have in the Trump White House. Republican National Committee chairman and incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus defended Bannons appointment on Good Morning America on Monday. This is a very, very smart person, said Priebus of Bannon, dismissing the charges of racism and anti-Semitism against him. I dont know where theyre coming from, he said. Thats not the Steve Bannon I know. By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple's (AAPL.O) stock extended recent losses on Monday after a warning that iPhone sales could suffer if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on campaign threats to impose new tariffs on China. Apple is among several major technology stocks, including Amazon.com (AMZN.O), Facebook (FB.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O), selling off since Tuesday's election as investors shift funds into financial and public works companies seen benefiting from deregulation and infrastructure spending under President-elect Trump. In a continuation of that trend, the Cupertino, California company's stock fell 2.5 percent on Monday, bringing its loss since Tuesday's election to almost 5 percent, compared to the S&P 500's (.SPX) 1.16 percent advance. Adding to concern for Apple investors, an op-ed published in the China government-backed Global Times on Sunday warned of "tit-for-tat" retaliation should Trump follow through on a campaign pledge to impose 45-percent tariffs on all imports from China. "A batch of Boeing (BA.N) orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted," the op-ed said. China has already become a disappointment for Apple, failing to deliver rapid growth that the company hoped would make up for slower iPhone sales in the United States and other mature markets. Revenue from China slumped 30 percent in Apple's September quarter, worse than the Americas' 7 percent decline. Apple's China sales could be hurt by potential trade conflicts as well as the country's weakening currency, said Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang by email. He said he believes China iPhone sales fell in October, even after fixing supply issues affecting the iPhone 7 Plus. Synovus Trust Company Senior Portfolio Manager Daniel Morgan, who owns $33 million worth of Apple shares, warned not to read too much into Trump's campaign trail threats against China, at least in the near term. "You just don't just jump in and start rewriting trade agreements," Morgan said. (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by Tom Brown) Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina will cull 100,000 beavers which are devastating southern woodlands by gnawing down huge trees, officials said Monday. The plague of big-toothed rodents has struck in the Tierra del Fuego province, a far southern region known as "the End of the World." "They can cut down a small tree in a few hours and a big one in days. We are talking about trees that are 100 or 150 years old and they do not grow back," said the region's conservation chief Erio Curto. "They cut down trees on the riverbank so the water overflows and floods everything," he told reporters. He said Argentine authorities had signed an agreement to exterminate the beavers with neighboring Chile. The surrounding Patagonia region spans the border of the two countries. Experts in the provincial government said it could take as long as 10 to 15 years to cull all the beavers. The cull is backed by the United Nations and environmental groups. Experts will catch the beavers in traps and then bash them on the head to kill them quickly, officials said. A few dozen beavers were brought from Canada and introduced to the region in 1946 to breed for their fur. But their breeding has got out of control. Authorities estimate the beavers have destroyed an area twice the size of Buenos Aires. "When I saw it I was reminded of Poland after the Second World War, where all the trees had been blown away," said the prominent naturalist Claudio Bertonatti, speaking in a recent documentary. "What had happened? Beavers, that's what had happened," he said, interviewed in the documentary, "Beavers: the Invasion at the End of the World." This armed service member just surprised his family at Disney, and were not crying, YOURE crying Coming at no surprise to literally anyone, Disney World is one of the happiest places on earth. Its a destination vacation for many around the planet, and its also the perfect place to really do something extraordinary. While we hear stories about just what kind of magic goes on inside the park each day, its rare that one of them makes us bawl our eyes out at an uncontrollabe rate. If youve got tissues ready, prepare your hearts for this: An armed forces member just surprised his family at Disney, and he did it on VETRANS DAY. OUR HEARTS. Miguel Irizarry is a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, and he also happens to be a cast member at Walt Disney World, too. Returning from deployment, he decided to put some ~Disney magic~ to good use and completely surprised his family at the Magic Kingdom. But not just that he surprised his family at the Magic Kingdom during the daily Flag Retreat on Veterans Day. In case youre not familiar with the Flag Retreat at Disney World, every single day at 5 p.m., Magic Kingdom lowers their American flag in the park, and they ask a current or retired service member to assist in the ceremony. For this day, Miguels dad was actually asked to be a part of it. This was all planned out, obviously, in an attempt to really wow and surprise his parents. The daily Flag Retreat at Magic Kingdom Park was even more magical this Veterans Day when Cast Member Miguel Irizarry, a... Posted by Walt Disney World in the Community on Friday, November 11, 2016 Looking at that picture, youre right they were surprised and completely overwhelmed with emotions. And so are we!! This certainly gets the waterworks flowing, but if youre looking to cry even more, theres a video of this surprise, because of course there is. Get three more boxes of tissues. CONGRATS VETERAN MIGS DAD!!...Miguel Angel Irizarry SURPRISED HIS DA THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!!!...#WHATAMERICAISABOUT #BEAUTIFUL #HAPPYVETERANSDAY #STANDTOGETHERASANATION Posted by Chris Michael Ross on Friday, November 11, 2016 TOO MUCH. Our hearts cant take this much. This is just the kind of happy cry we needed today, and were so happy Miguel got to spend this special time with his family. The post This armed service member just surprised his family at Disney, and were not crying, YOURE crying appeared first on HelloGiggles. Would you set your baby up on social media? [Photo: Getty] If youve just had a baby theres a whole host of must-dos to tick off. Registering the birth, sorting the nursery and learning how to look after an actual human for a start. But theres one thing that some new parents are shunting right to the top of the to-do list and thats making sure their little ones are digitally legit by setting up their own social media account. ICYMI Rob Kardashian (brother of Kim, Khloe et al) and girlfriend Blac Chyna had a baby last Thursday. And though little Dream (yes, thats her name) Renee Kardashian is only a few days old, the tiny tot already has her own Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Morning ???? it's bonding time with mommy! A photo posted by Dream Kardashian (@dream) on Nov 12, 2016 at 8:00am PST And the newborn has already delivered her first post. A photo of herself being breastfed by mum Blac, captioned Morning! its bonding time with mommy. It may seem like an obvious step for the littlest member of the Kardashian clan to be set up on social media, but baby K is by no means the only newborn with her own digital presence. According to a survey by Gerber.com close to 40% of mums in the US aged 18-34 created social media accounts for their baby before the childs first birthday and another 7% made one before their little ones second birthday. While there are no similar stats about babys being set up on social media in the UK, an alternative survey revealed that the average parent will post 1,000 images of their first child by the time theyre five, according to a survey of 2,000 social media users by the charity The Parent Zone. The idea that parents are setting up their babies with a personal social media account is sadly a sign of our times, explains psychologist Emma Kenny CEO of makeyourswitch.co.uk. These days having a personal brand is as common as eating your breakfast. While Instagram accounts for babies and young children are undeniably cute, some experts believe introducing little ones to a world of likes could be opening them up to a digital world they didnt sign up for. Story continues The problem with baby branding is that firstly you are sharing information about them without their permission and secondly you are creating a voice which isnt actually theirs, and this means that people are getting to know you and not your baby, explains Emma Kenny. The most obvious danger is that of security. Sharing pictures, media and social content online isnt very safe statistically and with recent figures suggesting that grooming on line is at pandemic levels, protecting your child needs to be a parents priority, continues Emma Kenny. But could there actually be some positives about babies and young children having a digital presence. Writer Laura June believes there were some up sides to her daughter having a footprint on social media. Writing in the NYmag she explained that sharing pictures of her daughter lead to her forming relationships with other new parents, In those early days, which could be long and lonely, these relationships had real meaning, she wrote of the relationships she developed with other parents online. Because I was still not back to work, I had lost real contact with many of my professional acquaintances and friends, but the conversation we had over our mutual affection for my daughter held us together. Laura also believes that documenting her daughters life on social media also enabled family members to share in her daughters developmental milestones. We often talk about all of the downsides of this type of sharing, or of overdocumenting our childrens lives, she continued. But there was no downside for my daughters grandparents, who experienced her first giggles and crawls via texted video clips, she wrote. Author and mum Jack Monroe set up her son on social media for similar reasons. My social media is all very public, she explained. I set one up specifically for friends and family to share photos of my son. Its locked-down, only approved friends can see it, and I feel more secure knowing its all there rather than on my social media where journalists trawl through it on a regular basis. Its unorthodox, but works very well for us. Monroe went on to say that as her son is only seven-years-old, he doesnt have access to the account. Its more like a secure storage unit for memories, [Im] not planning on letting him loose on it any time soon! she explains. Setting up your baby or toddler with a Facebook profile can help if for example a parent feels their own followers may be growing tired of having their feeds clogged up with baby pictures. Creating a page for a baby an their own fans not only keeps the parents own feed for other shares, but also means babys own page can be aimed purely at those who are interested in seeing pictures of their own development journey. Just updating my Instagram, mum! More babies than ever are being set up with their own social media profiles. [Photo: Getty] But the issue of consent needs consideration. Though its tempting to share every single moment of your babys little life, it is worth thinking ahead to when that baby becomes a teenager and isnt quite so fond of that nude shot of them in the bath. Babies cant give their consent to having every detail of their life posted to social media and therefore its impossible to know what they will think about it all when they get older. Who knows what a six month old is going to be like when theyre a strapping 16-year-old? They might be super shy, they might be super private, but by creating their own social media profile for them when theyre little, you could be signing them up for something they might not want to be part of. As your child grows up, they may enjoy reading all the sweet comments from nice followers, but equally they will be open to online abuse and analysis and for a developing child this can be disastrous for self esteem, explains Emma Kenny. So what age should a child start taking control of his or her own account? A recent survey revealed that over half of children use social media by the age of 10, despite the fact that Facebooks guidelines specify a person has to be 13 years olds to open an account. Chances are most of those childrens parents dont check what their child is posting on Facebook or perhaps dont even know that they have it. Instagrams restrictions are slightly different; basically you need to be 13 to set up an account but the app doesnt actually ask you for your age when you sign up. Plus most parents tend to send up the account on the childs behalf, therefore avoiding the restrictions entirely. Parent Zones editor, Eleanor Levy, believes there are some guidelines that need to be adhered to if parents are thinking of setting up social media profiles for their little ones. As Parent Zones research with Nominet showed, we love sharing images of our kids on social media, with mums and dads posting on average 11-20 images a month, she says. Its natural for parents to want to show off their children. I know I love seeing pictures of my nephews little girl in America. Even though we are thousands of miles apart, Ive watched her grow up on Facebook and it made me feel connected to her when we physically met for the first time earlier this year. But you do have to be careful, particularly once your child gets older. Our research showed that over a quarter of parents (28%) admitted they had never thought to check if their child minded them uploading images of them online. That may not be bad parenting and its unlikely to harm their child, but its certainly bad manners, Eleanor Levy continues. Weve already had a teenager in Austria suing her parents for sharing images on social media, and French lawyers have warned parents they could be violating that countrys privacy laws by doing the same. At the very least, be aware that as your child grows up, they may not want their formative years exposed in such a public way. Taking down a social media account they never asked for is a small price to pay for maintaining a good relationship with them. Would you set up your baby with a social media profile? Let us know @YahooStyleUK To blur or not to blur? Should we be pixelating our childrens pictures on social media? A Teenager Is Suing Her Parents For Posting Embarrassing Childhood Pictures To Facebook By Jan Lopatka and Pamela Barbaglia PRAGUE/LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese brewer Asahi and a consortium led by Swiss investment firm Jacobs Holding have made it onto the shortlist of bidders for SABMiller's eastern European beer brands, sources familiar with the matter said. Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BR), maker of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona beers, agreed to sell the brands, which include the Czech market leader Pilsner Urquell, to help get clearance from competition regulators for its $100 billion takeover of SABMiller. The brands up for sale, which also include the Polish beers Tyskie and Lech, Hungarian beer Dreher, Romania's Ursus and Topvar in Slovakia, are estimated to be worth more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion). Asahi has already bought SABMiller's Western European brands Peroni and Grolsch and could be interested in expanding its European presence. A source close to one of the other bidders said Asahi continued to be viewed as the favorite given its existing global distribution channels. "There is a chance (for us) but the favorites are elsewhere," the source said. Another bidder making it onto the shortlist is the Jacobs-led group, which includes Czech family office R2G and Canadian pension funds manager PSP Investments, said Jakub Dyba, an executive at R2G. R2G manages the assets of former CGS tyre firm founder Oldrich Slemr and the founders of software firm Avast. Three sources familiar with the matter said PPF, the investment firm of Czech business tycoon Petr Kellner, also made it to the shortlist. Two of the sources said Asahi was included while one of them said a joint bid by private equity firms Bain Capital and Advent was also through to the next round. Officials at PPF, Jacobs, Asahi and Advent declined to comment. Bain was not immediately available to comment. AB InBev received at least six indicative offers last week. Binding offers are due next month. China Resources also made an initial bid, as did KKR (KKR.N), jointly with specialist regional private equity firm Mid Europa Partners. Sources familiar with the sale process say the main attraction for all bidders is Pilsner Urquell, which has export potential as well as a 40 percent share of the Czech market, the biggest beer market in the world in terms of per-capita consumption. (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague and Ritsuko Shimizu in Tokyo; Editing by Greg Mahlich) By Jan Lopatka and Pamela Barbaglia PRAGUE/LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese brewer Asahi <2502.T> and a consortium led by Swiss investment firm Jacobs Holding have made it onto the shortlist of bidders for SABMiller's eastern European beer brands, sources familiar with the matter said. Anheuser-Busch InBev , maker of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona beers, agreed to sell the brands, which include the Czech market leader Pilsner Urquell, to help get clearance from competition regulators for its $100 billion takeover of SABMiller. The brands up for sale, which also include the Polish beers Tyskie and Lech, Hungarian beer Dreher, Romania's Ursus and Topvar in Slovakia, are estimated to be worth more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion). Asahi has already bought SABMiller's Western European brands Peroni and Grolsch and could be interested in expanding its European presence. A source close to one of the other bidders said Asahi continued to be viewed as the favorite given its existing global distribution channels. "There is a chance (for us) but the favorites are elsewhere," the source said. Another bidder making it onto the shortlist is the Jacobs-led group, which includes Czech family office R2G and Canadian pension funds manager PSP Investments, said Jakub Dyba, an executive at R2G. R2G manages the assets of former CGS tyre firm founder Oldrich Slemr and the founders of software firm Avast. Three sources familiar with the matter said PPF, the investment firm of Czech business tycoon Petr Kellner, also made it to the shortlist. Two of the sources said Asahi was included while one of them said a joint bid by private equity firms Bain Capital and Advent was also through to the next round. Officials at PPF, Jacobs, Asahi and Advent declined to comment. Bain was not immediately available to comment. AB InBev received at least six indicative offers last week. Binding offers are due next month. China Resources also made an initial bid, as did KKR , jointly with specialist regional private equity firm Mid Europa Partners. Sources familiar with the sale process say the main attraction for all bidders is Pilsner Urquell, which has export potential as well as a 40 percent share of the Czech market, the biggest beer market in the world in terms of per-capita consumption. (Additional reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague and Ritsuko Shimizu in Tokyo; Editing by Greg Mahlich) CAPE CANAVERAL Astronauts from four branches of the U.S. military spent Veteran's Day at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (Nov. 11), attending the launch of a public attraction devoted to honoring America's spaceflight pioneers. James Lovell, who served as a Navy Captain; Buzz Aldrin, who was a U.S. Air Force Colonel; Walt Cunningham, who was also a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps; and Bruce Melnick, who is one of only two astronauts to hail from the U.S. Coast Guard, joined more than 20 other military and civilian astronauts at a ceremony and ribbon cutting for the new "Heroes & Legends, featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame" exhibit at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. "It is no coincidence that we chose to celebrate the grand opening of Heroes & Legends on this day, Veteran's Day," said John Zarella, a former CNN news correspondent who served as the master of ceremonies. "Many, many of our astronaut heroes are also members of the United States Armed Forces, but not only that, they have all served their country as members of NASA's elite astronaut corps, each one willing to undertake extremely dangerous missions to advance scientific study to benefit all of humanity. [Photo Gallery: Astronauts' Adventures Come Alive in 'Heroes & Legends] Intended as the first stop after guests enter the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Heroes & Legends focuses on the early years of U.S. human spaceflight to explore the concept of heroism. The 37,000 square foot (3,440 sq. m.) attraction marries cutting-edge technology with immersive visual effects, authentic astronaut artifacts and interactive exhibits. "This great big attraction also has a great big name 'Heroes & Legends, featuring the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, presented by Boeing. That is because this attraction tells the story of many, many people not only the astronaut heroes whose daring missions are brought to life inside these walls, but also the countless people and companies who worked behind the scenes to enable those missions to happen," said Therrin Protze, chief operating officer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Story continues Protze delivered his remarks standing in front of the post-modern-inspired facade of the new exhibit, which features a towering bas relief of America's first astronauts, NASA's original Mercury 7. "It was the six surviving Mercury astronauts who were the first to conceive a place where space explorers would be remembered," said Dan Brandenstein, an Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee and chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. "I can only imagine how proud and humbled they'd have been, not only to see themselves immortalized on this wall, but to see the legacy of spaceflight that they all created." The opening ceremony for Heroes & Legends at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Nov. 11, 2016. collectSPACE.com "I'm certain that Heroes & Legends far surpasses anything that they would have imagined," said Brandenstein. Heroes & Legends is the first attraction at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to bear the name of its corporate sponsor, Boeing, which now comprises the companies that built the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft showcased in the exhibit. "I think it is appropriate going into our next 100 years as a company ... that we look back at the heroes that got us to this point," said John Elbon, the vice president and general manager of Boeing's Space Exploration division. "We are excited to partner with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on this Heroes & Legends attraction." The goal of Heroes & Legends, as described by the Visitor Complex, is for the public to gain a renewed sense of pride and more indepth understanding of the qualities of heroism represented by NASA's pioneering astronauts and why they deserve admiration and respect. "I think it is important as you tour this exhibit to remember all of the dedication and the hard work that it took for those of us who were involved in the astronaut program," said Charlie Duke, who in 1972 became the tenth man to walk on the moon. "Hopefully, it will be an inspiration to you and your grandkids and your kids." Take a photo tour of Heroes & Legends, featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, at collectSPACE. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. Editor's Recommendations By Ana Mano SAO PAULO (Reuters) - New York-based Aurelius Capital Management is behind the formation of a dissident bondholders group at Brazil's Oi SA(OIBR4.SA) that emerged last week, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday. The new group will also soon announce a financial adviser to handle negotiations with the debt-laden Brazilian carrier, which filed in June for the country's largest-ever bankruptcy to restructure about $19 billion of liabilities, the same source said. New York-based Houlihan Lokey is one of the firms vying for the role of financial adviser to the group, but no decision has been made, said the source. This is the second group of Oi bondholders formed to negotiate collectively with the company. The addition of a second group will add complexity to the carrier's debt restructuring talks, which the Brazilian government has already made clear it wants to influence in a way that ensures the company's survival. Aside from inter-creditor issues, industry watchdog Anatel is closely monitoring the carrier, and it recently banned two board members representing an activist minority shareholder claiming they were influencing decisions without formal regulatory approval. The second bondholder group said last week that investors representing $1.5 billion of the face amount of Oi bonds want "to construct a viable operational and reorganization plan" for Oi. Most investment firms in this group own bonds issued by Oi's two Netherlands-based finance subsidiaries, Portugal Telecom International Finance BV and Oi Brasil Holdings Cooperatif UA. Aurelius, Houlihan Lokey and law firm Dechert LLP, legal advisers to the new bondholder group, did not respond to requests for comment. SAWIRIS BID The first organized bondholder group to attempt to negotiate collectively with the carrier is being advised by New York-based Moelis & Co., which is working with Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris to present an alternative reorganization. Story continues However, Moelis' investor base shrank to about $4 billion of face amount of Oi bonds, said a second source with direct knowledge of Moelis' strategy, after two investors owning about $400 million of the bonds left the original group to negotiate alongside Aurelius in the dissident group. Calling Oi's own reorganization plan "a non-starter," the source said the only plan Moelis-led bondholders will approve is one introducing "an immediate debt-for-equity conversion." The Moelis-led group rejected Oi's original reorganization plan presented on Sept. 5 that would impose a 70 percent haircut on unsecured claims, including on Oi's bond debt, and a potential equity conversion only after three years. Reuters reported on Oct. 21 that the Egyptian billionaire plans to make an equity investment of $1.5 billion to take control of the ailing carrier. (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Cynthia Osterman) By Ana Mano SAO PAULO (Reuters) - New York-based Aurelius Capital Management is behind the formation of a dissident bondholders group at Brazil's Oi SA that emerged last week, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday. The new group will also soon announce a financial adviser to handle negotiations with the debt-laden Brazilian carrier, which filed in June for the country's largest-ever bankruptcy to restructure about $19 billion of liabilities, the same source said. New York-based Houlihan Lokey is one of the firms vying for the role of financial adviser to the group, but no decision has been made, said the source. This is the second group of Oi bondholders formed to negotiate collectively with the company. The addition of a second group will add complexity to the carrier's debt restructuring talks, which the Brazilian government has already made clear it wants to influence in a way that ensures the company's survival. Aside from inter-creditor issues, industry watchdog Anatel is closely monitoring the carrier, and it recently banned two board members representing an activist minority shareholder claiming they were influencing decisions without formal regulatory approval. The second bondholder group said last week that investors representing $1.5 billion of the face amount of Oi bonds want "to construct a viable operational and reorganization plan" for Oi. Most investment firms in this group own bonds issued by Oi's two Netherlands-based finance subsidiaries, Portugal Telecom International Finance BV and Oi Brasil Holdings Cooperatif UA. Aurelius, Houlihan Lokey and law firm Dechert LLP, legal advisers to the new bondholder group, did not respond to requests for comment. SAWIRIS BID The first organized bondholder group to attempt to negotiate collectively with the carrier is being advised by New York-based Moelis & Co., which is working with Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris to present an alternative reorganization. However, Moelis' investor base shrank to about $4 billion of face amount of Oi bonds, said a second source with direct knowledge of Moelis' strategy, after two investors owning about $400 million of the bonds left the original group to negotiate alongside Aurelius in the dissident group. Calling Oi's own reorganization plan "a non-starter," the source said the only plan Moelis-led bondholders will approve is one introducing "an immediate debt-for-equity conversion." The Moelis-led group rejected Oi's original reorganization plan presented on Sept. 5 that would impose a 70 percent haircut on unsecured claims, including on Oi's bond debt, and a potential equity conversion only after three years. Reuters reported on Oct. 21 that the Egyptian billionaire plans to make an equity investment of $1.5 billion to take control of the ailing carrier. (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Cynthia Osterman) Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sought to allay concerns Monday that a deal to send refugees from remote Pacific camps to the United States could be scuppered by President-elect Donald Trump. Canberra on Sunday announced a "one-off" arrangement that would see an unspecified number of the 1,600 boatpeople held in offshore processing centres on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea settled in the US. But with the political novice, who campaigned to ban Muslim migration, due to take office on January 20, the head of a prominent US anti-immigration think-tank warned: "This is the kind of thing the Trump administration will nix on Day 1." "I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either," Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival." Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia by boat to detention facilities on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru. They are blocked from resettling in Australia even if found to be refugees. Australia's arrangement with the Obama administration followed Turnbull in September saying he was ready to take more refugees from Central America. Officials from the US Department of Homeland Security are due to arrive in Australia soon before heading to Nauru to determine who will be eligible for the US move. While Turnbull spoke to Trump by phone soon after the shock election win last week, he said he did not bring up the refugee issue. "Until January 20 when Donald Trump is inaugurated, the president is Barack Obama and we deal with one administration at a time," he told Channel Nine. "And you dont discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration." Asked if he was confident a president who wants to put up a wall between Mexico and the US to keep people out would honour the commitment, Turnbull was non-committal. Story continues "We have a very long history of cooperation with the United States where we, in matters of this kind, are able to pursue our mutual and our respective humanitarian and national security objectives," he said. He added that those granted resettlement would be part of Washington's annual refugee quota and "they are simply managing the mix of their refugee intake just as we are". Refugees who are offered the US option but reject it would be offered a 20-year Nauru visa, while future boat arrivals will not be eligible. Australia has long sought to stem waves of boat migration by people from war-torn Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, using harsh policies including turning back the vessels, and strict secrecy about operations on the high seas and at the remote camps. Although the current conservative government has largely managed to stop the arrivals, conditions in the camps have been widely criticised, with the issue becoming a political headache. By Alexandria Sage SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hungarian autonomous vehicle technology start-up AImotive, which has changed its name from AdasWorks, said on Monday it had expanded to Silicon Valley, opening the door to becoming an acquisition target. The company, which has raised $10.5 million in seed and Series A funding from investors including Tier One supplier Bosch and graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), opened an office in Silicon Valley. AImotive is developing software that combines artificial intelligence with a low-cost system for gathering information about the conditions around a vehicle. A production version of the system for enabling autonomous driving will be ready in two years, executives said. "If you just see the statistics, we will probably be an acquisition," Chief Executive Officer Laszlo Kishonti told Reuters. In the highest-profile deal to date, General Motors Co (GM.N) bought self-driving start-up Cruise Automation for $700 million in May, sending a ripple effect through Silicon Valley's fledgling autonomous vehicle technology companies. "I think only a minority of (automakers) will be able to execute this plan all alone," Kishonti said. "That's why specialists like us who are hardware-agnostic and neutral to different clients can help them with software technology." Kishonti said AImotive, which plans to open offices in Japan and China next year, used off-the-shelf components to keep costs down. The company has grown from 15 engineers to 120 engineers and researchers. AImotive's system relies on six to 12 cameras in each vehicle that cost about $15 apiece. In contrast, the original laser-based Lidar sensor made by Velodyne that twirls atop Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google self-driving cars costs about $75,000, although Lidar manufacturers are working to slash the solid-state device's cost to about $100 by giving it fewer moving parts. Artificial intelligence, driven by faster and more powerful chips, can also substitute for the high-definition, three-dimensional maps that many in the industry say are a key ingredient to allow a car to drive itself. "If you wanted have the full United States in 3D, that would be thousands of terabytes," Kishonti said. "I think it's not really feasible to have a global product where the whole world is stored in your trunk and needs to be updated." (Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) Storm Reid, who plays Meg Murray, on set during filming of A Wrinkle in Time (Ava Duvernay/Twitter/Disney) By Dave McNary, Variety Disney has set Ava DuVernays A Wrinkle in Time for release on April 6, 2018. DuVernay made the announcement on her Twitter account with the films star, newcomer Storm Reid, at the end of a two-minute video posted Monday. That video featured the cast and crew of more than 100 of A Wrinkle in Time as part of its very own take on the Mannequin Challenge. The time-travel tale also stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Zach Galifianakis, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Mindy Kaling. Jennifer Lee, who wrote and co-directed Frozen with Chris Buck, is penning the adaptation of Madeleine LEngles book for Disney. Shooting started last week in Los Angeles. The California Film Commission selected A Wrinkle in Time in August for an $18 million tax credit as part of the states incentive program to keep films in California. It said that A Wrinkle in Time will bring $85 million in qualified spending to California with nearly 400 cast and crew members employed, and $44 million will be paid in wages to below-the-line workers. DuVernay, the director of Selma, came on to A Wrinkle in Time in February. The story follows a group of children as they travel through time and visit strange worlds in order to find their missing father. Reid plays the oldest daughter, Meg Murray, in the movie. (Adds details of lawsuit and context, paragraphs 3-8) By Ana Mano Nov 14 (Reuters) - Brazilian mining company Samarco Mineracao SA was sued by creditors in the United States on Monday, accusing it of making false statements about a deadly dam disaster in November 2015. Banco Safra's Cayman Islands branch, individually and on behalf of investors holding Samarco's bonds due in 2022, 2023 and 2024, said Samarco and Ricardo de Aragao, chief executive offer at the time of the accident, made "false and or misleading statements" related to "the longstanding systemic and structural defects" in the Fundao tailings dam. Samarco representatives were not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court. Samarco stopped production after the disaster. The lawsuit seeks compensation for damages caused by any violations of U.S. securities laws and seeks class action, or group status, for investors. It said New York was the proper jurisdiction because the bank bought Samarco notes from broker-dealers and counterparties in the district. Banco Safra's lawsuit makes reference to a burst tailings dam at a Samarco mine, which unleashed a mud flow that killed 19 people, left hundreds homeless and polluted the Rio Doce River. The government called it Brazil's worst environmental disaster. Samarco, a 50-50 joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, has $2.2 billion in outstanding bond debt. The company is in default after missing two interest payments related to its bond obligations. Banco Safra also claims investors were led to believe Samarco had taken measures to avoid a catastrophic disaster at its Fundao tailings dam, but these measures were not in place. The case is Banco Safra - Cayman Islands branch v Samarco Mineracao, et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-cv-08800 (Reporting by Ana Mano in Sao Paulo and Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Grant McCool) DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh's central bank hopes to retrieve $30 million more of the $81 million stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve in February, two bank officials said on Monday. Hackers used stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to try to send three dozen SWIFT messages to transfer nearly $1 billion from its Fed account. They succeeded in transferring $81 million to four accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila. Most of the money was laundered through casinos in Manila. On Friday, Philippine authorities began the process of handing over $15.25 million to Bangladesh. "We are hoping to get back around $30 million which remains frozen," Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit, told Reuters. A Bangladesh team was likely to visit the Philippines at the end of the month to accelerate the process, he said. "We are expecting to get a favourable verdict from Philippines Supreme Court as it has already been proved that $81 million is our money," said another Bangladesh Bank official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to talk to the media. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Nick Macfie) Styling by Alicia Buszczak Cocktail styling by Karen Gillingham Special thanks to Gearys of Beverly Hills When the London bartender and mixologist Tony Conigliaro bottled his first Manhattan a decade ago, he had no inkling his idea would be so prescient. Prebatching has now become the hottest technique on the cocktail scene. Conigliaros original inspiration was a bottle of 1920s vermouth. Marveling at its mellow and harmonious complexity, he wondered if cocktails aged in bottle would develop the same characteristics. Opening his first experiments a year later, he discovered they did, and the idea soon caught on. London remains the epicenter for batching: Ryan Chetiyawardana (who worked for Conigliaro at his 69 Colebrooke Row establishment) has made waves with White Lyan, a bar where all the drinks are prebottled and served straight from the fridge, finished in front of the customer with only minimal embellishment. Bottled cocktails are also a staple at Dandelyan at Mondrian London, Chetiyawardanas latest bar. The Craft Cocktail Co. in fashionable Bethnal Green and the whimsically named Worship Street Whistling Shop in hipster-hub Shoreditch are batching hot spots, too. But the trend also has become firmly entrenched Stateside, ever since Jeffrey Morgenthaler (the Spirited Awards 2016 American Bartender of the Year) pioneered prebottled cocktails at Clyde Common in Portland, Ore. Morgenthalers inspiration? None other than one of Conigliaros bottle-aged Manhattans, which he encountered at 69 Colebrooke Row. Back home in Oregon, he added an old whiskey cask to the mix, and his barrel-aged Negroni soon became the stuff of legend. Now dozens of bars across the United States are experimenting with bottled cocktails. There are even signs that batching, until recently the preserve of cutting-edge bars, is entering the commercial mainstream. The London department store Selfridges began stocking Chetiyawardanas range of elegantly labeled Mr Lyan bottled cocktails in 2014. Californias Craft Distillers debuted its Fluid Dynamics line of barrel-aged drinks in 2013, and Utahs High West Distillery now sells Barreled Boulevardiers and rye Manhattans. And with bottled cocktails on the retail shelves, the next frontier is the home. Story continues In fact, batched cocktails should appeal to the fastidious host for much the same reason theyre so popular with bartenders and mixologists. While bottle- and barrel-aging (as well as complex preparations like White Lyans tincture of chicken bones dissolved in phosphoric acid) are probably best left to the professionals, everyone can enjoy batchings other advantages. As Chetiyawardana is fond of repeating, its all about total controlby the time a batched cocktail is served, every aspect of the drink has already been leisurely perfected, with absolute precision and consistency, leaving hosts certain of guests enjoyment. All the work, in short, has been done in advance. The drinks may be labor-intensiveChetiyawardana estimates that the team at White Lyan spends about 70 percent more time prepping than an average cocktail bar. But service is as simple as opening a bottle. If that appeals to professional bartenders, experienced at working rapidly under pressure, its all the more attractive for the home mixologist: For hosts, batching means not only better drinks, but also a chance to dump the ice and shaker and relax with guests. Let us not forget that batching, in its most rudimentary form, has been around for quite some time. After all, punch, the beverage of choice for 18th-century scoundrels, is nothing if not a batched cocktail. Mixed by numbers in a large bowl, punches require no shaking or stirring. Guests can even serve themselvesperfect for the crush of a well-attended soiree. Even bartenders appreciate the genre: Morgenthaler, for example, has a daily punch program at Clyde Common. But if youre willing to be a bit more ambitious, home batching can be taken further. The first step is to scale your recipe, which is simplified by applying some elementary math to reveal the ratio of ingredients. The next is to factor in dilution, if ice is critical to the character of the drink: prepare a test cocktail, weigh it, shake it over ice, and weigh it again. The difference is the amount of water contributed by the melting ice; and since 1 milliliter of water weighs 1 gram, figuring out how much water to add to your recipe is easy enough. For the math-averse, mix the batch ahead of time, but shake the drinks over ice before serving. There are also a few fundamental donts. Avoid eggs is every bartenders first piece of advice for the home batcher: They are liable to separate and demand a lot of shaking. Fruit juices and bubbly ingredientswhether sparkling wine, club soda, or tonicmust also be added at the last minute; theyll lose their freshness and effervescence if there is any gap between mixing and service. Within those parameters, give the imagination free rein. Simple syrups, for example, can be infused with teas and herbs to contribute depth and complexity. Chetiyawardana recommends using the humble microwave for garnishes to provide a sharp burst of heat that liberates flavorwhether it be the citrus bitters of orange peel or the warm spice of cinnamon. Consider preparing garnishes in advance to speed up the finishing of your drinks. Experiment with refrigerator and freezer times to find the optimum temperature for each recipe. Shaken over ice, most drinks will reach 5 degrees centigrade (23 degrees Fahrenheit), but thats just a starting point when batching. And the best part? By the time your guests arrive, you can join in and enjoy the fruits of your labor, assured of your status as the ultimate cocktail craftsman. More From Robbreport.com If Built, This Superyacht Would Be One of the Largest in the World Outlaw Porsche 356s Are in the Emory Familys DNA Experience a Speaker that Packs the Same Punch as a Live Rock Concert This Breguet Watch Sounds as Beautiful as It Looks Monet Painting Sells for a Record $81.4 Million at Christies Auction Are You Most Calm at Home or at Work? 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." Bernie Sanders appeared on The View Monday to discuss the outcome of the presidential election and Donald Trumps victory. The Vermont senator, who lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, said Trump was able to connect with the working class in a way the Democratic Party could not. Trump touched a nerve on the part of millions of people, Sanders explained. You have a middle class for the last forty years that has been shrinking You got millions of people living in extraordinary economic anxiety, and meanwhile, the very richest people and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. And people are saying all over this country black and white and Latino What about me? Whose going to stand up for me?,' Sanders said. In my view, the Democratic Party has not been as strong as it should be in saying it will stand with the working people. Joy Behar asked Sanders what he thought about claims he wouldve won the election if had the partys nomination. Who knows and who will ever know, Sanders replied. The point is we have to talk about the future and how we go forward. The Senator then listed all the promises Trump made during his campaign: higher wages, pay equity, infrastructure improvements, trade, prescription drugs. Sanders agreed with the President-elect on several of these issues, and said he would keep him accountable. Sanders then denounced all the discrimination that has permeated Trumps campaign and continued after his victory. We are not going to accept a president trying to divide us up. Our enemies are not some Latino guy, some Mexican-American working in a tomato field making nine bucks an hour, Sanders said. Those are not our enemies and I dont want millions of people being worried today about families being separated. Ive seen too much of that. Were going to fight against sexism, racism and xenophobia. Sanders also brought up climate change, an issue that Trump has called a hoax. Story continues He better start listening to the scientific communities and not just the coal company and the oil companies. If he doesnt, youre not going to have much of a planet left for your grandchildren, Sanders warned. Sanders had strong words for FBI Director James Comey and Steve Bannon, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser over the weekend. Sen. @BernieSanders on FBIs letter to congress on Clintons emails: I think what the FBI did was unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/uIQu7PfJ30 The View (@TheView) November 14, 2016 What the FBI did was unacceptable. They got involved in a presidential election in an unprecedented way, referring to Comey opening up another investigation of Clintons emails just days before the election. But Sanders was critical of Clintons ability to reach out to the electorate as well. I think its fair to say the working class in this country did not believe she was prepared to stand up and fight for them. Sen. @BernieSanders on Trump's top advisor appointment: "[Breitbart's Stephen Bannon] should get us very nervous." pic.twitter.com/7DIE46sbY1 The View (@TheView) November 14, 2016 He said Bannon should get us very nervous, alluding to Bannons affiliation with the alt-right site Breitbart. I will be damned if were going to backwards and try and divide this country again Were going to tell Mr. Bannon and any other advisers, were not going to be turning on each other, were going to be standing together. Related stories Tech Stocks' Donald Trump Hangover Continues TV Ratings: '60 Minutes' Trump Interview, Seahawks-Patriots Game Score Ava DuVernay on Trump and Mass Incarceration: 'He Feels It's a Business' From Popular Mechanics A 15-foot-long, 4-foot-diameter metal cylinder fell out of the sky in northern Myanmar yesterday, shaking the ground when it crashed. "Every local thought it was the explosion of heavy artillery," local Ko Maung Myo told Myanmar Times. "I walked over to it and saw it was part of an engine." The cylinder struck in a jade mine and then bounced about 150 feet away before coming to a rest. A smaller cylindrical object, some 4.6 inches in length, crashed through the roof of a nearby home. No injuries have been reported from either incident. "I think it was an engine because I found a diode and many copper wires at the tail of the body," said Myo, who went on to say that there was an acrid smell around the cylinder, as though electronics were burning. Photo credit: Global New Light of Myanmar/Facebook The debris is thought to be from a Chinese Long March 11 rocket that was launched on Wednesday, carrying an experimental satellite. Rocket stages are designed to break off and fall back to Earth before the primary payload reaches space, but launches are generally directed so any part of the vehicle that breaks off will fall into the ocean or another unpopulated area. The China National Space Administration, however, has a history of not being so cautious when it comes to conducting launches. Last year, part of a rocket engine crashed through a man's roof and into his living room in China's northeastern province of Shanxi. China also recently confirmed that its Tiangong-1 space station is falling back to Earth and is expected to impact in late 2017. China has been aggressively expanding their space program of late. A second Chinese space station was launched in September, and the country has plans to send a rover to Mars in 2020 and put a person on the moon by 2036. Source: Myanmar Times via Gizmodo You Might Also Like How adorable are these young lovebirds? On Monday Bindi Irwin took to Instagram to wish her boyfriend of over two years, Chandler Powell, a very happy birthday grab a tissue, because her tribute might make you cry. For 20 years you have brought endless amounts of light into this world. I am thankful every day to have you in my life, her post began. Weve travelled the world together and had some of the most extraordinary adventures. Im so excited to continue on this beautiful journey with you. Your kindness and strength is inspiring, and your smile will always be my favorite, Irwin, 18, continued. Happy birthday my sunshine, youre amazing. The birthday boy also took to social media to share a few posts about celebrating his special day with the Dancing with the Stars champion. 20 years old will definitely be the most difficult age for me to get used to thus far, he wrote on Instagram. I couldnt have asked for a better way to spend it than living in the middle of nowhere for a few days with my girl @bindisueirwin, she sure knows how to give me an amazing birthday. Powell also added a cute video of the pair enjoying the Supermoon under the Australian stars. RELATED VIDEO: Bindi Irwin Posts Touching Tribute to Her Late Father Steve on Instagram Irwin and her boyfriend, a professional wakeboarder who is currently a college student in Florida, first met in November 2013 while he was visiting the Australia zoo. After the pair began a long-distance relationship, Irwin told PEOPLE that the two rely on Skype and FaceTime to keep in touch while theyre apart. A black veteran says that he was refused a free Veteran's Day meal at Chili's after a man wearing a Trump shirt called his military service into question. On Friday, Ernest Walker visited a Chili's in Cedar Hill, Texas, planning to partake in the chain's offer of a free meal for military veterans, CBS 11 reports. Walker says everything was normal as he ordered his food. Then, he was approached by a man who questioned his military service. "I was approached by an old white guy, maybe in his 70s, with a Trump shirt, at Chili's on Veteran's Day yesterday... He said he was in Germany, and that they did not let Blacks serve over there," Walker wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. Walker told Dallas News he was stationed in Hawaii in the 25th Infantry Division during the late 1980s. Black soldiers have fought in every American war since the Revolutionary War, including World War II, though often in segregated units. Walker said that as he prepared to leave with a to-go box of food, he was approached by the Chili's manager, Wesley Patrick. Walker said Patrick told him that another customer had reported he was not a real veteran, and that his dog, who was with him at the restaurant, was not an actual service dog. "At this point I was grossly offended embarrassed dehumanized and started [r]ecording," Walker, whose name on Facebook is Ernest Blackbatman, wrote in a post accompanying a video that he recorded. "Mr. Wesley snatched my food away, made body contact." In the video, Patrick repeatedly tells Walker he needs to leave, eventually taking away his to-go box of food. Walker said in another Facebook post that he joined the military when he was only 16 years old, at a time when he was homeless and sleeping behind a Kroger. Over the weekend, Walker's Facebook post was shared more than 5,000 times. Chili's Facebook and Twitter accounts were flooded with criticism. Story continues "You allow racism among your management staff? I find it hard to believe that your executives would be okay with this behavior," one comment reads. "I love your restaurants, I've dined at dozens and dozens of your locations. Now please... so people feel safe next time they eat at a Chilis." It'll be a lot of bizs like @Chilis losing black folk $$ like in the #MontgomeryBoycott. Let the boycotts begin. https://t.co/gn8EFG37MS S. Maxx Mahaffey (@smaxxmahaffey) November 14, 2016 As a 21 year Army Veteran I will no long be going to @Chilis after what I just saw and read. #disrespectful Demond Gooch (@dsgooch40) November 14, 2016 Boycott @Chilis in Cedar Hill, TX until they fire that ignorant, cruel manager Wesley Patrick! #Chilis https://t.co/EymbDN4mJN MsEbonyTheTeacher (@ebonynichole) November 13, 2016 .@Chilis 1) Have you apologized to this vet? 2) Has this employee been disciplined? 3) What training are you planning to avoid this again? Gabe Ortiz (@TUSK81) November 13, 2016 "I will certainly not be dining at Chili's Grill and Bar while they remain silent on hiring racist or bigoted staff who assault African-American veterans," reads another. Chili's has said on social media that its parent company, Brinker International, is working to address the issue. Brinker International did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. @Bebos4912P We're taking this situation very seriously & the leaders in our company are actively involved with the goal of making it right! Chili's Grill & Bar (@Chilis) November 14, 2016 According to CBS 11, Walker and his attorney are planning on meeting with representatives from Brinker International on Monday. Walker's attorney says that a Brinker attorney apologized to her on behalf of the company. The company has not yet issued a public apology to Walker beyond stating on Facebook: "Our goal is to make every guest feel special. Unfortunately, we fell short on a day that we strive to honor our Veterans and active military for their service." The US has seen a rise in racially-motivated attacks following the election of Donald Trump on Tuesday. Representatives from two organizations that track hate crimes, the Southern Povery Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told USA Today that they have seen a much larger number of people reporting hate crimes than is typical since the general election. NOW WATCH: Thousands of protesters gather at Trump Tower in New York More From Business Insider Protests across the United States continued Monday for a sixth-straight day, in opposition of President-elect Donald Trump. From New York to Los Angeles, the protestssometimes violent in naturecome in response to the results of the general election, in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in an upset. The real estate mogul-turned President-elect won the electoral vote, while Clinton won the popular vote. Former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, who was the GOP presidential nominee in 1996, joined the FOX Business Network to weigh in on the anti-Trump protests. I dont think they even know Donald Trump, said Dole. I think theyre crazy. I cant understand whats happening to the young people in America, and what the future holds for the rest of the country if these young punks take over and continue their protests. On Monday morning, hundreds of high school students in Maryland walked out of class to show their opposition to the President-elect. Dole believes some professional protesters are involved, and questioned the role of parents in regards to the high school-aged demonstrators. If you have good parents youre not going to be out protesting, he said. You ought to be in school worrying about your grades because if youre gonna have any life in the future, youve got to have, not only a high school diploma, but also a college degree. So I just cant believe whats been happening with adults and college students and now high school students. On Sunday, Trump named Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus chief of staff, and Trump campaign CEO and Breitbart News executive chairman, Steve Bannon, as chief strategist and senior counselor. Former Senator Dole, so far, likes what hes seen from President-elect Trump. I think hes made the right moves. I think hes been acting like he should, like the President-elect So I think hes doing a good job, he said. Related Articles Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - The leader of the jihadist group Boko Haram has reacted to the election of Donald Trump to the White House with a warning that "the war has just begun" against the West. "Do not be overwhelmed by people like Donald Trump and the global coalition fighting our brethren in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and everywhere," Abubakar Shekau said in an audio message posted on YouTube late Sunday. "We remain steadfast on our faith and we will not stop," he said in the hour-long message. "To us, the war has just begun." Boko Haram is waging a seven-year-old uprising against the Nigerian state that has claimed more than 20,000 lives, with the insurgency spilling over the West African nation's borders into neighbouring states. Boko Haram, which last year pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, has been in the grip of a power struggle since late last year. The IS high command said in August that Shekau had been replaced as leader by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the 22-year-old son of Boko Haram's founder Mohammed Yusuf. Shekau claims he is still in charge, however, as rival factions vie for control. During a visit to Nigeria in August, US Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated the government for reclaiming swathes of territory and releasing thousands of hostages from Boko Haram, while warning against the use of excessive force to fight extremists. Bingeworthy: 10 political shows to stream for the next four or eight years La Paz (AFP) - Centuries ago, Spanish colonizers forced their Bolivian servants to wear the puffy skirts that have come to symbolize the country's "cholitas," or indigenous women. Today, one local designer is turning the tables with plans to export high-end cholita fashion -- blossoming skirts, bowler hats and intricately woven shawls -- to Madrid, Paris and beyond. Fresh off her first show at New York Fashion Week, Eliana Paco, a 34-year-old indigenous Aymara designer, is ready to bring her take on a once-stigmatized style to the world. "Cholitas" -- a diminutive of "chola," a sometimes derogatory world for a woman from Bolivia's indigenous majority -- were once seen here as a silent underclass of maids and manual laborers. But in a changing Bolivia currently governed by its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, Paco said she sees the traditional women's costume as a symbol of "identity and pride." She has already made her mark on the local fashion scene, where TV presenters and cabinet ministers now regularly sport the indigenous look, updated and embellished. Her mission now is to "use that sophisticated touch to cross borders," she told AFP. She took a big step in September in New York, where she made headlines with her latest collection, "Pachamama" (Mother Earth, in the Quechua language). "It's the first time a chola women's suit has arrived on the runway. There were 12 international models wearing our designs," she said. - Turning heads - Paco's exuberant dresses, vibrant shawls and gravity-defying bowlers captured industry insiders' attention. "I love cholita clothing. It reminds me a lot of Yves Saint Laurent and the best era of Armani, when he used bowler hats," said Spanish designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada. "I would love to take (Paco's designs) to Madrid, to Paris," she told AFP in Lima, Peru, where she was presenting her own collection. Story continues "Until now there had never been a cholita with the marketing sense she has." Paco said she sees an international market for her designs. "I think it's possible European women could use the shawls or hats for everyday wear," said the soft-spoken designer with her ever-present smile. She envisions her shawls accessorizing Western dresses or jeans, she said. - 10-kilo skirts - Paco, the daughter of two artisans, takes pride in the quality of her designs. Her colorful "aguayo" shawls are hand-woven with naturally dyed alpaca or vicuna wool. The best ones take a team of three people two weeks to finish. The below-the-knee skirts have three or four layers, each using up to six meters (yards) of fabric. They can weigh up to 10 kilos (22 pounds). A full outfit can cost 1,500 to 30,000 bolivianos ($200 to $4,300). For special occasions, members of Bolivia's newly wealthy "cholita elite" add gold or silver pins, brooches and jewels that can add thousands of dollars to the price tag. "To me (the outfit) symbolizes culture, identity, pride and work, because chola women work long and hard," said Paco, who has three children. "It's also about the empowerment of independent and professional women," she said, sporting an outfit of her own design. Traumatic events may affect the brains of boys and girls differently, a new study finds. Among boys in the study, a brain area called the anterior circular sulcus was larger among those who had symptoms of a trauma, compared with a control group of boys who did not have any trauma symptoms. But among girls in the study, this brain region was smaller among those who had trauma symptoms. The region is associated with emotional awareness and empathy, the researchers said. The scientists said they were surprised to see that "the boys and girls were so clearly on different ends of the spectrum," said Megan Klabunde, the lead author of the study and a psychologist and neuroscience researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain] The researchers compared the size of this brain region in the boys in the control group with that of the girls in the control group, finding that the region was of approximately similar size in both groups. A potential explanation for these results is that "exposure to traumatic stress may impact brain development rates" differently in boys than in girls, the researchers said. However, because the study was conducted at a single point in time, it's not possible to know whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship in either girls or boys between trauma and the size of this brain region, the investigators said. In the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 59 children ages 9 to 17, using a type of scan called structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI). There were 29 children total in the control group, and there were 30 children in the group that had symptoms of trauma, such as mood changes, and mentally re-living their traumautic events. These children had experienced a traumatic event more than 6 months prior to the start of the study. The researchers compared the size of the anterior circular sulcus, located within a brain region called the insula, which plays a role in people's emotions, awareness and empathy. Story continues However, "the insula doesn't work in isolation," Klabunde told Live Science. Rather, this region is connected to other parts of the brain, which are also involved in emotion processing and empathy, she said. Previous studies have shown that about 8 percent of girls and 2 percent of boys develop post-traumatic stress disorder sometime during their lifetime. Girls, in general, are more likely to develop the condition than boys are. The researchers noted that their study had a relatively small number of participants. In addition, the research did not specifically study the impact of factors such as the time since the trauma, the age of the participant when the trauma first occurred, the severity of the trauma and other potential stressors that may also affect changes in the brain. Future studies may shed light on how trauma affects other brain structures related to empathy, and whether these effects also show gender differences, the researchers said. Additionally, further research may also help scientists determine whether these physical differences in the brain in turn lead to behavioral differences between boys and girls, the scientists said. Such research could help psychiatrists develop gender-specific treatments for boys and girls who have suffered traumatic events, the researchers said. Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Brad Pitt appeared to be in a pretty great mood on Monday, promoting Allied in Shanghai, China. The visit marked his first promotional appearance for a movie in China since reportedly being banned over his 1997 film, Seven Years in Tibet, due to its portrayal of harsh Chinese rule in the Himalayan region. The 52-year-old actor looked svelte in an all-black outfit, looking youthful as always. Getty Images WATCH: Brad Pitt Makes First Red Carpet Appearance Since Divorce, Poses With 'Allied' Co-Star Marion Cotillard Getty Images Pitt signed autographs for fans for 40 minutes, and questions were strictly limited to the film itself, and not about his recent divorce from Angelina Jolie. Getty Images "It's a nod to the classic films of the past," Pitt said about his new romantic thriller co-starring actress Marion Cotillard. "It's got good set pieces, good sense of action, but ultimately it's one of those really strong romantic thrillers that many of the classics are based in, so it's kind of got everything. We think it's one for everyone, it's why we wanted to bring it here. So, it's great to get started." Pitt also acknowledged Chinese cinema. "It's a great honor for us to start with the film here," he said. "It's amazing for us. Your film industry has been exploding in the best of ways that we have great respect for, and to have our film play in this arena is a real, again, a real honor for us and we think we've got something that you'll really like. So, we just hope you enjoy it and thank you so much." Pitt did visit China back in 2014 to accompany Jolie -- who was on a publicity tour at the time for Maleficent -- but didn't make any public appearances and kept a low profile. Last week, ET confirmed Pitt has been cleared of child abuse allegations by the Department of Child and Family Services after an incident involving his 15-year-old son, Maddox. In a statement to ET, Jolie's rep expressed relief that the investigation had concluded. Story continues "The job of the DCFS is to make sure the children are in a safe and secure situation," the statement read. "As we said earlier this week, childcare professionals encouraged a legal agreement accepted and signed by both sides that was in the best interest of the children. Angelina said from the beginning that she felt she had to take action for the health of the family and is relieved that after their 8-week involvement, the DCFS is now satisfied the safeguards are put in place that will allow the children to heal." WATCH: EXCLUSIVE -- Marion Cotillard on Meeting Brad Pitt While Filming 'Allied' -- 'He's Such a Good Man' Jolie and Pitt have now come to their own temporary custody plan. Last Monday, a representative for Jolie told ET that Jolie and Pitt's children -- Maddox, 12-year-old Pax, 11-year-old Zahara, 10-year-old Shiloh, and 8-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne -- will remain in the actress' custody. Watch below: Related Articles London (AFP) - Britain's interior minister on Monday ordered the extradition to the United States of a man accused of hacking into thousands of US government computers. Lauri Love, 31, faces three separate charges for allegedly hacking into the networks of the US Federal Reserve, US Army and NASA, among others, in 2012 and 2013. Interior Minister Amber Rudd paved the way for his extradition nearly two months after a British court ruled he could be sent for trial in the US. "On Monday 14 November, the Secretary of State, having carefully considered all relevant matters, signed an order for Lauri Loves extradition to the United States," an interior ministry spokesperson said in a statement. "Mr Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting US military and federal government agencies." Love has 14 days to appeal against the extradition order, the ministry told AFP. He could face a lengthy prison term if convicted but does not risk being sentenced to death. US prosecutors argue that Love disseminated the personal information of American citizens, including serving members of the military. A judge granted the extradition request in September after considering issues including prison conditions and Love's health. Love argues he should face justice in Britain rather than the US and believes that his Asperger Syndrome condition would get worse if he was sent to an American prison. Brussels (AFP) - EU ministers approved a common defence plan on Monday despite sharp differences over how far it should go, as Donald Trump's election win stoked fears about Washington's commitment to European security. Trump's campaign threat to think twice about defending NATO allies unless they up their defence spending has driven calls for the European Union to press ahead on its own, despite objections from Britain. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini insisted the plans -- to boost the bloc's ability to respond to external conflicts, help partner countries build their defence capabilities and protect EU citizens -- would not undermine NATO. "It's not about a European army, it's not about creating a new European Union SHAPE-style headquarters," Mogherini said after talks with foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, referring to NATO's own military HQ. Britain has long opposed any such moves as undermining NATO, but after its shock June Brexit vote, France and Germany jumped in with plans to boost defence cooperation that have now gained extra urgency with Trump's election victory. Mogerhini said the bloc was working on the issue long before the US vote and that it would "continue to do this in strong partnership with NATO". The meeting's final statement made no mention of a possible EU military headquarters in Brussels, but said they had asked the bloc's foreign policy service to develop a "permanent" system for coordinating civilian-military measures. - France-Britain rift - The issue exposed a rift between the bloc's two biggest military powers, France and Britain, which is set to leave the EU in two years after the Brexit vote in June. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the defence plan was an "essential step forward" for Europe to show it can take defence decisions on its own in an "increasingly uncertain world". Story continues But British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon meanwhile bluntly told the EU to stop "dreaming". "Instead of planning expensive new headquarters or dreaming of a European army, what Europe needs to do now is to spend more on its own defence, that is the best possible approach to the Trump Presidency," Fallon said. British foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, said earlier that Trump's election offered a "moment of opportunity" and the EU should wait to see what he wanted. "Donald Trump, as I've said before, is a dealmaker," he said, warning: "You shouldn't undermine the fundamental security architecture that's looked after us for the last 70 years." Johnson had snubbed special talks on Trump's election hosted by Mogherini over dinner on Sunday, saying the meeting risked sending the wrong message to the new president. Mogherini insisted after Sunday's session that ministers backed a "very strong partnership" with Trump, but that the EU would have to move on with its own plans nonetheless. - Defence on agenda - The EU has no military arm but has mounted a series of combined civilian and military operations such as in central Africa or to combat piracy off the Horn of Africa. EU diplomats say Brexit and now Trump's election have put defence firmly on the agenda. Nuclear-armed Britain counts as the bloc's most powerful military power and the United States through NATO has guaranteed Europe's security since 1949. They also say that while Britain has been most opposed to a larger military role, other member states -- of which 22 of the EU's 28 also belong to NATO -- are now being forced to come forward with their reservations. For example, Poland and the Baltic states want Trump to stick by commitments to increase NATO's eastern presence so as to deter a more aggressive Russia. The election over the weekend of Moscow-friendly presidents in Moldova and EU member Bulgaria will likely heighten concerns on that front. * Greencore to fund deal with rights issue * Sees enhanced earnings from acquisition * Shares up 12 percent (Adds shares, CEO quotes) LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Britain's biggest sandwich maker Greencore Group said on Monday it would buy U.S. convenience food manufacturer Peacock Foods for $747.5 million in a bid to transform its U.S. business. The announcement sent Greencore's shares up 12 percent. Irish-registered but London-listed Greencore had signalled an intention to expand in the United States where it already produces sandwiches, salads, sushi and deserts for customers including Starbucks and the 7-Eleven convenience store. It said it expects the deal to more than quadruple its total sales in the United States to contribute around 42 percent of group revenue, up from around 15 percent currently. Illinois-based Peacock focuses on frozen sandwiches for breakfast consumption, snack kits for children and salad packs, among other items. Greencore expects to see significantly enhanced earnings and a targeted return ahead of cost of capital from the first full year of ownership. "This is a huge deal for Greencore, it gives us real scale, real reach and a very strong performance in the United States and it rebalances our portfolio," Greencore Chief Executive Patrick Coveney said in a statement. The news sent shares in Greencore up 12 percent in early trading on Monday, giving it a market value of 1.4 billion pounds ($1.8 billion). Greencore, founded 25 years ago, will buy the business on a debt free and cash free basis, backed by a fully underwritten rights issue offered to qualifying shareholders. Coveney does not expect the deal to be affected by any changes to global trade that may come from the election of Donald Trump as president, with its food manufactured locally for local brands, he said. "Whatever may happen and frankly I'm not sure people know yet in terms of the implications for global trade once Donald Trump becomes president, it'll have very little impact on underlying food demand for U.S. consumers," he told Irish national broadcaster RTE. Story continues Peacock said the deal would help make it more innovative. "We are excited by the opportunity that we now have to leverage Greencore's expertise in innovation and fresh food manufacturing, thereby bringing a broader set of capabilities to our customers," Peacock Foods CEO Tom Sampson said in a statement. ($1 = 0.8008 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Holton in London and Padraic Halpin in Dublin, Editing by Paul Sandle and Susan Fenton) By Jonathan Stempel and Jeffrey Dastin NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Monday said it has bought shares in the four biggest U.S. airlines: American Airlines Group Inc , Delta Air Lines Inc , Southwest Airlines Co and United Continental Holdings Inc . The investments mark an unexpected reversal for Berkshire, which has avoided the airline sector for nearly two decades after a troubled investment in the former US Air Group, a forerunner to American. They also expand Berkshire's bet on the U.S. economy, and in particular transportation. Berkshire already owns the BNSF railroad and the NetJets luxury plane unit, and in January paid $32.1 billion for aircraft parts maker Precision Castparts. According to a regulatory filing, Berkshire as of Sept. 30 owned 21.8 million American shares worth $797 million, 6.3 million Delta shares worth $249.3 million, and 4.5 million United shares worth $237.8 million. Buffett told CNBC television that Berkshire later invested in Southwest, and was disclosing that stake to avoid misleading investors into believing he was avoiding the carrier. It is unclear whether Buffett or one of his deputies, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, invested in the airlines. Shares often rise when investors perceive that Berkshire has given them its imprimatur. Buffett usually handles larger Berkshire investments such as Kraft Heinz Co , Wells Fargo & Co , Coca-Cola Co and International Business Machines Corp . His Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate also owns roughly 90 companies such as BNSF, Geico car insurance and Dairy Queen ice cream. The airline investments are "really important for investor confidence" in that sector, said Adam Hackel, an airline analyst at Imperial Capital LLC in New York. Berkshire did not respond to requests for comment. Story continues In after-hours trading, American shares rose 3.8 percent, Delta 3.4 percent, Southwest 3.3 percent and United 2.2 percent. U.S. airlines have benefited in recent years from lower fuel costs, labor peace, higher fees from checked bags and other once-free services, and reduced competition through mergers. Such factors helped the four largest U.S. carriers post a record $21.7 billion combined profit in 2015, and command more than two-thirds of the domestic market. WRIGHT BROTHERS, WRONG INVESTMENT Berkshire had ventured into airlines in 1989 when Buffett bought $358 million of USAir preferred stock, but he quickly regretted that investment. In 1997, he told Berkshire shareholders he had misjudged how USAir would "increasingly feel the effects of an unregulated, fiercely-competitive market whereas its cost structure was a holdover from the days when regulation protected profits." Eleven years later, Buffett felt no better, calling airlines a capital-intensive business that earned little or no money. "A durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers," he wrote in his February 2008 shareholder letter. "Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down." Buffett nonetheless admitted to having sold the USAir stock, in 1998, at a "hefty gain." Orville Wright died in 1948, more than 44 years after he and his brother Wilbur flew their plane at Kitty Hawk, N.C. American and Delta said they welcomed Berkshire as an investor, and American said it "reinforces our view that our industry has fundamentally changed in a profound and lasting way." Southwest declined to comment. United had no immediate comment. Berkshire on Monday also disclosed other portfolio changes. It slashed its stake in Wal-Mart Stores Inc by roughly two-thirds to 13 million shares. Berkshire had begun paring its stake in the world's largest retailer earlier this year, after more than a decade of ownership. Separately, Berkshire reduced its stake in pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Inc , and exited an investment in Canadian oil and gas producer Suncor Energy Inc . (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Jeffrey Dastin in New York; editing by Bill Rigby, Bernard Orr) By Angel Krasimirov and Tsvetelia Tsolova SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov resigned on Monday after his center-right GERB party candidate lost Sunday's presidential election to a political novice backed by the opposition Socialists who favors improved ties with Russia. Bulgaria now almost certainly faces a parliamentary election in the spring but is likely to end up again with a fragmented assembly that will struggle to agree on a stable coalition capable of implementing vital reforms, political analysts said. Rumen Radev, a former air force commander, won the largely ceremonial presidency on the back of voters' impatience with Borisov's failure to tackle corruption and raise living standards faster in the European Union's poorest member state. Partial official results showed Radev had won nearly 60 percent of the vote against 36 percent for GERB's Tsetska Tsacheva, a parliamentary speaker seen as loyal to Borisov. The outcome is also a rebuff for the EU, which Bulgaria joined in 2007, and a triumph for Moscow, Sofia's historic ally, as it tries to reassert its influence in eastern Europe. In the election campaign, Radev had argued that Bulgaria needs to be pragmatic in balancing the requirements of its EU and NATO memberships with the need to improve ties with Russia, the Black Sea nation's communist-era overlord. Radev also criticized the EU's handling of the migrant crisis, which has lapped against Bulgaria's southeastern border with Turkey and prompted Sofia to build a wall there. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Radev on Monday and said his win would create an impetus for political dialogue and expanded cooperation, the Kremlin said. "SUCCESS FOR RUSSIA" "Many of the political parties - the Socialists, the nationalists and probably new populist leaders that are likely to emerge - will increase pro-Russia talk to win support," said Kiril Avramov of New Bulgarian University. "For a very long time NATO and the EU were closed topics. Now they are have become topics of debate and this is already a success for Russia." The Balkan nation of 7.2 million depends mostly on Moscow for its energy supplies and military kit, while Russian tourists are an important source of revenue. Bulgarians also share the Cyrillic alphabet and Orthodox Christianity with their giant neighbor across the Black Sea. While the prime minister and government hold most power in Bulgaria, the president can help to shape public opinion, appoints ambassadors and can veto laws once. Borisov, a charismatic, tough-talking former bodyguard with a black belt in karate, has long dominated Bulgarian politics and opinion polls suggest GERB will again emerge as the biggest party after an early parliamentary election. "Despite Tsacheva's defeat, GERB remains the strongest political force and it is the favorite to win the early elections," said Parvan Simeonov, a political analyst with Gallup International in Sofia. But as in 2014, when Borisov returned to power after toppling a Socialist-led government amid anti-graft protests, GERB may struggle to build a durable government. Borisov has said he will not try to seek support to form a new government within the current parliament and the Socialists have also ruled out any such move. The outgoing president, Rosen Plevneliev, will have to appoint a caretaker government until an early election is held unless a new cabinet can be formed by existing groupings. But under the Bulgarian constitution, Plevneliev would not be able to dissolve the current chamber. Radev said he had agreed with the outgoing president on Monday to discuss the appointment of an interim government. A pro-Russian candidate also won a presidential election on Sunday in ex-Soviet Moldova, which borders Bulgaria's northern neighbor Romania. Moldova is not in the EU or NATO. (Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Editing by Justyna Pawlak and Gareth Jones) United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Burundi's president has asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a new envoy less than two weeks after the emissary returned from crisis talks in Bujumbura, according to a letter seen by AFP on Monday. President Pierre Nkurunziza said in the letter sent last week that Ban and incoming Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should begin consultations on choosing a successor to British diplomat Jamal Benomar. Last week, Benomar returned empty-handed from talks on the government's decision to suspend ties with UN rights monitors and its refusal to allow the deployment of a UN police force. UN spokesman Farhan Haq indicated that there would be no search for a new envoy. "The special adviser continues his work as mandated by the UN Security Council and with the full confidence of the secretary-general," Haq said. Relations between Burundi and the United Nations nosedived after a report by UN rights experts in September blamed state police and security forces for the violence that has torn apart the country since April 2015. The government responded by breaking off ties with the UN rights office while the parliament voted to pull out of the International Criminal Court, which is already investigating serious crimes in Burundi. Burundi's ambassador to the United Nations said the request was linked to the change in leadership at the world body, where Guterres will take over as UN chief on January 1. "During this transition period between the two secretary-generals, Burundi would not want to be caught off guard by the appointment of a new envoy," said Ambassador Albert Shingiro. "Burundi would like there to be broad consultations between the government of Burundi and the two secretary-generals to consider a successor," Shingiro told AFP. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza announced plans in April last year to run for a third term, which he went on to win. Story continues More than 500 people have been killed and at least 300,000 have fled the country. Benomar was appointed in November last year to try to push the government into holding talks with the opposition and to agree to the deployment of 228 UN police to monitor security and human rights abuses. Burundi had initially said it was ready to accept only a few dozen UN police on its territory, but it now maintains that African Union observers can take on the monitoring role. Tanzania's former president Benjamin Mpaka has been appointed by the African Union as a peace mediator, but the government has yet to agree to talks with the opposition. A previous UN envoy, Said Djinnit, resigned in June 2015 amid accusations that he was biased in favor of the government. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. This cafe serves smoothies in lightbulbs, and were dying to try this food trend Friends, get ready to fall in love. You know were into all things food trends, especially unique healthy food trends, so when we saw this amazing idea, we were seriously blown away. Because this cafe serves smoothies in lightbulbs! Weve never wanted to try a new food trend more, friends. Meet Darling Cafe, a seriously beautiful cafe based in Melbourne, Australia. A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Oct 28, 2016 at 2:57pm PDT The shop is clearly adored for many reasons, but what most caught our eye were these INCREDIBLE smoothies. Why? Because theyre served in lightbulbs! A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Nov 7, 2016 at 1:46pm PST How totally adorable are these smoothies?! A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Oct 24, 2016 at 6:36pm PDT Wanna convince us to be healthier? Try some healthy food in a lightbulb. Were seriously feeling this. A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Oct 22, 2016 at 3:41pm PDT Were digging those bright colors swirling around. What a work of art! A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Oct 18, 2016 at 12:32am PDT We can only imagine the brunch selfies wed take with our squad. How fun! A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Sep 30, 2016 at 4:55pm PDT Were talking selfies galore! A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Sep 25, 2016 at 5:38pm PDT Its one way to stand out at brunch, thats for sure. A photo posted by D A R L I N G (@darlingcafe) on Sep 23, 2016 at 12:19pm PDT Were for sure wondering if we could DIY these lightbulb smoothies. Heres to this super fun food trend! Were feeling so inspired. The post This cafe serves smoothies in lightbulbs, and were dying to try this food trend appeared first on HelloGiggles. A California sheriffs deputy was fatally shot while on duty Sunday in what authorities described as an execution from point-blank range, PEOPLE confirms. Stanislaus County Sheriffs Deputy Dennis Wallace was on patrol when he responded to reports of a stolen van, according to a sheriffs department news release. Upon arrival, Wallace immediately asked for assistance, the news release states, after which dispatch lost contact with Wallace. When the officers reached the scene five minutes later, they discovered Wallace lying on the ground with gunshot wounds. He had been shot twice in the head, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said at a Sunday press conference, adding, This was an execution. The alleged shooter was identified as David Machado, but by the time deputies arrived, the 37-year old had allegedly fled the scene. Wallace was rushed to a local hospital where he died from his injuries, the news release states. Meanwhile, the sheriffs department received a call of a carjacking. According to the news release, the victim identified Machado as the alleged suspect. Authorities also received information that Machado had attempted to steal a womans purse. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Authorities issued a Blue Alert, including a warning that Machado was allegedly armed and dangerous. Four hours later, Machado was captured 150 miles south of the where Wallace was shot, according to Christianson. On Monday, community members took to social media to share their condolences while others laid flowers out in Christiansons honor. Christianson said that during Wallaces two-decade career, he played a key role in drug-prevention programs at local schools. You were there for us in school and throughout middle school as our DARE Officer, former student Emory Dy wrote on Facebook in response to a post by the Stanislaus County Sheriffs Department announcing Wallaces death, You were so cool and funny. You had open up your hearts to all of us. Story continues Christianson said Wallace left behind a wife and family: He had a special place in our hearts at the sheriffs office. Machado has not yet entered a plea or retained an attorney, according to a sheriffs department spokesperson. It could be California screaming the loudest if President Donald Trump says "You're fired!" to the Affordable Care Act. No state has seen more people get health insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare in the past three years. As a result, California stands to see the biggest increases in the number of people without health coverage if president-elect Trump follows through on threats he has made to completely repeal the ACA. "We've basically cut the number of uninsured in a little bit more than half, which is enormous progress," Dr. Gerald Kominski, head of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told the Los Angeles Times in a story about the threat Trump poses to the Golden State's newly insured. "We have the most to lose," Kominski said. The Times story notes that as of now, 4.6 million California residents have health coverage that is funded by Affordable Care Act programs. That includes people who buy private individual health insurance plans sold on the state-run Obamacare exchange, or who joined California's Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, after the ACA authorized federal funding to expand coverage to more poor people. California would lose $20 billion in funding from the federal government if the ACA is completely repealed, the story said. Whether Trump will actually seek full repeal after he takes office in January remains to be seen.In the past several days, Trump has made several statements about Obamacare. In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night, Trump said Obamacare "will be repealed and replaced" in one fell swoop. "And it'll be great health care for much less money," Trump said. But in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday, Trump said, "Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced." Trump's interview with the Journal came after he met with President Barack Obama at the White House last Thursday. Trump was quoted by newspaper as saying that Obama suggested keeping certain parts of the ACA, and "I told him I will look at his suggestions, and out of respect, I will do that." Story continues Trump said he is in favor of maintaining the ACA's bar against insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions, and also supports keeping the provision that allows adults until age 26 to be covered by their parents' health plans. More From CNBC By Robin Respaut Nov 14 (Reuters) - The California Public Employees' Retirement System said on Monday it shared about 14 percent of its private equity gains with private equity firms in the past year. The announcement by the nation's largest public pension fund marks a milestone toward greater fee and cost disclosures for private equity assets, which make up $26.4 billion or almost 9 percent of the total fund. It is sure to be noticed by other state and city pension funds. CalPERS and other large public pension funds have been under increasing pressure to track and disclose the costs of private equity. A new California law passed this year requires the state's public pension funds to disclose more about the fees paid to manage the funds. CalPERS paid $228.4 million in fees in fiscal year 2015-2016 and shared $539 million in profits. In total, CalPERS realized $3.26 billion in gains from its private equity portfolio last year. In fiscal year 2014-2015, when the asset class returned 8.92 percent, the pension fund paid $431.7 million in fees, according to a CalPERS report. Private equity returned 1.7 percent in the past year, considerably lower than in recent years. The asset class returned 10.2 percent over the last decade. CalPERS has been working with the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) to shed more light on private equity profit sharing. (Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Dan Grebler) By David Ljunggren and Allison Lampert OTTAWA/MONTREAL (Reuters) - A Canadian airliner with 54 passengers on board had to swerve to avoid an unmanned flying object near Toronto early on Monday, slightly injuring two cabin crew, in the most serious case of its kind in Canada, officials said. The Porter Airlines Bombardier Q400 plane, which took off from Ottawa, was at 9,000 feet (2,750 meters), descending into the city's Billy Bishop waterfront airport, when the pilots saw an unmanned aerial vehicle. "Two crew members performed an evasive maneuver to avoid the unidentified object," said Genevieve Corbin, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB). Corbin said the object was most likely a drone. Two cabin crew suffered slight injuries during the incident, Porter said. "The pilots' initial assessment was that it looked like a balloon. After debriefing, there is potential that the object was a drone," said Porter Airlines spokesman Brad Cicero. The plane landed at about 7:30 a.m. ET. The TSB has now launched an investigation, the first time it has done so for such an incident, said Corbin. Dan Adamus, president of the Air Line Pilots Association International's Canada Board, said by phone that he had never heard of a plane swerving to avoid a drone in the country before. "This is a big concern for pilots," he said. In June, Canada's Transport Ministry launched a campaign intended to deter people from flying drones near airports or aircraft. In Canada, users operating drones weighing less than 35 kg (77 lbs) for recreational purposes do not need a permit. Transport Canada, however, is now proposing to end the distinction between flying drones for recreational and commercial purposes, and would instead regulate the use of UAVs based on risk by looking at factors like the size of the drone and whether they are flown in the line of sight. "We are looking at the rules and regulations that are in place now, and we are looking to strengthen them because it is in fact it can be very dangerous," Kate Young, Parliamentary Secretary to Canada's Minister of Transport told reporters on Monday. There have been a rash of near misses between planes and unmanned aerial vehicles in the United States in recent years. In April, police in Britain said a British Airways passenger aircraft collided with what was most likely a drone as it prepared to land at London's Heathrow Airport. (Editing by Alan Crosby) TORONTO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Canada's Liberal government is speaking to sovereign wealth funds and global private equity firms as well as domestic pension funds as it ramps up efforts to attract funding for its new infrastructure bank, according to two sources. The overseas investors that the officials developing the infrastructure bank are speaking to include the Government Pension Fund of Norway, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, said the sources, who declined to speak on the record because of the sensitivity of the talks. The government said earlier this month it would set up an infrastructure bank and give it access to C$35 billion ($26 billion) to help fund major projects. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau are attending an event in Toronto on Monday aimed at attracting private investment. The event is part of a series of meetings with private investors ahead of the launch of the bank, which Ottawa hopes will be up and running next year, the sources said. Trudeau and Morneau had previously expressed a desire to attract investment from Canada's biggest pension plans such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the Caisse de depot du Quebec and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. A significant proportion of the projects the bank hopes to fund will be built from scratch, known as "greenfield" investments, rather than "brownfield" investments which have already been built. The Canadian pension funds, among the world's ten biggest infrastructure investors, have invested more in projects overseas than in their domestic market. That is partly because they have preferred to invest in existing infrastructure which has established revenue streams and does not carry construction risk. However, that stance is changing as investors seek alternatives to government bonds and volatile equity markets. Last week, CPPIB's Chief Executive Mark Machin said in an interview the fund would be open to investing in greenfield projects through the infrastructure bank. Story continues Meanwhile, the Caisse, Quebec's public pension fund, is planning to build a new 67 kilometer public transit system in Montreal, investing C$3 billion and seeking to supplement that with C$2.5 billion of federal and provincial government funding. That project could be one of the first to be funded by the new infrastructure bank, the sources said. Sources said the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan is also planning to invest more in greenfield projects. ($1 = 1.3546 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Matt Scuffham; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) By Rod Nickel and Hallie Gu WINNIPEG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Canadian canola meal shipments to China have jumped to their highest level in five years, boosting profits of crush plants and firming prices as farmers slog through a difficult harvest. Canada shipped 415,000 tonnes of canola meal to China from January through August, the most since 2011 and following zero shipments last year, according to Canadian Oilseed Processors Association (COPA). The shipments are worth C$132.1 million. Several Canadian plants were registered this year for trade by Chinese authorities, a process that took more than a year for some, said Chris Vervaet, executive director of COPA, whose members include Bunge Ltd and Cargill Ltd [CARGIL.UL]. Canola, known for its vivid yellow flowers, is crushed mainly to produce vegetable oil, vying against oils made from palm and soybeans. Its protein-rich meal feeds animals including U.S. dairy cattle. Stronger canola meal demand from China comes as Canadian crushers steadily expand capacity. Cargill opened last year a new Alberta plant, and Richardson International is expanding a facility in the province. "Finding alternative markets to the U.S. is huge for our continued growth, Vervaet said. Strong meal demand lifts crusher profits, increasing the prices they are willing to pay farmers, many of whom have struggled to complete harvesting in snowy, autumn weather. Canadian canola crush margins last week were more than double those of a year ago, ICE Futures Canada said. China's canola meal demand reflects a trade dispute through much of this year between Canada and China over canola seed. The dispute created additional demand for canola meal until it was resolved in September. Beijing also announced in September anti-subsidy duties on imports of U.S. animal feed ingredient distillers' dried grains (DDGs), which looks to build demand for canola meal if China's stance against DDGs, a byproduct of corn-based ethanol, remains, said Lu Yun, an analyst with consultancy JCI in Shanghai. Through August, the United States had exported 1.96 million tons of distillers grains to China in 2016, worth $402.5 million, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Canadian canola dispute temporarily reduced China's imports of seed for domestic crushing, leaving Chinese meal buyers to import the feed ingredient instead. Canadian canola meal sales to China look brisk through next June, said a U.S. canola broker, who was not authorized to speak publicly. China's growing aquaculture industry has also boosted Chinese demand for canola meal, Lu said. Hog farming faces pressure in China over environmental concerns, but aquaculture faces less opposition, helping it to expand and require more feed, he said. (Additional reporting by Michael Hirtzer in Chicago; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) Michael Milken, a survivor of prostate cancer, has devoted the latter part of his life to finding a cure for the deadly disease. The philanthropist, who founded the Milken Institute, also works closely with the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force under Vice President Biden. Milkens dedication has some, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, suggesting he could be a valuable asset to President-elect Trump. On Monday Milken downplayed that speculation. Well, Ive got a full-time job at the Milken Institute right now and I havent really been thinking about that, Milken told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. Milkens commitment to medicine followed his prison sentence for securities fraud in 1989 when the world knew him only as The Junk Bond King. Time-served, coupled by his philanthropic efforts, continue to impress the former mayor. Thats based on the good works that hes done after his conviction. This is a case of a guy who learned his lesson and has really helped society, said Giuliani during an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity. Despite the shout-out, Milken remains focused on his mission and collaboration with White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force Executive Director Greg Simon. The two discussed the progress in the fight against cancer. Well, as the Vice President likes to say, when we started the war on cancer in 71, we had no army, we had no strategy, we had no weapons. Today weve got millions of patients who weve studied, weve got thousands of scientists and we have a strategy on using big data in computing and the sharing of medical information to create a ubiquitous, seamless system like the markets said Simon. Fighting cancer is also good business and good for the economy, noted Milken. More than 50% of all economic growth has come from public health and medical research. The greatest achievement that has ever occurred in civilization has been the extension of life. As a cancer survivor, Milken knows that lesson all too well. Story continues I think, when you think about an individual like myself who 23 years ago was told he had 12 to 18 months to live with cancer, I have been blessed with many pardons OK, a solution to my life-threatening cancer. Today, Lori and I have nine grandchildren and one on the way. So theres a lot of joys in life. But the joy that Im really going to enjoy is when we eliminate cancer as a cause of death and suffering, he said. Related Articles Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels around the globe remained steady last year and will only rise slightly in 2016, according to new research. Researchers behind the study, conducted at the Global Carbon Project and published in the journal Earth System Science Data, project that carbon dioxide emissions will rise 0.2% in 2016. That represents a small fraction of the average 2.3% annual growth in the decade prior to 2013. Countries around the globe have developed and implemented policies to slow emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary gas behind man-made climate change. The new research credits Chinas efforts to decrease coal consumption as the primary cause of the emissions slowdown. The United States also continued to move away from coal power as natural gas and renewable generation comes online. Opponents on strong measures to address climate change have long-argued that emissions reductions would hurt the economy, but the slowdown reported in the new study comes despite global GDP growth that exceeds 3%. The report comes as diplomats from around the globe gather in Morocco for negotiations on how to implement last years Paris Agreement on climate change. The slowdown represents a step in the right direction, but it also suggests that the world is not on track to meet the long-term goal of the agreement to keep global temperature rise to 2C (3.6F) by 2100. To do that, emissions will need to decline sharplynot just remain steadyand humans may need to take some carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. This is a great help for tackling climate change but it is not enough, says study researcher Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglias Global Carbon Project. If climate negotiators in Marrakesh can build momentum for further cuts in emissions, we could be making a serious start to addressing climate change. Across India, patience is rapidly wearing thin. Last week, the government of Indias Prime Minster Narendra Modi triggered a nationwide scramble for cash, after unexpectedly banning currency notes that account for 86% of all money in circulation. Modi said the move was targeted at tax evaders with large stockpiles of illicit cash, as well as at currency counterfeiters. But nearly a week on, public frustration is growing amid continuing delays in dispensing replacement notes at banks and ATMs. Saddled with worthless pieces of paper, ordinary Indians are struggling to purchase essential goods. In Indias large informal economy where salaries are often paid out in cash, many are also facing delays in drawing their incomes. For others at the bottom of the economic ladder who survive on daily wages, the Modi governments move has resulted in the loss of hours of precious work, as they spend their time waiting in long bank queues. I support the fight against black money [as illicit cash is known in India], Ashok Mahto, a Delhi shopkeeper said at the weekend. But he blamed the government for not doing enough to prepare for the rush to exchange the old 500 and 1,000 Rupee notes (worth roughly $7.5 and $15 respectively) that had suddenly been declared illegal at midnight on Nov. 8. As a long queue spilled out of a nearby bank branch and snaked down the road in front of his shop, he said his business had come to a near-standstill, with his customers were left with wallets full of old, now-useless money. It has become very hard. In place of the old currency, the government has introduced a redesigned 500 and a new 2000 Rupee note. Already, the government says banks have received more than $44 billion in deposits in the form of old notes since the policy was announced last week. But withdrawing new currency is proving tough. At ATMs, differences in size mean that as many as 200,000 machines nationwide need to be reconfigured before they can start dispensing the new notes, a process that only began after Modis surprise announcement last week. Officials justified the delay on the grounds of secrecy, saying any advance notice would have alerted hoarders of illicit currency and given them time to launder their unaccounted for wealth. The machines that are functioning are fast running out of the smaller denomination notes still in circulation. Story continues Further complicating matters is the fact that millions of Indians live and work without formal banking, operating without accounts and credit or debit cards. Modis government, for its part, has tried to change this with a massive financial inclusion drive in recent years that has made it simpler for people to open no-frills bank accounts. But many still remain outside the system, with a 2015 report from the consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers putting the number of unbanked Indians at around 233 million. Another report from last year, compiled by Tufts University researchers, found that less than 10% of Indians have ever made non-cash payments. And although India has in recent years become a booming market for new digital forms of payments, access to new cashless technologies remains an issue for many. A recent report by Google and the Boston Consulting Group, published just months before the governments move last week, said the Indian digital payments industry could be worth as much $500 billion by 2020, contributing 15% to the countrys economic output. But India continues to suffer from a stark digital divide, with nearly a billion people still offline, according to the World Bank. To continue going about their daily lives, they have no choice but to endure long queues to get their hands on the new currency. As people grow impatient, Modi made an emotional appeal to Indians at the weekend, promising the current problems were only temporary and would help rid India of corruption and unaccounted for wealth. Cooperate with me and help me for 50 days and I will give you the India you desired, he said, referring to the end-December deadline for deposits of old notes at bank branches in a speech in coastal Goa state on Sunday, in which he grew teary-eyed. I know that (some) forces are up against me, they may not let me live, they may ruin me because their loot of 70 years is in trouble, but I am prepared. CBS News 60 Minutes which scored the first full sit-down with Donald Trump since he became president-elect is facing questions over what it chose not to release from the interview before it aired. During the interview, taped Friday afternoon at Trump Tower in New York City, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Trump if he had a message for his supporters who have reportedly been harassing Latinos and Muslims since Trumps election victory. I would say, Dont do it, thats terrible, because Im gonna bring this country together, Trump said. I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, Stop it. If it if it helps I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it. There have been numerous incidents of vandalism and intimidation reported since Election Day, with racist graffiti appearing in schools and pro-Trump bullying directed at children and minorities. Related: Acts of intimidation, violence and vandalism reported after Trump win The network released snippets of its Trump conversation over the weekend, including the president-elects vow to be restrained on Twitter as commander in chief and his plan to keep parts of the Affordable Care Act. But Trumps call for calm did not air until Sunday night, prompting some observers to question the ethics of sitting on comments that might dissuade potential violence. In a statement to Yahoo News, CBS defended its decision. We released a quote on the issue that affects millions of Americans, a 60 Minutes spokesman said in a statement. And that was his statement on Obamacare. But its not just Trump supporters who have been stirring things up. Since Trumps stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump protests have erupted around the country, some turning violent. Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested. On Thursday night, Trump took to Twitter to criticize the protesters and accuse the media of inciting them. Very unfair! he tweeted. Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016 But on Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he appreciated the demonstrators passion for their country, which he said would eventually unite under his presidency. Story continues Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016 Others in Trumps inner circle, though, have accused the anti-Trump demonstrators of being professional protesters. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a member of Trumps transition team, says he came face to face with an anti-Trump protest. I was in one a couple of days ago where they saw me in the car and they started banging, banging on my car, Giuliani said on ABCs This Week With George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Im not sure these are even Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama supporters. I think these people are, you know, kind of like professional protesters. They didnt look to me like people who were, you know, carefully studying political science and were all upset about the ideology of the election. On NBCs Meet the Press, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said its up to President Obama and Clinton to quell the anti-Trump protests. Its time really for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to say to these protesters, This man is our president, Conway said. Both Clinton and Obama gave speeches last week urging those who didnt vote for Trump to accept the election results. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead, Clinton said. Heavy call volume is looking for a pop in Cemex by the end of this week. OptionMonster's market scanner shows that 11,600 November 7 calls were purchased for $0.54 to $0.67 on Friday. This represents fresh buying, as open interest in the strike was just 132 contracts before the trades appeared. 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) CX fell 1.33 percent to $7.43 on Friday and is down 14 percent in the last three months. The Mexico-based cement manufacturer reported mixed results on Oct. 27 and is expected to release its next earnings numbers in pre-market hours on Feb. 2. Overall option volume was 5 times greater than average in CX on Friday. More From optionMONSTER New York (AFP) - Imprisoned transgender soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years behind bars for leaking classified US documents, has asked President Barack Obama to reduce her sentence before he leaves office, reports said. Originally called Bradley, Manning was convicted in August 2013 of espionage and other offenses after admitting to handing classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning, who has already spent half a dozen years in prison, said she is not asking for a pardon and understands that the conviction will stay on her record, according to a statement accompanying the petition, which was published by the New York Times on Sunday. "The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members," she said. Manning, whose suicide attempt last month was her second while in prison, spoke of the hardships she has undergone while serving in the military as a person coming to terms with her gender identity. The 28-year-old private has repeatedly decried her treatment in the men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where she is appealing her sentence. While hailed by supporters as a hero for exposing what they see as US abuses in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Manning has been denounced by prosecutors as a traitor who put country and comrades at risk. Manning's petition included letters of support from Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in 1971 as well as journalist Glenn Greenwald and former military commissions chief prosecutor Morris Davis. Obama has just over than two months left in office before newly elected Donald Trump becomes US president. Chevron Corporation CVX, the second-largest U.S. oil producer, recently reported that it has started production at the Mafumeira Sul oil field along with Angolan state oil major Sonangol. The initial production capacity of the field is 10,000 barrels per day. The Mafumeira Sul oil field is estimated to produce 110,000 barrels per day or more, once fully developed. Located off the coast of Angola, the project is worth $5.6 billion and currently uses early production systems or EPS to produce 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Sonangol has a 41% stake in the Mafumeira Sul oil project. Chevron, on the other hand, holds a 39.2% interest. The other partners are Total S.A. (TOT) and Eni SpA (E) with 10% and 9.8%, respectively. 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. Recently, Chevron yielded first gas from Alder field a gas condensate field in the Central North Sea. 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. CHEVRON CORP Price CHEVRON CORP Price | CHEVRON CORP Quote Chevron currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) which implies that the stock will perform in line with the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months. Some better-ranked players from the broader energy sector include Braskem S.A. BAK, Ultra Petroleum Corp. UPLMQ and McDermott International Inc. MDR. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. In the last four quarters, Braskem posted an average positive earnings surprise of 105.5%. Story continues Ultra Petroleum, on the other hand, posted an average positive earnings surprise of 65.91% in the last four quarters. In the last four quarters, McDermott posted an average positive earnings surprise of 250.00%. 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 MCDERMOTT INTL (MDR): Free Stock Analysis Report CHEVRON CORP (CVX): Free Stock Analysis Report BRASKEM SA (BAK): Free Stock Analysis Report ULTRA PETRO CP (UPLMQ): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Chicago (AFP) - Chicago on Monday joined several major US cities in affirming that it will remain a "sanctuary city" for immigrants, in defiance of President-elect Donald Trump. Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and San Francisco have made similar affirmations since Trump's election on Tuesday, vowing to refuse to jail undocumented immigrants in jail for deportation purposes and pledging that public services will continue to be offered regardless of legal status. "To all the children and all the families who are unsure of their place because of what happened Tuesday," Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference. "You are safe, you are secure and you are supported in the city of Chicago." Emanuel, a Democrat who was chief of staff during President Barack Obama's first term, said young undocumented people in particular will still be able to go to school and qualify for free community college education. "That speaks volumes to where our values are," he said. Trump, a Republican, campaigned on a promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. In an interview that aired on the CBS "60 Minutes" news program over the weekend, Trump said he plans to immediately deport or jail as many as three million immigrants with criminal records, upon taking office. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people -- probably two million, it could be even three million -- we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. -- Students 'terrified' -- Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States, many of them Central and Southern Americans long-established in the country. Since 2009, the Obama administration has deported 2.4 million immigrants from the country. But Obama has also offered a reprieve to young people who were brought to the US by their parents -- so-called "Dreamers." By executive order, he granted them temporary residency rights, allowing them to go to school and work. Story continues Trump could reverse the order, and had promised to do so during the campaign. He had also promised to cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities. His rhetoric has raised alarms in immigrant communities. "Since the elections, my phone has been off the hook," said Tayna Cabrera, who heads the Illinois Dream Fund Commission, which offers scholarships to undocumented college students. "My students are terrified. Some of them haven't shown up to school," she said. A visibly emotional Luis Gutierrez, a Democratic US congressman who represents parts of the Chicago area, said he will work with the incoming administration to reform immigration laws, as long as more than 700,000 young Dreamers -- who voluntarily identified themselves to the government -- are not deported. "We have fought too long to be divided today. The elections are over. Now, it is time to legislate and to organize," he said. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie just perfectly shut down a white man when he tried to define racism and we applaud We totally didnt need anymore reasons to adore feminist icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but it seems that shes going to give us more anyway. Stopping by BBC Newsnight, Chimamanda totally schooled this white man on racism and we applaud. Whether its opening up about her views on Beyonces feminism or slaying our lives as the face of this British makeup brand, were in awe of Chimamanda and everything she represents. Thats why were living for her response to a white man who tried to claim that Donald Trump and the rhetoric surrounding the election hadnt been racist. Speaking on BBCs Newsnight along side R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor-in-chief of a conservative magazine, American Spectator, Chimamanda shut him down when he said that Trump hadnt been racist. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie v R Emmett Tyrrell "I am sorry but if you are a white man you don't get to define what racism is" - Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie #Trump #Election2016 Posted by BBC Newsnight on Friday, November 11, 2016 I am sorry, but if you are a white man, you dont get to define what racism is. You really dont, Chimamanda told Tyrell after he denied that Trump had been racist. When Tyrrell tried to argue that he could, the author totally stopped him in his tracks/ No, you dont get to sit there and say that he hasnt been racist when objectively, he has. And its not about your opinion. Racism is an objective reality. And Donald Trump has inhabited that reality. Tyrrell tried to accuse Chimamanda of using the Marxist theory of false consciousness, sarcastically and defensively saying that he couldnt even open my mouth here because I am a white male. This, however, wasnt going to stop Chimamanda from calling him out. Using Donald Trumps comments about Mexican judge, Gonzalo Curiel, as an example, the author said that it proves her point. Story continues If he says to us, for example, that a judge a United States judge is unable to judge him fairly because he is Mexican that is racist objectively racist. We are all Chimamanda's eye roll pic.twitter.com/QnnnGyCb1d Frankie Brown (@frnkiebrwn) November 12, 2016 Watch the full interview between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and R. Emmett Tyrrell below. Calling out such microaggressions that R. Emmett Tyrrell is expressing is so important. Without people like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking out in a calm manner, theres no chance that people will learn from what theyre saying. We totally applaud her for speaking out on this important issue. The post Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie just perfectly shut down a white man when he tried to define racism and we applaud appeared first on HelloGiggles. BEIJING (Reuters) - China's State Council on Monday published rules on contingency guidelines for managing local government debt problems, as part of measures to resolve fiscal and financial risks and maintain economic safety and social stability. In recent years, Beijing has imposed tight controls on new local government debt issuance to help ward off financial risks, following a borrowing binge since the global financial crisis. The guidelines, specifying for the first time four types of "debt risk events" and corresponding emergency responses, sent out "clearer warning signals" to local governments, who must think about how to pay back their debts before borrowing, state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary. The worst kind, or "first degree" debt risk event, is exemplified by one of five conditions, such as when a provincial government fails to make a bond principal and interest payment, the central government said in a statement. The statement, published on its website, also detailed three other levels of debt risk events, based on less severe conditions, such as a lower percentage of bond payment defaults. Local governments take full responsibility for paying debts through emergency measures such as cutting investment, making use of government funds, selling assets and adjusting budgets, and the central government will stick to the principle of no bailouts, it added. City- and county-level governments are obliged to adopt fiscal restructuring when debt conditions worsen, for example if annual general debt payments exceed a tenth of the spending budget. Fiscal restructuring must not hamper provision of basic services but can include sales of state-owned assets. Local governments finding it tough to balance budgets can seek help from the provincial government, the Ministry of Finance said. The document also set out specific terms to hold local governments liable for borrowing, spending and managing debts illegally. China capped the rise in outstanding local-government debt at 17.2 trillion yuan in 2016, up from 16 trillion in 2015, excluding bonds issued under a debt swap scheme. The finance ministry said China's local government debt is under control and its debt burden would not show a big change this year. (Reporting by Yawen Chen and Elias Glenn; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) By Elias Glenn and Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - China's economy largely showed further signs of steadying in October as expected, but disappointing retail sales growth and fears of U.S. trade frictions under incoming President Donald Trump are increasingly clouding the outlook. Fixed-asset investment quickened slightly and beat expectations in January-October as the government stepped up infrastructure spending to support growth, official data showed on Monday. But a number of other indicators released over the past week from exports to bank lending, as well as expectations of a slowdown in the heated property market, suggest economic momentum may falter in the months ahead. "On balance, today's data suggest that the recent recovery in economic activity continued into the fourth quarter," Capital Economics said in a note. "We expect growth to hold up well for another quarter or two. However, with credit growth now slowing and the property market beginning to cool the drivers of the recent recovery look set to fizzle out early next year." China's leaders have depended on a surging real estate market and government infrastructure spending to drive activity this year and look set to meet their growth target of 6.5 to 7 percent. The construction boom in turn has helped perk up the ailing industrial sector, spurring demand for cement to steel. But top policymakers and investors are also clearly growing more concerned about the risks of prolonged debt-fuelled stimulus. China's overall debt has jumped to more than 250 percent of GDP from 150 percent at the end of 2006, the kind of surge that in other countries has resulted in a financial bust or sharp economic slowdown, analysts say. "I believe the overall policy tone has turned to risk management as the authorities are concerned about asset bubbles," said Singapore-based economist Zhou Hao at Commerzbank, predicting that the government will throttle back its aggressive stimulus before the end of the year. Story continues INVESTMENT STILL HEAVILY RELIANT ON GOVERNMENT Fixed-asset investment expanded 8.3 percent in the first 10 months from a year earlier, slightly ahead of market expectations and supported largely by government spending. Investment by state firms surged 20.5 percent, though the pace cooled slightly from the first nine months. In an encouraging sign, growth of private investment picked up to 2.9 percent from 2.5 percent in January-September, though it remained sluggish after hitting a record low of 2.1 percent in the first eight months of the year. Private investment accounts for about 60 percent of overall investment in China. Chinese policymakers have been trying to lure private investors into big infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships, but many lucrative sectors are still dominated by less efficient state firms. UNCERTAINTIES The most surprising miss for October was found in retail sales, though analysts were quick to note it was too early to tell if slowing consumption would turn into a trend. Retail sales growth cooled to a five-month low of 10.0 percent from 10.7 percent in September. Analysts had forecast they would hold steady. On Friday, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's (BABA.N) Singles' Day festival posted a record 120.7 billion yuan ($17.73 billion) worth of sales, though the gala shopping day saw growth slow as Chinese shoppers searched for deeper discounts and lower price tags. Statistics bureau spokesman Mao Shengyong blamed the sales slowdown on a high level of comparison with last year. "Consumption can maintain stable growth. There should not be a problem achieving this years GDP growth targets," he told a news briefing. October industrial output also missed expectations but to a much smaller degree, rising 6.1 percent, the same pace as in September but marginally less than forecast. Stronger factory prices have helped boost industrial profits, relieving some pressure on companies squeezed by higher costs and weak demand, though there are concerns some of the gains are due to speculation and are not sustainable. Data last week showed a sharp slowdown in bank lending last month, suggesting demand for mortgages is cooling after a spate of steps by local governments last month to restrict home purchases to cool soaring prices. While property investment growth quickened in October to its highest since April 2014, some analysts suggested it could be due to a last-minute push by developers to complete construction projects as home sales and surging prices start to slow. October exports and imports also fell more than expected, adding to doubts that the pick-up in economic activity in the world's largest trading nation can be sustained even if a trade war with the U.S. does not materialize. Trump had lambasted China throughout the campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and label the country a currency manipulator his first day in office. China's top leaders are due to map out economic and reform plans for 2017 at the annual Central Economic Work Conference expected in December. Analysts believe it's too early for the government to start withdrawing policy support now due to rising domestic and global uncertainties, despite the risk of added debt. (Additional reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Kim Coghill) (Repeats story from late Friday) * New loans 651.3 bln yuan (f'cast 700 bln yuan, Sept 1.22 trln) * Jan-Oct new bank loans hit record high, mortgage lending strong * Policymakers worry too much credit may fuel asset bubbles * M2 money supply +11.6 pct y/y, vs f'cast +11.4 pct * Oct TSF at 896.3 bln yuan, vs 1.72 trln yuan in Sept By Kevin Yao BEIJING, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Chinese banks extended 651.3 billion yuan ($95.56 billion) in net new yuan loans in October, below expectations and falling sharply from September, as policymakers pledged to prevent asset bubbles in the increasingly debt-fueled economy. The People's Bank of China has been keeping policy accommodative to spur growth - as evident by record bank lending so far this year - but it faces an uphill battle to divert money from the red-hot property market into the weak real economy. "Credit growth slowed down as mortgage lending weakened, after the introduction of a series of real estate controlling polices," analysts at Haitong Securities said in a note. "Corporate financing needs remain weak. There are risks that credit may continue to shrink in the future." Analysts polled by Reuters had expected new lending to have fallen back to 700 billion yuan from September's three-month high of 1.22 trillion yuan. New bank loans totalled 10.8 trillion yuan in the first 10 months of the year - an all-time high, according to Reuters calculations based on central bank data. Lending has been driven heavily by robust mortgage growth as the housing market booms, with banks increasing their exposure to the sector to offset a surge in non-performing loans in more sluggish parts of the economy. New household loans, mostly mortgages, fell to 433.1 billion yuan in October from 637 billion yuan in September, central bank data showed, suggesting demand for mortgages is cooling after a spate of steps by local governments last month to restrict home purchases to cool soaring prices. Still, the ratio of new household loans to total new loans rose to 66.5 percent from 52 percent in September, due to lower overall lending, the data showed. Story continues Highlighting underlying weakness in the broader economy, new medium- to long-term corporate loans fell sharply to 72.8 billion yuan from 446.6 billion yuan in September. "While the decline may be partly due to seasonal effects because banks usually slow their lending activities in Q4, the contraction in non-household credit still suggests that demand by corporates remains sluggish," ANZ economists said. The central bank said recently that it will maintain ample liquidity in the economy while taking steps to prevent asset bubbles, adding that the balance between stabilising growth and preventing bubbles has become more challenging. NO BASIS FOR TIGHTENING China's total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity in the economy, fell sharply to 896.3 billion yuan in October from 1.72 trillion yuan in September. TSF includes off-balance sheet forms of financing that exist outside the conventional bank lending system, such as initial public offers, loans from trust companies and bond sales. But broad M2 money supply (M2) grew 11.6 percent from a year earlier, the strongest in four months and slightly above forecasts of 11.4 percent. "Liquidity in the interbank market has tightened some, but looking at M2 growth it is not that low, so I think overall policy is neutral. We can't say there's been tightening," said Ma Xiaoping, HSBC economist in Beijing. "There is still not a basis for tightening, as the real economy is still weak. It is too early for tightening." China's economy expanded at a steady 6.7 percent in the third quarter and looks set to hit Beijing's full-year target, spurred by stronger government spending and the property frenzy that are adding to its growing pile of debt. China's overall debt has jumped to more than 250 percent of GDP from 150 percent at the end of 2006, the kind of surge that in other countries has resulted in a financial bust or sharp economic slowdown, analysts say. M1 money supply, which includes cash and short-term deposits, rose 23.9 percent in October on-year versus September's 24.7 percent rise. A widening gap between M1 and M2 growth has fuelled concerns about a "liquidity trap" in the economy where companies remain wary of investing regardless of how much stimulus policymakers pump into the system. The gap narrowed to 12.3 percentage points in October from 13.2 percentage points in September. (Additional reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk and Elias Glenn; Editing by Kim Coghill and Jacqueline Wong) Beijing (AFP) - Chinese President Xi Jinping and US president-elect Donald Trump agreed Monday to meet "at an early date" to discuss the relationship between their two powers, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Monday. In a telephone call, Xi told Trump -- who frequently savaged Beijing on the campaign trail and threatened to impose a 45-percent tariff on Chinese-made goods -- that the world's top two economies "need cooperation and there are a lot of things we can cooperate on", CCTV reported. Xi and Trump "vowed to keep close contact, build good working relations, and meet at an early date to exchange views on issues of mutual interest and the development of bilateral ties", CCTV said. Before his election, Trump went as far as calling the Asian giant America's "enemy", accused it of artificially lowering its currency to boost exports, and pledged to stand up to a country he says views the US as a pushover. He has vowed to pursue a policy of "peace through strength" and build up the US navy. But he also indicated he is not interested in getting involved in far-off squabbles, and decried the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal, which encompasses several other Asian countries and has been seen as an effort to bolster US influence, for costing American jobs. CCTV cited Trump as saying in the call that China was a large and important nation that he was willing to work with, and that he believed Sino-US relations could realise "win-win" benefits. The phrasing the broadcaster attributed to the US president-elect is typical of Chinese diplomacy. In a statement, Trump's office confirmed the call and said that "the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another". Trump "stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward", it added. - New starting point? - Story continues Trump's contrary and ambiguous positions have left a pall of uncertainty over how he will manage the relationship between the world's two largest economies and its biggest and most powerful militaries. An editorial in the often nationalistic Global Times newspaper warned Monday that China would "take countermeasures" if Washington levied tariffs and said that "making things difficult for China politically will do him no good". Beijing would use a "tit-for-tat approach" and target US autos, aircraft, soybeans, and iPhones. It also said that China could limit the large number of students it sends to American schools. Under President Barack Obama, Washington's foreign policy "pivot" towards Asia was viewed with alarm in Beijing, which saw it as an attempt to contain its growing geopolitical and economic might. But Trump has offered no clear prescriptions for the strategic issues that plague ties between the two powers, from Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea to North Korea's nuclear programme and the future of Taiwan. He has also indicated America has had enough of paying to defend allies such as Japan and South Korea, even suggesting they should develop their own nuclear weapons. Mark Williams of Capital Economics previously said in a note that "if the US is less engaged in Asia, Beijing will have an opportunity to shape regional political and economic integration on its own terms". That could include an Asia-focused trade agreement of its own that excludes the US, in the same way that China was not part of TPP. Beijing is already embarked on negotiations to create the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade area encompassing the Southeast Asian grouping ASEAN, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Something of a mirror image to the TPP, it includes six of the putative Washington-led grouping's 12 members. It would encompass more than three billion people and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told media Thursday that if the TPP does fail, "then the vacuum that would be created is most likely to be filled by RCEP". China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday that Beijing attaches "great importance" to its relationship with the US and will make "concerted efforts" to expand cooperation with the Trump administration. Asked about Trump's vow to withdraw from the Paris climate change pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions -- which China and the US both ratified in September -- Geng stressed that the agreement "officially entered into force" this month. A polar bear dubbed the "world's saddest" by animal rights activists has been removed from a Chinese shopping mall where campaigners said it was suffering in unsuitable conditions. The Grandview Mall in the southern city of Guangzhou held a farewell party for Pizza the bear at the weekend, it said on social media. A spokesman for the mall, which set up an "Ocean World" attraction with 500 species to try to draw in shoppers, told AFP: Pizza left the aquarium with escorts after the farewell party on Sunday. Chinese media reports said he was returning to the facility where he was born in captivity in the northern port of Tianjin. The mall claimed the move was a temporary one due to the facility being renovated, and that Pizza would return after the works were completed. But the US-based Humane Society International mounted a media-friendly campaign to highlight the bear's plight, coining the description the "world's saddest polar bear" and generating global headlines. It distributed video showing Pizza pacing around his 40-square-metre glass-fronted enclosure and shaking his head as onlookers took pictures on their cellphones. The footage showed the bear was in poor physical and mental condition, it said. Peter Li, China policy expert at HSI said in a statement: "Pizza the polar bear has endured a life of deprivation and suffering in his small, artificial glass-fronted room at the shopping mall. "At last he will feel the sun on his fur, sniff fresh air and see the sky above in the company of his mum and dad." The move was a result of public pressure, he said, and suggested that if the bear was in poor health that could be another factor. We implore the Mall to make this a permanent move for Pizza and to not condemn him to return," he added. Pictures of the bear's farewell party posted on China's Twitter-like Weibo by the mall showed children queuing up to say goodbye to the bear. Tears and sadness are only temporary, we will make the cosiest home to await your return, it said. Post-Britains exit from the European Union, Citigroup Inc. C is formulating the relocation of up to 900 jobs from London to Dublin. This is part of the companys contingency plan to deal with the growing uncertainties of Brexit. Per The Sunday Times, Citibank conducted a board meeting in Dublin last month, and was trying to explore options for office space in the Irish capital. The companys chief executive Mike Corbat and Chairman Michael ONeill attended the meeting. The newspaper quoted a source saying, "They have been testing the Irish political and regulatory regime on a macro level." Per the U.K. head of Citi, regardless of what deal Britain will enter into for access to the financial services market in the European Union, jobs in London will be shifted to other countries. Notably, U.K Citi has 9,000 employees. According to some Irish officials, many banks are reconsidering using London as their workplace and hence, are preparing to move some of their business from London to Dublin. Moreover, currently Ireland is being presented as the only country in Europe that uses English as their language and therefore, can help banks near London to continue their operations. Also, its labor laws are flexible and it has good transportation links to the U.S. Additionally, the country has a good reputation with regards to back-office fund management operations. Apart from Citi, various other banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM and Bank of America Corp. BAC have either already established their offices in Dublin or have the license to conduct business there. Currently, Citigroup carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. A better-ranked stock in the finance space is Carolina Financial Corporation CARO, sporting a Zacks Rank #1. It has witnessed an upward earnings estimate revision of 12.9% over the last 30 days and its share price is up 38.9% year to date. Confidential from Zacks Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>>. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report JPMORGAN CHASE (JPM): Free Stock Analysis Report CITIGROUP INC (C): Free Stock Analysis Report BANK OF AMER CP (BAC): Free Stock Analysis Report CAROLINA FIN CP (CARO): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The political aftershocks of Donald Trumps White House win hit Sweden over the weekend, apparently spurring 600 members of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement to rally Saturday in Stockholm. NMR spokesperson Per Oberg told the rally that Donald Trumps election was a sign that the world revolution was beginning, the TheLocal.se reported. The rally turned aggressive after NMR demonstrators confronted thousands of counter-protesters, according to the Expo. Two people were injured, five were arrested, and at least twenty demonstrators were removed from the march. Since its inception in 1997, the NMR has openly espoused anti-semitic and anti-immigrant views. Immigration has become a hot-button political issue in Sweden in recent years due after the country opened up to refugees and asylum seekers. Per capita, Sweden took in more refugees than any other European country in 2015. But the sheer number of asylum seekers looking to enter Sweden over 160,000 in 2015 alone quickly overwhelmed the small Nordic country. Cases of violence and hostility against refugees quickly proliferated. Germany, another refugee-friendly country, has also seen a rise in attacks on asylum seekers and refugee shelters in the past year. In response to overstretched welfare services and growing public resentment of the refugees, Sweden enacted tougher immigration laws, tightened border controls, and placed stricter rules on refugees looking to enter the country this year. Consequently, Swedens Migration Agency is planning for 28,000 to 32,000 asylum seekers this year significantly less than years past. The United States itself witnessed a flurry of racially-charged and anti-immigrant incidents after Trumps surprise win. Trump shot to prominence in the U.S. presidential race on a staunch anti-immigrant platform, and was buoyed by rampant anti-semitism of his campaign CEO, Breitbart editor Steve Bannon, and the online alt-right white nationalist movement. Story continues Trump told his supporters to stop it in an interview with CBS News 60 Minutes on Sunday. I am so saddened to hear that, he said, referring to the spray-painted swastikas and verbal abuse that littered the days after his upset win. And I say, Stop it. If it if it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it. No word if Swedish neo-Nazis were chastened by Trumps call to stand down. Photo credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images Though its called CMA Country Christmas, dont expect much twang in this years edition of the popular TV special. Thats no complaint, because the show delivers something dazzling for almost every holiday musical taste. Jennifer Nettles once again helms the special, the seventh annual, which airs Monday at 8 p.m. EST on ABC. Taped before a live audience on election night at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, the show features a strong array of country artists who deftly expand beyond their genre, as well as other special guests who otherwise circulate outside countrys porous borders. Among the standout genre-benders is Kelsea Ballerini, who transforms herself into jazz chanteuse for The Christmas Song and My Favorite Things. For the latter, she is accompanied by 13-year-old jazz piano prodigy Joey Alexander, who almost steals the show with his syncopated riffs. Rascal Flatts offers an outside-the-box rock arrangement of caroling favorite Joy to the World, accompanied by Lee Universitys renowned student choir. And Brett Eldredge goes full Rat Pack in a shimmering midnight-blue tux to turn in a Big Band version of Let It Snow, and his jazzy Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas goes down like hot-buttered rum. Both Rascal Flatts and Eldredge sing cuts from their new Christmas albums, and in fact, they are among nine of the 15 artists on the bill who have new holiday releases. Two more are Loretta Lynn and Kacey Musgraves, who provide the shows most countrified sounds with songs from their new albums. The legendary Lynn joins Nettles and Trisha Yearwood for Lynns self-penned classic Country Christmas. Neo-traditionalist Musgraves makes sure to add a pedal steel to the 22-piece onstage orchestra for both her numbers, the Hawaiian pop standard Mele Kalikimaka (with able assistance from the fiddling Quebe Sisters) and Christmas Makes Me Cry, a new co-write with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark that has holiday-standard potential. Story continues Musgraves song debut is an exception: The song selections are mostly crowd-pleasers, from Sarah McLachlans transcendent O Come All Ye Faithful to Yearwoods soulful What Are You Doing New Years Eve? to Amy Grants tender Tennessee Christmas. But all 23 songs have been freshened in one way or another, including through some inspired pairings. Chris Young and Brad Paisley join forces for The First Noel. Nettles and Broadway darling Idina Menzel combine their formidable chops for a breathtaking version of Little Drummer Boy, then Nettles returns with R&B artist Andra Day for a rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen that could easily make a home in New Orleans French Quarter. In previous years, off-camera show staff have been known to encourage the audience to standing ovations, but these were left to spontaneity this year, and among the artists who earned them were Nettles and Menzel; Jordan Smith, the winner of The Voice Season 9 who applied his preternatural tenor pipes to Youre a Mean One, Mr. Grinch; Kelly Clarkson, who blew off the Opry roof with Please Come Home for Christmas (Bells Will Be Ringing); and Eldredge, who lifted the crowd before hed even hit the final note of O Holy Night. Since it was a show taping rather than a concert, great chunks of the evening have ended up on the cutting-room floor, including a few mishaps and several song re-dos that the audience happily treated as encore performances. Nettles memorably missed her cue in Little Drummer Boy, admittedly mesmerized by the moves of scene-stealing dance sensation J.T. Church, a 10-year-old finalist on So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation. And Clarkson was forced to stop mid-verse on Run Run Rudolph after muffing the lyrics; the song appears on Red, her 2013 Christmas record. Oh my bad! Clarkson exclaimed. Its not Christmas yet. I havent listened to the album. Loretta Lynn had similar issues with Country Christmas. Nettles couldnt resist a comment. You wrote this song, didnt you? she ribbed. Yep, Lynn deadpanned before nailing the lyrics. (HAVANA) Colombia is trying a second time to achieve peace, with its government and largest rebel group signing a revised deal to end its brutal conflict following the surprise rejection of an earlier peace accord by voters in a referendum. Government negotiator Humberto de la Calle and rebel negotiator Ivan Marquez announced the new, modified deal Saturday in Havana, moving to end a half-century-long conflict that has claimed more than 220,000 lives and driven almost 8 million people from their homes. The latest agreement aims to address some of the concerns of opponents of the original accord, who said the deal was too lenient on a rebel group that had kidnapped and committed war crimes. The new deal is an opportunity to clear up doubts, but above all to unite us, said De la Calle, who described the text of the modified accord as much better than the previous one. The negotiator didnt say if or how it would be submitted again to voters for approval or to congress. President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia inked an initial peace deal on Sept. 26 amid international fanfare after more than four years of negotiations. But voters rejected it on Oct. 2 by just 55,000 votes, dealing a stunning setback to Santos who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end Colombias conflict. Santos immediately began looking for ways to rescue the deal and the sides extended a cease-fire until Dec. 31 to get the modified deal done. The rebels insisted they wouldnt go back to the drawing board and throw out years of arduous negotiations with the government. The meetings with the FARC delegation were intense, said De la Calle. We worked 15 days and nights to reach this new agreement. De La Calle said some modifications made were related to justice, punishment for combatants accused of war crimes and reparations for the conflicts victims. He said negotiators had worked out the details of how and where those responsible for crimes would serve their sentences, addressing complaints by opponents that rebels accused of atrocities would not be imprisoned but submitted to alternative punishments. Story continues Other modifications include requiring the rebels to present an inventory of acquired money and holdings, and the provision of safeguards for private owners and property during reforms carried out in the countryside. Cases of conflict participants accused of drug trafficking would be dealt with under Colombias penal code and be heard by high courts. In a televised address Saturday night, Santos said he had instructed De la Calle and the negotiating team to return to Bogota to explain the details of the new accord to the no campaign led by conservative former President Alvaro Uribe. Santos said that an issue where negotiators did not achieve advances was on the insistence by opponents of the peace deal that guerrilla leaders not be allowed to run for elected office. We wont have assigned legislative seats. To the contrary, they will have to participate in elections. Nor will they have positions in government, as has occurred in other cases. But yes they can be elected, he said. FARC negotiator Marquez said the implementation of the accord is all that remains for the construction of the bases for peace in Colombia. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated Colombians, including Santos and those from the no campaign, for reaching the new peace deal. After 52 years of war, no peace agreement can satisfy everyone in every detail. But this agreement constitutes an important step forward on Colombias path to a just and durable peace. The United States, in coordination with the Government of Colombia, will continue to support full implementation of the final peace agreement, he said in a statement. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons office said Sunday that he commends the parties for maintaining firm their commitment to the cease-fire and cessation of hostilities and reaffirms the support of the United Nations for the peace process. Hours before the deal was announced, Uribe, who was Colombias president from 2002 to 2010, had asked that it not be definitive until opponents and victims of the conflict could review the text. Following a meeting with Santos, Uribe read a statement to reporters saying he had asked that the texts to be announced from Havana not be official until they had been reviewed. Uribe and his supporters had demanded stiffer penalties for rebels who committed war crimes and criticized the promise of a political role for the FARC, a 7,000-strong peasant army that is Latin Americas last remaining major insurgency. They didnt like that under the old deal guerrilla leaders involved in crimes against humanity would be spared jail time and allowed to enter political life. By Gene Emery (Reuters Health) - Doctors in the Netherlands say they have successfully tested an implantable computer-brain interface that allowed the mind of a "locked-in" patient to spell messages at the rate of two letters per minute. The system was tested on a 58-year-old woman in the late stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Unable to speak or move her muscles, she had to identify the letters by imagining that she was moving her right hand. Previously, her only method to communicate was through eye movements and blinks. "We've built a system that's reliable and autonomous that works at home without any extra help. There's not a single system that even comes close to this," chief author Nick Ramsey of the Rudolf Magnus Brain Center at the University Medical Center Utrecht told Reuters Health by phone. Vikash Gilja, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California San Diego, who was not connected with the research, said the system used by the Ramsey team "does not push the envelope of performance, but that was not the purpose of the study. The news here is they have developed a system they fitted to one individual over a long time period and that individual was able to use it on their own without a lot of technical support." "Those are major accomplishments," he told Reuters Health by phone. "It takes us a big step closer to real worldwide-scale clinical translation of an implanted brain-machine interface." The hope is that such systems could eventually help others who can't move but whose brains are still capable of thought and communication, such as some stroke victims. The new research, presented November 12 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, was an attempt to find a method that could be used continuously at home without discomfort or disfigurement. Detecting brain signals can be challenging because the brain generates a lot of electrical noise, and screening out the important signals can be a challenge. In this case, four sensor strips for detecting discharges from the cortex were placed over the hand region of the brains left motor cortex. The surgery was done through four burr holes drilled through the skull. Each strip had four electrodes. The leads were tunneled under the skin to an amplifier and transmitter anchored in the woman's chest. An antenna placed outside the body near the transmitter picked up the signals and conveyed them to the computer. Placement of the implanted equipment required two surgeries lasting a total of just under eight hours. Testing was done over 28 weeks. The researchers then moved to a training period where, for example, the woman tried to hit a target on a video screen by thinking about moving and relaxing her hand. There was also a key task where the woman tried to accomplish the equivalent of clicking on a mouse button trying to move her hand for about 1 second. When it came time to spell words, letters would be highlighted on a computer screen and the woman would try to "click" on the one she wanted. It took the researchers several months to refine their algorithms to inhibit unintended brain clicks. Results from eye tracking were used to confirm what the volunteer typed. Initially, the woman needed 52 seconds to identify one letter. "The time required dropped to 33 seconds per letter when word prediction was used," the researchers reported. At times, she can do up to four letters per minute. "The speed is not that important. It's the certainty with which you can express yourself," said Ramsey, who explained that the woman has come to rely on the system when she goes outdoors, where her eye tracking equipment doesn't always work. She can spell words directly without help and it gives her the ability to alert her caregiver that she needs assistance without relying on the caregiver noticing her eye movements. Such calls for help can be critical if her ventilator stops working properly or saliva is building up. "This is a significant advance in our field," Jonathan Brumberg, an assistant professor of speech-language-hearing at the University of Kansas, who was not connected with the work, told Reuters Health in an email. "It has significant advantages because the patient could use the device outdoors and with minimal dependency on others for setting up the device." The technique poses risks because it requires surgery. In the case of this woman, side effects included a brief hospitalization for postsurgical fever, which dropped quickly without treatment. A feeling of numbness in the skin around the left ear and increased tiredness also resolved without therapy. Dublin-based Medtronic developed the implant and associated equipment, and contributed money to the Dutch government agency that paid for the research. One of the authors is a Medtronic employee who helped develop the system. "By using/modifying existing hardware, the cost of future devices may be lower than those with completely custom hardware," said Brumberg. "Also, using existing commercial solutions means that surgeons will likely be familiar with the components and already have developed appropriate procedures for their use." Ramsey said the next step is to streamline the process and test the system on two more patients before undertaking a large-scale trial. "I think of it as an achievement that puts implants for (brain-computer interface) on the map and it allows us develop more sophisticated devices," he said. Gilja said such devices are already well under development, including implants that have 100 electrodes on a 4-square-millimeter patch. Instead of sitting on the surface of the brain, the electrodes penetrate a millimeter or so into the brain tissue. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2fLANpx The New England Journal of Medicine, online November 12, 2016. (Adds details, CEO comments, shares) By Natalie Grover Nov 14 (Reuters) - Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc said its only drug outperformed a placebo in a mid-stage study involving patients with a form of systemic sclerosis, an incurable autoimmune condition caused by abnormal growth of connective tissue. Shares of the Norwood, Massachusetts-based company shot up nearly 125 percent to $13.15 in premarket trading on Monday. The 42-patient trial tested the drug, resunab, against a placebo in patients with diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis, the less common form of the rare condition that has a higher risk of death. Patients on resunab scored an average of 33 percent on an index that evaluates changes in skin hardening, lung capacity and assessments of benefit by patients and physicians, while those on the placebo scored zero after 16 weeks, Corbus said. A score of 20 percent or more is considered clinically meaningful. "No drug has ever shown has shown efficacy in scleroderma," Chief Executive Yuval Cohen told Reuters. "What we've seen here is unprecedented - to get these types of responses in a study that is so short and so small." Systemic sclerosis, also called scleroderma, comes from the Greek words for "hard skin" and mostly affects women. The chronic, rheumatic disease affects about 90,000 people in the United States and Europe but its cause is unclear. The disease is characterized by vascular damage and scarring or fibrosis of the skin, the gastrointestinal tract, heart, lungs and other internal organs. No existing drug can stop the progression of systemic sclerosis, but there are medicines that can relieve certain symptoms and reduce organ damage. Typical anti-inflammatory drugs suppress the immune system, which makes users susceptible to infection. Resunab, which is derived from cannabis but synthesized chemically to bind to the CB2 receptor found on immune cells, is designed to mimic a natural process to "turn off" chronic inflammation and fibrosis, without causing immuno-suppression. Story continues Multiple attempts to successfully develop a drug that targets CB2 have failed in the past. Resunab, which has already secured "fast-track" and "orphan drug" status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is also being evaluated in three other inflammatory diseases, including cystic fibrosis, dermatomyositis and lupus. Corbus is well positioned to secure an accelerated path towards approval, Cohen said, adding that the company now planned to discuss its next steps with regulators. The company expects to submit a marketing application for scleroderma by 2021, pending further trials. Up to Friday's close, Corbus's stock had more than tripled this year. (Reporting by Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr) SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- It was cold and windy, but Monica Araya relished the moment she was forced to get out of her car. Stepping out into the fresh Norwegian air, Araya asked her husband to snap a photo as she plugged their electric vehicle into the recharge station. She smiled for the photo, as her mind replayed their 300-mile journey across Norway, done without burning a single drop of fossil fuels. Why can't we do this in Costa Rica? she thought. Few would draw such immediate parallels between the wealthy Scandinavian country of Norway and small, tropical Costa Rica, but Araya, a Costa Rican economist who splits her time between San Jose and Oslo, believes Costa Rica could mimic her adopted country's plans to ban gasoline-powered cars. After returning to San Jose early this year, Araya launched a campaign to ban petroleum in Costa Rica. Though still in its infancy, her initiative, "Costa Rica Sin Petroleo" (Costa Rica without petroleum), comes at a critical moment for Costa Rica's future in carbon emissions. Under pressure from the Paris climate agreements and its own goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021 -- a goal reaffirmed at the U.N. climate change conference underway in Morocco -- Costa Rica is desperate to reduce its carbon footprint. Coming up short on these very public environmental commitments could damage Costa Rica's pristine green reputation, but despite what's at stake, the current government has pushed the complicated issue of transportation aside. Costa Rican citizens have now taken up the effort, launching transportation initiatives and protesting the country's deteriorating roads and ineffective and polluting public bus system. Though a full ban still faces stiff opposition, in recent months the movement picked up important political allies and is growing in popular support. "We have always been a small country with big ideas," Araya says. "It is connected with our identity and with these obstacles we are now facing with carbon neutrality, it is time that we think big again." Story continues Though Costa Rica is a small developing country, it has an outsized reputation for environmental friendliness. It regularly tops lists of the world's greenest countries and its long streaks using only renewable electricity have repeatedly been used as fodder for the internet's click-bait content mills. [READ: Climate change, and the draining of Lesotho.] There are many reasons Costa Rica deserves this environmental praise -- its extensive national parks system, decades-long reforestation effort or ban on open-pit mining, for example -- but while the country's victories often receive international attention, its congested roads and gas-guzzling cars slide under the radar. According to data from the navigation app Waze, San Jose has the worst traffic of any metropolitan area in Latin America, and the country's inability to address its transportation problems may single-handedly block Costa Rica from reaching carbon neutrality. Hydrocarbons used for transportation now make up 44 percent of the energy consumed in Costa Rica and are responsible for more than half of the country's carbon-dioxide emissions. While state-led programs in agriculture and industry have allowed Costa Rica to continue limping toward carbon neutrality, transportation is the only area left where significant emissions reductions can be made. Unlike most countries that burn fossil fuels to produce electricity, Costa Rica derives nearly all of its electricity from hydro, wind and geothermal sources. Switching to a transport system that relies on electricity vehicles would eliminate almost all of the country's oil use. Despite this advantage, so far, no arm of the government has summoned the political will to create a new public transportation system or to encourage the import of electric cars. "Obviously public transportation is very important, but climate change crosses so many different sectors," says Patricia Campos, the sub-director of climate change within the country's Environment Ministry. "Because of the movements in politics, we are waiting on other parts of the government to move forward." With government transportation reform stalled in the slow-moving cogs of bureaucracy, Costa Rica continues to use gas-powered vehicles and to import all of its oil. The high import costs have spurred a strong oil drilling lobby and many, like Jorge Chavez, the president of the National Association of Geologists, support lifting the country's moratorium on oil exploration and extraction. "Of course we think that renewable energy is better, but if we are going to be stuck using hydrocarbons for 40 or 50 years, why don't we at least see if we have them in our own country or not?" Chavez says. Proponents of renouncing fossil fuels view oil exploration as a step backwards. They argue that developing an electric transportation model that relies on Costa Rica's wealth of renewable energy would require less effort, carry fewer costs and have more benefits in the long run than drilling. "The era of carbon is over," says Marcela Guerrero, a lawmaker with the ruling Citizen Action Party. "Because most of our electricity already comes from renewables, Costa Rica can go through the process of eliminating fossil fuels much faster than other countries can." [READ: Costa Rica among the Best Countries for Adventure.] Though not all Costa Ricans are ready to open the country up for oil drilling, for those who spend their weekdays trapped in San Jose's epic traffic jams, the viral videos touting Costa Rica's green record often seem far from the reality of the last several decades. But while many Costa Ricans doubt the country's ability to reduce its emissions, there is overwhelming support for stepping up efforts to try. According to a 2015 climate change opinions survey by World Wide Views, 81 percent of Costa Ricans said that not enough was being done to address climate change. While the majority respondents from the rest of the world emphasized the importance of global initiatives, most Costa Ricans wanted to see changes at home. Some change is already happening. Dozens of advocacy groups from cyclists to urban planners have emerged in San Jose in the last several years, pushing for transportation reform and the abandonment of fossil fuels. Costa Rica Sin Petroleo has even caught on within the transportation sector, with the campaign convincing the National Chamber of Bus Drivers (CANABUS) to begin testing the country's first electric buses and to promote them in its trade magazine. "We are trying to foster a spirit of change here in our country," says Luis Diego Gonzalez, a member of the CANABUS board of directors. "Our goal is to leave hydrocarbons behind and start thinking about a future with clean transportation." Lindsay Fendt is a freelance reporter and photographer based in Central America. She covers the environment and human rights. Follow her on Twitter. Following a series of seconds-long teasers, Paramount Pictures have released the first official trailer for "Ghost in the Shell" starring Scarlett Johansson. The movie is set to hit US/UK theaters on March 31, 2017. Based on the original Japanese manga franchise of the same name, the live action movie "Ghost in the Shell" sees Scarlett Johansson starring as the cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi, referred to simply as The Major in the clip, released on November 13. The 2-minute trailer shows The Major fighting crime and showing an interest in discovering why she/it is unlike the other cyborgs in what appears to be a futuristic Tokyo cityscape. As a non-Asian actor playing an Asian character, Johansson was a controversial choice of protagonist for the movie, with directors accused of "whitewashing" the cast. Johansson is joined by actors "Beat" Takeshi Kitano ("Battle Royale"), Juliette Binoche ("The English Patient") and Michael Pitt ("Hannibal," "Boardwalk Empire"). The movie is set to screen in UK and US theaters on March 31, 2017. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/G4VmJcZR0Yg QADISIYAH, IRAQ An explosion went off outside the safe house where Iraqi Counter Terrorism Services Gen. Abdulwahab al-Saadi kept watch over his men. Another suicide car bomb had detonated. Yahoo News went to the frontline at Iraqs Qadisiyah district in northeastern Mosul, to find out how the CTS forces were faring in their effort to push back the Islamic State. Since the start of the operation in October, Iraqi forces have been able to retake considerable ground in the Mosul area from the militants, and are now making incursions into the city itself. In the safe house, the sounds of clashes less than 500 feet away were loud, and explosions shook the walls. Gunfire could be heard from snipers and CTS forces exchanging fire. Saadi told Yahoo News that at Qadsiyah, We are going a bit slower because of the civilians, we dont want to hurt them in any way. As you hear now, we are only using smaller weapons like the M4 [carbine] and the Kalashnikovs. For now, we are trying not to use air strikes because ISIS is among the civilians. Saadi took us to another house closer to central part of the district. A man lay dead in the dirt next to the house. Saadi confirmed he was an ISIS fighter. Carefully stepping through the opening where a wall had been destroyed, we skirted an improvised explosive device (IED) and climbed the stairs to the roof. Saadi pointed to other rooftops where suspected the snipers were waiting. None could be seen, but the general was careful not to step out into the open. ISIS is using suicide car bombs, IEDs and mortars as primary weapons, supported by snipers in urban areas. A group of IDPs coming to an aid and transport station, the child waves a white flag to signal they are not ISIS. (Photo: Ash Gallagher for Yahoo News) Its really hard to distinguish between ISIS and civilians, Saadi said, as they use civilians as shields, we ask [civilians] to stay in their houses while we liberate a street in the neighborhood. After we pass them, they can go to safer areas. Many of the rooftops have white flags on them as a signal to Iraqi forces that the family members are civilians and not associated with ISIS. Story continues As we descended to the street and hurried back to the safe house we could hear shooting. Two CTS soldiers took Yahoo News to another side of the neighborhood, at the edge of the fighting, which had been liberated the day before. The pops of gunfire could still be heard. And the crowd of civilians was in range of mortars. Hundreds of civilians were lined up to receive food and aid from Iraqi Interior Ministry volunteers. Others were in groups sitting on the ground, so that the guards could control the crowds waiting their turn to join the lines. Women and children were given priority over the men. Women lined up waiting to get aid from Iraqs Interior Ministry. (Ash Gallagher for Yahoo News) Families took turns receiving aid boxes from volunteers. Women waiting in line talked among themselves, thanking the Iraqi Army for their freedom. One woman said, Life was very hard under [ISIS]. I wish for safety for all the people here. An 8-year-old boy described his life under ISIS: They didnt let us go out and play. They punished people for smoking and not having beards. Mohammed, a father of six children, told Yahoo News, When ISIS came, everything stopped, food, schools, work, there was no life. They prevented the people from everything. On the way back to the safe house, Yahoo News asked CTS officials if they worried about further sectarian fighting after ISIS was defeated. One of the escorts, Mohammed, lit a cigarette, and said casually, Certainly, after liberation, there will be groups trying to fight with the army. There will be a unit that will stay in Mosul to take care of those groups. The driver, Sarhad, said, Our duty is to liberate it. After that, we dont know what will happen, but every city will have an [Iraqi Army] unit to protect it. Then Yahoo News left the safe house, and we drove around to another side of the district, where yet another CTS unit was fighting in a densely populated urban area. Less than 300 feet from the checkpoint at the fighting line, there was a small snack shack open in the destroyed area where a number of men and boys sat, talking and laughing. Majid is a mathematics teacher in Qadisiyah. He told Yahoo News that after ISIS took over, They changed the books. He said that even in math, the students were learning addition and subtraction using examples of guns and bullets. One lesson read: There are 10 Iraqi soldiers and one of us goes to detonate ourselves among them, how many will be left? Majid, a teacher who said he did not want to teach the ISIS curriculum. (Photo: Ash Gallagher for Yahoo News) Majid said he told ISIS he refused to teach the curriculum, but the armed group had already hung one woman for refusing, so he kept teaching. There were very few children in his class, and he had not received a salary for two and a half years, No one can imagine how hard of a life we lived, he said, Only God knows how hard it was. It was a disaster to live like this. The Iraqi Special Forces continued to exchange fire with ISIS inside the center of Qadisiyah, when a small truck pulled up from the direction of the village center and a young man walked up to the snack bar and introduced himself as Nassir, a 19-year-old operative for CTS, delivering food items to soldiers in the fight. He told Yahoo News that the day before, About 20 civilians came to us. ISIS was shooting at them. Two or three of the women got shot. He tried to help people get out, but snipers were still able to hit his truck. He walked around the truck and pointed to the bullet holes. I drive very fast, he explained, Thats why I can get away. Nassir left home at 15 and worked as a translator for U.S. forces. He later joined the Iraqi Army, but his family is still in Mosul, [ISIS] came to my family [in the beginning] to ask about me. Where did he go? they asked, but my family said they didnt know. When they asked why my family didnt control me, they assured them they didnt know where I went. Nassir wears a mask and said he didnt want his photo shared, to protect his family. He hopes he will be reunited with them when the battle for Mosul is finally over. After Nassir left, the CTS soldiers standing guard shared their lunch with Yahoo News and showed off their tattoos. After lunch, we followed a caravan of armored Hummers into a neighborhood just to the north of Qadisiyah, where much of the fighting continues. The armored caravan was protecting a group of generals and commanders that had marched out on foot in a show of support for their troops. Two CTS guards head toward the fighting checkpoint. (Photo: Ash Gallagher for Yahoo News) Reaching one of the main roads into the neighborhood, we waited for CTS troops to signal that it was safe to cross, as the danger of snipers was imminent. After crossing safely, we drove down a narrow residential road where civilians peeked out from the homes, some watering plants, others cheering. The caravan paused for a few moments before moving on, and as our car moved forward, a small mortar could be heard behind us. It had been fired into crowd, and the sound popped right behind our vehicle. But it did not hit the car, and it was not clear what damage it had caused. Finally, we reached a small aid station outside Gojali, a village liberated a few days before, where the Iraqi Army had set up a station to give medical assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs) and load them onto trucks to take them to camps. When a group of veiled women approached the aid station, Iraqi Security Forces stopped the women and asked each of them to lift their veils, to make sure they werent men in disguise. Iraqi forces have encountered male suicide bombers in recently liberated villages, and are cautious of groups of women traveling unescorted. Another group of mostly male IDPs were already loaded onto a truck. One of the boys poked his head over the top and asked a guard, Can I turn on my mobile? The guard replied, You can do anything you want except blow yourself up. The boy smiled and ducked back into the truck. Another explosion went off in the distance, and smoke was seen rising in the air. The sun started sinking and the trucks roared into gear. While the Iraqi Special Forces continue to push toward the center of Mosul, they know they have a tough fight ahead of them. For the civilians trapped in their homes, liberation cant come soon enough. An Iraqi soldier carries a child as he helps a woman who crossed from an Islamic State fighters-controlled part of Mosul into an Iraqi special forces soldiers-controlled part of Mosul, Iraq November 14, 2016. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) _____ Ash Gallagher is a multimedia journalist covering the Mideast for Yahoo News. 14 Nov - Daniel Padilla plans to get his college degree, despite his current busy schedule. As reported on ABS-CBN News, the actor, who addressed his mother Karla Estrada's previous wishes for her children to finish their studies, stated that he understands full well the advantage of having a degree. "Of course there are things that you can't just learn [without going to school]. Those are the knowledge you need," he said. While he has yet to make his decision about the courses, Padilla stated that he is most interested in Psychology and Philosophy. The actor added that his onscreen partner, Kathryn Bernardo, is also giving her full support for him to continue his studies. As for their next project, Padilla revealed that he and Bernardo may be involved in another acting project, although it might not be as serious as their last movie, "Barcelona: A Love Untold". (Photo source: instagram.com/imdanielpadilla) When one of the largest grocery companies in the country purchased Wisconsin-based Roundys, it was unclear what it would mean for the 120-plus Copps and Pick n Save stores around the state. Now, 10 months after the close of the $800 million deal were getting a better idea of Krogers strategy, but plenty of unanswered questions remain. All but two of the seven Madison-area Copps stores were converted to Pick n Save stores last week. The stores at 1312 S. Park St. and 620 S. Whitney Way were still under the Copps banner late last week, but the Whitney Way store had new grocery carts bearing the Pick n Save brand. Roundys would not comment on the future of the two Madison Copps stores or the seven other remaining stores around the state, in Antigo, Manitowoc, Phillips, Plover, Stevens Point, Wautoma and Wisconsin Rapids. Our store planning team is busy with the current Copps conversions in the Madison market, Jim Hyland, Roundys vice president of communications wrote in an e-mail last week. They will review customer reaction to the banner change and decide on further Copps store conversions in both the Madison market and for the remaining Copps stores in the state. Dane County now has 12 Pick n Save stores. Hyland declined to say if the company had plans to close any stores in the Madison area. Roundys, based in Milwaukee and now operating as a Kroger subsidiary, also has a Metro Market at 6010 Cottage Grove Road. Over the summer, seven Copps stores in the Green Bay and Appleton area were converted to Pick n Saves, a brand now with 101 locations in Wisconsin. In the case of the newly branded stores in the Green Bay and Appleton area, the overhaul of the Copps stores included new flooring, lighting and display cases; an updated layout, and new labeling for organic, vegan and gluten-free items, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported. At the Middleton Pick n Save, a gelato and smoothie bar is being built in a space that had previously had a bank near the stores north entrance. In Fitchburg, the store has been redesigned with lower shelving in the soda aisle and a revamped produce section. Our objective in renaming these Copps stores under the Pick n Save banner is to simplify our business, Hyland wrote. We are unifying these banners under the Pick n Save brand to improve efficiency, value and consistency for the benefit of our customers in the Madison market. Madison is considered one of the most competitive grocery markets in the Midwest and one that has experienced continuous change. Competitors include Hy-Vee, Woodmans Markets, Metcalfes Markets, Sams Club, Costco, Target and Wal-Mart stores in Madison, Monona, Stoughton and Sun Prairie that all sell groceries. In addition, Willy Street Co-op has more than 33,000 members and three locations, while Onalaska-based Festival Foods entered the market earlier this year on East Washington Avenue and is eyeing more locations. Other players include Aldi, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Jenifer Street Market, Regent Market Co-op and Miller & Sons in Verona and Mount Horeb. The conversion of some Copps stores to Pick n Save banners in the Madison area means not only updated stores but more offerings. When shoppers come and visit the updated store, they will find an increased number of organic, natural and gluten-free offerings, new private-label brands offered across the store and remodeled stores providing a more enjoyable shopping experience, Hyland wrote. Kroger employs nearly 400,000 people, has annual sales of more than $108 billion and brings deep pockets for improvement and expansion. Roundys, founded in 1872 in Milwaukee, has nearly $4 billion in sales and employs more than 22,000 people. It has steadily grown in recent years. In 2001, Roundys purchased 22 stores from Stevens Point-based Copps Corp., with that label ultimately becoming one of the main grocery brands in the Madison market. The company expanded into the Illinois market in 2013, with the purchase of 11 Dominicks stores that were converted to Marianos markets. Mount Horeb winery prepares to move The majority of the new Fisher King Winery in Verona is financed, but in an effort to avoid losing more equity in his project, owner Alwyn Fitzgerald has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund some of the costs of the $250,000-plus project. The winery, which opened in 2011 in downtown Mount Horeb and in 2015 was named the Wisconsin Winery of the Year, is scheduled to close later this month and open in December in a 7,000-square-foot space in the Liberty Business Park at the corner of highways M and PB. Fitzgerald has a list of projects that total about $25,000 that are not part of his financing package and include things like painting, a larger wine bar, the relocation and expansion of a wine tank chilling system and the construction of a patio. Fitzgerald is hoping to raise $15,000 through the all-or-nothing campaign that closes Nov. 18. As of last week, pledges were at about $2,000. For me, I dont want to sell equity in the winery anymore. Maybe in the future, but Ive already had three equity rounds, Fitzgerald said. Ive already diluted my position as far as I wanted to go. The facility will double the size of the Mount Horeb location and include a separate event space, catering kitchen and outdoor patio. Neighbors will include Sugar River Pizza Co., Wisconsin Brewing Co. and, by next year, a 160-room Hyatt Hotel and Wicked Jezebel Bootleg Distillery. Far West Side mixed-use development proposal draws a crowd About 65 people filled a small ballroom at the Radisson Hotel on Monday to get a closer look and hear from the developer of a project that would transform a corner near West Towne Mall. The Livesey Co.s five-phase, multiyear plan could lead to 17 buildings on the property bounded by South Gammon Road, Mineral Point Road, Tree Lane and the Tamarack Condominiums. The main existing building on the site was most recently home to the Madison Area Technical College West Campus and earlier, the corporate headquarters for Famous Footwear. The estimated $50 million first phase of the development called West Place would construct five buildings clustered on the corner of Gammon and Mineral Point roads and include 106 apartments, nearly 50,500 square feet of retail space and about 23,000 square feet of office space. Melissa Huggins, a Livesey planning consultant from Madison-based Urban Assets, told the gathering that if the project can make its way through the city approval process by March, demolition could begin in the spring, construction start in the fall and be finished in time for the 2018 holiday shopping season. Concerns from neighbors of the project, many of whom live in the nearby condominiums, include location of loading docks, stormwater control, traffic, the use of tax increment financing, density and the height of the buildings, some of which could reach six stories. Greg Mickells is the citys library director but was at the meeting because he lives along Westfield Road in the Tamarack Condominiums. Hes hopeful the development doesnt become inundated with national chains, instead bringing a modern character that will make the property a draw like Hilldale Shopping Center, Atwood Avenue and Monroe Street. Those are place-makers. You want to go there, Mickells said. Its active, it has a variety of things you could be engaged in. I like the idea that they were talking about programming some of the space to have small concerts, markets, some art exhibits, something for me that would be walkable and engaging. Livesey is one of Dane Countys largest developers and is behind Discovery Springs in Middleton. The development, at the Beltline and University Avenue, is filled with national chains and anchored by a 153,000-square-foot Costco that opened in 2008. Recent additions to the development include the corporate headquarters for Spectrum Brands, Fiskars and Mead & Hunt. John K. Livesey said the challenge for a development is finding the right mix of retailers and companies that have the financial backing to afford space in a new project. But he wants local businesses to be a key part of the development. I promise you Im going to do my best, Livesey told the crowd. If you dont have a more eclectic mix in there, a lot of the coolness goes away. This is one wedding anniversary that the royal family will never forget! Denmarks Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary celebrated their Copper Wedding Anniversary in a traditional way early Monday morning by having well-wishers wake up them up around 6.30 a.m. to mark 12-and-a-half years of wedded bliss. The couple tied the knot in a fairy tale wedding on May 14, 2004 after meeting at the Sydney Olympics. Danes traditionally celebrate wedding anniversaries at the 12.5, 25 and 50-year marks. The first of these is known as the Copper Wedding Anniversary. Danish tradition demands that family and friends of the couple form a half arch (its a full arch once the duo reaches the quarter-century mark) around the front door of their property before ensuring a noisy alarm call encourages the couple to get up and start the celebration! A photo of the happy couple, who have four children, was shared by Denmarks Royal Palace on Monday. And judging by their well-rested and fresh faces, they may have seen it coming! The early-morning event was just the beginning of a series of celebrations throughout the day. The heir to the Danish throne (who recently took quite the tumble on a trampoline) and his Australian-born bride are expected to host an entertaining meal for celebrants, at which they can expect to hear more songs, some of which have been specially composed for the event. Guests will then tell stories and make speeches while indulging in a piece of special almond cake known as kransekage. Karnal (India) (AFP) - As he surveys his acres of charred farmland outside New Delhi, Ishwar Singh has little sympathy for people choking in India's capital or any reason to stop the fires that are fuelling pollution. "Everyone does it and we've got no option as we can't afford to waste time or money clearing our land in other ways," says Singh. "All those complaining about what we're doing to our fields don't know a thing about farming and what people like me have to do to grow potatoes or onions and other vegetables. "If we didn't do it, then what would they eat? What prices would they have to pay? Everything would become massively expensive." While there are multiple factors behind New Delhi's status as the world's most polluted capital, much of the latest bout of smog has been blamed on the illegal but widespread practice among farmers of burning crop stubble. Attempts to tackle the problem have amounted to little more than hot air as India's federal system of government makes enforcement a challenge. Regional-rival Beijing, on the other hand, which competes with Delhi on poor air quality, has managed to stem the tide of pollution by ordering factory shutdowns and cars off the road with ad hoc edicts issued by the ruling Communist Party. Back in the Indian capital, the city's government admitted it was struggling to halt the crisis as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed last week that between 15 million to 20 million tonnes of stubble had been burnt in neighbouring states. Kejriwal appealed to the central government, headed by his arch rival Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to intervene with the state governments to find a resolution to the practice of crop burning. Hundreds of thousands of farmers who mainly cultivate rice and wheat set fire to their fields after harvest to clear the residue of their primary crops so they can grow vegetables over the autumn on the same land. Story continues The practice is particularly intense in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which serve as Delhi's breadbaskets. While Singh's farm in Haryana is around two hours drive from downtown Delhi, the smoke blown from fields such as his is a primary cause for the toxic smog which has shrouded the city. Levels of PM2.5 -- the fine particles linked to higher rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease -- have breached the "hazardous" upper limit of 500 several times in Delhi this month. - Token fines - Stubble burning is technically illegal, but it's rare for farmers to face more than a token fine. Singh was recently fined 2,500 rupees (around $35) but he said the local officials who sanctioned him were apologetic and it was a small price to pay for rotating his crops. Another small farmer, speaking on condition of anonymity as some of his land was still smouldering, said the alternatives were not viable. "I can't afford machines and if I hired people to clear all the residue, I would have to pay them and lose a week of growing time. "Besides, no one does a thing about these big businessmen," he added, pointing to a nearby processing plant belching out fumes. The impact of factory pollution and crop burning goes far beyond state boundaries, but authorities are reluctant to take action which might alienate vote banks such as farmers and business leaders. Both Punjab and Uttar Pradesh hold state elections next year. The ban on crop burning is rarely enforced and successive court judgements ordering ageing vehicles off Delhi's roads are also routinely flouted, leading to more unwelcome comparisons with China's track record. "We have repeatedly failed to implement the laws in India," said Mahesh Palawat, chief meteorologist at private weather forecaster Skymet. "There is hardly any control on emissions. The number of vehicles is going up and construction still continues across the region." "China is using technology and strict implementation because the authorities recognise air pollution as a health emergency and are doing everything to control it. "But here in India, there is no political will and laws are never implemented on ground, mostly because no one takes pollution seriously." Avin Sharma, who works in Delhi for a multinational corporation, questioned whether authorities really had the stomach to take on the range of vested interests that contribute to the pollution. "There are plenty of laws to deal with violators but they are wasting time by blaming each other," said Sharma. A week ago, most of the United States -- whether they supported her or not -- was expecting to inaugurate Hillary Clinton as the 45th President of the United States. Instead, the Democratic Party has a huge rebuilding job on its hands, entering the earliest days of its quest to reclaim the White House in 2020. About two years separate us from the unofficial start of the next campaign season, but obviously, there's plenty of work to be done in the meantime. 2018 promises midterm elections and a chance for Democrats to rebound, but the odds are stacked against them. President Donald Trump will enjoy a red majority in both houses of Congress, and the seats up for vote in two years don't present a major opportunity for gain. And on the subject of President Trump, it's impossible to tell -- for many obvious reasons -- if he'll seek reelection in 2020, so the Democrats have little idea of who they'll even be up against. But we're still getting ahead of ourselves. The Democratic National Committee needs a new chairman, someone to head fundraising as the party lands on its next Presidential nominee. The spot was vacated when Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down amidst controversy around leaked e-mails showing the DNC's efforts to sabotage Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. There are a number of candidates, though the most likely competitors are former Vermont Governor Howard Dean -- who held the chair from 2005 to 2009 -- and Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison. Dean is the centrist choice, who'd most mark a continuation of what's worked (and recently, hasn't worked) for the Dems; Ellison, an African-American and one of only two Muslims serving in Congress, has the support of the party's progressive wing, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Both Sanders and Warren are amongst the country's most visible Democrats, and they'll certainly have a say in which direction the party goes in these trying times. Does that include run at President? Both of their names will be in the mix. The Democrats need a charismatic leader with a strong personality -- the type who'd inspire their base to go out and vote in ways that Clinton didn't. Michelle Obama likely could, but don't bank on it; the outgoing First Lady has been adamantly denying such interest for years. So who could run? Here's a (very) early rundown of the names to know for 2020. Bernie Sanders. Just after Trump was elected, the self-described "democratic socialist" from Vermont was asked if he'd run in 2020. "We'll take one thing at a time," he responded. "But I'm not ruling out anything." Sanders' unlikely 2016 surge won him national recognition and popularity across party lines, especially with young voters. But Bernie will be 79 in 2020, older than any major party nominee in America's history. This obviously presents concern; though at 70, Donald Trump is already older than any other President beginning his first term. Elizabeth Warren. The progressive populist has so far denied interest in running, but she has a sizable following and a definite lane -- which would open up significantly if Sanders chose to sit out. Many fear the Democrats would be unlikely to nominate another female candidate following the misogyny that led to Clinton's defeat, though the Massachusetts Senator could be the best choice to override that. Cory Booker. Here's a reality TV star who's actually highly qualified to run for President. Booker's time as mayor of Newark, NJ was chronicled on the Sundance Channel series Brick City and -- to make him even more viable as a 21st century candidate -- he's especially adept at social media. He hasn't been vocal about a Presidential run, but that could be because of his current duties, serving in the U.S. Senate. Sherrod Brown. Representing the swing state of Ohio, this Senator could likely make a study campaign run, albeit without the name recognition of those just mentioned. His name floated around as a possible Vice President choice for Hillary Clinton this summer. Kirsten Gillibrand. The New York Senator filled Hillary Clinton's seat when she was named to Barack Obama's cabinet. Her name recognition is growing, often around her activism to raise awareness of sexual violence on campuses. Julian Castro. The Obama Cabinet member comes with a compelling American dream narrative and serious comparisons to the man who appointed him. He was raised in a low-income San Antonio neighborhood by a single mother, only to become mayor of his hometown by his mid 30s, and later, like Obama before him, enjoyed a breakthrough moment by giving the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic convention. Amy Klobuchar. Like Obama, the Minnesota Senator is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, and as with Gillibrand, she's known for her work to fight sexual assault, particularly in the military. Kamala Harris. California was applauded for the liberal legislation it passed last week, in addition to electing Harris, the Senate's first member of Indian descent. (Her mother is Indian; her father is Jamacian). The former California Attorney General could be too light on Washington experience come 2020, but expect her name to at least remain in the discussion for future elections. Tim Kaine. We'd be remiss to to run down the Democrats' 2020 hopefuls without mentioning the Vice President on its most recent ticket. However, his connection to the failed Clinton bid could be too much for him to overcome. Martin O'Malley. Again, this inventory of the Democrats' chances has to include O'Malley, the only candidate to make it to primary season alongside Clinton and Sanders. (He dropped out opening night, during the Iowa Caucuses). He could have been testing the waters towards a more successful run in 2020, though it's worth noting he's also pushing for that DNC chairman job. And finally, there's a good chance the eventual 2020 nominee hasn't even been considered yet. It could be because they're still relatively unknown, or because they're already famous -- just not as a politician. Interviewed following the Trump win, Michael Moore wondered if the Democrats might take a page from the Republicans' book and nominate a celebrity. "Democrats would be better off if they ran Oprah [Winfrey] or Tom Hanks," he told CNN's State of the Union show yesterday. "Why don't we run somebody that the American people love and are really drawn to, and that are smart and have good politics and all that?" Actually, the Democrats' 2020 field already reflects this: Minnesota Senator Al Franken -- who could've made the list above -- was a writer and performer with SNL for 15 years. So, Kanye West in 2020? In all seriousness, the prospect of 'Ye earning a nomination is ludicrous on multiple fronts, but for those Moore named -- and countless others -- the Presidency is nowhere near as out of reach as it might seem. The past election cycle has clearly taught us as much. COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark has ordered its poultry farmers to keep flocks indoors after bird flu was found in wild birds, the Nordic country's environment and food ministry said on Monday. The order will take effect from midnight, the ministry said. It excludes ducks, geese and wild birds. Several European countries, including Germany and Switzerland on Saturday as well as Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands and Croatia, have reported outbreaks of a severe strain of bird flu. Last week, Danish authorities ordered a farm to destroy more than 250,000 eggs imported from Germany that contained the highly pathogenic H5N8 virus. Germany's agriculture minister Christian Schmidt said earlier on Monday it was considering ordering its poultry farmers to keep their flocks indoors and would consult with countries including the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark. (Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Catherine Evans) - By Ben Reynolds Sysco Corp. (SYY) started out as a small company with a simple mission: to assist foodservice companies in providing customers with quality meals consumed away from home. The company went public in 1970. That year, it had sales of $115 million. Last year, Sysco's sales exceeded $50 billion. Today, Sysco has about 425,000 customers. It operates in 194 locations throughout the U.S., Bahamas, Canada and Ireland. The company has more than 50,000 employees. President-elect Donald Trump yes, its still strange to say that sat down with CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday to discuss what he plans to accomplish when he takes office in January. And some of his comments were nearly as surprising as his campaigns victory. In an in-depth conversation with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in Trump Tower on Friday, a noticeably subdued Trump addressed which of his campaign promises he intended to keep, his post-election conversations with Hillary Clinton and President Obama, and his reaction to the acts of racially charged violence being carried out in his name across the country. Here, the ten most surprising revelations from Donald Trumps 60 Minutes interview: 1. Hes already made nice with many of his opponents. This presidential campaign was one of the most bitter weve ever seen, but Trump struck a conciliatory note with the candidates he battled against. He said of Hillary Clintons phone call to concede: She couldnt have been nicer. Shes a great competitor. Very strong. Very smart. He noted that Bill Clinton and both President Bushes called to congratulate him. And he described his meeting with President Obama in cordial terms: I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humor. 2. The Wall may be more like a fence. Stahl asked Trump directly about his campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, adding that some have said itll really be more like a fence. Would he accept that, she asked? For certain areas, I would, he responded, adding, Im very good at this. Its called construction. But he doubled down on his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants: The people with criminal records, were getting them out of our country, or were going to incarcerate. He did note, though, that some of those immigrants are terrific people. Story continues RELATEDDave Chappelle Wishes Donald Trump Luck in Saturday Night Live Monologue: Im Going to Give Him a Chance 3. Hes already working with lobbyists but he doesnt like it. Trump railed against the lobbyists and special-interest groups that dominate Washington during his campaign, but Stahl noted that hes already added a number of lobbyists to his transition team. Trump copped to this, saying I dont like it, no, but theyre the only people you have down there. Thats the problem with the system. Were gonna clean it up. They know the system right now, but were gonna phase that out. 4. He wants any of his supporters attacking minorities to stop it. Trump feigned ignorance when Stahl asked him about the rash of racially charged attacks on minorities since his election: Im very surprised to hear that. I hate to hear it. (He added, I think its a very small amount.) What would he say to Trump supporters taunting and attacking minorities? I say stop it. If it helps. Ill say it right to the camera: Stop it. He later added, I think its horrible, if its happening. But he cautioned: I think its built up by the press. RELATEDCorey Lewandowski Resigns at CNN Is He Headed to Trumps White House? 5. He credits social media for his big win. Trump is a notorious tweeter, and he intends to continue using Twitter and other social media in a very restrained manner as President: Its a great form of communication. He sees it as a way to get his message out when hes criticized by the mainstream media: I have a method of fighting back. And he thinks it was instrumental in his victory: I think it helped me win all these races where they spent much more money than I did. I think social media has more power than the money they spent. 6. He wont commit to locking Hillary Clinton up. Despite promising that he would appoint a special prosecutor to put Hillary Clinton in jail if he won, Trumps stance has softened. Im gonna think about it, he says. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on health care. He insists she did some bad things, but he showed sympathy for the Clintons: I dont want to hurt them. Theyre good people. Hell keep us in suspense on this one, he tells Stahl: Ill give you a very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes. VIDEOSThe Daily Shows Hasan Minhaj and Michelle Wolf Just Delivered TVs Best Post-Election Takedowns 7. Even Melania thinks he goes too far sometimes. Future First Lady Melania Trump also sat down with Stahl, and she addressed his aggressive approach on Twitter: Sometimes it got him in trouble, but it helped a lot as well. Did she ever tell him he crossed the line? I did. Of course I did. Many times. Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesnt I think he hears me, but he will do what he wants to do in the end. 8. He wont fight to overturn gay marriage. Opposition to LGBT rights has been a part of the Republican platform for decades, but Trump signaled that he doesnt want to continue that fight. When Stahl brought up the LGBT community, he proudly replied, I mentioned them at the Republican national convention. And hes not planning to oppose gay marriage in the courts, he says: Its irrelevant, because its already settled. Its done. Im fine with that. VIDEOSRatings: Election Night Draws 71 Mil, On Par With Obamas Historic 2008 Win 9. Hed be in favor of ditching the electoral college. The electoral college system gave Trump the win (Hillary won the popular vote), and Trump, shockingly, isnt against switching to a straight popular vote count. I would rather see it where you went with simple votes, he said. You know, you got 100 million votes, someone else gets 90 million votes But he added, in defense of the electoral college: Theres a reason for doing this, because it brings all the states into play. And theres something very good about that. I do respect the system. 10. Hell only take a dollar per year in salary. Trump doesnt need the salary that comes with the office of president around $400,000 a year and he confirmed to Stahl that hell forego that salary: I think I have to, by law, take one dollar. So Ill take one dollar a year. He didnt even know how much the president makes, and had to ask Stahl. But he reiterated: Im not taking it. The savings wont pay off the national debt but its a start. Whats your reaction to Donald Trumps 60 Minutes interview? Hit the comments and share your thoughts. Related stories Seth Meyers: Donald Trump's 'Fresh Start' Has Come and Gone Samantha Bee Skewers Trump Staff, Cites Us (!), Checks In With Jon Stewart Ratings: Trump Boosts 60 Minutes; Secrets and Lies, Quantico Tick Up Ikeda Manabu remembers where he was exactly three years ago this fall: marking the first pen strokes of a massive work of art hed create in the Chazen Museum of Art. Soon, the work will be done. The visiting Japanese artist has been working inch by inch on a 130-square-foot artwork, creating a riveting and astonishingly detailed visual epic. Since he began the project in 2013, some 6,340 visitors have stopped by his studio in the Chazen basement to witness his work. They saw the photos, twigs and stones laid out on tables to inspire him, and watched over his shoulder as the artwork, made in pen and ink and watercolor, flourished. And as those three years passed, life continued outside the museum, too. Ikedas eldest daughter Tou, now 7, became a perfect English speaker at her Madison elementary school. The artist and his wife welcomed two more children into the world. Slowly, the family began to meet other Japanese speakers in Madison, and even found an Asian market that sold foods from home. Ikeda and Tou spent time fishing at Lake Wingra. The artist was invited to create new works at UW-Madisons Tandem Press, and liked to ski Wisconsin slopes until an accident temporarily halted the use of his dominant right hand. So Ikeda taught himself to draw with his left. And through it all, his artwork embraced his thoughts, his learning, his imagination and inspirations. The panels that make up the piece, which is yet to be titled, will be unveiled to the public at 2 p.m. Friday (the day after his youngest daughters first birthday) in the Chazens Gallery XVII. It will remain on display at the admission-free museum at least through Dec. 11, when it will be shipped to Japan. The work will be shown at a number of museums before it likely lands in the hands of a private collector, Chazen officials said. It began as a near-apocalyptic depiction of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. At the core of the artwork is a craggy tree, its lower limbs reaching out like the thrashing arms of a drowning victim. Intertwined are minute, intricate images at first evoking wreckage and strife. But as the limbs grow upward, so does the sense of life and regeneration. The work blossoms into a celebration of renewal, a flowery springtime linked to the cycles of life and death. Humorous images from Ikedas life in Madison pop up in the work: Bucky Badger, road signs, even a placard from the Chazen museum. When he started, he was thinking more about the force of the nature, the recovery of the nature, and how human beings could live better with the nature more integrated into their lives, said Mina Keith, a volunteer docent-in-training at the Chazen who translated Ikedas comments during an interview. But in three years, he had the birth of the children, he experienced the death of a friend, he personally experienced an accident with his shoulder, and he began thinking more about life and the importance of life. You see that in the flowers. The flowers depict a lot of themes related to birth and death, the artist, 43, explained through his translator. In some (of the flowers) youre going to see babies, in some youre going to see more death-related themes. Also, the tree almost died, and then recovered. In all this disaster, there is also life going on, and death happening too. And recovery. A market price was not available for the towering artwork, or for other works that Ikeda has sold through the gallery in Japan that represents him. Another of Ikedas intricate pieces, titled Meltdown, was bought by the Chazen several years ago with gift funds for $220,000, and is currently on display at the museum. Meltdown depicts a glacier sliding down a mountain, taking with it layers of civilization. Ikeda created it over six months during another residency, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Chazen director Russell Panczenko became a fan of Ikedas work after seeing it in a New York exhibition in 2011. The New York Times would choose Ikedas work Existence from that show as one of the top 10 events of the art world in 2011. The Chazen offered work space to Ikeda for his three-year project. The artist said he appreciates the large studio a far cry from when he had to work in a corner of his small apartment in Japan. Ikeda very much likes that Japanese tradition where you meticulously work it out, doing everything very precisely, Panczenko told the Wisconsin State Journal soon after the artist began working here. The master does it by hand; thats what makes him the master. Thats important to him. During his stay in Madison, Ikeda has been filmed by Wisconsin Public Television (which will present a five-minute segment on the artist during its show Wisconsin Life at 7 p.m. Nov. 24) and also by a documentary film crew from the Japanese public television network NHK. He has traveled back to Japan over the past three years for art openings. Last winter his wife Ai returned there for the birth of their third child; meanwhile, Ikeda dislocated his shoulder while doing ski stunts at Tyrol Basin. He damaged the nerves (on his right arm). And after that its a slow recovery, Keith said. While his wife was in Japan, Ikeda stayed at the home of a museum docent because it was too hard to live on his own. He was there for three months. He had to do everything with his left hand only, because he couldnt use his right, his interpreter explained. Cooking, dressing, taking showers everything was with his left hand. And here (in the art studio) he was learning to use his left hand. Ikeda points out a tree branch in his work, a section where you can see veins and nerves along the bark, symbolizing the damaged nerves in his arms growing back again. He still has some numbness and tingling in his hand, but can use it again to draw and expects a full recovery, he said. Hes comfortable in Madison, he said, and would like to remain in the U.S. for another artist residency. But right now he is pouring all his energy into finishing the artwork being unveiled this week. He cant plan for the future yet he has to finish the work, and then hell maybe have more chance to talk with other museums about this, his translator said. And the kids have school now, so he is planning to stay here for awhile, until he has a solid plan. Ikedas studio was open 504 days to the public during his three-year residency. Visitors, some of them from other countries, stood behind ropes to see the artist working, and sometimes asked questions that he wasnt prepared to answer, he said. But over time, Ikeda learned that viewers come to the pictures and they are mesmerized and start finding things and having fun with that, he said. It has resulted in (me) having more confidence. Im more confident now that everybody from all over the world can appreciate the work. Donald Trump 60 Minutes interview tonight will be a must watch for a few reasons Donald Trump will appear tonight on 60 Minutes, and its shaping up to be a memorable episode. This is his ninth appearance on the show, and his first extensive interview following his shocking and highly controversial Election Day victory. Which is exactly why Trumps 60 Minutes interview on his plans for his presidency is a must-see for a few reasons. Trump sat down with reporter Lesley Stahl, alongside wife Melania and several of his children, to discuss the ins-and- outs of the election and what to expect from the next four years regarding immigration, Obamacare, and Twitter. Heres why its worthwhile to tune in, even if your political stance is the polar opposite of Donald Trumps. Trump shares his thoughts on immigration. President-elect Donald Trump says the wall on the Mexican border may have fence segments, tonight on #60Minutes: https://t.co/n4ZKu8f3mk pic.twitter.com/bCmtXgcyFh 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 13, 2016 Those claiming the president-elect would tone down his rhetoric after winning are in for a big surprise; Trump is determined to deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants as soon as he enters office. And that wall we all heard so much about over the past few months? Its still on, whether Mexico likes it or not. He says hell exercise restraint. Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the "Trump phenomena" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016 When discussing his penchant for Twitter, of course. This comment might raise some eyebrows, given his energetic Tweeting regarding the protests that have been popping in the wake of his win. Then of course theres his ongoing feud with The New York Times Story continues Hes still on the fence about Obamacare. This may be Donald Trumps 9th interview on #60Minutes, but its his first extensive interview as president-elect: https://t.co/z9JR1LjMTj pic.twitter.com/zlShtPJ1RF 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 13, 2016 Although Trump says that hes willing to consider keeping parts of the universal healthcare plan (including helping those with preexisting conditions and young adults 26 and under), the system is in for a major overhaul. He intends to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but we dont know just what that means yet. Whether the interview touches on the mounting protests against him remains to be seen. Fans of the president-elect will no doubt tune in to revel in his victory; opponents, on the other hand, should stay informed to know exactly what they are standing against. The post Donald Trump 60 Minutes interview tonight will be a must watch for a few reasons appeared first on HelloGiggles. President-elect Donald Trump sat down with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl on Friday in his penthouse home in Trump Tower to talk about the election, his plans going forward, what he and President Barack Obama spoke about in their closed-doors meeting and what he thinks of those people protesting him across the country. Trump said in his interview with the CBS newsmagazine, which aired Sunday night, that he wasn't surprised he won, given that he'd been giving speeches for 21 days in a row and even gave a last-minute 1 a.m. speech the morning of the election that drew 31,000 people. "When I left, I said, 'How can I lose?'" Trump said, adding that he realizes that winning the election is "enormous. I've done a lot of big things; I've never done anything like this. It's so big, it's so enormous, it's so amazing. ... This is a whole different life for me now." He said he spoke with both his rival Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill, in separate phone calls after the election. "It was a tough call for [Hillary], I can imagine it was tougher for her than for me, and for me it would have been very difficult. She couldn't have been nicer." Trump added that Bill was "gracious." Asked if he had any regrets about anything he'd said during the campaign about Hillary, he replied: "They were tough, and I was tough. ... I wish it were softer, nicer, more about policy. But I will say that it really is something that I'm very proud of. It was a tremendous campaign." Read more: Dave Chappelle Performs Stand-Up On 'SNL,' Wishes Donald Trump Luck Later in the interview, Trump was asked if he still plans to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Hillary's emails. "I'm going to think about it," he replied. "I feel that I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on healthcare, the border and immigration. ... I want to focus on all these things we're talking about, and make it a great country. She did some bad things. ... I don't want to hurt [the Clintons]. They're good people. I don't want to hurt them, and I will give you a very, very good definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together." Story continues Trump also declined to comment on whether he'll ask for FBI director James Comey's resignation. "But I would certainly like to talk to him ... before I answer a question like that. He may have had a very good reason for doing what he did." he said. Trump also revealed a little about what he and President Obama spoke about during their post-election meeting, which was scheduled for 15 minutes but lasted 90. "It could have gone on for four hours," he said, praising Obama as "very smart and very nice. ... It was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say." Trump said it wasn't awkward despite the fact that each has made very harsh comments against the other in the past and during the campaign. Trump said he didn't want to get into specifics, but topics included the Middle East, North Korea and healthcare. On the latter, he said that President Obama told him both "the merits and the difficulties." Later in the interview, Stahl asked if Trump would repeal Obamacare and leave those Americans using the plan without healthcare for a period of time. "It's going to be simultaneous; they're going to be just fine," he said. "We're not going to have a two-day period or a two-year period where there's nothing. It's going to be replaced, and it's going to be great healthcare for much less money. That's not a bad combination." Asked if his election win was a "repudiation" of Obama's presidency, Trump replied: "No, I think it's a moment in time where politicians for a long period of time have let people down. They've let them down on the job front, they've even let them down in terms of the war front. We've been fighting a war for 15 years. We've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East; we could have rebuilt this country twice. Look at our roads and bridges and tunnels and our airports. It's a repudiation of what's taken place over a long period of time." Stahl asked if Trump might conduct himself differently as president than he did during the campaign. "I'll conduct myself in a very good manner, but it depends on what the situation is," he responded. "Sometimes you have to be rougher, when you look at the world and the various places that have taken advantage of our country. We're losing this country. That's why I won the election. ... Sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated." Read more: Oprah Winfrey Faces Backlash About Her Comments Following Donald Trump's Win As for other promises he made during his campaign, Trump still plans to build a wall but would accept a fence in some areas. Regarding immigrant deportation, he wants to focus on getting "people who are criminals and have criminal records, who are gang members, who are drug dealers - there are probably 2 million, could be 3 million - getting them out of the country, or we're going to incarcerate them." He also says lowering taxes is a priority and was a major focus when he recently met with Republican leaders. Trump also plans to name a Supreme Court appointee very soon who is pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. As for concerns that Roe v. Wade might be overturned, Trump said: "It if were overturned, it would go back to the states. ... We'll see what happens. That has a long way to go." He also noted he's been a supporter of the LBGTQ community and said his feelings about marriage equality are "irrelevant because it was already settled. It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean, it's done. ... And I'm fine with that." Trump also refused to talk about his plans to defeat ISIS, indicating he didn't want to give away details that could harm his effort: "Why do I have to tell you that? I don't want to tell them anything." While he himself isn't scared about taking on such a great responsibility, Trump added that those people protesting him also shouldn't be scared and are protesting only because "they don't know me." He also reiterated a sentiment that he believes some of the protesters are "professionals" getting paid to do so, based on what was revealed in leaked emails posted on Wikileaks. Asked what he would tell the protesters, Trump said: "I would tell them, 'Don't be afraid. ... We are going to bring our country back. ... We just had an election and you have to be given a little time.' If Hillary had won, and my people went out and protested, everybody would be saying it's a terrible thing, and it would be a much different attitude. There is a double standard here." Read more: Donald Trump Shakes Up Transition Team, Elevating Mike Pence Over Chris Christie He also encouraged his supporters to stop any acts of violence and racism and said he'd not been aware of the full extent of what was happening. "I am surprised to hear that," Trump told Stahl. "I hate to hear that. I've seen some instances, a very small amount. Don't do it. It's terrible. I'm going to bring this country together. I am so saddened to hear that, and I say, stop it. If it helps, I will say this, and I'll say it right to the camera: Stop it." At times, Trump's tweets were a major focus of his campaign. He said he doesn't plan to stop tweeting, noting that he has 28 million followers on his various social media platforms combined. "It's a modern form of communication," he said, noting that it's his way of fighting back against inaccurate media reports. He added that if he does continue using social media after he's sworn it, he'll be "very restrained." As for his comments leading up to the election that the system was "rigged," Trump said: "I'm not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. you know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. There's a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play. Electoral College and there's something very good about that. But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system." Trump's wife, Melania, also sat down for part of the interview, along with Trump's four grown children. Melania revealed that Donald did sit down with his entire family to ask permission to run for president and that she does let him know when he needs to restrain himself. "Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn't," she said. Read more: Trump Names Reince Priebus White House Chief of Staff Trump, who added that he'll release his much-discussed tax returns "at an appropriate time," also said he doesn't plan to collect the $400,000 salary the president typically receives, nor will he take a vacation. He also isn't concerned about whether the Trump brand has taken a beating. "This is big-league stuff. This is our country. Our country is going bad. We're going to save our country," he said. "I don't care about hotel occupancy. It's peanuts compared to what we're doing. Healthcare, making people better. It's unfair what's happened to the people of our country and we're going to change it. As simple as that." Nigel Farage, the British right-wing enemy of the European Union, became one of the first foreign politicians to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend, upending the diplomatic order to the embarrassment of the U.Ks ruling Conservative Party. A photo of Trump posing at Trump Tower with Farage, the interim leader of the smaller U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), was pictured on the front of many Sunday newspapers and was widely dissected online. The meeting with Farage ahead of British Prime Minister Theresa May or her main opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party comes as the British government seeks to foster ties with Trump to secure a strong trading relationship after it leaves the European Union. Now, many in Westminster are coming to terms with the fact a politician long seen as a fringe figure in British politics can command the attention of the leader of the free world. On his return, Farage reported that Trump and his aides are unhappy at the attacks leveled at the President-elect during the campaign by some government figures. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he offered to provide introductions and to start the necessary process of mending fences. It was a great honour to spend time with @realDonaldTrump. He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President. pic.twitter.com/kx8cGRHYPQ Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) November 12, 2016 May has said the government will not be taking Farage up on his offer, but some in the party think its not a bad idea. A Conservative member of the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of the Parliament, said Farage should be used as a salesman for British business. Anything we can do at any level to rebuild that relationship will be to Britains advantage, said Lord Marland to the BBC, and if Mr. Farage happens to be one of the people who encourages that relationship then so be it. The diplomatic coup by Farage gives the UKIP leader a status that is neither reflected by his electoral success nor his partys. Farage has failed seven times to be elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for UKIP, and is currently a legislator in the European parliament. His party has only one MP, Douglas Carswell, who has clashed repeatedly with its fractious leadership. Although this lack of representation may be due to Britains electoral system UKIP did receive 12.5% of votes in the 2015 election the party has long been a minor player on the political scene here, and is seen by many as a single-issue party whose views on British immigrants border on the unacceptable. The former investment banker, however, can and does claim to have played a part in the countrys decision in the June referendum to leave the European Union. Having joined demands by Euroskeptics in the Conservative Party to have the vote in the first place, he campaigned tirelessly for Brexit and has styled himself as the driving force behind its success. Others may have a stronger claim to that especially Boris Johnson, the pro-Brexit former London mayor now acting as Britains Foreign Secretary but it was Farage who accepted an invitation to stand alongside Trump in Mississippi this summer and use the example of Brexit to inspire Trump supporters to get out the vote. The meeting also raises questions about which other foreign politicians might be welcomed into the Trump White House ahead of their elected leaders. Trumps election was welcomed warmly by populist leaders across the Continent, including the French leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, who is seeking the countrys presidency next year. It remains to be seen whether the grace and favor of the White House will bestow legitimacy on other Trump supporters and flatterers. Donald Trump says he has a message for the thousands of people who are protesting in the streets since he won the Electoral College count, though not the popular vote on Election Night, and others who say they are afraid of a Trump presidency: Dont be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, dont be afraid, he told Lesley Stahl on tonights 60 Minutes interview. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. I mean, people are protesting. If Hillary had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, Oh, thats a terrible thing. And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different attitude. You know, there is a double standard here. He said he would rather not comment when questioned as to whether he would ask for FBI director James Comeys resignation. Hillary Clinton has said Comeys two letters to Congress about emails found on Anthony Weiners computer cost her the White House. I havent made up my mind. I respect him a lot. I respect the F.B.I. a lot. I think Even though they leak so much? she asked. Theres been a lot of leaking, theres no question about that. But I would certainly like to talk to him. And see him. This is a tough time for him. And I would like to talk to him before Id answer a question like that. Trump waffled when asked whether hed like to do away with the Electoral College system of picking a president. Before Election Day, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results and repeatedly called it a rigged election. Since Election Day, those who favored Clinton have called for doing away with the Electoral College. Im not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. you know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. Story continues But, he continued, Theres a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play..and theres something very good about that. But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system. Trump promised to move quickly to name a new Supreme Court justice who was pro-life but declined to go so far as to say they would overturn Roe v. Wade, sticking to having to do with abortion if it ever were overturned, it would go back to the States. So it would go back to the States, adding that [women will] perhaps have to go, theyll have to go to another state. But, in trying to calm fears that his Supreme Court would toss last years decision to legalize same-sex marriage, Trump argued, its done, adding these cases have gone to the Supreme Court, theyve been decided. And Im fine with that, adding that his views on the subject are irrelevant. When Trump did the interview, late last week, he said had not heard about some of the acts of violence being perpetrated in his name, or against his supporters. Nor, he said, had he heard about reports of racial slurs and personal threats against African Americans, Latinos and gay people by some of his supporters. Im very surprised to hear that. I hate to hear that, he said. Asked if he wanted to say anything to those people, Trump responded, I would say dont do it, thats terrible, because Im going to bring this country together. If it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it. Related stories Obama Ducks Question On Donald Trump's Steve Bannon Appointment, Calls "Impressive" His Talent For Tapping "Anxieties And Enthusiasms" 'South Park's President Trump - Er, Garrison - Meets A Constituent In Second Post-Election Episode 'The Simpsons' Addresses Its 2000 Prediction Of Donald Trump Presidency President-elect Donald Trump spent his first days after his improbable White House victory trying to come to terms with the immensity of the job ahead of him. His first staffing decisions showed how he hasnt quite figured it out yet. On Sunday, the real estate magnate-turned-reality television host and presidential candidate tapped RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, and Stephen Bannon, the former CEO of Breitbart, as his chief strategist. The duo show the tension inside the next Administration, as Trump struggles with the impulse to carry on his freewheeling style with the imperative to grow more disciplined. While every chief of staff in the White House adopts a different style, the job has come to be a combination of chief operating officer and therapist for the person occupying the Oval Office. And for the bombastic Trump, the first president never to serve in government or the military, the role may never have been more important. While Priebus doesnt have detailed experience within the federal government, he brings a wealth of relationships in the nations capital to the post, Priebus hiring to the top job was greeted by relief in Washington. An Establishment stalwart and a close ally of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite, Priebus, 44, proved himself a moderating force on the President-elect through the final days of the bitter campaign. You dont tell Trump you cant do this, stop doing that, RNC strategist Sean Spicer told TIME recently, describing how Priebus has pushed Trump to stay on message. You say, You know what would be more helpful or more effective? Or, Right now the Dems are taking advantage of how youre saying this. During the campaign, the RNC took on an unprecedented role in backstopping an inexperienced staff working for the partys nominee, which drew praise from Trump, who called him a superstar on Election Night. Priebus is said to be looking at ways to bring more veteran staff to the Trump administration to assist lesser-qualified aides who are coming off the campaign. Story continues While Trump considered elevating Bannon to the job of chief of staff, advisorsincluding Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushnerargued itd be a poke in the eye to mainstream Republicans. Under Bannon, Breitbart has waged war against Ryan, on whom Trump will rely for any sort of legislative agenda, and has elevated the so-called Alt-Right movement, a movement of white nationalists and extreme conservatives that has sprung up online. The conservative news site has used epithets to describe minorities and highlighted the religious persuasion of those it disagrees with. Bannon himself has also been accused in court documents of anti-Semitism. If he picked Bannon, it would be total war, said a Republican congressional aide. There is little love lost between Bannon and Priebus either. The party chairman has long been critical of Breitbart for sowing disunity in the GOP, and has been a frequent target of attacks from the websites writers. But even without the title, Bannons hiring to a senior White House posting may mark a mainstreaming of such controversial opinions. The Trump transition team announced that he and Priebus would work as equal partners in the White House. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory, Trump said in a statement. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who served as transition chairman throughout the campaign, also lobbied heavily for the chief of staff role, but fell out of favor with the nominee after the election. Christie was replaced by Vice President-elect Mike Pence as transition chairman, and has not been recently spotted at the transition teams daily meetings in Trump Tower. Priebus was a frequent critic of Trumps rhetoric on the campaign trail, whether his proposed ban on Muslim immigration or the lewd language he used to describe women. Yet he resisted calls from some in the party to abandon Trump after the Access Hollywood tape of Trump describing attempt at sexual assault. The RNC chairman has told associates he has no regrets about his leadership of the party, and has expressed hope, like Ryan, that Trump will prove to be malleable to the traditional Republican form. In the days since becoming president-elect, Trump has sent just those signs, suggesting he would try to rock the boat in Washington far less than he indicated during the campaign. Trump has staffed his transition with a collection of lobbyists and special interest groups. He indicated he would not try to repeal Obamacare without a replacement and backed off a pledge to deport all of the more than 11 million people in the U.S. illegally. All of those decisions, transition aides said, pointed to the influence of Priebus and his allies over Bannon. In the closing days of the campaign, Priebus, his chief of Staff Katie Walsh, Kushner, and Trump digital director Brad Parscale formed a key alliance that ran everything from the nuts-and-bolts of digital marketing to which states Trump invested his time in. Trump legit listens to [Priebus], said a person involved with the hiring discussions. Republican operatives describe Priebus as expert at navigating overbearing egos. Hes used to getting yelled at by donors and politely explaining to them why theyre wrong, said one person who has witnessed those conversations. But Bannon and Priebus represent just several of the power centers being arranged around Trump as he prepares to assume the White House. Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has said she has been offered a senior White House job, while Kushner is eyeing how he can legally be involved in the administration despite strict federal anti-nepotism laws. It will be up to Trump to decides who he ultimately listens to. President-elect Donald Trump Source: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Nearly a week after one of the greatest upsets in recent US history, Americans are wondering how the Donald Trump administration will affect their personal lives and the industries they work in. For Silicon Valley, theres justifiable concern over whether President-elect Donald Trump will be good for innovation. Investors also seem concerned, as tech stocks have been slumping in recent days. Trumps campaign was light on tech policy but focused on issues that will affect Silicon Valley, including immigration and trade. In theory, a few of Trumps other policies could benefit the tech industry, including corporate tax cuts and increased spending on infrastructure. Still, tech leaders have reason to worry about Trumps attitude toward their industry, despite the addition of tech billionaire Peter Thiel to his transition team. Trump has attacked major tech companies, calling for a boycott of Apple (AAPL) in the wake of its feud with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone, stating he would make Apple build its devices in America instead of China, and arguing Amazon (AMZN) has a huge anti-trust problem. His controversial comments raised red flags among many in the tech community. This July, for example, about 145 technology leaders, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, signed a letter condemning the president-elects candidacy. In the letter, they argued Trump would be a disaster for innovation. In reality, its possible a Trump administration may not be entirely bad for those in the Valley. Trump, for example, has said he plans to transform the countrys infrastructure and create jobs in sectors such as telecommunications. Most everything these days thats done, whether its industrial, or manufacturing, involves technology, John Canally, chief economic strategist at LPL Financial, told CNBC. And I think the sector thats benefiting the most is financials. The financial sector is the biggest spender on tech. So techs going to benefit there as well. Story continues Trump also plans to bring new technologies into areas like the transportation system, theoretically spurring innovation. Trumps campaign promised to incorporate new technologies and innovations into our national transportation system such as state-of-the-art pipelines, advancements in maritime commerce, and the next generation of vehicles. Trumps corporate tax cuts and paring back of regulations could also benefit big corporations including big tech. The Angel Capital Association, a North American trade association of investors and investing groups, has said having a businessperson such as Trump running the White House could push the Securities and Exchange Commission to reinterpret laws to cut down on red tape. Moreover, Trumps plan to reduce corporate tax rate from 35% to 15% is intended to invigorate US business, enabling tech companies to expand and develop products and services more quickly. Such a tax cut could also render the US a more attractive place for multinational companies to set up shop. In the case of Apple, which is headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., but has operations in locations as far flung as China, the tech giant could benefit from Trumps pledge to offer a lower, 10% tax on any overseas cash brought back to the US. Morgan Stanley Managing Director Katy Huberty recently wrote a report that Apple would likely pay $54 billion less in taxes if a tax holiday occurs and the company opts to move all its cash to the U.S. Of course, these are all hypotheticals and promises for now. Trump: a disaster for innovation? Feasible. But it may very well also mean the next four years wont be wholly doom and gloom for techs innovators. JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook. More from JP Mangalindan: Trump victory bursts Silicon Valley bubble Obamas chief tech boss explains the shortage of women in tech Shaquille ONeal explains why he missed the boat on investing in Starbucks Michael Phelps is trying to be the Michael Jordan of ex-swimmers Silicon Valley has never been more politicized Kinshasa (AFP) - Congolese Prime Minister Augustin Matata resigned Monday to make way for an opposition figure to take his place following a controversial deal that effectively extends the president's term in office. The decision to delay presidential polls until at least late 2017 was part of a deal agreed in October by the government and fringe opposition groups that has been boycotted as a sham by the mainstream opposition. The deal, which followed a "national dialogue", was aimed at calming soaring political tensions. "I have offered my resignation as well as those of the members of my government... to respond to the spirit and the letter of the accord," said Matata as he left a meeting with President Joseph Kabila. The opposition has accused 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. Kabila will address the situation on Tuesday when he speaks to parliament to discuss "the state of the nation", according to a statement read on state media. Vital Kamerhe, who led the fringe opposition bloc that participated in the national dialogue, is the favourite to succeed Matata as prime minister. Following a meeting with Kabila, Kamerhe said that the nomination of a new premier was "imminent" and the formation of a new opposition-led government would be complete within a week. - 'Get on board' - He added that the opposition groups which boycotted the "national dialogue" could still "get on board at any moment. We are still open". The main dissident coalition Rassemblement (Gathering) -- which has rallied around veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi -- has rejected the deal that followed the "national dialogue" and stepped up its calls for Kabila to leave office by December 19 when his term ends. Tshisekedi's UPDS party said the resignation was meaningless. Story continues "The UDPS notes the resignation of Mr Matata," said spokesman Augustin Kabuya, adding that it "will however not resolve the crisis. "The Congolese people don't want a new prime minister to be named but that Mr Kabila quits power" next month, he said. The country has been in a state of crisis since disputed elections in 2011 returned Kabila to office for a second term. A 2006 constitutional provision limits the presidency to two terms. Violent anti-Kabila protests on September 19 and 20 triggered by the political instability claimed 53 lives, according to the UN. A UN Security Council delegation in the country has called for a peaceful transition of power following the government's decision to delay elections. Kabila took power in 2001, 10 days after the assassination of his father, the then-president, Laurent Kabila. Joseph Kabila was first elected to a five-year term as president in 2006. He then won a hotly-disputed election against Tshisekedi in 2011. SCOTTSDALE, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / On November 1, 2016, NOHO, Inc., a Wyoming corporation (the Company) announced the following: The Company has negotiated letters of intent to acquire the assets two companies: - Essential Marketing Systems, LLC, of Scottsdale, Arizona - ChoiceAdz.com, Inc., operating as BizConnect360.com, of Yorba Linda, California. ChoiceAdz.com has already done $350,000 in revenue in 2016 and is operating profitably. Its projected revenue for 2017 is well beyond $1,800,000. These companies presently operate in the advertising technology space and the acquisitions will expand the Company's product lines to offer customers a bundled suite of advertising and business services from a streamlined and direct platform. These acquisitions are anticipated to be completed by December 15, 2016. These acquisitions will be achieved by using the newly issued preferred shares and there will be no dilution to the existing common shareholders. The 54 billion shares of common stock exchanged by NOHO in the share exchange agreement with Media360 Licensing, Inc. on September 9, 2016, shall be retired and reissued as preferred shares on a ratio basis consistent with the share exchange agreement. In order for the Company to convert the newly issued preferred shares, a filing will be required. Expansion of Cannabis Advertising Platform Based on the results of the proven concept in Colorado, the Company is expanding its Cannabis advertising platform to all states where recreational Cannabis is permitted under state law. NOHO, Inc., CEO David Mersky stated: "These are exciting times for the company. Our strategy for growth will see us continue making revenue producing acquisitions. In keeping with our plans to expand within the cannabis sector we have started due diligence on several acquisition candidates. We look forward to announcing updates as developments occur." The Company has authorized its counsel to effectuate a name change from NOHO, Inc. to IMBUTEK Corporation, seeking to trade under the new proposed symbol of IMTK, or if not available then IUTK or IBTK. This change is intended to more accurately reflect the nature of the Company's core advertising technology business. Until that process is completed, the stock will continue to trade under its current symbol: DRNK. Story continues Further, pursuant to the Spin-Off Agreement with Purple Investment Group, Inc. dated September 9, 2016, the 2,609,527,445 shares belonging to Dolce B Investments have been transferred to NOHO as collateral and a guarantee of Purple Investment Group, Inc.s assumption of liabilities of NOHO, until such time as those liabilities are satisfied and no longer pose a contingent risk to NOHO. About NOHO, Inc. NOHO Gold Premium and Functional Lifestyle beverage is setting the standard for beverages that not only taste great, but also serves a functional purpose. The 8.4 oz can has a light, refreshing flavor and can be used as a healthy alternative to high sugar sodas and juices. With only 6 grams of sugar and 30 calories, it proves that healthy can taste good. For additional information on NOHO please visit www.nohodrink.com. SOURCE: NOHO, Inc. By Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers began painstaking work on Monday to secure the remains of the 3,000-year-old city of Nimrud, a day after driving out Islamic State militants who overran and ransacked the ancient Assyrian capital. Nimrud's palace and temples, once at the heart of an empire which stretched across the Middle East, were razed by the ultra-hardline zealots after they swept through northern Iraq in 2014, destroying historic sites they declared idolatrous. Whether any treasures at Nimrud can be rescued will be hard to assess until archaeologists can get there. That will take time because of fears the militants have left bombs or even fighters concealed in tunnels among the ruins. "We are stepping up drone surveillance now over Nimrud to make sure no imminent threat still exists," a colonel in the Ninth Armoured Division told Reuters. He said troops were in control of the area, but had strict instructions to be "extremely cautious" and were staying out of Nimrud while remaining villages nearby were cleared. The drones overflying the area were unarmed. "We want to make sure we don't inflict even the least damage to buildings in Nimrud already damaged by the evil Daesh (Islamic State)," he said. Nimrud lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris river, 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul where Iraqi soldiers are battling to crush Islamic State. Mosul is the largest city under the militants' control in Iraq and neighboring Syria. The Sunni Islamist group still controls the remains of the ancient city of Nineveh, in central Mosul. Khorsabad, another Assyrian site northeast of Mosul, is close to the frontline of the current conflict. To the south, the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra, famed for its pillared temple blending Graeco-Roman and eastern styles, was also seized and damaged by the militants in 2014. The UN cultural agency UNESCO has condemned the destruction at Nimrud as a war crime and an attack on the world's shared heritage, pointing to ancient Mesopotamia's role as a cradle of civilization where early urban centers flourished and cuneiform writing on clay was developed. "Liberation of ancient Iraqi archaeological sites from the control of the forces of dark and evil is a victory not only for Iraqis but for all humanity," Iraq's deputy culture minister Qais Hussain Rasheed told Reuters after the army announced it had taken Nimrud. NIMRUD DEVASTATION In neighboring Syria, Islamic State was driven out of the city of Palmyra eight months ago, after dynamiting monuments including two temples and Palmyra's imposing triumphal arch. Syria's antiquities chief said much of Palmyra could be restored, but video footage of the destruction carried out by the militants in Nimrud, and a government report issued last year, suggest the devastation in Iraq is extensive. The report by Iraq's culture ministry said a carved wall panel was stolen from the northern palace at Nimrud in July 2014. Eight months later, far greater damage was inflicted. The militants destroyed 10 colossal statues of winged bulls, located at the palace gates and at the temple of Ishtar - goddess of love, war, sex and power - and Nabu - god of literature and wisdom. A month later in April 2015 "the gangs completely blew up the city and its ancient buildings" the report said. Video released by Islamic State supporters, purporting to show them at work in Nimrud, included footage of the militants using bulldozers and electric drills to tear down murals and statues. They also rigged up barrels full of explosives which they appeared to detonate at the site. As recently as in the last three months, according to satellite imagery, Islamic State appears to have bulldozed the ziggurat, or step tower, built by Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III in the 9th century BC. Pictures released by the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Cultural Heritages Initiative showed that between late August and early November the towering remains of the ziggurat had been steadily flattened. What appeared to be scars from bulldozer shovels were visible, and ASOR said there were also signs of machinery tracks at the temple of Ishtar. A picture which ASOR dated Nov. 4 did, however, show contours of the palace and two temples still visible, suggesting they were not entirely erased. "It's premature to talk about the extent of damage that has been caused by Daesh," a government archaeological source said. "After the sites have been completely secured by the army, then we will send the archaeology police to cordon off the sites," the source added. "Then we will send our crews to take images and write a detailed report on the damage." Nimrud was excavated by a series of archaeological missions since the 19th century including in the 1950s by British archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was accompanied by his wife, detective novelist Agatha Christie. Her experiences in Iraq, and journeys from Britain to the Middle East, formed the background to several of her books, including Murder on the Orient Express, They Came to Baghdad, and Murder in Mesopotamia. (Writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Philippa Fletcher) A Madison man who allegedly threatened a woman with a gun at a Far East Side residence Sunday night was tackled by a Madison police officer after refusing to show his hands to police. Douglass Hafeman, 57, was taken into custody on multiple tentative charges, including endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, second-degree reckless injury, strangulation, battery, disorderly conduct while armed and intimidation of a victim, Madison police said. The incident happened at about 7:30 p.m. at a residence on Fieldwood Road. Officers responded to the scene after getting a report of the female getting physically assaulted and having a gun pointed at her. Officers set up a perimeter and tried to talk Hafeman out of the residence. "He came outside briefly but refused to show his hands," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "He swore at officers and was about to re-enter the home when the tackle was made." Hafeman allegedly fought with officers before being taken into custody. The pharmaceutical industry is regularly chastised for failing to do enough to ensure that people in low and middle-income countries have access to its medicines. Yet the real picture is actually more nuanced, according to a newly released report that finds some but not all drug makers are making headway. Some companies, for instance, are partnering to develop needed medicines. Others are pledging to waive or abandon patent rights and granting licenses so that generic versions of their drugs become available. At the same time, the report finds that much more can be done. There is a social contract between pharmaceutical companies and the people who need their products. Our research suggests that many people in the industry are committed to fulfilling this contract. But progress is slower than many of us would like, wrote Jayasree Iyer, executive director of the Access to Medicine Foundation, a nonprofit based in the Netherlands. On the bright side, Iyer told us that, overall, theres no area where the industry, as a whole, is doing less. And there are several areas where they are doing more. For instance, most drug makers have a detailed access-to-medicine strategy. But, she added there are some areas where we need to move the conversation forward affordability for more products and stopping the occurrence of misconduct. The foundation analyzed policies and practices meant to ease access to medicines for 50 different diseases in 107 countries. To assess performance, the foundation examined pricing; patents and licensing; R&D, quality manufacturing and safety monitoring; product donations and philanthropic activities; and public policy, which included anti-competitive marketing, lobbying, and corruption. The foundation then took its findings and compiled an index that ranked the top 20 pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to improve access to medicine in low- and middle-income countries. Funding, by the way, came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK government and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Story continues So what did the foundation conclude? Here are some key findings: GlaxoSmithKline led the index for the fifth time and was followed by Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, while Astellas had the poorest showing. Roche dropped on the list, from number 12 to number 19, since the last index was compiled in 2014. Novo Nordisk fell even more steeply, from 2 to 10. Conversely, AstraZeneca climbed to 7 from 15, and Takeda Pharmaceutical went to 15 from 20. In a statement, Glaxo chief executive Andrew Witty said the fundamental changes we have made to our business model enable us to make our products as available and affordable as possible while generating the returns we need to sustain our business and invest in research. Significantly, the report found progress is static in some areas. There were no signs of improvement in a key measure of affordability the proportion of drugs covered by pricing plans that consider the ability of people to pay for medicines. Only 5 percent of 850 drugs had pricing strategies that met key criteria set by the index, notably achieving affordability for different population groups within countries. Over the past four years, the number of companies using equitable pricing strategies increased from 16 in 2012, to 18 in 2014, to 19 in 2016. Ischemic heart disease replaced HIV/AIDS as the disease with the most products with equitable pricing. Gilead Sciences had the highest proportion of products 50 percent with equitable pricing strategies that target priority countries The foundation also identified what it called 84 product gaps where there is an urgent need, but low commercial incentive to engage in R&D concerning the 50 diseases covered in the index. Drug makers developed 151 medicines for 31 of these gaps, but only six companies account for the bulk of this activity, the report found. Leading the pack was Glaxo, followed by AbbVie. The foundation also examined product registration, which refers to filing an application to market a drug in a particular country. Such registrations ensure that medicines reach the people who need them. However, the analysis found that registration is limited, particularly where the need for better access is greatest. As for drugs being developed, the report counted 420 R&D projects that address specific needs of people in low and middle-income countries, up from 93 in 2014. The pipeline focuses heavily on five diseases lower respiratory infections, diabetes, malaria, viral hepatitis and HIV/AIDS that cause relatively large burdens and either have large commercial markets or are high priorities. The report also sought to identify the extent to which drug makers are transparent about their policy positions; political contributions; marketing activities and memberships in associations and the associated financial support provided and board seats held. But the foundation concluded that transparency remains low in all areas. Iyer noted that Gilead was not very transparent when it came to ensuring clinical trials are conducted ethically and sharing trial data, as well as sharing sales information and pricing strategies for certain drugs in specific countries. This is a lengthy report and there is much to read, so please look here. Christchurch (New Zealand) (AFP) - A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed two people and caused massive infrastructure damage in New Zealand on Monday. Here are some facts about the seismically active nation known as the Shaky Isles: Why so few casualties? The key was distance from major population areas. In a devastating 2011 quake in nearby Christchurch, which left 185 dead, the shallow epicentre was very close to the city centre, causing large buildings to collapse which accounted for many of those who died. In contrast, Monday's quake was centred in a rural area around halfway between Christchurch and Wellington. Seismologists said the 2011 disaster also had more powerful high-frequency energy, lasting barely 10 seconds, while Monday's quake, despite having a higher magnitude, was deeper and of a lower frequency. This saw the energy released more slowly over a longer period -- up to two minutes -- as it travelled in a "rolling" motion along an estimated 200 kilometre (124 miles) fault line. So where does this quake rank? The quake, near Kaikoura, was measured at 7.8 by the US Geological Survey and 7.5 by New Zealand's official GeoNet service. Regardless of which figure is used, it still ranks as one of the largest ever recorded in the South Pacific nation. The biggest was an 8.2 monster that hit Wellington in 1855. The deadliest was a 7.8 tremor in Hawke's Bay in 1931 that claimed 256 lives. Using USGS's 7.8 figure, Monday's quake was the joint second strongest in New Zealand. GeoNet's 7.5 magnitude ranks it jointly as the sixth most powerful on record. How does NZ cope with so many quakes? New Zealand has strict building compliance codes that aim to limit quake damage and keep casualties to a minimum. Modern buildings such as "The Beehive" parliamentary complex in Wellington have complex foundation systems incorporating huge rubber blocks that allow it to shake without sustaining structural damage. Residential houses are generally built of timber, which flexes and bends in a quake, rather than collapsing like masonry. The system failed in the 2011 Christchurch quake simply because the fault line which caused the tremor was unknown before it ruptured, so authorities thought the city was relatively stable and did not impose the strict conditions used elsewhere. Can New Zealand expect 'the big one'? New Zealand sits on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, which form part of the so-called "Ring of Fire", and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year. The most powerful to date was the 8.2-magnitude disaster in Wellington in 1855 that caused four deaths and changed the city's entire geography, pushing the shoreline out 200 metres (650 feet) as it thrust the harbour floor upwards. New Zealand's government-run GNS Science says on its website that the Alpine Fault, which runs for about 600 kilometres up the spine of the South Island, has a high probability of rupturing in the next 50 years. This will produce one of the biggest earthquakes since European settlement. It has only ruptured four times in the past 900 years, each time producing an earthquake of about magnitude 8.0. By Francesco Canepa FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Actions taken by bankers or bank shareholders to mitigate any potential conflict of interests will be taken into account by the European Central Bank when it is considering whether they are "fit and proper" to hold their positions. New ECB guidelines published on Monday, which apply to those running banks as well as people with qualifying shareholdings, are meant to give investors and bankers insight into the ECB's work as the euro zone's top banking watchdog, a role it has taken up in 2014 in response to the bloc's financial crisis. The ECB has to approve senior managers, board members and significant shareholders at the 129 lenders it directly supervises and has the power to reject appointments or attach mandatory conditions or non-binding recommendations if it finds conflicts of interest or shortcomings in the candidates' competence or reputation. The draft guidelines, which are subject to a public consultation and due to come into effect in the second quarter of 2017, say that when deciding on any conflicts of interest the ECB may accept "mitigating action". "What we...would like to see in the conflict of interest policy is that the candidate ensures that he will always act with independence of mind and would not participate in decisions that are directly linked to the position that he has," ECB supervisor Sofia Toscano Rico said during a conference call. The ECB gave no specific examples of where the new guidelines would apply among European banks. However, earlier this year the ECB opposed former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest owning a "significant stake" in asset gatherer Mediolanum (BMED.MI) after he was convicted for tax fraud. Fininvest is challenging the decision. The central bank said its supervisors would consider both pending and concluded legal cases in their assessment of whether an individual was fit and proper. "While there is a presumption of innocence, the very fact that an individual is being prosecuted is relevant to propriety," the ECB said. (Additional reporting by Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Editing by Alexander Smith) The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Monday released its November report on drilling productivity in seven key oil and gas producing regions of the U.S. Overall oil production is projected to remain essentially flat at 4.52 million barrels per day, just 7,000 barrels a day below October production. Total production in December is forecast to reach 4.498 million barrels a day, a drop of 20,000 barrels a day. In October the number of drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells rose by 58 to a total of 5,155. The largest gain came in the Permian Basin with 85 new DUC wells. The largest decline is forecast for the Eagle Ford play in South Texas where production is expected to slip by 33,000 barrels a day in December. Production in the Bakken play in North Dakota and Montana is expected to drop by 14,000 barrels a day and Niobrara production is pegged to rise by 2,000 barrels a day. Production from the Permian Basin is forecast to rise by 27,000 barrels a day and the output from the Haynesville and Marcellus shale plays is expected to remain unchanged in both regions. The Utica shale play is expected to slip by 2,000 barrels a day. ALSO READ: The Worst Companies to Work For Natural gas production is expected to drop by 94 million cubic feet per day with Eagle Ford production down the most (196 million cubic feet per day). Production in the Marcellus play is expected to rise by 130 million cubic feet in December. Utica shale gas production is forecast to decline by 4 million cubic feet per day. WTI crude oil for December delivery closed Friday at $43.41 a barrel, and traded down less than 0.1% late Monday afternoon at $43.37 after dropping to $42.20 earlier in the day. Natural gas for December delivery traded up nearly 5% at $2.75, up 13 cents from Friday's closing price. Related Articles Emmy Rossum is just the latest Hollywood figure to experience harassment in the wake of last week's presidential election. The Shameless star received anti-Semitic threats on Twitter from Trump supporters, the actress claimed in a series of tweets on Sunday. Rossum, who's Jewish, said she'd received messages "threatening to send me and my 'ilk' to the gas chambers" with "hashtags like '#sieghiel'." "NOT OK," she added. "Telling anyone to 'get ready for the trains' in reference to WWII is disgusting and offensive. Reporting you to twitter is not enough. Back off," she wrote in a subsequent tweet. Read more: 'Shameless' Season 7: On the Scene With Emmy Rossum for Her Directorial Debut Rossum, who last week also posted several tweets mourning Hillary Clinton's election loss and previously indicated she was a Clinton supporter, continued to defend herself against critics who suggested she was making up her experience, directing users to the specific user who targeted her. Although he deleted the train pic, Rossum was able to post a screenshot, captioning it, "No matter WHO you voted for, I don't care, THIS is not okay." Late Sunday night, she indicated she was staying strong but saddened by what she'd experienced. Earlier this weekend, Silicon Valley stars Kumail Nanjiani and Thomas Middleditch said they were called "cucks" and harassed by Trump supporters. Other incidents of harassment and violence have been reported across the country since Trump's victory. In an interview on Sunday night's 60 Minutes, which was taped Friday, Trump told his supporters, "Don't do it. It's terrible. I'm going to bring this country together. I am so saddened to hear that, and I say, stop it. If it helps, I will say this, and I'll say it right to the camera: Stop it." Read more: Oprah Winfrey Explains Controversial Donald Trump White House Tweet Story continues Read Rossum's tweets below. Trump supporters are sending me messages threatening to send me & my "ilk" to the gas chambers & writing hashtags like "#sieg hiel". NOT OK. - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 13, 2016 Telling anyone to "get ready for the trains" in reference to WWII is disgusting & offensive.Reporting you to twitter is not enough.Back off. - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 13, 2016 I would NEVER make something like this up. I couldn't. For those of you who are shaming me for bringing attention to it, go read his feed - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 14, 2016 This is 1 individual who targeted me. He since deleted the awful train pic. Why not check out the rest of his posts/likes @SpotEnemyBoats - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 14, 2016 No matter WHO you voted for, I don't care, THIS is not okay. "You will be seeing a train shortly" pic.twitter.com/cvQP6Fegz4 - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 14, 2016 This doesn't scare me. It doesn't cause me nightmares. I find it sad to recognize that this kind of vicious underbelly was there all along. - Emmy Rossum (@emmyrossum) November 14, 2016 By Gabriela Baczynska and Robert-Jan Bartunek BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union must spend more on defense and uphold accords on climate change and Iran's nuclear program, the bloc's foreign ministers said after mulling future ties with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on all three. "We understand that there will be more American businesslike approach and therefore there should also be more Europe from our side," said Miroslav Lajcak, the foreign minister of Slovakia, which now holds the EU's rotating presidency. "But no one has ever questioned the outcome of the election or our readiness to work with the United States," he said after a late Sunday meeting of the bloc. During the election campaign, Trump suggested he would make U.S. security guarantees for its European allies conditional and has criticized both the international Paris agreement to fight climate change and the deal curbing Iran's nuclear program. The EU's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said the bloc's foreign and defense ministers will decide on Monday to boost their common defense and security capabilities. "It could be even more relevant in the future," she said. But, in a clear sign of disunity in the bloc, the British and Hungarian foreign ministers refused to attend the ad-hoc meeting convened after Trump's shock victory at the polls on Nov. 8. The French minister was also not present. "Europe has multiple problems, but one of them is not America," said Poland's Witold Waszczykowski. "Americans chose a man who is no angel, but is not a child requiring special treatment either." Britain, which voted in June to leave the bloc, and eastern states such as Hungary and Poland, have criticized the EU for its response to a mass influx of refugees and migrants last year and for centralizing too much power in Brussels at the expense of individual member states. "These are the problems we should be dealing with and this special consideration of the United States that Europe is showing now is a bit exaggerated," Waszczykowski said. Fostering closer defense cooperation has long proved difficult in the EU but Germany and France now hope Trump's victory gives the plan renewed momentum. "I think the debate at the moment is to see how Europe can strengthen its voice in the world. We have already spoken about matters of security and defense," said Belgium's Didier Reynders. "That may also be true for matters of commerce, migration and climate change." (Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Alan Crosby) Brussels (AFP) - The European Union on Monday placed 17 Syrian ministers plus the central bank governor on a sanctions blacklist targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad over attacks on civilians. They face travel bans and asset freezes for "being responsible for the violent repression against the civilian population in Syria, benefiting from or supporting the regime, and/or being associated with such persons," an EU statement said. EU leaders agreed at a summit in October to increase sanctions against the Assad regime, citing devastating attacks on Syria's second city of Aleppo, and added 10 top military and government officials to the list. But suggestions they might also sanction Russia, which has backed long-time ally Assad's offensives against rebel forces and flown many of the missions against Aleppo, were dropped after sharp differences emerged. The decision brings to more than 230 the number of Syrian individuals hit with travel bans or asset freezes, it said. Another 69 entities are affected by asset freezes while the EU also has in place other sanctions against Syria as a whole, including arms and oil embargoes plus investment restrictions. At the first meeting of a University of Wisconsin System task force that will examine the climate on UW campuses, Regent Eve Hall had a message for students who pushed for changes by protesting and disrupting System meetings over the past year. We heard you, Hall told the students, some of whom attended the task forces meeting Friday at UW-Madison. UW officials agreed to launch the task force earlier this year after a series of demonstrations at Board of Regents meetings led by minority students who recounted the negative experiences they have had on campuses around the UW System. Those demonstrations came against a backdrop of protests over racist incidents at UW-Madison and activism on the campuses of predominantly white colleges and universities nationwide. Hall, the task forces chairwoman, and its co-chairman, Ed Manydeeds, credited UW activists for showing Regents that students face problems in feeling welcome on campus. The task force has been charged with reviewing climate programs already underway at UW System campuses to figure out what does and doesnt work. Members will also identify models for improving campus climate a broad term encompassing the way students race, sexual orientation, gender or other pieces of their identity affect their experiences and make recommendations to UWs governing board with that goal in mind. Made up of a diverse group of students, faculty and administrators from several UW campuses, the task force is expected to meet three or four more times before presenting its recommendations to the Board Regents next spring, officials said. Regents honor UW-Milwaukee genius The UW Board of Regents spent part of its one-day meeting at UW-Madison last week honoring UW-Milwaukee professor Anne Basting, who was named a MacArthur Fellow in September. A theater professor, Basting was awarded the fellowship, commonly known as the genius grant, for demonstrating the potential of storytelling and creative expression to improve the lives of elders experiencing cognitive impairment, according to the foundation. Speaking to the Regents on Thursday, Basting said her work doesnt fit into a single field, but instead shows how collaboration across disciplines can spur innovation and create the jobs of tomorrow. By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers on Monday criticised Turkey's crackdown on alleged supporters of a failed military coup in July but Austria's call to suspend Ankara's EU membership bid failed to garner enough backing. As the 28 EU foreign ministers met in Brussels, President Tayyip Erdogan said he was ready to hold a referendum on whether to continue the membership talks and reiterated that he would restore the death penalty - a move sure to scupper the EU talks - if his parliament passed such a law. Turkey has suspended, dismissed or detained at least 110,000 people, including soldiers, judges and teachers, since the coup. Critics of President Tayyip Erdogan accuse him of using it as a pretext to crush dissent, a charge he denies. "I am not for the continuation of entry negotiations and I believe that this Turkey does not have a place in the European Union," said Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. Luxembourg and Belgium were also critical of Turkey, but the bloc's most powerful members, France and Germany, support continued engagement, arguing that ending the accession negotiations now would do more harm than good. "...Turkey is too important to us - not least because of the close personal times between our two countries - that we could afford to renounce dialogue, particularly in these difficult times," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters before leaving for a one-day visit to Ankara. Boris Johnson, the foreign minister of Britain, which intends to leave the EU, also cautioned against over-reaction to events in Turkey, a large, strategically important, mainly Muslim country on the EU's southeastern flank. "We should not push Turkey into a corner, we should not overreact in a way that is against our collective interests," he said. Despite its increased concerns over human rights and press freedoms in Turkey, the EU has often toned down its criticism of Erdogan and his government, whose cooperation it needs to keep low the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe via Greece from Turkey. More than 1.3 million people arrived in Europe last year, triggering bitter disputes between EU member states over how to handle them. The deal with Turkey, though much criticised by rights groups, has reduced the influx to a trickle. "RED LINE" An EU official said the bloc's leaders would review the situation in Turkey at a summit scheduled for Dec.15-16. "It would have to be a majority vote to stop the talks and it's clear there is no majority at this stage," the official added. Some EU countries said the bloc would lose any residual influence it has over Turkey if it suspended talks, but also voiced concern over a possible restoration of the death penalty, previously scrapped by Ankara as part of its accession drive. "It is important to keep the membership negotiations ongoing since it is the only way to influence Turkey," Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini told reporters. "(But) everybody understands that if it goes on like this, Turkey will not become a member of the EU. The death penalty is the absolute red line for the EU." Steinmeier said: "We cannot decide for the government in Ankara whether they will slam the door on the EU and turn away from the West. That is Ankara's responsibility. If they decide to reintroduce the death penalty, then that would be a clear signal that they want to permanently close the 'EU file'." Turkey has often threatened to walk away from the migration deal if the EU does not deliver on its side of the bargain by relaxing visa rules by the end of the year for its citizens visiting Europe. Ankara has also accused the EU of failing to show sufficient solidarity with it over the failed coup, in which more than 240 people were killed. Erdogan blames a U.S.-based Muslim preacher, Fethullah Gulen, and his supporters for the putsch. Gulen denies any connection with it. Diplomats said Johnson spoke out during Monday's discussions for a transactional relationship with Turkey, which some took as meaning he thought human rights were of secondary importance. However, a British diplomat said Johnson had wanted to discuss "how we can constructively influence Turkey" in its deliberations over the death penalty rather than alienate it further. (Additional reporting by Robin Emmott, Alastair Macdonald and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels, Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Gareth Jones/Mark Heinrich) Brussels (AFP) - The EU on Monday urged all parties to the landmark Iran nuclear accord to stick to their commitments after US President-elect Donald Trump said he might ditch the deal. European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said the deal signed last year with Iran by the United States, three EU powers as well as Russia and China must be respected as the bloc seeks to expand economic and other ties. "The upholding of commitments by all sides is a necessary condition to continue rebuilding trust and allow for continued, steady and gradual improvement in relations between the European Union, its member States and Iran," the ministers said in their conclusions. The EU welcomed the fact that the US government was now issuing licences for the export of commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and services to Iran and said it hoped they would continue. Such sales "will be an important signal" for the deal's implementation and contribute to a safer commercial aviation environment, the ministers said. Under the deal, all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran were lifted in return for Tehran accepting curbs on a programme that Western powers feared would pave the way for atomic weapons. During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to tear up the Iran nuclear deal, the signature diplomatic breakthrough of Barack Obama's second term, but he has been more circumspect since winning last week's election. The EU said it is committed to lifting nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions against Iran while engaging with banks and other economic operators "to promote growth in trade and investment." It said it "remains concerned" with the human rights situation, especially over the frequent use of the death penalty, and underlined the need for equal rights for women and minorities. The EU, voicing concern about Iran's missile programme, urged Tehran to refrain from ballistic missile tests and urged Iran to "to use its influence on the Syrian regime" of President Bashar al-Assad to end attacks on civilians. If U.S. President-elect Donald Trump keeps his campaign pledge of abandoning the Paris climate agreement, one of Frances top politicians is already preparing a payback: A so-called European carbon tax against American imports. Donald Trump has said well see if he keeps this promise that he wont respect the conclusions of the Paris climate agreement, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running in 2017 elections for his former post, said in an interview Sunday. Under Sarkozys proposal, Europe would impose a carbon tax of between 1 to 3 percent against all products coming from the United States, if Washington doesnt apply environmental rules that we are imposing on our companies. In December 2015, negotiators from 196 countries met in Paris and pledged to tackle reduce global carbon emissions in an historic international agreement on climate change. Representatives from around the world have been meeting for a week in Marrakech, Morocco, to iron out the details of how to enact the Paris agreement. But Trump, a longtime climate change skeptic and vocal critic of the deal, cast a large shadow over the confab in Morocco, as Foreign Policy reported last week. Sarkozys proposal treads into politically contentious and legally difficult waters. Scott Lincicome, an international trade attorney with the Cato Institute, called it a horrible idea thats likely inconsistent [with World Trade Organization] rules. And Europe and the United States got into a fierce diplomatic row in 2011 when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sharply rebuked the EU for trying to charge U.S. airlines for carbon emissions. Sarkozy, seeking reelection after serving as French president from 2007 to 2012, may not need to push the new tax if Trump withdraws his promise to abandon the Paris agreement. Trump has already backed off some political promises: On Sunday, the president-elect said the U.S.-Mexico border wall hes been pledging to build his entire campaign could just be a partial fence. Story continues Were in this interim period between rhetoric of the campaign and actual governing, David Waskow, director of the International Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute, told Foreign Policy, speaking from Marrakech. Well have to wait to have a sense of where [the Trump administration] is headed, he added. Still, Waskow said, negotiations remain on track in Marrakech, despite Trumps surprise victory. Clearly the election has created some degree of uncertaintybut the fundamental mood here is one of determination and commitment, Waskow said. Photo credit: CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union on Monday agreed a defense plan that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's criticism of allies appeared to galvanize Europe into revamping its strategy. The plan set out by EU defense and foreign ministers could allow the bloc to send forces to stabilize a crisis before U.N. peace keepers can take over, and more broadly cement a willingness to act without the United States. "Europe needs to be able to act for its own security," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. "This will allow Europe to take a step towards its strategic autonomy," said Le Drian, who has led the EU efforts along with Germany and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, using EU code language for greater independence of Washington. The 16-page plan lists tasks and aims, many of which risk remaining abstract without an increase in funding. But it nonetheless takes on special relevance after Trump's comments during his campaign for the U.S. presidency in which he sniped at low levels of defense spending by some of NATO's European members. Mogherini said there was support from governments on using so-called EU battle groups of 1,500 personnel, which have been operational since 2007 but never used. EU leaders must still sign off on the plan in December, while divisive aspects over money were left for officials to work out next year. Proposals for a European military headquarters were scaled back to focus on civilian missions. Figures on the table for funding the EU plan pale in comparison to the $18 billion that the United States aims to spend over the next five years on new technologies. During the U.S. election campaign Trump threatened to abandon U.S. allies in Europe if they did not spend enough on defense, appearing to question almost 70 years of U.S. military support that has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy. "Clearly it is a message for all of to see how we can increase and improve our coordination," Sweden's Foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said of Trump's campaign comments, even though her country is not itself a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance. The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defense operations. The EU has 17 military and civilian missions underway - many of them out of the classic European theater, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Mediterranean where it is seeking to stem migrant flows from Libya and uphold a U.N. arms embargo. But European planners were at pains to stress the plan would not rival the work of NATO which Britain, one of two nuclear-armed European members together with France, is setting as a priority since it voted to pull out of the European Union. NO 'EU ARMY' British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who supported Britain remaining in the EU, said Europe had to increase defense spending that has sunk to historic lows in some parts of western Europe since the end of the Cold War. Only five EU countries, including Britain, meet a NATO target of spending 2 percent of economic output on defense, while another 10 have set firm plans to reach that level. That meant only half the EU's members were putting up enough funds for the training and equipment that Europe needs, Fallon said. "Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defense spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting. The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries. France has also pushed defense cooperation along with Germany after Britons voted to leave the EU in a June referendum. Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defense coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious. Though the new steps proposed are generally seen as modest, one diplomat said the proposed plan broke taboos that have held back European defense cooperation since the French parliament rejected a first attempt in the 1950s. (Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Richard Balmforth) (Corrects Bentham Europe ownership detail to show it is solely owned by Elliott Management) By Kirstin Ridley LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Litigation management company Bentham Europe plans to fund a potential 100 billion euro ($110 billion) damages claim against Europe's biggest truck makers after they admitted to operating a 14-year price cartel. Bentham said on Monday it intends to back a group action on behalf of truck buyers who fell victim to the cartel involving Volvo, Daimler, Paccar's DAF, CNH Industrial's Iveco and Volkswagen's MAN. Four truck makers were fined a record 2.9 billion euros by EU regulators in July for price fixing and passing on to customers the costs of complying with stricter emission rules. Volkswagen's MAN escaped a fine after it blew the whistle, but all five conceded that they had operated a cartel between 1997 and 2011 apart from VW stablemate Scania, which remains under investigation. Bentham Europe, owned by funds managed by U.S. investment firm Elliott Management, estimates that 10 million trucks were sold across the EU in the period and that each one was overpriced by about 10,500 euros. Bentham, which is also funding shareholder lawsuits against British supermarket chain Tesco and VW, said that it is too soon to announce which law firm would bring its proposed claim or in which European jurisdiction it would be filed. Third-party litigation funding has become increasingly mainstream in the UK over the past seven years. Funders offer to pay for lawsuits in exchange for a share of any payout and returns can be sizeable, but it is a high-risk business and payments for successful claims can take years to materialise. Critics say that litigation funding operators can bully smaller companies by threatening class actions. But Bentham Europe, whose competitors include the likes of Burford Capital and United States-based Gerchen Keller Capital, says it only takes on sizeable claims where it scents proper misconduct. Story continues "Bentham is determined to bring the opportunity to recover the overcharges to the attention of as many truck purchasers as it can and enable these victims of the cartel collectively to seek redress," said Bentham Europe's Chief Investment Officer Jeremy Marshall. "Claims against the truck cartel are expected to be one of the largest-ever compensation claims resulting from a cartel ruling." Bentham is also funding a 100 million pound ($125 million) investor damages claim against Tesco after an accounting scandal and part of a multibillion-euro case against VW after the company admitted cheating U.S. emissions tests, sending its share price tumbling. ($1 = 0.9184 euros) ($1 = 0.8022 pounds) (Editing by David Goodman) By Kirstin Ridley LONDON (Reuters) - Litigation management company Bentham Europe plans to fund a potential 100 billion euro (87.50 billion pounds) damages claim against Europe's biggest truck makers after they admitted to operating a 14-year price cartel. Bentham said on Monday it intends to back a group action on behalf of truck buyers who fell victim to the cartel involving Volvo (VOLVb.ST), Daimler (DAIGn.DE), Paccar's (PCAR.O) DAF, CNH Industrial's (CNHI.MI) Iveco and Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) MAN. Four truck makers were fined a record 2.9 billion euros by EU regulators in July for price fixing and passing on to customers the costs of complying with stricter emission rules. Volkswagen's MAN escaped a fine after it blew the whistle, but all five conceded that they had operated a cartel between 1997 and 2011 apart from VW stablemate Scania, which remains under investigation. Bentham Europe, a joint venture between Australian-listed IMF Bentham (IMF.AX) and U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management, estimates that 10 million trucks were sold across the EU in the period and that each one was overpriced by about 10,500 euros. Bentham, which is also funding shareholder lawsuits against British supermarket chain Tesco and VW, said that it is too soon to announce which law firm would bring its proposed claim or in which European jurisdiction it would be filed. Third-party litigation funding has become increasingly mainstream in the UK over the past seven years. Funders offer to pay for lawsuits in exchange for a share of any payout and returns can be sizeable, but it is a high-risk business and payments for successful claims can take years to materialise. Critics say that litigation funding operators can bully smaller companies by threatening class actions. But Bentham Europe, whose competitors include the likes of Burford Capital (BURF.L) and United States-based Gerchen Keller Capital, says it only takes on sizeable claims where it scents proper misconduct. Story continues "Bentham is determined to bring the opportunity to recover the overcharges to the attention of as many truck purchasers as it can and enable these victims of the cartel collectively to seek redress," said Bentham Europe's Chief Investment Officer Jeremy Marshall. "Claims against the truck cartel are expected to be one of the largest-ever compensation claims resulting from a cartel ruling." Bentham is also funding a 100 million pound ($125 million) investor damages claim against Tesco (TSCO.L) after an accounting scandal and part of a multibillion-euro case against VW after the company admitted cheating U.S. emissions tests, sending its share price tumbling. (Editing by David Goodman) Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f283623%2f8f5763abeceb4e9d8a59c04b55e0f0d3 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary's Twitter account, which has had quite an active election season between fact-checking America's vocabulary and tossing out burns, has come back with a more somber tone about the incoming Trump administration. SEE ALSO: Merriam-Webster is chucking incendiary tweets ahead of the election On Sunday night, the dictionary tweeted out a list of the top word lookups, just a few hours ahead of Trump's appearance on 60 Minutes, his first major interview since he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Top lookups right now, in order: fascism bigot xenophobe racism socialism resurgence xenophobia misogynyhttps://t.co/Y1nrjCtOWq Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 13, 2016 That is an incredibly depressing list. Giving it extra heft is the blog post attached to the tweet, showing the spike in searches for the word "misogyny" in the wake of Trump's victory. Not to read too much into things, but a few other tweets from the dictionary in the days after the election hint at the feelings of some across the country. Please enjoy this article on the history of the word 'farce'. https://t.co/ZZ5nxjnFQm Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 11, 2016 Of course, it all could just be a coincidence. By Nate Raymond (Reuters) - A former executive at pharmaceutical company InterMune Inc and a British restaurant owner were found liable on Monday on U.S. civil charges that they engaged in a $1 million insider trading scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said a federal jury in San Francisco found Sasan Sabrdaran, InterMune's former director of drug safety risk management, and Farhang Afsarpour, a British friend, liable for insider trading. The verdict marked a victory for the SEC, which has gone 2-1/2 years without a trial defeat in federal court after suffering a series of losses in insider trading cases. "This jury verdict reaffirms our commitment to aggressively root out and prosecute insider trading schemes in order to protect the integrity of our markets," Andrew Ceresney, the SEC's enforcement director, said in a statement. Both defendants denied wrongdoing. Mark Fickes, Sabrdaran's lawyer, and Christopher Cooke, Afsarpour's lawyer, said they were disappointed by the verdict. Fickes said he may appeal after a federal judge determines what penalties should be imposed. He cited "thorny legal issues" in the case, including some that may turn on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in another insider trading case. The SEC sued Sabrdaran and Afsarpour in November 2014, two months after Roche Holding AG (ROG.S) said it had agreed to buy Brisbane, California-based InterMune for $8.3 billion. The SEC said that Sabrdaran in 2010 was part of a group of InterMune employees tasked with shepherding its application before a European Union regulator to market a drug called Esbriet, which aimed at treating a fatal lung disease. The SEC said Sabrdaran tipped Afsarpour to inside information about the drug's progress in the regulatory process, allowing him to buy InterMune stock and spread bets. It said he also collected money from friends to trade on their behalf. In December 2010, InterMune said the European Medicines Agency advisory subcommittee assessing the application had recommended Esbriet for approval, causing InterMune's stock price to soar, the SEC said. Story continues Afsarpour, who lives in Manchester, England, and owns a number of restaurants, and two of his friends made nearly $1.08 million trading ahead of that announcement, the SEC said. Sabrdaran denied tipping Afsarpour, who said he had been placing bets on InterMune for several months after analysing its public statements and believing the company was likely to get EU approval for Esbriet. The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Sabrdaran et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 14-cv-4825. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney and Dan Grebler) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A former Rabobank trader from Britain on Monday avoided prison after cooperating with U.S. authorities investigating how traders manipulated Libor, the leading benchmark for pricing financial transactions, to the bank's advantage. Paul Robson, 47, was sentenced to time served and two years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan, who cited his decision to cooperate with the U.S. Justice Department for imposing a non-prison sentence. "No crime of this kind can be prosecuted without cooperation," Rakoff said. Robson, who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in August 2014, in court apologized for his actions. Libor, or the London interbank offered rate, underpins trillions of dollars of financial products globally from mortgages to credit cards. The rate is based on what banks say they believe they would pay if they borrowed from other banks. U.S. and European authorities have spent years probing whether banks tried to manipulate the rate to benefit their own trading positions. The investigations have led to around $9 billion in regulatory settlements with financial institutions and charges against several individuals. Those included Robson and six other former Rabobank traders charged by the U.S. Justice Department after the bank in 2013 reached a $1 billion deal to resolve related U.S. and European probes. Prosecutors said Robson participated in a scheme with others to rig the U.S. dollar and yen Libor rates to benefit Rabobank's trading positions, in which traders sought to influence the bank's Libor submissions. On behalf of prosecutors, he testified at trial against two other ex-Rabobank traders from the United Kingdom, Anthony Allen and Anthony Conti, who a federal jury found guilty in November. In March, Allen and Conti were sentenced to two years and one year in prison, respectively. Both are appealing. Robson's sentencing came after another ex-Rabobank trader who pleaded guilty, Paul Thompson, was sentenced on Wednesday to three months in prison. Story continues Two other Rabobank traders - Takayuki Yagami and Lee Stewart - have pleaded guilty and have yet to be sentenced. A seventh, Tetsuya Motomura of Tokyo, is considered a fugitive by the U.S. government. The case is U.S. v. Robson et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-cr-272. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr) A formidable character actress, Amy Ryan has built a career on dramatic supporting roles in everything from Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to HBO's The Wire, as well as Tony-nominated performances on Broadway. She is probably most famous for her Oscar-nominated turn as a distraught mother of a missing daughter in Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. "I'm not a glamour girl and that's OK," Ryan tells ET by phone. Not confined to Hollywood's standards for leading ladies, she naturally gravitated toward these supporting roles. "It's what got me excited when reading scripts. The character parts are always so much fun." While there's no doubt that Ryan can deliver scathing, emotional performances, she has a serious funny bone that's not often seen onscreen. "My mom always said to me, 'Your career really surprised me,'" Ryan says. The 48-year-old actress, who is currently earning laughs in Roundabout Theatre Company's limited run of Love, Love, Love, doesn't often do straight comedy. But when she does, it's hilarious, as first widely seen on NBC's The Office opposite Steve Carell. "She was always like, 'Amy, you were so funny as a kid. What happened?'" MORE: 10 Most Memorable Guest Stars of 'The Office' Admittedly, Ryan did not have the best experience early in her career on a traditional sitcom. "That spooked me enough that I went back into an Arthur Miller play," she says. But years later, when The Office came calling, she was ready to try again -- this time with success. "I thought, 'OK, there could be a place for me here back in comedy.'" While The Office didn't transform her career, Ryan says it did surprise a few people in the industry, allowing her to indulge her funny bone now and then. Most recently, she's appeared on two hit stoner comedies, Broad City on Comedy Central and HBO's High Maintenance. On the latter, she and her husband, Eric Slovin, appeared in an episode about an adult sex party gone wrong. "We jumped at the opportunity," Ryan says of taking up friends and co-creators Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair's offer to be on the series, which is now streaming on HBO Go and HBO Now. "It's such a gift." Story continues Joan Marcus But it's on stage in Mike Bartlett's Off-Broadway play, about a pair of boomers of the "Me" generation who start having kids of their own, that Ryan's striking a chord. Playing Sandra from age 19 to 64, Ryan hilariously embodies the narcissistic woman who turns to wine and cigarettes to cope with motherhood. The trick, Ryan says, is "playing it quite deadly serious." "There's really strong base notes in there, on top of this hysterical drunkenness, that's real," she says of playing Sandra, especially in the second act's wine-fueled despair over her suburban life. Love, Love, Love is unlike anything Ryan's ever done. "If you think outside the box, you're so screwed," she says the play's extreme precision. "We all joke if my right leg is crossed over my left and then the opposite happens, I won't know where I am." MORE: HBO's 'High Maintenance' Elevated by Eclectic Cast of Guest Stars "To breathe, smoke and drink is kind of hard," Ryan laughs. For all its challenges, it's also creatively satisfying. The role is a rare find "because there isn't as much choice for women," Ryan says of being tired of just playing the wife. "That's not news. But you do need to be patient and creative about it." It's largely the reason why an actress like Ryan bounces between stage and screen so often, looking for gratifying work. "High Maintenance is incredibly satisfying. This play is deeply, deeply satisfying," Ryan says. "But I always welcome more." Related Articles By Jess Macy Yu and Faith Hung HONG KONG/TAIPEI (Reuters) - More than 50 violations at a steel mill run by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group, including the unauthorised use of a dirtier production process, led to Vietnam's worst environmental disaster, according to an internal government report. The July report, reviewed by Reuters, is the first official document to emerge publicly since the April accident, when a toxic leak sullied over 200 km (125 miles) of coastline, killed more than 100 tonnes of fish and left thousands jobless. After months of popular outrage against both the Hanoi government and one of the communist state's largest investors, Formosa agreed in June to pay $500 million (398.12 million pounds) in compensation. The report, signed by Vietnam's environment minister and written after consultation with an unidentified panel of international experts, said Formosa did not keep to production plans agreed in original environmental assessments made for the $10.6 billion project. Begun in 2008, the plant was still ramping up at the time of the spill and working at less than 25 percent of total capacity, according to a Formosa Ha Tinh Steel official. But it was not using the processing system agreed with Hanoi authorities, the report said. Formosa was using 'wet' coking - a system which uses water for cooling and is considered more polluting, as it generates more emissions and wastewater containing compounds including cyanide. The alternative 'dry' process, widely used in modern plants, is costlier and does not use water. That proved critical when a power cut disabled the plant's waste processing equipment, spilling contaminated water into the sea, according to the report. Formosa officials agreed it was using the dirtier process but said it had until 2019 to switch to cleaner methods. "We are following their instructions and trying our very best to do what is required," Formosa Ha Tinh Steel (FHS) executive vice president Chang Fu-ning told Reuters. Story continues Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment did not respond to written questions and requests for comment on the report or the plant. Chang said Formosa had rectified 45 of 53 violations cited since the July report. Seven more will be fixed by the end of the month he said, without giving details. The plant was now scheduled to begin full commercial production in the first quarter of 2017, subject to approvals, Chang added. RESTARTING? Thousands of people from the affected regions have criticised the government for its handling of the disaster and the payment of compensation, and accused the police of heavy-handed measures to break up demonstrations sparked by the spill. In a rare criticism from an active parliamentarian, Tran Cong Thuat, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of Quang Binh, one of four affected provinces, said this month that everything would be need to be "clear" before FHS scaled up. "No one (from the government) has ever stepped up to take responsibility over the illegal discharge by Formosa," he said in televised comments. "If the issue is not made clear and violations are not resolved, we must resolutely not let Formosa operate." Formosa has plans to expand the steel plant to become the biggest of its kind in Southeast Asia, including a deepwater port and 1,500-megawatt thermal power complex. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has threatened to close down the Formosa plant if there is a repeat. The report said Formosa's failures included omitting a planned water storage dam, a measure which according to experts could have kept tainted water out of the sea even during a power outage. FHS's Chang said the company had committed to build a facility to gather and hold waste water. Friedhelm Schroeder, an academic who was among a group of foreign experts invited by the Vietnam government to assess the damage, said experts had identified other failings. "What the company should have done was shut off all the production of coke, so the toxic substance would not reach the sewage plant," said Schroeder, from the Institute Coastal Research in Germany. An FHS official declined to comment on that aspect and the report by the foreign experts has not been made public. The lack of information released about the accident has galvanised many Vietnamese and mobilised demonstrators on a scale not seen before in the controlled, one-party state that tolerates little dissent. Anger and mistrust mounted after the government initially said the mass fish deaths could be the result of "red tide", when algae blooms and produces toxins, or a release of toxic chemicals by humans, but there was nothing linking FHS to it. "We see there is some cover up for Formosa, which is completely opposite from governments in other countries," said Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop, the head of the Catholic community in several provinces which have been fighting to protect the environment. "Until now Formosa and the government haven't used any advanced technology to clean up the Vietnamese sea, and haven't been able to say when the central region's sea will be clean as before." A state television broadcast last week highlighted how the government was reimbursing seafood businesses and promoting tourism in areas affected by the spill. The Labor Ministry estimates some 263,000 workers have been impacted by the Formosa incident, including nearly 40,000 workers in the four provinces directly affected. (Writing by Clara Ferreira Marques; Editing by Lincoln Feast) Forget Thanksgiving -- it's all about Christmas from here on out at the Bell-Shepard household! Kristen Bell confessed Christmas prep has been on her mind since October and she's itching to get started on decorating. EXCLUSIVE: Kirsten Bell Gets Real About Balancing Acting and Parenting "Just before Halloween, [I] start thinking about Christmas," the actress told ET's Denny Directo at The Grove's annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday. "It just makes you feel so good. My family was always really into Christmas and my husband and I decorate like crazy." "We start early," the mom of two continued. "I just took the Christmas [light] boxes down. I haven't put them up yet, but a lot of my neighbors have. I have really radical neighbors -- the electric bill on my street, I cannot even fathom." Bell, 36, admitted that she and husband Dax Shephard may actually be more excited than their two daughters, who "do not really know what is going on." And when it comes to gifts, 3-year-old Lincoln and 1-year-old Delta won't be writing extensive wish lists. "We focus more on, 'What do you want to get other people?'" said Bell. "And wrapping other gifts and saying, 'This is a time to spoil everyone else.' We try to take them volunteering and we tell them they can ask Santa for three presents." Bell leaves buying those presents to "the grandmas" and does most of her Christmas shopping online. WATCH: Kirsten Bell Explains Why Husband Dax Shepard Tries to Get Them to Swing Christmas isn't the only occasion bearing gifts for Delta in the coming weeks, though. The tot marks her second birthday on Dec. 19 and Shepard can't wait to celebrate the milestone. "I'm very sick of saying 23 months, so I'm pumped to be able to say two years," the actor told ET's Cameron Mathison at the Baby2Baby Gala presented by John Paul Mitchell Systems in Culver City, California, on Saturday. "That's why I'm excited." Story continues According to Bell, the couple was enjoying the "fanciest date night we've had in awhile" at the event, which honored Jennifer Garner. "I'm in the exact same outfit I was in Thursday night," laughed Shepard. "[It] hasn't even been to the dry cleaner. I'm gonna get two more events out of this shirt before it goes." WATCH: Jennifer Garner Talks Thanksgiving Plans at Baby2Baby Event Bell was thrilled to support Garner at the gala, saying the mother of three was the perfect person to be honored with the charity's Giving Tree Award, for her dedication to children in need around the globe. "She is unrelenting in her commitment to moms and motherhood, and caring about children, not just her own," said Bell. "Knowing her a little bit as a person, she's the real deal." See Bell chat to ET about balancing work commitments with family life in the video below. Related Articles By Hadeel Al Sayegh and Reem Shamseddine DUBAI/KHOBAR (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's main sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), is considering buying a stake in Riyadh-based ACWA Power, which operates power and water plants around the world, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. PIF, which already owns a 13.7 percent stake in ACWA indirectly through a subsidiary, invited investment banks last month to pitch for the role of advising it on a potential ACWA deal, according to four sources, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. Talks are still at a preliminary stage, and neither party has appointed an advisor, said two of the sources, who are based in the Gulf. Privately held ACWA describes itself as an investor, developer, co-owner and operator of a portfolio of plants in Europe, Asia and Africa that generate more than 23 gigawatts of power and produce 2.5 million cubic metres of desalinated water a day. The fund declined to comment, when contacted by Reuters on Monday. ACWA also declined to comment. PIF's investment strategy aims to help the government diversify the Saudi economy away from oil into power and other sectors. PIF's subsidiary Sanabil Investments, which focuses on making direct equity investments in local companies and projects, acquired a 13.7 percent stake in ACWA in January 2013. It is unclear how the new investment will be made at this stage: whether it would be structured as a stake increase by Sanabil or whether the PIF will take a direct stake, a third source said. One of the Gulf-based sources said PIF would like to increase its total holding to anywhere between 25 and 35 percent. 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. PIF is seen as a key driver of the kingdom's Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy, with the authorities aiming to turn it into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. Story continues Central to the reform plan is greater involvement by the private sector in the Saudi economy, including in the power sector: it has called on raising the percentage of power plant electricity generation through strategic partners to 100 percent from 27 percent currently. Vision 2030 has also called for generating 9.5 gigawatts of renewable energy, an area in which ACWA has developed significant expertise with around half of its portfolio in "clean" energy. Other shareholders in ACWA include Saudi's Public Pension Agency, which bought a 5.7 percent stake at the same time as Sanabil, and World Bank unit International Finance Corp, which invested $100 million for an undisclosed holding in mid-2014. (Editing by Susan Fenton) She didnt realize it, but Princess Kate was following in the footsteps of Princess Diana in more ways than one on Sunday. As in recent years, Kate joined other royal women on the balcony overlooking the somber ceremony to remember Britains war dead. Her late mother-in-law did the same during her palace years and in one photograph taken Sunday, Kate evokes Diana with a similar upward gaze. Also at the ceremony, Prince William laid a wreath alongside his brother Prince Harry and their grandmother Queen Elizabeth. Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter. During the years Diana was married to Williams father Prince Charles, she made many appearances at the same spot above Whitehalls Cenotaph, the main war memorial in central London. On Sunday, Kate wore a black Diane von Furstenberg coat accessorized with the red poppy emblem of remembrance. Many of the citys streets, and those around the country, came to a silent halt as people commemorated the sacrifices made by servicemen and women in the World Wars and conflicts since then. The previous evening, William and Kate joined other members of the family as they headed to the Festival of Remembrance concert at the Royal Albert Hall. (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to shake up Washington and as president the brash real estate mogul will be in a position to dramatically change how the United States handles immigration, trade and a range of other policies. Yet many of his more ambitious proposals will require cooperation from Congress after he takes office on Jan. 20. While he will may enjoy a post-election honeymoon with congressional Republicans, a long-lasting romance is far from guaranteed, given his uneasy relationship with congressional leaders and some basic ideological differences he has with Republican orthodoxy. Following is an overview of Trump's top policy plans: TRADE In his campaign, Trump argued that international trade agreements had hurt U.S. workers and the country's competitiveness. He has promised to "get tough" on China and withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which is still not finalized. As president, Trump does have some power to raise tariffs on countries such as China. President Barack Obama's administration has suspended its efforts to win congressional approval for TPP, saying its fate was up to Trump and Republican lawmakers. Trump has also said he would renegotiate or scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 free-trade deal with Mexico and Canada. Both Canada and Mexico have indicated they are willing to discuss the agreement with Trump. Canada has indicated it would consider a free-trade agreement that excludes Mexico. Economists have warned that such moves would damage the economy by forcing consumers to pay dramatically higher prices on everything from refrigerators to T-shirts. U.S. exports, such as airplanes and soybeans, would likely suffer as well. IMMIGRATION Trump has promised to build a wall along the Mexican border, deport millions of undocumented immigrants and ban immigration from countries that have been "compromised by terrorism." Story continues Since his election, he has said parts could be a fence instead of a wall, and he would act to deport up to 3 million immigrants in the country illegally who have criminal records. It was unclear where his figure comes from. Think tank Migration Policy Institute estimated in a 2015 report there were 820,000 unauthorized immigrants with criminal records. Those policies would not come cheap. Trump has estimated the wall would cost $8 billion to $12 billion. Other estimates have run much higher. Politico estimated it would cost at least $166 billion to deport all of those in the country illegally and complete a border wall. While many congressional Republicans support those policies, they might blanch at the cost. Trump has said he would force Mexico to pay for the wall, but he has no power to force another country to spend money on something it does not want. Trump also promised to withhold federal funds from "sanctuary cities" such as New York and Los Angeles that shield people who are in the country illegally. More broadly, Trump could shift the broader debate over immigration, empowering skeptics like Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama who want to reduce overall immigration levels and reduce the number of skilled guest workers. That would be a blow to business groups and Hispanic advocates who have sought to relax immigration laws. HEALTHCARE Trump has promised to repeal President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and replace it with a plan that would give states more control over the Medicaid health plan for the poor and allow insurers to sell plans nationally. He would need Congress to act, and Republicans could have difficulty getting the 60 votes needed to advance a repeal effort through the 100-member Senate. Republicans could face a public backlash if they repeal a law that has provided healthcare to millions of Americans who previously had no healthcare. After the election Trump said he would consider retaining parts of Obamacare, including provisions letting parents keep adult children up to age 26 on insurance policies and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with existing conditions. TAXES AND SPENDING Trump has vowed to make deep tax cuts, while also promising to protect popular health and retirement programs that account for more than a third of U.S. government spending. That combination of policies would massively increase the national debt, according to the nonpartisan Center for a Responsible Budget. He has also proposed increasing spending on the military and infrastructure, but has said he would reduce spending on categories other than health and retirement by 1 percent each year. On taxes, he would get plenty of help from Republicans in Congress, who have been laying the groundwork for a tax-code overhaul that would lower rates and close loopholes. But they will encounter fierce resistance from homeowners, businesses and other interest groups that benefit from current tax breaks. Trump's promise to protect entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will rile fiscal conservatives, who worry they will swamp the federal budget in the decades to come. But those programs are popular with the American public. WALL STREET REGULATION Trump has promised a "dismantling" of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law enacted following the financial crisis, but has given few details. Both Trump and the Republican Party have called for reinstating Glass-Steagall, the 1930s-era law that forced the separation of investment banks from deposit-taking institutions. Republican lawmakers have so far been unable to undo many of their most-despised pieces of the Dodd-Frank law, and many in their ranks oppose a return to Glass-Steagall. Trump appears to be leaning toward weakening the law in a manner similar to what was proposed in a bill known as the CHOICE Act this summer by Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. ISLAMIC STATE Trump has offered few details about his plans to fight Islamic State but has said he would "knock the hell out of" the militant group. He says he is keeping the details of his strategy a secret so as not to disclose them to the enemy. Trump said that if he won, he would give U.S. generals 30 days after taking office on Jan. 20 to propose their own plans. Trump has said he opposes accepting refugees fleeing violence in Syria, and instead has said he would create "safe zones" there, which he says would be funded by Gulf states. Obama has said a safe zone in Syria would require a large U.S. military commitment, something that could prove to be unpopular with Americans weary of lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. RUSSIA Trump has said he would have a "very, very good" relationship with Russia. Trump has said could work with Russia to combat Islamic State. He also said he would look into recognizing Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014, as Russian territory and lifting sanctions on Russia imposed by Western nations for what they called an illegal land grab. Trump has criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, saying some U.S. allies have not met their defense commitments. In July, he said if Russia attacked a NATO member, he would consider whether the country has paid up before providing defense. NATO leaders say the sanctions against Russia are key to persuading it to change that country's behavior in Ukraine, where it has backed ethnic Russian separatists, and that the alliance has long been focused on fighting international terrorism. SUPREME COURT With one vacancy on the Supreme Court and several more possible in the coming four years, Trump will have a chance to put a conservative stamp on the courts for decades to come. His list of potential nominees has won praise from conservative activists and Republicans in the U.S. Senate, who will be eager to help him in that area. CLIMATE CHANGE Trump has called global warming a hoax and said he wants to cancel the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations that entered into force on Nov. 4. Instead, he says he will push ahead and develop cheap coal, shale and oil. Trump's advisers are considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to a source on his transition team. (Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker) Warsaw (AFP) - Polish justice officials began exhuming the remains of their country's former head of state on Monday, reviving a probe into a 2010 presidential plane crash that has stoked friction with Russia and caused divisions at home. Prosecutors want to check the remains were correctly identified and test for traces of explosives or combustion, as the governing rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party believes a fire may have erupted onboard before the crash. The PiS suspects the crash involved foul play, but Polish and Russian investigators have never found any evidence to support the claim. Local media say 83 of the victims' remains are to be exhumed in the investigation likely to last up to a year. Danish, Portuguese and Swiss experts will take part in the new probe. Late president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were buried in the crypt of the Wawel royal castle in Krakow where the kings of Poland and Jozef Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence in 1918, are also interred. Justice officials began the process of removing their remains Monday evening, local media reported, adding that the late president's twin brother, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and daughter Marta were due to be on hand. The remains were to be taken to Krakow's nearby Jagiellonian University for forensic examination and will be returned to their resting place by Friday, reports said. The couple were among 96 people -- most of them senior Polish state officials -- who died in the crash in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10 2010. The delegation was heading to a ceremony in Russia's Katyn forest for thousands of Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 -- a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990. - Divisions - In March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Polish suspicions as "groundless, biased and having no connection with the real circumstances of this aircraft accident." Moscow has been asked many times to hand over the wreckage and black boxes to the Polish authorities, but each time has said it will only do so when its own inquiry is finished. Story continues Poland's previous liberal government -- headed at the time by Donald Tusk, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's arch-rival -- blamed bad weather and errors by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers. But the PiS-led government, which came to power in November 2015 after eight years in the opposition, rejected those conclusions as a cover-up and launched its own investigation. Only 10 percent of Poles approve of the decision to exhume the bodies, according to a survey conducted by the IPSOS pollsters published in October. Last month, more than 200 relatives of 17 of the 96 victims wrote an open letter to President Andrzej Duda, saying they felt "abandoned and distraught in the face of a cruel and heartless act" of exhuming the remains. The relatives were backed by Poland's ombudsman, who argues they have the right to appeal. Duda asked the families to show "understanding" for state prosecutors who are "required by law" to order the exhumations. Malgorzata Wasserman, a PiS lawmaker whose father died in the crash, supports the exhumations: "I know it's very painful, but from the legal point of view, it's indispensable." "Don't forget that we're in a unique situation in that we have very little material evidence in Poland about the disaster. Like it or not, these bodies constitute rare material evidence." But journalist Pawel Deresz who lost his wife, lawmaker Jolanta Szymanek-Deresz, wants her remains left in peace. "The exhumations are a kind of hunting for clues to prove the absurd theory that president Lech Kaczynski was assassinated," he said. With settings around the U.K. from London to Hogwarts Castle, the Harry Potter books came to the big screen with the fantastical production design of Stuart Craig, who worked on all eight Potter films and earned Oscar nominations for four of them. But for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, director David Yates' return to the wizarding world, which opens Friday, the three-time Academy Award winning production designer was tasked with shifting to 1926 New York. It was an "interesting juxtaposition" to the prior films, Craig found as he got started. "The Harry Potter movies are contemporary stories but because Hogwarts is a Medieval castle, they felt like period films. The real period film, set in 1926, felt more modern," he explains. To begin, he visited New York and did extensive research into what Manhattan looked like during the period. "At that stage we were investigating actually shooting there," he says. "But since so much of the film was exteriors, it proved impractical [as we] couldn't close streets for that long." And so the majority of the film was shot on sets built at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England, with some location work to the north in Liverpool. The most challenging set was a main street, which was an 800 ft. set that remained faithful to the real city. "[We built the set] with the real dimensions of New York. [Even] the sidewalk widths were taken directly from maps and were accurate, so that you believe you really are in New York. That was the fundamental challenge, getting that set built," Craig said, adding another tricky element for the street scenes was locating nearly 50 classic cars to populate the streets. Another key set was the headquarters of the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), which is housed in the Woolworth building on Broadway (and like the Ministry of Magic, is hidden from the muggles). Completed in 1912, the Woolworth was the world's tallest building at the time in which the story is set. Story continues "JK Rowling's script is quite specific sometimes; she specified this building," Craig says. "She did pretty extensive research, and it was immediately apparent why she had chosen it. It was very richly decorated on the outside with gothic structure and gargoyles. And in the Harry Potter series, Hogwarts was gothic in style, so the gothic style became synonymous with the magical world." The film also includes an elaborate scene set in a bank - inspired by the Tweed Courthouse in lower Manhattan, which was built in the second half of the 1800s. The architecture of New York's Tribeca section, meanwhile, became the basis for the film's jewelry district. "There a lot of cast iron buildings in Tribeca, which for Europeans is very unusual and they are very beautiful," says Craig. Read more: 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them': Film Review Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler speaks at the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington DC, U.S. February 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo This story was delivered to BI Intelligence Apps and Platforms Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to AT&T detailing concerns about whether the company unfairly favors its own video content over its competitors', Ars Technica reported. Specifically, AT&T doesn't count video content from DirecTV, which AT&T owns, against AT&Ts data caps for mobile subscribers. However, the company charges other content producers that compete with DirecTV for the same privilege. The FCC said that this practice, called zero-rating, may obstruct fair competition and harm consumers by preventing them from accessing video content from producers that compete with AT&T. AT&T started exempting DirecTV from data caps in September. The company has argued in the past that DirecTV pays for the right to exempt its content from data caps on AT&T phones just like its competitors. However, the FCC responded that this argument is insufficient since DirecTV is directly owned by AT&T. The FCC also said that AT&T had disclosed to the commission how much it charges other companies for data cap exemptions. The charges are significant enough that it will impair other companies ability to compete with DirecTVs upcoming $35-per-month streaming video service, DirecTV Now, according to the commissions letter. When AT&T acquired DirecTV last year, the FCC specifically barred AT&T from exempting DirecTVs online video services from home internet data caps, but that ruling doesn't apply to mobile data caps, according to Ars Technica. However, the FCC may not pursue this matter any further after Donald Trump takes office, as many expect the new president to take a stance against net neutrality. The ultimate ruling on this matter could have a profound effect on the wireless industry, which is in a state of flux. AT&T and Verizon have dominated the carrier market over the past seven years while T-Mobile and Sprint have struggled to gain subscribers. Then in 2013, T-Mobile tweaked its strategy to turn around its business. Story continues This move, along with slowing smartphone adoption and other forces in the mobile industry, killed the two-year contract and initiated an ongoing price war between carriers. The movement away from the contract model is not only changing the way carriers operate, its affecting the myriad of industries that rely on carriers services. BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on wireless carriers that examines how the wireless industry has fundamentally changed since carriers began aggressively responding to the launch of T-Mobiles Un-Carrier movement. It also looks at the factors underpinning changes in the broader wireless industry and the challenges carriers face in 2016 and beyond, including the upcoming spectrum auction and the deployment of new wireless technologies. Here are some key takeaways from the report: Consumers are actually becoming more loyal to their current wireless operator even as competition between the carriers intensifies. The wireless carriers are not only battling over device financing, theyre also trying to woo consumers through attractive data packages. Intensified competition between carriers has lengthened the smartphone replacement cycle, posing a challenge for mobile software developers and handset makers. With phone subscriber growth stagnating, carriers will look to alternative sources of revenue, including connected cars, tablets, and IoT devices, to drive growth. The upcoming spectrum auction, the latest ruling on net neutrality, and new technology, will change the face of the broader wireless industry in next few years. In full, the report: Examines the impact of T-Mobiles Un-Carrier movement on the wireless industry. Forecasts how the death of the two-year contract will impact the broader mobile industry. Identifies how carriers are helping facilitate the growth of mobile video consumption. Explains the changing nature of subscriptions and the growing importance of connected devices. Discusses what changes and challenges the wireless industry will face over the next five years. To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options: Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, youve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the wireless carrier war. More From Business Insider The Wisconsin Hospital Association, the Wisconsin Medical Society and a dozen other health care stakeholder groups on Monday asked Gov. Scott Walker to consider how self-insuring state workers could impact the states health care market and economy. The potential repercussions for the state, for taxpayers, for state employees, for Wisconsin health care organizations, and for the Wisconsin economy are significant and could be far-reaching, the groups said in a memo to Walker. The Group Insurance Board, which oversees benefits for nearly 250,000 state and local government workers and their family members, is expected to vote Nov. 30 on whether to shift to self-insurance beginning in 2018. Currently, nearly all of the workers and dependents, almost 100,000 of whom are in Dane County, are covered by 17 HMOs that receive premiums and accept the risk for claims. Under self-insurance, the state would pay benefits directly and take on the risk. One or more companies might help administer the program. Its possible self-insurance might be mixed with parts of the current program. Many of the HMOs are owned by regional health care systems around Wisconsin, which has one of the most competitive health insurance markets in the country. In Dane County, the HMOs include Dean Health Plan, part of SSM Health; Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin; Physicians Plus, part of UnityPoint Health; and Unity, part of UW Health. Consultants have said that moving to self-insurance could cost $100 million a year or save $42 million, largely by avoiding $18 million in Affordable Care Act fees, cutting $11 million in administrative costs and eliminating $11 million in insurance company profits. Walker said any savings would be used for public education. The Walker administration has talked about the possibility of switching to self-insurance since at least 2013. This July, the Department of Employee Trust Funds sought bids from companies to run a self-insured, or self-funded program, starting in 2018. The Wisconsin Association of Health Plans has long opposed the move, saying it would hurt the states health insurance market. Some legislators have expressed concerns about the impact on regional health care systems. The memo sent to Walker on Monday came from the states hospital and doctor associations, along with the health plans group, the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Cooperative Network and M3 Insurance. Associations representing chiropractors, psychiatrists, anesthesiologists, emergency doctors, ophthalmologists and radiologists also supported it. As leading Wisconsin health care stakeholders, committed to reducing the per capita cost of health care while promoting a better patient experience and improving the health of Wisconsins citizens, we urge you to consider the impact a change to self-funding could have on Wisconsins health care and health insurance markets, the groups wrote. The current state worker health benefits program has been remarkably successful in using choice and competition to control costs, improve quality, and maintain financial stability and value for taxpayers, they said. Any alternative the state considers should be held to this high standard. Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said the governor appreciates this input and will take these concerns into consideration. Washington (Reuters) U.S. officials are striving to put finishing touches on a slew of banking rules before President Barack Obama leaves office and hands regulatory power to Donald Trump, who has vowed to rewrite the existing financial rule book. President-elect Trump will take over on Jan. 20, and his fellow Republicans will have control of Congress and government agencies, allowing the new administration to block or roll back many of the last-minute changes. But by completing far-advanced work on some banking standards in the next 10 weeks, Obama officials would raise the chances that some elements of the regulatory framework will survive. Not So Fast On Dodd-Frank Gutting Some rules are meant to flesh out the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 designed to prevent the next global financial crisis. Trump campaigned on a pledge to scrap the law, but now he says only some provisions must go to lighten the regulatory burden. The Federal Reserve is working on rules to govern matters such as executive pay, market stability and what investments Wall Street may hold. Last month, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White said her agency would "in the near term" finish a rule on one thorny issue: how mutual funds manage derivatives. The SEC and bank regulators have also for years struggled to finalize a rule that would tie more banker pay to the long-term health of their firms rather than short-term performance of Wall Street firms. Time Running Out With only about 40 working days until the handover, it is not clear which, if any, of those standards will get across the finishing line. "Just look at the calendar," said Tom Quaadman of the Chamber of Commerce. "These are intricate rules and there's not much time." The executive pay rule exemplifies the challenge. Six federal agencies have a say on the compensation standard meant as part of Dodd-Frank, and a final draft has not yet been offered, industry officials told Reuters. Story continues It would be nearly impossible to circulate a final rule and get the agencies to endorse it while still satisfying standards for clearing such paperwork, several lobbyists who have opposed the rule said. Banking regulators declined to comment on when the compensation rule might be completed. No Time To Chat Simple logistics also pose a challenge. New federal rules come into force once they have been published in the Federal Register, and employees there typically need several days to typeset a rule. That means Obama officials need to lodge paperwork with the Federal Register at the beginning of the inauguration week, at the latest. Some 16 copy editors are due to forgo leave and be on hand in the coming weeks to process final rules expected from dozens of agencies, said an official familiar with the operation, but not authorized to speak to the media. "These days, people do not spend a lot of time hanging around the coffee maker," he said. Congressional Review Act Factor Some freshly minted rules also face the prospect of getting erased under a 1996 law known as the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to block a regulation within 60 working days of being drafted. One such rule allows students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges to seek loan forgiveness. The Department of Education finalized it days before the Nov. 8 election, meaning Republicans who have raised objections to it will have a chance to block it. President George W. Bush was the first to trigger the Review Act when he blocked labor regulations that his predecessor Bill Clinton had enacted at the end of his term. Recommended Stories Permalink | Copyright 2016 ETF.com. All rights reserved WICHITA FALLS, Tex., Nov 14 (Reuters) - Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan on Monday said he is sticking to his forecast for 2 percent U.S. economic growth next year, as it is too early to assess the effect of new economic policies under a Donald Trump presidency. If a Trump administration delivers fiscal and other policies as investors are betting he will, that would give the Fed some room to maneuver, Kaplan told reporters after an economic forum hosted by the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce. But so far, the rise in yields that those expectations have driven do not affect his own expectations for Fed policy or for the economy. "In the near future it would be appropriate for us to remove some accommodation," said Kaplan, who has said he would have supported a rate increase at the last two Fed meetings. (Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Meredith Mazzilli) From Road & Track This week, Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne revealed the Italian automaker has debated entering Formula E. But as Marchionne told Autosport, mid-race car swaps and technical restrictions are holding Ferrari back. "If Formula E requires people to change cars during a race because we exhaust the power available within a given car, that is not something that Ferrari would naturally gravitate to," he told reporters. Currently, drivers are required to make a pit stop and swap cars, since the batteries don't have enough energy to last an entire race. This process should be eliminated for the 2018-19 season thanks to new, higher capacity batteries supplied by McLaren Applied Technologies. "Secondly, the standardisation associated with the electric car is something which runs against the grain of Ferrari because otherwise it will prevent [Ferrari] from playing whatever it is that it does technically on a vehicle," Marchionne also said. According to Autosport, Formula E currently uses a single-make chassis built by Italian firm Dallara. That means every competitor gets the same car, minus the motor, transmission, and inverter. While the series still intends to loosen its restrictions on battery development, Marchionne isn't fully convinced. "It is possible that [after] some level of maturity that Ferrari would develop a unique set of skills that will make that car uniquely Ferrari, in an environment like that, but I know we are not there today," he said. via Autocar You Might Also Like By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV (FCHA.MI) and Cummins Inc (CMI.N) said on Monday they will fight a class-action lawsuit filed against the companies accusing them of cheating on diesel emissions tests. On Monday, lawyers representing owners of older 2500 and 3500 Dodge Ram trucks filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit, asserting the companies "conspired to knowingly deceive consumers and regulators of illegally high levels of diesel emissions in their vehicles." The suit accuses the automakers of fraud, violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and consumer-protection laws by intentionally misleading the public, concealing emissions levels and illegally selling noncompliant polluting vehicles. The suit filed by Seattle lawyer Steve Berman said the emissions catalysts are not durable and do not meet emission standards, and that at times emissions are nearly 10 times legal limits. The class action suit comes as Fiat Chrysler and Cummins are fighting over the costs of an emissions recall involving a different, newer population of trucks. Fiat Chrysler said in a statement it "does not believe that the claims brought against it are meritorious" and the company "will contest this lawsuit vigorously." Cummins spokesman Jon Mills said the lawsuit "has no merit. We are obviously disappointed in the effort to tarnish our image and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves." The suit covers owners of 20072012 Dodge Ram 2500 and 20072012 Dodge Ram 3500 pickup trucks. Reuters reported on Oct. 10 that Fiat Chrysler and Cummins Inc have been fighting over the $200 million estimated cost for a recall of 130,000 newer 2500 Ram pickup trucks equipped with Cummins diesel engines that could exceed U.S. pollution limits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board have demanded a recall of 2013-2015 model year Ram 2500 pickup trucks with 6.7L Cummins diesel engines because moisture can lead to the deactivation of the selective catalyst reduction system, causing excess nitrogen oxide emissions, Cummins said. Story continues Fiat Chrysler has sued Cummins to recover the $60 million it has spent to date repairing 42,000 trucks at its own expense, a company lawyer said in court documents. Settlement talks are ongoing. Cummins counter-sued, saying Fiat Chrysler would not cooperate in the recall "for one reason - money" and said the automaker was "holding both Cummins and its own customers hostage." When the emissions system fails, the warning light goes on and if the vehicle isn't fixed soon the vehicles go into "limp mode" that allow them to only be driven very slowly. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler) By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Cummins Inc said on Monday they will fight a class-action lawsuit filed against the companies accusing them of cheating on diesel emissions tests. On Monday, lawyers representing owners of older 2500 and 3500 Dodge Ram trucks filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit, asserting the companies "conspired to knowingly deceive consumers and regulators of illegally high levels of diesel emissions in their vehicles." The suit accuses the automakers of fraud, violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and consumer-protection laws by intentionally misleading the public, concealing emissions levels and illegally selling noncompliant polluting vehicles. The suit filed by Seattle lawyer Steve Berman said the emissions catalysts are not durable and do not meet emission standards, and that at times emissions are nearly 10 times legal limits. The class action suit comes as Fiat Chrysler and Cummins are fighting over the costs of an emissions recall involving a different, newer population of trucks. Fiat Chrysler said in a statement it "does not believe that the claims brought against it are meritorious" and the company "will contest this lawsuit vigorously." Cummins spokesman Jon Mills said the lawsuit "has no merit. We are obviously disappointed in the effort to tarnish our image and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves." The suit covers owners of 20072012 Dodge Ram 2500 and 20072012 Dodge Ram 3500 pickup trucks. Reuters reported on Oct. 10 that Fiat Chrysler and Cummins Inc have been fighting over the $200 million estimated cost for a recall of 130,000 newer 2500 Ram pickup trucks equipped with Cummins diesel engines that could exceed U.S. pollution limits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board have demanded a recall of 2013-2015 model year Ram 2500 pickup trucks with 6.7L Cummins diesel engines because moisture can lead to the deactivation of the selective catalyst reduction system, causing excess nitrogen oxide emissions, Cummins said. Story continues Fiat Chrysler has sued Cummins to recover the $60 million it has spent to date repairing 42,000 trucks at its own expense, a company lawyer said in court documents. Settlement talks are ongoing. Cummins counter-sued, saying Fiat Chrysler would not cooperate in the recall "for one reason - money" and said the automaker was "holding both Cummins and its own customers hostage." When the emissions system fails, the warning light goes on and if the vehicle isn't fixed soon the vehicles go into "limp mode" that allow them to only be driven very slowly. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler) VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / FIORE EXPLORATION LTD. (TSXVF.V) ("Fiore" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent with Sociedad Quimica Y Minera de Chile SA ("SQM") to acquire a 100% interest in the Cerro Tostado exploration project in Chile, located just south of the main zone of Yamana Gold's flagship El Penon Mine. As part of the transaction, Fiore will also acquire two new concession blocks near Fiore's existing Pampas El Penon project. A map showing the location of the concessions can be found at (see Figure 1). Tim Warman, Fiore's CEO stated, "With drilling underway at our Pampas El Penon project, it's a perfect time to begin adding to our project portfolio in Chile. Like Pampas El Penon, Cerro Tostado is a project with encouraging geology, located within sight of a major operating gold mine. The project is at a bit earlier stage than Pampas El Penon, so we'll begin with mapping, sampling and geophysical surveys in order to define drill targets. However, we're very encouraged by some of the preliminary drill results obtained by SQM indicating the potential for a high-grade epithermal veins system similar to that at Yamana's nearby El Penon and Mina Florida mines." Cerro Tostado The Tostado project consists of five concessions totalling approximately 1,500 ha located in Region II some 125 km southeast of Antofagasta. The project is approximately 12 km southwest and 8 km east-southeast of Yamana's El Penon and Fortuna mines respectively (see Figure 2), and along strike from the principal veins reported at the Fortuna mine. A large hill, Cerro Largato, forms a north-south elongated outcrop of argillic altered and brecciated rhyolite that intrudes and is in fault contact with porphyritic andesitic units and dacitic to rhyodacitic units towards the east and southeast. These outcropping units are surrounded by gravel and caliche covered areas. Alteration is most intense along the breccia bodies that are spatially related with the dominant N-S and NW-SE structural trends. Associated with the argillic alteration and structural trends are variable intensities of hematite-jarosite bearing veinlets. Previous work by SQM has included geological mapping and sampling, trenching, and approximately 1,937 m of reverse-circulation drilling in 17 holes. The results have confirmed the presence of structurally control silver-dominated mineralization, with highly anomalous levels of silver, arsenic and antimony and anomalous levels of lead and zinc. Pampas El Penon South Concessions The Pampas El Penon south concessions cover an area of approximately 400 Ha and are located approximately 3 km south of, and directly on strike with Yamana's Pampas Augusta Victoria mine. The concessions area also approximately 1 km southeast of Fiore's El Penon West concession block (see Figure 3). Fiore's land position now surrounds the Pampas Augusta Victoria mine on three sides. Very little work has been conducted in this area, but limited regional rock sampling has found elevated arsenic values. Fiore plans to carry out a detailed mapping and sampling program over these new concessions. Deal Terms Fiore can earn a 100% interest in the Cerro Tostado and Pampas El Penon South concessions by: Spending a total of US$2,247,700 in exploration expenditures over a five-year period, including a US$400,900 exploration commitment in the first year Making total cash payments to SQM of US$1,259,700 over a five-year period, including US$19,000 in the first year Issuing 500,000 common shares of Fiore Exploration to SQM on signing of a definitive agreement Granting SQM a sliding-scale royalty on precious metal production, which at current gold prices would be 2.5%, with a maximum royalty of 5.0% when gold prices exceed US$2,000 per ounce A definitive agreement between Fiore and SQM is expected by the end of the year. Vern Arseneau, P. Geo., Fiore's VP Exploration, is the Qualified Person who supervised the preparation of the technical data in this news release. About Fiore Exploration Fiore Exploration is a Latin America focused gold explorer, whose Pampas El Penon and Cerro Tostado gold and silver projects in Chile cover land in the same geological environment as Yamana's flagship El Penon mine. On behalf of FIORE EXPLORATION LTD. "Tim Warman" Chief Executive Officer Contact Us: info@fioreexploration.com 1(416) 639-1426 Ext. 1 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. Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information "This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of the Company in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the Company's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon. Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required by applicable law." SOURCE: Fiore Exploration Ltd The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane was killed in a crash during an aerobatics training exercise, state-run media reported Monday. Yu Xu, 30, a member of the Chinese air force's "August 1st" aerobatic display team, ejected from her aircraft during a training exercise in the northern province of Hebei at the weekend, the China Daily newspaper said. She hit the wing of another jet and was killed, it said, although her male co-pilot ejected safely and survived. "As one of only four female pilots in the country capable of flying domestically made fighter jets, her death comes as a tremendous loss to the Chinese air force," the Global Times newspaper said. Yu, from Chongzhou in the southwestern province of Sichuan, joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in 2005, reports said. She graduated from training four years later, one of the first 16 Chinese women pilots qualified to fly fighter jets, the China Daily said, and in July 2012 was the first woman to fly the J-10. Fans dubbed her the "golden peafowl", it added. Yu was seen as a pioneering trailblazer in a country which enshrines women's rights but where traditional values are still widespread. Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social media service posted pictures of candles in her memory, with thousands mourning her death. "We praise her not as an individual, but for the spirit she transmitted to us, becoming the ideal vehicle for everyone's hopes," wrote one user. Others raised questions about the crash. "Rather than stirring up emotion, the most important thing is to investigate why this accident occurred, was it a problem with the design problem in the fighter, or in the rules of operation, or in inadequate training," wrote one. "Only by ascertaining the causes can we ensure it doesn't happen again." - Jumpsuits and sunglasses - Yu rose to become a flight squadron leader and according to the Global Times dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Story continues She was one of two female members of the August 1st team -- named for the date of the founding of the PLA -- pictured at China's premier air show in Zhuhai two years ago. The pair strode to their fighter planes in lock-step with male pilots, all wearing identical green jumpsuits and sunglasses. At the time the China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Yan'an, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, as saying: "Female pilots have learned to fly cutting-edge fighter jets in the Chinese air force. "It means the air force has diversified its pilot pool and can recruit more female pilots." Yu appeared again at this year's show earlier this month, according to reports. The official news agency Xinhua quoted Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke saying all its personnel were "deeply regretful and mournful" at her "unfortunate death". The J-10 is a workhorse of the Chinese air force. Two of the fighters conducted what the Pentagon called an "unsafe" intercept of a US spy plane over the East China Sea in June. An estimated 400 of the jets have been built, most for Chinese use, according to defence analysts IHS Janes. It said in December reports had emerged of three crashes in the previous three months. A lavishly illustrated medieval book, full of gold leaf and finely painted images, the "Aberdeen Bestiary" had remained somewhat of a mystery. Now, with new high-resolution images of each page of the 12th-century manuscript, scientists have found that it was likely seized from a monastic library by scouts of King Henry VIII during the dissolution of monasteries in the 1500s. As such, the book was likely used as a tool for teaching rather than as a treasure for a royal elite, like one of the king's ancestors, the researchers said. [See Images of the Drawings and Text in the 'Aberdeen Bestiary'] "The book was used for teaching many words have accents on them to indicate emphasis for reading out loud," lead researcher Jane Geddes, an art historian from the University of Aberdeen, told Live Science. "On one page, there is an area of dirty finger marks at the center top of the page. This would occur if you regularly turned the page upside down to show an audience." Beastly tales The book, which is considered an "illuminated" manuscript for its highly decorated pages, particularly those that gleam, or light up, with gold leaf, tells stories about animals as a way to illustrate moral beliefs, according to the University of Aberdeen. It was published in England around the year 1200 and first documented in 1542 in the Royal Library at Westminster Palace, according to the university. The manuscript was bequeathed to the university's Marischal College in 1625 by Thomas Reid, former college regent and former Latin secretary to King James VI and I. Records suggest that Patrick Young, Reid's friend and son of the king's royal librarian, gave the book to Reid. Now, Geddes and her colleagues have taken high-resolution digital images of the book and placed them online for the first time, revealing marks that had never been seen before. [Cracking Codices: 10 of the Most Mysterious Ancient Manuscripts] Story continues "Some were visible to the naked eye, but digitization has revealed many more which had simply looked like imperfections in the parchment," Geddes said. Tiny holes and notes She found that many of the book's images had puncture marks around them, likely the result of a copying technique called "pouncing" that is used to transfer an image to another page. "Tiny prick holes are placed around several of the animals," Geddes said. "Blank sheets would be placed under these holes, and charcoal sprinkled over the top, as a simple form of transfer." The three scenes in this image, called The Pelican, in the "Abereen Bestiary" show baby pelicans attacking their parents, who in turn kill the babies. Then, the mother pelican pierces her side and the resulting blood flows over the dead babies, who then return to life. University of Aberdeen The technique generally damages the illustrations and gold leaf on the reverse of the page. "This shows that when it was produced, the need to make copies was more important than keeping the book pristine," she added. She and her colleagues could also now see production details on the edges of the pages, features that would normally be cut off before the book was finished, Geddes said. These included marks to indicate where to rule the lines, tiny letters to indicate capitalization and notes on the colors to use, she said. "We also had a closer look at the editing, which took place after the text was finished. There are quite a few corrections to words in the margins," she said, adding that these edits mainly showed up in a section of the book about birds. That bird section, she said, is copied from another 12th-century book called the "Aviarium," which gives advice to Augustinian canons (an order of men in the Roman Catholic Church) on how to live a good life according to bird lore. "Why is this section [of the book] so badly copied with many mistakes and omissions? Why is this the section with the special teaching image? I believe this section may provide a clue that the book was destined for a priory of Augustinian canons with novices who needed agreeable training," Geddes said. Historians had debated whether the book was used by a group of common people or kept in a wealthy private library. "Although the book ended up in the royal library of Henry VIII, he probably purloined it form a monastery at the Reformation. Its heavy use indicates that it belonged in a working and training establishment, not a rich private library," Geddes said. A website created to showcase the newly enhanced book pages will allow readers to zoom in on minute details and "examine the precise brush strokes of the artist," Siobhan Convery, head of Special Collections at the university, said in a statement. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations (The following statement was released by the rating agency) SINGAPORE/SYDNEY, November 13 (Fitch) Fiercer competition and rising capex needs will put pressure on the credit profiles of most Asian telcos over the next year, says Fitch Ratings. We have a negative outlook on the telecoms sectors in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Korea, Indonesia, China and Sri Lanka are all on stable outlook. Competition is likely to intensify in India, Singapore and Malaysia, with new entrants poised to offer cheaper tariffs to poach customers from incumbents. Competition could be the most intense in India, where a well-capitalised new entrant, Reliance Jio, is offering free voice and text services and cheaper data tariffs than the incumbents. We expect the blended tariff to decline by 5%-6% for Indian telcos. In Malaysia, the fixed-line market leader, Telekom Malaysia, is making a move into the wireless market, which will prevent a recovery in the revenue of wireless incumbents next year. Finally, Singapore will soon auction sufficient spectrum to allow the entry of a fourth mobile network operator. Rising competition will add to pressure on revenue, which Fitch expects to grow by just 0-5% in most Asian telco markets in 2017. Data usage will continue to rise strongly, but most telcos are pricing data in such a way that increased usage is not translating into similar revenue growth. The trend of falling data tariffs and the substitution of data for voice and text will continue in most markets. Fixed-line and international long-distance services are in a structural decline. China is the only market where we expect higher data usage to translate into growth in average revenue per mobile user. Weak revenue growth will result in a hit to the profit of most Asian telcos. EBITDA margins are likely to shrink the most in the Philippines and India, where telcos still derive the majority of their revenue from voice and text services. Chinese and Korean telcos' profitability will remain stable, reflecting weaker competition and lower marketing and handset subsidy costs. Chinese telcos will benefit further from lower tower lease rental costs. Rising capex needs will mean that many Asian telcos will have minimal-to-negative free cash flow next year. Thai, Philippine and Indian telcos are likely to have the highest capex/revenue ratios, at around 28%-30%, as they strengthen 4G networks in response to fast-growing data consumption and the rising importance of network quality. In contrast, Chinese telcos' capex could decline by 10% as their 4G development cycle has peaked. We expect industry consolidation in India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, as weaker telcos exit the market or seek M&A to strengthen their competitive position. The Sri Lankan market looks particularly crowded and ripe for consolidation. Debt-funded M&A could threaten the ratings of acquirers in these markets. Among the Fitch-rated Asian telcos, Singapore Telecom Limited (A+/Stable), Telekom Malaysia Berhad (A-/Stable), Reliance Communications (BB-/Stable), Global Cloud Xchange (B+/Stable) and PT Tower Bersama Infrastructure Tbk (BB/Stable) have low ratings headroom. Fitch has published Outlook Reports for nine Asian telco markets: India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Korea and Philippines. Contacts: Nitin Soni Director Corporates +65 6796 7235 Fitch Ratings Singapore Pte Ltd. #35-05, Suntec Tower 4 6 Temasek Boulevard Singapore, 038986 Steve Durose Managing Director +61 2 8256 0307 Dan Martin Senior Director Fitch Wire +65 6796 7232 Media Relations: Leslie Tan, Singapore, Tel: +65 67 96 7234, Email: leslie.tan@fitchratings.com. The above article originally appeared as a post on the Fitch Wire credit market commentary page. The original article can be accessed at www.fitchratings.com. All opinions expressed are those of Fitch Ratings. ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTPS://WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. 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Due to the relative efficiency of electronic publishing and distribution, Fitch research may be available to electronic subscribers up to three days earlier than to print subscribers. For Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea only: Fitch Australia Pty Ltd holds an Australian financial services license (AFS license no. 337123) which authorizes it to provide credit ratings to wholesale clients only. Credit ratings information published by Fitch is not intended to be used by persons who are retail clients within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001 As Iraqi troops battle Islamic State fighters street by street in the northern city of Mosul, another crucial phase in the bid to neutralize the militant group is shaping up 230 miles to the west. A joint Kurdish-Arab militia has begun encircling Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital in Syria. It wasnt long ago that Islamic State had all the momentum, seizing swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. Now the group is being squeezed in two strongholds by simultaneous offensives. The strategy makes sense. As Islamic State relinquishes its hold on Mosul, its fighters will flee west into Syria. But Raqqa, their home base, will be sealed off by Kurdish and Arab fighters, and therefore untenable as a safe haven. No one knows how long it will take to free Raqqa, but once the Islamic State has been routed, the militant group will be without its nerve center. It all sounds straightforward and easy, but it wont be. Complications abound. First, the militia moving on Raqqa, the Syrian Democratic Forces, is a tenuous coupling of Syrian Kurd and Syrian Arab fighters. Yes, they have a common enemy in the Islamic State, but historically they are adversaries. Arabs dont want to be governed by Kurds, and vice versa. The plan is for the SDFs Arab contingent to take the lead in the battle for Raqqa once fighting begins inside the city. That would allay fears Arabs in Raqqa have of a Kurdish takeover. But will the Kurds acquiesce? They have already established a semi-autonomous region across northern Syria, and have visions of a trans-border Kurdish state encompassing the northern sections of Iraq and Syria, bookended by Iran on the east and Turkey on the west. The Kurds could move into Raqqa, a northern city, and stay there. Thats exactly what they did when they defeated Islamic State fighters in the town of Manbij, despite assuring the U.S. that they would leave once the town was liberated. Its not just the Arabs who worry about what the Kurds say versus do. In Turkey, where Kurds are the largest minority, Ankara has been clashing with Kurdish separatists for decades. Turkey adamantly opposes the idea of Kurds at the vanguard of a Raqqa offensive. Turkish leaders have gone so far as to tell the U.S. they wanted Syrian Kurds excluded from the Raqqa effort. But of all the entities battling in Syria, Syrian Kurds have had the most success so Washingtons not about to leave Kurds out of the offensive. Last week, Turkey suggested it could send its own forces to lead the charge into Raqqa. The U.S. hasnt given Ankara an answer, but that answer should be, Thank you, but weve got it covered. Turkish forces are already in Syria, and they have clashed with SDF fighters. Throwing Turkish troops into the caldron with Kurdish and Arab fighters risks a spasm of infighting that diverts the mission from its ultimate goal defeating the Islamic State. Retaking Mosul and Raqqa represent pivotal moments in the fight against the Islamic State. So far, the effort in Mosul is going well. What happens in Raqqa will unfold in coming weeks and months. It could fall on the desk of President-elect Donald Trump, who will be tasked with stewarding a disparate group of players with competing, even conflicting, interests. It wont be an easy job, ensuring that the unwieldy amalgam defeats the Islamic State and not itself. Floridas Stand Your Ground law, which gives widespread legal immunity to people who use lethal force in self-defense, may be responsible for an increase in homicides in the state, according to a new study released Monday. Since the controversial law was implemented in 2005, Floridas overall monthly homicide rate has increased 24.4% and the homicide by firearm rate is up 31.6%, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Floridas self-defense law, which was the first of almost two dozen to pass in states around the country over the last decade, became the subject of scrutiny following the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012. Zimmerman was acquitted of Martins murder after claiming self-defense following a confrontation with the unarmed teenager. The JAMA study, the first to look specifically at the effects of Floridas law, analyzed injury and homicide rates collected by the Centers for Disease Control and compared those rates to four other statesNew York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginiathat did not implement similar laws. Read more: How Stand Your Ground Laws Spread From Florida to Half the U.S. David Humphreys, a professor of social policy at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the paper, says he looked for other reasons to explain the increase in homicides in Florida, including changes in the way murders are reported. He also looked for proof of potential economic pressures from the Great Recession that could explain the uptick by analyzing the rate of suicides in the state but found no significant upswings. This doesnt rule out the possibility that there might have been something else that happened the we dont know about, Humphreys says. But the magnitude of the effect led us to believe that the only thing that could plausibly lead to that effect is Stand Your Ground. Story continues The research backs up a similar study from 2013 finding an 8% average increase in homicides in states that have passed Stand Your Ground laws. Mark Hoekstra, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University who authored the 2013 study, says the sharp increase in Florida homicides tracks alongside his own numbers. Determining why self-defense laws could translate into an increase in murders isnt entirely clear, but Hoekstra says people may be engaging in potentially violent situations that they wouldve previously avoided. These laws are reducing the expected penalties associated with using lethal force in self-defense, Hoekstra says. In the aggregate, the data suggests more people are getting killed as a result of these laws. Read more: Man Cites Stand Your Ground Law After Shooting Neighbor Over Loud Music If Florida is considered the birthplace of the so-called Stand Your Ground law, the measures father is Dennis Baxley. As a state representative in 2005, Baxley heard of an incident involving a man living in a FEMA trailer who shot and killed an intruder but had to wait several months before knowing whether he would be criminally charged. In the end he wasnt, but Baxley said the delay persuaded him to push for a clarifying statute on self-defense in the state. In many jurisdictions, criminal law requires people to retreat before resorting to force. But individuals have often been granted the right to use force when someone enters their home under whats called the castle doctrine. In 2005, Baxley co-authored the states Stand Your Ground law to expand those self-defense protections for people both inside and outside the home, which he argues could be a crime deterrent. The law was supported by groups including the National Rifle Association and the Florida Sheriffs Association, and there are now 23 states that have similar self-defense statutes. If youre protecting others from harm, we should stand beside you, says Baxley, who was elected to the Florida Senate last week. You shouldnt be concerned about being in trouble for doing the right thing. Baxley says he questions studies showing an increase in homicides related to the law and that numbers he has seen from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement shows a continuous decrease in homicides. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement statistics, the murder rate per 100,000 residents in 2005 was 4.9. In 2006, the year after the Stand Your Ground law was implemented, it rose to 6.2. Last year, the murder rate was 5.2 but has remained above the 2005 rate every year. Read more: Mothers Team Up to Fight Stand Your Ground Law Baxley also questions the objectivity of the studys authors, contending that the American Medical Association pursues an anti-gun agenda. They start with an assumption in mind that is quite different from mine, Baxley says. I would have serious questions about their motivation in the study. I continue to be mystified by this pursuit of the idea that people should not protect themselves from harm. Humphreys says that he doesnt typically do research on gun control, doesnt have a political axe to grind and that we were generally interested in evidence in either the homicide rate going up or homicide rates going down or nothing happening at all, which is often the case when you have a change in laws or policies. On Baxley questioning the studys objectivity, Humphreys says: I think thats an easy criticism to make or an easy way to undermine findings that you dont want to believe are true. Polio. Smallpox. These are the villains that caused so much pain, suffering and death for humankind for centuries. People suffered the scars and loss these organisms have wrought on their friends, parents, siblings and children until human ingenuity developed the weapon that has been the most successful in reducing and eliminating the threat: vaccines. Pneumonia. Influenza. HIV. Zika. As time has passed, humans have advanced in their ability to use vaccines to protect themselves against other diseases, such as whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis B. In fact, the frequency that these diseases have been encountered over the decades has declined so much that the general public has essentially forgotten the impact these diseases have had. And the public may be taking for granted the benefit these vaccines provide. [See: 10 Cold and Flu Myths Debunked.] There were about 580 tetanus cases per year prior to vaccines, with an average of 472 of these cases resulting in death (mortality rate 81 percent, i.e. about 8 in 10 chance of dying). The tetanus vaccine was first available in the United States in 1940. On average, there were 29 cases annually from 1996 to 2009, involving unvaccinated individuals. Annual rates of diphtheria in the 1920s were between 100,000 and 200,000 cases, with 13,000 to 15,000 deaths (in other words, a 1 in 20 chance of dying). After widespread use of immunization, only seven cases were reported to the CDC between 1998 and 2009. [See: Pharmacist Recommended Cough, Cold and Allergy Medicines.] Why You Should Get an Annual Flu Vaccine Though there's controversy around the flu vaccine's effectiveness in reducing mortality, we know the vaccine can reduce hospitalization among the very old and the very young caused by influenza symptoms. Because there are many influenza virus strains, it can be very difficult to determine which one will be most problematic in a given year. For this reason, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tries annually to make its best guess which three to four strains will be most likely to infect the largest number of individuals, and then develops the vaccine based on this hypothesis. Sometimes expectations are correct, resulting in fewer flu-related hospitalizations and less death. But other years, the CDC's guess is not so good, and the vaccine doesn't target the right strains. Story continues Recently, publications have raised concerns about the safety of vaccines, linking them to health problems. However, there's a lack of science to support these claims, and the efficacy and safety of these vaccines have been able to stand up on their own. The CDC recommends a yearly influenza vaccine for individuals age 65 and older to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death. Because the aging human body's immune system weakens, administration of a high dose influenza vaccine is recommended for our older patients. [See: Old-School Cold Remedies That Really Work.] Don't Forget the Pneumococcal Vaccine There are now two pneumococcal vaccines recommended for older individuals. One protects older persons from 13 different strains of bacterial pneumonia, and the other vaccine protects the same population from 23 different strains. It's important to remember that vaccines only reduce the risk of developing the disease -- they do not eliminate it 100 percent. Other strains of influenza and pneumonia, from which vaccines do not protect, can cause sickness. Regardless, getting vaccinated reduces your chances. Like most health matters, decisions to vaccinate are made by weighing risks and benefits. For vaccines, I believe that more often than not, the benefit is well worth the risk. Ronan Mangcucang Factora, MD, is Staff at the Center for Geriatric Medicine, Medicine Institute; Program Director for the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship, Co-Director of the Aging Brain Clinic; and Associate Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Factora is a diplomate of American Board of Internal Medicine, with added qualifications in geriatric medicine. His clinical interests include dementia and related disorders, normal pressure hydrocephalus, falls and elder abuse. Dr. Factora received his medical degree from the Ohio State University, College of Medicine and Public Health, Columbus, Ohio. He completed his internal medicine residency at Montefiore Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Penn. and a geriatrics fellowship at Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland. He is a member of many professional organizations, including the American Geriatrics Society, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. President-elect Donald Trump reassured the American people of his strong immigration stance by promising to go after undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. What we are going to do is get the people that are criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said in an interview on CBS 60 Minutes. In an interview on the FOX Business Networks The Intelligence Report, Former CIA Director Ambassador James Woolsey said that a policy neglecting to go after any criminal illegal immigrant fosters an environment of violent criminals. We have to look particularly hard I think at people who commit multiple crimes including violent crimes like the killer of that young woman on the bridge of San Francisco some months back. The interaction of policy not to go after people like that and sanctuary cities has produced a very situation with respect to violent criminals, he said. Woolsey reiterated Trumps policy on undocumented immigrants who are contributing members of society, and whose only crime was the way they entered this country. There are a number of people who are here, as Mr. Trump just said, may have broken the law in getting here but have led very productive and excellent lives with them and their families and obviously those people will be treated differently as he [Trump] said, Woolsey told host Trish Regan. The former CIA director also weighed in on President Obamas executive order to allowed sanctuary for 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States and believes such policy could pose a national security risk. Just open the doors and let in thousands without doing sufficiently detailed and careful vetting and checking is really dangerous as well as not just unwise, its dangerous to the country, he said. Related Articles Berlin (AFP) - Germany's ruling coalition backed Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the country's next president Monday, paving the way for an outspoken critic of Donald Trump to become head of state in Europe's top economy. Party leaders have been wrangling for months over whom to nominate as a successor to President Joachim Gauck, a 76-year-old pastor from the ex-communist East Germany who is stepping down due to his advanced age. On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc agreed on Germany's most popular politician, Steinmeier, whose name had been put forward by his Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merkel, who was unable to find a viable conservative candidate, told reporters Steinmeier was a "respected centrist" whose nomination stood for "stability, particularly in times of uncertainty and instability in the world". Steinmeier, who received the call from Merkel on his way to an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, said he was grateful for the vote of confidence "across the political spectrum". "That trust carries responsibility with it," he told the Bild newspaper. The new president -- a figure who is meant to transcend party politics and serve as a moral standard bearer for the nation -- will be elected on February 12 by a special assembly of MPs, delegates from the 16 federal states, and other notables. Steinmeier, 60, has emerged in recent months as the German government's most strident detractor of US President-elect Donald Trump. He warned a day after Trump's shock election that transatlantic relations would become "more difficult" with the United States making more decisions "on its own". During the US campaign, Steinmeier was even more damning, saying the prospect of a Trump presidency was a "frightening" prospect for the world. He compared Trump to a "hate preacher", saying he had much in common with "fearmongers" in Germany's right-wing populist AfD party as well as advocates of Britain's exit from the EU. Story continues - Stridency and pragmatism - A veteran of the German political scene and a familiar face in world capitals, Steinmeier served as former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's chief of staff before becoming Merkel's vice-chancellor and top diplomat during her first "grand coalition" government from 2005 to 2009. In his second stint as foreign minister beginning in 2013, he has at times drawn fire for attempting to keep the lines of communications open with Russia despite deteriorating relations over Ukraine. While his Social Democrats have praised his approach as in keeping with their long tradition of Ostpolitik, critics have accused him of being a "Russlandversteher" -- a Russia apologist. He raised eyebrows in many capitals in June when he warned NATO against "sabre-rattling and warmongering" after it conducted military exercises in eastern Europe in response to the perceived threat posed by Russia. Steinmeier has also been frank in expressing disapproval of Turkey's widening crackdown following a failed military coup in July, saying it should not be used as an excuse to muzzle the opposition. He is due in Ankara Tuesday for talks. Married with a 20-year-old daughter, Steinmeier is protective of his private life. But he made headlines in 2010 when he withdrew temporarily from politics to donate a kidney to his ailing wife, judge Elke Buedenbender. Media reports said that Steinmeier could be replaced by European Parliament president Martin Schulz, a Social Democrat, as foreign minister. The choice of a nominee threatened to become a distraction for Merkel as she prepares for what is widely expected to be a decision in the coming weeks to seek a fourth term as chancellor in 2017. While the pick of Steinmeier was widely welcomed, Germany's powerful conservative finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned it marked a "defeat" for the CDU ahead of an election year, according to a report in the daily Rheinische Post. This week Merkel will welcome outgoing US President Barack Obama, with whom she shared an often close working relationship during his eight years in power. Merkel -- arguably the world's second most powerful democratic leader -- is expected to chart a pragmatic course with Trump even as she has insisted she will hold him to basic democratic principles. From Cosmopolitan Foster Campbell is the reason some are saying the 2016 election isn't over yet. Louisiana will hold their final Senate election on December 10th, and if Campbell can best John Kennedy, his Republican challenger, he will ensure Democrats have more of a voice in the Senate. If he wins, the split will be 51-49, which is a split that guarantees better checks and balances in the upper house, and for all Americans. As Jackson Cantrell on Medium points out, Campbell is a strong candidate who should appeal to Louisiana voters - if they get to the polls and actually vote: Foster will fare much better than Hillary because he knows the electorate. Through four decades of listening to those around him, he built up a huge network of support in a deeply Red State. Hes stood up to big Tobacco companies, fought to fund schools, and led a campaign to lower the high cost of telephone calls from Louisiana jails and prisons. In 2008 he was elected to the Louisiana Public Service Commission with more than 78 percent of the vote. Some more facts about Campbell: He favors working on the Affordable Care Act rather than repealing it; he believes climate change is real; he supports federal funding for renewable energy; he supports campaign finance regulation; he names equal pay for women and increasing the minimum wage as administrative priorities; and he supports the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage, despite his own religious beliefs, and vows "to keep my oath to uphold the constitution and, above all, I will treat all my constituents and all the American people with respect." Although Kennedy is long-favored to win in the red state of Louisiana, they have elected Democrats before and it seems Campbell is the type of no-nonsense politician the Bayou state favors. As Cantrell points out, Louisiana's voter turnout was low on November 9th, and so it looks like whoever is successful in getting voters to the polls will win. To that end, Campbell is currently seeking donations and in person and digital volunteers on his website. Story continues Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like LOS CABOS, Mexico Building the multi-partner co-production structure which is proving a hallmark of breakout international hits from Latin America, Paris-based Manny Films and Buenos Aires Haddock Films have joined Madrids Tornasol Films and Montevideo-based Salado to produce Alvaro Brechners anticipated Memorias del calabozo. Also written by Brechner, Memorias del calabozo, was one of six projects presented at the inaugural Los Cabos Film Investors Summit on Friday. It won the Arte International Prize at the 2016 Berlin Co-Production Market. The now four-way co-production reunites Tornasol and Haddock, which joined forces for Juan Jose Campanellas Academy Award winner The Secret in Their Eyes. Memorias del Calabozo also marks Manny Films latest Latino co-production after Pablo Fendriks 2014 El Ardor, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Alicia Braga, and David Pablos Netflix pick-up The Chosen Ones, produced by Pablo Cruz at Canana and selected for Cannes 2015 Un Certain Regard. More than anything else, however, it also underscores one competitive asset of Latin American narrative drama, whether film or TV fiction. Time and again, at Los Cabos first Film Investors Summit, panelists stressed the need for writers and directors to be original. A directors vision needs to be singular, interesting, and unique so that it will stand stand out in a marketplace flooded with a lot of ordinary or mediocre films, said Bec Smith, a literary agent at UTA. Many, maybe most of the projects pitched at Los Cabos were based on true facts. Latin American history is so extraordinary, for good and bad, that its creative industries have a huge well of remarkable, unforgettable narratives to draw on. They just and its no small challenge have to coney their emotion, and their sense. A humanist survival drama, the true-fact based Memorias del calabozo begins in September 1973 as Uruguays falls under military dictatorship and nine captured Tupamaro guerrilla members are subjected to a solitary confinement which will last 12 years. One, Jose Mugica, spent two years confined to the bottom of one emptied horses water trough. Story continues Mujica went on to become a legendary president of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015, who dove to work in a battered car, refused to live in the presidential palace and was one major reason why The Economist chose Uruguay as its Country of the Year in 2013. But rather than a political drama, Brechner has construe what a chronicle of a remarkable feat of physical and, above all, psychological resilience. Star of The Fury of a Patient Man and May God Save Us, two standout big fest plays this late summer, Alvaro de la Torre, regarded as one of the finest Spanish actors of his generation, will play Jose Mujica. Chino Darin (Death in Buenos Aires, The Queen of Spain) co-stars. Memorias de un calabozo is based on the same-titled memoirs of Mauricio Rosencof and Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro, the other central figures of the film. My goal is to make a film which transcends historical events to tell the existential struggle of three men who cling to their spirit so as to maintain their humanity and hope, said director Brechner, whose first two features, Bad Day to Go Fishing and Mr. Kaplan were both Uruguays Academy Award entries He added: Even in the darkest moments, the struggle and resistance of an individual for dignity should never be under-estimated. Memorias del calabozo is based on a true-life figure and describes, describes a human journey, the creation of something positive in such negative context, added Tornasols Mariela Besuievsky. Shooting in Spain, Uruguay and Argentina, it is scheduled to go into production February to March 2017. Related stories San Sebastian: Tornasol, Salado Team for Brechner's 'Memorias' Alvaro Brechner: 'Mr. Kaplan,' Dignity, 'Scarecrow,' a Phrase His Grandfather Once Used Film Review: 'Mr. Kaplan' PARIS (Reuters) - France's finance ministry has started the process to reclaim a 2.2 billion euro (1.95 billion pounds) tax deduction granted to Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) after losses caused by its rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, Les Echos newspaper reported on Monday. Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Nov. 3 state tax experts would decide "within days" whether the funds should be recovered. A French court said in September the former trader was liable for only 1 million euros of the 4.9 billion in losses he racked up at the bank in 2008, the latest in a series of judgements on the case. Societe Generale declined to comment saying the deduction was covered by tax confidentiality, but that it would use all legal means to defend itself. Les Echos did not give a source for its information. (Reporting by John Irish and Benjamin Mallet; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Paris (AFP) - French tax authorities are seeking to recover 2.2 billion euros of tax breaks given to Societe Generale following massive losses due to "rogue trader" Jerome Kerviel's recklessness, Les Echos newspaper said on Monday. In September an appeals court in Versailles, west of Paris, decided that the French banking giant was mostly to blame for ex-trader Kerviel losing 4.9 billion euros ($5.3 billion) due to "woefully inadequate" internal checks. The company had been awarded tax breaks by the French state but the government said in September it would review that in light of the ruling which held the bank overwhelmingly responsible. Societe Generale had been awarded the tax breaks in 2009 and 2010 as part of a scheme aimed at protecting businesses facing huge losses or being victims of fraud. Les Echos said the taxman had "launched a procedure to recover all or part of the tax break from which Societe Generale benefited". Both the tax authorities and Societe Generale declined to comment on the report. In September, the Versailles appeals court reduced a previous order for Kerviel to repay the 4.9 billion euro loss to Societe Generale to just one million euros. Nantes (France) (AFP) - A court in western France cleared the way Monday for work to begin on an airport vehemently opposed by local residents and environmentalists defending precious moors and woodland. Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls hailed the ruling following years of legal battles and sometimes violent protests over the plan, saying it "proves once more that the project is perfectly legal and complies with current regulations." But an umbrella grouping of activists vowed that they would "not allow any work or evictions to begin" for the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport, which will be a second facility serving the western city of Nantes. Yannick Jadot, a former Greenpeace activist who is the green party EELV's candidate in France's presidential elections next year, slammed the ruling, calling the project "absurd and destructive". Between 200 and 300 activists are camped at the site some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Nantes in a protest that dates to 1965 when the project, now projected to cost nearly one billion euros (dollars), was first mooted. It was approved in 1970, but mothballed because of the oil crisis. Since Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin revived the plan in 2000, it has been the subject of heated public debate and dozens of legal challenges. Dairy farmers resisted eviction, while environmentalists said the project threatened important wetland supporting dozens of protected species of birds as well as newts and voles. In 2009, anti-capitalist activists from across Europe joined the dairy farmers and residents occupying the site. There have been several violent standoffs as riot police tried to dislodge the squatters, some of them living in treehouses. In 2012 then prime minister and current Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault -- who hails from Nantes -- set up a "dialogue committee" that found in favour of the project while strengthening environmental safeguards. Story continues Then in June this year, voters in the Loire-Atlantique region approved the project in a referendum, the "Yes" vote winning with 55 percent. "The people have voted, justice has ruled: work begins now!" Philippe Grosvalet, the region's Socialist president, said in a statement. The court said planned steps to compensate for the environmental impact of the project were adequate, and that the alternative of overhauling an existing airport serving the region, Nantes-Atlantique, was not viable. "It's a huge disappointment," said local activist Francoise Verchere, the former left-wing mayor of Bouguenais, where the Nantes-Atlantique airport is located. "The fight continues." Opponents of the airport can still lodge an appeal to France's highest court, the Conseil d'Etat, but one of their lawyers, Thomas Dubreuil, said it would be based "only on legal issues" that would not derail the project. Julien Durand, spokesman for the largest citizens' group opposing the airport, said vowed "we will multiply our resistance", wishing "good luck" to Valls. By Rich McKay ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia man accused of wanting a child-free life was found guilty by jurors on Monday of murdering his toddler son in June 2014 by leaving him in a sweltering car to die. Justin Ross Harris, 35, could be sent to life in prison for the death of 22-month-old Cooper, who was left strapped in his car seat for seven hours on a hot day outside his father's suburban Atlanta workplace. Sentencing is set for Dec. 5. Jurors deliberated over four days before finding Harris guilty of all eight counts against him. In addition to the murder allegations, he stood trial on charges of child cruelty and sex crimes related to explicit texts that he sent to a teenage girl. "I believe justice was served today on behalf of young Cooper Harris," Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds said in a statement after the verdicts were read. Harris' attorney Maddox Kilgore said at a press conference that the defense team planned to appeal the conviction, saying they "never once wavered in our absolute belief he's innocent." During the five-week trial, prosecutors argued the father intentionally allowed his child to suffer so Harris could be free of his marriage and fatherhood and continue to pursue extramarital affairs. Phone and internet records showed Harris was sending explicit messages for much of the day while his son was dying inside the hot car. The defense countered that the death was accidental, saying Harris was a flawed man who simply forgot his son was in the car. The boy's mother, who divorced Harris after Cooper's death, testified that though her ex-husband "ruined her life," she believed he would never have tried to harm their child. Harris remained stoic as the verdicts were read on Monday. During the trial, he wept many times at the defense table, particularly when pictures of his dead son were shown to the jury. The trial was held in Brunswick, Georgia, some 300 miles (500 km) from suburban Atlanta, after the court failed to seat an impartial jury last spring. The sentencing proceedings will take place back in Cobb County, prosecutors said. (Reporting by Rich McKay; Writing by Letitia Stein and Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Sandra Maler) The Affordable Care Act was a good idea poorly executed at a politically divisive time. Come Jan. 20, the Republican Party will control the federal government, and scrapping the act which is so tied to President Barack Obama that even he calls it Obamacare will be a top priority of President Donald Trump and probably House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as well. Many have long urged Congress and the White House to try to fix the ACA, believing it would never be replaced so long as Democrats held the White House or controlled part or all of Congress. When the GOP runs Washington, a better idea is to dismantle the ACA while keeping whats best about the 2010 law. This could well happen. There appears to be broad support among lawmakers for retaining popular ACA provisions allowing children to remain on their parents health insurance policies until they are 26 and for banning insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The even better news is there is a chance that rolling back and improving Obamacare could be a genuinely bipartisan effort, unlike the brutal 2009-2010 cage fight before the laws enactment. Coming off an ugly campaign, that may seem unlikely. Why wont congressional Democrats behave in the same disputatious way toward a Republican president as congressional Republicans have toward Obama? Why wouldnt they proudly defend a bold initiative that has led to 20 million more Americans having health insurance? Why wouldnt Democratic senators filibuster such a bill and defy McConnell to follow in the footsteps of Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid who as majority leader put some limits on the blocking tactic? Heres why: Because while ACA has worked out reasonably well in California and some other large states, it is on its way to being a disaster in many small and midsized states, with insurers pulling out of money-hemorrhaging state exchanges, premiums soaring and deductibles going ever higher. A recent analysis predicts that by next year, in one-third of the nation, Obamacare enrollees will have only one insurer option. Bill Clinton spoke for a lot of Democrats especially House Democrats up for re-election in 2018 when he called whats become of the ACA the craziest thing in the world. By contrast, Republicans fighting the prospect of Obamacare faced little downside because polls in 2009 showed most Americans were fairly satisfied with the health care status quo. Thats not true now. So lets not wait until Jan. 20 to get to work. Trump and Ryan have put out position papers calling for allowing insurers to offer policies in all 50 states under one federal standard. They propose giving tax credits and creating IRA-like health savings accounts to help individuals buy coverage. Republicans should ask Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, for input. The 2008 health reform proposal he helped craft was thoughtful and serious, and he has already worked with Ryan on Medicare reform. There are many knotty problems to address. But we can do much better than a system that gives people incentives to game it by not buying insurance until theyre sick and gives businesses incentives to hire part-time workers instead of full-time workers so they dont have to provide health insurance. Democrats should join Republicans to scrap what they should and salvage what makes sense. San Francisco (AFP) - German-based hotel booking site trivago, controlled by US online travel giant Expedia, on Monday filed for a public share offering in New York. The firm founded in 2005 which aims to connect travelers to hotels at the lowest rate is used for booking at 1.3 million hotels in over 190 countries, and has 55 localized websites and apps in 33 languages. The company said in a statement that the number of shares to be offered and price range had not been determined. But the filing gave a preliminary estimate it would raise $400 million in the initial public offering. The IPO will be led by a Dutch-based entity called travel BV, which will be the holding company for the German startup. Expedia bought a controlling share of trivago in 2012 and will retain shares after the IPO, according to the filing. According to the filing, Expedia and the founders will consider a corporate reorganization within 12 months of the IPO. The company took in some 580 million euros ($640 million) in revenue in the past fiscal year but has been consistently losing money. The filing says it has growth opportunities because "consumers are increasingly looking for tools to enable them to navigate through multiple hotel booking options simultaneously and compare prices" through an independent platform. "We believe that we are reshaping hotel discovery for our users, while changing the way hotel advertisers identify, engage with and acquire travelers." Trivago competes with other "metasearch" platforms such as Priceline's Kayak which help travelers compare listings, offering links to booking sites or hotels themselves. HAMBURG (Reuters) - Germany is considering ordering its poultry farmers to keep their flocks indoors following an outbreak of bird flu in the country, German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt said on Monday. Germany and Switzerland reported new outbreaks of a severe strain of bird flu on Saturday, the latest in a series of cases across Europe. The H5N8 virus has also been found in Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia. Germany will consult with countries including the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark about possible action, Schmidt said ahead of a meeting in Brussels. If the disease continues to show signs of spreading, Germany may go ahead alone and issue a lock-up order for poultry, Schmidt said. Wild birds are suspected of being the source of the current bird flu outbreak. The upcoming Christmas season is a critical time for sales for poultry farmers throughout Europe. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold and Hans-Edzard Busemann, Writing by Michael Hogan; Editing by Greg Mahlich) BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should not jeopardise its trade relations with the rest of the European Union in a deal on Britain's departure from the bloc, the chief of the BDI Federation of Germany Industries said, throwing his weight behind Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel has told Britain it will not be able to "cherry pick" what it wants to keep from its EU membership. The chancellor has also described the EU's "four freedoms" - of movement of goods, capital, people, and services - as essential for the bloc. Markus Kerber, managing director of the BDI Federation of Germany Industries, told Reuters it was important to stress that the four freedoms could only be enjoyed with EU membership. "It must be a priority for the German government and the EU to defend the single market as a crucial European project," Kerber wrote by e-mail, adding Germany's trade with the rest of the EU should not be jeopardised by granting Britain exceptions. "Because the business ties of the German economy with the remaining EU countries go far beyond the economic relations between Germany and Britain," Kerber said. In 2015, German exports to other EU members minus Britain accounted for more than 50 percent of overall sales abroad while German exports to Britain accounted for only seven percent. Kerber's backing for Merkel comes only days before the German Chancellor is scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May for bilateral talks in Berlin on Friday. May has said her country does not face a "binary choice" between curbing immigration and getting a good trade agreement. But so far the EU has portrayed the bloc's single market as a set meal, rather than an a la carte menu that Britain can pick and choose from. (Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Caroline Copley) By Arno Schuetze and Joshua Franklin FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The German finance ministry said it is fielding an increasing number of information requests from financial institutions in Britain considering a move to Germany since the UK's decision to leave the European Union. Germany's financial centre Frankfurt, home to Deutsche Bank (DBKG.DE) and Commerzbank (CBKG.DE), is seeking to lure financial institutions from Britain, vying with Paris and other European cities to attract business from London, Europe's dominant financial centre. "Frankfurt is a love at second sight. But a love that lasts all the longer," state secretary Thomas Steffen, a senior finance ministry official, said at a banking conference on Monday. "I have to say that we at the finance ministry are registering an increasing number of requests. And we are very, very open to such discussions," he said. He said he expected a number of decisions to be taken early in 2017. Frankfurt is in a strong position to benefit from any shift of banking activity from London after the Brexit vote, given it already hosts the European Central Bank and the EU's second biggest capital market, city and banking industry officials say. Frankfurt is also keen to secure the European Banking Authority (EBA), which oversees the regulation of banks across the European Union and has already said it will have to move from London after Britain's decision to leave the EU. Steffen said the EBA would be in good hands in Frankfurt, considering the city was already home to the European Central Bank, its banking supervisor SSM and insurance watchdog EIOPA. Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of the German state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, said the state's prime minister was currently meeting bank executives in New York to make the case for the city. Global banks have begun to quietly build up their investment banking teams in Frankfurt, boosting the city's chances of being one of the financial centres to benefit most from Britain's vote to leave the European Union. Story continues Sources have told Reuters that Goldman Sachs is considering shifting some of its assets and operations from London to Frankfurt, as it tries to secure access to the European Union market when Britain leaves the bloc. Deutsche Bank's Chief Financial Officer Marcus Schenck said while Frankfurt was best-placed among continental cities to attract business from London, the UK capital's 'microcosm' of infrastructure for financial services firms was hard to replicate. Deutsche Boerse's Chief Executive Carsten Kengeter warned that Europe should take care that London remains the region's financial capital with strong ties to Frankfurt to make sure the business is not lost to New York. Steffen, a former executive at Germany's financial watchdog Bafin, said Bafin was working on improving its services for British customers. He said he hoped that the EU and Britain would not start competing over who could loosen financial regulation faster. "Light touch in terms of regulation, that was yesterday. I hope it remains a thing of the past," he said. Three out of four companies in Britain with sales between 100 million pounds and 1 billion pounds ($125 million to $1.25 billion) across sectors have considered moving operations to the European continent after the Brexit vote, a survey by KPMG showed in September. Steffen said he expected that negotiations with Britain on the terms of Brexit to be fair, tough and lengthy. He said allowing generous terms or even a generous transition period to adapt to new terms was not an option as the EU would want to avoid a domino effect of other EU member states pulling out or cherry-picking rules beneficial to them. "There cannot be an EU a la carte," Steffen said, adding that he would look to keep negative effects from Brexit at a minimum. "But we cannot guarantee anything." ($1 = 0.8004 pounds) (Editing by Susan Fenton and David Evans) glenn beck Conservative political commentator Glenn Beck on Monday tore into Steve Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be his chief strategist during his radio show. "Steve Bannon wants to burn it down," said Beck, who has been a fierce Trump critic since the billionaire first launched his campaign. "He's a nightmare," Beck continued. "And he's the chief adviser to the President of the United States now." The talk-radio host also suggested that Bannon holds views that are far more extreme than Trump's, saying that the press should spend more time examining Bannon's "clear tie" to white nationalism and anti-Semitism. "He has built [Breitbart News] as a platform for the alt-right," said Beck, referring to the far-right website that has often taken controversial and racially charged stances on policy issues, while abandoning traditional conservative news coverage for a more ethno-nationalist platform. Bannon told Mother Jones that Breitbart was "the platform for the alt-right" during the Republican National Convention in July. He has denied that Breitbart is a racist website, saying instead that it is "nationalist," and likened it to far-right movements in Europe, like France's National Front, led by Marine Le Pen. Breitbart has run articles with headlines like "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy," referred to conservative commentator Bill Kristol as a "renegade Jew," and repeatedly published objectively false claims about the LGBTQ community, the Muslim community, immigrants, and others. Beck concluded the segment saying that Bannon "a terrifying man" who "wants to tear this system down." Watch the segment below: NOW WATCH: 'HOLD UP!': Watch Obama defend a Trump protester and scold the crowd at a Clinton rally More From Business Insider VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Kirkland Lake Gold shares rose sharply on Monday on speculation there might be another bid for the Canadian gold miner which has rejected three offers, but at least one potential buyer said it would not jump into the fray. Kirkland's stock climbed as much as 9 percent, partly boosted as well by the possibility that its planned takeover of Newmarket Gold Inc, which had put its stock under pressure, will be voted down. Reuters reported on Friday that South Africa's Gold Fields Ltd and Canada's Silver Standard Resources Inc have made three joint bids for Kirkland Lake and recently sweetened their offer to about C$1.4 billion ($1 billion). Both Kirkland Lake and Gold Fields later confirmed the report. Kirkland has rejected all three bids, saying they are "not financially superior" to its own plan to acquire Newmarket, a small Australia-focused miner, for about C$1 billion in stock. Three sources familiar with the bidding process told Reuters last week it is possible new bidders may enter the fray, noting companies such as Yamana Gold Inc and Hecla Mining Co have assets in the area where Kirkland Lake operates. A Yamana spokeswoman said it has no interest in making a bid. Hecla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kirkland Lake said in a statement on Monday that the majority of shareholders it had spoken with believed its planned acquisition of Newmarket "represents a clear and compelling opportunity to create sustained, long-term value." Kirkland Lake and Newmarket shareholders are due to vote on their combination on Nov. 25. At least two-thirds of Kirkland Lake shareholders and half of Newmarket's need to back the transaction for it to succeed. Investor advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis have recommended to shareholders of Kirkland Lake and Newmarket that they vote for the deal. Their recommendations came out before Reuters revealed the value of the Kirkland Lake bid and the identity of the bidders. A Glass Lewis spokesman said on Monday it was not planning to change its position now but would monitor the situation and could update it prior to the Nov. 25 meeting "if the situation warrants". In a note to clients, Scotiabank said it saw "a low likelihood" the Kirkland Lake-Newmarket deal has enough shareholder backing. Shares in Kirkland Lake, a mid-sized producer operating four gold mines and two mills in a bullion-rich belt of northeastern Ontario, ended at C$8.49, up 5.6 percent, after having touched C$8.83. Newmarket shares ended 3.9 percent higher at C$3.49. (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver and John Tilak in Toronto; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and James Dalgleish) For more than five years, the parents of missing Lisa Irwin who disappeared in October 2011 from her crib just a few weeks shy of her first birthday have insisted she was taken from their home in Kansas City, Missouri. Police dont know what to believe, or who might be to blame. Its hard to say that somebody isnt a suspect when you dont have any, Kansas City police Maj. Steve Young tells PEOPLE in this weeks issue, on newsstands now. But truly, there isnt anybody that is or isnt. The unsolved mystery began the night of Oct. 3, 2011. Lisas father, Jeremy Irwin, was working a late job as an electrical contractor; her mother, Deborah Bradley, was at the familys home in their working-class neighborhood with 10-month-old Lisa and her two older brothers. Deborah spent the evening drinking wine outside with a friend. She initially told authorities she put Lisa to bed around 10:30 p.m. Then her account shifted, as she said she may have consumed enough alcohol to black out and couldnt recall the exact time shed last seen her daughter. Subscribe now to PEOPLE, or pick up the latest issue, on newsstands now, for updates on the Lisa Irwin investigation. When Jeremy came home after 3 a.m. on Oct. 4, he found the front door unlocked, lights on and Lisa missing from her bedroom. During the couples panicked search inside and outside, he also discovered a pushed-in window screen at the front of the one-story home and cell phones missing from their charging spot on the kitchen counter. Those phones gave police a promising lead: They were able to trace a call from one of the missing phones to the ex-girlfriend of a person of interest, a familiar transient in the area who later spent a short time in custody. Police also investigated reports of a man seen on foot nearby, carrying an infant in the early-morning cold. But neither lead cracked the case, as eyewitnesses failed to agree on a suspects identification. For more on this case, watch What Happened to Baby Lisa? on our new true crime show, People Magazine Investigates, Nov. 14 (10 p.m. ET) on Investigation Discovery. A parallel look at Lisas parents soon put Jeremy and Deborah on the defensive. Though they denied it, were they somehow involved? Story continues They were very quickly able to rule Jeremy out, says defense attorney Cyndy Short, who worked with the family during the initial search and investigation into Lisas disappearance. A surveillance camera showed Jeremy on the job. But Deborah was different: No independent witnesses could corroborate her timeline of that night, Short says. In any investigation like this, the police must look at the people that are closest to the missing child, she says. Deborah did everything that she could do to help them clear her, so that they could move forward. Police never named them as suspects, but both parents were angry and frustrated theyd been placed under scrutiny Deborah agreed to a lie detector test and was told she failed while they feared their daughters abductor may have been moving Lisa farther and farther away. I completely understand, Deborah tells PEOPLE now about the unwanted focus on her. But there comes a time where your vision has to be less myopic. And when youre not getting anywhere, you have to look in a different direction. She also says that police remain the best hope for Lisa to be found and reunited with her family (who promote Lisas case and collects tips on FindLisaIrwin.com). Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. No matter what, I still have faith in them, Deborah says of law enforcement. We still forward all our tips. Any information we get goes right to them, and eventually theyre going to put this together and theyre going to get her home. Jeremy, too, has placed his trust in police to find the person or persons who he thinks may have abducted Lisa. He says that he and Deborah have repeatedly run possible scenarios through their heads since the day Lisa vanished but havent settled on firm answers. Five years later, I think we have a pretty good idea of what happened and pretty good idea of some of the players involved, but we dont have anything for sure, Jeremy says. Were not the police. They do not trouble themselves over whether others might still question their role in Lisas disappearance. Some people make up their mind immediately, and thats it theres no change in it, Jeremy says. As time goes on, it absolutely becomes infinitesimal, the amount of people or the thoughts that they have. You just cant listen to it. You have to write it off. Says Deborah: The most important thing is that theyre just keeping an eye out for her. Its not important whos on our side, she says. We just want everyone on Lisas side. People Magazine Investigates airs Mondays (10 p.m. ET) on Investigation Discovery. President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to consider hiring a special prosecutor to investigate his former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton over her emails. In an interview with 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl that aired Sunday night on CBS, Trump, 70, talked about the lovely concession call from Clinton. He also addressed his previous claims that he would try and put the former Secretary of State in prison. Im going to think about it, he said, later adding he was more focused on getting the country straightened away. She did some bad things, he said, when asked about his previous comments and references to Clinton as Crooked Hillary. I dont want to hurt Theyre good people. As the interview continued, Trumps wife Melania joined her husband for some questions about their dynamic as a couple, among other things. Here are more highlights from the interview: Trump on whether he regrets anything from his controversial campaign: I cant regret. I wish it were softer, I wish it were nicer, I wish maybe even it was more on policy, or whatever you want to say. But I will say that it really is something that Im very proud of, I mean it was a tremendous campaign. Trump on using similar campaign rhetoric during his presidency: Well, sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated. I dont want to be just a little nice monotone character and in many cases I will be. Trump on his meeting with President Barack Obama and if it was awkward: We never discussed what was said about each other. I said terrible things about him, he said terrible things about me. Ill be honest, from my standpoint zero, zero . And thats strange. Im actually surprised to tell you that. Melania on her relationship with her husband: I think he hears me. But he will do what he wants to do on the end. Hes an adult. He knows the consequences. And I give him my opinion. And he could do whatever he likes with it. Melania on the potential awkwardness of her one-on-one meeting with First Lady Michelle Obama, particularly after her speech at the Republican National Convention almost directly mirrored the first ladys 2008 Democratic Convention address: No. I didnt feel it She was a gracious host. We had a great time and we raising children in the White House. She was very warm and very nice. On reports of increased incidents of hate speech and racially charged incidents from his alleged supporters: I am so saddened to hear that and I say stop it, if it helps. Ill say it right to the camera stop it. On the presidential salary of $400,000 per year: Im not taking it. (Although he did admit that he might have to take a salary of $1 per year.) 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET on CBS. A Google representative told Business Insider on Monday that the company was looking into an issue that displayed an inaccurate source of the popular-vote tally for Tuesday's US election in its top search result. The most recently updated popular vote tally, according to the Associated Press, shows Hillary Clinton with a lead over Donald Trump. Though Clinton leads in votes by 61,039,676 to 60,371,193, Trump secured the presidency by winning the Electoral College. The top Google News result for searches of "final election count," however, linked to a WordPress blog called 70 News that said Trump won the popular vote by a margin of almost 700,000 votes. It cited Twitter as its source. Screen Shot 2016 11 14 at 9.34.52 AM Originally posted on Saturday and updated on Sunday, the post is titled "FINAL ELECTION 2016 NUMBERS: TRUMP WON BOTH POPULAR ( 62.9 M -62.2 M ) AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ( 306-232)...HEY CHANGE.ORG, SCRAP YOUR LOONY PETITION NOW!" The author wrote that the information came from "Twitter posts." "Except for the twitter posts, the popular vote number still need to be updated in Wikipedia or MSM media which may take another few days because the liberals are still reeling and recovering from Trump-shock victory," the blog said. The WordPress blog also shows up in the top Google News results when variations of the search are entered in, like "final popular vote." Screen Shot 2016 11 14 at 9.50.01 AM Other areas of Google, however, reflect the accurate numbers: Screen Shot 2016 11 14 at 10.12.49 AM "The goal of Search is to provide the most relevant and useful results for our users. In this case we clearly didnt get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider. With approximately 7 million votes left to count many of them from solid blue states like New York, California, and Washington it seems that Clinton may end with an even larger victory in the popular vote. NOW WATCH: How election forecasts got the results dead wrong More From Business Insider The fabulous weather that has graced southern Wisconsin this November is expected to continue for the work week, until much colder weather moves in during the weekend. The National Weather Service is forecasting highs in the mid-50s to low 60s through Friday, while the normal highs in Madison for mid-November are in the mid-40s. 27 Storm Track meteorologist Branden Borremans said sunshine should dominate the sky Monday through Thursday, with a chance for a stray shower north of Madison on Tuesday. The weather will start changing Friday afternoon. Clouds will be moving in, bringing a chance for showers, with Borremans saying we could even see a few snowflakes mixed in later at night as cold air comes into the region. Saturday's high is only expected to reach the low 40s, with a chance for a few showers. Borremans said highs on Sunday and next Monday are only expected to be in the upper 30s, with sunshine both days. Sunday's high in Madison was 56, 10 degrees above normal and 13 degrees below the record high of 69 for Nov. 13, set in 1999. The low on Sunday was 39, 9 degrees above normal and 37 degrees above the record low of 2 for the day, set in 1986. No precipitation (rain and melted snow) fell at the airport on Sunday, keeping the November total at 0.25 inches, 0.79 inches below normal. The record precipitation total for Nov. 13 was 0.96 inches in 1951. For the meteorological fall of September through November, Madison has received 13.67 inches of precipitation, 7.10 inches above normal. Since Jan. 1, Madison has received 41.91 inches of precipitation, 10.52 inches above normal. No snow has fallen in Madison this snow season. The record snowfall on Nov. 13 was 1.2 inches in 1959. By Julia Love (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google said on Monday it is working on a policy update to restrict its ads from being placed on fake news sites as concerns mount about the rapid spread of inaccurate information online. The policy change is imminent, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told Reuters. "Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," she said in a statement. The policy change comes amid an intensifying debate over how much responsibility technology companies bear for monitoring the accuracy of content as more and more people access news through sites such as Facebook rather than traditional media companies. Facebook, in particular, has been criticized over the spread of inaccurate articles promoting U.S. president-elect Donald Trump on the site. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has denied that the site influenced the outcome of the election. Googles AdSense advertising network is a key financial driver for many publishers. The company places various restrictions on where its ads may be placed, including bans on pornographic and violent content. Work on the policy update began before the election, Faville said. (Reporting by Julia Love; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Dan Grebler) Google Play Music machine learning update Google Play Music, Google's music streaming service, is getting smarter. On Monday, an update to the Google Play Music app will kick in a new feature that can predict what you want to hear next. In fact, Google is so confident in the app's accuracy, that it completely revamped the welcome screen on Play Music so you can just tap to start listening to a playlist suited for you based on the time, your location, and a variety of other factors. Google says it's able to accomplish this through machine learning, the technology that's starting to power a lot of intelligent services Google makes like Google Photos and the new Google Assistant. It also plays into Google's broader mission to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in all of its products. Play Music won't know you right away, of course. It has to learn your habits over time and its recommendations will get better and better the more you use it. Elias Roman, the head of Google Play Music, told Business Insider that you'll notice the playlist recommendations get more accurate after just a few days. The overhaul comes as competition tightens in the streaming music space. Google hasn't disclosed how many paid subscribers it has, but Spotify and Apple are clearly in the lead with 40 million and 17 million paid subscribers, respectively. Amazon also just launched its own paid streaming service. Google also offers another paid music service through YouTube. The hope with Google Play Music's update is that it'll mark a key differentiator from other services, given that they all pretty much host the same music libraries and charge the same for subscriptions, $9.99 per month. The update will be rolling out this week to Google Play Music on iPhone, Android, and the web. NOW WATCH: Scientists have discovered why American honey bees are turning into zombies More From Business Insider At its analyst meeting, W.W. Grainger, Inc. GWW provided an outlook for sales and earnings in 2016 and 2017. Further, it divulged plans that will improve its financial performance and strengthen returns to shareholders. Additionally, the company reported its Oct 2016 sales which remained flat with the prior-year level. October Sales Grainger reported flat daily sales in Oct 2016 compared to the prior year driven by a 1 percentage point increase in volume, offset by a 1 percent decline in price. The month had 21 selling days, one less than the previous year. Daily sales in the US dipped 1% due to a 1 percentage point decline in volume and a 1 percentage point decline in price, partially negated by a 1 percentage point contribution from intercompany sales to Zoro. Sales to Government and Light Manufacturing were up in the mid single digits while sales to retail was up in the low single digits. However, Commercial was down in the low single digits, Heavy Manufacturing was down in the mid single digits, Contractors was down in the high-single digits, while Resellers and Natural Resources were down in the low double digits. In Canada, sales plunged 15% in the U.S. currency and 13% in local currency affected by a 9 percentage point decline in volume and a 4 percentage point decline in price. The price decline was primarily owing to the effect of delaying price increases until customer service stabilizes. Daily sales to all customer end markets were down. On the contrary, sales in other businesses increased 15% driven by positive volume and price. Continued strong performance from MonotaRO in Japan and Zoro in the U.S. was primarily responsible for the growth, partially neutralized by sales declines at Cromwell and Fabory. Fourth-quarter 2016 will have 63 selling days, one fewer than fourth-quarter 2015. Guidance for 2016 & 2017 For fourth-quarter 2016, Grainger is projecting sales growth of -1% to 3% while earnings per share will range between $2.27 and $2.57. For 2016, the company maintained its sales growth forecast of 1.5% to 2.5% and its earnings per share guidance of $11.40 to $11.70. For 2017, sales growth is projected at 2% to 6% and earnings per share between $11.30 and $12.40. GRAINGER W W Price Story continues GRAINGER W W Price | GRAINGER W W Quote Looking Ahead Moreover, Grainger provided its long-term operating margin targets and expects an annual improvement of 25 to 50 basis points from 2017 to 2021. This is expected to stem from organic sales growth in the mid to high single digits and continued strong cost productivity. Consequently, Grainger anticipates operating margins, excluding special items that the company believes are not indicative of ongoing operations, to go up from the range of 11.7% to 12.2% in 2017 to the range of 13% to 14% by 2021. The company expects higher sales and operating margins, lower capital spending and increased productivity across its existing asset base to lead to an improvement in its Return on Invested Capital from a range of 24% to 26% in 2017 to 31% to 33% in 2021. Further, it stated that it will continue to grow its industry-leading customer experience by making pricing simpler and more applicable to drive faster growth as well as stronger share gain in its domestic business for a broader set of customers. These actions, along with cost cutting and a turnaround in its Canada business, are likely to improve results. Zacks Rank & Key Picks Grainger currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the same sector are HD Supply Holdings, Inc. HDS, Hudson Technologies Inc. HDSN and Middleby Corp. MIDD. HD Supply Holdings delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 4.79% in the last four quarters. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Hudson Technologies also carries Zacks Rank #2 and has delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 20.71% in the past four quarters. Middleby, another Zacks Rank #2 stock, has an average positive earnings surprise of 1.60% in the past 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 MIDDLEBY CORP (MIDD): Free Stock Analysis Report GRAINGER W W (GWW): Free Stock Analysis Report HUDSON TECHNOLO (HDSN): Free Stock Analysis Report HD SUPPLY HLDGS (HDS): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Athens (AFP) - Greek police have banned protests planned during US President Barack Obama's trip to Athens from Tuesday, the first leg of his last official visit to Europe. Thousands of police officers were on Monday patrolling central Athens which will be closed to traffic for several hours on Tuesday while Obama holds talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and President Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Security measures have been beefed up "as the circumstances require," a police source told AFP. Obama was set to leave Washington later Monday to embark on his last trip to Europe as president before he hands over to Donald Trump in January. He will be in Athens on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Greece's economic woes and Europe's migration crisis high on the agenda. The US president will then head to Germany where he will seek to calm nerves over Trump's upcoming tenure. Greek trade unions, leftist and anarchist parties had called for protests in Athens on Tuesday to denounce "imperialist" US involvement in wars in the Middle East. "During the two days of Obama's visit, protests and assemblies are banned for security and public order reasons," police said in a statement Monday. The boosted police measures also come after unknown assailants threw a grenade at the French embassy in Athens last week, slightly wounding an officer on duty. Police blamed anarchists for the attack. ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek left-wing urban guerrilla group on Monday claimed responsibility for an attack with a hand grenade on the French embassy in Athens last week, which wounded one guard. The attackers were riding a motorcycle when they threw the hand grenade outside the building opposite parliament, in one of Athens's best-guarded areas. The attack occurred less than a week before a planned visit by U.S. President Barack Obama on Nov. 15-16. In a statement uploaded on Athens Indymedia website, the Revolutionary Self-defense Group described the attack saying it was in protest at France's foreign policy and its treatment of refugees. The group has also claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of the Socialist PASOK party in Athens in 2014 and an attack against the Mexican embassy in August. "The political aim of the Revolutionary Self-defense Group in all three armed interventions was clear: attacking the state oligarchy, the dictatorship of the capital and its armed guards," the group said, warning of more attacks against police. Greek police were investigating the authenticity of the claim, one official said. Small-scale attacks on businesses, police, politicians and embassies are frequent in Greece, which has a long history of political violence and is struggling to emerge from a huge debt crisis which has sent thousands to unemployment and cut incomes. Police on Monday banned public gatherings in a large swathe of central Athens during Obama's visit, excluding an area where protesters typically gather for demonstrations. (Reporting by Renee Maltezou; editing by Grant McCool) BISSAU (Reuters) - Guinea Bissau's president said on Monday he would dissolve the government and appoint another soon, as part of a plan to end political deadlock that has gripped the country for over a year. Prime Minister Baciro Dja was appointed in May to ease tensions that have paralysed the West African country's political institutions since August 2015, the fourth prime minister in nine months. He has failed to win the full support of his ruling PAIGC party. "I will dismiss this government and appoint without delay a prime minister who must form an inclusive government," President Jose Mario Vaz said. "I hope to put an end to another episode of instability in our country." It was not clear when the government would be dissolved and who would take over as prime minister. The former Portuguese colony has seen nine coups or attempted coups since 1980. The turbulence has helped it become a major transit point for cocaine trafficked from South America to Europe. Political rivals in September agreed to a road map to ease a crisis that has prevented parliament from agreeing budgets and blocked international aid to the poor, cashew-exporting country of 1.7 million. The six-point plan, put together with the help of regional mediators, included a preliminary agreement to form a consensus government. (Reporting by Alberto Dabo; writing by Edward McAllister; editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew Roche) Arbid (Iraq) (AFP) - The Islamic State group drone hovered in the sky over the advancing Iraqi forces before dropping a grenade, the jihadists' latest move to weaponise small off-the-shelf aircraft. Down below, the grenade exploded on the roof of a building where Iraqi police forces were sheltering as they advanced some 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Mosul, the last IS-held Iraqi city. No one was injured, according to an Iraqi officer, but the incident nonetheless represents another escalation in the war of commercially available drones that is playing out as Iraqi forces battle the jihadists. Masters of invention, IS jihadists have booby trapped household appliances and turned cars into armoured suicide bombs as they try to stymy the Iraqi forces. Now they seem to have found another way to try to slow the progress: weaponising the $1,000 drones that they normally use to spy on their foes. "We have recorded three incidents," police Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Moayyad told AFP. The jihadists appear to have used an add-on -- similar to those intended to help fisherman drop their hooks farther out at sea -- to release the drone's payload, Moayyad said. They rig the grenade so the pin is pulled free when the explosive device is dropped, arming it. While this attack was relatively primitive and -- for now -- pretty ineffective, IS drones have already proved more deadly in other ways. Last month a hobby plane rigged with explosives killed two Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and injured two French soldiers. According to a US defence official, the incident unfolded on October 2 when a small plane with a styrofoam body was either shot down or crashed in Arbil in northern Iraq. Two Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters grabbed it and took it back to their camp to inspect and photograph it, when it blew up. - Duelling drones - IS is flying drones to spy on Iraqi forces -- so Iraqi forces are sending up their own devices to spot the enemy as well. Story continues Moayyad watched a screen inside a specially converted armoured bank van he has turned into a mobile drone control centre. "Now I am entering the dangerous zone, this is where Daesh is," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS as he manoeuvered the drone's remote control to focus on jihadist positions some five kilometres (three miles) away. Like the IS operation, the Iraq police have also cobbled their drone programme together with shop-bought equipment and ingenuity. Moayyad -- who has a masters degree in computing -- modified drones bought in Dubai and Turkey to give them greater range, longer battery life and the ability to film at night. When he spots enemy movement, he coordinates with the Iraqi artillery, air force or sometimes the US-led coalition bombarding IS from the sky. In eastern Mosul, Iraqi special forces soldiers are using drones for the same purpose. "There were three car bombs coming out from Al-Bakr toward our positions that we spotted with our drone and hit with our tanks," Staff Lieutenant Colonel Muntadhar Salem recently told AFP, referring to an area in the city. In total, Moayyad said, the Iraqi police force drones -- superior to the ones IS use -- end up costing somewhere around $26,000. But despite having superiority over the jihadists, he said the Iraqi forces could do with equipment that can let you take control of unknown drones, especially now that IS is arming them. "Maybe they could get bigger drones," Moayyad said. "And if they manage to use chemical weapons on them, then this is more scary, of course." On Monday, President Obama travels to Greece at the start of a trip that will also bring him to Germany and Peru. The stop in Greece, per the White House, will be an opportunity for the U.S. reaffirm our support for ongoing efforts to place the Greek economy on a path to sustainability and renewed prosperity. That goal, reassuring the world about the U.S. commitment to the Greek economy, is a departure from the Cold War concerns that dominated when a sitting U.S. president visited that nation for the first time, in December of 1959, when Dwight Eisenhower paid an official visit. (George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton would later do the same; President Obama is the fourth.) The voyage was part of a trip that was, at the time, the longest foreign voyage ever made by a sitting president, as TIME reported: he will travel for 19 days through 19,600 miles by plane, 270 by helicopter, 1,500 by ship, 1,000 by train and car. The trip was an attempt to show, while visiting 11 nations, that he supported the goals that free nations share. More specifically, however, Eisenhower had some things to talk about with Greeces leadership, as TIME explained: Such Greek problems as Cyprus and the threat of Iron Curtain countries to the north got a thorough going-over during Ikes talks with Premier Constantin Karamanlis. The Greeks, too, delicately hinted that the President should not put too much stock in Russian peace talk, reminded him that they had fought a bitter civil war to drive the Communists out of the country after World War II. Greece had staked out a priority interest in all Balkan affairs, and got from Ike his assurances that the U.S. and Greece would consult on such affairs. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter But, TIME noted, Eisenhowers visit was not just about the Cold War: when he arrived in Athens, cheering throngs lined the streets as he passed in a Rolls-Royce with King Paul of Greece. Ike could see the Parthenon glowing in light on the Acropolis, the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and a small obelisk monument to Americans who were killed in Greeces 1821-29 war for independence from the Ottoman Empire, the magazine continued, before he laid a wreath at that monument. As the crows cheered, he was seen to laugh in joy over the happy welcome he received. I think hes absolutely getting to love this, a staffer told TIMEs reporter. He doesnt say so, but hed have to be superhuman not to feel this way. Read the full story, here in the TIME Vault: Pages of History Harman International Industries, Incorporated HAR is being acquired by Asian giant, Samsung Electronics, in an all cash deal worth $8 billion (or $112 per share representing 28% premium to Nov 11, 2016 closing price). Following the takeover, Harman will function as an independent unit with CEO Dinesh Paliwal retaining his responsibilities. The acquisition, which is anticipated to close by mid 2017, has been approved by both the companies. It now awaits shareholders approval. Reportedly, if all goes well, Harman will be the biggest acquisition by Samsung, whose business is reeling under the recent Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Adding to troubles, the company had to recall a batch of its washing machines anticipating explosion. Of late, there has been tremendous interest in the auto sector as behemoths like Apple AAPL, Alphabet GOOGL, and Tesla TSLA pumping ample resources in developing self driving car technology. Samsung has long been trying to enter the automotive space. Therefore, the acquisition of Harman, an already established player in the arena, makes complete sense. Per the press release, Harman reported $7 billion in revenues for the year ended Sep 30, 2016, out of which nearly 65% were automotive related. It also added that 30 million vehicles across the globe are equipped with its connected car and audio systems. More importantly, the order backlog stands at an impressive $24 billion. Samsungs CEO was quoted saying HARMAN perfectly complements Samsung in terms of technologies, products and solutions, and joining forces is a natural extension of the automotive strategy we have been pursuing for some time. As a Tier 1 automotive supplier with deep customer relationships, strong brands, leading technology and a recognized portfolio of best-in-class products, HARMAN immediately establishes a strong foundation for Samsung to grow our automotive platform. Samsung has said that its Automotive Electronics Business Team, created in 2015 to explore business opportunities in the automotive sector, will now assist Harman. Story continues HARMAN INTL IND Price HARMAN INTL IND Price | HARMAN INTL IND Quote Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported that it is unlikely that Samsung will be making self driving cars. It will indeed leverage the Harman acquisition to boost the sale of its mobile services, display panels and semiconductors in the growing connected car solutions industry. The report also added that Samsung, which for long has stuck to developing its capacities internally, is now rapidly making a change in its strategy. Of late, the Korean giant has been on a deal-making spree to quickly up its ante in fast growing business areas like cloud, mobile payments etc. A cash pile of $71 billion adequately backs the change in Samsungs strategy, further adds The Wall Street Journal. At present, Harman has 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 HARMAN INTL IND (HAR): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA MOTORS (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The Japanese master of animation is thought to be preparing his 12th feature film, three years after announcing his retirement. Just a few months after the release of his movie "The Wind Rises," in September 2013, Hayao Miyazaki took the decision to stop directing animated feature films. Now, as his 76th birthday approaches, the Japanese filmmaker could be coming out of retirement with an upcoming film entitled "Boro the Caterpillar." Miyazaki has had the story of this little caterpillar in mind since the 1990s. In 1997, the director set the project aside to work on "Princess Mononoke," before taking it up again a few years later to create a short film for the Studio Ghibli museum, which opened on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, in 2001. If the movie comes about, it will be the 12th feature-length film from Miyazaki, following "The Wind Rises," released in 2013. Since 1979's "The Castle of Cagliostro," the Japanese filmmaker's work has enjoyed success all around the world. Many of his works ("Castle in the Sky," "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro") are now considered classics of the animated genre. Hollywood paid tribute to the director in 2014 with an honorary Oscar recognizing his entire career. Hayao Miyazaki (Photo: Jim Smeal/BEI/BEI/Shutterstock) Legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has hinted about a return to feature film making. Speaking on an NHK television program, Miyazaki talked about turning "Boro The Caterpillar" ("Kemushi no Boro"), a CG short he has been making for the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo, into a feature film. Related: Japan Box Office: 'Your Name' Stays top in 12th Week, Beats 'Museum' Opening He said that he has shared a proposal with Toshio Suzuki, veteran producer at Studio Ghibli, which has been Miyazakis creative home for three decades. "I haven't said anything to my wife yet," Miyazaki confessed. "When I do, though, I'm ready to die in the middle (of production)." No formal announcement about production or release date has been made. Now 75, Miyzaki announced his retirement from feature film-making in September 2013, following the summer release of his last feature to date, the World War II-themed The Wind Rises. Related: AFM: Japanese Animated Film 'In This Corner of the World' Sells to France, Germany On the program, Suzuki said that Miyazaki has been "battling with CG" in the new project, a departure from the hand-drawn style of animation he used throughout his career. "Miyazaki is a person who will keep making films until he dies," Suzuki commented. "Ghibli will continue as long as Miyazaki continues to make films." There was a five-year gap between The Wind Rises and Miyazakis previous film as a director, the 2009 Ponyo. If Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli work at their regular pace the new film would appear in 2021, when the director turns 80. Related: Japanese Hit 'Your Name' Wins China Release Among Miyazaki's many honors is an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement, presented at the 6th Annual Governors Awards ceremony in November 2014. Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter , Facebook , Newsletter Hayao Miyazaki's 'Ponyo': Watch a trailer: Haylie Duff seems to be her familys go-to chef, but its a role that the Real Girls Kitchen host doesnt mind taking on. The problem is like now that I cook so much people, especially my family, are like, Well why dont you make the blah blah blah? Im like, Okay, so I guess Im making this or I guess Im making that,' Duff tells PEOPLE. So this holiday season, Duff is handling a Thanksgiving staple again. My sister is a big fan of turkey on Thanksgiving and shes very particular about it, explains Duff. She wants crispy skin, and she wants juicy turkey. So I think I did her proud last year, and Im all too happy to make her the turkey again. RELATED: Haylie Duff Follows This One Rule When Cooking for Her 15-Month-Old Daughter Ryan The delicious recipe, which consists of three different types of peppercorn, along with lemon and orange zest, star anise, tons of salt and a bunch of fresh herbs, is really, really simple, says the Cooking Channel host. And when it comes to side dishes, Duff, 31, has a few favorites shell definitely be whipping up this year. WATCH: Haylie Duff Shares Her Favorite Recipes I love making stuffing, shares Duff. I love making roasted root vegetables. I love a savory bread pudding. I love a great roasted chicken I love soup. However Duff, a mom to 18-month-old daughter Ryan, is still trying to figure out holiday foods that her baby girl can also enjoy. Im going to have to probably consider because shes still little, says Duff. She still has baby teeth and can only eat certain things. Along with prepping for Thanksgiving, Duff has also recently partnered with T.J.Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods for their Bring Back the Holidays campaign. I dont get to go home as much as Id like to, and I think thats something that most people feel, says the Texas-native, who hosted a dinner on Thursday to kick off the campaign, which focuses on creating opportunities to bring people together. Story continues This is what the holidays are about for me, intimate times with people that I love and great food and just sort of shutting everything off putting my phone away and just focusing on the people in my life, explains Duff. I want to share how I spend the holidays with people and I hope that, that inspires people to get involved with this campaign and share with me how they spend their holidays. As part of the campaign, T.J.Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods are inviting people to share how the retail stores and Duff can help bring back the holidays by using the hashtags #bringbacktheholidays and #contest on Twitter. We get to pick ten people to go home with their families, says Duff of the contest, which runs until Nov. 18. Then were putting together some care packages for them to really just set their holidays off right. RELATED: Haylie Duffs Jalapeno Chili Dogs As for her own holiday plans? My holidays are split into two this year, says Duff. So half of our holidays will be Thanksgiving with my dad in Texas and then the other half will be a little vacation for Christmas. The family, who usually goes to Duffs, her moms or sisters house for Christmas, where they always end up in pajamas, staying up late playing games or watching a movie, is doing something a little different this year and jet-setting to Hawaii. RELATED: Haylie Duffs Daughter Ryan Eats EverythingExcept This My mom has been saying, Lets do a vacation Christmas, and its something thats been on our bucket list for a long time, explains Duff. We finally just said, If were not going to do it now, when are we going to do it?' She adds: Its something a little different and were excited about it. We dont know what its going to look like necessarily, but were excited to do it. Mary Jo White Mary Jo White, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced Monday that she will step down at the end of the Obama administration. Her departure from the SEC had been expected in the wake of Donald Trump's surprise presidential election victory. Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner and an outspoken critic of the regulatory response to the financial crisis, is on Trump's transition team. And Trumps transition website has restated his intent to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with new policies to encourage economic growth and job creation. Financial stocks have rallied in the aftermath of Trump's election as president, in expectation of deregulation. "The Dodd-Frank Act will face significant structural changes both from administrative and legislative actions but we caution that unwinding the regulatory regime for financials will be a lengthy, complicated, and contentious process," research firm Compass Point said in a note to clients Monday. Credit Suisse analysts, meanwhile, said Monday that they considered Rep. Jeb Hensarling's CHOICE Act and House Speaker Paul Ryan's A Better Way as "among the most likely blueprints/starting points for potential regulatory reform." Here's the statement on White's upcoming departure: Washington D.C., Nov. 14, 2016 SEC Chair Mary Jo White, after nearly four years as the agencys head, today announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration. Under Chair Whites leadership, the Commission strengthened protections for investors and the markets through transformative rulemakings that addressed major issues highlighted by the financial crisis. The Commission also instituted a new approach to enforcement that has resulted in greater accountability and record actions through, among other things, the use of admissions of wrongdoing and enhanced data analytics and technology. Chair White, who became the 31st Chair of the SEC in April 2013, will be one of the SECs longest serving Chairs. Story continues It has been a tremendous honor to work alongside the incredibly talented and dedicated SEC staff members who do so much every day to protect investors and our markets, said Chair White. I am very proud of our three consecutive years of record enforcement actions, dozens of fundamental reforms through our rulemakings that have strengthened investor protections and market stability, and that the job satisfaction of our phenomenal staff has climbed in each of the last three years. I also want to express my appreciation for the engagement and dedication of my fellow Commissioners and my financial regulator colleagues, past and present. In addition to completing the vast majority of the agencys mandates under the Dodd-Frank Act and all of its mandates under the JOBS Act, Chair Whites leadership has advanced the agencys mission through other critical rulemakings and built robust and effective frameworks for the SECs regulatory regimes going forward. My duty has been to ensure that the Commission implemented strong investor and market protections, and to establish an enduring foundation for future progress in the most critical areas - asset management regulation, equity market structure and disclosure effectiveness, said Chair White. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the SECs staff, we have accomplished both. Chair White drove many important rules and other policy measures to completion. Under her leadership, the Commission advanced more than 50 significant rulemaking initiatives, including: Fundamental reforms to the money market fund industry and unprecedented new disclosures and protections for mutual fund investors in a major initiative to strengthen regulation of the $67 trillion asset management industry Enhanced equity market structure oversight, including wide-ranging new controls on how key market participants handle technology and systems issues A comprehensive framework for enhancing the effectiveness of corporate disclosure for investors Extensive new safeguards for the financial system and for investors in the more than $7 trillion security-based swap market New ways for smaller companies to raise capital needed to grow their businesses New post-crisis restrictions on proprietary trading and investments by broker-dealers and other financial institutions through the Volcker rule Major enhancements to transparency and risk management for asset-backed securities, which were a significant contributor to the financial crisis Strong operating standards for the clearing agencies that stand at the center of our financial system Extensive reforms to the regulation of credit rating agencies and how they address conflicts of interest that can harm investors First-ever regulatory framework for municipal advisors who are critical to the capital raising activities of thousands of local governments Modernized rules of practice for conducting administrative proceedings, including providing expanded rights of discovery To enhance accountability of those who violate the securities laws, Chair White implemented the Commissions first-ever policy to require admissions of wrongdoing in certain cases where heightened accountability and acceptance of responsibility is appropriate. Thus far, the Commission has required admissions from more than 70 defendants, including 44 entities and 29 individuals. During Chair Whites tenure, the Commission brought more than 2,850 enforcement actions, more than any other three-year period in the Commissions history, and obtained judgments and orders totaling more than $13.4 billion in monetary sanctions. The Commission charged over 3,300 companies and over 2,700 individuals, including CEOs, CFOs, and other senior corporate officers. The record number of enforcement actions over the last three fiscal years against companies and senior executives involved many first of their kind cases in asset management, market structure and public finance. Other major cases involved insider and abusive trading, violations of anti-corruption rules and misconduct in accounting and financial reporting. In the last year alone, the Commission brought a record 868 enforcement actions. And for the first time, the Commission devoted significant resources and emphasis on using cutting edge data analytics to uncover and investigate misconduct resulting in numerous enforcement actions involving insider trading, asset management and complex financial instruments. As a result of the successful whistleblower program, the Commission has awarded more than $100 million, since inception virtually all during Chair Whites tenure to whistleblowers who provided key original information that led to successful enforcement actions. Under Chair Whites leadership, the Commission made significant enhancements to its examination program, including increasing staff by about 20 percent by hiring new examiners where funding permitted and redeploying staff from other program areas to heighten focus on the fast-growing investment management industry. The exam program also increased its use of advanced quantitative techniques to enable examiners to detect misconduct by more quickly analyzing large amounts of data. Over the past year, the examination program conducted more than 2,400 formal examinations of registrants, an increase over each of the prior seven fiscal years. The Commission also enhanced technology in its examination program through the National Exam Analytics Tool (NEAT), which enables examiners to analyze large volumes of trading data much more efficiently. Chair White serves as a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and on several other domestic and international organizations, including the International Organization of Securities Commissions, the Financial Stability Board, the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation Monitoring Board, the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee, and the Federal Housing Finance Oversight Board. Chair White added, It has been and will always be critical for this agency and the public that the SEC remain truly independent. That independence is crucial to our ability to protect investors, safeguard our markets and facilitate the capital formation that fosters innovation and the growth that is essential to our national economy. Prior to her arrival at the Commission, Chair White spent decades as a federal prosecutor and securities lawyer. As the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1993 to 2002, she prosecuted cases involving complex securities and financial institution frauds, other white collar crime and international terrorists. She also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and was Chief Appellate Attorney of that offices Criminal Division. She served as Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York as well as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney. In private practice, she was a litigation partner and chair of the litigation department of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, overseeing more than 200 lawyers. Chair White is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American College of Trial Lawyers. NOW WATCH: Here's how much $100 is worth in every state More From Business Insider By Svea Herbst-Bayliss NEW YORK, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Healthcare stocks, including insurers, are primed for a shot in the arm from a Trump presidency and some hedge fund managers stand to reap the gains after making new bets in the sector in the third quarter. Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, who recently told clients that idiosyncratic opportunities have buoyed Third Point's portfolio this year, invested in insurer Humana Inc during the third quarter, according to a new filing. Loeb's hedge fund bought 1.4 million shares of Humana. Diamond Hill Capital, Samlyn Capital, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management and Clovis Capital Management also made new bets on the insurer, although they were far smaller, according to regulatory filings that show what U.S. stocks investment managers owned on Sept. 30. Over the last six weeks, Humana has been one of the sector's best performers, boasting a 12.16 percent gain since Sept. 30. Since January, the stock has gained 11 percent, handily outperforming the S&P 500's 6 percent gain. Some insurers including UnitedHealth Group Inc and Anthem Inc had said they are losing money on the healthcare exchanges created by President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. With Donald Trump vowing to overturn the law, UnitedHealth and Anthem have also posted strong gains since the end of the third quarter. Anthem has climbed 10.5 percent in the last six weeks with UnitedHealth gaining 9 percent and Aetna Inc posting a 7.5 percent rise. Investment managers Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management as well as Cornerstone Advisors Inc each raised their stakes in Anthem while Vulcan Value Partners and Two Sigma Investments increased their bets on UnitedHealth. Most investment managers released their 13-F filings on Monday and while the information is backward looking, it is watched closely by investors for hints of upcoming trends. The filings also reveal which managers made moves, identifying by name the investors who may have been behind big gyrations. Story continues Not all investors stuck with the insurers, however, with a good number trimming their investments in the run-up to the U.S. election. With most polls calling for Hillary Clinton to win the White House, some investors were concerned she could impose greater regulation on drug companies and curb their price hikes. Hedge fund Adage trimmed its bet on Humana but held onto 1.1 million shares. Arrowgrass Capital Partners cut its bet by nearly half but still owned 1.9 million shares. And Farallon Capital Management, founded by Tom Steyer, cut its position by 45 percent to 382,000 shares. Similarly, shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which drew Clinton's ire during the campaign for enormous price hikes, continue to drop in the last weeks amid fears about its debt load. Mutual fund powerhouse Fidelity Investments cut its Valeant stake by more than half. But with Trump heading to the White House in January, a number of investors said healthcare stocks, which had been undervalued, could now be poised for robust gains. Since the end of September, biotech company Celgene, whose blockbuster cancer drug Revlimid helped boost earnings, has gained 15.4 percent, making it the sector's top performer. Two Sigma boosted its investment by 200 percent to own 177 million shares. Carl Icahn, the activist investor, sold most of his shares in Allergan Plc just a few months after Pfizer walked away from a plan to merge with the company. Even in the second quarter, a number of investors had trimmed their holdings in Allergan. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f284603%2fco2emissionsgoodnews Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels stayed flat in 2015 for the third straight year despite economic growth, a new assessment has found. However, this pause in the growth of emissions is likely to be short-lived unless new emissions policies are accelerated, scientists say. The report, from researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Global Carbon Project, found that the world has slowed its annual growth rate of emissions from about 2.3 percent per year prior to 2013 down to a projected 0.2 percent in 2016. However, before you take this new information and pronounce global warming solved, two key facts are important to consider. One is that much of the slowdown is due to lower economic growth in China, according to co-author Glen Peters, a researcher at the and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo. SEE ALSO: Earth to Donald Trump: 2016 will be the hottest year on record Also, the climate doesn't respond to the rate at which emissions are rising what matters is that we're still emitting greenhouse gases in the first place, which is what is causing global temperatures to increase and is having a host of damaging consequences. The report notes that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air will continue rising until emissions are reduced to zero, which no major emitter, such as the U.S., China or India, is currently on course to do. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere exceeded the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million in 2016, which is the highest level in human history. Global trends in carbon dioxide emissions during 2015. Image: global carbon project The good news in the report, Peters told Mashable in an interview, is that the pause in emissions growth provides an opportunity to take steps that would ensure that there is not another spike in carbon pollution. You could see it as an opportunity to sort of lock in those gains, Peters said, noting that it's possible that China could see its carbon emissions peak several years earlier than its target date of 2030. Story continues The report, released at the U.N. Climate Summit in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday, shows that emissions growth held below 1 percent in 2015 despite global economic growth of 3 percent. This is a great help for tackling climate change but it is not enough," said Corinne Le Quere, the director of the Tyndall Center at the University of East Anglia. "Global emissions now need to decrease rapidly, not just stop growing. A Chinese worker drives a wheel loader to pile up coal at a coal yard in Yichang city, central China's Hubei province, July 12, 2016. Image: Zhou jianping - Imaginechina On a country by country level, the report found that in China, to world's top emitter, carbon pollution actually decreased in 2015 by 0.7 percent, compared to a 5 percent increase the previous year. Peters attributed this trend to a slowdown in China's economy as well as increased use of renewables like wind and solar. The U.S. also reduced its emissions by 2.6 percent in 2015, thanks to declining coal use. However, other countries are seeing their emissions grow as they expand access to electricity. India, for example, showed a 6.3 percent increase in carbon emissions in 2015, the report found. Globally, countries still are not yet on track to meet the temperature targets agreed to under the Paris Climate Agreement, which obligates countries to cut emissions enough to limit global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, below preindustrial levels by 2100. The New York resident taking a photo with Hillary Clinton on a hike the day after her concession speech has been accused of staging the picture. Read: Woman Distraught Over Election Bumps Into Hillary Clinton on Hike: 'All I Wanted to Do Was Hug Her' It happened in the woods near the Clinton estate in Chappaqua, New York Thursday. Hillary, Bill and their two dogs were on a stroll at the same time a young mother, Margot Gerster, was taking a hike with her daughter to try and shake off her sadness at the Democratic presidential candidates loss. Gerster told Inside Edition of the Clintons: They seemed like a normal happy married couple taking their dogs for a walk. After she posted the photo to Facebook, where it quickly went viral around the world, one internet troll remarked: "It's so fake, it is comical." She contends that the hiking encounter is the real deal, telling Inside Edition the photo was "absolutely not staged" and that she's "saddened people think it's false." Gerster once met the former New York senator before when her mother held a fundraiser for Hillary at The Crabtree Kittle House in Chappaqua. Read: Hillary Clinton's Path to Becoming First Female Presidential Candidate in U.S. History While watching Clintons concession speech Wednesday, Gerster said: "All I wanted to do is hug her... and tell her how proud I was to take my daughter with me to vote. Then I got to see her and actually do that and that's crazy amazing spectacular! Watch: Mom Photographs Sleeping Daughter, 5, Clutching Hillary Clinton Action Figure Related Articles: Geneva (AFP) - Geneva's autumn jewel auctions got underway Tuesday, with Russian oligarchs and Chinese billionaires among those eyeing up the array of eye-wateringly expensive bling on offer. The Swiss city's twice-annual sales of rare jewels are often dominated by stones the size of door-stoppers. But this week, gems valued by their weight in carats will share centre stage with gems enriched by the weight of history -- including Russian diamonds that reputedly helped broker peace between warring empires three centuries ago. Christie's kicked off the sales at the luxury Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues on Lake Geneva, with an anonymous telephone bidder snapping up the most closely-watched item -- a pair of Boehmer and Bassenge earrings -- for a cool $17.61 million (16.42 million euros) including commission. Tobias Kormind, head of the 77 Diamonds firm that tracks the global diamond market, said elite collectors are more attracted to loose stones rather than show-stoppers like the earrings, composed of two flawless white diamonds weighing 52.55 carats and 50.47 carats. "These earrings are far more likely to be a gift for someone to wear for special occasions," he said ahead of the sale, noting that the list of people interested in socialising with more than 100 carats worth of diamonds on their ears is limited. The earrings fell a little short of the expected price, valued by Christie's at $20-$30 million. A necklace made of three huge diamonds by the same jeweller went under the hammer for $8.06 million. - 'Peace-making' diamonds - Rival Sotheby's takes its turn on Wednesday across the road at the five-star Hotel Beau Rivage. Among Sotheby's showcase offers is a parure featuring diamonds once owned by Russian empress Catherine I that were given to her by her husband, czar Peter the Great, who led Russia until his death in 1725. In 1711, Catherine was worried that a raging conflict with the Ottoman Empire posed an existential threat to Russia and ordered her husband -- in the middle of the night -- to draft a peace treaty, Sotheby's said, citing historical records. Story continues Without telling Peter, Catherine sent the peace proposal and all the jewels she was travelling with to the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III. The Sultan "accepted these and was obviously delighted, and the truce was given and the (Russian) empire was saved", David Bennett, head of Sotheby's International Jewellery Division, told AFP. The parure featuring Catherine's diamonds is expected to sell for between $3 million and $5 million. In an auction heavy on Russian imperial treasures, Sotheby's is also offering a diamond necklace with a detachable clasp owned by empress Catherine II -- Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796. It is similarly valued at up to $5 million. - $180 million of bling - Nothing sold on Tuesday night came close to the eye-popping records set by coloured stones at recent sales. Christie's set the current mark in May, selling the 14.62-carat "Oppenheimer Blue" for $57.54 million. That beat a record set a year ago by Sotheby's, when Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau bought the 12.03-carat "Blue Moon of Josephine" for $48.4 million. Christie's is aiming to capitalise on the still-solid coloured stones market with a 9.14-carat Fancy Vivid Pink estimated at $16-$18 million. The rare "Fancy Vivid" classification is awarded by the Gemological Institute of America to signify a stone's exceptional colour and clarity. Sotheby's top coloured gem going under the hammer this week is the 8.01-carat "Sky Blue Diamond", with a pre-auction estimated price of $15-$25 million. Sotheby's has estimated its 342-lot auction at a total of $100 million, while Christie's is offering 220 lots, with an estimated value of $80 million. In the past week, there have been reports of public American flag burning in isolated protests about Tuesdays presidential election results. The controversy over the act goes back to another political protest about presidential elections. Attorney William Kuntsler with Gregory Lee Johnson On August 22, 1984, Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag at the Republican National Convention in Dallas in a protest about both presidential candidates that year: Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. Officials there arrested Johnson and convicted him of breaking a state law; he was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine. The legal challenges mounted by Johnson led to a Supreme Court decision in his favor, debates in Congress, a second Supreme Court decision, and an almost constitutional amendment. Today, flag burning remains legal as a form of First Amendment protest and it is on the short-list of constitutional amendments that will be proposed in the next Congress, which convenes in early January. In the current Congress, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana reintroduced a proposed American flag desecration amendment in July 2015. It was sent to the Judiciary Committee, which took no action on the proposal. The last time an anti-flag burning amendment was considered by a full Congress was in 2006, when it failed in the Senate by just one vote after the House easily passed it with a two-thirds majority vote. However, the bar to any constitutional amendment remains high, with two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states needing to approve any changes to the Constitution. (The Constitutions Article V also allows for an amendment process by state conventions, which hasnt been used.) The Supreme Court case that first established flag burning as a protected First Amendment act was Texas v. Johnson. On June 21, 1989, a deeply divided Court voted 5-4 in favor of Johnson, the protester in Texas. Johnsons actions, the majority argued, were symbolic speech political in nature and could be expressed even if it upset those who disagreed with him. Story continues Justice William Brennan wrote the majority decision, with Justices Anthony Kennedy, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun and Antonin Scalia concurring. Johnson was convicted for engaging in expressive conduct. The States interest in preventing breaches of the peace does not support his conviction because Johnsons conduct did not threaten to disturb the peace, said Brennan. Nor does the States interest in preserving the flag as a symbol of nationhood and national unity justify his criminal conviction for engaging in political expression. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing a concurrence, spelled out his reasoning succinctly. The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result, Kennedy said. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases. Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented, along with John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day OConnor, and Byron White. In his dissent, Rehnquist said that, the flag is not simply another idea or point of view competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas. I cannot agree that the First Amendment invalidates the Act of Congress, and the laws of 48 of the 50 States, which make criminal the public burning of the flag, he said. In reaction to the Johnson decision, which only applied to the state of Texas, Congress passed an anti-flag burning law called the Flag Protection Act of 1989. But in 1990, the Court struck down that law as unconstitutional in a second case, United States v. Eichman. If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable, said Justice William Brennan. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the dissent in that Eichman decision. The flag uniquely symbolizes the ideas of liberty, equality, and tolerance ideas that Americans have passionately defended and debated throughout our history, he wrote. Thus, the Government may indeed, it should protect the symbolic value of the flag without regard to the specific content of the flag burners speech. The cases remain controversial to the present day. Justice Antonin Scalia voted with the majority in both flag burning cases, and in one of his last public events, he explained his reasoning on the principal of a textual reading of the First Amendment. If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag, Scalia said at a November 2015 event in Philadelphia. But I am not king. For now, the issue goes to the 113th Congress, which convenes on January 3, 2017 in Washington, D.C. It remains to be seen if a new amendment will make it to a floor vote. Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center. Election Resources on Constitution Daily When the Supreme Court ruled to allow American flag burning Close election causes another Electoral College debate Explaining how recounts and contested presidential elections work UPS operations Aircraft maintenance workers at United Parcel Service have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike in a decision that could paralyze shipments. About 80% of workers who are responsible for servicing UPS's fleet of planes took part in the vote, and of those, 98% voted to authorize a strike. The decision comes after three years of negotiations with UPS over the workers' wages and health benefits. If the workers go on strike, it could halt UPS's global shipping operation. But it's unikely that a strike will happen during the holiday period, when UPS is expected to ship at least 700 million packages. "Our customers remain in good hands with UPS throughout the holidays," UPS spokesman Mike Mangeot said. "Any kind of job action would be illegal under US labor law." Under the US Railway Labor Act which governs the maintenance workers the union representing the workers must have government approval to go on strike. A board of officials appointed by the president would be responsible for making that decision, and that process can take up to 30 days. The union representing the workers Teamsters Local 2727 say the biggest issue in the negotiations is related to health care. According to the union, UPS is proposing a reduction in health benefits for the maintenance workers and retirees. "Under UPSs proposal, health coverage for a retiree and his or her spouse would skyrocket to more than $19,000 per year in the first year with further increases each year thereafter," the union wrote in a release. "No one wants to go on strike, but I voted to strike because UPS mechanics and our families deserve better from UPS," Jim Kelley, a 29-year aircraft mechanic at UPSs Louisville, Kentucky, gateway said in a statement. NOW WATCH: We compared prices of Trader Joe's items to those of Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value here's what we found More From Business Insider Hollywood celebrated the life of legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune on Monday, honoring him with a star on its iconic Walk of Fame two decades after his death. Mifune rose to stardom through Akira Kurosawa's classics, including "Rashomon" (1950) and "Seven Samurai" (1954), with masculine portrayals of powerful warlords that earned him a reputation as the world's best samurai actor. He died in Tokyo at that age of 77 in 1997. He had been mostly confined to his home since suffering a heart attack five years earlier. His death shocked Japan's cinema industry, which took pride in him as its most presentable actor in international cinema, fondly calling him "Mifune of the world." Kurosawa cast Mifune in leading roles in all but one of 17 films he made between 1948 and 1965. "Rashomon," in which Mifune played a cynical bandit, won the Grand Prix award at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. Mifune played a peasant-turned samurai leading farmers' resistance against bandits in "Seven Samurai," which inspired two Western remakes, both titled "The Magnificent Seven" (1960 and 2016). Born in Qingdao, China, on April 1, 1920, to a photographic studio owner, Mifune joined film company Toho Co. in 1946 after serving six years in an Imperial Japanese Army aerial photography unit during World War II. He appeared in around 170 feature films, including such foreign productions as Terence Young's "Red Sun" (1972) and Steven Spielberg's "1941" (1979). He also starred in the 1980 popular US television mini-series "Shogun," based on James Clavell's bestselling book. Mifune's last role on the silver screen was in "Fukai Kawa (Deep River)" in 1995, in which he portrayed a man tortured to the last moment of his life by his experience eating one of his comrades during war. He left assets of 630 million yen (then $5.4 million), according to local tax officials. Story continues "My grandfather passed away when I was nine so the memories I have of him are mainly as a grandfather figure, but I remember him as a gentleman at home," said his grandson, the actor Rikiya Mifune. "He would talk in a gruff and manly manner and always have perfect posture, like a true samurai, even at home." His life is the subject of documentary "Mifune: The Last Samurai," screened at the American Film Institute's AFI Fest this year. It is set to be released in US theaters on December 2. Tom Dixon for Bronte. Since it opened in July on the Strand, Bronte (bronte.co.uk) has been creating considerable buzzand not just for its wide-ranging, daylong food-and-drink menus overseen by executive head chef Andrew Lassetter. Its vibrant interiors are giving the Trafalgar Square restaurant a serious pulse, attracting diners who may be design buffs first and foodies second. Owned by Trevor and Adam Davies, the father-and-son proprietors of Londons cabaret-themed bar Circus, the 260-seat Bronte serves up an enticing atmosphere courtesy of Tom Dixon and his Design Research Studio (designresearchstudio.net). The Tunisian-born British designer divided the eatery into several spaces punctuated by pops of color and filled them with his pieces. Dixons Fan chairs in black populate the main dining room, which also includes an open green-granite kitchen and a pink-concrete breakfast bar. A handful of steps lead down to the cocktail area, where guests pull black stools up to a gleaming pewter bar. Here, custom green-leather booths pair remarkably well with Dixons dark-teal Micro Wingback chairs and salmon-colored Scoop chairs. Suspended from the ceiling are his spherical, brass-plated Plane fixtures, arranged in rows like theater lights. It all sets the stage for Lassetters culinary creations. Guests seated in the main dining area eat and drink beneath Dixons Fade pendant lights, which hang in glimmering gold clusters, and catch glimpses of the bustling city through nearly ceiling-high arched windows. Se Already known as a hub of fine design, Londons Brompton district received a style boost with the September opening of the Se showroom. On display in the European brands new 680-square-foot flagship are three notable collections: one each from French designer Damien Langlois-Meurinne, Slovenia-based Nika Zupanc, and Spanish-born Jaime Hayon. Zupancs Stay bench (about $3,205 as shown), which made its London debut at the showroom, captivates with its oblong powder-coated steel frame and the clients choice of upholstery. (se-collections.com) Story continues The Rug Company For nearly two decades this maker of hand-knotted rugs has worked with top designers on its fun and fresh creations, and the companys latest additions are the cultivations of one longtime collaborator: the British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Among her four most recent designs for the brand is Viviennes Rose Dust ($145 per square foot), a wool-and-silk botanical print depicting mauve-colored roses in bloom. (therugcompany.com) Jay Jeffers for Wildhawk The San Franciscobased PlumpJack Group has added another bar to its home-city portfolio. Wildhawk, located in the Mission District, opened in April as a cozy watering hole with eclectically elegant interiors by Jay Jeffers. In the mix are modern zebra-print barstools, vintage-style punched-tin ceiling tiles, and floral wallpaper. Throughout the space, patrons encounter nods to the bars namesake: Lola Wildhawk Montez, an Irish dancer who entertained the City by the Bay in the mid-1800s. (jayjeffers.com, wildhawksf.com) Christian Lacroix for Roche Bobois Color is not an afterthought in an eye-catching furnishings line recently introduced by the Parisian houses Christian Lacroix and Roche Bobois. The collection, which debuted in September, includes a side cabinet, a console, and the chairs shown here ($1,470 each). Mimicking the shape of haute-couture mannequins, the chairs have brass leg coverings and an ivory-and-black striped pattern with a contrasting hit of red, fuchsia, or blue on the outside of the seat back. (roche-bobois.com) Neri & Hu for Poltrona Frau The accessories created by Shanghais Neri & Hu studio for the Italian company Poltrona Frau ensure that the entrywaythe space guests first set foot ingets more than a passing glance. The five designs in the Ren collection are equally suited for use elsewhere in the home and incorporate materials such as Canaletto walnut, brass, and leather. The mirrored clothes rack ($4,590) features a brass-and-leather-framed mirror and two brushed-steel coat hooks. (poltronafrau.com) Kelly Hoppen for Resource Decor Earlier this year, the London-based designer Kelly Hoppen celebrated a career spanning four decades with a striking new line of furnishings for Resource Decor. Called Retrospective, the assemblage includes more than 100 pieces ranging from velvet chairs to copper pendant lights. Among the standouts is the Sting Chest ($6,597), a black maple cabinet with angular handles and legs in mirrored brass. (resourcedecor.com) More From Robbreport.com This Breguet Watch Sounds as Beautiful as It Looks When Did the Cocktail Scene Go from Fuzzy Navels to Negronis? Monet Painting Sells for a Record $81.4 Million at Christies Auction Barclay Butera Puts His Spin on a Custom Rolls-Royce Breaking News: Lamborghini Reveals Its New Huracan Rear-Wheel-Drive Spyder One of the Most In-Demand Fine Jewelry Designers Is under 30 BANNOCKBURN, IL / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / ID Global Corporation (IDGC) has announced the appointment of Ken Berscht as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The appointment is part of the Company's launch of a new business strategy lead by Mr. Berscht. Mr. Berscht will be announcing new Executive Officers and Directors, as he transitions into the CEO position, and assumes the day to day administrative tasks of operating a public company. Mr. Berscht is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario where he received a degree in Honours Business Administration from the Richard Ivey School of Business. Mr. Berscht has been a member of the investment dealers' association of Canada and has qualified as a General Principal with the NYSE. He has served as president and director of many companies with emphasis on the natural resources' industry. He is a member of the Society of Mining, metallurgy, and engineering and is a senior member of the Rotary Club. Mr. Berscht has been a mutual fund administrator in the Cayman Islands where he managed an oil and gas fund for middle-eastern clients. He is also a partner with a firm in Taiwan where he has assisted in a financing in a mining venture in Ireland. About ID Global Corporation: ID Global Corporation (IDGC) is a diversified holdings company with a focus on emerging and middle market investment opportunities Worldwide. IDGC seeks, through debt and equity investments, controlling interests, joint ventures and licensing agreements with established companies. Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains statements which may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of ID Global Corporation and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated or changes to future operating results. Story continues Contact: idglobalinfo@gmail.com SOURCE: ID Global Corporation Photo credit: undefined From Redbook Nickol is a mother of two young daughters, 4 and 6, living in Plano, Texas. She is pregnant with a son on the way. She voted for Donald Trump to be President. Why I voted for Donald Trump is complicated. He's certainly not who I would have picked to be the final Republican candidate. I supported Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, but when it came down to Trump and Hillary Clinton, I felt like America had a better shot with Trump. I think that he understands the frustrations Americans are currently facing. I don't feel like Hillary understands that; I think she's very out of touch. The fact that some people supported Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman - that is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I don't think you can vote for somebody just because they have a vagina. That's ridiculous. It's like voting for somebody just because they're black. You cannot do that. You have to vote for who you feel is the best candidate and will have the most positive impact. And voting for someone based on their gender is sexism - this situation may be the reverse of typical sexism we hear about it, but it's still sexism. People have a lot of misconceptions about me as a Republican woman, like that I'm racist and full of hatred or that I don't support women's rights. I've had Democratic women tell me, "I hope you don't have any daughters." I do, so that's very hurtful. Sure, there are some sort of Trump supporters that are racist and sexist, but I think we've been painted in a very bad way. Of course I support women's rights. I think we need to pay better attention to women's rights! They've been ignored for too long. We need policies in place to protect women, like paid maternity leave. Not having that is detrimental to families. As a mother who breastfed her children, I want better support for women who nurse. And the childcare costs in this country are impossible. I stay at home, and I don't know how women who don't and have multiple children can pay for childcare costs. It's my understanding that Trump is pushing for six weeks of paid maternity leave. Ideally, eight or twelve weeks would be much better, but that's definitely a step in the right direction. He has also talked about giving more relief to the people who need childcare - like an added tax deduction for up to four kids, and you can write it all off - and I think that will be very beneficial to women I know. I'd definitely like to see the repeal of Obamacare, too. Currently, our healthcare costs more than our mortgage, so hopefully, from that perspective, Trump's America will be better for my family financially. Story continues Of course I support women's rights. They've been ignored for too long. I certainly don't stand behind certain things Trump said. I know he's not very eloquent and he doesn't necessarily speak in a way that a lot of people are comfortable with - and I know a lot of people got hung up on the comments he made on a tape from 2005. But I don't necessarily care what an elected leader says in private; I care more about what I think his actions will be. And I think Trump's actions will be ones that will be good for this country. Is he a good role model? No, I wouldn't say he's a good role model - but nor would I say Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton are good role models. My oldest daughter is a kindergartener and she's come home from school saying things like, "Trump is evil, how could anyone vote for him?" She hears that from her friends. You have to ask your kids,"Why do you think you heard that?" Obviously, she doesn't know anything about politics; you as a parent have to fill in the blanks with your kids. I told her, "Well, I don't think he's evil, I do think that he said some things that are not good." Because, yes, he's said things I don't like, but I think he's just one of those people who says things without a filter. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="My%20Family%20Refused%20to%20Support%20Hillary%20Clinton" customimages="" content="article.47014"] Bullies are a part of life. I don't think Donald Trump is a bully - his words, maybe, but not his actions. Bullies are everywhere, and you just try to make sure your child isn't one of them and you try to make sure your child is confident and strong enough that they stand up to any bullies they encounter. As a mother, I can assure you that my daughters are incredibly strong, confident little girls and I want them to grow up to be the kind of women that make up their own minds and make their own decisions. But I also want them to feel that they can healthily question authority, challenge the status quo, and be strong enough to face adversity. I want them to know they have a voice to be heard and that they can use that voice to bring about change. I think this election proved that America is no longer a country for the people, by the people, and we're sick of that. To me, Hillary Clinton represented the status quo. With fresh blood - like Trump - in Washington, I hope there will be more policies that are reflective of what people actually want. There are a lot of people who feel like their voices aren't being heard in America - and we are the people who voted for him. Follow Redbook on Facebook. You Might Also Like IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit against Sanderson Farms, Inc. ("Sanderson Farms" or the "Company") (SAFM). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between December 17, 2013 and October 6, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm in advance of the December 27, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline. If you purchased shares of Sanderson Farms during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang LLP, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. There has been no class certification in this case. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member. The complaint alleges that Sanderson Farms made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material information. On September 2, 2016, some media outlets reported the filing of an antitrust class action lawsuit against Sanderson Farms and some of its peers for conspiring to manipulate the price of broiler-chickens. Allegedly, in 2008, Sanderson Farms along with Tyson Foods and several other companies conspired by sharing proprietary data and reducing production to support prices. On October 4, 2016, a group of consumers filed an antitrust class action complaint against Sanderson Farms and several of its industry peers for violations of the Sherman Act. On October 7, 2016, Pivotal Research downgraded peer company Tyson Foods from "buy" to "sell," due to fears over the class action against the Company and its peers, which it called "powerfully convincing." When this information was disclosed, shares of Sanderson Farms declined in value, causing investors harm. If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit at no charge, or if you have any questions regarding this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. Story continues This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions. Contacts Joon M. Khang, Esq. Telephone: 949-419-3834 Facsimile: 949-225-4474 joon@khanglaw.com SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / Lundin Law PC, a shareholder rights firm, announces the filing of a class action lawsuit against Impax Laboratories, Inc. ("Impax" or the "Company") (IPXL) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws between February 25, 2014 and November 3, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period should contact the firm prior to the January 9, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline. To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here. You can also call Brian Lundin, Esquire, of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com. No class has been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member. The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Impax made false and/ misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that the Company was engaged in conduct that would trigger investigations of possible collusion of generic drug pricing by the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") and the Connecticut Attorney General; that the DOJ investigation and the underlying conduct would likely result in criminal charges against Impax for collusion of generic drug pricing; that the Company lacked effective internal controls over financial reporting; and that as a result of the above, Impax's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. Contact: Lundin Law PC Brian Lundin, Esq. Telephone: 888-713-1033 Facsimile: 888-713-1125 brian@lundinlawpc.com http://lundinlawpc.com/ SOURCE: Lundin Law PC JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police on Monday arrested five people in connection with a suspected militant attack on a church that killed one infant and injured three. Police said they were investigating possible links to the Islamic State extremist group. Sunday's attack in the parking lot of a church in East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo was the latest in a series that has raised concerns over rising militancy in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation. An Islamic State-linked assault in the capital Jakarta in January killed four people. Police said the attacker had been imprisoned on terrorism charges in the past and had links to existing radical networks. (Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Nick Macfie) The #views from the villa in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where exes Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick stayed during their weekend getaway extend to more than just her barely there bikini shot. The pair jetted off to Mexico with their three children, Mason, 6, Penelope, 4, and Reign, 23 months, who theyve been co-parenting, and called the Cape hotels Surfer Villa their home away from home during the quick trip. A private patio with direct beach access, a barbecue, wet bar and abundance of lounge seating offered plenty of space for Kardashian, 37, and Disick, 33, to hang out and enjoy meals al fresco. Kardashian also took advantage of the propertys private pool, sharing this cheeky shot on Instagram. Disick coordinated with In Cabo travel to plan a surprise for the kids a real life mermaid who made a casual pop up at the scenic swim spot. RELATED: Your Guide to the Kardashian Real Estate Empire WATCH THIS: Scott Disick Wants to Try and Make Things Work Again With Kourtney Kardashian: Source Inside, three bedrooms with walk-in closets and private bathrooms (with luxurious kimono robes and copper-leafed tubs), a laundry room, full kitchen, cocktail bar and mini bar make up the 3,000-square-foot digs. If there are any questions about the complimentary surf board rental, daily selection of snacks or turndown amenities, guests can always check with the personal butler whose services are included with the room. RELATED: Kylie Jenner Has a Boys Room Stocked with Issues of Playboy in Her House Although the former couple split last summer after a nine-year on-again, off-again relationship, they have remained close. A source told PEOPLE that, Scott set it all up and was a way to try and make things work again with Kourtney, adding, He surprised her and whisked her away on this trip. Kardashian, however, is hesitant to jump back into things with her ex. Right now I cant even wrap my head around that idea, she said on a recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Theres so much work that would be involved and Im so not even there yet. With student debt reaching a record $1.3 trillion, colleges are reporting the pain as students back away from taking on the expense of a college degree. According to a recent Gallup poll, 87 percent of college admissions directors of private colleges and 51 percent at public colleges say they're losing potential applicants because of fears about accumulating student loan debt. And according to government data, enrollment has dropped by about 800,000 from 2010 to 2014. Which begs the question, is investing in a college degree a worthwhile investment? "ROI (return on investment) is a major concern for most families, especially with students graduating with an average student loan debt of $37,000," says Kat Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise and an independent university admissions counselor. [See: 15 Money Management Tips for College Students.] The math. Just like any other investment, a look at its returns can determine if it's a good investment. For those without financial aid, the average cost of a four-year education in 2016, based on today's prices, is $129,640 for private colleges and $37,600 for public in-state colleges, according to the College Board (or less, of course, if you spend the first two years at a community college.) People with a four-year college degree make an average of $1,137 per week, which is $459 more per week than those with just a high school diploma, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2015 data. "As a result, a person with a bachelor's degree from a private school can recoup their cost of education, without considering other costs of living, in 5.4 years," says Michael Blattman, senior vice president of Collegiate Consolidation Services, a loan consolidation company. "Those with master's degrees can recover the cost of education in just 3.8 years, and those with a professional degree, in only 2.3 years." The unemployment rate also drops with each degree obtained, from 5.4 percent for high school diplomas to 2.8 percent for a bachelor's, to 1.7 percent for a doctorate, according to the bureau. Story continues And there is more income growth for an undergraduate degree, says Nayef Samhat, president of Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. "Those with a four-year degree earn (at least) 53 percent more than someone with a two-year degree and (at least) 60 percent more than someone with only a high school diploma," Samhat says. Which degrees pay the most? Which degree you choose has a big influence over your salary. "The income gap between the highest- and the lowest-paying college majors is more than $3 million (over the course of a lifetime, based on median wages)," Cohen says. Science, technology, engineering and math degrees account for the highest starting salaries, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employees, with engineering topping the list at an average starting salary of $65,000 for a bachelor's and $74,000 for a master's degree. Computer science was a close second. The difference between the highest STEM field majors and lowest paying majors is $3.4 million, according to a 2015 study by Georgetown University. "To maximize a student's education ROI, pay attention to the net cost of college when considering which school to attend, consider a degree that boosts marketability, and evaluate options, like community college, in-state public universities and grants and scholarships to help lower costs," Blattman says. Students can also shed thousands of dollars off their degrees by getting early college credits by taking CLEP or AP exams, or dual enrolling in college while still in high school. [See: 10 Out of the Box Ways to Save Money.] Many colleges such as Stanford and Harvard have programs that offer free tuition for students whose families make under a certain amount per year, Cohen says. Some states offer merit scholarships and private colleges often allow you to negotiate the price of your tuition. Apps, such as Scholly, can also help find scholarships. Avoid dropping out at all costs, and consider taking online classes to stay on track to graduate in four years. Those who drop out of college report having a harder time financially than those who did not attend college at all. Without college. If students think they're not yet ready for college, they should consider learning a skill that cannot be outsourced, says Kara Carrero, a parenting author, consultant and podcaster. "Even if it's not what they want for their lives, they have to think outside of the box to see how to be innovative in this high-tech world as to not have a job that can be done by a computer, outsourced, or rack up debt they can't pay off," she says. Trades can be lucrative. Dental hygienists average $72,000 per year, according to trade-schools.net, and plumbers can make $90,000 and more. Coding Dojo trains students to learn coding skills for an entry-level programming job in 14 weeks, for between $9,450 and $13,495. "Ninety percent of Coding Dojo students get a technology-related job within 180 days of graduating with an average starting salary of more than $70,000," says Austin Williams, spokesman for Coding Dojo. "Amazon ( AMZN), Expedia ( EXPE) and Microsoft ( MSFT) are the top three employers of Coding Dojo graduates." Outliers' success. The American Dream is built on success stories that show with enough drive, people can get ahead in this country by sheer will and hard work, even without a degree. Charles J. Bonfiglio, president and CEO of the multimillion-dollar international franchise Tint World, spent his teen and young adult years in business, not in a university. At age 21, he used his savings of about $25,000 and got a bank loan for about $60,000 to launch his franchise. Bonfiglio says working for a franchise is the fastest way to understand proven business systems, and owning one can be lucrative without a college degree. "Bottom line: All the formal education in the world can never prepare you for the constant reinvention it takes to stay ahead in the business world," he says. Josiah Nelson sold a company for eight figures and started several other successful companies, all without a college degree. [Read: 5 Reasons Donald Trump's Presidency Will Include a Recession.] "Without a college degree, most companies will immediately weed you out for a position even though you may otherwise have the skills for the job," he says. "I got where I am today by just making connections and putting my name out there. It takes time but it takes a lot less time than in college and I'm definitely better for it -- both experience and finances wise." Christine Giordano is a freelance business journalist with a passion to help consumers make educated decisions. Also a columnist for Newsday, you can follow her on Twitter @chrisgiordano. DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / ENSERVCO Corporation (NYSE MKT: ENSV) will host a conference call and live webcast to discuss the results of the third quarter 2016, to be held Monday, November 14, 2016 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. Live Event Information To participate, connect approximately 5 to 10 minutes before the beginning of the event. Date, Time: November 14, 2016 at 1:00 PM ET Toll Free: 877-407-8031 International: 201-689-8031 Live Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175408 or www.enservco.com Replay Information The replay will be available beginning approximately 2 hours after the completion of the live event, ending at midnight Eastern on November 21, 2016. Toll Free: 1-877-660-6853 International: 1-201-612-7415 Replay ID#: 3648502 Webcast: www.investorcalendar.com or www.enservco.com About ENSERVCO Through its various operating subsidiaries, ENSERVCO provides a wide range of oilfield services, including hot oiling, acidizing, frac water heating, water transfer, bacteria and scaling treatment, water hauling and oilfield support equipment rental. The Company has a broad geographic footprint covering seven major domestic oil and gas fields and serves customers in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Wyoming and West Virginia. Additional information is available at www.enservco.com. SOURCE: Investor Calendar (Repeats Sunday story with no changes) * China trying to arrest continuing fall in forex reserves * Beijing curbing channels for Chinese to invest overseas * Trade figures suggest a rise in fake invoices with HK * HK asset prices outperform, helped by flows from China By Saikat Chatterjee HONG KONG, Nov 13 (Reuters) - While Beijing has been busily damming up official channels for money to leave China, more than ever is leaking out through shady means as investors flee the country's slowing economy and weakening currency. China's official foreign exchange reserves fell more than half a trillion dollars last year and are still falling, with a loss of nearly $46 billion in October alone, and the International Institute of Finance think-tank estimates outflows doubled in the September quarter to more than $200 billion. To stem the flows, Beijing has frozen or restricted its main schemes allowing wealthy individuals (QDLP) and financial institutions (QDII) to invest overseas, and lawyers have noted a sharp slowdown in the approval process for large overseas direct investment (ODI) deals. "Fresh new QDII quotas have been broadly halted, ODI investments involving large amounts of foreign exchange remittance are taken on a case-by-case basis, and the QDLP scheme is undergoing a slowdown," said Yin Ge, counsel and head of financial services practice at Clifford Chance in Shanghai. Industry executives say there is no likelihood of any thaw in the coming months, so investors are seeking other means to get their cash out, such as faking trade transactions through Hong Kong. "The growth in the sheer volume of such transactions going through such channels means that even though more suspicious transactions are being caught by financial institutions, they represent a tiny fraction of the overall volumes of fake trade invoicing," said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist at Natixis in Hong Kong. SKIRTING RESTRICTIONS Official efforts to curb outflows have been extensive. Story continues Two executives at separate fund management companies in Hong Kong said the QDLP programme, halted since March this year, is likely to stay that way until mid 2017, according to briefings with government officials. For cross-border transactions above $50 million, government officials are demanding personal visits from investors to the offices of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the country's forex regulator, or asking them to pay by instalments. And they are bearing fruit. Outbound Chinese mergers and acquisitions in the September quarter have fallen by more than half to $38.4 billion from the March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data, and from $42.5 billion in the June quarter. Investment-linked insurance products, some offering returns of 6-7 percent, became an attractive alternative, with mainlanders accounting for more than half of AIA's annualised new premiums in Hong Kong, and similar figures for rival Prudential. But Beijing is also clamping down on that avenue, with China's biggest bank card provider UnionPay tightening regulations last month over how mainland customers can use its debit and credit cards to buy insurance products in Hong Kong. But one insurance industry executive said people were still finding a way to skirt the restrictions. "People will do what they need to do," he said. "Water flows through different places." TRADE CHANNELS Jolyon Ellwood Russell, partner at lawyers Simmons & Simmons, said international anti-money-laundering monitor Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had identified four main channels to bring money out of China: cash smuggling in vans, finance channels, trade and shadow banking. "The recent yuan weakness has meant that they are being used heavily," he said. With finance channels closing, fake trade invoicing has grown - as demonstrated by a growing gap between figures for Chinese imports from Hong Kong and Hong Kong's exports to China, which ought to be equal and opposite. In essence, Chinese importers overpay for goods from Hong Kong, the buyer declaring a larger figure to Chinese authorities than the seller declares in Hong Kong, with the difference parked in an offshore bank account. A three-month moving average to end-September shows the unexplained gap represents a staggering 70 percent of the total trade between the two, reaching its highest level this year of $1.4 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. Johnny Fang, senior analyst at Shanghai-based Z-Ben Advisors, says officials have stepped up their monitoring of cross-border trade transactions in recent months. The Joint Financial Intelligence Unit, an outfit comprising police and customs officials in Hong Kong, received 59,732 suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) in the first three quarters of 2016, doubling from the same period of 2015. This influx of Chinese cash is also causing headaches for Hong Kong authorities to handle, distorting asset prices in the city. "(It) explains the outperformance in Hong Kong stocks and property relative to global peers, and that is likely to continue," said Herrero at Natixis. (Additional reporting by Michelle Chen, Sumeet Chatterjee and Samuel Shen; Editing by Will Waterman) By Michael Georgy BASHIQA, Iraq (Reuters) - Days after helping to capture the Iraqi town of Bashiqa northeast of Mosul, Syrian Kurdish fighters walk proudly past the corpses of Islamic State combatants still lying in the ruins. As they inspect the devastated streets where militants hid in ditches under metal sheets, members of the 3,300-strong Rojava Brigade exude confidence. Fighting alongside Iraqi troops, Shi'ite militias and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters, they believe they can win the battle for Mosul, the jihadists' last big city stronghold in Iraq. They are also confident of defeating Islamic State in the civil war back home in Syria, where they hope to return to protect their fellow Kurds. But, in a situation that illustrates the complexities of the fight against the world's most dangerous militant group, rivalries between Kurdish groups are being played out across borders and preventing the Rojava Brigade fighting in Syria. "We want to protect our land and our people. We can defeat the jihadists at home," Brigadier General Mohamed Rashed, the leader of the Rojava Brigade, told Reuters in Bashiqa. But, speaking regretfully of the situation in Syria, he said: "We made several attempts to go back." Like about 20 percent of the men under his command, Rashed once served as an officer in the Syrian army. After an uprising broke out, he fled to Iraq, leaving behind his parents and dreams of creating an independent Kurdish state. Others also left for Iraq with the help of smugglers, then began military training with the Rojava Brigade in Iraq. For the last two years the brigade has received training and funding from the Zeravani, a police force controlled by the Iraqi Kurdish region's interior ministry. During that time it has joined Iraqi Kurdish forces in just about every battle against the jihadists, including the Mosul offensive, confronting highly skilled snipers, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombers. KURDISH RIVALRY Returning to Syria seems highly unlikely anytime soon. The main obstacle, Rashed says, is the Kurdish YPG militia, which is close to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Marxist group that has fought a three-decade insurgency with Turkey for more autonomy. The YPG has used the Syrian civil war to carve out an autonomous region across wide areas of northern Syria, which is known as Rojava in Kurdish. Ties between the main Syrian Kurdish groups and the Iraqi Kurdish authorities are however tense. The head of the Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria accused the Iraqi Kurdish authorities earlier this year of imposing a siege on Rojava by closing their border, saying the Iraqi Kurds were acting in collusion with Turkey against them. The United States regards the YPG as an ally in its fight against Islamic State, but Turkey considers it as a terrorist organization because of it has links with the PKK. YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said he had no knowledge of the Rojava Brigade but that military groups formed outside the Syrian Kurdish area were in general not allowed to enter the territory. "It is not permitted for any other military force formed outside Rojava or Syria to enter Rojava without the permission of the YPG and the (Kurdish) self-administration, because then there will be anarchy and this is what we absolutely cannot accept, particularly if this group does not recognize the legitimacy of the YPG and the self-administration," he said. Both Syrian and Iraqi Kurds have been repressed by Arab governments in their own countries. Divisions among Kurds make the long-held Kurdish dream of an independent state across Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey even more remote. Since 2014, when Islamic State swept through northern Iraq, 41 members of the Rojava Brigade have been killed and 200 have been wounded. Among these was a senior officer killed by an Islamic State sniper last week. The Rojava Brigade has been helping clear jihadists from Bashiqa and other towns and villages. Graffiti on the pockmarked walls in some parts of Bashiqa declare Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the leader of the world's Muslims, harking back to the group's tight grip on the town until last week. In one street, the corpse of an Islamic State fighter lays with a rusty metal rod attached to his lower leg, an apparent attempt to support a broken bone before he died. A dirt tunnel inside one house leads to a spotless room once occupied by an Islamic State emir, or leader. It has wooden walls and an air conditioning unit. Faisal Ayu, 40, arrived in Iraq in 2004. After he joined the Rojava Brigade and fought Islamic State, he was wounded by a suicide bomber in a car. That did not break his resolve, and now he is eager to fight the militants back home in northern Syria. He rejects the idea of fighting YPG, saying Kurds fighting Kurds would cross a red line drawn by Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, in his capacity as commander-in-chief. "We will wait," he said. For now, they can only dream. Step by step we will create Kurdistan, said Rojava fighter Safwan Hassan, 24. (Created by Michael Georgy, editing by Timothy Heritage and Pravin Char) The Iraqi Army said on November 13 that it had captured the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud from Islamic State. A Facebook post that reports on the operation to retake Mosul reported the advance. Nimrud, which is a UNESCO site, has been under the Islamic State control for about two years and lies approximately 20 miles south of Mosul. Islamic State destroyed several historical sites and temples in the ancient city. See Storyful report here. Credit: YouTube/Al-Mawsleya via Storyful ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish authorities on Monday denied that the destruction of Arab homes in areas recaptured from Islamic State was part of a strategic plan. The comments came in response to a report by Human Rights Watch which said Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling the jihadists in northern Iraq unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime. "There was no strategic intention" for the destruction of homes, Dindar Zebari, the head of a Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) committee tasked with responding to international reports, told Reuters. "KRG security forces may destroy a property if there is an assured presence of IEDs, with the destruction of the home being the last possible resort when defusing this explosive device proves too difficult or a large risk to our engineering teams," he said. Zebari had responded to the Human Rights Watch report on Sunday, but said he wished to clarify the KRG's position. (Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Richard Balmforth) MOSUL, Iraq (AP) Iraqi troops entered a town south of Mosul on Sunday where Islamic State militants destroyed artefacts at a nearby ancient Assyrian archaeological site, while special forces fended off suicide bombers during a cautious advance into the northern city. The push into Nimrud was the most significant gain in several days for government forces, potentially opening up the area for teams to assess the damage done to the famed ruins just outside the town. Troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city and the biggest urban area under IS control, as part of an offensive launched last month. The special forces have advanced the farthest so far, and hold a handful of districts on the citys eastern edge, but their progress has slowed in the face of fierce resistance in dense urban neighborhoods full of civilians. The operations commander said troops took Nimrud, some 19 miles (30 kilometers) south of Mosul, after heavy fighting. It was unclear if they had liberated the nearby 13th-century B.C. archaeological site, which IS destroyed with explosives according to videos they released. The 9th division of the Iraqi army has liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah said in a statement. The late 1980s discovery of treasures in Nimruds royal tombs was one of the 20th centurys most significant archaeological finds. The government said militants, who captured the site in June 2014, destroyed it the following year using heavy military vehicles. Video footage released by the jihadis at the time showed bearded men hammering, bulldozing and ultimately blowing up parts of the ancient Iraqi treasure, ripping down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. They claim the artefacts promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. Story continues Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led forces operating the air campaign assisting the operation against IS, said few airstrikes were used near Nimrud, and the advancing Iraqi troops had moved in carefully. Its an important gain, he said, but warned that IS often leaves behind some combatants. As Iraqi forces get closer to Mosul, everything becomes more difficult as they like to leave behind a few fighters to spoil the advance. In Mosul itself, the special forces said they have cleared the Qadisiya and Zahra neighborhoods, and are planning to advance farther in the coming hours. Over the past week they have inched forward slowly, trying to avoid casualties among their troops and civilians as suicide bombers in armor-plated vehicles charge at them from hideouts in densely populated areas. The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives, said Iraqi special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi as he radioed with commanders in the field. There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb, he said. Troops were building berms and road blocks to prevent car bombs from breaching the front lines. Since last weeks quick advance into Mosul proper, they have struggled to hold territory under heavy IS counterattacks. Several suicide car bombers attacked the advancing special forces on Saturday, wounding around a dozen troops, three civilians, and killing a child, officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to brief reporters. The Iraqi armed forces do not release official casualty figures, but field medics have noted dozens of killed and wounded since the operation to liberate the city began on Oct. 17. Civilians are paying a heavy toll in the battle for Mosul, with nearly 50,000 forced from their homes, most living in displaced persons camps. The Norwegian Refugee Council said Sunday that conditions were worsening for non-combatants, especially over the past week. Civilians have told us of horrific stories from inside Mosul, said Wolfgang Gressmann, the groups Iraq director. They have given terrifying accounts of IS moving them from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from house to house, in tactics identical with being used as human shields. Meanwhile, a leading U.S.-based rights group released a report alleging that security forces of Iraqs regional Kurdish government had routinely destroyed Arab homes and even some whole villages in areas retaken from the Islamic State group over the past two years. The Human Rights Watch report said that between September 2014 and May 2016, Kurdish forces advancing against IS destroyed Arab homes in disputed areas of Kirkuk and Ninevah provinces, while Kurdish homes were left intact. It says the demolitions took place in disputed areas in northern Iraq which the Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region over the objections of the central government. Sunni Arab politicians have previously accused the Kurds of seeking to recast the demographics of mixed areas in northern Iraq. The struggle is particularly intense in the oil-rich Kirkuk region. In village after village in Kirkuk and Ninevah, (Kurdish Regional Government) security forces destroyed Arab homes but not those belonging to Kurds for no legitimate military purpose, said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. KRG leaders political goals dont justify demolishing homes illegally. All sides fighting in the battle for Mosul have been accused of human rights abuses, with the worst allegations attributed to IS. Kurdish forces have been accused of destroying Arab homes before, with a report last year by Amnesty International alleging that the peshmerga carried out the attacks in retaliation for what they said was the Arab communities support for IS. Kurdish authorities say they abide by human rights laws and deny having any strategy to destroy homes. But they say some villages in which the population fought alongside IS have suffered extensive destruction because of the ferocity of the battles. There was a large presence of IEDs placed in these areas, said Kurdish official Dindar Zebari, referring to Sundays report. I have to say this was a huge cause of the destruction following the liberation process. Also Sunday, a wave of attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 23 people and wounded 70 others, inflaming already combustive sectarian tensions in the country. Police and health officials said many of the attacks struck Shiites on their way to an annual pilgrimage, with the deadliest bombing taking place in Baghdads northern Shaab neighborhood. There, an explosives-laden car parked near a checkpoint killed a policeman and two civilians, and wounded 12 others. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. The capital has seen near-daily bombings since the Mosul operation began, but no large-scale attacks. Militants frequently target security forces and the Shiite majority as part of its campaign to destabilize the country. ___ Rohan reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad, and Fay Abuelgasim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report. DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's Central Bank on Monday added domestic lender permanent tsb and subsidiaries of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L), Citigroup (C.N) and UniCredit (CRDI.MI) to its list of systemically important banks that have to hold extra capital. Like other European banks, Irish lenders identified as systemically important to the domestic economy due to their size and market share have to hold the additional capital, known as Core Tier 1, to increase defences against future shocks. The Central Bank last year set the amount of extra capital for Ireland's two largest banks, Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I) and Bank of Ireland (BKIR.I), at 1.5 percent of risk-weighted assets to be phased in at a rate of 0.5 percent from July 2019. After its first review of the so-called Other Systemically Important Institutions (O-SIIs) buffers, it set the mark for permanent tsb, RBS' Irish unit Ulster Bank and Citigroup at 0.25 percent in 2019, rising to 0.5 percent a year later. Citigroup shifted the head office of its European retail banking operation to Dublin from London last year. UniCredit, whose unit is based in Ireland's International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) and is primarily involved in structured finance and treasury activities, will have to just hold an additional 0.25 percent of capital by July 2019. The O-SIIs can be set between 0 and 2.5 percent and aim to protect lenders from potential losses related to excessive credit growth, a measure of particular resonance in Ireland where the banking sector required the euro zone's costliest state bailout following a 2008 property crash. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by Louise Heavens) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's high court Monday rejected a government bid to delay the evacuation of a wildcat Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, in a fresh challenge for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Amona outpost is under a court order to be evacuated by December 25 since it was built on private Palestinian land, but right-wingers in Netanyahu's cabinet have called for the around 40 families living there to be allowed to remain. "The evacuation must occur before December 25," the high court said in its ruling. "The court rejects the delay requested by the state." In what seemed to be a sharp criticism of the government, it said that "the duty to obey rulings is not a matter of choice. "It is an essential component of the rule of law to which all are bound as part of the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Whether the Netanyahu government moves ahead with the demolition of Amona has been seen as a test case of whether it will heed international calls to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank. The government, which had sought a seven-month delay while it considered where to move the Amona settlers, is seen as the most right-wing in Israel's history. Key members of Netanyahu's coalition advocate settlement building while openly opposing the idea of a Palestinian state. "We're aware of the duress of the Amona residents and are acting in different ways to solve the problem," Netanyahu told lawmakers from his Likud party on Monday. Settlements are seen as a major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state. Some 400,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, compared with about 2.6 million Palestinians. The United States, the European Union and UN officials have warned that settlement building is eating away at the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict. Story continues Netanyahu is concerned that controversy over settlements could provoke an international backlash and possibly prompt US President Barack Obama to seek a Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before he leaves office on January 20. - Threat to two-state solution - Israel's high court ruled in 2014 that Amona, northeast of Ramallah in the central West Bank, must be evacuated. There are concerns over how any evacuation will play out. A committee of solidarity with the Amona settlers announced late Monday that "thousands" of supporters would be mobilised to block their evacuation. In 2006, the demolition of nine permanent houses in the outpost led to clashes between settlers and Israeli forces. With the Amona deadline in mind, a committee of Israeli ministers on Sunday approved a draft bill to legalise Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land in communities that meet certain criteria. The Palestinian landowners would be offered compensation in return for the land being seized. The legislation is expected to apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 settler homes in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Six Day War and which the Palestinians want for a future state of their own. The bill must still be approved by Israel's Knesset, or parliament. It had been pushed forward by Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the hardline Jewish Home party, days after he said the idea of a Palestinian state was over after Donald's Trump's election as US president. Palestinian leaders denounced the bill and pledged to take the issue to the UN Security Council. Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki accused the Israeli government of seeking to "impose facts on the ground and create new realities by legalising the illegal actions that it commits". The Palestinians also sharply criticised a separate bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayers at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem, a measure government watchdogs have called a threat to freedom of religion and a provocation. "The recent Israeli measures are going to lead to catastrophe in the region," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not. The Israeli government differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not. Those like Amona are considered outposts as they have not been given Israeli government approval. America loves a reset. In 2007, there was the strategic reset for reclaiming control of U.S. security in the Middle East proposed by the Center for American Progress. In 2009, President Barack Obama famously went to Moscow to reset relations with then-President Dmitri Medvedev. And now, Naftali Bennett, leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, is hoping that the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president will mean a reset of politics and policies in the Middle East. On Monday, Bennett told members of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, We have a chance to reset the structure across the Middle East, reported Reuters. We have to seize that opportunity and act on it, he said. He didnt spell out what that reset would look like. Past might be prologue, though. Bennett, whose Jewish Home party once threatened the stability of conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition when Bennett decided Netanyahu was not conservative enough, has called for the annexation of most of the West Bank that is, for continued construction of settlements on more of the West Bank, a cause for which he urged Israelis to give our lives. Following Trumps election, Bennett announced, Trumps victory is a tremendous opportunity for Israel to immediately announce its intention to renege on the idea of establishing Palestine in the heart of the country a direct blow to our security and the justice of our cause. This is the president-elects outlook as it appears in his platform, and that definitely should be our way. Salient, simple and clear. The era of the Palestinian state is over. Not that the desires of the leader of the Jewish Home are necessarily those of Americas Jews. As Foreign Policy wrote in March, only 17 percent of U.S. Jews feel that building more settlements increases Israeli security, while 44 percent feel they are, in fact, detrimental. That piece drew from a 2013 study by the Pew Research Center, which noted that only 38 percent of U.S. Jews believed the Israeli government was making a sincere effort to make peace with Palestinians. But given overwhelming Jewish support for Hillary Clinton in the election, its not clear theyd be able to muster much pushback to sway Trump against embracing Israels right-wing stances. According to a Gallup poll from February, 62 percent of Americans are more sympathetic to Israelis than to Palestinians (and Republicans are more sympathetic than Democrats). But when it comes to Palestinian statehood, more Americans are in favor than not suggesting that Americans in general, and American Jews in particular, would not in fact love this particular reset. Photo credit: GIL COHEN MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi suggested on Monday that he may not stay on if a referendum on constitutional reform that he is championing fails. Asked in a radio interview what he would do if the 'no' vote won in the Dec. 4 referendum, he said: "If I have to stay on in parliament and do what everyone else has done before me, that is, to scrape by and just float there, that does not suit me." Polls have suggested the 41-year-old prime minister may lose the referendum, which, if the 'yes' vote wins, would reduce the role of the upper house Senate and cut the powers of regional governments. Earlier this year the premier repeatedly said he would resign in the case of a defeat. More recently, he has declined to confirm that outright, saying discussion of his own future deflected attention from the merits of the reform. Political commentators have speculated that if he does step down after a 'no' vote, he would then push for early elections in 2017, a year ahead of schedule. The referendum has also widened divisions in Renzi's Democratic Party (PD). (Reporting By Philip Pullella) By Kaori Kaneko and Ritsuko Shimizu TOKYO (Reuters) - Hoping to jolt Japan's limp consumer spending, policymakers and business leaders are considering plans to let workers leave by 3 p.m. on the last Friday of each month to encourage them to shop, dine out and generally spend more. Both the government and companies are currently discussing the proposed initiative, dubbed "Premium Fridays", which, according to two people with knowledge of the proposal, could begin as early as February. Retailers desperate for measures that could lift the consumption gloom say they'd welcome such a plan. "We are hoping it will promote a change in lifestyle, with Friday becoming part of the weekend," said Tetsuya Konnai, head of the Japan Department Stores Association. "It could change consumers' mindset." But in a country where long working hours are the norm, there are doubts about how willing companies would be to adopt the plan and whether it would actually stoke consumer spending. Talk of the plan comes as the latest economic growth numbers showed persistent weakness in consumer spending. Overall growth in Japan in the July-September period grew by a faster-than-expected annualised 2.2 percent, lifted mostly by exports. Private consumption rose only 0.1 percent. Past government efforts to jump-start consumption, such as tax breaks in 2009 on energy-efficient appliances, boosted consumer spending but did not drive sustainable growth. More recently, one-time payments to low-income seniors implemented this year failed to add significantly to spending. "It will be meaningless if workers leave a few hours early on Friday but work longer hours on other days or on holidays," said Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. In his efforts to revive Japan's economy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is campaigning for more employee-friendly labour practices, including closing loopholes on overtime hour regulations. Just over half of Japanese firms are reviewing rules on working hours with many looking to cut down on overtime, a recent Reuters poll found. Story continues A spokeswoman at Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, a major department store chain, said the company had yet to formally adopt a Premium Friday policy, although two of the group's stores in downtown Tokyo were preparing for it. However, Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at SMBC Friend Securities in Tokyo, says the plan to get workers leaving work earlier on Friday does little to address deeper problems around Japanese consumer sentiment. "Uncertainty about the future is the underlying cause," she said. Japan's economy has been stuck in the doldrums for more than two decades with wage growth anemic and consumer prices falling. Changing prevailing practices in the Japanese workplace also presents formidable cultural challenges for both businesses and policymakers. "I don't think we'd spend more money - my husband can't simply come home earlier because he's got lots of people to deal with," a woman shopping in central Tokyo, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on Monday. "Whatever the government says isn't going to have any impact." ($1 = 107.3400 yen) (Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Sam Holmes) TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea signed a preliminary pact to share and safeguard sensitive information on North Korea's missile and nuclear activities on Monday, a move that had already prompted anger among opposition lawmakers in Seoul. The signing of the General Security of Military Information Agreement had originally been expected in 2012, but South Korea postponed it amid domestic opposition against concluding such a security pact with Japan, a one-time colonial ruler. Japan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that discussions in the third round of the talks had reached an agreement and that a provisional signing had taken place. Discussions would continue ahead of a final signing, which Kyodo news agency said could take place by the end of November. Reclusive North Korea, which is still technically at war with the South because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, has carried out repeated nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions. Tokyo's ties with Seoul, plagued by a territorial dispute and Japan's past military aggression, have warmed after reaching a landmark agreement last December to resolve the issue of Korean girls and women forced to work in Japan's wartime brothels. South Korean opposition parties had warned against signing the agreement, threatening to dismiss or impeach Defence Minister Han Min-koo. (Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Nick Macfie) By Ahmad Sultan and Omar Fahmy KABUL/CAIRO (Reuters) - From Afghanistan to Algeria, jihadists plan to use Donald Trump's shock U.S. presidential victory as a propaganda tool to bring new fighters to their battlefields. Taliban commanders and Islamic State supporters say Trump's campaign trail rhetoric against Muslims - at one point calling for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States - will play perfectly in their recruitment efforts, especially for disaffected youth in the West. "This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands," Abu Omar Khorasani, a top IS commander in Afghanistan, told Reuters. Trump has talked tough against militant groups on the campaign trail, promising to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War." The president-elect later toned down his call for a total ban on Muslim entry to say he would temporarily suspend immigration from countries that have "a history of exporting terrorism." But he has offered few details on his plans to combat various radical groups, including IS, the Taliban and al Qaeda, which represent a wide spectrum of political views. "He does not differentiate between extremist and moderate Islamist trends and, at the same time, he overlooks (the fact) that his extremism will generate extremism in return," Iraq's powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS. Sadr's political reform movement, which commands thousands of followers, is a staunch opponent of the radical Sunni movements IS and al Qaeda, and unlike them has not waged or promoted attacks in the West. The United States has seen a handful of attacks inspired by Islamist militant groups, including the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who called a TV station swearing allegiance to IS and the killing of 14 people at a San Bernadino, California, social services agency last December. Story continues U.S. officials have warned the country will likely face a higher risk of similar attacks as IS urges supporters to launch attacks at home instead of joining its fight in the Middle East. "Our leaders were closely following the U.S. election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so," said IS's Khorasani, who described President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with at least a little brain in comparison to Trump. Al Qaeda, which has proven resilient more than 15 years after launching the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has yet to comment on Trump's victory. The militant group will likely respond after Trump's first speeches as president, anticipating they will be able to exploit his comments to win support, said Hisham al Hashemi, who advises the Iraqi government on Sunni jihadist movements. "Al Qaeda is known for its recruitment strategy that heavily quotes speeches of the White House and other Western officials," he told Reuters. PROPAGANDA MACHINE Trump's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements from the militants. Even if Trump tones down his anti-Muslim comments when he takes office in January, analysts say his statements during the campaign trail were enough to fuel the militants' propaganda machine. "Militants will still use those quotes," said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. "The key thing militant groups, particularly Islamic State and al Qaeda, depend on for recruitment purposes is convincing Muslims in the Western world that the West hates them and won't ever accept them as part of their society." A senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan said the group, whose resurgence is undermining efforts to end America's longest war, had kept track of all of Trump's speeches and anti-Muslim comments. "If he does what he warned in his election campaign, I am sure it will provoke Muslim Ummah (community) across the world and jihadi organizations can exploit it," said the militant leader, who declined to be identified because of strict Taliban policy that only its official spokesman can make statements. Shortly after Trump's victory, several jihadist sympathizers took to social media to declare this as an opportunity for their cause. "The dog Trump's victory in the U.S. elections is a gold mine for Muslims not a setback if they know how to use it," tweeted @alhlm200, who regularly posts statements in support of Islamic State. And in Algeria, @salil_chohada, an Islamic State supporter whose name on the Twitter account is Mohamed Aljazairie, said: "Congratulations to the Muslim nation over the infidel Trump's victory. His stupid statements alone serve us." (Additional reporting by Randy Fabi and Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Omar Fahmy in CAIRO, Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR, Pakistan; Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan and Saif Hameed in BAGHDAD; Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Lincoln Feast) UPDATED with video: John Oliver devoted the entirety of his final Last Week Tonight of 2016 to the just-concluded presidential election. Turns out instead of showing our daughters that they could some day be president, America proved that no grandpa is too racist to become leader of the free world, Oliver noted. Among the things Oliver suggested we be horrified about: Donald Trump will soon have access to the nuclear codes. Our future president was supported by a Grand Wizard of the Klan and 60 million people voted for him despite that. Oh shit, the Supreme Court Hes advocated bombing civilians, looting oil, waterboarding, and will be in charge of the military Donald Trump will be president, and respecting democracy means accepting that, Oliver acknowledged. But some journalists have been taking that sentiment a little too far, he warned, queuing up clips of Don Lemon and others saying we need to give Trump a chance to govern because if he succeeds we all succeed. Optimism is nice if you can swing it, but youve got to be careful, because it can feed into the normalization of Donald Trump, and hes not normal, Oliver warned. Hes abnormal. Hes a human What Is Wrong With This Picture So giving him a chance, in the sense of not speaking out immediately against policies he has proposed, is dangerous. Because some of them are alarming. Oliver ticked off some of his campaign vows, calling it the To Do list on Satans refrigerator. Some argue he might not have meant all those things, the late night host said. That leaves us with two bad options: Either we just elected a president who didnt mean a single word he said, or we elected one who did. Problem is, its impossible to know which one is true, Oliver said, citing Trumps 60 Minutes interview that had run earlier same evening, in which he walked back several of his campaign promises that had played well with his supporters. Among them, his vow to kill Obamacare, and to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton with a view toward tossing her into the hoosegow. Story continues Dont get complacentHe might change his mind on that again, Oliver cautioned Trump is like a Magic 8 Ball; every time you shake him gives you a different answer. Trumps election begs the question how the media, which is supposed to catch a serial liar, failed, Oliver said. Some blame lies with the mainstream media, who waited far too long to take Trump seriously, giving him billions of dollars worth of free media, the late night host said, running that clip of CNN Worldwide chief Jeff Zucker admitting his cable news net aired too many of Trumps campaign rallies in their entirety. More problematic: many Americans now get information from micro-targeted media, where fake facts circulate. This cesspool of nonsense would be a problem anyway, were it not that one of the people in thrall to it is our future president, Oliver said. The real estate magnate turned reality-TV star is the first major political candidate to harness and fully legitimize weird conspiracy bullshit clickbait. Ted Cruz got it right, Oliver said, when he called Trump a pathological liar who doesnt know the difference between the truth and lies. Keep reminding yourself this is not normal, Oliver said. Clarifying, he continued: a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll will deliver the next State of the Union Address, and that is not normal. Oliver ended his final show of the year with a look at how uncommonly shitty was 2016, including contributions from Amy Schumer, Larry Wilmore, Kathy Griffin, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, Larry David, Billy Eichner, and Jeffrey Tambor, among others. And then, Oliver blew up the year. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSDUsMwakI&w=605&h=371] Related stories Obama Ducks Steve Bannon Question, Calls "Impressive" Trump's Talent For Tapping "Anxieties And Enthusiasms" 'South Park's President Trump - Er, Garrison - Meets A Constituent In Second Post-Election Episode 'The Simpsons' Addresses Its 2000 Prediction Of Donald Trump Presidency John Oliver blamed Donald Trumps election on the media, including the fake news Americans routinely share on Facebook. Fake facts circulate on social media to a frightening extent, the Last Week Tonight host said Sunday. There is now a whole cottage industry specializing in hyper-partisan, sometimes wildly distorted click bait, Oliver said after explaining a fake story about the Pope endorsing Trump was shared almost a million times, which is absurd. Also Read: Megyn Kelly Says Donald Trump Acted 'Bizarre' for Someone After 'Nuclear Codes' in New Book Fake news stories are published for voters are both sides of the aisle, but a study reveals that the problem is more prominent among right-leaning websites. The sites can warp your views pretty fast, Oliver said. This cesspool of nonsense would be a problem anyway, were if not for the fact that one of the people in thrall to it is our future president. Trump used Twitter to share a video linking a man who rushed the stage at one of his rallies to ISIS, but the video was proven to be a hoax. When NBC News Chuck Todd confronted Trump about spreading false information, the president-elect said, What do I know about it? All I know is whats on the Internet. Being on the Internet is not a high bar for accuracy, Oliver said. During the campaign, Trump routinely used his platform to spread wildly incorrect information, and even fellow conservatives tried to point out how irresponsible this was. Also Read: Emmy Rossum Slams 'Disgusting' Trump Supporter Tweets: 'THIS Is Not OK' The HBO host also said that some news organizations waited way too long to take Trump seriously, pointing to CNN running his speeches in their entirety as an example. Oliver also played video of CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker admitting the cable news network got carried away. It turns out hindsight, much like the year were all now desperately looking forward to, is 2020, Oliver said. Story continues Watch the video above. Related stories from TheWrap: John Oliver Takes Some of the Blame for Donald Trump's Presidential Run (Video) John Oliver's Surprise for 'Liberal White New Yorkers' About School Segregation (Video) John Oliver Offers Donald Trump His Emmy to Quit Presidential Race (Video) Last Week Tonight host John Oliver took the extraordinary step of urging viewers on-air to donate to Planned Parenthood, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Trevor Project and other organizations serving communities that may come under fire during the Trump administration. The host of Last Week Tonight was fiery in the shows third season finale Sunday, warning viewers in the most dire terms about what he sees as the threat to the nation now that Republican Donald Trump has won the presidential race. How the f did we get here? Oliver said. Oliver urged viewers to donate to various non-profit orgs, including the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, the International Refugee Assistance Project, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. He also implored viewers to support top-tier journalism by subscriber to a major newspaper, or donating to the non-profit journalism collective or Pro Publica in order to help news outlets scrutinize Trumps moves. Keep reminding yourself, This is not normal, Oliver asserted as reviewed a litany of shocking statements from Trump. He also raised questions about the views and qualifications of some of those who are serving on Trumps transition team, and about Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana. He looks like hes from the 1950s but he thinks like hes from the 1650s, Oliver said of Pences views on homosexuality, abortion and evolution, among other issues. Last Week Tonight took aim at its sibling network CNN in a segment calling out mainstream media for giving Trump too much coverage too early in the campaign without holding his feet to the fire. He also sounded the alarm on the rise of fake news spread via social media and talk radio by specious websites, calling them a cottage industry specializing in hyper-partisan, sometimes wildly distorted clickbait. Oliver ran clips of Trump being confronted on air by NBC News Chuck Todd and Fox News Bill OReilly for spreading information found to be false. Story continues In closing, Oliver declared: Im calling it early 2016 has been the f worst. The half-hour episode wrapped with a montage of everyday people and celebrities including Amy Schumer, Larry David, Jeffrey Tambor, Billy Eichner, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally saying some variation of f 2016. Related stories TV News Roundup: First Look at Geoffrey Rush as Albert Einstein, Streaming 'The Affair' Premiere John Oliver's 'Last Week Tonight' Wins 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series Emmys: First Time's the Charm in Late-Night Race A federal judge on Monday ordered Brendan Dassey whose overturned murder conviction was spotlighted in Netflixs award-winning true crime documentary series Making a Murderer released from prison as he awaits a possible retrial, PEOPLE confirms. The district court judge placed several conditions on Dasseys release. Among them, Dassey is only allowed to travel in the courts Eastern District of Wisconsin. Hes also barred from obtaining a passport, or possessing guns, weapons of any kind or controlled substances. The court also forbids Dassey from having any contact with the family of slain photographer Teresa Halbach or his own uncle, Steven Avery. In 2007, Dassey and Avery were convicted for the 2005 murder of Halbach. A judge overturned Dasseys conviction in August, and the state has since appealed that ruling. It was not immediately clear from the judges ruling when Dassey will be freed. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In March 2006, Dassey, then 16, told investigators he had helped Avery rape and murder Halbach on Oct. 31, 2005. But he later recanted, claiming the confession had been coerced. Dasseys confession to law enforcement is perhaps the most debated aspect of Making a Murderer. On the day of the confession, lead investigators Tom Fassbender and Mark Wiegert pulled Dassey out of school and questioned him alone for hours. Dassey is described by multiple people in the series as having learning disabilities. During the interrogation, Dassey told investigators he had helped Avery kill Halbach, saying that they shot her in the head and burned her body at a bonfire on the Avery property later that evening. Calumet County Prosecutor Ken Kratz called a press conference shortly after investigators secured the confession, saying that Dassey described in detail Halbachs brutal assault and slaying. Story continues However, after seeing portions of the confession on Netflix, many people came to believe he was led by Fassbender and Wiegert, who repeatedly question him until the teen gives them a confession. In a recorded exchange with his mother, Barb Janda, following the confession, Dassey says, They got in my head. The teen later denied that he ever saw Halbach and said he had nothing to do with her murder. A second season of the Netflix show is in production but the streaming service has provided no information on when the new season will debut. From Cosmopolitan Kat Von D is an icon. The reality-TV star (American Ink) turned makeup mogul and champion for animal rights is set to receive the Compassion in Action Award from animal advocacy non-profit Farm Sanctuary on Saturday. She sat down to talk with Cosmopolitan.com about animals, makeup, and who designs her favorite shoes. What was it like to develop your own cosmetics line? Theres so much more work that goes into developing a makeup line than one would imagine. Personally, I like to be involved in the entire creative process - everything from art direction, collection concepts, formula testing, packaging artwork, to naming the shades and also the marketing side of things. I love being completely immersed in everything I do. Why was it important for your makeup to be cruelty free? There is no point in developing anything at the cost of exploiting and abusing animals. Not only is it important for me to create a 100% cruelty-free brand, but also send out a very clear message to both consumers and companies out there: testing on animals in the name of beauty is cruel and unnecessary. Was it hard to make everything cruelty-free? Were there any road blocks? Absolutely not. The decision to make Kat Von D Beauty cruelty-free was easy and simple. Sure, my products wont sell in China because of my decision, but if it spares an innocent animal from a life of torture, that is completely worth it in my book. You're outspoken about the treatment of animals. Can you tell me a little about your journey? When I became vegan 5 years ago, it was truly eye opening. I think its all about perspective, really. Years of cultural programming have taught us to love some animals while eating others, when in all reality, all animals are sentient beings with the capacity to feel, both physically and emotionally. Everyday, I have the choice to live a life of compassion that not only saves animals, but helps the environment. So whats so wrong about doing the right thing? Story continues You're being honored with the The Compassion in Action Award at Farm Sanctuary's Gala - what does that mean to you? It is a HUGE honor for me to be a part of Farm Sanctuarys Gala this year. I think if I can be of service to this cause in any way, then Im completely all for it. Its nice to be honored, but ultimately, this is just another way for me to be able to talk about these issues that are very real, and dear to my heart. More than anything, I am looking forward to being inspired by all of the amazing fellow vegans and animal activists attending. You always look amazing; what are your favorite cruelty-free clothing lines? Well, I have always been a big supporter and fan of independent designers in general. Natacha Marro has always been a favorite shoe designer, and now she has started offering vegan options in her collection, which is brilliant! As for clothing, I have discovered tons of great vegan independent designers on Etsy! What's your most favorite animal? Truthfully, I love all animals. Im known for being a self proclaimed crazy cat lady but Ill admit I spent the last few years with the goal to one day meet a cow in real life and I have to say, it was completely life changing. During my first visit to Farm Sanctuary, I got to meet Bruno, the beautiful black cow who let me cuddle and kiss him. He was like a giant cat! And probably the hardest question: what are your favorite vegan treats?! I am so obsessed with Vegan Treats - a bakery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When I became vegan I thought I would have to deprive myself of certain sweets that I loved so much, like caramel and peanut butter cups, but on the contrary! In my opinion, Vegan Treats are even better. Plus they make the coolest spooky Valentines chocolate box every year, that the packaging alone is worth it. Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like Kelly Ripa was happy to have her whole family under one roof this weekend. On Sunday, the 46-year-old daytime talk show host posted a selfie of with husband Mark Consuelos and their three children, Joaquin, 13, Lola, 15, and Michael, 19. "The band is back together!" she captioned the photo. The band is back together! A photo posted by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on Nov 13, 2016 at 3:58pm PST While Ripa has been busy searching for a new co-host for Live! With Kelly in New York City, Consuelos has been starring in Fox's new series, Pitch, which films in Los Angeles, California. Meanwhile, their oldest son, Michael, has gone off to college. EXCLUSIVE: Mark Consuelos Reacts to Wife Kelly Ripa Being Open to Moving Live! to Los Angeles "How are we old enough to have a kid that's going to college?" Ripa asked Consuelos when he guest co-hosted Live! in June. "I don't know," he replied. "I've got big plans for his bedroom," she joked. "That bedroom is going to be turned into a mega closet." WATCH: Mark Consuelos Gushes Over Wife Kelly Ripa, Shares the Secret to Their 20-Year Marriage As for Lola, she went with her dad to L.A., and when ET caught up with Consuelos in August, he quipped that the father-daughter duo are "very much like roommates." "It's easy. The kids are older now," the 45-year-old actor said of his bicoastal family. "There's no changing diapers. There's no midnight feedings. In the past, maybe we wouldn't take a job that's so far away, but now it's cool." EXCLUSIVE: Mark Consuelos Brings Daughter Lola to Nine Lives Premiere, Talks Bicoastal Living With Kelly Ripa Related Articles President Trump isnt bound by non-treaty agreements. Last year, the Obama administration made a bad deal over Irans nuclear program and decided that the deal would be in the form of an executive agreement rather than a treaty. The administration chose this path because it was worried that a treaty would not be ratified by the Republican-controlled Senate. That means a different president (i.e., Donald Trump) can now revoke the agreement at his choosing. James Phillips writes that such a choice would be a good idea: Irans dictators have had an easy time out-negotiating and out-maneuvering the Obama administration, which eagerly sought to clinch a deal. The administration made huge concessions that allowed Iran to dismantle international sanctions without dismantling key elements of its nuclear program, which continues to advance. It looks like the Trump administration will takea much harder line on the Iran nuclear issue, which will be one of the earliest foreign policy issues it must address. More HERE Muscat (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks Monday with officials in Oman on efforts to end Yemen's 19-month-old conflict, state media in Muscat said. Kerry met with Oman's ruler Sultan Qaboos to discuss "the conflict in Yemen and the urgent need to find a durable political settlement to ease the suffering of the Yemeni people", said US State Department spokesman John Kirby. They welcomed a peace roadmap proposed by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed that was rejected by Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, he added. Kerry also "expressed the United States' deep appreciation for the helpful role Oman played in securing the recent release of US citizens held in Yemen". Oman maintains good ties with Iran which is accused of supporting Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels. Muscat is also a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), led by regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which backs Hadi's internationally-recognised government. It has mediated the release of several Westerners held in Yemen, the latest being an American identified as Wallead Yusuf Pitts Luqman who was transported to Muscat from rebel-held Sanaa on an Omani military aircraft on November 7. Oman is the only GCC member not taking part in the Saudi-led military coalition bombing rebels in Yemen since March 2015, but it still maintains good ties with Saudi Arabia. Kerry's visit to Oman was one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration steps down in January. The US chief diplomat has been pushing for a settlement in Yemen, where the deadly conflict between rebels and the government escalated after the Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened on the side of the government. Oman has also used its links to mediate peace talks between the insurgents and Hadi's government. More than 7,000 people have been killed and nearly 37,000 wounded in Yemen since March 2015, and the UN says millions are in need of food aid. Story continues Another 21 million people urgently need health services, according to the United Nations. On Monday, 12 civilians, including a child, were killed in an air raid that targeted a convoy of lorries in central Ibb province, while nine rebels were killed in an ambush in the same region, military and medical sources said. After Oman, Kerry was to travel on to Abu Dhabi for talks on the Syrian conflict. * Tata Motors board to meet on Monday to discuss Q2 results * Mistry ousted as Tata Sons chairman in board coup last month * Tata drags shareholders of group cos into fight against Mistry * Mistry tried to streamline corporate governance at Tata By Aditi Shah and Abhirup Roy MUMBAI, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Tata Motors, owner of Jaguar Land Rover and makers of India's cheapest car, will on Monday become the latest piece of the Tata empire to be dragged into a battle over its future, in a test case for parent Tata Sons' efforts to tighten control. The $100 billion Tata group has been mired in a public spat with former holding company chairman Cyrus Mistry since last month, when he was abruptly ousted from the top job - an acrimonious tussle that has revived debate around India's corporate governance and Tata's complex structure. Removing him from individual group companies, however, has been trickier, and Mistry is still at the helm of several key Tata boards, including Tata Motors, whose board meets on Monday, and Tata Steel - among the best known units of the sprawling salt-to-software group. "Tata Motors ... generates a substantial profit and revenues, so it is important for Tatas to have control over the board," said Shriram Subramanian, managing director of InGovern Research Services, a firm advising institutional investors. Tata on Thursday wrenched Mistry out of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), 73 percent controlled by the group and the conglomerate's star performer. But it has struggled with other subsidiaries where ownership is closer to 30 percent. Boards at Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals voted to keep Mistry as chairman last week. The board of Tata Motors will meet later on Monday to consider second-quarter earnings before those are reported later in the day. Directors of Tata Global Beverages, which co-owns and runs Starbucks coffee stores across India, meet on Tuesday. If the Tata Motors board does not oust Mistry, Tata Sons will have to turn to shareholder meetings. Tata Sons has already called for extraordinary general meetings across its companies to remove Mistry as a director, including Indian Hotels Co , Tata Chemicals Ltd and Tata Motors. Story continues Tata Sons has blamed Mistry's abrupt exit on what it called breach of trust and poor performance, accusing him of eroding shareholder value. It has also said Mistry tried to reduce the role of Tata Sons, controlled by a series of charitable trusts. Mistry has argued he tried to create internal barriers for better governance - a move that would reduce Tata trusts' involvement in operational issues of group companies, which he said should be controlled by their own boards of directors. The Tata trusts collectively own about two thirds of Tata Sons. "A philanthropy running a commercial business creates its own paradoxes," said Institutional Investor Advisory Services, a proxy advisory, in a note about the feud. Tata Sons on Sunday said it was "crucially important" for the board members, including independent directors, to consider the future of Tata companies and its stakeholders. A spokesman declined to comment further. (Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Euan Rocha and Stephen Coates) By Aditi Shah and Promit Mukherjee MUMBAI (Reuters) - The independent directors of Tata Motors (TAMO.NS) gave board Chairman Cyrus Mistry a tacit nod on Monday, but stopped short of an outright endorsement, or picking sides in the power struggle within India's largest conglomerate. In a vaguely worded release late on Monday, the independent directors of Tata Motors - owner of luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover - backed Mistry's and company management's strategy saying that all decisions taken by the board of Tata Motors on strategy and operations had been "unanimous" and executed by the chairman and the management. Mistry was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding firm that steers the $100 billion steel-to-software Tata empire, last month. Mistry has since been in a bitter public spat with Tata Sons and Tata family patriarch Ratan Tata, who has returned as interim chair of the group. Tata Sons blamed Mistry's ouster on what it called a "breach of trust" and poor performance. Mistry in turn has faulted Tata Sons for poor governance structures and blamed Ratan Tata for many of the conglomerate's legacy issues. The independent directors of Tata Motors did not give Mistry a unanimous public endorsement though, and opted to avoid taking sides in the feud. A source close to Tata Sons told Reuters that an independent director brought forward a resolution at the Tata Motors board meeting on Monday, seeking to endorse Mistry in a similar manner as two other Tata group company boards, Indian Hotels (IHTL.NS) and Tata Chemicals (TTCH.NS), had done earlier this month. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the resolution was opposed by another independent director and the guarded statement that was later issued was a "compromise." The source admitted that the outcome however, was a setback for Tata Sons, which has already called for a number of special shareholder meetings to oust Mistry entirely from some of its group company boards. Story continues Representatives for both Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry were not immediately reachable for comment. Mistry remains chair of several major Tata group companies including Tata Motors and Tata Steel (TISC.NS). And despite his ouster as chair, Mistry remains a board member in Tata Sons, by virtue of his family's 18.41 percent stake in the holding firm. Tata Sons is roughly two-thirds controlled by Tata Trusts, a group of philanthropic foundations led by Ratan Tata. The group last week axed Mistry as chair of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS.NS), a company in which Tata Sons owns an over 70 percent stake. But it has struggled to get him out from other subsidiaries where it only owns minority stakes. The Tata Motors board met on Monday primarily to discuss the automaker's quarterly results. The company posted a net profit of 8.48 billion rupees ($125 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30. That compared with a net loss of 17.40 billion rupees in the same period last year. Tata Global Beverages (TAGL.NS), will be the next company in the Tata conglomerate to report results this week. The board of Tata Global Beverages, which co-owns and runs Starbucks (SBUX.O) coffee stores across India, is set to meet on Tuesday. Mistry is also chairman of the Tata Global Beverages board. (Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Grant McCool) From Cosmopolitan Well, this is terrifying. According to The Independent, the Ku Klux Klan has announced a "victory" parade in North Carolina to celebrate Donald Trump's win. As a reminder, Trump won North Carolina by nearly 5 percentage points. The parade, which is to take place in December, is organized by the Loyal White Knights, a chapter of the hate group out of Pelham. "Trump's race united my people," the announcement chillingly read. Of course, this comes as a surprise to few, as the hate group strongly supported Donald Trump in his bid for Presidency. The KKK's official newspaper endorsed him during the election, and David Duke, whose name is basically synonymous with the horrifying hate group, called Trump's election "one of the most exciting nights of my life." Entirely related: Racism in America has gotten worse since Trump's victory. Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like The longest staying and most controversial houseguest at Londons Ecuadorian embassy is being questioned Monday over a rape allegation in Sweden, potentially ending a four-year saga that began when Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange took self-imposed exile there. His questioning on Monday hinges on sexual assault and rape allegations that were first made in 2010. Heres what we know about it: Who is questioning him Assange is due to be questioned by an Ecuadorian prosecutor, with a Swedish police investigator and prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren, present. A DNA sample will be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees, read a statement from Swedens prosecutors office. The interview is due to be reported in writing by the Ecuadorian prosecutor and given to Swedish investigators. Originally planned for October, the interview was postponed so that Assanges lawyer could be present. After the report, the Swedish prosecutor will take a view on the continuing of the investigation, continued the statement. What are the allegations In Aug. 2010, Swedens Prosecutors office issued an arrest warrant for Assange over four allegations, of which three had five-year statutes of limitations that have since expired. A leaked confidential Swedish police report in 2010, seen by the New York Times, said two women claimed separate sexual encounters with Assange that began consensually, but turned nonconsensual. Assange allegedly demanded to have unprotected sex with each of the women, despite their insistence that he use condoms. The second woman, known as Miss W, alleged that Assange initiated sex with her while she slept, and without wearing a condom. Her claim led to prosecutors listing rape as one of the charges, which forms the basis of Mondays questioning. Assange has admitted to the sexual encounters, but insisted that they were entirely consensual. He sees the charges as a smear campaign and said, at the time, that the claims were without basis and their appearance at this moment is deeply disturbing, BBC reports. Earlier that year, his whistleblowing website was criticized for leaking more than 75,000 classified U.S. military documents on Afghanistan. Story continues Why hes in the Ecuadorean Embassy Assange was questioned in Sweden in Aug. 2010 and told of the charges against him. After being released, he flew to London. In December of that year a court in Stockholm approved an international arrest warrant for Assange, on suspicion of several counts of sexual molestation, rape, and illegal use of force. Assange handed himself to the police and was granted bail, with the backing of high-profile journalists and celebrities like film-director Ken Loach and British socialite Jemima Khan. He proceeded to fight his extradition to Sweden in British courts until 2012, when the U.Ks Supreme Court ruled against his appeals. Assange was given 14 days to challenge the decision, but in June that year he broke the terms of his bail conditions and fled to the embassy of Ecuador, which agreed to give him political asylum. The Wikileaks co-founder and his supporters claims that if he is extradited to Sweden, he could be at risk of being extradited to the U.S to face trial for espionage in America. According to the Washington Post, the Justice Department concluded in 2013 that there was no way to prosecute him. What other legal woes he faces The investigation into the allegations have been on hold since Assange sought asylum. This is mainly due to Assanges legal team, Ecuadorian and Swedish authorities being unable to agree on where and how Assange should be questioned until now. Even if he is not indicted for the rape allegation, which is not due to pass the statute of limitations until Aug. 2020, Assange faces another hurdle: he could still be arrested by British authorities for violating the terms of his bail agreement by ensconcing himself within the embassy building. It has been reported that the 24-hr police presence at the embassy to prevent Assange from escaping has cost Londons Metropolitan police $18.3 million. Hobart (Australia) (AFP) - Luck deserted Australia in their desperate bid to salvage the second Test with South Africa snaring the vital wicket of David Warner in unfortunate circumstances in Hobart on Monday. Warner, who was seeking redemption after his reckless dismissal in the opening over of the first innings, lost his wicket while at the forefront of Australia's fightback. At stumps on the third day the home side were 121 for two, still 120 runs behind the Proteas, who have been in control of the Test since routing Australia for 85 on Saturday. Usman Khawaja was unbeaten on 56, his ninth Test half-century, with skipper Steve Smith not out 18. Warner flung his head back in despair when a ball from Kyle Abbott hit his hip and ricocheted off an elbow onto his stumps when he was on 45. It gave the Proteas a huge fillip after Warner and Khawaja had recovered the innings with a 79-run stand after the loss of Joe Burns in the first over. Burns lasted just four balls before he was caught behind, tickling at one wide down the leg-side from Abbott. "We've done well with the bat, two unlucky dismissals, but that happens in cricket and the boys have shown some good fight, digging in even though the ball is nipping around a fair bit," Australian paceman Josh Hazlewood said. "A really good partnership in the morning, a good first hour and that will go a long way to having a good day tomorrow." Khawaja played some lovely shots in his vigil, providing great support for his captain Smith, who top scored with an unbeaten 48 in the first innings shambles. - De Kock century - Australia face a mighty struggle to prevent South Africa, already 1-0 up, from claiming their third successive series in Australia with only next week's day-night third Test in Adelaide still to play. South Africa earlier extended their first innings lead to 241 before they were all out for 326 with Quinton de Kock plundering a century and Hazlewood finishing with six for 89. Story continues After Sunday's second day was washed out, the Australians chased early wickets but de Kock and Bavuma batted South Africa into a position of strength with a century stand. The swashbuckling wicketkeeper, likened to Australian Test great Adam Gilchrist, was bowled by Hazlewood just before lunch for 104 off 143 balls with 17 boundaries. His stand of 144 with Bavuma was the highest by a visiting team in Hobart for the sixth wicket. "Obviously, I'm happy with what we've done and what we've achieved, but the game has only gone past halfway and we still have a lot to do," de Kock said. "The Aussies looked very determined in their second innings so we have a lot to play for." De Kock has scored 540 runs in 2016 in just nine Test innings and leads the year's international averages with 80 having been unbeaten twice. He became only the fourth South African to register 50 or more in five consecutive Tests after he swept spinner Nathan Lyon for four over wide mid-on. Shortly after lunch, Tembo Bavuma was surprised by a rearing delivery to spoon an easy catch to Nathan Lyon at point and give Joe Mennie his first Test wicket for 74. Vernon Philander was the last man out for 32 off 28 balls, caught behind off Hazlewood. BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev raised the stakes in his standoff with political rival Omurbek Tekebayev on Monday, ordering prosecutors to look into corruption allegations against Tekebayev, which the parliament deputy denies. The deepening rift between two political heavyweights could destabilize the volatile Central Asian nation which has seen two leaders overthrown by violent protests since 2005. Tekebayev, who had previously backed pro-Russian Atambayev and was a member of his parliamentary coalition until last month, has become one of the main critics of the president after Atambayev proposed to boost the powers of the executive. On Monday, Atambayev's office said the state security service had obtained documents from the government of Belize showing Tekebayev, along with two other people, was set to benefit from a sale of assets by an offshore company. Atambayev's office said the offshore company was believed to be owned by the family of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was deposed and fled the country in 2010. The sale mentioned in the documents never took place because the government nationalized the assets in question. Tekebayev denied any wrongdoing and said the move was politically motivated. The two other people mentioned in the Belize papers are members of his Ata Meken party and served as prosecutor general and justice minister respectively in April 2012, the date on the document published by the president's office. "This is 100 percent fake," he told Reuters. "This is a primitive provocation they have come up with... because we oppose the referendum (on executive powers)". The mostly Muslim nation of 6 million will vote in a national referendum on Dec. 11 on a package of changes to the constitution which boost the powers of prime minister and the executive in general. Atambayev's opponents have said the reform could allow him to become a powerful prime minister once he steps down as president next year. Atambayev, 60, who is not allowed to run for a second term, has denied having such plans. Both Atambayev and Tekebayev were among the leaders of the 2005 and 2010 protests and open confrontation between the two could lead to another wave of instability in the former Soviet republic which hosts a Russian military airbase. (Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Toby Chopra) By Kieran Guilbert DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Girls in conflict-ravaged eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are joining armed groups because they cannot afford to go to school, while former girl soldiers struggle to return to class amid stigma from their communities, a charity said on Monday. Many girls in the region join militia groups to obtain food and money, to seek protection against violence, or because their families cannot afford to pay their school fees, according to a report by Britain-based Child Soldiers International (CSI). Eastern Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups that prey on locals and exploit mineral reserves. Millions died between 1996 and 2003 as a regional conflict caused hunger and disease. Around a third of all children in armed groups in the country are estimated to be girls, who are often married off to militants and are vulnerable to abuse and rape, activists say. "It is deeply shocking that, because their families cannot afford to pay school fees, some girls see joining an armed group as their only option, and decide to throw themselves in harm's way," said Isabelle Guitard, director of programs at CSI. While primary education is free and compulsory by law, most schools in Congo charge fees for books and uniforms, CSI said. "Despite the horrific abuse the girls go through while with armed groups, it is the rejection from their families and communities which distresses many of them the most," Guitard told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from London. While civil society groups have had some success in getting boys out of armed groups and into reintegration programs, this shame and fear of rejection back home has kept many girls in the bush, according to CSI's report. "If we leave the group, we're going to be targeted ... so many girls accept and continue to live with their bush husband," said one of the 150 former girl soldiers interviewed by CSI. Most of these girls said going to school was the best way to regain acceptance from their communities, and that it helped them to deal with trauma suffered while with the armed groups. CSI said it was working with local partners to help former girl soldiers go back to school, provide catch-up sessions and literacy classes for those who have never been educated or who are too old to start. (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) KELOWNA, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / Laguna Blends Inc. (CSE: LAG ) (OTC: LAGBF ) (Frankfurt: LB6A.F ) (the "Company" or "Laguna"), has extended the deadline associated with the letter of intent (the "LOI") with Carlsbad Naturals ("Carlsbad") dated October 10, 2016, pursuant to which Laguna and Carlsbad plan to enter into an equity acquisition and exclusive licence agreement for the purpose of pursuing mutually beneficial business opportunities in the Cannabidiol (CBD) bottled water Industry and CBD ingestible products Industry. Laguna and Carlsbad anticipate finalizing the definitive Agreement by December 10, 2016. All other terms of the LOI remain the same. About Carlsbad Naturals: Created by a team of doctors, Carlsbad Naturals brings cutting edge science to deliver nutrients and hydration in an effective way, naturally and responsibly. Applying quantum physics, our nanotechnology successfully increases the surface area of each substance we put in our water, so that less is much more. Carlsbad Naturals is a market leader in the distribution and sales of CBD Water. With its unique and proprietary way of infusing CBD's though nanotechnology Carlsbad is poised to remain the market leader. We at Carlsbad Naturals are committed to providing the highest quality products for our customers. This is why we work with Solar Rain, a company in California with the same high standards, not only for the products they make but also their strong belief in preserving our planet by their use of sustainable and renewable resources. For more information about Carlsbad Naturals, go to www.cbdnaturals.com For more information about Solar Rain, go to www.SolarRainWatery.com About Laguna Blends Inc. Laguna Blends is a market leader in the distribution of Hemp and CBD products. Lagunas growth strategy includes acquiring and incubating companies who formulate and or manufacture Hemp products. Laguna Blends markets Hemp products utilizing its B to B Network along with driving traffic to its online marketplace. It's Lagunas intent to provide the highest quality hemp product experience for the end user, utilizing a proprietary nanotechnology in many of its consumable and topical skin care products. Story continues Laguna is currently seeking joint ventures and acquisitions to expand its portfolio and will aggressively begin international expansion into Asia and Europe in 2017. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Stuart Gray" Chief Executive Officer CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS: Howe & Bay Suite 600 - 535 Howe St. Vancouver BC V6C 2Z4 1.604.449.5302 COMPANY: Laguna Blends ir@lagunablends.com www.lagunablends.com https://cbdskincream.com/ Join Us On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LagunaBlends/ Twitter: @LagunaBlends Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future the Company's business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's products and plan will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation, and does not intend, to update any forward looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release.Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and makes no reference to profitability based on sales reported. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. SOURCE: Laguna Blends Inc. On December 7, 1972, NASA launched Apollo 17, a lunar mission crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt. It would be the last time humans traveled beyond low Earth orbit, the last time man landed on another celestial body, and the last time man went to the moon. The Last Steps uses rare, heart-pounding footage and audio to retrace the record-setting mission. A film by Todd Douglas Miller. Watch the complete film here. This Really Great Big Story was made in collaboration with our friends at CNN Films. It is one of 12 short films that we will be releasing throughout the year. Stay tuned for more! By James M. Kushiner - November 11 was Veterans Day in the United States. Its origins lie in the ending of hostilities of World War I on November 11, 1918, agreed by all parties to go into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. On November 11 there are four soldier-saints commemorated in the Western and Eastern calendars! In both East and West, Mennas of Egypt (d. 300) and Martin of Tours (d. 397) are commemorated. Also, in the Western calendar Mercurius(d. 250, pictured) is commemorated (Nov. 24 in the East), while in the Eastern churches we find Victor, martyred at Damascus (d. 160). Martin left the army and became bishop of Tours and died peacefully. The others three died as martyrs. St. Mennas (Menas) was supposedly buried at El Alamein, Egypt (origin of the name?). Also, curiously, November 11, 1942, saw the victory of Allied forces over Hitler at El Alamein. Churchill said of its importance in the war: "It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.'"(This posting at Ancient Faith is a reasonable assessment of an alleged miracle during the battle at El Alamein.) Soldiers are deeply woven into the history of the early Church. One of the most famous examples was a general and eventually emperor: Constantine, who is credited with ending the Age of the Martyrs and providing religious freedom for Christians. Speaking of Constantine and religious freedom, a curious piece from Mercatornet in Australia by Blaise Joseph compares him to the new American president-elect in the case of freedom: Conservatives do not lack will, good arguments, or articulate defenders; what they lack is the freedom to speak bluntly about social issues without being shouted down by the vindictive hordes of secular progressivism for "offending" particular groups of people. Donald Trump is the only person who can give us that freedom. Well, calling Trump a Constantine may be an exercise in imaginative prophecy. But, yes, the public square has been off-limits to certain Christian viewpoints. For example, notes Joseph: By Nnekule Ikemfuna KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - Police said nine people were killed in clashes between Shi'ite Muslims and police during a religious procession in northern Nigeria on Monday, but the minority sect said dozens of its members lost their lives. The clashes occurred on the outskirts of Kano, a city in a state of the same name, as members of the country's largest Shi'ite group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), conducted an annual procession to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna state. It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the sect. A judicial inquiry in August reported that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in mass graves after clashes with the army in December 2015, and two sect members were killed in processions in Kaduna state last month. Kano state Police Commissioner Rabiu Yusuf told reporters that nine people died in Monday's violence - eight IMN members and a policeman. He said several people were injured, including four police officers. "At first we used tear gas on them. They attacked one of our personnel, who sustained a fatal injury," he said. Yusuf said IMN members used the dead policeman's weapon to fire at officers and they had "no option" but to use live ammunition in response. Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the IMN - whose 1980s founders were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Shi'ite Iran - said policemen opened fire on a peaceful crowd and killed "close to" 100 people including women and children. "We view the unwarranted killings by the police as a continuation of the army pogrom started in Zaria last year," he said. The exact death toll was unclear, he added, because most of the bodies were "ferried away by the police, possibly for mass burial". Last month the Kaduna state government declared IMN as an "unlawful society" on the grounds that its processions were a danger to peace, and said anyone convicted of being a member of the sect could be imprisoned for up to seven years. Human Rights Watch estimates that IMN has around 3 million members. The sect's leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, has been held without charge since December following the clashes with the army in Zaria. Security analysts have drawn some parallels between the IMN and Boko Haram, the Sunni Muslim jihadist group whose insurgency began in 2009 after security forces killed hundreds of its members and its leader Mohammed Yusuf died in custody. Nigeria, which has 180 million people and is Africa's most populous nation, combines a predominantly Christian south and mainly Sunni Muslim north. Around 250 ethnic groups have co-existed mostly peacefully in the country. (Additional reporting by Garba Muhammad in Kaduna; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Mark Heinrich) MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / The management of Level 7 Global Holdings has used the last few quarters to open additional sales channels for growth and trade. After Level 7 Global Holdings issued ETI investment certificate: Level 7 Global Holdings ETI (WKN: A17TAW, ISIN: MT0000951252) with a denomination of EUR 1,000, including the supplement EU prospectus was approved by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission in August 2016. Source: https://www.gsx.gi/notice/62/prospectus-approval-level-7-global-holdings-asset-backed-eti-securities-note-approved-by-fsc Source: https://www.gsx.gi/notice/64/securities-admission-eur-10-000-000-asset-backed-level-7-global-holdings-eti-admitted-to-gsx The prospectuses for the capital market could be notified in August 2016 by the AFM in Holland and the FCA in England. On September 16, 2016, the BaFin [German Financial Supervisory Authority] also notified the prospectus of the 5.25% coupon ETI for private investors. This is an important step in the successful development of Level 7 Global Holdings. The stock exchange listing of the 5.25% ETI allows private investors in all EU countries to trade. In Frankfurt, the 5.25% investment certificate can be traded under the security identification number: A17TAW on a stock exchange: http://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/zertifikate/Auf-Level-7-Global-Holdings-Inc/A17TAW. Level 7 Global Holdings assumes that the open channel of the 5.25% ETI certificate for private investor groups will now be able to significantly and quickly increase liquidity, which will directly benefit the growth of the investments. As investors, Level 7 Global Holdings buys shares of innovative and promising companies. As an investment and holding company, Level 7 provides risk capital for start-ups, but also invests in established companies. Through this diversified portfolio strategy, Level 7 generates sustained revenues as well as capital gains as with a share. This investment structure is made possible by the broad distribution of capital and resulting minimized risk. Story continues The investments already entered into the portfolio by Level 7 Global Holdings will thus be developed even more rapidly, contracts and distribution agreements entered into, and last but not least, the preparations for IPOs already in progress will be implemented from the second quarter of 2017 onwards. This gives a good outlook for private investors investing in the 5.25% ETI to generate additional income from the development of holdings in the portfolio of Level 7 Global Holdings. This gives private investors the opportunity to act as professional investors and to participate in the success of their respective company development right from the start. As an active partner in the investment companies, Level 7 Global Holdings creates security and trust for all stakeholders through this transparency. Media Contact: Level 7 Global Holdings Corp. 7950 NW 53rd Street Suite 337 Miami, Florida 33166 Phone: +1.305.407.9619 E-Mail: media@l7holdings.com Website: www.l7holdings.com About Level 7 Global Holdings Corp.: Level 7 Global Holdings Corp. is a company that provide services as a Holding and Private Equity Firm to businesses, and asset management in all profitable business sectors that includes but is not limited to the media, the tech sector, digital technology, manufacturing, online retail and others. We are involved in start-up companies seeking to infiltrate fast-growing markets and we specialize in early-stage financing, venture capital and private equity. Beside our main investment strategy as noted above, Level 7 is also involved in the acquisition of shares from already well established companies that have a history of profitability, sustained earnings and positive cash flow. The aim of our portfolio strategy is to provide the company both room for growth, income flow, and capital appreciation on a sustained basis. Our Exchange Traded Instrument (ETI), listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, offers the professionals and institutional investors the opportunity to invest in our instrument. For more information, please visit: www.l7holdings.com. Disclaimer: This document contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the current views, expectations and assumptions of the management of Level 7 Global Holdings Corp. and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Actual results, performance or events may differ materially from those described in such statements due to, among other things, changes in the general economic and competitive environment, risks associated with capital markets, currency exchange rate fluctuations and competition from other companies, changes in international and national laws and regulations, in particular with respect to tax laws and regulations, and other factors. Level 7 Global Holdings Corp. does not assume any obligations to update any forward-looking statements. This document if for information purposes only and no investment advice neither a solicitation to offer, purchase or sell the profiled securities. SOURCE: Level 7 Global Holdings Corp. At a screening of their 1996 film Flirting with Disaster at the AFI Fest on Friday, director David O. Russell gave Lily Tomlin a bouquet of roses. Russell and Tomlin were there to talk about the independent comedy on its 20th anniversary year. But Russells flowery gesture may have struck some audience members as a tacit apology for the blow-up that occurred during the shooting of a different Russell film, I Heart Huckabees. In 2007, a video of Russell screaming and swearing at Tomlin during the shooting of 2004s Huckabees was leaked online, exposing a tense working relationship. But judging from Friday nights panel, the actress and director have reconciled, and are able to look back fondly on their first film together. I was so blessed to get a comic icon like Lily Tomlin to be in [Flirting with Disaster], Russell told the audience (via Indiewire, a co-sponsor of the screening). The film, an ensemble comedy about a new father (Ben Stiller) who goes to great lengths to track down his birth parents (Tomlin and Alan Alda), was only Russells second feature film. Fourteen years later, he received his first Best Director Oscar nomination for The Fighter (2011), followed by nominations for Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013). At the time, however, he was a quirky newcomer who appealed to Tomlin with his sense of humor. When I read the script, I laughed every time, she said of Flirting. It was just so hilarious. During the conversation (moderated by Mad Men creator Matt Weiner), Russell praised Tomlins contribution to one of the films best sequences: A dinner scene at which Tomlins character reveals her drug-dealer past, as well as the butterfly tattoo on her thigh. That tattoo [idea] was completely Lilys, Russell said. It just happened in the middle of the scene, and its perfectly timed. David O. Russell and Lily Tomlin reunited at #AFIFEST last night for a 20th anniv #FlirtingWithDisaster conversation. #davidorussell #lilytomlin #hollywood A photo posted by American Film Institute (@americanfilminstitute) on Nov 12, 2016 at 1:01pm PST Tomlin and Russell have both previously stated that their much-publicized feud is water under the bridge. Lily Tomlin and I love each other, and would work together tomorrow, Huckabee told the New York Times Magazine in 2013, while refuting his reputation as a difficult director. Speaking to Moveline in 2011, Tomlin said that the leaked video just captured a tense moment with a man who is like family to her. If you have a big fight in your family, usually its treated that way on the set. We dont want to misbehave; believe me, its embarrassing. Its humiliating, you know? she explained. But I adore David. I adore him as a talent. A lot of my friends said, Well, you wont work with him again. I said, Of course I would! In a heartwarming wedding day moment captured on video in Brazil, a little girl gets emotional as her stepfather asks her to be his daughter. Diogo Balant, 37, told InsideEdition.com that it was a surprise for 6-year-old Isadora, whom he has known since he started dating her mother, Nicole, three years earlier. Read: Tiny Twins Born 11 Weeks Early Hold Hands in Heartwarming Video My intention was to give her this special gift, Balant said. In the video, Balant gets down on one knee and asks the little girl, do you agree to be my daughter forever? and through tears, Isadora replies, yes. Read: Girl Celebrates 3rd Birthday on Election Day by Dressing Up as Both Candidates He then puts a little ring on her finger. Everyone was very emotional, said Balant. Watch: 4-Year-Old Girl Honors Late Mom by Wearing Her Wedding Dress in Touching Photos Related Articles: A group of bikers stopped to give a helping hand to a man with a broken-down motorcycle only to discover he was Bruce Springsteen. The Boss ride gave out in Wall Township, New Jersey, near Allaire State Park over the weekend. Motorcyclists from the Freehold American Legion, who were returning from a Veterans Day celebration, pulled over to help, not knowing the man in need was New Jerseys favorite son. Read: Like a Boss: After Skipping School, Kid Receives Absent Note Signed by Bruce Springsteen Rider Dan Barkalow told Inside Edition that Springsteen was just a "down-to-earth" guy. The group tried to get the rock stars bike running again, but had no luck. There was something wrong with the battery, Barkalow said. Read: Bruce Springsteen Signs Young Fan's Tardy Note After Late Concert So the group headed over to a local watering hole, where they swapped stories until Springsteens ride showed up. Watch: Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and Lady Gaga Give Hillary Clinton Final Push Related Articles: PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill has died, the public broadcaster said on Monday. Ifill, who served as moderator of Washington Week and as co-host for PBSs NewsHour, died at the age of 61. It is with extreme sadness that we share the news that Gwen Ifill passed away earlier today surrounded by family and friends, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement. Gwen was one of Americas leading lights in journalism and a fundamental reason public media is considered a trusted window on the world by audiences across the nation. Ifill was absent from the public broadcasters election coverage last week because of ongoing health issues, Politico reports. The veteran journalist previously moderated vice-presidential debates in 2004, between Dick Cheney and John Edwards, and in 2008, between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. Last year, Ifill moderated a Democratic primary debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Her contributions to thoughtful reporting and civic discourse simply cannot be overstated, Kerger wrote. She often said that her job was to bring light rather than heat to issues of importance to our society. Gwen did this with grace and a steadfast commitment to excellence. President Obama offered his condolences to Ifills family and journalistic colleagues during a Monday press conference. I always appreciated Gwens reporting even when I was at the receiving end of one of her tough interviews, he said, adding that Ifill not only informed todays citizens but she also empowered tomorrows journalists. Ifill began her career in the 1970s, reporting from the Boston Herald American before moving on to positions at the Washington Post, the New York Times and NBC prior to working at PBS. In winning the presidential election, Donald Trump has received fewer overall votes than Hillary Clinton according to current vote tallies. That fact has revived talk on the Left that the electoral college needs to be fixedas if the possibility that a candidate could win election with fewer overall votes was something the Founders failed to anticipate. In particular, the National Popular Vote plan calls for states to pledge their electors to vote for the candidate who receives the most votes nationally instead of the most votes in their state. As Tara Ross explains, not only is the National Popular Vote plan an end-run around the Constitution and its federalist design, it would also incentivize and nationalize voter fraud. Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - German energy supplier RWE on Monday blamed heavy third-quarter losses on low energy prices, but insisted it could still meet its full-year target. Net income attributable to shareholders was 446 million euros ($482 million) in the red between July and September, the group said, down from 193 million in profit over the same period in 2015. RWE had already suffered a loss of more than 400 million euros in the second quarter. Adjusted for special items, the group's net profit stood at 227 million euros between January and September -- a drop of 58 percent year-on-year. "In view of the difficult conditions, above all in conventional electricity generation, we recorded respectable earnings in the first three quarters," chief financial officer Markus Krebber said in a statement. But the group said it would meet its forecast of adjusted net profit between 500 million and 700 million for the whole year. Like other German energy heavyweights, RWE has faced stiff headwinds in recent years as it struggles to adapt to a changing market. Competition from subsidised renewable electricity has bitten deep, while the group must pay billions into a government fund to cover long-term storage of nuclear waste. In October, it split off its renewable energy and grid activities into a new publicly-traded firm, Innogy, in the largest IPO in Germany since 2000. RWE's Monday statement said it enjoyed "new room for manoeuvre through increased financial flexibility" since the flotation. The new cash will let the group pay its 6.8-billion-euro share of the 23.6-billion nuclear waste fund "as quickly as possible," CFO Krebber said. A judge has ordered the supervised release of Making a Murderer subject Brendan Dassey, pending possible retrial. According to court documents obtained by TheWrap, U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Duffin ordered that Dasseys motion for release pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 23(c) (ECF No. 29) is GRANTED. The respondent shall release the respondent upon the United States Probation Office notifying the court that it has approved the proposed residence and completed whatever addition investigation it deems necessary. Dasseys release is subject to conditions including that he may not violate any federal, state or local law and that Dassey must provide the address of his intended residence no later than Nov. 15. Dassey will not obtain a passport and can only travel in the courts Eastern District of Wisconsin. He cannot possess a gun or any other weapons or possess any controlled substances. Also Read: 'Making a Murderer' Steven Avery Dumps New Fiancee: 'She Is a Golddigger' Additionally, he cannot contact his uncle Steven Avery, who was also convicted of killing Teresa Halbach in 2005, or the family of Halbach. The order also stated that Dassey does not offer any represent any danger to the community. Dassey has no criminal record other than this case, read the document. His prison disciplinary record is exceedingly benign There is no hint of violent or antisocial behavior from his time in prison. The United States Probation Office may also propose that the court add any additional conditions or modify conditions of Dasseys release. In August, Dasseys conviction was overturned. Judge Duffin granted Dasseys writ for a petition of habeas corpus, finding that Dasseys imprisonment was unlawful because his confession to the murder of Teresa Halbach was involuntary. Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Wisconsin to Appeal Brendan Dassey's Overturned Conviction In a brief filed with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals within 90 days of the decision, Attorney General Brad Schimel appealed the decision, asking for Dassey to remain behind bars: We believe the magistrate judges decision that Brendan Dasseys confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. Story continues On Monday, Schimel announced he would be filing an emergency motion in the Seventh Circuit seeking a stay of this release order. The saga surrounding Halbachs killing in Wisconsin around Halloween 2005 and whether Dasseys uncle Steven Avery committed the brutal act was the focus of Netflixs hit docuseries Making a Murderer, which gained wide acclaim and interest after it was released in December 2015. Dassey, who is now 26, was convicted in 2007 of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse in Halbachs murder. His lawyers filed this writ of habeas corpus in 2014. Pamela Chelin contributed to this report. Related stories from TheWrap: 'Making a Murderer': Brendan Dassey's Lawyers Make New Bid for His Release 'Making a Murderer': Steven Avery's Lawyer Hints at Brendan Dassey Decision 'Making a Murderer': Brendan Dassey Retrial May Hinge on Teresa Halbach Family Decision A U.S. Magistrate Judge in Wisconsin has ordered Making a Murderer subject Brendan Dassey released from federal prison while prosecutors appeal his overturned conviction. Judge William Duffin today ordered Dassey released with multiple conditions as court proceedings continue. Dassey, one of two men whose murder convictions were chronicled in the hit Netflix docuseries, was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for his alleged participation in the death of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach. His uncle Steven Avery was found guilty of Halbachs murder. Judge Duffin overturned Dasseys conviction in August, ruling that the court found his confession was involuntary. That was followed by a notice of appeal by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. The 10-episode Making a Murderer chronicled and questioned the murder convictions of Avery and Dassey. The case gained national attention after its December premiere. Related stories Jason Momoa's 'Frontier' Gets Netflix Premiere Date Long Before Donald Trump Surprised, Hollywood Values Consultant Marshall Mitchell Saw It Coming Kate Walsh Cast In Universal's 'Girls' Trip' & '#REALITYHIGH' For Netflix Steven Avery making a murderer fox 5 "Making a Murderer" subject Steven Avery's attorney Kathleen Zellner announced that they have just cleared a major legal hurdle in potentially proving his innocence. Back in August, Zellner filed a motion to carry out tests on the case evidence in Wisconsin. Now nearly three months later, the tests can finally move forward. "Agreed Testing Order entered on Monday for Steven Avery," tweeted Zellner, who hopes that this closer look at the evidence will prove that at least some of it was planted. Agreed Testing Order entered on Monday for Steven Avery. #MakingAMurderer Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) November 12, 2016 According to Uproxx, that means the scope of Zellner's proposed testing has been decided. That requires an agreement between Avery's legal team and the prosecutors in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where in 2007 Steven Avery was convicted of the murder of Teresa Halbach a trial covered by Netflix's hit "Making a Murderer." Specifics on the tests will be revealed after Zellner files the order on Monday and it becomes available to the public. What we do know is that Zellner's original motion included requests to test the keys to victim Teresa Halbach's Toyota Rav4; various parts of the Rav4, including the hood latch where police found Avery's DNA; purple underwear discovered in the Avery scrap yard; and all previously collected swabs from the trial, including blood that Avery's lawyers have argued came from a vial of Avery's blood that was held by the police. Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, were both found guilty of the 2005 murder of Halbach. A judge overturned Dassey's conviction in August, but Wisconsin prosecutors are fighting the decision. NOW WATCH: The defense attorneys from 'Making a Murderer' respond to criticism from Steven Averys new lawyer More From Business Insider The man carried out the act in his Pasir Ris flat in December 2013. (Yahoo Singapore file photo) A man who raped his maid from Myanmar twice in his flat in 2013 was given 13 years jail and 20 strokes of the cane. Chin Swee Chung, who was in the alcohol distribution business, had pleaded not guilty earlier in the trial, saying that the maid had consented to having sex with him. Appearing before Justice Chan Seng Onn at the High Court on Monday (14 November), the 45-year-old bespectacled Malaysian was emotionless when his sentence was read out. Media reports said that the 38-year-old maid, who cannot be named due to a gag order, is a mother of three and has left Singapore. The court heard previously that Chin had returned to his flat in Pasir Ris after a night out of drinking with his friends. At around 1am on 20 December 2013, Chin called out his maid from her room. He gripped her hands and pulled her from the living room into his bedroom where he raped her. Some six hours later, he again forced the victim into the bedroom and repeated the offence. The maid called the police later in the morning, and Chin was later arrested and charged. Chins lawyer, Sunil Sudheesan, appealed for a sentence of 11 years and 12 strokes of the cane, saying that Chin had acted out of character and pointed out that his client had no prior criminal record. However, Deputy Public Prosecutor Kumaresan Gohulabalan stressed that the incident happened at a place where the maid was supposed to feel safe. The maid also lost her job and a source of income, DPP Kumaresan added. Chin plans to appeal against the conviction and sentence, and is out on bail. Marco Mueller is opening up about his sudden resignation from the Macao International Film Festival and Awards (IFFAM). The industry veteran gave the global film festival community a shock on Saturday by announcing that he was departing the festival he helped create less than a month before its inaugural edition. Mueller's surprise announcement of his exit preempted a press conference the Macao festival held Monday to unveil the lineup of films that would show at the event. Addressing their festival director's sudden flight, members of the event's organizing team said they were contemplating legal action against him. Speaking by phone from Macao, Mueller tells THR that the reason for his resignation was "diverging opinions on the way a festival was to be run, especially the inaugural edition of the festival." He declined to elaborate and wouldn't say whether a specific incident prompted his departure. A mainstay of the festival circuit and a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker, Mueller previously headed the Locarno, Venice and Rome film festivals, as well as the Beijing and Fuzhou Silk Road film festivals in China. "They said they are going to sue me," he adds. "It's inconceivable that they would talk first, when normally they should have called me, instead of announcing it to the press." Mueller says he signed an "agreement, not a contract" with the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), before their working relationship began. "That's why I was really shocked that, at the press conference, the MGTO and the MFTPA (Macau Films & Television Productions and Culture Association) mentioned that they are contemplating legal action," he adds. Read more: Marco Mueller Exits Macao Film Festival The festival lineup that the IFFAM unveiled Monday was the same one that he and a team of international consultants had put together though, according to Mueller. "I think we have done tremendous work," he says. "We have been very busy putting together this program. Imagine how it is, to try and sell a festival that has not existed so far, to try and sell Macau, a tiny dot on the geographical map." Story continues The plan to create a new festival in Macau, the former Portuguese colony turned wealthy casino enclave in southern China, was announced at the Berlin International Film Festival last February - and it was news that many in the industry cheered, as an opportunity for deeper engagement with the fast-growing Chinese movie world. The lineup unveiled Monday includes an international competition section; a "Hidden Dragons" section representing the latest trends in contemporary Asian genre cinema; a Best of Fest program of award-winning features from other festivals, and a Crossfire category of a dozen films selected by renowned East Asian filmmakers. Notably, there were no Hollywood films included throughout the festival's first lineup. Mueller declined to reveal whether the decision not to include Hollywood titles was what caused the split of opinion among the organizing committee. "The potential success of the festival this year will prove that there is space for another festival in this part of Asia, and the media and the industry will be present," says Mueller. "Starting from next year, you can imagine big Hollywood films coming to the festival. You have to clarify your national and international media policy, and your industry and market policy." Speculation has been rife in Macau since the news of his resignation was made public. The Macau Daily Times quoted unnamed sources as saying that the festival's local organizing team was chaotic and rife with nepotism, where people with no experience in films or film festivals were put into positions of importance. As for leaving a festival he has helped nurture since its inception, Mueller says he is conflicted. "I feel serene, because we have worked hard [and] we have done everything that we tried to do. But of course, at the same time, I'm very sad to leave the festival before it's begun. So many films are waiting for their world, international or Asian premiere in Macau, but I'm sure a team is there; they know how to take care of the films. And the international consultants will be there to help - to take good care of each and every film." Next for the renowned festival director - now that he suddenly has some flexibility in his schedule - is a trip to India. "For many years I have been a mentor for the Work in Progress Lab in Goa. So I'm traveling to India to be a mentor in a big culture workshop," Mueller says. But it seems, his mind is still in Macau. "Actually, another wonderful film in the [IFFAM] festival program is the world premiere of Gurgaon. It is a film that I discovered in the Work in Progress Lab last year," he says. "I've been following the post-production of the film. It can only be described as such a beautiful film." Read more: French Ballet Drama 'Polina' to Open Inaugural Macao Film Festival Marijuana use may be linked to a weakened heart muscle, a new studyfinds. Researchers found that people who used marijuana were twice as likely to later develop a heart condition called transient ventricular regional ballooning (TVRB) than those who did not use marijuana. TVRB is a form of cardiomyopathy, which is a sudden weakening of the heart muscle that can mimic symptoms of a heart attack. The symptoms can include chest pain, dizziness and shortness of breath, but the condition is often temporary. The most surprising finding from the study was that the marijuana users in the study were the opposite of the people that TVRB tends to strike in several ways, said Dr. Amitoj Singh, a co-author of the study and the chief cardiology fellow at St. Lukes University Health Network in Pennsylvania. The condition tends to develop in post-menopausal women, he said. In the study, the marijuana users who developed TVRB were 44 years old, on average, and 36 percent were men. Among the non-marijuana users in the study who developed TVRB, the average age was 66, and just 8 percent were men. [10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart] None of the people in the study who had used marijuana died from the heart condition after being admitted to the hospital, so the study does not link marijuana use to deaths, Singh told Live Science. However, people "should be aware that certain cardiovascular abnormalities and complications can occur from marijuana use," he said. In the study, the researchers looked at data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database, which includes data from community hospitals in 44 states. The researchers found 33,343 admissions for TVRB between 2003 and 2011, and that 210 of these patients had either reported that they had used marijuana, or had a marker of the drug in their urine. After the researchers took into account a number of factors linked with TVRB, such as depression and anxiety disorders, the link between marijuana use and TVRB held, they said. Story continues It isn't clear how the link may work. TVRB has only recently been recognized as a health condition, Singh said. Some research shows that that high levels of stress hormones are linked to the development of the condition. Moreover, studies have shown that stress hormone levels in the urine increase in people who smoke marijuana, he said. [7 Foods Your Heart Will Hate] The researchers noted that their study was retrospective, and cannot establish that marijuana maybe be a cause of TVRB. Furthermore, the researchers did not have information on how long patients had been using marijuana, how much of the drug they used, or how that marijuana was ingested. (Marijuana can be smoked, or consumed in edible products, such as brownies or candies.) Singh emphasized that he does not discount studies that have shown some of marijuana's positive effects of people's health. However, the drug needs much more study, he told Live Science. "We don't know everything about marijuana." Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations A high school student protest spilled off-campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Monday, November 14, in a march against Donald Trumps election. Teachers and administrators at Montgomery Blair High School thought the protest would remain on campus, according to a news report. Jennifer Cueva, who took this video, said the students were hoping to get students at other schools to join the protest. They would then march to Washington, she said, but she did not leave campus, so she didnt know where the group ultimately would march. The students were part of several high school walkouts across the country since Trump won the presidential election. A thousand students were estimated to have taken part in protests at Berkeley High School in California last week. Credit: Twitter/Jennifer Cueva via Storyful Kaga Bandoro (Central African Republic) (AFP) - A month after rebels killed dozens of civilians in Kaga Bandoro, residents of the Central African Republic town still live in fear despite the presence of UN peacekeepers in the country and the prospect of nationwide disarmament. Returning to the scene of the massacre for the first time, Sylvie pointed to the ruins of the small home she built in what was a settlement for 8,000 civilians displaced during years of unrest. "That's where I lived for three years," she said, recovering a comb from the scorched ground between the low walls of now roofless huts. On October 12 the predominantly Christian settlement was attacked by remnants of the mostly Muslim rebel "Seleka" coalition, which overthrew the national government in March 2013, only to be dislodged the following January. In apparent reprisal for the death of one of their own, the attackers killed at least 37 people and set fire to the camp. "People were burned on the spot, like two children and a grandmother over there," said site watchman Michel Kenze, near a pump where children were drawing water. After the attack, victims' corpses were left in the open to be eaten by wild pigs and other animals. Thousands of survivors, including Sylvie, fled to set up another camp between a base of the UN's MINUSCA peacekeeping force and the runway of the town's airport. - No longer in school - Sylvie now makes ends meet selling peanuts and fritters in a marketplace opposite the MINUSCA base. On the edge of the runway, young girls sing songs and play games. They are not in school. "We had just started the school year on September 19. On October 12, an education inspector was killed. After that, inspections shut down," said an aid worker with MINUSCA. "Civil servants had returned (to Kaga Bandoro), but they went back to Bangui after what happened," said local government official Paul Fradjala, who never ventures far from the UN base. Story continues The large country's army, police and government have a very limited presence outside the capital, Bangui. In 2013, Seleka's coup led to the formation of "anti-Balaka" vigilante units, drawn from the Christian majority, which began to target Muslims. Both sides committed widespread atrocities in different parts of the country, even after Seleka was chased from power. "We want peace, we want the armed groups to be disarmed," Sylvie said in her new home, a hut made from plastic sheeting where she stores her few possessions: a notebook, a jerrycan and an old mosquito net. A national programme to disarm fighters in CAR was officially launched a year ago, but in practice little has been done since to actually collect weapons or demobilise combattants. Sylvie no longer dares to visit Muslim traders on the far side of town over a bridge guarded by a few Pakistani UN troops -- members of the MINUSCA contingent accused of standing by as last month's massacre unfolded. The Muslim quarter is busy with shops selling food and clothes, a motel and a garage fixing motorbike taxis. In this part of town, Seleka fighters, along with gunmen from neighbouring Sudan and Chad, rub shoulders with civilians, residents say. "In the displaced persons' camps, there are also armed men among the civilians and MINUSCA sees and knows about them," counters Idriss Al Bachar, a young Seleka leader. - Tax on cattle - As much as he condemns the October massacre, Bachar is not in favour of disarmament, arguing that the rights and safety of the Muslim minority -- between 15 and 20 percent of the country's 4.5 million people -- are not yet guaranteed. "There is a climate of impunity in CAR, where members of armed groups and militias alleged to have committed appalling human rights abuses and crimes under international law, move freely throughout the country and continue to fuel violence," Amnesty International's Central Africa Researcher, Ilana Allegrozzi said Friday. There is an economic aspect to this impunity, according to Azrak Mahmat, an official in Kaga Bandoro's cattle market. "I pay 11,000 CFA francs ($16) in tax to Seleka for every head of cattle, he said. "When I load my vehicle to go to Bangui, the anti-balaka threaten me as well", he added. In the town's Muslim quarter, Abdelkarim, 56, and his Christian neighbour, Isakho Ndenga, 71, have enjoyed a decades-long friendship that has survived civil war and sectarian violence. Could they be an example for their country? "Inch Allah", the Muslim replies. If God wills it. Nouakchott (AFP) - The appeal of 13 anti-slavery activists in Mauritania began Monday under heavy security as defence lawyers called for their case to be thrown out due to "legal inconsistencies", including torture in custody. A court in Zouerate, northern Mauritania, will consider whether the sentences of three to 15 years in prison handed down in August to members of a group fighting hereditary slavery were justified. Defence lawyer Bah Ould M'Bareck, acting for the members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), said his team had "raised the procedural exceptions that we judge to be sufficient to have (the case) thrown out." The lawyer said the activists had been "submitted to torture" while in custody, an assertion repeatedly made by the accused themselves. The court decided to add the procedural claims to the main case, which opened on Tuesday evening, with the first three accused pleading not guilty, M'Bareck said. The case is due to continue on Tuesday with more accused giving evidence, followed by speeches from the prosecutors and defence lawyers. The 13 were initially convicted by a judge in the capital, Nouakchott, of using violence, attacking security forces, gathering while armed and membership of an unrecognised organisation. The campaigners were arrested between June 30 and July 9 after a protest by a Nouakchott slum community that was being forcibly relocated as the city prepared for an Arab League summit on July 25. About 10 police officers were injured during the demonstration, according to local officials. The slum was home to many so-called Haratin -- a "slave caste" under a hereditary system of servitude whose members are forced to work without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants, despite an official ban. Seven of the slum's residents are also appealing against their sentences. IRA supporters flooded the court on Monday, according to witnesses contacted by AFP, following a morning sit-in closely watched by police. Story continues Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement ahead of the appeal that those convicted were not even present the day of the Nouakchott protest. "This is an open and shut case of the government trying to silence anti-slavery activists in Mauritania," said Kine Fatim Diop, Amnesty International's West Africa campaigner. "From the outset this trial has been marred by irregularities, and allegations of torture that have not been investigated," Diop added, calling the legal proceedings a "farce" that had not proved criminal responsibility on the part of the activists. French lawyers for the IRA accused filed a criminal complaint in Paris for "torture and cruel treatment". By Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May called on business leaders on Monday to help her government win back Britons disillusioned with liberal elites and globalisation by forging an economy that "works for everyone". Describing the election of real estate magnate Donald Trump as U.S. president and Britain's vote to leave the European Union as proof that "change is in the air", May said Britain should not shy away from making the case for globalisation. Instead, government and business must show the benefits of global trade and liberalism can be shared more widely, creating jobs by pressing on with her "new industrial strategy" but also by encouraging companies to help communities, she said. "So at this moment of change, we must respond with calm, determined, global leadership to shape a new era of globalisation that works for all," she said in a speech at the Guildhall in the City of London financial district. "I stand here confident that in facing these new challenges, once again, Britain can lead." Many Western leaders have been rattled by the Brexit vote and Trump's election victory, fearing that they might also be brought low by growing dissatisfaction with the ruling elites. Since Britain's vote to leave the EU in June propelled May into leadership, the former interior minister has said she will deliver Brexit and address the fears of some British voters over high levels of immigration. That has spurred fears she may be heading for a "hard Brexit" or clean break with the EU's single market of 500 million consumers. On Monday, May again said there was no binary choice. "All of us here tonight know that there is not some choice between hard Brexit and soft Brexit," she said. "It is about how business and government works together to get the best deal; the right deal for Britain and the right deal for businesses working across the continent." She also said while she wanted Britain to be "the true global champion of free trade in this new modern world", she also wanted to ensure that all Britons profited from it. Story continues A new industrial strategy, she said, would target strengths across the British economy, whether they are universities, start-ups or dynamic businesses, rather than "propping up failing industries or picking winners". She also told the audience the government will be "unashamedly pro-business" as it leaves the European Union, but that companies must also act responsibly - part of plans to improve corporate behaviour. "The government I lead is unequivocally and unashamedly pro-business ... We will do everything we can to make the UK outside the EU the most attractive place for businesses to invest and grow," May said. "But in return, it is right to ask business to play its part in ensuring we build a country that works for everyone." (Editing by Toby Chopra) BERLIN German media giant Bertelsmann, which owns European broadcaster RTL Group, publishing house Penguin Random House and music rights company BMG, is to raise its investment in Brazil, India and China from 500 million ($536 million) to 1 billion ($1.07 billion) over the next three to five years. Chief executive Thomas Rabe said in an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday that the company generated 500 million ($536 million) of its revenue which totaled 17.1 billion ($18.3 million) last year from growth regions such as China, and is looking to increase that to more than 1 billion ($1.07 billion) over three to five years, in part through acquisitions. Rabe added that growth opportunities in China, Brazil and India as well as the U.S. were better than in Europe. Bertelsmann will become much, much more international, he said. Bertelsmann holds stakes in some 70 startups in China, Brazil and India through various funds. The Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI) fund has invested in some 60 digital companies in China, including social fashion network Meili and the Keep fitness app. Since the funds inception in 2008, BAI has generated around $194 million from divestments, making what the company said was a significant contribution to its net income. In the first half of this year, BAI contributed gains from asset sales that amounted to 55 million ($59 million). About 60 Bertelsmann executives from Europe, the U.S., China, India and Latin America met in Beijing last week to firm up the groups strategic development in the BIC countries. Rabe was on hand to open the new Bertelsmann Corporate Center offices in China, from where the company will coordinate its activities in the country. While its already active in the region through other high-profile divisions, namely television group RTL, Bertelsmann is focusing on a broad range of digital companies as well as media and educational content. In Brazil, Bertelsmann has shares in Medcel, a provider of courses for medical students; corporate-training market leader Affero lab; and financial services provider Intervalor. In India, it has invested in YoBoHo, a digital childrens video content provider; online furniture marketplace Pepperfry; streaming service Saavn; university services provider iNurture; and budget hotel marketplace Treebo. Story continues RTL is already active in Brazil, India and China, where its FremantleMedia production unit develops regional versions of such hit TV formats as Idol and Got Talent as well as other local programming. Penguin Random House, another Bertelsmann subsidiary, is the largest English-language trade publisher in India and a market leader in the Latin American book market. In addition, music division BMG recently expanded to Brazil. Rabe said Bertelsmann was ensuring its operations there would make a significant contribution to the groups overall growth in the years ahead. The company will achieve this through further investment, increasingly in cooperation with local partners, he added. Bertelsmann wants to be the partner of choice for businesses and creative people who want to expand in Brazil, India and China with their businesses and ideas. The media conglomerate on Friday posted consolidated nine-month sales of 12 billion ($12.9 billion), down from 12.2 billion ($13.07 billion), and a 13.8% increase in net profit to 652 million ($699 million). Related stories NBCUniversal, Germany's RTL Extend, Expand Movie, TV Series Pact BMG, BroadbandTV Create 'Windfall' for Aspiring YouTube Music Stars NBCU, RTL, TF1 Form Pact to Produce U.S. Procedural Shows for Global Market Fox News Channel has named contributor Meghan McCain as a permanent co-host of its weekday noon program Outnumbered. McCain joins panelists Harris Faulkner and Sandra Smith, along with one rotating male, described by the network as lucky guy. Sen. John McCains daughter begins her new gig today. McCain joined FNC in 2015 as a contributor and has provided political analysis across the networks daytime and primetime programming. Prior to joining FNC, McCain served as the host of Pivot Networks TakePart Live. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling childrens book My Dad, John McCain and a 2010 memoir Dirty Sexy Politics. Outnumbered ranked in the top 15 programs in total viewers for the month of October, outpacing some primetime cable news competition. Related stories Roger Ailes Again Denies Sexually Harassing Megyn Kelly At Fox News Election Week Delivers Record Monday-Friday Ratings For Fox News Channel Megyn Kelly Refutes NYT Book Review Citing Possible Poisoning, Leak To Trump About Debate Question My family sat down for our first interview post-election with @60minutes. Tune in at 7pm EST to watch! A photo posted by Ivanka Trump (@ivankatrump) on Nov 13, 2016 at 10:52am PST On Sunday night, the Trump family including the President-elect, Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany, Donald Jr., and Eric sat down with Lesley Stahl for an interview on CBSs 60 Minutes. For the first time, the new first family opened up about what Washington will look like with them in the White House. Well, there is a lot of responsibilities. And its a lot of work needs to be done. And its your stuff on your shoulders, the future first lady said when asked if she was nervous about her new job. And we will take care of it day by day. I will stay true to myself. Im very strong and um tough and confident. And I will listen myself and I will do what is right and what feels to my heart. One thing Melania already understands is the intense scrutiny first ladiess appearances come under. We are used to it, Melania, wearing a red sheath, admitted. The silhouettes similar to one that she favors, tailored to fit her body perfectly. According to Net-a-Porter, the Antonio Berardi piece is expertly cut from stretch-cady and has a softly draped low back and split sleeves, giving it a feeling of relaxed elegance. The dress retails for $1,655. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. By Andreas Rinke and Andrea Shalal BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives agreed on Monday to back Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier as Germany's next president, creating a vacancy at the foreign ministry at a critical moment in relations with Russia and the United States. Merkel's camp had hoped to promote its own candidate but chose to back political rival Steinmeier for the largely ceremonial post to avoid a long fight with his party, its partner in the ruling 'grand coalition'. Steinmeier, who called Republican Donald Trump a "preacher of hate" before the U.S. election, said on Monday he hoped the president-elect would change course upon entering office and recognize that "the world is more complex, that climate change is real and that NATO is not superfluous." Merkel said Steinmeier was excellently suited to be head of state. "At a time when there's unrest and instability around the world, sending a signal of stability - and so the conservatives supporting Steinmeier's candidacy - is in my view right and important," she said. The chancellor's desire to show a unified front gained new urgency after the election of Trump, at a time when anti-establishment parties are taking root across Europe and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany has made rapid gains. The next foreign minister will have an overflowing in-tray as Germany tries to unite a divided post-Brexit European Union, contain an assertive Russia and work out a new relationship with Washington under Trump. Media reports tipped European Parliament President Martin Schulz as a candidate. Schulz has in recent weeks criticized Turkey over human rights and taken a firm line towards Britain over its pending departure from the EU. Last week he said he hoped for "rational cooperation" with Trump, whom he had previously described as "not only a problem for the EU but also for the whole world". Monday's decision paves the way for Steinmeier to be elected on Feb. 12 to the largely ceremonial post now held by Joachim Gauck, a Lutheran pastor who made his mark as an anti-communist leader in the former East Germany. Both of Gauck's predecessors in the job had resigned, creating headaches for Merkel. BRIDGE-BUILDER Steinmeier, in his first interview after the news, said he worried about the rise of populist candidates in the United States and across Europe, with their anti-immigrant and nationalist rhetoric, mistrust of the media, and isolationism. "I see all those trends here at home too," he told a website run by the Bild newspaper. "We have to pay close attention, and my appeal is clear: we must nip it in the bud." Steinmeier is liked and respected in Germany despite losing out as the SPD's chancellor candidate in 2009. His popularity surged in 2010 when he took a break from politics to donate a kidney to his sick wife. Gauck's term expires in March, six months before Germany holds a parliamentary election. Merkel, 62, is widely expected to run for a fourth term as chancellor, and a poll last week showed more than half of Germans want her to do so. Steinmeier raised concerns among U.S. and NATO officials earlier this year when he said Western military exercises in eastern Europe could be seen as "saber-rattling" against Russia. He has pushed hard to end fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and condemned Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. At the same time, he backs continued dialogue with Russia, a view shared by Trump. The president is not directly elected by the people, but rather by the Federal Convention, an assembly of members of the federal parliament and delegates from state parliaments. (Additional reporting by Joern Poltz in Munich, and Hans-Edzard Busemann and Reuters TV in Berlin; Writing by Andrea Shalal and Paul Carrel; Editing by Michelle Martin and Mark Trevelyan) Mexico City (AFP) - Mexico's government said Monday it will discuss with US President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration his plan to jail or deport millions of undocumented migrants with criminal records. President Enrique Pena Nieto has given instructions to his ministries to consider any "contingencies" in case Trump undertakes massive deportations when he takes office in January, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said. "We will have to see how many of these deportations, which the US government usually carries out, ... correspond to Mexico," Sanchez said at a news conference. "This and other issues will be part of the agenda that Mexico will put on the table in the bilateral meetings that will take place with the government of President-elect Donald Trump," he said. Pena Nieto said last week that he had agreed to meet with Trump, possibly before the Republican billionaire takes office in January, and that he felt "optimistic" about future relations. Trump said in a interview broadcast Sunday on CBS television's "60 Minutes" program that up to three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or incarcerated. The United States has an estimated 11-12 million undocumented migrants, mostly of Mexican origin. Trump also reaffirmed his signature campaign pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico, although he conceded parts of it may be just a fence. Sanchez recalled that Pena Nieto has rejected Trump's call for Mexico to pay for the barrier. The presidential spokesman said the foreign ministry will launch a campaign in the United States to keep Mexicans informed and protect them through Mexico's consular network. Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu huddled with consular officials on Saturday to design plans to protect and assist Mexicans in the United States. While Pena Nieto prepares for the new US administration, he spoke by phone with President Barack Obama on Monday about economic ties, fighting organized crime and "managing migration," the White House said in a statement. "Both presidents agreed to continue to take steps to solidify the relationship and institutionalize mechanisms of cooperation that have been created with bipartisan support to ensure that the strong and mutually beneficial partnership between Mexico and the United States endures," the statement said. LOS CABOS, Mexico Producer, with Christian Valdelievres Cinepantera, of Maria Jose Cuevas Bellas de Noche, which won the Audience Award at Los Cabos Festival on Saturday, Panorama Global, the Mexico City-based production house launched in 2015 by Gerardo Gatica, Alberto Muffelmann and Moises Cosio, is pushing forward on its 2016-17 production slate. Its volume, ambition and range speaks large of the energies now coursing Mexican movie production. On its flagship project, Museum, Alonso Ruizpalacios follow-up to Gueros, which it produces with Ramiro Ruizs Peliculas de Leyenda, principal photography is scheduled for Feb. 2017. With Distant Horizon in talks to board Museum, a large international interest from sales agents and distributors and the projects capacity to attract a top-of-their class Spanish-speaking star to the film, the elements are beginning to come together on Museum to raise it in scale, big fest potential and media awareness above the norm of movies coming out of Mexico. But Museum is not Panoramas only ambitious play. Luis Gerardo Mendez (The Noble Family, Club de Cuervos), best known as a comic in Mexico and the Latino U.S., will take on a dramatic role in Kyzza Terrazas Bayoneta, which marks the directors English-language debut. Producing, Panorama teams with Stacy Persky and Woo Films, whose Rafa Ley developed the films concept with Terrazas. With Mendez playing a Mexico boxer who attempts to make it in Finland, Bayoneta shoots February 2017. In further moves: *Cinepolis will release Bellas de Noche, a Netflix pickup, on 80-100 screens on Nov. 25, said Gatica. *Family comedy Un padre no tan padre will bow Dec. 23 via Cinepolis on 600-1,000 screens in Mexico, the exhibitors biggest commercial release to date. Also producing, Anant Singh and Brian Cox at Distant Horizon closed a U.S. distribution deal with Pantelion. Panorama and Distant Horizon is now in conversations to make a sequel and U.S remake, Gatica said. Story continues *Panorama has set shoot dates of fall 2017 for Fernando Frias awaited Im No Longer Here, about a 17-year-old Cholombiano, a Mexican urban tribe member, forced to emigrate from Monterrey to Queens, where his counter-culture is seen as a commodity. Related stories Michael Rowe Scores Los Cabos Double Win With 'Alicia' Adrian Garcia Bogliano Preps TV Series 'Highway 433,' '20 Minutes Into The Future' (EXCLUSIVE) 'Little Secret's' David Schurmann Preps 'Dot,' 'Blood Rose' (EXCLUSIVE) Mexico-based Michael Rowe, who leapt to notice winning the Cannes Festivals Camera dOr for his debut, Leap Year, scored double this weekend with his new feature, Alicia, winning a development award and CTT Exp & Rentals Award from the festivals Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund. Alicia, Rowes fourth feature, was one of only two titles, with Julio Hernandez Cordons Comprame un Revolver, which won more than a single plaudit from the fund, which mixes straight cash with awards in services from Mexican companies. Written by Rowe and Montserrat Varela, Alicia turns on a 14-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother and estranged mom and suffers from severe sexual repression. Then, one day in the subway, a casual sexual encounter acts like it releases a genie in a bottle, initiating Alicias exploration of her identity and a plunge into extreme sexuality, Rowe told Variety. Alexander de Graaf, a production and direction assistant on Amat Escalantes Heli, which won best director at Cannes in 2013, will produce Alicia. According to Rowe, Alicia is opting for potential state production funding from Foprocine, a subsidy line of Mexicos Imcine Film Institute, which will be announced in the next weeks. If financing is completed, shooting is scheduled for February in Mexico City. Australian-born but based in Mexico since 1994, Rowes opera prima Leap Year seduced reviewers with what Variety called a raunchy and acutely minimalist study of urban alienation, romantic longing and bedroom practices. In Rowes follow-up, The Well, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2013, he depicted a girls struggle to come to terms with her parents divorce. Rowes third feature and first English-language outing, Early Winter, chronicles a mature mans battle to save his marriage. Early Winter snagged the 2015 Venice Days Award. Related stories Mexico's Panorama Readies Movies with Alonso Ruizpalacios, Kyzza Terrazas, Fernando Frias Story continues Adrian Garcia Bogliano Preps TV Series 'Highway 433,' '20 Minutes Into The Future' (EXCLUSIVE) 'Little Secret's' David Schurmann Preps 'Dot,' 'Blood Rose' (EXCLUSIVE) A police officer in Traverse City, Mich. has been suspended for flying a Confederate flag at a demonstration against president-elect Donald Trump. Officer Michael Peters was seen in photographs from a love trumps hate rally in Michigan on Friday drinking a beer as Confederate flags waved in the wind from the back of a pickup truck hed driven to the rally. The Traverse City Record Eagle reports the citys police chief received about 100 emails calling for the officers termination after the incident at the rally. As of Sunday, Peters had been suspended from the department and officials were conducting an investigation into whether his actions violated the departments code of conduct. He is not working as a police officer, Traverse City Police Chief Jeff OBrien told the Record Eagle. I do not condone his actions. The Traverse City officer was confronted by Marshall Collins, an African American man who had attended the rally last week. According to Michigan Live, Collins was not aware that Peters was an officer when he approached him. During their conversation he reportedly said, You dont know the history of it That flag didnt do anything to you,' according to Collins. The Confederate Flag is considered by some as a hate symbol and is used by white nationalists to intimidate minorities. Others consider it an emblem of Southern pride. The incident came amid a spate of both protests and racist incidents across the U.S. in response to the election of Donald Trump. Many have accused the Trump campaign of emboldening white nationalists, a charge that has only increased in the wake of Trumps selection of Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior advisor. By Abu Anas DHAKA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For much of his early life on Bhola, an island in south-central Bangladesh, Mohammed Abul Kalam battled poverty and a hostile river that twice engulfed his homestead. Now, as a resident of a "bastee", or private slum on the western edge of the capital, Dhaka, he faces new challenges: the trade-offs he has made on the family's health, education and security in exchange for being near a source of work. "I came here because I found no other way," Kalam said, sitting on the floor of his tin shack. The story of how he swapped rural farming for survival in one of Dhaka's burgeoning slums on privately-owned land reflects the precarious situation of up to half a million Bangladeshis estimated to migrate to the capital each year. Kalam's journey began when the Meghna River wiped out his home for the second time, sending the family deep into debt after he borrowed $765 from moneylenders to build a new house. His neighbours told him, "Go to Dhaka", suggesting that in order to pay to marry off two teenage daughters, he would have to leave his home in Madras, on Bhola, home to more than two million people, a third of whom live below the poverty line. With empty pockets, he and his family set off on the 18-hour trip by river to the capital, where he was taken on by a garment washing factory to carry clothes in a role that was a far cry from his old life paddy farming in his village. Earning just $76 a month, Kalam struggled to make ends meet and, four months into the job, he left to take up other work demolishing buildings with a hammer and a shovel, he said. This paid a little over $6 a day but the work was irregular and eventually he had no alternative but to find work for his two eldest daughters with a garment producer in Mirpur district. There, his teenage daughters cut sewing threads and checked clothes for alterations for $51 a month - less than the industry minimum wage of $68. RURAL EXODUS Kalam and his family are not alone. According to the World Bank, each year up to half a million rural migrants stream into Dhaka for work, swelling the ranks of the urban poor. Experts say more than three-quarters of new arrivals end up living in a bastee - owned by private landlords who provide some services - as squatter settlements on public land have disappeared amid demolitions and evictions by authorities. Since Bangladesh declared independence in 1971, the city's population has quadrupled to around 20 million. By 2050, it is projected to reach more than 35 million. Three years on, life for Kalam and his family is far from comfortable. He and his wife sleep on the concrete floor of their one-room shack to leave space for four children who share a bed. The family share a toilet with 10 households and risk fire by cooking with an electric stove as they have no gas. Even a brief burst of rain sends water into the bastee, which is spread out over five acres of low-lying land. "(My) sorrows have a beginning but no end. I have lost everything, but the greatest loss is my daughters' education," said Kalam, reflecting on his life in the city. PRIVATE SLUMS The family rents their room for $32 a month and the landlord takes care of some services, including electricity and water - important in a city where slum-dwellers on public land often have to pay "mastaans", powerful local figures, for utilities. Experts say the failure to re-house inhabitants evicted from homes in public settlements that have been demolished partly accounts for the boom in privately-owned slums. "Slums are being cleared, but slum dwellers stay behind - they are not leaving Dhaka," Khondker Rebaca Sun-Yat, executive director at advocacy group the Coalition for the Urban Poor (CUP), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A 2014 census found that nearly 60 percent of slums in the north and south of Dhaka are built on private land, but urban experts and rights groups estimate the figure at 80-90 percent. Sun-Yat blamed centralised development that focuses services and industries in urban areas for the rise in private slums. "Cities have sources of income. You build infrastructure in cities; how can you expect rural people not to come to cities?" she said. "If rural areas had income sources and mills and factories, people wouldn't have come to Dhaka," she said. Nevertheless, she warned that cities would "become paralysed" if slum-dwellers returned to their place of origin. The development of Dhaka reflects a wider rise in the numbers of urban poor and what economists call the "non-monetary" conditions of poverty, such as overcrowding, vulnerability, poor security and poor sanitation, experts say. In comparison to rural poverty, urban poverty is surging. The number of urban poor in Bangladesh rose to 8 million from 6 million between 1991 and 2010, the latest period for which data is available. In contrast, the number of rural poor went down in the same period, to 46 million from 55 million. Nine in 10 slum-dwellers in Dhaka were born outside the capital, while one-fifth are poor, according to initial results of a 2016 urban slum survey conducted by the World Bank. Tenure in privately-owned slums is no more secure than in public squatter settlements, according to Salma A. Shafi, treasurer of the Centre for Urban Studies, a thinktank in Dhaka. "The tenants (in private slums) have no security as rents are raised according to the owner-developers' whims," she said. "Without any contractual agreement or legal support, tenants have no power." 'SUB-HUMAN CONDITIONS' Mosharraf Hossain, Minister of Housing and Public Works, is among those who believe migration to urban areas of Bangladesh is now "unnecessary" as wages have risen in rural areas. He said the city was not in a position to absorb more rural migrants given the poor state of its sewerage network, which covers just two-fifths of the city's population. "It's better not to have slums," Hossain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at his ministerial office in central Dhaka. "Slum people are living in sub-human conditions, near the rail lines. This is unnecessary." The government was piloting a low-cost housing project in Mirpur, which would be scaled up if successful, he said. Kalam said he was prepared to move to another private slum nearby - even for more rent - if he had to, but he did not want to leave Mirpur, where he and his daughters earn their living. "I never expected my daughters to support me," he said. "Instead, I dreamed they would continue their education." (Reporting by Abu Anas, Editing by Jo Griffin; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) Millie Bobby Brown wants to be on The Walking Dead, and someone make her a zombie already The undeniable breakout star of the fall is the young actress who plays Eleven on Stranger Things, Millie Bobby Brown. While shes already won over our hearts, now shes looking to conquer the rest of television, too and we have no problem with that. Over the weekend at the Rhode Island Comic Con, Millie confessed she wants to be on The Walking Dead, and the TV Powers That Be, make this happen, and make it happen fast. We saw Millie transform into Eleven (and Elle) during Stranger Things, so being a zombie will be a piece of cake! Probably! During her panel, Brown admitted that wants to be on the hit AMC show. In a video taken by a fan, Brown discusses everything from her school schedule to her aspirations to *maybe* direct one day. She even sings a little bit! But to be honest, its her interest in The Walking Dead that really has us intrigued. The moderator asks Brown about other roles she wants to play. The young actress responds: Theres this one show I just want to be on so badly, Ive tried everything to get on The Walking Dead. I dont even care if Im a zombie! zombies We love that Millie want to be on The Walking Dead. While it would definitely be cool to see her as a zombie, we also wouldnt mind if she were a survivor. A 12-year-old would have pretty badass to survive roughly two years in the zombie apocalypse. Anyway, whether shes a strong survivor, or a creepy walker, we know she can handle it. After all, Brown has done both as Eleven. Brown goes on to say, And I do know thatNegan is here today. Negan himself, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, was also in attendance at the convention. Maybe she was able to meet the actor and ask him to put in a good word for her with The Walking Deads creators? Cross your fingers Either way, Millie Bobby Brown wants to be on The Walking Dead and we want her on it, too. TV gods, are you listening? The post Millie Bobby Brown wants to be on The Walking Dead, and someone make her a zombie already appeared first on HelloGiggles. By Jill Serjeant NEW YORK, (Reuters) - With his peacock-blue coat, bow tie and battered suitcase, Eddie Redmayne stars as J.K. Rowling's latest magical hero in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." Redmayne spoke with Reuters ahead of the movie opening on Friday about his favorite beasts and his hopes for his character, Newt Scamander. The following are edited excerpts. Q: How much of Newt came from you and how much from J.K. Rowling? A: Newt was wonderfully well defined on the page and then it was about hearing where Newt came from in her imagination. She wrote that Newt walks his own walk and that he has a Buster Keaton-eseque quality. So I met a man who tracks animals for a living, and he said that if you are trying to be absolutely silent, you turn your feet out. So I brought in that open-toed stance, which was great until I had to do stunts running like that and I kept pulling muscles. Q: Do you know if you're going to be in all five of the "Beasts" movies? A: No, I don't. The whole production is so top-secret that at nights our scripts would get locked up and put in a safe. Jo has kept the story very close to her. Q: How do you feel about becoming a young adult icon, like Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter? A: I don't really know. How does one prepare for that? There's nothing you can do really. A few more people ask for selfies and that's about it. I think? Q: What was it like acting against the computer-generated beasts? A: With the erumpent, we had some of the guys who worked on "War Horse" make a huge puppet that I rehearsed with for a few weeks. Then when it came to shooting, it would go away and I would have the sense memory. Q: Did you have a favorite beast? A: I think Pickett was my favorite. He has got attachment issues and he just wants a bit of a hug. He is bullied by the other bowtruckles. Q: Where would you like Newt's character to go in the second film? A: You get a sense when you see Leda Lestrange's photograph that this girl has clearly had an effect on him, so that would be interesting to see. Also you hear that Newt has spent a year out in the field in Equatorial Guinea. I would love to see him out with his sleeves rolled up, wrangling some of these extraordinary creatures. (Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) (Adds protests in Chisinau, OSCE report, Sandu comment) By Alessandra Prentice and Alexander Tanas CHISINAU, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The pro-Russian winner of Moldova's presidential election said on Monday he would push for early parliamentary elections next year to force out a government that favours closer ties with the European Union. New elections would mean yet more instability for Moldova, where a $1 billion graft scandal in 2014 badly damaged trust in pro-EU leaders and resulted in the prime minister being jailed. The impoverished country has had four premiers since then. Igor Dodon won Sunday's election after campaigning for the scrapping of a trade deal the former Soviet state signed with Brussels in 2014. He told Russian state television voters had "united and voted for friendship with Russia, for neutrality". "A very serious combat is ahead but we are ready for this combat," he said, referring to an election he wants to bring forward to next year, from 2018. Anti-EU rhetoric proved rewarding elsewhere in eastern Europe on Sunday, as a pro-Russian candidate won the presidency in Bulgaria. The Kremlin congratulated both Dodon and Bulgaria's Rumen Radev on their victories. Dodon's win prompted more than 2,000 pro-European Moldovans to protest against alleged electoral violations. Waving Moldovan flags and a giant Romanian tricolour, they chanted "We still have a chance" and "Dodon to the trash". Dodon has called for a snap election before, but his call for one so soon after his victory suggests he and the government could be at loggerheads from the start of his presidency. TRADE EMBARGO On Sunday, Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the government and new president would need to work together, but added that Moldova's path towards greater EU integration "cannot be reversed". Russia imposed trade restrictions on Moldovan exports after it signed the political and trade agreement with the European bloc in 2014. Dodon's Socialist party wants to scrap that agreement in favour of joining a Eurasian economic union dominated by Russia - a policy backed by many Moldovans who suffered financially from the goods embargo and a broader economic downturn. Story continues Some analysts question how far he is willing to push Moldova back into Moscow's orbit. In October, an ambassador from one EU member state told Reuters that Dodon had privately told diplomats his party would not jettison the EU accord. Dodon's opponent in the race, Maia Sandu, has yet to accept the preliminary results and said she was compiling a list of all the violations and would present it to the Central Electoral Commission for review. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored the election, said on Monday its overall assessment was positive, with key procedures followed. However it said reports that some voters were unable to vote because of a lack of ballots were "regrettable". (Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow; Editing by Matthias Williams and Andrew Roche) A Texas woman was arrested after police discovered four tigers, a cougar, a fox and a skunk freely roaming around her home, where she was living with her 14-year-old daughter. Read: Exotic Animal Store Owner Paid Hooker in Stolen Girl Scout Money and a Pet Primate Trisha Meyer was taken into custody Monday after Houston police said several wild animals were discovered in her home after an investigation lasting several weeks. According to a document from the Harris County District Attorney, an adult male tiger, three tiger cubs, a fox, a cougar and a skunk were loose in the home at the time of her arrest. There were also several monkeys in the home, "which [the] defendant stated can be vicious, and one in particular has attacked other people," it stated. Meyer's teenage daughter, who is homeschooled, was "petting and making physical contact with the tigers," the report continued. Meyer admitted the tigers were dangerous and could kill, but she locks up the tigers when she leaves the home, according to the report. According to officials, Meyer had permits for the tigers, but none for the fox or skunk, which were confiscated by Texas Game Warden and released into the wild. "I assume since they were released, they were in decent shape," Texas Game Warden spokesman Steve Lightfoot told InsideEdition.com. The rest of the animals, including the tigers, were also eventually confiscated by another agency. Read: Woman Who Hoarded Nearly 50 Dogs Was Reportedly Eaten By Pets After She Died The investigation began in September, when cops said she tried selling a kitten to a man in California for $3,000. After she received the cash, she reportedly never handed over the kitten. She was kicked out of her Houston home after cops contacted her landlord about her exotic animals. Officials said she fled to Las Vegas with her animals, and then to Pahrump in Nye County where cops finally tracked her down. Story continues She is currently facing charges of endangering a child, with bail set at $10,000. Watch: 33 Lions Rescued From Circuses Fly to Their New Home at South African Sanctuary Related Articles: Iraqi forces advanced against Islamic State and captured new areas in Mosul on November 14, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said. Iraqi forces captured at least 10 new neighborhoods and killed as many as 1,000 Islamic State fighters since the Mosul offensive started, Kurdish media reported. Kurdish media outlet Rudaw posted this video and described as showing an airstrike against an Islamic State position in a village near the town of Hamdaniya, outside Mosul. Credit: Rudaw via Storyful By Alan Baldwin SAO PAULO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Lewis Hamilton emphasised how much the Brazilian Grand Prix meant to him after winning in the wet on Sunday, but the race's future on the Formula One calendar remains clouded by uncertainty. "I just assume this is going to be on the grand prix calendar because it is one of the best races," said the triple champion after succeeding at Interlagos, his boyhood idol Ayrton Senna's home track, for the first time. "It is part of the heritage of Formula One. We cannot lose this grand prix." Despite the Mercedes driver's words, the chances of Brazil remaining on the calendar remain very much a 'maybe' due to the country's ongoing economic crisis. Brazil will also have only one driver next year, in an uncompetitive car, and even that is not certain with Felipe Nasr yet to be confirmed by struggling Sauber. The atmospheric amphitheatre has an asterisk against it, along with Canada and Germany, on the 2017 draft calendar and commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone is not sounding positive. "I think we may well be able to sort Canada out, possibly, but the other two...," the Briton told Reuters with a shrug. The final calendar, currently 21 races, will be published in December. Interlagos, with fans exposed to the elements and the track close by slums on one side, has undergone an upgrade to the cramped pits and paddock area but there is always more to do. "They've done a good job, but it needed to be done," commented Ecclestone, who is married to a Brazilian and owns a ranch in the country. The 86-year-old Briton said long-standing talks with Argentina, which last hosted a race in 1998, could lead to another South American option but "it would be good not to lose this race". Canadian promoters have sounded optimistic about keeping their grand prix but the prospects for Germany, a home race for champions Mercedes and Ferrari's four-times champion Sebastian Vettel, do not look good. "Trouble is it's all commercial. If they can't make it work commercially they will stop," Ecclestone said of Germany. Hockenheim held the race this year but has been reluctant to do so in successive seasons unless the hosting fees are frozen, while the Nuerburgring has baulked at the cost. "We tried to keep them (Hockenheim) alive, but they've run out of tablets," Ecclestone told motorsport.com separately. "I'll put my money on it not happening. I'll have to talk to them in the next couple of weeks." (Editing by Ed Osmond) By Alan Baldwin SAO PAULO, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Tears flowed in the Formula One pitlane as Brazilian Felipe Massa hugged his family, thanked his past and present mechanics and waved to the crowd after crashing out of his home grand prix on Sunday. The Williams driver, who will bow out in Abu Dhabi at the end of the month after his 250th race, had hoped for one last hurrah at a circuit where he was twice a winner with Ferrari but it was not to be. "It was heartbreaking," the 35-year-old, who wrapped the national flag around his shoulders after getting out of the car, said of the crash at the final rain-soaked corner in front of grandstands packed with fans. When he arrived back at the garages, with the pitlane closed while the field lapped behind the safety car, mechanics from other teams came out to applaud in an emotional tribute before his wife and young son arrived. If that was a breach of safety regulations, with the pitlane again opened to cars as Massa reached the line of Ferrari mechanics, nobody cared. "I didn't want it to finish like this," said the driver, whose last win was at the Sao Paulo circuit in 2008 when he missed out on the title by a single point to Lewis Hamilton -- the winner for Mercedes on Sunday. "I wanted to finish with a good result for the fans, for Brazil, for my team, for me. Unfortunately I couldn't." "It's impossible to explain my feelings from today, for everything that has happened. So much love," added the Brazilian. "I was just walking, in front of my people, with this amazing reaction. "I never expected this in my life, I don't think I deserved as much as this." (Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Mark Lamport-Stokes) Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti From ELLE DECOR Ever wondered what the coolest way to enjoy winter might be? The Kanin Winter Cabin, a tiny sliver of a house resting on the edge of a rocky ridge in the Slovenian Alps, could be the answer to your wildest frozen fantasy. Designed by OFIS Arhitekti, the 104-square-foot cabin is located on Mount Kanin, along the Slovenian-Italian border. The sylph-like shelter was built from a complex composite of glass, aluminium panels and cross-laminated timber, reports Deezen. Offering a majestic panoramic view of the valley below, the minimalist interior is lined entirely with timber, with just three resting platforms and one hunting trophy for decor. It can accommodate up to nine alpinists. Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Before we get you too excited, disclaimer: Unfortunately, the cabin is owned by the architecture firm and isn't up for grabs - but we're hoping its sleek design and durability will encourage more similarly wondrous homes. Currently, only climbers and helicopters can gain entry into the shelter due to its risky location. While cliffside houses and other cantilevered homes and restaurants are nothing new, this winter cabin may just top them all, because it was created to withstand extreme elements even with its tiny frame. Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Developed in partnership with engineering company CBD, the Kanin Winter Cabin was transported via airlift and positioned curiously on the lip of a ledge by the Slovenian army, which, after three attempts, finally was able to secure the structure with cables. Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti "The challenge is to install real objects on remote sites and study their response to extreme weather, radical temperature shifts, snow and rugged terrain," OFIS Arhitekti told Dezeen. "The harsh conditions of wind, snow, landslides, terrain and weather require a response of specific architectural forms, structures and concept." Apparently, that challenge was accepted, and so far, it's been achieved. Take a closer at the impressive structure below. Story continues Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti Photo credit: Courtesy of OFIS Arhitekti h/t: ArchDaily You Might Also Like By Karin Strohecker LONDON (Reuters) - Mozambique wants to strike a debt restructuring deal before the end of this year and aims to treat bondholders on par with its other commercial creditors, the country's legal advisor told Reuters. One of the world's poorest countries, the southern African nation has seen its currency collapse and its dollar-denominated bonds lose a third in value since April when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found over $2 billion in undisclosed debt which had not been approved by parliament, and pulled its funding. The country told creditors at the end of last month its debt position was unsustainable and it had to renegotiate repayment terms if a new IMF loan deal were to be agreed. "There is virtually no capacity for Mozambique to pay anything to commercial creditors in coming years," said Ian Clark, a partner at law firm White & Case which advises Mozambique on its sovereign debt restructuring. "It is absolutely inevitable that there will be a restructuring of the commercial debt, including the direct debt and the guaranteed debt," Clark told Reuters. The commercial debt at the centre of restructuring efforts are a Eurobond and nearly $1 billion of state-guaranteed loans. The bond was launched by state fishing company EMATUM in 2013 with a complex structure to finance a fishing fleet, but the project was a fiasco with boats now rusting in Maputo harbour. In April, bondholders agreed to swap the initial issue for a sovereign bond with $727 million outstanding in a deal widely seen as investor friendly. [nL5N16P5VI] Eurobond holders have formed a creditors' group, but insisted that as they have already accepted one debt swap, other commercial and bilateral lenders should be first to take the additional pain Mozambique plans to inflict. [nL8N1D9658] Mozambique's commercial debt accounts for 17 percent of its external public and government-guaranteed debt stock, while the rest consists almost equally of obligations to bilateral and multi-lateral lenders, according to a government presentation in late-October [nL8N1CV7P6]. Total external debt was expected to exceed 100 percent of gross domestic product in 2017, the presentation showed. Clark noted that the April Eurobond swap, which extended maturity and increased the coupon, was positive or at least neutral for investors. The creditors have labelled the deal a "restructuring" while the government deems it a "reprofiling". "Bondholders have not gone through any sort of distressed restructuring at this stage so they are in the same position as the holders of the guaranteed loans in that respect, and in our opinion inter-creditor equity requires that they will all be treated on an equivalent pari-passu basis in this process." Bondholders are due another coupon payment in January. While Eurobond creditors had specified that the group was open only to those holding the issue, Mozambique would like to see all commercial creditors club together, Clark said. HAIRCUT "NOT OFF THE TABLE" The commercial loans were made to state firm Mozambique Asset Management (MAM) to build shipyards, and to Proindicus, a firm owned by the Ministries of Interior and Defence and the State Security and Intelligence Service, to pay for maritime security projects. They were arranged by Switzerland's Credit Suisse and Russia's VTB, which also participated in arranging the eurobonds. Clark said Mozambique was in contact with both banks over the loans. No agreement has been reached, he said, but he added that both banks, acting as facilitators, were "willing to engage with us and discuss solutions". While the exact shape of a future restructuring was yet to be determined, a repayment of principal in the next five years was "out of the question" and a very substantial interest relief or deferral was needed, Clark said. "Whether we are going to need anything more than significant maturity extensions and reductions in coupons, or capitalisation of interest and go into nominal haircuts and the like, we don't know that for sure," he said, adding that nothing was "off the table". Yet time is running out. Eurobond investors insist they want to wait for the IMF's return to Mozambique and the publication of an international audit into state firms' loans before starting negotiations. "If you wait to get the IMF back in the country, if you wait to get the financial situation stabilised, countries can end up going into a downward spiral that can become very difficult to control," said Clark. "We would like to reach an agreement with them by the end of the year and implement that in January - that is extremely aggressive, I fully accept that." (Reporting by Karin Strohecker; editing by Peter Graff) (Adds comments from Highway Patrol, environmental group, pipeline supporters) By Ernest Scheyder and Liz Hampton Nov 14 (Reuters) - Federal authorities deferred a final decision on a controversial North Dakota section of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday in a statement that highlighted concerns about the "repeated" dispossession of tribal lands in the country's past. The Departments of the Army and Interior, in a joint statement, said that while their previous decisions to grant construction were consistent with legal requirements, they wanted to have additional discussions due to concerns about protecting Lake Oahe, a sensitive federally owned water source. The $3.7 billion Dakota Access construction project has drawn steady opposition since last summer from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with environmental activists, who claim it could pollute nearby water supplies and destroy sacred historical sites. Most of the construction of the proposed 1,172-mile (1,885 km) line, which will stretch from North Dakota to Illinois, has been completed. However, Energy Transfer Partners LP, which is building the line, has yet to receive approval for an easement to tunnel under Lake Oahe, which is part of the Missouri River and is adjacent to the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. Demonstrations continued on Monday as more than 500 Dakota Access Pipeline protesters tried to gain entry to the capitol in Bismarck. Officials put the building in a "soft lockdown," in which all doors were locked and guarded, at 11:30 a.m. CST (1830 GMT), said Lieutenant Tom Iverson, spokesman for the Highway Patrol. Employees were given the option of going home and told they could return only with key cards, Iverson said, adding that more than 30 state highway patrol officers were deployed to the building. Completion of the pipeline was delayed in September so federal authorities could re-examine permits required by the Army Corps of Engineers. In its statement, the Army said that its previous decisions "comported with legal requirements." However, it added that it was "mindful of the history of the Great Sioux Nation's repeated dispossessions, including those to support water-resources projects." Story continues It said its additional analysis and discussion with the tribe will include conditions in an easement for the pipeline crossing that might reduce the risk of spills, along with an assessment of how such a spill could affect the tribe. "This delay provides an opportunity for the U.S. government to resolve outstanding issues to the full satisfaction of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and end this pipeline project," said Amanda Starbuck, climate and energy program director at the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group. Shares of ETP dipped about 1 percent in after-hours trading. Officials at Energy Transfer Partners were not immediately available for comment. The line has been billed as a cost-effective and efficient way to bring North Dakota oil through Illinois, en route to the Gulf of Mexico. It is unclear how long the review will take. The Obama Administration has been supportive in the past of the protection of tribal lands. President-elect Donald Trump has voiced support for infrastructure projects, including pipelines, though he has not specifically addressed Dakota Access. The MAIN Coalition, which represents groups that support the pipeline, called Monday's action another "attempt at death by delay" of the pipeline, saying the administration "has chosen to further fan the flames of protest by more inaction." With Trump's inauguration a little more than two months away, they said they hoped "this is not the final word on the Dakota Access Pipeline." 'DAY OF ACTION' BRINGS MORE PROTESTS Protests were a factor in the Obama administration's decision to delay the line's completion in September and ask for further review from the U.S. Army. The highway patrol's Iverson said a convoy of 140 vehicles entered the capitol grounds in Bismarck. The protesters lacked a permit, required by state law for people to assemble inside the capitol. There were no arrests or physical altercations, and a few hours later the protesters marched toward the federal courthouse, Iverson said. However, the demonstrators broke into smaller groups and attempted to gain entry to the capitol through various side entrances, he said. Officials with the Standing Rock Sioux were not immediately available for comment. Previous demonstrations, which have drawn celebrities including actors Shailene Woodley and Susan Sarandon , have occasionally turned violent. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder and Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Dan Grebler and Alan Crosby) On Sunday evening, after the leaders of Europe had spent the better part of a week trying to guess the scale of Donald Trumps contempt for the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, its secretary general, offered the U.S. President-elect a reminder of what that alliance has cost. He didnt give the sum in terms of money as Trump has so often tried to do but in the lives of European soldiers, more than a 1,000 of whom have died fighting alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan. As Stoltenberg wrote in the Observer on Remembrance Sunday: Today of all days, we remember them. It was an oddly emotional statement from a man better known for bureaucratic platitudes, and it showed just how anxious the Europeans have become about the U.S. commitment to their defense. They have good reason to be. Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Trump has suggested that the worlds most powerful military alliance should be run like an insurance scheme or a protection racket. In a typical remark on the issue this summer, he said allies that dont reasonably reimburse the U.S. for the costs of defense should expect to be told, Congratulations, you will be defending yourself. No one can say for sure what exactly that would mean in practice. An emerging consensus in Europe has called Trumps remarks the beginning of the end of the global order that has kept the West united since World War II. At best they mark the start of a bruising renegotiation of the transatlantic friendship. But its hard to tell which is closer to Trumps true intention, because like so many of his policy positions, the statements he has made on NATO have come with plenty of caveats and room for retreat. During the primary race this spring, he repeatedly called the alliance obsolete. But after winning the Republican nomination, he told the New York Times in July that he would like to preserve it, adding that only fools and haters would suggest Trump does not want to protect U.S. allies. The ambiguity has left some room for optimism, at least among the defense experts who are willing to discount Trumps apparent disdain for the idea of mutual defense. I think this was politicking, says Lord David Richards, the former head of the British Armed Forces. I have every confidence that he will be as resolute on this issue as all U.S. presidents have since the formation of NATO, he tells TIME. Indeed, under a generous reading of Trumps remarks, they could be seen as repeating a well-established U.S. position albeit in far more crass and confrontational terms. The question of how much Europe should spend on defense has been at the top of the U.S. engagement with Europe since about 1952, says Ivo Daalder, who served as the U.S. ambassador to NATO during President Obamas first term. That was the year the alliance first laid out a specific agenda for protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union. At the time, much of the Continent was still in ruins after the devastation of World War II, so it seemed clear that the U.S. would need to foot a disproportionate share of the bill at first. But that burden has been slow to shift onto Europes shoulders over the decades, even as European nations rebuilt their economies and became global centers of prosperity. This is a long-standing issue that wasnt discovered by Donald Trump during the elections, says Daalder. There has always been that tug-of-war. It became especially acute when the Europeans made deep cuts in defense spending at the turn of the century, leaving the U.S. to carry an ever-greater share of the costs within the alliance. In an effort to reverse that trend, all NATO countries committed in 2002 to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. But only five of its 28 members the U.S., the U.K., Greece, Poland and Estonia currently meet that benchmark. Massive economies like Germany and Canada have not even come close, despite President Obamas persistent demands that they spend more. In an interview with the Atlantic in April, Obama famously referred to these allies as free-riders. He also recalled warning his then-counterpart, British Prime Minister David Cameron, that, You have to pay your fair share, or else face the end of the special relationship between London and Washington. After that, the U.K. increased defense spending to slightly more than 2% of GDP a share it is expected to maintain under new Prime Minister Theresa May. So it is possible to see Trump as simply driving a harder bargain than Obama, one that would directly punish Europeans for failing to pay their bills. He wouldnt be the first American politician to do so. In 1984, at the height of the Cold War, Senator Sam Nunn, who was then the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, proposed withdrawing a third of U.S. troops from Western Europe unless the allies ramped up their defense contributions. The idea failed to win support from the Reagan Administration and the Senate. But it did underscore the eternal problem of burden sharing within NATO: Why would the Europeans bother spending money to defend themselves when the U.S. commitment to their defense is unconditional? It is a recipe for free-riding, says Jeremy Shapiro, the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. And as a result, the U.S. still accounts for roughly 70% of the total NATO defense budget, spending more on security than all the European allies combined. That has led some observers, including Daalder, to see an upside in Trumps attitude toward NATOs more frugal members. If theres one salutary factor coming out of this campaign, Daalder says, my hope is that they start spending a little more and a little quicker. Theres just one problem with that expectation. If Trump continues to push the notion that NATO is a commercial enterprise reliant less on the mutual trust and commitment of its members than on the question of who is picking up the check he could alienate his European partners so completely that they will have no alliance left to defend. Everybody will be so frustrated and disappointed with the other side that they will not feel a desire to continue, says Shapiro. NATO will become a hollow shell, because nobody will be contributing. A lot of that frustration has already begun to show. Even Europes typically cautious and understated officials have begun warning that NATO could split down the middle. It might be that [Trumps] policy priorities will lead America far away from some of the European basic principles or interests, Federica Mogherini, the European Unions top official for foreign and security policy, said in an interview televised last week. And in that case Brussels as well as all the European capitals decide our own foreign policy priorities independently from what happens in Washington. One option would be for Europe to create an alternative to NATO, most likely under the umbrella of an E.U. army. But mustering the political will for such a project does not seem likely any time soon. The mood across Europe, much like in the U.S., has been overwhelmed by feelings of nationalism and retrenchment, especially after the U.K. voted in June to leave the E.U. If that trend continues, Europeans will likely need to start thinking in terms of national rather than collective defense a worrisome prospect for the part of the world where nationalism helped spark two world wars. Daalder, who now heads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, sees a couple of options for European countries that start to feel like NATO no longer has their backs. Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states, which are most vulnerable to military threats from Russia, could be forced to consider a policy of appeasement or even an alliance with Moscow, thus splitting the Continent along Cold War lines. Larger countries in Western Europe, especially Germany, could meanwhile think about acquiring nuclear weapons in order to ensure their own security a feat that they could technically accomplish at the turn of a screw, Daalder says. With France and Britain already in possession of nuclear arsenals, a German move to catch up would unravel decades of effort to contain the spread of these weapons and prevent a global arms race. Both of these options could lead to catastrophe. Not only would they upend the balance of power in Europe, but they would also leave the U.S. with far fewer allies to stand by its side in a global crisis. As Stoltenberg reminded Trump on Sunday, there has been no shortage of crises in the recent history of the West. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the U.S. called on NATO to come to its defense, and since then, hundreds of thousands of European soldiers have gone to fight in Afghanistan as part of the NATO coalition. Thousands of them are still risking their lives as part of that mission. On Thursday night, for instance, while the world was still absorbing the news of Trumps election victory, the Taliban staged an assault on the German consulate in northern Afghanistan, detonating a truck bomb that killed at least six civilians and wounded scores of others. Special forces troops from several European countries among them Latvians, Belgians and Georgians descended on the scene to help their German allies as part of the NATO mission known as Resolute Support. None of them were killed or wounded in the fighting that day. But they might have been reminded how hard it is to put a price on an alliance, and how galling it has been for Europeans to be badgered like delinquent tenants at one of Trumps hotels. I know from numerous conversations with our European neighbors how irritated they are with these dismissive remarks about NATO and NATO partners, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German minister of foreign affairs, told Der Spiegel on Thursday. Dismissive or not, those remarks could soon become official U.S. policy. With reporting by Mark Leftly / London Just in time for the holidays, British designer Timothy Oulton has created a masterpiece for the most epic of merrymaking moments. The Ultimate Bar Cabinet is no ordinary spirit store; wrapped in rich leather panels affixed with hand-applied studs for a look both rugged and refined, the furnishing is a flawless addition to the most magnificent of man caves. In the true spirit of celebration, however, it is what is inside the cabinet that means most. Stocked top to bottom, the bar comes with a treasure trove of the worlds most exclusive labels, featuring Robb Report favorites like Glenlivet Winchester Collection Vintage 1966; Domaine de la Romanee-Conti 2007 Romanee-Conti; and Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne 2002 Gold Medallion Jeroboam. Of particular interest is a rare Lalique crystal decanter of Courvoisier LEsprit de Josephine, of which only 14 were produced. Cigars are also on tap in the cabinet, with a line-up of 40 premium puffs curated by Londons cigar merchant James J. Fox that includes Partagas, Hoyo de Monterrey, Cohiba, and Montecristoall stored within an Elie Bleu Alba Blue 110 humidor. Oultons ultimate barwhich is priced at $148,600 and available through the website Very First Toalso comes with the ultimate bartender. Award-winning mixologist Marian Beke, who rose to prominence at Londons legendary Nightjar lounge, will personally deliver the cabinet, and even stay for the weekend to share his mixology secrets and bespoke cocktail recipes with the bars new owners. And for the merrymaker who wants even more, Oulton is also offering a month-long journey crisscrossing the globe to visit the worlds most exclusiveand elusivesecret bars. The trip (priced at $98,000 per couple, including business-class airfare and five-star hotel accommodations) includes visits to clandestine haunts in Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and, of course, Oultons home of London, where guests will visit bolt-holes like Callooh Callay and Evans and Peel Detective Agency. (timothyoulton.com; veryfirstto.com) More From Robbreport.com One of the Most In-Demand Fine Jewelry Designers Is under 30 Breaking News: Lamborghini Reveals Its New Huracan Rear-Wheel-Drive Spyder Outlaw Porsche 356s Are in the Emory Familys DNA Experience a Speaker that Packs the Same Punch as a Live Rock Concert Montage Palmetto Bluff Opens New Wellness Oasis Penfolds Grange Has Flavor You Can Measure in Liters The Nigerian Air Force destroyed barges it said were carrying caches of oil in Rivers State on November 10, as part of an ongoing military campaign against the theft of crude oil from pipelines in the Niger Delta. This footage shows a Nigerian Air Force helicopter opening fire at barges and canoes, which were stationed around the towns of Isaka, Bille, Alakiri and Kidney Island. The latest operations showed that illegal bunkering activities have resumed around Bille and environs, an official statement on the Nigerian Air Forces Facebook page reads. Nevertheless, the NAF will not relent in its pursuit to put an end to these acts of economic sabotage by ridding the region of these criminal elements. Bunkering, or the theft and artisanal refining of crude oil, costs the Nigerian government billions of dollars in lost revenue. Credit: YouTube/Nigerian Air Force via Storyful A few weeks ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences met with representatives from various studios and reminded them to please not campaign for Oscars at the Governors Awards, which were held Saturday night in Hollywood. Dont escort talent around the room making the usual introductions to press and Academy voters, they said. Dont sully the evening with the status quo of this time of year. If youre laughing, thats fair. It does sound like a joke. Im not even sure how much the Academy meant it or if it was just putting on airs. After all, the org sent out a rules and regulations update over the summer that included this stunningly vague passage: Academy members may not be invited to or attend any non-screening event, party or dinner that is reasonably perceived to unduly influence members or undermine the integrity of the vote. That sounds like a textbook definition of the Governors Awards, however. The Academy often projects the sentiment that campaigning for Oscars however you might define that, which could be a number of ways is inappropriate and therefore discouraged. And yet the org provides the single greatest campaign opportunity of the year, right in the middle of November. Not only that, but the satellite events that revolve around this week every year exhaust iCals all over town. Like clockwork, a number of films have had talent on hand for luncheons and the like, from Hell or High Water to Captain Fantastic to A Monster Calls. (And Id be remiss not to concede the media quotient in all of this: A number of Variety productions and round tables are timed to this stretch every year as well. Because the talent is here!) Few but the overworked are really complaining, though. The Governors Awards presents a unique opportunity, a single ballroom packed with the very audience Oscar campaigns are trying to reach this time of year. So of course the guest list is always star-studded. Attendees included Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Mark Wahlberg, Jeff Bridges, Nicole Kidman, Ava DuVernay, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Aaron Eckhart to name a fraction. Representatives of virtually every film angling for awards attention were on hand yet again this year, and despite that meeting a few weeks ago, they were dragged around the room to meet and greet, per usual. Who can blame them? Story continues If the Academy is serious about this untoward nature of campaigning, what is stopping them from holding the Governors Awards in June or July? It would be refreshing to spread things out on the calendar like that. But the downside is theres little incentive for many of the big names to show up when theyre not promoting or campaigning. And make no mistake, the Academy benefits from the splash a November ceremony makes. The Governors Awards may not be televised, but theyre a huge event that draws attention because of the stars on hand. Thats a promotional opportunity. I dont really feel strongly about any of this. Curtailing campaigning is a fools errand. But the Academy could be a little more honest about it and not act like its all beneath the integrity of the org. If that were true, the heartfelt acceptance speeches from Lynn Stalmaster, Anne V. Coates, Frederick Wiseman and Jackie Chan would have been delivered months ago, celebrated in their own space, rather than under the specter of the Academy Awards and the agenda of countless Oscar hopefuls squeezing their own opportunity out of the event. Related stories Jackie Chan Oscar Climaxes Warm Evening at the Governors Awards Record 27 Films Submitted for Animated Feature Oscar Race ABC Takes a Back Seat as Academy Calls the Shots for Oscar Show Again (Updates with pipeline company saying driver not associated with pipeline project, paragraphs 7-8) By David Ingram Nov 13 (Reuters) - North Dakota authorities are investigating a weekend incident in which pipeline protesters said a woman was struck by a man driving a truck who drove over her feet and fired shots into the air. The Morton County Sheriff's Department is looking into what occurred, spokesman Rob Keller said in an email on Sunday, declining to comment further because the investigation is ongoing. Early on Saturday, protesters against the oil pipeline near sacred tribal lands briefly blocked two entrances to a work yard near the rural town of Mandan, causing workers to leave the area. Videos and pictures posted online show a man in a white vehicle holding a handgun and yelling obscenities while driving forward through a crowd of protesters. One video shows the man later raising his gun into the air and firing several shots, although it is not clear from the video whether any protesters were nearby at the time. The man was not identified. A protester was injured in the incident and an ambulance was called, but she refused treatment, Keller said. The circumstances of the injury were not clear, but one video shows the man striking a woman while she hangs off the truck's side-view mirror. Protesters said on Facebook that a woman's hand had been smashed, requiring three stitches on a finger, and that her feet had been run over. The woman could not immediately be reached for comment. Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the company leading the construction of the pipeline, said the man with the gun "is not associated with the pipeline project in any way." "It is my understanding he lives in the area and was just trying to get where he needed to go and felt threatened," Granado said in an email. Protests have sometimes turned violent over the $3.8 billion Dakota Access construction project, which has drawn steady opposition from Native American and environmental activists since the summer. Story continues Last month, a demonstrator was charged with the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. Authorities said she fired at a police officer three times during a struggle without hitting him. The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) pipeline, being built by a group of companies led by Energy Transfer Partners LP, would offer the fastest and most direct route to bring Bakken shale oil from North Dakota to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. (Reporting by David Ingram in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney) U.S. President Barack Obama particpates in a news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst President Barack Obama on Monday refused to disclose his position on President-elect Donald Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon to the top strategy job. Speaking at his first press conference since Trump's election, Obama asserted that he would not comment on Trump's individual appointments in order to facilitate a smooth White House transition. "Without copping out, it's fair to say that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making. If I want to be consistent with the notion that we want to try to facilitate a smooth transition," Obama said. Bannon's selection sent shockwaves through the political world, earning condemnations from Democrats and even some prominent Republicans. The 62-year-old former head of Breitbart News has been accused of anti-Semitism over Breitbart's embrace of the alt-right, a white nationalist movement. His ex-wife also testified that Bannon "doesn't like Jews." Throughout Tuesday's press conference, the president urged patience while the administration turned over the reigns to Trump's incoming team. Though he said that it was "too early to tell," Obama said he hoped Trump would balance his promises to voters with the concerns of many critics who fear Trump's positions on key issues such as immigration and abortion. The president also emphasized that it's "important for [Trump] to have the room, the staff up, to figure out what his priorities are, to be able to distinguish between what he's campaigning on and what's practical, what he can actually achieve." "Given that President-elect Trump is now trying to balance what he said in the campaign and promises he made to his supporters with working with people who disagreed with him and members of Congress and reaching out to constituencies that didn't vote for him," Obama said. "I think it's important for us to let him make his decisions, and I think the American people will judge over the course of the next couple of years whether they like what they see, and whether these are the kinds of policies and this is the direction they want to see the country go in." Story continues "And my role is to make sure that when I hand off this White House, it is in the best possible shape, and I have been as helpful as i can to him in going forward and building on the progress we've made." The president also gently chided Americans who did not show up to vote. "Whenever you've got an incoming president on the other side, particularly in a bitter election like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality," Obama said. "Hopefully it's a reminder that elections matter and voting counts. I don't know how many times we have to re-learn this lesson, because we ended up having 43% of country not voting who are eligible to vote, but it makes a difference." NOW WATCH: Its surreal to watch this 2011 video of Obama and Seth Meyers taunting Trump about a presidential run More From Business Insider President Barack Obama recommended to President-elect Donald Trump, when they met for the first time last week, that he extend an olive branch to minorities and women after the blisteringly divisive election. Holding his first news conference since last weeks shocking election results, Obama this afternoon pointedly started his remarks talking about how his White House is rooted in a respect for diversity and tolerance, and also in facts and reason and sober analysis, saying, pointedly, that so long as hes in the office of president, we are going to uphold those norms and cherish those ideals. It is important to send signals of unity and reach out to minorities and women and others who are concerned about a Trump administration, Obama told reporters in the White Houses Brady Press Briefing Room. At their meeting, Obama said he congratulated Trump on his ability to tap into, yes, the anxieties, but also the enthusiasm of his voters in a way that is impressive. Obama went to pains to demonstrate respect for the office of President, and the democratic election results, saying he hopes Trump grows into the job. Most notably, based on his 90-minute meeting with the president elect the day after the election, Obama said he thinks Trump is not an ideologue but a pragmatist, which Obama forecast could serve Trump well. Yes I have concerns. He and I differ on a whole bunch of issues, Obama conceded, but he cautioned Trump should be given time to realize that what makes a great campaign soundbite doesnt necessarily make good policy. To that end, Obama noted hes heading to Europe, then Peru, to reassure leaders anxious about Trumps presidency, and said is is going to be bringing them a commitment to NATO from the president-elect, which Trump has yet to state to a public that has heard him threaten NATO and a stated intent to undo some of Obamas top international initiatives. Obamas news conference performance stood in marked contrast to his recent campaigning against Trump and on behalf of Dem White House hopeful Hillary Clinton, during which he said Trump is unqualified for the office and lacks the needed temperament. Today, Obama refused to bite when asked about Trumps appointment of former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, saying it would not be appropriate of him to comment. Obama also declined to rise to the bait when asked to address his own campaign rhetoric about the POTUS-elect, saying, The people have spoken. Donald trump will be the next president. Story continues Related stories Donald Trump's '60 Minutes' Sit-down Delivers Season High; Lags Behind Obama 2008 Interview & Sean Penn On El Chapo Seth Meyers Takes Closer Look At Donald Trump Presidency "Bad First Signals" Megyn Kelly On 'GMA': Steve Bannon Is "Trump Whisperer" In New White House Washington (AFP) - Barack Obama will travel Monday to Greece and Germany in a final official visit designed, in a strange bit of political contortion, at reassuring worried Europeans about a man he once warned was "unfit" for the presidency: Donald Trump. The irony is cruel: In the name of a peaceful transition, the American president, having thoroughly denounced the billionaire Republican during the recent campaign, must now do his best to reassure his European counterparts about the future of American democracy under a President Trump. "I think the design of the trip was meant to just give everybody some reassurance that we made it through this campaign and we're going to come out of it all right," said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. "We just have a different scenario now." The bombastic populist, whose victory over Hillary Clinton surprised virtually everyone, has given Europeans ample cause for concern. He has questioned the relevance of some of America's paramount alliances, starting with NATO; put the Paris climate-change accord in doubt by calling global warming "a hoax," and sharply criticized the strenuously negotiated pact that Washington and five other countries signed with Iran to curb its nuclear program. Trump's attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the New York mogul called him "a leader, far more than our president has been a leader" -- is deeply concerning in Europe, particularly in small countries like the Baltic nations living in Russia's shadow. Beyond the many concerns over the future of American foreign policy, many European Union countries are bracing for a possible ripple effect of the outspoken Republican's victory. "They are very worried, because the same populist, nationalist expressions" that Trump exposed in America on immigration and trade could amplify the already "very strong political currents within Europe," Conley said. Story continues She noted that several European countries have important elections coming up, not least of them the French presidential election next spring. In Greece on Tuesday for his first visit there, Obama is set to meet with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Security will be tight in central Athens, with thousands of police officers on the streets and traffic cut off for several hours. Civil servants, communists, far-left groups and anarchists all plan to hold demonstrations as Obama swings through the Greek capital. - The roots of populism - During a day heavy with symbolism, Obama on Wednesday will visit the Parthenon in Athens, then deliver a speech -- sure to have considerable resonance, given the recent US elections -- on the challenges of globalization. His advisers, pointing to the results of that election but also to the equally stunning British vote to leave the European Union, said the US president would offer his thoughts on the reasons so many people in the world feel "like decisions are made beyond their control." Speaking at the United Nations in September, at a time when the US presidential campaign was in full stride but a Trump victory seemed anything but certain, Obama had called on his fellow leaders to come to grips with the rising frustrations fueling populist movements. He warned them against succumbing to a "soulless capitalism that benefits only the few." "Twenty-five years after the Cold War, the world is less violent and more prosperous," he said, "and yet there is uncertainty and strife." "This is the paradox that defines our world today," he said, stressing that a world in which one percent of the people control as much wealth as the other 99 percent can never be stable. For his sixth visit to Germany since coming to power in 2009, the Democratic president will again meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, long one of his closest foreign partners, according to Ben Rhodes, the US national security adviser. The day after his election, the chancellor pointedly reminded Trump of the criteria that have long bound the two countries in close cooperation: "democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or political views." Obama will also meet in Germany with French President Francois Hollande -- who once said Trump's "excesses" made people "want to retch" -- British Prime Minister Theresa May, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The leaders plan to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine, as well as the fight against the Islamic State group. The American president will conclude his trip with a stop in Peru for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). Among the leaders he is expected to meet there is President Xi Jinping of China. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he would reassure U.S. allies during his trip overseas this week that Republican President-elect Donald Trump plans to maintain core U.S. strategic relationships around the world, including with NATO. Obama, speaking ahead of a trip to Europe and Latin America, said one of the most important things he could do during his visit was to reassure U.S. allies who may be concerned following Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton last week. Trump slammed NATO allies during the campaign for not paying enough for their own defense and suggested the United States was paying a disproportionate amount that was too much given the changes in the world. He also told the Washington Post the United States could not fund NATO at current levels. Trump's comments echoed longstanding U.S. complaints that too many NATO allies do not live up to their pledge to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. Only the United States and four other NATO allies - Greece, Britain, Estonia and Poland - met the goal last year. France and Turkey have been close. Despite Trump's criticism of NATO spending during the campaign, Obama said the president-elect, who takes office Jan. 20, had indicated he was committed to maintaining ties with U.S. allies. "In my conversation with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships," Obama told a news conference before his departure. "So one of the messages I will be able to deliver is his commitment to NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance." "One of the most important functions that I can serve at this stage ... is to let them know that there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship and a recognition that those alliances aren't just good for Europe, they're good for the United States and they're vital for the world," he said. The European Union agreed on a new defense plan on Monday that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, a move seen as giving it the ability to act without the United States if necessary. The action appeared to be galvanized in part by Trump's criticism. Obama is visiting Greece, Germany and Peru on his last trip abroad as president. He is expected to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders in Germany and Greece. In Peru he will see Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Pacific leaders at an economic summit. Obama said U.S. foreign policy remained quite stable despite changes in administration, in part because of the breadth of U.S. government interactions with other nations. "There is enormous continuity beneath the day-to-day news that makes us that indispensable nation when it comes to maintaining order and promoting prosperity around the world. That will continue," Obama told reporters at the White House. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by James Dalgleish) Barack Obama President Barack Obama said in a press conference Monday that when he traveled to Europe this week he would be able to deliver a message to US allies that President-elect Donald Trump remained committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Obama told reporters that Trump "expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships" when the two spoke last week at the White House. "I think that's one of the most important functions I can serve at this stage, during this trip, that there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship," Obama said. "And that there is a recognition that those alliances aren't just good for Europe, but they're good for the United States and vital for the world." Obama's characterization of his conversation with Trump about NATO appears to contradict what Trump said during his campaign about the 28-member defense alliance. Trump frequently questioned the value of NATO along the campaign trail, and he has postulated that the US should not be obligated to come to the defense of its NATO allies if they "aren't paying their bills." Obama has also criticized some NATO members in the past for not paying their fair share. But he has never gone as far as to suggest, as Trump has, that the US disengage from the alliance completely because some of its members are not living up to various financial obligations. Trump's comments have worried European officials faced with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with Moscow. Russian officials warned over the summer that Europe could find itself in Russia's "crosshairs" if NATO didn't back down from plans to conduct war games in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. "The newer members of NATO and especially the Baltics have reason to be very concerned," Stephen Biddle, an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations who is a professor of political science at George Washington University, told Business Insider last week. Story continues "They're not rich enough or big enough to defend themselves against the Russians, and a Trump administration's willingness to help them is very unclear," he said. It's more unclear given Trump's stated admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as his apparent desire to work more closely with Russia to fight terrorism once he takes office. Putin has repeatedly characterized the US-led organization as an "aggressive" force whose aim is to isolate Russia from Europe rhetoric that has grown more heated amid NATO's military exercises in the Baltic Sea. Russia has responded to those drills by transferring nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania. Trump and Putin spoke by phone Monday, Trump's transition team said, in a call in which Trump said he was "very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia." NOW WATCH: OBAMA: Certain elements of Trump's temperament 'may not serve him well' in the White House More From Business Insider President Barack Obama said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump had expressed a "great interest" in maintaining America's core strategic relationships. Those continued relations include U.S. participation in NATO, Obama indicated during a news conference at the White House . "In my conversation with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships, and so one of the messages I will be able to deliver is his commitment to NATO and the Transatlantic alliance," Obama said. "There is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship, and a recognition that those alliances aren't just good for Europe, they're good for the United States and they're vital for the world." Obama also reflected on Trump's upcoming transition into the White House, saying the presidency is bigger than any one person. When asked about Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist, Obama said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on every appointment the president-elect starts making. When pressed on how he thought Trump would perform as the 45th U.S. president, Obama struck an optimistic tone, "He's sincere in wanting to be a successful president," Obama said. "I think he's going to try as best he can to make sure he delivers." The president said issues raised by Trump during his campaign, such as immigration and trade, have to be approached differently when governing than when campaigning. "We do need to make sure that we have an orderly, lawful immigration process, but that if it is orderly and lawful, immigration is good for our economy," Obama said. "It keeps this country young, it keeps it dynamic." When asked if he has any concerns about a Trump presidency, Obama said he "absolutely" has concerns. He added that he doesn't think Trump is ideological, but is ultimately pragmatic, which is something that can serve him well as long as he has good people around him and a clear sense of direction. Story continues Obama will depart today for his final foreign trip as president, visiting Greece for the first time, Germany and Peru. This is breaking news. Please check back for updates. More From CNBC Barack Obama says he "absolutely" has concerns about a Donald Trump presidency, in his first news conference since the US election. And he advised Mr Trump to change some aspects of his behaviour. "I think what will happen with the President-elect is that there are going to be certain elements of his temperament that will not serve him well unless he recognises them and corrects them," he said. During their face to face meeting on Thursday, he said he offered Mr Trump "honest advice" and highlighted the importance of finding trusted aides for the White House. "We had a very cordial conversation," he said. "Do I have concerns? Absolutely." Mr Obama told Mr Trump he must reach out to voters who did not support him. He told journalists he thinks Mr Trump will try to "send some signals of unity" to people who were alienated by what was a ferocious campaign. And he urged the President-elect "to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign". Mr Obama said the job of President was a big challenge, and the Presidency was bigger than one person. But he promised that he and his team will do all they can to help make the transition peaceful and smooth. Mr Trump needed to be given the "rope and space" for a "reset", he said, reflecting on his own arrival in the White House during the economic crisis. He said Mr Trump will have more "time and space" than he had to make "judicious decisions". Mr Obama said that immigration was good for the American economy if it was orderly and lawful, and he would urge Mr Trump to think "long and hard" before he cracks down on young undocumented immigrants. He refused to comment about Mr Trump's first senior appointments, including naming Stephen Bannon as the chief strategist of his administration . Following Hillary Clinton's defeat, Mr Obama said Democrats must accept the result, compete everywhere and show up everywhere. Story continues He has arrived in Greece for his last foreign trip, which will last for a week and also take in Germany and Peru. Mr Obama said he would be reassuring America's allies that Mr Trump supports NATO, despite comments made during the campaign that he wanted other countries to pay more towards it. Meanwhile, there have been more protests against Mr Trump's election victory. Six days after the vote, high school students walked out of class to stage protests in several US cities, including Los Angeles, Denver, Portland and Oakland. Mr Trump accused some of being "professional protesters", but during an interview for 60 Minutes he said they were afraid because they did not know him. Read more: :: Trump softens Obamacare threat but fears remain :: Donald Trump wins: US election results in full :: Putin will wait to see if Trump is 'real deal' :: Brand Trump: Conflict of interest for tycoon :: President Trump: What could possibly go wrong? :: Sky Views: Trump a threat to global free trade A giant tree limb slices diagonally across the stage, creating a looming image in Suzan-Lori Parks symbol-laden, language-rich, ritualistic play about the erasure of African Americans and their history from Western World chronicles. Its one of many powerful images that Parks and director Lileana Blain-Cruz use for dramatic and haunting effect in this handsomely staged, evocative revival of Parks 1990 play at Signature Theater. As African-American archetypes and stereotypes from the biblical, historical and folkloric past roam on stage in a limbo state, Parks weaves a woozy spell with her stylized, fragmented and elliptical use of language. Your response to the work might parallel how you feel about a free-form jazz session, one filled with meditative riffs and theatrical flourishes. Characters at this ancestral burial ground include the Old Testament figure of Noahs son Ham (Patrena Murray), the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut (Amelia Workman), and Bigger Thomas from Richard Wrights novel Native Son (Reynaldo Piniella). They reflect upon or attend to the figure of a dead black man, who is first seen as lifeless, seated on stage at the plays start. He is brought back to life but his Lazarus lift is short-lived, for he is destined to die and return again and again. The figure is called Black Man with Watermelon (Daniel J. Watts), and this surrogate victim represents multiple deaths of his race lynching, electrocution, suicide over the ages. But his greatest demise is death by invisibility. You should write it down because if you dont write it down then they will come along and tell the future that we did not exist, says Yes and Greens Black-Eyed Peas Cornbread (Niki Kadri), another of the symbolic characters that drift in and around Riccardo Hernandez off-kilter, otherworldly set. Yi Zhaos lighting, Montana Blancos costumes and Palmer Hefferans sound design also add to this eerie existential void. Here Parks creates a kind of wake for the dead with periods of mourning, remembering, sharing and chronicling. Parks characters testify on their own behalf, too, revealing glimpses of the person behind the pose. Its all done in spare and idiomatic language, using repetition, refrains, and call-and-response to create a dreamy alt-reality. Story continues The play-as-requiem does not follow a traditional linear narrative, but rather creates a meditative collage that mixes the lyrical, the shocking and the playful with a fair amount of abstruseness. The charismatic presence of the acting company and the hypnotic precision of Blain-Cruz direction help in the beguilement, but its can still be a challenge for the talented company to create an emotional bond longer than lasts longer than an impulse. When a sustained emotional scene finally occurs at the plays end with Black Woman with Fred Drumstick (Roslyn Ruff), also born of slavery its a heartbreaking revelation as the play steps away from the lyrical abstract and engages in the deeply personal as the loving couple at the heart of the play speak to each other in separate dimensions, aching to be remembered. Even at 75 minutes, Death of the Last Black Man may still be challenging for some audiences as they try to make connections among the words, the relationships and the ideas. But others will find the experience resonating down to their bones, rich with meaning of their own making. Related stories Off Broadway Review: Election Night Drama 'Women of a Certain Age' Off Broadway Review: Lynn Nottage's 'Sweat' Off Broadway Review: Anna Deavere Smith's 'Notes From the Field' Online therapy start-up Talkspace can barely keep up with the increase in demand. Requests for mental health consultations have gone up seven-fold since about 7:00 pm on election night in the United States. Co-founder Oren Frank woke up on Wednesday, November 9, to one of the busiest days he has had since launching the online therapy company in 2012. (Originally called Talktala, the startup officially launched as Talkspace two years later.) As voters watched the election results roll in, they started texting their therapists. Talkspace provides services via text message and online video with a network of 1,000 licensed therapists in 48 states. Text-only therapy plans start at $32 a week for unlimited messaging. That's much less expensive than more traditional, in-person therapy. Talkspace's management team can track service use on a minute-by-minute basis. The week before the election, Frank saw a steady rise in traffic. Between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm on November 8, Talkspace saw traffic spike. And that growth is still sustained as of today, Frank wrote in an email to CNBC. The team is struggling to keep up. "As you can see this is very painful and stressful, and very, very serious. We're trying to get help to as many people as possible but unfortunately because of the load our response time is a little slower then usual," Frank says. Talkspace therapists responsible for matching therapists on the platform with users say "the vast majority of this traffic" is in response to the election. A majority of the surge in therapy services are coming from residents of the New York tri-state region, who mostly voted Democratic in the election and would be more likely to be upset by the election results. But almost 20 percent of the traffic Talkspace has seen since the election is from residents of areas outside the blue tri-state region, including red states. Talkspace users' fears of the future include concrete concerns, like how they explain the election results to their children and how will they manage to have healthcare coverage if Obamacare is repealed. They also include more existential feelings, such as a loss of hope and a fear that equality and gender issues will become more trying in a country run by Donald Trump. Story continues "Interestingly, people are very aware that this is a long term concern and problem which won't go away soon, and this is a big burden," says Frank. Several Talkspace therapists have provided CNBC with anonymous feedback about what they are hearing from clients. "I have had about a handful of clients express fear and profound sadness about the election. Two of them, men, said they shed tears and feel hopeless," says one therapist. "A handful of my clients reached out last night and today with feelings of stress and many of my female clients who are struggling with anxiety and self esteem issues have stated that they have been tearful and feel devalued due to the underlying message the election has sent," says another. "I had 27 clients expressing serious concerns over the election," says a third. "One reports that he was bedridden because of his severe anxiety related to the election. Some are reporting that they drank to relieve their stress and anxiety. Most of my clients concerns are related to: access to healthcare, lowered wages, discrimination, fears of our country being invaded, being physically harmed because they are members of minority groups, and general sense of hopelessness." In particular, the Talkspace community has seen a dramatic rise in fear among the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community. "We specifically see increased need for help from the LGBTQ community. Future marriage and acceptance concerns on top of the anxiety, and many of our therapists are LGBTQ and suffer from the same concerns," says Frank. "The client who spoke about it is a gay man who has been in a relationship and married for a few years. He expressed that he was frightened about what Trump's election would mean," a therapist reports. "My LGBTQ clients are talking of the fear of losing rights such as marriage protections/benefits. Fear of violence. Trans client have expressed concern about losing access to healthcare that is affirming. There is obviously a lot of shock and anger as well," says another. "Huge impact here in Philly. Lots of fear, trauma-reactions, unsettledness, a GIANT step backwards for LGBT rights. Lots of people are frightened for LGBTQ youth, especially trans teens," says a third. The emotional triggers that have caused a spike in Talkspace's traffic aren't likely to dissipate. The coming weeks, months, and even years are likely to be tumultuous. The American Psychological Association released a quick guide for decreasing stress in the political election season, and the advice remains applicable: Go for a walk outside, take a break from constant conversations about the election, and volunteer for a cause that means something to you. More From CNBC (Adds details on government measures, housing market) By Fergal Smith TORONTO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The Ontario government said on Monday it remains on track to balance the budget next year and proposed a higher tax refund for first-time home buyers in the province's hot housing market. Canada's most-populous province expects to run a deficit of C$4.3 billion ($3.17 billion)in the 2016-17 fiscal year, the Liberal government said in a budget update, in line with the deficit it had estimated in February. Ontario, which accounts for about 40 percent of Canada's economy, maintained its promise to have a balanced budget in 2017-18 and expects to remain in balance the year after. It has run a deficit every year since 2008-09, when the global financial crisis hurt the economy. The Liberals, who have a majority in the provincial legislature, also proposed to double the maximum Land Transfer Tax refund to C$4,000 for eligible first-time home buyers, effective Jan. 1, 2017. The measure, aimed at helping younger buyers get into the housing market, would mean that eligible buyers would pay no Land Transfer Tax on the first C$368,000 of the cost of their first home. Ontario's approach to combat expensive home prices contrasts with measures taken by British Columbia, which moved in August to damp Vancouver's long-running housing boom. The West Coast province introduced a foreign property transfer tax in August on transactions in Vancouver, dramatically cooling the market in the city. Ontario also forecast its long-term borrowing in 2016-17 to be C$23.8 billion, C$2.6 billion less than forecast in the February budget and C$8.3 billion lower than the amount borrowed in 2015-16. (Reporting by Fergal Smith, editing by G Crosse and Alan Crosby) Oreo regularly releases novelty flavors to fill its classic cookiesremember the infamous Swedish Fish incident of 2016?but today marks a true turning point with the introduction of actual Oreo chocolate bars. The milk-chocolate-coated bars come in two versions, a family-sized Big Crunch and more traditional Chocolate Candy Bar. Each of the two types is made with Milka chocolate, a popular European brand known for being particularly creamy and sweet. The chocolate exterior sandwiches an Oreo filling, giving the candy blocks a satisfying crunch in between the melt-in-your-mouth exterior. (They really are exceptionally melty, too.) The Big Crunchwhich has a thick layer of Oreo cookie between layers of vanilla cremewill start popping up in stores on Monday, Nov. 14; those large bars will sell for about $5 each. The Chocolate Candy Bar, in which the filling is more of a classic crumbled cookies-and-creme mix, will appear on store shelves starting in January 2017, and will be available in multiple sizes. Its likely to please milk chocolate fans, but dark chocolate diehards might find these bars cloyingly sweet, so they might want to pass. Next question to the Willy Wonkas in the Nabisco lab: when do we get chocolate-chip-flavored Oreo filling in the chocolate bars? Now that would be a candy inception. Audrie & Daisy directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk say there's a reason this year's docs include several on women's issues: among them, Dawn Porter's Trapped, about reproductive rights; Hooligan Sparrow, Nanfu Wang's investigation of a child-rape case in China; and their film, which exposes the trauma of two teenage girls after sexual assaults against them end up on the internet. "For sure, more female voices are being taken more seriously," says Cohen. Cohen and Shenk wanted to reach out to kids like the real-life Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman. Though social media connects teens, the directors say it also allows shaming and ridicule to go viral. For their subjects, the internet exposure was almost more painful than the physical assault. "These girls are waking up to a public square of shame that is online," says Shenk. Read more: Oscars: Heartbreaking Doc 'Gleason' "Gives You a Little Dose of Perspective" The women in the film were drinking, and the directors say viewers often suggest they were asking for it. "[It's], 'What about the alcohol?' Does that mean our boys believe that gives them license to assault girls?" asks Shenk. Although the helmers say their main goal was to bring Audrie & Daisy to theater audiences, they chose a distribution model with Netflix because it allows the film to reach teens in the privacy of their homes, including on their mobile devices. Cohen describes a therapist friend who had urged a teen, who had been sexually assaulted but was afraid to go public, to watch Audrie & Daisy: " 'You can watch it on Netflix - you don't have to tell your parents,' " she says. The girl later said Daisy's words in the doc spoke to exactly how she felt. This story first appeared in a November standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinian leaders on Monday denounced an Israeli bill to legalise several thousand Jewish homes in the occupied West Bank, vowing to take up the issue at the UN Security Council. They also sharply criticised a separate bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayers at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem, a measure government watchdogs have called a threat to freedom of religion and a provocation. A committee of Israeli ministers adopted the two bills on Sunday, though they must still be approved by parliament. The settler bill had been pushed forward by Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the hardline Jewish Home party. Bennett last week called for an end to the idea of a Palestinian state after Donald Trump's presidential election win in the United States. "The recent Israeli measures are going to lead to catastrophe in the region," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. "The Palestinian leadership will turn to the UN Security Council and all other international organisations to stop those Israeli measures." Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki accused the Israeli government of seeking to "impose facts on the ground and create new realities by legalising the illegal actions that it commits". UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said that the settlements bill and other such issues were "further pouring oil onto the fire." The bill to legalise Israeli homes in the West Bank was pushed through the committee despite opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was drafted in response to a court order requiring the Israeli outpost of Amona, which includes about 40 families, to be evacuated by December 25 because it was built on private Palestinian land. On Monday, the Israeli high court rejected a government bid to delay the evacuation by seven months. Netanyahu had feared the bill could jeopardise the government's case. Story continues - 'Unique opportunity' - He is also concerned it could provoke an international backlash and possibly encourage US President Barack Obama to seek a Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before he leaves office on January 20. The bill would allow for the legalisation of settlements built on private Palestinian land in communities that meet certain criteria. The Palestinian landowners would be offered compensation in return for the land being seized. The bill is expected to apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 homes in the West Bank. Bennett said Monday: "The combination of the changes in the United States, in Europe and the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything. "It's no secret that I think that the notion of setting up a Palestine in the heart of Israel is a profound mistake," he said, referring to the West Bank. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not. The government differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not. Settlements like Amona are considered outposts as they have not been given Israeli government approval. Settlements are seen as a major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state. This Immigrant Doctor Is Reimagining Health in the American City Well, heres a paradox: Palm oil plantations are notorious for destroying orangutan habitat on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra and pushing the animals to extinction. But the cooperation of the palm oil industry may be needed if theres hope to prevent the same thing from happening to other great ape species, according to a new report. Palm oil is a cheap ingredient used in everything from food to cosmetics to biofuels. The rapid growth of the industry in Southeast Asia has been linked to deforestation and the critical endangerment of orangutan species. Now the industry is spreading to Africa, where it threatens to do the same thing to gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. It took 30 years for palm oil to really embed itself in Southeast Asia, said Douglas Cress, program coordinator for the Great Apes Survival Partnership, a United Nations program. It will take half that time in Africa. Weve got to move quickly or well lose a lot of important species. A new report from GRASP called Palm Oil Paradox argues that one of the keys to saving the worlds great ape speciestwo-thirds of which are critically endangeredis to enlist the aid of the most environmentally responsible companies in the $62 billionayear palm oil industry. Among the reports recommendations are setting aside priority ape conservation sites called no-go zones and placing certified sustainable palm oil plantations right up against great ape habitats so the companies can safeguard their neighboring apes. Cress acknowledged that this is radical thinking, but he said it stems from an important question: How do we make the palm oil industry our allies? These are major corporations with billions of dollars at stake. Thats vital, he said, because nothing were doing today works. If its just a question of saying no to palm oil and boycotting it, then why are all of the orangutans critically endangered? This isnt working, so lets try something different. Story continues The report also calls for more participation from conservationists. We are instructing our people on the conservation side to get in on day one on the planning process, Cress said. Make yourself part of the conversation. Dont wait until its already been allocated and developed to suddenly complain. Youve got to get upstream. RELATED: Orangutans Are Dying as Indonesia Burns Cress said the information learned during the two years it took to develop the report highlighted how critical the issue will become in Africa. The researchers found that the sites most suitable for growing oil palm overlaid almost exactly with great ape habitat. For example, about 98 percent of bonobo habitat is also perfect for growing palm oil. That just horrified us, he said. Theyre square in the firing line. One of the editors of the report, biologist and orangutan researcher Serge Wich, said the lessons learned about what has worked and not worked in Southeast Asia should be put into practice in Africa while theres still time. With industrial oil palm development in Africa still being relatively small, this is the time to discuss with all the relevant stakeholders how we can balance conservation and oil palm development, he said. One of the biggest goals identified in the report is the expansion of the market for certified sustainable palm oil. Only about 20 percent of palm oil is sustainably sourced, according to researchers. But half of that palm oil fails to sell at the higher prices certified products are supposed to attract. Instead, it gets folded back into the regular supply chain and sold at a lower price. We have to create more consumer demand for sustainable palm oil, Cress said. We need to make sure people know that they can ask for it. He recommended searching products for the Green Palm logo, established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, although he said it has not yet reached deep market penetration. Its just not ubiquitous enough yet, he said. Wich said consumers can take another step. Let companies know you decided not to buy a product from them because it has not been certified, he said, noting that if companies know they are losing customers, they may embrace more responsible approaches to palm oil. The report, which was released at last weeks RSPO meeting in Bangkok, coincided with criticism of the industry group. Environmental groups complained that a palm oil company that had lost its certification for reportedly illegally chopping down rainforests in Indonesia regained its certification too quickly and without on-the-ground oversight. Meanwhile, a smoky hazeblamed on illegal fires aimed at clearing land for palm oil plantationsis blanketing Indonesia and nearby Singapore. Could Africa suffer a similar fate without the cooperation of the industrys better-behaved players? Cress acknowledged fear for the future but said the two sides need to work together to save great apes. Were asking our community to trust another community that theres not a tremendous amount of mutual faith right now, he said. Were going to have to find some. We cant keep repeating these same old equations and hoping for something different. We dont have the luxury of decades. We have the luxury of years. We really have to make this happen soon. Sign the Petition: Don't Let Your Shampoo and French Fries Destroy Tropical Forests and Displace Orangutans Related stories on TakePart: Indonesia Is Still Burning The Problem With Palm Oil The Pervasiveness of Palm Oil Original article from TakePart Geneva (AFP) - A stainless steel Patek Philippe watch has sold for a record $11 million (10.2 million euros) in Geneva, an auction house said Monday. The piece from the Swiss company's 1518 series sold on Saturday for 11,002,000 Swiss francs following a 13-minute bidding war, according to a statement from Phillips, a leading watch auction firm based in London. When Patek Philippe introduced the 1518 series in 1941, they were the first-ever perpetual calendar chronographs, meaning they were the first timepieces that had both a stop-watch function as well as a calendar designed to keep track of dates for centuries, with leap years factored in. The piece sold on Saturday was made in 1943, Phillips said, calling its sale price "a new world record for any wristwatch at auction", which more than tripped the pre-sale estimate. Neither the buyer, nor the seller were identified. A total of 177 watches were sold over the weekend in the Swiss city, fetching $27.5 million collectively. PBS political reporter and vice-presidential-debate moderator Gwen Ifill passed away from cancer Monday in hospice care. She was 61. In April, Ifill took a leave from her position as the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor of PBS Newshour to address some health issues. At the time, a representative from the network said doctors were encouraged with her progress, and she hopes to be back in the saddle as soon as possible. As late as early November, Ifill was at least in consideration for Election Night coverage: Political analyst Jeff Greenfield tweeted on Nov. 5 that he was looking forward to being on-air with Ifill and PBS Judy Woodruff on the big night. On Nov. 7, PBS updated its website to note Ifills upcoming absence. Throughout her career, Ifill covered seven presidential campaigns and moderated two vice-presidential debates: in 2004 between Dick Cheney and John Edwards, and in 2008 between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS. Prior to joining PBS, Ifill was chief congressional and political correspondent for NBC News and White House correspondent for The New York Times. She also reported for The Washington Post, the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Boston Herald American. Gwen was a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change. She was a mentor to so many across the industry and her professionalism was respected across the political spectrum. She was a journalists journalist and set an example for all around her, PBS NewsHour executive producer Sara Just said in a statement obtained by Politico. So many people in the audience felt that they knew and adored her. She had a tremendous combination of warmth and authority. She was stopped on the street routinely by people who just wanted to give her a hug and considered her a friend after years of seeing her on TV. We will forever miss her terribly." Story continues Related stories Beauty and the Beast's Romantic Trailer Arrives Just as Once Upon a Time's Beauty and Beast Hit a Sad Nadir Westworld Renewed for Season 2 -- Divorce, Insecure Also Snag Renewals SNL's Alec Baldwin Says NBC Execs 'Kill' Political Endorsement on the Sketch Series -- But Should They? Washington (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Monday advised NATO countries worried about the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House to talk to the incoming administration to ensure he respects the alliance. During the campaign ultimately won by Trump in a shock victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Republican billionaire said he might think twice about defending NATO allies unless they up increase their defense spending. Those comments have sparked fear in Europe, where some have called on the European Union to press on with its own common defense plan. Carter said he could not speak for Trump's incoming administration, but urged America's partners to take advantage of the opportunity to air their concerns. The only thing I would say is, engage with the new administration... work with them, stay committed to the values and the principles that we have stood for," Carter told an audience at 1776, a start-up incubator in Washington. "We're much better at protecting ourselves if we can find a way to work together," said Carter, a firm backer of the 28-nation NATO. Washington has been pushing some European countries for several years to increase their defense spending, and thereby lessen America's load for NATO's collective defense. Many European countries still spend less than the two percent of GDP on defense, the bar sent by the Alliance. The United States, which spends roughly 3.3 percent of its GDP on defense, contributes about 70 percent of NATO's budget. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Sunday that "going it alone is not an option" -- a not-so-veiled message to Trump. "This is no time to question the partnership between Europe and the United States," Stoltenberg wrote in a commentary for Britain's Observer newspaper. From Esquire There's another online petition going around. Once again, for the price of a few clicks, you can change the world. This one's about that whole election thing that happened this week. You know, the one in which 56 percent of people voted and now a similar percentage are upset about the outcome. Some of those upset folks have circulated a Change.org petition that can undo the bad thing that was done on Tuesday. If you just sign it, the electors of the Electoral College will be convinced to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, and she will become president. But wait, you say. Donald Trump was elected through the same democratic process we have always used. He won a majority of electoral votes, like the 44 guys before him. You're right, but that hasn't stopped a bunch of people from trying to get Hillary Clinton installed as president instead. (The petition's title says it all. "Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19." Not even a head-fake towards "elect" or "vote.") They want the electors, who do in many cases have the right to ignore the will of the American citizens they represent, to ignore those citizens and vote for the person that People On The Internet tell them to. Photo credit: Robyn Beck The scenario is possible. They could do it. And in so doing, they would legitimize every claim made by Trump and his supporters: That the system is rigged. That the election would be rigged. That a revolution-yes, a revolution-would be justified. We all watched in shock and horror as Trump supporters talked about open revolt if he lost, and that wasn't justified. But if Trump's legitimate victory in a democratic election were to be ignored, that kind of response would be justified. It would be a subversion of democracy far more reprehensible than Trump's pre-election threat not to honor the outcome of the election. But Clinton won the popular vote, you might say. More people said they want her to be president. Maybe, but the presidency does not go to the person who gets more votes. For more than 240 years, it has gone to the person who gets more electoral votes. The irony, as Charles P. Pierce pointed out, is that the electoral college system was built to try to prevent the rise of a populist demagogue. Instead, it has enabled it, but it remains the system we use to select our democratic leaders. Story continues The petition has 2.5 million of the 3 million signatures its creators have decided is enough to overturn the outcome of the actual election, which involved just under 120 million people. In the great tradition of slacktivism, these 2.5 million people think a click and a share is worth more than action in the physical world. It would be interesting to know how many of them made their voice heard earlier this week. You Might Also Like JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius has been moved to a prison better suited to his rehabilitation while serving a six year jail term for murdering his girlfriend, a prison service spokesman said on Monday. Pistorius has been moved to the Atteridgeville correctional center, on the outskirts of the capital Pretoria, from the nearby Kgosi Mampuru remand center. "The issue is about access to rehabilitation programs," department for correctional services spokesman Manelisi Wolela said. "A remand detention facility has no rehabilitation program because everyone there is assumed innocent and therefore cannot be subjected to rehabilitation programs." The athlete, known as the Blade Runner for his carbon-fiber prosthetics, was treated for wrist injuries in August but prison services said he denied trying to kill himself. Pistorius was sentenced to six years in prison in July after being found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on appeal last December. The track star originally received a five-year sentence for a manslaughter conviction, that was upgraded to murder on appeal. State prosecutors are challenging Pistorius' latest six year sentence, arguing it was too lenient as it was less than half the 15-years they sought. Pistorius says he shot dead Steenkamp by accident after mistaking her for an intruder in his house. (Reporting by Stella Mapenzauswa; Editing by Joe Brock) Johannesburg (AFP) - Jailed Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has been transferred to a prison adapted for disabled inmates to serve the rest of his sentence for murdering his girlfriend, a South African official said Monday. The Department of Correctional Services said the double amputee was moved from Kgosi Mampuru II prison in the capital Pretoria to Atteridgeville Correctional Centre, just outside the city. "The transfer was in line with his special needs," department spokesman Singabakho Nxumalo told AFP. "The new prison caters for people with special needs, it has been revamped to include facilities like bath tubs." The smaller facility holds convicts serving sentences of up to six years. In July, Pistorius, 29, was given a six-year jail term after an appeals court upgraded his manslaughter conviction to murder. He had been earlier given a five-year jail term and was released on parole after one year. State prosecutors are still battling to lengthen his sentence, which they have described as "shockingly lenient and disturbingly inappropriate". The former Paralympic hero shot dead Reeva Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013. The "Blade Runner", as he was known, has always maintained that he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four high-calibre bullets through a locked toilet cubicle in his upmarket home in Pretoria. The South African government news service said Pistorius had requested the transfer, adding that work to renovate the Atteridgeville centre began in May and was not linked to his case. - 'Pay for his crime' - At Pistorius' sentencing, High Court judge Thokozile Masipa said a mitigating factor for giving him less than the 15-year term for murder included his claim he believed he was shooting an intruder. "He cannot be at peace. I'm of the view that a long term of imprisonment will not serve justice," Masipa said. Story continues At an earlier hearing, a sobbing Pistorius hobbled on his stumps across the courtroom to demonstrate his physical vulnerability. His lawyers argued he should not be returned to jail on account of an anxiety disorder and depression. But Steenkamp's father Barry told the court that he wanted Pistorius to "pay for his crime". The Supreme Court of Appeal last year ruled he was guilty of murder, irrespective of who was behind the door when he opened fire with the pistol he kept under his bed. The year before he killed Steenkamp, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at Olympic level when he appeared at the London 2012 games. While on parole he gave a television interview saying that an "instant fear" drove him to grab his gun and walk on his stumps towards the bathroom. "All of a sudden I hear a noise, at the toilet. I presumed it was the toilet door opening and, before I knew it, I'd fired four shots," he said. By Victoria Bryan and Peter Maushagen NEU-ISENBURG, Germany (Reuters) - Lufthansa's (LHAG.DE) airline catering business wants to become more like a mainstream retailer in a shift that includes an expansion into new areas such as trains and convenience stores, its chief executive said. The airline's catering division, known as LSG Group, makes food for other carriers as well as Lufthansa. It has been active in airline catering for more than 70 years and last year made 591 million meals, or roughly one in every three served onboard globally. But like its rivals in airline catering, such as Do&Co (DOCO.VI) and GateGroup (GATE.S), LSG is grappling with a shift from free airline food to buy-on-board that is forcing these companies to try to reinvent themselves. "Transforming from a caterer to a retailer is a big challenge," LSG Group CEO Erdmann Rauer told Reuters in an interview at the group's headquarters just outside Frankfurt. For example, packaging and the way the food looks become more important to entice passengers to spend the extra money, especially given how some love to share photographs of airline food on social media, he said. Rauer said he expected 10 to 15 percent of the 14-billion-euro ($15 billion) global airline catering market to shift to buy-on-board. LSG's purchase of Irish in-flight sales specialist Retail inMotion brought in Ryanair (RYA.I) as a customer and also helped to provide retail and data analysis capabilities, Rauer said. LSG is still achieving 4 percent growth in the traditional airline food business and is investing in more luxury meals for business and premium economy passengers, for instance for Chinese and Gulf carriers, as well as providing food for Lufthansa lounges in Munich and New York. But it is also seeking contracts in other areas, such as catering for trains and convenience stores, counting German rail operator Deutsche Bahn, Britain's Virgin Trains, and 7-Eleven among its customers. Such deals would help to ensure continued work for the 210 kitchens it has around the world. Story continues Airline catering, including buy-on-board, currently accounts for 85 percent of LSG's revenues. That should fall to about 75 percent over the next five years, with the rest coming from non-airline customers, Rauer said. Union Investment fund manager and Lufthansa shareholder Michael Gierse said LSG needed to get its margin closer to those of rivals. LSG reported an operating margin of 3 percent in 2015, compared with rival Do&Co at 10 percent and GateGroup at around 6 percent. "If they can reach 5 percent it would be a success," Gierse said. Rauer said LSG's operating margin should rise again in the next three to five years. "Change costs money. It's a burden on profit but it's an investment to make the company fit for the future," he said. Last year, LSG made adjusted core profit of 99 million euros, equivalent to 5 percent of Lufthansa Group's 2015 profit of 1.8 billion. Analysts value LSG at around 1 billion euros ($1 = 0.9191 euros) (Editing by Jane Merriman) A panel of plastic surgeons from across the country join The Doctors to share their best secrets and recommend what procedure they think will give you the best bang for your buck. Last year nearly 16 million people in the U.S. had a cosmetic procedure done. But the "desired" look is different across the country. Plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Ordon shares that in Beverly Hills the trendiest surgery of late is the "My O Lift," which focuses on raising the neck area through a non-invasive procedure. Plastic surgeon Dr. Cash shares that in Houston, Texas the new breast trend is to remove the implants. She's finding that smaller is better. Dr. Cash works on reshaping their natural breast tissue, which allows her to make them bigger or smaller, and to sit up by themselves. She uses silk protein or pig skin if their natural tissue has been stretched over time. Plastic surgeon Dr. Alvarez reveals that the Brazilian butt lift is the most popular procedure in Miami right now. He has personally done over 1,000 lifts. Watch: Benefits of Brazilian Butt Lift "Women want their bodies back!" says Plastic surgeon Dr. Breslow. After kids, the "mommy makeover" is the most asked for procedure on the east coast. He also shares that "looking like you've had something done is worse than looking like you need something done." This is the east coast mantra for achieving a natural look with plastic surgery. The Midwest obesity rate is at an all-time high. Approximately 30% of people in the Midwest are overweight. So it's no surprise that the most asked for procedure according to plastic surgeon Dr. Pryor is liposuction. Watch: Bad Liposuction Results! So what procedure may give you the best bang for your buck if you're considering going under the knife? Dr. Cash recommends eyelid surgery or rejuvenation with filler. Everyone looks at your eyes and if you can rejuvenate them it can brighten your whole face. Story continues Dr. Alvarez recommends sunscreen and Botox, which can help you prevent wrinkles and keep you looking young. Dr. Breslow shares that liposuction is the tried and true method to remove stubborn fat. Non-invasive fat loss procedures like Coolsculpting are great but lipo has more consistent results. Dr. Pryor says is Bellafill is the longest lasting filler on the market and reduces the need for repeat treatments over time. ER Physician Dr. Travis Stork recommends doing your homework if you're considering any procedure. Look up the doctors credentials, make sure they have a good-standing medical record, and get multiple opinions before undergoing a major procedure. By Wojciech Zurawski KRAKOW, Poland (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors on Monday began the exhumation of President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, to examine his remains as part of an investigation into the tragedy likely to deepen political divisions in Poland. The crash near Smolensk in western Russia, which killed 96 people including Kaczynski's wife, top army brass and the central bank governor, has become one of the most fraught public issues in Poland, with some claiming foul play. An inquiry by Poland's previous, centrist government ruled pilot error caused the government's Soviet-made TU-154 to crash into the ground in heavy fog during an attempt to land. But Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, whose nationalist-minded Law and Justice party (PiS) unseated the centrists in an election last year, has said an onboard explosion could have caused the crash. Prosecutors want to determine whether there was no mix-up of remains during burial, as well as whether damage to the bodies had been described correctly in previous inquiries, arguing that Russia's refusal to return the plane's wreckage was a critical obstacle. "The crucial evidence remains in Russia and I don't expect to have access to it any time soon," Marek Pasionek, a deputy prosecutor general, was quoted saying by Rzeczpospolita daily last week. "We need to have the wreckage in order to reconstruct the flight. "And however brutal this may sound, the bodies are practically the only piece of evidence which we can have access to, through exhumations." Russia has said the wreckage cannot be returned until its own criminal inquiry is concluded. PAINFUL DEBATE The remains of Kaczynski and his wife Maria will be removed from their crypt in the Wawel cathedral in Krakow in southern Poland after it closed for tourists at 6 p.m. local time (12 p.m ET). Other exhumations will follow in coming months. Critics say the new investigation amounts to a politically-motivated effort to discredit the centrist opposition and rally a conservative electorate deeply distrustful of Russia. Kaczynski has long accused Donald Tusk, who was the prime minister in 2010 and now heads the European Council of heads of EU states, of being indirectly responsible for the crash - caused, in his view, at least partially by government negligence. "The Smolensk crash continues to fan heated public tensions," said Izabella Sariusz-Skapska, daughter of a Polish activist who died in the crash. "We don't know how long (the investigation) will last ... Maybe the calculation is to have fireworks ready for the next election campaign," she told Reuters. Sariusz-Skapska's father was flying with Kaczynski and his entourage to a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet secret police killed thousands of Polish officers in a forest in western Russia. Her father headed an association of the Katyn victims' families. (Additional reporting by Pawel Sobczak and Justyna Pawlak; editing by Mark Heinrich) Warsaw (AFP) - Poland said Monday it will build a new territorial defence force of 53,000 volunteers by 2019, which it announced with an eye on heading off any threat from Russia. Similar to the US National Guard, the force will be made up of civilians who undergo military training. It is intended to deter Russia from seizing Polish territory by infiltration, as it is accused of having done in eastern Ukraine. "By 2019, the (force) should have 53,000 men," Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz told a press conference, adding that the new force would cost 800 million euros ($862 million) over the next three years. But he insisted that the new "units are the cheapest way to increase the strength of the armed forces and the defence capabilities of the country." "It is also the best response to the dangers of a hybrid war like the one... following Russia's aggression in Ukraine," Macierewicz added, pointing to Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Experts and officials say hybrid warfare is a tactic employed by Russia that uses deception rather than a formal declaration of war. "Professional soldiers will constitute between six to eight percent of these units and will command the volunteers," defence ministry spokeswoman Beata Perkowska told AFP. Volunteers who will be paid a nominal sum undergo basic military training and are required to hone their skills on a regular basis. The first three units of the force will be deployed in eastern Poland, which is deemed to be the most exposed to Russian pressure. Plans call for each of Poland's 16 provinces to have a volunteer force of 3,000-5,000. The Polish move has been mirrored in the ex-Soviet Baltic states, which have a long history of tension with Moscow. Poland already has a 12,000-strong paramilitary group, a "riflemen's association" called the Strzelec, first set up in the early 20th century by the architect of Polish independence, Jozef Pilsudski. NATO leaders endorsed plans this summer to rotate troops into Poland and the three Baltic states to reassure them they would not be left in the lurch if Russia was tempted to repeat its 2014 Ukraine intervention. The US also said in March it would deploy an additional armoured brigade of about 4,200 troops in eastern Europe from early 2017 on a rotational basis. Stockholm (AFP) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday said he has "no doubt" that president-elect Donald Trump will refuse to recognise Russia's annexation of Crimea, and will cooperate with his country. "Not one state in the world, except it seems to me North Korea and Venezuela, recognises Crimea," Poroshenko told a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in Stockholm. The "United States is not North Korea. And let's respect United States' people, the United States and the United States president," he added. When asked about the possibility of "an agreement" with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin about recognising Crimea, Poroshenko responded: "I am absolutely sure that the new president-elect is completely strong enough in an effective cooperation with Ukraine ... no doubt." In an interview with ABC in August, Trump suggested that the US could accept Russia's annexation of Crimea if it led to improved relations between the two nations, which are bitterly at odds over Syria. Trump, who takes over as US president in January, criticised President Barack Obama's foreign policy stance during the election campaign saying it had caused a sharp deterioration in relations with Russia. US-Russia relations dipped to their worst since the Cold War after Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March 2014, and Russia also has been accused by Washington of supporting pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko called for the extension of Western sanctions against Russia. "We need European unity. Unity in the European Union, and transatlantic unity," he said. Donald J. Trumps first interview as president-elect of the United States will air Sunday on CBS 60 Minutes. He doubled down on several of his campaign promises, according to the transcript of the interview. Its going to be America first, Trump told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview taped on Friday. The full interview airs Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7/6c, but here are the biggest takeaways: The wall: Trump still plans on building a wall across the Mexican border, though he said he was perhaps open to part of it being a fence, rather than a wall. Im very good at this. Its called construction, Trump said. Deporting undocumented immigrants: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said. Once he considers the countrys borders secure, he said there will be a vetting process to allow re-entry. Taxes: Were going to substantially simplify and lower the taxes, Trump told Stahl. Hillary Clinton: Though he called his competitor a nasty woman and a puppet during the final presidential debate, Trump characterized Clintons concession phone call as lovely. She is very strong and very smart, he said. But Trump wouldnt rule out appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton over the use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Theyre good people. I dont want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together, he said. His meeting with President Obama: On Thursday, Trump met with President Obama, for a meeting that lasted 90 minutes. We talked about the Middle East, thats tough, Trump told Stahl. Its a tough situation. I wanted to get his full view and I got his, you know I got a good part of his view, Trump said of his discussion with the man he once claimed was the founder of ISIS in a campaign speech. Story continues His strategy for dealing with ISIS: Trump declined to tell Stahl how he planned to defeat ISIS, saying he wanted to preserve the element of surprise, and that we have some great generals. Stahl noted that he had previously said he knows more than those very generals. Ill be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job theyve done. Obamacare: According to Trump, the President did not ask Trump not to repeal Obamacare, but instead explained the up- and downsides to the Affordable Care Act. Trump said his replacement for the Act will also include a provision mandating that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions, and that parents will still be able to keep children still living with them on their insurance. Draining the swamp: Stahl called Trump out on the presence of lobbyists on his transition team; Trump responded that the only people in D.C. available are lobbyists. Im saying that they know the system right now, but were going to phase that out, he said. Abortion rights: Trump told Stahl he plans to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who leans pro-life as he does, and that if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, that would mean the states would decide abortion rights issues. When Stahl pointed out that meant some states could ban abortions entirely, leaving women with no choice but to go to another state, he responded, Yeah, well, theyll perhaps have to go, theyll have to go to another state. Marriage equality: Trump doesnt see his Supreme Court Justice overturning marriage equality. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. Theyve been settled. And Im fine with that, he told Stahl. The Electoral College: While he spent much of his campaign and even years before talking about how Americas electoral system was rigged, Trump was unfazed by the fact that he won the presidency with the Electoral College but did not win the majority of the publics votes. Im not going to change my mind just because I won, he told Stahl. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. His tweeting: If I use it at all, Im going to do very restrained, he told Stahl on Friday. On Sunday morning, his account posted two tweets casting (inaccurate) aspersions at the New York Times. Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the "Trump phenomena" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016 Protests and hate crimes: In part because Trump won the Electoral College but not the popular vote, his election has inspired large protests across the country. But perhaps of more concern are reports of increasing numbers of alleged hate crimes: violent rhetoric directed at ethnic minorities, swastikas spray-painted on cars, hijabs grabbed from Muslim womens heads, and worse. I am very surprised to hear that, Trump said when the reports were brought up. I think its a very small amount. When pressed by Stahl over whether he had anything to say to the perpetrators of these alleged acts, Trump finally responded with: Stop it. 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7/6c on CBS. Related stories Ava DuVernay on Trump and Mass Incarceration: 'He Feels It's a Business' Donald Trump Names Reince Priebus White House Chief of Staff Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook Against Charges of Swaying Election President Obama addressed concerned about President-elect Donald Trump in his first press conference since Election Day, saying that the massive responsibilities of the presidency would change the businessmans tenor. In a subtle effort to assuage fears, President Obama suggested Monday that the office of the president has a way of opening ones eyes to the realities of governing and decision making. Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up, Obama said. Obama maintained his commitment to ensuring a smooth, peaceful transition of power during his first press conference since Election Day, refusing to weigh in on president-elect Donald Trumps staffing picks and comments the president made about his successors qualifications on the campaign trail. Speaking to the press ahead of his final international trip as president, Obama said it was important for the American people to allow Trump to make decisions and settle into the office before judging his presidency. The people have spoken, Donald Trump will be the next president, the 45th president of the United States, Obama said. It will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies. Those who didnt vote for Trump, Obama said, have to recognize that thats how the system operates. President Obama said again that he was encouraged by Trumps sober response to his Election Night win and hopes that hell commit to unifying the country going forward. The two met in the Oval Office the Thursday after the surprising election and during that meeting, Obama said Monday, he advised the President-elect to reach out to communities that may feel disaffected as a result of his win. In the days since the election, protestors have taken to the streets across the country chanting things like not my president and dump Trump. There has also been an increase in racially charged incidents across the U.S. in the wake of the election. Story continues My advice, as I said to the President-elect, was that campaigning is different from governing, Obama said Monday. I think he recognizes that I think hes sincere in wanting to be a successful president. I think hes going to try as best he can to make sure that he delivers not only for people who voted for him but the people at large. Obama also said hed advised Trump to reach out to women, communities of color, and others who expressed concern about the tenor of his campaign and the nastiness of the 2016 election. As noted, the president did not weigh in on the announcement that controversial Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon will have a senior role in the Trump administration. Reports and comments from advocates, Democrats, and civil rights groups signals that some are angered by the President-elects staffing choices. President Obama said he thinks of Trump as less of an ideologue and more of a pragmatist, something he hopes will benefit him when hes in the thick of it. The president also said he hopes the president will consider the impact of decisions like completely gutting the Affordable Care Act and reversing deportation deferrals of children who immigrated to the U.S. Nov 14 - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. The Times The former high court judge who will oversee RBS's compensation scheme for thousands of companies mistreated by its restructuring unit was misled by the bank in a court case over a business dispute. http://bit.ly/2fQ9ifQ The former finance director of Autonomy has been indicted in America over claims he worked with others to deceive Hewlett Packard and investors ahead of its $11 billion sale. http://bit.ly/2fQfeWl The Guardian GlaxoSmithKline has come top of a league table that monitors the availability of medicine in developing countries, with fellow UK drugmaker AstraZeneca making it into the top 10. http://bit.ly/2fQ9Kei The chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland has warned that banks could pull operations out of Britain unless Theresa May draws up transitional arrangements for the country's exit from the EU. http://bit.ly/2fQ9Z9c The Telegraph Dominic Chappell, the former owner of BHS, has been arrested for unpaid bills, it emerged, on the eve of a High Court deadline for him to provide evidence about why 6 million pounds is missing from BHS's balance sheet. http://bit.ly/2fQcCri Nissan Motor Co Ltd and other big Japanese manufacturers can only work in the UK if they are free to import parts from the EU, the country's ambassador said, warning the government not to slap taxes on the trade post-Brexit. http://bit.ly/2fQfTqR Sky News The former chairman of ARM Holdings, the British chip designer sold this year in a 24 billion pound deal, is making a rapid return to the technology sector with a new role at Ve Interactive, a fast-growing software company. http://bit.ly/2fQj8yv Energy firms have been accused of making "six times" the profit they admit to publicly , following an investigation into their finances. The claims are based on a report for Energy UK, which represents power firms, by respected accountancy firm PWC, according to the Sun newspaper. http://bit.ly/2fQfwMS Story continues The Independent The former bankrupt who bought BHS from Sir Philip Green for a pound has been reportedly arrested over unpaid tax. Dominic Chappell, 49, is alleged to have been arrested by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for failing to pay more than 500,000 pounds in tax on money from the doomed department store chain. http://ind.pn/2fQjx43 (Compiled by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru) Nov 14 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. THE GLOBE AND MAIL ** Rogers Communications Inc says it will cut down on the frustration of waiting for the cable guy by letting customers track their technician's location in real time as a service van makes its way to their home. The new service will be launched on Monday in Hamilton, Ontario. https://tgam.ca/2eSnOkR ** Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and some of his senior cabinet ministers will spend Monday behind closed doors at Toronto's Shangri-La hotel, pitching investors on why they should park their billions in Canada. https://tgam.ca/2eSq8Z6 ** Canadian security experts are increasing their vigilance against activists' threats to the country's energy infrastructure, as civil-liberties advocates worry about the use of improper surveillance on peaceful opponents to major projects. https://tgam.ca/2eSqcIe NATIONAL POST ** Canadian doctors are increasingly medicating children with antidepressants and antipsychotics, suggests a new study. Experts worry this is the latest sign of using drugs to achieve "behavioural control". http://natpo.st/2eSkPcd ** Quebec's provincial Liberal Party has a reputation as a disciplined election-winning machine. But after holding power for 11 of the last 13 years, there are growing signs of decay in the party of Premier Philippe Couillard. http://natpo.st/2eSqUFr (Compiled by Shalini Nagarajan in Bengaluru) From ELLE A lot of people were hoping that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would make their first public appearance together at Saturday's rugby match between England and South Africa. And, as a result, a lot of people were left disappointed when Markle didn't accompany the redheaded royal to the match at Twickenham Stadium in London. According to E! Online, Markle wasn't even in the country, and had already left for Toronto by the time Harry was cheering on England. Since Markle wasn't around to attend, Princess Charlene of Monaco kept Harry company, which was fitting since she was raised in South Africa. After Prince Harry confirmed his relationship via a statement from Kensington Palace earlier this week, a lot of people thought the couple would finally appear in public together. But, since the open letter confirming their relationship doubled as a plea for privacy, it's not so surprising that the couple isn't rushing to step out together publicly. In the meantime, the internet is going crazy over an interview Markle gave to Esquire U.K. in 2013, in which she says she loves British guys and, specifically, the way they dress. "I love how British guys dress for the cold," she said. "I'm from L.A. so I'm used to seeing people in sunglasses and flip-flops. There's something so romantic about a man in a scarf and a knitted hat." According to Us Weekly, in addition to scarves and knitted hats, Markle's perfect mate is also kind, funny, confident, and liberal with use of the word "darling." "I love how much men call you 'darling' [in the U.K.]," she said. "I'm a sucker for a compliment." You Might Also Like Prince William and Kate Middleton stepped out Sunday alongside Queen Elizabeth II for the annual Remembrance Sunday service in London. The royal family donned symbolic red remembrance poppies for the event, which honors those who have suffered or lost their lives at war. WATCH: Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton Wear the Same Dress Arriving at the Cenotaph on Whitehall for the somber service, the Duchess of Cambridge looked elegant in a double-breasted black coat adorned with a trio of poppies and her hair styled into a side bun under a large black hat. Getty Images The Duchess of Cambridge, The Duchess of Cornwall and The Countess of Wessex pay their respects at today's #RemembranceSunday service pic.twitter.com/VEhb0grERr The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) November 13, 2016 While she watched on from a balcony with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, Prince William stood alongside Prince Harry for the service. The brothers have both served in the armed forces. We Will #RememberThem The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry join HM and the @RoyalFamily at the #RemembranceSunday service at the Cenotaph pic.twitter.com/J8lOX3kfIL Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) November 13, 2016 Londoners began lining up at dawn, and crowds lined the streets 20-deep as the Queen laid the first wreath, followed by other royals and politicians. Members of the Armed Forces took part in the national Service of Remembrance in London today. We will remember them. #RemembranceSunday pic.twitter.com/mvAWsWV3Eb Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) November 13, 2016 The Queen leads the nation in #Remembrance to the fallen on this #RemembranceSunday pic.twitter.com/a7hnhwWb9Z The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) November 13, 2016 NEWS: Kate Middleton Surprises Fellow Passengers When Flying Commercial Airline The royal family was also out on Saturday for the Festival of Remembrance at London's Royal Albert Hall. The Duke of Cambridge opted for a navy suit for the evening event, while Kate let her brunette locks down and sported a black Callas evening coat from Temperley London's pre-fall 2014 collection, accessorizing with a velvet clutch. Getty Images See more on Middleton's fashion choices in the video below. Related Articles By Alexander Tanas and Alessandra Prentice CHISINAU (Reuters) - A pro-Russian candidate for president of Moldova has won the race, preliminary results showed on Sunday, following a campaign in which he vowed to slam the brakes on seven years of closer integration with the European Union. With 98 percent of votes counted, online results showed Socialist candidate Igor Dodon had won 54 percent, and his pro-European challenger, Maia Sandu, had just under 45 percent. Dodon's win is in part a reflection of a loss of trust in pro-European leaders in the ex-Soviet state of 3.5 million, which was plunged into political and economic crisis after a corruption scandal came to light in late 2014. "I am president for the whole country, for those who voted for me and those who voted against," Dodon said in a short briefing to journalists. In another potential blow to the European Union brand, Bulgaria - which also held a presidential vote on Sunday - elected a pro-Russian candidate by a large margin, according to exit polls. The president in Moldova is more than just a figurehead: he or she can return laws to parliament and dissolve the assembly in certain situations. Dodon's promise to pursue closer ties with Russia rather than the European Union is in direct conflict with the pro-European stance of the current government. Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the two sides would need to work together in Moldova's best interest. "This includes key reforms needed for the country's modernization and continued EU path, which cannot be reversed," he said in emailed comments after polls closed. Squeezed between Ukraine and EU member Romania, Moldova signed a political and trade agreement with the European bloc in 2014 that damaged its ties with Moscow, which imposed trade restrictions on Moldovan farming exports. Dodon's Socialist party wants to scrap that agreement in favour of joining a Eurasian economic union dominated by Russia - a policy backed by many Moldovans who have suffered financially from the goods embargo and broader economic downturn. "He's got experience and knows that now is not the time to be turning a back to Russia, while she (Sandu) only looks to Europe," said pensioner Tatiana, declining to give her last name. The banking scandal in Moldova involved the looting of $1 billion - the equivalent of an eighth of its economic output, highlighting the scale of corruption in Europe's poorest nation. Moldovans believe members of the pro-EU elite were complicit. "Local partisans of the West or EU have not only performed weakly but have performed perversely," said William Hill, a former head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Moldova. "And this has gone a long way to discrediting popular faith in the ideals of the West and the prescriptions of the EU or the U.S. as effective medicine for what ails their societies and their economies." In a sign of the waning enthusiasm for the EU, just 30.9 percent of Moldovans would currently support joining as a full member, compared to 44 percent favouring the Eurasian Customs Union, a survey by Moldova's Institute for Public Policy showed in October. (Writing by Matthias Williams and Alessandra Prentice; editing by Jane Merriman and Mary Milliken) Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke on the phone on Monday evening and agreed on the need to normalise ties between Washington and Moscow, the Kremlin said. The Kremlin also said that the two politicians agreed to "make provisions for a personal meeting." The presidential transition team in Washington said in a statement that it was Putin who called Trump to "offer his congratulations on winning a historic election." The Kremlin said that Putin and Trump noted "the extremely unsatisfactory state of Russian-US relations at present" and "declared the need for active joint work to normalise them." Putin wished Trump success in carrying out his campaign promises, the Kremlin said, and expressed his readiness to "create a dialogue of partnership with the new administration on the basis of equality, mutual respect and non-intervention in each other's domestic affairs." They "agreed on the need to unite efforts in the struggle with the enemy number one: international terrorism and extremism," the Kremlin said, adding that in this context they discussed the "issues over resolving the crisis in Syria." Trump's team meanwhile said more generally that the pair discussed "the threats and challenges" facing both countries as well as economic issues and "the historical US-Russia relationship that dates back over 200 years." Trump told Putin he is looking forward to "a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia," the Washington statement said. In a telegram of congratulations sent the day after Trump's victory, Putin "expressed hope for mutual work on bringing US-Russia relations out of their critical condition as well as on working out outstanding issues on the international agenda," the Kremlin said. Putin later said that "Russia is ready and wants to restore full-fledged relations with the US." Putin has tacitly supported Trump during the campaign, while Trump repeatedly flattered and praised the Russian leader and said he was willing to work with him. Russian state-run media on Monday reported somewhat breathlessly that US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken on the phone Monday and agreed to a face-to-face meeting in the near future. After Putin had congratulated Trump on his victory in last Tuesdays presidential elections, the two men focused on combating international terrorism and extremism, and on settling the crisis in Syria, according to Sputnik News. Related: Russias New Main Battle Tank Is Raising Alarms in Europe A Kremlin press release said the two agreed on uniting efforts in the fight with the common enemy number one international terrorism and extremism. The release said they also discussed the importance of repairing frayed relations between the two countries and agreed to mutual non-interference in the two countries respective internal affairs. While there is nothing surprising about a US president-elect receiving a courtesy call from the Russian president, the relationship between Putin and Trump -- and between Moscow and the Trump campaign in general -- has been the subject of much speculation throughout the campaign. The phone conversation was apparently the first between the two men, despite Trumps claim during the campaign to have a personal relationship with the Kremlin strongman. Trump would later deny any personal contact with Putin after his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, warned that Trump would be a puppet for the Russian leader if he were to win the White House. Early in the campaign, after Putin said some mildly complimentary things about Trump, the former reality television star went out of his way to praise the Russian leader, even appearing, at one point, to dismiss concerns that Russian journalists who oppose Putin frequently wind up dead. Related: The Failed Ceasefire in Syria Now Leave Russia in Charge Trump also expressly denied the findings of US intelligence agencies, who are convinced beyond doubt that hackers working on the orders of the Kremlin are responsible for multiple hacks of Democratic operatives and organizations, which led to a rolling release of damaging documents throughout the presidential campaign. Story continues Late last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov provoked surprise in the US when he told a Russian news agency that the Kremlin had been in contact with the Trump campaign during the election, saying, Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage. He added, We have just begun to consider ways of building a dialogue with the future Donald Trump administration and channels we will be using for those purposes. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: As previously reported, Rae Sremmurd rockets from No. 9 to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated Nov. 26) with "Black Beatles," featuring Gucci Mane, marking the first Hot 100 leader for both acts. It's also the first No. 1 on the list first for the song's producer and co-writer, Mike WiLL Made-It (who, among three prior top 10s, had risen as high as No. 2 in 2013 thanks to Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop"). Upon hearing of their Hot 100 coronation, the members of Rae Sremmurd - brothers Khalif "Swae Lee" Brown and Aaquil "Slim Jxmmi" Brown - and collaborator Mike WiLL Made-It share their excitement about the achievement and their gratitude for their fans with Billboard. "You do what you want in this world, and people either love you or hate you for it," says Swae Lee. "Thanks to everyone that stands behind us." "Unlock the swag, shoutout to the fans that supported 'Black Beatles,'" beams Slim Jxmmi. Adds Mike WiLL Made-It, "To be able to put Gucci Mane, the person that gave me my first opportunity in music, and Rae Sremmurd, the debut artist from my [imprint, Eardrummer; Rae Sremmurd's name is a reversal of "drummer's ear"], on what's both [Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane's] biggest record ever, and the first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 for both, is something I could have never imagined or dreamed of. I couldn't have asked for a better moment to be a part of." Helping "Beatles" vault to No. 1 on the Hot 100 has been its usage in videos driving the viral Mannequin Challenge. Mike WiLL Made-It says the craze, even though it involves participants not moving a muscle, reminds him of now relatively old-school dances that helped spark past hits: "I haven't seen anything like the Mannequin Challenge since [Soulja Boy Tell'Em's 2007 seven-week No. 1] 'Crank That (Soulja Boy)' or [Los Del Rio's 1996 14-week No. 1] 'Macarena.'" "'Black Beatles' is the best song I have produced so far in my career," Mike WiLL Made-It marvels. "The way it came together couldn't have been more natural, and it's amazing to see people feel the same way, and gravitate to the record so naturally. For 'Black Beatles' to be so true to us and our sound - we weren't chasing a sound - it solidifies that the world is ready for us and what we have to come." Baghdad (AFP) - Suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group killed 15 people on Monday in an oasis town south of Baghdad and the city of Fallujah to its west, officials said. The attacks come as Iraqi forces battle IS in the northern city of Mosul, the last major population centre the jihadists hold in the country. IS has carried out a series of attacks in other areas since the operation to retake Mosul was launched on October 17 in an apparent bid to draw attention and possibly troops away from the city. Masum al-Tamimi, a member of the Karbala provincial council, said six suicide bombers armed with light weapons as well as explosives tried to infiltrate Ain al-Tamer early on Monday. But they clashed with security forces before withdrawing to the Al-Jihad area and detonating explosives there, Tamimi said, putting the death toll at eight, a figure confirmed by a doctor. The attack also wounded at least six people, officials said. The interior ministry said security forces killed five of the bombers while the sixth detonated explosives inside a house. But IS issued a statement claiming the attack in which it said that there were only five bombers, identified with noms de guerre indicating two were from Mosul and three from Syria. The jihadist group said the bombers, who were armed with automatic weapons and grenades as well as explosive belts, battled security forces until running out of ammunition and then blew themselves up. Attacks in southern Iraq are rare, especially compared to the frequent bombings that hit Baghdad. But Ain al-Tamer, which is located 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, is on the edge of Anbar province, which has long been a haven for jihadists. A similar attack involving militants armed with explosives, rifles and grenades hit Ain al-Tamer in late August, killing 18 people and wounding at least 26. Later in the day, two more bombers detonated explosives-rigged vehicles near police checkpoints in Fallujah, killing seven people and wounding 25, a police captain and a hospital official said. Story continues IS also claimed responsibility for the bombings in Fallujah, a city that was retaken from IS at the end of June after two and a half years outside of government control. "These two explosions are the first two explosions in Fallujah since its liberation from (IS)," Raja Barakat, a member of the provincial council security committee in Anbar province, where Fallujah is located. The jihadist group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to IS two years ago. The jihadists are however still able to strike inside government-held territory with bombings and other attacks even as they lose ground. Heavy fighting was reported between the Syrian Army and armed opposition groups across Aleppo on November 13 and into November 14, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The observatory said five people died in rebel strikes on government-held areas. It also reported on regime strikes on towns around Aleppo including Haritan. It said that among the dead from these strikes was a mother and four of her children, but this has not been independently confirmed. This video was shared by opposition media group and shows rebels shooting at a helicopter in Aleppo. Credit: YouTube/Baladi News via Storyful Researchers were intrigued by an increasing number of sores on red squirrels in the United Kingdom and Ireland, so they decided to run tests on the animals to find out what was causing these mysterious marks. After investigating, they now say they have found the cause: Some squirrels harbor the same bacteria that caused leprosy in humans in medieval Britain. The squirrels had skin lesions along with swelling of their snouts, ears, lips, eyelids and extremities which are some of the symptoms also seen in people with the disease. In the study, the researchers conducted genetic screening and blood tests on more than 100 red-squirrel cadavers from England, Ireland and Scotland. These red squirrels, of the species Sciurus vulgaris, arefound throughout Eurasia. [6 Strange Facts About Leprosy] They found that all 25 red squirrels from England's Brownsea Island were infected with the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, which is the oldest pathogen associated with leprosy and was responsible for outbreaks of the disease in medieval Europe, according to the findings, published today (Nov. 10) in the journal Science. No other squirrels in the study were found to harbor this type of bacteria, although a few tested positive for a related bacterium, Mycobacterium lepromatosis, which can also cause leprosy. The results were particularly surprising, given that no humans have contracted leprosy in the British Isles for centuries, according to the researchers, led by Charlotte Avanzi, a doctoral assistant in molecular life sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. "The main message of this is that the number of non-human reservoirs of leprosy might be much higher than previously thought," Avanzi told Live Science. "This is of particular interest in countries where leprosy is still endemic in human[s], where maybe a part of the new cases number could be explained by the presence of an animal reservoir." [Story continues below] Story continues The findings suggest that "a pathogen can persist in the environment long after its clearance from the human reservoir," the researchers wrote in their study. The bacteria were found in both squirrels that had visible symptoms of leprosy, which can include hair loss and swollen limbs, and those squirrels that had no symptoms. Today, leprosy is called by its modern name, Hansen's disease, and occurs mainly in developing countries, although there are cases elsewhere. Globally, there are about 220,000 cases yearly, according to the study. In the U.S., between 150 and 200 cases are typically reported each year, according to the National Hansen's Disease Program. A study published in May 2016 found that there were a total of 139 cases of leprosy in England and Wales between 2003 and 2012. Symptoms include skin lesions and damage to the peripheral nerves, which can lead to a loss of sensation as well as certain visible deformities. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases] The bacteria that cause leprosy were once thought to be found only in humans, until researchers discovered in the past decade that nine-banded armadillos could harbor M. leprae. These armadillos are found in North, Central and South America, including parts of the southern U.S. "The armadillos carry the [bacteria] in huge numbers and have no particular symptoms," said Kenrad Nelson, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who was not involved with the new study. The armadillos do not get sick, "and there's no evidence it shortens their life," Nelson told Live Science. However, the animals can transmit the disease to people. Cases have been reported in Texas, Louisiana and other states, according to a 2011 study in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers of the new study stressed, however, that the chances of people catching the disease from red squirrels is low. Nelson said he agrees that the chances are low, primarily because contact between red squirrels and humans in the U.K. is limited. Although armadillos are often kept as pets, or even eaten, squirrels do not come into direct contact with humans as frequently, he noted. The authors of the new study said they are not certain how the squirrels became infected with the leprosy-causing bacteria. They noted that it's possible that in the past, "humans may have been infected through contact with red squirrels bearing M. leprae, as these animals were prized for their fur and meat in former times." It's also possible that in medieval times, humans may have passed the disease on to squirrels, Nelson added. Further research is needed into other potential animal carriers of the bacteria, as such animals may thwart efforts to eradicate leprosy in humans and serve as "reservoirs" of the bacteria, the researchers said. Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations A California rehab mogul has been charged with allegedly sexually assaulting nine female patients, prosecutors said Monday and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office believes there could be more victims. Christopher Bathum, who founded 19 drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, was taken into custody Thursday after a raid of his home and more than a dozen locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, PEOPLE confirms. (Bathum, 55, ran treatment centers there and in Colorado.) He is charged with 27 counts of sexual exploitation and 12 counts of furnishing controlled substances, as well as three counts of sexual penetration by a foreign object, two counts of forcible oral copulation and one count each of forcible rape and rape of an intoxicated person. The self-described mogul and his company CFO, Kirsten Wallace, are also accused of multiple felony counts of grand theft, money laundering, insurance fraud and identity theft for allegedly conspiring to defraud patients and health insurers such as Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Cigna, Health Net and Humana. Approximately $44 million was ultimately paid out by the five insurers after they were fraudulently billed for $175 million, prosecutors allege. Bathum and Wallace are each charged in that case with eight counts of grand theft, six counts of identity theft, five counts of insurance fraud and 31 counts of money laundering. The sheriffs department began its investigation in May after authorities were tipped off to allegations of sexual misconduct at Bathums Community Recovery treatment facilities dating back as far as 2012. Bathums alleged victims range in age from 20s to early 30s, prosecutors said. Christopher loves to save his patients lives from the clutches of addiction, Bathums website, christopherbathum.co, states. He understands what a successful treatment must be like because he has helped others achieve it. Not so, authorities say. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Bathum and Wallaces alleged conspiracy victimized hundreds of people addicted to drugs and alcohol by keeping them in a never-ending cycle of treatment, addiction and fraud all the while lining their pockets with millions of dollars from allegedly fraudulent insurance claims, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in a statement. Story continues This is likely the first wave of indictments and charges in an ongoing investigation into one of the largest health insurance fraud cases in California. Authorities say their alleged scheme involved stealing patient identities and buying health insurance policies for patients without their knowledge. Bathum allegedly continued to bill insurance companies even after his patients treatment was finished, and prosecutors allege the bulk of the fraudulent billing was for services that were never provided. In June, ABCs 20/20 aired an episode on Bathum and the accusations leveled against him in which several women claimed he coerced them to have sex in exchange for drugs sexually assaulting them and disrupting their recovery. One of the women, Amanda Jester, said that Bathum allegedly sexually assaulted her in a sweat lodge at his Malibu, California, facility and later in a Four Seasons hotel room. I have no credit card, no money, no cellphone I felt like I had no choice, she told 20/20. Another woman alleged Bathum overdosed on heroin and methamphetamine after a drug-fueled night at a Malibu motel with her and two of his other clients. But Bathum denied all of their claims to ABC. He remains in jail and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office. It was not immediately clear if he has retained an attorney ahead of his arraignment. Wallace also remains in custody, according to state insurance officials. She will be arraigned Tuesday, but its not clear if she has retained an attorney ahead of her court appearance. The L.A. sheriff is asking for the publics assistance in identifying additional victims. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departments Special Victims Bureau at 877-710-5273. Susan Fulcher has spent most of her life making dogs feel good. For 40 years she has groomed pups, helping pets look their best. It was through the many inspiring animals she cared for, and a beloved Boxer pup of her own, that Fulcher found herself getting more involved with rescue work. What started as fostering a few dogs and cats turned into a non-profit that is dedicated to taking shelters hardest-to-place pups and letting them shine in a new life. Based on a customers suggestion, Fulcher started Dharma Rescue, a non-profit animal rescue organization dedicated to taking disabled dogs from high-risk shelters and transforming them into amazing therapy dogs. With paralyzed dogs, they dont get adopted, but I believe that every animal should live to its fullest. They live a longer life with us, the founder tells PEOPLE. The program started with Joey, a paralyzed pup who was ready to be euthanized. Fulcher agreed to take the dog in, just in time. Looking at that little dogs face, she knew Joey was a great guy who could do even greater things, so she looked into therapy dog training. First, Fulcher found a challenging obedience class for Joey, to make sure he was up for the work. Joey proved he was ready to start doing good, soaring through training and graduating at the top of his class. The next step was getting him certified by Alliance of Therapy Dogs. After a long and thorough evaluation, the little dog, who just a few months ago was on deaths doorstep, was approved to start therapy work. Now, Dharma Rescue has several dogs who have gone through and aced this rigorous training process. This squad of adorable do-gooders spend their days visiting schools, nursing homes and providing comfort to travelers at Los Angeles International airport. Its fulfilling work that has created a noticeably positive change not just in people, but in the dogs, too. Taking these dogs where their past is just the worst, in situation where they would die without this, and they come into this new world and new life, where they are loved and groomed and get to go out Its just in their eyes when they look at you, like they didnt know that this is what life could be like, Fulcher shares. Story continues Often in wheelchairs, these therapy dogs attract extra attention when they first arrive, but Fulcher says people quickly see past the differences, stop feeling sorry for the dogs and start treating them like beloved friends. The ultimate goal of Dharma Rescue is to find forever homes for all of the hard-working therapy pups, preferably with families who will want to continue their therapy work. Through what these dogs do, the group hopes people realize that disabled pets are just as a capable and worthy of love, and that the success of Dharmas dogs with inspire others to give pups with health issues a chance. Fulcher sums Dharma Rescues entire message up simply: The way the world is today, people need to start giving and caring, she says. The first album in 18 years from exploratory, jazz-traveling rap heroes A Tribe Called Quest effortlessly chronicles the chaotic crescendo of the 2016 election: a warning of "mass un-blackening," dark-humored crooning about intolerance ("Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways") and perceptive words about the media's culpability in everything ("Why y'all cool with the fuckery/Trump and the SNL hilarity/Troublesome times, kid, no times for comedy"). The whole album ends with late rapper Phife Dawg taking the nickname "the Donald" back from our oncoming bigot-in-chief. Recorded well before the election, it serves as the hands-down best musical release valve the confused and angry segment of America has gotten since Election Day. As Q-Tip says in "Melatonin": "The world is crazy and I cannot sleep." In addition, the band itself was rocked to their foundation earlier this year when Phife, the group's "high-strung voice," passed away at age 45. The shadow of his death is the other overarching theme of We Got It From Here, the remaining members paying honor on multiple songs, most poignantly when de facto leader Q-Tip spins a nearly verse-long tribute, delivering a rap as Phife himself on "Black Spasmodic." It's important to check the vibe throughout. Entire books can be written about how the sound, identity, location, phrasing, technical innards and even purpose of rap music has changed since A Tribe Called Quest's last album, The Love Movement, in 1998. But Tribe, in both delivery and content, maintain the attitude of the Bohemian everydude funkonauts that inspired Kanye West, Andre 3000 and Kendrick Lamar (who all appear here). Lyrically, they're still popping the bubbles of hip-hop fantasy ("Kids ") and examining their egos instead of inflating them ("Ego"). Technically, Q-Tip is in a particular school of awesomely stubborn Nineties MCs who only let their flows grow more complex, internally knotty and speedy with age; as opposed to the Jay Z route of always trying to understand what makes modern rap tick. To anyone who grew up loving Big Daddy Kane or Kool G. Rap, Q-Tip is in that small field of fortysomething rappers (Andre 3000, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Lauryn Hill) who decided the only way to move forward was go ludicrously speedy, not infectious with the slow-mo. His rhymes are absolute stuntman level at times: On opening track "The Space Program" he spills, "We about our business, we not quitters, not bullshitters, we deliver/We go-getters, dont be bitter 'cause we not just niggas." The usually more elusive MC Jarobi brings his hard-rhyming A-game too, and longtime associates like Busta Rhymes and Consequence play berserk supporting roles. Story continues A record rooted in anxiety and mourning, We Got It From Here remains musically as dark and electrically relaxed as 1996's Beats, Rhymes and Life and 1998's The Love Movement. With help from visionary producer J Dilla, those critically mixed, commercially sturdy records were moody, muted, experimental, deeply funky and remarkably prescient, but ultimately unable to wrangle the proper amount of attention in the shiny-suit era. We Got It From Here checks in with similarly off-kilter but undeniably grooving beats. Tribe utilize the Dilla innovation of letting samples clash at odd angles; they let a copy of Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets" skip endlessly until the real John pops in for a guest spot, and the drum beat to "Lost Somebody," one of the album's Phife tributes, doubles up and separates from itself like a Steve Reich phasing experiment before abruptly slamming into total silence. In a contemporary move, Tribe abandon the Nineties hip-hop format and allow for modern musical and melodic sprawl, like a guitar solo from Jack White, a psychedelic keyboard detour or a spiraling verse from Anderson Paak. One of the most timeless rap groups ever has returned with a record that doesn't sound like 1996, but doesn't sound like 2016 either. It's imbued with the same feeling of "Push It Along" that they've had from the beginning. The biggest complaint is the one thing they couldn't control: The entire thing feels like it needs a whole lot more of Phife Dawg's scrappy humor, personality and playful back-and-forth. His absence is not only lamented and honored, it's also felt. Related Content: By Lauren Hirsch (Reuters) - U.S. cigarette maker Reynolds American Inc is seeking a higher price from British American Tobacco Plc after rejecting its $47 billion takeover offer, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. Last month, British American Tobacco, which already owns 42 percent of Reynolds American, offered to buy the remaining shares of the maker of Camel and Newport cigarettes to create the world's biggest listed tobacco company. "We thought it was a possibility, so it's not too surprising," Morningstar analyst Adam Fleck said in an email. "Depending on how another offer from BATS could be structured, there's a bit of a circular argument here for the value of RAI," Fleck said. The companies are still in talks and BAT is willing to increase the price slightly, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter. (http://bloom.bg/2fQxNIu) Altria controls 51 percent of the U.S. market and Reynolds 34 percent. Analysts estimate the Reynolds' acquisition would make the United States account for about 40 percent of BAT sales and 50 percent of its profits. BAT's cash-and-stock offer would mark the return of the company to the lucrative and highly regulated U.S. market after a 12-year absence, making it the only tobacco giant with a leading presence in the American and international markets. Some analysts have predicted that the deal could encourage current market leader Philip Morris International to reunite with its U.S. affiliate Altria, reversing a 2008 spin-off of the international business. Both Reynolds American and BAT declined to comment. Bloomberg was the first to report on Reynolds' rejection. Reynolds American had a market capitalization of about $76 billion as of Monday's close of $53.05. The company's stock had risen nearly 15 percent this year. (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru and Lauren Hirsch and Jilian Mincer in New York; Editing by Anil D'Silva) Reynolds American tobacco The cigarette-seller Reynolds American has rejected British American Tobacco's $47 billion buyout offer, according to Bloomberg's Ruth David, Dinesh Nair, and Manuel Baigorri. The American company is seeking a higher price, according to the report, and BAT is willing to increase its offer slightly. BAT currently holds a 42% stake in the company. It first made an offer to buy Reynolds last month. "The proposed merger of our two great companies is the logical progression in our relationship and offers all shareholders a stake in a stronger, truly global tobacco and Next Generation Products company," BAT CEO Nicandro Durante said in a statement at the time. As Reuters previously reported, a takeover "would give BAT a leading position in the high-value United States market and more premium brands such as Camel which it can sell in countries including Russia and Turkey where demand for Western cigarettes is still growing." Read the full story on Bloomberg NOW WATCH: JAMES ALTUCHER: This is why owning a home is financial suicide More From Business Insider Richard Branson, the billionaire founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, was in New York City on Friday to promote his new documentary, "Don't Look Down." Shortly before Branson sat down with Business Insider, he dropped by Quartz's office to do a Q&A in front of an audience. As Branson writes in a blog post on Virgin's site, only one person in the audience was in a suit and tie, and he ran after Branson after the talk, to catch him in the elevator. "He asked me to help him bring more joy and a relaxed culture to his office," Branson wrote. "As Dr Yes, I was more than happy to say yes." Branson then pulled out a pair of scissors from his jacket pocket and snipped off the man's tie. And yes, he usually has a pair of scissors on him specifically for this purpose. Cutting ties & raising smiles in New York: https://t.co/Fy5cj96LpZ pic.twitter.com/BDQfNmU4Qx Richard Branson (@richardbranson) November 14, 2016 Branson has made this gesture part of his repertoire for years now, and the Virgin Hotel in Chicago even has a wall of ties slashed from their owners. "I don't know why the tie was ever invented," Branson told Bloomberg in 2012. It's about one of the few things that Britain has exported successfully and it completely destroyed those lovely robes that the Japanese used to wear, and now everyone looks the same and dresses the same." richard branson He wrote in his blog post that he has always considered ties to be an uncomfortable imposition on employees by their bosses, and that he believes if you're more comfortable, you'll be more productive. As he wrote in his 2014 book "The Virgin Way": "Fun is one of the most important and underrated ingredients in any successful venture. If you're not having fun, then it's probably time to call it quits and try something else." Story continues NOW WATCH: RICHARD BRANSON: The war on drugs shouldve been shut down 49 years ago More From Business Insider By Barbara Lewis LONDON (Reuters) - Rio Tinto called a board meeting on Monday to discuss payments of $10.5 million made to a consultant on its project to develop the world's largest untapped iron ore reserves in Guinea, industry sources said. Rio said last week it had alerted Australian, UK and U.S. authorities after becoming aware on Aug. 29 of emails from 2011 that referred to payments to a consultant providing advisory services on its Simandou project in Guinea. Spokesmen for the mining company said on Monday they could not comment beyond last week's statement because a legal investigation was underway. In an internal email sent at the weekend, Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques said he was aware many people in the company were "shell-shocked" by the news. He said he had launched an investigation the day he found out there was an issue and that now it was in the hands of external authorities it could take "several years". "We are committed to making sure we are not in the same situation again. As you know, over the last five years we have done a lot to strengthen our systems and controls," he said in the email, seen by Reuters. Jacques took over as CEO at the start of July from Sam Walsh, who has a track record in iron ore. Jacques has earned kudos for his Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia which will be the world's biggest copper mine when completed. The Simandou project has huge potential, but Jacques has voiced frustration over the difficulty of funding the massive infrastructure required to develop the mine. At the end of October, Rio announced it was selling its Simandou stake to its partner Chinalco, which has declined comment on the investigation. Rio's share rose on the news it had found a way out of Simandou and the rally has continued despite the uncertainty of a lengthy legal investigation. So far this year, Rio shares have gained nearly 60 percent. The company announced the payments and suspended one senior executive on Nov. 9, the day of the U.S. presidential election won by Republican candidate Donald Trump. Any negative impact on Rio's shares from the investigation was wiped out by a strong rally in mining stocks, driven by Trump's promises of major infrastructure projects which are likely to boost demand for raw materials. Anti-corruption campaigners asked why the payments had not been questioned earlier. "The issue is that the rules are tight and should have been picked up at the time," Peter Van Veen, business integrity director at Transparency International, said. Frances Hudson, a director at Standard Life, which holds Rio shares, said the investigation could drag and it was not yet clear whether there would be any financial fallout. "The risk of punitive action remains but price movements in the meantime will be determined by other factors," she said. (Additional reporting by Simon Jessop and Kirstin Ridley; editing by David Clarke) Washington (AFP) - A surge in reports of racist incidents has minorities and civil rights groups worried that Donald Trump's election as US president has emboldened hate groups. Swastikas and Nazi slogans scrawled on a Philadelphia storefront, xenophobic chants at a New York high school, threatening letters in the mail, insults on college campuses: reports like these have proliferated since November 8. "I have a scarf on. Passed by someone on the platform today and he says, 'Your time's up, girlie,'" journalist Mehreen Kasana wrote on her Twitter account. Hispanics -- the target of Trump's most incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign -- appear particularly vulnerable, as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) noted in tracking the rise of harassment of minorities. Asked about the outbreaks of anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic bullying, Trump said in a CBS interview aired Sunday that he was "saddened to hear that," adding it was "a very small amount." "If it helps, I will say this and I'll say it right to the cameras. Stop it," he said. - 'Pack your bags' - "'Build a wall' was chanted in our cafeteria Wed at lunch. 'If you aren't born here, pack your bags' was shouted in my own classroom. 'Get out spic' was said in our halls," a teacher in Washington state told the SPLC, a non-profit that monitors the activities of hate groups in the United States. SPLC collected reports of more than 200 similar incidents between Election Day on November 8 and Friday, against African Americans, women, and members of the LGBT community. "It doesn't compare to the civil rights movement. No one is blowing up churches," SPLC president Richard Cohen told the New York Times. "But I don't think there's any question that there's been an increase." Anti-Muslim attacks increased by 67 percent in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a report released on Monday. Story continues Educational institutions around the country, some with liberal reputations, have reported disturbing incidents in recent days and have sent out emails assuring their communities they are taking action to counter them. Some incidents have involved graffiti on bathroom walls, including a modified version of Trump's campaign slogan: "Make America White Again." - Emboldened extremists - The insults have included some of the worst slurs against blacks and Latinos as well as words of contempt for homosexuals. "Seig Heil" and Nazi swastikas appeared spray-painted on a storefront in south Philadelphia a day after the election. Swastikas also appeared in Brooklyn, prompting police to open an investigation. "Acts of violence in our beautifully diverse city will not be tolerated," the New York mayor's office said on its Twitter account. Some incidents have involved more than verbal violence. A Muslim student at San Jose State University in California reported that a white man tried to rip off her veil, nearly choking her. Another student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor told of being accosted by a man who threatened to set her on fire with a lighter unless she took off her Muslim headdress. In the city of Missoula, Montana, tracts from the American Nazi Party accusing Jews of controlling the media were distributed in residential neighborhoods. The local synagogue asked the police to increase security. Despite the tense climate, Trump picked extreme-right firebrand Steve Bannon, a darling of white supremacists, to be his chief strategist. Choosing him for a top White House post "only further emboldens the extreme fringes during this very tense time," warned Oren Segal, head of the Anti-Defamation League. President Barack Obama voiced hope, however, that Trump might soon be tempered. "I don't think he is ideological. I think ultimately he is pragmatic in that way," Obama told reporters at his first news conference since the Republican mogul defeated his Democratic rival Clinton in last week's presidential election. "And that can serve him well as long as he's got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction," he added. "In an election like this that was so hotly contested and so divided, gestures matter," Obama said. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now vice chairman of President-elect Donald Trumps transition team, said Trump might follow through on a threat to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Asked in ABC News interview if Trump might actually appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton, Giuliani called it a tough question. As a lawyer, I hate to use the 'on the one hand, but the other,' but on the one hand, you don't want to disrupt the nation with what might look like a vindictive prosecution, even though it might not be, he said. On the other hand, you want equal justice under the law, and if she has violated the law - you know, the FBI never completed the [Clinton] Foundation investigation. That's, as far as I know, that's still an ongoing investigation. They completed the email investigation, but not the Foundation investigation. During the second presidential debate, Trump said that, if elected, he would instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton for her use of a private email server as Secretary of State. After a yearlong investigation, FBI Director James Comey said there was no intentional misconduct and recommended that no criminal charges be brought against Clinton. Trump has repeatedly attacked Clinton over the findings of the FBI probe. If Trump followed through on his threat, Trump would be the first sitting president in recent history to use federal power to prosecute a political rival. Giuliani is now among the contenders for the role of Trumps attorney general. I guess the next attorney general is going to have to figure that out. I don't know if that will be me or not, but the next attorney general would have to figure that out, Giuliani said. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com By Tsvetelia Tsolova and Angel Krasimirov SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian Socialist ally Rumen Radev, a Russia-friendly newcomer to politics, won Sunday's presidential election by a wide margin, exit polls showed, prompting centre-right Prime Minister Boiko Borisov to pledge to resign. Radev, 53, entered Bulgarian politics on a wave of discontent with the ruling centre-right's progress in combating corruption, disappointment with the European Union and concerns among voters over alienating an increasingly assertive Russia. A former air force commander, Radev has argued Bulgaria needs to be pragmatic in balancing the requirements of its European Union and NATO memberships while seeking ways to benefit from a relationship with Moscow. Exit polls showed Radev, who is backed by the opposition Socialist party, winning 58.1-58.5 percent of the vote, compared with 35.3-35.7 percent for Tsetska Tsacheva, the 58-year-old candidate of the ruling GERB party. Compounding GERB's problems, Tsacheva was seen as lacking Borisov's charisma. "The loss of GERB is definite and clear," Borisov told reporters after exit polls were published. "In this election, the people showed us that something is not as it should be. That our priorities may be good, but obviously there are better ones. So the most democratic thing, the right thing to do is to (resign)," he said. Borisov's resignation would likely lead to an early election as soon as March and could be followed by months by difficult coalition talks among several political groupings. "There isn't an alternative to take over government," said political analyst Ognian Minchev. "The Socialists and the ethnic Turkish MRF party have lost much of their public trust only two years ago...Early elections are inevitable," he said. FINDING A BALANCE Coupled with political instability, Bulgaria's tilt towards Russia is a blow to the country's western European allies and underscores Moscow's growing influence in southeastern Europe. In Moldova, another ex-communist state near the Black Sea, voters were expected to install a pro-Russian candidate as president and slam the breaks on seven years of closer EU integration in an election also held on Sunday. While most of the key decisions in Bulgaria are taken by the government, the president, who leads the armed forces, can sway public opinion and has the power to send legislation back to parliament. Radev is not advocating NATO member Bulgaria abandon its Western alliances, mindful of the financial impact of EU aid and the country's long history of divided loyalties. But he has called for an end to EU sanctions against Russia and said Sofia should be pragmatic in its approach to any international law violations by Moscow when it annexed Crimea. "We listened (to the voters') concerns. We said that we will work for Bulgarian national interests, that's what gave us broad support," a jubilant Radev told reporters. Many in the Balkan country are keen to see restored trade with their former Soviet overlord, hurt by economic problems and sanctions, and to protect vital tourism revenues. Speaking on Sunday evening, Radev said he hoped for good dialogue both with the United States and Russia and expressed hopes that with a new president in Washington, there will be a drop in confrontation between the West and Moscow. "In his election campaign (Donald Trump), already elected, said clearly that he will work for a better dialogue with Russia. That gives us hope, a big hope, for a peaceful solution to the conflicts both in Syria and in Ukraine and for a decrease of the confrontation," Radev said. Although Bulgaria's economy is expected to grow at a relatively healthy rate of about 3.1-3.3 percent this year, having shaken off recession, it remains the EU's poorest member, with average wages about 470 euros per month. Rampant graft in public administration is seen as a key factor slowing the small Black Sea state's progress in catching up with its wealthier EU peers. (Additional reporting by Radu Marinas; Editing by Dale Hudson, Justyna Pawlak and Alexandra Hudson) MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Iran are in talks over an arms deal worth around $10 billion that would see Moscow deliver T-90 tanks, artillery systems, planes and helicopters to Tehran, a senior Russian senator said on Monday, the RIA news agency reported. Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense and security committee in the Russian upper house of parliament, or Federation Council, told reporters talks on the potential deal were under way during a parliamentary visit to Iran, RIA said. (Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe) MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian MiG-29 fighter jet from the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, news agencies cited a defence ministry statement as saying on Monday. They said the pilot was safe after ejecting from the plane. Flights by Russian military planes in the region had not been suspended. Admiral Kuznetsov belongs to a naval group which Russia has deployed near Syria as part of its campaign against militants who are fighting government forces. RIA news agency said the plane had crashed during a training flight, a few kilometres (miles) from the aircraft carrier, due to a technical fault. Attacks by Russian and Syrian air forces on targets near Syria's second-largest city of Aleppo have been suspended for the past four weeks. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Richard Balmforth) Moscow (AFP) - Russia's defence ministry said Monday that a fighter jet crashed while attempting to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean off Syria, but the pilot survived. In a statement to Russian news agencies, the defence ministry said the MiG-29K fighter crashed due to a "technical fault" a few kilometres (miles) from the carrier. The pilot ejected and was recovered and taken aboard the ship. "The pilot's health is in no danger. The pilot is ready to carry out missions," the ministry said, quoted by Interfax news agency. The defence ministry did not say when the incident occurred, but said the plane was taking part in training flights. It stressed that flights were still going ahead from the aircraft carrier despite the accident. "The flights of aircraft from the carrier are continuing in accordance with the set tasks," it said. The ministry released a statement after US broadcaster Fox News reported the crash, citing US officials. The Mig-29K is a multi-functional plane developed in the Soviet era and is used to strike targets both in the air and on the ground. Russia acquired 24 MiG fighters last year. It also deploys Sukhoi bomber planes in Syria. The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier arrived in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast as part of a flotilla of ships sent to reinforce Russia's military in the area, its commander confirmed on state television. The ship's commander Sergei Artamonov said in an interview broadcast Saturday on Rossiya-1 television that planes had been taking off from the ship's deck "practically every day for the last four days" to survey the area. The flotilla has sparked concern from NATO that it will be used to take part in air strikes on Syria. The fleet cancelled a plan to refuel at a Spanish port after Madrid came under pressure to refuse permission. Russia has been flying a bombing campaign in Syria for the past year in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad and has deployed a naval contingent to back up its operation. Officially, 20 Russians have been killed in combat so far. Russia says it has ceased air strikes on rebel-held east Aleppo since October 18 after international condemnation of its ferocious bombardment of the city and has declared a series of brief ceasefires. Prior to the birth of his second child, Ryan Reynolds was thrilled about being "on the precipice of having a real American family" with wife Blake Lively. "I mean, I always imagined that would happen, and then it happened," the father of two tells GQ magazine. "Every idiotic Hallmark-card cliche is true." WATCH: Ryan Reynolds Deliciously Apologizes to Wife Blake Lively for Revealing Sex of Their Second Child Reynolds, 40, and Lively, 29, have been married for four years, and the Deadpool star can't help but crack jokes about how he first knew she was the one. "Probably after the sex," he quips. GQ Man of the Year Ryan Reynolds is the hero we need right now. Read the story and see more photos at the link in bio. ( @alasdairmclellan) #GQMOTY A photo posted by GQ (@gq) on Nov 14, 2016 at 7:44am PST Introducing GQ's 2016 Men of the Year. Get a sneak peek at the link in bio. ( @alasdairmclellan) #GQMOTY A video posted by GQ (@gq) on Nov 14, 2016 at 5:48am PST In all seriousness, the couple's love story is pretty adorable. "We were hanging out at this little restaurant in Tribeca that's open really late, and this song came on and I was just like, 'Want to dance?' No one was in there, so it was just totally empty," Reynolds recalls. "And it was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, I was like, 'Oh, I think I just crossed a line.' And then I walked her home. And, uh, you know, I don't really need to go into what happened after that." WATCH: Taylor Swift Gets Deadpool Halloween Costume From Ryan Reynolds Himself While Reynolds tells the magazine that he's "embraced" life more than usual lately, he admits to having a hard time after starring as the beloved comic book character, Deadpool. "When it finally ended, I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown. I literally had the shakes," he confides. "I went to go see a doctor because I felt like I was suffering from a neurological problem or something. And every doctor I saw said, 'You have anxiety.'" Story continues Reynolds definitely has the support of his wife, and the romantic gestures didn't stop at that dance in Tribeca. The actor revealed to ET the sweetest thing he's ever done for his wife, and it's definitely a doozy! Check it out: For more Entertainment Tonight videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS. Related Articles A newly described fossil skull from one of the largest of the saber-toothed cats, Machairodus horribilis, is the biggest saber-toothed skull ever found, and is helping scientists understand the diversity of killing techniques used by these extinct and fearsome predators. The skull was excavated from the Longjiagou Basin in Gansu Province, China, but languished in storage for decades before researchers rediscovered it in a collection room and identified it in the new study. And while M. horribilis may have had the biggest skull of the saber-toothed cats, it didn't necessarily have the biggest bite. When scientists analyzed the skull alongside its saber-toothed cousins, they estimated that it couldn't stretch its jaws as wide as some of the other extinct cats, which likely affected what type of prey it hunted and how it brought them down. [My, What Sharp Teeth! 12 Living and Extinct Saber-Toothed Animals] M. horribilis lived in the steppes and forests of northwestern China during the late Miocene epoch (11.6 million to 5.3 million years ago). The skull's upper surface measures 1.4 feet (415 millimeters) in length, and likely represents an adult male. Its incisors are arranged in a "gentle arch" and its signature upper canines are serrated on both edges, the study authors wrote. Reconstructing an ancient bite They noted that some of the fossil's features resembled those seen in primitive saber-toothed cats. But certain aspects of the skull shape were more like the skulls of modern lions and leopards, suggesting that M. horribilis may have had a range of motion in its jaw similar to large cats alive today. Clues in both the shape and the surface texture of the fossil helped the scientists determine how the jaw may have moved in life, according to study co-author Z. Jack Tseng, a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo. M. horribilis's skull shares features with both primitive sabertooths and modern big cats. Courtesy of T. Deng/IVPP, artwork by Y. Chen "The surface of bones preserves ridges and bumps that indicate where muscles once attached, so paleontologists and anatomists can reconstruct the lines of action of the major muscle groups," Tseng told Live Science in an email. Story continues "The joints of the jaw one on each side between the upper and lower jaws, and one down the middle between the two halves of the lower jaw provide clues as to the mobility and range of motion possible in the animals bite." But when it came to using its knife-like teeth for killing, M. horribilis was "a lightweight" compared with some other saber-tooths, Tseng added. It lacked the shallower jaw joints that allowed other cats' jaws to open wider to enclose and rip out the throats of large prey. The jaws of M. horribilis just didn't stretch wide enough to do that, he said. A burly predator However, M. horribilis probably made up for that disadvantage with its bulk, Tseng said. The researchers estimated that it weighed nearly 900 pounds (400 kilograms), which would have given it a size and strength advantage over even large prey, which it probably killed by ripping open the throat "and causing massive blood loss," the study authors wrote. Short-legged horses may have been hunted by M. horribilis in the steppes of northwestern China, millions of years ago. Courtesy of T. Deng/IVPP, artwork by Y. Chen "We found evidence of short-legged, probably slower-running horses in the same fossil assemblage," Tseng said. "Those horses are good candidates as this cat's main prey." Their findings emphasize how even highly specialized adaptations like extra-long canines can be used by different species in different ways, even in closely related groups such as saber-toothed cats. "Cats continue to surprise us," Tseng added. "We now think gigantism is one of those mechanisms for intermediate saber-tooths to get by as predators." The findings were published online Oct. 25 in the journal Vertebrata PalAsiatica. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations From Cosmopolitan Photo credit: Krystalina Tom In an essay for the New York Times published the day after Donald Trump's victory, Lindy West issued a call to action for women. "We have abortion pills to stockpile." On Twitter, women have echoed the same sentiment: gather ye abortion pills while ye may. Trump has expressed vague interest in repealing Roe v. Wade, and to avoid revisiting the days when women were self-inducing with coat hangers and catheters shoved into wombs, women are reaching, instead, for pills. "Stockpile abortion pills now" is a powerful statement because it feels desperate, dramatic, but also practical. In the days following the election, the bar for "What constitutes a rational fear?" has essentially disappeared, because no one has the data to predict what Trump can do in the Oval Office. A week ago, a call to keep a bottle of abortion pills in your medicine cabinet would've been hysterical. But today, in an America that's simultaneously New and Exactly The Same, it raises the question of should we actually be doing that, and if so, how? The quick answer is: you can't. In America, in 2016, it is impossible to stockpile abortion pills without breaking the law. For this reason, I cannot, in good conscience, advocate for illegally seeking out abortion pills to keep in the medicine cabinet. But since it is a fact that pregnant women who want to be unpregnant will pursue whatever means necessary to become that way, let's entertain the possibility, for a moment. Daniel Grossman - a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California San Francisco who studies contraception and medical abortion - told Cosmopolitan.com, the "gold standard" for medical abortion involves two drugs, taken together in a precise regimen: misoprostol and mifepristone. Taken together, under the supervision of a doctor or nurse, those two drugs are very safe, and are "95 to 99 percent effective in inducing a complete abortion up to 10 weeks," Grossman explained. Story continues "But in settings where mifepristone isn't available, the World Health Organization recommends a regimen of misoprostol used alone, which is about 85 percent effective, provided it's used correctly," he said. Because misoprostol has other FDA-approved uses that aren't abortion-related (like treating stomach ulcers), misoprostol is more easily obtained than mifepristone. Grossman said that any physician can write a misoprostol prescription, and provided your pharmacy has it in stock, you can obtain it that way. But you still need the prescription, which means you have to actually need it in order to get it, making it impossible to stockpile. Still, women have found other ways to procure the drug. In Texas, for example, researchers found that women who had no other way of acquiring an abortion were terminating pregnancies at home with misoprostol pills bought from pharmacies in Mexico, where the drug is sold without a prescription to anyone who wants it. There are also organizations like Women on Waves and Women on Web - both of which deliver abortion pills to women without any access, though not to women in the United States. On its website, Women on Waves even has very clear, precise instructions for people who want to purchase misoprostol to illegally self-induce an abortion: "To obtain one these medicines, one could, for example, say that your grandmother has rheumatoid arthritis so severely, that she is visiting, and she forgot her medicines and is in pain, and that you do not have money to pay for a doctor to get the prescriptions for the tablets or that the doctor is on a holliday," the site instructs. Of course you could buy misoprostol pills illegally online, from the black market or from Canadian drug stores. It's possible that those illegal pills would be fine and safe, and if you knew exactly how far along you were in your pregnancy, and had clear instructions on how to terminate your pregnancy with those pills, you would be successful and healthy. But it's also possible that you won't know the exact dosage of those pills, or how far along you were, and while misoprostol is a very safe drug when used correctly, any drug used incorrectly can have severe consequences. "If you're not sure exactly how far along you are, it's a more complicated procedure if used later in pregnancy," Grossman said. "It may take longer, it may be less effective, it may be more painful, and essentially just more shocking for the woman to expel a second trimester pregnancy on her own. The biggest concern is that women may not know the appropriate dosage to use. In places like Mexico, where women get medication in pharmacies, they're told crazy regimens that are not likely to be effective." In some states, the issue of access stripped away to the point of impossibility for some women is solved by abortion pills being sent via telemedicine. In the U.S., Grossman said this practice involves a woman visiting a clinic, having a video conference with a doctor about wanting to terminate her pregnancy, and then after an ultrasound and proper tests, she is able to take abortion pills - under the doctor's instruction - without actually having to be physically in front of them. The New York Times mentions a new model some states are trying out right now, that would have women receiving the drugs directly in their homes, with clear instructions, and then quietly terminating their pregnancies without ever having to visit an actual doctor's office. But 19 states currently ban the use of telemedicine to prescribe medication abortion to women remotely, so the model isn't a perfect solution in the instance that Trump is actually able to roll back abortion access. If you were planning on rolling up your sleeves and stockpiling abortion drugs, this all sounds like bad news. While abortion is a safe procedure, it's safest when administered at the hands of a physician who knows exactly what she's doing, and whose job it is to keep you alive, and healthy. Grossman said the idea that, someday, abortion pills might be able to be issued in advance, in the same way that Plan-B is, is interesting, and certainly worth talking about. But he remains optimistic that Trump won't be able to restrict abortion access to the point that women necessarily need to stockpile abortion pills. "My belief is that Congress, and some state legislatures, may feel emboldened under the Trump administration to pass more restrictions on abortion access, but the reality is we just got a very good ruling from the Supreme Court in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt," Grossman said. "I'm actually optimistic that, even though they may try to impose more restrictions on abortion access, litigators will have a lot of tools to go after those laws." In the decision for Whole Woman's v. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court made it incredibly clear that abortion legislation without any medical backing won't be upheld. So while yes, Trump may appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices who could try to suppress abortion rights in this country, it would be hard to do so, in Grossman's opinion, without proving that those restrictions benefit the health and livelihood of the women they affect. Does this mean abortion is safe under Donald Trump? Not necessarily, no, lawmakers - especially the top lawmakers - can always find new ways to restrict women's rights. But it also doesn't mean it's time to break the law, and purchase black market abortion pills for ourselves and our friends, in the case that we ever need them. The best thing to do is set aside the money for an emergency abortion fund, and to get an IUD while you still have the protection of the ACA and can afford it. Correction: A previous version of this article stated that telemedicine always involves abortion pills being mailed to a woman remotely. It has been updated to reflect that telemedicine pills can be distributed in other ways as well. Follow Hannah on Twitter. You Might Also Like Violence in the United States has steadily declined for several decades. While the violent crime rate has fallen considerably -- from 685 violent crimes reported per 100,000 Americans in 1995 to the current rate of 383 incidents per 100,000 -- the national violent crime rate rose 3.0% last year. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed violent crime rates in each state from data collected through the FBIs 2015 Uniform Crime Report Program. Violent crime includes all offenses involving force or threat of force and are broken into four categories: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. These crimes are more common in some states than in others. ALSO READ: 40 Countries the US Government Doesn't Want You to Visit Vermont is the safest state in the country with a violent crime rate of 118 incidents per 100,000 state residents. In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Nancy G. La Vigne, director of the Justice Policy Center at public policy research organization Urban Institute, said, crime clusters not just within major metropolitan areas but even within cities. For this reason, La Vigne noted, it is very difficult to draw conclusions from statewide trends alone. Violent crime is considerably more common in urban centers than in rural regions. While it is not always the case, violent crime rates across the 10 states on this list can be largely attributed to either low levels of violence reported in the states' cities or to the absence of major cities in these states. Of the dozens of cities tracked by the FBI in the nations 10 safest states, only a handful report crime rates higher than the national rate. Cities such as Provo and West Jordan, Utah; Stamford, Connecticut; Boise City, Idaho; Lexington, Kentucky; and Fargo, North Dakota all report below average violent crime rates. On the other hand, some states on this list remained among the nations safest despite containing cities with staggeringly high violent crime rates. Manchester, New Hampshire; Bridgeport and Hartford Connecticut, as well as Salt Lake City, Utah, for example, all have violent crime rates well over 600 incidents per 100,000 people. Story continues Economic prosperity and the presence of job opportunities in communities can lower the likelihood of crime at the local level, and the states with the lowest violent crime rates tend to also have better economic and social conditions than more violent states. The poverty rate is lower than the national rate of 14.7% in eight of the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rates. The annual unemployment rate is lower than the national 2015 rate of 5.3% in eight of these 10 states. Explaining these economic factors as just some of the many drivers of crime, La Vigne said, People who engage in criminal behavior often may do so because of an absence of opportunity. The violent crime rate, while relatively low, decreased in only three of nations safest states. The violent crime rate in four of the 10 states increased slower than the nationwide uptick of 3.0% between 2014 and 2015. In the remaining three states -- Vermont, Wyoming, and Utah -- violent crime rates actually increased considerably faster than across the nation. To identify the 10 safest states, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the number of violent crimes reported per 100,000 people (the violent crime rate) in each state from the FBIs 2015 Uniform Crime Report. The total number and rates of murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, which are included in the violent crime rate, as well as burglaries, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson -- all classified as property crime -- also came from the FBIs report. We considered these data for each year from 2011 through 2015. Annual unemployment rates for 2015 came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Median household income, poverty rates, the percentage of adults with at least a bachelors degree, population, and the percentage of adults with at least a high school diploma came from the U.S. Census Bureaus 2015 American Community Survey. ALSO READ: The Most Republican County in Each State These are the safest states in America. 10. North Dakota > Violent crimes per 100,000: 239.4 > Total population: 756,928 > Total 2015 murders: 21.0 (5th lowest) > Poverty rate: 11.0% (9th lowest) While nationwide the violent crime rate rose by 3% in 2015, in North Dakota it declined by a near nation-leading 11.5%. Today, the state is 10th safest in the country. There were 239 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 state residents last year, much lower than the nationwide rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 Americans. The economic benefits from North Dakotas oil boom seem to have contributed to less violence in the state -- but not in all areas. In some parts, violent crime levels have actually risen. For example, crimes such as drug trafficking, homicides, and prostitution have spiked in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in northwestern North Dakota. And although the oil boom has been waning, North Dakotas annual unemployment rate of 2.7% remains the lowest in the nation. 9. Utah > Violent crimes per 100,000: 236.0 > Total population: 2,995,919 > Total 2015 murders: 54.0 (11th lowest) > Poverty rate: 11.3% (12th lowest) Violent crime increased in Utah in 2015. Driven by a spike in the aggravated assault rate, which increased by 12.4%, the violent crime rate in the state rose by 7.5% last year -- more than double the nationwide increase in the violent crime rate of 3.0%. Unlike most states with low violent crime levels, property crime is relatively common in Utah. At nearly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people, Utahs property crime rate is ninth highest of all states. By contrast, the national property crime rate is less than 2,500 per 100,000 people. Still, violence is not especially common in Utah and the state is one of the safest in the country. With above average incomes and one of the nations lowest annual unemployment rates, economic prosperity could partially explain why violent crime levels remain relatively low. As is the case in every state, violence in Utah is by no means evenly distributed. While West Jordan and Provo report violent crime rates well below the national average, Salt Lake City -- the states largest -- reports 855 violent crimes per 100,000 people, one of the higher rates of all cities tracked by the FBI. ALSO READ: The Next 14 States to Legalize Marijuana 8. Wyoming > Violent crimes per 100,000: 222.1 > Total population: 586,107 > Total 2015 murders: 16.0 (3rd lowest) > Poverty rate: 11.1% (10th lowest) Wyoming, which has one of the lowest crime levels, is one of the few states to report a spike in crime last year. The states violent crime rate rose by 13.7% in 2015, the fifth largest jump of all states and several times greater than the national increase of 3.0%. Specifically, the number of aggravated assaults per 100,000 Wyoming residents jumped 16.9%, third largest in the nation. Still, the states aggravated assault rate, at 180 incidents per 100,000 residents is considerably lower than the national rate of 238 incidents per 100,000 people. Just 10 robberies, which are included in the violent crime rate, were reported for every 100,000 Wyoming residents last year, the lowest of all states and one-tenth the national robbery rate. 7. Kentucky > Violent crimes per 100,000: 218.7 > Total population: 4,425,092 > Total 2015 murders: 209.0 (25th highest) > Poverty rate: 18.5% (5th highest) The relationship between income and violent crime is complex, and the connection is not a direct one. Still, Kentucky is unusual among relatively safe states because of its high poverty rate. At 18.5%, the percentage of people living in poverty trails just four other states. Similarly, unlike other states listed here, not only is the typical household income in Kentucky of $45,215 a year lower than the national median, but it is also among the lowest of all states. Kentuckys murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate, at 4.7 per 100,000 people, is in line with the national murder rate. The incidence of aggravated assault in Kentucky -- aggravated assaults tend to make up the vast majority of violent crimes -- is nearly the lowest of any state. Just 106 such incidents were reported for every 100,000 Kentuckians, the third lowest rate and less than half the national rate. 6. Connecticut > Violent crimes per 100,000: 218.5 > Total population: 3,590,886 > Total 2015 murders: 117.0 (19th lowest) > Poverty rate: 10.5% (6th lowest) Connecticut is one of the many states and communities where financial prosperity has likely contributed somewhat to the relatively low violent crime levels. Just 10.5% of people live in poverty, the sixth lowest rate, and the typical household in Connecticut earns $71,346 annually, the fifth highest of all states. ALSO READ: Cities With the Highest Risk of Heart Attack Connecticuts violent crime rate has historically been among the lowest. It also dropped by 8.4% in 2015, even as the national violent crime rate increased by 3.0%. The rate of aggravated assaults, the most common sort of violent crime, dropped by 10.0%, nearly the largest drop and also in stark contrast to the national increase of 3.7%. 5. Idaho > Violent crimes per 100,000: 215.6 > Total population: 1,654,930 > Total 2015 murders: 32.0 (9th lowest) > Poverty rate: 15.1% (20th highest) High income areas generally have lower violent crime rates. Idaho, though, is one of just three of the 10 safest states where the median household income is below the national annual median of $55,775. Also, the state's poverty rate exceeds the national rate of 14.7%. Because violence tends to be more common in urban centers, most cities report violent crime rates higher than the national rate of 383 per 100,000. This is also why violence in urban areas is generally the driver of a states overall violent crime rate. This is no different in Idaho, where violent crimes reported in Boise -- the states largest city -- account for a large share of crime across the state. At 309 incidents per 100,000 city residents, however, Boises violent crime rate is well below the national violent crime rate. 4. New Hampshire > Violent crimes per 100,000: 199.3 > Total population: 1,330,608 > Total 2015 murders: 14.0 (2nd lowest) > Poverty rate: 8.2% (the lowest) New Hampshire is one of just four states where fewer than 200 violent crimes were reported per 100,000 state residents in 2015. The low level of violence in the state is likely at least partially due to economic prosperity. The state's poverty rate of 8.2% is the lowest in the nation. For a variety of reasons, cities tend to report more violence. Manchester reported 671 violent crimes per 100,000 city residents, one of the highest violent crime rates of any U.S. city. However, Manchester is also one of New Hampshires only major cities, and the low number of urban areas in the state could partially account for New Hampshires low violent crime rate. ALSO READ: Retailers Hiring the Most for the Holidays 3. Virginia > Violent crimes per 100,000: 195.6 > Total population: 8,382,993 > Total 2015 murders: 383.0 (16th highest) > Poverty rate: 11.2% (11th lowest) As the largest state by population on this list, the total number of murders reported in Virginia of 383 is one of the highest of any state. Adjusted for population, Virginias murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 4.6 per 100,000 people is just under the national rate of 4.9 murders per 100,000 people. The states violent crime rate, which includes murder, declined by 1.4% last year and remains one of the nations lowest. Meanwhile, the nations violent crime rate rose by 3.0% in 2015. While Norfolk, Richmond, and Newport News each reported above average rates of violence, Chesapeake, Hampton, Alexandria, and Virginia Beach each reported violent crime rates lower than the national average. 2. Maine > Violent crimes per 100,000: 130.1 > Total population: 1,329,328 > Total 2015 murders: 23.0 (6th lowest) > Poverty rate: 13.4% (22nd lowest) Aggravated assaults, which make up the vast majority of violent crimes reported across the nation, are very rare in Maine -- one of the nations most rural states. Despite increasing by 3.7%, fewer than 70 such incidents were reported for every 100,000 Maine residents, the lowest rate of any state and in stark contrast to the national aggravated assault rate of 238 incidents per 100,000 Americans. On the whole, Mainers are not poor, but they are also not especially wealthy. The typical household in the state earns $51,494 a year versus the national median of $55,775 a year. 1. Vermont > Violent crimes per 100,000: 118.0 > Total population: 626,042 > Total 2015 murders: 10.0 (the lowest) > Poverty rate: 10.2% (4th lowest) Vermont is the safest state in the nation, reporting just 118 violent crimes per 100,000 state residents. Due to the states low population of just 626,042, the total number of murders, at 10, and the total number of violent crimes, at 739, are each also the lowest of any state in the country. However, violence rose substantially in Vermont last year. The states violent crime rate rose by 15.1%, third most compared with other states. While the robbery rate, which is included in the violent crime rate, remains nearly the lowest in the country, it rose by a staggering 40.4% last year. Related Articles Amazon Studios has released a new trailer for Oscar-winning writer-director Asghar Farhadis suspenseful drama, The Salesman, Irans official Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. The film screened at this years Cannes Film Festival and earned Farhadi an award for best screenplay along with a best actor award for lead Shahab Hosseini. It also played as a Special Presentation during the Toronto International Film Festival. Synopsis: After their old flat becomes damaged, Emad (Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), a young couple living in Tehran, are forced to move into a new apartment. However, once relocated, a sudden eruption of violence linked to the previous tenant of their new home dramatically changes the couples life, creating a simmering tension between husband and wife. Asghar Farhadis A Separation won the Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 has a worldwide gross of $19M. His next untitled project stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem and will begin filming in Spain next year. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-61yYjKHHc&w=605&h=340] Related stories Tig Notaro-Diablo Cody's 'One Mississippi' Renewed For Season 2 At Amazon Will Arnett's 'Comedy Show Show' & More Set On Audible 'Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan': Abbie Cornish Cast As Female Lead In Amazon Series By Hyunjoo Jin and Miyoung Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics has agreed to buy Harman International Industries in an $8 billion deal, marking a major push into the auto electronics market and the biggest overseas acquisition ever by a South Korean company. The transaction highlights Samsung's efforts to break into the high-barrier automotive industry where it has little track record and also marks a strategic shift for the electronics company, which has previously shunned big acquisitions. "An M&A deal this big is a first for us. But it shows that under Jay Y. Lee, the company is changing and open to new ways to grow," a source familiar with the deal told Reuters, referring to Samsung Electronics' vice chairman. The purchase of the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of connected car and audio systems is part of Samsung's search for new growth areas as its smartphone business - scarred by the withdrawal of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 - slows. The greater use of electronics and software in vehicles, and the ability of cars to connect to smartphones and other devices, is offering technology companies with new business opportunities. "We have been studying the automotive market for some time. We conclude that organic growth will not get us where we want to go fast enough," Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics, said on a conference call. "Samsung will not get into the business of manufacturing cars," he said. Samsung, a maker of chips, displays, smartphones and TVs, agreed to acquire Harman for $112.00 per share in cash, a 28 percent premium to the U.S. company's closing price on Friday. Harman shares rose 25.6 percent to their highest level in more than one year. "Harman was missing, in our opinion, a meaningful presence in displays and cockpit electronics; Samsung has these," Baird Equity Research said in a report. But investors in Samsung had reservations about the purchase price. "Samsung is using its huge cash pile to pull ahead of rivals in the auto technology market. But it remains to be seen whether Samsung will be able to grow into a company that will be able to compete with the likes of Bosch and Continental," said fund manager Park Jung-hoon of HDC Asset Management, which owns Samsung Electronics shares. Story continues Harman's products, which provide infotainment, telematics, connected safety and security services, are used in more than 30 million vehicles made by automakers such as BMW, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), according to its website. Harman earns around two-thirds of its revenue from its automotive-related business, and its automotive order backlog as of end-June stood at $24 billion, more than three times annual sales of $6.9 billion in fiscal 2016. Samsung created an automotive electronics business team a year ago to look for opportunities in this area. This year it invested $450 million in Chinese automaker and rechargeable batteries firm BYD Co Ltd. Separately, Samsung has held talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) over a potential sale or partnership for the latter's Magneti Marelli auto parts maker, sources have said. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Miyoung Kim; Additional reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Jacqueline Wong and Jane Merriman) Snagging your first apartment can be tough, especially if you have poor credit (or even no credit!). But you can still be an attractive rental candidate for that awesome one-bedroom apartment in Dallas, TX, even if your credit score is nothing to write home about. Landlords and property managers look at other factors besides just credit score. And sometimes, those other factors can tip the scale in your favor. Here are seven ways you can make yourself attractive to a landlord, even without the strongest credit score. 1. Have a stellar past rental history The most relevant piece of information about you for landlords is your rental history, potentially even more than a credit score. But if this is your first apartment, you probably wont have any rental history. Bringing in character references, such as from a teacher or employer (or providing the landlord with their contact information) can help demonstrate that you are reliable and dependable. You may, however, first need to establish some type of rental history, especially if you have poor or no credit. Start paying rent to your parents, or rent out a room in someones house. That way, you can show potential landlords that you can pay rent regularly and on time. Be sure to get receipts or have some type of proof of payments to show potential landlords. 2. Earn a high salary If you make a good income, your landlord may forgive your poor credit score, even in a red-hot rental market. Ive had [bad credit] tenants with high incomes and over a years worth of rent in their bank accounts be accepted, says Klaus Gonche, a South Florida real estate agent. But what do landlords consider a high annual income? A good benchmark would be at least 40 times the monthly rent. For example, using this guideline, if rent were $1,200 a month, you would need to earn at least $48,000 a year. Prove your income by showing the landlord your pay stubs for the past year. And consider showcasing your income on Trulias Rental Resume, a tool that lets renters highlight their qualifications, like move-in time frame, occupation, income, and more. Story continues 3. Have savings Just making big bucks isnt necessarily enough if you have poor credit. You might have lots of debt, for instance, which can eat up a lot of that large income. So show your potential landlord your bank statements, proving you have reserves available. Its a good idea to have both a checking and a savings account, and you should ideally have several months worth of rent saved up. If a landlord sees that you have money set aside, they may feel more confident in your ability to pay rent each month. 4. Be honest (and communicate well) Be upfront with potential landlords. Explain the reason your credit score is not very good and how you will be a responsible tenant anyway. Maybe you made a poor financial decision in the past, maybe your credit utilization is high (from using one credit card for everything and then paying it off each month actually a good thing!), or maybe theres an error on your credit report (it happens!). Landlords are free to waive their own requirements as long as they treat all applicants the same way. This method works best when youre dealing with individual landlords as opposed to a big management company that might not be able to bend the rules. 5. Offer to set up automatic payments Heres a secret: Landlords love receiving rent on autopay. Offer to allow your landlords bank to deduct rent from your bank account through automated clearinghouse (ACH), a system that moves money from one bank account to another. That helps ensure your landlord will be paid and on time. Youll need to demonstrate youll have enough cash in said bank account to cover those automatic payments. If youve been chronically irresponsible about paying your bills, for example, earning you a bad credit score, potential landlords probably wont trust that you will keep enough in your account. When I see utilities and cellphone companies with delinquent payments, that is a red flag for me. Especially when it is coupled with many unpaid and high-balance credit cards, says Denise Supplee, a Pennsylvania real estate agent and co-founder of SparkRental, a rental automation service. This tells a story of irresponsibility more than one of hard times. However, if you can show a steady income bolstered by a hefty savings account, and you sign up for ACH payments, you just might get that apartment. 6. Agree to pay more upfront You typically need to pay first months rent plus a security deposit when you rent an apartment. That means you can make your application stand out by offering to pay not just one month and security, but two or even three months rent plus security in advance. Cash offers are always attractive. Just make sure you then start paying your rent on time when it becomes due. 7. Use a co-signer If nothing else works, call in some backup to help you rent with bad credit: a co-signer. If you can get someone with good credit to co-sign for you, the landlord might agree to rent you that apartment. Note that if you dont pay your rent, the landlord will ask your co-signer to do so, which could strain your relationship with that person. Have you landed an apartment even with a poor credit score? Tell us how in the comments! The post How To Score A Great First Apartment With Poor Credit History appeared first on Trulia's Blog. Washington (AFP) - The chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, will step down in January, three years before the end of her term, the SEC announced Monday. White becomes the first major political appointee to head for the exit when President Barack Obama leaves office, following Donald Trump's upset victory last week in the race for the White House. Trump has signaled a coming shift in the enforcement of securities and financial regulations. The SEC statement did not address the reasons for White's early departure. She said that during her reign the agency succeeded in protecting investors as well improving oversight in areas such as asset management and corporate disclosures. "I am very proud of our three consecutive years of record enforcement actions, dozens of fundamental reforms through our rulemakings that have strengthened investor protections and market stability," White said. A former federal prosecutor, White took over leadership of the SEC in April 2013 after a lengthy career as a powerful white-collar criminal defense attorney, having represented major corporations that went on to face SEC scrutiny under her leadership of the agency. She took charge of the regulator as the dust was still settling from the 2008 global financial crisis and with ire among lawmakers at perceived government leniency toward large financial institutions near its zenith. White's connections, including the fact her husband is a corporate attorney, required her to recuse herself from multiple matters that came before the SEC, according to media reports. They also attracted the suspicions of reform-minded critics, who saw White as too close to the industry she was meant to hold to account. Firebrand Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has campaigned for greater accountability on Wall Street, last month called for White's resignation and accused her of undermining the Obama administration's priorities for corporate accountability. Story continues In a statement late Monday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew praised White as a champion of fair and secure markets. "Under Mary Jo's stewardship, the SEC has reduced risks to our financial stability and recognized that it must adapt to new trends in markets to provide effective oversight," said Lew. However Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, said White had failed the public by styming regulation, reducing corporate transparency and "slow-walking" the rulemaking process under the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. "Mary Jo White was a disappointing chair," the group said in a statement. Anyone with dependents needs life insurance, we're told. Policies on parents can provide food, shelter and education until children can provide for themselves. Husbands and wives can get policies to make a survivor's later years more secure and comfortable. But what about people in their 50s, 60s or beyond? Many seniors have never had life insurance. Some had term policies that expired after the children grew. Some drop their coverage because they thought their investments had grown big enough and then find things aren't working out. [See: 10 Financial Perks of Getting Older.] So what are the ins and outs of getting a policy later in life? Several purposes. Insurance experts say older people may need life insurance for a variety of reasons: -- Provide for a surviving spouse or young children from a second marriage. -- Pay estate taxes. -- Help with long-term care expenses. -- Help heirs pay taxes they will face from inherited IRAs and 401(k)s. Many seniors also have business interests, says Kenneth Pendley, a long-time insurance executive who is national marketing director for Atlanta-based Habersham Funding, a life settlement provider that converts policies to cash or income streams. "In such circumstances, life insurance may be necessary or helpful to hedge against business interruption upon the death of a business owner or key employee or partner," Pendley says. The website Quickquote.com shows that a 65-year-old non-smoking man in good health could get a $500,000 20-year term life policy for about $5,300 a year, compared to about $275 for someone who is 35. Options for policies. Though a policy may be pricey for a senior, chances are you could find one, says Anthony Martin, owner & CEO of the Choice Mutual agency, a Citrus Heights, California, firm specializing in life insurance for seniors. "It's very uncommon for someone, senior or not, to be flat-out declined for any sort of underwritten life insurance," he says. Story continues Age, health and smoking history affects the premium, and he warns that advertising typically lowballs the cost. While there are many types of policies with different names, all fall into one of two categories. Term policies are cheapest because they last for a specific number of years, and cost more for longer periods. Permanent policies can be much more expensive but last for life, so no matter how old you are when you die your survivor gets the death benefit. Regardless of the type of policy, one with a bigger death benefit is more expensive than one with a smaller benefit. But even though premiums are larger for older policyholders, the math can work out, says Chris Huntley, owner of Huntley Wealth & Insurance Services in San Diego. "A healthy, non-smoking 70-year-old female could purchase a lifetime guaranteed policy with a $250,000 death benefit for as little as $4,982 per year," he says, referring to a type of permanent insurance. "Assuming she lives to age 86, her life expectancy based on the (Social Security Administration) actuarial life table, she will have spent just $79,712 in premiums." [See: 10 Costs You Can Eliminate in Retirement.] It would take an unlikely 12.49 percent return for those premiums to grow to $250,000 over the same period in an investment, he says. A matter of taxes. Years ago, people later in life bought life insurance to help pay estate taxes. But in 2017, the first $5.49 million of an estate will be exempt from this tax, so many people don't have to worry about it. But for those who do, many choose a survivor life or second-to-die policy, types that pay off only after the second spouse dies. This is cheaper because a couple, compared to an individual, has twice the chance of one living longer than average, says Chris Acker, owner of CB Acker Associates Insurance Services in Palo Alto, California. "While seemingly expensive, the premiums on a life insurance policy designed for estate tax funding are usually a very good return on investment for the families involved," Acker says. "It's typically much less expensive to buy life insurance than to liquidate assets to pay taxes at death." Policies for estate taxes are typically purchased within an irrevocable life insurance trust, so the benefit is not counted in the taxable estate, he says. Life insurance can also help heirs pay taxes that will be due on tax-deferred retirement accounts like traditional IRAs and traditional 401(k)s even if there is no estate tax, adds Nancy Butler, author of "Above All Else, Success in Life and Business," and owner of an advisory firm of the same name in Waterford, Connecticut. Butler teaches continuing education courses in life insurance. "Many heirs loose over 45 percent of the tax-deferred assets left to them," she says. "Without proper planning, a large percentage of the money you worked your life to build could be lost to income taxes rather than being passed to who you want it to go to." Additional uses. Yet another purpose for life insurance late in life is to replace pension income that may dry up after the beneficiary's death, she adds. Often, Martin says, seniors get life insurance for specific purposes such as paying off a mortgage or other debts, funeral expenses or caring for an adult child with a disability. In these cases, a term policy large enough to cover the expected cost may be cheapest. But Acker cautions that it can be difficult or impossible to get a term policy after 60 or 65, while permanent policies may be available for people as old as 90. He says some permanent policies offer riders to fund long-term care, and can be a better deal than ordinary long-term care policies. "With the life insurance policy/long-term care rider option, people tend to feel confident that this policy will be used," Acker says. Seek expert help. While you can shop for policies on your own online, many experts recommend using an insurance broker who represents many providers and knows details you might not easily find online, like whether given medications will get your application denied or boost the premium. Term life is pretty straightforward, but permanent policies have so many provisions it's hard for an amateur to make apples-to-apples comparisons. "Above all else, the advisor needs to be an independent agent," Martin says. "I cannot stress this enough." He also recommends agents who specialize in life insurance and don't do policies for cars and homes. A good independent agent should represent at least 10 carriers, he says. [Read: 5 New 401(k) and IRA Rules for 2017.] Butler points out that premiums can be lower if you pay once a year rather than several times or monthly. And she says shoppers should look for "break points" where a larger policy becomes cheaper than one that is only slightly smaller. Jeff Brown spent nearly 40 years as a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor, including 20 years writing about investing, personal finance, the economy and financial markets. He spent 20 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer and has been freelancing since 2007. Mother Georgia (Photo: Courtesy of Brian Griffin) It was 1989 in Soviet-era Georgia, a country on the verge of gaining its independence. Statues of Stalin were being destroyed, animal sacrifice was the norm, and phone calls were under constant surveillance, but one thing was certain: The country was face to face with a new order. Just 20 minutes from Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, British photographer Brian Griffin shot some of his most iconic photographs for Comme des Garconss now-defunct Six magazine whose name stemmed from the phrase "sixth sense." This was the brand's unstapled A3 publication, containing no words, just images made to bring founder Rei Kawakubo's creative sensibilities to reality. As Griffin recalls, these images would later become Kawakubo's all-time favorites for the magazine. For the first time in 26 years, the photographs will come to life thanks to their first exhibition, Mother Georgia, in partnership with Project ArtBeat, a contemporary art gallery startup based in Tbilisi. The exhibition debuted at the Museum of Modern Art Tbilisi during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tblisi. How did it all happen? Griffin tells Yahoo Style, "It was quite extraordinary when I met Rei for some reason she chose me to work on [Six]. And the reason I say for "some reason" is because I was not a fashion photographer, and she only had real, top fashion photographers working on it in the world." Although, at the time, Griffin was not established as a fashion photographer, he had previously worked with Kawakubo, photographing actor John Malkovich and musician John Cale from the Velvet Underground for Comme des Garcons. Soon after, this project for Six came along and Kawakubo commissioned Griffin to be the photographer and Georgian film director Sandro Vakhtangov to produce it. But why choose Georgia? Truthfully, as Griffin remembers, "there were a lot of problems in this country at the time. It was quite dark, foreboding, and very little traffic around. Street lighting was very bad, [a lot of] pollution. The hotel up the street [from the MoMA Tbilisi], which no longer exists, was like a real Soviet hotel." Story continues Despite this, Kawakubo was inspired to shoot in Georgia by the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani. He is best known for his paintings featuring Georgian locals in their everyday routine, depicting rural life. Griffin, coincidentally, was a fan of Pirosmani as well. In short, the entire shoot featured only Georgian locals; no professional models. The concept was to have the locals wear their traditional attire intermixed with Comme des Garcons pieces. One example was a "chokha" worn by one of the locals, a traditional Georgian style of dress. It is a wool coat featuring panels of bullet holders across the chest a symbol of Georgian nationalism. Remarkably, the entire shoot was also captured by producer Vakhtangov in a fuzzy VHS taping, later uploaded to YouTube by Griffin, which began the frenzied interest into the shoot's origins by British magazine Dazed & Confused. The footage was projected onto a large screen during the exhibition, featuring Griffin, Vakhtangov, Kawakubo, and her assistant, Yuki, during the course of the shoot. Raw, original, and completely stripped of any editing, the film demonstrated the subtle, precise styling decisions made by the team and the cold environment of rural Georgia at the time. Kawakubo, seen sparingly in the film draped in a black headscarf, stands quietly in the background communicating intermittently with her assistant, Yuki, to translate her creative vision to Griffin. In this rare footage, it is fascinating to see Kawakubo in action considering she was and still is a very private person. This shoot would become the launching pad for Griffin's future fashion career. "She gave me an incredible precedent in the last issue. I photographed Harry Dean Stanton, in different shirts in Paris for her, and then the magazine folded. I never worked with her again," says Griffin. The convergence of old and new is clear in the photographs and a sign of the blurred lines between Soviet rule and independence, which Georgia would acquire just two years after the shoot, in 1991. The image of Kartlis Deda, the statue known as "Mother Georgia," became the defining image of the entire collection. Shot by Griffin after Kawakubo had already left Georgia, it features a border of red tulips surrounding the statue a sign of hope, new life, and better times ahead. Click on to see images from the "Mother Georgia" exhibition by Brian Griffin. And as Griffin reminds us: "Remember this was film days. All this is straightforward film. No Photoshop at all. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces a class action lawsuit against Xerox Corporation ("Xerox" or the "Company") (XRX). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between April 23, 2012 and October 23, 2015 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the December 23, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline. If you purchased Xerox shares during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. There has been no class certification in this case. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member. The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, Xerox repeatedly touted its new software product, Health Enterprise, as an important growth area for the Company, which would operate at low cost and high profit margin. The Company's statements pertaining to the profitability and growth prospects of the Health Enterprise business were materially false and misleading because Xerox failed to disclose: that the Company's existing Health Enterprise projects were experiencing major delays and cost overruns; that Xerox would be unable to deliver Health Enterprise implementations at sustainable profits; and that as a result of the above, the Company's statements about its business, operations, and prospects lacked a reasonable basis. On October 26, 2015, Xerox released its third quarter 2015 financial results which were disappointing due to costs associated with the implementation of Health Enterprise and the termination of Health Enterprise contracts with the state agencies of California and Montana. When this information emerged to the public, shares of Xerox declined in value, causing investors harm. If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit at no charge to you, or if you have questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or via e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com. Story continues This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions. Contacts Joon M. Khang, Esq. Telephone: 949-419-3834 Facsimile: 949-225-4474 joon@khanglaw.com SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP: To: All Persons or Entities who purchased Harman International Industries, Inc. ("Harman International") (HAR) stock prior to November 14, 2016 . You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of Harman International Industries, Inc. to Samsung Electronics for $112.00 per share. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/harman-international or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. There is no cost or obligation to you. Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Joseph E. Levi, Esq. Eduard Korsinsky, Esq. 30 Broad Street - 24th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 363-7500 Toll Free: (877) 363-5972 Fax: (212) 363-7171 www.zlk.com SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP: To: All Persons or Entities who purchased Inteliquent, Inc. ("Inteliquent") (IQNT) stock prior to November 2, 2016 . You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of Inteliquent to affiliates of private equity firm GTCR, LLC. Inteliquent will merge with a subsidiary of Onvoy, LLC for $23 per share. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/iqnt or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. There is no cost or obligation to you. Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Joseph E. Levi, Esq. Eduard Korsinsky, Esq. 30 Broad Street - 24th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 363-7500 Toll Free: (877) 363-5972 Fax: (212) 363-7171 www.zlk.com SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP No time to cook? We've got you covered. With 10 basic pantry items and 15 express line ingredients, you can make a week's worth of quick dinners with very little time. Comforting shrimp and pimiento cheese grits are the perfect dish after a hard day of work. Quaker brand grits work really well in this recipe, and they are distributed very widely. If you cant find them, use any other white, medium-grind, long-cooking grits. http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/shrimp-and-pimiento-cheese-grits Joe Kaeser It's official: Siemens just announced it was buying the semiconductor-design software company Mentor Graphics for $37.25 a share in cash, or about $4 billion. That's a 21% premium to Mentor's closing price Friday, and it values the Oregon-based company at about $4.5 billion, including debt. "Siemens is acquiring Mentor as part of its Vision 2020 concept to be the Benchmark for the New Industrial Age," Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said in a statement. "It's a perfect portfolio fit to further expand our digital leadership and set the pace in the industry." Kaesar has made it a priority to sell off core units to boost profitability since taking control in 2013. Mentor Graphics has been fending off interest from activist investors for years. Carl Icahn fought and won a proxy fight to get three board seats in 2011, but he later exited the trade. Elliott Management in September reported a stake in the company, saying the shares were deeply undervalued, according to Reuters. Reuters in October reported that Mentor Graphics had hired Bank of America to explore strategic alternatives. Here's the press release: Siemens is further building its Vision 2020 to shape Digital Industrial Enterprise by expanding its unique portfolio for industrial software. Siemens and Mentor Graphics (MENT) ("Mentor") today announced that they have entered into a merger agreement under which Siemens will acquire Mentor for $37.25 per share in cash, which represents an enterprise value of $4.5 billion. The offer price represents a 21% premium to Mentor's closing price on November 11, 2016, the last trading day prior to the announcement. Mentor's Board of Directors approved and declared advisable the merger agreement, and Mentor's Board of Directors recommends the approval and adoption of the merger agreement by the holders of shares of Mentor common stock. Mentor shareholder Elliott Management has committed to support the transaction. Story continues This acquisition decisively extends Siemens' leading Digital Enterprise Software portfolio with Mentor's well established electronics IC and systems design, simulation and manufacturing solutions. These capabilities are essential for today's smart connected products such as autonomous vehicles. The combination provides mechanical, thermal, electronic and embedded software tools which will allow Siemens' customers to further accelerate their innovation, drive production efficiencies and optimize the operation of their products in the field. Now, for the first time, quality, efficiency, flexibility, safety and speed can be optimized across technical domains, throughout the entire lifecycle and for the entire extended enterprise. "Siemens is acquiring Mentor as part of its Vision 2020 concept to be the Benchmark for the New Industrial Age. It's a perfect portfolio fit to further expand our digital leadership and set the pace in the industry," said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG. "With Mentor, we're acquiring an established technology leader with a talented employee base that will allow us to supplement our world-class industrial software portfolio. It will complement our strong offering in mechanics and software with design, test and simulation of electrical and electronic systems," said Klaus Helmrich, member of the Managing Board of Siemens. Mentor is headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, U.S., and has employees in 32 countries worldwide. In its fiscal year ended January 31, 2016, Mentor had over 5,700 employees and generated revenue of approximately $1.2 billion with an adjusted operating margin of 20.2%. Siemens expects these attractive margins to continue in the future and contribute significantly to the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software business of Siemens Digital Factory (DF) Division, which Mentor will join. Mentor serves a large, diverse customer base of marquee systems companies and IC/semiconductors companies with over 14,000 global accounts across communications, computer, consumer electronics, semiconductor, networking, aerospace, multimedia, and transportation industries. Mentor is viewed as a global leader in strategic industry segments including IC design, test and manufacturing; electronic systems design and analysis; and emerging markets including automotive electronics. "Combining Mentor's technology leadership and deep customer relationships with Siemens' global scale and resources will better enable us to serve the growing needs of our customers, and unlock additional significant opportunities for our employees," said Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor. "Siemens is an ideal partner with financial depth and stability, and their resources and additional investment will allow us to innovate even faster and accelerate our vision of creating top-to-bottom automated design solutions for electronic systems. We are excited to join the Siemens family, as it is clear they share the same values and focus on customer success, and are pleased that this transaction provides immediate and certain value to our stockholders." Siemens expects to achieve synergies through a combination of revenue growth and anticipated margin expansion, with a total EBIT impact of over 100 million within 4 years from closing the transaction. Additionally, the transaction is expected to be EPS accretive within three years from closing. Closing of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected in Q2 of calendar 2017. Mentor will be part of the PLM software business of Siemens' DF Division. DF is the industry leader in automation technology and a leading provider of PLM software. "By adding Mentor's electronic design automation solutions and talented experts to our team, we're greatly enhancing our core competencies for product design that creates a very precise digital twin of any smart product and production line," noted Helmrich." NOW WATCH: These are the business skills you learn from being in a gang More From Business Insider Berlin (AFP) - German industrial giant Siemens on Monday said it would buy US software firm Mentor Graphics for $4.5 billion, building out its offer to high-tech manufacturing industries. Oregon-based Mentor employs more than 5,700 people and produces software used to design electronics products, especially integrated circuits. The deal would "complement our strong offering in mechanics and software with design, test and simulation of electrical and electronic systems," Siemens board member Klaus Helmrich said. In a statement, Siemens said its offer of $37.25 per share in cash -- a 21-percent premium on Mentor's Friday closing price -- had been accepted by the US firm's board, but still needed to be approved by shareholders. The German firm said it would provide more details about the purchase at a press conference later on Monday. The prognosticators who write for The Simpsons have proven themselves to be uncannily accurate about the future on several occasions. That doesnt mean they are always happy when their predictions come true, though. Sixteen years ago, the show aired an episode called Bart to the Future, which tasked president-elect Lisa Simpson with cleaning up the nation after the disastrous presidency of a fictional version of Donald Trump. The episodes author said that the Trump presidency was meant as a warning to America. That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom, writer Dan Greaney said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane. Now that Trump has been elected as the 45th president, the show addressed their accuracy on Sunday nights episode. In the opening montage, Bart Simpson is seen writing a note on the school chalkboard: Being Right Sucks. In case there was any doubt about to what that was referring, the show tweeted out confirmation that the gag was in regards to the Trump presidency. Watch below. Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f27886%2fscreen_shot_2016-11-14_at_12.53.04_pm LONDON This election season, there's been a lot of hullabaloo over The Simpsons and whether they predicted Donald Trump's ascent to the Oval Office. The speculation stems from an episode aired back in the year 2000 called "Bart to the Future" that featured a Trump presidency. And in the first episode to air since Trump's victory was announced last week, the show threw in a reference to its prophetic powers. SEE ALSO: 'Simpsons' creator: Donald Trump candidacy has gone 'beyond satire' In the iconic opening credits when Bart Simpson is seen writing lines on a chalkboard before the school bell releases him from his toil, this week's episode features the phrase: "Being Right Sucks." In the show's history, Bart's blackboard has often been used to poke fun at social and political issues, and this week's blackboard messaging seems to indicate pretty strongly the show's feelings towards Trump not that we didn't already have an idea. BONUS: Things you didn't know about 'The Simpsons' Office space. Were almost a week into transition planning for President-elect Donald Trump, and theres no clear picture who will staff Washingtons national security apparatus come January 20. Plenty of names have been floated for Secretary of Defense, including former senator and representative Jim Talent, who looks to have the deepest defense-related resume of any of the candidates said to be in the running, including Sen. Jeff Sessions, a longtime Trump ally. One veteran Republican think tanker tells SitRep that Talent is the Flounoy of the right, referring to Hillary Clintons presumed SecDef pick, Michele Flournoy, one of the most respected national security thinkers in Washington. Talent, who spent time at the Heritage Foundation after leaving Congress in 2007, would likely also attract people on the fence about working in a Trump administration, as would another rumored choice, Stephen Hadley, a national security advisor for former president George W. Bush. The analyst added that Sessions wouldnt likely have the same effect, a problem since the bench is short for talent to staff senior jobs at the Pentagon given the dozens of Republicans who signed never Trump pledges over the past year. Culture wars. Another early Trump supporter, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) also rumored to be in the running for a top Pentagon spot told the San Diego Union Tribunes Carl Prine, Im excited about a warrior culture, a warrior mentality put back into the (military), as opposed to a corporate culture ruled over by the bureaucrats and lawyers, adding, the warrior culture is going to get infused into (the department) again. Its probably going to take a while because a lot of guys who had that mentality are no longer there, but maybe peoples true colors can show now, a little bit. The Pence factor. One person who might have a large role to play in national security issues is incoming Vice President, Mike Pence. The Lawfare blogs Jane Chong points out how much Pences thinking on key issues like Russia, NATO, and U.S. involvement in Syria appeared to differ from those of his boss while out on the campaign trail, but whether the disagreement comes to anything now will turn on whether Trumps stated positions were, in fact, bluster borrowed for purposes of cultivating an authoritative, know-something posture during the campaign, or if they represent genuine convictions on which he means to run his presidency. Story continues Sneak attack, and secret plans. On 60 Minutes Sunday night, Trump again refused to offer any blueprint for fighting ISIS, saying Im not going to say anything. I dont want to tell them anything. I dont want to tell anybody anything. And he again said he knows more than the U.S. military brass when it comes to fighting the terrorist group. Trump started by saying, we have some great generals. We have great generals, before host Leslie Stahl reminded him that he claimed to know more than those generals about ISIS. I probably do because look at the job theyve done. They havent done the job, he said, a curious line for the now president-elect. Meanwhile, in Syria. Some U.S.-backed Syrian rebels are bracing for Trump to cut off their funding, as he recently indicated he may. And some of them seem to be looking forward to it. The New York Times Anne Barnard reports from Beirut, seeking a silver lining, some rebels express hope that American allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey would then go it alone and defy United States orders not to provide more sophisticated weapons to rebels though in the short term, such a cutoff could mean losing supplies of American antitank guided missiles. Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to talk Syria with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru November 19-20, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. Deaths in Jordan. A big part of the U.S. support for Syrian rebels has come in the form of training and advising fighters to take on the Islamic State, some of which is done by the CIA. The three Special Forces soldiers killed in a shooting outside a military base in Jordan last week were reportedly working for the CIA on just such a program, the Washington Post reports. Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe and Staff Sgt. James Moriarty, members of the 5th Special Forces Group, were helping the CIA train anti-Assad regime Syrian rebels. The CIA has offered few details on the incident and whether it may have been the result of a planned terrorist attack. But Jordanian sources tell the Post that the shootings couldve been triggered by an alleged weapons discharge within the three soldiers vehicle and confused Jordanian forces anxious after a recent suicide attack on guards by the Jordanian border Good morning and as always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley Afghanistan A suicide attack on a U.S. base in Bagram Afghanistan killed four Americans on Saturday, two service members and two contractors. The BBC reports that the attacker who detonated his vest inside the facility was a member of the Taliban who worked inside the post in an as-yet unknown job. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing and has frequently used insiders at American and Afghan facilities to carry out attacks. China China is building a new base unusually close to the border with North Korea, according to UPI. Locals say the Chinese military has been trucking in supplies and relocating residents to make room for the new facility in the city of Longjing. No one quite knows what the base is for or why its being built and North Korean troops across the border have been keeping a close eye on construction. A local source tells Radio Free Asia, somewhat breathlessly, that the base is a sign China is preparing for the collapse of North Korea. Worried about American stealth fighter jets and bombers attacking your country? The China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) is offering a solution for export that might help with that. IHS Janes reports that China is now making CETCs anti-stealth YLC-8B and SLC-7 radar systems available for export. The radars are purportedly capable of detecting American F-35 and F-22 jets, although evidence proving or disproving the claims is lacking so far. Philippines Hes been called the Donald Trump of the Philippines, but Trumps electoral victory doesnt mean that Philippine President Duterte is going to start backpedaling on his anti-American rhetoric. Bloomberg reports that when asked if Trumps victory meant hed change tack on pledges to move away from Washington and closer to China, Duterte offered a polite nod to the president elect saying they share a passion to serve but warned therell be no change in his plans and that he intends to pursue what Ive started. Since his election, Duterte has railed against the U.S. and said the Philippines needs to cut back on its military alliance with it in favor of closer relations with China and Russia. Russia Russia says it needs permission from the United Nations before it sells new fighter jets to Iran. Russias ambassador to Iran Levan Dzhagaryan tells the Tehran Times that Moscow would like to sell Su-30M fighter jets to upgrade Irans aging fleet of fighter jets but it needs a sign-off from the Security Council before any deal can go through. A U.N. resolution implementing the nuclear deal signed with Iran lifted sanctions barring weapons purchases by Iran but required that the Security Council approve sales to Tehran. When Russia and Iran first began talking about a possible Su-30M sale, the U.S. said it would attempt to block the sale as a violation of the resolution. Moscow and Tehran are also in talks over an arms deal worth around $10 billion that would include Russian T-90 tanks, artillery systems, planes and helicopters, according to RIA, a Russian news agency. Iraq The Islamic State is putting up an even fiercer fight than expected in its defense of the city of Mosul. The Washington Post describes Iraqi commanders as shaken by the tenacity of the jihadist group. Islamic State fighters have exploited the presence of Mosuls civilians in the city in order to frustrate troops, sending them out in batches to halt assaults and using them as shields when moving about the dense urban environment. They have also made use of networks of tunnels, both underground and between buildings, to move throughout the city and attack Iraqi forces. Miami (AFP) - Skygazers took to high-rise buildings, tourist landmarks and beaches worldwide to catch a glimpse of the closest "supermoon" to Earth in almost seven decades. The unusually big and bright moon happens when the Earth's satellite rock is full at the same time as, or very near, perigee -- its closest point to our planet on its monthly ellipsis-shaped orbit. At a distance of 356,509 kilometers (221,524 miles), this is the closest it has been to Earth since 1948, creating what NASA described as "an extra-supermoon." The phenomenon was visible first in Asia, on Monday, sending astronomy enthusiasts and photographers flocking to the best viewing spots, hoping the chronic pollution that blights many of the region's cities would not spoil the fun. Sydney's eastern Bronte suburb became an unexpected magnet as thousands of people armed with picnic mats and cameras packed its small beach after a Facebook invite went viral. Loud cheers went up among the crowd as the moon made brief appearances between heavy, gray clouds before disappearing. "It's really nice," Aidan Millar-Powell told AFP of the festive community atmosphere at the beach. "People don't usually come together like this in Sydney for a natural phenomenon." Tourists, office workers and couples crowded the Hong Kong waterfront as the supersized moon rose over the skyscrapers of the financial hub, while in the Chinese capital Beijing the moon climbed spectacularly over the city's skyline. - 'More super than others' - The supermoon was visible across much of India although residents of New Delhi, the world's most polluted capital, struggled to see it clearly through the toxic smog that has been shrouding the city in recent weeks. In Thailand, astrologers were variously predicting the supermoon would bring disaster or great fortune. The supermoon means a stronger high tide, something that gets surfers giddy with excitement, not only at the prospect of riding bigger waves, but doing so at night. Story continues In Florida, tides were unusually high and flooding was reported along some beachside streets near Miami and Fort Lauderdale. NASA published a photo of the moon appearing as a giant orange orb behind Russia's Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan, ready to propel a Russian cosmonaut, a European and an American astronaut to the International Space Station later this week. "Supermoon adorns our rocket," tweeted Peggy Whitson, the NASA astronaut who will be on that flight. "Incredible perspective of spaceflight." Astronomers say it can be hard to notice that the moon appears brighter than usual. Once it is high in the sky, it can also be hard to tell it is larger. To get the best view, Pascal Descamps of the Paris Observatory advised choosing somewhere with a well-known landmark in the foreground for comparison. Supermoons are actually quite common -- there is one every 14 months on average. "But some supermoons are more super than others," said Descamps. - 'Supercloud' - After Asia it was the Middle East, Africa, Europe then North and South America's turn to peer upwards, with eager moongazers on all continents heading to popular landmarks to see the supermoon up close -- with mixed results. In Athens, the hundreds gathered at the ancient Acropolis were treated to the sight of the massive orb rising between the monument's famous columns, bathing the site in its glow. But thick clouds spoiled the show in several European capitals including London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. Amateur photographers took up positions on London's Waterloo Bridge hoping to see the moon rise above St Paul's Cathedral, but cloud had blanketed the sky all day and mobile apps were the only way to track the moon's progress. In Poland, the great rivalry between Warsaw and the old royal capital Krakow reared its head as heavy clouds thwarted moongazers in the former. But in Krakow, further south, the massive moon rose victoriously above the clouds. "I think the moon is more golden than usual -- it doesn't have the usual cold silver color," said Roman Kwiatkowski, a Krakow psychotherapist making use of his large balcony to enjoy the spectacle. Parts of east Africa also had an excellent view, from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam. Johannesburg got a storm instead, with one disgruntled Twitter user, @Runningflyhalf, renaming the phenomenon "supercloud." But in Cape Town, thousands of people were rewarded for making the hour-long trudge up Lion's Head mountain with the sight of the huge moon reflecting off the glimmering bay below. "I think it's well worth waiting another 34 years to see it," tourist guide Leslie Edgar, 30, told AFP. "I will do it again. It was spectacular." Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f283931%2fap_16318310145601 In the aftermath of Indias bold move to demonetize its most circulated currency notes, mobile wallet apps are witnessing an unprecedented growth. Naturally, they are going above and beyond with marketing to tap new users to go cashless. But top player Paytm may have gone too far over the weekend with one such ad. SEE ALSO: Indians sign up for mobile wallets after most cash rendered useless The company posted a scripted ad in which a woman explains the difficulties invalidation and shortage of cash has imposed on her and millions of people alike. How do they pay maids who typically accept only hard paper cash? She adds, "Sure you didnt care about us, but you [government] should have at least thought about such people [maid]". To which, her maid promptly cuts her short in the middle and says, "stop the drama, Paytm karo". (Paytm karo is the app's punchline in Hindi, which translates to "Use Paytm".) Little did Paytm know that its shorter than one-minute ad would offend so many people. Expressing their disgust with Paytms condescending tone, several people threatened its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Twitter of uninstalling and leaving the app. The ad was soon taken down with Sharma thanking people for the feedback. Dear @vijayshekhar I am uninstalling @Paytm for mocking people facing hardship due to demonetization through your disgusting ads #StopPayTM pic.twitter.com/JD8kXsrBMr Shreekant Sahu (@SahuSKNT) November 13, 2016 Very tacky @Paytm Expected better of you. Saddened by the gloating & self-glorification when people are suffering #shame #DeMonetisation https://t.co/7t0aA705KB Seema Goswami (@seemagoswami) November 13, 2016 Paytm, which is India's largest mobile wallet service, along with competitors Ola Money and Freecharge, is seeing astronomical growth in downloads, new user registrations and daily transactions. The company said Monday it is handling five million transactions a day and is on its way to process Rs 240 billion ($3.54 billion), which it believes makes it the largest payment company in the country. Story continues Paytm has had a good run so far, even with its ads. Last week Sharma's response to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who had criticized Prime Minister Modi for appearing on a Paytm ad, was lauded by many. India remains a sensitive place with people possessing strong believes about almost anything and everything. Dear Sir, The biggest beneficiary is our country. We are just a tech startup, trying to solve financial inclusion & make India proud. # https://t.co/3rI8r6W0EZ Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) November 10, 2016 In the meantime, Paytm reuploaded the ad today with some modification. The company had removed the "stop the drama" line from the ad, with the maid now saying "please don't worry about us, use Paytm." Even if you arent a Kardashian fan, youre probably painfully aware that Kim, Khloe, Kylie, and the rest of the clan love posting updates on social media about where they are (Paris!), whom theyre with (Kanye!), and (last but definitely not least) what kind of bling theyve acquired recently. But guess what? All of their oversharing on Instagram, Snapchat, and other sites does have some serious downsides. Beyond the psychic toll its having on their souls, its also harming them on a more literal levelby helping burglars break into their homes to rob them blind. Case in point: Shortly after Kim Kardashian flaunted a $4.49 million engagement ring on Instagram in October, thieves tracked down her whereabouts in her Paris apartment and made off with the bling. Meanwhile, police have warned younger sister Kylie to stop posting her GPS coordinates on Snapchat, because this could lead strangers straight to her front door. Seems kinda obvious once you mention it! This danger isnt limited to reality stars, either. Whether youve posted recent vacation pics or a close-up of a pricey gift (OMG, look what he gave me for Christmas!!), were all sharing a lot of information online that could be leading criminals straight to our homes and valuables. In fact, one study found that nearly 80% of burglars use social media to plan their heists. Thats a scary statistic no matter how you look at it. Here are three main ways your social media habits might be putting your home security at risk. Risk No. 1: Including your location in posts Typically when you post an update on many social media sites, they will ask whether youd like to include your location in the post. Take Twitter, for instance: If you compose a tweet and hit the location icon, you can choose the city and state youre currently in, or you can turn on share precise location, which will share your exact GPS coordinates. Story continues This is a bad idea: Post while youre home, and thieves who gain access to this info now have your address. All they need to do now is lie in wait for a later post when youre away on vacation to know your home is sitting there vacant, ready to be robbed! Solution: First things first, make sure your permissions are set so that your posts are viewable only by friends and not the public. But even thats not enough. Even with privacy settings in place to limit your posts to friends, if someone in your network gets hacked and compromised, anything youve shared with them is likely to be exploited, says Spencer Coursen, a security expert in New York. So as an added layer of security, never, ever enable location services for social media sites, and dont add location tags, either. Also make sure not to post any pictures or statuses about your vacation while youre awayno matter how tempted you may be to show off your toes in the sand. If you want to share, post those photos later and be sure to remark that they are from a previous vacation. Risk No. 2: Posting photos of expensive items Even if you omit your exact location on your Facebook updates, another weak point many arent aware of is hiding in the photos. If you take a photo with your iPhone and post it online, it may automatically contain geotags with your exact GPS coordinates. While Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter strip out location data from photos, other sites (like Tumblr) do not. The upshot? A thief could easily download the photo you took of, say, your awesome new jewelry or flat-screen TV, and use a tool (such as ExifTool) to pinpoint the address where your prized possessions are hiding. Solution: The safest option, of course, is to simply avoid posting pictures of any valuables on social media sites, even if theyre just in the background. You also have the option to disable your phone from adding GPS location information to pictures as well. For example, on the iPhone 6 go to: Settings / Privacy / Location Services / Camera / Choose Never. Risk No. 3: Adding your hometown, birthdate, and other details to your profile Even if your exact home address isnt listed in your updates or photos, is your profile on Twitter or Facebook filled with details about your life such as your hometown, current city, workplace, and birthdate? Most are, but all of that info along with other publicly available research tools on the internetsites like Intelius or Spokeomake it pretty darn easy for robbers to find out exactly where you live. Solution: Keep your personal informationbirthdate, hometown, and other detailsoff social media profiles. Even setting personal information to be viewable only by friends can be potentially dangerous. A burglar could simply create a fake profile to try to induce a user to add them as a friend so that they could then view that personal information, says Shawn Davis, director of digital forensics at Edelson PC Law Firm in Chicago. Overall, the resounding advice is to post as little as possible about where you are and what valuables you might have lying around your home. In the industry, we refer to this as security via obscurity, which means not disclosing facts that would bring unwanted attention, says Robert Siciliano, an identity theft expert in Boston. The Kardashians violate that rule quite often. The bottom line: Be less like a Kardashian. How hard is that? Have your check-ins made your home someplace that potential burglars want to check out? Or do you look at the Kardashians and see what not to do? Chime in on the discussion on House Talk. The post Are Your Social Media Habits Leading Burglars Straight to Your Home? appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African opposition firebrand Julius Malema told his followers on Monday to seize any piece of white-owned land they wanted, defying a court trying him on charges of inciting violent property grabs. Malema addressed cheering members of his ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party near the courtroom in Bloemfontein, after a judge adjourned the politically charged hearing. "When we leave here, you will see any beautiful piece of land, you like it, occupy it, it belongs to you... It is the land that was taken from us by white people by force through genocide," he said. Malema has rallied an enthusiastic band of backers through calls for the nationalization of mines and the curbing of whites' economic power, building on frustration over the slow pace of economic progress for many blacks since the end of apartheid. His three-year-old party controls 25 of South African's 400 parliamentary seats. But there have been signs of growing support since he stepped up criticism of his former mentor President Jacob Zuma, currently embroiled in a series of scandals. The EFF emerged as electoral king maker in Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria at municipal elections in August, giving it a foothold that he has promised to expand in national elections in 2019. Malema was appearing in the courtroom 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Johannesburg, to face charges of inciting his supporters to take over land during a party meeting in 2014. He faced a similar charge last week of inciting trespass in the town of Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal province, but that trial was also postponed to let him file an application to the Constitutional Court to scrap an apartheid-era law. After that trial, he called for land grabs "without compensation", and added: "We are not calling for the slaughter of white people at least for now" - drawing criticism from the main opposition, the Democratic Alliance party, which has many white supporters. On Monday, he told his supporters: "I will never kill white people, why should I kill them? I will never revenge for what they did ... I'm asking politely for the land to be returned." (Reporting by James Macharia; Editing by Andrew Heavens) Pathfinder-1 image Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries is sharing some of the first pictures of Earth ever taken by its low-cost, high-resolution BlackSky Pathfinder-1 satellite and theyre spectacular. The roughly 100-pound (50-kilogram) Pathfinder-1 spacecraft was launched from Indias Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sept. 26 as a ride-share payload on a PSLV-C35 rocket. Spaceflight Industries says the satellite cost $10 million to build and launch, which is relatively cheap for orbital imaging capability. The Pathfinder-1 images released today confirm that the BlackSky concept works. The pictures provide breathtaking views of farms and industrial sites near Beijing, the suburbs surrounding Tokyo, and mountain ranges in China and Afghanistan. Each image spans an area measuring about 6 miles by 2 miles (10 by 3 kilometers), with a resolution of roughly 6 feet (2 meters) per pixel. As we continue to calibrate the system, our images will become even sharper, Jason Andrews, Spaceflight Industries CEO, said today in a blog posting. This first satellite is orbiting Earth at an altitude of 428 miles (690 kilometers). When BlackSkys commercial constellation of 60 satellites goes into operation, its expected to send back 1-meter-resolution pictures from a height of 280 miles (450 kilometers). We have proven out our overall business plan and system architecture, and are on track to revolutionize our understanding of the world, Andrews said in a news release. The BlackSky networks capability is due to double early next year when Pathfinder-2 is launched as a ride-share payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Spaceflight Industries aim is to provide on-demand images that can be delivered in as little as 90 minutes, at a cost of as little as $90 per image. Andrews has said widespread availability of Earth imagery could revolutionize endeavors including agriculture, urban planning, emergency response, humanitarian relief and environmental monitoring. Story continues Poking around the planet and looking at whatever you want, when you want, is a powerful thing, he said today. Here are a few more pictures from BlackSky Pathfinder-1. Click or tap on each image for a larger, higher-resolution version: Chinese mountain Pathfinder-1 view of Tokyo suburbs Pathfinder-1 view of Afghan mountains More from GeekWire: REUTERS - British insurer Standard Life said on Monday that India's insurance watchdog had "expressed reservations" in accepting the current deal terms for the purchase by its Indian joint venture of Max Life Insurance. In August HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co (HDFC Life) agreed to buy India's Max Life Insurance in an all-stock deal to create the nation's top private life insurer valued at nearly $10 billion. The deal is expected to kick-start consolidation in India's lucrative insurance sector where relatively few people hold insurance policies despite the country being the world's second-most populous nation of 1.3 billion. Standard Life said that Indian mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp, which currently owns a majority of HDFC Life, believes that the scheme of arrangement submitted to Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) complied with all applicable laws. The companies, which filed an application for IRDAI's in-principle approval for the scheme in September, propose to make suitable representations to the regulator, Standard Life said. The current terms of the deal involve Max Life being merged into its parent company Max Financial Services, which in turn would combine its entire life insurance business with HDFC Life. Analysts said regulators were likely to be focusing on the logistics of having an insurer merger with a non-insurer. The deal is set to give Max Financial Services' shareholders 2.33 shares of HDFC Life for every Max Financial share held. If it goes ahead, it would also give Standard Life about 24 percent of HDFC Life while Housing Development Finance Corp will own a 42.5 percent stake. Shares in Standard Life were up 1.23 percent at 368.1 pence at 0923 GMT on the London Stock Exchange. Max Financial Services and HDFC Ltd's stocks did not trade on Monday as Indian markets were closed. (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; editing by Pamela Barbaglia and Rachel Armstrong) One year on from a terrorist attack at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, France, Sting helped re-open the music venue with a sombre and emotional concert on Saturday. Indie rock band Eagles of Death Metal were in the middle of a sold-out gig at the venue on Nov. 13 last year when terrorists stormed the theater, taking concertgoers hostage and killing 89 people, including the group's merchandise manager Nick Alexander. WATCH: Paris Attacks: At Least 100 People Killed at Concert Hall "In re-opening the Bataclan, we have two important tasks to reconcile," Sting told the crowd in French, later writing in English on his Instagram page. "First, to remember and honor those who lost their lives in the attack a year ago, and second to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theater represents. In doing so we hope to respect the memory as well as the life-affirming spirit of those who fell. We shall not forget them." In re-opening the Bataclan, we have two important tasks to reconcile. First, to remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attack a year ago, and second to celebrate the life and the music that this historic theatre represents. In doing so we hope to respect the memory as well as the life affirming spirit of those who fell. We shall not forget them. A photo posted by Sting (@theofficialsting) on Nov 12, 2016 at 12:25pm PST The special concert took place on the eve of the first anniversary of the horrific attack. In between performing tracks from his new album, 57th & 9th, the 65-year-old music icon recited the words, "We will never forget," in French. In addition to performing his hit, "Message in a Bottle," Sting also dedicated "50,000," to legendary musicians who have died this year, including Leonard Cohen, Prince and David Bowie. NEWS: Sting to Play at Bataclan Theater Re-Opening One Year After Paris Terrorist Attack While reports have surfaced that two members of Eagles of Death Metal, including controversial frontman Jesse Hughes, were kicked out of the venue during the concert, the band's management have denied the claims. Story continues Mark Pollack of The MGMT Company told Billboard that Hughes' time in Paris was about "recalling the tragic loss of life that happened right in front of his eyes during his show," with friends, family and fans. "Jesse never even tried entering the club for Sting's show tonight," Pollack added. See more on the Paris terrorist attacks in the video below. Related Articles From Esquire (Optional Video Accompaniment To This Post) Maybe it's because I grew up at the tail end of the McCarthy Era and in the heart of the Cold War, and maybe because I spent 13 awful days in 1962 waiting for the missiles to fly, and maybe it's because I believe that, Tsarist or Communist or Kleptocracy, Russia behaves in pretty much the same way, but I honestly believe that this should be the only story dominating the news right now. At least, I think it warrants as much space in our various media as was devoted to the BREAKING NEWS about what John Podesta had for lunch last year. Per The Washington Post: The statement came from Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency that "there were contacts" with the Trump team. "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage," Ryabkov said. "We have just begun to consider ways of building dialogue with the future Donald Trump administration and channels we will be using for those purposes," Ryabkov was quoted as saying. Ryabkov provided no further details, and his remarks drew a swift denial from Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who said the campaign had "no contact with Russian officials" before Tuesday's election. Why in Christ's sweet name isn't this thundering through the news cycle right now? Why aren't hundreds of national-security reporters all over it? We have elected a guy who may well have traded what little integrity he has to a vicious autocrat and his thieves-in-law. (Note to anyone who takes exception: This is not "red-baiting" because these crooks are not Red.) We know he can't get a loan from most American banks, so he has to go overseas for a lot of his financing. What banks is he tied into, and are any of those banks tied into the Russian government? Whom does he owe and how much does he owe them? And how do they plan to collect? Story continues [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="GOP%20Plans%20to%20Gut%20Medicare%20and%20Blame%20Obama%20for%20It" customimages="" content="article.50589"] This is a monumental story, and it deserves a full airing before we swear this guy in. And it's only part of the unprecedented tangle of shadowy business dealings that will follow him into office. The president-elect also is the defendant in 75 different lawsuits of assorted kinds. He plans to put his assets into a "blind trust" that will be overseen byhis children. I know a lot of people are charmed by his reluctance to abide by traditional political norms and customs, but this is far beyond that. This is a guy toting a huge amount of baggage into the Oval Office and each piece of it contains a ticking time-bomb. The Russian business is perilous beyond words. But you can sense even now that our Fourth Estate is pushing it ever so gently in the direction of the same memory hole down which went Nixon's treasonous behavior as regards the Paris Peace Talks and the possibility that the Reagan campaign monkeywrenched the release of the hostages in Iran in 1980. The way this works is that the elite political media decides something is so unthinkable that the children-that's the rest of us-are too delicate to handle it. Well, kids, the unthinkable already has happened. You might as well cover it as fully as possible. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. You Might Also Like This Studio Ghibli director is coming out of retirement and its a huge deal Fans of all things animated and joyful in this life will be happy to learn that Studio Ghibilis Hayao Miyazaki is coming out of retirement to direct one last film. Miyazaki, who directed classic Ghibli films such as the brilliant Spirited Away, the wonderfully emotive My Neighbour Totoro, and Princess Mononoke, announced his retirement in 2013. Despite this, the animator, who turned 75 this year, came out of retirement last year to create a CGI animated short, Boro the Caterpillar (Kemushi no Boro), for the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. However, now the iconic animator and director has announced his plans to return to the world of Studio Ghibli for one last film and we couldnt be more excited! Speaking in a television special over the weekend, Miyazaki announced his plans to turn Boro the Caterpillar into a full length feature film, and it sounds wonderful. As Dazed and Confused report, Miyazaki was unhappy with the limitations of working on a short film, feeling that there was more story to tell. Described as a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers (too cute), its expected that the film will take Miyazaki up to five years to make, meaning that he could be 80 when the movie is released. Hayao Miyazaki In the documentary, The Man Who Is Not Done, Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki joked about Miyazakis dedication to animation. Miyazaki is a person who will keep making films until he dies, Suzuki said. Ghibli will continue as long as Miyazaki continues to make films. While no official confirmation about the film has been made, Miyazaki confessed that hed not even told his family. I havent said anything to my wife yet, he said. When I do, though, Im ready die in the middle (of production). Boro the Caterpillar would mark the first feature length film Miyazaki has worked on since 2013s World War II movie, The Wind Rises. Story continues Given the uplifting and emotional weight of Miyazakis films, we feel that the world is in desperate need of a new film by the iconic director and animator. We cant wait to see what he has in store for us with Boro the Caterpillar. The post This Studio Ghibli director is coming out of retirement and its a huge deal appeared first on HelloGiggles. For the first time ever, U.S. colleges, universities and employers hosted more than a million international students in a single academic year, according to a report released today. In 2015-2016, there were more than 1 million international students in the U.S. pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees, nondegree studies, such as intensive English programs, and practical training, per the 2016 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, an annual survey from the Institute of International Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. This is an increase of 7.1 percent from the previous year. Over the last decade, the overall number of international students in the U.S. has grown nearly 85 percent. [See national universities in the U.S. with a strong international student presence.] Despite that growth, international students only make up around 5 percent of all higher education students in the U.S., according to the report. Students come to the U.S. to study a variety of subjects, as illustrated below. But some of the most popular areas of study are those related to science, technology, engineering and math fields -- collectively known as STEM. More than one-third of all international students in the U.S. in 2015-2016 were studying engineering or math and computer science, the report shows. In all, 216,932 students were studying and training in engineering, a 10.3 percent increase from the previous year, and 141,651 students in math and computer science fields, a 25.4 percent year-over-year increase. [Explore U.S. News data on international students at U.S. colleges.] Engineering overtook business and management, the No. 1 field in 2014-2015, to become the most popular field of study among non-U.S. students. This growth in engineering was driven, in large part, by a sizable increase in students from India coming to the U.S., says Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice president for research and evaluation at IIE. In certain countries and cultures, such as India, "There's a certain premium and importance and prestige attached to the STEM fields as compared with, let's say, the social sciences or the humanities," she says. Story continues The number of Indian students in the U.S. rose 24.9 percent in 2015-2016, to 165,918 students. And a whopping 80.1 percent of the students from India that year studied subjects that IIE classifies as STEM fields -- engineering, health professions, math and computer science, and physical and life sciences. One such student is Karan Syal, a sixth-year doctoral student from Panjab, India, at Arizona State University studying biomedical engineering. His research focuses on antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a new device that will help health care providers identify them more quickly. He says in some ways, the U.S. feels comparable to India, which he says he's appreciated during his time here. "The countries are very similar in perspectives, people, the kind of cultures we have," he says. Syal earned his bachelor's and master's from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He says he was drawn to the U.S. for doctoral studies in part because of the structure of U.S. Ph.D. programs, which include a greater mix of coursework and research than programs in other countries he was familiar with. Another country that has, over the last few years, sent a number of STEM-interested students to the U.S. is Brazil. But there was an 18.2 percent decline in the number of international students from Brazil in 2015-2016, mostly because the government-sponsored Brazil Scientific Mobility Program is sending fewer students to the U.S. The scholarship program has over the last several years provided support to thousands of Brazilian STEM students for a year of study and internship abroad. [Learn how scholarships can help STEM majors pay for college.] An additional factor driving the increase in international STEM students in the U.S. is the 24-month extension of the optional practical training program, which went into effect earlier this year, Bhandari says. OPT allows international students to remain in the U.S. after they complete their studies for real-world training in fields related to their degree. A total of 147,498 international students participated in OPT in 2015-2016, an increase of 22.6 percent from the previous year. Though the idea of traveling to the U.S. for education as an international student can seem daunting at first, students like Syal and Junru Ren, a third-year computer engineering major at University of California--San Diego from China, say they have been able to connect with their U.S. campuses and communities. "I was really worried in terms of the challenges I'd face when I'm a long way from home and also in a total different culture," Ren says. But two-plus years into his degree program, he says his experience at UCSD has been "incredibly great." For more international student tips and news, explore the Studying in the U.S. center. Kelly Mae Ross is an education staff writer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at kross@usnews.com. By Ilona Wissenbach FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Europe's biggest sugar maker, Germany's Suedzucker (SZUG.DE), is considering acquisitions in Brazil, its chief executive told Reuters. Wolfgang Heer said Suedzucker had the financial power and know-how to make large acquisitions if required, which could be outside the European Union if necessary. "Naturally we are always examining projects for growth by acquisitions, not only for sugar," he told Reuters in an interview. Brazil is the world's largest sugar producer but extracts sugar from cane rather than beet, as is used in Europe. "Apart from the raw material being different, sugar production from cane or from beets is very similar," he said. Heer said that Europe's largest sugar refiner was experienced in production technology and that its agricultural raw materials experts would be able to cultivate sugar cane. "It must not necessarily be a takeover costing billions. I can achieve the same with a small takeover over a long period as with a large takeover," he added. Heer said he expects firm sugar prices in coming months. On Oct. 13, Suedzucker said rising sugar prices helped it post an 81 percent jump in first-half net profits in its 2016/17 financial year starting in March. Raw sugar futures hit a four-year high in October as lowered expectations for Indian production and a weak end to the cane processing season in Brazil lent support to talk of a potential global supply deficit. Analysts are forecasting a global supply deficit in the coming year, Heer told Reuters. "If you assume that the demand in the coming year will be higher than supplies, then the (sugar) price would hold," he said. "The world market price is definitively expected to rise rather than fall. This will support the price situation in the EU." The EU is liberalising its restrictive sugar market. EU sugar production quotas will be lifted after Sept. 30, 2017, and EU sugar producers will be able to export freely on the world market. The EU is now a net sugar importer. Story continues Suedzucker will use the new freedom to examine expanding sugar exports, Heer said. "Today we have an export share of less than 10 percent," he said. "We will expand our export volume when it is sensible from an economic viewpoint. But at the same time we do not want to give up market share in the EU." Traditional export markets for EU sugar include the Middle East, countries around the Mediterranean, Africa and South East Asia, he said. "There is also a supply deficit in the Philippines and possibilities in South Korea," the Suedzucker head added. (Writing by Michael Hogan, editing by Tina Bellon and David Evans) Disaffected white men living on the back roads of the Rust Belt are getting a lot of credit for propelling Donald Trump to the White House. Hillary Clinton is laying some of the blame for her loss on FBI Director James Comey and his controversial decision to send a cyptic letter to Congress 11 days before the election disclosing possible new developments in the investigation of her use of private email as Secretary of State. And whining protesters no doubt including some who decried Trumps refusal to say he would accept the results of the election -- are continuing their demonstrations against his head-snapping victory. Related: Did Third Party Candidates Help Sink Clintons Campaign? But the truth of the election is a lot more complicated than often-unpredictable white voters suddenly emerging in the heartland to back a candidate who for all his flaws they see as an agent of economic change. It also is a lot more complicated than Comeys red alert, later downgraded to a never mind on November 6. Yes, Trumps win is about white voters upset about being left behind. Still, you can make the case especially given the popular vote, which has Clinton ahead by almost 640,000 votes that Trump didnt win. It was Clinton who lost. And she lost because of a stew of reasons, including turnout, Obamas normalizing of relations with Cuba and maybe even the third-party candidacy of Jill Stein. Democrats have themselves to blame for not showing up to vote for Clinton, especially in places that turned out to be crucial like Cleveland and Detroit. If Trump had not won Florida and doesnt win Michigan, which still has not been officially called, he would not be president-elect. In Michigan, with 16 Electoral College votes, Trump is ahead by 0.3 percent or fewer than 12,000 votes. Related: Trump Awakens a Sleeping Giant: Record Turnout for Latino Voters In 2012, Barack Obama won Wayne County, which includes Detroit, with 595,253 votes. Clinton won Wayne County with 517.022 78,231 fewer than Obama. Those numbers reflect a weak turnout, especially by African Americans, despite the millions and millions spent by Democrats to mobilize voters. Story continues Had blacks turned out, Clinton would have won Michigan. Had even a fraction of the more than 50,000 votes for Green Party candidate Stein gone to Clinton, she would have won the state. In Florida, Clinton lost by 114,455 despite the fact that she won 278,000 more votes than Obama in 2012, according to Meet the Press. That reflects a surge in the Hispanic vote driven in part by an influx of Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida in search of jobs because of the economic crisis at home. But the majority of Cuban-Americans, especially in the Miami area, are thought to have voted for Trump. In 2012, the majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County, usually reliably Republican, voted for Obama over Mitt Romney 49-47 percent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Related: Why Puerto Ricans in Florida Could Decide the Election In Miami-Dade, which includes Miami, there are about 260,000 Cuban-Americans registered as Republicans. And turnout among them is as high as 80 to 90 percent. If 80 percent turned out and 49 percent voted for Clinton as they did for Obama in 2012, thats about 102,000 votes, putting her loss at fewer than 12,500, which under Florida law would probably have triggered a recount. What happened in between 2012 and 2016? Certainly part of the reason is Obamas detente with Castros Cuba, which didnt sit well with older Cuban-Americans. Mariano Martinez is a 70-year-old Realtor in Miami with deep ties to the Cuban-American community. Martinez, whose father was a successful businessman forced to leave Cuba and start over after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, said events like that remain with you and affect your political views. But it was more than his disgust with Obamas overtures to Cuba that drove Martinez, whom I have known for decades and who was friends with Bill Clinton when they were undergraduate classmates at Georgetown, to vote for Trump. He felt that Obamacare was a disaster, and he feared that Hillary Clinton would not boost the economy, would drive up the national debt and would take the country further left. Related: Trump Would Undo Obama's Cuba Moves Unless Religious Freedom Allowed Nothing is being done to fix the underlying economy, he said. To me, the economy was the centerpiece. Cuban-Americans in South Florida are divided in their loyalties, Martinez said, with older immigrants more likely to be Republican and newer arrivals more disposed toward Democrats. But while they are highly engaged, this year he said he saw a reluctance to display preferences, with few lawn signs and bumper stickers. Martinez watched the election closely: Over the course of the primaries and general election campaign, he and his wife would get together with five other couples to watch the debates over drinks and dinner. Trump has his issues, Martinez said. On Election Day, though, Martinez not a hugely religious person -- was so fearful of a Clinton victory and how it would affect his three children and six grandchildren that he went to church and knelt for an hour praying that Trump would win. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: So much for leaving without a trace. Everywhere we go, we slough off skin cells, leaving traces of ourselves and our habits the food we eat and the drugs we take, among other things on things we touch. It also means that unlocking these chemical trails from these common objects could be key to solving criminal cases in the future. Physical evidence is an important piece of an investigation, but two of the most common types of DNA and fingerprints could benefit from complementary forms of evidence, according to the team's study published Monday in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." DNA and fingerprints are often indispensable tools in determining the guilt or innocence of suspects and producing leads in investigations. But good samples of either may not always be available. In some cases there may not be enough DNA for a sample, or only a partial or smudged fingerprint at a crime scene. So lead author Amina Bouslimani and her colleagues say skin traces recovered from personal objects at a crime scene pens, keys, phones, etc. leave chemical trails that can help investigators understand a person's individual routine. These traces can reveal information on habits, lifestyle even medical conditions. The researchers swabbed the phones of 39 people for skin cells and used a technique called mass spectrometry to identify different molecules in the samples by their weight. They compared these measurements to references found in a database of molecular profiles, previously developed by two members of the research team. The skin cells offered all kinds of evidence. The team found medications such as anti-inflammatory and antifungal skin creams, hair loss treatments, antidepressants and eye drops. They found food traces of citrus, caffeine and various herbs and spices. Remarkably, the tests even found traces of sunscreen and DEET mosquito repellent months after those products had last been used by the phone owners. Story continues And the traces found on the phones corresponded with skin samples taken from the participants' hands. Compiling a full profile of all the molecules on a single object can say a lot about a person. "By analyzing the molecules they've left behind on their phones, we could tell if a person is likely female, uses high-end cosmetics, dyes her hair, drinks coffee, prefers beer over wine, likes spicy food, is being treated for depression, wears sunscreen and bug spray and therefore likely spends a lot of time outdoors all kinds of things," said Bouslimani, a post-doctoral researcher at Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Diego, in a press release. "This is the kind of information that could help an investigator narrow down the search for an object's owner." There are limitations, of course. People cannot be "matched" to this kind of evidence in the way they can be matched to fingerprints or DNA. But it could provide clues about a person in question. The team says that making this approach more feasible would require a much larger database of molecular information. Such databases could be used for everything from tracking terrorists to measuring the impact of pollutants to determining whether a patient is taking medication. More From CNBC London (AFP) - Prosecutors were questioning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London on Monday, the latest twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, due to be present while Assange faced a grilling by an Ecuadoran prosecutor, entered the embassy behind the famous Harrods department store shortly before 1000 GMT, an AFP photographer said. Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson said the questioning is expected to last several days at the embassy where the founder of the secret-spilling website has been holed up for four years, refusing to come out over fears he could be extradited to the United States. "I am very hopeful," Samuelsson told Sweden's TT news agency. "Objectively, there is no doubt that everything happened as Assange said it did." Assange, a 45-year-old Australian, sought refuge in the embassy in June 2012 after Sweden sought his arrest over allegations of rape and sexual assault. He has always denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated. The former computer hacker insists his sexual encounters with the two women, who he met on a 2010 trip to Sweden, were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he could be extradited over WikiLeaks' explosive release of 500,000 US secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. - 'Time for a trial' - A small group of protesters gathered outside the embassy to greet the prosecutors, waving banners reading "Free Assange" and "You Won't Stop WikiLeaks". "Freedom Loving People of the World Say Thank You Ecuador!" read another banner hung under the balcony from which Assange has sometimes addressed supporters. Story continues But Elisabeth Fritz, the lawyer for Assange's alleged victim, said: "My client has been waiting six years for justice... It is time for this to go to trial." She added in a statement: "We are expecting that the prosecutor will announce charges after this questioning and that these charges lead to a trial in a Swedish court." A Swedish police inspector was also due to attend the questioning and investigators planned to take a DNA sample from Assange, subject to his agreement. The grilling has been delayed in the past because of diplomatic disagreements between Ecuador and Sweden, making this the first time Assange has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Speaking through his lawyer, Assange has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. - Petition for Trump 'pardon' - In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on President-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" -- an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 17,700 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. Later on Monday WikiLeaks said Samuelsson had not been summoned to attend Assange's questioning, blaming Sweden for "irregularities with procedure". "For the first time since August 2010, Mr. Assange was finally able to give his statement in relation to this allegation. "He has done so in part to ensure the Swedish authorities have no further excuse not to discontinue their preliminary investigation," WikiLeaks said in a statement, adding that Assange fully cooperated with the process. The grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Trump defeat Clinton in a stunning upset. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the Clinton leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states. Geneva (AFP) - Switzerland will return to Egypt an ancient stela stolen from a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, Geneva's public prosecutor said on Monday. The stone slab bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt. "During an inventory control in the Geneva free economic zone at the end of 2014, the federal customs identified... a granite engraving of unknown origin and alerted Geneva police, who opened a criminal case," the public prosecutor said. Egyptologist Philippe Collombert from the University of Geneva examined the artefact and it was traced to the Isis temple near the towns of Sebennytos and Mansoura in the Nile delta, the statement said. Investigators compared photographs taken by French archeologist Christine Favard Meeks at the site in the 1970s to more recent ones which "established without any doubt that the granite engraving was stolen from" Behbeit El Hagar. The tablet will shortly be handed over to Egyptian authorities. The Iseion was one of the major centres of the Isis cult in antiquity, comparable to those in the temple complexes at Philae and Abydos in Upper Egypt. Isis was venerated as the goddess of health, marriage and wisdom. She was the consort of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and the underworld. Egypt has been campaigning to have many precious artefacts housed in European museums that it considers stolen to be returned, such as the Nefertiti Bust in Berlin. Offices across the country are filled with political talk right now, as people digest last week's election results and speculate on what the country can expect from the new presidential administration and Republican-controlled Congress. It's possible to have interesting, productive political conversations with your co-workers ... but it's also possible to cross lines, cause tension and even harm your work relationships, so you need to proceed with caution. Here's how you can discuss politics at work without being a jerk. [See: 10 Things They Don't Tell You About Your First Job.] First and foremost, respect that not everyone wants to talk about politics at work. You might be itching to debate the merits of the electoral college or speculate on what will happen in the next congressional session, but not everyone wants to have those conversations, particularly at work. Some people may be deliberately trying to get away from political talk, others may be uncomfortable sharing personal viewpoints with their employer and still others may just want to work in peace. So if you notice your co-worker isn't engaging in the conversation with you or is actively trying to change the subject, don't ignore those cues. An awful lot of people don't want to talk politics with co-workers, and in the interest of office harmony -- and basic decency -- you should respect those preferences. Be aware of trapped bystanders who might not appreciate the conversation, as well. If you're having a spirited political debate with a colleague, have some empathy for the person whose desk you're lingering near. Being trapped near co-workers who won't drop the political discussions is plenty of people's idea of hell, to say nothing of how hard it can make it for them to concentrate on work. [See: Don't Be That Guy (or Gal): 8 Networking Turn-Offs.] Accept that in the aftermath of last week's election, some of your co-workers may be grieving. Many people whose candidate didn't win have serious worries about what the results will mean for their own lives (including in regard to things like health care) and the lives of those they care about. Whether or not you think their concerns are founded, this is not the time to try to prod or provoke people. Be respectful and sensitive to the depth of feelings that many people have about last week's results. Story continues Be respectful. If you want to talk about the election with co-workers who have different beliefs than you, make your goal to educate and understand -- not to persuade or harangue (and definitely not to gloat or demonize). If you don't think your co-worker's political beliefs are deserving of your respect, take that as a sign that you shouldn't be engaging in the conversation at work at all. After all, to do your job well, you need to maintain pleasant and respectful relationships with colleagues -- and your colleagues deserve to be able to come to work without being harassed about their beliefs. [See: 8 Things You Really Need to Know About the Family and Medical Leave Act.] Don't assume that other people share your political beliefs. Even if your office seems relatively homogeneous, your co-workers' political beliefs may not be. Assuming that you know someone's political viewpoints is a really good way to offend, alienate or marginalize your co-workers. And while you might think it should be no big deal for the person to speak up and correct you, some people may not be comfortable doing that, especially if doing so would mean that they would out themselves as a political minority in your office. Try to seek common ground. If you find yourself in a conversation with a colleague whose views are quite different from your own, things will likely go better if you assume that the other person cares deeply about the country's future and the well-being of future generations. Saying that out loud can help keep things from becoming contentious -- as in, "I know we both want the best future for our country. We just disagree about how to get there." If you don't want to talk politics at work, be forthright about setting and enforcing that boundary with your co-workers. You can simply say, "I'd rather not discuss politics at work" or "We look at these issues differently, and I'd rather keep politics out of our work relationship." And if all else fails, this may be a good month to wear headphones. More From US News & World Report * Mistry ousted as Tata Sons chairman in board coup last month * Tata drags shareholders of group cos into fight against Mistry (Adds details from source on board meeting discussions, background) By Aditi Shah and Promit Mukherjee MUMBAI, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The independent directors of Tata Motors gave board Chairman Cyrus Mistry a tacit nod on Monday, but stopped short of an outright endorsement, or picking sides in the power struggle within India's largest conglomerate. In a vaguely worded release late on Monday, the independent directors of Tata Motors - owner of luxury automaker Jaguar Land Rover - backed Mistry's and company management's strategy saying that all decisions taken by the board of Tata Motors on strategy and operations had been "unanimous" and executed by the chairman and the management. Mistry was ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding firm that steers the $100 billion steel-to-software Tata empire, last month. Mistry has since been in a bitter public spat with Tata Sons and Tata family patriarch Ratan Tata, who has returned as interim chair of the group. Tata Sons blamed Mistry's ouster on what it called a "breach of trust" and poor performance. Mistry in turn has faulted Tata Sons for poor governance structures and blamed Ratan Tata for many of the conglomerate's legacy issues. The independent directors of Tata Motors did not give Mistry a unanimous public endorsement though, and opted to avoid taking sides in the feud. A source close to Tata Sons told Reuters that an independent director brought forward a resolution at the Tata Motors board meeting on Monday, seeking to endorse Mistry in a similar manner as two other Tata group company boards, Indian Hotels and Tata Chemicals, had done earlier this month. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the resolution was opposed by another independent director and the guarded statement that was later issued was a "compromise." The source admitted that the outcome however, was a setback for Tata Sons, which has already called for a number of special shareholder meetings to oust Mistry entirely from some of its group company boards. Story continues Representatives for both Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry were not immediately reachable for comment. Mistry remains chair of several major Tata group companies including Tata Motors and Tata Steel. And despite his ouster as chair, Mistry remains a board member in Tata Sons, by virtue of his family's 18.41 percent stake in the holding firm. Tata Sons is roughly two-thirds controlled by Tata Trusts, a group of philanthropic foundations led by Ratan Tata. The group last week axed Mistry as chair of Tata Consultancy Services, a company in which Tata Sons owns an over 70 percent stake. But it has struggled to get him out from other subsidiaries where it only owns minority stakes. The Tata Motors board met on Monday primarily to discuss the automaker's quarterly results. The company posted a net profit of 8.48 billion rupees ($125 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30. That compared with a net loss of 17.40 billion rupees in the same period last year. Tata Global Beverages, will be the next company in the Tata conglomerate to report results this week. The board of Tata Global Beverages, which co-owns and runs Starbucks coffee stores across India, is set to meet on Tuesday. Mistry is also chairman of the Tata Global Beverages board. (Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Grant McCool) The bulk of the third-quarter earnings season is behind us with 455 S&P 500 members, representing 91% of the indexs total market capitalization, having already reported their results. As of Nov 11, total earnings of these companies are up 3.9% on a year-over-year basis (72.7% of the companies beat EPS estimates) while total revenue is up 2.7% on a year-over-year basis (55.4% of the companies beat top-line estimates). The earnings recession is expected to end in the third quarter with positive growth arriving ahead of schedule. The third quarter can be interpreted as an inflection point where the growth trend is finally shifting from the negative territory to the positive territory. Notably, after five consecutive quarters of decline, earnings are finally back in the positive territory and the overall picture is that of improvement. Moreover, the proportion of companies beating both the topline and the bottomline estimates are modestly tracking above historical periods. As per our latest Earnings Preview report, overall third-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are anticipated to be up 3.4% (compared to an earlier estimate of a rise of 3.3%) from the year-ago quarter on revenues that are estimated to increase 1.5%. While solid results from the finance sector buoyed the index higher, sluggish growth from the energy, autos, transportation and technology sectors was a drag. Coming to the technology sector, overall earnings are up 4.5% and margins are marginally higher at 0.9%. Here we take a look at three technology companies that are set to report their quarterly earnings on Nov 15: Diebold Inc DBD is unlikely to beat third-quarter 2016 estimates as it has an unfavorable combination of a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) and an Earnings ESP of 0.00%.You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter. This is because, as per our proven model, a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1(Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to beat earnings. We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Strong Sell) going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions. Story continues Diebold develops, manufactures, sells and services automated teller machines, electronic and physical security systems, various products used to equip bank facilities, software and integrated systems for global financial and commercial markets. During the last quarter, the company acquired Wincor Nixdorf, which is likely to bolster the companys capability of providing customized solutions for the financial and retail industries and have a positive impact in the to-be reported quarter. However, macroeconomic conditions and regulatory changes remain matter of concerns ahead of the results. DIEBOLD INC Price and EPS Surprise DIEBOLD INC Price and EPS Surprise | DIEBOLD INC Quote We note that Diebolds results compared favorably with the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two out of the last four quarters, resulting in an average positive surprise of 1.19%. Similarly, Stratasys Ltd. SSYS too is unlikely to beat third-quarter 2016 estimates as it has an unfavorable combination of a Zacks Rank #1 and an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. Stratasys operates as a manufacturer of 3D printers and materials. The company's systems are used by manufacturers to create models and prototypes to aid in the new product design process. During the last quarter, the company demonstrated its capabilities in next generation 3D printing technology for achieving enhanced performance and production. Moreover, recently Stratasys entered into a new strategic partnership with Schneider Electric per which the French multi-national company will incorporate the 3D printing companys technology into its manufacturing processes. While such developments augur well for the company, fast changing technology, pricing pressure and competition might pose a concern in the to-be reported quarter. STRATASYS LTD Price and EPS Surprise STRATASYS LTD Price and EPS Surprise | STRATASYS LTD Quote Notably, Stratasys results have beaten the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the preceding four quarters with an average positive surprise of 65.45%. Last but not the least, MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings Inc. MTSI too is unlikely to beat fourth-quarter fiscal 2016 estimates as it has an unfavorable combination of an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3.You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. MACOM Technology provides analog semiconductor solutions for use in wireless and wireline applications across the RF, microwave and millimeterwave spectrum. The company's primary markets are Networks, which includes CATV, cellular backhaul, cellular infrastructure and fiber optic applications, A&D and Multi-market, which includes automotive, industrial, medical, mobile and scientific applications. During the last quarter, the company introduced new transmitter/receiver solutions for short reach applications and added two new wideband amplifiers to its high-performance MMIC portfolio. Although the introduction of such leading technologies remain positives for the company, growing competition in the primary markets namely, networks, optical networks and others remain a concern in the to-be reported quarter. MA-COM TECH SOL Price and EPS Surprise MA-COM TECH SOL Price and EPS Surprise | MA-COM TECH SOL Quote Notably, MACOM Technologys results have beaten the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the preceding four quarters. It has an average four-quarter negative surprise of 7.49%. Zacks' Best Investment Ideas for Long-Term Profit Today you can gain access to long-term trades with double and triple-digit profit potential rarely available to the public. Starting now, you can look inside our stocks under $10, home run and value stock portfolios, plus more. Want a peek at this private information? Click here >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report DIEBOLD INC (DBD): Free Stock Analysis Report STRATASYS LTD (SSYS): Free Stock Analysis Report MA-COM TECH SOL (MTSI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Second Quarter and Year-to-Date Net Income More than Doubles Year-over-Year WESTMINSTER, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 14, 2016 / TechPrecision Corporation (TPCS) ("TechPrecision" or "the Company"), an industry leading manufacturer of precision, large-scale fabricated and machined metal components and tested systems with customers in the defense, energy and precision industrial sectors, today reported financial results for the second quarter period of fiscal year 2017, the period ended September 30, 2016. Second Quarter Recap "This was another quarter of operational and financial progress as we delivered a profit for our sixth consecutive quarter," stated Alexander Shen, TechPrecision's Chief Executive Officer. "We more than doubled net income as we continue to benefit from our consistent sharp focus on productivity initiatives and top line growth with key customers. This progress has enabled us to improve our balance sheet, as we reported $2.8 million in cash and $2.4 million in working capital at September 30, 2016, both significantly improved compared to March 31, 2016 levels." "Moving forward, we intend to maintain the sharp focus that led us to this point of our recovery," continued Mr. Shen. "We continue to replenish our backlog, focusing on new business contracts with our core customers that utilize our core competencies in custom, large scale, high precision fabrication and machining, and leverage our established expertise, certifications, and qualifications in the defense, nuclear and precision industrial sectors." "We continue to maintain a healthy backlog, which was $18.1 million at October 31, 2016 compared to $19.8 million at March 31, 2016, as demand for our expertise within the defense, nuclear and precision industrial markets remains strong," added Mr. Shen. Second Quarter of Fiscal 2017 Financial Results Net sales were $3.7 million compared to $4.1 million the same quarter a year ago, a decrease due to the uneven timing of shipments. Gross profit was $1.5 million compared to $1.4 million in the same quarter last year. Gross margins improved in the second quarter of fiscal 2017 due to a higher margin product mix. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by approximately 19%, or $170,000, to $740,000 in the second quarter of fiscal 2017 from $910,000 in the same quarter last year primarily due to reduced headcount and related costs to exit leased office space. Net income of $546,000 increased significantly compared to net income of $255,000 in the same quarter a year ago. Story continues Six Months Year-to-Date Financial Results Net sales decreased 2%, or $178,000, to $8.3 million from $8.5 million in the year-ago six-month period. Increases in net sales to defense and precision industrial customers were slightly offset by lower revenue in the energy sector. Cost of sales decreased 9%, or $497,000, to $5.3 million compared to $5.8 million in the year-ago six-month period. Gross profit in the first six months of fiscal 2017 was $3.0 million compared to $2.7 million in the first six months of fiscal 2016. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by approximately 5%, or $86,000, to $1.6 million in the first six months of fiscal 2017, down from $1.7 million in the same six-month period last year. Interest expense decreased by approximately 27%, or $140,000, to $376,000 in the first six months of fiscal 2017, down from $516,000 in the same six-month period last year. Net income was $991,000 for the first six months of fiscal 2017 compared to net income of $461,000 in the first six months of fiscal 2016. Balance Sheet Summary At September 30, 2016, TechPrecision had working capital of $2.4 million compared to working capital of $1.9 million and $0.5 million at June 30, 2016 and March 31, 2016, respectively. The Company had $2.8 million in cash at September 30, 2016 compared to $1.3 million at March 31, 2016 and generated $1.4 million of cash from operations for the first six months of fiscal 2017 compared to $0.8 million in fiscal 2016. Teleconference Information The Company will hold a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern (U.S.) time on November 14, 2016. To participate in the live conference call, please dial 1-800-894-5910 five to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled conference call time. International callers should dial 1-785-424-1052. When prompted, reference Conference ID: TECH. A replay will be available until December 14, 2016. To access the replay, dial 1-877-481-4010 or 1-919-882-2331. When prompted, enter Conference Passcode 10141. The call will also be available live by webcast at TechPrecision Corporation's website, www.techprecision.com, and will also be available over the Internet and accessible at http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=175449. About TechPrecision Corporation TechPrecision Corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Ranor, Inc. and Wuxi Critical Mechanical Components Co., Ltd., manufactures large-scale, metal fabricated and machined precision components and equipment. These products are used in a variety of markets including: defense, aerospace, nuclear, industrial, and medical. TechPrecision's goal is to be an end-to-end service provider to its customers by furnishing customized and integrated "turn-key" solutions for completed products requiring custom fabrication and machining, assembly, inspection and testing. To learn more about the Company, please visit the corporate website at http://www.techprecision.com. Information on the Company's website or any other website does not constitute a part of this press release. Safe Harbor Statement This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of the Company and its subsidiary companies. These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including the availability of appropriate financing facilities, the Company's ability to receive contract awards through competitive bidding processes, the Company's ability to maintain standards to enable it to manufacture products to exacting specifications, the Company's ability to enter new markets for its services, market and customer acceptance of the Company's products, the Company's reliance on a small number of customers for a significant percentage of its business, competition, government regulations and requirements, pricing and development difficulties, the Company's ability to make acquisitions and successfully integrate those acquisitions with its business, general industry and market conditions and growth rates, general economic conditions, and other risks discussed in the Company's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) and available on the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or to persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this press release, except as required by applicable law. Company Contact: Mr. Thomas Sammons Chief Financial Officer TechPrecision Corporation Phone: 978-883-5109 Email: sammonst@ranor.com Website: www.techprecision.com Investor Relations Contact: Hayden IR Brett Maas Phone: 646-536-7331 Email: brett@haydenir.com Website: www.haydenir.com TECHPRECISION CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (Unaudited) September 30, 2016 March 31, 2016 ASSETS Current assets: Cash $ 2,838,328 $ 1,332,166 Accounts receivable, less allowance for doubtful accounts of $0 at September 30, 2016 and March 31, 2016 904,461 2,022,480 Costs on uncompleted contracts, in excess of progress billings 2,155,211 2,395,642 Inventories - raw materials 125,590 128,595 Other current assets 378,747 530,808 Total current assets 6,402,337 6,409,691 Property, plant and equipment, net 4,575,552 4,814,184 Deferred income taxes 684,270 684,270 Other noncurrent assets, net 177,163 176,344 Total assets $ 11,839,322 $ 12,084,489 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY: Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 589,602 $ 996,065 Accrued expenses 1,604,516 1,804,485 Income taxes payable 29,990 9,032 Advanced claims payment 507,835 507,835 Billings on uncompleted contracts, in excess of related costs 683,660 1,629,018 Current portion of long-term debt 615,948 953,106 Total current liabilities 4,031,551 5,899,541 Long-term debt, net 4,354,839 3,735,410 Deferred income taxes 684,270 684,270 Noncurrent accrued expenses 27,419 37,097 Stockholders' Equity: Common stock - par value $.0001 per share, 90,000,000 shares authorized, 27,324,593 shares issued and outstanding at September 30, 2016, and 27,324,593 shares issued and outstanding at March 31, 2016 2,732 2,732 Additional paid in capital 7,117,659 7,094,749 Accumulated other comprehensive income 20,345 21,568 Accumulated deficit (4,399,493 ) (5,390,878 ) Total stockholders' equity 2,741,243 1,728,171 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 11,839,322 $ 12,084,489 TECHPRECISION CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (Unaudited) Three Months Ended September 30, Six Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 2016 2015 Net sales $ 3,656,163 $ 4,103,887 $ 8,300,968 $ 8,478,862 Cost of sales 2,182,547 2,696,333 5,291,959 5,788,449 Gross profit 1,473,616 1,407,554 3,009,009 2,690,413 Selling, general and administrative 739,585 910,038 1,627,763 1,714,245 Income from operations 734,031 497,516 1,381,246 976,168 Other income 6,822 1,255 7,568 1,066 Interest expense (183,268 ) (244,179 ) (376,478 ) (516,301 ) Interest income 2 14 7 24 Total other expense, net (176,444 ) (242,910 ) (368,903 ) (515,211 ) Income before income taxes 557,587 254,606 1,012,343 460,957 Income tax expense 11,505 - 20,958 - Net income $ 546,082 $ 254,606 $ 991,385 $ 460,957 Other comprehensive income, before tax: Foreign currency translation adjustments (281 ) 1,413 (1,223 ) 1,352 Other comprehensive income, before tax (281 ) 1,413 (1,223 ) 1,352 Income tax expense on other comprehensive income - - - - Other comprehensive income, net of tax (281 ) 1,413 (1,223 ) 1,352 Comprehensive income $ 545,801 $ 256,019 $ 990,162 $ 462,309 Net income per share (basic) $ 0.02 $ 0.01 $ 0.04 $ 0.02 Net income per share (diluted) $ 0.02 $ 0.01 $ 0.04 $ 0.02 Weighted average number of shares outstanding (basic) 27,324,593 26,113,433 27,324,593 25,460,435 Weighted average number of shares outstanding (diluted) 28,020,795 26,257,402 27,936,098 25,503,542 TECHPRECISION CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited) Six Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES Net income $ 991,385 $ 460,957 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation 353,488 393,119 Amortization of debt issue costs 90,049 153,589 Stock based compensation expense 22,910 41,227 Provision for contract losses (40,532 ) 20,371 Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable 1,118,019 7,915 Costs on uncompleted contracts, in excess of progress billings 240,431 534,207 Inventories raw materials 3,005 (15,821 ) Other current assets 152,051 (4,757 ) Other noncurrent assets (819 ) - Accounts payable (406,463 ) (846,386 ) Accrued expenses (170,369 ) 68,298 Accrued taxes 20,958 - Advanced claims payment - 507,835 Billings on uncompleted contracts, in excess of related costs (945,358 ) (527,667 ) Net cash provided by operating activities 1,428,755 792,887 CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES Purchases of property, plant and equipment (114,856 ) (17,600 ) Net cash used in investing activities (114,856 ) (17,600 ) CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES Deferred loan costs (145,995 ) - Borrowings of long-term debt 3,011,648 - Repayment of long-term debt (2,673,432 ) (466,740 ) Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities 192,221 (466,740 ) Effect of exchange rate on cash 42 (259 ) Net increase in cash 1,506,162 308,288 Cash, beginning of period $ 1,332,166 $ 1,336,325 Cash, end of period $ 2,838,328 $ 1,644,613 SOURCE: TechPrecision Corporation From Cosmopolitan A Redding, California, high school student is in trouble for handing out deportation notices to classmates of different ethnicities, the Record Searchlight reports. Shasta High Schools principal said the papers were an inside joke among friends. Shasta Union High School District Superintendent Jim Cloney couldnt confirm whether the notices were related to the results of the election (Donald Trump is going to be President, BTW, and the increase in racist and sexist rhetoric happened immediately), but I guess it would be hard to say it wasnt as they were handed out the day after. Principal Leo Perez said the students involved are all friends and the act was meant as a joke. According to KRCR TV, the student filmed himself handing the notices out to others and posted the video to Twitter and Snapchat, captioned with comments like got him and another french one - the footage has since been removed. Photo credit: Screengrab via KRCR TV The school hasnt specified how the situation will be handled, but Cloney told the Record Searchlight We take issues around racial and cultural insensitivity very seriously. Follow Tess on Twitter. You Might Also Like From Cosmopolitan The body of missing 16-year-old Kirsten Fritch was found in Texas City, Texas, on Thursday in the wooded area behind a local bar, KHOU reports. Fritchs boyfriend, 21-year-old Jesse Dobbs, had been arrested outside the same bar on Wednesday. Fritchs mother, Cynthia Morris, 37, and her sister Breanna Pavlicek, 13, were found dead of gunshot wounds in their home on Tuesday. When authorities discovered their bodies - and that Fritchs car was missing from home - they issued an Amber Alert. According to The Houston Chronicle, Fritchs body had most likely been in the woods for more than 24 hours by the time it was discovered. At the time of his arrest, Dobbs was charged with resisting arrest. The Baytown police department said in a press conference they are looking to add murder charges, though its unclear if he will be charged for all three womens deaths, or just his girlfriends. He is a suspect in all three homicide investigations. Regardless, Click2Houston.com reports it will take time before the official charges come through: We are essentially working two scenes and two cases that are effectively linked together and we want to make sure we have everything right," Lieutenant Steve Dorris said. He added police are looking for a gun, though he did not specify whether Fritchs corpse had gunshot wounds as well. Fritchs grandmother Barbara DeRamus told KHOU she believes Dobbs murdered her entire family. Fritch and Dobbs met online earlier this year and Dobbs moved into the family home a few weeks ago. DeRamus says Morris wanted him out of her house: "He just seemed like a lowlife. I thought what was Kirsten doing with this idiot. Dobbs is being held on $50,000 bond. Follow Tess on Twitter. You Might Also Like Students from Baylor University mobilized after a classmate was harassed on her way to class on November 9, a day after the presidential election. Natasha Nkhama posted a video on Facebook saying what a man told her: No niggers on the sidewalk. This guy went out of his way to bump into me, sort of shoved me out of the sidewalk, and said: No niggers allowed on the sidewalk, Nkhama said on a live stream video posted to her Facebook page. The video was shared by her friend Jaileene Maite on Twitter and caused outrage. Students created the hashtag #IWalkWithNatasha and gathered on Friday at the university to protest racism. Bailey University released a statement condemning racist behavior and supporting the student. Im hearing a lot of support, but Im also very sad, Nkhama told Storyful. Ive heard about other cases across the country. I hope those people are feeling the same support that I had. Credit: Facebook/Natasha Nkhama via Storyful Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States rose by 67 percent in 2015, according to an FBI crime report released Monday. Gwen Ifill, the American journalist who worked for PBS since 1999, died Monday of cancer. She was 61. President Obama kicks off his final major foreign-policy trip tonight, leaving Washington for Athens. He will visit Berlin and Lima later this week, where hes expected to try to reassure leaders surprised by the unexpected election of Donald Trump. Were live-blogging the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5). Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Miami (AFP) - Traces of skin, oil and grime left on your phone can reveal a lot about your lifestyle, and may some day serve as a "fingerprint" in criminal investigations, researchers said Monday. The study involved 39 volunteers who allowed scientists to swab their smart phones -- and right hands -- in several places. Researchers found a bounty of chemical information left behind on the devices. These included anti-inflammatory and anti-fungal skin creams, hair loss treatments, anti-depressants and eye drops, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They also found food molecules from citrus, caffeine, herbs and spices. Sunscreen ingredients and DEET mosquito repellant were detected months after they had last been used by the phone owners. "By analyzing the molecules they've left behind on their phones, we could tell if a person is likely female, uses high-end cosmetics, dyes her hair, drinks coffee, prefers beer over wine, likes spicy food, is being treated for depression, wears sunscreen and bug spray -- and therefore likely spends a lot of time outdoors -- all kinds of things," said study co-author Amina Bouslimani of the University of California, San Diego. "This is the kind of information that could help an investigator narrow down the search for an object's owner." Other applications could include criminal profiling, airport screening, medication adherence monitoring, and environmental exposure studies. "You can imagine a scenario where a crime scene investigator comes across a personal object -- like a phone, pen or key -- without fingerprints or DNA, or with prints or DNA not found in the database," said senior author Pieter Dorrestein, of the San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "They would have nothing to go on to determine who that belongs to. So we thought -- what if we take advantage of left-behind skin chemistry to tell us what kind of lifestyle this person has?" The study was considered a "proof of concept" exercise, and more work is needed to refine the techniques for widespread use. For now, the approach can only provide a general profile of person's lifestyle, not a one-to-one match. Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Comedy Central Trevor Noahs book is nothing like the usual celebrity collection of essays, even though his wry comic voice, familiar from The Daily Show, is easily recognizable. In the eye-opening Born a Crime, he writes about growing up in South Africa under apartheid. His mother is black, his father white, and his very existence evidence of racial mixing that was then illegal. Noah was 6 when the laws began to loosen, and 10 when democracy arrived, in 1994. With a droll sense of absurdity, he recalls his boyhood. While visiting his grandmother in Soweto, he was forbidden to leave the yard; she feared, with good reason, that as a conspicuously mixed-race child he might have been snatched by the authorities and sent to an orphanage. His fiercely independent mother emerges as the books heroine. She raised him on her own, although Trevor spent Sunday afternoons with his dad. His mother later endured an abusive marriage to a man who shot her in the face. Related: Fall Reading List: 16 TV-Themed Books The book ends as Noahs career in standup is beginning. It doesnt address The Daily Show, which he took over from Jon Stewart last year. Reviews and ratings were and still are underwhelming, but the audience is growing, and the show does well in its most desirable demographic, young men. Yahoo TV talked to Noah the day before the presidential election; like most late-night hosts, he now seems shocked at Donald Trumps victory. He brings a unique experience of race to the conversation. One startling thing about the book is that most of us dont imagine that somebody who is 32 years old would have grown up under apartheid. It seems so far away. It really does. Its one of those stories in time where you feel like it happened ages ago and then you realize no, it just happened now. When you first moved to the U.S. in 2011, what was the biggest difference you saw in race relations here? The biggest difference I saw was how below the surface it was. Obviously now in just the space of a year through the Trump campaign, weve seen an explosion. But I was shocked by people using code words and innuendo when speaking about race or trying to imply racism. It was a really interesting dynamic Ive never experienced before. In South Africa, we come from such a blatant place both in terms of policy and people that there was no one who was denying it and no one who tried to hide what it was. Story continues Did that change start happening before this past year, or is it all about the Trump campaign, do you think? Look, weve always known racism has been around. But you cannot deny that in the last year alone, we have seen an explosion. Just the brazen nature with which people express their racism now, its quite a thing. Not just Trump supporters. Im talking about governors or mayors. And youre like how is this allowed? But you realize when youre in a world where the person who is way closer than they should be to being the president of the United States says it, then why would anyone whos below that position feel they have to hide the fact that they are racist? Your mother has an incredible sense of humor. You write about how she was meant to bow down to her husband at the time, and she bowed so low that she was making fun of the gesture. You describe her approach as Dont fight the system, mock the system. Is that what youre doing on The Daily Show? I believe thats the role of any comedian or any commentator in the world of satire. You are mocking the system, and you use that mockery to poke holes in the fallacies and the lack of logic. Laughter is a very undermining thing. When something is laughed at, it does not maintain the same status it may have possessed before. Did you inherit your mothers sense of humor? Definitely. I inherited my mothers sense of humor in terms of her physicality and her boisterousness and her silliness. But I also inherited my fathers dry sense of humor, so I do have a mix. It depends on which day you meet me, and it depends on what Im feeling like. Some people only know me as a fairly dry comedian and sarcastic. Some people think of me as being all about impersonating and being physical. And my grandfather was a big storyteller. All those people influenced how I see humor. Trevor Noah- Born A Crime In one funny, outrageous section, you write about your friend as a teenager, whose first name was Hitler. You explain that is not an unusual name in South Africa. You DJd with a dance group and Hitler was the star. You truly did not understand why performing and chanting Go Hitler in a school auditorium full of Jewish kids got you thrown out. How did you go from there to doing pointed political satire today? I think it was traveling the world and existing beyond my bubble. In the U.S. people use the word Hitler for everything. Theyll say, Youre a grammar Nazi and Youre a soup Nazi. We dont say that. I grew up with Jewish kids, I knew who Hitler was, but its a name. Growing up in South Africa we had many people named after the fathers of apartheid. We hated the people for what they had done, but it wasnt the name that made them do it. The U.K. was the first place where I had an experience. Because of their history they have a deep connection to World War II, and every British comedian has a joke about Hitler. So when I traveled there, I begin to realize oh, wow. What part of the book was the most difficult to write or the most painful to look back on? It was definitely the stories of growing up in a household of violence. A lot of the time we try to get over issues as quickly as possible, and writing a book forces you to live in those moments way longer than you would like. Having to talk about my mother being abused and shot those are not easy things to get through even if youve gone over them many times in your head. The Daily Show ratings have been going up, and October was your best month so far. What are your plans postelection to try to keep that momentum? Im hoping that Ill be able to expand the variety of the show in terms of talking about more international stories, and have conversations about social issues beyond war, politics, and policy. And I think in time, we will grow with the audience. Thats really what a daily show is about. It doesnt matter which show you are on, whether its Ellen or Kimmel. Youre building a relationship every single day. What are some of the social concerns youd like to explore? Something around education, for instance. Im a huge believer that education is one of the biggest reasons we have a lot of issues in society, everything from domestic abuse to injustice in general. Look at voting. The way a lot of people vote is divided along the lines of how theyre educated. Its tough to have conversations where you see eyetoeye when one group is seeing things through the lens of being uneducated or misinformed. If were all informed, there is a good chance we will all be trying to get to the same place. But now were living in a world where some people dont even believe that global warming is a real thing. Theres people who dont even know that slavery was that bad. How have you have changed and made adjustments in the time youve been doing the show? Ive gotten more and more confident in the idea that I am going to share my point of view. I dont exist in a space of knowing; I exist in a space of wanting to know. Thats how I approach life. I think initially I was afraid to embrace that, because youre seeing Jon Stewart and everyones telling you how this guy was the most trusted man in America, and youre taking that position. Everyones saying to you, Hey, how are you going to have that levity? Then you realize you cant have it. That is something thats built over time. Once I realized that I was, like just be truthful to yourself and go with it. Im not here because I have the answers. Im here because I like to ask the questions and I believe that I can ask the right questions. If you can exist as always trying to learn, thats where you experience the most growth. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood goes on sale Tuesday, Nov. 15. The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. We have witnessed in recent years the emergence of technology start-up ecosystems across the world. New technology trends are reducing the costs as well as the barriers of access to markets and resources for developing technology start-ups. If in the 1990s an entrepreneur needed $2 million and months of work to develop a minimum viable prototype, today she would need less than $50,000 and six weeks of work. Entrepreneurs are also surging in emerging economies. India hosts major start-up ecosystems in New Delhi and Bangalore, with their start-ups having raised $1.5 billion in funding in 2016, respectively. Sao Paulo ranks among the top 20 start-up ecosystems with more than 1,500 active start-ups, closely followed in the region by Santiago and Buenos Aires. Warsaw hosts around 700 active start-ups, and Nairobi is the home of leading African start-ups, such as Ushahidi, M-Pesa or Brck. Tech start-up ecosystems present new opportunities for emerging economies. Local entrepreneurs develop new business solutions that address domestic demands. For instance, in Kenya, M-Kopa is addressing the demand for energy in off-grid locations, a major issue in the country's rural areas. Unicorns, those start-ups that raise more than $1 billion, are no longer a U.S./Europe-only phenomenon. Indian, Chinese and Indonesian start-ups, such as Lu.com, Flipkart or Go-Jek, have reached this valuation, and African Internet Group from Nigeria is poised to be the first African unicorn. Start-up ecosystems also create new jobs. Data from New York City's ecosystem on employment generated in the tech start-up ecosystem shows that most of the jobs generated by tech start-ups are not in start-ups themselves, but in local traditional industries that either are influenced or disrupted by start-ups. Think about a bank or a retail company that has to react to a mobile app providing finance or retail business and needs to hire new talent to develop a competing app. More than 40 percent of these new jobs do not require a college degree. These are jobs like building a website, a basic database, a web or mobile app. Given all this potential, is there a need to better understand what makes these ecosystems successful and sustainable? Partnering with the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network, the World Bank Group is surveying start-up ecosystems across the world to help us understand how start-ups connect with each other and how various elements of their ecosystem such as events, meetups, accelerators, incubators, seed investors and universities interact with each other. Together with our partner Endeavor Insight and other GERN members, we have already carried out surveys in more than 12 cities, including Beirut, Bogota, Cairo, Dar es Salaam, New York City, Santiago and Singapore. We expect to survey another 15 cities in the coming months. This new start-up data is allowing us to better understand the essential elements for these ecosystems to be successful. A recent World Bank working paper, titled "Boosting Tech Innovation Ecosystems," identified four categories of ingredients needed for these ecosystems to succeed: People : The human talent needed to create innovations and start-ups. Economic assets : The elements that provide the means for people to innovate and create start-ups, such as universities and industries and availability of investments. Infrastructure : Transportation, housing, water and sanitation, telecommunications. Enabling environment: Circumstances and policies that promote or restrict innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition to these four elements, interactions and collisions among people were critical in creating and maintaining these ecosystems. These interactions happened organically in events and spaces created by and for the community of entrepreneurs. These included meetups, competitions, hackathons, co-working spaces, accelerators and bootcamps. These "networking assets" seem to be central to the connections among entrepreneurs and the sustainability of the communities of these entrepreneurs, based on new data generated from the start-up ecosystem survey. This has important consequences for policies that aim to support the growth and sustainability of these ecosystems. More from The Global Entrepreneurial Revolution: Entrepreneurship is at all-time high in India These Midwest towns are starting to rival Silicon Valley The trillion-dollar growth sector that is jump-starting a jobs boom Many policymakers have focused primarily on infrastructure and the development of innovation districts, while ignoring the creation of an organic community of entrepreneurs and facilitating their interaction with traditional industries, universities and other stakeholders. However, this is exactly what is critical for the success of start-ups and their ecosystems. By Ganesh Rasagam and Victor Mulas. Mr. Rasagam is manager of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship unit in the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice at the World Bank Group. Mr. Mulas is a senior operations officer in the unit. More From CNBC A Washington insider who could help push Trumps agenda through Congress and the chair of a far-right website who has been accused of peddling white supremacist rhetoric . Donald Trump has named Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsellor, describing them as highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. The president-elect has said that Priebus and Bannon, neither of whom have served in elected office, will work as equal partners to transform the federal government. Related: Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon to lead Trump's White House Stephen Bannon Bannon, 62, replaced former lobbyist Paul Manafort as Trumps campaign chief when Manafort left after reports of his past ties to pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politicians. Bannon was the executive chairman of the far-right website Brietbart News for much of the past decade. The site is the most widely read conservative news and opinion site in the US, but it is charged with being racist, antisemitic and sexist, and of repeatedly peddling conspiracy theories to further its agenda. Breitbart has, among other things, accused Obama of importing more hating Muslims, compared conservative commentator Bill Kristol to a renegade Jew, likened Planned Parenthoods work to the Holocaust, said young Muslims in the west were a ticking time bomb, and advised female victims of online harassment to just log off and stop screwing up the internet for men. Bannon stands on the far right of the Republican party. Following his appointment, the Anti-Defamation Leagues chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, issued a statement calling Bannon hostile to core American values. It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the alt-right a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed antisemites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house, Greenblatt said. Story continues Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said: It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide. Bannon is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business school. He is a former US Navy officer and investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He has also made documentary films celebrating Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, and was an early investor in the sitcom Seinfeld. In 2007, Bannons ex-wife accused him of making antisemitic remarks when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school. Mary Louise Piccard said her former husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews, an accusation Bannon denied. In 1996, Bannon faced domestic violence charges after Piccard accused him of grabbing her by the neck violently and destroying a telephone when she tried to summon police. The charges were dropped after his estranged wife did not show up at the trial, according to court records. In August this year, the Guardian found that Bannon was registered to vote in Florida, a key swing state, at an empty house where he did not live, in an apparent breach of election laws. The revelation followed years of aggressive claims by Breitbart News that voter fraud was rife among minorities and in Democratic-leaning areas, an allegation that was repeated forcefully on the campaign trail by Trump, who predicted that the election would be rigged. Bannon subsequently changed his registration. He co-owns a condominium in Los Angeles and is known to stay at the so-called Breitbart embassy, a luxurious $2.4m townhouse beside the supreme court in Washington DC, where Breitbart staff work from basement offices. Bannon has repeatedly criticised Republicans for not moving far enough to the right of the political spectrum. While Priebuss selection signals an attempt to build bridges with the old Republican guard, Bannons appointment by Trump shows a commitment to the president-elects promise to drain the swamp of Washington. We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory, Bannon said of Priebus in a statement. We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda. Reince Priebus Priebus, 44, is the long-serving chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and loyal adviser to the Trump campaign. He is a Washington insider, having worked in government since 2004, and his friendship with the House speaker, Paul Ryan, is expected to be instrumental in securing early legislative victories for the Trump administration. A lawyer by training, Priebus served as state treasurer in Wisconsin and worked his way up through the Wisconsin Republican party to become chairman in 2007. After he led his party to success in the November 2010 elections in the state, which had previously been held by the Democrats, Priebus, together with Ryan and Scott Walker, became known as part of a rising Republican movement in Wisconsin that was influential at a national level. A trio of young Wisconsin politicians are now positioned to have a substantial influence on the future direction and success of the Republican party, the Washington Post wrote in 2011. Priebus was elected to the job of chairman of the RNC in 2011, unseating Michael Steele, for whom he once served as general counsel. As part of his bid, he promised to put the committees finances in order and to modernise the party. He later led the so-called autopsy report after the Republicans failed to win the 2012 presidential election, recommending efforts to win over Hispanic and women voters. Priebus consistently appealed for unity within the Republican party, regardless of who would become the nominee, and forged a positive relationship with Trump following his victory in the primaries. He worked hard over several months to persuade rebellious factions to fall into line behind Trump, who, among others, had alienated the 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, the Bush family, as well as a handful of outspoken senators such as Susan Collins. In August, Priebus said when it came to personal issues with Trump I go with the flow, and the following month, he suggested the party may take punitive action against failed presidential candidates who reneged on pledges to support him. He earned Trumps trust after steering the RNCs resources behind the candidate despite Republican officials urging him to abandon the businessman. When Trumps candidacy was steeped in controversy following the release of a 2005 tape in which he boasted of groping and kissing women without their consent, Priebus stood by his candidate and worked hard to salvage his run for office. Related: Theresa May sets out stall for UK's place in Trumps world In the final stages of the campaign, Priebus travelled with Trump and held a critical position in helping him prepare for the debates against the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Trump praised Priebus during his victory speech, stating: I never had a bad second with him. Hes an unbelievable star. Priebuss reward is his appointment to one of the most powerful positions in Washington, from which he will be charged with ensuring that the presidents agenda passes uninhibited through Congress. His links to the Republican establishment will be significant for Trump, who has never served in government and has few links to mainstream figures in the party, many of whom turned away from him due to his mockery of disabled people and prisoners of war, as well as the string of sexual assault allegations that followed him throughout his campaign. On Sunday, Priebus said in a statement that the Trump White House would work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism. From Esquire Donald Trump's attorney filed a motion late Saturday to postpone the upcoming trial in a federal class-action fraud suit against him and Trump University. The trial is scheduled for November 28, but Trump's attorneys want to push it back to after Trump is inaugurated. Why? Because Trump is too busy right now. Yep, the bloated Cheez-It seems to think that preparing to be president is somehow less time-consuming than actually being the leader of the free world. (God help us all.) [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Judge%20Ordered%20Release%20of%20Trump%20U%20Documents" customimages="" content="article.45323"] The motion filed in federal court stated, in part: The President-Elect should not be required to stand trial during the next two months while he prepares to assume the Presidency. The time and attention to prepare and testify will take him away from imperative transition work at a critical time. We acknowledge plaintiffs have a right to trial of their claims, but their rights will not be abridged if trial were continued to a date after the inauguration to allow the President-Elect to devote all his time and attention to the transition process. The suit, which has been pending for six years, was already delayed to allow Trump to run for president. It is only one of two federal class-action suits against the president-elect in relation to Trump University. The other suit was supposed to begin shortly after the first. Trump's lawyers have also asked that Trump only testify once and that his testimony be recorded. The judge in the lawsuit is U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump accused of being impartial because of his Mexican heritage. Curiel was born in Indiana. [H/T Politico] You Might Also Like President-elect Donald Trump says he intends to immediately deport two to three million illegal immigrants who have criminal records after he is inaugurated in January, according to an interview with CBSs 60 Minutes that will be aired Sunday night. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, according to a preview of the interview released by CBS. "But were getting them out of our country. Theyre here illegally." The warning that he intends to make good on his campaign pledge to gradually round up and deport as many of the 11 million illegal immigrants throughout his first term comes amid growing protests across the country against Trumps strict immigrant policies. It also comes as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on Sunday morning that he and other lawmakers are not prepared to create a deportation force to round up and oust millions of illegal immigrants. We are not planning on erecting a deportation force, Ryan said during an interview on CNNs State of the Union program, Donald Trumps not planning on that. Related: Ryan Declares GOP Has a Mandate to Enact Sweeping Changes Ryan, who has clashed in the past with Trump over a range of issues including how best to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., said that I think we should put peoples minds at ease. Thats not what our focus is. Were focused on securing the border. We think thats first and foremost before we get into any other immigration issue. However, Trump repeated a pledge from last fall that while he wouldnt attempt to round up and deport all illegal immigrants, he would simultaneously focus on weeding out convicted criminals while simultaneously tightening security along the border and pressing for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Story continues "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, were going to make a determination on the people that theyre talking about who are terrific people. Theyre terrific people, but we are gonna make a determination at that, Trump said. But before we make that determination...its very important, we are going to secure our border. Ryan has done much to patch up his rocky relationship with Trump since last Tuesdays election. He has proclaimed the coming year a golden opportunity for the new Republican president and GOP-controlled Congress to press forward with a broad policy agenda on health care, taxes, immigration and welfare reform that he has had a major role in crafting. In arguing that Trump won a mandate with his electoral college victory to take the country in a new direction, despite losing to Democrat Hillary in the popular vote by two million, Ryan told CNNs Jake Tapper that Trump beat all the odds and that people need to stop underestimating Donald Trump. I think he is very much of a mindset that there is a need to unify this country, to heal the division in this country, but also there is a mandate and a desire and a commitment to fix the problems as weve laid the solutions out . . . to get this country back on track, he added. Related: 11 Huge Questions Americans Face Under President Trump This is going to help people get out of poverty, we think this is going to grow the economy, make our country more secure, make our borders secure, help the military go on offense against ISIS, clean up the red tape that is strangling small businesses so that they can hire people again. These are good things that we have in store that were really excited about. Yet in the early going after Trumps historic victory last Tuesday, there is growing uncertainty and confusion over the extent to which Trump intends to convert his often fiery, divisive rhetoric into policy including repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, building a wall along the southern border and forcing Mexico to pay for it, and his promise last year to create a huge deportation force to round up and oust millions of illegal immigrants. Ryan said last April during a town hall meeting at Georgetown University that the Congress and administration must come up with a solution for illegal immigrants that doesnt involve mass deportation. Trump has sent conflicting signals on his position, gradually backing away from a promise to deport all illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. However, in his most definitive policy statement last September in Phoenix, Trump said he would require a massive and pricey expansion of the U.S. border-control system, one that would target criminals and gang members for immediate removal. Related: Can Trump the Disruptor Become Trump the Uniter? He outlined a plan that would target at least five million and as many as 6.5 million undocumented immigrants for prompt removal or about half of the 11 million estimated to be living in the United States. Without being any more specific, he left open the possibility he would deport more in subsequent years. Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation, Trump declared in a speech. Ryan, the conservative policy maven on Capitol Hill, maintained a tenuous on again, off again relationship with Trump throughout the stormy 2016 presidential campaign. He frequently publicly differed with Trump over the billionaire businessmans more outlandish statements, including his call for banning all Muslims from the U.S. and his criticism of a Mexican-American federal judge presiding over a fraud case against the defunct Trump University for being biased against him. Ryan advised his House Republican colleagues to focus on their own reelections and to distance themselves from Trump if necessary after an 11-year-old Access Hollywood videotape surfaced in early October showing Trump boasting of having used his star power to grope and sexually assault attractive women. Related: Trumps New Plan for Illegal Immigrants: Like Obamas, but With More Energy Trump and his allies reportedly viewed Ryans actions as an act of betrayal, rather than simply pragmatic political maneuvering essential to protect the majority in the House. But all was forgiven after Trumps historic and totally surprising victory last week over Clinton. Ryan described Trumps narrow win as a mandate, adding at a press conference in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin that The opportunity is to go big, to go bold, and to get things done for the people of this country. Trump and Ryan signaled that they had put their differences behind them during Trumps visit to Capitol Hill last Thursday when the president-elect and congressional leaders held their first preliminary discussions of the new GOP legislative agenda. I think were going to do some absolutely spectacular things for the American people, Trump boasted in brief remarks after his meeting with Ryan, citing, among other things, immigration, taxes and health care as shared priorities. We cant get started fast enough. Well be putting things up pretty quickly. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Nobody expected Donald Trump, whose presidential candidacy was built far more on his personality than it was on the details of his plans for the country, to become a policy wonk overnight after his shocking victory at the polls last week. But in his first major sit-down interview since the election, Trump appeared in a pre-recorded segment on CBSs 60 Minutes last night and demonstrated little evidence that he has started to grapple with the details of even his top priorities. Having campaigned on a promise to immediately repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump told interviewer Lesley Stahl that he intended to keep several of the acts more popular measures in place, including the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and the requirement that insurers allow the adult children of policyholders to remain on their parents policies through age 26. Related: Is the Country on the Wrong Track? Why That's a Stupid Question However, Trump has so far consistently failed to address a glaring problem: Both he and his allies in Congress say that they will do away with the individual mandate, which requires people who do not receive insurance through their employer or the government, to purchase their own policies. It was the individual mandate, though, that convinced insurance companies to buy into Obamacare in the first place, judging that the influx of new customers would offset the additional cost of insuring those with preexisting conditions. When Stahl pressed for details about how Trump would manage the transition from the ACA to his as-yet-unspecified alternative, his answer was heavy on hand-waving and without any real substance. Now we're going to do it simultaneously, he said. It'll be just fine. we're not going to have, like, a two- day period and we're not going to have -- a two year period where there's nothing. It will be repealed and replaced. And well know. And it'll be great health care for much less money. So it'll be better healthcare, much better, for less money. Not a bad combination. Story continues When Stahl brought up the ongoing battle to destroy the terror group ISIS, Trump doubled down on his insistence that he is better informed about fighting the terror group than the leaders of the US military. Related: Trumps Kids Are on His Transition Team: A Serious Conflict of Interest? You said you knew more than the generals about ISIS, she reminded him. Well, I-- I'll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they've done. Okay, look at the job they've done. They haven't done the job. Now, maybe it's leadership, maybe it's something else. Who knows? All I can tell you is we're going to get rid of ISIS. When Stahl asked for more detail, Trump continued to insist that his plans for dealing with the terror group must be kept secret. On his signature issue of immigration, Trump said that he would implement the immediate deportation of up to three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records, construct the border wall he has promised (though he conceded that some segments of it might simply be a fence,) and turn his attention to the remaining eight or nine million undocumented individuals in the country. Related: Trump Will Deport Millions of Illegal Immigrants with Criminal Records What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, he said. But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that youre talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people, but we are going to make a determination at that. But before we make that determinationLesley, its very important, we want to secure our border. How he will do any of these things, though, Trump did not say. And Trumps promise of mass deportations seemed to run counter to comments House Speaker Paul Ryan made Sunday morning, in which he said that the government would not be creating the deportation force that Trump has promised. When Stahl asked Trump if he would continue to use social media to attack his critics and rivals, Trump refused to take the possibility off the table, though he said he might dial things back somewhat as president. Im going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, Im going to do very restrained, he said. I find it tremendous. Its a modern form of communication. There should be nothing you should be ashamed of. Itsits where its at. Related: Why Wall Street and Liberals Are Bullish on Trumps Stimulus Plans By the time the interviewed aired on Sunday night, Trump had attacked The New York Times as dishonest and insisted that the newspaper is losing thousands of subscribers. (Officials at the Times said that their digital subscriptions are actually rising, not falling.) The president-elect also demonstrated a remarkably flexible approach to dealing with major legal issues. For example, when Stahl asked him about marriage equality for gay couples, which the Supreme Court declared legal nationwide last year, Trump essentially said that its a non-issue because it is now a matter of settled law. It's irrelevant because it was already settled. It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean its done...these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They've been settled. And- I'm-- I'm fine with that, he said. However, on the issue of abortion rights -- which has been settled law for decades -- he said that he would fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court with a justice who would vote for a pro-life judge and that one outcome could be returning jurisdiction over abortion rights to the states. Related: Five Things Trump Wants to Do That Liberals Would Love When Stahl pointed out that the likely consequence of that would be that many women would not be able to have abortions, Trump said it wouldnt be a big deal -- theyd just have to travel to a different state. Well, we'll see what happens, he said. It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: By John Whitesides and Alana Wise WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday picked Reince Priebus, a Washington insider who heads the Republican National Committee, as White House chief of staff, signaling a willingness to work with Congress to advance his agenda when he takes office in January. But while giving the influential post to the low-key Priebus, Trump handed another senior White House job to rabble-rousing conservative media figure Stephen Bannon, his campaign chairman who helped engineer his surprise victory on Tuesday over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Priebus is a friend of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who distanced himself from Trump during the campaign but embodies the Republican establishment in Washington and will play a critical role in shepherding Trump's agenda in Congress. Both Priebus and Ryan are from Wisconsin. But Bannon, former head of the right-wing Breitbart News website, has been fiercely critical of Ryan. Trump's statement announcing the appointments said Bannon and Priebus would be "working as equal partners to transform the federal government," with Bannon serving as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. The White House chief of staff serves as a gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president, but Trump's statement mentioned Bannon's job first. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said in a statement. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House." Before joining Trump's team, Bannon spearheaded Breitbart's shift into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semitics. Bannon's hiring by Trump's campaign this year signaled the businessman's dedication to operating outside the norms of Washington. Under Bannon's leadership, the Breitbart site presented a number of conspiracy theories about Clinton as well as Republicans deemed to be lacking in conservative bona fides. Critics have accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. In a 2007 court filing during divorce proceedings, Bannon's former wife accused him of making anti-Semitic comments on at least three occasions. As head of Breitbart, he repeatedly attacked the Republican Party establishment including Ryan, alienating many veteran Republicans. Bannon showed his willingness to engage in brutal political tactics when he instigated the appearance before a presidential debate of three women who said they had been sexually abused by his Democratic rival's husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump, who will succeed Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, has been contemplating the candidates for top jobs in the White House and in various Cabinet positions since Tuesday's victory. Priebus' appointment could anger some hardline Trump supporters who were counting on Trump to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders. Priebus is a longtime Wisconsin political operative who was credited with marshaling party resources for Trump's White House bid. The Republican National Committee stepped in and ran most of the party's get-out-the-vote effort this year in the absence of such an operation by the Trump campaign. While some Republicans fled from Trump during the campaign, Priebus was unwavering in his backing for the New York real estate developer. Priebus frequently traveled with Trump on the campaign trail and was seen as a positive force who helped rein in the unpredictable Trump in the closing weeks. Trump made his high regard for Priebus known on election night when he pulled him to the microphone to take a bow for his campaign efforts. BORDER WALL Trump and his advisers already have hedged on some of his major campaign promises, including on immigration, healthcare and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton. Trump, in an interview that aired on Sunday, backed away from his promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, saying some areas could instead be "fencing." Trump, whose pledge to force Mexico to pay for a border wall was a centerpiece of his White House, said in "certain areas" he would accept fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall, according to his interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes." "But certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I'm very good at this, it's called construction, there could be some fencing," he said. In the "60 Minutes" interview, Trump said Americans alarmed by his election had nothing to fear. "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don't be afraid," he said. Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest against Trump. Trump said in the interview that once he takes office, he would remove immigrants with criminal records who are in the country illegally. During the campaign, Trump said he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, most of whom are Hispanic. Ryan on Sunday backed away from Trump's promise during the campaign of a "deportation force" to round up and deport immigrants in the country illegally. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Ryan told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "I think we should put people's minds at ease. That is not what our focus is. That is not what we're focused on. We're focused on securing the border." (Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Howard Schneider; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney) By Valerie Volcovici and Alister Doyle WASHINGTON/MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump is seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, a source on his transition team said, defying broad global backing for the plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Since Trump's election victory on Tuesday, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris agreement during climate talks involving 200 nations set to run until Friday in Marrakesh, Morocco. Trump has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement, which was strongly supported by outgoing Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama. Trump's advisers are considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source, who works on Trump's transition team for international energy and climate policy. "It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before the election" on Tuesday, the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Paris accord won enough backing for entry into force on Nov. 4, four days before the election. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday in New Zealand the Obama administration would do everything it could to implement the Paris accord before Trump takes office. The accord says in its Article 28 that any country wanting to pull out after signing on has to wait four years. In theory, the earliest date for withdrawal would be Nov. 4, 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election. The source said the future Trump administration is weighing alternatives to accelerate the pull-out: sending a letter withdrawing from the 1992 international framework accord that is the parent treaty of the Paris Agreement; voiding U.S. involvement in both in a year's time; or issuing a presidential order simply deleting the U.S. signature from the Paris accord. Story continues Withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would be controversial, partly because it was signed by former Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and approved by the U.S. Senate. The action also could antagonize many other countries. [L8N1DB41L] The UNFCCC sets a goal of avoiding "dangerous" man-made damage to the climate to avert more heat waves, downpours, floods, extinctions of animals and plants and rising sea levels. The 2015 Paris Agreement is much more explicit, seeking to phase out net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of the century and limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. Many nations have expressed hope that the United States will stay. But the host of the current round of climate negotiations, Morocco, said the pact that seeks to phase out greenhouse gases in the second half of the century was strong enough to survive a pullout. One party deciding to withdraw would not call the agreement into question, Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar told a news conference. In Beijing on Monday, the foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told a regular news briefing that China would like to continue working with all countries, including the United States, in the global fight against climate change. The agreement was reached by almost 200 nations in December and, as of Saturday, has been formally ratified by 109 representing 76 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States with 18 percent. The accord seeks to limit rising temperatures that have been linked to increasing economic damage from desertification, extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels. U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa declined to comment on the Trump source's remarks to Reuters. "The Paris Agreement carries an enormous amount of weight and credibility," Espinosa told a news conference. She said the United Nations hoped for a strong and constructive relationship with Trump. The Trump source said the president-elect's transition team is aware of the likely international backlash but said Republicans in the U.S. Congress have given ample warning that a Republican administration would take action to reverse course. "The Republican Party on multiple occasions has sent signals to the international community signaling that it doesn't agree with the pact. We've gone out of our way to give notice," the source said. The source blamed Obama for joining up by an executive order, without getting approval from the U.S. Senate. "There wouldn't be this diplomatic fallout on the broader international agenda if Obama hadn't rushed the adoption," the source said. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Alister Doyle in Morocco; Additional reporting by Sue-Lin Wong in Beijing; Editing by John Stonestreet and Clarence Fernandez) A senior Republican lawmaker has some advice for President-elect Donald Trump on dealing with his Russian counterpart: proceed with caution. In an interview with Foreign Policy, Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump has been unfairly criticized for his stance on Russia and predicted the next U.S. president would show resolve with Moscow. As a candidate, Trump had only friendly words for Russian President Vladimir Putin and steered clear of criticizing the Russian leader over Moscows seizure of Crimea in Ukraine or its air war in support of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Trump refused to pin the blame on Russia over the hacking of the U.S. election and the Democratic party, even after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Moscow was behind the digital operation. But Nunes, who backed the New York real estate magnates candidacy, said there was nothing out of the ordinary for Trump to be saying he hoped to find common ground with Moscow. Name a secretary of state or a president in the last 15 years who hasnt said we are going to work with the Russians, he said. But Nunes said that forging a cooperative relationship with Russia required a clear-eyed approach, bearing in mind Moscows track record. My advice to Trump and his team is proceed with caution, he said. Trumps upset electoral victory was greeted with applause in the Russian parliament and a senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow had maintained contacts with Trumps team during the campaign. Supporters of defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused Russia of trying to undermine her candidacy by allegedly orchestrating the release of hacked emails of her aides and Democratic party officials. Nunes, who was named Friday to Trumps transition team, said he was angered by suggestions by some intelligence officials that Russias cyber hacking was aimed at skewing the election in favor of Trump, as it reflected a misunderstanding of how Moscow spy services operate. Story continues Theyre trying to sow doubt in the world and with allies that the U.S. system is truly democratic and on the up to up, Nunes said. He added: The truth is Trumps going to be a lot tougher on Putin than Clinton ever would have been. The California congressman also accused U.S. intelligence agencies and successive administrations of consistently misreading Russian President Vladimir Putin and being blind-sided by Moscows actions. Our biggest intel failure since 9/11 is our inability to understand Putins plans and intentions, Nunes told FP. Its been a huge intelligence failure. But its also been a civilian side of government failure too. Trumps election coincides with rising tensions between Washington and Moscow not seen since the Cold War, as Putin has broken with convention and linked nuclear weapons issues to other unrelated disputes. Nunes said the Trump White House will be inheriting a very dangerous world including the spreading threat of Islamist extremism, a fragile global economy and Chinas bid to assert control over the South China Sea. But he said the president-elect has already surrounded himself with two capable minds on national security in Mike Flynn, the retired Army general who worked in military intelligence, and Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and federal prosecutor. Those are two guys that are really solid. Both Flynn and Giuliani have accused the Obama administration of failing to recognize the scale of the danger posed by Islamic State and of downplaying the strength of al Qaedas terror network. Im totally convinced that, without a proper sense of urgency, we will be eventually defeated, dominated, and very likely destroyed by Islamist militants, Flynn and co-author Michael Ladeen, an outspoken neoconservative, wrote in their book released this year, The Field of Fight. Flynn was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 2014 after a clash with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers and other officials over budgets and his attempt to reorganize the DIA. Flynn had wanted to push more of the agencys analysts and operators into the field and his plans rankled some inside the service. Trumps election has caused consternation among officials working in the countrys spy agencies, because of his casual dismissal of their findings on Russia and other countries and his vow to bring back waterboarding and other interrogation methods outlawed by Obama and widely condemned as torture. Nunes, however, played down the possibility that a Trump administration would revive waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques that were introduced after the 9/11 attacks under the Bush administration. I think first off, you got to be real careful reading too much in what a first time candidate for office says, Nunes said. As president-elect Trump begins to get classified briefings, and builds a good team, hell be able to address a lot of those topics better. The new administration is expected to name a new director at the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its new team but its unclear if the next White House will keep in place a sweeping reorganization launched last year by the current director, John Brennan. Brennans Blueprint for the Future, unveiled in March 2015, is meant to tear down bureaucratic walls between operations officers who handle spies in the field and covert activities, and analysts who evaluate information for policymakers in Washington. The reform effort also created a new Directorate of Digital Innovation, which is designed to take into account the impact of new technology on intelligence gathering. But Brennans changes have gotten a mixed reception inside the agency, and some lawmakers have been skeptical. Nunes said theres been some really good things that have been done with the reorganization, particularly the digital directorate. But any new CIA director will have to go in and evaluate whats working and whats not. Over the past year, Nunes and other Republican lawmakers clashed with the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command over allegations that intelligence assessments on the fight against Islamic State were being watered down to convey a more positive picture of the situation in Iraq. Nunes in February accused the Pentagon of obstructing and slow-rolling a congressional inquiry into the allegations. The Defense Departments Inspector General office is conducting an investigation into the case and has yet to release the results. Photo credit: SERGEI KARPUKHIN/AFP/Getty Images Investors are getting quite comfortable with the victory of Donald J. Trump. So much so the brief shock to global financial markets is a distant memory. In case you missed it, when Trump clinched the highest office in the land, Dow futures plunged and gold prices spiked. Now, after nearly a week to digest the news, the Dow is hitting hit fresh records and gold has fallen back into a trading range. Dr. John Rutledge, former advisor to President Ronald Reagan, now advisor to the Chinese, said something which I think captured an important truth: Behavioral finance shows that human natures makes us tend to overreact to breaking news when we make investment decisions. I think this is doubly true for unexpected news, and triply true for unexpected news which comes from the actions of people from outside of your social world. For the most part the financial media (though not everybody) had repeated warnings of a dark, dystopian populist vision from fly-over country. Markets had been acting as though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win. People who participate in political futures markets are often the same type of people who participate in financial markets. Perhaps that blind spot was why Predicit and Iowa Electronic Market and the rest got things so wrong. Just as that group failed to see the Brexit victory, it also failed to see the Trump victory, which represents a similar outlook and dynamic. Just as in the Brexit vote, markets reacted to the news with what appear in retrospect to have been excessive sell-offs, and then went on to significant gains. Those sharp moves higher came as many on Wall Street, who had never even considered Trump, started to take a closer look at him, his rhetoric and his likely political appointments. Clinton had spent years massaging the top banks top brass. They knew the deal: Public denunciation, private accommodation. Thats why they gave much more money to her than they did to him. George Gilder and Peter Thiel, both Trump supporters and one a Trump advisor, have both decried excess financialization of the economy. When banks get big in a free and open market, thats one thing. But when they get not only the big bailout of 2008-9, but the on-going bailout of near-zero interest policy, and an oligopoly of currency hedging in a world of fluctuating paper currencies, than thats more crony than capitalism. Story continues Big moneys Pavlovian response at the prospect of a Trump victory was to sell, sell, sell. But theyre smart and adaptable group of people. Peaceful (well except for a few rent-a-riots) transition of power? Check. Mike Pence as head of transition team? Check. Peter Thiel as close advisor? Check! Yes, there are still dangers, for example a trade war. But so far, investors, now that theyve had a chance to take a closer look, like what they see. Jerry Bowyer is the President of Bowyer Research. He has some more thoughts about Trump and Portfolio design at his blog: http://insights.videntfinancial.com/blog Related Articles Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump's capture of the White House should serve as warning to policymakers responding to similar populism in Europe, European Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Monday. "We need to turn this painful awakening into a political wake-up call," Moscovici said in an address at Harvard University, adding that discontented voters on both sides of the Atlantic now distrusted the state institutions built to serve them. Moscovici said that income inequality and flagging economic growth, terrorist attacks and war in the Middle East had undermined the value of Europe in many voters' eyes, while the gulf separating them from political elites had widened. "We have a huge lesson to learn from last week's election here in the US. The fact is that a growing part of our populations can no longer relate to the existing systems," he said. "These people consider themselves the losers of globalization. We should not misunderstand the meaning of their vote. Even if driven by anger, it is completely rational." Moscovici called for a "more political Europe" which could counter what he called populist narratives. "Europe needs to be able to prove to all parts of its population, who are feeling the effects of globalization in very different ways depending on where they live and what their skills are, that it is still able to offer them protection," he said. Ford (NYSE:F) became a lightning rod of the 2016 presidential race, as Donald Trump hammered the automaker for expanding its manufacturing operations in Mexico. The president-elect also targeted other automakers and manufacturers for doing the samepart of Trumps broader criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The top car-producing states in the nation ultimately sided with Trump, who swept through the Rust Belt on Election Day. In Michigan, the epicenter of Americas auto industry, Trump won a state that hadnt supported a Republican candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. The Republican nominee also took Ohio, the second-largest car producer among the 50 states, with relative ease. A similar story played out in Indiana, whose vehicle production is slightly ahead of Kentucky this year. Overall, the seven states that have manufactured the most cars so far this year all lined up behind Trump: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Missouri. It was apparent that Trumps message resonated with voters who work in manufacturing. According to Fox News exit polls, union households supported Hillary Clinton by an eight-point margin, below President Barack Obamas lead of 18 points in 2012. The results marked the lowest union support for a Democrat in the past 20 years. Trump carried 52% of the union vote in the battleground state of Ohio, far better than former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneys 37% support. About half of Ohio voters believe trade with other countries costs American jobs, while 32% said trade creates jobs. Among those who think trade hurts jobs, 67% backed Trump. An internal poll by the United Auto Workers union showed 28% support for Trump before the election, and another 6% of members were undecided. However, during a press conference following Trumps victory, UAW President Dennis Williams conceded that the unions poll may not have accurately reflected Trumps overall support among auto workers. Story continues Consider that Trump likely garnered support from voters who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector, including car factories. Trump successfully reached those Americans by targeting NAFTA and what he characterized as imbalanced trade deals that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. For car companies, Mexico has become another critical region for manufacturing, particularly for small cars. Compacts generate smaller profits at their price point, so companies such as Ford have moved production of most small cars to Mexico. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (NYSE:FCAU) has gone a step further. The Italian-American firm will stop building the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart in two plants in Michigan and Illinois at the of this year. CEO Sergio Marchionne was seeking a partnership with another car maker who could make the midsize sedans, but no deal has materialized. Ford made its own move official in September, announcing that all small cars would be produced in Mexico. Earlier this year, Ford detailed plans to invest $1.6 billion to build a new assembly plant in the country. Trump has threatened to push for tariffs as high as 35% on cars imported from Mexico, arguing that a tax is necessary to encourage companies to focus on building cars in the U.S. Ford CEO Mark Fields defended the companys record, arguing that manufacturing moved to Mexico was replaced with other models built in the U.S. Chairman Bill Ford revealed in October that he met with Trump to discuss the matter. After Trumps victory, Ford released a statement saying it agrees with Trump that it is really important to unite the country and we look forward to working together to support economic growth and jobs. Likewise, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Republicans will focus on adjusting U.S. taxes on border adjustments rather than imposing tariffs. A group representing the industry has already reached out to Trumps transition team to suggest changes to federal fuel-efficiency rules that are seen as overly burdensome, among other proposals. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes top automakers like Ford and General Motors (NYSE:GM), said the regulations are a substantial challenge for car companies, according to a letter cited by multiple reports. Also, Williams expressed a willingness to work with the Trump administration on trade policies, saying his position on the issue is right on. Related Articles Robots may prevent Trump from bringing back the manufacturing jobs he promised. Source: Reuters President-elect Donald Trump has promised to wage a war against globalization, to bring back jobs that corporations have sent abroad. But what about all the jobs that simply dont exist anymore, left behind by advances in technology? For anyone in the US manufacturing economy Trump has been describing, a job lost to China looks and feels identical to a job lost to technology, making it hard to effectively get to the bottom of whats happeningand how to fix it for the American workforce. From Federal Reserve data, it seems relatively clear that scapegoating China and Mexico misses a good portion of whats going on. Domestic manufacturing sector output (blue line) is at an all time high, back to the pre-recession levels of 2008. But the red line, employment, shows that the output has not created jobs. fredgraph US factories are not disappearing; they simply arent employing human workers, Rice University professor of computational engineering Moche Vardi told Factor earlier this year. Job losses due to automation and robotics are often overlooked in discussions about the unexpected rise of outside political candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders. Compared to tough-talking trade policy, in which a country stands up to another, discussions about robots taking jobs dont have satisfactory endsyet, at least. But the spectre of significant technological job loss is very real, not just in the manufacturing sectors. The evening after the election, one tweet went viral that illustrates the trouble the country could be in, having ignored technological job loss in favor of strawmen woven purely from trade and immigration issues. The self-driving truck is all but in mass production at the moment and I just remembered this map, the tweet read. Above the text were two maps, a data visualization from NPR showing the BLSs most common job in every state, and a map of red and blue states. the self-driving truck is all but in mass production at the moment and I just remembered this map pic.twitter.com/3oCkiyHNdn Findom De Siecle (@griph) November 10, 2016 It doesnt take an economist to see the implications here. Technology is coming for American jobs in many sectorsand much more aggressively than any outsourcing ever couldand that tweet shows how high of a cliff we could be standing at. Story continues Trucking has provided a go-to opportunity for people to earn middle-class wages without a college degree, and winter appears to be coming. Tesla has normalized autopilot on cars (even if it was premature), Ford and other automakers and tech companies have invested heavily in self-driving cars, and Uber-owned Otto became the first robot trucker, successfully making a 120-mile beer run in Colorado. According to an Oxford Martin study published in 2013, 47% of total US jobs are at risk from robotsa number thats likely to grow. Indeed, as a recent follow-up done in conjunction with Citi has shown, no relief has emerged. People have been nervous about machines taking peoples jobs ever since the Luddites in the 19th century, but the study concluded that this time was different. The pace of tech has quickened, the scope of tech has broadened, and most importantly, the benefits are not being widely sharedreal median wages have fallen behind growth in productivity and inequality has increased. So how would policy approach issues of robots taking jobs? Considering the winners of increased automation are corporations and their shareholders, which save money by having a machine do the same job faster, often better without health insurance, unions, and sick days, it will be especially difficult to address it. Washington could never get away with forcing companies to employ people they dont need. As Vivek Wadhwa, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon put the question in the Chicago Tribune: Trump may be able to keep immigrants out, but how will he stop the advance of robots? Those robots will likely be an ever-growing hurdle for the president-elect making good on his promise of reinvigorating old-school manufacturing jobs. Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann. Read more: History says Trump probably wont repeal Dodd-Frank any time soon What Trumpcare will look like Two professors predicted the Wells Fargo scandalin 2014 Donald Trump could leave consumers on their own How Facebook and Twitter make it seem like Trump makes sense Donald Trumps appointment of ex-Breitbart news chairman Stephen Bannon as chief strategist has drawn outrage with the Anti-Defamation League, which has accused him of being hostile to core American values." Read: Trump Campaign CEO Stephen Bannon Once Faced Domestic Violence Charge Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the ADL, tweeted a lengthy message against Bannon, saying it is a sad day when the president-elect appoints someone who has aligned himself with white nationalists, anti-Semites and racists. We at @ADL_National oppose the appt of Steve Bannon to sr role at @WhiteHouse bc he & his alt-right are so hostile to core American values pic.twitter.com/qCVEPKoa7q Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 14, 2016 In the past, Bannons ex-wife accused him of being anti-Semitic in court documents when she filed for divorce in 2007. According to Mary Louise Piccard, he did not want their children attending the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles because of the large Jewish enrollment at the school. "He said that he doesn't like the way they raise their kids to be 'whiny brats' and that he didn't want the girls going to school with Jews," Piccard wrote in her 2007 court declaration. Following the announcement that he would be Trump's chief strategist, the Huffington Post ran the headline: "White Nationalist in the White House." Bannons relationship with his ex-wife was splashed into the headlines in August when he was appointed the head of Trumps campaign. Piccard claimed Bannon grabbed her 'by the throat and arm and screamed at her during a fight on New Years Day 1996. Story continues Bannon was charged with domestic violence and pled not guilty. According to The New York Times, the case was dropped when she failed to show up in court, which Piccard claimed was because of threats from Bannon's lawyer, whom she accused of telling her she "would have no money and no way to support their children" if she went to jail. Bannon's divorce lawyer denied he pressured her against testifying. He told The Times: "It's possible that Steve Bannon said that to her but I did not." Piccards domestic abuse claims go on to say that Bannon threatened to "take the girls and leave referring to the couple's twin daughters. The divorce documents also contain shocking allegations that Bannon would only marry Piccard, who was pregnant at the time, if the twins she was carrying were normal. Read: Donald Trump Asks His Supporters Not to Attack Minorities: 'Stop It' Piccard claims in the divorce papers: Bannon made it clear that he would not marry me just because I was pregnant. I was scheduled for an amniocentesis and was told by the respondent that if the babies were normal we would get married. The couple wed on April 15, 1995, 3 days before the birth of the twins. Despite the claims in the divorce papers, a spokesperson for Bannon said he has a great relationship with his ex-wife." The 62-year-old is a Harvard Business School grad and once worked as a banker at Goldman Sachs. In 1990, he left the banking giant and started his own company, Bannon & Co., which has a stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Watch: Megyn Kelly's New Book Suggests She Might Have Been Poisoned Before First Republican Debate Related Articles: DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey temporarily closed a border gate with Syria on Monday near its southeastern province of Kilis after clashes broke out across the border, security sources and the provincial governor said. The Oncupinar border gate, which lies across from Bab al Salam in Syria, is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey. It lies close to the Syrian town of Azaz, controlled by Turkish-backed rebels. Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed temporarily to humanitarian aid and commercial traffic due to developments on the Syrian side. Security sources said it was unclear how long the border would remain closed. Turkey launched an incursion into Syria in August in support of largely Turkmen and Arab rebel fighters to try to drive Islamic State away from its border and prevent Kurdish militia groups from seizing ground in their wake. (Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Nick Tattersall) Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey on Monday closed a border crossing with Syria in the southeastern province of Kilis after violent clashes in the Syrian town of Azaz, a local official said. "The border gate remains open only for ambulances," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Turkish media reported that the closure of the Oncupinar border crossing, which faces Bab al-Salama inside Syria, was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. Turkish media reported that the border closure was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. The town of Azaz, not far from the border, is one of many Syrian villages and towns taken by Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters since an offensive supported by Turkey began on August 24. Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed to humanitarian aid and trade traffic "due to developments on the other side of the border", the private Dogan news agency reported. It was unclear when the border crossing would reopen. Turkey has embarked on an ambitious operation inside Syria dubbed "Euphrates Shield" to support Syrian opposition fighters in a bid to cleanse its border of Islamic State fighters and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish militia. The Ankara-backed fighters comprise various brigades rather than one organised force, according to experts. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the rebels had advanced "closer to Al-Bab" -- the next target in Turkey's Syria operation, adding that Turkey resumed aerial support to help rebel forces. ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes struck 15 targets in the al Bab area of northern Syria on Sunday in an operation with Syrian rebels to drive Islamic State (IS) militants out of the border region, the Turkish military said on Monday. President Tayyip Erdogan has said seizing control of al Bab, around 30 km (19 miles) south of the border, is a goal of the operation before targeting Manbij, from which Kurdish-led forces recently drove IS, and the IS stronghold of Raqqa. Ten Islamic State defensive positions, command centers and an ammunition store were destroyed in the strikes, the army said in a statement. Nine Syrian rebels were killed and 52 wounded during clashes in the region, it added. The Turkish military launched the operation, dubbed 'Euphrates Shield', on Aug. 24 and the rebel forces have so far seized control of about 1,620 square km (625 square miles) of territory, the military said. The operation has also targeted the Kurdish YPG militia in the region and 10 of the group's fighters were 'neutralized' in shelling over the last 24 hours as they tried to seize control of the Tal Jijan area, the statement said. The YPG is an ally of the United States in its fight against Islamic State. Ankara denounces the YPG as an affiliate of the PKK, which has fought the Turkish military in southeast Turkey for three decades and which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Editing by Daren Butler and Clarence Fernandez) In Fridays episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a mother of two who dreams of law school chooses to get an abortion and the twist is that its not really that big of a deal. Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), already a mother of two, discovers shes pregnant just days after applying to law school a lifelong dream, finally realized. After nearly giving up law school to have the baby, shes so bowled over by early admission and high praise from a judge that she chooses to terminate her pregnancy, with the support of her husband. In the final moments of the episode, she nearly tells her best friend Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) about it, but ultimately doesnt even lend the decision that much weight: I just you know, I had a thing, I figured it out. Paula is a woman trying to pursue her dreams, co-creator and showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna told Variety. One of the ideas of this show is that shes somebody who had kind of limited scope of ambitions until Rebecca came along. Paulas first pregnancy was also an accident; when faced with the choice back then, she opted to go ahead and have her son. Fifteen years later, things are different. Were sort of in a golden age of female characters, and depicting them in their complexity, said McKenna. Shows that are dealing with women and how they live their lives the inflection points in their lives how they make decisions. These are the types of decisions that women make in their lives frequently. The quotidian nature of the question of choice stands out. If there is one assumption we have about abortion on television, it is that abortion episodes are Important. They frequently spend the entire episode dwelling on the anguish of decision-making or, more recently, find a way to depict an aspect of the experience that has been marginalized in the past because the procedure is so politicized. So alongside episodes like Friday Night Lights I Cant, in which Becky (Madison Burge) struggles with the wave of emotion that accompanies choosing to terminate, are episodes like Scandals Baby, Its Cold Outside, where Olivia Popes (Kerry Washington) decision is cut-and-dried, but the almost complete depiction of the procedure is revolutionary. Either politically, personally, or both, abortion episodes are almost always occasions for getting very serious about a big, high-stakes debate. Story continues Yet earlier this year, in a no-holds-barred attempt to turn this convention on its ear, BoJack Horsemans Brrap Brrap Pew Pew managed to make astonishing, brilliant, irreverent comedy out of its abortion episode, using one characters decision as the jumping-off point for another to fake a pregnancy, fake an abortion, and then film a music video about it. The episode zeroes in on the question of shame, needling the viewers assumptions about how much self-loathing needs to go into the decision to abort. It also torpedoes the notion of an abortion episode necessarily being Important, devoting lots of time to gunshot noises instead. And this month, abortion on television has accrued added complexity, with three different shows that feature an abortion decision that just kinda happens. In the tradition of Six Feet Unders Twilight, its the matter-of-fact abortion, where the procedure is desired or necessary and the drama of it is marginal enough to be a subplot. In the CWs Jane the Virgin, Xiomara (Andrea Navedo) is revealed to have had a medical abortion between the Oct. 14 and Oct. 24 episodes; and in Nov. 2s Youre the Worst on FXX, Lindsay (Kether Donohue) got an abobo in between two different diner excursions for pie. In last weeks Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Paulas final decision happens off-screen. The audience meets up with her again after shes already in bed recovering from the procedure. In each episode, both personally and politically, its a lower-key development. The politics of the women are either not discussed or irrelevant. No one engages with rhetoric about the childs life or the ethics of choice. Crazy Ex-Girlfriends Paula is the most hesitant to abort, but as McKenna puts it, Paulas decision whether or not have a baby doesnt have to do with political considerations. They have to do with where she is in her life, and what shes taken on, and what she wants her future to be. Instead, in every case, the primary drama is whether or not they should tell loved ones in their lives. For Xiomara, its her Catholic mother; for Lindsay, its her husband; for Paula, its her best friend. Rather than make the drama about the choice to have the procedure, the emphasis on storytelling in these three shows is about defending, explaining, or sharing the choice. Its canny commentary on where the conflict within the abortion debate really lies. A long-running thread through depictions of abortion in pop culture is that choice, as a political and personal act, is a burden which is why episodes about it are so Important, or even Very Special. But in all three of these shows, the conflict is instead about how the woman in question can continue to live in the world of the show; the decision itself has a de-emphasized burden of agonizing over ethics, while sharing it in major relationships becomes the fraught avenue of drama. This has the effect of focusing sharply on the character in question. Lindsay has such an erratic personality and such terrible reasons for conceiving that even the pro-life protestor outside the clinic ends up encouraging her to terminate her pregnancy. Xiomaras decision forces her to challenge her mothers strict Catholicism. And Paula is so eager to be everyones sidekick that she slips into that mode again when she finds out shes pregnant putting her own needs, long-deferred, once again behind the needs of someone else, even though that person doesnt even exist yet. None of these three episodes are about abortion as much as they are about three individual characters determining what is best for them. Instead of pawns in a larger debate, the characters stories make for a highly specific set of circumstances, unique to each person. Which is helpful, because ultimately, thats where most of us live in the privacy of our own bodies, making decisions for the well-being of our particular families. This storytelling device also has the effect of demonstrating how practically simple abortion usually is. Perhaps not all of us would be as comfortable with these decisions; perhaps for us, it would not be an abobo followed by lunch. But in their cut-and-dried nature, the abortion stories of these three shows have a way of clearing the air around the debate, divorcing shame and anxiety from the experience to attempt to engage with them as they are regularly, daily, universally lived. Related stories 'You're the Worst' Creator and Cast Talk About This Week's Controversial Topic Q&A: Chris Geere on the Evolution of 'You're the Worst,' Jimmy's Speeches TV Ratings: 'Big Bang Theory' Wins, 'Jane the Virgin' Returns Up From Finale A woman who allegedly killed her twin sister has been charged for the second time with murder after she drove a vehicle off a cliff in Hawaii with both of them inside over the summer, killing her twin. Alexandria Duval, 38, was charged with second-degree murder and arrested again in her Albany, New York, home Friday after a warrant for her arrest was issued at the end of October, according to reports. Read: Teen Missing After 21-Year-Old Boyfriend Allegedly Kills Her Mom, Younger Sister Duval was initially arrested after the June tragedy when witnesses said they saw the twins arguing in an SUV in Maui before it slammed through a rock wall and went over a 200-foot, seaside cliff. Anastasia Duval was pronounced dead on the scene, while Alexandria had critical injuries. Alexandria pleaded not guilty to the charge of second-degree murder and the charge was later dropped after a judge determined there was no probable cause to support the charge. Shes now awaiting extradition to Hawaii in an Albany jail. Alexandria spent three weeks in an upstate jail after the crash in August for a DWI, according to reports, the most recent of many arrests comprising the twins' checkered pasts. The two have a criminal history that includes arrests for public intoxication, driving under the influence, assaulting a peace officer and battery, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported, citing 2014 and 2015 court records from Florida and Utah. They were also reportedly known for running yoga studios and then abandoning them, leaving behind unpaid debts and employees. Hawaii was reportedly supposed to be a fresh start for the pair, but they were evicted from their rental home and forced to move to a budget hotel, according to reports. Read: Woman Allegedly Stabs Boyfriend to Death and Tells Police He Accidentally Cut Himself The pair had reportedly been fighting constantly and the latest of their dust-ups led to the tragic crash, according to reports. Story continues Prosecutors initially said that although the charge was dropped, Alexandria may not be off the hook because they were considering all charges and believe a crime has been committed. Watch: 15-Year-Old Brother Charged With Fatally Shooting His 10-Year-Old Sister Related Articles: A Hawaii woman who was behind the wheel of a truck that plunged off a cliff, killing her identical twin sister, has been arrested in New York state and charged for the second time with murder after being cleared in June. According to a statement by New York state police, 37-year-old Alexandria Duval was tracked down and taken into custody Friday in Albany, New York, after Hawaiian authorities issued a murder warrant. The Maui News reports the warrant for Duvals arrest was issued last month when a grand jury in Maui County, Hawaii, indicted her on a second-degree murder charge and set bail at $3 million. According to the police statement, Duval was found inside an Albany residence but allegedly attempted to flee from police. However, she was arrested and is awaiting extradition back to Hawaii in a New York jail, the statement says. Duval has not entered a plea, and it was not immediately clear if she has retained an attorney. She is accused of killing her twin, Anastasia, by driving their SUV 200 feet off a cliff in Hana, Maui, on May 29. Witnesses reported seeing the sisters arguing with each other, with the passenger pulling the drivers hair, the Associated Press reports. Witnesses also said that they saw the truck accelerate forward and then take a sharp left over the cliff, one prosecutor said. Duval, who was also in the car as it went off the edge, suffered minor injuries, Maui News reports. Days after the crash, the yoga entrepreneur was arrested and charged with murder. However, a judge ordered her release due to a lack of probable cause. Duval was arrested in August on an aggravated driving while intoxicated charge and other traffic violations in New York. She spent three weeks in jail for the incident, according to ABC News. The twins formerly owned and operated two popular yoga students in Palm Beach County, Florida, before changing their names. Warning: This post contains spoilers for Westworld. Westworlds seventh episode, Trompe LOeil, opens with what appears to be a memory from Bernards (Jeffrey Wright) agonizing past. We see Bernard wake up to find himself at his sons hospital bedside reading from Alices Adventures in Wonderland. The quote he reads provides a telling framework for the story: If I had a world of my own everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isnt. The Mad Hatters lines welcome us into an episode that confirms the elusive truth about how our world can defy our perception. Everyone who orbits Westworld may not who they appear to be, and this episode officially altered the audiences reality, opening up endless possibilities. Bernard is a host, and he has been for a long time. So it turns out that mild-mannered Bernard is actually a very old-school host. Even though the show presented him as human, we now know hes one of the robots that the park has constructed specifically to oversee other robots. Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) orders him to take out Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen) for scheming to destroy his lifelong passion project, which Bernard has been an integral part of this whole time. In the remote diagnostic facility beneath Dr. Fords happy place, the episodes final scene confirms the popular fan theory as Bernard sputters out of control due to a crucial update: hes one of Fords creations, just like the manmade machines hes been charged to oversee. At first, he ignores the proofa blueprint that doesnt have the word Bernard on it. To him, none of it adds up. He was a father who sat beside his dying son, he had a wife, but thats just the life he was coded to remember. Lucky for Ford, this restricted area, which is perhaps a metaphor for his troubled mind, has awful cell phone service. So no one comes to stop Bernard from choking Theresa to death. Ford even uses Hales wordsblood sacrificewhen hes intimidating Theresa. This perhaps proves hes been watching her every move: Like I said, I built all of this, he says before the kill. On Fords command, without hesitation, Bernard removes his blazer signifying that its murder time, or simply because he really respects a sharp blazer, and he ends her life. Theres one less enemy to Fords creativity to contend with. But whos going to remind Lee that hes worthless now that shes gone? Maybe Hale. Story continues Maeve has a real shot at getting out of there. m The shows been tracing the arc of Maeves awakening, and as far as viewers could see, shes been the most threatening android this side of Sweetwater. But thats not the case. Sweet innocent Clem is also conscious and powerful, so no, she will not obey a Hemsworth brother when he tells her to shut down. She will just fix her hair and wipe the blood, as we see during the boards demonstration. At the Mariposa bar, Maeve tries to find out if Clem also dreams shes someone else (prior build), but Clem acts very innocent about this line of questioning. Before Maeve can get anywhere, the cleanup crew descends to extract a host whos done something really dangerous. Notably, Maeve doesnt freeze, proving she can ignore these shutdown commands. She just clutches yet another sharp object that just happened to be right there in case she needs to defend herself. Clem, on the other hand, seems to snap into sleep mode as shes removed, although this could simply all be an act. Maeve returns to the slab and tells her new subordinate, Felix, to help her find Clem. He shows her that she is at the body shop for a routine nose drill with Sylvester. Emboldened, Maeve enlists Sylvester and Felix to help her escape. Felix tries to discourage her by warning her trying to escape would be a suicide mission, but she threatens to kill them and explains that shes not afraid of death. You think Im scared of death? Ive done it a million times. Im f-cking great at it. How many times have you died? Maeve is strong enough to attempt to leave and to her advantage, she has two people on the inside who can help her. At this point, the show doesnt tell us if shes mobilizing Clem or other hosts with her newfound power. Dr. Ford and his data arent going anywhere yet. The board is out to get rid of Ford because hes been disruptive, hogging Delos resources in service of his new narrative. But this guy is holding onto his control as tightly as Maeve clings to her conveniently located sharp objects. He flaunts how powerful he is, and is poised to foil the boards gameplan to secure 35 years of his intellectual property before asking him to resign. h He says, in true mastermind fashion, that everything that motivated Michelangelo, Mozart, Shakespeare and the Empire State Building was thirst for sex. Fans have theorized that Dr. Fords feelings about his unsupportive dad could be his undoing, but for now, it looks like hes in control. Its not easy to tell. When Theresa fires Bernard, he does nothing except look extra nuts in his close-up. But the episodes ending (which was in part possible because of Theresas intimate connection with Bernard), is a sure sign that if anyones in charge, it isnt the board. Some hosts are immune to commands, but a gun still works on them. When the board shames Ford and Bernard with a presentation that demonstrates the havoc the reveries have wreaked on hosts, we learned the hosts are not unstoppable. Yes, theyre overriding the parks commands, holding grudges and bashing heads, as Elsie warned they could on day one of this journey. Hosts remember trauma and can inflict their own, a major development thats now advancing at full speed, but its not exactly a fair fight. f Heres how we know. Step 1: A technician, who is the first official worker host, bludgeons Clem. Step 2: After Clems memory of that upsetting encounter is seemingly zapped out of her, she resets and immediately murders him. To seize control of her, Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) enters the room with a suggestion. Thats enough sweetheart, he says and its not the only time a man calls one of the females sweetheart in this episode. In an act of defiance, Clem blows him off, and she tastes the blood on her lips, proving that the revenge she exacts is likely a direct result of the reveries. (Fans will note that when the reveries were first introduced to us, the show illustrates the update with Clem touching her fingers to her lips.) Unlike the original 1973 movie, host rebellion usually happens with a woman turning the tables on her male attacker. Remember when Dolores pulled the trigger on her assailant? But the parks security team still stops Clem by shooting her, so it would seem that a gun in a humans hands is still a protection against an uprising. Theres more to the attraction between Dolores and William. wd After last weeks episode skipped Westworlds favorite couple, we return to Dolores and William, who spend a passionate night together. Theyre falling for each other, but theres a little mood killer. Turns out, theyre riding through Ghost Nation, a romantic attraction lined with heads of intruders on sticks. Lawrence explains two important things here: the Confederados arent fighting a fair war, and Westworld has absolutely seduced William, even though at the outset, he appeared to be immune to its charms. When William and Dolores chat about their hope and dreams, Dolores says in more loose terms that she knows her life is a lie and she aches for truth. William, on the other hand, reveals he used to escape into storybook adventures, and via his passage to Westworld, he has crossed into a universe he could have only read about. Dolores longs for freedom while Williams captivated by the fantasy of it all. Hes done pretending he belongs with the rich folks, and hed very much like to start getting real. d To trick the Confederados who ambush them, William, Dolores and Lawrence rely on a trompe loeil visual move. They send a lifeless cowboy mannequin, white surrender flag in hand, trotting out to the scene so that Lawrence can take aim and explode it. In the chase that follows, William saves Dolores so he can get to be the hero and shes the damsel again, a very storybook setup. He cant be there for her forever though, as after 28 days, apparently guests have to check out. Most intriguing of all, when William is sleeping like a useless baby, Dolores gets creative and paints an entire masterpiece. Its an important first: she used to paint her environs, but this time, she came up with a vision of a place where the mountains meet the sea from her head. And lo and behold, it actually exists at the end of their treacherous chase. So its possible that Arnold or some powerful figure planted this exact image there for her find. Whats the end game? Best to take Lawrences advice and ask the dust. South Korean prosecutors on Monday questioned two former key presidential aides over allegations they helped a shadowy confidant of President Park Geun-Hye meddle in state affairs and secretly visit her office. Park has been engulfed by a scandal that centres on Choi Soon-Sil, who is accused of using her personal ties with the president to coerce local firms to donate millions of dollars to non-profit foundations Choi then used for personal gain. Choi, 60, is also accused of interfering in state affairs to the extent of nominating officials and editing Park's speeches even though she has no official title or security clearance. Ahn Bong-Geun and Lee Jae-Man, who served as Park's key advisors until last month, are accused of helping Choi to visit the presidential office. They also allegedly reported state affairs or leaked confidential documents to her. TV news footage showed the pair separately entering the Seoul prosecutors' office on Monday morning as they were mobbed by reporters. The two, who served as Park's aides for decades, were described by local media as "doorknobs" to the president who wielded enormous power over policymaking. Two other presidential aides have been arrested in the snowballing influence-peddling scandal. - Independent probe - Ruling and opposition lawmakers, meanwhile, agreed Monday to appoint an independent team of prosecutors to probe the widening scandal. Under the agreement, a special prosecutor will be recommended by the two opposition parties, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea told AFP. The deal comes after opposition parties said they were not satisfied with the existing investigation. The new, larger team -- consisting of more than 60 prosecutors and other investigators -- will be given 120 days to look into allegations against Choi and a handful of presidential aides mired in the scandal. The spokeswoman said the agreement would be passed at a plenary session scheduled for Thursday. Story continues Choi, whose father was an elusive religious figure and a longtime mentor to Park until his death in 1994, was arrested earlier this month for abuse of power and fraud. The scandal has sparked nationwide fury with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to call for Park's resignation and mocking the president as Choi's "puppet". A mass rally held in Seoul on Saturday drew one million people, according to organisers, making it the largest public protest in the South for nearly three decades. Park also faces allegations that she helped Choi extract money from local companies including Samsung and Hyundai. Prosecutors are seeking to formally question her this week. If she agrees, Park will become the first South Korean president to be probed while in office. Under South Korea's constitution, the incumbent president may not be charged with a criminal offence except insurrection or treason. But many argue the sitting president can be investigated by prosecutors and then charged after leaving office. HOUSTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Monday delayed a decision on whether to grant an easement to Energy Transfer Partners for construction of a segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to joint notice published by the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Army. The Army Corps of Engineers said it had completed its review of the pipeline and said additional discussion and analysis are warranted. It specifically noted past dispossession of lands held by the Native American group protesting the line. Construction on a segment of the line in North Dakota was halted in September following protests from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other activists. (Reporting by Liz Hampton; Editing by Dan Grebler) By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. internet companies including Facebook Inc and Amazon Inc have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent on Monday by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet's Google, Uber [UBER.UL] and Twitter, represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign. The internet industry looks forward to engaging in an open and productive dialogue, reads the letter, signed by Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, and seen by Reuters. Some of the policy goals stated in the letter may align with Trumps priorities, including easing regulation on the sharing economy, lowering taxes on profits made from intellectual property and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market. Other goals are likely to clash with Trump, who offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector during his campaign. They include supporting strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations, upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency, and maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. The association seeks immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. Though Trump made tougher immigration policies a central theme of his campaign, he has at times shied away from arguing against more H-1B visas for skilled workers, saying in a March debate he was "softening the position because we need to have talented people in this country." Story continues While urging support for trade agreements, the letter does not mention the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump has repeatedly assailed with claims it was poorly negotiated and would take jobs away from U.S. workers. The technology sector supported the deal, but members of Congress have conceded since the election it is not going to be enacted. Trump's often-shifting policy proposals on the campaign trail frequently alarmed tech companies and sometimes elicited public mockery, such as when Trump called for closing off parts of the internet to limit militant Islamist propaganda. Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple Inc products over the company's refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon, and demanded that tech companies such as Apple manufacture their products in the United States. In a statement, Beckerman said the internet industry looked forward to working closely with Trump and lawmakers in Congress to "cement the internets role as a driver of economic and social progress for future generations." (Editing by Leslie Adler and Jeffrey Benkoe) By Alexander Besant NEW YORK (Reuters) - Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign manager said President Barack Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton should do more to support a peaceful transition. Following several nights of unrest, crowds of people marched in parks in New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California, according to social media. A few thousand joined a march at the south end of Manhattan's Central Park, beginning at a Trump property on Columbus Circle and walking toward the real estate mogul's skyscraper headquarters less than a mile (1.6 km) away. They chanted: "Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcomed here," and held signs such as "White silence = violence" and "Don't mourn, organize." One protester said demonstrators were reclaiming what the American flag he was holding stood for. "The flag means freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection under the law and other values like diversity, respecting differences, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press," said Daniel Hayman, 31, of Seattle, who was in New York for work. "We're trying to reclaim the flag and push forward those values." Thousands in several cities have demonstrated since the results from Tuesday's election showed Trump, a Republican, lost the popular tally but secured enough votes in the 538-member Electoral College to win the presidency, surprising the world. Largely peaceful demonstrators in urban areas have said Trump threatens their civil and human rights. They have decried Trump's often inflammatory campaign rhetoric about illegal immigrants, Muslims and women, as well as allegations, which he denies, that the former reality TV star sexually abused women. Dozens have been arrested, including 71 in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday night, according to police, and a handful of police injured. 'LET'S MAKE WAVES' In San Francisco on Sunday, about 1,000 people marched through Golden Gate Park toward a beach where they chanted: "Let's make waves." They held signs such as "I resist racism" and "Down with the Trumps." Across the bay in Oakland, thousands of protesters joined a festival-like atmosphere, holding peace signs and blowing soap bubbles in the sunshine. Many had brought their children, aiming to hold hands around the 3.4-mile (5.5-km) circumference of Lake Merritt in a popular urban park. Civil rights groups have monitored violence against U.S. minorities since Trump's win, citing reports of attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, of racist graffiti and of bullying of immigrant children. They have called on Trump to denounce the attacks. Trump said he was 'so saddened' to hear of instances of violence by some of his supporters against minorities, according to a transcript released on Sunday of an interview with the CBS program '60 Minutes.' 'THIS MAN IS OUR PRESIDENT' Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said on Fox News on Sunday that she was sure many of the protesters were paid professionals, although she offered no proof. Suggesting a double standard, Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that if Clinton had won the election and Trump supporters had protested, "people would be freaking out that his supporters were not accepting election results." "It's time really for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to say to these protesters: 'This man is our president,'" she said. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Sunday that protests were protected by the First Amendment as long as they were peaceful. Neither Obama nor Clinton has called for an end to the protests. Obama told Trump at the White House on Thursday that he was going to help Trump succeed, "because if you succeed, then the country succeeds." Clinton told supporters at a New York hotel on Wednesday: "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead." Trump on Sunday attacked the New York Times for coverage he said was "very poor and highly inaccurate." "The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change - doubt it?" Trump wrote on Twitter. The newspaper published a letter in Sunday's editions from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet, not apologizing, but thanking readers for their loyalty and asking how news outlets underestimated Trump's support. The Times plans to "hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly" during the Trump presidency, they wrote. (Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington, Beck Diefenbach in San Francisco and Noah Berger in Oakland, Calif.; Writing by David Ingram; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney) By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White plans to step down around the same time President Barack Obama exits the Oval Office, the agency said on Monday. Her departure will cap a nearly four-year tenure marked by regulatory and enforcement milestones, as well as internal discord over Wall Street rules. It also may leave a sharply understaffed and gridlocked commission in her wake. With White's departure, the SEC will be left with only two commissioners, who often staunchly disagree with each other - Democrat Kara Stein and Republican Michael Piwowar. Unless the U.S. Senate confirms two pending SEC nominees during the lame duck session, the 10th floor that is home to the commissioners at the SEC's Washington, D.C., headquarters could become a very lonely place come January. Once White departs, Piwowar, as the sole Republican commissioner, will likely be designated by incoming President Donald Trump to serve as acting chairman until a permanent chairman is selected. White, a former federal prosecutor and Wall Street defense lawyer in her pre-SEC days, said in a farewell interview with Reuters that she does not know what she will do next, though retirement is not an option. Since she assumed her post as SEC chair in April 2013, White has presided over a record number of enforcement actions. They consisted of both big cases and smaller matters, often referred to as "broken windows" cases -a reference to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's strategy of policing minor offenses to deter bigger ones. Among her most notable accomplishments were the institution of a policy requiring some companies to admit wrongdoing when they settle cases with the SEC, and new rules that upended money market mutual fund pricing and aim to reduce systemic risks by asset managers. White, an independent, has often found herself caught in the crossfire between more partisan SEC commissioners who have not been able to agree on controversial rules. Story continues As such, she has been unable to get some rules - such as a politically charged one requiring financial brokers to put their clients' first - across the finish line. Moreover, White has also drawn the ire of progressives, including Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who have criticized her for not being tougher on Wall Street and for refusing to push public companies to disclose their political spending. Before she leaves, White has said she will work to wrap up rules governing the U.S. derivatives market. She also highlighted the SEC's intentions to approve a plan that will help police the markets by storing data on every trade order, execution and cancellation. A vote has been slated for Nov. 15. White's departure announcement comes less than month after Warren took the unusual step of asking President Obama to oust the SEC chair. The SEC draws strength from being a bipartisan panel with a healthy diversity of opinions, but politics are checked at the door, White told Reuters. "When you cross the threshold into the job as chairman or commissioner, then your mission is the SEC's mission," she said. Unlike some of White's predecessors, who were tasked with restoring confidence in the SEC after the financial market collapse, White has not faced the same kinds of crisis management challenges. Rather, she had to contend with completing a mountain of rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and the JOBS Act, a 2012 law designed to help start-ups. "When I first came in, on the rulemaking front, there were things pending of great importance," she said. "We had not yet gotten anywhere, frankly, on the JOBS Act." The changes she made in the enforcement division, including requiring corporate defendants in some cases to admit to their wrongdoing rather than letting them settle without admitting or denying the charges, will likely stand out as one of the most significant milestones of her tenure. Since then, White said, the SEC has done more than 70 settlements with admissions, and some other regulators have started to follow suit, In its municipal bond fraud case against the City of Miami, White said the SEC's insistence on admissions helped send the case to trial, and the jury later handed the SEC a victory. If she has one regret, she says, it is that the SEC has yet to harmonize disjointed rules governing financial advisers, who are fiduciaries who must act in their clients' best interest, and brokers, who are held to a lesser standard. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Linda Stern and Dan Grebler) By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White plans to step down around the same time President Barack Obama exits the Oval Office, the agency said on Monday. Her departure will cap a nearly four-year tenure marked by regulatory and enforcement milestones, as well as internal discord over Wall Street rules. It also may leave a sharply understaffed and gridlocked commission in her wake. With White's departure, the SEC will be left with only two commissioners, who often staunchly disagree with each other - Democrat Kara Stein and Republican Michael Piwowar. Unless the U.S. Senate confirms two pending SEC nominees during the lame duck session, the 10th floor that is home to the commissioners at the SEC's Washington, D.C., headquarters could become a very lonely place come January. Once White departs, Piwowar, as the sole Republican commissioner, will likely be designated by incoming President Donald Trump to serve as acting chairman until a permanent chairman is selected. White, a former federal prosecutor and Wall Street defense lawyer in her pre-SEC days, said in a farewell interview with Reuters that she does not know what she will do next, though retirement is not an option. Since she assumed her post as SEC chair in April 2013, White has presided over a record number of enforcement actions. They consisted of both big cases and smaller matters, often referred to as "broken windows" cases -a reference to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's strategy of policing minor offenses to deter bigger ones. Among her most notable accomplishments were the institution of a policy requiring some companies to admit wrongdoing when they settle cases with the SEC, and new rules that upended money market mutual fund pricing and aim to reduce systemic risks by asset managers. White, an independent, has often found herself caught in the crossfire between more partisan SEC commissioners who have not been able to agree on controversial rules. Story continues As such, she has been unable to get some rules - such as a politically charged one requiring financial brokers to put their clients' first - across the finish line. Moreover, White has also drawn the ire of progressives, including Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who have criticized her for not being tougher on Wall Street and for refusing to push public companies to disclose their political spending. Before she leaves, White has said she will work to wrap up rules governing the U.S. derivatives market. She also highlighted the SEC's intentions to approve a plan that will help police the markets by storing data on every trade order, execution and cancellation. A vote has been slated for Nov. 15. White's departure announcement comes less than month after Warren took the unusual step of asking President Obama to oust the SEC chair. The SEC draws strength from being a bipartisan panel with a healthy diversity of opinions, but politics are checked at the door, White told Reuters. "When you cross the threshold into the job as chairman or commissioner, then your mission is the SEC's mission," she said. Unlike some of White's predecessors, who were tasked with restoring confidence in the SEC after the financial market collapse, White has not faced the same kinds of crisis management challenges. Rather, she had to contend with completing a mountain of rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and the JOBS Act, a 2012 law designed to help start-ups. "When I first came in, on the rulemaking front, there were things pending of great importance," she said. "We had not yet gotten anywhere, frankly, on the JOBS Act." The changes she made in the enforcement division, including requiring corporate defendants in some cases to admit to their wrongdoing rather than letting them settle without admitting or denying the charges, will likely stand out as one of the most significant milestones of her tenure. Since then, White said, the SEC has done more than 70 settlements with admissions, and some other regulators have started to follow suit, In its municipal bond fraud case against the City of Miami, White said the SEC's insistence on admissions helped send the case to trial, and the jury later handed the SEC a victory. If she has one regret, she says, it is that the SEC has yet to harmonize disjointed rules governing financial advisers, who are fiduciaries who must act in their clients' best interest, and brokers, who are held to a lesser standard. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Linda Stern and Dan Grebler) By Ernest Scheyder HOUSTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - U.S. shale producers are redeploying cash, rigs and workers, cautiously confident the energy sector has turned a corner after Donald Trump's election victory and OPEC's recent signal that it plans to curb production. The downturn produced a leaner, more efficient U.S. shale industry that was forced to develop and quickly adapt new technology to compete with conventional oil supplies during a two-year period of depressed prices. "You're starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel," Ryan Lance, chief executive of ConocoPhillips , the largest independent U.S. oil producer, said in an interview last week. "We're beginning to put capital back to work, but we're being cautious." Specifics of the deal by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - especially what it means for each member - need to be finalized at a meeting later this month in Austria. But the tentative agreement indicated OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is keen to end a damaging two-year oil price war. That prodded U.S. producers to action. The U.S. oil drilling rig count has grown 6 percent since OPEC's September accord, according to oilfield analytics firm NavPort, with additions across the country's top shale fields including the Permian (7 percent) and the Bakken (17 percent). Also, Trump's victory is expected to bring to the White House an advocate for oil and gas drilling, who will slash regulations and encourage new energy industry development. Occidental Petroleum Corp, Chevron Corp, Pioneer Natural Resources Co and ConocoPhillips are among those adding rigs or preparing to do so. Oasis Petroleum Inc, a major North Dakota producer, bought 55,000 acres last month from SM Energy Co for $785 million, a bullish bet on the future of oil prices. The company also plans to add rigs. "This all reflects more of a confidence around our business plan in a lower oil price environment," Oasis Chief Executive Tommy Nusz said in an interview last week. Story continues "We feel like we can hold our own now in a $40 (per barrel oil) world and grow in a $45 to $50 world." Citing its technology and other improvements, EOG Resources Inc raised its growth projections and now expects to boost output 15 to 25 percent each year through the end of the decade if oil prices stabilize near $50 per barrel. "After two years of this down cycle, we are more than ready to resume higher-return oil growth," EOG CEO Bill Thomas told investors in early November. All that activity will have an effect once things ramp up. U.S. unconventional shale oil production is expected to dip 13 percent this year from 2015 levels and continue to slip into 2017 before rebounding 11 percent in 2018, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. INVESTORS EYE POTENTIAL Investors in the oil sector are also bullish, eager to see returns grow after lagging for several years. "We fundamentally feel that where energy prices are at now are below where they are going to be at some point, and below their long-term equilibrium level," Tony James, president of private equity investor Blackstone Group LP, told reporters in late October. James' outlook reflects a broader perception among shale oil producers and their financiers that the industry has turned a corner for the better, analysts said. U.S. oil producers have launched initial public offerings, with Extraction Oil & Gas Inc and WildHorse Resource Development Corp filing this fall alone. That is good news not only for the oil industry but also for its largest lenders, including Wells Fargo & Co and Bank of America Corp. Oil "companies are now entrepreneurial and they've cut costs to become viable at these prices," a senior executive at one of the top private equity firms in New York said last month. The executive declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media. "Those people are going to start producing again." To be sure, a resurgence in the U.S. oil industry must still contend with market fundamentals, including a large oversupply and sluggish demand that neither Saudi Arabia nor President-elect Trump can fully control. America's oil inventories rose by more than 14 million barrels in late October, the largest one-week increase on record and one linked to large production of shale oil and natural gas. If American oil companies continue to increase production, they run the risk of abrogating any OPEC output cuts later this month and pushing down prices on their own accord. "Obviously if we pull back to $25 per barrel, that will have an impact upon our investing," said Al Walker, CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Yet demand for the light, sweet oil produced across American shale fields continues to rise globally. U.S. crude oil exports hit an all-time high in September, according to U.S. Census data. And many companies have hedged for 2017 at least, taking advantage of the oil price rise this year. That emboldens executives to boost budgets. Pioneer, considered by Wall Street analysts one of the best-run U.S. shale oil producers, has hedged 75 percent of its 2017 output at an average price around $50 per barrel. "The industry is looking forward to a tepid recovery in early 2017," said John Chisholm, CEO of Flotek Industries Inc , which supplies chemicals used in fracking and other oilfield products. Demand for Flotek's CnF, a nontoxic fracking fluid, during the first nine months of 2016 has already eclipsed 2015 sales volumes, with projections higher for 2017. "These oil producers have reconstructed their business so they can make money at these low oil price levels. They're pressing forward." (Additional reporting by Gui Qing Koh in New York; Editing by Simon Webb and Matthew Lewis) Abu Dhabi (AFP) - A UAE court Monday jailed two Emiratis up to 10 years for their links to a "terrorist" organisation seen as a branch of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, media said. The first defendant was handed a 10-year jail term after he was convicted of playing a "leading role" in a "banned secret group," the official WAM news agency reported. The local Gulf News daily said in its online edition that he was found guilty of joining the outlawed Al-Islah group, which authorities accuse of activities aimed at overthrowing the government and seizing power. He will remain under surveillance for three years after serving his prison term, both sources said. The same Abu Dhabi-based Federal Supreme Court sentenced another Emirati to seven years in prison after it convicted him of joining the same organisation, running one of its offices in the Gulf country, and promoting its ideology, the sources said. The United Arab Emirates in 2013 sentenced 69 activists to up to 15 years each in jail following a mass trial that saw them convicted for their links to Al-Islah. The trial was the largest in the history of the UAE, where authorities have cracked down on dissent and calls for democratic reform in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings that swept other countries. Also on Monday, the same court sentenced a citizen from Comoros Islands to three years in jail after he was found guilty of promoting the Islamic State group, the Gulf News said. The man drew slogans and symbols on public law promoting the jihadist group as well as "slanderous and degrading phrases about state officials", it added. The United Arab Emirates is a member of the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS jihadists in Iraq and Syria since September 2014. Authorities in the Gulf state have enacted anti-terror legislation, including the death penalty and harsher jail terms for crimes linked to religious hatred and extremist groups. (Reuters) - UK commercial property values inched ahead in October, a closely-watched index showed on Monday, breaking a downward trend since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June. Overall property values for UK commercial assets rose 0.07 percent in October, following gradually decreasing declines between July and September, the IPD real estate index, compiled by MSCI (MSCI.N), showed. Britain's 900 billion pound commercial property market was one of the biggest victims of the turmoil that followed the referendum and at one point commercial property funds worth over 18 billion pounds were suspended. However, investor appetite has since started to return as several commercial property funds have reopened, developers have committed to projects initially put on hold and property valuers have dropped Brexit uncertainty clauses from valuation reports. Britain's largest listed property developers and largest listed office landlords, Land Securities (LAND.L) and British Land (BLND.L) are set to report results on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. The October IPD index by MSCI showed a stabilisation of value for UK offices, which felt the largest jolt of any UK commercial property asset class after the Brexit vote on concerns that financial firms would move jobs to Europe, hurting rental demand. Capital values in offices grew 0.015 percent in October compared with a fall of 0.242 percent in September, data showed. Offices in the City of London showed 0.162 percent growth in October. The IPD real estate index is one of Britain's most widely watched commercial real estate data surveys, and tracks about 10.5 percent of the professionally managed UK property across all sectors, including retail and office property. The October index was based on data from 3,180 property investments with a total capital value of 45.1 billion pounds, MSCI said. (Reporting by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru; Editing by Keith Weir) By Natalia Zinets and Alexei Kalmykov KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's police chief and a prominent customs officer resigned on Monday, continuing an exodus of reformist officials that has raised serious doubts about the Western-backed government's commitment to tackle corruption. Police chief Khatia Dekanoidze, a Georgian who was appointed on the strength of her reforms as a minister in Tbilisi, said political meddling in appointments had thwarted her efforts to bring meaningful change. Yulia Marushevska, a 27-year-old who was appointed in 2015 to end rampant bribe-taking at the Odessa port customs, also resigned, accusing the government and her boss of blocking her reforms. Their departures are another blow to the leadership in Kiev, whose will to tackle corruption and vested interests has been repeatedly questioned since coming to power after the Maidan street protests in 2014. The resignations come just days after former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili quit as governor of the Odessa region, accusing President Petro Poroshenko of blocking his efforts to fight graft. Police chief Dekanoidze told a news conference there was a conflict in Ukraine between "those who want to change, and those who are stuck in the past." "I am asking, and even demanding, from the politicians and officials to refrain from interfering in the affairs of the National Police," she said. "They will have to understand that or be doomed to a new confrontation with society, sooner or later." Marushevska was parachuted into the customs service as a student activist by the president, after rising to prominence through a viral video she appeared in called "I am a Ukrainian" during the Maidan protests. She has repeatedly accused vested interests in state agencies of sabotaging her attempts to build a new headquarters, fire corrupt officials or introduce new software. "We have become hostages of sabotage, weakness, cowardice of senior government leaders and key officials," Marushevska told a news conference. A slew of other high profile reformers have quit or been dismissed -- many of them foreign-born officials brought in after Maidan. They include Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, a Lithuanian, who quit in February, saying vested interests were blocking his ministry's work. (Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Two Ukrainian lawmakers exchanged punches during a meeting of the Conciliation Board in Ukraines parliament on Monday, November 14. Yuriy Boyko, of the centre-left Opposition Bloc, punched Oleg Lyashko of the left-wing Radical Party after Lyashko accused Boyko of being a Kremlin agent, according to reports. A scuffle between the pair then ensued. Boyko returned to his seat and Boyko resumed speaking before he was struck once more by Lyashko, who was then asked to leave the chamber. Credit: Rada TV via Storyful Balatah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - The UN's top official on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process said Monday he was concerned the West Bank's largest refugee camp could "explode" if intra-Palestinian clashes worsen, during a rare visit to the Balata camp. In what his officials said was the first visit in "years" by a top UN official to the camp near Nablus in the northern West Bank, Middle East peace envoy Nikolay Mladenov met with civil society figures and politicians including those believed to be opposed to President Mahmud Abbas. Balata has seen an uptick of violence in recent weeks, with Palestinian security officials attempting a series of raids to capture alleged criminals in the camp -- leading to gunbattles. Analysts say Abbas sees the camp as a base for support for his political rival Mohammed Dahlan, who is currently in exile in the United Arab Emirates. Mladenov said he had visited the camp to send a message that the "international community is watching" the situation on the ground. "If you forget about these communities they will explode," he said in an interview with AFP. Balata, where 30,000 people live in 25 hectares (62 acres), is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank and played a key role in previous Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, against Israel. The lives of residents have worsened as the camps have been left behind economically compared with major Palestinian cities, said Mukhaimer Abusada, professor of politics at Azhar University. "Dahlan, who is the main competitor against Abu Mazen, has exploited the situation in the camps by offering some assistance to those in the camps," said Abusada. Dahlan, Fatah's former strongman in Gaza, was expelled from the party in 2011 but is now believed to have strong support in a number of key Arab states in the battle to replace Abbas, who is 81 and has been in power 11 years. Mladenov met with local civil society leaders and teachers and also the camp's Popular Committee -- a political leadership body -- in a meeting closed to the media. Story continues Abusada said a number of the committees members were believed to be allied to Dahlan. Mladenov stressed the UN was not interfering in Palestinian politics but was trying to stop political differences crossing "over into an environment that becomes violent in which Palestinians stand against other Palestinians with weapons". "Our role is to be able to talk to everyone and to send everyone a very clear message that violence is not the answer." He added the UN remains supportive of Abbas's efforts to bring a peaceful resolution to the conflict. "Abu Mazen is the person most committed to non violence and a peaceful resolution. If he is undermined that will affect the Palestinian cause," he said, using the Arabic nickname for Abbas. In the run-down camp residents were wary of talking politics but one who did not want to be named said the Abbas-run Palestinian Authority was deeply unpopular. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A first group of 127 UN peacekeepers returned Monday to a camp on the Syrian-held side of the Golan Heights, two years after withdrawing amid clashes with Al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels. UN spokesman Farhan Haq said more troops from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) would return to camp Faouar this week and that both governments in Israel and Syria supported the move. "The total number of troops that deployed to Camp Faouar this morning is 127 and more are expected to join in a week," said Haq. "For now... they will perform as many of the mandated tasks as they can, security conditions permitting," he added. The UNDOF monitors a 1974 ceasefire between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights. Hundreds of UN troops withdrew from the Syrian-held side of the Golan to the Israeli-occupied sector in September 2014 after Al-Qaeda-linked rebels kidnapped dozens of peacekeepers. In late August 2014, rebels on the Syrian side including Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front kidnapped more than 40 Fijian UNDOF troops and released them two weeks later. The fighters also clashed with 75 Filipino members of the force, who eventually fled a nearby outpost in a worrying sign of spillover from Syria's war. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of the Golan during the Six-Day War of 1967, then annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognized by the international community. Some 510 square kilometers of the Golan remain on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line, with UNDOF overseeing a buffer zone stretching some 70 kilometers from Lebanon in the north to Jordan in the south. "The situation in the area is dramatically different from what it was prior to 2014 and the mission's concept of operations has been adjusted accordingly," said Haq. "But we are going to incrementally return back." The returning troops are from Fiji and Nepal. In the coming days, a total of 150 peacekeepers will be positioned once again at Camp Faouar, UN officials said. MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) - UniCredit (CRDI.MI) and Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) declined to comment on talk of a possible merger between them after their shares rose on speculation about a tie-up. Rumors about a possible merger between the French and Italian banks have been doing the rounds for several years and have re-emerged after Jean-Pierre Mustier, a former investment banking boss at SocGen, was appointed earlier this year to run UniCredit. This was highlighted on Monday by a report from Italian news agency Ansa which said talk of a tie-up was circulating in financial markets. "It's market speculation that the bank does not intend to comment on," a UniCredit spokesman said when asked about the market rumors. Societe Generale also said it did not comment on market rumors. A source inside UniCredit told Reuters recently some managers at the bank believed Mustier's endgame was a tie-up with the French bank. An investment banker at another bank also mentioned such a scenario. This banker said Mustier, who is expected to launch a share issue in the first quarter of next year, would likely raise more than the bank needed to increase its market capitalization with a view to a SocGen deal. Such a tie-up could take place 12-18 months after the share sale, the banker said. Two other sources close to the situation said a tie-up between the two banks was unlikely because of regulatory and constraints. Banks in Europe face pressures to consolidate to help to tackle the problem of low profitability and heavy bad debts, but cross-border deals have always proved tricky. Mustier, who took the helm of UniCredit in July, is considering tapping the market for 10 billion to 13 billion euros ($11 billion-$14 billion), four sources familiar with the matter said on Saturday. That would be more than initial expectations for a 7 billion -8 billion euro cash call and would increase UniCredit's market value to between 24 billion and 27 billion euros. This compares with SocGen's current market value of about 32 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters data. Story continues UniCredit, which is also selling assets, is expected to announce the capital increase together with the results of a strategic review on Dec. 13. UniCredit's shares spiked 5.6 percent higher after the Ansa report, but were flat by 1101 GMT. SocGen also rose more than 2 percent after the report before paring gains to stand about 1 percent higher. (Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro, Paola Arosio, Pamela Barbaglia and Maya Nikolaeva, writing by Silvia Aloisi. Editing by Jane Merriman) Paris (AFP) - An unpublished sketchbook of Vincent Van Gogh's will be presented in Paris on Tuesday, ahead of the release in several countries of a new book displaying the works. The sketchbook is owned by a private collector and hardly any details have emerged of what is depicted on its pages. The new 288-page book reproducing the drawings -- entitled "Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arles: the rediscovered sketchbook" will be published Thursday in France, the US, Japan, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. It contains more than ten drawings, according to French publisher Le Seuil, adding that they form "a very impressive ensemble" and that "their authenticity is well established". "This book has only been seen by its owners, myself and the publisher," the book's editor Bernard Comment told AFP in an interview earlier this year, describing its content as "stunning, dazzling". Van Gogh lived in the scenic southern French town of Arles towards the end of his short life. It was there, in 1888, that he famously cut off part of his ear after an argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh committed suicide in France, aged 37, in 1890. (Adds UPS comment, stock price) By Nick Carey CHICAGO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Air maintenance workers at United Parcel Service Inc have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against the world's largest package delivery company as contract talks remained deadlocked over health-care benefits, the workers' union said on Monday. Teamsters Local 2727 said 98 percent of those who took part in a mail-in ballot voted to authorize strike action. Eighty percent of the local's 1,200 members participated in the ballot. Contract talks have been ongoing for three years. If they remain deadlocked Monday, union representatives say they will begin the process that could lead to a strike within 60 days. The main sticking point has been healthcare benefits. The Teamsters say UPS is demanding major concessions, including a massive spike in retiree contributions for health-care costs. "UPS wants huge concessions and our members are not willing to take them," Local 2727 President Tim Boyle said. "We're not asking for anything we don't already have and this demonstrates our members are willing to strike." The air maintenance staff work at hubs around the United States, with more than one-third in Louisville, Kentucky, which is UPS' main hub. "UPS continues to negotiate in good faith for a contract that is good for our employees, our customers and our company," a UPS spokesman said. "We are confident talks will be completed successfully." The company said it was also hopeful that contract talks can be concluded "without any disruption" to customers. A strike could ground UPS' airplanes, affecting packages shipped by air. While it would not halt all deliveries, it would be a major disruption. The air maintenance workers are governed by the U.S. Railway Labor Act, which only permits strikes after negotiations and mediation have failed. If talks remain deadlocked Monday, the Teamsters say they will ask the federal mediator overseeing negotiations to release the union from the bargaining table. If there is no resolution after a 30-day cooling-off period, a board appointed by the president would have to rule on a strike, which would take up to 30 days. Story continues A strike would be highly unlikely during UPS' crucial holiday peak season this year. But it could go before the presidential board before President Barack Obama leaves office in January. Kevin Gawlik, an air mechanic for 20 years who works at a UPS air hub in Rockford, Illinois, voted to strike. He said the work is tough and can result in health problems, including hearing loss from working around jet engines. "That's why I'm willing to walk out and strike to keep my benefits," Gawlik, 49, said. In trading on the New York Stock Exchange, UPS shares were down 0.3 percent at $113.94. (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) US forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan from 2003-2004 by torturing prisoners in what appeared to be a deliberate policy, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday. Unveiling the results of a lengthy initial probe into atrocities in Afghanistan, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide "imminently" whether to ask to launch a full-blown investigation -- and take the world's only permanent war crimes court into uncharted territory. She stressed that the Taliban militia and the affiliated Haqqani network, Afghan government forces and US troops as well as the CIA all appeared to have carried out war crimes since the Islamic militia was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001. And she blamed the Taliban and its allies for the deaths of some 17,000 civilians since 2007 to December 2015 in a brutal insurgency with "numerous attacks" on schools, hospitals and mosques. But for the first time, Bensouda highlighted allegations of "war crimes of torture and related ill-treatment, by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency". There was a "reasonable basis to believe that" during the interrogation of detainees, "members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture" as well as cruel treatment and rape. - Complex investigation - If Bensouda does ask judges to authorise a full-scale inquiry, the tribunal would be taking on its most complex and politically controversial investigations to date. But the United States has not ratified the court's founding Rome Statute, and it is unlikely Washington would cooperate in any investigation which would expose US forces for the first time to the glare of an ICC probe. And while the US has been leading calls for those behind atrocities in the Syrian conflict to be brought to justice in The Hague, there is little chance of any US soldiers ending up in the dock here. Story continues The former administration of president George W. Bush authorised the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques --including waterboarding -- after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Their use was abolished by President Barack Obama when he took over the White House in January 2009. But the ICC could be set for a collision course with president-elect Donald Trump, who has said he is in favour of such harsh interrogation techniques and may re-authorise their use. War crimes allegedly carried out by US forces were "not the abuses of a few isolated individuals," Bensouda insisted in her annual report to the 124 states that belong to the ICC. Rather it appeared "these alleged crimes were committed" as part of "a policy or policies aimed at eliciting information through the use of interrogation techniques involving cruel or violent methods". The aim was to "support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan". Detailing her office's initial findings, Bensouda said "at least 61 detainees" were subjected to "torture (and) cruel treatment" by US armed forces in Afghanistan between May 1, 2003 and December 31, 2014. "Members of the CIA" also appeared "to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment... and/or rape on the territory of Afghanistan" as well as in secret detention centres in Poland, Romania and Lithuania between December 2002 and March 2008. - Moving out of Africa - Any prosecutions of Afghan forces could also be complicated by a general amnesty law passed by the Afghan parliament which came into force in 2009. The ICC was set up in The Hague in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes in cases where national courts are unwilling or unable to act. The report was released just ahead of Wednesday's opening of the annual conference of the tribunal's state parties, set this year to be dominated by the shock defections of three African nations, with Bensouda under pressure to widen the geographic scope of her investigations. Kabul recognised the court's jurisdiction in February 2003, authorising Bensouda's predecessor Louis Moreno-Ocampo to probe atrocities on its territory. But some African nations have led a chorus to quit the tribunal, accusing it of bias. Of the 10 current full ICC investigations, nine are based in Africa. The other is in Georgia, pitting the ICC against Russia which is also not a signatory. Washington (AFP) - Keith Ellison, a US Muslim lawmaker and a supporter of Bernie Sanders, on Monday formally announced his bid to lead the battered Democratic Party, vowing to take it in a more liberal direction. "I am proud to announce my candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and if given the opportunity to serve, I will work tirelessly to make the Democratic Party an organization that brings us together and advances an agenda that improves people's lives," Ellison, 53, said in a statement. Ellison, a member of the House of Representatives who hails from Minnesota, became the first Muslim elected to the US Congress in 2006. He was one of the first supporters of Sanders, in October 2015, in the Vermont senator's ultimately unsuccessful bid against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries. Clinton's loss in the November 8 election to Republican tycoon Donald Trump has left the party reeling. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, was among the first to announce his support for Ellison to lead the DNC. A number of other party heavyweights also back him, including the next Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York. "The Democratic Party needs to look itself in the mirror and work tirelessly to become once again the party that working people know will work for their interests," Sanders wrote in launching a petition drive to support Ellison's bid last week. - A party in crisis - As Democratic President Barack Obama winds up his eight years in office, his party is in crisis. In addition to losing the White House in last week's election, the Democrats were unable to retake control of either the Senate or the House from the Republicans and lost a number of state races. In the battle to rebuild the party of former presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, Ellison said, the focus needs to be populist and anchored at the grassroots level. Story continues "We should have to make the voters first. Not the donors first," Ellison said in an ABC television interview Sunday. "I love the donors and we thank them but it has to be that -- the guys in the barber shop, the lady at the diner, the folks who are worried about whether that plant is going to close.... They've got to be a laser beam focus on everything we do," he said. "That's how we come back." Ellison would be the first Muslim and the third African American, according to the Huffington Post, to head the DNC. He notably faces a rival in Howard Dean, former party head from 2005 to 2009 and a presidential contender in the 2004 primaries. The DNC is currently led by interim chair Donna Brazile following the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who stepped down in July under fierce criticism of her pro-Clinton bias during the primaries. Washington (AFP) - The United States on Monday condemned Israel's "unprecedented and troubling" step toward legalizing unauthorized Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Israeli ministers on Sunday approved draft legislation that would retroactively grant legal status to wildcat settlements across the West Bank in defiance of international law. US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Washington is "deeply concerned" by the proposal. "We hope it does not become law," she said. "This would represent an unprecedented and troubling step that's inconsistent with prior Israeli legal opinion and also break longstanding Israeli policy of not building on private Palestinian land." "Our policy on settlements is clear. We believe they are corrosive to the cause of peace," she added. "This legislation would be a dramatic advancement of the settlement enterprise, which is already gravely endangering the prospects for a two-state solution." Despite friction between the two sides, President Barack Obama's administration has maintained the close US alliance with Israel and recently signed the biggest military aid deal in American history with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Last week, American voters chose Donald Trump as Obama's successor and, although the Republican is new to foreign policy, some expect him to abandon or soft-pedal the long-standing US support for an Israel-Palestinian peace deal based on two states side-by-side within agreed borders. Last week, millions of Americans haplessly watched Donald Trump do the impossible and seal a victory to become the 45th president of the United States without ever holding a government job. As clouds of doubt hover over the country's future, Chicago rapper Vic Mensa remains fearless. Mensa -- who unleashed his unflinching EP There's a Lot Going On earlier this year and joined Chicago protests over the shooting of Laquan McDonald -- continues to seek justice. Days after soaking in the reality of Trump's forthcoming term as president, Mensa relives the moment he found out about Hillary Clinton's loss, his phone conversation with his dejected sisters, and his mind-set moving forward as a black man in America. I was kind of woozy when I first found out. Just to see such a symbol of hatred and opposition to equality be put in our nation's highest office. I was in Atlanta working with The-Dream on some things. I had to remind myself that this wasn't my election to win or lose. Then, when I woke up in the morning, I realized that this had to happen because we've been pacified by having Barack [Obama] in office. That pacification would have only continued by having Hillary elected. My fight doesn't end here no matter the outcome. I could have felt a bit more comfortable but a felt sense of security had Hillary won, because the things that I've been talking about this year and going hard on are the same. Those things have not changed. They've just manifested themselves in slavery, Jim Crow Laws, segregation and mass incarceration. Even the conversations people have about mass incarceration don't get to the issue. They always talk about nonviolent crimes. They don't even get the issue and how different this nation treats its prison system. It's not just nonviolent offenders that need to be re-evaluated. It's the entire mother----ing system. To people who have been led to believe you are white, race is the child of racism; racism is not the child of race. Race is a fairly new idea that's been used to divide and conquer. If you look at a lot of historical texts, when you're describing Italian war generals, it wasn't described as black. Might have been North African. People had real backgrounds. We have Irish people, English people, Polish people, Russians, and Chinese people, and Indians from India, Native Americans. All of this brown, black and white has stolen the true identity of humanity and been used to categorize people so they can focus on their differences more than their similarities. Story continues This is not the first time in American history where poor people have been led to believe they're white and have also been led to believe that their problems are the result of Mexicans, Muslims and black people. It's just a scapegoat technique to keep them confused and keep them from looking at their real enemies, who really propagate their state of disenfranchisement and major corporations like the president-elect. They're just pawns in a bigger capitalist and imperialist game. Until we can regroup and re-identify the real issues in our society -- which I think Bernie Sanders started to get people focused on -- we're gonna have all of this pointless fighting in this country that's not taking us anywhere positive. We can't solve the problems of the poor by blaming other poor people. It's not poor people taking each other's jobs; it's major corporations. It's shipping companies overseas, technology changing and factory positions being done by machines. But, right now, it's just a hoax. I feel like that's gonna bring out the worst in a lot of people in America because hurt people hurt people. I know that. Some people in these small towns with heroin epidemics and lack of employment -- they're hurt -- and the easiest way to approach that is to blame somebody of a different race; to blame "the others." It's a lot more difficult to identify the real structural issues that have us disenfranchised all across this nation. I think when you start getting at those things, that's when the assassinations happen. When Martin Luther King starts working on a poor people's movement and he starts organizing people of all races to recognize how they're being oppressed, police start cutting him off. Like Fred Hampton, when he was in Chicago, and the Black Panthers were uniting with Latinos and Asian revolutionary groups, they kill you in your sleep. So obviously, there's something to be found there. I've been having conversations with people from a movement right now about creating something a lot bigger than a Black Lives Matter campaign -- something very inclusive. For us to make real change, we're gonna need everyone and people of all different walks of life to recognize the part that they play and how these powers at hand affect them too. I feel like these ideas of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia and homophobia are so damaging to both the hater and the hated because having that type of energy on your heart and on your mind [is hard]. I know how it feels to really f---ing feel like I hate somebody and it is f---ing tiring. It's exhausting and it's so hard to think rationally. It skews your perspective and I think that people are hurting all over this nation for different reasons and they're only leading themselves to more pain. It's discouraging getting on the phone with my sisters and listening to them crying because they don't feel safe as black women in America right now. They're not with the family. They're not in Chicago. I got a sister in Memphis, Tennessee, right now and a sister in Rhode Island, and it hurts to hear them cry because they fear that they'll be the victims of assault or abuse. As much as I wish I didn't have to tell them this, I'm telling them, "Well, you know what? You should have already been on your toes. You have to be looking over your shoulders and watching your back before this election if Hillary was elected, because this nation was not built to serve your interests." I don't sing the national anthem. This is not "my country, 'tis of thee." This is not a sweet land of liberty for people who look like me and not has been. So, yeah, the white nationalist groups and the KKK are being empowered right now and they're getting bolder, but they were there. They've been there. We've been getting killed in the streets by police like dogs with a black president in the White House and there's no accountability for those white officers. We already had to mother----ing watch our back. This was not a safe place for us to begin with. The advice that I've been giving to my friends is that if you know someone that's a Trump supporter, you need to have conversations with them because it's wrong and needs to be proven wrong. We've been preaching to the crowd this whole time. We've been talking to a lot of people that's been agreeing with us, but we're seeing now that that's not the state of America. The state of America is a lot more volatile than The New York Times or The Huffington Post and New York City, L.A. and Chicago. This gigantic massive land built on the backs of slaves and stolen from its native people with disease, massacre and Trail of Tears, the state of America is far more in the dark than us. The reason that Trump was able to empower so many people was because it was all affirmative. You know, my brother Malik Yusef is always telling me that, "The power of yes is so much more than the power of no." So when Trump tells a lot of people, "We're gonna make America great again. We're gonna make America yours again. We're gonna bring you back to your position," he's basically telling them, "Yes, white supremacy is the answer" to their white nation. Our whole f---ing approach was, "No, that's wrong. No, that's not right." We can't do that anymore. We've seen how that's not powerful enough. We need to unify and decide what it is that we really believe in -- that's what we need to fight for. We can't just fight against injustice. We gotta fight for justice. --As told to Carl Lamarre From Cosmopolitan If you thought Blac Chynas Mannequin Challenge DURING LABOR would be the end of the trend, think again. Victorias Secret models took up the mantle on Thursday night, posting an Instagram video of themselves holding intense workout positions for so long it had to definitely hurt. While it couldnt possibly surpass Chynas delivery room version (welcome to the world, Dream!), it is a seriously impressive clip. Models Thayna Santos, Maria Borges, Cindy Mello, Veridiana Ferreira, and Luma Grothe painfully hold their Bossu Ball crunches, squats, bicep curls, and planks as the camera seemingly takes forever to pan around the scene. Of course, the girls are outfitted in their VS activewear, including multicolored running leggings and patterned sportsbras. Can't. Stop. Watching. Can someone let these ladies know they can stop holding the pose now?! Get non-boring fashion and beauty news directly in your feed. Follow Facebook.com/CosmoBeauty. Follow Rachel on Twitter and Instagram. You Might Also Like Vietnamese officials destroyed a $7 million stockpile of elephant tusks and rhino horns that had been confiscated from smugglers on Saturday The 2.2 tons of ivory and 150 pounds of rhino horn, which were destined to become jewelly and ingredients for traditional medicine, were crushed and burned at an event on the outskirts of Hanoi ahead of a major international summit on wildlife trafficking in the Vietnamese capitol. The seized goods were worth over $7 million on the black market, according to Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre. The Humane Society International estimated that around 330 African elephants and 23 rhinos were killed for the ivory and rhino horn destroyed on Saturday. Vietnam is a major transit point for the illegal trading of elephant ivory and rhino horn from Africa to customers in China, the United States and South East Asia. These videos show the destruction of the ivory stockpile. Credit: Twitter/IrisHo & HSI via Storyful A Vietnamese village has become "a supermarket for illegal wildlife trafficking" raking in millions of dollars, a special hearing was told Monday. The two-day public hearing in The Hague is laying out the findings of a year-long undercover investigation by the new Wildlife Justice Commission. The probe has provided "clear and irrefutable evidence of an industrial-scale crime hub in the village of Nhi Khe in Vietnam," said the commission's executive director Olivia Swaak-Goldman. "Urgent, decisive action" was needed, she told about 200 people gathered at The Hague's imposing Peace Palace. The commission, set up last year, has no power to bring charges, but hopes the hearing will push Vietnam and other countries to crack down on the global $20-billion (18.5-billion-euro) trade in wildlife poaching. Five experts, including international judges, will set out recommendations on Tuesday for further action. But it seems Hanoi has already been spurred into action ahead of a major international conference on wildlife trafficking it is hosting later this week. On Saturday, Vietnamese authorities destroyed a stockpile of two tonnes of ivory and 70 kilos (154 pounds) of rhino horn, which had been uncovered by the commission. Former US assistant New York attorney Marcus Asner, an advisor on wildlife trafficking to US President Barack Obama, said it was "a good step" but more was needed. Nhi Khe had become "a supermarket for illegal wildlife" with "massive quantities of rhino horn for sale and huge quantities of elephant products" openly on display, he said. The commission says it has identified 51 people involved in the illegal trade in Nhi Khe, operating out of 16 shops dotted around the small village. The names have been given to Hanoi. But "justice has not been activated in this case by the authorities in Vietnam, despite months of discussions and clear and detailed evidence," said Swaak-Goldman. Story continues During five return visits in 2015 and 2016, the undercover operation found $53.1 million worth of parts from rhinos, elephants and tigers in Nhi Khe, just 17 kilometres (10 miles) south of Hanoi. There were parts from up to 907 elephants, 579 rhinos and 225 tigers. But there were also other dead animals for sale, including pangolin, bear, hawksbill turtles and helmeted hornbills. They were smuggled to the Southeast Asian country mostly from Africa and overwhelmingly destined for customers in China. - Massive profits - After a sale is agreed, business is then conducted on WeChat, the Chinese version of the mobile phone messaging service WhatsApp, with the buyers providing account details of Chinese banks for payment. "What is most lacking is enforcement, and this is based on the absence of political will," said international judge Motoo Noguchi. "The culture of impunity prevails." A series of undercover videos showed shopkeepers weighing piles of ivory and rhino horn. There were also hundreds of bangles, necklaces and figurines. One elephant tusk was estimated at $29,000 -- a fortune in the country where the average monthly salary is $210. One woman trafficked an estimated $2.2 million in products over 12 months from her mansion, with a brand new Mercedes outside, the commission's senior legal investigator Pauline Verheij told the hearing. Despite crackdowns elsewhere, an interpreter told the team it was safer to shop in Nhi Khe as people there "had their connections" ensuring police turned a blind eye. At this year's edition of Vinexpo Tokyo, Japanese wine lovers will be challenged to expand their wine repertoire beyond traditional favorites to less familiar wine-producing regions like Moldova and Romania. After making its inaugural debut in 2014, the Tokyo edition of the world's largest and most prestigious wine trade, fair Vinexpo, returns this week. This year, attendees will be introduced to 200 wine producers from more than 12 countries, including producers from Moldova, Romania, Austria, New York and Switzerland. France is the leading wine supplier in Japan, followed by Italy and Chile -- traditional wine-growing regions. But at this year's Vinexpo Tokyo, exhibitors and experts like Jon Arvid Rosengren of Sweden, who took the title of Best Sommelier 2016, will be introducing attendees to wines from regions off the beaten path. During a masterclass, Rosengren will shine the spotlight on sparkling wines from Austria, for example, while Paolo Basso, Best Sommelier of the World 2013, will present wines from his home country of Switzerland. Wine producers from New York will also be exhibiting at Vinexpo Tokyo for the first time, including America's oldest winery Brotherhood, from the Hudson River region. This year's edition is expected to draw 4,500 trade visitors. In Japan, wine imports totaled 2,793,000 hectoliters in 2015, worth 176.28 billion yen (1.41 billion), an increase of nearly 4 percent in both volume and value compared to 2014. Japan is Asia's biggest market for imported spirits and the second biggest market in Asia for wine. Vinexpo Tokyo is expected to attract 4,500 trade visitors. The event takes place November 15 to 16 at Prince Park Tower Hotel. Burmese government security forces say they opened fire from helicopters in the countrys troubled northwest as counter-terrorism operations continue in Maungdaw, an area mostly populated by Rohingya Muslims. The government of Burma, officially called Myanmar, says the air strikes were a response to an alleged ambush by armed Islamic militants. Burmas state-controlled newspaper the Global New Light of Myanmar said two government security personnel and six attackers died when about 60 assailants ambushed government troops on Friday in the conflict-torn region. Government forces then fought back, forcing the alleged assailants to retreat into Gwason village, the paper said. When the troops attempted to approach the village in search of assailants, they reportedly came under attack by some 500 people armed with small guns, knives and spears. The government said it then opened fire with two Air Force helicopters, forcing the alleged attackers to retreat into Gwason village where the Burma Army has stepped up its clearance operations and are actively searching for the attackers. The BBC reports that the army has since said soldiers shot and killed at least 25 suspected assailants in the area on Sunday. Independent journalists are not allowed to enter the operation zone, making it impossible to verify the scale of the violence. This weekends operation marks the latest and potentially most serious escalation of violence in Arakan State, also known as Rakhine, since three border guard posts reportedly came under attack on Oct. 9. The government said that attack was carried out by Islamic militants and immediately put the area on military lockdown, halting all access for humanitarian workers and journalists. Credible reports have emerged from the area that government troops have committed human rights violations including rape, extra-judicial killings and the razing of villages. Satellite images released by Human Rights Watch appear to show extensive fire damage in several villages, and the group claims some 430 buildings were burnt. The images were captured between Oct. 22 and Nov. 10. Story continues The government claims that Muslim militants have set their own villages ablaze in an attempt to discredit the Burma Army, known locally as the Tatmadaw. This theory is viewed with skepticism by most observers. The U.N. and the U.S. have called for an independent investigation into allegations of abuse. Rohingya Muslims, a stateless minority numbering about 1.1 million, are the majority in Maungdaw, which borders Bangladesh. They are viewed as illegal immigrants and widely persecuted. Elsewhere in the state, as in much of Burma, Buddhists are the majority. Communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the state left more than 100 dead and displaced some 140,000 people in 2012. Most of those affected were Rohingya, and many of the displaced are still confined to squalid camps where they are largely denied movement, education and health services. Tens of thousands have fled by boat in recent years. The Oct. 9 border guard attack marked the most serious escalation of tensions since the 2012 riots, and the ensuing counter-terrorism operations have prompted concern that Muslim civilians could suffer in the crossfire. State police have announced a plan to arm and train a civilian security force made of non-Muslim recruits. At least 58 people have died during the counter-terrorism operations, though human rights researchers claim the casualties could be higher. The renewed conflict in Arakan is the toughest test yet for Burmas new government, which is led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi following her landslide win in elections last year. Her party flushed out a military-backed government and ushered in a wave of international optimism about the former pariah state, though the army retains significant political and economic power. From Cosmopolitan Where you lead, I will follow! (Even if it's across the country, because Lorelai and Rory are worth it!) (JK, everyone knows Emily and Paris are the real stars of Stars Hollow.) In celebration the much anticipated Gilmore Girls return to Netflix, you can visit Stars Hollow. Spoiler alert: It's not in Connecticut, but rather in Los Angeles at UCLA. It's dubbed "The Festival of the Four Seasons," and it looks like it's gonna be filled to the brim with coffee and twinkle lights: From Mashable: The pop up festival will take place on Saturday, Nov. 19, and Sunday, Nov. 20 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., and feature fan-favorite locales from the show, including Luke's Diner, Kim's Antiques, Taylor's Old Fashioned Soda Shoppe and, of course, a replica of the town's iconic gazebo. Visitors can even expect to see "appearances by real Stars Hollow citizens," so maybe Miss Patty herself will be on hand to see if you can handle her punch. !!! RSVP here and visit townofstarshollow.org for more information for your FREE (!!!) tickets. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premieres Nov. 25 on Netflix. Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Pool, via Reuters) President-elect Donald Trump talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Trump was repeatedly attacked for praising the autocratic Putin during the election, particularly in light of allegations that Russia attempted to influence the campaign. According to a readout of the conversation that was released by Trumps transition team, the Russian leader called to offer his congratulations on winning a historic election. During the call, the two leaders discussed a range of issues, including the threats and challenges facing the United States and Russia, strategic economic issues and the historical U.S.-Russia relationship that dates back over 200 years, the readout said. The Russian government also released a readout of the phone call that described the discussion as agreed to in advance by both sides; it showed Putin as ready to develop a dialogue of partnership with the new administration on the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each others domestic affairs. According to the Kremlin, both Putin and Trump indicated they were unhappy with the current relationship between their countries. The Russian readout said, During the conversation, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump not only agreed on the absolutely unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations, but also expressed support for active joint efforts to normalize relations and pursue constructive cooperation on the broadest possible range of issues. They emphasized the importance of establishing a reliable foundation for bilateral ties by developing the trade and economic component. The office of the director of U.S. national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint statement last month accusing the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to interfere with the election. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russias senior-most officials could have authorized these activities, the statement said. Story continues The DNC hack revealed emails that indicated Democratic Party officials favored Clinton over her primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton was also hit with negative headlines based on emails hacked from the account of her campaign chairman, John Podesta, that revealed internal debates and critiques. Private security groups have linked the Podesta hack to Russia. U.S. officials have not accused Russia of being behind the hacking of Podestas email, though White House press secretary Josh Earnest noted that the breach bore similarities to prior Russian operations. There are signs Russia is eager to see a Trump presidency. The Russian parliament reportedly burst into applause after the announcement that Trump had won the election. Putin has also told foreign ambassadors he is ready to restore ties with Washington in the wake of Trumps victory. On Nov. 10, the Russian news agency Interfax published an interview with the countrys Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in which he said the Kremlin was in contact with Trumps campaign during the presidential race. The Trump campaign told Yahoo News it was unaware of any such conversations. Several analysts have predicted that Trump would look at lifting President Obamas sanctions against Moscow that were placed after Russia annexed Crimea. Trump has also indicated he would be willing to negotiate with Russia over the situation in Syria. The Russian readout of Trumps conversation with Putin said the pair discussed Syria in the context of the need to work together in the struggle against the number one common enemy international terrorism and extremism. The Kremlin also said Trump and Putin agreed to maintain contact by phone and arrange a meeting in person in the future. According to the Trump transition teams readout, Trump expressed to Putin optimism about the two countries relationship going forward. President-elect Trump noted to President Putin that he is very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia, the Trump readout said. _____ Related slideshows: Tens of thousands protest Trumps election victory >>> Donald Trump meets with Obama at the White House and visits the Capitol >>> Protests after Donald Trumps victory >>> Newspapers around the world react to Donald Trumps victory >>> Tears and cheers as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters clash at the White House >>> World reaction to Trumps stunning victory >>> By Jake Spring and Norihiko Shirouzu BEIJING (Reuters) - Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) Audi AG (NSUG.DE) said on Monday that it was in talks with China's SAIC Motor Corp Ltd for a long-term collaboration, which dealers for its existing joint venture say would cause them "potentially fatal damage." Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the two sides had signed an agreement that could pave the way for Volkswagen's joint venture with SAIC, China's largest automaker, to make Audi brand cars. Audi cars are now made in China through a joint venture with China FAW Group Corp [SASACJ.UL], providing a lifeline to the state-owned company whose own brands have struggled with falling sales. An early entrant to China, the world's largest car market, Audi is the best-selling premium car brand although it is rapidly losing ground to newer car models from Daimler's (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes-Benz and non-German automakers such as Toyota's Lexus and General Motor's (GM.N) Cadillac. Audi has been slow to introduce new products, hurting sales growth, so Audi dealers are generally losing money, existing Audi dealers said in a letter to the automaker in response to the talks. "The interests of Audi dealers will be further damaged if your company sets up a new sales company in China," they said. The dealers, in the letter seen by Reuters, requested Audi to collect their opinions and guarantee their rights before making a final decision. Volkswagen gets a larger proportion of its proceeds from the 50-50 tie-up with SAIC than from its 40 percent stake in the venture with FAW. Audi reaffirmed its commitment to FAW in the statement announcing the talks with SAIC, saying it had outlined growth plans with FAW for the next 10 years that include making green energy sport utility vehicles and sedans in every major segment. "With this 10-year plan, everything is set for future growth together with FAW, including the dealership investors," an Audi spokesman said. Audi will also form a new joint venture company with FAW that will be based in Beijing to focus on mobility and digital services, according to the statement. (Reporting by Jake Spring and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath and Subhranshu Sahu) By Jake Spring and Norihiko Shirouzu BEIJING (Reuters) - Volkswagen's Audi AG said on Monday that it was in talks with China's SAIC Motor Corp Ltd for a long-term collaboration, which dealers for its existing joint venture say would cause them "potentially fatal damage." Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the two sides had signed an agreement that could pave the way for Volkswagen's joint venture with SAIC, China's largest automaker, to make Audi brand cars. Audi cars are now made in China through a joint venture with China FAW Group Corp [SASACJ.UL], providing a lifeline to the state-owned company whose own brands have struggled with falling sales. An early entrant to China, the world's largest car market, Audi is the best-selling premium car brand although it is rapidly losing ground to newer car models from Daimler's Mercedes-Benz and non-German automakers such as Toyota's Lexus and General Motor's Cadillac. Audi has been slow to introduce new products, hurting sales growth, so Audi dealers are generally losing money, existing Audi dealers said in a letter to the automaker in response to the talks. "The interests of Audi dealers will be further damaged if your company sets up a new sales company in China," they said. The dealers, in the letter seen by Reuters, requested Audi to collect their opinions and guarantee their rights before making a final decision. Volkswagen gets a larger proportion of its proceeds from the 50-50 tie-up with SAIC than from its 40 percent stake in the venture with FAW. Audi reaffirmed its commitment to FAW in the statement announcing the talks with SAIC, saying it had outlined growth plans with FAW for the next 10 years that include making green energy sport utility vehicles and sedans in every major segment. "With this 10-year plan, everything is set for future growth together with FAW, including the dealership investors," an Audi spokesman said. Audi will also form a new joint venture company with FAW that will be based in Beijing to focus on mobility and digital services, according to the statement. (Reporting by Jake Spring and Norihiko Shirouzu; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath and Subhranshu Sahu) The burgeoning relationship between Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) was one of the lone bright spots in a sea of grimness in the home stretch of Season 6 of The Walking Dead. But in the aftermath of Negans brutal subjugation of the Alexandria community, Rick and Michonne have found themselves holding two opposing views on their predicament, leading to some tension. Gurira called up Variety to discuss Michonnes surprising decision at the end of the episode. Talk us through Michonnes decision-making process in giving up the gun, and seemingly coming around to Ricks point of view, which is that they cannot fight these people. It really was the realization that these two people havent been on the same page. They havent had a conversation since this happened. The shot with both of them in bed at the beginning of the episode, its very different from the first time we saw them in bed together. Then, they were disrobed, intertwined. Now theyre back-to-back and clothed. They know each other too well to know theyre not on different sides. Michonne finding Negan there is very, very frustrating for her. They have been caught with their pants down. Rick has been shut down about it; they havent strategized. No one knows if there is a strategy. Michonne has been garnering a very real reaction to Ricks inertia. It is really a very frustrating disconnect and lack of communication, which theyve never had. It causes her to retreat. She goes back to being a loner and being by herself, figuring out how to handle this in a solo way. Being part of a team has its flaws when youre not on the same page. Giving him the gun is when she feels that fear hes been feeling. When she hears him express that fear of more loss, she understands. But its a very frustrating moment, because she understands but its not who they are. Theyre warriors. Her attempt to come to his side comes from when he tells her about Judith. Shes that far away from him, so he has to go that far, because he knows what shes capable of. It does work, because she sees such a beautiful component of him she hadnt seen before. Its heartbreaking, and thats what she loves about him. Hes so sacrificial, and he doesnt do it from that place of ego. She cant ignore that. In some ways it makes her love him even more. She would never have dreamt that he wasnt Judiths father from the way he treats this little girl. Story continues But she says, Im going to try, because its not who she is. To see what the Saviors did as theyve left, thats their act of enslavement. Theyre breaking us in every way they can think of. Taking their things and then burning it all. Is there even a way to cooperate with people like this, on top of all theyve done already? Do we live a life of being enslaved? Thats something she cant quite get her mind around. She can get her heart aligned around him. But her mind? Its hard. Where does Michonne go from here? Can she really lay down for the Saviors? Its interesting that Negan didnt take away Michonnes sword. I think there is something about not taking away peoples knives. Negan wants us to be alive, and knives are harder to cause a ruckus with. Its strategic on Negans part. Michonnes sword is a big knife, but it is a knife. It cant cause a magnificent amount of damage. At the same time, shes caught between her love for her partner, the love of her life, and who she is. She just knows in her gut and instinct and intellect that theres always a way to fight looking at all that we dont have isnt the way. Right now she cant argue with him when he tells her they just dont have the numbers. Theres a deep emotional and psychological argument, but she doesnt really have anything to come back at him with, because hes being so pragmatic. Having to play someone in that state feels like it could take a toll on an actor. It really is about how you need to get there. Its particular to each actor. Myself and Andy didnt really discuss the scenes in the episode a lot. I discuss them a lot with my boss, but there was less discussion between us because the conflict is in the moment. Weve been that separate. I just got in the bed, hes in the bed, theres that disconnect, and we lived in that a little bit as we were shooting it. Its them trying to navigate through that through lack of communication. I lived and stewed in that very trapped place; its a component of the grief the loss and the need to rectify. Related stories 'Walking Dead' Recap: Negan Offers 'Service' With an Evil Smile (SPOILERS) 'The Walking Dead' Recap: There's No Escaping Negan's 'Cell' (SPOILERS) 'The Walking Dead's' Austin Amelio on Torturing Norman Reedus, Laughing With Jeffrey Dean Morgan Manchester by the Sea is, at times, a difficult movie to watch. The drama about a Boston custodian who returns to his coastal hometown to care for his teenage nephew confronts the reality that sometimes things can never go back to the way they were and we can never quite become the people we wish to be. But Kenneth Lonergans new movie, which hits theaters Nov. 18, also acknowledges the thin line between crying and laughing. Even the darkest moments are illuminated by pinpricks of light stubbornly forcing their way into the room. In this exclusive clip, Casey Affleck, who plays taciturn janitor Lee Chandler, and newcomer Lucas Hedges, who plays his nephew Patrick, discuss the fate of Patricks late fathers boat with a family friend and business partner (C.J. Wilson). Though they are, in concrete terms, talking about a boat, theyre also talking about the future: Will Lee make Patrick relocate away from his friends, halfway through his high school career? Will Lee be able to live up to his brothers dying wish that he become Patricks guardian? Affleck, whose performance has generated Oscar buzz since the movie premiered at Sundance in January, plays a pained soul who might find relief if only he could find a way to open a pressure valve and share his burden. Hedges, meanwhile, brings levity and anguish in equal measure. His sexual conquests and basement band practice get as much attention as his grieving processperhaps because, in truth, grieving is messy and nonlinear, and those things are a part of it. With Michelle Williams as Lees ex-wife Randi and Kyle Chandler, in flashbacks, playing Lees brother Joe, Manchester by the Sea is a story about finding a way forward without roadmap or instruction manual. As Affleck says in the clip, as good a tagline as any for the film: We dont know exactly what were doing. Stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live last night to record high ratings. He was joined by A Tribe Called Quest, the musical guest of the night. SNL has been covering the 2016 presidential election for months, and last night's episode was the first since Donald Trump won the presidency. During his opening monologue, Chappelle expressed his feelings about the election results, scolding America for electing "an Internet troll as president." Later in the night, he brought old Chappelle's Show characters back to life in a hilarious Walking Dead parody. For more Saturday Night Live sketches visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS. After wrapping up his hosting gig, Chappelle hosted an unforgettable afterparty at New York City hotspot The Cutting Room. The star-studded event was attended by SNL cast members along with celebrities like Lenny Kravitz and Madonna. When the party was in full swing, Chappelle took to the stage at to perform a cover of Radiohead's "Creep" alongside Leslie Jones. The afterparty was not the first time the comedian showed his admiration for the song, as he also covered it at Erykah Badu's 45th birthday party. The footage was captured by Questlove, who posted it on Instagram along with a heartfelt caption. "In a life full of highlights? Im glad I waited til 5:22 a.m. for this..., he writes. Watch Chapelle sing "Creep" below. In a life full of highlights? I'm glad I waited til 5:22am for this.... A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Nov 13, 2016 at 2:23am PST Continue Reading On PigeonsandPlanes More from PigeonsandPlanes Theres still seven weeks left in 2016, but John Oliver is calling it early: this year has been the worst. Reflecting on the recent election, the Last Week Tonight host dedicated the shows season finale to railing against President-elect Donald Trump and doing a postmortem on the year. Instead of showing our daughters that they could some day be president, America proved that no grandpa is too racist to become leader of the free world, Oliver who has spent the last year outspokenly slamming Trump lamented during the 30-minute episode, before telling viewers, We have to take all of Trumps promises seriously. He later added, If we dont get actively involved to at least mitigate Trumps damage, things will not be okay. And yes, the sun will rise each day but the continuing rotation of the earth should not be your baseline expectation of American society. Oliver said that things might start feeling normal as Trump prepares to take office next year, but that people must keep reminding themselves that this is not normal. A Klan-backed misogynist Internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address and that is not normal, Oliver told his audience. It is f up. The British comedian offered ways that people can make a difference, urging them to support actual journalism and donate to organizations like Planned Parenthood. So were gonna have to actively stand up for one another, said Oliver. Im talking about actual sacrifice to support people who are actually under threat. Near the end of the segment, Oliver admitted, Its been an uncommonly s year. Reflecting on the deaths of numerous celebrities including, most recently, Leonard Cohen as well as the ongoing crisis in Syria to Zika to Ryan Lochte being a d, Oliver said, were all desperately looking forward to 2020. With help from celebrities like Larry David, Kathy Griffin, Weird Al Yankovic, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, Billy Eichner and Jeffrey Tambor, Oliver bid farewell to 2016 with some profanity. Summed up Mullally, Hey 2016, go punch yourself in the d. Good morning! This week, President Barack Obama heads to Greece and Germany before the APEC Summit. According to a statement by Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, Europe was added to the trip to once again signal our solidarity with our closest allies in the world and nations that have been among the Presidents closest partners during his eight years in office, to express our support for a strong and integrated and united Europe and to reinforce our support for the approaches that have been taken over the last eight years to try to promote economic growth, economic security, and global cooperation on a whole range of issues. But before we watch Obamas effort to lock down a legacy in Europe before giving NATO-questioner President-elect Donald Trump the keys to the White House, lets check in on whats happened this weekend. In the United States, both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic relations have both reported increases in hate crimes in the days following the election of Trump. It is hard to say for certain whether the increase is just in the reporting, or whether these incidents which include black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania receiving lynching texts and a truck draped in a Confederate flag driving through an anti-Trump rally in Syracuse, NY are related to Trumps election or campaign rhetoric. In other Trump-related news: On Saturday, the President-elect met with British politician and Brexit champion Nigel Farage. Also on Saturday, Marion Le Pen, niece of National Front president Marine Le Pen, tweeted that she had accepted Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannons invitation to work together. Bannon was expected to be named Trump Chief of Staff; now, however, many are reporting that that role will be filled by GOP head Reince Priebus. President-elect Trump himself seems to have spent much of Sunday receiving congratulatory phone calls and resenting the New York Times. But Americas were not the only elections that took place last week. On Sunday, the relatively pro-Russian Rumen Radev, who has promised pragmatism in balancing the whims and wishes of the European Union, NATO, and Russia, was elected president of Bulgaria. A similar situation is expected in Moldova that is, pro-Russia Igor Dodon looks likely to win but results will be announced on Monday. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the World Health Organization warned of a measles outbreak in Ukraine, which, at present, has the lowest vaccination rates in the world. The Colombian government and the rebels reached another peace deal several weeks after voters rejected the deal reached in a referendum. Per the Associated Press, The latest agreement aims to address some of the concerns of opponents of the original accord, who said the deal was too lenient on a rebel group that had kidnapped and committed war crimes. It unclear whether the government will put this new deal to a new popular vote one of many things we will watch this coming week. Photo credit: DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/Getty Images Westworld has officially been renewed for a second season, but theres a catch If youre a fan of Westworld, then youre about to be as happy as Dolores picking up a can of milk. Because the tv gods are good, HBO has officially renewed Westworld for a second season! BUUUUTtheres a catch. We may not get to see the second chapter of this awesome-Western-theme-park-gone-bad story until 2018. And were not sure if we can wait that long! HBOs programming president Casey Bloys explained to The Hollywood Reporter, With Westworld, because the production is such a big endeavor, I dont exactly know when [the second season will premiere] yet. I cant speculate other than to say itll either be 17 or 18. Probably more like 18 [] lets see how it goes. Ugggh. 2018 is a VERY long time to wait considering there will probably be MAJOR cliff hangers at the end of this season. All of us, right now: westworld dolores Of course, were not at all surprised by this second season renewal because the show opened to VERY BIG numbers. An estimated 6 million people total have watched the premiere episode. And for comparisons sake, according to THR, Westworld is averaging a gross audience of 11.7 million total viewers, which is more than Game of Thrones AND True Detective during their first seasons. And because Westworld is nothing without its mysteries, the shows official Twitter account celebrated its Season 2 renewal with a wonderfully cryptic video. Bring yourself back online. #Westworld is renewed for Season 2. pic.twitter.com/AxU71qRPs2 Westworld (@WestworldHBO) November 14, 2016 Well, at least you have PLENTY of time to start coming up with new theories based on this mysterious clip before Season 2 of Westworld gets here! The post Westworld has officially been renewed for a second season, but theres a catch appeared first on HelloGiggles. Warning: This recap contains spoilers for the Trompe LOeil episode of Westworld. Westworld has been playing its cards close to its vest since it launched seven episodes ago, which, in turn, has prodded audiences to try and actively decode whats going on behind the shows poker face. With Sundays episode, Trompe LOeil, the series finally flips over a narrative card, and its a doozy: Bernard Lowe, Westworlds stalwart head of programming, is as artificial as the hosts hes tasked with overseeing. Now thats a twist that seriously attentive fans probably saw coming: Its certainly been discussed with great frequency online. But to have it confirmed is still a pretty big deal, especially as it potentially holds the key to unknotting other plot threads as the freshman season heads into the homestretch. Heres our update on five of Westworlds big storylines in the wake of Sundays revelation. Related: Our Westworld Recaps and Postmortems The Hunt for the Maze As we learned back in the pilot, the Man in Black has been a fixture in Westworld for three decades. And during that time, hes explored virtually every nook and cranny of this simulated world, save one: a Maze, whose entrance is presumably buried somewhere amid the yawning canyons and rugged mountains that dot the landscape of a re-created American frontier. Hes embarked on this mission under the impression that the Maze is a physical thing yet another level of Westworlds open-world gameplay that had previously been known only to the hosts. And thats why hes conscripted various hosts to assist him in his progress, from outlaw Lawrence to lovestruck cowboy Teddy, discarding them when theyve outlived their usefulness. But as the series has progressed, weve been receiving signals suggesting that were dealing with a metaphorical Maze one that might describe a hosts journey from programmed automaton to genuine consciousness. Thats the path that the shows other Maze-hunter, Dolores, has been walking ever since she fully abandoned her predetermined loop and accompanied new guest William on his own adventure. Dolores first became aware of the Maze in the fifth episode, when Bernard implanted the idea in her artificial mind during one of their face-to-face counseling sessions. Early on, these meetings appeared to be happening in the physical world; but now that we know that Bernard is a fellow bot, it seems more likely that theyre engaging with each other in some kind of shared consciousness, as he guides her through a mental maze where self-awareness waits at the center. Story continues Arnold: Lost and Found Stay with us while we take Bernards role in Doloress journey a step further. Its been pointed out that Bernard Lowe is an anagram for Arnold Weber, the man who co-created Westworld with Robert Ford some three decades ago. But Arnold didnt survive to see the park become the wealthy tourist destination it is today, opting instead to vanish into his creation under still-mysterious circumstances. As Robert himself has implied, though, Arnold undoubtedly left a small piece of himself behind in the robots he had a direct hand in creating robots like Dolores, who is one of the parks longest-serving hosts. In that case, the Bernard she sees in her mind might actually be Arnolds way of informing her that shes on the right track to completing their original mission: destroying Westworld. Why destroy Westworld? Because Arnold viewed the entire place as a corruption of his chief interest: creating artificial life. The thought that his children were to become mere sport for flesh-and-blood humans no doubt pushed him to lead the near-cataclysmic charge that resulted in the destroyed offices Bernard visited in last weeks episode and the fragments of horrifying memory specifically something involving a church that float through Doloress mind. Even if Arnold is dead in body as Robert presumes, his ghost is still very much present in his machines. Whose Timeline Is It Anyway? When William and his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Logan, first disembarked in Westworld back in the second episode, sharp-eyed viewers noted a discrepancy between the clunky park logo the new arrivals saw versus the sleeker one present throughout the premiere. That spawned the hotly debated theory that young William would grow up to become the grizzled Man in Black, and that each episode thus straddles the present and the past. We still dont have confirmation one way or the other, but Bernards awakening, at least, is very much happening in the present day, with the future of the park on the line. Thandie Newton and Angela Sarafyan (Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO) You Say Maeve Wants a Revolution Independently of Dolores, bordello madam Maeve is also approaching heightened consciousness, albeit with the help of two hapless park employees rather than a mythical maze. The discrepancy between their two approaches is most likely rooted in the fact that Maeve appears to be a more recent model, created after Arthurs heyday when metal faces still hid underneath fleshlike exteriors. Its worth noting that Dolores did trigger Maeves awakening in the second episode via the words, These violent delights have violent ends. But that never led to visions of Bernard dancing in her head. Instead, Maeve has used Westworlds laboratories as her school, retaining the memories of what she sees. And in this episode, what she sees is the casual murder of Clementine, her friend and employee, who was pulled out of the bordello on the orders of Theresa and Charlotte Hale, the board director of Delos, the corporation that has a controlling interest in Westworld. They want to illustrate to Robert and Bernard that the most recent code update has left the robots capable of remembering the violence visited upon them and responding in kind. Having served her purpose, Clementine is then lobotomized and permanently retired, remembered by no one except Maeve, who now has a very personal reason for vengeance. Anthony Hopkins (Photo: HBO) The Deal With Delos Tensions between Robert and the Delos board have been lightly simmering for some time, escalating after he seized back control of the parks creative direction from self-aggrandizing Narrative Director Lee Sizemore. With Ford literally moving mountains to make his grand new idea a reality, the corporation is understandably a bit concerned about its real interests in Westworld: the intellectual property that makes the park run. Firing Bernard over the code mishap was intended to help ease Robert out the door, but Theresas subsequent death at Bernards hands which Ford chillingly calls a blood sacrifice shows that hes instead choosing to view this as a test of his authority one that he plans on passing. Westworld airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO. [Warning: This story contains spoilers about the seventh episode of HBO's Westworld.] There's a lot of attention on the final scene of the latest episode of Westworld, called "Trompe L'Oeil." And rightfully so. It was a game-changer, as promised, certainly for Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Theresa (Sidse Babett Knudsen). But that wasn't the episode's only gut punch of a twist. Far from it. In the episode, Delos board representative Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and Theresa fake a malfunction within the hosts, tied to Robert Ford's (Anthony Hopkins) reverie program, in order to create a plausible reason to push Ford out of power. In order to do this, "the gods demand a blood sacrifice," and that sacrifice comes in the form of Clementine (Angela Sarafyan), among the Mariposa Saloon and Brothel's most prominent employees. Charlotte and Theresa use Clementine as an example of reverie-driven glitches leading to acts of extreme violence, resulting in a bone-breaking battle between Clementine and a host designed to read as human. Due to the "error," Westworld will need to rebuild its hosts from the ground up over the coming months, beginning with Clementine. Her self-aware robot pal Maeve (Thandie Newton) watches in horror as lab technicians lobotomize Clementine, effectively killing her. Is that it for Clementine? It sure sounds that way, based on what Angela Sarafyan tells The Hollywood Reporter about the "heartbreaking" story. Here's her take on the scene, the physical preparation involved, and her view of Clementine as "the epitome of the prostitute with a heart of gold." Read more: 'Westworld' Creators Explain "Terrible," "Devastating" Game-Changing Reveal Clementine's story in this episode is incredibly tragic, encapsulating the host experience: being used for human benefit. What struck you most when you learned about the development? Story continues First of all, with each episode, we don't know where the character's going to go. All you get is what's happening in the episode itself. When I read this, I thought it was incredibly heartbreaking. I didn't know that this would happen with her. But it's incredibly pertinent for the entirety of the series, especially because she's someone who is constantly giving love. In this episode, we see why she does that. She does it for her family, providing for them and supporting them. You see this innocence about Clementine. She's the epitome of the prostitute with a heart of gold. It's completely unexpected, too. That's probably why they chose to do this with her. She's the least threatening option of possibly all the hosts, because she's not someone who has hurt anything or anyone in the entire series. It's not a part of her program. It's heartbreaking when you see that initial part of what's happened to her, but then, as things turn around, there's this insane adrenaline rush. She's really strong. Even though the whole thing is manipulated for Charlotte's benefit; they made her do this, she's not malfunctioning in any way. Can you talk about the rehearsal process for the scene? The actual fight, it's kind of choreographed. There were these incredible stunt guys, very wonderful. We started choreographing with Jonah Nolan and the director of the episode [Fred Toye], trying to see how we were going to really make it impactful but not jokey. Not like a caricature or a superhero. What he does to her in the beginning is almost like domestic violence. It's not a superhero fight. And then what she does, that's where you see how incredibly strong these hosts really are. Even though she can be delicate and very beautiful, she's actually incredibly strong. I wanted to really show that. You've seen one side of Clementine, and now you get to see this. How difficult was it to tap into the scene emotionally? Because there are at least two different sides of the character in the scene: Clementine the victim, and Clementine the warrior. When I first read it, it was very easy. Usually, you imagine that emotional [scenes] are hard to do, but for me, they're very easy when you have great writing and something with so much meaning behind it. It fuels you to use all of your being to reveal that story. For me, it was a relief rather than a challenge. Clementine studies herself in the window and performs her "reverie," stroking her lip. What was in that moment, as far as how you played it? You know what's funny? That wasn't written in the script. There's a part where she's looking into the window and she's seeing her reflection. I thought this would be a great opportunity for her to go back to her reveries. The physical movement in that could reveal how, one, she didn't realize there's blood on her face, and she goes back to her sensuality in that moment, where she fixes herself up. I also thought, and this was something that just went through my head, that when you see Charlotte in the window at the beginning, I thought that even though we think these hosts are asleep, I still think there's something that they are constantly receiving, whether or not they're awake. And so I kind of mirrored [Charlotte's] hand gesture when she touches her hair. It felt very much in line with Clementine. That's what I loved about playing her. She's a celebration of femininity and women and womanhood. She uses her sensuality and love and everything up until this moment. That's what I loved about playing her. I didn't want to not take an opportunity at the end of it all to bring a little taste of that into it. How about the development of Clementine's "reverie" overall? What kind of memories did you imbue in the gesture? In the first episode, in the pilot, they talk about her lip and her movement. When we were shooting the pilot, Jonah and Lisa mentioned that as the hosts move forward, they're constantly progressing. There's constant growth in them. They're never the same. There's always an evolution happening in them. In that very first scene where she's sleeping in front of Bernard and Elsie (Shannon Woodward), I suggested that she's in a dream state rather than sleep mode. I played the character like she's actually in a different place, rather than in the laboratory and asleep. I started creating everything - all of her gestures and her movements. For example, it could be love, or a man that she's seen, and she wants him to touch her that way. The movements have an element of sensuality and how she would want a man or a woman to touch and love her. I played with that idea when I was working on it. I also thought that we as women, and not all women - I'm talking about a very particular type, being Clementine and mine - we're always trying to be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. That's something that's almost in contrast to me growing up, because I'm somebody who likes to use my brains and abilities to impress, rather than my looks. Clementine became an opportunity to use and celebrate this part of my femininity. It's actually a powerful thing to be a beautiful woman. I remember growing up, like Once Upon a Time in the West with Claudia Cardinale, or Sophia Loren - you see these women and they have hips and breasts and waists, and that's what Clementine was. I was using all of these inspirations to build whatever moment I have in the story. The lobotomy scene must have been complicated as well - truly baring it all, body and soul, as we're saying goodbye to at the very least a version of Clementine. What do you remember about shooting that scene? It was really funny. [Actors Ptolemy Slocum and Sidse Babett Knudsen] and I were laughing, because of what Ptolemy was wearing. The tech's outfits are all latex, and they have almost gills like fishes. We were playing with it. It wasn't so serious. We were laughing the whole time. But what I thought was, if Clementine is sweet - and you only see it in the beginning - I thought I would look directly in his face instead of looking out, even though she's in this sleep mode. She's still kind of functioning within her regular reverie of love. I was playing with the idea that she's looking at him and has a crush on him before he puts that drill in her nose. From a distance, you could see me looking at him. Then, when he did it - for me, it was really sad. Everything you are is now dying, and I remember my whole body and my eyes were welling up. It was a sad, sad moment. (Pauses) I loved playing her. I think she's a wonderful creature. She's so beautiful, and I'm so glad I got to bring that kind of life into the show. Earlier in the episode, Clementine reveals her "backstory," such as it exists. Her family lives in the desert, and she's only working at the Mariposa until she can earn enough money to give them a better life and move "somewhere cold." And she says the word: "someday." That feels like a buzzword on this show - a word that people say when they really mean never, according to Dolores a few episodes ago. What does that word, "someday," embody for you? It's really interesting. We shot the pilot two years ago now. I remember thinking how challenging it was going to be for me. I don't necessarily function or think like Clementine. We're different. But what's similar about us is her backstory, which is very much a parallel to my own life. I love my family and I'm very close with them, and I recently lost my grandmother, who I was very close with. I believe everything I create, I create for them. I create for them and for all of our happiness. The thing about it is, I don't know what the future holds, just like all of us don't know what the next day holds. Clementine doesn't, either. We just hope for the best. But there's always a little bit of doubt that who knows if it will happen, if her dreams will come true. You shared so many scenes with Thandie Newton this season. Can you share a memory of working together? Thandie and I have become friends. I really adore her. I think she's just a beautiful woman in life and everything she's done with her family. Everything I felt for her in the show, I really feel toward her. There's nothing put on. Never amoment. I genuinely admire her as a person, and I look up to the things she's accomplished as an actress and as a woman. Even now, we text and email each other about how much we care about each other. When I see her character, my heart melts. I think she's a really wonderful person. It's a gift. It's not always the case when you work with people that you'll love or care about them. Really, throughout the entire season I was the first actress who came to Melody Ranch [in Santa Clarita, Calif.], where we were shooting, two years ago. I tested before I got the part, and I met Jonah and Lisa, and they're such kind and generous and creative people. That's a rarity. This whole production, along with Thandie and the other actors involved, has been and as I'm talking, it makes me emotional. You want to have people in your life who inspire you, and that's what they did. Not only did the show affect my life and the character I played, but the people did as well. The whole experience has been amazing. As much as you can say, is this it for Clementine? Is this where the story ends for her? Yeah. Sad to say, but yeah, Clementine this is where it's sad for me. It's kind of the end for her. I loved playing her and I hope that I'm going to get to play a strong character [like her] again. In the end, she really is so strong. I hope I'll get a chance to continue that kind of character in the future. You'll have to tune in and see. Read more: 'Westworld' Star on Theresa's Devastating Discovery Follow THR's Westworld coverage for more interviews, news and analysis. From Esquire Yesterday we were happy to report that, despite Donald Trump's electoral victory, Macy's will stand firm in its decision not to sell his crappy line of menswear and accessories. Today, however, we get to see the other side of that coin. Turns out that some people's moral stances can be quickly reversed when there's a financial windfall at stake. Back in 2015, when Trump kicked off his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, Perfumania, the country's largest fragrance retailer, very publicly announced that it would no longer carry his line of colognes. But apparently Perfumania likes a winner. [contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Macy's%20Still%20Won't%20Sell%20Trump's%20Terrible%20Menswear" customimages="" content="article.50569"] Head on over to the Perfumania website (actually please don't, just take our word for it), and you can find Empire by Trump and Success by Trump listed among its offerings. Earlier today TMZ reached out to the company to find out its reasoning for the move, but a rep simply replied, "no comment." Well Perfumania, how about we go ahead and make that comment for you. Here's the high and the low of it: When racist comments mean slower sales, you're all about standing up for decency and equal rights. But when the person saying those racist comments ends up winning the highest office in the land, you'd rather ride his coattails to a potentially bigger payday. Racism be damned, there's money to be made. That sound about right? Also: Who would really want to smell like Donald Trump? It's probably some cloying mix of self-tanning chemicals, hairpiece fumes, and residual fear from every non-white non-man he's intimidated that particular day. You Might Also Like From Esquire Food scientists can create a vast array of tastes and smells by combining chemicals. Those nacho-chipotle-wasabi-ranch chips you love? They're the result of tinkering with molecules and millennial focus groups. Nearly all of the processed foods on the market, even those containing "natural flavors," are given their kick by science and a healthy dose of market research. In the case of complexity however, technology is still far behind nature. Case in point: Scotch whisky, lauded for its nuance in nose and palate, much of which scientists and craftsman alike still fail to fully comprehend. The interactions between environmental variables like spring water and climate mingle with human craft in the whisky making process to create tasting experiences that surely blew the minds of the 15th century monks who first dabbled in distillation, and continue to compel enthusiasts from around the world. Simplicity and discipline are at the core of what makes this craft timeless. History: The Monks were onto something Not surprisingly, there's some hazy uncertainty over exactly who presided over the first whisky stills of Scotland, but there's no doubt it was in a monastery. According to the earliest written record in 1494, King James IV ordered over half a ton of whisky from Lindores Abbey, located due north of Edinburgh. At the time, whisky was capable of inspiring wonder on the palates of kings, but it was still a work in progress. There were bottles of golden sunshine, like those possibly found at Lindores, and there were varieties that at best didn't cause blindness. Whisky scholars infer that with the King placing an order with this particular monastery, it's likely that distillation was widespread by this time among monks. Distilled spirits were used first in religious rituals, which makes sense because monks had the space and time to dedicate resources to fine-tuning the process. However, as the Reformation swept up from England, many monasteries were dissolved. Yet, rather than snuffing out the practice of distillation, it spread and flourished. Story continues Grain to Barrel: The Basics Advancements in whisky making have occurred over centuries of trial and error, with distillers passing their knowledge onto the next generation. Though industrial machinery is now used to increase the scale at which batches are made, the process remains one that relies heavily on skill and experience. From the harvesting of the barley to the aging process, there are key moments where whisky makers imbue their own personal and regional touches that result in the distinct expressions found in the bottle. Whisky makers set themselves apart from one another in the very first stage of the production process. After the barley is steeped in water, it's laid out on what's called a malting floor to germinate. Traditionally, and in many contemporary whisky distilleries, the barley is turned at various intervals with shovels or by hand. This process provides an even germination amid the barley. Once the barley has reached an optimal germination point, and the starch has turned the sugar, it must be dried. At this point, the way in which the barley is dried begins to vastly impact the character of the whisky. For instance, the use of peat smoke when drying barley will contribute to a smoky character while opting out of peat smoke altogether opens up other profiles. The process remains one that relies heavily on skill and experience. Next, the dried barley is ground into course flour called grist. It's heated to extract sugar, yeast is added, and then fermentation occurs. The so-called "wash" is now ready for distillation. Over the centuries the process has been refined for repeat results, but the principles are the same: heat the wash to roughly 178-degrees Fahrenheit, where the alcohol evaporates while the water stays in the still. This is done twice, but rarely three times as the more a wash is distilled, the more it loses its original character. It's actually the shape of the still where whisky makers leave their mark on taste. Long, narrow stills create more delicate flavors while wider-based stills create bolder profiles. Aging: Worth the Wait Whisky making is perhaps at its most active stage when the work is done and the waiting begins. A largely tasteless, clear alcohol going in, it's here that whisky comes into its own. The process is one of knowledge, skill, and discipline. From the source of the oak wood to the size of the barrel down to the temperature and humidity of the warehouse, every element of the process is integral to the finished product. It's the aging process where Scotch whisky gets its distinction. In order to earn the classification, the spirit must age for at least three years and one day. There are a host of other restrictions-including that it must be produced in Scotland-but this is the most essential. Master whisky makers through the ages have understood that time is their most powerful tool in crafting the best product. The Simplest Ingredients, The Most Complex Tastes If aging is the key component of a whisky's flavor, then the ingredients are a close second. By law, the only legal additive to whisky is water and plain caramel coloring. In terms of taste, a whisky maker from 1776 and present day are working with the same set of ingredients: the difference is how they prepare and interpret them. Water plays a particularly interesting role. In Scotland, many of the rainfall basins are composed of impervious rock which results in soft water meaning it's largely low in minerals. As the water passes through the meadows around the distilleries, it takes on a character unique to the area. Contrary to popular belief, water that flows through peat bogs doesn't result in a smoky whisky, that's thanks to the barley drying process mentioned above. It All Comes Down to the Human Touch In many areas of the food industry, chemistry is the key indicator of when a product is perfected. Whisky however, is decidedly more esoteric in its pursuit of quality. The determination of a whisky's flavor is largely up to one person: the blender. This chef de barley of sorts culls from various barrels at different times to determine an expression or-as is often the case in blended whiskies-replicate a flavor profile from year to year. Balancing the age and volume of current whisky stocks with market forces, the position is a blend of the qualitative and quantitative, with the nose and palate serving as the chief guide. Whisky making has evolved over the last 500 years. Thankfully, makers can meet most demands and the consistency for expressions means an old favorite is always available. Despite these improvements, the field remains a subjective pursuit of passion. In working with natural elements, variables continue to present opportunity and challenges for whisky makers. And in keeping the human touch the final decider of taste, the craft of whisky making retains its timeless character. You Might Also Like By Rory Carroll (Reuters) - A federal judge in Wisconsin on Monday ordered the release of Brendan Dassey, who was imprisoned for life for helping his uncle kill a freelance photographer in 2005 in a case spotlighted in the Netflix documentary "Making a Murderer." Based on Magistrate Judge William Duffin's order, Dassey, who has been incarcerated more than a decade, could be released within 90 days unless prosecutors attempt to retry him. Dassey, now 27, and his uncle, Steven Avery, were convicted in separate trials of killing photographer Teresa Halbach at Avery's home in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. Halbach's charred remains were found in an incineration barrel and a burn pit on Avery's property, about 80 miles (130 km) north of Milwaukee. Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse. Avery was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and being a felon in possession of a gun. Dassey was sentenced by the court to life without parole. In August, Duffin ruled the guilty verdict returned by a trial jury in 2007 against Dassey was based on a coerced confession he gave as a 16-year-old youth with a learning disability. Duffin said the confession obtained by investigators violated Dassey's constitutional rights. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel on Monday said that he intends to file an emergency motion in the Seventh Circuit seeking a stay of the release order. The case was the subject of the 10-part Netflix-released documentary "Making a Murderer," which questioned the handling of the investigation and the motivation of Manitowoc County law enforcement officials, who sent Avery to prison in 1985 for a rape he did not commit. (Reporting by Rory Carroll in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) From Cosmopolitan Oh, this is delicious. Our new Vice President-elect Mike Pence isn't a big favorite of women who value bodily autonomy. The unpopular former governor of Indiana and born-again evangelical Catholic gutted Planned Parenthood funding in his state and signed a controversial anti-abortion law that would have banned abortions of fetuses sought over gender, race, ancestry, or diagnosis of a genetic disorder, if it hadn't been blocked. And that's just the beginning - he's a really scary guy if you believe in a women's right to choose what happens to her own body. (Not totally related but just so you understand what a trash can he is: he's also a real menace to the LGBT community.) To that end, women all over are donating to Planned Parenthood in his name. Not only are they supporting much-needed services for women, but they're also ensuring that certificates with the donation information are sent to Pence's office. Honestly, imagining his office papered in these certificates is the only thing getting me through the day. It's my new happy place. Follow Laura on Twitter. You Might Also Like By Ivy Josiah Bersih chairperson Maria Chin is used to pressure, having been involved in womens movement since the 1980s, and mounting three massive protests calling for clean and fair elections. The three Bersih rallies held in 2008, 2012 and 2015 brought over 500,000 protesters onto the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Indeed, Bersih has inspired Malaysians to show no fear, and to claim our rights to parliamentary democracy and a corrupt-free government. It wasnt just in Malaysia but abroad as well; Malaysians living and working overseas held parallel protests in over 80 cities in solidarity with their fellow Malaysians at home. In my view, the Bersih movement is unique. I do not know of any other peoples movement that has awakened citizens both at home and abroad to take action. When citizens show no fear, authorities do; they feel insecure that their regime is losing control and power. Bersih 4 in 2015 even called for the resignation of the Prime Minister. The ruling government responded by getting its police force to make several charges against Bersih organisers, including banning the yellow Bersih T-shirt on the morning of the rally (29 August). It must be noted that that the ban did not rattle over 500,000 protesters, who went ahead and donned the T-shirt to create an ocean of yellow. Besides wrestling with the authorities, the non-state actors also prove to be equally insidious and menacing. When Ambiga Sreeenvasan, former chair of Bersih, was leading Bersih 2 and Bersih 3, she faced intimidation that ranged from the ridiculous to the violent. Besides threats at her private home, there were calls for her death and revocation of her citizenship. One fine morning in 2012, a group of ex-military men turned up at her front gate to carry out butt exercises. They literally shook their bums at her gate and were taken aback when a bemused Ambiga came out of her house and offered them cold drinks! The leader of this group, Ali Tinju went on to utter that Ambiga is enemy of the nation who had smeared the countrys name and issued a threat: We will act if your smear the countrys name. Police reports were made but to my knowledge, Ali Tinju was not charged. Story continues Maria, too, has not been spared when she took over the leadership of BERSIH. Last year, a group of men stomped on and poured red paint on an effigy of her. Ali Tinju reared his ugly head as soon as Maria Chin and her team announced Bersih 5 is to be held on 19 November 2016. Presumably emboldened that the authorities will not take any action against him, he has furiously threatened that Maria will no longer walk on this earth (tidak akan berjalan di atas bumi). He also issued a rather sexualised threat: Dont challenge us or we will make it so that her legs point upwards and her head points downward to the ground (Jangan cabar kami, nanti kami akan buatkan kaki dia ke atas, kepala ke bawah jalan). Ali Tinju claims he has been misquoted but recorded evidence shows otherwise. Although Ali Tinju is being investigated for criminal intimidation, the police have also stated that Maria Chin herself is being investigated for allegedly trying to topple the government and the Prime Minister through the planned Bersih 5 rally. It is double whammy for Maria Chin, and its nothing new. Targeting women leaders with violence has become a norm in Malaysia. In 2014, a Muslim NGO offered a cash reward to slap Member of Parliament, Teresa Kok. Last year, Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, the spokesperson for Group 25 which advocates for moderation in Islam, was threatened with sexual assault by a man in a Facebook comment. These women who dare to fight for democracy and justice face attacks that are specifically targeted in a misogynistic manner. Its a form of gender-based violence; male human rights defenders are generally not threatened with rape. The silence of public authorities implies that the state condones these actions by non-state actors who, in a sense, act as vigilantes for the state. But as the saying goes, you cannot keep a good woman down and in the words of Betty Makoni, a Zimbabwean activist, women human rights defenders are Passion holders, speakers, people with a vision, we hold the front line. Ivy Josiah was formerly Executive Director of Womens Aid Organisation(WAO), one of Malaysias leading womens rights organisations. She is currently WAOs fundraiser and host of the web-based talk show, The IvyGram. From Good Housekeeping Captain Paul Rothman, a World War II veteran, and Geraldine Rosen, a Jew who escaped Nazi Germany just a moment before it was too late, have a love story marked by war, luck and - some would argue - fate. But, like so many tales of great love, Rothman and Rosen's story comes with a surprising twist: They didn't find each other until 50 years after WWII. Today, on ABC News, the couple told their story to the world. After years of fighting in the jungles of Bombay, India and China, Rothman was honorably discharged in the late 1940s; he then moved to New York City to build a major textile company. Around the same time, Rosen, at 11 years old, arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey after a tumultuous journey from Germany by sea. "I remember getting off the boat, bending down and kissing the floor," Rosen told ABC. While Rothman came to America to apply the leadership skills he gained in the war to a thriving business, Rosen came into the country as a displaced refugee - lucky enough to leave Germany just days before Kristallnacht, the night when Nazis threw Jews from their homes, burned their business and murdered hundreds. This was when the unbelievable coincidences began. Rosen and her family came to New York City with the aid of a cousin, who told them that he would help them that he could give them a place to stay - as it turns out, that cousin lived in Rothman's old apartment building on 39th Street. When Rosen's brother, Eli, entered the workforce, he did so in the - wait for it - textile company, where he was quickly introduced to Rothman. The pair became great friends. And still, Rosen and Rothman had yet to be introduced. When they finally did meet just 25 years ago, after Eli suggested they have dinner, they realized that they lived within three blocks of each other in the very same neighborhood. And today? The couple now lives just one block from Hunter College in Manhattan, where Rosen worked for 10 years. All this time, she was just a block away from her future. Story continues Both Rothman and Rosen were unhappily married in the time between the war and their meeting in 1990. "When I met Paul, I had left a marriage of 25 years, it was very difficult [but] Paul and I just clicked, " said Rosen. "He had his baggage and I had mine." Rothman was also taken by Rosen, but, skittish after his divorce, "didn't immediately follow up to take her out again." Fate, however, intervened once more. While helping her brother with his work, Rosen unknowingly walked into Rothman's warehouse in downtown New York - and walked straight into him. "If she wasn't there, maybe we wouldn't be here," said Rothman. "But I'm sure glad she was standing at the elevator." Gerry and Paul connected over the war, over the uncanny coincidences, and most of all, true love. Today, they are the backbone of each other's family. "She's the love of my life," said Paul. "What else is there to say?" [h/t ABC News] You Might Also Like President-elect Donald Trump, with son Barron and wife, Melania, acknowledges his supporters on election night in New York City, Nov. 9, 2016. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Since election night, millions of Americans who voted against Donald Trump have been torn by competing impulses. They have heard the words of President Obama the day after Trumps victory: We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country and We have to remember that were actually all on one team. Theyve thought of all the noble Americans in our past who found grace and magnanimity in more trying times. Lincoln! Speaking at his inaugural, extending a hand to the seceding Southerners: We are not enemies, but friends. But then they turn on the television and watch commentators talk about the Trump transition as politics as usual. They feel a nagging doubt. They remember how fervently they believed during the campaign that Trump was a threat to the republic. Balancing generosity and vigilance feels impossible. They owe it to the republic to treat this transition as any other, to banish, at least for the time being, the idea that Trump is an American Putin, Mussolini or Hitler. But what if he is? The history of the presidency does not offer easy comfort we have simply never had a figure like Donald Trump in the Oval Office before. But consolation is there in the mere fact that the republic has survived 44 presidencies before Trumps, not all of which were moments of shining glory. Some of our presidents were Trumps equals as easily provoked hotheads its probably for the best that Andrew Jackson did not have Twitter. Others were his equals in brutish vulgarity one shudders to imagine what Lyndon Johnson might have said if given a few hours to kill with Billy Bush. Some presidents were simply bad at the job. And yet weve made it through. If we are, in fact, in for a scary four years, previous moments of challenge in the history of the presidency offer lessons in how to survive several different kinds of trouble from President-elect Trump. Scenario 1: Hes Truman. The best hope for a Trump presidency is that the real Donald Trump is a much better person than he appeared to be in the campaign. While believing in this Good Trump requires a considerable suspension of disbelief, assume for a moment that its true. Even a goodhearted President Trump would still face a glaring experience deficit. In a moment when the American president faces myriad potential crises at home and abroad, we will soon have a chief executive who has never before held public office or apparently given much thought to many areas of public policy. Story continues President Harry S. Truman announcing the Allied defeat of German forces on all fronts in 1945. (Photo: AP) But if inexperience is Trumps only problem, history says we may end up OK. Other presidents have come to the job facing similar experience deficits and in even more difficult times than our own. In April 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died. His little-known vice president, Harry S. Truman, was thrust into the presidency in a moment of great trial. Americans were still fighting the Second World War in two theaters, scientists were in the late stages of developing an atomic bomb and the Allied powers had charged themselves with designing a new order for the globe. Plucked by FDR from the Senate, Truman had served less than three months as vice president and had virtually no experience in statecraft. His friends, Time magazine reported shortly after he took office, believed with almost complete unanimity that he would not be a great president. Even Truman was struck by the awesome responsibility thrust upon him. Boys, he told White House reporters, if you ever pray, pray for me now. Yet Truman endured, and historians have come to marvel over how, despite his inexperience, he was able to intuit postwar geopolitics and invent a new role for America as leader of the free world. Some of our greatest presidents were deemed similarly unprepared for the problems facing the nation at the outset of their terms. A newly elected Abraham Lincoln went to Washington derided as a third-rate Western lawyer. The columnist Walter Lippmann, assessing Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, declared him a pleasant man without any important qualifications for the office of president. Meanwhile, sterling credentials have never been a guarantee of presidential success. It would be hard to design better resumes for governing than those of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, yet they still gave us Vietnam and Watergate. Scenario 2: Hes Buchanan. But what about the many signs that Trump is not just inexperienced, hes also incompetent? His multiple bankruptcies and failed businesses, his odd personnel choices, his seat-of-the-pants management style? The best example we have of a well-intentioned but utterly hapless president is James Buchanan, the man who failed to keep the country together as it divided over the issue of slavery. His four years in office were a sad cascade of bad decisions rooted in wishful thinking that the Supreme Court could resolve the issue of slavery in the Dred Scott case; that secession-minded Southerners could be appeased with concessions and conciliatory talk. On his last day in office, he addressed his successor as they rode back from the inauguration: If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland his Pennsylvania home you are a happy man. President James Buchanan (Illustration: Ullstein Bild via Getty Images) The consolation in the Buchanan example: That successor sitting beside him was Lincoln. Frequently, some of the worst presidents have been followed by some of the best Buchanan was succeeded by Lincoln, Herbert Hoover by FDR. As a presidents public support falls away, a talented politician sees his chance to fill the vacuum. If Trump is truly in over his head, we will probably know it soon enough and, with good luck, a once-in-a-generation political talent will swoop in to clean up the mess. Scenario 3: Hes Nixon. The more frightening possibilities for a Trump presidency surround his temperament and his authoritarian tendencies. Theres his hostility to the press and to peaceful protest, his threats to jail his opponents, his fondness for strongmen, past and present. For most Americans, Nixons presidency is the most vivid example of a presidency run amok, a cautionary tale for what Trump could become. But while the Watergate era showed the dangers of a president who steps outside his constitutional bounds, it also demonstrated how our system can effectively police a president who believes himself above the law. The Congress, the courts and the press all did their part to keep the country intact. President Richard Nixon, with his wife, Pat, and daughter Tricia, delivers an emotional farewell to his staff at the White House after resigning from office. (Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) Trump is a more gifted public performer than Nixon and it is possible that he could use his talents to delegitimize the press and the courts in a way that Nixon could not. Its worth remembering, though, that when the Watergate investigations began, Nixons bond with the public was quite strong: in his 1972 reelection he won 49 out of 50 states. Scenario 4: Hes Adams, Lincoln or FDR. American history contains an unsettling truth: The list of presidents who violated individual liberties includes some of the most exalted figures in our past. John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. In World War II, FDR ordered the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps. With historical distance, we have justifications for their actions Lincoln had a responsibility to preserve the Union that superseded constitutional constraints; the Japanese internment was a wrong and unjust decision, but one of many choices made by a president who was ultimately responsible for preserving freedom in the world. But viewed in isolation on purely moral grounds, Lincolns actions are difficult to defend and FDRs impossible. President Franklin Roosevelt reviews the U.S. naval fleet in San Francisco Bay, July 14, 1938. (Photo: George Skadding/AP) If presidents of the highest character and qualification were tempted to step outside the Constitution in moments of crisis, whats to stop a President Trump? At present, conventional wisdom is that the unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigration that Trump floated in his campaign has no future Trump doesnt talk about it anymore, Congress wouldnt pass it and, anyway, its impossible to administer. But imagine Trump riding a wave of public approval after a spectacular 9/11-style attack, theatrically rallying the countrys spirit, promising Americans he would act. Would a ban on Muslims, or, even worse, a registry of Muslim-American citizens (which at one point in the campaign Trump suggested he favored) seem so impossible then? The Constitution offers us good remedies for dealing with bad presidents. If Trump appears to a majority of the nation like the second coming of Nixon, or Andrew Johnson or Warren Harding, or any of the other flawed presidents in our past, the republic will be fine. The more dangerous scenario is a popular Trump presented with a national emergency and a public demanding swift action. Given what he has already told us, that is the President Trump we should watch carefully and fear. Jonathan Darman is the author of Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America. SANAA/DUBAI (Reuters) - At least 14 people were killed in central Yemen on Monday in air strikes on fuel trucks by the Arab coalition fighting in the country, medics and witnesses said, with the coalition saying the vehicles were carrying rebel military supplies. The medics and witnesses said at least 11 other people were wounded in the Monday morning attack in which two tanker trucks parked on a road linking the town of Yarim in Ibb province with the provincial capital, Ibb, were hit. A medical source at Yarim hospital said the facility received the bodies of 10 people, including one soldier. The official said 15 wounded people were also brought to the hospital, some of them in serious condition. The official later said that three other people had died. Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the convoy was en route from Ibb province carrying ammunition and other supplies for Houthi and allied forces near Taiz city. The attack occurred at about 2 a.m. (2300 GMT Sunday), he said. "There is a huge network of smuggling those weapons moving around. They try to camouflage ... We were tracking them and when they stopped in the area of the 55th Brigade of the Republican Guard we attacked them in the night," he said. "It was so late at night that it was only the smugglers and the Houthi rebels around those vehicles," he said. Asseri added it was possible the trucks were carrying fuel in addition to ammunition and weapons. The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who hold much of the north of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, since March 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. Units of the Republican Guard are among the forces loyal to Saleh that are on the Houthi side. Taiz, Yemen's third largest city, is one of the cities they are fighting to control. The Saudi-led coalition had been blamed for several attacks on medical centers, including some run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), schools, factories and homes in the past 18 months that has killed scores of civilians. Last month, coalition air strikes killed more than 140 people when they struck a hall where a wake was being held in the capital Sanaa. The coalition said the attack was the result of wrong information. (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa and William Maclean in Dubai,; writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Toby Chopra) GENEVA (Reuters) - Yemen is at risk of a significant cholera outbreak with the number of suspected cases doubling within 12 days to over 4,000, the World Health Organization said. The outbreak in a country ravaged by a 20-month war that has killed thousands was declared by Yemen's Health Ministry on Oct. 6. By Nov. 1 there were 2,070 suspected cases, rising to 4,119 by Sunday. "The numbers of cholera cases in Yemen continue to increase, sparking concerns of a significant outbreak," the WHO said in a report on Monday. Cases confirmed as cholera by laboratory testing rose to 86 from 71 on Nov. 1. Eight people have died in the outbreak, as well as 56 from acute diarrhoea. Yemen is already beset by humanitarian problems arising from the war between a Saudi Arabia-led coalition and the Iran-aligned Houthi group which controls much of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. The war has destroyed much of Yemen's infrastructure, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced millions. The United Nations says only 45 percent of health facilities are functional and two-thirds of the population has no access to safe drinking water or sanitation. The WHO said the largest cholera caseload was in the governorates of Taiz and of Aden, the site of the government's temporary capital. But deaths due to cholera have also been confirmed in Amran, Sanaa, Hajjah and Ibb, and there are 29 "hot" districts in the country, with 11 governorates affected so far, the report said. Although most sufferers have no symptoms or mild symptoms that can be treated with oral rehydration solution, in more severe cases the disease can kill within hours if not treated with intravenous fluids and antibiotics. The U.N. estimates the cholera caseload in Yemen could end up as high as 76,000 across 15 governorates. (Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by John Stonestreet) Matt Maloney grubhub ceo GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney recently caused a stir over an email to employees expressing his opinions on the 2016 US presidential election. As Matt Weinberger previously reported for Business Insider, Maloney wrote: "While demeaning, insulting and ridiculing minorities, immigrants and the physically/mentally disabled worked for Mr. Trump, I want to be clear that this behavior and these views, have no place at GrubHub. Had he worked here, many of his comments would have resulted in his immediate termination." The CEO followed up the email with a press release clarifying his views, noting that he "intended to advocate for inclusion and tolerance" not "ask for anyone to resign if they voted for Trump." While some might have interpreted Maloney's initial email differently than how it was meant, it's actually not illegal in the United States for bosses to tell their employees who to vote for or to terminate employees based on speech with several important caveats. This all started with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed companies to endorse and campaign for political candidates. This means that, in most cases, your boss can send out a mass email telling you to support a certain politician, according to Steven Greenhouse writing for The New York Times. Note that your boss can try to influence your vote, but they cannot influence your ultimate ballot. But what about the First Amendment? Well, as Sydney Ember at the New York Times reported last year, the Bill of Rights won't protect workers in the private sector from being fired over speech in or outside the workplace it only protects you from the government. In certain states like New York and California, bosses can only influence their workers' votes within limits and cannot discriminate based on employees' political activities or beliefs (unless it interferes with their work). Government workers tend to enjoy more free speech in the workplace. Story continues According to a 2016 Harvard University study, 25% of 1,032 survey respondents claimed that their bosses have sent them politically focused messages. Unsurprisingly, most people weren't too happy about that, with 70% of participants saying that there should be limits on political campaigning at work. Joe Weinlick, senior vice president at Beyond, a career network focused on workplace environment and legal issues, says that good leaders shouldn't stifle opposing political speech in the workplace, as this could lead to a toxic work environment. "Interestingly, though, this type of commentary saying what you are thinking with no filter is exactly what Trump does that upsets people," Weinlick told Business Insider. While Maloney may have "crossed the line" by sending an email that could be misinterpreted, he said, "he has since clarified his comments, and perhaps there is a lesson for all of us that in this age of hyper-connectedness we need to not only be careful about what we communicate, but also careful not to judge people solely by what we learn from social media." No matter what, it's probably best to leave the politics outside the office whenever possible. As Rachel Gillett previously reported for Business Insider, "As an employee expressing yourself at work, you have fewer protections than you'd think and if your boss doesn't like what they hear, you could get fired for it." So tread with caution. NOW WATCH: 'Very unfair!': Trump sends mixed messages over ongoing protests More From Business Insider By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Police in New York were investigating two cases on Monday involving swastikas drawn or painted in public spaces, as civil rights activists said there had been a surge in hate crimes following last week's U.S presidential election. Surveillance video was released of a suspect wearing a gray sweater and backpack, who is believed to have spray-painted a large swastika in front of a 78-year-old man's home in Brooklyn on Saturday, police said. The man's residence is in the borough's Crown Heights section, a predominantly Jewish area. Also on Saturday, swastikas were drawn on four dormitory doors at the New School, a progressive private university in Manhattan that includes the Parsons School of Design. School president David Van Zandt said police were investigating, and that the graffiti was "intended to threaten and express hatred toward some of our students because of their identity." Civil rights groups say racial and religious minorities nationwide have been targeted since Republican Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8. His divisive campaign rhetoric has emboldened some of his supporters to spread racist messages, civil rights leaders say. Since the vote, Trump himself has called for peace and unity, and has denounced the white supremacist groups that supported him. Some Trump supporters say they, too, have been subjected to ugly rhetoric and worse from opponents. The American Civil Liberties Union said it had received a surge of donations, totaling $7.2 million, since Election Day. "This is the greatest outpouring of support for the ACLU in our nearly 100-year history," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, said in a statement. HATE CRIMES SURGE An annual Federal Bureau of Investigation report showed 5,850 hate crimes reported in the United States last year, up 7 percent from 2014. Anti-Jewish crimes were up 9 percent, and made up more than half of the 1,244 hate crimes based on religion. Anti-Muslim bias crimes rose 67 percent from 2014, to 257, the data showed. Story continues Bias crimes against African-Americans were up 7 percent last year to 1,745, making up 30 percent of all hate crimes. A day after the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, began tracking reports of hate crimes made to the center, in the news and on social media. By Monday, they had tallied more than 300 reports of physical or verbal altercations and vandalism, said Ryan Lenz, editor of the center's Hatewatch blog. While that appeared to represent a "sharp uptick," Lenz said, the organization began monitoring after the vote and could not make a comparison with numbers prior to the election. Among the incidents reported were a University of Oklahoma student accused of sending racist messages, including some from a source called "Trump's Disciples," to black freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump said on Sunday he was "so saddened" to hear about racial slurs and personal threats made against African Americans, Latinos and gay people by some of his supporters. "I say, 'Stop it.' If it - if it helps," Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview. (Reporting by Laila Kearney; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Ian Simpson and Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Alan Crosby) By David Ingram NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City police sought to reassure residents and tourists on Monday that they would be safe attending the city's Thanksgiving Day parade despite the militant group Islamic State calling on its followers to attack the event with trucks. The largest U.S. city has prepared for such attacks in the past and will be prepared again, John Miller, deputy police commissioner for counter-terrorism, said at a news conference. "Come to the Thanksgiving Day parade. Have a good time. Bring your family. I always go. I always bring mine," he said. The holiday celebration, featuring enormous balloons shaped like cartoon characters high above Manhattan, is scheduled to be broadcast nationwide the morning of Nov. 24. Islamic State, in the latest edition of its online magazine Rumiyah, suggested that readers use motor vehicles to kill and injure people. The article was accompanied by photos of rented moving trucks and of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which the magazine called "an excellent target." "What you see is the psychological warfare of printing materials that indicate, 'Be afraid, be very afraid.' We never accede to that," Miller said. New York police speak regularly with companies that rent trucks, and they use vehicles to block certain roads at large gatherings such as the Thanksgiving Day parade, Miller said. Security authorities have been on alert for truck attacks since Bastille Day this year, when a delivery man plowed a refrigerator truck into a crowd of revelers in Nice, France, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more. Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and seeks to inspire attacks by others abroad, claimed responsibility for the July 14 attack. (Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Richard Chang) Much ink has been spilled and many viral videos made arguing that Donald Trump won the election because liberals college students, the media, the coastal clique are out of touch with America. And their borderline hysteria over creeping authoritarianism since Trumps surprise victory, the argument goes, just proves how out of touch they are. But what about folks who have some experience with political earthquakes, and where the legacy of authoritarianism looms large? How do young liberals in what used to be called the Eastern Bloc view the rise of Trump? The short answer is that the young intelligentsia the liberal elite of Prague, Warsaw, Tbilisi, and Sofia were surprised and disappointed, as were many of the liberal elite in the United States. This has been a big blow to [those of] us believing in liberal, democratic America, Nino Vardiashvili of Tbilisi, Georgia told Foreign Policy. Marcin Buzanski, director of the Peace and Stabilization Strategies Programme at Pulaski Foundation in Warsaw, Poland noted that few expected Trump to win, and that nobody has a clue how he might turn his campaign rhetoric into governing. Thats not cause for optimism. Calling the election extremely worrying, he said, We have actually felt what authoritarian rule means before, so if we see the signs that were heading this way, they should somehow be addressed and addressed quite quickly. Such sentiments were echoed by Matteo Mazzini, who is a doctoral student based in Warsaw. When I was growing up in a freshly democratized Poland, he said, the United States was always shown as blueprint of a strong constitutional order, respect for civil liberties, a model we wanted to look up to, no matter who was in power. Now, however, for the past year the government in Poland has made all efforts possible to dismantle the Constitutional Court and tighten their grip on civic liberties, attacking women, immigrants, minorities. And since they control all branches of power, there is no way to stop them I feel the U.S. runs a serious risk of going down the same path. Story continues In the Czech Republic, where Trumps win was as surprising as anywhere else, Many people are horrified, said Jessie Hronesova, a Czech pursuing a doctorate in England. I can give you the view of my parents. They lived through 1968 and 1989. They lived through the politics of truth and love of [Vaclav] Havel and then its gradual entanglement by [Vaclav] Klaus and [Milos] Zeman, she said. And now they are watching that liberal peace unravel across Europe and then the U.S., too. Still, many noted that one election does not an authoritarian system make, particularly because the United States has strong civic and political institutions. I dont think you are in danger of authoritarianism just four very unpleasant years, said Johana Sedlackova Vamberska, a lecturer and businesswoman based in Prague. Also, I believe that people who voted for Trump wont gain any particular advantages during his presidency and, once they realize that, their support will weaken or vanish. Simona Valentova, who also works in business in Prague, agreed. I think you should not be scared, and definitely you will get through [it] just look at our Czech president and you will know what I mean, she said, referring to Zeman, the Czech Republics pro-Russian president, and one of the few Czech politicians to be an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Americas institutions and their ability to kneecap nascent authoritarianism are held in high regard in other quarters. Tatia Chikhladze, a native of Tbilisi, Georgia working on her dissertation in Germany said, When I was reading all this sad statuses and comments of my U.S. friends, I was thinking to myself, But institutions are so strong in the USA, will they allow him to become a personalistic president? I strongly doubt that [they will]. A fellow Georgian, Elene Lika Sekhniashvili, chief specialist at the National Intellectual Property Center of Georgia, agrees. This is not the end of the world, she said, Believe me, weve been there, done that. I sure the American people and the U.S. democracy can handle it! How Eastern Europe will handle it, however, is still to be seen. Almost every person with whom FP spoke cited anxiety about how an increasingly aggressive Russia would behave without Washington backstopping NATO, or with less American engagement to defend the established order. They may just get an unlikely champion. Trumps first wife, Ivana, who is from the Czech Republic, has offered to be her husbands ambassador to her native country. Photo credit: JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images A day after Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was held overnight at a Bangkok airport in early October, a grouping of fellow young activists from across the region issued a statement condemning his detention. They call themselves the Network of Young Democratic Asians (NOYDA), and draw members from East and Southeast Asia. The names on the list include activists who were involved in the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and the antijunta movement in Thailand. Their aim? To reclaim the social, cultural and political narrative of a region grappling with entrenched authoritarianism. They plan to ascend into governments and other institutions. Some of them have already done so, like 23-year-old Nathan Law, who in September became the youngest legislator in Hong Kong history. Wong and Law are both onetime students activists who co-founded the political party Demosisto. Not long after Wongs detention in Thailand, the two met TIME in a Kowloon cafe to share the story behind NOYDA, which was born of a three-day youth congress held in the Philippine capital of Manila in April this year. We want to have connections with different activists in the region, to facilitate our mutual support and mutual understanding, Law says. The network remained underground until Oct. 5, 2016, when it put out its first public statement of solemn protest after the government of Thailand denied entry to Wong, who was due to address students and activists at Bangkoks Chulalongkorn University on the 40th anniversary of the Thammasat University massacre. No one is aware because weve kept a low profile, explains Wong. Wong, 20, a figurehead in the Umbrella Revolution, Hong Kongs pro-democracy protests in 2014, says he has been networking with regional activists since he spearheaded a massive protest against patriotic education in Hong Kong in 2012 a curriculum regarded by many locally as procommunist brainwashing. The then 15-year-old convenor of student-activist group Scholarism was invited by Wang Dan, former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen protest in Beijing, to Taiwan to attend a seminar organized by the New School for Democracy. Story continues At that time, Wong met student activist Lin Fei-fan, who later in 2014 emerged as a leader of the Sunflower Movement, a 24-day student occupation of Taiwans legislature that successfully forced the postponement of a trade deal with Beijing. Wong and Lin subsequently met several times, in both Taiwan and Hong Kong, though since two years ago, the Taiwanese activist is no longer allowed to enter Hong Kong. Lin took part in the meeting in Manila this year, and is also a member of NOYDA. NOYDA has 14 official members, two representatives from each of its seven member-states or regions: Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. (There are also observer states like Burma.) Hong Kong is represented by Law and Alex Chow, both of whom were leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and important figures in the Umbrella Revolution protests. The members plan to convene annually. Many people in this region are becoming aware that the young activists, the younger generation, are influential, Lin, 28, tells TIME. Were starting to think about how maybe we can analyze or identify the common crisis that is happening among the younger generation in East Asia. Asian students have long taken inspiration from activism in other countries. We have seen some evidence that activists are inspired by other instances of nonviolent movements in the region, says Alexander Dukalskis, lecturer at University College Dublin, whose research specializes in authoritarianism in Asia. He says many pro-democracy activists in South Korea in 1987 were aware of the 1986 People Power movement that ousted Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This is not to say that one caused the other, but it is true that international examples of nonviolent resistance can influence activists for better or worse. But the degree of cooperation embodied in NOYDA is, many say, a new phenomenon. Its always a great thing to find alliance in other countries; it gives each of us more power, says Rangsiman Rome, director of the New Democracy Movement, a Thai antijunta youth network and a member of NOYDA. Rangsiman, 24, says that while the space for civil society to operate in Thailand has diminished under military rule especially in the wake of the Oct. 13 death of Thailands King Bhumibol Adulyadej student organizations, perceived as incorruptible, hold a privileged position in Thai society. With democracy precarious in much of Asia and criticizing a neighboring countrys human-rights conditions unheard of, NOYDA faces an uphill challenge. In addition, some members are not free to travel, and several member states have criminalized certain types of expression. However, Lin says the network is committed to offering support to all of their members. We want the Philippines government, and Thailands government, and other governments to know, Lin says, that our generation and our civil society is cooperating with each other, and they are all pro-democracy, and they will all protect the same values and principles. When we feel helpless in our own country, Wong tells TIME, dont forget that there are still people outside of your country supporting you to achieve the universal values of freedom and democracy. With reporting by Yenni Kwok / Hong Kong By Charlotte Greenfield WELLINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - New Zealand faces billions of dollars in damage from the powerful earthquake that hit the country on Monday, but the government's strong balance sheet means it will have little trouble footing the bill, officials and economists said. Central New Zealand was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake just after midnight, killing at least two people, destroying road and rail links and damaging hundreds of buildings. Strong aftershocks continued throughout Monday. "You've got to believe it's in the billions of dollars to resolve," Prime Minister John Key said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Despite the widespread damage, the financial fallout would pale in comparison to the 2011 quake in the city of Christchurch that killed 185 people and required a NZ$40 billion ($28 billion) rebuild that is still being completed. "This hit largely rural areas in small towns so it's not really comparable to Canterbury, which hit the biggest city in the South Island," said Ilan Noy, chair of disaster economics at Victoria University in Wellington. The small South Island tourist town of Kaikoura, a popular spot for whale watching, appeared to have borne the brunt of the latest quake. The town was cut off by landslips that covered road and rail links in both directions. Two years of budget surpluses and low government debt meant the cost of the quake was unlikely to hit the economy hard or require the government to issue bonds, according to analysts. "It does look like at this early stage - it is early, aftershocks are still occurring - economic consequences look relatively manageable," said ANZ senior economist Philip Borkin. Key's centre-right government made it a priority in recent years to balance its books and reduce government debt, which equalled around 24.6 percent of the country's GDP in the year ending July. It reported a surplus of NZ$1.83 billion for the same year. "From a national perspective we can easily pay for it," said Victoria University's Noy. Story continues Much residential damage from the quake would be covered by government-owned insurer the Earthquake Commission (EQC), which was also backed by reinsurance. "EQC has about NZ$4.7 billion of reinsurance," EQC chief executive Ian Simpson told Radio New Zealand. "We still have some other financial resources, but at the end of the day, we still have access to a Crown (government) guarantee, so there are no circumstance where EQC can't process claims." Most major commercial insurance companies said they were still assessing the damage and that it was too early to tell the volume of claims. "We have a reinsurance programme in place and expect this event to fall within our net large risk and catastrophe allowances," a spokeswoman for QBE Insurance said. ($1 = 1.4128 New Zealand dollars) (Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in SYDNEY; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Paul Tait) Prabal Gurung is a proud feminist and designer of clothing for women of all sizes. (Photo: Getty Images) Accomplished fashion designer Prabal Gurung, a native of Nepal, has taken a bold stance on the culture of shaming women. In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Gurung placed accountability primarily on men, saying, The more I read about body-shaming or slut-shaming, the more I realize that it has little to do with the women and more to do with the men. It is not the women wearing the clothes that are the issue but the men judging them. Gurung who has dressed Michelle Obama, Kate Middleton, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lawrence, Zoe Saldana, and Priyanka Chopra, to name a few prides himself on being a feminist and tells the publication that he is devoted to inclusiveness in his own aesthetic. He attributes his progressive mentality to being raised by a single mother. My mothers biggest passion in life was equality for herself and others. So for me, feminism is not a trending topic on social media or a vehicle to forward my own agenda, the openly gay designer told the publication. He doesnt just talk the talk, though. Gurung consciously dresses women of all sizes an approach that not enough designers are brave enough to adopt in an industry that glorifies ultra-thin figures. He tells the Hindustan Times: Since day one, I have provided size zero to size 22. Also, I am working on a plus-size range, as I believe in being inclusive. In fashion, inclusivity doesnt only mean including models of different colors and race but also of different body types. But that doesnt mean his clothes are necessarily reaching their target demographic. Gurung says that its a shame that more retailers arent inclined to stock larger-size garments. Gurungs eagerness to recognize women of all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life is likely rooted in his own experiences as an underdog. He tells the Hindustan Times that although Nepal allows gay marriage, society as a whole is still homophobic. He says the country was not gay-friendly when he was growing up and was teased and mocked for being a boy with interests that included drawing and dressing up paper dolls. I was different, and I knew it from the very beginning, Gurung told the publication. Again, it was his mother his support system who encouraged his talents and inspired both confidence and empathy in him. Story continues Gurung has channeled that confidence to overcome career obstacles that could have been disastrous. The Hindustan Times says that when Gurung lost his job as creative director when his employer Bill Blass was shuttered, Gurung decided to launch his first label under his own name. It was 2007 in the middle of a recession, no less. Where other suddenly jobless people might have dived headfirst into depression or scrambled for any kind of employment elsewhere, Gurung took that as a sign,' the publication says. Gurungs guerrilla-style solo endeavor clearly paid off as did his moxie. Now hes applying that same resolve to helping to change the landscape of womens fashion so that plus-size consumers can have all the same glamorous options as their smaller counterparts and not have to suffer the humiliation of being judged and marginalized. My goal as a designer is to give options, he tells the publication. I am not a good designer if I am only good at making size zero clothes. And diversity transcends size for Gurung, who claims he enjoys dressing women who are strong, intelligent, independent, and appreciative of the finer things in life. Of course, not everyone agrees with Gurungs theory that men are responsible for body-shaming and slut-shaming. According to the Telegraph and vocal plus-size advocates like Tim Gunn, the fashion industry itself is to blame for body-shaming anyway. Some female feminists even point fingers at fellow women for body-shaming and others would say that women should own up to slut-shaming too. Gurung points out that a third party retailers is also complicit. When discussing his designs for larger women, he told the Hindustan Times its a shame that retailers dont pick those. Gunn echoed that very sentiment in a recent interview aired on the PBS NewsHour and in an op-ed for the Washington Post. In addition to the fact that most designers max out at size 12, the selection of plus-size items on offer at many retailers is paltry compared with whats available for a size 2 woman, Gunn wrote, noting in his video interview that hes baffled as to why retailers arent demanding larger sizes, pointing out that the average size of an American woman is 16 to 18. Gurung and Gunn seem to agree that whats in order here is less shame and more options. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Photo: Getty Images In an unusual turn of events, Daylight Saving-born twins have encountered a rare age-twist. Week-old Samuel Peterson is a half-hour older than his twin brother Ronan but not according to their birth certificates. Photo: Cape Cod Healthcare/Facebook Massachusetts couple Emily and Seth Peterson welcomed their twin boys early in the morning of Nov. 6, while the country turned back their clocks in DTS adjustment. Their son Samuel was the first to arrive at 1:39 a.m., shortly before the hour of 2 a.m. when clocks fell back an hour. Brother Ronan was born 31 minutes later. But because he was born after clocks were turned, his official time of birth was declared 1:10 a.m. instead of 2:10 a.m. So even though Samuel was the first born twin, on paper, Ronan is the eldest of the brothers. My husband was the first to say it, Heres a riddle for you!' mom Emily Peterson, 32, told ABC News. It literally took me a day to wrap my head around it. I didnt realize it was quite that big of a deal until my nurse turned around and said Ive been working here 40 years and havent seen anything like that.' President and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare, Michael K. Lauf, told ABC News that the Peterson twins birth story was a remarkable occurrence. Its a pleasure to have such a positive story at our hospital about a wonderful young couple who will have a great tale for their sons. he said in a statement. Samuel and Ronan Peterson have since joined their big sister Aubrey, 2, at home with mom and dad. MemoMa is a notes app that you can write your memos, ideas, journals, or any kind of text directly into your iPhone calendars. You can add a note very quickly by tapping a plus (+) button, and your note will be registered with a time stamp. You can also add a calendar event using MemoMa. You can start your day by checking MemoMas todays view. That is where the app starts when you launch it. It shows all of your notes and events for the day. Everything you write is displayed on your timeline, so you dont have to expand each item. Scroll through the day with your finger to learn all the details, including addresses, emails, URLs, whose hyperlinks can lead you to external resources. If you want to copy one of your notes or events, long press it and the text will be copied to the clipboard. You can move to another day by swiping left or right, or by specifying a date. If you have difficulty finding a specific note or event, expand the view to a week, a month, or a year. A full text search not only helps you find a specific note or event, but tells you how many entries fit your criteria for a specified period. And, it can be displayed in both chronological and reversed chronological orders. It helps you track down how many times you've had a certain activity, and lets you know when it happened the first as well as the last time. What MemoMa Can Do: - Create and edit plain text notes with date and time stamp. - Create and edit calendar events. - View entire texts for a given period (e.g., a day, a week, a month or a year) without having to open each event or note. - Copy a notes or events detail to clipboard. - Hyperlink addresses, URLs and phone numbers to launch external apps. - Full text search within given period (up to a year). - Search results in chronological and reversed chronological orders. - Create notes and events off-line. - Change text size through system settings. Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking all have something in common: All three have gone on the record sharing their concerns and fears about artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies hold a great deal of promise, and will have a real impact on our future, its important for us to understand the ramifications they could have for all of us, particularly in terms of labor. My first big concern about AI was recently highlighted in a New York Times piece by John Markoff, who wrote that while AI has great potential for good, it could also be abused by criminals who might use it for their nefarious goals. Heres Markoff: The growing sophistication of computer criminals can be seen in the evolution of attack tools like the widely used malicious program known as Blackshades, according to Mr. Goodman. The author of the program, a Swedish national, was convicted last year in the United States. The system, which was sold widely in the computer underground, functioned as a criminal franchise in a box, Mr. Goodman said. It allowed users without technical skills to deploy computer ransomware or perform video or audio eavesdropping with a mouse click. The next generation of these tools will add machine learning capabilities that have been pioneered by artificial intelligence researchers to improve the quality of machine vision, speech understanding, speech synthesis and natural language understanding. Some computer security researchers believe that digital criminals have been experimenting with the use of A.I. technologies for more than half a decade. To some degree, we saw this scenario play out recently when sites like Amazon, Netflix and others were crippled for hours by bots involved in a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack. The motive behind the attack remains unclear, and it will take some time to sort that out. But as Markoff pointed out, the criminal potential for AI is real and needs to be understood now to try and head off these kinds of attacks in the future. Story continues AI and robotics also concern me in terms of their role in replacing people in the labor force, thus eliminating jobs. Im hearing from more and more people who study the job market and believe this problem is very real. Telegraph Science Editor Sarah Knapton wrote the following last April: Robots will have taken over most jobs within 30 years leaving humanity facing its biggest challenge ever to find meaning in life when work is no longer necessary, according to experts. Professor Moshe Vardi, of Rice University, in the US, claims that many middle-class professionals will be outsources to machines within the next few decades leaving workers with more leisure time than they have ever experienced. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, Prof Moshe said the rise of robots could lead to unemployment rates greater than 50 per cent. We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task, said Vardi, a professor in computational engineering. While a life of leisure may be appealing to many, the fact is that work and jobs are important to our overall lifestyle and identity. Even more importantly, they provide our livelihood. Forecasters believe that by 2050 there will be close to 10 billion people on the earth. If Vardi is right, and robots could replace as many as 50% of the workers in the market, were headed for disaster. Its easy for my generation, or even those younger than I, to cast off this problem as one for others to solve. But I dont think we can wait to address this potential nightmare scenario. Leaders in Silicon Valley and Washington need to view AI and robotics as an opportunity, but also a threat if mishandled. AI experts need to heed the warnings of people like Gates, Musk and Hawking, and build safeguards and security into the products they create. Our education system, meanwhile, needs to be retooled to emphasize STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning, the sort of skills that will be most useful in a world where technology and automation could wipe out many of the jobs for which our children are currently being prepared. I see plenty of potential for good in AI and robotics. But I also see the dangers. Silicon Valley, the broader technology world, and our political leaders need to understand this problem and begin working together to deal with it immediately. The generations behind us are counting on it. Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists, covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc and has been with the company since 1981 where he has served as a consultant providing analysis to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry. Over the past few years, Apple's cash hoard has swelled to near unthinkable levels. Per the company's most recent earnings report, Apple now has more than $237 billion in cash and other securities, anchored of course by the company's insanely lucrative iPhone. Though the iPhone only has a thin slice of smartphone marketshare, Apple's iconic smartphone accounted for an astonishing 104% (yes, you read that correctly) of the profits across the smartphone industry last quarter. DON'T MISS: Watch Dave Chappelles hilarious SNL opening monologue tackle all things Trump With so much money in the bank, it's only reasonable to ask what the company plans to do with all of growing cash pile. The situation is a bit tricky because the vast majority of Apple's cash (more than $200 billion) resides in overseas accounts. The following chart, compiled by Statista this past August, provides an instructive illustration of Apple's current cash position. apple-cash As a result, if Apple were to bring that cash back stateside, it would be subject to the United States' uniquely high 35% corporate income tax rate. Apple, therefore, has opted to let its cash sit overseas rather than take a huge tax hit and bring it back. Apple's strategy in this regard, we should point out, is hardly unique. On the contrary, many large companies -- from Google to Pfizer -- hold billions of dollars in offshore accounts because they too want to avoid a large tax hit. With Donald Trump poised to assume the Presidency this coming January, Apple may be able to repatriate some of its overseas holdings sooner rather than later. Per Donald Trump's tax plan, companies like Apple would be afforded the opportunity to repatriate foreign holdings at a significant tax discount. As detailed on Trump's website, Trump's tax plan for businesses "will provide a deemed repatriation of corporate profits held offshore at a one-time tax rate of 10 percent." Story continues The language here might also suggest that company's with vast cash holdings overseas will be taxed at 10% regardless of whether or not the cash is repatriated. That said, we'll have to wait and see what Trump's tax plan actually looks like once he assumes the Presidency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWWB5uhvoYs The savings Apple would enjoy with Trump's tax plan would be immense, to say the least. In a hypothetical scenario where Apple opts to repatriate, say, $50 billion, Apple under Trump's plan would save more than $12 billion. Apple and other large multinational companies have been lobbying for a one-time tax holiday for years now. As a quick example, Tim Cook back in 2013 had this to say on the topic during an interview with the Washington Post. "If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the US, you need to pay 35 percent of that cash," Cook said. "And that is a very high number. We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don't view that. But I think it has to be reasonable." The last time we saw the powers-that-be approve a one-time tax holiday was back in 2004 when companies were allowed to repatriate their offshore holdings with a generous 5.25% tax rate. Strictly speaking, Trump isn't exactly offering a tax holiday if the 10% tax rate is enforced across the board, but the posited rate is low enough such that many companies like Apple would likely bring back their cash happily. Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it will likely take several years to fix problems at the social network uncovered by the recent data scandal (AFP Photo/Josh Edelson) Washington (AFP) - Facebook had a tool to weed out fake news circulating on the social network this year but declined to deploy it for fear of offending conservatives, a report said Monday. The report by the online news site Gizmodo comes with Facebook under fire for allowing hoaxes and misinformation to go viral and -- according to some critics -- boost the efforts of Republican Donald Trump in his successful presidential run. Facebook denied the report. Gizmodo, citing unnamed sources said to be knowledgeable about Facebook's decision-making, said the tool was shelved after a controversy over reports saying the social network suppressed some conservative voices in its "trending topics" earlier this year. "They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news," Gizmodo quoted one source as saying. "There was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after (the uproar over) trending topics." A Facebook statement said that the claims made in the article were "not true." "We did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party," the statement from Facebook said. "We always work to make News Feed more meaningful and informative, and that includes examining the quality and accuracy of items shared, such as clickbait, spam and hoaxes." Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has rejected the idea that bogus stories shared at the social network paved a path of victory for Trump. "The idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way I think is a pretty crazy idea," Zuckerberg said during an on-stage chat at Technonomy, a technology trends conference in California. In a weekend posting, Zuckerberg said dealing with hoaxes and fake news is complex. "This is an area where I believe we must proceed very carefully," he said. "Identifying the 'truth' is complicated. While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted." Story continues - Bogus election results - The notion of hoaxes and fake news remained a topic of debate on Monday, when internet users searching on Google were delivered a bogus report saying Trump won the popular vote in addition to the Electoral College. The numbers on a blog called 70News -- contradicting official results tallied so far by states -- said Trump received 62.9 million votes to 62.2 million for Hillary Clinton. The blog urged those petitioning for the Electoral College to switch their votes to reflect popular will to scrap their effort. "Hey Change.org, scrap your loony petition now," the posting said. The bogus site was listed at the top of many search queries for "final election result." Preliminary tallies showed Clinton won roughly 700,000 more votes than Trump despite losing the states needed for an Electoral College victory. Google seeks "to provide the most relevant and useful results for our users," a company statement to AFP said. "In this case we clearly didn't get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms." Facebook says now everyone using its Messenger platform will have the ability to "unsend" a message sent in error, a privilege enjoyed until now by CEO Mark Zuckerberg (AFP Photo/Josh Edelson) (AFP/File) San Francisco (AFP) - Facebook on Monday began letting interactive "bots" inside its Messenger service tap into analytic capabilities once reserved for the social network, ramping up the potential to earn money from e-commerce. The move comes as Facebook is under pressure to profit from services such as Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, having recently told investors it is hitting a limit on the number of ads it can pack into the online social network. Facebook last week rolled out news feed ads that open into Messenger exchanges, and began letting businesses send "sponsored messages" to users who have interacted with them before. "Driving people to a Messenger conversation isn't enough," Facebook vice president of messaging products David Marcus said in an online post. "This is where sponsored messages come in." Facebook shares took a hit early this month after the huge social network delivered a blockbuster earnings report but warned that its stunning growth pace was set to slow. Although the California group reported a surge in profit and revenue, it also said it was unlikely to sustain that kind of growth in the near future. Facebook executives on an earnings call said the social network can no longer keep boosting the number of ads delivered without harming the user experience. - Bet on bots - Since they were first announced at Facebook's annual developer conference in April, more than 30,000 chatbots have been built with artificial intelligence to act as virtual agents for businesses in text exchanges with customers. The bots can answer questions, offer goods and services, send receipts or confirm reservations. Data gathered and provided by the social network would include how often people are transferred to humans at businesses or click through to websites to make purchases. Analytics tools can also provide demographic insights on users based on what people share publicly at the leading social network. Story continues "These bots are providing new ways for businesses to interact with their customers," Facebook product manager Josh Twist told AFP. "Because we own the Messenger platform, we can help get analytics without any effort." Twist stressed that data being made available to businesses came only from interactions in their own bots, and that any broad insights such as behavior breakdowns by demographics was aggregated and made anonymous. - Boosting business - Last year, Facebook made analytics tools available for apps synched to the social network. Providing the insights to bots at Facebook-owned Messenger moves them outside the social network for the first time. The company could then make money from the messaging service by acting as an intermediary between businesses and customers. Analytics may reveal reasons people add items to virtual carts but don't complete purchases, or which marketing approaches work better with women or men. "This is about understanding user behavior and identity," Twist said. User demographics derived from analytics potentially include information openly shared at Facebook including gender, country, language, education levels and relationship status. That data is aggregated and made anonymous, according to Facebook. "You could never snoop on a particular individual," Twist said. Twist said the company's goal is to help businesses using bots discern what makes people buy rather than browse. Bots do not receive analytic data in real time, so artificial intelligence cannot learn along the way or detect if it is chatting with a man or a woman, according to Twist. He said developers currently build artificial intelligence for bots, and Facebook handles the analytics. The company also announced it will begin accepting developers of bots for Messenger into a Facebook-sponsored program that provides free tools, services, and other resources to those who qualify. (Reuters) - Login credentials for over 412 million users of adult websites run by California-based FriendFinder Networks Inc. were compromised last month in the largest hack of 2016, according to breach notification website LeakedSource.com. Compromised data includes nearly 340 million credentials for Adultfriendfinder.com, which bills itself as "the world's largest sex and swinger community," some 63 million records from video sex-chat site cams.com and about 7 million records from adult magazine site Penthouse.com, LeakedSource said in a blog published on Sunday. Asked if the account from LeakedSource was accurate, the company provided Reuters with a statement saying it had brought in outside experts to help review the matter. "FriendFinder takes the security of its customer information seriously and is in the process of notifying affected users to provide them with information and guidance on how they can protect themselves," FriendFinder said in the statement. "Our investigation is ongoing but we will continue to ensure all potential and substantiated reports of vulnerabilities are reviewed and if validated, remediated as quickly as possible," it said. If LeakedSource's claims are confirmed, the number of email addresses would account for more than 10 times the number exposed in last year's high-profile hack of infidelity website Ashley Madison. That attack prompted class action lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. LeakedSource said it was able to view passwords for 99 percent of the credentials. It said that some 78,301 of the accounts were registered to .mil email addresses, which are used by the U.S. military, and another 5,650 were .gov addresses used by U.S. government agencies. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Dan Grebler) Samsung may still be reeling from the fiasco that was the explosion-prone Galaxy Note 7, but the South Korean tech giant remains focused on releasing new smartphones with compelling features that will, if all goes according to plan, help everyone forget about the company's ill-fated phablet recall. Samsung Galaxy S8 rumors have been coming in at a furious clip lately, and the most recent report relays that Samsung's next-gen smartphone will incorporate a pressure sensitive display, similar to what Apple first introduced with its 3D Touch feature on the iPhone 6s last year. DON'T MISS: The 5 best new features coming to your iPhone in iOS 10.2 According to an anonymous Samsung supplier who spoke to The Korea Herald, Samsung is considering adding the feature to the S8 and, later on down the line, perhaps to other devices in its product lineup as well. PhoneArena adds: A Samsung component division exec has also tipped that the Force Touch tech is coming to its flagships "in the near future," though it may take a while to roll down the midrange, so that's a second source to hint at a Galaxy S8 with pressure-sensitive display right there. We've been hearing this story for the Galaxy S7 as well, but the S8 is apparently going to be redesigned completely, so there is a much higher chance for a Force Touch display to happen there. That Samsung is interested in releasing a pressure sensitive display should hardly come as a surprise given that competitors in the smartphone market routinely copy and modify features from rival handset manufacturers. Indeed, rumors of Android manufacturers looking to get on the pressure sensitive display bandwagon first came to light more than a year ago when Synaptics issued a press release touting that its new ClearForce touchscreen display controller that can detect varying levels of pressure. Now whether or not anyone will be captivated by a Galaxy S8 with a pressure sensitive display remains to be seen. Recall that 3D Touch was heralded as a great new interface breakthrough when it launched but never really became as widely used as some initially anticipated. If anything, it's taken a good full year of development, both from Apple and from third-parties, to transform 3D Touch into a feature that's more useful than it is just a gimmick. Story continues As for other Galaxy S8 features we can expect to see, Samsung last week confirmed that its next-gen smartphone will feature an intelligent personal assistant similar to Siri. Aside from that, the S8 is also rumored to feature a dual-lens camera on the back, an iris-recognition camera on the front, and enhanced wireless charging capabilities. Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com Nokia Corporation NOK recently inked a deal with Korea Rail Network Authority (KRNA) to provide LTE-R mobile broadband network to the latter. Notably, this is the first time that such a technology will be deployed. KRNA maintains and develops railway infrastructure in South Koreaas well as several other countries. Its railway operations and employee services would, therefore, be highly benefited by the new broadband network technology. The LTE-R service will be initially introduced on a railway line between Wonju and Gangneung in South Korea as the country is gearing up to host a major international sporting event in 2018. Details of New Technology The LTE-R technology is a version of the popular 4G LTE technology. The new technology is currently being developed to cater to the various requirements of railway operators. KRNAs communication network will utilize the LTE-R technology for operational and maintenance purposes. The companys high speed commercial railway line can reach speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour and the LTE-R technology should ensure a secure, trustworthy and high-speed connection among trains, stations and other facilities. The companys project will also serve as the base for the future applications of the LTE-R technology. Nokia will be supplying radio access networks (RAN) base stations (eNodeBs) in addition to Nokia NetAct(TM) for this project. NetAct provides advanced assurance capabilities that forms a key component of the companys multi-domain Service Assurance program. NetAct is also utilized for providing railway operations and employee service management applications to KRNA. Despitestiff competition from peers like Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO, Motorola Solutions Inc. MSI and InterDigital Inc. IDCC, Nokia carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold),implying that the stock will perform in line with the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Story continues Confidential from Zacks Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report CISCO SYSTEMS (CSCO): Free Stock Analysis Report NOKIA CP-ADR A (NOK): Free Stock Analysis Report INTERDIGITL INC (IDCC): Free Stock Analysis Report MOTOROLA SOLUTN (MSI): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. The election was the biggest event last week, easily blotting out everything else, especially because of the surprise President-elect. But that didnt stop a hot Apple AAPL rumor from KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo; or Alphabets GOOGL defense of its Android ecosystem; or the gangbuster Singles Day numbers from Alibaba BABA. So read on Apple May Not Upgrade iPhone SE KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo is famous for breaking Apple product-related news. This time, hes saying that the company may not refresh the budget iPhone SE line next year. The rationale is purportedly to boost demand for the more expensive and higher-margin iPhone 7, while also pressuring SE component makers to reduce prices. This pressure may increase because Apple is now selling refurbished, certified iPhones from its online store. The iPhone SE is a very competitive and lighter phone, especially if you can make do with a smaller screen and 64GB storage, dont mind a somewhat weaker front camera and more limited water resistance, and also really want the headphone jack. The analyst feels that not refreshing the SE, weaker China demand and lower 4.7-inch volumes will impact iPhone sales next year. He forecasts an iPhone shipment volume decline to between 35 and 40 million (40.4 million units were shipped in 2Q16). He also has reservations about component price declines. Google Defends Android Google has its rival Yandex to thank for this one, as the leading Russian search engines (until it was displaced by Google) complaint to the Competition Commission precipitated proceedings. In 2013, Google rivals Microsoft MSFT, Nokia and Oracle ORCL had gone to the EU through an umbrella organization called Fairsearch. But it was hard to pin Google guilty, leading to the case dragging on. But when in Russia, Google required phone makers to pre-install Google search (just as everywhere else) instead of Yandex, the company went to court. Story continues In this case, the EU is investigating 3 angles as Techcrunch pointed out so well- that Google is allegedly requiring and incentivizing smartphone and tablet manufacturers to exclusively install its own services, and in particular its search engine that it is allegedly bundling certain Google products with other apps & services whether Google is hindering the ability of smartphone and tablet makers to use and develop other OS versions of Android (aka Android forks) If found guilty, Google will have to pay up to 10% of revenue, or around $7.4 billion. The crux of Googles response of more than 100 pages is that Googles practices are with a view to prevent fragmentation of the platform without which Android would be weakened and competition would in fact be impaired. It says that the Commissions decision to omit Apple as a competitor appears arbitrary and partisan. It makes no sense because the Commissions own survey revealed that 89% of respondents consider Apple and Android as competing platforms. Besides, it allows the Commission to conveniently ignore the fact that 39 out of 39 pre-installed apps on iPhone 7 are from Apple, and 39 out of 47 pre-installed apps on the Microsoft Lumia 550 are from Microsoft. Android has allowed phone makers to bring cheaper phones to the market and has helped millions of app developers. A weak platform would be bad for everyone. In the words of Kent Walker Googles general counsel, "The response we filed today shows how the Android ecosystem carefully balances the interests of users, developers, hardware makers, and mobile network operators. Android hasnt hurt competition, its expanded it." Alibaba Singles Day Alibaba had a record Singles Day with sales of $17.79 billion, up from the record $14.3 billion last year and short of the $20 billion analysts were projecting. But these sales are nothing to scoff at: 2015 sales in the U.S. on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined and from all stores (both online and offline) totaled $19.4 billion. This year, Singles Day moved across the border, with the top markets for Chinese goods being Russia, Spain, Israel, Ukraine and France. Top markets selling to the Chinese were Japan, U.S., South Korea, Australia and Germany. The most popular brands were Apple, Nike, New Balance, Siemens, Philips and Adidas. Around 37% of shoppers bought from international stores with virtual reality creating new experiences like Chinese customers browsing the isles of Macys store in New York without ever leaving their seats. But clouds are looming for Alibaba with the election of Donald Trump. The companys business hinges on China-U.S. relations, so it will be negatively hit by Trumps decision to charge a heavy tax on Chinese goods. If the Chinese government reacts with similar duty on U.S. goods, Alibaba will be affected very badly. The other concern is with respect to its accounting practices, particularly with respect to its Singles Day sales, for which the company is being investigated both in the U.S. and in China. Company Last 1 Month YTD AAPL -0.38% +20.01% FB -1.42% -1.05% GOOGL -1.19% +6.00% MSFT +0.53% +14.58% INTC +2.98% +16.30% CSCO +3.87% +17.58% AMZN -2.12% +2.94% Other stories you might have missed- Corporate Facebook on Fake News: After claims that the false stories on social media won Trump his victory, Facebook FB has said that it will take the matter more seriously. Adam Mosseri, VP of product management at Facebook says, In Newsfeed we use various signals based on community feedback to determine which posts are likely to contain inaccurate information, and reduce their distribution. In Trending we look at a variety of signals to help make sure the topics being shown are reflective of real-world events, and take additional steps to prevent false or misleading content from appearing. Despite these efforts we understand theres so much more we need to do, and that is why its important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation. The company earlier formed an alliance with various media houses for similar reasons although the possibility of potential business partners colluding to suppress or misinform the public for vested interests is a bit unsettling. Singapore Civil Service Chooses Facebook Workplace: Singapores civil service is adopting the Facebook Workplace platform for its pool of 143K (and growing) public servants by March 2017. The platform is inexpensive at just a dollar per user per month for groups larger than 10K people, so its a good deal for Facebook as well. In fact, this is the first deal of its kind for Facebook and underscores the platforms popularity in Asia. Legal/Regulatory Irish Finance Minister Will Go to Bat for Apple: The EU Competition Commission has determined that Apple owes taxes to the tune of $14.5 billion for illegally transferring profits generated in Ireland to a titular head office in a tax free zone. Irish Finance Minister Noonan says that the Commission is acting out of its jurisdiction because tax is a matter decided by individual countries and the competition angle is just a back door to meddle in the member nations internal affairs. The tax breaks enjoyed by Apple are part of state aid that some European countries resort to with the objective of attracting investment in the region. Apple has around 6K employees in Ireland. In September, the cabinet approved Irelands joining Apple in appealing the EUs demand, and Noonan submitted his appeal last week. LinkedIn Banned in Russia: The professional network faces a ban in Russia because of a law passed in 2014, requiring websites storing personal data of Russians to store it in servers within the country, says Russia's Roskomnadzor communications watchdog. LinkedIn reportedly has 6 million users in the country, so it could be a near-term blow. However, the problem may not be long-lived given its pending acquisition by Microsoft. Amazon Refunds for In-App Purchases: A federal judge has ruled that Amazon AMZN must take the responsibility of informing and then refunding parents, when their kids run up bills related to unauthorized in-app purchases. While judge Coughenour agreed with Amazon that the $26.5 million decided by the FTC was too high, he ruled out lump sum payments and gift cards for the amount as Amazon would collect profit on goods sold through gift cards. In similar dealings, Apple and Google coughed up around $32.5 million and $19 million, respectively. Unauthorized purchasing has been curtailed however, with the help of improved controls since then. New Technology/Products Pre-Owned iPhones Now on Sale: Last September, when Apple introduced the concept of iPhone annual upgrades and AppleCare+ for $32 a month, I had speculated that they wanted to build inventory of phones on which manufacturing cost was already recovered to target emerging markets like India. But competitors protested this in India, so Apple needed a Plan B (which may have also been in the works actually). With the anniversary up, Apple would be receiving these phones about now. So it is selling these refurbished (new battery and outer shell) phones after testing and certifying them at a 15% discount through the app store and making a huge profit. Apple is reportedly selling eight versions, all with a one-year warranty. The decision is also of great strategic importance as it could prevent users from moving away to cheaper phones from competitors. Its also a way for Apple to further expand its user base, enabling it to sell more services. The current rates are $399 for the 4GB model, which sells for $499 at full retail and $499 for the 8GB model, which sells for $599. Facebook App for Emerging Markets: Facebook is determined to eat Snapchats lunch and the leading social network is doing about all it can to replicate Snapchat-like features such as Instagram stories, secret (erased after some time) conversations and more. Now its launched Flash, a Snapchat-like platform targeted at emerging markets like Brazil, Indonesia and India where the Facebook brand name is very well recognized. This may cap Snapchats progress in emerging markets while strengthening Facebook versus this picture-sharing networking platform. Intels New Chip Tech: Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland has called out Intels high-speed, in-package optical interconnect silicon photonics technology as a product with the capacity to revolutionize the semiconductor industry". As the analyst says, it will definitely mitigate the effects of a slowing Moores law by reducing the interconnect time between Intels Xeon Server CPUs and Alteras FPGAs, i.e. until Intel integrates the technology into a single piece. The analyst also said that Intel has "proof of concept" chips and is looking to improve current low production yields. This could lead to a commercial product just three to five years down the line. Rolland estimates that data transfer rates may start at 50 to 100 gigabits per second with the new chips, but could increase to a half terabit or 2 terabits by early next decade, he said. Google, Apple App Store Updates: Both Google and Apple have huge app marketplaces, which might make it difficult for developers to reach buyers. The two companies are therefore always looking for ways to help developers get their apps seen. Google had many encouraging announcements such as a) allowing developers to offer limited-time discounted subscription pricing for their apps b) a promise to expand the Google Play Store to wearables, VR headsets, and Chromebook laptops for easier distribution from a single marketplace and c) a decision to employ machine-learning algorithms more heavily to provide app recommendations for Google Play users. Apple, which earlier this year promised developers a bigger revenue share and more reviews for new apps, announced that they can now create early-access promotional codes for new apps that can be offered to journalists and reviewers. These should help them generate more publicity for their new apps and in-app purchases. Some Numbers Google Home vs. Amazon Echo: IHS Markit says that Google Home will solidly beat Amazon Echo by 2020, shipping 5.4 million units that year, while Amazon will be stuck at 2.4 million units. Amazon does have a first mover advantage right now, but it will evaporate over the years as Google uses its treasure trove of data to more fruitfully apply artificial intelligence according to the research firm. Apple is also expected to join the fray with a device based on Siri. The Google device is fifty bucks cheaper at $129, but lacks Amazons skills (app ecosystem). This should be a very short-term hurdle as Google has the wherewithal to more than catch up here. NVIDIA Results: NVIDIA reported solid results this past quarter with its adjusted EPS of 83 cents far outpacing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 57 cents on the back of solid revenues that also beat our expectations by a wide margin. Read more: NVIDIA (NVDA) Q3 Earnings & Revenues Top, Outlook Strong Confidential: Zacks' Best Investment Ideas Would you like to see a hand-picked "all-star" selection of investment ideas from the man who heads up Zacks' trading and investing services? Steve Reitmeister knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click for his selected trades right 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 AMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report ORACLE CORP (ORCL): Free Stock Analysis Report FACEBOOK INC-A (FB): Free Stock Analysis Report ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report ALIBABA GROUP (BABA): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. internet companies including Facebook Inc and Amazon Inc have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent on Monday by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet's Google , Uber [UBER.UL] and Twitter , represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign. The internet industry looks forward to engaging in an open and productive dialogue, reads the letter, signed by Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, and seen by Reuters. Some of the policy goals stated in the letter may align with Trumps priorities, including easing regulation on the sharing economy, lowering taxes on profits made from intellectual property and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market. Other goals are likely to clash with Trump, who offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector during his campaign. They include supporting strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations, upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency, and maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. The association seeks immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. Though Trump made tougher immigration policies a central theme of his campaign, he has at times shied away from arguing against more H-1B visas for skilled workers, saying in a March debate he was "softening the position because we need to have talented people in this country." While urging support for trade agreements, the letter does not mention the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump has repeatedly assailed with claims it was poorly negotiated and would take jobs away from U.S. workers. The technology sector supported the deal, but members of Congress have conceded since the election it is not going to be enacted. Trump's often-shifting policy proposals on the campaign trail frequently alarmed tech companies and sometimes elicited public mockery, such as when Trump called for closing off parts of the internet to limit militant Islamist propaganda. Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple Inc products over the company's refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon, and demanded that tech companies such as Apple manufacture their products in the United States. In a statement, Beckerman said the internet industry looked forward to working closely with Trump and lawmakers in Congress to "cement the internets role as a driver of economic and social progress for future generations." (Editing by Leslie Adler and Jeffrey Benkoe) By PTI: Kathmandu, Nov 14 (PTI) An alliance of 29 Madhes and other small parties today gave a 15-day deadline to Prime Minister Prachanda to table a proposal in Parliament to amend the new Constitution to address their grievences. Sanghiya Gathabandhan of Janjati and Madhes parties have been protesting against the new Constitution, saying it marginalises them. Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav submitted a reminder letter on the matter to Prachanda at his office in Singha Durbar on behalf of the alliance. advertisement A source close to Prachanda quoted Yadav as saying: "The registration of the amendment proposal wont suffice unless it accommodates our opinion. The proposal should be agreeable to us and fulfil our demands." "We are ready to wait for another 15 days. But the proposal should be agreeable to us," Yadav told Prachanda. In reply, the Prime Minister assured that he was working to register the amendment proposal in couple of days. Yadavs 15-day deadline has left the other leaders affiliated to Madhesi Morcha shocked as they have been reiterating that they would launch another protest if the amendment proposal was not registered by mid-November. They said that Yadav did not discuss about the 15-day ultimatum. With Yadavs new deadline, Morcha leaders, who have started boycotting Parliament meeting from Friday, have been left in perplexing situation. "We now face a moral question on what role would we play in upcoming House meetings," a Morcha leader expressed his rue. Prachanda last week had said that the amendment proposal would be tabled in the parliament before the current Nepali month Kartik ends on November 15. The minority, mostly of Indian-origin, has led months- long violent protest seeking better representation in the Parliament and the federal structure of the Constitution that divides their ancestral homeland. PTI NSA --- ENDS --- By Sushant Mehta: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has been making headlines courtesy her sizzling chemistry and intimate scenes with Ranbir Kapoor in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil but the 43-year-old actor told India Today Television that she was not comfortable with intimacy on celluloid. ALSO READ: Aishwarya supports PM Modi's demonetisation policy SEE PICS: Aaradhya in mommy Aishwarya's arms is the cutest thing you will see today advertisement From Dhoom 2 to Ae Dil Hai Mushkil here is Aishwarya on her much-hyped racy scenes in an India Today Exclusive. India Today (IT) : A lot of hullabaloo about 'Ash has done intimate scenes in the film' and you know, when our 50-year-old superstars do kissing scenes, it's written about, but it's not blown out of proportion. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan : Well fortunately, there hasn't been that excessive a noise, um, in fact there was probably more chatter during Dhoom 2, and um, there hasn't been around this, which is... which is wonderful, which is what, how many years since Dhoom 2 now, maybe 10 years right? So, that's.. that's saying a lot. IT : But you thought, when it comes to you, it is blown out of proportion... Aishwarya : No, I think.. in that I'm referring to the fact that when I did Dhoom 2, um, I remember I did that just around the time there was also the talk of possibly working in the West, and um, I was declining some wonderful work in the West because I personally also wasn't comfortable with the idea of intimacy on celluloid, but I keep referring to everything as, I think to the audience, everything is relative to how much they are exposed to. So when there's this huge influx of (kissing scenes) they've seen so much, that I think somehow (sic) now the audience has also become, pretty uh, they've... they've gotten used to all of this visually. Uh, but at the time, I said okay let me first do, let me kind of maybe explore that turf a little bit, in an Indian movie, and so Dhoom was where you know I kind of explored the area, and um... IT: Were you shocked by the reactions? Aishwarya: No, I mean the response of the audience and critics and all was obviously I mean there, you saw the results in the movie itself, people kind of loved the movie and all of that, but uh... there was some kind of, there was a little bit of uproar that Yashji had shared with us, which at the time was surprising, but it was topical about, (sic) there's just this immense, but it's weird... it came from a place of great love... and towards me, I mean it's almost like people felt I belonged to everybody, and it was from that protective, possessive love, that there was a bit of, a bit of chatter and talk around, and a bit of a reaction, so what I mean is... it's all relative, when you kind of see with the times, but here we are. --- ENDS --- The evening was attended by stars like Hrithik Roshan, Sohail Khan, Dino Morea, Sooraj Pancholi, Afrojack among many others. Ananya Birla's new track is titled Livin' the Life. By India Today Web Desk: Twenty two-year-old Ananya Birla is many things. A non-ambitious individual not being one of them. Ignoring the weight of her surname, Ananya--daughter of eminent industrialist, Kumar Mangalam Birla--founded Svatantra Microfinance at the age of 17. And now, translating her love for music into a full-fledged music career, she has launched her debut track, Livin' the Life. advertisement Produced and co-written by internationally acclaimed music producer, Jim Beanz--who has previously worked with global superstars Nelly Furtado Cheryl Cole, Demi Lovato, Jason Derulo among others--has been shot at the beautiful Santa Catalina Island in California. Ananya performing at the event. Also Read: What's in a name: I want to build my own legacy says Ananya Birla Held at Mumbai's Taj Lands End hotel, the lauch of Ananya's music debut was attended by stars like Hrithik Roshan, Prasoon Joshi, Atul Kasbekar, Dino Morea, Sooraj Pancholi, Afrojack among many others. Hrithik Roshan was one of the few stars who attended the event. Ananya who has been signed by record label, Universal Music Group also crooned her track at the star-studded evening. Actor Dino Morea cheered Ananya on. Photo: Yogen Shah Actor Dino Morea cheered Ananya on. Photo: Yogen Shah Ananya's parents, Kumar Mangalam Birla and Neerja were also in presence. Photo: Yogen Shah Lyricist Prasoon Joshi at the launch. Photo: Yogen Shah Photographer Atul Kasbekar was also spotted at the event. Photo: Yogen Shah --- ENDS --- Comparing the government's demonetisation move with "renovation of one's house", the actor on the second day of Sahitya Aaj Tak, said: "Don't you have to sleep in the drawing room or on the roof when some renovation is done in your house or it is being painted." By Karishma Kuenzang: Actor and activist Anupam Kher has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his sincerity in curbing black money and asked the people to accept some hardships that come in the way. Comparing the government's demonetisation move with "renovation of one's house", the actor on the second day of Sahitya Aaj Tak at the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts, New Delhi, said: "Don't you have to sleep in the drawing room or on the roof when some renovation is done in your house or it is being painted." advertisement BETTERMENT OF COUNTRY Emphasising that demonitisation is a step towards ending corruption and black money, he stated, "The intention of this decision is for the betterment of the country." Kher, however, conceded that the step is posing some problems for the poor too. "The government should have thought about it a little more before taking the step, but what people don't understand is that a revolution can't happen overnight." TAKES A SWIPE AT OPPOSITION PARTIES, CONGRESS VP Taking a dig at the Opposition parties, Kher said that some people have suddenly got worried about their servants and maids. "I've never heard people being worried about their bais (maids) and drivers before this The veteran actor also took a swipe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for standing in a queue outside a bank in New Delhi to exchange invalid currency notes. He quipped, "Those who never went to bank, if they stand in queue outside an ATM or bank, it raises doubts about their intentions... If the situation is so bad, why hasn't the MP gone to Amethi to resolve the issues? CRUSADER OF CRITICISM Kher was equally, if not more, critical of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Recalling his old association with the 'India Against Corruption' movement, he said, "I was closely associated with Kejriwal and company when they were protesting against corruption at Jantar Mantar. But today, somewhere deep inside, I am very disappointed with Kejriwal. The kind of majority he got in Delhi, he could have done so much. Someone who just keeps criticising can't become a crusader." "It is not the first time that he has spoken a bogus thing," Anupam Kher said of Kejriwal's questioning of demonetisation move. Anupam Kher said that Modi government's policy has brought hope for the country. "The government's efforts ensured that Pakistan was isolated after the surgical strikes." BOLLYWOOD, 90 PER CENT WHITE MONEY Mocking the idea of a comparison between Modi and Kejriwal, he said: "Kejriwal compares himself with Modi. I can compare myself with Marlon Brando. But I am happy to be Anupam Kher. Kejriwal should be happy being Kejriwal." The actor also reminded that Bollywood has come clean now, "There is 90 per cent white money in the film industry. --- ENDS --- KV Vijayendra Prasad, who is known for his blockbusters like Magadheera, Baahubali and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, has finished writing the script for Ilayathalapathy Vijay's next. By India Today Web Desk: KV Vijayendra Prasad, one of the legendary screenwriters of Telugu cinema, will be writing the script for Ilayathalapathy Vijay's next. The announcement which came as a surprise, has been creating waves online. In an interesting development, Vijayendra Prasad has finally finished penning the script for Ilayathalapathy. ALSO READ: Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada review- Gautham's commercial film tries to please all, but isn't successful advertisement ALSO READ: Suriya to lose 10 kilos for Thaana Serndha Koottam According to Gallata.com, Vijay, who is super impressed with the script, will be donning a never-before-seen role for the film, which is also touted to be his 61st film. Vijay is currently wrapping up the shoot of his upcoming actioner Bairavaa, which is directed by Bharathan of Azhagiya Thamizh Magan fame. The teaser of Bairavaa is rocking the online platform and has clocked more than 9 million views on YouTube. Following the blockbuster success of Theri, Vijay is teaming up with director Atlee again for Vijay 61. To be bankrolled by Thenandal Films, the film will have music by GV Prakash Kumar. However, it isn't clear if Vijay 61 will have the script written by Vijayendra Prasad or a completely different film. --- ENDS --- By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: It is not only people of India who are reeling under the chaos following the decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. The unexpected decision has put several businessmen in Bangladesh in a precarious situation. Bangladeshi's who travelled to India, traders, hundi businessmen possess a huge reserve of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Most of these notes have been obtained through illegal channel. The decision has adversely affected even the registered money exchangers who are now facing a financial risk. advertisement Several traders of spice from Bangladesh are considering to travel to India to exchange their cash. Bangladesh's largest commodity market in Chittagong's Khatunganj, is known to have over 100 brokers and spice traders from India's Memon community. They import spices from India and supply them in local markets across the country. Their transaction with local banking channel is limited, hence they use 'Hundi' or specialized foreign banks for their import. Huge amount of Indian rupees are reserved for these businessmen. Also read: Bilateral trade collapses, thousands of trucks queued up on India, Bangladesh Border A leading businessman from Khatunganj, who belongs to Memon community of India, said that reserved rupees of many Bangladeshi businessmen will be stuck following Indian government's decision of banning Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes. NOTES WILL BE SOLD AT LOWER VALUE He added that many people will sell these notes at a lower value due to loss as the permission to exchange the demonetized note is limited to Rs 10,000 per person daily. For that, a new business may kick off in Bangladesh to exchange the demonetized notes. Hundi businessmen buy and sell rupees behind closed doors. Besides, the local money exchanges also keep a huge reserve of Indian rupee. Concerned said, this type of institution will be on a major financial risk following the ban of Indian currency. "Some people exchange rupees by violating the regulations. These money exchanges, the institutions and businessmen who exchange money through hundi traders will face a major loss," said Asit Kumar De Manager of Agrabad Money exchange. Also read: West Bengal: Crores deposited in banks in remote villages in 24 hours It has been known after speaking with several businessmen from Chittagong curb market (unregistered foreign currency exchange market) that selling and buying of Indian currency remain closed since yesterday. Businessmen of the curb market are already in trouble with their previously stocked currency. While, some are exchanging the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes at 50 per cent of its original value. advertisement MOST BUSINESSMEN USE INDIAN CURRENCY Meanwhile, there are huge number of businessmen from capital's Tati Bazaar, Shakhari Bazar, Islampur Road, Kotwali Road, Moulovi Bazar, Begum Bazaar, Chowkbazar, Imamganj and Chawk Mogoltuli who have a huge amount of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes. The businessmen use to sell and buy money and made the payment of illegally imported and exported goods for commission. For that, Bangladeshi businessmen have been affected same as the illegal money exchanger from Indian. Also read: Here to fulfil Nehru's vision for country: Modi's dig at Congress in first rally post demonetisation Meanwhile, small and medium entrepreneurs of Benapole, Bhomra and Hili land port are being affected financially. On average, daily around 1,500 to 2,000 trucks bring goods to Bangladesh from India through these land ports. The drivers of the trucks spend nights at the land ports and all of them use rupees to meet their needs. Those involved in illegal commodity trade including the truck drivers are also facing hardship over the decision. "We are observing the situation and it is not the right time to make any comment. But we are trying to exchange the rupees that are stored in our government banks form our Indian branch," said Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Subhankar Saha. --- ENDS --- advertisement By PTI: Dhaka, Nov 13 (PTI) Muslim-majority Bangladesh will drop Islam as the countrys state religion "when the time comes", a media report today quoted a senior ruling Awami Leage leader as saying. "Islam has been kept as the state religion for strategic reasons," the partys Presidium Member and former minister Abdur Razzaq told a roundtable here yesterday. "I have said it abroad and now I am saying it again that Islam will be dropped (as state religion) from Bangladeshs Constitution when the time comes," the former food minister was quoted as saying by BDNews24.com. advertisement The ruling party leader made the statement while speaking about Bangladeshs secular tradition at the roundtable organised by SAARC Cultural Society at the national Press Club. Politicians and journalists from India also took part in the discussion titled Strong Unity of Masses of Bangladesh and India to Prevent Terrorism, held with the recent attacks on Hindus in Brahmanbarhia in the backdrop. Indian participants included Congress leader Preetam Ghosh, social worker Ajoy Kumar Dutta and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shiladitya Dev. Highlighting secularism Razzaq said: "The force of secularism is in the people of Bangladesh. There is nothing called minority in our country." Secularism was included in the Constitution as one of the four basic principles when it was written in 1972 as people from all religions joined the struggle for independence and snatched it from Pakistan. After the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, Bangladeshs course of direction was reversed, and Zia-ur- Rahman, capturing the power, replaced secularism with Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah. Another military dictator, HM Ershad, later included Islam as the state religion in the Constitution. After Ershads ouster, the demand to drop Islam as state religion from the Constitution was raised several times, but even Awami League, the party that led the struggle for independence, has not made the change. Through the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 2011, the four basic principles of the 1972 Constitution - nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism - were restored, but Islam remained the state religion. The Awami League leaders comment came at a time when there are protests on the street against the attacks on Hindus and tribal Santal minorities in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said as a Muslim majority country it is the moral responsibility of the Bangladeshi citizens to take care of minorities. "Bangladesh is a country of communal harmony which should be maintained at any cost for development and brighten the countrys image," Hasina said at a video conference. "As a Muslim majority country it is the moral responsibility of all of us to take care of the minorities," she said. advertisement The prime minister added: "You have to remain careful so that no such incidents, which are taking place sporadically in different parts of the country, take place anywhere in the country." PTI AKJ AKJ --- ENDS --- Facebook user Midhun Noble discovered his bill was dated to September, which could mean it was the hotel officials' trick to adjust black money. By India Today Web Desk: The news of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordering to devalue Rs 500 and 1000 notes is an old one, but its effects are still fresh. While many are happy about the decision, agreeing that this will indeed put a dent on the black money crisis, others are feeling harassed standing in long queues outside ATMs and banks. advertisement Meanwhile, some businesses are tricking customers into helping them snake out their black money. A young man from Bangalore shared on Facebook his experience at a hotel named Vasudev Adigas, where he was forced to pay in cash. Upon relenting, Facebook user Midhun Noble discovered his bill was dated to September, which could mean it was a trick to adjust black money. Here's what happened to Noble: "Yesterday I went to #Adigas hotel in church street to order food for my office. To my surprise they refused to accept cards and insisted on paying by cash. After receiving the bill and checking the date on the bill it is given as 01/09/2016. What an intelligent way to adjust your books and convert black money to white by pushing up the sales in previous months and remitting the amount as sales done in previous months. Most of us don't even read our bills, so next time please ensure you spend a 20 seconds on the bill details and insist on bills after every purchase. It's a shame such iconic names like Adigas is doing this. Let's contribute to our PM's efforts." --- ENDS --- Nitish Kumar today held a meeting with a group of common people to discuss the new prohibition law. The BJP, which wasn't invited to the meet, raised four major objections to the law. By Rohit Kumar Singh: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today held a 'lok samvad' over the controversy about prohibition in the state. Nitish Kumar held discussion with a group of commoners who had provided suggestions on making prohibition public-friendly. BJP, which was not invited for this meeting, however, did not shy away from giving their own suggestions on prohibition. advertisement Terming the new prohibition law as draconian and Talibani in nature, BJP leader Sushil Modi said Nitish Kumar was holding consultations with the people of the state fearing that the Supreme Court may scrap the newly implemented Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act 2016 after the Patna High Court had scrapped the old liquor law in September. "The Bihar government has agreed for amendments in the new liquor law fearing scrapping of the law by the Supreme Court. The BJP is in favor of prohibition but against draconian provisions incorporated in the new liquor law", said BJP leader Sushil Modi. ALSO READ | My promises are not jumlas, I deliver on what I say: Nitish Kumar ALSO READ | Nitish Kumar slams BJP for trying to project prohibition a failure in Bihar 4 OBJECTIONS OF THE BJP Modi said BJP majorly had objections to four provisions which are present in the new prohibition law. The first objection was related to collective fine to be imposed on those villages and locality that repeatedly violate liquor law. The second objection was regarding punishment for violating liquor law, which, the BJP says is more strict than punishment for murder and rape. The third objection was to arrest and send all the adult members of the family to jail if liquor is found in the house. The fourth objection was related to confiscation of the house if liquor was recovered from there. The BJP has demanded the removal of all the above four provisions from the new prohibition law. It may be noted that several people had given their suggestions on prohibition after the Bihar government invited the public to give feedback on the newly-enforced Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016. Nitish Kumar discussed the suggestions of the people on prohibition today. Also Read:Nitish Kumar reimposes liquor ban in Bihar, to challenge Patna High Court order in Supreme Court Liquor Law which court scrapped brought social change in Bihar, asserts Nitish Kumar advertisement FROM THE MAGAZINE: The booze ban --- ENDS --- The Modi-government will discuss demonetisation with the Opposition in Parliament, said Amit Shah in BJP's Parliamentary executive meet. By India Today Web Desk: The BJP Parliamentary executive meeting has begun. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh after demonetisation was announced on November 8. The Prime Minister has received an unprecedented and overwhelming support from across the nation for his bold decision. Sources have stated that the BJP party was ready for discussion on demonetisation. While the Opposition parties have sought it to be an eight to 10-hour-long discussion, however, the BJP-led government want it to go on for about four days so that all aspects of demonetisation can be discussed. advertisement "The nation is with the government for taking the step to demonetise," said PM Modi. BJP President Amit Shah too shared his stand on the flak the party has received for the landmark decision. "The Opposition will try to corner the BJP-led government on demonetisation, surgical strikes, OROP and pollution. We will be answer every concerns raised by the Oppositions," said Shah. OPPOSITION LASHES OUT AT MODI GOVERNMENT "The PM in his speech had said the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is in bad taste. My humble suggestion to the Centre is not to hit the poor people like this," tweeted Mamata Banerjee. "The situation has gone out of control and the Prime Minister is just giving emotional speeches. It is a poorly implemented scheme and it will become a law and order problem," said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal further added that the Prime Minister should apologise for mocking people standing in queues. HOLLOW MOVE Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati has dismissed demonetisation as "hollow" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claims of attacking black money. She termed scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes as "anti-farmer". "Where are the new currencies the Central Government was talking about. The situation in the country is very bad. The government is not prepared. Modi ji makes claims of fighting against corruption, but today BJP got its volunteers in trains without tickets for Ghazipur rally," said Mayawati. On his part, Congress spokesperson Surjewala said Modi first indulged in "bragging" by declaring that Rs 15 lakh will be deposited in every account. Now, he said, Modi was giving another "jumla" about the problems of people getting solved in 50 days. Also read: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted 'Bold' demonetising alone won't stop corruption, says Chinese media --- ENDS --- BJP senior leader Sushil Modi has alleged that political leaders who have accumulated wealth for their next seven generations were the ones who are opposing PM's crack down on black money by demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. By Rohit Kumar Singh: BJP senior leader Sushil Modi has alleged that political leaders who have accumulated wealth for their next seven generations were the ones who are opposing PM's crack down on black money by demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. Modi said politicians like RJD chief Lalu Prasad who is convicted in fodder scam, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Bannerjee who is embroiled in Sharda chit fund scam, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati, both who are accused of amassing disproportionate assets were the ones who were agitated by de-monetization and now ganging up against PM Modi. The Prime Minister said that these four politicians had no moral right to speak on issue of black money. advertisement "People of the country should remain alert of politicians who are shamelessly opposing PM Modi's crack down on black money", said Sushil Modi. Modi said there were two types of political leaders who are ganging up against PM Modi on the pretext of inconvenience being caused to common man following scrapping of old currency notes, first leaders like Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and secondly leaders who was already amassed massive wealth for their next seven generations. "Rahul Gandhi has never gone to a bank and today is standing in line and getting himself clicked while getting his ?4000 exchanged. Other politicians who have massive wealth along with leaders like Rahul Gandhi are laying thorn in PM Modi's path", said Sushil Modi. Modi slammed politicians who despite PM's assurance that things will normalise in next 50 days and despite Central govt putting in all resources to facilitate common man are still criticising PM Modi. "PM has assured thing will become normal soon. Limit of cash withdrawal has been increased. Banks are working overtime to meet people's need and for the first time helicopters are being pressed into action to send cash boxes to remote areas", said Sushil Modi. --- ENDS --- Republican Party of India (A) president Ramdas Athavale during his tour to Uttar Pradesh said that his party is leading Dalits in the country. By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Union Minister of State for Social Justice, Ramdas Athavale attacked Mayawati's BSP during his visit to the state. Athavle said that it was his party, Republican Party Of India (A) leading Dalits across India and not the BSP. "To teach a lesson to the BSP, we will be contesting at least 200 seats in this UP election," said Athavale. advertisement As per sources, the RPI (A) wants to form alliance with the BJP for the upcoming UP elections but if that doesn't work out, the party will contest 200 seats individually. The RPI (A) feels that the political atmosphere of UP is in their favour and it is the right time to provide another option to the people of the state. Also read: Indian Railways names trains after personalities to woo voters in UP elections Athavle was felicitated by the RPI (A) faction of Uttar Pradesh for becoming state minister for Social Justice in the Modi government. The RPI (A) would be the second party from Maharashtra that has shown willingness to contest 200 seats in Uttar Pradesh after Shiv Sena. Also read: Here to fulfil Nehru's vision for country: Modi's dig at Congress in first rally post demonetisation --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: With today, November 14, being Children's Day, it only makes sense to celebrate the innocence and love children exude. But what if we tell you that there are some young geniuses who're better at makeup, singing and well, life--than you'll ever be. Don't get us wrong, we're not saying you're ridiculous. It's just that, these kids are wonderful and immensely gifted. Think we're kidding? Here's a list of five kids whose YouTube stardom will put normalcy to shame. 1. Nihal Raj:This 6-year-old from Kerala has won hearts not just in the country, but also in the United States--and everywhere Ellen DeGeneres' show is telecast. How? Well, the young chef recently appeared alongside popular television host, Ellen DeGeneres where his innocence and precision with food managed to impress one and all. Raj has a full-fledged YouTube channel, KichaTube HD- Nihal Raj, to his credit where he reviews food, shares recipes and cooks some delicious food. Also Read: Happy Children's Day: 10 Indian children who have made the nation proud 2. Angelic:The 12year-old from Miami is blessed with a voice that is capable of crooning to every song there exists. From Sia's Cheap Thrills to Shawn Mendes' Stitches, the young girl has covered several tracks. What more? She's also collaborated with Dreamworks for the upcoming Hollywood movie Trolls, that has names like Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick associated with it. Also Read: 13-year old Odisha girl bags Google Science Fair award 3. Evan:10-year-old Evan is the face of YouTube channel, EvanTube. With a little help from his father, Jared, Evan and his sister Jillian review toys, video games and other attractions. The channel is amongst the most popular ones on YouTube and reportedly, earns over USD 1.3 million annually. 4. Ayat:The magic in Ayat Shaikh's voice is no secret for those who've seen her on The Voice Kids India. She impressed everyone from Shekhar Ravjiani to Neeti Mohan and won the hearts of millions. Her YouTube channel, Wonder Girl Ayat has the 4-year-old sing, dance and recite poems. --- ENDS --- advertisement China says it backs peaceful use of nuclear energy as long as it was 'conducive' to global non-proliferation. By Ananth Krishnan: China has cautiously reacted to India's landmark civilian nuclear agreement with Japan, saying it backed countries' peaceful use of nuclear energy as long as it was "conducive" to global non-proliferation. China, which has in the past expressed reservations about India's entry into the mainstream of global nuclear commerce, said on Monday in response to the nuclear agreement signed in Tokyo that it believed "all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy" as long as they fulfilled "the international obligation of nuclear non-proliferation". advertisement ALSO READ | India, Japan sign landmark nuclear deal, Tokyo's first with a non-NPT signatory Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang added that "at the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime". China's guarded reaction comes as it continues to stonewall India's entry into the 48 member-Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which decides the rules for global nuclear trade. Beijing, however, insists that it is not the only member that is concerned about India's status as a non-NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty) country. The India-Japan deal will pave the way for not only bilateral commerce but also India's projects with American nuclear companies that use Japanese technology. China reluctantly backed a waiver granted by the NSG to India's civilian nuclear deal with the United States. Beijing, however, responded by exporting nuclear reactors to Pakistan, which it continues to do despite the country's non-NPT status and without seeking an NSG exemption. China's statement on Monday on all countries being "entitled" to civilian nuclear energy echoes its defence of its own controversial deals with Pakistan, which have violated NSG guidelines. Prime Minister Modi's Japan visit was closely followed in China, particularly after recent discussions between India and Japan to strengthen maritime security. The joint statement made as many as three references on countries needing to respect the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), although not explicitly referring to the recent tribunal ruling, constituted under UNCLOS, that sided with the Philippines in its disputes with China over the South China Sea. Asked about the reference to UNCLOS, Geng, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, responded that "under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction". "We have been repeating that we should come back to the right track of peacefully resolving the relevant dispute through negotiations and consultation," he said, adding that China hoped "that countries outside the region would respect efforts made by countries in the region" as well as "do more that is conducive to regional peace and stability". --- ENDS --- Andhra Pradesh Police today arrested eight persons with currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 amounting to Rs 24 lakh from Eluru. By Ashish Pandey: The CCS team of West Godawari Police of Andhra Pradesh on Monday arrested eight persons with Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes amounting to Rs 24 lakh. The accused were trying to exchange the cash in a local market in Somavarappadu of Denduluru Mandal of Telangana when police arrested them. According to the Eluru police, based on specific information a team headed by central crime station (CCS) DSP nabbed the eight persons with the stash of cash. Police suspects that the money is unaccounted and the persons were trying to convert it with newly launched 2000 Rs currency. advertisement The seized Rs 24 lakh was in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination and the suspects were trying to exchange it with the villagers. Two of the arrested persons have been identified as businessmen from Vijayawada. While six others were locals who were employed in various professions. The accused have been booked under 102 CrPC and further investigation is on. The CCS team has handed over the money to the Tehsildar for further action. Also read: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted 'Bold' demonetising alone won't stop corruption, says Chinese media --- ENDS --- State Bank of India has announced that they will dispense Rs 20 and Rs 50 notes soon. By India Today Web Desk: After almost a week of cash deficit, much to the relief of the citizens State Bank of India today announced that Rs 50 and Rs 20 notes too will be dispensed from ATMs soon. The announcement comes as a breather for citizens who were grappling with shortage of cash and limited denominations ever since the demonetisation was announced on November 8. advertisement Citizens were in a difficult situation after Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 were declared illegal by the central government. Following the decision, ATM kiosks and banks witnessed an unprecedented flow of citizens who thronged to withdraw cash. The announcement was made by SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya. The chairman said that the bank will start dispensing Rs 50 and Rs 20 denominations once the rush decreases. RS 83.702 CRORE DEPOSITED IN FIVE DAYS State Bank of India earlier today announced that it had collected Rs 83,702 crore in deposits in the last five days after Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 was demonetised by the central government. The country's largest lender exchanged Rs 4,146 crore of scrapped notes between November 10 and November 14 up to 5 pm, the bank said. Though several branches were closed in many parts the country on account of Gurunanak Jayanti today, a number of branches, especially in southern states, were open. Withdrawals from SBI branches stood at Rs 9,342 crore since November 10. The bank witnessed withdrawals from ATMs to the tune of Rs 1,958 crore till 5 pm today. RS 4,654 CRORE WORTH OF RS 500 AND RS 1,000 NOTES Its customers deposited Rs 4,654 crore worth of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes through cash depositing machines. The finance ministry, yesterday, increased the limit of old and now withdrawn Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs 2,000 and new Rs 500 notes from Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. The weekly limit of Rs 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs 24,000. In a statement issued yesterday, Indian Banks Association (IBA) had said in the last three days, banks disbursed nearly Rs 30,000 crore in currency notes of lower denominations and the newly introduced Rs 2,000 notes. With inputs from PTI Also read: Demonetisation, Day 6: PM reviews currency availability, upholds decisions for smoother cash dispensation advertisement Amit Shah: All queries from Opposition on demonetisation will be answered in Parliament --- ENDS --- Congress and TMC will be meeting today to decide a unified protest in the winter session of the Parliament against the Modi government over demonetisation scheme. By India Today Web Desk: Congress-led opposition is all set to corner the Modi government in the winter session of the Parliament, commencing on November 16, on the demonetisation scheme. The opposition parties will be focusing on how the people are facing difficulties due to the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes by the Modi government. Congress and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders will hold a meeting today to chalk out a floor strategy of cornering BJP-led NDA government. advertisement The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, will be meeting the TMC leader in the lower house, Sudip Bandyopadhyay. This meeting comes ahead of an all-party meeting convened by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan today, opposition sources said. ALSO READ | Demonetisation of 500, 1000 rupee notes: 5 rumours you must not fall for ALSO READ | Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted ONLY CONGRESS, TMC? Derek O' Brien, a TMC leader, is also likely to be present in the meeting. It is not clear whether other opposition parties have been invited even though parties , including CMP, CPI, SP and BSP have targeted the Modi government of taking the demonetisation decision in haste. The Opposition, however, lacks unanimity on the demonetisation issue as some parties, like NCP and BJP, have supported the demonetisation move. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday spoke to Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and mooted the idea of a united fight against the demonetisation. Congress leaders too had reached out to several parties, including TMC to chalk out a joint strategy ahead of the winter session of the Parliament. Meanwhile, CP(M) leader Brinda Karat snubbed Mamata Banerjee and caller her "mired in corruption". Karat said demonetisation was a major blow to Mamata's dream of a grand alliance. Watch the video here: Also Read: Banks closed on Gurupurab but your old notes can still be used: Latest updates on currency crisis PM Modi holds late night meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation PM Modi's emotional appeal: I understand your pain, bear with me for 50 days ATM cash withdrawal limit increased to Rs 2500 per day: Finance Ministry --- ENDS --- The Prime Minister's decision has hit the poor in the city. By Pramod Madhav: The Prime Minister's sudden decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes has hit the common people hard in Chennai. People's fear that their hard-earned money will be worthless if they don't exchange or deposit them in a bank at the earliest has led to a mad rush at banks and ATMs for the last few days. advertisement Those at the bottom strata of society have been hit the hardest. ALSO READ: Demonetisation: PM appeals people to tolerate inconvenience for 50 days, says his fight is for honesty RUNNING BUSINESS ON CREDIT Selvi, a 45-year-old mother of two, runs a small tea shop. Migrant workers are her primary clients. Her husband is an alcoholic and works at construction sites. Selvi started the tea shop to support her family. ALSO WATCH Since the November 8 decision to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Selvi's business has taken a hit. "How are people supposed to get change for Rs 2,000? Poor people are suffering the most," she says. ALSO READ: Demonetisation: Kerala traders withdraw decision to shut shops Selvi, however, hopes the Prime Minister's decision will help the country in future. She says had the government issued adequate number of Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes before the currency ban, the crisis could have been avoided. "Many don't have the money to pay for tea. I am doing business on credit. I already owe a total of Rs 1,000 from various clients, and this is a huge amount of money for me," Selvi says. ALSO READ: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully THREE-HOUR WAIT FUTILE Mohan stood in front of an Indian Bank branch for three hours to exchange his wife's money on Sunday. A friend agreed to accompany him. When his turn came, the bank officials refused to deposit the money over some discrepancy in the wife's bank account details. ALSO READ: Benami property is next target after black money, says PM Modi They asked for his wife to come to the bank. Mohan's wife stays in Aranthangi, which is 417km from Chennai. "I have to send Rs 10,000 immediately to my family. After such a long wait, the bank says that they can't take my money. Now, my wife will have to borrow money or ask for credit until I find another way," Mohan says. Every hour that Mohan spends standing in a queue costs him dearly. He is waiter at a restaurant near Saidapet and has to take time off work to visit a bank. advertisement ALSO READ: ATM cash withdrawal limit increased to Rs 2500 per day: Finance Ministry ALSO READ: Banks start releasing new Rs 500 notes to customers ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- "It is the church where people come and talk about their problems. Some of them did meet the priest and tell how they were finding it difficult to buy daily necessities. That's when the father discussed about the possibility of opening the collection box to the needy," said Shelson Francis, Convenor, Church Committee Youth Wing. By Revathi Rajeevan: While Kerala, like the rest of India, waits in queues in front of banks and ATMs to get their old notes exchanged and withdraw new currencies, a church in Kerala on Sunday opened its doors to help the less privileged. In an unusual announcement during its Sunday mass, St Martin De Porres church in Ernakulam district of Kerala said it would be opening its collection box for those who are in urgent need of money, expecting nothing in return. advertisement The church announced this during its mass at 6.30am and 8.30am after which two collection boxes were opened. "There are around 200 families who come under this church. Most of them are people who may not have proper savings in bank accounts and those who do not know the workings of an ATM. Ever since the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes became illegal, they have been struggling to meet their daily needs," said Jimmy Poochakkatt, the parish priest. Also Read: Here to fulfil Nehru's vision for country: Modi's dig at Congress in first rally post demonetisation People could take as much money as they needed and could give it back to the church later, whenever they could. "It is the church where people come and talk about their problems. Some of them did meet the priest and tell how they were finding it difficult to buy daily necessities. That's when the father discussed about the possibility of opening the collection box to the needy," said Shelson Francis, Convenor, Church Committee Youth Wing. "We did not keep track of who took what. But we were told the box mainly filled with Rs 10 and Rs 50 notes were of great help for them," he added. The collection box is usually opened once in six months or so. By the end of Sunday, the boxes were left with only a few Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Also Read Khans to Kapoors, Bollywood supporting Modi's demonetisation is laughable Vishal Dadlani says PM Modi's demonetisation is so badly executed that it's a joke India's demonetisation drive leaves Bangladeshi businessmen in a fix --- ENDS --- The Kerala traders' organisation withdrew its decision to shut shops indefinitely from Tuesday. The decision was taken on Saturday owing to the shortage of currency following demonetisation. By Revathi Rajeevan: Two days after the Kerala Vyapara Vyavasaya Ekopana Samithi (KVVES) announced that they would be shutting shops indefinitely from Tuesday due to shortage of currency following demonetisation, the organisation has today withdrawn their decision. Over 10 lakh traders, working under the organisation, decided on Saturday to shut their shops and restaurants across 14 districts of Kerala from Tuesday onwards as there was not enough currency and their businesses were going slow, following the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. advertisement The traders had decided to keep their shops shut until the situation became normal. ALSO READ | Demonetisation of Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes: Traders in Kerala to shut shops indefinitely from Tuesday WHY THEY WITHDREW THE DECISION? However, they withdrew the decision today following the changes in rules related to withdrawals and deposits. The changes were announced on Sunday. Also, as the Shabarimala pilgrim season begins on Tuesday, the traders thought it would be better if they kept their shops open. Also Read: Demonetisation of 500, 1000 rupee notes: 5 rumours you must not fall for Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted Banks closed on Gurupurab but your old notes can still be used: Latest updates on currency crisis PM Modi holds late night meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation PM Modi's emotional appeal: I understand your pain, bear with me for 50 days ATM cash withdrawal limit increased to Rs 2500 per day: Finance Ministry --- ENDS --- Farmers said they don't have enough money to buy seeds, fertiliser and diesel ahead of the sowing season for the Rabi crop. By India Today Web Desk: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his recent decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 will hit only the rich who are sitting on piles of unaccounted money, it seems he didn't take into account the plight of the farmers. Farmers who are preparing for the Rabi season now fear that the cash crunch will affect the sowing time. Without the money to purchase seeds, fertilisers and diesel for the next crop, the farmers say they will have to start sowing late. advertisement NEXT 15-20 DAYS CRUCIAL Prime Minister's timing on demonetisation, they say, could have been better. Even as the Prime Minister made an impassioned plea, asking people to give him 50 days to end the black money menace, farmers say the next 15-20 days are crucial for the Rabi crop and a delay in sowing may affect yield. ALSO WATCH ALSO READ: Banks start releasing new Rs 500 notes to customers The decision will hit the small farmers the most who may not have enough resources to tide over the crisis. Many said they will now have to buy the seeds on credit. It is, however, diesel which is the cause of concern. ALSO READ: 'Bold' demonetising alone won't stop corruption, says Chinese media NO MONEY FOR DIESEL Despite the government's repeated statements on old notes being valid at petrol pumps, farmers said the situation is different on the ground. Many petrol station owners are refusing to take the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, farmers complained. Some farmers also said that without enough money they are not able to pay their workers. The government's recent decision on increasing the operational limit of business entities with current accounts to Rs 50,000 may bring some respite to them. (with inputs from agencies) ALSO READ: Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted ALSO READ: Benami property is next target after black money, says PM Modi ALSO READ: Anupam Kher backs PM Modi on black money crackdown, compares it to house renovation ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- Modi who addressed a public meeting in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh as part of the ongoing Parivartan Yatra of BJP said he was fighting the battle for honesty. By Rohit Kumar Singh: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that he was fully aware of the inconvenience the people of the country were facing following demonetisation but appealed them to tolerate for 50 days to eradicate black money from the economic system. Modi who addressed a public meeting in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh as part of the ongoing Parivartan Yatra of BJP said he was fighting the battle for honesty. advertisement "I know the people are facing problem but I am doing this for betterment of the country but I am sure the people are willing to suffer a bit to clean the system. I am fighting for honesty", said PM Narendra Modi Hitting out at the black money holders, especially the politicians who are raising their voices against scrapping of Rs. 500, 1000 rupee notes, Modi said the problems for them are only going to increase in days to come as he was in no mood to spare them. Modi also obliquely attacked BSP Chief Mayawati saying that some politicians are in love with getting garlanded with currency notes. Here to fulfil Nehru's vision for country: Modi's dig at Congress in first rally post demonetisation "Some politicians love to wear garland of currency notes. They are agitated because they do not know what to do with their black money that they are holding", said PM Modi. During his speech in Ghazipur, Modi also attacked the Congress asserting that leaders from Congress were hiding their own trouble by raising issues of public inconvenience. He also slammed Congress for questioning him under which law was demonetisation implemented. "Congress had also scrapped 25 paise once, they should tell under which law did they do so ? The Congress had scrapped 25 paise according to their stature and I scrapped Rs 500, Rs 1000 according to my stature", commented PM Modi. Modi admitted that all those who have hoarded black money have become his enemy. He said black money holders were powerful but asserted he that he will not be reviewing or going back on his decision. ALSO READ: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully --- ENDS --- By Anindya Banerjee: Mamata Banerjee will arrive in Delhi tomorrow and the chief minister has already chalked out her course of action already. Mamata seems to be gearing up to weave a new political design on the issue of demonetisation and is seen as one leading the charge against the Narendra Modi government. She is expected to land in the second half of the day and get into some serious political dialogue. Though she has kept her entire plans under wraps, but sources said that she is slated to meet President Pranab Mukherjee day after tomorrow at around 1:30pm to raise the demonetization issue and how people are facing difficulties by this policy that she has termed 'draconian'. advertisement Mamata earlier in an unprecedented move called up arch rival CPIM chief Sitaram Yechury to join hands on this issue forcing CPIM to distance itself from the overture. Also read: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully Sitaram Yechury said, "Those who are tainted in Narada and Sarada are now talking of black money". In a way it also helps CPIM to assuage it's Bengal unit which was dead against of any such strategic cooperation. She also called up JDU chief and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and even Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. She was even contemplating a march to President house in a way opposition leaders marched against Land Acquisition Bill. TMC, CONGRESS SHARE THE SENTIMENT Sources in the Congress Party say their view and that of TMC is similar on the matter. But the reason they are 'cautious' is because Mamata wants to project herself leading the opposition charge. On the other hand though JDU has criticised the government over its ill preparedness but supported it over the larger interest of eradicating black money. Also read: Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted Sources say many Opposition leaders were willing to work with her but not in a way where the TMC boss is seen as the one leading the pack. It is because of this she has only two parties giving her assurance to be by her, come what may on this issue despite a plethora of national and regional parties sharing the same anti demonetisation sentiment. Aam Admi Party and the National Conference are believed to have assured Mamata of support. But no support from Congress, RJD, JDU, Samajwadi party so far. Also read: 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money Ghulam Nabi Azad called a meeting of all opposition parties today where Sudip Bandopadhaya and Derek O Brien represented TMC that was also attended by Yechury but sources say there no interaction between TMC and CPIM apart from a frosty handshake between Sitaram and Derek O Brien. FORGING NEW TIES So Mamata's Mission Delhi is all about convincing old friends and few detractors to join hands. Mamata will also visit the parliament and speak with these party leaders at Central Hall. She has deputed Derek to keep the channel of communication open with parties who have openly supported the government's move but not happy with its implementation. advertisement It can be seen as Mamata's efforts to forge a political alliance on demonetisation. She has entrusted her lieutenant Derek to exploit the channels of communication. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Chennai, Nov 14 (PTI) Tamil Nadu Government today requested the Centre to ask the Sri Lankan government to release over 100 fishing boats, which are still in custody of the island nation. Recalling the detention of 158 fishing boats by Sri Lanka in 2014, Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Rao in a letter to Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, said that Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had repeatedly urged the Prime Minister to take necessary steps for the release of the boats. The Tamil Nadu Government had unanimously passed a resolution in December 2014, seeking early release of the boats, Rao said, adding that Sri Lankan courts had finally ordered their release in February 2015. advertisement Stating that two salvage teams were formed towards the release of the boats, he said, "the salvage operation was carried out in two phases by 355 fishermen with 54 salvage boats". Sixty four boats were salvaged with minor and major repairs and brought to India in March and April 2015. "But due to prolonged berthing, 16 were damaged beyond retrieval," he said. Despite repeated appeals by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the Centre is yet to agree to bear the losses suffered by the Indian fishermen, he said. As the fishermen association requested release of 105 boats still in Sri Lankan custody, he urged the Centre to suitably compensate them for their losses. "The cost of each fishing boat is around Rs 25 lakh. I request you to impress upon the Government of Sri Lanka to secure the early release of 105 fishing boats, which are sustaining serious damages in Sri Lankan custody and return the boats in refurbished condition", he said. PTI VIJ APR UZM --- ENDS --- American TV host Jimmy Kimmel has interviewed a group of people whose reaction to the US election results have not been given the importance it deserves: CHILDREN. Check out what they have to say. By India Today Web Desk: We have heard them all: people, preachers, politicians, pundits, even goats and fish. Almost everybody has something to say about Donald Trump becoming the new POTUS, after beating Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections last week. Jimmy Kimmel, however, has interviewed a certain group of people whose reaction to the election results have not been given the importance it deserves: CHILDREN. advertisement The American television host dedicated a segment of show Jimmy Kimmel Live's latest episode to asking children in America about how they feel about Trump. Here's what they had to say: Weird. Idiot. Iffy. Rude. Dope. One of the kinder ones said Trump is "at least not the ugliest person on earth. One sunglass-wearing uber-cool fellow had a clear-cut answer, "He (Trump) should be plumber,". The best reaction, however, was when the mic was pointed to a baby in her stroller: she burst to tears. Check out what others had to say (don't miss the Canadian kid's reaction): --- ENDS --- In their first interaction since the US election, Chinese state media said Xi told Trump in a telephone call on Monday that as the world's largest developing and developed economies, there were many areas where China and the United States could cooperate. By Reuters: Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President-elect Donald Trump that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the world's two largest economies, with Trump saying the two had established a "clear sense of mutual respect". There has been intense speculation over the impact of Trump's win on issues facing the two countries, from global trade and climate change to the security balance in the Asia-Pacific. advertisement Trump lambasted China throughout the US election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office. His election has injected uncertainty into relations at a time when Beijing hopes for stability as it faces daunting reform challenges at home, slowing growth and a leadership reshuffle of its own that will put a new party elite around Xi in late 2017. Also Read: Will take $1 as salary with no vacations, says Donald Trump NEED COOPERATION In their first interaction since the US election, Chinese state media said Xi told Trump in a telephone call on Monday that as the world's largest developing and developed economies, there were many areas where China and the United States could cooperate. "The facts prove that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States," China Central Television (CCTV) cited Xi as saying. Xi's remarks were a reiteration of phrasing typically used by Beijing to describe bilateral relations. The two sides must "promote the two countries' economic development and global economic growth" and "push for better development going forward in China-US relations", Xi said. "During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another, and President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward," a statement from Trump's presidential transition office said. The two agreed to maintain close communications and meet soon, CCTV said. Xi had congratulated Trump in a message delivered shortly after his surprise election victory last week. Also Read: Suspense over Trump's foreign policy, mood upbeat over India-US relations The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper, said if Trump slapped China with heavy tariffs it would "paralyze" bilateral trade. "When the time comes, large orders for Boeing planes would switch to Europe, US auto sales in China would face setbacks, Apple phones would essentially be crowded out, and US soybeans and corn would be eradicated from China," the paper said in a commentary. advertisement "Trump, coming from a business background, is very astute. We do not believe he will treat China-US trade so childishly." China has signalled it will promote plans for regional trade integration, vowing to seek support for a Beijing-backed Asia-Pacific free trade area at a summit in Peru later this month, after Trump's win dashed hopes for the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Trump's criticism of US allies, including Japan, for free-riding on US security guarantees, has deepened anxiety among Washington's allies about its commitment to post-war security arrangements in the face of a rising China and volatile North Korea. IS TRUMP SEEKING WAYS TO WITHDRAW FROM A GLOBAL ACCORD Trump appears to be seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, which has been billed by China and US President Barack Obama as a key area for cooperation. --- ENDS --- People across the country are celebrating the occasion of Gurpurab- the birth anniversary of the first Sikh guru- and are visiting gurdwaras to offer prayers. The famous Golden Temple at Amritsar was beautifully lit on the occassion of gurpurab; Photo: PTI By Indo-Asian News Service: Thousands of devotees thronged gurdwaras across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh today to offer prayers on the occasion of Gurpurab - the birth anniversary of the first Sikh guru, Nanak Dev. The holiest of Sikh shrines 'Harmandar Sahib', popularly known as the Golden Temple, in Amritsar and other gurdwaras elsewhere saw religious fervour to the fore on Gurpurab. advertisement Thousands of people, from various faiths, reached the Golden Temple complex today early morning to offer prayers marking the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism. The shrine complex was decorated with lighting. Hymns were rendered at the holy shrine and hundreds of other gurdwaras across the region to mark the occasion. Tight security arrangements were made around all leading Sikh shrines in Punjab. ALSO READ | 8 Guru Nanak quotes that will add meaning to your life PEOPLE OFFER PRAYERS, GURDWARAS OFFER LANGARS At other gurdwaras in cities, towns and villages, hundreds of people were seen coming to offer prayers. 'Langars' (community kitchen), were arranged at most gurdwaras. Over 2,000 devotees, mostly Sikhs, went to neighbouring Pakistan to celebrate Gurpurab at Nankana Sahib, 100 km from Lahore, at the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev, who was born there in 1469. Though around 3,000 visas were issued by the Pakistan embassy to devotees to visit the shrine, about 1,000 people opted out following recent tension between the countries and currency crunch due to demonetisation. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal greeted people on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' and urged them to follow the Guru's teachings and maintain peace and harmony. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Kathmandu, Nov 14 (PTI) An Indian national was killed and a Nepali policeman injured in an heavy exchange of fire between police and an armed group of smugglers in central Rautahat district. Acting on a tip off that a huge cache of arms was being smuggled into the district via the Lalbakaiya River embankment at Dewahi VDC-8, a police team reached the site, but the gang comprising 3-4 individuals opened fire at the team. advertisement Police also fired in retaliation and in the heavy exchange of fire a gang member, identified as Tejhilal Saha, 44, from East Champaran in Bihar, was killed and a Nepali policeman was injured, Nepali Deputy Superintendent of Police Nabin Krishna Bhandari was quoted as saying by local media. One rifle, a home-made pistol and some bullets were recovered from the possession of the deceased. Others in the group are on the run and search for them is underway. PTI PMS AKJ PMS --- ENDS --- Confirming the killing of seven of its soldiers late last night, Pakistan, however, charged that India resorted to unprovoked firing. By Manjeet Negi: Retaliating to continued ceasefire violations by Pakistan on Line of Control (LoC), Indian troops killed seven soldiers of the neighbouring country in Bhimber Sector last night. Confirming the killing of seven of its soldiers late last night, Pakistan, however, charged that India resorted to unprovoked firing. However, India maintained that the firing was in retaliation for Pakistans continued ceasefire violations. advertisement According to latest reports, Pakistan has summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to its Foreign Office. ALSO READ: 174 schools closed in Jammu as heavy firing by Pakistan continues So far, 286 such violations have taken place since the surgical strikes by India on September 29 on terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Recently, on the first two days of November, heavy shelling from Pakistan side was reported at the Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir. Several people were injured in this unprovoked firing. Heavy firing also took place in Mankote, Balakot, Rangroor areas. ALSO READ: Jammu: 6 injured in ceasefire violation by Pakistan, firing continues IG of BSF DK Upadhyaya had said India was giving a befitting reply to Pakistan. As many as 14 Pakistani posts were devastated in retaliation by India. ALSO READ: Pakistani firing kills jawan in Rajouri, 2 others injured ALSO READ: 15 Pakistan Rangers killed in retaliatory firing by Indian forces ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- The annual board exams have begun today in Kashmir- a move that can be seen as a first major educational activity since the last four months of Valley unrest. While class 12th exams started today, class 10th exams will start from tomorrow onwards. By Shuja-ul-Haq : What could be seen as the first educational activity in last four months of Kashmir unrest, the secondary school exams begin in Kashmir today. Over one lakh students are scheduled to take their annual board examinations, starting today, following adequate security arrangements. While class 12th board exams have begun today, class 10th exams will be held on Tuesday in Kashmir. advertisement According to education officials, around 98 per cent of the students have taken their admit cards. While a total of 484 exam centres have been set up for about 48,000 candidates for class 12th examination across Kashmir division, as many as 550 exam centres have been established for 5,5000 candidates for class 10th examination. ALSO READ | J-K: Another government school set ablaze in Anantnag, concerns mount over students' safety OPINION: Kashmir schools burning is a terrifying reality of how India views education ADEQUATE ARRANGEMENTS PUT IN PLACE Adequate arrangement has been put in place for the smooth conduct of these examinations. It will be a major litmus test for the government. The government will have to ensure that the exams are held peacefully among growing fears. There was a huge debate whether the exams should be held in this session. While the government was adamant on sticking to this year, the students wanted the exams to be held in coming March. The government, however, tried convincing the people but also said that those students who can't give exams in these two days can give it in March, but with a catch. The catch was that those giving exams in March will be tested on the entire syllabus while the exams being conducted today and tomorrow will have only 50 per cent of the syllabus. The schools in the Valley went on a two-week summer holiday on July 1 but could not resume functioning due to the unrest. Over the last two months, 32 schools have been torched down. The Kashmir unrest has left 96 persons dead and thousands injured, with hundreds of people, including students, booked by the security forces. Watch the video here: Also Read: Future of Kashmir students uncertain as 31 schools destroyed in Valley 174 schools closed in Jammu as heavy firing by Pakistan continues --- ENDS --- Bigg Boss 9 couple Kishwer Merchantt and Suyyash Rai are finally get married in December. By India Today Web Desk: Brahmarakshas actress Kishwer Merchantt, who has just recovered from a bout of dengue, is now all set for her December wedding. Her cousins recently threw a bachelorette party for her and the actress had loads of fun., Wearing a bride-to-be crown and looking lovely in a pink outfit, Kishwer surely seemed happy and relaxed. Also read: Kishwer Merchantt shops for wedding gown; to tie the knot with Suyyash this year totally loved what u guys did for me .. it was a quiet but a very warm..loving and fun bachelorette ?? thank u #brothersandsisters for this special evening ???? A photo posted by Kishwer (@kishwersmerchantt) on Nov 13, 2016 at 11:03am PST advertisement "Totally loved what u guys did for me .. it was a quiet but a very warm..loving and fun bachelorette ?? thank u #brothersandsisters for this special evening," Kishwer thanked her cousins for all the love. "The preparations have begun in full swing and I am very excited about my December wedding. People will get to know about the exact dates very soon," Kishwer had earlier shared in an interview. On work front, Kishwer is scaring everyone with her Brahmarakshas avatar, in the ZEE TV's supernatural show. As an evil and manipulative woman (not rakshas) Aparjita, Kishwer's performance is being appreciated by one and all. --- ENDS --- The West Bengal chief minister today said the poor are not sleeping peacefully. By India Today Web Desk: Hitting out at PM Narendra Modi on demonetisation issue, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said the poor are not sleeping peacefully. "The PM in his speech had said the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is in bad taste. My humble suggestion to the Centre is not to hit the poor people like this," tweeted Mamata Banerjee. advertisement ALSO READ | Note ban: Mamata Banerjee pens poem against Modi in protest "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. POOR ARE SLEEPING PEACEFULLY WHILE SOME RICH PEOPLE NEED SLEEPING MEDICINES: MODI Asserting that the poor in the country are supporting his demonetisation decision, Modi today took on the opposition parties saying it is the corrupt who are sleepless now. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said at BJP's Parivartan Rally. Scoffing at opposition for blaming him for the problems being faced by the poor, the Prime Minister said he was better aware of the hardships being faced by commoners. "You (Congress) issue statements. I feel the pulse of the poor," he said. --- ENDS --- Speaking to mediapersons in Lucknow today, Mayawati said, "Where are the new currencies the Central Government was talking about. Modi ji makes claims of fighting against corruption, but today BJP got its volunteers in trains without tickets for Ghazipur rally." By India Today Web Desk: Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati has dismissed as "hollow" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claims of attacking black money. She termed scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes as "anti-farmer". Speaking to mediapersons in Lucknow today, Mayawati said, "Where are the new currencies the Central Government was talking about. The situation in the country is very bad... The government is not prepared. Modi ji makes claims of fighting against corruption, but today BJP got its volunteers in trains without tickets for Ghazipur rally," she alleged. advertisement The BSP president said ATMs are not working and there is no money in the banks. She said, "Where is the money if the arrangements were being made for the last 10 months? I would like to ask the PM where were the new currencies which the Government was referring to." Also Read: Here to fulfil Nehru's vision for country: Modi's dig at Congress in first rally post demonetisation She alleged that the situation in the country was bad. She said, "Modi ji makes claims of fighting against corruption, but today BJP got its volunteers in trains without tickets for Ghazipur rally. ATMs are not working while there is no money in the banks. Where is the money now if the arrangements were being made for the last 10 months?" She asked PM Narendra Modi the steps the Centre has taken for the people of Purvanchal in the last two-and-a-half years. "The PM should have made adequate preparations before scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes," she said. Like Mayawati, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also held press conference at the same time, though at different places, to counter PM Narendra Modi's claims on demonetisation in Ghazipur earlier today. ARVIND KEJRIWAL Kejriwal said the situation arising out of demonetisation was deteriorating each and every minute. An emergency session of the Delhi Assembly has been convened tomorrow. The civil defence employees will be deployed to provide biscuits, water and any other help, he said. The Delhi CM alleged that the Centre did not plan well before scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. "Though the Modi Government is rattled, it is behaving in a stubborn manner and is not ready to withdraw the order. Modi said the poor are sleeping peacefully while the corrupt are taking sleeping pills. But, in fact, only the PM is having a sound sleep," he said. Also Read: Government eases norms to fight currency crisis, ATMs to dispense new Rs 2000 notes from tomorrow advertisement Kejriwal said this scheme has worked like a tonic for the corrupt. It has harassed 1.25 billion people of the country. The PM has asked for 50 days but trade has come to a grinding halt. He challenged Modi to successfully indulge in any trade and let everyone know. He said crop's sowing season will start in 10 days but the farmers did not have any means to make payment to the labourers? The PM will have to find a solution to the problem otherwise the law and order situation will deteriorate, he warned. If you have your way, you can treat the poor miserably. Modi has given poison in the name of "kadak chai". Also Read: 'Bold' demonetising alone won't stop corruption, says Chinese media RANDEEP SURJEWALA On his part, Congress spokesperson Surjewala said Modi first indulged in "bragging" by declaring that Rs 15 lakh will be deposited in every account. Now, he said, Modi was giving another "jumla" about the problems of people getting solved in 50 days. He charged the Centre of unleashing "tax terrorism". He alleged that it was seriously affecting markets across the country. Small traders severely hit, he said. advertisement The Congress leader said calling the Centre's move "demonetisation" was a misnomer. He claimed it was "note exchange policy" and not demonitisation. --- ENDS --- From Shah Rukh Khan to Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Bollywood's vapid championing of Narendra Modi's demonetisation policy is laughable at best and cruel at worst. By Devarsi Ghosh: All of Bollywood has come forward to support our Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brave masterstroke to declare Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes as invalid currency in a bid to fight corruption and black money. With this one masterstroke, the Modi government has master-struck all the hoarders of unaccounted money in this country, the bad men who fund terrorist attacks on Indian soil and, well, the Indian people cannot stop tearing up in joy at the precision of Mr Modi's surgical strike on black money. advertisement ALSO READ | Suicide, shock death, out of cash: How Modi's surgical strike on black money has hit some people hard ALSO READ: Shahid, Deepika, Kareena joins rest of B-Town to support Modi's demonetisation move ALSO READ: Salman supports Modi's demonetisation move, calls it fantastic Indeed the entire demonetisation policy has been so strategically and surgically planned, that not only black money hoarders are getting caught red-handed in the bank when they walk to declare their undeclared money but the common man is also walking in to the bank and walking out with fresh 100-rupee notes within just 30 minutes. And perhaps, the ones happiest by this bold move by Modiji are our Bollywood actors and celebrities - truly the class of people who are doing their every bit for the country standing in queues outside ATMs since 5 in the morning, no? The night of November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that from midnight, Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes would become redundant and that banks would be closed for the next day and ATMs for the next two days, Bollywood erupted in joy and exhibited their economic acumen one after the other on Twitter. Farsighted. Extremely smart. And not politically motivated. Will bring such a positive change for Indian economy. Great move @narendramodi Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) November 9, 2016 For example, Shah Rukh Khan, who wrote that Modi ji's move would bring "positive change for Indian economy" and that our PM is "farsighted". Guess who else is farsighted? Shah Rukh Khan. The Economics graduate knows for a fact that demonetisation will bring a positive change in the country, and yes, of course; the usefulness of a Rs 2000 note has not been lost on anyone. You flash it in front of a sabziwala and he will give you change in 100s just like that. Because he loves the nation. And do you know the Rs 2000 note cannot be forged as well? It has got state-of-the-art security system which prevents bad men from making fake Rs 2000 notes. News of fake 2000-rupee notes coming in from Karanataka is obviously being circulated by paid media which does not like Modi's masterstroke. But Bollywood does. On the night of November 8, it seemed like Bollywood celebs sat together with a dictionary and tweeted. This is truly a masterstroke move!!!! @narendramodi hits it out of the stadium!!!! ???? Karan Johar (@karanjohar) November 8, 2016 History is made by bold masterstrokes like these. Respect @narendramodi sir May this be a step forward to a corruption free future kunal kemmu (@kunalkemmu) November 9, 2016 100 ? ??, 1 ? ?? Masterstroke @narendramodi Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn) November 8, 2016 advertisement Bollywood's darling Shah Rukh also called Modi's move 'politically unmotivated', which is very true. As we all know, Narendra Modi is well above the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s electoral politics. He is first the country's, then anyone else's, as he himself has reiterated time and again. Like Khan no.1, the other two Khans also spoke of demonetisation in glowing terms. Aamir, Bollywood's conscience-keeper, rightly said that the short-term woes of the common man should not be the focus of discourse. No! Doing that does not help build a nation. The actor also 'joked' that he is unaffected by the demonetisation policy because like any middle-class and lower-middle class and piss-poor Indian, Aamir hardly has any cash. The perfectionist that he is, Aamir is probably being in character, still playing villager Mahavir Singh Phogat off sets. Completely cashless. advertisement Salman Khan too had some choice words for Modi's demonetisation move. On Big Boss, bhai said, "Iss hafte kaale dhan par dhanaadan vaar padi. It is a fantastic move." Regarding any inconvenience to exchanging cash from banks, Sallu bhai said, "Koi baat nahi, main agle 2-3 din mein bank jaake cash karwa loonga." Please do that. Showbiz desks all over the country would like to see Salman stand in a kilometre-long queue in front of a bank for hours. The goodwill Salman would earn, he would never need a driver again! Last but not the least, the 74-year-old Amitabh Bachchan's statement on the demonetisation move is one that completely befits his maturity and wisdom that he has earned for seven decades. T 2435 - the new 2000 rs note is PINK in colour ... the PINK effect ..!! Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) November 8, 2016 advertisement His daughter-in-law Aishwarya also went on to tell India Today, "This is going to be a movement to wipe out corruption at all levels." As we can see, like Shah Rukh, Aishwarya is also very far-sighted. Aishwarya also said that public discomfort is not something we need to focus on right now. Aamir said that as well. Shahid also said that everybody is finding the move difficult but still, it is a very bold and right decision. Aditi Rao Hydari and Taapsee 'Pink' Pannu also said the same thing. So, common people of the land. The verdict is clear. Bollywood has said it. Modi's masterstroke is like nothing you have ever seen before. Even as a woman dies in shock on knowing about the demonetisation policy, even as another commits suicide, even as a man's child dies because the hospital won't accept Rs 500/1000 notes, even as Arun Jaitley says that it will take weeks to re-calibrate ATMs to dispense Rs 2000 notes, demonetisation is still a brave, bold move that will weed out corruption from the country once and for all. Shivaay isn't suffering because of demonetisation Raju chacha https://t.co/GYuey4lF6x Anurag Verma (@kitAnurag) November 13, 2016 And best of luck to the billionaire Bollywood stars who have abandoned their ivory tower to stand outside banks and ATMs to rub shoulders with the country's people who are now sadly broke to watch the masterpieces Bollywood has to offer every Friday. Hopefully, the phone cameras will capture these stars' master-patriotism in full public view. Let's wait for the photos. (The writer tweets as @devarsighosh.) --- ENDS --- By PTI: Washington, Nov 14 (PTI) Scientists have designed a smartphone app that can track eye movement to determine, in less than a minute, if a child is showing signs of autism spectrum disorder. Early detection of autism can dramatically improve the benefits of treatment, but often the disability is not suspected until a child enters school, researchers said. advertisement "The brain continues to grow and develop after birth. The earlier the diagnosis, the better. Then we can inform families and begin therapies which will improve symptoms and outcome," said Michelle Hartley-McAndrew, assistant professor at University at Buffalo (UB) in the US. "We offer many educational interventions to help children with autism reach the same developmental milestones met by children with typical development," said Kathy Ralabate Doody, an assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo State College. The app tracks eye movements of a child looking at pictures of social scenes - for example, those with multiple people. The eye movements of someone with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often different from those of a person without autism. In the study, the app had an accuracy rating of 93.96 per cent. "Right now it is a prototype. We have to consider if other neurological conditions are included, like ADD, how that will affect the outcome," said Kun Woo Cho, an undergraduate in UBs School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Autism spectrum disorder affects 1-2 people per 1,000 worldwide, researchers said. "The beauty of the mobile app is that it can be used by parents at home to assess the risk of whether a child may have ASD," said Wenyao Xu, University at Buffalo assistant professor. "This can allow families to seek therapy sooner, and improve the benefits of treatment," he said. The study found that photos of social scenes evoke the most dramatic differences in eye movement between children with and without ASD. The eye tracking patterns of children with ASD looking at the photos are scattered, versus a more focused pattern of children without ASD. "We speculate that it is due to their lack of ability to interpret and understand the relationship depicted in the social scene," Cho said. Use of the app takes up to 54 seconds, which makes it less intrusive than other tests and valuable with children with short attention spans. advertisement The study included 32 children ranging in age from two to 10. Half of the children had been previously diagnosed with autism. The other half did not have ASD. One benefit of the technology is that parents could use it at home to determine if there is a need for clinical examination, researchers said. PTI SAR SAR --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 13 (PTI) Over 12,000 Delhi Police, Rapid Action Force and paramilitary personnel were deployed today to maintain law and order as a large number of people queued up to withdraw money or get their notes exchanged at various banks and ATMs in the city. Owing to a Sunday today, a crowd was more outside banks and ATMs, and personnel of Delhi Police, RAF and paramilitary forces were ensuring that people stay in queues and maintain law and order, a Delhi Police official said. advertisement "More than 12,000 personnel of Delhi Police were manning banks and ATMs across the city. They were ensuring that people stay in queues. We are committed to maintain law and order in the city," Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said. Today also police control room received several calls from people complaining about they being jostled in the queue, ATMs running out of cash and overcrowding in the banks. Police also issued an advisory on its Twitter handle, asking people not to believe on rumours, related to withdrawal of money and demonetised notes, spreading thick and fast. It kept an eye on social media to identify the rumour mills. Today a rumour started doing rounds that how one can withdraw money from Reserve Bank of India after getting a signed letter from the Deputy Commissioner of Police of your area. PTI SLB AG SMJ --- ENDS --- By Kaswar Klasra: Pakistan Foreign Office has summoned Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan to protest against unprovoked firing across LoC which killed seven Pakistan army soldiers. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed his profound grief and sorrow over the loss of precious human lives in the latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces. Paying high tributes to the martyred Pakistani soldiers, the Prime Minister said that it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at LoC, in the recent days. advertisement Also read: Indian troops kill 7 Pakistani soldiers in retaliatory firing "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression. The Indian Forces have resorted to escalating tension on LoC only to detract the world's attention from the grave human rights situation in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IoK)," said the Prime Minister. UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES The Prime Minister said that Indian forces have inflicted unspeakable atrocities against the unarmed and innocent people of IoK. "There is an indigenous uprising against Indian occupation, and the Indian government is failing to read the writing on the wall. By creating tension at LoC the Indian forces are uselessly trying to divert the attention from the Kashmir issue," added the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister said that those who sacrificed their lives in defending the motherland would always be remembered and held in the highest esteem. Also read: Blast at Shah Noorani shrine in Pakistan: 52 dead, over 100 injured, ISIS claims responsibility Note ban: Following India's lead, Pakistani senator submits resolution for demonetisation --- ENDS --- Opposition parties to discuss crucial issues in the all-party meet that they will raise in the upcoming Winter Session. By Supriya Bhardwaj: The Opposition parties huddled on Monday to chart out strategy on the issue of demonetisation as the countdown begins for Parliament's Winter Session to commence. According to sources, the leading opposition parties have arrived on a consensus to raise the demonetisation issue to the hilt inside the Parliament. However, aware of the catch 22 situation - black money issue - the Opposition parties have decided to attack the NDA government, head by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the implementation of Demonetisation scheme rather than on the intent with which the scheme was brought in. advertisement "The protest is against the implementation of this scheme due to which people are suffering across country. We are also against black money but the approach adopted by NDA government to roll out the scheme is wrong," said leader of Opposition Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad. THE INITIAL GAME PLAN During their two-hour long brainstorming session, the Opposition parties decided that they will raise demonetisation issue on the first day November 16 of Parliament's Winter Session. Also, it was decided that all political parties will be meeting President of India too and will inform him about the hardships being faced by the people. "Opposition parties have agreed on few things that the sufferings have to be stopped at the earliest. There has to be some plan of action. We discussed how to raise this matter in the Parliament. There was a broad consensus on it that there will be two different strategies. One for Lok Sabha and another for Rajya Sabha," said TMC MP Derek O Brien. Opposition is also keen to take this fight to President of India's doorsteps. "There is a consensus that we have to meet the President of India. Some parties want to go on November 16 and some want to go on another date But one thing is for sure that we all will go and meet President," added TMC MP Derek O'brien. WILL THERE BE A UNITED OPPOSITION FRONT? The million dollar question doing the rounds in power corridors of Delhi whether we'll see a United Opposition Front after CPIM gave cold shoulder to TMC. Clearing the air on this issue, General Secretary CPIM Sitaram Yechury said, "United Opposition cannot be anywhere else except on the floor. Opposition parties leaders have decided that first we will raise Demonetisation issue in Parliament and then we'll decide the next step." TO MEET AGAIN With SP and BSP missing, Opposition parties will be meeting once again on Tuesday afternoon to sharpen its strategy. This meeting of opposition leaders will take place before all-party meeting called by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar. "When Parliament session is about to start from Wednesday and most of the leaders come a day before. We will have a final meeting before all-party meet tomorrow. Leaders of all opposition parties have decided that we will work together," said Ghulam Nabi Azad. advertisement Also read: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully Rs 2,000 won't be withdrawn, printing on it not wrong: Social media rumours busted 'Bold' demonetising alone won't stop corruption, says Chinese media --- ENDS --- The meeting came amid continuing chaos and growing public anger across the country over limited cash availability following the surprise demonetisation of two higher value currency notes by Modi. By PTI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with senior ministers past midnight today to review demonetisation and its impact. MINISTERS IN ATTENDANCE The meeting at Prime Ministers residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, I&B Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Power, Coal and Mines Minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the Finance ministry. advertisement MEETING OVER GROWING PUBLIC ANGER OVER LIMITED CASH The meeting came amid continuing chaos and growing public anger across the country over limited cash availability following the surprise demonetisation of two higher value currency notes by Modi. There was little respite for cash-starved people queueing up outside banks and ATMs yesterday, with branches witnessing unprecedented rush since early morning and leading to arguments and scuffles. Also Read: PM Modi's emotional appeal: I understand your pain, bear with me for 50 days TRANSACTIONS INCREASED Earlier in the evening, after a review by Finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs 2000 and new Rs 500 notes was increased from Rs 4000 to Rs 4500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. Also Read: ATM cash withdrawal limit increased to Rs 2500 per day: Finance Ministry WITHDRAWAL FROM BANK COUNTERS INCREASED The weekly limit of Rs 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs 24,000. The maximum limit of Rs 10,000 per day on such withdrawals has been removed, the ministry said in a statement. Also Read: PM Modi inaugurates Goa Shipyard Limited, a facility critical for Make in India projects --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Addressing his first public rally since announcing demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Prime Minister today said that it is because of this government that the poor are sleeping peacefully while the rich are rushing to the market to get sleeping pills. Modi, who made his second visit to Ghazipur in two years, thanked the people of Uttar Pradesh for playing a huge role in the BJP's mammoth victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. advertisement ALSO READ: Angry Mamata hits out at PM Modi, says poor are not sleeping peacefully FULFILLING NEHRU's VISION "It is the power of your vote, the vote of people of UP, that the poor are sleeping peacefully while some rich people need sleeping medicines," said the PM, who laid the foundation for several rail projects and flagged off a new weekly express train between Ghazipur and Kolkata. ALSO WATCH Taking a dig at the Congress, Modi said, "Pandit Nehru, your family members abuse me, your party abuses me but I am here to fulill what you left incomplete". Modi said he deliberately chose to address the public on November 14, the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to expose those who are not "fulfilling" his vision for the country. ALSO READ: Lalu Yadav says atmosphere in the country has become explosive post demonetisation 19 MONTHS vs 50 DAYS Continuing his tirade against the Congress, Modi said that the Congress had turned the entire country into a "prison" during the 19 months of Emergency, while he has asked for just 50 days to fight the menace of black money. Much like his emotional appeal to his "honest countrymen" a day ago, Modi once again said that he understood the pain of the people. Adding on to that, he said the real pain is being felt by those who have hoarded unaccounted money. "India has no shortage of wealth but the question is who has this wealth. I had promised you that our government will end corruption," he said. ALSO READ: Multiple withdrawals in a day, ATMs to dispense new Rs 2000 notes: Government fights cash chaos Here is a snapshot of what he said at the rally: The NDA government is for the poor, it is for the farmers and it is for rural India, the Prime Minister said. India has no shortage of wealth but the question is who has this wealth. I had promised you that our government will end corruption, the PM said. I am aware that you are facing problems with Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes ceasing to be legal tender. I understand your pain, the PM said, trying to firefight the chaos in the country in the wake of demonetisation. Launching a scathing attack on his detractors on demonetisation, the Prime Minister said, "Some people are in pain because of our move, and these are not the common citizens of India". Continuing his tirade against the Congress, Modi said that the Congress had turned the entire country into a "prison" during the Emergency. The police, during the Emergency, would randomly go to homes, threaten people; Congress leaders made so much money in those times, the PM said. Calling the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes a much-needed measure, the PM said that it was the only way to curb counterfeit currency coming from neighbouring countries. Promising to continue his relentless drive against black money, Modi said he will not let anyone loot the money that belongs to the poor "Yes, those against me are strong people but I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity," the PM said. Addressing the Parivartan rally ahead of the Uttar Pradesh election, the Prime Minister said a "new era of development" has started in the country during his government's rule in the Centre. advertisement ALSO READ: Demonetisation: Opposition reacts, says BJP thriving on black money, PM misleading people advertisement Watch the video here: --- ENDS --- By PTI: Chamba, Nov 13 (PTI) Himachal Police today seized Rs 24.64 lakh in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, which has been demonetised by the government, from two SUVs at Banikhet toll tax barrier here, a senior police official said. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Dalhousie, Sagar Chander Sharma said that during a naka (checkpost) set up by the police at Banikhet Toll tax barrier on the Chamba-Pathankot national highway, a sum of Rs 21.79 lakh was found in a Duster SUV. advertisement Mixed currency notesof Rs 1000 and Rs 500 denomination were seized from the vehicle bearing a Chamba number. In another Duster SUV, bearing registration number of Amritsar, Rs 2.85 lakh was recovered, the DSP said, adding these currency notes were in denomination of Rs 500. The DSP said these currency notes were being handed over to the Income Tax department officials for further investigation. PTI CORR PCL ARK --- ENDS --- By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 14 (PTI) Amid the governments demonetisation move, Rs six crore in scrapped notes of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 was today seized from a vehicle in Maharashtras Osmanabad district. However, the persons carrying the cash in the vehicle claimed that the money belonged to an urban cooperative bank and was being taken to its headquarters, police said. advertisement An election squad, on duty on Osmanabad-Tuljapur bypass road, intercepted a car this morning and found six bags of demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and 500 in it, they said. The squad then alerted Tuljapur Police Station, following which police personnel reached the spot and detained the persons who were in the vehicle, police said, adding the vehicle was also impounded. During investigation, those detained claimed to be personnel of an urban cooperative bank. They claimed that the money belonged to the bank and was being taken to its headquarters in Sangli, police said. Meanwhile, statements of those detained are being recorded and Osmanabad police have started in-camera counting of the currency as part of its verification process. PTI DC GK NSD --- ENDS --- By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 14 (PTI) Amid the governments demonetisation move, Rs six crore in scrapped notes of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 was today seized from a vehicle in Maharashtras Osmanabad district. However, the persons carrying the cash in the vehicle claimed that the money belonged to an urban cooperative bank and was being taken to its headquarters, police said. advertisement An election squad, on duty on Osmanabad-Tuljapur bypass road, intercepted a car this morning and found six bags of demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and 500 in it, they said. The squad then alerted Tuljapur Police Station, following which police personnel reached the spot and detained the persons who were in the vehicle, police said, adding the vehicle was also impounded. During investigation, those detained claimed to be personnel of an urban cooperative bank. They claimed that the money belonged to the bank and was being taken to its headquarters in Sangli, police said. Meanwhile, statements of those detained are being recorded and Osmanabad police have started in-camera counting of the currency as part of its verification process. PTI DC GK NSD SSB --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 14 (PTI) Amidst unprecedented panic rush in banks and ATMs across the country, the Supreme Court would tomorrow hear a batch of PILs seeking quashing of the governments decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes on the grounds that it infringed citizens right to life and trade among others. A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice D Y Chandrachud has listed for hearing as many as four pleas against the November 8 decison of the Narendra Modi government that these notes are no longer a legal tender. advertisement Out of the four, two PILs have been filed by Delhi-based lawyers Vivek Narayan Sharma and Sangam Lal Pandey respectively. Two other pleas have been filed by individuals, S Muthukumar and Adil Alvi, on the demonetisation issue. The apex court, on November 10, had agreed to hear the pleas on Tuesday. The petitioners have alleged that the sudden decision has created chaos and harassment to public at large and the notification of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance be either quashed or deferred for some time. The Centre has also filed a caveat in the registry saying it should be heard if the bench agrees to hear and pass orders on any such plea. Sharma, in his plea, has termed the notification of DEA as "dictatorial", claiming that it did not grant reasonable time to citizens for exchanging the specified bank notes to legitimate notes to avoid "large scale mayhem, life threatening difficulties". The plea has sought either quashing of the notification or a direction to the Centre for grant of "reasonable time frame" to citizens to exchange the demonetised currency notes to avoid difficulties being faced by the people. The Prime Minister, in a televised address to the nation, had declared that high denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 will no longer be legal tender from November 8-9 midnight. He had said the Government has declared a "decisive war" against black money and corruption. PTI SJK MNL RKS ARC --- ENDS --- Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput took some time off to go on a dinner date on Sunday evening. By India Today Web Desk: Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput went out to find some quality time for themselves as they were spotted on a dinner date outside a restaurant in Bandra. Mira Rajput looked the ever-confident wife and hand-in-hand with Shahid, the two looked like a strong, power couple. Shahid and Mira gave birth to their first child, a baby daughter on August 26 this year. The 35-year-old actor later shared the child's name Misha on Twitter. Misha is formed from the combination of the first letters mother Mira's first name and those of papa Shahid's first name. advertisement ALSO READ: I wake up every 3 hours. I change diapers now, says Shahid Kapoor ALSO READ: When ex-flames Shahid and Kareena greeted each other with a hug ALSO READ: Shahid, Kareena, Deepika speak in favour of Modi's demonetisation Recently, Shahid Kapoor spoke in favour of Narendra Modi's demonetisation move. He said that the government's step was extremely important and rather bold. "If we have to eliminate corruption, when it is so much, it is necessary to take a hard step. I think its still early to comment on how it'll go because there are certain practicalities attached to the change in currency notes. It is going to be difficult," said Shahid Kapoor. On the work front, Shahid Kapoor will be seen in Vishal Bhardwaj's World War II drama Rangoon early next year, followed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period epic Padmavati which also stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh. (All photos by Yogen Shah) --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Aditi Khanna London, Nov 14 (PTI) Swedish officials today questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for over four years, over sexual assault charges. The 45-year-old Australian national has been living in the embassy for more than four years after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador amid fears he will be extradited to the US and questioned over the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by his controversial website. advertisement Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long said, "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years," he said. After years of stalemate, representatives from the Swedish prosecutors office and Swedish police officers agreed to be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadorian official based on a previously approved set of questions. A DNA sample will also be taken from Assange if he gives his consent. The results of the interview will be transcribed and reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren was photographed entering the embassy but it was made clear that she would not be giving any press interviews during her stay in London. Astatement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorean legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview". Todays interview at the embassy follows a long-drawn legal and diplomatic wrangle between Ecuador and Sweden before prosecutors consented to interview Assange in London, and then until the two sides agreed arrangements. Assange denies Swedens allegation of rape dating back over six years. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of Assanges responses during the questioning, but not put any fresh questions. PTI AK KUN AKJ KUN --- ENDS --- Sheila Dikshit's daughter Latika had filed a case of domestic violence against her husband at the Barakhamba police station. The accused and Dikshit's daughter have been separated for 10 months. Imran got aggressive with Latika after Sheila Dikshit lost the elections in 2013 By Mail Today Bureau: Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's son-in-law Syed Mohammad Imran has been arrested for allegedly subjecting his wife to domestic violence. Imran was arrested from Bengaluru two days back. Sheila Dikshit's daughter Latika had filed a case of domestic violence case against him at the Barakhamba police station. Imran was arrested from Bengaluru and brought to Delhi on transit remand, said a senior police official. The accused and Dikshit's daughter Latika had been living separately for the last ten months TORTURE AFTER LOSING ELECTIONS advertisement The arrested son-in-law of former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had begun torturing his wife after Dikshit lost power in Delhi during the 2013 elections. Dikshit's daughter Latika has alleged that her husband Syed Mohammad Imran had been living happily since their marriage in 1996 but things went awry after her mother lost the elections. "Imran's behaviour changed suddenly after my mother lost elections. He turned aggressive and rude and subjected me to torture," Latika reportedly said in her complaint to Delhi Police which arrested Imran on charges of domestic violence, theft and adultery. One of the allegedly stolen articles that the victim highlights in her complaint were papers pertaining to a land in Nainital she owns ILLICIT RELATIONSHIP FOR 2 YEARS On the instance of Latika, police have also arrested a woman in the case with whom Imran had allegedly developed an illicit relationship. Delhi Police confirmed the arrest on Sunday. A senior police official said Dikshit's daughter accused Imran of subjecting her to violence, almost choking her to death in one occasion. She alleged that the two accused have been in an illicit relationship for the past two years. VALUABLES, JEWELLERY MISSING She told police that jewellery and other valuables had been missing from her Hailey Road house and whenever she asked Imran about the same, he would give evasive replies. Police has also charged him under several sections of the IT Act. Imran had been living in Bengaluru until Delhi police arrested him. IMRAN EVASIVE, ABUSIVE Latika along with her two children was living with Sheila Dikshit in her Delhi house. According to an official of Barakhamba Road police station, Latika had lodged criminal complaint against Imran in June this year. "We contacted Imran several times to come to Delhi for investigation. He was ignoring our calls repeatedly. Following directions from senior officers, a team was sent to Bengaluru which arrested him there," an official said. Delhi police produced Imran in a Bengaluru trial court and secured his transit remand to pursue the case further in Delhi. Also Read: Former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit's son-in-law arrested under Domestic Violence Act --- ENDS --- advertisement By PTI: & security of people: DGP Srinagar, Nov 14 (PTI) Director General of Police K Rajendra Kumar today reviewed the security scenario in Kashmir saying synergy among law enforcing agencies is must to ensure safety and security of the people. "The maintenance of law and order is also imperative to prevail congenial atmosphere in the State," Kumar said. advertisement He was addressing a meeting of senior police, para-military and intelligence officers at Police Control Room (PCR) here convened to take stock of security, law and order situation in the Valley. Stressing for greater coordination among different law enforcing agencies, the DGP said rule of law is our prime concern and JKP along with other security agencies have done a commendable job in maintaining law and order in the State during hostile situations. He said the success achieved on anti-militancy front and in maintaining law and order was due to the peoples cooperation with the forces. Calling on the officers for strengthening intelligence grid, the DGP said while dealing with the situations, the cops have to take special care of the human rights and every effort should be taken to avoid collateral damages. "Better policing and the peoples cooperation are mandatory to achieve desired results and police should make all out efforts to get the wholehearted support of the people of the State," Kumar said. Emphasising upon the officers to adopt an effective strategy to mount pressure on the elements inimical to peace, the DGP said while conducting operations, it should be our endeavour that common people are not put to inconvenience. He said that input sharing among different agencies is necessary to foil sinister designs of bad elements. Special DGP (Coordination, Law and Order) S P Vaid also addressed the meeting saying a comprehensive security plan has been chalked out for deployment of manpower to ensure law and order in the Valley. Earlier, IGP Kashmir Zone, S J M Gillani also briefed the meeting about security, law and order situation in the Valley. He informed about successful operations conducted by the forces in the recent days. PTI MIJ RG --- ENDS --- By PTI: Hyderabad, Nov 14 (PTI) The Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) today teamed up with Salesforce to provide "valuable Salesforce skills" to over 2,000 students and 100 faculty members over the next two years. TASK is a not for profit organisation established by the Government of Telangana to enhance skilling for youth. "We are very pleased to partner with Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, to create a student success platform that will help launch careers in the world of cloud computing," a release quoted Sujiv Nair, CEO, TASK as saying. advertisement "The Salesforce ecosystem will produce nearly 2 million jobs between now and 2020, according to IDC, and were excited to help prepare Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) students with valuable Salesforce skills to thrive in todays digital economy," said Sundar Nagarathnam, senior vice-president, Salesforce University. Under the partnership, the Salesforce Academic Alliance team will facilitate instructor-led training to third and fourth-year students of engineering colleges registered with TASK in two flagship courses: Application Development, and Programmatic Development Using Apex and Visualforce --eventually leading to Associate and Professional Salesforce certifications. "TASK will also be empowered to deliver its own Trailhead workshops, where students will learn how to leverage Trailhead?s fun, easy, self-guided learning as an ongoing training and knowledge source," the release added. PTI SJR NSK UZM --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 14 (PTI) Saddened by the reports of harassment of Muslims, African-Americans and Latinos following his victory in the election, President-elect Donald Trump has for the first time publicly asked people to "Stop it". "I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, Stop it. If it - if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it," Trump told the CBS 60 Minute yesterday. advertisement He was responding to a question on a wave of alleged hate crimes against Muslims, Hispanic Americans, black people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT community in recent days. "Do you want to say anything to those people?" he was asked. "I would say dont do it, thats terrible, cause I?m gonna bring this country together," Trump said. The president-elect said some section of the society are scared about him because they do not know him. He asked them not to be afraid. "Thats only because they dont know me," he said. "What do you think they?re demonstrating against?" he was asked. "I think in some cases, you have professional protesters," he said, referring to mentions about it in Wikileaks. "Dont be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, dont be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. I mean, people are protesting. If Hillary had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, Oh, thats a terrible thing. And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different attitude. You know, there is a double standard here," Trump said. PTI LKJ ZH --- ENDS --- Asked whether he was going to take the president's salary, 70-year-old Trump said, "No, I'm not gonna take the salary. I'm not taking it," confirming a promise he had made in a campaign video in September. By PTI: US President-elect Donald Trump has said he would take USD 1 as his salary a year and not the USD 400,000 that comes with the president's job and will refrain from going on any vacation. Asked whether he was going to take the president's salary, 70-year-old Trump said, "No, I'm not gonna take the salary. I'm not taking it," confirming a promise he had made in a campaign video in September. advertisement "I think I have to by law take USD 1, so Ill take USD 1 a year. But I don't even know what it is," Trump told CBSs "60 Minute" in an interview aired yesterday. Trump said he did not know what the salary of a US President is and also said he would not take any vacation. "We have so much work. There's so much work to be done. And I want to get it done for the people," he said. "I want to get it done. Were lowering taxes, were taking care of health care. I mean, there's just so much to be done. So I don't think well be very big on vacations, no," Trump said, ruling out a vacation for himself. Trump defeated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential vote. Also Read: Trump elected 45th US President, says it's time to renew American dream Lesser known Donald Trump facts: At 13, parents wanted him to behave Donald trumps Hillary Clinton. Says he will be President of all Americans, rebuild Congrats President elect Donald Trump: Barack Obama makes the call --- ENDS --- By PTI: From Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 14 (PTI) Asserting that H-1B visa creates more jobs, a Silicon Valley-based CEO has urged US President- elect Donald Trump to reform the system and increase the quota of this speciality work visa, which would help in achieving his agenda of spurring growth in the country. "So heres a first step: reform the H-1B visa program to allow American companies to hire the high-skilled workers they need to grow and remain competitive," Alan H Fleischmann founder, president & CEO of Laurel Strategies, a global business advisory and strategic communications firm for leaders, CEOs and their C-suite, said in an op-ed published in the Fortune magazine on Sunday. advertisement "While the broader immigration debate will be heated and highly partisan, reforming the H-1B immigration program enjoys strong bipartisan support," he said. "President-elect Trumps stance on this issue is not yet defined. This creates a further opportunity to properly address this policy issue," Fleischmann said. He said many of Trumps voters express concern about being left out of the 21st century tech-based economy and have not seen innovation as a powerful job-creator or a force for good. "Their fears are valid, and Washington with Silicon Valley must do a better job of broadening the promise of technology so that so many disaffected Americans no longer are left behind," he noted. Fleischmann said Americas H-1B visa program is designed to permit US companies to recruit workers from abroad to fill highly specialized jobs here in America. "Far different from the more wide-ranging worker visa program, H-1Bs are specifically used to fill specific jobs that companies cant find enough American workers to fill. Particularly for technology firms, H-1B visas are a lifeline to the global talent pool of engineers, who can build products and create economic growth here in America, rather than in other countries," he said. Evidence shows that jobs for Americans would increase and wages would rise under the visa program, he argued. According to a 2012 report by the US Chamber of Commerce studying foreign students with a STEM degree hired by American companies, each H-1B employee creates 2.62 additional jobs for American workers. According to another report from McKinsey in 2011, "in recent years, the supply of [STEM] graduates has been sluggish at a time when demand for them has been rising." Yet despite the overwhelming benefits of the H-1B visa program for Americas economy, the programs annual cap is stunningly low at just 65,000 per year, Fleischmann said. "That quota may have been sufficient 30 years ago, but its just a drop in the bucket compared with today?s demand for high-skilled workers," he added. Noting that Trump was elected with virtually no connection to America?s technology sector, he said convincing Congressional Republicans to support H-1B reform as a job-creator and economic imperative would be a savvy and much-needed first step. "This is a tremendous leadership opportunity for the new administration," he said. PTI LKJ ZH --- ENDS --- advertisement By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) There is an urgent need to promote alternative livelihoods for the growers and workers of tobacco, tendu leaf and cigar leaf, according to a declaration adopted at WHOs global tobacco control conference attended by representatives from around 180 countries. About 1,500 delegates along with other observers participated in the six-day COP7 of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) held at Greater Noida near here. advertisement Accusing the tobacco industry of trying to mislead by generating a perception that the Convention is against the farmers, a top official of the Convention Secretariat said it was against the tobacco industry and not the agriculturists. Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, head of the Convention Secretariat of WHO FCTC, said the intention was to help the tobacco growers by reaching out to them. The Delhi Declaration, which has been submitted to the Convention, noted that "there is an urgent need to promote alternative livelihoods for tobacco growers and workers, tendu leaf growers and cigar leaf growers as a response to the expected gradual reduction in global tobacco consumption and promote regional and international cooperation for reaching this objective". It further stressed the need for effective implementation to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products and to counter the threats from proliferation of all forms of tobacco use, including smokeless tobacco as well as new and emerging tobacco or nicotine products, which "may encourage its use and addiction". The participating nations also decided to hold meetings of various departments along with members of the tobacco farmers industry to find other alternatives for them. "We want to help the tobacco growers. The point is that the tobacco industries are using this farmers at the forefront for their own benefits.The tobacco industry is trying to mislead and generate a perception that the Convention is against the farmers but it is against tobacco industry. We want to help them by reaching out to them," Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva told reporters at the concluding ceremony of the meet. The COP7 called upon all parties to actively pursue the achievement of SDG target 3, which seeks to ensure health and well-being for all at every stage of life, and strengthen the implementation of the WHO FCTC. It also request the Convention Secretariat to take lead in coordinating support to the parties to this effect in collaboration with WHO and other inter-governmental organisations. All the member countries were asked to increase their efforts to prevent interference by the tobacco industry in accordance with Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC through legislative and regulatory measures. The Declaration also called upon the parties to strengthen national capacity for tobacco taxes in accordance with Article 6 of the WHO FCTC in an effort to reduce consumption of tobacco products and improve revenue collection and domestic resource mobilisation to meet the commitments contained in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). advertisement "To continue to promote ratification, acceptance and approval of the protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products in order to facilitate its early entry into force," it read. Additional Health Secretary Arun Panda, who was present on the occasion,said, "The Health Ministry will hold a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture, Biotechnology, Commerce, representatives of the Tobacco Farmers Association to discuss the alternate livelihoods for tobacco growers, tendu leaf and cigar leaf growers." PTI PLB KIS --- ENDS --- By Shreya Goswami: There are so many ways you could come across celebrity chef Vikas Khanna--you probably first saw him on television, cooking something with grace and charm reminiscent of master chef Sanjeev Kapoor. If you're one of those who like to check out all the shelves in bookstores, you would have seen his face on the covers of many cookbooks (he's authored 25 till date). Maybe you saw him in a Quaker Oats advertisement; maybe it was MasterChef India where you first saw him, and instantly fell in love. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna advertisement Yes, that's the effect Vikas Khanna has on most of us, women and men (just admit it guys, you admire him too). Also Read: When celebrity chef Vikas Khanna joined Amritsar farmers for Diwali Of course, he's good looking. But there's more to it than that, as anybody whose met Khanna face to face will tell you. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna What more, you ask? Read on to find out. Brilliant professional You don't just get a Michelin star by sitting around, posing for the cameras. You can't run two restaurants in New York and Dubai, while shooting for MasterChef India in your native country, without having some prowess as a businessman and an accomplished chef. Here's a man who started his first catering business at the young age of 17 in Amritsar, Punjab; a man who struggled to get three square meals during his early years in New York. The rise and further rise of Vikas Khanna just couldn't have happened without the force of his sheer talent. And while critics might say that the food he serves in Junoon is average Indian fare, you have to admit that average or not, he is making a difference as an Indian chef working abroad. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna Also Read: MasterChef judge, celebrity chef Vikas Khanna undergoes surgery Relatable Ask anybody who's had a chance to meet Khanna in person, and they'll tell you just how easy it is to warm up to him. For a man that famous, he doesn't behave like a celebrity. We guess, it's his life journey and humble roots that have kept him grounded. He comes across as a typical Punjabi man who has had to struggle to get where he is. And while that earns him our respect, it also makes him more believable and trustworthy. He's one of us after all. And that's why his television shows are popular. He might be travelling through the coast of India, but he's welcome in every household and community as if he was born there. Don't believe us? Just watch any episode of Twist of Taste. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna Inspiring No, we aren't just talking about his struggles in life and the stature he's reached now. While that is inspiring indeed, what's more inspiring is the way Khanna gives back to society. Whether it's through his association with Smile Foundation or his own philanthropic venture, SAAKIV, Khanna manages to contribute to society with more than just food. Even with his food-related ventures, he manages to showcase his culture and roots. Just think about his first documentary, Kitchens of Gratitude. Bringing out the best, most unifying part of religions in a world where faith is doing more to divide than unite, is an inspiring feat indeed. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna advertisement Also Read: Chef Gordon Ramsay is super humble, says Chef Vikas Khanna Knowledgeable Again, this is something that people who have met Khanna would be able to testify. This is one chef who has travelled the length and breadth of his own country, and other parts of the world. He doesn't just talk about dishes from around the world. He can actually talk for hours about the equipment with which we cook today, and the ones that have been used since time immemorial in the Indian subcontinent. This is the man behind the first culinary equipment museum in the world; a museum that will showcase utensils and cooking equipment used in Indian households for generations. Yes, Khanna can actually impress you with his intellect, if you give him the chance to. Picture courtesy: Facebook/Vikas Khanna There are, of course, so many more reasons to love this chef. You can go for any one of them, or all of them. You can still believe that ultimately, it's his good looks that matter. But, you can't take away the fact that he's one of the most influential chefs in the world today, and a household name in his motherland. --- ENDS --- advertisement Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has convened a meeting of the leaders of political parties to ensure smooth functioning of the Lower House. By India Today Web Desk: As the month-long Winter Session of Parliament commences from November 16, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has convened a meeting of the leaders of political parties at 7 pm today to ensure smooth functioning of the Lower House. The Centre has also convened an all-party meeting which will be held on December 15 to seek cooperation from leaders of both the Houses for efficient working of Parliament. advertisement ALSO READ | Demonetisation: Congress, Trinamool to chalk out plan to corner Modi government in Parliament The Centre's demonetisation move is likely to get primacy in the forthcoming Winter Session. CONGRESS TO RAISE DEMONETISATION ISSUE DURING WINTER SESSION Meanwhile, on Sunday, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said the Congress MPs would raise the demonetisation issue under rules 56 and 193 during the Winter Session. Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has already given a notice for the suspension of business under rule 267 of the Rajya Sabha for a discussion on the same issue. ALSO READ | Parliament's month-long winter session to start early on November 16 Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad has given a notice under rule 267 for discussion on Kashmir unrest. The BJP-led NDA members are also scheduled to meet today to chalk out an efficient floor strategy to counter any attack from the Opposition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are likely to attend the meetings. The month-long Winter Session of Parliament will continue till December 16. It is expected to be noisy, with Opposition party leaders already expressing their dissent over the government's move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. --- ENDS --- [November 14, 2016] BriefCam's Syndex Certified Again by Milestone Systems MODI'IN TECHNOLOGY PARK, Israel, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BriefCam the Video Synopsis company, today announced the solution certification of its Syndex EP/EP+, version 4.0 and above, with Milestone Systems' XProtect video management software. This certification further strengthens the companies' long-standing partnership, ensuring that current and new customers benefit from XProtect integrated Video Synopsis solutions for enhanced security, operational management and business insights. XProtect integration with BriefCam Syndex offers rapid video review, search and analysis. Processed video data can be filtered by various classifications, such as color, size, people, car and animal. In addition, actionable data is presented in various ways such as heat maps, pathways and charts, enabling organizations to gain more value from their video data and extend the use of Video Synopsis beyond security to retail and operational excellence. Amit Gavish, BriefCam's General Manager of Americas said, "Our partnership with Milestone began in 2009 with an initial technology integration. Since then, our products have matured to become ever more powerful. Our current offering, Syndex Pro, enables users to not only review hours in minutes, but to take that valuable video data, analyze it in a variety of ways for security, and then leverage the extracted metadata to the advantage of the enterprise as a whole." Milestone Solution Partner integrations are assured through rigorous testing, evaluation and documentation with a focus on four areas: functionality, usability, performance and partner assessment. Milestone Solution Certified integrations provide end customers, systems integrators and resellers extra confidence to work with XProtect integrated solutions. Reinier Tuinzing, Strategic Alliances ManagerAmericas, Milestone Systems, said, "This re-certification demonstrates the strength of the Milestone Solution Partner Community. Milestone and Briefcam have had a strong working partnership for the past seven years. As BriefCam's Syndex product offering has matured, the Milestone SDK has also evolved to accomodate new features, like the ability to add a BriefCam tab in the XProtect Smart Client view where BriefCam Syndex parameters can be adjusted from inside the VMS user interface." Tuinzing noted that the Solutions Certification Program provides BriefCam-Milestone installation customers with verified test result documentation on the functionality and interoperability of BriefCam Syndex Pro with Milestone XProtect VMS, adding that after the initial solution certification of the integrated solution, there are annual options for re-certification when Milestone or the partner launches a new product version. "The best part of this integration is that the BriefCam application is located directly inside the XProtect Smart Client it's very easy to integrate, and one BriefCam installation can be connected to multiple Milestone systems." Full configuration and performance data is available in the BriefCam Listing on the Milestone Solution Finder website: certification report. Gavish will be leading a panel at Secured Cities on Transforming Surveillance Video from Cost Burden to Value-added Asset, on Tuesday, November 15, 1:00PM, Room: San Jacinto 2. About BriefCam BriefCam develops and delivers Video Synopsis solutions, empowering organizations to validate their investment in video by gaining value from video-data across all levels of organizations, maximizing security, operations and business insights. About Milestone Systems Milestone Systems is a global industry leader in open platform IP video management software, founded in 1998 and now operating as a stand-alone company in the Canon Group. Milestone technology is easy to manage, reliable and proven in thousands of customer installations, providing flexible choices in network hardware and integrations with other systems. Sold through a community of partners in more than 100 countries, Milestone solutions help organizations to manage risks, protect people and assets, optimize processes and reduce costs. For more information, see: www.milestonesys.com. For news and viewpoints from the Milestone open platform video community, visit The Milestone Post. Press Contact: Rachel Neiman Director of Marketing Communications, BriefCam Ltd. Email: [email protected] Cell: +972 54 215 2653 | Tel: +972-2-5337228 Press Contact: Courtney Dillon Pedersen, Corporate Communications Manager, Americas/APAC Tel. +1 (503) 719-3439 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160908/405543LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/briefcams-syndex-certified-again-by-milestone-systems-300362135.html SOURCE BriefCam [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] RiskSense Executive to Discuss Emerging Approaches to Cyber Risk Management at Wall Street Technology Association Event RiskSense, Inc., the pioneer and market leader in pro-active cyber risk management, today announced that Torsten George, Vice President of Global Marketing and Products, will discuss how financial institutions can take advantage of innovations in cyber threat detection and advanced security analytics to reduce cyber risk across a growing attack surface that includes the network, applications, databases, cloud, mobile, IoT, and third-party vendor integrations. WHO: Torsten George is Vice President of Global Marketing and Products at pro-active cyber risk management software vendor RiskSense. He has more than 20 years of global information security experience and has held executive level positions with Agiliance (now RiskVision), ActivIdentity (now part of HID Global, an ASSA ABLOY Group brand), Digital Link, and Everdream Corporation (now part of Dell (News - Alert)). He is a frequent speaker on cyber security and risk management strategies worldwide and regularly provides commentary and byline articles for media outlets, covering topics such as data breaches, incident response best practices, and cyber security strategies. Other panelists: Brian Alexander, Sales Director, Americas for Cloud and Automation, BMC John Checco, Senior Information Security Advisor, Bank of America Thomas Doughty, VP-Chief Information Security Officer, Prudential Financial George Grzyb, Nexum Charles Kaplan, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology WHAT: WSTA Emerging Cybersecurity Technologies Panel Discussion http://www.wsta.org/events/event/critical-and-emerging-technologies-2/#agenda WHEN: Thursday, November 17, 2016 from 8:00 AM - 10:30 AM EST WHERE: The Yale Club of New York City 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 HOW: To schedule a conversation with Torsten George, contact Marc Gendron at [email protected] or +1 781.237.0341. About WSTA The Wall Street Technology Association (News - Alert) (WSTA) provides financial industry technology professionals, vendors, service providers, and consultants with forums to learn from and connect with each other. The WSTA facilitates seminars and networking events where members meet and exchange ideas and best practices that assist them in effectively capitalizing on technology advances and dealing with financial industry business challenges. Founded in 1967, the WSTA is a not-for-profit association with a long history of evolving to meet the needs of its members. Follow the conversation on Twitter (News - Alert) @WSTAORG and use #WSTATech. About RiskSense RiskSense, Inc., is the pioneer and market leader in pro-active cyber risk management. The company enables enterprises and governments to reveal cyber risk, quickly orchestrate remediation, and monitor the results. This is done by unifying and contextualizing internal security intelligence, external threat data, and business criticality across a growing attack surface. The company's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) platform transforms cyber risk management into a more pro-active, collaborative, and real-time discipline. The RiskSense Platform embodies the expertise and intimate knowledge gained from real world experience in defending critical networks from the world's most dangerous cyber adversaries. By leveraging RiskSense cyber risk management solutions, organizations can significantly shorten time-to-remediation, increase operational efficiency, strengthen their security programs, heighten response readiness, reduce costs, and ultimately minimize cyber risks. For more information, please visit www.risksense.com or follow us on Twitter at @RiskSense. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005158/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 14, 2016] Lenovo Unveils New Open Innovation HPC Solutions at SuperComputing 2016 Celebrating its success in high-performance computing (HPC), Lenovo (SEHK:0992) today announced the completion of its second phase deployment at CINECA - a world class HPC research resource with the capabilities to become a leading artificial intelligence compute resource. The company also strengthened its position in the high performance computing space maintaining its #1 HPC vendor ranking in China while becoming the #2 vendor in the world in terms of total systems included on the TOP500 list. Committed to HPC innovation, Lenovo (News - Alert) also today unveils a new generation of solutions that extend HPC benefits to a wider spectrum of users than ever before. The new offerings include: Antilles- an OpenSource Graphical User Interface (GUI), that simplifies system management, and the new Lenovo Distributed Storage Solution (DSS)- a new family of Scalable Storage Infrastructure solutions for file and object storage. The Next Phase of CINECA: Game Changing Technology Now Online for Researchers Phase one of CINECA, an academic consortium, was completed in May 2016 - coming in at 1.7 PFLOPs, which at the time was the largest Intel (News - Alert) Omni-Path Fabric system in the world. Lenovo and CINECA are pleased to announce the delivery and installation of phase two, a 3,600 node Intel Xeon Phi processor (formerly code-named "Knights Landing") system which is interconnected with 100Gb Intel Omni-Path fabric - delivering 6.2PFLOPs of performance. Dubbed Marconi by CINECA, the installation is expected to be one of the largest SuperComputers in Europe and will be online for researchers to transform data into new insight across such disciplines as physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, and urban planning. Leveraging the Lenovo maintained OpenSource Extreme Cluster/Cloud Administration Toolkit (xCat) for system management, CINECA's Marconi system houses the core tools which will enable it to become one of the premier machine learning and artificial intelligence systems in the world. Commitment to OpenHPC: Expanding the Benefits of Open Source to More Users One year after joining OpenHPC as a founding member, Lenovo's submission of an xCAT/Confluent based OpenHPC recipe for system management and provisioning was accepted by the consortium. Lenovo is also announcing its latest Open Source contribution with the initial delivery of an easy to use GUI named Antilles. The graphical web portal sits atop of a powerful Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) software suite bundling best-of-breed OpenSource software enhanced with Lenovo configurations, plug-ins and scripts to enable a ready to use software stack. Antilles was designed to run and manage HPC, big data and workflows on a virtualized infrastructure optimally and transparently, adjusting dynamically to the user and datacenter. It has been architected to help more users adopt OpenHPC by lowering the required expertise needed to deploy and benefit from these powerful ools. Once a domain of only the largest HPC users, the benefits of open source are being unlocked for users of all sizes. Expanding the Lenovo Storage Portfolio: Foundation for Dense Scalable File Storage Furthermore, Lenovo announced a new high-density disk array system for its growing storage portfolio - the Lenovo D3284 JBOD. The new 5U 84 disk enclosure, provides high performance 12Gb capability with hot swap SSD and HDDs. The resilient ultra-dense D3284 delivers massive scalability for a range of data storage needs including Software Defined file storage, video surveillance, and backup and archive. Leveraging the new JBOD as well as the existing Lenovo Server and SAN portfolio, Lenovo introduces Distributed Storage Solution (DSS) a new family of Scalable Infrastructure solutions for scale out file storage targeting high performance and data intensive environments. The first release will be Lenovo Distributed Storage Solution for IBM Spectrum (News - Alert) Scale (DSS-G), a software defined storage implementation leveraging IBM Spectrum Scale RAID. DSS-G will support up to 670 HDDs in a single distributed RAID array enabling users to start with installation from as small as 22 disks and scale out to over 6 Petabytes by simply adding additional JBODs and disks. The new architecture speeds recovery times by 25X over the current solution and is based on a 20-year proven software stack that will deliver up to 40 GBytes per second of performance. DSS-G combines high storage density and I/O performance with superior availability, reliability and resiliency for scale out file, parallel file sharing workloads, video streaming, and private or hybrid cloud, storage. DSS-G availability is expected in 1H 2017. While the new JBOD and DSS expand the portfolio for extreme density and performance Lenovo is also proud to announce that is has become the newest reseller of Intel Enterprise Edition for Lustre* software, providing clients choices in file systems and topologies. Lustre is now available on the current family of Lenovo S Series mid-range SAN offerings. Showcasing Global Breadth and Flexibility to Deliver HPC in all Fields and Sizes As a result of Lenovo's commitment to its client success we are pleased to share that we have once again taken a greater share on the TOP500 list. After just its fifth time on the TOP500 list, Lenovo systems now power over 100 of the largest SuperComputers on the planet holding the #2 position in the TOP500 in terms of quantity of listing. The TOP500 list includes clients across all geographies and workloads in both research and business - Lenovo is uniquely positioned to support the unique needs of the world's largest HPC clients as well as the capabilities and focus needed to make HPC accessible for smaller departmental HPC users. Those attending SC16 can learn more about Lenovo HPC along with these products and solutions by visiting the Lenovo booth at 2643. The booth will be open throughout the show. About Lenovo Lenovo (SEHK:0992) (Pink Sheets:LNVGY) is a $45 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode Yoga brands), workstations, servers, storage, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Moto brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (News - Alert) (@Lenovo) or visit us at www.lenovo.com. Quote from Scott Tease, Executive Director, HPC Lenovo Data Center Group "Growing workload diversity, further optimization of existing workloads as well as the dawn of new workloads, like Machine Learning, is resulting in a resurgence of highly specialized technologies. Lenovo's customer centric strategy of co-designing solutions in partnership with our clients is driving strong global momentum across many disciplines and with clients of all sizes. Gaining a deep understanding of their goals, constraints, time lines and budgets is the only way to design a truly optimized solution for each customer's individual needs." Quote from Sanzio Bassini, HPC Director, CINECA "We started off the Marconi project with a very definite idea of what our 'ideal' solution would be - and Lenovo met all our requirements. We are especially pleased with the energy-efficiency and the cost-effectiveness of the Lenovo solution, which were key differentiators. These, in fact, will enable CINECA's Marconi system to expand their support to innovation in an environmentally conscious and economically affordable way, while meeting the ever-growing requirements of public and private researchers alike." Quote from Bina Hallman, VP, Offering Management Executive IBM (News - Alert) Software Defined Storage "IBM Spectrum Scale is an important part of IBM's Spectrum Suite of software defined storage solutions, which provide our partners with confidence reliability and security. As an ecosystem that provides client choice, including cloud and innovative commodity solutions, IBM Spectrum Scale provides Lenovo a robust solution that helps brings new platforms to market quickly." Intel and Xeon Phi are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005898/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Josephine Baker Josephine Baker was born on June 3, 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson, both Black entertainers, had a vaudeville song-and-dance act, playing wherever they could get work. The relationship between her parents did not last long and Eddie abandoned both Carrie and Josephine after living with Carrie for about a year. Josephine developed her street smarts as her playground was the yards of Union station. She was often hungry and always poorly dressed. Her mother later gave Josephine to a wealthy white family in St. Louis were the young girl worked as a live-in domestic housekeeper. In this position she was often abused. As an example, the prominent family once burned Baker's hands when she put too much soap in the laundry. Baker ran away from this family and lived in the slums of St. Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters and scavenging for food in garbage cans. To obtain money for a meager existence, Baker danced on street corners for the few coins that she could collect. As a result of Baker's talent for both singing and dancing, she was recruited for the St. Louis Chorus vaudeville show at the age of 15. She then headed to New York City and landed as a chorus member in a couple of hugely successful Broadway shows. Baker had an opportunity to travel to Paris, France, where she was an instant success for her erotic dancing and for appearing practically nude on stage. After a short time, Baker was the most successful American entertainer working in France. In fact, Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw." Prior to the time Germany would occupy France, the allies recruited Baker to spy on the occupying German military. She would collect what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe, visiting neutral nations such as Portugal and some in South America, carrying information for transmission to England. In 1951, Baker was invited back to the United States for a nightclub engagement in Miami. After winning a public battle over desegregating the club's audience, Baker followed up her sold-out run at the club with a national tour. Due to Baker's experience with discrimination at America's nightclubs where she entertained, she would become a civil rights activist during the 1950s. She worked with the NAACP, and as a result of her involvement, Baker was presented with life membership by this organization. Josephine Baker had a very successful professional life, and while living in Paris she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on April 12, 1975. Upon her death she received a full Roman Catholic funeral and was the only American-born woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral. MATTOON (JG-TC) -- A local man has been arrested for allegedly stealing and burning two trucks, and for allegedly crashing a third stolen vehicle while being pursued by the police. A Mattoon Police Department press release reported that Kaden R. Deadman, 19, of Mattoon was arrested at 5 p.m. Friday in rural Coles County. He was initially charged with possession of a stolen motor vehicle, aggravated arson, aggravated fleeing and eluding, and driving under the influence. The charges allege that Deadman allegedly stole a truck in Mattoon and then burned it in Charleston on Nov. 10, and then stole another truck in Charleston and burned it in Mattoon. Deadman then allegedly stole a third vehicle in Mattoon and fled from the Illinois State Police prior to crashing that vehicle and being taken into custody on Friday. Deadman was taken to the Coles County jail. MATTOON (JG-TC) -- The City Council is scheduled tonight to consider proposed annual property and casualty insurance and workers compensation coverage for the city. The total cost of this insurance coverage, provided by various insurance companies, would increase from the current level of $805,285 to approximately $907,000 for Dec. 1, 2016 to Dec. 1, 2017. City Administrator Kyle Gill said the total cost of the city's insurance coverage typically increases each year, but the worker's compensation insurance provided by the Illinois Public Risk Fund is increasing at higher than usual amount from $565,490 to $649,819 per year. The council is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. tonight in City Hall, 208 N. 19th St. Other items on the council's meeting agenda include: -- Authorizing agreements with the Coles County Regional Planning & Development Commission for up to $10,000 in technical assistance services and up to $3,000 in Mattoon Revolving Loan Fund administration services from Dec. 1, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2017. -- Hearing a presentation from Doehring, Winders & Co. about the 2016 city audit. -- Acknowledging the retirement of Anita Kaufman after more than 13 years of service with the city. A Commitment To Community: Operation HOPE Appoints D. Bryan Jordan To Executive Board Global financial dignity and economic empowerment leader, Operation HOPE, Inc., recently named First Horizon National Corporation Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, D. Bryan Jordan, to its executive board of directors. D. Bryan Jordan is not only a first class and highly respected leader, who has spearheaded impressive growth for an institution with 150 years of history in Tennessee alone, he is also one who genuinely cares about, and is engaged in this thing we call community, said Operation HOPE, Inc. Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Hope Bryant. First Horizon National Corporation is one of the 40 largest publicly traded banking organizations in the United States in terms of asset size, with $25 billion in assets and 4,200 employees. First Horizons two major brands First Tennessee and FTN Financial provide customers with a broad range of products and services. First Tennessee provides retail and commercial banking services throughout Tennessee and other selected markets and is the largest bank headquartered in the state of Tennessee. FTN Financial is an industry leader in fixed income sales, trading, and strategies for institutional clients in the U.S. and abroad. Before joining First Horizon, Jordan was chief financial officer at Regions Financial Corp. His experience also includes positions at Wachovia (formerly First Union Corp.) and KPMG. Jordan is an active member of the community and serves on numerous local and national boards. He is currently chair of Memphis Tomorrow, the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America and Youth Villages. He also serves on the board of AutoZone Inc., the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the Tennessee Bankers Association and HOPE global board. First Tennessee Bank and Operation HOPE have partnered to impact the community by equipping people with the financial tools and training required to ensure their financial wellbeing through HOPE Inside First Tennessee Bank locations across the state. Since 2014, HOPE Inside offices at First Tennessee branches have provided credit counseling to more than 2,400 participants through the 700 Credit Score Communities Program, which provides education on budgeting, debt management and building wealth. View Full Release. Lincoln, West Gate Bank Mortgage is proud to announce Bob Rutan was named 2016 Lender of the Year by the Nebraska Mortgage Association (NMA) at the NMA 2016 Annual Fall Conference on September 22, 2016. The Lender of the Year award recognizes mortgage lending professionals who have demonstrated strong dedication to the mortgage industry and who are involved in community and homeownership initiatives. Rutan is the senior vice president of West Gate Bank Mortgage. He joined West Gate Bank in 2011 with over 20 years of mortgage experience, including underwriting and marketing. Rutan has been an active member of the NMA, serving as president in 2015. "We're pleased to have Bob's efforts in the industry recognized by the NMA," said Mark Hansen, president of West Gate Bank Mortgage. "West Gate Bank Mortgage continues to excel as a result of Bob's outstanding leadership. With local decision-making, loan processing and servicing, we offer our mortgage clients top-notch service from our team, which positions us to continue our growth in this department." About West Gate Bank West Gate Bank is a full-service community bank focused on Lincoln. Stop by any of our seven branches to experience the local community bank difference and see how Lincoln's Bank can serve you. Free checking, free gifts and a buy back program for your unused checks and debit cards. Visit www.westgatebank.com for more information. Goodwill's electronics store at Cotner Boulevard and O Street will close this weekend and move to the Goodwill location at 17th and Sumner streets. Joanne Pickrell, CEO of Goodwill Industries Serving Southeast Nebraska Inc., said the store lost its lease after more than five years in what was formerly an Alltel Wireless store. Pickrell said the owner of the property gave Goodwill several months' notice, and the store did not have to move out right away, but she said the organization decided to go ahead and move now. She said the decision was made to move to an existing Goodwill location rather than trying to find a new site, and the 17th and Sumner location was chosen because it one of the organization's larger stores and has good neighborhood traffic. Pickrell said the location will have all the same items the electronics store had, which in addition to computers and other electronics includes books and sporting goods. The Cotner and O store will close Nov. 21. The 17th and Sumner location will close Nov. 23 and then reopen as the electronics store on Dec. 1. The closest regular Goodwill retail store to the 17th and Sumner location is at 1731 O St., about a mile away. Pickrell said Goodwill moved its Job Connection office into that store last week. The owner of the Cotner and O building declined comment about plans for the site. Pickrell said it's her understanding that the building will be torn down and a new one built for a new tenant. Principal Mark Larson got to Lincoln High School the day after a divisive, difficult presidential election planning to do his regular morning announcements over the intercom. Before long, he changed his mind. It was clear, he said, things were different Wednesday morning. When students began to enter the building there was a palpable tension, a palpable anxiety in the air, he said. You could feel it. Students were raw yesterday, emotionally. More than any other day that I can remember in my career. At the states most diverse high school, where students come from 50 countries and speak 34 languages, they were looking to adults for answers. What does the election -- one where the candidate elected president built his campaign on building a wall on the Mexican border, deporting all undocumented immigrants and banning Muslim immigrants -- mean for them? Larson already had sent staff a message encouraging them to stress to students that school was a safe place for all of them. After feeling the tension in the building, he decided to do more. He shut his office door, he thought about the conversations hed had with students and looked out the window at the statue of Lincoln Highs mascot: the Links. A short time later, he got on the intercom for the daily announcements -- about lunch and clubs and upcoming events -- and then he continued. I know there are many of us who are thinking about the results of the election last night, he said. I feel compelled to speak on that for a moment. You go to a place that since 1871 has had a history of being one of the most loving, welcoming and accepting places in our city. That does not change today. He talked about what the mascot -- the Links -- represented: tradition, excellence, diversity and unity. He told students how proud the school was of that diversity and unity, of a place where everyone feels safe and welcome. Upstairs, in Susan Hertzlers class of English Language Learners, it was quiet. Some students cried. Larsons message was a place to start, to let students ask questions, express their worries. Would they have to leave? When? Hertzler said she was honest: that she didnt know, but that there were people -- not just here but nationally -- who supported them. At Culler Middle School, Dr. Chandra Diaz-Debose said the atmosphere was somber. Students showed up to her class early, and they came to her at lunch with similar questions. I felt like I had to give them an avenue to speak, she said. At Belmont Elementary, a first-grade student in Laurie Martinez's English Language Learner class raised her hand. How soon am I going to have to go back? she asked. Martinez said she was not prepared for first-graders to be worried about the election. "I was naive,"she said. She told them there were lots of people in the country that wanted to protect them, that they should be worrying about what to have for lunch, who they should sit next to, maybe what theyd do when they got home. Those are the concerns first-graders should have, not going back to the country they came from, she said. You know that saying, You could hear a pin drop? Well, you could yesterday. She pulled two long tables together, had all the students sit together. She read a story. They talked. East High media specialist Jane Raglin Holt said library staff had deep conversations with several students. Some needed comfort, others clarification. There were impromptu civic lessons on the three branches of government, of the checks and balances, the importance of voting, the legitimacy of the electoral process. School was really difficult yesterday, for kids and adults alike, she said. Lot of folks, I suspect, thought about not coming, myself included. But when I got there and saw the kids that I get to see every morning before school, I knew how important it was for all of us to be there. It was a quiet, strange, tiptoeing-around kind of morning. Incidents popped up on social media Thursday: a 15-year-old Asian American student in Lincoln who told his mom someone yelled You dont belong here as he walked home from school. Another Lincoln high school student called a dirty Mexican. Across the district, teachers and counselors countered the divisiveness of the election by stressing that school was a caring, accepting place where people show concern for each other, said Brenda Leggiadro, the districts counseling coordinator. There was a full range of emotion at schools, students who supported both candidates, those excited by the results, those worried and anxious. Many students were just curious -- what all the talk of change really meant, she said. We had some reminders about how this is a great time to think about how we can be good winners and good losers, to disagree and be respectful. Oscar Rios Pohirieth, LPS cultural specialist who works with the districts 23 bilingual liaisons, said he tried to help students focus on remaining productive and proactive, despite the uncertainty. While the election created uncertainty, so do many other life events, he said. The message, he said, was part of the work the district has been doing -- unrelated to the election -- to devise ways to help students who suffer such "cultural anxiety." At Lincoln High, Larson asked five students to read a part of his announcement in five different languages. "Let Lincoln High be an example to our city and our nation how to respect and care for one another. You are a Link. We are all Links. Unity." Neighborhood advocates are lining up early to oppose a proposal to reduce the required distance between businesses that sell packaged liquor and neighboring homes, schools and churches. The current regulation has served neighborhoods well and has helped protect homes from having liquor sales right next door, Bob Reeves wrote in a letter to the Lincoln City Council opposing any change in what is often called the 100-foot separation rule. A coalition of 27 neighborhood associations originally endorsed the 100-foot spacing requirement and believes it helps protect the quality of life in neighborhoods, Shawn Ryba of NeighborWorks Lincoln said in a letter to the council. Lincoln attorney Mark Hunzeker is asking the city to reduce the distance to 50 feet. He is representing Walgreens, which has a store at 48th and O streets that is 60 feet from a residential property and thus cannot get an off-sale liquor license. Hunzeker said his proposal would also make the separation rule uniform across all business districts. Neighborhood advocates are opposing the proposed change well before the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission takes it up on Nov. 30. The proposal will eventually go to the City Council. We want to get out in front of it, Ryba said about the early letters to the council. A large coalition of neighborhood groups proposed the non-negotiable 100-foot rule, which was adopted by the city in 2004, he said. The citys complicated rules allow liquor licenses in the downtown area without any distance requirements and bans businesses that sell liquor from residential districts. The city also allows restaurants that serve alcohol to be within 25 feet of homes, churches and other like uses. But the strict 100-foot distance rule applies to businesses with off-sale liquor licenses in smaller shopping centers. In addition to homes, churches and schools, the businesses must be at least 100 feet from parks or state mental institutions -- no waivers allowed. The smaller business districts are generally in older areas like Uni Place, Havelock and College View, and are often close to houses. The city allows greater leeway when a business with an off-sale liquor license is in a larger, suburban or regional shopping center, measuring the distance differently, said city planner Brian Will. The larger suburban centers are generally oriented inward with their backs to residential areas. And they usually are buffered from the surrounding areas by setbacks and landscaping. When the City Council changed the ordinance 12 years ago, it made the 100-foot separation rule absolute for these smaller shopping areas. At that time, Will said, the council did not want to be in a position of deciding each liquor license case by case. That no-waiver provision creates a problem for the Walgreens at 48th and O, where Hunzeker believes a waiver would make sense. A high retaining wall physically separates the commercial property and neighboring homes to the south, said Hunzeker. In the past, he said, the council could grant a waiver if there were mitigating, and that was the result of bad policy being put into the zoning ordinance. Hunzeker said all he is trying to do is mitigate some of the harsh results of the 100-foot separation rule and the inequity between different kinds of business districts. But neighborhood advocates say they are trying to protect their homes and neighborhoods. There are many neighborhoods like mine that are working hard to create a better quality of life for ourselves and our neighbors," wrote Joe Shaw, who lives in the Malone Neighborhood. "We need improvements. We need quality retail businesses that give added value to our neighborhoods, not businesses that have the potential to make it worse, he wrote in a letter to the council. Three Culler Middle School teachers stood on the Nebraska Capitols north steps Saturday holding signs. One was in Spanish, and a second sign adjacent to it translated: The wall that separates us only exists in the minds of the ignorant. The signs referred to President-elect Donald Trumps proposal to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. The wall has been talked about as a literal thing, but its also figurative, said teacher Jessica Nickum as she held the sign in Spanish. My idea of the wall is that it only exists for people who live their lives in fear and are scared about the things they dont understand. People driving by laid on their horns as they passed, some waved. One man in a truck rolled his window down to yell Get a job hippies! Go Donald Trump! at the peaceful crowd of about 100 people. He can have his feelings and thoughts, but this whole election has divided our country, teacher Sherri Robinson said about the heckler. We have to be about positive change. The event, called "We Stand United" on Facebook, was just that: a space for people upset about the surprising outcome of the presidential election to gather, grieve and meditate on positive, peaceful change. The speakers disagreed with Donald Trump's past statements about women, immigrants, refugees, LGBTQ community, Muslims and other minorities as reason to mourn the news of his election. The gathering was planned through a Facebook event page, which was shared with around 2,600 people. I wanted to facilitate a space for like-minded people to come together and connect with each other in a positive way to facilitate conversation and meet each other and sit in peace, said event organizer Kjerstin Egger. After Egger and other speakers discussed the need to reject bigotry, xenophobia, Islamaphobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny," the group sat together for a guided meditation and sound healing by VJ Herbert, a sound vibration practitioner at Empowered Healing LLC. Herbert used gongs, crystal sing bowls and chimes, along with his voice to relax and soothe the audience. Andira Losh walked around the capitol steps handing out safety pins and Kleenex for people who were either sniffling from the brisk November weather or crying. The safety pins she handed out were a nod to the national movement to show solidarity. The idea was created in the wake of racist actions occurring in the U.K. after the country voted to leave the European Union. The pin signifies an ally and a safe space for people who are scared of being targeted based off of their race, religion, sex or gender. Losh says the election has been difficult because Donald Trump ran a campaign essentially making us unsafe. She says her community is going through a process of collective mourning. She is a transgender woman married to a woman and says she takes Trumps past statements about the LGBTQ community personally. Its disheartening to feel a sense of progress only to have a backlash and feel so many people standing up and feeling comfortable in their hate in this country, she said. But while some people were closing their eyes for the meditations, others were feeling frustrated that there wasnt more of a call to action at the event. I think the luxury of coming together to grieve is an expression of privilege, said attendee Andrew Swenson, who noted that the gathering was largely white, despite the vocal support for minorities. What Im afraid of, as white people, we grieve and then we feel better about ourselves. If we have the opportunity to talk to a bunch of people at events (like these) lets not waste it by not talking about steps for action. But others feel like the grieving process and self-care is a necessary step is important for people to get to the stage where they can be actors in movements for change. I think after we grieve and take this space we need to organize and be an ally and advocate for people who feel in danger, said Kelly Seacrest while holding a sign that said All are welcome. When you come from a place of privilege, you have a duty and responsibility to fight for those who are being actively oppressed. I feel like its very important to start out from a place of love and compassion action is very important but first we need to realize that people are grieving and hurt and we need to come together, said Losh. The three Culler teachers holding signs didnt engage in the meditation aspect of the event. Instead, they faced the street, waving their signs quietly. Seacrest, one of the teachers, says she and her husband were scared when they learned that Donald Trump is the new president-elect and even had fleeting thoughts about moving to Canada. But then I went into my classroom and thought, I cant leave them behind because there are so many people who cant (leave), Seacrest said. When the meditation and sound healing ended, Egger closed the gathering with a heartfelt message of unity. The crowd huddled together and joined hands. Together they repeated after Egger. They echoed, I stand by you, I stand for you, I stand with you, we stand united." A political earthquake shook the nation and the world on Tuesday when Donald Trump shocked all the prognosticators and won the presidency. Those same pundits are digging through the wreckage of their predictions to try and figure out why Trump was able to prove them wrong, but to me, the answer was on full display over two years ago during a chance meeting I had with Trump at his New York office. In the summer of 2014, Trump asked me to stop by his office the next time I was in Manhattan. Later that summer, I dropped by Trump Towers with my daughter Sarah Maria. When we walked into his office, he was sitting behind his desk holding a copy of my book Blue Collar Conservatives that I had published that spring. The first thing he said was, I read your book. I laughed. The hell you read my book. Trump shot back, I did; it was great! So I quizzed him on the message in my book that the great middle of America was hollowing out as a result of big government policies that were helping the elites but leaving blue-collar families behind. And to my great surprise, Trump passed my test with flying colors. We discussed the problems facing Middle America specifically the implications of unfettered globalization on American manufacturing and its effect on wages for blue-collar families. The billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump not only got it, he was as upset as I was that these families were being left behind. He said he might run for president and, if he did, he wanted to take that message to the American voter and did he ever. You saw the fruits of Trumps labor on Election Day in Democratic strongholds like Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania that were once reliably union Democrats and overwhelmingly took a chance on a brash billionaire who spoke their language. These families have been told globalization and unfettered free trade should come at the cost of the American worker, and they are sick and tired of their jobs being shipped overseas. They are told we need to abandon the rule of law and allow open borders because amnesty is good for economic growth, but voters recognized the simple laws of supply and demand dictate that the more the labor force grows, the lower the resulting equilibrium salary. But now it is time for President-elect Trump to deliver for these families who put their faith in him. This means prioritizing the American worker at every step and fulfilling his campaign promises. To not only kill the Trans Pacific Partnership once and for all, but enforce existing trade laws and negotiate new bilateral trade agreements that include enforcement mechanisms to ensure our trading partners are held accountable. And yes, to provide a modest increase in the minimum wage to help hardworking families, particularly those in the most rural areas that put their faith in the prospect of a President Trump. As we all saw this fall, the double-digit increases in health-care premiums hit community after community across Pennsylvania. So challenge number one is tackling Obamacare. This is a promise Republicans have universally made in campaign after-campaign since 2010. Republicans must follow through with their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Build the wall can no longer just be a campaign chant. Securing our border must be a reality to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Just as important, we must limit the flow of low-wage workers coming into this country, depressing wages for working Americans. Wage earners in America havent seen a real raise in 20 years, so immigration legislation must begin by ending chain migration and the visa lottery system immediately. This is why blue-collar conservatives stood up and, for the first time in 28 years, a Republican presidential candidate won the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. For all the talk of the second year of the woman or the rise of Hispanic voters, it was Trumps blue-collar revolution that upended the establishment and won him the White House. Donald Trump has realigned the political landscape and created a YUGE Republican victory. The Republican majority must join him to deliver for working families. If they do, believe me, it will be great! So, the Mayor wants to make Lincoln a happier place to live ("Making Lincoln a happier place," Nov. 6). He should start by not raising the costs to live here. Since he has been in office, we have had a one-quarter cent sales tax increase on all utilities and goods, a city dividend added to our electric bills, a 2 percent tax on restaurant, car rental and hotel services, a waste water bond, increased property tax, increased fees on City services, a 1 percent sales tax for Southpointe and one proposed for a downtown development. With LES wanting a rate increase and home prices rising, Lincoln is fast becoming an expensive place to live. City Hall provides a gravy train for the wealthy and all who want to hop on for a free ride. Watchdogs has examined the records of the Urban Development Department and found misuse of the law. We have notified state senators who agree we have big problems here. The mayor and his cohorts cater to wealthy young professionals who will transform the city. Such has been expressed at public hearings. The government refuses to see that this group is only a small section of our population and retired and low income residents make up the greatest portion. The defeat of the Southeast Community College bond issue finally says that taxpayers are waking up and that they had had enough of supporting only a few citizens ("SCC plan to expand, improve fails big," Nov. 9). Jane Kinsey, Spokesperson for Watchdogs of Lincoln Government, Lincoln A bull elk was illegally shot and left to die in a wheat field in the Panhandle over the weekend, state game officials say. The elk, believed to have been killed overnight Saturday, was found southeast of Crawford, according to a news release from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. A pronghorn and two mule deer, all does, were also found dead recently near Hemingford. In October, a cow elk was killed and left to rot near a road northeast of Valentine, and four buck pronghorns three without heads were found south of Kimball, followed by additional pronghorn carcasses. Rewards are being offered for information leading to conviction of people responsible for the animals' deaths. Informants can contact the Nebraska Wildlife Crime Stoppers program at 800-742-7627 and may remain anonymous. State regulators have set the deadline for Whiteclay's four beer stores to reapply for their liquor licenses. Those four stores collectively sell the equivalent of millions of cans of beer each year on the doorstep of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol is banned. They were ordered to reapply after a Sheridan County official told lawmakers the county lacked adequate resources to enforce the law in Whiteclay. Nebraska by Heart is part of a statewide celebration of the 150th anniversary of Nebraska and has been endorsed by the Nebraska Sesquicentennial Commission. This most recently announced public art project is similar to the bikes of Tour de Lincoln and the light bulbs of Illuminating Lincoln: Lighthouse. Nebraska by Heart will feature 6-foot fiberglass hearts (and in some cases steel and bronze hearts) and promises to be a monumental, bigger-than-life component of Nebraskas 150th anniversary celebration. Nebraska has 93 counties. Therefore, this statewide projects goal is to see 93 6-foot hearts sponsored and exhibited May through September 2017 near or on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. The following testimonials of some of the individuals and businesses that have sponsored an artist indicate the immense pride Nebraskans feel for our great state and the level of interest, support and excitement generated by Nebraska by Heart. We are about halfway to our goal of 93 sponsorships and feel confident that because of the love Nebraskans feel for our great state, the goal of 93 6-foot hearts is well within the realm of becoming a reality. Chris and Mark Whitehead In 2017, Nebraska will be celebrating its 150th anniversary its Sesquicentennial! Because of the importance of this statewide celebration, Chris and I are supporting Nebraska by Heart, a project of real magnitude featuring 6-foot heart sculptures extending from a base created in the shape of Nebraska symbolic of Nebraska as the heartland of our country. Nebraska by Heart will express visually the tremendous pride we feel about our AMAZING state! For that reason, we hope you join us as Patrons of an artist for Nebraska by Heart and ultimately the 150th anniversary of Nebraska. Kathie Svoboda As a widow whose marriage (just short of 63 years) was broken by the death of my elderly yet charming and loving husband, Bill, I wanted to honor his memory. With Bills forebearers coming to Nebraska before statehood and a project symbolizing Nebraskans love for our prairie state and its 150th anniversary in 2017, sponsoring an artist seemed a perfect way to honor Nebraska and show my love for Bill. Mary and Frank Dupuis As retired Lincoln Public School teachers, we are proud to support Nebraska by Heart, as this is an opportunity to show our love for Nebraska and what the Midwestern spirit stands for in Americas Heartland. We believe art is an expression of our humanity and a way to show our feelings across time, language and cultures. Being a sponsor of Nebraska by Heart is our way of supporting the humanities and the very talented people of Nebraska. Mary and Jim Abel The Abel Foundations mission is to provide financial support to nonprofit organizations, throughout the state, where Nebco and affiliated companies have operations. As lifelong proud Nebraskans, Mary and I are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of Nebraskas 150th anniversary celebration by supporting Nebraska by Heart and sponsoring an artists proposal. Melissa Folsom, Lincoln Alumnae President, Kappa Kappa Gamma The Sigma Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma is honored to be the first sorority at the University of Nebraska to sponsor and display a beautiful Nebraska by Heart sculpture in front of our historic home here on the UNL campus! The Nebraska Kappas are proud of our pioneering role, past and present, and of the 3,000 young women who have lived here as sisters, learning to dream big together before going on to do amazing things. As the first sorority established at the young university, we also wanted to be the first to get behind this wonderful project, strongly supporting Nebraska artists and celebrating our states 150th birthday in 2017! Julie and Jim Pittenger When I first read about the new public art project celebrating Nebraska's 150th anniversary, I have to admit that the Sadie Dog Fund was one of the beneficiaries that caught my eye, as Ive always had a soft spot for anything that helps animals. With that in mind, Jim and I attended the First Friday reception to learn a bit more about the project, as well as Hope College (a project of Boys Hope Girls Hope), which is also a beneficiary. We were so impressed with everything about Nebraska by Heart, and, most of all, the amazing designs submitted by Nebraska artists. As a result, Jim and I wanted to sponsor an artists vision and be a part of the whole Nebraska by Heart project. We loved seeing the bicycles and lightbulbs around town and look forward to being a part of this very meaningful celebration of Nebraskas 150th anniversary! To learn more about Nebraska by Heart, and sponsoring an artist and one of the 6-foot hearts, go to nebraskabyheart.org. Questions? Contact Liz Shea-McCoy, project director, at 402-430-5923 or liz_shea@windstream.net. RACINE The racial tension in classrooms and in the city of Racine continues to worry residents after the election of Donald Trump for president of the United States. Fernanda Jimenez, a junior at Horlick High School and member of Youth Empowered in the Struggle, said at a meeting Sunday night that she began hearing racist language being used after Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump, a Republican. During school I would see kids walking around the hallway screaming Trump won. Now all you Mexicans can go back to where you came from, Jimenez said. They would say it as a joke. But it wasnt a joke to her. They would laugh about it and say It was nice meeting you, now youre going back to Mexico. That happened to me, Jimenez said. Theres a lot of students at Horlick High School that could be undocumented and I dont know it or no one knows of it its really hard right now in the schools. During the campaign, Trump spoke openly about being aggressive when it came to immigration and deportation. Jimenez herself is an undocumented immigrant but is protected from deportation because of the Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that affects children brought to the country illegally by their parents. Its sort of uncomfortable to tell people Im undocumented, Jimenez said. Its something thats your whole life, you live with it every day. So if you tell someone, youre putting yourself in a very dangerous spot. At the community meeting, organized by Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant activist group, residents were able to come together, reassure each other and voice their concerns with local elected officials. The group strategized about how to go forward during Trumps administration by collaborating with different organizations and becoming more informed on immigration law. Support from mayor Racine Mayor John Dickert attended the forum in between two other events. This city will protect people who are being discriminated against, Dickert said emphasizing over and over that the city will support immigrants. Dickert took some impromptu questions from the audience from residents who pressed him on what the city was going to do if new laws came into place, or if old laws are changed. Ill be honest with you, I dont know what theyre going to do, Dickert told the room. When I came on board, the federal government was going into peoples houses whether they committed a crime or not; we contacted the Department of Justice and got it stopped. Now I dont know if this president or this Department of Justice is going to listen to us. Valeria Ruiz, an adult who works as a youth organizer for Voces de La Frontera in Racine, said the purpose of the event is to inform the community and provide resources that might be helpful in the future, such as legal documents to provide power of attorney. If something were to happen, they can say whats going to happen to their child, Ruiz said. Theres a form they can fill out in both English and Spanish. Some may doubt how much Trump can get done on the issue of immigration when he takes office. But its a concern, Ruiz said, that people are taking seriously. Were taking this very seriously because, like, for myself Im undocumented but I benefitted from DACA, Ruiz said. Even if they say Hes not serious, he cant do that, Im going to take it very seriously because it doesnt only affect myself, it affects my parents and it affects almost 11 million people. Ruiz said she qualified for DACA in 2012. It changed my life, Ruiz said. It gave me the chance to get a drivers license, to get a good-paying job. Its not a low-wage job, its a living wage where I can continue to contribute to this economy not only that, it also gave me protection from deportation. Banda affects normal life nationwide General strike enforced by Netra Bikram Chand-led CPN Maoist turned violent in various parts of the country on Sunday. Commercial banks profits jump 52pc Commercial banks recorded handsome profits in the first quarter of the current fiscal year as credit expansion took place at a relatively faster pace. Dont link polls with charter amendment CPN-UML senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal has said that elections and constitution amendment are different issues and should be dealt separately. Dozens of projects left incomplete in Rolpa Dozens of infrastructure projects in Rolpa district have been left incomplete. Dr KC on fast against new IoM dean Senior orthopedic surgeon at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital Dr Govinda KC began his tenth indefinite hunger strike on Sunday. FNCCI urges government to manage Indian currency The Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI) has urged the government to manage the Indian currencies of 500 and 1,000 denominations owned by Nepalis. Girl saved by traffic police provides tiffin to onduty officers Tiffin snacks have been distributed to traffic police who were on duty at various streets and road sections in Kathmandu valley today. Govt apathy leaves TRC in a quandary The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has not been able to proceed with complaints of conflict victims three months until its mandate expires in February. Govt decision to provide medical expense to Sujata triggers social media backlash The government decision to provide Rs five million to Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala for medical treatment of her breast cancer has triggered a backlash in the social media. Govt gives Sujata Rs 5m despite outcry In a move that has triggered a public outcry, the government on Sunday decided to provide Rs5 million to Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala for medical treatment. Govt to build fuel storage plants in all 75 districts The Ministry of Supplies has started laying the groundwork to build petroleum storage plants in all 75 districts of the country. Guru Nanak Jayanti being marked The 548th Guru Nanak Jayanti, or Gurpurab, birth of the first Sikh guru and founder of Sikhism, is being marked amidst various programmes on Monday. Lawmakers express qualm over govt decision to provide Rs 5 million to Sujata Koirala The parliamentarians from various political parties, including the major opposition CPN-UML, have expressed their disagreement with the government's decision to provide Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala Rs 5 million for the treatment of breast cancer. Lawmakers push for stronger EC Most of the lawmakers participating in a discussion on three bills related to election on Sunday backed strengthening the Election Commission to ensure timely and fair elections. NC leaders ask cadres to get focused on polls The Nepali Congress leaders have urged the party cadres to concentrate their efforts towards holding the three-tier elections which are crucial for constitution implementation. New Zealand hit by second strong quake An earthquake measuring 6.3 in magnitude has hit New Zealand's South Island, hours after an initial quake killed two people. Rautahat shooting: Cops gun down armed assailant in fire exchange An armed assailant was killed in a shootout between a criminal group and the police at Lalbakaiya River dam in Debahi-8, Rautahat on Monday morning. A police constable has been injured in the clash. Parliament continues deliberations on impeachment motion A meeting of the Legislature-Parliament on Monday continued deliberations on the motion of impeachment against Chief (now suspended) of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Lokman Singh Karki. Police intercept smugglers with 33 cows Police in Mahottari yesterday prevented 33 cows and a calf from being smuggled to India from Nepal. 'Supermoon' viewers to get closest glimpse since 1948 Skywatchers are preparing for the latest "supermoon" as Earth's satellite makes its closest approach since 1948. The divide within Invisibility of labourers in Kathmandu is compounded by their inability to negotiate with employers directly The road less travelled Dahal govt has forgotten its early promises to give credible closure to conflict-era cases Ruling Maoist-aligned students vandalise Kathmandu University VC's office A group of students aligned with UCPN (Maoist Centre), All Nepal National Independent Students Union-Revolutionary (ANNISU-R), on Monday vandalised the office of the Vice-Chancellor of Kathmandu University. Use diplomatic channel to clear confusion, FNCCI urges govt The largest umbrella body of the private sector has urged the government to use the diplomatic channel to clear the confusion over replacement of now-useless Indian currency of 500 and 1,000 denominations held by Nepalis with legal bills. Wreckage of missing ultralight recovered after a year Wreckage of an ultralight aircraft, which went missing in October last year with two persons on board, has been recovered at Machhapuchhre VDC in Kaski district. Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Rubaga South MP, Paul Kato Lubwama tells the High court that it has no powers to extend time set by Parliament, and allow Habib Buwembo file an election petition to challenge his academic qualification. This is Katos response to the application his Voter Buwembo filed out of time, seeking for 30 days to hunt for 500 signatures supporting his election petition, intended to throw Lubwama out of the 10th Parliament. His lawyers led by Asuman Basalirwa informed presiding Judge Margret Oumo Oguli that the law governing Parliamentary elections is good law, because it confirms the principal of separation of powers; therefore enlarging time with no enabling provision permitting court to do so, would be judicial legislation. He then invited Justice Oguli to be bound by the decisions of her brother justices in the High court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, who has extensively considered the same application and all came to one conclusion that time set by parliament cannot be extended. Buwembo dragged Kato to court claiming that Kato Lubwama lacks the minimum academic qualifications to be a member of parliament having failed his Uganda Certificate of Education examinations. Unknown assailants have hacked two police officers to death in Kasese district in Western Uganda. The deceased were guarding Simba Safari Camp and Tourist Hotel in Katwe sub country. According to the police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kweesi, these two officers identified as Danson Tweheyo, and Ronald Karemera were attacked by unknown assailants who hacked them to death and disappeared with two loaded guns. They also made off with two laptops and an unspecified amount of money. He says police has arrested the assistant manager of the hotel identified as Juma Thembo to help with investigations. By Damalie Mukhaye Over 100,000 students are set to sit for Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education examination which commence today across the country. The Executive Director of Uganda National Examinations Board Daniel Nokrach Odong says 104,361 students registered for the 2016 examinations. Of these 61,834 are male while 42,527 are female students. The exams will be administered from 1,887 centers. According to Nokrach, UNEB has deployed slightly over 727 scouts and about 8,000 invigilators to monitor the conduct of the examination throughout the country. This will be beefed up by about 500 Police personnel. He has notified schools, candidates, and parents against involvement in any form of malpractice warning that punitive action will be taken against culprits. The students are starting with Economics paper one and Chemistry paper Three in the morning. In the afternoon they will sit for Economics paper two. Meanwhile, this set is the last batch of exams after UCE and PLE and Odongo said that for the three levels of examinations (UCE, PLE and UACE) UNEB will have examined a total of 1,068,224 candidates By Andrei Lankov The New Yalu Bridge separates the twin cities of Sinuiju and Dandong, lying opposite each other on the Chinese and North Korean sides of the Yalu River respectively. The very existence of the bridge, however, is nowhere to be found in local Chinese media. State censors do not want a reminder of what is gradually becoming a chronic embarrassment; a living (and very expensive) symbol of the uneasy nature of Sino-North Korean relations. Over the many decades since the Korean War, commercial traffic between Sinuiju and Dandong has been serviced by a 1943 bridge originating in downtown Dandong. The narrow passageway is used by both trucks and trains. Decades of heavy use and poor maintenance have made the one-time marvel of engineering dilapidated and unreliable. The New Yalu Bridge still accounts for about two thirds of all land traffic between North Korea and the outside world. Thus, it seemed only logical when in 2009 during a visit of then-Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Pyongyang, North Korea and China agreed to build a second bridge, built with the very best materials and twenty-first century engineering, that would accommodate automotive and commercial traffic, while the old 1943 bridge would be rail only. The project was expected to cost $150 million, the lion's share to be paid by the Chinese. The new bridge is located downstream from the city center but still within city limits, and is perfectly accessible from Dandong proper. Construction of the new bridge brought much business activity to Dandong. A new commercial district began to grow nearby on the assumption that the area would become a major trade and investment hub. Some optimists even went as far to say the city was well on its way to being a "Macao of the North". Property investors invested piles of money constructing high-rise buildings where offices and flats of lucky businessmen and women were to be located. With characteristic swiftness the Chinese nearly completed the bridge by 2014, less than five years after construction began. Its formal opening was highly anticipated, but as time went by no news about the bridge appeared in official publications in either country. Something was up. Indeed, even though the bridge was more or less complete, it went nowhere. While the Chinese side had a large customs and freight processing complex built, connected with a system of roads leading to the bridge, on the North Korean bank the bridge ends abruptly, virtually in the middle of a field, with no signs of customs, immigration and other buildings in sight. There are no paved roads to the supposed North Korean terminal for the bridge. Soon it was clear that the North Koreans, due to some unknown reasons, had decided not to complete their part of the project, even though their expected contribution was relatively tiny. There was complete silence on the matter in the media, but rumors claimed that the entire bridge project was initially the brainchild of Jang Song-taek, the uncle of the North Korean Supreme Leader. Jang was very publicly purged and executed in December 2013, and many projects he was associated with were shelved or delayed indefinitely. There are other explanations too. A high-level Chinese analyst conveyed that his North Korean interlocutors claimed they were suspicious of China's true intentions. Accordingly,, the new bridge was too large for civilian traffic, and thus was probably designed to facilitate a Chinese invasion of North Korea (decision makers in Pyongyang, ever suspicious of their neighbors, believe that such invasion is not completely impossible). The above-mentioned analyst was told that the bridge "can be used by hundreds of tanks every hour". Regardless of the true motivations behind North Korean dereliction, the city of Dandong was the biggest loser. Speculative investments in the bridge district did not pay off; most of the flats and nearly all offices remain empty, with little chance of being sold at an acceptable price. Rumors surface from time to time about a North Korean change of heart, that construction will start on a customs office and on paved roads. The last time such rumors circulated, early this year, it was believed that work would resume in July. However, nothing happened. The massive nearly-complete bridge towers rise over the city for a fourth year, a vivid reminder of the risks of doing business with North Korea. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com. SPARTA Its the busiest time of the year for Susan and Mike Olson and their Ole & Bean Creations, a 9-year-old business that makes crafts and bath, body and other scented products. September through December is the busiest time of year because people are buying for the Christmas holidays, said Susan, who works full time at the Ole & Bean Creations production room and retail store at 102 Jefferson Ave. in downtown Sparta. Mike helps her with the business, but he also works at Century Foods International in Sparta, Susan said after pouring a batch of pumpkin cheesecake-scented candles. The business began in 2007 and at first only sold its products at craft shows. The Olsons bought their downtown building in 2011, and opened their retail store on the first floor in June of that year. The bath, body and other scented items are made in a production room in the basement. Susan Olson and her mother, Alice, staff the store and also sell Ole & Bean Creations products at 20 to 30 craft shows each year. The business also sells products through its website. And some of its items are available at The Craft Barn near Galesville and at Down a Country Road near Cashton. Ole & Bean Creations will be among the crafters selling products at the 53rd annual Holiday Fair from Thursday through Nov. 20 at the La Crosse Center. It has been participating in that show since 2012. My dad, Chuck Bluske, has called me Bean ever since I was a baby, Susan Olson said, explaining how she and her husband settled on their business name. Ole is her husbands nickname. Susan is a Sparta native, while Mike was raised in Cashton. The couple and their two sons, who help set up their booth at some craft shows, live near Sparta. Susan Olson makes such things as soy candles, soy melts, lotions, body spray, hand sanitizer, lip balm, bath tea, air fresheners for cars, sink fresheners, hot packs and carpet sprinkles that are sprinkled and then vacuumed up, serving as an air freshener. One of the most popular items she makes is a sinus bomb. I sell tons of them, especially in the winter, Olson said. You stick them in the back of your shower. They get wet and dissolve and release a sinus-opening scent. Her mother makes the stores humorous wooden signs as well as such things as crocheted items, dish towels and childrens aprons. Olson also makes and sells bottle cap magnets, and began selling her first bottle cap Christmas ornaments three weeks ago. The store also sells rugs made by Amish crafters from the Cashton area. And we sell essential oils and aromatherapy items, Olson said. Olson, who said she continues to research and develop new products, estimated 90 percent of the items in the Sparta store are made by her or her mother. Being handmade and affordable are my two big things in deciding what to make and sell, Olson said. I figure that if I cant afford to buy it, I dont sell it in the store. Olson said she designs and makes her own labels, and can customize labels for organizations that sell her products as fundraisers. Ole & Bean Creations also offers custom-made gift baskets. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Donald Trump on Tuesday beat Hillary Clinton in a long and hard-fought presidential race, clearing the way for him to enter the White House in January. His victory upends the establishment, shocks the media and leaves everybody wondering what his next steps will be. So, what can citizens expect from a President Trump? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate. Joel Mathis What was striking to me on Tuesday night as the truth emerged that Donald Trump would be our next president was the pain and terror and sheer fear expressed by so many people of color. Conservatives get angry when theyre told Trump ran a racist campaign, but the palpable, undeniable truth is that it sure felt racist to people whose communities have historically been victims of discrimination. This isnt because Trump voters are bad people. Its because people of color have paid close attention to Trump and his rhetoric. For them, the future is quite scary. If youre Latino, youre now being thrust into a country where the color of your skin or your Spanish surname invites suspicion that youre not really a citizen of the country. If youre a young person who came as a child to America with undocumented parents and grew up here functionally, if not legally, an American you face a greater likelihood of being forced to return to a home country where you have few connections to the people and the culture. If youre Arab, youve probably already spent the last two decades under discomfiting scrutiny from the government and your neighbors. Its only going to get worse. And your family members fleeing violence in Syria? Theres a greatly reduced chance theyll be able to join you in America. The Trump administration will, if it keeps his promises, turn those refugees away at the border. If youre African-American, you probably already know what its like to be stopped for driving while black pulled over by police for no apparent reason. President Trump wont have direct oversight of the nations police forces, but the Department of Justice is about to get far less interested in civil rights violations by police. With a reduced threat of accountability by the feds, the problems that animate the Black Lives Matter movement are probably going to get worse before they get better. This is what we voted for. If Trump keeps his promises, America is about to feel a lot meaner to many of its citizens. Ben Boychuk Eight years of identity politics run rampant has done more to sow discord in the United States than anything Trump has said, let alone had a chance to do. The liberal case against Trump was built on snark, insinuation, distortion and calumny. Hes a bigot. Hes a fascist. Hes a threat to democracy. Those are not arguments. Those are assertions. There could be no reasonable response none except what a plurality of voters did on Tuesday. Defeating Clinton was a rebuke and repudiation of a noxious premise. Race relations are arguably far worse today than they were eight year ago. Voters clearly had enough of the divisiveness so they went with the candidate the press labeled the most divisive in decades. Go figure. Trump rejected the language of race. Instead, he spoke candidly to black voters. At an August rally in Michigan, he said: Youre living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed what the hell do you have to lose? At least some voters seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt. Exit poll data show Trump improving the GOPs standing with African-Americans. Eight percent of black voters went for Trump, compared with just 6 percent four years ago. Not bad considering one summer survey had Trump polling at zero with black voters. As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass points out in a post-election analysis for City Journal, real turnout analysis will have to await a final vote count. But, he writes, the available data runs directly counter to the casual assumption that Trumps victory relied on narrow and exclusionary appeal, that it indicates an ascendant white identity politics, or that it portends further segregation of the electorate. On election night, Trump said: The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Not just whites. Trump has set out an ambitious agenda. Who knows whether he can pay for it, much less get it past a wary Republican Congress. But the post-election meanness so far has come largely from one side and it isnt the winning one. State Sen. Jennifer Shillings lead over Republican challenger Dan Kapanke shrank to 56 votes as provisional ballots from the city of La Crosse were counted Friday. Kapanke picked up six votes to Shillings four in the canvass. Another 18 provisional ballots were thrown out because electors didnt show up to present valid identification by the 4 p.m. Friday deadline. That brings Shillings total to 43,569 to Kapankes 43,513 in a race that pitted the Senate minority leader against the man she unseated in a 2011 recall. There are another six provisional ballots in Vernon County. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is preparing for a recount in the race, which Kapanke would have to ask for. Kapanke has three days to request one after all votes are canvassed, which is expected to be Tuesday. Kapanke has not responded to calls this week asking whether he will seek a recount. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, he wrote, The vote is close and we must make sure every vote is counted, including provisional and military ballots. I am looking forward to the conclusion of the official canvass. Shilling, the minority leader in the Senate, declared victory early Wednesday, saying, I am proud to have earned the support of the voters in the 32nd Senate District and I look forward to continue serving as a strong voice for western Wisconsin in our State Capitol. She has not commented further, but an attorney with Shillings campaign said Friday the outcome of the race is not in question. Regardless, the election has cast uncertainty on Shillings status within her caucus, which was further weakened by the defeat of Sen. Julie Lassa. Democrats this week postponed a vote on Senate leadership, and WisPolitics.com reported that some have questioned whether Shilling, often mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in 2018, did enough to protect the Stevens Point Democrat. Why was Shilling pouring SSDC money into the 14th SD which Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, won with 57 percent of the vote and not doing more for Lassa? read the political blog. Others, though question who else would run the show. If successful in a recount, Kapanke would give Republicans their largest Senate majority in nearly 50 years. Democrats have credited Donald Trump, the first Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin since 1984, with carrying down-ticket Republicans to victory. But the numbers suggest Kapanke may deserve more of the credit. Across the district, Kapanke outperformed Trump by an average of 3.5 points, while Shilling edged the top of her ticket by only 0.61 points. Kapanke got more votes than Trump in each of the four counties in the district. He did especially well in La Crosse County, a Democratic stronghold, pulling in 2,585 more votes than Trump. University of Wisconsin political scientist Joe Heim said in spite of Trumps strong rural showing, many Republicans in the district never warmed to him. But those voters still showed up to support down-ballot Republicans. If it wasnt a coat-tail effect, it certainly was a Republican effect, he said. Meanwhile, Democrats did not benefit from the same level of enthusiasm. Shilling got fewer votes than presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who in turn pulled in about 12 percent fewer votes than President Barack Obama got in the 32nd District in 2012. First elected to the 32nd District seat in 2005, Kapanke was attempting to retake the 32nd District seat he lost to Shilling in a recall spurred by anger over Republican efforts to curtail collective bargaining rights for public workers. Heim thinks Kapanke also benefited from his name recognition and relentless campaigning. Hes the local kid, he said. Hes well-known. 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08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (6) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (6) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (5) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (5) May 18 (6) May 17 (6) May 16 (4) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (4) May 10 (5) May 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18 (3) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (5) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (6) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (8) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (2) May 29 (2) May 28 (2) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) 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(4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (9) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (3) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (2) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (2) Jan 04 (2) Jan 03 (2) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (2) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (2) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (2) Nov 21 (2) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 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(4) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (2) Aug 12 (2) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (2) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (2) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (2) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (2) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (2) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (2) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (2) Jun 15 (2) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 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(3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 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(1) Mar 10 (1) November Wed 02: Vieux Carre Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Wed 02: Castillo Nuevo @ Revolucion de Cuba, Newcastle. 6:00pm. Wed 02: Darlington Big Band @ Traveller's Rest, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public). Wed 02: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 7:00pm. Wed 02: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Thu 03: Vieux Carre Jazzmen @ The Holystone, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Thu 03: Thursday Night Prayer Meeting @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free admission (donations). Thu 03: Paul Skerritt Duo @ Tomahawk Steakhouse, High St., Yarm. 8:00pm. Paul Skerritt & James Harrison residency. Thu 03: Tees Hot Club @ Dormans Club, Middlesbrough. Guests: Kevin Eland (trumpet); Dave Archbold (keys); Adrian Beadnall (bass guitar); Dan Johnson (sax). 9:00pm. Fri 04: Mike Durham's International Classic Jazz Party @ Village Hotel, North Tyneside. 12 noon. SOLD OUT! Fri 04: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Fri 04: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. 5.00. Fri 04: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm. Fri 04: Zoe Gilby Trio @ The Vault, Hexham. 7:30pm. Fri 04: Paul Donnelly Quartet @ Saltburn Community Hall. 7:30pm. Fri 04: Twelve Pound Daddies @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. Free (donations). Blind Pig Blues Club. Sat 05: Mike Durham's International Classic Jazz Party @ Village Hotel, North Tyneside. 12 noon. SOLD OUT! Sat 05: Waves Festival @ Sunderland. All day event, various venues, line-up inc. Ishmael Ensemble & Yaatri. Sat 05: Red Stripe Band @ St Augustines Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm. 10.00. Sat 05: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Tutor: Bradley Johnston - Playing from within. 25.00. Enrol at: www.jazz.coop. Sat 05: Jazz Voice showcase @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 7:00pm. Admission: 3.00. Hosted by Chris Robinson. Sat 05: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. Sun 06: Mike Durham's International Classic Jazz Party @ Village Hotel, North Tyneside. 12 noon. SOLD OUT! Sun 06: Vieux Carre Hot 4 @ Spanish City, Whitley Bay. 12 noon. Sun 06: Smokin Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm. Sun 06: Foundry Jazz Ensemble @ The Exchange, North Shields. 3:00pm. Sun 06: Jo Harrop & Jamie McCredie @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm. 10.00. adv. Mon 07: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm. Mon 07: John Garner & John Pope @ Little Buildings, Ouseburn, Newcastle. 7:30pm. Tue 08: Harry Keeble & Andy Champion @ Forum Music Centre, Darlington. 7:30pm. THE NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY (1966), a Western starring Clint Walker, has been released by Olive Films in their new Olive Signature line. It's available on both Blu-ray and DVD.The Blu-ray I watched today is a beautiful print, and it comes with a nice collection of extras.Walker plays Big Jim Cole, a former lawman who moves his family from Utah to Wyoming when he inherits land from an uncle. The Cole family consists of Jim's wife Angela (Martha Hyer), son Charlie (Kevin Brodie), daughter Gypsy (Victoria Paige Myerink), and niece Meg (Candy Moore), plus Jim's former deputy Sam (Don Haggerty). Jim has an unpleasant surprise when the family arrives and learns from the kindly banker (Regis Toomey) that he has to pay off a loan on the property, which takes most of his money. Matters go from bad to worse when Jed Curry (Keenan Wynn) pressures Jim to sell out and then a nasty grizzly bear feasts on Jim's stock. To top it all off, a dangerous man (Leo Gordon) from Jim's past shows up in town...THE NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY was a movie I really wanted to like thanks to Walker, Hyer, and the cast, but I found it pretty weak tea, a far cry from Walker's outstanding FORT DOBBS (1958). It reminded me of some of Disney's live action films of the late '60s and '70s, colorful but with a lightweight, often silly script; it's even got Disney stalwart Keenan Wynn!Knowing the film is special to friends who grew up watching it, I suspect those who first met the movie as kids have a certain loyalty to it, just as I love Disney's SNOWBALL EXPRESS (1972). The good cast includes Jack Elam, just a couple years before his great role in James Garner's SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF! (1969). Ron Ely, Med Flory, and Ellen Corby are also on hand.The film also has fine locations, filmed by Loyal Griggs and Harold Lipstein in the Big Bear Lake area. The extensive outdoor shooting is attractive, but despite the widescreen Techniscope, at times the movie looks more like a TV episode than a film, particularly during an unattractive zoom shot introducing the family; for some reason I can't put my finger on, the photography there seemed wildly out of place.The film also suffers from that weird malady of '60s films, when women had bouffant, bleached blonde hair rather than something a little more authentic. For some reason many '60s Westerns and WWII films have the "anachronistic hair" problem, including THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY (1964) and especially BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969). I was impatient with the film due to things such as a prolonged sequence in which a young child is doused by a skunk. At the same time, I didn't mind its company too much thanks to Clint Walker being onscreen a majority of the time. He even has the obligatory shirtless scene while working on his farm (grin). The man was pretty amazing to look at, which went a long way to offset my feelings on the film's deficiencies; he's also a pleasant actor -- and by all accounts he's a very nice man offscreen as well, always good to hear. There's a nice relationship between Jim and Angela (Hyer), which is the most appealing thing about the movie.The Olive Signature extras include a commentary track by a good friend of this blog, Toby Roan of 50 Westerns From the 50s . I enjoyed the first 15 minutes or so of the track immediately after finishing this 102-minute movie, and I plan to listen to the rest on my lunch breaks this week. I have a feeling I will enjoy the film a little more the second time around, seen through Toby's appreciative eyes. The track has already been quite informative, such as explaining how Clint Walker and actor-writer Warren Douglas put together the project. Douglas was the screenwriter behind a number of strong, relatively unsung noir and Western titles such as SIERRA PASSAGE (1951), LOOPHOLE (1954), and DRAGOON WELLS MASSACRE (1957). Besides writing the GRIZZLY script, Douglas also plays the minister.THE NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY was directed by Joseph Pevney FLESH AND FURY ).Besides the commentary track, extras include archival interviews with Clint Walker, footage of the premiere, and a booklet with a nice essay by C. Courtney Joyner, who examines Walker's career in detail, with special attention to THE NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY.Olive Films is to be commended for putting together such a nice package of extras along with a terrific print. On Election Day, American voters decided more than who would go to the White House next year. Voters in 35 states were asked to decide more than 150 policy questions, such as legalizing use of the drug marijuana and restrictions on gun ownership. Marijuana use Voters in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota approved measures to permit marijuana use for medical purposes. A majority of states now let patients use the drug for some medical conditions. In California, Maine and Massachusetts, people over 21 may now use marijuana even without a medical need. But voters in Arizona rejected the legalization of recreational marijuana. Gun control California voters approved a measure to severely limit peoples ability to buy ammunition for large guns. In the state of Washington, voters approved a plan to temporarily ban people who show signs of mental problems or violence from possessing a gun. In Nevada, voters passed a measure to expand investigations into individuals taking part in nearly all private sales and exchanges of guns. But a similar measure failed in Maine. Minimum wage The federal government currently requires all American businesses to pay workers at least $7.25 an hour. Three states agreed to raise that rate to as much as $12 an hour by 2020. In the state of Washington, voters approved a measure to raise the minimum wage to $13.50 an hour, also by 2020. But in South Dakota, voters lowered the minimum wage for people under age 18 by about one dollar. Death penalty Californians rejected a measure to end the states right to use execution as a way to punish criminals. In Nebraska, voters agreed to re-establish a courts right to sentence some prisoners to death. And in Oklahoma, residents approved a measure to make it harder to cancel the death penalty. Education California voters made it easier for schools to teach in languages other than English. And in Georgia, voters said the state cannot take control of public schools that fail year after year. Other measures In California, voters rejected a measure that would require people in adult films to wear condoms during sex scenes. Coloradans voted on a measure related to adults with a life-threatening health disorder. Voters agreed to let such individuals end their life with doctor-approved medication. The measure will require three health experts to confirm that natural death is near and also confirm that the patients are making the decision for themselves. Voters in the District of Columbia approved a measure to make the U.S. capital the 51st state. The decision has no immediate effect. Instead, voters say they hope their opinion puts pressure on the next government to end D.C.s lack of representation in Congress. Im Jonathan Evans Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story minimum adj. the lowest amount of number of something condom n. a thin rubber that a man wears during sex to prevent pregnancy or to the spread of disease penalty n. punishment scene n. a part of a movie or play in which a certain activity takes place American President-elect Donald-Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reported to be planning a meeting to discuss relations between their countries. Chinese state television said the two men agreed on Monday to meet at an early date. The two spoke by telephone. The Chinese leader congratulated the businessman on his recent win in the U.S. presidential election. Chinese state television said Xi told Trump that the only correct choice for China and the United States is to cooperate. Trumps office in New York said that During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another. In addition, President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward. During the campaign, Trump was critical of Chinese trade policies and efforts to influence the value of Chinas currency on foreign exchange markets. He also threatened new taxes on Chinese goods being sold to the United States. Joseph Cheng formerly served as a professor at City University of Hong Kong. Cheng told VOA that Trumps election comes at a time when Chinas economy is slowing. He said that Chinese experts are hopeful over what they see as Trumps isolationist ideas. They believe that, after he becomes president, the United States might reduce its security guarantees to Japan and South Korea. Cheng also said China is worried that Trump will put in place protectionist trade policies at a time when the Chinese economy is dependent on foreign trade. South China Sea Disputes During the campaign, Trump did not talk much about territorial disputes in the South China Sea. So it is not clear how he feels about Chinas recent moves to develop the waterway. But some experts believe Trump will make a few strong military moves in the area to prove a point. They think he then will stop doing so and begin working with China on economic issues. China claims about 95 percent of the South China Sea, which covers an area from Taiwan to Singapore. In 2010, China began expanding its control in the sea. Sean King is a senior vice president at Park Strategies, a political advisory service. He says experts believe Trump may order U.S. naval ships to sail through the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea to show it is open to all countries. These experts believe such a move would support anti-China statements Trump made during the campaign. And they say it would make him appear stronger than President Barack Obama, who leaves office in January. Trump has yet to announce his policy on the South China Sea. The United States is not among the six countries that claim control of some parts of the sea. But Obama has used warnings and has moved military resources into some areas to push China back. On his campaign website, Trump said a larger deployment of American military resources would slow Chinese adventurism. Trump also criticized China for taking control of disputed islands in the sea and reclaiming land for others. China has reclaimed an estimated 1,295 hectares. Trumps policy on Asia might become clearer when he announces who will serve in high-level positions in his administration. Trump has called China a cheater and a currency manipulator. But experts believe he will seek to work with the Chinese leadership because Chinas large market and many factories are important to American businesses. Exports of American goods to China totaled $113 billion in 2015. The US-China Business Council, a not-for-profit group, reported that China is the third-largest importer of American products after Canada and Mexico. Lin Chong-pin is a retired strategic affairs professor in Taipei. He says Trump may reduce the military budget as he deals with domestic issues. That would limit U.S. military action in the South China Sea. And that, he says, would make China very happy. Im Jonathan Evans. VOAs Fern Robinson and Victor Beattie reported this story from Washington. Ralph Jennings reported from Taipei. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted their stories for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story currency n. the money that a country uses isolationist adj. of or relating to the idea that a country should not be involved with other countries benefit n. a good or helpful effect Each year, more ice disappears from the Arctic Ocean. A new study blames human activity for the loss. The damage is caused, the study says, by greenhouse gases coming from vehicles, airplanes and other human activities. These gases capture heat and warm the atmosphere, melting the ice. The study was published in the journal Science. Greenhouse gases are produced when fuel is burned to take a passenger on a flight from New York to Europe, or a person driving 4,000 kilometers in a gasoline-powered car. These activities emit enough heat-trapping gas to melt three square meters of ice on the Arctic Ocean, according to the study. Carbon dioxide emissions warming the planet There is a very clear linear relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and sea ice retreat in September, according to Dirk Notz. He is a climate scientist at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, and the studys lead author. He said this is especially the case at the southern boundaries of the Arctic Ocean. Its very simple. Those emissions from our tailpipes and our coal-fired power plants are all going into the atmosphere, said Julienne Stroeve, a co-author of the study. She is a climate scientist at both the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and University College in London. The study said limits on the increase in the worlds temperature called for in the Paris Agreement on climate change are not enough for the Arctic summer sea ice to survive. The Paris Agreement calls for keeping the global rise in temperature to below two degrees Celsius. The study said at current carbon emission amounts, the ocean around the North Pole would likely be ice-free in September in about 30 years. Closest planet may be able to hold life Our next story comes from a star not too far from our own sun. More details are coming out about the nearest exoplanet to our own solar system. In August, a team of astronomers announced that they had discovered a small planet. They called the planet Proxima b. It orbits the star Proxima Centauri. It is the closest planet to our solar system, a little more than four light years away from our sun. The scientists said the planet appears to be in the so-called Goldilocks zonemeaning the conditions there could support life. Last Monday, a group searching for intelligent life beyond Earth called Breakthrough Listen, announced a new effort. Breakthrough Listen said it is using the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia to listen for possible life on Proxima b. Because the telescope is in the southern hemisphere, it has a direct line to try to reach the planet. The chances of any particular planet hosting intelligent life-forms are probably minuscule, said Andrew Siemion, director of UC Berkeley SETI Research Center. But once we knew there was a planet right next door, we had to ask the question, and it was a fitting first observation for Parkes. To find a civilization just 4.2 light years away would change everything. As the closest known exoplanet, Proxima b is also the main target for Breakthrough Listen's partner program, Breakthrough Starshot. That program is developing technology to send small spacecraft to explore our nearest stars. More details on Proxima b A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters provided more details about Proxima b. It says that the conditions on the planet increase the chances that it can support life. Researchers say Proxima b could be an ocean planet. It may be covered with the same kind of oceans below its surface that might exist on some of the moons orbiting the planets Jupiter and Saturn. A team of researchers from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory said Proxima b could be an ocean planet with an ocean covering its entire surface. The size and qualities of the planet favor its habitability, they said. The study also finds that the Proxima b, like Mercury in our solar system, has a metal corethe inside part of the planet. Researchers say its core accounts for two-thirds of its mass. They add that its mass is similar to Earth. The U.S. space agency, NASA, says it looks forward to additional research to know about the radius of the planet. Without knowing the radius, it is impossible to know what the planet looks like, or what it is made of. The radius of a planet sometimes is measured during transit, when it passes in front of a star. But Proxima b is not known to transit. Im Bryan Lynn, and I'm Anne Ball. Smita Nordwall, Rick Pantelo and others reported on this story for VOANews.com. Anne Ball adapted this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and find us on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story emit v. to send (light, energy, etc.) out from a source linear adj. forming a straight line solar system n. our sun and the planets that move around it minuscule adj. very small Goldilocks zone n. a place in outer space that is not too hot, or too cold and could hold life exoplanet n. a planet outside our solar system radius n. a measure, taken from a straight line from the center of a circle or sphere to a point on the outer edge The YMCA is coming to Gothenburg. In 2017, the recreational facility will begin making a home in the 18th Nebraska city to host a YMCA, said Becky Jobman, director of planning and development for Gothenburg Health. The $4.95 million project is also a step in Gothenburgs Center Project, which aims to create a hub at Gothenburg Health the site for the upcoming YMCA. The hub will combine wellness, health, nutrition, fitness and recreation. Groundbreaking is set for February 2017. The YMCA is a natural partner for this great endeavor, Jobman said. The YMCA will be connected to Gothenburg Health as part of the hospitals renovation project. It will begin its operations in spring 2017 out of the existing hospital wellness center. The final project will include a high-school regulation-size gymnasium with two cross-courts; a four-lane swimming pool with room for physical therapy and a kids area; an indoor walking track; workout space with weights and cardio machines; a group exercise room; mens, womens and family locker rooms; educational child care; and a social lobby with free Wi-Fi, Jobman said. In addition to all these planned components, there will be an abundance of educational space which include the potential for mentorship programs, early childhood development, after-school programs and career development opportunities for students, Jobman said. A capital campaign directed by the Gothenburg Health Foundation raised $2,265,000 in donations, leaving $2,685,000 left to raise, Jobman said. She said part of this could come from a 2-to-1 challenge grant awarded by the Sherwood Foundation of Omaha. For every $2 raised for the facility, the Sherwood Foundation will contribute $1, up to $895,000, Jobman said. The challenge continues through the end of 2017. All past and future funds raised will stay in Gothenburg and be used for the Gothenburg YMCA. Ginger Cowne, CEO of YMCA of the Prairie, said the project will add Gothenburg to an association that already includes nearby Lexington and Holdrege. She gave high marks to the Center Project and called the expansion remarkable. Have writer's block? Hopefully this resource will help librarians identify publishing and presentation opportunities in library & information science, as well as other related fields. I will include calls for papers, presentations, participation, reviewers, and other relevant notices that I find on the web. If you find anything to be posted, please drop me a note. thanks -- Corey Seeman, University of Michigan(cseeman@umich.edu) Welcome to the Long Island Blog - Long Island's blog for exchanging ideas, info and express opinions with the Long Island, New York Community. This blog is owned & maintained by LongIsland.com Long Island's Favorite Online Community & Resource 21 Years and counting! The Louisville Slugger, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Fort Knox, the Kentucky Derby, and even Muhammad Ali all have their roots in Kentuckys largest city. Now, Louisville can boast of its latest addition: Chabads new Jewish Learning Center, located in the heart of the city, caters to a wide variety of Jews who all have one thing in commona desire to learn. Since opening Kentuckys Chabad house three years ago, the community has been participating at regular prayer services, TGIS Friday night dinners, family fun events, holiday programs, and classes on everything from meditation to Kabbala to JLI. But it was the robust attendance at Chabads regular Torah classes that prompted Rabbi Avrohom and Goldie Litvin to open a center dedicated exclusively to, well, Jewish learning. Centrally located, less than a mile from the Louisville Chabad House where all other Chabad activities take place, the 6500 square-foot center, which hosted its inaugural class Tuesday, November 7th, will serve as the one-stop-shop for Jewish education in Louisville. It will house the Gan Torah Preschool, the Louisville Jewish Day School, a library, JLI courses, JLearn classes, and more. The center will also eventually host the Louisville Friendship Circle, which is slated to open in 2017. Bringing people together through Torah study is a great way to bolster Jewish unity, says Rabbi Litvin. The classes provide an alternative for people who may not be ready to come to a synagogue service and daven in Hebrew with a mechitza and other religious paraphernalia but who still want to get involved with something real. We are finding more and more people who have shown interest in getting involved in ongoing classes in a serious way, the Rabbi says. The center is also open to those who want to study on their own and boasts a wide range of resources that facilitate independent learning, including a growing library and audio-visual collection. People are welcome to stop by for refreshments and chat with any of the rabbis who are usually found on site. Rather than going to a coffee shop or cafe, a college student can come and relax, do homework, and maybe catch a quick Torah thought or video. Community member Bobby Fraser, whose wife Estee Pichasin is a commander at FortKnox, drives 45 minutes each way to bring his two-year-old son, Joey, to preschool every day. Instead of driving home and back again to pick Joey up, Bobby, who works remotely, sets up shop in the center and does his work there, saving himself an extra hour and a half in traffic. Hanging out at the Learning Center during the day, says Bobby, gives him the opportunity to spend time with the Litvins and their sons who are often in the building. I can ask questions about things that Im interested in and I also really enjoy the JLI classes they offer. JLearn is a new program featuring rabbinical leaders who teach a variety of different topics. Their tagline: Learn Torah Anytime, Learn Torah Your Way. Participants can customize their learning and pursue subjects that interest them. The program, which began this past Thursday, November 10, started with classes such as Chasidic philosophy, Pirkei Avot, Hebrew, and Jewish femininity. After the first week, says the rabbi, students will choose subjects that interest them and use that as a guide for future courses. Bible and Bourbon in the Bluegrass will begin by looking at the role of alcohol in the Temple and throughout Jewish history. Community member Nikki Deshurko is looking forward to the JLearn sessions. Well be able to dive into topics that we hope to learn more about. The center, she says, is a wonderful place that will bring the community together. Im excited for this opportunity and I think its a great addition to our community. The Litvins hope that the learning center will ultimately bolster Chabads growth in all areas. Over 8500 Jews live in Louisville, and the Chabad mailing reaches the vast majority of them. With new programs for both teens and seniors in the works, they expect to reach even more. For more information, visit www.chabadky.com Two very different demonstrations protesting the election of Donald Trump as president took place in the Bay area Sunday. One was characterized by music and light, while the other filled the night with slogans, chants, and vows to keep fighting. Lighting the Way to Kindness took place down River Walk in Tampa St. Petersburg demonstrators began Anti-Trump march at 9 p.m. in downtown Thousands marched in St. Pete demanding justice, change Under the swoon of a cello Sunday evening, residents from around the Bay area gathered at Tampa's River Walk, hoping to bring a divided community together. Participants called it "Lighting the Way to Kindness." It was a walk of unity and solemnity, one certainly gentler in tone than the march taking place in St. Pete, but no less purposeful. "A little more love than hate. How about that?" said one participant. Across the bay, meanwhile, thousands of demonstrators showed up to express their frustration with and outright rejection of President-elect Donald Trump, as well as the rhetoric that characterized his campaign. Like many protests around the U.S. following Election Day, many in the crowd Sunday came out looking for kindred spirits, others who shared their concerns and fears. "At this point, I'm feeling I want to be around people who are also feeling how it is that I'm feeling," said protester Louis Bardach, "and I feel like we just made a huge mistake." A Pasco County woman was arrested Friday, Nov. 11 on child neglect charges. Deputies were called out to Carmel Avenue in New Port Richey after residents saw a child running in the road unattended. 3-year-old found living in deplorable conditions Pasco County woman arrested on child neglect charges Neighbors stated this is a habitual issue When deputies arrived to the area, the neighbor who contacted authorities told them that the 3-year-old was the daughter of Whitney Shoemaker, 24, and that the child had been wandering in the street alone for 30 minutes. According to the neighbor, Friday wasn't the first time she'd seen the girl. The neighbor reportedly told deputies that Friday was the third day in a row that she has seen the child alone in the street. She had taken the little girl out of harm's way on both occasions, returning her back to Shoemaker. Deputies attempted to make contact with Shoemaker at her home. When she didn't answer, they entered the home to conduct a welfare check. Inside the home, they spotted Shoemaker sleeping in the bedroom. When she awoke, deputies noticed that she appeared disoriented and under the influence of narcotics. Deputies also noted that the inside of the home was in a 'deplorable condition.' After the incident, the abuse hotline was notified, Shoemaker was arrested, and the child was taken into protective custody. Auto refresh feeds Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denominations are equal to piece of paper from tonight midnight (8 November 2016). "You have 50 days to return the old notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 to your respective bank from 10 November 2016 to 30 December 2016. The banks, however, will have a cap on how much cash can be withdrawn Rs 10,000 daily and Rs 20,000 weekly." New Rs 2,000 note that will be soon issued New Rs 2,000 note that will be soon issued "And no one should blame me if I take tough decisions after the 30th. This money belongs to the countrys poor. No one has the right to loot this. This is my commitment. I am working with full force and will continue the effort," he had said. Apparently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a fair warning to all the black money hoarders in this interview with CNN-News18 in September this year. Replying to a question on if he intended to carry forward his tough line on curbing black money, Modi had urged those with undeclared wealth to take advantage of the disclosure scheme before the deadline of September 30 and return to into the mainstream. A lawyer by profession, Kamboj said that he understands the legal consequences of doing any such thing. "I know I can land up in big trouble if I do something so foolish. What Kejriwal is doing is nothing more than dirty politics. He will see what will happen to him in Punjab." There were various news reports about the probable introduction of new notes. What was new in that? Kamboj added. Rubbishing Kejriwal's claims, Kejriwal said: I had only written that new notes would soon be introduced. But nowhere I had talked about or even mentioned banning of the old notes. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday alleged that BJP had informed its 'friends' beforehand about its decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, to help them fix their black money. Firstpost reporter Amitesh Singh spoke to Sanjeev Kamboj, co-convener of BJP's law and legal affairs department in Punjab, who had tweeted the picture of Rs 2,000 notes on 6 November. Only tweeted about new notes, not ban on Rs 500, Rs 1,000: BJP leader Sanjeev Kamboj tells Firstpost The step is being taken after it was observed that same people have been withdrawing money, again and again, misusing the facility and not giving a chance to others to exchange their money. The government has decided to use indelible ink to mark people who exchange cash over the counter in the banks. Indelible ink to be used to mark people who exchange cash in the banks: Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das Are you willing to give PM Modi 50 days to make good on his promise? "Government should allow old Rs 500 notes to remain in circulation along with the new notes. Also, Rs 100/50/10 notes must be made easily available. Rs 1,000 notes may be withdrawn when circulation improves by 30 December, or at your discretion. No need for anymore faltu, action-less announcements. Sometimes blunders lead to more more blunders," says the West Bengal Chief Minister. In a series of tweets on Friday, Mamata Banerjee said that there are ways that the government can restore normalcy and help people. "Such tax evasion activities can be made subject to income tax and penalty," ANI reported. The ministry added that thos who allow their accounts to be misused will be prosecuted."However, genuine people having their own household savings in cash and depositing the same will not be questioned," the ministry was quoted as saying by ANI. Announcing that small deposits made in banks of artisans, workers, housewives will not be questioned by Income Tax Department, the finance ministry said that there are reports that a few people were "using other's accounts to convert their black money into new denomination notes." The Opposition parties are not wrong this could have been planned better and the government is not giving us all the facts. The truth is the government did have a plan. Not for recalibration for which it has come under severe attack but for the preemptive calibration of ATMs. If this plan had run its course, it could have considerably smoothened the currency exchange at ATMs. But the plan ground to a halt even before it took off. But more on that later. And the answer is yes and no. An entire population of 1.25 billion is living in misery, craving something they already have: A strange contradiction of shortage in abundance. The only question that everyone is asking is: Did Prime Minister Narendra Modi send a country into war against black money without planning? "What is the difficulty? " the bench asked Rohatgi. The AG explained the situation by stating that after printing, the currency has to be moved to thousands of centres across the country and ATMs have to be re-calibrated. "There is no shortage of funds," he said. At the outset, the bench questioned the relief measures undertaken by the Centre by saying, "Last time you said there will be relief for people in the coming days but you have squeezed the exchange limit to Rs 2,000 only." "It's a political attempt in the court. I have seen your (Sibal's) press conference also. You are not appearing for a political party, but for an advocate. You are turning the apex court into a political platform," Rohatgi said. The Attorney General (AG) Mukul Rohatgi in his response, said there is no dispute, but the queues are getting shorter and even suggested that the Chief Justice of India can go out during lunch and himself look at the queue. "Kindly go in the lunch time," the AG told the bench and took objection to senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for a private party, for allegedly exaggerating the situation. "We have also come to know that corruption through new notes has already started. Such reports are surfacing in newspapers and especially on the social media," he said, claiming the goal of unearthing black money and weeding out fake currency notes will not be achieved. On the Centre's stand that demonetisation will check corruption, Akhilesh said cases of graft involving new currency notes are already making news in some parts of the country. Talking to reporters in Lucknow on Friday after presiding over a Cabinet meeting, Akhilesh Yadav said, "The meeting was of the opinion that farmers should get relaxation in use of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes...cooperative banks to which farmers are directly linked should get relaxation as money is not promptly reaching bank branches." SC made the remarks as Attorney General (AG) Mukul Rohatgi submitted that any matter relating to challenge to the demonetisation issue be heard by the apex court only. "Some measures are required. See the kind of problems people are facing. People have to go to the high court. If we shut them from going to the high court, how can we know the magnitude of the problem. People going to different courts indicates the magnitude of the problem," the bench said. "It is a serious issue which requires consideration," a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice A R Dave said, while asking the parties to be ready with data and other issues in writing. The apex court also refused Centre's request to put on hold petitions pending in various high courts challenging the decision to demonetise. Coming down heavily on the Narendra Modi government for not taking the issue seriously, the Supreme Court on Friday questioned the move to reduce the exchange limit of old notes from Rs 4,500 to Rs 2,000. The apex court added that the situation was serious and there are possibilities of riots breaking out. "We are not against demonetisation. We are against the hardships being faced by poor people due to mismanagement in implementing this scheme," Ravat said, when he was detained and taken away by police. Those who have been detained include Vadodara Congress president Prashant Patel and General Secretary of Gujarat Congress Narendra Ravat. In Vadodara, at least 100 Congress workers were detained from different parts for trying to block the roads. While two Congress workers were detained for setting fire to tyres on Ahmedabad-Vadodara highway on the city outskirts, around 100 have been detained for blocking an internal city road at Dandiya Bazar area. Slamming the Centre over faulty implementation of the demonetisation drive, Mayawati said that the government has unleashed an Economic Emergency on the nation and the party does not care how people of the nation are suffering. Just like Samajwadi Party, BJP is digging its own grave before Uttar Pradesh elections: Mayawati He then said that India trusts its citizens who will make the country emerge successful after "this test of fire". "But I see your support. Despite so many attempts to dissuade you, you have understood this move for the welfare of this nation," said the Prime Minister. "The entire world is watching this move. Every economist is analysing this move. The world is watching whether 1.25 crore Indians, despite difficulties, will achieve success." "But for 70 years, we have been tolerating the disease of corruption and black money. The cure to that disease cannot be simple," he said. "When I had taken this decision, I had said that this is full of difficulties. And the implementation of this decision was also bound to be difficult. I knew about the kind of difficulties people would have to face," Modi said. "I knew that it will definitely take 50 days to come out of the effect [of demonetisation]," he added. "A lot of people have asked me to talk more about the currency ban," said the Prime Minister, as he began talking about demonetisation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday talked about the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on the radio programme 'Mann Ki Baat' and appealed to the people of India to help him create a "less-cash society". Sources have told CNN-News18 that the central government has stepped up the printing of the new Rs 500 notes. The news channel also reported that the shortage in Rs 500 notes will be over by the end of December. Old Rs 500 notes at petrol pumps and for airline tickets will be accepted till 2 December as against 15 December announced earlier, reports PTI. Exactly a month ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced scrapping of high denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. On Thursday, Opposition parties and Members of Parliament protested outside the Parliament House. Modi said, "The government's decision has several gains for farmers, traders, labourers, who are the economic backbone of our nation. I always said that the government's measure will bring a degree of inconvenience but this short term pain will pave way for long term gains. No longer will the progress and prosperity of rural India be curtailed by corruption and black money. Our villages must get their due. We also have a historic opportunity to embrace increased cashless payments and integrate latest technology in economic transactions." In a series of tweets, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the government never denied that the demonetisation drive will not be inconvenient, but "this short term pain will pave way for long term gains." I always said that the Government's measure will bring a degree of inconvenience: Modi Slamming the government, West Bengal Chief Minister on her Facebook page slammed the move and said, "One month of harassment, pain, hopelessness, financial insecurity and utter chaos." Leading members of Opposition took to social media to speak on demonetisation. 8 December marks one month since the Modi government scrapped high-denomination notes and introduced the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. The Opposition parties will meet with BJP leaders as well at around 12 pm on Thursday to discuss demonetisation. The Bharatiya Janata Party has announced that it will hold a party meet at 9.30 am on Thursday. According to CNN-News18, the party meet will discuss demonetisation and will be broadcast live. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the nation as well, the news channel said. PM said Congress had chance to clean the system in 1971, but it didnt | ANI 'It's a pity that this opposition party, who fought against the Congres both inside the Congress and outside the Congress are ready to work with Congress. Trinamool Congress, CPI (M) are with Congress. Even DMK who had taken talaq from Congress are rallying behind it. They don't even know what their leader is going to talk about. The congress regime was filled with scams. They will have to explain it to the people," he added. 'It's ironic to see that government is fighting corruption, and the opposition is opposing it. Many people are shaken because vested interests are shaken. They are trying to create panic in the public. And therefore, they are trying to tarnish Prime Minster's image,' Venkaiah Naidu said. It's ironic that parties which opposed Congress are now supporting it: Venkaiah Naidu Unlike Gandhi, who in a letter dated 24 August, 1974, to all chief ministers, sought selective action against bigger people that could be publicised to counter the perception in the public mind and in Parliament, Modi and his officers were well prepared in advance to scrutinise the shades of unaccounted stash in the country, even if that meant severe criticism of his government. Modi is not Indira Gandhi and 2016 is not 1974 when TA Pai, the then Union Minister for heavy industry told Gandhi: "Currency has no complexion and it is neither white nor black." (Declassified black money files of prime ministers office, no 37 (465)/74 PMS). When Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a televised address on 8 November, told the nation that the existing Rs 500 and 1,000 notes can no longer be used for transactions and they are now mere pieces of papers, he very well knew that a huge number of zero-balance accounts were going to witness sudden activity from the very next morning. Narendra Modi did what Indira suggested was not for her to do This means that these notes will not be acceptable for transactions from midnight onwards. The 500 and 1,000 rupee notes hoarded by anti-national and anti-social elements will become just worthless pieces of paper. To break the grip of corruption and black money, we have decided that the 500 rupee and 1,000 rupee currency notes presently in use will no longer be legal tender from midnight tonight, that is 8th November 2016. As (Narendra) Modi gets ready to address the nation on 31 December in a stock-taking speech, sober watchers of the game may find no nail-biting finish or clear winner. We might need to use something resembling the Duckworth-Lewis method that cricket scorers use when rains or disruptions mar a match. As time to submit demonetised notes comes to a close today, people queue up outside RBI offices across India The government is also planning to come out with an Ordinance making possession of old Rs 500/1,000 notes beyond a specified limit for numismatic purposes illegal and punishable. People, however, will still have time to exchange the currency notes at designated RBI counters till 31 March after giving valid reasons for not depositing defunct notes in their accounts by 30 December. The 50-day deadline to deposit the old Rs 500/1,000 notes in banks comes to an end today, but the cash crunch and queues before ATMs are likely to continue for some more time as currency printing presses have failed to meet the huge demand for new bills. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the nation on Saturday after his self-imposed deadline of 50-days for the situation to return to normal ends. While some people are hoping for an extension in the deadline, the government maintained it had no plans to do so. The deadline to deposit old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in banks ends today. From next week onward, those still holding the scrapped currency can deposit it only with the Reserve Bank of India till 31 March, 2017. After 31 March, holding demonetised notes would be illegal and could invite hefty fines and even jail, according to an ordinance passed by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. Post #DeMonetisation Govt. to roll out massive campaign. PM's address to the nation on Dec 31st will be beginning of this campaign: Sources PM Modi could launch massive campaign in his address on New Year Meanwhile, the RBI's image seems to have been dented significantly during the period. Post the announcement, the action mostly happened in Delhi and the central bank was relegated to the background. Moreover, the frequent rule changes, mostly dictated by the political bosses in Delhi, unfairly affected the central bank's image. The man who is complaining the most is the one who is affected and that is not the common man, believes Bijoor. He places Modis popularity on a ratio of 80:20 with 80 percent having welcomed the bold move of the PM. The common man is in the mood to forgive the prime minister as he realises that demonetisation is a big task that irritants like more than 60 policy flip-flops after the announcement of the scheme can be tolerated, says Harish Bijoor, chief executive officer of brand and business strategy firm Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. The brand Modi might have received a good boost after the demonetisation drive, however, the brand RBI, the monetary authority in charge of the Indian currency, may have taken a huge drubbing, brand experts told Firstpost's Sulekha Nair . The cash crunch in cities seems to be easing. Just for a lark i went to 5-10 different ATMs on diff days and all yielded cash Queues shorter (Cont) to deposit the same in any Issue Office of Reserve Bank or a currency chest on December 31, 2016 itself: RBI SBNs (Specified bank notes) cannot form part of banks cash balances from the close of business as on December 31, 2016: RBI Specified bank notes (SBNs) cannot form part of banks' cash balances from the close of business as on 31 December, 2016 to deposit the same in any Issue Office of Reserve Bank or a currency chest on 31 December, 2016 itself, RBI said. Bihar: Tattered demonetised notes of Rs 500 found by locals in Gopalganj. Police on the spot for further investigation #DeMonetisation pic.twitter.com/QmYMDbFRsF As time to submit demonetised notes comes to a close today, people queue up outside Reserve Bank of India's Kolkata branch #DeMonetisation pic.twitter.com/Ct3HHxhoMP Delhi: Today being the last day to submit demonetised notes, people seen queuing up outside RBI #DeMonetisation pic.twitter.com/LjhkeRdacC As time to submit demonetised notes comes to a close today, people queue up outside RBI offices across India Fearing a jump in footfalls to deposit or withdraw cash following the demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1,000 banknotes, banks will remain open this Saturday and Sunday and its staff will do overtime till 9 pm for the next three days to clear the rush. Banks also announced a slew of measures, including extension of banking hours, doing away with ATM charges and expanding credit limits to handle the expected huge rush to tender now defunct Rs 500 and 1000 notes. Bankers have also been advised not to take additional leaves for the next one month, during which the government has asked holders of over 22 billion currency notes that are no longer legal tender, to deposit them in bank accounts. For public convenience, banks will remain open on coming Saturday and Sunday, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das tweeted. The Reserve Bank also came out with an order instructing all the banks to be open for business on the coming weekend, including Sunday. RBI also said ATMs will remain shut tomorrow as well. The nation's largest lender State Bank of India was among the first to announce an extension in banking hours, till 6 pm tomorrow and also said each of its branches will be having a dedicated 'exchange counter' to change the currency notes. ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Chanda Kochhar said the bank's branches will be open till 8 pm on Thursday and Friday. The bank also introduced a slew of relaxations on the electronic payments or withdrawals front. All charges pertaining to cash deposit into one's accounts will be waived till 30 November and the fees for transacting at ATMs will also be scrapped till 31 December, ICICI Bank said in a statement. It has also doubled the daily usage limit of debit cards for use at merchant ends as well as online transactions. Axis Bank has also waived cash handling charges, and done away with the five free transactions a month limit on its own ATMs and extended banking hours, its president Rajiv Anand told PTI. While making the announcement to discontinue Rs 500 and 1,000 banknotes yesterday, the government had also announced closure of bank branches and ATMs today. It also announced the launch of newer notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 from 10 November. People holding to the older notes will be very keen to do away with them and also get the newer series banknotes of higher denomination when the bank branches reopen tomorrow. ICICI Bank said it is ensuring that Rs 2000 and the existing notes of Rs 100 notes are available at its 'main branches' from tomorrow. It also announced an expansion of up to 20 per cent in the credit limits for 'worthy' customers using its credit cards. Anand said there is no need for the customers to panic and appealed them to defer their visits to branches, pointing out that there is a 50-day limit to change the older notes. Anand said the bank also expects a significant jump in alternate channels like the newly introduced UPI, points of sale terminals and mobile and online banking because of the RBI moves. Kotak Mahindra Bank joint managing director Dipak Gupta said apart from the cultural change in adopting digital faster, we should also see a surge in activation of new bank accounts. In the biggest-ever move to curb black money, and crime funding Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last night announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bank notes would become illegal tenders from last midnight and massively curbed cash withdrawals through ATMs and from bank counters. "In order to meet the anticipated heavy demand from members of the public to conduct their banking transactions, it has been decided that banks shall remain open for public transactions on Saturday, 12 November, and Sunday, 13 November, 2016," RBI said in a statement. Banks are advised to keep all their branches open on 12 and 13 November, 2016, as regular working days for transacting all business, it said. RBI also asked banks to give due publicity to the availability of banking services on these days. As per the normal schedule, the coming Saturday being the second would have been an holiday, but keeping in view the expected rush at the branches, it was decided otherwise. It is, however, not clear whether post offices would be open or not on the weekend. There are about 1.25 lakh post offices across the country. At the same time, the government and RBI are yet to take a call on keeping banks open on Monday, 14 November, which is a holiday. There are about 149 scheduled commercial banks, including 56 regional rural banks, with branch network of about 1.30 lakh across the country. Besides, the cooperative banks have also been asked to take deposit and exchange the old with the new one. The first demonetisation happened under the British rule in 1946 and the first one after the Independence on 16-17 January, 1978 when the Morarji Desai government demonetised bank notes of Rs 1000, 5000 and 10,000 notes. The news triggered panic and people started queueing up at all ATMs or CDMs to either withdraw money or deposit Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes account for over 86 per cent of the total Rs 16.42 lakh crore value of bank notes in circulation as of 31 March, 2016, according to Reserve Bank's latest annual report. For convenience of customers, Financial Services Secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal said banks will be working extra hours. Meanwhile, SBI said all branches will remain open tomorrow with extended business hours up to 6 pm. Kochhar said branch timings will be extended by two hours on 10-11 November and branches at prominent locations will remain open from 8 am to 8 pm. Many other banks like HSBC and PNB has also announced extension of working hours. Demonetisation has been touted by the government as the solution to black money and corruption projecting an image of rooms full of hidden cash as the evil poisoning our economy and society. The misdirection of this policy, its drawbacks policy have been pointed out by Roshan Kishore, Saquib Salim, Prabhat Patnaik, and large sections of the media over the past few days. A broad analysis of what has occurred will help us understand that the policy has two political aims: to give the semblance of crusading against black money while doing nothing of the sort, and to fill the coffers of public sector units and banks (rather than admit their starvation due to lakhs of crores of bad loans. Here's the analysis: It is important to know that only 15 percent of cash is in the form of Rs 100 notes, and 85 percent of it is in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Almost instantly the ability of the middle class consumer to make purchases online through Cash On Delivery was taken away, including orders that had been made a few days before the announcement of demonetisation. Most of the black money that is believed to exist, is in liquid form with majority of the chunk abroad. Further, this definition of black money does not include the erstwhile forms that have over the years now been legalised, normalised or legislated through tax breaks. Billionaires and corporations, thanks to loopholes in laws, have been able to keep nearly all of what they earn. The "black money" rhetoric also fails to disclose that favours are the main and highest form of corruption, especially at the highest levels publicly undetectable and legally permissible. The most important purpose of the forced depositing of currency, according to Janata Ka Reporter, appears to be the dire need to fill Public Sector banks coffers in wake of bad loans - to keep them afloat. This route has been seen as more accessible rather than recovering it from the rich defaulter in effect bailing out the billionaires who squandered public money. If the establishment was genuinely serious about black money, why did it let Vijay Mallya leave? The many ways in which the governments decision affects poor people adversely has been well explained in various articles. The father who was saving up for his daughters wedding, the many people who have died after collapsing while waiting in lines at the bank or the ATM, the farmer whose agricultural income (non-taxable) is often kept at home for expenditure over a long term, the fact the ATMs are heavily concentrated in urban areas, the fact that hospitals are turning away people in serious need of treatment, the fact that a majority of families are having trouble buying provisions, the fact that people in dire need of cash make journeys outstation to bigger cities only to unsuccessfully attempt to withdraw cash. What was startling was the fact that the decision to outlaw high currency notes adversely affects the BJPs own shopkeeper base to no end, with several shops closing for lack of customers. It's worth noting that the government approved changes to anti-corruption laws that would serve to shield bureaucratic staff from probes, reported in Scroll. There also appears to be an attempt at starving non-BJP political parties of cash for campaign expenditure before the UP elections. What has also emerged is that several BJP state units deposited vast amounts of cash to the tune of crores of rupees in the days preceding the currency ban, effectively having been given prior notice. A further end of this policy could be the encouraging of long and short term loans to more people while boosting savings. This would enable the banks to, in the future, gamble with ordinary peoples money by loaning it out to defaulting billionaires, and to, secondly, recover loans far more easily from ordinary people. Further, it would stop the Public Sector Units from going broke as the public sector banks can loan them anything as of now. Shortly after the outlawing of high currency notes, we can see the rise of exchange touts who would exchange one Rs 500 note for three or four notes of Rs 100. This creates a chunk of black money of its own. There is also concern that this change, and economic and statistical implications, could be used to mask the lack of economic development under the Modi regime. The announcement came parallel to the US election, and in terms of political diversion, also came with the news that Afspa (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) was extended in Assam by 6 months, and expanded in Arunachal Pradesh by 3 districts. Ultimately, this demonetisation policy only makes it harder for offenders to spend the black money stashed domestically in cash form fast enough. The culprits in the Panama Papers will go scot-free. The ends appear entirely political. The citizens of India, with consent or without, just bailed the government and the billionaires out. This demonetisation is essentially a move to cover up a larger monetary mismanagement. The author is a research scholar in modern and contemporary history at Centre For Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ahmedabad: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has barred the District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) in Gujarat from accepting or exchanging defunct currency notes from people. The central bank on Sunday issued a circular to the Gujarat-based DCCBs, asking them not to accept and exchange the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. However, the RBI has not specified the reason behind the move. Currently, there are 18 DCCBs with hundreds of branches across the state. Following RBI's instructions to the DCCBs, some leaders in the co-operative sector have expressed their displeasure and warned of an agitation. BJP leader Dilip Sanghani, who is the chairman of National Federation of State Cooperative Banks (NAF-SCOB), said, "Yesterday, Gujarat office of RBI sent an email to all the DCCBs in the state and instructed them not to exchange or deposit old notes. Due to this sudden decision, farmers, farm laborers and villagers are facing severe cash crunch." "I had a telephonic talk with Union Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar yesterday in this regard. He assured to intervene in this matter," he said. Meanwhile, the RBI today issued a statement, in which it said that the DCCBs can, however, allow their existing customers to withdraw money from their accounts up to Rs 24,000 per week up to 24 November. Opposing RBI's decision, cooperative sector leader Virji Thumar, who serves as the director of Kheti Bank, today warned of launching a mass agitation if the "restrictions" on DCCBs were not lifted. "After the sudden demonetisation move, old currency notes were being accepted at the DCCBs. Now, RBI has suddenly put a ban on it. It shows that this government is anti-farmer. I appeal Sanghani, who is very close to PM, to do something, or else farmers across the state would start a mass agitation," Thumar said. Meanwhile, senior cabinet minister in Gujarat, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama has assured to sort out the issue. "Yesterday, Chief Secretary J N Singh held a meeting with top brass of RBI here on this issue. We are confident that an amicable solution will be found," he said. Meanwhile, in comparison to the long and serpentine queues seen outside the banks, ATMs and post offices over the past few days, the rush of people to withdraw or exchange money was less on Monday. New Delhi: This could turn out to be a manic Monday at Tata Motors, with the battle between the Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry camps for control expected to be in full swing at the scheduled meeting of the companys board of directors. Though the battle is expected to rage over independent directors and how independent they actually are, it is interesting to see that the company itself has emerged from doldrums this past year. Mistry became the chairman of Tata Motors in 2012. After his ouster from Tata Sons last month, the holding company has pointed towards the perilous drop in market share in both, passenger cars and commercial vehicle sales, over the past three years when Mistry was in the driving seat. Today, reports have suggested that Tata Sons will convene an EGM to oust Mistry and independent director Nusli Wadia from the Tata Motors board. The Tatas own over 30 percent stake in Tata Motors. Reports also suggest that in todays board meeting, Wadia will likely back Mistry. One of the most highlighted themes in the Ratan Tata-Mistry battle has been the furore and losses surrounding the Nano. The Nano is making a loss of Rs one lakh on each car produced by the company but it has been kept alive due to emotional reasons, Mistry has alleged earlier. On its part, Tata Sons has said poor performance marked Mistrys tenure all round. It has pointed out that in passenger cars segment, market share has dropped to 5 percent now from 13 perfent in the year ended March 2013 and that it would be difficult if not impossible to retrieve this market share loss. It has also said that the commercial vehicle market share dropped from 60 percent for the year ended March 2013 to about 40 percent plus now, making this the lowest in the companys history as the market leader in commercial vehicles. The holding company has also pointed out that Tata Motors UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover, which Ratan Tata acquired in 2009, is one of the only two jewels in the entire Tata group. Tata Sons has further alleged that Bolt and Zest, the two passenger cars launched under Mistrys stewardship as turnaround products for the company have been lackluster in market acceptance. Their current sales levels more or less equal to those of the Indica and Indigo which are around 15-year-old vehicles. In effect, JLRs stellar performance masks the rot at Tata Motors since consolidated statements hide the inefficiencies of the domestic business. While facts in the Tata Sons statement cannot be disputed, it is also true that Tata Motors has begun to improve its performance from last fiscal. The turnaround has already begun and if the macro-economic environment remains encouraging, the companys performance may improve from here onwards. In fact, some analysts have said FY16 was one of the best years for Tata Motors in a long time. In the annual report of Tata Motors for 2015-16, Mistry notes that though for the Tata Motors Group, 2015-16 was a year of mixed results but it was important to note the return to profitability. It was therefore a turnaround year, backed by strong Jaguar Land Rover growth despite challenges, as well as the start of the turnaround for Tata Motors standalone. Jaguar Land Rover continued to show strong global sales, despite the China slowdown. It reported strong growth in the key markets of North America and Europe. Its strong revenue growth reflected the demand for the new models such as Land Rover Discovery Sport, Jaguar XE and XF, that helped the Company add new customers to both brands across UK, Europe and North America. In 2015-16, Jaguar Land Rover sold more than half a million cars in any one year for the first time in its existence. Going forward, the company should do even better. Analysts suggest that the commercial vehicle market decline has bottomed out which means every CV player was being impacted in a bear market along with Tata Motors in the last 3-4 years and now with market recovery, things will look up for everyone. CVs account for almost two-thirds of the companys sales. Also, the triggers for improving sales across product categories, saving costs and brand building - all taken under Mistrys tenure in the last four years. *** Tata Motors EBITDA improved to Rs 2,740 crore in 2015-16 against a negative EBITDA of Rs 800 crore in the previous fiscal, says the companys annual report for 2015-16. *** New product launches have been stepped up, particularly in the passenger vehicle business with the launch of Bolt and Zest in last fiscal and Tiago early this fiscal. *** To deleverage the company and reduce borrowing costs, Tata Motors has raised equity from the shareholders (including promoters) of about Rs 7,498 crore in May 2015. This helped curtail borrowings and reduce interest costs. *** As per the annual report, the Indian automobile industry as a whole shrunk by more than 8 percent between 2012-13 and 2014-15 (the Mistry tenure at Tata Motors). *** And within the overall domestic automobile industry, commercial vehicles segment shrunk by 30 percent or by a third. Commercial Vehicles account for 60 percent of Tata Motors turnover, so this explains the massive loss of volume and value share of Tata Motors in the trucks and buses arena between 2012-13 and 2014-15. *** The report says Tata Motors was more severely impacted due to certain sectors performing more adversely, which impacted segments in which the company had larger volumes and higher market shares. Take the small CVs, where Tata Motors claims over 70 percent market share. The company said this segment was severely challenged and is yet to show recovery. *** Last fiscal the M&HCV segment also saw a recovery since the industry sales were up 9.6 percent. *** Low capacity utilisation across the automobile industry these last few years has lead to aggressive competition in pricing among domestic automobile players, with marketing and selling cost increasing substantially. This created further pressure on the margins and profitability of Tata Motors. Analysts at Motilal Oswal estimate almost 23 percent CAGR in CV volumes over this fiscal and the next for Tata Motors. They also say that since the Nano launch in 2009, there has been no major passenger vehicle launch from Tata Motors till Zest, Bolt and Tiago arrived and now, there is a confirmed plan for two new launches every year till 2020. We estimate almost 26 percent PV volume CAGR over FY16-18E (17% CAGR de-growth over FY12-15). Not just a shrinking overall vehicle market, leadership issues also played a big role in Tata Motors operations under Mistry. This story suggests that Mistry has had a really tough time in appointing anyone to head the countrys largest automobile company for two years after the demise of MD & CEO Karl Slym, due to opposition from the Tata camp. He finally managed to get Guenter Butschek past the roadblocks and anointed him the MD & CEO earlier this year. Will todays events, whichever direction they take, shake up Tata Motors leadership structure? This remains to be seen. Speaking to shareholders, Mistry has said in the report that For the Tata Motors standalone business, this will mark a milestone year of growth, great launches and transformation. There continues to be the growing pressure of competition and we will look to bring in significant launches in PV and CV with focus on cost efficiencies to remain competitive. A very important aspect of this transformational journey is the appointment of Guenter Butschek as the new CEO and MD for the Tata Motors standalone business. The M&HCV business showed sustained growth for a year to lead the turnaround of the Indian business. Within this, some segments like the multi-axle vehicles and tractor trailers emerged as the key growth drivers, the tipper segment also started showing signs of recovery with demand coming primarily from coal mining regions. Has Ratan Tata then mistimed his move? Just when his beloved Tata Motors, after years of languishing, was set for a turnaround. Beijing: Terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to demonetise high-value currency notes as "startling and bold", Chinese official media has said it is "far from enough" and India may "look at ideas" from China's crackdown on corruption which has shown "efficiency". Modi in "a startling and sudden move" demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes to "demonstrate that he is truly up for a fiercer fight against black money and corruption", an op-ed article in the state-run Global Times said. "Modi means well and his decision was made based on the reality in India, since most illegal business in the underground economy is cash-only, and 500 and 1,000 rupee notes constitute over 80 per cent of all cash circulation in India. Nevertheless, we can hardly count on the new rule to fully root out corruption," the article titled 'Beijing offers clues for Modi's new anti-corruption moves'. Since Modi assumed office, he has carried out a number of measures to crack down on black money, corruption and tax evasion. However, many of them are believed to be "without teeth and can't begin to scratch the surface of the problems he faces", it said. India's new policy to scrap high-value notes is considered a "risky, but a bold and decisive step", it said. "And yet, delivering a corruption-free country requires more than banning currency notes. The key should be reforming systems. In this regard, New Delhi might need to look for ideas from Beijing," it said, referring to the massive anti-graft campaign carried out by President Xi Jinping in which over a million officials at different levels were punished. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party in 2012, during which Xi was elected as its general secretary, and taking over as the President and military chief launched the anti-graft campaign which also attracted criticism that he used it effectively to consolidate his power emerging as the most powerful Chinese leader after party founder Mao Zedong. "Over the years, China promoted anti-corruption laws, improved the supervision system, deepened judicial system reforms and adopted measures to make sure the system is transparent," it said without referring to criticism about the campaign. "For instance, China's foreign ministry has lately published information about the families of 12 senior officials on its website in an effort to fight against corruption through familial networks by improving transparency. These steps are taken to ensure that achievements made in the struggle against corruption can be consolidated by laws and systems," it said. China is still on its way toward building a comprehensive anti-corruption system. But "compared with India, Beijing's method has already shown its efficiency", it said. "More time is needed to see whether Modi's new policy will turn into a huge blow against corruption in India. The hard truth is that the corrupt and fraudulent won't just conduct shady deals by using cash, but with gold, real estate and overseas assets. "Corruption can be bred in a variety of ways. Blocking the circulation of large currency bills is without question far from enough," it said. Mumbai: The Rata Tata-Cyrus Mistry feud flared up on Sunday with the ousted chairman rebutting allegations of "drifting away" Tata companies during his tenure and hitting back at attempts to question integrity of independent directors who backed him, prompting the $102-billion group's holding firm Tata Sons to assert it will do "whatever is required" to deal with the situation. Terming the Tata Sons' contention that group companies were "drifting away" under him as "furthest from truth", Mistry hit out first at Tata Sons calling its criticism of independent directors, revered names in India Inc, as "truly unfortunate". This led the salt-to-software conglomerate to assert that it will do "whatever is required to deal with the situation", hinting at a no-holds-barred battle in the days ahead. A day ahead of the crucial board meet of Tata Motors, the group also said it is "crucially important" for the boards, including the independent directors, to "consider their views and positions ensure that the future of Tata companies is protected, taking into consideration the interest of all stakeholders". It can be noted that the independent directors of at least two big companies from the Group, including Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) and Tata Chemicals, have backed the ousted chairman leading the holding company to question their objectives in a 9-page letter sent last week. Mistry's first statement was a part-rebuttal of the allegations levelled against him in the statement and in defence of the independent directors. "To suggest that 'ulterior objectives' and 'clever strategy' can sway these eminent names in undertaking their fiduciary duties and in discharging the duties mandated by statute as independent directors is absolutely astonishing and really speaks of how low Tata Sons has unfortunately stooped in their public statements," a statement from his office said, in a rebuttal to the recent actions of Tata Sons. Stating that the independent directors whose conduct has been questioned include names like Deepak Parekh, Nusli Wadia and Nadir Godrej, among others, Mistry added that it is "truly unfortunate" that independence of "stalwarts of India Inc" is being questioned. The statement is a rebuttal to the 9-page open letter issued by the Tata Sons in which it had accused Mistry of "trying to gain control of Indian Hotels Company, whose independent directors had sided with the former chairman of Tata Sons". "He (Mistry) has cleverly ensured over these years that he would be the only Tata Sons representative on the board of IHCL in order to frustrate Tata Sons' ability to exercise influence and control on IHCL," the Tata Sons letter had said. Independent directors at Tata Chemicals have also backed Mistry, which has led Tata Sons to initiate action to expel Wadia from its company boards. In its letter, Tata Sons had alleged that Mistry was trying to gain control of the group's main companies and regretted its decision to appoint him as chairman four years ago. It had said the structure of the group has been "consciously dismantled so that now the operating companies are drifting farther away from the promoter company and their major shareholder". Mistry retorted back at this today, saying these suggestions are "furthest from the truth" and added that changing the board structure was part of a plan to alter the corporate governance practices with an aim to make the salt-to-software group's companies run independently. "The corporate governance framework that was developed under Mistry's leadership attempted to ensure that group companies would adhere to the group values, share best practices, enable movement of talent, exploit win-win synergies and do all of this without impinging on independence of the operating companies and the boards that they are ultimately responsible to," he said. This was done to protect the interests of all stakeholders, employees, and minority shareholders, he said, adding that it was a case of placing responsibility "where it should lie". The Mistry statement also made a veiled but not fully elaborate reference to insider trading while explaining the need to have a new corporate governance framework. "... between Tata Trusts, Tata Sons, and the Tata operating companies, there was a need to be compliant with the law relating to insider trading by ensuring communication of unpublished price sensitive information strictly on a need to know basis," Mistry said. Listing out the names of the nine directors whose conduct has been questioned, it highlighted six of them were appointed during Ratan Tata's tenure that ended in 2012 and two of them serve as trustees on Tata Trusts. It said under the existing laws, the independent directors are required to bring "independent judgement" on issues of strategy, performance, risk management, resources, key appointments and standards of conduct, and safeguard the interests of all stakeholders, especially the minority shareholders. It acknowledged that in both IHCL and Tata Chemicals, the independent directors were unanimous in their support of him as the chairman and claimed that this is a "reflection of Mistry's conduct as chairman in upholding the highest standards of corporate governance". The statement also elaborated on the change in the board composition of companies under Tata's leadership and the changes which Mistry introduced. As against the earlier practice of all the board members being internal members of the group, Mistry's statement said now the requirement is to have 30 per cent Trust nominees and 30 per cent independent directors. "The corporate governance framework in India has considerably tightened in recent times with more stringent rules with respect to independence of directors, female directors, board evaluation, and so on. To meet this increased scrutiny, several new policies and frameworks were developed at the group centre and deployed across operating companies," it said. These included refreshing the code of conduct, developing a board effective framework, LEAD programme to enhance gender diversity and provide TBEM feedback on company to the board, the statement said. Mumbai: Hardening its stand, Tata Sons on Sunday said its management will do whatever is required to deal with the situation arising out of the ouster of Cyrus Mistry and wanted its independent directors to ensure future of Tata companies and interest of all stakeholders is protected. In a late-evening statement, Tata Sons said in its statement on 10 November 10, 2016, it has already put forward facts so that the decision of the Tata Sons board "to replace Cyrus P Mistry as chairman is seen in the desired perspective". "The Tata Sons management will do whatever is required to deal with the situation," it said. Last week, the promoter company of the major operating Tata group firms had accused Mistry of betraying trust and trying to seek control of main operating companies of the over $100 billion group. It had also punched holes into Mistry's performance over four years and listed Tata Steel Europe, DoCoMo-Tata Tele joint venture and Tata Motors' Indian operations as "problem companies" where there was no "noticeable improvement in operations" and the situation has worsened with widening losses, increasing debt and declining market share. Referring to the changes announced in the management roles of the company on 4 November, Tata Sons asked its board of group firms and independent directors to keep the interest of the group as priority. "In light of the developments since 4 November, 2016, Tata Sons reiterates that it is crucially important for boards, including independent directors, to consider that their views and positions ensure the future of Tata companies is protected, taking into consideration the interest of all stakeholders," the statement said. On 4 November, Tata Sons had announced organisational changes bringing in S Padmanabhan as the group human resources head. Besides, former Tata brand custodian under Mistry's regime Mukund Rajan has been given the responsibility of overseeing operations of the overseas representative offices of Tata Sons in the US, Singapore, Dubai and China. This is in addition to his existing responsibility of ethics and sustainability. Harish Bhat, who is responsible for marketing and customer centricity, will henceforth also be responsible for managing the Tata Brand. The Tata Sons statement comes days after independent directors of IHCL came out in support of Mistry while Tata Chemicals independent directors also showed their support to him. Last week, Tata Sons, which holds 26.51 percent stake in Tata Motors, asked the owner of Jaguar Land Rover to convene an extra-ordinary general meeting of the company to consider its resolution seeking removal of Chairman Cyrus Mistry and independent director Nusli Wadia. Besides, Tata Sons has served notices to IHCL, Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals to convene shareholders meeting to oust Mistry and Wadia from their boards. The board room battle in the Tata group has escalated ever since Mistry was ousted on 24 October. The Ratan Tata camp has been trying to evict Mistry from the chairmanship of group companies and has already fired him as chairman of TCS. However, Mistry with the support of independent directors, including Wadia, have been able to hold on to his position as chairman in Indian Hotels Co Ltd and Tata Chemicals. "...between Tata Trusts, Tata Sons and the Tata operating companies, there was a need to be compliant with the law relating to insider trading by ensuring communication of unpublished price sensitive information strictly on a need to know basis," Mistry said. Listing out the names of the nine directors whose conduct has been questioned, it highlighted that six of them were appointed during Ratan Tata's tenure which ended in 2012 and two of them serve as Trustees on Tata Trusts. It said that under the existing laws, the independent directors are required to bring "independent judgement" on issues of strategy, performance, risk management, resources, key appointments and standards of conduct, and safeguard the interests of all stakeholders, especially minority shareholders. It acknowledged that in both IHCL and Tata Chemicals, the independent directors were unanimous in their support of him as the chairman and claimed that this is a "reflection of Mistry's conduct as chairman in upholding the highest standards of corporate governance". The statement also elaborated on the change in the board composition of companies under Ratan Tata's leadership and the changes which Mistry introduced. As against the earlier practice of all the board members being internal members of the group, Mistry's statement said now the requirement is to have 30 per cent Trust nominees and 30 per cent independent directors. "The corporate governance framework in India has considerably tightened in recent times with more stringent rules with respect to independence of directors, female directors, board evaluation, and so on. To meet this increased scrutiny, several new policies and frameworks were developed at the group centre and deployed across operating companies," it said. These included refreshing the code of conduct, developing a board effectiveness framework, LEAD program to enhance gender diversity, and provide TBEM feedback on the company to the board, the statement said. Vadodara: Two leading bank unions on Monday criticised the government over demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, saying the move has led to "financial chaos" across the country. In a letter to Indian Banks' Association (IBA), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said the decision to withdraw the high-value notes was taken without proper planning or preparation. They also highlighted heavy work pressure on employees and officers at bank branches in the wake of demonetisation which has led to customers rushing to exchange the now defunct notes. "Chaotic situation is prevailing at the bank branches and this is unbearable for both customers as well as bank employees and officers," S Nagarajan, General Secretary of AIBOA, and CH Venkatachalam, his counterpart at AIBEA, said in the letter to IBA, the apex body of bank managements. There is a huge shortage of Rs 100 notes which are now in great demand for routine needs, while most customers are not willing to accept the new Rs 2,000 bill, they said. "The Centre and the Reserve Bank must be fully aware that already there is a huge gap between the indent and supply of Rs 100 notes. "For example, in 2015-16, as against the indent of 535 crore pieces of Rs 100 notes, the supply received was only to the tune of 490 crore pieces," according to the letter. "One cannot understand the reason behind banning the existing Rs 500 notes and not providing new supply of Rs 500 notes in time," it added. Most of the 2.20 lakh ATMs across the country are closed or partly functional. This has put additional pressure on the staff and customers are compelled to visit branches to withdraw cash from their accounts, the two unions said. Nagarajan and Venkatachalam requested the IBA to ensure the RBI supplies adequate cash in denominations of Rs 100 and new Rs 500 notes to ease pressure on banks and provide relief to customers. Beijing: China on Monday cautiously backed the India-Japan nuclear deal signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Tokyo visit, saying all countries are entitled for peaceful use of nuclear energy if they meet the international non-proliferation obligations. Beijing also reacted mildly to the references to South China Sea in the India-Japan joint statement, reiterating its earlier stand that countries outside the region should respect efforts made by China and other contestants to resolve the dispute. "With regard to nuclear agreement signed between India and Japan and on the use nuclear energy, we believe that under the promise of absorbing international obligation of nuclear non-proliferation, all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media briefing in Beijing. "At the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," he said. Contrary to the write-ups in the official media in Beijing, prior to the recent signing of the civil nuclear deal, Geng made no reference to the media criticism of Japan selling its nuclear technology shedding its past objections. Japan has traditionally adopted a tough stand on proliferation issues having been the only victim of atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. India is the first country which has not signed nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with which Japan has signed the civil nuclear agreement. China opposes India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), citing India's refusal to sign NPT. An article in the state-run Global Times earlier criticised Japan for relaxing its rules to sign civil nuclear deal for India and said that selling nuclear technology to New Delhi will "taint Tokyo's reputation of advocating for a nuclear weapons-free world". About the reference to the South China Sea in the joint statement issued at the end of Modi's visit, Geng said "under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction". "We have been repeating that we should come back to the right track of peacefully resolving the relevant dispute through negotiations and consultations." "We hope that the countries outside the region would respect efforts made by countries in the region and safeguard as well as consolidate the sound momentum in the South China Sea and and do more that is conducive to regional peace and stability," he said in a cautious response. Narendra Modi's stated objective behind the demonetisation exercise is to flush out black money and bring it into the system. But it would seem his police force in Chhattisgarh does not agree. And it has strong reasons to defy the order. The police in this Maoist-hit state believe that a substantial sum of money, mostly in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 is kept at safe dumps, buried under the soil in forest areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha. Now with the currency declared illegal tender, the security forces believe the Maoists will try to reach some of the safe hideouts where they have buried the money to take it out. The cops want to ensure they cannot do so. So entry points into the forest areas are under the radar. Usually, the exact location of the dumps are known only to the top committee leaders of the Maoists. The Chhattisgarh police feel a desperate Maoist leadership may pass on the word to some of their trusted tribals to take out the money since their movement into the jungle would be fraught with risk. The police believe much of this money is gained through extortion from contractors of tendu patta (used to manufacture beedis), infrastructure firms and levy from businessmen. They also accuse Maoists of extorting from illegal mining mafia groups. Another avenue of extortion is to collect what in local parlance is called Maoist tax from vehicles passing through 'liberated zones'. But how much money would really be inside the forest? No one quite has a clear idea since none of those who give money under duress speak out. Any guesstimate about the amount is usually pieced together based on the literature that is confiscated after an encounter. The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in a report in 2013 had pegged the money extorted at Rs 140 crore per year. But police officers on the ground consider this a conservative estimate. The Chhattisgarh police has maintained that the outlaws who practically control the southern part of the state, collect up to Rs 2,000 crore through extortion every year. As a result of collections over the years, they believe that close to Rs 7,500 crore would be buried in Chhattisgarh at this point in time. That this parallel economy thrives in the world of terrorism was clear when in 2007, Misir Besra, a central committee member of CPI (Maoist) was arrested. Besra reportedly revealed that the Maoists had earmarked that year Rs 42 crore for arms, ammunition and explosives, Rs 2 crore for intelligence gathering and Rs 16 crore for propaganda, computer training, documentation and transport. Besra was subsequently freed in 2009 during a daring attack on a police in the court premises in Bihar. The Maoist extortion machine in Jharkhand also is believed to collect, according to the Union Home Ministry, close to Rs 320 crore every year. But whether it stays safe is a crucial question. In August this year, a bag containing Rs 29 lakh consisting of Rs 1,000 notes was eaten up by termites in the Chakri-Bakrakocha jungles of Jharkhand. It is believed that the bag was extortion money buried by Kanhu Ram Munda, who is one of the CPI (Maoist) leaders in Jharkhand. Odisha and Maharashtra are other areas which yield a rich harvest though Maoist influence in these parts has been on the wane. The recent encounter last month in Malkangiri in Odisha in which 30 Maoists were killed is a pointer to the ability of the security forces to push them on the back foot and hit their leadership. But given the expenditure incurred by the Maoists on intelligence gathering, weapons and ammunition and medical emergencies, it is not clear how much they would be putting for safekeeping in the forests. Police sources say Maoists are also reported to pay a monthly remuneration to their cadre in the range of Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 depending on their rank and tenure in the outlawed organisation. Since 10 November, the police are also keeping an eye on banks in Maoist-affected areas for anyone coming with a large amount of money, which he cannot account for. But it is quite possible that forests are not the only hideout, given the risk of a Jharkhand-like termite attack. The overground Maoist sympathisers in villages, towns and cities could also be safekeepers of such unaccounted for cash. That will make the task of tracking down the cash trail tougher. But if the Maoists are in possession of even a fraction of the amount estimated by the security agencies, they will be hit badly. It will cripple their operations more severely than any encounter has in the recent past as they would not be in a position to run the outfit. It is also likely to make them more reckless, going on an extortion overdrive to line their pockets with new cash. The Prime Minister's intention was also to track fake currency and cut off the supply to terror funding. The hit on the Maoists has been an unintended financial strike, which will bring the security forces much cheer. Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision to demonetise Rs 500 and 1,000 currency notes has not done much to check the funding of the militants, but has lead to worst business losses across Jammu and Kashmir. People are struggling to pay for medicines because they cannot exchange the old notes as the banks are shut. Separatists have called for a shutdown and majority of banks are closed due to that. The decision of the government to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes has hit the traders who had already been facing losses due to the ongoing unrest. Unlike the rush which was witnessed during the relaxation time earlier, the buzz is now missing in the markets in Srinagar. Patients have complained that the pharmaceutical companies and chemists are not taking the old currency notes due to which their treatment has been severely affected. Fayaz Ahmad Bakshi, owner of the Shangrilla, an A-category hotel, said that the decision of the Government of India (GoI) to scrap the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes put him through an ordeal. "I couldnt even go and visit the dentist and buy medicines. It is a terrible time. Even my friend couldnt fill the tank in his vehicle as the pumps remain closed and are not accepting the old notes. He had to travel some 20 kilometres from Soura to Bemina to locate a petrol pump, but there was no petrol at the pump. He was livid," he said. A top police official said that the demonetisation has not served the purpose of cutting any support to the militants here. "We have not come across any of the cases of seizure of hawala money after the decision to scrap the currency notes was announced. We have not found any discarded notes," he added. In a recent meeting however the Director General of Police, K Rajendra, has asked the police officials to keep a close watch on the "people who are masking hawala money by converting large cash hoards into formal books of accounts." Director General of police (DGP), Law and Order, Dr S P Vaid, however, said that the police is keeping a close tab on transactions. "We are keeping a close watch on the separatists here after the the government scrapped the notes," he said. The demonetisation, however, has affected the business. President of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, said that the impact of the demonetisation was widespread. "There is no business during the shutdown here. The shops remain shut during the day due to the strike call given by the Hurriyat conference and would open during the relaxation time in the evening, But after the demonetisation decision there is no business in the market even in relaxation time. The day to day spending has taken a worst hit. There is no business for the relaxation period as the currency is not available now," he said. Assistant professor of medicine at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital (SMHS), Dr Nisarul Hassan, said that the patients are "compromising on medication due to the non-availability of currency notes." "The patients have complained that the chemists are not accepting the old currency notes. The situation is grave here. Patients are not able to buy the medicines and equipments from the market and as all the medicines arent available in the government hospitals their medication is getting compromised." The situation in Kashmir remains particularly bad as not many banks have remained open due to the ongoing shutdown. The skeletal number of branches have, however, seen long queues of people exchanging the currency notes and non availability of cash at ATMs have compounded to the miseries of people. Head Corporate Communications, Jammu and Kashmir bank, Sajad Bazaz, however, said that the bank has made "all infrastructure and manpower available at its branches to ensure that the people dont face any problems." The Jammu and Kashmir bank is a market leader in terms of the number of branches that exist in state. It runs over 800 branches in the state which is 65 percent of the market share here. A top bank official however said that the situation could become much worse in the days as the demand for cash increases. "With demonetisation, 86 percent of the currency notes have become invalid, the demand for the new notes will only increase," he said. By suspending mobile internet services in the states, citizens are not able to make online transactions and pay utility bills. However, Bazaz said that the bank has designated many branches where the people can pay their electricity bills. He said that the footfall in many of the bank branches has increased after the government decision to take out the old currency notes from the market. As Israel's President Reuven Rivlin lands in India on Monday, he will find an Indian government that is ready to celebrate its close ties with his country. Indias relations with Israel, more so its defence co-operation with the nation, are now out of the closet. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now willing to publicly acknowledge the importance of the Indian-Israeli relations, especially in regards to security. At the same time, India will continue to balance its relations with Israel along with its growing engagements in the Gulf region. Modi had made it a point to visit the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Countries as well Iran. India had also hosted a ministerial meeting of the Arab-India Co-operation Forum. The Modi government has vigorously carried forward Indias engagement with the Arab world. Ever since former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had upgraded relations with Israel in 1992, Indias ties with Tel Aviv have soared. Both the Congress and the BJP have promoted relations with Israel. But in the past, India's defence and security ties with the nation were usually not spoken of publicly. Israeli Ambassadors since 1992, while briefing reporters, would often say that a lot is happening in defence albeit with the caveat that they dont want to make it public for obvious reasons. The obvious reasons were Indias historical support for the Palestinian cause, New Delhis sensitivity towards the Gulf States and the fact that millions of Indian were working out of the area and sending back much needed foreign exchange. But over the years, with many of the Arab countries themselves working, sometimes openly and often clandestinely, with Israel, that concern no longer holds. India, under both the BJP and the Congress governments, has steadily increased its defence purchases from Israel. Today, Israel is Indias third largest defence supplier, after Russia and the US. In the last decade alone, India has bought defence hardware from Israel worth USD 12 billion, making India Israels biggest defence customer. President Rivlin on his first state visit to India was previously a politician of the ruling Likud party and was once an arch rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a hardliner and was bitterly opposed to the Oslo accord of 1993. He also supports the Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip. On the agenda for his visit are terror, defence deals, business and overall political ties. The defence deals, worth nearly three billion dollars, have already been cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security. Israel is one of the first countries to implement the Make in India vision. There are already plans for joint ventures for making 'for India' by Israeli companies, with the support of the Israeli government, Israels Ambassador to India, Daniel Carmon, said at a news conference ahead of the visit. The six day trip will also take President Rivlin to Agra, Karnal, Chandigarh and Mumbai. We are in the final stages of finalising an agreement on water, energy, agriculture research and development and education, the envoy said. Representatives from the defence industry as well as a business delegation will be travelling to India at the same time. Apart from defence, Israel is also cooperating with India in water management, dry irrigation and other fields of expertise, underlining the fact that the ties are not confined just to arms. But defence purchases are what drive the India-Israel relationship. Both countries are also politically aligned, especially since Indias relations with the US has seen a sea change. New Delhi remembers how Israel played a part in getting US lawmakers to pass the '123 agreement' in the US Congress during the civil nuclear deal negotiations. There is much admiration for Israels strong anti-terror stand among large sections of people in India. Many in the country would like the state to be as tough as Israel. Hot pursuit and surgical strike are concepts that Israel has used with alacrity. Indians, especially the Hindutva supporters, hold Israel as an example of a country which knows how to fight terror. Many want India to follow Israels example. Modi himself referred to Israel in his address following the Indian Armys post Uri surgical strike: Our armys valour is being discussed across the country these days. We used to hear earlier that Israel has done this. The nation has seen that the Indian Army is no less than anybody, he said. That is of course political hyperbole. But the admiration for Israel is apparent. President Pranab Mukherjee's last year visit to Israel was a path-breaker. He was the first Indian Head of state to break the 'taboo'. The BJP has always advocated closer relations with Israel, but even former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had not travelled to Israel. New Delhi has also made sure that a visit to Israel was balanced by a trip to the Palestinian state. In fact, President Mukherjee spent a night there during his Israel trip. Mukherjee had noted during his visit that Israel had always helped India at crucial times. The reference was to the Kargil operations in 1999, as well as during the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan. Though this was all hush-hush back then. Apart from the Presidents visit, India also showed support for Israel at the UN Human Rights Council. India abstained from voting on a resolution criticising Israel's use of excessive force in the 2014 Gaza crisis. Though the Ministry of External Affairs had said that India had abstained because of the reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the resolution. India is not signatory to the statute for the ICC. This was perhaps the first time that India had stayed away from an anti-Israel resolution. Tel Aviv was delighted. Though New Delhi clearly went with another explanation. The next big-ticket item in the India-Israel calendar will be Modis visit to Israel next year. In 2017, the two countries will mark 25-years of establishing diplomatic ties. India has so far succeeded in balancing its ties with Israel with the growing co-operation of the Arab world. Srinagar: Over one lakh students are scheduled to take secondary school exams beginning in Kashmir on Monday following adequate security arrangements in the valley, education officials said. "One lakh five hundred students are taking these exams," Zahoor Ahmad Chatt, chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (BOSE) told IANS. "Over 45,000 students are appearing for class 12 exams beginning at 11 am at 484 centres." "While over 55,000 students are appearing for class 10 exams which begins in here tomorrow (Tuesday)," the chairman added. He said 98 percent students have taken their admit cards. Since all educational institutions including schools have remained closed since 9 July, BOSE has decided to allow a 50 percent cut in the syllabus for those students willing to take the secondary exams. Elaborate arrangements of security have been made for the smooth conduct of these exams. Dozens of schools have been burnt by miscreants during the last two months. State Education Minister Naeem Akhtar has attracted a lot of criticism from the separatist leaders and also a threat from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for trying to re-open the schools. One of the most lingering, poignant and perplexing of my childhood memories belongs to the afternoon of 27 May, 1964. We, children, having been fed, were forcibly put to sleep, to save us from heatstroke and to give Jiji (as we addressed our mother) a few moments of much-needed rest and recreation after her exhausting chores. I was on the verge of falling asleep that I felt a warm drop tickling my cheekthere was this trembling, broken voice of Jiji, "Uthh, (Jawaharlal) Nehru nahi rahe Wake up, Nehru is no more After a while, Babuji was also back, having closed shop. Quite dejected, trying hard to hold back his tears, handed the shop keys over to Jiji, and just lay down. No food was cooked that evening, although we, the children, were given something to eat. And, Babuji and Jiji far from being admirers were usually quite critical of Nehru. They very harshly condemned Nehru in the wake of humiliating experience of October, 1962, but today, as if they had lost a near and dear one, a member of the family. Our mohalla was known to be the stronghold of Hindu Maha Sabha. There, of course, were also voices of jubilation at the death of 'that arch enemy of Hindu nation'; but muted, embarrassed in fact, at themselves given the grief and sadness all around. Those were not the days of 24/7 TV and social media, but for the next many days, the sense of loss was palpable all over the city across communities and classes. Even, in the Vaishnava math, to which my family professed spiritual allegiance something quite unexpected happened. Incidentally, this is the famous math, whose then mahant Gangadasji had performed the last rite of Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi. The mahant in 1964, Jagannathdasji apparently hated Nehru, among other things, because he lost large patches of Mafidari land due to the wretched policies of that adharmik Nehru. But, that afternoon, far from his usual overbearing, almost fearsome self, mahantji was a study in grief and sadness. No food was cooked in the math kitchen that evening, and the sootak the ritual of mourning was duly observed. For some people, such a connect (to use a word often used these days) with people would be quite explicable in case of Mahatma Gandhi who spoke the religious language and employed traditional metaphors like Ram-rajya; but Nehru? How could he a self confessed modern be so close to such religious and traditional people? Some did and continue to dismiss Nehru as being culturally alien parkiya. How could he, with his culturally 'alien' self and ideas, secure such an emotional connect with his people? Nehru, of course represented the clearly understandable notion of modernity, but was Gandhi merely traditional? More importantly, are tradition and modernity so monolithic? Are they really situated in such a flat binary? Gandhi was deeply rooted in his tradition, no doubt. But, how did he interpret tradition? Without going into a longer argument, suffice it to say that every modernity has a tradition; and every tradition has a potential of modernity. In India, the philosophical idea of an individual (a hallmark of the modernity howsoever defined) was quite emphatically articulated in all the Indian languages by the bhakta poets, and Gandhi looked at the tradition through the prism of bhakti sensibility. In other words, he represented Indias own tradition of modernity in his ideas and acts. Also, in spite of being deeply suspicious of western modernity, Gandhi was leading a mass movement for an independent nation-state an idea that was modern to the core. Gandhi was an original philosopher, His articulation of Satya and Ahimsa is rooted in his radical critique of the very notion of civilisation as we know it. And yet, far from imposing his radicalism on his comrades and masses, Gandhi was accommodating their concerns in his practice. Nehru, on the other hand, was intellectually closer to the European tradition of modernity, and at the same time was deeply in love (of course not of the kind that would claim space-shuttles in the vedic era) with his own country and his traditions. He was among the few, who in those days of European intellectual hegemony, knew and appreciated the wisdom inherent in civilisations like Indian and Chinese. The key to the mystery of the peculiar chemistry between him and Gandhi the traditionalist lies here. Both complemented each other, as they represented a dialogue between the modernity coming from West and the modernity that emerged from Indias own rich and diverse traditions of philosophy and ways of living. There were, of course moments of sharp differences, even of vast distance between the two. In the wake of the sudden withdrawal of the Civil Disobedience Movement by Gandhi after the Gandhi-Irwin pact, Nehru took recourse to his favourite poets words: That is how the world ends/Not with a bang, but with a whimper. He, in fact went to the extent of noting in his diary, "I am getting more and more certain that there can be no further political cooperation between Bapu and me. At least, not of the kind that has existed." (Nehru, Selected Works, volume 5, page 489). And yet, the bond was deeper than any of these two great souls consciously realised themselves. Gandhi was certain that Jawahar will speak my language, once I am gone; and Jawahar on his part knew and told Gandhi, I feel lost in strange country, where you are the only familiar landmark and I try to grope my way in the dark but I stumble ( ibid, page 474). Nehru felt confused and even irritated with many acts of Gandhi, but he knew that Gandhi did not strategically use (as some commentators believe) the dharmik idiom, but actually looked at the world in a dharmik (not religious, but ethical) way. In fact, he considered the emphasis on the ethical idea of the purpose of life in general and politics in particular the greatest contribution of Gandhi. And, that is why he knew the quantum of appeal Gandhi had among the people. It is also important to remember that Nehru realised the value of Ahimsa the cornerstone of Gandhis worldview not just because of his relations with Gandhi, but through his own experience of the peoples agitations. Reflecting on the Kisan movement in Awadh in 1920-21, Nehru wrote, It is not the masses but we, nurtured in an atmosphere of the West, who talk glibly of the inefficiency of peaceful methods.The masses know the power of Ahimsa. (Nehru, Selected Works, volume 1). Nehru realised both the strength and weakness of those 'nurtured in the atmosphere of West' and the need for such people to discover the strengths and weaknesses of India. Writing that famous book just a couple of years before Independence, he was clear that, "It is destined for India to play a leading role in the post-colonial world order... There can be no other option for a wise and great civilisation." Let us, for even a moment not forget the fact, that our freedom movement was not merely for political independence. It was a movement for ethical regeneration of society, and worked with a healthy dose of self-criticism. It was motivated by a clear vision of ethical direction, independent India ought to take. This vision was and is known as idea of India, and is generally attributed to Nehru, but was actually shared by almost all the leaders (including critics of the Congress like BR Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh), their differences of opinion and sometimes bitter polemics notwithstanding. Those who were opposed to this vision, in fact to the freedom movement as such, are also well-known. The ethical orientation of the freedom movement is best articulated in the resolution on 'fundamental rights and economic policy' of the Karachi Session of Congress (1931). Among other things, it makes clear that in Independent India, civil liberties and equality before law will be ensured; the state will be neutral in matters of religion, working hours will be regulated and key industries will be under the control of state; untouchability will be eradicated, women and peasants will be protected and of course, the rights of minorities will be safe-guarded. It is not only historically, but also metaphorically important that this resolution was drafted by Nehru and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and presented by Gandhi in a session chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Before this, Nehru had made it clear in the Lahore Session of Congress that 'poverty can be eradicated only in accordance with the genius and trading of Indian people'. The ethical vision inspiring the Freedom Movement could be realised only with a robust economy and strong institutions of democratic governance. After Independence, the challenge was to transform this old 'wise' civilisation into a strong, modern nation-state. Nehru must be judged on this touchstone: Did he or did he not contribute greatly to this task of transforming the civilisational idea of India into a modern nation-state? Nehru was quite conscious of the genius and traditions of Indian people and imagined a role for modern India with this consciousness. With all the questions and doubts his acts as prime minister might raise, one thing is beyond doubt that he was trying to find a middle path quite in accordance with the genius of India. This genius though most famously articulated by Buddha in his Madhyama Pratipada is actually the consensus of the intellectual traditions of India and the lived experience of Indian people. Like any idea, the idea of India also needed a solid material basis to survive. For Nehru, the idea of India was not merely a cultural idea, it was also an economic and political idea. It is not merely about communal harmony and social tranquility, it is also about modernising national life in accordance with traditions and genius. Nehru articulated this consensus coming down from the traditions and genius of India in every sphere of policy-making. Many nationalists wanted Nehru to accept the US' umbrella and the Communists criticised him for not being sufficiently distant from the US and the West. The fact, however remains that in those days of the Cold War, the only sensible thing was the path of enlightened nonalignment articulated by Nehru. Similarly, it is very tempting to criticise his model of planned development under a mixed economy, but the fact remains that it was due to that model that India can boast of strong fundamentals till now; and could confidently take the steps of required reform. It should not be forgotten that Nehru took an active interest in projects, some of which seemed unnecessary luxuries to his critics. These include IITs and IIMs as well as Isro and the nuclear research program. The successful launch of Mangalyaan, India being a nuclear power and enjoying such an influential presence of in Silicon Valley is all due to the farsightedness of the man, under whose leadership and that of his party, according to some, nothing worthwhile happened in the past 60 years. Also, his idea of development was not that of converting human beings into robots and morons. It is to his active interest that we owe institutions like Sahitya Akademi, National School of Drama, Film Institute, Sangeet Natak Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi. Yes, he made mistakes. In fact, he committed blunders. One can and must criticise him for his mistakes, but, also appreciate the fact that unlike some of his own colleagues, the idea of turning into a benevolent autocrat never crossed his mind. As is well known, he was quite conscious of his popularly and obviously enjoyed it, and quite inspiringly wrote that famous article by Chanakya to warn Indian people of the possibility of such popularity being misused. He valued criticism and cherished free press as an essential attribute of our democratic process. He used this phrase in a speech delivered to the Newspaper Editors Conference in December, 1950. He further said, I have no doubt that even if the government dislikes the liberties taken by press and considers them dangerous, it is wrong to interfere with the freedom of press. How does one feel reading these words in this era of selfie journalists and every critic of the prime minister being branded anti-national? It is quite understandable that the admiration for Nehru has been waning over the years, partly due to the sustained campaign (including slurs of all kind) and partly due to unprecedented spread of neo-illiteracy induced by TV and social media among all sections of people. It could serve as an effective antidote to the harmful effects of this neo-illiteracy to understand Nehrus idea of India, his vision for Indias future and ask: Can we do without it? New Delhi/Kolkata/Lucknow: With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi, on Monday, defended the action as one which has brought "sound sleep" to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as "insult" to people. As a belligerent Prime Minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging BJP leaders had prior information about the impending decision. Pummelling the Congress and other parties which are criticising demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left yesterday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. "Don't mislead people...I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing Emergency," he said addressing a rally in Ghazipur, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad High Court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The 8 November decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliament's winter session with representatives of eight rpt eight parties-- Congress, TMC, JD(U), RJD, CPI, CPI(M), JMM and YSR (Congress)--discussing the matter. The SP, BSP and AAP, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on 16 November, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the "crisis" situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawati's BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. "Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Daring Modi to make public the bank details of the party at the central and state levels, Surjewala alleged that a BJP functionary O P Jha had deposited Rs one crore in party account in West Bengal in currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 on 8 November, shortly before the Prime Minister announced their demonetisation. Mamata Banerjee, who has been in touch with various parties on the issue, including arch rival CPI(M), slammed Modi for his remarks that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. "This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days," she said in a statement. BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Modi's "garland of notes" remark, unleashed a no- holds-barred attack on the Prime Minister, saying he cannot tolerate that a "dalit ki beti" is presented such a garland. "He (Modi) has accepted garland of notes many times. But if a 'dalit ki beti' is offered such a garland, it it does not become palatable for the Prime Minister, it reflects his cheap mentality," she said at a hurriedly convened press conference in Lucknow hours after Modi made the remark at a BJP rally in Ghazipur. "In order to divert people's attention from his failures, Modi levels baseless allegations against his poltical opponents which is condemnable...allegations on policy matters are different but personal ones should not be made...he cannot tolerate that a dalit ki beti is presented garland of notes," she said, adding one cannot digest what Mayawati wears. Mayawati said an undeclared "Bharat Bandh" was prevailing in the country where all economic activity has come to a grinding halt due to demonetisation. "Our party welcomes from the heart any strong action for it (against black money) but the present government in the garb of checking black money and corruption has forced the people to face immense hardships," she said. Mayawati was offered a garland of currency notes at a party rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury also sought to pick holes in the demonetisation drive, claiming that Prime Minister's stated objectives including those of tackling corruption will not be achieved with the steps taken. He also claimed that the BJP-led government had gains in UP election in mind while making the move and reiterated his party's charge that BJP leaders had prior information about the decision, referring to the West Bengal BJP depositing crores "a few hours ahead of Modi's 8 November announcement." "You discontinued Rs 1000 and Rs 500 currency notes. But, replaced it with that of Rs 2000. Nobody is able to use that note," Yechury said as he flashed a Rs 2000 note he withdrew from an ATM in Parliament premises to tell reporters that he has not been able to spend it over the past five days. "Also terrorists don't use cash, such funding is done through electronic transfers. The government should rather implement the law which was brought after 2008 terror attack in Mumbai," he suggested. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, one of the most strident critics of Modi, demanded that the measure be rolled back. "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur Modi said, "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, set to face a difficult state assembly election, said the farmers were badly hit by the Modi government's action and asked the Prime Minister to make special arrangements for them in the middle of the cropping season. "They said the measure (demonetisation) will cause pain, but whose who are giving the pain themselves did not know how much pain it will cause. First they said it will last for a week or ten days, now they are saying 50 days," Akhilesh said. As Modi battled opposition criticism, BJP ally Shiv Sena too did not pull any punches and termed the demonetisation drive as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said. Despite a show of unanimity on the issue of demonetisation, divisions persisted among opposition parties on whether they will join TMC delegation when it meets the President. "By and large there was a decision that we will work together. In such cases, it is not like will be led by a, b or c or whether we should meet the President at the start of the session, in the middle or the end," Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said after the meeting. Yechury, whose party and TMC are at daggers drawn in West Bengal, said,"The matter has to be first raised in Parliament and then we will take it forward." When asked if the opposition was united on the issue, he said,"It (unity) has to be on the floor of the House. Floor coordination cannot happen anywhere else." TMC's Derek O'brien, however, said his party will meet the President on the appointed day and at appointed hour in view of the "crisis" situation. "16th November it is, 1:30 pm it is. I hope others will see the urgency and come back to us," he said. Amid reports of inconvenience caused to cash strapped people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday night chaired a high-level meeting to review the demonetisation policy. The detailed review meeting went past midnight and focused on improving public convenience. The review panel decided to extend the deadline to use old currency notes for essential commodities and key services until 24 November. It also took a battery of measures to facilitate last-mile distribution. Shaktikanta Das, secretary, department of economic affairs, briefed the press on the out decisions taken. Here are the 10 key takeaways: 1) No need to panic. The government has enough cash. Steps are being taken to enhance supply. In the days to come, there will be enough cash available in every channel. 2) A special task-force will be formed under the Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India to monitor to expedite the recalibration of ATMs. All ATMs will be functional within the next few days. The task force will work closely with agencies involved in disbursement of cash. 3) The banks have been advised to hold separate queues for senior citizens and disabled people. So far, four instances have been reported where senior citizens had lost their lives while standing in long queues to withdraw cash. Queues for those customers who are visiting only to exchange old series of notes for new notes will also be separate. 4) A large number of micro ATMs will be deployed across the country to facilitate the disbursement of new currency. 5) To enhance supply of cash in rural areas where banking presence is less, the government will tap into the existing network of over 1.2 lakh active banking correspondents (BCs). The government has decided to increase their cash holding limit to Rs 50,000 and the banks will have flexibility to increase it further in case of special circumstances. The limit on transactions for the BCs, at present at one transaction per day, has also been lifted. They can now approach the branch they are attached to, multiple times to replenish their cash. 6) Over 1.3 lakh branch post offices will be authorised to disburse more cash in rural areas. 7) Limit of current accounts that are operational for at least three month has been increased to Rs 50,000 per day to help small businesses carry out paltry payments. 8) Nearly 18 crore transactions have been done by banking system in the last four days. 9) District cooperative banks will also receive cash to facilitate withdrawal. Govt departments PSU undertakings will be advised to undertake all their transactions in e-payment mode. That will also reduce pressure on banks and public. 10) The RBI has already advised banks to waive off transaction fees. There shall be separate queue for people visiting for transaction against account. Separate queue for notes exchange. The time limit to submit life certificate for pensioners has been extended up to 15 January. New Delhi: Congress and TMC leaders are meeting in New Delhi on Monday evening to chalk out a united fight during the Winter Session of Parliament commencing on 16 November against the demonetisation of RS 500 and Rs 1000 notes by the Modi government. The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, would be meeting the TMC leader in the lower house, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, ahead of an all-party meeting convened by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday, opposition sources said. Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Derek O'Brien is also likely to be present. It was not immediately clear whether other opposition parties have been invited. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on Sunday spoken to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury besides several other opposition leaders and mooted the idea of a united fight against the demonetisation move. Congress leaders too had reached out to several parties, including TMC to chalk out a joint strategy ahead of the Winter Session of Parliament. The Congress and TMC, besides other opposition parties like CPM, CPI, SP and BSP have targeted the government, accusing it of taking the decision in haste and without proper planning and caution, leading to harassment of the common man. After decimating the Left-Congress coalition and getting re-elected with an overwhelming mandate in May this year, Mamata Banerjee moved quickly to scupper all speculation about a bigger national role. She had a template response to a thousand questions from a hundred reporters on her prime ministerial ambitions, that she was too small a fry and is happy playing the behind-the-scenes kingmaker instead of fronting an alliance against the BJP. Crisis brings opportunities. As the Prime Minister's dramatic demonetisation drive to ferret out black money hoarders and bust the fake currency industry plunges the country into a financial crisis, the opposition believes that it has an unprecedented opportunity to hammer a crack in the bond that still exists between Narendra Modi and the electorate. The West Bengal chief minister remains a mass leader who understands the pulse and takes pride in keeping herself grounded among the grassroots. She rarely has let an opportunity slip by couldn't afford that luxury while uprooting the three-decade old Left Front rule in Bengal. Battling a formidable adversary whose reach and influence went far and wide into the polity, Mamata learnt how to grab chances as they come. That innate ability to seize the moment seems to be at work again as she tries to forge an alliance against the Centre, only this time taking the lead in doing so. This is obviously an important revision from her earlier position of remaining a backroom operator. The change in Mamata's position seems to have been triggered by two factors. One, the decline of the Congress as a pan-Indian counterfoil to BJP. The grand old party may have been in decline for long, but until recently it still had the ability to be a conduit of counter forces. It could, through its depleted but still considerable local network, serve as a platform. Rahul Gandhi has put paid to even that ability. Congress's state leaders now make MLAs sign 'Gandhi bonds' to prove their loyalty. As India becomes Congress-mukt, there is a vacuum to be filled. Two, the nature of the crisis. Money touches us all, cuts through all divides. There is not a shadow of doubt that the Prime Minister's decision has influenced public opinion in a very big way. Has it been a positive influence, coalescing public support further in Modi's favour, or are the people disillusioned with the Prime Minister and frustrated at his handling of the crisis? Mamata believes as does some other leaders that his disruptive influence will have a negative effect and it is up to the opposition parties to exploit this fault line. She must have also been motivated by the fact that in her own backyard, the RSS is steadily gaining ground and slowly but surely, the BJP's shadow is looming larger and larger. Therefore we find Mamata taking a proactive role in shoring up a united opposition to tap into the public anger and frustration. In the past 24 hours Mamata has cancelled her Monday trip to a Bengal district and is scheduled to land in Delhi instead. The Telegraph reports that "she is said to have got in touch with several Opposition leaders, such as CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and RJD boss Lalu Prasad Yadav, requesting them to unite against the Centre to protest the demonetisation drive and 'jointly take up with the President the difficulties the common people are facing because of the sudden decision'." The Congress has expectedly responded warmly to the Trinamool Congress Chief's overtures. The TMC will attend a Parliament meeting on demonetization to be chaired by Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mamata, in all likelihood, will join Rahul Gandhi in leading a opposition delegation to Raisina Hill on Wednesday to explain to President Pranab Mukherjee "how common people are suffering because of demonetisation". But Congress isn't the mitigating factor in the front. It is a force in decline unlike the Aam Admi Party whose leader Arvind Kejriwal has relentlessly tried to bring Modi down from the pedestal and pit himself as a credible rival. Interestingly, even the Delhi chief minister seems to be receding in the background in favour of Mamata taking the lead in the front. Though both leaders have called for a rollback of the demonetization drive and have been vitriolic in their responses, the AAP chief has indicated that he won't mind in letting Didi take the limelight. Third Front has been a cursed idea in national politics simply because the rivaling forces that come together have little commonality in idea and purpose beyond an ambition to share the spoils of power. The Left, whose Tripura bastion is facing a lot of heat from TMC, has already indicated its reluctance in joining in, perhaps also because it understands that it has nothing to gain from Mamata's rise. But Mamata won't be deterred. The Winter Session may see renewed fireworks from Didi. Mumbai: Israel President Reuven Rivlin arrived in Mumbai on 14 November 2016 on a six-day visit to India to further strengthen bilateral ties. Rivlin, who landed at the Mumbai airport with a large delegation of businessmen and academicians, will leave for Delhi today. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of co-operation and joint projects between the two nations. The Israeli leader will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh. He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in Mumbai and lay wreaths at memorials for Mahatma Gandhi and for Indian soldiers, who fell in the World War-I. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008. Rivlin will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common," Rivlin said before he boarded the flight to Mumbai. "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes presidents and senior representatives of Israeli academic institutions, who are expected to sign separate agreements with Indian institutions. Chennai: In her first communication to party workers since being hospitalised in September, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Sunday said she has taken rebirth because of people's prayers and urged them to vote for the AIADMK in the 19 November polls. "I have taken rebirth because of your prayers and worship. I would like to share this happy news with you in the first place," she said in a statement released by AIADMK here, which carried her facsimile signature. Stating that she does not have any grievances in view of people's "great love" for her, she said, "by God's grace, very soon, by recovering fully, I am waiting to resume work." Exhorting party workers, she asked them to work in full swing for the victory of AIADMK in the 19 November polls for Aravakkurichi, Thanjavur and Thirupparankundram constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Nellithope Assembly segment in Puducherry. Though she could not directly meet cadres and functionaries working in these constituencies and the general public, "my heart and thoughts are with you always," she told them. Without elaborating much, she asked party workers to "understand the nature of this statement and work with a sense of duty for making MGR's winning symbol two leaves bag a huge victory." She said cadres should work for the victory of AIADMK nominees by a huge margin of votes. "Work with vigour and a passion for the goal, which is AIADMK's victory." Jayalalithaa said the cadres should consider the party's victory as a victory for each one of them. Quoting lyrics from an MGR era song, she said, "AIADMK's victory should resound in all the directions. I am eagerly waiting for news of such victory." To voters, she recalled the slew of welfare schemes being implemented by her regime and urged them to "give your love and support to AIADMK in the present polls as well, remembering such innumerable schemes to enhance the people's standard of living." The chief minister, who has been in hospital since 22 September, said she has been slogging for the growth of the people of Tamil Nadu and her party from day one of her public life on the advice of her mentor and AIADMK founder chief M G Ramachandran. The 68-year-old AIADMK supremo was admitted to the hospital on 22 September 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 during the period. Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls it Imandari Ka Mahayagna (a rough translation: the true test of honesty). He is acutely aware that continuing hardships of common men and women across the country for seventh consecutive day due to cash crunch, could potentially derail his decision of abruptly scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, which was earlier touted as "bold". Modi, therefore, had to set the tone and agenda for public discourse and broader public mood, so that people would not mind suffering for a few weeks for larger public good in months and years to come. In the last 36 hours, Modi has addressed four consecutive rallies Goa, Karnataka, Pune and today the prime minister was in Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur. And in all the four rallies, he sought public support and tried to convince people that honesty and transparency will pay and make that an article of faith just like the way people don't mind hardship, fasting and austere living during certain religious occasions because of the long-held social belief and faith that their present sacrifice would bring them better future. It is clear from his speeches that the prime minister wants to discredit the Opposition Congress, Left parties and Trinamool Congress and their arguments against demonetisation even before they raise it in Parliament during the Winter Session. Month-long Winter session of Parliament opens on 16 November. The Congress and Trinamool Congress have already given notices to challenge government on one pretext or the other. Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal and Mayawati have their made bitter opposition to demonetisation known. Mamata has taken the initiative to combine opposition against the Modi government on demonetisation issue and will march to President House on Tuesday to submit him a memorandum. "I want to tell the leaders who misguide people in name of honesty that they should tell publicly tell whether they want continuance of Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes, black money and corruption. Stop misguiding people." With Modi making a pro-poor and pro-honest narrative, the leaders opposing the demonetisation move don't have much credibility left, especially when it comes to honesty, integrity and public probity. Out of the major leaders protesting against the move Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal have far less baggage as compared to the others. The two, so far, have managed to keep their names clean. Same cannot be said about their respective governments though. Mamata's name has been dragged to the mud after Saradha and Narada scams. Modi, at Ghazipur rally, spoke of his humble background yet again: "Mera nirnay kadak hai... Garib ko kadak chai bhati hai aur amir ka mooh bigad jata hai. (My decision was strong... poor like strong tea, but when rich people drink it, the aftertaste in their mouth is not that great)." Modi also used a social media coinage to blast Congress. "These Congress leaders and their top lawyers are claiming that the prime minister does not have the power and authority to demonetise currency. The Congress had discontinued chavanni (25 paise). But they could have gone beyond the chavanni by discontinuing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. We have done what was of our parity," he said. He also linked it with fake currency, terror and naxalite violence funding. At other level he is discrediting those leaders who are perceived to be cash rich:. "Some parties are deeply worried, they are deeply anxious as to what to do now. Those big garlands of high denomination notes where the leaders neck wouldn't be visible." Incidentally, after Modi's rally, Mayawati held a press conference and in her prolonged opening statement she blasted Modi for this statement. Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping has reaffirmed the importance of relations with the United States in a phone conversation with President-elect Donald Trump. State media reports say Xi congratulated Trump on his election in their Monday talk and said cooperation was the "only correct choice" for China and the US, the world's two biggest economies. Trump had accused China of unfair trade practices and currency manipulation during the election campaign, threatening to slap a 45 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Despite that, Chinese state media largely favored Trump over his Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton. She was disliked in Beijing over her promotion of the US "pivot" to Asia that is viewed by China's leaders as an attempt to contain their country's rise to global prominence. Brussels, Belgium: US President-elect Donald Trump is a man Britain and the European Union can do business with, British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Monday, amid sharp EU divisions over the tycoon's upset election win. "Donald Trump, as I've said before, is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain but it can also be a good thing for Europe," Johnson said as he arrived for an EU foreign ministers meeting, having snubbed special talks on the issue the night before. "I think we all need to wait and see what they come up with, but I think we should regard it as a moment of opportunity," he added. Trump's shock election win has sparked deep fears in Europe after his campaign-trail rhetoric appeared to cast doubt on US security commitments to Nato. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called a special dinner late Sunday to discuss the EU's response but Johnson refused to attend, saying it would send a wrong signal to the new president. Mogherini said after Sunday's talks she looked forward to a "very strong partnership" with the Trump administration, but warned that the EU could not just simply wait to see what he came up with. "For the moment it's not a wait-and-see attitude we can afford having because the world goes on, Europe goes on, crisis goes on, but also opportunities we can take go on," she said. Mogherini is pushing a new Global Strategy to give the EU a real defence policy, but Britain and several other EU member states oppose her plans because they believe they will undercut US-led Nato which has guaranteed Europe's security since 1949. Johnson told reporters that increased EU defence cooperation and spending was positive, but it should not come at Nato's expense. "It's important when you're setting up these EU structures that they should be complementary with Nato," he said. "You shouldn't undermine the fundamental security architecture that's looked after us for the last 70 years." By Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS The European Union on Monday agreed a defence plan that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's criticism of allies appeared to galvanise Europe into revamping its strategy. The plan set out by EU defence and foreign ministers could allow the bloc to send forces to stabilise a crisis before U.N. peace keepers can take over, and more broadly cement a willingness to act without the United States."Europe needs to be able to act for its own security," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. "This will allow Europe to take a step towards its strategic autonomy," said Le Drian, who has led the EU efforts along with Germany and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, using EU code language for greater independence of Washington.The 16-page plan lists tasks and aims, many of which risk remaining abstract without an increase in funding.But it nonetheless takes on special relevance after Trump's comments during his campaign for the U.S. presidency in which he sniped at low levels of defence spending by some of NATO's European members.Mogherini said there was support from governments on using so-called EU battle groups of 1,500 personnel, which have been operational since 2007 but never used.EU leaders must still sign off on the plan in December, while divisive aspects over money were left for officials to work out next year. Proposals for a European military headquarters were scaled back to focus on civilian missions. Figures on the table for funding the EU plan pale in comparison to the $18 billion that the United States aims to spend over the next five years on new technologies. During the U.S. election campaign Trump threatened to abandon U.S. allies in Europe if they did not spend enough on defence, appearing to question almost 70 years of U.S. military support that has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy."Clearly it is a message for all of to see how we can increase and improve our coordination," Sweden's Foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said of Trump's campaign comments, even though her country is not itself a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance.The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defence operations.The EU has 17 military and civilian missions underway - many of them out of the classic European theatre, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Mediterranean where it is seeking to stem migrant flows from Libya and uphold a U.N. arms embargo. But European planners were at pains to stress the plan would not rival the work of NATO which Britain, one of two nuclear-armed European members together with France, is setting as a priority since it voted to pull out of the European Union. NO 'EU ARMY' British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who supported Britain remaining in the EU, said Europe had to increase defence spending that has sunk to historic lows in some parts of western Europe since the end of the Cold War. Only five EU countries, including Britain, meet a NATO target of spending 2 percent of economic output on defence, while another 10 have set firm plans to reach that level. That meant only half the EU's members were putting up enough funds for the training and equipment that Europe needs, Fallon said."Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defence spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting.The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries.France has also pushed defence cooperation along with Germany after Britons voted to leave the EU in a June referendum.Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defence coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious. Though the new steps proposed are generally seen as modest, one diplomat said the proposed plan broke taboos that have held back European defence cooperation since the French parliament rejected a first attempt in the 1950s. (Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Richard Balmforth) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Baghdad: Iraqi forces recaptured the ancient village of Nimrud and the site of the ruins as part of the ongoing battle for Mosul, the Islamic State (IS) terror group's last major stronghold in the war-torn country. The recapture took place on Sunday, according to Colonel Mohammed Ibrahim, a spokesman for Iraq's Joint operations command. While the village was now under control by Iraqi forces, clashes were still underway to retake the town, less than a mile west of the ruins, Ibrahim told CNN. Nimrud is 30 km southeast of Mosul. Archeologists first began excavating the Assyrian city of Nimrud built nearly 3,000 years ago in the 1840s. In the decades that followed, they unearthed priceless treasures from the city, including palaces adorned with unique frescoes and giant sculptures. Last year, the IS blew up the ancient walled city. Unesco described the deliberate destruction of Nimrud as a "war crime". Nimrud flourished between 900 BC and 612 BC. Buildings there "have yielded thousands of carved ivories, mostly made in the 9 and 8 centuries BC, now one of the richest collections of ivory in the world," according to Encyclopedia Britannica's website. The famous British mystery novelist Agatha Christie accompanied her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, at his excavation in Nimrud and helped clean some of the ivories. The Iraqi and Kurdish troop offensive to liberate Mosul began on 17 October with a three-pronged offensive along the north, south and eastern fronts, which has enabled the liberation of various eastern Mosul neighbourhoods. Wellington: A powerful earthquake struck New Zealand's South Island early Monday, killing at least two people, damaging buildings and infrastructure, and prompting warnings to people along the coast to move to higher ground to avoid possible tsunami waves. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck just after midnight in a mostly rural area that's dotted with small towns. Near the epicenter, it opened up snaking fissures in roads and triggered landslides. It caused damage in Wellington, the capital, more than 200 kilometres (120 miles) to the north. It was also strongly felt to the south in the city of Christchurch, which was devastated by an earthquake in 2011 that killed 185 people. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes, and was followed by a number of strong aftershocks. Police said one person died in the small coastal town of Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. There were also reports that several people had suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police spokeswoman Rachel Purdom said. The quake completely cut off road access to Kaikoura, said resident Terry Thompson, who added that electricity and most phones were also down in the town of 2,000, a popular destination for tourists taking part in whale-watching expeditions. Thompson was out of town but managed to reach his wife by cellphone during the night before her phone died. "She said the glass exploded right out of the double ranch-slider," he said. "The neighbour's chimney was gone, there were breakages and things smashed everywhere." His wife helped a 93-year-old neighbor and a tourist into her car and drove to higher ground, he said. "They stayed in the car all night but couldn't sleep," Thompson said. "They're all very, very tired and concerned about the state of their property." The main road to Kaikoura was blocked in places by landslides, and police were working to airlift out a few tourists stranded in their campervans to the north and south of the town, according to emergency services officials in the nearby Marlborough region. Kaikoura suffered "major infrastructure" damage in the quake, the Marlborough Emergency Management Group said in a statement. Sewage and water supplies were knocked out, though power was gradually being restored Monday afternoon. Police were in radio communication with the town and mobile phone service was expected to be restored shortly. Prime Minister John Key was traveling to Kaikoura by helicopter on Monday afternoon. The prime minister said waves of about 2 metres (6.6 feet) hit the coast but the tsunami threat had since been downgraded to coastal warnings. He said authorities had no reason to believe the death toll would rise above the two reported fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two. But of course there are isolated parts of the country which we don't have perfect eyes on, so we can't be 100 percent sure," he said. Key said officials had decided not to declare a national emergency because the nation's regions were able to adequately cope with the situation. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111, police reported. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Australians Paul and Sandra Wardrop and their children Alexander, 15, and William, 12, were on the 10th floor of the Park Hotel when the shaking began. "We felt that the building was going to collapse," Sandra Wardrop said. "You could hear the sounds of the building shaking and see cracks appearing in the walls, in the plasterwork in the bedroom." The family was among dozens of people who took shelter in the capital's parliamentary complex, which threw open its doors. It was William's 12th birthday, and while he didn't get to tour Wellington as planned, he did get to meet Key, who visited the displaced tourists. New Zealand, with a population of 4.7 million, sits on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. Monday's quake brought back memories of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 and destroyed much of the downtown area. That quake was one of New Zealand's worst disasters, causing an estimated $25 billion in damage. Monday's quake was stronger but its epicenter was deeper and much farther from major urban areas. Location, depth and other factors beyond magnitude all contribute to the destructive power of an earthquake. Authorities in Wellington were urging people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress, and the quake would likely have caused a mess in some buildings. The city's suburban rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management reported that a tsunami wave struck at about 1:50 am and warned residents living in low-lying areas anywhere along the country's east coast to move to higher ground. There was confusion about the tsunami threat throughout the morning. The ministry initially said there was no threat but later wrote on Twitter "situation has changed - tsunami is possible" before reporting that a tsunami had hit. When the quake hit, Christchurch resident Hannah Gin had just sat down in her living room to watch a replay of the national rugby team's weekend match against Italy when her house started shaking. Upstairs, her mother let out a scream. The 24-year-old is accustomed to quakes in the temblor-prone region, so she said she sat calmly and waited, figuring the rumbling would stop in a few seconds. Instead, she said by telephone, the shaking went on and on for at least three minutes, according to the clock on her phone. The quake was far less violent than the one that struck Christchurch in 2011, Gin said, adding that there was no jarring up and down or side to side, just a long, rolling sensation. But it went on for much longer than the typical quakes that strike the area, she said. She was less concerned about running for cover than she was about vomiting from the motion sickness, she said. "I could hear the sliding door sliding back and forth, and we've got washing hanging up and I could see the washing moving," Gin said. "It just kept going and going." The quake was centered 93 kilometers (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS initially estimated it had a magnitude of 7.4 before revising it to 7.8. It said the quake struck at a depth of 23 kilometers (14 miles), after initially putting the depth at 10 kilometers (six miles). Earthquakes tend to be more strongly felt on the surface when they are shallow. By Nnekule Ikemfuna | KANO, Nigeria KANO, Nigeria Police said nine people were killed in clashes between Shi'ite Muslims and police during a religious procession in northern Nigeria on Monday, but the minority sect said dozens of its members lost their lives. The clashes occurred on the outskirts of Kano, a city in a state of the same name, as members of the country's largest Shi'ite group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), conducted an annual procession to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna state. It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the sect. A judicial inquiry in August reported that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in mass graves after clashes with the army in December 2015, and two sect members were killed in processions in Kaduna state last month.Kano state Police Commissioner Rabiu Yusuf told reporters that nine people died in Monday's violence - eight IMN members and a policeman. He said several people were injured, including four police officers. "At first we used tear gas on them. They attacked one of our personnel, who sustained a fatal injury," he said. Yusuf said IMN members used the dead policeman's weapon to fire at officers and they had "no option" but to use live ammunition in response. Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the IMN - whose 1980s founders were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Shi'ite Iran - said policemen opened fire on a peaceful crowd and killed "close to" 100 people including women and children. "We view the unwarranted killings by the police as a continuation of the army pogrom started in Zaria last year," he said. The exact death toll was unclear, he added, because most of the bodies were "ferried away by the police, possibly for mass burial". Last month the Kaduna state government declared IMN as an "unlawful society" on the grounds that its processions were a danger to peace, and said anyone convicted of being a member of the sect could be imprisoned for up to seven years.Human Rights Watch estimates that IMN has around 3 million members. The sect's leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, has been held without charge since December following the clashes with the army in Zaria. Security analysts have drawn some parallels between the IMN and Boko Haram, the Sunni Muslim jihadist group whose insurgency began in 2009 after security forces killed hundreds of its members and its leader Mohammed Yusuf died in custody. Nigeria, which has 180 million people and is Africa's most populous nation, combines a predominantly Christian south and mainly Sunni Muslim north. Around 250 ethnic groups have co-existed mostly peacefully in the country. (Additional reporting by Garba Muhammad in Kaduna; writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Paris: An unusually large and bright Moon will adorn the night sky on Monday the closest "supermoon" to Earth in 68 years and a chance for dramatic photos and spectacular surf. Weather permitting, the phenomenon should appear at its most impressive at 1352 GMT, when it will be at its fullest just as night falls over Asia, astronomers said. Provided there are no clouds and not too much light pollution, people should be able to see Earth's satellite loom unusually large over the horizon shortly after sunset, irrespective of where in the world they are. This happens when the Moon is full at the same time as, or very near, perigee its closest point to Earth on an elliptical, monthly orbit. "On 14 November, it becomes full within about two hours of perigee, arguably making it an extra-super Moon," NASA says on its website. The orbit itself is changeable, meaning the distance from Earth differs from perigee to perigee this time it will be the closest since 1948 at a distance of 3,56,509 kilometres (221,524 miles). The average is 3,84,400km. On Monday, the full Moon's relative proximity should make it appear about 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than at its furthest orbit point, according to the Irish Astronomical Association (IAA). "Because the Earth/Moon system will be getting quite close to the time of year when it is closest to the Sun (January 4, 2017), the Moon will be receiving more sunlight than average, also boosting its apparent brightness." Furthermore, the Moon's position in the sky will mean its southern hemisphere, the brighter of the two, will be turned towards Earth, said the IAA. Illusion Without foreknowledge, one might barely notice that the Moon appears brighter than usual, astronomers say. Once it is high in the sky, it would be hard to tell that the Moon is larger. But on the horizon, it could be quite spectacular. "When you look at the Moon when it's rising, there is this optical illusion where it looks bigger," astronomer Mark Bailey, emeritus director of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, told AFP. Lying low, as a backdrop to trees or buildings for context, our satellite appears larger to the human eye despite being the same size the whole night. Supermoons are actually quite common there is one every 14 months on average. "But some supermoons are more super than others," said Pascal Descamps of the Paris Observatory the closer the Earth the more so. "If you want to try to image it, choose a location where you'll get some nice terrestrial feature in the foreground: a well-known landmark such as a tower or a spire will provide a nice comparison, particularly if you stay back a bit and use a zoom or telephoto lens which will magnify both objects," added the IAA. The supermoon will also mean a stronger high tide, something that gets surfers giddy with excitement, not only at the prospect of riding bigger waves, but doing so at night. The next comparable event will be in 2034, when the Moon will come even closer, by 64km, to Earth. London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces questioning by prosecutors Monday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in a twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. An Ecuadoran prosecutor will quiz the founder of the secret-spilling website at the red-brick building where he has been holed up for more than four years, with Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police inspector also attending, officials said. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the central London embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. A Swedish official source said the questioning was expected to begin at around 1000 GMT. The investigators intend to take a DNA sample, subject to his agreement. "It's planned to last a few days," Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson told AFP, adding that it was too early to say what might arise from the meeting or what would be made public. It will be the first time he has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. Petition for Trump 'pardon' In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on president-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 16,500 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Meanwhile, Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. The legal grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Republican Trump elected. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states and their electoral processes. WikiLeaks released medical records in September claiming Assange's mental health was at risk if he remained any longer in the embassy. London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was being questioned by prosecutors on Monday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in the latest twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, who will attend while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadoran prosecutor entered the embassy building shortly before 1000 GMT, an AFP photographer said. Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson has said the questioning, which has been delayed in the past because of diplomatic disagreements between Ecuador and Sweden, could last for several days. A Swedish police inspector will also attend and investigators plan to take a DNA sample from Assange, subject to his agreement. The creator of the secret-spilling website has been holed up in the red-brick building behind Harrods luxury department store for more than four years. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. "It's planned to last a few days," Samuelsson told AFP, adding that it was too early to say what might arise from the meeting or what would be made public. It will be the first time Assange has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. Petition for Trump 'pardon' In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on President-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 17,700 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. The legal grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Trump, a republican, elected. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states and their electoral processes. WikiLeaks released medical records in September claiming Assange's mental health was at risk if he remained any longer in the embassy. The low-to-moderate intensity surface fire in this prescribed burn will lower the fuel load in this forest in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Credit: Alan H. Taylor Forest fire activity in California's Sierra Nevada since 1600 has been influenced more by how humans used the land than by climate, according to new research led by University of Arizona and Penn State scientists. For the years 1600 to 2015, the team found four periods, each lasting at least 55 years, where the frequency and extent of forest fires clearly differed from the time period before or after. However, the shifts from one fire regime to another did not correspond to changes in temperature or moisture or other climate patterns until temperatures started rising in the 1980s. "We were expecting to find climatic drivers," said lead co-author Valerie Trouet, a UA associate professor of dendrochronology. "We didn't find them." Instead, the team found the fire regimes corresponded to different types of human occupation and use of the land: the pre-settlement period to the Spanish colonial period; the colonial period to the California Gold Rush; the Gold Rush to the Smokey Bear/ fire suppression period; and the Smokey Bear/fire suppression era to present. "The fire regime shifts we see are linked to the land-use changes that took place at the same time," Trouet said. "We knew about the Smokey Bear effectthere had been a dramatic shift in the fire regime all over the Western U.S. with fire suppression. We didn't know about these other earlier regimes," she said. "It turns out humansthrough land-use changehave been influencing and modulating fire for much longer than we anticipated." Finding that fire activity and human land use are closely linked means people can affect the severity and frequency of future forest fires through managing the fuel buildup and other land management practiceseven in the face of rising temperatures from climate change, she said. The team's paper, "Socio-Ecological Transitions Trigger Fire Regime Shifts and Modulate Fire-Climate Interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA 1600-2015 CE," is scheduled for publication in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Nov. 14. Trouet's co-authors are Alan H. Taylor of Penn State, Carl N. Skinner of the U.S. Forest Service in Redding, California, and Scott L. Stephens of the University of California, Berkeley. Initially, the researchers set out to find which climate cycles, such as the El Nino/La Nina cycle or the longer Pacific Decadal Oscillation, governed the fire regime in California's Sierra Nevada. The team combined the fire history recorded in tree rings from 29 sites all along the Sierra Nevada with a 20th-century record of annual area burned. The history spanned the years 1600 to 2015. However, when large shifts in the fire history were compared to past environmental records of temperature and moisture, the patterns didn't match. US Forest Service fire professional uses a drip torch to light a low-severity prescribed burn to reduce the fuel load in a mixed-conifer forest in the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area in northern California. Credit: C.N. Skinner/ USFS Other researchers had already shown that in the Sierra, there was a relationship between forest fire activity and the amount of fuel buildup. Team members wondered whether human activity over the 415-year period had changed the amount of fuel available for fires. By using a technique called regime shift analysis, the team found four distinct time periods that differed in forest fire activity. The first was 1600 to 1775. After 1775, fire activity doubled. Fire activity dropped to pre-1775 levels starting in 1866. Starting in 1905, fire activity was less frequent than any previous time period. In 1987, fire activity started increasing again. However, the frequency of forest fires did not closely track climatic conditions, particularly after 1860. The researchers reviewed historical documents and other evidence and found the shifting patterns of fire activity most closely followed big changes in human activity in the region. Before the Spanish colonization of California, Native Americans regularly set small forest fires. The result was a mosaic of burned and unburned patches, which reduced the amount of fuel available to fires and limited the spread of any particular fire. However, once the Spanish arrived in 1769, Native American populations rapidly declined because of disease and other causes. In addition, the Spanish government banned the use of fire. Without regular fires, fuels built up, leading to more and larger fires. The influx of people to California during the Gold Rush that began in 1848 reduced fire activity. The large numbers of livestock brought by the immigrants grazed on the grasses and other plants that would otherwise have been fuel for forest fires. In 1904, the U.S. government established a fire suppression policy on federal lands. After that, fire activity dropped to its lowest level since 1600. Starting in the 1980s, as the climate warms, fire frequency and severity has increased again. Fires now can be "bad" fires because of a century or more of fire suppression, according to lead co-author Taylor, a professor of geography at Penn State. "It is important for people to understand that fires in the past were not necessarily the same as they are today," Taylor said. "They were mostly surface fires. Today we see more canopy-killing fires." Even in the face of global warming, people can affect the level of forest fire activity by managing the fuel available and other aspects of human land use, Trouet said. "There has to be a consideration of both people and climate to predict and plan for future fire activity," Taylor said. More information: Socioecological transitions trigger fire regime shifts and modulate fireclimate interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA, 16002015 CE, PNAS, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1609775113 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences This week marked one of the wildest and highest volume trading periods in U.S. history, with booms and busts surrounding Tuesday nights election results. In the first few hours of vote counts, Wall Street boomed on the expectation that Hilary Clinton had strong results in exit polling, which was followed by a fierce collapse in stocks and explosion in gold once early vote tallies showed an extremely close race. Late Tuesday night, before any swing states had been called, Dow futures were down nearly 900 points, while gold was up a whopping $64 per ounce. Once Donald Trumps Electoral College win became clearer overnight, equity markets recovered from their panic drop, but still reflected a pessimistic economic outlook. But, by midday Wednesday traders began to find optimism as they reassessed President-elect Trumps economic policy plans; stocks rose sharply as gold made new lows. This weeks wild ride left many investors wondering if this may be just the beginning of a rougher ride ahead. Infrastructure Plans Boost Copper One of the biggest winners this week was copper, a metal that is closely associated with economic growth, as it is an essential component in construction and manufacturing. The red metal exploded higher, gaining over 40 cents per pound on expectations that Trumps economic plans will result in stimulus and infrastructure spending. Similar expectations for more construction helped boost lumber, steel, and aluminum markets, as well as the stock market as a whole. Stocks were also boosted by an expectation for lower taxes and less regulation of the health, banking, and energy sectors. Crude Oil under Pressure The potential for loosened environmental regulations was a boon to energy producing companies that may be able to drill for oil and gas more easily and refine those fuels into gasoline and diesel fuel with fewer barriers. Though these companies stock prices rallied, this expectation knocked energy futures markets lower during the week. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency announced that global oil production is rising, and that OPEC is producing petroleum at a record pace, despite recent vows to reduce production. Exports in Question President-elect Trumps criticisms of trade agreements were a central part of his candidacy, leading many to expect that there will be increased trade barriers over the next four years. This could hurt U.S. exporters, especially if other countries respond with similar measures, sparking trade and tariff wars. These concerns are weighing heavily on the agricultural sector, which accounts for 10 percent of all U.S. exports. If China, Mexico, the EU and other major trade partners buy less soybeans, wheat, corn and livestock from the U.S., our farmers could see a sharp decline in revenue. Corn, wheat and soybeans tumbled to the lowest price in weeks with a weak finish on Friday. BURLEY Cover crops are as individual as the growers who plant them. Cover crops can rejuvenate the soil, they can trap nematodes, they can provide winter feed. Figuring out the best seed mix and seeding rate comes down to the individual and seeing what works best. Luke Adams has been experimenting with cover crops on his barley and sugar beet farm near Rupert for the last five years. In the beginning, he planted just oilseed radishes following winter barley with the intention of trapping sugar beet cyst nematodes. Then he began experimenting with different species including winter peas, mustards, clovers, turnips and buckwheat. Even though one of the mantras of planting a cover crop is to get planted as early as possible to get the maximum growth in the fall, Adams began moving his planting date later by seeding a cover crop after his spring barley was harvested. Winter barley matures almost a month earlier than spring barley. We feel like were getting enough growth even with the later planting date, explained Cody Plochar, a fieldman who has been working with Adams on the cover crops. While the reduction in fumigant costs and a boost in organic matter was what first attracted him to cover crops, Adams wanted to find other ways to boost his bottom line using cover crops and is now growing a little seed. He and Plochar have put together three different custom mixes to meet different goals. Adams fertilizes his cover crop mixes by applying everything the following beet crop will need plus a little nitrogen for the cover crop. As soon as possible, the volunteer barley crop is sprayed out. Volunteer barley can be extremely competitive, Plochar said. The cover crop is chopped late in the fall and disked down. Fields are roller harrowed in the spring and then planted to beets. Farther north, near Kamiah, Seth Woodland is also using cover crops to help build soil health on his farm that he describes as rocks and clay. When he took over the family farm, he quit doing deep tillage and has largely quit spraying insecticides or fungicides. Last year, Woodland planted 450 acres of mustard as a cash crop. The mustard grew about 5 feet tall and Woodland admits he waited too long to harvest it. This year he planted a five-way cover crop mix into that volunteer mustard. The mix included an Austrian pea, control radish, clover, and a mustard species. Even though the mustard choked out everything but the pea, it was a great feed source for his bees. Next year, Woodland plans to look at a simpler mix that focuses on building nitrogen. He also plans to put the cover crop seed in with dry fertilizer and farrow the seed in. Hell keep planting mustard as a crop before sugar beets in his rotation, direct seeding the beets into the stubble using his Monosem planter and trash movers. Not only is mustard a good natural fumigant for nematodes, but it also seems to deter mice and elk. his two largest rodent problems since the farm is bordered by Bureau of Land Management ground. Another speaker on the tour mentioned that cattle dont like to eat mustard either. I dont see any reason to till anymore, Woodland said adding that he can feel down to the bedrock in his fields using just his hands. I dont have the funds to drag a ripper through a field and then pick rocks. At $16 per acre, he says his cover crop provided way more benefit than he can get from purchasing nitrogen or phosphate. All of my yields have gone up, Woodland said. His grain crop averaged 100 bushels per acre, which he admitted may not sound like much to some on the bus but was over the farm average of 70 bushel per acre. His beets averaged over 30 tons per acre compared to 27 tons. For Jeff Johnson, cover crops offer a way to feed cattle more cheaply than putting up hay. He and his brother decided to plant a mix consisting of 2 pounds of turnips and 20 to 30 pounds of oats per acre into spring barley stubble on half the field. The other half received that mix along with 20 pounds of Italian ryegrass. They planted on Aug. 25 and watered the field twice. They would probably put some nitrogen down with the cover crop seed in a future year and bump the turnips to 3 pounds per acre. Theyve also talked with a sheep producer who flies turnip seed over standing barley to get more growth on the turnips before harvesting the barley. That idea intrigues Woodland, who is hoping the cover crop will give him an extra month of grazing this fall. One of the key lessons that all growers who have experimented with cover crops have learned is to be careful with seed sources. Thats particularly true for growers who are planting a cover crop into a field with known nematode problems. Some varieties of radish and turnip are actually hosts for nematodes rather than trap crops. Peas are a great nitrogen building crop but some growers in the Magic Valley have had trouble getting them to germinate. Checking germination and making sure you are buying good quality seed is nearly as important as planting date for establishing a good stand. I dont see any reason to till anymore. I dont have the funds to drag a ripper through a field and then pick rocks. Seth Woodland, Kamiah area farmer RABAT, Morocco Should a doomsday agricultural crisis hit the worlds driest environments, scientists and farmers will turn to an up-and-coming research center and seed bank in Morocco to restock their harvests. Tucked away in the university hub of Irfane in Rabat, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, hosts the largest collection of seeds in North Africa. If for any reason, a particular community lost all their resources, we are capable of providing them with the seeds for restoration and rehabilitation, says Ahmed Amri, head of ICARDAs Genetic Resources Unit. The crucial role of seed banks in protecting biodiversity is receiving increasing attention because of climate change, which threatens to wipe out crops as dry areas of the world get even hotter and drier. The impact on African agriculture is among the topics being discussed at U.N. climate talks taking place through next week in Morocco. The site in Rabat has become ICARDAs primary center of storage and research after its previous hub in Aleppo, Syria, was seized by an Islamist rebel group in September 2015. We couldnt continue doing this work because of the situation in Syria, so we decided to make arrangements to move elsewhere to continue our work, says Amri, who used to work in Aleppo, but is now leading genetic research efforts in Rabat. While many of the research activities moved to Rabat, 98 percent of the Aleppo centers seeds were safely transferred to ICARDAs center in neighboring Lebanon. Duplicates were also sent to a doomsday seed vault in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, which serves as a backup for other seed banks worldwide. Rebels from the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group have occupied the Aleppo center since September 2015, cutting off access to its 75 employees. Amri has daily contact with the five staff members who remain in Aleppo, including associate scientist Ali Shehadeh. With the cease-fire, its stable and unstable at times, Shehadeh told The Associated Press from Aleppo in a Skype interview facilitated by Amri. The Rabat center holds tens of thousands of seeds spanning from wheat and barley to lentils and chickpeas inside a vault in near-freezing temperatures. The seed bank not only preserves these essential staples but develops them to become more resistant to disease and a warming climate. Last year, Morocco faced an unprecedented drought that scientists and the government and have linked to climate change, with drier and warmer winters in Morocco and neighboring countries. Domestic grain production dropped, forcing the government to drop tariffs on imports to avoid shortages and stem rising prices. Last month, the government decided to temporarily remove import duties for lentils to lower the price just in time for the winter season a time when lentils are widely consumed in Morocco. Scientists at the Rabat center work closely with farmers in Marchouch, a nearby rural town. The scientists provide seed samples to farmers who allocate about 2 percent of their own farm land to test the seeds and provide feedback to scientists. We are looking for science-based solutions for farmers problems, says Shiv Kumar Agrawal, a lentil breeder with ICARDA. These problems include contending with droughts, invasive insects and increasing production. Farmers report back to scientists on the results of the harvest yielded from the seed samples, after which further tests are conducted to improve the seeds durability and production yield. Farmer Abdellah Slimani, 48, president of a farmers cooperative in Marchouch, believes the feedback loop has helped him and fellow farmers to improve their own methods as climate change continues to impact harvests. We hope that this years harvest will be better, God willing, Slimani says. Bruce Campbell of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers says the climate conference in Marrakech offers a unique opportunity to address the impact of climate change on African agriculture. Considering all African countries have included agriculture in their climate adaption strategies, (the conference) will be the ideal setting to discuss how the most promising solutions can be deployed and indeed, funded, he says. BOISE (AP) What would happen to an industry that loses one-fourth or more of its employee base? Idahos agriculture industry, and particularly its farming sector, might run head-on into that hypothetical question if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on a pledge to reverse his predecessors executive actions on immigration and deport undocumented immigrants en masse. Agriculture represents about 4 percent of Idahos $65 billion annual gross domestic product, and about the same percentage of the state labor force. The states share of the estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is minuscule approximately 45,000, or 0.4 percent, according to analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center. But Pews analysis says Idahos undocumented workers dominate in the states agriculture industry. More than 1 in 3 in Idaho are farm workers, and their numbers constitute 43 percent of all farm workers in the state, according to the research. The states agricultural industry employs more than 40 percent of Idahos undocumented immigrant population, and more than one-quarter of all state ag workers are undocumented. Idaho, Washington and Oregon are the only three states in the nation where agriculture is tops in both of those metrics, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer with Pew and one of the studys authors. The share of agriculture workers who are unauthorized tends to be very high everywhere, Passel said. But Idahos agriculture sector is a little bit unusual because it also employs the largest portion of the states unauthorized immigrants. Nationwide, construction and the leisure/hospitality industry, which includes hotel service workers, employ the most unauthorized immigrants. Just 4 percent of unauthorized workers are in agriculture nationwide, Passel said. Idaho tops in amnesty eligibility Idaho ranked first among states in the percentage of undocumented immigrants who could avoid deportation under President Obamas executive action on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and related moves on pathways to citizenship more than 60 percent, according to Pew. Thats because such a high percentage of Idahos undocumented population, nearly 9 out of 10, is Mexican. That population qualifies at a higher rate based on DACAs criteria regarding longevity and family ties. Trump has proposed immediately reversing Obamas actions and deporting anyone in the U.S. illegally. Tracking the undocumented population is difficult. Neither employers nor industries that depend on those workers are likely to aggressively monitor and report those here illegally. Employers may check work papers but thats not fool-proof, and some workers who enter the country legally on work visas just overstay. A measurable if imperfect proxy for undocumented population is foreign-born workers. Robert Troxel is manager of the Marsing Agricultural Labor Sponsoring Committee, an Owyhee County-based temp agency for documented agricultural workers that hires about 1,800 people annually as far east as Idaho Falls and north to Payette County. Almost all are Hispanic, he said. The states unemployment rate is tight at 3.8 percent. We have been short of workers here for the last two or three years, Troxel said. Dependent on foreign-born labor Troxel said that if workers are deported, it will have impact. If food prices go up because it cant get harvested or processed by the existing workforce, then theres going to be dramatic repercussions, he said. Like Troxels group, the Idaho Dairymens Association has supported and worked for immigration reform to address the status of undocumented workers. Dairy workers are needed year-round, not seasonally, so the industry has little use for H-2A visas granted to temporary agricultural workers. Any change in immigration policy that brings some certainty to what that policy is, is a positive, because currently we really dont have an immigration policy, said the associations executive director, Bob Naerebout. Weve become very dependent on foreign-born labor, and therefore the rural economy becomes very dependent on foreign-born labor. If food prices go up because it cant get harvested or processed by the existing workforce, then theres going to be dramatic repercussions. Robert Troxel, manager of the Marsing Agricultural Labor Sponsoring Committee, an Owyhee County-based temp agency for documented agricultural workers CHALLIS The fire started early Oct. 4, destroying the Bureau of Land Management office on the edge of town within minutes. Volunteer firefighters worked the blaze through the night. In the morning, Challis BLM Manager Todd Kuck began calling his 25 employees, saying they no longer had a place to work. By that afternoon, state and federal investigators had arrived, combing the scene for any evidence of foul play. Reports of a loud bang when the fire began stoked rumors around the town of 1,000. There was talk that the Three Percenters had something to do with it, said Custer County Sheriff Stu Lumpkin, referring to the radical patriot group opposed to federal overreach. The Idaho chapter of the group held a protest rally at the BLM office earlier this year. Custer County, where 97 percent of land is owned by the federal government, easily couldve been the latest hot spot for an escalating conflict around the West between land managers and anti-government militants such as Cliven and Ammon Bundy. But the opposite has happened since the fire, residents and officials say. The community has rallied to help their local BLM office, despite often sharp disagreements over who should control the land and how it should be managed. Investigators soon determined the blaze was due to an electrical problem, to the relief of many. County commissioners met with BLM leaders to ensure the office wouldnt be moved to Salmon or another city. Officials opened up the Community Event Center, so BLM employees could temporarily get back to work. Residents called Kuck and other BLM workers to see if there was anything they could do to help. We have a different culture and value system here, said Challis Mayor Michael Barrett. People reached out and said, Hey, how can we help you? Do you need office space? We react to things a little bit differently, because were such a small community. Close community Farmers, ranchers and other Custer County residents dont agree on much with the BLM or the Forest Service, which also maintains a Challis office. They dont like when roads are blocked, or areas are closed seasonally to protect big game range. There have been dust-ups in the past over prescribed burns spreading onto private property, or vice versa, Lumpkin said. Transferring federal lands to state and county control is a popular idea in Custer County. Under county management, the thinking goes,there could be selective logging, grazing, and new areas opened to mining. Barrett argues it would boost the struggling local economy,which saw hundreds laid off at the Thompson Creek molybdenum mine in recent years. But that doesnt mean residents want the BLM to leave anytime soon. The office is among the largest employers in Challis. Its employees are well-paid, and many have children in the local school district. People go to church with BLM employees; they see them at the grocery store and the post office. Theyre friends and neighbors, Barrett said. You may have frustrations with the way things work, but it doesnt mean you take it out on the individual people, said Jolie Turek, who leads the countys economic development office, and has a close friend who works for the BLM. Im just glad that, as a community, we were able to help them out. Thats what communities do. As rumors of possible arson traveled quickly around the community after the fire, Barrett said he consistently heard one response: That better not have happened here. He said he knew only a handful of locals none of them ranchers or farmers who took part in the 3% of Idaho militia rally at the BLM office in February, shortly after the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon ended. The rally was peaceful,and the office stayed open that day. But Custer County residents generally werent big fans of the rally, or the Oregon occupation,Barrett said, despite agreeing with some of their principles. Are there people here who support what happened at Malheur? Sure. If I told you there werent you could probably walk out on the street and find somebody, Barrett said. But I think by and large the community doesnt support things like that. We support working things out here. And when we cant, we take it to our representatives, and the people we think can affect some change. Slow recovery Kuck, the BLM manager, wrote a guest column after the fire in the Challis Messenger. He said he felt truly blessed to live and work in Challis. While we sometimes disagree, this community understands that BLM employees are members of this community, and that means a great deal to us, Kuck wrote. While the near future will be challenging for our employees with the loss of our building, we are not going anywhere. The fire started in the shop area of the building, torching an all-terrain-vehicle, a forklift, motorcycles, rafts, and other tools and supplies, Kuck said. It moved into the roof, quickly spreading through the u-shaped office section of the structure. Federal investigators told Lumpkin the bang was from an acetylene tank blowing open in the fire. Officials still hope to recover some records, but almost everything else BLM employees used to manage nearly 800,000 acres of public lands was lost. On Nov. 7, Kuck and his staff continued to organize their temporary office space at the community center. Shelving and desks were ready to set up. Employees were still awaiting a shipment of new desktop computers. In the coming months, the BLM will move to a different but still temporary office space. The likely destination is the citys former middle school building, which also houses Challis City Hall and the Challis School District Office. It will be two to three years before the BLM can build something new, Kuck said. Its important to have the BLM office here in Challis, so when there are issues, (residents) dont have to travel somewhere else, or always talk to somebody on the phone, Kuck said. The owner of the burned building, longtime Challis resident Spencer Strand, said his insurance company is still examining specifics of what caused the blaze. The building was constructed 15 years ago, and wouldve lasted many more, he said. After the fire, Strand, 75, said he complained to his wife about losing a steady source of income. And she said, Spencer, lets not talk about money. Lets talk about a beautiful building thats gone. Lets talk about 25 to 30 people who work there, their homes are here, their children go to our schools. They participate in volunteer efforts on behalf of the community. Its not all about money. And with that, I apologized to her. TWIN FALLS Vice has never been too far out of reach for Magic Valley residents. Want to try your luck gambling? Jackpot, Nev., is less than an hours drive south of Twin Falls. And legal prostitution isnt much farther. And beginning the first of next year, the Magic Valley will be a short drive away from legal recreational marijuana. Neighboring states legalizing cannabis is nothing new for Idaho. Washington and Oregon legalized recreational pot in recent years, and Montana legalized medical marijuana. The Spokesman-Review reported this week Idaho now shares 80 percent of its border with pot-friendly states and provinces. But for Magic Valley residents, legal pot has never been closer after Nevada residents voted last week to legalize recreational marijuana. Now, the question for many across southern Idaho is how Nevadas new law will affect the Magic Valley. I can guarantee my deputies will be paying more attention, Twin Falls County Sheriff Tom Carter said. There very well may be more stops because of it, especially for people getting high while there and then coming home. Carter said those driving under the influence of marijuana are a bigger concern than people bringing back small amounts of pot. The sheriffs office intends to continue looking for both types of travelers but wont make any significant changes like setting up extra patrols near the border. Im sure well write more citations for possession of marijuana, Carter said. But as far as doing anything special, probably not. Idaho State Police troopers will take a similar approach by maintaining vigilance on U.S. 93 near the border without significantly increasing patrols, Lt. Robert Rausch said. We try to spread our resources out in a way where we use them in the most effective manner, and that area of U.S. 93 has been traditionally an area where we get a lot of crashes, Rausch said. Whether its impairment, people crossing the dividing line or otherwise, it does remain a major concern. Rausch said ISPs plans are subject to change depending on what actually happens once pot becomes legal Jan. 1 in Nevada, but he said it was business as usual for ISP when Oregon and Washington legalized marijuana. We enforce drug impaired driving, and we intend to continue that, Rausch said. And, its illegal to possess here, no matter what your medical card says. Nevadas new law Nevadas new recreational marijuana law will look similar to the ones already in place in Washington and Oregon, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Adults 21 and older will be able to possess 1 ounce of marijuana or one-eighth of an ounce of cannabis concentrate, but smoking in public and driving while high will still be against the law. The big question for the Magic Valley, and one that Elko County commissioners dont know, is where pot will be sold. The chances that a marijuana dispensary opens in Jackpot are slim. According to the Review-Journal, Las Vegas Clark County will be allowed up to 80 stores, Renos Washoe County up to 20 stores, and all other counties will be allowed only two. That means if a dispensary opened in or near the city of Elko, the county would get only one other dispensary. And Elko County Commissioner Cliff Eklund said theres already interest coming from West Wendover, less than a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City. Its a no-brainer (someone would want to open a dispensary) in West Wendover, Elko County Commissioner Glen Guttry agreed. Commissioners Eklund, Guttry and Demar Dahl all told the Times-News theyve yet to look at the new law and how it will be implemented, but they have time. While pot will be become legal to possess and smoke Jan. 1, the state has until 2018 to figure out the best ways to sell it and tax it. The commissioners said theyd be looking for direction from the state about exactly what to do. But even if a dispensary doesnt open in Jackpot, local law enforcement officials are expecting an increase in marijuana-related crimes. Whenever a neighboring state passes a law making something legal there thats illegal here and federally, you see more people who cross into our state, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said. Many people unintentionally violate the law by bringing back small, personal-use amounts, Loebs said, while others break the law more deliberately by trafficking large amounts across the border. Weve seen huge increases of marijuana in Twin Falls since Oregon and Washington legalized, Loebs said. In regards to distribution, weve seen huge amounts of trafficking compared to years before. While stopping trafficking is still a priority, Loebs said, cracking down on people with small, personal-amounts is not. If a guy just has a marijuana cigarette, well confiscate it and write a citation, but hes not going to jail or prison, Loebs said. But distribution, trafficking large amounts? Five, 10 pounds? Thats a felony and still a big problem. TWIN FALLS A dispute over a woman between an old boyfriend and a new boyfriend likely led to Saturdays murder-suicide, the county prosecutor said Monday. Troy Anderson, 36, shot and killed Benjamin Day, 42, early Saturday at a Twin Falls home before shooting and killing himself. Both Anderson and Day were armed, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said, but he couldnt confirm whether Day fired his gun. Its too early to know that, Loebs said. Twin Falls County Coroner Gene Turley, who released the names of the men involved, said Anderson was the aggressor. A deputy coroner took the bodies to Boise for autopsies and returned them to Twin Falls on Monday afternoon. The full autopsy results are not expected for about a month, but Turley said the initial findings didnt appear to reveal anything unexpected. The murder-suicide happened shortly after midnight Saturday at 161 Juniper Street N., police said. Two children inside the home were unharmed, and officers who broke into a basement window to rescue the children witnessed Anderson shoot himself. The prosecutor said it appeared Anderson was the ex-boyfriend in the relationship, but he didnt know if the woman at the center of the dispute was the same woman who was screaming outside the home and alerted police to the shooting. Officers originally responded to 274 Teton Street for the report of a drunk man who fired a round at the ground and was pointing the weapon at people, police said. When officers arrived, they heard a woman screaming several blocks away near Juniper Street and Shoup Avenue, then heard several gunshots. Its unclear if Anderson was the drunk man with the gun from the original report. Im not sure anybody knows that, Loebs said. The screaming woman outside the Juniper Street home told police two children were inside, and the officers devised a plan to break into a basement window and rescue the children. As officers entered the basement bedroom, they were able to see up a short stairway and witnessed the suspect take his own life, police said in a statement. Loebs said he didnt know how many officers went inside the home; Lt. Terry Thueson said police were only in the home a matter of moments before Anderson killed himself. The prosecutors office would typically investigate such an incident to ensure police didnt make any mistakes, but Loebs said that might not happen with this case. I dont think theres any indication that police were involved enough to look at anything, Loebs said, adding that no officers fired their guns. After witnessing Anderson kill himself, officers discovered hed also shot and killed Day. The children inside the home were not injured, Thueson said, and neither is believed to have witnessed the murder or suicide. KIMBERLY The Kimberly School District plans to start building a new elementary school in March, but its still working to buy land and finalize design details. School trustees are slated to make a final decision Wednesday on the interior and exterior design. Theyll also hear cost estimates from Starr Corp., which will build the facility. Weve gone from a conceptual design to a more specific design now, Superintendent Luke Schroeder said. A new 50,000-square-foot elementary school estimated to cost about $11 million will open in fall 2018. It will help alleviate overcrowding, a trend felt at schools throughout the Magic Valley as the population grows. The school district chose a school site this summer, but a written sales agreement hasnt been finalized. School officials have a verbal commitment with the owner of a 10-acre property north of Center Street. Schroeder said last week he wont announce the location until the agreement is signed. The project will go out to bid in February and construction will start in March, if the weather cooperates. Once the new school opens in 2018, thats the year well renovate the current primary building, Schroeder said. Megan Garner, principal of Kimberly Elementary School, wasnt available to comment last week. To pay for the new school, voters approved a $14 million bond in May. About $3 million of the money will pay for a cosmetic facelift and upgrading safety features at the existing elementary school, slated for completion by January 2019. Funds will also be used to purchase land for a future school site. For Kimberly residents, tax rates are expected to remain steady. Thats because an existing bond for Kimberly High School will be paid off this year. A new elementary school will be a major change for Kimberly, which only has one elementary school now. New attendance zones will be created and elementary children will be split among two schools. But before that happens, a major step remains: finalizing the land purchase for the new school. It has probably been the biggest and most time consuming part, Schroeder said. The district wants to buy farmland adjacent to the Kimberly city limit. Its zoned as agricultural land, so its going through a rezoning process. A land survey has been completed and now, the school district is waiting on an engineering firm to come back with a legal description. Without that description, school trustees cant finalize an official sales agreement, Schroeder said. Once the land sale and appraisal is done, construction can begin. The one-story building will have three wings of classrooms, organized by grade level. It will also include common spaces where small or large groups of students can gather. Theres room carved out for a lot of multipurpose learning spaces, Schroeder said. A multipurpose space will be used for a gymnasium. It flows into a commons area that would be a great space to have a very large activity, Schroeder said, and would also be used for physical education classes. We really want to be as efficient as possible. To get design ideas, Kimberly school officials toured fairly new school campuses in Twin Falls, Jerome and Wendell. They decided to incorporate some of the elements they saw, such as security features and pods of classrooms. We kind of took a lot of different ideas from those buildings, Schroeder said, that are feasible within the project budget. School leaders are also using features that work well in Kimberlys fairly new middle and high schools. School security at the new school will be similar to two Twin Falls elementary schools Rock Creek and Pillar Falls that opened in August. During the school day, the main doors will be locked. Visitors will be directed into a vestibule that leads directly to the school office. Pods of classrooms can also be locked down during an emergency. Another consideration: Good sight lines. You design the building essentially so you have great visibility, Schroeder said. That means front office employees can see children outside on the playground, and at drop off and pick up areas. Seniors wellness The Twin Falls Senior Center will hold a presentation for senior citizens at 12:15 p.m. Monday at 530 Shoshone St. W. Connie Campbell of Syringe Place will talk about sugar. Free; 208-734-5084. Breastfeeding Free Breastfeeding 101 class, 6:30 p.m. Monday in Oak Room 4 on the lower level at St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. Topic: Breastfeeding basics for new and expectant mothers. Babies are welcome. Free; pre-registration is required, 208-814-0402. Weight loss support TOPS Club (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), a nonprofit weight-loss support group, will meet weekly at several locations. The Twin Falls chapter will meet at 4:30 p.m. Monday at the Twin Falls Senior Center, 530 Shoshone St. W., 208-734-2641 or 208-734-5300. Other local chapters will meet at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday at 2025 S. Highway 81 in Malta, 208-645-2438; 9:15 a.m. Thursday at the Jerome Public Library, 100 First Ave. E., 208-324-6693; 9:30 a.m. Thursday at 410 E. Third St. in Rupert, 208-436-6037 or 208-679-3518; and at 5:30 p.m. Friday at 1800 J St. in Heyburn, 208-678-8706 or 208-678-2622. Childbirth Childbirth refresher course, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in the Oak Rooms on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. Topic: Review of childbirth preparation and medical center procedures, and a tour of the maternal and child unit. Bring a labor support person, if possible. Cost is $15; pre-registration is required, 208-814-0402. Victims support Support group for victims of domestic violence, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. every Tuesday at the Mini-Cassia Shelter Haven of Hope, 323 First St., Rupert. Information: Rachel, 208-312-7021. Grief support Suicide Prevention Action Network of south-central Idaho is a nonprofit group that offers education and support. A free support group is available for anyone who has lost someone to a suicide. The support group meets from 7 to 8 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month at the Church of the Ascension, 371 Eastland Drive N. in Twin Falls., and is open to everyone. Information: Donna Stalley, 208-733-1462. Alzheimers support Alzheimers Association, Greater Idaho Chapters Caregiver Support Group meeting, 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Twin Falls Senior Center, 530 Shoshone St. W. The group meets on the third Wednesday every month. Information: Pattie Dennis, 208-734-4264 or 208-539-4290. Vision support Visually Impaired Support Group meeting, 12:45 to 2 p.m. Thursday at the Twin Falls Senior Center, 530 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls. Topics: glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetes-caused vision problems. Information: Idaho Commission for the Blind, 208-734-2140. Mental health support Mental Health Support Group, 5:30 p.m. every Thursday at Family Health Services/Behavioral Health building, 1102 Eastland Drive N., Twin Falls. The free support group is open to Magic Valley residents. Information: 208-734-1281. Grief support Getting Through the Holidays, a special session for Visions of Hope grief support group, 5 p.m. Thursday at Hospice Visions, 1770 Park View Drive, Twin Falls. The support group is open to everyone in the community. Information: 208-735-0121. Grief support Light Up A Life event for families who have lost a loved one, 6 p.m. Thursday in the front lobby at St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. The program will include music, a short message from Chaplain Jeff, tips on surviving the holiday season, and light refreshments. Counselors will be present. The free event is sponsored by St. Lukes Magic Valley Home Care and Hospice, St. Lukes MSTI Twin Falls, Spiritual Care, St. Lukes Magic Valley Auxiliary, Women and Childrens, St. Lukes Magic Valley Health Foundation and St. Lukes Emergency Department. Asthma education Free asthma education class for patients and caregivers to assess and manage asthma will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. The class is presented by St. Lukes Magic Valley and meets on the third Thursday of each month. Pre-registration is required. To register and for location of the class: 208-814-8765. Grief support Auburn Crest Hospices Grief Support Group, 7 p.m. Thursday at 397 Blue Lakes Blvd. N., Twin Falls. The support group is for those who have lost loved ones. The group meets on the first and third Thursdays, through Dec. 15. Everyone is welcome. Information: Sandy and Sheri, 208-735-7450. Grief support Grief Share meetings, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, through Feb. 2, at Lighthouse Church, 960 Eastland Drive, Twin Falls. Anyone who has lost a loved one or friend is welcome to attend. A separate class for teens will begin at the same time. Participants can attend any session. Enter through the east doors at the rear of the main building. Information: 208-737-4667. CPR, first aid St. Lukes Magic Valley Education Department is offering a Heartsaver Pediatric CPR, First Aid and AED class, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in Oak Rooms 5-6 on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. The course provides training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid and using an automated external defibrillator. Cost is $60. Pre-registration is required, 208-814-9050. C-sections Caesarean childbirth class, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22, in the Oak Rooms on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls. Topics: Caesarean deliveries, pain management, non-conforming labors and hospital procedures. Free; pre-registration is required, 208-814-0402. Joint replacement Free class on total joint replacement, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22, at BridgeView Estates, 1828 Bridgeview Blvd., Twin Falls. Meet in the lobby. Topics: Preparing for joint-replacement surgery, amount of pain, recovery time, insurance coverage, care after surgery, discharge planning and long-term rehabilitation. Tours of the BridgeView rehabilitation facility are available. Pre-registration is required, Amy at 208-280-0047 or Sarah at 208-280-0045. For the last generation of general election days, in Idaho, if its breathing and Republican, it gets piles of votes. This year even more than usual. By some measures, this was the most Republican general election in Idaho since 2000. And thats saying a lot. Donald Trump did very well, obviously, nationally, but his just-short-of-landslide in Idaho (59.3 percent) was striking. Considering how decisively he lost the Republican primary a few months ago, and how much significant parts of Idaho society (notably many members of the LDS Church) disliked him, he exceeded expectations. Evan McMullin, who only a few weeks ago seemed to be exciting a lot of interest in eastern Idaho and talked a lot more like traditional Republicans (Mitt Romney, say) do, could manage only 6.7 percent. His problems may have been various, but crucially he didnt have the R behind his name. The Legislature, already one of the most Republican in the nation, moved further in that direction, which barely seemed possible. The long-time House Democratic leader, John Rusche of Lewiston, lost (it wasnt even close, a margin of more than 3,000 votes) should Lewiston now be accounted as a Republican city, period? along with one of the few Democratic state senators, Dan Schmidt of Moscow. That means in the whole of Idaho north of Boise, just one Democratic legislator is left. She is Paulette Jordan, representing the Moscow-based district, and she won this time by fewer than 300 votes. Shell be targeted next cycle. Among Republican legislators, the most controversial probably was Heather Scott, known for her alt-right leanings, whose followers were said to have engaged in harassment of her political opposition. Scott won with 62.5 percent, just a little shy of the average for Republican legislative candidates throughout the north in contested races. A couple of strong campaigns by Democrats to break through in Twin Falls were smacked down, rolled under Republican landslides. The picture differed in only a few places. The city of Boise remained Democratic-leaning, its Democratic legislators re-elected easily. But the west Boise District 15, which has been on the edge between the two parties, remained just out of Democratic reach. Its still distinctly purple territory (the Republican legislators won there with just 56.3 percent, 50.8 percent and 56.2 percent), but tinged on the red side. And District 26, the central Idaho district anchored by Sun Valley and Ketchum but surrounded by more conservative farming areas, remained the most competitive region in Idaho. It is one of the few legislative districts split by parties (two Democrats, one Republican), all three of whom won with less than 60 percent of the vote. The district centered on the city of Pocatello, District 29 (Idaho State University is located there), traditionally has been the lone Democratic stronghold in eastern Idaho. Its a stronghold no more; Democrat Mark Nye, running for the Senate, was held to 48.1 percent, and he might have lost but for the incursion of a Libertarian in the race. The other House seat, which Nye had held, went to Republican Dustin Manwaring. The other Democratic representative there, veteran Elaine Smith, was unchallenged this year, but dont expect that to repeat next time. This district shows the signs of flipping Republican. Actual competitive politics in Idaho has boiled down to one or maybe two legislative districts, out of 35. Talk about species on the verge of extinction. Democrats are rending their garments, bemoaning their failure to connect with rural and small-town America. They are supposed to feel guilty about insufficient empathy for the industrial heartland. Perhaps, but before they don sackcloth and ashes they might want to consider that this election as much as anything else was a candidate failure. We will say it once more: Vice President Joe Biden would have won this going away. Hillary Clinton did offer a jobs program, a debt-free college tuition plan, a middle-class tax cut, etc. All of these would have helped the Trump voters far more than the urban poor or coastal elites. These voters either didnt believe her or didnt like her. The blowback to dynastic policies that Jeb Bush got in the GOP primary, Clinton got in the general election. (In that sense, the primary was rigged to favor a weak but inevitable candidate.) Democrats dont need to beat themselves up; they picked a losing candidate just as the GOP did in 2008 and 2012. GOP elites meanwhile are being harangued for cultural insensitivity and economic callousness. Republican elites and Democrats would have disagreed with Trumps policy prescriptions (which they took seriously silly them!) but not been shocked or horrified by his win had this been a battle of policy plans. They were shocked and horrified because Trump won these people over by playing to their worst instincts. He dealt out xenophobia, racism, misogyny and contempt for science and the Trumpkins ate it up. Trump defenders, and defenders of Trump supporters, argue this wasnt about white nationalism or male resentment. If so, why were these the main tools Trump used to amp up his support? Trump did what Republicans have long bemoaned. He played on class resentment. He told his voters Americas economy is a fixed pie; if elites get more, then they get less. He cultivated excuses for white, rural social decay and economic stagnation on behalf of voters who would surely reject such rationalizations for African-American poverty. Remember, a good deal of the opposition to Trump on the right went to his character and the noxious hatreds he was stirring up in the populace. Objecting to his appeals does not make one culturally insensitive; it makes one a decent person. The way Trump won the race with zero respect for the truth, with contempt for nonwhite voters, with assaults on our democracy the #NeverTrump forces fear will now be the rule, not the exception, in presidential politics. That he won (it worked!) is no cause for recriminations against the #NeverTrump forces. It actually proves their point: Public figures who behave this way tear the fabric of our country and undermine democratic values. And Trump has done just that because it was the only way he knew to get the approval of the Trumpkins. He was certain they were not above vile tactics; he was right. Congratulations, Trumpkins: You never go wrong underestimating the American people. Just as his critics predicted, however, Trumps vague and fantastical promises are already colliding with reality. Obamacare isnt going to get repealed at least not all of it, he says. Rounding up 11-12 milllion people does not seem to be on his list of top priorities. His team is coming to the realization the Iran deal will not be ripped up on his first day in office. If Trumpkins discover Trump is just another pol who sold them a bill of goods, how will they react? We will find out in the months ahead. Some thoughts about ideology are in order. Just as Democrats need a sane Republican Party, Republicans need a responsible Democratic Party. Should the Democratic Party decide Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who marketed many of the same economic fallacies as Trump, was right, Democrats may well go off the ideological deep end, giving Americans the choice between right-wing populism and democratic socialism. No thanks. We in the center-right sincerely hope that doesnt happen. The best way to constrain Trump would be a viable, appealing center-left alternative with whom he must compete for votes. If, however, the Democratic Party re-visits its pre-Bill Clinton errors, there nevertheless is a backup. If one party goes far, far left and the other goes nativist-populist, the center-left and center-right would need to join forces and put forth an alternative that fills in a huge ideological gap. They would: Refuse to favor one-half of America over the other; Advance responsible internationalism; Understand the benefits and the downsides of centralized power, Take the Constitution seriously; Support civil rights and practice civility; Defend free markets but also programs that combat poverty and promote upward mobility; and Urge we invest in human capital so we can thrive in a globalized economy, not inveigh against modernity. If neither party is going to support that kind of approach, there likely will be a crisis in governance and a felt need for an alternative. Those who voted for Hillary Clinton and those who voted for Mitt Romney but saw through the flights of political fancy Sanders and Trump indulged in will need to find each other, champion these common-sense polices and practice public civility. They might even need to form a new political party. We need determined champions of moderation, fervent defenders of centrism and an unwavering commitment to decency, kindness and empathy. Thats ultimately the only place from which to govern a complicated, diverse country and to cool tempers and dampen resentments. Eventually, we hope, thats where this will all wind up. Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Several heads of space agencies from all over the globe held a meeting in Marrakech on the sidelines of COP22 to discuss the prospects for cooperation in the field of earth observation in the context of climate change. The event, held in the Moroccan pavilion on the side lines of COP22, was an opportunity for the heads of space agencies to reiterate resolve to support international efforts to implement the Paris Agreement, said a statement published on COP22 website (cop22.ma). The statement reported that Salaheddine Mezouar, President of COP22, highlighted the importance of the meeting, saying that data sharing between space agencies is key to understanding and countering climate change. He urged data sharing and adequate funding to developing states to support their endeavor to adapt to climate change, and said satellite agencies can help small island states develop an efficient early warning system for environmental risks. For her part, French Minister of the Environment and President of the COP 21, Segolene Royal, said that the meeting is one of the most important side events at COP22 as it aims at facilitating an international independent data collection and sharing system in order to back climate adaptation efforts. On the same occasion, Minister-Delegate for National Defence, Abdellatif Loudiyi, said that this meeting in Marrakech is an opportunity to enhance cooperation mechanisms between these space research centers. He said space technology, notably in terms of earth observation satellites, should be geared towards assisting the decision making process, noting that satellite monitoring of the planet puts technology at the service of achieving climate resilience. In this respect, Loudiyi called for improving the access of African countries to satellite services to help them develop climate resilience plans. In the same vein, head of the French National Centre for Space Studies (CENS) indicated that satellite monitoring will help ensure that commitments under the Paris Agreement are upheld by sharing maps of greenhouse gas emissions. Held by Moroccos Royal Centre for Remote Sensing (CRTS), the Royal Center for Spatial Studies and Research (CRERS) and the French CNES, the event brought together heads of space agencies from several countries including Morocco, Germany, Italy, the UAE, Mexico and Norway as well as the President of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and the director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Head of Algerian government has said that his country is ready to settle its disputes with neighboring Morocco in a bid to boost Arab Maghreb Union which is lagging behind other regional blocs. In an interview carried out by Al Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, who will visit Saudi Arabia Nov.15-16, describes Morocco as a brotherly country, saying Algiers is ready to settle its differences with Rabat to give a new impetus to Arab Maghreb Union (UMA). The Head of the Algerian government recognizes the existence of divergences between the two neighbors, saying that his country prefers a global approach addressing all issues through a direct dialogue so that the two countries can turn their attention to UMA invigoration, fulfilling the wishes of the two brotherly peoples. Such remarks made on the eve of the trip of the Algerian official to Saudi Arabia come after a visit of paid last April to Riyadh by an advisor to President Bouteflika, seem to suggest that the Moroccan-Algerian relations will be at the center talks of Mr Sellal with Saudi officials. Riyadh has offered many times a mediation between Rabat and Algiers to defuse the crisis and disagreements between the two neighboring countries over the Sahara issue. For the Algerian Prime minister, this issue is in the hands of the United Nations and in the process of political negotiations between Morocco and polisario. Algeria supports this process and hopes that these talks will be concluded as soon as possible and crowned with a final and just solution to this conflict, said Mr. Sellal. Algeria, which is hit by an unprecedented economic and financial crisis due to the fall in oil prices, has renewed contacts with Saudi Arabia, after a diplomatic crisis due to Algiers stand on the Syrian conflict and its refusal to include Lebanese Hezbollah in the list of terrorist organizations. According to some analysts, Algeria is reaching to Saudi Arabia seeking assistance to overcome economic and financial crisis, but such rapprochement could also have positive impact on Algerian-Moroccan relations. It is fair to say that only time will tell whether Algiers flip-flap move will yield positive results. Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank. As delegates and negotiators continues talks at the ongoing climate change summit in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, there is concern about further US involvement in the fight against global warming. Speaking to AFP this weekend, Moroccos Environment Minister Hakima el Haite though worried, is equally confident the Americans will continue to contribute to the climate change agenda. I think that even if the Americans revise their position, I think that the competition worldwide will push them to change their position, she told AFP. While the US is the second-largest greenhouse gas polluter, it has been instrumental in helping other countries such as India reduce emissions. US President-elect Donald Trump has earlier this year campaigned against draconian climate rules and said he would cancel the Paris climate agreement and withdraw any funding for United Nations programs related to global warming. Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax in the past, bucking the overwhelming international scientific consensus that man-made emissions are spurring a dangerous increase in global temperature. Trumps transition team and Republican lawmakers argue that leaving the agreement will be simple, because it hasnt been ratified by the Senate. Thirteen Senate Republicans sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week stating that sole executive agreements, as Obamas State Department describes Paris, constitute one of the lowest forms of commitment the United States can make and still be considered a party to an agreement. According to el Haite said these statements came from candidate Trump and we didnt hear yet the President Trump. And we are waiting for him. If it failed to meet its obligations, which are being negotiated at the U.N. climate conference underway in Marrakech, US would be breaking international law. Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram on Sunday night, reacted to the election of Donald Trump. In an audio message published on the groups YouTube page, Shekau said they will not be fooled by people like Donald Trump or anyone in the coalition who is fighting our brothers in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or anywhere else. Were done with Obama, now were going to start with Trump [] we remain convinced by our faith and we will not stop. For us, the war is just beginning, he said in the Hausa language. Boko Haram, which has killed and kidnapped thousands of people, is waging a seven-year-old uprising against the Nigerian state. The group an area in north-eastern Nigeria by last year but has since lost significant ground amid growing regional military pressure. Hundreds of fighters and their families have surrendered in Chad in the past month, security and U.N. sources said on Monday. As a reminder, the terrorist group, which pledged allegiance to ISIS in March 2015, aims to impose a stricter enforcement of Sharia law across Africas most populous nation, which has a Christian-majority south and a Muslim-majority north. A bilingual support group addressing the psychological and educational needs of patients with lupus and their families is a valuable resource to help them cope, according to a study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). The research, "Evaluating the Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) Program's Teen, Young Adult and Parent Support Group: Reaching the Hispanic/Latino Community through a Family Model of Support" was presented at the American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals annual meeting on November 13 in Washington, DC. "Lupus is a chronic autoimmune illness that not only affects a person medically, but also mentally and emotionally," said Melissa Flores, MPH, LMSW, program coordinator of Charla in the Department of Social Work Programs at Hospital for Special Surgery. "People with lupus may experience debilitating symptoms such as extreme fatigue, joint pain, and skin rashes. Additionally, there are often psychosocial challenges, such as feelings of isolation, adjusting to medications with difficult side effects, and coping with the invisible, unpredictable nature of the illness." Research shows that chronic illnesses such as lupus have a wide-ranging impact on the family. HSS started Charla to offer help and strategies to patients and their loved ones for managing the disease. "Lupus disproportionately affects women of color," Flores explains. "Our program strives to address health disparities by serving African American and Hispanic/Latino communities through our family model of support and our bilingual/bicultural programming." The free monthly, hospital-based program provides support and education to teens and young adults under age 30, as well as their loved ones. Conducted in English and Spanish, each two-hour session consists of a presentation by an expert on a subject of interest to patients, a workshop or an open discussion. Topics include medications, nutrition, research and doctor-patient communication. Flores and colleagues set out to determine how much the sessions helped participants and their families, with particular interest in the impact on Hispanic/Latino group members. A 16-item survey in English and Spanish was distributed after seven group meetings between 2015 and 2016. A total of 148 surveys were handed out, including questions on overall satisfaction, knowledge, coping and disease management. Separate analyses were conducted for teens and young adults versus their parents/caregivers. Responses were also classified by ethnicity. A total of 141 surveys were returned, which represented 95% of those who had received the questionnaire. Fifty percent of the respondents were teens/young adults and half were family members. Seventy-three percent were female. More than half of the respondents (68%) were Hispanic/Latino, 29% were African American, 28% were another race, 23% were White and 13% were Asian. The answers to open-ended questions showed substantial improvements in knowledge and coping strategies in areas such as explaining lupus to others and communicating with doctors. Additional survey results: 99% of all respondents reported overall satisfaction with the program 94% agreed that the program increased their knowledge of lupus-related issues 88% agreed that the groups helped them to cope 90% agreed that they could apply what they had learned to manage lupus 95% agreed that the program met their expectations 98% agreed that the presenter was clear and informative 96% agreed that they would recommend the program While overall ratings were high, the survey indicated that the meetings were particularly beneficial to Hispanics/Latinos. A higher percentage of Hispanics/Latinos indicated that the program increased their knowledge of lupus, helped them with disease management and coping, and met their expectations. "Our results demonstrate the value of the group and our success in engaging patients with lupus. The evaluation also underscores the relevance of the family model of support when serving a diverse group of chronically ill teens and young adults and their caregivers," Flores said. More information: Study Title: "Evaluating the Charla De Lupus (Lupus Chat) Program's Teen, Young Adult and Parent Support Group: Reaching the Hispanic/Latino Community through a Family Model of Support" New University of Liverpool research has found that co-witnesses to a crime can contaminate each other's memory of who committed it, but that the likelihood of this contamination occurring depends upon their confidence. The research, conducted by Dr Craig Thorley from the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, was inspired by real-life incidents where co-witnesses have discussed a crime, one has made a mistake during these discussions, and the others have then included this mistake in their subsequent police statements. This effect is known as memory conformity and it has the potential to derail police investigations. Memory conformity As Dr Thorley explains, "In 2003, 29 people witnessed the murder of the Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, in a shopping mall. Afterwards these co-witnesses discussed the murder. During these discussions, one incorrectly stated that the murderer wore a camouflage-patterned jacket. "Several of the witnesses then included this incorrect information in their subsequent police statements. Consequently, the police wasted time and resources looking for someone in a camouflage-pattern jacket. Photographic evidence later revealed the murderer had worn a grey hooded sweatshirt". Last year, Dr Thorley conducted the first study examining whether memory conformity can result in eyewitnesses blaming an innocent bystander for a crime. In that earlier study, participant eyewitnesses watched a crime video and then read a statement from a co-witness about the crime that incorrect blamed an innocent bystander for it. Just over 40% of participants who read this statement also blame the innocent bystander. This specific form of memory conformity became known as blame conformity. Blame conformity In his most recent research, published in the latest issue of Psychology, Crime, and Law, Dr Thorley conducted two studies examining whether or not eyewitnesses are more likely to engage in blame conformity when incorrect information about a crime comes from a high-confidence, compared to a low-confidence, co-witness and when the eyewitnesses themselves are low, compared to high, in self-confidence. In both experiments participant eyewitnesses watched a video of a bag theft. They then read a co-witness statement about the theft. For some of these participants, the co-witness incorrectly stated an innocent bystander was the thief. The participant eyewitnesses were then asked who committed the theft. Confidence In the first experiment, the incorrect co-witness expressed high or low confidence in her assertion that the innocent bystander was the thief. Participant eyewitnesses who read the incorrect statement by the high-confidence co-witness were at greater risk of engaging in blame conformity by also blaming the innocent bystander for the crime. In the second experiment, participants' own self-confidence was assessed. Those who were lower self-confidence were more likely to engage in blame conformity by also blaming the innocent bystander for the crime. Interestingly, when participant eyewitnesses engaged in blame conformity in both experiments were asked how confident they were that the innocent bystander was the thief, they only expressed moderate levels of confidence. This suggests they had an awareness that their responses were potentially incorrect but engaged in blame conformity regardless. Eyewitness susceptibility This is the first research to examine whether or not co-witness confidence and own self-confidence can predict susceptibility to blame conformity. The findings suggest both play an important role in the effect. Dr Thorley specialises in teaching people about human memory, memory and law, research methods, and statistics. As part of his ongoing research Dr Thorley has lectured to a range of different audiences including undergraduate students, fellow academics, medical professionals, and senior police officers More information: Craig Thorley et al, Eyewitness susceptibility to co-witness misinformation is influenced by co-witness confidence and own self-confidence, Psychology, Crime & Law (2016). Craig Thorley et al, Eyewitness susceptibility to co-witness misinformation is influenced by co-witness confidence and own self-confidence,(2016). DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2016.1258471 Mosquitoes are capable of carrying Zika and chikungunya viruses simultaneously and can secrete enough in their saliva to potentially infect humans with both viruses in a single bite, according to new research presented today at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). The work by scientists from Colorado State University is one of several new Zika-related studies being presented at the world's largest gathering of tropical medicine experts, including probing the implications of having three mosquito-borne virusesdengue, Zika and chikungunyacirculating in the Americas and parts of Asia at the same time. They include a new study from researchers in northeastern Brazil who documented an intriguingand troublingmix of neurological problems in patients treated during a rare and unprecedented outbreak of all three diseases in 2015. Scientists are investigating whether antibodies to dengue can either intensify or, conversely, neutralize a Zika virus infection. Zika and dengue are closely related and come from the same family of viruses, known as flaviviruses. Very little is known about Zika's possible interactions with chikungunya, however, in humans or mosquitoes. That's why researchers at a laboratory headed by Greg Ebel, ScD, at Colorado State University, are testing what happens in the Aedes variety of mosquitoes responsible for transmitting the viruses when they encounter more than one virus at a time. In a contained experiment, the scientists allowed mosquitoes to feed on blood that contained dengue, chikungunya or Zika, either alone or in combination. The tests so far show strong evidence that mosquitoes can pick up and transmit Zika and chikungunya simultaneouslysomething that had not been confirmed before, given the recent arrival of Zika in the Americas. "Their saliva is clearly testing positive for both, which could mean that people bitten by this type of mosquito could be infected by both viruses at once," said Claudia Ruckert, PhD who is presenting the results at the ASTMH meeting. It's not clear if mosquitoes can carry all three viruses at the same time. But a previous study, also conducted in a laboratory setting, found that Aedes mosquitoes can carry dengue and chikungunya simultaneously, an observation that was confirmed by the Colorado State research team. And the real-world opportunities for mosquitoes to encounter more than one of these viruses appear to be increasing. A recent study in Nicaragua revealed that about one in five patients who tested positive for dengue, chikungunya or Zika also had a co-infection with at least one of the other two diseases. Some even tested positive for all three. "We need to understand more about what happens in both mosquitoes and people when all of these viruses are circulating in close proximity," Ruckert said. She said the study also suggests that co-infection with chikungunya inhibits infection of Zika virus in the Aedes aegypti mosquito, meaning that one virus may outcompete another in mosquitoes, which could have an impact on the epidemiology of two mosquito-borne viruses circulating at the same time. Sorting Out Neurological Problems When Zika, Dengue, Chikungunya Hit at Once In a second study released at the annual meeting, researchers in Brazil presented new insights from their efforts to work in real-time to untangle a web of neurological complications encountered in a group of 21 patients at the Roberto Santos General Hospital in the northeastern city of Salvador-Bahia over a four-month period in 2015 during an "unprecedented and concurrent" outbreak of Zika, dengue and chikungunya. Thus far, their evidence indicates that each disease may be linked to severe neurological problems, including a rare disorder seen in two patients called Opsoclonus-myoclonus-ataxia syndrome or OMS. It's sometimes referred to as "dancing eyes-dancing feet syndrome" for the chaotic eye movements and muscle contractions it causes. One of those patients tested positive for Zika and dengue. But the other patient tested positive for chikungunya and dengue, though it's been difficult to determine whether this "co-infection" was to blame. "Our analysis shows that each of these viruses may have the potential to cause a range of neurological complications, some very severe, and patients should be monitored for symptoms," said Isadora Siqueira, MD, PhD, a scientist with Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. "What's very difficult to determine is whether having a co-infection with two of these viruses increases the risk of neurological problems. We are still looking closely at the case of the patient who was infected with both chikungunya and dengue." She and her colleagues were particularly surprised to encounter OMS, which globally occurs in about one in a million people. Seeing it around the same time in two unrelated patients in the same hospital is considered unusual. Dr. Siqueira said she and her colleagues are now investigating whether the problem was the result of an auto-immune disorder sparked by one of the viruses that caused the immune system to attack nerve cells, similar to what occurs in Zika patients who develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Zika already is known to occasionally cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which prompts the immune system to attack nerve cells and can cause paralysis and even death. But Dr. Siqueira said they also saw GBS in patients who did not have Zika but tested positive for either chikungunya or dengue. Dr. Siqueira said there is also interest in learning more about how the presence of dengue antibodies might affect the course of a Zika infection in patients, given that the viruses share many similarities. She said a large majority of people in the region of Brazil where Zika exploded have been infected with dengue in the past and carry antibodies to the disease. "This kind of clinical research is essential so that we can better understand the true public health threat of these mosquito-borne viruses," said Stephen Higgs, PhD, president of ASTMH. "Tropical medicine scientists must continue to be vigilant on the front-lines of these outbreaks and provide new and beneficial insights for physicians around the world. It is great to have so many of our members involved, and to see the impact of their work." A global outbreak of Mycobacterium chimaera, an invasive, slow-growing bacterium, is linked to heater-cooler devices (HCD) used in cardiac surgery, according to a study published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. This study adds interim guidance to recent field reports on the outbreak, providing precautionary recommendations to hospitals and health systems to reduce the risk of infections. "It is surprising that a global outbreak like this could go unnoticed for years. This dangerous infection has put many patients at risk all over the world," said Rami Sommerstein, MD, of Inselspital, Bern University Hospital in Switzerland, the lead author of the study. "Now that we know HCDs are the source, individual action from the different players (healthcare institutions, manufacturers, etc.) is needed to contain the ongoing patient risk. The most important action a hospital can take is to remove contaminated HCDs from the operating room and other critical areas. That is the only way to ensure that patients are protected from this infection moving forward." HCDs are stand-alone devices needed for heat exchange in heart-lung machines used in some 250,000 surgeries annually in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response to an increasing number of infections, investigators looked into hospital water sources and found M. chimaera in HCD water circuits - specifically, in the LivaNova 3T HCD used in most hospitals around the world. They also found the bacteria in air samples during surgeries with LivaNova HCDs, suggesting transmission through air particles. To prevent future cases of invasive M. chimaera infections, the researchers made the following recommendations for hospitals and health systems, as well as public health authorities, based on their personal experience with the outbreak: Ensure strict separation of contaminated HCDs from air of critical medical areas Educate clinicians on the risks for and dangers associated with M. chimaera Screen patients who had open heart surgery, heart transplantation or those who were exposed to ventricular assist devices and demonstrate prolonged and unexplained fevers. M. chimaera is a non-tuberculous mycobacterium that was previously known to cause lung infections. Invasive M. chimaera in cardiac surgery patients is particularly difficult to treat because it requires surgery and prolonged antibiotic therapy. "While our understanding of the causes and the extent of the M. chimaera outbreak is growing, several aspects of patient management, device handling and risk mitigation still require clarification," said Sommerstein. More information: Rami Sommerstein et al, Mycobacterium chimaera Outbreak Associated With Heater-Cooler Devices: Piecing the Puzzle Together, Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (2016). Rami Sommerstein et al, Mycobacterium chimaera Outbreak Associated With Heater-Cooler Devices: Piecing the Puzzle Together,(2016). DOI: 10.1017/ice.2016.283 Credit: NIH A large-scale genetic study has provided strong evidence that the development of insulin resistance - a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and heart attacks and one of the key adverse consequences of obesity - results from the failure to safely store excess fat in the body. Overeating and lack of physical activity worldwide has led to rising levels of obesity and a global epidemic of diseases such as heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. A key process in the development of these diseases is the progressive resistance of the body to the actions of insulin, a hormone that controls the levels of blood sugar. When the body becomes resistant to insulin, levels of blood sugars and lipids rise, increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease. However, it is not clear in most cases how insulin resistance arises and why some people become resistant, particularly when overweight, while others do not. An international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge studied over two million genetic variants in almost 200,000 people to look for links to insulin resistance. In an article published today in Nature Genetics, they report 53 regions of the genome associated with insulin resistance and higher risk of diabetes and heart disease; only 10 of these regions have previously been linked to insulin resistance. The researchers then carried out a follow-up study with over 12,000 participants in the Fenland and EPIC-Norfolk studies, each of whom underwent a body scan that shows fat deposits in different regions of the body. They found that having a greater number of the 53 genetic variants for insulin resistance was associated with having lower amounts of fat under the skin, particularly in the lower half of the body. The team also found a link between having a higher number of the 53 genetic risk variants and a severe form of insulin resistance characterized by loss of fat tissue in the arms and legs, known as familial partial lipodystrophy type 1. Patients with lipodystrophy are unable to adequately develop fat tissue when eating too much, and often develop diabetes and heart disease as a result. In follow-up experiments in mouse cells, the researchers were also able to show that suppression of several of the identified genes (including CCDC92, DNAH10 and L3MBTL3) results in an impaired ability to develop mature fat cells. "Our study provides compelling evidence that a genetically-determined inability to store fat under the skin in the lower half of the body is linked to a higher risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease," says Dr Luca Lotta from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "Our results highlight the important biological role of peripheral fat tissue as a deposit of the surplus of energy due to overeating and lack of physical exercise." "We've long suspected that problems with fat storage might lead to its accumulation in other organs such as the liver, pancreas and muscles, where it causes insulin resistance and eventually diabetes, but the evidence for this has mostly come from rare forms of human lipodystrophy," adds Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly from the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit and Metabolic Research Laboratories at the University of Cambridge. "Our study suggests that these processes also take place in the general population." Overeating and being physically inactive leads to excess energy, which is stored as fat tissue. This new study suggests that among individuals who have similar levels of eating and physical exercise, those who are less able store the surplus energy as fat in the peripheral body, such as the legs, are at a higher risk of developing insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease than those who are able to do so. "People who carry the genetic risk variants that we've identified store less fat in peripheral areas," says Professor Nick Wareham, also from the MRC Epidemiology Unit. "But this does not mean that they are free from risk of disease, because when their energy intake exceeds expenditure, excess fat is more likely to be stored in unhealthy deposits. The key to avoiding the adverse effects is the maintenance of energy balance by limiting energy intake and maximising expenditure through physical activity." These new findings may lead to future improvements in the way we prevent and treat insulin resistance and its complications. The researchers are now collaborating with other academic as well as industry partners with the aim of finding drugs that may reduce the risk of diabetes and heart attack by targeting the identified pathways. More information: Lotta, LA et al. Integrative genomic analysis implicates limited peripheral adipose storage capacity in the pathogenesis of human insulin resistance. Nature Genetics; 14 Nov 2016; Journal information: Nature Genetics Lotta, LA et al. Integrative genomic analysis implicates limited peripheral adipose storage capacity in the pathogenesis of human insulin resistance.; 14 Nov 2016; DOI: 10.1038/ng.3714 Neighborhood stressors - the density of liquor or convenience stores, reports of domestic violence and rate of violent crime - were associated with signs of biological stress in a small study of black children in neighborhoods in the greater New Orleans area. Many children are exposed to violence and a greater understanding of the effect on children's health is critical because social environmental conditions likely contribute to health disparities. Socioeconomically disadvantaged communities have a higher exposure to violence. Katherine P. Theall, Ph.D., of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, looked at the association of the three neighborhood-level stressors with biological outcomes reflected by telomere length (parts of chromosomes that can help measure stress on the body because shortening relates to cell aging) and cortisol (a stress hormone) functioning. The study included 85 children between the ages of 5 to 16 (50 of them were girls) from 52 neighborhoods around New Orleans from 2012 through half of 2013. Saliva samples were used determine average relative telomere length and cortisol reactivity. Neighborhood stressors were measured within radiuses of the children's homes. The authors report each neighborhood stressor was associated with biological stress as measured by shortened telomere length and cortisol functioning. Limitations of the study include its lack of applicability to other demographic groups. The study also cannot establish causality. "Neighborhoods are important targets for interventions to reduce the effect of exposure to violence in the lives of children. These findings provide the first evidence that objective exposures to neighborhood-level violence influence both physiological and cellular markers of stress, even in children," the study concludes. More information: JAMA Pediatr. Published online November 14, 2016. . Published online November 14, 2016. DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.2321 @amysherman1 The last time Florida Democrats elected their own chair, it was a drawn out battle with pressure from on high: U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the national party chair, and Sen. Bill Nelson pushed for lobbyist Allison Tant who beat Tampa activist Alan Clendenin in January 2013. This time, one of the key power brokers in the decision to elect Tants replacement -- Broward state committeeman Ken Evans -- says that Democrats should start the process by listening to fellow activists first. While some of the candidates vying for the chair position have contacted Evans seeking his support, he says he isnt ready to commit to any candidate yet. Evans will host a listening session on Thursday evening to begin the process of brainstorming the type of qualities that activists want in their next chair. It's for me to take notes, see what they want, he said. Do they want a party in Tallahassee that is going to be money people like it was? Do they want to work on grassroots? How do we bring that to work together. I think people need be heard right now -- they are upset and hurt. Evans said he invited a few dozen active Democrats in Broward including activists who supported Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, club presidents and members of the Democratic Executive Committee to meet at Duffys restaurant in Plantation. Evans said he doesnt want Democrats forced into making an early decision. The election for the four-year position will be held in January. Lets just wait, not rush into things, said Evans, who was a leader for Clinton on LGBT outreach. We saw what happened with the DNC and that. Lets just be fair and let people run, lets do the right thing. Thats why I want to have communication with the local people, I want to get some guidance from people who are going to elect me." (For the record, Evans has no interest in seeking the state party chair position although he will seek re-election from Broward Democrats in December as state committeeman.) State committeemen and committee women elect the chair based on a formula that gives weight to the number of registered Democrats in their county which means that Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach hold the bulk of the power. We don't yet know for certain who those people will be since county party groups will hold their elections before the state party election in January. Broward has about 600,000 Democrats -- the highest number in the state -- followed by Miami-Dade which has about 585,000 Democrats and Palm Beach with 384,000. Tant announced last week that she would not seek re-election, setting off a long list of potential candidates who are interested in the seat. In addition to Clendenin, other names in the mix include former Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairwoman Annette Taddeo; Susannah Randolph, U.S. Rep. Alan Graysons former district director; state Rep. Ed Narain of Tampa, who narrowly lost a state Senate race in the August primary; Miami political consultant Christian Ulvert; former state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach; and state Sen. Dwight Bullard of Cutler Bay, who heads the Miami-Dade party and lost his seat Tuesday. (Tampa Bay Times photo of Allison Tant, left, when she beat Alan Clendenin, right, for state party chair in 2013.) Floridas utility industry steered more than $20 million of their profits into a failed constitutional amendment to impose new barriers to the expansion of rooftop solar energy generation, but developers say that as the cost of installing solar panels drops, the state could quickly become a leader in private solar energy expansion no matter what the energy giants do. The Florida Solar Energy Industry Association estimates that over the next five years, Florida homeowners, businesses and utilities are projected to take advantage of the falling prices andinstall 2,315 megawatts of solar electric capacity 19 times more than the amount of solar installed in the last five years. Solar prices are in free-fall, and no one knows where the bottom is, said Chris Delp, an attorney with the Tampa law office of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick. Large companies, such as Elon Musks Solar City, are offering zero down, low-interest loans, and people can also cut their expenses by deducting 30 percent of their costs under a federal Investment Tax Credit program that was extended last year, he said. The economics are just going to make these regulatory barriers irrelevant. Floridas utilities could work with customers to roll out solar or they could work to rule it out. What approach will Floridas investor-owned utilities take? Will they encourage homeowners and businesses to install their own solar systems as utilities in Georgia, California, New York and dozens of others states have done or will they ask regulators to stifle rooftop solar expansion, as they attempted to do with Amendment 1, so that they can control the development of solar themselves and limit the hit to their bottom line? More here. For picture posts from 2010 and earlier, see the Earlier Picture Posts Page The ascendency of Donald Trump to the presidency has reverberated around the nation and world and rightfully taken the lions share of headlines. Given that Republicans now control both chambers of Congress as well as the White House, theres certainly plenty of reason for widespread concern. But closer to home, Montanas Democrats suffered an almost total loss in statewide elections and, come January, we will have an all-Republican Board of Land Commissioners except for one Gov. Steve Bullock, who held the office against a political newcomer by the slimmest of margins. The time has obviously come for the Democrats to take a hard look in the mirror and get rid of the stale old plotters and planners in the party that are responsible for one of the greatest losses of statewide public offices in Montanas history. Whether theyll ever admit it or not, the Democrats are in deep trouble and its largely of their own making. The debacle of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the now-disgraced former head of the Democratic National Committee, set the stage for nationwide abhorrence of the corruption infecting the partys top officials. The funneling of funds that should have been spent fairly prior to the primary into the Hillary Victory Fund was a national scandal. Then came the knife-in-the-back to Bernie Sanders, who had rallied young and old supporters in ways the Dems hadn't seen since Barack Obamas first campaign. Yet, despite the polls showing Sanders, not Clinton, beating Trump, Wasserman-Schultz and the entire panoply of top-level officials in the Dem machine were on a mission to ensure Clintons candidacy based primarily on what they blithely called breaking the glass ceiling with the first woman president. It was, they said, Hillarys time. And they would not be distracted by a cranky old socialist they prematurely dubbed unelectable while ignoring the enormous and energetic crowds he was drawing and the rather unbelievable amount of money he was raising from a vast number of tiny donations that averaged $28. Firmly rooted in their big-donor mindset, the DNC and Clintons campaign continued to milk the very millionaires and billionaires that Sanders so vigorously and successfully exposed. That Clinton took $275,000 each for speeches to Wall Street moguls pretty much said it all. If there was any hope for the 99 percent to overcome the vast economic inequality plaguing the nation, it certainly wasnt by riding Clintons horse to the White House. Here in Montana, despite the fact that Sanders won our primary, the Clinton machine had its allies in the top jobs at Democratic Party headquarters in Helena, aided and abetted by Senator Jon Tester and Governor Steve Bullock, both of whom continued to support Clinton in open defiance of their constituencies. It was, by all indications, a done deal. The fix was in and good old Bernie was out. What Montanas Democratic Party officials hadnt counted on was the effect their continuous scuttling to the right would eventually have on their base. Due in no small part to West Coast states deciding they didnt want coal-fired power anymore, the party's candidates announced they were pro-coal. Given the escalating impacts of global warming on Montanas environment, one might have expected them to take a strong stance to fight for future generations. But instead, they backed continued mining, burning, and exporting coal while ignoring the vast scientific evidence of climate change. Nor did they uphold the Montana Constitutions mandate that the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations. Theres an old saying that given the choice between Democrats who talk like Republicans and real Republicans, voters will choose real Republicans every time. I guess that bit of wisdom evaded the Dem strategists, and they paid a terrible price for their smug naivete. Taken together, the cascading blunders of the party's leaders led to electoral doom. Whats more dismaying is the lack of cognizance that Republicans, unlike Democrats, do not reach across the aisle when they have the majorities they run the agenda they promised their constituents and if the Ds dont like it, too dang bad. The Democratic Party has lost its way and a wholesale house cleaning is in order. Either that, or get used to being in the minority and watching traditional ideals of the party be further degraded and destroyed. The choice, if they care at all about their base, is inescapably clear if Democrats hope for future relevance. NorthWestern Energys property tax payments are going up this year, not down. In fact, they are going up 10 percent. NorthWesterns property tax bills have made lots of headlines across Montana recently. We are the states largest property taxpayer, and our property taxes are one of our largest costs of doing business. As Montanas largest provider of essential utility services, our prices are based on the cost of providing that service. Given that property taxes are a significant portion of our customers bills, it is extremely important that we manage our property tax costs for the benefit of our customers. As NorthWestern continues to invest in its electric and natural gas infrastructure, our property taxes have increased. However, the level and rate of the increases of taxes proposed by the Montana Department of Revenue place an increasing burden on our customers bills and limits our ability to invest in safe, reliable and affordable service. There are some important facts worth noting concerning our recent discussions with the MDOR and our 2016 property tax bills: 1. Even before the 2016 tax increase, NorthWestern and our customers were paying 34 percent ($121.9 million) of all the centrally assessed property taxes in Montana. The second largest was BNSF Railway at 7 percent ($17 million). 2. NorthWestern wanted to ensure it was allocated its fair share of Montana property taxes. In fact, even with the MDOR settlement, we are paying $12 million more than in 2015. 3. Under MDORs initial valuation, NorthWesterns tax bill would have increased from $121.9 million paid in 2015 to $163.4 million for 2016, a 34 percent increase. While we have been able to work with MDOR to avoid protests for almost a decade, we were prepared to protest had we been unsuccessful in our recent negotiations. We agreed to a $134 million bill, about a 10 percent increase over 2015, and 35 percent over 2014. 4. Because of the impact on schools and local governments, NorthWestern did not want to protest this tax increase and began negotiating with the MDOR in June in the hope we could reach a settlement sooner. 5. Local taxing authorities will receive larger checks from NorthWestern than they did last year, and much larger than the year before. NorthWestern, like schools and local governments, wants greater certainty in how these taxes are calculated and paid. We are interested in changes that provide more predictability, reach final outcomes sooner, and stabilize the overall tax burden for NorthWestern and ultimately our customers. NorthWestern and our customers are taxed at the highest rate in Montana, 12 percent. In contrast, the states rural electric cooperates and their members are taxed at 3 percent. NorthWesterns tax payments are important to schools, local governments and other tax-supported entities. They are also important to our customers, and to the Montana Public Service Commission, which has directed that we separately disclose the significant amount of property taxes included in customer bills beginning this January. Looking ahead, we hope to work with MDOR to resolve valuation issues before they create budget issues. We also hope that we can develop more stable, predictable and equitable methods of establishing property tax valuations, a change that would benefit us all. I am writing in memory of Larry Blackwell, who passed away on July 22. This country was founded on the freedom of all who come to it, yet we still have citizens feeling disenfranchised. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that even in Missoula my husband Larry was told by racist Americans he couldnt live in our neighborhood; he must be carrying a gun and going to rob a store because his hand was in his pocket; he was told he couldnt be in someones house without disgracing it and much more. Most of you have no idea what happens every day to non-white Americans. My husband was a veteran, father, hard-working man, had a great sense of humor and helped his neighbors. He was also black. Larry would be incredibly sad right now. For a country to elect an openly racist and sexist person to the most important job of leading all who live in this country is disgraceful. If you are a minority and voted for him, I openly dont understand you. If you are a woman and voted for him, do you care about yourself, our daughters, our sisters, other women? If you are a white male who cast a vote for a commander in chief who is openly supported by the Klu Klux Klan, are you proud you did that? My 11-year-old daughter, who is bi-racial, asked me Wednesday morning if, after he gets rid of the Hispanics, will I have to leave the country next. She also said "I suppose rape will become legal now. I understand that we must figure a way to come together as a country. Americans wanted a change, but change for the sake of change does not always work. The choices we make have to reflect the greater good. Randee Hearst Blackwell, Missoula Youve never lived until youve almost died. For those who fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know. Guy de Maupassants quote found on the back of Jack Henleys business card *** HAMILTON Jack Henley was 19 years old when someone first shot at him. By the time he was 20, the son of a West Virginia coal worker had been awarded a Silver Star and two Bronze Star medals for gallantry in action on two islands in the South Pacific. On this morning, with his two pit bulls resting comfortably under the kitchen table covered in a red, white and blue cloth with the words Home of the Free, Because of Brave embossed on it, Henley shared his story. At 92, the Hamilton man can still remember the sounds, smells and sights of the World War II jungle warfare he experienced on the islands of Bougainville and Cebu. He still knows how to spell every island, every trail and every river that he crossed as a U.S. Army private first class. And Henley hasnt forgotten the pride that his father showed every time the military awarded his son one of the 13 medals that now rest in a lighted display case in his living room. He was the boss of the coal separation plant, Henley said with a smile. He would walk from one end of the town to the other showing everyone the medals and telling them what his son had done. Today, Henley lives in a small home on the northeast side of Hamilton thats filled with memorabilia of his storied career with the U.S. Army, which was once featured in the Steven Spielberg WWII documentary Price for Peace. In his office, Henley has hung the sword and framed the Japanese flag that he took from a Japanese officer who charged his position during a nighttime patrol on the Solomon Island called Bougainville. On that night, he had been assigned to accompany a group of Army Rangers looking for Japanese camps. After they stumbled across one, there was a firefight where nearly all the Japanese enlisted men were killed. Suddenly, the Japanese officer sprang up and rushed the group while waving a sword and flag. I hit him with my Tommy gun, Henley said. You couldnt see much. It was so dark. The flag that hangs in Henleys home carries the holes from the machine gun that he carried that night. *** Henley enlisted not long after he graduated from high school. There was a war on, he said. It was the right thing to do. Fresh out of boot camp, Henley found himself on a troop transport that sailed from New York to New Caledonia off the coast of Australia. The trip took 47 days. A short time later, he was assigned to the Americal Division and shipped to Bougainville where U.S. soldiers were fighting against well-entrenched Japanese forces. When I got there, they handed me a rifle, he said. When I started to clean it up, rust poured out of the barrel. His first action came at Hill 260, where Japanese had dug in beneath a large banyan tree. He can still remember the sound of bullets in the air. It was disturbing, he said. It was a very expensive hill. During that battle, an Army photographer captured an image of Henley and others in his squad as they fought their way toward the Japanese position. That photograph was later used on the cover of a photography book published by Life magazine. I didnt know that I was being photographed, he said. We were working behind a tank called Lucky Legs. It was pretty rough going. They wiped out our company several times before we finally took the hill. On the Philippine Island of Cebu, Henley was asked to do the impossible. After his company had suffered numerous casualties on April 2, 1945, Henleys company commander asked him to attempt to reach a squad of men and bring them back to fill in a gap in the line. The bands of enemy fire were so intense and close to the ground that the path to the squad was considered practically impassable, said Henleys citation for a Silver Star. Somehow he managed to crawl over the 400 yards, find the 12-man squad and bring them back without a single casualty. Along the perilous route, Henley spotted two of his fellow soldiers who were wounded and couldnt make it back behind the lines. On his own, he returned to the fire zone and half-dragged, half-carried each man back to an aid station. They were even firing 20 mm canons at me, he said. I had to crawl most of the way. I guess I lucked out. I was pretty small back then. Private Henleys gallantry in action and devotion to duty contributed greatly to the thwarting of the enemy attack and was a major factor in saving two of his comrades lives, said the 70-year-old citation, now stained brown with age. By the time he finished, Henley was bleeding from both ears from the concussion of exploding rounds. Thirty years after that day, he was awarded a Purple Heart for those wounds. I remember the war ending and the great feeling that we all had that we had survived it, Henley said. The train that eventually took him home went right past his familys house on its way to its stop five miles away. Henley remembers the door was locked when he first got home. He knocked. My mom darn near had a fit when she saw me standing there, he said. She yelled: Hey, Dan. Jacks home! And he remembers his old cur dog didnt recognize him as he stood there in his dress blues. The ancient pit bull that he calls Buddy stands next to Henleys wheelchair in hopes for a back scratching as Henley smiles with the memory. So I went upstairs and got back into my old clothes, he said. They were left out just like the way they were when I left. My mom hadnt changed a thing. That old dog knew me then. Yes, he did. Henley served 28 years in both the active service and reserves, including time as a drill sergeant. His name is included on the Hall of Valor in Washington, D.C. He believes its important to remember the men and women who have served their country. People should honor those who have put their lives on the line for their luxury of being free, Henley said. There should be no ifs, ands or buts about that. CROW AGENCY During lunch at Crow Agency Elementary School on a recent Thursday, students hunch over the table, eating oranges. They know the Crow word for yellow shiile and for red hisshe. But the second-graders struggle with other colors, like orange. Its hard to say, Zarah Nomee said. No, purples hard to say, Kyler Haugen chimed in. What about blue, like their milk cartons? Thats hard to say, too, Haugen said. What about animal names? 'Background knowledge' Teachers at the small elementary school on the Crow Reservation have informally incorporated Apsaalooke into their lessons for years. But this is the first year the school is coordinating a cohesive approach, anchored by a kindergarten immersion class. I started off with their background knowledge, said kindergarten teacher Lavonna Real Bird. Thats very important. Students chimed together, iichiile, when shown a sheet of paper with pictures of horses. They know what a horse is, they see a horse all the time, Real Bird said. Even babies say iichiile. From there, they count out how many horses are on the paper hawate, duupe, daawiia, shoope, chiaxxo, up to five. School principal Jason Cummins is trying to shift how the school thinks about language, especially for students who dont come from Crow-speaking homes. We dont just want to blame anybody anymore, he said. I think thats been a crutch We dont say, 'If only your family taught you quadratic equations.' The language learning level in Real Birds classroom mirrors kindergarten content. Students sing songs for numbers, months and days of the week in both English and Crow, swaying just-counted fingers. Math lessons are taught first in Crow, then repeated in English. Reading instruction occurs in English, but everything else is in Crow. As students practice numbers in Crow, they also work on addition problems. They go over body parts on a diagram with things labeled in Crow. Some people think, just talk to them, Cummins said. (But) language acquisition is different from language instruction. We dont just wing it. We need to treat it like any other content area. Politics Thats an approach echoed by Jioanna Carjuzaa, a professor at Montana State University. True immersion means that youre using language as a vehicle to focus on other content, she said. Carjuzaa visited the school earlier in October with a group of teaching students from countries around the world. Native language teachers, like other teachers, need training, she said. They need professional development, she said. Theres no question that the elders and the tribal members have the knowledge and the wisdom. (But) theyre not an integrated part of the teaching staff. Some language advocates argue for a more informal approach; during a conference earlier this year in Billings, a co-founder of a language immersion school in Minnesota highlighted the schools reliance on tribal members without formal teacher training. And the continued development of language itself can be very political, Carjuzza said. Thats something Cummins works to steer clear of. I dont care who gets the credit, I just want my kids to learn, he said. Funding Language immersion preschools received a political boost with the passage of legislation from Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, who represents the Rocky Boy Reservation, opening state funding for teaching Native languages with dwindling speakers. Montanas Indian Education for All provision, which requires the teaching of Native American culture and history in public schools and is backed up by dedicated funding, has been held up as a model of curriculum integration. But language instruction has lagged. Its really in a lot of ways in the very infantile stages, Carjuzaa said. Theres a real push to embrace immersion programs. Some private schools have emphasized the topic for several years. The Nkwusm Salish Language School was established in 2002 on the Flathead Reservation and offers a a complete academic experience dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the Salish Language. The Piegan Institutes Cuts Wood Academy in Browning was founded in 1995 with the mission of creating more Blackfeet language speakers while providing a K-8 education. And on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations, St. Labre and its satellite schools have incorporated American Indian language for several years. In public schools, its very sporadic, Carjuzaa said. It depends on who the teachers are and what the commitment is. In addition to Crow Agency, public schools in Browning and Wyola have used the new funding to create language programs. School and home Real Bird grew up in a Crow-speaking home. When I talk to another Crow-speaking adult, its so natural, its normal, she said. The challenge is trying to speak to a young child in Crow. Its become a widespread condition: educators said that adults often will speak English to children despite being fluent in Crow, as more children understand English and there's no need to adapt their Crow to a lower comprehension level. Crow Agency Elementary has a preschool class that heavily incorporates Crow language, though its not a true immersion program. It can give kids a jump start on Crow, just like other subjects, whether they come from a Crow-speaking home or not. When they go to Head Start or preschool, when they come they have an idea. Same thing with Crow, Real Bird said. But its an inescapable fact that students who hear Crow at home will have a leg up. Just like anything we do in the classroom, if its reinforced at home, theyre going to improve, Real Bird said. In the classroom, theres a dearth of resources for teaching Crow. Real Bird makes most of her own teaching materials and plans her own lessons. Cummins is working with other language groups to provide assessment options in Crow for students; English proficiency has been shown to have a significant effect on standardized test scores, and scholars have debated if tests carry an inherent cultural bias. Weve had some kids that we thought were having challenges behaviorally, he said. It turned out that it was a language issue. Im not saying thats an answer to everything, Cummins said. He doesn't expect language instruction to single-handedly bridge American Indian academic achievement gaps that are well documented in reservation schools and schools in predominantly white areas. But language isn't just an academic issue. It's a matter of identity. Different people have different opinions, Real Bird said. I believe that Crow means speaking our Crow language. UM faculty member publishes biomedical research Kasper Hansen, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Montana, recently received a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for his research. Hansen is a Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence investigator in UMs Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics. His research focuses on N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the central nervous system, which are critically involved in neuronal development, sensory processing, memory and learning. Aberrant activity of these receptors is strongly associated with numerous neurological and psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury, as well as Parkinsons, Huntingtons and Alzheimers diseases. In a recently published scientific article in the high-impact journal Neuron, Hansen and postdoctoral fellow Feng Yi, together with Tung-Chung Mou and Stephen Sprang in UMs Macromolecular X-ray Diffraction Core Facility, used electrophysiological and X-ray crystallographic methods to explain the mechanism of action for a novel class of inhibitors that target neuronal NMDA receptors. This work and Hansens other research activities create a foundation for the development of new therapeutic agents to treat brain disorders that involve NMDA receptors. Hansens grant was awarded to study strategies and mechanisms that can be used in the treatment of childhood epilepsy and aphasia syndromes caused by abnormal activity of NMDA receptors. For more information about the UM Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, call 243-6003 or visit hs.umt.edu/cbsd. Biological Station documents ancient methane-derived carbon in stoneflies New research by scientists at the University of Montanas Flathead Lake Biological Station has documented the first example of freshwater consumers using ancient methane-derived carbon and the most extensive example of a methane-derived carbon contribution to a river ecosystem. The research conducted by FLBS researchers Amanda DelVecchia and Jack Stanford, along with Xiaomei Xu from the University of California at Irvine was recently published in the open access journal, Nature Communications. Read the article online at nature.com/articles/ncomms13163. The teams research focused on the Nyack floodplain on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in Montana; the main stem of the Flathead River in Kalispell; the Jocko River floodplain near Arlee; and the Methow River floodplain in Winthrop, Washington. The work helped helps to explain a decades-old question in groundwater ecology: How do thousands of large-bodied stoneflies survive in the barren (carbon-poor) and dark environment of gravel aquifers underlying river floodplains? The researchers found that up to 67 percent of the carbon in stonefly biomass (body tissue) across entire floodplains came from methane. Furthermore, the methane carbon in the Nyack floodplain ranged from modern to millennial-aged (6,900 years old) to ancient (greater than 50,000 years old). The millennial-aged methane carbon could have come from organic matter deposited during the retreat of the last glaciation 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, or the ancient carbon could have come from a shale methane source, as the Kishenehn shale formation underlies the floodplain. Either methane source was likely consumed by bacteria first before being directly or indirectly consumed by the stoneflies themselves. River floodplains are some of the most valuable and most threatened ecosystems in the world. The findings of this study advance scientific understanding of the base energy sources in freshwater ecosystems and underscore the value of pristine river floodplains for maintaining biodiversity, productivity and ecosystem services such as maintained water quality. The researchers continue to study the role of methane in the food web and community ecology of the Nyack aquifer and expect subsequent findings to be published over the next one to two years. DelVecchia received her doctorate from UM in 2016. She is a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar at Allegheny College, North Carolina State University and the Rocky Mountain Biological Station; Stanford is emeritus professor and former director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station; and Xu is a project scientist at the UC Irvine Keck Laboratory. Montana World Trade Center launches Technology Export Initiative The Montana World Trade Center at the University of Montana is scheduled to introduce a tech export initiative at its TechEx kickoff event, Wisetail Tells Its Tale, from 1 to 2:15 p.m. Tuesday at First Interstate Bank, 101 E. Front St. The initiative will help Montana businesses in industries such as cloud computing, photonics and bioscience by bringing together a team in international trade and technical law. Members of the new tech export team will weigh in on best practices in a live case study, after Wisetail CEO and founder Justin Bigart shares his story from the perspective of a Software as a Service internationally. Seating is limited. For nearly two decades, MWTC has served Montana as a trusted adviser: for businesses wanting to connect globally and prosper locally, said Brigitta Miranda-Freer, MWTC executive director. The TechEx Initiative is designed to give Montana-based SaaS companies like Wisetail an edge in exporting these services to other markets. According to a 2015 report from UMs Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Montanas high-tech and manufacturing industry is growing at eight times the rate of the Montana economy. In Missoula, tech companies like Submittable and EDULOG are growing and leaving their marks, and according to the Montana High-Tech Business Alliances February profile, 16.4 percent of companies in the alliance are software/SaaS companies. But not every company has found the help it needs to expand. Technical assistance for these types of technology exports is difficult to obtain, Miranda-Freer said. A common problem that exporters have is a lack of uniformity in export regulations, security considerations and tax structure. While the global demand for cloud computing technology is clear, export figures are elusive given the rapidly changing nature of the industry. However, projections point to a strong global market with anticipated exponential growth. Beginning in November, MWTC provides access to a team of export professionals and targeted training to help businesses. The team includes Angela Marshall Hofmann, founder and president of World Strategies LCC; Joel Henry, senior counsel with Michael Best and co-founder of Agile Data Solutions; Antoinette Tease, intellectual property attorney; and Justin Cook, Certified U.S. export compliance officer. Initial free consultations and discounted service packages will be available for MWTC members. Businesses may register to attend the free event at mwtc.org. Tuscaloosa, Ala. Many people, of all partisan stripes, are still wondering, How did this happen? The fact is that a very small difference in net votes around 100,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would have turned Hillary Clintons popular vote victory into an Electoral College victory as well. As people try to process what happened on Election Day, we need to consider carefully whether the difficulty of voting in our nations urban centers, in places like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, might have played a decisive role. This isnt merely idle speculation. Professors Charles Stewart III, of M.I.T., and Stephen Ansolabehere, of Harvard, estimate that long lines at the polls discouraged between 500,000 and 700,000 would-be voters from casting ballots in the 2012 general election. This year, long lines, some of them a half-mile long in Cincinnati, snaked outside too many urban polling places. In Brooklyn, some voters had to wait almost three hours to vote because of unreliable voting machines. This is hardly a new problem; reports of excessive waiting times to vote also arose in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 general elections. However, this is probably the first presidential election in which discouraged nonvoters might have determined the outcome. No citizen should have to wait for hours to exercise the fundamental right to vote; would-be voters shouldnt be forced to choose between significant lost work time (and hence pay) and voting. Yet this is precisely the choice confronting a significant number of urban voters. MOSCOW President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke by telephone for the first time on Monday, agreeing to review what both consider the poor state of relations between the two countries, according to a statement from the Kremlin. The two agreed on the absolutely unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations, said the statement, and they both endorsed the idea of undertaking joint efforts to normalize relations and pursue constructive cooperation on the broadest possible range of issues. The issues discussed included trade and economic ties as well as combating terrorism. Mr. Putin was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mr. Trump last Wednesday, sending him a telegram about an hour after he had emerged the victor, but the two men have not met nor had they spoken previously. Mr. Putin repeated the congratulations over the phone. The Russian president said he hoped that Moscow could build a collaborative dialogue with Washington on the bases of equality, mutual respect and noninterference in the others internal affairs, the release said. A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal. Improving Montanas criminal justice system must be high on the priority list for the 2017 Legislature and governor. Whoever is elected must confront these challenges: The state prison system continues to be at or above its capacity of 2,580 inmates month after month, year after year. Overflow state prisoners are housed at county jails, adding to overcrowding in those facilities, including the Yellowstone County jail. General fund spending on corrections increased from $131 million in fiscal 2006 to $182 million in fiscal 2014. Montanas prison population has grown faster than the national average. Most of the people getting locked up have failed at probation or parole. Growth in the corrections population in prison and the much larger number in community supervision coincides with an increase in District Court felony cases. Nowhere has the increase been bigger than in Yellowstone County. Last year, 2,291 felony cases were filed in Yellowstone County District Court. The surge in criminal cases is driven largely by drug offenses. More than 500 people were arrested last year in Yellowstone County on methamphetamine charges alone. Montana incarcerates offenders at a higher rate than any of its neighboring states. Between 2004 and 2013, Montanas property crime rate dropped substantially, while its violent crime rate increased even though more people were locked up. Montana crime rates remain below national averages. The justice system is overloaded and understaffed at almost every level. Billings has struggled to recruit and pay for adequate police protection. The county attorneys office has seen its workload double without a commensurate increase in staff. The Montana Public Defender Office doesnt have enough money in its budget to last this fiscal year. Yellowstone County District Court judges each handle double the caseload that is considered full time by national standards. The Department of Corrections has struggled with staffing shortages and its probation-parole officers have too many people to supervise adequately. Many of those offenders on probation and parole are parents involved with the child protection system, which is overwhelmed with huge increases in reports of child abuse and neglect. Drug addiction is a major factor in the child welfare crisis. In fact, methamphetamine, opioids or alcohol figure prominently in most criminal cases in Montana. The vast majority of people in our prisons, jails and on probation or parole have substance abuse issues that are the root of their recidivism. Created by the 2015 Legislature, the Commission on Sentencing has been developing solutions to Montanas justice problems. The commission received research assistance from the Council of State Govermments Justice Center, which has helped 20 other states with comprehensive policy reviews. Montana must look to other states that have successfully reduced recidivism. Yellowstone County was well represented on the 15-member commission by District Judge Ingrid Gustafson, Billings attorney Majel Russell, probation officer Jennie Hansen and Rep. Margie MacDonald. Last month, the commission agreed to support a dozen bills in the 2017 Legislature, so the next steps will depend on lawmakers. Republicans, Democrats and many people outside of the Capitol will need to come together to stop the revolving door of prison, release, prison. Otherwise, Montanas justice system will continue to cost taxpayers more each year without reducing crime, drug abuse or recidivism. The system needs adequate staffing at every level so cases move expeditiously, rendering swift justice for victims and communities. Offenders who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs must be compelled to enter effective treatment with aftercare. Montana needs more probation officers to closely supervise offenders in the community. Montana cant keep locking up so many drug addicts. We must move toward a system in which offenders who are a danger to the community are incarcerated and nonviolent offenders have speedier opportunities for drug treatment and rehabilitation. Lets put more offenders to work and fewer in prison. -- The Billings Gazette Greece is generally regarded as the birthplace of democracy. Central to their concept of democracy was the concept of citizenship. According to Aristotle, a citizen was one who took turns ruling and being ruled. In our parlance, a citizen mainly participates in the affairs of the state by electing those who make laws, by abiding by the outcome of elections and by being subject to the laws of the state. In fact the word idiot comes from the Greek, meaning one who did not participate in the affairs of the state. Aristotle also believed that the answer as to what constitutes good public policy could not be determined with the exactitude of a mathematical or scientific theorem. Public policy answers were found in the realm of the probable and the contingent not the certain. Good public policy was discovered and/or created through free public debate and deliberation that adhered to the rules of civility. As the dust settles from the recent elections it is good to remember this view of citizenship and the nature of public policy. Much of the rancor experienced in the recent national and state elections was due to people believing that they had an absolutely certain answer as to what government should do and would barely tolerate and would certainly not listen to opposing points of view. Too many see compromise as immoral. Identity politics is the rule. Given such a view of political truth and the political process, it is no wonder that the next step is to condemn those who hold opposing views. Those in opposition are the enemy of good and should be either converted or silenced. These absolutists miss the point: The American system of government, as articulated in the U.S. Constitution, is based on the need for compromise. If checks and balances are to work and gridlock to be avoided, there must be compromise. Once an opponent is attacked as the devil, compromise is excluded. For there to be compromise, political civility is necessary but political civility is missing in this country. All too often, we characterize our political opponents as infidels, enemies, traitors, etc. We dont listen to the other side; we attack them. We dont counter the argument; we attack the maker of the argument. We speak past out opponents; we dont speak to them. In fact, civility has always had a political connotation. The word incivility comes from the Latin incivilis that means not a citizen. Civility is an important political value in that the lack of civility creates an almost insurmountable barrier to effective and reasonable public deliberation. Given that a major citizen function is to engage in public deliberation, political civility, by which I mean courtesy, self-constraint, empathy, tolerance of others with differing views and respect for their right to speak and a willingness to consider the point of view of another person, is an important characteristic of citizenship and civic engagement. Public issues are now framed in absolutist and simplistic terms. Slogans and threats that assume the truth of ones position replace reasoned, nuanced thought about an issue. Political civility is expressed by means of civil discourse. Our democracy is based on a certain degree of humility; that we may not have all the answers; that we may be incorrect and that the other person could/will have something useful to say. The British philosopher David Hume noted: When citizens are most sure and arrogant, they are most mistaken, giving view only to passion. Civil public deliberation is the only corrective to this passion but free debate and discussion assumes that citizens are willing to consider the others point of view. Seeing public issues in absolutist terms precludes meaningful public debate and discussion. While citizens will not agree on the content of public policy, we should be able to agree on the value of civil discourse. We may not agree on what policy to pursue but we should agree that we will treat each other civilly as we discuss public issues. Our democratic belief is that through the give and take of civil public debate good public policy emerges and is created. Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent and debate. (Hubert Humphrey) -- John W. Ray, Ph.D, is a professor of political science and political theory at Montana Tech. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Montana Tech. RYEGATE After he finished setting up his booth in the school gym for the town's Christmas bazaar, Adrie Min on Friday night said he knew it all along. That despite what the polls and the media said, Republican Donald J. Trump would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Min's booth was for the Ryegate Gun Club; he'd gotten permission from the sheriff to sell tickets for a raffle to win a handgun. He's a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, and it's one of the main reasons he voted for Trump, he said. But even in this county of less than 1,000 people, where were 77 percent of the 471 votes cast went to Trump, he didn't loudly broadcast his support. "If you were a Trump supporter, and they knew it, you ran the risk of being vandalized," said Min, a physical therapist who works in Harlowton. "Even in this part of Montana." Nancy Clark, chairwoman of the Golden Valley County Republican Club, agreed. "I got the feeling that this was all over the country, that people were the silent majority, and that's why the polls were wrong. A lot of people don't trust polls. It's so slanted," she said. Clark worked as the sergeant at arms in the Montana Legislature for several sessions. People here have always been shy about voicing their political views. Clark makes quilts and said the sewing club is one of the few places people talk freely. "You knew who you could talk to and you knew who you couldn't," said Sharon Brastrup, who is retired and used to work at the courthouse, another member of the club. Vindicated isn't the right way to describe how Clark, Brastrup and Min, along with others in this rural region in the middle of Montana feel. Optimistic is a better word. A vote for Trump here was for the ex-candidate, now president-elect's pledges to roll back the Clean Power Plan, to make America energy-independent and to secure its borders. Club members want to see the Republican party at its most conservative. Now they're hoping Trump will come through. "Happy days are here again," said Bob Clark, Nancy's husband, who was a state representative here. But Min, who was born in Holland, moved to the U.S. in the 1980s and became a citizen in 2007, was more subdued. "Well, I don't know." Over in Roundup 40 miles east, Bill Canon said he only knows one person in Musselshell County who voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, and it's his wife. She was one of 331; here Clinton got just 13 percent of the vote. "We vote for a guy like Trump because we want our America back," Canon said. "He's one of those individuals, and Montana likes individuals. We like people who stand alone, on their own two feet." In Roundup, many businesses in town are barely hanging on, Canon said. He struggles to pay rent on his shop in the winter, and his daughter just moved back from the Bakken oilfields after a slowdown there and opened a salon in the back of his motorcycle shop. Bringing back jobs that rely on natural resource extraction is something Nancy Clark looks to Trump to accomplish. The president-elect needs to follow through on his promise to limit the power of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said. "We're dependent on the coal mines around here. They employ a lot of people. We've lost the logging, we're losing the coal, the things Montana was founded on. The EPA needs to be reined in so we can use those resources. You can use your resources responsibly. We've come a long ways since the turn of the century." Min wants the EPA eliminated. "The federal overreach in anything they do, any branch, all this licensing stuff, it's just to control you. The only thing they don't need licenses for is when they run for office. And they're more dangerous than anybody that has a license." Min said he believes many trade agreements are unconstitutional and wants to see Trump deliver on a pledge to crush the North American Free Trade Agreement. During the campaign there was much speculation on what kind of president Trump would be. His stance on many issues was inconsistent. He touted his status an outsider but picked a long-term politician as his vice president. Even his supporters aren't sure what he'll do next. On the trail, Trump said he'd eliminate the Affordable Care Act, what he called a "failed" law. But by Friday told reporters he was open to keeping parts of it after a meeting with President Barack Obama. "I think we need to wait and see," Brastrup said. "My husband, he come home last night, since the election, he's very afraid because of the Affordable Care Act, which is not affordable. But he's got a sister who had tongue cancer and her husband has colon cancer and then he's got a nephew that nearly died of cancer, and he is afraid of going back to something they can't afford. But I don't think that's going to happen. The way I'm hearing the report today is he said he will keep those things." The club members want to see him Trump crack down on illegal immigration, though at this point even they conceded his hallmark wall between the U.S. and Mexico may be unrealistic. "That open borders thing, that's got to stop," Bob Clark said. "Building a wall, it's possible, but I don't think that's the only answer. There's got to be something else out there, some other way." Brastrup said there needs to be enforcement. "My son was down on the border with the National Guard and they could do nothing but tell the officers if they see somebody. They have absolutely no authority." In addition to increased border security, Nancy Clark wants a stronger vetting program for refugees. "There's got to be, before we start letting the Syrians in here, some of the refugees, there has got to be a system that they can be well-vetted so that ISIS supporters are not coming in with them." Things will become more clear as Trump makes picks for key jobs within his cabinet. Bob Clark wants to see Ben Carson as surgeon general and U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-N.C., a Tea Party member, as attorney general or a Supreme Court justice or Ted Cruz as a justice. Not everyone in the club who voted for Trump backed him initially. In the primary they supported everyone from Rand Paul to Carson and then Cruz after Carson dropped out. Brastrup said there wasn't a perfect candidate. "I felt like we didn't have a whole lot to choose from either way. But by the same token I think Trump was the one that had the intestinal fortitude to take on the system, and I'm glad to see that dynasty broken." When asked what Trump has said or done they disagree with, the club didn't come up with much, though Min said he's not OK with Trump's support of stop-and-frisk policies. When asked about some of the less-than-savory things that came out about Trump during the election, including a tape that came out with Trump discussing groping women, Canon, who supported Trump from the start, chalks it all up to politics. "A lot of it was paid-for trash," he said. "But the politics part of it did sway a lot of people. It swayed my wife hard-core. She thinks he's the most bullying, womanizing piece of bullcrap. But she does have a point." Min said none of the things he heard from Trump made him reconsider voting for the candidate. "You know from what side it comes," Min said. "They'll say anything to win. We call them liars. They're just born liars almost." Nancy Clark said even with his faults, Trump is "refreshing." He doesn't weigh it to see who's going to like me and who's not going to like me. It's just 'this is the way I feel' and 'take me how I am,' and most of it I agree with.'" At Brastrup's house at dinner Friday night, the discussion centered on two factions within the Republican Party. She hopes Trump helps the more conservative wing rise to the top. "We've got Republicans in Name Only, and then we have the true Republicans. But you can count them on one hand almost," Min said. "I'm hoping that he's going to be a leader enough that we'll be able to, I hope that's going to change. But I don't know that it will. You've got the old establishment and I don't know that they will come around, but you have the conservative Republicans, and I'm hoping that's going to be the prominent leg of the party." Bob Clark said he is anticipating good things. "I think him being in there is going to force Congress to make some uncomfortable changes." Min was more tempered. "Well, it's a start." Island Storage will dispose of the property of Daniel A Baker 903 E 2nd St #6d Muscatine IA 52761 , Unit RV004 contents: Boat Trailer, on November 22nd 2016 at 4:00 PM at the facility site located at: Island Storage, 2470 41st St, Muscatine, IA 52761. AND Island Storage will dispose of the property of Hope Logel 157 Sandrun Rd Fruitland IA 52749 , Unit E41 contents: Personal Items, on November 22nd 2016 at 4:00 PM at the facility site located at: Island Storage, 2470 41st St, Muscatine, IA 52761. AND Island Storage will dispose of the property of Kent Hendrix 3 Cherry Ln Muscatine IA 52761 , Unit D03 contents: Personal Items, on November 22nd 2016 at 4:00 PM at the facility site located at: Island Storage, 2470 41st St, Muscatine, IA 52761. AND Island Storage will dispose of the property of Raul Robles 133 E Garonne St Bluegrass IA 52726, Unit RV006 and F34 contents: Food Trailer and Personal Items, on November 22nd 2016 at 4:00 PM at the facility site located at: Island Storage, 2470 41st St, Muscatine, IA 52761. The cold, gray drizzle of November finally found central Illinois on Election Day. No one complained, however, because the warm, dry harvest season had ended weeks before. Fifty or more years ago, that was never the case on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth. In fact, if we were half-done with harvest on Election Day, we were very lucky. Done by Election Day? No one we knew was ever that lucky. Back then, in the 1960s, Election Day was like a Sunday. My mother, a poll judge, would put on a church dress to earn, maybe, $10 over the 13- or 14-hour day. (The polling place, in fact, was a church.) And like Sunday, work stopped long enough for you to do your sacred duty. Moreover, in Illinois then, when the polls were open the taverns were closed. That was a minor distraction to a local deputy who was the Democratic precinct boss as well as the owner of a well-known local watering hole. Officially, it was always closed on Election Day; unofficially, its back door was always open to anyone who voted right. Not surprisingly, most everyone, either out of blind loyalty or blind thirst, did vote right and the precinct never went Republican while that deputy (later sheriff) wore a badge, a gun, and a knowing smile. It took little convincing; most southern Illinois farm folks had been Democrats since the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. It was Roosevelt, after all, whose hopeful words carried them through the Depression; Roosevelt who brought electricity to their dark corner of nowhere; and, praise heaven, Roosevelt who delivered a monthly pension check so a lifetime of hard work left no one broken and broke. That loyalty, like America itself, began to crack in 1968, the worst election year ever. The Tet offensive came that February, then Martin Luther Kings murder in April, and Bobbys in June. (My mother woke my siblings and me that awful morning with the shocked cry, They shot another Kennedy! They shot another Kennedy!) Summer ended in clouds of teargas and pools of blood at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The ugly emptiness of the 2016 election might have been a bad dream but, by comparison, 1968 was a bloody nightmare. My father, a thoughtful, informed voter for almost 70 years, backed Richard Nixon in 1968 because Nixon had promised to raise milk price supports, a key ingredient in our farms main enterprise. You have to vote for a man who understands farming, offered my father. Nixon kept his word; he increased milk price supports before announcing his reelection bid in 1972. Shortly thereafter, Watergate investigators discovered he had done so only after pocketing at least $1 million in unreported campaign cash from the dairy lobby. My father never commented on Nixons criminal deeds or the dairy lobbys dirty schemes. I suspect, however, that their corruption deeply offended him because he was a rules person. Rules, like fences, mattered. To him, breaking the rules to win wasnt winning. It was, in fact, losing because it meant you had first lost your dignity, then your honor. Republicans didnt have the corner on the corruption market in the southern Illinois of my youth. Two years before Watergate, a well-known Illinois Democrat, Secretary of State Paul Powell, died after a brief illness. Within weeks, his executor discovered several shoeboxes filled with $800,000 in cash in Powells Springfield hotel room, as well as 49 cases of whiskey, 14 transistor radios, and two cases of canned corn. That was quite a haul for a southern Illinois boy who never made more than $30,000 a year as an elected official. Powell, like Nixon and the vote right sheriff, werentarentthe only scoundrels to hold public office. In fact, its quite likely we elected more than a few crooks, cheaters, and knuckleheads this Election Day. We usually do. These folks, however, come and go. We, the people, however, always persevere. 2016 ag comm MUSCATINE, Iowa Dozens attended the Knights of Columbus annual beef and noodle dinner on Sunday, November 13. On the menu: homemade egg noodles, Black Angus beef, green beans and dessertenough to feed a crowd. To prepare this years dinner, dozens of volunteers cracked nearly 600 eggs, prepared an estimated 70 pounds of beef, and baked a multitude of pies and pastries. It was my first noodle-making experience, so I didnt realize how much work went into making the noodles, said Emily Blair, one of the organizers of the benefit. Every single noodle is made by hand, from the cracking of the eggs to the mixing of dough, rolling it trimming it, drying it, all handmade, she said. Proceeds from the benefit fund Thanksgiving dinners for Muscatines neediest people. The benefit grew out of a single act of kindness. A decade ago, Jim Weigand of the Knights of Columbus heard about a Muscatine man who died a week before Thanksgiving. He left a wife and a couple of children, so my wife and I went to Hy-Vee and we bought a turkey dinner [and] we had that dinner sent to their home anonymously, he said. A couple of days later, a business man in the area said he would give Weigand money to expand the operation for the following year. Each year, more people got involved by volunteering their time and donating money. In 2015, Weigand said, he and his fellows at the Knights of Columbus fed an estimated 750 people. This year, Weigand, 79, is passing the baton to Eric and Emily Blair. Weigand said he will still be involved in planning and delivering the meals, but it would be more of a supporting role. And the Knights have an ambitious goal for the upcoming holiday season. This year were hoping to get closer to a thousand, to feed a thousand people for Thanksgiving dinner in our community, Eric said. Dinners will be delivered to the Jesus Mission, Muscatine Center for Social Action, the womens shelter and needy families the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Its truly a community effort to say, we appreciate everybody that lives in Muscatine and if you are in need of a meal or in assistance in some way, theres an organization thats here to help you, Emily said. Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and theyd say Oh thats interesting. And that would be the end of it. --Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels If President-Elect Donald Trump decides to start a trade war between China and the US, companies like Apple and Boeing will suffer. An article in the Global Times warns that Trump promised a 45% tariff on imports from China during his presidential campaign. Besides the fact that a US president doesnt have the authority to impose taxes on a permanent basis, Global Times warned that if Trump succeeds in getting the tariff implemented, China will respond. iPhone and US motor vehicle sales in China will suffer, a batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted, stated the report. It added that soon after Barack Obama entered the White House, US trade and commerce authorities announced a 35% import tariff on Chinese tyres. China responded by imposing tariffs on US chicken and automotive products. Both countries suffered losses, and the Obama administration backed off. Now read: What Donald Trump said about South Africa Mobile operators in South Africa are not rolling out updates for Android phones when security vulnerabilities are patched. A reader recently alerted MyBroadband to the fact that his Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge from Cell C was not receiving security updates as it should. Samsung releases security patches for the Galaxy S7 range of smartphones on a monthly basis. These patches are rolled into firmware updates which mobile operators then distribute to their subscribers on those devices. A look at Vodacoms firmware release schedule on Sammobile reveals that it has been issuing regular updates since June, sometimes even patching twice a month. Other mobile networks have not been as good at keeping the devices on their networks up to date. This raises the question: If Samsung and operators in South Africa wont update the flagship device of the most popular smartphone brand in the country, what does that say about the rest of the Android ecosystem? Responding to this question, Telkom told MyBroadband it has now issued an update that brings Galaxy S7 devices on its network up to date with Samsungs October security patches. MTN was not able to give a specific answer about how it is tackling the issue, but said security is vital to it. We take both information and physical security extremely seriously, said MTN. Cell C and Samsung did not respond by the time of publication. Now read: Samsung Galaxy S7 has Quadrooter vulnerability From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/10/29 (Sat) 2:19 PM Subject: Investment My name is George Ureise . I represent the interest of my colleague, I am making this contact with you on the strength of my colleagues for an individual such as you, who will be willing to receive money on our behalf abroad, and then invest this money for making profit in accordance with the foreign directinvestment regulations in your country. As I clearly explained above , we simply need you to receive this fund in a safe account there in your country , invest it into real estates , and set up an account for any accruing income. Because of the statutory restrictions on our official positions, we shall give you a power of Attorney to act on our behalf until our retirement. We do not want our personal identities to be associated with the movement and investment of the fund for now. I shall soon come down to personally meet with you to make every necessary planning andarrangement, as soon as I obtain leave from my office. We have made all the necessary arrangement for legally obtaining the Foreign Exchange Control & Currency Transfer Approvals. To start with, this block fund of Sixty Million, Five Hundred Thousand U.S .Dollars was accumulated jointly by the three of us here, out ofwhich I have been nominated to conduct this project for and on behalf of all us. All the three of us are top Federal GovernmentFunctionaries and our collective intention is to move and invest this fund to your country which is where we all plan to live with our families on retirement from active government service shortly. Your role as a partner will be to devise the necessary business plan based on your knowledge of the domestic economy in your country. To oversee the day to day management of the business that will be established there in your country with this capital (U.S$60,500,000). The establishment of this joint business venture with the above mentioned fund will be carried out in a manner consistent with the prevailing international laws and that of your country guiding such an investment. In the event that youare willing to work with me on this project as a partner, provide me with your direct telephone and fax numbers, including yourfull name and address. Your bank details where the money will be transferred (bank name, account number, address of the bank and the account name} Please find attached copies of my id. Best regards George Ureise .My phone number is +2347019368627 Best regardsGeorge Ureise DearMy name is George Ureise . I represent the interest of my colleague,I am making this contact with you on the strength of my colleagues for an individual such as you, who will be willing to receive money on our behalf abroad, and then invest this money for making profit in accordance with the foreign directinvestment regulations in your country.As I clearly explained above , we simply need you to receive this fund in a safe account there in your country , invest it into real estates , and set up an account for any accruing income. Because of the statutory restrictions on our official positions, we shall give you a power of Attorney to act on our behalf until our retirement. From: george ureisi Send date: 2016/10/31 (Mon) 4:55 PM Subject: BANK DETAILS Dear I received your letter containing your bank details. I have officially submitted application for the release of the fund into your account Please note that the central bank of Nigeria will be contacting youdirectly as the beneficiary of the as it is established today that you are the true beneficiary of the fund, in the claim application. The central bank of Nigeria shall be communicating with you the progress of the transaction from time to time until the final approval is granted. The claim application will be officially granted approval by all the Ministries concerned and the central bank of Nigeria respectively. I will be expecting to receive update from you as soon as the central banks of Nigeria establish contact with you. We are open for new prospect in the area of investment. It is not necessarily on real estate. We are concerned with good returns to our investment. I will be willing to invest part of the fund into the oil business you are proposing. Please use your discretion to invest wisely. Thanks George From: BNP PARIBAS BANK Delivery Date: 2016/11/4 (Fri) 3:22 AM Subject: WIRE TRANSFER Dear Please find the attached. We have officially transferred your fund at the request of the central bank of Nigeria. Sincerely Jonathan Warbuton From: BNP PARIBAS BANK Delivery Date: 2016/11/4 (Fri) 8:57 PM Subject: Fwd: TRANSFER ON HOLD Dear Please find the forwarded message from the US Department of Treasury and act accordingly. Jonathan Warburton From: US DEPARTMENT TREASURY < internalcontrol@deptreasury.org > To: transferdesk@bnpparibasecure.com Date: November 4, 2016 at 6:14 PM Subject: TRANSFER ON HOLD Dear Mr. Warburton, Please communicate the attached to the beneficiary and advice accordingly Mile Sanders BNP PARIBAS BANK 2016/11/7 () 4:48 PM Re: FW: CERTIFICATE Dear We received the two FSA certificates. It is exactly what the US Government is asking for. It is good and I and convinced that your fund will be released today. Please go to the bank now and transfer the money and send the slip to me to enable the Federal Reserve Bank of New York release your fund today. Jonathan Warburton From: george ureisi Date Sent: 2016/11/7 (Mon) 8:29 PM Subject: Re: FW: CERTIFICATE Dear , The $8760 is penalty for not reporting the transfer and it is refundable. Please try and send the money immediately, otherwise the US Government will ask questions. I plead with you to complete this task to help them release the fund. The US Government has already guaranteed the transfer, I see no reason for you to be afraid. I promise you that all is well and you will be glad if you transfer the money as directed. George From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/11/8 (Tuesday) 12:08 AM Subject: Re: RE: FW: CERTIFICATE Dear , I am not sure that you are very sincere with me. I have told you all my challenges. It is certainly that someone is advising you wrongly. Look at the message you forwarded to me from the US Department of Treasury guarantying you that everything is fine Please try and be understanding and send the money immediately I beg you in the same of GOD to do this for us and you will never regret it. TRUST ME ON THIS. George From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/11/8 (Tuesday) 2:42 PM Subject: Re: RE: RE: FW: CERTIFICATE Dear , I strongly assure you that this transaction will bring smile to your business and it will certainly change your life for good. Please kindly do me this favour and send the money today. I will ever remain grateful to you. The money will not do you any harm but will change our fortunes. I plead with you to do this for me as I have no other hope to realize this dream. I know you will be fine. Thanks and GOD Bless. George From: US DEPARTMENT TREASURY Delivery Date: 2016/11/8 (Tuesday) 9:51 PM Subject: YOUR FUND Dear The US Department of Treasury is putting you on notice that your fund, USD60, 500, 000.00 will be suspended by close of workThursday 10th November 2016, if there is no response from you. We have notified the FEDERAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY OF NIGERIA in respect to this development, and the US Homeland security will be directedto carry out a comprehensiveanalysis on why you decided to abandon the huge sum of money. The US Department of Treasury wish to inform you that the time limitoffered to you will not be accessible after close of work Thursday, if no response is received from you. All necessary security guarantee was provided to you by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to assure that your fund will be released. Please note that the US Department Treasury will initiate official investigation against you if this fund is not claim as scheduled. We shall direct Justice Department and Homeland security to carry out a proper investigation against you on TERRORIST related case, to find out why you choose to abandon such huge sum of money at the intervention of the US Department of Treasury. Please regard this letter as a `notice from the US Government to carry out investigation on the transfer of the fund placed on hold. Miles Sanders From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/11/9 (Wed) 1:59 PM Subject: Re: YOUR FUND Dear , If you can trust me, let us close this deal fast before it becomes an issue. The letter from the US Department of Treasury is clearly saying that you nothing to worry, but to send the money and have the fund released. Please try and pay the money today and let us conclude the deal today. George From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/11/9 (Wed) 3:57 PM Subject: Re: FW: YOUR FUND Dear, I have reviewed the letter from the US Department of Treasury and was able to understand that they have given you guarantee that your fund will be released as soon as you pay the penalty fee of $8760. If such strong word of assurance comes from the Government of United States of America, there is no need to have doubts over the whole process. Their letter is asking question on why you abandon such a huge sum of money at their intervention. It looks funny for you to let go this amount of money for just $8760. It is as a result of this that they want to find out why such thing could happen. I do know that you are having some doubts over the entire process, but will equally give you my word that everything is fine and you will never have any regret. I therefore urge you, and plead with you to send this money today to enable them release the fund. We have every opportunity to do the right thing now and STOP asking people around you or discussing the business with people that do not know the history of the transaction. The money, $8760 will not do your business any harm and that is the reason why you should give it a chance and see if it will come out good or bad. Please let us not give the American FBI the opportunity to start looking into our past for any kind of investigation. It will not do you or me any good, instead, it will destabilize our normal life activities. I beg you in the name of almighty GOD to reconsider your position and pay the money today. George From: george ureisi Delivery Date: 2016/11/11 (Friday) 6:09 PM Subject: Re: YOUR FUND Dear, Could you please raise a POWER OF ATTORNEY in favour of HOFFMAN HANDELLS GMBH, Hamburg Germany. Please ask your Lawyer to write a letter of Authority transferring the beneficiary to the German company to help us change your details, including your bank coordinates. We have agreed to give you $3000 dollars as soon as the fund is transferred. The German company has agreed to pay the money so that the fund can be transferred into their account in Germany. George From: US DEPARTMENT TREASURY Date of Posting: 2016/11/11 (Fri) 11:02 PM Subject: Re: Passport Copy Dear We have demonstrated some level of leniency, and amazingly, very kind to you. Please donot push our patience to the extreme. You assuredBNP PARIBASthat everything will be completed by last week. The fund will notcontinue to stay in the treasury of the federal Reserve Bank endlessly due to your inability to substantiate your claim. It may interest you to know that MONEY LUANDARY charges will be initiated against you in few days from today The case will be referred to the Justice Department as soon as Homeland security is through with the final background check on your organization and will possibly review paper work with theFederal Airport Authority of Nigeriasoon. Miles Sanders If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more.... WASHINGTON During his triumphant presidential campaign, Donald Trump renounced Republican orthodoxy on a Social Security overhaul. Were not going to hurt the people who have been paying into Social Security their whole life, Trump declared, calling the payment of promised benefits honoring a deal. But the man heading the Trump transition teams Social Security effort? Michael Korbey, a former lobbyist who has spent much of his career advocating for cutting and privatizing the program. Its a failed system, broken and bankrupt, Korbey said as a lobbyist in the mid-1990s. Korbey acknowledged that some of the changes his group backed would hurt retirees, but our constituents arent just senior citizens, he told a newspaper in 1996. A decade later, as a senior adviser to the Social Security Administration, Korbey was an advocate for the George W. Bush administrations failed attempt to privatize Social Security. Korbey is just one example of apparent discord between Trumps populist economic platform and the people who have been put in charge of planning to carry it out. While there are some true Washington outsiders on the team such as Dan DiMicco, a former steel industry executive who is Trumps transition head for the office of U.S. Trade Representative many of the players are familiar from the Republican economic establishment. The mix indicates a strong leaning toward rolling back much of the Obama administrations post-financial collapse changes, and a general posture toward deregulation. The team will not necessarily carry over into the Trump administration though members of past transition teams often have. Instead, they are in charge of putting together hiring recommendations, working with outgoing appointees and laying the groundwork for administrations opening months. Bill Walton, one of the two people overseeing the economic transition effort, is the former chief executive for Allied Capital, a financial firm that was sold after nearly failing during the financial crisis. He is both a trustee for the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at another conservative organization, the Discovery Institute. David Malpass, who is overseeing both the Treasury Department staffing and part of the broader economic issues portfolio, was Bear Stearns chief economist in the years leading up to its collapse. In August 2007, as U.S. economic growth ground to a halt and the debt markets shuddered, he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled Dont Panic About the Credit Market. Housing and debt markets are not that big a part of the U.S. economy, or of job creation, the piece declared, predicting continued economic growth and dismissing concerns that recent growth had been dependent on the housing bubble. Eight months later, Bear Stearns collapsed, unable to withstand the toxic combination of overheated home prices and shoddily assembled debt that Malpass dismissed. But Malpass landed on his feet, founding a consulting firm called Encima Partners. Since then, hes faulted both the Federal Reserves monetary response to the financial crisis and regulations intended to prevent future such calamities. In a 2010 National Review article titled Chris Dodds Big, Misguided Bill, Malpass argued against the value of creating the consumer financial protection bureau, writing that the Obama administration should streamline and concentrate existing consumer protection regulators, a step that he said would result in a reduction of government jobs. In Paul Atkins, Trump has found a leading proponent of the theory that government should get out of the financial industrys way. Appointed to the Securities and Exchange commission in July 2002 at the height of the eras corporate accounting scandals, he was considered the most conservative member of the SEC during his tenure. Atkins objected to stiff penalties imposed on companies for allegedly fraudulent conduct, contending that they dont effectively deter crime. And in 2005, he defended the practice of backdating stock options a practice in which executives paid themselves for fictitious outperformance in their companies stocks. Numerous executives went to jail for those activities but Atkins caused a stir by saying he found nothing objectionable about it. In the years that led up to the financial crisis, Atkins warned of dangers posed by enacting regulations that supplant the markets judgment. Among the initiatives he successfully backed at the SEC was a loosening of leverage restrictions on investment banks, a step that allowed firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman brothers to borrow more money and invest it in mortgage-backed securities. Atkins resigned in August of 2008, and now runs a financial services industry consulting firm. But he has maintained his vigorously pro-market stance. We all know that overregulation can kill the goose that laid the golden egg, he said in a 2012 speech opposing the regulation of money market funds. Up until recently white porcelain plates have been the standard in most higher-end eating establishments. Chefs used these white spaces as open canvases for presenting their artistry across a blank page. Over the last few years, however, there has been a distinct shift toward more ceramic creations, hand-formed dinnerware made in various shapes and colors. Part of this trend comes from innovative Napa Valley restaurants, such as Meadowood, that utilize a few select local artisan pottery-makers, including NBC Pottery in Angwin. Ceramists Nikki and William Callnan [owners of NBC Pottery] came to visit us at the restaurant one day, having heard about our interest in collaborating with artisans in the valley, wrote three-star-Michelin Chef Christopher Kostow in his A New Napa Cuisine cookbook. On that first visit they carried boxes dirtied with dried clay and overflowing with newspaper packing material. Seeing their brown earth bowl on our dining table, a compelling juxtaposition between linen and stone, completely upended my conception of elegance. We have been a different restaurant ever since. That a bowl could influence the direction of one of the top-rated restaurants in the world is certainly a statement about the culinary ecosystem of place and the importance of not only the eating establishment itself but also all those other elements that go into making the meal: the wine, food and its farmers, the many hands that prepare, plate and present the food. We are thrilled to have been working with the team at Meadowood for a while now, said Nikki Ballere Callnan, ceramic artist, art educator and co-owner of NBC Pottery. I have been making ceramics for over 23 years, and my motto has always been to keep one hand in the dirt. Although they met at Sierra Nevada College, studying ceramic and art, the Callnans had moved to Massachusetts to continue school and for work, eventually returning to the Napa Valley in part to work with local master ceramic artist Richard Carter, whose work adorns many collections around the world, including the di Rosa in Carneros. But in 2011, the year NBC started working with Meadowood, the Callnans were struggling to balance their passion for making ceramics with the economic realities of starting a family. Nikki had gone back to graduate school and Will was helping keep things afloat. But then their situation changed. We got an email from Meadowood, Nikki said. They said they liked our work and wanted to check it out. We really believed that our work would fit in so well with what they were doing up there, Will said. We had a ceramist friend that had been working with them for years, and sometimes he called us up and asked if he could use our kiln, saying, The chef needs this right now, and the work was similar to the kind of stuff we were doing, too. When they finally met Kostow at Meadowood they felt even more synergy, so they got right to work. We heard Christophers vision, and what he wanted was a perfect fit with our work, Nikki said. Hed say, I want to do a dish like this, and then wed say, Sure, we can do that. It was exciting, fun and collaborative to work with them, Will said. And then we started working with Nathaniel a lot, too, which is how we came up with the coffee service. So we were in the back of the house (plates and bowls) and in the front of the house (coffee service), which was amazing. I have been working with Will and Nikki on our coffee service, which is unique to anything else people have seen in the Napa Valley, said Meadowoods front-of-the-house director, Nathaniel Dorn. Were also excited for people to see what we have planned for the Charter Oak when it opens early next year. Dorn was referring to his and Kostows yet-to-open new restaurant, the Charter Oak, a less-formal dining establishment than Meadowood that will open sometime in 2017 in what was the old Tra Vigna in downtown St. Helena. NBC Pottery has been one of the local artisans we have collaborated with in bringing our concepts and designs to fruition, Dorn said. Not only do they produce great work, but its been meaningful to have a partnership with two individuals who are invested in our community, specifically with their involvement in Nimbus. Nimbus Arts is a community-owned nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the mission of giving the Napa Valley community access to art. In addition to their on-site classes and camps, open studios and lectures they offer free public events, community service programs, classes in public and private schools, and collaborative art projects throughout Napa County. Both Nikki and Will have been involved as instructors and contributors to Nimbus since its inception. Nikki was one of the first artists I hired to teach at Nimbus, with Will coming on shortly after, said Jamie Graff, executive director and co-founder of Nimbus Arts. Their passion and dedication, growing their vision as artists, their beautifully designed ceramics and the love they pour into it all over the years has been so inspiring to watch. When you have the opportunity to work with the same group of artists for over 10 years its so exciting to see their ideas, artistry and lives grow and touch so many people. It is gratifying to see our work having an impact, Will said. We have been working hard for decades, sometimes not knowing we were on the right track. But we just kept going, believing that someday we might find our place. Now I think weve found it. NBC will be holding its annual Holiday Studio sale on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 3 and 4, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at their studio in Angwin, where theyll have all their inventory on sale, along with food and drinks. The event will also include live music by flamenco guitarist Chris Vorland. More information can be found on the NBC Pottery website at www.nbcpottery.com. Seeing their brown earth bowl on our dining table, a compelling juxtaposition between linen and stone, completely upended my conception of elegance. We have been a different restaurant ever since. Christopher Kostow, A New Napa Cuisine Napa County caregivers must have permits In Napa County, all individuals providing care for compensation are required to undergo a background check and obtain a permit. The regulations governing these permits were slightly changed with Ordinance #1406, which went into effect on Jan. 1. You can apply for a permit, check a caregivers permit status, or obtain further information at NapaCaregivers.org. Napa County seeks landlord for 100-day housing challenge Napa County seeks landlords and property owners to house as many people as possible during the 100-day Rapid Rehousing Challenge a national campaign to more effectively use existing resources to advance the goal of ending homelessness. Rapid Rehousing is for individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness (residing in emergency shelters or on the street) and need temporary assistance in order to obtain housing and retain it. The two key elements to making this challenge successful are landlord engagement and comprehensive case management. In Napa County, hundreds are experiencing homelessness or on the verge of it every day. So far this year, the South Napa Shelter has served 234 adults. The Samaritan shelter has served 43 adults and 49 homeless children. The Napa County Continuum of Care, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), has identified 12 local veterans eligible to receive HUD-VASH vouchers. HUD-VASH is a collaborative program, which combines housing vouches with VA supportive services to help veterans who are homeless and their families find and sustain permanent housing. Ten Napa County veterans need to find housing before their vouchers expire. Napa County needs landlords and property owners to work together to find the affordable units so desperately needed. If you have a rental property, consider participating in this program and help community members overcome the challenges of homelessness and lead independent lives. For more information, call Kelsey Swan at (707) 253-4217. For those seeking housing, the first step is to go to the Hope Resource Center, 1304 4th St., in Napa or call (707) 259-8133. The center is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Unofficial election results available online Napa County election results are available at countyofnapa.org/electionresults. The final count is expected by Dec. 2, according to the elections division. Have a question? Use our website chat feature Napa Countys website, CountyofNapa.org, has a chat function that allows users to ask questions online about programs and services countywide. If the button on the right-hand side is blue, someone is available to answer your question. If the button is gray, leave us a message, and well get back to you shortly. Napa County Library renovations underway Pardon our dust at the Napa County Librarys downtown Napa location, 580 Coombs St., as we work on a $4.4 million design and construction project. The renovations will focus on Childrens Area updates, new ADA/unisex restrooms, the Circulation Area including adding a modernized automated handling system and garage conversion to improve delivery and return of materials. You might hear some drilling, but were still open for business throughout the duration of construction. For more information, visit countyofnapa.org/library or follow us on Facebook (Napa County Library) or Twitter (@napalibraries). Vet Connect: New Napa County Service for Veterans Have you served in the military? You might be eligible for programs and resources you didnt even know existed. Napa County Vet Connect puts veterans in touch with local resources and services at no cost the second Thursday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon at 650 Imperial Way. Please bring your DD214 if available. Call Patrick Jolly 253-6072 for more information. Link+ is available at the Napa County Library Patron initiated Link+ is here! Now you can search unique titles in more than 50 libraries including universities in California, Nevada, and Arizona. Borrowing materials through Link+ is free. Items should be received in five to seven days. For more information, visit our website at napalibrary.org or contact Assistant Director Anthony Halstead at Anthony.Halstead@countyofnapa.org. Sign up for Nixle Get safety and community messages straight to your mobile phone by joining Nixle, the countys emergency mass communications system. Text your zip code to 888777 to receive updates during storms, wildfires and other emergencies. Want to work for us? Come work for us! You can apply online for any county job. Visit http://www.countyofnapa.org/jobs/ or call 253-4303 for more information. Get involved join a Napa County committee or commission Do you want to provide direct input to the Napa County Board of Supervisors and other county leaders? Apply for one of the countys advisory committees, commissions and boards. Put your knowledge, energy and passion to work for your community. If you need assistance with a committee or commission application, please contact Barbara Fultz at 253-4595 or visit us online at countyofnapa.org/ceo/committeesandcommissions. Follow Napa County on social media Become a fan of the Napa County, California Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @countyofnapa and check us out on countyofnapa.org to stay updated on everything Napa County. Information is posted daily to help connect you with resources and answer questions. Barbara Pope of Napa likes Costco. Really, really likes Costco. So much so that Pope decided to pack up her 2010 Honda Odyssey minivan and drive solo across the country to visit Costcos in every state that has one. I love it, Pope said of shopping at Costco warehouse clubs. Unlike what most people think, each Costco is different, Pope said. Im panning for gold, she said. I see all kinds of interesting things in the pan but Im looking for that nugget or two thats different from anything else. Drew Sakuma, a Costco Regional vice president, said this is the first time hes heard of such a Costco odyssey. However, hes not too surprised. People that have the Costco craze tend to visit Costcos wherever they are, he said. Shes just one of many members that feel excited about shopping at Costco, he said. If I had the time I would love to do the same thing. This was a good time to hit the road, said Pope, age 47. She and her husband were nearing the end of a home remodel project and she was at a crossroads in her event planning business. Her husband, who works in appliance sales in St. Helena, supported the idea, as did her friends, she said. There was this excitement that I didnt expect at all, she said. Pope said that a higher power also motivated her. Im a woman of faith, said Pope. While at first even she thought her idea was a bit ridiculous, I believe God was telling me to do this cross-country Costco road trip. Over time, this trip started taking on a life of its own. Calling her journey My Costco Odyssey, Pope is documenting her trip on a new blog, Facebook page and other social media. The idea to start the road trip started with a visit to see her brother, who had recently bought a home in Indiana. As she planned to drive east, Pope figured she could stop at Costco stores along the way for gas and check out what each one offered. Because Napa doesnt yet have its own Costco, Pope said she has always made it a point to stop at other Costcos when shes out of town to see what each one offers. I could be missing out on something really interesting. Depending on an areas demographics, Costco sells different kinds of ethnic foods, which brings back memories of her childhood growing up in a multicultural area on the south side of Chicago. These ethnic selections remind her a little bit of home, she said. She left Napa on Sept. 28. As of last week Pope had traveled more than 6,000 miles and visited more than 36 Costco stores in 19 states. This is just the tip of the Costco iceberg. As of Mon. Nov. 14, there are 499 Costcos in 44 states in the United States. There have been so many cool things that have happened along the way, said Pope from a stop in Ohio. For one, shes met some Costco executives, including CEO Craig Jelinek. He was super friendly, she said. Jelinek said he thought her odyssey was a great idea and joked that maybe he would join me. I told him there was room in my van, she said. Shes been invited to a number of Costco grand openings and other special events. Pope said the biggest surprise from her trip is just how cool people are. Shes been invited to stay in locals homes and to join them on other outings. The kindness and support of strangers has been unexpected, said Pope. The random people that Ive been meeting along the way (outside of Costco) who encourage me by laughing with me at the seeming absurdity of a venture like this and embrace my excitement about it by taking it as their own Im amazed by this camaraderie. To stay organized, Pope said she goes to each Costco with her own version of a visit worksheet. First, she always makes sure to take a selfie at the store. Pope then notes how easy the store was to find, the range services offered (i.e. optometry, pharmacy, gas, tires, car wash, photo, hearing aids), the selection of local foods, organic food selection and any special local distinctions. The clothing sold at each Costco is one big difference, she immediately noticed. For example, the boots that Costco sells in California are much more fashion oriented and less weather functional than those sold in cold weather states. In Montana, they have real snow boots, she said. Those Costcos sell much more cold weather gear and specific outdoor equipment like bear resistant coolers and hunting supplies. Pope said she doesnt have a set budget for her trip, but Im trying to do things as inexpensively as possible, staying with friends or family and occasionally using Airbnb. By taking the rear seats out of her van, she fit a twin mattress into her vehicle. Parking at Walmarts overnight, she can sleep in her car, she said. Pope said the most unusual thing shes seen for sale was an ice fishing auger. The largest Costco shes visited was in Salt Lake City. Its the worlds largest Costco and I did not know that until I got there, she said. But I can believe it. I walked over 2.5 miles that day. Pope said her favorite Costco treat are blueberries and blackberries. I love berries and they always have the best price. When asked about the best deal that Costco offers, Pope said that depends on the shopper. I think the best deal is always the deal you find there, Pope said. Thats what it comes down to whats most important to you. Her larger goal is to earn income as a writer, said Pope. Hopefully my blog will get sponsors and advertisers so I can generate the income and stay home and do some writing. She might also be able to afford to do an international trip and visit Costcos in other states like Hawaii and Alaska. Im going to go with this, she said. RIO VISTA Police are asking for the publics help to identify a man who was found Sunday morning in Rio Vista, appearing lost and unable to speak. Around 11:10 a.m. Sunday, officers responded to a report of a person in distress near St. Francis and Laurel ways, according to police. There, officers found the man carrying a blanket and appearing extremely thin, police said. The man was apparently unable to explain who he is or where he is from. A resident in the neighborhood believed he lives in the area with his family, who may not realize that he has gone missing, according to police. Anyone with information about the mans identity is asked to call Rio Vista police at (707) 374-2300. If you have never heard the term cultural relativism before, rest assured you are not alone. One really has to work hard to keep up with the new words and phrases that have popped up in the last few years, particularly on social media. Cultural relativism can be defined by this type of statement: Womens wearing of veils in certain Arab countries is just part of their culture and, therefore, we should not criticize them. It is also reflected in the comment made by Secretary of State John Kerry when asked about whether our ally, Saudi Arabia , should allow women to drive. He responded that this decision was best left to Saudi Arabia , thus refusing to take a stand for the rights of women. But Secretary Kerry and cultural relativists are making a serious mistake for one simple reason. Women dont have a choice in these countries to decide for themselves whether they wear veils or whether can drive. It is this issue of choice that underlies all basic human rights and should not be construed as simply a difference in cultural norms. Mona Eltahawy , in her recent work entitled Headscarves and Hymens Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, states that Cultural relativism is as much my enemy as the oppression I fight within my culture and faith. [1] The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe. It is made up of 47 nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights , as promulgated by the HRC, contains important phrases such as recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women, and a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. It also decrees that maintaining these basic human rights is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Lets examine some of the practices that affect women throughout the globe and try to determine whether they would be upheld by the Human Rights Council as a violation of womens human rights or whether they consist of different cultural norms that should not be criticized by those outside that culture. Unchained at last We must realize that it is not only in countries outside the United States that womens human rights are blatantly violated. The Public Broadcasting System recently aired a program entitled Unchained at Last about the practice of older men marrying young girls in the United States. Unchained at Last is a non-profit corporation founded by an ex-Orthodox Jewish woman named Fraidy Reiss. According to its mission, it helps any woman or girl in the US, from any community, culture or religion, who is or has been pressured, bribed, tricked, threatened, beaten or otherwise forced into marriage. It is quite obvious that each of the verbs used in that sentence violate a womans basic human rights. The founder, whose husband turned out to be abusive after only one week, was trapped for twelve years in her marriage. When she finally escaped with her two daughters, her Orthodox Jewish family shunned her. Esther, whose story is told here in more detail, was married off at just 17. Because she was under 18, her parents signed her marriage certificate. Her husband wanted to see her have sex with other men and she was gang raped numerous times while he hid in the closet and watched. Esther explains why her parents forced her to marry this man. They didnt have a chance to grow and mature, so how could they raise children to grow and mature? It is in this way that culture perpetuates itself. But to not criticize this aspect of culture is to condone it much as Secretary Kerry did in his comment about the Saudi Arabian practice of refusing to allow women to drive. FGM Female genital mutilation is the removal of part or all of the clitoris and part or all of the labia of the female genitalia. The obvious point in this cruel practice is to remove the organ that is responsible for sexual arousal and satisfaction in the female. The belief is that if this procedure is done on a pre-pubescent girl, she will not seek out a sexual partner prior to marriage, thus fulfilling the cultural and religious dictate to be a virgin when she marries, thus upholding the honor of her family. The requirement of virginity dates from at least the second millennium BCE as evidenced in the Old Testament. Once private property came into existence, the male head of household wanted to be sure that this property would pass to HIS children, thus virginity was paramount in a bride and adultery during marriage was severely punished. Because the young girl has no say in the matter, it is a basic violation of at least Article 3 of the GDHR Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. A recent report by UNICEF on FGM gives us some hope as it shows that there has been a sharp decline in numerous countries where it is currently practiced. Prevalence has dropped by as much as almost half among adolescent girls in Benin, the Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria. Education is helping. More and more mothers are becoming aware that this practice can lead to death and at the very least is torture. Honor Killing In her book entitled Unworthy Creature, Aruna Papp outlines her upbringing in India. Her story contains a litany of practices that everyone should agree violate the human rights of women. First, her mother had several coat-hanger abortions because abortion was not legal in her country. Second, Aruna herself was raped by a family friend. He raped her anally so that her virginity would be preserved (and probably also to increase his deniability). When she finally married, the man who raped her attended her wedding. The scene that is the most heart-wrenching in her narrative, however, occurred when she was a teenager. She witnessed the burning of Kiran, a young neighbor girl. Kiran was burned to death because her family believed in some way that she had dishonored the family. Needless to say, no police or fire department was called to intervene to save her life. Aruna also found a dead baby girl on a garbage heap. Each of us must do what we can in the countries that we live in to call out all the practices that do not treat women in the ways mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. I am most heartened by a young girl in Boorama town in North-West Somalia. I dont want any part of my body to be cut. I dont want to be circumcised, says 10-year old Kheiriya Abidi . Quite naturally she is terrified of the physical pain, torture and possible death that might occur. She had the support of her family, but of course not of the cultural norms in her country. If Kheiriya can stand up for her rights, what can we do to support her and girls and women throughout the globe? We know that religion and culture are inextricably linked. If you are an atheist, have you told your friends? Do you talk to your friends about things you read like this blog post? There are many organizations that support womens rights across the globe. Can you help support them financially? Listed below are just a few of them. For a longer list, please see this New York Times article . MELBOURNE, Florida Neil Shafranski, 39, of Vero Beach, Florida has died as a result of injuries that he sustained in a vehicle accident that occurred around 12:37 a.m. on I-95 near Melbourne, Florida. Shafranski was driving a 2014 Volkswagen Jetta southbound on I-95 in the outside lane. Meanwhile, a semi-truck driven by 54-year-old Rolando Veitia Gonzalez of Miami, Florida was also traveling southbound in front of the Volkswagon in the same lane. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Shafranski failed to slow down as the Volkswagon approached the semi-truck. The front, right end of the Jetta then struck the rear, left end of the semi near mile marker 188. Shafranski was pronounced deceased at the scene. 08:31 Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with senior ministers past midnight to review demonetisation and its impact. The meeting at Prime Minister's residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, I&B Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Power, Coal and Mines Minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the Finance ministry. Emerging from the meeting, Economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das told ANI: * "The PM reviewed the supply and availability of cash to various banks and post offices. The reach and distribution of cash especially in rural area will improve substantially." * "ATMs are being recalibrated to dispense 500,2000 notes that is new series of Rs 500 & Rs 2000 notes. To expedite the process as soon as possible, a task force is being set up under the chairmanship of RBI Deputy governor with representatives of banks as its members." * "In the meantime, micro ATMs will be deployed in large number of areas to dispense cash against debit and credit cards." * "Current account business entities which have operational current accounts during the last 3 months will be permitted to draw Rs 50,000 at a time. The ATM limit also has been increased to 2,500 rupees in respect to the recalibrated ATMs. In other words ATMs which are recalibrated to dispense new Rs500 or Rs 2000 notes, they can dispense 2,500 at a time." * "It has been decided that all govt departments and central public sector undertakings will maximize their e-transactions. RBI advised National Payments Corporation of India to waive its transaction charges on old transactions which are settled through the financial switch. This facility will be available till December 31." * "Annual life certificate which pensioners are required to submit during November, time limit for that has been extended till January 15, 2017. There will be separate queues for senior citizens and divyang persons in banks." * "There will be separate queues for those who are visiting the banks only to exchange old series of notes for new notes." * "Currently, the government has given exemption to certain category of transactions where old series of 500 & 1000 notes can be accepted. The limit for such transactions is being extended from November 14 midnight to November 24 midnight. * "RBI has informed that there is enough cash available in the system." New Delhi [India], Nov 14 (ANI- Business Wire India): This Children's Day Ola, India's most popular app for transportation is giving citizens of Kolkata a chance to support underprivileged children in the city. In an endeavor to help more than 30 thousand underprivileged kids, Ola, today announced an on-demand contribution drive. As part of this campaign, Ola will introduce a category icon - 'NOV 14', on its app on Children's Day. The 'NOV 14' icon will appear as an additional category on the Ola app, where customers can avail the offering at the click of a button, just like they book an Ola cab. Ola customers will be able to buy CRY (Child Rights and You) branded goodies like T-shirts, stationery kits, coffee mugs, cards and photo albums. All proceeds from the activity will be donated to CRY, to support their work towards upliftment of underprivileged children in the city. The category will be live between 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm, on 14th November 2016. Once booked an Ola cab carrying CRY goodies will appear at the customer's location, from which he will be able to purchase the goodies of his/her choice. "A majority of children are still unable to receive basic amenities in the country. CRY has been playing a pivotal role in bringing about a positive change in the lives of millions of underprivileged children across the nation; and we are extremely proud to join them and do our bit in widening the reach of this effort," said Business Head - East at Ola, Piyush Surana. "While Ola is constantly working towards strengthening the transportation ecosystem in the city through its smart and sustainable commuting solutions; initiatives like these fall in line with our endeavour to serve the city in a holistic manner. As an Indian company whose vision is to create mobility for a billion Indians, we feel that it is of great importance that we open up our platform for such causes and enable people to contribute seamlessly. We hope to reach more and more underprivileged children through this campaign," added Surana. "We welcome Ola on their effort towards broadening our reach to the people of Kolkata on this Children's day. Having impacted over two million underprivileged children across 23 states in the country over the last 37 years, we hope that this drive will go a long way to raise awareness among the people at large, and receive considerable support from them, which will help us reaching more children in a meaning and effective way," said Regional Director CRY East, Atindra Nath Das. CRY, a renowned organization that has worked tirelessly to protect child rights and facilitates education opportunities for the underprivileged children. Together with Ola they are aiming to reach out to hundreds and thousands of Ola users through this contribution drive. Ola and CRY have worked together successfully on several occasions. Earlier this year, Ola collaborated with CRY for the World Environment Day wherein Ola gave away ride coupons to children affiliated with CRY to attend the event at Indian Museum, Kolkata. In September, Ola also participated in CRY's book launch event. (ANI- Business Wire India) New Delhi [India], Nov 14 (ANI- Business Wire India): How often have you said this or heard people saying it? We forget many things in our daily lives, but there is a difference when we forget to take our prescribed medicines. If you missed yesterday's medicines, you can't take them today - the damage has already happened in your body. According to the World Health Organization, "Approximately 50 percent of patients do not take their medications as prescribed." This can lead to significant increase in hospitalization, treatment failure and even death. As per studies 2.5 times increased risk of hospitalization for patients with diabetes. Praveen Wadalkar with more than 15 years of experience in the healthcare domain offers strategies for patients to improve medicine adherence through his book "Stop buying medicines- if you are not going to have it as prescribed." He states, "Medicine adherence is the key to get maximum benefits from the treatment in any disease." Praveen Wadalkar is also a CEO and CO-founder of pharma digital marketing company, Techizer Tech solutions which is engaging more than 300000+ patients via various patient engagement programs in partnership with pharmaceutical companies. Dolly Wadalakar, Director and Co- founder of Techizer states, "We are exploring various digital technologies to develop robust, secured, compliant and scalable patients support programs for pharmaceutical companies. Even the audio version of this book will be introduced soon." Readers of his books have expressed great enthusiasm on this subject. Mihir Baxi, Marketing Manager Wockhardt states, "Based on the observations and various citations, it is found that in our country one thing has not changed, or maybe it was ignored then and is ignored now as well. It's the way we take our MEDICINE. The challenge at a doctor level has remained unchanged. Taking medicine on time as prescribed is like "I Know thing." Medicine non-adherence has huge impact on the global health system. As per studies done in the USA alone, one person is dying every five minutes due to non-adherence related issues. 10 percent to 25 percent of hospital and nursing-home admissions and 30 percent to 50 percent of treatment failures are because of medicine adherence related issues. Estimated annual pharmaceutical revenue loss due to medicine non-adherence is around USD 564 billion. Techizer has also introduced educational website www.neverskipmedicines.com for patients and their caregiver to improve their understanding on medicine adherence. "Very soon we are launching a free website where patients can read important information about their medicine in 9 Indian regional languages. Dolly Wadalkar, Director and Co-founder, Techizer Tech Solution. Further states, "Education is important in improving medicine adherence." Arun Intodia, General Manager, Sales at Springer Healthcare states, "I loved reading this book as author has focused on such an important topic very effectively in simple patient friendly language. I congratulate author for creating awareness about medication adherence through this book. This book should be available in all the Doctor's waiting rooms." (ANI- Business Wire India) On Monday, leaders of the Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the YSR Congress met in the room allotted to Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad. "All parties denounced the manner in which the demonetisation was enforced. We are not against fighting black money, but this action has affected the farmers and daily wage earners," CPI leader D. Raja told IANS. The opposition leaders will meet again at 2 p.m. on Tuesday and decide their strategy for the session. Those present in the meeting included Sharad Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, Sudip Bandopadhyay, Derek O'Brien, D. Raja, Prem Chand Gupta, Sushil Kumar and M. Rajamohan Reddy. Besides Azad, Congress Leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and the party's Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma were also present. The opposition parties are quite vocal in opposing demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 night, which has left people slogging in long queues outside banks and ATMs, with many complaining they do not have enough money even to buy esential items. --IANS sid-ao/tsb/vt ( 247 Words) 2016-11-14-22:28:02 (IANS) Harjinder Singh and Sandeep, along with two others, were printing the new Rs 2,000 notes in Bhikhiwind village, 40 km from Amritsar, to circulate these in the market and make a fast buck, the Punjab Police said. The government had on November 10 issued the new notes of Rs 2,000 denomination in the wake of November 8 demonetisation of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "Since most people have not seen the Rs 2,000 notes till now, the accused wanted to take advantage of the situation," a police officer said. The arrested men had scanned the new notes to obtain their colour prints, police official Gurdeep Singh said. The police seized fake currency notes, printer, scanner and computer of the accused. "A case of counterfeiting currency has been registered against them. Further investigations and raids are in progress and more arrests are likely soon," the police officer said. --IANS js/tsb ( 195 Words) 2016-11-14-22:36:02 (IANS) Actor Sidharth Malhotra, who is currently in New Zealand as a brand ambassador of Tourism New Zealand, shared his prayers with all those who suffered damage after an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale rocked New Zealand's South Island on Sunday. "Waking up to the news of the earthquakes overnight here in New Zealand - we're fine," he tweeted. "Thankfully at first light it seems the shakes have spared us from serious widespread damage. My thoughts n prayers are with the people of NZ," he further tweeted. A tsunami hit two hours after the earthquake. The US Geological Survey said the quake hit just after midnight, around 95 km from Christchurch, BBC reported. Officials who have warned the residents to head inland or for higher ground along the coast, said the first waves may not be the largest, with tsunami activity possible for several hours. A gauge at Kaikoura, 181 km north of Christchurch, measured a wave of two metres, according to Weatherwatch.co.nz. Smaller waves are said to be arriving in Wellington and other areas, the website said. Thousands of people have already evacuated their homes, Radio New Zealand reported. Christchurch is still recovering from the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city centre. According to the Herald newspaper, the tremor was felt all the way to Wellington, where sirens sounded and people fled buildings into the streets, some of them crying. On his second trip to the country, Sidharth loved Christchurch. "It has nice, easy vibes and it's comparatively younger I feel. It is less populated, which again makes this place very attractive for people like us who come from India. Its secluded, scenic, relaxed nature makes it a complete destination for anybody," he said. (The writer's trip is at the invitation of Tourism New Zealand. Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in) --IANS nv/pgh/ ( 321 Words) 2016-11-14-04:00:04 (IANS) Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi today emphasised that Indian nationalism is based on the concept of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the whole world is a family)' whereas globalisation is merely an economic concept. "The importance of nationalism in current era of globalisation and neo-liberalisation has been debated over the years. There is a difference between both of them. However, coordination is also required between them," said Dr Joshi while addressing a session on the second day of Lok Manthan being held at the Vidhan Sabha premises here, according to copies of a release distributed to media after the programme. NITI Ayog member and famous economist Bibek Debroy said true nationalism is subscribing to the belief that one's own progress is inherent the country's progress and vice-versa. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said India has provided more profound concept than globalisation and neo-liberalisation to the world in the form of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'. "Both capitalism and communism have failed. The whole world is looking with hope on India. Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay's concept of 'Ekatma Manav Vad (integral humanism)' is based on Indian traditions," he added.UNI PS PY SHK 2133 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-1021384.Xml Nokia has been selected by the Korea Rail Network Authority (KRNA) as a supplier for the world's first LTE-R mobile broadband network to support railway operations and employee services. The network will be deployed on a railway line between Wonju and Gangneung as part of preparations for the major international sporting event being hosted by the country in 2018. KRNA is responsible for the development and maintenance of railway infrastructure in South Korea as well as a number of other countries. The communications network for KRNA will be based on LTE-R technology, a version of 4G LTE technology that is being developed to meet the mission-critical service requirements of railway operators. The network will support both operational and maintenance services on a high-speed commercial railway line operating at speeds of up to 250 km/h. KRNA's LTE-R network will provide secure, reliable, high-speed connectivity between trains, stations and other railway facilities between Wonju and Gangneung. The network will also be designed to interoperate with other LTE networks supporting public safety and maritime operations as well as legacy VHS (very high frequency) and TRS (trunked radio system) radio networks. This project is intended to serve as a model for future LTE-R deployments, and help further define LTE-R standardization efforts. For this project, Nokia will supply radio access network (RAN) base stations (eNodeBs) along with Nokia NetAct(TM), the first major virtualized network management software for mobile networks. NetAct delivers best-in-class applications for the railway operations and employee services management of KRNA. It also delivers advanced assurance capabilities as part of Nokia's comprehensive, multi-domain Service Assurance program, which provides closed-loop automation to drive greater network agility and optimization. Nokia systems integration and deployment services will help to establish the new LTE-R network. Andrew Cope, head of Korea at Nokia, said: "South Korea has been a world leader in the use of mobile broadband technology to make public services of all kinds safer, more efficient and reliable. With a thirty-year history in the delivery of GSM-R mobile networking technology for railways, and as a pioneer in the development of LTE-R solutions, we are pleased to partner with KRNA to bring these cutting edge capabilities to the country as they prepare to host one of the world's premier sporting events." (ANI) Shocked by the gruesome murder of Dainik Bhaskar journalist Dharmendra Kumar Singh by unidentified assailants at Amra in Bihar on Saturday, the press fraternity of Arunachal Pradesh has condemned the incident in the strongest terms and urged the Bihar government to deliver justice to aggrieved family at the earliest. Singh, who was working with a prominent Hindi newspaper, was gunned down by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants on Saturday morning, making it the second murder of a journalist in the state in the past six months. In a joint statement issued on Sunday, the Arunachal Press Club (APC), Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ) and Arunachal Electronic Media Association (AEMA) expressed deep shock at the killing of Singh who had taken on the powerful local mafias in many occasions through his writings. The fraternity termed the murder as a cowardly attempt to muzzle down the freedom of speech. The media fraternity urged the Bihar government to come up with a mechanism to protect scribes in the state so that crusaders of freedom of speech are not cowed down. "The murder of journalist reflects the law and order situation of a state, it is duty the duty of welfare government of Bihar to protect the press fraternity and ensure safety of all scribes in the state" the press bodies stated in their statement. It further added that perpetrators should be brought to justice and award exemplary punishment, so that it sends message across. Expressing solidarity with media fraternity in Bihar as well as with aggrieved family, APC, APUWJ and AEMA stated that courageous and fierce writings of late Dharmendra Kumar Singh will embolden and inspired working journalists across the India. The fraternity further prayed almighty god for eternal peace of departed soul. (ANI) The Israeli President will be accompanied by his spouse Nechama Rivlin and a high-level delegation comprising officials, academicians and business leaders. During his visit from 14-21, President Rivlin will be received by President Mukherjee, who will also host a banquet in his counterpart''s honour. Later, Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari would call on him. On November15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral discussions with President Rivlin and will also host a lunch for him. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would call on President Rivlin. President Rivlin is expected to meet business leaders of both of India and Israel. He will also be visiting ''Centre of Excellence'' in agriculture in Karnal and participate in Agro Tech - 2016. India and Israel enjoy excellent relations marked by strong ties in the areas of economy and commerce, science and technology, research and innovation, culture and tourism, education etc, said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on November 9 in New Delhi. (ANI) The Shiv Sena on Monday hailed the BJP-led NDA regime's bold step of demonetisation and asserted that such a move was required to combat the menace of black money. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said that his party is with the government in the fight against black money but added the Centre should also address the grievances of the common public which is suffering due to monetary crisis. "The government has full right to take such a bold step to combat the menace of black money and we are with the government in this endeavour. We demand that black money should be brought to an end and the nation should get a strong economic policy," said Raut. "Our issue is that measures should be taken to address the incumbent grievances of the common man, who does not possess black money. The Prime Minister is talking about 50 days, I say the people are not ready to wait for 50 hours," he added. During an emotional address to the people in Goa, Prime Minister Modi yesterday said that he left his family and home to serve the nation, adding he understands the pain of the people who have been waiting in long queues to exchange their currencies. "I was not born for sitting on a chair of high office. Whatever I had, my family, my home...I left it for the nation," Prime Minister Modi said. "Yes, I also feel the pain. These steps taken are not a display of arrogance. I have seen poverty and understand the problems of the people," he added. The demonetisation by the government has thrown normal life out of gear for those falling under the lower income group across the country as the new endeavour has caused cash crunch. Long queues at ATMs and bank branches are being seen as worried customers are thronging them to exchange or deposit their old cash and withdraw money. On November 8, Prime Minister Modi announced demonetisation of currency notes in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption. (ANI) Gurupurab, the 548th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji, is being celebrated today with religious fervour and gaiety in the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh region despite sub-zero temperatures. Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, leaders of different political parties and sikh organisations greeted people on the occasion. Both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheading the agitation since July 9, have already withdrawn the Lal Chowk Challo call on the request of Sikh organisations. However, hartal continues in the Valley, where life remains affected for the past 129 days. Braving chilly weather conditions due to below freezing minimum temperature, members of the Sikh community, including women and children, visited Gurdwaras in colourful dresses in the morning. The main function was held at Gurdwara Chatipadshahi on the foothills of Kohi-e-maran, where the shrines of Mehboob-ul-Aalam and a Hindu temple are also located. Despite minus 1.9 degrees Celsius minimum temperature, a large number of Sikhs, including women and children, from different parts of the city were visiting the Gurdwara in their private vehicles and covering the distance from their houses on foot since there was no public transport due to strike. Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits were seen greeting their Sikh brethern on the occasion. Special langars (community kitchen) have been established in gurdwaras for the devotees. Similar religious functions were also held at Jawahar Nagar, Sanant Nagar and other places in Srinagar, Baramulla, Tral, Uri and Pulwama. Hundreds of devotees also offered special prayers on the occasion of Gurupurab in Kargil and Leh despite below freezing temperatures. The All Parties Sikh Coordination Committee (APSCC) has conveyed its greetings to the people around the globe on the occasion. In a statement, APSCC chairman Jagmohan Singh Raina, said: ''People should follow teachings of Guru Ji and his message of love and peace should percolate down the world. ''Ultimate peace can be achieved if people follow the path set out by Guru ji.'' More UNI BAS RSA SNU 1210 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-1021747.Xml The Bus Bar makes the successful power distribution in high powersatellites with minimum power loss and good thermal performance ofHTS, where power requirement is greater than 10 kW, ISRO said in its website. The indigenous Bus Bar would replace conventional harness tocater to the high power requirements of HTS Class of Satellites. Thepotential of Indian industry is utilised to realise Bus Bars at aremarkably competitive cost. For the first time, indigenous Bus Bars will be carried byGSAT-19 which is scheduled to be launched by GSLV-Mk III from SDSC,SHAR, Sriharikota later this year. The development of indigenous Bus Bar meets the requirements ofongoing programmes and ensures the adaptability for forthcoming highpower spacecraft programme of ISRO. Conventional harness for power distribution with twisted pair ofwires could not meet the low power and voltage drop specifications.Therefore, it was prudent to have an efficient and optimised powerdistribution system. Usage of Bus Bar in place of conventional powerharness was noted to be an appropriate option. The main advantagesare power and voltage drop reduction, better thermal design, andreduced Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) compared to wireharnesses. The development of indigenous materials and processes associatedwith the Bus Bar also have paved the way for spin-off applicationsin other subsystems and utilisation for future satellite programmeISRO said. In addition, the indigenous development has derived the benefitsof technology demonstration, technical expertise gain, in-houserealisation with adaptable and scalable designs for futureapplication and saving of considerable foreign exchange. Developmentof insulation materials such as Poly Aryl Ether Ketone (PAEK), 3Dprinted Ultem and processes such as Micro Arc Oxidation and EpoxyInsulation coating are the new areas proven for space applicationwhile evolving this Bus Bar.UNI CNR MSP RSS1355 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-1021890.Xml In view of higher demand of womenentrepreneurs seeking logistic and infrastructure support from thegovernment, Karnataka will be setting up industrial parksexclusively for women entrepreneurs in different parts of the state,Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today said. Speaking as the Chief Guest at 'Think Big -- Women in Business2016' summit, dubbed as Asia's largest women entrepreneurshipplatform here, he said his government had given women Entrepreneursspecial attention to encourage enterprise creation and industrialcapacity building by them for an inclusive growth and sustained development. The event, supported by the Karnataka government is a summit forwomen business owners being held today and tomorrow in associationwith WEConnect, a mega event that focuses exclusively on womenentrepreneurship. More than 2000 women entrepreneurs from across the globe,including 600 from Karnataka, are taking part in the event. ''We did not anticipate this kind of unprecedented response fromthe Women Entrepreneurs in such a short span. Initially we thoughtof developing one Women's Park at Harohally near Bangalore. But,surprisingly there was a great response from all over the State toset up Parks for Women. ''So we will be doing it and several such parks would come upacross the districts soon. This include a women's industrial parknear Kalaburgi in backward Hyderabad-Karnataka region,'' MrSiddaramaiah said. He said Karnataka's diversity ratio in employment andentrepreneurship is amongst the best in India. The eco-system in theState was regarded as the bench-mark for women to live and work andI am happy that we are in the right direction. As per the World Bank Report 2010-11, the highest percentage ofwomen work participation was in United States of America at 45percent. Their share was 35 percent in Brazil, 38 percent in France,40 percent in Indonesia, 42 percent in Canada and 43 percent inUnited Kingdom. India which had a share of 31.6 per cent can made further stridesto bring in more women as entrepreneurs, he said. He said according to the fourth Medium, Small and MicroEnterprises (MSME) census, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and WestBengal have 51.9 percent of the country's women-owned business trulyindicating the potential that exists in our State and country. ''I am sure with the initiatives taken up, Karnataka would soonbe in the top slot for Women Entrepreneurship. Therefore, ThinkBig2016 rightfully provides a platform to many Aspiring and Existingwomen entrepreneurs an equal opportunity for economic freedom andwell-being and Wealth creation, he added. He said his government had approved the reimbursement of the feeof WEConnect International for the next three years in a phasedmanner to encourage Women Entrepreneurs. WEConnect International provides certification to women-ownedbusinesses to help them succeed in global value chains and connectthem to Indian and Multinational Corporation. The chief minister said such networks have a critical role infinding solutions to common challenges faced by women globally andbringing about greater equity. UNI RS MSP RSS1400 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-1021919.Xml Business and other activities remained crippled for the 129th day due to strike called by separatists in Kashmir valley, where a large number of private vehicles, besides three-wheelers, hit the streets in view of 12th grade examination commencing from today. However, public transport remained off the roads since July 9 in support of the separatists strike call though buses plied on city roads yesterday, when there was relaxation in shutdown between 1600 hrs to 0700 hrs this morning. Police said there was no curfew or restrictions in any part of Kashmir valley though security forces continued to remain deployed to maintain law and order. There was, however, no change in the situation in and around historic Jamia Masjid, where main gates leading to the mosque remained closed and no Friday prayers could be offered for the past 18 weeks due to curfew. Good number of private vehicles, particularly two-wheelers, were plying in summer capital, Srinagar and other major towns in view of the grade 12th examination. But public transport, barring some three-wheelers, remained off the roads in Kashmir, where around 90 civilians were killed and 10,000 others injured in security force and police action since July 9. Shops and business establishments also remained closed in summer capital, Srinagar and elsewhere in Kashmir, where large number of security forces and state police personnel remained deployed to prevent any demonstrations. Both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheading the agitation since the death of Burhan, had already extended the strike till November 17. The separatists had earlier urged people to march towards historic Lal Chowk today, but later withdrew the programme on the request of All Parties Sikh Coordination Committee (APSCC) in view of Gurupurab. However, there is no evening relaxation in the strike today. Business and other activities remained paralysed, including at major business hubs of historic Lal Chowk, Budshah Chowk, Gonikhan, Hari Singh High Street (HSHS), Residency road, Moulana Azad road, Dalgate and exhibition. However, some vendors, particularly selling vegetables and fruits could be seen at several places.MORE UNI ABS SB ADG 1414 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-1021891.Xml Sharpening her attack against the Narendra Modi led NDA government at the Centre over banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today strongly criticised Mr Modi for his reported statement that the poor people were sleeping peacefullly."The PM in his speech had said the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," Ms Banerjee twitted immediately after the PM's reported speed during a rally in Uttar Pradesh.In Ghazipur on demonetisation Mr Modi said it was like ''kadak chai'', not liked by rich,but relished by poor. Mr Modi said the "poor are sleeping peacefully and the rich need sleeping pills". Reacting to this comment by the PM, Ms Banerjee said the statement on the poor was an insult to common people and in bad taste." The PM in his speech had said the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste. My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this ," she added."While common people have been victimised and crushed under weight of 'demonetisation', many economists now predicting onset of recession," twitted the Bengal CM.She said "this ( banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000) will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost to the economy in only six days," she added.Ms Banerjee earlier called for a "joint movement" by oppositions against the Union government to force the Centre to withdraw the decision, saying its was "financial anarchy." UNI PC RN -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0311-1022140.Xml All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(AIADMK) legislature party leader A Anbazhagan today exhorted the voters of Nellithoppe Assembly constituency to vote and elect AIADMK candidate Om Sakthi Sekhar in upcoming by-election. In a statement here today Mr Anbazhagan called upon the people to think how this by-election was imposed and for whose benefits and also how the constituency where the DMK had won five times was given away to the Congress in the last elections. Refuting several claims of Tamil Nadu opposition leader and DMK treasurer M K Stalin, Mr Anbazhagan said that Mr Stalin who held posts like Deputy Chief Minister and leader of the opposition hid the fact that Narayanasamy's government was one example for how a government should not function. He said in the last four years, the government was not functioning here and Mr Stalin during his election campaign last evening had pointed out several achievements in a government which was not at all functioning. Mr Anbazhagan also posed several questions to Mr Stalin whether, he knows that the real DMK cadres are irritated on giving away the seat to the Congress and the DMK is now becoming a branch of the Congress in Puducherry, whether Stalin will make clear which money the income tax officials had seized from the residence of former legislator John Kumar immediately after his resignation and why he(John Kumar) had "sold out" the love and affection of the people who voted him to power. Mr Anabzhagan said Mr Narayanasamy who was in power at the Centre for 23 years did nothing for Puducherry. The government owned Anglo-French Textile mill was closed for the past 10 years and in the past 15 years no new industry started here and in the 15 years Congress ruled 65 per cent of the industrial units left Puducherry. He said Mr Stalin had stated that Mr Narayanasamy had brought the law and order under control and wondered whether the bomb culture was eradicated. Refuting the claim of Stalin that Narayanasamy will bring more employment opportunities, Mr Anbazhagan said, when he assumed office as the chief minister 4000 government employees were terminated.UNI PAB SHS 1507 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1021926.Xml Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao today praised the Apollo Hospital for serving the society for more than 32 years, while noting the connection between Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Jayalalithaa and the hospital. While inaugurating the 66th Hospital of Apollo Group in Navi Mumbai, Mr Rao said when he took over as the Governor of Tamil Nadu, the Chief Secretary gave him a 'very important' file for reading. It was about the 1983-founded hospital, which treated Ms Jayalalithaa's mentor MG Ramchandhran, when he was the CM. Apollo hospital and the context was the health bulletin issued by its founder Dr Pratap Reddy in 1983 about Jayalalithaa's mentor MG Ramchandhran 32 years ago when he was the CM, who had been admitted and was being treated at the hospital. After 32 years, another Tamil Nadu Chief Minister was admitted to the same hospital and its founder Dr Pratap Reddy, who had issued health bulletin on MGR, did the same for the current CM, he said. UNI XR NV RJ 1508 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-1022048.Xml Official sources here today said that Rizwan Ahmad, after battling for his life for over a week, succumbed to his injuries at a hospital this morning. Rizwan was hit and critically injured by a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) vehicle at Parimpor in Srinagar last week.UNI ABS RJ 1514 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-1022047.Xml Kalavati (65) on pillion of bike being driven by her brother-in-law Devi Dyal, fell on road when hit by a speeding car on Barara-Sadhaura road. She died on the spot while injured Dayal was admitted to hospital. The car driver escaped. In another incident, an old farmer Baldev Singh, a resident of village Kakkar Majra, was returning home from his fields. He was killed when a car on high speed hit him killing him on the spot. The police started investigation after registering a case against unknown person driving the car.UNI XC JS SW 1652 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0292-1022181.Xml Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi is launching a global 'youth for youth' campaign to end child slavery and other forms of violence against children. The campaign will start from India with some of the world's highest moral authorities Nobel Laureates and other leaders-- assembling to take part in the 'Laureates and Leaders for Children Summit' on December 10 and 11 in the national capital. The summit will be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee. In a press statement today, Mr Satyarthi called upon the government and citizens to celebrate Children's Day by pledging to protect the rights of all children in the country. Stressing on the need for a national resolve towards children, he made an appeal to the leaders of all political parties to devote at least one full day to deliberate on children's issues in the upcoming session. "The fight against child labour, child trafficking and child sexual abuse need higher political will," he said. Mr Satyarthi also said, "Although significant progress has been made for the protection of child rights, critical challenges continue due to gaps in policy and their implementation. More serious efforts are needed in this regard." He expressed his disappointment towards the budgetary allocation for the issues of children. Indian population comprises about 492 million children which is a massive 41 per cent of the overall figure. Whereas, the budgetary allocation made towards their issues is only 4 per cent. "Regardless of the fact that our nation has the world's highest number of malnourished children, child labour and children vulnerable to sexual offences; it is unfortunate that this section of the society receives the lowest budgetary allocation in terms of proportion." "All our efforts for the development of children fail with such disproportionate investment", he added. ''Every eight minutes a child goes missing in India. Another 43 lakh toil in exploitative labour conditions every day and the number of children out-of-school is close to 99 lakh. This is official data. However, the ground situation could be more pathetic,'' he noted. Mr Satyarthi appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiative asking Parliament Members to make at least one model village in each constituency. The PM had announced this in his speech at the Red Fort on Independence Day after assuming office in 2014. He added, "We should work towards making these model villages child-friendly. Child participation should be emphasised on children's related matter. There should be zero tolerance to trafficking, child labour, child marriage, illiteracy and other forms of abuse against children at village level." Mr Satyarthi's novel concept of was started in 2001 with the objective of keeping children as the focal point, and through them, approximately 500 villages in 11 Indian states have been made child-friendly. A novel concept has been started of making Bal Mitra Gram (Child-friendly villages) to establish a child-friendly society through democratic processes and actions. "There is a deficit of moral will and compassion for children. Even with so many institutions of governance and faith, laws and conventions, we are failing to protect millions of our children worldwide. There is an imperative need for a strong moral platform of global leaders to come together for the cause of children", expressed the Nobel Laureate. Besides 25 Nobel Laureates and world leaders, around 150 eminent personalities from the corporate sector, academia, sports, media and civil society will be present on the occasion. UNI SY SB ADG 1707 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0093-1022078.Xml Fortis Hospital Anandapur today saluted little superheroes on Children's Day. What happens when a six year old child is brought with two failed kidneys? What happens when an iron rod travelling at a lethal pace from the second storey of a building pierces an 11 year old girl? What happens when a baby is born just 25 weeks into the womb weighing 600gms? What happens when a six year old is brought with Dengue induced complications resulting in convulsion and bleeding into lungs? They fight hand-in-hand with the doctors. They cheat death. They celebrate life. In this age and time when the world is ruled by adult values and norms, Fortis Hospital Anandapur feels humbled in saluting these indomitable spirits on this Children's Day felicitating them as FORTIS SUPERHEROES. Speaking on the occasion, Zonal Director at Fortis Healthcare Ltd (East) Samir Singh said, "Children's day is celebrated to give respect, support and encouragement to the next generation. In a world where children are progressively being seen as passive recipients of an adult run societies values, beliefs and norms, it is important to enable the society to begin recognizing children as active participants of societal change and growth." "These little angels have proven they are fighters and are great idols for us adults to emulate. We are celebrating life, our future and also our doctors who never lost heart," he said. On the occasion, senior consultant Psychiatrist at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr Sanjay Garg said, "Every child is a real life super hero, they have within themselves the power to don their very own cape and save the world in their own special way". Consultant Paediatric Nephrology at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr Rajiv Sinha said, "This event is organised to celebrate those children who has come out from serious disease for example a child who lost both of the kidney because of in born problems and then came for dialysis and finally went for a transplant. Both of this is quite big procedure but they fought it and have survived. So they are the Hero to us. It's celebrating their spirit of fighting and survival". Consultant Neonatologist and Paediatrician at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr Sumita Saha said, "Fortis provides State of the Art facilities at Neo-Natal unit for babies fighting Congenital abnormalities and for those who require critical surgeries. Fortis also provides all equipped ambulances for us to go and pick critically ill babies from other Nursing Homes at odd hours. This event is to celebrate the survival instinct of such kids and we at Fortis stand united to salute the spirit of such superheroes"Consultant Paediatrics at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr Nicola Flynn said " To our children, whom we want to teach everything in life, but end up learning what life is all about. Give your child the gift of your precious time." Consultant Paediatric Intensivist at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr. Bichitrovanu Sarkar said, "While it takes true dedication and genuine expertise and knowledge to save a critically ill child, it is also important to support the family during this stressful period, with an understanding of their emotions and be accommodative of their reactions. We must remember, it is easy to be wise in retrospect, and whatever the initial treating doctor did, he did it according to his best judgement in that specific situation. Situations evolve and we do not know how things were like when he first saw this child. I think we need to do a lot more in bringing back these simple ethics into our medical practice today". Consultant Paediatric Neonatology at Fortis Hospital Anandapur Dr Indrani Bhattacharya said, " In the era of the babies " born to soon" we should commit ourselves to help make the future generations mentally and physically healthy and strong .UNI BM KK 1745 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1022415.Xml Only two people from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) arrived here, while eight Kashmiris crossed over to the other side of Line of Control (LoC) by Karwan-e-Aman bus, operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad. Meanwhile, 12 people also returned to their respective sides at Kaman post, the last Indian military post on this side of the LoC in Uri sector. Official sources here this evening said two PoK residents, including a woman, arrived at Kaman post after crossing Aman Setu, peace bridge, on foot to meet their relatives, separated in 1947 due to partition. They said eight Kashmiris, including two women and as many children, who had gone to the PoK, returned to Srinagar after completing their stay there. Meanwhile, eight Kashmiris crossed to the other side of LoC, to meet their relatives. Sources said that four PoK residents, including a woman and a child, who had come to Srinagar earlier, also returned to their homes. ''The bus had left Srinagar at 0700 hrs this morning to avoid any protests and stone pelting,'' they said. The bus service was not affected this time, despite tense situation on the LoC, where two soldiers were killed and several others were injured, when Pakistani troops violated ceasefire and targeted forward posts and civilian targets in Machil and Keran sectors, during the past four days.MORE UNI ABS SW RJ 1756 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-1022339.Xml Addressing a two-day annual Security Skills & Leadership Summitorganised by Security Sector Skill Development Council (SSSDC) here,the Minister said the security agency should focus on the process ofsmart grooming and training of the men and woman in the field. ''It is very important for the security industry to focus onproduct presentation and quality services. This will take theindustry into the next orbit of growth,'' he said. He urged the private security sector (PSS) to set up qualitytraining centres and centres of excellence across the country andmake the eco-system more aspirational for the youth and securityguards. ''The PSS needs a lot of interventions and I am ready toprovide all aids required in skill development and management,'' he added. Mr Rudy hoped that Star Badge embedded with SSSDC logo andbarcode will give private security forces professional confidenceand special status as well. Mr Kunwar Vikram Singh, Chairman, SSSDC, said wearing star badgewill not only make the badge holder trust his inner strength andstand out but also others to trust his competence and skills. Thisrecognition by SSSDC will also increase their salary to Rs 15,000from the current Rs 8,000-10,000, as per the guidelines of theLabour Ministry. He said SSSDC will honour 20 lakh security guards with star badgeacross the country and it aims to certify the remaining 50 lakhsecurity services personnel with required training and grooming inthe next few years. The private security sector has over 300 training centres acrossIndia to produce skilled security guards engaged mainly in mannedguarding and cash services. Mr Singh said SSSDC aims at setting up centres of excellencepan-India and expects to increase the training centres manifold inthe next few years.UNI RS MSP AK1820 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-1022508.Xml A militant was reportedly killed as alert troops foiled an infiltration bid at Nowgam sector in the frontier district of Kupwara, Kashmir. Defence Ministry Spokesperson Col Rajesh Kalia told UNI that troops guarding the Line of Control (LoC) noticed a group of militants sneaking into this side from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) in Nowgam sector of Kupwara. However, when challenged and asked to surrender, the militants opened indiscriminate firing with automatic weapons. Troops also retaliated and in the fierce encounter, a militant was reportedly killed, he added A massive search operation has been launched in the woods, he said, adding further details are awaited. However, the Defence ministry spokesman was not available to confirm the incident.UNI ABS CJ RJ 1824 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0433-1022428.Xml Haryana Tourism Minister Ram Bilas Sharma today said the mindset of people of the state had changed and daughters were being treated with respect and consideration. Speaking at the Golden Jubilee Celebrations, organised by the Haryana Association UK at Southall, London, Mr Sharma said that wrestler Sakshi Malik and para athlete Deepa Malik had brought laurels to the country and the state by winning medals at the Olympics and Paralympics, respectively. Members of UK Parliament Seema Malhotra and Virendra Sharma; First Secretary, High Commission of India, London Sunil Kumar and other dignitaries were present in this event, a statement said here. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expressed appreciation for the improvement in the sex ratio of the state after the launch of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme at the inaugural function of Swarna Jayanti celebrations in Gurugram on November 1, he added. He also invited the people to participate in the international Gita Jayanti Utsav, to be held at Kurukshetra from December 6 to 10, and International Crafts Mela at Surajkund in district Faridabad from February 1 to 15.UNI XC RJ 1923 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-1022626.Xml Along with the rest of the country Children's Day was celebrated at Raj Bhavan here in Meghalaya today. The celebration was organised by Raj Bhavan, Shillong in collaboration with the East Khasi Hills District Administration with the support from State Bank of India, Singhania Printing Press, Round Table India, Delhi Mistan and Madras Cafe, Shillong. Meghalaya Governor V Shanmuganathan welcomed the students to the historic Raj Bhavan, stating that Raj Bhavan, Shillong is over a century old and is located amidst lush greenery. He informed the gathering that Children's Day is celebrated on the Birth anniversary of the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The late Prime Minister was very much enthusiastic and warm hearted towards children and was also concerned for their welfare, rights, education and overall improvement, he further said. "The deep love of Chacha Nehru towards children is the big reason for celebrating Children's Day on his Birth anniversary," the Governor said. He appealed to all parents and teachers present to strive to be role models to their wards, adding that their every word and action has a direct influence in the lives of the children. Mr Shanmuganathan urged upon the parents and teachers to give time, care, love, affection and to raise their children in such a manner that they grow up to become responsible citizens of this great nation. Songs and dances presented by the students of K J P Girls' Higher Secondary School, Sein Jaintia Secondary School, Garo Union Secondary School, and a One act play performed by ICCR and Department of Arts and Culture, Government of Meghalaya were some of the other highlights of the celebration. Mr Shanmuganathan distributed trophies and certificates to the winners of the different schools who participated in the Raj Bhavan Sprint Meet, Raj Bhavan Painting Competition, Raj Bhavan Essay Competition and Raj Bhavan Speech Competition which was held on October 25 to 27 at J N Stadium and at U Soso Tham Auditorium premises. UNI RRK BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1022854.Xml Bihar joined the nation in paying tributes to first Prime Minister Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru on his birth anniversary, celebrated as children's day today. Bihar Education Minister Ashok Kumar Chaudhary paid floral tributes to statue of Pundit Nehru near Patna Junction where main function was organised. Excise Minister Abdul Jalil Mastan, Animal and Fisheries Minister Awadhesh Kumar Singn, former Minister Shyam Rajak and former MLA Sanjeev Prasad Tony besides several otherimportant dignitaries also paid tributes to the first Prime Minister on the occasion. Reports of organising function to pay tributes to Pundit Nehru also poured in from various parts of the state. Functions were also organised to observe birth anniversary of first Guru of Sikh communityGuru Nank. Main function was organised in Takht Sri Harmandir Sahib in Patna City, the birth place of 10th Guru of Sikh community Guru Govind Singh.UNI KKS BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1022856.Xml BJP today said militancy and separatism in Kashmir will never be same after the 'Financial Surgical Strike' by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The well timed and extremely well executed move on blocking currency of high denominations by the Union Government has put the nail in the coffin of separatism and militancy in the state,'' Sunil Sethi, State BJP Chief Spokesperson in a statement issued here said. He said it is matter of common knowledge that unrest in Valley is sustained by 'fake currency' and 'Hawala money' from across borders or by even enemies of the nation sitting within but with the change of high denomination currency the money flow in Kashmir will be effectively stopped, which will ensure peace in region. Mr Sethi further said capacity of separatists and enemy, sitting across border to financially sustain such unrest over period of time, like what is being witnessed now, will never happen in future. "The correction in system carried by currency reforms will be here for stay and more anticipated reforms of Central Government will ensure that in future, nobody will be allowed to run business of terror and blood in land of peace,'' he added. Mr Sethi further said though people are currently facing difficulties because of the shifting of system but this is being done for larger interest of nation, which is being welcomed by public at large. He also noted that money, which is being deposited in banks, will put currency back in circulation and also get tax to govt, adding that the system as being implemented will make corruption and black-marketing in future almost impossible. He said the government will surely target the money in foreign banks stacked by corrupt elements. UNI VBH PY SHK 2124 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1022858.Xml High Court Judge Justice P Ubaid while rejecting the plea, asked petitioner Zakir Hussain to surrender before the investigating officer within one week. While considering the anticipatory bail application, Kerala government counsel told the court that Zakir Hussain was a goonda. The police had opposed the bail application stating that if the accused has been granted bail, there was possibility to influence the witness in the case.UNI CGV PY SHK 2155 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1022885.Xml According to sources, Bhuyar, who heads Vidarbha region of the pro-farmer outfit, received the order of externment under the Bombay Police Act last week in a case of alleged extortion and obstruction of government work. SSS, a partner in the BJP-led Maharashtra government, has alleged misuse of powers over slapping of an externment order against one of its key functionaries in Buldhana district. Under the provisions of the Bombay Police Act, police prepares the externment order, which is then sent to the Revenue Department for approval, following which it is forwarded to the inspector general of police, after whose approval it is implemented by the district police. The decision has irked local workers of SSS and the entire organisation that supported BJP during the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections of 2014. "The organisation's popularity is the real problem to some leaders, who ensured that I get notice of externment,"Mr Bhuyar said to a section of media on getting the notice.UNI PK SS PY SHK 2134 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-1022832.Xml The Shiv Sena has warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to roll back the demonetisation scheme or be on the receiving end of an angered public, who are seething with fury after being massively inconvenienced by the Centre's tectonic scheme. Speaking to the media here, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut asserted that the severe crunch being faced by the people was a very disturbing sign for the government. When told that the Prime Minister had firmly ruled out any possibility of a roll back, Raut replied saying, "then the government can face a roll back themselves. The Shiv Sena fully stands in the fight against corruption, but if there is so much anger among the masses, then something must be wrong." Emphasising his party's stand on the matter, Raut further said that it was the common man on whom the scheme had proven to be costly, which the rich and powerful continued to languish in their palaces. "Not a single one of them has been caught, nor are they standing in the long queues. This is not about siding with the opposition but about being with the masses when they need us. All political parties must join hands and call for a roll back of the scheme," Raut said. However, calling on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to pay no heed to the barrage of attack by the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier today ordered the government to go full ahead with demonetisation and ruled out any chance whatsoever of rolling back the scheme. According to sources, the Prime Minister who was chairing the BJP Parliamentary Party executive meeting, told the attendees to not buckle under the opposition's pressure and go ahead with the Centre's policy. Stating that the opposition was hard at work to sabotage the process of demonetisation, the Prime Minister assured that the nation has welcomed the step. The Prime Minister's assertion comes in the wake of the all out attack launched by the opposition today, as the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) joined forces in tearing down the scheme of demonetisation. Earlier today, Mayawati asserted that people, who were expecting good days, are now facing bad days because of the government's strange decision to ban high denomination notes. Attempting to reach out to the poor and middle class ahead of next year's assembly polls, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that small and medium businesses have shut down courtesy demonetisation. "In the name of demonetisation, the common people are being made to suffer. Modi ji has brought miseries and pain for the poor which is extremely wrong. I would like to ask why people of the nation are being troubled like this," said Mayawati. "The economic affairs of the nation has been hampered by this decision, crores of small and medium scale businesses have been shut in the wake of demonetisation. Its seems like a country wide shutdown is being observed. The people, who were expecting 'achhe din', are now facing 'bure din' and people of the nation want freedom from all this," she added. On the other hand, holding the Prime Minister responsible for the present cash crunch, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the Centre was unprepared in dealing with the crisis. "Today Centre announced that Indian Air Force will be used to carry and distribute currency notes, it shows that government did not have any game plane to tackle the crisis, government was unprepared in executing its plan, it shows that the government is in a precarious situation," Kejriwal said. He said that despite Prime Minister Modi's claim that the demonitisation drive would bring sleepless nights to the rich, the aam aadmi (common man), instead, are having sleepless nights standing outside the ATMs. Branding the Prime Minister as a "habitual abuser", the Congress said that arrogance of power should not surpass the problems faced by people. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala lashed out at the Prime Minister and said that it has become his "character and style" to taunt others. "The Prime Minister is a habitual abuser himself. We respect the Prime Minister and the office he holds. Whatever abuses he may heap, which he continues to do every day on the leaders of the opposition parties, let him mock the entire country. The Prime Minister mocks the entire nation. The other day, he was sitting in Japan and mocked everybody who was getting married, who were not able to arrange their marriages. Such has become the character and style of this minister," Surjewala said. Prime Minister Modi, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on Monday. (ANI) President Pranab Mukherjee today facilitated the Sikhs on the birthday of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh religion, and celebrated it with usual fervour and religious sanctity at Rashtrapati Bhavan.President of the Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee Manjit Singh G K and secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa formally honoured Mr Mukherjee on behalf of the committee. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani were part of the congregation. A Gurbani Kirtan (hymn) was performed on the auspicious occasion which was rendered by a team led by Bhai Rai Singh, Hazoori Ragi, Shri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar.Addressing the congregation, Mr Sirsa said Guru Nanakji worked for uplifting humanity by promoting a casteless and classless society that respected all religions sans ritualism and superstitions. He raised his voice against all and mighty barbaric rulers of the day while preaching equality and urging the people to be benevolent and partake their wealth with the needy and hapless. He sought not only equality but also put women at a higher pedestal an ideal which is still to be accomplished.Mr Sirsa emphasised that even during those days, Guru Nanak undertook four major pilgrimages and toured almost one-third of the present day world to spread his spiritual message which remains equally relevant today.Mr Mukherjee led the congregation to 'langer' which was organised at the Rastrapati Bhavan itself. After the holy prayer (ardas), the President honoured the kirtani jatha and five DSGMC office-bearers, Manjit Singh,Manjinder Singh Sirsa, vice-president Mohinder Pal Singh Chadda, junior vice-president Satpal Singh, joint secretary Amarjit Singh and Principal Dr Jaswinder Singh.UNI SM PY SHK 2213 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1022908.Xml Prime Minister Narendra Modi today arrived at Lal Bahadur Shashtri International Airport, Babatpur, here. He arrived 10 minutes before the scheduled time and later left for Ghazipur in an Army helicopter. Official Sources said here that Mayor Ramgopal Mohley, Commissioner Nitin Ramesh, District Magistrate Yogeshwar Ram Mishra welcomed Mr Modi at the airport. The PM will inaugurate several railway projects and will flag off a new train ''Shabdabhedi Express'' in Ghazipur. After that, he will return to Babatpur airport at around 0100 hours and then return to Delhi.UNI XC-JDM MB SHS SNU 1202 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1021772.Xml One person was killed and two others injured when an unidentified vehicle hit their scooty in Srinagar outskirts, official sources said here today. They said three people riding a scooty were injured when they were hit by an unidentified vehicle at Kralpora on Srinagar-Charar-e-Sharief road. The injured were rushed to a hospital where one of them identified as Suhail Rafiq succumbed. The condition of two other injured is stated to be critical, they said, adding that a massive hunt has been launched to identify the vehicle and driver.UNI BAS SHS SNU 1021 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-1021687.Xml Despite tense situation on the Line of Control (LoC), the Karvan-e-Aman bus, operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), left here early this morning for Kaman Post, the last Indian military post on this side of the border in Uri sector. The weekly peace bus left Srinagar at 0700 hrs for security reasons to avoid any stone pelting and protests due to strike, called by separatists. The bus has since reached Kaman Post at around 0900 hrs. The bus run was not affected this time despite tense situation on the LoC, where two soldiers were killed and several others were injured when Pakistani troops violated ceasefire and targeted forward posts and civilian targets in Machil and Keran sector during the past four days. They said the exact number of passengers travelling in the bus will be known only in the afternoon as some of them will join at Trade Facilitation Centre (TFC) at Salamabad, Uri. Similarly, people coming from the PoK will have to wait at Uri before starting journey towards their respective destinations late in the night, to avoid stone pelting. Despite unrest since July 9 the bus run continued. On July 11 and 18, the bus could not operate for security reasons following strike by the separatists while on July 4 and September 12, it did not run in view of Eid festivals. However, the weekly bus service was not affected even after the Fidayeen attack on Army Brigade Headquarters at Uri on September 18, which left 19 soldiers dead and over 20 wounded. Four Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants, believed to be foreigners, were also killed in the encounter. The Fidayeen attack was followed by surgical attack by Indian troops across the LoC. On October 17, the peace bus could not operate due to tense situation on the LoC while on October 24, it was suspended due to some political activity in the PoK. The bus service has helped thousands of families divided due to Partition in 1947 to meet each other after India and Pakistan agreed to allow travel of state subjects from both sides on travel permits, instead of international passport. People are allowed to travel only after their names are cleared from intelligence agencies from both the sides in the bus, a major Confidence Building Measure (CBM) introduced on April 7, 2005 by India and Pakistan, will not operate much to the disappointment of passengers, who were scheduled to travel to meet their relatives separated in 1947. UNI BAS RSA SNU 1115 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-1021704.Xml French journalist Olivier Bertrand has been released, his employer said today, following his arrest in Turkey which had drawn condemnation from the French government.Bertrand, who works for French news website lesjours.fr, was detained on Friday while reporting in the town of Gaziantep, just north of Turkey's border with Syria."Our journalist Olivier Bertrand is free, he is in a plane en route for Paris," lesjours said on its official Twitter page.Earlier today, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had demanded that Bertrand be set free. The Turkish government has been cracking down on the media following a failed coup earlier this year.The authorities have detained tens of thousands of people over alleged links to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric living in the United States who is accused of masterminding the abortive putsch - something he denies.The EU official in charge of relations with Ankara said earlier this month that Turkey's quest to join the bloc would probably fail unless it reversed its clampdown on civil rights, press freedoms and the judiciary.France had also expressed "serious concern" this month at Turkey's arrest of Kurdish lawmakers, while Ayrault voiced concern on Sunday over signs that Turkey could bring back the death penalty, something which Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said is a possibility.Turkey abandoned the death penalty in 2002 as part of the EU accession process, although there had been no executions since 1984. REUTERS AKC 0028 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1021563.Xml President-elect Donald Trump backed away from his promise to build a wall on the US-Mexican border, saying some areas could instead be "fencing," and added he would move to deport up to 3 million immigrants in the country illegally who have criminal records.Trump, who made his pledge to force Mexico to pay for a border wall a centerpiece of his White House campaign, said "for certain areas" he would accept fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall, according to excerpts released today of his interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes.""But certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I'm very good at this, it's called construction, there could be some fencing," the New York real estate developer said.Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's election and replaces Democratic President Barack Obama on January 20, also said once he takes office he would remove immigrants in the country illegally with criminal records."What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country," he told "60 Minutes."During the campaign, Trump said he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, most of whom are Hispanic. In calling for the construction of a border wall, Trump said Mexico was sending criminals and rapists into the United States.Trump and his senior advisers have signaled they could be flexible on some of his campaign promises once he takes office.Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who will play a key role in getting Trump's agenda through the Republican-led Congress, backed away from Trump's promise during the campaign of a "deportation force" to round up and deport immigrants in the country illegally."We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Ryan told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "I think we should put people's minds at ease. That is not what our focus is. That is not what we're focused on. We're focused on securing the border."Kevin McCarthy, the No. 2 House Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday" the wall with Mexico could in parts be a "virtual" wall patrolled by drones."You have to put a wall, it could be all virtual with the UAV airplanes as well, but I think that is doable and one of the first things that needs to be done," McCarthy said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.'A TRANSACTIONAL GUY'Today, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway indicated Trump would be results-oriented as he chooses his top aides, prepares his transition to the White House and gets ready to work with Congress."He'll be surrounded by people who want to get things done. Because he's a transactional guy. He's a businessman," Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press."Ryan said he agreed with Trump's comments in a Wall Street Journal interview published on Friday that he would keep elements of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare.Repealing and replacing the 2010 Affordable Care Act was another centerpiece of Trump's campaign. But he told the Journal that after talking to Obama at the White House on Thursday he would consider retaining provisions letting parents keep adult children up to age 26 on their insurance policies and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions."We can fix what is broken in healthcare without breaking what is working in healthcare," Ryan said. "Obamacare is failing. It must be replaced. We're going to do that."Ryan also sidestepped questions about Trump's plan to impose tariffs on imports from countries such as Mexico and China. Ryan said changes to tax law could accomplish the same goals "without any collateral damage to the economy."Trump, who pledged during the campaign to "drain the swamp" of corrupt insiders in the US capital, is considering a wide range of experienced Washington hands for his administration, as well as some officials with extensive lobbying experience.Conway said that experience was needed in Washington."Look, these are people who are talented and have done this before. You can't just appoint novices, you have to have people who know what they're doing. But at the same time moving forward this is an administration that's going to run very differently than typical Washington," Conway said on "Fox News Sunday."REUTERS AKC 0032 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1021564.Xml A group of migrants who hadmarched for two days from the Serbian capital Belgrade werestopped today at the border with Croatia, a European Unionmember which said would not allow illegal crossings. Some 150 migrants, reported as being mostly from Afghanistanand Pakistan, left Belgrade on Friday to walk about 125 km (80miles) to the Croatian border, demanding free and secure passageto Western Europe. Due to exhaustion and cold weather, some decided to give upthe march, media reported. But most of them, arriving at the Serbian border town ofSid, said they would wait until the frontier with Croatia wasopened and refused to be accommodated in the reception centre. "There is not a single reason why anyone should enterCroatia illegally. Croatian police will protect the border fromsuch attempts," Croatia's Interior Minister Vlaho Orepic said today after a visit to the Tovarnik border crossing near wherea group of migrants was stranded on the Serbian side. According to the UN refugee agency, around 6,400 migrantsfrom countries such as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan arecurrently registered in Serbia, a candidate for EU membership. Local non-governmental organisations say their number isclose to 10,000 and they mostly arrived from Bulgaria andMacedonia. Last month, another group tried a similar march toward theHungarian border but eventually decided to return to Belgrade.Hungary, another EU member, has practically sealed its bordersto migrants. Last year, a total of 579,518 migrants and asylum seekerswere registered arriving in Serbia, out of more than a millionwho made it to Europe by land and sea. A deal between Turkey and the European Union, struck inMarch, has largely shut off the flow of people reaching Greeceand the Balkans. Austria began consultations with Balkan statesthis month to see what measures can be taken if the dealcollapses. REUTERS AKC 0055 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1021569.Xml The United Nations Security Council pushed for a peaceful transition of power in Congo during a weekend visit aimed at averting massive violence when President Joseph Kabila's mandate runs out on December 19.The visit by diplomats from countries on the council yesterday and today aimed to break the deadlock over whether Kabila should step down before an election which, thanks to slow voter registration, has been delayed until at least April 2018.He has vowed to stay on until the poll goes ahead, but the opposition accuse Kabila of manipulating the process to cling to power in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a charge his supporters deny.Several protests have erupted against Kabila, who has been in power since his father was assassinated in 2001. More than 50 people were killed in street protests in September.Security Council members stressed that Kabila's seeking to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third elected mandate, as the opposition accuse him of doing and some of his supporters suggest he might, would be no solution."The DRC is at a pivotal moment in its history," Francois Delattre, France's ambassador to the United Nations, told journalists after the meetings yesterday."For the first time, a peaceful transition of power at the end of the president's mandate is possible."Angola's ambassador to the United Nations Ismael Abraao focused more on the peaceful resolution of the crisis."We have assurances. There is a desire from everyone to avoid the worst ... The Security Council is ready to work with you so that there is peace," he said.But he added: "A third term has not been considered as a solution to the crisis. The solution lies in permanent dialogue."Leonard She Okitundu, a senator representing Kabila's ruling coalition, sought to allay fears Kabila would seek another term."There is no question of a third term because the constitution forbids it," he said. "There can be no third term."World powers fear that the political impasse over Kabila staying on beyond December 19 could reignite chaos in the vast Central African nation, where millions died in regional conflicts between 1998 and 2003.Congo stepped up patrols in its volatile east after the former military chief of a rebel group was reported missing from a camp for demobilised fighters in neighbouring Uganda, although the Ugandan military said today that Sultani Makenga was in the country's capital Kampala.As often, there appeared to be mixed messages about Kabila's intentions during the Security Council visit."UNSC asked #DRC Pres. Kabila to confirm he would not run in election. He said Constitution clear on no 3rd mandate but could be amended," Stephen Hickey, political counsellor at the UK Mission to the United Nations, tweeted yesterday."Very concerning that Pres. Kabila mentions possibility of amending constitution when asked straight question on standing for 3rd term," he said in another Tweet.REUTERS AKC 0327 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1021581.Xml Australia's prime minister said today resettlement to the United States of many of the 1,200 asylum seekers held in detention camps on Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island of Nauru will begin after President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in January.Whether Trump honours the deal Australia reached with the outgoing Obama administration, and announced earlier this month, will provide an early test of Trump's anti-immigration stance.Campaigning for the presidency, Trump had started by advocating a blanket ban on Muslims entering the United States, but later adjusted his stance to propose that the ban should apply to people from nations that had been "compromised by terrorism".Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday that the United States had agreed to take a "substantial" number of those held on Manus Island and Nauru. Many of them are Muslims who have fled conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.Under Australia's tough border security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach the country by boat are sent for processing at the camps on Papua New Guinea's Manus island and Nauru.The resettlement deal with United States came after Turnbull's government agreed in September to accept people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as part of Australia's annual intake of 18,750 asylum seekers, to support a resettlement plan for Central Americans drawn up by Washington.Turnbull said today the first refugees to be resettled in the United States will not come before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Trump."The process will continue for some months. The United States won't be short-cutting their security or health checks," said Turnbull.Analysts said the timing could prove awkward for Turnbull."It looks pretty clear that the resettlement deal was done as a quid pro quo after Australia agreed to resettle Central American refugees," said Peter Chen, professor of political science, University of Sydney."But by holding off and starting the process in the expectation that Hillary Clinton would win the US presidency, it gives Trump the ability to reject the deal."Over the weekend, Trump said his administration would deport up to 3 million immigrants in the country illegally who have criminal records. While campaigning, Trump said he would deport 11 million illegal immigrants.Should Trump veto the deal with Australia, the detainees would be left with the choice of returning to their home countries or remaining in Nauru or Papua New Guinea.A veto would force Turnbull to search for another country willing to take them while facing growing outrage both at home and internationally over the treatment of the refugees.Turnbull said he remained confident that the new US administration would stand by the deal, stressing that it didn't require any increase in the United States' annual intake of asylum seekers.REUTERS SHS PM0930 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1021638.Xml The security officials said the arrested suspect was among the three suicide bombers, who had launched a coordinated attack, reports Khaama Press. A photograph of the attacker was released by the security forces. On November 10, a vehicle laden with heavy explosives detonated in the vicinity of the German Consulate, which damaged more than 100 homes and shops. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, describing it as revenge for recent air strikes in the neighbouring province of Kunduz. Condemning the attack in strongest words, the UN mission in Afghanistan said "Attacks deliberately targeting the civilian population and violence aimed at spreading terror among civilians may amount to war crimes under customary international humanitarian law."(ANI) United States President Barack Obama's successor Donald Trump, who has been a consistent opponent of marriage equality, has said that he is "fine" with same-sex marriage remaining legal across the country. He said in an interview that he wouldn't appoint Supreme Court judges with the goal of reversing the ruling on same sex marriage, reports the CNN. "It's irrelevant because it was already settled. It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it's done," he said. However, standing by his stance against abortion rights, Trump pledged to appoint judges who oppose abortion rights and oppose restrictions on Second Amendment gun rights. If the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion were overturned, Trump said the decisions on whether to legalize or ban abortion would return to the states. "We'll see what happens. It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go," he said. When asked if he still knows more about the terror outfit ISIS, his often-mocked claim that he knows more than American generals about fighting ISIS, he said, "I'll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they've done. OK, look at the job they've done. They haven't done the job." On the issue of Electoral College, he said he favors ditching the Electoral College and handing the presidency to the winner of the popular vote despite winning more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton and losing the popular vote to her. "I'm not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. There's a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play," he said. Trump also signaled that he has no real plans to change his tone even though it's seen by many as evidence of a man too combustible for the presidency. (ANI) Bangladesh's central bank hopes to retrieve 30 million dollars more of the 81 million dollars stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve in February, two bank officials said today.Hackers used stolen Bangladesh Bank credentials to try to send three dozen SWIFT messages to transfer nearly 1 billion dollars from its Fed account. They succeeded in transferring 81 million dollars to four accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila.Most of the money was laundered through casinos in Manila.On Friday, Philippine authorities began the process of handing over 15.25 million dollars to Bangladesh."We are hoping to get back around $30 million which remains frozen," Bangladesh Bank deputy governor Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, who heads its financial intelligence unit, told Reuters.A Bangladesh team was likely to visit the Philippines at the end of the month to accelerate the process, he said."We are expecting to get a favourable verdict from Philippines' Supreme Court as it has already been proved that $81 million is our money," said another Bangladesh Bank official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to talk to the media. REUTERS SHS PM1208 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1021782.Xml Pakistan today claimed that Indian forces had killed its seven soldiers in shelling last night at Bhimber sector, across the Line of Control (LoC). Pakistan's military media wing, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), said in a statement that seven soldiers were killed in Bhimber sector, on the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The ISPR said that Pakistani troops also responded to the shelling by Indian troops and targeted the Indian posts effectively. The relations between India and Pakistan have strained since the killing of terrorist Burhan Wani by Indian security forces in Kashmir, leading to unrest in the Valley, which India said, was fuelled by Pakistan.Pakistan backed terrorists have been continuously targeting security forces in the Valley for several months leading to deaths of civilians and soldiers. UNI XC CJ ADG 1649 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1022219.Xml Turkish food manufacturer Yildiz Holding today denied a media report suggesting its units were being targeted in a government operation against the cleric Ankara blames for the failed July coup, after news that sent their shares sharply lower.Yildiz, Turkey's largest food manufacturer and the owner of the Godvia chocolate brand, made the comment in an e-mailed statement to Reuters.Shares of three of its companies, including biscuit maker Ulker, investment fund Gozde Girisim and food wholesaler Bizim all fell more than 11 per cent in morning trade in Istanbul.REUTERS VS VP1632 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-1022204.Xml Turkey temporarily closed a border gate with Syria today near its southeastern province of Kilis after clashes broke out across the border, security sources and the provincial governor said.The Oncupinar border gate, which lies across from Bab al Salam in Syria, is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey. It lies close to the Syrian town of Azaz, controlled by Turkish-backed rebels.Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed temporarily to humanitarian aid and commercial traffic due to developments on the Syrian side. Security sources said it was unclear how long the border would remain closed.Turkey launched an incursion into Syria in August in support of largely Turkmen and Arab rebel fighters to try to drive Islamic State away from its border and prevent Kurdish militia groups from seizing ground in their wake. REUTERS VS AS1726 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-1022346.Xml Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were poised to begin an assault to try to drive Islamic State from the Syrian city of al-Bab, two of their commanders said today, a battle that could also prompt new fighting with Kurdish groups that are competing for the area.Further escalation in the complex, multi-sided conflict in northern Syria has the potential to undermine a campaign supported by an international coalition led by the United States to oust Islamic State from its Syrian capital of Raqqa.Al-Bab is fast becoming a major faultline in the war in northern Syria, bringing Free Syrian Army rebels backed by Turkish armour closer than ever to frontlines held by the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies in nearby Aleppo."There is nothing between us and al-Bab," said one of the rebels, a commander in one of the groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner taking part in the Turkey-backed Euphrates Shield operation in north Syria that began in August."If not in hours then in a very few days we will be inside al-Bab," the commander told Reuters, declining to be identified.The Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday cited residents saying areas surrounding al-Bab were being struck by Turkish and FSA artillery. Another FSA commander who identified himself by the nom de guerre, Abu Assad Dabiq, said rebels were less than 3 km away.The main struggle in Syria's civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite militias against Sunni rebels backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies. They are all fighting against Islamic State.Further complicating the warfare in northern Syria, Turkey and the FSA rebel groups it backs are also set against a Kurdish-dominated alliance of militias that has fought Islamic State since 2015 and recently began a campaign to take Raqqa.GOVERNMENT ALLIES' WARNINGAl-Bab is located 30 km south of Syria's border with Turkey and the same distance from Aleppo, meaning its capture could help rebels to advance against pro-government forces besieging their comrades inside the city.The city of al-Bab had a population of 63,000 before the war according to a 2004 census by Syria's Central Bureau of Statistics and is a hub for major roads in the region north of Aleppo."God willing with the capture of al-Bab, we will be on the outskirts of the (Aleppo) industrial zone and the outskirts of the Kweiras air port, and the outskirts of the infantry college, meaning in direct contact with the regime," the rebel commander, who declined to be identified, said.However, allies of the Syrian government late last month warned Turkey against an advance towards their positions to the north and east of Aleppo, saying any such move would be met "decisively and with force".The Syrian government is backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militia.Al-Bab also sits between two Kurdish-ruled enclaves and its capture would thwart Kurdish ambitions to join them, something some Syrian Kurds regard as necessary to advance their goal of protecting Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria.While Turkey's launch of the Euphrates Shield campaign in August was partly aimed at pushing Islamic State from border areas after the jihadist group shelled Turkish towns, it was also intended to prevent the Kurdish enclaves from joining.RAQQA CAMPAIGNAnkara regards the main Kurdish militia group YPG as being an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey and is listed by the United States and European Union as a terrorist group.The YPG and allied groups have also tried to advance towards al-Bab in recent months from their two enclaves to the west and east but remain about 20 km away on each side.The YPG is the strongest element of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed alliance of armed groups fighting against Islamic State which last week began an offensive against territory held by the jihadist group north of Raqqa.Turkey and the YPG have both insisted that the other should have no part in the Raqqa campaign.The push against Raqqa has already been complicated by concerns that the central role of Kurds in the battle for the mostly Arab city would play into Islamic State propaganda.Last week, the Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa, one of the few Arab groups involved in the fighting in that area said it would not take part in the campaign because there were too few Arabs involved."We are not satisfied that the campaign should start this way," Mahmoud al-Hadi, head of the group's political office, told Reuters.Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, the spokeswoman for the SDF's Raqqa offensive, in comments to reporters on a social networking site on Saturday said she believed there were "sufficient" Arabs taking part in the campaign.The United States has said Arabs must play the central role in any push to take Raqqa.Turkey has also said that after the Euphrates Shield operation captures al-Bab, it will target Manbij, a city 40 km to the east that has been held by forces allied to the SDF for months.That could prompt a much wider escalation between Turkey and Kurdish groups that could in turn foil efforts by the United States to orchestrate an SDF assault on Islamic State in Raqqa."As for what is happening in al-Bab, it has an impact one way or another on our campaign," said Ahmed of the Raqqa offensive.REUTERS VS AS1802 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-1022452.Xml The European Union said today it would keep pushing to restore ties with Iran in line with last year's nuclear deal, which US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will rescind. Trump has raised the prospect that the United States will pull out of the pact, calling it a "disaster" and "the worst deal ever negotiated" during campaigning for the White House, although he has conceded it would be hard to destroy a deal enshrined in a United Nations resolution. The deal curbs Iran's nuclear programme in return for the easing of Western sanctions and came after years of standoff and growing fears in the West that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies that its nuclear programme has military aims. "The European Union reiterates its resolute commitment to the (Iran nuclear deal)," the bloc's foreign ministers said in a statement in Brussels. "The European Union is committed to support the full and effective implementation ... by the lifting of nuclear related economic and financial sanctions and engaging with the private sector and economic operators, especially banks, to promote growth in trade and investment." Despite concerns over human rights in Iran, the bloc is seeking to open a diplomatic mission there and senior EU officials have visited for talks on issues from trade and investment to migration and humanitarian aid.MORE REUTERS VS BD1805 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-1022466.Xml Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama may discuss Syria on the sidelines of APEC summit in Lima (Peru), on November 19-20, Kremlin's Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today.However, Mr Peskov made it clear that so far, no contacts are planned between Mr Putin and Mr Barack, saying that the two leaders could meet on the sidelines of APEC summit."It is clear that if talks are held, it cannot be ruled out : The Syrian crisis is one of the most urgent issues," he told RIA Novosti."No contacts with Obama have been scheduled yet. At the same time, they are both likely to be in Peru on the sidelines of the APEC summit. Certainly, it cannot be ruled out that they will hold talks on the sidelines. It is difficult to say whether it will be a full-format conversation," Peskov said.He also said that there were no plans yet for a meeting between Mr Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump.UNI XC CJ RJ 1842 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1022498.Xml Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev raised the stakes in his standoff with political rival Omurbek Tekebayev today, ordering prosecutors to look into corruption allegations against Tekebayev, which the parliament deputy denies.The deepening rift between two political heavyweights could destabilise the volatile Central Asian nation which has seen two leaders overthrown by violent protests since 2005.Tekebayev, who had previously backed pro-Russian Atambayev and was a member of his parliamentary coalition until last month, has become one of the main critics of the president after Atambayev proposed to boost the powers of the executive.Today, Atambayev's office said the state security service had obtained documents from the government of Belize showing Tekebayev, along with two other people, was set to benefit from a sale of assets by an offshore company.Atambayev's office said the offshore company was believed to be owned by the family of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was deposed and fled the country in 2010. The sale mentioned in the documents never took place because the government nationalised the assets in question.Tekebayev denied any wrongdoing and said the move was politically motivated. The two other people mentioned in the Belize papers are members of his Ata Meken party and served as prosecutor general and justice minister respectively in April 2012, the date on the document published by the president's office."This is 100 percent fake," he told Reuters. "This is a primitive provocation they have come up with... because we oppose the referendum (on executive powers)".The mostly Muslim nation of 6 million will vote in a national referendum on Dec. 11 on a package of changes to the constitution which boost the powers of prime minister and the executive in general.Atambayev's opponents have said the reform could allow him to become a powerful prime minister once he steps down as president next year. Atambayev, 60, who is not allowed to run for a second term, has denied having such plans.Both Atambayev and Tekebayev were among the leaders of the 2005 and 2010 protests and open confrontation between the two could lead to another wave of instability in the former Soviet republic which hosts a Russian military airbase. REUTERS VS AS1912 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0440-1022638.Xml Turkish warplanes struck 15 targets in the al Bab area of northern Syria on Sunday in an operation with Syrian rebels to drive Islamic State militants out of the region, the Turkish military said today.Ten Islamic State defensive positions, command centres and an ammunition store were destroyed in the strikes, the army said in a statement. Nine Syrian rebels were killed during clashes in the region. REUTERS SHS PM1119 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1021718.Xml Police said nine people were killed in clashes between Shi'ite Muslims and police during a religious procession in northern Nigeria today, but the minority sect said dozens of its members lost their lives.The clashes occurred on the outskirts of Kano, a city in a state of the same name, as members of the country's largest Shi'ite group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), conducted an annual procession to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna state.It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the sect. A judicial inquiry in August reported that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in mass graves after clashes with the army in December 2015, and two sect members were killed in processions in Kaduna state last month.Kano state Police Commissioner Rabiu Yusuf told reporters that nine people died in Monday's violence - eight IMN members and a policeman. He said several people were injured, including four police officers."At first we used tear gas on them. They attacked one of our personnel, who sustained a fatal injury," he said. Yusuf said IMN members used the dead policeman's weapon to fire at officers and they had "no option" but to use live ammunition in response.Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the IMN - whose 1980s founders were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Shi'ite Iran - said policemen opened fire on a peaceful crowd and killed "close to" 100 people including women and children."We view the unwarranted killings by the police as a continuation of the army pogrom started in Zaria last year," he said. The exact death toll was unclear, he added, because most of the bodies were "ferried away by the police, possibly for mass burial".Last month the Kaduna state government declared IMN as an "unlawful society" on the grounds that its processions were a danger to peace, and said anyone convicted of being a member of the sect could be imprisoned for up to seven years.Human Rights Watch estimates that IMN has around 3 million members. The sect's leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, has been held without charge since December following the clashes with the army in Zaria.Security analysts have drawn some parallels between the IMN and Boko Haram, the Sunni Muslim jihadist group whose insurgency began in 2009 after security forces killed hundreds of its members and its leader Mohammed Yusuf died in custody.Nigeria, which has 180 million people and is Africa's most populous nation, combines a predominantly Christian south and mainly Sunni Muslim north. Around 250 ethnic groups have co-existed mostly peacefully in the country. REUTERS AKC 2356 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1022940.Xml UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday commends the efforts by the government of Colombia and the rebel group to signed a revised peace accord Saturday after years of negotiations and a half a century of conflict. "The secretary-general commends the efforts by the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) to conclude a modified peace agreement that incorporates many of the proposals of the groups representing Colombians who voted 'No' in the 2 October plebiscite," said a statement issued here by Ban's spokesman. The secretary-general also acknowledged the many groups and individuals in Colombian society who came forth with proposals to modify the texts and who took part constructively in the dialogue process, the statement said. "Throughout this exercise, Colombians have listened to one another and have reaffirmed their collective desire for peace," the statement said. "They now have a new opportunity to go forward on this road to peace more unified than before." Meanwhile, the secretary-general also commended the parties for maintaining firm their commitment to the cease-fire and cessation of hostilities, said the statement. "He reaffirms the support of the United Nations for the peace process and hopes that the focus of efforts can turn as soon as possible to the implementation of a final peace agreement." The new pact seeks to overcome the impasse after the previous agreement discussed for four years in Havana, capital of Cuba, was rejected by a slight margin in an Oct. 2 referendum in Colombia. A peace deal negotiated earlier this year with FARC rebels was unexpectedly defeated by Colombian voters in October. Many were angered by what they saw as insufficient punishment for those who perpetrated a litany of crimes against their people. Negotiations for a peace deal continued after the defeat with rebels and those opposed to the original agreement. The conflict in Colombia has left more than 260,000 people dead and displaced millions of others since 1964. WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has named Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, according to an official statement released Sunday. Trump's campaign manager Stephen Bannon will serve as his chief strategist and senior counselor, the statement said. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said in the statement. Both Priebus and Bannon expressed their gratitude and eagerness to help Trump "achieve his agenda." The appointment was the first important government personnel arrangement Trump has made since his election on Wednesday. He has previously named his running mate Mike Pence to chair his transition team. Priebus, 44, is a Wisconsin native who became the RNC chairman in 2011. he is said to have good relationships with both Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, a quality that is seen crucial to mend any possible differences between the White House and the Congress. Bannon, 62, is a media executive who became Trump's campaign manager in August. He is also the chief of Breitbart News, a right-leaning U.S. news outlet that supported Trump during the presidential elections. Trump is due to ascend to presidency on Jan. 20. RAMALLAH, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) slammed the Israeli government on Sunday for its decision to legalize settlement outposts and prevent loudspeakers calls for prayers in the West Bank. Nabil Abu Rdineh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in an official statement that "the Israeli measures will drag the entire region into disasters." He also said that "these measures are totally rejected," and warned that the PNA will go to the United Nations Security Council and all other international agencies to prevent the escalated Israeli measures." Settlement is one of the most sticky issues that obstructed the resumption of the peace process that had been stalled since April 2014. Since then, the Palestinians and the Israelis were unable to resume their peace talks. Reyad al-Malki, the PNA minister of foreign affairs told earlier "Voice of Palestine" Radio that the Israeli government "is trying to make use of the current international and regional atmospheres by legalizing its settlements." However, he said that France is determined to hold the international conference for peace in the Middle East to end the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the end of this year. He stressed that France will keep going on with its measures to hold the conference in spite of Israel' s opposition to the idea, adding that a French envoy is expected to visit in the Palestinian territories to discuss holding the conference. "The Palestinian side will present to the French envoy a list of the countries the Palestinians wish to invite to the international peace conference," said al-Malki, adding that "all issues related to holding the conference will be debated." The senior Palestinian diplomat said the Palestinian side applied to Egypt asking for holding a meeting with the Arab Ministerial Quartet to discuss the question of settlements, "but until now, the Egyptian side didn't respond to our request." Photo taken on Nov. 14, 2016 (local time) shows a living room of a house in Wellington, New Zealand. A major earthquake rocked South Island of New Zealand in the wee hours of Monday, followed by a series of strong aftershocks and a tsunami warning. (Xinhua) WELLINGTON, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Emergency services were trying to reopen communications and transport to the tourist town of Kaikoura after a deadly earthquake rocked much of New Zealand early Monday. Roads into Kaikoura, on the northeast coast of the South Island, were blocked by landslides after the 7.5-magnitude quake hit just after midnight. Police confirmed the two deaths, saying emergency services were still working at the scenes. One fatality occurred at a property at Mount Lyford, north of Christchurch, on the east of the South Island, and the other at a reported collapsed property in Kaikoura. Medical rescue helicopters and the air force planes were flying into Kaikoura, a popular tourist destination famed for its coastal scenery and whale-watching activities. The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said it had mobilized at least three of its aircraft to support the government's response to the severe quake. Air Commodore Darryn Webb said an air force NH90 helicopter was supporting relief efforts and a P-3K2 Orion surveillance aircraft was surveying main transport routes and towns from Picton, on the top of the South Island, to the second city of Christchurch. Another NH90 helicopter and other aircraft were on standby for other tasks, including conducting an aerial survey of areas in the Kaikoura region, which suffered the brunt of the earthquake, Webb said in a statement. A New Zealand Police spokesperson told Xinhua that emergency services had no information on how many, if any, overseas travellers were in Kaikoura when the quake struck. "We don't have any information on specific individuals/groups who are in Kaikoura, but can confirm that Kaikoura is currently not accessible by road - so everyone there is stuck - locals and tourists alike," the spokesperson said. "Government agencies are working together to provide support to people affected by the quake, including those in Kaikoura." Prime Minister John Key and Acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said it was impossible to rule out further fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two, but of course there are isolated parts of the country in which we don't have perfect eyes on so we can't be 100 percent sure, but we're not aware of any that we're not reporting," said Key. "We don't have any indications at this point to believe that will rise, but we obviously can't rule that out because what's going to happen now as we have daylight is we can do a proper assessment. Communities will obviously go out and reach out to their neighbors and their friends and their workmates to get a sense of the damage and making sure people get support." Structural engineers were also checking buildings in the capital, Wellington, where the quake was felt strongly. The quake was centered 15 km northeast of Culverden, on the east of the South Island, and struck at 12:02 a.m. on Monday, according to the government's GeoNet monitoring service. The quake was 15 km deep and was felt widely throughout New Zealand. It is being followed by many aftershocks, the largest of them a magnitude of 6.2. The Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) issued a tsunami warning along most of the country's eastern coasts after the initial earthquake and urged residents to move to higher ground. The first tsunami waves had arrived, but it was too early to know what damage or casualties there might have been, said a statement from the MCDEM. "Further waves should be expected and may be larger or more dangerous," it said. The tsunami warning was later downgraded to a marine and beach threat, but the MCDEM still urged people to stay off beaches, stay out of the water, and not go sightseeing. New Zealand is frequently rattled by earthquakes, most of which do no damage and cause no injuries, but Monday's quake brought back memories of the 6.3-magnitude quake which killed 185 people in Christchurch in February 2011. WELLINGTON, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has called off talks in Argentina this week as his government deals with the aftermath of a deadly earthquake. Key said on Monday that he had postponed a trip to Buenos Aires Tuesday for a series of meetings aimed at strengthening New Zealand's trade, economic and political ties with South America. However, he would attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Peru on Nov. 19-20 if circumstances permitted. At least two people were killed when a 7.5-magnitude quake centered on the northeast of the South Island rocked much of New Zealand just after midnight Monday. It has been followed by hundreds of aftershocks. "The situation is still unfolding and we don't yet know the full extent of the damage," Key said in a statement. "I believe it is better that I remain in New Zealand in the coming days to offer my assistance and support until we have a better understanding of the event's full impact," he said. "My officials have conveyed our apologies to the Argentine government and I intend to call President Mauricio Macri in the next few days," Key said. The decision on whether the trip to APEC would go ahead would be made later this week. CANBERRA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Beef and live cattle represent Australia's biggest agricultural exports for the first time, a report has found. The report, released by the Rural Bank on Monday, revealed that beef and live cattle exports were worth 8.6 billion U.S. dollars of Australia's total agricultural exports of 34.7 billion U.S. dollars in the financial year ending in 2016. It marks the first time that beef exports have been worth more to the Australian economy than crop products, which were worth 7.7 billion U.S. dollars. The growth of the agricultural export market, up from 33.4 billion U.S. dollars in the financial year ending 2015, came despite widespread drought throughout Australia causing downturns in cotton (26 percent), wool (9 percent) and beef (13 percent) export volumes. The Rural Bank report said that horticultural exports were the biggest improvers, up 30 percent in value to 1.58 billion U.S. dollars, led by the almond industry which has experienced a 337-percent in export growth in the past five years. A growing appetite for Australian goods in China, best exhibited by the growth in table grape exports from 11 million U.S. dollars in 2014/2015 to 77 million U.S. dollars to China alone in 2015/2016, was largely responsible for the strong agricultural year. Andrew Smith, general manager of agribusiness for the Rural Bank, said that there were even brighter prospects ahead as the Asian food boom escalated. "There remain further opportunities in Asia outside our major trading partners in Japan and China," Smith told News Limited on Monday. "Indonesia, Vietnam and India all have huge populations," Other industries which shone in 2015-16 were wine, up 10 percent to 1.6 billion U.S. dollars, seafood which rose 10 percent to 1.06 billion U.S. dollars and prepared foods which rose 42 percent to 2.56 billion U.S. dollars. China, the United States and Japan receive 39 percent of all Australian agri-food exports. CANBERRA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Australian authorities are trawling through Facebook and other social media to identify and prosecute tax cheats. Chris Jordan, Commissioner of the Australian Tax Office (ATO), said his organization had invested in data collection analysis of social media platforms to find cases of people's declared incomes not matching their lifestyles as part of a multi-faceted crackdown. The social media posts, in addition to private school records and immigration data, have unveiled dozens of cases of undeclared foreign income being used to pay private school fees or for overseas holidays, netting the ATO 7.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. "It's also a reality of the age we live in that there is more and more information publicly available, particularly through social media," Jordan said on Monday. "Of course, we'll never go looking for this information where people are doing the right thing and are open with us. We only go looking when something just doesn't add up." The ATO said that the gap between the tax that would be paid if all income was declared and the actual amount collected was 141.3 billion U.S. dollars in the financial year ending in 2016. "Lots of little amounts add up to a lot," Jordan told News Limited. "We need to continue to support those who do the right thing, and identify and take action against those who choose not to." Jordan gave an example of a married couple who declared total income of 105,000 U.S. dollars for the year but had three children at private schools at an estimated total annual cost of 56,000 U.S. dollars and had recently purchased five business-class flights for a holiday to the Whistler ski resort in Canada. "If our intelligence from immigration shows that the family of five flew business class three times in the last few years, and their social media posts show photos of the family on a ski holiday in Whistler, this will prompt us to contact them to ask more questions," Jordan said. "People say 'well how do you know about that?' They can't dispute it because the kids are at that school and a lot of it is public information." KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia and Singapore are likely to sign an official bilateral agreement on the much anticipated high speed rail project linking the two countries in December, local media reported Monday. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong are expected to witness the signing of the legally binding agreement during their annual talks early next month, the New Straits Times reported. The signing of the agreement would pave the way for construction to start in 2018, the report said. Malaysia and Singapore had said they were targeting operations by 2026. The two countries inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in July for further negotiations on the details of the project, which would cut the traveling time between the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur and the city state to 90 minutes. The MoU captures key points of agreement between the two countries on the project such as the details on technical parameter, commercial model as well as custom, immigration, quarantine (CIQ) clearance, safety and security matters, regulatory framework and project management. Railway companies from China, Japan and Europe have long expressed interests in this major infrastructure project. by Chen Jin, Lin Huifen CHISINAU, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Socialist candidate Igor Dodon led his rightist rival Maia Sandu by over 5 percentage points in Moldova's presidential runoff on Sunday, after 99.47 percent of the votes were counted. Dodon, leader of the Socialist Party, picked up 52.57 percent of the votes, while the common right-wing candidate Sandu got 47.43 percent of the ballots, according to latest data of the Central Election Commission. Local analysts believe Dodon's victory is already guaranteed, though there are still ballots to be counted. "I promise I will be President for everyone, for those who see themselves as right-wing and for those who see themselves as left-wing, for those who want EU integration and for those who want close relations with Russia," the 41-year-old main opposition leader told a press conference after midnight, stressing that he had realized the responsibility he would bear as head of state. The Socialist leader also addressed Moldovans living abroad, promising to take into account the problems they face. Earlier, the rival Sandu, leader of the Action and Solidarity Party, told the media soon after the closing of polls that the runoff was organized badly, there weren't enough ballots at some polling stations and many people were unable to vote. The Action and Solidarity Party is a party outside the parliament founded by 44-year-old Sandu after leaving her post as education minister last year. Sandu complained that her team had earlier asked for setting up additional polling stations for Moldovan residents abroad, but their requests were ignored., Sandu was echoed by his contender Dodon, who also criticized the way in which the elections were organized. "In Europe, Russia and Transnistria (a breakaway region of Moldova), thousands of people were forced to go home without voting as there were insufficient polling stations and a shortage of ballots," said the Socialist leader. "I have repeatedly warned the Central Election Commission of the need to open an additional number of polling stations where the diaspora is widely represented, namely the Russian Federation. They did not," Dodon added. "Now the CEC and other institutions will have to answer for it," he stressed. Moldova held the presidential runoff on Sunday, as none of the nine candidates competing in the presidential race received an absolute majority of the votes (50 percent, plus one vote) in the first round of direct presidential elections on Oct. 30, a change from the past 16 years during which the head of state was indirectly elected by the parliament. The voter turnout at the runoff, which ended at 9:00 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) in the country, was over 53 percent, some 5 percent more than that at the first round two weeks ago. The presidential elections are generally viewed in the country as a battle between pro-Russian and pro-EU camps. Landlocked between Romania and Ukraine, the former Soviet republic is still shrouded in the shadow of a corruption scandal in which a total of 1 billion U.S. dollars, or around 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), disappeared from its banking system. The scandal sparked large-scale protests last year, eroding the confidence in pro-European politicians that have led the country since 2009 and has partially contributed to the Socialists' gain in popularity. SYDNEY, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- The China Chamber of Commerce in Australia is looking to build on the steady growth and achievements of its members' Australian investments for the past decade, including expanding their reach to all parts of the country and involving more local businesses in its network. The chamber's chairman, Hu Shanjun, who is also general manager and country head of Australia, Bank of China, said Chinese investment as seen through the chamber members' work has proven to be a "win-win" situation. "We've steadily grown bigger, with more members, most of which are Chinese businesses," said Hu, who was speaking in an interview with Xinhua, together with other leading representatives from a number of chamber members, at Bank of China's Sydney headquarters. "We encompass a wide range of industries and sectors, from the financial sector, to aviation, agriculture, steel and mining." The China Chamber of Commerce in Australia is marking its 10th anniversary this year, with major celebrations for the milestone lined up at The Westin Sydney on Nov 15. The non-profit organization has grown to include 289 members across New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland. By the end of September, the chamber's Sydney branch had 127 members and its Melbourne branch had 57. All its members form a major part of Chinese investment in Australia, which hit 74.9 billion Australian dollars in 2015, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The organization aims to provide services that include helping to protect the legal rights of its members as well as promoting the development of bilateral trade and economic exchanges. It also serves as a bridge between China and Australia to facilitate the business development of its members as a major role. "Next year, firstly, we'll be looking at expanding our work to all states beyond the four that we currently have presence in, to the rest of the country, to grow our role and investment. That includes South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory," Hu said. "Secondly, we'll definitely be looking at including more Australian companies, Australian members. There's a lot of potential in that. Most of our members are Chinese companies now. But I've actually spoken to a number of Australian industry players and businesses, such as those from the financial sector, and they've expressed keen interest in joining us and playing a role." That will certainly build on the work of the chamber so far, Hu said. "Our businesses have helped with a lot of jobs here, it's contributed a lot to the economy, in terms of taxes and beyond. We've also spent much time and made a lot of effort to contribute to society, including corporate social responsibility, facilities, public welfare and education projects," he said. Other chamber members similarly highlighted the contributions of their association to the Australian economy, as well as the benefits and rewarding experience they reaped from doing business in the country. The chamber's deputy chairman, Wang Ji, the president of resources and minerals assets development company Sino Mining Australia Pty Ltd, a member of leading global metals and minerals conglomerate China Minmetals Corporation now possessing a vertically integrated, trade-based and resource-backed production chain, cited one prominent case of "saving" a beleaguered Australian company. "Following the acquisition of the majority of Oz Minerals by China Minmetals, carried out just about a year after the 2008 financial crisis, a number of measures were rolled out to help the new Minerals and Metals Group deal with the transition and changes in the sector. In a way, that significantly helped the troubled Oz Minerals, the company and its staff," Wang said. Leo Liu, general manager of CCIC Australia, which focuses on services of accreditation, inspection and testing of Australian exports to China, said his work actually involves helping to keep both the Chinese and Australian sides "happy." "Local companies that approach us for help, mostly small- and medium-sized, and industrial associations such as Wine Australia and Dairy Australia, expressed their concerns particularly in registration and certification to get their products to Chinese consumers," Liu said. "For example, about two years ago, some Australian grape batches exported to China were found to contain pests during routine inspections. The head of the relevant association came to us for help. We gave them advice and actually helped them resolve the problem. We referred their problems to related Chinese authorities for verification so that their exports could be resumed, after measures were taken to ensure the quality and safety of their products. "We are familiar with the standards and we can help both sides communicate effectively so that business can be conducted successfully. We are now upgrading a traceability system to trace the origin of Australian exports so that a better channel can be built to facilitate Sino-Australia trade," Liu said. Members also lauded the positive Australian investment environment and spoke highly of its transparency. Zhang Baocai, who chairs coal mining giant Yancoal Australia's executive committee, said Australia boasts a developed economic environment where businesses are protected by a sound legal system. "It's safe to invest here. We've been here for more than 10 years and overall, for a Chinese company to be here, we've learned and benefited a lot in terms of the legal framework, management, human resources and other areas," Zhang said. He also allayed recent fears that Chinese companies such as Yancoal might gain too much control of Australian assets or resources. "We're operating a market-driven enterprise in line with global economic forces," Zhang said. "Some mistakenly believe, for instance, that we corner the resources and direct them back home. But our main markets include Japan, South Korea and India. "It's totally transparent and it's all part of a positive experience that we get from doing business here. All of that is facilitated by important two-way exchanges and open communication." Hu, of Bank of China, believed the China Chamber of Commerce in Australia, from its initial stages to the present, has done a lot of work and put in a lot of effort to build China-Australia, people-to-people links. "We'll certainly continue to do all of that going forward, to play an active role and continue contributing." News Story not available This story has been published on: 2022-11-02. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to Latin America (LatAm) is expected to improve the all-round cooperative partnership and usher in a new era of bilateral relations. Xi will pay state visits to Ecuador, Peru and Chile from Nov. 17 to Nov. 23, and attend the 24th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting from Nov. 19 to 20 in Lima, Peru. This will be Xi's third visit to Latin America since he took the presidency in March 2013, and the visit to Ecuador will be the first since diplomatic relations between the two countries began in 1980. The visit shows that China and LatAm are striving for win-win cooperation and common development under the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit and mutual learning. During Xi's visit, China will discuss free trade arrangements and cooperation in e-commerce, production capacity, industrial parks and infrastructure. At present, affected by a weaker global market and the falling prices of commodities, LatAm needs capital and technology to improve its manufacturing capabilities, reduce its dependence on the export of raw materials and boost economic transformation. As China has cost-effective equipment, and LatAm needs infrastructure and industrial upgrading, Xi's visit comes at a time when there are ample opportunities to expand the current relationship. In fact, China-LatAm ties have been improving. Back in July 2014, Xi and leaders from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) announced the establishment of the China-CELAC Forum. In January 2015, China and the CELAC inked a five-year cooperation plan at the first ministerial meeting of the cooperation forum in Beijing. The cooperation forum marked a new era of mutual benefit and common development and improved bilateral cooperation in various fields. In the political sphere, ties have been propelled forward by the exchanges of high-level visits. Peru, the first country in the LatAm region to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with China, will be Xi's second leg of the visit. Xi's visit to Peru comes hot on the heels of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's state visit to China in September, which was his first state visit since he assumed the presidency. Such frequent high-level visits are sure to consolidate traditional friendship and pave the way for future cooperation. Chile, the last leg of Xi's visit, has always led relations with China. It was the first South American nation to forge diplomatic ties with China, the first LatAm country that signed a bilateral accord with China on China's membership to the World Trade Organization and signed a free trade agreement with China. In the economic and trade sector, trade volume between China and LatAm has risen more than twenty-fold during the past decade to hit 236.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. Currently, China is the second largest trade partner and third largest investment source country of LatAm, while LatAm is China's seventh largest trade partner. As an emerging economy and the largest developing country in the world, China has always stood with developing countries and performed its due responsibilities commensurate with its status as a global economic power. China provided cash support of two million dollars and humanitarian aid worth 9.2 million dollars to Ecuador after a fatal earthquake killed 668 people, injured 4,859 and displaced around 80,000 in April. Furthermore, China provided financial and technical support to help LatAm countries bridge the infrastructure deficit. Thanks to China's financial support, the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, the largest hydroelectric plant ever constructed by a Chinese company, in northeast Ecuador, is expected to generate 1,500 megawatts of energy and meet 30 percent of Ecuador's demand. The plant, along with others built by Chinese companies, will help Ecuador transform from a power-hungry country into a clean energy exporter and greatly contribute to the country's economic development. Within the framework of the China-CELAC Forum, cooperation has also flourished in other areas like education, people-to-people exchanges and culture. China promised LatAm and Caribbean countries 6,000 government scholarships within five years from 2014. In addition, various cultural activities have been run in China and LatAm to boost mutual understanding and consolidate the basis for a lasting friendship. Moreover, 2016 is the "Year of Cultural Exchanges" between China and the region. It is believed that Xi's visit will consolidate the traditional friendship, promote common development and build a community of shared destiny between China and LatAm. TOKYO, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Japan's economy grew an annualized 2.2 percent in real terms in the July-September quarter, expanding for the third consecutive quarter, the government said on Monday. The growth, partly attributed to an export recovery, came in stronger than the average market expectations for an annualized 0.8 percent expansion, according to data issued by Japan's Cabinet Office. Analysts here, however, are generally concerned about the difficulty Japanese economy is facing, due to weak domestic demands and the stronger yen, as well as the uncertainty of global economic outlook following Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election. Japan's exports in the July-September quarter increased 2.0 percent, following a 1.5 percent fall in the April-June period. The imports, however, were down 0.6 percent in the recording period. Private consumption, which accounts for roughly 60 percent of GDP, posted a modest 0.1 percent growth in real terms, unchanged from the second quarter. Capital expenditure, another key component of GDP, was almost flat, reflecting worries about the global outlook and the stronger yen among Japanese companies, despite efforts of the government and the central bank to encourage them to invest more. In nominal terms, the economy expanded an annualized 0.8 percent compared to the previous quarter. DHAKA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will attend the High-Level Segment of the twenty-second session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to be held in Morocco on Nov. 15-16. According to a statement of the Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs received here Monday, King Mohammed VI of Morocco has especially invited Bangladeshi prime minister for this event. Hasina will be accompanied by a high profile delegation comprising minister of Water Resources, minister of Environment & Forests and minister for Foreign Affairs, as well as high officials of the government, it said. In her national statement at the Marrakech Summit, Bangladeshi prime minster is expected to re-emphasize Bangladesh's resolve and determination in this regard, highlighting the initiatives and measures undertaken by the government in tackling the menaces of climate change, according to the statement. She is expected to return to Dhaka on Nov. 16. . Photo taken on Nov. 14, 2016 (local time) shows a living room of a house in Wellington, New Zealand. A major earthquake rocked South Island of New Zealand in the wee hours of Monday, followed by a series of strong aftershocks and a tsunami warning. (Xinhua) KAIKOURA, New Zealand, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Prime Minister John Key has described scenes of "utter devastation" around the tourist town of Kaikoura and nearby areas after a deadly earthquake rocked much of New Zealand early Monday. Emergency services were trying to restore power and water supply, and reopen communications and transport to Kaikoura, on the northeast coast of the South Island. Roads into the town were blocked by landslides after the 7.5-magnitude quake hit just after midnight. Medical rescue helicopters and the air force planes were flying into Kaikoura, a popular tourist destination famed for its coastal scenery and whale-watching activities. Police confirmed the two deaths, saying emergency services were still working at the scenes. One fatality occurred at a property at Mount Lyford, north of Christchurch, on the east of the South Island, and the other at a reported collapsed property in Kaikoura. Meanwhile, a dam on the Clarence River, just north of Kaikoura, breached on Monday, releasing a "large wall of water." Local residents were urged to move to higher ground after a wall of water was sweeping down the river, breaking through the earthquake debris, Radio New Zealand reported. State-owned television network TVNZ reported about 1,200 tourists were stranded in Kaikoura and the government was looking at ways to get them out. However, a New Zealand Police spokesperson told Xinhua that emergency services had no information on how many overseas travellers were in Kaikoura when the quake struck. "We don't have any information on specific individuals/groups who are in Kaikoura, but can confirm that Kaikoura is currently not accessible by road - so everyone there is stuck - locals and tourists alike," the spokesperson said. "Government agencies are working together to provide support to people affected by the quake, including those in Kaikoura." According to the Chinese consulate general in Christchurch, the first batch of six Chinese tourists has been airlifted from Kaikoura to the country's second largest city. "Altogether 21 Chinese tourists, including one slightly injured in the head, have been found trapped in Kaikoura so far, and they are all safe now," Consulate-General Jin Zhijian said. TVNZ showed footage of Prime Minister John Key and Acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee surveying the damage to Kaikoura from an air force helicopter. "It's just utter devastation, I just don't know ... that's months of work," Key told Brownlee and pilots. He hoped there were no cars stuck underneath the heavy rockfalls. "It's lucky it was midnight," said Key. Key and Brownlee estimated the clean-up would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and clearing the debris and blocked roads could take months. The Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) said local state of emergency had been declared in Kaikoura and the neighboring Hurunui district. "Civil Defence and Emergency Management groups across the country are sending people to the region to help. Search and rescue are on the ground and (the New Zealand Defence Force) is doing an aerial inspection so we can get a full picture of the help that is needed," MCDEM management director Sarah Stuart-Black said in a statement. The St John ambulance service said it had two fully crewed ambulances operating in Kaikoura, despite earthquake damage to the Kaikoura Ambulance Station. Additional paramedics and other ambulance officers had been transported into the area by helicopter, said the service. The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said it had mobilized at least three aircraft to support the government's response to the severe quake. Key and Brownlee said in a televised press conference earlier Monday that it was impossible to rule out further fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two, but of course there are isolated parts of the country in which we don't have perfect eyes on so we can't be 100 percent sure, but we're not aware of any that we're not reporting," said Key. Structural engineers were also checking buildings in the capital, Wellington, where the quake was felt strongly. The quake was centered 15 km northeast of Culverden, on the east of the South Island, and struck at 12:02 a.m. on Monday, according to the government's GeoNet monitoring service. It is being followed by many aftershocks, the largest of them a magnitude of 6.3. GeoNet scientist Sara McBride said the quake was the largest recorded in New Zealand since a magnitude 7.8 quake in the Dusky Sound, at the top of the South Island, in 2009. "We can say one thing with certainty: there will be more earthquakes to come in this area," McBride said in a statement. "It looks like we've got two separate but related quakes going on. Our reports indicate that the combination of these two quakes lasted two minutes, with the most severe shaking at around 50 seconds. It was widely felt throughout both the North and South Islands. It looks like one was a strike-slip and the other was a thrust fault." A tsunami warning from Wellington, on the North Island, to Banks Peninsula, on the east of the South Island, was lifted later Monday afternoon, said the MCDEM. New Zealand is frequently rattled by earthquakes, most of which do no damage and cause no injuries, but Monday's tremor brought back memories of the 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 185 people in Christchurch in February 2011. SYDNEY, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China Development Bank Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. and Australia's Fortescue Metals Group have entered into a 473-million-U.S.-dollar agreement to fund the ongoing construction of eight iron ore vessels. The finance lease facility will fund 85 percent of Fortescue's construction costs over 12 years, the largest direct funding arrangement provided by a major Chinese financier for a non-Chinese company in Australia ,with options for lease extension or early payment. "This is a ground breaking financing transaction which builds and broadens Fortescue's highly valued relationships with China through our first direct funding arrangement with a major Chinese leasing company," Fortescue chief executive Nev Power said in a statement on Monday. The world's fourth largest iron ore exporter has been ramping up production while rivals BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have been scaling back, benefiting from higher spot iron ore prices to pay down debt faster than expected. The first of eight Very Large Ore Carriers (VLOC) being built at China's Jiangsu Yangzijiang and Guangzhou Shipbuilding International shipyard is expected to be delivered by months end, with remainder through to mid -2018. Once operational, the fleet will provide 12 percent of Fortescue's shipping requirements while improving load rates, efficiencies and reduce operating costs, the company said. RIYADH, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Education Ministry has warned international schools from marking non-Islamic occasions, such as Christmas and New Year, Al Eqtisadiya local e-news reported on Monday. The ban includes forbidding those schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them. The ministry directed all schools to stick to the academic calendars for exams and holidays. The ministry warned of legal steps against violated schools that could reach to termination of the license. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-conservative state that follows Islamic rules in all walks of life. SYDNEY, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- German discount supermarket giant Aldi will leverage its Australian suppliers as it looks to begin retail operations in China via e-commerce beginning mid next year. Australia exports over 80 percent of produce due to increasing demand for high quality and clean goods in the emergent Asian middle class, driven primarily from China. Following detailed feasibility studies, Aldi on Monday announced it would begin offering selected non-chilled grocery and wine products sourced from its Australian suppliers in the second quarter 2017 via an e-commerce retail platform. The move is a bid to gain a foothold in the Chinese market before a wider Asian expansion. "We know there is a strong demand among Chinese consumers for Australian manufactured products and our goal is to provide a competitively priced alternative for shoppers seeking quality groceries," an Aldi spokesperson told Xinhua in a statement on Monday. "We believe our unique offer of high-quality Australian products at unbeatable prices will be an attractive proposition for Chinese consumers." Aldi has had a rapid expansion across Australia since 2001, taking a significant market share from the duopoly Woolworths and Wesfarmers owned Coles, allowing the German giant to gain and develop key relationships in the nation's agriculture industry. "Our growth across the country has provided increased business for these suppliers, allowing them to invest this back into their own operations and contributing to their success," the spokesperson said. "We look forward to further expanding these relationships as we develop further opportunities in Asia." URUMQI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are working with local private firms to help improve the lives of the region's poor. To date, 1,600 companies have provided 550 million yuan (80 million U.S. dollars) in funding to poverty alleviation projects; generated 6,800 jobs; and donated 6 million yuan, according to figures released Monday by the region's federation of industry and commerce. The federation and the regional poverty alleviation office launched a campaign in March, encouraging local companies and chambers of commerce to sign contracts with villages to help with poverty alleviation. The companies have opened factories, created jobs and promoted trade in impoverished areas. Jueit Imin, chairman with the federation, said thanks to the participation of firms these villages are closer to being lifted out of poverty. "Mini Jack Ma" Fan Xiaoqin (web photo) Jack Ma, China's second richest man, will fund the education of his eight-year-old doppelganger, according to a statement from e-commerce giant Alibaba released Sunday. The boy, Fan Xiaoqin, earned the nickname "mini Jack Ma" when photos of him showing a striking resemblance to the Alibaba founder were posted online last year. Ma was impressed with the look-alike. Younger Jack Ma (Left) (web photo) "At first glance, I thought it was a photo of me when I was little," he wrote in a post on Sina Weibo last year. "I thought I was looking into a mirror." "The only difference between us is the way we fastened our buttons," he added. The photos and video of little Fan, who lives in Yongfeng County in east China's Jiangxi Province, were originally taken and posted online by a fellow villager in the winter of 2014. The boy soon became a cyber-celebrity and his plight has moved many. Born into a poor family, the child and his elder brother have never attended school. His mother suffers from polio and lost an eye after getting hit by a buffalo. His 83-year-old grandmother has dementia. His father, 59, the family's sole breadwinner, lost a leg in an accident. "Mini Jack Ma" Fan Xiaoqin (web photo) The boy's story circulated online once again during this year's Singles' Day. The annual online shopping event on Nov. 11 was first launched by Alibaba, and this year, the company's sales topped 120 billion yuan (17.6 billion U.S. dollars). Social media users remembered Fan and his family, and urged Ma to help the child. Ma noticed the buzz and reportedly announced his decision within the company to fund the boy's education, from primary school to college. Ma, 52, is a rags-to-riches story. He worked as an English teacher and translator early in his career, and today, with an estimated wealth of 28.2 billion U.S. dollars, ranks second on the 2016 Forbes list of China's 400 richest. Younger Jack Ma (Left) (web photo) "[Fan's situation] is not a joke. It is a serious fact," said the Alibaba statement. "There are still many poor people in the country. The problem of growth and education of China's rural and left-behind children is alarming," it said. By the end of 2015, China still had 55.75 million people living in poverty. About 40 million children live in impoverished areas nationwide. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the country also has 9.02 million left-behind rural children whose parents are migrant workers, or who have one migrant-worker parent and another incapable of guardianship. "To fund one child's education is easy, but in order to help millions of poor children, more resources need to be used," said the Alibaba statement. More than 700 million Chinese people have been raised from poverty over the past three decades. China vows to lift all of its poor out of poverty by 2020. The Chinese government assigned poverty relief funds totaling 189.84 billion yuan from 2011 to 2015, and will allocate more in the coming five years, according to a white paper published by the State Council Information Office. BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi security forces on Monday killed six suicide bombers who tried to carry out attacks in a town near the holy Shiite city of Karbala in central Iraq, leaving six people killed, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. The attack occurred in the morning in the town of Ain al-Tamur, some 80 m west of Karbala, when the security forces spotted six suicide bombers and clashed with them before reaching their targets, killing five of them, Brigadier General Saad Maan said in a press release. The troops chased the sixth suicide bomber and surrounded him after he entered a house in the town, prompting the attacker to detonate his explosive vest inside, Maan said. Six civilians were also killed and six others wounded by the clashes and explosions, Maan added. The attacks occurred as the Shiite Muslims are preparing to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, one of the Shiites' twelve most revered Imams, who was killed in 680 AD. and buried in Karbala, some 110 km south of Baghdad. The Shiite Muslims had already observed the death day of Imam Hussein on October 12, in a ritual named Ashura Day, but they usually continue their mourning till the ritual of al-Arbaeen, or 40 days after the Imam's death which will take place on November 21. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Islamic State (IS) militant group, in most cases, is responsible for deadly attacks against Shiite Muslims who perform communal rituals in Iraq, in an attempt to provoke sectarian strife in the violence-shattered country. Terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts killed 1,792 Iraqis and wounded 1,358 others in October across Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said. Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S., which invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China and New Zealand inked an agreement on Monday to mutually recognize organic food with official certification labels to facilitate organic food development and trade. China's Certification and Accreditation Administration and New Zealand's Ministry of Primary Industries agreed to mutually recognize each other's certifications for organic food imports. This is the first mutual recognition agreement for organic food certification China has signed with a foreign country. China mainly exports coffee, frozen vegetables, and pet food to New Zealand and imports dairy products, meat and fruit from the country. Under the agreement, all organic food should be marked with Chinese certification labels and codes. Official data showed that China sold organic food worth 60 billion yuan (8.78 billion U.S. dollars) last year. China is the fourth largest destination for New Zealand's organic food exports. SEOUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of smartphones, chips and TVs, said Monday that it had agreed to buy Harman International Industries, the U.S.-based auto parts supplier, for 8 billion U.S. dollars in cash. The South Korean company said in a statement that Harman shares were valued at 112 U.S. dollars apiece, 28 percent higher than the closing price in New York on Friday. It is the largest acquisition by a local company of a foreign firm in history, indicating Samsung's push to become one of global auto parts leaders. Harman is the market leader in connected car and audio systems, including embedded infotainment, telematics, connected safety and over-the-air solutions. It generated 700 million U.S. dollars in operating profit on revenue of 7 billion dollars in the past 12 months. Samsung expects the connected car solutions market to expand from 45 billion dollars in 2015 to around 100 billion dollars in 2025. "Harman perfectly complements Samsung in terms of technologies, products and solutions, and joining forces is a natural extension of the automotive strategy we have been pursuing for some time," said Kwon Oh-hyun, vice chairman and chief executive of Samsung Electronics. "As a tier-1 automotive supplier with deep customer relationships, strong brands, leading technology and a recognized portfolio of best-in-class products, Harman immediately establishes a strong foundation for Samsung to grow our automotive platform," Kwon added. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China will achieve major progress in the steel sector's structural overhaul by 2020 and "fundamentally bail out" the industry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Monday. China plans to reduce crude steel output by 100 million tonnes to 150 million tonnes by 2020 and ease the uneven supply-demand situation in the sector, according to the ministry's 2016-2020 plan on upgrading the steel sector. The whole sector will be modernized and its energy consumption and pollutant emissions will be within the nation standard by 2020, said the plan. The ministry stressed the central government's resolution to continue to shed unnecessary production capacity in the steel sector, and underscored that it will not allow the addition of new steel capacity and said any investment that would increase steel capacity should stop. Intelligent and green manufacturing in the steel sector will be encouraged, as well as mergers and acquisitions, according to the plan. China's over-supplied steel sector experienced years of plunging prices and factory shutdowns due to the sluggish economy. However, with encouragement from the upward trend of prices from the beginning of this year, many steel mills are resuming production. The central government reiterated that cutting overcapacity is high on its reform agenda as excess capacity in sectors such as steel and coal has weighed on the country's overall economic performance. China has shut down steel plants with total capacity of over 90 million tonnes over the past five years. The National Development and Reform Commission said Friday that the steel industry had completed its annual target of reducing production capacity by 45 million tonnes by the end of October. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday discussed China-U.S. relations with Donald Trump in a telephone conversation. Xi congratulated Trump on his election as U.S. president and expressed his willingness to work with him. Since the two countries established formal ties 37 years ago, bilateral relations have been continuously progressing, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples and promoting world and regional peace, stability and prosperity, Xi said. Facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the two countries, he said. As China-U.S. cooperation faces important opportunities and has huge potential, the two countries need to strengthen coordination, advance their respective economic development and global economic growth and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples and promote the smooth development of China-U.S. relations, said the Chinese president. As the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country respectively and as the top two economies of the world, there are many things in which China and the United States can and should cooperate, Xi said. "I attach great importance to China-U.S. relations and am ready to work with the U.S. side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world," he told Trump. For his part, Trump thanked Xi for the congratulations and said that he agreed with Xi on his views about U.S.-China relations. China is a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects, said Trump. The United States and China can achieve win-win results featuring mutual benefits, he added. Trump voiced his readiness to work with Xi to strengthen U.S.-China cooperation and expressed his belief that U.S.-China relations will witness even greater development. Xi and Trump also agreed to maintain close contact, establish a good working relationship and meet at an early date to exchange views on bilateral ties and other issues of common concern. HANOI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's cashew exports are expected to reach a record high of 3 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, with kernel accounting for 2.8 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade on Monday. In the first 10 month of this year, the country exported 290,000 tons of cashew worth 2.32 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 5.5 percent in volume and 16.4 percent in value, said the ministry. Vietnam currently accounts for half of the world's cashew exports, and has been the leading exporter for the last 10 years. Its cashew products are exported to 80 countries and regions, with the United States, Europe, and China being the main markets. However, Nguyen Duc Thanh, chairman of the Vietnam Cashew Association said on the state-run news agency VNA that the Vietnamese cashew industry is facing high risk due to its massive reliance on imported raw materials, which also makes it hard for processors and exporters to control quality or food safety and hygiene. During the 2013-2016 period, demand for raw nut imports doubled, Thanh said, adding that the quality of raw cashew imported from Africa had been lower this year compared to last, affecting Vietnamese exporters. The insider proposed local companies to have a strategy on developing raw material sources, and be more careful about importing raw nuts. Yang Jianmin's wagon gallops on the National Highway 318 in Tingri County. (Xinhua/Guo Qiuda) Yang Jianmin runs a little store in the Tibetan town Zhaxizom, only 50 kilometers away from the world's highest peak Mount Qomolangma. He has to go to the nearest city Xigaze for stockpile. Recently his store has started to run the express business. This September, Yang was approached by a logistic company to establish an express post. Knowing the new business would provide convenience for his fellow town people, Yang agreed to open the express service, maybe the highest express post of the world. Every Tuesday, Yang fetches parcels from the county seat Tingri. Although the way to Zhaxizom is rigged by mountains and long distance, online shopping is no new practice there. However, what has bothered the town people is the glacial speed of logistics. Yang's son helps unload cargo in front of the express post. (Xinhua/Liu Dongjun) It used to take 15 to 20 days for parcels to be sent to Tingri, where the town people had to travel 60 kilometers to collect parcels by themselves. Yang's express post solves this problem. On November 8 when Yang got a bunch of parcels to his post, Degyi Zhuoima hastened to get her pants booked online. It was her fifth time of the month to enjoy the service of the express post. "It now takes only half of the time than before to get the parcel, so I shop online much more frequently," Degyi says. She has showed her purchase records during the annual online shopping festival, Nov. 11, on her WeChat, a leading social networking platform in China. The convenience is also proved by Yang's postal record: It only takes nine days to dispatch a parcel from Guangzhou in south China to Zhaxizom. The view of Mount Qomolangma from Tingri County. (Xinhua/Liu Dongjun) Yang has to drive through 100 turnings on the mountain road which has a drop of 1,000 meters. Besides altitude sickness, the capricious weather conditions and frost storms add to the difficulty of his drive. Since September 27, when Yang's post delivered the first parcel, the express post has handled over 200 parcels. Online shopping is gradually changing people's life at the foot of Mount Qomolangma. "My daughter used to wear facials when she got here, which terrified some of the local kids," Yang says. Now many people know what it is, and other girls have also started to place orders. Yang Jianmin and his wife show the fresh fruits shipped from Xigaze. (Xinhua/Guo Qiuda) Yang's post has also become gospel for tourists and mountaineers: they mail their heavy luggage back home. Online shopping has become a new normal for Tibetans. According to the local authorities, the number of Internet users in Tibet had reached 1.639 million by March this year. An account statement of Alipay, a leading mobile payment service, shows that 83.3% of the payments in Tibet were conducted on mobile phones in 2015, topping the country for four years in a roll. MANILA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is open to support free trade deals, including the Chinese-led Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Monday. Leo Herrera-Lim Sr., a senior assistant of the DFA-Office of International Economic Relations made the remarks during the briefing in Malacanang, the presidential palace, of President Rodrigo Duterte's attendance in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru later this week. "I think for the Philippines and President Duterte, he's been open to anything that contributes well to the Philippine economy. So we are not closing the door on any economic integration or free trade because I think we understand that free trade by itself penetrates the greater population," he said when asked if Duterte is keen on joining the FTAAP being pushed by China. He said the only thing that Duterte would like to see is that any free trade agreement would not disadvantage any of the sectors in the country. During the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, APEC member economies pushed forward the process of the FTAAP by sketching out a historic roadmap. China has been pushing for the FTAAP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). "RCEP is still alive," Lim said. Duterte will join other 20 APEC leaders in the APEC Summit on Nov. 19-20. Colourful lantern boats are seen during the annual Water Festival in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Nov. 13, 2016. The 3-day Water Festival kicked off here on Sunday. (Xinhua/Zhang Yanfang) by Xue Lei, Nguon Sovan PHNOM PENH, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of people from rural Cambodia have traveled to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to enjoy the 3-day Water Festival, which began on Sunday. Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen as well as other notable figures and foreign diplomats watched the Water Festival boat races over the Tonle Sap River in front of the Royal Palace on Sunday afternoon. A total of 259 dragon boats with about 15,000 racers from across the kingdom have taken part in the competition over the distance of 1.7 km, according to the Boat Racing Technical Control Committee. The Water Festival is the biggest annual festival in the Southeast Asian nation. Besides viewing the regatta in the daytime, festival-goers can also enjoy processions of illuminated floats and fireworks over the river at nighttime. Visitors can also see trade exhibitions and concerts, which will be performed by the country's superstars and comedians. Phnom Penh Municipal Governor Pa Socheatvong said on Tuesday that around two million Cambodians, especially rural dwellers, are expected to flock to Phnom Penh for the festival. He said more than 10,000 security personnel have been deployed to ensure security and safety, as tankers, cargo trucks, and buses are banned from entering the capital during the event. Chhil Chhum, 70, a team minder of a boat from southern Kandal province, said his boat had 57 oarsmen, who had spent about 10 days to train together before joining the race. "Most of us are farmers and construction workers, so we don't have much time for training," he told Xinhua, adding that their participation was mainly aimed to preserve the traditional Water Festival. He said all boaters have been allowed to stay in makeshift shelters along the riverfront and provided a daily per diem of about 15,000 riel (3.75 U.S. dollars). Chheang Lang, a 29-year-old boat racer from southeastern Kampong Cham province, said the festival was an opportunity for the people in the provinces to see Phnom Penh. "This is the second time I have joined the race," he told Xinhua, adding that his boat had 72 crew members. "Our participation is only for fun because we trained just two weeks before participating in the competition." Lang said he is a construction worker and will return to work after the festival. Hang Nob, 65, a farmer from the western Pursat province, said she came to visit the event for the first time with her relatives. "Previously, I just heard from my neighbors that visiting the Water Festival was really fun," she told Xinhua. "Now, I have come to see it with my own eyes and I see that it is indeed really a happy event!" Another festival-goer, Tek Sam, 70, from southeastern Tboung Khmum province, said that he would regret it if he could not see the regatta with his own eyes. "I like boat racing very much. This is the third time I've been to Phnom Penh to enjoy the festival," he said, adding that he visited the event with his two nephews. The Water Festival is a traditional event that marks the end of the rainy season and the reversing course of the Tonle Sap River that connects the Tonle Sap Lake with the Mekong Rive. "The festival is seen as a thanksgiving to the Mekong River for providing the country with fertile land and abundant fish," the website said. "Boat racing marks the strength of the powerful Khmer marine forces during the ancient Khmer Empire." This year is the second celebration held in six years, following a tragedy on the final day of the 2010 festival in which 353 people were trampled to death or suffocated in a stampede on a bridge connecting the mainland to the Diamond Island. MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to play an active role in climate change with much stronger actions, while enhancing cooperation with related parties. The 22nd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) is being held in the Moroccan city of Marrakech. Participants in the meeting are expected to identify ways for a potential future coalition and adopt a declaration on health, environment and climate change. MUCH STRONGER ACTIONS China has set up an ambitious target to reach the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030, Xie Ji, a deputy chief of the Chinese delegation, said Thursday. "Many cities promised they can reach their peaking before 2030, and a few cities try to achieve the target around 2020," said Xie, adding that many industries, especially energy-intensive ones, were asked to control CO2 emissions and try to reach the peaking around 2020. Gou Haibo, another deputy chief of the Chinese delegation, said Wednesday that China would continue to uphold a development concept highlighting innovation, coordination, greenness, openness and sharing. He said that China would act positively and forcefully in maintaining the international mechanism, promoting international cooperation and combating climate change. CHINA-U.S. COOPERATION CONTINUES China's policies will not be affected by any external changes, Chen Zhihua, a member of the Chinese delegation, said Friday. "No matter what happens in the new U.S. government, China will continue to constructively participate in the international climate change process," Chen said. Chen was referring to concerns that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed to cancel the agreement during his campaign, takes office in January. "We still need to wait," Chen said, adding that now is not the right time to assess it. Even if the United States withdraws from the agreement, cooperation between China and the U.S. will continue, Chen said. "This is the attitude we hold toward the matter." Catherine Novelli, U.S. undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said the United States and China have an "incredible working relationship" on climate issues. "And I think it would portend well for leadership for the future," Novelli said. "I think everybody acknowledges that the momentum for Paris was generated by the agreement between the U.S. and China." Novelli also said her country would continue the existing cooperation with China after Trump takes office in January. COOPERATION WITH ALL PARTIES The World Bank would continue to be a strong partner of China, with the country's commitment and leadership on climate changes issues, Laura Tuck, vice president for sustainable development of the World Bank, said Friday. In an interview with Xinhua, Tuck hailed China's effort on climate issues, praising its impressive National Determined Contributions targets for 2030, which will take a variety of measures to achieve, among them the planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Tuck said the ETS China will be worth 50 billion U.S. dollars, the largest in the global range. "The scale of the ETS China would be an inspiration for the countries and it has the potential to change investment and consumption decisions made by individuals and that can lead to a much lower-carbon economy," said Tuck, adding that it could be a model. Meanwhile, members of the European Parliament on Friday urged the European Union and China to join forces at COP22. "In Paris, China and the EU played a key role of honest brokers among different 'camps' during negotiations. That contributed to the final conclusion of the ground-breaking agreement," said Jo Leinen, chair of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with China. The historic Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, has been ratified by 96 countries and the EU, and entered info force on Nov. 4. Under the agreement, nations have agreed to combat climate change and to unleash actions and investment toward a low-carbon, resilient and sustainable future. "In Marrakech, we will have to work on the implementation of the Paris Agreement. We shall also work to consolidate the trust between developed and developing countries," said Giovanni La Via, chair of the European Parliament's delegation to COP22. "China is expected to line up with the EU. These two global powers should assume their responsibility by forming a new coalition with the aim of fighting for a progressive global climate policy," Leinen said. RIYADH, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Saudi court has sentenced an Arab manager to one year in jail and 900 lashes for forcing an Asian worker to shave his beard in front of the employees, Okaz local newspaper reported on Monday. The manager threatened to suspend the worker if he did not heed the order, the report said, without giving details on the reasons behind the order. The court said its verdict was based on the psychological harms that befell the victim. Expat workforce is with high demands in Saudi Arabia, especially for harsh jobs with low demands among local jobseekers. Saudi Arabia's population grew by 2.4 percent to 31.52 million last year from 30.77 million in 2014, according to a report based on the Saudi Department of Statistics and Information published in February. The number of Saudis, who make up two-thirds of the population, increased to 21.1 million in 2015. The number of expats rose to 10.4 million, it added. ANKARA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu here on Sunday, with the two sides pledging further pushing forward bilateral strategic cooperation in economy, anti-terrorism and other fields. Wang is in Ankara for the first meeting of the mechanism for consultation between the Chinese and Turkish foreign ministers. Wang said the first meeting of the mechanism is intended to implement the important consensus reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Erdogan during their three meetings since last year, part of which is the agreement on a governmental cooperation committee mechanism at the foreign ministers' level. As two developing countries as well as two emerging economies, China and Turkey enjoy vast potential and large room for the development of bilateral relations, Wang said. The Chinese side attaches great importance to China-Turkey relations, and is willing to make a good use of the foreign ministers' consultation mechanism to strengthen strategic communication and policy coordination, to fully implement the important consensus reached between the two leaders, and to promote bilateral strategic cooperative relations, Wang said. He also expressed the hope that the two countries could bring their respective potential and advantage into full play through joint efforts to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and boost national and regional development. For his part, Cavusoglu said Turkey stands ready to further promote its relations with China in economy, security and other fields. "Turkey highly values relations with China and looks forward to further expanding trade and investment cooperation, pushing forward cooperation in major projects, and strengthening bilateral cooperation in humanistic fields including education, culture tourism," he said during a joint press conference with Wang after their first meeting under the consultation mechanism late Sunday. Both sides agreed to align China's Belt and Road Initiative with Turkey's "Middle Corridor" project, innovate ideas and methods for cooperation, put emphasis on major cooperation projects such as high speed railway construction, in a bid to realize common development. The two sides also agreed to deepen cooperation in security and anti-terrorism, build mutual political trust, and support each other in efforts of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and stability. Both sides agreed to solve hotspot regional issues by political means in safeguarding regional peace. VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- "Days of Heilongjiang Province," an event featuring forums, exhibitions and concerts, opened in Vladivostok on Monday. "Heilongjiang province has planned rich programs in Primorsky Territory, in areas including economy, culture, tourism, sports, education, medicine and science," said Heilongjiang Governor Lu Hao. Due to its special geographic location and history, cooperation with Russia has an important place in Heilongjiang. The province will continue to strengthen cooperation with Russia in various fields, Lu said. Governor of Primorsky Territory Vladimir Miklushevsky said Heilongjiang is a special foreign partners of Primorsky. "For Primorsky Territory, China is the main economic partner. Primorsky's trade volume with China exceeds 60 percent of its total annual volume," said Miklushevsky. HANOI, Nov.14 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam is one of the three countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) along with the Philippines and Indonesia to have the most migrant workers, said the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) on Monday. Some 500,000 Vietnamese labors are working in over 40 countries and regions worldwide, said the MoLISA at an international conference on informal laborers, migrant workers and healthcare issue in the ASEAN. The conference held Monday in Vietnam's central Thue Thien-Hue province, some 540 km south of capital Hanoi, drew participation of over 200 delegates from Cambodia, Laos, Germany, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, reported the state-run news agency VNA. Representatives at the conference discussed labor competitiveness, rights of laborers in the wave of labor mobility among ASEAN countries, risks and diseases of migrant workers, low-skilled labors in ASEAN among others. They came to a conclusion that in the coming time, workers should be further protected by using sample labor contracts with detailed terms in labor safety and hygiene for migrant workers, said VNA. WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. presidential election winner Donald Trump on Sunday told his supporters to stop harassing minorities in his first televised interview as president-elect. Trump said he was "saddened" by reports that incidents of harassment and intimidation of minorities had spiked since his election. "I hate to hear that. I am so saddened to hear that," Trump said when asked about the reports at the interview with the CBS's "60 Minutes," which was taped Friday and aired in full Sunday. Police across the country are investigating a wave of alleged hate crimes against Muslims, Hispanic Americans, black people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in the wake of the U.S. election. Attackers professing support for Trump have been accused of numerous attacks following his shock victory, including death threats, physical assaults and racist graffiti. Among the incident is the alleged robbery of a Muslim student at San Diego State University by two men who "made comments about President-elect Donald Trump and the Muslim community" before stealing her purse, rucksack and car. There were also many reports of attacks on women wearing hijabs and Islamic dress. Trump's election victory has sparked days of protests in several major cities nationwide, and analysts believe that the demonstrations may continue for some time. The "we reject the president-elect" chant echoed far and wide again in New York City Saturday, as thousands of angry New Yorkers protested against Trump's win. The protesters, mostly young people, gathered at Union Square in force and soon marched towards the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, residence and campaign headquarters of the real estate mogul and reality show star turned politician. The police force of the city was on high alert, barricading the entrance of Trump Tower and many storefronts. Protesters have also taken to the streets of Chicago, Miami, Denver, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Louisville, Kentucky, Baltimore and other cities. While most protests have been peaceful, there have been reports of violence and at least one shooting. A man was shot and injured during a protest march in the early morning hours of Saturday in the city of Portland, the U.S. state of Oregon, police said on Saturday. The police said in a news release that the victim was participating in the protest march when he was shot, and that he was continuing to recover from his non-life-threatening injuries. Analysts said the reason behind the widespread protests across the country is that Trump has elicited much controversy over the past year in one of the most controversial and nastiest presidential races. The question remains whether the protests will continue, fade out, or even turn violent in the days and weeks to come. "The protests against Trump will continue. Progressive forces are strongly opposed to Trump's agenda and will ferociously resist what he is doing. There is a risk that protests turn violent and exacerbate societal tensions," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A training course for UN peacekeeping officers organized by China's Ministry of National Defense (MND) started in Beijing Monday. The course enrolled 39 participants from 22 countries, including China, Sweden, Pakistan, New Zealand and Mexico. The two-week course will be in English, and include topics such as international law, human rights, UN peacekeeper conduct, and crisis management. Apart from learning basic theory and professional skills, the trainees will also take part in physical drills. This is the first time for the MND to organize the course for UN peacekeeping staff officers. The UN currently has over 1,800 military observers and staff officers working in 16 peacekeeping-mission areas, responsible for duties such as organizing, coordinating military peacekeeping operations, intelligence, communication, and training, including 93 from China. MOGADISHU, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A security officer was killed and two others wounded in a gun attack on a checkpoint in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday evening, police sources said. The sources said on Monday there was a gunfight after armed men raided the police checkpoint in Warta Nabada district. A local resident told Xinhua on Monday the armed gang shot security officers manning the checkpoint with rifles. "Heavy exchange of fire ensued thereafter. There was panic in the area and traffic was diverted to other roads," the resident said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Islamist group Al-Shabaab has carried out frequent attacks in the country, many of them in Mogadishu, in its insurgency against the government. Al-Shabaab has intensified its attacks as Somalia prepares for presidential election due on Nov. 30. Parliamentary elections are ongoing in various parts of the country. PARIS, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A collision between a school bus and a truck in Pas-de-Calais in northern France killed one person and seriously injured two others on Monday, local authorities said. The collision occurred at 7:45 am local time (0645 GMT) between Arras et Doullens in northern region of Pas-de Calais after a truck left the lane and smashed head-on with a school bus in the opposite direction, Pas-de-Calais prefecture said. The bus driver was killed and two others are in critical situation, it added. Carrying 12 pupils, the bus was en route to a local school in Bapaume, according to local reports. JAKARTA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Singapore's Premier Lee Hsien Loong held bilateral talks in Indonesia's Central Java capital of Semarang on Monday, discussing ways to further expand economic ties between the two nations. The meeting was held prior to the inauguration of the Indonesia-Singapore jointly-operated Kendal Industrial Park located in city of Kendal, western part of Semarang. President Widodo said in a joint press conference that Singapore is Indonesia's key partner in various sectors. He said the Kendal Industrial Park would represent "new icon" of bilateral relations between the two countries which would be increased further in the future. Scheduled to commence in 2020, initial operation of Kendal Industrial Park that covers 860 hectares, was expected to facilitate up to 200 trillion rupiah (about 14.9 billion U.S. dollars) of investments, opening up to 500,000 jobs. Singapore investment in Indonesia was recorded at 7.1 billion U.S. dollars in the first nine months this year, or 44 percent higher than in the same period last year. Meanwhile, the two leaders on Monday agreed to set up a business council to enhance business networking of the two countries. Premier Lee said the council will give an added-value to the partnership of the two countries, according to a statement. The two sides also inked four deals on hospitality and tourism, digital economy, and a smart city development plan. Rwanda's President Paul Kagame (Front R) and Tanzania's President John Pombe Magufuli (Front 2nd R) light the Flame of Remembrance during the 22nd anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, April 7, 2016. Rwanda on April 7, 2016 marked 22nd anniversary of the 1994 genocide in which more than one million people, mainly Tutsi and moderate Hutus, were killed. (Xinhua) KIGALI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda has called on the international community to apprehend and extradite genocide fugitives roaming freely in their respective countries. Richard Muhumuza, Rwanda Prosecutor General told reporters Sunday, that Rwanda Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit (GFTU) is pursuing more than 500 genocide suspects in hiding around the world. "We thank countries that have cooperated with Rwanda and already extradited notorious genocide suspects to the country, but we are looking forward for more fugitives brought to Rwanda to face justice," he said. "We call upon the international community to investigate, arrest and extradite, all other fugitives accused of genocide residing on their territories." Muhumuza's comments follow the extradition of two genocide suspects from Netherlands to Rwanda on Saturday evening. The extradition follows a Dutch court's ruling to deport Jean-Claude Iyamuremye and Jean-Baptiste Mugimba, for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the 1994 genocide. The National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) commended the Dutch government for supporting the cause for justice. Most of the suspects residing in Europe are in Belgium and France. In Africa, most fugitives are said to be hiding in neighboring DR Congo and Uganda, according to GFTU. "We are happy about the decision taken by Holland to seek for justice of genocide victims. We had been requesting for their extradition through normal channels, and finally it has happened. We call upon other countries to follow suit," said Jean-Damascene Bizimana, executive secretary of CNLG. He hailed foreign countries for trusting the Rwandan justice system to be able to handle genocide cases fairly. According to the Rwanda prosecution, the suspects extradited from Holland have been transferred to Kigali Central Prison where they will await trial before the specialized International Crimes Chamber of the High Court. Both Mugimba and Iyamuremye will be tried for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, murder as a crime against humanity and extermination as a crime against humanity committed in Kigali City. Mugimba was born on October 24, 1959 in then Cyambara, Gaturo Sector, Mutura Commune, Gisenyi Prefecture, Western Rwanda. During the 1994 Genocide, he lived in Nyakabanda Sector, Nyarugenge Commune in Kigali. He was previously employed by the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) and was Secretary General of the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic ("CDR"), an extremist Hutu political party. Iyamuremye was born on December 14, 1975, in the former Gatare cellule, Kicukiro sector, Kanombe commune of Kigali City. He is suspected of having been the leader of the "Interahamwe" militia in Kicukiro sector and a member of the Mouvement Revolutionnaire National Pour Development (MRND). Presently eleven people accused of committing genocide have been extradited from Uganda, DR Congo, Canada, U.S, Netherlands and ICTR to stand trial in Rwanda. The top fugitives who have eluded justice for nearly two decades now include Felicien Kabuga, the alleged chief financier of the Genocide; Protais Mpiranya, the former commandant of the notorious Presidential Guards, and former defence minister Augustin Bizimana. Liu Yunshan (R, front), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Satya Nadella in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 14, 2016. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin) BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Liu Yunshan, a senior leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), met with Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Satya Nadella here on Monday. Liu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said he hoped Microsoft would share its technology with China and contribute to cooperation between Chinese and U.S. businesses. Liu also called on the United States to work on cyber security with China with an open and inclusive attitude. Praising Internet development in China, Nadella said Microsoft benefits from cooperation with China, and will continue to work with the country to develop new products with world class standards and security. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- In his role as chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping has signed an order to confer a posthumous honorary title on a fighter jet pilot. Zhang Chao, who died on April 27 when flying a J-15 carrier-based aircraft in a carrier-landing simulation, was given the title "Pioneer in Building a Strong Army." Zhang, who had participated in several dozen marine patrols, joined the team of carrier-based aircraft pilots in March 2015. The whole army and armed police forces were asked to learn from Zhang's virtues such as self-discipline and being bold enough to sacrifice everything for the Party and the people. Zhang should be an example to those who strive for a world-class military, said the order. People attend a gathering to call for less fossil fuel development and a transition to renewable energy during the 22nd Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) in Marrakech, Morocco, on Nov. 14, 2016. Africa presents united front and calls for action at the COP22 scheduled from Nov. 7 to 18 in Marrakesh, Morocco. (Xinhua/Meng Tao) ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Africa presents united front and calls for action at the 22nd Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) scheduled from Nov. 7 to 18 in Marrakesh, Morocco. Africa is among the world's regions most vulnerable to climate change, reiterated a statement from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on Monday. Africa's key priorities include ensuring that global ambitions and historic responsibilities regarding means of implementation, particularly predictable financing, to facilitate low carbon climate resilient development are in line with the continent's development goals, said the statement. A collaborative partnership between the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union Commission, ECA, and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) established the Africa Pavilion in the blue zone of the COP22 village, dedicated to engagement, networking and dialogue, said the statement. The Pavilion also aims to provide a platform for the voices of the continent to be heard. The Pavilion embodies the united front of an Africa "speaking with one voice" in articulating its interests given the high stakes of climate change negotiations The Africa Pavilion features a dynamic program of round-tables, conferences and bilateral meetings, where key issues of adaptation and mitigation; green industrialization; agriculture; transport; health; water and sanitation; biodiversity and innovation are discussed. Both COP21 President and French Minister of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, in charge of international climate negotiations, Segolene Royal and COP22 President and Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Salaheddine Mezouar, visited the Africa pavilion in the early days of COP22. Several African heads of State and high level officials are also expected to visit the pavilion during the High level week of COP22, and especially on Africa Day, on Wednesday, according to the statement. COP22 is the fourth COP to take place on African soil, the second time in Morocco, presenting an important opportunity to place special emphasis on the continent's needs and proposals. COP22 is dubbed the COP of action, providing a clear roadmap for the implementation of commitments made in the Paris Agreement which came into force on 4 Nov. 2016. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China takes a positive attitude toward cooperation with the United States in all areas, including infrastructure, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Monday. Geng made the comment when asked if China is willing to participate in U.S. infrastructure plans, as President-elect Donald Trump hopes to create more jobs through an infrastructure revamp in the country. China looks forward to working with the United States to expand cooperation on bilateral, regional and international levels, Geng said at a regular news briefing. "As for the specific areas of cooperation, China takes a positive attitude to all areas that will benefit the two countries and peoples, including infrastructure," Geng said. Media reports said the Obama administration has suspended its efforts to win congressional approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact before Trump takes office, saying that the TPP's fate is up to Trump and Republican lawmakers. "China is open in principle to all trade arrangements that are conducive to liberalizing and facilitating regional trade. But China maintains such arrangements should comply with World Trade Organization rules and should not be politicized," Geng said. Responding to concerns that Trump vowed to "cancel" the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was inked last December and came into force last week, Geng said the deal was a result of concerted efforts of all parties, including China and the United States. China is willing to strengthen cooperation with the United States and other countries on climate change and promote green, low-carbon and sustainable development around the globe, the spokesperson added. BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan recently expressed the hope that a U.S. student delegation that recently visited China at their invitation would become ambassadors for China-U.S. friendship. The presidential couple made the remarks in a letter to the students of the Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington, which they met during their state visit to the United States in September last year. "We hope you will share your experience and impression of China with people around you, so that more Americans will get to know China better," they wrote in the letter. "We hope you will become ambassadors of China-U.S. friendship and do more to promote the friendship between our peoples," they added. During their recent visit in China, the students toured the Chinese cities of Beijing, Chengdu and Fuzhou, interacting with their peers and making friends with them. In the letter, Xi cited the "Guling story" to demonstrate that the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples enjoys a long history, and needs to be carried forward by the younger generation. In 1992, when Xi was working in Fuzhou City in southeast China, he helped an American woman fulfill her late husband's wish to visit Guling in the suburbs of Fuzhou. Elizabeth Gardner's husband Milton Gardner was born and spent his childhood in Guling, before he left for the United States in 1911. Milton Gardner had longed to revisit Guling since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1979, but never made the trip due to his failing health. After he died, his widow made several trips to China in an attempt to find the small town, but in vain. On reading the story from a newspaper, Xi decided to lend a hand. With Xi's help, Elizabeth Gardner finally visited the town in August 1992. The delegation of 118 U.S. students and teachers visited China on Oct. 11-18, and sent gifts to Xi and Peng through the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. NEW DELHI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday made a scathing attack on the country's main opposition Congress party for trying to obstruct the fight against corruption. "I will never let anyone loot the money that belongs to the poor of India," Modi said at a political rally in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. His remarks came in the wake of the Congress and other opposition parties slamming the Indian government for scrapping currency notes of higher denominations, saying the move was causing massive inconvenience to the people. However, the prime minister said he was "pained by the inconvenience caused," and assured he was "working tirelessly to help people overcome this." The demonetization of currency notes of 500 Indian rupees (7.5 U.S. dollars) and 1,000 Indian rupees (15 U.S. dollars) has turned into a nightmare for citizens, with people standing in queues for hours just to withdraw money, which is being rationed till there are enough replacement notes. Modi has said that the inconvenience would last for a few days, but promised the benefits would be manyfold in the long-term. by Chen Jin, Lin Huifen CHISINAU, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Moldova's presidential candidate Igor Dodon, leader of the Socialist Party, emerged Monday as the winner of the presidential runoff, preliminary results released by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) showed. The pro-Russia candidate got 52.29 percent of the votes, and his rival Maia Sandu received 47.71 percent, with 99.9 percent of the ballots counted. The CEC said 835,010 voters chose Dodon as their next president, while 761,934 gave their votes to Sandu. Supporters of Sandu are expected to gather late Monday in the central square of Chisinau to protest the results, as they believed the arrangements for this runoff were unfair for the pro-European candidate. Late Sunday, Sandu told the media soon after the closing of polls that the runoff was organized badly and there weren't enough ballots at some polling stations and many people were unable to vote. Sandu complained that her team had earlier asked for setting up additional polling stations for Moldovan expatriates, but their requests were ignored. The insufficient amount of ballot papers abroad is seen by Sandu's supporters as an attempt to minimize the amount of votes in western European cities, an important pool of votes for the candidate. After clinching the victory, Dodon called on Sandu to prevent destabilization in the country. "I think everyone realized that we won in this campaign...We must do everything possible to avoid a split in society," Dodon said. Moldova held the presidential runoff on Sunday, as none of the nine candidates competing in the presidential race received an absolute majority of the votes in the first round of direct presidential elections on Oct. 30. The presidential race marked the first time in 16 years that the country was electing its leader by national vote instead of having parliament select the head of state. The presidential elections are generally viewed in the country as a battle between pro-Russian and pro-EU camps. Landlocked between Romania and Ukraine, the former Soviet republic is still shrouded in the shadow of a corruption scandal in which about 1 billion U.S. dollars, or around 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), disappeared from its banking system. The scandal sparked large-scale protests last year, eroding confidence in pro-European politicians that have led the country since 2009 and has partially contributed to the Socialists' gain in popularity. NEW DELHI, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Israeli President Reuven Rivlin arrived in India Monday on a six-day visit, aimed at bolstering bilateral ties. President Rivlin landed in Mumbai in the morning, accompanied by a delegation of businessmen and academicians, and paid respects at the sites of 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which over 170 people, including six Jews, were killed. The visiting Israeli president will head to the Indian capital later in the evening, where he is slated to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during his stay, sources said. He will also visit several sites of cooperation and joint projects between India and Israel, the sources said. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," Rivlin said in departure statement. The last Israeli president to visit India was Ezer Weizman in January 1997, while Indian President Pranab Mukherjee visited Israel in October 2015. JUBA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A senior South Sudanese official has denied a UN report that the war-torn country risks spiraling into genocide due to targeted killings along ethnic lines. Deputy Minister of Information Paul Akol Kordit told Xinhua on Monday that the report by the UN Secretary General Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng was alarming but overstated the situation. "I don't think this country can slide into genocide. This country has experience of conflict and emerging from it stronger. I have seen the report but the statement was overstated," Kordit said. "What people of South Sudan need are not messages that spread fear but those that give them hope," he added. Dieng concluded his fact-finding mission in South Sudan on Friday. He observed that the country risked falling into genocide if the government did not intervene to nip it in the bud. "Inflammatory rhetoric, stereotyping and name calling have been accompanied by targeted killings and rape of members of particular ethnic groups," Dieng said. He called for an end to targeted killings that have caused tension between the Equatoria region's Bari-speaking tribes and Dinka, the largest ethnic group in South Sudan. Civil war broke out in December 2013 between government troops led by President Salva Kiir and forces loyal to sacked First Vice President Riek Machar. Tens of thousands have died and more than two million have been displaced ever since. A peace deal signed between the rival leaders under UN pressure last year led to the formation of a unity government in April, but was shattered by renewed fighting that erupted in early July. Machar, who had returned to his old post as Kiir's deputy in the unity government, was sacked again and fled the country after the July fighting. He is now in residence in South Africa and has asked his supporters to launch a rebellion. Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands forced out of their homes since July. "Those killing civilians on the highways and targeting people on ethnic basis are criminals and the government is doing anything to deal with them. And for now we have not heard of more killings," Kordit said. He also said that some SPLA-IO (Machar-led opposition party) officers had started to report to cantonment areas, which are established by the government, to avoid clashes. LUSAKA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's corruption watchdog on Monday revealed that it was investigating a former minister, who was recently fired, on alleged corruption. Last week, President Edgar Lungu fired Chishimba Kambwili, who was information and broadcasting minister. This came barely a few days after the Zambian leader had complained that some of his ministers were engaging in corrupt activities. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) said it has instituted investigations on alleged corrupt practices against former minister. Timothy Moono, the watchdog's public relations manager said there has been an inquiry against the former minister of corrupt practices. He however did not reveal more details on the matter. "These investigations are on-going and the Commission would therefore not wish to comment further as this may jeopardize the investigations," he said in a statement. TurKish anti-riot police officers detain protesters at Kadikoy district in Istanbul, on November 6, 2016, during a demonstration against the arrest of nine MPs of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), including the two co-leaders. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) ISTANBUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A package exploded on Monday in Istanbul's Asian district of Maltepe, wounding three people, local media reported. The package was delivered to an electronic company by a courier, CNNTurk said, noting one of the injured was in serious condition. Ambulances and police teams were sent to the area, and an investigation has been launched, CNNTurk said. It said the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Istanbul is being overshadowed by the threat of terrorism, as the metropolis has come under a spate of deadly attacks over the past year. KAMPALA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Biosafety experts in East Africa are meeting in Uganda to assess the region's preparedness to prevent, detect, respond and contain natural, accidental or deliberate threats. Ruth Aceng, Uganda's minister of health, in a statement issued ahead of the start of the two-day meeting on Monday said the experts from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya will look at the strategic preparedness and response capacities to deal with diseases attributed to the interface between humans and animals, and also deliberate use of biological agents (bioterrorism). "Recent outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases commonly spreading from animals to humans, what we call zoonosis, simply attest to how vulnerable we are especially considering how fatal they are, and how quickly and widely they can spread," said Aceng. The region in the recent past has experienced Ebola, Marburg, Anthrax, Congo Crimean Fever, Rift Valley Fever and Yellow Fever outbreaks. "In less than 36 hours, these diseases can cross to the farthest corners of the world because of our interconnectedness through travels, trade, tourism, education and all," said Aceng. While the diseases have largely been attributed to the interface between human, animal and environmental ecosystems, the fear of bioterrorism -- the deliberate use of biological agents like Ebola, Anthrax, Multi Drug Resistant strains to cause massive destruction, is another growing threat to the region and global public health. Aceng said the experts meeting is critical in the context of the growing number of terror groups, weak bio-banking systems, weak sector-based containment capacities, and fragmented response abilities. The meeting held under the theme, "Bioterrorism in East Africa Region; Are we ready? Examining strategies for Biosafety and Biosecurity multi-sectoral collaboration" has attracted government officials, security experts and researchers. KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghan Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of parliament disqualified another minister on Monday on the ground of failure in spending development budget, bringing the number of disqualified ministers to six since launching the move of no trust on Saturday. On Monday's session, the lawmakers dismissed Farida Mohmand, the minister for higher education, with majority, while the minister for Urban development and the minister for Justice have survived the move. The move has taken place amid opposition by Arg or Presidential Palace as Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, according to local media reports, has urged Wolesi Jirga to postpone the ministers' disqualification process, a call spurned by the lawmakers. In a similar move on Sunday, the lawmakers dismissed ministers for transport and education, but minister for finance narrowly escaped the vote of no confidence. Earlier on Monday, the Lower House had dismissed the minister for foreign affairs, the minister for Public Works and the minister for Social Services, citing poor performances and failure to spend allocated budgetary funds on time. The Afghan government has 25 ministries and more ministers will be summoned in coming days to the Lower House of parliament over failure of spending development budget and few more of them might be disqualified on the same ground. Summoning and sacking ministers by Wolesi Jirga is taking place at a time when militants loyal to the hardliner Taliban and Islamic State outfits have increased activities in the insurgency-riddled country. President Ghani, in a letter delivered to Wolesi Jirga on Sunday, asked the lawmakers to further evaluate the performances of disqualified ministers in line with the constitution. However, the move initiated by legislators to disqualify ministers has drawn mixed reactions among Afghans, according to local media reports. "Members of parliament should work based on the national interest and they should consider the fragility of political situation in the country," an analyst Keramudin Rezazada told local media. "Disqualifying ministers should not continue," another analyst Sayed ali Rezas Mohamadi said, according to local media reports. Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change affairs, addresses the opening ceremony of high-level forum on "South-South Cooperation on Climate Change" during COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, Nov. 14, 2016. (Xinhua/Meng Tao) MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China stands ready to continue contributing to global efforts in addressing climate change through South-South cooperation, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change affairs, said here Monday. "Both South-North cooperation and the South-South cooperation among developing countries are essential for international cooperation in countering climate change," said Xie at a high-level event on the sidelines of a United Nations climate conference. China is coping with climate change with a highly responsible attitude and is willing to share its best practices in this regard, including capacity-building, with other developing countries, Xie told the opening session of the forum on South-South cooperation. Xie, who arrived in the southern Moroccan city Sunday, pointed out that China has actively pushed forward South-South cooperation through various mechanisms. He underscored that China has donated a considerable amount of materials to developing countries to help them address climate change issues according to their own requirements, such as energy-saving lamps and clean cook stoves. He noted that China has signed some 27 Memorandums of Understandings on donating materials to developing countries to help them address climate change and has carried out numerous regional dialogues and exchanges with Southern countries. Xie reaffirmed China's plan to set up a 20 billion yuan (2.93 billion U.S. dollars) fund for South-South cooperation, saying that China will use the fund to establish low-carbon model parks, implement mitigation and adaption projects and train personnel in developing countries. China has since 2011 earmarked a total of around 85 million dollars for low-carbon, energy-saving, capacity-building and other projects in developing countries, he said. The forum, co-organized by China, Morocco, and the United Nations, brought together senior UN officials and ministers from more than a dozen countries. The participants will discuss the role of South-South cooperation in addressing climate change and building the capacity of developing countries and explore ways of financing for climate efforts and sustainable development. by Xinhua writer Huang Xin BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- By floating an emergency plan for local government debt risks Monday, China has addressed an issue that has made headlines for years. The four-grade emergency plan, which could mean "fiscal re-balancing" on the part of local government, is a precautionary arrangement rather than an alarm for a crisis, said experts. "We should make it clear that no crisis has ever occurred. The plan is more like a barrier against risk," said Zhao Quanhou, director of the financial research office of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science at the Ministry of Finance (MOF). Data from the ministry showed total local government debt in China stood at 16 trillion yuan (about 2.35 trillion U.S. dollars) at the end of 2015 with a 38.9-percent debt-to-GDP ratio -- markedly lower than the 60-percent alert line of the European Union and other major economies. With Grade I being the most serious, classification is based on the nature and impact of any incident, according to the State Council announcement. City and county governments will fiscally re-balance if their annual interest payments on general debt are 10 percent higher than their public spending budgets, or if interest on special debts is 10 percent more than their government fund budgets. "The fiscal rebalancing act is actually a rearrangement of government budgets. It is different from debt restructuring or a government bankruptcy plan," said Zhang Bin, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS). According to the plan, once the local government launches fiscal rebalancing, it should take a slew of measures -- such as clearing up overdue taxes and owed fees, reducing expenditures and disposal of government assets -- to restore fiscal balance, guaranteed by the basic public service and effective operation of the government. A senior official with the MOF said the precautionary arrangement is consistent with the nation's Budget Law and serves as a powerful measure to strengthen local government debt management. Monday's announcement reaffirmed the central government will not become involved in bailouts and local government officials involved in graded incidents will be held accountable, even if they leave office. While Chinese authorities have said the nation's debt risks are controllable, they still face challenges at the local level featuring illegal financing guarantees and fake public-private partnerships (PPPs). By the end of 2015, the provinces of Zhejiang, Sichuan, Shandong and Henan had registered a total of 15.35 billion yuan in outstanding debt involving irregularities, according to latest statistics with the National Audit Office. Local government debts soared during an investment and construction binge following the global financial crisis in 2008. China has put a ceiling on the amount of local government debt. The total outstanding debt of the nation's local governments must be kept under 17.2 trillion yuan at the end of 2016, according to the central budget for 2016. Risks will be eased by putting in place accountability mechanisms, said Bai Chongen, a Tsinghua University professor and member of the central bank monetary policy committee. "The lifelong accountability system for officials will serve as a great deterrent against involvement in foul debts," said Zhang with CASS. To rein in rising debt risks, China overhauled the management of government debts two years ago, streamlining fund-raising channels for local authorities and putting a cap on their annual bond issuance. Government bonds are used to raise funds for urban infrastructure construction and public facilities. The nation is ramping up public spending to shore up the economy as private investment turned sluggish this year in fear of a continued slowdown. A debt-for-bond swap program was introduced to convert outstanding debts. By the end of September, local governments had replaced 7.2 trillion yuan of debts under the program, according to the MOF. The MOF said the debt level will remain stable for the remainder of the year and beyond thanks to growing fiscal incomes and GDP. With its economic restructuring showing nascent progress, China's economy grew 6.7 percent in the third quarter, holding steady from the first two quarters of the year. (Xinhua reporters Han Jie, Liu Hongxia and Li Jingfeng contributed to the story.) Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan (3rd R Front) and Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan (2nd R Front) inspect guards of honor in Iran's capital Tehran, Nov. 14, 2016. Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan on Monday held talks with Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan in Tehran. (Xinhua/Mu Dong) TEHRAN, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan on Monday held talks with Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan in Tehran. Chang said the development of bilateral relations between China and Iran is not only positive for mutual interest of Chinese and Iranian peoples, but also positive for world peace and stability. Witnessing increased mutual visits and personnel training cooperation between the armed forces in recent years, Chang said he is confident that the friendly relations between the two countries as well as the armed forces will be further reinforced. Dehqan hailed Chang's remarks, voicing the hope that further military exchange and cooperation between Iran and China will continue to play a positive role in safeguarding regional peace and world stability. Chang arrived in Tehran on Sunday for a three-day visit at the invitation of Dehqan. GAZA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A senior Islamic Hamas movement leader on Monday called for forming a new body to replace Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which is chaired by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas strongman in Gaza, made his call during his participation in a workshop organized by organized Hamas in Gaza to debate initiatives aimed at ending the current freeze in the Palestinian situation. "The Palestinian factions are urged to form a new organization instead of the PLO that adopts the choice of armed resistance against the Israeli occupation," al-Zahar told the participants in the workshop. He reminded that "the PLO recognition of the Israeli occupation 20 years ago was the biggest disaster that happened to the Palestinian people." Al-Zahar said that his movement is a major foe to President Abbas Fatah Party and doubts that Abbas Fatah Party will dare to annul Oslo peace accords signed between the PLO and the Israeli occupation in 1993. "I believe that it is impossible for Fatah to quit Oslo because its security apparatuses are living and counting on the security cooperation with the Israeli occupation," said al-Zahar. He noted that "if Fatah and the PLO wouldn't be able to annul Oslo, we should look for an alternative and form a new body that adopts the armed resistance against the Israeli occupation." Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 following weeks of internal fighting with Abbas security forces. Hamas won the parliamentary elections held in the Palestinian territories in 2006. GAZA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Egypt temporarily reopened on Monday Rafah crossing point with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for five days. Mohamed Odwan, the Palestinian director of the Hamas-run part of the crossing, told reporters that the crossing was reopened to enable around 25,000 Gaza Strip residents to travel from Gaza to Egypt and then to the entire world. Rafah crossing point is the only crossing for around 2 million people residents of the Gaza Strip, that has been ruled by Hamas movement since the summer of 2007. Eyewitnesses and workers at Rafah crossing said that four buses with full of passengers had already crossed from the Palestinian side to the Egyptian side. "Reopening Rafah crossing point for five days is a positive step that we highly appreciate," said Odwan, adding "We hope the temporary opening of the crossing will be a positive introduction for a permanent reopening of the crossing." Last week, Egypt reopened Rafah crossing point for one day to enable the return of 100 Palestinian figures, which included businessmen, notables and civil society activists, to the Gaza Strip. The 100-figure delegation joined a three-day workshop held in a Red Sea resort in Egypt to discuss the urgent needs of the coastal enclave's populations and the improving of their hard living conditions. SALT LAKE CITY, United States, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China's Sunway TaihuLight has unsurprisingly won the title as the world's fastest machine again, according to the latest edition of the semiannual Top500 list of supercomputers released Monday. ISTANBUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- An explosion hit an industrial zone in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Monday, wounding at least 10 people, local media reported. The blast occurred at a manufacturing workshop within the industrial zone in Istanbul's Asian district of Sultanbeyli, the Hurriyet daily said. The CNNTurk said a boiler inside the workshop exploded. Fire brigades and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, the reports said. Hours earlier, a package delivered to an electronic company in Istanbul's another Asian district of Maltepe went off when opened, wounding three people. ANKARA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Turkey could hold a Brexit-like referendum next year on whether to continue membership talks with the EU, Turkish President Erdogan said Monday, local NTV reported. Erdogan slammed European Parliament (EP) President Martin Schulz for his remarks that the EU could impose sanctions on Turkey following its anti-terror arrests. In a televised speech, Erdogan cited to calls from some EU members states to stop membership negotiations with Turkey and said "You are even too late. Make up your mind immediately," he said. "We will be patient until the end of the year, and then go to public vote. Final decision shall be made by the nation. Let's ask the nation," he stated. If Turkish parliament passes a law on reinstating death penalty, he would approve it, the president said. Meanwhile,Turkish Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus also slammed European Parliament President Schulz on Monday for signaling that the EU could impose sanctions on Turkey following its anti-terror arrests. "It is impossible to understand Mr. Schulz's threatening remarks," he said. He blasted the recent EU Progress Report on Turkey for being "biased" and "not friendly." Kurtulmus said that Turkey rejects the report, which was released last week, and includes the July 15 failed coup attempt and the follow-up arrests. Turkey is under fierce critic by EU over its post-coup attempts measures including thousands of purges and detentions on opponents and alleged plotters, including pro-Kurdish MPs. Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) holds a welcoming ceremony for Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski before their talks outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) LIMA, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Peru and China are in the right time to further promote their economic ties to higher level, said Peruvian economist to Xinhua ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the South American country. "The most important task is now to consolidate the advances in economic relations made since Peru and China began their free-trade agreement (FTA) in 2010," Peruvian economist, Fernando Gonzalez, told Xinhua. In terms of China's vision of Peru, the director of the APEC Studies Center, explained that "China has a very clear strategy based on continued results, boosting its own production chain for industry and services, and seeing ever more sophisticated technological development." "China is a country of high efficiency. These capacities are not limited to production but extend to how to make pragmatic public policies," added Gonzalez. He said that, after the visit of Peru's Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to China in September and the upcoming visit by President Xi Jinping to Lima in November, the two countries "must resolve any problems that remain and focus on the fundamentals." Image taken on Jan. 29, 2016 shows the concentrator plant of the mine site of the company Shougang Hierro Peru, in the district of Marcona, province of Nazca, Ica, Peru. (Xinhua/Luis Camacho) According to Gonzalez, both sides need to improve cooperation in mining areas and allow China's ICBC bank to open up more financial services in the country. Moving on to the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), Gonzalez said this was an initiative to minimize divisions within the region and help to create one large free-trade zone. "This is a project that unites China and the U.S., and it drives to work together while managing their rivalries in the most civilized possible. This is the central topic for the future of the Asia-Pacific, for peace and prosperity in the region," he continued. It would essentially unite the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), between ASEAN, and six other Pacific economies, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The academic concluded that "it is an honor for Peru to host the one more step of the Beijing Roadmap being taken this year." GUANGZHOU, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A three-day international academic seminar on Sun Yat-sen began on Monday in south China's Guangdong Province to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The conference held in Zhongshan City, Sun's birthplace, was attended by more than 130 scholars from nearly 70 research institutions in countries such as China, France, Japan, Russia, Singapore and the United States. Born in 1866, Sun was the founder of the Kuomintang Party, and is a revered revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in overthrowing imperial rule in China. Attendees will discuss Sun's political, military, economic ideas. Some 90 theses were selected from several hundred papers for the seminar. Sun is important in China's modern historical research and there have been new findings and contributions in study of him in recent years, said Xiong Yuezhi, a Chinese scholar. Academics should conduct more detailed research on Sun, said Wang Weiguang, president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A series of events have been held recently across China to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Sun's birth. JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Supreme Court denied a request by the State of Israel on Monday to postpone evacuating an unauthorized Jewish outpost built on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. The ruling puts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition at odds with the country's top court, amidst efforts by the government to retroactively legalize the outpost. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that Amona was illegally built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished by December 25, 2016. However, pressured by his far-right partners - Jewish Home and Israel Our Home - Netanyahu agreed to petition the court for a seven-month postponement. On Monday, the court unanimously rejected the petition, noting that the government has repeatedly postponed executing the evacuation time. "In this case, as with previous ones, we have been asked at the last minute to extend the date of an evacuation that was set by a judgment," said the court, according to a copy of the decision sent to Xinhua. The judges said that if they continue to allow these extensions, the dates set might "turn into recommendations," instead of orders. The judges addressed a secret review submitted to the court by Israel's Shin Bet security service, which warned that evictions might trigger a violent reaction by settlers, with consequences to "the security of the region." According to the judges, these types of threats communicate the message that executing judgments can be prevented by threats of violence, "a message with which cannot be accepted in a state of law," said the judges. In recent years, settlers reacted aggressively to several attempts by the state to evict the unauthorized outpost. The reactions involved clashes with security forces and the so-called "price tag" attacks, when ultra-nationalist Israelis assaulted Palestinians and their properties. The ruling comes a day after the government's Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs voted in favor of a bill to prevent the eviction. The government's Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs is chaired by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked from the pro-settler Jewish Home party. The bill aims to legalize the outpost by allowing the government to expropriate Palestinian land on which it was built. The proposed legislation still needs to be voted in the Knesset, or parliament, and is scheduled for a preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday. The Israeli anti-settlement organization Peace Now condemned the decision, saying it would petition the Supreme Court should the bill pass. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit warned ministers that such a law would be unconstitutional and that he will not be able to defend it in court. This law is expected to trigger angry responses from Palestinians and the international community, who consider the settlements constructed on lands where Palestinians wish to establish their future state as a major obstacle to peace. Amona, east of Ramallah city, is the largest among the so-called "unauthorized outposts," which are communities built by far-right Israelis without government permits. There are about 100 unauthorized outposts and 120 settlements that Israel considers legal. However, both outposts and settlements are illegal under international law as they were built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. VIENTIANE, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Laos has made great strides in development, and extreme poverty has fallen below 24 percent, reads a press release of the World Bank (WB) on Monday. During her recent visits to Laos' Vientiane and the Khammoune province on Nov. 9-12, World Bank Regional Vice President for East Asia and Pacific Victoria Kwakwa said she has seen how people's living conditions have improved, particularly among households with access to electricity. People are now enjoying better water supply and sanitation, and with more roads built, are more connected than ever. On her visit to Laos, Kwakwa reaffirmed the WB's strong support for programs and policies to promote inclusive growth, invest in human development and protect the environment, as identified in the eighth National Socio-Economic Development Plan, also known as the NSEDP. Laos has many opportunities to maintain strong growth and create more jobs while protecting its rich natural resources, Kwakwa said, commending Laos for its increased focus on green growth, which focuses on maintaining robust income growth and development while protecting the environment. "The WB Group supports the Lao authorities' strategy to pursue diversified, green growth, with a view to advancing beyond Least Developed Country status and providing lasting and accessible opportunities for better health, nutrition and education services, as well as more jobs for the country's poor," she was quoted as saying on WB website. The WB Group is committed to providing financing for critical programs and investments in Laos in both private and public sectors. Key investments expected to benefit from WB Group support include programs to improve the trade and business environment, improve the access to high quality education and health care, reduce the incidence of malnutrition, and support environmental protection and sustainable national resources management. The WB press release said about 44 percent of children in Laos are stunted, one of the highest rates in the world. In southern Sekong and northern Phongsaly provinces, even more than 60 percent of children are stunted. "The NSEDP correctly puts the development of human resources first, as strong education, skills, and health will allow people to participate in the growing Lao economy, said Kwakwa. "Chronic malnutrition among young children is a major challenge, and the WB supports the government's Health Governance and Nutrition Development Program to help improve child nutrition by focusing on infant and child feeding practices through a national behavior change campaign." File photo shows a staff of the WFP (United Nations World Food Programme) helps the South Sudanese refugees carry relief materials in a UN camp in Juba, capital of South Sudan, Dec. 29, 2013.(Xinhua/Lv Rui) JUBA, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Some 3.6 million people are estimated to be highly food insecure in South Sudan during the ongoing lean season, says the World Food Program (WFP). A WFP analysis says food security situation in the war-torn country has continued to deteriorate, with the number of people projected to face acute food insecurity likely to rise to 4.6 million in the coming months. "Needs are expected to increase further in the first quarter of next year, with likely 4.6 million people in need of assistance," the WFP said in a report received on Monday. The WFP said it is scaling up its response to the declining food and nutrition security situation in the country, reaching over 3.4 million people so far this year and aiming to reach 4.1 million by mid-2017. The WFP said its mobile teams recently concluded distributions of one-month food rations to approximately 50,000 people in the southwestern town of Yei, where people have been affected by fighting and violence. Renewed fighting erupted in South Sudan between rival political factions in early July. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced since then. The WFP said it would launch a "special operation" for the rehabilitation of the road from Kosti in White Nile state to Renk in Upper Nile state, which it says is critical for the delivery of life-saving food assistance. The 2.5 million U.S. dollar project is expected to be approved in the coming week. South Sudan's civil war since its outbreak in December 2013 has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than two million people. In the wake of recent fighting in July between government troops led by President Salva Kiir and troops loyal to sacked First Vice President Riek Machar, more than 60,000 people have sought refuge in neighboring countries. VIENTIANE, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands of Lao nationals and tourists, together with the country's leaders, gathered at the annual almsgiving ceremony of the That Luang Festival, the biggest religious ceremony of the country, in capital Vientiane on Monday. The religious ceremony to pay homage to the That Luang stupa on Monday morning was attended by Lao communist party and government leaders including President Bounnhang Vorachit and his predecessor Choummaly Sayasone, Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, along with other senior officials, and country representatives of foreign embassies and non-governmental organizations. Traditionally the almsgiving ceremony, along with the playing of the traditional games Tee Khee and the candlelit procession marching around the grand stupa, were also held on the waxing moon of December of the Lao lunar calendar marking the end of the annual celebration, according to Lao News Agency on Monday. This year's festival holds greater significance than usual as it marks the 450th anniversary of the building of the nation's iconic symbol, the golden That Luang stupa. There was also an extra surprise in store for visitors as there were several exhibitions featuring a traditional village and various aspects of the Lao lifestyle since the 16th century. Built in 1566 by King Setthathirat, That Luang is the national symbol and most important religious monument in Laos. The That Luang Festival or Boun That Luang is Vientiane's most important Buddhist festival. Enditem by Marian Draganov SOFIA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- After the ruling GERB party lost Bulgaria's presidential vote on Sunday and the prime minister resigned on Monday, the Balkan country is going to face unpredictable early parliamentary elections, analysts said. With some 99 percent of ballots counted, General Rumen Radev, a candidate backed by the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), won 59.35 percent of the vote against 36.17 percent for the GERB party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva and 4.48 percent preferred the option "none of the above." Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, who heads the GERB party, said on Sunday night that this meant there was a new political situation in the country, and submitted the resignation of his government to the National Assembly on Monday. Meanwhile, he said that his party, which came to power in November 2014 in coalition with the Reformist Bloc, the Patriotic Front and ABV, definitely wanted early elections. Korneliya Ninova, leader of BSP, the second largest party in parliament, said in turn that her party would not try to form a government within this National Assembly, also called for early parliamentary elections. Ninova stressed that the leaders of all parliamentary parties have to be responsible statesmen, ensure law and order in Bulgaria, and not allow political instability. Earlier on Sunday, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev, who will serve until Jan. 22, 2017, said "finding a sustainable governance formula within the current National Assembly depends only on the political parties and the executive branch of government." "It is too early to form a caretaker government," Plevneliev said, adding that he was ready to hold consultations and a dialogue with everyone, including the newly-elected president, in order "to have stability and functioning institutions achieved in the state." However, Nayden Zelenogorski, co-chairperson of the parliamentary group of the Reformist Bloc, said it was obvious that early parliamentary elections are coming, probably in March or April 2017. Various political analysts agreed that early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria are inevitable, and it was not clear who would come to power as a result. Ognyan Minchev said that the results of the presidential elections showed a serious crisis of confidence in GERB, but there is no clear alternative to the government. Andrei Raichev held the opinion that the era of Borissov was over but GERB is the largest party in Bulgaria, and will probably have the biggest parliamentary group in the next National Assembly. Kolyo Kolev, director of Mediana Polling Agency, said in an interview with Xinhua that "it's too early to predict what will happen after the elections, but the next government will most likely be a broad coalition without the participation of GERB." It was also possible that a new political force would emerge, but this new force would hardly win the majority in the next parliament, Kolev said. DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Germany on Monday announced an 11-million-Euro support to Tanzania in coping with the influx of refugees from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Egon Kochanke, the German Ambassador to Tanzania, said the funds will support ongoing operations of the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and non-governmental organizations assisting refugees in the East African country. "Our additional assistance comes in full recognition of Tanzania's humanitarian leadership role in providing a safe-haven for thousands of refugees who have fled conflicts in Burundi and Congo," he told a news conference in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam. Michael Dunford, WFP Representative in Tanzania, said the UN food agency needed over 6 million U.S. dollars a month for providing food to the refugees. "More support is needed from development partners like Germany as the number of refugees is increasing day after day," said Dunford. Chansa Kapaya, UNHCR Representative in Tanzania, said there were currently more than 245,083 refugees in Tanzania coming from Burundi and DRC. "The situation in refugees' camps in western Tanzania is pathetic. There is congestion. The refugees don't have toilets and water. And most of the children are not going to school due to shortage of qualified teachers and other school materials," she said. Enditem TEHRAN, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Ministry of Petroleum said Monday that energy giants, France's Total and the Netherlands' Shell, have joined a fresh round of talks between Iran and Oman for the construction of a sub-sea gas pipeline, state-owned Press TV reported. The ministry also said that Iran and Oman are approaching Korea Gas Corporation for its possible participation in the project. According to the outlines of the project, Iran would export an annual 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas to neighboring Oman when the pipeline comes on stream. Under a contract between the two countries in March 2014, Iran's gas would be pumped from the southern Iranian province of Hormuzgan to Oman's Sohar port, where it would join Oman's domestic natural gas network. The accord is a 25-year deal with a value of about 60 billion U.S. dollars. It is reported that Oman might have some of the imported gas liquefied for export to its neighbors, in addition to the country's own domestic use. Despite huge gas reserves in the south, Iran has been slow to enhance its gas production due to Western sanctions in the past years. BANGKOK, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) Public and private sectors across the ICT industry gathered here in Bangkok to talk about collaboration while Chinese ICT giant Huawei asks for a better connected world during the ITU Telecom World 2016 which will last from Monday to Friday. In the forum section followed by a opening ceremony on Monday morning, participants expressed their opinions about the ICT industry development. "Within the ICT industry, it is the innovative small and medium enterprises tech SMEs that are key to industry disruption, to job creation, and to the technological innovations that are taking the industry forward, said Houlin Zhao, secretary-general of International Telecommunication Union. Prajin Juntong, Thai deputy prime Minister and acting minister of Digital Economy and Society emphasized that "ICT is not for those who can afford it but we must allow those who are most in need to benefit from it to not be left behind. Besides these forums, many telecom carriers and ICT enterprises set up pavilions to show their latest technology and ideas during the 5-day event. Chinese ICT giant Huaweis pavilion shows its latest ideas and experiences in cloud, national broadband networks, ultra-fast wireless communications, and smart devices. In the pavilion, Huawei showed how cloud can make our world connected in the future. People can unlock the door of their house with a click on smartphones and control other furnitures and equipments at home in the same way, governments can be connected with their people and thus service their people better, patientss health data from birth are all in a cloud for doctors to refer to, data of every motor vehicle is in a cloud for traffic police and hospitals to follow in case of an emergency, and for insurance companies to check In order to achieve such a connected digital society, he company suggests countries around the world to make their ICT regulation less restrictive but more comprehensive. The company says every country should be building more digital infrastructure to fuel a high quality economic transformation and long-term, sustainable growth. "Data centers and broadband networks are a vital part of the national information infrastructure. Huawei is committed to building a better connected world, and we believe that for any developing nation or region seeking dramatic development, it is vital for them to use the levers of policy, to coordinate on standards and to accelerate infrastructure developments, said Zou Zhilei, president of Huawei's Carrier Business Group. Zou added that Huawei is now a leading provider of global ICT solutions and the company is ready to work with all nations to develop their broadband capacity." With a developed broadband capacity, the future society that Huawei described is a one with ubiquitous sensors, ubiquitous connectivity, and ubiquitous intelligence. MADRID, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Monday received his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa at his official visit in the Palacio de la Moncloa in Madrid. Costa is the first foreign leader to visit Spain since Rajoy's return to office at the end of October, which highlights the good relationship between the two neighboring countries. In a meeting described "as a working meeting followed by lunch," the two leaders discussed bilateral issues, as well as European and international affairs, such as the questions to be dealt with at the forthcoming meeting of the European Council on Dec. 15-16. "The leader of Portugal will always be welcome in Spain," said Rajoy in the posterior press conference. When asked about the results of the U.S. elections later in the conference, Rajoy said he "respected the wishes of the American people in their election" in choosing Donald Trump. "Spain will continue working to cultivate our relationship with a national that is both an ally and a friend," he said, refusing to be drawn on the recent meeting between U.S. president-elect Trump and Nigel Farage, the leader of British euro-sceptic party, UKIP. "I am not going to comment on the meeting, he (Trump) can meet whoever he wants to meet," commented Rajoy. The Spanish prime minister also highlighted the importance to combat climate change, stressing that his new government had "remitted the Paris Climate Change agreement to Parliament," something that the lack of government in Spain had not permitted for the past 10 months. Screenshot shows the Athens Acropolis on Nov. 10, 2016. A team of Xinhua reporters are now exploring Greece. A highlight of the exploration is to get a panoramic view of some incredible Greek cultural heritages, including the Acropolis and underwater relics, by using virtual reality(VR) technology. According to Greek cultural protection authorities, Xinhua is the first authorized Chinese media outlet to make a VR product out of the country's world famous archaeological sites and relics. (Xinhua) ATHENS, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Ascending the Athenian Acropolis, acknowledged by UNESCO as a timeless symbol of the world's cultural heritage, is considered as a must have experience at least once in life. However, the steep rocky hill in the heart of the Greek capital which embodies Classical Greece's ideals remains out of reach for many. Xinhua News Agency in collaboration with the Greek Culture Ministry embarked this November on an unprecedented mission to capture Greece's unique cultural treasures with Virtual Reality (VR) cameras and drones, allowing people across the globe to take a 360-degree look at the Sacred Rock, as well as a panoramic aerial view of the breathtaking monuments built in the 5th century BC. Xinhua's team is producing a documentary on Greece's rich ancient civilization relics filming with the latest technological tools the Acropolis, as well as the underwater antiquities discovered at the seabed of south Peloponnese peninsula. Standing in front of the Parthenon temple on a sunny day, Vassiliki Eleftheriou, director of the Acropolis Restoration Service, which realizes all restoration works on the hill since 2000, spoke to Xinhua about the challenges of the task which is a national priority for Greece despite the current economic difficulties. Eleftheriou warmly welcomed the use of technology in documenting the site with more accuracy and bringing it closer to wider audiences. The drones flying around the ruins of Propylaea, Erechtheion and the Athena Nike temple captured from a bird's eye view the cranes, archaeologists and marble technicians operating on the site, as Theodosis Tzavaras, the operator of the VR camera, wearing a robotic arm filmed details in 360 degrees. "You have everything in your frame," he explained with enthusiasm, as tourists visiting the Sacred Rock were watching the filming, expressing eagerness to see the result. Angeliki Simosi, head of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, which is responsible for the preservation of ancient relics under sea, also shared their enthusiasm on the new perspectives VR technology and drones offer, while giving a tour to Xinhua's team of the submerged treasures of Navarino Bay off Pylos town. A picture taken on Nov. 12, 2016 shows a underwater photographer filming columns on the seabed near Methoni in the southwest Greek municipality of Pylos-Nestoras.The columns are believed to be built by King Herod in Caesarea, Palestine in the 1st Century, AD. (Xinhua) Off the coast of Sapienza island, braving the rough seas, Xinhua produced an underwater VR video which will help reveal more details and perhaps solve the mysteries of the two Roman era shipwrecks of the sarcophagi and columns, as well as the modern wreckage of the Greek oil tanker Irene Serenade which sank in the bay in 1980. In contrast to the monumental complex of the Acropolis of Athens, the greatest and finest example of the beauty and glory of Greek ancient civilization at its peak, the underwater treasures of Navarino traced at a depth of 10-15 meters have still not been fully documented. Xinhua's production will take audiences for the first time on a virtual reality trip to the site where Greek authorities aim to create underwater archaeological museums and diving parks in the future to promote Greece's cultural heritage. ACCRA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama assured businesses and investors here on Monday that the country will not "blow up" despite the competitive nature of the upcoming polls in December. He assured them of a stable and peaceful business environment ahead of next month's general election for which he is seeking re-election. "One of the things which have made Ghana an attractive place for doing business is our stability and our democracy and the respect for rule of law,"the president stated. On the economic slowdown across the world, the president maintained that Ghana was fortunate to have gone through the crisis way ahead of the rest of the world, adding that necessary measures were put in place to contain any further deterioration. "As a result of that, we started structural reforms at the right time. So you notice that our economy is showing some more resilience in this period when everybody is facing economic headwinds," he said. Enditem VALLETTA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Malta saw the biggest increase in the length of working life in the EU between 2005 and 2015, figures issued by Eurostat on Monday showed. The expected duration of working life has increased in all EU member states, albeit to different extents. It has risen the most in Malta (5.1 years), followed by Hungary (4.2 years), Luxembourg (3.1 years), Estonia (3.0 years) and Lithuania (2.9 years), while it remained nearly the same in Denmark, Portugal and Ireland. The overall increase in duration of working life was generally driven across member states by the change in women's duration of working life. The latter has increased between 2005 and 2015 in all EU states, notably in Malta (8.6 years), Spain (5.1 years), Luxembourg (4.7 years). By contrast, the duration of working life for men has dropped in five member states, with men in Cyprus working 1.9 years less, in Greece 1.4 years less, with Ireland, Spain and Portugal standing at one year or under. Across the EU member states, the average working life in 2015 was expected to be the longest in Sweden (41.2 years), ahead of the Netherlands (39.9 years), Denmark (39.2 years). At the opposite end of the scale, working life was expected to last less than 33 years in Italy (30.7 years), Bulgaria (32.1 years), Greece (32.3 years). In all member states except Lithuania, the duration of working life was expected to be longer for men than for women. The expected duration of working life in the European Union (EU) stood at 35.4 years on average in 2015, up by 1.9 years compared with 2005. Enditem KIGALI, Nov, 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientist Zhao Dongyuan scooped the 2016 TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize for his works on nano materials. The award, one of the most prestigious honors given to scientists in the developing world, was announced Monday at the ongoing 27th The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) general meeting in the Rwandan capital Kigali. Zhao is credited for developing innovative nano-sized materials that can be used to clean water, deliver medicine and improve batteries. The chemistry professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, focuses on mesoporous materials -- structures that feature tiny, microscopic holes. The annual prize including 100,000 U.S. dollars is provided by China's largest computer maker Lenovo. The TWAS-Lenovo Prize focuses on recognizing outstanding work in basic sciences, with the subject area changing each year -- Physics and Astronomy in 2013, Biological Sciences in 2014, Mathematics in 2015 and Chemical Sciences in 2016. Each year the Academy also awards individual prizes of 15,000 dollars to scientists who have been working and living in a developing country for at least 10 years.

NEW YORK, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Americans who have so far never been to China have a "handy channel" to explore the land of endless wonders from Monday to Nov.28.
They could get of glimpses of the top natural and historical attractions of the robust country, starting from Monday morning local time, on one of the most visible billboards in the world at the Times Square.
A 50-second advertising video, featuring top Chinese tourist destinations including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the Potala Palace in Lhasa, is being posted China National Tourism Administration and China Public Diplomacy Association on a spectacular on 2 Times Square, the building that is the northern anchor of the district.
The video, running 48 to 120 times each day from Nov. 14 to Nov. 28, is a prelude to the launching of the closing ceremony of the 2016 China-U.S. Tourism Year and a grand event with 5,000 Chinese tourists visiting the U.S. in Washing D.C. and other parts of the United States in late November, according to an official with the Chinese Consulate in New York on Monday.
The events and activities hosted during the China-US Tourism Year are aimed at promoting a steady growth of U.S. tourists travelling to China as well as an early realization of the goal of 5 million trips between the two nations in 2016.
China has become the No. 1 travel destination for US tourists in the Asia-Pacific and the U.S. is the third biggest source country travelling to China.

by Xinhua writer Zhang Xu MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Braving the chills in Marrakech, delegates attending a United Nations conference on climate change crossed through low-carbon fabricated pavilions, pondering pragmatic prescriptions to curb the fever gripping mother Earth. As has been always the case, China, as the largest developing country, has taken concrete moves to act on its pledges on this issue of global concern. From billions of dollars in climate investment over the years to Yangtze electric shuttle buses serving the conference in Marrakech, one can see China's role as a positive force behind endeavors to save the planet. As Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai put it, "whatever other countries may do or may not do, China will continue to make genuine efforts to respond to climate change to seek to realize green and sustainable development." SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS STRATEGY Since 1997, when sustainable development was set as a national strategy, China has been stressing its crucial role both domestically and at world forums. Last September, while chairing a United Nations roundtable on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Chinese Premier Li Keqiang unveiled the country's national plan for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As the first national blueprint that specifies various domains and concrete goal-oriented measures, the plan comprehensively expounds China's development policy and its efforts to help other developing countries forge ahead with the process of global implementation. Pursuing sustainable development is the fundamental solution to all kinds of global problems, the premier said, adding that as a responsible developing country, China is willing to join in relevant international efforts and continuously increase investment in South-South cooperation. SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION "China plays a 'very important' role in promoting and consolidating South-South partnership," said Salaheddine Mezouar, president of the 22nd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22), on Saturday. Cooperation among developing countries, with its great potential in managing climate change, is a main area of discussion at COP22, to help developing economies come up with common responses to their pressing needs. Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change affairs, said here Monday that China stands ready to continue contributing to global efforts in addressing climate change through South-South cooperation. China is willing to share its best practices, including in capacity-building, with other developing countries, Xie told the opening session of a forum on South-South cooperation. With 27 MoUs signed and many regional dialogues and exchanges, China has made considerable donations to other developing countries to help them address climate change issues according to their own requirements, Xie said. CHINA'S CONTRIBUTION Standing as an active contributor in the global climate campaign, China, itself still a developing country, now tops the world in conservation efforts and utilization of new and renewable energies. Since 2011, China has earmarked around 85 million U.S. dollars for low-carbon, energy-saving, capacity-building and other projects in developing countries. "China becomes the largest investor for renewable energies across the world," said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. "It shows the Chinese commitment towards climate change and tackling air pollution." Earlier November, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Erik Solheim, hailed China's contribution to advancing the global green agenda, commending China for its "robust leadership" in advancing the December 2015 Paris Agreement. Signed during COP21, the Paris Agreement entered into force on Nov. 4, committing its 180 signatories to limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. At the Paris climate summit in late 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated China's pledge to cut its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent from the 2005 levels by 2030. On Monday in Marrakech, Xie, China's top climate change envoy, reaffirmed the country's plan to set up a 20 billion yuan (2.93 billion U.S. dollars) fund for South-South cooperation, to help establish low-carbon model parks, implement mitigation and adaption projects, and train personnel in developing countries. Laura Tuck, vice president for sustainable development of the World Bank, on Friday praised as "impressive" China's planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which will be worth 50 billion dollars, the largest in the world. China is the first developing country to set up a national carbon emissions trading market, based on its seven pilots that are running now. Xie Ji, deputy chief of the Chinese delegation to COP22, said on Thursday that China has set up an ambitious target of reaching the peaking of CO2 emissions around the year 2030. "Many cities promised they can reach their peaking before 2030, and a few cities are trying to achieve the target around 2020," Xie said, adding that many industries, especially energy intensive ones, were asked to cut CO2 emissions and try to reach the peaking around 2020. TEHRAN, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that Iran and Russia are determined to enhance their cooperation and relations in all fields. Russia is an important friend and neighbor of Iran and both countries have common regional and global interests, said Rouhani during a meeting with visiting Russian Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Ivanovna Matvienko in Tehran on Monday. "There is a strategic cooperation between Iran and Russia to fight terrorism and such cooperation will continue until the eradication of terrorism in the region," he was quoted as saying by Press TV. He urged Tehran and Moscow to further improve ties in the economic, cultural, scientific and technological fields. He was also quoted as saying that developing banking and economic cooperation, facilitation of customs-related issues and visa issuance process can speed up trade ties between both countries. Rouhani additionally called for collective international cooperation to establish stability and Syrian sovereignty over their country's affairs. As for Matvienko, she said that Tehran and Moscow share a common stance regarding the fight against terrorism. Russia calls for the expansion of all-out cooperation with Iran particularly in the energy and nuclear fields, she added. Matvienko arrived in Tehran on Sunday for multi-dimensional talks with senior Iranian officials, accompanied by the chairman of the Russian Federation Council's defense and security committee, Viktor Ozerov, and a number of parliamentary officials. Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) shakes hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during their meeting in Ankara, capital of Turkey, on Nov. 14, 2016. (Xinhua/Turkish Presidential Office) ANKARA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim here on Monday. Erdogan said that Turkey attaches great importance to China-Turkey relations and is willing to maintain high-level exchanges to address issues concerning partnership through strategic cooperation. "I'm pleased to see the consensus reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and me in our previous meetings being effectively implemented," he said. He also agreed to align China's Belt and Road Initiative with Turkey's "Middle Corridor" project, push ahead with major cooperation projects such as high speed railway construction and strengthen bilateral cooperation in fields such as tourism, culture and education. The two countries need to deepen cooperation in security and anti-terrorism and support each other in efforts of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and stability, the president added. In his meeting with Wang, Yildirim said that frequent high-level mutual visits have played a positive role in boosting bilateral relations between Turkey and China. He expressed the hope that the two countries could bring their respective potential into full play through joint efforts to step up economic and trade cooperation and accelerate strategic alignment. The prime minister also pointed out the importance of building high-speed railways as a new Silk Road to promote China-Turkey friendship in the new era. For his part, Wang said the visit is intended to implement the important consensus reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, launching the mechanism for consultation between the Chinese and Turkish foreign ministers. The Chinese side attaches great importance to China-Turkey relations and is willing to keep high level dialogues and strategic communication, Wang added. He also expressed the hope that the two countries could uphold the spirit of the ancient Silk Road and make joint efforts to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, in order to make new contributions to promoting national development, revitalizing Eurasia and advancing human civilization. The two sides should also deepen cooperation in security and anti-terrorism and enhance mutual strategic trust to pave the way for all-round cooperation between the two countries, Wang said. Wang arrived in Ankara on Sunday at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. China's vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin delivers a speech at a forum on South-South cooperation in countering climate change on the sidelines of a UN climate conference, in Marrakech, Morocco, on Nov. 14, 2016. China will continue strengthening its cooperation with other developing countries in addressing climate change, Liu Zhenmin said here Monday.(Zhao Dingzhe) MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- China will continue strengthening its cooperation with other developing countries in addressing climate change, Liu Zhenmin, China's vice foreign minister, said here Monday. China will incorporate its development with the common development of other developing countries and make joint efforts with them to find a low-carbon development path, said Liu in a speech concluding a forum on South-South cooperation in countering climate change. The high-level forum, co-organized by China, Morocco and the United Nations, brought together ministers from 14 countries, senior officials from various UN bodies and representatives from civil society organizations. The day-long event took place on the sidelines of a UN climate conference opening in the southern Moroccan city a week ago. Liu said that speakers at the forum made a common call for governments to work together against climate change in line with the principle of common but shared responsibility and achieve sustainable development. As a developing country, China knows too well the difficulties and challenges developing countries are faced with, Liu said, adding that China has long been actively engaged in, and committed to the strengthening of, South-South cooperation. China regards its cooperation with developing countries as the basis of its foreign policy and an important part of its opening-up in an all-round way, he added. China launched the Belt and Road initiatives four years ago, with the aim of strengthening its connection and economic ties with other developing countries and create a community of common interests, Liu said. Addressing climate change is a major area of South-South cooperation being carried out by China, he noted, adding that China will do everything it can to help other developing countries cope with climate change, while calling on developed countries to fulfill their obligations. In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the establishment of the 20 billion yuan China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund, which is aimed at providing a new platform for South-South cooperation, Liu said. China has started to operate the fund this year, building low-carbon model parks, implementing climate-related projects and training personnel in other developing countries, he said. Many speakers at the forum spoke highly of China's efforts to promote South-South cooperation in meeting the challenge of climate challenge. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special advisor on climate change, David Nabarro, said that China is playing a critical leadership role in pushing forward South-South cooperation in addressing climate change. "I would like to again thank China for its leadership and the generous support it provided to advance South-South cooperation," he said. A woman holds up a placard reads "Immigrants are welcome here" during a protest againstDonald Trump's presidential election victory near the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan of New York City, the United States, Nov. 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) By Matthew Rusling WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President-elect Donald Trump' s stunning political upset has sparked protests in several major cities nationwide, and the demonstrations may continue for some time. That's because Trump has elicited much controversy over the past year in one of the most controversial and nastiest presidential races. While the New York mogul's supporters back him strongly, many others despise the man they view as overtly sexist, and who has referred to Mexicans as rapists and criminals. Many also view Trump as a loose cannon who easily flies off the handle, and fret that he may make rash, poorly-thought-out decisions based on emotions. Recent days have seen thousands take to the streets in major U.S. cities to protest a president-elect who has grabbed headlines for his outrageous sexist comments and myriad other insults toward women. The question remains whether the protests will continue, fade out, or even turn violent in the days and weeks to come. "The protests against Trump will continue. Progressive forces are strongly opposed to Trump's agenda and will ferociously resist what he is doing. There is a risk that protests turn violent and exacerbate societal tensions," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua. Trump already has used Twitter to attack protesters and say they are unfair and incited by the media. "He is thin skinned and these protests will be very upsetting to him. He is likely to give local police resources to deal with these disruptions," West said. Others, however, believe the protests will fizzle out in the coming days and weeks, although it remains to be seen whether more demonstrations will follow once Trump assumes office. "I believe the protests will die down over the next week or two," Dan Lee, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, told Xinhua. "But the next question is what sorts of protests will happen after he actually enters office. That is, what protests will there be against specific bills once they are proposed and then make it to the floor in Congress? Then what protests might happen after specific bills are passed and signed into law?" Lee said. Trump is a candidate who is loved by his supporters and hated by his detractors. While a shocking 53 percent of white women voters cast their ballots for the billionaire, many other women are staunchly anti-Trump. Indeed, the president-elect has over the past year made crass comments against several women, including former Republican contender Carly Fiorina, making disparaging remarks about the former HP CEO's face. "Look at that face!" he said during the primaries, suggesting she was unattractive. Recent weeks saw Trump get embroiled in a social media war with a former Miss Universe, calling the former beauty pageant winner "Miss Piggy," remarking that she had put on weight in recent years. Trump in recent weeks also caused a media firestorm after the release of tapes, several years old, that showed him making overtly sexist remarks on a radio show and backstage on a separate television show. MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Monday killed at least 57 militants of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in and near the city of Mosul, as fierce battles continued in the city to drive out the IS militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq. The commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) repelled several attacks by IS suicide bombers on the troops' positions in the freed districts in eastern Mosul, including al-Qadsiyah and Zahraa, according to the CTS deputy commander Lieutenant General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi. The troops fought fierce clashes with the attackers and managed to kill 26 suicide bombers, Saadi told reporters. The security forces have been fighting to go deeper into the eastern side of the city, locally known as left bank of the Tigris River, but the troops were slowed by stubborn resistance of the extremist militants who are fighting in small groups of well-trained fighters with snipers, suicide bomb attacks and many landmines, in addition to the heavy presence of civilians in their homes in Mosul districts. Saadi also said that the CTS commandos will storm the Baker district in the coming hours, while heavy clashes are underway in several other districts. Separately, the troops of the army's 16th Division and allied Sunni tribal fighters killed 31 IS militants and destroyed two booby-trapped cars when they stormed IS positions in area located some five kilometers in north of Mosul, according to the commander of the security forces in north of Mosul, Lieutenant General Ali al-Freiji. In south of Mosul, the armored 9th Division freed the village of al-Naiyfa, just west of the town of Nimrud and its nearby archeological site, some 30 km south of Mosul, which the troops liberated them on Sunday, said Lieutenant General Abdul-Amir Yarallah from the Joint Operations Command. In west of Mosul, the Shiite Hashd Shaabi paramilitary units continued their advance in the vast rugged land in west of Mosul toward the town of Tal-Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, and managed to recaptured four villages after clashes with the IS militants, Yarallah said in a press release. Tal Afar, which used to have majority of both Sunni and Shiite Turkoman villagers, as well as other minorities of Kurds and Arabs, fell to IS in 2014. The advance of the pre-dominantly Shiite paramilitary units was aimed to cut off the supply lines between Mosul and neighboring Syria, but such advance in the ethnically mixed region where Sunni Muslims form a majority, could spark sectarian tension with Sunni Arabs and neighboring Sunni state of Turkey. The battles in and around Mosul is part of a major offensive announced by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Oct. 17 to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city. Since then, the Iraqi security forces have inched to the eastern fringes of Mosul and made progress on other routes around the city. Early in the month, hundreds of the CTS commandos and Iraqi army made a significant progress from three directions at the eastern side of Mosul and managed to recapture some 10 districts, so far, out of about 60 districts on both sides of the city. Mosul, some 400 km north of Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. Belgian soldiers patrol outside the European Union headquarters in Brussels, capital of Belgium, on Jan. 19, 2015. (Xinhua/Zhou Lei) BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Europe must be prepared to cope with a "wave of jihadists" returning from Syria, as situations keep escalating in the regions controlled by the Islamic State (IS), warned Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon. "We can see that IS is under pressure in (the Syrian cities of) Raqqa and Mosul, Belgian jihadist fighters will either stay there to help the IS defence, or they will be sent back (to Europe)," Jambon told an interview with broadcaster RTBF aired on Sunday. Jambon revealed that among all the Belgian nationals who left to join the IS in Syria, 117 had returned, adding that half of these people are now in prison, and the other half under surveillance. Moreover, Jambon warned that Europe as a whole is facing a more severe threat, saying "Apart from the 200 Belgians, 3,000 to 5,000 European citizens are over there." Nonetheless, the minister believes that Belgium is safer than before the terror attacks in Paris last November and the bombings in Brussels in March, as a result of tight security measures. Both attacks were plotted in Brussels. "All the intelligence services are keeping an eye on the situation and exchange information," he said. "If this wave does arrive, we must be ready." Photo taken by the author shows a cable car crossing the Yangtze River in Chongqing Municipality, southwest China, on Nov. 3, 2016. (Photo provided by the author) BEIJING, Nov. 14(Xinhuanet) -- Despite the ticket price hike, riding a cable car crossing the mighty Yangtze River in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality remains a significant part of local culture. The ticket price of a Yangtze River cable car riding has now risen to 20 yuan from 10 yuan charged just before the National Day holiday in October. However, the number of riders keeps going up to hit a record of 18,000 in a single day last month. According to the local residents, from six o'clock in the morning, riders speaking dialects of Beijing, Guangdong, and other places would queue up for over two hundred meters to buy the tickets. For one thing, it is a unique way to see the gorgeous scenery on the two sides of the river in daytime, and the night view of illuminating neon and twinkling stars. Besides, riders could also feel the imposing rush and hear the thunderous roar of the Yangtze River from high above in the cable car. For another, unforgettable scenes in the famous Chinese movies like Crazy Stone, Chongqing Blues and Door were shot here, which further give food for their imagination. The cable car was put into service in 1987, as a primary commuting tool for locals, taking them four to five minutes to cross the river. Nicknamed "airbus" of the city, the cable car is China's first large cross-river passenger cableway. Thanks to solid safety checks and maintenance, there has never been an accident over its nearly thirty years' operation. According to the cable car company, in the first half of this year, the number of riders exceeded 1.5 million, and the number is expected to surpass 2.5 million for the whole year. A Chinese tourist trapped in the worst-hit town of Kaikoura receives interview of Xinhua News Agency, in Kaikoura, New Zealand, Nov. 14, 2016. The first batch of six Chinese tourists has been airlifted from the worst-hit town of Kaikoura to Christchurch after a deadly quake rocked much of New Zealand early Monday. A 7.5-magnitude quake hit just after midnight Monday, leaving at least two dead. (Xinhua/Su Liang) Five more cops fingered in $.4M robbery A Special Reserve Officer (SRP), who is said to be a Tobagonian and assigned to the San Juan Sub Station, was detained hours after the robbery and is assisting investigators with their inquries. Sources revealed that the SRP was transferred to the San Juan Sub Station recently. On Friday, three armed men went to the home of Wei Hui Zhu, 31, at Soledad Road, Claxton Bay, in a marked police vehicle, wearing police tactcal uniform. Three others later arrived in a black Sport Utility Vehicle, telling the businessman they had instructions to search his home. The men found and took $400,000 as well as two iPhones. Officers who raided the SRPs home on Friday night recovered a high powered weapon, along with a quantity of cash. Initially the SRP refused to cooperate with the police, but early Saturday he began confessing which led to five other officers being called in for questioning. Sources revelead that camera footage obtained from the premises of the victim has proven to be very useful to investigators. Sources also revealed that an iPhone stolen fronm the Chinese businessman was traced and found at the home of one of the five suspects. Investigators are expected to approach the Director of Public Prosecutions today for instructions. TERRIBLE TIMES' Pastor Michael Phillips, who led the congregation as they raised their voices in praise, quoting scripture after scripture, told mourners that although Francis death was a testament of a dark time in our nation, better days are coming. There will be terrible times in the last days! Phillips quoted from the bible, People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God... but in spite of everything, better days are coming, he said. He reminded the crowd that Felicias death was a sign of these times, but reminded them of Gods promise of eternal life. Francis was described by most at the service as a well put together woman, who was straightforward, and strong willed, but was also loving, industrious, caring and kind-hearted. Representatives from the Community Hospital, where she worked most of her professional career, and from the Womens Ministry, Department of her Church, the South East Port-of- Spain Seventh Day Adventist Church took turns praising Francis for her contributions to the lives of the people around her. On November 4, after attending an hour long service at her place of worship, Dyer Francis was shot dead by a unknown gunman. She was shot in her head and shoulders while sitting in her vehicle outside her church. Reports indicate that she was killed as a warning to one of her children, who is a police officer. Francis murder on November 4 was the 388th recorded murder for the year. Since then, the toll has shot up to 405. Voicing a serious concern for the rate of murders being committed in this country, Minister of National Security Edmond Dillon yesterday appealed to the nation to cease the unabating violence that has been destroying this nation. The minster said he was made aware of several news reports where neighbours were killing neighbours, brothers were killing brothers and friends were killing friends. He pleaded with the nation to look out for our fellow man. We have to be our brothers keeper, said Dillon in a phone conversation with the Newsday. He said that some instances of murder, for example gang violence could be deterred through utilising strategies which include detection, deterrence, prosecution and intelligence, but there are other instances of murder that police are less able to predict - like a friend killing a friend in an altercation. Every murder is of a serious concern to the Ministry of National Security, and should be a concern to all of Trinidad and Tobago Said Dillon, Through recent meetings with the Acting Commissioner of Police, and commanders of the Northern and Central Division, we are setting the ground work to implement new strategies to tackle the rate of murders in the nation. We are looking for new ways to capitalize all our resources. We will be utilizing deterrence methods, by way of a higher police presence, and we will be looking for even better intelligence gathering methods. Newsday was told that up to October this year the detection rate for crimes in the country was at a ballpark figure of 17 percent. Man killed by AirGuard According to preliminary reports, Sylvan DeFour, of the Trinidad and Tobago Air Guard, was in an Air Guard vehicle, heading East-bound on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway near Maloney when an unidentified man crossed the highway. The man was struck by the vehicle. He died at the scene. A statement from the TTAG said, DeFour was returning to station from official duty at about 11.30 pm in an official vehicle with five occupants when it collided with the man. Reports indicate that the pedestrian ran across the highway into oncoming traffic, the statement said. The TTAG said it was working with the TT Police Service in its inquiries. In a separate incident, a man was driving in Pasea on Saturday night and lost control of his vehicle, hitting a lamp post. He was taken to hospital for emergency treatment. Sandals Resort a gold mine for Tobago, says Stewart He was speaking on Saturday at the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce Champions of Business Award Ceremony held at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain. Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley had approached Sandals founder and chairman Gordon Butch Stewart about establishing a Sandals Resort in Tobago. The elder Stewart reported that he is eyeing No Mans Land for a 750 room resort. On Saturday night Stewart reported that his father, was unable to attend as he was recovering from minor surgery. In his feature address he said that this country has been relying on the certainty of the oil. Like I am sure many of you, I have been shocked to read about the impact plummeting oil prices have had on the sectors contribution to Trinidad and Tobagos GDP, a 50 percent reduction and if that were not startling enough, with production down and only the most highly skilled workers necessary, it seems as there will be people, good people looking for work, he added. Now, oil is not where my business expertise lies, but I do believe Prime Minister Rowley may be onto something because everything I do know something about hospitality, is telling me that Trinidad and Tobago is a gold mine just waiting to be discovered. As you consider new paths to economic growth, I believe now is the time for Trinidad and Tobago to make way for tourism, Sandals style. He explained that Sandals style means as a Caribbean-based company, understanding this region, and knowing the critical role of tourism as an economic engine across all sectors and the responsibility we accept for the success of any endeavor we pursue. Stewart also stressed that without destination demand Trinidad will not be able to encourage airlift but where Sandals plants it flag - the airlines follow. He pointed that these planes will deliver guests to other hotels as well. And we never work in a silo. Sandals Resorts become part and parcel of the place where we operate. Our success trickles down and up and sideways and all ways... Whenever and as much as we can, we buy local. In Jamaica, for example, a country like your own with a strong agricultural sector Sandals Resorts purchased US $1.5 million in melons, lettuce, pineapples and potatoes last year alone... We provide local farmers with consistent demand, creating a robust market for their produce that simply would not exist without full hotel rooms, he explained. He reported that their guests consume in one year at a single resort of 750 rooms, about the size were proposing here in Trinidad and Tobago, nearly: 350,000 bottles of water; 215,000 bottles of beer; 925,000 eggs. Altogether, the economic foot print of a resort the size we propose for Tobago, when you take into account payroll, taxes, local services and more, would be in the region of US$80 million annually. In the construction phase alone we anticipate to employ between 2500 to 3000 persons. Beyond that there will be some 1800 sustainable jobs for persons employed by the resort itself, he reported. He continued: Trinidad and Tobago is on the brink of a great opportunity, a break- through in its quest to become a vibrant and relevant member of the Caribbean tourism community. I applaud Prime Minister Rowleys efforts to realise Trinidad and Tobagos potential and appreciate his thoughtful approach in considering the sizeable investment this will require. After all, so much is on the line. Last known indentured labourer dies at 105 Historian and genealogist Shamshu Deen yesterday reported that jahajin (one who came on the boat from India) Samundarie died on Saturday night at the San Fernando General Hospital, where she was being treated after she fell ill at her home in St Charles Village, Princes Town. She died of pneumonia and heart failure. Her grand-daughter Lola Joseph, 65, took care of her during her last days. I miss hearing her voice, she said. She said her grandmother was a strong and independent woman. Samundaries grandson Raymond Joseph, 62, said she worked extremely hard during her life. She never stayed home from the estate nor did she stayed away from her vending job, he said. Deen said his research shows that Samundarie came here in 1912. The historic passing of the last indentured survivor jahajin has truly a tremendous impact. Deen said. He noted that this represents the last chapter of a book of 147,592 pages of Indian ancestors to Trinidad and perhaps in the whole diaspora. Samundarie arrived in Trinidad aboard the SS Mutlah of 1912 as a baby with her mother Makhani. She worked hard to raise her children after being a widow in her 30s. She had two daughters and a son. They produced 10 grand-children and 16 great-grand. She was a cane cutter in Caroni and when she retired she started selling market produce at the San Fernando market. She later became a vendor at the Jordan Hill Presbyterian school. Her funeral is expected to take place later this week. Kamla predicts: 0,0,0 seats for PNM, IPL Political Leader of the United National Congress (UNC) Kamla Persad-Bissessar made the prediction yesterday during a campaign motorcade in the Chaguanas region, where she urged supporters to translate their support into votes. In the borough of Chaguanas is zero, zero, zero seats for the PMN. No seats for the PNM. Tell the PNM and ILP, it is zero, zero, zero seats from the Borough, Opposition Leader Persad- Bissessar said while addressing supporters at Pepper Sauce Village Junction, Endeavor. Referring to a newspaper report that the murder toll was 400 for this year, the Opposition Leader charged that the real figure is over 438 murders in this year alone. Crimes are not only in the hotspots areas but nowhere are you safe in any community, in any village. The bandits are everywhere. It is like since the PNM came into power , the criminals feel they have open free season for all. We must tell the PNM that enough is enough, she said. In addition to the spiraling crime under ( Dr Keith) Rowley there continues to be an increase in the unemployment figures, Persad-Bissessar noted. She added: When we came into office, we had bills to pay . We came into the end of a recession, but we were able to stabilise our country and our economy . When we were there we were able to create over 57,00 new jobs. The campaign tour commenced at Price Plaza and ended at Jubilee Recreation Ground. A PNM win a gift to Fyzabad I pledge to displace the UNC in Fyzabad and this will be my gift to you, he said as he addressed a meeting of the PNM at Charlie King Junction on Saturday. He also said he would continue the highway from Bamboo Junction to St Marys Junction in 2017, as well as the Point Fortin Highway. The PNMs Mon Desir candidate Eileen Applwhite Steel said she will ensure that residents receive better roads, better drainage and better recreational facilities. MP for Point Fortin and Minister of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon called on the women to go out and vote. She said the previous government spent millions and had little to show for it in Fyzabad. 2 killed following powerful tremor in New Zealand United Kingdom,Crime/Disaster/Accident,Environment/Wildlife, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Wellington, Nov 14 (IANS) At least two people were killed on Monday after a series of powerful earthquakes jolted New Zealand's South Island, triggering a tsunami and sending aftershocks across the country, officials said. The first, a 7.8-magnitude quake, struck just after midnight on Monday near the coastal community of Kaikoura, some 93 km northeast of the city of Christchurch, the US Geological Survey reported. It triggered waves of 8 feet above usual tide levels, the highest New Zealand had seen in at least 38 years, Philip Duncan of Weather Watch New Zealand said. An initial tsunami warning was lifted but temblors continued on Monday afternoon, CNN reported. A 6.2-magnitude quake struck around 1.30 p.m., km west-southwest of Kaikoura, further north of Christchurch. Aftershocks from South Island reverberated all the way to Wellington, the country's capital on the North Island, where residents were told to stay indoors Monday. Images on social media showed shattered windows, toppled grocery items on the floor of a supermarket and water sloshing back and forth in swimming pools from different parts of the country. Prime Minister John Key called off talks in Buenos Aires, Argentina scheduled for Tuesday following the quakes, Xinhua news agency reported. "The situation is still unfolding and we don't yet know the full extent of the damage," Key said in a statement. The South Island was hit by a flurry of aftershocks, according to the USGS and New Zealand's Geonet service, some with a magnitude above 6.0. Officials from the island's second-largest town, Dunedin, has issued a state of emergency. New Zealanders are used to earthquakes. The country lies on the Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim, the BBC reported. Christchurch is still recovering from a 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city centre. --IANS ksk Saudi Arabia bans schools from marking non-Islamic holidays Saudi Arabia,Religion,Education, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Riyadh, Nov 14 (IANS) Saudi Arabia has warned international schools from marking non-Islamic occasions such as Christmas and New Year. The ban includes forbidding the schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them, Xinhua news agency reported. The education ministry directed all schools to stick to the academic calendars for exams and holidays. It warned of action against schools that violate the directive. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-conservative state that follows Islamic rules in all walks of life. --IANS ksk/mr Obama urged to revoke executive order against Venezuela Venezuela,Politics,Diplomacy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Caracas, Nov 14 (IANS) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has urged his US counterpart Barack Obama to revoke an executive order that labelled his country a security threat. "It is an atrocity that I hope Obama corrects before he leaves office," Maduro said on Sunday, reiterating his government's willingness to improve diplomatic ties with the US. In a message directly addressing the US head of state, Maduro said "in spite of the arrogance, aggression and negative legacy, you, President Barack Obama, can garner the admiration and respect of Venezuela, if you have the courage to sign a decree revoking that infamous executive order that claims our beloved country is a threat," Xinhua news agency reported. The South American nation will also formally request the White House revoke the decree during an upcoming meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, so Obama "can leave with a message of peace for Venezuela", said Maduro. While ties between the two countries have been sour since Venezuela's socialist party first came to power some 15 years ago, the 2015 decree calling the South American country "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the US", marked a particular low point. A day after the US presidential election on November 8, Maduro spoke with Kerry to request the two countries establish a "positive agenda" with which to work when the administration of President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January 2017. --IANS ksk Ancient Iraqi city recaptured from IS Iraq,Defence/Security,Terrorism,Human Interest/Society, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Baghdad, Nov 14 (IANS) Iraqi forces recaptured the ancient village of Nimrud and the site of the ruins as part of the ongoing battle for Mosul, the Islamic State (IS) terror group's last major stronghold in the war-torn country. The recapture took place on Sunday, according to Colonel Mohammed Ibrahim, a spokesman for Iraq's Joint operations command. While the village was now under control by Iraqi forces, clashes were still underway to retake the town, less than a mile west of the ruins, Ibrahim told CNN. Nimrud is 30 km southeast of Mosul. Archeologists first began excavating the Assyrian city of Nimrud -- built nearly 3,000 years ago -- in the 1840s. In the decades that followed, they unearthed priceless treasures from the city, including palaces adorned with unique frescoes and giant sculptures. Last year, the IS blew up the ancient walled city. Unesco described the deliberate destruction of Nimrud as a "war crime". Nimrud flourished between 900 B.C. and 612 B.C. Buildings there "have yielded thousands of carved ivories, mostly made in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C., now one of the richest collections of ivory in the world," according to Encyclopedia Britannica's website. The famous British mystery novelist Agatha Christie accompanied her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, at his excavation in Nimrud and helped clean some of the ivories. The Iraqi and Kurdish troop offensive to liberate Mosul began on October 17 with a three-pronged offensive along the north, south and eastern fronts, which has enabled the liberation of various eastern Mosul neighbourhoods. --IANS ksk Indian national killed in Nepal cross-fire Nepal,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Kathmandu, Nov 14 (IANS) An Indian national was killed on Monday during a cross-fire between the police and an armed group in Nepal's Rautahat district. Along with the victim, Tejhilala Shah, 44, of Bihar's East Champaran district, one Nepali policeman also received serious injuries, sources said. Acting on a tip-off that a huge cache of arms was being smuggled into the district via the Lalbakaiya River embankment from India, a joint security squad reached the site. But the gang comprising three to four individuals opened fire at the police team. The security personnel fired in retaliation and the exchange of firing continued for a short while. One rifle, a home-made pistol and some bullets were recovered, the police added. --IANS giri/ksk/dg Review demonetisation, act against black money hoarders: CPI Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The CPI on Monday demanded an immediate review of the demonetisation of high denomination currency and instead sought action against hoarders of black money. "If the government is really sincere in curbing a parallel economy based on black money, it should take people into confidence about the WikiLeaks list of Indians holding accounts in foreign banks, the list of those with investment in foreign countries leaked in the Panama leak papers," said a statement by the Communist Party of India. "The government should take urgent action against such holders of black money," it said. The party said the new Rs 2,000 notes were causing more difficulty to the people due to shortage of notes of lesser value. The CPI demanded banks to act against corporate defaulters and publicise the names of those who had made "huge deposits" prior to the announcement of the November 8 demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "There are reports that a large number of people, including leaders of political parties, have deposited crores and crores of rupees in banks in the last month as they were aware (beforehand) of the demonetisation move. Banks should release the list of such depositors at all levels." --IANS and/tsb/mr Banks warn staff over unauthorised exchange of notes Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) Banks have issued alerts to their employees, warning them of serious action over unauthorised transactions following demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes in India. According to a senior public sector bank officer, complaints were received that some bankers were indulging in unfair means like not maintaining records of customers who come to deposit or exchange the phased-out currency notes. Allegations were also made that some bank employees were entertaining people known to them and issuing them lower denomination currency notes many times over the limit without bothering to keep records. This is in violation of the government instructions that banks can exchange cash up to Rs 4,000 per person once till November 24. The central government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes effective November 8 midnight leading to a sharp demand for smaller currency notes. Banks and ATMs saw huge queues of people trying to exchange or withdraw money across the country, with most coming back empty-handed. The government has placed restrictions on the amount that an individual can exchange or withdraw from the banks. Employees of the public sector banks on Monday received instructions from higher ups that they need to enter the data of their customers in the banking software. "Further, it was made very clear that the exchange of cash has to be recorded in CCTV and this footage has to be shared with RBI. It was also informed that any non-compliance would be dealt by RBI and (the) bank very seriously," read the note sent to the bank branches. Some of the head offices of banks warned against this "dangerous" trend stating that serious action would be taken against the staff if they indulged in such activities. "All the branches are instructed to sensitise their staff and desist from such practices. They should understand that they are diluting the government of India guidelines which attracts serious punishment," said the note sent by bank head offices to their branches. Many other banks have also asked their branch offices to keep a strict vigil and maintain proper records of all the customers who exchange or deposit the now-spiked currency. --IANS na/sar/hs/dg Did banks ignore RBI order on Rs 100-ATMs before demonetisation? Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) In anticipation of the huge demand for lower currency notes, ahead of the demonetisation move, the Reserve Bank of India had asked banks to set up Automated Teller Machines which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. On November 2, six days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a television address to the nation that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes would become illegal from midnight of November 8, the RBI had asked banks to recalibrate 10 per cent of its ATMs to exclusively dispense Rs 100 notes. How many banks complied with this directive is not known. However, the long queues at ATMs and the resultant chaos all across the country would imply that the directive may have been ignored. In its circular DCM(CC)No 1170/03.41.01/2016-17 issued on November 2, the apex bank said that "in keeping with the objectives of Clean Note Policy and to ensure that genuine requirement of members of public for Rs 100 denomination bank notes are met, the banks should increase dispensation of Rs 100 bank notes through ATMs." Stating that as a pilot project, 10 per cent of the ATMs in the country would be recalibrated, the RBI said that "as the process involved in configuring the requisite number of machines is not complex, the banks are required to complete the exercise within 15 days" and report compliance. The RBI had also moved as early as May this year to provide incentive for setting up ATMs which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. In a circular on May 5, The central bank promised to pay 50 per cent of the cost of such ATMs up to Rs 2 lakh. --IANS hs/bg Andhra professor accused of abetting medico's suicide held Andhra Pradesh,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Vijayawada, Nov 14 (IANS) A professor of Guntur Medical College accused of abetting the suicide of a post-graduate medical student was arrested in Bengaluru on Monday, police said in Guntur. The professor, A.V.V. Lakshmi, is likely to be brought to Guntur later on Monday or Tuesday. She was absconding following the suicide of B. Sandhya Rani in October. Sandhya Rani (27), belonging to Nalgonda district of Telangana and a post-graduate student of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, committed suicide by injecting in herself an overdose of anaesthesia. She died on October 24 while undergoing treatment at Guntur Government Hospital. During investigation, police found Sandhya's diary in which she wrote that she is ending her life as she is unable to bear the harassment by Lakshmi. Sandhya's classmates at the medical college had staged a protest demanding the immediate arrest and suspension of the Professor. An inquiry committee of the college had found Lakshmi guilty of harassing the student. However, Andhra Pradesh Police faced allegations from the victim's family that it is not doing enough to bring Lakshmi to book. Denying the allegation, the police had formed special teams to track down the absconding Professor. Lakshmi through her relatives had also moved a court in Guntur for anticipatory bail but the court refused her plea. Following, Sandhya Rani's death her husband Ravi had also attempted suicide in Miryalaguda town of Telangana. Ravi, also a physician, tried to hang himself at his residence but was saved by his brother. The couple had married a year ago. Sandhya was allegedly denied leave and burdened with additional work by the Professor. --IANS ms/lok/dg Bengal government announces exemption of agricultural tax for 3 days West Bengal,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Kolkata, Nov 14 (IANS) The West Bengal government has decided not to impose agricultural tax for the next three days on the trucks coming from other states as they were facing an acute cash shortage, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Monday. Truck owners said over 40 per cent of their vehicles have stopped plying following the demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. "Bengal government has decided not to impose any agricultural tax on movement of trucks for next three days," Banerjee said. Banerjee said thousands of trucks carrying perishable vegetables and other essential products are stuck all over the country for the last three days. "Thousands of trucks all over the country carrying essential goods and perishables facing huge cash shortage. This issue will become even more serious over next few days and push essential prices up beyond control. Quick action needed," Banerjee twitted. She said the tax exemption was given to help resume the flow of essential products. "To save farmers and commoners, perishable vegetables should not be allowed to spoil," the Chief Minister said. The All India Motor Transport Association Chief Kultaran Singh said post demonetisation, over 40 per cent of their trucks have gone off the roads. "Though the central government has exempted the toll tax on national highways till November 18, the truck owners are facing several issues due to the lack of cash flow. Paying the drivers, buying fuel and maintenance is not possible unless government allows to withdraw more cash," Singh said. --IANS mgr/ssp/lok/bg Manipur battles cash shortage, blockade Manipur,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Imphal, Nov 14 (IANS) People in Manipur are battling a twin crisis: an ongoing "economic blockade" and a crippling shortages of cash. So severe is the problem of currency that shopkeepers across the state are freely accepting the spiked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. But no balance is returned as smaller denomination notes have virtually disappeared. Many are blaming the Reserve Bank of India for not airlifting the new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes to the state on time. Besides, ATMs in the state are yet to serve the customers properly. Also, only small amounts can be drawn by cheques. The situation has further worsened on account of the ongoing fortnight-old economic blockade imposed by the United Naga Council, which has sent commodity prices soaring. The crisis has spelt a windfall for those making a quick buck through illegal money exchange trade. One can get any amount of Rs 100 and lesser denomination notes on payment of 20 per cent as "interest". And since people are hard-pressed for liquidity, the illegal money trade is thriving. Meghajit Laithangbam, who works in a private company, said: "Since it is impossible to draw money from the banks, we are paying 20 per cent to get the required amount for our daily needs." Departmental stores, village shops, meat and fish sellers and other traders are freely accepting the demonetised currencies but with a rider that the entire money should be spent since there is no change to be returned. In fact, no shop returns any change even if a customer pays Rs 100 or smaller denomination notes. Chief Secretary Oinam Nabakishore said: "On our request, the RBI had despatched Rs 107 crore in new currencies. Now we have requested for Rs 304 crore more." Official sources told IANS that the central government had invited the United Naga Council for talks to hammer out a solution to the economic blockade as Manipur is now short of most essential items. Because of the blockade, potato is sold in some shops for Rs 80 a kg, each egg costs Rs 15 and petrol is selling at Rs 300 a litre. Life saving medicines are not available. --IANS il/nir/mr/sar Modi greets nation on Gurpurab Delhi,National,Politics,Religion, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted the nation on the occasion of Gurpurab and urged the people to draw inspiration from the teachings of Guru Nanak. "Gurupurab wishes to everyone. The inspiring teachings of the venerable Guru Nanak guide us in creating a prosperous and harmonious society," Modi tweeted. Gurpurab or Guru Nanak Jayanti or Prakash Utsav is the sacred festival of the Sikh community. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born in Talwandi near Lahore (now Nankana Sahib), Pakistan, on April 15, 1469. However, his birthday is celebrated during the Hindi month of Kartik in autumn. --IANS aks/in Dell EMC unveils new IT products and solutions Delhi,Business/Economy,Technology, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) To help customers scale technology availability with IT demand, Dell EMC on Monday announced a range of products, solutions and consumption models that address cloud, big data analytics, converged infrastructure, storage, data protection and security. "Today's organisations must embark on a digital transformation. To truly realise their digital future, we believe the vast majority of organisations will transform their IT through a hybrid cloud strategy," David Goulden, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC, said in a statement. Dell EMC announced the expansion of its leading converged infrastructure portfolio through integration with PowerEdge servers into VxRail Appliances and VxRack System 1000 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The company also announced the new Analytic Insights Module delivering all of the software, hardware and services necessary to stand up an environment for both big data analytics and cloud native application development in days rather than weeks. Dell unveiled its Endpoint Data Security and Management portfolio encompassing technologies from Dell, Mozy by Dell, RSA and VMware AirWatch, offering data protection, backup and recovery, identity assurance, threat prevention and advanced response, and endpoint device and application management capabilities. The company rolled out updates to the Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) platform, with new support for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers. --IANS sku/na/dg Ahead of demonetisation, banks asked to install additional CCTVs Tamil Nadu,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Chennai, Nov 14 (IANS) When a nationalised bank's manager read an official circular on November 7 regarding beefing up the closed-circuit television network or even hiring a videographer to capture the scene near its cash counters, he had no inkling of what was in store the next day. "We initially thought the instructions were for increasing security. We asked an agency to urgently install two more CCTVs. We realised the actual import of the instruction only when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes," the bank manager told IANS on condition of anonymity. "Today, every person who enters a bank and the amount he deposits are captured on a camera. Further, we enter the details in the banking system. There is also documentary evidence," he added. "If the government wants, it can now track a person. So, if people think they can exchange Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 notes on behalf of somebody else without detection, they are totally wrong," he said. The official said he had heard people talking of offers of Rs 400 commission to anyone who exchanged invalid notes totalling Rs 4,000. "If the government wants to track them or check bank accounts that suddenly became active, it can do so. We also send daily reports to higher authorities on the amount of cash exchanged," he said. Meanwhile, banks in Tamil Nadu were open as usual as the state didn't declare a holiday on Gurpurab, which marks the birth anniversary of first Sikh master, Guru Nanak Dev. However, many automated teller machines dried up soon after they were filled. But bank branches continued to exchange Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes with new Rs 2,000 or old Rs 100 notes. Queried about other banking operations, the official said everybody was running after cash for the last two days. "Today (Monday), it is a holiday in Mumbai and so major markets are closed. The problem may crop up tomorrow (Tuesday). But, tomorrow is another day," he quipped. --IANS vj/tsb/bg We'll touch Rs 100 cr-mark in Indian mobile accessories market by 2017: Intex Delhi,National,Technology,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The Indian mobile accessories market is set to explode owing to the exponential smartphone sales growth and domestic phone maker Intex aims to touch the Rs 100 crore mark in this segment by March 2017 while gearing up to play a key role in the batteries segment, a top company executive has said. The global mobile phone accessories market is expected to reach $107.3 billion by 2022, according to alliedmarketresearch.com. The major factor that boosts market growth is the increase in adoption of smartphones in urban as well as rural areas. Industry experts peg the Indian mobile accessories segment at $1 billion, which is set to grow 20-25 per cent year-on-year. Intex entered the mobile accessories vertical in 2011 and, since then, has been growing rapidly by developing and designing products ranging from batteries, chargers, hands-free devices, cables and power banks, among others. "Battery is the backbone of the mobile phone industry and since day one, our focus was on battery. Our major share -- almost 50-55 per cent -- comes from batteries," Manish Gupta, Deputy General Manager, Mobile Accessories, at Intex Technologies (India), told IANS. Intex also sells batteries for other Indian brands like Micromax, Lava and Karbonn and even for Nokia, Samsung and some Chinese brands. "Every month, we sell half-a-million batteries for the mobile accessories business in the general trade market. We have a capacity of more than that and, gradually, we are increasing the capacity. We are also planning to make power banks in-house," Gupta noted. The company reported Rs 670 million in revenue in the financial year 2015-16 -- up from an average growth rate of 90 per cent year-on-year. The significant accessories sale is via batteries and chargers -- 70 per cent of the business value originates in this category. Intex's growth came from new products, including power banks and accessories such as USB cables, Gupta said, adding that for the mobile accessory as a whole division, the revenue sat at 25 per cent with standard growth rate of 20-25 per cent. "Northern region is a major contributor to our business. Almost 50 per cent of business comes from the northern region. Southern region will be major focus for us in the next financial year," Gupta told IANS. Intex is also aiming to launch a separate a smartphone accessory section wherein they already have one product -- MFI cable for iPhones. The company has taken a licence from the Cupertino, San Francisco-based Apple to launch the cable which is available online as well as in retail stores. According to Gupta, power banks is another big growth area. In the last financial year, Intex sold 130,000 power banks and have already sold 750,000 power banks this year. "Diwali was excellent for us. At 'Flipkart Big Billion Day', we sold 100,000 power banks. With 'Snapdeal Unbox', we sold 25,000 power banks and in general trade, we sold 15,000-16,000 power banks," Gupta said. "That is almost 34 per cent share in the power banks segment we garnered this festive season. We were number one in the 'Flipkart Big Billion Day'," Gupta added. The company sold 400,000 units of power banks in the months of September and October alone. The sale of power banks has gone up by more than 100 per cent as compared to the same time last year. "There are almost 1,000 channel partners with us for accessories business pan-India," the executive said. The company will soon launch another innovative product -- "power inverter" -- that can charge laptops and two devices simultaneously. The product will be available in the market before March 2017. (Anuj Sharma can be contacted at anuj.s@ians.in) --IANS anuj/na/vm/sac President, Vice President pay tributes to Nehru Delhi,National,Politics, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Monday paid floral tributes to the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary. The President and the Vice President arrived at the Shanti Vana - the memorial of Nehru on the banks of river Yamuna. Nehru was born to Motilal Nehru and Swaroop Rani on November 14, 1889, in Allahabad. He remained in office until his death on May 27, 1964. As Nehru's birthday is celebrated as Children's Day, school children also gathered at the memorial to pay tributes. --IANS aks/in Autocrat PM has created financial chaos in country: Congress Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The Congress on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having pushed the country into a "financial chaos" through demonetisation and called him an autocrat. "The powerful autocratic Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has pushed the country into a financial chaos by overnight reducing their hard earned money to worthless pieces of paper," Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said here. "Modiji has assumed that a clear majority in Parliament has given him a pass to act on his whims and fancies. But in a democracy the decisions have to be taken as per peoples' wishes," he added. He said the black money that the government was targetting was not with the people who are wasting hours standing in long queues at banks and ATMs, but with "a handful of suited-booted friends of yours" who are not standing in queues. "What is the reason that none of your corporate friends, your officers, your cabinet ministers your chief ministers or BJP leaders is seen standing in the queues outside banks? Is it not indicative of where the black money is actually lying?" Surjewala said. He dared the Prime Minister to make public all the transactions done in the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) national and regional units bank accounts between March and September this year. "These bank details will show how much money was changed before the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes was announced. Isse doodh ka doodh aur pani ka pani ho jayega (It will make the picture clear)," he said. Surjewala said that before demonetisation, the Modi government had already hiked the remittances limit by 130 per cent in a financial year. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), any citizen of India is allowed to freely remit up to $2,50,000 in a financial year. In 2013 this limit was $75,000. --IANS mak/rn 44 per cent people found ATMs non-functional Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) As difficulties continue in exchanging demonetised notes and withdrawing cash, 44 per cent of respondents in a survey complained that ATMs did not work between November 11 and 13. With more than 9,000 citizens participating, 14 per cent said they had to wait for up to 2 hours, 8 per cent said they able to get cash in less than 10 minutes while 34 per cent did not visit an ATM, according to a survey conducted by the LocalCircles citizen engagement platform. Similarly, at the banks, 29 per cent people said they had to wait for over two hours to exchange notes, 21 per cent waited between 30 minutes to two hours, 11 per cent suggested being able to transact in 10 minutes or less while 39 per cent did not visit the bank for currency exchange, it said. In addition to sharing their experiences with the ATM and banks, citizens also highlighted the negative impacts of the demonetisation plan and the process gaps they have observed. They said that enough currency notes were not available in small denominations before rolling out the scheme. Citizens have highlighted that since the introduction of the Rs 2000 note was already announced last month, ATMs could have been upgraded to dispense these while maintaining secrecy. As per field experiences of LocalCircles members, more than 40 per cent people in bank lines stood for someone else. Since 80 per cent of the currency is in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, business owners said they are finding footfalls reduced by 50 per cent in malls, local markets and the like. The majority of citizens said they expect these difficulties to continue in the coming months. --IANS mg/vm India's first Cherry Blossom Festival starts in Meghalaya Meghalaya,National,Environment/Wildlife, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Shillong, Nov 14 (IANS) Meghalaya on Monday became the first state to start India's first Cherry Blossom Festival, which is widely celebrated in Japan. The four-day festival will also provide opportunities to showcase the unique beauty of pink and white cherry blossoms as well as Meghalaya's traditional arts, culture and cuisine to the naturalists and tourists. Chief Minister Mukul Sangma inaugurated India's first Cherry Blossom Festival in this state capital of Meghalaya, where cherry blossoms are in full bloom in several parts of the city and the suburbs. Sangma said: "This nature's gift of cherry blossoms to Meghalaya must be appreciated and is one of several elements that makes Meghalaya an attractive destination for tourists looking for a green destination and a short break away from the hustle and bustle of polluted cities." He also appreciated the partnership with Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development (IBSD) for joint conceptualisation and implementation of this humble yet successful start in putting Meghalaya onto the global tourist map. The IBSD, a national institute of the Centre's Department of Biotechnology, said the festival would not only bring socio-economic development in the region, but also promote peace, prosperity and sustainable development, which are the United Nation's sustainable development goals. IBSD Director Dinabandhu Sahoo, who conceptualised the Cherry Blossom Festival in India, said the event would set the stage for 2017, which has been declared by the UN as International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. "This festival would create a number of opportunities for the people of Meghalaya," he said, emphasising that collaborations should be developed with Japan so that more international tourists can visit the north-eastern states. The Cherry Blossom Festival, popularly known as Sakura Festival in Japan, is held in April every year. Australia, Korea, China, the US and some other countries celebrate the festival which helps in creating a positive impact on the local economy. The Washington DC Cherry Blossom Festival alone generates about $126 million from tourists every year from across the world, Sahoo said. --IANS rrk/ask/vt Domestic, foreign traders accepting demonetised notes at Trade Fair Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The 36th India International Trade Fair, inaugurated here on Monday, has become an easy way out for people to use up their demonetised currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 as domestic and even foreign traders are easily and openly accepting payment in the phased-out notes. "We are accepting all notes. Rs 500, Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000 -- all notes. People can buy anything for the full amount of the old currency. However, we cannot give change," a woman trader at Turkey's pavilion told IANS. The annual IITF is being organised by the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and will continue till November 27 at the sprawling Pragati Maidan here. Another trader at the Myanmar pavilion, selling precious stones and gems and jewellery, said: "You can pay us anyhow, we are accepting online payments and cash as well. Cash... you can pay in old currency also." Asked how will they get it exchanged as the notes have been demonetised, the trader nonchalantly said that he has access to Indian accounts into which he can deposit the cash. The government had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8 night. The public at large is easily using up their stock of demonetised notes at the trade fair. A customer told IANS: "I brought new currency with me and old currency also. And I have purchased stuff using both. Many Indian and foreign counters are accepting old notes." An Indian dealer trading in tea leaves said that they are open to accepting old Rs 500 notes and would even give the remaining change if the purchase is of lesser amount. Asked if the government is allowing to trade in old notes at the trade fair, the sales girl told IANS: "I do not know. But we have instructions from our company to accept demonetised notes too." Demand for point of sale (POS) machines have also gone up as the traders at the fair are accepting card payments. At the State Bank of India counter, an employee said that on the first day of the trade fair itself, orders for about 60 machines have been placed. A trader who was filling the form for a POS machine told IANS: "The cosmetic pavilion is openly accepting old currency notes. They will get it exchanged later from the market. I am not accepting, so I have to take card payments." This year's fair is seeing 7,000 participants including representation from 24 nations, Indian states and union territories, public and private enterprises with around 800 rural artisans and craftspersons. (Meghna Mittal can be reached at meghna.m@ians.in) --IANS mm/vd/vt Congress dares PM to disclose BJP's bank transactions Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The Congress on Monday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make public the bank transactions of the BJP's national and regional accounts from March to September 2016, following allegations of a spike in deposits in some bank accounts in September. The Congress also attacked the government for allegedly leaking the demonetise move to a "selected few" and questioned how the BJP's Kolkata unit had deposited Rs one crore on November 8, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. "In September 2016, as against August 2016, there was a spike in deposits of Rs 5,88,600 lakh crore in banks across the country," Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters here. "According to RBI figures, money deposited in all the banks in July 2016 was Rs 96,196 billion, whereas in September 2016, this rose to Rs 1,02,082 billion," he added. Surjewala said the huge increase in deposited amount "tells the tale of black money". "In July 2015, the money deposited in all the banks was Rs 88,301 billion. In September 2015, the money deposited in the banks was Rs 89,462 billion, which means around Rs 1 lakh crore extra money was deposited," said Surjewala. "But, in July 2016, Rs 96,196 billion was deposited and in September 2016, it became 1,02,082 billion, which shows that the increase in the deposits during this period was around Rs 14 lakh crore," he added. He also termed as a "lame duck excuse", Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarifying that in September the arrears of the Seventh Pay Commission was paid leading to increase in bank deposits. Congress said the Bharatiya Janata Party should disclose all the bank details of their national and state bank accounts from March to September 2016. "Everything will become clear how much money has been exchanged before the demonetisation announcement." "A few hours before the announcement of demonetisation, the Kolkata unit of BJP deposited Rs one crore in a bank bearing account number 554510034 on November 8, which was deposited by O.P. Jha. The information was leaked to a few selected people," he added. The Congress also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having pushed the country into a "financial chaos" through demonetisation and called him an autocrat. "The powerful autocratic Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has pushed the country into a financial chaos by overnight reducing their hard earned money to worthless pieces of paper," Surjewala said. "Modiji has assumed that a clear majority in Parliament has given him a pass to act on his whims and fancies. But in a democracy the decisions have to be taken as per peoples' wishes," he added. He said the black money that the government was targetting was not with the people who are wasting hours standing in long queues at banks and ATMs, but with "a handful of suited-booted friends of yours" who are not standing in queues. "What is the reason that none of your corporate friends, your officers, your cabinet ministers your chief ministers or BJP leaders is seen standing in the queues outside banks? Is it not indicative of where the black money is actually lying?" Surjewala said. Surjewala said that before demonetisation, the Modi government had already hiked the remittances limit by 130 per cent in a financial year. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), any citizen of India is allowed to freely remit up to $2,50,000 in a financial year. In 2013 this limit was $75,000. --IANS sid/rn Karnataka to set up women's parks to facilitate entrepreneurs Karnataka,Business/Economy,Politics, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Bengaluru, Nov 14 (IANS) The Karnataka government on Monday invited women entrepreneurs to explore investment opportunities in the state, saying it will set up 'Women's Park' in all 30 district to facilitate their business endeavours. "Our government has rolled out a red carpet for women entrepreneurs to explore investment opportunities in Karnataka and make it their base," said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at an international conclave here. Asserting that the state's new industrial policy gave special attention to women entrepreneurs for inclusive growth, the Chief Minister said the state government will set up 'Women's Park' in each district across the state to facilitate their enterprises and industrial capacity building. "Though we decided to set up a Women's Park at Harohally near Bengaluru initially, we received demands for similar parks from all districts (30) across the state," Siddaramaiah said while inaugurating the two-day 'ThinkBig 2016',a women entrepreneurs summit, at a convention centre here. Organised by the state government in association with WEConnect International, Asia's largest women entrepreneurship platform has brought 2,000 delegates, 300 industry leaders and 400 organisations from across the world on one platform to inspire more women to become entrepreneurs in diverse sectors. The US-based WEConnect is a global network that connects women-owned businesses to qualified buyers the world over and helps women entrepreneurs to succeed in global value chains. "As WEConnect helps women-owned businesses succeed in global value chain and connects them to Indian and multinational corporations, I have approved to reimburse its fee for the next three years to encourage women entrepreneurs," the Chief Minister said. He said the state had the best diversity ratio in employment and entrepreneurship in the country. "I am sure all delegates will experience the rich programmes, matchmaking and networking with corporate, government and women entrepreneurs and exhibitors showcasing brands, products and services," Siddaramaiah said. According to the fourth Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) census, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have 51.9 per cent of the country's women-owned businesses, indicating the potential for further growth. As per a World Bank report, the US has the highest women workforce (45 per cent), followed by Britain (43 per cent), Canada (42 per cent), Indonesia (40 per cent), France (38 per cent) and Brazil 38 per cent and India (31.6 per cent). "We have 50 per cent reservation for women in local bodies to ensure equality, promote their participation in governances even at the grass-roots level for all-round socio-economic development of the state," added Siddaramaiah. --IANS fb/tsb/vt Opposition leaders to meet on Tuesday against demonetisation Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) The opposition leaders on Monday joined hands in opposing the demonetisation of high-value currency notes and plan to hold another meeting on Tuesday to chalk out their strategy for Parliament's winter session, opening on Wednesday. On Monday, leaders of the Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the YSR Congress met in the room allotted to Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad. "All parties denounced the manner in which the demonetisation was enforced. We are not against fighting black money, but this action has affected the farmers and daily wage earners," CPI leader D. Raja told IANS. The opposition leaders will meet again at 2 p.m. on Tuesday and decide their strategy for the session. Those present in the meeting included Sharad Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, Sudip Bandopadhyay, Derek O'Brien, D. Raja, Prem Chand Gupta, Sushil Kumar and M. Rajamohan Reddy. Besides Azad, Congress Leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and the party's Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma were also present. The opposition parties are quite vocal in opposing demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 night, which has left people slogging in long queues outside banks and ATMs, with many complaining they do not have enough money even to buy esential items. --IANS sid-ao/tsb/vt Paralysed property dealer shot dead, wife critically injured Delhi,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Tue, 15 Nov 2016 IANS New Delhi, Nov 14 (IANS) A 40-year-old property dealer was shot dead by two unidentified assailants in his own house on Monday while his wife was critically injured in the attack, police said. The incident happened in Brijwasan area, where Sonu Rana, who was paralysed since the last couple of months, used to operate from his house. According to police, around 3.45 p.m. two bike-borne assailants came to meet him to inquire about a property. "When Rana came out with his wife as he could not able to walk properly, both the assailants shot at him thrice and one of the bullets also hit his wife," Deputy Commissioner of Police Surender Kumar told IANS. Rana died on the spot, while his wife, who was admitted to a nearby private hospital, is said to be critical, Kumar said. The assailants managed to flee, he said. A case of murder has been registered and further investigation is on, he said. --IANS sp/vd We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. At COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco unveiled its new initiative, dubbed Blue Belt, to boost sustainable fisheries and bolster coastal resilience to climate change. On the occasion of this COP, Morocco will confirm its support for the initiatives relating to the oceans, which have been already launched, and will launch a new initiative called the Blue Belt, aimed at increasing the resilience of coastal populations as well as promoting sustainable fishing activities, Princess Lalla Hasnaa, Chairwoman of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, Ambassador of the Coast, said in a speech at the opening ceremony of the Oceans Day at COP22. The Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection will join the Blue Belt, said Princess Lalla Hasnaa, the youngest sister of King Mohammed VI, during the ceremony which was notably attended by Prince Albert of Monaco, French Minister of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, President of the COP 21, Segolene Royal, and European Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Karmenu Vella. The Foundation will take part in the creation of marine protected areas in keeping with its efforts to bolster sustainable development of three Moroccan wetlands on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, she said, adding that oceans protection is part of Moroccos environmental engagement, which is a key component of public policies. The Oceans Action Event at COP 22, part of the Global Climate Action Agenda, features high-level political leaders from around the world, international agencies, NGOs, experts, and private sector representatives to showcase how the world is tackling climate change impacts on oceans, seas, and coastal and island populations. Morocco and Senegal are two old friend countries boasting an enduring and special relationship based on the values of freedom, democracy, enterprise and mutual respect. The two countries are busy working building a modern and model South-South partnership tackling shared challenges and promoting mutual prosperity. King Mohammed VI paid several visit to Senegal wherein he launched landmark socioeconomic development projects. During latest royal historical visit to this African country, the Sovereign addressed Moroccan people from Dakar on the occasion of the Green March, an unprecedented event showing the depth and solidity of the Moroccan relations. During this visit, the Moroccan monarch received a warm welcome from Senegalese people and had a private meeting with president Macky Sall. The two leaders chaired later on signing ceremony of numerous cooperation accords. These accords seek to boost small-scale agriculture in Senegal, octopus farming and preservation in this African country which received 12 Moroccan inflatable boats for rescue operations and monitoring of fishing activities. King Mohammed VI and President Sall also chaired the launch ceremony of an Entrepreneurship Training Center to provide training on business creation to 300 young people a year in various sectors including tourism. The center will also offer assistance to 100 young people carry out their projects. The two Heads of State also visited Dakar Hospital where the Moroccan Sovereign donated to the Senegalese Aids Control National Council 1.6 tons of medicines to combat this deadly disease. On the sidelines of the royal visit, the two countries carriers are also exploring partnership and joint business opportunities. During the royal visit to Senegal, four partnership agreements, mapped out by the Moroccan-Senegalese Economic Impulse Group, were inked under chairmanship of King Mohammed VI and President Macky Sall. The goal of these agreements is to promote tourism between two countries, set up a trade exhibition for social, solidarity economy & handicrafts, establish a Senegalese center for the development of IT & digital competence and create joint venture between Moroccan La voie express and Senegalese company Tex Courrier. The Moroccan-Senegalese Economic Impulse Group endeavors more support for the sectors of transportation & logistics, an economic intelligence unit, better coordination between public and private sectors. To achieve the goals set by the two countries leaders, the Moroccan & Senegalese businessmen call for more investment and tourism flow, support for the social economy, the removal of trade barriers, harmonized health standards and that signing of a trade deal with ECOWAS to get access to this market with huge business opportunities. Morocco, host country of the 22nd UN climate conference, has launched Adaptation of African Agriculture (AAA) initiative which seeks to restore African ecosystem balance and enable countries of the continent to have access to climate funds. This initiative focuses on strengthening the financing capacities of African farmers, via the micro-credit generalization to small farmers, meso-credit development to medium-sized farms and mobile banking solutions deployment. It is characterized by its pragmatic approach based on the design, implementation and monitoring of bankable projects with accountability for results and impacts on African countries populations. It will help link climate financing with food security through priority projects, which will allow for better appreciation of Africas natural resources in a sustainable manner. The AAA initiative calls for the mobilization of all stakeholders: governments, international institutions, private sector, NGOs, and scientific community. The Moroccan government seeks to mobilise $30bn of investment for the sector that is under the most significant threat from climate change, in the region that is the least equipped to deal with it. According to current estimates, the negative effects of climate change are already reducing Africas GDP by about 1.4 per cent, and the costs arising from adaptation to climate change are set to reach an annual three per cent of GDP by 2030. A principal victim of this is the agriculture sector, which not only feeds the chronically food-insecure continent, but forms the backbone of its economy and its route out of poverty. A new study out this week led by the International Fund for Agricultural Development shows that Moroccos approach may well be on the right track. It confirms that investment in climate-sensitive approaches for smallholder farmers can more than double farmer incomes meaning directing climate funding for adaptation in African agriculture would make both climate and economic sense. However, Africa currently only attracts around 5 per cent of climate funding. Morocco has purchased from the World Bank USD 100 million Green Bonds to fund sustainable development projects in African countries to support their transition to a low carbon economy. Many political analysts are wondering whether there is currently a Saudi mediation to heal relations between Algeria and its neighboring Morocco as top Algerian officials have softened up lately their anti-Moroccan rhetoric prior a visit to Riyadh by Algerian Premier Abdelmalek Sellal. Morocco is one of the strategic partners of the Arab rich Gulf monarchies, while Algeria is an OPEC member as countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) gathering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. Saudi Arabia has offered many times in the past its mediation to settle the disputes opposing Morocco to Algeria, particularly the Sahara issue, which is paralyzing the Arab Maghreb Union. Road borders between the two neighbors remain closed since 1994 despite Moroccos numerous calls to the Algerians to reopen the borders and lift the hurdles which are affecting trade exchanges in the Maghreb and people living the near the borders. The two countries remain at loggerhead with unbridgeable disagreements over the Sahara issue as Algeria continues to fund, harbor and provide weapons to Polisario separatists. But lately Algerian PM Abdelmalek Sellal has softened the tone. In an interview with Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, he described Morocco as a brother and neighboring country, saying Algiers is ready to settle its differences with Rabat in a bid to give a new impetus Arab Maghreb Union (UMA). There are issues on which we have opposed viewpoints. Algeria prefers a global approach where all questions will be posed in a direct dialogue, he added, noting his country supports UN political negotiations on Sahara and hopes that these negotiations will lead to a final and just solution to this conflict. For his part, former Algerian foreign minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem early this month in an interview CNN Arabic spoke in favor of reopening land borders with Morocco. According to some political analysts, the change in tone of the Algerian officials comes as this North African country seeks support to weather the economic and financial crisis after the falling in oil prices, while Morocco is thriving, expanding its influence in Africa and turning a world leader in renewable energies. Furthermore, Morocco has sealed a strategic partnership with GCC which openly expressed support to Moroccos territorial integrity and backed its sovereignty over Sahara, hailing autonomy plan for the Moroccan Sahara. Last April, Morocco and GCC convened in Riyadh their 1st summit meeting, a historical event that ushered in a new era in partnership between Rabat and the six-member powerful regional economic bloc, sharing common geostrategic, economic, and religious interests. All these factors playing in favor of Morocco suggest that rival Algeria might seek Gulf backing to catch up. After all nothing is impossible in the world of politics wherein old foes become friends and vice versa! Thirteen centres of excellence and think tanks from Africa, Europe, Asia and Latin America came together, on Monday in the Moroccan COP22 pavilion, to launch a network dubbed The International Climate Change Centre of Excellence and Think Tanks for Capacity Building (INCCCETT 4CB). The network aims at catalysing cooperation and coordination between the centres of excellence in the field of capacity building for climate change mitigation and adaptation in order to boost efforts towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Speaking on this occasion, Nizar Baraka, President of the COP 22 Scientific Committee, and President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, highlighted the role that these centres can play in promoting capacity building efforts as part of south-south and north-south cooperation. Capacity building is a priority for Moroccos COP22 Presidency along with adaptation, funding, NDCs, technology transfer and innovation, said Baraka. Speaking on the same occasion, Argentinas Under-Secretary for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, Carlos Gorissen, welcomed the initiative, saying that the network is well placed to act as a bridge between policy makers and the scientific community. Each with extensive and substantial expertise in elaborating climate change plans, research and development, and capacity building, the 13 founding excellence centres and think tanks of the network are: Centre de Competences Changement Climatique (4C Maroc); Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI); Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3); Institut du Developpement Durable et des Relations Internationales (IDDRI); RedeClima Brazil; Centre for Climate and Resilience Research, Chile ; International Research Institute for Climate and Society of Columbia University (IRI); German Development Institute (DIE); National Climate Change Strategy Research and International Cooperation Center (NCSC), China; Consortium of Finnish Universities; Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS). The Network founding members agreed to establish a permanent secretariat at the Competency Centre of Climate Change (4C Maroc) in Morocco. When he took office in 2001, George W. Bush inherited a healthy Republican Party roughly at parity with its opposition. When he left office eight years later, Bush had degraded his partys image and taught a generation of Americans to loathe the GOP, and members of that generation have clung to their disgust through every election cycle since (though their enthusiasm for showing up at the ballot box has waxed and waned). Bush was such a comprehensive political fiasco that his only saving grace, in terms of the brand management of the Republican Party, was handing his successor a financial crisis so deep it allowed Republicans in Congress to run against his successors attempts to recover from it. The Bush administration cratered because it was filled with hacks, ideologues, and business cronies and led by a mental lightweight. Many people believed that for the Republican Party to recover, it would have to develop a governing class that grasped science and evidence. It is safe to say that this has not exactly transpired. The Trump administration will make the last failed Republican presidency look like an age of reason. The United States has never elected a president so openly contemptuous of democratic norms. Theres no So Youve Elected a Bullying, Racist, Authoritarian Swindler As President pamphlet within easy reach. The loyal opposition faces an unusual paradox. What will almost certainly be a catastrophe for the Republican Party in the long run will also be a catastrophe for the United States much sooner. The threat posed by Trump requires a massive countermobilization of people and resources with the dual tasks of safeguarding the large-D Democratic Party and small-D democracy. A letter to Trump from a first-grade student at Woodland School, Portola Valley, California. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine The immediate theater of action will be in Washington, where the key political dynamic has been identified by Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals, he told The Atlantic in 2011, referring generally to the agenda of Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress. Because we thought correctly, I think that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the bipartisan tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and theres a broad agreement that thats the way forward. Democrats in Congress have to understand this. Most people, and especially low-information voters who decide elections, pay little attention to legislative details. Bipartisanship tells them things are going well. Partisan conflict tells them things are going badly. McConnell filibustered the first bill that came up in 2009, a conservation measure with broad bipartisan appeal that ultimately passed with 77 votes. The second element of this dynamic is equally crucial: It is the governing party that will be held accountable by the voters. Bipartisanship suggests high presidential approval, which leads to more success for the governing party in Congress and for the presidents reelection. Helping the majority govern means helping the majority maintain power. As McConnell said in 2010, The reward for playing team ball this year was the reversal of the political environment and the possibility that we will have a bigger team next year. The conventional wisdom of the pre-Obama years, that the minority would pay a price for obstruction, was precisely backward. The minority party pays a price for bipartisanship. This does not mean Democrats should ape destructive tactics like shutting down the government or threatening default (which, in any case, they have no opportunity to do without the majority in either chamber of Congress). It does not even mean they should rule out all cooperation. It means they should carefully weigh every policy concession they can win, assuming that any present themselves, against the enormous political price they will pay by getting it. A few policy goals could meet this test. If Trump is somehow willing to abandon his catastrophic plan to destroy the international climate accords and unleash irreversible planetary catastrophe, or perhaps rethink his partys plan to deny access to medical care to millions of Americans too poor or sick to afford it, the political sacrifice of offering bipartisan cover to Trumpian moderation would be worthwhile. In the short run, this calculation is almost entirely theoretical. Trumps allies in Congress are prepared to collect on their devils bargain. House Speaker Paul Ryan described the election as a mandate a curious term for an election in which his party will finish second in the national vote and Republicans will move with maximal haste on plans to cut taxes for the rich, deregulate the financial industry, and cut social spending for the poor. There is no other conceivable course of action: The Republican Party in Washington has been organized over the last three decades as a machine to redistribute resources upward. It has no other ideas and automatically rejects any proposals with any other effect. The political cost of waging class war for the rich will not deter them because it is their reason for existing. Trump managed to pass himself off to many hard-pressed voters as an enemy of concentrated wealth, but concentrated wealth mostly knew better, which is why stock of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase swelled on the news of the incoming friendly administration. Democrats in Congress must make it their task to expose the contradiction Trump has heretofore concealed. So should anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton. The day after the election, protesters swarmed the streets of major cities shouting that Trump was not my president. Good for them. They were not expressing the traditional postelection decorum, but then again, many were simply describing reality: Trump has almost explicitly promised not to be the president of large swaths of this country. His campaign was rooted in his belief that Mexican-Americans and Muslim immigrants cannot become real Americans. There can be purpose beyond catharsis to theatrical expressions of alienation and anger. Just look at the tea party. Trumps loyal opposition has a duty to respect the law. More than that for all those who are wondering, everyone must hope he can avoid the worst. It might help Democrats regain power if Trump throws 20 million Americans off their insurance, dissolves NATO, or prosecutes Hillary Clinton, but that is not an agenda to root for. Less horrible is better. At the same time, Americans who did not support Trump have no obligation to normalize his behavior. To the contrary: Upholding the dignity and value of the presidency means refusing to treat the ascendancy of a Trump into the office as normal. Trump is counting on a combination of media weariness and Republican partisan solidarity to allow him to grind governing norms to dust. Two days after the election, his attorney reaffirmed his intention to have his children run his business even while he serves as president an arrangement creating limitless opportunity for corruption, as his use of the presidency enriches his brand and foreign leaders strike deals that curry personal favor. Whatever signs of normality he has given since Tuesdays triumph are, thus far, purely superficial. To submit to a world where we say the words President Trump without anger or laughter is to surrender our idea of what the office means. A broader and even more vital mission, one that should attract support far beyond the Democratic Party, is to safeguard and expand space for political dissent. American politics has regularly been stalked by authoritarian figures, from Charles Coughlin to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace. None of them has ever had command of a party with full control of government. It is now within the realm of imagining that the United States will come to resemble some sort of illiberal democracy or quasi-democracy Berlusconis Italy or, eventually, even Putins Russia. This is no mere Trumpian personal idiosyncrasy. The GOP is absorbing the ideological tendencies of other far-right nationalist parties. The Nevada Republican Party chair raged at evening early-voting in Las Vegas: Last night, in Clark County, they kept a poll open till ten oclock at night so a certain group could vote Yeah, you feel free right now? Think this is a free or easy election? Alabamas Jeff Sessions, Trumps closest Senate ally, has railed against a global intellect elites with their big money and George Soros and his globalist crowd. Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, who spoke at the Cleveland convention and has been touted as a potential Homeland Security secretary, tweeted that anti-Trump protests must be quelled. A recent Pew survey asked whether certain characteristics are important to maintaining a strong democracy. Fewer than half of the Trump supporters surveyed agreed with the statements Those who lose elections recognize the legitimacy of the winners and News organizations are free to criticize political leaders. Traditional Republicans in Washington will go along with all this, provided Trump signs Paul Ryans fiscal agenda into law. American small-D democrats need to treat the election of Trumps party in a way not unlike how we respond to authoritarianism overseas. The nonprofit sector has a long tradition of subsidizing institutions to safeguard open discourse, human rights, labor rights, and ballot access. (Not coincidentally, Soros has made enemies in the Putinsphere by doing precisely this.) Trumps government will probably set itself the task of grinding down all these rights, from union organizing to civil-rights enforcement to freedom from torture. Philanthropists should subsidize legal defenses for journalists threatened by the tactic, embraced by Trump and his ally Peter Thiel, of bankrupting critics through exorbitant legal action. America already has a nonprofit infrastructure devoted to safeguarding domestic civil, human, and political rights, but it will have to scale up radically to meet the threat of a Trumpist party in full command of the federal government. Democracy will not disappear overnight, but it can be eroded over time. The fight to defend it must be joined in full. There is one glimmer of dare I say it hope. Opposition parties tend to suffer from a lack of charismatic, high-profile leaders. American liberals enjoy the unusual good fortune of having the most popular politician in America on their side in Barack Obama. Obama has floated plans to devote his postpresidency to mentoring young black men. This is both a worthy endeavor and no longer the most high-leverage use of his time. Obama very properly offered his deference to the validity of Trumps election (proving himself a more committed democrat than the president-elect, who refused beforehand to bind himself to the outcome and who, in 2012, took to Twitter on Election Night to call for revolution when it momentarily seemed that Obama would win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote). But the political-cultural norm of former presidents steering clear of politics is not rooted in any particular public interest. All recent living ex-presidents left office either infirm, unpopular, or in some way disgraced. (A pardon scandal in his final days, compounded by his sexual dalliance, created an especially noxious odor around Bill Clinton.) There is no example of a young, popular former president facing a successor committed to destroying all of his work. And so the man who thought he was through with politics has, it turns out, one more essential role left: Beginning next year, Obama needs to rally the opposition, to community-organize his coalition, and to exploit his celebrity to make the case for saving his legacy. His visibility alone would serve a vital function. Trumps election has sent a statement to Americans and the world about the countrys identity. It has been received viscerally, by bullies abusing minorities as well as by fearful allies overseas. Obama is a powerful symbol of rationalism, thoughtfulness, and pluralism the ultimate anti-Trump, both ideologically and symbolically. Women, religious minorities, immigrants and prospective immigrants, transgender people, young Africans with iPhones, the beat-down opposition in places like Russia and China, and the people who bully all the preceding groups and more the whole planet, really need reminding that Obamas version of America has prevailed before and will prevail again. The night after the election. Photo: Andres Kudacki And prevail we can. The aftermath of every election plunges the losers into despair and launches the victors into giddiness, and Trumps shocking victory has had an unusually distorting effect. American progressives are burdened with a habit, stretching back decades, of handling political success badly taking power for granted, bemoaning compromised progress, and collapsing into sectarian cannibalism. Hillary Clinton suffered from the same liberal ennui that bedeviled Al Gore in 2000, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Harry Truman in 1948. She suffered additionally from the self-inflicted wounds of bad decisions regarding hired speeches and her private email server, months of bruising attacks on her ethics from Bernie Sanders, and a widespread sexism that made her ordinary shortcomings seem sinister. Add to that a press corps that obsessed over her email lapse and twin attacks by Russian intelligence and rogue, right-wing FBI agents. It all culminated with the director of the FBIs breaking all precedent to float new insinuations of wrongdoing against her ten days before the election, sealing her image as an untrustworthy and even criminal figure. Polls taken at the end of the campaign demonstrated that voters, astonishingly, believed that she was less honest and trustworthy than her opponent a man who is literally facing trial for fraud. Trump will solve the Democrats voter-complacency problem for them. He may also help them solve another problem: massive Republican gerrymandering. The House map is redrawn every ten years, and Republicans had the good fortune that the last redrawing followed their 2010 anti-Obama midterm wave, allowing them to lock into place a map of districts designed to virtually guarantee Republican control throughout the decade. Should Democrats generate an effective response to Trump, an anti-incumbent wave could allow the party to capture governorships in 2018 and legislatures that year and in 2020. They would then be in a position to create district maps that are more fair and democratic and which, more often then not, would turn more Democratic. Remember: When Trump showed the first signs of seriously challenging for the nomination, the panicked Republican Establishment identified him as a political calamity a candidate who appealed to the partys shrinking white, non-college-educated base and alienated the minorities and educated voters whose share of the electorate was growing. Its calculations were off, but only to a degree. Trump drew every ounce out of a shrinking coalition. The party Establishment was on track to wipe its hands of the foul nominee after his expected defeat, clearing the way for fresh-faced, conventionally right-wing figures like Ryan and Marco Rubio to rebuild their partys standing. The flip side of a president who will sign Ryans agenda into law is that there will be no more oh-so-earnest Ryan speeches apologizing from the bottom of his heart for the nominees transgressions. Instead, a man who embodies hateful, misogynistic bluster will define the partys imprint in a lasting way. Tens of millions of young voters, and children too young to vote, will grow up associating the Republican Party with a man who embodies reactionary hate against them. The Trump stink will not wash away easily. Notwithstanding his ability to appear reasonable from time to time, Trump has character traits that are consistent and long-standing. The postelection hope that his lifelong childlike attention span, monumental ego, obsession with dominance and vengeance, and greed verging on outright criminality will abate in his eighth decade is fanciful. More so the notion that the experience of enjoying electoral vindication against his critics, then ascending to the most powerful position in the world, will curtail these tendencies. Trumps election is one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worth recalling, however, that history is punctuated with disasters, yet the country is in a better place now than it was a half-century ago, and a better place than a half-century before that, and so on. Despair is a counterproductive response. So is denial an easy temptation in the wake of the inevitable postelection pleasantries and displays of respect needed to maintain the peaceful transfer of power. The proper response is steely resolve to wage the fight of our lives. *This article appears in the November 14, 2016, issue of New York Magazine. Government bound? Photo: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty Images In an interview in the New York Post on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trumps ex-wife Ivana Trump said that she would like to be appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic. During the interview, Ivana boasted that she was quite known all around the world. Not only in America, she added. I have written three books, and they were translated in 40 countries in 25 languages. Im known by the name Ivana. I really did not need the name Trump. Ivana suggested that she could be ambassador for the Czech Republic, because that is where Im from and my language and everybody knows me. Normally, it would be easy to dismiss a presidents ex-wife claiming that she would make a good ambassador to a country on the grounds that she speaks the language, but this is a presidency in which the presidents children are somehow allowed to stay on and manage his global business empire, so anything is possible. Elsewhere in the interview, Ivana who certainly knows Donald Trumps habits better than just about anybody provided some insight into what a Trump presidency might look like. First she reassured the nations nervous interior-decorating enthusiasts by saying, I dont think hes going to do gold leafing in the White House. But she did say that she doubted that Trump would be willing to truly leave his Trump Tower apartment and live in the White House full time. Not that Ivana blames him. To be perfectly honest, she said, I think probably the Trump Tower and my townhouse in New York is much better than the White House. Ivana also intimated that the commander-in-chiefs busy travel schedule would be hell for the president-elect: Donald is like a good French wine. He doesnt like to be moved and traveled. The last 18 months, he traveled as much as he ever has in his life. Thank God he has his private plane, but still, it was brutal. Im lending him my box set of West Wing DVDs. Hell be fine. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images By naming Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon as his top two advisers, President-elect Donald Trump set up a battle between the GOP Establishment and the alt-right for control of his administration and there may be a third voice whispering in the presidents ear. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that President Obama plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do because he realized during their meeting last week that Trump needs more guidance. Per the Journal: During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obamas term. One would think that Obama would spend as little time as possible with a man who repeatedly suggested that hes the Kenyan-born founder of ISIS, but what was scheduled to be a 15-minute meeting wound up lasting 90 minutes. As I said last night, my number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful, Obama said. Prior to the meeting, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama would take the opportunity to urge Trump to keep some of his policies in place though many could be undone with a few executive orders. He may have had some success. After promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump told the Journal on Friday that hed consider keeping two provisions that he discussed with Obama: the prohibition on denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, and allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance plan into their late 20s. Trump confirmed that he is interested in keeping those two very popular provisions in his interview with 60 Minutes, which aired on Sunday night. Trump reiterated that he and Obama had great chemistry, and said he was surprised that there was zero awkwardness. He even heaped more praise on the president: I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humor, as much as you can have a sense of humor talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects. In addition to Obamacare, those topics included the Middle East and North Korea. On Monday night, President Obama will embark on his last foreign trip, heading to Greece, Germany, and Peru. It was supposed to be a celebratory farewell tour, but now Obamas mission is assuring foreign nations that America will keep its commitments though, in some instances, Trump has said that it wont. Trump is not consistent, so by the time Obama gets back, Trump may have decided that he doesnt need the presidents help during the nine-week transition after all. But liberals need something to keep them going, and the idea of Obama and Trump forging an unlikely friendship is a more appealing best-case scenario than Mike Pence secretly calling the shots. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images In the disorienting wake of Donald Trumps election, Democrats in Congress grasped for some normality. To them being Democrats reared for decades in a lawmaking culture this meant some reassurance that they would participate in legislation. They quickly settled on Trumps proposal for infrastructure spending as a promising venue through which they could trade cooperation for policy leverage. Charles Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader, sounded excited about the prospect of passing a bill he has worked for years to enact without success. As President-elect Trump indicated last night, investing in infrastructure is an important priority of his, announced Nancy Pelosi. We can work together to quickly pass a robust infrastructure jobs bill. How and where to cooperate with Trump presents many dilemmas for the opposition, pitting the Democrats self-interest against the need to safeguard the welfare of the countrys political institutions. There are certainly venues where Americans alarmed by the incoming president ought to consider working with him for the sake of preserving the welfare of the country. But infrastructure is not one of those dilemmas. Supporting a Trumpian infrastructure bill would be to cooperate with the subversion of American government and an act of political self-sabotage. It is an idea so insanely bad it disturbingly suggests the party utterly fails to grasp the challenge before it, or the way out. It would make sense that Trumps election would enable the passage of a large infrastructure plan if he were replacing a president who opposed such a plan. This is not the case. Obama spent years pleading publicly and privately with the Republicans to support a national infrastructure bank. They blocked it on the purported grounds of affordability. To the extent they are willing to support infrastructure spending under Trump, or at least stand aside, it is a continuation of a pattern dating back to Reagan, in which Republicans toggle between wild expansionary fiscal policy under Republican presidents and brutal contractionary policy under Democratic ones. Republicans blew up the deficit under Ronald Reagan, then fomented hysterical warnings of insolvency under Bill Clinton. When Clintons policies structurally balanced the budget, they unbalanced it with massive tax cuts, a military and security buildup, and a prescription drug benefit, all entirely debt-financed. When the first signs of recession appeared in early 2008, Republicans did support a Keynesian stimulus bill. As Obama entered office, the seeming mild recession that had spurred both parties to action a year before had spiraled into a bottomless crisis unlike any in memory. But at the moment the justification for Keynesian stimulus had become stronger than at any time in the previous 80 years, Republicans embraced austerity, insisting temporary deficit spending would worsen the economy. They held to that stance with the exception of tax cuts for the rich, which they support regardless of circumstance throughout Obamas presidency, which is why they blocked infrastructure spending despite its appeal to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. The cycle has been repeated enough times that careful observers simply assume that the GOP will immediately flip from debt hysteria to debt mania. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters today he still cares about the debt, but has realized that economic growth is a priority that will help resolve it a realization that somehow dawned in the immediate aftermath of the election after eluding him throughout Obamas two terms. This is a major reason the stock market has taken Trumps election with such equanimity: The government is no longer held hostage by an opposition party committed to tight fiscal policy. Steven Blitz, chief economist at Pangea Market Advisory, told The Wall Street Journal that he had previously worried the economy would tip into recession, but that new debt-financed tax cuts and spending would allay such a scenario: Now that Republicans are in control, theres no concern about debt and deficits, said Steven Blitz, chief economist at Pangea Market Advisory. Again, this reversal has no relation to actual economic conditions. The unemployment rate is now half the level it was at the outset of Obamas presidency, when Republicans opposed fiscal stimulus. For Democrats to cooperate unconditionally with this strategy is to institutionalize a political order in which Democratic presidents must be punished with contractionary policy while Republicans are rewarded with expansionary policy. Reasonable people can disagree about what level of national debt can be sustained, but the figure is finite. The political system seems to passively accept that Americas long-term debt should be allocated toward the goal of maximizing growth exclusively during Republican administrations. Why Democrats would find this system good for their country, let alone their party, is difficult to understand. There is additional irony in the prospect of a Republican infrastructure plan, one with even more chilling implications for democratic governance. In addition to their opposition to Democratic Keynesianism, Republicans opposed Obamas stimulus on the purported grounds that it contained pork and crony capitalism. As Michael Grunwald details in The New New Deal, his history of the stimulus, Obamas administration was seized with terror of being attacked for boondoggles. It established a rigorous vetting mechanism to ensure no dollar would be misappropriated, and obligingly eliminated any spending program that could be attacked as wasteful. Republicans gleefully savaged spending plans for such infrastructure as resodding the National Mall as if surrounding the Washington Monument with grass was an absurd indulgence public swimming pools, and virtually anything else. The administrations terror of waste did not stop the news media from framing the stimulus as largely an exercise in pork, or in deploying its resources to scour the country for examples of supposed waste. As Grunwald shows, no evidence of impropriety surfaced. As a political exercise, though, the campaign to lambaste the stimulus as corrupt payoffs to insiders was a success. What makes this history relevant is not the implication Democrats should be driven by revenge or to replicate the Republican strategy. Indeed, low levels of routine pork-barrelling ought to be considered at worst a third-tier problem. The issue is that Trump is actually proposing to invite unprecedented levels of corruption into government. Trumps high potential for corruption involves the interplay of two different rejections of political norms. First, unlike every other presidential candidate in modern history, he has refused to disclose his tax returns, so his financial interests remain opaque. Second, he will continue to hold his interests in office rather than retreat into passive investment. Indeed, his branding business is so intricately connected to his name, which will be enhanced immeasurably through his standing as president, that he will garner enormous personal profits even if he and his family govern in a completely above-board fashion. But that is a highly optimistic scenario given Trumps history. He has gravitated toward business dealings with organized criminals both in the United States and abroad. His foundation was a cesspool of self-dealing, and he is facing trial for fraud. Business lobbyists could literally give Trump or his children stock in return for favorable treatment, and the public would have no way of knowing. Yesterday, Trumps close adviser and rumored cabinet official Rudy Giuliani gave an interview to Jake Tapper about the potential conflict of interest. His defense made it clear how willing the new administration is to shred any semblance of public ethics. Asked by Tapper about the presidential tradition of placing his assets in a blind trust, Giuliani replied (correctly) that a blind trust would do no good if Trumps branding business continued, since he knows its assets, and only selling off the entire company would do. But Giuliani insisted that such a drastic step would be unfair to Trumps offspring: Put his children out of work, theyd have to go start a whole new business, that would set up a whole set of new problems. The premise that Trumps children could not find jobs that did not involve selling their fathers name, and that averting the crisis of Trump-children unemployment should take precedence over averting massive corruption of the federal government is one Republicans probably do not relish having to defend. Giulianis second defense was even more audacious. You have to have some confidence in the integrity of the president. The man is an enormously wealthy man. I dont think theres any real fear or suspicion that hes seeking to enrich himself by becoming president, he laughed. If he wanted to enrich himself, he wouldnt have run for president. In reality, the world is replete with wealthy men who attained power and used it to enrich themselves. This is the very source of concern about Trumps attack on the norms that prevent American presidents from using their power for self-enrichment. These norms exist precisely because we dont assume a president is immune to temptation. Giulianis argument is that the very fact of Trumps wealth refutes any suspicion of his motives and frees him from any obligation to demonstrate his integrity. His premise is banana republicanism. At minimum, Democrats could insist that any dealing with Trump be conditioned upon him selling off his family business and placing the assets in a blind trust, and attaching a law requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns. They now have the opportunity to simultaneously expose the hollow joke of Trumps populist image and to defend vital protections against the subordination of the presidency to private gain. They seem ready to choose neither. Congressional Republicans demonstrated the partisan advantage to be gained by unified opposition. As Mitch McConnell boasted, the public would hold the president and his party alone responsible for how they believed Washington was doing, and their estimation of how Washington was doing would be colored by the degree to which the two parties were getting along. If Democrats support elements of Trumps agenda, it will make Trump more popular and lift the popularity of his party, enabling Republicans to entrench their majorities. Giving Trump and his party such a valuable gift, and weakening Democrats own chances for regaining power, is worth doing in the case of a vital humanitarian interest. But for some highways? And to give bipartisan cover to what may well have grants to contractors who will be giving kickbacks to Trump and his family? From the standpoint of Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer, the end of the Obama-era legislative boycott and a return to the old Washington, where they can sit with colleagues and hash out funding formulas and hold ribbon-cutting ceremonies, probably feels like sweet relief. They appear to be in the grips of a dangerous myopia. On the fence. Photo: The Washington Post/The Washington Post/Getty Images Donald Trump gave his first television interview as president-elect to 60 Minutes on Sunday, giving America its first glimpse of what a Donald Trump presidency might mean for the country. First, the good news. It appears that Trump, at least for the time being, is sticking with the real friend to the LGBT community persona that he adopted during the election. When asked about the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide, Trump said that he wouldnt challenge it. Its irrelevant, because its already settled. Its done. Im fine with that, he said. Thats a welcome surprise for Americas gays and lesbians, but a stance that is sure to put him in opposition to many of his supporters, and even his own partys platform. Speaking of disappointing his supporters, one major theme of the interview was Trumps willingness dare we say eagerness? to walk back some of his campaigns most-touted promises. For example, the wall. Trump has yet to back down on his assertion that Mexico will foot the bill for a wall on its northern border, but at least now hes making it much more affordable for them. Trump admitted that a wall for the entire border simply didnt make very much sense, and that a fence would surely suffice in places though surely it will be a big, beautiful fence. Lest you think that Trump is going soft on immigration, he still promised to deport all undocumented immigrants with criminal records, which he figures and by figures we mean has made up is between 2 and 3 million people. Trump also back-pedaled on his campaigns other defining promise: to lock Hillary Clinton up. When asked about the Clintons, Trump changed his tune. I dont want to hurt them, I dont want to hurt them, he said, adding, Theyre good people. When pushed on the whole special-prosecutor thing, Trump had the perfect response ready: I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together. On abortion, Trump was more in-line with his conservative base. The future president insisted that he was still pro-life and reiterated his promise to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court. Though he did have what he seemed to think would be reassuring words for American women. Well, well see what happens. Its got a long way to go, he explained, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go. And anyway, he said, when Roe. v. Wade is eventually overturned it will just go back to the states, so if you want an abortion all you will have to do is go to another state. Simple. Donald Trump was perhaps most clear in addressing the spike in hate crimes that has been reported since he was elected. After claiming that he hadnt heard of any hate crimes, he said that even if he had, hes sure that its a very small amount. Trump did tell his followers that, when it came to hate crimes, Dont do it. Thats terrible, he explained, cause Im gonna bring this country together. Trump looked right into the camera and spoke directly to his supporters, telling them: Stop it. Problem solved. Alison and Ann Dadow (otherwise known as Alexandria and Anastasia Duval). Photo: Courtesy of Twitter/aguyonclematis Earlier this year, the news of a fatal car crash involving twin sisters one of whom died made local news in Hawaii and then quickly spiraled into something more sinister, resembling the makings of a Lifetime flick. Murder charges were initially filed in the spring against 37-year-old Alexandria Duval, who survived the wreckage while her twin sister, Anastasia, died after the SUV they were in fell off a 200-foot cliff. The second-degree murder charges were later dropped when a judge said there was insufficient evidence for a case. But in the latest plot twist, prosecutors have again charged Alexandria after a grand jury indicted her in October. She was arrested again on Friday after police found her in Albany, New York, according to IBT. Witnesses claim the sisters were seen arguing in the car prior to the crash, including plenty of hair-pulling, according to the Maui News. As their apparent argument escalated, the SUV accelerated toward the cliff and then made a sharp turn left, before plunging down into a rocky coastline. Police investigators found that the accelerator was pushed all the way to the floor and that there were no signs it was broken, the Maui News reports. Alexandria, who was in the drivers seat, survived with minor injuries while Anastasia, who was in the back seat, suffered severe head trauma. The twin sisters were popular yoga instructors, albeit with a shady past. For starters, Alexandria and Anastasia arent their real names: Theyre Alison and Ann Dadow. Prior to owning a yoga studio in Maui, the twins owned studios in New York and in Florida, where they caused some gossip after they unexpectedly and suddenly shut their business down and moved without paying staff or refunding customers. In Utah, where they opened their next studio, they also declared bankruptcy and then changed names before moving once more to Hawaii. If Alexandria Duvals case goes to trial (bail is currently at $3 million), all bets are on Lifetime getting the rights for the story. Barneys New Yorks By George ad campaign, 1965. Photo: Courtesy of Barneys New York Photo: Tom Sibley In 1923, the first Barneys New York store opened in Manhattan thanks to an engagement ring, or lack of it: Businessman Barney Pressman pawned his wifes ring for $500, which helped him lease a 500-square-foot space at Seventh Avenue and West 17th Street. It began as a mens store, selling 40 designer suits with the tagline No Bunk, No Junk, No Imitations. His son Fred Pressman later transformed the discount house into a high-end department store by 1973, the 60,000 suits in Barneys stock included designs by Pierre Cardin, Christian Dior, and Hubert de Givenchy. The store sold womens clothing three years later, expanding to sell Christian Louboutin, Diane von Furstenberg, Prada, Balenciaga, and others. The book Barneys New York, edited by Interview magazine editor-at-large Christopher Bollen and out now from Rizzoli New York, chronicles those moments in the stores 93-year history. Three-hundred pages showcase famous ads and window displays alongside memories from celebrities like David Bowie and Sarah Jessica Parker, photographers, and fashion insiders. Click ahead to preview the book. Barney Pressman stands in front of his menswear store Barneys on West 17th Steet and Seventh Avenue, at the stores opening. By George ad campaign, 1965. Cartoon Bouffant Window Display, 1992, featuring Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, and Herve Leger. Barneys warehouse sale begins, Daily News ad, September 9, 1970. Photo: Tom Sibley Window display celebrating 20 years of Christian Louboutin, 2011. Lypsinka Window Display, 1986, artwork by Albert Sanchez. Neo Modern Window Display, 2013. Photo: Barneys New York 2016 Barneys New York, edited by Christopher Bollen, published by Rizzoli New York Weekend With is an ongoing Instagram series that features people we like photographing places wed like to be. Follow @thecut on Instagram to join in, and tag your photos with #weekendwith when you travel somewhere new. Shes a self-described general enthusiast and after taking a look at Ana Montiels Instagram, that seems like a good way to identify. With a combination of painting, photography, and all types of graphic design, Montiel documents life in Mexico through a variety of mediums. After spending most of her life in Europe Logrono, Barcelona, and London respectively she decided to embark on a spiritual and artistic quest in her homeland. Hugo Duran received a degree in visual arts at Escuela Nacional de Pintura Escultura y Grabado La Esmeralda. After a long period in Germany he recently returned to Mexico City. Attracted by the local gastronomic culture, he takes an interest in the professional practice of the culinary arts. Hes currently working on his first restaurant, which will open in 2017. The OECD Observer online archive takes you on a journey through half a century of public policy and world progress. Since November 1962, the OECDs experts and leading guests offer insights on the questions facing our member countries with concise and authoritative analysis, and provide our audiences with an excellent opportunity to understand policy debates and consider solutions. Each edition of the OECD Observer reports on a core theme of the OECDs on-going work, from economics and society through governance, finance, and the environment, and articles are bolstered by tables and graphs. Great fuel for Hayley's writings. Brand New Eyes was so bitter and so good. Reply Thread Link fuck yeah I love Brand New Eyes Reply Parent Thread Link Mte and from the Parahoy cruise this year she is really bitter about this more than the Farro exit IMO. Reply Parent Thread Link what happened on the cruise? Reply Parent Thread Link I was really hoping that they would come out on the cruise and open with All We Know just as a big f you to jeremy Reply Parent Thread Link mfte Reply Parent Thread Link being married to an attorney, i've learned some very important things: get everything in writing, read your paperwork, and the wheels of justice do creak along. Reply Parent Thread Link it's really not that black and white. like you can't just demand that members sign a paper after each session stating we wrote this song together etc. that would just drive a considerable wedge between band members. i guess he should have been more careful, and asked to see the copyrights that are submitted to the recording associations but those things are usually handled just before the release of an album so it could have been an oversight. either that or he's lying. Edited at 2016-11-14 08:34 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link idt he was involved much in writing. apparently in interviews they have joked about his lack of involvement in songwriting? haven't actually seen those interviews tho. so he may be just lying to play up his contributions Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I don't really care for Paramore and I don't know how problematic their ex-bassist is, but still since I don't like Hayley, this is entertaining. Reply Thread Link lol there's always drama for them in between each album i stg. really sucks but hopefully the next album is good and i can get back into stanning mode. Reply Thread Link wait zac is back???!! i'm excited now. though that must be super awkward for josh lmao Reply Parent Thread Link He only recorded the drums for the next album. He seems heavily invested in his solo band HalfNoise to go back to Paramore. Josh must be extra bitter that he's not back since he's been thirsting it on every single interview for his band. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yikes. This band is a mess but i love their songs. Reply Thread Link meeee tooo. i hate how much i like them. Reply Parent Thread Link lol i feel like ex members are constantly suing them Reply Thread Link lol same. everything about this band just sounds messy. Reply Parent Thread Link I don't think the Farro bros ever sued Paramore. That whole thing was just personal with Josh being bitter about Hayley and Chad. No one is touching Hayley's money though. Lol. Jeremy is screwed. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Jeremy is the only one who has ever sued though...Josh just wrote that messy ass letter and then took it back because it was full of lies because he was bitter. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link this band has always been a mess. i've been a fan since i was like 13/14 though lol :| Reply Thread Link been a fan since 05/06 and i can confirm that they have ALWAYS been messy lmao Reply Parent Thread Link I can't keep up with any of the band members except Hayley. I think it's messed up that the original band members would have been pushed out of their company. Reply Thread Link i think legally she is the only band member lol so you have kept up with them! Reply Parent Thread Link Hunter left. Josh and Zac left. and Jeremy left who was pushed out? Reply Parent Thread Link just release your new album and go on tour puh-puh-please. it's been too long. Reply Thread Link Lol josh came crawling back cause he broke now and needs that paramore $ Reply Thread Link Josh is a trump supporter so he can fuck right back off into the hole he crawled out of Reply Parent Thread Link he is? this...doesn't really surprise me at all. which says a lot tbh Edited at 2016-11-14 05:15 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link They asked him to come back though... Reply Parent Thread Link And he still gets royalties off their old songs so hes not really hurting for money. Fame maybe. Reply Parent Thread Link Let's not act like Jeremy wasn't petty too. He released this news the day Parahoy (paramore cruise) started on March 2016. He's trying to do as much damage as he can to the band to get his money. I heard he also wants money for things he named like Parahoy and Monumetour (Paramore/Fall Out Boy tour name). This band will always be messy and it's why I stab them so hard. I dont like happy record and Paramore always delivers with the bitter angry songs. I can't wait for this new album because I know they're going to shred Jeremy apart. Reply Thread Link Yeah tbh something seemed up with Jeremy. I kinda figured there were drugs involved oop Reply Parent Thread Link Really? I thought he might have left because of his child. Reply Parent Thread Link Me too, I still somewhat have a feeling that they kicked him out cuz of drugs. He's so weird on instagram now too with his videos, just makes me think that even more. Reply Parent Thread Link it's why I stab them so hard Reply Parent Thread Link They are always so messy Reply Thread Link lmao mte Reply Parent Thread Link this is kinda sad they've been friends since they were teens and ngl jeremy leaving hurt me more than when josh left and dragged zach with him Edited at 2016-11-14 07:59 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link this band is always messy. i only know that one song.....uh....whatever makes you brag? Reply Thread Link jesy's hair should always look that curly omg Reply Thread Link Their hairstylist hates us, so that will never happen She also looks better with her bangs to the side, but she only wears them like that like once a year. Reply Parent Thread Link like, her portrait shot is STUNNING i am in love Reply Parent Thread Link I love this photoshoot but did leigh not get a solo bedroom shot? Reply Thread Link They keep doing Leigh dirty this era and I'm not pleased I think she did tho Reply Parent Thread Link mte! she easily looked the best in the fabulous mag shoot but they kept her mostly behind a fence wtf Reply Parent Thread Link I didn't find her solo shot. I also thought it was weird that she didn't have one. Reply Parent Thread Link Happy belated birthday OP! ty for all the work you always put into these < 3 They all look so good omw. I'm so pumped for the album. Two of my friends are seeing them a day after my birthday and I'm mad at myself for not being able to afford a way out there lol. Reply Thread Link Thank you! Reply Parent Thread Link I am completely ready to unstan if they don't even try with Touch here in the US. Like...They have no excuse. It's such a fucking bop. And happy belated OP! Edited at 2016-11-14 06:14 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link Thank you! And I loved Touch, but I have a feeling that Power is gonna be even better and I don't even know why. Reply Parent Thread Link I love Jade's eye makeup like it is in those bed shots, she has such amazing eyes. Leigh-Anne's body is INSANITY and I'm so jealous. Reply Thread Link it's crazy how much prettier perrie got after she broke up w/ zayn lol Reply Thread Link The glo up was real. Reply Parent Thread Link There are rumors about them going to the pitstops because they went to the one in Australia this weekend, but I doubt it. That would require a lot of planning and a lot of flights and way more time, so I think that they're probably going to a few pitstops in the UK and maybe Europe, but that's it. Reply Parent Thread Link Their team just doesn't care. I mean, they didn't even send SOTME to radios outside of the UK and Australia. But someone from Modest, I think the president of the company or the owner, said the other day that they were gonna focus on them with this album because they want them to have more success internationally and they're gonna be doing a lot of promo in the US next year when they tour with Ariana. I won't believe it until I see it. Reply Parent Thread Link Love Jesy's hair like that so much. Leigh's top is super cute. They're beautiful etc etc Happy late Birthday, OP! <3 Reply Thread Link Three new oilfields in Iran were put in production mode this weekend at an official ceremony, adding more than 220,000 bpd to the countrys total output. The fields are Yadavaran, North Azadegan, and North Yaranthree of the five fields that Iran shares with Iraq. The launch of North Yaran was reported last week, with initial production seen at 30,000 bpd. North Azadegan will yield 75,000 bpd, and Yadavaran should produce 115,000 bpd. At the ceremony, President Hassan Rouhani was quoted as saying that Oil production west of Karoun must reach one million barrels per day. This is a realistic goal, and we need investment and technology. The latest production figures for October for Iran are 4 million bpd, with exports at 2.4 million bpd. The country, which insistedand succeededthat it be exempted from an OPEC-wide production cut, has made no secret of its intentions to ramp up its oil production as quickly as possible. To this end, Tehran devised a whole new petroleum contract in a bid to lure in foreign energy companies with the know-how and experience to help it in its plans. The first international major to sign on was Frances Total, which will develop the giant South Pars offshore field, together with Chinese CNPC. Related: Is GE Looking To Exit Oilfield Services? Meanwhile, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has during his campaign slammed the decision that put an end to the harshest of the sanctions against Iran, saying that he would have negotiated longer sanctions. At the same time, however, Reuters reminds us, Trump has been critical of the sanctions as something that prevents U.S. companies from doing business with Iran. According to experts, pulling out of the international deal could create tension between Washington and its allies in Europe, for whom Irans return on the international energy scene was welcome news, as the continent seeks to reduce its energy dependence on Russia. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm is on the short list for Secretary of Energy, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press. Along with the energy billionaire, president-elect Donald Trump is also considering venture capitalist Robert Grady and Kevin Cramer, a Republican Congressman from North Dakota. In the run-up to the presidential elections, Trump had been vocal in his support for the oil and gas industry, and for U.S. energy independence. In fact, the document cited by the AP also includes repealing the Clean Power Plan passed by the Obama administration. According to the AP, the Plan, currently in the lap of the Supreme Court, could be dismissed if the court doesnt rule on it by the time Trump enters the Oval office. The Clean Power Plan, which aims at reducing carbon emissions from power generation, envisaged the closure of up to 80 GW of coal-fired generating capacities in the U.S. With Trump at the helm, its repealment could buy some time for the troubled coal industry, which has come under the twin fire of environmentalists and low prices. For the oil and gas industry, the next presidency would also more than likely be beneficial, as during his campaign the Republican candidate pledged to tackle new regulations that, according to the energy business, has stifled expansion. However, nothing is certain, as S&P Global Ratings managing director Thomas Watters said as quoted by the USA Today. According to Watters, Trumps statements regarding the fossil fuel industry were lacking in detail. Related: How Important Is The Colonial Pipeline? Appointing Harold Hamm, head of one of the most successful shale oil and gas players in the country, as the head of the Energy Department could certainly be seen as putting ideas into reality. Hamm, whose Continental Resources is a top player in the Bakken, last week criticized drilling regulations that had harmed the oil and gas industry in no small way. There's so many of these overreaching regulations that's gone on. My goodness. We called it death by a thousand cuts, and that's exactly what it was intended to do, he said as quoted by CNBC. Continental Resources has done much better than many of its peers thanks to its long-standing presence in the shale patch and the constantly improving efficiencies that the upstream industry is hailing as the only thing thats kept the business going during the price slump. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The technical committee in charge of hammering out the details of an OPEC-wide production cut will meet for a fresh round of discussions on November 21, according to an energy industry source in Algeria. Previously, the meeting was scheduled for November 25. The source spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, also said that the decision on the new date was made by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Falih and his Algerian counterpart Nouredine Bouterfa. The two met in Algeria over the weekend. Since the first OPEC meeting in Algeria at the end of September, when a general agreement for a production freeze was achieved, there has been a wave of other meetings between individual OPEC members such as Venezuela and Iran and outsiders such as Russia, on which the deals effectiveness depends. This is the first market-rebalancing initiative undertaken by OPEC since 2008. With its patience strained by the reluctance of some members to freeze production, most notably Iran, and others insistence that they be included in the exempted group, such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia recently threatened to raise production to 11-12 million bpd. The situation has been aggravated by record-high OPEC output for October at 33.64 million bpd, which is substantially higher than the band agreed to at the September meeting in Algiers: 32.5-33 million barrels. Those OPEC members that were exempted, such as Iran, Nigeria and Libya, are ramping up production as fast as they can to make up for market share loss, adding to the glut. So, it is abundantly clear that a simple freeze will not do. Saudi Arabia has said earlier that it was willing to cut its production, but it remains to be seen if all the other OPEC members outside the exempted group will also agree to do so, not to mention Russia, who might not be willing to cut at this stage. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: During a recent visit to Vancouver, British Columbia, George Schneider was inspired by how deeply the city celebrates the diversity of its people. Then he saw something really incredible. Bright, rainbow-striped crosswalks, representing the citys support for LGBTQ pride, stand loud and proud at the intersection of Davis and Bute in Vancouvers West End. These visuals really impressed Schneider, owner of This Is It, 418 E. Wells St., and long-time advocate for LGBTQ causes, so much so he decided to bring the idea home to Milwaukee. On Nov. 5, he pitched an idea on the This Is It Facebook page. "It was just one of those things where you see something wonderful," said Schneider, "and you think, 'Who can we get to make this happen?' I hoped the Facebook post would inspire conversation and attract people of influence." Less than a week later, the Facebook post has been liked by nearly 1,000 people, inspiring lively conversation and motivating Schneider to advance the idea further. "The public has been very supportive," said Schneider, "but the main concern has been vandalism. In the three years since the Vancouver crosswalks have been installed, theyve seen only one or two vandalism attempts. The other major question has been around maintenance, considering traffic, snow plowing and Wisconsin weather conditions. But if the city commits to this project, we know theyll use the right pavement paint and simply repaint it as often as any other crosswalk." Vancouver is one of many world cities that have installed rainbow crosswalks to commemorate traditional LGBTQ neighborhoods. Theyve popped up in San Francisco; Sacramento; Atlanta; Philadelphia; Seattle; Key West; West Hollywood; Miami Beach; Northampton, MA; Reykjavik; Stockholm; Sydney; Toronto; and more. Other cities, like Vienna, London, Utrecht and Munich, have installed LGBT-friendly pedestrian signals during pride observations. (PHOTO: WikiCommons/Qaswed) There is a precedent for decorative street painting in Milwaukee. Three years ago, the East Town Association partnered with the Commissioner of Public Works to honor Jazz in the Park with piano key crosswalks at Kilbourn and Jefferson and Wells and Jefferson. Last year, innovative street art was installed at the intersection of South 2nd Street at Freshwater Way (formerly Pittsburgh Street) to commemorate the Global Water Council and Reed Street Yards developments. When it comes to LGBTQ monuments, our city hasnt exactly been a leader. Although 18 national landmarks, including the White House, lit up for marriage equality on June 26, 2015, not a single Milwaukee building was illuminated. Some leading Milwaukee companies, including The Pfister Hotel and Northwestern Mutual, lit their facades with rainbow lighting in June 2016 to honor victims of the Club Pulse shootings. Milwaukees City Hall was also proudly decorated with the largest LGBTQ pride flag in Wisconsin for over a week. Curiously, the U.S. Bank tower, as the tallest building in Milwaukee and one of its most recognizable landmarks, seems to have abandoned its longtime tradition of illuminating the roofline with different colors for holidays, sporting events or national happenings. Schneider believes its time for a more permanent form of community commemoration. "With the Milwaukee Streetcar coming to East Town, a rainbow crosswalk would be a wonderful visual for visitors to see and know they are welcome here," said Schneider. "It would carry lasting meaning as a continuous, year-round celebration of our LGBTQ citizens. "But this is not just about This Is It. Crosswalks would be just as appropriate at the intersection of 2nd and National, in the heart of LGBT nightlife." George knows a thing or two about LGBTQ visibility. When the Marquette Interchange was completed, he worked with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to light the underpasses with pride colors during PrideFest Milwaukee weekend. Without any exterior signage or storefront, This Is It was long considered a "secret" or "hidden" bar. That changed in 2013 when Schneider and longtime operator Joe Brehm decided to redecorate the exterior with bright accents and a pride flag. (PHOTO: George Schneider) "We had a real problem with people not finding us," explained George. "While there were some who appreciated the speakeasy charm, we wanted to make a change that reflected that times have changed. The community as a whole had embraced us. We became an active member of the East Town Association. We wanted to establish a prominence. When LGBTQ bars are disappearing, sneaking into back doors and staying hidden is not the best course of preserving your future. And now, nobody has to call us to find us." This Is It, now the longest operating LGBTQ landmark in Wisconsin and one of the longest running gay bars in the United States, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2018. Management plans to honor the legacies of June Brehm, an early LGBTQ champion who opened the bar in 1968, and her son Joe Brehm, who operated the bar from 1982 until passing away in April 2016. After a long day of touring tavern properties, June arrived at 418 E. Wells St., took one look around the room and said, "This is it were not going anywhere else." She had many gay friends and sought to create a safe space where they would be treated as well as any other customer. This was a policy June defended with fury. As the legend goes, June became fed up with her business partner complaining about an ever-increasing gay clientele. She pulled out two $20 bills and asked him to tell her which was gay and which was straight. She said, "Until you can tell me the difference, well serve whoever the hell we want." As we approach a week after the election, the campaign for greater LGBT visibility in Milwaukee is growing. Individuals have already stepped forward offering sponsorship support for the rainbow crosswalk project. What began as a conversation has become a call to action. Where can this go from here? Sandy Rusch Walton, communications manager for the City of Milwaukee, confirmed Friday that there is currently no formal process for requesting a decorative crosswalk. Since the city has done so few of these, the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works reviews each request on a case-by-case basis. George is hopeful that the project will move forward. "Weve got a great city here," said George. "And it would be terrific for Milwaukee to take a stand against the hateful rhetoric of the past year. Crosswalks would say we are all-inclusive and supportive of all our citizens. So, lets do it. Its high time." From Civil Arab Donald Trump won. I'm not here to tell you that Bernie would have beaten him, or that Hillary won the popular vote, or that voter suppression laws affected things, or anything like that. In our constitutional system, Donald Trump won the presidency. It's done. I know why you voted for him. Trump tore down the political establishment that has been neglecting everyday Americans. He tapped into the raw emotions and real anxiety that you feel about your economic futures. He said that you have been forgotten, that the elites were screwing you over. I traveled around the country working for the Sanders' campaign and talking with people who supported Bernie for the same reasons. I get it. Hillary Clinton was part of the problem. I understand. Trump won fair and square, as far as our system is concerned. I guess it wasn't "rigged" after all. But he won in a way no one has won before. He won while employing fear of Muslims, Latinos, and immigrants. In the last week of his campaign, Trump went to Minnesota and told its citizens that Somali immigrants were hurting their community, turning it into a dangerous place. Minneapolis' mayor (someone who actually lives there), quickly retorted back that Somalis add positively to the city. He won by kicking off his campaign by calling Mexicans "rapists." He proposed banning Muslims from America. He agreed with a suggestion to register Muslim Americans in a national database. He said a judge couldn't be impartial because of his heritage. He went after the parents of a dead Muslim American soldier for being Muslim. These things happened. And we heard them in a different way than you did. Now, maybe he was just stoking things up. Maybe he is not an ideologue. Maybe he will change his tune now to embrace unity and diversity. Maybe he is such a narcissist that he needed the attention then and needs the reverence now. And maybe that will turn him into a uniter. Sure, he removed the Muslim ban from his website. Maybe he was being hyperbolic. But my question is this: Do you hope for all the same "maybes" I do? Maybe Trump is just like our crazy Arab uncles who say a lot of sensical stuff just to conclude it with some conspiratorial insanity. I've heard it before: "You know, we have to make sure we stand up for our rights and fight for justice. We need to work hard, give back to our communities, and look out for each other. We need to be good Americans. And we wouldn't have all these problems if the Jews hadn't brought down the World Trade Center on 9/11." That's when I look at him and say, "Ok, but you can't say that last crazy s&!t." Can't you say the same to your crazy uncle Donald? I saw you at his rallies. You'd say things like, "He didn't really mean it." "You're taking him out of context." "That's not what I heard." Maybe you're right. But as much as you give him the benefit of the doubt, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. In San Jose, California, a Muslim college student was attacked and choked as her assailant attempted to pull off her hijab. In Buffalo, New York, a building was spray painted with the words "Make America White Again" and a swastika. In Royal Oak, Michigan, middle school students (right, middle school students) chanted "Build That Wall" to their Latino counterparts during lunch. In York, Pennsylvania, high school students marched in the halls, holding a Trump sign and chanting "White Power!" This stuff is all happening. In just the few days since Trump's (and your) victory. Let me be clear. Are you all racists? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. And it doesn't make me smart or brave to say as much. (Just like it doesn't make you smart or brave to say that Muslims aren't all terrorists.) But you did vote for a guy who said terribly racist things. Perhaps you didn't celebrate his racist comments, but you did, at best, dismiss them. And whether you like it or not, the KKK is celebrating today. How do you feel about that? Or is that a ridiculous question to ask? See, racism for us "others" is not episodic. It's the default state of affairs. And more importantly, it's something we can protest, but it's not something we can actually solve. Racism is not a problem FOR white Americans, but it is a problem OF white Americans. I don't expect you to know exactly how I feel. It's tempting, maybe even comforting, to be in a position where you can ignore Trump's bigotry because it won't affect you (and perhaps even benefit you). But you do need to listen for a little while. I know you might have voted for him because you're scared. Because you don't have a good job, and because you're worried your kids won't either. Because the government is screwed up and rigged. And you think he's the answer. But when you elected him, you empowered this ugliness. You, intentionally or not, allowed some to think it's now acceptable to openly and proudly make the rest of us feel like we don't belong. In other words, when you voted for Trump, you exchanged your anxiety for ours. And we need to talk about that. From Consortium News Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Image by (Photo by Gage Skidmore)) Details DMCA The election commentary now filling the Internet seems distinctly out of touch. Many analysts are castigating Hillary Clinton for all the things she did wrong, her failure to connect with white workers in the Rust Belt, her inability to sufficiently rally blacks, and so on. Or they're criticizing the American people for falling for a racist, sexist know-nothing like Donald Trump. But these critics are ignoring the elephant in the parlor. The simple fact is that Americans didn't elect Trump. An ancient relic known as the Electoral College did. For better or worse, a plurality of the people voted for Hillary Clinton. Indeed, her margin of victory is turning out to be bigger than many imagined. The latest count by the Associated Press has her ahead by about a half million popular votes, or Clinton's 48 percent to Trump's 47 percent. That's about the same as George W. Bush's losingmargin in 2000 before a judicial coup d'e'tat propelled him into office. But Nate Cohen of The New York Times's "Upshot" team is predicting that by the time all mail-in, absentee, and provisional ballots are counted, it will end up even bigger, i.e., as high as 2.2 million, or 1.7 percent. That's 10 times John F. Kennedy's margin of victory in 1960 and four times Richard Nixon's in 1968. If true, then Clinton will not only have won in terms of the popular vote, she will have won big (or as Trump might say "bigly" or "big league" depending on how you decipher one of his favorite expressions). Yet thanks to an obscure constitutional quirk, she's not the one going to the White House. Instead, an orange-haired reality TV star is so that he possibly can do to the United States what he did to his own real-estate empire, i.e., drive it into bankruptcy. A Failure of Democracy Three things seem clear as a consequence. One is that America has a major problem on its hands. After all, this is the second time in 16 years that the people (or at least a plurality of the people) have been robbed of their choice for president. And both times political democracy has suffered a major body blow as a consequence. How much more abuse the democratic process can take without succumbing entirely is now open to question. A second thing is that no one has foggiest idea how to fix it. A third is that the ruling elite and its minions in the chattering classes don't give a damn because, in contrast to the population at large, they benefit from the breakdown (it's much easier to control a demoralized population that has lost faith in the value of democracy) and are therefore eager to sweep the entire issue under the rug. So let's take these issues on one at a time and see where they lead. First, the problem. The Electoral College is a very Eighteenth-Century affair, an example of what happens when New World pragmatism combines with the Age of Reason's love affair with ancient Rome. Faced with a tentative new republic in which "democracy" tended to be limited, local and individualist, the Framers concluded that a special body of elite electors was needed to hold the country together and ensure that a solid leader like George Washington took the reins. The decision may not have been unreasonable given the exigencies of the day. (The proposed Constitution was a radical departure from the Articles of Confederation, which made the states supreme. The Constitution shifted sovereignty to "We the People," but the states, especially the small ones, still wanted a significant role in the new hybrid system.) Unexpected Problems But 230 years later, the device has turned out to have unexpected consequences. By awarding one vote for every senator and representative that a state sends to Washington, it triples the clout of demographic Lilliputians like Wyoming (population 586,107, according to the most recent estimate) at the expense of multi-racial giants like California (population 39.1 million). By forcing presidential candidates to concentrate on a handful of swing states, it sidelines Democratic strongholds like California or New York along with Republican bastions such as Indiana or the Deep South. It also effectively cancels out millions of votes. Since Clinton carried New York State by 59 percent, it means that out of the 4.1 million people who voted for her, some 632,000 might just as well have stayed home. Since she carried California by 61 percent, more than a million Golden State residents could have done the same. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. From Counterpunch One of the most confounding aspects of Donald Trump's election as 45th President of the United States is that in the space of a year -- indeed less than a year -- a man with zero political experience has destroyed two of America's most entrenched political dynasties: Bush and Clinton. Just pause on this for a moment, and place it in the context of someone who when he first appeared on the political stage as a candidate for the Republican nomination was met with ridicule and scorn. Consequently, a mainstream media and liberal commentators for whom politics is an exclusive club, the preserve of a select group of blessed people who belong to this club as if by divine right, have just been delivered one almighty slap-down. The sense of entitlement that emanated from the Clinton campaign during this election was astonishing to behold. Hillary Clinton emitted the demeanour of a woman approaching a coronation rather than an election, disdaining not only Donald Trump but also his supporters, whom she infamously described as "deplorables." This was her undoing. Regardless of the attempt to paint her as someone in touch with the suffering and pain of the millions of Americans who have long been denied a seat at the banquet of US democracy, she came over as the very embodiment of a machine politician, a candidate whose credibility and character was irredeemably tainted by her connections to Wall Street, big business, the Saudis, George Soros, etc. This is why it is not so much that Donald Trump won this election as that Hillary Clinton and her campaign lost. Here the Democratic Party only has itself to blame. Bernie Sanders offered a far more potent challenge to the Trump phenomenon, both because he did not carry any of the baggage that Clinton brought to the election and also -- perhaps more importantly -- he represented a far sharper ideological counterweight to Trump. One of the most salient consequences of the 2008 global economic crash, which ushered in the worst crisis within capitalism since the 1930s, has been the collapse of the political center ground and with it the dominance of the liberal order. In this respect it is just as Karl Marx opined in his Communist Manifesto, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life..." The analogy that best describes this process is a battlefield after the smoke has cleared to reveal the ideological right on one side and its left wing counterpart on the other, ready to go to war over the right to shape the future. And as Brexit in the UK and now Trump's electoral victory in the US leaves no doubt, this is a struggle currently being won by the right. This is not to suggest the struggle is completely over however. On the contrary the political, social, economic, and constitutional crisis ushered in by Brexit proves that there remains some distance to travel before the matter is settled in Britain, while Trump's election will inevitably give rise to strong opposition in the streets, perhaps even sparking a much needed revival of the left across the US, which based on the success of the Sanders campaign is far from dead. Focusing in on Donald Trump and based on statements he made in the course of his campaign, it is interesting to observe that among the many places where you will find the most grievously disappointed people in response to his victory are NATO headquarters in Brussels and ISIS and Nusra headquarters in Syria. It is evidence of the hitherto insurmountable contradiction that has lain at the heart of Washington's geopolitical priorities and strategy these past few years. Trump, in contrast, laid it out very simply when he said, "Russia is killing ISIS. Assad is killing ISIS. I think it would be a good idea to get along with Russia." This being said, the acid test is what he does rather than what he has said, which is why it remains far too soon to be complacent in welcoming a new dawn in Washington's relations with Russia or the rest of the world. Trump also said some harsh things about China and Iran during his election campaign, which taken in conjunction with the fact that as President he immediately becomes the CEO of an empire that is no longer sustainable, requires us to exercise caution rather than celebration at this stage. Domestically, let us not delude ourselves. Trump has given rise to the recrudescence of nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment across America, in much the same way Brexit has done in the UK. The logical conclusion of this path is social divisions and the erosion of social cohesion. Whether people like it or not globalization has given rise to multicultural societies across the West, with both constituting two sides of the same coin. In other words people cannot expect to enjoy the benefits of the free movement of capital without the free movement of people. And here we get to the heart of the matter. Donald Trump and Brexit are symptoms of the rise of anti-politics in response to the massive inequality that has engulfed both British and US society in recent years. Far too much wealth is now owned by far two few, with the result that people are angry and in no mind to continue to support a status quo widely regarded as corrupt and hopelessly compromised by its support for a corporate elite and vested interests. The world has changed, perhaps utterly. Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity Search Title Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 SHARE Something to Teach Us About Living Well As efforts to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline grow, communities across the country are hearing from activists on their return from North Dakota and sending off fresh teams to lend support. The author believes that part of the support for the Standing Rock protests is a dawning consciousness that Native people have something important to teach us about living well on this planet. Sunday, November 13, 2016As efforts to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline grow, communities across the country are hearing from activists on their return from North Dakota and sending off fresh teams to lend support. The author believes that part of the support for the Standing Rock protests is a dawning consciousness that Native people have something important to teach us about living well on this planet. Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity Search Title Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 Page 1 of 4 First Last Back Next 2 3 4 View All (1 comments) SHARE Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions European sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year will likely go down in history as a prime example of how sanctions can result in unintended consequences Tuesday, September 13, 2022European sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year will likely go down in history as a prime example of how sanctions can result in unintended consequences (1 comments) SHARE Foreign Policy Fail - Biden's Sanctions Are a Windfall For Russia! 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This will likely tip the economy into a recession. (1 comments) SHARE Biden's Big Government Centrism America's ham-fisted intervention in the Ukraine-Russian conflict has caused more countries to seek alternatives to the dollar. Monday, April 4, 2022America's ham-fisted intervention in the Ukraine-Russian conflict has caused more countries to seek alternatives to the dollar. (1 comments) SHARE Biden's Disastrous European Tour Speaking of Russian President Putin, he told the audience near the border of Ukraine, "for God's sake this man cannot remain in power." Monday, March 28, 2022Speaking of Russian President Putin, he told the audience near the border of Ukraine, "for God's sake this man cannot remain in power." (1 comments) SHARE End the Fed and Get More Doritos Ending the era of the welfare-warfare state and fiat currency can lead to a transition to a new era of liberty, peace, prosperity, and full bags of Doritos. 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(1 comments) SHARE It All Comes Back to NATO NATO should be disbanded not expanded. In the meantime expansion should be off the table. The risks do not outweigh the benefits! Monday, February 28, 2022NATO should be disbanded not expanded. In the meantime expansion should be off the table. The risks do not outweigh the benefits! (19 comments) SHARE Ukraine Crisis - A Nightmare Caused by US Interventionism This is not our fight yet Biden's foreign policy team has decided it's a great time to kick the hornet's nest. Monday, February 14, 2022This is not our fight yet Biden's foreign policy team has decided it's a great time to kick the hornet's nest. (6 comments) SHARE We Are All Canadian Truckers Now! For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an "unacceptable view." Tuesday, February 1, 2022For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an "unacceptable view." (7 comments) SHARE America's Most Dangerous Unknown Man I don't often agree with Senator Warren but I do agree with her assessment that Powell is "dangerous." Monday, January 24, 2022I don't often agree with Senator Warren but I do agree with her assessment that Powell is "dangerous." (1 comments) SHARE Washington's Bi-Partisan Russia-Bashers Are Determined to Start a War NATO is a Cold War relic that should have been disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. It serves no purpose and its constant saber-rattling puts us at risk in conflicts that have nothing to do with US national security. Monday, January 17, 2022NATO is a Cold War relic that should have been disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. It serves no purpose and its constant saber-rattling puts us at risk in conflicts that have nothing to do with US national security. (7 comments) SHARE We Need a Revolution I am not speaking of a violent revolution that replaces one form of authoritarianism with another but a peaceful revolution of ideas. Monday, January 10, 2022I am not speaking of a violent revolution that replaces one form of authoritarianism with another but a peaceful revolution of ideas. (23 comments) SHARE Omicron - The Lockdowners' Last Stand The timing of omicron's emergence was perfect. The variant was first discovered in South Africa with the US and European media running endless scare stories. Monday, December 20, 2021The timing of omicron's emergence was perfect. The variant was first discovered in South Africa with the US and European media running endless scare stories. Page 1 of 4 First Last Back Next 2 3 4 View All First CPEC cargo left for its destination Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at a grand opening ceremony at the Gwadar port on Sunday marked the operationalisation and opening of trade activities at the port, a key project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). "We will leave no stone unturned in ensuring the CPEC and all the projects under its umbrella are materialised within the given time," he said. "This idea was conceived only two years ago, and this day marks the breaking of the dawn of a new era." "CPEC is for entire Pakistan and no region or province will be left out of it," the PM said, in an apparent attempt at putting to bed the reservations of smaller provinces that claim the project doesn't benefit them. "The newly-constructed roads in Balochistan have opened up new areas that were inaccessible and deprived of development... and have brought peace to a volatile region," the premier said. "The government of Balochistan and the Army have been successful in making the local population a stakeholder in development... Development can never be sustainable if it creates islands of properity. It must reach the lives of those who have remained mired in a trap of poverty and backwardness," he said. The One Belt-One Road project integrates development of various regions, he said, adding that it integrates with Pakistan's Vision 2025 which seeks to transform Pakistan into a hub of trade and commerce, harnessing its geo-strategic location into a geo-economic advantage. "The government has spent Rs49 billion on these projects. Next year, projects worth Rs200bn will be launched," the PM said. CPEC will help integrate South Asia, China and Central Asia and offer opportunities for people in this region, and investors all over the world, he said. Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Asim Bajwa earlier tweeted that the first mega trade convoy of containers had arrived from China and will be loaded onto ships. The trade convoy departed from Kashgar, China, on Oct 29, entered Pakistan on Oct 30 and reached Gwadar on Nov 12. PM Nawaz termed the arrival of the convoy 'a watershed event'. Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong told the ceremony today: "This the first time that a trade convoy successfully passed through the western part of Pakistan from the north to the south. It proves the connectivity of the local roads and the realisation of the concept of one corridor with multiple passages." "This is the first time that the Gwadar port is exporting containers to overseas destinations. It proves the port has restored it designed handling capacity," he said. "This is also the first time that Pakistan and China co-organised a trade convoy through Pakistan to Gwadar port." Balochistan Chief Minister (CM) Nawab Sanaullah Zehri addressing the ceremony said, "Due to the government's hectic efforts, the active participation of our security forces and all-out cooperation fo the people of Balochistan, we have succeeded in curbing anti-state elements, and the law and order situation has improved." Zehri's claims come a day after a brutal attack on a shrine in Balochistan's Khuzdar area claimed at least 52 lives and injured over 100 other people. Executives from Sino Trans, a Chinese logistics company, also attended the ceremony as well as ministers for defence and planning and a number of politicians, especially from Balochistan. This is the largest collection of VIPs hosted by Gwadar since it witnessed the signing of the 2009 National Finance Commission Award. Amid tight security and a stream of arriving VIPs, the first consignment of cargoes from China to depart from the Pakistani port arrived at Gwadar on Saturday. All day long, a stream of trucks of different sizes lined up outside the port to be individually scanned before being ushered in. The convoys that joined up in Quetta took diverse routes. One convoy came from China, carrying almost 150 containers which were then shifted onto Pakistani trucks at the Sust border crossing south of Khunjerab in the Northern Areas. At Jund, it was met by another convoy that originated in Sialkot with 50 trucks carrying around 100 containers and together the whole convoy crossed the Indus river to Kohat where they stayed the night before moving on to Dera Ismail Khan, Zhob and then Quetta, where it stopped for another night. They were joined by a third convoy originating in Lahore and Sialkot, consisting of 45 trucks carrying approximately 90 containers that moved south to Sukkur, then west on the N65 highway past Sibi and Mastung before joining their companions in Quetta. The containers carry cargoes ranging from rice and cotton, to Chinese machinery, some of which is destined for Gwadar for the ongoing development works here, and the rest going abroad. Around Rs35 billion has been spent on road infrastructure for the CPEC projects in Balochistan alone since 2014, says the FWO chief. He said he pushed for the convoys to take these routes to show that the road infrastructure built during this time is fully capable of handling cargo consignments of this size. Two ships Al Hussain Zanzibar and Cosco Wellington are berthed at Gwadar to receive the cargoes. They are setting sail for ports in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the EU late on Sunday, according to information provided by the FWO. If You Enjoy My Articles, Please Consider Supporting My Writing By Giving A Donation Of Any Amount. Thank you! Of course. You would have to be be barking mad to want to bring this rabble to NZ. But then socialists are mad by definition. It's not as if we don't have... About This Quiz Celebrate the festive spring holiday Easter by taking this quiz, which will set you straight on when it is observed, why it exists and most importantly which flavor jelly bean everyone is going to try to steal from your Easter basket. (A) An ovule inserted with a pollen tube that can fertilize. Ovule enlargement is observed upon fertilization. (B) An ovule without insertion of a pollen tube. Without insertion of a pollen tube, ovule enlargement is not observed. (C) An ovule inserted with a pollen tube that cannot fertilize. Even though fertilization has not occurred, ovule enlargement is observed due to release of PTCs into the ovule. Upon analyzing 100 ovules inserted with pollen tubes that cannot fertilize, the ovule size was on average, 2.5 times larger relative to ovules without insertion of a pollen tube. Credit: ITbM, Nagoya University Plant biologists at ITbM have made a key discovery that the contents in pollen tubes alone can increase the size of seeds, without the need for fertilization. This finding may be useful in developing crops, which can develop seeds under unfavorable environmental conditions where fertilization does not readily occur. Plant biologists at ITbM, Nagoya University, have made a key discovery that the contents in pollen tubes alone can increase the size of seeds, without the need for fertilization. This new plant phenomenon, named as POEM (pollen tube-dependent ovule enlargement morphology), shows that even in the absence of fertilization (fusion of sperm and egg cells), release of the pollen tube content (PTC) to the ovule leads to enlargement of the ovule and seed coat formation. This finding may be useful in developing crops, which can develop seeds under unfavorable environmental conditions where fertilization does not readily occur. Nagoya, Japan Dr. Ryushiro Kasahara, Professor Tetsuya Higashiyama of the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) of Nagoya University and their colleagues have reported in Science Advances, on the discovery of a new plant phenomenon where the pollen tube contents (PTCs) trigger seed enlargement in the absence of fertilization. Upon pollination, pollen grows pollen tubes inside the pistil, in order to deliver its sperm cells (male) to the egg cells (female) located inside the ovules. Although PTCs have been known to exist inside the pollen tube along with sperm cells, its actual function has been unknown for a long time. In animals, the function of the seminal fluid (containing sperm cells), which is in a similar position to PTCs in plants, has been well studied. Research in mice shows that when a particular protein is removed from the seminal fluid, the sperm cell is unable to induce fertilization, thus indicating that the seminal fluid is essential for fertilization to occur in animals. Ryushiro Kasahara, a leader of this research, decided to look into the function of PTCs to see if it has a similar function to the seminal fluid in animals. He conducted hybridization experiments using mutants of a model plant Arabidopsis thaliana that can release PTCs into the ovule even when fertilization does not occur. (A) An ovule inserted with a pollen tube that can fertilize. Seed coat formation is observed upon fertilization. (B) An ovule without insertion of a pollen tube. No seed coat formation is observed in the absence of pollen tube insertion. (C) An ovule inserted with a pollen tube that cannot fertilize. Even though fertilization has not occurred, seed coat formation is observed due to release of PTC into the ovule. Credit: ITbM, Nagoya University As a result, his group found that ovules subjected to PTCs without fertilization lead to cell division, along with enlargement of the seed. In addition, formation of the seed coat and endosperm was also observed. For years, it has been considered that ovule enlargement only occurs upon fertilization. Nevertheless, Kasahara's new discoveries show that PTCs alone can induce ovule enlargement, which breaks the common principle that fertilization is essential for seed development. "The most difficult part of this research was to make sure that fertilization does not occur in order to identify the function of PTCs," says Kasahara. "I was extremely excited when I saw that PTCs alone led to seed development without fertilization." Reproduction in plants starts from pollination on the pistil, followed by pollen tube guidance, which eventually leads to fertilization. This research demonstrates the existence of an unexplored step between pollen tube guidance and fertilization, where PTCs have a major role in seed development. In crops, such as rice, corn and wheat, the parts that we mainly eat are the endosperm in the seed. By further elucidation on the function of the PTCs, as well as development of new technology to apply PTCs to plants, it may become possible to produce crops that can form the endosperm without fertilization. As the fertilization rate becomes relatively low under unfavorable or unusual weather conditions (e.g. typhoon and high temperatures) during the flowering season, this has drastic effects on crop production. If endosperms can form by application of the key molecules in PTCs, without the need for fertilization, this may be useful in producing crops that are unaffected by climate conditions. Initially, Kasahara and his colleagues investigated what kind of genes is expressed in ovules that have accepted PTCs, by analyzing the genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. They carried out experiments using mutants that do not necessarily fertilize upon pollination. "We found that ovules that have accepted PTCs, undergone fertilization and have developed an embryo and endosperm, show expression of genes that are essential for embryo and endosperm formation," explains Kasahara. "On the other hand, ovules that have accepted PTCs but have not been fertilized did not show gene expression of the embryo and the endosperm. We were surprised to see that this unfertilized ovule showed expression of genes that induce cell expansion and division, as well as seed coat formation." a) Growth of pollen tube towards the ovule. Sperm cells exist at the tip of the tube. Pollen tube contents (PTC) are the liquid part of the pollen tube, shown in yellow. b) Upon pollination to the pistil, the pollen tube grows from pollen towards the ovule. Once the pollen tube reaches the ovule, the tube bursts releasing PTCs and two sperm cells that can fertilize the egg cell and the central cell. Yellow lines on the ovule after fertilization (seed) in figure 1. a) show the pathway taken by the pollen tube. c) A seed after fertilization. After fertilization, the egg cell and central cell develop into the embryo and the endosperm, respectively. Simultaneously, the ovule develops a seed coat. Credit: ITbM, Nagoya University From the results of gene expression, Kasahara hypothesized that the division and enlargement of ovules, as well as seed coat formation can occur without fertilization. Therefore, he decided to look into the gene expression of ovules. "We found that ovules with the insertion of pollen tubes but without fertilization are on average 2.5 times larger that those without the insertion of pollen tubes. The unfertilized ovules with pollen tube insertion also showed seed coat formation," says Kasahara. "This new observation overturns the common principle that ovules need to fertilize for enlargement to occur." Kasahara was then able to confirm through further experiments that PTCs were responsible for ovule enlargement. By using mutants where pollen tubes burst at a certain rate and release PTCs, they compared to ratio of ovules that increased in size without fertilization, to the ovules where the pollen tube ruptures and releases PTCs. "We were delighted to see that the percentage of ovules that become enlarged and the percentage of ovules accepting PTCs showed a good match," describes Kasahara. "This shows evidence that PTCs contribute to ovule enlargement." Kasahara named this new phenomenon, POEM, which stands for "pollen tube dependent ovule enlargement morphology". Upon using a mutant that generates an endosperm without fertilization, the rate of autonomous endosperm formation was below 3% without PTCs. On the other hand, when PTCs were released into the ovule, 50% of the ovules autonomously formed an endosperm. This indicates that PTCs are able to increase the probability of endosperm formation in ovules. "We are currently interested in what kind of molecules in the PTCs are responsible for triggering POEM," says Kasahara. "We hope we can find key molecules, which can be constantly expressed in ovules so that the endosperm can be formed without fertilization. This is expected to be highly useful for producing crops in various climates, where fertilization does not readily occur." More information: R. D. Kasahara et al. Pollen tube contents initiate ovule enlargement and enhance seed coat development without fertilization, Science Advances (2016). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600554 Journal information: Science Advances SLU geologists John Encarnacion, Ph.D., and Timothy Keenan. Credit: Saint Louis University Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can cause the Earth's tectonic plates to sink into the Earth. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can cause the earth's tectonic plates to sink into the earth. John Encarnacion, Ph.D., professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at SLU, and Timothy Keenan, a graduate student, are experts in tectonics and hard rock geology, and use geochemistry and geochronology coupled with field observations to study tectonic plate movement. "A plate, by definition, has a rigidity to it. It is stiff and behaves as a unit. We are on the North American Plate and so we're moving roughly westward together about an inch a year," Encarnacion said. "But when I think about what causes most plates to move, I think about a wet towel in a pool. Most plates are moving because they are sinking into the Earth like a towel laid down on a pool will start to sink dragging the rest of the towel down into the water." Plates move, on average, an inch or two a year. The fastest plate moves at about four inches a year and the slowest isn't moving much at all. Plate motions are the main cause of earthquakes, and seismologists and geologists study the details of plate motions to make more accurate predictions of their likelihood. "Whenever scientists can show how something that is unexpected might have actually happened, it helps to paint a more accurate picture of how the Earth behaves," Encarnacion said. "And a more accurate picture of large-scale Earth processes can help us better understand earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as the origin and locations of mineral deposits, many of which are the effects and products of large-scale plate motions." Plate movement affects our lives in other ways, too: It recently was reported that Australia needs to redraw its maps due to plate motion. Australia is moving relatively quickly northwards, and so over many decades it has traveled several feet, causing GPS locations to be significantly misaligned. Subduction, the process by which tectonic plates sink into the earth's mantle, is a fundamental tectonic process on earth, and yet the question of where and how new subduction zones form remains a matter of debate. Subduction is the main reason tectonic plates move. The SLU geologists' research takes them out into the field to study rocks and sample them before taking them back to the lab to be studied in more detail. Their work involves geological mapping: looking at rocks, identifying them, plotting them on a map and figuring out how they formed and what has happened to them after they form. Researchers date rock samples and look at their chemistry to learn about the specific conditions where an ancient rock formed, such as if a volcanic rock formed in a volcanic island like Hawaii or on the deep ocean floor. In this study, Keenan and Encarnacion traveled to the Philippines to study plates in that region. They found that a divergent plate boundary, where two plates move apart, was forcefully and rapidly turned into a convergent boundary where one plate eventually began subducting. This is surprising because although the plate material at a divergent boundary is weak, it is also buoyant and resists subduction. The research findings suggest that buoyant but weak plate material at a divergent boundary can be forced to converge until eventually older and denser plate material enters the nascent subduction zone, which then becomes self-sustaining. "We think that the subduction zone we studied was actually forced to start because of the collision of India with Asia. India was once separated from Asia, but it slowly drifted northwards eventually colliding with Asia. The collision pushed out large chunks of Asia to the southeast. That push, we think, pushed all the way out into the ocean and triggered the start of a new subduction zone." Their finding supports a new model for how plates can begin to sink: "Places where plates move apart can be pushed together to start subduction." The SLU researchers now want to learn if their model applies to other tectonic plates. "How common was this forced initiation of a subduction zone that we think happened in the Philippines?" Encarnacion said. "I would like to see work on other ancient subduction zones to see whether our model applies to them as well." More information: Timothy E. Keenan et al, Rapid conversion of an oceanic spreading center to a subduction zone inferred from high-precision geochronology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1609999113 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Canadian boreal forest is dominated by the 10-year snowshoe hare cycle. Credit: University of Toronto Scarborough Rudy Boonstra has been doing field research in Canada's north for more than 40 years. Working mostly out of the Arctic Institute's Kluane Lake Research Station in Yukon, the U of T Scarborough Biology Professor has become intimately familiar with Canada's vast and unique boreal forest ecosystem. But it was during a trip to Finland in the mid-1990s to help a colleague with field research that he began to think long and hard about why the boreal forest there differed so dramatically from its Canadian cousin. This difference was crystallized by follow-up trips to Norway. "Superficially they look the same. Both are dominated by coniferous trees with similar low density deciduous trees like aspen. But that's where the similarities end," he says. The real differences are most obvious on the ground, notes Boonstra. In Canada, the ground is dominated by tall shrubs like willow and birch but in the Northwestern European forests found in Norway, Finland and Sweden the ground is dominated by dwarf shrubs like bilberry. "The reason for the difference comes down to different climates," he says. It also goes without saying that global warming will have an effect on vegetation and the species that rely on the boreal forest, adds Boonstra. "The data is still coming in but there are indications that this ecosystem is shifting and it could potentially be a massive shift," he says, pointing to changes in the global carbon cycle and the predator/prey dynamics. Boreal forest covers an incredible 50 per cent of Canada's land mass and has evolved quite differently from the boreal forests of Northwestern Europe say Boonstra, who co-authored a book on Canada's boreal forest ecosystem. The winters in the Canadian boreal forest are drier and 15 to 20C colder, with snow that is soft and shallow. In Northwestern Europe the winter is more mild and wet by comparison with deep snow that packs harder. The milder European winters are driven mainly by westerly winds from North America that dip into the Caribbean and carry warm air across the Atlantic. The difference in climate means the plant and animal species in both forests have evolved along two very different paths. The Canadian system is dominated by the extreme cold tolerant tall shrubs and the 10-year snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx cycle On the other hand, the forests in Northwestern Europe are dominated by cold intolerant dwarf shrubs and a three to four-year cycle of small rodent and weasels that live below the snow. It also has a higher density of larger animals like Moose. "Predators have evolved to the prey, and the prey have evolved to the vegetation in both places," adds Boonstra. Boonstra and his colleagues looked at a host of other potential factors to explain the differences between these forests including human activity, density of large mammals and other predators, but the deciding factor came down to climate. The research, which included collaboration from researchers across Canada and Norway, was published in the journal BioScience and received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Norwegian Science Council. Boreal forests are important ecological zones because they cover 11 per cent of the Earth's total land surface and make up 25 per cent of the Earth's closed canopy forests, which are continuous, uninterrupted forest systems. These forests play a key role in the global carbon cycle that allows the Earth to be capable of sustaining life. "There's no question that a shift in snow consistency and temperature will impact this immense ecosystem," adds Boonstra. Physicists Nigel Goldenfeld (left) and Chi Xue, at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Credit: Kathryn Faith. Nature is full of parasitesorganisms that flourish and proliferate at the expense of another species. Surprisingly, these same competing roles of parasite and host can be found in the microscopic molecular world of the cell. A new study by two Illinois researchers has demonstrated that dynamic elements within the human genome interact with each other in a way that strongly resembles the patterns seen in populations of predators and prey. The findings, published in Physical Review Letters by physicists Chi Xue and Nigel Goldenfeld, are an important step toward understanding the complex ways that genomes change over the lifetime of individual organisms, and how they evolve over generations. "These are genes that are active and are doing genome editing in real time in living cells, and this is a start of trying to really understand them in much more detail than has been done before," said Goldenfeld, who leads the Biocomplexity research theme at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Universal Biology (IGB). "This is helping us understand the evolution of complexity and the evolution of genomes." The study was supported by Center for the Physics of Living Cells, a Physics Frontiers Center at Illinois supported by the National Science Foundation, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology at Illinois, which Goldenfeld directs. Goldenfeld and Xue embarked on this work because of their interest in transposons, small regions of DNA that can move themselves from one part of the genome to another during the lifetime of a cella capability that has earned them the name "jumping genes." Collectively, various types of transposons make up almost half of the human genome. When they move around, they may create mutations in or alter the activity of a functional gene; transposons can therefore create new genetic profiles in a population for natural selection to act on, in either a positive or negative way. The Illinois researchers wanted to learn more about how evolution works on this level, the level of whole organisms, by looking at the metaphorical ecosystem of the human genome. In this view, the physical structure of the DNA that makes up the genome acts like an environment, in which two types of transposons, long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) and short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), have a competitive relationship with one another. In order to replicate, SINEs steal the molecular machinery that LINEs use to copy themselves, somewhat like a cuckoo bird tricks other birds into raising her chicks for her while abandoning their own. With help from Oleg Simakov, a researcher at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Xue and Goldenfeld focused on the biology of L1 elements and Alu elements, respectively common types of LINEs and SINEs in the human genome. The researchers adopted methods from modern statistical physics and modeled the interaction between Alu and L1 elements mathematically as a stochastic processa process created from chance interactions. This method has been successfully applied in ecology to describe predator-prey interactions; Xue and Goldenfeld simulated the movements of transposons within the human genome with the same mathematical method. Their models included a detailed accounting for how Alu elements steal the molecular machinery L1 elements use to copy themselves. Xue and Goldenfeld's results predicted that populations of LINE and SINE elements in the genome are expected to oscillate the way those of, for example, wolves and rabbits might. "We realized that the transposons' interaction actually was pretty much like the predator-prey interaction in ecology," said Xue. "We came up with the idea, why don't we apply the same idea of predator-prey dynamics . . .we expected to see the oscillations we see in the predator-prey model. So we first did the simulation and we saw the oscillations we expected, and we got really excited." In other words, too many SINEs and the LINEs start to suffer, and soon there are not enough for all the SINEs to exploit. SINEs start to suffer, and the LINEs make a come-back. Xue and Goldenfeld's model made the surprising prediction that these oscillations occur over a timescale that is longer than the human lifespanwaves of Alu elements and L1 elements pushing and pulling at each other in slow motion across generations of the human genomes that carry them. "The most enlightening aspect of the study for me was the fact that we could really compute the timescales, and see that it is possible that we could observe these things," said Goldenfeld. "We have a prediction for what happens in single cells, and we may be able to actually do an experiment to observe these things, though the period is longer than the lifetime of a single cell." In a related study, Goldenfeld's laboratory has collaborated with the laboratory of fellow physicist and IGB Biocomplexity research theme member Thomas Kuhlman to visualize the movements of transposons within the genomes of living cells. Using this type of innovative technology, and by studying the history of molecular evolution in other species, Goldenfeld and Xue hope to test some of the predictions made by their model and continue to gain insight into the dynamic world of the genome. More information: Chi Xue et al, Stochastic Predator-Prey Dynamics of Transposons in the Human Genome, Physical Review Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.208101 Journal information: Physical Review Letters Researchers will survey a new site Little Dome C, which is located 50 kms away from the French-Italian station of Concordia, based at Dome C. Credit: British Antarctic Survey A team of European scientists heads to East Antarctica this month to locate the oldest ice on Earth. The team is part of an EU-funded research consortium from ten European countries whose aim is to search for a suitable site to drill an ice core to capture 1.5 million years of Earth's climate history. The project, Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice (BE-OI), will answer important questions about big shifts in the past record of Earth's climate. By extracting air from the tiny bubbles trapped in the ice, researchers will understand how the atmosphere's composition has changed over time. Dr Robert Mulvaney, ice core scientist from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the UK partner in Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice, and involved in the site survey explains: "In the early 2000s we drilled an ice core from Antarctica that gave us a climate record going back 800,000 years. Now we want to double the length of that record to investigate an important shift in Earth's climate around one million years ago, when the planet's climate cycle between cold glacial conditions and warmer interludes changed from being dominated by a 41,000-year pattern to a 100,000 year cycle." Understanding what controlled this shift in the Earth's glacial cycles, and whether increasing carbon dioxide levels played a part, along with factors such as changes in the Earth's rotational tilt, will help scientists to understand better how ice sheets will behave as the world warms. Dr Mulvaney continues: "We need to understand the interaction between the Earth's atmosphere and climate in very different conditions in the past if we are to be sure we can predict the future climate response to increasing greenhouse gases. There is no other place on Earth that retains such a long a record of the past atmosphere other than the Antarctic ice sheet, and it is tremendously exciting to be embarking now on the journey to recover this record." Dr Robert Mulvaney from BAS is involved in the site survey at Little Dome C. Credit: British Antarctic Survey The team will survey several sites at and near Little Dome C just 50 kms from the previous EPICA drill site located at the French-Italian research station Dome Concordia in East Antarctica using radar towed behind a snow tractor, and drilling test boreholes, so they can determine the suitability of the site and the terrain at the bedrock beneath the ice. The researchers, together with other BE-OI partners, will investigate the ice sheet's thickness, its physical properties and the topography of the underlying bedrock at two different sites (Dome C and on the East Antarctic plateau at Dome F). Ice thickness is just a first indicator of past ice, as different snow accumulation, ice flow behaviour and the temperature at the bottom determine whether old ice remains near the base of the ice sheet. "During previous studies we determined key regions where we expect the oldest continuous ice record on Earth" says Prof Olaf Eisen, project coordinator and glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). "Now we have to prove this and it is important that we learn as much as possible about deposition processes and the composition of the ice", he explains. Once a suitable drilling site is found, scientists will embark on a second phase multi-year project to extract an ice core from the surface to the bed at nearly 3km depth using traditional ice core drilling technology. Laboratories across Europe will analyse this ice to determine how the climate and the atmosphere have interacted over the past 1.5 million years. Dome C (75.10'S, 123.35'E) is one of the most hostile environments on the planet, and average annual temperatures are below -54 degrees Celsius. The deep field party at Little Dome C, supported by those at Concordia Station, will travel hundreds of kilometres by tractor and skidoo over featureless snow where blizzards are common. Credit: University of Maryland A major breakthrough in the cloning of a resistance gene to eliminate wheat scaba widespread disease responsible for drastic reductions in crop yield as well as millions of dollars in annual losses worldwidehas been achieved by a multi-institutional team of researchers including Nidhi Rawat, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Michael O. Pumphrey, associate professor in Washington State University's Crop and Soil Sciences Department, who together performed most of the experimental work. This discovery has broad implications for the future as a promising source of resistance to not only wheat scab, but a variety of similar host plants affected by the fungal pathogen known as Fusarium graminearum. Ultimately, once the nature of gene action is known, the findings can be applied to control other Fusarium species which causes rot in cucurbit, tomato and potato to name a few. Fusarium graminearum produces a toxin that makes the infected crop unfit for human and animal consumption. James Anderson, a professor of wheat breeding and genetics at the University of Minnesota, said there are frequent epidemics of the disease reported in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and South America. Historically, wheat scabotherwise known as Fusarium Head Blighthas been a very difficult problem to solve. 20 years of research that includes input from scientists in China and several American Universities has been slow to produce results, with resistance only found in a select group of local Chinese plants. Until now, nothing was known about the Fhb1 gene and its ability to provide broad-spectrum resistance. The multi-University team, which also included researchers from Kansas State University and the University of Minnesota, used sophisticated wheat genome sequencing techniques to isolate the gene. Now that the DNA source of the resistance is known, processes that would take years to replicate can be done in much quicker fashion in a diagnostics lab. The team recently published their work in Nature Genetics. "After quite a long research process into Fusarium Head Blight, we are thrilled to uncover a solution to help the international farming community combat this devastating disease," says Dr. Rawat. "Fhb1 is very special, as only a few broad-spectrum resistance genes have been cloned so far that provide multi-pathogen resistance. The durability and applicability of Fhb1 puts it in a category all to itself and we must learn how to harness it appropriately." Moving forward, Rawat and her colleagues will work towards utilizing Fhb1 for solving a multitude of diseases caused by the pathogen. Research will involve optimizing the transfer of this resistance to other crops infected by Fusarium species through breeding, transgenic, cis-genic, and genome editing techniques. More information: Nidhi Rawat et al. Wheat Fhb1 encodes a chimeric lectin with agglutinin domains and a pore-forming toxin-like domain conferring resistance to Fusarium head blight, Nature Genetics (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ng.3706 Journal information: Nature Genetics Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany's Phase IIb ADDRESS II Results Confirm Potential of Atacicept as a Candidate Therapy for SLE Details Category: Antibodies Published on Monday, 14 November 2016 15:43 Hits: 2092 DARMSTADT, Germany I November 14, 2016 I Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, today announced the results of the ADDRESS II Phase IIb, multicenter study on atacicept in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Patients on standard-of-care therapy (n=306) were randomized to weekly subcutaneous injections of atacicept (75 or 150 mg) or placebo for 24 weeks. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients achieving a clinical response as defined by a composite SLE Responder Index (SRI)-4 at week 24. Secondary endpoints included SRI-6 response rate and time to severe flare, assessed by SLEDAI flare index (SFI) or BILAG. Although the primary endpoint was not met in the overall study population, there was a trend favoring atacicept with statistical significance achieved in a pre-specified sensitivity analysis of the primary endpoint using treatment Day 1 as baseline (rather than screening visit); atacicept 75 mg (55.9%, adjusted odds ratio/OR 1.88, p=0.029) and 150 mg (55.8%, adjusted OR 1.96, p=0.020) compared with placebo (41.0%). BILAG A flare was significantly reduced compared to placebo with atacicept 75 mg (p=0.019), and severe SFI flare reduced with 150 mg (p=0.002). Additionally, analyses of a predefined subpopulation of patients with high disease activity (HDA; SLEDAI-2K10, n=158) demonstrated statistically significant treatment effects of atacicept when compared to placebo. SRI-6 response at week 24 was significantly greater with atacicept 150 mg (54.9%, adjusted OR 3.30, p=0.005) compared with placebo (28.8%). Both atacicept doses led to significant reductions in the incidence of severe flare versus placebo, BILAG A flare (150 mg, hazard ratio/HR 0.32, p=0.038; 75 mg, HR 0.08, p=0.002) and SFI flare (150 mg, HR 0.19, p=0.004; 75 mg, HR 0.33, p=0.029). "This is an impressive result, and particularly remarkable for having been achieved in a small study and in 24 weeks," said Dr. Joan Merrill, Coordinating Investigator for the ADDRESS II study. "If confirmed in future studies, this could hold exciting possibilities for our patients." Luciano Rossetti, Head of Global Research & Development for the biopharma business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany added, "Building on the results of the APRIL SLE study, the results of ADDRESS II show that atacicept has the potential to become an important option for patients with lupus. We are particularly encouraged by the results in patients with high disease activity which was approximately 50% of the patients in the ADDRESS II study. We are looking forward to discussions with the regulatory authorities." Atacicept was also associated with increased serum complement C3 and C4, and decreased IgG, IgM, IgA, and anti-dsDNA antibodies over time. Treatment-emergent adverse event incidence was slightly higher with atacicept (150 mg, 80.8%; 75 mg, 81.4%) than placebo (71.0%), however, the risks of serious adverse events or serious/severe infections were not increased with atacicept versus placebo, and there were no deaths. The safety findings were comparable for the high disease activity subpopulation, in that the risks of serious adverse events or serious/severe infections were not increased with atacicept versus placebo. These results will be presented in a late-breaking poster session, "Efficacy and Safety of Atacicept in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Results of a 24-week Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Phase IIb Study," at the 2016 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ACR/ARHP) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, U.S. For more information about the data presented, please review the ACR/ARHP website. Also, visit Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany's booth at this year's Annual Meeting to learn more about the company's commitment to advancing innovation in lupus and other immunological diseases. About Atacicept Atacicept is a potential treatment for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Atacicept, a recombinant fusion protein, contains the soluble TACI receptor that binds to the cytokines BLyS and APRIL. These cytokines are members of the tumor necrosis factor family that promote B-cell survival and autoantibody production associated with certain autoimmune diseases such as SLE. Atacicept has been shown in animal models to affect several stages of B-cell development and may inhibit the survival of cells responsible for making antibodies. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany acquired exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights for atacicept, including in North America, from Zymogenetics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb) in 2008. Atacicept is currently under clinical investigation and not approved for any use in the United States, Canada and Europe. About Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) SLE (often referred to as "lupus") is a chronic autoimmune disease, where the immune system attacks the body's own tissues and organs. SLE can result in swollen, painful joints, skin rash, extreme fatigue and kidney damage. Estimates vary widely, but SLE may affect as many as 300,000 patients in the U.S. alone. Women and individuals with African American, Asian, and Hispanic heritage are affected disproportionately by SLE. All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, press releases are distributed by e-mail at the same time they become available on the EMD Group Website. In case you are a resident of the USA or Canada please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register again for your online subscription of this service as our newly introduced geo-targeting requires new links in the email. You may later change your selection or discontinue this service. About EMD Serono, Inc. EMD Serono is the biopharma business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the U.S. and Canada - a leading science and technology company - focused exclusively on specialty care. For more than 40 years, the business has integrated cutting-edge science, innovative products and industry-leading patient support and access programs. EMD Serono has deep expertise in neurology, fertility and endocrinology, as well as a robust pipeline of potential therapies in oncology, immuno-oncology and immunology as R&D focus areas. Today, the business has more than 1,100 employees around the country with commercial, clinical and research operations based in the company's home state of Massachusetts. About Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life - from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2015, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, generated sales of 12.85 billion in 66 countries. Founded in 1668, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, holds the global rights to the Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials. SOURCE: Merck KGaA The state tests in math and English for students in grades three through eight will continue to be taken over a three-day period in the spring. State education officials had looked into changing the format to administer the tests over two days. They announced Monday that they will keep the three-day format for the next two years. They cited the fact that switching to a different format would make it difficult to compare students performance from year to year. I have always said that state assessments must be diagnostic, valid, and reliable and they must provide timely and practical information to teachers, administrators and parents, said Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa in a news release. Maintaining the current testing for now will allow us to measure student development over time in these areas. While we will consider moving to two-day tests for 2019, we will also examine the possibility of adding multiple measures of student achievement into the assessments. The New York State Education Department had listened to feedback from educators and parents about the format of the tests and worked with its test vendor, Questar, to consider changes. Last year, the state made the tests shorter and allowed students to be given unlimited time as long as they were working productively. In addition, the state released 75 percent of the test questions, which is more than ever before, and made the reports to parents about the chidlrnens scores in a more user friendly format. Education advocacy groups took predictable positions on the announcement, with the pro-standards group High Achievement New York praising the decision and the New York State United Teachers union sharply criticizing it. SEDs decision to maintain testing consistency through 2019 is the right approach to continue showing the real progress students are making in proficiency, said High Achievement New York Executive Director Stephen Sigmund in a news release. Just as standards should be consistent, districts and students shouldn't have to see a different test year in and year out. The tests have already been improved by eliminating extra questions, adding teacher review to every question, and removing time limits. Now, further changes should wait until they can be carefully implemented along with revised New York standards. NYSUT released this statement on the matter: Despite a fierce outcry against the length of state standardized tests by parents and educators, the State Education Department is punting on the changes needed to move forward. So much for listening. Whats worse than SEDs failure to heed the legitimate concerns of parents and educators, however, is its indefensible rationale for not reducing the number of test days from three to two. With wholesale changes expected to the states standards, tests and evaluations and a moratorium on the use of test results for students and teachers in place through 2019-20 there is no reason to continue to subject children to three days of standardized tests that mean little. NYSUT strongly encourages the State Education Department to reconsider, and to continue to work with stakeholders to develop age- and developmentally appropriate assessments that are fair and meaningful. Teaching and learning must always take precedence over testing. When Lynn Ackershoek stepped into the food pantry at Warren-Hamilton County Community Action just before Halloween, it was what she didnt see that truly scared her. There was no pasta, no soup. I was really scared when I looked in there, said Ackershoek, the director of the Glens Falls-based non-profit that is one of the go-to places for the needy to get food. One street over, at Open Door Mission, Kim Cooks main concern is the backpack program her organization runs that feeds 300 children from 10 schools over the weekends. We are very, very low on backpack food, said Cook, whose group also provides a soup kitchen and food pantry. We really dont have enough to be able to give the kids what they want. We want to be able to put two lunches in each backpack, and we are barely able to do that. The story is the same at every organization in the region that provides food for the needy. Part of it is cyclical, but its still an issue, and it likely will be in the future. Well start doing pretty good for a while from now through Christmas, then until the end of January, Ackershoek said. We do pretty well through the end of January. Then we will start getting tight again. Cook said the cost to sponsor one childs backpack for a year is $185, and donors can also choose to just sponsor milk. Cook is also looking for donations of healthy snacks, juice boxes, canned spaghetti and microwaveable macaroni and cheese. Things are not good at the Salvation Army of Glens Falls, either. We are down about 4,000 pounds of donated food, so we will be forced to purchase more again this year, said Major David Dean, the Salvation Army pastor said. Food donations have been trending pretty heavily down the last three or four years. Devin Bulger, at Comfort Food Community in Greenwich, said he has been seeing a steady rise in the number of households using the Greenwich and Cossayuna pantries and the Fresh Food Hub deliveries, which ended Friday. Its rough at the beginning of home-heating season, he said. Families are bracing for that. In Salem, Seth Pitts said much the same thing. Were struggling, but we will get it done. said Pitts, who is the town supervisor and also runs the food pantry. Pitts said the Salem pantry was starting to put together its Thanksgiving baskets with 15,000 pounds of food from the Region Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Latham. Its been awfully busy lately, and other pantries I have talked to have said the same thing, said Marcy Robinson of the Washington County Economic Opportunity Council. Kimberly Sopczyk, executive director of Family Service Association of Glens Falls, Inc., which has one of the largest food pantries in the area, echoed what other directors were saying. We, too, felt uneasy this fall when our pantry shelves were bare, she said, noting that through various drives, her pantrys shelves are now full. We also are very grateful for the support of the community during the Stuff The Bus food drive and other food drives. The community, including faith organizations, businesses, and schools have been extremely generous to us. FSA supports families in Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties. Stuff a Bus: 3.1 tons There was some good news for local pantries recently. Community, Work & Independence held its annual Stuff A Bus food drive at Price Chopper Nov. 4 and 5 and collected 3.1 tons of food, surpassing last years 2.5 tons. More than 20 local food pantries will share in the collection, up from 17 last year. It was amazing how giving people were, said CWIs Krista Klock. We tried to make it as easy for them as we could, and that really seemed to help. CWI worked in combination with the Tri-County United Way to put on the event. Robinson said the drive really helped the Washington County EOC pantry. Things are great, because we just got our food from the Stuff A Bus campaign, she said. And the Hannaford Helping Hands boxes are coming in, too. Bellringers needed One of the ways the Salvation Army funds its holiday food and gifts is through the Red Kettle bell-ringing campaign. Dean said late last week the Salvation Army was still more than a dozen volunteers short for this week. This is a critical shortage for the second week, he said. We really need to be strong in our second week, and we are just not getting the calls. Dean said the first week produced far below the amount of money needed. With both Election day and Veteren Day falling within a 3 day span, it has been very quiet, he said. Election day was the lowest one day total for income we have seen in our eight years here. The organization is also still looking for volunteers to ring for the volunteer meal stipend of $23 per day for meals and transportation. It is still one-third short of the number it needs. To volunteer for any of the positions, call 792-1960. Prep for Thanksgiving With Thanksgiving just 10 days away, food pantries and other groups are well into preparations for that day. In Glens Falls, the Hometown Thanksgiving meal will be held at Christ Church, and there are also meals planned in Argyle and at the Caldwell Presbyterian Church in Lake George. Open Door holds a dinner for its regular visitors on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The Salvation Army will put together Thanksgiving food baskets, as will some of the other local food pantries. Bulger said his group has gone away from the baskets and is delivering meals picked up from a food pantry site in Albany instead. Comfort Food Community collects names and passes them on to the Greenwich Central School National Honor Society, which gets the meals at the Equinox dinner in Albany. Ackershoek said her pantry is something of a last resort for people for Thanksgiving boxes and has to buy much of the food for the boxes. We usually suggest people utilize one of the other sites, but were here if they need us. Marcy Robinson, senior program coordinator for the Washington County Economic Opportunity Council. QUEENSBURY The official results in the Warren County Family Court judge race were still unknown Monday, as absentee ballot counting has stopped in 11 counties because of a court order sought by a Supreme Court judge candidate. Republican Ted Wilson declared victory on Nov. 8 after receiving 13,778 machine votes compared with 12,401 for Democrat Rob Smith in the race for the Family Court position. But Smith said he will not concede until all the votes are counted. In the race for Supreme Court justice, Warren County Board of Elections Republican Commissioner Mary Beth Casey said the process of counting absentee ballots has come to a halt because of an order impounding the ballots that was requested by Schenectady County Family Court Judge Mark Powers. Powers, who has the Democratic and Conservative Party lines, is running against Republican Clinton County Family Court Judge Timothy Lawliss for in the Fourth Judicial District. A hearing on the matter was scheduled for Tuesday. No ballots will be counted at this time, according to Casey. Were not allowed to open any of our ballots or give out numbers, she said. Powers received 160,479 votes on Election Day, compared with 159,064 for Lawliss for the judge position in the district, which covers 11 counties Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Montgomery, Saratoga, Schenectady, St. Lawrence, Warren and Washington counties. There are at least 21,000 absentee ballots left to be counted in the Powers-Lawliss contest. MOREAU The final iteration of the 2017 town budget softens the blow to village residents, but theyre still seeing a big change in tax rate. Now they are facing a 39 percent increase in their town tax, down from a 64 percent increase. The proposed tax rate is 77.9 cents per $1,000 of assessed property, which means the average property owner with a house assessed at $100,000 would see a tax bill increase of $21.90. The Town Board will vote on the budget Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall. Town Board member Todd Kusnierz pushed for changes to reduce the tax impact. But he warned that village residents may see another rise in town taxes next year. For 2017, the budget proposal uses $270,000 from savings in the general fund to mitigate the tax impact, he said. Previously, the Town Board had planned to put just $67,000 from savings into the general fund. But injections of cash from savings wont go on forever. Savings is in limited supply, and the Town Board needs to steadily reduce the amount it spends, Kusnierz said. He wants to get to a point where the board doesnt rely on savings to balance its budget, calling that a sustainable budget. We cant get there in one year, but were a far cry from where we were, he said. Were moving in the right direction. In addition to savings, the board agreed last week to put $200,000 in sales tax revenue into the general fund. Originally, Supervisor Gardner Congdon wanted to keep all sales tax revenue out of the general fund, arguing that it was unfair to town residents. He put it in fire protection, a town tax paid only by residents who live in the town, not the village. Congdons arrangement eliminated the fire protection tax. But it greatly increased the general fund tax, which is paid by both town and village residents. Town residents ended up with a total tax rate lower than their total tax rate this year, but village residents saw a 64 percent increase. With the change, town residents will have to pay a fire protection tax but will still see a slight decrease in their total tax bill. Now town residents will pay 95 cents per $1,000 of assessed property. Thats 4 cents lower than this year, so the average property owner with a house assessed at $100,000 will see a tax bill decrease of $4. Its still a decrease, Congdon noted. Kusnierz said it was a good interim step to ease village residents into the new budgeting method. Congdons philosophy is that village residents shouldnt benefit from the towns share of Saratoga County sales tax revenue, because the village gets its own share of sales tax and uses it in its own budget. Kusnierz agreed with that philosophy but said a 64 percent tax rate increase was too much for one year. Thats why he proposed using some savings and sales tax revenue in the general fund. It softens what theyre going to be faced with, he said during last weeks budget meeting. Maybe as a one-time effort. Congdon supported his plan, saying that he, too, was worried about village residents. Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether Read more Welcome Guest! You Are Here: He noted that the project will make road transportation to and fro Accra very comfortable and will also impact positively on productivity. The President in his speech at the inauguration stated that his administration is committed to improving the transportation system in the country and is working feverishly towards that objective. "Lack of traffic flow [at Circle] resulted in an estimated loss of about 100 million dollars per annum to our national economy," he said. "This is the longest flyover and the highest in West Africa...please note I said flyover, the longest bridge is in Lagos, Nigeria but the longest and highest flyover is in Accra, Ghana." "Time is a precious invaluable commodity and once spent, it cannot be recovered. "Effective use of time, therefore, has a direct impact on our economy and must be calculated as a contribution to our GDP.""With the opening of this interchange on which at peak hours is used by about 80,000 vehicles and daily it is estimated to be used by about 200,000 vehicles, reducing travelling time between the Ring Road Central and Feo Oyeo Intersection towards the North Industrial Area from two hours to just approximately five minutes, not only are we saving hundreds of millions of cedis in time wasted by the delay and the travel time, but we are also stimulating business and economic activity," he added. The GH320.2 million project was jointly financed by the Brazilian government and the government of Ghana. More here: Kwame Nkrumah Circle to be opened to traffic It carries about 84,000 vehicles a day and constitutes a key bottleneck in the major road network that links the suburban areas of Accra to the central business district. Such animals are believed to cause interruption to switching structures, causing intermittent power cuts. READ ALSO: Power Crisis But the Director of Operations at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Tetteh Ankamah Okyne insists that The power cut being witnessed in Accra and certain parts of the country is due to the activities of vultures and other birds and we are working hard to address the problem. He made this known last week when the Public Utility Regulatory Commission convened a meeting among the power producers including VRA, GRIDCO, ECG, Asogli, and so on to find out the cause of the power cut being witnessed in Accra and certain parts of the country lately. The Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor last month dismissed claims by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that Ghana may suffer another load shedding crisis in 2017 if the governing National Democratic Congress is given a second term. READ ALSO: Power Supply According to him, Ghana has sufficient power than it even requires. Mr Boakye Agyarko, policy advisor of the NPP in a press conference on Wednesday said the NDC has not demonstrated any measure of control in addressing the challenge. He said: many businesses and residential consumers of electricity are justifiably afraid that dumsor will come back if the NDC is retained in power. According to him, Gas supply from Nigeria stopped in June this year and may not be resumed soon due to governments failure to pay outstanding debts in excess of US $160million. Gas supply from Jubilee Field will also stop at the FPSO and it is expected to be shut down for repairs for the period between three to six months. With these developments, Asogli and AMERI will not be able to generate power. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The GH320.2 million project was jointly financed by the Brazilian government and the government of Ghana. Read related:Mahama to inaugurate Nkrumah interchange on Monday A statement issued by the Ministry of Roads and Highways, said the opening was necessary to reduce congestion and allow traffic to flow freely at the interchange and its environs. The statement asked the drivers of big trucks to, as a matter of urgency, observe the height restrictions when using the Interchange, and also tasked traders to transact business at authorised locations. It said: "Law enforcement officers would not countenance any encroachment on the aforementioned routes", warning that trespassers would be dealt with and appropriate sanctions applied where necessary. "The general public, both motorists and pedestrians are strictly advised to observe all road traffic regulations and obey the law enforcement officials to make driving on the new Kwame Nkrumah interchange safe and smooth for all," it added. The Kwame Nkrumah Circle is a key intersection in the major road network in Accra. More here: Kwame Nkrumah Circle to be opened to traffic It carries about 84,000 vehicles a day and constitutes a key bottleneck in the major road network that links the suburban areas of Accra to the central business district. President Mahama cut the sod for the construction of the three-tier interchange at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra in October, 2013. The development irked passersby, with many asking why party faithfuls would hoist its flags at such an event. Business is flourishing with the sales of NDC paraphernalia at the Kwame Nkrumah interchange. The traders are into selling T-shirts, scarves, wrist watches, headgear, key holders, umbrellas, calendars, handkerchiefs, belts, clothes, necklaces and beads branded in NDCs colours and symbols or embossment of President John Dramani Mahamas portrait. Read more: Mahama to commission Nkrumah interchange today A statement issued by the Ministry of Roads and Highways, said the opening was necessary to reduce congestion and allow traffic to flow freely at the interchange and its environs. The statement asked the drivers of big trucks to, as a matter of urgency, observe the height restrictions when using the Interchange, and also tasked traders to transact business at authorised locations. See also: Government to construct interchange at Tema roundabout to ease traffic The Kwame Nkrumah Circle is a key intersection in the major road network in Accra. The NPP when elected into office will bring hope to the youth by introducing tax incentives, creating thousands of jobs and reserving 30 percent government contract for the youth, he said. Dr Bawumia made this known when he addressed a mammoth youth rally organised by the party's youth wing in Moree in the Central Region on Sunday. We are going to bring hope to the youth. We are going to create jobs. We are going to make sure that the economy is booming. We are going to bring in a tax incentives schemes so that companies that hire fresh graduate will get tax rebate," he said to sustained cheers from the crowd. We are going to make sure that businesses set up by the youth, women and the disabled gets thirty percent of the seventy percent of contracts that are reserved for Ghanaian companies," he added. And on the teacher and nursing trainee allowances, he promised to restore in full their quashed allowance by the Mahama administration. We will fully and fully restore the teacher training allowances and nursing training allowances," he assured. On empowering the youth living in the Zongo communities, Dr Bawumia reiterated the party's pledge to establish the Zongo Development Fund. "And we are going to make sure that our youth in the Zongos are taken care of when we establish the Zongo Development Fund," he said. "We will make allocation every year from the budget to fund the Zongo Development Fund to make sure the Zongos are not forgotten and they are treated with respect and with emphasis on development." "So we are asking all of you, all of you the youth of Ghana to arise for this change," he charged. Dr Bawumia also reiterated the party's promise to create the Coastal Development Authority for the Coastal Regions of Ghana, the Northern Development Fund and a Middle Belt Development Authority as well as the Zongo Development Fund. The ballots for the region arrived in Kumasi Sunday night and the representatives of the various parties gathered to assess them Monday morning. READ ALSO: EC slams false claims over ballot papers But the NPP regional chairman Bernard Antwi Boasiako said the ballot did not have NPP initials printed on it as the other parties have. According to him, apart from the logo printed on the ballot paper, there is no indication of the party to which the logo belongs. The issue created confusion at the Electoral Commission Ashanti regional office on Monday, with the NPP feeling they are being cheated. READ ALSO: Political parties have these interesting interpretations to their positions on the ballot paper Meanwhile, the EC in the Ashanti region said it will communicate the incident to the Accra EC headquarters for a solution. Addressing thousands of NPP supporters at the party's first ever youth rally in Moree in the Central Region, Dr Bawumia said the government is only interested in schemes they can siphon off money, citing the bus branding saga and the Woyome saga. "But when it comes to the welfare of our people, there is no money. And this is why we say, this Mahama government is probably, and I say probably advisedly because I believe it is the most corrupt government in the history of this country," he said. "Dollar for Dollar, Cedi for Cedi, this is probably the most corrupt in the history of this country," he stressed. On the Woyome saga, Dr Bawumia slammed the government handling of the case, promising that an NPP administration will get to the bottom of it. "And you see how they are treating the Woyome case, I can assure you that we will get to the bottom of this case when Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo is president of this country," he said. Dr Bawumia also urged the youths to rally behind the NPP because the party has sound policies that will transform Ghana. CLARIFICATION: POLITICAL PARTY LOGO ON BALLOT SHEETSThe Commissions attention has been drawn to reports in sections of the media suggesting that the Commission had printed a wrong logo for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the Parliamentary ballot sheets. We would like to place on the records that the claim is entirely inaccurate.Below are the facts: 1. All Political Parties participating in this years elections worked closely with the Commissions Directorate of Electoral Services to agree on the acceptable logo for their parties to be printed on the Notice of Polls and the ballots sheets.2. For the Parliamentary Notice of Polls and Ballot Sheets, the New Patriotic Party specifically indicated their satisfaction with the logo as processed for printing. 3. During the printing process, not only did the party have its representatives at the printing houses at all material times, high ranking officers of the party visited the printing houses regularly to monitor the process. At no point did they raise any objections about the NPPs logo as it was being printed. 4. For the avoidance of doubt, we have added the NPPs official logo as it appears on the partys letterheads. It is clear from the pictures that the party uses these two versions of their logo interchangeably. Both do not include the partys acronym as now being claimed.5. We would like to further place on the record that it is only for the Presidential Ballot that the NPP has specifically requested that its acronym should be added to the logo, and that has been done.6. Therefore, it cannot be accurate that the Commission committed any design or printing errors as being speculated or claimed.Thank you.Signed:ERIC KOFI DZAKPASUHead of Communications They also added that the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs were inconsistent with the 1992 constitution of Ghana. The plaintiff argued in his writ that section 23 of C.I. 94, of the law which regulates the conduct of the 2016 general elections, is inconsistent with Article 49 of the 1992 constitution. The applicants are of the belief that people who want to take part in the special voting should not be made to wait until the total results on actual polling were to be declared and that the results should be declared immediately after the polls have closed. READ ALSO: Special voting fixed on December 1 Police Director of Communications, Superintendent Cephas Arthur, had told Accra-based Kasapa FM that "One of the Security guards of the opposition leader pointed a gun at the Commander of the Counter Terrorism Unit of the Ghana Police Service, fired a warning shot and pointed the gun back at the officer. The Police team attempted to unleash a defensive attack but the Commander ordered them to restrain the attacks and were very professional yesterday." He said, "Imagine a civilian pointing a gun at the Police; you have called for everything possible, but the Police were very professional. If it were to be the army whose orientation about weapon is a different thing altogether you can imagine what would have happened." But in a response, the Greater Accra regional chairman of the NPP, Ishmael Ashitey, insisted that Nana Addos bodyguards are not allowed to carry guns in the course of duty. ...Where did that person get the gun from? I will find out but I know Nana Addos security guards do not use guns. But even in the house, there are policemenso I do not know if those cops will look on and allow others to fire gunshots, he told AccraFM. The two parties clashed on Sunday in front of Nana Akufo-Addos Nima residence when the NDC were having a health walk. It is, however, unclear what triggered the clashes but according to reports, both sides confirmed gunshots and hurling of harmful objects. The NPPs acting General Secretary, John Boadu at a press conference hours after the incident accused the NDC of attacking their supporters with guns, knives and other harmful objects. The NDC has since denied the claims saying it was the personal security of Nana Addo who first fired multiple shots at the NDC members. Meanwhile, political parties have been asked to immediately suspend all political activities in the metropolis following recent clashes between the governing National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party. According to him, no one has so far been arrested in connection with the clashes. Violence broke at the Nima residence of Nana Addo on Sunday for reasons yet to be made public but according to the NPP, the incident is part of series of activities planned by the NDC. Some supporters of the NDC undertaking a health walk, allegedly veered off to Nana Addo's Nima residence and tried to enter the house but met resistance from security men. It is however unclear what triggered the clashes but according to reports, both sides confirmed gunshots and hurling of harmful objects. But Cephas Arthur in an interview with Accra-based Kasapa FM said, "One of the Security guards of the opposition leader pointed a gun at the Commander of the Counter Terrorism Unit of the Ghana Police Service, fired a warning shot and pointed the gun back at the officer. The Police team attempted to unleash a defensive attack but the Commander ordered them to restrain the attacks and were very professional yesterday." He said, "Imagine a civilian pointing a gun at the Police; you have called for everything possible, but the Police were very professional. If it were to be the army whose orientation about weapon is a different thing altogether you can imagine what would have happened." He added that, "Im sure we would have been telling a different story by now. But amidst this fierce challenge we faced yesterday, there were no casualties recorded. Its rather disappointing to hear the public blamed the Police." However, the NPP has condemned an attack on the residence of Nana Akufo-Addo at his Nima residence by some alleged supporters of the NDC. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! It was gathered that the woman was abducted on Friday, November 11, 2016, at her residence on Iyewa Olorunsogo Estate. A neighbour of the Falodis who spoke to newsmen, Baba Ayomide, said he had gone to the womans residence around 8am on that day to charge his mobile phone and that the woman had collected the phone from him and had wanted to enter her house when the bandits accosted her and whisked her into the bush while he was beaten up. He was said to have been arrested after the case was reported at the Owutu Police Division. Foladi's daughter, Fola, said she and her mother had vacated the residence a few months ago after a failed attempt to kidnap the sexagenarian, adding that they only came back thinking that the law enforcement agencies had curbed kidnapping in the area, only to be proven wrong. A neighbour of ours called Baba Ayomide came to charge his mobile phone. She came out and collected the phone from him and was about to enter the house when three men suddenly appeared and attacked her. She begged them but they didnt listen. They whisked her away. They came with an axe, a cutlass, and a gun. There was an attempt to kidnap her a few months ago. We left home for about a month. We came back thinking the community was calm. We have not heard anything from the gang. She is a widow. A landlord on the estate said he too was a victim of the gang on two occasions, adding that the incident has negatively affected the psyche of his family members, adding that he had relocated. After I was kidnapped for the second time, I became convinced that the place is no longer safe for my family and me. The second time they came for me, it was in the presence of my wife and children. They are still nursing the trauma. I had to rent a two-bedroomed apartment somewhere else. I also know of a neighbour that had packed out of the estate. The flamboyant Senator who has been involved in a lot of skirmishes in the Senate, took to his Twitter account to post the photo of a toddler with a disfigured face as a result of tribal marks. Melaye who calls the act barbaric believes that the National Identity card is enough to identify individuals instead of tribal marks. This is what the Senator wrote: "This barbaric act must stop. National Identity card is enough to identify where individuals come from. Support my bill to stop this ...." Read the tweet here. Egbu, who pleaded not guilty to the two-count charge of stealing and obtaining by false pretences, resides at Ojo area of Lagos. The prosecutor, Insp Uche Simon, told the court that the accused committed the offences on July 27 along Abule Ado, Ojo. Simon said that the accused fraudulently obtained N200,000 from the complainant on the pretext of supplying Aluminum windows to him. The prosecutor said that Egbu, who had no intention of supplying windows to the complainant, converted the money to his own personal use. The complainant said that when they did not get the Aluminum windows from the accused, he demanded a refund of his money. The complainant said that when he asked the accused for a refund, he started coming up with different excuses for not paying him. When Iyke got tired of Egbus excuses, he reported the matter to the police and the accused was immediately arrested, Simon said. The prosecutor said that the offences committed contravened Sections 285 and 312 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Section 312 prescribes 15-year jail term for obtaining by false pretences. The magistrate, Mr A.A. Paul, granted the accused bail in the sum of N50,000 with one surety in like sum. He said the surety must be gainfully employed and also show evidence of two years tax payment to the Lagos State Government. The two men who in the past have had no love for each other spent 90 minutes in the Oval Office talking about the nation. After the close door meeting, the Trump and Obama came out and addressed the media about their private conversation. "I had been very encouraged by the, I think, interest in President-elect Trumps wanting to work with my team around many of the issues that this great country faces. And I believe that it is important for all of us, regardless of party and regardless of political preferences, to now come together, work together to deal with the many challenges that we face" said President Obama. Donald Trump on his part said "I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel. Hes he explained some of the difficulties, some of the high-flying assets, and some of the some of the really great things that have been achieved." While both men remained cordial and respectful their body gestures told a different story entirely. Here are the three body gestures from Trump and Obama's talk to the media. 1) Obama doesn't acknowledge Trump The President of the United States did not look at Donald Trump until after the 1:45 second mark in the video. If you really admire someone and like the person's personality you would make eye contact with person a lot. Obama didn't look at his former adversary till after 100 seconds. This shows that Obama does not really regard Donald Trump. 2) Trump steepling his hands Steepling is the act of placing your hands or fingers together so that they create an upward-pointing V-shape. According to body language experts, this is used to intimidate people. This has been Donald Trump's signature gesture for years. However, if you notice Trump's steeple is downward not upward which reveals he is paying respect to Obama's position as President. 3) Eye blocking The Coordinator, Non Communicable Diseases and Cancer Control, Niger State Ministry of Health, Dr Hauwa Kolo, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna on Monday. She said that the 2016 World Diabetes Day has the theme Eyes on Diabetes, a call for all to be involved in a global drive to confront and combat diabetes as a crucial health challenge. Kolo said that diabetes is a disorder of the metabolism system causing excessive thirst and the production of large amount of urine. She described diabetes as a condition where the amount of glucose in the blood is too high because the body cannot use it properly. The director also explained that diabetes develops when glucose cannot enter the bodys cells to be used as fuel. This happens when there is no insulin to unlock the cells known as Type one diabetes. When there is no adequate insulin or the insulin is there but not working properly this is also known as Type two diabetes, Kolo said. The state chairman of the association, Mr Umaru Sadiq, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lafia on Monday that governments attitude to his members was not encouraging. NAN reports that November 14 is celebrated worldwide as the World Diabetic Day. The theme for this year is Eyes on Diabetic. The attitude of the state government toward the plights of those living with diabetes is disappointing to say the least. Many of our members are the elderly and the poor in the society and because of their situation, many cannot easily manage it. So, I expect that the state government should do more to help this category of people, he said. Sadiq who said that diabetes was far more deadly than the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV), wondered how government could give huge resources and adequate attention to people living with the HIV but ignore diabetic patients. He appealed to the state government to have a positive attitude toward assisting diabetic patients. A diabetic patient, Mrs Rukayat Maitalo, told NAN that the state government was not doing enough to adequately support diabetic patients in the state. Maitalo appealed for a pragmatic approach to diabetics care to help patients live a healthy life. "We have a lot of problems, especially, relating to buying of drugs and testing for blood fasting sugar. A test that used to cost N200 before is now N300, she said. Maitalo said she was, however, optimistic that since more attention was being given to the disease, government would do more to assist patients living with the ailment. Another patient, Mr Umaru Husseini, defended the Nasarawa State Governments attitude, saying it was due to the current economic crunch being witnessed in the state and across the country. Husseini suggested that a cooperation mechanism be put in place between diabetic patients and the state government so that patients could have easy access to the relevant drugs If patients keep to the rules, they will have no problems. What is needed is cooperation between those who have the disease and the government, so that government can provide the drugs at subsidised rates since it cannot be provided free, he said. When NAN correspondent contacted Mallam Tukur Ahmed, the Special Assistant to Gov. Umaru Al-Makura on Media and Publicity, for reactions on the issue, he directed the correspondent to the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Daniel Iya. According to Punch, President Muhammadu Buhari may have asked the Senate to investigate how the bailout was spent by the Governors. It was gathered the Senate President, Bukola Saraki ordered the Senate Committee on State and Local Government Administration to probe how Aregbesola applied the N34.988,900 given to it by the Central Bank of Nigeria as bailout to pay workers salaries. Consequently, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on States and Local Government Administration, Senator Abdullahi A. Gumel, informed the Governor that the Senate committee would visit the state on December 7 for the investigation. ASUU President, Biodun Ogunyemi announced that the industrial action begins from November 16. He disclosed this after an emergency National Executive Council (NEC) meeting which held at its headquarters located inside the University of Abuja. According to Ogunyemi, this would be a one-week warning strike pending the Federal Government's response to subsisting demands raised by the union. He said if the government fails to do the needful before the end of the warning strike, it would declare an indefinite action. ASUU also faulted the recent approval granted by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for the establishment of eight new universities. According to Leadership, the Governor described the reports as false, adding that his focus is on developing Adamawa state. Bindow also said the false reports will not distract him from his goal of delivering his campaign promises to the people. He said The attention of Adamawa State governor, Senator Muhammad Umar Jubrilla Bindow have drawn to a story on Peoples Daily newspaper of Friday, 16 November 2016, titled, 2019 Presidency: Its Either Atiku Or Nobody, Says Gov Bindow. Governor Bindow wish to categorically state that at no time in the flag-off ceremony of the Girei-Pariya-Wuro Bokki last Thursday did he made any statement about 2019 presidency. The governor only stated that Atiku is like a father to him and he has no political godfather as insinuated by some section of the media. He then thanked President Buhari for bringing peace to the Northeast and Nigeria as whole and called on the people of Adamawa to unite and make the state a better place. The attribution of such statement to him by the newspaper is false, mischievous, fictitious and malicious. Its is a surprise that such concocted story is published by a reputable newspaper like Peoples Daily. Atiku Abubakar, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, described Gov. Jibrilla Bindow as the best performing governor the state has ever produced. The former Vice president pledged that he would continue to support Bindows administration to achieve its vision of transforming the state. According to Daily Trust, the state's Chief of staff, Abdulrahman Abba Jimeta, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, revealed that Bindow declared his support for the presidential ambition of Atiku. Muazu said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Minna on Monday, that various police divisions had been briefed on appropriate steps to take ahead of the event. The police commissioner added that the command was working with other security agencies to ensure peace and harmony across the state. He said the early preparation was to ensure that residents move about freely and carry out their legitimate activities without any hindrance during the period. All that we expect from members of the general public is vital information about bad elements living in their midst, the police chief said. The commissioner also solicited the support of stakeholders in mobilising residents to volunteer information that would aid the command arrest and prosecutes criminals. "Thanks be to God. After another 24 days in detention I am finally out. Thanks for all ur love, prayers and support. We shall prevail," he wrote. Fani-Kayode who served as spokesman for the Goodluck/Sambo Campaign Organisation has been facing a 17-count charge of money laundering to the tune of N4.9 billion before he was re-arrested on Friday, October 21 by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He was also re-arraigned on fresh charges bordering on corruption, criminal breach of trust and diversion of funds by the EFCC. Fani-Kayode however pleaded not guilty to the five-count charge. Falana also added that the government should obey the ruling of the ECOWAS court ordering the release of the former NSA. He also asked the President to instruct security agencies not to violate the rights of people as they carry out their duties. According to Punch, the lawyer told Buhari to put a stop to all human rights violations and also release all political detainees. Falan said With respect to the substantive relief, the ECOWAS Court held that the detention of Col. Dasuki without a court order could not be justified under the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Consequently, the court ordered the release of the applicant and the payment of N15m damages to him as reparation for the infringement of his rights. In reporting the judgment of the ECOWAS Court, the media conveyed the impression that that the Federal Government has been ordered to release the plaintiff unconditionally from further detention. Contrary to such misleading impression, the ECOWAS Court has not discharged and acquitted Col. Dasuki in respect to the criminal charges pending against him in the Nigerian courts. All that the court said was that the suspect be allowed to enjoy his human right to liberty within the context of the bail granted him by the trial courts. The situation is so bad that Arik is now the poster child for flight delays, arbitrary cancellations, customer mishandling and other unbelievable things that would have seen the airline shut down a long time ago in saner countries. But this is Nigeria, so the madness continues. On March 31, 2014, Arik locked its passengers, including musician Banky W, in an airplane with no air conditioning. The passengers stayed this way for more than an hour and, according to accounts, some people even fainted. My thoughts are as follows: it was an avoidable disaster, and one that could have ended up much worse for the staff and equipment of Arik Air. This policy of enclosing passengers within a cabin with no A/C is senseless Banky wrote after the incident. That incident alone constitutes false imprisonment and criminal negligence on Ariks part, yet there was no investigation or penalty; only an apology which was issued more than a week later. On November 12, 2016, DJ Neptune also criticized Arik for leaving him stranded and losing his equipment. Dear @flyarikair @arikair. It is not a must to do business, if you can't act right kindly pack up and stop frustrating passengers. See how passengers going to Benin almost stopped us from boarding today out of frustration, not knowing my own was on the way waiting, he wrote. He also explained how one passenger lost her wedding dress on the same flight. On November 13, passengers waiting to fly Arik from Kaduna to Lagos were delayed from 2pm to almost 1:00am. According to a passenger who works with Pulse, staff of the airline had actually started sneaking out of the airport without informing passengers that the flight had been cancelled. Unfortunately for the Arik staff, they were detained by some passengers, including DJ Humility, who posted videos on Instagram. Arik air is seriously messed up!! Weve been in the airport since 1pm, our flight was meant to takeoff by 2pm from Kaduna to Lagos.... This is almost 9pm we are still here and this crazy officials ain't showing any concern leaving everyone stranded here.. They do dis cus dey always get away with it but tonight that shitss gonna stop!!!!! WE ARE HUMANS!!! he wrote. Arik has become so notorious for its poor customer service that someone created a whole blog dedicated to (negative) experiences on the airline. This is how over 200 international passengers were held against their will without information, without assistance, without even food or water for more than 15 hours! It should also be noted that these TWO HUNDRED PASSENGERS were international passengers, meaning they were in a foreign country so there was no option to go back to their homes and wait for their flight information. They had no home there and had been prevented from going home for reasons unknown to them, one complainant, Lucie, wrote on the blog. Another person, Kehinde Gafar wrote: I am writing on behalf of my father of the dreadful experiences he has had with Arik Air. Flying on a return journey from London Heathrow International to Murtala Muhammad International Airport Lagos,his flight was delayed for 24 hours until he could actually get to Lagos! Also, my father had to make an onward journey to Ikorodu. Arik Air has also been accused of gambling with the lives of its passengers through illegal practices. Sources within the aviation industry told Sahara Reporters in October 2016 that the airline pays pilots $200 to exceed the maximum number of landings permissible by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). A staff in Ariks catering department also told Sahara Reporters that the airline takes meals to serve in New York in cargo hold from Lagos because of huge debts owed food vendors in New York. The meals, she said, are usually rancid after the long flight, but are still served to passengers. Passengers are said to regularly complain of food poisoning. On Friday, November 11, an Arik Air aircraft lost one of its two engines while in flight, with over 100 passengers on board. Luckily the plane made an emergency landing, and this might be a random incident, but given Ariks history of carelessness, I seriously doubt it. Theres absolutely no reason why Arik Air should get away with all these infractions without being investigated or penalized in any way. Alhaji Abubakar Augie, the state Commissioner of Finance, gave the directive in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Birnin Kebbi on Monday. Augie said that government was committed to checking the activities of illegal miners and directed the council administrators to mount surveillance in such areas. As chief security officers of their localities, the council administrators have the responsibility of securing both public and government assets in their areas, Augie said. We therefore expect the council administrators to be up and doing in guarding against illegal mining activities the commissioner said. He noted that government has commenced formal registration of capable mining entities with a view to ensuring that due processes of mineral exploration were adhered to. According to him, the state will make maximum utilization of its mineral resources to diversify the economy, generate employment and boost its revenue base. NAN reports that Kebbi was blessed with various mineral deposits, including Gypsum, Gold, Diamond, Kaoline and Iron Ore. Sagay made the comment in response to the recent arrest of some judges across the country by the Department of State Services (DSS). Read excerpts of his interview with Vanguard below: What is your position on the DSS raid on the homes of some judges and justices? Prof. Itse Sagay I can respond to this as Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee on Corruption because we have an official position, and that position is: There is nobody that is above the law in this country. The only people who are enjoying immunity against criminal prosecution are president, vice president, governors, and deputy governors. Anybody outside this group is totally subject to the full weight of the law for any crime he/she commits. Why we look at the judiciary, with all respect, is that we expect them to conduct themselves in such a manner that they are totally above suspicion. So, any judicial authority that wants to maintain that aura and authority must be credible. You cannot be corrupt and expect to be respected. You cannot reduce yourself to a level where you are purchasable, where what I will call irresponsible and low type of lawyers will carry money to you and buy your soul and you sell your judgment. The highest bidder will now hand over money to the judge. So, when you bring us down to that level where nobody can determine the outcome of a judgment based on arguments, the law and facts, then you have destroyed the judiciary. Those judges, who are corrupt have destroyed the judiciary and nothing is too much for their punishment. Who are the corrupt persons? They are the politicians and lawyers who share part of the proceeds of crimes. Sincerely speaking, the High Command of the Niger Delta Avengers cannot be blamed for the continuous bombing of crude oil export pipelines and other oil installations, since the Government has been relentlessly carrying out military build ups to continuously harass communities and indigenes of the Niger Delta after the November 1st meeting of the PANDEF and President Muhammadu Buhari, NDA said via a statement released by spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo. Iniruo Wills, IPA President, in a statement in Yenagoa, urged NCDMB to convert unregulated artisanal refining into a standardised and sustainable local economy of mini-refineries. The group congratulated Simbi Wabote on his appointment as NCDMB Executive Secretary and urged him to enhance the participation of indigenes of host communities in the petroleum industry. IPA urged the board to address issues pollution control in the petroleum sector to ensure that the sector operated in an environmentally sustainable manner. He said there was urgent need to develop adequate indigenous and in-country capacity for dealing with environmental disasters inflicted on host communities by the petroleum industry over the years. Obaseki said If you have been patient all these years, will you not give me 90 days? We want to change things radically. We have not less than half a million of young men and women between the ages of 19 and 35, at least half a million who are doing nothing. I know if I have the figures, I will have to begin to do something about it. So please, just be patient with me. We will get there and we will get there sooner than you think. He said You will find out that our administration is going to be slightly different, if not radically different, from the last four years and the reason is simple. In the last four years, we had to do a lot of politics because we had to recover our state from strange people who took over. By the grace of God, we have recovered our state; it is now our state. In the next four years, we are going to be concentrating on what to do with it. But the problem we have is that we now have to get value for everything we have. There is no free lunch anymore; everybody must now work to earn. You must work to chop. he said. APC said in a statement on Monday by its Publicity Secretary, Mr Abayomi Adesanya, that Oke had hired over 500 luxury and mini buses to bring in supporters from the neighbouring states to the rally to deceive the people. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed Nov. 26 for the Ondo State Governorship Election. Adesanya said: Some of our members have been receiving calls from APC members in Osun and Lagos states informing them of the planned mass mobilisation for the ADs flag off campaign in Akure. We are reliably informed that Bola Ilori, the Director- General of Okes Campaign Organisation, who also doubles as an aide to the Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has concluded plans with some APC leaders from Lagos and Osun states. The arrangement is to hire over 500 luxurious and BRT buses, among other mini buses, to ferry people from these two states to deceive the general public and the good people of Ondo State. Other desperate tricks being employed by Olusola Oke is generation of fake bulk SMS purportedly from EDO APC sent to people to deceitfully invite them to the flag off campaign. The reality on ground in Ondo State is that the APC Candidate, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), is the most popular in the hearts of the good people of the state. The AD candidate is a third force that has no place of reckoning in the present Ondo State politics. The party, therefore, urges the people of the state to disregard whatever crowd seen at the AD flag off campaign as hired. Crucial issue about this election is about evolving a home grown governor for the state; one in tune with the cravings of the people, not one thrown up by political and business merchants outside Ondo State for the promotion of pecuniary interests of Lagos and Osogbo jobbers. In his reaction, Mr Kolawole Olabisi, the Chairman, Media and Publicity of Olusola Oke Campaign Organisation, advised APC to mind its problems and face its campaign like the AD candidate had been doing. Is it not an irony that a party that specialises in the importation of people from Osun, Ogun, Oyo and Lagos states where the party currently rules is now accusing a party that it described as an orphan? AD will not engage in such underhand methods that the APC is noted for. Our people from the nooks and crannies of Ondo State are the ones on ground now for our flag off rally. Oke is the headache and sole manifesto of the APC in Ondo State and we are aware of their shenanigans and evil plots to stop him from contesting. Osinbajo, who is also a Pastor, made the call while at the 8th Annual Festival of Minna Choral Society on Sunday in Minna. The Vice President, who took his text from the book of Romans, Chapter 8 verse 37, re-echoed the portion of the Bible that says we are more than conqueror through Christ that loves us. He reminded the people of St. Pauls teachings about the various problems that must be confronted by man, saying that people must brace to worlds challenges. St. Paul was referring to people who are elected and people who have accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour. He said that for I am persuaded that neither in death, nor in life, that Christ will not let us go. We are conqueror, not because we have any strength of our own, but because Christ has promised that if we can hold onto him, he will not let us down, the VP said Osinbajo noted that Christ loves us so much that he gave us his grace in this life and the life to come. He said Nigerians must realise the abundant grace Christ had given to us, adding that the worlds problems were temporal. Gov. Abubakar Bello of Niger urged Nigerians to demonstrate honesty and sincerity in their daily activities. He said Permit me to use this opportunity to remind you to take advantage of occasions like this to reflect on the need to imbibe the true teachings of Christ. Are we indeed practicing things prescribed in the holy books. Are we our brothers keeper, do we see ourselves to have come from one father. The time has come for us to take the things of God more seriously. It is my prayers that we will make our communities, our state and the country at large free from crisis. He urged the choristers to continue using their God-given talent in advancing the Kingdom of God. He asked youths to shun acts capable of undermining the existence of the country, adding the youths were one of the priority areas of his administration. As a government, we are determined to give every youth the chance to succeed as they are one of our major priorities. We will not fail you but you must desist from acts capable of undermining our corporate existence, he said. According to Punch, the spokesman of PENGASSAN, Emmanuel Ojugbana said the unions stand on the issue still remains the same. This is coming on the heels of a proposal by the petroleum ministry on November 10, 2016, suggesting the sale of the governments stakes in NNPC. Ojugbana said Actually, the government is trying to revisit the Petroleum Industry Bill and that may have to do with the draft document being reported. But we have not engaged with them in order to know the implication of what is in the draft or the bill. However, we have already made our position clear and Im restating it that we are not in support of any attempt to sell our national assets. But if there are other policies of government that will enhance the oil and gas industry, we are in support of that. So, we need to understand what the draft proposal is all about and then we will make our contributions. But as per the sale of assets, PENGASSAN is completely against it and should be counted out. We are not in support of the sale of our national assets; we will only give support to policies that aim to create adequate governance structures, as this will provide more business opportunities, which is good for the Nigerian people. In times like this, the government should not consider the sale of assets belonging to the NNPC, for we will oppose it seriously. He also added that PENGASSAN will support the Federal Government if it comes up with options that will benefit Nigerians. Lending his voice, PENGASSAN Secretary-General, Lumumba Okugbawa said the union is looking forward to holding talks with the Federal Government. He said Our position still remains the same that they cannot sell our national assets. It is not to be allowed. We dont have the details of which company they want to sell in the NNPC. Is it the Kaduna, Warri or Port Harcourt refinery? Is it a different subsidiary of the NNPC, or is it the entire NNPC? These are things we need to find out. But no matter what it may be, our position stays and it is that the government should not be allowed to sell our collective national assets. There should be better ways to handle things, not by selling our national assets. So, we look forward to having better dialogue with the government. Ortom said his administration will soon overcome the challenges of non-payment workers salaries in the state. Ortom gave the assurance when he met the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastort Enoch Adeboye, who was in Makurdi on Sunday for a programme. The governor, who has owed about five months workers salaries, said that God would provide to help for his government to settle the backlog of the salaries. He said despite the economic crunch that had affected the smooth running of his administration, God has been faithful and would intervene through the servant of God. The governor noted that the security challenges of the state had ended since the state was dedicated to God in May, 2016. Ortom stressed the need for the people to serve God and obey Him, saying that is the only way to live in plenty and prosperity. Quoting from the Bible in Job 36: 11-12, the governor assured the people that God is the only source of prosperity, pointing out that God has a hand in his election because he was faithful to Him. He, therefore, pledged that his tenure as governor would continue to focus on glorification of God and service to the people. Responding, Adeboye said that God encountered man for the first time and spoke to him in blessing, taking his Bible passage from the Book of Genesis 1:26-28, He stated that God still encounters man even today as He did in the time of old, urging the people to draw closer to God so that He would bless them and establish them in dominion According to him, a true christian can still prosper despite the economic situation of the nation,adding that the plan of God for His people is to prosper. He also prayed for the people to encounter God in a new dimension that will catapult them into their blessings and dominions. Adeboye further prayed to God to give Gov. Ortom wisdom to govern Benue well, so that the people of the state can rejoice. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that AFRIFF kicked off its sixth year of cinematic celebration on Sunday with the unveiling of a new movie, Birth of a Nation. The star-studded event held at the Filmhouse, IMAX Cinema, Lekki, Lagos. In his opening speech, Mohammed, assured stakeholders of the Federal Governments commitment to the growth of the industry. I congratulate the organisers of the Africa International Film Festival on what promises to be another successful event. I want you all to help me celebrate their commitment to the industry and laudable investment in Nigeria, year after year. This is the sixth one, and I am here to assure all the practitioners in the industry and the ever-growing customer base of this industry that the best days are here. Before now, maybe the Nigerian Government threw crumbs at the Nigerian movie industry in terms of infrastructure and human capital investment. However with the steady growth in the population, we have no choice than to turn to the creative industry, the minister said. He added that the current administration would ensure that Nigeria would no longer depend only on oil revenues. If that is the case, which industry do we turn our attention to? The creative industry, of course, he said. On employment, Mohammed said that the creative industry had provided a veritable platform for talented youths and entrepreneurs to ply their trade. The movie industry has fully accepted to be not just a great employer of labour, especially young people, but also a potential high foreign exchange earner because of its international appeal and demand. We are taking the bull by the horn. You have all done a fantastic job with all the support of government and partnership. Mr President has formally put his weight behind the creative industry and has promised to do everything that will make it possible for us to transit from a creative industry to a creative economy. The minister gave the assurance that the government was taking proactive measures to provide necessary infrastructure for the development of the industry. To this end, we are already in talks with state governments and investors to build studio facilities that would equal those in Mexico, India and the U.S. to make filmmaking easier and increase the quality of our films. To make this industry a great success and attract investors and the best human skills, we are going to see not only to the expansion of distribution, but formalising it, he said. The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Film One Distribution, Kene Mkparu, expressed delight at the large turnout of guests for the event. 2015 was great, but in order to make 2016, bigger and continental, it is going to open the biggest silver-screen in the whole of Africa. In trying to find the right title to open this amazing film festival with, we spoke to our partners, 20th Century Fox. We met them just under two years ago, and they got this amazing plan and desire to work with Africa and play a part in what happens in the continental film industry. When we reached out to 20th Century Fox to say we wanted this particular title which happens to be an African story, a huge African story, written and directed by Nate Parker, they turned said yes, we will do it, Mkparu said. He hailed the Senior Executive Vice President of 20th Century Fox in Europe and Middle-East, Mr Paul Higginson, for the partnership. He is the most important person as far as distribution and marketing are concerned. We wanted the stars of this film to come for the opening, but because of timing and schedules, we couldnt get Nate Parker, Gabriel Union and whole bunch of them. But there is somebody who played a part in this film and happed to be one of our own; I will like to introduce Mr Chike Okonkwo, he said. In his remarks, Higginson praised Film-house and all those involved, for putting up a great show. The best way to see film is in the cinema, and the only way you are going to distinguish it from the mobile and home viewing is having great films in great environments. Frank was suspended following the recommendations of the APC disciplinary committee. The Northern youths, under the aegis of Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY), also issued a seven day ultimatum to the APC to call the embattled spokesman back. The group said Franks suspension shows that the leadership of the party does not want youths to participate in the government. At their stakeholder meeting in Kaduna, the CNY called on Buhari to look into the crisis rocking the APC. The youths also said the issue in the ruling party is capable of rubbishing the achievements of the Presidents administration. The youths said We are of the firm belief that the suspension is not welcome at this critical moment that President Buhari needs the support of all stakeholders to achieve his agenda for the country in the face of the prevailing economic crunch being experienced by Nigerians. The Chairman of the party instead of a bridge builder has become the main problem of the party, causing division instead of using his experience and fatherly disposition to bring members together. It is also pertinent to note that the leadership of the party has not been fair to the Deputy National publicity Secretary who should by virtue of his position and the constitution be the National Publicity Secretary after Lai Mohammad was appointed as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Instead, there were subtle move to sideline the young man and bring another person in his place, a development we as youth stakeholders in the party are not comfortable with. From all indications, we are of the firm belief that the treatment being meted out to Comrade Frank is because he is a young man among elders like Oyegun. This is why we are saying that he must be protected by youths except if the elders are saying the party belongs to elders only. As lovers of democracy, believers in the ideas of President Muhammadu Buhari with millions of Nigerian youths who worked for the success of the party in the last elections, the coalition of Northern Youths want to continually support the APC to deliver on its promises to Nigerians, they added. That political party will be such a strong force and its one Nigerians will immediately embrace, once source revealed to this medium over Pizza on a sunny afternoon in the nations commercial capital of Lagos. Various other political heavyweights in the country have revealed to Pulse that an alignment and realignment of political forces in the nation is currently underway. Meetings are being held in the major cities in each geopolitical zone and very soon, well have that party, one prominent politician in the South West, told Pulse. We just held one of our meetings in Lagos last week and weve been holding series of these kinds of meetings as we try to put this political party together, added the prominent politician whos been part of these gatherings at the highest levels. Some of the chaps floating this new political party disclosed to Pulse that theyll be capitalizing on the poor performance of the APC at the center to make their case before Nigerians. It's a strategy they are hoping can be pulled off. As you are aware, the APC at the center has been struggling with the economy, said one Northern politician who spoke to Pulse over the phone. If things continue the way there are, well into 2017; and given the type of manifesto and programs well present to Nigerians; given the pedigree of the politicians wholl be selling this party to Nigerians, I can tell you that well displace APC at the center come 2019, he added confidently. Some of the politicians spoken to for this story, would not reveal to Pulse the identity of the heavyweights behind this third force, except to say that the new party will be run by upwardly mobile and young politicians; some of whom are no strangers to the nation's topsy-turvy political terrain. Well be a party of the young and old. Unlike the APC and PDP, well actually allow younger Nigerians have a say in the affairs of our party. In the first quarter of 2017, Nigerians will be proud to have a party they can call theirs, offered another politician. It also looks like a pretty good time to usher in another political party with the APC and PDP battling different forms of internal crises. APC heads into the Ondo governorship election, not throwing its full weight behind standard bearer, Oluwarotimi Akerodolu. Indeed, APC leader and strongman of South West politics, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is no fan of Akerodolu. Tinubus candidate for the election, Olusegun Abraham lost out in the party primaries. So miffed was Tinubu about not having his way in Ondo, the Jagaban of Borgu called on APC Chairman John Odigie-Oyegun to throw in the towel for allegedly rigging the primary contest in Akerodolu's favour. Tinubus letter was so scathing and vitriolic, Oyegun needed a few more days to pen his response. Grapevine reports suggest that Tinubu will be pulling the rug from under the APCs feet by no longer bankrolling the party he helped forge together. Last weekend, a few loyalists of Tinubus took to the streets to say the Buhari Presidency has treated the former Lagos Governor badly in spite of all hes done for the party. The man that started the whole revolution (Tinubu) is now being rubbished because of the inordinate ambition of very few members of the party. They want to destroy the party and that is why we are concerned about what is going on. If we allow a few people to truncate what we fought for, then the promise made to Nigerians would not be fulfilled, lamented Henry Ajomale who is the APC Chairman in Lagos. Olusola Oke who is flying the flag of the AD in the Ondo governorship election, is now assured Tinubus support, sources close to The Jagaban have told Okes social media campaign has since been taken over by a crop of young men and women who swear by Tinubu. Tinubu was also ominously absent during the campaign launch of the APC in Ondo--a move that political pundits have linked to the mans growing desire to severe ties with his party, at least behind the scenes. Hes no longer playing an active role in the APC, said one APC chieftain who craved anonymity for this story. First, his candidate, was badly treated in and you all saw what happened in Ondo. If Tinubu can no longer have a say in how the APC is run, hed better keep his distance, the chieftain lamented. The PDP isnt faring any better. It has paraded two chairmen in Ahmed Makarfi and Ali Modu Sheriff, since the turn of the year. It went into the Edo governorship contest with two candidates before eventually settling for one on the eve of voting; and it is playing a similar, disoriented card as it heads into the Ondo governorship election. It is this disharmony in the two biggest political camps in the country, which the incoming third force intends to latch on into reckoning. The 'third force' guys think they are savvy enough to spot a fertile political field when they see one. The allegation was contained in a memo presented before the Katsina State Judicial Commission of Inquiry. Counsel to the commission, Mr Hassan Liman (SAN) stated this on Monday, November 14, during the sitting of the commission. Liman said the amount was diverted from the accounts of the Ministry of Environment, Department of Community Development, Special Duties, Girl-child Education and the Department of Almajirai Affairs. He explained that available records showed that the funds were allegedly diverted by the former governor and other government officials. According to him, there was no evidence on how the funds were utilised during the period under review. Liman, however, told the commission that the former governor had filed a case before the Court of Appeal, Kaduna, on infringement of his fundamental human rights. ALSO READ: Katsina road agency accuses Shema of misappropriating N14.2bn He asked the commission to adjourn the sitting pending the determination of the case. In his ruling, the Chairman of the commission, Justice Muhammad Surajo, adjourned the sitting indefinitely, saying that the commission will communicate to all parties involved. The commission also adjourned the hearing of memo on activities of Katsina Road Maintenance Agency and Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs pending the determination of the appeal case before the Court of Appeal. , , , . According to Punch, the spokesman of the Akeredolu Support Organisation, Steve Otaloro on Sunday, November 13, 2016, alleged that the PDP had defaced Akeredolus posters in Akure. Otaloro also accused the Ondo state Governor, Olusegun Mimiko of using the state signage agency to stop the APC from displaying Akeredolus posters. He said The PDP members who took to the streets to celebrate the court verdict did not only deface posters and billboards of the APC candidate, Chief Rotimi Akeredolu, they also uprooted and hacked all his billboards in sight. This was done without the governor restraining them due to the soaring popularity of the APC candidate above the candidates of other political parties contesting the election. (Governor Olusegun) Mimiko is intimidated by the mammoth crowd and the high celebration with which the Akeredolu Support Organisation is being welcomed in all the towns and cities visited after the commencement of our campaign for Akeredolu in the forthcoming governorship election. According to the Ghanaian prophet, the married men of his congregation need to learn to be financially generous towards to their wives. "Love gives, love shares. Pretty soon your wife is going to say Where is the love? These days women too can do what men do, men if you tell a lady, you know I love you sweetheart, you know I love you babe, or whatever you call them these days, I love you, where is the money? Love must be followed by giving. Dont just do mouth mouth. You must show it", he said. Ive watched and listened with amusement as people have tried to make Trumps victory seem like a victory for Christians; its not. Christians are followers of Jesus Christ who are required to be like Jesus Christ; Donald Trump is not a Christian. Its amusing but not unexpected that religious people are explaining why Christians should be happy about a Trump presidency; theyve conveniently forgotten that Jesus came to abolish religion. They believe that because Trump is anti-gay and anti-abortion, he represents the Christian faith, but what about love? Does Donald Trump know about love? Love is the most important part of being a Christian, and Jesus said so himself: Mark 12: 30-31:and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these. How can Donald Trump represent God when he is hate personified? He has expressed hatred for blacks, Mexicans, women and even Jews. How can an anti-Semite possibly represent God? Trump wants to stop the US from helping dying Syrian children, he wants to separate families, he has no compassion, no milk of human kindness, nothing. How can he possibly represent a God who loves both the evil and the good? Donald Trump is a hateful, hateful person who has ridden to power mostly on the wings of hate. He is nothing like Jesus Christ, who died for a world full of sinners not knowing if theyd ever love him back. Trump and his like are bullies who thrive on fear; he is not like God whose perfect love casts out fear. Donald Trump has won the US election, fair enough, but do not think for one second that this represents a victory for Christianity. ALSO READ:Why Christians voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton The Colombian military said over the weekend that members of the ELN had activated an improvised explosive device causing a pipeline blast 100 meters from a kindergarten that left behind an oil slick in a nearby riverbed. "This is the kind of anti-humanitarian gesture, besides being reprehensible, that calls into question those who say they want to start a peace process," the government's lead negotiator, Juan Camilo Restrepo, said Sunday on Twitter. The government and the ELN, the second largest guerrilla group in the country, had planned to launch public peace talks on October 27 in Quito. President Juan Manuel Santos cancelled the negotiations after the rebels failed to release hostage ex-congressman Otis Sanchez. The government and the FARC meanwhile announced over the weekend a new peace deal to end more than half-a-century of violent civil strife. "We have reached a new final agreement to end the armed conflict, which incorporates changes, clarifications and some new contributions from various social groups, which we have gone through one by one," said a joint statement read out by diplomats from Cuba and Norway, the peace process guarantors. "Building a stable, lasting peace must be the shared commitment of all Colombians, and one that helps polarization be overcome while including all social and political voices," the statement added. 'A better agreement' Santos stressed that the new peace deal between the FARC and the government "is a better agreement." "We made adjustments, tweaks and changes in 56 of the 57 issues that were addressed," Santos said, so "we can build a deeper and broader peace." The modified agreement leaves intact the accord's major tenets, including the FARC laying down its arms and becoming a political party. It includes a number of "innovations" to several of the key points in the original peace deal, according to the government's lead negotiator Humberto de la Calle. The new accord was fine-tuned after the groups that opposed the original deal submitted proposed changes as starting points for negotiations. "The tweaks and clarifications we have made do not undermine the issues we agreed on, which shaped the first peace deal," De la Calle said. Santos acknowledged that a suggestion seeking to bar rebel leaders involved in serious crimes from elections was not part of the re-worked peace deal. He also hinted that the new accord would maintain the provision that FARC rebels could avoid prison time by confessing and carrying out acts of reparation to victims. But he added that there would be specifications concerning the "effective restriction of their freedom." The agreement also states that foreign magistrates will not be allowed on special tribunals to hear cases about those involved in the conflict. 'An important step forward' The original deal's fiercest opponents included Alvaro Uribe, who requested that spokespeople of the opposition be able to review the new text. The United States hailed the agreement, and pledged continuing US support in implementing a peace under which the guerrillas would demobilize and become a political party. US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the new accord "constitutes an important step forward on Colombia's path to a just and durable peace." The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "commends the efforts" of the FARC and the Colombian government and reaffirmed UN support for the peace process. "Colombians have listened to one another and have reaffirmed their collective desire for peace," Ban said. "They now have a new opportunity to go forward on this road to peace more unified than before." The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Santos' government had been meeting since October 22 to try to rescue a peace deal that has taken four years to negotiate. In an October 2 referendum, voters unexpectedly rejected the peace agreement, deeming it too soft on the country's largest rebel group. The development was a blow to Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last month for his efforts to bring "total peace" to Colombia. Monyane Moleleki, who quit the government earlier this week, said the landlocked country needed a broad-based and "strong" government of national unity to replace the "rotten" current administration. "I invite all parties represented in the national assembly including the opposition to approach us to talk about how we can take this country forward," he said. The current prime minister, Pakalitha Mosisili, heads a coalition government that took power after snap elections in February 2015. On Thursday Mosisili sacked four ministers, immediately triggering the departure of four others including Moleleki, while 20 lawmakers from the ruling group announced they were quitting the fragile parliamentary majority. The departures were officially due to disagreements over economic policy, according to local media. Moleleki was speaking from his stronghold of Machache, about 40 km from the capital Maseru, in front of several thousand supporters dressed in the red colours of his party, an AFP journalist said. Lesotho has been gripped by crisis since a failed coup d'etat in June 2014, which led to the elections in early 2015. The All Basotho Convention (ABC) party of then premier Thomas Thabane was beaten by the Democratic Congress (DC) of former Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, who formed a slim majority with several small parties controlling 65 seats in the 120-member parliament. On Sunday several ABC members joined the DC rebel group, confirming that alliances could be completely rebuilt in parliament, threatening the current government. Completely landlocked by South Africa, Lesotho is one of the world's poorest countries and its economy is heavily dependent on its larger neighbour, to whom it exports water and hydroelectric power. The irony is cruel: In the name of a peaceful transition, the American president, having thoroughly denounced the billionaire Republican during the recent campaign, must now do his best to reassure his European counterparts about the future of American democracy under a President Trump. "I think the design of the trip was meant to just give everybody some reassurance that we made it through this campaign and we're going to come out of it all right," said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. "We just have a different scenario now." The bombastic populist, whose victory over Hillary Clinton surprised virtually everyone, has given Europeans ample cause for concern. He has questioned the relevance of some of America's paramount alliances, starting with NATO; put the Paris climate-change accord in doubt by calling global warming "a hoax," and sharply criticized the strenuously negotiated pact that Washington and five other countries signed with Iran to curb its nuclear program. Trump's attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the New York mogul called him "a leader, far more than our president has been a leader" -- is deeply concerning in Europe, particularly in small countries like the Baltic nations living in Russia's shadow. Beyond the many concerns over the future of American foreign policy, many European Union countries are bracing for a possible ripple effect of the outspoken Republican's victory. "They are very worried, because the same populist, nationalist expressions" that Trump exposed in America on immigration and trade could amplify the already "very strong political currents within Europe," Conley said. She noted that several European countries have important elections coming up, not least of them the French presidential election next spring. In Greece on Tuesday for his first visit there, Obama is set to meet with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. He is expected to thank them for the "remarkable generosity" the Greek government and people have shown to the thousands of immigrants who have poured into the country from Africa and the Middle East. The roots of populism During a day heavy with symbolism, Obama on Wednesday will visit the Parthenon in Athens, then deliver a speech -- sure to have considerable resonance, given the recent US elections -- on the challenges of globalization. His advisers, pointing to the results of that election but also to the equally stunning British vote to leave the European Union, said the US president would offer his thoughts on the reasons so many people in the world feel "like decisions are made beyond their control." Speaking at the United Nations in September, at a time when the US presidential campaign was in full stride but a Trump victory seemed anything but certain, Obama had called on his fellow leaders to come to grips with the rising frustrations fueling populist movements. He warned them against succumbing to a "soulless capitalism that benefits only the few." "Twenty-five years after the Cold War, the world is less violent and more prosperous," he said, "and yet there is uncertainty and strife." "This is the paradox that defines our world today," he said, stressing that a world in which one percent of the people control as much wealth as the other 99 percent can never be stable. For his sixth visit to Germany since coming to power in 2009, the Democratic president will again meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, long one of his closest foreign partners, according to Ben Rhodes, the US national security adviser. The day after his election, the chancellor pointedly reminded Trump of the criteria that have long bound the two countries in close cooperation: "democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or political views." Obama will also meet in Germany with French President Francois Hollande -- who once said Trump's "excesses" made people "want to retch" -- British Prime Minister Theresa May, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The leaders plan to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine, as well as the fight against the Islamic State group. The MiG pilot and former Bulgarian air force chief of staff, more used to a uniform than a suit, won close to 60 percent of ballots in a closely-fought run-off on Sunday, projections showed. The 53-year-old, little known previously, beat the personal nominee of centre-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, ex-parliament speaker Tsetska Tsacheva, who fell short with just over 35 percent. Radev graduated from Bulgaria's Air Force University and Rakovski Defence and Staff College and specialised in the US Air War College in Maxwell Air Force Base. He started his military career as junior pilot in 1987-88 and moved up the ranks to become Bulgaria Air Force deputy commander from 2009 to 2014, when he stepped up in the commander's seat. Bumpy ride with Borisov Radev has taken Borisov to task over his failure to improve the lot of the many Bulgarians living in dire poverty and the lack of progress in stamping out rampant corruption. He had already crossed swords with Borisov in his air force days, when he pressed hard for the acquisition of new rather than used fighter jets, finally leaving office earlier this year in a huff. He was then invited by the main opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party as their candidate for president. His election campaign stressed national security and preventing a new migrant influx, and he gained confidence projecting himself as a fierce critic of the conservative status quo. "He will unify the nation... and he knows how to defend his positions," his father, Georgi Radev, said on Sunday evening in the southeastern village of Slavianovo, which celebrated the news. His first job as new president -- a largely ceremonial role -- will be to call early elections in March, after Borisov announced he would resign shortly after news broke of Tsacheva's crushing defeat. Closer ties with Russia Radev's clear support for the lifting of EU sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and ambivalent statements about the EU and NATO have prompted analysts to speculate that he might pursue closer ties with Moscow. "I am convinced that the sanctions do not help but only harm... Russia and the EU countries are equally hurt," Radev said during the campaign. Bulgaria's membership into the EU and NATO "has no alternative but it does not necessarily mean that we must declare ourselves enemies of Russia", he added. He also shocked observers by repeatedly saying that Crimea "is de jure Ukrainian but de facto Russian". Radev is married and a father of teenage daughter and son from a previous marriage. He speaks English, German and Russian. "Not one state in the world, except it seems to me North Korea and Venezuela, recognises Crimea," Poroshenko told a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in Stockholm. The "United States is not North Korea. And let's respect United States' people, the United States and the United States president," he added. When asked about the possibility of "an agreement" with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin about recognising Crimea, Poroshenko responded: "I am absolutely sure that the new president-elect is completely strong enough in an effective cooperation with Ukraine ... no doubt." In an interview with ABC in August, Trump suggested that the US could accept Russia's annexation of Crimea if it led to improved relations between the two nations, which are bitterly at odds over Syria. Trump, who takes over as US president in January, criticised President Barack Obama's foreign policy stance during the election campaign saying it had caused a sharp deterioration in relations with Russia. US-Russia relations dipped to their worst since the Cold War after Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March 2014, and Russia also has been accused by Washington of supporting pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko called for the extension of Western sanctions against Russia. Woman jailed for misuse of 911 Marianne Gray, 51, was charged with misuse of a 911 service after the Nye County Sheriffs Office dispatch received a 911 call that a domestic violence was in progress at an address on Cajon Lane and a male was armed with a hammer. Gray reportedly stated on a 911 call Friday that she and the male were involved in an argument and the male allegedly starting throwing tool boxes out of the closet and grabbed a hammer. Gray said that the male began hitting and breaking items within the residence as well as breaking the kitchen cabinets. Gray told deputies that she feared for her safety because the male was standing within two feet of her with the hammer in his hand and she feared he would hit her. The male reportedly barricaded himself in the residence and refused to come out. After Nye County SWAT responded, Sheriff Sharon Wehrly and Undersheriff Brent Moody were able to speak with the male. An investigation revealed that the residence was not in disarray and nothing was broken, contrary to the statements made by Gray. The male stated that Gray told him to leave the residence and when he began packing, Gray called the sheriffs office and reported that he was chasing her around with a hammer. The male, who is on parole and probation, said Gray always taunts him that hes going back to jail for 10 years. Gray was subsequently arrested and transported to the Nye County Detention Center and booked on charges of false reporting of a crime and unlawful use of an emergency phone number. Man charged with burglary Michael J. Brown was arrested on Feb. 25 and charged with burglary after deputies received a report of a burglary at a residence on East Bank Avenue. The victim reportedly told deputies that after arriving home he observed a male inside his residence who was attempting to exit out the back door. The victim said he was holding the suspect, identified as Brown, at gunpoint until deputies arrived. As deputies were investigating, they reportedly discovered that Brown had forced a window open from the back door, unlocked the door and gained access to the residence. The home had been ransacked throughout and the victim reportedly said that Brown had opened and consumed approximately $250 worth of food. Deputies noted in the arrest report that Brown is also a suspect in another burglary case where his clothing was discovered left behind inside the victims travel trailer as well as the suspects cellular phone. That victim reportedly told deputies that he made contact with Browns twin brother using the contact information in the phone. Brown was arrested and transported to the jail and booked on charges of burglary and petit larceny. This article is compiled from Nye County Sheriffs Office arrest reports. Contact reporter Michelle Hermann at michelle.pvtimes@gmail.com A Nye County Detention Center inmate who has been rushed to the hospital on several occasions after purposely ingesting plastic utensils and eyeglasses was denied a release from custody on his own recognizance last week by a District Court judge. A Nye County Detention Center inmate who has been rushed to the hospital on several occasions after purposely ingesting plastic utensils and eyeglasses was denied a release from custody on his own recognizance last week by a District Court judge. John Oliveira, 46, appeared in court Thursday morning following a report that mental health professionals had deemed him competent to stand trial in two cases he has pending. The defendant was sent to Lakes Crossing, a state mental health facility in Sparks, for an evaluation at the request of his attorney. Oliveira is currently facing charges of burglary and offenses involving a stolen vehicle, both of which he pleaded not guilty to during last weeks hearing. After a trial date was set for next month in the burglary case, Oliveiras attorney Harry Kuehn asked Judge Kimberly Wanker if she would be willing to grant his client a recognizance release from custody. Kuehn explained his client has cost the county money on several occasions when he has ingested something inedible and had to be sent to the hospital for treatment and Nye County Sheriffs deputies must be assigned to watch him around the clock while he recovers. He said it may be more cost-effective to allow his sickly client out of custody while he awaits further action in the two cases. Your honor, the Lakes Crossing report, as I indicated earlier, is probably the most uncomplimentary a client has ever had in my 33 years. But the true reality of Mr. Oliveira is this, when he was in (custody) early on he ate some Styrofoam and a pencil and he had to be hospitalized until those items passed and the sheriffs office had to provide 24/7 coverage at the hospital. Then when he came back somehow he got a pair of eyeglasses and he swallowed those and he had to be hospitalized, he perforated his colon and had at least a temporary colostomy bag, and the sheriffs office had to provide supervision 24/7, the attorney told the court. When he was in that second time, the hospital determined that he needed heart surgery, so he was again sent to the hospital and he had heart surgery, Kuehn said. Having said that I met with Lt. (Mark) Medina, I met with District Attorney Brian Kunzi and just philosophically discussed how long we might keep Mr. Oliveira in custody when hes so self-destructive and when hes costing so much time and effort and morale. Kuehn said in light of those findings, it might be best to let Oliveira out of custody as he is likely not a flight risk in his diminished physical state. Deputy District Attorney Michael Vieta-Kabell, however, told the court he believes Oliveira was the last defendant the judge should consider granting an OR release. He does this every time. Ive never seen anyone go to that length to manipulate the system and to avoid their obligations to society and the courts. I feel for the sheriffs office but they have a job to do. This gentleman is the worst candidate for an own recognizance release Ive ever seen, he said. Wanker said she agreed with the prosecutor, telling Oliveira and his attorney she does not reward bad behavior by letting someone out of custody. This is a very, very manipulative attempt and unfortunately he thinks his bad behavior will be rewarded with an OR release and Im not going to do it, the judge said. Maybe he shouldnt be given any utensils to eat with, maybe he needs to just eat with his hands or be served sandwiches or something. The bottom line is Im tired of him pulling these little stunts and thinking hes going to get away with it, she said. The point is if he thinks he can manipulate the system and walk out the door. I dont think so, its not going to happen, not on my watch. After he was ordered to remain in custody unless he can post bail, Oliveira told the judge he was just worried about being in custody and going through another heart surgery in the future. Mr. Oliveira, I told you before when you ate the plate and the cup and then ate the pencilyou should have thought about that before you behaved so badly, she responded. Oliveira will appear in court again on Nov. 14 for a one-day trial in the case of the burglary charge. Canada will no longer require citizens of Romania and Bulgaria to hold a valid Canadian temporary resident visa (TRV) to lawfully enter Canada effective December 1, 2017. Further, citizens of Romania and Bulgaria who have held a Canadian TRV within the past 10 years or who currently hold a valid non-immigrant visa for the United States of America, will not be required to hold a valid Canadian TRV to lawfully enter Canada effective May 1, 2017. Citizens of Romania and Bulgaria will however be required to obtain an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) to fly to or transit through Canada upon removal of the visa requirement. In addition, Bill Morneau, Finance Minister, has announced that new measures will be implemented in 2017 to attract more foreign investment and foreign talent to Canada to stimulate growth. A Global Skills Strategy will be adopted that will expedite certain work permit and visa applications and the aim will be to process these applications within two weeks. The Global Skills Strategy will also introduce a new work permit exemption for foreign nationals working in Canada for 30 days or less within a year. What this means for you as an employer? Upon removal of the visa requirement, citizens of Romania and Bulgaria will be able to travel to Canada with a valid eTA and will be eligible to apply for a Canadian work permit at a Canadian port-of-entry (e.g. international airport), if required. Therefore, if you have any current or prospective employees who are citizens of Romania or Bulgaria and who are required to travel to Canada, they should be able to travel to Canada more expeditiously upon removal of the visa requirement. The Global Skills Strategy will target high-growth Canadian companies that require foreign talent to facilitate and accelerate investments that create jobs and growth as well as global companies that are making large investments in Canada, relocating to Canada, and establishing or expanding production in Canada. The Global Skills Strategy should assist Canadian companies, particularly startup companies, to attract highly skilled workers and it should make Canada a more desirable place to do business. Please do not hesitate to reach out to your usual PwC contact for further details. Davenport police are investigating a report of shots fired early Sunday on Gaines Street. The incident was reported at 2:47 a.m. when police were called to the 800 block of Gaines Street, according to a news release from the police department. Officers were told that a vehicle had struck a pole and flipped on its side in the 1100 block of Gaines Street. The occupants of that vehicle fled the scene. Casings were recovered in the area. Preliminary investigation indicates several vehicles had been chasing each other. At 3:43 a.m. officers responded to Trinity Hospital in Rock Island for a gunshot victim. An adult male with a non-life threatening gunshot wound had been transported by private vehicle. This incident was reported to have occurred when the victim was driving into Iowa on the Centennial Bridge. Casings were located on the bridge. Detectives are currently conducting follow up and to determine if these incidents are related. Anyone with information regarding these incidents is encouraged to DO WHATS RIGHT and call the Davenport Police Department at 563 326-6125 or submit an anonymous tip via our mobile app entitled CityConnect Davenport, IA." A Davenport woman was sentenced Monday to 17 years in federal prison for her role in a conspiracy to bring methamphetamine to the Quad-Cities. Theresa Gay Morales, 51, declined to make a statement before District Court Judge Stephanie Rose handed down the sentence in U.S. District Court, Davenport. Morales pleaded guilty in June to charges of conspiracy, distribution of a controlled substance, possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and being a felon in possession of a firearm. During an hour-long sentencing hearing, Rose sentenced Morales to 210 months in prison on the conspiracy and distribution charges and 120 months, or 10 years, on the gun charge. The sentences will run concurrently, or at the same time. Once she completes her prison sentence, she will serve five years of supervised release. There is no parole in the prison sentence. According to court documents: In early November 2015, agents used a confidential source to investigate the distribution of methamphetamine by Morales, who was living in Bettendorf. The confidential source told agents that Morales received large amounts of crystal methamphetamine from a man later identified as Cesar Angeles-Ballesteros. The source said Morales would travel to where he was and obtain the methamphetamine, including a run to Las Vegas where Morales collected about 10 pounds of methamphetamine, rented and car and drove back to the Quad-City area. On Nov. 10, 2015, agents determined Morales had flown from Chicago to Phoenix and was returning in a particular vehicle. On Nov. 13, 2015, agents located Morales on Interstate 80 and tried to initiate a traffic stop. Before stopping, Morales and her passenger, Ashley Marie Palmer, had thrown about 8 pounds of methamphetamine from the vehicle. During questioning, Morales told agents she traveled to Phoenix and got 8 pounds of methamphetamine from two men working through Angeles-Ballesteros. Morales said she had transported meth for Ballesteros about 12 times with the largest amount being 15 pounds. Morales, who has felony convictions in Illinois and Iowa, also had a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol in a safe deposit box at a Bettendorf bank, according to court documents. Palmer pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced in October to 60 months in prison. Angeles-Ballesteros and co-defendants Douglas Ray Lairmore, Abraham Guevara-Ocampo, Robert J. Skinner Jr., will be tried Jan. 9. Two other co-defendants, Tammy Velazquez and Kimberly Edwards, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and will be sentenced Jan. 17 and Feb. 13, respectively. A roundup of Capitol news items of interest for Monday: REYNOLDS ON GLASS CEILING: Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton achieved a milestone in her unsuccessful bid for the White House by becoming the first woman to earn a major-party nomination. Reynolds, a Republican, said she thinks Clinton lost because Americans voted for change. Reynolds said she encourages Iowa women to not only run for state office but to get involved with local government and non-profit organizations. Thats how were going to continue to get more women involved in the process, Reynolds said. PROTESTORS SHOULD TAKE A BREATH: Responding to a reporters question about multiple race-related incidents in Iowa since the Nov. 8 presidential election, Reynolds urged people to take a breath. We need to treat everybody with dignity and respect. President-elect Trump called for that last night (during a televised interview). He said for individuals to stop it, Reynolds said. This is a divided country and we need to look at how we can bring this country back together. And its not about any one individual. Its about the direction of the country. When asked about the incidents, Reynolds said it is happening on both sides, and noted protests like the one in Iowa City, where protestors blocked a portion of Interstate 80. APPRENTICESHIP WEEK: Reynolds discussed the second annual National Registered Apprenticeship Appreciation and Awareness week this week, which she plans to commemorate by traveling across Iowa to observe apprenticeship programs at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Anamosa, the MidAmerican Energy training facility, Service Legends, and Central Campus in Des Moines. Reynolds said the registered apprenticeship program can help the state fill what employers say is a lack of skilled workers. I believe that work-based learning can empower Iowans with the skills that they need for rewarding careers and grow the talent pipeline for Iowas employers so that they can expand and innovate, Reynolds said. --Times bureau staff MUSCATINE, Iowa John Moses Biah has all the American markers of success: a modest but inviting home in Newell Avenue, a car and a steady job at Allsteel. In his living room, a gargantuan flat-screen TV engulfs the wall behind it, and a plush rug adorns the floor. On his brown sectional sofa, he recalls his previous life. A life marred by conflict, strife and hunger. A life as a refugee. He describes his previous life in big, urgent gestures, as though words alone are not enough to convey the message fully. My life was very difficult. A lot of family members were killed, he said. Biah lived in the Liberian capital of Monrovia with his parents, sisters and extended family when the civil war erupted in 1989. When rebels took over the city, he and his family fled the city by foot, walking for a month until they reached Ivory Coast. Later the same rebel group came to Ivory Coast and we moved to Guinea, he said. In Guinea, Biah and his extended family lived in a refugee camp ran by the U.N. International Organization for Migration, which assists migrants in need. In the camp, two of his nieces died of pneumonia. He and his family would eventually come to the US, and would settle in different parts of the country. Biahs story is not unusual, said Pastor Bruce Martin of Calvary Church in Muscatine. He estimates that since 1995, more than 600 Liberian refugees have made the city their home. The church created the Liberian Fellowship, where many Liberians congregate to worship. The first Liberian refugee to ever come to Muscatine learned about the city because engineering company Stanley Consultants has branches in the city and in Monrovia, Martin said. Many Liberians who come to the country as refugees eventually move to Muscatine to work in factories such as Tyson, Heinz and Allsteel. Biah was one of them. He initially settled in Minnesota, while other family members settled in Georgia. He visited his friend in Muscatine a decade ago, and his friend convinced him to settle in Muscatine. Biah got a job in Allsteel in 2006 and has since made his home in the Muscatine. The life he had built in the United States is stable and productive. He studies agriculture in Muscatine Community College. He also has a fiance, Cecilia, an old friend from Monrovia who used to live in Atlanta. He recalls his first few weeks in the United States with joy. There was an abundance of food, he said. And there was snow. Lots of it. It was my very first time to have seen snow in my life. It was like a miracle to me, he said. MUSCATINE, Iowa - The Third Annual Soup Sample Supper sponsored by the American Legion Family will be held from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19, at the American Legion Post 27 home at 110 South Houser Street in Muscatine. The American Legion will be serving a variety of homemade soups to sample so plan on having fun sampling the variety and then going back for a bowl of your favorite(s). A cold cut platter will also be available for sandwiches along with crackers and other trimmings for the soups. The dinner also includes ice tea and coffee. DES MOINES Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday shes had no discussions with Gov. Terry Branstad about ending his current term early to take a post in President-elect Donald Trumps administration, and she expects the focus to be on working with a GOP-led Legislature to move their goals to the next level. Reynolds dismissed speculation about Branstad possibly being eyed as Trumps pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to China given his close ties to Chinese President Xi Jinping and his strong support in helping Trump win Iowa in last weeks election. She also said it was coincidence that Branstad currently is leading an Iowa trade mission to China and Japan, noting the visit was planned months ago for this week. As youve heard the governor and I say multiple times, Reynolds said during the administrations weekly news conference Monday, were proud of what weve been able to do. But were not done yet. Weve got a lot to do, so Im looking forward to continue serving Iowans. Reynolds sidestepped questions if she planned to run for governor in 2018 and told reporters I dont know what the governors going to do when asked if she expected Branstad would seek a seventh term. She did confirm she and Branstad have not talked about the possibility of him not serving out the remaining two years and two months of his current term after an eventful election last week. Republicans will return to the Statehouse in January with a new majority in the Iowa Senate to go with a slightly larger majority in the Iowa House after Nov. 8 balloting in which Iowans backed Trump, held status quo on federal-level incumbents and put 29 GOP senators and 59 GOP representatives in charge at the Statehouse. Im excited about this next legislative session and Im excited to get back to work on behalf of Iowans, Reynold said. Were going to sit down the governor and I and our team and our staff and legislators and were going to talk about putting an agenda together that will take Iowa to the next level. The lieutenant governor said the Branstad administrations goals continue to be growing quality jobs, shrinking the size of government, returning Iowa schools to world-class caliber, making Iowa the healthiest state in the state as a way to help control spiraling healthcare costs, and improving the quality of Iowas water supply. Thats the big picture were looking at, Reynold said. Well sit down and take a look at everything and then work with legislators and see how we continue to move the state forward. The 2017 sessions agenda may be tempered by the amount of state tax money that is available for budgeting once the state Revenue Estimating Conference meets in December. That could be somewhat restrictive on what our opportunities are moving forward. All of that has to come into play when we take a look at next steps, she said. Iowas economic growth has been slowed by depressed farm prices that have hovered below the cost of production, and Reynolds said the objective of the trade mission Branstad currently is leading to China and Japan is to expand Iowas exports and to encourage reverse investment in Iowa by Chinese companies. Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film Alexandra Zapruder Twelve $27.00 472 pages Point and click. These days, its that easy: theres a camera on your cell phone and a cloud for your photos. No more film to buy, or plastic flash bulbs. No more waiting a week for your pictures; you can see them immediately and delete what you dont want. But be careful as youll see in Twenty-Six Seconds by Alexandra Zapruder, some snaps may have lasting significance. Though she never knew her grandfather, Alexandra Zapruder understood that hed done something noteworthy. When people remarked on her surname, or asked if the family was related to the man who captured the Kennedy assassination on film, Zapruder adults answered politely but otherwise rarely discussed the matter. That man, Zapruders grandfather, Abe, was born in 1905 in the Ukraine and immigrated to America when he was a teen. It was a trip that was not without dangers; still, Zapruder says her grandfather grew up to be a confident go-getter who ultimately owned a clothing business in Dallas. That was his work but photography was his passion. On November 23, 1963, Abe told his employees that they were free to take a long lunch to watch as President Kennedys entourage drove past their building, and he left to retrieve the new film camera hed forgotten that morning. Shortly after he returned to work with camera in-hand and film loaded, he asked another employee to help steady him so he could get the best footage. Twenty-six seconds. Thats all he caught. Within minutes, he was offered big money for the footage, but Abe resisted, insisting that hed only release it to government officials; days after that, he controversially opted to release it to LIFE magazine. In coming months, when asked to do so, he answered questions and testified in court, in regards to the footage. And then he put the matter aside, reluctant to speak of it again. But, of course, that wasnt the end of the film. There would be no end to it, says author Alexandra Zapruder but the footages afterlife was a contentious one. In Twenty-Six Seconds, she elaborates. Beginning with Zapruders reasoning for telling this story, readers will gain a unique perspective on this iconic sliver of celluloid, but that tale is marred by passages of recreated emotions and conversational bits. Yes, that moves this story along but recreated scenes as such are inherently fiction. Clarity matters here was the information from interviews or was it meant to set a scene? and it would have helped a lot. And yet, though it can absolutely be quite wordy, theres enough family research and personal insight in this book to keep it readable and relevant. Its been 53 years since the film was captured; it seems that we can never know enough about it. I think that if you want nothing but hard facts, pass. If youre still fascinated with Camelot and conspiracy, then this book belongs on your bookshelf. Fall in the latter camp, and Twenty-Six Seconds is a book you should make a point to own. RAPID CITY | South Dakota has dismissed a criminal charge against a SkyWest Airlines pilot accused of being under the influence of alcohol before a flight at an airport in the state. Pennington County Chief Deputy State's Attorney Lara Roetzel said Monday that the state filed for dismissal because a blood draw taken hours after a preliminary breath test showed no measurable alcohol in his system. The 39-year-old pilot was arrested Oct. 26 at Rapid City Regional Airport after a security worker said the pilot smelled like alcohol and notified authorities. The pilot was arrested before passengers had boarded the 50-seat jet. Although the breath test showed a level above the legal limit of 0.04 percent, that level had dissipated by the time his blood was drawn four hours later, Roetzel said. Breath test results are not admissible in court. The flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, with a passenger list of 45, was delayed for two hours until a new crew arrived. The airline based in St. George, Utah, issued a statement Monday saying the pilot was immediately grounded and remains on unpaid leave while the investigation continues. Following his arrest, the pilot posted $300 bail and was released from jail. SPEARFISH | After waiting more than two years for formal approval of its flight plan from the Federal Aviation Administration, the city of Spearfish has formally assumed the controls of Black Hills Airport-Clyde Ice Field from Lawrence County. Local officials say the busy airport should see improvements under the new arrangement and will play a key role in the ongoing growth and development of the Spearfish economy. Following the first meeting of the newly constituted Spearfish Airport Advisory Board late last week, city officials and the airports longtime manager said they see only clear skies in the years to come. As you look at the city and you consider those assets that help create economic opportunity like Black Hills State, Regional Hospital and our Industrial Park the airport is one of those big assets that can be an economic driver for the community, Spearfish City Administrator Joe Neeb said. We believe this will be an asset that will help Spearfish reach its true potential. Neeb said city control over operations, management and fiscal responsibility of the Spearfish airport, the busiest general-aviation airfield in South Dakota, should be a revenue-neutral proposition and that it was the intent of the city council to not devote any property tax revenues to its operation. As discussed at Thursdays meeting, the city may initially have to assist in replacing some outdated equipment at the airport, but overall, the facility should be self-supporting, he said. Its not a burden, but a vital piece of our citys future, Neeb said. Tucked on the eastern flank of the Northern Black Hills and centered among the burgeoning energy camps of the Niobrara, Powder River Basin and the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota, the airport is named for pioneer aviator Clyde Ice. Airport Manager Ray Jilek said Friday that the skys the limit for the airfields future. Were optimistic and looking forward to flying in the right direction, Jilek said of the citys new role at the airport. I dont anticipate any real significant changes due to city control. This airport will continue to operate as it has, if not improve. As evidence of the airports position for the future, Jilek pointed to 14 individuals and companies currently on a waiting list for hangar space, 47 existing and occupied T-hangars, and plans to build a new 11-unit T-hangar in 2017. Weve been fortunate the past 16 years to have 100 percent occupancy of our hangars, and anytime we can bring another airplane to the field, it contributes to the local economy, he said. In addition, potentially weve got three large aircraft owners interested in developing hangars for their aircraft right now. On top of that, just this morning I got a call from a Texas company that would like to hangar their aircraft here. So the demand is there, Jilek added. Last year, the city bought 160 acres at the southeast edge of the airport to prevent encroachment and to accommodate a planned second cross-wind runway, Neeb noted. Typically, the FAA has funded 90 percent of airport improvements, with the remainder covered by local entities and the state, airport officials have explained. The airport advisory board consists of seven members appointed by the mayor to serve three-year terms. They are Chairman Michael Rath, Vice Chairman Brooks Hanna, Randy Deibert, Travis Lantis, Randall Rosenau, Dan Hodgs and Jim Seward. SIOUX FALLS | Lillie Ann Hybertson passed away peacefully Nov. 10, 2016, at Avera Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls. Born Sept. 5, 1931, on the family farm near Beresford to Elmer and Lillie Larson, Lillie Ann graduated from Beresford High School and Augustana College. She married Paul Hybertson in 1954, and they raised their five children in Sioux Falls. Lillie Ann was employed by the Sioux Falls Public Library and the City of Sioux Falls personnel office. Pauls career with the South Dakota National Guard led them to Rapid City in 1977, where Lillie Ann worked for the Rapid City Public Schools personnel department. A renowned and accomplished home cook, she also enjoyed reading, needlework, and an active volunteer life with the Wesleyan Church, Rapid City Regional Hospital Auxiliary, and numerous other causes. After her husbands death, Lillie Ann returned to Sioux Falls and resided at Good Samaritan Prairie Creek Lodge. Lillie Ann was a deeply loving and supportive mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. The candy bowl was always full, the Scrabble board or jigsaw puzzle was in play, and the Twins or Vikings played in the background. She was firmly grounded in her spiritual life and treasured her relationships with Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Rapid City, Linwood Wesleyan Church in Sioux Falls, and the Prairie Creek Chapel. Lillie Ann was preceded in death by her husband, Paul Hybertson, grandson Matthew Farmen, great-grandson Henry Opoien, and son-in-law Ray Dickerson. She is survived by her children Joel & Kathy Hybertson of Sioux Falls, Julee and Dale Farmen of Katy TX, Mary and Tom Frederick of Sioux Falls, Susan Dickerson and Louie DeSimone of Sioux Falls, and Karen Ellman of Minneapolis, MN. Her meatballs, lemon meringue pies, and cinnamon and caramel rolls will be fondly remembered by her surviving grandchildren, Christopher, Corey, Kristen, and Scott Hybertson; Molly and Jacob Farmen; Sam Frederick and Janet Fearnside; Joseph and Andrew Dickerson; Greg, Jane, and Libby Opoien; and nine great-grandchildren. Lillie Ann was fortunate to have enjoyed the life-long love and enduring friendship of her surviving sisters and brothers-in-law, Alice Mae and Howard Kennedy of Beresford, SD, and Judy and Marlin Mehrens of Primghar, IA, and well as her nieces and nephews and their families. The Hybertson family is grateful for the care provided by the Avera and Good Samaritan systems, and particularly the Dougherty Hospice House care team during her extended stay. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, at Miller Southside Chapel, 7400 S. Minnesota Ave. in Sioux Falls. Remains will be committed at Black Hills National Cemetery in Sturgis, SD, at a later date. Please direct memorials to Avera Dougherty Hospice House or Rapid City Regional Hospital Hospice of the Hills. For obituary and online registry, please visit www.millerfh.com Four other Ukrainian officers charged with using banned methods of warfare MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) - Russian investigators have charged in absentia four other Ukrainian officers with using of prohibited methods of warfare in Donbass region, acting spokeswoman for Investigative Committee Svetlana Petrenko told journalists on Monday. Charges were brought against commanders of the 72nd, 92nd mechanized brigades, Col. Andrey Sokolov and Col. Viktor Nikolyuk, commander of the 44th artillery brigade, Col. Oleg Lisovoy and commander of the Army operational command Yug (South) Andrey Grishchenko, Petrenko said. Last week similar charges were brought against commander of the 1st battalion of the 14th mechanized brigade, Lt. Col. Mykhaylo Prokopiv and commander of the 10th mountain assault brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Lt. Col. Vasily Zubanich. Investigators claim that on March 15 and 16, 2016, officers of the 72nd and 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigades and their subordinates deliberately opened artillery fire on Yasinovataya and Staromikhailovka settlements in the Donetsk region damaging local civilian facilities and houses. On March 16, in yet another incident servicemen of the 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade bombarded a house located near the town of Gorlovka, as a result harm was caused to two local residents. On March 24 and 28, 2016, a local resident was wounded and several houses were demolished after two districts of the city of Donetsk had been chosen as an aim for the artillery of the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade. Besides, a criminal case was opened over the shelling of houses in the town of Makeyevka by heavy artillery on October 27, 2016. As a result of this bombardment two local residents died and several other were wounded, including a 6-year-old girl. Damage was caused to some civilian facilities. U.S. citizen deported from Russia for illegal border crossing MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) U.S. citizen Julio Prieto who had come to Russia "looking for a better life" was deported from the country for illegal border crossing, RIA Novosti reported on Monday. Prieto tried to enter Russia from Kazakhstan but the entry was denied because he had no visa. U.S. citizen crossed the border anyway and was arrested by a border patrol, according to prosecutors. Prieto was detained on September 15 and brought to court in October. He was fined 7,000 rubles ($106) for crossing the Kazakh-Russian border and ordered to pay 2,000 rubles ($30) for administrative offense before being deported. Prieto was put on the flight from Novosibirsk to New York via Moscow and Dublin, according to the Bailiff Service Directorate for the Novosibirsk Region. Prieto told prosecutors that he came to Russia "looking for a better life" to work in the countryside. America must return to conservative principles of less government,reduced taxes, less spending and a balanced budget! Cut,cap and balance! AmericaUp to Its Eyeballs in Mass Murder and Starvation in Yemen Updated November 14, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us While the presidential election campaign was going on, America was up to its eyeballs in the mass murder of thousands of people, and the starvation of millions more. These war crimes were never mentioned, and many may never have heard about the country being devastated: Yemen. Map: revcom.us Yemen is located at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula and is one of the worlds most impoverished countries. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been flying warplanes supplied by the U.S., guided by U.S. intelligence, refueled by U.S. tanker planes, and dropping U.S.-made bombs on Yemen. These bombs have destroyed homes, factories, funeral parlors, schools, and markets, and killed thousands of ordinary people. This savage campaign is aimed at crushing the Houthi rebellion because it threatens the reactionary interests of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. The Houthi movement is based among followers of the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, who are over a third of Yemens 25 million people. The Houthis are fighting under the reactionary Islamist banner of Ansar Allah (Partisans of God). Theyre politically supported by and have some ties to the reactionary Islamic Republic of Iran. Markets, Homes, Funeral ParlorsNow a Prison Rubble after a funeral hall was destroyed by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sana'a, Yemen, October 13. (Photo: AP) The infrastructure of life in and around Saada, Yemen (above) has been devastated from U.S.-backed airstrikes by Saudi Arabia: 178 bridges, 13 power stations, 17,193 houses, 173 schools, 118 markets and 696 farms have been destroyed or damaged according to AP. (Photo: AP) The latest Saudi massacre happened on October 30, when Saudi warplanes bombed a jail full of prisoners in the Houthi-controlled city of Al Hudaydah. At the time, the prison held 84 inmates; it was reduced to rubble by a direct hit which collapsed the roof. Sixty people were killed. They were mainly prisoners. The U.S.-backed Saudis are waging a barbaric war against a whole section of Yemens population numbering in the millions. The United Nations reports that over 4,000 civilians have been killed and over 7,000 more wounded since the Saudi campaign began, mostly by the Saudis. After the prison bombing, for the first time in the 19-month war, the U.S. called on Saudi Arabia to stop attacking civilian targets. Yet Saudi Arabia remains a key U.S. ally, military aid and support continue to flow, and the U.S. continues to uphold Saudi Arabias right to self-defense, their excuse for attacking Yemen in the first place. War by Starvation and Disease... A Country on the Verge of Collapse The Saudis are also waging war by a blockade thats prevented food and needed supplies from getting to Yemens people. Now 80 percent of the populationmore than 21 million peopleurgently need humanitarian aid. Some 1.5 million children are acutely malnourished. The World Health Organization has reported that deadly cholera is spreading. The UN warns that Yemen is on the verge of collapse. The Destruction of Saada Saada is an old town in northern Yemen where 50,000 people live. Its also the birthplace of the Houthi movement. On November 4, the Associated Press reported the city had been devastated by the U.S.-Saudi bombing campaign: All along the main street, buildings are crumpled beyond recognition, roofs punched in and pancaked. Historic mud-brick houses in its walled old city are pounded to dust. Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systemsand the lives of peoplenot just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means warwar to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist statesit means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button. Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolutionthe oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentorsand that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism. Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:6 The infrastructure of life in and around Saada has been shattered: 178 bridges, 13 power stations, 17,193 houses, 173 schools, 118 markets, and 696 farms have been destroyed or damaged. One local organization documented the killing of 2,262 civilians, including 397 children, in the area from March 2015 to March 2016. Fear is a constant. The more crowded a place is, the more we are afraid of bombings, a 15-year-old girl said. Her family, like 4 of 10 Saada residents, had fled the town. Why Is the U.S. Backing the Saudi Slaughter? Why is the United States backing and enabling Saudi war crimes in Yemen? Because the U.S. is a capitalist-imperialist power. It economy, wealth, and international influence are based on a global empire of sweatshop exploitation, resource plunder, and brutal oppressionenforced by the worlds biggest military. The Middle East region is a key part of this. It contains the worlds largest concentration of oil and natural gas. Important trade routes pass through the region. The U.S. has a number of military bases there. Now the region is being torn by wars, upheavals, and deep suffering and anger. The U.S. is desperately working to protect key allies, like Saudi Arabia, while it fends off regional and global rivals, and the spread of anti-U.S. Islamic jihadism. Saudi Arabia has been shaken by the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, and then the 2014-2015 Houthi uprising. Both could strengthen their archrival Irans position in the region. So the U.S. has stepped up the arming of Saudi Arabia and backed its murderous war, even as the U.S. may have differences with some Saudi moves. Systems Crimes Will ContinueNo Matter Who Is Commander in Chief Saudi Arabias American-backed and -enabled crimes against Yemen have taken place under Obama, a Democrat. As his Secretary of State in 2011, Hillary Clinton personally oversaw the sale of $29.4 billion in U.S. weapons to the Saudi kingdom, including some 84 advanced F-15SA fighters, which are now in all likelihood being used to attack Yemen. An International Business Times investigation found that U.S. arms exports to Saudi Arabia increased 97 percent when Clinton ran the State Department. Now, Donald Trump has been elected. Trump is a dangerous, outright fascist and war criminal in waiting. Heres the reality: no matter who is commander in chief, America backs barbaric, fundamentalist despotisms like the Saudi kingdom. And it backs and has carried out horrific crimes that have shed oceans of bloodin Yemen and around the world. STOP Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation, and Crimes Against Humanity! For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here Native Americans Fight Modern-Day Genocide: Critical Juncture in Battle at Standing Rock November 14, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us Standing Rock encampment, November 5, 2016. Photo: Special to Revolution/revcom.us The battle taking place near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between North and South Dakota, to stop the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL) may be reaching a critical turning point. On November 11, media outlets reported that after delaying the pipeline since September 9, Obama is preparing to approve resuming its construction, perhaps as early as this week. One report said the approval is related to the election of Republican nominee Donald Trump who would eventually approve the project anyway. The Obama administration denied the reports. Kelcy Warren, head of Energy Transfer Partners that has funded the pipeline, recently boasted hes 100 percent sure that Trump will OK the pipeline. The struggle to stop the DAPL is a battle against modern-day genocide of Native Americans and environmental destruction. The pipeline, being built right next to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation as part of its almost 1,200-mile route, threatens the tribes water, land, irreplaceable historical and cultural sites, and their future as a people. The DAPL, scheduled to carry nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day, is also a potential environmental catastrophe for the planet. The Standing Rock Sioux is a small tribe8,250 live on the reservation near where the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers meet. Theyre up against powerful forces: a juggernaut of big financial institutions and energy companies, backed by the government, the legal system, and the armed enforcers of the state. Standing Up Donate to Support revcom.us Correspondents at Standing Rock Revcom.us correspondents at Standing RockTravis Morales and, from the Revolution Club, NYC, Riley Ruizare standing with the struggle, reporting on developments, learning from people, and engaging people with the new communism and the work and leadership of Bob Avakian. Click here now to make urgently needed donations to support them. The Standing Rock Sioux have been battling the DAPL for two years. Early this year, they made a bold move and set up a protest camp to stop the pipeline. This just and courageous stand by a determined few water protectors, as many at Standing Rock call themselves, has galvanized the fighting spirit of many more. Hundreds of Native tribes have joined the struggle, including ones with longstanding historical conflicts. Environmental activists and a wide range of people compelled to take a stand against injustice and oppression have joined. Thousands of people have been part of the protest encampment. Well-known voices, such as Edward Snowden and Susan Sarandon, have spoken out in support, and actor Shailene Woodley was among those arrested at a protest. At least 19 city governments have passed resolutions or written letters opposing construction of the pipeline. Thousands have taken part in support actions in over 200 cities across the U.S. and in Canada and England. On November 3, over 445 clergy members came to Standing Rock to act in solidarity. Find out more about the revolution Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution Cannonball River. Photo: Special to revcom.us Protesters have repeatedly faced off with police and constructions crews. Theyve stood up to pepper spray, rubber bullets, attack dogs, and heavily armed police and hired thugs. Theyve built barricades across roads and forded the freezing waters of the Cannonball River. Theyve refused to back down in the face of a media-fueled climate of violent hatred whipped up among significant numbers of whites in the area, who are armed and openly threatening Native Americans and those they perceive as supporting them. Many Native Americans and supporters have been brutalized and hundreds have been arrested. The Systems Ongoing Genocide and Environmental Devastation Over 90 percent of DAPL is being built on private landmuch of it on land granted to the Sioux by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and then stolen. The original plans called for the pipeline to cross the Missouri near Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. State officials worried that an oil spill could poison Bismarcks drinking water. In a blatant act of environmental racism, they moved the pipeline crossing to within half a mile of the Standing Rock reservation, land taken from the tribe in 1958. The determined actions of the fighters at Standing Rockand now the possibility that Obama is preparing to give final approval to the pipeline and the near certainty that Trump willare shining a light on the predatory nature of the oil-addicted capitalist-imperialist system. Whatever the differences within the ruling class, all of them are committed to increasing domestic fuel production (what they call U.S. energy independence) in order to gain strategic advantage over rival world powers. This is a key part of maintaining their position as top global oppressor and exploiter. All this is driven by the workings of their capitalist-imperialist system. A Critical Juncture The pipeline construction reportedly reached the Missouri River in early November, and Energy Transfer Partners has stated it plans to start digging under the river in less than two weeks. The election of the fascist Trump promises to further embolden the capitalists building the pipeline and reactionaries in the area. Read the entire HOW WE CAN WINHow We Can Really Make Revolution HERE Our correspondents at Standing Rock report that many at the protest camp are NOT in a mood to sit by as this pipeline continues to go through, and more people continue to arrive at the encampment. As we go to press, the November 15 national day of action in solidarity with Standing Rock is demanding that the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers stop this pipeline. This is a crucial juncture. Everyone needs to express clear, unequivocal, and public support for the fighters at Standing Rock, who are not only defending the lives, water, and humanity of the Standing Rock tribe, but standing up against centuries of genocide against all Native peoples in America, and against the further destruction of the Earths environment. What takes place at Standing Rock can contribute to fueling a more defiant and determined spirit of resistance against all this systems crimesincluding the election of Trump. Background on the struggle at Standing Rock: "Native Americans Fight Modern-Day Genocide: Standing Up at Standing Rock" For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here WASHINGTON, Nov 14: President-elect Donald Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs of cracking on Sunday, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and the top House Republican rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people in the country illegally. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Trump said Sunday he would accept a fence in some places along the U.S. southern border where he had promised to build a wall. During his campaign he insisted he would deport 11 million people living in the country illegally, with exceptions. But he distanced himself from that position as time went on, and in his first television interview since winning the presidential election, Trump said he's willing to deport or incarcerate 2 million to 3 million people living in the country illegally who "are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers." Earlier Sunday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, also told CNN's "State of the Union" that "we are not planning on erecting a deportation force." Ryan said "I think we should put people's minds at ease" on mass deportation because the top priority is really border security. On that, both men agreed Sunday, with the president-elect emphasizing that securing the border is his first immigration priority. Trump campaigned on a promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. The promise elicited chants of "Build that Wall" from the thousands throughout the country who packed his rallies. Mexico has said it would not pay for the construction of a border wall. Nearly 700 miles of fencing was put in place during President George W. Bush's second term and the beginning of President Barack Obama's first term. The fencing is placed largely in urban areas along the nearly 2,000-mile frontier. It is not the type of solid wall that Trump has pledged to construct at Mexico's expense. The fence has miles-long gaps and gates built in to allow landowners access to their property on the south side of the fencing. Immigrants have been known to go over and around the fence. Guwahati, November 14: At least four persons were killed when a speeding SUV hit at a roadside railing in Assam's Lakhimpur district on Monday morning, police said. According to the reports, the incident took place near Lakhimpur town when a speedy SUV hit at a roadside railing. All the four persons who travelled in the vehicle killed on spot. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) FILE a In this Oct, 1, 2016 file photo, Pakistan army soldiers take position at a forward area Bagsar post on the Line of Control (LOC), that divides Kashmir between Pakistan and India, in Bhimber, some 103 miles, 166 km, from Islamabad, Pakistan. Photo: AP ISLAMABAD: Pakistans military says Indian troops fired on its soldiers in Kashmir on Monday, killing seven of them and prompting return fire, as officials warned that the tense standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals could escalate. The two sides have traded fire repeatedly in recent weeks across the Line of Control, which divides the Himalayan region into Indian and Pakistani-controlled zones. The two nuclear rivals each claim the entire territory, and have fought two of their three wars over it. The international community should pay attention, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif told Geo News TV. It can escalate. This could be catastrophic for the region. He added that Pakistani troops had also inflicted losses on the Indian army, without elaborating. An Indian army officer said Pakistan had fired on Indian troops in a breach of the cease-fire, and that they effectively retaliated. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said there were no casualties on the Indian side. The latest escalation was set off by a September attack on an Indian military base by Pakistani militants. India blamed the attack on Pakistan, which has denied involvement. Tensions have run high since Indian troops killed a Kashmiri militant leader in July. The killing ignited some of the most violent protests in years, and dozens of people have been killed in Indias resulting crackdown. Pakistani foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz said there has been an increase in the duration and frequency of indiscriminate firing by India, which has in recent weeks killed 26 civilians and wounded over 100 in villages near the frontier. The Indian actions, which constituted a threat to the maintenance of peace and security, may lead to strategic miscalculation, he said. US President-elect Donald Trump and Chairman of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus (right) address supporters during his election night rally in Manhattan, New York, US on November 9, 2016. Photo: Reuters WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday picked Reince Priebus, a Washington insider who heads the Republican National Committee, as White House chief of staff, signaling a willingness to work with Congress to advance his agenda when he takes office in January. But while giving the influential post to the low-key Priebus, Trump handed another senior White House job to rabble-rousing conservative media figure Stephen Bannon, his campaign chairman who helped engineer his surprise victory on Tuesday over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Priebus is a friend of US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who distanced himself from Trump during the campaign but embodies the Republican establishment in Washington and will play a critical role in shepherding Trumps agenda in Congress. Both Priebus and Ryan are from Wisconsin. But Bannon, former head of the right-wing Breitbart News website, has been fiercely critical of Ryan. Trumps statement announcing the appointments said Bannon and Priebus would be working as equal partners to transform the federal government, with Bannon serving as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. The White House chief of staff serves as a gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president, but Trumps statement mentioned Bannons job first. I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country, Trump said in a statement. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House. Before joining Trumps team, Bannon spearheaded Breitbarts shift into a forum for the alt-right, a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semitics. Bannons hiring by Trumps campaign this year signaled the businessmans dedication to operating outside the norms of Washington. Under Bannons leadership, the Breitbart site presented a number of conspiracy theories about Clinton as well as Republicans deemed to be lacking in conservative bona fides. Critics have accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. In a 2007 court filing during divorce proceedings, Bannons former wife accused him of making anti-Semitic comments on at least three occasions. As head of Breitbart, he repeatedly attacked the Republican Party establishment including Ryan, alienating many veteran Republicans. Bannon showed his willingness to engage in brutal political tactics when he instigated the appearance before a presidential debate of three women who said they had been sexually abused by his Democratic rivals husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump, who will succeed Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, has been contemplating the candidates for top jobs in the White House and in various Cabinet positions since Tuesdays victory. Priebus appointment could anger some hardline Trump supporters who were counting on Trump to keep his campaign promise to drain the swamp of business-as-usual Washington insiders. Priebus is a longtime Wisconsin political operative who was credited with marshaling party resources for Trumps White House bid. The Republican National Committee stepped in and ran most of the partys get-out-the-vote effort this year in the absence of such an operation by the Trump campaign. While some Republicans fled from Trump during the campaign, Priebus was unwavering in his backing for the New York real estate developer. Priebus frequently traveled with Trump on the campaign trail and was seen as a positive force who helped rein in the unpredictable Trump in the closing weeks. Trump made his high regard for Priebus known on election night when he pulled him to the microphone to take a bow for his campaign efforts. BORDER WALL Trump and his advisers already have hedged on some of his major campaign promises, including on immigration, healthcare and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton. Trump, in an interview that aired on Sunday, backed away from his promise to build a wall on the US-Mexican border, saying some areas could instead be fencing. Trump, whose pledge to force Mexico to pay for a border wall was a centerpiece of his White House, said in certain areas he would accept fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall, according to his interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes. But certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. Im very good at this, its called construction, there could be some fencing, he said. In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump said Americans alarmed by his election had nothing to fear. Dont be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, dont be afraid, he said. Demonstrators in major US cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest against Trump. Trump said in the interview that once he takes office, he would remove immigrants with criminal records who are in the country illegally. During the campaign, Trump said he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, most of whom are Hispanic. Ryan on Sunday backed away from Trumps promise during the campaign of a deportation force to round up and deport immigrants in the country illegally. We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trumps not planning on that, Ryan told CNNs State of the Union program. I think we should put peoples minds at ease. That is not what our focus is. That is not what were focused on. Were focused on securing the border. Kathmandu, Nepal: Lawmakers of the agitating Federal Alliance (FA) a loose alliance of the Madhesi and Janajati parties, boycotted the Parliamentary session on Monday. They had boycotted the parliament meeting alleging the government for delaying to address their demands by amending in the constitution. Interestingly, earlier in the meeting with the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal the leaders of the agitating FA had urged not to register the constitution amendment proposal right away. Kathmandu, Nepal: Going contradiction to their demand, the agitating United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) has urged the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal not to register the constitution amendment proposal right away. During a meeting with Prime Minister Dahal held at Singha Durbar on Monday, the UDMF leaders urged to register the constitution amendment proposal only by the end of November. The UDMF had not only been piling pressure on the government to table the constitution amendment proposal in the Parliament at the earliest possible but also challenging to launch decisive protest demanding early registration of the constitution amendment bill in the parliament. The UDMF leaders have a demand that the constitution amendment proposal should be registered in the parliament only after consultation with the political parties represent in the parliament. You have permission to edit this collection. Edit Close Just as Shinkai Makoto and Hosoda Mamoru are going strong in the race to become the new king of anime, it looks like Miyazaki Hayao, the man who was king for so many years may also be returning to the fold (once again). The Man Who Is Not Done: Miyazaki Hayao, the master animator announced that he wants to make a new anime feature, according to In a recently screened NHK television special,, the master animator announced that he wants to make a new anime feature, according to ANN Miyazaki has been working on Ghibli Musuem short Boro the Caterpillar but is apparently unsatisfied with it as a short and therefore has presented a project proposal for a feature film version, that could be completed by 2019. According to the report, Miyazaki has already started creating storyboards for the film, but is still awaiting official approval. Russia is going to ban Linkedin after a court ruling that found the professional social network to be in violation of the countrys data protection laws. violation of the countrys data protection laws. On Thursday, a Moscow court has confirmed the decision to ban the professional social network LinkedIn in Russia. LinkedIn is violating the countrys data protection laws that ask foreign and Russian companies to store personal data of Russian users within the countrys borders since Sept. 2015. This summer a court ruled in favor of Roskomnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, explaining that LinkedIn company didnt comply with Russian law. LinkedIn it is not storing information about Russians on servers inside the country, and it is processing information about third parties who arent registered on the site and havent signed the companys user agreement. The Russian Personal Data Law was implemented since September 1st, 2015, it requests foreign tech companies to store the personal data of Russian citizens within the country. The Law was designed for protecting Russian citizens from surveillance activities of foreign agencies such as the NSA. On Aug. 4, Moscows Tagansky Court approved a request from Russias communications watchdog Roskomnadzor to add LinkedIn to a list of Internet sites that violated Russias personal data laws. reported the Moscow Times On Sept. 1 2015, amendments to the law On Personal Data, which requires the localization of personal data on the territory of Russia, came into effect. Any Russian or foreign company working with Russian users must ensure recording, systematization, accumulation, storage and clarification of personal data of Russians using databases on Russian territory. LinkedIn is just the first firm that could be targeted by the Roskomnadzor which is now threatening other tech giants, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. The Russian courts decision has the potential to deny access to LinkedIn for the millions of members we have in Russia and the companies that use LinkedIn to grow their businesses. We remain interested in a meeting with Roskomnadzor to discuss their data localization request. reads a statement from Linkedin. Some companies like Google and Apple have already moved some of their infrastructures to Russia this year, differently from Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter that decided not to comply with the Russian law. The ban could take effect today, with Russian internet service providers blocking access to LinkedIn. LinkedIn could still appeal the courts decision to avoid being blocked across the country. Russia isnt the unique country that is going to adopt a similar law, the Germany passed similar legislation that forces tech companies to store German users data on servers located in the country. A number of American tech companies are investing billions of dollars combined to build data centers across Europe to comply with such rules. reported the NYT. In Brazil, a judge also blocked WhatsApp, the internet messaging service, after the company, which is owned by Facebook, refused to hand over data to help in a criminal investigation. In May, a Brazilian judge ordered to block access to the WhatsApp messaging service for 72 hours, it was the second time in five months. Brazilian authorities ordered ISPs to block WhatsApp in a dispute over access to encrypted data. The order to block the messaging service for 72 hours has been issued by a judge from the Brazilian state of Sergipe, the ISPs were obliged to comply the order to avoiding face fines. According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo the ban impacted more than 100 million Brazilian users. Pierluigi Paganini (Security Affairs Russia, LinkedIn) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Email Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On "Judicial Challenges to the Collateral Impact of Criminal Convictions: Is True Change in the Offing?" | Main | "A comeback for the death penalty?" November 13, 2016 Respond to Election 2016 outcomes by writing a commentary for the Federal Sentencing Reporter Wearing my hat as an editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, I am happy to reproduce a solicitation from the journal below (and I am eager to encourage regular readers to put together their views ASAP for possible publication): Seeking Commentaries for Federal Sentencing Reporter Special Issue to provide Advice for the new Congress and new Administration Every election cycle presents a notable opportunity for new discussions and debate over the state and future of the federal criminal justice system, especially when the election comes at the close of a two-term presidency. And after considerable talk before the campaign season of bipartisan agreement over the need for federal sentencing reforms, the 2016 campaign saw the two leading candidates take divergent tacks when discussing crime and punishment. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton spoke of the need for end-to-end reform of the criminal-justice. In sharp contrast, GOP candidate (and now President Elect) Donald Trump stressed the themes of "law and order." With the election of Donald Trump and with both houses of Congress to be under the control of the same party as the President Elect, the incoming Congress and new Administration could seek to move forward swiftly with criminal justice reforms. But what form might new reforms take? In a short document entitled "Donald Trump's Contract with the American Voter," the President-Elect pledged to work with Congress to establish new mandatory minimum prison terms for certain immigration offenses, to create a task force on violent crime, and to increase funding for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors. But beyond these few pledges, it remains quite unclear whether or how the new Trump Administration or the incoming Congress might want to make a criminal justice reform priority. In light of these developments and related uncertainty, the editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter have decided to create a special Forum opportunity to invite judges, lawyers and other sentencing practitioners, legal academics and sentencing researchers, to share "Advice for the new Congress and new Administration." We hope that contributors to this special issue of FSR can help provide both general ideas and specific proposals for how the new Congress and new Administration should approach criminal justice reform issues, especially as they relate to federal sentencing law and policy. FSR seeks to publish short commentaries ranging in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages on any federal crime and punishment topics authored in any reasonable form to provide Advice for the new Congress and new Administration. Commentaries could tackle big structural issues (such as whether the time has come to radically change the advisory guideline system), smaller technical issues (such as how to revise statutory mandatory minimum drug sentencing provisions), or any other topic of interest or concern to modern federal sentencing policy and practice. FSR hopes to publish in its December 2016 and February 2017 issues all proper commentaries submitted before the end of this year. Submissions must be received no later than November 28 for possible publication in the December issue and not later than December 24 for the February issue. Submissions should be sent electronically to sentencinglaw @ gmail.com with a clear indication of the author and the authors professional affiliation. All judges, lawyers and other sentencing practitioners, legal academics and sentencing researchers, and any others with an informed interest in federal sentencing law, policy and practice are encouraged to submit a commentary. November 13, 2016 at 11:06 PM | Permalink Comments I'm probably going to write on how Obama sucked on clemency and how Trump is going to make clemency great again. Posted by: Don't Ask | Nov 14, 2016 1:38:12 PM Sounds like a great topic good to me. Certainly DJT cannot do worse in next four years than Prez Obama did during his first term. Posted by: Doug B. | Nov 14, 2016 7:26:00 PM Post a comment Following a preliminary ruling by a federal judge last week suggesting that the court will hold Airbnb responsible for conducting transactions with hosts who are violating San Francisco law, the short-term rental company has done an about-face and said that it will cooperate with the city after all, as the Chronicle is reporting. Chris Lehane, the company's global policy chief, told the paper, "This is a serious proposal to once and for all address the core issues that exist in San Francisco. We can sit across the table from the city and address the issues in a win-win scenario." Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled against a preliminary injunction sought by Airbnb that would have halted the implementation of a new ordinance passed by SF's Board of Supervisors in June. That ordinance would put Airbnb and competitor Homeaway on the hook for fines of $1000 per day per illegal listing if and when the companies did business with hosts trying to skirt local law. Airbnb had been arguing that the 1996 Communications Decency Act absolved them of responsibility for the content posted by users of the site, however Judge Donato said that because the ordinance was written to specify that a transaction had to take place before a fine was levied, the issue was no longer about content. Donato sent the company and the city back to the negotiating table to come up with a mutually agreeable compromise on enforcement of the so-called Airbnb law, with another hearing scheduled for Thursday, November 17. Though they've resisted doing so now for several years as SF has sought to legislate against the loss of habitable units from the long-term rental market, Airbnb now tells the Chronicle that they are willing to release names, addresses, and guest stay data from their hosts' accounts in San Francisco, and that they will rejigger the system to disallow hosts from continuing to rent units beyond the city's 90-day per year cap which pertains to the rentals of entire homes or units, but not to hosts who rent out rooms in units they occupy. They will also have to crack down on the thousands of hosts who continue to use the site but have not registered, as they're obligated to do, with the city's Office of Short-Term Rentals, which requires them to pay hotel taxes and Airbnb is reportedly addressing this issue by creating their own online registration system, guaranteeing that all hosts are automatically registered with the city. Airbnb also says they will prevent the use of their site by owners of units where Ellis Act evictions have taken place. Earlier this year, Airbnb vowed to crack down on hosts in SF who were listing multiple units on the site, which is also illegal, and which they said was being done in 20 percent of listings in SF. John Cote, spokesperson for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, tells the Chronicle, "Were encouraged that Airbnb appears to be taking steps to meet their requirements under the law, and we look forward to them coming into full compliance." Meanwhile, the Board of Supervisors is set this week to discuss making the cap on full-unit rentals even more stringent, 60 days per year down from 90, and perhaps Airbnb is hoping that their willingness to crack down will keep the city from making this move. A previous attempt to curtail rentals and cap full-unit rentals at 75 days per year (Prop F) was rejected by voters in 2015. In related news, NBC Bay Area is reporting on the problem of SF homeowners who are on the hook for thousands of dollars in city fines because they had tenants who were using Airbnb and other platforms to rent their units illegally. One woman, who received a notice of violation from the city for her condo in Alamo Square, says her total fine is $22,000 despite the fact that it was her tenant who was acting illegally and not her. Previously: Airbnb Dealt Blow By Federal Judge In Their Challenge To SF Crackdown On Illegal Rentals Airbnb Reveals 20% Of SF Listings Are By Hosts Listing Multiple Homes, Vows Crackdown 16th BART plaza in SF. Wall of Empathy. pic.twitter.com/CQlN5iznNg Jeff Hunt (@jeffnhunt) November 14, 2016 Inspired by a subway tunnel in New York that has become an outpouring of grief and messages of support in the wake of the Democalypse last week, walls at three SF BART stations became "Walls of Empathy" Monday, with Post-It notes being shared by sad but defiant San Franciscans. Walls are ready for your messages of hope and empathy at 24th and Mission, 16th and Mission, and Montgomery Street stations, and they already display phrases like, "Lick wounds. Make plan. Rise up." New York artist Matthew Chavez, a.k.a. Levee, started his "Subway Therapy" wall last Wednesday, providing Post-Its for strangers to leave notes to each other and a message that simply said "Express Yourself" in a long underground tunnel that connects the Sixth and Seventh Avenue stations at 14th Street in Manhattan. According to ABC News, more than 1500 notes have gone up on the walls so far. People write supportive notes after Trump's election on a "Wall of Empathy" at the 16th St BART #Election2016 (Credit: Rachel Roberson) pic.twitter.com/MYvxBb2HaG KQED News (@KQEDnews) November 14, 2016 Close up of Wall of Empathy, 16th & Mission station entrance, San Francisco pic.twitter.com/tM3MN0taUr Newt Bailey (@nmbailey) November 14, 2016 According to CBS 5, the SF Walls of Empathy may only be temporary as they were installed in above-ground areas at the three BART stations. Organizers Muriel MacDonald, Tamilla Mir and Melissa Goldman issued a statement saying, "In this time when so many members of our community feel threatened, we hope our Wall of Empathy will communicate support and love, as well as help those who participate to process their feelings. Hate crimes and hateful rhetoric have no place in our city. We are stronger together." Previously: Thousands Join In Peaceful Sunday Protests At Lake Merritt, Golden Gate Park, Market Street China Live, the ambitious, four-story food hall and restaurant project from restaurateur George Chen (he owned the former Shanghai 1930, and originally opened Betelnut in 1995), has finally got an opening timeframe set for January, just shy of two years later than it was originally set to open, in March 2015. Eater reports that the much-delayed project at 644-660 Broadway, which has been in the works for at least three years and under construction for more than two (SFist first talked about it in August 2014), intends to be open in time for Chinese New Year. As we had heard in years past, China Live is intended to be akin to Eataly in New York, with multiple components under one roof including retail marketplace, several bars, a tea house, and a pair of restaurants including a fine dining, destination spot. The latter is called Eight Tables, and will contain just that, eight tables wherefrom you can enjoy a 12-course seasonal prix fixe for about $200 per person, at least in 2014 dollars. In addition to the retail-focused Marketplace on the ground floor, there will also be the more casual Market Restaurant & Bar, which we learned earlier would have 155 seats and boast "five specialized exhibition kitchens, including a noodle bar, a dim sum and dumplings kitchen, a Chinese charcuterie and barbecue station, a seafood and raw bar, and a rice table and seasonal vegetable kitchen." Also on the ground floor will be a tea shop called Oolong Cafe. Chen is working with his wife Cindy Wong-Chen on the project, and along with Eight Tables on the second floor will be a a craft cocktail bar dubbed Madames Parlour (at least that was the original name) with 42 seats, and an event space. Eater also reports that Joey Altman, executive chef/owner of Menlo Parks Wild Hare, will direct culinary operations, and Chi-Feng Lin has been hired as chef de cuisine, presumably for both restaurants, though that is unclear. Stay tuned for more as we learn it. SIOUX CITY | The bitter, partisan battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to win the presidency came to an Tuesday. The outcome was a surprise for many, since polls had predicted a Clinton win rather than the Trump victory that played out. Americans who got wrapped up in the long election slog have described feeling shocked or bruised and having a difficult time finding their feet again. Getting into a new headspace is an essential next step for some. Here are five tips for moving on, gleaned from varying sources and even some friends. (1) Limit input from social media and traditional news sources. Reducing exposure to media will stop the circulation of anxiety-causing election narratives. Stop the alerts on smartphones or go cold turkey on news. (2) Exercise and be active. Exertion outdoors in raking leaves or a longer dog walk, or inside by pumping iron or doing minute-long planks refreshes the body and brain. (3) Figure out your next new thing. Make a huge pivot and take on the hobby or pursuit that's been tucked in the recesses of the mind. Finally learn how to play an instrument (or a new one beyond the flute you once played in junior high). Buy art supplies and see where it takes you. Volunteer for a school or social agency in the community. (4) Double up on your sleep or mood-altering medications. Be forewarned, this tip doesn't have medical backing, but likely has a certain allure for some. Maybe downing a favorite comfort good is a better recommendation. Lots of that. (5) Or more holistically from the fourth option, take a tip from Henry David Thoreau, a renowned author, naturalist and philosopher, promoting simple living as America in the 19th century became more industrialized. "I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day... So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real," Thoreau wrote. NEW YORK At one point in the "Soundbreaking" documentary series, producer Paul Epworth describes a freshly heartbroken Adele singing him her new song, "Rolling in the Deep," pounding out the beat and her frustrations with her foot on a slab of wood. He shows how her foot-stomping was incorporated into the rhythm track of the recording, which became one of this century's biggest hits. It's one of several insights packed into the eight-hour series that begins Monday at 9 p.m. on most PBS stations. The series was the brainchild of Beatles producer George Martin, who died March 8. The sprawling overview was wrestled into shape by American producer Jeff Dupre, who made sure it was something other than a technology wonk's paradise. "You want it to not be a history lesson but an experience for the audience," Dupre said. "They'll hear a few new things, but also enjoy hearing it." The series is divided into several topics, including the role of a producer, the use of sampling and how the recording studio became an instrument. Each episode is packed with songs and personal stories. Tom Petty describes how Jeff Lynne stopped him upon first hearing the chord progression that became "Free Fallin'," and Questlove talks about being entranced by the sound of "Rapper's Delight." Giles Martin was a partner in the project, becoming more active with his father's illness. "His life was dedicated to making people happy through sound," he said. "If you think about it, it was really as simple as that. He tried to push boundaries all the time within that. The innovation, not just with himself but with a lot of people, he thought was quite an interesting story to tell." After the Beatles left the road, they partnered with Martin using the studio as a palette. "Soundbreaking" discusses the making of "Tomorrow Never Knows," where Martin was charged with bringing some of John Lennon's offbeat ideas to life. For much of the 1900s, the goal of recording technology was to make a listener experience being in a room as music was made, said Giles Martin, who went into the family business. In the 1960s and beyond with the constant introduction of new technology, that changed. Before being assigned to a young Liverpool band no one had heard of, George Martin produced comedy records, where he was accustomed to incorporating sound effects into recordings. With his background, he would have never gotten the job as Beatles producer in today's world, "which is kind of an interesting lesson that hasn't been learned since," Martin said. The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, both participate in "Soundbreaking." More than 150 artists and producers are interviewed. Besides George Martin and the Beatles, "Soundbreaking" talks about the 1960s work of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Because of Spector piling on the instruments, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" doesn't sound like a breakup, "it sounds like the end of the world," Dupre said. Fortunately, the series doesn't stay stuck in a bygone era. There are artists you wish you'd heard from Prince and Bruce Springsteen come to mind but "Soundbreaking" keeps up with changing styles and the diversity of creators. In the first episode, Dr. Dre explains that "it's very easy to make a hip-hop record. It's not easy to make a good hip-hop record." Although it's not something that Giles Martin wanted to spend much time on, the series doesn't avoid the masking power of recording technology: auto-tune's ability to make someone sound much better than they actually are. "This is more a celebration of what is great about music," he said. "Since pop music has begun, there are people who have sold records who can't sing. It's not a new thing." Mostly, "Soundbreaking" tells stories about how artists as fans were excited by certain sounds they heard on records and how they aspired to create something new themselves. "If you watch all the episodes, you will hear music in a new way, because you will have a greater understanding of how it was created," Dupre said. The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless. The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well. By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism. The St. Mary's County Museum Board of Trustees November meeting, originally scheduled for Monday, November 14, has been rescheduled for Monday, December 12. The meeting will take place at 8:30 a.m. in Room 14 inside the Potomac Building, 23115 Leonard Hall Drive, Leonardtown, Maryland.Museum Board of Trustees meetings are generally held every other month, on the second Monday of the month, beginning in January. Details on the dates and locations of 2017 meetings will be updated in the near future on the county website at www.co.saint-marys.md.us/docs/BoardsCommitteesCommissionsSchedule.pdf For more information, please contact the St. Mary's County Museum Division at 301-769-3235.The St. Mary's County Planning Commission meeting, scheduled for Monday, November 14, has been canceled. The applicant has removed their project from the agenda.The next scheduled meeting of the Planning Commission is Monday, December 12.Maryland is home to a number of outstanding senior volunteers, and St. Mary's County is fortunate to have three citizens recognized recently. Sam Brown was the recipient of the Outstanding Maryland Rural Health Volunteer Award in early October and Gail Murdock and Anne Marum were inducted into the Maryland Senior Citizens Hall of Fame on October 27.Brown, a member of the St. Mary's County Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), serves as President of A Community That Shares (ACTS), a non-profit organization that provides free convalescent medical equipment to persons in need. Recipients include persons with disabilities, frail seniors and veterans, as well as individuals recovering from an illness, injury, and/or medical procedure. The ACTS warehouse stores an array of assistive medical equipment available for loan, including wheelchairs, walkers, canes and hospital beds.In addition to his work with ACTS, Brown is a member of the Garvey Senior Activity Center Council (GSAC), board member of the St. Clements Hundred, member of the Friends of Colton Point Lighthouse, the Welfare and Employment Specialist with his church and serves with the St. Mary's County Interfaith Council coordinating snack packs for Benjamin Banneker Elementary School.With so many accomplishments, Brown remains humble."You don't do it for the praise," he said. "You do it for the good feeling you get in your heart."Among his many activities, Murdock serves along with Brown on the GSAC. He is also a member of the RSVP Community Advisory Committee, member of the Commission on Aging, Commander of the American Legion Post 221, Financial Officer for Voiture Locale 456, Assistant Judge Advocate for Southern Maryland District American Legion, charter member of the Mechanicsville Optimist Club, and a founding member of Helen's Veterans, Inc.Murdock got involved because he'd seen friends retire then withdraw from life and sit at home. It wasn't a life he wanted for himself, so he began volunteering."It's what I do, it keeps me busy," Murdock said. "I have a philosophygo home when you can't go anywhere else."Marum volunteers at Summerseat Farm, assisting with wedding planning. Loffler Senior Activity Center Operations Manager Joyce Raum, whose son recently had a wedding at Summerseat, has firsthand experience working with Marum."Anne's role with weddings at Summerseat (a major fundraising activity for the farm) starts with arranging the initial tour of the property for the intended and ends only after everything has been removed from the property, often the day after the wedding. Anne tends to her duty as the wedding coordinator lovingly, tastefully, respectful of individual preferences and most professionally. In our case, it was Anne to whom we turned with each and every inquiry. She had a thorough and fitting response each time. Anne made herself present and available through every step of the pre- and post-wedding planning."Marum has been working with Summerseat for 10 years. She also helped start St. Mary's County Christmas in April and served on the board of directors of the organization for a number of years. For Marum, volunteerism and community service has been part of her life since she was a child."It's been my family's way, it's been what I've done all along," she said. "It's important to give back."Looking to get involved? Give us a call! St. Mary's County Department of Aging & Human Services is always looking for volunteers. Individuals over 55 can enroll in the RSVP program and become matched with one of the many opportunities in the community. Visit www.stmarysmd.com/aging/rsvp-overview.asp or call RSVP Program Manager Norine Rowe at 301-737-5670 ext. 1653. Teens can get involved as well. Check out the Teen Court program at www.stmarysmd.com/teencourt/ or call Teen Court Coordinator Greg Jones at 301-475-4200, ext. *1852. Exoneree Sabein Burgess hangs out in his hometown of Baltimore on Tuesday, Oct. 20. Though the Maryland legislature has passed several laws facilitating the vacation of wrongful convictions, advocates and lawmakers say local prosecutors are blocking further progress. (Photo courtesy of Sabein Burgess) ANNAPOLIS (Nov. 14, 2016)Sabein Burgess wasted no time trying to prove his innocence.Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in June 1995, the then-24-year-old waited just 10 days after his trial before filing a motion for a new one.The act was his first step in a battle that would last 19 years, during which the Baltimore resident would spend the prime of his life in a jail cell."From the day I was locked up, I was saying I was innocent," Burgess, now 46, said. "From the night I spent in homicide to the day I came home (from prison)."Baltimore City prosecutors had charged Burgess with the murder of his then-girlfriend, Michelle Dyson, whom he discovered fatally shot in the basement of her Baltimore home that fall. Evidence against him included gunpowder residue discovered on his hands; none was ever found on his body or clothes, according to the National Registry of Exonerations."It was a heart-wrenching experience," Burgess, who was holding Dyson's body when police arrived, said. "Nobody can really understand what it's like to be innocent and still go about your daily activities as if you were guilty."Just three years after Burgess's conviction, a man named Charles Dorsey wrote multiple letters confessing to the murder, according to The National Registry of Exonerations, a law school project that tracks every known exoneration since 1989. He was then serving a 45-year prison term on different charges brought after Dyson's death.However, it took 16 yearsspanning multiple motions for new trials, the uncovering of new evidence, and the involvement of innocence advocatesbefore the prosecution agreed to vacate Burgess's conviction."To do something about him (Dorsey), they would've had to help me, and they didn't want to help me," Burgess said. "It wasn't in their best interest to admit they were wrong and I was right."You look back on all those years, and all the stuff they had," Burgess told Capital News Service. "People keep asking me all the time why they didn't do somethingif I knew that, I'd be rich."In Maryland, prosecutors and judges make it unusually difficult to overturn wrongful convictions, lawmakers and advocates say. Though the state boasts a Democratic electorate and a progressive legislature, its judicial and prosecutorial climate is surprisingly unconducive to securing exonerations for the wrongfully convicted; meaning cases take far longer than expected."It is, for some reason, incredibly hard in Maryland to get prosecutors or judges to admit that people who are innocent get convicted," said Shawn Armbrust, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, an advocacy group that helped Burgess become exonerated. "It's surprising, because it's Marylandthe legislature has been great, it's a progressive statebut there's not much enthusiasm in other areas of the system."If we were talking about Alabama, this wouldn't be a story. But we're not."To the layman, Maryland may appear poised to be a nationwide leader in exonerations.Some of the most high-profile cases took place here; Marylander Kirk Bloodsworth became the first American to be spared the death penalty by DNA evidence, in 1993.Most critically, its Democrat-controlled legislature is one of the most progressive in the country on the topic.Since 2008, some members of the Maryland General Assembly have worked closely with innocence advocates to push through some of the most exoneration-friendly laws in the nation, among them progressive policies concerning eyewitness identification, false confessions, and post-conviction DNA testing.In 2009, lawmakers enacted a statute that permits a convicted person to file a petition for a "writ of actual innocence" based upon a claim of newly discovered evidencea relatively low bar, experts say.However, these efforts have been stunted by state prosecutors and judges who appear unwilling to entertain the possibility of actual innocence, advocates and lawmakers say."The intent of the legislature has been to provide a mechanism for people who have been wrongfully convicted to have their cases heard and heard in an expeditious manner, but we don't see that happening," said Michele Nethercott, director of the University of Baltimore Innocence Project Clinic. "The legislative branch has been quite responsive; however, other players in the criminal justice system have not been."This contrast is unique to Maryland, said Rebecca Brown, policy director for New York-based advocacy group Innocence Project."It's extremely rare that all of the innocence-related activity is centered in the legislature," Brown said. "Usually it's a cumulative effort."In illustration, Armbrust points to neighboring Washington, D.C., where its Superior Court initiated forming a committee to examine wrongful convictions, and nearby Virginia, where she says multiple prosecutors are "more receptive to these cases."Utah, Alaska, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey also have courts that have issued rules to streamline the exoneration process, Brown said."That hasn't happened in Maryland," Armbrust said.As a result, trying to secure exonerations for those wrongfully convicted takes longer than it does in other states.The nation has seen 1,913 exonerations since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Maryland has seen 24, and neighboring states Virginia and Pennsylvania have seen 43 and 59, respectively, in that time.Those wrongfully convicted in Maryland have spent an average of 11.3 years locked up; almost three years longer than the national average of 8.8 years, according to the National Registry of Exonerations."We see enormous delays," Nethercott said.State judges are hesitant to grant motions for new trials. And, when they do, they delay the docketing of the cases, Nethercott said.Moreover, state prosecutors and judges frequently oppose the releaselet alone the testingof new evidence, one of the ways they can make it extremely difficult for defense attorneys to secure objects that may help prove their client's innocence, Nethercott said.Malcolm Bryant, whose 1999 murder conviction was vacated in May, was also prosecuted in Baltimore City. It took him and his legal team eight yearsand multiple trialsto obtain the release of the DNA evidence that proved him innocent."When the person is in the category of being wrongfully convicted, to put so many additional obstacles in their path is just immoral and counterproductive," state Sen. Delores Kelley, D-Baltimore County, said."Often the response is not only surprising," Nethercott said. "The level of outright hostility we often encounter in connection with these claimsthat's a little discouraging."One possible reason prosecutors and judges could be so opposed is that vacating a conviction contradicts everything they work toward."It's hard for them to think, 'I did something that resulted in someone getting convicted,'" Nethercott said. "They view themselves as advocating on behalf of those victimizedthe idea that they may have participated in bringing about an injustice is at odds with their self-concept."Another potential explanation is that entertaining the idea of wrongful convictions would mean having to evaluate the effectiveness of the criminal justice system."There's a fear that if you admit innocent people are in jail, you open up the system to too many questions," Armbrust said.Rather, prosecutors in Maryland "tend to like the status quo," said Kelley."They do what they think will keep everybody comfortable," Kelley said. "It's sad, but I think that's impacting (exonerations) significantly."The state's prosecutorial and judicial communities are taking steps to address the issue of wrongful convictionsjust at a slower pace than the legislature, said Lauren Lipscomb, chief of the Baltimore City Conviction Integrity Unit."We're moving in the right direction," said Lipscomb. "I just think that with most things in the criminal justice field, things tend to be slow-moving."However, some prosecutors say the state already has "robust post-conviction procedures," rendering any further progress on their part unnecessary."There are a number of places to make sure that we have it right with the right defendants," said Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger. "A lot of things have happened. We've made a lot of progress."Shellenberger says the legislature's progressive stance on exoneration means that action on behalf of the state's prosecutors is redundant."I don't know how much farther we have to go," Shellenberger said. "We got a lot of laws."Former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler says securing an exoneration isn't difficultthere just aren't any innocent people in jail in Maryland."It's not hard to get someone exonerated," said Gansler, who held office from 2007 to 2016. "There just aren't people who aren't guilty in jail."When asked if he thought the state could use more Conviction Review Units like Baltimore City's, Gansler said Maryland doesn't need them."Every case that should be reviewed is reviewed," Gansler said. "There's no question of actual innocence."The legislature is "skewed" to favor defendants, meaning that those accused are afforded so many protections that they are rarelyif everwrongfully convicted, Gansler said."There are just very, very, very innocent few people sitting in jail in Maryland," Gansler said. "There is nothing a lawyer would rather do than defend an actually innocent person, they are just extremely far and in-between."Looking back on that October night, Burgess says he bears no regret in remaining at the scene of the crime. If he hadn't, Dyson's young children would have discovered her body instead of him, he said."I slept well (in jail) every night because I did the right thing, even though it got me in a situation I had to endure," Burgess said. "Had I left, they would've had to have seen what I sawand I wouldn't wish that on anybody."But that doesn't make what happened to me right." (SS) About 500 protesters marched through the streets of Fort Lauderdale on Sunday night, chanting anti-Trump slogans and engaging a few observers in heated debate. "Build bridges not walls," they chanted as they crossed the Intracoastal bridge. The protesters were a mix of young and old, many holding posters. One held American flags. Just minutes into the march down Las Olas Boulevard, some of the protesters got into heated arguments with people who were sitting in restaurant outdoor patios. One woman and an elderly man exchanged verbal jabs. "Communist!" the man yelled at the woman. After several minutes, the woman rejoined the march. "That's my dad," said Cathy Josey, of Pompano Beach. "He's been calling me a communist since I was 20 years old because I vote Democratic, he's the original Rush Limbaugh viewer. I haven't had anything to do with him in five years, there's no Thanksgiving between us." Josey said she fears that Trump will follow through on his many campaign promises, especially those relating to immigration. "He changes so much you really don't know what he'll do, all you can go off is what he's done in the past." The protesters marched east on Las Olas to A1A, both of which were shut down to traffic by police. The march carried on for about three hours. After hitting A1A, protesters retraced their steps back to the downtown area and at one point walked to Broward Boulevard. It ended up back at the park at approximately 9:15 pm, with a short rally before they disbanded. "The people voted, Hillary Clinton, not Trump," said Gabrielle Carline, one of the organizers. "We should get rid of the Electoral College. "Trump is is responsible to get up and denounce all that hate that he created." Gail Koranyi stood on the sidewalk near the shops and restaurants on Las Olas and shook her head as the marchers passed. "I voted for Trump, but even if I didn't, I would tell them, grow up, that's the way it's gonna be, and if I had voted for Hillary, same thing. I am just sick over this." "Hillary is a liar and Trump, he's a billionaire and we need some like him because we're in a financial bad way," said Steve Greco, sitting at a table with friends. One woman was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct on Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale Police spokeswoman Tracy Figone said. The brisk march, cleared by police on motorcycles, was otherwise peaceful. It was organized through a social media page and started at Huizenga Plaza. Mostly peaceful protests have been held in more than a dozen cities across the country. On Sunday, more than 1,000 people marched in Manhattan, carrying signs in English and Spanish saying "Hate won't make us great" and chanting "We are here to stay." Protests were also held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia. In Oregon, police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during anti-Trump protests. A man in Portland was shot and wounded Saturday during a confrontation, police said. On Friday, a mostly peaceful anti-Trump protest has held by more than an estimated 400 who gathered at the foot of Trump Plaza in downtown West Palm Beach. The crowd kept off roads until a couple hundred protesters left to march through the downtown and briefly blocked traffic on Flagler Drive. In Miami on Friday night, a crowd of 300 to 400 people who gathered at Bayfront Park grew to what police estimated was several thousand who spilled into the streets and blocked major roads including Interstate 95, the Miami Herald reported. Another group gathered Saturday in Wynwood. Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza. Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres. NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 10 November 2016. NASA The three Expedition 50 crew members today are working to unload cargo and set up new computer servers onboard the station. In Kazakhstan, the next trio to launch to the International Space are continuing their final prelaunch preparations. Commander Shane Kimbrough completed work on Wednesday on the Oxygen Generation System (OGS) in the U.S. side of the International Space Station. The OGS was down for maintenance as he and ground specialists troubleshot the device due to a low voltage signature. Teams in Mission control conducted checkouts of the system today and reactivated it successfully, enabling OGS to once more supply oxygen to the space station crew. Final checkouts on the system are on the plan for Friday. Today, Kimbrough set up new laptop computers to allow ground specialist to load required software. He also unloaded additional cargo from the attached Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft. Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko performed routine maintenance on the ventilation system inside the Russian segment and took part in the Pilot-T experiment, which assesses the cosmonauts ability to perform complex tasks at different points during their spaceflight. Three new station crew members are in Kazakhstan preparing for a Nov. 17 launch to the station. Veteran station residents Peggy Whitson of NASA and Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, along with first-time space flyer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency will take a two-day, 34-orbit trip to the station after their liftoff and stay in space till May. The group reviewed flight plans and took part in traditional preflight events, including a media day and the ceremonial raising of flags and planting of trees. On-Orbit Status Report Oxygen Generation System (OGS) Maintenance: This morning the crew took a return-to-ground sample of the OGS Recirculation Loop and restowed all tools and hardware the crew has used the last 2 days for the OGS maintenance. The calibration settings for the OGA were updated based on performance this morning and the unit is now in Process, producing 2 kg of O2 per day. The current plan is to stay in this configuration overnight. Tomorrow, OGA will be put in a safe configuration to allow the crew to inspect the H2 ORU QD. Glacier-1 Buffer Troubleshooting: On October 17, 2016 Glacier-1 internal memory disk buffer reached 99% and was not responding to clean up commands. Glacier-1 was unpowered to prevent the unit from reaching max capacity on the memory disk and risk file corruption. Today, the crew connected the Glacier into the EXpedite PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (EXPRESS) Rack-2 Laptop Computer (ELC) for ground controllers to command through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and successfully cleared the internal memory disk buffer to below 70%. Glacier-1 is currently not in use and the next planned science operations are scheduled for SpX-10. Fluid Science Laboratory (FSL) Software Update: To overcome the non-functioning high rate data link nominally used to downlink data from the FSL, the crew connected the Multi-purpose Computer and Communications (MPCC) Laptop to the FSL via S-Video cable. The crew was unsuccessful in updating the software on the MPCC laptop, possibly due to a file error. Ground teams are evaluating the software files used during the update. European Space Agency (ESA) plans to have the Simulation of Geophysical Fluid Flow Under Microgravity-2 (Geoflow-2) experiments video and data downlink through the Joint Station Local Area Network (JSL) by connecting it to the MPCC. The Geoflow-2 experiment, first run is scheduled for November 14. Geoflow-2 studies heat and fluid flow currents within the Earths mantle. Geoflow-2 aims to improve computational methods that scientists and engineers use to understand and predict the processes in the Earths mantle that lead to volcanic eruptions, plate tectonics and earthquakes. Station Support Computer Server Load: The crew deployed and configured the new SSC Server2 ZBook laptop to allow ground specialist to load required software. The ground completed the SSC Server2 load. This afternoon, the crew moved the Ethernet and power cables to SSC Server1 and prepared the laptop for ground teams to load that laptop. SSC Server1 will host ISS-Server1 after the transition planned on Friday. SSC Server1 and 2 are the first use of the new ZBook model laptop onboard ISS. Orbital ATK (OA)-5 Cargo Operations: The crew performed 1.5 hours of Cygnus cargo transfer operations today. As of the last report the crew had completed 19.5 hours of cargo transfer with an estimated 7.5 hours remaining. International Docking Adapter (IDA) Survey: The robotics team completed the dynamic surveys that simulate the view of an incoming docking vehicle as it approaches the recently installed IDA at Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 (PMA-2). These surveys used the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) Camera Light Pan Tilt Assembly (CLPA) and pre-configured automatic trajectories to simulate vehicle motion. The approaches were performed in various lighting conditions. Todays Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. In Flight Maintainence (IFM) Oxygen Generator System (OGS) Sample Soyuz 732 Samsung Tablet Recharge, Initiate SM Ventilation Subsystem Preventive Maintenance. Group ?2 Finding the cause of current overload in FGB ???31 exchange bus via SM-FGB Docking Assembly -X. Oxygen Generation System (OGS) Photodocument and Restow GLACIER Cable Connect FSL MPCC Laptop Installation Hardware Pre-Gathering FSL Stowage Container Opening and S-Video Cable Retrieval FSL Stowage Container Closure MPCC1 USB Stick move from SSC11 Laptop to MPCC Laptop FSL MPCC Laptop Relocation, Powering On & Software Image Installation PILOT-T. Experiment Ops. Station Support Computer Server 2 Load Prep Soyuz 732 Samsung Tablet Recharge, Terminate Move Cables between Station Support Computer Servers Station Support Computer Server 2 Load Prep ??? maintenance Progress 433 (DC1) Transfers and IMS Ops Crew Handover Conference GLACIER Cable Disconnect Transfer Cygnus Cargo Operations Cygnus Cargo Operations Conference FSL MPCC Laptop Reboot FSL MPCC Laptop Hardware Relocation and Powering on Laptop FSL AVM brackets installation & Facility Core Element release in preparation of scientific operations Station Support Computer Server 1 Tear Down IMS Update Completed Task List Items None Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. 4B3 Battery Reconditioning SSC Server1 and 2 software load OGS activation Three-Day Look Ahead: Friday, 11/11: GCM Troubleshooting, PFS PuFF Calibration Syringe Maintenance Saturday, 11/12: Weekly Housekeeping, Crew Off Duty Sunday, 11/13: Crew Off Duty QUICK ISS Status Environmental Control Group: Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [???] 1 SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1) Off [???] 2 SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2) Off Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Idle Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Process Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Standby Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up Soyuz MS-03 NASA Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft its moved toward its encapsulation into the upper stage of its Soyuz booster Nov. 9. at Baikonur Cosmodrome. Expedition 50-51 crew members Peggy Whitson of NASA, Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency will launch on the Soyuz Nov. 18, Baikonur time, for a six-month mission on the International Space Station. NASA/Alexander Vysotsky Larger image One of the largest gatherings to date was present in London on Sunday (Nov. 13) for the fourth session organized by Ontario Racing (OR) regarding a proposed long-term funding framework for horse racing in the province. More than 50 people attended the Sunday session at the Metroland Media Agriplex, with a very engaged crowd discussing the framework with OR Executive Director Rob Cook and representing the Alliance was Western Fair District COO Mike Woods. Questions and comments from those in attendance mirrored many of the sentiments and concerns put forth by the harness racing industry in the other jurisdictions. Concerns were presented regarding purses; that with increasing costs these purses are insufficient, and that to make it worthwhile to race, some racetracks may have to be closed. The mayor of Lakeshore, Tom Bain issued concern that his local track in Leamington is one of those on the outside looking in. According to Bain, 2,000 jobs will disappear and there seems to be little to no discussion of a regional focus within this framework. He feels that the horse racing industry doesn't have a voice in this format going forward and they deserve one. Cook noted that OR needs to know about economic impacts and the facts from all stakeholders which is why these consultations are being scheduled to better understand options and alternatives going forward. More comments came from the audience regarding a voice in this process after the framework is complete. Legal counsel from the Lakeshore group mentioned the newly-formed horse people's alliance and noted that it's growing in numbers. Cook acknowledged those statements and confirmed OR is aware. The discussion continued on the interim OR board, a board making decisions in which some feel they don't have a voice. Cook stated there will be a full governance review and associations are welcome to express interest in being a part of the finalized board, with those at the session stating that board needs to be finalized as soon as possible. Further comments came with a sense of frustration, noting that information like the operating costs at Standardbred Alliance racetracks were not publicly released and why that is the case. Another question came from the aspect of urgency, asking what the rush is for this process. Cook replied that delaying and waiting further hampers bringing certainty to the industry, and confirmed the need to re-engage OLG on creating additional funding. Many asked what OLG is doing with respect to industry integration, with Cook noting that the industry integration has begun but communication will be forwarded regarding the need for this process to move faster with more cohesion. He noted a committee is looking at products but there are a number of challenges that go along with such a process. The framework discussion shifts next to Ottawa for a session on Wednesday night at Rideau Carleton Raceway. This framework, subject to government approval, will be presented to the industry for feedback. If approved, this framework will provide the industry as a whole from owners, trainers and breeders to racetrack operators with the certainty they need to make investments in their businesses. ORs primary objective, to this point, has been to engage directly with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. and the government to provide input to the development of a road map to sustainable funding for the industry. Now, ORs focus will shift towards engagement with the industry as a whole to garner feedback on this proposed framework. This proposed framework is based on key principles including: A new racetrack alliance: all Ontario racetracks that conduct live racing will be invited to create a new alliance. It is proposed that Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) will serve as the administrator of this new alliance. Longer-term, predictable funding: Ontarios horseracing industry can invest in their businesses beyond 2021. Ongoing accountability and transparency: decision-making based on evidence and agreed upon success indicators. Industry leadership: racetrack business plans, race dates, purse levels will be aligned across racetracks for a coordinated approach. Ontario Racing will play a key industry leadership role in the future. Next steps include widespread in person conversations with the industry about these principles, across Ontario. Sessions will take place in every region of the province that has horse racing. The following consultation schedule has been updated. (dates subject to change) Wednesday, November 16 - 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. - Ottawa (Rideau Carleton Raceway) Saturday, November 19 - 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. - Port Perry (Golfer's Dream Golf Club, Scugog) Tuesday, November 22 - 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Milton (Gambrel Barn, Country Heritage Park) Ontario Racing encourages all interested parties to submit their feedback about the future of the industry by accessing its online consultation portal here. The portal includes a series of questions and the option to attach a word document, for those who would like to share additional thoughts. The proposed long-term funding framework was outlined in a webinar, hosted on October 19, and can be viewed here. Ontario Racing will collate feedback from the industry, and this perspective will inform recommendations to government. There is an update in regard to the status of horseman John Beaton, who was one of the drivers involved in the serious accident this past Saturday (November 12) at Northside Downs in Nova Scotia. Trot Insider reported on Saturday that the accident occurred after the opening quarter-mile in the fourth race when I Am Able and driver Danny Campbell moved up to challenge leaders R Es Aiden and Rodney Gillis at the top of the stretch and fell, which caused a pileup of horses and drivers. Among those involved were Fleetwood Cam, driven by John Beaton, and Shiny Mach, with Roddy Hurley aboard. Campbell, Hurley and Beaton were taken to hospital. Campbell sustained three hairline cracks to his hip and was to undergo more x-rays to his back. He is expected to be out of action for at least six weeks. Hurley suffered a bad concussion along with bumps and bruises, but was released from hospital and is resting at home. As an article by CBC News Nova Scotia explains, Beaton also suffered some serious injuries. According to Beatons wife, Kim, the horseman was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax where his injuries were determined. "They have him stabilized and everything, Kim said. He's in the outpatients there. He has broken ribs that I know of and his back, it may be vertebrae in his back. They're working on him now. I'm very upset. I want everything to work out all the best for him." It is not believed at this time that any of the horses involved in the accident suffered serious injuries. Simon Poirier, an owner of one of the horses involved, stated in social media that local horsepeople should be commended for their quick actions. As an owner of one of the horses involved in the accident yesterday, Id like to [thank] all the horsemen from Northside Downs that helped with my horse whom seemed to get the [worst] of it, Poirier wrote. But with the great help she received she is going fine today walking sound and seems very alert just some cuts and scrapes to deal with but looks like she will be fine. Please join Standardbred Canada in wishing all of the horsemen and horses that were involved in the accident speedy and complete recoveries from their injuries. (With files from CBC News Nova Scotia) National Bible Week Commemorating 75th Anniversary with Special Reading of the Bible on Floor of the US House of Representatives National Bible Association with Rep. Doug Lamborn (CO) host bi-partisan event to include readings from the Bible on Tuesday November 15th, 2016. WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- In commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of National Bible Week, a bi-partisan event will be held on the floor of the US House of Representatives and will include readings from the Bible. Led by U.S. Congressmen, Doug Lamborn of Colorado Spring, CO., the event will be held in the afternoon hours of Tuesday November 15th, 2016 and will include the reading of passages from three different Bibles: A Catholic Bible A Jewish Bible A Protestant Bible WHO: Members of the House of Representatives led by U.S. Congressmen, Doug Lamborn of Colorado Spring, CO., in partnership with National Bible Association. WHAT: Bi-Partisan Commemoration Event of 75th Anniversary of National Bible Week WHEN: 3pm ET exact time may vary depending on potential House schedule overruns. WHERE: The Floor of The House of Representatives DAY OF POINT OF CONTACT: Elise Inman - (e) : Elise Inman - (e) einman@nationalbible.org (p) 615 775- 6902 The National Bible Association is a non-profit, educational association operating in the public square that provides a platform for our Nation's Leaders to encourage people to read the Bible. The National Bible Association was created in 1940 by a group of business and professional leaders in New York City. Their purpose was to find hope for America while war raged in Europe. Today, the strength of National Bible continues as an association of dedicated members who encourage Bible reading locally, through events and special projects, and nationally, through media campaigns. This is done primarily through our three main program areas: International Bible Week (previously National Bible Week), Media & Literature, and Awards and Recognition. Our goal is to encourage everyone to read the Bible and raise awareness of the Bible's importance and relevance to our nation as a whole, as well as in the lives of individuals. The essential component of totalitarian propaganda is artifice (het toepassen van kunstgrepen. svh) . The ruling elites, like celebritie... Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy . This slow cooker butternut squash lentil curry is creamy and flavored with warm spices, butternut squash, coconut milk and lime juice! Works great as a comforting vegan dinner, or for meal prep. This slow cooker butternut squash lentil curry is a reader favorite around here! Not only is it super easy to get on to cook (no sauteeing!), but it tastes amazing and is hard to screw up. Inspired by my favorite Red Lentil Dal recipe, this version has butternut squash, which adds a little bit of sweetness, coconut milk, which makes it richer and adds a little coconutty flavor, and lime, which brings out all the flavors. This curry also happens to be one of my favorite meal prep lunch recipes: makes a big batch and is easy to portion out with rice and freeze for later. It's filling, but healthy, and I love that it's vegan, as we are making an effort to consume less meat these days. Reasons you'll butternut squash lentil curry it's a 'dump and go' slow cooker meal it freeze/thaws great (before or after cooking!) it is vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free Recipe video Watch the video below to see exactly how I prepped this curry. Its so easy! You can find more of my recipe videos on my YouTube channel. Don't forget to pin this post to save it for later! What's in this curry? Red lentils- use dried red lentils. This recipe has not been tested with green or brown lentils and probably won't work with pre-cooked canned lentils (unless you want soup) use dried red lentils. This recipe has not been tested with green or brown lentils and probably won't work with pre-cooked canned lentils (unless you want soup) Butternut squash - 4 cups, which is roughly half a butternut squash. You could use frozen pre-cut butternut squash cubes as a shortcut! - 4 cups, which is roughly half a butternut squash. You could use frozen pre-cut butternut squash cubes as a shortcut! Aromatics - onion, garlic and ginger. - onion, garlic and ginger. Canned goods - diced tomatoes + juices and coconut milk. Use a good quality full fat coconut milk for the best results! Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk has never let me down. - diced tomatoes + juices and coconut milk. Use a good quality full fat coconut milk for the best results! Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk has never let me down. Spices - curry powder, cumin, ground coriander, garam masala and salt - curry powder, cumin, ground coriander, garam masala and salt Stock - use vegetable stock for a vegan recipe or homemade bone broth - use vegetable stock for a vegan recipe or homemade bone broth Lime juice- to stir in before serving to bring a bit of acidity and make all the other flavors pop! Can I cook this in the Instant Pot? Yes, you can! While I have not tried this myself, reader Patricia recommends a 4 minute cook time with a 10 minute natural pressure release. Can I swap the butternut squash for something else? I think sweet potatoes would work well as a replacement. Can I skip the coconut milk in this recipe? I have not tested this without the coconut milk. I *think* you could leave it out, and add in some cream or yogurt at the end of the cook time, but I am unsure of how this may alter the flavor. If you try it without the coconut milk, please leave us a comment below to tell us how it tasted! Tips for the best curry! half batch - this recipe makes 8 servings. Leftovers do freeze, but if you want to cut it in half, you can cook it in a small 2.5 quart slow cooker. - this recipe makes 8 servings. Leftovers do freeze, but if you want to cut it in half, you can cook it in a small 2.5 quart slow cooker. mash it - after cooking, I take a potato masher and mash until it's creamy and smooth. This is totally optional. - after cooking, I take a potato masher and mash until it's creamy and smooth. This is totally optional. shortcut - use pre cut frozen butternut squash to save time on prep - use pre cut frozen butternut squash to save time on prep meal prep - this can be meal prepped in one of two ways: freezer crockpot- assemble all ingredients (except for the stock and lime juice) in a sturdy gallon-sized freezer bag. Squeeze out air and freeze for up to 3 months. cook ahead- cook as directed, cool, and portion out with rice. Store in the fridge for up to 4 days or freeze for up to 3 months. - this can be meal prepped in one of two ways: Find my favorite slow cookers and other kitchen equipment in my shop! More vegan slow cooker recipes This recipe was originally published in 2016. It has been re-written and published in 2019 with a brand new video! Same great recipe. Play at the new site will be free and first come, first served through the year's end. BY OLIVIA ROSE STAFF MEMBERS of the National Health Insurance Plan (NHIP) are calling for the removal of Chief Executive Officer, Zaneta Burton. In a correspondence received by the Weekly News staff members with the exception of one person have signed a petition to remove the current CEO from office. Prior to this move, a number of Sick-outs and sit-ins were planned and executed by irate staff of the NHIP to demonstrate their frustration with management. Workers last month staged a no-show, leaving many visitors upset and management scrambling to rectify the situation. The petition which was addressed to the NHIP chairman, who since the inception of the saga, has allegedly not intervened, stated: "Under the leadership of Mrs. Burton, we the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands have been oppressed, victimized and demoralized. "Mrs. Burton's leadership skills leave much to be desired and at this time we feel that we have had enough. "After much consideration, we as a united group have decided to go forth and make all concerned aware of what has transpired at this organization and demand that Mrs. Burton be removed from office. "We believe that we can no longer work with Mrs. Burton and it is in the best interest of all concerned that she be replaced. The staffers also bemoaned the lack of action by the Minister of Finance Washington Misick and Premier Rufus Ewing, who has direct jurisdiction for the National Health Insurance Board (NHIB). An insider told the Weekly News that Burton lacks the caring temperament for her staff and the people of the Turks and Caicos, as she would always state that she 'is a Bahamian and has somewhere to go'. Coupled with the removal of the CEO the staff is calling for a salary increase. A document entitled, "Staff Proposals and Grievances and a Way Forward has since been submitted to the board. The document outlines several proposals with the objective to "affect change in the organization, promoting a healthier/positive image, providing greater customer service, increasing personal and professional development and implementing a cohesive, highly structured management team to carry out the proposed strategies. It further stated that the general consensus of the members is the replacement of Mrs. Burton as CEO since she demonstrated lack of leadership skills, inability to promote a team and productive environment and personal practices are not conducive to a healthy relationship between sta? and Burton. Staff expressed a grave dissatisfaction with the level of professional development and training allowed. It was felt that only lip service was ascribed to the training mandate and even though monies were allocated, the members were not given the opportunity to undergo training that would increase their productivity and level of competency. BY OLIVIA ROSE THE GOVERNMENT is in the process of negotiating with private land owners to create alternative disaster routes in the event of Tsunami. At a press conference recently held to commemorate the first World Tsunami Day, it was revealed that the planning department has started to consult with land owners in the Blue Hill area to create more routes. November 5 was designated World Tsunami Awareness by the United Nations General Assembly. According to Assistant Director of Planning Toriano Williams private land owners must consider the public good. He revealed that the negotiations are centered on addressing the issue of congestion in the event of major disaster. He said: "Thats one of the issues on our table; the Government is currently working with different private land owners and trying to provide the different routes. He noted that: "There was one that was coming out of Chalk Sound; however, that would only deal with taking parts of some Blue Hills to Chalk Sound area. "But now that we are currently looking at from Blue Hills into the town, I think were on a table and were working on that currently, so at this stage it will come on stream next year fully. He noted that: "Blue Hills front road, we can probably connect from the front road leading directly into the town or more up to the highway, or we look at the back road, theres a route coming from out of Blue Hills that can take you towards the airport. "So we`re looking at different options and doing case studies and analysis. The date for the annual celebration was chosen in honor of the Japanese story of "Inamura-no-hi, meaning the "burning of the rice sheaves. During an 1854 earthquake a farmer saw the tide receding, a sign of a looming tsunami. He set fire to his entire harvest to warn villagers, who fled to high ground. Afterwards, he built an embankment and planted trees as a buffer against future waves. The UN General Assembly has called on all countries, international bodies and civil society to observe the day, in order to raise tsunami awareness and share innovative approaches to risk reduction. The debut World Tsunami Awareness Day focuses on education and evacuation drills. For the pass five (5) years here in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies (DDME) has embarked on raising Tsunami Awareness by working with the public and private schools here in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Some of the key activities undertaken in the past to promote awareness include, observance of annual Earthquake and Tsunami Awareness Week in January and Tsunami evacuation drills were held with a number of the schools. DEMA has also worked assiduously to draft a National Tsunami Response Plan and Standard Operating Procedures. Additionally, recently following the Haiti Earthquake January 2010, the Turks and Caicos Islands were placed under a tsunami watch. In light of this DEMA says the country can longer afford to focus on just hurricanes and flooding but need to look at other hazards that give very little to no warning but their impact is far more dangerous and deadly. By Daisy Handfield DURING a recent press conference, Government officials from the Ministry of Education updated the media on its Early Childhood Pilot Program, a curriculum advertised as a syllabus to reform and revise the way Turks and Caicos schools teach and how students learn. The new curriculum was launched on September 14, with a goal to advance and improve the learning experience of every child in the TCI. The press conference was held on Tuesday, in the conference room at the Hilly Ewing Building in Providenciales. The prospectus, which is touted under the slogan no child left behind, aims to boost the holistic potential of students through improved teaching strategies. Rhonda Blackman-Smith, curriculum development officer with the Ministry of Education, said during the press conference that she has received positive feedback from the participating teachers, at least from five out of six schools that the curriculum has been implemented in. "Our teachers felt that it was what was needed and they welcomed the document. They felt that the curriculum was relevant, it was broad and it was balanced and it created the length of content and depth that they wanted. Our teachers felt that working with the document was easier for them because it lends itself to content, objectives and right down to the assessment, Blackman-Smith said. Blackman-Smith further explained that the curriculum is more child-centred and more active learning. Laranda Parker, teacher at the Ianthe Pratt Primary School, who was present during the press conference said that the experience with the new curriculum has been great so far. She said: "I was one of those persons that was able to help out with the writing of the math curriculum and giving ideas for others. What I like about it is that with this curriculum, it is not just a document handed to you, without further guidance. Akierra Missick, Minister responsible for Education, said that the program was important because it was a way to engage all of their educators and stakeholders. The Minister added that the feedback is of paramount importance, as the Ministry solidifies the program, the curriculum, the document for the younger citizens of the Turks and Caicos Islands. "This is just a first step, when we have a solid foundation at the early childhood level, we will see our children blossom, Ms Missick said. The curriculum has been implemented in all three Government primary schools in Providenciales, Eliza Simons and Ona Glinton in Grand Turk and private school, Best Institute. The focus subjects are mathematics, science, social studies and language arts. You may know about the speediest running animal of the planet Cheetah which can run 75 mph and about the sailfish, which motors through the water at 68 mph. But do you know who the fastest flyer is in the animal realm? Well, it is the Brazilian free-tailed bats which speed is clocked at 160km/hour. A new study held by a group of US researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany have found a new front-runner among the acrobats of the air which can fly 160 kilometres per hour in the night sky. The Brazilian free-followed bat shoots during the evening skies at more than 160 miles for an hour. The streamlined body shape and longer than regular wings contrasted with other bat species empowers this type of Brazilian-bats to achieve such high speed of flying in the night. Brazilian bats are small yet ravenous creatures, known to eat up moths, bugs, and various creepy crawlies by the hundreds every night. They fly in groups of a few million, their settlements shaping the biggest accumulation of warm-bodied creatures around. Concerning their flying paces, it was thought to be not more than the speed of 59 mph, but the new research conducted by biologists at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has proved it to be wrong and said that this type of Brazilian Bats fly quicker than its sibling creatures, as per new research drove. Birds are still considered as a model for aeronautics designs today and stay unequalled with regards to flight qualities. While most flying creatures can take off at relatively low speeds, this newly spotted Brazilian Bat has proven to be something more exciting and more high-flying. 3: 15 pm Reacting to the RBI's policy, BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman lashed out at the government, arguing that RBI cannot sort out the government's economic problems and the common man is at the receiving end as interest rates remain at elevated levels. RBI need not consult govt for mid-quarter review, says Pranab 12: oo pm Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the central bank has also taken into consideration the consumer price inflation in May which could be the reason for it to hold its policy rates. The Reserve Bank of India need not consult the government for a mid-quarter policy review, the finance minister was quoted as saying on CNBC-TV18. The finance minister had on Saturday said Indian economy is in difficult situation and expressed hope that the RBI will keep this in mind while devising its policy review. Meanwhile commenting on the policy, Dinesh Thakkar, CMD, Angel Broking said " the markets were expecting at least a 25bps cut, so a status quo policy comes as a bit of a disappoint. But the fact is that in spite of significant decline in growth, inflation has remained very sticky in India, creating challenges in monetary policy-making. I believe the markets and policy-makers alike will continue to look for cues on the domestic front from the inflation readings and crude prices, and if core inflation continues to slow-down on expected lines due to weak demand, then in the coming quarters we will likely see rate cuts, though more slow-paced than earlier expected," he said. Rates unchanged; inflation pressure too strong to ease 11: 00 am The Reserve Bank of India has left the policy unchanged and delivered nothing for the financial markets by leaving the CRR and the repo rate unchanged.The central bank has left the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 8.0 percent. RBI, however, will continue to use open market operation to contain liquidity pressures. However, the markets which were at least expecting a 25 basis point cut, tanked immediately, with the BSE down 140 points at around 16825 levels and the Nifty near the day's low at 5080 levels. The benchmark 10-year Government bonds too declined from day's high. The rupee also lost ground versus the US dollar. The repo rate is the rate i set by the central bank and is modified to signal its stance on how money should be priced in the system. Now that the repo rate is left unchanged, it means the RBI is tightening its monetary stance. Fewer cars, houses and goods are bought when interest rates are high and fewer investment projects are funded. This means borrowing becomes more expensive, resulting in a slowdown in economic activity and growth. It looks like the RBI is ready to live with slower growth but not high inflation. While growth in 2011-12 has moderated significantly, headline inflation remains above levels consistent with sustainable growth, said the central bank. The central bank said that factors other than interest rates were contributing to the growth slowdown. It also said that management of liquidity remains a priority, adding that the current account deficit is wide despite growth slowdown. " This is symptomatic of demand-supply imbalances and a pointer to the urgent need to resolve the supply bottlenecks," it said. Crude is an argument for cutting interest rates but it has negated by the rupee depreciation.Moreover, the RBI says easing core inflation has shown demand conditions. RBI's furute action depends on external factors, domestic developments and inflationary risks, said the reserve bank. "The Reserve Bank had frontloaded the policy rate reduction in April with a cut of 50 basis points. This decision was based on the premise that the process of fiscal consolidation critical for inflation management would get under way, along with other supply-side initiatives. Our assessment of the current growth-inflation dynamic is that there are several factors responsible for the slowdown in activity, particularly in investment, with the role of interest rates being relatively small. Consequently, further reduction in the policy interest rate at this juncture, rather than supporting growth, could exacerbate inflationary pressures," RBI said in its statement. C. Rangarajan said that the RBI may take a decision on cutting interest rates at the end of the quarter. He added that the central bank has taken a very cautionary approach as the may inf lation data did not give enough room to cut rates, adding that further action depends on inflationary pressures. Sujan Hazra, chief economist at Anand Rathi Securities said "The Reserve Bank of India's action is clearly disappointing. Inflation remains a concern, but the slowing growth needed at least a 50-basis-point rate cut. The RBI will have to ease sooner or later, otherwise there will be further challenges to growth.It can cut the cash reserve ratio even before the next policy. The decision will depend on the liquidity tightness." RBI is of the opinion that depreciating rupee should help in expanding exports. "Rupee fall to eventually act as demand stimulus," the bank said. Separately, the central bank enhanced the eligible limit of the Export Credit Refinance (ECR) facility for scheduled banks (excluding RRBs) from 15 percent of the outstanding export credit eligible for refinance to 50 per cent. The move will be effective in the fortnight beginning June 30. This would provide an additional amount of Rs 30000 crore as liquidity support to banks. Now all eyes would be on next policy meet which is due in July, where RBI could possibly act. . 10:45 am Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy review, which is expected to provide an impetus to the Indian economy is due in about fifteen minutes and most analysts are expecting a repo rate cut (The rate at which theRBIlends money to commercial bank) by 25 basis points, leaving the cash reserve ratio ( amount of funds that the banks have to keep with the RBI) unchanged. A reduction in the repo rate helps banks get money at a cheaper rate and vice versa. RBI uses the CRR to drain out excessive money from the system. There is widespread expectation among many market participants that the RBI will once again cut policy rates. The banking regulator has surprised the market with a higher-than-expected rate cut of 50 bps in the previous policy meet. A CNBC-TV18 poll conducted suggests that most participants are betting on a 25 bps cut in rates. Ramesh Damani, member BSE says he will be surprised to see more than 25 bps rate cut today. Damani, in a interview with CNBC-TV18 said Indian equity market will strengthen from a favourable RBI action. In addition, valuations are attractive at these levels though investors are sceptical of taking the plunge. Leif Eskesen of HSBC Global Research told CNBC-TV18 that there isn't a strong case for a cut in cash reserve ratio from the Reserve Bank today. "I don't actually think there is necessarily a case for cutting rates either, but nevertheless we think they would still do it," he added. Eskesen believes the Reserve Bank will be influenced by global events, mainly the unresolved issues in the eurozone, and will signal easing on account of weak economic data. India's March quarter economic growth of 5.3 percent was far worse than expected and the weakest annual pace in nine years. The data sparked calls from industry for immediate action to lift an economy that Standard & Poor's says could be the first BRIC nation to lose its investment-level credit rating. April industrial output figures last week suggested little pickup in economic growth heading into the current quarter. Core inflation, which excludes food and fuel, is running below 5 percent, which also helps to justify a rate cut. Investors and companies have long called for India to implement pro-growth policies that would spur investment and help remove bottlenecks in the economy blamed both for restricting growth and keeping inflation high. US rating agency S&P's warning put India on a negative watch although with investment grade. Inflation has also not cooled off much. The May inflation data at 7.5-7.55% is a little higher than April and more importantly it is accompanied by consumer price inflation, which is 10.5% for April itself. Bankers especially State Bank of India (SBI) said that they will pass on the cuts in the form of lower lending rates only if the CRR is cut. So much depends on how serious the RBI is about monetary transmission. tech2 News Staff Google Pixel, the current flagship launched last month by Google was hacked by a Chinese hacker team under 60 seconds. The team hacked Apple Safari and Adobe Flash along with Google Pixel in the PwnFest in Seoul last week. The white-hat hacker team from Qihoo 360 used an undisclosed security flaw to perform a remote code execution attack and took away $ 1,20,000 cash prize from the company. The hacking attacks included the team launching Google Play Store before opening Chrome and opening a web page that said "Pwned By 360 Alpha Team", as reported by The Register. According to Google the bug used in the hacking attack was fixed within 24 hours of the demonstration at the event, and the code changes have made their way to the stable build branch of Google Chrome. This is the second time that the Google Pixel has been compromised in two weeks. Qihoo 360 also breached Adobe Flash which took them four seconds. The first hack was demonstrated by Keen Team which utilises a zero-day exploit during Mobile Pwn2Own event in Japan. Google has still not managed to fix the zero-day exploit. The Keen Team demonstrated the attack again during the event showing that they can hack all sections of Google Pixel including phone calls, messages, contacts and photos stored on the device. Nash David 8 November was supposed to be a normal day. And it was. But as millions of Indians wrapped a normal workday and sat around the dinner table, TV news channels flashed an alert. PM Modi was to address the nation. Like every other Indian, I glued myself to the television set as well. What followed was a government announcement that in a matter of hours Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes would cease to be legal tenders. Out of curiosity, I wanted to know what digital Indians felt around the on-going chatter. Over the weekend, I ran several search queries across analytical tools to gauge what the kind of sentiment was buzzing online. Here are my findings. Chatter online was largely backlash for the cash inconvenience With widespread inconvenience, users felt execution could have been much better. Although emergency services were to continue to accept these large denominations, small businesses struggled with a surge in demand for returning the balance change. In short, the buzzing cash market was getting sluggish. And individuals depending on cash were having a tough time. If you thought this was supposed to result in backlash for the Prime Minister, well, that didn't happen. For those with hard earned cash, venting out on social media is natural. On the other hand, those with wads of unaccounted cash lying at home would've probably disconnected from social media. Theyd rather be sweating it out under stress or be running around trying to dump it in garbage bins, or let it flow in the Ganges. The key hashtags I considered were #BlackMoney, #Demonetisation, #NarendraModi, #RBI among several others. I used a mix of social media tools including Sentiment140 among a few more to make sense of the rise in chatter on social media. What I found was, on a larger scale, online sentiment was rather positive when it came to the efforts taken by the Prime Minister to curb black money. Most agreed this was necessary. And would help in weeding out the concern of unaccounted black money. Interestingly, #BlackMoney, #CurrencyBan and #NarendraModi throw contrasting sentiments. On Saturday night (after day 4 of the currency ban), conversations were 57 percent negative for #BlackMoney. That was despite people welcoming the move. Soon it turned into complaints over how banks were executing the move. That seems surprising to begin with because curbing black money (as a derivative from corruption) is supposed to have been one of the most sought after concerns from the electorate during the elections. People feel differently towards the Prime Minister and the RBI This was one trend I was surprised over. One would assume that opinion towards the Prime Minister and the RBI would be aligned. Both were supposed to work in tandem to ensure smooth functioning and transitioning to the new cash market. However, from the analysis, it appears that the larger online base is swinging in favour of the Prime Minister, while the RBI could have done much better in ensuring that the transition was smooth. Essentially, what this meant was that users on Twitter supported the government on the issue of demonetisation, but had grave complaints with the banking system in terms of the execution of the plan. Many online users complained about how banks werent doing enough. A few tweets also were vocal about how banks were closing at 4 PM when they were supposed to stay open will 8 PM. A few tweets expressed their expectations from the RBI in taking action against banks that werent helping customers. A few also mentioned that banks were displaying notice boards that said only the specific bank customers could get currency notes. Such and similar operational hurdles got the sentiment to sway towards negative. https://twitter.com/yogeshaugust/status/797736354352427008 Execution makes a huge difference In such a nationwide move, execution makes all the difference. Disbursement of cash, access to ATMs with cash, as well as the arduous task of queuing up for withdrawal were key areas where the conversations were turning negative. In fact, shortage of cash and the issue of calibration of ATMs to read the new Rs 2000 notes were also contributors in the negative sentiment. Concerns about how notes would be scarce given the short notice didn't help either. Since banks and ATMs were shut on the first day of the ban, users were sinking in the implications of the move. However, the next day, when banks and ATMs opened is when the backlash began. This continued through the weekend as well, when long queues outside banks and ATMs where a common sight. All through, there were some tweets that questioned the need for the Prime Minister to be travelling when there was a situation in the country. But largely, online sentiment still supported the demonetisation move. hidden To help customers scale technology availability with IT demand, Dell EMC on Monday announced a range of products, solutions and consumption models that address cloud, big data analytics, converged infrastructure, storage, data protection and security. "Today's organisations must embark on a digital transformation. To truly realise their digital future, we believe the vast majority of organisations will transform their IT through a hybrid cloud strategy," David Goulden, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell EMC, said in a statement. Dell EMC announced the expansion of its leading converged infrastructure portfolio through integration with PowerEdge servers into VxRail Appliances and VxRack System 1000 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The company also announced the new Analytic Insights Module delivering all of the software, hardware and services necessary to stand up an environment for both big data analytics and cloud native application development in days rather than weeks. Dell unveiled its Endpoint Data Security and Management portfolio encompassing technologies from Dell, Mozy by Dell, RSA and VMware AirWatch, offering data protection, backup and recovery, identity assurance, threat prevention and advanced response, and endpoint device and application management capabilities. The company rolled out updates to the Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) platform, with new support for Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers. IANS tech2 News Staff Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, a leading cyber security services vendor, has presented evidence that Microsoft is pushing out third party anti-virus software companies from its ecosystem. The problem is with the latest version of Windows 10. The bundled Windows Defender app aggressively pushes itself to users over third party anti-virus software. On upgrading to the latest version of Windows 10, Microsoft disables "incompatible" security applications. Windows Defender takes over even if the software passes the initial compatibility check. If users have installed a third party security service, and are using it, Windows pushes out an alert claiming weaker security because Windows Defender is disabled. Enabling Defender prevents the existing anti-virus software from working, but this is not immediately apparent from the graphics used in the alert window. Additionally, Microsoft has restricted third party software vendors from pushing alerts to continue subscriptions, to within three days after expiry of the license. If a user forgets to renew a license, there is a buried notification in the Security Center, and Windows turns on Defender. Microsoft has limited the operating system to support just one anti-virus software. This may seem like a bad idea because the software might be incompatible, fight over viruses and use up too many resources. However, it prevents users from running trial versions of anti-virus software while being subscribed to a service. If such a situation occurs, Windows turns off both anti-virus software and turns on Defender. The rule for only one anti virus software on the operating system does not apply to Defender itself. Defender scans the system periodically, and on such scans, prompts the user to switch to Defender. Kaspersky claims that having a single anti-virus solution for all Windows users is in itself a security threat. Malicious attackers will have to get through the defenses of just one software instead of compromising a wide range of anti-virus software. Kaspersky also alleges that Windows Defender provides security that is markedly below the industry standard, in terms of false positives and missed samples. Chris Hallum, Senior Product Manager of Windows Client Security at Microsoft, outlined improvements to Windows Defender for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update in a video posted on YouTube. Over the course of the video (at 58:20), Hallum says "I can't promise you we will be number one, but I can promise you that we will be within a tenth of a point, so meaning basically like we have very comparable protection. And so this is something that I think you should put on a roadmap, I want you to evaluate it, and I want you to think about kicking out third party antivirus." The blog post by Eugene Kaspersky calls for co-operation from the entire third party software industry, as well as anti-virus vendors, to take on Microsoft for its violation of anti-competition legislation. Kaspersky has taken up the matter with official bodies around the world, including the EU and Russia. Responses to the post ranged from cheering Kaspersky in taking such a measure, to users who genuinely wanted an integrated security solution from Microsoft. hidden The consortium that approves emojis has signed off new ones, including a woman wearing a hijab, woman breastfeeding a baby and a person doing yoga. The new emojis are likely to arrive on smartphones next year after Unicode, the international consortium that sets their global standards, proposed the 51 icons. It will take the total number of the cartoon images, which are increasingly being used to replace words in text messages, to 1,724, The Telegraph reported. Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old from Germany, had campaigned for the inclusion of the character wearing a hijab emoji, proposing it to Unicode after realising there was no emoji to represent her. Among the list of introductions are person with headscarf, breastfeeding, bearded person, older adult, reflecting the current lack of grandparent icons. Other emojis that will be released in 2017 by Unicode are a head exploding, a face with open mouth vomiting and a man and woman practising yoga, The Guardian reported. The new list, Unicode 10, adds to efforts to make emojis more diverse. Smartphone makers have included a variety of skin tones, hair colours and cultural and religious references in recent years following claims that they reinforce stereotypes. Google recently called for more emojis that reflect women in the workplace, while Apple added male and female versions of some emojis after complaints that many of the female- focused cartoons featured activities such as cutting hair. Alhumedhi, whose own proposal was accepted by Unicode, tweeted that she was "so excited" by the news. The other new emojis proposed include a zombie, a vampire, a person holding their finger to their mouth, and a T-Rex. Unicode, which represents the major technology companies, proposed a shortlist of the new emojis. They are typically approved in the following summer and are likely to be added to smartphones in roughly a years time. In the coming weeks, Apple is set to add the emojis from the previous set, Unicode 9. They include emojis for facepalm, selfie, a clown and a pregnant woman. PTI tech2 News Staff A pregnant woman in western Sydney went to sleep with an iPhone 7 charging on her arm, and woke up to second degree burns on her hand. On visiting the doctor, she was advised a visit to the hospital. Apple has sent the phone for testing by a senior technician in California. Apple has confirmed to News.com.au that it is investigating the matter with Pelaez. Apple also offered Ms Tan Pelaez a replacement iPhone, but she did not want it as she had lost faith in the company. Pelaez has been a long time Apple user and has not previously faced any problems with products by the company. On returning the phone, Apple executives had said that the source of the burn injuries could not have been the phone as the phone was designed to cut off power on overcharging. Pelaez has visited the emergency room in the hospital twice because of the burns, and is exploring the option of plastic surgery to fix the scarring. This is the second such incident from Sydney, Australia in recent memory. A biker had to punch the phone off his leg after the device burst into flames following a fall. An Apple iPhone 7 had reportedly exploded in China three days ago, after a 50 centimetre fall. For those fearing a repeat of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fiasco, there were reports of over 30 Note 7 devices exploding over a course of a week. Aditya Madanapalle Volkswagen's Audi AG said on Monday that it was in talks with China's SAIC Motor Corp Ltd for a long-term collaboration, which dealers for its existing joint venture say would cause them "potentially fatal damage." Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a source familiar with the matter, that the two sides had signed an agreement that could pave the way for Volkswagen's joint venture with SAIC, China's largest automaker, to make Audi brand cars. Audi cars are now made in China through a joint venture with China FAW Group Corp, providing a lifeline to the state-owned company whose own brands have struggled with falling sales. An early entrant to China, the world's largest car market, Audi is the best-selling premium car brand although it is rapidly losing ground to newer car models from Daimler's Mercedes-Benz and non-German automakers such as Toyota's Lexus and General Motor's Cadillac. Audi has been slow to introduce new products, hurting sales growth, so Audi dealers are generally losing money, existing Audi dealers said in a letter to the automaker in response to the talks. "The interests of Audi dealers will be further damaged if your company sets up a new sales company in China," they said. The dealers, in the letter seen by Reuters, requested Audi to collect their opinions and guarantee their rights before making a final decision. Volkswagen gets a larger proportion of its proceeds from the 50-50 tie-up with SAIC than from its 40 percent stake in the venture with FAW. Audi reaffirmed its commitment to FAW in the statement announcing the talks with SAIC, saying it had outlined growth plans with FAW for the next 10 years that include making green energy sport utility vehicles and sedans in every major segment. "With this 10-year plan, everything is set for future growth together with FAW, including the dealership investors," an Audi spokesman said. Audi will also form a new joint venture company with FAW that will be based in Beijing to focus on mobility and digital services, according to the statement. Reuters Back in 2000, when she was running to represent New York in the Senate, Hillary Clinton benefited from the almost unanimous vote of one small Jewish hassidic village in Rockland County called New Square. This week, running for president, Clinton is once again expected to be the favorite of New Square a town comprised mostly of Skver Hassidim whose loyalty runs counter to the prevailing trend of the American Jewish community. While overall support among American Jews traditionally leans Democratic in presidential elections, polls have shown that when it comes to Orthodox voters, the tendency is reversed. According to the famous 2013 Pew Research Center study on American Jewry, 57% of Orthodox Jewish voters are Republican or lean Republican, and only 36% are Democrats or lean Democratic. More recently, an American Jewish Committee survey published in September showed 50% of Orthodox respondents prefer Donald Trump, and only 21% side with Clinton. CEO of the public affairs consulting firm The Friedlander Group, Ezra Friedlander, an Orthodox Jew himself who has accompanied many presidential candidates in visits to the community this year, is familiar with the community in New Square. A day before the election, Friedlander told The Jerusalem Post that he believes the local Skver hassidic community, like the Satmar Hassidim who have already endorsed her, will cast its vote for Clinton because of their long-time ties. The hassidic community has a relationship with Hillary Clinton, he said. [...] In recent days, leaders of the Satmar Hasidim in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the Skver Hasidim in Rockland County, New York, have endorsed Clinton. The Satmar and the Skver are among the most socially conservative and religiously observant Jewish groups in the United States. So why are they backing Hillary Clinton? Its relationships, said David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and perhaps the Jewish establishments leading expert on the byzantine politics of New York Citys ultra-Orthodox communities. Those relationships run deep. The Satmar community in Williamsburg has been exceptionally successful over decades building ties to elected officials at all levels of government. Their top criteria for which candidate to back? Theyre going to vote for the winner, Pollock said. Thats because the Williamsburg Jewish community, in particular, needs friends in government. The neighborhood is poor, and relies on government programs for housing and healthcare. So they tend to back Democrats, both because Democrats usually win in New York, and because Democrats support the social programs that they need. Since Jewish institutions play an outsized role in the lives of Hasidic Jews, endorsements from communal leaders carry an unusual amount of weight. For politicians, these bloc votes are attractive. Williamsburg is one of the few places in American where politicians can attract votes wholesale, not retail, Pollock said. Sometimes these relationships are nakedly transactional. The Skver, for example, voted almost unanimously for Hillary Clinton during first race for Senate in New York in 2000. Weeks later, Bill Clinton shortened the sentences four Skver men convicted of defrauding the federal government. A federal investigation of the Skver commutations ended without any charges filed in 2002. Before the presidential election took place this year, there was some pretty eyebrow-raising news about what Orthodox Jewish communities Hillary Clinton could definitely rely upon , and it's ultra-Orthodox clans like the Skver, and Satmar:Indeed they do. And it's because she saw to it they'd get all the socialist welfare support they wanted, rather than work for self-support. Something which The Forward had more about:Except that, as seen this past week, they didn't. But, here's the answer why they'd support Clinton coming up:See that? To date, they've relied 99 percent upon the Democrats for welfare-type programs to subsist upon, and wouldn't get jobs that could help them pay their bills by themselves. I hope Trump doesn't cozy up to these phonies and their MO. The Satmar and Skver's socialist lifestyle has only made things worse for several areas where they live, since the tax dollars of the neighborhoods they're living around have only ended up going to waste. There's no need to win favor from the two clans, because their whole structure runs counter to what the USA was built upon.And there you have examples of the "Orthodox" sects Democrats like the Clintons could rely upon, till now. Labels: haredi corruption, Moonbattery, New York, political corruption, United States, US Congress Whom he chooses and how soon he will act after the inauguration will send a clear message to Americas foes and friends alike where this nation is heading and its resolve to assert its global leadership role. Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. If nothing else, the 2016 elections have once again reaffirmed Americas solid democratic system. Without any major incidents, tens of millions of Americans went to polling stations across the land, voted for the candidate of their choice, and readied themselves, as always, for the peaceful transfer of power. I believe that even those who were deeply disappointed with the results of the election will sooner than later rise above the fray, put the nations interests first, and work to build a more wholesome union.Notwithstanding the post-election trauma that many Americans are experiencing and the time the Trump administration will need to sort out a host of domestic and foreign policy issues, the U.S. faces numerous foreign crises and it does not have the luxury of time to pause in dealing with them. Americas leadership role and responsibility remain pivotal to mitigate, if not end, many of these violent conflicts sweeping the Middle East in particular. Although President-elect Trump is inexperienced and lacks the nuanced knowledge of the complex crises America is confronted with, he must now navigate his own way and develop new strategies, particularly in the areas where Obama fell short, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Sunni-Shiite war, and the civil war in Syria.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: There is no doubt that President Obama has made supreme efforts to solve the seven-decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However admirable his efforts were, the president and his chief mediator Secretary of State John Kerry failed to take into account the psychological dimension of the conflict, which has been and remains the core impediment to resolving the conflict, especially from religious, historic, and ideological perspectives.Throughout the two sets of intensive negotiations in 2009-2010 and 2013-2014, and in spite of the progress made on various conflicting issues such as the Palestinian refugees, the future of Jerusalem, and borders, the failure to mitigate the psychological aspect connected to these issues made it impossible for either side to deliver what they have agreed upon.At this juncture, the gulf between the two sides has become even deeper and wider, and no amount of mediation, compensation, or coercion can persuade either side to make the significant concessions needed to make peace possible.The Trump administration must first focus on a process of reconciliation (people-to-people activity) that would mitigate the profound mutual distrust, instill a sense of mutual security, and disabuse the strong constituencies on both sides that they can have it all.During this process of reconciliation between the two sides, which should last for about two years, the U.S. with the support of the EU (led by France) should promote the Arab Peace Initiative (API) to provide the overall framework for peace based on a two-state solution.Although many Israelis celebrated the election of Trump, believing that he would not pressure Israel to accept a two-state solution, the Trump administration will make a mistake of historical proportions if it leaves Israelis and Palestinians to their own devices.The current relative calm should not be taken for granted as the simmering tension can explode any time if the Palestinians see no prospect of ending the occupation in the foreseeable future.Only by creating the social, political, and psychological atmosphere conducive to peace, and with the support of the Arab states, the EU, and other major powers, can the negotiations be resumed with a far better prospect of success. If Trump is concerned about Israels future security and political integrity, he must not hesitate to pressure Israel now to seek a solution and save it from its own destructive path.The Sunni-Shiite war: ISIS came to being in the wake of the Iraq war, which instigated a renewed violent conflict between the Sunnis and Shiites. Although the eventual defeat of ISIS is inevitable, it will not bring an end to the Sunni-Shiite conflict as long as Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are fighting for regional hegemony; they will continue to wage a proxy war in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen to secure their goal.The key to settling this conflict is to revisit the Iraq war and its repercussions on the Sunnis in Iraq. After 81 years of their continuous rule, the Iraqi Sunnis now find themselves at the mercy of the Shiite governing majority, which has systematically discriminated against and marginalized them from the first day the Maliki-led Shiite government came to power.The Trump administration must now understand that maintaining the unity of Iraq as a single country is no longer a viable option. Though the Sunni Iraqis loath ISIS, they despise and detest the Shiite government in Bagdad even more. To help bring a swifter end to the civil war in Iraq, the Sunnis need to be granted autonomy along the line of the Iraqi Kurds.The U.S. must now begin the dialogue between the Sunni and Shiite leadership in Iraq to reach an amicable agreement with which both can live. The three Sunni provinces that include the city of Mosul should constitute the contours of such an entity, but given the lack of natural resources (i.e. oil) in these areas, an equitable distribution of oil revenue should be established between them and the central government.In the final analysis, only a long period of peaceful coexistence between the two sides will allow them over time to develop a closer, more trusting, and friendlier relationship. This will greatly satisfy the Saudis as the Sunnis will maintain a strong foothold in Iraq while Iran will still be in a position to exert some influence on the Shiite government.This would also bring an end to the bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites that will otherwise further escalate in the wake of ISIS inevitable defeat.The civil war in Syria: The civil war in Syria will not end unless the U.S. changes its approach to the war by putting both Putin and Assad on notice that the slaughter of Syrian civilians must immediately come to an end.The U.S. cannot assert its commanding regional role and at the same time save the Syrian people from near-complete destruction by leading from behind and merely providing military equipment and material to the rebels.That said, the U.S. must recognize that Russia has been for decades and will remain a permanent fixture in Syria, and Iran will not relinquish its longstanding interest and influence in Damascus as Tehran views Syria as the linchpin to the Shiite-dominated crescent of land between the Mediterranean and the Gulf. However unorthodox this may seem, the U.S. has little choice but to work with these two powers to find a solution.While recognizing the importance of Russias role and its willingness to cooperate with Putin to find a permanent solution, the Trump administration must also convey in unequivocal terms to Putin and Assad that they must stop the indiscriminate bombing and killing of tens of thousands of innocent Syrians while erasing one neighborhood after another.Given Putins desire to work closely with Trump, he is likely to be more receptive in finding a solution to the conflict. But if he does not, the U.S. must assert itself and be prepared to bomb and destroy all of Assads air force fields, hangars, and munitions depots.The cessation of hostilities in Syria will not, in and of itself, bring an end to the civil war, but it remains a prerequisite to open up diplomatic channels in the search for a permanent peaceful solution.In any future solution, the U.S. should not object to Assad remaining president throughout an agreed-upon transitional period if his participation keeps intact the bureaucracy, military, and internal security apparatus to prevent a replay of what happened in Iraq following the U.S. invasion.The U.S. cannot escape its responsibility, and it must now confront head-on the three most urgent and intractable conflicts before they further escalate out of control.Given that Trump is all about America First and that America has significant geopolitical interests in the region it is imperative that a Trump administration addresses these conflicts in a serious and consistent manner. Trumps first test will be his choices of advisors, who can assist him to navigate through the thicket of these conflicts. US will be 'rogue' state if it ditches climate accord: UN envoy UN Special Envoy Mary Robinson said the US will be a \"rogue\" state if climate deal is ignored. Reuters, Morocco : The United States would become "a kind of rogue country" if it pulls out of an international agreement to combat global warming, leaving the world more vulnerable to droughts and other climate extremes, warned Mary Robinson, a former Irish president and human rights advocate. "It would be a tragedy for the United States and the people of the United States if the U.S. becomes a kind of rogue country, the only country in the world that is somehow not going to go ahead with the Paris Agreement," Robinson said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Sunday. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, has promised to pull the United States out of that global climate accord, which was agreed last year by 193 countries and which came into effect earlier this month, just in advance of his election. The deal aims to hold climate change to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius of warming by moving the world economy away from fossil fuels. The agreement provides for $100 billion a year in international funding from 2020 to help poorer countries develop cleanly and adapt to the already inevitable impacts of climate change. Robinson, who now runs a foundation focused on seeking justice for people hit hard by climate impacts despite having contributed little to the problem, said she was confident other countries would continue their backing for the accord regardless of any action taken by the United States. "I don't think that the process itself will be affected (if) one country, however big and important that country is, decides not to go ahead," she said on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Marrakesh, due to end on Friday. But a pullout could mean a "huge difference" to already difficult efforts to gather enough international finance to help poorer countries develop their economies without increasing their emissions, "which is what they want to do", she said. "The moral obligation of the United States as a big emitter, and a historically big emitter that built its whole economy on fossil fuels that are now damaging the world - it's unconscionable the United States would walk away from it," she said of the threat to withdraw from the Paris deal. However, Robinson said she sympathised with Americans who had lost their jobs in polluting industries such as coal, many of whom supported Trump in his election campaign. "Clearly they're hurting at the moment," she said, calling for assistance to help such workers retrain and win new jobs in a clean energy economy. "But it's not a future to go backward into coal and have higher emissions in the United States," she warned. "The impact of that will be felt by poor communities and poor countries all over the world." As a U.N. envoy for El Nino and climate change, she said she had been in dry regions of Honduras where women told her they no longer had water as a result of worsening drought. Diabetes Day observed Staff Reporter : World Diabetes Day 2016 has been observed on Monday in Bangladesh as like as the other countries in the world through various programmes like rally, discussions, distributing posters and leaflets, free screening and treatments. It observed countrywide to aware people on healthy lifestyle for better management of all types of diabetes. The theme of the day was 'eye on diabetes, keep diabetes in control to prevent blindness.' Bangladesh Diabetic Samity (BADAS) organised a rally from Shahbagh in the city at the morning. Besides, National Healthcare Network (NHN) and Healthcare Development Project (HCDP) also arranged separate rallies. Those organizations including Bangladesh Institution of Research and Rehabilitation in Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders (BIRDEM) also arranged free screening, treatments and discussions in various places in the capital including the National Museum. Health Minister Mohammad Nasim was the chief guest at the discussion held at BIRDEM auditorium. BADAS President Professor AK Azad Khan presided over the meeting. Professor Ashraf Sayeed, Major General (Rtd) professor A R Khan, Muhammad Saif Uddin and DG of BIRDEM Professor Nazmunnahar also gave speech. Besides, Danish Pharma Novo Nordisk, the world's largest insulin maker, celebrated the day. Novo Nordisk participated in 103 rallies organised across the country with different associations affiliated with Bangladesh Diabetic Samiti (BADAS), to celebrate this day. Novo Nordisk also organised a motivational programme for the children living with diabetes in BIRDEM hospital at Segun Bagicha, which is the world's largest clinic for the children. Others organisations also observed the day with various programmes like free screenings and rallies. Anti-Trump protests continue for 5th day Anti-Donald Trump protesters continued to rally across the country Sunday to disavow the president-elect. Some of them are pictured holding signs outside the CNN studios in Los Angeles, California. Reuters, New York : Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign manager said President Barack Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton should do more to support a peaceful transition. Following several nights of unrest, crowds of people marched in parks in New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California, according to social media. A few thousand joined a march at the south end of Manhattan's Central Park, beginning at a Trump property on Columbus Circle and walking toward the real estate mogul's skyscraper headquarters less than a mile (1.6 km) away. They chanted: "Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcomed here," and held signs such as "White silence = violence" and "Don't mourn, organize." One protester said demonstrators were reclaiming what the American flag he was holding stood for. "The flag means freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection under the law and other values like diversity, respecting differences, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press," said Daniel Hayman, 31, of Seattle, who was in New York for work. "We're trying to reclaim the flag and push forward those values." Thousands in several cities have demonstrated since the results from Tuesday's election showed Trump, a Republican, lost the popular tally but secured enough votes in the 538-member Electoral College to win the presidency, surprising the world. Largely peaceful demonstrators in urban areas have said Trump threatens their civil and human rights. They have decried Trump's often inflammatory campaign rhetoric about illegal immigrants, Muslims and women, as well as allegations, which he denies, that the former reality TV star sexually abused women. Dozens have been arrested, including 71 in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday night, according to police, and a handful of police injured. In San Francisco on Sunday, about 1,000 people marched through Golden Gate Park toward a beach where they chanted: "Let's make waves." They held signs such as "I resist racism" and "Down with the Trumps." Across the bay in Oakland, thousands of protesters joined a festival-like atmosphere, holding peace signs and blowing soap bubbles in the sunshine. Many had brought their children, aiming to hold hands around the 3.4-mile (5.5-km) circumference of Lake Merritt in a popular urban park. Civil rights groups have monitored violence against U.S. minorities since Trump's win, citing reports of attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, of racist graffiti and of bullying of immigrant children. They have called on Trump to denounce the attacks. Trump said he was 'so saddened' to hear of instances of violence by some of his supporters against minorities, according to a transcript released on Sunday of an interview with the CBS program '60 Minutes.' Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, said on Fox News on Sunday that she was sure many of the protesters were paid professionals, although she offered no proof. Suggesting a double standard, Conway said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that if Clinton had won the election and Trump supporters had protested, "people would be freaking out that his supporters were not accepting election results." "It's time really for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to say to these protesters: 'This man is our president,'" she said. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Sunday that protests were protected by the First Amendment as long as they were peaceful. Neither Obama nor Clinton has called for an end to the protests. Obama told Trump at the White House on Thursday that he was going to help Trump succeed, "because if you succeed, then the country succeeds." Clinton told supporters at a New York hotel on Wednesday: "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead." Trump on Sunday attacked the New York Times for coverage he said was "very poor and highly inaccurate." "The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change - doubt it?" Trump wrote on Twitter. The newspaper published a letter in Sunday's editions from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet, not apologizing, but thanking readers for their loyalty and asking how news outlets underestimated Trump's support. The Times plans to "hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly" during the Trump presidency, they wrote. 10,000 edn instts lack digital touch yet M M Jasim : Mirzakalu Fazil Madrasa located at Hasannagar union under Borhanuddin upazila of Bhola district, has no computer. The madrasa authorities go to local market for their official computer work. Like the Mirzakalu Fazil Madrasa about 10 thousand schools, colleges and madrasas across the country have no computer facilities although the government assured computer, internet and multimedia classroom facilities for all educational institutions. Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS) sources said no computer is used at 27 percent schools, 40 percent madrasas and 11 percent colleges all over the country. There is no computer's teacher at 39 percent schools in the country. There is no internet connection at about 9,706 educational institutions. Of them 5,485 are schools, 3911 madrasas and 305 colleges. A total of 10,308 institutions are deprived of multimedia classrooms. Of them, 5,704 are schools, 3,865 madrasas and 789 colleges. The school, madrasa and college authorities blamed lack of electricity connection for the absence of computer and multimedia classrooms at their respective institutions. A teacher of Bagdubi High School wishing anonymity told The New Nation that they applied for electricity connection several times, but they are yet to get it. Headmaster of Gander Alga High School in Kurigram Azizur Rahman told this correspondent that his school did not get any touch of digitalization as there is no electricity here. "We cannot provide practical computer knowledge to the students. We also do not get the information of the Education Ministry from the website. And we have to go to different government offices to complete our regular activities like printing, photocopy and others," the headmaster said. BANBEIS sources said, at least 5,000 institutions have no electricity connection. Of the institutions, 2,968 are schools, 1,751 madrasas and 141 colleges. Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid told The New Nation on Sunday that the ministry initiated its journey for ensuring digital education from the zero level. "We brought 33 thousand educational institutions under digitalization across the country." "We are working to bring all the institutions under digitalization. But it is matter of time. It is impossible to do everything overnight," the minister said. Director General of Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education Professor SM Wahiduzzaman said some projects of digitalization at the educational institutions are going on. Computer, lab and multimedia will be sent at about 1,500 institutions under Teaching Quality Improvement project. "We hope that computer, lab and multimedia will be ensured at every institution throughout the country in due course of time," the DG said. Punitive steps against to officials suggested Staff Report : Police on Monday submitted the probe report on Nasirnagar attacks, recommending punitive measures against two of their officials for negligence in duties. Mohammad Shakhawat Hossain, chief of the probe body and additional Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Chittagong Range, submitted the report to the police headquarters in the afternoon. "We have submitted the report to the Police Headquarters today enclosing findings of the investigation," Mohammad Shakhawat Hossain told The New Nation on Monday night confirming the matter. When asked, he declined to disclose the details of the report saying that the Police Headquarters would brief the journalists in a day or two in this regard. Earlier, the Police Headquarters formed the probe body to investigate into the attacks and vandalism of Hindu temples and houses at Nasirnagar in Brahmanbaria. Sources in the Police Headquarters, however, said, the probe body has suggested actions against two police officials as it found negligence in their duties during the attacks. The body also found an intra-party feud among the local ruling party men who provoked another group to go for the attacks on the Hindu community in Nasirnagar. The report identified some 15-20 persons as instigators and attackers on the Hindu Community. On October 30, religious zealots, armed with sticks and sharp weapons, went berserk for around two hours rampaging in Duttabari, Goura Mandir, Jagannath Mandir and Kashipara Mandir in Brahmanbaria's Nasirnagar and ransacked over 100 Hindu houses and looted them over a Facebook post that allegedly hurt Muslim sentiment. At least 58 families were affected and 17 temples were either damaged or looted in at least eight Hindu-dominated areas that day BN joins elite club China delivers 2 submarines Special Correspondent : Bangladesh Navy (BN) on Monday joined the elite club of submarine operators after taking delivery of two Ming class (Type 035G) diesel-electric submarines from China. These two submarines-Nabojatra and Joyjatra-would be added to the BN's fleet at the beginning of new year. Rear Admiral Nizamuddin Ahmed took delivery of the submarines from Chinese Peoples Navy Rear Admiral Liu Zhi Zhu at a ceremony held in Dalian of Liaoning province in China. "Bangladesh Navy appeared as a 3D naval force after adding the two submarines in its fleet, according to Navy's Public Relations Department. BN personnel have already received submarine training in China to operate and maintain the Mings. Bangladesh has already set up a base and associated infrastructure in Kutubdia Island where the submarine fleet will harbour. In 2013, Bangladesh signed a $203 million deal with China for purchasing the two submarines to portend increasing militarisation of the Bay of Bengal. BN, in the recent past, has also bought frigates, corvettes and patrol craft from China as part of the government plan to modernize Bangladesh's naval forces. Bangladesh has been expanding its defence capabilities in recent years, building a new airbase close to neighbouring Myanmar, opening several new military cantonments across the country and adding new frigates to its naval fleet. In 2013, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina signed a billion-dollar deal with Russia to buy fighter training jets, helicopters and anti-tank missiles. Hasina announced the plan to purchase two submarines the same year as part of her government's move to build a modern navy to defend the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh had finalised the deal with China for supply of two Type 035G or Ming class export version submarines along with training at a reported cost of $ 203 million by end 2013. These types of submarines have been in service with the Chinese navy for nearly forty years since the early 70s though the Type 035G entered service in 19907. This class of submarine has its origin in the Soviet Romeo class design of the 50s which has been extensively modified by the Chinese. These submarines, in all likelihood, are ex-Chinese navy which were either decommissioned or placed in reserve since the Chinese navy itself is going through a modernisation phase. These diesel-electric submarines displace 2110 tons and have a surfaced endurance of 8000 nm allowing them to stay at sea for about 60 days. They are manned by a crew of 57 personnel and carry 18 torpedoes with an option for carrying 32 mines also. Considering the vintage of the design, the sensors may not be state-of-the-art though modern fire control systems may have been installed. The torpedoes are also likely to be early Chinese designs with ranges of about 20 - 25 km. Four killed in police firing 50 including 6 cops injured: Panic runs high among locals Narsingdi Correspondent : At least four people were killed and over 50 other injured in police firing during fierce a clash between two rival factions of ruling Awami League (AL) centering previous enmity and establishing supremacy over Nilakkhoya Char at Sonakandi village in Raipura upazila of the district on Monday. The deceased were identified as Mohammad Mamun, 22, son of Mangal Miah of village Amirabad, Manik Miah, 45, son of Altu Miah, Mohammad Khokon, 32, son of Arab Ali and Shahjahan, 25, son of Abdus Salam. Six cops including Officer-in-Charge of Raipura police station Azharul Islam, Sub-Inspector Asaduzzman also received serious wounds. The injured villagers and police were rushed to the Raipura Health Complex. Besides, over 16 houses were torched and many others looted during the violent clash spreading panic among the villagers there, locals said. A tense situation is prevailing in the area. Heavy contingent of law enforcers have been deployed there. Police launched massive hunt to net the attackers. Many villagers went into hiding to avert arrest. However, police said they opened fire in self-defense and they did not know how and in what way four people were killed. According to local people, as a sequel to the enmity, supporters of both the groups locked into an altercation yesterday morning. "The clash ensued between two groups of one led by incumbent AL-backed Chairman of Nilakkhoya Union Tajul Islam and former chairman Abdul Haque-over the control of their Union on Monday morning," a police official said. Locals said earlier a series of clashes were taken place between the followers of the incumbent chairman Tajul Islam and former chairman Abdul Haque since the UP election. "Leaders and activists of the two rival groups continued to launch attack on each and other. Panic runs high among all the villagers, as we can't feel safe and secure even single day," a villager told The New Nation yesterday evening. On Monday the followers of two groups equipped with lethal weapons and crude bombs swooped on each other at Nilakkhoya Char adjacent village Sonakandi. At one stage the clash spread to eight other neighbouring villages and continued till afternoon, local said. Being informed Assistant Commissioner (land) Humayun Kabir and officer-in-charge of Raipura police station Azharul Islam along with a heavy contingent of helmeted police rushed to the spot and fired several rounds of blank shots to bring the situation under control. Being failed to control the situation, police later fired several rounds of sound grenades and tear shells targeting the troublemakers. As the police continued their action, the followers of two groups launched attack on the members of law enforcers. Local said at one stage police started firing targeting the agitators. Manik, Mamun and Khokon died on the spot in police firing. Shahjahan who received serious wounds during the clash succumbed to his injuries on the way to capital Dhaka. Anti-dumping on jute goods to hamper trade THE business community in Bangladesh has rightly expressed the concern over the Indian governments move to impose 25 to 30 percent anti-dumping duty on export of jute goods to its market. Earlier this week media report made the disclosure of Delhi's move in this regard prompting protest from various chamber bodies and trade associations. The DCCI has also urged the Indian government on Thursday to stop the move to keep export of jute goods to India unaffected. They said the Indian move is not based on reasonable ground and justified at a time when Bangladesh is seriously lobbying with India to make our export access easier to Indian market. It contradicts fair trade. We believe that the concern of our business circles is quite reasonable at a time the existing trade balance is over 12 times against Bangladesh. It is not correct that Bangladesh's jute goods such as jute yarn are under-priced as Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA) claims causing loss to their competitiveness. What is true is that local producers are dominating their market because exporters from Bangladesh have to work against many disadvantages and spend a lot to reach the Indian market. In this situation our trade circle's fear makes sense that the Indian move will seriously impact our local farmers, jute goods processors and exporters to finally add to more trade imbalance. When Bangladesh is asking India to remove the existing tariff and non-tariff barriers to fully implement the duty-free trade under SAFTA, several duty-free export items are rather facing major setback. Export of jute goods was so far at zero tariff but Indian government now wants to impose higher level of tariff on its export. RMG export is also suffering the most from counter veiling duty thus narrowing all scope for new trade creation and expansion of existing trade. Such Indian attitude is not conducive to allow Bangladesh to increase its trade to India. Reports said that the Indian government's Directorate of Anti-dumping and allied duties is convinced that Bangladesh is dumping its cheaper jute goods into Indian market at low cost and market study has verified it. But Bangladesh Tariff Commission officials differ with the Indian claim. In our view one may also look into the new Indian government move from a different perspective. Since Bangladesh has stopped exporting raw jute, Indian jute mills owners are facing setback; as many of them were dependent on raw jute import from Bangladesh. We are not sure whether or not the new move has any relation with such decision of Bangladesh government. We must say a big country like India can't take Bangladesh as a threat to its market. Rather Bangladesh needs support to increase exports to India to repay the growing import bills. In our view India must rethink its move. The Undead Archives I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world. Today Armistice Day and the Red Poppy have little to do with honouring the dead, it's about manipulating the living. Once again it's that time of year when one cannot walk down a high street or turn on the TV without having the Red Poppy waved in ones face. When I was a child World War One veterans were still thick on the ground, my own grandfather one of them. It's not an exaggeration to say they were a forgotten people, and in many cases that was one of choice. Few if any wished to remember that bloody and unnecessary conflict which saw countless young men on both sides slaughtered helplessly. Indeed unlike those who fought in WW2, the attitude of these old Tommys seemed to be much like those who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan: Fuck king and country, we fought for each other and then if lucky we got to go home. Once again it's that time of year when one cannot walk down a high street or turn on the TV without having the Red Poppy waved in ones face.When I was a child World War One veterans were still thick on the ground, my own grandfather one of them. It's not an exaggeration to say they were a forgotten people, and in many cases that was one of choice. Few if any wished to remember that bloody and unnecessary conflict which saw countless young men on both sides slaughtered helplessly. Indeed unlike those who fought in WW2, the attitude of these old Tommys seemed to be much like those who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan: My own long dead Granddad regarded all politicians as shysters and from what I could gather his thoughts about WW1 were those of hatred, contempt and bitterness and not for the Germans and Turks he had fought, but for the senior officers and politicians who in some cases were interchangeable.* One bitter cold winter afternoon, when he was ploughing a field, as I clung to the mud guard of the Massey Ferguson tractor with which he hauled the plough, he told me he had never attended a remembrance day and never would: as he had no wish to be in the company of the types who sent him and his mates to fight in a senseless war, to kill blokes much like himself. One of the nice things about the Irish is their tradition of in death celebrating people's lives. Poppy day is a monstrosity because it does the exact opposite and celebrates death, albeit dressed up in the same type of jingoistic language which led to the slaughter of a whole generation during WW1. It's ghoulish and undignified to allow at its centre the very same type of people, Royalty, Prime Ministers and Generals who were the donkeys which sent a whole generation of young men into the meat grinder that was WW1. And for What? I have no wish to insult other people's beliefs and if they so choose they have every right to wear the Red Poppy, but I would suggest 'celebrating' the deaths of countless young men 100 years on in such a non inclusive way, is playing a very dangerous game. It cannot but encourage the 'war party' which governs the UK today to become embroiled in ever more military conflicts overseas. Whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria or the Yemen, all the evidence cries out becoming involved militarily in other people's civil wars only makes a bad situation worse. Those who propagate the Royal British Legion's poppy day use words like 'sacrifice,' 'our boys, 'the fallen.' They never ever mentioned the futility and obscenity of war. If they did I might have some sympathy with them, but they do not. What was the point of WW1, beyond the elite of the great powers squabbling and then fighting over the spoils of new markets, etc? The European great powers set the peoples of one nation against another using the most flimsy pretext and then used the most obscene propaganda to instill hatred between these nations. This type of putrid apple never falls far from the tree. This word sacrifice is used in this context as some sort of noble act. Perhaps someone could explain to me what was noble about going over the top at the Somme like lemmings to the slaughter. On the first day of the battle alone, 19,240 British soldiers lost their lives. This was not a noble sacrifice. It was a mass slaughter overseen by wicked politicians and organised by incompetent Generals who had placed machine guns in the rear to ensure, "every man did his duty." Please do not misunderstand me, by saying this I mean no insult to the dead of WW1. When Alan Clark wrote they were lions led by donkeys he was spot on. There is an element of blooding in the manner the MSM and the politicians use Poppy Day. If you refuse to 'celebrate' the blood sacrifice of countless young people in unnecessary wars, it's implied you're being disloyal, unpatriotic and the poppy fascists rage against you in the mainstream media and on social media. Whenever these reactionaries begin to lose the argument, they wheel out WW2. True it was a necessary war, one of the few the UK State has ever engaged in. But even that necessary conflagration which left 50 million people dead came about due to the crass stupidity of those who led the victorious Allies after the end of WW1. When they refused to sign a just peace with Germany, preferring to grind the German people into the ground, they opened the door for the rise of Hitler.. Surely there must be a better, and more inclusive way of commemorating 'all of those' who have had their lives stolen in wars. As things stand today we have a hierarchy of victims, headed by and including only the dead of the UK armed forces. * Churchill for example went from government minister to senior officer, to Government minister in the space of one year. After his disastrous fiasco of the Gallipoli landings in the Dardanelles, he morphed into a Lieutenant Colonel, returning to government as Munitions minister in 1917. Proving 'these people' have no shame. Jeep Cj8 For Sale Shop millions of cars from over 22,500 dealers and find the perfect car. 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Rauner said last week he was "cautiously optimistic" when he asked House and Senate leaders to meet to begin work on ending a 16-month budget standoff but the absence of ruling Democrats shows how challenging it continues to be to find compromise. The political standoff has led to cuts to social service providers, some of whom have shut down altogether, and an uncertain future for higher education institutions that are receiving less funding than they have in the past. The governor called the meeting days after the results from Election Day, when Republicans diminished the Democrats' numbers in the Legislature with Rauner's financial backing. The day before the meeting was set to take place, Rauner got a response from Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. "A short time ago, I determined a schedule conflict will prevent a meeting with the governor and other legislative leaders," Madigan said in a statement Sunday evening. "We will continue to work to schedule a meeting and look forward to getting an agenda for the meeting from the governor." Madigan did not provide details of the conflict. "I can't imagine what conflict is more important than the challenges facing the people of this state," Radogno said. After Madigan's announcement, Senate President John Cullerton bowed out, saying the meeting wouldn't be productive without everyone there. He said he hoped the meeting could be reschedule for Tuesday. Last December, Madigan also said a scheduling conflict kept him from attending one of the governor's budget meetings. He didn't say what the conflict was then, either. Lawmakers return to Springfield on Tuesday for a brief, annual fall session after one of the most expensive and contentious election cycles in Illinois history. Rauner used about $30 million of his personal wealth to support GOP candidates in last week's elections, giving money to both political committees and individuals, forcing Democrats to raise unprecedented amounts of money to compete with his millions. Although Republicans made gains in the Legislature, Democrats still have considerable majorities in each chamber and have resisted Rauner's demands for union-weakening, business-friendly legislation as part of any budget deal. Rauner has argued his ideas are a meant to grow the state's economy, but Democrats have said his policies would harm middle-class families. As wildfires cause major problems in drought-plagued areas of the Southeast, the weather forecast is not encouraging. La Nina has arrived and could hang around through winter, government weather forecasters say. La Nina, the flip side of El Nino, is the periodic cooling of the central Pacific Ocean that affects weather patterns around the globe. Predictions called for fleeting La Nina conditions that could last through February. It's "anticipated to be a weak, short-lived event," said Mike Halpert of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. In the United States, the arrival of La Nina usually brings wetter winters to the northern Rockies, Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley and warmer, drier conditions to southern parts. There's a 55 percent chance La Nina will stick around through winter, causing the drought to persist in regions of the Southeast, Southern California and the southern Plains, NOAA said. NOAA plans to release a winter forecast update this week. Last month, the agency predicted warmer and drier-than-normal conditions for the South. Already in the South, drought has turned pine trees into matchsticks and forced people to evacuate their homes ahead of fast-moving flames. With humidity so low, the normally lush Appalachians and Great Smoky Mountains had plenty of tinder. Tens of thousands of acres have burned and authorities are bracing for more. The national drought report shows 41.6 million people in parts of 15 Southern states living in drought conditions. The worst is in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, but extreme drought also is spreading into the western Carolinas. Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina all have fierce fires. Smoke from the fires is affecting areas far from the blazes, with haze and smoky conditions in The T&D Region and around South Carolina. On Thursday, the S.C. Forestry Commission expanded its State Foresters Burning Ban from five Upstate counties to all Piedmont counties. The counties covered by the ban include Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Chester, Edgefield, Fairfield, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens, Lexington, McCormick, Newberry, Oconee, Pickens, Richland, Saluda, Spartanburg, Union and York. State Forester Gene Kodama expanded the ban because of weather conditions in the Piedmont region that present an elevated risk of wildfire. The diversion of additional agency resources to a wildfire in Pickens County also contributed to the expansion of the burning ban. A State Foresters Burning Ban prohibits outdoor burning, which includes yard debris burning and burning for forestry, wildlife or agricultural purposes. While campfires and open-fire cooking are not included in the ban, the Forestry Commission strongly encourages all citizens in the five counties to refrain from any unnecessary burning. Residents in counties not subject to the burning ban are cautioned to be extremely vigilant when burning yard debris and/or conducting prescribed burns. State law requires that citizens outside of unincorporated areas notify the Forestry Commission before burning outdoors. The notification is a quick, easy, automated process, and the toll-free numbers for each county are provided at http://www.state.sc.us/forest/fyard.htm Badger has body armor. The 6-year-old Belgian Malinois is the Orangeburg Department of Public Safetys only K-9. Hes trained in drugs, tracking and suspect apprehension, handler Cpl. Ryan Cornforth said. Cornforth has been his handler for about three years. Badger recently received a stab- and bullet-resistant vest that will help him stay safe while at work. Thanks to a non-profit organization, Vested Interest in K9s Inc., of East Taunton, Massachusetts, Badger received his body armor vest free of charge. The vest is valued at about $2,000. Not only does Badgers new vest protect him from the harm of bullets or punctures, hes wearing the vest in memory of a K-9 who was killed in the line of duty. The underside of Badgers vest has the words In memory of K-9 Nicky, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, NV. K-9 Nicky was shot on March 31, 2016 when a LVMP officer opened fire on a suspect. Prior to that incident, K-9 Nicky, also a Belgian Malinois, had returned to duty after recovering from stab wounds he received during a standoff in February. Cornforth said Badger is most vulnerable when hes deployed to track suspects and when hes dispatched to clear a house or building before officers enter. His vest weighs less than five pounds and will shield him from potential danger. Cornforth said Badger undergoes many hours of weekly training to make sure hes keeping his skills sharpened. He can detect five different narcotics: marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and crack cocaine. He is nationally certified and underwent extensive training at the Tarheel K-9 facility in Sanford, North Carolina. Each year, Badger and Cornforth must re-certify at the Tarheel facility to ensure Badgers skills remain top-notch. Cornforth estimates that Badger has assisted in at least 60 cases of drug/money seizures for local, state and federal agencies. Badgers work has also resulted in drug convictions for several suspects. Cornforth said hes thankful for the generosity of Vested Interest in K9s and Badger is, too. Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5 currently needs 19 teachers, and administrators are urging the S.C. Department of Education to approve an alternative means of certification. Shawn Williams, head of OCSD5 Human Resources, recently told trustees the district hasnt been able to hire enough teachers in the special education, foreign language, English as a second language, elementary and early childhood areas. Theres none out there. ... This is a national epidemic that were facing, she said. The Human Resources department has contacted all 30 of the states colleges that train teachers, specifically looking for students who are graduating in December, Williams said. Seven students from South Carolina State University and Claflin University have signed letters of agreement to teach in the district next semester, she said. The district currently uses teachers certified through the Program of Alternative Certification for Educators, but that still doesnt supply enough teachers, she said. For one thing, PACE does not offer certification of early childhood or elementary teachers. Shes been filling up the state departments ears with requests for a different type of alternative certification for teachers who have experience, but are not certified in the needed areas, Williams said. Trustee Vernon Stephens said he and other trustees will contact legislators and other officials about developing an alternative means of certifying teachers. Some other local districts also reported a shortage of teachers, including Bamberg District 2 and Orangeburg Consolidated School District 4. Bamberg 2 Superintendent Dr. Thelma Sojourner says she needs an elementary teacher and a special education teacher. The shortage came about because of the increase in student enrollment, according to Sojourner. At present, the district is serving all students, but has had to increase the number of students in classes, she said. Bamberg 2 has reached out to hire teachers from other countries to meet its educational needs, Sojourner said. OCSD4 spokesman Ernest Holiday said the district has hired a math teacher who will come on board in January, but is still looking for social studies teacher. The shortage of teachers is a problem that cuts across the state and nation and is expected to increase in upcoming years. According to a 2015 survey by the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement, South Carolina does not produce a sufficient number of teachers each year to replace those retiring or leaving the profession, especially in the sciences, social studies, mathematics and special education areas. More than 5,300 did not return to their teaching jobs in the fall of 2015, a 33 percent increase over the fall of 2014 and a 66 percent increase over the fall of 2013. The results are in and the Democrats are experiencing a shock in response to what they perceive as an uneducated mob -- the populists -- taking majority democratic control. Who are these people? The assumption is that they are racist and bigoted. They are neither. In fact they are rather boring. What many dont realize, is that they want what most people want: They want the federal government to behave like an adult. This means a real plan to reduce the national debt, controlled sensible immigration, no illegal immigration and higher economic growth to create the jobs they need to fulfill their personal goals for an improved life. They want to live in communities that find the right balance between protecting human rights but also give them the freedom to act and behave according to their beliefs. But as Americans are still processing election results, the first question many are asking is, what? Here is some insight into four of the most important: * What? Less government? Many Democrats see all progress as requiring more government and more regulations. Total government spending in the USA is about 40 percent of GDP. The United States now has a $20 trillion national debt. The populists correctly point out that the private sector creates all the wealth that the government spends. The private sector wants the federal government to learn to live within its allowance (no deficit spending). The liberal progressives cannot deal with having to make the hard choices of what to cut back. * What? Profit is good? Democrats say the only thing that business people care about is maximizing profits. Profit is a measure of how efficient you are in attracting and serving customers. Maximizing profit maximizes national wealth. Maximizing profit maximizes government revenues. Maximizing profit is where the capital comes from to invest in and create new businesses. Maximizing profit is good. * What? Not white and uneducated? The liberal progressives cannot accept that many African-Americans, Latinos and other minority races and religions voted for Trump. How could these minorities vote for a white, uneducated populist movement? Perhaps the answer is that it is not a white uneducated populist movement. Rather it is a majority of people of all backgrounds who want their government to move toward generating a surplus, to create economic growth and to have a pragmatic foreign policy. In fact, these populists want to make America great again. * What? Make America great again? The United States has an outstanding record as a multicultural society in creating a high standard of economic wellbeing and human rights. The mix of government with free market capitalism is an engine for progress. This election was about many issues. Each voter had his or her own list. But this race can be best summarized by three statements: 1. Federal government, please get your act together. Come up with a plan to reduce the national debt. Enforce the law or make new ones but do not willfully disrespect our laws. Re-engineer your vast array of laws, regulations and bureaucracies to try and deliver efficient accountable government services. 2. Back off in attacking who I am and my familys values. Get off this social justice, ethnic group obsession. We are all Americans. Please treat us equally and speak to us as one class of people with the same aspirations. 3. Supreme Court, interpret our existing laws. Do not usurp the role of the state legislatures by creating new laws. Dick Sim is the author of Freedom to Argue: We the People Versus They the Government. He spent 30 years traveling the world overseeing global industrial operations, which included serving as CEO and chairman of two NYSE public companies. For more information, visit www.freedomtoargue.com. After Republican Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, billionaire Donald Trump said the Electoral College is a disaster for democracy. During the 2016 campaign, Trump said the election process in America is rigged, urging his supporters to be on the lookout for fraud. The Republican refused to say whether he would accept the outcome, prompting all sorts of speculation about Trump supporters resorting to violence in the aftermath of what nearly every poll forecast would be his defeat in the Nov. 8 election. Hillary Clinton and Democrats did not complain about the Electoral College system under which a president is elected not by total national popular vote but by the electoral vote totals based on winning individual states. Its the system set up by the founding fathers. But history and the nations legal foundation for elections had nothing to do with the Democrats position prior to Tuesday. The Electoral College math favors Democrats, with the votes from the two largest states, California and New York, near certainties for the nominee. From there the 2016 election was supposed to be a matter of simply holding the majorities put together by President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2013 in key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Leave it to the voters to change everything. No longer does Trump have any reason to complain about the Electoral College. Not only did he defy predictions in holding on to states that are GOP strongholds, Trump won the election. He did it not by total national popular vote, but by getting narrow majorities in states that were to be Clintons: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina. The outcome left Clinton, Democrats and even many Trump supporters in shock. The candidates prediction of a mass turnout of voters dissatisfied with the state of the country and its government proved accurate. In the swing states of the so-called Rust Belt, new voters showed up and others previously voting Democratic crossed over to cast ballots for Trump. The Reagan Democrats of 1980 are the Trump Democrats of 2016. Now Democrats are crying foul. They point to losing a presidential election for the second time in 16 years when their candidate won the popular vote. Al Gore was defeated by George W. Bush in 2000 after losing Floridas electoral votes in a razor-tight election that was contested all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They claim voter intimidation and suppression contributed to lower turnout of minorities that cost Clinton the votes she needed in key states. And they are angry. Instead of Trump supporters not accepting the results, Democrats are the ones protesting. And whether the protesters are Democrats and Clinton supporters or not, hundreds have taken to the streets in the days since the Trump electoral victory. Some openly predict violence. All on both sides of the electoral outcome should step back and take a deep breath. Trump has been magnanimous in victory, no longer sounding like the fiery candidate willing to say anything to spark passion in his supporters. He has praised Clinton and Obama after vilifying both on the campaign trail. Obama and Clinton have pledged their full support to Trump in making the transition to the presidency. And the nation as a whole should do the same in giving the president-elect a chance to prove himself. America is a great country and the electoral system is at the root of what makes it possible for candidates to fight it out in the roughest fashion until Election Day and then pledge support for the winner after the votes are counted. The founding fathers saw the Electoral College as a tool in balancing federalism with the rights of the people in individual states They built a system founded on constitutional principles and the rule of law. At its root is the expectation of a peaceful transfer of presidential power. Thankfully that system serves to temper extremes, no matter the occupant of the Oval Office. The system and the winner it produced in 2016, the same as in other presidential elections, deserve support. BAMBERG -- SouthernCarolina Alliance Executive Director Danny Black brought Bamberg County Council up to date the economic development group's work to improve the quality of life in the region. Black's group serves the Bamberg, Allendale, Barnwell, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties. The SCA to date has brought $105 million in private investment to the region and just over 260 new jobs, Black reported. Gov. Nikki Haley was among those who celebrated the opening of Bamberg County's new barrel-making company, Blackwater Barrels , on Sept. 21. Black said the the SCA also has an ongoing marketing plan, with "42 or 45" active projects being pursued for the region. Bamberg County is one of six Promise Zones, or high-poverty communities, where the federal government partners with local leaders to address priorities. Black said 41 grant applications have already been submitted through the Promise Zone to provide services in both Bamberg County and across the region. "A lot of those have to do with health care," with crime prevention, broadband access and workforce training among the other service targets, he said. Black said the SCA has already applied for a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, along with a $4 million U.S. Department of Labor grant, to address the region's needs, particularly after a welding school that addressed workforce needs closed. "We're trying to get some money to do that again," he said, noting there were 146 participants who went through the welding training program and found employment. Also during the meeting, Mallory Biering, Keep Bamberg County Beautiful director, presented checks to recognize cheerleaders from Andrew Jackson Academy and Denmark-Olar High School and the Bamberg-Ehrhardt High student council for participating in the litter-free game program. The funds -- $300 to AJA and $250 to the two other groups -- came from Palmetto Pride. In other business, Treasurer Alice Johnson reported the county's total income for September was $399,252. Expenses came in at $795,030, leaving a negative balance of $395,818, she said. The county will have increased income from the receipt of real estate taxes, the notices for which were sent out in October, Johnson said. Finance Director T.M. Thomas reported the general fund had generated $1,113,414 in year-to-date revenue as of the end of September. He said expenditures stood at $1,702,923, reflecting a negative balance of $589,509. "Overall, all departments are operating within budget and within expected bounds," Thomas said. Controller Gina Smith said work is being done to reduce deficiencies in the county's accounting and financial reporting system. The county's books were turned over to its auditors in mid-October, Smith said, noting that she had built a spread sheet of all the county's cash balances for the past three years. She said her goal is to keep audit fees down and reduce material weaknesses that may appear in the audit report. "We're doing more," but it's not a simple task because the county has 12 funds which carry their own set of books, balance sheets, income statements and "rules and nuances," Smith said. Also at the meeting, council gave final third-reading approval to an ordinance to restate and affirm the Bamberg County Fire Service area, the county fire service coordinator and the Bamberg County Fire Advisory Board, including repealing and revoking all related prior ordinances and resolutions. No one made comments during the public hearing held to address the ordinance. Bamberg County Administrator Joey said approval of the ordinance was important in letting fire departments know what their job responsibilities are. The Colston and Ehrhardt fire departments are considering a "territory swap," a potential deal that was referred to the county's public safety committee, Preston said. He said there were no plans for a new fire department, "at least not at this time." In his report, the administrator said he anticipates 200 to 400 people showing up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new courthouse annex at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 18. County voters in a November 2012 referendum approved the penny sales tax that will fund $4.4 million in construction projects, and Preston reported most of those projects are nearing completion, including a new roof for Denmark's Dane Theater. He noted the county is in the planning stage of creating a veterans' memorial. "We're working on that," Preston said, adding the county will need thousands more than the $75,000 allocated through the penny sales tax to make the proposed memorial the tourist destination it deserves to be. In other business: Jerry Bell of the Bamberg County Chamber of Commerce President announced the Chamber's 50th Annual Banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Olar Fire Department and the county's Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony is set for 6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, at the county courthouse. Council appointed Shawn Hanks, pastor of Colston Branch Baptist Church, to the Lower Savannah Council of Governments board, replacing the late Jasper Varn. Council approved the appointment of Cindy Hurst, Jeff Deibel and James Harold Barnwel Jr. to the Bamberg County Property Maintenance Code Appeals Board. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. The 1930s was not just the era of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. It also saw unprecedented mass strikes in France and the highest point of the US labour movement so far. Complacent assumptions that the racist right will burn itself out are dangerous. So is despair that overstates their strength and our weakness. Both are recipes for inaction that can be lethal Conventional political certainties are being swept away. Parties that believed they had massive and secure support bases are suddenly losing them.The centre of politics is falling apart. Deep anger at the grinding economic crisis, stagnant or collapsing living standards, and an undemocratic and unaccountable political elite is bursting to the surface in unpredictable ways The Financial Times newspaper wrote after Donald Trumps victory, The American people have spokenor perhaps shouted and nothing is likely to be the same again. The mere fact of Mr Trumps victory puts him halfway towards obliterating an establishment that was largely united in revulsion at his candidacy.Every pollster in the land misread the US public. By electing a man whom voters knew to be disrespectful of US constitutional niceties, America has dispatched the electoral equivalent of a suicide bomber to Washington. Mr Trumps mandate is to blow up the system.More pithily the French ambassador to the US tweeted, Everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes.The question is whether the fury at big business and the political elite is turned leftwards or grabbed by the racists and the right.It can fuel great new socialist movements that offer hope or give ammunition to the fascists.This is the era of both Trump and Jeremy Corbyn Capitalism is not delivering, and it is less and less credible to say that with just a few small reforms it can be made to work for the benefit of all For a period in the 1950s special circumstances allowed the system to expand and deliver some improvements for at least a section of the worlds ordinary people. But that era has long past.Today there are many parallels with the 1930s, when fascist movements flourished against the background of a devastating economic crisis.The threat of fascism should be taken very seriously The regime responsible for the Holocaust was destroyed, but the system that created it lives on. But the 1930s was not just the era of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.It also saw unprecedented mass strikes in France and the highest point of the US labour movement so far.It also saw the Spanish Revolution and powerful workers struggles in Germany that could have blocked the fascists and gone on to fight for socialist change.One of the key elements today is the failure of the Labour-type social democratic parties. In Spain, Greece, France and Britain they implemented austerity, and paid a heavy price.In some cases this has fuelled parties further to the left , such asfor a periodSyriza and Podemos.Elsewhere the far right has grownsuch as Marine Le Pens Front National in France.The trade union leaderswho in general have held back struggle in Britain, the US and much of Europehave also made it easier for the right to grow.When there are big strikes workers feel their unity and their anger is directed upwards against the bosses and the state.When struggle is held back it is easier for individualism and division to emerge.Sunday 4 December could see Ukip leader Nigel Farage lead a march in London at the same time as fascist Norbert Hofer wins the Austrian presidential election.Its also important to say that broad similarities between events in different countries can mask fundamental differences.Donald Trumps victory is not the same as the Leave vote in Britain.Its true that both rest upon deep dissatisfaction among broad layers of working class people. But there is a strongly progressive case for opposing the neoliberal, austerity-imposing, migrant-repelling European Union (EU).There is no progressive case for Trump.However contradictory peoples reasons, voting for a bigoted boss is not the same as voting against the bosses EU.The US presidential election saw a 57 percent turnout, a continuation of a long-term trend where about half the population dont vote. The EU referendum in contrast saw a huge turnout of 72 percent.Although Trump alienated many leading Republicans, the party and its voters largely held together behind him. Brexit split the Tories in half with many ministers, activists and voters backing Remain.The Leave sides most visible supporters were racists no better than Trump. But others were more like those who rallied to Bernie Sanders left wing case against neoliberal trade deals.Marine Le Pen, who could win the first round of Frances election next year, cheered both Trump and Brexit. But her Front National party represents a distinct danger.Trump barged his way to the head of one of the existing main parties. Le Pen is seeking to sweep them aside with an organised, active movement all of her own.Trump stands in the tradition of celebrity-turned-Republican-president Ronald Reaganand of US populists who won big votes only to fizzle away. Le Pen is a real fascist.Some narratives submerge these differences. For example, many articles have tried to explain a rise in nationalism in psychological terms.They say industrial decline and economic crisis made fearful workers turn inwards. They say civil rights and womens liberation made white people and men resentful of a relative loss of privilege.Others erect a false division in society.On one side are the backward isolationiststhe angry, the racist, the uneducated and the poor (or at least poor whites).On the other are the forces of opennessthe European Union (EU), the US Democratic Party, globalisation and anyone with progressive politics. But this masks a real class war.The institutions of neoliberal capitalism are no friends of those who defend freedom and equality.Toxic nationalists are no friends of those who have suffered from globalisations effects.Democrat Barack Obama oversaw more deportations than any other president, across a border thats already in large part walled off.Labour prime minister Tony Blair brought tough measures against immigrants supposedly placing our hospitality under threat.The EU builds external border controls to keep out supposed economic migrants, bogus asylum seekers and terror threats. These same myths boosted racists against EU migrants.The respectable yet often vicious Islamophobia of the war on terror also created a space for more extreme forms.Caricaturing the situation lets a society that breeds despair off the hookalong with politicians who use racism to exploit or deflect that despair. And it avoids the question of what we can do about it.Confronting reality with all its contradictions reveals a challenge thats daunting but not hopeless.Racist scapegoating can tap into workers fears. But few workers buy into it fully.Many believe that there is too much immigration in the abstract, for example, yet defend actual immigrantsfrom their workmates to refugee children.There is a sense of the weakness of the socialist left and the trade union movement. But the sudden surges in support for Sanders and Corbyn revealed much wider demand for left wing ideas than previously suspected.Mass protests and strikes appear to be reviving in the US. In Britain they remain generally at a low ebbalthough when given the chance to strike workers take it up enthusiastically.The situation can change. Throughout the history of the working class in Britain, long periods of decline for the trade unions have alternated with strike waves that build them anew.Theres no guarantee that this will happen again, though stirrings of activity even among supposedly unorganisable groups of workers are a reminder not to rule it out.France, where the situation currently seems bleakest, shows this vividly. Authoritarian president Charles De Gaulle governed almost unchallenged except by the hard right, up to a few months before the biggest general strike ever in 1968 And mass strikes earlier this year were a reminder of working class power, re-energising debates about how to unleash it.Economic crisis and the political volatility it produces can increase the opportunities for such explosions.People are less likely to trust the existing system to safeguard their future and more likely to look beyond itone way or another.Complacent assumptions that the racist right will burn itself out are dangerous.So is despair that overstates their strength and our weakness. Both are recipes for inaction that can be lethal.Instead we need a mass movement against racism , united opposition to the fascists who feed on it, and a real alternative to the system that breeds it. By Azernews By Nigar Abbasova Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR may soon expand its participation in the modernization of Egyptian energy industry. Azerbaijani Ambassador to Egypt Tural Rzayev said that Egyptian side is interested in broader participation of SOCAR in the oil industry of the country. For now, energy is deemed to be the main dimension of cooperation between the two countries. The worth of oil export from Azerbaijan to Egypt amounted to some $300 million in January-September 2016. The two countries intend to expand their cooperation in the sphere, he said. The envoy further said that the issue of bolstering cooperation was high on agenda during the meeting between SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev and Egyptian side in early November. Within his visit to Egypt, Abdullayev held talks with Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla. The sides discussed the expansion of cooperation between SOCAR and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC, a national oil company of Egypt), hailed the role of SOCAR in the in modernization and improvement of Egypts oil industry and exchanged views on the implementation of other joint projects. The two companies, that have six-year successful energy cooperation, also signed a Memorandum of Mutual Understanding (MOU). The agreement envisages the execution of long term oil and gas projects. Moreover, SOCAR is expected to provide nearly 2 million barrels crude oil to Egypts MIDOR and Nasr Petroleum refineries, according to Egypt Oil&Gas. Additionally, the document covers the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemicals. By Azernews By Nigar Abbasova Being the main export market of Azerbaijan for agricultural products, Russia recorded a growth in the volume of tomatoes imported from the country. Azerbaijan has managed to enter the top-three and became a runner-up in the list of main exporters of tomatoes to Russia. The country exported some 86,000 tons of tomatoes in January-September 2016, recording a 56 percent growth in the volume, as compared to the figures of 2015, according to Izvestia. Morocco held the leading positions in the list, while the volume of imported tomatoes from the country amounted to 88,700 tons, recording an increase of 158 percent in the reported period. Azerbaijan places a serious emphasis on the promotion of export potential, while local entrepreneurs get a huge assistance and a number of incentives. Moreover, Azerbaijans Deputy Agriculture Minister Ilham Guliyev, earlier said that the two countries established a "green corridor" for the export of agricultural products, which in turn positively influenced the trade turnover between the countries. Azerbaijan entered the top 3 suppliers of agricultural products to Russia among the CIS countries, after Moscow imposed anti-Turkish sanctions. Then, rejection of Turkish tomatoes became one of the critical issues for Russia, as nearly 70 percent of tomatoes in the Russian market are imported. However, experts say that mending of ties between Turkey and Russia does not affect the growth of the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia, as the figure increases every year, due to the quality of Azerbaijani products and their already well-established place on the Russian market. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia totaled $1.35 billion in January-September 2016, with some $251.6 million accounting for the export of Azerbaijani goods to Russia, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. Russia is the third among importers from Azerbaijan. By Trend Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 15 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported on November 14. The Azerbaijani army positions located in Qaymaqli village of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located in Barekamavan village of the Noyemberyan district of Armenia. The Azerbaijani army positions located in Munjuglu village of Azerbaijans Tovuz district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located on the nameless heights of the Berd district of Armenia. Moreover, the Azerbaijani army positions also underwent fire from the Armenian positions located near the Armenian-occupied Chilaburt village of the Tartar district, as well as on nameless heights of the Goranboy, Tartar and Fizuli districts. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. By Trend Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has accused the head of the European Parliament of defending the terrorist group PKK after the latter criticized the detention of journalists and opposition lawmakers on terror charges, Anadolu reported. They are defending the PKK very well. Was there any statement from Schulz and those who think like him after our governor was martyred? Cavusoglu told reporters when asked about the European Parliaments President Martin Schulzs earlier remarks on arrests targeting journalists and lawmakers. The Turkish minister was referring to Muhammet Fatih Safiturk, the governor of Mardin's Derik district, who succumbed Friday to wounds sustained in a PKK terrorist attack. [Martin] Schulzs threatening statements have no effect on us, Cavusoglu told reporters in the Turkish capital Ankara following a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. First, [he] should stop the activities of the PKK in the European Parliament, Cavusoglu said. If he is strong enough, he should be using this discourse against those supporting terror in the EU member countries, he added. The Turkish minister said that Schulz would do whatever was necessary to impose economic sanctions against Turkey. Earlier this month, Martin Schulz, the European Parliaments president, reacted to the arrest of 11 journalists from the Cumhuriyet daily in Istanbul and Ankara as well as the arrest of lawmakers from Turkey's opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) on terror charges. Media reports said he had indicated that the EU could impose sanctions on Turkey following the anti-terror operations. The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU -- resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July last year. Since then, more than 300 civilians and nearly 800 security personnel have been martyred. Around 8,000 PKK terrorists have been killed or apprehended. The UAE Exchange, a leading money transfer service in the region, has clarified that the exchange is not accepting the demonetised currency notes of India's Rs500 and Rs1,000 denomination. The clarification follows fake WhatsApp Audio messages that are circulating in the UAE and across the GCC claiming that the UAE Exchange is accepting the demonetised currency notes, said the company. "We would like to ensure that those are false claims which are misleading the public to visit the branches all over the country trying to exchange the notes," it said "We are receiving a lot of inbound calls seeking service assistance to exchange these notes. We would like to reassure you that we are closely monitoring the situation and are standing by to make necessary arrangements as and when notified by Reserve Bank of India and/or Government of India for handling such notes outside India," the exchange house said. "As of today, all UAE Exchange branches worldwide are not accepting the demonetised currency notes until further notice," it said. All updates and communication on this matter will be issued through our official channels via uaeexchange.com, official Facebook and Twitter accounts, and press announcements, it added. -TradeArabia News Service Cofely Besix Facility Management (CBFM), a leading facility management provider in the region, has launched the 'Al Mareefa' training bus - a purpose-built mobile training facility to provide on-site training to all its employees in the UAE. It was created by a team of in-house carpenters and electricians who renovated a second-hand school bus by removing 75 per cent of the bus seats in order to build workbenches for the training, said a statement from the company. The bus has also been modified with a mini-theatre style seating arrangement and TV monitor for class-room type training, it stated. Simulation panels, such as electrical distribution boards for the practical part of the training were also installed. The bus also boasts a state-of-the-art vehicle fire suppression system, and has its own independent power supplier via an on-board generator. The training bus will regularly visit 50 sites across the UAE providing training on-site for all its employees located at the various projects managed by CBFM. The company also plans to host special community-based training programmes at labour accommodation camps, schools, and remote farming communities within the country, it said. "In this hectic business of supporting customers, it is always challenging to keep technicians up to date with the latest safety and technical requirements, and with the Al Mareefa bus we can take the training directly to the employees, however remote," explained Ian Harfield, the company CEO. "It also allows us to make training and development a seamless and non-disruptive activity, which is especially appreciated by our customers," he added. The training sessions, which are conducted only when the bus is stationary, can accommodate 14 people simultaneously. Andre Mars, the HSQE (health, safety, quality and environment) manager, said: "The training provided on board the bus, is technical in nature with a focus on mechanical, electrical, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) and plumbing, hence we had to make sure the bus was fully-equipped with all the necessary equipment required, as well as adequate space to conduct practical training too." "I am extremely proud of my team for developing such a unique innovation that adds real value to our customers," remarked Harfield. "Additionally, by providing training at our labour camps we are also enabling our non-skilled employees to learn basic skills, skills which they will keep and take to their home countries which will transform their lives and the lives of their families and localities," he stated. "We also hope to visit local schools across the UAE over the coming months, to educate children on the basics of facilities management and maintenance, which will show them how they can contribute to the upkeep of their homes and surroundings," he added. A team of Cofely Besix FM volunteers will also visit remote farming areas in the UAE in Al Mareefa where for the first time some of the Asian sub-continent workers in farming will have access to a bespoke training centre, said the company statement. They will be shown how to deal with basic electrical wiring, air-conditioning, plumbing as well as water hygiene, as part of the companys corporate social responsibility initiative, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Leading regional and global real estate developers, contractors, consultants, master planners, property owners and designers are taking part in The International District Cooling Conference 2016 which opened in Dubai, UAE, on Monday. The two-day event will see high-ranking industry officials and experts discuss the strategic use of district cooling in saving energy and enabling sustainability in modern cities, said the event organisers. It was officially inaugurated by Ahmad Bin Shafar, the chief executive of Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower), and Rob Thornton, the president and chief executive of International District Energy Association (Idea) in the presence of top officials and experts accompanied by a delegation of the public and private sector. The districtCooling: A Climate Solution event is being held at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai. "This is a huge opportunity for stakeholders of the district cooling industry globally and in the UAE to showcase their products and services to an international audience from the Gulf region and beyond," stated Bin Shafar as he made a tour of the exhibition along with other officials. "It is of great pride that the opening has attracted that much attention from participants and media. We have high expectations from this event and we are confident that this international gathering will bring the awaited solutions in term of business deals and best practises to all attendees," he noted. The officials were introduced to a wide range of providers, manufacturers, suppliers and business partners in the district energy sector, during a tour among the stands. The event was attended by senior representatives from Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Johnson Controls, Carrier, Daikin, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Supreme Council of Energy, Trane, DC Pro Engineering, Bronze, Elips, Evapco and Climate Control Middle East. In his opening remarks, Thornton said: "This edition of the International District Cooling conference will allow us to find about the next generation of district cooling systems and related technology." "Our goal is to set up development and upscaling goals that contribute to a sustainable and efficient energy and water management," he noted. Recognised industry leaders took part at the opening plenary panel discussion that focused on the best practises in the district cooling systems deployment, operations and business. Bin Shafar (Empower) along with Yasser Al Jaidah (Qatar Cool), Afif Harhara (Tabreed), Anwar Hassan (Johnson Controls), Juan Ontiveros (University of Texas Austin) discussed the strategic role of district cooling in supporting the Paris Agreement (COP 21). Tim Griffin, the chair of Idea, addressed the session. The following panel discussions gave insightful interventions and presentations on financing the district cooling solutions, the regulations in the GCC region, the environmental innovations, design considerations taking into account the regional factors, DC applications around the world and the DC system optimisation to create customer value, said the organisers. The participants are being given several occasions to interact, mingle and network during themed roundtables, Idea recognition Luncheon, Idea business partner exhibitors receptions and the gala dinner hosted by Empower, they added. The District Cooling 2016 conference will be held tomorrow (November 15) with a rich programme featuring discussions on district cooling projects from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan, lined up for the session besides comparative study of various systems, thermal energy storage and best practices in plant room construction, and operation and maintenance in the GCC region. The event concludes tomorrrow with technical tours to give participants a peek into Dubais achievement in the district cooling sector and check on the ground Empowers projects and plants. The tours are planned to the Business Bay Plant 2 and to the Command Control Centre.-TradeArabia News Service A total of 42 construction companies and workers walked away with the Taqdeer Award, the worlds first points-based award programme for recognising excellence in labour welfare practices, at a special ceremony held in Dubai, UAE. The ceremony was attended by decision-makers and leaders from local and international government bodies, labour organisations and private companies, said a statement from the organisers. The award was launched under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, and chairman of Dubai Executive Council. Furthermore, the winners were honoured by Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, chairman of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, it said. Hussein Nasser Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality and president of the judging committee, said: The committee has worked diligently to achieve the desired goals of this award. Within a short time of about 10 months only, the award has helped companies achieve a lot and created an everlasting impact and this is just the beginning. Major General Obaid Muhair Bin Suroor, deputy director general of general directorate of residency and foreigners affairs (GDRFA) in Dubai and chairman of Taqdeer Award, said: It is a moment of great pleasure for us that the award has encouraged and led construction companies in Dubai to set exemplary standards in labour welfare. The construction sector is vital to Dubais economy and employs over 500,000 workers, each of whom play an important role in Dubais journey to excellence. This award will go a long way in enhancing relationship between employers and employees, in line with the vision of our leadership to ensure happiness and welfare of all and realising Dubais vision of becoming one of the worlds best places to work and live, he said. The award has received global appreciation and I would like to congratulate the winning companies for setting international benchmarks in labour welfare practices and the workers who have given their best and shown excellence at workplace, which sets an example for others to follow, he stated. Bin Suroor said the committee expects at least 100 companies for the next edition of the Taqdeer Awards. Our goal is to encourage companies across all sectors to set such benchmarks as Dubai, guided by its visionary leadership, is continuously working toward attaining excellence, he stated. In its first phase, the award targeted construction sector and will eventually be extended to other sectors.- TradeArabia News Service The overall number of projects in Iran which have drawn foreign direct investment is expected to increase by over six times by March, a senior official said in a report. Once the contracts between Iranian and foreign firms are finalised, the Islamic Republic will attract $10 billion to $12 billion in foreign investments, Feriyal Mostofi, a member of Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mine and Agriculture, was quoted as saying in the Iran Daily News report. Based on figures released by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Iran drew foreign investments to the tune of $2.05 billion and $2.10 billion in 2015 and 2014, respectively. Iran had been off limits to global investors as a result of sanctions that banned major investments in the country, specifically in its oil and gas industries that provide the lifeline of its national revenues. The sanctions were removed after Iran and P5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) finalised a lasting nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on July 14, 2015, and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Abu Dhabi-based Agthia Group, a leading food and beverage company, has signed a purchase agreement for 100 per cent of the shares in the water business of Delta Marketing Company, based in Saudi Arabia, producing Al Ain brand water. The transaction is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2017, following regulatory approvals and other closing conditions, said a statement from the company. The acquisition enables Agthia to enter the Saudi market for the first time with its Al Ain water brand, the leading bottled water brand in the UAE, reflecting the groups strategy to expand in the GCC and become a region-wide player, it said. Deltas water business has been present in Saudi Arabia for three decades and is a growing and cash-generating operation. The transaction helps to fast-track Agthias objective of establishing a fully-fledged water production presence in kingdom, it added. Eng Dhafer Ayed Al Ahbabi, chairman, Agthia, said: This agreement is an important step in carrying out our commitment to deliver sustainable growth for our shareholders through international expansion and acquisitions. Saudi Arabia presents a very large market opportunity for us and the vehicle we have found to extend our presence there by producing Al Ain water locally allows us to take a critical step in our regional expansion, he added. Iqbal Hamzah, CEO, Agthia Group, said: Acquiring Delta with their Al Ain water brand is a very important milestone for us. Regional expansion, especially in our water business, is a core part of our strategy. This transaction provides a significant step change in our business. Al Ain will now be manufactured, distributed and sold in the three largest GCC economies the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia thus enhancing Al Ain image as a truly regional water brand, he added. Hassan Alireza, managing director of Delta Marketing Company, added: I am pleased to announce that we have entered into a definitive agreement with Agthia to sell Delta Water Factory Company (DWFC), the water division of Delta Marketing Company. We have full faith in Agthia building on our rich history of 30 years in the water market, and take our products and brands to the next stage. Over the coming weeks, we will work closely with Agthia to complete the transaction and ensure the successful transition of DWFC to its new owner, he said. This transaction will offer genuine opportunities to the employees with broader development prospects as part of a GCC Group that firmly focuses on growth, and will benefit Saudi Arabia by bringing foreign investments, he concluded. Agthia is pursuing a five-year strategy aimed at becoming one of the Middle Easts leading food and beverage companies. The cornerstone of this strategy is expanding its water business. Earlier this year, the company entered into a joint venture in Kuwait to establish a water bottling plant, which is expected to be completed in 2017, said a statement. Last year Agthia also acquired Al Bayan Water Company a leading player in the 5 gallon bulk water segment in the UAE with a presence also in Oman. Alpin, a natural spring water brand of Agthia is produced at its factory in Turkey, it stated. TradeArabia News Service Canada-based BlackBerry Limited, a global leader in secure mobile communications, has signed an agreement with Ford Motor Company for the expanded use of BlackBerrys QNX and security software. As part of this agreement, BlackBerry will dedicate a team to work with Ford on expanding the use of BlackBerrys QNX Neutrino Operating System, Certicom security technology, QNX hypervisor and QNX audio processing software. The terms of the deal are confidential, said a statement from the company. The deal signifies an acceleration in BlackBerrys pivot from hardware to software in support of the automakers goal of providing connected vehicles and mobility to its customers, it said. The combination of BlackBerrys expertise in security and QNXs mission-critical operating systems and software for automotive applications, allows the company to offer the most secure, trusted and reliable platform that can power every aspect of the connected car, it added. BlackBerrys QNX software powers more than 60 million vehicles, including the SYNC 3 Infotainment system in Fords current models. John Chen, executive chairman and chief executive at BlackBerry, said: The future of the automobile is all about embedded intelligence. I believe our expertise in secure embedded software makes us the preferred technology provider to put the smart in the car. Ford is an industry leader and the opportunity to contribute our world-class technology to their products is a privilege. Fords expanded application of our software and services illustrates the diverse and broad value we can bring to market, he added. Raj Nair, executive VP (product development) and chief technical officer at Ford Motor Company, said: With the success of our SYNC 3 system globally, which is based on the BlackBerry QNX operating system, we understand the importance of the connected car experience to our customers. Growing our expertise, experience and use of the BlackBerry QNX embedded software platforms will help ensure we deliver the high-quality, highly secure experience that our customers expect, he concluded. TradeArabia News Service Asiacell, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Ericsson, won the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Campaign of the Year honour at the recent CommsMEA Awards 2016 in Dubai, UAE. To help reach children affected by the conflict, Ericsson has partnered with Iraqi telecommunications operator, Asiacell, and the IRC to launch a Connect to Learn project in schools in Domiz Refugee Camp, Iraq. This partnership reflects candid commitment to society and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by using ICT and connectivity as an enabler to ensure that teachers are provided high-quality teacher professional development and teaching resources to improve classroom instruction and education outcomes for Syrian refugee students. The 11th edition of the annual CommsMEA Awards acknowledges operators and individuals who have taken a leadership role in the regions fast growing and rapidly changing telecoms sector. TradeArabia News Service Hong Kong-based Comba Telecom Systems Holdings, a leading global wireless solutions provider, has appointed Dr Hazim Al Rawi as its new general manager for the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). The appointment comes as the company embarks on expanding its business footprint in the Mena region in response to the growing network coverage and capacity needs. In his new role, Al Rawi will manage and provide strategic direction to Combas regional business across all products, solutions and services, said a statement from the company. In fact, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region is headed for the strongest mobile data traffic growth of anywhere in the world at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 71 per cent in the lead up to 2020, it said. The UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have seen a steep increase in mobile data traffic in the last few years, with forecasts for continued heavy growth, it added. Dr Al Rawi plans to leverage Combas classification as a Tier 1 antennas provider and its expertise in full-turn-key of In-Building Solutions (IBS) and Distributed Antennas Systems (DAS) to help existing and new customers enhance their mobile networks, said a statement. Commenting on the appointment, Al Rawi said: "The Mena region continues to experience exponential growth in data communications and, in turn, the pressure on mobile network operators to facilitate coverage anywhere-anytime is mounting." Meanwhile, the number of subscriptions, too, is seeing unprecedented growth multiple countries within the region have extremely high smartphone and mobile device penetration rates, he stated. Our company will play its part in meeting this growing demand by leveraging its extensive 2G, 3G and 4G wireless products portfolio. Network operators within the Mena region have shown a particular interest in our new antenna systems to tackle bandwidth bottlenecks, he added. Comba was recently ranked Tier 1 antenna supplier by industry analyst EJL Wireless Research, following a rise in deployments of its new generation of ultra-wideband compact 4G antennas, which provide a rapid fix for weak network coverage in high-traffic areas, it stated.-TradeArabia News Service Bahrain's Tourism & Exhibition Authority (BTEA) has concluded its participation at the World Travel Market (WTM) in London, which saw 50,000 delegates attend over the three-day show. A total of 12 companies were represented at the BTEA show stand, including Gulf Air, destination management companies and a host of Bahrains leading hotels and resorts. WTM London has been a great success, said Zayed Bin Rashid Alzayani, The Minister of Industry, Commerce & Tourism Its been great to see people excited about the new brand on display, to see them meeting with our partners, and immersing themselves in our story and culture. Shaikh Khaled Bin Humood Al-Khalifa, CEO of the BTEA, said: All of our stand partners were delighted to be here, establishing trade links with the UK and leading global travel professionals. Many have secured deals and new agreements over the last few days and are leaving more excited than ever about the future. During the three days, BTEA held 19 meetings with members of the travel trade and media, including meetings with key travel partners such as Expedia, Southall Travel, Thomas Cook, Lastminute.com and Emerald. Agents visiting the stand were able to try their driving skills on the Bahrain International Circuit Formula 1 simulator, and fuel their wanderlust through the many inspiring images on display throughout the stand part of the new 'Ours.Yours.Bahrain' brand launched by BTEA at the show. On the sidelines of the World Travel Market and in line with Gulf Airs longstanding mission and continuous efforts to promote Bahrain to an international audience as a tourist and business destination, Gulf Air and BTEA presented a grand prize to Carl Halvorsen who won an all-inclusive package to visit the kingdom and attend the 2017 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix. The prize included Gulf Air return flights from London, race tickets and hotel accommodation for two persons. - TradeArabia News Service Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre has appointed Sam Jones as director of sales for a fresh and international perspective for the propertys meetings and incentives business. The passionate and inspirational hospitality manager comes from a multi-segment global background in the hospitality business, the hotel said in a statement I am thrilled to join the immensely talented team at Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre, a hotel that quipped to grow with Dubais rise as a leading global Mice destination. With 5,500 sq mt of conferencing facilities, the hotel is adept at accommodating the most demanding business meetings as comfortably as an intimate private gathering. Ive had the opportunity to develop sales teams and drive sales for our hotels in the UK and now look forward to applying my experience here in the beautiful city of Dubai, Jones said. Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre is home to three ballrooms : the intimate Falcon Ballroom, the flexible Wasl Ballroom and the newest addition the Great Ballroom featuring indoor and outdoor event spaces, show kitchens, ample parking, the option of dividing into three spaces and a capacity of up to 1,500 people, In addition to the Great Ballroom, the hotel also features 25 function rooms, backed with world class technological support. Dedicated to offering the finest guest experience, Le Meridien Dubai introduced Le Royal Club, a new wing of 196 rooms at the elegant annex building. Modern rooms with a minimal aesthetic offering spacious 52 square meter spaces, the latest technology and luxury comforts. Le Royal Club guests are welcome to experience the rooftop pool, dedicated spa floor, valet service and exclusive Club Lounge access. Jones earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in Hotel Management and a Diploma in Hospitality Management from the International College of Management in Sydney, Australia before joining W Hotel, Sydney. His career continued in the UK as a Reservations Coordinator in 2007 at Starwood Central London Hotels before climbing the ladder to account director, Middle East, Diplomatic, Luxury in 2012 - his final role at the property. In early 2014, he was appointed Director of Sales at Sheraton Heathrow Hotel, leading up to his appointment at Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre. An energetic professional, Sam Jones has worked in international markets from the U.S. to Brazil for sales missions and hospitality industry events. He is a proven sales leader with a record of consistently exceeding sales goals. The newly appointed Director of Sales was awarded the EAME Best Practice Award in 2013 for Suite Sales Strategy W London/Park Tower and the Top 10 TeamHOT performer of EAME in 2011, among other accolades. His UK experience will be an extraordinary asset for Le Meridien Dubais MICE segment, this being one of their key source markets. Further, Jones ability to continually surpass sales goals will serve as a value contribution for growing business at the hotel. Sam comes with a proven track record in hospitality sales in the dynamic UK hospitality landscape and it gives me great pleasure to welcome him to head our growing sales team at Le Meridien Dubai. Says Shaun Parsons, complex general manager of Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre. - TradeArabia News Service The Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the UAE hosted Korea Festival 2016 on Corniche Beach in Abu Dhabi. The Festival, held in association with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation - Abu Dhabi, featured a range of engaging Korean cultural activities and culinary specialties, catering to the growing interests of the UAE residents, mainly young generation, in Korea and the countrys cultural values. The key attraction of the festival was the display of globally popular Korean herb Red Ginseng by the aT Center (Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation). Considered the most effective form of ginseng available, the Korean Red Ginseng has wide-ranging health-promoting effects on the human body. Showing the Korean culture more vibrantly, the festival this year began at the National Theatre on October 28; continued at the Abu Dhabi Corniche Beach the next weekend (November 3 to 4); and concluded in Al Ain the last weekend. Speaking on the occasion, Park Kang-ho, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea in the UAE, said: We are excited to organise the Korea Festival 2016 in such a massive scale this year. The objective of the Festival is to treat the residents of the UAE with a glimpse of Korean culture. We are grateful to the UAE Government for supporting our efforts to bring Korean products and cultural elements closer to the UAE. The Korean Embassy in the UAE has been instrumental in educating people in the UAE about various offerings from Korea. With the Korea Festival 2016, we initiate some strong steps to educate the UAE residents about the unique Korean cultural elements and amazing Korean culinary specialties. The number of Emirati citizens visiting Korea for tour and medical treatments are increasing, he added. Myung-Gu Seo, director general of Korea Agro-Trade Center, Abu Dhabi, said: We are happy to be part of an event that brings Korean products to the residents of the UAE. The interest has been overwhelming from all communities and we are happy to bring the products here. Besides the huge Korean population in the UAE, we have seen an increased interest from other nationalities. Being a melting pot of different cultures from around the world, the UAE is an ideal market for products from our country. This year, we are keen on bringing attention of the visitors to the popular Korean herb Red Ginseng. Our purpose is to educate the participants on the benefits of using Korean Red Ginseng. At the festival, we focus on the magic root Red Ginseng, which is known to be the most potent of all Ginsengs and its health benefits are immeasurable. Experts from the aT Center stall educated visitors on the benefits of using the herb. Every Korean citizen is a strong advocate of the Red Ginseng as they understand the goodness and benefits of the root brings to their life, he added. Visitors at the festival were provided with opportunity to taste Korean Red Ginseng drinks and explore more about it. The festival also set up booths for people to taste Korean food, further featuring renowned Chef Jaehak Lee from Intercontinental Abu Dhabi who conducted a Master Cooking Class showing how to prepare the perfect Kimchi. A key attraction of the festival was K-Dance featuring different Korean dance forms including a performance by contemporary Korean dance group Goblin Party, and The Lion Dance, traditional Korean dance which is a popular style where one or more dancers put on a giant costume and perform. Korean B-Boy band performed the marionette, interpretation of an international dance form. SE:UM, a world music group and one of Koreas most innovative ensembles showcased a one-of-a-kind music performance drawing instrumental, vocal and improvisation techniques from both Korean and Western jazz traditions. Apart from the music and dance programmes, Korea Festival also screened Korean movies for the public, and animation films for kids; in addition to K-Drama, a giant screen that kept playing Korean TV dramas back to back; and VR Games to engage people, and booths with traditional Korean games like Tuho and Yut Nori for kids to discover and play. - TradeArabia News Service The first year Ultra Petroleum operated in Sublette County, it paid $1.3 million in taxes on some $200 million worth of property. The gas company was one of many firms to contribute millions in taxes to the state in 2014. But the following year, when the company reported the value of its property in the Jonah Field to the local officials, it claimed the value was $28 million. The change is not unusual in Wyoming. Every year the overall worth of a companys facilities and equipment are part of the property and real estate taxes that fuel local economies. But values are reassessed every year, and sometimes changes result in significant losses in tax dollars, said the Sublette County assessor, L. Jeness Saxton. Over the last few years, revenues from oil, gas and coal have plummeted in Wyoming due to low prices in those commodities. The result has been a decrease in local and county budgets. And though production and prices are beginning to level out, counties are aware that adjustments can still roll in, further reducing their tax income. Disparities in property value, like the case of Ultra Petroleum in Sublette County, can deliver a significant hit to expected revenue. In Campbell County, two large coal companies have emerged from bankruptcy, and a third is set to emerge early next year. It is yet to be seen how much of a change in value could result from the post-bankruptcy mines. It could happen. I know some of the coal mines that came out of bankruptcy were doing some reappraisal, said Troy Clements, the county assessor. We havent seen any figures, dont know which direction they are heading yet. Campbell County uses Pickett and Co., a private firm that does industrial appraisal, to value its coal mines each year. The firm serves a number of Wyoming counties. But though Campbell always has a third-party appraiser involved, companies can still dispute the countys claims, Clements said. The changes in value could be significant, though Campbell County receives most of its tax dollars from coal production, he added. Since last year, total valuation of property in the county from mobile homes to power plants has dropped $1 billion. Of the three companies affected by Chapter 11 in Campbell County, none confirmed or denied that a reappraisal could result in lower taxes. Contura is a newly formed company that bought the Wyoming assets of Alpha Natural Resources. The company declined to comment on for this story. Arch Coal, which owns the Black Thunder mine near Gillette, did not respond to a request for information. Peabody Energy, which operates the North Rochelle mine near Gillette, should emerge from bankruptcy in January. Its spokesman said Peabody relies on the county and Pickett and Co. to determine its mines values. There are a number of reasons why a companys value can be drawn down year to year, particularly after large sales or financial insolvency. In the case of Ultra Petroleum, Sublette County hired Picket and Co. to resolve the discrepancy between the companys two-year estimates. Picket and Co. determined the value was $63 million, resulting in a loss of $875,000 in taxes from the previous year on the same equipment. Ultra received a reduction from the previous years $200 million estimate because it wasnt using some facilities to their full potential, Saxton said. I have some qualms about that, but it is an independent third party who have done [appraisals] on a regular basis, she said. We were able to keep enough revenue by hiring an outside contractor. It was a cost to the county to do that, but it kept a lot of revenue coming in and created an unbiased situation. Something similar happened in Natrona County in 2015. After the Salt Creek Oil field was sold by Anadarko Petroleum to FDL Energy, the new company contested its value of $578 million. An appraisal by Pickett brought down that sum to $320 million. The difference in taxes was $2 million, according to the Natrona County assessor, Connie Smith. Smith said she could not release the reasons for the companys contested value. Counties are aware these fluctuations can happen, Clements said, but when and how much they will differ is too unpredictable for planning. Have an event, trend or general energy happening youd like to see in the Energy Journal newsletter? Send it to Star-Tribune energy reporter Heather Richards at heather.richards@trib.com. Sign up for the newsletter at www.trib.com/energyjournal. This week in numbers Friday's oil prices: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) $43.41, Brent (ICE) $44.75 Natural gas weekly price averages: Henry Hub $2.23, Wyoming Pool $1.94, Opal $1.99 Market analysts and Trump The presidential election dominated the stories on energy this week, and with good reason. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to change the nation's approach to the energy sector, from unleashing oil and gas production on public lands to bringing back coal jobs. The day after Trump's win, analysts weighed in on what it could mean. The most pressing issue, or the most obvious issue, was Trump's promise to deregulate industry. Uncertainty and the president-elect The promises made on the campaign trail don't always come to fruition. In the case of Trump, a lack of substantive policy makes it difficult to predict exactly how his White House will differ from the current one in regard to energy policy. Still, many are hopeful that Trump's support for oil, gas and coal will be a good thing for industry. Others have serious doubts concerning the next president's ability to follow through on his plans. Final moves It's not only the president-elect being considered in energy policy this week. The Obama administration released a final rule Thursday on a new leasing program for wind and solar. Pavillion The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality reaffirmed its position that Pavillion's drinking water has not been affected by fracking in the area. The state released its final report on the issue Thursday. Local residents and environmentalists have criticized the state's investigation. Federal regulators have also contested the state's conclusions. Casper was rated the most giving city in the United States by the vacation website Travelocity last week. More than just Stetson hats and the Gateway to the Tetons ... Casper is the most charitable city in the nation, the company wrote. While Travelocity cited Caspers annual fundraiser for the Wyoming Special Olympics, the companys methodology for determining the most charitable cities was based entirely on social media. The travel website ranked cities by searching Twitter hashtags #charity, #donate and #volunteer and determining which locations had the highest per capita usage of those terms. The list of 25 cities accompanied a pitch for visiting the towns on readers next vacation: When planning your next vacation, consider these like-minded charitable cities and maybe even lend a helping hand when youre in town. In the write-up about Casper, Downtown Development Authority CEO Kevin Hawley said the city had a long history of charitable giving. We take a great deal of pride in our community and our way of life in Casper and in Wyoming, Hawley said. The generosity of the Casper community never ceases to amaze and makes me extremely proud to call Casper home. Hawleys DDA has been the recipient of millions of dollars in charitable giving toward its downtown plaza project. The plaza broke ground in late October after raising the $1.6 million needed to complete the first phase of the project. The agency announced two substantial gifts toward the second phase of the project in October. Hilltop National Bank contributed $500,000 toward the splash pad that will be built on the plaza, and the Cercy family donated $1 million to the project. Dr. Shelley Springer is the neonatologist/pediatrician and owner of Casper Childrens Center, located in the Casper Clinic. She has a law degree in addition to a medical degree and a master of science in biometry (the application of statistical analysis to biological data) and epidemiology (the study of disease in populations). She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has been in Casper for just over two years. She came to Wyoming from Minnesota and found a practice that was perfect and a state in desperate need of a neonatologist. This is the last bastion of no child health care, and I thought I could really make a difference, she said. Thursday is World Prematurity Day, designed to focus attention on the huge emotional, social, economic and cultural problem of prematurity, with the hope of allocating more resources to reduce it. Please tell us about premature births in Wyoming. As you know, Wyoming is the only state in the union that does not have 21st century childrens health care, no childrens hospital, no specialized providers to take care of either high-risk mothers or premature babies. All of our preemies (less than 37 weeks completed) have to be transported out of state even if mildly premature. Most family practitioners are operating out in rural settings without any support at all, and there is a contingent of families who prefer to deliver at home those women deliver in really primitive circumstances. All of those converge to contribute to what is an unacceptable high rate of infant mortality. The March of Dimes puts out a report card that gives a snapshot. As a whole, the United States is embarrassingly bad when it comes to infant mortality. Were in the 20s in terms of worldwide, which is horrible. In Wyoming, our premature birth card just came out. It is 9.8 percent, or almost 10 percent, of our births in the state of Wyoming in the last year were premature. Thats a little bit better than last year it was almost 11 percent, as a state. That resulted in our grade going from D to C. There was improvement, primarily in Albany County. Some of our counties have incredible disparity. Natrona for 2015 is 11.5 percent, up from previous years, which is a grade of F. A 37-week baby is not a term baby. There is a lot of pressure placed by payers to decrease the rate of elective premature births, which are elective C-sections. Technically, a full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks. Payers have gotten together and are restricting payment for electives less than 39 weeks. Absolutely, I am in favor of that, and Im also in favor of natural labor rather than induction. The thought now is the day youre 39 and 0 days is the day were scheduling your induction, because the mother is miserable or the doctor wants to be out of town, and thats not good either. We know induced labors tend to have more complications because its not natural. What can be done to improve the outcomes? There are recognized interventions that can start with prenatal providers things like pregnancy spacing, having more than 18 months between pregnancies decreases risk; do not smoke during your pregnancy; get good prenatal care; medical intervention. There is medication that can be given to women who are at risk for pre-term birth. Evidence-based medicine comes in that has been shown to decrease risk. If you are in impending labor, there are interventions that can stop labor or improve outcomes, but those need to be provided by high-risk maternal fetal specialists or neonatal specialist. If women are in pre-term labor in Wyoming, they tend to go to the E.R. and they are given a shot of morphine and are sent home. Twenty-eight-week babies have outcomes almost as good as late- or full-term babies, and success rates at 23 or 24 weeks are over 50 percent, but they have to have the right care. What is happening in Casper on World Prematurity Day? November is World Prematurity Month and the color is purple, and Thursday is World Prematurity Day. At the Casper Childrens Center in the Casper Clinic (930 E. Third St., Ste. 205), were starting the day with a news event and there will be decorations and refreshments. Later in the afternoon at 3:30 or 4 p.m., at Mountain View Regional Hospital, there will be a hot air balloon and kids can get up close and personal with the balloon, all kinds of activities in the lobby area, music by Vibes, instruments for kids to play, face painting, a balloon artist making balloon animals, a diaper the preemie contest, photo booths, cards to make and send to the NICU in Denver, as well as hats to make to send there all with the objective of bringing peoples awareness to the fact that premature births in Wyoming are a big problem and with the right care, we can improve the health and well being of both moms and babies. Final thoughts? People dont know what they dont know in Wyoming. They dont know how medical care in the rest of the country has progressed. Also, the Wyoming can-do philosophy weve been doing just fine, we dont need any help from city folks tends to come into play. Wyoming is finally talking about telemedicine, and we jumped on that bandwagon right away. Those doctors around the state can easily take care of a 34- or 35-weeker if they can talk with somebody and know what to do. Follow community news editor Sally Ann Shurmur on Twitter @WYOSAS Wyoming lawmakers are reviewing whether to spend $4.5 million on water rights to a lake near Sheridan. The Wyoming Water Development Commission and the Select Water Committee discussed buying water rights to 62,000 acre-feet in Lake DeSmet at a recent meeting in Casper. The complex proposal involves buying water and infrastructure from Sasol, a South African synfuels developer. Commission director Harry LaBonde told the committee and lawmakers that the company recently approached him about purchasing the water rights along with the Clear Creek diversion, Lake Healy Reservoir, an industrial pump station, and over six miles of 66-inch water transmission line to Lake DeSmet. All of those Sasol assets went on the market for sale, along with a 10,000-acre ranch that overlies some rather shallow and extensive coal deposits, LaBonde added. That was the energy source for the coal to fuels, or the industrial program, that was planned for the last really 60-plus years. The entire package was being offered at around $18 million, but LaBonde said the deal splits the water infrastructure from the ranching operations. LaBonde recommended setting aside the funds and exploring the deal, saying while there were no current prospects for selling the water, the state has a history of securing water rights for the future. The state of Wyoming has invested in water assets over the years, the Palisades Reservoir, Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Pathfinder, Glendo are all part of that package, along with High Savory, LaBonde said. I think DeSmet, specifically that 62,000 acre-feet of space, really fits into that same category. He further noted the Lake DeSmet water could be used to resolve recent court rulings where Montana can place calls on the Tongue River, which they have done for the last two years. If the infrastructure was built to pump water from DeSmet into the Tongue River drainage, then that water could be used as replacement water so that Wyoming irrigators could continue to irrigate in the event of a call from Montana, LaBonde said. While most everyone agreed that the water price was a bargain, some on the committee challenged the proposal. Calling it an albatross, Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, commented that no one has ever found a way to market the Lake DeSmet water, and the state may wind up owning it anyway. I see theres a pretty good chance Johnson Countys going to probably want to turn this back, their part of the reservoir, Driscoll said. Id like to know how much money theyve got invested, because it might be $4.5 million is the tip of the iceberg if we wind up with a reservoir that we have to maintain and keep up, and dont have sales to pay for the water. Sen. Gerald Geis, R-Worland, said the state should acquire all of Lake DeSmet. We should have bought that instead of the county trying to handle that, because its too big a project, Geis said. I tried to get (the state) to do it with the Water Development Account way back when it first came up. The Joint Committee agreed to put the funding recommendation on hold, moving forward with a two-track approach. In December, LaBonde will bring the cost of a Level II feasibility study to the water commission. At the same time, a separate legislative draft bill will be developed that will allow for negotiations for water assets to proceed. Arizona Opera is mounting Dvoraks Rusalka this weekend a first for the company and the first time it has done an opera in Czechoslovakian. Here are a few things you need to know about the production before you see it on Saturday, Nov. 19, or Sunday, Nov. 20, at the Tucson Music Hall: Its a fairytale: Rusalka takes its cue from Hans Christian Andersens 19th century fairytale The Little Mermaid, who gives up her identity as a sea creature to become human. What weve decided to do is look at the piece through the lens of Rusalka herself and to distill the piece down to its most essential relationships and most essential storytelling, explained Joshua Borths, Arizona Operas resident stage director. Silence and silhouettes: The stage is set with the human world hidden in silhouette and the sea world clearly visible. The human world is silent until Rusalka crosses the threshold connecting the two worlds, and then the human world comes out of the shadows. These giant doors open to let the human world in, which highlights what the piece is about, what happens when we make irrevocable decisions and have to bear the consequences, either living happily ever after or living with the tragedy, said Borths. Girl gets boy and then ... : Rusalka is a water spirit who falls for an earthly prince. She convinces the witch Jezibaba to turn her into a human so she can be with her prince. But the transformation has consequences: As a human, she cant speak, and if the prince rejects her, shes damned, the witch warns her. Turns out Jezibaba isnt too fond of humans. There is obviously a hidden storyline there of her hatred for humans, said mezzo-soprano Daveda Karanas, who sings the role of the witch Jezibaba. I just love how multifaceted she is. Any day I can play a witch is my favorite day. I love it. Rusalka takes the chance, crosses over and finds her prince. And, pretty much as Jezibaba warns, the prince turns a blind eye on her on their wedding day, turning his attention to a princess at the party. Here comes the girl loses boy part: Prince makes a move on princess, Rusalka returns to the sea, then the princess ditches the prince. And here it gets fairytale quirky: Rusalka can have her cake and eat it, too, if she kills the prince. Of course she cant, so the prince, feeling pretty lonely and lousy, comes begging for forgiveness and one last kiss, knowing that kiss will mean his death. Dontcha love fairytales? Singing in Czech: For the first time in its 45 years, the Arizona Opera will sing in Czech. What will it sound like? Probably Russian, said Karanas. Its fun. Ive sung in many languages, so I would definitely compare it to Russian, said Karanas, a Louisiana native and Arizona State University graduate. It kind of feels like Russian with Italian vowels. This is Karanas first Rusalka, although she did a childrens version of it while she was in graduate school. The company took that version a little more Disney than not, Karanas said to schools around the state in conjunction with the performance, which played in Phoenix Nov. 11-13. Borths, the companys education outreach and community engagement director, estimated 60,000 kids statewide experienced the performance. Dream come true: Borths has never directed Rusalka, but he said it is one of his favorite operas. JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) Brittany Bailey and Emily Gage had no idea how hard it would be to complete an unfinished film about haunted places by their late father. "We thought it would be a nice tribute to him," Brittany told The Janesville Gazette (http://bit.ly/2epoFho ). In the process of finishing "Strange Incorporated," they honored their dad, John Gage, who died in a car accident in 2008. But the endeavor stoked raw emotions. "We knew him well enough to get inside his mindset through the entire thing," Emily explained. "But seeing him and hearing him in the video eight years after his death was hard." Both women work at Janesville's Videogenics, a video-production business started by their father and grandfather, Howard Gage, in 1986. A premier showing of "Strange Incorporated" took place earlier this month in partnership with the Rock County Historical Society, and another screening may take place early next year. Material in the film is just as fascinating as the story of how it was made. In 2001, John Gage and a crew of friends made a video about Bachelor's Grove Cemetery in Illinois. The small, abandoned graveyard is known as one of the most haunted cemeteries in the United States. Apparitions, floating balls of light and unexplained sights and sounds have been reported there. John Gage unsuccessfully tried to use the film to sell the idea of a paranormal TV series, then tucked away the idea. After his death, he left behind hours of additional video shot at Manteno State Hospital in Kankakee County, Illinois, which he was going to turn into a second TV episode. This is where Brittany and Emily stepped in. The women, both in their 20s, called upon their father's friends who were involved in the original project and asked them to talk about their experiences at Manteno. "We were able to sit down with them and ask questions," Brittany said. "We had no clue where to start with the film." Brittany edited the film, while Emily wrote the compelling script about the state hospital, which like Bachelor's Grove has a reputation of being haunted. "We had 20 tapes of footage sitting there," Brittany said. "I learned how to take raw footage and make it look good." After reviewing the video, they did not find evidence of the paranormal. But they realized the horrors of life at Manteno were far more frightening than spirits of the dead. The massive mental health complex conducted experimental testing on patients without consent. Doctors at the facility also performed regular lobotomies and shock therapy. In addition, allegations of sexual abuse were common at the complex, which closed in 1985. Brittany and Emily tell the story of a young woman taken to the hospital by her parents after an argument. "Upon entry, doctors found the woman named Gennie friendly with no signs of mental illness," Emily said. "Ten years later after extensive neurosurgery, she couldn't do anything for herself. She eventually went to a nursing home because she was completely incompetent." Spray-painted graffiti on tubs and walls of the hospital tell of Gennie's horrible fate. Brittany calls "Strange Incorporated" the biggest production of her young career. She and Emily are pleased with the outcome. "I now understand why my father spent so much time at work," Emily said. "We have lived and breathed this film. We are not only trying to please the viewers, but also our dad." Both believe John Gage also would be happy with the film. "He would love it," Emily said. "He always wanted us to be as creative as he was. After 15 years, this film can see the light of day." ___ Information from: The Janesville Gazette, http://www.gazetteextra.com An AP Member Exchange shared by the Janesville Gazette. DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. Veterans Day is commemorated to honor those who have served in the United States Armed Services. Despite retiring from the Air Force 32 years ago as a medical technician, and serving an additional 16 years of civil service, retired Chief Master Sgt. Garland Bill Love continues to devote his time to his country. Love, from West Monroe, Louisiana, joined the Air Force after his half-brother died during World War II. His decision to suit up was a no-brainer. I joined when I was a little tyke, at the age of 17, Love said. There are people that say Theyll never get me in uniform or I dont want anything to do with that, but it just came natural to me. I had no desire to do anything else. I was born to wear the uniform. The retired chiefs active duty career took him on a worldwide journey. Almost 60 years ago, Love met a female Airman, Maria, while stationed at Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico. Shortly after, Maria was sent to Barksdale AFB, while Love was on a short separation from the AF. Probably the best moment was when I married that little girl over there, Love said as he pointed to a photo of him and his wife. It was a very small ceremony because she had just got to Barksdale and Louisiana was my home state so my sister was there, and three witnesses who were all in the military at the time too. I dont remember being nervous but theres a lot of things that cross your mind at that point in time. Approaching his 30th year in the AF, Love applied for a two-year extension during his last duty assignment at Bolling AFB, Washington D.C., working alongside the chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps. I had the opportunity to have my input for the enlisted medical corps, Love said. I had three years there. It was an opportunity to hopefully do something for our enlisted medics and it turned out well. After retiring from his active duty service, Love began his second career in civil services eventually leading him to more locations far from home. I had more time overseas in civil service than I had in uniform, Love said. My first duty station assignment was at Reese AFB in Lubbock, Texas, and from there is where I started my almost 10 years of being overseas. I had five years at Kadena AB in Okinawa, Japan, two years in (South) Korea and then two years in Yokota AB in Japan. As his last overseas tour in Japan came to a close, Love began to research where he and his wife would go next. We decided to buy a car and started south, Love said. We were back visiting one of my sons in Utah and where the car stopped was in Tucson. Shortly after his spontaneous stop to Tucson, Ariz., the restless veteran began his ongoing assistance for the U.S. Armed Forces in the Retiree Activities Office at Davis-Monthan AFB. It keeps me close to the troops, Love said. Some people retire and want to get as far away as they can from the uniform or the military. I never felt that way. Love is on his 13th year of service to D-Ms RAO, where he is the deputy officer. He and his wife, Maria, still reside in Tucson and have two sons who have also served in the USAF. Its been just over a year since Tucson voters resoundingly shot down the use of red-light cameras for traffic enforcement. The city manager ordered the cameras shut down for citations the day after the election. Those cameras, the shells of which remain at the eight major intersections, have been the source of many emails and queries to the Road Runner. So, finally, your humble columnist dove into the most basic question about them. Did they work? In short, when it comes to curbing dangerous intersection driving, data provided by the Tucson Police Department make a strong case they did. However, the cameras impact on collisions especially serious wrecks is more difficult to discern, at least according to new data obtained by the Road Runner. The Road Runner requested red-light camera intersection collision data for two nearly year-long periods before and after the vote. Additionally, a TPD officer provided a spreadsheet with speeding and red-light running violation data not actual police citations for the two months after the ban and the same period the year before. (The cameras did continue collecting data after the Nov. 3, 2015, vote, but not for enforcement.) According to the two-month violation data, overall incidents of red-light running and speeding through the intersections between Nov. 4, 2015, and Jan. 4, 2016, were up 109 percent and 126 percent, respectively, from the same range a year prior. Data recently compiled by the Traffic Safety Coalition, a pro-red-light camera group funded in part by the industry, shows similar patterns in other Arizona communities where voters ended their use. During the latter two-month period, that meant 25,291 motorists proceeding into the eight intersections after a light turned red and 5,045 people speeding through them at a minimum of 11 mph over the speed limit. Responding to those findings, John Kromko, chairman of the successful Tucson campaign to end the use of red-light cameras, said he suspects TPDs violation data was manipulated, possibly by shifting definitions of where the intersection begins. Some jumps at specific intersections and directions of travel were eye-popping. For example, red-light running on westbound Speedway at North Kolb Road skyrocketed 818 percent to 1,497, and speeding shot up 730 percent on southbound Craycroft Road at East Broadway. However, the collision data suggest a trend that might be counterintuitive to some: Collisions at the intersections didnt increase after the cameras went dark, and may have actually declined. Comparing collisions between October and December 2015 (which includes about a month before the cameras were shut off) to the same period a year before, TPD found that collisions at all intersections either stayed the same or decreased with the exception of two intersections, where they rose modestly. The longer-range data requested from TPD suggest something similar. That set shows collisions at or near the eight intersections between November 2015 and August 2016 fell 8 percent to 307 from 334 the year prior. Only one intersection, West River Road and North Oracle Road, saw an increase, a modest jump of one to 35. Two intersections had exactly the same number of collisions, and the steepest decline was seen at Speedway and Kolb, where the number of incidents fell 25 percent to 38. There were no fatal wrecks at any of the intersections in either period, according to TPD. TPD Assistant Chief Ramon Batista described the mixed bag of data, which shows seemingly incompatible increases in dangerous driving behaviors and flat or declining collisions, as the wildest anomaly. However, thanks to TPDs Lt. Jamie Brady graciously taking time out of her Veterans Day holiday, the Road Runner received even more fine-grained collision data. That data confirm the overall reduction in collisions, but add a few interesting twists, including that more serious reportable crashes increased slightly and less-serious property damage only collisions declined by nearly 30 percent. David Goldenberg, a TSC spokesman, said that without a more granular look at crashes in the eight intersections stemming from red-light running and speeding, a complete and full understanding of what is happening is not possible. Anything less is arguably flawed data. It does not tell a complete or accurate story, he added. But Kromko was not at all surprised by the result, arguing that in some ways the cameras made intersections more dangerous, by encouraging sudden braking, among other things. Also, annual collision data for the eight intersections proper not including areas approaching the intersection do show a steady decline from 188 in fiscal year 2006 to 57 in FY 2015, which includes the roughly four-year period during which all of the red-light cameras were deployed, according to a previous TPD analysis. Kromko is also suspicious of these numbers. He provided the Road Runner with an independently produced report based on Arizona Department of Transportation collision data that argues the decline may have just mirrored a broader decline in collisions in the area. Meanwhile, data from other communities that have shut off red-light cameras show a 16 percent rise in fatal red-light running crashes, according to another report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Kromko again countered that fatal crashes were fairly rare at the eight Tucson intersections to begin with, and have remained so. So, what to make of this mess of conflicting numbers? Batista argued that even if overall collisions are declining, the speeding and red-light violation data suggest that the collisions that do occur might be more serious, an argument supported by the follow-up data Brady provided. Kromkos view is that red-light cameras were an expensive scam for drivers when they were operating and at the very least did nothing to improve intersection safety. For his part, Goldenberg said that if collisions are in fact declining in Tucson, that would constitute an exception to what has been seen in a number of other communities that have banned the cameras. The data is indisputable, he said. Red-light cameras reduce red-light running, reduce crashes, and reduce the injuries and deaths that occur because of red-light running and speeding. But what do you think? Check out the poll available in the online version of this story and weigh in. PHOENIX If incoming state House Speaker J.D. Mesnard had his way, it likely would be Hillary Clinton preparing a transition today, not Donald Trump. Its not that the Chandler Republican likes Clinton more than his own partys nominee, for whom he voted, its that Mesnard thinks that whoever wins the popular vote should be the president. And this year its Clinton. This is more than just Mesnard ruminating. In fact, he pushed a measure through the House earlier this year with bipartisan support that would have Arizona join with other states to make it so. It was only because Senate President Andy Biggs now headed to Congress would not give it a hearing that the measure did not advance more. Whether he might have better luck this year with fellow Chandler Republican Steve Yarbrough now in charge of the Senate remains an open question. I know president-elect Yarbrough to be a thoughtful man, Mesnard said this weekend. Mesnard stressed he is not proposing to scrap the Electoral College, where each state gets votes equivalent to the members of the House and Senate, with the winner needing at least half of the 538 votes. That would require a constitutional amendment. Instead, Mesnard wants Arizona to enter into deals with other states. Once there are states on board with at least 270 electoral votes, each would legally require its electors to cast their votes for whomever wins the national popular votes, regardless of who won the tally in that state. Put simply, had the system been in place this year, it would not matter that more Arizonans supported Trump than Clinton. Its electors would have had to vote for Clinton. The idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds: National Popular Vote, the organization pushing the plan, reports lawmakers in 11 states with 165 electoral votes have already passed the measure. Mesnards complaint with the current system is it can make Arizona irrelevant. Arizona did get a fair share of attention from both candidates this year as it appeared at one time that the state might actually be in play. But this year has proven the exception to what Mesnard has seen before. What happens is we get ignored, Mesnard said in pushing the legislation earlier this year, with Arizona a flyover state as presidential hopefuls cater to voters in places like Ohio and Florida. This year, for example, while Arizona did get 10 visits from presidential and vice presidential contenders, National Popular Vote says Ohio got 48, Pennsylvania got 54, North Carolina got 55 and Florida got 71. Mesnard said its irrelevant that the change would sometimes benefit Democrats. He said future elections could just as easily go the other way. The point is whats good for Arizona. That also was the assessment of political consultant Patrick Rosenstiel who testified earlier this year for Mesnards bill. He said in 2012, presidential candidates from both parties spent more than $175 million in Florida; in-state spending in Arizona was a paltry $40,350. And Rosentiel said once a president is elected, the issues in those battleground states are likely to get more attention than those elsewhere. Mesnard said its not necessarily a foregone conclusion that Clinton would be headed to the White House had the popular-vote system been in place. How many Republicans stayed home in California? he asked, knowing that the largely blue state was going to give its 55 electoral votes to Clinton. Perhaps if they had turned out, Trump might have won the popular vote. The move has its detractors. Its a direct attack on our republic and will lead us down the path to what is known as direct democracy, that is, direct government ruled by the majority, often referred to as rob rule, Arizona Republican Robert Hathorne testified when Mesnards bill came up for debate earlier this year. Former state Rep. Barbara Blewster urged lawmakers to preserve the electoral system so that residents of states voted for electors, people who were more learned on the issues of the day. Then those electors would go to Washington and decide who would make the best president. It might be time to put a hands-free headset for your cellphone on your Christmas list. The city of Tucson is partnering with Pima County, Oro Valley and other jurisdictions to move forward with a measure to make it a driving infraction to physically use a cellphone without a hands-free accessory. The city and county now have texting-while-driving bans although they differ on whether they are primary or secondary offenses. Government leaders said the new measure would require drivers to use the hands-free phone devices while driving, instead of having the phone in their hands. The measure would go further than what is currently on the books, including the citys ban on texting while driving or the states distracted-driving law. While still in the draft phase, the law could allow law enforcement officers to pull someone over just for using a cellphone while driving in other words, making it a primary offense. Currently, the citys law governing texting while driving is a secondary offense, meaning an officer needs to observe the driver committing another violation for example, speeding in order to pull them over and cite them for texting. The countys ban is a primary offense, meaning a deputy can pull a driver over specifically for texting. City Attorney Mike Rankin said the measure is unlikely to run afoul of the state legislators, as there is no statewide law similar to what the city and other municipalities are proposing. The city of Tucson is under investigation by the Arizona attorney general, accused of violating a 2013 Arizona law that requires the sales of confiscated guns obtained by law enforcement agencies. Tucson Councilman Paul Cunningham described meeting a local resident two months ago who had spent 18 months recovering after being in an accident on his bike nearly crippled by a driver who was using a cellphone while driving. He admitted he was guilty of using a cellphone while driving, but now uses a hands-free device while driving. I am behind this because it is a right thing to do, Cunningham said. Councilman Steve Kozachik brought the issue forward, calling it the next step after passing a ban on texting while driving, in connection with lowering the speed limit for cars along bicycle lanes. He said the city needed to act, as the state was unwilling to take up the issue. I wish the state were taking the lead on this, he said. The issue, he said, is safety, and he was dismissive of any argument attempting to sideline the proposal. However, not all members of the Tucson City Council are on board . Councilman Richard Fimbres voted against having city staffers write up a proposal and work with other jurisdictions, asking a number of technical questions during a council discussion last week. The goal is to have each local jurisdiction to pass the cellphone ban in the coming months and then have a period where police officers issue warnings to drivers before writing tickets. The smoke you see rising from the Santa Catalina Mountains Monday, Nov. 14, means U.S. Forest Service crews have determined that conditions are right to safely burn brush, downed timber and small trees on Mount Bigelow. Parts of Mount Bigelow, where an array of communications towers are visible from most parts of Tucson, have been deliberately lit ablaze before, as protective measures against the Aspen and Bullock fires in 2002 and 2003. Mondays fire was planned, in part, to help restore what existed before those fires, removing the brushy plants and allowing ponderosa pine to re-establish, said Heidi Schewel, spokeswoman for the Coronado National Forest. The 200-acre site is mostly surrounded by the paved Mount Lemmon Highway and dirt roads that lead to popular camping spots and the communication towers atop Mount Bigelow, which, at 8,540 feet, is the second-tallest peak in the Catalinas. On the west side where there are no roads, fire crews will scratch out a handline down to bare soil and remove ladder fuels that could carry fire into the branches of larger trees, said Schewel. Crews will burn out from those lines to establish a perimeter and allow the fire to burn hotter on the interior of the site. A minimum of three fire engines and two 20-person crews will be available to extinguish any spot fires that occur, Schewel said. Fire will be kept away from several areas, including a water tower, wooden culverts and a four-acre site where University of Arizona researchers have taken continuous measurements of plant mass, tree moisture, soil moisture, precipitation, temperature, humidity and other variables for eight years. Greg Barron-Gafford, who manages the Critical Zone Observatory site, said the Forest Service has been super cooperative and interested in maintaining the scientific integrity of the site. Barron-Gafford, a UA assistant professor of biogeography and ecosystem science, said he plans to be on the site Monday, just because were nervous. In addition to heading off catastrophic fires, prescribed burns help restore forests to a more natural state, said Jim Malusa, a research scientist with the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Malusa has mapped vegetation on most of the Sky Island ranges managed by the Coronado National Forest, as part of a U.S. Forest Service plan to restore fire to its natural role on the landscape after more than 100 years of snuffing fires as quickly as possible. The area being burned Monday used to burn at least once a decade, said Malusa. A study by tree-ring researchers Tom Swetnam and Chris Baisan set the fire-return interval in the adjoining Rose Canyon and Palisades areas at 7.3 years between 1700 and 1900, he said. Malusa said you can get a better picture of how ponderosa forests develop with regular fire in the adjacent Rincon Mountains, where fires have not been aggressively fought. The whole top of the Rincons is ponderosa grasslands, he said. He said such natural forests have an appearance anyone would recognize large mature trees and an understory that doesnt reach into the canopy. Its a park-like area a nice place to walk and dream and picnic. OPINION: "Dickens' famous passage about an earlier fraught time captures this knife-edge moment: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...'" writes Tucsonan Brent Harold. Around this time of year, the sidewalks of South Twelfth Avenue are lined with squash: big ones, small ones, veiny green ones with bell bottoms and curvy trunks, flat little pumpkins and puffy white ones with bumps. (Sorry, squash is so dang pretty it makes me want to write schlocky Dr. Seuss poetry.) They're usually at the stands that sell the corn. Farmers come up from the Southeast Arizona town of Elfrida to sell them, along with their Mexican honey and packets of dried chiles. When you ask what they're selling, the answer is always the same: "calabazas." (Simple as that.) I did a little snooping around and I found out that most of them are actually Green-Striped Cushaw squash, also known as the crookneck pumpkin. This variety is primarily grown here and in the American South, where people like to use them in their pumpkin pies. The Slow Food website says the cushaw came up from Mesoamerica, and is currently grown by the Hopi and the Tohono O'Odham, who call it Ha:l. I have been cooking with this squash which cost me $5 for the past week. The seeds I roasted with salt and pepper, and have been snacking on at work. (They're a little less flaky than your regular pumpkin, but otherwise the same.) The light orange flesh I put in a pasta primavera with tomatoes, summer squash and Cotija cheese. The next morning I cooked an egg over the leftovers, and let the squash fry until it was crispy and brown on the edges. I was buying some pumpkin empanadas at La Estrella Bakery the other day and I struck up a conversation with the woman who was ringing me up. She told me she likes to make that squash into a dessert. She boils it like you would camotes, or sweet potatoes, with a cone of the Mexican cane sugar piloncillo. Then she pours sweetened condensed milk on top. It's not something you buy at a restaurant, she said. You cook it at home. When I headed over to the Saint Mary's Food City for the piloncillo and the canned milk, guess what I found! The squash was right there, in a giant bin labeled "Mexican hard squash," two pounds for 98 cents. Gorgeous! #squash #tucson #calabacitas A photo posted by #ThisIsTucson (@this_is_tucson) on Nov 11, 2016 at 4:57pm PST Register for more free articles. Log in Sign up I made some up this morning with my remaining two bowls of squash cubes. (Even a medium-sized Cushaw has quite a bit of meat in there.) I submerged the squash in water with a a couple of star anise pods I bought at Food City, the cone of piloncillo and a cinammon stick. I let it simmer for half an hour. When it came out the flesh was soft and rich and summery like a pumpkin's, but much less stringy. It soaked up the cinnamon and anise, which added a rich campfire feel without being overwhelming. I have never tasted anything like this before, but it felt so incredibly familiar. I'm still sitting here trying to recall a memory I've never had, of sitting around a table eating this with people I love. I guess I still have so much to learn about this place we call Tucson, but this lesson was easy ... I could do it in my sleep. Cushaw dessert squash with piloncillo and sweetened condensed milk Ingredients: 1 medium-sized Cushaw squash 1 cone piloncillo 2 star anise pods 1 cinnamon stick 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk Cut stem off squash and then slice in half. Remove seeds and strings from inside of squash. (Seeds can be roasted separately.) Carefully cut away skin and chop flesh into 1-inch cubes. Boil four cups of water in medium-sized pot. Add piloncillo cone, star anise and cinnamon stick. When piloncillo is dissolved, add the squash and simmer for half an hour. Plate, and top with sweetened condensed milk, to taste. Help India! By TCN News New Delhi: Creating Muslim as the enemy to mobilize the Hindus and manufacture a conflict between the two is the primary aim of the RSS-BJP government in the country, a meet organized by peoples movement Satyagarh Abhiyan here today observed. It demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the October 31 Bhopal encounter in which one police constable and eight other undertrials were killed. The meet was attended by Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani and Shamshad Pathan, and expressed concern over politics of fake encounter in India. Support TwoCircles From Left to Right: Miran Haidar Student JMI, Parvez Alam Khan, Jignesh Mevani, Ameeque Jamei, Mohit Pandey President JNUSU and Advocate Shamshad Pathan The politics of fake encounter propelled the prime ministership of Narendra Modi. We all know how Sadiq Jamal, Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsi Prajapati were eliminated by police after terming them as Lashkar affiliates. This politics of fake encounter is now being replicated by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Pathan said, adding that he may throw his hat in the ring for the position of prime minister soon ahead of the next general elections. The Satyagrah Abhiyan has stepped up effort for mobilization of people from November 13 at Jantar Mantar to spearhead the cause for justice for nine people, including the police constable killed in Madhya Pradesh. The police claim that alleged SIMI activists had killed the constable, before escaping from jail. Calling for a wider pan-India Dalit-Muslim OBC alliance, Jignesh Mevani said, that these communities need to come on one platform to fight the RSS led forces in the country. Punching hole in the Gujarat model of development, Mevani pointed out that Modi created fake aura of the Gujarat model by hosting vibrant Gujarat summits, while actual investments never came. The CAG kept on exposing scams after scams in the state. Modi was rattled by economic challenges and thus resorted to the politics of encounter killings to save his face. The Patidar and Dalit movements are shining example of failure of Gujarat model. Political activist Ameeque Jamei termed the Bhopal encounter as an attack on the Constitution of India, in which eight under-trials allegedly affiliated with alleged SIMI activist were killed in cold blood while a constable was murdered. He demanded a Supreme Court monitored probe into the incident. There is no rule of Constitution in Madhya Pradesh, where police cannot register a case against RSS cadres, who are involved in criminal incidents, he said. Jamia Nagar based Congress activist Parwez Alam Khan said that BJP-RSS government is playing the politics of perception, and attempting to create a conflict between both the communities. They are engineering a conflict between Ram and Rahim with the aim of winning the elections in Uttar Pradesh. They want to polarize the communities, he said. Khan wondered how locks of ISO-certified jail opened with wooden keys and steel spoons? The press meet termed the RSS-VHP as the biggest threat to internal security in the country. JNUSU president Mohit Pandey recalled the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh in which at least 55 people related or linked to it have been killed in mysterious circumstances. He recalled the alleged fake Batla House encounter in which Jamia students were allegedly implicated and killed. Jamia Millia Islamia student leader Meeran Haidar expressed concern over the implication of educated Muslim youths in the country in terror charges. If one wants to become a doctor, engineer or MBA graduate, he might be framed in terror cases by the agencies. Help India! By Pushkar Raj for TwoCircles.net Pink and Akira, two recent Bollywood hit films, depict an ugly reality of the police in India. It seems much has not changed in country for the last ten years since the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh case ordered in September 2006 that the police must be made functionally autonomous and accountable by enacting new police laws. Support TwoCircles After 1947, Indian police continued to be governed by the police laws framed in 1861, thereby retaining its colonial character. Intriguingly, after gaining independence while democratic laws have been legislated, their instrument of implementation- the police continue to be authoritarian. This conflict plays out in a citizens life every day which is convincingly presented in Pink and Akira. In Pink, police hound and frame three young women under false charge of prostitution at the behest of a political master. The case is illegally registered; backdating FIR and women are arrested without following service rules. In the film, police act under the influence of the politician and his henchmen flouting law, a routine event in the country, cynically accepted without much indignation. Political interference in policing is rampant in the country. Whether it is intimidating and arresting political opponents, firing on protesting citizens, fixing human rights activists or being inactive while mob kill selective ethnic or religious minority, police are ready to crawl where they are asked to bend by the politicians. Prakash Singh, a former Director General of police, highlighted this before the Supreme Court which after deliberating over plethora of documentary evidence for ten years expressed its disappointment at the situation and ordered the centre and the state governments to professionalise the police service from a rotten politicised force. A politicised police is dangerous for a democratic society. The political patronage and interference in police promote culture of impunity and encounter killings, ghastly portrayed in Akira. In the film, police rob huge cash from an injured person and kill him. They also execute a few potential witnesses in cold blood and pass them off as encounters. The films encounter scene has an uncanny resemblance with the recent killing of eight SIMI under-trial activists in Bhopal where senior police officials are heard on phone instructing police on ground to eliminate the escapee (Hindustan Times, 4 November 2016). Encounter killings in India are endemic. In a press statement, National Human Rights Commission said in October 2016 that there were 206 cases of encounter killings in last twelve months. The majority of these deaths are questionable as reports of human rights organisations and independent citizens fact finding reports suggest. Needless to say, culprits go unpunished. Hashimpura massacre is one of the few examples. Indian police are plagued with serious structural malaise. An average policeman does not know his Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and Indian Evidence Act well. He does not get chance to develop and refresh his professional skills in service. He learns hands on and makes terrible mistakes that have serious repercussions on justice delivery in the society. The conviction rate, according to National Crime Research Bureau, was 45.1 per cent in the country in 2014, while the conviction rate in crime against women is merely 21.3 per cent. In other words, in 55 per cent cases either people were wrongly framed or they got away without punishment after committing a crime, thereby adding injustice in already unjust society. What is the use of having strict laws on crime against women when nationwide about 78 per cent accused get away with a crime? Indian police is in such a pathetic state because there is no investment in basic infrastructure and human resource in policing. The police continue to lack basic amenities and support for performing their duties. For example, a right to information application revealed that 23 police stations in Jammu and Kashmir lack drinking water facility while 14 are without a toilet (Indian Express, 14 October). Average police personnel is over worked and lowly paid. Consequently, he becomes like the havaldar of Akira who counts on his share of booty to solemnize his daughters marriage. The Supreme Court judgment tried to address some of these structural issues in policing in the country. However, 17 states that have passed new laws have diluted them considerably. The centre has also not implemented the Supreme Courts order in union territories. If it had, Delhi police would not be able to act in such a partisan manner, without facing tough accountability at different levels. Clearly the establishment- the political elite- does not have an interest in reforming the police because control over it suits them. But their convenience is against the interest of the society. While common man experiences persecution and legal injustice, our police are getting dehumanized and brutalized. The police leadership must impress upon the political leadership that they can neither have job satisfaction, nor pride in service if they keep dragging resource starved mass of demoralized men who are setup to indulge in serious service aberrations. Home ministry 2016-17 budget is merely 30.2 per cent of defense ministry allocation while they have more or less same number of men to cater to. Even out of these 77,923 crores of home ministry budget, allocation for police modernization is paltry 11 percent. The police leadership must insist on greater resources for the internal security services from the political leadership to inject some oxygen to a listless body that the Indian police have become. The leadership of social movements may also consider adding the issue of changes in policing structures in their demand for legal justice beside social and economic justice which is a major need, right and demand of the poor, dalits and minorities across the country. They should impress upon political parties like Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that it should commit to systemic changes in policing in the country rather than political control over it. A start can be made with coming elections in Punjab, where the party has a strong support. Pink and Akira present to us a distressing reality of policing in our society. It depends on us whether we continue to live with it or endeavor to change it. For a young nation on the path of so many changes, it is not a big ask. The writer is Melbourne-based researcher and author. He campaigned for police reform in the country after the Supreme Court Judgment on police reform in 2006. Formerly he taught political science in Delhi University and was the national general secretary of the PUCL Help India! By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net AJMER: Not only cutting across various sects in the Muslim community, prominent religious leaders of different other faiths were also perched on the dais giving a strong message loud and clear that Indias age old tradition of Unity in Diversity is still alive and kicking. Support TwoCircles Massive gathering at the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind public meeting in Ajmer at the conclusion of 33rd general session of JUH This scenario was on display at the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH) public meeting in Ajmer at the conclusion of the 33rd national general session of JUH on Sunday at the Kayad Vishram Sthali about 15 kms away on the outskirts of historical city. The stage was decorated with Muslim clerics of all sects, and caretakers of shrine of Sufi saint Hazrat Khawja Moinuddin Chishti (R) who is remembered as Ghareeb Nawaz represented by the office-bearers of the Anjuman Syed Zadgan of Dargah Ajmer and Professor Akhtar-ul-Wasey, former trustee of Ajmer Dargah along with Maulana Tauqueer Raza Khan, chief of the Bareilly sect. Religious heads of other faiths who graced the dais to make the picture perfect were Swami Chidanand Saraswati, Acharya Lokesh Muni, Pandit N. K. Sharma and Dalit leader Ashok Bharti, the chairman of the National Conference of Dalit Organisations, (NACDOR). The above conglomeration representing the Unity in Diversity was a strong rap on the divisionary tactics of the governments of the day vehemently backed by the saffron brigade which has been busy targeting Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis ever since the BJP-led Narendra Modis NDA Government came to power in May 2014 at the centre. If it was earlier Ghar Wapsi; Love Jihad; Beef politics; Gaurakshaks; it is nowadays the melodrama of Triple Talaq and Uniform Civil Code controversy threatening to rip apart communal harmony and peace and thereby severely jeopardise the National Integration of the country. As such in this backdrop a clarion call was given to forge unity amongst Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis to unite against the injustices being meted out to them and to all the oppressed. A resolution of Muslim-Dalit-Adivasi unity was also passed by voice vote. It also stressed need of forging unity with Dalits and backward classes and asking to all Muslims to maintain cordial relations with members of every section of the society for strengthening the national unity. Maulana Niaz Ahmad Faruqi while reading the resolution asserted that Jamiat will fight against social injustice meted out to the Dalits and Adivasis. The eight-point Ajmer declaration warned the Union Government that if Uniform Civil code is imposed on this country or interference made in the Muslim Personal Law, then our status will not be of a free citizen. The declaration also condemned triple talaq at one go and appealed to every sections of the Muslim society to make stride to eliminate this wrong practice. View of Unity in Diversity: Muslims of various sects and leaders of other faiths hold hands to emphasise unity. On rising communal incidents in the country since the present government came to power, JUH general secretary Maulana Madani said the Jamiat has been pressing upon the previous governments to pass anti-communal valence law but unfortunately they did not heed this demand. The resolution states: Jamiat considers communal harmony as the pre-condition for the security and integrity of the country. It regards incidence of communal riots as a blot on the face of the nation and stumbling block in the countrys progress. Its the primary duty of the Government to maintain peace and security in the country. It must not allow communal disturbance. Therefore this session of the Jamiat demands from the Central and the state Governments to enact anti- Communal violence law. It also expressed deep concern over declining representation of Muslims in different walks of life and made several demands for rectifying the situation including reservations and scraping of religious bar from the Article 341 . In his presidential address, Jamiat president Maulana Mohammad Usman Mansoorpuri especially touched upon the sectarian differences among Muslims adding that it is a call of time that every sects should be on a common platform on issues related to the nation and community. In the past, he warned that sectarian differences among Muslims have caused harm to the nation and the Muslim world. Help India! By Twocircles.net Staff reporter, Mumbai: A special NIA court here on Saturday rejected the bail application of 2008 Malegaon blast accused, Major Ramesh Upadhyay. Support TwoCircles Consdiering all (these) facts as well as peculiar circumstances of this case, nature and gravity of the offence, coupled with restrictuion imposed by subsection (5) of Section 43D of the UAPAct, I think that the applicant is not entitled to be released on bail, Special NIA Judge S D Tekale observed in the order. On September 29, 2008 blast had taken place at Bhiku square opposite Shakil Goods Transport Company in a textile town Malegaon. The blast was caused by LML Freedom motorcycle with explosives concealed inside. 4 people had dead and 79 injured due to the blast. Upadhyay was booked for his role in hatching the conspiracy along with Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit. The two were members of Abhinav Bharat, an extremist Hindu organisation. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which probed the blast, alleged that Upadhyay attended meetings during which the conspiracy was hatched at Bhopal, Faridabad and other places. On January 25 and 26 in 2008, a secret meeting was held at Faridabad, during which Upadhyay accepted Purohits theory that a separate constitution and flag (bhagwa flag) were needed for a Hindu Rashtra. He participated in a discussion on the formation of a central Hindu government (Aryawart) against the Indian government and proposed to form this government in Israel or Thailand, reads the charge sheet filed by the agency. Adv. Wahab Khan appointed by Jamiat-Ulama-e-Maharashtra (Arshad Madni) to represent intervene Nisar Ahmed successfully argued to convince court in rejecting the bail application. Special public prosecutor Avinash Rasal objected to the bail plea. The prosecution contended that though the meetings did not involve explicit discussions on bombing Malegaon, the atrocities committed by Muslims were discussed. Upadhyay, in his bail plea, said recordings of the meetings showed that the organisation held only general discussions regarding the establishment of Abhinav Bharat. These are aimless talks, sheer frustration expressed by the accused on societys state of affairs, and utopian ideas, which could not have and have not been implemented in any manner, reads the bail plea. Defence lawyer Pasbola argued that the meetings did not involve discussions on bombing Malegaon. He also questioned the agency for not implicating Abhinav Bharats president and other members who attended these meetings. He also contended that most of the witnesses have retracted their statements to NIA. Adv. Khan asserted that trial court has to look into both the charge sheets to decide the bail application at the present juncture. Prosecutor Rasal contended that call data record (CDR) analysis of Upadhyay and Purohits mobile phones showed that the two were in contact. He said Abhinav Bharats earlier president and other executive members withdrew their membership from the organisation owing to Purohits activities. Considering the prosecutions case and evidences presented by the anti terrorism squad (ATS) and NIA, the special court refused to grant bail to Upadhyay. Earlier court has rejected bail to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Col. Purohit sighting enough prosecutable evidences against them to deny bail. A deadly magnitude 7.8 Earthquake struck New Zealand's South Island, leaving two people dead. According to the US Geological Survey the earthquake struck just after midnight (11:02 GMT Sunday) around 95km from Christchurch. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami just two hours later in Kaikoura with small but very dangerous waves hitting the coast near Wellington according to the weather site, Weather Watch. Head for higher ground warnings The ministry of civil defence advised residents on the South island near the east coast, as well as those living in the nearby Chatham islands to head inland or for higher ground. They also described the Tsunami as " an event of life-threatening or national significance. However by 08:00 am local time (19:00 GMT) the prime minister John Key downgraded the warning to "marine and beach threat" as the waves only reached 1 meter along the small stretch of coast which included the Chatham islands, an archipelago some 680 km of the mainland. People coping very well Authorities in New Zealand said the regions were coping well with the disaster and said they were not yet declaring a national emergency. St Johns ambulance have been sending helicopters with rescue and medical personnel to the epicenter of the quake, where many homes have been destroyed and fissures in the ground have caused landslides. Elsewhere in the city, the earthquake has caused a ferry loading ramp toe collapse, sending hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. 'Drop, cover and hold' New Zealand police have said in a statement: "A number of after-shocks of a lesser magnitude have been experienced up and down the country. Police continue to remind members of the public to 'drop, cover and hold' during any subsequent earthquake". The earthquake comes five years after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch in 2011 causing widespread damage and killing 185 people. It was one of the deadliest disasters to hit the nations and caused an estimated $25 billion in damage. "Days Of Our Lives" fans are expecting Hope Brady (Kristian Alfonso) to go to prison. However, there is another Salem women that will end up behind bars. Who is it and why is she there? Hope Brady's prison sentence Kristian Alfonso's character on "Days Of Our Lives" is going to prison this week. She will be sentenced to 25 years. Additionally, the judge has given Hope Brady no chance of parole. This is a shocking sentence, especially considering how evil Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) was. There is also the fact that Hope was under a lot of emotional strain and was not in her right mind during the shooting. Hope meets another Salem fan favorite character in prison "DOOL" spoilers tease that Hope will meet some familiar faces in prison. One of those is someone fans will not only recognize, but is considered a fan favorite character. What is she doing there? Marlena Evans goes to jail on 'Days Of Our Lives' Imagine Hope's surprise when Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall) shows up in prison. Hope is shocked and Marlena says her name is "Hattie." She actually looks kind of tough with her hair disheveled and wearing a prison outfit. The "DOOL" character is apparently there to protect Hope. Will Hope get released from prison? While Hope is in prison, Rafe Hernandez (Galen Gering), Shawn Brady (Brandon Beemer), Steve Johnson (Stephen Nichols), and Shane Donovan (Charles Shaughnessy) will try to get her released. They are pouring over case files and studying a computer screen. How will they get Hope Brady released from prison on "Days Of Our Lives"? Will they find out information on the judge and get a new trial? Or will they find some other way to get her out from behind bars? What do you think is going to happen on the NBC soap opera? How does Marlena Evans plan on helping Hope Brady in prison? What other familiar faces will be seen Will she be able to get released despite her harsh sentence? Keep watching the soap opera to find out what happens next. "Days Of Our Lives" airs weekdays on NBC. The office of a tech park in Skolkovo Innovation Center, Moscow. [Photo/Xinhua] Both nations see huge potential to develop expanding scientific and tech centers As the two countries agreed to push the coordination of the Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiatives, Chinese science and technology parks are now seeking opportunities in Russian markets. TusPark, a science park under Tsinghua University, didn't want to miss the opportunity. After signing a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Skolkovo Technology Park, witnessed by Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2014, TusPark is maintaining close connections with its Russian counterpart. Yuri Saprykin, vice-president of the Far East division of Skolkovo, told China Daily cooperation with Chinese science parks has already started, as they have signed agreements with both Z-Park and TusPark allowing companies from either park to use Skolkovo as a window and gateway to the Russian high-tech market. Moreover, science park cooperation is expected to evolve as he said a joint investment for a science park in Moscow is being planned, and will be further discussed in the coming meeting of the two prime ministers in November. Medvedev said the country has carried out a major innovation project in Skolkovo, which is claimed to be the largest science park in Europe, and has already had cooperation and dealings with Chinese science parks and high-tech companies. In late September, he said, the country welcomed foreign investors. "Now in Moscow there are 26 science parks, and a number of science parks operate in other places," he noted. "Still advanced knowledge and equipment from other countries are needed, and different models and forms of innovation from different territories, such as special economic zones, scientific parks and innovation clusters from China and other countries, are needed." Saprykin revealed Chinese companies, such as TusPark and Z-Park, had both shown great interest in the Russian market, and started negotiations with Russian local high-tech startups. Herbert Chen, vice-president of TusPark, said China and Russia enjoy a great potential of cooperation in the field of science parks with their various advantages as political relations push broader bilateral cooperation. Chen said the international business strategy of TusPark is made under the reference of China's Belt and Road Initiatives, and their strategy has been more friendly to Russian markets in recent years. "Chinese science parks have established connections with Russian parks over the past 10 years, and Russia has been a key area when making the international strategy," he said. "In the future there will be more Russian elements in their plan." Zheng Xiaodong, managing director of international operation of Z-Park, said there is huge potential of innovation cooperation between China and Russia. "On one hand, such cooperation has gained full support from both governments in the policy aspect," Zheng said. "On the other hand, both sides are actively seeking a new direction of opportunities." "In the past the direction was energy cooperation, and then military cooperation, now we can see more cooperative points in innovation," he said. "We can't ignore the fact that the current excellent Sino-Russian relations and policy support from governments help to boost our business links with China," Saprykin said. "But as a businessman, we prefer saying that we want to cooperate with China because we really see lots of potential, and there will be a win-win for both countries." The blue-and-white porcelain pieces, made in the 17th-19th century and collected by the Frick family, are shown for the first time in public as a group at Nassau County Museum of Art in the Long Island, New York. LU HUIQUAN / FOR CHINA DAILY One of the largest and most important suburban art museums in the United States, located in the heart of Long Island's fabled Gold Coast, is exhibiting Chinese ancient and contemporary art from collectors on Long Island. The exhibition China Then and Now Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) is open until March 8 at the museum on the former Frick estate, 20 miles east of New York City in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island. The exhibition starts with Buddhist sculpture made of stone and marble from the 6th century. The sculptures were made during a time when civil wars pushed people to Buddhism for spiritual asylum and were not recognized as fine art by the American mainstream until the 20th century. The exhibition, which took three years to plan, continues with blue-and-white porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties and ends with ink paintings by Liu Dan, a contemporary Chinese painter. "Our guiding idea in the exhibition has been to present works that best characterize facets of Chinese art," said Amy Poster, curator of the exhibition. "The show is highly selective," said Poster. While the "Then" part was presented by Buddhist art from the 4th-8th century, and the blue-and-white porcelain represent works around the 17t -19th centuries, the "Now" part is presented by Liu Dan's art works, which combine Western styles and traditional Chinese ink painting techniques. Long Island collectors have some of the most dazzling Chinese art, said Poster. Affluent residents in the area traveled around the world and bought Chinese artworks. "When you travel, you get excited about certain things, and those blue-and-white [porcelains] became fashionable," said Laura Lynch, NCMA's director of education. In 1919 Henry Clay Frick, co-founder of US Steel Corporation, purchased the Georgian mansion that now houses the museum as a wedding gift for his son, Childs Frick, a fan of Chinese art. The museum used to be Frick's residence, and some of the house's decorations were imported from China. He also had an extensive collection of Chinese porcelains that were used both for artistic displays and for daily uses. The collection is being shown for the first time in a group. "American collectors, museums and scholars have long appreciated Chinese culture and the arts of China as one of the world's great artistic cultures," said Poster. But it has become illegal to sell Chinese antiques for profit. And as Chinese government regulation tightens, it is increasingly difficult for foreign collectors to acquire Chinese antiques. American collectors, therefore, started to shift their attention toward contemporary artists. In a separate but related exhibition - Long Island Collects the Arts of China at NCMA - more modern Chinese artworks are shown. Beyond religious or aesthetic pursuits, these Chinese artists touched social topics. For example, one of Chinese installation artist and textile designer Lin Tianmiao's Focus series puts the artist's own digital photograph on canvas with thread, which reflects the restrictions women are facing in China. A workshop on Chinese art will also be available from Feb 17 to 19, where parents could create artworks with children after a tour of the museum. "It's about getting out of your room, getting out of your computer and talking about things, thinking creatively. Each problem solving is getting through an art medium," Lynch said. Lu Huiquan in New York contributed to this story. As wealth in China increases, the volume of illegal luxury vehicle exports from the US also has increased. "It's big business," Tim Dunne, director of global automotive operations at California market-research firm JD Power and Associates, told China Daily. Now a probe into alleged kickbacks being paid to salesmen at New York-region luxury vehicle dealerships part of a nationwide investigation is moving into a new phase as investigators get set to file charges, the New York Times reported. The investigation focuses on dealerships in New York and New Jersey that sell Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers and Porsches and whether executives sold new cars to businesses engaged in exporting luxury vehicles to China. Federal prosecutors have seized dozens of high-end cars at ports around the US and bank accounts holding millions of dollars. US authorities were seeking to halt "a burgeoning black-market industry" that was trying to undercut legitimate dealerships in China, the Automotive News reported. At least 35,000 luxury vehicles a year are purchased at US dealers and sent out of the country illegally, the Wall Street Journal has reported.Typically, the scammers hire "straw buyers" in the US to purchase cars from dealers and ship them overseas by claiming them as used vehicles, according to authorities. The cars typically retail for $55,000 to $75,000 and are supposed to be sold only for domestic use. It is not clear what laws the export businesses are violating. At any rate, "as wealth (in China) has increased, the volume of gray market" - or illegal - "luxury vehicle exports has increased," Dunne said. Even after factoring in shipping and other costs, the exporters can make "a huge profit" on each vehicle, Automotive News reported. The schemes can cause big financial problems for US dealers, who are contractually prohibited from selling new vehicles to anyone who intends to export them and can be penalized by the automakers for doing so - even if they do so unwittingly, the automotive-industry news website reported. Dealerships that sell to exporters may be forced to pay charge-backs, have incentives revoked and receive fewer vehicles from the factory in the future, according to an article on the website. Fraudulent registrations also hurt dealerships that do not sell to exporters because such registrations understate the dealerships' actual market shares, making it appear they are falling short of sales targets, the article said. That can affect bonuses paid by automakers as well as future allocation. The price-tags tell the tale. In the United States, the Porsche Cayenne a midsized luxury crossover vehicle has a sticker price of just more than $50,000. In China, the car's base price is 922,000 yuan, or nearly $149,000 nearly three times the US cost. Donna Boland, a spokeswoman for Daimler AG's New Jersey-based Mercedes-Benz USA unit, has told China Daily illicit vehicle exports hurt the company by undermining its "pricing and volume positioning" in its global markets. "We have an exclusive distribution and license agreement to distribute and sell Mercedes-Benz vehicles and parts solely within the United States of America or its territories," Boland told China Daily. Steps must be taken "to ensure that vehicles produced and equipped for the US market are sold to end consumers in the US and not operated in areas for which they were not designed or certified", according to Boland. Illegal exports pose issues for buyers, too, Boland said in an email to China Daily. A buyer's glee over his illgotten gains may turn to anguish "since overseas Mercedes-Benz distributors may not stock parts and/or accessories necessary to properly service US specification vehicles. The impact from this investigation will become clearer in the months ahead. The US governments yearlong crackdown is starting to have an impact on overseas demand and some wealthy buyers in China are backing away from transactions, the Times reported. Contact the writer at michaelbarris@chinadailyusa.com Obama appoints Chinese American to commission Updated: 2014-04-22 08:18 By AMY HE in New York (China Daily USA) President Barack Obama has appointed Grace Tsao-Wu, a Chinese-American, to be a member of the Commission on Presidential Scholars. Established in 1964, commission members select scholars for exceptional talent in visual, creative and performing arts from a pool of 3,000 high school candidates each year. They then name up to 141 as Presidential Scholars, one of the nation's highest honors for high school students. Tsao-Wu's appointment was announced on April 18 by the White House. She is a partner at Chicago-based fashion brand LaudiVidni, and is also the owner and founder of Tabula Tua, a homeware store. She is on the advisory board of the Chinese American Service League, which provides social services to Chinese and Chinese Americans in the Chicago area, and on the board of One Million Degrees, an organization that helps low-income students get through community college. She graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School. Tsao-Wu has been a major donor to the Obama campaign. In early April, she and Craig Freedman, a fundraiser, hosted a Democratic National Committee dinner fundraiser in their Lincoln Park home in Chicago. The president was present for the 55-person dinner, all of whom donated up to $10,000 each, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2011 and 2012, Tsao-Wu raised more than $290,000 for the Obama campaign, and since 2007 has raised close to $600,000, according to the New York Times. Those amounts do not include contributions from Tsao-Wu herself and do not reflect all the money she raised for the campaign, according to the newspaper. In commenting on Tsao-Wu's appointment to the Scholars Commission, Joyce Moy, executive director at the Asian American/Asian Research Institute in New York, noted that under the Obama administration there has been more participation from Asian Americans compared to previous presidencies. Asian Americans' participation in politics has been increasing over the last decade, and especially in their involvement in the Obama campaign, she said. "There was a fairly large turnout for Obama in the last two elections," she said. In the 2012 election, 77 percent of Asian Americans voted for Obama, according to figures from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Moy said that increasing Asian American visibility and growing populations of Asian Americans across the country are also influencing participation in US politics. "I think there is a greater interest in participating and the reason for that is many people feel that they want their voices heard. The Asian community has not been invited to the table in earlier generations and now with the folks like President Obama, whose political career has been built on building coalitions, there's a great opportunity for people of Asian heritage to participate and to be invited to participate," she said. Appointed with Tsao-Wu to the commission was Howard Borin, a Delware-based pediatrician. Current commission members include Sheldon Pang, member of the China Advisory Council at Brown University and vice-chairman of Freepoint Commodities, and Marina McCarthy, an associate of the Davis Center at Harvard University. amyhe@chinadailyusa.com Nordstrom pulls hoodie depicting Nanjing massacre Updated: 2016-11-14 06:47 (Agencies) People walk past the Nordstrom Rack store, in New York's Union Square, May 21, 2010. [Photo/Agencies] US fashion retailer Nordstrom was in hot water Sunday after placing a hoodie depicting a scene from the massacre in the Chinese city of Nanjing for sale on one of its websites. The company has since removed the item, which featured a still image of Japanese soldiers about to behead victims in the 2009 film City of Life and Death, which was about the violent episode in late-1930s China. Outraged shoppers posted messages of disappointment on Nordstrom's Facebook page, demanding apologies and asking for the company to take down the article. "We have removed this item from our site and updated our process so that this type of item isn't offered in the future," the company said in response to an angry post on its Facebook page. Emblazoned across the back of a black hoodie, the still shot shows a scene from the movie with added flourishes, such as red bars across the eyes of the victims and soldiers and the message "Why indifference?" scribbled across the top of the image. In the foreground, a woman has been superimposed sitting on a bench, staring into the distance indifferently. "Nordstrom, please take down this disgusting cloth," one Facebook user wrote yesterday. In response to yet another indignant message demanding an explanation, Nordstrom offered "our sincerest apologies for the disappointment." The Nordstrom Rack website offered it for sale under the label "Happiness" by Andrea Hoodie. The Nanjing massacre, often called the "Rape of Nanjing," refers to the mass murder and rape committed by Japanese troops after the fall of the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937. Russian parliament chief arrives in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials Updated: 2016-11-14 10:02 (Xinhua) TEHRAN - Russia's Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Ivanovna Matvienko arrived in the Iranian capital city of Tehran on Sunday for multi-dimensional talks with senior Iranian officials, Press TV reported. During her two-day official visit, Matvienko will meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Matvienko is accompanied in her trip by the chairman of Russian Federation Council's defense and security committee, Viktor Ozerov, and a number of parliamentary officials, According to the report. She will bring up a variety of issues in the talks with the Iranian officials, including ways to improve parliamentary cooperation and to reinforce convergence in the Middle East to fight terrorism in Syria, Matvienko told official IRNA news agency earlier. Tehran and Moscow have stressed the importance of bolstering cooperation and taken positive steps and made great achievements in this regard, she added. China ready to enhance US relations, Wang says Updated: 2016-11-14 11:14 By Mo Jingxi(chinadaily.com.cn) China is ready to achieve more progress in China-US ties after the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. "We're willing to communicate with Trump's team, enhance mutual understanding and broaden our consensus on cooperation," he said in Ankara at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. Wang was there to co-chair the first meeting of the China-Turkey consultation mechanism. He told reporters that China and the US have kept close contact at all levels, and it is the consensus of both US Republicans and Democrats to develop and deepen the bilateral relationship. "We're willing to continue cooperation with the Obama administration, to ensure the smooth transition of our relationship to the next US administration," he said. In a congratulatory message to Trump on his election on Wednesday, President Xi Jinping said China is willing to push China-US relations further forward from a new starting point, on the basis of principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. "This has shown the direction for future development of bilateral ties," Wang said, adding that China is willing to work together with the US in this regard. US President-elect Donald Trump said on CBS' 60 Minutes program on Sunday evening that he will deport millions of "criminal" undocumented immigrants immediately after he assumes office in January. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million; we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told 60 Minutes. "But we're getting them out of our country; they're here illegally." US House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said that a plan to forcibly remove undocumented immigrants from the country is unlikely. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump is not planning on that," Ryan said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. Trump's plan to rein in illegal immigration could change, with him backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the border with Mexico. Trump was asked on 60 Minutes if he would accept a fence in some spots. "For certain areas, I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," Trump said. "There could be some fencing." China Daily USA posted a Xinhua story about Trump's immigration comments on its Facebook page, which generated a variety of responses. Why is "criminal" in quotes? And why the politically correct term "undocumented immigrants"? They're ILLEGAL ALIENS, which makes them CRIMINALS. Try to be an illegal alien in China and see what that gets you," wrote one commenter. "Then get all the European Americans out. Native Americans are the first Americans, everyone else is here illegally, according to their sacred law," another posted. "A windfall for rich high-paid immigration lawyers. This will be no easy task and cost trillions." "Just give the man time to do what he thinks don't talk bad on him. I think he is going to do a very good job. I am a black man. I think a lot of him." "They are destroying their country only to reside in other nations. Mr President you are right." "Deport him immigrants offer more than he ever will and they are welcome here." "He is following the laws we already have." Trump and his advisers already have signaled he may hedge on some of his other major campaign promises, including healthcare and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, his Democratic presidential campaign opponent. In other political news on Sunday, Trump named Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and conservative media owner Stephen Bannon as his top strategist, two men who represent opposite camps in the the GOP. In bringing Priebus and Bannon into the White House, Trump is making overtures to both traditional Republican circles and the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Priebus has ties to GOP congressional leaders, particularly Ryan. Bannon previously ran the Breitbart.com website, which has been highly critical of Republican leadership, including Ryan. Bannon was given top billing in the press release announcing the appointments, a curious arrangement given that White House chief of staff is typically considered the most powerful West Wing job. Together with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the triumvirate will lead Trump's transition and help guide his presidency. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said. On trade, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he hopes Trump will drop his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal. The 12-nation TPP, which doesn't include China, became a contentious issue during the US election campaign, with critics saying it would cost American jobs. The deal has been signed but not ratified by US lawmakers. Kerry denied that the TPP was intended to create an economic bulwark against China's rise in the Asia-Pacific. "It's not about China," he said on Sunday. "The United States welcomes the peaceful rise of a great nation like China; we've said that directly to President Xi (Jinping)." Kerry said he and President Barack Obama are "deeply committed" to the deal but would not try to push it through a "lame duck" legislative session before Trump takes over. Trump also was back on Twitter on Sunday. During a four-hour spree, he criticized The New York Times and talked about GOP stalwarts who congratulated him, saying that critics and GOP rivals John Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent well wishes. "Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the Trump phenomena,'" Trump wrote to his 14 million Twitter followers. Former presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush also sent their "best wishes on the win. Very nice!" Also on Sunday, Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid should be careful in a "legal sense" about characterizing Trump as a sexual predator. When asked whether Trump was threatening to sue Reid, Conway said no. But Adam Jentleson, Reid's deputy chief of staff, said Trump is "hiding behind his Twitter account and sending his staff on TV to threaten his critics". Reunification gets boost Updated: 2016-11-14 14:14 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco(chinadaily.com.cn) Overseas Chinese in the US are being urged to contribute to the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and play more of a role in the rejuvenation of Chinese nation. More than 100 representatives from 15 chapters of the Washington-based National Association for Chinese Peaceful Unification and officials from China gathered on Saturday in San Francisco for the organization's annual joint conference. CONGJIANG WANG/ FOR CHINA DAILY More than 100 representatives from 15 chapters of the Washington-based National Association for Chinese Peaceful Unification (NACPU), as well as officials from China gathered on Saturday in San Francisco for the organization's annual joint conference. Participants discussed the role of overseas Chinese in unifying the motherland and boosting Chinese development. Since the new leader of Taiwan took office this year, the good relationship that had been maintained between both sides across the Taiwan Straits for eight years has been greatly impeded and the interests of the Taiwan people have been jeopardized, said Ran Wanxiang, vice-president of the China Overseas Friendship Association. He told the conference that Beijing would adhere to the 1992 Consensus and firmly oppose "Taiwan independence", despite the change in Taiwan's leadership. He also said he expected overseas Chinese to take advantage of their resources to expand communication channels, promote Chinese culture and foster patriotism. "The 5,000-year-old Chinese culture is the tie connecting all Chinese in the world," said Ran. "Overseas Chinese are expected to carry forward the Chinese culture and tell the Chinese story well." He said China has realized outstanding economic development and also provides opportunities for the world. "Overseas Chinese are expected to integrate their individual development with serving the nation's great cause of rejuvenation," said Ran. "As the world's largest two economies, the US and China have far more shared interests than differences. China can contribute to world peace by realizing her own development," he added. The fate of the overseas Chinese has been closely tied with the motherland and they have been playing an important role in promoting the peaceful unification of the Chinese nation and China's economic development, said Huang Wentao, a communications director with the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council. "We have never been so close in history to the goal of reunifying the Chinese nation," he said. "The development and progress of the mainland provides the foundation for peaceful cross-Straits unification." Huang reiterated that Beijing's principles and policies concerning Taiwan are consistent and will not change after the leadership changed. "Although the road will not be smooth, the Chinese unification is inevitable. We will keep walking on the right road," he told the conference. Zha Liyou, deputy Chinese consul in San Francisco, also attended the conference. He said the whole Chinese nation, including the people of Taiwan, will benefit from the Chinese unification and rejuvenation, which is the shared goal of the people across the Straits and all the overseas Chinese. Congjiang Wang contributed to the story. Toasting China's national drink Updated: 2016-11-14 14:14 By Chang Jun in San Francisco(chinadaily.com.cn) More and more people could be lifting their spirits, the Chinese way. For Moutai, China's leading liquor producer, the new buzzwords are technological innovation and continuous expansion into overseas markets, and the brand is getting a shot in the arm in San Francisco. On Nov 12, Kweichow Moutai Group kicked off a series of celebrations by hosting a grand banquet and product exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts to commemorate the first anniversary of Moutai Day in San Francisco. A delegation led by Li Baofang, general manager of Kweichow Moutai Group of Guizhou, is on a mission to strengthen liquor cultural integration with its Western counterparts, enhance communications with global consumers and help facilitate China-US relations through a variety of platforms that involve people, business and governments on both sides. During Moutai's overseas centennial celebration held at San Francisco City Hall last year, Mayor Ed Lee named Nov 12 the city's Moutai Day. In his speech to 500 guests on Saturday night, Li reviewed Moutai's history of growth, brand development and its journey to internationalization by recalling that it had won a gold award at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition which was held "at exactly the same place where we hold the gala tonight." San Francisco remains a city of opportunity and a shrine to generations of Moutai group employees, Li said, adding "Our ancestors rarely traveled outside of the local town but all of us know the liquor we made through hard word and artisan spirit is well received throughout the world," Li said. For 100 years, the group has been sustaining the original artisan spirit, adapting to changing environments and embracing technology innovation in order to maintain the legacy of the "Moutai miracle" and Moutai's iconic ranking in China's liquor industry, Li said. Currently, Moutai products are sold in more than 60 countries and regions in Asia, Europe, the Americans, Oceania and Africa with its liquor exports reaching 614 tons by the end of August, representing a yearly growth of 12.9 percent. The group reported a net profit of approximately $2.5 billion by the end of August, a 6.7 percent yearly rise over the same period last year, according to Yuan Renguo, chairman of the group, adding that increased exports and expansion into other businesses such as e-commerce, investment and financial leasing contributed to the rise. Moutai is also known as the "liquor of diplomacy and friendship", serving as the toaster of the normalization of China-US relationship in the 1970s through to the current building of a new type of major power relationship, said Li. At the famous state dinner of 1972, then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai proposed a toast to visiting US president Richard Nixon with a glass of Moutai as the whole world looked on. "When I paid a visit to former US president Jimmy Carter and presented him four bottles of Moutai," Li recalled, "Carter said he knew the liquor and called it well-known." In June, 2013, visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping drank Moutai with his US counterpart President Barack Obama at Sunnylands as Xi initiated the concept of building a new type of major power relationship between the world's two largest economies. Through political differences and ideological variances, Moutai remains the reliable anchor to revitalize the faith in friendship, said Li. As the national liquor of China, "Moutai has played a big part in China's international relations and a significant role in celebrating major festive events and moving forward friendship between China and other countries," said Li. Strolling around the exhibit booths check the lineup of Moutai products, Mayor Lee said, "Moutai is associated with many important celebrations, celebrations of new year, celebration of birthdays, celebrations for meaningful events that bring tons of understanding between many people," he said. Calling himself a "big supporter of the success of Moutai not only in the US but the world", Li said, "when we drink Moutai, it brings us closer and can help us accomplish more than we think on the people-to-people level, on the local level, national level and international level." Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. Hanoi , November 13 (VNA) President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan has extended his best wishes to Cao Dai dignitaries and followers on the occasion of their 91 st founding anniversary. In his congratulatory message, Nhan wrote the Cao Dai followers have raised the patriotism and solidarity to work with people from all social strata to defend the country over the past 91 years. Besides implementing the Partys guidelines and the States laws, the Cao Dai churches have actively engaged in patriotic emulation campaigns, charitable activities, poverty reduction efforts, and rural development programmes, he said. He called on the Cao Dai dignitaries and followers to strengthen solidarity and get involved in the campaign of building new-style rural areas and civilised urban areas launched by the VFF Central Committee. The sect is also expected to make remarkable contributions to the countrys socio-economic development, environmental protection, and climate change response as well as social welfare activities and protection of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, he added. Founded in 1926 in Tay Ninh province, Cao Dai is one of the major religions in Vietnam with over 2.5 million followers, 10,000 dignitaries and 1,000 places of worship. The religion worships the Divine Eye, known as the eye of heaven and a symbol of its supreme being. VNA/VNP Workers process wood products at SAHABAK Joint Stock Company in Bac Kan Provinces Thanh Binh Industrial Zone. VNA/VNS Photo Danh Lam HA NOI Viet Nam will continue its reform to improve business and investment environment to support enterprises and negotiate other agreement whether US president-elect Donald Trump thwarts the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or not, according to the Minister of Trade and Industry Tran Tuan Anh. Donald Trump, who opposes the TPP trade pact, has won the US presidential election, and many experts said the Republican victory will put an end to this trade agreement. The Minister Tuan Anh told the press on the sideline of the ongoing National Assembly that Viet Nam was consistent with its point of view and pocily in the international integration. The TPP was one of the free trade deals Viet Nam agreed to participate in, but it will proceed with other free trade agreements (FTAs) to create opportunities for companies to fuel economic growth. The minister said it was too early to predict the future of TPP, and Viet Nam is ready for integration with or without TPP. If the TPP aggrement continues to be implemented favourably, it will bring many benefits to Viet Nam in many sectors. Viet Nams key export products like textile, garment, footwear, and seafood would likely gain breakthroughs in export value to the US, Japan and Canada. On the other hand, if the TPP was not approved, Viet Nam still has other export markets, Tuan Anh said. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh told Vietnam Summit 2016 in HCM City early this month that with Viet Nams signing the TPP agreement, the country hoped to tighten trade ties with Asia Pacific countries and create more business opportunities for Viet Nam and other TPP members. Therefore, Viet Nam looks forwards to the ratification of the trade deal by all member countries, including the US. He said if the TPP is not passed due to any reasons, it will be considered a setback, as countries spent much time and effort on the negotiation process. He however also noted that besides the TPP, Viet Nam has concluded FTAs with many other partners like the European Union (EU) and the Eurasia Economic Union. Viet Nam and other ASEAN nations are preparing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership FTAs. In addition, members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are negotiating a FTA in the region. Also at the summit , Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade o Thang Hai said 10 FTAs including Viet Nam as a signatory had come into force. One FTA will become into effect soon and several others are on the negotiating table. Hai stressed that with or without the trade deal, Viet Nams economic policy towards international integration will remain unchanged. Hai said before negotiating the TPP, Viet Nam had taken part in multilateral organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). Viet Nams business environment has been improved and the nation has stepped up investment restructuring, encouraged the private sector and strengthened management of public debt to pursue sustainable growth. According to economist Ngo Tri Long, in the global trend, no country can stand alone. Viet Nam should prepare the best plan to deal with worst senarios and should not totally depend on the TPP. In another development, Japans lower house of parliament on Thursday passed the contentious free trade deal. President Barack Obama championed the 12-nation deal saying it would enable the United States to set the global trade agenda in the face of Chinese increasing economic clout. Besides Japan and the US, the TPP includes 10 other countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Viet Nam. If it came into full force it would account for an enormous 40 per cent of the global economy. After approval in the lower house of parliament, the TPP will automatically take effect after 30 days, even if the Upper House does not vote for it. VNS The opening ceremony of the Viet Nam technology startup festival (TechFest Vietnam 2016) took place in Ha Noi on Saturday. Photo vtv.vn HA NOI Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am has urged ministries and sectors to conduct specific activities to carry out the Governments policies to encourage business startups. Creating such enterprises is considered an opportunity for Viet Nam to speed up its growth and narrow development gaps with other countries. The deputy minister made his statement at the opening ceremony of the Viet Nam technology startup festival (TechFest Vietnam 2016) on Saturday. The two-day event, which took place in Ha Noi, is held annually by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The event gathered partners in the startup ecosystem, state agencies, investors, the startup supporting community and new startup groups. Along with the significant risks associated with new businesses, startups also have the high potential of producing valuable products with strong competitiveness, he said, adding that the Government has designed various support policies for the startup community. Meanwhile, Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh noted that in the wake of the trend and potential of technology and innovative enterprises, the Party and State have focused on the expansion of the science-technology market and encouraged creative startups. Viet Nams stable creativity index in the past two years has lifted the country to rank among top ASEAN countries in the field, said the minister, pointing out that the development of the science-technology market has yet to match the full potential of domestic supply and demand sources. He also noted that the young startup ecosystem is promising, attracting the regional startup community with an increasing number of investors and business incubators, along with more completed legal corridors for startup activities. In the future, the ministry plans to work more closely with other ministries, sectors and startup organisations to assist startups at home and abroad to connect components of the ecosystem and learn from the international startup community, he said. The 2012-16 period saw a flourishing of startups, with a considerable rise in both quantity and quality of incubators. Currently, the country has 1,800 startup enterprises, along with 21 incubators and seven business accelerators. TechFest Vietnam 2016 attracted some 2,000 participants, including 100 Vietnamese and foreign investors and 100 startup enterprises. A number of activities will also be held to connect domestic and international investors with startups, honour outstanding startup firms and link Vietnamese startup ecosystems with international ecosystems. Moreover, startup firms will also have the chance to recruit human resources from 200 applicants attending the event. - VNS HA NOI Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group, or PetroVietnam, has proposed to add the construction of the Nhon Trach 3 and 4 thermal power plants to plans for national electricity development. This was reported by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. According to the proposal, the two power plants, each with the production capacity of 750-800 MW, are designed to be constructed on the total area of some 34ha in the Ong Keo Industrial Park in Nhon Trach District in the southern province of ong Nai. The Nhon Trach 3 power plant will occupy nearly 16.6ha, while the second power plant will be spread over an area of 17.4ha (excluding the complex area, surface water and public service buildings). Following PetroVietnams proposal, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has requested the oil group to make a supplementary report on the compatibility of the power plant construction with the development plan of the Ong Keo IP and with land use zoning and planning of the locality approved by the competent authority. The ministry also said construction must comply with water resource legislation. The oil and gas group must prepare an updated report on the current state of water exploitation and use of the Nhon Trach Power Centre and calculate the water demand of the power plants and supply capacity of the water resource. The group is also required to make an additional plan for prevention and control of pollution, degradation and depletion of water resources during construction. As the project is located at the confluence of ong Tranh and Long Tau in the ong Nai river system, construction activities must comply with the law on the water resources protection corridor. The two power plants are required to build a centre for collection and sewage treatment. In addition, PetroVietnam will have to report the current state of the air and water environment in the construction area. If its proposal is approved, the oil group is requested to provide an environmental impact assessment report to the competent authority for approval. Earlier, the Ministry of Industry and Trade finalised the investment plan for Nhon Trach 3 and 4 plants as part of efforts to deal with power shortage after 2020, especially in the southern region. PetroVietnams Nhon Trach 2 plant began commercial operation in 2011 with the capacity of 750 MW and productivity of 5.5 billion kWh per year. The 450KW Nhon Trach 1 plant, which began operation in 2008, generates 2.5 billion kWh per year. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam Competition Authority has revoked the licences of 14 multi-level marketing firms and forced 11 others to halt business until November, Vietnam News Agency reported. The authority, under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, reported that at present, there were 42 multi-level marketing firms that were trading nationwide, a decrease of 25 since 2015. According to the authority, sales activities of these multi-level marketing firms were being disguised recently, affecting the business models participants. The multi-level marketing (MLM) business model, referred to as a pyramid scheme, is a legitimate but controversial marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for the sales they generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople they recruit. The competition authority found that common violations of MLM firms involved taking advantage of the multi-level method for illegal financial services trade or for unlawfully raising money. In addition, many unlicensed firms were stealthily trading to raise money from innocent participants, aiming at making illicit profits. Facing with the situation, the Ministry of Trade and Industry has this year focused on implementing urgent measures to enhance the effective management of multi-level sale activities. This included promulgation of Direction No. 02 on strengthening inspection, supervision and tackling violations of multi-level sale activities. The inspection has essentially controlled the spread of multi-level sale activities. The ministry penalised 64 of total 65 violation cases of multi-level marketing firms from June, 2015 to November, 2016, seizing VN11 billion in fines. Additionally, 37 provincial departments of trade and industry penalised 21 multi-level marketing firms for 65 violations, fining them VN4 billion. To improve efficiency of the state management, the ministry asked relevant state offices to actively contribute to the draft of amendment decree 42, which is expected to be promulgated late this year or early next year. The amendment decree will make multi-level sale activities transparent and improve the competence of provincial management offices for multi-level sale activities. Next year, the ministry will continue inspecting and supervising multi-level sale activities and will coordinate with Ministry of Public Securities to supplement regulations on criminals related to the business model. The ministry reported that over the first six months of this year, revenue from multi-level sale activities of firms reached VN4 trillion, of which VN1.8 trillion came from foreign-invested firms and the rest came from domestic firms. These firms paid VN712 billion in commission money and other bonus services to participants involved in the business model. In the first six months, the number of participants was some 500,000, a decline of 57 per cent against the same period in 2015. Multi-level marketing firms paid taxes totalling VN453 billion. Goods traded by the mode of multi-level sale activities were mainly functional foods (51.27 per cent), cosmetics (31.65 per cent) and household appliances (12.33 per cent). VNS HA NOI Local shares declined yesterday on the two national stock exchanges as foreign investors increased selling caused by uncertainty on the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The benchmark VN-Index, the measure of 314 stocks on the HCM Stock Exchange, edged down 0.9 per cent to close at 673.1 points. The index had gained 1.9 per cent last week. On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange, the HNX-Index tracking 377 stocks inched down 0.3 per cent to 80.9 points. It increased 0.9 per cent in the previous week. Foreign investors were net sellers in HCM Citys market yesterday for a total value of VN272 billion (US$12.2 million). They sold shares worth VN522 billion, making up 21.2 per cent of total trading value in the market, while picking up only VN250 billion worth of net buy value. Heavy selling pressure dragged down stock prices of large-cap companies. Private equity business Masan Group (MSN) plunged 4 per cent. Dairy giant Vinamilk (VNM) slipped 2.6 per cent. Real estate developer VinGroup (VIC) fell 2.5 per cent and lender BIDV (BID) decreased 2.2 per cent. Of the top 30 largest shares by market capitalisation, only seven advanced and up to 23 stocks tumbled. Traders were uncertainty about the fate of Trans-Pacific Partnership after the Obama administration suspended the trade deal, stock analysts at FPT Securities Company wrote in a report. The destiny of TPP will depend on newly-elected US President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers who were not in favour of the deal, in which Viet Nam is reportedly the biggest beneficiary. Overall market condition was negative when the number of losing stocks outnumbered that of gaining ones by 246-188. Another 257 closed unchanged. On the bright side, FAROS Construction Corporation (ROS) hit the daily limit rise of 7 per cent to VN116,200, roughly 10 times higher than the starting price on the floating day on October 14. Investors bet on mineral and coal shares following sharp rises in prices of black gold in the global markets. Coal prices have begun to recover since early this year after more than eight years of decline. As of November, coal price has increased by 112 per cent, the best performer this year compared with other energy commodities. Local coal shares hit the ceiling prices of 7-10 per cent yesterday, including Vinacomin Nui Beo Coal (NBC), Vinacomin Coc Sau Coal (TC6), Vinacomin - Ha Tu Coal (THT) and Bac Giang Exploitable Mineral (BGM). Liquidity increased with a total of 159.6 million shares worth VN 2.8 trillion traded in the two markets, up 38.8 per cent in volume and 47.4 per cent in value compared to the previous sessions levels. VNS NEW YORK - Leon Russell, who achieved rare fame as a session musician by playing with artists from The Rolling Stones to Elton John and pursuing his own eclectic career, has died. He was 74. Russell, who remained active and had tour dates in front of him, died in his sleep at his home in Nashville, his wife said in a statement Sunday without further details. Born in Oklahoma, Russell mastered the piano as a child and soaked up a variety of musical influences from country to rhythm and blues to gospel. By 14, he was singing pop standards in Oklahoma nightclubs and at 17 he took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles, seeking out music gigs. He eventually became a leader of the so-called Wrecking Crew of top-notch session musicians in Los Angeles who recorded with top artists. Key collaborations throughout his long career included The Rolling Stones, Beatle George Harrison, Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and the Beach Boys. With his long beard, top hat and lively, blues-infused piano playing, Russell was instantly identifiable at concerts. One of his most famous performances came at the The Concert for Bangladesh, the 1971 charity show in New York led by Harrison, in which Russell led the house band and rocked out on an energetic medley that started with the Stones Jumpin Jack Flash. By the late 1960s, Russell also became a successful songwriter, starting with Joe Cockers Delta Lady, and co-founded his own label, Shelter Records. He organized Cockers 1970s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, considered pioneering at the time by bringing together top musicians, but keeping the schedule loose so they did not need to commit full-time. Russell eventually faded from the spotlight, traveling as a country artist under the name Hank Wilson. He re-emerged in a major way when he collaborated with Elton John on the 2010 Grammy-nominated double album The Union. Russell said that he had been struggling to get bookings when John unexpectedly called his former rock pianist at home, where Russell was watching television, and proposed working together. "Thats why I tell people he came and found me in a ditch by the side of the highway of life," Russell told the magazine of AARP, the US organization for senior citizens. Russell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. AFP Nguyen Khanh Quang, deputy head of the General Department of Customs, talks to the Viet Nam News Agency about measures to block cross-border cigarette smuggling. What are your comments on cigarette smuggling activities in the first 10 months of this year? I should say cigarette trafficking and smuggling activities along the border provinces, from the north to the south, have become a hot issue for our anti-smuggling forces. Smugglers activities are diverse, so are their tactics. The most popular smuggled cigarettes are Triple 5, Marlboro, Jet, Esse, Hero, Chinese cigarettes and tobacco materials. The smugglers have deployed quite diverse tactics in their transportation, including close surveillance of our anti smuggling forces. In the southern border provinces of Long An, ong Thap, An Giang and others, they have even used power boats to transport goods. If detected by anti-smuggling forces, smugglers have resorted to all means to flee and avoid arrest. In worst cases, they have asked their local accomplices to fight back against law enforcement officers. What has the General Department of Customs done to deter such smuggling crimes? Under the instruction of the Prime Minister issued on September 30, 2014, the General Department of Customs (GDC) has ordered all municipal and pprovincial customs departments to increase their daily patrols and inspection activities, particularly at the border gates and border routes. In addition, they have asked customs officers to co-ordinate with other agencies, including the Market Watch forces, police and local administrations. On special occasions, like the Lunar New Year, the anti-smuggling forces have launched operations to deter smuggling activities. We have also launched communication campaigns to raise peoples awareness about cigarette smuggling and asked them to join the fight. In the first 10 months of this year, Customs forces with support from other anti-smuggling forces, have detected and seized 55,600 kg of cigarette materials and 579,747 cigarette packets What challenges are the anti-smuggling forces facing? As we all know, most of our border topography is very complicated. The steep, earth roads, particularly during the monsoon season, are very treacherous and pose difficulties for law enforcement officers in their operations. In addition, most of the people living along the border line are very poor. They dont have stable jobs. Thats the key reason they become cross-border transporters for smugglers or informants for them. Our law doesnt have any sanction mechanism against people who work as informants against the interest of the general public. Nowadays, smugglers are very malicious and they are ready to counter-attack law enforcement officers in case they are detected or arrested. This has become a headache for us in the fight against cross-border smuggling. The Lunar New Year the biggest festival of the Vietnamese people is coming soon. Does the GDC have any plan to deter the cross-border cigarette activities at that time? Well develop detailed activities for anti smuggling law enforcement officers, particularly those stationed at border checkpoints as we approach the Lunar New Year festival. Weve instructed all city and provincial customs departments to increase their activities, particularly collection of information in key areas as well as developing specific plans to foil smuggling. To facilitate cross-border checks, well open training courses for customs officers and provide them with good facilities to perform their jobs quickly and efficiently. We vow to stop cigarette smuggling right at the border gate and adjacent areas. Last but not least, we try to ask the Government and local governments to develop economic activities for residents along the border. We consider this to be very important; if they have stable jobs and sustainable income, they will not work as transporters for the smugglers. VNS HA NOI Lawmakers adopted a resolution on the 2017 State budget with 82.15 per cent of yes votes during the on-going second meeting of the 14th National Assembly (NA) yesterday. Per the resolution, total central budget collection is estimated at over VN729.7 trillion (US$32.7 billion) while collection at the local level is set at VN482.4 trillion ($21.6 billion). Total budget spending will be over VN902 trillion ($40.4 billion), of which an estimated VN254.6 trillion ($11.4 billion) will be allocated to local budgets. The NA asked the Government to task each ministry, office and locality with budget collection and spending in line with the Law on State budget and the resolution. The Government must guide ministries, sectors and localities to distribute development investment capital with priority given to major national programmes and projects, and official development assistance and public private partnership projects. The National Assembly Standing Committee, the NA Finance-Budget Committee and the NA Council of Ethnic Affairs are responsible for supervising State budget allocation for ministries, sectors and local Peoples Committees and Peoples Councils. Later the same day, NA deputies discussed draft amendments to the Law on Irrigation. Most deputies agreed with the need to issue the law for better management of irrigation works, which play a vital role in agricultural production, providing water for the daily activities of the locals and other economic sectors, along with being a key measure for disaster prevention and control. However, some deputies said the compiling board should propose policies encouraging investment in irrigation works and make clear the responsibilities of relevant ministries and agencies in managing irrigation works. They asked the compiling board to research and review related policies, guidelines and related laws to avoid overlapping between laws. Some deputies, including Thach Phuoc Binh from southern Tra Vinh province and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan from northern Bac Ninh province, said the law should have specific regulations to encourage the participation of locals in planning, building and supervising the operation of irrigation works. Their discussion also focused on the laws new regulation on the price of irrigation services, which will replace existing irrigation fees in line with the current Law on Price. First hearing begins The 14th NA is slated to begin a question & answer session today, which will be broadcast live on national television and radio. During the hearing sessions, the Ministers of Industry and Trade, Natural Resources and Environment, Education and Training, and Home Affairs will field questions on issues of public concern. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will deal with lawmakers questions about his handling of issues under discussion. Before the Q&A, the NA will hear a report on the parliaments monitoring of the handling of petitions that voters sent to the 11th session of the 13th NA. This is the first time the 14th NA has conducted a Q&A. - VNS HCM CITY Despite difficulties in its implementation, Viet Nam is utterly resolute in its plan to scale up the number of facilities that provide voluntary and diversified services of treatment to 200,000 drug addicts by 2020. Our principle is to use many different methods of drug addiction treatment, but aiming toward voluntary treatment, Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Trong am said at conference to collect opinions for a draft of a decree on voluntary treatment for addicts held late last week. Addicts, who are brought to establishments providing compulsory treatment, fail in voluntary community-based treatment, am said. The push to boost drug rehabilitation solutions comes amid several recent high-profile escapes by patients at compulsory rehab facilities. Last month, about 600 patients broke out of a facility in ong Nai Province. Government authorities said some facilities suffer from overcrowding, a lack of staff and poor conditions. "The facility was designed for 800 addicts, but now admits more than 1,400," said Ho Van Loc, deputy head of the ong Nai Provinces Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. am said that many provinces and cities focus on bringing addicts to compulsory facilities and when these facilities become degraded over time, "escaping is unavoidable." He instructed them to carefully select which addicts should receive community-based treatment and which ones should go to compulsory facilities. The government has sought to diversify treatment services and scale up voluntary treatment in community to reduce compulsory treatment, he added. Regarding the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs plan for the development of rehabilitation establishments for drug addicts from now to 2020, the number of rehabilitation facilities that provide compulsory treatment for addicts will be reduced to 71 by 2020, and will serve just 20,000 addicts from 67,000 in 2015. The plan aims to convert the remaining 52 rehabilitation facilities which provide compulsory treatment into those which provide voluntary treatment. Thirty private rehabilitation facilities providing voluntary treatment are expected to be built by 2020. About 22 private establishments have been provided licences during the last 14 years. Five of them have stopped operation. Dr Khuat Thi Hai Oanh, head of the Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives, said that scaling up voluntary and diversified services for drug addiction treatment is a common trend in the world, especially in developed countries. These countries do not provide compulsory treatment for addicts. The country should focus investment in the services at facilities and the community, Oanh suggested. Difficulties ahead According to Dr Nguyen Huu Khanh Duy, head of Thanh a Rehabilitation Centre in HCM City, Vietnamese addicts dont often volunteer for treatment. Nguyen Thi Hong Phuong, head of Drug Addiction Treatment and Counselling Centre in the citys Binh Thanh District, said: Many addicts are brought to the centre by their family. The addicts themselves dont come voluntarily, Phuong added. In the last year, for example, nine of 63 provinces and cities made plans for voluntary community-based treatment for addicts, but no addict registered for the services, according to the central Department of Social Evil Prevention. It is difficult for addicts to be treated at voluntary rehabilitation facilities because drug trading still exists, she said, adding they are easily seduced. Financial assistance for addicts to receive voluntary treatment is not as the same as those who are brought to facilities providing compulsory treatment, she said. According to the central Department of Prevention for Social Evils, the time for addicts receive voluntary treatment is not flexible. There is no treatment programme specifically designed for each addict. The government should have preferential policies to encourage the private sector to set up more rehabilitation facilities. Duy of the Thanh a Rehabilitation Centre said that his facility still has yet directly benefited from the preferential policies. The ministry plans to issue new regulations on voluntary treatment to make it more effective and solve these difficulties. The draft regulations were collected opinions from relevant agencies at provinces and cities at the conference. Le Van Khanh, deputy head of the central Department of Prevention for Social Evils, said that the country has seen an increase of drug addicts this year as of June, with 2,470 more compared to last year. There were 202,604 addicts in Viet Nam as of June, Khanh said. Among drugs, cocaine addiction has had the highest increase in the number in the last several years. The number of addicts brought to rehabilitation facilities was 14,437, an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to last year. Of the 14,437 addicts, 4,015 do not have a stable residence. More than 50 per cent of addicts who were brought to rehabilitation facilities use amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). They have severe mental disorders and do not know what they are doing. They also do actions which cause harm to their health and even suicide. The provinces with the high proportion of addicts using ATS are ong Nai (82 per cent), a Nang (85 per cent) and An Giang (76 per cent). According to the central Department of Social Evil Prevention, the voluntary services of treatment were provided to nearly 55,000 addicts at 110 public drug addiction facilities between 2000 and 2015. Moreover, community or family-based voluntary services of drug addiction treatment have been provided to addicts since 2010. However, these services are not provided in many provinces and cities, leading to difficulties for addicts to voluntarily receive treatment in the community. VNS HA NOI Ha Nois investigative agency began legal proceedings against Nguyen Dieu Linh, owner of the karaoke bar at No. 68 Tran Thai Tong Street in Cau Giay district, where 13 customers were killed by a fire on November 1. The proceedings were also taken against Le Thi Thi, head of a company in charge of renovation work for the karaoke bar, and welder Hoang Van Tuan. Both are currently being detained. The three have been charged with violating regulations on fire prevention and safety. The police earlier confirmed that carelessness by Tuan, who is a free-lancer working without a professional licence, was one of the main causes behind the karaoke bar fire. It took more than seven hours for firefighters to extinguish the fire. Nguyen Dieu Linh, from Ha ong Districts Van Quan, said she hired the building for ten years from July this year to July 2026 to run a karaoke service business. Linh then signed a contract with the Thiien An Phu Investment Join-stock Company based in Hoan Kiem Districts Phuc Tan Ward to design and install fire fighting accessories for the bar. The design and installation plan for fire fighting was licensed by the local police on October 13, and the company started implementation right away. By October 31, about 90 per cent of the plan had been finished, except a connection for the operation of the fire fighting system, the investigation revealed. The implementation of the bars firefighting system plan had not been completed, but the bar owner still let customers use the room on the second floor on the day when the fire occurred.VNS Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong meets local residents yesterday in Phat Tich Commune of Tien Du District, northern Bac Ninh Province. VNA/VNS Photo Tri Dung BAC NINH A celebration of the great national unity bloc and the 86th anniversary of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front (VFF) was held yesterday in Phat Tich Commune of Tien Du District, northern Bac Ninh Province. At the event, which was also attended by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President of the VFF Central Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan, local residents were reminded of the development of the Viet Nam National United Front the VFFs predecessor founded by the Communist Party of Viet Nam and then President Ho Chi Minh on November 18, 1930. Under different names over the past 86 years, the Front has brought into play Viet Nams traditional unity and patriotism and gathered people from all strata to defeat invaders and retake national independence. Speaking to residents in Phat Tich, Party General Secretary Trong praised the solidarity, efforts and achievements that the local Party committees, administration, VFF chapter and people have obtained. He highlighted local improved infrastructure, more industrial parks, good economic growth, stable social situation, and rising per capita income. Various activities have also been organised in response to VFF-launched movements. He underscored the VFFs significance to the national unity as seen through various initiatives today such as the great national unity festival, or movements calling for peoples joint efforts to practise civilised lifestyles, and build new-style rural areas and civilised cities. The Party chief also sent congratulations to VFF staff nationwide on the occasion the great national unity festival. During his stay in Phat Tich Commune, he offered incense and planted trees at Phat Tich Pagoda, a national historical and cultural relict site of special importance. On the same day, Truong Thi Mai, head of the Party Central Committees Commission for Mass Mobilisation, attended a similar ceremony held in Vinh Phuc Province. Speaking to authorities and people of the province at the event in Van Giua Village, Van Hoi Commune, Tam Duong District, Mai said it would require the efforts of the whole community to tackle common issues. She also called on every resident of the locality to continue to contribute to the building of a civilised rural environment free of social evils. VNS A grand requiem for traffic accident victims was held yesterday at Trinh Pagoda in the Yen Tu national relic site, northern Quang Ninh Province, with a view to easing the bereaved families pains of losing their relatives. Photo tuoitre.vn QUANG NINH A grand requiem for traffic accident victims was held yesterday at Trinh Pagoda in the Yen Tu national relic site, northern Quang Ninh Province, with a view to easing the bereaved families pains of losing their relatives. With the participation of nearly 10,000 Buddhists and other attendees, the function was held by the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha and the National Committee for Traffic Safety as part of activities in response to the World Day in Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (the third Sunday of November). At the requiem, Minister of Transport Truong Quang Nghia urged all central and local relevant agencies, organisations and people to improve their road sense and adherence to traffic safety regulations. He also asked them to share the losses suffered by the victims and their families, thereby treasuring the happiness when traffic safety is ensured. The Traffic Safety Year 2016 is the fifth year Viet Nam has responded to the UN General Assemblys call for activities to be organised towards the World Day in Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. From January to August this year, 13,612 traffic accidents occurred nationwide, claiming 5,728 lives and wounding 11,781 others. VNS Pham Hoang Nam HCM City -- Overseas Vietnamese are an inseparable part of Viet Nam and though they live abroad, their hearts are always with the country, a delegation heard at the third overseas Vietnamese conference, which closed on yesterday in HCM City. Speaking at a conference themed "Overseas Vietnamese join hands in quick and sustainable development and international integration of HCM City, Primer Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said he was highly appreciative of the enthusiasm of overseas Vietnamese contributing to the development of HCM City. Your presence here today confirms a sacred fact that Viet Nams potential is not only within our country but all around the world where Viet kieu live and work, he said. Viet Nam warmly welcomes all Viet kieu who would like to contribute to the country, he added. Overseas Vietnamese business, investment, finance, technology and science co-operation have become important resources to the development of the country and in the new period of development, the country needs more contribution from overseas Vietnamese from all around the world, Deputy Primer Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh said. However, Viet kieus contribution to the development of HCM City is not equivalent to their intelligence potential, international business experience and huge finance resources. We would like to promote all of their potential, Nguyen Thanh Phong, chairman of the HCM City Peoples Committee said. Over 500 Vietnamese national residents from 36 countries and territories attended the two-day event which started on Saturday. During the conference, they focused on the citys sustainable development, human resources, science-technology development, economics and trade and service investment. Nguyen uc Khuong, Finance Professor at the IPAG Business School in Paris, discussed three challenges that HCM City has been facing, including: high speed of change in technology, knowledge and economics; fluctuating financial markets; a sharp reduction of natural resources and climate change. To cope with the situation, HCM City authorities must create a policy that can mobilise all economic sectors to contribute to the development of the city; increase human resources with professional skills and responsibility toward society and environment; and study and apply the digital economy to efficiently save all resources, he said. This is a sound material-cycle society based on the principle of Reduce Reuse Recycle, he added. Nguyen o Dung, an overseas Vietnamese in Singapore and member of the Viet Nam Initiative Group, stressed three factors that can help boost development of the city; a clean and orderly government, meritocracy and a flexible institutional structure. A strong government must have good development policies and smart master planning to create an open and knowledge society, he said. HCM City authorities so far have already had a vision but it is not really good as restructuring is not flexible and has limited authorisation. The city should release and maintain long-term policies, open co-operation with neighbouring provinces to compete with international competitors, he said. Particularly, Dung pointed out that the city should make challenges into opportunities. HCM City leaders should think about the city having a lot of ponds that can solve the current seriously flooding. Traffic congestion will be opportunities for investors to find solutions, he said. Lets make a master plan for sea, create more green space and a friendly environment for residents, more open, more creative; create trust between each other: authorities believe in business and in return, people trust each other. All that makes a city become a place thats worth living and working in, he said. An open society, open economy, open data, open gateway for the region: these are all things the city must do to reach a new level of development, Dung added. Dr Pham o Chi from the US, an economic expert for the IMF from 1994 2001, warned that Viet Nam and HCM City must face that bad debt in the banking sector could be 10 per cent to 15 per cent, much higher than the officially announced number of 3 per cent and public debt could be 106 per cent of GDP, nearly double the 65 per cent of the official announcement. To solve these two bad figures, private enterprises should be free to do business in a fair environment. Viet Nam did a miracle in the past when leaders decided to renovate the economy in 1986 and now is the time for the second renovation, he said. Many overseas Vietnamese suggested creating a connection through the Internet by sending their contributions and suggestions for different aspects of live to HCM City authorities regularly. According to the Overseas Vietnamese Affairs Committee under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more than 4.5 million Vietnamese nationals are residing in over 100 countries and territories around the globe. Of the total, more than 400,000 are working at research institutions and universities in developed countries. HCM City is the economic hub of Viet Nam with the largest number of Vietnamese living and working abroad. The city has received the highest volume of overseas remittances, investment and contribution by overseas Vietnamese experts and intellectuals. Overseas remittances could hit around US$10 billion this year. To date, Vietnamese abroad have invested in approximately 2,000 projects with an estimated capitalisation of $6 billion. The first and second conferences were hosted in 2009 and 2012, respectively. This was the first conference organised for HCM City to step into a new development level. VNS HA NOI Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am yesterday joined some 500 students in cleaning up the area around Ha Nois Linh am Lake. The activity is part of the programme Be nice to Environment" launched by youth unions of central government offices and the Youth Connecting Club to mark World Kindness Day on November 13. Supporting the programme, the deputy PM called on young people to engage more in good deeds and activities for the community and the society. He said environmental protection activities should not merely be undertaken during campaigns, but regularly be organised to create a routine among the youth. World Kindness Day is celebrated internationally on November 13. It was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of nations NGOs. It is observed in many countries, including Canada, Japan, Australia, Nigeria and United Arab Emirates. This year, Viet Nam marks World Kindness Day with a campaign named Dance for the Kindness in Ha Noi and other localities nationwide. Thousands of youngsters, including celebrities, joined a flash mob and drew pictures around Hoan Kiem Lake. VNS NINH THUAN Sea grape cultivation model has brought economic sizeale benefits to the central province of Ninh Thuan. Thanks to sea grapes easy cultivation and maintenance on otherwise abandoned shrimp ponds, low initial investment and especially high value exports, many households have overcome poverty. Six households in Ninh Hai District are piloting cultivation of sea grapes on a total area of 15ha, with encouraging initial results. The most successful model among these households is of Tran Hung, a resident of Khanh Hai Town. With just 4ha of area to cultivate sea grapes, on average, he collects some 60kg, which he can sell at markets for VN50,000 (US$2.2) per kg. Annually, he can make a profit upwards of VN1 billion ($44,770). According to Nguyen Van Thach, from the economic and planning department of Khanh Hai Town, sea grapes can be planted right on the seabed, the ponds bottom or in "net bags" floating in the ocean, which is economically efficient, especially in areas that do not witness frequent storms or strong winds. Some households even cultivate this seaweed in cement pools filled with seawater. Depending on the ponds area, lining materials, water source, lighting directions, etc., initial investment for an average pond (3000 square metres) stands at some VN50-70 million ($2,200-3130). Ninh Thuan Province possesses ideal conditions to grow sea grapes, Pham Ngoc Thuong, chairman of Khanh Hai Town Peoples Committee, asserted. With its economic benefits and easy care, sea grapes can be a good direction to expand, he said. In addition, sea grapes can improve aquaculture environment quality since they develop quickly, have strong anabolism and high nutrition uptake. They can be grown simultaneously while cultivating shrimps and fish this intercropping allows two to three times higher income compared with shrimp or fish cultivation alone. Sea grapes are a highly nutritious plant that can be used as a substitute for green vegetables. Sea grapes contain high quantities of protein and minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium, as well as iodine, iron and vitamin A, which help prevent malnutrition and anemia. Sea grapes are especially in high demand in markets such as Japan, South Korea, China and Malaysia, making it a promising export. With these advantages, Khanh Hai Town authorities are planning to provide farmers with guidance, consulting and training sessions on cultivation techniques and food safety regulations. Another priority is to find purchase partners to ensure farmers output and to develop sea grapes sustainable for peoples livelihoods. VNS KHANH HOA - The eighth International Conference on the East Sea (South China Sea), themed "Cooperation for Regional Security and Development," opened in the central coastal city of Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa Province yesterday. The conference, jointly held by the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam (DAV), the Foundation for East Sea Studies and the Viet Nam Lawyers Association, brings together nearly 200 delegates, including close to 60 foreign scholars. Amidst notable developments in the East Sea during the past year, the conference offers an opportunity for domestic and foreign scholars and researchers to share information and assess the recent developments in the sea as well as their repercussions, while discussing possibilities for further cooperation in the region. Nearly 30 reports will be presented through the course of the two-day conference, comprised of seven thematic sessions focusing on the historical perspective of the cause of disputes in the East Sea, international law and the East Sea, political economy, security, politics and diplomacy regarding the waters, interactions and coordination at sea, and mechanisms for tension management in the East Sea. Through discussions, the delegates will seek opportunities and initiatives to promote understanding and cooperation in the East Sea in the spirit of principles of international law. A special session will be held for the first time for representatives of naval and law enforcement forces of relevant countries, who will discuss interaction and coordination field measures in order to avoid unexpected clashes and boost maritime cooperation. As part of the conference, the annual Young Leaders Programme will gather eight young researchers and PhD candidates from seven countries, aiming to build a network of young researchers on the East Sea issue in the hope they contribute fresh views on how to step up cooperation for peace and development in the sea. In his opening remarks, Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Vu Tung, Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Viet Nam, said tensions in the region have shown no signs of cooling down in 2016, as conflicts and changes of the status quo continue. As examples, he cited dangerous clashes between fishing boats and law enforcement ships near the Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago and especially the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago, while island reclamation and militarisation in disputes areas are becoming increasingly complicated. At the same time, the ocean environment in the region has degraded at an alarming rate, Tung added. The scholar said he hopes the event will put forth initiatives to help concerned Governments coordinate with each other to improve security and common development in the East Sea, especially ideas aiming to build, consolidate and utilise regional security mechanisms to manage disputes and handle complex issues in the sea peacefully. Le Thanh Quang, Secretary of the Khanh Hoa provincial Party Committee, expressed concerns about the East Sea situation, where competition sometimes has taken precedent over cooperation and where international law has not been respected at times and in some places. He worries this pattern will continue to undermine trust between countries in the region. The situation poses an urgent need to seek a long-term solutions to the regional disputes and to form mechanisms that maintain order and law at sea, he said. Attention should be paid to not only peace and stability, but also to issues regarding rights and obligations of the related parties, livelihoods of coastal residents and sustainability of the ocean ecology, he said. On this occasion, a new website providing the latest research studies on maritime security, politics, economy and relevant laws was launched: https://maritimeissues.com. VNS HA NOI The war against smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeit goods will be enhanced in the final months of this year, ahead of Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday. This was revealed at a dialogue held yesterday to seek measures to combat smuggling. Participants stressed that smuggling has become more complicated and expanded to all routes, including road, sea and air, posing great challenges in fighting the crime, particularly in hot spots such as border areas and remote mountainous areas. Smuggled products included essential goods and products with high-tax and big differences between domestic and international prices, such as tobacco, alcohol, medicine, electronics, drugs, petrol, minerals and food products. In the first ten months of the year, agencies uncovered 72,000 cases of smuggling, a year-on-year increase of two per cent. Nguyen Xuan Bac, Deputy Head of the Department of Drug and Crime Prevention and Control, said the department would assign more officials to smuggling hot sports, increase co-ordination with relevant agencies such as police, customs and market watch forces and improve the skills of officials to detect rings. Deputy Director of the General Department of Police ong ai Loc agreed that smuggling has become more complicated, particularly tobacco smuggling. Each year, police discovered about 4,000 cases of tobacco smuggling, with a total of 9 million packs of cigarettes. He stressed that smuggling was often perpetrated by criminal rings outside the country. Smugglers often brought products to Viet Nams border and used tough terrain to smuggle products into Viet Nam such as rivers and tracks through forests and around mountains. Many smugglers were equipped with weapons and willing to attack officials if they were caught, he said. For the rest of the year, the department will focus on key areas such as border areas and key products such as petrol and tobacco in the fight against smuggling. The department will also co-ordinate with authorised agencies to increase patrols and direct localities to urge locals not to work with smugglers. Localities should also boost socio-economic development, creating jobs for locals so they have stable incomes and dont work with smugglers, he said. Bac from the Department of Drug and Crime Prevention and Control said it was essential to strictly punish smugglers as a warning for others and increase co-operation with authorised agencies of neighbouring countries such as China and Laos. Leaders of localities and relevant agencies should bear legal responsibility if smuggling was found in their areas, he said. - VNS LONDON WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces questioning by prosecutors today at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in a twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. An Ecuadoran prosecutor will quiz the founder of the secret-spilling website at the red-brick building where he has been holed up for more than four years, with Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police inspector also attending, officials said. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the central London embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. A Swedish official source said the questioning was expected to begin at around 1000 GMT. The investigators intend to take a DNA sample, subject to his agreement. "Its planned to last a few days," Assanges lawyer Per Samuelsson said, adding that it was too early to say what might arise from the meeting or what would be made public. It will be the first time he has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. AFP Inside Secure a fait savoir ce lundi matin via un communique que France Brevets a conclu avec le fabricant de telephones mobiles HTC un accord de licence de brevets NFC (Near Field Communications), lequel lui confere une licence mondiale pour ses produits. Entierement dirige par France Brevets et sa filiale NFC Technology LLC, le programme de licence de brevets NFC englobe des brevets NFC d'Inside Secure et d'Orange ainsi que des brevets acquis par France Brevets et par NFC Technology, LLC. Avant ce nouvel accord de licence ont egalement ete signes un accord avec LG en 2014, avec Sony en mars dernier et avec Samsung en mai, a rappele Inside Secure. Offre limitee. 2 mois pour 1 sans engagement Je m'abonne Les parties n'ont divulgue aucun detail financier relatif a l'accord de licence avec HTC. Gilbert left her training and came straight to Roanoke, Virginia, where she has been a physician and trauma surgeon since the early 1980s. Gilbert served as the first medical director for Life-Guard, the first medical helicopter in Virginia. She has weathered many changes to the health system, which was focused on hospitals in the early days, to a clinical model with Carilion Clinic, to now the beginnings of an academic medical center with robust residency programs, research, and the opening of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine for its first class in 2010. Already active in teaching through the surgical residency, Gilbert quickly got involved with the new medical school, helping with early curriculum development and implementation. She has maintained an active faculty role since, serving as a facilitator for problem-based learning cases, engaging in innovative anatomy instruction, and observing students in clerkships. Dr. Gilbert has achieved the profoundly rare status in her career where she is simultaneously an excellent mentor for students, a master clinician, a compassionate surgeon, an academic leader in resident and student education, and an advocate for all learners and patients, said Chris Reed, a 2016 graduate of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and general surgery resident at Duke University. Beyond her skills as a faculty physician, Gilbert earns high praise from students and peers for her compassion. This was no more apparent than recently when she and I rounded together on a mutual patient in the ICU, said T.A. Lucktong, director of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine surgery clerkship and associate professor. To help the patient's family better understand situation, she invited members to join us on rounds where she kindly and patiently explained each aspect of the patient's care as the team was discussing complex multi-system management. Gilbert started this practice about five years ago to open up lines of communication with patients families. I want the family to understand this is a group affair and they are part of the team, taking care of the patient just like we are, Gilbert said. I also send the students into the room to get the family. I want the family to see the student as bringing good things information is the most important thing to a family with a patient in the ICU. Students and physicians also note Gilberts ability to inspire hope for patients and their families. Almost two decades ago, one of Gilberts patients was a 2-year-old boy who suffered a bad head injury. Another doctor told his mother the boy was unlikely to recover. I told her in my experience, this is a very bad head injury. But the reason we are pursuing this is because I would love for in a year or two for you to bring him back and say, 'See what the difference is', Gilbert said. The patient is now in his mid-20s and still calls Gilbert from time-to-time to catch up. Our figures add up: Guy grilled over cheaper Vic public transport promise Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has faced a grilling on the first day of the Victorian election campaign over his party's ability to cost policies, with Labor claiming a key Liberal election promise is more than double the costed figure. Government rules out one-off cash splash to fight rising cost of living Australians will not receive government cheques to relieve rising cost of living as Labor rule out a cash splash amid growing fears interest rates will continue to surge. Taronga launches full review after lions escape and one cub is tranquilised An enclosure at Taronga Zoo will undergo a "full review" after a "significant incident" where five lions escaped, with one of the cubs shot with a tranquillizer gun hours before visitors were set to arrive. IS families may not return to Victoria until after state election Details surrounding the return of wives and children of former Islamic State fighters to Victoria remains unclear, with suggestions a second group reportedly unlikely arrive until after the state election due to complexities of the cases. CEDAR FALLS The Board of Education Monday will discuss proposed names for a planned new elementary school. The board meets at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 220 Clay St. Members of the public were invited to submit suggested names in September. Andy Pattee, Cedar Falls Community Schools superintendent, said a board subcommittee has since narrowed the ideas down to a list of four recommendations. The school, with an estimated cost of $19.8 million, will be funded through a voter-approved taxpayer-supported bond issue. It will be located in southwest Cedar Falls near Erik Road west of Hudson Road. In other business, the board will: Consider the purchase of two used buses that had been leased. Finalize the refinancing of sales tax revenue bonds at a cost of $15.6 million, saving an estimated $1.46 million. The board last month approved selling the outstanding bonds to Key Government Finance Inc., of Superior, Colo. On Monday, it will appoint the paying agent, bond registrar and transfer agent; authorize terms of issuance; and approve the tax exempt certificate. CEDAR FALLS Lawmakers, who in the coming months will work through another state budget, voiced support Monday for a new Board of Regents initiative to plan two years out for tuition increases and urged regents to go even farther. During a meeting in Cedar Falls of the Legislatures fiscal committee, co-chairman Rep. Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said he wants regents to help students budget four years ahead. Its just looking at students having the ability to know what four years of education would cost, Grassley said. How do we get to that point? Is that where were trying to get right now? Because I think it should be. Regents President Bruce Rastetter said it is, and the board has asked its university presidents to think how to get there. Weve seen some different plans of that, he said. But that should be a natural goal of the regents. Over the summer, the board debuted a forward-looking plan that envisions increasing resident undergraduate tuition rates 2 percent in each of the next two academic years while also seeking 2 percent increases in state money each year. Nonetheless, tuition could go up more in the second year if state appropriations fall short of what the board wants. The board next month is scheduled to consider final approval of tuition rates for the 2017-2018 school year, including the 2 percent bump for resident undergrads and higher increases for nonresident students and those pursuing academic programs that cost more to provide. The board historically has discussed tuition and appropriations one year at a time, but late-running legislative sessions in recent years have prompted last-minute tuition increases across the university campuses. Rep. Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville, was among lawmakers Monday who stressed the importance of avoiding surprises in helping families budget, reducing student debt and potentially improving four-year graduation rates. I know youre asking for two years, but honest to gosh years three and four are probably what worries families even more, he said. So if theres a way the Board of Regents could actually look longitudinal at three years and four that would help immensely. Rastetter said the two-year plan is a step toward that goal, but he acknowledged the difficulty of balancing university budgets that depend not only on tuition revenue but on appropriations, enrollment trends, fundraising and other factors. One of our challenges is were dependent upon state appropriations, which I think all of us practically realize is dependent upon state revenue and the economy of Iowa, he said. Because tuition rates depend on the number and type of students paying, regents and lawmakers closely track trends. Regents Director of Institutional Research Jason Pontius told lawmakers Monday enrollment has been increasing, with record enrollment this year for the three regent universities combined, including record numbers at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University. About 60 percent of the regent total 81,899 students are Iowa residents, with the rest coming from outside Iowa. Pontius said the state Department of Education is projecting the number of high school graduates in Iowa will remain flat in the coming years, potentially affecting the universities growth. Projections show slower growth in the coming decade about 6 percent more students are expected by 2026. But lawmakers Monday noted many Iowans move away to get a degree or dont pursue higher education at all. We need to stop the frame of reference that were competing against a fixed pool, when we have stats in front of us right now that show there are a lot of Iowans who dont even show up, said Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls. DES MOINES Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday shes had no discussions with Gov. Terry Branstad about ending his current term early to take a post in President-elect Donald Trumps administration. She said she expects the focus to be on working with a GOP-led Legislature to move their goals to the next level. Reynolds dismissed speculation about Branstad possibly being eyed as Trumps pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to China. She said it was coincidence Branstad is leading an Iowa trade mission to China and Japan, noting the visit was planned months ago for this week. As youve heard the governor and I say multiple times, Reynolds said Monday, were proud of what weve been able to do. But were not done yet. Weve got a lot to do, so Im looking forward to continue serving Iowans. Reynolds sidestepped questions about whether she plans to run for governor in 2018. I dont know what the governors going to do when asked if Branstad would seek a seventh term. She did confirm she and Branstad have not talked about the possibility of him not serving out the remaining two years and two months of his current term. Republicans will return to the Statehouse in January with a new majority in the Senate to go with a slightly larger majority in the House after voters put 29 GOP senators and 59 GOP representatives in charge at the Statehouse. Im excited about this next legislative session and Im excited to get back to work on behalf of Iowans, Reynold said. Were going to sit down the governor and I and our team and our staff and legislators and were going to talk about putting an agenda together that will take Iowa to the next level. The lieutenant governor said the Branstad administrations goals continue to be growing quality jobs, shrinking the size of government, returning Iowa schools to world-class caliber, making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation as a way to help control spiraling health-care costs, and improving the quality of Iowas water supply. Thats the big picture were looking at, Reynold said. Well sit down and take a look at everything and then work with legislators and see how we continue to move the state forward. The 2017 sessions agenda may be tempered by the amount of state tax money available for budgeting once the state Revenue Estimating Conference meets in December. That could be somewhat restrictive on what our opportunities are moving forward. All of that has to come into play when we take a look at next steps, she said. Iowas economic growth has been slowed by depressed farm prices that have hovered below the cost of production, and Reynolds said the objective of the trade mission Branstad currently is leading to China and Japan is to expand Iowas exports and to encourage reverse investment in Iowa by Chinese companies. With the nation in the aftermath of a stunning Election Day, the issue of backyard chickens seems pretty tame. However, its an issue that popped up in Cedar Falls recently, just as it did a decade ago. In both instances, the City Council voted to maintain a ban on city residents from keeping chickens in their yards on 4-3 votes. In each instance we would have liked to have seen a clear preference of city residents when it comes to their neighbors having farm animals in their yards. In discussions leading up to last weeks meeting, supporters cited many cities, across Iowa and the nation, that allow residents to keep a limited amount of chickens. Staff recognizes that urban chickens are a growing trend for people to have them as pets and for egg production, David Sturch of the city planning staff wrote in a memo to Mayor Jim Brown and council members. Passage of the motion would have allowed up to three chickens per household, hens only. Birds would have been required to be kept in an enclosed and fenced area with a 25-foot separation from any other residential dwelling. There was a motion to add ducks to the proposal before the motion was denied on the close vote. Council members Tom Blanford, Susan deBuhr, Dave Wieland and John Runchey voted for maintaining the ban. I think there are very legitimate health and safety concerns, Blanford said after last weeks meeting. Do I think it would be a mass problem? No. But I think theres very real concerns we should at least have a discussion about, and we never had that discussion. He said other communities ordinances should have been researched more. Supporters of backyard chickens spoke, including a group of grade school children. Councilman Dave Wieland reported of the people he spoke with, 80 percent supported the ban. In supporting the proposal, Councilman Nick Taiber questioned the importance of relying on polls. Lets have a little freedom, he said. But were left wondering where that freedom ends and with what types of animals. Ten years ago, Wieland took similar action, breaking out the phone book and calling 20 people to get their opinions. At that time, he said no one wanted to live next to a chicken coop. It was an action that changed his mind on the proposal back then. We understand Wielands poll may not be scientific or official, but he took the time to try to figure out a consensus among his constituents. We dont have a strong stance for or against allowing chickens to be kept in yards throughout the city. But we are in favor of garnering a better consensus on what the people of Cedar Falls, as a whole, would prefer on this issue. We thank those council members who take the time to try to find out. The Trumpists have responded to their great victory at the polls, and to the prospect of a refashioned Republican Party under President-elect Trumps leadership, with their characteristic good grace and charm. The same could be said of those on the left who in many cases had already begun gloating over their inevitable triumph from the moment Trump secured the Republican nomination. This is to be expected, and hardly counts among the more dire consequences likely to follow his ascendancy to the nations highest office. That the administration of so great a country will fall to the likes of Steven Bannon and Corey Lewandowski is the greater occasion for mourning than the bleating of emotionally immature Trump enthusiasts, or the unseemly histrionics of the left. It would take conscious effort to be more spectacularly wrong than I have been about the likelihood of Donald Trumps ever becoming president. After many months of arguing, with no small degree of vehemence, that this years general election result was more or less impossible, it turns out that my reading of this years political scene was badly askew. It is of course true that I have a lot of company, and not only among partisans of the Never Trump persuasion, but this does nothing to obviate the simple fact: I was as wrong as it is possible to be, not once, but many times over the course of this interminable election season. My own period of mourning took place some months ago, which has freed me to react with some detachment from the unfolding scene. Like a lot of conservatives who bitterly opposed Trumps candidacy, I find myself able to indulge a considerable dose of schadenfreude at Team Clintons expense. That such a grasping, malevolent old crone would become the most outstanding victim of her own hubris and insatiability is cause for some celebration. In her uttermost famine, she devoured herself at last. The fall of House Clinton and her final repudiation by an American public which has, to its credit, never shown much sympathy for her transparent brand of self-seeking and deceit, has given me deep satisfaction, and for that I am grateful. I will leave it to others to dissect the polling data. The efficacy of such data is perhaps at its lowest-ever esteem, maybe with good reason (though I would caution future presidential hopefuls against the idea that Trumps improbable victory could be replicated by someone without his peculiar personal qualitiesno cult of celebrity without the celebrity). The only thing I will add to the torrent of commentary on How It All Happened is that the conventional wisdom on the prevailing dynamics of the contest still seems to me to be basically right: In a race between two deeply disliked and distrusted candidates, each with his own obviously disqualifying flaws, the candidate with the greatest advantage is the one best able to direct each news cycle into a story about the other candidate. It was, in fact, Mrs. Clintons strategy from the outset to remain as closeted and distant as possible from the daily headlines, and in Donald Trump, whose neurotic craving for attention is perhaps his defining characteristic, she had the ideal opponent. Not only was he incapable of allowing a moment to pass in which he was not the central topic of discussion, but he was bound to make that discussion as unflattering as it possibly could be. This was, at least to most observers, the basic electioneering dynamic of the whole campaign, one which militated powerfully against Trumps ever winning the presidency. Again, I still think this was basically right. There was something else, though, something that stood a chance of making the 2016 campaign into a black swan event, though I had dismissed it with scorn from the very start: the craving for attention on the part of Trumps voters (and, decisively, his potential voters). That craving found indirect reflection in the unbalanced, narcissistic personality of the Republican candidate. Moreover, their acute sense of victimhood made them amenable to any appeal that seemed to be directed at them. It was an appeal that Team Clinton consciously decided it had no need to make, bound as they were by their stubborn conviction that the Obama coalition could be mobilized without Obamas name on the ballot (something for which none of the last five election cycles has provided any evidence). Call it the Mister Rogers effect, if you will. Mister Rogers Neighborhood was as successful and beloved as it was because the children watching it felt sure that Mister Rogers was speaking directly to them through the lens of the camera. Something similar was true of Ronald Reagan and, in an altogether different technological era, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was almost too simple to attract the notice of the experts or, in my case, the amateurs. Why these voters, especially the much-talked-about white working class of rural Pennsylvania and elsewhere, were so susceptible admits of various explanations, some derogatory and others less so, depending on your point of view. I would suggest that the most underappreciated factor in it all was a tyrannical Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice Roberts, which had audaciously and repeatedly handed down to them massive political defeats, on such divisive and personally-felt subjects as health care and the meaning of marriage. A Supreme Court ruling is a horrible mechanism for the establishment of political consensus, as the ongoing thermonuclear war over Roe v. Wade ought to have shown. When those rulings are handed down on the basis of pure ideological will, and in direct contravention of repeatedly-expressed public desires, it has the effect of demolishing any respect for the forms of Constitutional government. A candidate who presents adherence to such forms as a suckers game will find receptive ears in such a setting. One could add the profligacy of the Obama administrations own rule-breaking and law-making, for example as regards the various statutory and regulatory constraints on insurance coverage that he unilaterally waived in the heat of his own re-election campaign, but as appalling as those things might have been to conservative political junkies, they lacked the visceral quality and sense of finality that a Supreme Court ruling over a highly contentious issue might have. What comes next? A lot of chin-stroking about What Comes Next, Id wager. Fresh off of the most in-your-face demonstration of the limits of my own powers of prediction, I will nonetheless double down on my contention that the Trump presidency will be a disaster for conservatism and that his supporters will find themselves betrayed without remorse by Donald Trump, as have so many others who have been receptive to his Art of the Deal, an art that amounts to saying pretty much anything necessary to close the deal, the details to be re-negotiated later, mostly through litigation. That such a habitual swindler and transparently self-concerned demagogue might prove to be a reliable political ally seems to me to be quite ludicrous. The alt-right and the generally pro-Trump response is something like this, which is appearing in a thousand memes as I type: You said Trump would never cross 30%. Then you said he would never cross 50%. Then you said he would never get the nomination. Then you said he would never win Pennsylvania. Then you said he would never be president. NOW you say he will never build a wall, that he will never undo Obamas regulatory effrontery, etc. Why should you be believed or listened to at this stage? Its a fair enough question, but it overlooks something crucial. All of the previous predictions about Trumps odds were really predictions, not about what Trump would dohe did pretty much everything we expected he wouldbut about what the American electorate would do. Nothing has happened to date that has changed my estimation of Trump the man, who already is beginning the process of walking back his many extravagant promises. To argue that he will govern as a conservative or that he will acquire a gravitas and intellectual curiosity to which he has never been even mildly susceptible, on the basis of his having won an election, is quixotic. It seems probable that on the issue of the courts he will be willing to take some direction from his betters, because it is an issue about which he cares nothing. But because practically everything that matters to conservatives falls under the same heading, it is vain to hope that he will risk any damage to his own prestige by taking positive action on behalf of conservative policy goals. This is particularly true of "social" concerns like abortion or religious freedom, to say nothing of such arcane preoccupations as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rules promulgated by the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development. If a multi-level marketing salesman comes knocking at my familys door, I may have some misplaced confidence that they will send him packing. If they dont, it would be very foolish to change my assessment of his product or the likelihood of his making good on his promises. It is hard to imagine a figure less likely to become a scourge of the left on actual policy grounds than Donald J. Trump. All that any of us has is hope, and in the exhilaration of the post-election moment, Ive seen an unreasonable amount of it from the right-wing commentariat. (A quick aside: All this makes the puerile hysteria of politically-attuned homosexuals all the more insufferable--it is explainable not by anything Trump has ever said against them, but only by the fact that they 1) skew young and have little experience of political defeat, and 2) have exercised such merciless retribution and denunciation against their political foes that they can only assume that that is how things are done in Zero-Sum America.) Time will tell, as always. What remains to philosophically committed conservatives is to engage with great energy the opportunity, suspect though it might be, to gain some ground in those areas where a Congressional majority may be efficacious, in the hopes that the insouciance of the next president can be turned to some advantage. 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(1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) Standing in Salem Pioneer Cemetery, amid the graves of more than 40 black pioneers, Willamette students gained a historic perspective on racism. Some of the black people, who were among Oregons first pioneers and whose remains date back to the late 1800s, were buried near whites like Asahel Bush, a newspaper publisher known in the 1850s for his racist editorials. Yet, even back then, some people fought against discrimination. Also buried in the cemetery is the Rev. Obed Dickinson an abolitionist whose wife, Charlotte, tutored black children barred from attending school. Luther Jessie III 20, an undeclared major from Oakland, California, found the cemetery visit insightful. After decades of bitter history, he says, They all ended up in the same place anyway. Racism yesterday and today Jessie and other students visited the cemetery Saturday for a College Colloquium class trip led and narrated by Gwen Carr, secretary for educational nonprofit Oregon Black Pioneers. After the stop at the cemetery, students headed north to Portland, where they visited several sites that illustrate black perseverance and struggle in the predominantly white state. The trip complemented their Remembering Emmett Till College Colloquium class, taught by Maegan Brooks, assistant professor of civic communication and media. Students have been exploring the history and impact of Till, a teen whose brutal death in Mississippi became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Till was lynched in 1955 after being accused of flirting with a white woman. No one was ever convicted of his murder. Brooks says she didnt want students to conclude her class with the impression racism only happened in the Mississippi delta and in the 1950s. Discussion of recent violence last month, bullet holes riddled a memorial site where where Till was killed reminded students how racism can persist even over an incident that happened decades ago. I wanted to bring racism to the present day, not only with all these nationwide shootings of unarmed black youth but also whats happening to Emmett Tills memory right now, she says. What better way to try and understand how African-American history is remembered than to tour memorial sites in our own region? A story of perseverance North of Portland, students stood in a sprawling park and raceway area once known as Vanport, a temporary housing development for shipyard workers. Black residents made up 35 percent of Vanports population. Their presence, as well as the dilapidated housing, caused mixed feelings among other residents until the town was destroyed by a flood in 1948. In Portland, students visited Union Station, a key center for black employment in the late 1800s to the early 1930s, and Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church of Portland, a popular location for activism in the 1950s through today. Brooks arranged the tour with Oregon Black Pioneers in the hope it would encourage students to consider interning at the nonprofit or engage in related efforts. It was also a way to educate first-year students, many of whom are from other states, about Oregons lesser-known history. Brooks says, Im hoping to pique their interest in African-American history so they can really understand through these stories that racism is everywhere but so is perseverance and resistance. Long hard trip down to the Tiny Russian Village Snowed, rained, sleeted and cold cold cold. But we made it and drove all the way to the Tiny Russian Village with no issues to speak of. Just nerve wracking for this bear. I have said many times, Russians suck at driving! Father Pavel was at the village and he looks to be trying to figure out how he can live in the Tiny Russian Village year around. He was so glad to see us and was happy that this American is back for the winter. This makes just four of us all winter. Vova, Nina, Nikolai and I are all that is left. I would be happy to have Father Pavel all winter also. He has issues for a home to live in. The church which is a home converted to a church, can not by their rules, be used to stay in. The bell tower is not ready yet and another home they have, has too many issues. He knows that if he lived here, his flock would be up and down the mountain all the time and bring life back to this Tiny Russian Village Svetochka and I will spend several days in the Big Village and we have to do banking issues, gather more winter supplies and just look around and see what is happening. Time moves slowly in the villages of Russia. While time moves fast in Moscow and things change like the wind. The villages resist change like a willow tree in a storm. It is nice and makes the villages the place to be We also need to get hold of our mechanic in the Big Village, the one who installed our engine, he has to finish up a few small issues and check the car over again. Sammy the Volga did fantastic coming down and is such a pleasure to drive. She may be a Volga, old and cantankerous, but she is reliable and fun to drive. I can honestly say, I have owned dozens of cars, from expensive to cheap and the Volgas we have owned are the best cars I have ever driven! We have had two Volgas since I have been to Russia. A model 2410 called Nelly and the one we have now a model 310221 called Sammy Going to make this short today. Still have to work on the laptop. Some reason the Windows OS simply broke while it set waiting for me to come back. It was turned off and when turned back on, no worky againy So I have reinstalled Windows 7 and having to get everything set back up again. I have two back up drives and everything was there waiting to reinstall. Not sure what happened, but Windows would not start and it was unable to fix itself, with the startup repair. I am going to have to figure this out. I do not want to have that happen again. Therefore, that is why I make backups and such Yes, it is nice to be back in the Tiny Russian Village More tomorrow WtR Master filmmaker Mani Ratnams ongoing romantic drama, Duet, will be shot in the Southeast European country of Serbia. The shooting will begin in the last week of this month and Mani and his expert crew will can several action episodes, which were earlier planned to be shot in Kashmir. Mani Ratnam is usually known to stick to his storys milieu and he rarely goes abroad to shoot his movies. He had earlier shot some portions of Guru in Turkey and Amrutha in Sri Lanka. This is after almost a decade that Mani is shooting his film abroad. Starring Karthi as a pilot and Aditi Rao Hydari as a doctor, Duet has its music scored by AR Rahman. The film will be releasing in March next year. Articles that might interest you: Nov 14, 2016 | By Tess Perhaps one of the best things about 3D printing technology is how democratic and accessible it can be. Of course, while not everyone can afford a state of the art industrial or desktop 3D printer, there are tons of options out there for those who want to 3D print for cheap or who want to build their own additive manufacturing systems. Recently, for instance, we came across the particularly inspiring story of Afate Gnikou, a Togolese inventor who built his very own 3D printer from electronic waste he gathered from landfills. Gnikous foray into 3D printing began in 2013, when the 37-year-old geographer took part in a contest organized by local tech incubator WoeLab to build Togos first ever 3D printer. At the time, he wanted to draw attention to the huge amount of electronic waste that was ending up in Togolese, Nigerian, and Ghanaian landfills, largely from second hand computers from Europe and abroad, so decided to build his 3D printer out of these wasted materials. Since participating in the contest, Gnikou has continued to work on his innovative 3D printer, made entirely from recycled parts, and has been recognized for his determination. In 2014, for instance, Gnikou and his team were awarded first place at Fab10, an international event hosted in Barcelona geared towards accessible technologies. As the maker explains, however, even this award did not help him to raise funds or find a partner for the project. Gnikou at Fab10 in Barcelona (2014) Despite these challenges, Gnikou is still determined to further develop his 3D printer and turn it into a viable product for the African market. As he explained, I want to adapt the 3D printer to the Togolese and, indeed, African context and to fit local needs. This has involved making a more sturdy and durable 3D printer model, and improving its structural frame. For example, while the first 3D printer model was built using the body from a computer, the second iteration has integrated the body of a scanner, and plastic parts from computer monitors. This has allowed him to make the 3D printer more solid than before. Additionally, Gnikou has added lights to the 3D printer, which means it can more easily be used at night or in darker spaces. 3D printed knee prostheses Ultimately, the Togolese maker is hoping to use his recycled 3D printer to make affordable and custom fit prostheses for the people in his community. As he explained in an interview, There are many people in my community living with disabilities. If I ask them why they dont use medical prostheses, they smile and say 'My friend, they are too expensive!.' Like in many places, prostheses are still relatively unaccessible in Togo largely because of their high cost. Under the current system, prosthetic devices are all standardized and imported to Togo from abroad, meaning not only high costs but also ill-fitting or generically sized prostheses. Gnikou hopes that his 3D printer will help to create affordable and specially customized prostheses for those who cannot afford regular ones. With a 3D printer, we could what we need and free our continent from its dependence on imports. The DIY 3D printer has so far printed about 150 objects, though all relatively small in size, the largest being 16 cm in width and 12 cm in height. To help move his vision forwards, Gnikou is continually looking for interested partners and additional funding. Primarily, he is looking to expand his workshop space (he is currently working out of his parents house), and to set up a training facility where he can teach young people to build their own 3D printers and machines. My goal would be to get them to the point where they are able to create objects that respond to concrete needs or help them in their daily lives, he said. Posted in 3D Printer Maybe you also like: Nov 14, 2016 | By Benedict Penn State University has signed a Master Research contract with defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin, signaling the continuation of research collaboration and an enhanced recruiting relationship. Lockheed Martin has previously supported Penn State students in various 3D printing projects. Agreements between academic institutions and wealthy companies can be mutually beneficial: universities are put in a good position to secure research funding from the corporate partner, while participating companies able to keep an eye on promising graduates from the university who might prove worth recruiting. Penn State and Lockheed Martin, a Pennsylvania-based public university and an American defense and aerospace company, respectively, are two parties to have consistently taken advantage of the unique relationship between business and academia, having collaborated on numerous ventures, including several additive manufacturing projects, as recently as spring 2016. According to a press release put out on Friday, the partnership between Penn State and Lockheed Martin is set to continue long in to the future, as the pair recently put pen to paper on a Master Research Contract. According to the two parties, the new agreement will signal the initiation of further research collaborations, an enhanced recruiting relationship, and an increased engagement from Lockheed Martin in Penn State programs. Advancing university-industry partnerships such as this one with Lockheed exemplifies Penn State's renewed emphasis on economic development and job creation, and adds to our growing reputation as the go-to industry-friendly university, commented Neil Sharkey, vice president for research at Penn State. While there are few details yet about the kind of projects on which Penn State and Lockheed Martin will collaborate, the defense company has historically taken part in several Penn State research programs, including those in the area of 3D printing, or additive manufacturing. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin asked students in Penn States Introduction to Design Engineering class to use 3D printing to solve new problems in aerospace, defense, and other areas of interest for Lockheed Martin. During this project, students used additive manufacturing to create, amongst other things, 3D printed heat exchangers, shock absorbers, wire connectors, and USB hub mounting brackets. The research agreement between Penn State and Lockheed Martin reportedly includes a framework that will guide future research projects focused in areas including computer science, cybersecurity, supply chain and aerospace engineering. Students will have access to high-profile talent recruitment opportunities, and Lockheed Martin employees will get the chance to take part in Penn States online masters programs for electrical engineering and engineering leadership and management. As our technological demands increase, so do our needs for world-class talent, said Lockheed Martin Vice President of Engineering & Technology Dan Heller. This agreement is an ideal opportunity for Penn State students to work alongside Lockheed Martin engineers and scientists on the challenges we face today and those we anticipate will emerge in the future. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin reported that it was using metal 3D printing technology to build satellites up to 40 percent faster. The company has also used 3D printed parts in its Trident missiles. Posted in 3D Printing Technology Maybe you also like: by Leanne Ogasawara Every night God takes his glittering merchandise out of his showcase holy chariots, tables of law, fancy beads, crosses and bells and puts them back into dark boxes inside and pulls down the shutters: Again, not one prophet has come to buy. Yehuda Amichai Jerusalem: utterly obssessed by the place, I even love finding copies of the holy city both imaginal and real. There are, for example, William Blake's rural England of his imagination (Ah, Jerusalem) and the Puritan's city upon a hill in America. There are also the real Jerusalems built of brick and stone. Such real-life copies can be found mainly in European cities, from Cambridge to Bologna. My own favorite new Jerusalem is the holy city of Lalibela in Ethiopia, however, where it is believed that pilgrims receive the same blessing visiting that city as they would if they had visited Jerusalem itself. It is a place I long to see someday. Despite knowing that copies of Jerusalem can be found dotted around Europe, I never really expected to find one so far north as in the Flemish city of Bruges. In Bruges. Belgium's greatest poet Guido Gezelle referred to the city as a copy of the holy land. But, in the movie In Bruges, the mob boss Harry calls the town a fucking fairy tale. (Ray, however disagrees). In any event, my astronomer and I were visiting the city on a van Eyck pilgrimage. Starting in Paris, we looked at van Eyck pictures in the Louvre, in Ghent and then in Bruges and I was struck over and over again by the way time was conflated in the paintings. Like a wormhole connecting discrete and distant points in time, these late Medieval and early Renaissance pictures were stunningly transportive in terms of time and space so that, for example, Mary and the baby or the Lamb were depicted side-by-side with contemporary figures. Contemporary donors appeared in the paintings accompanied by their patron saints, who thereby formed a link between these two worlds. The church authorities not surprisingly clamped down on this practice and the early Renaissance donor portraits disappeared but it was in Bruges that I realized how wonderful it would be to see oneself in a picture like that. If I lived back then, I certainly would have desired a picture of myself like that, depicted alongside saints, pilgrims and God. Is it not the ultimate selfie? In summer, I had written here in these pages about relics and their long-lost power to emotionally and spiritually transport and spiritually move a person, asking: I wonder if things have the power to move us in this way anymore? I mean, there was a time (the time Umberto Eco likes to write about) when people were obsessed by fantastical maps and with great quests for objects that held much power. Like mountains, certain objects had the power to draw people in. Relics, for example, were big business. Think of Sainte-Chappele, built to house the Crown of Thorns or recall the mystery surrounding the quests for the Holy Grail. Eco's Baudolino is almost entirely taken up with the relic trade and the role played by faith (faith in the fragrance of these relicswhere it is the perfume that is true not necessarily the relic itself). This kind of devotion to relics is famously practiced by Catholics and Buddhists, and probably harkens back to an ancient propensity for becoming enchanted by things. It is also a commitment to remember, right? (Poor, dear Henri Fontal!) Believe it or not Bruges happens to be in possession of one of the Top Ten Relics Associated with Jesus Christ. This came about when the Count of Flanders, Thierry of Alsace, was given a relic of the Holy Blood by the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III of Anjou (who I think was also the count's brother-in-law). Given as a reward for his courage during the second crusade it came with the approval of the patriarch of Jerusalem. In all probability the relic was obtained during the sack of Constantinople a hundred years later but whatever the fact, this relic was to put Bruges on the map big time (transforming the town into a holy city) and the adoration of the relic is the main reason that Bruges came to be seen as a little Jerusalem. The blood of Christ was seen by some as being what is commonly referred to as the Holy Grail. (Sang Real, etc.) Interestingly, the man credited with starting the legend of the Grail romance, Chretien de Troyes, stated that he had found the story of the Grail in a manuscript supposedly given to him by Philip of Alsace, who was the son of Thierry of Alsacethe very man who brought the vial of blood back from Jerusalem in 1150. Or so the legend goes. Remember in the movie In Bruges when Ken and Ray go to visit the relic of the Holy Blood? Instead of going to the Basilica of the Holy Blood where the relic is actually housed, the two characters visit an altogether different church. It seems crazy not to film such a famous relic in the church where everyone knows it is kept and yet how could the director resist Jerusalem Church? So, we see Ken and Ray in Jerusalem church, preparing to view the relic of the holy blood. It is such a great scene in what is such a great film! Stepping inside Jerusalem Church in Bruges is like slipping into an Umberto Eco novel. Did I mention it's real name is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre? It all started around the time that van Eyck was painting his Mystic Lamb altarpiece (un sospiro~) that two members of the illustrious Italian banking family, the Adornes, returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Deeply impressed by the beauty of the Christ's tomb in Jerusalem, the two brothers immediately began work on their own chapel based on the design of the Holy Sepulchre upon their return to Bruges. With its rounded dome and Jerusalem cross atop, it is reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalembut what awaits one inside is what is the real surprise. The clip from the film describes the feeling best, I think. Here it is again. Beneath soaring crosses and a dark and morbid altar of skulls and bones, along with whips, nails and hammers, lies the the crypt of Anselm (who died while engaging in intrigues in Scotland) and his beloved wife Maragaretha. It is Golgotha. The scene of Ray and Jen talking in the church is classic. Instead of the holy blood, however, in reality when one ascends upstairs there one fins a splinter of the True Cross, also brought back from the holy Land. Un unexplained mystery, as described here, it is not prominently displayed nor was it being worshipped (compared to the massive crowds at the Holy Blood relic). It's my favorite scene in the movie and in many ways perfectly depicts the gloomy or morbidly medieval mood of Bruges. For there were orders of men (knights?) that grew up around the crusadesorders such as the Order of the Holy Sepulchre (of which Anselm was a card-carrying member) and the Knights Hospitaller, also known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, who had toyed with the idea of turning Bruges into a New Jerusalem, which could serve as spiritual HQ of Europe, should Jerusalem and the Sepulchre fall again to the Moors. ++ The Dead City (Gluck das mir verblieb). I am now reading George Rodenbach's Bruges-La-Morte. Believe it or not, I had never heard of the book (nor the opera which some say inspired the making of Hitchcock's Verigo). Filled with beautiful black and white photographs, it is one of the most stunning portaits of a city that I have ever read. Rodenbach indeed insisted that cities reflect different states of the soul. And, in the author's introduction to the novel, in his poetic and evocative prose he writes: In this study of passion our other principle aim has been to evoke a Town, the Town as essential character, associated with states of mind, counselling, dissuading, inducing the hero to act. And in reality, this town of Bruges, on which our choice fell, does seem almost human. It establishes a powerful influence on all who stay there. It molds them through its monuments and its bells. Devastated at the loss of his beloved wife the main character chooses Bruges as the perfect place to mourn. So much like in Mann's Death in Venice, the city is portrayed like death itself. With cold and still, unmoving waters filling the city's canals, the swans themselves become images of decay and death; while the famous bells of the belfy toll with the stagnation and weight of the church (or maybe like in Pamuk's Istanbul, it seems to be crumbling by the sheer weight of its own glorious history?) Before long the story becomes a stage for the character's fight between darkness and light as he obsessively struggles with the allure of a young dancer with whom he confuses with that of his beloved lost wife (even their voices are identical). The story does not end well. In fact, it ends in the death of the novel's title But Bruges is not simply a dead city, like Mann's Venice or Pamuk's Istanbul. Because Bruges is both about heaven and hell. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. John Milton Burning in hell this city after all was the inspiration for the Dante of the painters Bosch's images of hell. For as Joel Bleifuss says, it is a city with a dark past. While the sleepy, medieval backdrop to Martin McDonagh's hitman comedy certainly appears like the setting for a fairy tale, it also hides a very dark past, one full of fundamentalist depravity and dank dungeons as well as knights and ladies. It was a city of contradictions-host to one of the most spectacular banquets in medieval times and the inspiration for Hieronymus Bosch's hellish visions The movie is very much taken up with these images of hell and of purgatory. It is a place where nothing works and everyone dies. As Ernest Mathijs says, The key to In Bruges is its nothingness. Nothing works, nothing is sacred; every action misses its goal; everyone is misunderstood; and no one escapes. What a strange fate for a city said to be holy; a city housing a relic of the True Cross and a vessel containing drops of the Holy Blood. But I think it is perhaps this dual quality of heaven and hell that most ties the place to Jerusalem. As I said about Jerusalem here, maybe Bruges too exists as a heavenly city lying on the same axis as purgatory AND heaven as not just the center of the world, but also the heart of the world? Less a city of fanatics and never-ending conflict, Bruges reminds me so much of the poem by Yehuda Amichai at topa sleeping city, where all the fancy beads, crosses and bells are on display in wait. Like Venice and Jerusalem, Walking around the city, I could not help but think of Dante's great allegory of the soul's journey to find God. Down, down, downTime and space warpon Dante's Holy Mountain. Wonderful movie, wonderful book, wonderful poem, wonderful city. For more: a great article on El Bosco here. Also my earlier post: The Walls of Jerusalem by Michael Liss We got our butts kicked, and kicked very hard. Adlai Stevenson, ruminating about the results of the 1952 Election, recalled Abraham Lincoln's reaction to an electoral loss: We are like the boy who stubbed his toeit hurts too much to laugh, and we are too old to cry. It's a few days later, and the damaged digit still aches, so let's take off the shoe and get a closer look. Nastyswollen with punctured pride and inflated expectation. And, is that yellowish stuff pus? There is no delicate way to describe why and how this wrenching event occurred. Nor is there any comfort in speculating just what our new leaders in Washington have planned for us. But we need to. If we don't dive in, take our medicine, and prepare for the future history will repeat itself. We can begin the post mortem with the Clinton campaign's primary complaints: unfair coverage by the mainstream media, and James Comey's intercession. To that, I am going to add the dedicated Trump team at WikiLeaks. Ah, the press, you can't live with them, you can't live without them. They loved Trumpeven though he threatened and mistreated them, he was great copy, he made news constantly, which drew eyeballs and advertiser dollars. To balance out their reporting of Trump's excesses (all Trump had was excesses) they felt compelled to add an equal dollop of negative Hillary stories. To the Clinton's campaign's collective way of thinking, this constantly created a false equivalence of two sinners. Fair? Kind of. I give it 5 out of a possible 10 on the biased scale. Comey? Very difficult to evaluate. I don't want to impugn his motives and I think he was genuinely conflicted. What we don't know is how many votes he moved because we don't have hard, reliable data. Even with that qualifier, we can't discount the impact of Comey's choices and the possibility that his decisions changed both the Presidential and down-ballot races. I think he is an honorable manand, because he's an honorable man, he probably is losing sleep over thisand should. 8 out of 10, with the potential for an upward revision. Assange's vigilantes? Yes, they played a role. What the hackers showed the voting public was something they suspected existed but didn't really want to seethe sausage of politics-as-usual being made. The content wasn't extraordinarywar gaming, opposition research, evaluation of vulnerabilities is exactly what campaigns are designed for, and in fact, must do. But we only got to look behind one curtain, not both, and when the contest is between the ultimate insider and the ultimate outsider, it takes its toll. Six out of ten, especially because the disclosures were the equivalent of regular small doses of poison. Yet all these things had a common threadthe candidate herself. No emails, no Comey. No hacked private server, no WikiLeaks drip-drip of internal speculation and doubt. No forty years in public service and the public eye, for good and bad, no Clinton Foundation, no checkered past, no jaded press, no false equivalence. And here is where it falls apart for me. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I believed that she was highly qualified, experienced, intelligent, and would have done a good job. And I believed that Donald Trump was uniquely unqualified, for any number of reasons. But I simply do not understand what the heck her campaign was thinking when they got into this, because, while Donald Trump was unpredictable, everything else above was. The private server was obviously a terrible choicebut, for darn sakes, why not deal with it forthrightly, with a plausible reason and serious mea culpa? The Clinton Foundation? Go on the offense, with specificity Donald bought portraits of himself, but here's what we accomplishedwe built schools, we built hospitals, we got pharmaceutical companies to donate lifesaving drugs. Build a narrative of a committed public servant, maybe not the most likable, but someone who was dogged in her pursuit of good things for others. Remember you aren't trying to convince your enemies, but trying to give comfort to your friends. Make them proud, not defensive. It never happened. Maybe it wasn't in heror maybe there was too much scar tissue, but Hillary Clinton never connected, and never had a cohesive message that she could and would better people's lives. Trump did, in his own unique way. Bernie certainly did. But Hillary was unable to ignite a movement, to engender a loyalty to person and theme. You could see it in how she ended her campaigntrying to assemble a coalition of minorities and the coastal elites, two groups with virtually nothing in common, and holding rallies with pop stars. Trips to the Midwest, to Wisconsin and Michigan? Not so much. Joan Williams, in The Harvard Business Review, roughs up Hillary a bit too much, but she does make some acute observations about the white, working class voters who, in massive numbers, rejected her in favor of a crude macho mogul who began life on third base and spent most of his adult life on corporate welfare. From the pantsuits to the deplorables language, Hillary was the embodiment of elite condescension. So she lost this crucial group, taking down the Democratic Party with her. What's next? Now that we have handed over our government to a cranky, imperious 70-year-old used to having his way, and a tight band of ideologues chomping at the bit to exercise power, what can we expect? It is going to be bad, and it's going to be bad right away. The core constituencies of the GOP have been clamoring for their priorities, and will not tolerate legislative roadblocks. There is plenty of low-lying fruit, starting with the Supreme Court. We Democrats are going to have to grit our teeth on this one, as good-old Mitch McConnell gives us his turtle smirk and uses the nuclear option, while John Cornyn lectures us on the need for a prompt confirmation, and on how the country has chosen. Expect someone hard-right with a Messianic zeal for activismconservative activism. We will live with it because we have no choice, whispering to ourselves and the horse you came in on and dreaming of a time when we can return the favor. That's one Supreme Court Justice, which takes us back to Scalia. But now comes the hard partthe social conservative agenda: guns, gays, and fetuses. Abortion, first up. Look for top-down Federally preemptive legislation modeled on bills such as Oklahoma passed, except even more severe. The real debates amongst Republicans (Democrats will be shut out of committees and gagged) will be just at the edgeseither a complete abortion ban, a ban with an exception for the life of the mother, or a ban with exceptions for life, rape, or incest. Criminalization will also be discussedof both the mother and the provider, with a humane compromise of just criminalizing the provider (watch out Planned Parenthood). Congress will pass this on party lines, McConnell will use reconciliation and/or the nuclear option if needed, and Trump will sign it, because he said he would. It will then move through the court system, with conservatives fervently praying that Justice Ginsburg gets just a little closer to God in the interim. Gays are nextthe GOP will revisit the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, revitalize it and expand itlegalizing discrimination in both the public and private sector based on religious belief. This will go well beyond wedding cakes and flowers and apply more broadly to healthcare, hiring, and benefits. The language will be broad enough to eliminate restrictions as they relate to previously protected classes including race, religion, and gender. The extent of the final legislation will be debated, and my guess is that there will be some pressure to moderate from some otherwise GOP-aligned business interests, but in the end, it will be passed. Trump will sign this one as well, perhaps after some negotiations in which Pence (who championed similar measures in Indiana) will play a key role. Watch this area very carefullyit's a place where the Alt-right might have a serious dog in the fight, as conscience exemptions could finally provide them with the safe-harbor for open discrimination they have been hoping for. Guns NRA legislative priorities will be Congress's. More pre-emptive legislation prohibiting states from enacting restrictions on gun sales, gun ownership, registrations and information databases. Universal reciprocity on the issuing of gun permitsso, a concealed-carry permit issued in Texas would have to be honored by New York. This is all going to get doneTrump is in favor of it, and it's a trap for Democrats. The simple fact on guns is that the people who believe in unlimited Second Amendment rights are infinitely more organized and passionate that the larger group who favor regulation. The Democrats know itit's a complete loser for any (remaining) Democrat from any area with a gun culture. Soon, we will all have guns. On to money and mayhem. The Establishment GOP has three priorities, with which Trump is irregularly aligned. First, both favor steep tax cuts for business and the wealthythese can't be done immediately (you need to give the lobbyists time to bid) but they will happen by mid-year. The Democrats have absolutely no chance of stopping this, and they shouldn't even try. Second, both Trump and the GOP favor substantially more military spending, although they have different military ambitions. This, too, will happen, but most of it will be on weapons, and less on personnel and readiness. The GOP has an unacknowledged policy problem here. It takes a lot of money and a lot of manpower to soothe the fevered brow of the armchair warriors, and, realistically, that can only come from two unpopular sourcestaxes and a draft. Republicans think they can return to the Bush erause borrowed money (and blame the Democrats for deficits) and purely volunteer armed forces. That won't be enough because the world has changed and threats are broader, although this problem will not be publicly acknowledged for some time. Environmental regulations. Prepare for a lunar landscape. Trump is going to tear up the Paris Agreement. The GOP has long craved drilling and mining everywhere, while shielding the extractive industries from liability or a responsibility to clean up. This is a layup for Trumphe will frame it as a job-creator for his blue-collar fans, but, in the end, it's a gigantic boondoggle for industry, and they will pay handsomely for it. Legislation and Executive Orders will move very quickly here, and there is absolutely nothing the Democrats can do about this onethey just don't have the votes anywhere. I plan to invest in Hazmat suit-makers and air-conditioning equipment manufacturers. That Wall and Those People. Trump will have his wallwhat kind of wall will be open to interpretation, but it will be a wall, and a great one. This was a key promise he made to his backers. He will swiftly eliminate DACA, again, winning cheers from his supporters. On mass deportations and flying squads headed to minority neighborhoods to root out six-year-olds taking American jobs, he will hold back, looking for the political cover of a committee. But take note that Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a fierce critic of immigration, now has a key role on Trump's team. These two are going the play a game of Bad Cop, Worse Cop. Obamacare: The surest repeal on the planet. Hating Obamacare is part of the catechism of being a Republican. Replace? Not so much. The GOP has some ideas for patient-centered reforms which largely revolve around liability shields for medical providers, drug companies and medical-device makers. But even they know they don't actually have any way to improve medical careit's not the purpose of their plans anyway. Trump has expressed some interest in retaining preexisting condition coverage and coverage for children until they are 26, and expect the GOP to use those as fig-leafs as they look to expand by millions the numbers of uninsured. Democrats have a tough road on thisACA is broadly unpopular, so the best they can do tactically is to allow the GOP to indulge themselves and hopefully take some responsibility (and blame). Entitlements: This one is trickier. Programs for the poor will be cut back or eliminated in the name of deficit reductionlook at SNAP and Medicaid as deep pockets. As to Social Security and Medicare, the GOP fantasizes about curtailing these and using the savings for more tax cuts and military spending, but has electoral concerns. The problem Democrats have with this is that it's just as much as a loser for them. For decades they have failed to understand something basicmany people who work resent every dollar that goes to people who don't. This is absolutely critical for Democrats to accept and adapt toif entitlement reform leads them to only defend the poor, they lose. They need a comprehensive response, which includes input from the healthcare providers who will not be able to provide care if Medicaid doesn't pay them. So, my fellow Democrats, where are we? My friends are upset, my children frightened, and I haven't slept more than 3 consecutive hours for over a week. I have been inundated with texts and emails from people I know and care about, who are similarly suffering. There is an overwhelming feeling of profound personal vulnerability that may be unprecedented in the history of the greatest nation the world has ever known. But all is not lost. We can beat this. First, we will need to indulge ourselves in breast-beating and self-recriminations. It's a normal reactionand we have time for it given the fact that we will play no role in governance for the foreseeable future. Second, a moment of reality. We are down, but not entirely out. Hillary actually won the popular vote, meaning that there are plenty of Americans who are willing to listen to us, if we can only come up with a coherent message. Third, Republicans have now become the party of Trump, and Trump is now a Republican. Before Election Day, neither of these things were true. Now, as they exercise power together, it will be. They will both overreach. Fourth, we have the luxury of picking our fightsand we have 48 Senators, the Senate rules (and Chuck Schumer) to use. Choose them wisely, don't get suckered into things on which we look out of touch, and we can highlight differences that matter to the American people. Fifth, the hard-right program that GOP is about to impose will not be universally admired, and some of their Senators and Congressmen are going to have to pay for their votes at the ballot box. Am I overly optimistic on this? Perhaps, but the least popular Governor in America is Sam Brownback, whose vision of a conservative utopia is too extreme even for conservative Kansas. Finally, let's try to become a national party again, a party of growth, of optimism. In a democracy, when it does something government should seek the most good for the maximum number of people. The Republicans won'ttheir model is built around reward and punishment. We can be better than that. It doesn't matter so much whether we move a little more to the left, or a little more to the center. Rather, we need to show that we are more than a collection of special-interest groups, that we have a broader vision. We haven't done that well, and we need to. I leave you with one final thought, not my own, but from a neighbor with whom I rode up in the elevator. He's a naturalized citizen married to a Canadian, and we talked about that for a bit. When we reached his floor, the door open, he walked out, turned on his heel, and pointed his finger at me. You leave, he wins twice. Kind of sums it up. I'll have to stay. by Matt McKenna A population of complacent optimists unexpectedly find themselves at the mercy of a ghastly ogre: Is this the story of the Democrats in 2016 or the plot of DreamWorks new animated film, Trolls? As liberal American adults come to grips with how their country could elect the relatively progressive Barack Obama to the Presidency twice in a row only to immediately elect the much less progressive Donald Trump, children around the world are watching Trolls, a hard hitting metaphor for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. The filmmakers deserve credit for coming up with a ninety-minute movie based on nothing more than the license for a brand of goofy dolls that was last culturally relevant back in the 1990s along with other collectibles such as Beanie Babies, Furbies, and Pokemon. To turn the toy line into a movie franchise, the screenwriters gifted the Trolls with a strange backstory: Within their songful, permanently optimistic society, the Trolls only problem is that they are hunted by the Bergen, a diseased-looking band of ogres who find happiness only in eating the little Trolls. Every year, in fact, the Bergen enjoy a festival called Trollstice in which the normally mopey, grumpy, and unpleasant Bergen feast upon the bodies of the radiant Trolls to attain momentary contentment. Unsurprisingly, the Trolls eventually tire of being eaten, and they escape Bergentown by hiding in a nearby forest. After a brief chase, all the Bergensave onegive up looking for them, and the Trolls appear to be safe forever. The Trolls, however, are not safe forever. Chef, the last Bergen holdout, spends the next twenty years of her life attempting to locate the Trolls in order to cook them for Trollstice. Her search is unsuccessful until the overly optimistic Trolls throw one dance party too many, and the dour Bergen tracks the noise to their secret location. Chef collects a handful of screaming Trolls into her fanny pack, returns to Bergentown, and leaves Trolls protagonist Princess Poppy in a state of shock and sadness. Sound familiar? How directors Walt Dohrn and Mike Mitchell could possibly have known how the 2016 Presidential election was going to unfold is beyond me, but their deft depiction of election night from the point of view of liberal Americans is striking. The party at which the Trolls are discovered by Chef closely resembles Clintons pre-election rallies and the election-night party where buoyant Democrats enjoyed a festival-like atmosphereat least until the election results started trickling in. While the Trolls pre-Bergen dance party included a light show and a DJ voiced by Gwen Stefani, the Democrats enjoyed pre-election musical performances by Beyonce, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and others. Clearly, both the Trolls and the Democrats know how to throw a party even if they arent great at knowing how to identify a threat. While the pre-Bergen and pre-election parties were similar, the partygoers reaction to their respective festivities chaotic aftermaths bares an even more stark similarity. The stunned faces on the Trolls as the Bergen walked away with their doomed compatriots match the stunned faces on the Democrats as Trump walked away with their doomed electoral votes. Furthermore, the immediate responses of the Trolls and the Democrats highlight the uncomfortable uncertainty around how the two groups could possibly recover from their bad nights. For example, when faced with the shock of the Bergen attack, Princess Poppys reaction is not to evaluate how she and the other Trolls ended up in their predicament, but rather she curiously continues doing the same thing that attracted the Bergen to the Trolls location in the first placeshe belts out loud and lengthy saccharine tune about going on an adventure. Democrats have reacted similarly to their loss by continuing to hit upon the same talking points that failed to persuade enough Americans to vote for Clinton during the actual election. Though topics such as the awful things Trump said during the race and FBI Director James Comeys handling of the Clinton email server case strike a chord with current Clinton supporters, they clearly dont resonate with the Americans that flipped their votes from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. For both the Trolls and the Democrats, the tension in the narrative comes from both groups inability to adapt to changing circumstances. The silver lining for Democrats is that if Trolls accurately represents the pre-election and immediate post-election feelings of American liberals, the conclusion of the film offers hope for the demoralized political party. Although Princess Poppy may not have much of a plan to win back her fellow Trolls from the Bergen, she is joined on her adventure by Branch, a Troll who is somehow immune to the creatures typical optimism. Therefore, even if the Democrats dont currently have a plan for how to reclaim the electoral votes they lost in 2016, perhaps they too have members who can see through their partys typical optimism to ensure that future election nights dont end quite so poorly. by Akim Reinhardt Maybe one day I'll publish the 2,500 word screed I wrote for this website about how fucking sick I am of white people. And not just the racist, sexist ass holes who eagerly voted for a racist, sexist ass hole flaunting racism and sexism as a central part of his campaign; or the not-racist, sexist ass holes who held their noses and pulled the lever for a racist, sexist ass hole, and in doing so exhibited morally bankruptcy by giving public sanction to racism and sexism; but also the middle class, white liberals ass holes who valiantly fought hard to prevent a racist, sexist ass hole from reaching the White House, but once they lost, became self-centered, self-indulgent turds who had to publicly make everything about themselves, because nobody fucking suffers like white people. Maybe one day I'll publish that essay. But not today. Because publishing that essay, ironically enough, would be just one more way in which a white, middle class ass hole (me) found a way to use his privileged platform (this site) to make public declarations about white people. And even though it's a blistering critique which I stand behind every word of, it would just be another example of a white person making this all about white people. But right now, this is not about white people. This is about what we, as Americans, choose to do amid the horror that some of us have wrought. So instead of going an angry rant, I am going to write in of support brown people, in support of immigrants, and in support of women, and in support of LGBTQ people. People are complex, contradictory beings. Despite the absurd fantasies of some economists, we are not like cats, simply licking what we like, clawing what we don't, ignoring all that doesn't matter or captivate us, and always working in our self-interest. Rather, we are complicated and erratic to the point of enigma. We are not always kind or good to each other, or even to ourselves. We are not the nominals in rational choice theory equations. We are the ephemeral stuff of poetry. We are the tangled threads of psychology. We are the blinking vagaries of stardust. We are the unknowable mysteries we use to paint our gods. And sometimes that shit goes really wrong. The wrong can take as many forms as we humans can assume, which is nearly endless. As Townes Van Zandt once said, sometimes our pain and trouble fall upon us like a storm, and sometimes we dig our own holes. Right now, this nation is digging holes. Holes that force people into pits of isolation and inequity. What to do? Refusing to dig is good, but it is not enough. Imploring others not to dig is also good, but it is also not enough. Reach down. Extend your hand. Pull people up. And those of us who are in no real danger of falling into a hole must be prepared to climb down in there, willingly, and stand side by side with those who are caught, those who feel the earth around them falling away. Offer words of encouragement, yes, but offer tangible support as well. On January 21, when the Million Woman March comes to Washington, D.C., just a 50 minute train ride from Baltimore where I live, I will open my home to a small army of women prepared to descend upon the capital. I will march with them only if they want me to. And I will fight to support equality for women, and offer my body as a shield against the pussy grabbers, the molesters, and the men who would use their power and authority to gaze upon nude 15 year old girls. I will voice my support for immigrants of all stripes, rejecting the divisive notion that some nations send us better people than other nations. I will pressure politicians to enact and support humane laws. And I will actively work to make my city and my personal home a sanctuary for families facing fracture upon the anvil of deportation. I will continue to advocate for and aid Native people struggling to maintain and assert their independence in Indian Country, and Native people in urban and suburban America who endure anti-Indian racism on a daily basis so frequent and so casual that perhaps the most shocking thing about it is that hardly anyone is shocked by it. I will be adamant that we as a nation never return to the sexual dark ages; I will openly recognize that LGBTQ people are our sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, lovers and friends, and I will work to ensure they maintain and expand their hard won legal rights and continue to live freely and openly among us. As a middle class person, I will not ignore the increasingly grim economic reality of a modern America where unskilled and semi-skilled workers of all colors and sexes face not just diminishing opportunities, but also a seemingly endless array of predators and scavengers looking to exploit them. And I will not become self-satisfied. I will never believe that I have done enough simply because I publicly condemn racism against brown and black people. Or because I write a check to support a cause. I will never forget that other people can never remove their dark skin and escape into the comfort of majority and power. I will never forget that I have the luxury of not caring, or the luxury of caring deeply yet staying out of harm's way. As a teacher, as a public writer, and more importantly, as a citizen and human being, I will not only condemn racism and sexism, but I will work towards banishing them by doing the only thing that can free us in the end: building bridges between people. * This past Friday night, my girlfriend and I along with another couple blew off some steam at a neighborhood bar in a working class section of Baltimore. The corner row home bar itself reflects the neighborhood it is nestled in. The clientele is mostly white, but not entirely. On Friday, there was a typical crowd: maybe a dozen white men, two black women, plus me and my friends (three of us white, one from India). The owners are a Korean woman and her older white husband. Everyone was at least in their thirties. All of the other patrons, aside from my group, were decidedly working class. At one point, a guy with no front, bottom teeth told me he had saved up $1,500 so he could go be homeless in Florida this winter. Maybe he was serious, but he was pretty plastered so who knows. He also gave me really good advice about hanging doors. Some twenty-something whites, who are part of the recent gentrification wave in this neighborhood, wandered at one point. They were excited to be there, perhaps wanting to burnish their street cred. But it was probably a bit too gritty for them, and they were gone after about 20 minutes. They missed the show. If this bar is emblematic of America's many confusions, contradictions, and conflicts, it could be pinpointed in the owner. She left Korea decades ago, but retains a very thick accent. She voted for Obama the first time, not the second time. She has a very low opinion of politicians generally. She voted for Trump this time, but repeatedly mused that no one knows what the future holds and maybe he'll be assassinated. Based on her face and tone of voice, she neither relished such a prospect, nor would be bothered in the least by it. For a while, things were copacetic. People drank cheap cans of beer and the occasional shot of soju. Then the fireworks started. The spark of politics lit the room. I didn't quite catch the pro-Trump moment that ignited it, but soon enough, one of the black women began repeatedly shouting: Fuck Trump, leave it alone! One of the white guys bellowed that this would be the end of welfare. The bartender and her husband tried to dampen the outburts, less out of any real political concern I think, but because it was bad for business. The initial wave of anger settled down into the occasional grumble. There never seemed to be a threat of physical violence, but the tension and catharsis were very real. About 20 minutes later, one of the black women, who had a voice of stunning beauty, was singing karaoke arm-in-arm with one of the white guys as many of the patrons got watery eyes. This is my America, in all its ugliness and beauty, its shame and potential. Akim Reinhardt's webste is ThePublicProfessor.com. Jonah Kanner and Alan Weinstein in Nautilus: At 2:40 a.m., my phone woke me up. At least one of us was always on shift, and that night in September of 2010, I had volunteered to respond to automated text messages from our alert system. As a graduate student at the time, I (Jonah) had helped build the first quick-response alert software pipeline for two gravitational-wave observatories, called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. This system was designed to search for astrophysical signals in data as it arrived, to alert people who could check if a signal seemed valid, and share the message with astronomers around the world if needed. Every alert carried the possibility of a positive detectionhumanitys first direct observation of waves traveling through the fabric of spacetime, predicted by Einstein in 1916. I got out of bed and made a sleepy-eyed walk to the small workstation we kept in our apartment. I didnt know it, but the alert was the beginning of a professional and emotional rollercoaster. I logged into our event database and started browsing plots. I didnt stay sleepy-eyed for very long. The plots showed an unusually loud signal. More dramatically, the waveform showed the chirp pattern that we were all hoping to see, something characteristic of the gravitational-wave emission from a pair of black holes spiraling together and then merging. The chirp was familiar to me from simulations, but nobody had ever seen one appear naturally. I plugged in headphones and jumped on to a conference call. Nine of usspread across the United States and Italybegan to talk the results over, wrestling with something too good to be true. Our hearts were racing. We needed to make a fast decision. If this dramatic signal was some kind of mistake, then there was no need for it to go further. After about 30 minutes of discussion, we agreed that the signal seemed valid, and pushed a button that spurred a collection of robotic telescopes to swing their gaze to the source location. Our log notes, usually dry, captured what we were all thinking that night: Exciting!!!!! Very strong significant event More here. Everything is an art perfect material was the mantra of Bay Area conceptual artist David Ireland (1930-2009), who spent more than 30 years transforming his sprawling 1886 Victorian house in the Mission into a living work of art, home to some of his best-known sculptures, drawings, and furniture designs. Starting on January 15, fans of Ireland's work may visit his home and see it all for themselves. Upon the artist's death in 2009, the 500 Capp Street Foundation was established to oversee the preservation of David Ireland House and the study of Ireland's work. This week, the ongoing restoration project celebrates its completion with an exhibit in honor of the home's reopening, as well as special events including artist talks, a Champagne christening, and dance performances. The 3,000-piece collection of David Ireland House, which captures the internationally renowned artists whimsical and freethinking approach to the process of making art, will be open for public viewing, along with various photographs and other paraphernalia, such as glass jars filled with the dust of the home's previously sanded floors and dirt from the old boarded-up windows. German and Norwegian holiday breads, given to Ireland by friends visiting from abroad, are affixed to the walls; and the Collection of Brooms with Boom is arranged in the formation of a clock as a statement on the fleeting life cycle of everyday household objects. Tours are booking up fast. While supplies last, you may also snag your very own piece of the house, a section of wall in poster form, compliments of Southern Exposure and The Thing Quarterly. General admission to the house is $20. Check online for more information and special events. // David Ireland House, 500 Capp St. (Mission), 500cappstreet.org Now that the weather has taken a turn for the worse, youll be in need of indoor adventures. So, pick one (or two, or three) of these East Bay staples and enjoy a brew and some bar bites inside with friends. This list only includes Berkeley and Oakland, but the East Bay has so many more breweries up and down the coast. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments. 1. The Rare Barrel, Berkeley Rare Barrel had a cult following even before they opened their doors last December. This sour-only brewery is dishing up delicious brews and rotating their taps weekly. As of right now you can only find their beers inside the tasting room, and only in 10 oz. pours. Seven beers are available so far, and each one is complex and delicious. Go for the Wise Guise, a red sour beer aged in oak barrels with raspberries (it's so good) or try the single-barrel release Cosmic Dust, a golden sour beer aged in oak barrels with hibiscus (it tastes like boozy jamaica - the agua fresca, not the country), before it runs out. The tasting room is open Fridays and Saturdays, and can be a little hard to find its pretty set back from the street at the end of a long parking lot. And dont forget to bring a sweater; the whole place is kept at barrel aging temperature, aka cold. The Rare Barrel: Open Friday 4-10 p.m. and Saturday 2-10 p.m., 40 Parker St, Berkeley. 2. Linden Street Brewery, Oakland If youre looking for some East Bay pride with your beer head to Linden Street Brewery and order the Town Lager. Served only on draft in Oakland (seriously, you can't drink this beer in the city), this brew is suitable for all occasions. Made in the same fashion as the Gold Rush pioneers, Linden Street uses lager yeast, but its fermented at ale temperatures so that its naturally carbonated and unfiltered. Bonus points: Linden Street transports all its products to local bars in a custom-made bicycle that can hold two kegs at a time. Open on Saturday and Sunday from Noon to 5:00 p.m., the tasting room is the perfect place to cheer on your favorite East Bay team. Linden Street Brewery: Open Saturday - Sunday, 12:00 - 5:00 p.m., 95 Linden Street, Suite 7, Oakland 3. Jupiter, Berkeley In the heart of downtown Berkeley, Jupiters outdoor patio and solid selection of house craft beers (along with 20 other local brews) keeps the bar packed on any night of the week with locals and Cal students alike. Jupiter even has gluten-free beer on tap (it is Berkeley, after all), but its home-brewed Honey Wheat stands out for the sweet aftertaste of locally grown wild honey. Pair it with one of their wood-fired pizzas and you have tasty dinner plans for any night of the week. Jupiter: Open Monday Thursday 11:30a.m. 1 a.m., Friday, 11:30 a.m. -1:30 a.m., Saturday 12:00 p.m. 1:30a.m., and Sunday 12:00 p.m. Midnight., 2181 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley 4. Triple Rock, Berkeley Served only by the liter and just one day a week, the Monkey Head Arboreal Ale makes Triple Rock the place to be on a Thursday night. The warming, bottle-conditioned, malty amber ale with a slight hop bite and clean finish is perfect for sharing with friends, just make sure to get there early. Founded in 1985, Triple Rock is the nation's oldest original brewpub, and co-owners/ brothers John and Reid Martin, are considered the founding fathers of the industry. Unsurprisingly, their beers have the taste of something well aged to perfection. Open Monday - Wednesday 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 a.m., Thursday - Saturday 11:30 a.m. - 2:00 a.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. - Midnight., 1920 Shattuck Avenue 5. Pacific Coast Brewing Co., Oakland Perfect for the adventurous drinker, the Pacific Coast brewpub offers more than 24 beers on tap, only a third of which are their own. You can't go wrong with the Killer Whaler Stout or the Blue Whale Ale, but we're really looking forward to the Mermaid's Revenge, a Belgian triple-ale coming out this year. Pacific Coast is also furnished with old treasures acquired from the Oakland Museum, including an elaborate stained-glass window, an ornate bar, and a vintage bar cooler. Having a beer here is the closest youll ever come to Oakland in its glory days. Hit them up on the first Friday of the month when they hold a reception for a featured artist with live music from 7:30 - 11:00 p.m. or on Lazy Sunday with live music from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. Pacific Coast Brewing: Open Monday-Thursday, 11:30-12:00 a.m., Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m. -1:00 a.m., and Sundays 11:00am-11:00 p.m., 906 Washington St., Oakland 6. Pyramid Alehouse, Berkeley Pyramid was founded in the Pacific Northwest, but set up shop in a warehouse in Berkeley in 1997. You must try the Apricot Ale on tap it is even more refreshing and delicious than it is in bottle form but, for any other day go with the classic Single Hop IPA, it's unique to the Berkeley location and pairs perfectly with any of the hearty burgers on the menu. It's a pretty robust beer, though, so grab some appetizers and enjoy the ride. Pyramid: Open Monday - Thursday 11:30 a.m. - 10:00 p.m., Friday 11:30 a.m. - 11:00 p.m., Saturday 11:30 a.m. - 11:00 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.., 901 Gilman St 7. Sierra Nevada, Berkeley The newest addition to Berkeley's happening 4th Street, The Torpedo Room at Sierra Nevada features rare, small-batch Sierra Nevada beers you won't find anywhere else among its 16 different taps. Grab a flight and the bartenders will be happy to walk you through what brought each beer to life, down to the barley kernels. Every Thursday they offer a special taste of a unique cask with local brewmasters from 4:00 - 7:00 p.m., and keep an eye on the calendar for more special events. Torpedo Room: Open Tuesday - Thursday 11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m., Friday - Saturday 11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m., 2031 4th Street, Berkeley Picking the best neighborhood in Portland is completely subjective. Want great food? Portland has it. How about state-of-the-art public transportation? Check. But you can't have it all, or at least not all at the same time. Choosing your neighborhood comes down to priorities. Willing to take a lively nightlife with a little more crime? Or live in a boring neighborhood that will make your dog or kids happy? This guide will help you decide. Best Public Transit: DOWNTOWN Downtown is an easy choice for the public-transit obsessed, and it's no mystery why. Downtown Portland is the public transportation pride and joy for a city consistently ranked of one of the best in the country for car-less citizens. If you're downtown, you're within easy walking distance of one of downtown's 32 bus lines, as well as streetcar and four high-speed rail MAX lines. Walk, ride or pedal to the Portland Transit Mall that runs 20 blocks along 5th and 6th streets and you'll gain access to a spider web of bus, streetcar and Max routes that lead to every corner of the city. But it gets better: Downtown is part of Portland's "Free Rail Zone," which runs through downtown and across the Willamette River to the Lloyd District. Take a Max ride within those boundaries and it won't cost a dime. That's just one more reason that Portland's car-less commuter website Portland Afoot notes 75 percent of people who live downtown don't own a car. Runner-Up: HOLLYWOOD: Four bus lines and three Max lines make Hollywood the best mass transit neighborhood outside of Downtown and adjacent areas. Photo by Flickr user ilovemypit Best for Foodies: PEARL DISTRICT Every neighborhood in Portland is peppered with great restaurants, but for concentrated excellence you have to go with the upscale Pearl. Even the notoriously brutal Portland Yelp scene grudgingly gives the geographically small Pearl 42 restaurants with at least four of five stars. And the beauty of the Pearl is that it has everything, whether its epic Peruvian tapas at Andina, Portland's nicest brewpub in Deschutes Brewery and Public House, uber-hip French/Italian cuisine at Blue Hour or ridiculously good ice cream at Cool Moon. Runner-Up: CLINTON-RICHMOND: Not everybody can afford the Pearl. For more reasonable fare check out this Southeast neighborhood containing a beloved stretch of Division Street boasting Portland's best fried chicken at dive bar Reel M Inn, taste-bud-popping Thai at Pok Pok, the genteel pub fare Portland does best at Sunshine Tavern and the beer-sausage-spaetzle heaven of Victory Bar. Photo by Flickr user ghindo Best Culture: CONCORDIA Home to the ever-funky Alberta Street, this northeast neighborhood will always keep you entertained. The heart of the east side's arts culture, Alberta is full of galleries promoted by Art on Alberta, strange little coffee shops, boutiques, bars, restaurants, music venues and other oddities. It's also home to Last Thursday, Portland's monthly summertime celebration of its own weirdness. Meanwhile Concordia is caught in the midst of its increasingly controversial gentrification programs, leaving it an interesting mix of races and socioeconomic identities. Runner-Up: SUNNYSIDE-HAWTHORNE: A narrow southeast strip centered on the militantly local business and bar districts of Hawthorne Boulevard and SE Belmont Avenue, Sunnyside-Hawthorne is the punk rock cousin to Alberta's hippie artists. Photo by Flickr user Evil Erin Best for Families: HEALY HEIGHTS With nearby elementary, middle and high schools all ranked "outstanding" by Oregon Department of Education's 2009-10 performance assessment, this tiny southwest neighborhood offers great education for kids of all ages. It's a stable, family-oriented neighborhood with nearly 90 percent home ownership and 77 percent of the population married, according to the 2010 Census Population Map. Runner-Up: SYLVAN-HIGHLANDS: Sylvan-Highlands comes in second, also with "outstanding" schools in all classes, 86 percent home ownership and 62 percent married. Photo by Flickr user frozenchipmunk Best to Be Young and Single: NORTHWEST The math for the young singles is simple the more other young singles nearby, the better. And in this category the tightly packed Northwest neighborhood reigns supreme. U.S. Census numbers speak for themselves here: 80 percent single, median age 34. It's also easy to find all those other young, beautiful singles. They're either shopping on NW 23rd Avenue or eating and drinking on NW 21st Avenue. Runner-Up: BOISE: For a similar experience, look at the Boise neighborhood across the river in Northeast, with 78 percent of residents single, a median age of 30 and an up-and-coming stretch of N Mississippi Avenue. Photo by Flickr user firepile Best for Pets: TABOR The Tabor neighborhood is named for Mount Tabor, a 630-foot-tall cinder cone covered by a 190-acre park of trails, woods, open spaces and reservoirs. Your dog will thank you for living here, especially because of the park's large, well-maintained off-leash area that's usually full of other friendly dogs and people. Meanwhile the highly rated Mt. Tabor Veterinary Care is close at hand, as are popular pet shops Portland Pet Supply and For Paws. Runner-Up: SELLWOOD-MORELAND: Active dog lovers in particular will be happy here in the summer. You can take the puppy for a run and swim in the Willamette at Sellwood Riverfront Park, then go out for a beer with your K-9 at nearby Lucky Labrador Brewing Company. Safest: HEALY HEIGHTS The Portland Police Bureau's clumsy but nevertheless useful CrimeMapper application shows what most Portlanders already know: The city is safer the farther you get from its core around the Willamette River, and the Portland's south end is generally safer than the north. The pastoral, quiet Healy Heights neighborhood followed this trend on the southwest side of Portland with less than one crime per 1,000 people last year. Runner-Up: BEAUMONT-WILSHIRE: Nearby, the Arnold Creek neighborhood is technically second with three crimes per 1,000 people, but the woods and hills aren't for everyone. For a safe neighborhood closer in, try the old, well-established Beaumont-Wilshire area, which has just 19 crimes per 1,000 and features a happening stretch of Fremont Street. Other Neighborhood Notes Best Access to Nature: Forest Park, with its backyard access to the nation's largest urban park and an easy hop onto Highway 26, which will get you to the Oregon Coast and the 11,240-foot-tall Mount Hood both in less than 90 minutes. Best for Cyclists: St. Johns, with 23 miles of bike lanes. Youngest: Glenfair (median age 28) Oldest: Hayden Island (median age 53) Biggest Price Dip: Homestead (down 39 percent from last year) Biggest Price Spike: Hayden Island (up 27 percent from last year) Most Dangerous: The Lloyd neighborhood had more than one crime per person last year, with 1,086 crimes per 1,000 residents. The Northwest Industrial neighborhood was technically worse, but with only 23 residents its numbers aren't really meaningful. Regardless, you probably don't want to wander around either one at night. By Joe Hansen The rewards of caring for a loved one who needs our help can be substantial. Its an opportunity to pay something back, to offer a return on the loving investment someone once made in us. Its a chance to help preserve a quality life for an individual who has a tough time completing lifes daily tasks. Its the joy of knowing that we are easing someones way, lifting burdens and making sure they are not alone. Family caregivers lovingly offer their help free of charge, contributing their time, their energy and often their own well-being. What they do is of incalculable emotional value and of enormous social worth. In the past, AARP has tallied what society would be paying for the labor that family caregivers so willingly donate: In 2013, about 40 million family caregivers provided 37 billion hours of care worth an estimated $470 billion to their parents, spouses, partners and other adult loved ones. The total estimated economic value of uncompensated care provided by family caregivers in 2013 surpassed total Medicaid spending ($449 billion) and nearly equaled the annual sales ($469 billion) of the four largest U.S. tech companies combined (Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft). What we havent included in the calculations before is the significant amount of money family caregivers often spend out of their own pockets as part of their contribution. A new AARP study, Family Caregiving and Out-of-Pocket Costs: 2016 Report, estimates that family caregivers spend an average of $6,954 on out-of-pocket costs related to caregiving, nearly 20 percent of their annual income. Out-of-pocket spending is even higher among Hispanic/Latino caregivers ($9,022 annually, representing 44 percent of their income). African American caregivers report costs similar to white caregivers, but that amounts to a much greater percentage of income 34 percent vs. 14 percent. To cover the extra expense, many family caregivers have to pare back their own spending. They cut back on saving for retirement, leisure spending, eating out and vacations, and many have dipped into personal or retirement savings. See the full report at www.aarp.org/caregivercosts. Clearly, family caregivers could use a break. The bipartisan Credit for Caring Act would help give them some of the financial breathing room they need, with a federal tax credit of up to $3,000 for those who are eligible. AARP and other national organizations are supporting this bill. Each of us has the opportunity to give caregivers other measures of relief by making a meal, doing the laundry, running an errand, raking leaves any warm, friendly assistance that shortens their endless to-do lists. They deserve and appreciate everything we can give them. SD Secretary of State office says Smith remedied campaign finance mistake Rep. Jamie Smith's campaign originally did not include the mailing addresses of his donors in violation of campaign finance law. IndexBox has just published a new report World: Iodine Market Report. Analysis And Forecast To 2020. This report has been designed to provide a detailed analysis of the global iodine 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 iodine trade value exhibited robust growth from 2007 to 2013, suddenly reversing the trend in 2014. After a sharp decline over the last two years, global exports of iodine amounted to 878 million USD in 2015. According to IndexBox estimates, Chile continued to supply over half of worlds iodine. In 2015, Chiles iodine exports totaled 506 million USD, which accounted for a 58% share in terms of global exports. Belgium, Japan, USA, and the Netherlands were the other key global suppliers of iodine in 2015, with a 35% combined share of global exports. The Netherlands (+11.2% per year) and Belgium (+10.3% per year) were the fastest growing exporters from 2007 to 2015. Belgium strengthened its position in the global iodine export structure, growing its share from 11% in 2007 to 15% in 2015. On the other hand, USA (17.5%, based on value terms), China (13.7%), India (9.3%), Norway (8.8%), and Belgium (8.6%) were the leading destinations of iodine imports in 2015. Imports to Norway grew at a rapid pace of +9.6% per year from 2007 to 2015. None of the major importers contracted their imports over the period under review. The share size of the top five importers remained relatively stable, with the exception of the USA, which saw a -6 percentage point decline in its share size. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 REPORT DESCRIPTION 1.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2.1 KEY FINDINGS 2.2 MARKET TRENDS 3. MARKET OVERVIEW 3.1 MARKET VOLUME AND VALUE 3.2 CONSUMPTION BY COUNTRY 3.3 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES BY COUNTRY 3.4 MARKET FORECAST TO 2020 4. PRODUCTION 4.1 PRODUCTION IN 2007-2015 4.2 PRODUCTION BY COUNTRY 5. IMPORTS 5.1 IMPORTS IN 2007-2015 5.2 IMPORTS BY COUNTRY 5.3 IMPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY 6. EXPORTS 6.1 EXPORTS IN 2007-2015 6.2 EXPORTS BY COUNTRY 6.3 EXPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY 7. PROFILES OF MAJOR PRODUCERS 3 easy ways to order Follow the link below to review a free sample or to buy the report: http://www.indexbox.co.uk/store/world-iodine-market-report-analysis-and-forecast-to-2020/ Call us +44 20 3239 3063 to discuss your information needs and for special discounts on multi-report orders Email your order to info@indexbox.co.uk Price: 1490 EUR for Single License Source: http://www.indexbox.co.uk/store/world-iodine-market-report-analysis-and-forecast-to-2020/ Media Contact Company Name: IndexBox Marketing Contact Person: Inna Ivonina Email: info@indexbox.co.uk Phone: +44 20 3239 3063 Country: United Kingdom Website: www.indexbox.co.uk Crater Gold Mining Limited (ASX:CGN) is engaged in the exploration, evaluation and exploitation of gold and other base metal projects. The Company's segments include Croydon, Fergusson Island and Crater Mountain. The Croydon project consists of two sub-projects in far North West Queensland, the Croydon Polymetallic Project and the Croydon Gold Project. The Fergusson Island project consists of two gold exploration projects at Wapolu and Gameta on Fergusson Island, in Milne Bay province, Papua New Guinea. The Gameta Deposit lies within exploration license (EL) 1972. It is located on the northeast coast of Fergusson Island. The Wapolu Deposit lies within EL 2180. The Crater Mountain is an exploration and production project located in the Papua New Guinea Highlands approximately 50 kilometers southwest of Goroka. The project consists of three contiguous ELs, straddling the border between the Chimbu and Eastern Highland Provinces. Invigor secures two new contracts for Insights Visitor Sydney, Nov 14, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Leading big data solutions company Invigor Group Limited ( ASX:IVO ) ("Invigor") is pleased to announce the continued rollout of its Insights Visitor platform into locations with major consumer traffic flows. - Iconic Sydney CBD Shopping precinct deploys Insights Visitor through OneWifi partnership - Zoos Victoria trials Insights Visitor at all of its three zoos in Victoria - Six new Insights Visitor contracts secured in four months - Substantial revenue opportunity from media placement using Insights Visitor - Pipeline for Insights Visitor continues growing rapidly with new contracts pending Insights Visitor has been successfully deployed into the retail and dining areas of a major iconic Sydney CBD Shopping precinct, the name of which remains confidential at this time. Together with WiFi installed and operated by OneWiFi (operating as Infrastructure Logic Pty Ltd), a leading managed WiFi service provider, Invigor will provide managers and marketing staff with real-time analytics and insights into the behaviours, interests and activities of visitors to this iconic Sydney CBD shopping precinct. The Insights Visitor platform provides an understanding into who is frequenting the shops and dining venues, how long they stay there, and which areas they visit. This information can then be used to shape marketing initiatives and in-centre activities to deliver a better visitor experience. Invigor is also pleased to announce that Zoos Victoria, which includes Melbourne Zoo, Werribee Open Plains Zoo and Healesville Sanctuary, will trial Insights Visitor on their WiFi network to better understand patron movements within and between their zoos. A detailed understanding of how visitors connect with the zoos will enable Zoos Victoria to better engage with patrons and improve their experience. The opportunity to generate significant revenue using our Insights Visitor platform gathers apace. Manly Wharf is the first substantial project where we are rolling out our engagement model with retailers and we are also now speaking with advertisers who can see the potential of being able to reach their audience more effectively rather than using more traditional means. Invigor's Chairman and CEO, Mr Gary Cohen, said: "It is encouraging to note that Insights Visitor has been deployed as the WiFi analytics and engagement platform at this iconic Sydney CBD shopping precinct - a major CBD attraction for tourists and local shoppers. This significantly strengthens Invigor's presence in the retail sector, and gives us an added advantage when tendering for other major retail shopping precincts. "These two new contracts reflect the ongoing and rapid sign up of our Visitor platform to high profile locations with significant foot traffic such as Manly Wharf, Preston Markets, the Sunshine Coast Council precinct and Moore Park Supa Centa. In the last four months, we have secured six new Visitor contracts alone and our pipeline of tenders is building rapidly. We will report on additional wins very shortly. Further, we are now seeing a real opportunity to monetise the use of such venues with our engagement model." About Invigor Group Ltd Invigor Group (ASX:IVO) uses its complementary suite of big data products to source, aggregate, analyse and publish content for the benefit of businesses and consumers. Today its interconnected data sets enable enterprise clients including retailers, brands, shopping centres and government bodies to identify and better understand competitors, consumers, markets and demographics while providing the consumer with the best value-for-money. Using its current products and a pipeline of additional offerings Invigor will have the ability to provide an end-to-end solution spanning sales, product management, business intelligence, marketing, advertising, content creation and distribution, while monetising each step of the process. CCV 1st QTR Update FY2017 Perth, Nov 14, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Cash Converters International Limited ( ASX:CCV ) ( LON:CCVU ) ( CKKIF:OTCMKTS ) ('the Company') is pleased to provide the following trading and performance update based on the first quarter unaudited results for the 2017 financial year. The net profit for the period was $6.3 million and is in line with the Company forecast. The first quarter result benefits from the timing of interest earned on higher loan volumes written in the second half of the previous year. The Company confirms guidance previously given to the market of full year 2017 NPAT being in the range of $20.0 to $23.0 million. Financial results summary - first quarter Highlights - Net profit after tax $6.3 million - EBITDA profit $13.1 million - Key strategy initiatives well advanced and within budget - Cash converters UK (CCUK) returned to profit for the quarter generating an EBITDA of $383.7K - CCUK has generated $6.5m of cash from the personal loan book wind down Strategy implementation and results Cash Converters continues to advance the implementation of the three year corporate strategy and associated restructure announced to the market earlier in the year. - In the United Kingdom, the Company has exited its corporate owned stores and is operating as the master franchisor. It is also winding down the United Kingdom personal loan book and expects to have that closed by December 2016. Lending ceased from 31 May 2016. CCUK has since returned $6.5m of cash to the parent Company. CCUK produced an EBITDA profit of $383.7K, for the quarter. - In Australia, Carboodle has been closed and Green Light Auto Finance (GLAF) started. The focus of the business is to provide a car loan product rather than a complete car package. Early loan advances of the new vehicle finance company's principal and loan interest product have been encouraging. GLAF produced an EBITDA loss of $69.0K for the quarter. - As advised previously, we have decided to reduce our small amount lending to a number of customer segments which will impact our overall SACC (Small Amount Credit Contract) loan volumes in Australia. This strategy has been implemented in the first quarter and lending volumes are down approximately 30%. This reduction has impacted profit accordingly, however the first quarter has benefited from interest earned from higher loan volumes written in the second half of last year. The Australian business produced an EBITDA profit of $12.6 million down 30.4% on the corresponding quarter in 2016. - To help offset this reduction in profit a new loan product, the MACC (Medium Amount Credit Contract) being a loan ranging in value from $2K to $5K was released to the market on 17 October 2016. Search for Independent non-executive directors The Company has engaged worldwide executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles to commence a search for two Independent non-executive directors to join the Board. It is anticipated that process will be completed within the next quarter. Outlook Managing Director Peter Cumins said: "We are making good progress with the implementation of the new corporate strategy we announced earlier this year. The key changes to our businesses in the United Kingdom and Australia are proceeding as planned and within our estimated budget. We are well positioned financially and we expect demand for our well established retail and pawn broking services to remain solid". To view tables and figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/311ME322 About Cash Converters International Ltd Cash Converters International (ASX:CCV) is a franchised retail network listed on the ASX. It specialises in the sale of second-hand goods. The Cash Converters group employs modern retailing practices, professional management techniques and high ethical standards to the management of its stores throughout the chain which appeal to a wide cross section of the community. As a result, Cash Converters has been able to position its outlets as credible retail merchandise stores, resulting in a profitable market for the group. EY announced on Monday that their annualEY Vantage program- which sees some of the firm's top professionals travel abroad to aid entrepreneurs at no fee - has concluded for the year. Twenty-eight EY professionals donated over 6,700 hours of service this year - a figure equivalent to over $2.5 million in services - to help entrepreneurs in developing economies. Now in its 12thyear, the EY Vantage program has seen a total of 147 advisors from EY Americas member firms collaborate with 145 entrepreneurs. The program works in collaboration withEndeavor Global, a non-profit organization that helps in mentoring entrepreneurs around the world. Since its inception, EY Vantage has made a positive impact for the entrepreneurs we have supported, as well as for the up-and-coming EY leaders who have taken part in the program, stated Deborah Holmes, EY Americas Director of Corporate Responsibility. Our hope is that EY Vantage can serve as a catalyst for sustainable growth in countries with emerging economies where cultivating entrepreneurship can have a lasting effect on society. At the same time, we are engaging our top professionals through this transformative international experience which aims to develop leadership skills and a global mindset. During the programs six-week assignments, EY professionals work on projects ranging from market expansions, internal auditing, work flow, and the development of business plans. The Advisors, in turn, get to learn firsthand about the emerging markets and industries in which they are working. I feel lucky to be an EY Vantage Advisor and to work for a purpose-led organization that offers skills-based, international volunteerism programs," said Rose Martin, an EY advisory manager and Vantage Program volunteer, per a statement. "Traveling to a foreign country alone to work with a high-impact entrepreneur challenged me both personally and professionally. The experience was difficult at times, and ultimately incredibly rewarding. I returned with greater confidence in my skills and leadership abilities, and have already noticed my enhanced global mindset coming into play with colleagues and clients who I encounter regularly working for a large global organization. Notably, the Vantage program expanded its reach at the beginning of the year to include new cities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, bringing the total number of countries served to 30. For more on the EY Vantage program, head to EY's site here. Millions of Indians across 17 cities can now monitor the air quality they breathe with a single Tweet. @TwitterIndia in partnership with non-profit data journalism initiative, @IndiaSpend have launched #Breathe, an independent and real-time air quality monitoring public service initiative on Twitter. By Tweeting #Breathe , people can access air quality levels in Agra, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Delhi NCR, Gandhinagar, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi and Varanasi. On Tweeting, people will get an immediate visual auto-response Tweet in the form of an infographic card with a measurement of the air quality -- comprising Air Quality Index, air quality levels, reading of particulate matter 2.5 and 10, along with the possible impact this air quality will have on health. #Breathe is a public service initiative aimed at leveraging technology to provide citizens, institutions, media and civil society organizations with real-time data to catalyze participative engagement within communities, municipalities, state and central government. With this hashtag service, Twitter aims to empower citizens by increasing public awareness about the alarming rise in air pollution levels across major cities in India. Since the initial launch phase in April on #EarthDay, people in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore have been able to monitor the air quality in their neighbourhoods. The pilot of this launch recorded 100,000 Tweets for the month of April 2016. Speaking on the initiative, a Twitter spokesperson said, With #Breathe, Twitter is democratising access to air pollution data to empower Indians with awareness and knowledge that can help them make healthier living decisions. As pollution levels continue to rise at an alarming rate, we are partnering with IndiaSpend to democratize AQI data & put it in peoples hands. Our platform has evolved as a daily utility service for citizens and continues to be the best place to know what is happening right now. Govindraj Ethiraj, founder of IndiaSpend said, #Breathe was launched in 2015 as a pure sensor and data journalism initiative using low-cost indigenously-developed monitoring devices. In the absence of independent real-time data to provide substance for IndiaSpends editorial efforts, we set up a network of monitoring stations. Clean air is a public good and every citizen in this country is entitled to this basic right. Dialogue on issues that matter to rule of law and basic governance when grounded in data and backed by facts will change the discourse and hopefully result in effective and transparent policies. In its endeavour to support citizens in times of need, in January 2016 Twitter India also partnered with Delhi Transport Department (@TransportDelhi) during the odd-even car driving experiment to launch #PollutionFreeDelhi service. The initiative focused on enabling users with real-time info for bus and metro route options, traffic updates, and weather conditions. Twitter was able to support Delhi citizens in making the #PollutionFreeDelhi a success, adding another milestone to its daily utility service in India. PNB MetLife, one of the leading private life insurers in the country, won the 2016 Working Mother and AVTAR 100 Best Company for Women award at the Working Mother Medias Global Advancement of Women Conference held in Mumbai on November 10, 2016. The company won the award for their women friendly policies towards creating a women enabling workforce by empowering them and building inclusive work environment for their growth in the organization. PNB MetLife is at the forefront of implementing women friendly policies like flexi timing and flexi work place policy, maternity leave policy for duration of 26 weeks, educational assistance program and exclusive hospital tie-ups, amongst others. The company started its Diversity & Inclusion journey in 2014 and has achieved significantly in a span of 4 years. Recently, the company launched the Equal Employment Opportunity Policy for its employees. The policy aims at providing equal access to employment opportunities for employees and applicants and administering all terms, conditions and privileges of employment fairly. Elizabeth Nieto, Senior Vice President, Global Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, MetLife said, Globally, MetLife is committed to creating an environment of inclusion where all employees can contribute to their full potential and work in an atmosphere of mutual respect. The attraction, development and retention of women are critical aspects towards achieving this goal. We have made it to the Working Mother 100 Best Companies List in the U.S and are extremely proud to win this award for our Indian joint venture as well. Gender diversity will continue to remain a top priority for us at MetLife. Tim Braswell, Director Human Resources, PNB MetLife India said, We are very happy to receive the 2016 Working Mother and AVTAR 100 best company for women award. This award is a testimony of our efforts towards providing equal opportunities and an enabling work environment for all the women in the organization. At PNB MetLife, we believe it is important to empower women to perform to the best of their ability and work towards the achievement of the organizations goals. This platform has provided us an opportunity to showcase our policies and best practices towards building a diverse workforce across the organization. The 2016 Working Mother and AVTAR 100 Best Companies is an extensive research driven process which includes application with more than 400 questions on leave policies, workforce representation, benefits, childcare, advancement programs, flexibility policies and more. It surveys the availability and usage of programs, as well as the accountability of managers who oversee them. In selecting this years winning companies, particular weight was given to representation of women, advancement programs and flexibility. Analysis Group, one of the largest private economics consulting firms in North America, has been recognized as among the Top 100 Women-Led Businesses in Massachusetts for the fourth consecutive year. The state-wide evaluation, conducted by a partnership between The Boston Globe Magazine and The Commonwealth Institute (TCI), ranked Analysis Group 18th in Massachusetts. This is the fourth year that TCI a non-profit organization devoted to advancing businesswomen in leadership positions has created the list together with The Boston Globe Magazine. The full list of top 100 women-led businesses in Massachusetts is available at The Boston Globe. About Analysis Group: Analysis Group is one of the largest private economics consulting firms in North America, with more than 700 professionals across 11 offices in the United States, Canada, and China. Since 1981, we have provided expertise in economics, finance, health care analytics, and strategy to top law firms, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies. Our internal experts, together with our network of affiliated experts from academia, industry, and government, offer our clients exceptional depth of expertise. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005965/en/ Analysis Group Sue Brelus, 617-425-8193 susan.brelus@analysisgroup.com RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Clean Design, an award-winning branding + advertising agency, today announced it has been named agency of record for Affordable Care as the national dental support organization looks to expand and improve its dentist recruitment marketing. Affordable Care supports a network of more than 230 affiliated Affordable Dentures and Affordable Dentures & Implants practices in 39 states. Clean Design will provide branding, overall marketing strategy and creative services to support dentist recruitment efforts within Affordable Care. An integral part of the Affordable Care offering is its practice ownership program, a 360-degree business support system that offers resources to help dentists open and maintain their own successful practices. The company provides support for nonclinical duties, including recruiting and human resources, advertising and marketing, real estate and equipment upgrades, and IT services. "Affordable Care has revolutionized the tooth replacement industry with a unique, same-day business model ideally suited to both patients and dentists across the country," said Clean Design CEO Natalie Perkins. "Our team looks forward to partnering with their recruitment team to help further solidify their market leadership position." "As we continue to grow our affiliated practice network, we need an agency that can help craft and shape our vision," said Matt McCallum, Affordable Care senior director of recruiting. "With an impressive team and a reputation for innovative, spot-on strategy, Clean Design was the right fit to help guide us as we work to better understand the benefits our practice owners enjoy, so we can align dentist recruitment with our accelerated growth plans." Founded in 1975, Affordable Dentures & Implants affiliates have treated more than 6 million patients for dentures, dental implants, and other tooth replacement options. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Affordable Care is owned by private equity firm Berkshire Partners LLC. About Clean Design Clean Design is an award-winning brand + design agency with a diverse client portfolio featuring Red Hat, Lenovo, Yadkin Bank, Builders Mutual, UNC Kenan-Flagler, and Durham Distillery. Ranked the #1 design firm in the Triangle for the past seven years, the agency offers integrated marketing solutions including branding, advertising, digital marketing, graphic design, public relations, media planning, and content. A woman-owned business, Clean Design has been awarded HUB certification by the State of North Carolina. cleandesign.com CONTACT: Alyson Stanely, 1-919-719-4510, astanley@cleandesign.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clean-design-named-agency-of-record-for-affordable-cares-recruitment-brand-300362318.html SOURCE Clean Design AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new nonprofit foundation is joining the fight to protect Texas fish and wildlife for future generations. A group of prominent Texans have created the Texas Foundation for Conservation, dedicated to ensuring the people of Texas will always have abundant and healthy fish and wildlife to enjoy. The foundation launched with an event in Austin on Monday, Nov. 14 called "Ensuring the Wild Conservation Summit." Attended by approximately 100 conservationists and community leaders from across Texas, topics of discussion included impending threats to native fish and wildlife, the role of the private landowner and the agricultural community in conservation, history of the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation, and the public trust doctrine. "Those who love Texas fish and wildlife are increasingly concerned about the threat of privatization," said Dr. Fred Bryant, director of the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and president of Texas Foundation for Conservation. "Native fish and wildlife are no different than our beaches and waterwaysthey belong to all Texans. We strongly believe our wild natural resources belong to the people of Texas, and we're committed to engaging Texans in efforts to ensure that the fish and wildlife we all treasure will be around for our kids and grandkids." Privatization occurs when ownership of a public resource is transferred to a private individual or corporation. Potential negative consequences of privatization include unrestricted harvest without regard to natural life cycles of fish and wildlife resources, spread of disease, conflicts between neighboring landowners, inconsistent or non-existent regulatory frameworks, genetic manipulations of species, failure to conserve resources for future generations, and consumption of the resource for short-term gain, rather than long-term management. The new foundation is committed to supporting the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which has proven to be the most successful conservation model in the world. The public trust doctrine is an essential cornerstone of the North American Model, as it establishes a trustee relationship obligating government to hold and manage fish and wildlife for the benefit of all Texans, present and future. Private property rights are another key element of successful wildlife management, particularly in states like Texas, where 95% of land is privately held. Private landowners play a critical role in managing the fish and wildlife that belong to all Texans. The Texas Foundation for Conservation believes that publicly-owned native fish and wildlife on privately-owned land represents an ideal arrangement. "Ensuring the Wild Conservation Summit" brought together local, national and international experts to discuss these issues, including keynote speaker Shane Mahoney, president and CEO of Conservation Visions, an internationally recognized voice for conservation. "The North American Model is based fundamentally on the principle of public ownership of wildlife and is the very foundation of our conservation successes in the United States and Canada, two countries which now enjoy abundant wildlife, though many common species were on the brink of extinction in the early 20th century," Mahoney said. "The pressure to privatize wildlife is growing, and we've already seen the negative impacts of these efforts in other parts of North America. The Texas conservationists who are drawing the public's attention to this fundamental wildlife issue are doing a great service to their state and to their country." Recent threats to privatize wildlife in Texas have galvanized the effort to inform and educate the public about the North American Model and the public trust doctrine. The board of the Texas Foundation for Conservation is composed of a diverse group of Texans from across the state who are concerned about protecting the public trust doctrine. Honorary trustees include Nolan Ryan (Georgetown), The Hon. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Dallas) and The Hon. Pete Laney (Hale Center). For more information about the Texas Foundation for Conservation or to get involved, visit http://www.texasfoundationforconservation.org/. About the Texas Foundation for Conservation The Texas Foundation for Conservation is a diverse group of Texans from across the state who are concerned about impending threats to privatize Texas native fish and wildlife. The Foundation was created to raise the profile of this critical conservation issue, and increase awareness of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The public trust doctrine is an essential cornerstone of the North American Model as it establishes a trustee relationship obligating government to hold and manage fish and wildlife for the benefit of current and future Texans. Honorary trustees include Nolan Ryan (Georgetown), The Hon. Kay Baily Hutchinson (Dallas) and The Hon. Pete Laney (Hale Center.) For more information, please visit http://www.texasfoundationforconservation.org/ Contact: Heath Riddles or Lia Truitt 512-472-9599 hriddles@echristianpr.com or ltruitt@echristianpr.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-foundation-seeks-to-ensure-texas-fish-and-wildlife-for-future-generations-300362202.html SOURCE Texas Foundation for Conservation Shopko, a $3 billion retailer with more than 375 stores in 26 states, and First Bankcard, a division of First National Bank of Omaha and a leading issuer of credit cards, announce the launch of Shopkos first private label credit card program. The new Shopko Credit Card, which can be used at any Shopko throughout the United States, will offer discounts, periodic deferred interest promotional financing offers and automatic gift card rewards, in addition to in-store instant approval. Those signing up for the card will get 10% off one purchase in-store, upon approval. In addition to in-store and online Shopko purchases, a unique card feature is access to deferred interest promotional pricing, which will be offered during select periods. Shopko Credit Card program customers also will automatically receive a $10 gift card for each $200 spend. Go to www.shopkocreditcard.com to learn more about the program, to view specific terms and conditions, or to apply for the new card. We are thrilled to partner with First Bankcard, said Peter McMahon, Shopko CEO. Were always looking for ways to improve services and benefits to our customers, including maximizing convenience, and the new Shopko Credit Card helps add even more value to their Shopko shopping experience. First Bankcard is excited to bring its expertise in the retail and merchandise category to benefit Shopko customers, said Jerry OFlanagan, Executive Vice President, Consumer Banking Group. Shopko is known for quality merchandise and providing expert pharmacy and optical services to small and mid-size communities across the country. Great brands like Shopko reward customer loyalty, and this card program will provide more value and superior customer service to its customers. About Shopko Shopko is owned by an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners, Inc., a leading private investment firm focused on leverage buyouts, equity, debt, and other investments in market-leading companies. Founded in 1962 and headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Shopko Stores Operating Co., LLC is a $3 billion retailer that operates more than 375 stores in 26 states throughout the Central, Western and Pacific Northwest regions. Retail formats include 131 Shopko stores, providing quality name-brand merchandise, great values, pharmacy and optical services in small to mid-sized cities; 5 Shopko Express Rx stores, a convenient neighborhood drugstore concept; 5 Shopko Pharmacy locations; and 248 Shopko Hometown stores, a smaller concept store developed to meet the needs of smaller communities. For more information, visit www.shopko.com. About First Bankcard First Bankcard, a division of First National Bank of Omaha, is a leader in the credit card partnership arena, serving approximately 400 financial institutions, co-brand and affinity partners nationwide. For 60 years, First Bankcard has offered quality products and superior service to help its customers achieve their goals. Visit www.firstbankcard.com for more information. About First National Bank of Omaha First National Bank of Omaha is a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska. First National of Nebraska is the largest privately owned banking company in the United States. First National of Nebraska and its affiliates have more than $21 billion in assets and 5,000 employee associates. Primary banking offices are located in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Texas. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161114005238/en/ Bozell for First Bankcard John Melingagio, 402-965-4324 jmelingagio@bozell.com or Shopko Public Relations Michelle Hansen, 920-429-4054 michelle.hansen@shopko.com Partnership brings together best-of-breed solutions for merchants to create rich consumer interaction at the point-of-sale Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a world leader in payments and commerce solutions, has partnered with Vesca, a leader in providing payment and marketing solutions as a service in Japan, to offer enhanced and secure payment services and solutions to merchants in the country. The partnership will bring together the technology portfolio and geographic strengths of the two companies, to enable financial institutions, retailers and various industry verticals to benefit from innovative payment solutions. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005012/en/ While a cash-based economy in which cards and other forms of payment amount to comparatively little volume, the local EMV liability shift deadline and the Olympic Games Tokyo coincide in 2020 giving Japanese merchants the opportunity to install the capability to accept multiple payment forms. To bring enhanced world payment standards to Japan, Vesca will offer the Verifone Engage V200c countertop and P400 PIN pad to provide increased speed and security, and an interactive user interface. These devices meet Japans EMV requirements and enable merchants to personalize the customer shopping experience with targeted offers and loyalty programs for additional revenue streams at the point of sale (POS). What matters most to Japanese merchants today is business growth and consumer loyalty, said Thad Peterson, senior analyst at Aite Group. Nations around the world are progressing towards becoming cashless economies, and it has become imperative for them to adopt the latest in technology that can best support this change and help businesses become more efficient. As Japan prepares for some major changes in the near years, Verifone, with its engaging payment solutions and value-added applications, is well suited to meet the needs of businesses across sectors and the country at large. This partnership will bring end-to-end advanced payment services and solutions for Japanese merchants as well as in-depth market expertise, said Mr. Makoto Yoshida, chief executive officer of Vesca. Furthermore, we plan to create unique segment-specific features by collaborating with our extended ecosystem of clients and partners. Vesca will introduce the new Verifone solution which will include end-to-end payment services such as estate management, payment gateway and merchant consoles. With commerce-enabled devices from the Verifone Engage family, merchants in Japan will have the flexibility to accept Sony FeliCa, the local contactless smartcard payment option, and a wide range of internationally accepted payment methods including card, payment apps and wallets. With Vesca as our strategic partner, we are offering Japanese merchants, particularly in dominant sectors such as retail, food and hospitality, access to the best technology solutions and services available, said Steve Aliferis, president of Verifone Asia Pacific. We are aligned on the goal to continue to spur the growth of new payment and commerce solutions that will enhance opportunities for merchants and experiences for consumers as Japan incorporates more cashless options. 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 payment solutions in Japan, 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 Vesca Vesca is the leading provider of payment and ID marketing solutions as a service. Vesca provides the secure and flexible payment management platform partnering with innovative companies worldwide, located in Tokyo, Japan. About Verifone Verifone is transforming everyday transactions into opportunities for connected commerce. Were connecting payment devices to the cloud, merging the online and in-store 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 who 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 worlds best-known retail brands, financial institutions and payment providers. Verifone.com | (NYSE: PAY) | @verifone View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161113005012/en/ FleishmanHillard Tokyo Contact: Yufuko Toyoda, 03-6204-4340 (+81-3-6204-4340) yufuko.toyoda@fleishman.com or Verifone Contact: Kwiyoung Baumgarten, 770-754-3460 kwiyoung.baumgarten.@verifone.com Hawkeye: Eyes, ears of the RQ-4 An aircraft accelerating down the runway with 8,500 pounds of thrust and a wingspan greater than a Boeing 737 is inherently dangerous. The danger is amplified when the pilot isnt even located on board the aircraft. Trailing behind pursuing the aircraft is Hawkeye ensuring the remotely piloted aircraft ascends from the surly bonds of Earth. The RQ-4 Global Hawk, serves as the Air Forces high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, long endurance RPA. Global Hawks are loaded with an integrated sensor suite and cameras capable of providing global all-weather, day or night ISR, however while on the ground visibility for pilots operating the aircraft from within the Mission Control Element is limited. That is where Hawkeye fulfills its role. Hawkeye is any RQ-4 pilot who performs preflight inspections no differently than a typical pilot would conduct a preflight inspection, said 1st Lt. Jeffrey, a 12th Reconnaissance Squadron RQ-4 pilot. The pilots in control at the MCE have limited visibility; Hawkeye is the eyes and ears of RQ-4 Global Hawks on the ground. While maintaining a safe distance, Hawkeye pursues the aircraft at 40 mph down the runway until takeoff. Prior to engine start Hawkeyes reviews a checklist with maintenance personnel verifying the functionality of the aircraft. We guide them from a maintenance perspective during their walk arounds, said Staff Sgt. Josh Reynolds, a 9th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron RQ-4 crew chief. We provide a second set of eyes and answer any maintenance related questions the pilots may have. According to Jeffrey, he has personally witnessed multiple occasions where a Hawkeye prevented a potential incident. Hawkeye has prevented various incidents from bird strikes, runway incursions, located leaking hydraulic fluid and damaged aircraft, he said. While deployed serving as Hawkeye I once identified an engine fire on another jet. Aside from locating potential hazards and serving as the eyes and ears of the aircraft, Hawkeyes are also responsible for communicating critical information to the pilots coordinating with the air traffic controller before takeoffs and landings. When the air traffic controller gives clearance to land, Hawkeye is on the taxiway visually locating the jet, ensures the airfield has no debris or obstructions, and serves as a secondary source to the tower notifying the pilot the aircraft is cleared to land, Jeffrey said. Global Hawks possess the capability to fly nonstop for 28 hours. Occasionally, the pilots and their aircraft are geographically separated. Although pilots and their aircraft are sometimes separated, technology and mission elements such as Hawkeyes, enable missions to be accomplished. Hawkeye conducts those firsthand checks, Jeffrey said. When we fly, the Hawkeye is there for every single takeoff and landing. Jacqueline Fernandez has entertained the audiences through the year by delivering back to back hits. Her movies this year, A Flying Jatt, Dishoom and Housefull 3 have enthralled the audiences with their long theatrical run and have garnered huge commercial success by keeping the cash counters ringing. After becoming huge hits at the theatres, her movies have gone on to woo the audiences with their TV premiers as well. As per the TRP ratings of the TV premier, all three of her movies have successfully secured positions in the top five movies premiered on television making her one of the top contenders of the female entertainer this year. Interestingly, Jacqueline is the only female actor to have three successful releases this year. Along with these successful movies, the actress has also delivered songs like Beat Pe Booty from Flying Jatt, Sau Tarah Ke from Dishoom and Pyaar Ki from Housefull 3. The self made actress has made a mark for herself in Bollywood, making her one of the most commercially viable actress of Btown. On the same note, Jacqueline smiles and shares, Its an overwhelming feeling to witness all three releases of mine, garner so much love from the audience. I want to entertain people at all times and its certainly a great feeling when people enjoy your work. Actress Sofia Vergara flaunted her hourglass figure in a body-hugging dress for a date night with husband Joe Manganiello. The ribbed stretch-knit midi dress had clasps from the neckline to the hem. She added a cleavage-baring touch to the look by unclasping the top notches. She accessorised her outfit with danglers, a neutral clutch and matching open-toed pumps, reports people.com. Happy bday beautifull Amy!! A photo posted by Sofia Vergara (@sofiavergara) on Nov 11, 2016 at 9:35pm PST It appears the couple were meeting up with friends for a birthday celebration, as Vergara later posted a photo with two friends. Happy birthday beautiful Amy! the actress, 44, wrote in the post. [dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the action will affect very powerful people but he is prepared to fight for the poor. As usual, this was just a speech what all these years he is delivering to the people. As Modi stressed that the poor strongly backed his decision to demonetise high denomination currency, he questioned the moral authority of his political opponents, especially the Congress, for criticising his step as anti-poor and anti-common man. But he is ignoring the ground reality which is not as per his assumption and party supporters are giving him. Those Bhakt on social media are not common public who are standing in queue for hours and compromising their lives on many front. No amount of Modis crocodile tears can conceal the shambles the governance of the country has been reduced to under BJP/RSS combine tutelage. It is total wreckage of common people rather than a surgical strike against black marketers. In fact, there is nothing surgical at all in the whole operation. It is simply a flea-bite for the accumulators, fraudsters, guerrillas and terrorists. The new notes do not seem to possess the security features to defeat the counterfeiters. The higher denomination Rs. 2000 notes will only make it easier for the criminals to handle their money than in the erstwhile small notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000. Those rambling over the mirage of economic nirvana to be ushered in by BJP/RSS combine stand to be disillusioned. Not only the opposition but BJPs ally in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena also disapproved the governments move. The demonetisation move has led to financial anarchy, but Modi is busy in chest beating about self-achievements. He along with his party failed on bringing back black money and also to counter terror activities from foreign lands. They promised to bring back Dawood Ibrahim but now settled on demonetisation of currency. He failed to deliver election promises made by him. I hope, PM will learn bitter lesson from Punjab, UP state elections for his autocratic style of functioning. He is taking decisions without proper home work to avoid inconvenience to all sections of the society. Instead of attacking neo-rich, he is bulldozing common mans daily bread. It is quixotic to see certain things happening in India these days. Moreover, WhatsApp and Facebook are two platforms were people participate with each other to spread lame jokes and these are the strongest mediums in spreading rumours, folks. Along with these two platforms, people are debating on Twitter as well. The best time, they chose to spread a rumour is when the target audience is confused and scared, and the easiest thing to do when the topic is something related to money, is to spread fear, and in turn create panic, then hatred and ultimately violence. They went on saying that the 2000/- rupee note will have security chip in it, but later on all those claims got exposed and the real note looks as bogus and fake ones. Forget about security measures, the quality of paper used for the note is also cheap with all gaudy colours. A few weeks ago, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court broke down in front of the public while speaking; now the PM, Modi, said to be a super-strong man, breaks down. When would the Prime Minister of the nation shed tears for the nation? Modi must understand, at least now, that his big talks, bombastic schemes and action paced speeches cannot deliver socio-economic developments, as well as so-called surgical strikes, that include some military action as well as the current demonetization drive. However, India requires employment, so please generate the employment for at least 450 million people. Bringing some small percentage of the black money through demonetization is not the achievement. However, India needs big value additions for development. PM needs to understand that the support of the people is there with him. It could have grown more if a little more thought had been put into the scheme before a hasty execution. The suffering is real. It should not be taken to a breaking point. Some immediate measure to provide cash of 50s 100s must be implemented on war footing. The people will always support any good measure adopted by the government. The dissenting voice of the opposition politicians may be brushed aside because that is born out of frustration. Let urgent relief reach the people at the earliest. Banks and its employees are creating artificial scarcity. They are involved in commission and not giving money to poor people and instead are giving money to people who are paying commissions. His so called good ideas are being damaged by bankers and bank employees. On his own admission, Modi has stated that the step of demonetising Rs. 1000 and Rs. 500 notes were under contemplation for nearly six months and if that were true, a little bit of foresight in pumping adequate Rs.100 and Rs. 50 denomination notes in the system well in advance could have mitigated large scale sufferings of the citizens who have been subjected to hardship for the past five days. Here is where the BJP government has weakened. The Prime Minister promised, he would not allow the money of the poor to be looted., but he needs to make more promises that common man will not be brought to roads and deprived of two time meals. People are bearing the distress for a few days but that should not be stretched beyond the limit. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) Prime Minister on Monday took potshots at Opposition parties for hitting out at his government over demonetisation. He asserted that poor people are within in the fight against corruption, black money. PM said, We dont lack money, but it is lying where it should not be. Only when people are ready to face inconvenience, then corruption will go. New whitewash gives out foul smell, but it is necessary. Mr. Modi seeks the blessings of people, asks them for help. Just look at the wealth of the poor! And, hes greeted by an applause. This is a fight to end corruption and dishonesty. Asks people if he did the right thing by scrapping high denomination notes. And hes get a loud roar from the crowd. Will you face hardships? If people in villages are ready to face hardships there is no place for dishonesty in India, he said. My decision (to ban Rs500 and Rs1000) is like strong tea that I used to make earlier in my days as a chaiwala. The poor are loving it, while for rich its bad in taste. Modi lauded his government for the decision to demonetise the big notes to root out corruption and black money and said the step had robbed the rich of their sleep. After demonetisation, poor enjoying sound sleep, rich running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills, Modi said at BJPs Parivartan Yatra in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. He said the move to demonetise big currencies would help bridge the gap between rich and poor in the country. Those who are looting the country by stashing away Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, should they not suffer, are we not ready to experience a little hardships to teach a lesson to those cheating the country? We are going to rid the country of cheaters, Modi said. PM Modi also lauded the state for its contributions to the country and said, Uttar Pradesh has given many prime ministers to the country. I am the ninth Prime Minister from Uttar Pradesh. Both Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and I share Uttar Pradeshs legacy. More than 5,000 jawans have come from this great state. As PM Modi, said the poor are sleeping peacefully and the rich need sleeping pills a comment he has made more than once in rallies since Sunday Mamata Banerjee, CM of West Bengal posted her criticism on Twitter. PMs remarks are an insult to commoners and in bad taste, she wrote. Gary Kompothecras, who likes to be called Dr. Gary, is a chiropractor who acknowledges that, if you cross him, he can be a bulldog. He made himself a multi-millionaire building clinics to treat people hurt in car accidents and by creating the 1-800-ASK-GARY referral network. He is also one of the state's biggest political donors and a close friend of Gov. Charlie Crist. By J.B. Handley I often talk about the "autism net", the concept that the ranks of parents impacted by the autism epidemic grows every day. With each person added to the net, the chances of someone being added with the power and connections to do something about it grows. Meet Dr. Gary Kompothecras: he's one of those parents. Based in Sarasota, Florida, he appears to be a one-man wrecking crew doing many of the things all of us wish we could. Consider this excerpt from an article that ran yesterday in his local paper, the Herald Tribune of Sarasota, FL. (HERE) Two of his children are autistic. Sarah Alice, 11, repeats back what other people say to her and still plays with a jack-in-the-box. Bronson, 12, is so severely delayed he spent years in therapy to learn the name of his favorite plaything, bottles. Kompothecras (pronounced kom-PAHTH-uh-kras) believes their disorder was caused by an ingredient in vaccines, mercury-based thimerosal, that they received as infants. "Dirt bags" is one of the nicer names he has for public health officials who disagree. This legislative session Kompothecras wants lawmakers to pass a law preventing any vaccines with more than a tiny amount of thimerosal from being given in Florida, creating what would be the nation's strictest vaccine law. Pediatricians say the legislation, which essentially amounts to a ban on the preservative, is rooted in bad science and will put children and the elderly at risk for deadly flu viruses. The one shot containing a substantial amount of thimerosal is the flu vaccine, and if the preservative is restricted there could be a shortage, medical experts warn. But Kompothecras is relentless. He promises to leverage every political favor and every dollar he can to get the law passed. "If I can do this, my son won't go down for nothing," Kompothecras said. "You know how many lives we're going to save? This is going to be bigger than tobacco." * * * I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Gary today. He's one of us, he gets it, he's hopping mad, and he can make things happen. He appreciates how important looking at unvaccinated kids is, and he's currently moving to do just that in Florida. From the article: "Working for a vaccine law is just the beginning for Kompothecras. He wants to commission a study using the state's Medicaid database looking at children who received thimerosal-containing vaccines and at how many became autistic." Dr. Gary is a member of the Florida Governor's Autism Task Force. To that end, he put together a 46 minute video of a hearing on the thimerosal bill in September of 2008. The video includes excellent testimony by the Geiers, Dr. David Berger, and Dr. Boyd Haley (And some great questions from Ven Sequenzia, Jr., the President of the Autism Society of Florida). While it's long, I highly recommend you watch it HERE (HERE). (Checkout minute number 25, where the Florida Department of Health speaker, Saad Omer, gets shredded, and minute 35 where Boyd Haley explains the extreme toxicity of mercury. And, minute 38 where a mom gets the Florida Department of Health loser to admit they have no studies on the safety of simultaneous administration of vaccines. And, minute 39 where Dr. Gary trips up the Department of Health loser by quoting Dr. Healy!!) Our kids need more Warrior Dads. In Dr. Gary, they have one who we will be hearing a lot more from soon. Welcome, Dr. Gary, were thrilled to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the fight. WASHINGTON, Nov. 13, 2016 - Lawmakers return this week for a lame duck session that will lay the groundwork for the next Congress, while Washingtons attention is riveted on finding out who will get the top jobs in Donald Trumps administration. Trump announced his new transition team on Friday, replacing the original leader, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Sen. Jeff Sessions chief of staff, Rick Dearborn, will be executive director. The first key positions were filled Sunday. Trump announced that Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, would be the White House chief of staff. Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News and the CEO of the Trump campaign, was named chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. According to the announcement, Priebus and Bannon will be working as equal partners to transform the federal government. Priebus represents the establishment GOP view, while Bannon and Brietbart News have been a harsh critic of GOP immigration and trade policies. Priebus represents the establishment wing of the party, while Bannon has been an aggressive critic of the establishment Also on Friday, the leader of Trumps agricultural advisory team, Nebraska agribusinessman Charles Herbster, met with Dearborn on Friday, according to a source familiar with the transition team. It is not known when Trump will name an agriculture secretary, but Herbster and other members of Trumps agricultural advisory team are some of the most likely prospects. In an email to the campaigns agriculture supporters Herbster challenged them to stay involved with the new administration. Trump cannot make these changes alone. It will take the unity, time and effort of the entire nation. I challenge each of you to join me and do your part to make your voices heard, Herbster wrote. Mike Torrey, a lobbyist who served as deputy chief of staff at USDA during the George W. Bush administration, is advising the campaign on its organization of USDA. Trump, meanwhile, is expected to meet on Thursday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, even as the Japanese parliament is in the process of approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump has pledged to pull out of the TPP, and Republican congressional leaders have ruled out considering the TPP during the lame duck session. But Trump reportedly views Abe as an ally in pushing back against Chinas influence in Asia. President Obama also will be meeting with Abe leaders of the other 11 other TPP countries when he arrives this weekend for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Obviously we recognize the recent political developments in our country and how that affects TPP, but that's all the more reason for the president to discuss with other TPP leaders the work theyve done together and how we're looking at issues related to trade going forward, said Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. Congress will be welcoming the newly elected House members and senators this week, and Republicans are expected to vote on Tuesday to retain Paul Ryan as House speaker. But with TPP off the table, the rest of the lame duck agenda appears to be shrinking. The continuing resolution that is currently funding the government expires Dec. 9. GOP congressional leaders had planned to work out an agreement with the White House on spending legislation to cover the rest of fiscal 2017. Like what you see on the Agri-Pulse website? See even more ag, rural policy and energy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription. However, in the wake of Trumps election there are growing expectations that GOP leaders will instead seek another continuing resolution that would fund the government into the first part of next year, allowing time for Republicans to negotiate spending levels and policy provisions with Trump and his new team rather than Obama. American people rose up and resoundingly rejected the status quo, aid Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy group. Instead of negotiating with a lame duck president, Republicans in Congress must begin setting the stage for 2017. Heres a list of agriculture- or rural-related events scheduled for this week in Washington and elsewhere: Monday, Nov. 14 11 a.m. - Cato Institute forum, The Way Forward on Trade, 1100 Massachusetts Ave. NW. 4 p.m. - USDA releases Crop Progress report. Tuesday, Nov. 15 All day - Science Board to the Food and Drug Administration meeting on the bovine heparin initiative and other issues, Silver Spring, Md. Wednesday, Nov. 16 National Organic Standards Board meeting, St. Louis, through Friday. 9 a.m. - Biotechnology Regulatory Services stakeholder meeting, USDA Center at Riverside, Md. 10:30 a.m. - Third Annual Summit on Global Food Security and Health Issues, George Mason University Arlington campus, 3351 Fairfax Dr. Thursday, Nov. 17 NOSB meeting. President-elect Donald Trump meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 8:30 a.m. - USDA releases Weekly Export Sales report. 10 a.m. - House Agriculture Committee hearing, Past, Present, and Future of SNAP: Opportunities for Improving Access to Food, 1300 Longworth. Friday, Nov. 18 NOSB meeting. #30 (Updated at 4 p.m.) For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com Aiken, SC (29801) Today Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 54F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. Keith Jones, left, the Rev. Sotello Long, John Lindsay and the Rev. Bob Byrne stand in Marion Square in Charleston on Sunday before the start of the From Forgiveness to New Life Walk. Byrne is leading the walk, which will end at Glove Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Warrenville on Nov. 20. The purpose of the walk is to raise money for Glover Grove, which was rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in June 2015. Aiken, SC (29801) Today Mainly cloudy. High 77F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable. November 13, 2016 CAIRO While Egypts northern Sinai region has been associated with terrorism in recent years, there are concerns the violence could be spreading to Cairo. The Cairo governorate which includes Egypts capital and its suburbs, and is highly populated has witnessed five terrorist attacks in the span of less than three months, from Aug. 6 until Nov. 4. The so-called Hasm movement claimed responsibility Aug. 6 for the failed assassination attempt on former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa. On Sept. 30, the movement also claimed another failed assassination attempt on Assistant Attorney General Zakaria Abdul Aziz, who was targeted with an improvised explosive device (IED). In the third such incident, Brig. Gen. Adel Ragaie was gunned down in front of his house Oct. 22 in a Cairo suburb in an attack claimed by a group called Lewaa al-Thawra (Revolution Brigade). On Oct. 28, there was a terrorist attack against a security patrol on the Suez bridge street. On Nov. 4, Judge Ahmad Abu al-Fotouh, one of the judges in the trials against ousted President Mohammed Morsi, survived an assassination attempt with IEDs. These operations are similar to the ones carried out in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In December 2013, an explosion occurred at the Dakahlia Security Directorate; another took place in January 2014 in the Security Directorate of Cairo. This is not to mention the June 2015 assassination of Attorney General Hisham Barakat, who was killed in a bombing of his motorcade. These operations were linked to a dangerous organization known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, later to be called Wilayat Sinai after it pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). However, the recent attacks have been associated with newly emerged movements and organizations, such as the Hasm movement and Lewaa al-Thawra, which have less experience and savvy than Wilayat Sinai. Retired Maj. Gen. Khaled Moutaweh told Al-Monitor that there are some indications suggesting a lack of experience within these groups. For instance, in the assassination attempt against Gomaa, a large number of bullets were fired and yet the target was missed. Moutaweh also underlined a lack of capabilities, as bullets were used instead of explosive materials, which he said has been Wilayat Sinai's signature attack and the most effective attack in general. Meanwhile, retired Maj. Gen. Mohammed Nur al-Din, a former assistant to the interior minister and a security expert, told Al-Monitor that the Hasm movement and Lewaa al-Thawra are likely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, as evidenced by the latter's announcing that the assassination of Ragaie was to avenge the Oct. 3 killing of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Kamal. Kamal was a member of the movements guidance office, in charge of the major cells in the Brotherhood. It is worth mentioning that the emergence of Lewaa al-Thawra and the high-tempo operations of the Hasm movement happened in tandem with the resumption of fierce attacks by Wilayat Sinai, most notably one on a security checkpoint in northern Sinai on Oct. 14. The attack killed 12 soldiers in the armed forces. Sinai also witnessed other major attacks, which caused the death of prominent leaders in the armed forces, including Col. Rami Hassanein, the commander of Brigade 102, and Brig. Gen. Hicham Mahmoud Abu al-Azm. Nur al-Din said, One ought to pay attention to the announcement of Mohammed al-Baltagy, a leader in the Brotherhood, during the Rabia al-Adawiya protest, as he said that the terrorist attacks will continue until the return of Morsi to power. The Muslim Brotherhood is carrying out operations under the names of different groups because it wants to create political distance so it can move about easily in Turkey and Europe and deal with political systems without being questioned about its associations with terrorist activities." Nur al-Din believes there are three reasons behind the new attacks. This is an attempt to boost the morale of terrorist organizations and members of the Brotherhood. It is also a bid to intimidate judges before pronouncing final judgments on Morsi and Brotherhood leaders, as judgments have already started to be issued. Finally, these attacks aim at disrupting the economic reform process in Egypt, he said. Retired Maj. Gen. Hisham al-Halabi, a consultant in the Nasser Military Academy and member of the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs, told Al-Monitor, With the resumption of heavy attacks, terrorist groups are trying to establish themselves in the Egyptian arena. He said one reason for the intensification of such operations is their relative ease compared with attacks against military targets or sites, saying, There is no 100% [protection] guarantee anywhere in the world. For example, American security could not protect President John F. Kennedy from assassination, despite the substantial capacities of US security services compared with Egyptian security services. Moreover, security services in France, the United States and Turkey were unable to repel the frequent terrorist attacks launched recently. Therefore, terrorist organizations benefit from the security services inability to secure all streets and provide protection to all prominent figures to carry out their operations. Halabi said that as a result of the attacks, Citizens are becoming more supportive of the security services and armed forces, despite the terrorist organizations attempts to break the trust between the citizen and the state. Moreover, these operations are further boosting the armed forces, police and intelligence services determination to avenge their colleagues and eradicate terrorism. He said the details of the terrorist operations show the declining capabilities of terrorist organizations. He said the use by these organizations of bullets and lighter explosive devices in several operations show that the organizations' capabilities are declining and that the security and armed forces have drained the financing sources of terror groups and curbed their flow of weapons and ammunition. The operation against the Security Directorate of Dakahlia used a booby-trapped car fitted with 1.5 tons of explosives, and the Cairo Security Directorate and the Barakat motorcade were targeted by half a ton of explosives each. On the other hand, the quantities of explosives used by the terrorist groups in the recent operations have dropped significantly. A 3-kilo (6.6-pound) explosive device was used in the assassination attempt on the assistant attorney general and only 5 kilos of explosives were used in the assassination attempt of the judge ruling on the Morsi case. November 8, 2016 TEHRAN, Iran Millennia after the discovery of gold, the metal continues to retain its value and status as precious and remains widely used. Its unique characteristics, including its malleability and resistance to corrosion, have made into a key element in medicine as well as in engineering and electronics. The significant economic advantages of the metal, such as its profitable trade along with related wealth and job creation, are the most important factors behind countries around the world attaching paramount importance to their gold industries. Iran, one of the most resource-rich countries, has not been an exception. Investment in gold-mining projects and related industries have surged in the past decade. In recent years many important developments among them the discovery of gold reserves in Yazd province and the establishment of major gold complexes have further shone a spotlight on Irans gold reserves and their potential. With Iran holding proven gold reserves estimated at 340 metric tons scattered among some two dozen mines, 15 of which are currently operational the Money and Credit Council of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) issued a letter to custom's authorities legalizing the export of raw gold, provided it is extracted from domestic mines and is not sold on Iranian markets at competitive international prices. Moreover, exporters must repatriate revenues either as foreign exchange or standard gold bars. The letter also stated that the change in policy was pending approval by the Industry, Mines and Trade Ministry. Previously, the CBI had held the exclusive right to export gold. Although exporters still need permission from the CBI to sell gold, the removal of previous limitations has been hailed by many active in the countrys gold industry. The move gives the opportunity to Iranian mines to enter the competitive market of gold exports. Iran can also enter global markets, Mohammad Vali, head of Irans Gold and Jewelry Producers and Exporters Union, told the semi-official Iranian Students' News Agency July 5. Kourosh Azizi, an economics consultant who works with mining companies, also described the lifting of restrictions as a positive development, provided relevant and well-designed schemes will also be put forward. Key gold reserves in Iran are managed by the government, while the private sector runs small mines, Azizi explained to Al-Monitor. In the short term, the legalization of raw gold exports helps the private sector access foreign exchange resources, which subsequently helps it attract capital, pay off debts to banks and resolve other problems it faces. With the private sector booming, small economic enterprises will be able to attract investment as well, something considered as a driving force to make and maintain changes in gold mining. The new guidelines have also been criticized, however. Mining researcher Morteza Momenzadeh is not very positive about the legalization of raw gold exports. He told Eghtesad News July 5, The measure helps increase mining activities, but it is not of significant help in boosting the gold economy. Domestic gold consumption is higher than production. As such, domestic production of gold is not sufficient for exports. Irans raw gold production is projected at five to ten tons per year, while the gold in circulation stands at 300 tons per annum. This indicates that the industry has yet to make a considerable contribution to the overall economy, given that domestic consumption represents the lions share of domestically produced gold, with exports limited to gold products rather than raw gold. Moreover, even though the export of raw gold is now legal, various challenges remain as experts believe the country lacks the cutting-edge mining technology and machinery required to produce gold on par with international standards. While the acceptable global standard for gold bars at the London Bullion Market Association requires the product to have a purity of 99.9%, only one Iranian mine can currently produce raw gold with such purity. According to Iranian officials, all other mines produce gold with a purity level of 99.8%. Nonetheless, Azizi, who has years of experience working with major state companies in the mining industry, said that the long-term effect of the legalization of raw gold exports is manifold. Once private sector-run gold production becomes lucrative, producers will have the tendency to explore and extract more gold mines, he explained. This will require the use of new technologies, which subsequently brings high-level added value to gold mining. Hamid, a jeweler in Tehran, also described the decision to authorize raw gold exports as a good step, but said that it will take time to bear fruit. Gold production has really progressed over the past five years. You can hardly differentiate between Iranian-made gold products and their Italian equivalents, he told Al-Monitor. But, the industry needs to receive great support if it wants to enter international export markets. Indeed, Iran has a long road ahead of it in achieving its goal of becoming a major gold exporter. It currently has to rely on imports to meet domestic demand. Meanwhile, experts cite issues related to trade in precious stones as well as the lack of required machinery as additional hurdles that the government has to address to further boost the gold industry. Though the use of gold and the jewelry industry have millennia-old roots on the Iranian plateau, Irans present share of global production of raw gold and jewelry is 1% at best, even after the increased emphasis on developing gold mines in the years since President Hassan Rouhani was elected, in 2013. Iranian officials believe that with the sanctions lifted as part of the nuclear deal, the countrys mining sector can catch up with the world by increasing its gold- production capacity and attracting additional investment from foreign companies. As such, while there has been foreign investment in Iranian gold mines by Russia and China, many experts believe that given Irans vast untapped mining potential with 68 types of minerals amounting to total reserves of 43 billion metric tons major global firms that have not already entered the market will sooner or later take steps to do so. November 11, 2016 Iraqi security forces arrested Saddam Husseins cousin Nizar Hammoud Abdul Ghani, who was one of the Iraqi presidents personal guards, on Oct. 25 for his alleged involvement in the Islamic State's attack on Kirkuk on Oct. 21. Three of his brothers are also high-ranking officers in the [IS] organization in Al-Hawija district, the chief of Kirkuks suburban police, Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir, told Rudaw. Hawija lies some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Kirkuk. As the inevitable defeat of IS approaches, analysts and politicians are busy discussing life in Iraq after the group. Sectarian reconciliation, political autonomy and the role of external actors such as Turkey continue to dominate the media discourse. One group that remains absent from post-liberation narratives is the former Baathists, who have played a complex role in Mosuls recent history and have had a dysfunctional relationship with post-2003 governments in Baghdad. If the role of former Baathists is forgotten in post-IS Iraq, then many of the key issues that arose when IS entered Mosul in 2014 will likely return in the future. The powerful role played by former Baathists in IS leadership structure is well known. Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, a lieutenant colonel in Saddams Intelligence Service, and Abu Ali al-Anbari, a former major general under Saddam, were IS former deputy commanders in Iraq and Syria. Ezzat al-Douri, the former deputy leader of the Baath Party, was reported to be fighting for IS. The fingerprints of the old Iraqi state are clear on their work. You can feel it, a former Baath Party official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. IS strong Baathist links gave the group a clear Iraqi identity and allowed it to make alliances with many other such groups upon its entry into Mosul. One of these alliances was with the Baathist-linked Naqshbandi Army, which is led by Ezzat al-Douri. When IS forces stormed into Mosul in June 2014, the Naqshbandi Armys Baathist network largely facilitated their entry. As the Iraqi journalist and analyst Hazem al-Amin notes, Baath Party officers were the people who were in charge of capturing Mosul and the people of Mosul. After entering Mosul, however, IS revealed its true colors by forcing the former Baathists within the Naqshbandi Army and other groups to pledge allegiance to their caliphate. Some Baathists joined, swelling the ranks of IS military personnel, while others were killed or went into hiding, removing their uniforms to avoid detection. IS took the revolution from us, said a senior Baath Party official. We couldnt sustain the battle. As retribution for the betrayal, many former Baathists who remained inside Mosul have resurfaced and are now assassinating IS militants inside the city, heeding the Oct. 17 calls by senior Naqshbandi figures to rise up against IS. They form one of many anti-IS groups inside Mosul, such as Kataib al-Mosul, the so-called M-Resistance and the Prophet Yunis Brigades, working occasionally in conjunction with the Iraqi government's security forces. IS continues to pursue the Naqshbandi members, perceiving them as a strong threat to their control on the city. As former Naqshbandi Col. Qais al-Jibouri has said, Naqshbandi members are waiting for the right time to act and exact their revenge on IS. But he remains wary of the groups future moves despite their anti-IS stance. Distrust of former Baathists remains among various factions of Iraqi society, as many Iraqis hold them responsible for carrying out attacks in Iraq during the insurgency after 2003, while others remember the bloody massacre of 1,700 Shiite cadets at former US base Camp Speicher. Despite resentment of IS, the remaining Naqshbandi members are likely to still hold the same resentment that facilitated the initial marriage of convenience with IS in 2014, and in particular great contempt for the Baghdad government and its de-Baathification policies of 2003, which dismissed hundreds of thousands of Sunnis. As Fawaz Gerges predicts in his book ISIS: A History, once Mosul is liberated, many of the Naqshbandi Army's Baathist members will return underground to regroup and wait for an opportunity to return, just as they did before exploiting the social instability in Nineveh in 2014. Despite their ideological differences, the pragmatic secular nationalist Baathists are determined to acquire power by any means available and exploit any situation to their advantage. But for those that attempt to blend back into civilian life, what does the future hold? The Supreme National Commission for Accountability and Justice made amendments to the de-Baathification law on Sept. 30, allowing many former Baathists to resume their jobs. As IS represents the greatest threat to Iraq and its people, national reconciliation must include all groups, including Baathists, to defeat it. Understanding Baathist networks are of paramount importance and the topic must be included alongside the more prevalently discussed issues of sectarian reconciliation, political autonomy and the role of external actors when addressing the drivers of social insecurity. The controversial amnesty law passed by the parliament Aug. 30 allows people convicted of all but 13 crimes to apply for an official pardon in an effort to promote political reconciliation with those who were convicted after 2003. Yet many people fear this leniency will play into the hands of those harboring anti-government sentiments. Representatives from the National Alliance, including the Sadiqoun bloc's Hassan Salim, lambasted the law as a gift to terrorists and [IS] members and a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs and victims. As a result of this, the National Alliance, led by Ammar Hakim, has attempted to address the matter by engaging Sunni political blocs and agreeing on reconciliation measures after IS, as well as promoting Iraqs sovereignty, unity and democracy. With the help of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq and other Sunni-majority nations, this effort is a positive step toward national reconciliation between different political and religious groups. But as researcher and writer Ali Mamouri notes, Confronting the conditions of jihadism requires a comprehensive plan supported by the international community and regional powers addressing the economic, political and social aspects of the issue. What must be included within this framework, then, is recognition of Baath networks to ensure a political climate in which they will not be able to resurface. November 11, 2016 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip The seventh Fatah conference, to be held Nov. 29, is drawing the attention of the movement itself and of the Palestinian street in light of the division and internal conflicts plaguing Fatah. Fatahs internal division reached its peak in the past few months when on Sept. 28 Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Fatah leaders and cadres on charges of delinquency and on Oct. 25 withheld the salaries of others based on the same charges. The announcement of the conference, in which 1,300 Fatah leaders and cadres are expected to participate, comes after a two-year delay caused by internal disputes and incomplete preparations. In this context, Article 43 of Fatahs statutes stipulates, The Central Committee calls for a regular session [of the general conference] once every five years. This session can be postponed by force majeure, following a decision by the Revolutionary Council. The importance of the conference lies in the fact that it represents the highest legislative authority in the movement, as it passes laws, regulations, rules and political programs, and it discusses past decisions and reports issued by the Central Committee. Also, the conference elects the members of Fatahs executive bodies, including the Revolutionary Council. The Revolutionary Council monitors the decisions issued by the general conference and the work of the movements bodies, as well as discusses the decisions and work of the Central Committee. The Revolutionary Council thus constitutes a link between the general conference and the Central Committee, whose members are also elected by the conference. The Central Committee, for its part, is considered the highest executive authority within the Fatah movement. A small number of people were invited to attend the upcoming conference compared to past ones, as the sixth conference was held in Bethlehem in August 2009 with the participation of 2,355 people. About the reasons for this low number, Fatah sources told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on Nov. 3 that most of the 1,300 people who were invited to the conference are expected to adopt Abbas positions during the conference, which would keep any coalition made up of Mohammed Dahlan supporters from emerging during the conferences sessions. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Amin Maqboul, the secretary-general of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, listed those who will be attending the seventh conference: the Central Committees members, the Revolutionary Councils members, the Consultative Committees members, the elected representatives of provinces and military members (i.e., those who were part of Fatahs former military wing) of the movement. The list also includes, as per Maqboul, a number of Fatah cadres working in the Popular Organizations Department affiliated with the PLO, members of the movements bodies working in departments of the Palestinian state and the PLO, a number of Fatah representatives in foreign countries and some competent members of Fatah. Maqboul said that Abbas has been making contacts in the past few days to ensure that all the cadres and leaders currently residing outside the Palestinian territories and Gaza, and who were invited to the conference, will attend. He further noted that the conference will discuss important issues on the internal level of the movement, including the election of leadership bodies, the general Palestinian situation, as well as several amendments that will be made to Fatahs internal statutes. These amendments will mainly focus on the conditions set for choosing the members of the Revolutionary Council in case of death or absence of one of the members. Maqboul confirmed that the conference will not discuss the issue of dismissals on charges of delinquency, considering that the dismissal of one or 10 members (in reference to those who were dismissed for belonging to Dahlans current) will not affect a movement that is more than 50 years old. Abdel Hamid al-Masri, a Fatah leader who was dismissed on charges of delinquency, expects the same. Speaking to Al-Monitor, he said it was unlikely that the conference will discuss the dismissal file, describing the conference as exclusionary and destructive. As Fatah is suffering from deep internal disputes, while another major current is denied participation, Masri expects the conference to be another step toward further schism within the movement. Masri also held Abbas and his officials responsible for the state of division plaguing the Fatah movement today. He denied media reports saying that supporters of dismissed leader Dahlan are preparing to hold their own conference in response to the seventh Fatah conference, saying, We have many options in this regard, but we will not reveal them at the moment. Ashraf Jomaa, a Fatah parliamentarian who is close to Dahlan, said in a Nov. 3 statement for local paper Felesteen that as long as the Fatah division is not addressed and the recommendations of the previous conference which mainly stipulate that the next conference not exclude any Fatah figure are ignored, holding the current conference will be a real national catastrophe and the Fatah movement itself will pay the price. Political analysts and experts believe that the state of division plaguing Fatah will be exacerbated after the conference. This is evidenced by the facts on the ground. In this context, Riyad al-Astal, a political science professor at Al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip, expects the movement to face a complete split at its organizational base after the conference. This is because the young leaders who are close to Dahlan reject the control the founding generation of Fatah has on the Fatah leadership. He expects the current that rejects the seventh conference to hold a parallel conference. Astal told Al-Monitor that the decisions issued during the seventh conference will be at the advantage of the existing Fatah leadership, which seeks to get rid of Dahlans current. He also warned that the Fatah movement will face difficulties in its relations with the Arab Quartet (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates), as it backs the return of Dahlan to the movement. Political analyst Mohsen Abu Ramadan said that the conferences decisions will be important, as they will reflect on the internal situation of the movement, on the Palestinian political system and on relations with Israel. Abu Ramadan ruled out any possible dialogue between the current Fatah leaders and those of Dahlans current. This seems to confirm that after the conference, the internal relations in Fatah will be heading toward a split, not reconciliation. The Fatah movement will be facing its ultimate test at the end of November. Many agree that the movement will face the biggest organizational schism since its inception in 1965 as Abbas continues to ignore all efforts aimed at reconciliation with Dahlan. November 11, 2016 BEIRUT Some of Syria's endangered antiquities could find a safe haven in Europe. French President Francois Hollande announced Nov. 1 that the Louvre Museum in Paris will host heritage artifacts from Syria and Iraq by 2019. The preservation of Syrian heritage has been a priority for individuals and organizations from inside and outside Syria since the beginning of the country's civil war in 2011. In 2009, Syrian tourism was a $6 billion industry, or 10% of gross domestic product, and the service industry accounted for 47%. With the war, these sectors have been decimated. For that reason, and more importantly to preserve Syrian heritage, foreign and Syrian archaeologists have drafted since 2011 an incomplete list of endangered sites and how they have been, and still are, threatened. The Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA) highlights the risks incurred by monuments during bombings, premeditated destruction, looting, vandalism and traffic but also during maintenance work and restoration, or protection measures of the sites led by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) in Syria with international archaeologists. The association provides daily updates for the public about historical sites affected via a YouTube channel. On site, the information APSA gathers and processes is provided by students in archaeology and architecture, but also civilians who alert and send information, sometimes risking their lives, Martin Makinson, who is responsible for the organization's press relations, told Al-Monitor. This will serve, at the end of the conflict, to determine who did what and what is the extent of destruction, in an objective way. The destruction is not merely due to the Islamic State (IS) the regime also caused it, he said. As with APSA, many international scientific initiatives have supported efforts to preserve artifacts in different ways since the Syrian conflict began. Shirin International, a nongovernmental organization composed of archaeologists and mission managers who worked on Syrian sites until 2011, focuses on three projects. One project conducts regular assessments of damage to sites and excavation houses. Another project is developing an information system capable of integrating all the archaeological data from recent surveys. The database eventually will help with drafting an inventory of museum objects as accurately as possible. The third endeavor involves recording the topography of sites, however small or isolated they might be. It is preventive archaeology, Frank Braemer, Shirin president and research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research, told Al-Monitor. As soon as the work of clearing and cleaning sites begins, this will help prevent further destruction" by providing a clear idea of how the sites structures work and what causes damage to them. His colleagues in the Shirin branch in Switzerland are invested in the fight against illegal trafficking of antiquities. Swiss legislation drafted in 2005 already provides a model law on the topic and Zurich museums offer to host objects from any country whose heritage is in danger. Syrians with doctorates from the University of Geneva play a major role there, maintaining contact with the local population via social networks and raising awareness to prevent possible looting at already-damaged sites. Manar Kerdy is one of these volunteer researchers who keep in touch with their Syrian counterparts. She told Al-Monitor, I help because I am Syrian, and I want to protect my heritage. I communicate with local people because they live there [in Syria], they see what happens, and I see how we can help, how to involve them. Most often, they are students and civilians who worked in museums and excavation sites. Sometimes you have to send them money, or give them access to training. This is not easy as they face the worst, but we are listening to them, we are available. Other times, international aid is confined to data, as with the Syrian Heritage Archive Project of the German Archaeological Institute at the University of Cologne. With the coordination of DGAM, the project aims to develop a database capable of integrating all the information on ancient Syrian sites, including topography, the number of artifacts and details of the excavations through archives, photographs and reports. That focus is shared by Iconem, a Paris-based company that provides technical support to Syrian archaeologists. The company documents sites by using drones and algorithms to make precise 3-D images, Yves Uberlmann, an architect and founder of Iconem, told Al-Monitor. We are not into restoration, but we provide reliable data to help experts make decisions, especially for our Syrian colleagues in DGAM, he said. DGAM Director Maamoun Abdulkarim told Al-Monitor, Heritage is our identity, not politics. So we will continue to work because we risk losing a lot. With about 400 archaeologists and architects on-site, Abdulkarim is working on a field study in Palmyra, which was liberated from IS in March. The study is expected to last a year and will examine what reconstruction options are possible, while urgently restoring some items. Mechtild Rossler, the director of UNESCOs heritage division and the World Heritage Center, told Al-Monitor, We [already] preserve [sites and artifacts in Syria]; in each case we consider our next steps. Sometimes also, we either leave the ruins or reconstruct small parts, she said. As for the city of Palmyra, we must take into account a reconstruction [process] on the basis of archaeological tourism, from which its 50,000 inhabitants benefited. UNESCO is already helping archaeologists and staff of Syrian museums through training seminars in Beirut, Amman and Damascus on emergency safeguarding, and is teaching customs' staff to detect antiques trafficked outside Syria. However, UNESCO has been harshly criticized by archaeologists from around the world due to the statement of Director-General Bokova Irinia in March welcoming the liberation of Palmyra. On March 31, Syrian archaeologist Ali Othman signed a public letter questioning the organization's authority and calling for UNESCO to remain neutral regarding the conflict. There is no place here, in the current state of armed conflict, for a stand in favor of any of the parties involved directly in the Syrian tragedy, he recently told Al-Monitor by email. Rossler emphasized that UNESCO is working on communication with the armed presence [referring to the Syrian rebels and regime, and their respective allies], especially to avoid strikes on sites. We remind the authorities of the need to protect heritage, but we cannot communicate directly with an army on a case of siege. A UNESCO conference on Syrian cultural heritage, held June 2-4 in Berlin, bypassed the controversy by focusing on assessments by 230 Syrian and international experts who called for cooperation between official, civil and scientific organizations to continue to preserve Syrian heritage and establish a post-conflict recovery plan. All this marks a positive but still fragile will, when large parts of Syria's history, such as Aleppo's souks, have suffered and still suffer damage impossible to measure. November 14, 2016 Syrian rebels mentored by Turkey said they were positioned to launch an assault to drive the Islamic State out of the strategic town of al-Bab today, but it remains unclear whether they will actually throw themselves into what most analysts agree will be a bloody battle. Pro-government dailies trumpeted the news of the Turkish-backed rebel advance, saying the forces were only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the mainly Sunni Arab town. But the English-language Daily Sabah quoted a Free Syria Army commander as saying the operation could take days or weeks. The commander added, "We will see how reinforced [IS] is in the town. Al-Bab has emerged as something of a test of Turkish resolve in Syria, not against IS but against the Syrian Kurds. The Syrian Kurds are desperate to lay their hands on al-Bab because it would allow them to link the large, uninterrupted swath of land they rule east of the mainly Arab town of Manbij to the mainly Kurdish enclave of Afrin that lies further west. Turkey says it will not permit further expansion of a contiguous Kurdish-run zone along its borders but has faced stiff resistance from Russia, which controls the skies over al-Bab. Until recently, most analysts concurred that Russia would prevent Turkeys rebel proxies from taking al-Bab because of the threat they would pose to Syrian regime forces in Aleppo, just as they appear to be gaining control over the war-ravaged city. And while Turkey has backed the rebel advance from the ground, Turkish jets have not taken part in any offensive action since last months wave of sorties against Syrian Kurds, presumably because of Syrian threats to shoot them down. But Turkish airstrikes on Syria resumed over the weekend, hitting 15 IS positions near al-Bab. Many speculate that Ankara has struck some kind of deal with the Russians and by extension with the Syrian regime over Aleppo. The prevailing wisdom is that the agreement involves Turkish pledges to rein in rebel forces, notably the al-Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra, which continues to rely on logistical supply lines from Turkey for its operations in northern Syria. Last week, US President Barack Obama ordered the Pentagon to find and kill leaders of the group, which remains the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government. All of this is unfolding in the wake of Donald Trumps surprise victory in the US presidential elections. Trumps previous comments about Syria suggest that he is more closely aligned with the Russian position and that he is not in the least bit interested in deepening US engagement there other than to defeat IS and other jihadist groups. Indeed, some pundits suggest that he may pull the plug on CIA-vetted Syrian rebels. Ankara had long hoped that if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton were to win, as she was widely predicted to, that she would fulfill pledges to create a safe haven for the rebels, action that could eventually lead to the overthrow of the Syrian regime. Turkey may now have decided to cuts its losses and stomach some kind of reconciliation with the regime, if only to join forces against the Syrian Kurds. The Syrian Kurds are the one issue on which Ankara and Damascus hold a common view: that their aspirations of self-rule must be crushed. And even before the US election, Ankara had been putting out feelers to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Yet Russia views the Syrian Kurds as a useful lever both against Turkey and the Assad regime. It is therefore improbable that Moscow would ditch them altogether. We dont really understand what is going on in al-Bab or in Syria in general, for that matter, said Syrian Kurdish commentator Barzan Iso in a Skype interview with Al-Monitor, echoing a widespread view among Syrian Kurds. The situation is likely to remain murky at least until Trump takes office. In the meantime, Turkey will seize on the transition hiatus to press forward with its own goals. November 11, 2016 DIYARBAKIR, Turkey Around 8 a.m. Nov. 4, life was just getting animated in Diyarbakir when a white minibus drove to the entrance of the police compound in the Baglar district. Its driver braked hard to avoid crashing into a taxi that cut in front of him. According to closed-circuit security camera recordings that Al-Monitor was allowed to watch, the irate taxi driver got out and angrily marched to the minibus. He opened the door of the minibus and almost immediately started shouting Bomb, bomb and ran away. Everyone in the area started running in panic. That was the end of the recording. A massive explosion and a mushroom cloud followed, along with the sound of gunshots. Three or four people with shaven faces in a car opened rifle fire and withdrew while firing, an eyewitness who did not want to be identified told Al-Monitor. The vicinity of the explosion looked like a war zone with almost all buildings damaged. Chaos prevailed, with people wailing and frantically searching for friends and relatives. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was the usual suspect in the bombing, especially in Diyarbakir. But reports began coming out that Selahattin Demirtas, the chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), and several other senior HDP officials and parliamentarians were in detention in the compound. Arguments raged. A group of anti-government, pro-PKK protesters chased and attempted to lynch two men who were shouting, Murderer Selahattin and Murderer PKK. One young man involved in that lynching attempt, which was witnessed by Al-Monitor, tried to justify his behavior: Why should the PKK be behind the blast when our own parliamentarians are inside? They are automatically accusing us. Who was the perpetrator? The first official statement came from the government of Diyarbakir province: At 7:53 a.m. Nov. 4 in Baglar district near the riot police compound, while there were many civilians and students in the streets, a vehicle-borne explosive device was set off by members of a separatist terror organization, the statement said. The separatist terror organization referred to was the PKK. But no one was satisfied with this statement because people know from experience that the PKK is instinctively accused in all violent incidents whether or not it is involved. The official statement said the PKK had claimed responsibility for the attack, but no such claim was found in news reports or on social media. PKK supporters persistently questioned why the organization would attack a building where HDP parliamentarians were kept. A day later, the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack on its website, first in Arabic and then in Turkish. The report disseminated by Reuters news agency comforted the PKK partisans, who felt vindicated. HDP parliamentarian Sirri Sureyya Onder on the same day said the target of the attack was the HDP parliamentarians who were in detention. In a briefing with journalists, he said all the legislators were in the same compound during the attacks. Our Co-Chair Mrs. Figen [Yuksekdag], myself and two parliamentarians were in there while our Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtas had been taken to the court. We entered the building and then the explosion happened. Our party officials, citizens and co-chairs have been in detention in that compound for 26 days. This massacre was a precisely planned operation, Onder said. Onder then gave the details of the attack to a news website. We were just given a medical checkup. A massive explosion brought down everything around us from the walls, ceilings. My neck was bleeding. Police took us out to the corridor. We heard 10 minutes of sustained gunfire. We know the police were firing. There were casualties in the building. What panic and fury, Onder told Gazete Duvar. The IS claim for responsibility dispelled tensions in Diyarbakir for a while. People remembered a voice recording that was distributed three days before the Diyarbakir attack in which IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was heard ordering attacks against Turkey. But in the afternoon, the government issued another statement, which was sent to Al-Monitor. It still insisted that the PKK was the culprit. On Nov. 4, after the attack, our province made a statement saying the attack was claimed by the separatist terror organization. But because of a news report by an international news agency based on sources, the media began saying that (IS) had claimed responsibility for the attack. Our statement was based on intercepts of radio communications of members of the separatist terror organization. In three different intercepts it is heard that a terrorist code-named Kemal had carried out the attack using three tons of explosives. This clearly proves that the attack was carried by that separatist terror organization. Others news has been fabricated to create a different perception and to protect the terror organization, the statement said. The governments persistence that the PKK was responsible did not persuade everyone, although it had provided the code name of the attacker and even provided a copy of his identity card. PKK supporters were sure that the perpetrator was IS until two days later, when Firat News Agency, which is close to the PKK, reported that the attack was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), who are linked to the PKK. The name they used as the perpetrator matched the one used by the government. At first, people didnt want to believe this bombshell of a report. There were allegations that Firat News Agencys website was hacked. Al-Monitor was among those who investigated but couldnt find any evidence of hacking. Shortly afterward, a statement by editors of the site declared that there was no hacking and their report was correct. People were furious and disappointed. An organization struggling for the Kurds had blown up a neighborhood where Kurds lived and almost killed political representatives of the Kurds. It didnt take long for HDP deputies to react to the TAK. The perpetrator was thus identified and only one more question needed an answer: How, in a city where security measures are so strict, was a minibus laden with three tons of explosives able to reach the police compound? For the inhabitants of the ravaged neighborhood, the identity of the perpetrators doesnt mean anything except 11 fatalities, wrecked residences and dramas left behind. The Alabama Career Center System will host a job readiness workshop on Nov. 21 at the Montgomery Career Center. The workshop will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the center at 1060 East South Blvd. in Montgomery. The center will conduct the four-hour training, which will cover such topics as resume preparation, interview skills, how to "dress for success" and soft skills, such as timeliness and proper communication skills. Workshop participants will receive a certificate that they can present to employers at the job fair. The workshop is free and open to the public, but registration is strongly encouraged. For more information or to register, call Tiffany Daniels or Jackie McQueen at (334) 286-1746. The workshop is to help jobseekers prepare for a regional job fair to be held in Montgomery on Nov. 30 at the Cramton Bowl Multiplex. The Nov. 30 job fair is being sponsored by the Alabama Career Center System/Department of Labor, WSFA 12 News and the City of Montgomery. To register for the job fair, visit here. A pizza pie chart and cover shot A new Terry's Pizza restaurant is being targeted for an early-2017 opening. (Bob Gathany/bgathany@al.com) They're using an old takeout menu as a road map. For their upcoming location of Terry's Pizza across from Huntsville's Grissom High School, Star Market plans on offering 95 to 98 percent of the items that were on vintage Terry's menus. Signature pies like the Chef's Special and Sticky Fingers. Subs. Calzones. Spaghetti. Lasagna. "If you've been a Terry's Pizza fan in the past, you'll recognize the menu," says Star Market's Mark Tow. A grocery store/pharmacy with locations in Huntsville and Meridianville, Star purchased the Terry's Pizza name and recipes after the beloved pizzeria closed in 2006 following the death of owner Lou Pejza. Star has been making and selling carry-out and "take-and-bake" Terry's pizzas out of its Five Points store since 2008. But the new Terry's location, targeted for an early-2017 opening, will be the first standalone Terry's restaurant with a dining room since the Governors Drive, South Parkway and North Parkway locations shuttered 10 years ago. Terry's will take over a cozy Bailey Cove Shopping Center space formerly home to Coffee Tree and, most recently, Lizzy B's Bakery and Deli. The restaurant will seat around 80 people. There will be a drive-thru for pick-up orders and take-and-bake pizzas available. According to Tow, the restaurant's design will likely incorporate booths, brick veneer walls, hardwood floors and a burgundy awning evoking the one from the old North Parkway Terry's. The classic Terry's Pizza logo of an ecstatic mustachioed chef will also be involved. Exterior photo of the former Terry's Pizza location on North Parkway. (File photo) "I think they'll be pleasantly surprised when the building gets done," Tow says. "It's going to have a lot of the old feel of a Terry's Pizza and it's also going to be more of a modern, casual type restaurant. Tow is Star Market's director of pharmacy operations. And the connection between pharmacy and pizza is? "You've got to understand we're a little company," Tow says with a laugh. "People wear a lot of hats." Demolition has begun on the Baily Cove space, and the building permits are in place, Tow says. Star Market also maintained an embedded, to-go Terry's Pizza at its Bailey Cove grocery store. After that 9020 Bailey Cove Road grocery closed in October 2014, Star kept its pharmacy there open, until moving the pharmacy to Bailey Cove Shopping Center, address 7900 Bailey Cove Road, where it had previously operated for three years or so until 2010. The return of Star Discount Pharmacy to the shopping center helped bring about the upcoming Terry Pizza restaurant there. "This one kind of fell in our lap," Tow says. "I put a bug in the ear of the landlord: 'If a place opens up where a Terry's Pizza could come in we would be interested.' And they came to me and said, 'Hey we got one.'" Other business located in the shopping center include Casa Blanca Mexican Restaurant & Cantina, health club You Fit and closeout retailer Tuesday Morning. Star signed a lease for the Bailey Cove Terry's space this summer. Some of their pharmacy customers have known about this development since around that time, Tow says. "We don't hesitate to tell them we're coming. It's not a secret but we've been low-key because we don't have an opening date. We're going to keep it low key until we're close. I don't want to rush this, I want to do it right." Ben Otieno worked for decades at the South Parkway Terry's Pizza and for the last eight years he's made those pies at Five Points Star Market. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com) According to Tow, the to-go Terry's inside Star Market's Five Points location, address 704 Pratt Ave. N.E. sells "just under 1,000 pizzas a week." Ben Otieno makes a lot of those pies. Otieno worked at Terry's former South Parkway location for decades, and when Star Market owner Darden Heritage purchased the Terry's name and recipes and opened the Five Points embedded location, Otieno and other former Terry's employees were brought in to work there. After the Terry's restaurants closed in 2006, Birmingham's VR Business Brokers announced the Terry's name, recipes and some equipment could be bought for about $200,000, according to a Huntsville Times report from that year. A former typewriter repairman from the Midwest, Lou Pejza co-founded Terry's original Governors location in 1959 with sister Theresa (for whom the restaurant was named) and brother-in-law Earl Alger. The business was built on Chicago-style pies. Tow says although Otieno will remain at the Five Points location, he'll play a big role in training employees for the Bailey Cove restaurant. "He is our connection to the past," Tow says of Otieno. "He knows how they made them back then and how we make them now." So what is Otieno looking forward to most about the return of a standalone Terry's Pizza restaurant? "Getting the families back together," Otieno says. "I used to enjoy watching the families coming in, having dinner together, chit-chat." He then uses his hand to illustrate the height of a young child and adds, "I saw kids from about this age and they come in here now married with children of their own, still eating Terry's Pizza." Otieno was born in Kenya and says customers will often recognize him by his speaking accent: "You're were on South Parkway weren't you?" The most popular pies at the Five Points Star Market Terry's Pizza include the Sticky Fingers Special, which features sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and extra cheese. Otieno says the key to keeping Terry's pizzas authentic is "consistency. If you're not consistent the customers don't come back." The sauce is another key, he says, "There's a secret in it - that one I'm not going to tell." Bessemer Homicide Charges.jpg Steven McMillon, Tyran McMillon and Damyon Hill are charged with capital murder. (Bessemer Police) Three young men are now formally charged in a Friday morning shooting that left a Bessemer 20-year-old dead. Bessemer police on Monday announced capital murder charges against Steven McMillon, 21; Damyon Hill, 19, and Tyran McMillon, 18. All three are from Bessemer, and two of the suspects are brothers. DeCarlos DeAndre Walker, 20, was killed in the shooting. Police were dispatched about 10:25 a.m. to the 500 block of Seventh Avenue North, said Sgt. Charlie Burton. When they arrived in the neighborhood they found Walker suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead on the scene at 10:22 a.m. The McMillon brothers and Hill were taken into custody shortly after the slaying, and a vehicle towed as evidence. Bessemer police Sgt. Cortice Miles on Monday said investigators believe the shooting stemmed from an argument that happened more than a week ago. The slaying is the sixth this year in Bessemer. In all of Jefferson County, there have been 127 homicides. The investigation is ongoing, Miles said, and anyone with information about the case is asked to call Bessemer police at 205-425-2411 or the department's Tip Line at 205-428-3541. Childersburg Student paddled.jpg ( ) The father of an eighth-grade Childersburg boy said his son was paddled at school for writing "Trump" on the blackboard, and he's livid. "I don't think you ought to be punished for writing the president's name,'' Troy Stephenson told Al.com. "Yeah, I'm pretty mad." The incident happened Thursday at Childersburg Middle School. This is what was written on the Talladega County Schools Discipline Referral Form sent home with the student: "Students were told on yesterday because of the sensitivity of the matter, not to discuss the election unless it was in history class. They were told any discussion would result in an office referral. (The student) decided to write "Trump" on my board this morning, disregarding others that were in the classroom. This resulted in some upset students. I informed the student that the name (it could have been the other candidate) wasn't the issue. But it was the nature of everything behind it." The disciplinary form reflected the following actions: conference with pupil, phone call to parents, and corporal punishment. Efforts to reach Childersburg Middle School officials for comment Friday and Monday were unsuccessful. Griff Hill, the coordinator for secondary programs for Talladega County Schools, said he couldn't comment specifically on disciplinary action against any student, but said, "I can say with 100 percent accuracy, no student would ever be disciplined based on their political beliefs. There would never be a situation in our school system where the students would be disciplined because of their support of a political candidate." Last week, Tuscaloosa City Schools received a number of complaints after a high school math teacher projected an image of Donald Trump firing President Barack Obama in his classroom on Wednesday. In Childersburg, Stephenson said the school called him and told him what happened. They then asked him if he'd rather his 14-year-old get paddled, or spend the day in in-school suspension. "I said I didn't think they should be punished at all,'' Stephenson said. "They said it caused a disruption." He told the school his wife was on her way, but if they couldn't wait for her to arrive, they should let his son make the decision. "I told them 'I don't want you to do anything,'' he said. By the time his wife arrived, the young teen had already been paddled by Assistant Principal Chad Bynum, Stephenson said. Alabama is one of just 15 states with a state law that explicitly allows for corporal punishment. Another 29 states specifically ban the practice. For two weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election, Stephenson said, the students had been given homework assignments to watch election coverage and study the process. It's only natural, he said, that the students would continue those discussions after the election results came in. "You piqued their interest, and then when the candidate you wanted to win didn't win, you want it hush-hush," he said. "That's what it looks like to me." Stephenson said he spoke with a school official Monday morning who told him his son was paddled not because he wrote "Trump" on the board, but because he wrote anything on the board at all. Stephenson has contacted a lawyer, and they are deciding what to do next. In the meantime, he said, he has instructed his son to avoid all political discussions at school. "Basically what they've done is give them a gag order. That's against the First Amendment, and I just don't understand,'' he said. "It just seems drastic to me." Stephenson's attorney, Scott Morro, said Bynum and the Talladega County School Board are sending the wrong message. "The Presidential Election had been discussed for months in class. The election results and their ramifications should have been discussed as well. What a perfect time to teach,'' Morro said. "Instead, the students were banned from discussing it. The student shouldn't ignore rules or instruction but those same rules and instruction shouldn't stifle free speech,'' he said. "They have equated writing Trump on a blackboard to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. Corporal punishment, without the parents' permission in this case, is unreasonable. We are still gathering evidence and will determine what action to take in the future. The family hopes that by bringing this incident to the forefront that the Talladega School Board will think before they act." More than 200 volunteers turned out for a cleanup event Sunday at Lake Purdy, which has receded dramatically in the midst of a record-setting drought in Alabama. The reservoir, a major source of drinking water for the Birmingham area, is down to about 25 percent of its usual capacity, exposing large swaths of land usually covered by water. The volunteers took advantage of the opportunity to remove hundreds of beer bottles and cans, at least a dozen tires, assorted car and appliance parts, and at least one discarded computer with a crayfish living inside (see the video below). John McDonald of Birmingham said he visited the lake just to look around on Saturday, and came back the next day for the cleanup. "It's just incredible," McDonald said of the dry lake bed. "We probably got 10 or 15 bags (of trash). We got some Vienna sausage cans, a lot of old Coke cans and beer bottles. "It's great that there's such a big turnout today, but hopefully we never have to do this again." Ken Delap, manager of the Lake Purdy Fish and Boat shop, said a lot of people are visiting the lake outside of the usual crowd of bass fishers. "We're actually sort of becoming a tourist attraction," Delap said. "How often can you go walk along somewhere that's usually 20 feet underwater?" Delap helped organize the cleanup day, and during the afternoon became "Trash Man," by hot-gluing small pieces of trash to his suit. A large dumpster brought out for the occasion was almost completely full by the end of the cleanup. See the video below for more from Sunday's event at Lake Purdy. Family Dollar Robbery.jpg (Tuscaloosa Police) Police are trying to identify a man who robbed employees of a Tuscaloosa store at gunpoint late Sunday night. Officers responded about 9:30 p.m. to Dollar General in the 200 block of 14th Street on a report of a robbery. When they arrived on the scene, employees told them that while closing the store, a black male wearing a green hooded jumpsuit and sunglasses entered and robbed them. The gunman took an undisclosed amount of money, as well as phones belonging to the store and the employees, said Lt. Teena Richardson. While searching the area, officers recovered the suspect's clothing, all three phones and money in the area of the railroads north of the store. Anyone with information on the suspect or the crime is asked to call Tuscaloosa Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division at 205-248-4520 or Crime Stoppers at 205-752-7867. priebus.jpg Reince Priebus, Chair of the Republican National Committee, right, speaks as President-elect Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech during his election night rally, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson) (Julie Jacobson) WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump on Sunday named Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus his White House chief of staff, elevating one of his loyal GOP advisers with a deep expertise of the Washington establishment Trump has vowed to shake up. Priebus, a close ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan, called the appointment "an honor" and predicted the billionaire "will be a great president for all Americans." Trump also named Stephen Bannon, his campaign CEO and executive on leave from conservative website Breitbart, to be the president-elect's chief strategist and senior counsel. According to a statement, Trump called Priebus and Bannon "equal partners." "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said in the statement. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." With Vice President-elect Mike Pence as transition chief, the trio was expected to organize the incoming administration, according to a statement from the Trump camp. There was much to steady. The appointments came after a day in which Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and Ryan rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people living in the country illegally. After Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" that his border wall might look more like a fence in spots, the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores. President-elect Donald Trump tells '60 Minutes' he plans to deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants During a four-hour spree, Trump savaged the New York Times and gloated about the GOP stalwarts lining up to congratulate him, bragging that staunch critics and GOP rivals John Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent attaboys. Former presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush also had sent their "best wishes on the win. Very nice!" The New York Times, Trump wrote to his 14 million followers, is "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate." As Trump revenge-tweeted, threats flew between power brokers, and protests across the country continued. The president-elect retreated from the campaign promise that had inspired his supporters chant "Build the wall!" at Trump's massive campaign rallies. Would he accept a fence in some spots on the border? In an interview to be aired Sunday, Trump told "60 Minutes": "For certain areas, I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. There could be some fencing." Excerpts of the interview were released in advance. Trump also had vowed to immediately deport all 11 million people in the country illegally. But in the interview, he said he's focusing first on ousting or incarcerating 2 million to 3 million "that are criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers." Trump emphasized that securing the border is his very first immigration priority. On that, Ryan agreed. But on CNN's "State of the Union," Ryan rejected the kind of "mass deportations" Trump had championed during the campaign. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force," he said. More tension emerged Sunday when Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid should be careful in a "legal sense" about characterizing Trump as a sexual predator. When asked whether Trump was threatening to sue Reid, Conway said no. But Adam Jentleson, Reid's deputy chief of staff, said Trump is "hiding behind his Twitter account and sending his staff on TV to threaten his critics." Meanwhile, another Trump aide -- Rudy Giuliani -- suggested that the president-elect should have a "blind trust" to run his global empire to avoid potential conflicts of interest. But he said three of Trump's adult children should probably have a hand in that trust. "There's no perfect way to do this," he told CNN's "State of the Union." ''You have to have some confidence in the integrity of the president. Also on Sunday, Republicans backed off decades of investigating Clinton. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on "Fox News Sunday" that GOP-led congressional Republicans will focus on policy and leave any probes of Clinton to law enforcement. Ryan, meanwhile, tried to calm the nation by suggesting that "people should just really put their minds at ease, we are pluralistic, we're inclusive." Acts of hate, he said, had nothing to do with the GOP. "People who espouse those views, they're not Republicans and we don't want them in our party even if they're thinking about it. And I'm confident Donald Trump feels the same way," the Wisconsin Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union." But at least on Sunday, Trump seemed to prefer to relish his election win. At one point, he noted that Gov. Kasich, who refused to endorse him, "of the GREAT, GREAT, GREAT STATE OF Ohio called to congratulate me on the win." Trump pointedly did not return the congratulations or offer thanks to Kasich. "The people of Ohio were incredible!" he tweeted. Governor John Kasich of the GREAT, GREAT, GREAT State of Ohio called to congratulate me on the win. The people of Ohio were incredible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016 He later attributed his win to his performance in the presidential debates against Democrat Hillary Clinton. "The debates, especially the second and third, plus speeches and intensity of the large rallies, plus OUR GREAT SUPPORTERS, gave us the win!" A teen who pleaded guilty to felony murder in the 2014 killing of a Domino's deliveryman was sentenced today to 20 years in prison. Corey Arrington Jr., 19, was charged in the December 21, 2014 death of Najeh Masaeid during a robbery. The incident happened at The District at the Summit, an apartment complex in the popular shopping area off of U.S. 280. He was also sentenced by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace to 10 years for robbing a Papa John's deilveryman at the same apartment complex weeks before Masaeid's death. The sentences will run concurrently. Masaeid, 63, was called to deliver a pizza to a vacant apartment in the complex. When he arrived, Arrington punched Masaeid and knocked him down, before punching the deliveryman again. Police testified at a preliminary hearing last year that Arrington said when Masaeid fell, he hit his head on the concrete ground. Arrington said Masaeid was bleeding from the mouth and choking when he turned the body over to get his wallet. According to the owner of the Cahaba Heights' Domino's, Masaeid did not have more than $20 in his wallet. Masaeid's car was still running when police arrived, after a resident found the Jordanian man's body. A warming bag holding pizzas was found near him. At a preliminary hearing last year, Detective Charles Wilson said Arrington, who was 17 at the time of Masaeid's death, placed the pizza order via an app called Pinger. The app number was traced back to Arrington. Arrington pleaded guilty to felony murder, a lesser charge than his original charge of capital murder. "This case was never a capital murder case," said John Lentine, one of Arrington's attorneys. "This was an unintentional homicide that occurred during a robbery." Lentine said that if Masaeid did not fall and hit his head during the incident, Arrington would only be facing robbery charges. During the sentencing hearing, Domino's manager Clara Hogan and Masaeid's daughter Jordan Hosey spoke. Arrington and his mother, Neville Means, also spoke. "He doesn't deserve to walk the streets we walk," Hogan said through tears. When asked how long Masaeid had worked alongside her, she replied: "I think he was born with the store." She said that whenever she needed someone to cover a shift, Masaeid was the first to volunteer. Hogan said Masaeid would always say, "Najeh come, Najeh come! Just call me!" Hosey, Masaeid's only daughter, said her father always dreamed of coming to the United States. When he arrived, he relied on hard work and taught his family to do the same. She cried when she told the court how her father would not get the chance to see his grandchildren grow. "He won't be at their graduations, their weddings..." she said. She said her father always stressed to his four children that if they chose to disobey a rule, there would be consequences. Looking at Arrington, Hosey said, "You made that choice." "We will never forget the day all of this was changed because of his decision," she said. "I forgive the tragedy he caused, but I don't forgive him." More than two rows were filled with family and friends of Arrington. During his short statement, the teen said he was "truly sorry" for his actions which resulted in Masaeid's death. "If I could give my life for his... I would," he said. Arrington added that he would suffer every day of his life. Means reiterated that her son was sorry for his actions, and that he prayed for Masaeid after he ran from the crime scene. "I'm a hard worker. I believe in working- I tried to teach my son that," she said. "Give my son a second chance to right his wrong." Arrington Jr. at his sentencing hearing on November 14, 2016 (Ivana Hrynkiw | ihrynkiw@al.com) Before announcing the sentence, Wallace said that Arrington did not plan the murder; but the robbery was premeditated. "There's no way in the world I can come up with a sentence that equates with what your father's life was worth," he said to Hosey. "I wish I could put things back." Wallace said Arrington took responsibility for the crime and has no criminal record. Those factors influenced his decision, he said. Arrington told police he did not intend to kill Masaeid, which Lentine repeated throughout the sentencing hearing. Chief Jefferson County Medical Examiner Dr. Greg Davis said Masaeid died of a brain injury caused by blunt force trauma. During questioning from Lentine at the preliminary hearing, Davis said the injury could have been caused by Masaeid hitting the concrete. Hosey said after the hearing she was disappointed with the sentence, but her family would "rest better" now that the case was over. "I've let the poison in my heart... affect me for so long. It's not up to me to be the judge." She described the past two years as emotionally draining, and she hopes that Arrington changes his life for the better when he is released from prison. Hosey added that she did not think Arrington's remorse was sincere. "He came here for the American Dream and it was shattered by American greed,'' Hosey previously said of her father. "Where's the justice in that?" T.A. "Theo" Lawson II, who served more than a decade as an assistant attorney in Jefferson County's legal department, was recently tapped to lead that department. He is the first African American to hold that job. The Jefferson County Commission on Nov. 2 unanimously approved Lawson's appointment as Jefferson County Attorney. "I am elated to have been chosen Jefferson County Attorney," Lawson said. "I hope that my selection by this commission is evidence to all, of the progress that is being made here in Jefferson County." Lawson replaces Carol Sue Nelson, who left the county attorney's job on Sept. 30. "After interviewing over a dozen applicants, Mr. Lawson proved to be the best candidate for the position," said Jimmie Stephens, president of the Jefferson County Commission. "His institutional knowledge coupled with a very competent legal skill set and loyalty to the county clearly presented Theo as the man for the job. The Jefferson County legal department represents the county commission and other departments in legal matters, including defending the county against lawsuits. Among those legal issues is the on-going federal monitoring of the county's personnel department. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith in in late 2013 appointed a receiver to oversee the Jefferson County human resources department after finding the county commission had not complied with a 1982 federal consent decree that mandates the county not discriminate against blacks and women in hiring, firing and other personnel matters. Smith holds monthly status conferences to receive reports from the receiver to see how the county is doing in complying with the decree and efforts to revamp the county's hiring process. Lawson is a 1990 graduate of the Birmingham School of Law. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication degree from the University of Alabama (1984). Before his appointment by the commission Lawson had served since 2004 as an assistant county attorney. Lawson has also worked during that same time in law enforcement. A certified law enforcement officer, Lawson is a graduate of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department Law Enforcement Academy and has been an instructor at the Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and the Alabama Northeastern Law Enforcement academies. Last year Lawson was appointed as Director of Public Safety Director and Chief Law Enforcement Officer for the Miles College Police Department. Since 1998 he has also served as a professor at Miles Law School. Lawson is the son of Lawson State founder T.A. Lawson. The college was founded in 1950. Also, since 2000 Lawson has been a reserve Lieutenant with the Fairfield Police Department serving as legal adviser for the police chief and investigations division and as firearms and tactical instructor for the department. Lawson also once served as a prosecutor in the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office. He served from 1991 to 2000 as a deputy district attorney, prosecuting a variety of cases, from capital murders and rapes to misdemeanor appeals. From 2000 to 2004 was chief assistant city attorney and deputy director of the City of Birmingham legal department. Lawson noted he has a connection to another person who is on the verge of making history - Lynneice Washington who is leading in the tight race for district attorney of the Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff. If her victory is ultimately confirmed after a Nov. 21 automatic recount, she would become the first African American, and the first woman, in Jefferson County history told the position of district attorney in the county. "Six years ago we were campaigning together. Me for district attorney and she for district judge," Lawson said. "When she was battling cancer I would drive when she couldn't. We both lost. She is a great person." Washington is leading Republican Bill Veitch by 223 votes and an automatic recount is set because vote difference is less than one half of one percent. Provisional and overseas and military ballots also have yet to be counted. Veitch, who was appointed the cutoff's district attorney in January after the retirement of former cutoff district attorney Arthur Green Jr., is awaiting the results of the recount. That a guy named William Johnston II voted for Donald Trump in Alabama last Tuesday may not seem extraordinary. But despite Johnston's very Anglo-sounding name, he is in fact the 20-year-old son of two Brazilian immigrants. A sophomore business major at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Johnston is one of the just 18 percent of Latino voters who cast their ballots for Trump, according to The Washington Post. One of the big questions many asked in the day's following Trump's win last week was why so many Latinos voted for him despite his repeated pledges to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and deport millions of immigrants. But the Latino vote is not monolithic, and Johnston is no uninformed fool. 'I'm conservative' For Johnston, it all goes back to his deeply held conservative principles. A diehard disciple of conservative darling Ted Cruz, he even traveled to Iowa to volunteer for the Texas senator's campaign before he lost the presidential primary. "I'm actually a Ted Cruz guy. I'm big on states' rights and cutting money for big federal programs," he explained in between sips of a Mocha Frappuccino outside a Starbucks on Birmingham's South Side Friday night. "I'm fiscally conservative, small federal government. I just say I'm conservative when people ask." But Johnston said that after Trump and Hillary Clinton were selected as their parties' presidential nominees this summer, he did "plenty of research" on the candidates. Though he admits he is new enough to politics that he doesn't know whether he would have backed Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush in their primaries, he eventually concluded that despite disagreeing with a number of Trump's proposals and many of his offensive statements, Clinton was simply unelectable. "I honestly think WikiLeaks hurt her a lot," he said. "Another big thing was the Supreme Court. When Hillary believes an illegal immigrant has more rights than an unborn baby - which I believe is a human being - that's a big problem." 'He doesn't hate immigration' And so the topic of immigration was broached. As a Latino who describes himself as a first-generation immigrant, Johnston has gotten plenty of hate both online and off for his decision to vote for a candidate who said that Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists," and who has said he will preside over mass deportations. Johnston's parents both lived for years near the Brazilian capital of Brasilia before he was born in Atlanta, and they now live in Prattville after a stint of about a dozen years in Alaska. His mother is of 100 percent Brazilian descent, and his father was born in Rio de Janeiro, but is only half-Brazilian. Johnston's paternal grandfather was a white American who fought for the U.S. in World War II, hence his name. He may be a member of the first generation of his nuclear family to be born in America - and the first to tweet more than 39,000 times - but that doesn't mean that Johnston has sympathy for people who enter the U.S. illegally. And even if he did, he believes Trump doesn't actually intend to make good on his most extreme anti-immigration proposals. "There's no way he's going to deport every single illegal immigrant. It's not going to work," he said. "The main thing people will tell you is Trump hates immigrants. He doesn't hate immigration, he hates illegal immigration." Rather than simply deporting all illegal immigrants, as has been floated in the past, Johnston believes that there should be a difficult and expensive path to citizenship for them to attain citizenship, so long as they have not been convicted of a crime. 'Middle ground' That doesn't fall in line with some of the hardline right-wing or mainstream GOP proposals, but Johnston says that he is no typical Republican and that rather than being doctrinaire and overly partisan, he prefers to "find that middle ground" while upholding his conservative principles. "I would say I'm pretty conservative. I don't agree with the way the typical Republicans do everything. A lot of them are RINOs [Republicans In Name Only]," he said. "But I don't like trying to polarize." Those two statements may seem at odds, and Johnston's strong support for proposals like the flat tax, mandatory voter ID and harsh cuts or outright elimination of entire federal agencies may seem anathema to compromise with liberals. But he also thinks Trump should enact some more progressive policies, such as a heavy investment in infrastructure. And he believes that "American society needs an authority figure - not to fear, but for people to respect." Store.jpg Customers talk outside Berlin Plaza Quick Stop in Cullman, Ala., on June 10, 2014. The store was the scene of a shooting two days earlier that preceded the slaying on a man convicted of sexually abusing a girl in 2002. The girl's father is now charged with murder in the shooting. ((AP Photo/Jay Reeves) ) An Alabama man scheduled for trial today in the killing of his daughter's sexual abuser pleaded guilty to murder in Cullman County Circuit Court. Jay Maynor, 43, of Cullman, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the June 2014 killing of Raymond Earl Brooks, a 59-year-old Berlin man, The Cullman Times reported. Brooks pleaded guilty to sexually abusing Maynor's daughter 15 years ago. Circuit Judge Gregory Nicholas issued the sentence and accepted Maynor's plea. Maynor also was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted murder because he opened fire outside a country store in the Berlin community, The Times reported. Just before Brooks was killed, Maynor saw and fired at a man who had been dating his stepdaughter. The boyfriend ran into the Berlin Plaza Quick Stop on U.S. 278 and hid. Brooks pleaded guilty to sexual abuse in 2002. Although he was sentenced to five years in prison, he later received probation, court records show. Sulaimania When gold appears in the Euphrates River, out of a hundred men, only one will survive so recounted a Kurdish woman from Kirkuk whom I met on my way to Sulaimania in Iraqs Kurdistan region. She was paraphrasing a famous hadith, or saying, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Its an old saying, its in our books, she insisted. A hundred men, and only one will survive. Isnt this happening all around us today? People are coming to my country and fighting and dying for what? Does anybody know? This hadith about gold in the Euphrates has become an oft-repeated truism since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The gold appeared for the Kurdish region and lasted a decade a decade of prosperity, reconstruction and hope before the advent of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Two years after ISILs declaration of its so-called caliphate, the ongoing battle for Mosul has elicited a wide range of reactions in Iraqs northern Kurdistan region. But the overarching sentiments are hopelessness, apathy and cynicism. READ MORE: Money and patience grow short in Iraqi Kurdistan They promised us independence after Saddam Husseins regime fell, said the Kirkuki woman. But now whenever our president [Massoud Barzani] appears on TV to talk about independence, we all laugh. We know hes trying to distract us from some crisis or corruption scandal. But nobody buys it any more. Once a post-war boomtown for foreign investors, the Kurdish region today is a ghost town. And the public sector salary crisis, which began in late 2014, has now taken its toll. by Whether the crisis is Barzanis refusal to cede his presidential post (his term expired in August 2015) or the expected tsunami of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Mosul, people are fed up. Or as one politician told me, off the record: Independence? What are you talking about? We cant afford to run the few cities we have under Kurdish regional control. This war isnt about grabbing lands. This isnt about independence. This is about holding on to what we have. Indeed, a festering dispute between Baghdad and Erbil over illicit oil sales has meant that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has not received its 16 percent share of the Iraqi budget for months. Once a post-war boomtown for foreign investors, the Kurdish region today is a ghost town. And the public sector salary crisis, which began in late 2014, has now taken its toll. Its the [mostly Arab] IDPs who are keeping the business going in the bazaar, says one resident of Sulaimania. They still receive their pensions and salaries from the Baghdad government. But here, the Kurds are getting nothing. The IDPs are richer than we are! A resolution of the dispute with Baghdad, reached last month, was dampened by internal Kurdish bickering. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, which holds sway over the province of Sulaimania and Kirkuk, accused the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of misappropriating the Kurdish regional budget. Meanwhile, the average Kurdish public sector worker hasnt been paid in months, and pensions for invalids and the elderly have been slashed. As a consequence, public schools and universities are now closed teachers havent been paid. Only the wealthy can afford to attend private schools and universities. We have never seen so many people enlist for Peshmerga service, quipped the politician. Its about the only public sector job that is getting salaries paid at least from time to time. The Kirkuk woman lamented the state of her nation: An entire generation is being deprived of an education. What will become of us? A nation of shoe-shiners and vegetable sellers? Our politicians seem to be telling us, forget your education, get a menial job to make ends meet. In a region where most media outlets are controlled by one party or another, and reliable information is scarce, many continue to rely on hearsay or a neighbours anecdotes. READ MORE: Kurdish war history preserved through art Rumours are rife in town about IDPs in their midst supposedly sympathising with ISIL, or about Kurdish politicians making deals with neighbouring countries, purportedly giving away 50 percent of the regions oil wealth. They are accusing us of trying to change demographics, of burning down Arab villages But whose demographics are really changing? asked one politician. We have 1.5 million Arab IDPs living across the Kurdistan region today in Erbil, in Sulaimania, in Dohuk and who will likely never return to their hometowns because they cant. So whose demographics are changing? Follow Tanya Goudsouzian on Twitter: @tgoudsouzian While one resident sees Trumps victory as a reminder of the hatred in the world, another calls it a miracle. Hamtramck, Michigan Hip-hop and Middle Eastern music spill from the windows of passing cars, competing for attention with the days final call to prayer at the corner mosque. Men and women, many in headscarves and long robes, walk along the pavements as another day comes to a close. Welcome to Hamtramck, said to be the most diverse city in Michigan. Last year, the city of 22,400 people became the first in the country to be run by a Muslim-majority city council. Residents claim their city is its own little world, and they work hard and coexist peacefully here the way Americans are supposed to, they say. But this little world was shaken on November 8 when Republican nominee Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. People were shocked, said Saad Almasmari, who tipped Hamtramcks city council to a Muslim majority when he was elected a year ago. We pushed hard for Hillary Clinton. Almasmari, a 29-year-old immigrant from Yemen, said the city came out in droves to vote, motivated largely by Trumps anti-Islam and anti-immigration rhetoric. More than half of Hamtramcks residents are practising Muslims and immigrants from Yemen, Bangladesh, Poland and Bosnia make up the majority of the citys population. African Americans also claim a sizable portion. It hasnt alway been this way: The city was once an enclave of almost exclusively Polish Catholic immigrants. A wave of immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia, however, changed the demographics of the city dramatically. The shift initially caused a rumble in the community. Tension came to a head with protests about 10 years ago when a local mosque was granted permission to broadcast its call to prayer over a rooftop speaker. Karen Majewski, Hamtramcks mayor and the daughter of Polish immigrants, said in the past that some Polish residents felt uneasy about the ethnic shift. She, however, supported the mosques efforts to broadcast the call to prayer in 2004. Majewski has also been outspoken on social media about her disdain for Trump and has shown support for the diversity of her city. In an open letter to residents posted on Facebook the day after the election, Majewski said: Its no secret that I strongly opposed Trump in this election, and like many of you Im worried about what a Trump presidency would bring for the country and the world Were all immigrants, and we respect each other Flags from nations across the globe flutter above Joseph Campau Avenue, a main thoroughfare of the city. Mosques sit across the street from churches. Middle Eastern and European restaurants and supermarkets are scattered throughout the city. I, as a Muslim, know my non-Muslim neighbour who knows her Catholic neighbour who knows his Jewish neighbour, Almasmari said. Were all immigrants, and we respect each other. For many, Trumps lack of respect for immigrants and minorities during his campaign seemed to undermine the diversity embraced by the people of Hamtramck. I didnt think Trump had a chance, said Omar Alkusari. He alienated Muslims, blacks, women and gay people. Alkusari, who came to the US from Yemen in the 1980s, said he could not fall asleep on election night and stayed awake into the early hours of the morning. He felt some fear when he heard the results. I have a lot of worry about what could happen, Alkusari said. The 33-year-old said he is not fearful for himself so much as much as he is about Muslims in other communities that are not so welcoming as Hamtramck. Trump stirred up hatred in the country, Alkusari said, and if the president-elect did not mean what he said, then hes a hypocrite, at best, he added. But Alkusari is still confident that his country will continue to grow in the right direction. Let the racists see that he cant just kick us out and that he cant just bring Jim Crow laws back, Alkusari said, referring to a set of US laws that once enforced segregation between blacks and whites. Down one of Hamtramcks signature narrow alleyways is the Al-Islah Islamic Centre, where a mostly Bangladeshi Muslim community meets for prayer. Abdul Motlib, president of the centre, said Trumps win was nothing short of a miracle. I feel fine about him winning, he said, unlike others in his community. Motlib thinks Trumps anti-Muslim and immigrant rhetoric was simply a campaigning tool to win the election and believes that the president-elect will behave differently when he is in office. It is [Gods] decision to have Trump, he said. Of course he will support our community. He will be president for everybody. Others in the community are not so sure of his equitability, and the harshness of Trumps pre-election behaviour still worries some. Jeff Urcheck, 25, of Hamtramck, said that he loves the citys diversity and that Trumps words were damaging. The things he said about Muslims and women are horrifying, Urcheck said. It makes me scared for my neighbours. A citys resolve In an aged, brick school building on the Detroit-Hamtramck border, MaNisha Walls, 25, of Detroit, carries on through her day as a school teacher as though nothing in the country has changed. In her heart, however, she said she knows what Trumps election is a revelation. Trumps election is a reminder of the hatred in this world, Walls, who converted to Islam four years ago, said. Hes ignorant and despicable. Walls is all three, as she calls it: female, Muslim and black. Walls teaches third-grade pupils at a private school attended mostly by Muslims. The morning after election, she said, her children came to class curious about what the results meant. Did you know Trump won? He hates Muslims. Hes going to deport us, she recalls some of the young pupils saying. Walls said she is not worried about her own life under Trump because she has no problem persevering through any hardships that may come. Im proud that I stand out and I am different, she said, but it is the children in her classroom she worries about. My kids arent strong enough yet to know who they are, she told Al Jazeera. It breaks my heart that there is hatred, and I cant always protect them. The mayors post continues, addressing the fears shared by members of her community: We live in a city whose strength is its diversity, where people live as neighbours no matter what country they come from, no matter the circumstances that brought them here, no matter their language, their ethnicity, no matter the colour of their skin, no matter their religion, no matter their gender, and no matter who they love. For all the differences in race, religion and opinion packed into Hamtramck, the city is united by its resolve and unwillingness to let these differences divide them. A series of surprise voting results this year and last has led to much speculation as to the cause of these high-profile prediction failures. They include the election of Donald Trump in the US and of the Conservative Party in Britain, the UK referendum to leave the EU, and the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Each has its own particular circumstances, of course, but a common denominator has been finger-pointing at opinion polling, with suggestions that the industry is facing a crisis and potential demise. Such thinking is premature, and is largely based on over-simplification, mischaracterisation, and a degree of scapegoating. It is nothing new for opinion polls not to reflect actual voting outcomes. However, people forget that such polls are not predictions, but snapshots of sentiment at the time they are undertaken. Prominent polling organisations have a good track record, but they make headlines only when they are wrong, giving the impression that they are wrong more often than they actually are. They are even criticised when they get the result correct, but do not accurately reflect its extent. For instance, opinion polls correctly suggested that last years referendum on Scottish independence would result in a vote to remain part of the UK, but they got flak for suggesting the outcome would be tighter than it turned out to be. Prediction challenges Opinion polls considerably underestimated Trumps following, but his rival Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote, albeit by a far smaller margin than they suggested she would. The problem here lies with the US Electoral College, which does not necessarily correlate with the popular vote (hence Trumps victory despite getting fewer votes nationally). He won a few key states by a very slim margin had they gone Clintons way, she would be the next president, and pollsters would not be facing anywhere near the level of opprobrium they are facing now. OPINION: Trump Tribe portrait of the New Americans Opinion polling faces some significant shortcomings that are difficult to overcome, and this should be recognised by those who place great stock in them. Changes in communication technology are complicating the ability to get truly representative samples, and there are suggestions that in the cases of the US election and Brexit, opinion polls underrepresented the white working classes. It is difficult to predict how people will vote if they tell pollsters they are undecided, or if they do not want to express their political view. People can change their minds, they can decide to not share their opinions or they can flat-out lie, wrote Mona Chalabi, data editor at Guardian US. This has been exacerbated by the vitriolic nature of certain elections and referendums, among them the US election and Brexit. There are suggestions that some people feel ashamed to tell pollsters how they will vote, either out of fear of being judged, or because they are struggling with their decision. It is also difficult to predict voter turnout, and which candidate or movement will get more people to the polling booths. Opinion polls may even inadvertently influence this. If they show one side in the lead, this may encourage complacency and galvanise the losing side to maximise turnout. Polling data led the Clinton campaign to feel quietly confident of a victory in Wisconsin and Michigan, and to therefore air few advertisements in those states, wrote Chalabi. Both ended up voting for Trump. Keeping up to date with changes in technology, communication platforms, demographics and other relevant factors is often necessarily a reactionary process for pollsters, rather than a proactive one. Social media bubbles Newer methods of prediction based on data from social media have been successful, but they have not been around long enough for their flaws to be highlighted by prediction failures. These methods include measuring which side has more tweets in its favour, and measuring engagement data from sites such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. However, there are obvious shortcomings to this. Not all tweets can be pigeonholed as for or against a particular candidate or party, and they do not necessarily indicate the tweeters voting intentions. In addition, reading a tweet or Facebook post does not necessarily mean the reader endorses the view expressed. Furthermore, thousands of automated Twitter accounts campaigned for Trump and Clinton. If measuring social media sentiment becomes a more established way of predicting elections, there will be a great incentive for each side to create bots to give the impression they will win, wrote Patrick Evans of the BBCs user-generated content and social news team. As social media proliferates and becomes a primary news source for a growing number of people, the way it is used is key to explaining the shock over certain voting results. On these platforms, people tend to be connected with like-minded others, and tend to read and share content with which they agree, aided by algorithms that ensure you receive the kind of content you like. This creates bubbles from which opposing views are minimised if not absent, giving the impression that those views are less popular. As such, shock results are usually only shocking to those whose bubbles have been burst. Blame is assigned and accusations made, because that is easier and more comforting than facing the fact that your view the one echoed for so long in your self-made chamber is not the prevailing one, or that there is a whole other narrative with which you are unfamiliar. Sharif Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and analyst on Arab affairs. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Donald Trump has been proclaimed an honorary Cossack in St Petersburg. Russia Today editor Margarita Simonyan is driving around Moscow in a car decorated with an American flag, and the crypto-fascist ideologist of Russian neo-imperialism, Aleksandr Dugin, has called for dumping anti-Americanism now that Trump has won. Russia has been rooting for the US president-elect throughout the campaign, so naturally, it is now celebrating his victory. But it doesnt mean that we are in for an era of reset and reconciliation between the US and Russia. Putin needs Trump not as a friend but as an ideal enemy, who will help him to mobilise his constituency and keep domestic opposition at bay. Looking for a cartoonish enemy Yes at the beginning, it will look like the start of a beautiful friendship. Putin wont be himself if he doesnt try and dupe Trump into concessions on Ukraine and Syria. In exchange, he might hand over Edward Snowden to the US. He will have no qualms about it because he views Snowden as a traitor who is now biting the hand that feeds him by openly criticising internet censorship in Russia. But ultimately the Kremlin has other designs for Trump. The pillar that supports the political regime in Russia is the besieged fortress mentality; it is natural for a people who have seen nothing but misery and genocide for most of the previous century. To maintain this worldview, its vital to have a powerful enemy that attacks Russian interests across the globe, an omnipotent alien force which ordinary Russians can blame for their misfortunes and bleak, unhappy life. Apart from coming across as cynical and ruthless, the enemy should be suitably cartoonish and capable of feeding Russian propaganda with ridiculous gaffes and bizarre escapades. George W Bush suited this description ideally. Barack Obama, on the other hand, was problematic too clever, too cautious and surrounded by people who actually understand what modern Russia is. Obama was hard to hate. Now Trump is even better than Bush. Rude and ruthless, but also clueless on so many issues, self-contradicting, mind-bogglingly disingenuous he is an epitome of an American oligarch. To someone who grew up in the USSR, Trump is a twin brother of Mister Twister, ex-minister, a character from a Soviet childrens poem by Samuil Marshak, who satirised American capitalism in the 1930s. Millions of Russians still remember it by heart. Trump is a walking caricature of America, a gift to the Russian propaganda machine which the Kremlin couldnt even dream of. The ideological proximity of Trump and Putin shouldnt fool anyone. Yes, they are both members of the global populist movement that has almost completely erased the 20th-century left-right division. They also have very similar constituencies. OPINION: Under surveillance in Russia In the past week, Ive driven 3,000 kilometres through the Midwest swing states, talking to Trump supporters in small towns and villages. The parallels with Russia are striking. Just like Putins, Trumps constituency comprised those who have lost in the process of globalisation and liberalisation, who find it hard to live in this new strange world and compete with those who are better fit for it. By voting for Trump or Putin, they want to rein in time, make it move slower so they can catch up with those who they see as bigmouth upstarts getting money for nothing. The term silent majority, which Trump supporters are so fond of using, evokes the memory of the aggressively obedient majority a 1990s term describing those Russians who didnt accept democratic changes and paved the way for the advent of Putin. A Putin-Trump symbiosis But the fact that the two politicians lead similar constituencies doesnt mean that they wont hate each other. Quite the opposite: They will enjoy mutual hatred. They will feed off it in a happy, political symbiosis. Putin will love to hate Trump in the same way he loves to hate East European nationalists who might be outwardly anti-Russian, but really appear on the same side of the global political barricade as the Kremlin. Russian TV propaganda takes an utmost pleasure in circulating Russophobic statements by Ukrainian, Baltic and Polish nationalists. They help prove that Russia is surrounded by enemies who will strike as soon as it becomes weak and disunited. But the Kremlin has a major problem with genuine liberals in these countries when they come to power. This is why in Ukraine the pro-Russian Party of Regions was funding the vehemently Russophobic Svoboda party, according to recently published fiscal documents. A Ukraine engulfed in archaic nationalism and Russophobia will never become a successful alternative to Putins Russia, it would never be a better place for Russian-speakers to live than Russia itself. A successful and liberal Ukraine, on the other hand, presents an existential risk for Putins regime, which is why it decided to start a war there in 2014. The other benefit of Trump and his likes in other countries, say Brexiteers in Britain, is that they create internal strife, which weakens the West and distracts everyones attention from what Russia is doing, while at the same time allows the Kremlin to present Russia as an island of stability to TV audiences at home. They also help to undermine Western supranational institutions, such as the EU and NATO, giving Russia free reign in its neighbourhood. Finally, a billionaire who was extremely reluctant to disclose his tax returns is extremely unlikely to go after the Western assets of his fellow billionaires in the Kremlin, thus greatly reducing the risk of regime change in Russia. For Putin and his entourage, Trump is not an extravagant and experimental choice. Its a conservative choice driven by the same kind of thinking that made Americans vote for Trump. It takes the world back into the good old Cold War times, when years of arms race and proxy wars were alternated with grandiose summits and nuclear treaties. It makes Russia feel great again. Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Moscow. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. In traditional Chinese medicine rhino horn was ground into a powder or shaved, added to boiling water and taken as a cure for a range of illnesses from arthritis to fever. Considering rhino horn is precisely the same material as your nails keratin you might just as well chew your own fingers. In the past couple of years some of the respected colleges of traditional medicine in China have come out saying that there is no scientific evidence that rhino horn has any curative or restorative value. Slowly its use was dying out. But a few years ago an urban myth spread around Vietnam. A never-identified VIP sometimes a general, sometimes a minister was supposedly at deaths door, his doctors having given up hope. Then he started taking rhino horn and made a miraculous recovery. And even though no one has ever identified the star of this story, suddenly rhino horn became a fashionable product not just as a medicine but also a hangover cure for the newly moneyed fashionable set. It showed off their purchasing power and had the added edgy appeal of being illegal. And so the slaughter of South Africas remaining rhino leapt from a few dozen in 2008 to several hundred by 2011 and around 1,200 over the past three years. Every night in the Kruger National Park, home to the worlds largest population of rhino, two or three animals are shot by poachers. As the demand from China and Vietnam grew, so the price rose. A kilo of horn sells for between $30,000 and $60,000 on the black market as it passes from dealer to dealer and on to the consumer. Cut into bangles or bead bracelets the price per kilo is cheaper. Horn is carved into cups and highly ornate libation bowls. Most expensive of all are the statues carved out of whole front horns, which can weigh upwards of 6 kilos and cost more than $250,000. None of that is new. Antique carvings and cups dating back to the 16th century regularly come up at auction and easily fetch prices upwards of $100,000. The auction house Christies sold one for almost $500,000. Horn, just like ivory, has long been prized as decorative proof of status and wealth. The difference is that even at the turn of the century there were tens of thousands of rhino across Africa and Asia. READ MORE: Anger and outrage over widespread rhino horn poaching Of course the closer the rhino comes to extinction, the more horn becomes a scarce resource with the inevitable hike in price. That in itself has created a new market in horn, to buy and keep, as an investment for the future. It is no longer anything to do with any supposed curative powers. It is now just about hard cash. As well as the wealthy buying horn, analysts and law enforcement agencies say that horn is traded between criminals as payment for other illegal deals such as drugs and weapons. Rhino horn has moved from a conservation issue to a major commodity for organised global crime syndicates. READ MORE: How conservationists saved one young rhinos life On the legal side, the owners of private rhino farms in South Africa have amassed stocks worth millions of dollars from the horns of rhino that have died naturally but also from periodically cutting the horns down to a stump. The horns can slowly regrow. John Hume, who owns the largest private herd of rhino, has an estimated stockpile of five tonnes of horn. He and other pro-trade farmers argue that they are protecting their animals from poachers. They also believe that creating a legal market in horn would put the criminal syndicates out of business. Their hope is that in the future the ban on trading horn will be lifted and they can sell their stocks. Turnbull said 1,200 refugees from Nauru will not be resettled in the US before president-elect Trump takes office. Australias prime minister said on Monday that resettlement to the US of many of the 1,200 asylum seekers from prisons on Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island of Nauru would begin after president-elect Donald Trumps inauguration in January. Whether Trump honours the deal Australia reached with the outgoing Obama administration, and announced earlier this month, will provide an early test of the new presidents anti-immigration stance. Behind Australias tough border policies Campaigning for the presidency, Trump started by advocating a blanket ban on Muslims entering the US, but later adjusted his stance to propose that the ban should apply to people from nations that had been compromised by terrorism. Australias Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Sunday that the US had agreed to take a substantial number of the 1,800 refugees held on Manus Island and Nauru. Many of them are Muslims who have fled conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under Australias tough border security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach the country by boat are sent for processing at detention centres on Papua New Guineas Manus island and Nauru under conditions harshly criticised by rights groups as well as the UN. Former employees from Nauru have also spoken to the media about widespread abuse at the camps, including violence against women and the sexual abuse of children. The resettlement deal came after Turnbulls government agreed in September to accept people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as part of Australias annual intake of 18,750 asylum seekers, to support a resettlement plan for Central Americans drawn up by Washington. Turnbull said on Monday the first refugees to be resettled in the US would not come before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Trump. The process will continue for some months. The United States wont be short-cutting their security or health checks, said Turnbull. Potential Trump veto Analysts said the timing could prove awkward for Turnbull. It looks pretty clear that the resettlement deal was done as a quid pro quo after Australia agreed to resettle Central American refugees, Peter Chen, professor of political science at the University of Sydney, said. But by holding off and starting the process in the expectation that Hillary Clinton would win the US presidency, it gives Trump the ability to reject the deal. Over the weekend, Trump said his administration would deport up to three million immigrants in the country illegally who have criminal records. While campaigning, Trump said he would deport 11 million illegal immigrants. Should Trump veto the deal with Australia, the detainees would be left with the choice of returning to their home countries or remaining in Nauru or Papua New Guinea. A veto would force Turnbull to search for another country willing to take them while facing growing outrage both at home and internationally over the treatment of the refugees. Turnbull said he remained confident that the new US administration would stand by the deal, stressing that it didnt require any increase in the USs annual intake of asylum seekers. It is a ubiquitous item for tourists to carry when travelling out of South Africa. Plastic bags that contain long strips of dried meat or game known locally as biltong. You can buy it almost anywhere and many visitors bring it home as a souvenir. Until now it was an innocent and delicious gift, but a new Al Jazeera investigation reveals that it is connected to a smuggling technique employed by wildlife traffickers. They use packets of biltong to sneak rhino horn out of the country. It is just one of many smuggling techniques revealed by a new Al Jazeera Investigation into the illicit trade. The programme, The Poachers Pipeline, tracks the movement of rhino horn from the kill in Africa to the sale in Asia. As part of the undercover investigation, a restaurant owner and middle man based in Johannesburg revealed the technique. The horn is cut into strips and placed in the middle of bags of biltong. Then, using a friendly butcher contact, the package is vacuum sealed and labelled as a commercially purchased bag of biltong. When smugglers leave the airport they can easily bypass customs officials. At the other end the rhino horn can be ground into powder and easily resold. I think he is a princeling Other traffickers use high-level contacts at airports in both Africa and Asia to circumvent the authorities. One trafficker featured in the film, who is based in Nelspruit, South Africa, claims that he uses a high-level contact at Beijing airport to smuggle in the horn. You pay the customs declaration before you fly directly back to China. Get the luggage number and you send it to our Beijing contact. You dont even need to pick up your luggage, explains the trafficker in a conversation recorded on hidden camera. Hes quite influential at the airport. I think he is a princeling, from a powerful family. Hes untouchable. READ MORE: Anger and outrage over widespread rhino horn poaching Rhino horn often has a terrible smell associated with it. In order to confirm that the horn is authentic traffickers prefer to have some of the rhino flesh still attached when they make a buy. As a result traffickers try to mask the smell. What they do is try and put it into boiling water to get the old meat off, says Joe Van Der Walt, the chief of operations for Focus Africa, a risk-management firm that focuses on wildlife trafficking. They then will make a garlic paste and slather it over the horn, wrap it in tin foil and try to throw the dogs off the scent. Diplomatic immunity Another way in which rhino horn can be smuggled out of the country is through the diplomatic pouch. When delegations are travelling on official business they can use the cover of diplomacy to hide the horn. Government officials in Africa are unlikely to allow police officials to search the bags of Chinese or Vietnamese diplomats, explains Julian Rademeyer, an analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. READ MORE: How conservationists saved one young rhinos life Rademeyer has documented dozens of examples in which embassies and government officials have been connected to rhino horn smuggling. In many instances diplomats bring home rhino horn as a status symbol. In one instance a car that was previously owned by the Vietnamese embassy in South Africa, had a special compartment installed in the back to hide rhino horn. Its essentially the perfect crime, explains Rademeyer. You have a diplomatic bag that cant be opened, it cant be searched. No prosecution at all. President Xi Jinping highlights importance of ties with the US in a phone call with incoming leader Donald Trump. Chinese President Xi Jinping has told US president-elect Donald Trump that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the worlds two largest economies, with Trump saying the two had established a clear sense of mutual respect. Intense speculation has swirled over the impact of Trumps win on China-US issues from global trade and climate change to the security balance in the Asia-Pacific. Trump lambasted China throughout the US election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges of slapping 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods, and labelling the country a currency manipulator. His election has injected uncertainty into relations at a time when Beijing hopes for stability as it faces daunting reform challenges at home, slowing growth, and a leadership reshuffle of its own that will put a new party elite around Xi in late 2017. In their first interaction since the US election, Chinese state media said Xi told Trump in a telephone call on Monday that as the worlds largest developing and developed economies, there were many areas where China and the United States could cooperate. READ MORE: Donald Trump, climate finance, and catastrophe The facts prove that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States, China Central Television (CCTV) cited Xi as saying. Xis remarks were a reiteration of phrasing typically used by Beijing to describe bilateral relations. The two sides must promote the two countries economic development and global economic growth and push for better development going forward in China-US relations, Xi said. During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another, and president-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward, a statement from Trumps presidential transition office said. The two agreed to maintain close communications and meet soon, CCTV said. Xi had congratulated Trump in a message delivered shortly after Trumps surprise election victory last week. China has signalled it will promote plans for regional trade integration, vowing to seek support for a Beijing-backed Asia-Pacific free trade area at a summit in Peru later this month, after Trumps win dashed hopes for the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Trumps criticism of US allies, including Japan, for free-riding on US security guarantees, has deepened anxiety among Washingtons friends about its commitment to post-war security arrangements in the face of a rising China and volatile North Korea. Suicide attacks kill at least 14 south and west of Baghdad, as Iraqi forces push to retake Mosul makes slow progress. ISIL fighters in Iraq launched a series of suicide bomb attacks in the city of Fallujah and an oasis town south of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens. The attacks came as Iraqi forces and their allies continue fighting ISIL in the northern city of Mosul, the armed groups last major population centre in the country. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has carried out several attacks in other areas of Iraq since the operation to retake Mosul was launched a month ago, in an apparent bid to draw attention and possibly troops away from the battle for the city. In Fallujah, at least eight people were killed and nearly 20 wounded in two separate car bomb blasts that hit police checkpoints, police sources told Reuters news agency. The attacks were the first since Iraqi forces took back the city from ISIL, also known as ISIS, in June. These two explosions are the first in Fallujah since its liberation, said Raja Barakat, a member of the provincial council security committee in Anbar province, where Fallujah is located. READ MORE: Suicide attack hits south of Baghdad Earlier on Monday, a group of ISIL attackers armed with suicide vests and light weapons killed at least eight people in Ain al-Tamer, 50km from a Shia shrine in the city of Karbala, before blowing themselves, according to local officials. The attack involved six suicide bombers who were detected by security forces before a major gathering in the area that is expected to draw tens of thousands of pilgrims. Masum al-Tamimi, a member of the Karbala provincial council, said the attackers tried to infiltrate the town in the early hours before withdrawing to the al-Jihad area after clashing with security forces, where they detonated their explosives. He put the death toll at eight. The interior ministry issued a statement on the attack, saying five of the bombers were killed by security forces while the sixth detonated explosives inside a house. The ministry put the death toll at six. ISILs online statement put the number of the suicide bombers at five, saying they clashed for hours with the security forces and set off their explosives consecutively when they ran out of ammunition. Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Erbil, said the attackers were dressed as pilgrims trying to pass the checkpoint to enter the village. The policemen were suspicious of these bombers when they tried to enter the checkpoint. They detonated their explosive once the policemen opened fire at them, Jamjoom said. The attack just underlines how volatile Iraq is, and not just Mosul, but other parts of the country as well where ISIL is regularly carrying out attacks. READ MORE: How will Mosul rise from the ashes of battle? Attacks in southern Iraq are rare, especially compared with the frequent bombings that hit Baghdad. But Ain al-Tamer, which is 50km from the Shia holy city of Karbala, is on the edge of Anbar province, which has long been a haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq and now ISIL. The group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory. Iraqi government forces, supported by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shia militias, as well as air and ground support from the US-led coalition, are now fighting to retake Mosul. But ISIL fighters are putting up stiff resistance, while the group has been able to retain its ability to strike inside government-held territory with bombings and other attacks as it loses ground. The offensive on Mosul entered its fifth week on Monday, with Iraqi government forces still trying to consolidate gains made in the eastern edge of the city that they breached end of October. They are yet to cross into the northern and southern limits of Mosul, where more than a million people are thought to be still living. Separately, a mixed Kurdish and Yazidi armed force known as the Sinjar Resistance Unit said on Monday it had dislodged ISIL fighters from five Yazidi villages west of Mosul in an advance that began on Saturday. Threat of ISIL will live on even after they are pushed out of key territory, Iraqi Kurdish intelligence chief warns. Sulaimania The US-led war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) cannot be won on the battlefield alone, warns Iraqi Kurdish intelligence chief Lahur Talabany. The real danger, he says, is the lack of a strategy to counter the groups ideology. We can defeat them in Mosul, and we can defeat them in Raqqa, but we wont win this war with military means alone an ideology is much harder to control, says Talabany, head of the Iraqi Kurdish regions intelligence and counterterrorism agency, Zanyari, the Iraqi Kurdish equivalent to the CIA. As we saw with Jund al-Islam, which morphed into Ansar al-Islam, as with the case of al-Qaeda, we can try and fight these guys militarily, but they always come back stronger in another form, Talabany, who has 15 years of experience in battling armed groups in Iraq, tells Al Jazeera. He predicts that both Iraq and Syria will face a spate of asymmetric attacks even after ISIL, also known as ISIS, have been eliminated as an organised group as we saw in Kirkuk, when they sent 100 suicide bombers into the city, he says, referring to the coordinated ISIL attacks in and around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on October 21. We will see these kinds of attacks not only in Iraq and the Kurdistan region, but we should expect similar attacks in Europe. You are hurting them, so they will try to get back at you any way they can. READ MORE: Money and patience grow short in Iraqi Kurdistan Talabany, the nephew of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, says there is currently no effective effort in place to fight ISILs ideology, citing significant setbacks in towns where the group has already been pushed out. Is the international community willing to help to give back to these communities? by Lahur Talabany, head of Zanyari Look at most of the towns where major battles have taken place. Most of these towns are ruined and Mosul will be messed up by the time its retaken. That means no school, no medical care, and unemployment. All these are key factors and breeding grounds for extremist groups. Talabany, who is also head of the regions Counter Terrorism Group, is an advocate for more aggressive anti-radicalisation programmes to counter ISILs sophisticated online recruitment strategy, which capitalises on discontent and harsh realities on the ground, whether in the Middle East or Europe. We keep telling everyone this needs to be done; otherwise it is a mistake. What Im worried about is that the Iraqi government is having internal issues. Do they have the money to put back into these communities? Is the international community willing to help to give back to these communities? READ MORE: KRG Mosul victory depends on ISIL fighters morale Deradicalisation campaigns are still an experimental science, adds Talabany, but he believes it must be a priority for Iraqs Kurdish region. While an estimated 150,000 Peshmerga are fighting the ground battle in Iraq, there have also been reports of 400 to 500 young Kurds joining ISIL, egged on by rogue preachers or local Islamist parties. To be honest, we have had issues with extremism in the past, so my expectation was much higher, says Talabany. I expected thousands of Kurds joining the ranks of ISIL, but I was wrong. A few hundred Kurds is nothing compared with the number of European men who have come here to join ISIL. I believe ISILs brutality affected Kurds perception of the group. Follow Tanya Goudsouzian on Twitter: @tgoudsouzian Socialist leader wins presidential vote after campaigning to pursue closer ties with Russia rather than the EU. A pro-Russian politician has won Moldovas presidential election, according to final results released on Monday. In the full count, Igor Dodon won 52.2 percent of Sundays vote. His opponent in the race, Maia Sandu, who ran on an anti-corruption ticket, had 47.8 percent. Speaking after his win, Dodon, the leader of the Socialist Party, said he would push for early parliamentary elections in 2017 to force out a government that favours closer ties with the European Union. A very serious combat is ahead but we are ready for this combat, he told Russian state TV, referring to an election he wants to bring forward by a year. Voters had united and voted for friendship with Russia, for neutrality, said Dodon, who campaigned for the scrapping of a trade deal the former Soviet state signed with Brussels in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Dodon to visit Moscow and said he looked forward to developing bilateral relations. But in her first comments after the final results, Sandu said the elections were neither free nor fair. and accused opponents of using dirty methods, including the media and administrative resources, against her. She called for the resignation of authorities responsible for organising the elections. International election observers said on Monday fundamental freedoms [were] respected, but polarised media coverage, harsh rhetoric detracted from the process. On Monday, up to 3,000 mostly young Moldovans marched to the offices of the Central Election Committee in Chisinau, shouting Down with the Mafia! Anger had also flared on Sunday after Moldovans voting in Britain, Ireland, France, Italy and elsewhere lined up for hours and ballot papers ran out. Sandu said the elections had been badly organised. Dodons victory was celebrated with fireworks early on Monday in the semi-autonomous Gagauzia region, home of many ethnic Russians. Dodon announced himself the victor at midnight on Sunday and called for calm, vowing to be a president for all Moldovans, regardless of their political views. He said he seeks good relations with the nations neighbours, Romania and Ukraine. READ MORE: Moldova and the Russia-EU tug-of-war Moldovas president represents the country abroad, sets foreign policy and appoints judges, but needs parliamentary approval for major decisions. However, the office is expected to gain authority because Dodon is the first president in 20 years to be directly elected rather than being chosen by parliament. The 41-year-old Dodon, who painted himself as a traditional Moldovan with conservative values, tapped into popular anger over the approximately $1bn that went missing from Moldovan banks before the 2014 parliamentary elections. Dodon says he will move to rescind a law which obliges taxpayers to reimburse the $1bn, but parliament would have to agree. He has not called for a thorough investigation to find those responsible for the heist. He wants to restore ties with Russia, which placed a trade embargo on Moldovan wine, fruit and vegetables in 2014 after Moldova signed an association agreement with the EU. However, the president cannot cancel the association agreement, which was ratified by parliament. On Sunday, Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the government and new president would need to work together, but added that Moldovas path towards greater EU integration cannot be reversed. Six suicide bombers armed with light weapons clash with security forces before donating explosives. A group of attackers armed with suicide vests and light weapons killed at least six people southwest of Baghdad on Monday, local officials said. The attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Ain al-Tamer, involved six suicide bombers, some of whom may have been killed by security forces before they could blow themselves up. Masum al-Tamimi, a member of the Karbala provincial council, said that the six attackers tried to infiltrate Ain al-Tamer village early in the morning. But they clashed with security forces before withdrawing to the Al-Jihad area and detonating explosives there, Tamimi said, putting the death toll at eight. The interior ministry issued a statement on the attack, saying that five of the bombers were killed by security forces while the sixth detonated explosives inside a house. The ministry put the death toll at six. Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Erbil, said the attackers were dressed as pilgrims trying to pass the checkpoint to enter the village. The policemen were suspicious of these bombers when they tried to enter the checkpoint. They detonated their explosive once the policemen opened fire at them, our correspondent said. The attack just underlines how volatile Iraq is and not just Mosul but other parts of the country as well where ISIL is regularly carrying out attacks. READ MORE: How will Mosul rise from the ashes of battle? Attacks in southern Iraq are rare, especially compared with the frequent bombings that hit Baghdad. But Ain al-Tamer, which is 50km from the Shia holy city of Karbala, is on the edge of Anbar province, which has long been a haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq and now ISIL. A similar attack involving fighters armed with explosives, rifles and grenades hit Ain al-Tamer in late August, killing 18 people and wounding at least 26. ISIL issued a statement claiming responsibility for that attack. The group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory. Iraqi forces are now fighting to retake the northern city of Mosul, the last major population centre held by ISIL in the country. But ISIL-linked fighters have still been able to strike inside government-held territory with bombings and other attacks even as they lose ground. Israels High Court rejected a government bid to delay the evacuation of an unsanctioned Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank beyond a December deadline, in a case that has drawn international concern. Amona settlement is under a court order to be evacuated by December 25 since it was built on private Palestinian land. But right-wing Israeli politicians have called for about 40 families living on the outpost to be allowed to remain. The evacuation must occur before December 25, the court said in its ruling on Monday. The court rejects the delay requested by the state. Whether the government moves ahead with the demolition of the outpost has been seen as a test case of whether it will heed international calls to halt continued settlement growth in the West Bank. Israels government, which had sought a nine-month delay to Amonas demolition, is seen as the most right-wing in the countrys history, and key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition advocate settlement building, while openly opposing the idea of a Palestinian state. The High Court ruled in 2014 that Amona, northeast of Ramallah in the central West Bank, must be evacuated. READ MORE: Israeli committee approves bill legalising outposts There are concerns over how any evacuation will play out. In 2006, the demolition of nine permanent houses in the outpost led to clashes between settlers and Israeli security forces. With the Amona deadline in mind, a committee of Israeli ministers on Sunday approved a bill that would allow for the legalisation of homes there and elsewhere in the West Bank. The legislation would allow for the settlement homes built on private Palestinian land in communities that meet certain criteria. The Palestinian landowners would be offered compensation in return for the land being seized. The legislation is expected to apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 settler homes in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war, and which the Palestinians want for a future state of their own. The draft bill could embolden armed Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to continue taking over Palestinian homes. Israel has approved a controversial draft bill aimed at authorising Jewish settlements that were built on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank without Israeli government permission. The bill must now pass through three readings in parliament and also be ratified by the Supreme Court before it can become law. Sundays vote was rushed through the ministerial committee for legislation in an attempt to prevent the evacuation of the outpost of Amona in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by the end of the year. The Supreme Court had ordered the evacuation of settlers from Amona and the demolition of their homes by December 25. Amona, near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, is home to about 40 Jewish families and was built on land privately owned by Palestinians who had petitioned the court for the outpost to be removed. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not. The Israeli government already has at its disposal several tools with which to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, in order to use that land to develop Jewish-only neighbourhoods and settlements. These include Israeli court orders, as well as military force. But so far, the Israeli courts have maintained that outposts built by settlers without governmental approval are illegal. The building of these outposts usually entails armed Jewish settlers occupying Palestinian homes and farms in the occupied West Bank. Several rights groups have accused the Israeli military of ignoring, or in many cases aiding the armed settlers. The bill, approved unanimously on Sunday, stipulates that the government could order the confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land in exchange for compensation. It was at the centre of a row between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had sought to delay the vote, and hardliners in his ruling right-wing Likud party. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the religious nationalist Jewish Home party, succeeded in rallying support for the vote leading to Sundays endorsement of the bill. Netanyahu had insisted on delaying any political move and told his cabinet to allow the new administration of US president-elect Donald Trump to take over in Washington before setting future policy. Netanyahu last week expressed confidence that he and Trump could work together to bring US-Israeli relations to new heights. OPINION: Trump and Israel The anti-settlement Peace Now movement denounced the vote. It is a shame: the government is backing a law that will allow the confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land in order to build settlements, said Hagit Ofran, one of the watchdogs leaders. According to Ofran, about 2,000 homes have been built on land owned by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and therefore the draft bill could retroactively legalise these dwellings. Israels Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit warned the ministers that he would be unable to defend the bill before the Supreme Court. A statement by Mandelblit said the bill undermines private property and is contrary to Israeli law and international law, public radio reported. Mandelblit also warned that if the bill were to become law, it could spur many people to lodge official complaints with the International Criminal Court. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that enacting such a law would force the Palestinians to appeal to international bodies. At least nine people killed in clashes between members of a Shia group and the police on the outskirts of Kano city. At least nine people have been killed and several wounded during clashes between Nigerian police and Shia Muslims at a religious procession in the northern state of Kano, according to witnesses and authorities. The violence broke out on Monday during a march of thousands of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) from Kano city to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna state where they had been banned for the Ashura religious day of mourning. It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the group. A judicial inquiry in August reported that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in mass graves after clashes with the army in December 2015. READ MORE: Nigerian army killed 347 Shia followers of Zakzaky Kano state Police Commissioner Rabiu Yusuf told reporters that eight IMN members and a police officer were killed in Mondays clashes. Several people, including four police officers, were also wounded, Yusuf said. According to the police, participants in the procession were armed with bows and arrows. Officers opened fire on the IMN crowd after one of them was hurt, police said. At first we used tear gas on them. They attacked one of our personnel, who sustained a fatal injury, he told Reuters news agency. Yusuf said IMN members used the dead policemans weapon to fire at officers, who had no option but to use live ammunition in response. READ MORE: Sheikh el-Zakzaky: Through the eyes of his followers But a spokesman for the IMN, whose 1980s founders were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, said police had blocked the path of its members before unleashing tear gas and live ammunition on them. He also said the IMN was a peaceful group. Throughout the nearly four decades of the existence of the IMN, it has never stockpiled, carried or used weapons, spokesman Ibrahim Musa told Reuters news agency. The police arrived and started firing tear gas canisters on the procession of Shia to disperse them, grocer Ilyasu Ammani told AFP news agency. I saw 15 bodies sprawled on the ground before the police evacuated them, said Ammani of the violence in Kwanar Dawaki, an area on the outskirts of Kano. Witness Kabiru Mudassir said he saw more than 10 bodies being taken away in a police van. Mudassir, who was on his way to work when he was caught in the violence, said more policemen are being deployed and a military jet keeps circling the area. The IMN has been in conflict with the Nigerian government over the years. In October, Kano police banned IMN from conducting street processions ahead of the annual Ashura rites. Kaduna state governor Nasir El-Rufai banned the group as an unlawful society, saying it was a security threat and calling for security forces to vigorously arrest its members. In December last year, the group fought against soldiers for two days in the city of Zaria, resulting in the death of 347 of its members.. Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, the groups leader, was also left partially paralysed and blind in one eye. Pakistan accuses India of firing across disputed Kashmir border, as tension between the neighbours escalate The Pakistani military has accused India of killing seven soldiers in cross-border fire in the disputed Kashmir border, where tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have surged in recent months. There was no immediate response to the accusation from Indian officials. The Pakistani military media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said in a statement on Monday that the soldiers were killed in the Bhimber sector on the Line of Control or LOC, which is the de facto border separating the two South Asian rivals. Seven [Pakistani] soldiers embraced shahadat [martyrdom] at the Line of Control in Bhimber sector in a crossfire LOC violation by Indian troops late last night, the military said in a statement. Pakistani troops, while responding to Indian unprovoked firing, targeted Indian posts effectively. Al Jazeeras Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the incident was quite serious as Pakistans military said it had responded to the firing. Pakistans military has said that they have come under unprovoked firing from the Indian side and that they have responded to the Indian fire, our correspondent said. However, it is not yet clear whether there are casualties on the other [Indian] side as well. Tensions across the long-disputed de facto Himalayan border reached dangerous levels in September, when India blamed Pakistani fighters for a raid on an army base that killed 19 soldiers. India said it had responded by carrying out surgical strikes across the border, although Islamabad denied the strikes happened. There have since been repeated outbreaks of cross-border fire, with both sides reporting deaths and injuries, including of many civilians. Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both claim the Himalayan territory in full and have fought two wars over the mountainous region. Proposed legislation allowing confiscation of private land and silencing of mosque noise could lead to catastrophe. Palestinian leaders on Monday denounced controversial Israeli draft bills one authorising illegal settlements, the other silencing calls to prayer threatening to take the issues to the United Nations Security Council. A committee of Israeli ministers adopted the two bills on Sunday, though they must still be approved by parliament. Israeli committee approves bill legalising outposts The recent Israeli measures are going to lead to catastrophe in the region, said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian leadership will turn to the UN Security Council and all other international organisations to stop those Israeli measures. On the bill allowing the government to order the confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land, Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki accused Israel of seeking to impose facts on the ground and create new realities by legalising the illegal actions that it commits. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to be illegal whether they are authorised by the government or not. Palestinians also sharply criticised a separate bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem. Government watchdogs have called that proposal a threat to freedom of religion and a provocation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received complaints from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions about the excessive noise coming from the loudspeakers that transmit the prayers. Benjamin Netanyahu backs bill to stop mosque noise While the draft bill applies to all houses of worship, it is seen as specifically targeting mosques. There happens to be one religion that does, if you will, disturb the peace a little bit more than some of the others. But this bill is written for everyone, Jeremy Saltan, of the Jewish Home Party, told Al Jazeera. Sheikh Omar Kiswani, director of al-Aqsa Mosque, said the move against the call to prayer was unacceptable. The occupying power should not intervene in our religious culture, he told Al Jazeera. The bill violates international and religious laws. The occupation is not just provoking Muslims in Jerusalem but around the world. Controversial autopsies on former president Lech Kaczynski, among 80 others, aims to determine cause of 2010 crash. The bodies of former Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife will be removed from their tomb in Krakow, the first of more than 80 exhumations planned on prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. Exhumations scheduled for after dark on Monday are part of a new investigation into the crash ordered by Polands conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, which is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late presidents twin brother. Post mortem examinations will be carried out to determine the cause of the death and of the crash, identify all the remains, and check for explosives since some of Kaczynskis followers believe a planned blast downed the aircraft, killing all 96 aboard. READ MORE Obituary: Lech Kaczynski Kaczynski has cast doubt on earlier investigations carried out by both Poland and Russia which concluded that the crash was an accident caused primarily by bad weather and pilot error. There will not be a free Poland, a truly free Poland, without the truth, without a proper honouring of those who died, without a closure of this case, which has cast such a long shadow on our national and social life, Kaczynski said last week. Cruel act The exhumations are proving controversial with most Poles dismissive of conspiracy theories, and some relatives aghast at the thought of their loved ones being exhumed. We stand alone and helpless in the face of this ruthless and cruel act, the relatives of 17 victims wrote in an open letter. The forceful exhumations constitute a violation of a taboo existing in our culture that calls for the respect of the bodies of the dead, said Malgorzata Rybicka, the widow of Arkadiusz Rybicki, a politician with Civic Platform, in an interview with the Tygodnik Powszechny magazine. It also shows the light-hearted approach to the feelings of the families. WATCH People and Power: Poles Apart However, Malgorzata Wassermann daughter of Zbigniew Wassermann, a politician who died called the exhumations a procedural must given that Poland carried out no autopsies, as the stunned nation watched the dozens of coffins, draped in white-and-red national flags, arrive from Russia in 2010. The Russian autopsy report on her father described him as having the healthy liver of a young man, when in fact the 60-year-old had only part of his liver left after an operation. The tragedy occurred on April 10, 2010, when the presidential delegation was travelling to honour 22,000 Polish officers who were murdered by the Soviet secret police at the start of World War II in the Katyn forest and elsewhere. The delegation included government members, politicians, military commanders and the relatives of officers killed in the wartime massacre. The symbolism of the mission only added to the national grief and the suspicions. Former air force commander who has called for an end to EU sanctions against Russia wins election by wide margin. Pro-Russia, anti-migration candidate Rumen Radev won the Bulgarian presidential election, partial official results showed on Monday. Former air force commander Radev won 59.4 percent of the vote, compared with 36.2 percent for the candidate of the ruling centre-right GERB party, Tsetska Tsacheva, with 99.3 percent of polling stations counted. Bulgaria faces an uncertain future after centre-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov quit his post following the crushing defeat of his presidential nominee at the hands of Radev. The results clearly show that the ruling coalition no longer holds the majority, the premier, who was re-elected in 2014 for a second time, said on Sunday evening. I apologise to those who supported us. I thought I was doing the right thing. Radev, a former fighter jet pilot and novice to politics, has tapped into public anger with political elites and fears about immigration, and vowed not to make the Balkan country a migrant ghetto. Despite promised reforms, corruption and poverty remain rife in the European Unions poorest member state, while public anger has grown over thousands of migrants currently stranded in Bulgaria. Speaking on Sunday evening, Radev said that he hoped for good dialogue with both the United States and Russia, and expressed hopes that with a new president in Washington, there will be a drop in confrontation between the West and Moscow. READ MORE: Bulgaria Prime Minister Boiko Borisov resigns In his election campaign [Donald Trump], already elected, said clearly that he will work for a better dialogue with Russia. That gives us hope, a big hope, for a peaceful solution to the conflicts both in Syria and in Ukraine and for a decrease of the confrontation, Radev said. The country of 7.2 million people already has warmer ties with Russia than most of its EU peers. Radev has made it clear he believes Bulgaria, a NATO member, should focus more on its economic and political ties with Moscow, which has been under EU sanctions since it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Under Bulgarias constitution, the presidents job is mostly ceremonial, but whoever holds the post can influence policy, veto legislation and sign international treaties. Radev is due to take office on January 22 for a five-year term. His first job will probably be to call early elections in spring next year, after Borisov said on Sunday that he would refuse to form an interim government. Security chief David Mahlobo issues statement refuting Al Jazeera report on his alleged ties to wildlife trafficker. South Africas Minister of State Security David Mahlobo has denied accusations of links to a rhino trafficker that were alleged in Al Jazeeras The Poachers Pipeline investigation. In a statement posted on the ministrys website, Mahlobo noted with grave concern and disappointment the unfounded and slanderous allegations made against him. Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit said it uncovered evidence of high-level political connections to rhino poaching in Africa and broadcast the investigation on Sunday. The investigation raises serious questions about the involvement of Mahlobo, as well as members of a Chinese presidential delegation in the illegal rhino horn trade. Mahlobo refuted Al Jazeeras investigation with all the contempt that they deserve and said that he reserves his rights in respect of those making such false claims. It is extremely reckless and mischievous for an internationally renowned broadcaster like Al Jazeera to be broadcasting such misleading content despite our response, said Mahlobo. Mahlobo responds to poacher mate allegations The security chief also stressed that South African officials have launched a new investigation on alleged rhino poaching activities in the country. Mahlobo further stated that he has been at the forefront in fighting against environmental crimes since he was appointed security minister in 2014. On Monday night, the moon will be 30,000km closer to the Earth, offering an impressive spectacle to skygazers. On Monday, the full Moon will be the biggest and brightest since 1948 as it reaches its closest point to Earth to form what is known as a supermoon. The rare proximity of spectacular supermoon to Earth means it will appear 30 percent brighter and 14 percent bigger as it reaches just 356,509km from Earth, according to NASA. It will become its fullest at the same time as it makes its closest pass to Earth, causing it to appear unusually large, according to astronomers. Since the Moons orbit around Earth is elliptical, its distance to the planet varies between lunar cycles. The unusually big and bright Moon will appear at its most impressive just as night falls over Asia, but astronomy enthusiasts will be able to see Earths satellite loom large anywhere in the world shortly after sunset, weather permitting. Stargazers gear up From India to Australia, skygazers and photographers were seeking the best viewing spots in the region where the phenomenon will be visible first, hoping that cloudy skies and the perennial pollution that blights many Asian cities will not spoil the fun. Thousands of people were expected to head to Sydneys Bronte Beach to witness the event after author Gavin McCormack created a Facebook page to let friends know of his plans. Bring a flask of tea bring a picnic, bring the kids and bring your binoculars because this is going to be fantastic, he wrote. Delhi residents were hoping toxic smog shrouding the worlds most polluted capital in recent weeks would abate to allow spectacular views as the supersized Moon rises over the Red Fort, the former Mughal emperors residence. Picnics were being organised in downtown Hong Kong for residents to watch the supermoon rise over the financial hubs famous skyline, while hikers were heading to the greener, more distant corners of the Chinese city to enjoy views with less light pollution. The landmark Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan, one of the worlds tallest buildings, was set to welcome skygazers, with astronomers predicting it would be one of the biggest Moons seen from the island in nearly 100 years. The supermoon will also mean a stronger high tide, something that gets surfers giddy with excitement, not only at the prospect of riding bigger waves, but doing so at night. Tides were predicted to be higher than usual on the popular Indonesian holiday island of Bali, a favourite with surfers. Supermoon fortune In Thailand, astrologers were variously predicting the supermoon would bring disaster or great fortune. Soraja Nuan-yoo, renowned for predicting the 2004 tsunami that killed many in Thailand and other countries round the Indian Ocean, warned that when the Moon gets close to the Earth, natural disasters happen. Astronomers say it can be hard to notice that the Moon appears brighter than usual. Once it is high in the sky, it would be hard to tell the Moon is larger but on the horizon, it could appear quite spectacular. The last time a full Moon was this close to Earth was in 1948, while in 1912 it was even larger, coming 134 kilometres closer to Earth. With a new president, the US needs a bold Iraq initiative to move beyond the wreckage left by previous administrations. As a new US leader makes his way to the White House, the question on most minds in Iraq is: How will the next US administration deal with the huge challenges left behind by President Barack Obama in the war- battered country? This is especially true in light of Iraqs dire need for American assistance in its military campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), and the president-elects vague vision on Iraq during the run-up to the Oval Office. In that sense, much will depend on whether Donald Trump, whose presidential campaign was pegged on upending decades-old Washington policies, will initiate drastic changes in the US strategy in Iraq, largely shaped by Obama and his predecessor George W Bush. READ MORE: The Middle East that Obama left behind During the presidential race, Trump struggled to distance himself from the 2003 war in Iraq launched by Bush (though evidence abounds that he had supported the war). He has also questioned the outcome of the invasion while suggesting he could have done better had he been US president. Trumps top priority in Iraq should be working to ensure that Iraq will not fall apart after the battle of Mosul, increasingly seen as a turning point. The only relevant pledge the New York tycoon-turned-politician made during his largely noisy and politically sour campaign was to step up the fight against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, though he failed to articulate a clear strategy if he wins. Yet, among all other pressing foreign policy issues, which Trumps should confront when he takes office in January, is Iraq where there are already some 6,000 US forces on the ground engaged in a war that many believe its outcome may be a make or break for the country. Rhetoric and inconsistency of the campaign aside, there is no question that the US new commander-in-chief will face the daunting task of tackling Iraq, which is expected to remain a pillar of Washingtons Middle East strategy and one with significant real-world geopolitical importance. But while Iraq remains a myriad challenge, the question is how the Trump administration will be realistically engaged there in a way that helps fix Iraqs troubles that are largely the creation of the US invasion and the consequent policies of the two former administrations. One may fill a book with the catastrophes both the Bush and the Obama administrations brought upon Iraq. If the stupidty of the invasion and regime change by a foreign power is oblivious, the failure to rebuild a post-Saddam Husseins inclusive, fair and stable political system, undisputedly, ranks as Americas top sin in Iraq. How would Trump approach Iraqs problems and how much his administration will be involved is not clear, but here is what he must do to deal with the challenges inherited from Obama whose strategy in Iraq was like that of his predecessor: Using military power and avoid all attempts at national reconciliation and nation-building. The biggest question is what is going to happen to Iraq after retaking Mosul and ISILs threat is eradicated. While driving ISIL from the city appears to be all but assured, the biggest threat to Iraq remains the ethnosectarian split, which has shaken the country to the core. Trumps top priority in Iraq should be working to ensure that Iraq will not fall apart after the battle of Mosul, increasingly seen as a turning point in view of the conflicting agendas and interests of national and regional stakeholders who have been active in reshaping the geopolitical environment there. Much of that will depend on whether the Trump administration will be able to work out a constructive policy in Syria and forge a coherent strategy to deal with major regional actors who vie for influence in post-Mosul Iraq, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and also check Kurdish aspirations of independence. Trumps other main priority in Iraq must be dealing with the key issue of clearing the mess of a visibly failed state, left over from eight years of US occupation and deep communal divisions that have produced a sectarian-based and dysfunctional governing system. While the Bush and Obama administrations have ignored nation building in Iraq, which is responsible for much of the countrys disasters, the new administration should capitalise on the liberation of Mosul and the ensuing stabilisation and rebuilding efforts to push for a national settlement in Iraq. In order to launch a successful state-and nation-building process, Iraqs communities, political groups and civil society should come up with a historic compromise, or a grand bargain. The new deal should create a cross-national bloc that would agree on a new holistic approach not only to sharing power and wealth, but also to the larger objective of living together in a united, free, democratic, inclusive, and prosperous country. In recent weeks, the Iraqi National Alliance, the ruling Shia bloc, has endorsed the proposal and presented its own draft for a national settlement for debate. The document which the alliance said it will present for national discussions after the liberation of Mosul has been cautiously welcomed by Sunni groups pending negotiations of its details. The United Nations mission in Iraq (UNAMI), mandated to help in national reconciliation, has supported the idea of a historic compromise to promote an inclusive reconciliation process that upholds respect for Iraqs unity, sovereignty and constitutional order. But much of the success of the proposal that should initiate a transition of political rebuilding and reconstruction will depend on support from Washington which had conditioned its help in the war against ISIL to Baghdads fostering reconciliation as complementary to the military effort to finish off the group. Iraqs invasion and its disastrous aftermath had affected the thinking of the Republican President Bush to the extent that he dumped the occupation on his Democratic successor Obama who himself missed all opportunities to correct the terrible mistakes of his predecessor. With the humiliating defeat of the powerful Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the election, the danger of course is that Obama will be leaving the unfinished war against ISIL and the quagmire in Iraq to Trump to wrestle with. History has already made its judgment on Bush and Obama, both seasoned politicians elected with two core mandates, who will be remembered for their catastrophic failure in Iraq. Will the billionaire property developer, whose victory over the Washington establishment has stunned the world, be able to avoid his two predecessors missteps in Iraq by nudging things forward towards this blueprint for a political settlement in the war-torn nation? It remains to be seen. Turkish forces and allied FSA fighters target al-Bab with the aim of pressing on to ISILs main stronghold in Syria. Turkish jets hit 15 targets in the al-Bab area of northern Syria on Sunday in an operation with Syrian rebels that could foreshadow a push on ISILs de facto capital Raqqa, the Turkish military said. Ten defensive positions, command centres and an ammunition store used by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group were destroyed in the raids, the army said in a statement. Nine Syrian rebels were killed and 52 wounded during clashes in the area, it added. According to Al Jazeeras Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish-Syrian border, the attack on al-Bab started a few days ago when the Turkish military resumed air strikes on the area. Since then, [the Turkish-backed] FSA fighters have come much closer to retaking al-Bab, he said, using an acronym to refer to the Free Syrian Army. WATCH: The Disappeared of Syria Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that seizing control of al-Bab, around 30km south of the border, is a goal of the operation before targeting Manbij and Raqqa. Kurdish-led forces recently drove ISIL, also known as ISIS, from Manbij, and Raqqa is considered ISILs de facto capital. Al-Bab is near the border of Syria and Turkey, and is one of the last remaining [ISIL] strongholds in that area, Bin Javaid reported. It is strategically important because Turkey needs to take this area if they want to reclaim all territory east of the Euphrates River, which was their goal when they first launched Operation Euphrates Shield. The Turkish military launched Operation Euphrates Shield on August 24, entering Syria with the aim of both clearing ISIL from the border region and preventing the expansion of a Kurdish-controlled autonomous region. The Turkish military and its allied rebel forces have so far seized control of about 1,620 sq km of territory, according to the military. The Turkish army said shelling neutralised 10 Kurdish YPG fighters in the past 24 hours as they tried to seize control of the Tal Jijan area, in the eastern countryside of Aleppo province. The YPG, as the Peoples Protection Units are kniown, is the primary ground partner for the US-led coalition in its battle against ISIL in Syria. Ankara claims the YPG is an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkeys southeast for nearly three decades and is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. READ MORE: Syrian government texts east Aleppo residents to leave The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a loose coalition of rebel groups led primarily led by the YPG, recently announced the beginning of its own offensive to retake Raqqa from ISIL. Both Turkey and the SDF regional rivals due to tensions between Anakara and the YPG are vying to lead the operation to push ISIL out of its stronghold in Syria. If the Turkish military and its allied rebel forces manage to take al-Bab, they will be well-positioned to move on Raqqa. Andreas Krieg, a researcher at the Near East Centre for Security and Strategy at Kings College London, told Al Jazeera that Turkey did not want the YPG or the SDF to take more control of land [in Syria], which is why their military got involved [in Syria] in the first place. With multiple, unaligned armed forces simultaneously pushing towards Raqqa, efforts to take the city from ISIL are bound to be complicated. After taking al-Bab, which [the Turkish military] hopes is not that far away, they will take on Raqqa. But Raqqa is much more complicated because of the formation of forces in and around Raqqa. There are many sides there, not just the SDF, but the FSA, and others, said Al Jazeeras Bin Javaid. Founder of whistle-blowing website, who has been living in Ecuadors UK embassy for years, denies the accusations. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been questioned by prosecutors at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in the latest twist in a long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. Assange, who denies the accusation, has been holed up in the embassy for more than four years. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren entered the embassy building shortly before 10:00 GMT on Monday and stayed in the building for more than four hours. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadorean prosecutor. The prosecutor [Insgren] did not say anything as she went in or went out, but we know now that she spent four hours in the building, said Al Jazeeras Emma Hayward, reporting from the Ecuadoran embassy in London. There was no word from Julian Assange about how that meeting went. Assanges lawyer Per Samuelsson has said that the questioning, which has been delayed in the past because of diplomatic disagreements between Ecuador and Sweden, could last several days. After UN & court findings condemning 6 years of abuses by Sweden against Assange, Sweden finally takes his statement for the first time ever WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 14, 2016 I am very hopeful Objectively, there is no doubt that everything happened as Assange said it did, Samuelsson told Swedens TT news agency. Outside the embassy, a small group of protesters held banners reading Free Assange and You Wont Stop WikiLeaks outside the embassy as the officials arrived. Freedom Loving People of the World Say Thank You Ecuador! read another banner hung under the balcony from which Assange has sometimes addressed supporters. A Swedish police inspector was also expected to attend the questioning and investigators planned to take a DNA sample from Assange, subject to his agreement. Holed up Assange, the creator of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. READ MORE: UN panel says Assange arbitrarily detained since 2010 He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing that he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault invesstigation last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. It was the first time Assange has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said that he welcomes the chance to clear his name and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order , rejecting the finding of a United Nations working group that his confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy amounted to arbitrary detention . We return to Japan to see how the remote community of Miyako has recovered from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Ten years ago, in November 2006, Al Jazeera English was launched. To mark that anniversary, weve created REWIND, which updates some of the channels most memorable and award-winning documentaries of the past decade. We find out what happened to some of the characters in those films and ask how the stories have developed in the years since our cameras left. Japan had been waiting decades for the big one to hit, an earthquake powerful enough to devastate the country Emergency services and the public were drilled in how to respond when the earth moved; thousands of kilometres of sea walls were built to protect the coast from tsunamis, the deadly after-effects of quakes out at sea. I've never forgotten for a moment the black tsunami wave going over the coastal levee ... I was one of the affected people. My house was swept away. by Naoshi Iwata, head of the Civilian Life Department in Miyako City Hall But when the earthquake came on March 11, 2011, few would have predicted the devastation it caused. The magnitude 9.0 quake unleashed a tsunami so powerful, it tore through Japans defences as though they were not there. The surge turned towns and cities into matchwood, killed thousands of people and caused a still-to-be resolved nuclear crisis. As Al Jazeeras People & Power discovered, among the communities hit was the small port city of Miyako in northern Japan. In the days after the disaster its surviving citizens somehow had to carry on with their lives. REWIND recently returned to Miyako and spoke with Naoshi Iwata, the head of the Civilian Life Department in Miyako City Hall, to see how those people have moved on. There are people who have returned to the affected area I am going to retire in less than a year. This is where I was born and raised So I really look forward to the weekends and catching up with my neighbours. I want to continue living here. On Thursday, the UF Hispanic Student Association and Hispanic-Latino Affairs broke down a wall. The organizations created the wall, made of cinder blocks, for a unity demonstration behind the Hub. Throughout the day, students wrote words and phrases they considered harsh or cruel, with the intent to tear them down. The demonstration was in response to the presidential election results, said Edward Zambrano, the HSA treasurer. Usually something like this would take longer to plan, but this seemed pressing, he said. Zambrano, 20, said he knew it was something that could help students cope with the results. Students dont think one candidate over the other is the answer, the UF political science junior said. Its going to take a lot of unification and love to bring us together. Block by block, people painted words on the wall. Rapists, someone wrote. Bigotry. Hypocrisy. Fear. Zambrano, who wrote anchor baby, said as a first-generation college student with parents who immigrated from Ecuador, its a phrase hes become familiar with. The phrase carries a negative connotation by labeling children who were born in the U.S. to noncitizens. But he is not a burden to the country, he said. He is an asset. The words and phrases on the blocks represented students daily struggles, he said, but tearing down the wall symbolized what they can achieve together. The wall was a message that we dont want to build walls, Zambrano said. We want to break them down and bring people together. Mariana Castro, the president of UF Chispas, said members of the organization have been victims of racial intolerance following the election. It has damaged some of us to such an emotional point that some of us could not go to class yesterday, the 22-year-old UF neurobiology and Latin American studies junior said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now It was OK to feel sad or hurt, she told the crowd. People who cannot sympathize for those who are afraid are privileged, she said. Its OK to feel fear, because at the end of the day, thats what has won, she said. Before the wall was knocked down, Jose Abastida, 25, told the crowd that as an undocumented student, he has seen injustice and inequality in the U.S. Despite Islamophobia and racism existing in American society, the UF political science senior said students should not be afraid to be on campus. They need to stand together. Im more pumped than ever to help fight the fight, he said. In unity, there is strength. The UF Hispanic Student Association and Hispanic-Latino Affairs break down a wall made of cinder blocks for a unity demonstration behind the Hub on Thursday afternoon. Throughout the day, the organizations invited students to write words and phrases they found harsh and cruel, with the intent to tear them down. As protests rage across the country following Donald Trumps election, his opponents in Gainesville are organizing acts of resistance this week and hoping to influence local politicians to fight the president-elects future policies. On Sunday, about 250 anti-Trump protesters crammed inside the Music Art Movement and Action Club downtown to voice concerns about Trumps impending presidency, the second formal gathering by the group following an emotional rally outside Gainesville City Hall on Thursday. As organizers spoke through black megaphones, discussing plans to protest Trump throughout the city Thursday, many stood in the clubs courtyard straining to hear. Diana Moreno, the program coordinator for UFs Hispanic-Latino Affairs, helped organize the meeting. An immigrant from Ecuador, she wore a Not My President button as she implored the crowd to resist Trumps plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants by making Gainesville a sanctuary city, where it would adopt policies against prosecuting undocumented immigrants. She said those gathered needed to take direct action to protest Trump, who she said has marginalized minority groups. We are here united against racism, against misogyny, she said. Protests are planned for 4 p.m. Thursday at the intersections of Southwest 34th Street and Southwest Archer Road, and Southwest 13th Street and West University Avenue, among other locations. A march is also planned for Saturday at 4 p.m. starting at the Stephen C. OConnell Center. Those gathered Sunday split into three groups to organize their plans of resistance, going to the main room of MAMA Club, the courtyard in the back and Haisley Lynch Park across the street. James Davidson, a 49-year-old Hawthorne resident, was playing in the park with his 2-year-old son, Henry, when Candi Churchill, an organizer, gathered dozens in a circle. He brought Henry over to the edge of the crowd, at one point hoisting him up on his shoulders to give his son a better look. Davidson said he worries about Henry growing up under a Trump presidency. I worry about the future, he said. I worry about the future now more than I used to a week ago. As they listened, Churchill took suggestions for the name of Saturdays march. The name Freedom From Fear won, getting the most snaps of approval. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Kneeling on the sidewalk, Kayleigh Chalkowski, a 27-year-old Gainesville resident, started making anti-Trump signs for Thursdays protest. She drew Trump with orange and yellow markers before crossing his face out with one black line. Chalkowski said she fears Trump undoing policies to combat climate change. She cited his appointing Myron Ebell, a climate-change skeptic, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team. I just really dont want to see us take a step backward, Chalkowski said. After the meeting, Gainesville resident Alyson Chadwick walked over to Maudes Classic Cafe for a cup of coffee. While there, she got up to speak at the Not My President open-mic event. She told a group of about 20 people she worried about womens rights under Trump, mainly in light of his 2005 comments about his fame allowing him to make sexual advances on women. Layne Wrighton, the owner and general manager of Maudes, said she was approached by Gainesville resident Jackson Sabbagh, who stood outside as they and customers shared their fears following the election. I thought it was a great idea, Wrighton said. I think people should be able to come together. Faye Williams, the owner of MAMAs Club, said she offered up her building after hearing the group needed a place. A community organizer for 43 years, she said it is time for the older generation to step back and listen to new voices. She walked between her building and the park, listening from afar. This is the young peoples movement, Williams said. They got to move it forward. A woman holds a homemade cardboard sign while marching with thousands of other people on East Randolph Street in Chicago on Saturday morning. Those in attendance protested President-elect Donald Trump. Gainesville Police is asking residents to call with information after reports circulated on social media of a woman luring others to be sexually assaulted. At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Kristen Oliff, who declined to comment for this article, wrote on Facebook about a woman who approached people claiming to be a single mom who needed a ride back to her house. The woman, Oliff continued, then leads good samaritans to a house where multiple men allegedly rape them. Although GPD has not received any credible reports about the alleged incidents, many commented on Oliffs post saying they have seen the woman before. Oliff described the suspect as a slim African-American woman with a chipped front tooth. GPD spokesman Officer Ben Tobias said police know who the woman is, and she has a history of panhandling, but the department has not received any credible reports to corroborate Oliffs post. The problem is people are posting it on social media instead of calling us, Tobias said. Josh Brown, a UF mechanical engineering alumnus, said he gave the woman a ride two years ago after he and his roommate met her at the Publix located at 1302 N. Main St. The woman told him she needed a ride to the hospital to see her daughter, who she said had sickle cell anemia. I think at the end I just brushed it off, the 22-year-old said. Last week, his roommate sent him Oliffs Facebook status, hoping to verify it was the same woman they encountered. (Its) kind of surprising that no one drew (this) connection until this time, Brown said. Anyone with information can call GPDs non-emergency line at 352-955-1818. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Jess Hardy and Katherine Triplett met while working at a primate sanctuary. Now good friends, Hardy, 26, and Triplett, 25, spent Sunday afternoon walking around and looking at the tables lining the lawn at First Magnitude Brewing Company. Each table advocated a different local environmental organization as part of the inaugural Fall Festival for the Environment. We are constantly having to educate people about the pet trade, Hardy said. The two women were part of about 100 people who came to the festival, where attendees made $5 and $10 donations to drink, eat and raise money to rid invasive plants from parts of Gainesville. The event was hosted by the Gainesville Arts and Parks Foundation. Kentucky Costellow, who organized the festival, said the proceeds will benefit the Great Invader Raider Rally, which will be held Jan. 28. During the rally, volunteers will help remove thousands of pounds of non-native plants from the city. My main intention is to instill responsibility in people, she said. To prepare for the rally, Sundays event raised awareness about the presence of invasive species that causes a kink in the ecosystem, she said. Alachua County Forever, Gainesville Greenway Challenge and Florida Invasive Species Partnership were some of the organizations that attended. Rose Godfrey, a UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences extension outreach coordinator, stood in front of the FISP table, which was lined with the skin of a Burmese python. The python is one of many species that do not belong in Florida, the 36-year-old said. One of the partnerships main goals is to reduce the number of introduced species so native species dont suffer the consequences. We could hopefully restore the balance so that children will have biodiversity, she said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now With the election slowly fading back into our national collective memory, we feel it necessary to spur a discussion about our democracy. We wish to remind our readers that democracy is more complex than formal electoral processes. It is a complex and informal grid of unwritten, collective ideologies smashing together, breaking apart and reforming anew. When Donald Trump won, it really symbolized a total breakdown of a political machine similar to the Brexit vote. We now have the opportunity to rebuild it. We can rebuild it as a total fascist movement or we can rebuild it with a fresh start. To those of you who point fingers at the evil white men who voted for Trump (not all of them voted for Trump, by the way. Some were incredibly vocal in their support for Hillary Clinton), know that you probably agree with them in the most fundamental reasoning in terms of motivation for voting: unhappiness with the traditional political machine. For better or worse, this nation acknowledged that the machinery formerly used to harness popular political opinion has broken down. For this, we should be ironically grateful. Trump single-handedly demolished the Republican Party. The party was previously comprised of two general blocs: Christian fundamentalists and socially unconcerned, yet fiscally committed, conservative business elite. Both of which, mind you, abhorred Trump. Perhaps it was because of his coarseness. But in this coarseness, he exposed something basic and human about him. Once again, Trump is a repulsive human being, but compared to former GOP presidential candidates like Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum, hes at least human. There is something so monstrous about Cruz and Santorum; perhaps it is their desire and ability to impose Christian Sharia law, their blatant misunderstanding of fundamental economic principles and other things. As vile as Trump is, hes redeemed us from truer perils like Christian fundamentalists. Unless he dies and leaves Pence in charge. On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Party mostly unified behind Not Trump. This fundamentally stupid logic cost us Sen. Bernie Sanders, who couldve harnessed the anti-establishment momentum while also having sensible policy. In his place, Democrats put their trust in establishment candidate Clinton. Sure, shes progressive like Sanders on topics like LGBTQ+ and civil rights, but shes also the establishment vote. Hopefully, the its her time logic will meet its end, and the Democratic Party will evolve as well, ridding themselves of traditional logic and embracing the peoples true choices. There are further consequences that extend beyond the political sphere, though. With the destruction of the political machine, theres an opportunity for us to rebuild it with rhetoric that doesnt disenfranchise people. Trumps success shows a rejection of the infamous political correctness movement. Unfortunately, he has officially normalized blatant racism and open misogyny. Remember two years ago how words like waterboarding and torture were changed to phrases like enhanced interrogation? This was an institutional interpretation of political correctness. Its the same logic that could justify us renaming horrific acts like stealing and looting to enhanced property reassignment. This idea that we should use language that doesnt harm people works in cases in which we discuss those who are marginalized in some way in terms of race or gender identification, but it unequivocally fails when we make it universal across the board of discussion. In politics, we have known enemies, and not everyone deserves respect. Our method of discussion should reflect this, and Trump exposed this fundamental flaw in our political machinery. English News Building a Community of Shared Destiny for Common Progress: President Xi Jinpings discourses on China-Latin America relations Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 13 Novembre 2016 President Xi made a number of comments on the relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, expecting the two sides to build a community of shared destiny for common progress, and create a splendid future. Source: Peoples Daily Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to pay state visits to Ecuador, Peru and Chile. China and Latin American and the Caribbean states are all developing countries in about the same development stage and face the same task of striving for development. In recent years, the relations between China and Latin American and the Caribbean countries have gained great development. President Xi made a number of comments on the relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, expecting the two sides to build a community of shared destiny for common progress, and create a splendid future. 1.Open and inclusive process featuring win-win cooperation China and Latin America and the Caribbean share the same approach to development. We have found increasingly more common language whether in respective nation-building and governance or in international affairs. Facts have proven, and will continue to show, that the growth of China-Latin America relations is an open and inclusive process featuring win-win cooperation. It not only serves the common interests of the two sides, but also contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in the region and the world at large. (May 2013, a joint written interview to the media of Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Mexico ahead of President Xi Jinpings state visits to the three countries) 2.An important window of opportunity for the development of relations We believe that the further Latin America develops, the better it is for the world and China as well. At present, there is an important window of opportunity for the development of relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean. We should take a far-sighted view, keep abreast of the times, build on the traditional friendship, enhance all-dimensional exchanges, upgrade cooperation and work for fresh and greater progress in the Partnership of Comprehensive Cooperation featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development between China and Latin America and the Caribbean. (June 5th 2013, President Xi Jinpings speech at the Senate of Mexico) 3.Set a model for South-South cooperation China and Latin American and the Caribbean states are all developing countries in about the same development stage and face the same task of striving for development. We support each other in pursuing development paths that suit our respective national conditions and are committed to making the international order more just and equitable. These are the fundamental reasons which enable us to seek common ground while shelving differences and stand by each other's side in our joint pursuit of development. Since the beginning of the new century, China and Latin American and the Caribbean states, focusing on the theme of common development, have deepened mutual trust in the political field, expanded cooperation in economy and trade, learned from each other in cultural and people-to-people exchanges and coordinated closely in international affairs. This has made it possible for us to make big strides in our relations and set a model for South-South cooperation. (July 2014, President Xi Jinpings joint written interview with the major media organizations from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba) 4.The "Chinese Dream" and the "Latin American Dream" are closely linked The relations between China and Latin America have witnessed a comprehensive and rapid development in the 21st century, and brought real benefits to the people of China and Latin America. It is common expectation of the two peoples to comprehensively enhance cooperative relations featuring mutual benefit between China and Latin American countries. China is willing to work jointly with Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, and to make the two sides good friends who share the same ideal and good partners who make progress together. Unity, collaboration, development and revitalization are the dreams the Latin American people from generation to generation. The "Chinese Dream" and the "Latin American Dream" are closely linked. Both sides should take the courage to pursue the dream and jointly make the dream come true. (July 16th 2014, President Xi Jinpings speech at the Brazilian National Congress) 5.A Five-in-One new pattern of China-Latin America relations This afternoon belongs to China and Latin American and Caribbean relations. Chinese and Latin American leaders gathering together is a historical event of global influence. At present, the relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean are best ever in history and standing at a new starting point. Here, I wish to propose that we jointly announce at this meeting the establishment of the China-Latin America comprehensive cooperative partnership of equality, mutual benefit and common development, and work together to build a Five-in-One new pattern of China-Latin America relations: sincerely trust each other in politics, cooperate with each other for a win-win outcome in economy and trade, learn from each other in people-to-people and cultural exchanges, closely cooperate with each other in international affairs, and promote each other in overall cooperation and bilateral relations. (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 6.The establishment of the China-CELAC Forum send out a strong signal The second CELAC summit held last January adopted the Special Declaration on the Establishment of the China-CELAC Forum, which has laid down an important groundwork for the establishment of the forum and advancement of our overall cooperation. Through this Summit, we will jointly announce the official establishment of the China-CELAC Forum and will hold the first ministerial conference of the Forum in Beijing at an early date. This will have profound implication for our future relationship and send out a strong signal of our commitment to strengthening unity and coordination and promoting South-South cooperation. (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 7.Common dreams and shared pursuit Currently, the Chinese people are striving to achieve the "Chinese Dream" of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, while the peoples of Latin American and Caribbean countries are also struggling for the "Latin American Dream" of realizing solidarity, cooperation, development and revitalization. The common dreams and shared pursuit closely connect China and Latin America. Let's seize the opportunity, forge ahead, and try hard to build a hand-in-hand community of common destiny, so as to create a splendid future for China-Latin America relations! (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 8.A creation in the history of China-CELAC relations Half a year ago, I had a milestone meeting with the leaders of the Latin American and Caribbean countries in Brasilia. The two sides decided to establish the China-CELAC comprehensive cooperative partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development and officially establish the China-CELAC Forum, which conforms to the trends of the times of peace, development, cooperation and win-win results, and should be called a creation in the history of China-CELAC relations. The China-CELAC Forum is a newborn, just like a young shoot sprouting out of the earth, whose sturdy growth into a towering tree needs meticulous cultivation of both sides. (January 8th 2015, President Xi Jinpings speech at the First Ministerial Meeting of China-CELAC Forum) 9.The overall cooperation between China and Latin America has set sail smoothly At present, the relations between China and Latin American and the Caribbean countries are standing at a new historical point. With the establishment of China-CELAC Forum, the overall cooperation between China and Latin America has set sail smoothly. The two sides have opened a wide perspective for all-dimensional cooperation via working hand-in-hand in promoting the comprehensive cooperation partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development, and jointly building China-Latin America community of shared destiny. (October 2016, President Xi Jinpings congratulatory letter to the 10th China-LAC Business Summit) 10.A new stage of parallel development between bilateral cooperation and overall cooperation At present, the relationship between China and Latin America has entered into a new stage of parallel development between bilateral cooperation and overall cooperation. China is willing to work together with Uruguay and other Latin American countries to jointly build a new framework of the 1+3+6 cooperation, so as to push China-Latin America relations for greater development and forge a community of shared destiny featuring joint progress together. (October 18th 2016, President Xi Jinping held talks with President Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay) Dans la meme rubrique : < > More robots entering people's daily life China sees accelerated development of express delivery sector in rural areas China's FAST discovers largest atomic cloud in universe Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News Chinese technology improves Ecuadors emergency-reaction capability Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 14 Novembre 2016 According to data from Ecuador's Ministry of Security and National Institute of Statistics and Census, crime rate in the country dropped by 24 percent after the ECU911 came into service. In addition, the country set an example for other Latin American nations after its rankings of security index raised to 4th place in 2015 from the 11th in 2011. By Li Qiang and Wang Xiaobo from Peoples Daily Thanks to an emergency warning and monitoring system developed by Chinese companies, Ecuador has significantly improved its capability in dealing with public security risks as well as its reaction speed towards disasters. The ECU911, designed and built by China National Electronics Import and Export Corp(CEIEC), integrates Ecuador's various security and disaster relief agencies, such as police forces, fire departments, transportation, paramedic units and the Red Cross, into one platform to speed up reactions to emergencies via a single telephone number -- 911. The ECU911 is the latest effort made by Chinese enterprises like CEIEC to bring sense of security and add luster to Ecuador, which has been faced with public security challenges, by introducing a series of high-tech products and services. Taxi drivers, who have been suffering from robberies for a long time, are big beneficiary of the system. Thanks to the newly-equipped public security kit, taxi drivers can report emergencies by pressing a red button in the vehicle, and the locations as well as surveillance videos will be sent to the police simultaneously, said a taxi driver named Willian. "The security kit connects with the ECU911 system command centers," explained Wang Fei, manager of CEIECs Ecuadorian branch. The system, as a key cooperation project between China and Ecuador contracted by CEIEC and China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd, is also the first foreign-funded security system established in Latin America. Since the first command center was established in 2011, the system now has 16 centers, realizing a 100-percent coverage of the 23 provinces in Ecuador. With the application of the ECU911, 87 percent of local police can make response in less than 3 minutes, and more than half of the policemen would arrive at the site within 10 minutes. But such process used to cost more than 2.5 hours. According to data from Ecuador's Ministry of Security and National Institute of Statistics and Census, crime rate in the country dropped by 24 percent after the ECU911 came into service. In addition, the country set an example for other Latin American nations after its rankings of security index raised to 4th place in 2015 from the 11th in 2011. As a result, Venezuela and Bolivia have inked deals with CEIEC on security system of national defense, while Peru and Argentina also expressed their interest to cooperate with China to improve their national governance. The ECU 911 emergency warning and monitoring system also helped save a number of lives after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake jolted the Pacific coast of Ecuador on April 16. Just 10 minutes after the deadly quake, the employees of CEIEC arrived at the command center in Quito, and recovered communications half an hour later for earthquake relief. With the assistance of the ECU911, first-hand information about surveillance videos, resource distribution and real-time updates were all sent to the authorities of Ecuador. The system finally stood the test with its outstanding coordination performance. Because of its great performance, ECU911 was rated by the European Emergency Number Association as top level. It is the first one on American continent and the fifth one in the world that gained such credit. Cesar Navas, Minister of Security Coordination of Ecuador, told People's Daily that the ECU911 not only reduced crimes, but also greatly aided the reaction speed to emergencies. Chinese technology has helped protect the safety of Ecuadors citizens, said Navas, hailing an irreplaceable role played by the system in dealing with the earthquake disasters. A symbol of Chinas high-tech brands, the system is believed to bolster the influence of made-in-China products. Ecuadorian analysts noted that the system not only represents the success of a Chinese firm, but also indicates Chinas national strength. Dans la meme rubrique : < > More robots entering people's daily life China sees accelerated development of express delivery sector in rural areas China's FAST discovers largest atomic cloud in universe Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) Construction began today on a new market in Rajaf which aims to to enhance livelihoods and promote peace in a community impacted by conflict in Juba in July. Members of the Jondoru community in Rajaf County gathered on Friday to celebrate the progress on the market, which aims to serve approximately nine thousand residents, as []Source : http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... English News Op-ed: Tokyo Trials should never be forgotten Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 14 Novembre 2016 Words about denials of the Tokyo Trials were not on the horizon of the Japanese public before 1970s, but such ideology emerged in the 1980s as its right-wing forces mulled a complete reshuffle of post-war politics. By Zhongsheng Source: Peoples Daily Mr. President, this is no ordinary trial, for here we are waging a part of the determined battle of civilization to preserve the entire world from destruction If there is no justification for punishment of individuals who have already brought civilization to the brink of disaster, then justice itself is a mockery. The above remarks are recited from the opening statement of Joseph B. Keenan to the International Military Tribunal Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trials, as chief prosecutor in 1946. By quoting these words at an international forum on the Tokyo Trials and world peace, held on November 12, Gao Wenbin, a 95-year-old professor who witnessed the Tokyo trials in court, stressed the importance of the trials in enlightening later generations. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Trials. By bringing those who waged aggressive war and murdered innocent people in the victimized countries to account, the trials on Japanese war criminals 70 years ago upheld international justice and defended the dignity of humanity. Scholars commented that the Tokyo Trials were a further settlement than the war itself, because it used the power of the law instead of military power. Its significance is not confined to those involved, but offers insight and enlightenment to later generations. Experts from different countries noted at the seminar that the Tokyo Trials were of vital importance in a host of spheres, like international politics, international law and historic course. In the perspective of international politics, it laid the foundation for the post-war international order in Asia along with the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation. In terms of international law, the Tokyo Trials represent the victory of justice instead of the victory of the winners. It enriched the principle of nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without a law) and cemented the consensus that no war is legal. The concepts derived from this consensus, such as crimes of aggression, crimes against humanity as well as individuals are responsible for war crimes, provide a crucial reference to the theoretical studies and practice of international law. The Tokyo Trials also worked as a recorder of history. The evidence gathered for the trials constituted a giant database for history, covering Japanese history from the end of the 1820s to its surrender in 1945, especially the aggression war launched by Japanese rulers as well as the crimes they committed during the war. With detailed files and testimonies, the Tokyo Trials provided damning evidence of the crimes committed by Japanese militarists and stands as a warning to the world and the future. The meanings behind the studies on the Tokyo Trials go beyond academic and historical importance. If put under the context of post-war politics in East Asia, Japans attitude toward the Tokyo Trials almost serves as an indicator of its political ecosystem. Words about denials of the Tokyo Trials were not on the horizon of the Japanese public before 1970s, but such ideology emerged in the 1980s as its right-wing forces mulled a complete reshuffle of post-war politics. This kind of mentality prevailed to political, ideological, academic, educational and cultural circles since the beginning of 1990s as Japan fought hard to be a global political power. With the right gaining more ground in Japans political arena in the past few years, some senior officials uttered remarks about distortions in the trials, and some even staged concrete actions to smear the final ruling of the trials. The repeated visits of Japanese officials to the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine are one such example. Last summer, the Liberal-Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) even announced that they would conduct an investigation and verification of the procedures of the Tokyo trials, which reveals Japans intention of historical revisionism. The recent events in Asia, especially a series of actions Japan made to breach the post-war system, have raised concerns about the current regional peace. Against such a background, it is certainly important that different countries come together to ease anxiety and maintain regional stability by protecting the authority and solemnity of international law and order. In other words, each country in East Asia and international society should frequently consider the historical and realistic meanings of the Tokyo trials in a correct way. A Japanese journalist once made a metaphor at the first day of the Tokyo Trials, saying each scene can be compared to the classics of Shakespeare. As the unique appeal of Shakespeares work lies in its enlightenment beyond time, the Tokyo trials will demonstrate more far-reaching significance with the history moving forward. Dans la meme rubrique : < > More robots entering people's daily life China sees accelerated development of express delivery sector in rural areas China's FAST discovers largest atomic cloud in universe Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News President Xi's Peruvian visit will usher new chapter in bilateral ties: diplomat Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 14 Novembre 2016 With an investment of more than $14 billion in Peru, China is also the country's largest trading partner, export destination and source of imports, he stressed, adding that more than 170 Chinese enterprises have invested and developed business on Perus soil. By Peoples Daily Chinese President Xi Jinpings upcoming state visit to Peru is of milestone significance in bilateral ties, Chinese Ambassador to Peru Jia Guide wrote in an article published in the Peoples Daily on Monday, before Xi kicked off his tour. During his Peruvian trip, Xi is also scheduled to attend the 24th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in capital Lima. It is believed that the two ancient civilizations, respectively located on the east and west coast of the Pacific Ocean, will write a new chapter of friendship under the political guidance of the two heads of state, Jia added. With ancient civilizations, abundant resources and diversified and inclusive culture, Peru enjoys a long-standing friendship with China, the ambassador said, citing the remarks of former Peruvian President Alan Garcia and incumbent President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Garcia once praised China's social and economic reforms as one of the two major progresses of the late 20th century in world, together with globalization, while Kuczynski hailed the importance of China's development to the future of the world. Kuczynski also chose China as the destination of his first overseas visit after assuming office, which reflects the sound development of bilateral ties. Jia further elaborated that as a reflection of China-Peru friendship, the number of ethnic Chinese people living in Peru has increased to 10 percent of the countrys population, since they first set foot on this Latin American country in 1849. Over 10,000 restaurants offering Chinese cuisine in Peru not only light up Peruvian catering industry, but represent a fusion of two cultures, the diplomat added in the article. Jia lauded the fruits reaped from bilateral ties since the two countries established diplomatic relationship 45 years ago, citing the frequent high-level exchanges, deepening mutual political trust, increasing trade and investment, improving cooperation mechanisms, mutual support in multilateral fields, and enhanced cultural exchanges. Peru is the only Latin American nation that has established a comprehensive strategic partnership, and at the same time, has inked a comprehensive free trade agreement with China, underlined the ambassador. With an investment of more than $14 billion in Peru, China is also the country's largest trading partner, export destination and source of imports, he stressed, adding that more than 170 Chinese enterprises have invested and developed business on Perus soil. China's mobile phones, automobiles and engineering machines are popular in the Peruvian market, while the avocados, grapes and alpaca products from Peru are also favored by Chinese customers, Jia further explained. In the article, Jia also affirmed Chinas appreciation of the theme of this years APEC meeting, namely Quality Growth and Human Development, saying that it has common ground with China's 13th Five-Year Plan to promote economic transformation and upgrade. China and Peru share a consensus in facilitating regional economic integration, building Asia-Pacific free trade zone, advancing trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, opposing protectionism, and pushing forward economic globalization and inclusive development, the diplomat emphasized. China will work with other regional partners to build an open and interconnected Asia-Pacific economy featuring innovation-driven development and integration of interests, he said. According to him, the exchange of visits between the two heads of state in two months, which is rare in the world, reflects the close relationship between the two countries and their firm will to bolster their ties. The converging points shared by China and Peru in their development goals and internal demands provide them with unprecedented opportunities to deepen cooperation, said Jia. He illustrated that Peru is determined to realize modernization before 2021, the bicentennial of the country's independence, while China also aims to achieve its first centenary goal in 2021, also the centenary of the founding of the CPC. In addition, as Peru is working to diversify its industries and accelerate industrialization and China needs to export its production capacity, the two nations, standing at a critical stage of economic transition, will embrace the vast opportunities in cooperation on infrastructure, resource, mining and manufacturing, Jia concluded. Dans la meme rubrique : < > More robots entering people's daily life China sees accelerated development of express delivery sector in rural areas China's FAST discovers largest atomic cloud in universe Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) At the heart of the drama over Wells Fargo employees having opened fake accounts was an incentive structure that promoted unethical outcomes. But that structure was hardly limited to one bank or even limited to the banking industry. This scandal finds its origins in an incentive architecture encouraging bad behavior to happen and failing to punish that behavior (enough) when it does happen that plagues other industries as well as the government. One of the fundamental tenets of economics is that economic actors respond to incentives. While this may seem obvious, economists take great care to prove across different countries, historical periods and business sectors that people respond to the incentive structure within which they are asked to perform. Driving this structure is what is known as the "principal agent problem." Without an incentive system rewarding effort, an employee hired to perform a task exerts the least amount of effort possible, which is the detrimental to the firm. Higher-powered incentives are the "solution" to this problem, allowing employers the ability to structure rewards based on performance. The ubiquity of how economic actors respond to all incentives of varying degrees explains why thousands of people at Wells Fargo acted in largely the same way. The widespread nature of the incentive disease that permeated Wells Fargo, however, extends far beyond its walls. Since the financial services sector is so politically important and therefore politically connected, the incentive problem in banking affects other stakeholders, such as politicians, regulators, U.S. attorneys, rating agencies, etc. They either explicitly or implicitly promote ethical violations or fragility-creating actions. For politicians facing relatively short elections cycles, for example, legislation that produces positive outcomes for voters faster (such as mortgages) are often prioritized relative to those that take longer to bear fruit (such as education.) Politicians eager to win votes in the early 1990s not only passed legislation promoting homeownership for low-income groups using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to carry out this objective but required the mortgage giants to maintain portfolios with at least a certain percentage of low-income loans (50%). Presented by the government with an incentive structure rewarding a larger percentage of low-income loans, employees and subsequently loan officers followed suit, resulting in an increasing (and ultimately unsustainable) fragility in the financial sector. Thus, the ability and incentives of politicians to influence financial services led to an insidious incentives structure. It is because the underlying incentive disease transcends the boundaries of one firm or industry that real change addressing these issues is such a monumental task. Focusing instead on placing blame squarely on one individual, like former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, will be unproductive in truly changing outcomes. It ignores the fact that all economic actors respond similarly to the same incentive structure. Nor should we blame higher-powered incentives themselves, as they provide the fuel for the engine of growth in our system by motivating employees to pursue extraordinary work. Without them, we would, in effect, be an effortless society. This is not to say that individuals and companies are not culpable, rather that culpability extends far and wide. It is not the person, but the underlying system that needs change, as all economic actors respond to incentives similarly. Instead, effective reform of the incentive architecture almost by definition requires a holistic, coordinated and cohesive approach by regulators and policymakers, transcending company and even industry boundaries. Yet in the case of Wells Fargo, cohesion is currently absent, as evidenced by the no less than six separate current investigations of Wells Fargo by six separate agencies. True change in how incentives affect behavior would come from a thorough analysis of the incentives of the major companies, industries and executives. A more cohesive and coordination examination of the incentive architecture would also help policymakers find a unified voice across stakeholders in dealing with industry ethics in general. Sharon Poczter is an economics professor at Cornell University who studies the bank sector and emerging economies. She can be reach on Twitter @SharonPoczter. If there is one thing credit unions and banks can agree on with regard to the National Credit Union Administration's latest efforts to revamp its field-of-membership rules it is this: a lawsuit is brewing. "It would shock me to no end if the bankers did not file a lawsuit," Geoff Bacino, a partner at Bacino & Associates in Washington and a former NCUA board member, said in an interview. Though no legal challenge has yet been filed, the Independent Community Bankers of America telegraphed its intent to do so even before the rule was finalized, and new changes were introduced, at last month's NCUA board meeting. So, what are they waiting for? It could be that they're waiting to see the language of the two additional field-of-membership proposals that were discussed during the agency's Oct. 27 meeting and were recently published in Federal Register. The clock is now ticking on a comment period that ends Dec. 9. But the ball started rolling last year, after the NCUA published the first set of field-of-membership revisions, leading bankers to flood the agency with thousands of comment letters complaining the new framework was far too liberal. And though a resumption of that campaign aimed at the new proposals would come as no surprise, observers on both sides expect bankers' response to extend well beyond letter-writing this time around. After all, the ICBA is already suing the NCUA over the recent overhaul of member business lending regulations. And even before the regulator had issued its final rule on field of membership, ICBA Chief Executive Camden Fine said the group was also giving serious consideration to a second lawsuit challenging any new rules. From the banking industry's perspective, dual lawsuits would be costly, but Heidi Gesell, president and chief executive of the $258 million-asset BankCherokee in St. Paul, Minn., said the investment would be money well spent. "Somehow, we need to get our message out there," Gesell said in an interview. "We need to keep trying." Gesell submitted a comment letter opposing the original field-of-membership proposal unveiled last November. She said that she may try a second time but that she doesn't hold out much hope that she or any other bank advocate can sway the NCUA, which she sees as more of a partner to CU industry than a regulator. The ICBA's member-business-lending lawsuit has already spawned a rare partnership between the often-competing credit union trade groups the Credit Union National Association and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. Mary Dunn, former general counsel at CUNA and now a lawyer with CU Counsel, said the ICBA's telegraphing its intent to litigate "before they even saw the final rule does call into question the rationale for a lawsuit." One question hanging over a potential field-of-membership lawsuit is what will happen with the member-business-loan litigation. The NCUA recently filed a motion requesting a dismissal of that lawsuit, and Dunn asserted the regulator's motion clearly demonstrates the bankers have misread the rule. It also also unclear how quickly the member-business-loan lawsuit will move through the legal system. While there is no standard timetable for when the court might respond this particular district court, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, has earned the nickname "Rocket Docket" because it tends to move reasonably swiftly. Even if the court does dismiss the member-business-loan suit, however, there is still the possibility that the bankers may sue over the NCUA's recently approved field-of-membership rule. It's not just the ICBA that is dismayed by the NCUA's liberalization of member business lending and field of membership. Fine's counterpart at the American Bankers Association, Rob Nichols, said last month that his group "will take any action necessary to protect the interests of taxpayers, small banks and the communities they serve." The NCUA ignited the latest bank-credit union imbroglio Oct. 27 when Chairman Rick Metsger and J. Mark McWatters, another board member, gave final approval to the sweeping field-of-membership revision initially proposed a year earlier. Ironically, as part of its editing process, the agency actually removed a provision that banks had tabbed a particularly objectionable from the final version. It would have permitted entire congressional districts to be counted as well-defined local communities. Whatever goodwill that move might have engendered was quickly canceled out when the board made public the details of the two new proposals it plans to add to the freshly modified regulation. One would quadruple the population cap for a well-defined local community to 10 million people. The other would permit credit unions to use a narrative format, instead of existing political and census jurisdictions, to define their fields of membership. The NCUA said it decided to introduce the proposals in response to what it termed "stakeholder suggestions" contained in the more than 10,000 comment letters it received. The field-of-membership rule finalized late last month would take effect 60 days after it is published in the Congressional Record. The board can vote on the other proposals after the 30-day comment period. As it stands now, the rewritten field-of-membership rule that the NCUA just approved includes several provisions that could make it markedly easier for credit unions to increase membership. One eliminated a rule that had required credit unions seeking to serve any part of a core-based statistical area to serve the region's "core," downtown district, as well. Another did away with a guideline that had made it difficult for credit unions to serve portions of core-based statistical areas whose populations exceeded 2.5 million. Under the revised rule, credit unions can seek to serve portions of any combined statistical area, provided the population of the portion in question does not exceed 2.5 million. The old rule limited the population of rural districts to 250,000, or 3%, of a state's population. The revised rule raises the rural district population limit to 1 million. Other provisions made it easier for single-common-bond and multiple-common-bond credit unions to add members. In bankers' eyes, the rewritten field-of-membership rule "goes way beyond" anything envisaged for credit unions when the industry was founded and given its federal income tax exemption. "If you look back, there were very specific reasons and limitations," Gesell said. "Now, that's all being blown away. These latest proposals fly in the face of what credit unions were meant to be." The decision to revive narrative charter applications surprised Keith Leggett, a retired ABA economist who authors a blog about credit union issues, because they proved susceptible to legal challenges in the past. Indeed, Leggett suggested legal vulnerabilities were the reason that the NCUA did away with the practice about a decade ago. "The agency was accused of accepting evidence that supported the applications and tossing out any evidence that did not," he said. While it is predictable, perhaps, that bankers would see red over a proposal describing aggregations of 10 million people as well-defined local communities, Marc Schaefer, president and CEO of Truliant Federal Credit Union in Winston-Salem, N.C., labeled bankers' concerns "a tempest in a teapot." "Field of membership is something Congress intended for NCUA to interpret," said Schaefer, whose credit union, then known as AT&T Family Federal, stood at the center of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that ultimately resulted in passage of the Credit Union Membership Access Act of 1998. "This battle was fought a long time ago," Schaefer said. "It's not a productive use of resources. The courts are not going to protect a whole segment of the market because that's what the bankers want." Summit State Bank in Santa Rosa, Calif., has hired a rival's chief credit officer. The $514 million-asset bank said Brian Reed will succeed Brandy Seppi as credit chief on Dec. 5. Seppi was named chief lending officer. Reed joins Summit from the $1 billion-asset First Community Bank in Santa Rosa. "With the addition of Brian, we believe we are well positioned to serve the lending needs of small businesses and nonprofits while achieving greater results well into the future," Jim Brush, Summit State's president and CEO, said in a press release Monday. Brush became Summit's CEO and president in April after he was appointed to the bank's board in 2009. He succeeded Thomas Duryea, who resigned and joined Summit Bank in Oakland, Calif., as CEO in September. President Obama visits Greece in three days, and is walking into hazardous territory, at least for the photo ops he was planning in the birthplace of democracy. In Greece, there is none of the cognitive dissonance about President Obama that one sees in the U.S.: although an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction, Obama remains personally quite popular. It's as if we can't look beyond Obama's winning, grinning persona and cannot see that Obama is the one responsible for the country's wrong direction. In Greece, unfortunately, there has been a strong anti-American view of the U.S. ever since Andreas Papandreou demagogued the American bases out of Greece during the 1980s. The mainland bases were duly shut down, Souda Bay on the island of Crete was the only one that remained open. To say that Orthodox Christian Greeks did not take kindly to Bill Clinton's bombing of Orthodox Christian Serbs in the spring of 1999 would be a pretty considerable understatement, so when Clinton visited the city of Athens that autumn the walls of its buildings were suddenly plastered with posters of Clinton as Hitler. There were a lot of demonstrations and property damage leading up to, and carried on during, Clinton's visit. Then George W. Bush invaded Iraq just a few years later. Greeks were apoplectic, and not just because they opposed the invasion. Having lived through the Nazi occupation of WWII, and a subsequent civil war between communists and republicans (Greece was the only nation contested and saved from communist rule in the aftermath of WWII), Greeks were afraid the war would spread (it didn't) and concerned that a refugee crisis would result (it did). Anarchists and far leftists are pretty common in Greece. The mysterious November 17th terrorist group, which for decades seemed to be committing mayhem on a regular basis with no consequences, was finally unmasked in 2002 by a Chinese clock which malfunctioned, detonating a bomb being carried by one of its members, who was injured, but not severely enough to prevent him from dropping the dime on his fellows. November 17th took its name from the student uprising in 1974 at the Athens Polytechnic College which protested the ongoing rule of an American-backed military junta that had seized power and imposed virtual martial law on the country in 1967. While the CIA's involvement, exposed as a result of FOI requests, was not our finest hour, geopolitical considerations (i.e., the Cold War and Greece's proximity to the USSR) led then-president Johnson to approve of the overthrow. The protests at the Polytechnic College and the subsequent restoration of democracy to the people who actually invented democracy was not a bad thing. What was a bad thing, however, is that, having seen a successful attempt to take over an institution of higher learning, anarchists have since used the same tactic to really tear things up from time to time. The chief reason they use this tactic of co-opting universities and using them as a base for their nefarious work is that after the '74 Polytechnic uprising, Greece passed a law declaring all of its universities and colleges places of asylum: the police and military are not allowed onto their grounds. So when they want to wreak a little havoc, whether it be against the IMF, the EU, the G8, or the U.S., the anarchists simply camp out on university property, manufacture Molotov cocktails on their premises, load them into shopping carts swiped from local supermarkets, and push them out into the streets where the cocktails get ignited and thrown at buildings, businesses, and law enforcement personnel. Traditionally, Greek police adopt a policy of containment and pretty much let the anarchists have their way as long as they stay within predetermined boundaries. Now here's the problem with Obama's visit: it falls on November 15-16, exactly at the time when anarchists get revved up to celebrate the November 17 uprising. My Greek wife is incredulous. "Did not the Americans know about November 17th?" she asked me. "Doesn't their ambassador know anything about Greece?" Obama had planned on a magnificent speech lauding the Greek democratic tradition on Pnyx Hill, just to the west of the Acropolis. This is the place the Athens ekklesia, or assembly, met during classical times to hash out and vote on policies for their city-state. Mr. Obama was to stand there, demonstrating his considerable oratorical skills like a latter-day Demosthenes, with the real columns of the Parthenon in the background, instead of those Styrofoam things he had placed behind him in Denver's Mile High Stadium in 2008 when he accepted the Democrat nomination for president. Buildings' walls all around Athens are once again festooned posters denigrating the American president: they show Obama with the "prohibited slash across his face like an "insufficient funds" stamp on a bounced check. The text of these posters is as follows: Obama: Unwanted! To the Streets of November! Anti-imperialistic Uprising Against: NATO, American Bases, Imperialistic Wars and Fascism, The Division of Cyprus, (and) The Social Barbarism of the European Union and the IMF! The AP reports that the "Conspiracy Cells of Fire," a member in good standing of the Anti-imperialistic Consortium of Leftists, is "urging anarchists to 'spoil the party... and sabotage'" Obama's visit. The group's website encourages anarchists to "return a little of the violence that we receive daily" to the organizers of Obama's visit (What "violence" they are referring to is anyone's guess.). A march to the U.S. embassy is planned. A similar march protesting Clinton's visit in '99 resulted in violent clashes and extensive property damage. So we have some fireworks to look forward to in Greece during the next few days. By the way, in 2007 a rocket was fired at the embassy from a construction site across the street by yet another anarchist group, the Revolutionary Struggle. On the route to the embassy, in the median of Vasillisas Olgas Avenue, stands a life-sized bronze statue of Harry Truman. Truman is striking a dynamic pose, one foot forward, his coattail flowing backwards in a breeze, left hand down near his pants pocket and balled into a fist, his right tightly holding a rolled up copy of the Marshall Plan. The statue was erected during a happier time for Greek-U.S. relations, after Harry had fed thousands of starving Greeks with American food products in the aftermath of WWII, during which the Nazis had shipped all of Greece's agricultural output to Germany. Poor Harry. He gets torn down every time the anarchists act out, and he'll probably get pulled off his pedestal during the November 15th demonstration as well. And poor Barack. He kind of got torn down from his pedestal, too, on November 8th. Now the dramatic venue for his speech has been cancelled. Due to security concerns, instead of the Pnyx, he'll speak at an indoor auditorium in downtown Athens. Here's hoping he has a safe trip, and I mean that sincerely. The progressives are determined to get rid of the Electoral College. Of course they are. Abolishing the Electoral College would complete their project of overthrowing America's unique federal system, begun about one hundred years ago. The direct election of senators was the first and greatest victory of the progressives over the Framers of the Constitution. Made possible by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, it mortally wounded the Founders' system. Abolishing the Electoral College will finish the job. And the progressives mean to do just that. If we want to understand the efforts of the Framers during that hot summer in 1787, we must see them as trying to design self-government with a sober assessment of human nature in mind. When in the next century Lord Acton wrote that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he captured in a ringing aphorism the view of the Founders. This understanding of the effect of political power on human nature explains the Framers' focus on defining and limiting federal power. They did so by distributing power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government; preserving the political independence of the states; and creating a zone of liberty around the individual even by further dividing the (supreme) legislative power itself, crafting two legislative bodies with separate powers and potentially competing interests. Jefferson put it this way: What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body. And Lord Acton put it this way: Liberty consists in the division of power. Absolutism, in concentration of power. The Framers of the Constitution aimed to preserve your unalienable rights and mine by preventing the concentration of political power in the central government. They began with "the Virginia Plan," the original proposal written by James Madison and presented by Edmund Randolph at the Constitutional Convention. This initial proposal opened the discussion and became the basis of the debate. David O. Stewart in his book The Summer of 1787 describes the Virginia Plan like this: The people would elect the "first Branch" of the legislature[.] That "first branch" (the future House of Representatives) would choose the "second branch" (the future Senate). Together, those two houses would select the president and appoint all the judges. Self-government meant that in America, the people and their elected representatives were going to populate the government all the way to the top. But how? The important feature of Madison's plan was that it provided a way to accomplish that. To do so, Madison made a decisive break with England's parliamentary system. The problem with the English model was that the House of Lords was in the hands of the hereditary nobility, and the executive was in the hands of the hereditary monarch. Since America was not going to have a king or a House of Lords, there was no way to make the English model fit America's needs. It is all too easy for us today to fail to recognize how much of Madison's proposed system of representation actually made it into the Constitution of 1787. This is because the original system of federal elections was significantly different from the one we have today. Only the way we now elect the members of the House is according to the original Constitution. According to Madison's Virginia Plan, the voters would only directly elect the members of the first branch. The Constitution of 1787 preserved that basic feature. Members of the House of Representatives were the only federal officers directly elected by the voters. The indirect election of U.S. senators was also carried over from the Virginia Plan to the Constitution. U.S. senators were elected by each state legislature; the state legislatures did the selecting in place of Madison's first branch. This followed Madison's proposed format of indirect representation for the upper chamber, with the additional advantage of also providing each state with representation within the federal government. This modification of Madison's original plan by the Framers was brilliant. Having the first branch of the federal legislature choose the second branch would have had the effect of binding the two branches close together. The selection of senators would also have been a collective process by the first branch. By using the state legislatures as many different channels through which the voters populated the Senate, the Constitution's original design dispersed the process of selecting senators over the whole extent of the republic, state by state. In addition, making the selection process for the two chambers separate in this way put their independence of each other on a firm electoral foundation, preventing the concentration of federal legislative power that would have resulted from the Virginia Plan. Finally, there can be little doubt that the most important benefit of the constitutional system was that it worked to preserve the political independence of the individual states. That was the electoral system for Congress America once had. The direct election of U.S. senators, the system we have today, bypasses the state legislatures. Direct election began a process of putting an end to America's unique federal system. The independence of the states and their ability to counter-balance the power of the central government has withered away. The Senate had been a barrier to the passage of laws infringing on the powers reserved to state governments, but the Senate has abandoned that responsibility under the incentives of the new system of election. Because the states no longer have a powerful standing body representing their interests within the central government, the power of the central government has rapidly grown at the expense of the states. The states increasingly are relegated to functioning as administrative units of today's gargantuan central government. The Tenth Amendment has become a dead letter. Instead of retaining many of their powers and responsibilities, and surrendering only a limited number of their powers to the central government, as the Framers intended, the states are more and more entangled in administering programs of the central government and in carrying out mandates of the central government. As the central government has metastasized and the states have lost their independence, liberty has diminished. Getting rid of the Electoral College would complete this project. The Electoral College was another brilliant modification by the framers of Madison's plan. Instead of having the two branches of Congress together choose the president, once again, the voters initiated the process at the state and local levels by choosing the presidential electors. The model for this system was the slates of delegates who had represented the people of the individual states at the Constitutional Convention. Leading citizens well known to the voters were to be chosen by the voters for the special purpose of selecting the president. The electors would assemble in the state in which they were selected, deliberate, and then cast the votes allotted to that state. Though it does not function as the Founders originally intended, the Electoral College remains an essential constitutional safeguard of American liberty. Each state is allotted as many electoral votes as it has senators and members of the House of Representatives. To become president of the United States of America, one must even today win the national election state by state. Eliminating the Electoral College and electing the president by the popular vote, as the progressives are determined to do, would transform the office. Its occupant would in effect become the president of the big cities of America, and the last vestiges of political autonomy guaranteed the individual states by the Constitution's electoral system would be swept away. We must preserve and protect the Electoral College at any cost. Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment instead would be a great idea, though. It would be victory for the Founders' vision and a defeat for the progressives. It would make possible a return to America's unique, liberty-preserving federal system. Robert Curry is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books. You can preview the book here. President Obama has done everything possible to damage race relations, especially planting hostility against white people and a disabling sense of victimization in the hearts of young black people. His message of division and resentment has been carried forth by smug media. But the left wing's dogma of white privilege is proffered mainly to elites who don't live side by side with different races. Ordinary white and black people who live and work closely together still predominantly share mutual acceptance and respect in their everyday lives. That is true of the area where I live and vote. The precinct where I vote is in the most thoroughly biracial community I have ever seen in America. This district is probably 50-50 white and black. It abounds with little white buildings where a dazzling light of the Living Self is shared. The churches huddle closely together and silently speak joy to one another across a few feet of muddy lawn. While houses of worship are either predominantly white or black, any person can walk into any church and encounter a loving fellowship in Christ. I know, because I have. Voting here takes place in a 1960s-era Head Start building. This election precinct is run almost entirely by black ladies. A few years ago, I saw a solitary black man behind the registration table, but never once a white person. There are ten qualified political parties in South Carolina. For those who wanted to vote a straight party ticket, they appeared on the left side of Tuesday's touchscreen ballot. Number one on the ballot was the Democratic Party. Way down the list, next to last, past the Greens, Working Families, United Citizens, and Libertarians, the patient voter could find the Republican Party. I have never stood in line to vote until last Tuesday. As I was waiting, a middle-aged white woman rushed in. She explained that her daddy was very sick and shouldn't be out of his bed. She was having trouble with the portable oxygen, and he needed to vote as soon as possible. The Misses Latasha and Lillie Mae swung into action. The younger woman brought the material for curbside voting out to the man, while the older lady stood guard over the voting booth he was using remotely. This patriot and beloved father was fully reclined in the front seat of a runcible green van, eyes barely open, as he cast his ballot. He said, "Thank you, ma'am" to Latasha, as is the custom here. Whom do you suppose he voted for? For the candidate who called him deplorable, racist, and who despises him? For a woman who strew national secrets around with as much concern as she would have for used tissues? Did he choose the secretary of state who let her direct that subordinate employees be disemboweled and butchered in the streets, even though they had pleaded to her for protection? The dying man in the van is old enough to remember humming textile mills that once were planted everywhere in this region. Maybe he worked in one and went bowling with the team from work on Wednesdays. The mills are gone. The train tracks are covered with weeds, the sidewalks along so many main streets are broken and buckled, and shop windows wear shrouds of rain-swollen plywood. The economic devastation this man has seen is due in part to the trade agreements one candidate promoted, even as the other candidate is promising to focus on the very problem that caused so much destruction. Left-wing cake holes have been gorging themselves for years on the expired and spoiled provender that Americans are racist and sexist. Donald Trump's victory has acted on their bloated stomachs like an emetic, causing the racism-sexism lies to become as vomitus shooting from their mouths. For example, CNN's hate color commentator Van Jones blamed Trump's victory on "whitelash." Jones upchucks thusly because he neither knows nor cares anything about the real lives of black people, the real problems they face, and the causes of those problems. The people in this rural area, white and black, face the same problems of economic devastation, drug abuse, and worsening crime. Republicans who did not unify around Trump will now be calling to unify with Democrats, as a way of defeating the programs of President Trump. Paul Ryan opened his congratulatory remarks with a call for national unity and added, "What I see here is a unified government and not having more of this protracted divided government[.]" Ryan needs a new optometrist. The last thing America needs now is unity. Democrats will never unify with Republicans. They have become the party of hate, and they will continue to hate. Only hate can preserve the left wing's misbegotten power and counterfeit virtue. President Trump needs to keep his promises to a dying South Carolina man. Trump needs to build a mighty manned wall, because a country without borders is committing suicide. The president needs to keep his promise that the resources that come from this land will be made useful by Americans once again. For the sake of those Americans in heaven, as one Carolina man soon will be, and those still on Earth who worked and fought to preserve the Constitution and our national greatness, President Trump must reject the falsehood that we are a nation of cowards and restore the truth that we are a great, good, and generous people. When that happens we will once again be a great and unified nation. Donald J. Trump's victory was described as an upset in many news outlets on November 9, 2016. It was an "upset" only because of the almost uniformly failed prognostications about the results from "scientific pollsters," from Nate Silver to Quinnipiac to CNN and numerous others. What went wrong? The news networks and the pollsters will try to answer this question by looking at the demographics of polling, and how there were so many unanticipated "last-minute" shifts among Jews, blacks, women, educated, uneducated, Hispanics, etc. This type of analysis tends to shift the blame from the pollsters to the "unpredictable voter." The voter is thus portrayed as behaving in a surprising, even erratic way that caused the pundits to err. Is this model of explanation valid? In order to answer our question, it is not necessary to review the details of polling methodology. Rather, we can answer our question by going back to the sixteenth-century savant Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon perceived that advances in knowledge were being held back by our biases. He called these biases "idols" and asserted that they distorted our perceptions of reality, and even our experimental approach in science. His choice of the word "idols" was significant in a time when Christian religion was not considered retrograde, as it is in many learned circles today. Idol-worship was considered a wrong worship when compared to worship of the one true and living God of the Old and New Testaments. The Ten Commandments includes the statement: "You shall have no other God before me." If one did have another God, then he or she would be an idol-worshiper. Thus, by designating certain biases as idols, Bacon was to some degree loading his terminology to suggest a kind of ungodly behavior. And since Christians believed that Jesus Christ was the "way, the truth, and the life," the distortion of our biases was a departure from godliness and hence from truth. Truth or the search for truth was a search to free one's mind from biases. Nevertheless, in our time, this writer has been told good-naturedly by certain academics that it is impossible to rid ourselves of our biases, so we should extol our biases, teach our biases (as though they were truth [realizing as we do that they are nonetheless relative]), and go happily on our deconstructivist way. However, Bacon listed four idols that this writer will briefly outline and suggest that they applied to the vast majority of pollsters in this presidential election. Their minds were distorted by mis-assumptions, inclinations, and various agendas that kept them enslaved to their biases and thus, in the last analysis, wholly incorrect in their predictions. First, Bacon refers to "Idols of the tribe." This includes the human tendency to "accept, believe, and even prove what we would prefer to be true." Also, it includes our tendency to "rush to conclusions and make premature judgments." Thus, President-Elect Trump was right on target when he described the election as rigged. The pundits and pollsters had politically correct assumptions that attitudes of denigration of the Trump movement and the candidate contributed to their uniformly incorrect assessments. For example, how often did I hear Megyn Kelly say to guests she was interviewing that the vast and enthusiastic attendance at Trump rallies was relatively insignificant? What really counts, she often insisted, is the voting turnout and not the rallies. Yet this observation cuts directly against common sense. Trump himself, with uncanny insight, remarked frequently at his rallies that the media showed only the people behind him when he speaks and failed to pan the enthusiastic, vast crowd in front of him. He reprimanded the media, but his criticism was ignored. A second idol for Bacon was the "Idol of the cave." This includes "high esteem for a few select authorities," as well as "a tendency to reduce or confine phenomena within the terms of our own narrow training or discipline." On election night, some of the TV commentators admitted their polling experts had had long arguments with Trump's people who talked about expected large turnouts in certain "red" counties in North Carolina. But the pollsters pooh-poohed this because they were attached to their predictability models based on a succession of past elections. They statistically evaluated the variability of turnouts in 6, 8, or 10 previous presidential elections and concluded that turnout would have to be within a certain range. In fact, the turnout in various "swing states" was greater in the pro-Trump counties and outside the range of turnout of the pollster models. They had discounted the wholly correct feedback they had received from the Trump camp. A third idol for Bacon was the "Idol of the market place." This type of idol is "from the 'intercourse and association of men with each other.'" Here the main culprit is language. Thus, the pollsters and the commentators who are working hand-in-glove tend to live in a politically correct world, a world where definitions are distorted to mean whatever the P.C. crowd wants them to mean. There is a mental discounting of certain Trump expressions as "mere demagoguery" when the people listening are hearing words that are "very inspiring." Thus, the commenters and the pollsters who support them have an edge of contempt built into their assessments. Hillary and her supporters on PBS, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS are always using the word "inclusivity" as expressing her vision for America, thus they suppose that Trump's interest in putting more controls on illegal immigration or refugee admission is exclusionary, whereas he is merely talking about some practical restraints, not the elimination of our inclusive history. Thus, polling pundits failed to factor out or offset their own P.C. bias in interpreting the feedback from voters and potential voters. Pollsters must ask questions, and the questions as well as the hearing of the answers require an interpretive cognitive framework that governs the creation of the questions and the understanding of the responses. Thus, the polling questions may be distorted and colored by bias from beginning to end. Bacon's fourth idol was the "Idol of the theater." This is the idol of the marketplace operating at a more sophisticated or philosophical level. Thus, the pollsters are not merely carrying around the baggage of left-wing politically correct assumptions and beliefs (both educated and uneducated may have these). They are reinforced in their anti-Trump prejudices by sophisticated economic theories like those of Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, and even David Ricardo (author of the principle of "comparative advantage," which is so basic in our formulation of so-called free trade deals that Trump wants to correct). The sophisticated anti-Trump pollsters and commentators are apostles of John Stuart Mill and his ethical principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. This principle is extended to apply to a global model (not the nation-state) as the "greatest number." To this end, they are willing to sacrifice other ethical philosophies embodied in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount that ratify the sanctity of property ownership and of individual moral liberty, not imposition of fiats based on collectivist neo-Marxist assumptions. In essence, it is idol-worship that caused a misunderstanding of the dynamics of this year's election by the media. But truth broke through and showed itself to an amazed population. In July of 2011, when North Korea's butcher-dictator Dear Leader Kim Jung-Il died, all the NK Communist Party members in the land were ordered to cry hysterically, to ululate in grief at the death of Dear Leader, in public, altogether, on command. You can see it in this video, the Party cadres lined up on the hard snow in military platoon formation, men and women, bursting into tears when the command was given. The BBC wondered at the time whether all that public crying was real or not, since Dear Leader controlled every human being in that country, by sending any wrong 'uns to his vast concentration camps to be starved and worked to death. Every tear-stained face in those black-clad platoons knew with absolutely certainty that they would be arrested and sent to death if they failed to show enough dramatic grief. Some unconvincing mourners were undoubtedly grabbed and taken away to the camps. North Korea's national cry-in for the loss of Dear Leader is an important lesson about human politics: the power of closed cult indoctrination. Turns out you don't even need death camps. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment showed how it could be done with legally free Stanford students in the prime of life, able to walk away from the experiment any time they liked, without murderous guards armed with guns. All you needed was a Stanford grad student wearing a white lab coat. A whole series of experiments showed the same kind of thing. The iron key to mind control is having one source of "real" information, and shutting off any competing ones. It's all Scientology has to deliver for its faithful followers to stay in that imaginary world. Most of the more fanciful religious and non-religious cults on the web have followers who indoctrinate themselves. The Five Star Movement in Italy started as an internet cult in the 90s telling teenage kids about airplanes spreading out chemtrails to control the minds of Italians; today the Five Star Cults controls a plurality of votes in the Parliament in Rome. Today "brain hackers" are no doubt using the same dark arts on the more gullible of their webizens. It's one reason why teenage kids a decade ago started to put metal objects through their ears, lips and noses. To them those were magical symbols as surely as a reversed swastika was an object of power to the Hitlerjugend. Cults are human universals. A lot of tribal groups are nothing but cults: The key is always restricting information, and crushing dissent. That's why U.S. cults often block communication between members and their families. Karl Marx had only a few precepts for his followers to remember, and the most important one was, 'First, conquer the organs of propaganda." Which meant the schools and the newspapers in 19th century Berlin. Marx was employed as a "journalist," a word that was just as phony then as it is today. His real passion was mass agitation, and in that way, he was a kind of genius. When you control every message a person receives 24/7, through teachers and professors, through news media, and through their peers, you imprison people just as effectively as concrete blocks and iron bars, complete with AK-47s. The United States used to have about a hundred newspaper owners, most of them small. Today we have half a dozen giant transnationals that can reach perhaps 90 percent of the population. If you wonder how it is that the American Left has all that power, the mental media monopoly is all you need to look for. They are so convincing that they even persuade themselves about plainly false superstitions like global warming. We may think we have made progress since the Dark Ages, but the fact is that humans are as superstitious as ever, perhaps more so. If you were a medieval peasant walking behind an ox plow all day you probably had more contact with reality than today's college indoctrinees. So today we see the same thing happening on the American Left, for pretty much the same reason: Ever since the late 1960s, the Hard Left has run our schools, colleges, and mass media, with the inevitable result that American liberals live in a mental box where only one truth is allowed to be voiced: the Left created the worship of Obama the Savior (we will slow the rising of the seas), and Hillary the Woman of Destiny (who will liberate women for the worship of Gaia). These people are not technically crazy, although their beliefs do not correspond to reality. They are only deeply indoctrinated and protected from contradiction. Today's Butcher of North Korea, Kim III, may have just murdered his wife, probably with an artillery piece, as he is wont to do to express displeasure at family members. But when Kim inevitably passes on, the national outburst of grief will be just as loud and dramatic as before. You might object that American Leftists do not live in fear of imminent execution if they fail to cry hard enough at the Victory of Demon Trump. That seems true enough, but it ignores a basic fact about mentally closed cults, namely that they create their own realities, and if enough young feminists at Wellesley believe that Hillary's defeat equals Mass Mind Rape, they will feel and act exactly as if it's true. Cult fantasies are incredibly powerful, even with otherwise normal people. You don't need an actual artillery piece to blow up the victims: They create that reality all by themselves. Since every faithful member of the college Left is pledged never to listen to a dissenting opinion, they have cultified themselves. There's nothing we can do to make any difference: they are mentally armored. All we can do is wait for reality to assert itself. Meanwhile, kids, have a good cry and don't forget your hanky. It brings a smile to my face to read one article after another detailing how President Obama's legacies can be so easily undone by Donald Trump. The reason why so many of Obama's initiatives can be undone is because so many of them were done without authorizing legislation. Obama acted unilaterally, and the Congress, composed of timid Republicans, never mustered up the courage to object. But because Obama acted unilaterally, often even illegally with insufficient authority, many of his actions can be reversed without even requiring authorizing legislation. Let's take a look at a few: 1) The Iran deal. The deal with Iran to supposedly curb its nuclear enrichment was never submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification, as it was supposed to be. That means that any succeeding president can simply ignore it. 2) The Paris climate deal. Obama signed the Paris Climate Accord committing the U.S. to reduce production of greenhouse gases to reduce imaginary man-made global warming. Trump has indicated he wants to pull out of this treaty, but liberals claim that the treaty requires Trump to give four years' advance notice before quitting. However, since this treaty, like the Iran deal, was also never submitted to the U.S. Senate, the United States is not bound to it, and Trump can simply disregard it, without any need for action from the Congress. 3) Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would effectively shut down many coal- and gas-fired power plants, was put into effect with an EPA regulation; no law was ever passed giving the EPA such sweeping authority. Trump's new EPA director can cancel it immediately. Trump can also open up new areas for oil exploration that were ruled off limits by Obama, again without legislation to back him up. 4) Obama's amnesty to children of illegal aliens (DACA). This too was implemented by executive order and can be canceled immediately. 5) Obama took the "work" out of workfare through an executive order, allowing people to once again get welfare without having to work. That also was the act of an easily reversible executive order. 6) Obama allows the so-called "transgendered" to serve in the military and has threatened schools that do not allow boys in girls' bathrooms. These too are easy to reverse. Ironically, if Obama had acted legally and gotten these measures approved by Congress, as he rightly should have, President-Elect Trump might have had more difficulty getting all these measures overturned, especially in a closely divided Senate where 60 votes are often required to avoid a filibuster. But since Obama acted unilaterally, much of his legacy is as durable as Hillary Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania. Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com. On Friday, Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of the N.Y. Times, wrote a letter to his newsroom apologizing for their coverage of the Clinton/Trump campaign while simultaneously asserting they were completely unbiased. As non-apologies go, his is a classic. It took him 279 words to say the equivalent of we told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about both candidates and we promise to stop lying about Trump in the future. He sounds like a kid caught shoplifting: I didnt steal nothin, and Ill give back anything that wound up in my pockets, honest I will! And then, the very next day, Pinchs newspaper of record published a story wherein Hillary blames her loss on James Comey: Mrs. Clintons contention appears to be more rooted in reality -- and hard data. An internal campaign memo with polling data said that there is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win, but that, in the end, late-breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome. So an internal campaign memo from Hillarys campaign is now hard data? And this just 24 hours after your letter to the newsroom? Your journalists just cant help themselves, Pinch. Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com. Remember Merrick Garland, the judge President Obama nominated for the Supreme Court? Back in March, Republicans said they would not consider the nomination because it came too late in Obama's term to be considered, and they would leave it to the next President to choose a nominee. But Democrats never give up, and President Obama may have a unique opportunity when the Senate goes into recess. Under the law, when the Congress is in recess for at least ten days, the President can make what's called recess appointments. Under the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, a president may make a recess appointment including one to the Supreme Court but only if the Senate is in a recess that lasts at least ten days. If the Senate reassembles more frequently than that, but does no business other than formally opening and closing a session, that still interrupts the opportunity for a recess appointment to any federal post. Once the Senate has recessed this years session for the final time, in late December, the Garland nomination if not acted upon would be returned to the White House. But whether that would create an opportunity for President Obama to name Garland to a recess appointment before inauguration day on January 20 depends upon how late in December the Senate is formally sitting, determining how long a recess will be until the new Congress meets on January 3. In other words, if the Senate goes into a final recess before December 24th, or even simply takes ten days off in November or December, Obama will have a golden opportunity to directly put Garland on the Supreme Court. And recess appointments last until the end of the next session of Congress, which means two years. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution reads: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session. And in fact, President George W. Bush appointed William H. Pryor a circuit court judge during a Senate recess on February 20, 2004, and the appointment lasted past the November 2004 election until the end of 2006. Let's hope that Mitch McConnell has enough brains to keep the Senate in session every few days and not get caught with his pants down, legislatively speaking. Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com. The left will not stand for a President Trump. Theyre crying, screaming, threatening, and attacking. None of us is safe whether youre an adult, a child, or even an innocent dog. Trump supporters are being beaten on the street. Young students who voted for Trump in mock elections are being physically assaulted. One mother kicked her 7-year-old out of the house, verbally accosting him throughout the shocking ordeal, after learning that he voted for Trump in a mock election. She then posted the disgusting scene on YouTube. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Violent protests riots across the country are spreading as leftist goons having unfettered pre-pubescent tantrums drone on about peace and love. Targets of the attacks are anything and anyone, including the police. Meanwhile, plans are in the works to disrupt Trumps inauguration with civil unrest. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) In addition to violence and threats of violence, the madness of the left expresses itself in other ways, such as when the CEO of one company seemed to order employees who supported Trump to resign. (Since then, shares in the company have dropped nearly 10%.) Or when a taqiyya-practicing Muslima filed a false police report claiming that a Trump supporter attacked her. She has since been charged with filing a false claim. (See here, here, here, and here.) There are calls for the election results to be overturned, and lawsuits against Trump are in the works. One supposedly conservative journalist (cough) declared that Trump would resign or be impeached by the end of his first year in office. (I guess the crease in Trumps pants didnt cut mustard with the guy. You know whom Im talking about.) (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) West Coast states want to secede from the union. Until that happens, leftists are finding all sorts of ridiculous ways to comfort their fragile selves. Some are wearing safety pins (such as used on diapers) to signify they are a safe space for other traumatized zombies. Schools are offering grief counseling, allowing students to skip exams, bringing kittens and puppies into classrooms, and providing coloring books and Play-Doh (thats at the university level, by the way) among other measures to protect shattered souls. Videos are being made by the perpetually hysterical and tearful that give testimony to their abject trauma, including Yoko Ono recording a 19-second ear-shattering primal scream. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) As readers are well aware, the media have been in full meltdown mode, shamelessly exposing themselves as the hacks they are, just as they did in the months leading up to the election. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Predictably, members of the Hollywood elite are also distressed. Why anyone cares what these people think is beyond me. Do journalists ever spread out across the country to ask farmers or steel workers for their thoughts on major events such as the results of this election? No. Instead, one-name goons like Cher and Madonna are peddled as important voices to weigh in on such matters. As for Donald Trump, the rallying cry for him to be murdered comes from various quarters. Twitter has allowed the #assassinatetrump hashtag. Effigies of Trump have been hung, set ablaze, and beaten with sticks. Mobs in the street have threatened to set Trump Tower on fire. And a sign at one protest called for Melania to be raped. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) The madness is unfolding at breakneck speed, with no end in sight. The president (or even Hillary Clinton, for that matter) could make a statement to help settle this insanity. But he hasnt. I think we can safely assume hes all on board with it, even cheering it on from the privacy of his soon to be former residence. May God keep Trump and his family safe. And may we prevail against the evil machine that is communism masked as progressivism masked as the Democratic Party. Hat tips: The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Right Scoop, Weasel Zippers In a 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday night, president-elect Donald Trump said his administration would immediately deport 2-3 million illegal aliens with criminal records. As for the remaining illegals, Trump said once the border is secure, a determination will be made about their status. CBS News: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said in an interview with CBS 60 Minutes. But were getting them out of our country, theyre here illegally. He continued by saying that after the border is secure, immigration officials will begin to make a determination about the remaining undocumented immigrants in the U.S. After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, were going to make a determination on the people that theyre talking about who are terrific people, theyre terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that, he said. But before we make that determination...its very important, we are going to secure our border. Asked whether he really plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border -- a proposal that served as a centerpiece of his campaign message -- Trump replied, Yes. Since Trumps election on Tuesday night, the realities of actually building that wall have begun to set in. The Mexican government has publicly reminded him that Mexico will not pay for the wall. And asked about the wall, Trump transition co-chair Newt Gingrich said the wall was a great campaign device. Trump also told 60 Minutes that the border wall, which was one of the centerpieces of his campaign platform, could be part wall and some fencing, in accordance with what congressional Republicans have proposed. For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate, he said. Im very good at this, its called construction. Is there anything Donald Trump cant do? His election is shaking up (for the better) the ruling British Conservatives, as a high-powered team (two top political editors and the chief political correspondent) at the UK Telegraph explain: Theresa May is facing a growing Cabinet backlash over her decision to dismiss Nigel Farage despite him being the only British politician to meet with Donald Trump since his victory. The Telegraph understands a number of members of the Cabinet and other Government ministers believe the Prime Minister's allies have made a mistake by referring to Mr Farage as an irrelevance. One Cabinet source also accused Downing Street of having "made no plan" for a Trump victory, despite Government claims that officials have for months been holding talks with members of his inner-circle. Mrs May has made clear that none of her ministers will be allowed to speak to Mr Farage, the interim Ukip leader, despite his close links to Mr Trump. Mr Farage on Saturday spent nearly one hour with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York. That last point has got to be intolerable for the head of the British government. The special relationship with the United States has taken a beating under President Obama, who notoriously returned the bust of Winston Churchill to the U.K. after evicting it from the Oval Office. It is obvious that a bust of Churchill will be returned to the Oval Office, the only question being which British person will ceremonially bring it to its proper place at the heart of the presidency. On the assumption that the queen will not be available, May has got to be worried that Nigel Farage will have a picture even more annoying (to her) than this... ...to post on his Facebook page with President Trump, Winston Churchill, and himself in the Oval Office. Farage and Trump apparently are BFFs. Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Farage says that he was greeted like a long-lost friend by Mr Trump, who he supported on the campaign trail in America. Even worse for May and the Tories, Farage has become the link between the new president and British politics: Mr Farage also discloses that Mr Trumps team has raised concerns about the unrelentingly negative comments made about him by senior Conservatives and members of Mrs Mays Downing Street staff. The Telegraph team is confident that May will have to back down and allow her cabinet ministers to talk with the former head of a rival party in order to get information about and perhaps information to the next president of the United States. Can Mrs. May say out of the loop? With a court decision trying to obstruct Brexit, and with the Tories facing the job of actually implementing it, having Farage occupy the position of de facto ambassador to the Oval Office is a nightmare. P.M. May might actually have to obey the voters' will. According to the Telegraph, she is beginning to rethink something: Mrs May will today say that Mr Trumps victory shows the Government must deal with the "overlooked" communities that have been transformed irrevocably by immigration without the "permission" of British voters. Heh, heh, heh. I don't know about you, but I love it when squishy conservatives get outfoxed by real ones. Victor A. Lundy is best known for his modernist architecture the imposing rectangles of the United States Tax Court Building in Washington, D.C., the angular shapes of the Church of the Resurrection Harlem in New York City, and the mushroom-styled umbrellas around the entrance of the Warm Mineral Springs Motel in Sarasota County, Florida. Born in New York City, Victor Lundy had a keen interest in drawing which he nurtured throughout his childhood. He eventually attended New York University to study architecture before he was sent off to the frontlines of World War 2. After returning from the war, Lundy graduated from Harvard University and went to Sarasota to make a name for himself. But a part of his life that deserves more than a passing mention are the years he spent serving as a soldier in the U.S. 26th Infantry Division during World War II. In 1942, Victor A. Lundy was nineteen year old, studying to be an architect in New York University. The war had got him excited, because it provided him an opportunity to rebuild Europe after the war. Eager not to miss the chance, he and other college men enlisted in the Army Special Training Program (ASTP), only to find themselves thrown into the infantry. Lundy was horrified, and later recalled that during his training, he "never listened, I was busy sketching." But soon, "I sort of took to it. ... war experience just hypnotizes young men." Lundy sketched his way through the war drawing whatever was around him forced marches, men at rest, and French villages. When a surgeon noticed his sketches while Lundy was getting treated for his war injuries, he was recruited to sketch a new medical procedure the surgeon was developing, allowing Lundy to miss eight dangerous months on the front. Lundy filled up more than two dozen spiral bound sketchbooks, 3 inches by 5 inches in size, out of which eight have survived. He donated these, containing a total of 158 pencil sketches, to the Library of Congress in 2009. via Messy Nessy Chic One of the strangest places in Utah, United States, is Goblin Valley located in Emery County between the towns of Green River and Hanksville. This valley, which is only about a mile across and two miles long, is filled with thousands of hoodoos eroded sandstone rocks, carved by the wind and the water into shapes suggesting mythical goblins and other phantasmagoric creatures. The most striking of these formations are three isolated hoodoos, immense in size, standing on top of a narrow ridge, surrounded by the flat, grassy land that extends for miles around. Photo credit: morgan/Flickr The hoodoos were formed by the erosion of the so-called Entrada sandstone, that was deposited during the Jurassic period between 180 and 140 million years ago, when the area was situated next to an ancient sea. These odd shapes were created because the Entrada sandstone is made up of different kinds of sedimentary rocks having different levels of hardness, causing the rocks to erode at different rates. The softer rock material eroded more quickly, leaving the harder rock behind in the shape of goblins. The secluded Goblin Valley was first discovered by cowboys searching for cattle. Then, in the late 1920s, Arthur Chaffin, the later owner of the Hite Ferry, along with his companions were searching for an alternate route between Green River and Caineville, when they came to a vantage point about 1 mile west of Goblin Valley. It is said that Chaffin and his companions were awed by what they saw five buttes and a valley of strange, goblin-shaped rock formations surrounded by a wall of eroded cliffs. Chaffin named the area Mushroom Valley. He returned to it in 1949 and spent several days exploring the mysterious valley and photographing its scores of intricately eroded rocks. In 1954, the property was acquired by the state of Utah and the Goblin Valley State Reserve was established. It was officially designated a state park in 1964. Photo credit: Pam Falcioni/Flickr Photo credit: Rob Lee/Flickr Photo credit: morgan/Flickr Photo credit: Steve Corey/Flickr Photo credit: Art Bromage/Flickr Photo credit: jimmy thomas/Flickr Sources: Wikipedia / MNN.com / Summit Post 2016 is known as the year that the Nexus brand was retired. With Huawei being the last smartphone maker to create a Nexus device with Google. Many were hoping that they would get another chance at making a device with Google, after all the Nexus 6P was one of the most popular Nexus smartphones ever, and it received nothing but great reviews. But Google decided to go with the Pixel brand this year, and as most of you know, despite it being Made by Google, HTC was actually contracted to make the device. HTC was the original Nexus manufacturer, so in a way, Google was going back to their roots. Now theres already been some reports out that talked about why Huawei skipped out on the Pixel project this year, and now theres another report out confirming those earlier reports. Huawei ultimately decided not to work with Google on the Pixel smartphones this year due to branding. Knowing that their devices that they made with Google would not bear their own branding, Huawei felt it wasnt a good fit for them. Not surprising, considering Huawei has been working hard over the past few years to make a name for themselves in North America. And sinking in all this time into the Pixel smartphone wouldnt do much to help them out. But this doesnt mean that Huawei wont be working with Google on the Pixel program in the future. Its currently being rumored that Huawei may be working with Google in 2017 on a Pixel device that will have Huaweis branding on it. While Huawei has had issues expanding into the US in the past few years, the Nexus 6P was perhaps the smartphone that gained the most traction for the Chinese manufacturer here. But working on a phone that has none of your branding on it, and offering it in a market that you are looking to crack, definitely isnt a good thing. So it makes sense for Huawei. But with the popularity of the Nexus 6P, its not surprising to see Google working with them on a new Pixel device for next year. Its been almost a week since the US presidential elections took place, but the GOP candidate and President-elect Donald John Trump is still the talk of the town and likely will be for quite some time. The upcoming administration will certainly change a lot of industries with new sets of rules and regulations as Trumps political platform was heavily based on the idea of promoting production in the United States and limiting the influx of foreign-made goods into the country. Apart from requesting American companies to keep their manufacturing operations within the US and stop outsourcing production, President-elect Trump has also pledged to raise tariff barriers in order to make domestically produced goods more competitive on the market. While that is a less-than-ideal situation for US-based tech giants like Apple, the foreign IT companies are even more worried about Trumps plans. As Business Korea reports, South Korean tech companies such as LG and Samsung have recently been moving a lot of their production facilities to China and Vietnam to reduce labor costs and obviously arent too thrilled about the likely possibility of paying increased tolls on the products they import to the United States. As the North American sales amount to almost one-third of total sales of both LG and Samsung, high tariffs would almost certainly significantly lower their revenue and profits. Given how most of the final assembly sites of the South Korean tech giants are located in China, Trumps promise of 45% tariffs on Chinese goods certainly isnt good news for these companies. In addition to that, the new administration will likely scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade deal negotiated by the US under President Obama and 11 other Pacific countries. The ultimate goal of the TPP was to slash tariffs and foster trans-Pacific trade to create a unified market similar to that of the European Union. While the Korean tech giants would obviously profit from such a partnership, the fact that its yet to be ratified means that Trumps administration can and likely will scrap it in a relatively simple manner. Advertisement On the other hand, the South Korean IT industry could also see some benefit from Trumps economic policy which also wants to prevent Chinese companies from taking over US firms. This is significant because acquiring American chip makers has so far been Chinas primary method of competing with Korean semiconductor manufacturers. We recently reported on the cell carrier television advertising spend for October 2016 showing that Verizon Wireless were at the head of the league table. Its easy to understand why Verizon Wireless were spending the most in advertising: firstly, they are Americas largest wireless carrier and have the deepest pockets to afford expensive television advertising. Secondly, Verizon Wireless has a pair of new devices in the shape of the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL, and and they are not afraid to tell the country about it. And third, Verizon is feeling the pressure: in the last quarterly update, subscriber numbers fell and the businesses competitors have been piling on the advertising pressure. Sprint, now Americas fourth largest cellular network after being overtaken by T-Mobile US last year, has maintained this advertising assault onto Verizon. The company has previewed their new advertising campaign on their website and they are showing how Verizon Wireless executives are stressin about why customers are switching to Sprint. The three reasons are that Sprint are offering 50% off the price of most Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile US standard plans (there are a number of caveats to this offer). Second, Sprints Unlimited Freedom offers unlimited airtime, text messages and data for only $60 a month where Verizon doesnt even offer an unlimited plan. The third reason picks a hole into Verizons network quality argument, explaining that in 2016 all carriers perform well and according to industry tests, Sprints network reliability is within 1% of Verizon. Interestingly enough, one of these messages as reaches the consumer is dont let a 1% difference in network reliability cost you twice as much. Sprints network investment plan has been criticized within the industry for, essentially, not being expensive enough as the carrier has pursued a different network upgrade and densification plan as compared with the other national carriers. This is in part because Sprint has access to considerable spectrum at the 2.5GHz frequency, which although can allow a higher data transfer speed, is less able to penetrate into buildings or travel a long distance. Because of this, the traditional method of establishing a network of larger cell sites would be ineffective and Sprint has instead taken to using smaller cell sites in order to extend its network this way. So far, this approach appears to be working. And Sprints morale is also said to be good. Roger Sole, Sprints chief marketing officer, explained: Sprint employees and executives feel very positive about the momentum at our company, the new pricing offers for customers and our network improvements. You can watch the new commercials below. Advertisement https://youtu.be/oGLOeyalDLc https://youtu.be/sFJAEIo_E Before Android conquered the mobile phone industry as the dominant operating system, Samsung phones were running the Tizen mobile OS platform. Since Googles Android operating system took over the lead spot in the race, Tizen was left out in the cold, though a number of Samsung devices still run the OS at present. But the South Korean phone maker is rolling up its sleeves to bring back its proprietary operating system to where it was before. Samsung has launched a new incentive program that aims to support developers of Tizen apps with $1 million in investment. The long-term goal of the Tizen Mobile App Incentive Program is to expand the mobile app ecosystem for Samsungs in-house platform by inviting the global developer community to build apps for Tizen. As well as new apps, the program also accepts apps that are already available on the Tizen store, so developers who have been a member of the Tizen community for quite sometime are eligible to participate. It is worth noting that the program is Samsungs first effort to support Tizen developers worldwide. Developers are allowed to submit their apps to Samsung for a chance to win $10,000 and even higher. The program will officially kick off in February 2017 and will run through October 2017. The program is open to developers who create apps for gaming, social networking, and more. Bear in mind also that Samsung will award $10,000 to each of the top 100 apps downloaded from the Tizen store and pre-registered to join the program every month. Developers will also be able to generate revenue from their apps through mobile ads with the InMobi Ad Software Development Kit. Woncheol Chai, vice president of global product management for Samsung Electronics mobile communications business said in a press statement that the program is intended to evolve the Tizen ecosystem and provide better experience to customers. Submissions to the program will start in January of next year and Samsung will notify the winning developers every 10th of each month beginning on March 10, 2017 until November 10, 2017. The program was also announced last week at the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference, largest gathering of game developers in India, where Samsung last month unveiled the Tizen App Challenge to persuade Android and iOS game developers to port their existing games to Tizen in exchange for cash rewards of up to $20,000. While the majority of us will of course understand that Samsung is a major, major player in the world of mobile technologies thanks to their smartphone and tablet divisions, but they are also a major player in consumer electronics, too. For Samsung, their TV division is a huge earner as well as their smartphone division, and they often find themselves selling more units than most other major players in the TV world. Samsung is clearly good at making world-class displays of all shapes and sizes, and where their TV technology is concerned, this patent shows what the future of TVs could be, and it looks far more exciting and interactive than 3D did. As discovered by Patently Mobile, Samsung have been awarded a patent for a holographic TV technology. According to this patent, Samsung have devised a system that would fire a laser lighting system from behind the TVs display itself to create an interference pattern, which, as it passes through the panel is then displayed correctly to the viewer. Where most TVs that would ship with 3D technology would rely on binocular parallax technology, Samsung seem to have gone to great lengths to drastically improve this sort of technology, and potentially creating a much, much better effect. To ensure that this technology works well for the viewer, no matter where theyre sat relative to the position of the TV, the patent goes on to describe an eye tracking unit which would make sure to display the hologram in the right way for the viewer to be able to enjoy it, relative to the content being played. This is a very, very in-depth patent filing from Samsung, and while it doesnt guarantee that Samsung will be releasing such a product any time soon, these patents are important for a company like Samsung. The South Korean giant has been a major player in the TV world for decades now, and has often been instrumental in bringing new technologies to the TV world. As 3D failed to capture the excitement of viewers, and 4K is still struggling to find its feet, Samsung could be on the verge of introducing the next big thing in the world of TVs. Donald Trump: 3 millions migrants, Farages Brex Pistols and a riot 58 floors up Donald Trump continues to set the tabloid news agenda. (Well, that and the Im A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!). The Mirror leads with Donal Trumps TV PLEDGE. Ha, indeed. Everything weve seen of Trump has been a TV pledge. Even the people watching the live show should admit Trumps words carry the legend as seen on TV. I Will Kick Out 3 Million Migrants, runs the Trump telly pledge. The US President-elect will deport or jail up to three million illegal immigrants. Well, as soon as he gets a handle on the numbers, he can start building the prisons and fuelling the planes. Trump says its probably two million, it could even be three million. Why stop at three million? The answer could be because Trump understands media and that sound-bites are all. Save four million for a slow news day. The Express hears the headline figure and muses on its front page: Trump to kick out 3million migrantsNow Britons asks: can we do the same? By Page 4 readers have an answer: UK backing for Trump to deport migrants. The Express then produces a phone poll: Should Britain now send home all illegal migrants? Ah, not all migrants, as the front-page said. All illegal migrants. Having delivered a poll more loaded than Trumps can of hair lacquer, heard from three UKIP voices and one Tory, we leave the Express and look at the Suns front page. We see Nigel Farage, retired and re-instated UKIP leader ad nauseam. Farage humiliated the Government by saying it was in the national interest for him to broker any post-Brexit trade deal with the US, says the Sun. Which nation is unspecified, but given the calibre of Farages dream team the Brex Pistols we cant rule out France. On Page 4, the Sun reminds reader that Farage is not the countrys popularly elected leader. It says Theresa May who isnt either is Primer Minister. May will deliver a speech in which she promises to clamp down on rampant immigration. She will do this by: a) Building a wall. b) Surrounding the country with water (see Ice Age-induced Brexit) c) Saying it clearly. d) See what Trump does. Its Trump and Farage on the Mails cover. Its a terrific photo of the two men stood before Trumps gold and diamond-encrusted front door. Over two pages, Andrew Pierce has the riotous inside story behind it. Farage and his four cohorts were mesmerised by Trumps flat. One of them called a Renoir on a wall magnificent. Another called an Eros statue striking. And, er, thats it. No riots. They were outside. Paul Sorene Posted: 14th, November 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews, Tabloids Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink Israel proposes bill to ban mosque loudspeakers Abu Mazen says proposal could create rift in region (ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, NOVEMBER 14 - The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved a bill that would ban mosque loudspeakers, which are used for the call to prayer. Netanyahu said that Israel is "committed to ensuring freedom of worship for all religions but it also has the obligation to protect citizens from noise". Palestinian President Abu Mazen said the proposal "risks sinking the region into a chasm", and his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina threatened to appeal to the UN Security Council. From the Gaza Strip, Hamas spoke out against the bill, while Arab MPs in the Israeli Knesset said that a law banning excessive noise in public places already exists, so one specifically for mosques is unnecessary. Meanwhile the bill, which would allow for exemptions on the ban under the discretion of local authorities, is set to move through the parliamentary process.(ANSAmed). (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 14 - Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Monday said the EU will open formal adhesion talks with Albania. The 28 foreign ministers have expressed ''a consensus of all member states so that in the month of December the European Council can formally start Albania's adhesion talks with the EU'', said Italian foreign minister arriving at the council after a breakfast promoted by Italy and Austria with Albanian Premier Edi Rama in Brussels. ''It is an important result for which Italy has worked over these years with recent visits of the president of the Republic'', observed Gentiloni, stressing it is also a ''good sign of vitality'' for Europe ''in this moment in which it needs to confirm its ability to attract and consolidate''. It is even more important for the Balkans, added Gentiloni, which ''need stability'' and are ''a region in which a very delicate match has always been played''. ''Albania is an Islamic-majority country'', concluded Gentiloni, adding that he considered a ''good sign of vitality'' the fact that, ''based on the opinion of the commission and the consensus attained this morning, there are the conditions to start formal adhesion talks''. (ANSAmed). ISTANBUL - Turkish human rights layer Levent Piskin on Monday at dawn was arrested by police in his Istanbul home after visiting in prison the leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP Party, Selahattin Demirtas, who was among 10 MPs arrested last week in Turkey, the Association of lawyers for freedom (OHD) announced. Piskin is a member of the group and a campaigner for the LGBTI movement. The lawyer was accused by pro-government daily Sabah of ''terrorist propaganda'' after delivering to the German media a message Demirtas had sent from jail. The OHD is among the 370 organizations shut down Friday by the interior ministry on charges of being ''terrorist organizations'', based on a decree of the state of emergency issued after the failed coup on July 15. Egypt: House Oks 3-month extension state of emergency Sinai (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, NOVEMBER 14 - Egypt's House of Representatives on Sunday voted almost unanimously the decision of President Abdel Fattah al Sisi to extend by another three months the state of emergency in some regions of northern Sinai, Mena news agency reports. The lawmakers added that terrorist groups and takfiri (Islamic fundamentalists) are a danger for both security forces and civilians because they threaten the unity and security of the country. (ANSAmed). More migrants land in Sardinia, five Algerians apprehended Tranferred by Carabinieri to hosting center (ANSAmed) - CAGLIARI, NOVEMBER 14 - More migrants have reportedly landed on the coast of Sulcis, in Sardinia. Carabinieri police apprehended five Algerians on Sunday afternoon. A fisherman called police to report that a foreigner was in the area of port Tramatzu, in Teulada. Carabinieri who arrived at the scene found the five men but no boat and are investigating the landing which allegedly occurred in spite of rough sea conditions. The Algerian nationals are reportedly in good health and were moved to migrant hosting centers after being visited and identified. (ANSAmed). ISTANBUL - Police stopped some students and used force to block a protest at Istanbul's Bosphorus University on Monday, where a new rector was appointed directly by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan named the new rector, professor Mehmed Ozkan, without considering the will of the campus's academics as required by a controversial state of emergency decree issued in late October. Opposition daily Birgun said Ozkan is the brother of an MP in Erdogan's AK Party. Outgoing rector Gulay Barbarosoglu had obtained 86% of the vote in an internal election in July, but announced his retirement after Erdogan appointed Ozkan. Erdogan's direct appointment was contested in recent days by about 350 Bosphorus University academics, who pointed out that the regulation approved as part of the decree had been withdrawn from the parliamentary debate in August following strong controversy. Ozkan, meanwhile, vowed to defend the university's "pluralistic tradition". TEL AVIV - The Israeli government, against the opinion of Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, has approved a bill to start a retroactive amnesty of Jewish settlements on private Palestinian land in the West Bank. The Knesset will now need to give the green light to the measure which risks to be highly controversial with the international community. The move was strongly promoted by the leader of the religious nationalist party (close to settlers) Naftali Bennett who has clashed with Netanyahu over the issue, the country's prosecutor general Avichai Mandelblit and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Netanyahu slammed it as an ''infantile and irresponsible'' act although members of his Likud party have voted in favor. The measure, according to the media, only concerns Jewish settlements whose construction has involved the government and Palestinians who will be able to prove ownership of the contested land will get money as compensation. According to some analysts, Netanyahu will do everything possible to halt the proposal in the Knesset. Turkey: German minister visits, tension with EU on agenda Berlin's diplomacy chief arrives after arrests, Brussels report (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, NOVEMBER 14 - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is expected Monday in Turkey for a two-day visit to discuss ''bilateral Turkey-Germany relations, the cooperation in the fight against terrorism and EU-Turkey relations, together with current regional and international issues'', according to a statement of the Turkish foreign ministry. The visit comes at a moment of strong tension between Ankara and Brussels after a wave of arrests of journalists and Kurdish lawmakers and the publication of the EU annual report on the state of adhesion talks, rejected by Turkey as ''far from objective''. Yesterday, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again spoke about the possibility of a referendum to decide the future of negotiations that started in 2005, modelled after the Brexit vote. (ANSAmed). Turkey: lawyer detained after visiting Demirtas in jail Human rights attorney arrested after meeting with Kurdish leader (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, NOVEMBER 14 - Turkish human rights layer Levent Piskin on Monday at dawn was arrested by police in his Istanbul home after visiting in prison the leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP Party, Selahattin Demirtas, who was among 10 MPs arrested last week in Turkey, the Association of lawyers for freedom (OHD) announced. Piskin is a member of the group and a campaigner for the LGBTI movement. The lawyer was accused by pro-government daily Sabah of ''terrorist propaganda'' after delivering to the German media a message Demirtas had sent from jail. The OHD is among the 370 organizations shut down Friday by the interior ministry on charges of being ''terrorist organizations'', based on a decree of the state of emergency issued after the failed coup on July 15. (ANSAmed). Donohoe, who serves on the foundation's Board of Governors, will discuss the pros and cons of automation in aviation and the importance of a "back to basics training approach." Automation is one of several aspects of technology that will be explored during the industry's pre-eminent annual safety event. A number of presentations will look at new technology in avionics and the role it will play in enhancing safety in the air and on the ground. Included will be a presentation on next-generation flight safety systems. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) also will be the topic of much discussion. "The growth in the development, use and technological sophistication of UAS is almost unprecedented," said Greg Marshall, the Foundation's vice president, global programs. "While this new entrant into the aviation industry brings with it the promise of enhancing safety through the use of alternative technology, it is not without its own issues, especially with respect to integration into non-segregated airspace," he said. Marshall, working with the Foundation's International Advisory Committee, played a key role in developing the agenda for IASS this year. IASS 2016 also will feature, for the first time, a day-long parallel track dedicated to aviation maintenance and engineering (M&E) safety. The M&E track, which will be presented on Tuesday, will include sessions on fatigue risk management, maintenance line operations safety audits/assessments and engineering safety culture. On-site registration will be available for both the full IASS programme and for the one-day M&E track. The host sponsor for IASS 2016 is Emirates, a benefactor member of the Foundation, as well as one of the world's largest international carriers and most technically advanced operators. Emirates also is the official airline of the event. Other major sponsors include platinum level contributors Airbus, Boeing, Embraer and Rolls-Royce. According to US Bangla team, the airline is objective to start operating daily flights to Muscat international Airport. Muscat International Airport welcomed its first direct flight of US-Bangla Airlines on Saturday the 12 of November 2016. US-Bangla Airlines has been voted as the best domestic airline in Bangladesh in 2015. US Bangla Airlines will further connect to Kolkata, India, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Kathmandu, Nepal and several destinations of Bangladesh with a brief stopover in the country; offering passengers an option in Oman to other south Asian destinations. US-Bangla Airlines (USBA) is an affiliate of the US-Bangla Group, located in Dhaka. The Airline started its journey in 2013 and in 2016 declared the operation of its first two Boeing 737-800 aircraft. It also launched its first international flights last May with its flights to Nepals Tribhuvan airport. The city office of US-Bangla Airlines has also officially opened, in addition to US-Bangla Airlines appointing Travel Point LLC as its general sales agent (GSA) in Oman. The Airlines works in favor of the bigger community of Bangladesh nationals residing in the Sultanate of Oman. As an inaugural offer, US-Bangla Airlines is offering fares as low as OMR45 to Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. The addition of new direct flights to the Sultanate is a significant step towards OAMCs strategic goal of placing Oman Airports amongst the top 20 airports in the world by 2020. goralikus/istock/Thinkstock(JERUSALEM) -- A bill to legalize Israeli settlements built on the privately-owned Palestinian land in the West Bank retroactively passed a ministerial committee on Sunday. The bill would have to be approved by Parliament before it could become law, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, opposed its advancement. Israel's attorney general warned that he would find it difficult to defend the legislation in his own country's Supreme Court. One illegal outpost, Amona, was ordered to be destroyed by December 25th by a lower court, prompting urgency on the part of Israel's pro-settlement camp. Israel's expanded settlements have enraged Palestinians and been a source of tension with the Obama administration. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS-ARTSAKHPRESS. Dealing with Azerbaijan, we are dealing with a subject from whom possible adventurous steps are always expected, deputy foreign minister of Armenia Shavarsh Kocharyan said in an interview to ARTSAKHPRESS in Stepanakert, commenting on the Azerbaijani provocative actions in several parts of the line of contact since the morning of November 11. April showed that Azerbaijans blitzkrieg failed and as opposed to its estimates the potential of the Armenian states was a lot bigger. Such actions of Baku only hinder the resumption of the negotiation process and, especially the initiation of the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements. Similar premeditated practice of the Azerbaijani authorities doesnt leave an alternative to the status quo, which themselves often complain about. Otherwise they would have given the opportunity to initiate those agreements, Kocharyan said. Speaking on the current stage of the negotiations process, Kocharyan noted that it should be divided into two platforms: One is the actual negotiations regarding settlement. Second negotiations, which are aimed at strengthening the ceasefire regime. Today we are talking about the second platform, because as we have said multiple times, as long as there are shots, provocations, it is simply naivety to say that there can be progress in the negotiations. In this point of view these latest provocations once again hint that the Vienna agreements should be initiated as soon as possible. Speaking about the possible upcoming bilateral meetings, Shavarsh Kocharyan particularly said: Anyhow we are talking about a meeting of the foreign ministers, and even if it happens, the emphasis will be what I just said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. A new kindergarten, currently under construction, is the fourth major community-development project to be implemented by the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund in Karin Tak, a village in Nagorno Karabakhs Shushi Region. In recent years, the fund has built Karin Taks multifunctional community center and new potable-water network, and completely renovated the local school gym. The construction of the kindergarten is co-sponsored by the Devejian and Ekserciyan families as well as Krikor Simsiroglu of Argentina, the Greek-Armenian and the Cypriot-Armenian communities, and the government of NKR. Proceeds from the upcoming Phoneathon of the Hayastan All-Armenian Funds affiliate in Greece will likewise benefit the kindergarten-construction project. The future kindergarten is designed to accommodate up to 50 children. The facility will feature a complement of state-of-the-art amenities, including a boiler room, a central-heating system, and an outdoor playground with various play equipment, all of which will make for an enriching and comfortable learning environment. The structure is already up and the roof is finished. In the next phases of the project, crews will work on the exterior and interior decoration, the installation of the boiler room, and the landscaping of the grounds. When completed in the summer of 2017, the campus will open its doors to the communitys 40 kindergarteners. Karin Tak has a population of over 650, with a large percentage of young people. According to Mayor Mkhitar Arushanyan, the necessity of a kindergarten has long been felt in the community, given its steady demographic growth. Our villagers feel a very strong bond with their native land, Arushanyan says. Even during the war years in the 1990s, when the village was under constant bombardment, our residents refused to abandon their birthplace. Today, thanks to a string of marvelous development projects, Karin Taks quality of life is improved significantly, and our residents have great faith in their future. Located five kilometers from the city of Shushi, Karin Tak was founded in the 18th century. It is among villages that were utterly devastated during NKR war of liberation. Every year on January 26, the residents of Karin Tak commemorate their communitys heroic battle and victory in 1992. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday picked Reince Priebus, a Washington insider who heads the Republican National Committee, as White House chief of staff, signaling a willingness to work with Congress to advance his agenda when he takes office in January, Reuters reports. But while giving the influential post to the low-key Priebus, Trump handed another senior White House job to rabble-rousing conservative media figure Stephen Bannon, his campaign chairman who helped engineer his surprise victory on Tuesday over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Priebus is a friend of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who distanced himself from Trump during the campaign but embodies the Republican establishment in Washington and will play a critical role in shepherding Trump's agenda in Congress. Both Priebus and Ryan are from Wisconsin. But Bannon, former head of the right-wing Breitbart News website, has been fiercely critical of Ryan. Trump's statement announcing the appointments said Bannon and Priebus would be "working as equal partners to transform the federal government," with Bannon serving as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. The White House chief of staff serves as a gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president, but Trump's statement mentioned Bannon's job first. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said in a statement. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House." Before joining Trump's team, Bannon spearheaded Breitbart's shift into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semitics. Bannon's hiring by Trump's campaign this year signaled the businessman's dedication to operating outside the norms of Washington. Under Bannon's leadership, the Breitbart site presented a number of conspiracy theories about Clinton as well as Republicans deemed to be lacking in conservative bona fides. Critics have accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. In a 2007 court filing during divorce proceedings, Bannon's former wife accused him of making anti-Semitic comments on at least three occasions. As head of Breitbart, he repeatedly attacked the Republican Party establishment including Ryan, alienating many veteran Republicans. Bannon showed his willingness to engage in brutal political tactics when he instigated the appearance before a presidential debate of three women who said they had been sexually abused by his Democratic rival's husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump, who will succeed Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, has been contemplating the candidates for top jobs in the White House and in various Cabinet positions since Tuesday's victory. Priebus' appointment could anger some hardline Trump supporters who were counting on Trump to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders. Priebus is a longtime Wisconsin political operative who was credited with marshaling party resources for Trump's White House bid. The Republican National Committee stepped in and ran most of the party's get-out-the-vote effort this year in the absence of such an operation by the Trump campaign. While some Republicans fled from Trump during the campaign, Priebus was unwavering in his backing for the New York real estate developer. Priebus frequently traveled with Trump on the campaign trail and was seen as a positive force who helped rein in the unpredictable Trump in the closing weeks. Trump made his high regard for Priebus known on election night when he pulled him to the microphone to take a bow for his campaign efforts. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has accused the head of the European Parliament of defending the PKK after the latter criticized the detention of journalists and opposition lawmakers on terror charges, Anadolu reports. They are defending the PKK very well. Was there any statement from Schulz and those who think like him after our governor was martyred? Cavusoglu told reporters when asked about the European Parliaments President Martin Schulzs earlier remarks on arrests targeting journalists and lawmakers. The Turkish minister was referring to Muhammet Fatih Safiturk, the governor of Mardin's Derik district, who succumbed Friday to wounds sustained in a PKK attack. [Martin] Schulzs threatening statements have no effect on us, Cavusoglu told reporters in the Turkish capital Ankara following a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. First, [he] should stop the activities of the PKK in the European Parliament, Cavusoglu said. If he is strong enough, he should be using this discourse against those supporting terror in the EU member countries, he added. The Turkish minister said that Schulz would do whatever was necessary to impose economic sanctions against Turkey. Earlier this month, Martin Schulz, the European Parliaments president, reacted to the arrest of 11 journalists from the Cumhuriyet daily in Istanbul and Ankara as well as the arrest of lawmakers from Turkey's opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) on terror charges. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. US President-elect Donald Trump says his plan on fighting the Islamic State will remain undisclosed, Trump said in an interview aired on CBS on November 13. Trump categorically refused to give any details on his anti-ISIS strategy. Donald Trump also said the battle for Mosul is very hard, because the White House had initially announced about the offensive. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The Parliament of Armenia discusses the draft law on the compensation of the damage caused to life or health of servicemen during the military operations, reports Armenpress. Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan said the law aims to form a special system which will ensure the compensation of the damages caused to the life or health of servicemen while defending Armenia, participating in military operations or while on military service in the line of contact. The current law regulates the relations in connection with the compensation of the damages caused to the life or health of servicemen as a result of military operations, as well as the procedure and conditions for establishment and activity of the compensation fund, the Minister said. He said the beneficiaries are the servicemen whose life or health has been damaged as a result of military operations. Servicemans being killed or missing is considered as damage caused to his life, and the servicemans loss of ability to work as a result of received injury is considered as damage to his health. If serviceman is killed or is missing, in this case his spouse, child, parents are considered as beneficiary. The special fund is going to be the base of the proposed system which will unite the state and public funds, will ensure the professional management of these funds, as well as the compensation of damages caused to the life or health of the servicemen in the expense of the allocated funds. The fund will operate under certain key principles. In particular, the collection of fees and the insurance compensations must be simple and perceivable for every citizen, they must be managed based on the professional asset management calculations. The system must be transparent in order to receive the necessary trust from the system, the Minister said adding that the compensation funds will be transferred for incidents that will be registered after January 28, 2017. In case of death or having 1st degree disability a lump-sum 10 million AMD will be compensated. In case of 2nd degree disability a lump-sum 5 million AMD will be compensated. Thereafter, there will be monthly payments. In case of officers deaths or 1st degree disability 300.000 AMD will be compensated, in case of 2nd degree disability 200.000 AMD. 250.000 AMD and 150.000 AMD respectively will be compensated for the corporal staff, 200.000 AMD and 100.000 AMD respectively will be compensated for the privates, the Minister said. He also presented the sources for the Funds financial resources. He said the financial resources will be formed from monthly 1000 AMDs of each of employees salaries, from the sales of securities, as well as from grants and donations provided for that purpose. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Head of the Armenian Diocese of Germany Archbishop Garegin Bekchian , who is one of the probable candidates of the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, says the Patriarch election process must be carried out in more convenient conditions, Bekchian told Agos. The mistakes of the past and unacceptable stances must be forgotten, he said. The Archbishop suggests attaching a new guideline to the letter to Turkish authorities, which will be in line with traditions. Bekchian also proposed the 4 candidates to meet for exchange of views. I would like to pass this proposals through you to Aram Ateshyan. Since in my opinion the success of the Patriarchal election is the dream of all of us. I think harmony and prosperity can be achieved only by this path, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The board of trustees of the Fund, which will be established for the compensation of servicemen fallen or who became disabled during the military service, will work exclusively on a public/voluntary basis, Defense Minister of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan said in the Parliament, in response to Rule of Law faction MP Hovhannes Margaryans question, reports Armenpress. No salary will be provided in the first stage of the Funds formation. The Board of Trustees is working exclusively on a public/voluntary basis. Except from the Government representatives, the involvement of civil society representatives in the Board of Trustees is aimed at increasing the transparency, strengthening the trust, the Minister said, commenting on the MPs view that it is possible to leave the Funds management on the Ministries of Defense and Labor and Social Affairs, and the maintenance costs of the Board of Trustees to direct to the Fund. Vigen Sargsyan said the Central Bank has already agreed to manage the assets for 5 years for free and without taking funds from the Funds resources. We have defined by law that all overhead costs cannot exceed half a percent of the all managed funds. These thresholds are clearly set, the Minister said. The Board of Trustees will be comprised of 9 members. There will be three representatives from the Armenian Government, three from the Central Bank and three from the civic society. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The Russian Defense Ministry has affirmed the crash of its MIG-29 jet in the Mediterranean. Armenpress reports, citing Ria Novosti, the Russian Defense Ministry also mentioned that the pilot of the jet has ejected and there are no risks with his health. Earlier, international media had informed that a Russian fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after launching from its aircraft carrier near the coast of Syria. The Russian MiG-29 fighter jet took off from their aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov. Once airborne, the Russian jet appeared to have mechanical difficulties and turned around in the direction of the aircraft carrier. The Russian jet splashed down in the water while attempting to land. A Russian rescue helicopter picked up a parachute and the pilot. The pilot's status was unclear, U.S. intelligence officials had said. Best Marketing Products and Services Would you like to submit an article in the Marketing category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article. Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us. Watchdog expects directors to protect stakeholders. Mumbai: The capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is closely monitoring the current feud between Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry with both the camp fighting it out in the open to wrest the management control of listed Tata group firms. While Cyrus Mistry was removed as the chairman of the Tata Sons, he continues to remain chairman in several listed Tata group firms. According to sources familiar with the development, the regulator is more concerned with the protection of the interest of public shareholders and alleged violations of corporate governance norms. The regulator is keeping a close tab on the developments happening at the board level as well as at the extraordinary meeting of shareholders convened by Tata Sons seeking the removal of Mr Mistry from the board. Sebi has also received representations from several institutional investors, investors associations and corporate governance firms. Last week, TCS ousted Mr Mistry as chairman and appointed Ishaat Hussain in his place. However, Mistrys camp retorted saying that the due process of law wasnt followed while removing and appointing a new chairman. Additionally, Tata Sons had issued a notice for convening an extraordinary meeting of shareholders of Tata Steel and Tata Motors for the removal of Mr Mistry and Nusli N Wadia from the board of the respective firms. The ongoing tussle gained further momentum after a section of the independent directors of Indian Hotels and Tata Chemical affirmed their faith in the leadership of Mr Mistry and the current management team. The real issue is of allegations and counter allegations, questions on governance, independence and so on. All issues must be clarified by Tata, as the investors, stakeholders and regulators need to know the truth. Not only this, the reputation of Tata brand is at stake now. And they are duty bound to their stakeholders to bring the facts out so as to minimise damage, said J.N. Gupta, MD at Stakeholders Empowerment Services, a corporate governance firm. The government also announced that a large number of micro-ATMs will be deployed across the country. New Delhi: The Finance Ministry on Monday announced that ATMs across the country will start dispensing higher denomination currency, including the new Rs 2,000 note, from either today or tomorrow. The focus of the Govt is to activate all channels whereby cash is dispensed to the public, said Shaktikanta Das, Economic Affairs Secretary, while addressing a press conference in the national capital. To ease the problems of the common man, the government also announced that a large number of micro-ATMs will be deployed across the country to cater to the millions lining up for cash. Das said that higher cash withdrawal limit of Rs 2,500 would only be for recalibrated ATMs. "Number of recalibrated ATMs will be enhanced within the next few days, a task force is being set up under the Deputy RBI Governor," Das said. RBI has informed enough cash is available in system, there is no need for panic; situation will ease in coming days, he added. He announced that banking correspondents will be now allowed to withdraw cash multiple times as opposed to only once a day earlier. Banks will also be increasing the cash holding limit of banking correspondents to Rs 50,000. The proposal to amend the provisions dealing with Christian marriages is yet to be cleared by the Cabinet. New Delhi: Christian couples wait for two years to seek divorce by a mutual consent may soon end as the government has put the Divorce (Amendment) Bill, 2016, in the tentative list of government legislative and financial business, which means it is expected to be taken up during the Winter Session of Parliament beginning November 16. The law is set to be amended to lower the requisite separation period to one year following persistent demand from the community. The proposal to amend the provisions dealing with Christian marriages is yet to be cleared by the Cabinet. According to the law ministry proposal, the Divorce Act, 1869, would be amended to halve the separation period for couples from the present two years before they can file for divorce by a mutual consent to bring it at par with laws governing other communities. The separation period under the Hindu Marriage Act, Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act and the Special Marriage Act is one year. The Section 10A(1) of the Divorce Act, added through an amendment in 2001, says that a couple seeking divorce should be living separately for two years or more. Against the backdrop of a Supreme Court order in April 2015 and persistent demands from the community, the law ministry has decided to move the proposal to reduce the separation period. Questioning the existing law, the Supreme Court had urged the Centre to make necessary amendments. Should Christians stay separated for minimum two years when the period prescribed for others is one year? It does not make sense to us. It is a pure question of law and you (government) should have acted on your own, a bench of Justices Vikramjit Sen and A.M. Sapre had observed. The bench delivered the order on a petition filed by a Delhi resident. Some high courts have also struck down the provision of the two-year separation period. The ministry has also proposed another amendment in the law to enable any of the spouses living in India to file for divorce. As of now, both husband and wife should be living in India when the petition for dissolution of marriage is moved. Also, if the law is amended, then it will allow a woman to move the divorce petition in the district court in whose jurisdiction she ordinarily resides. As per the existing provisions, a petition can be filed only where the marriage was solemnised or where the couple reside or last resided together. In the past, the Law Commission had recommended amendments to the Divorce Act to make it more women-friendly. The meeting at Prime Minister's residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with senior ministers past midnight on Sunday to review demonetisation and its impact. The meeting at Prime Minister's residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, I&B Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Power, Coal and Mines Minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the Finance ministry. The meeting came amid continuing chaos and growing public anger across the country over limited cash availability following the surprise demonetisation of two higher value currency notes by Modi. There was little respite for cash-starved people queueing up outside banks and ATMs yesterday, with branches witnessing unprecedented rush since early morning and leading to arguments and scuffles. Earlier in the evening, after a review by Finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs. 2000 and new Rs. 500 notes was increased from Rs. 4000 to Rs. 4500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs. 2,500 from Rs. 2,000 a day. The weekly limit of Rs. 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs. 24,000. The maximum limit of Rs. 10,000 per day on such withdrawals has been removed, the ministry said in a statement. General Sharif ordered his troops to effectively respond to firing by Indian forces across the LoC. Pakistan army soldiers gather at a forward area post on the Line of Control (LOC), that divides Kashmir between Pakistan and India, in Tatta Pani. (Photo: AP) Islamabad/Srinagar/New Delhi: In a rare admission of casualties since India carried out surgical strikes against terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the Pakistani Army said on Monday that seven of its soldiers were killed by Indian cross-border shelling overnight Sunday. Seven soldiers embraced shahadat at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in a ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, a statement issued in Islamabad by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said. It added that Pakistani troops responded to unprovoked Indian firing effectively, and that the Indian side had suffered major casualties. The Pakistan foreign secretary later summoned the Indian high commissioner and condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violation that resulting in the death of seven Pakistani soldiers. He emphasised that this belligerent attitude of Indian forces was a serious threat to regional peace and security and a strategic miscalculation. Hours after Pakistans statement, the Indian Army and police in Jammu said that an Army jawan was injured as Pakistani troops resorted to heavy unprovoked firing in the Rajouri and Poonch areas along LoC on Monday afternoon. They identified the injured soldier as 9 Paras commando Vinay Davrai (27), a resident of Uttarakhand. Intense firing was reported between the Indian and Pakistani troops from different sectors along the LoC and the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir. According to news agency reports from Islamabad, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed profound grief and sorrow over the loss of precious human lives in the LoC firing, but asserted that his country is fully capable of defending its territory against any aggression. Mr Sharif said in a statement that Indian forces are trying to divert attention from the Kashmir issue by creating tension at the LoC. It is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at LoC, in the recent days The Indian Forces have resorted to escalating tension on LoC only to detract the worlds attention from the grave human rights situation in Kashmir, he said. There is an indigenous uprising against Indian rule, and the Indian government is failing to read the writing on the wall, added Pakistani Prime Minister. Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Asif sought to escalate the provocative rhetoric by saying it was regrettable that certain extremist elements which had come into power in India could become a source of destruction not only for their own country but the whole region. In Jhelum, Pakistan, Army chief Raheel Sharif offered Nimaz-e-Janaza (funeral prayers) for the soldiers after which their bodies were carried to their hometowns. The deceased soldiers were identified as Hawaldar Zafar Hussain and Ibrar Ahmad Awan, Lance Naik Muhammad Shaukat, Lance Naik Muhammad Halim, Sepoy Pervaiz, Sepoy Muhammad Ilyas and Sepoy Muhammad Tanveer. Their photographs, in uniform, were released to the Pakistani media. Later on, General Sharif ordered his troops to effectively respond to firing by Indian forces across the LoC. In Srinagar, India, a defence spokesman said that the Army foiled an infiltration bid by militants along the LoC in Nowgam sector of Kashmir Valleys Kupwara sector on Monday. The LoC and the IB have witnessed intense clashes between facing troops ever since Indian Army conducted surgical strikes across the LoC on September 29, leaving dozens of soldiers, border guards and civilians dead and injured on both sides. Also, thousands of border-dwellers have migrated to safer locations because of escalating tensions and skirmishes. Earlier on November 10, Pakistans foreign secretary had summoned the Indian high commissioner and condemned the continued unprovoked firing that he said was in violation of the 2003 Ceasefire Understanding and the international law. He observed that indiscriminate firing and shelling from the Indian side deliberately targeting villages and civilians in the area had, in the last two months, resulted in the deaths of 26 people and injuries to 107, including women and children. The secretary deplored the use of artillery by the Indian forces in Shahkot and Jura sectors on the LoC on November 9, 2016, and said that such weaponry had been used after 13 years, emphasising Indias intention to further escalate tensions. BULLET FOR THE TURN The J&K government on Monday announced that nearly 200 schools closed in the borders areas of Poonch, Rajouri, Jammu, Kathua and Samba districts last month will reopen on Tuesday. Economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said that ATMs are expected to start dispensing Rs 2,000 notes as soon as Tuesday. People standing in a long queue to exchange their old Rs 500 and 1000 notes outside RBI headquarters in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The finance ministry on Monday announced that small businesses can withdraw Rs 50,000 in a week from banks (to allow them to pay wages), set up a task force under RBI deputy governor S.S. Mundra to ensue that ATMs are recalibrated fast and increased cash holding limit of banking correspondents to at least Rs 50,000. The announcement of these and other new measures, aimed at making life a little easier for citizens and businesses struggling since Prime Minister Modi announced demonetisation of high-denomination currency notes, came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meeting on Sunday that lasted past midnight. Following the meeting, RBI ordered banks to waive all types of ATM charges on saving bank customers from November 10 to 30 December, 2016. Banks will not charge any levy irrespective of the number of ATM transactions by saving bank customers at any branch during this period. The finance ministry also extended use of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees as well as purchase from co-operative stores till November 24 midnight. Railways too extended the use of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes to purchase tickets and for onboard catering till November 24. To facilitate the smooth movement of passengers, collection of parking charges at all airports, including Delhi and Hyderabad, has been suspended till midnight of November 21, 2016. And for easy and fast movement of trucks and other vehicles, the government has extended the no toll at national highways measure till November 18. Economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said that ATMs are expected to start dispensing Rs 2,000 notes as soon as Tuesday. Mr Das said that banking correspondents will now be allowed to replenish cash multiple times in a day against the earlier limit of once a day so that people in rural areas are able to get cash. During the meeting with the PM it was decided that supply of cash to post offices will be enhanced to facilitate cash withdrawals from postal accounts. With 1.2 lakh BCs and 1.3 lakh branch post offices getting further activated, a total number of 2.5 lakh points in rural areas will be available to disburse cash and facilitate cash withdrawals from bank accounts, said Mr Das. Till all ATMs are recalibrated, micro ATMs will be deployed to dispense cash against debit or credit cards up to the cash limits applicable for ATMs. As micro ATMs are mostly handheld, they will allow banks to deploy them at places where there is huge need for cash, including hospitals. Mr Das said adequate cash will be made available with District Central Co-operative Banks (DCCBs) to facilitate withdrawal from existing accounts. All Central government departments and public sector enterprises are being instructed to use the method of e-payments to the maximum extent possible so that there is less pressure on banks for cash. The MTP Act in India came into existence in 1971 and was amended in 2003 to facilitate better access to women. To make it easier for women to seek safe abortion, the government has also suggested doing away with the necessity of second opinion. (Photo: Pixabay) (Representational image) New Delhi: In a move that somewhat recognises a womans right over her own body, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government has suggested that the right to safe and legal abortion should be available to all women in India, irrespective of their marital status. The existing Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act recognises and caters only to sexually active married women. In a set of proposed amendments to the MTP Bill likely to come to the Cabinet soon the Union health ministry has also suggested increasing the limit of abortion from 20 to 24 weeks in cases of vulnerable women, including rape survivors and disabled women, and recommended that abortion beyond the stipulated time be allowed in cases were the foetus suffers from substantial abnormalities. In all other cases abortions beyond 20 weeks wont be allowed. Recognising a womans agency over her body and the growing reality of sexually active single, unmarried women, the health ministry in their draft bill recommended making abortion legal for all sexually active women in case of unplanned pregnancy or in case of contraceptive failure. While it is easier for married women to opt for abortion, single women often land in unsafe hands. It has been proposed that all sexually active women be covered under the Act. The idea is to make it women centric, sources said. The change in law is bound to free Indias betis a little more, while taking the moral sting out of visits to gynecology. The health ministry has proposed that homeopaths, midwives be allowed to carry out non invasive abortion procedures. As per the proposal, except unani doctors, all ANMs, nurses, midwives working in the system should be allowed to carry out non invasive-abortions, sources added. To make it easier for women to seek safe abortion, the government has also suggested doing away with the necessity of second opinion. As per the existing Act, it is mandatory to seek second opinion. In the draft bill, the government has suggested that a single opinion is enough for seeking abortion in first and second trimester. Earlier, second opinion was mandatory for abortion. The government has decided to do away with it, sources further said. According to figures available with the government, out of the six million abortions consucted every year in the country, 55-60 per cent are unsafe, with younger population being the usual prey to the complications. Unsafe abortions contribute to 8.8 per cent of the total maternal deaths. The MTP Act in India came into existence in 1971 and was amended in 2003 to facilitate better access to women. China has also reiterated its commitment not to allow any terrorist activities from its soil. Guwahati: In what may have a cascading effect on the insurgency scenario in the Northeast region, India and China have signed an agreement to share real-time intelligence to combat terrorism jointly. Home ministry security sources told this newspaper the two sides had agreed to continue a dialogue on their differences over some key bilateral issues, while the formal agreement has operationalised a mechanism to combat terrorist activities. Joint Intelligence Committee chairman R.N. Ravi, who was involved in working out the pact, said: India and China have differences on several fronts, but both are aware that no country can survive without cooperation on issues of common interest. The sources said China was apprised of the presence of elusive Ulfa(I) chief Paresh Baruah in its frontier province, while China had sought Indias help to identify the terrorist leaders holed up in that country, and added that they expect some action soon. China has also reiterated its commitment not to allow any terrorist activities from its soil. The sources said while India had strongly opposed Chinas construction of a corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, such contentious issues would not come in the way of cooperation on the terrorism front. Mr Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. New Delhi: Friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and is not a relationship we should be hiding, said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Mr Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. Mr Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday on key bilateral and regional issues. The Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo- Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Mr Rivlin said that his country was proud to stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on murmurs in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Mr Rivlin said, Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe India is proud of its friendship with Israel. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out..., he said. It is learnt that the Prime Minister expressed his annoyance over the delay of the project during a review meeting a few days ago. New Delhi: Cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha will be holding a high-level meeting on November 17 with the chief secretaries of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to take stock of the ongoing Rs 1,658 crore Dasna-Meerut six-lane connector under the Delhi-Meerut Expressway project. Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi laying the foundation stone of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway in December last year, the construction work of the project has not started so far. It is learnt that the Prime Minister expressed his annoyance over the delay of the project during a review meeting a few days ago. The Prime Minister has reportedly made it clear to the NHAI officials that they should not have laid the foundation stone in a hurry if the project was not ready for takeoff. A source said that the Cabinet secretary has called a meeting of all stakeholders, including chief secretaries of Delhi and UP, to take stock of the ongoing project. Some land related issues, which have been reported, need to be sorted out on a priority so that the work is not hampered. Reports suggest that the NHAI has not taken any prior approval from the National Green Tribunal for the construction of a bridge over Yamuna for the expressway project. The ambitious Delhi-Meerut Expressway project, aimed at decongesting traffic in the national capital, proposes construction of four stretches including Nizamuddin bridge to UP border, UP border to Dasna, and Dasna to Hapur. Once fully operational, the 96-km Expressway will provide a safe and smooth transit for commuters between Delhi and Meerut. The Delhi portion is being constructed by the concessionaire, Welspun Delhi-Meerut Expressway Pvt. Ltd. Meanwhile, in Hapur, road construction machineries have been deployed by the concessionaire, Apco Chetak Expressway Pvt. Ltd. The environment ministry has given clearance to NHAIs proposal to construct a greenfield alignment of Delhi-Meerut Expressway from Dasna to Meerut and the six-lane connector. The proposed Dasna-Meerut alignment has been approved, though subject to certain conditions. The Prime Minister had laid the foundation stone at Sector-62 in Noida on December 31, 2015. The total length of the entire expressway will be 105.45 km and the construction has been divided into three stages. The tests havent been possible as the hospitals refused to accept the fee in old currencies of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. New Delhi: For last four days, Nathuni Ojha, a resident of Rohtas in Bihar, is running from one bank to another to get his old currency notes exchanged in order to carry out the treatment of his wife. Mr Ojha was in the national capital to follow up of his wifes treatment. She had undergone heart surgery in 2014 at a leading hospital in Faridabad. Due to demonetisation of currency notes of higher values, some crucial tests of my wife has been delayed and we are left with no money in the national capital, said Mr Ojha. According to Mr Ojha, doctors had called his wife, Patiraji Devi, for a follow up of her heart surgery held in 2014 and recommended few tests to check proper functioning of her heart. His misery started as soon as the government demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. As soon as we reached the hospital for the follow up treatment of my wife, doctors, after seeing the records and after a discussion with me and my wife, asked us to get a few test done to check the progress. But the tests havent been possible as the hospitals refused to accept the fee in old currencies of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. They suggested me to get the old currencies exchanged at any of the banks and deposit the fee to get the test done, he said. Acting on the suggestion of the hospital administration, Mr Ojha went to get his money exchanged at the bank. First of all I went to Canara Bank and saw a long line of almost a kilometer. After a failed attempt at the Canara Bank, I went to SBI and the condition was no different from the previous one. Next day, I once again waited for hours in a long queue to get the money exchanged and the result was same. I failed to get my money exchanged even with several attempts at different branches from Delhi to Faridabad, added Mr Ojha. Some shopkeepers have been giving tips to beggars, fakirs and eunuchs to get change. Mumbai: Most people have been inconvenienced by the abrupt demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, but the move has proven profitable for some cell phone shop owners from Goregaon and Borivali, who are accepting these notes on the purchase of the recently released iPhone 7. On the other hand, facing a paucity of smaller denomination notes, some shopkeepers have been giving tips to beggars, fakirs and eunuchs to get change. The latter, however, are struggling to make ends meet. The iPhone 7, which costs around Rs 60,000 for the 32GB version and around Rs 75,000 for the 128GB and 256GB versions, seems to be flying of the shelves after Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were discontinued. The Asian Age spoke to a few shop owners, who refused to speak on record but admitted they were selling off iPhone 7s as they were in demand from people who wanted to get rid off their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The phones are being sold at an approximate value of Rs 60,000 per piece. Customers who had bought the smartphones unanimously said it was due to the heavy discounts offered to them by the shop owners and their acceptance of the illegal notes. Anees Shaikh, a Juhu resident who bought an iPhone 7 on Friday, said, Buying an iPhone is better than spending time in queues outside an ATM. One customer, who sought anonymity, bought seven iPhones from a Vasai shop. I had no plan to buy a new phone but since the shopkeeper, a trusted person, contacted us informing that he was accepting the banned notes, as well as offering a discount, I decided to buy a phone for all of my cousins and myself, he said. Meanwhile, eunuchs and beggars told The Asian Age that they said they were not willing to part with their earnings despite being in high demand. Durga, a eunuch, said, Shopkeepers are approaching us, but we need change ourselves. Some of us do not have a bank account. How will they manage with Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes? Tulsiram, a beggar, elaborating on his plight, said, We have been given big tips to produce change. But now we are in trouble since we lack smaller denominations. Even we have families. We need to buy food to survive. The owner of a small Dadar-based shop, Sanjay Rai, said, We have been asking beggars and a few people for change but they arent parting with it. Both India and Japan seem to have shown flexibility to ensure a positive outcome. In todays multipolar world stamped by an asymmetrical power distribution, Tokyo and New Delhi figure on every analysts list of major power centres. The relationship between the two nations impacts the Asian power balance, in the backdrop of Chinas economic and military rise and a marked tendency to assert itself. Hence, Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Japan, November 11-12, was imbued with considerable significance. The visit was the occasion for the third India-Japan annual summit during the Modi governments two and a half-year-long tenure so far. With the two Prime Ministers having met for the eighth time, the relationship has advanced noticeably in this period. The question to ponder is as to what additionality was achieved in Tokyo last week. It has produced tangible results. The most salient gain is the conclusion of the agreement for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This was pending for several years, causing much uncertainty. It now opens the way for cooperation involving Indian, American and Japanese companies in the field of civil nuclear cooperation. Both India and Japan seem to have shown flexibility to ensure a positive outcome. Besides, nine other agreements and MoUs were signed covering diverse fields. The future of Japan-India partnership, Mr Modi stated, is rich and robust. Another notable feature is the progress registered on one of the mega projects, namely the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail project. Consultancy work is set to begin next month; construction will commence in end 2018, and the operation starts in 2023. The 58-para joint statement, issued on November 11, is significant for its several elements. It highlights the synergy between Indias Act East Policy and Japans Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy. The partnership between India and Japan brings peace, stability and balance in the region. The para on countering terrorism is very strong and explicit, with India and Japan calling on Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 and in Pathankot in 2016. India reciprocated this by showing ample sensitivity to Japans need for security in its neighbourhood. It joined the Japanese government in condemning in the strongest terms North Koreas continuing development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. With the right protocol followed, the C word does not figure anywhere in the joint statement, but many of its paragraphs will be of special interest to Beijing. One in particular is directly addressed to it where India and Japan speak clearly about the commitment to respecting freedom of navigation etc., based on the principles of international law. Specifically, on the South China Sea, the two countries have called on all parties to show utmost respect to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and to resolve the disputes by peaceful means. Post visit, India-Japan relations need to be assessed from two principal perspectives, namely of the recent history and the changing geopolitics in Asia. First, the backdrop of developments in the past one and a half decades confirms an ascending trajectory. Since PM Yoshiro Moris visit to India in 2000, the two nations began shaping what they called a global partnership. During PM Manmohan Singhs 10-year long innings, the concept evolved significantly as the two governments, with Shinzo Abe as PM in Japan, upgraded the relationship to global and strategic partnership in 2006. The year 2014 was of special significance. Mr Abe, PM again, visited India in January to hold discussions with the Manmohan Singh government, following the maiden visit of Emperor Akihito in end 2013. A few months after Mr Abes visit, PM Modi visited Japan, his first foreign tour outside South Asia. This is when the relationship was elevated to the special strategic and global partnership. Mr Abe was in India again in December 2015 to craft, along with the Modi government, the India-Japan Vision 2025 that reflected the shared view of a long-term strategy towards peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific Region and the world. The Modi-Abe discussions in Tokyo last week revealed a deep sense of mutual satisfaction over the current state of cooperation, with its twin focus on strategic and economic facets. Second, the changing dynamics of Asian geopolitics make it evident that Chinas assertive policies since 2009, particularly on the South China Sea/East China Sea issues, reached a new watermark in 2016. With the US preoccupied with its presidential election and developments in other regions, President Barack Obama came up with a weak-kneed strategic response. The US policy of pivot/rebalancing proved ineffectual. Consequently, Asean went into a disarray. Smaller countries (viz. Laos and Cambodia) chose to join the China camp. The Philippines performed its own pivot, announcing its separation from the US. Other member-states hunkered down, beset with anxiety as well as an instinct to explore accommodation with Beijing. One thus sees the contours of an emerging alliance of angst, with Japan, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and probably South Korea as its key constituents. How does the US view the fast changing geopolitical scenario in East Asia? We will have to wait for a few months to know the answer. President-elect Donald Trump has been ambiguous in articulating his Asian view and his likely China policy. His constant refrain during the election campaign about making Japan pay for its security and about getting back US jobs that were lost to China and India, will now face a reality check. Experts are agreed that, given Indias strengthened relations with the US and Japan and escalating tensions in Chinas relations with India and Japan, Asias largest democracy India and the oldest and most prosperous democracy Japan are natural partners. The Tokyo summit last week was a confident step in guiding the two nations towards the desired direction. He also said he stood by his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border -- although he said it could include some fencing. But he made clear in excerpts of Sunday's interview that he still intended to crack down on the undocumented, focusing on people with criminal records. (Photo: AP) New York: Donald Trump plans to immediately deport or jail as many as three million undocumented immigrants, the Republican said Sunday as he set out his priorities as America's head of state in the first television interview since his election. Millions were expected to tune in to Trump's full interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" for clues on how the populist billionaire will govern, and how far he intends to convert his firebrand slogans into hard and fast policy. Since Tuesday's shock election triumph, Trump had appeared to tone down his rhetoric, notably suggesting he might be willing to reconsider a pledge to scrap President Barack Obama's signature health reform. But he made clear in excerpts of Sunday's interview that he still intended to crack down on the undocumented, focusing on people with criminal records. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people -- probably two million, it could be even three million -- we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. He also said he stood by his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border -- although he said it could include some fencing. Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States, many of them Central and Southern Americans long-established in the country. Trump's stance stood in opposition with comments by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Sunday the focus under a Trump administration would be on securing the border, not rounding up immigrants. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Ryan told CNN. Appointment 'imminent' Since his election on the back of an incendiary anti-immigrant campaign, thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets daily, worried that Trump will put his rhetoric into practice. The billionaire's Trump Tower residence in Manhattan was picketed for four straight days by, with similar protests across the United States. The tower has been a hive of activity as the real estate mogul huddles with his transition team to shape his cabinet -- appointments expected to play a crucial role in setting the tone of an administration led by a 70-year-old political novice. Trump faces a colossal task in hammering out cabinet picks and filling hundreds of other top government jobs ahead of his January 20 inauguration. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has said the announcement of White House chief of staff -- the powerful gatekeeper to the president -- is "imminent." Top contenders include Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, who Trump has credited for helping engineer his unlikely election win. 'Hold him accountable' Democrats have been despondent in the wake of an election they were certain of winning, but vowed Sunday to oppose Trump -- despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. "Our job now is to hold him accountable," said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. "If Mr. Trump has the courage to take on Wall Street, to take on the drug companies, to try to work forward, go forward to create a better life for working people, we will work with him, issue by issue. "But if his presidency is going to be about discrimination, if it's going to be about scapegoating immigrants or scapegoating African-Americans or Muslims, we will oppose him vigorously," Sanders declared. An ABC News/Washington Post poll out Sunday shows that 74 percent of Americans accept Trump's election as legitimate, but that number fell to 58 percent among supporters of his defeated rival Clinton. Trump has shown some willingness to soften his more strident positions. His U-turn on Obamacare -- he now says he may simply amend a law he once branded a "disaster" on the stump -- was prompted by his White House meeting with the outgoing president earlier this week. He told CBS and The Wall Street Journal he may maintain some of the program's more popular elements, such as a ban on insurance companies denying coverage because of so-called pre-existing health conditions. Asked by the paper whether he would, as threatened, name a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Trump deflected, saying his priorities were "health care, jobs, border control, tax reform." Not long ago Trump was leading crowds in chants of "Lock her up!" Hate groups The Republican has yet to respond, however, to mounting calls to reassure Americans who fear a xenophobic crackdown under his authority. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, tracked more than 200 incidents of election-related harassment in the three days following the vote, with many more allegations emerging on social media. Tens of thousands have signed an SPLC petition urging Trump to clearly distance himself from hate groups. Tycoon claims appointing a prosecutor against Clinton not on his mind right now. Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump has said he has not given a thought yet on appointing a special prosecutor against his bitter campaign rival Hillary Clinton and instead wants to focus on major issues like jobs, health and immigration along with border security. I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on health care, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration Bill. We want to have a great immigration Bill. I want to focus on all of these other things that weve been talking about, Mr Trump told CBS 60 Minute programme that was aired on Sunday. Mr Trump said he wants to get the country straightened away instead of thinking about appointing special prosecutors against Ms Clinton. I dont want to hurt them. I dont want to hurt them. Theyre, theyre good people. I dont want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together, he said when reminded about his campaign rhetoric. Mr Trump said he discussed several priority issues with the House Speaker Paul Ryan during their meeting at the Capitol Hill on Thursday. I would say there was more than one thing, there were three things, it was healthcare, there was immigration and there was a major tax Bill lowering taxes in this country. Were going to substantially simplify and lower the taxes, he said in response to a question. Mr Trump said he has made decisions about Cabinet positions, but refused to divulge any names. World leaders calling him after his election, he said, reflects Americas power. You know the amazing thing to show you the incredible nature of our country. First of all, every major leader... Has called me, Ive spoken to many of them and Ill call the rest of them, but and I said, Boy, this really shows you how powerful our country is. France and UK and I mean everybody, all over Asia and very, just to congratulate. But it really shows the power of our country, he said. Responding to a question, he said he has not made up his mind if he would ask for the resignation of the FBI director James Comey for his decisions related to the probe against Ms Clinton. I think that I would rather not comment on that yet. I dont I havent made up my mind. I respect him a lot. I respect the FBI a lot. I would certainly like to talk to him. And see him. This is a tough time for him, Mr Trump said when asked if he would seek the resignation of the FBI director. Under Church law, they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner. Pope Francis blesses the faithful during an audience with the participants of homeless jubilee in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. (Photo: AP) Vatican City: Four conservative Roman Catholic cardinals made a rare public challenge to Pope Francis on Monday over some of his teachings in a major document on the family, accusing him of sowing confusion on important moral issues. The cardinals two Germans, an Italian, and an American said they had gone public with their letter to the Pope because he had not responded. The Pope has clashed before with conservatives who worry he is weakening Roman Catholic rules on moral issues such as homosexuality and divorce, while focusing on social problems such as climate change and economic inequality. At issue are some of the teachings in a 260-page treatise called Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), a cornerstone document of Pope Francis attempt to make the 1.2 billion-member Church more inclusive and less condemning. In the document, issued in April, he called for a Church that was less strict and more compassionate towards any imperfect members, such as those who divorced and remarried, saying no one can be condemned forever. Most critics have focused on what the Popes letter said about the full re-integration into the Church of members who divorce and remarry in civil ceremonies. Under Church law, they cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sex with their new partner, because their first marriage is still valid in the eyes of the Church and therefore they are seen to be living in an adulterous state of sin. In the document, the Pope appeared to side with progressives who had proposed an internal forum in which a priest or bishop decide jointly with the individual on a case-by-case basis if he or she can be fully re-integrated and receive communion. Conservatives have contested this and, in their cover letter, the four cardinals asked the Pope to resolve those doubts which are the cause of disorientation and confusion. Investigators plan to take a DNA sample from Julian Assange, subject to his agreement. London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was being questioned by prosecutors on Monday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in the latest twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, who will be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadoran prosecutor, entered the embassy building shortly before 1000 GMT, an AFP photographer said. Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson has said the questioning, which has been delayed in the past because of diplomatic disagreements between Ecuador and Sweden, could last several days. "I am very hopeful... Objectively, there is no doubt that everything happened as Assange said it did," Samuelsson told Sweden's TT news agency. "Free Assange" and "You Won't Stop Wikileaks" read banners held up by a small group of protesters outside the embassy as the officials arrived. "Freedom Loving People of the World Say Thank You Ecuador!" read another banner hung under the balcony from which Assange has sometimes addressed supporters. A Swedish police inspector will also attend the questioning and investigators plan to take a DNA sample from Assange, subject to his agreement. The creator of the secret-spilling website has been holed up in the red-brick building behind Harrods luxury department store for more than four years. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. It was the first time Assange has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. Petition for Trump 'pardon' In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on President-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" -- an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 17,700 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. The legal grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Trump, a republican, elected. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states. The Indian troops violated ceasefire along the LoC in the Bhimber sector of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the Pak army said. Pakistan army on Monday said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in firing by Indian troops. (Photo: AP/Representational) Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that the country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the worlds attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. So far, mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. The Obama-Xi era is ending amid doubts and uncertainties that weigh on the entire Pacific region. Chinas president calls for "cooperation in many areas." Trump pledges to cooperate for "mutual benefit" but the protectionist threats he made during the campaign hang over the future. Taiwan, North Korea and the South China Sea are the other main items on the agenda. Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) Bilateral relations, North Koreas nuclear programme, US arms sales to Taiwan, Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, and trade are some of the most important issues that hang in the balance of relations between Beijing and Washington. During his campaign, Donald Trumps protectionism irritated Chinas leaders, and his victory has created uncertainty about the future. Chinese state TV network CCTV reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping and the US president elect spoke on the phone. During the conversation, the two leaders agreed to meet soon to discuss bilateral relations and major international issues. According to press reports, the Chinese leader told Trump that the two countries "need collaboration and can cooperate in many areas." No direct reference was made to the Republican leaders threat during the campaign to impose a 45 duty on Chinese imports and his definition of China as an "enemy". "Good intentions" appear to prevail in the first direct contact between the two leaders, who pledged to meet "as soon as possible" to discuss "bilateral relations and issues of common interest". Trump also said during the phone conversation that the United States and China can cooperate for their mutual benefit. Still, uncertainties surround the new US president with respect to foreign policy, especially compared to Barack Obamas hands-on approach to Asia. The outgoing president focused in recent years on continent and its main unresolved issues, including the South China Sea conflicts. At the same time, Beijings own problems from internal reforms to the economic slowdown through changes to the party leadership in late 2017 will also affect relations between the two superpowers. Analysts and experts are waiting to see what decisions Trump will make in relation to the Asia-Pacific region and if China can benefit from an eventual US disengagement from it. During the Obama presidency, a gradual change has taken place in bilateral relations. The promise of friendship and cooperation during the first term was followed by four years of gradual wearing down in relations and rising confrontation. The highlight in Beijing-Washington relations was the signing of the climate accord at the Paris Conference in 2015. However, uncertainties remain as to the future with respect to energy and environmental policies by President elect Trump, who is anything but an enemy of US oil conglomerates. The Obama-Xi age also coming to an end amid big doubts and many uncertainties that will weigh heavily on the whole Asia-Pacific region with old alliances at stake in a climate of growing mistrust and mutual suspicion. Still, some observers agree that economic choices will shape future relations between the two countries. If Trump sticks to protectionist policies, and imposes customs duties on Chinese products, there could be serious repercussions for the world economy as a whole. A trade war would cause "incalculable" damage, considering that China which owns much of the US foreign debt is not without weapons to retaliate and could launch a counteroffensive. For the experts, the coming months will give the White Houses new landlord time to assess the relationship with Beijing and the impact of his choices - protectionist or not - not only on the US economy, but also on the world. by Mathias Hariyadi A child among the wounded. AsiaNews sources: the author was stopped by the crowd and arrested. A strategy of tension that finds its roots in a blasphemy accusation against governor of Jakarta. The real goal: to topple President Joko Widodo. Jakarta (AsiaNews) - A homemade bomb exploded in front of the church in Oikumene Sengkotek (Samarinda), in the East Kalimantan province. Four people, including a child, were injured and there was damage to motorcycles parked there. It is the first time that such an incident of this nature has taken place in the provincial capital of East Kalimantan. The police chief General Safarudin, confirming the incident, spoke of Molotov cocktail thrown by persons unknown, at 10.30 local (30.09 Jakarta time). A local source informed AsiaNews that some people present at the scene said that the author was stopped and detained by the crowd after attempting to escape by jumping into the nearby river. The motive for the attack is unknown. The author is a resident of Bogor, in West Java province. The political situation It is likely that the attack is the result of the tension clouding Jakarta. Society is divided in two. One part believe the accusations of "blasphemy" made against the Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian. This part of society would include radical Muslims and other groups, including the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). The other camp defends Ahok. These include academics, Muslim religious, the two most numerous Islamic organizations in the country - the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah - and other civil society groups. These state that Ahok was targeted on purpose by some radical fringe, manipulating an apparent case of "religious blasphemy" to destabilize the administration of President Joko Widodo. Radical groups staged demonstrations and clashes last November 4 and are preparing another for November 25 next. Their design is to force Widodo to resign after organizing widespread chaos. A similar thing happened in 1998, when a kind of "civil war" broke out between different sectors of society, forcing then-President Suharto from power. This morning a suicide attack in the south-west of the capital has caused eight deaths. Over the weekend a series of explosions killed at least 11 civilians, dozens wounded. So far there are no official claims. Special forces have recaptured the ancient Assyrian city. The jihadists had destroyed heritage sites, considered pagan. Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At least eight people have died and six were wounded in a suicide attack this morning by a commando suicide bomber in a town south-west of Baghdad, Ain al-Tamer, an area hitherto spared from violence. The assault involved six suicide bombers, some of which may have been killed by security forces before blowing themselves up. The morning's attack is just the latest in a series that hit the Iraqi capital and other parts of the country over the weekend, killing at least 11 civilians and wounding dozens. Residential and commercial districts were the main targets of the explosions. So far there have been no official claims, even if the suspicions favor the Islamic State (IS). In increasing difficulty in Mosul under the offensive launched on 17 October by the army and Kurdish Peshmerga, the Daesh fighters have so far responded with attacks in other parts of the country. Security sources report that a car bomb exploded in the south-east Kamaliya district, causing three deaths and eight injured. Police surrounded the area and ambulances have transported the wounded to local hospitals. Two other civilians were killed and eight were injured in the blast of an improvised explosive device near a shopping center in Abu Ghraib, 25 km west of the capital. A civilian was killed and five others injured in a car bomb that hit the north-eastern district of Sadr City. Also yesterday, a bomb exploded at the passage of a car in Muhammad Qasim Road, in the east of Baghdad, causing a victim and three wounded. Four other people were killed in the explosion of a bomb in Sha'ab district to the north of the capital. Meanwhile the Iraqi army and Kurdish militias offensive continues towards Mosul. Over the weekend special forces wrested Nimrud from the jihadists. The ancient Assyrian city came under the control of the IS, and whose heritage sites were devastated by the militia because considered pagan. Nimrud is located on the east bank of the Tigris River, about 30 kilometers south of Mosul, in northern Iraq. In March 2015 Iraqi historical and government officials had condemned the destruction of the archaeological site, which dates back to the 13th century BC. For UNESCO the ravages committed by men of the Caliph constitute a war crime. In an official statement the Iraqi army says that "the troops of the Ninth Armored Division liberated the city of Nimrud" and have "raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings." At the same time the soldiers "have inflicted heavy losses in terms of lives and equipment on the so-called Islamic State". by Mathias Hariyadi Two year old Olivia Intan Marbun did not survive her wounds and burns. She was playing with other children in front of the church when the improvised explosive device exploded. The assailant, Johanda, had already been arrested for terrorism and has ties with the Islamic State. Jakarta (AsiaNews) - The first victim of the attack yesterday at the church Samarinda (East Kalimantan) is a two year old girl, who did not survive her wounds and the burns. Olivia Intan Marbun was playing with other children in front of the church, waiting for her parents, when an improvised explosive device exploded overwhelming her and other children. Triniti Hutahayan (4 years), Anita (4) and Alfaro Sinaga (5) are in serious condition. All of those wounded in the attack belong to the Batak ethnic group, members of the Protestant Batak Church. Police arrested the alleged assailant, Jo Bin Muhammad Aceng Kurnia known as Johanda, an ex-convict for terrorist crimes, suspected of having links with the Islamic state. Johanda was arrested in May 2011 for plotting attacks on the science and technology center in Puspitek Serpong (South Tangerang, southwest of Jakarta) and the Gading Serpong church. Sentenced to three years and six months imprisonment, the terrorist was released on bail in 2014, during the Islamic holiday of "Eid Mubarak." It is tradition that during this period some prisoners can get their sentences reduced, as is the case with Christians during Christmas. Much of civil society is now asking if this measure is not too permissive towards terrorists. Instead of repenting, Johanda continued to plan attacks up to yesterday. According to the head of the Indonesian police, Tito Karnavian, "Johanda is a member of the Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT)," an Islamist movement founded by Abu Bakar Bashir. The latter, 77, was sentenced in August to 15 years in prison for having financed a fundamentalist training camp in Aceh. Johanda along with five other people were arrested in connection with the attack yesterday. The Synod of Protestant Churches in Indonesia (PGI) has released a document describing the terrorist attack "as a human tragedy". Violent acts, the statement said, can never be the best solution to solve the problems: "We ask the police to deal with this emergency as soon as possible. Intolerance can not be tolerated in any form, including the hate speech that led to the protests of recent weeks ". The reference is to the protests against the Christian Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, accused of blasphemy. According to many analysts, they are part of a political plan to bring down the President Joko Widodo. by Victoria Ma Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - Pope Francis has appointed the current auxiliary bishop Michael Yeung Ming-cheung, coadjutor bishop of Hong Kong. The announcement was made by the Holy See yesterday at 12 noon and in Hong Kong at 7pm, while the closing of the Holy Door of the Jubilee of Mercy was being celebrated in the Cathedral. Msgr. Yeung, 71, succeeds Card. John Tong, current ordinary bishop of Hong Kong, who is 78 years old. Card. Tong turned 75 in 2014, the canonical age for retirement, but the pope has extended his responsibility for another three years, until 2017. Towards the end of the Mass, Msgr. Ante Jozic, Head of the Holy See Study Mission in Hong Kong (see photos), made the official announcement, pointing out that Msgr. Yeung has served for some time the diocese of Hong Kong with "renewed dedication and love for the Church of Christ", "with ever greater responsibility", aiding Card. Tong in his duties. After the announcement, Msgr. Yeung knelt in front of Card. Tong and then in front of Card. Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong. Rising, he embraced both, along with the auxiliary bishop Msgr. Joseh Ha. Addressing the faithful, Msgr. Yeung (photo 1) confessed to having many defects and thanked the Pope for the trust given to him. He also thanked the two cardinals, who had taken him in about 44 years ago when he entered the seminary. He said Card. Zen has always supported him and from him he has learned not to allow difficulties stop him. From Card. Tong he has learned to be kind and magnanimous, full of love for the culture, the people and the Chinese Church. In a society as diverse as that of Hong Kong, he said, the two cardinals are like two big trees, under which he can enjoy a little 'shade. And while obeying the pope's appointment, he cannot help but follow in their footsteps. Msgr. Yeung was born in Shanghai on 1 December 1945 into a Catholic family and arrived in Hong Kong when he was four. He worked in import-export, before entering the seminary in Hong Kong at 26 years of age. He was ordained a priest on June 10, 1978. He completed studies in communication (Syracuse, USA) and in philosophy and education (Harvard, USA). Since August 2003 he has been head of the local Caritas and Vicar General since 2009. He was ordained auxiliary bishop in August 2014. (Lucia Leung collaborated) by Vincent Lazun Naw San* The relics were exhibited at the closing ceremony of the Holy Door at St Mary Cathedral. The Mass was attended by the faithful of various nationalities. The bishop blessed children, following the Shinto ritual of Shichi-go-san. Tokyo (AsiaNews) Yesterday, 13 November, in the morning, Mgr Peter Takeo Okada, archbishop of Tokyo, along with the Apostolic Nuncio Mgr Joseph Chennath and other priests concelebrated the closing Mass of the Year of Mercy in Tokyos St Marys Cathedral. Many Japanese Catholics from the capital as well as immigrants from Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, and Burma as well as a small number of Europeans took part in the important event. A choir marked the solemnity with songs at different moments of the service. The Mass also included a ritual for children called Shichi-go-san. Originally based in Shinto culture, it involves taking children aged seven, five and three years to the temple to be blessed by the priest. In yesterday's ceremony, the bishop blessed the children. Usually, the Shichi-go-san festival is celebrated on 15 November, a date deemed lucky in Shinto culture. In Japan, the odd numbers are lucky numbers. Children are brought to the temple because they are protected by Kami (deities). In the case of Christianity, they are blessed by Jesus who blessed the children in the Gospel. During the Mass, the relics of St John Paul II and St Faustina Kowalska were exhibited. The Polish pope is a figure much admired by the Japanese, who welcomed him with great solemnity in 1981. Kowalska is the initiator of the devotion to the Divine Mercy, whose celebration was introduced in the Catholic Church by John Paul II. The Jubilees closing ceremony had as its intention asking God, through the grace of the two saints, for mercy for the Japanese people as a whole. * PIME missionary in Japan. by Nirmala Carvalho First year seminarians from St Pius College in Goregaon East were divided into four groups. Living for a week among poor people in Maharashtra hill villages made them understand their many blessings". Mumbai (AsiaNews) Four groups of first year Orientationist seminarians at St Pius College in Goregaon, East Mumbai spent a week living among the people of some tribal villages of Maharashtra to see first hand the challenges of mission and become more aware of their vocation. Fr Jervis D'Souza, an educator, took the students of the Archdiocesan seminary to the hills near the Madad Mission, home to tribal Adivasi. Here, the seminarians stayed with locals, experiencing their daily difficulties, such as lack of electricity and running water. But they also "learnt to appreciate what they have, and they understood the value of manual work (often considered inferior) that Tribals accept without finding excuses. The seminarians travelled to the mission run by Fr Carlton Kinny who has been working ceaselessly and selflessly for the past 27 years in Raigad District with Fr Elias D'Cunha and the Daughters of the Cross Sisters. They began their missionary experience on 15 October ahead of World Mission Day, which was celebrated the following Sunday. They were divided into four groups, each destined for a local village, populated mostly by ethnic Katkari Adivasi. Before they began their week of service, Fr DSouza noted, they were "invited to observe the Adivasi who are completely satisfied with their lives and the context in which they live and challenged to find the same satisfaction in their own lives." The first group was taken to Dehwad. Here the missionaries imprint is visible, starting with houses built with masonry rather than mud. The village has a kindergarten and a primary school, electric power is available almost everywhere and new bathrooms were installed recently. Still, the seminarians were "shocked by the lack of education. Only very few people attended school and many young people under 30 are already grandparents." The educator explains that "despite three decades of social effort by the missionaries, there is still a high rate of child marriages. The caste system is strong in society and ancient taboos and superstitious traditions are still alive. People are not aware of their rights and are still distrustful of the missionaries." Looking at the daily difficulties of these people, almost all landless farmers, "the group realised how lucky they are. This experience has made the seminarians aware of the many blessings they have." The second group went to another village "where it was surprised by the difference between the lifestyle at the seminary and that of the Katkaris. For example, the alarm clock is not needed here because of the rooster crow. Looking at manual work, the group understood the value it has for the villagers, who endure great hardships without finding excuses." Another group visited the 50 families of the village of Khumbarde. Here the children are encouraged to attend school and are rewarded with a rupee a day. The locals spend this money for daily food, and are not overanxious about the need to make money to feed the family. The fourth group went to Palasgaon, where it had the opportunity to learn and speak the local Marathi dialect, a crucial step for breaking the language barrier with Tribals. Through this experience of mission, "the seminarians have understood how hard the work of priests, religious and laity is. They need prayer support every day. Young people have a better understanding of the reality, and this has deepened their perspective on life, Fr DSoua said. "We hope that some of them may choose the way of the mission." Conspiracy Theory Alleges Trump Was Born In Pakistan Trending News: President Trump Now Has His Own Birther Scandal To Deal With Long Story Short Donald Trump was born in Pakistan as Dawood Ibrahim Khan in 1946. Or so alleges a new conspiracy theory originating from Twitter. In the extremely, EXTREMELY, unlikely case that this is true, Trump wouldn't qualify for the presidency. Long Story Birtherism is back. Although this time, Donald Trump may be the one having to provide his birth certificate. An Urdu-language news site called Neo News reported that the U.S. president-elect isn't who you think he is. Contrary to popular belief, Trump wasn't born in New York, but rather in the now-Taliban-controlled Waziristan region of Pakistan in 1946 (as seen in English via The Times of Israel). Citing Twitter posts, the Pakistani news agency reports that Trump's birth name was Dawood Ibrahim Khan (ironically the same last name as the Gold Star family he humiliated on the campaign trail). In a video report, Neo News shared a photo of the boy they say Trump was back in Pakistan. As the conspiracy theory goes, Trump was taken in by a British Indian Army captain following the death of his parents in a tragic car accident. While in London in 1956, Trump was adopted by the American family who we know as his parents. In the extremely unlikely case that this is true, Trump wouldn't be allowed to sit as president because he wasn't born in the United States. This is a little taste of Trump's own medicine. He spent years spewing the baseless theory that Barack Obama was born outside of the U.S. and is Muslim. In September, Trump finally said he accepts that Obama was born in America, but refused to apologize. I mean there have been stranger conspiracy theories, I guess. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question Will Trump respond to these ludicrous allegations? Drop This Fact As of August, 41% of Republicans believed the birther movement. UN Weather Service Officially Declares 2016 The Hottest Year On Record Trending News: UN Declares 2016 The Warmest Year Ever Recorded Long Story Short As negotiators of the Paris climate agreement meet in Marrakesh, Morocco to work out details of the accord, the UNs World Meteorological Organization has announced that 2016 is the warmest year ever recorded. Long Story The WMO doesnt need data from the years final two months to declare this year the hottest since measurements began in the 19th century. The figures show that the year through October has shown an average global temperature increase of 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The Paris accord calls for an increase limit of 2 or even 1.5 degrees. The WMO says the El Nino weather phenomenon did play a role in this years temperature rise, but believes that human activity, in particular the burning of fossil fuels, remains the most important factor in boosting world temperatures. The WMO released the preliminary report to act as a spur to negotiators meeting in Morocco this week to hash out methods of implementing the Paris treaty, which was adopted in December and signed by 193 countries earlier this year. This years temperature record breaks the previous record set only last year. 2015 was the hottest year on record after global temperatures surged past 2014s numbers. Another year. Another record, said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas. In parts of Arctic Russia, temperatures were 6C to 7C above the long-term average. Many other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and north-west Canada were at least 3C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different. According to the Reuters news agency, President-elect Donald Trump is looking for a quick way to walk out of the agreement, and believes climate change is a hoax. 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 Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question Can the world move ahead with the Paris deal without the United States? Drop This Fact For the third year in a row, global carbon emissions were flat. Its believed the ongoing recession in China and declining consumption of coal in the US are the cause. Beauty Bloggers during the Happy Skin x Disney Limited Edition Makeup Launch L-R Tara, Phoebe, Me, Sophie, Earth, Angela and Jackie Photo taken from Happy Skin FB Page Let It Glow Brightening Powder Foundation (Php1,499.00) Tale As Old As Time Brightening Powder Foundation (Php1,499.00) Shades: Soft Beige or Natural Beige Happy Skin X Disney Princess Enchanted Luminous Mesh Blush Shades: Pink or Peach Php899.00 each Happy Skin X Disney Princess Liquid Matte Lipstick Cinderella and Ariel Php699.00 each Php1,299.00 for a set Happy Skin X Disney Princess Moisturizing Matte Lipsticks Rapunzel and Belle Php699.00 each Happy Skin X Disney Princess Moisturizing Matte Lipsticks Snow White and Aurora Php699.00 each Happy Skin X Frozen Moisturizing Matte Lipsticks Anna and Elsa Php699.00 each Actress and artist Heart Evangelista-Escudero Singer, host and actress Karylle Tatlonghari-Yuzon Actress and Advocate Carla Abellana Philippine Blogging Pioneer Tricia Gosingtian Actress, Singer and Songwriter Ylona Garcia YouTube Vlogger Janina Vela Top Bloggers and iconic sisters Vern and Verniece Enciso What's your favorite Happy Skin X Disney makeup item/s? Keep smilin' Stay happy! Even in my 30s, I have to admit, I still watch Disney Movies because I feel so good deep inside. Especially Disney's Iconic Princesses like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and who could forget Frozen?The list could go on because deep inside, I believe all women are Princesses! We deserve to be treated as one too!Just as Disney plays a significant part of everyone's childhood, it is even more exciting to see these Princesses in our favorite makeups!Happy Skin made our dreams come true!The collaboration between the two brands Happy Skin x Disney equates to a limited edition makeup collection that girls are going crazy about!During the launch, Happy Skin also revealed #ThePrincessInYou role models who appeal to us today.Together with The Walt Disney Company Philippines General Manager Ms. Veronica Cabalinan and Happy Skin Co-Founders Jacque and Rissa, here are the Princesses --- the women who aren't afraid to dream big!I had so much fun singing Disney songs on top of my head as I'm writing this article! :)You may shop online www.happyskincosmetics.com www.zalora.com.ph . Follow them on Facebook ( www.facebook.com/happyskincosmetics ) , Instagram and Twitter (@Happyskin_ph) Aldi to sell Australian products in China Aldi has announced that from second quarter 2017 it will begin on-line retail operations in China. The company plans to begin by selling wine and parts of its non-chilled grocery range, most of which will be sourced from Aldis established Australian suppliers and sold on-line. Aldis initial online service will allow Chinese shoppers access to cheap groceries and weekly specials. It will also offer home delivery. Aldi already operates in three continents: Europe including Britain, the US, and Australia and is the seventh largest food retailer globally. The announcement comes after several years of detailed feasibility studies by Aldi considering its options for entering the Chinese market. The company expects to open physical stores at a later date. Previous attempts by Western-based supermarket groups such as Tesco and Carrefour to enter the Chinese market have proved difficult. Chinese consumers are known to be wary of retailers house brands but are keen buyers of Australian produce and products since these are perceived by consumers in China to be clean, pure and of high quality. There is some speculation that Aldi is hopeful of recruiting staff in Australia for its new China business from Australias Chinese community. Related articles Australian agribusiness export concern on Trump election Australian farmers are worried that the overtly hostile rhetoric of American President-elect Trump toward imports might close their second most-important market. The US currently takes 11 per cent of Australias AUD $46 billion agrifood export trade which includes: Beef AUD $3.1billion Lamb AUD $601million Goat meat AUD $155milion Wine AUD $491million Many times during the recent US Presidential election campaign, Trump said that he would tear-up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has not yet been implemented by the American Congress. He has also said he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was signed by President Bill Clinton in December 1993. Australian government ministers and Austrade spokespersons have said that Trumps election poses no threat to the continuation of the 12-year old Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Australia and the US. Since this FTA was signed in January 2005, the two-way trade between Australia and the US has increased from AUD $41 billion to more than AUD $70 billion. By 2023, 98.4 per cent of US tariff lines are to be completely duty-free for Australian exporters to the USA. However, the anticipated cancellation of the TPP will likely remove opportunities for international growth for Australian beef, dairy, grain and rice producers into US markets and also into the markets of the other ten countries who were to be parties to the TPP treaty. Before the 2016 US election, the Australian sugar industry, which exports 80 per cent of its AUD $3 billion crop each year, was promised greater access to the high-priced US sugar market with a boost to exports projected from 85,000 tonnes per year to 150,000 tonnes. Some farmers in the US are also displeased at the prospective cancellation of the TPP. Through their lobby group, American Farm Bureau, they have campaigned loudly in its support. Paradoxically, Trump has in the past been a strong proponent of international trade but has also wanted to see American goods and services gain ascendancy in foreign markets. Byron Bay Chilli Co. does huge international deal Australian regional food manufacturer, Byron Bay Chilli Co, has launched in Bangladesh under licence, six varieties of its best-known sauces. Demand for high-quality chilli sauces has boomed across Bangladesh and parts of Western Asia and the Middle East to where the largest Bangladeshi factories have been exporting. In 2015 the two-way trade between Australia and Bangladesh was worth AUD $1.87 billion. Australias exports to Bangladesh, mainly pulses, fertilisers and wheat, were worth AUD $688 million. Other Australian sauce and salsa products are already exported to Bangladesh, but under the new licensing production agreement by Byron Bay Chilli Co to PRAN Agro Ltd, Bangladeshs largest processed food conglomerate, the latter will produce the sauces at its factory in Natore. This is the first agreement of its kind to produce food in Bangladesh using Australian recipes, technology and branding. Byron Bay Chilli Ltd expects the licensing agreement to give it an edge in the market and there is potential for the sauces to be exported from Bangladesh to the Middle East and neighbouring South Asian markets such as Nepal, Bhutan, and the north-eastern states of India. The growing middle class in Bangladesh now numbers approximately 30 million and is developing as a significant consumer market for high-quality food products. Australia has long been a supplier of food to communities in Bangladesh, helping to make up shortfalls in local production, but the middle-class market is now maturing. The demand by the middle class for innovative, international food brands is expected to open other opportunities for other Australian brands and foods such as fresh juice, jam, honey, cereals, dairy and pasta. Go beyond customers first names with personalised packaging Unbranded Hazelnut Spread isolated on a white background with a blank label. Ideal for imposing your own artwork onto. Brought to you by Trent Munro, Product Manager for Coding Technologies at Matthews Australasia, Adding customers names to packaging has proven a hit with some brands: think Nutellas Christmas bonanza last year and Coca-Colas Share a Coke campaign from a couple of years ago. Its a great strategy for customer engagement and driving sales, particularly when, according to Mintel, one in five Millennials in the USA is after customised packaging, and nearly one in four Chinese consumers is willing to pay more for soft drink in personalised packaging. But now its time to go beyond consumers first names, and leverage digital technology to truly get closer to your customers. Heres how. Its not a fad, this desire for personalised packaging goes a long way to explaining how Nutella topped the 2015 Christmas list, with just Myer, just in Victoria, selling more than 400,000 jars of the chockie spread at $12.95 with someones name on it. (And on those Gen Yers or Millennials, heres an interesting look about how theyre changing the face of packaging.) Brands have mostly played it safe with personalisation so far, and technology has made it faster and easier to add individual names to packaging via variable printing. Thats all well and good, but how else can you leverage the technology to engage consumers on a personal, emotional or even local level? Dig into data Already customer data is driving massive changes in the way products come to market and packaging is no exception. Data insights mean you can personalise packaging to engage specific target markets, for instance: to target specific geographic areas, or interests or generations. Take yoghurt: packaging for the same product could differ depending upon whether you were targeting Millennial consumers or Baby Boomers. A good point to think about is which product features you could highlight for different markets; this could even be different recipes. The true purpose of personalised packaging is to focus on engaging a consumer emotionally, rather than simply grabbing their attention in the short term. Its through emotional engagement that you can find the key to stronger customer loyalty. Data can unlock this. Sensory role The role of our senses is more powerful than you might realise with packaging especially for food and drink products. Packaging type, colour and format can all affect a consumers perception of the taste of the product within. Food & beverage are beginning to focus on touch, hearing and smell as well, and because consumers are less consciously aware of these elements, it makes their impact greater. For example, individually wrapped portions of Mars Ice Cream dont have a strong aroma, so the manufacturer has captured scents associated with the ice cream within the carton seal. Its the same with sound. Back in 2004, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University conducted a test to find out how different wavelengths affect taste perceptions. Using Pringles, Charles Spence discovered that the sound of the crunch changed how people felt about the chips. Louder, higher-pitched crunch noises were rated as 15% fresher on average than softer, lower-pitched crunches. Since then, Spence has gone on to study how the auditory aspects of packaging can affect product perception. Beer brands are already using this to get the right fizz sound when a bottle is opened, so consumers enjoy an enhanced product experience. Interactive senses Some processors are taking multi-sensory packaging further by blending it with interactivity. When American brewer Anheuser-Busch introduced its tequila-flavoured beer, Oculto, it used thermochromic ink on the reverse of the label, which changes colour depending on the beers temperature. The brand went one step further at a launch promotion where customers could scan their bottles, connect to a special app and win prizes. They were also directed to a web app, called Relics of the Night, which let them interact with the brand online, join the community on social media, and earn rewards and prizes by posting comments and photos. When activated by a pressure-sensitive switch underneath, LEDs light up with a Mexican skull design. For some brands, this could be one step too far, but it does show whats possible when the boundaries of packaging technology are pushed to engage consumers. Oculto targets a young, tech-savvy millennial demographic the very same consumers who expect an interactive, personalised element to packaging. Which brings us back to the most important point of all: personalised packaging needs to work for your target market and your brand. Dont just jump on the personalisation bandwagon hoping for success. Using customer-data insights, take the time to find a strategy that will lead to greater engagement with your product and brand. If youre thinking about the types of technology you could use for printing different labels, please check out in-line labelling, Label Printer Applicators and Label Applicators. You may also find some useful information here on other types of coding. Matthews has a wonderful resource library. The videos, case studies, whitepapers, presentations, infographics, articles from our thought leaders, brochures and product data sheets are all free to download. Please sign up for our quarterly newsletter, which is a great summary of our latest postings. And of course, you can check out our latest news and scroll through our FAQs. * Trent Munro is the Product Manager for Coding Technologies at Matthews Australasia, and an accomplished business strategist, marketing innovator and speaker specialising in business development and optimisation. Over the past 18 years, he has worked across a range of blue-chip and medium enterprises including Goodyear Automotive, Clariant, Corona Manufacturing and Matthews. Trent holds a range of post-graduate and graduate qualifications in Commerce, Psychology, Project Management and Science. At Matthews, he has overseen market development locally and abroad, launching class-leading traceability and automation technologies across manufacturing, healthcare and logistics Woolworths and SPC agree on new 3 year deal Woolworths has announced that SPC Ardmona (SPC) has signed a three-year contract to supply an increased volume of deciduous fruit to Woolworths for its private brand. The announcement came following an earlier report that Woolworths would not honour its AUD $70 million deal signed with SPC in 2014. The latest deal commits SPC to supply approximately nine million cans of Australian deciduous fruit for Woolworths private brand over three years. The new agreement also means that SPCs owner, Coca-Cola Amatil, will not have to repay the grant of AUD $22 million, for updating the companys operations, to the Victorian government. Woolworths had shocked farmers in the Goulburn Valley with its unexpected announcement early last week that it was cancelling a contract with SPC for the supply of house brand tinned tomatoes and creating speculation about the future of its tinned fruit supply. However, SPC has reassured the tomato growers of the Goulburn Valley saying that it will honour its verbal agreements to pay them for supplying this seasons crop.Tomato growers had already planted the tomato crop when Woolworths announced that it was cancelling its contract with SPC for the supply of its house brand tinned tomatoes. Growers have been contacted by the fruit processor and told that even in the absence of written contracts, SPC will also honour all verbal assurances regarding price and quantity. Related articles: Free newsletter Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole. Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer. Andrew Hay has joined the Board of Australias leading child protection organisation Bravehearts.He will join Board members Hetty Johnston AM (Chair); Wilma James (Vice Chair); Gemma Cook (Treasurer); Margaret Fitzsimons (Company Secretary); Carol Ronken (Minute Secretary) and Directors Rob Molhoek and Scott Chapman.A partner at Clayton Utz Brisbane, Hay has more than 25 years experience and has advised a plethora of companies in corporate governance and the formal application of ethical standards.For nearly two decades, Bravehearts has been a critical voice in advocating for the rights of all Australian children to be protected from sexual harm, says Hay.The 3 Piers to Prevention, on which Bravehearts activities are founded Educate, Empower, Protect are values that resonate with me and reflect the organisations approach to ensuring our children are able to live their lives in a safe environment.Bravehearts Founder and Chair Hetty Johnston AM, says the senior lawyer brings a high skill level of corporate professionalism that will complement Bravehearts existing leadership team.Andrew brings not only a wealth of knowledge, but also a passion for protecting children and we are delighted to have a person of his standing join us, as we strive to create child-safe communities around the country, says Johnston.Bravehearts is growing to meet demand on our services and having such diversity and balance on our Board and being able to draw on that collective experience, will help us to achieve our vision to make Australia the safest place in the world to raise a child.The veteran lawyer is well-connected in the domestic and Japanese business communities after spending a number of years practising in Tokyo and currently leads Clayton Utzs Japan practice group nationally and is President of the Australia-Japan Society (Queensland) Inc.He is a trusted advisor to Japanese companies for their inbound investment into Australia, and Australian companies undertaking business in Australia and investing overseas including Japan. He also heads the corporate advisory team for Clayton Utz in Brisbane and the Agribusiness Group nationally.Hay is involved in programs and organisations that provide community care, such as his current role of Chairman of the Adam Scott Foundation, which provides life opportunities for Australian youth and his previous trustee role with the Childrens Cancer Institute. New research warns that many UK lawyers face considerably lower pension savings for their retirement.According to a new study by specialist mutual Wesleyan, most lawyers in the UK face almost 10,000 (about $16,700) per year shortfall in pension they deem sufficient to support themselves in retirement.On average, lawyers in Britain say they need approximately 36,852 per year (about $61,467) in order to live comfortably during their retirement, says a Global Legal Post report.However, when asked how much money they are saving every month, lawyers averaged just 1,042 (about $1,738) or just over 12,500 per year (about $20,850).When that amount is spread over 20 years or when lawyers reach their average retirement age of 58, the saving equate to 27,539 per year (about $45,934) in retirement income, nearly 10,000 less than what UK lawyers said they needed to live comfortably in retirement.The study also found that, on average, lawyers dont start topping up their retirement savings above their basic workplace pension contribution until the age of 29.Wesleyan warns that lawyers who wait until 29 to start increasing their savings will need to put away 1,523 per month (about $2,540) for the rest of their careers in order to reach the 36,852 per year pension target.Our research tells us that failing to save early enough if one of the biggest financial regrets, so its imperative that people start saving earlier to avoid a shock later in life, says Vicki Wentworth, Wesleyans customer and strategy chief. A major trademark owned by the company that makes the Rubiks Cube has been struck down by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last week.The trademark was a three-dimensional EU trademark on the shape of the cube which the company through its intellectual property rights manager, British company Seven Towers was awarded in 1999, Reuters reports.The trademark was challenged by German firm Simba Toys in 2006 which argued that the design which features moving parts was inappropriately protected by a trademark. Simba argues a patent is more apt to protect the product.Simba lost at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) which granted the trademark and at lower EU court, but has won big at the higher court. Nonetheless, people should not expect to soon see a flood of lower-priced Rubiks cubes on the markets.We are disappointed by todays decision by the ECJ. While the Rubik Brand is fortunate in having other trademarks, copyright, passing off and unfair competition protection to rely on which will continue to ensure its exclusivity, this judgment sets a damaging precedent for companies wishing to innovate and create strong brands and distinctive marks within the EU, and is not what European lawmakers intended when they legislated for 3D trademarks, Rubiks Brand UK President David Kremer told The Guardian.Kremer added that the firm is baffled that the court finds functionality or a technical solution implicit in the trademark. In their decision, the ECJ noted that the rotating element of the cube is functional.In examining whether registration ought to be refused on the ground that shape involved a technical solution, EUIPO and the General Court should also have taken into account non-visible functional elements represented by that shape, such as its rotating capability, the judges argued.The ECJ decision is final and not subject to appeal which forces the EUIPO to issue a new decision.Invented by Erno Rubik in 1974, more than 360 million copies of the Rubiks Cube, which was originally called the Magic Cube, have been sold. Americans disgruntled by Donald Trump being voted in as the next President of the United States have been looking at what it takes and would cost to move to Australia.The Department of Immigration and Border Control (DIBP) and real estate websites have confirmed a surge in inquiries from people in the United States since the election result was announced. 'There has been an increase in traffic to the Department's website from the United States,' a DIBP spokesman said but was unable to give numbers or any idea if they were from specific parts of the country.However property websites have seen searches from the United States being focussed on Sydney and Melbourne with those making the searches coming from Democrat strongholds such as California, New York and Florida.According to a REA Group spokesman views from the United States tripled last Wednesday, the day Trump was confirmed as President elect. Websites in the US which feature property in Australia also saw spikes in traffic with Realtor.com reporting a 329% increase.Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed that there will be a one off deal where thousands of refugees currently held in controversial detention on Nauru and Manus Island will be resettled in the United States.The timing is significant as the deal will have to be completed before Trump takes office in January as he has declared he wants to reign in immigration to the United States.Resettlement arrangements for refugees in Nauru and Manus Island already exist with Papua New Guinea and Cambodia. 'This further agreement is with the United States and it will not under any circumstance be available to any future illegal maritime arrivals (IMAs) to Australia,' said Dutton.'The priority under this arrangement will be for resettlement of those who are most vulnerable, namely women, children and families. US authorities will conduct their own assessment of refugees and decide which people are resettled in the US,' he added.Dutton explained that refugees will need to satisfy standard requirements for admission into the US, including passing health and security checks and that the process will take time and the resettlement will be gradual.'This arrangement is supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and we will continue to engage with UNHCR on its implementation. We will continue to support the Governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea to return people determined not to be owed protection. These people should return to their country of origin,' Dutton pointed out.And he repeated the Australian Government's tough stance on people trying to reach Australia by boat. 'Settlement in Australia will never be an option for those found to refugees in regional processing centres nor for anyone who attempts to travel to Australia illegally by boat in the future,' Dutton said.'Australia's border protection policy remains consistent and firm. Operation Sovereign Borders will continue to turn back people smuggling ventures where it is safe to do so and any illegal maritime arrivals to Australia will be sent to regional processing centres. The Australian Government has reinforced our maritime assets in the waters to Australia's north and increased our surveillance capabilities to ensure that any boats that attempt to come to Australia will be detected and turned back,' he concluded. Part B Q9 it asks for the original issue date. Would that be your first passport? * Current passport. Part C Q14 would a national insurance number count? * Believe no. Part F Q19 firstly, there are only 5 rows for entering details if you need more I assume part t would be the place to use but common sense tells me to print multiple part f pages as it is set out with the table just for the info you need to provide. Secondly, if you don't have addresses or a company has moved or stopped trading what should you enter as their address? Thirdly, I assume no address is required if you are entering unemployed for certain periods. * Think last page is if more space is required from memory - Put as much correct info as possible (make a note to Case Officer if you have best guessed something). Part G Q20 firstly, I'm an outdoor instructor and so have many national governing body awards eg. Kayak coach qualification, Powerboat certificate etc are these to be included? Secondly, it says all tertiary education, and gives examples one of which is college does that include GCSEs which I took when I was 16? * Not sure. Part H Q22 as we are applying for a 189 visa and thus has no current travel arrangements then do I need to mention anything here? * No current travel arrangements I guess. Part K Q36 this one is my main concern. The point which asks, "been convicted of an offence....." Does this include diving offences? I've had speeding fines and points as various times and I went to court for one because it was my second offence. My other concern is details because I cannot remember dates, fines, points, or even how many offences there have been, mainly because they were some time ago, ( as grown up since ). * certainly the court one, I would say need to be included (it will show on police report). Luxury quotient, SUV shape and green positioning could work in cars favour; priced over Rs 1 crore. Around the time Volvo launched the new S90 sedan in India, it also revealed the S90 Excellence elsewhere in the world. Volvos most luxurious sedan yet, the S90 Excellence is built on an extended wheelbase version of the S90 and is unique for its three-seat layout with the missing front passenger seat allowing the rear seat occupant to really stretch out. Unfortunately, the S90 Excellence will not be made in the right-hand-drive form, which rules it out for countries like India. However, Volvo India is confident it can cater to discerning luxury car buyers solely with the XC90 T8 Excellence that was launched here earlier this year. The fully-loaded Excellence sits at the top of the XC90 range and features a four-seat layout in place of the standard models three-row arrangement, with emphasis on rear seat comfort. While India deliveries will commence only in 2017, the model has received 50 bookings so far. The number may be small in absolute terms but, then again, estimates suggest the overall market for cars priced over Rs 1 crore is in the region of just 300 units per year. What seems to have worked in the XC90 Excellences favour is that it is drawing attention from luxury sedan buyers. The customer base for the XC90 T8 is not the biggest since its quite an expensive car. But I am quite positively surprised with the results so far. I definitely think we are looking at sedan customers as well. People who look for a comfortable car with reclinable seats and ventilation get everything in the Excellence. You also have more ground clearance and the SUV image, so I think we can sort of steal customers from the sedans, Tom Von Bonsdorff, managing director, Volvo Auto India, told Autocar India. While the SUV's shape and luxury are keys to the XC90 Excellences appeal, whats helping its case is that it sits in a sweet spot in the market. Priced at Rs 1.25 crore (ex-showroom, Delhi), it competes with full-size luxury sedans rather than any direct SUV rivals. The Range Rover is perhaps the closest rival to the XC90 Excellence in philosophy, but the Rangies high pricing (starting at Rs 2.15 crore) puts it in a different price bracket altogether. Another trump card for the XC90 Excellence is Volvos decision to launch it in India as solely hybrid. The T8s powertrain comprises a supercharged and turbocharged 2.0-litre petrol engine and an electric motor with a combined output of 407hp. To a fair few buyers, the XC90 Excellence has the required green credentials to help them portray the right image at a time when emissions scandals and air pollution are part of everyday talk. What could work against the XC90 Excellence after the initial excitement, however, is the Volvo badge. The Swedish brand doesnt yet have the cache of German luxury rivals, though it is amid a resurgent phase with both the XC90 and new S90 having been well received the world over. Still, Volvo insiders are quietly confident the XC90 Excellence will only grow in popularity and potentially even become the best-selling luxury car over Rs 1 crore in India. Should that happen, rival manufacturers will definitely have something to think about. This most in-demand workhorse of our long-term fleet has been munching miles at a superfast rate. Every weekend, I head out on a mandatory trip one to visit my parents who live in Nashik. Because of this, our long-term Creta has become a frequent flyer on the NH 3, covering close to 400 kilometres in the process. Let me be honest, I have never been a big fan of Hyundai cars and when I first drove the petrol Creta, I didnt appreciate it too much, especially because the suspension setup was way too soft for my liking. But thankfully, our long-termer is a diesel version, which gets a more firmer setup in comparison, and over the last few months of driving this SUV, I have developed a fondness for it. What I really like about the Creta is just how comfortable it is to drive, given its size. The light clutch makes it almost effortless to drive in peak-hour traffic something I experience daily, going from where I live in Chembur to office and back. Another bonus is that the steering is light to operate at parking speeds and the six-speed gearbox is slick to use. And even though there is never an opportunity to get past the fourth gear or fifth, I have no complaints. Cabin refinement is noteworthy and its one aspect I have really come to appreciate, especially when crawling in traffic, even though this Creta runs on a diesel motor. The suspension on this SUV is great in the way it dampens and irons out potholes or any other undulations the road throws at it. This is most evident during my drives between Nashik and Mumbai where the highway is littered with potholes and rough sections, made worse thanks to the monsoons. I must mention the electric-folding mirrors, and the window control that can be operated even after the car is switched off; very useful when I forget to fold the mirrors or roll up the windows. This long-termer is the top-of-the-line SX (O), which is loaded with features, and looks stunning with the 17-inch alloy wheels that come as a standard fitment. You get leather seats, keyless entry and go, a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with sat nav, Bluetooth connectivity, USB, aux and even video playback. Hyundai has never skimped on loading its cars with features and there is no doubt that this SUV too is packed to the brim. But it does have a few weak points. I have a grouse with the keyless entry feature. Although useful, it only works for the drivers door or the boot, as these are the only two doors that have unlock buttons on them. Another thing I dont like is the rear-view mirror which is a basic day/night tilt mirror instead of an automatic dimmer which Hyundai surprisingly offers in its cheaper Elite i20. The factory-fitted infotainment system is great and everything worked perfectly. I found the reverse camera to be very useful, especially with the trajectory lines for reference. But it could have been much better with a sharper video resolution. The Creta has a fair number of positives that have made me overlook these minor flaws, and I think Ill drive it around for a few thousand kilometres more. But for now, what I need to figure out is a way to keep the keys away from other Autocar staffers. This acceleration test features the Clio GT-Line, a body kit added on top of the regular model. But it's actually faster than the Clio GT.Why? Because the Clio GT comes as standard with an EDC gearbox , while this has a regular 5-speed manual. Generally speaking, the higher the power of an engine, the better a job the auto will do. But we're only dealing with a 1.2-liter mill, not your average Porsche monster.According to this independent acceleration test, the 2017 Clio GT-Line reaches 100 km/h in only 9 seconds, 0.4s faster than its auto-only predecessor. That's backed up by the official claim of the manufacturer, which is also 9.0 seconds.The weight figures are all over the place, but nearly every twin-clutch gearbox adds 40-50 kilos to the car. Also, this new version of the 1.2 TCe engine has gained 15 Nm of torque for a total of 205 Nm.The way we see it, the GT-Line body kit has everything the Clio GT had, including 17-inch wheels, a diffuser tail, that odd-shaped exhaust and interior touches.But we get why the auto-only GT model has its appeal. If you're a young driver that just passed his test a year ago, and you want to look like a hero, something like this is right up your alley. The turbo engine has a kick, and you just want to have a second glance of that body kit once it's parked.But there's a price to pay, as the 120 horsepower engine and GT-Line body kit boost the price to 21,250 in France. That's dangerously close to the 20,750 MINI Cooper which has a much punchier 1.5-liter turbo engine. Renault doesn't have a good answer to that or the multitude of VW Group models equipped with the 1.4 TSI. EV Why 200 miles? Well, it needs to be a round number, and since 300 isn't yet achievable, that was what we were left with. It's also a psychological thing as that number of miles is well beyond most people's daily needs, which means any fear of range anxiety is removed from the start.As with most thing, Tesla was the first to popularize it, but now we have more models, both on sale and upcoming, capable of covering the same distance between charges. The one everyone's thinking about right now is the Chevrolet Bolt, but Renault has released a 200-mile ZOE as well, and Nissan is reportedly working on a LEAF that should clear the hurdle as well.After being one of the main supporters of the liquid hydrogen fuel cell solution, the Koreans from Hyundai are now getting ready to launch a battery-powered version of their Ioniq sedan . The EV is expected to debut early next year and will come with a maximum EPA-certified range of 124 miles (that's 200 kilometers).However, the Hyundai bosses are well aware that's not nearly enough anymore to persuade the public toward your brand, so Ahn Byung-ki, Hyundai 's eco-vehicle performance group director, was quick to announce the company's plans. Quoted by Automotive News , he said that "124 is not enough, and we have a plan to extend that to more than 200 by 2018."Of course, saying that is akin to taking next year's electric Ioniq off the market, because nobody in their right mind would ever buy a sub-par electric car knowing there's a better one coming just a little over a year away. But it just goes to show how important it was for Hyundai to let everyone know it was aware of its car's limitations and that it's working on it. They basically said "we know it's crap, but since it's ready, we're going to put it on sale anyway, just in case, until the improved version arrives."The Hyundai Ioniq will be sold with three powertrain options: hybrid, plug-in hybrid , and battery-powered electric. The return of this companys products on American shores is expected to happen by 2021, as part of its global offensive plan called Push to Pass. The idea behind the scheme was to launch a global sales campaign for the corporation, which would raise profits, sales, and earnings.Evidently, a car company must also sell cars in the U.S. even if America is no longer the worlds biggest vehicle market. Second place is still a good position when it comes to volumes, and PSA Peugeot-Citroen has been absent on that market for over two decades. Because of that absence, the French corporation is missing out on sales and potential profit.However, the French cannot just modify their lineups to American standards and sell them as they are. Instead, PSA Peugeot-Citroen is expected to significantly alter its offering within the next five years, which is supposed to coincide with the moment of entry into the U.S. market. The change will come in the form of plug-in hybrid technology, which should be available for all the models in the range. Do not rule out any electric cars from the portfolio.The portfolio for the American and Canadian markets is difficult to predict at this point. Peugeot and Citroen might not return to the USA at all, but the DS brand might be the new French player on the North American market. If they choose their models wisely, Groupe PSA might have a success story just like Toyota had with Lexus in the U.S.All they have to do is come up with excellent marketing for their all-new products, which will have to match and even exceed their direct competitors in many aspects.The DS brand would be at an advantage here, because it will come with a fresh image, and it would already be integrated into the premium segment, where profit margins are usually higher. Cintas Corp. will test a Workhorse Group Inc. E-Gen gasoline-electric hybrid step van in its delivery fleet during a six-month field test in Cincinnati, the company announced. The field test will allow Cintas to use the vehicle in a real-world environment to determine how much it can help the company reduce emissions with an eye toward purchasing additional vehicles. "We look forward to evaluating the Workhorse E-Gen vehicle," said Matthew Rose, Cintas' corporate director of fleet. "Based on the energy-efficient design, it appears that Workhorses unique capabilities may give us an opportunity to reduce emissions in certain delivery situations." Cintas will deploy the vehicle on service and delivery routes. The Workhorse E-Gen step van offers a threefold fuel economy increase over a typical gasoline-powered step van. The E-Gen power train propels the vehicle with a 2200-nm permanent magnet motor generator, along with a small internal combustion engine that turns a small electric motor to recharge the battery pack when the state of charge reaches a pre-determined level. "Workhorse E-Gen [step vans] set a new standard for greenhouse gas reductions in the service and delivery markets, and we believe that it will set a new standard for the corporate identity uniform marketplace, an industry whose local delivery and service routes are perfectly suited for our E-Gen trucks," said Steve Burns, Workhorse's CEO. Fox Rent A Car's affliate location at Heathrow Airport in London. Photo courtesy of Fox Rent A Car. Fox Rent A Car has announced that many of its current affiliate partners have experienced growth and will be moving to larger rental facilities or upgrading their existing locations. Fox affiliates in Maui, Brisbane, Australia, and four United Kingdom locations (London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Manchester, and Glasgow, Scotland) all plan to move or expand their rental location facilities to accommodate the growth they have seen in the past year. With the help of Fox Rent A Car, we have increased our U.K. fleet over the past three years by 120%, said Paul Hanley, managing director of EasiRent Car and Van Hire. As a result, we are moving to much larger premises at both our London Heathrow and Manchester Airport locations. Our success is exhibited by our partners success and expansions, said Jack Wetzel, director of Fox Rent A Cars affiliate division. The changes weve made to our affiliate partner vetting process, allowing us to identify the best independent car rental companies and leaders in the international marketplace, has allowed us to partner with car rental companies that share our core Fox values and culture. We continue to seek out new affiliate partners and business opportunities to expand our car rental brand to loyal Fox customers around the globe. The first female member of a Chinese military demonstration team died in in an unrelated accident on Sunday. Yu Xu was unable to eject from the J-10 fighter she and another pilot were flying. The other pilot was able to get out but was injured in the ejection. The mishap was the latest in a string of at least five J-10 crashes in the past two years. Yu was one of 16 women in the Chinese militarys first intake of female fighter pilot trainees in 2005. She was one of four females qualified on the J-10, a single-engine jet that looks a lot like an F-16. A few weeks ago, Yu performed as part of the August 1st aerobatics team, which flies J-10s, at the Zhuhai Air Show. The team is named for the founding date of the Peoples Liberation Army and is based at Yangcun Air Force Base near Tianjin. The morale of the aerobatics team will be hit. There has not been an incident like this for the team for a long time, Macau military analyst Anthony Wong Dong told the South China Morning Post. There were no details released on the accident. Like everything else surrounding the future Donald Trump presidency, the predicted impact on aviation is as varied and as, well, unpredictable as the campaign that led the country to this point. Depending on who is being asked, the predictions range from doom and gloom, through cautious optimism to somewhat less cautious optimism. We didnt find any jubilation among the dozens of aviation reaction stories but the overall theme seemed to reflect a generally positive response with a healthy dose of wait-and-see. Perhaps the most curious, and quickest, reaction came from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). NATCA had a fractious relationship with the Republican administration of George W. Bush but wasted no time welcoming Trump and that could be a reflection of the general belief that Trump will back privatization of the air traffic organization. We look forward to working with the new Administration to secure a stable, predictable funding stream for the NAS, NATCA President Paul Rinaldi and VP Trish Gilbert said in a joint statement. This will be essential to protecting the system and the workforce that safeguards it, while also implementing modernization efforts and providing air travelers the safety and professionalism they deserve. That mirrors NATCAs sentiment when it supported a privatization bid contained in an early version of the current FAA reauthorization but with the House and Senate now both controlled by the Republicans, the kind of legislative gridlock that hampered FAA operations at times in the previous eight years shouldnt be as much of an issue. But the pro-privatization lobby that surfaced earlier this year seems to have been re-energized by the Trump victory. Rep. Bill Shuster, who championed privatization, won reelection last week and is still the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He seemed to be saying there will be another kick at that can with the Trump administration in that the FAA reauthorization expires next September. Congress must pass an FAA reauthorization bill that modernizes our aging air traffic control system and significantly improves the efficiency of our aviation system, Shuster said last week. The well-organized airline lobby is ready to advance the idea again. We want to see a reliable ATC funding model funded by the system users, not political gamesmanship so that we can plan for the long-term capital improvements the system needs to grow, Airlines For America (A4A) said in a news release last week. There seems to be widespread hope that airports and other aviation services will get a slice of the trillion dollars Trump has said will be spent on infrastructure improvements. There never seems to be enough money for all the safety and service improvements that airports and associated organizations want to make, but Trumps pledge was to fund projects to rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals in his first 100 days in office. What the priorities will be for that funding is anyones guess. On the manufacturing side, Trumps often-stated protectionist bent is a concern but his desire to increase military spending is a plus. China was often a target for Trumps protectionist speeches during the campaign and its also Boeings biggest offshore market. Its been less attractive for general aviation manufacturers but there remains hope that a huge market could emerge if and when China embraces Western-style aviation. Trumps protectionism could also manifest in support for U.S. airlines opposition to the rapid expansion of state-sponsored airlines from the Middle East. International carriers like American, United and Delta have long argued against increased access to American airports by Qatar and Emirates Airlines in particular, saying the carriers are syphoning off customers on lucrative long-haul routes in violation of international standards. Trumps call for a larger military will likely mean more security for big programs like the new B-21 stealth bomber, the P-8 Poseidon program and new tanker contracts but it could also reach down to innovative initiatives like the Textron Airland light attack Scorpion and armed versions of the T-6 Texan II. Much has been made of Trumps existing ownership of four private aircraft, the Boeing 757 that crisscrossed the U.S. during the campaign, a Cessna Citation X and two Sikorsky S-76B helicopters. But theres no evidence that the ownership has inspired any particular fondness for private aviation. The 757 is lavishly laid out as an executive aircraft but Trump rarely acknowledges its value as a campaign or business tool. 14 November 2016 10:32 (UTC+04:00) The Armenian armed units shattered ceasefire with Azerbaijan a total of 15 times throughout the day, Azerbaijan`s Defense Ministry reported on November 14. The Armenian armed forces, stationed in Armenia`s Barekamavan village in Noyemberyan region and nameless hills in Berd region subjected to fire the positions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces located in Gaymagli village in Gazakh region and Munjuglu village in Tovuz region. The ceasefire was also violated near the Chilaburt village in Tartar region, as well as nameless hills in Tartar, Goronboy and Fuzuli regions. For over two decades, 20 percent of Azerbaijani historical lands remain under occupation of Armenian troops. Due to the war, over 1 million of Azerbaijani population had to leave their homelands and become GDPs. Moreover, Armenian troops severely killed over 20,000 Azerbaijanis, including children, women and elders. By ignoring four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, as well as appropriate documents adopted by The European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Non-Aligned Movement, Armenia intends to preserve the status quo in the region and freezes the needed settlement of the conflict. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 12:10 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Azerbaijan will soon host the International Investment Conference to increase the attraction of foreign investors to the country. The conference will be the first and largest event aimed at attracting investments from Arab countries. The event, scheduled for December 8, will be organized by the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) and the IDB Group Business Forum in cooperation with Azerbaijan Investment Company (AIC) and Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO). A source told Trend that ICD Head Khaled Al-Abudi will participate in the event. The source mentioned that the participants will get acquainted with the most recent reforms on the improvement of business environment, investment climate in the country, incentives schemes, as well as priority sectors and favorable conditions created for investors in industrial parks. Moreover, the participants will also consider risks and challenges for investors, as well as measures required to facilitate business doing in the country. The conference is expected to reinforce the position of Azerbaijan on the world investment map by highlighting profitable business opportunities available in the country. Additionally, the event will also create linkages and business relations between the participants. The trade turnover with the countries of the Persian Gulf amounted to some $200 million in January-September 2016. Doing Business 2017 report placed Azerbaijan 65th among 190 countries in the global rankings on the Ease of Doing Business, ranking the country among 29 countries that implemented three or more reforms. Azerbaijan is currently the leading state among CIS countries in terms of macroeconomic indices, according to CIS-STAT, while the economy of the country grew more than fivefold in the last 20 years. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 18:12 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova The prospect of significant changes to underline dynamic of the real estate market of Azerbaijan awaits buyers and sellers in the years to come. Head of the State Committee on Property Issues Azer Bashirov stated that the country intends to revive its real estate market, mentioning that RecExpo international real estate exhibition, scheduled for November 22-24 will give a stimulus to achieve the goal. A number of companies representing some 9 countries, including Turkey, Ukraine, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Luxemburg and UAE will participate in the event, which will be focused on the revival of the market and attraction of foreign investors to the sector, he said at a press conference on November 14. The event will be organized by the Committee, Elan Expo and Atlm Fuarclk, while such large companies as Gilan Holding, Absheron City, Daydream Island, Azinko, Dreamland, AMF Park, Yeni Hayat will exhibit their projects at the event. Being a reliable investment instrument, real estate is deemed to be one of the most effective means to preserve and increase capital. In Azerbaijan, there is no difference in the rights of foreigners and local citizens for buying a real estate. The foreign citizen, as well as the citizen of Azerbaijan can buy any property, except a land plot. Prices in the market are mainly determined by location, quality of buildings and a number of other factors. Bashirov went on saying that the event will also exhibit a stand of the Committee, while participants will be able to get acquainted with the novelties introduced by the authority, as well as get information about privatized state facilities. Moreover, a conference Investments in the Real Estate will be held within the exhibition. Head of Department at the Committee Shamil Shirinov, in turn, informed that the conference will be aimed at the attraction of investments and involvement of foreign companies in the process of privatization. The participants will be familiarized with the most recent reforms on the improvement of business environment, investment climate in the country, as well as novelties in the sphere of privatization. Azerbaijans State Committee on Property Issues is engaged in the process of privatization of state-owned properties, while the acceleration of the process is defined as an important direction of the economic policy. The privatization process is designed to attract both foreign and local investors, as well as improve the business environment of Azerbaijan. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 15:22 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The next auction on privatization of state property will be held on December 13, Azerbaijans State Committee on Property Issues reported. The auction will put up for sale 101 enterprises and properties, which are 23 joint stock companies, 43 small enterprises and properties, 19 of unused non-residential areas and 16 vehicles. Most of the 43 small objects on display for privatization are sold together with the land on which they are located. These companies and facilities are located in Baku, Ganja, Shaki and Sumgayit, Shirvan, Sabirabad, Shamkir, Zagatala and other regions of the country. The most expensive small state enterprise put up for auction, along with land, is "Ganja cotton mill" with a total area of 44.600 square meters. Its cost is 5.24 million manats ($3.05 million). With regard to joint-stock companies, only 30-45 percent of their shares will be put up for sale. The activities of these companies cover the areas of construction, repair, industry, transport, processing, and others. The portal for privatization privatization.az, launched in July 2016, reflects all necessary information about the facilities, their addresses, location, and even initial cost and aims at facilitation of the process. The website is available in two languages - Azerbaijani and English. Why Azerbaijan is special section available on the website explains the reasons and advantages of investing in the country. The privatization process is designed to attract both foreign and local investors, as well as improve the business environment of Azerbaijan. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 17:01 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Caspian Marine Services Company, which operates offshore marine support vessels, may soon expand its fleet. The company reached a preliminary agreement with German ER Offshore on the purchase of two vessels worth at least $21 million. The deal envisages a purchase of E.R.Stavanger and E.R. Aalesund supply vessels for offshore oil platforms. The company said that the talks on concluding the deal are currently underway, while certain details are to be worked out. The vessels are currently in the idle state, while a number of operations, including the delivery of vessels to the Caspian Sea, adjusting of mechanisms will be implemented, should the sides reach the agreement. Moreover, mandatory repair of engines will be implemented in accordance with the navigable register. Additionally, work on disassembling of bridge and masts, as well as marking of electric, communication and other lines will be implemented to provide unimpeded delivery of vessels to the Caspian Sea through Volga-Don Canal. The company said that activation of vessels is a quite difficult process, which requires a big amount of financial means, mentioning that the vessels are expected to be kept in Turkey within the next 4 months given the fact that the Canal freezes in winter. The company earlier managed to cut the cost of vessels as a result of negotiations, but the worth of each vessel is expected to stand at least at $ 10.5 million given the work to be implemented. The company will operate the vessels both in the territory of the country and outside the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan highly prioritizes the development of the shipping industry, while the State Program on Development of Shipping in Azerbaijan for 2016-2020 envisages a number of measures promote the sphere. The program covers renewal of the transport and specialized offshore fleet, expansion of activities, increase of the volume of freight transportation through the territory of the country, modernization of shipbuilding and maintenance yards and improvement of the academic base of marine education, as well as implementation of certain measures to turn the country into major transport-logistics hub of international importance. Caspian Marine Services started its operations in Azerbaijan in the early 2006. With vessels strategically deployed offshore in the Caspian Sea, the company provides a broad range of offshore support services in oil and gas exploration and production industry. The company has a strategic alliance with Azerbaijans State Oil Company (SOCAR) and Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company (ACSC). -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 12:44 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijans National Arts Museum will host an exhibition dedicated to the 100th birth anniversary of Azerbaijans famous artist, recipient of the State Prize Maral Rahmanzade, Trend Life reported. The exhibition featuring artist's works kept at the Azerbaijan State Art Gallery and the National Museum of Art will take place on November 15. Talented artist Maral Rahmanzade became the first woman in Azerbaijan to depict offshore oil. Struck by the majesty of the fuel, she even settled on the Oil Rocks to get a true feeling of the lives of oilmen. This brave step by the young Azerbaijani girl, born in the heart of Baku in 1916, might still be puzzling, but it is a part of history. She became the first Azerbaijani female artist to get a professional art education. Rahmanzade made a great contribution to the development of the modern national school of painting. Rahmanzade is the most famous for series of easel paintings of patriotic content created during the Great Patriotic War. One of the series is dedicated to the Soviet women during the wartime, including "People's volunteer corps", "Women in the ranks", "Partisan's daughter", and "Radio operator". Other series, were dedicated to the work of people and the home front: Work on the farm, Social activists, and The artists performing for the front-line soldiers. Rahmanzade also worked on illustration of belles-lettres. In 1945, she designed the books Dehname by Khatai and "The land of fires" by Zohrabbeyov. She portrayed circumstances, landscape, architecture, and costumes on numerous illustrations of The land of fires novel, following the literary description. Rahmanzade also designed two volume poem of Jafar Jabbarly. She created a lot of lists, portraying personages of "Sevil", "Almaz", "Withered flowers" plays of Jafar Jabbarly. M.F.Akhundov's historical play "Deceived stars" was published in that very year with illustrations of Maral Rahmanzade. The great artist illustrated also translated publications "Eugene Onegin" of A.S.Pushkin, "A Hero of Our Time" M.Y.Lermontov. The bright and multi-faceted creativity of Maral Rahmanzadeh would gain popularity far beyond the borders of Azerbaijan and CIS countries. Her works adorn many world-renowned museums, and enjoy the same success in the most "high-profile" and authoritative exhibitions throughout the world. For great merit in the development of national fine art, she was awarded many orders and medals. She is a People's Artist of Azerbaijan, State Prize winner, and holder of the Shohrat ("Glory") order. Maral Rahmanzade, died on March 16, 2008. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 15:19 (UTC+04:00) The business seminar of the year 'How the Most Successful Managers Grow Their Business in Any Market' with Brian Tracy under the Azersun Holding sponsorship was held in Baku on October 31. The business seminar was organized by Brucke GmbH company. At the business seminar attended by 300 participants and representatives of more than 60 best Azerbaijan companies, Brian Tracy shared his knowledge, ideas and experience aimed at a true understanding of the crisis, searching new business possibilities and its effective realization by Azerbaijan business society. The business seminar has become an essential platform for giving new anti-crisis solutions, establishing new business contacts, obtaining some additional knowledge and getting motivation to overcome crisis business problems on the way to effective and successful development of Azerbaijan business environment. To see how the business seminar was hold and get to know participants testimonials you can watch the following video: Brucke GmbH company gives thanks to the sponsors, partners and participants of the business seminar and will be glad to see all of them at new business events in Baku! Media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 11:17 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli In April, Armenia committed yet another armed provocation against Azerbaijan and its people, and Azerbaijans army of heroes soldiers and officers gave an adequate response to that provocation. Azerbaijani President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev made this remark on November 12 as he was addressing the soldiers who have distinguished themselves in battles. By conducting a successful counterattack operation, the Azerbaijani army inflicted a crushing blow to the enemy and liberated a part of the Azerbaijani lands from the occupation, said President Aliyev. Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions of Azerbaijan are under the control of the Armenian military and separatists since a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan ended in 1994. Negotiations lasting for over 20 years have brought little progress in resolving the conflict, though a fragile truce has been in place. One of the most tragic conflicts in the history of the 20th century and affected the destiny of millions again aggravated on April 2 after the Armenian military units in the occupied lands started shelling Azerbaijans positions. To protect civilian population, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched counter attacks and as a result, the Azerbaijani troops retook hills around the village of Talish, as well as Seysulan settlement, and also took over Leletepe hill located in the direction of Fizuli region. Today we are in the territory of Leletepe. A few months ago this area was under occupation. We ended the occupation, said the president. A successful counterattack operation resulted in liberation of more than 2,000 hectares of land that were under occupation in the Fuzuli, Jabrayil and Aghdere regions. Today, the Azerbaijani army fully controls thousands of hectares of land. The president also noted that the counteroffensive operation started from disadvantageous positions. We liberated the heights, the hills from the occupiers and showed great heroism. The April battles should go into military textbooks, he said. The Azerbaijani army demonstrated its professionalism, heroism and skills in those battles. We had martyrs, may Allah rest the souls of all our martyrs. We had wounded soldiers, officers. During a meeting with wounded soldiers and officers at the military hospital, I saw their enthusiasm. They had an only desire to quickly recover and return to the battle zones, added the president. This once again shows that the people of Azerbaijan is a great people, Azerbaijani citizens are patriots. Our soldiers and officers are ready to die for the motherland. The April battles are our valiant victory. We are on our lands, it is Azerbaijan. Leletepe, Shusha, Khankendi are also Azerbaijan. We are on our land, said President Aliyev, adding that Azerbaijan has no claims for others lands. We will never allow the creation of a second Armenian state on our lands. The April battles once again showed it, he stressed. The president went on to add that a successful operation was conducted in the Fuzuli region in January 1994, and 22 villages were liberated from the occupiers. It was a great, historic victory, noted the president, saying that the April battles are another historic victory. He noted that the operation in Leletepe is a symbol of Azerbaijani armys heroism. Leletepe went down in history. If the Armenian armed forces did not draw a right conclusion from the April battles, there will be many successful operations as the Leletepe operation in the future, said President Aliyev. The leadership of Armenia must finally realize that their aggressive actions are leading them to the abyss, noted the president. The head of state also said the Azerbaijani army showed its strength, adding that Armenia has been for many years inventing lies, myths about its army, alleging that it has an invincible army. The April battles showed which army is invincible. The Azerbaijani army is the invincible army. The Azerbaijani army can execute any task. There is no such a military target in the occupied territories and Nagorno-Karabakh that cant be destroyed by Azerbaijans army, said President Aliyev. He went on to add that today the Azerbaijani army is among the strongest armies, adding that the national army ranks very high in ratings of strongest armies. President Aliyev noted that the combat readiness of Azerbaijans army stands at a high level and is rising day by day. Discipline and order prevail in our army. Material and technical support of our army is at the highest level, he said, adding that in recent years Azerbaijan has purchased the most modern weaponry and military equipment worth billions of dollars. The world has once again seen that Azerbaijan will never reconcile with the aggressive policy of Armenia. We must restore and will restore our territorial integrity. This is our ancestral land, our historical land, and we will return to our land, which today is still under occupation, said the head of state. Azerbaijan is strengthening day by day. We have strong potential and a strong army. We are proud of our army, soldiers and officers, you our sons standing here face to face with the enemy. Glory to you! Azerbaijan will develop, and we will restore our territorial integrity. Thank you!, added the head of state. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 11:57 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Donald Trump could have a strategic, economic and geopolitical interest in the South Caucasus region, Cyril Widdershoven, Middle East geopolitical specialist and energy analyst, partner at Dutch risk consultancy VEROCY and SVP MEA-Risk, told Trend on November 14. Based on the statements made by Trump, putting American interests first, this would mean that he will have a strategic, economic and geopolitical interest in the region, he said. Noting that the South Caucasus region is of the utmost importance for the US, the expert pointed out that major oil and gas companies are working in Azerbaijan. Regarding the US support for such energy projects as the Southern Gas Corridor, Widdershoven said that European energy supply is also of importance to the US, as they have been pushing for oil and gas exports. The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey. US-EU cooperation is and will be strong, so European views will be taken into account, he said, adding that a possible strategic support of the Eastern European countries, Baltic and Balkan, would mean that Russia's plans could still be under threat. The love between Putin and Trump could be soon over. Support from Russia is not always taken positively inside of the US, said the expert, adding that Russia's stranglehold on EU is not an easy thing to swallow for an American president, also not for Trump. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 11:36 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Hasanova The large-scale exercises of Azerbaijan's Armed Forces entered the third day. More than 60,000 members of military personnel, over 50 planes and helicopters, more than 150 tanks and armored vehicles, as well as up to 700 systems of missile and artillery forces are involved in the training. Under the plan of the drills, movement of military equipment, warships, forces and means to the points of destinations have already been carried out. Movement and regrouping of put on alert troops, command and control centers to the areas of operational use, means of combat aircraft to the reserve airfields, ships and boats of the Naval Forces to the operational areas, formations and military units of the Rocket and Artillery Troops to the temporary fire and starting positions have been completed. Currently, the troops are fulfilling tasks on the effective use of modern means, control systems, weapons, and equipment in order to prevent possible actions of the conditional enemy. The exercises are conducted according to the plan approved by Azerbaijans President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev in order to check the system of control over troops and weapons in the field. The Azerbaijani Army, which today is considered the most modern army in the Caucasus, consists of Air Force and Air Defense Forces, the Navy, and the Land Forces. The skills and combat readiness of the Azerbaijani army are growing year by year. The army building process in Azerbaijan is progressing as well. The countrys armed forces regularly conduct military exercises since Azerbaijan remains in a state of war with Armenia, as Armenian forces occupy a 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding regions. A ceasefire was signed in 1994, but negotiations still continue on a long-term peace agreement. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. --- Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 13:24 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Hasanova The foreign ministers of EU will discuss in Brussels the preparation of a new agreement on the partnership with Azerbaijan. The discussion will take place at a meeting of foreign ministers at the EU Council in the framework of the discussion on the "Eastern Partnership, which will be held in Brussels on November 14. A mandate to start negotiations on the new EU-Azerbaijan Strategic Partnership Agreement may be issued until the end of 2016, said Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev, Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister in an interview with Trend on November 4. Currently, bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan are regulated on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation that was signed in 1996 and entered into force in 1999. Azerbaijan initiated to sign an agreement on strategic modernized partnership with the EU instead of the agreement about the association. This is not a legal document, but rather a program, a plan of action aimed at the expansion of cooperation with the EU beyond energy. The new agreement will define new directions of partnership such as education and other spheres. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international and trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. Currently, the EU is Azerbaijans major trade partner. The share of European countries in Azerbaijans foreign trade was 37.12 percent in January-September 2016, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. Currently, European countries account for 27.89 and 45.87 percent of Azerbaijani import and export, respectively. European countries mainly deliver vehicles and transportation equipment to Azerbaijan and import oil products. Azerbaijan has become a country of direct priority to the EUs strategy in its wider neighborhood since the last enlargement of the European Union in 2007. Azerbaijan affects Europes interests, mainly in a regional energy strategy. --- Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 15:48 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova An international conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the 1st Turkish kicked off in presidium of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) in Baku on November 14. Entitled Common values and new challenges in Turkish scientific and cultural movement, the event is jointly organized by the Ministry of Education, the Institute of Literature named after Nizami, the Institute of Linguistics named after Nesimi and the Institute of Oriental Studies named after Academician Z. Bunyadov, Azertac reported. President of ANAS, Academician Akif Alizade, addressing the event, recalled the order issued by President Ilham Aliyev to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1st Turkish Congress. He stressed that the document allowed to evaluate and draw conclusions from the lessons of the First Turkish Congress in social and scientific terms. The conference will hear several reports on Turkish language, culture and integration of the Turkic peoples, the history of the Turkish lexicography, dialectology and grammar and other ANAS is the main state research organization and the primary body that conducts research and coordinates activities in the fields of science and social sciences in Azerbaijan. It was established on 23 January 1945. The Academy closely cooperates with different foreign research institutions and organizes international scientific workshops and conferences in Azerbaijan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 17:31 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The European Council has adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan. The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today, said the message. The mandate was discussed in Brussels at a meeting of foreign ministers at the EU Council in the framework of the discussion on the "Eastern Partnership on November 14. Baku has already welcomed the issuance of a mandate by the European Council. Hikmat Hajiyev, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman, commenting on the issue, said Azerbaijan welcomes and approves the agreement prepared by the EU on comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan, and the issuance of a mandate for negotiations in this area. He emphasized the agreement will raise the cooperation to a qualitatively new level, and will create a legal framework for the comprehensive development of the Baku-Brussels relations. In May 2015, Azerbaijan presented a draft agreement on strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and the EU, thus expressing Azerbaijan's intention to develop cooperation with EU. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. The EU is Azerbaijans major trade partner. Azerbaijan initiated to sign an agreement on strategic modernized partnership with the EU instead of the agreement about association. The document is a program, a plan of action aimed at the expansion of cooperation with the EU beyond energy. The new agreement will define new directions of partnership, such as education and other spheres. The share of European countries in Azerbaijans foreign trade was 37.12 percent in January-September 2016, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. Currently, European countries account for 27.89 and 45.87 percent of Azerbaijani import and export, respectively. European countries mainly deliver vehicles and transportation equipment to Azerbaijan and import oil products. Azerbaijan has become a country of direct priority to the EUs strategy in its wider neighborhood since the last enlargement of the European Union in 2007. Azerbaijan affects Europes interests, mainly in a regional energy strategy. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 18:00 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Hasanova Ships and boats of the Naval Forces joined the large-scale exercises of Azerbaijan's Armed Forces on the third day of the drills. The Defense Ministry reported that common readiness of military personnel participating in the exercise and operational situation in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, as well as Naval Forces control were inspected. Tasks on putting the Naval Forces into a state of full combat readiness, movement of a group of ships and military units to the staging areas, and operational coordination were successfully completed during the first stage of the exercises. The aim of the exercise phase, carried out with the involvement of Navy, is the interoperability with other branches of Armed Forces in fulfilling tasks on the protection of energy infrastructure in the operational zone of the Caspian Sea, as well as the release of the ship captured by terrorist sabotage group. More than 60,000 members of military personnel, over 50 planes and helicopters, more than 150 tanks and armored vehicles, as well as up to 700 systems of missile and artillery forces are involved in the training. The exercises to run till November 18 conducted according to the plan approved by the President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev, involved ships and boats of the Naval Forces. The Azerbaijani Army, which today is considered the most modern army in the Caucasus, consists of Air Force and Air Defense Forces, the Navy, and the Land Forces. The skills and combat readiness of the Azerbaijani army are growing year by year. The army building process in Azerbaijan is progressing as well. --- Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Afghanistan's parliament dismissed two more cabinet ministers on Sunday, ignoring pleas from the president and chief executive to halt votes that threaten an already fragile Western-backed government. The power-sharing unity government was brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry following the disputed 2014 presidential elections, but has since been weakened by infighting between rivals. Parliament removed the transportation and education ministers on Sunday, citing poor performance and bringing the total number of ministers dismissed to five over two days. "President Ghani and Dr. Abdullah told MPs that their decision will deal a huge political blow to the government at this critical time and urged them to stop the process," Mirdad Najrabi, chairman of parliament's security commission, told Reuters. Parliament on Saturday dismissed three ministers including, Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani. - Read More 14 November 2016 10:58 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR may soon expand its participation in the modernization of Egyptian energy industry. Azerbaijani Ambassador to Egypt Tural Rzayev said that Egyptian side is interested in broader participation of SOCAR in the oil industry of the country. For now, energy is deemed to be the main dimension of cooperation between the two countries. The worth of oil export from Azerbaijan to Egypt amounted to some $300 million in January-September 2016. The two countries intend to expand their cooperation in the sphere, he said. The envoy further said that the issue of bolstering cooperation was high on agenda during the meeting between SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev and Egyptian side in early November. Within his visit to Egypt, Abdullayev held talks with Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla. The sides discussed the expansion of cooperation between SOCAR and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC, a national oil company of Egypt), hailed the role of SOCAR in the in modernization and improvement of Egypts oil industry and exchanged views on the implementation of other joint projects. The two companies, that have six-year successful energy cooperation, also signed a Memorandum of Mutual Understanding (MOU). The agreement envisages the execution of long term oil and gas projects. Moreover, SOCAR is expected to provide nearly 2 million barrels crude oil to Egypts MIDOR and Nasr Petroleum refineries, according to Egypt Oil&Gas. Additionally, the document covers the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemicals. -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 15:45 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR sold 199.92 million cubic meters of gas to population in October 2016. The company reported that the total amount of consumers of Azerbaijans gas operator, Azerigaz Production Union of SOCAR, was almost 1.97 million people as of Nov. 1, 2016. In October 2016, 11,810 new consumers were registered, says the message, 3,450 of them was from Baku, Sumgait and Absheron districts and 8,360 consumers from the countrys regions. As of Nov. 1, 2016, 132,880 IDP families were provided with gas on preferential terms. Azerbaijan added 310 million cubic meters of gas to its reserve in underground facilities, bringing the volume to 2.96 billion cubic meters (bcm) by mid-October. Garadag and Kalmaz gas storages facilities, which are on the balance of SOCAR, have a capacity of approximately five bcm of gas. SOCAR includes such production associations as Azneft (the enterprises producing oil and gas onshore and offshore), Azerkimya (the chemical enterprises) and Azerigaz (distributes gas produced in the country), as well as oil and gas processing plants, service companies, and the facilities involved in geophysical and drilling operations. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 18:11 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Abbasova Burkina Faso is interested in developing mutual relations with Azerbaijan, in particular, in the energy sphere, said President of Burkina Fasos Parliament Salifou Diallo. Diallo made the remarks during his meeting with the Azerbaijani delegation led by Energy Minister Natig Aliyev in Burkina Fasos capital, Ouagadougou. SOCAR Vice-President for Investments and Marketing Elshad Nassirov and management of the Azerkimya Production Association and SOCAR Trading company also took part in the meeting, Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR reported on November 14. Aliyev gave thorough information about energy strategy of Azerbaijan, as well as a number of regional and international projects implemented with the participation of SOCAR. He went on saying that Azerbaijan has an important role in the world energy market, mentioning that the country is one of the main exporters of oil and gas. Salifou Diallo, for his part, noted that Burkina Faso is a major importer of energy and is interested in expanding ties with Azerbaijan. Burkina Faso is dependent on energy imports, notably of oil, as the country has no known crude oil reserves or refining capacity. SOCAR expanded its presence in Africa in 2015 by buying a 20 percent stake in Benin's Octogone Stockage de Produits Petroliers that engaged in crude storage. The project became the first direct investment of the SOCAR in West Africa. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 2004, while the sides also cooperate within such organizations as UNO, OIC and African Union, where Azerbaijan has an observer status. Being a wholly state-owned company and headquartered in Baku, SOCAR produces oil and natural gas from onshore and offshore fields in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea. . -- Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 14:34 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Hasanova Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan did not rule out a possibility of holding a referendum on Turkey joining EU to ask Turkish population whether they need EU. The president made the remark on the board of presidential plane to journalists accompanying him. "The European Union is trying to compel us to withdraw from this (accession) process. If they don't want us they should be clear about this, they should make a decision," Erdogan told the Hurriyet newspaper. "Our patience is not endless. If need be, later, we could also consult our people," he said, alluding to the UK's Brexit referendum in June. Ankara's bid to join the EU dates back to the 1960s with formal talks starting in 2005. But the process has been mired in problems, which current tensions have done nothing to help. Turkey has a long waited for its EU membership, while each application to accede to the European Union was frustrating for the government. Turkey, holding a status of an associate member at the Economic Community -- the predecessor of the EU since 1963 -- made an official application for entry on April 14, 1987. The European Commission has proposed in May that the European Parliament and EU Council will lift visa restrictions for citizens of Turkey if Ankara fulfills the remaining conditions for abolishing visa entries until the end of June. The list of pre-conditions included measures to prevent corruption, negotiations on an operational agreement with Europol (the EU police office), providing judicial cooperation with all EU member states, as well as the revision of the legislation on the fight against terrorism. However, since the July 15 coup attempt, relations between Ankara and Brussels have fallen to a low as Turkish politicians lament the EUs muted response to the attempted takeover and EU leaders criticize Turkey over widespread arrests and job suspensions in its wake. --- Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 16:12 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Hasanova Moscow has announced its readiness to develop military-technical cooperation with Tehran. Iran is interested in the purchase of a wide range of Russian weapons and Moscow is ready to develop military and technical cooperation with Tehran, Sputnik quoted Zamir Kabulov, the Russian Foreign Ministrys director of the Second Asian Department, as saying. In October, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei said that Tehran was looking for ways to broaden the scope of defense cooperation with Moscow, even in areas that require coordination with the UN Security Council (UNSC) and need a resolution. It is true that the Iranians have a wide range of military-purpose products they would like to buy from Russia. Naturally, some of these products tanks and fighter jets are covered by the UNSC sanctions, because there is a moratorium, Kabulov said commenting on Sanaeis statement. It means that if we sign an agreement on the delivery of such products, we have to request for the UNSC permission in the next five, or rather, the next four years and receive such permission, he added. Kabulov further said that his country is ready to work with Iran in the area of military and technical cooperation. There are other goods from the sphere of military and technical cooperation that are not subject [to the UNSC sanctions]. There are no problems, but here we should act via the UNSC mechanism, unfortunately," the diplomat said. Meanwhile, Viktor Ozerov is the Chairman of the Security and Defense Committee of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation pointed out that Iran is interested in supplies of Russian arms and equipment, including T-90 tanks, artillery systems, aircraft and helicopters, and the total volume of orders is $ 10 billion approximately. "Such negotiations are going on, the soil is created, the portfolio is about $10 billion, said Ozerov, who visits in Iran as part of the delegation of the Federation Council. --- Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 15:05 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The Iranian defense minister, Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan and his visiting Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan signed an agreement on the expansion of cooperation in defense sphere. The agreement envisages exchanging military experience, particularly in training of personnel, as well as an all-out fight against terrorism and insecurity in the region, TASNIM news agency reported. The agreement was signed during the ongoing visit of the Minister of National Defense of China Chang Wanquan to Tehran on November 14. Speaking to Chang Wanquan, the Iranian minister said that upgrading ties with China in defense and military areas is a priority of Irans defense diplomacy. Saying that the military and defense cooperation between Iran and China guarantees the peace and stability in the world as well as the region, he noted that all the regional states should be held accountable for protecting peace and stability in the Asia and Oceania region. He further blamed the expansion of terrorism in the Middle East on foreigners, saying the region has turned into a hotspot of insecurity and crises due to the foreigners meddling in the region as well as their disrespectful behavior towards the national sovereignty of the regional states. The Chinese ministers three-day visit takes place at the official invitation of Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan. Chang Wanquan is slated to meet several high-ranking Iranian officials to discuss bilateral issues as well as regional and international developments. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 17:50 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Palestines embassy will be opened in Ashgabat during the visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Turkmenistan on November 13-15, the Turkmen government reported on November 14. Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, during his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Turkmen side will create all necessary conditions for the proper functioning of the diplomatic mission of the brotherly country, according to the message. The two countries will celebrate the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations in April 2017. The Turkmen president proposed to hold the Turkmen-Palestinian business forum in 2017, according to the message. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 November 2016 14:00 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan became the latest destination of Kazakh traveler Sergey Bondarenko, who visited over 18 countries without a penny in his pocket. Bondarenko visits Azerbaijan, also known as the Land of Fire, for the second time. First time, the traveler visited Azerbaijan two years ago for a short period of time. This time, the traveler decided to stay longer and enjoy the countrys beauty and hospitality. "You have a very hospitable people. Every day someone invited me to a nearby restaurant or bought me food, as well as offered a place for sleep. Your police officers also helped me a lot. I am very thankful for that. I am very grateful for what your people dif for me, said Bondarenko talking to Day.Az. The Kazakh traveler also shared his interesting and crazy travel adventures from around the world. "I didn't have a visa so first of all I visited visa-free countries for Kazakhs. When I started the journey, I had no passport, only the ID card, which allowed me to visit Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. Then, my friend helped me to get a passport. Then I expanded the area and already visited 18 countries, among them Malaysia, China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Turkey and others," said the Kazakh traveler. Chine, a country full of culture and tradition, impressed the traveler a lot. "I really like China, and I'm really like to stay there. The only difficulty is Chinese language, he said. Remembering how it all began, Bondarenko spoke about desperate days when as a youngster he had found himself alone and without any means to live. I have faced a lot in my short life. I was 18 when I lost my family. My house was taken away and I was forced to live on the streets. And at that moment, I realized that it's right time to make my dream come true- to see the world, he said. Bondarenko says that he has never afraid of the unknown. "The uncertainty doesn't scare me. There are a lot of good people willing to lend a helping hand. I have never asked for money. People voluntarily help me, he said. Speaking about his future, the young adventurer said that he will continue this journey. "I understand what freedom is and its value. So when leaving the kilometers behind, you also leave behind bad memories and thoughts. A man can't know himself in the busy city. For example, when person drinks coffee, he does not know the price of this drink. But, now, I appreciate it all", he explained. Now, Bondarenko is going to visit South America and stay there for a few years. "I'm not going to spend the whole life traveling. One day, I will have a family and engage in something interesting. Also, I'm going to write the book about my adventures", said Bondarenko. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Significant milestone in achieving ultimate goal of commencing manufacturing of sterile injectable products at the site during 2018 Copenhagen, Denmark, November 14, 2016 / B3C newswire / -- Xellia Pharmaceuticals (Xellia), a specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on providing important anti-infective treatments against serious and often life-threatening infections, has received notice from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowing the Company to commence packaging and distribution of drug products at its Cleveland, Ohio facilities. The notice follows a successful cGMP inspection by the FDA conducted under the procedures of the Modified Consent Decree that Xellia entered into with the FDA in April 2016. Xellia acquired the Cleveland site in November 2015. This notice demonstrates the significant progress that Xellia has made in bringing the Cleveland site back to compliance. The Company can now initiate certain commercial activities at the newer part of the Cleveland site that involves labelling, secondary packaging and distribution of drug products manufactured at other sites. As well as investing significantly in equipment upgrades and the facility design, Xellia has hired an experienced team of over 90 employees. This will be expanded to a staff of around 170 employees over the next twelve months as the Company prepares to start the production of sterile anti-infective injectable products during 2018. Xellia is working closely with the FDA to ensure this is achieved. Carl-Ake Carlsson, CEO, Xellia said: The permission by the FDA to commence packaging and distribution of drug products at this site is a huge achievement for the Cleveland team on our journey towards resuming sterile product manufacturing. It is testimony to the expertise and dedication of our employees who have worked tirelessly to achieve compliance at the site. Once up and running, this facility will significantly increase our production capacity for sterile injectable products in the US, meeting the growing needs of our customers and helping to alleviate supply shortages for vital anti-infectives. We have already received considerable interest in our contract manufacturing services from both existing customers and new prospects. Xellia Cleveland will operate alongside the Companys existing sterile injectables production plant in Raleigh, North Carolina and Copenhagen, Denmark. The US is an important market for Xellia, generating over 40% of total sales in 2015. About Xellia Xellia Pharmaceuticals is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on providing important anti-infective treatments against serious and often life-threatening infections. With over 100 years of experience Xellia is a leading developer, manufacturer and trusted supplier of fermented and semi-synthetic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and Injectable Finished Dosage Forms (FDFs) to the pharmaceutical industry. The Company has growing sales in more than 70 countries to over 500 customers across the healthcare industry. Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Xellia has global facilities including operational and manufacturing capabilities in Denmark, USA, Hungary and China, and currently employs over 1,200 people. Xellia is a leading supplier of vancomycin and colistimethate sodium (CMS) which together combat life-threatening, multi-drug resistant bacterial infections across Gram-positive and Gram-negative species. Xellia is also developing novel antibiotics effective against MDR Gram-negative bacteria in a development project with SINTEF Materials and Chemistry (Trondheim) and the Statens Serum Institut (Copenhagen), supported by a grant from the Research Council of Norway. Since July 2013, Xellia has been wholly owned by Novo A/S, the holding Company of the Novo Group. Contacts Xellia Pharmaceuticals Carl-Ake Carlsson CEO +45 32 64 55 00 Niels Lynge Agerbk General Manager, Xellia Cleveland +1 440 359 2055 Instinctif Partners (media relations) Melanie Toyne-Sewell / Eileen Paul / Jen Lewis +44 (0)1260 296 500 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 53 patients treated with PD fluid designed to improve outcomes of PD Cross-over trial design to provide validity of several times larger conventional trials Data on cytoprotective effect of PD-protec to be presented at ASN Meeting Vienna, Austria, November 14, 2016 / B3C newswire / -- Zytoprotec, a biopharmaceutical company developing innovative dialysis fluids with cytoprotective properties, announced today that the last patient has completed treatment in a Phase II study with its lead product, PD-protec. The Company expects results of this trial to be available in the first quarter of 2017. PD-protec is a novel fluid for peritoneal dialysis (PD), a live-saving therapy for patients with chronic kidney failure. Current PD fluids tend to damage abdominal tissue, limiting the use of this convenient and cost effective therapy. By contrast, PD-protec is designed to alleviate, or even avoid, the damage from current fluids. The product is targeting a significant improvement of the clinical outcomes of PD, allowing more patients to stay longer on this therapy and thus to lead more mobile and independent lives compared to haemodialysis. 53 patients were treated with PD-protec in a randomized, double-blinded Phase II clinical trial. We are very pleased that we will soon be analyzing clinical and molecular biology data from this study, commented Bernhard Zinner, Managing Director of Zytoprotec. Due to its innovative cross-over design, the results of this study will have the statistical power of a conventional study with several times the number of patients. Upon final evaluation of the results we plan to prepare PD-protec for a pivotal study together with industrial or other partners, Zinner continued. Meanwhile, we are pleased that data on the cytoprotective effect of PD-protec will be presented at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) in Chicago. Prof. Dr. Uwe Schlokat, Chairman of the Zytoprotec Board, stated: Over the next decade the number of patients suffering from chronic kidney failure is expected to grow to almost 4 million worldwide, posing an immense and increasing burden on patients and health care systems. As PD has obvious benefits for both, a fluid that allows patients to stay longer on this therapy will be a major contribution to the treatment of chronic kidney failure in general, and to the quality of life of those affected. About Zytoprotec Zytoprotec is a biopharmaceutical company based in Austria, Europe. Its lead product, PD-Protec, is being developed to improve the treatment of patients with end stage renal failure. Currently, treatment with peritoneal dialysis (PD) is limited as the fluids used in this procedure inherently damage the peritoneal tissue. PD-Protec includes a cytoprotective compound, whose beneficial effects have been discovered by one of Zytoprotec's founders, Prof. Dr. Christoph Aufricht. The compound is expected to protect peritoneal tissue, prolonging the time patients can stay on PD. In previous Phase I and Phase I/II clinical trials PD-protec has been shown to be safe and to restore peritoneal cellular stress response while attenuating sterile inflammation caused by conventional PD fluids. Contacts Zytoprotec Bernd Seibel, Managing Director (Financing) Bernhard Zinner, Managing Director (Business Development) Mariannengasse 28/2 1090 Vienna Austria, Europe +43-1-406 20 02 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Media contact Frank Butschbacher Investor Relations & Communications +43-650-7844940 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Shared from Politico: Rep. Keith Ellison formally announced his candidacy to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I am proud to announce my candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and if given the opportunity to serve, I will work tirelessly to make the Democratic Party an organization that brings us together and advances an agenda that improves peoples lives, Ellison said in a statement released Monday afternoon. The Minnesota congressman had been laying the groundwork to run for DNC chairman even before the deep losses Democrats suffered on Election Day. In recent days, his efforts have begun to come into public view. Ellison, who played a prominent role in Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, has already been endorsed for chairman by Sanders and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid, as well as Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also said. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has already announced that hes running for DNC chairman and the field of candidates is likely to expand. Last week, Dean argued that Ellison couldnt adequately serve as both DNC chairman and as a member of Congress. You cannot do this job and sit in a political office at the same time. Its not possible, Dean said in an interview on MSNBC. That view is shared by critics of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultzs tenure as DNC chairwoman. But Ellisons supporters insist that the Minnesota congressman can juggle both jobs. Bakersfield, CA (93308) Today Cloudy with occasional rain...mainly this evening. Low near 50F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.. Tonight Cloudy with occasional rain...mainly this evening. Low near 50F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. President-elect Donald J. Trump announced what he called his senior leadership team Sunday, naming his White House Chief of Staff as well as a "chief strategist and senior counselor." Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus named Chief of Staff Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon named "Chief Strategist" Both men will work as "equal partners" in administration The announcement of Trump's White House Chief of Staff has been expected for most of the weekend. Trump named Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus to the post. It is truly an honor to join President-elect Trump in the White House as his Chief of Staff, said Priebus in an official release. I am very grateful to the President-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism. He will be a great President for all Americans. Trump also named Brietbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. "Steve" Bannon as "Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President." Bannon previously worked with Trump as CEO of his presidential campaign. I want to thank President-elect Trump for the opportunity to work with Reince in driving the agenda of the Trump Administration, added Bannon. We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory. We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda. Trump's statement on the appointments said the two men would work as "equal partners" within the administration, effectively continuing a partnership that began during the campaign. Priebus and Bannon, according to the statement, would also aid Vice-President-elect Mike Pence to help lead the transition process in the run-up to Inauguration Day. A man authorities believe is responsible for murdering a Hillsborough County woman was arrested in Marietta, Georgia. Latoya Smith, 30, was found dead on Oct. 20 Boyfriend Jovan Huggins, 23, was an immediate suspect Huggins was arrested in Marietta, Georgia Investigators in the Bay area have had a warrant out for Jovan Huggins, since Latoya Smith was murdered on October 20. Cobb County deputies in Georgia responded to a vagrant call on November 9 near an exercise gym. They found Huggins sleeping outside of the business. After properly identifying the 23-year-old man, he was taken into custody. A Tampa Police Homicide Detective traveled to Georgia to interview Huggins about the murder case. He is currently in a Cobb County jail awaiting extradition back to Hillsborough County where he will face charges for the shooting death of Smith. On Oct. 20 Smith, 30, a mother of three children, was located in the roadway on West Flora Street. She had suffered a fatal head injury. Witnesses were able to establish that the Smith had been with her new boyfriend, Huggins, a short time prior to her being located in the road. At the time, Huggins was wearing a red shirt and black shorts. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The city of Beaumont hopes to bet $85,000 on the roulette wheel of economic development and turn it into $51 billion. The likelihood of the croupier pushing over that much in winnings is remote - unrealistic, perhaps - but the prospect of that much on the table is tantalizing. Those stacks of chips include everything from industrial mega-projects, one of which - involving Exxon Mobil's polyethylene plant expansion along U.S. 90 west of the Beaumont Municipal Airport - will be announced at noon Monday, to smaller, ground-level efforts by the University of Texas Medical Branch's new health clinic at the Gateway Shopping Center. These efforts, great and small, are supported by the city's annual contract with the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce to perform as its economic development corporation. The city's share is $85,000, approved last week by City Council. Specifically, the money is for retention of existing jobs, new business creation, expansion of existing business and attraction of new employees. If that happens, builders could put up new houses. Retailers will take note and select local sites for new stores. Regina Lindsey, the Chamber's president and chief executive, said it's unrealistic to expect $51 billion worth of new development, but a 10th of that is still $5.1 billion, which makes $85,000 seem like pocket change. Beaumont rankings On Forbes Magazine's Best Places lists of top 200 cities - No. 14 - cost of doing business - No. 166 - job growth - No. 185 - best place for business or career - No. 192 - education - Median household income - $42,815 - Family median income - $49,500 - Median home price - $143,000 - Unemployment rate - 6.7 percent - Recent job growth - 0.79 percent - Future job growth - 34.8 percent Sources: Forbes.com, October 2016, and Sperling's BestPlaces.net See More Collapse Still, a person could buy three new pickups or two fishing boats or fund the city's entire $65,000 grant for nutrition services for the elderly and the homeless and still have $20,000 left over. The question becomes what return taxpayers get on their $85,000 investment. Return on investment "We do a lot of the same functions (as an EDC), but we can't give out incentives, like Port Arthur," Lindsey said. "The city gets a better return on investment because it's a lot less money." The Chamber also agrees to spend $100,000 or more from its own sources - private, dues-paying members - for the economic development program. An example of the joint effort between the city, the Chamber and other outfits, such as Entergy Texas, with a stake in expansion is the Exxon Mobil polyethylene plant expansion, for which the city rezoned a parcel of land on the plant's east side to accommodate construction. Called BPEX (Beaumont Polyethylene Plant Expansion), the expansion would employ 1,400 construction workers at peak and create 40 permanent operating jobs, Exxon Mobil spokesman Lee Dula said in mid-October. If it proceeds, the expansion could add a production line for growing market demand for products that deliver lighter packaging weight, less energy consumption and reduced emissions. Exxon Mobil is considering another project at its Beaumont refinery, which already has two others under construction. A new plant, being built from the ground up, is Natgasoline, worth at least $1 billion, along the Neches River. While the expansions scale dizzying heights in dollar terms, they don't represent the same kind of economic promise as new stores in town or new rooftops that retailers want to see when deciding whether to move to Beaumont. Job sources Lindsey said 85 percent of new jobs come from existing business. Among the ground-level expansions could be one on a recently cleared patch of land along the south side of Phelan Boulevard west of Lucas Drive. Lindsey said she can't reveal who is developing the acreage or what it might be. Likewise, real estate developer Sam Parigi said he couldn't reveal who or what might be developing a recently cleared parcel on Fannett Road west of U.S. 69. Home sales are another activity sector that can have an outsized impact. The Texas A&M University Real Estate Center reported that in September 108 homes sold for a combined $17.9 million at an average price of $166,000, bringing down the inventory to 368 listings with an "inventory" of 3.9 months, meaning a desirable home would be sold in about 90 to 100 days. That's down from 5.8 months in September 2015, a sign that demand is higher than supply is deep. "That points to a lot of good for Beaumont," Lindsey said. Karisa Tinsely, president of the Beaumont Board of Realtors, said the median price of a home in Beaumont went up 18 percent in the last year, to $148,450. Median means half of sales are above or below that point. Tinsely said three-fourths of home sales are in the range up to $199,999, and a quarter are from $200,000 to $500,000. "We are continuing to see multiple offers on good homes in good locations for homes in the $80,000 to $175,000 range," she said. Northwest Parkway The city is about to start its newest street project, called Northwest Parkway, which will open up about a square mile of previously inaccessible land between Major Drive and Parkdale Mall for residential and retail growth, Lindsey said. "The retail sector has a tight model. They look at rooftops. That drives decisions on placement. They look at home sales and whether incomes are rising," she said. "Having parcels open with growing home sales is very promising." Many business decisions slow down in an election year, but Lindsey said the Chamber is talking to a lot of people. "We're answering requests from the governor's office. If we qualify under the criteria, we get inquiries from site selectors," she said. "We're seeing it from energy, manufacturing and chemical industries." Beaumont also is attractive because it is a federal air quality attainment area. That helps with emissions permitting, she said. Beaumont's weaknesses include out-migration of young professionals because of the perception that quality of life is lacking, she said. Recent problems with the Beaumont Independent School District seem not to be an obstacle because of strong home sales in the city, she said. Election effect President-elect Donald Trump's animosity toward current international trade agreements, as expressed in the recent campaign, could dampen otherwise strong economic news. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is likely dead, Lindsey said. That would have opened 40 percent of the world's consumers to American products, she said. A revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement also could jeopardize trade with Mexico. "We export a lot to Mexico," Lindsey said. A recent vote by the British to withdraw from the European Union, called BREXIT, also could blunt local exports. The Chamber provides "certificates of origin" for companies that export to the United Kingdom. "We were issuing seven or eight a month through August. But not since," she said. "What is a President Donald Trump going to do? If you can get a better agreement, that's one thing. If you get protectionist, that's another." Lindsey said Turkish companies have a lot of interest in developing industry in Beaumont. If there is backlash against Muslims, that could have an economic cost locally, she said. "There are too many unknowns," she said. DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Safeway Driving, a Houston-based driving school that offers custom training based on where students live and go to school, wants to expand to Southeast Texas. The company is in talks with six area high schools West Brook, Lumberton, Nederland, Orangefield, Little Cypress-Mauriceville and Bridge City to implement driver's education programs in the fall of 2017, said Vice President Ann Littmann. In addition to the basics, practice drives in Southeast Texas will focus on what to pay attention to when navigating country roads, said Littmann. By comparison, students in Houston learn how to weave through the city's intricate highway system while drivers in Austin learn how to control a vehicle's speed on hilly roads, she said. Safeway Driving instructors are equipped with an iPad that contains notes about the student, including how they performed in previous practice drives. Parents also have access to the notes, as well as a tracking system that tells them where the car is in real-time, Littmann said. The practice drives accompany a 32-hour online course broken up into 16 two-hour sessions, which must be completed within three months, Littmann said. After the third course, drivers can take their permit test and begin scheduling drive times. Safeway Driving also offers a course for students on the autism spectrum, according to Littmann. Driver's education packages meet the state minimum license requirement and include the online course, a state permit test, a state alcohol course credit for insurance discounts and at least seven hours of driving and observation. Prices start at $499. More: safewaydriving.com Have an item for In the Works? Email LocalNews@BeaumontEnterprise.com. ERobinson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/eeelizzzabeth Authorities are searching for a suspect involved in a south side shooting who sent a victim to a local hospital late Sunday evening, according to the Beaumont Police Department. The shooting happened around 6 p.m. at the 900 block of Bingman, officials said. A Southeast Texas housing developer is suing the City of Port Neches, alleging city officials blocked the construction of a new apartment complex after residents made racially motivated complaints, according to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month. Jeff Akhtar, a developer who planned to build a 140-unit complex on Twin City Highway and Eighth Street, claims in his suit filed on Nov. 4 that Port Neches officials had no grounds to challenge the project, which already had been approved by the city's Zoning Board of Adjustments. Akhtar bought the Port Neches property in November 2015 with the intention of building a three-story apartment complex, according to the suit. That same month, the zoning board granted three variances to allow Akhtar to increase the usual 18 dwelling units per acre to 23; increase the maximum of 12 dwelling units under one roof to up to 49; and increase the height of the building from two stories to three. Akhtar's request for a three-story complex was critical to the project, the lawsuit states. "The surrounding area to the complex was unsightly, including a mobile home park of which the complex would shield from view," the lawsuit states. Residents protested the complex during a hearing last year. Akhtar claims in his suit that some made disparaging comments about him being a Muslim. The Port Neches City Council attempted to rescind the variances in late November 2015, eventually filing suit against its own zoning board. The lawsuit between the city and its zoning board is still pending. Akhtar, who names Port Neches Mayor Glenn Johnson and the city council as co-defendants in his suit, is seeking damages of more than $75,000. Earlier in 2015, Akhtar met resistance from Groves residents when he announced plans to expand his Axis Manor Apartments on 25th Street, which was described by neighbors as being unkempt. Groves Mayor Brad Bailey said during a May 2015 town hall meeting that Axis Manor's rental prices - about $475 per month - attract a "certain type of person," alluding to criminals. Akhtar, who said during the meeting with Groves residents and officials that he was "ashamed of what (Axis Manor) looks like," later pulled the permit request. The Port Neches complex was not intended to be low-income housing. The average rent for the apartments would be $900 a month, according to Akhtar's lawsuit. While the proposed complex would fall in the Port Neches city limits, it would be zoned for Nederland ISD. BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In a commercial that aired in the waning weeks of the recent election campaign, Jefferson County Republican Party Chair Garrett Peel carefully noted that the presidential race was "interesting" and then, without mentioning Donald Trump, launched straight into the merits of the local GOP and its candidates. Meanwhile across the state, officials apprehensive about how Trump's polarizing candidacy could hurt local office-seekers tried to keep a safe distance. In the end, though Trump captured traditionally red Texas by fewer votes than any presidential candidate in decades, his straight-talking message of middle-class empowerment might have been the key to the Jefferson County GOP's belated emergence in a region long dominated by Democrats. >> Scroll through the gallery above to see how Jefferson County voted in national, state and county races. Trump became the first GOP presidential candidate to carry Democrat-leaning Jefferson County, and Jefferson County Republicans rode the phenomenon. Republican candidates for sheriff and two judicial seats narrowly lost but threatened all Tuesday night to pull off a major upset of the local Democratic establishment. Peel pointed out that Republicans registered the greatest number of straight-ticket ballots ever, with 24,598, which represented significant increases from 2008 and 2012. Experts say the president-elect helped re-energize the party by tapping into the frustrations of white, working-class voters, regardless of their previous party affiliation. Jefferson County Clerk A vision for growth Trump's victory in Jefferson County and the down-ballot boost he provided for local Republicans can be explained by the same factors that enabled him to flip traditionally blue states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Jefferson County stands in sharp contrast to Texas counties like Bexar, Fort Bend and Harris, where Trump's presence at the top of the ticket adversely affected local Republican candidates. "Unlike the case throughout most of Texas - especially in large urban counties like Harris and Bexar, where Trump represented a drag on the GOP ticket - in Jefferson County, Trump boosted the performance of down-ballot Republicans," said Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. "Jefferson County retains a significant share of Anglo 'Reagan Democrats' who have retained a tradition of voting Democratic. But this cycle, like their peers in the Upper Midwest, they saw in Donald Trump a candidate who better represented their vision for the country and anger towards a governing elite they feel does not have their best interests at heart." Former Jefferson County GOP Chair Billy Oliver said Trump's message resonated in a Beaumont-Port Arthur metro area that has seen little economic growth in the past few decades while much of Texas has thrived. Oliver said Southeast Texas has flatlined since the early 1900s oil boom, and the closing of factories across the country has stifled job opportunities for blue collar workers. "We save our country by manufacturing everything we consume again like we used to," Oliver said. "Trump talked to the working people and told them the reasons why all of these factories have closed and nothing says Made in America anymore." Future bids will be no-Trump Jefferson County Democratic Party Chair Cade Bernsen cautioned against the conclusion that Republicans have overthrown the county. Bernsen acknowledged that Trump helped make local races closer but said the Democrats' victory in local races shows the party can withstand a GOP surge. "This was their best shot," Bernsen said. "The Trump phenomenon still wasn't enough to win the local races here. This was the highwater mark for the Republican Party in Jefferson County, as good as it gets for them." Overall voter turnout for the presidential election was lower in Jefferson County than in 2008 and 2012. Both Trump and Clinton received fewer votes than either Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or John McCain in the previous elections. Bernsen showed no concern over losing white working class voters in the local Democratic party. He attributed Clinton's failure here to low turnout from Bernie Sanders supporters. Clinton lost to Trump in Jefferson County by only 424 votes, while more than 4,400 voters here picked Sanders in the March primary election. Nationwide, the Democratic Party is undergoing uncertain realignment, Bernsen said. Economic globalization is pushing away some Democrats, creating "a more modern, cosmopolitan party that appeals to minorities," Jones said. A different role for unions Robert Nebout, a union leader for the Iron Workers Local 135 covering the upper Texas Gulf Coast and Southeast Texas, said, "it's pretty obvious some of our members sided with Trump this election." Nebout said older and younger union members were split on which issues were more important. While the older members stressed worker issues, some of the younger ones focused on more personal issues like the Second Amendment, Nebout said. Clinton's push for stricter gun regulations, as well as concerns about her integrity, drove away some of the Southeast Texas working class, according to union leaders. Richard "Hoot" Landry, an international rep for the United Steelworkers union, said it seemed "almost everybody disliked (Clinton)" in Texas. Landry said unions generally disregard such single issues as gun control and instead evaluate candidates according to broader criteria. Members might see things differently. "Elections today are very different than what they were in the past," said Landry, a union member for the past 43 years. "We've tried to identify (candidates) we believe help us the most and that's the message we continue to send our memberships. We do not try to tell anybody how to vote, or speak to the moral issues that they live with. "We urge them to consider workers' safety, bad trade deals and legislation that affects our membership," Landry said. "We try to keep them informed, but the morality of elections now is taking over." It could swing back at some point, union leaders said. "You've got a lot of younger members that haven't been working under Republicans and don't know what it's like," Nebout said. "They're going to experience that now." BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott It's tempting to wish that President-elect Trump would take Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller off our hands and make him the secretary of agriculture, as the new administration is reportedly considering. But as much as many Texans would love to be rid of Miller and his many missteps, we can't inflict him on the rest of the nation. Miller is barely managing to handle his current state ag job. Giving him national responsibilities for agriculture would soon be regretted by America's farmers and ranchers. We won't bother to list all of Miller's gaffes; there are too many. But his latest one was a doozy - calling Hillary Clinton a vulgar term on Twitter, and then either blaming it on a staffer or claiming it was a retweet. (His explanations varied.) Neither excuse, of course, sufficed. If he hires staffers like that, what's wrong with him? And retweeting vile stuff you run across is hardly acceptable either. Here were the five most read Becker's ASC Review gastroenterology/endoscopy stories for Nov. 7 to Nov. 11, 2016. 1. AGA encourages gastroenterologists to watch 3 key policy areas Click here 2. Physicians accept blame for Joan Rivers' death: 8 key notes on the Yorkville Endoscopy settlement Click here 3. American Gastroenterological Association to host drug development conference: 3 things to know Click here 4. 28 starting salaries for specialty physicians GI comes in 5th Click here 5. ACG names Dr. Carol Burke president: 5 things to know Click here As hospitals and health systems transition to alternative payment models, many are seeking answers on how to best navigate changing reimbursement levels. In January 2015, HHS said it wanted 30 percent of all Medicare provider payments to fall under an alternative model, which includes accountable care organizations, patient-centered medical homes or bundled payments, by the end of 2016. Last March, HHS said it has already achieved this goal. By 2018, the benchmark is to have half of all Medicare provider payments fall under an alternative model. At Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable on Nov. 8, experts seasoned in healthcare finance discussed how their entities are working to stay ahead of the curve. During a panel titled, "Observations and thoughts on changing reimbursement levels: How to thrive," the panel emphasized why the revenue cycle management process and financial planning are critical for reimbursement success. "For our hospital, about 70 percent of the funding is activity based, so it's based on the patients we serve and the clinical diagnosis and the case mix index. So it's really important for us to capture the right documentation right upfront on admission the postal code, zip code, where the patient is from because that's how funding comes back to us, and it floats through a system of clinical documentation, physician documentation, medical record," said John Kurvink, vice president of corporate services and CFO of Georgian Bay General Hospital in Ontario, Canada. But capturing the right documentation upfront is not always an easy task, according to Edward Gaines, chief compliance officer for Zotec Partners, which provides billing services as well as management services to physician practices. "On the front end, providers don't always get demographics and insurance right [for patients], and that creates problems on the back end in terms of resolving that and avoiding friction in the revenue cycle," he said. That front-end misstep can be even more likely when a mix of clinicians, including mid-level providers and residents, are accessing the EMR. But new and emerging technology platforms and solutions can help facilitate more accurate documentation, added Mr. Gaines. Another important step in achieving reimbursement success is preparing for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act final rule. The final rule is a landmark payment system for Medicare physician fees that replaces the sustainable growth rate formula. Physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and certified registered nurse anesthetists who bill more than $30,000 a year or provide care for at least 100 patients under traditional, fee-for-service Medicare will be subject to MACRA's Merit-Based Incentive Payment System beginning Jan. 1. While the New Year is approaching, there is time to adjust to the final rule. That's because under the final rule, providers may opt out and not send CMS any data in 2017. Those who opt out will receive an automatic 4 percent negative Medicare payment adjustment in 2019. However, Mr. Kurvink noted that the bar is low for hospitals to avoid this penalty by submitting data for just one quality measure or improvement activity. Still, Joe Barnes, CFO of Summersville (W. Va.) Regional Medical Center, who has been at his job since last April, said medical staff at his facility have been resistant to the changes in payment models. "They're very resistant so we have to play catch up quickly so that's what we'll do," he said. Panelists also addressed how financial planning amid reimbursement changes are impacting services at their entities. Greg Klugherz, senior vice president and CFO of CentraCare Health in St. Cloud, Minn., said for his facility in St. Cloud, it's an opportunity to change their portfolio by re-evaluating low-volume services and enhancing services in greater demand by the community. "We pay attention to people leaving our area for services we're capable of providing ...We're paying attention and trying to build patient loyalty," he said. But community demand and reimbursement pressures are often not the only factors administrators have to balance when making service decisions. At Georgian Bay General Hospital, officials at one time thought the hospital should close the obstetrics unit. However, the organization decided not to close the unit after seeing strong support from the community. Local residents made it clear they "wanted their babies born in their community. So now we're going to collaborate with a larger facility for those services," Mr. Kurvink said. All of the panelists agreed clinical affiliations and strategic partnerships will continue to be key as hospitals navigate a changing reimbursement environment. Panelists also agreed patient experience which hasn't historically been a significant focus for the finance department is an increasing relevant discussion topic for CFOs in a value-based reimbursement model. Mr. Klugherz said patient experience is a particularly important consideration in managing the revenue cycle, because it impacts the public image of a hospital. Overall, Mr. Gaines said, hospitals and health systems have an opportunity and a responsibility to better engage and educate patients on the revenue cycle, which will ultimately lead to reimbursement success. More articles on healthcare finance: Quorum Health adds 6 more hospitals to sale pipeline Final site-neutral payment rules create uncertainty around HOPD lease agreements This week's 5 must-reads for hospital CFOs A panel of CFOs shared their thoughts on some of the most pressing issues CFOs address at Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable on Nov. 9, 2016. With physician shortages affecting hospitals nationwide, CFOs are doing whatever they can to make sure their systems are properly staffed. Sandwiched by major health systems Donald Longpre, CFO of North Ottawa Community Health System in Grand Haven, Mich., is experiencing the shortage first hand. "Physicians were leaving and going in all other directions," Mr. Longpre said. The competition his health system faces has created several challenges for Mr. Longpre. Not only does he have to bring in specialists that aren't already in the area to avoid a duplication of service, but he has to consider the long standing relationships patients may have with their physicians. "I did not anticipate that we'd have to combat that," Mr. Longpre said. Amy Fioria, CPA and CFO at Goshen (Ind.) Health is also combating a shortage. Her system in Northern Indiana experiences difficulty adding high quality physicians to her staff; it has forced her to get creative. "We're starting to use more nurse practitioners because of the physician shortage," Ms. Fioria said. "It addresses the access to care issue." Her system also scaled back the services it offers to ensure that it gets the most out of its staffing costs. R. Jason Standifird, CFO at EmCare in Englewood, Colo., and his national physician practice for hospital-based specialties are 90 percent fully recruited. However, his health system is still about 1,000 physicians short, a trend he doesn't "see changing anytime soon." One strategy to combat the physician shortage is to ensure physicians are practicing at the top of their licenses. "We're taking those administrative tasks that are not a physician treating a patient off their plate and it helps drive better efficiency through that program at the right cost to address that shortage," Mr. Standifird said. Another issue facing hospitals is a stagnant reimbursement rate. Hospitals are now looking to lower the provider based cost of care. Ms. Fioria said her system has to become a little bit tougher with its spending and start considering partnerships with health systems that are making profits on certain specialties Goshen does not. "From a pure cost perspective we need to get smarter and lower utilization," she said. "At the same time you have to grow. You have to know what service lines will be profitable and stay in those. We have a hard time stopping what we've already been doing but we try to realize that we don't have to do everything and be everything. We just have to provide access to our patients for that." Ms. Fioria suggested examining the service lines that are doing well, working to tighten the ship to make them more profitable and partnering the with other organizations to fill the deficiencies. Mr. Standifird believes lowering utilization and outsourcing care is a real possibility in the current health system picture. "You have to become more mindful of appropriate utilization." Mr. Standifird said. Mr. Longpre had one example of how his system is lowering utilization. For example, he identified a patient that had gone to the emergency room 97 times in one year. Although it helped add to the profit margin for the emergency department, it was creating an irregularity. The health system convinced the man to go to an urgent care facility instead of the ER, which helped to increase utilization rates. This article was updated on Nov. 22, 2016 to correct the following: it stated that EmCare was 10,000 physicians short of its recruitment goal. It is 1,000 short. It also mislabeled EmCare as a health system. It is a national physician practice for hospital-based specialties. We regret those errors. Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health selected Richard D'Aquila to serve as president. Here are three notes: 1. Mr. D'Aquila will continue to serve in his current role as president of Yale New Haven Hospital. 2. Having joined Yale New Haven Hospital in 2006 as executive vice president and COO, the hospital named Mr. D'Aquila president in 2012. 3. He has played an instrumental role in the integration of Yale New Haven and the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven in 2012. Throughout Donald Trump's campaign, the president-elect vowed to change America's healthcare by repealing and replacing the ACA and favoring a free-market approach over increased government oversight. His proposals like repealing the ACA, expanding health savings accounts, reestablishing high-risk insurance pools and allowing states to administer Medicaid through block grants, among other policies may now come to fruition. Panelists at the Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable on Nov. 9 discussed the implications of such policies on the healthcare industry. Here are four ways healthcare leaders think the election will affect healthcare and the ACA. 1. Uncertainty over the ACA's repeal and replacement timeline. "There will be this repeal and replace movement [of the ACA], and a lot of the replace will include the current. But what's the real politics of this and how long do you think this will take?" Joseph Lupica, chairman of Newpoint Healthcare Advisors, asked panelists. Steve Rice, area president of physician services at Integrated Healthcare Strategies, says once the outcome of the election begins to set in, President-elect Trump will need to shift gears from lobbying for an election to running the country. However, Mr. Rice says it is unclear how quickly that will happen. "Coming out hard and saying I'm just going to rip off the Band-Aid as fast as I possibly can in my opinion, I don't think that's going to happen," Mr. Rice says. "It'll have to be more thoughtful. I know that's counter to the way Donald Trump talks, but hopefully what will happen is the team he puts together will allow him to function in a way that if there is repeal, if there is replace, there's some rigor underneath [those words]." However, John Cacciamani, CEO of Philadelphia-based Chestnut Hill Hospital, says he thinks the process may be "faster than you think in terms of timeline. [Republicans are] going to see that they got two years to make sure they can get this deal done." 2. Decisions about what will remain of the ACA. A concern for the poor and uninsured needs to be sustained by the president-elect, Lyman Sornberger, chief healthcare strategy officer at Capio Partners, says. "He's going to try to commit that he's for the underinsured in some way, shape or form. To abort that too quickly or abolish it would be a career suicide," Mr. Sornberger says. "I think he'll create a more competitive market, which I think Hillary was trying to move toward with ACA evolution." Another element the Trump administration may maintain is the value-based care momentum carried by the ACA, says Alison Tothy, MD, chief experience and engagement officer and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medicine. Dr. Tothy says she hopes "that patient-centered care and the intersection of quality, safety and experience really won't disappear from the true meaning of how we design healthcare in the future." 3. Decisions about what will be eliminated from the ACA. Mr. Cacciamani says that when one looks at the progress made over the past eight years, the value equation has not moved much under the ACA. While he agrees support for the poor and uninsured through Medicaid should be kept, he thinks a lot of the bill's aspects will not be maintained. "Everything from EHR economic support to ACOs we haven't made much progress as a country," he says. "I think there's a lot that's going to be taken away. I think it's going to be shelled for the most part." 4. Development of new options. In terms of possible new paths from the ACA, Mr. Cacciamani says he thinks the incoming administration is going to look at a voucher system and operate to make sure as many Americans as possible have health insurance while avoiding constricting regulatory oversight. Mr. Sornberger says if Mr. Trump can extend an olive branch to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), he could evolve Mr. Ryan's already constructed plan. Mr. Rice added if a new plan emerges, it will need the full support of payers to succeed a piece that has fallen short under the ACA. Some community hospitals are not far from major metro areas, while others serve more rural communities. No matter where they are located or their independence or affiliation with a major system, patients rely on community hospitals when they need care close to home. Their size, limited financial resources and geographic locations can make it challenging for community hospitals to remain sustainable in an environment of competition for providers and physicians while offering scaled-down services. At Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable on Nov. 8, experts seasoned in the inner workings of community hospitals discussed how their entities are working to thrive. During a panel titled, "Building a sustainable business model for community hospitals," the participants emphasized what is relevant about their respective organizations and what they're doing to meet the challenges unique to community hospitals. Bryan Slaba, CEO of Wagner (S.D.) Community Memorial Hospital - Avera, leads a small critical access hospital in rural South Dakota. His facility is 60 miles from a tweener hospital and 120 miles from a tertiary hospital. Wagner Community Memorial serves a demographic that is approximately 55 percent Native American. Its payer mix is 25 percent Medicaid, 50 percent Medicare and another 10 percent Indian Health Service. The 20-bed hospital's average daily census for acute care is one, and it has only about 2,400 annual emergency room visits. Still, it is critical to the community. One issue Wagner Community Memorial struggled with was physician recruitment. To help address this issue, the CEO offered nurses at the hospital the opportunity to go back to school to become an advanced practice provider, with expenses paid for by the hospital. The only requirement was they come back to Wagner Community Memorial and work there as an APP for three years. "I put them in my ER, and on my floor and in my clinic. Right now, 40 percent of my ER is covered by an APP with a physician backup who is 120 miles away through telemedicine," Mr. Slaba said. As a result, the hospital's direct costs in the ER are down to 2012 levels and quality at the hospital has increased, he said. Patient advocacy went from the 63rd percentile to the 89th percentile on inpatient side, and on the ER side, the hospital went from the 63rd percentile in HCAHPS to the 90th percentile nationwide. "Quality has stayed where it needs to be, costs have come back down 25 percent since their high in fiscal year 2014," Mr. Slaba said, noting that the APP initiative has also stabilized his hospital's cost-to-charge ratio. Ginger Williams, MD, president and CEO of Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, Mich., faces a slightly different situation at her hospital, a 94-bed community hospital in south central Michigan. Oaklawn has more than 1,000 employees and has about $130 million in net patient service revenue. Its tertiary and quaternary competitors are roughly 20 to 30 miles away, and there is another community hospital in the area. Despite competition and challenges, Oaklawn has been able to achieve successes, Dr. Williams said. She specifically noted Oaklawn was named by Consumer Reports as being safest hospital in the country in 2015, and it was one of only four hospitals in Michigan to receive a five-star rating this year from CMS within the agency's Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating program. Additionally, the hospital established its own independent investment grade bond rating again this year. Dr. Williams acknowledged there is no magic formula to building a sustainable business model. But she did recommend that community hospitals be entrepreneurial and look at the different service lines to assess where changes are needed. She also said she believes one of the fundamental things for a sustainable business model in healthcare is having a culture "that not only services change but can actually thrive in change." "Any change creates stress, and constant stress can result in some catastrophic results if you don't deal with it well," said Dr. Williams. To be able to "thrive in change," she encourages community hospital CEOs work with physicians, provider staff and employees to adopt an outward-thinking mindset rather than an inward-focused mindset. This means instead of focusing unilaterally on their own goals and objectives, everyone working inside the hospital should recognize what others' goals and objectives are and how they can play a role in helping others achieve their individual goals, thus, helping the entire hospital. Technology also plays a key role in building a sustainable business model for community hospitals. Michael Monahan serves as director of solution enablement for Chicago-based GE Healthcare. GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric, has various offerings, such as medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, among others. Mr. Monahan cited Oklahoma State University Medical Center in Tulsa as an example of how technology can help its community hospital partners and affiliates thrive. At OSU Medical Center, a teaching hospital, the radiology department was on different platforms. This meant when an electrocardiogram, for instance,was performed, different members of the hospital staff could view it but had to physically go to the EKG viewing platform or viewing machine. With the new GE solutions, the hospital staff and physicians are now able to use technology for a universal view whether they are in the teaching hospital, a smaller partner/affiliate facility or in a post-acute care setting. The data sharing aims to reduce costs, save time and enhance efficiencies across the board. "I really see that as driving great quality. And truly if we we're going to start to move it down the care continuum, the closer you get to the end caregiver, and they're included in that conversation from day one, it's going to make a big difference," Mr. Monahan said. More articles on leadership and management: Week in review: 8 biggest healthcare stories this week How community hospitals can introduce the surgical home model Newly released Trump healthcare overview indicates position on Medicare, FDA, abortion With a Republican sweep of the White House and Congress, last week's election could lead to major health policy changes, according to The Advisory Board. In a perspective piece, Chas Roades, chief research officer at The Advisory Board, outlined the most common questions he has received from those in the healthcare industry following the election. Below are the top 12 questions Mr. Roades has received. 1. Will the ACA be repealed? It is likely some form of ACA repeal will be a high priority for President-elect Donald Trump's administration, according to Mr. Roades. In a policy brief released last week, Mr. Trump said the repeal of the health reform law will be paired with a replacement effort that includes expanded health savings accounts, re-established high-risk insurance pools, flexibility for states in administering Medicaid and a revamped approach to Medicare. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump said he would consider leaving certain parts of the ACA in place, such as the provisions that prohibit insurers from denying coverage due to a patient's preexisting conditions and allow parents to keep children on their health insurance policies for additional years. 2. How will provider rates of uncompensated care be affected if Medicaid expansion is repealed? Republicans may seek to repeal Medicaid expansion, which was enacted under the ACA, according to Mr. Roades. This would lead to an increase in uncompensated care and bad debt, as it would cause reduction in the total number of people covered by Medicaid. "Organizations should prepare for the possibility that the Medicaid expansion is undone, bad debt rises and [Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital] payment cuts still eventually kick in," said Mr. Roades. 3. How would Medicaid reform affect healthcare organizations' finances? Mr. Trump has proposed Medicaid reforms that would limit growth of federal funding for Medicaid and give states greater flexibility in administering the program. These reforms may cause some states to limit Medicaid eligibility, payment rates or benefits. "For providers, this would portend lower revenue and a need to double down on efforts to reduce costs," said Mr. Roades. 4. What will happen to the ACA health insurance exchanges? The future of the ACA exchanges is uncertain, according to Mr. Roades. He notes that Republicans may repeal the exchanges and implement a transition plan that phases out the subsidies. 5. Will the ACA's cuts to long-term Medicare spending be repealed? Medicare spending cuts under the ACA are likely to remain in place. Mr. Roades highlighted that previous legislation approved by the House to repeal the ACA left the long-term Medicare spending cuts intact. This means healthcare provider organizations would have to endure the Medicare price cuts without the upside of coverage expansion, according to Mr. Roades. 6. What is the future of payment reform? There's a lot of uncertainty surrounding existing risk-based payment and pay-for-performance models. If providers and key stakeholders voice a preference for value-based care models over deeper fee-for-service rate cuts, the Trump administration and new Congress may support the payment models. 7. What will happen to bundled payment programs? Although some Republicans have taken issue with CMS' Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model and the proposed Episode-Based Payment Model, it is unlikely bundled payment programs will come to an end, as they have general support from both parties, according to Mr. Roades. 8. Will ACO programs continue? A full repeal of the ACA would mean the Medicare Shared Savings Program would be eliminated. However, Mr. Roades noted Republicans haven't proposed a replacement for alternative payment models such as MSSP, and there has been no indication the alternative payment models would be included in more specific repeal efforts. 9. Will the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation be eliminated? Although it's unclear if CMMI is on the chopping block, Mr. Roades noted previous House bills to repeal the ACA eliminated CMMI's funding and authority. 10. How will the election affect MACRA? Although the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act has strong bipartisan support, action to cut back alternative payment models, such as repealing the ACA or defunding CMMI, would undermine MACRA's effectiveness, according to Mr. Roades. 11. What does the future hold for Medicare Advantage? "While it is not likely that MAwill fully supplant traditional Medicare in the immediate future, providers would be wise to craft strategies that address both the MA and traditional Medicare segments in complementary, scalable ways," said Mr. Roades. 12. Will Medicare move toward a premium-support model? House Speaker Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare includes transitioning the program to a defined-contribution or "premium-support" model from a traditional entitlement model. However, Mr. Roades noted it is not clear whether President-elect Trump supports the plan. More articles on leadership and management: Week in review: 8 biggest healthcare stories this week How community hospitals can introduce the surgical home model Newly released Trump healthcare overview indicates position on Medicare, FDA, abortion Republicans in Congress are conflicted over the best approach to repealing the ACA, The Hill reports. Meanwhile, Republican President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he might be willing to compromise and save certain parts of the healthcare reform law, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, want to rip the ACA out "root and branch," according to The Hill. Other conservative members of Congress favor a longer, smoother transition away from the law to ensure those who gained health insurance under the ACA are able to keep that coverage in some way, according to the report. Mr. Trump is also considering a flexible approach to the repeal. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump said President Barack Obama suggested protecting a few elements of the law during their meeting at the White House Thursday. Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal he will take Mr. Obama's suggestions into consideration. In particular, Mr. Trump favors keeping requirements for insurers to cover patients with pre-existing conditions and allowing children up to age 26 to remain on their parents' health plans, according to the report. "Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced," Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal. Congress is likely to take up the ACA repeal issue shortly after Mr. Trump takes office, as he has indicated he will make healthcare a top priority of his presidency. More articles on leadership and management: Hospital executives' 12 most pressing post-election questions, answered Layoffs loom at ValleyCare Health System in Ohio Week in review: 8 biggest healthcare stories this week The American College of Physicians elected 53 physicians to Master status within the organization for making notable contributions to medicine. These contributions include those in teaching, clinical research, clinical practice, preventive medicine, delivery improvements or contributions to literature. Masters are chosen "on account of personal character, positions of honor, contributions toward furthering the purposes of the ACP, eminence in practice or in medical research, or other attainments in science or in the art of medicine." The following 53 physicians will be recognized at a ceremony during ACP's annual meeting in March. Jeffrey L. Berenberg, MD (Kaneohe, Hawaii) Nora Valeria Bergasa, MD (New York) Ruth E. Berggren, MD (San Antonio, Texas) Glenn J. Bingle, MD (Indianapolis) Patricia A. Bomba, MD (Pittsford, N.Y.) George J. Bosl, MD (Syosset, N.Y.) Major W. Bradshaw, MD (Houston) John B. Bulger, DO (Danville, Pa.) John M. Carethers, MD (Ann Arbor, Mich.) David S. Cooper, MD (Baltimore) William A. Curry, MD (Birmingham, Ala.) Anne B. Curtis, MD (Buffalo, N.Y.) Nitin S. Damle, MD, MS (Wakefield, R.I.) Stephen Neil Davis, MD (Baltimore) Robert Dreicer, MD (Cleveland) Richard M. Dupee, MD (Boston) John R. Ebright, MD (Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.) Edwin W. Grimsley, MD (Macon, Ga.) James F. Hanley, MD (Laguna Vista, Texas) Darrell W. Harrington, MD (Long Beach, Calif.) Stuart B. Himmelstein, MD (Lake Worth, Fla.) Phillip E. Hoffsten, MD (Pierre, S.D.) Robert H. Hopkins Jr., MD (Little Rock, Ark.) Hans-Peter Kohler, MD (Bern, Switzerland) Princy N. Kumar, MD (Washington, D.C.) H. Clifford Lane, MD (Cabin John, Md.) Debra K. Litzelman, MD (Carmel, Ind.) Milton de Arruda Martins, MD (Sao Paulo, Brazil) Barbara L. McAneny, MD (Albuquerque, N.M.) David E. Midthun, MD (Rochester, Minn.) Clinton K. Murray, MC USA (San Antonio) Heidi D. Nelson, MD (Portland, Ore.) John E. Nestler, MD (Richmond, Va.) James R. O'Dell, MD (Omaha, Neb.) John H. O'Neill Jr., DO (Middletown, Del.) Thomas J. Olsen, MD (St. Louis) Calvin Q. Pan, MD (Flushing, N.Y.) Mukta Panda, MD (Chattanooga, Tenn.) Michael W. Peterson, MD (Fresno, Calif.) Maria E. Pinto, MD (Santiago, Chile) Mark W. Purtle, MD (Des Moines, Iowa) Khalid A. Qushmaq, MD (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Daniel W. Rahn, MD (Little Rock, Ark.) Maria A. Rodriguez, MD (Houston) Mitchell H. Rosner, MD (Charlottesville, Va.) Gerald W. Smetana, MD (West Roxbury, Mass.) Bruce C. Smith, MD (Issaquah, Wash.) Paul A. Smith, MD (Seattle) Banu E. Symington, MD (Twin Falls, Idaho) Gary H. Tabas, MD (Pittsburgh) Thomas G. Tape, MD (Omaha, Neb.) Peter F. Weller, MD (Boston) Mone Zaidi, MD (New York) More articles on integration and physician issues: How to motivate physicians to accept ACA health plans: 4 questions with Bronx-Lebanon Hospital's Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum What managed service organizations can do for hospitals, physicians & patients Physicians cite themselves as top factor in prescription opioid abuse The following healthcare organizations shared plans to hire workers so far in November, starting with the most recent. 1. Pennsylvania healthcare organizations look to fill staffing needs Job openings in the healthcare field are plentiful in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania., according to a Standard-Speaker report. Christine Jensen, Pennsylvania CareerLink administrator in Hazleton and Wilkes-Barre, told the publication that of 134 occupations on Pennsylvania's High Priority Occupation list for Luzerne and Schuylkill counties, 20 percent of them are in the healthcare field. 2. Plaza Medical Center to build $64M ED Fort Worth, Texas-based Plaza Medical Center will construct a $64 million facility, nearly doubling its emergency and intensive care capacity to meet increasing demand, reports Star-Telegram. Overall, the expansion will add 130 full-time jobs to Plaza Medical Center, which currently employs more than 1,100, according to the report. 3. Va. community group, hospitals work to connect people with hospital jobs Richmond, Va.-based Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities is teaming up with VCU Health System and HCA Virginia Health System, also in Richmond, to help local residents in "distressed neighborhoods" land healthcare jobs, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch report. RISC an interracial, interfaith, nonpartisan organization and the two healthcare providers will partner for the employment initiative, which seeks to help unemployed or underemployed people find entry-level jobs in healthcare, according to the article 4. 133 new behavioral health jobs coming to Sussex County, Del. A new psychiatric hospital in Delaware is expected to bring 133 jobs and crisis care to Sussex County in 2018, according to The News Journal. The 90-bed, 93,000-square-foot psychiatric hospital and treatment center is being built in Georgetown across from Delaware Technical Community College. 5. CarePoint Health seeks New Jersey approval to open 9 satellite EDs: 3 things to know Bayonne, N.J.-based CarePoint Health plans to open nine satellite emergency departments throughout New Jersey, according to a report on NJ.com. CarePoint has applied with the New Jersey Department of Health to open facilities in Jersey City, Union City and North Bergen, according to the article. CarePoint also proposed facilities in Edgewater, Palisades Park, Carlstadt, Lodi and Clifton. More articles on human capital and risk: 2 Catholic Health System hospitals reach labor agreements with nurses Union nurses ratify 4-year labor contract with Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital Tacoma General nurses say no to extra shifts in weeklong boycott Oran Aaronson, MD, will join Nashville, Tenn.-based Saint Thomas Medical Partners, according to WGNS Radio. Here are six points: 1. Board-certified neurosurgeon Dr. Aaronson will serve patients at the Howell Allen Clinic in Nashville, starting Jan. 1, 2017. 2. He currently serves as the medical director of Nashville-based Vanderbilt Spine Center. 3. He headed Vanderbilt University Medical Center's neurosurgery residency program until 2015. 4. Between 2004 and 2014, Dr. Anderson was chief of neurosurgery at the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital. 5. Dr. Anderson is a contributing author on more than 25 publications and presentations regarding spine surgery. 6. Dr. Aaronson completed his neurosurgery residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, also in Nashville. More articles on spine: 5 key notes on medical complications for adult spinal deformity surgery ISASS releases new coverage rule for decompression with interlaminar stabilization 4 spine and neurosurgeons in the headlines this week Nov. 11, 2016 To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below A wannabe weatherman has been jailed for arson after admitting he started a wildfire to draw attention to his selfie videos on Facebook, police said. "It's really too bad because he's not a bad kid - he's just misguided," said James Stephens, the police chief in Jenkins, Kentucky, where Johnny Mullins, 21, was arrested on a second-degree arson charge. "He likes to do Facebook videos and have people follow him on his 'weather forecast', so that's pretty much why he did what he did," the chief said. "He enjoyed the attention he got from the Facebook stuff." "He didn't realise how much danger he was putting other people in," Mr Stephens added. A teenager in Harlan County, Kentucky was also was arrested for arson - and in Tennessee, authorities said that Andrew Scott Lewis was charged with setting fires, vandalism and threatening homes outside Chattanooga. No further arrests were announced over the rest of the suspicious fires, which have been torching forests in and around the southern Appalachian mountains. The relentless drought across much of the South has removed the usual humidity and sucked wells and streams dry, making the woods prone to fire. Tens of thousands of acres have burned, about a dozen of the largest fires remain uncontained and many people had to evacuate their homes ahead of fast-moving flames. Law officers in Georgia's Rabun County suspect that someone started a series of small roadside fires on Wednesday that eventually merged into the much larger blazes firefighters were working to contain over the weekend, said Justin Upchurch, the county's assistant fire chief. The area is less than 50 miles from North Carolina's Nantahala National Forest, where more than 20 wildfires that have burned more than 17,000 acres are all "being investigated for suspected arson", forestry officials announced in a status update. There were 14 other wildfires burning on Cherokee Nation land in North Carolina, all under investigation by local law enforcement. A fire managers' update noted that the US Bureau of Indian Affairs is seeking information about fires on Indian lands through an arson hotline. The US Forest Service announced on Friday that the entire Cohutta Wilderness, which stretches across the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia and the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, has been closed to the public due to multiple fires there. States of emergency were declared in some of the affected areas to facilitate state and federal spending on the response. More than 5,000 firefighters and support staff from around the nation have joined the effort, said Shardul Raval, director of fire and aviation management for the southern region of the US Forest Service. AP Aviation experts fear flights by UK carriers could be grounded if the country withdraws from the single market for aviation as part of Brexit Maintaining "liberal access" to European aviation markets will be a "top priority" when the UK negotiates its exit from the EU, the Government and UK airlines have said. Aviation experts fear that flights by UK carriers could be grounded if the country withdraws from the single market for aviation as part of Brexit. The agreement, created in the 1990s, means there are no commercial restrictions for airlines flying within the EU. Brexit Secretary David Davis, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Airlines UK, a trade body for UK airlines, issued a joint statement to pledge that they will work together to ensure aviation " continues to be a major success story for the UK economy". They said: " Market access remains a top priority, and we want to make sure we have liberal access to European aviation markets. "We will also work closely to explore new opportunities for further liberalisation. We are clear that Brexit provides greater freedom to seek new agreements between the UK and some third countries. "This includes looking at possible bilateral agreements to strengthen economic and cultural ties even further with countries such as the US and Canada." Mr Davis and aviation minister Lord Ahmad chaired a meeting at L ondon City Airport to discuss Brexit with industry leaders, including representatives from easyJet, Ryanair, Heathrow Airport and Virgin Atlantic. The statement, issued following the meeting, insisted that ministers will " give as much early certainty to the sector as possible" due to the long lead-in times associated with developing new routes. According to the Department for Exiting the European Union, the UK has the " largest aviation network in Europe", handling over 250 million passengers and 2.3 million tonnes of cargo last year, with connections to more than 370 international destinations. The sector was worth around 20 billion to the UK economy in 2014, the statement added. Prime Minister Theresa May will warn that those at the bottom of the economic ladder see globalisation as a job destroying, income cutting cause for concern Theresa May has denied she is anti-business and urged companies to work with the Government to help those "left behind" by globalisation regain their faith in capitalism. The Prime Minister said the post-war liberal consensus has "failed to maintain the consent of many people" and told those who cannot see the breakdown in trust that they are the "enemy" of liberalism. She urged firms to cooperate with the Government to ensure they "do business in the right way", because a minority have "gamed the system" and undermined the reputation of business as a whole. Those who have championed globalisation have, in their "zeal and enthusiasm", overlooked the impact on those who have seen their jobs outsourced and wages undercut, and who have seen their communities changed by immigration but "don't remember agreeing to that change". But now as the UK gets ready for Brexit and Donald Trump prepares to be inaugurated as United States president, "a change is in the air", she said. In a speech to City leaders at Guildhall, s he called on Britain to react by continuing to be a "pioneer" and an "outrider", and to rebuild trust in global free markets by ensuring they deliver prosperity for everyone. "If we believe, as I do, that liberalism and globalisation continue to offer the best future for our world, we must deal with the downsides and show that we can make these twin forces work for everyone," the PM said. "Because when you refuse to accept that globalisation in its current form has left too many people behind, you're not sowing the seeds for its growth but for its ruin. "When you fail to see that the liberal consensus that has held sway for decades has failed to maintain the consent of many people, you're not the champion of liberalism but the enemy of it. "When you dismiss the very real and deeply felt concerns of ordinary people, whether here at home or abroad, you are not acting to defend your world view but to undermine it." Mrs May insisted businesses have a crucial role in restoring public faith in free markets and in helping those who have not gained from globalisation. "I know many of you in this room recognise this responsibility, but others have voiced their suspicion of what they see as a growing anti-business agenda," she said. "I don't agree. It is because I believe so passionately in business that I say this. Asking business to work with Government to play its part is profoundly pro-business, because it is fundamental to retaining faith in capitalism and free markets." The Prime Minister said she sees Brexit as an opportunity to "manage the forces of globalisation so that they work for all" and to show that "Britain can lead" in facing the "greatest challenges of our time". In her speech, Mrs May also signalled her intention to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the US. The PM said Britain can use its economic strength to do "new business with old allies" in a sign that she views the election of Mr Trump as an opportunity. As Downing Street was forced to insist that Nigel Farage will not be a "third person" in the UK's relationship with the US president-elect, Mrs May said she would use the freedoms granted by Brexit to "set our own rules" and forge new trading arrangements. Mrs May said: "As we leave the European Union, we will... use the strength and size of our economy to lead the way in getting out into the world and doing new business with old allies and new partners alike. "We will use the freedoms that come from negotiating with partners directly, to be flexible, to set our own rules and forge new and dynamic trading agreements that work for the whole UK." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused Mrs May of playing catch-up and, in an echo of Mr Trump, claimed the Tories would not dismantle the "rigged system" which serves "billionaires". Mr Corbyn said: "Theresa May is trying to catch up with a changing world the Conservatives do not understand. "There can't be a globalisation that works for all without taking on the billionaires' club that controls this rigged system. "The Conservatives have presided over ballooning inequality. They've given tax cuts to the richest 1% while the incomes of 70% have stagnated or fallen. "Labour will take on the interests holding our country back. We will invest to rebuild and transform Britain, so no-one and no community is left behind." CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn welcomed Mrs May's "robust case for free trade" and said businesses were looking forward to working with her on an industrial strategy. On responsible business, she added: "Companies are committed to improving employee engagement. "There is no blanket solution, but a starting point is firms being able to outline what approach they are taking - whether that's employees on boards, employee committees, dedicated representatives, or another model. "Investors should rightly hold companies to account over exceptional pay for poor performance. "Introducing a targeted binding vote regime would focus attention on the most concerning cases giving shareholders the teeth to truly have the final say on top executives' pay." Northern Ireland's shop vacancy rate has improved despite a fall in footfall last month, a survey said today. The Springboard research said footfall in Northern Ireland's shops was down 5% during October, decreasing for the second month in a row. The year-on-year fall in Northern Ireland compared to a 0.4% decrease in the UK as a whole - and at 5.3%, was steeper than the three-month average of 2.1%. The province's shop vacancy rate was 14.5%, which was down from 15.3% in July - but still the highest rate of anywhere in the UK. Diane Wehrle, Springboard marketing and insights director, said the October results were typical of volatile footfall in the province. But she said footfall in shopping centres had grown for the fourth month in a row - with a 0.4% October increase - "a much improved position from a decline of -0.9% in October 2015". She added: "Whilst a boost in luxury sales due to the weak pound has been widely reported, this is not reflected in increased footfall as it is driven by higher value purchases." And she said the fall in vacancy rate was good news for Northern Ireland: "The vacancy rate always lags behind trends in footfall and sales due to the stickiness of the property market, and so the improvement is likely to be a response to rises in high street footfall that occurred over the summer. "In order to avoid an increase in vacancies post-Christmas, it is critical for retailers - and retail destinations - to deliver the best in class in terms of both price and experience." Aodhan Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, said the figures were a "mixed bag". But he said he hoped the fall in vacancy rate would prove a lasting trend. "It shows that our members are, even in uncertain economic times, more than willing to create jobs in retail and support other areas of the economy that rely on our industry. Our commitment to Northern Ireland has never been stronger. "However, our industry faces considerable business cost headwinds, many of which are policy driven and which deter investment. We would urge the NI Executive to do whatever it can through the Programme for Government and associated Budget to reduce the escalating cost burden on our members." Nick Rhodes, Simon Le Bon and Roger Taylor leave the Rolls Building in central London after a US copyright hearing Members of pop group Duran Duran are involved in a critical legal battle over US copyright in their first three albums. Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor were at London's High Court on Monday to assert their right to end agreements with major publishers Gloucester Place Music - ultimately owned by US business Sony/ATV. A fourth group member, John Taylor, is in the US. Former member Andrew Taylor is also involved in the case but did not attend court. Lawyers for Gloucester Place, which is part of EMI Music Publishing, are asking a judge to declare that the group members have breached music publishing agreements by serving notices to terminate the grant to the company of US copyrights in Duran Duran works. Under US law, songwriters have "an inalienable right" to call for a reversion of copyright after 35 years. But Gloucester Place says the agreements with the group members are governed by English laws of contract which prevent them seeking to take back copyright in their first three albums - Duran Duran, Rio and Seven And The Ragged Tiger - plus A View To A Kill, the first Bond film title track to go to the top of the US Billboard charts. Rhodes said: " We sincerely hope that this cynical attempt to deny us the opportunity offered to all songwriters in the US, to reclaim their copyrights after 35 years, will be dismissed outright by the British courts." Experts in copyright law say the case is of importance to all other songwriters subject to contracts similar to those Duran Duran members signed. The 1980 agreements at the centre of the case were made with the band members personally and all are referred to as "the writers". The group members have all given notice of reversion relying on section 203 of the US Copyright Act 1976, which, their lawyers say, allows for the automatic termination of rights after 35 years. Ian Mill QC, appearing for Gloucester Place, said: "My clients entered into contracts and agreed to pay these artistes sums of money both by way of royalties in return for which the artistes promised to give them rights to exploit, subject to the payment of those sums, for the full term of copyright." Mr Mill told Chancery Division judge Mr Justice Arnold the issue before the court was "one of pure contractural construction", and he complained that written submissions on behalf of Duran Duran contained "intemperate language". He argued that, on a correct construction, the terms of the contracts meant that "these writers have agreed that they will not seek to obtain a reversion of their copyrights under section 203 and they are in breach of contract should they do so". Michael Bloch QC, for the Duran Duran members, argued that the "shameful" Gloucester Place case was "as feeble as it is greedy". He said the implications of the case were potentially far reaching. "If the publishers were right, the English court may serve as an offshore haven for any of their ilk who wish to defeat the protective provisions of the US - the principal market for popular music in the English language - or any similar legislation elsewhere," argued Mr Bloch. The publishers were asking the court to attribute a meaning to the "bland language" of the agreements which would be oppressive and controversial and would create "a precedent to which they have no right." Outside court, Rhodes said: "US copyright law clearly states that songwriters are permitted to apply for a reversion of their copyrights after a 35 year period. "This provision was instigated to help rebalance the often unfair deals which artists sign early in their careers when they have little choice to try to get their first break, with no negotiating power and virtually no understanding of what their copyrights really mean for the future. "When we registered a request, in 2014, for the reversion of our eligible copyrights in America, we understood it to be a formality. "Regrettably Sony/ATV have decided to challenge our rights under the premise of a contractual technicality in the UK and have elected to take legal action against us. "We felt we had absolutely no choice but to stand up for ourselves, and indeed all other artists, who are likely to suffer similar circumstances." Olly Murs is set to top the album charts with 24 Hrs Olly Murs's 24 Hrs album its on its way to making this week's number one spot in the official album charts. If it's successful, his fifth studio album, released on Monday, will be his fourth chart-topper in a row. But Emeli Sande's second album, Long Live The Angels, currently at number two, could still take the lead before the official results are revealed on Friday. Her debut album, Our Version of Events, in 2012 broke records when it spent 67 weeks in the top 10 - the longest reign for any female artist, according to the Official Charts Company. Vying for third place is Cliff Richard's Just... Fabulous Rock 'n' Roll, which would be his 44th top 10 album, followed by Michael Ball and Alfie Boe's Together and Elvis Presley's The Wonder Of You. Days after his death, Leonard Cohen's final studio album You Want It Darker shot up 23 places to number six, while his 2002 greatest hits album The Essential Leonard Cohen has re-entered the charts at 19. David Bowie's latest Legacy compilation is currently at number 13, followed by Nathan Sykes' debut solo album Unfinished Business. Clean Bandit's Rockabye looks set for a second week at the top of the singles chart, with Little Mix's Shout Out To My Ex currently at number two. Say You Won't Let Me Go by James Arthur looks likely to claim third position, followed by 24K Magic by Bruno Mars and Sexual by Swedish producer Neiked. Randy Crawford's One Day I'll Fly Away has made a comeback 36 years after its released, coming in at number 24 in the top 40, after it was used in this year's John Lewis television Christmas advert. More than 2,000 people have been fined for driving in Belfast's bus lanes - in the dead of night when buses aren't even running More than 2,000 people have been fined for driving in Belfast's bus lanes - in the dead of night when buses aren't even running. In many cases motorists did not realise cameras were rolling 24 hours a day. One driver said he had been ticketed twice in the space of 30 minutes outside Central Station at 1am in the morning. Roads Minister Chris Hazzard has now asked for the matter to be reviewed. City centre buses do not run at night. It is the latest controversy to hit the city's bus lanes, which have been strongly criticised over the high number of fines issued to drivers. The Belfast Telegraph reported in September how one camera had scooped 1m in just 15 months. South Belfast MLA Christopher Stalford said it was "absurd" to fine people for using the bus lanes at night. "I am astounded by the figures that the Belfast Telegraph has obtained," he said. "It is becoming increasingly clear to a lot of people that the bus lanes and the cameras on them are a money-spinner, rather than making it easier to move people around Belfast." Bus lanes were introduced in 2012 as part of the Belfast on the Move traffic plan, to help get people around the city more quickly. Since June 2015, motorists who drive in the lanes have faced a 90 fine, which is reduced to 45 if paid in two weeks. There are more than 60 bus lanes across the city. Two operate 24 hours a day - even though no buses operate in Belfast through the night. These are at East Bridge Street, which runs past Central Station, and Castle Street, which is a buses-only street. Figures obtained by this newspaper after a Freedom of Information request show a total of 2,205 fines were issued at both locations between midnight and 6am. The fines were issued in a 16-month period between June 2015 and September this year. A handful of buses do run to Dublin, Derry and the two airports. Yet the city centre services - which the lanes were supposed to benefit - are not in operation through the night. Mr Stalford added: "It is absurd to be fining people for being in a bus lane when there are no buses running. "That needs to change. It is completely unfair to penalise people like this." The disclosure will add to the growing criticism of bus lanes. The Belfast Telegraph recently reported how the cameras had raised more than 2.7m in their first 15 months. Up to August 31 this year, a total of 51,811 penalty charge notices were issued. They were worth a combined 2,729,021 - or 6,245 a day on average. One camera, at Donegall Square East beside City Hall, was responsible for 17,972 penalties being issued to city centre commuters in just 15 months. That camera alone had generated fines totalling 975,242 by the end of August. The other hotspots are Castle Street, where drivers have been issued with 14,184 fines, worth 706,366, and Great Victoria Street, where 8,167 fines worth 442,978 have been generated. Mr Stalford added: "The whole idea of charging people for accidentally driving into bus lanes needs to be looked at again." The Department for Infrastructure said minister Chris Hazzard was looking at the policy of fining people for using the lanes at night. A spokesperson said: "Castle Street between Fountain Street and Donegall Place is currently a no-entry street for all vehicles except buses and bicycles. "This is to stop traffic using the city centre as a short cut when travelling either east or west between High Street and Millfield. "It also facilitates south-only bus movements on Donegall Place, by allowing north bound buses to use Queens Street and Castle Street. "The minister has asked officials to look at the restrictions within this area of Belfast to ascertain if changes to existing prohibitions can be made." Previously, officials have denied that Belfast's bus lanes are aimed at raising money. In September 2015 Ciaran de Burca told MLAs from Stormont's regional development committee that the level of fines incurred was a surprise. While he admitted the department's finances were "in the red", Mr de Burca said the scheme was not a money-making operation. 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Robin Newton said he would not tolerate any abuse of procedures and would not be sympathetic to representatives who breach the rules. He said: " It has been disappointing that members, of late, have been frequently breaching our procedures by challenging standard procedural decisions and challenging the authority of both myself and the Deputy Speakers both inside and outside the chamber. "Indeed, we have had occasion to write to two members who have been challenging the authority of the chair following last week's business. "As I made it clear to party leaders in a letter of October 21, members who challenge the authority or that of the Deputy Speakers, whether inside or outside the chamber, need not expect me to be sympathetic towards them or future business. "I have discussed this with the Deputy Speakers and I am increasingly concerned about this issue and members seeking to involve us in issues which are properly for ministers or indeed, party political debate. "There are indeed many issues being raised with us at the minute but I warn members we will be proactive in relation to any abuse of procedures towards the chair." The comments come after some elected representatives queried decisions taken by the Speaker's office in recent months. Last week, Alliance Party MLA Chris Lyttle used social media to voice concern that his urgent oral question request, which allows matters of public importance to be discussed at short notice, was turned down. He wrote on Twitter: "At total loss how Assembly Speaker ruled Teacher Strike does not merit an urgent oral question response from Ed Min." Meanwhile, the Speaker has also been accused of blocking debates on a number of controversial issues including the Nama property scandal and appointment of a new Executive press secretary. Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye Dee Fennell and Colin Duffy 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye Dee Fennell and Colin Duffy 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Kevin Scott / Presseye 25th Anniversary Commemoration parade for IRA member Patricia Black takes place through Lenadoon on November 13th 2016 in Belfast , Northern Ireland. (Photo by Kevin Scott / Presseye) Images showing children dressed in paramilitary regalia taking part in a republican parade have been criticised by the Children's Commissioner. On Sunday, children in berets and sunglasses joined Republicans marching in West Belfast to remember an IRA terrorist killed 25 years ago. The parade for Patricia Black (18) ,who was killed by her own bomb on November 15 1991, took place through Lenadoon. A number of children can be seen taking part marching with flags and their faces partially covered with sunglasses. Northern Ireland's Children's Commissioner raised concerns over the images showing young people taking part - and said it needs to form part of a wider discussion. Koulla Yiasouma said her primary concern is the best interests of children. She said: "I have to make sure that relevant authorities are keeping children safe and let's not forget that it's parents who decided that their children take part in what was deemed to be a legal parade. "I would be concerned about images of children in any sorts of involvement with any sort of paramilitary regalia or images. "I will be contacting all the relevant authorities including the parades commission to make sure the best interests of these children have been protected and there are no child protection issues." She added: "This is a legal parade what I would like to know is what measures are in place to make sure that the authorities know if children are going to take part. "Do I think it's OK, probably not, but thats not within my remit telling parents how to involve their children in legal parades." Meanwhile Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly refused to tell the BBC Stephen Nolan Show whether he supported the children taking part and their attire. He said: "Do you have a problem when it comes to cadets wearing British Army uniform? Or in memorials for British Army that they also wear berets and all the rest of it? "If you want to be consistent, be consistent but don't come to me every time you want to make a complaint about Republicans. "If you are going to be consistent look right across the board - because young people do this throughout Ireland, throughout Britain." He added: "If you are asking me a biased question about a particular section of children, it is fair for me to ask you to look at it right across the board." Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact detectives at Musgrave Police Station Two men have entered a house in the Cooke Place area of south Belfast and attacked a woman. Shortly after 9am on Monday, the men entered the house and assaulted a woman who was in the house with a young child. The woman received injuries that required hospital treatment. Detective Sergeant Keith Wilson said: "One of the men is described as being approximately 510 tall, of stocky build, with a bald head, stubble and he spoke with a Belfast accent. "He was wearing a dark hip-length puffa type jacket and dark trousers. The second man is described as being of stocky build and was wearing a dark waterproof type hooded jacket and black gloves. "I would ask anyone with any information about this incident to contact detectives at Musgrave Police Station on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 264 of 14/11/16. "Or if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details, they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111." A councillor who was attacked when he tried to reason with a group of youths as they defaced a memorial to the late PUP leader David Ervine says he was "deeply saddened" that the incident occurred on Remembrance Sunday. Dr John Kyle, a local GP who is in his sixties, was also swift to call for no retaliation following the incident, which occurred on the Albertbridge Road at around 8.20am. It is understood four young people were involved in defacing the memorial, with one of the perpetrators reportedly defecating on the structure. When Dr Kyle, who was on his bike at the time, intervened and asked the group of youths to stop what they were doing, he was kicked but did not sustain any injuries. The PUP councillor for the area said he had spoken to Mr Ervine's widow, Jeanette, and revealed she echoed Dr Kyle's appeal that the attack would not cause trouble among the east Belfast community. Stressing that he was "absolutely fine", Dr Kyle last night said the incident had been condemned by all sides of the community. He told the Belfast Telegraph: "For this to have happened on Remembrance Sunday, of all days, and particularly given David's role in trying to bring about a political process which resulted in Stormont running again, and as a man who was held in such high esteem in east Belfast, it is just very regrettable that this has happened. "What we as a party have made clear is that the last thing David would have wanted is for this to cause any angry backlash. David would not have wanted retaliation or anything like that, his reaction would have been one of sadness and that is my own reaction on this occasion. "I just think it is very regrettable that something so shameful should take place on Remembrance Sunday. People have been working hard to continue David's work to bring peace and prosperity to an area of east Belfast which has suffered from deprivation and it would be awful if something like this would spoil all that effort. "I have spoken to David's widow, Jeanette, and explained what happened. "She was obviously upset but equally firm in saying she wouldn't want this to cause any trouble in east Belfast." The young people involved in the incident are understood to have been in their late teens or early 20s. Sophie Long, the PUP's Director of Communications, urged anyone who comes across video footage of the memorial attack to contact police with a view to prosecuting those responsible. She said everyone connected to the party was "very sad" about what had happened to Dr Kyle and to the memorial itself. "For anyone to use violence on such a lovely, gentle man as John is just awful," said Ms Long. A statement on the PUP's Facebook page welcomed the condemnation "from all sections of the community". A PSNI spokesman said officers are investigating the report of an assault on a man in the Albertbridge Road area of Belfast which occurred at around 8.40am on Sunday morning, as well as a report of attempted criminal damage to a memorial on the Albertbridge Road. Inspector Murphy would appeal to anyone who may have witnessed either of these incidents to contact police at Strandtown Police station on the non-emergency number 101. Peter Robinson says his position "has already been set out in detail" at the Northern Ireland Finance Committee hearing Peter Robinson has said he is not answerable to a parliamentary inquiry in Dublin probing a controversial 1.2 billion property portfolio sale by the Republic's toxic assets agency Nama. The former Northern Ireland first minister said he would want to help the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee investigation but he has not received an invitation to attend. The committee said it sent a letter to Mr Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness more than a month ago, on October 5, asking them to give evidence before the hearings. While Mr McGuinness agreed to attend, and is to be cross-examined on Wednesday, the parliamentary watchdog said it never received a response from Mr Robinson. It works on the assumption that no response within 10 days means the invitee is unavailable. Mr Robinson told the Press Association: "I have not received any invitation yet but constitutionally Northern Ireland ministers are not and should not be answerable to a Dail committee for their actions. "However I would want to be helpful to the committee in carrying out its role. If they do want to contact me I'm sure we can devise another way to provide my views to the committee." He added: "My position has already been set out in detail at the Northern Ireland Finance Committee hearing." Mr McGuinness has previously said he thinks Mr Robinson should attend the hearings. Dublin's Public Accounts Committee is investigating the sale by Nama of a massive Northern Ireland property portfolio, known as Project Eagle, to American investment fund Cerberus in 2014. It wants to speak to Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness about a phone call they were involved in, along with Dublin's Finance Minister Michael Noonan, about Project Eagle in January 2014, months before the sale. Another US investment company, Pimco, has told the committee it pulled out of an earlier bid for the portfolio after it discovered a "success fee" or fixer payment of 16 million for three parties behind the scenes. Pimco said the money was to be shared equally by Belfast businessman Frank Cushnahan, US law firm Brown Rudnick, and Ian Coulter, a managing partner of Tughans, a Belfast law firm subcontracted to assist in the deal. Mr Cushnahan was formerly a Nama adviser on Northern Ireland on the recommendation of the Democratic Unionist Party. Brown Rudnick also acted as advisers in the successful deal with Cerberus, which has been dogged by scandal for more than a year, including 7 million linked to it being found in an Isle of Man bank account. Mr Coulter resigned after it was unearthed. Pimco said it was first approached about buying the portfolio in April 2013, by Brown Rudnick, which introduced Mr Cushnahan and Mr Coulter. The investment firm was told the Northern Ireland government wanted to ensure there would no fire-sale of the properties and that "it was a sensitive political matter and would have a major impact on the Northern Ireland economy". Following a meeting with Mr Robinson and then finance minister Sammy Wilson in May 2013, Pimco was "informed by Brown Rudnick that it was the Northern Irish government's preferred purchaser for Nama's Northern Ireland portfolio", the firm said in a letter to the committee last week. All parties involved have denied any wrongdoing. The fate of an RAF airman who was lost in a Second World War bombing raid has been uncovered in an aircraft excavation in Belgium 71 years later. Flying Officer Holman Gordon Stanley Kerr, from Lurgan, was one of a crew of seven who all perished when their Lancaster aircraft was shot down in Belgium on its return from a bombing raid on Germany in March 1945. Several bodies were recovered from the downed aircraft at the time and buried in a communal grave with seven headstones at Heverlee War Cemetery, but the remains of Flying Officer Kerr were never identified. Earlier this year, a special team scanned the area to identify the exact location of the Lancaster and this weekend they excavated the aircraft from the soft ground where it had crashed, under the strict guidance of the RAF, Royal Australian Air Force and the Belgian Air Force. History Hub Ulster member Gavin Bamford was at the dig in a personal capacity to ensure that the remaining crew are buried with dignity and full RAF honours in Heverlee cemetery. He said the team have uncovered the remains of three of the crew and judging by their position in the aircraft, they were probably the Australian, Jamaican and one of the English crew members. This throws new light on the burials carried out in 1945, suggesting that four bodies were retrieved but not identified, including that of Flying Officer Kerr. All four were buried in Heverlee cemetery in a group grave. The bodies recovered over the weekend will now be buried with full RAF honours in the same cemetery. Expand Close Excavation work shows the soft ground into which Flying Officer Kerrs Lancaster bomber crashed in 1945 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Excavation work shows the soft ground into which Flying Officer Kerrs Lancaster bomber crashed in 1945 Locals in Bunsbeek, Belgium, have known about this shot down aircraft for the past 71 years and all are excited over the project to excavate it from the ground, Mr Bamford said. All seven crew on the plane perished, including the Lurgan born pilot, Holman Gordon S Kerr, son of Mr and Mrs J Kerr, Lurgan. Gordon Kerr was formerly a junior official with the Belfast Banking Company and served in Rathfriland branch. The Belfast Banking Company merged with Northern Bank in 1970 and now trades as Danske Bank. Gordon Kerr was educated at Lurgan College from September 3, 1934 until July 31, 1940. Soon after leaving school, he joined the Belfast Banking Company and worked in its Rathfriland branch. During the war, he was stationed at RAF Waterbeach, Cambridge. On the night of March 5, 1945, the crew flew their Lancaster bomber aircraft on an operation to Gelsenkirchen, a benzol plant, and it was shot down over Belgium. Expand Close The latest bodies to be discovered being recovered / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The latest bodies to be discovered being recovered Witnesses of the crash said the plane disappeared nose down into soggy ground. But years later it was still possible to see marks in the meadow, indicating the last resting place of the huge plane, which had a length of 21 metres, height of six metres and wingspan of 31 metres. Experts believed the wet ground may have preserved the craft over the last 70 years and the bombs it carried may still lie in the subsoil. In the search for the craft, they used sonar technology to scan to a depth of eight metres. Mr Bamford said that the weekend excavation of the RAF Lancaster went well, although the aircraft was buried in fuel-soaked clay and this has made the excavation conditions difficult. The locals were very respectful of the job they were doing and at all times treated the remains with much dignity. My photos show the small coffins draped with the Australian and United Kingdom flags, he said. This exercise has helped to show that the remains of Pilot Officer Gordon Kerr were discovered at the time of the crash, but were unidentifiable. The seven crew were F/O Holman Gordon Stanley Kerr, Sgt. William Marsden, F/Sgt. Sidney Smith, F/O Frank Clarke, F/Sgt. Allan Olsen, Sgt. Christopher George Hogg and Sgt. Herbert Percival Thomas. The excavation was attended by the British and Australian ambassadors to Belgium and the excavation was carried out by Plane Hunters Recovery Team, assisted by many groups and volunteers. A 14-year-old girl was among a number of young teenagers targeted by a sinister social media account posing as a Northern Ireland modelling agency. File image A 14-year-old girl was among a number of young teenagers targeted by a sinister social media account posing as a Northern Ireland modelling agency. Using the image messaging app Snapchat, the fake ACA Models account sent messages direct to teenagers and young women. The recipients were told they could earn anywhere between 450 and 55,000 by working for the model and promotions company. Alison Campbell, the agency's boss, was alerted to the fake account on Saturday, after her friend's daughter received a message. And she stressed that her company does not recruit models online. The Snapchat profile claimed to be from 'Louise' who said she worked as head of recruitment for ACA Models agency. "The reason I have added you, is because after looking at least one of your Instagram photos we have decided that you are suitable to model for our agency," the message said. "We are offering between 450 and 55,000 a shoot depending on who we put you forward for. "In terms of different types of modelling we literally do every single type you could think of. Obviously the more you are interested in the better chance you have of getting jobs. "This is a one-off opportunity and we are looking for 30 new models. This is purely based on a first come, first served basis. "If you are interested, then please give me a message asap. "Bear in mind the reason why we have added you to our company Snapchat account is because we are interested in you as well." Former Miss Northern Ireland and ACA model, Leanne McDowell, issued a warning online not to accept messages from the fake account. Many of the messages were sent in the early hours of Saturday morning and encouraged the teens and women to send pictures of themselves. Miss Campbell also posted a warning on the official ACA Models Facebook page. "I started getting lots of private messages from people asking if we were recruiting on Snapchat," she said. "Then I got a message from a 14-year-old girl asking if we were taking on new models through the app, as she had been asked to join. "The young girl wrote back saying she was interested and that she would love to be a model and has always been interested. "The person wrote back asking for some pictures of her and she sent some head pictures. "The person replied and said they would like to see some body pictures. "Fortunately she alerted her mum to the account after that. "It's very dangerous. We definitely don't contact people through social media or send any alerts to any random people. "It's happened in the past - people have been in Belfast city and went up to people saying they were from ACA Models and were scouting and asked for details." A tribute at the scene of the crash The son of a dissident murder victim who died in a road crash will be laid to rest tomorrow morning at the same church where his murdered father's funeral took place at in 2013. Kevin Kearney-McMillan (27) died when his silver Toyota Supra careered off the road on York Street in Belfast close to its junction with the Limestone Road, colliding with a tree. The north Belfast man had recently become a father again when he died on Friday. Rescue teams cut him from his wrecked vehicle and he was rushed to the Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital, but later died. Last night, family and friends were preparing to say their final farewells at a funeral in Holy Family Church, north Belfast on Tuesday morning. He will be buried at Milltown Cemetery. His heartbroken mother Jeanette spoke of her sorrow in a death notice, saying that she has lost her only son, who had a "heart of gold". "We will miss your wit, wisdom, kindness and compassion, and most of all son, your presence in our lives," she said. Mr Kearney-McMillan's partner Katie said: "Where do I begin, you were the love of my life, left too soon, my love for you went beyond the moon, stay close to me and the boys Kevin, we love and miss you so much, you were the heart and soul of our family, love you so much, your Katie and boys." His grandmother Maureen McMillan expressed her devastation in another heartrending death notice. "Your smile has gone forever, and your hands we can never touch, we have so many memories we all love you so much," she said. Many friends have expressed solidarity with the family. Flowers and notes have been left at the site of the road crash. It is the second devastating tragedy for the family. Mr Kearney-McMillan's father, Kevin Kearney, was killed by the dissident republican group which calls itself "the IRA" in October 2013 in what police at the time termed as a "callous and cold-blooded murder". His body was found in a lake in Alexandra Park. He had been shot. The 46-year-old father-of-four had left his daughter off at school on Tuesday morning, and returned home to take his dogs for a walk in Alexandra Park. Mr Kearney's brother Martin spoke out at that time and said the murder had "torn us apart". "He lived for his children. He spent almost every hour with his children. It has torn the family apart. It has been a very emotional week. We're just devastated," he said. A former model, television personality and wedding planner who went on to become one of the UK's top law graduates has had his ambitions thrown into limbo by the Student Loans Company (SLC). Antrim-born Anthony Miller, who often appears on Stephen Nolan's TV and radio shows, is one of 31 Northern Irish victims of a blunder by the company. After initially being told they had been successful in their applications for loans to fund their postgraduate courses in England, the SLC said it had made a mistake and withdrew the offers. The Masters students began their courses in September - but now the SLC has said the 10,000 they received was a mistake. It has left Anthony - who starred in the BBC1 Northern Ireland Radio Face TV series - and the 30 others facing an uncertain future. The 38-year-old graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class degree with honours in July and was set for a bright future as a lawyer, until he received the devastating news that Student Finance England, on behalf of the SLC, had done a U-turn. The students from Northern Ireland had completed degrees in England and believed they were eligible for postgraduate funding there. But after starting their courses, the SLC informed the students that the money was being withdrawn as they had moved to England to study and weren't normally resident there. The SLC said the students from Northern Ireland did not "meet the residency requirements to be eligible for a postgraduate loan" and blamed "human error in the interpretation of the regulations when processing" the loan applications. Anthony has said he has been left devastated and has been left with no option but to withdraw from the Masters degree in Legal Practice, a qualification he needs in order to pursue a career in law. "I had enrolled on my course and my studies were going really well, then out of nowhere came the news that my funding had been withdrawn," he said. "There was some uncertainty as to what the regulations would be and it was quite late in the summer before the Student Loans Company was prepared to receive applications. "I spoke with various agents on a number of occasions and I was advised that I had met the requirements" Anthony sent his application to the SLC and said he was told that he had been approved by a company advisor as well as by their automated system. "I spoke with one of their agents who advised me that my funds would be paid within a couple of weeks as it was taking some time to process the applications and when I rang the Student Loans Company the automated answering system advised that my application had been approved," he said. When the news came that Anthony had in fact been declined, based on the residency requirements, he immediately contacted the SLC. He said he was advised that it may have been an error and should appeal, which he did. SLC chief Steve Lamey sent Anthony a letter 15 days later which dealt the devastating blow that his appeal had not been upheld. The letter stated: "Our records show that you were previously awarded funding by the devolved authority, Student Finance Northern Ireland for an undergraduate course in England". "You have now completed that course and are progressing onto a postgraduate Master's degree course in England". "When a student transitions immediately from one course to another it is considered a continuous study period and their residence remains their home region." Anthony said he is currently seeking legal advice about what do next, and may take a case against the SLC. Born in the Stiles estate in Antrim, he left St Joseph's Primary School having failed the 11-plus and then was expelled from St Malachy's High School before his GCSEs. He finished school with no qualifications but had a modelling contract from the age of 15. He moved to London at the age of 25 and set up a wedding planning service with his friend Richard Jones under the title Ant and Dic. The couple were among the first to plan the civil partnership celebrations of gay couples, a niche that got them featured on Wedding TV on Sky. In 2011, he decided he wanted to become a lawyer and ended up one of the top law graduates in England. A Belfast-born banker is understood to be among the leading contenders for appointment to the role of US ambassador to Ireland. Michael George emigrated to the USA in the late 1980s and has since gone on to enjoy a stellar career in the financial services industry. Mr George is managing director of Fortress Investment Group, the New York-based private equity giant that lost out to rival Cerberus in the competition to acquire Nama's Project Eagle Northern Ireland loan portfolio. He is described by sources as a "strong supporter from day one" of Donald Trump and a "very close friend" of the US president-elect's son Donald Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Prior to joining Fortress in October 2009, George spent 10 years as a managing director at Deutsche Bank in New York. Before that, he spent 13 years at Lehman Brothers in New York and London, where he started his career. An American citizen since the 1990s, he earned his MA in economics and post-graduate diploma in computer science from Cambridge University, having entered on an academic scholarship. Mr George emailed the Taoiseach Enda Kenny's then-chief economic advisor, Andrew McDowell, on February 13, 2014, asking how Fortress might become involved in the bidding for Nama's Northern Ireland loan book, code-named Project Eagle. In his email, George said: "We've heard that Nama/Dept of Finance is running a 'process' for the loans to NI borrowers. Being from the North, I've taken a keen interest in this 4bn portfolio and would like to throw our hat in the ring. Might you have any insight as to how we can get involved?" Married with three children and living in New York, George is said to be a passionate follower of Irish rugby and takes a keen interest in Irish affairs. In 2012 he hosted the launch of a finance internship for Queen's University Belfast students in his Manhattan home. The event saw the unveiling of a portrait of senator George Mitchell, former special advisor to US president Bill Clinton on Ireland. A letter written by Padraig Pearse ordering the 1916 Easter Rising volunteers to surrender will not be bought by the Irish government as it would waste resources, says a minister A letter written by Padraig Pearse ordering the 1916 Easter Rising volunteers to surrender will not be bought by the Irish government as it would waste resources, says a minister. Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys defended the decision not to buy the historic letter as its guide price at an upcoming auction of up to 1.5m (1.3m) was "rather a lot," she said. The Pearse letter, written three days before his execution, was brought to the volunteers' garrison in Dublin's Four Courts, which then surrendered. She said the Republic's National Museum already has other surrender letters written by Pearse. "The cost mentioned was between 1m and 1.5m so there were other pressures that we felt we had to meet. "There were a number of such letters of a similar type. We felt that to spent 1m or 1.5m on one single letter would be rather a lot," she said. Minister Humphreys was speaking at the unveiling of a monument at Glasnevin cemetery yesterday - a gift from the people of France to Ireland in recognition of the sacrifice of Irishmen on French battlefields, chiefly during the First World War. The new France-Ireland Memorial was officially dedicated by French Minister Jean-Marc Todeschini and Ms Humphreys. The memorial is over seven metres tall and consists of a Celtic cross surrounded by tall leaning rocks. The cross is a replica of a wooden cross created by the 16th Irish Division during the Battle of the Somme at the churchyard at Ginchy in France. Nigel Farage has accused Downing Street of allowing "petty party politics" to get in the way of the national interest, after he was given the cold shoulder over his offer to act as a go-between with US President-elect Donald Trump. Number 10 dismissed suggestions that the Ukip leader might become the "third person" in the relationship between Mr Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May, insisting that the Government already has "well-established" channels of communication. Mr Farage scored a huge political coup in becoming the first British politician to meet Mr Trump after his election victory, and said he was ready to play a "constructive" role in fostering close UK relations with the new regime at the White House. But Mrs May's official spokeswoman p ointed out that the Prime Minister has already had a phone conversation with Mr Trump, in which he invited her to visit Washington at the earliest opportunity and voiced his hopes of striking up a relationship comparable to that between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "The president-elect talked about enjoying the same relationship Reagan and Thatcher did," said the spokeswoman. "I don't remember there being any third person in that relationship." In response, Mr Farage told LBC radio: "It just amazes me that those ghastly little apparatchiks that work in Downing Street put out statements like this. It just goes to show they are not really interested in the country or the national interest, they are more concerned about petty party politics and trying to keep me out of everything. "If you think of America in terms of a business and think of them as a client we want to do business with. What would you do? You would use the person who has the connections. Nobody in this administration in the UK has any connections with the Trump team at all, and yet they are prepared on behalf of the country to cut off their noses to spite their faces." Mr Farage, who spent around an hour with the president-elect in his Trump Tower home in New York, said he had only gone to the US to meet "old friends" in the politician's team and did not expect to meet Mr Trump himself. Conservative former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said it was "not sensible" to ignore Mr Farage, and the May administration should "think out of the box" about their relations with Washington. "If Nigel Farage is well-connected with Donald Trump - as it would appear that he is - then we should certainly be talking to him," Sir Gerald told BBC Radio 4's World At One. "I am not suggesting a formal role for him but I certainly do think it is worth talking to him." Mr Farage appeared to hint he had spoken with ministers about his contacts with Mr Trump. Asked whether any Cabinet members had sounded him out, he told LBC "Not really", though he declined to explain his comment. Pressed over whether Mrs May saw a role for Mr Farage, the PM's official spokeswoman said: "We have established routes of engagement with the president-elect and his team. Our diplomatic staff have been building those contacts and links in the run-up to the election ... Relations between the two teams are working well." And she brushed off suggestions that ministers could be briefed by Mr Farage on his meeting, telling reporters: "It seems to me that there are pretty widespread reports of his visit to Trump, so I'm not sure they need to speak to him - they could just read the British press." The spokeswoman said she "did not recognise" reports that Mrs May was disappointed that the UK embassy in Washington, led by ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, had not got closer to Mr Trump's team during the election campaign. "The Prime Minister has welcomed the work that the diplomatic team have been doing at the embassy in Washington and the engagement from our ambassador to the US and his team with the teams of both candidates in the run-up to the election," she said. The spokeswoman went on: "This is about the relationship between the Government of the United Kingdom and the president-elect and the office of the White House as it will be once he is inaugurated in the United States. There are well-established channels for that relationship between the elected politicians, the elected leader of the US and the Prime Minister of the UK and we intend to continue with that route." Mr Farage said that the election of Mr Trump represented a "fantastic opportunity" for the UK which could give it extra clout in Brexit negotiations under Article 50 of the EU treaties. "He is a really devoted Anglophile," said the Ukip leader. "He loves this country and he was talking about where his mum comes from in Scotland and how beautiful the countryside is and he has investments in this country. "I think, talking not just to him but to his team, there is no question that they want the relationship between the US and UK to be back where it should be - because Obama very much downplayed it. "I think we have got a fantastic opportunity here, a chance to do a trade deal with the USA. And the prospect of that - I think - strengthens our negotiating hand in Brussels after Article 50 is declared, so this is really important stuff." Mr Farage dismissed Sir Kim as an "arch-europhile" and said that Mr Trump's team had "very long memories" about disobliging comments about the president-elect made by Cabinet ministers including Mrs May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during the election campaign. "I genuinely, honestly think I could play a constructive role here," said the Ukip leader. "But if I'm not wanted, what can I do? "I don't want anything, I'm not asking for anything. I'm just saying that actually I can help with something that I think is very, very important." Mr Farage said he did not believe that Steve Bannon - the Breitbart News chairman who has been appointed a senior adviser to Mr Trump, is a "white supremacist", as critics have claimed. And he said that while there "may be a bit of truth" in reports of a spike in hate crimes since the election, it was being "exaggerated" by Mr Trump's opponents. Former chancellor George Osborne backed Mrs May's position. Asked if he would hire Mr Farage to build bridges with Mr Trump, Mr Osborne told ITV's The Agenda: "Absolutely not, I mean Theresa May is a very sensible person who is not going to do that. "The British Prime Minister or the British Government cannot contract its foreign policy out to Nigel Farage." Mr Osborne urged Mrs May to focus on Brexit rather than relations with Mr Trump. "For the first time really the most important decisions over the next few years are going to be about our relationship with Europe, not about our relationship with the United States," he said. Home Secretary Amber Rudd has authorised the extradition of Lauri Love to the US, where he is accused of hacking into government computers, the Home Office said. Mr Love, who has Asperger syndrome, is alleged to have stolen huge amounts of data from US agencies including the Federal Reserve, the US Army, the Department of Defence, Nasa and the FBI, in a spate of online attacks in 2012 and 2013. US authorities have been fighting for the 31-year-old, who lives with his parents near Newmarket in Suffolk, to face trial over charges of cyber-hacking, which his lawyers say could mean a sentence of up to 99 years in prison if he is found guilty. Responding to the announcement, Mr Love's father , the Rev Alexander Love, told the Press Association : "It was going to happen - it was inevitable - but it's still painful. I cannot begin to express how much sorrow it causes me." He added: "All we are asking for is British justice for a British citizen." During a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court on September 16, District Judge Nina Tempia ruled that Mr Love could be extradited. Mrs Rudd had two months to consider four legal matters - including if there was a risk of the death penalty and extradition arrangements between the US and UK - before deciding whether to block or order extradition. A Home Office spokesman said: "On Monday 14 November, the Secretary of State, having carefully considered all relevant matters, signed an order for Lauri Love's extradition to the United States. "Mr Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting US military and federal government agencies." Mr Love, who could face the possibility of three separate trials in different jurisdictions, has 14 days to apply for permission to appeal against the decision. It is alleged that between October 2012 and October 2013 Mr Love caused "millions of dollars" worth of damage by placing hidden "backdoors" within the networks he compromised, allowing them to return and steal confidential data. Mr Love, who also suffers from depression and eczema, has said that a jail term in the US could cause his health to deteriorate and would lead to a mental breakdown or suicide. Barry Sheerman, one of the more than 100 MPs who have signed a letter calling on US President Barack Obama to block Mr Love's extradition, said he was "deeply disappointed" at the decision. The Labour MP for Huddersfield said: "We are still keeping up the pressure. We are getting more and more MPs to sign the letter to President Obama." He added: "The pressure continues, we won't give up." Conservative MP David Burrowes, who also led the fight to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon, said the Home Secretary had little power to block the extradition and that he expected Mr Love to appeal against the decision. The MP for Enfield Southgate said : "We hope that the High Court realises it would be disproportionate to extradite Mr Love and risk his life. "Failing that we have to rely on Donald Trump to step in and be our knight in shining armour. "President Obama is still going to be president until January and we still hope that in one of his final acts he could stop the extradition. "Donald Trump is trying to show his fair mindedness, care and concern, and there is no better way to show that than to stop Lauri Love's extradition." Tor Ekeland, Mr Love's US lawyer and an expert in hacking cases, said Mrs Rudd was "boxed in" by UK legislation and would have found it "very hard" to justify blocking the extradition. He told Iain Dale on LBC: "We were expecting this because under the law in the UK now this is essentially a rubber stamp for the Home Secretary - there's not much latitude which she has. "But he does have an appeal to the High Courts. We have one more shot at it in the UK." Mr Ekeland added that he feared that Mr Love would face a "way harsher environment" in the US following Mr Trump's election than he would have under the Obama administration. Mr Love has yet to comment but - in an apparent nod to the announcement - posted a picture of a beer on his Twitter page alongside the caption: "This one is dedicated to Her Majesty's Principal (if not Principled) Secretary of State for the Home Department." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned in the Ecuadorian embassy WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally been questioned in the presence of Swedish officials about a sex allegation. Sweden's assistant prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and police inspector Cecilia Redell were present at the interview inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Questions supplied by Swedish officials were put by an Ecuador government representative to Mr Assange, who has always denied the allegation. He has been living inside the embassy for over four years, believing that if he leaves, he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. The results of the interview will be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Ecuador's UK ambassador Carlos Ortiz was in the embassy during the interview, as well as lawyers for Mr Assange. Ms Isgren faced a battery of photographers as she arrived at the embassy in Knightsbridge, and left four hours later, with up to 20 police officers holding back reporters, photographers and TV crews from across the world. She made no comment and is not expected to say anything until well after the questioning is finished. WikiLeaks tweeted: " After UN & court findings condemning 6 years of abuses by Sweden against Assange, Sweden finally takes his statement for the first time ever." A small group of supporters stood outside the embassy, holding up banners calling for the WikiLeaks founder to be freed. A statement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorian legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview." Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who is responsible for the investigation, said: "I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect." As the interview got under way, Mr Assange's cat sat in a window looking out at the scenes in front of him, later returning wearing a small collar and tie. The cat has its own Twitter feed, which says it lives with Mr Assange and is "interested in counter-purrveillance". Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell joined Assange supporters, saying he hoped the questioning would lead to the WikiLeaks founder being freed. "WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have performed an important public service in exposing government deception and human rights abuses," he said. "We are appalled it has taken the Swedish prosecutors six years to come and interview him. Julian has always said he is willing to meet them so why has it taken so long? "It is clear that the Swedish prosecutor has seriously mishandled the case and subjected Julian to unreasonable delays that have denied his right to swift and fair justice. "We have always said Julian Assange should answer the serious sex allegations but he has made it clear he is willing to answer the allegations." Emma Butlin is part of a group which has been holding vigils outside the embassy three or four days a week since Mr Assange arrived more than four years ago. She said support for Mr Assange remained strong. Sources said the questioning of Mr Assange could take up to three days. WikiLeaks said in a statement that after six years of offering his statement to the Swedish authorities, Mr Assange has finally been afforded the opportunity to do so. It continued: "There have been numerous irregularities in Sweden's preliminary investigation, which the UN has described as "excessive and unnecessary". "Sweden's failure to progress the preliminary investigation until now has resulted in a gross breach of Mr Assange's right to be presumed innocent and has fatally harmed his ability to meaningfully defend himself. "Unfortunately, the irregularities with procedure have continued today. Mr Assange's Swedish counsel, Per Samuelson, was not notified or summoned to attend the procedure by the relevant prosecution authorities, despite the fact that the process concerns a preliminary investigation in Sweden under Swedish law in the presence of a Swedish prosecutor. " Mr Assange's Swedish defence counsel had travelled to London in the hope of being able to attend. In spite of the fact that Mr Assange's Ecuadorian counsel, Carlos Poveda Moreno, raised concern that Mr Samuelson was not present at the start of the procedure, the authorities in charge proceeded anyway. "This clear breach of process did not stop Mr Assange cooperating fully. Mr Assange felt compelled to participate even with these problems. "For the first time since August 2010, Mr Assange was finally able to give his statement in relation to this allegation. He has done so in part to ensure the Swedish authorities have no further excuse not to discontinue their preliminary investigation. "In the presence of Swedish prosecutors, but without his Swedish defence counsel, he offered his full cooperation throughout the process. These irregularities will be raised in a formal setting in the near future." (l-r) Admi Headley, 34, Paul Bromwich, 54 and Wayne Maycock, 33, who absconded from HMP Leyhil, south Gloucestershire, on Nov 13. Police are hunting for three prisoners serving sentences for crimes including rape, grievous bodily harm and robbery who absconded from an open jail. Admi Headley, Wayne Maycock and Paul Bromwich are considered to be a risk to the public, Avon and Somerset Constabulary said, appealing for help tracing the men. The trio were last seen at HMP Leyhill, a Category D prison in South Gloucestershire, at 4.45pm on Sunday and have links to the Manchester area, said the force, which has alerted Greater Manchester Police. Headley, 34, is described as black, 5ft 10in tall, of slim build with brown eyes and short black hair. He has a tattoo on his left arm. Maycock, 33, is white, 6ft 3in tall, of medium build with green eyes and brown hair. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder and scars on his forehead and both arms. Bromwich, 54, who also uses the name Smith, is 6ft tall, of medium build with blue eyes. He wears glasses and has a scar on the left side of his face and tattoos on both arms. Their disappearance comes less than a week since two men escaped from HMP Pentonville in north London, although both have now been apprehended. Police urged anyone who sees Headley, Maycock or Bromwhich to phone 999 and tell the call handler they are phoning in relation to log 1050 of 13/11. Any information on where they may be can be passed on to police by calling 101 and quoting the same log. Burma police officers patrol along the border fence in Maungdaw, Rakhine State. (AP) At least 34 people were killed in Burma after they attacked troops in western Rakhine state over the weekend, the government says. But villagers belonging to the Muslim Rohingya minority say the victims were unarmed civilians. The government has been conducting counterinsurgency operations since nine police officers were killed in attacks last month on guard posts along the border with Bangladesh generally blamed on Muslim insurgents. Tensions have been high in Rakhine since fighting in 2012 between Buddhists and Muslims. The government said in a statement on Monday that 28 people described as "violent attackers" were killed on Sunday. An earlier statement said six attackers died on Saturday, in addition to two government soldiers. Human rights groups accuse the army of abuses against the Rohingya minority, including killings, rapes and burning of homes. AP European Union foreign ministers are trying to reach a common stance on Turkey over the government crackdown on political opponents and the media European Union foreign ministers are trying to reach a common stance on Turkey over the government crackdown on political opponents and the media. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she and the ministers would strive for "a common, united position on developments in Turkey". Turkey and the EU have been locked in a war of words over Ankara's commitment to democracy and rule of law in the wake of the failed coup in the country in July. EU officials say it is time for Ankara to say whether it really wants to join, but Ms Mogherini said the future of membership would not be on the table at Monday's talks in Brussels. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested holding a referendum on the future of the membership bid. Addressing a group of farmers, Mr Erdogan said: "Let's wait in patience until the end of the year and then go to the people." He was responding to reports that the European Parliament's president said Turkey could face economic sanctions in response to the country's increased crackdown on opposition voices. President Erdogan also accused the EU of not keeping its promises and of supporting the outlawed Kurdish militants. AP Kurdish Peshmerga fighters gather near a frontline during fighting with IS militants in Bashiqa, east of Mosul (AP) Iraqi forces battled waves of suicide car bombs yesterday as they attempt to advance deeper into Mosul in the face of heavy resistance from the Islamic State (IS) group. Troops were converging from several fronts on the city, Iraq's second-largest and the extremists' last major holdout in the country. The special forces have advanced the furthest so far and hold a handful of urban districts. Officers say they have cleared the areas of Qadisiya and Zahra, and are planning to advance further. Over the past week they have inched forward slowly, trying to avoid casualties among their troops and civilians as suicide bombers in armour-plated vehicles rush forward from hiding spots among densely-populated areas. "The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives," said Iraqi special forces Major General Sami al-Aridi. "There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb." Several suicide car bombers attacked in the same area on Saturday, injuring around a dozen troops, three civilians and killing a child, officers said. The troops are building road blocks to prevent car bombs from breaching the front lines. Since last week's quick advance into Mosul proper, they have struggled to hold territory under heavy IS counter-attacks. Donald Trump did not offer Nigel Farage a job in his administration when the pair met in New York at the weekend. "I'm not going to be working for the American administration. Of course I'm not," the Ukip interim leader told Sky News. "I don't think that's going to happen at all, but if I can be useful in any way to the British government then I am very happy to do so." The government has also confirmed that Mr Farage will not assist with the UK's relations with the Trump administration. Senior Conservative Crispin Blunt said it is "completely implausible" the Ukip leader would take up such a role. Mr Farage had hinted that ministers are sounding him out about dealing with Mr Trump, as he revealed the US president-elect's close advisers have "reservations" about Theresa May's government. The interim Ukip leader, who became the first British politician to meet Mr Trump since his shock victory, insisted he could act as a bridge between Downing Street and Trump Tower if asked. Asked if he had contact with Cabinet figures regarding his close ties to the incoming Republican president, Mr Farage told Sky News: "I am not going to go into whatever private phone calls I may, or may not, have had with individual ministers." In a swipe at No 10 officials who have dismissed his links to Mr Trump, the Ukip leader said: "It would appear that the apparatchiks in Downing Street keep saying very negative things about me. I'd have thought that's just a little bit short-sighted, frankly. "I would have thought, in the national interest, they perhaps ought to bury their personal enmity towards me and we ought to have a constructive conversation." Mr Farage disclosed that members of the president-elect's inner circle were concerned about unflattering comments made by British Cabinet ministers, though Mr Trump told him he had a "nice" phone call with Mrs May. "He said he had a nice conversation, although some of his team had reservations about what members of the Cabinet have said during the election. Believe you me, his team are conscious of the comments," Mr Farage told the Daily Telegraph. The pair met at Trump Tower in New York and spent over an hour discussing the president-elect's victory, global politics and Brexit, according to Ukip. Mr Farage used US media appearances to warn Mrs May that she needed to "mend fences" with Mr Trump after the "quite rude" things said about him by leading Tories. Asked on Fox News why the president-elect should meet the PM after the things senior Tories had said about him, Mr Farage said: "I think he has got to meet her. Mrs May's team have been quite rude about Trump, so there are some fences to be mended." Downing Street moved to try to play down the significance of the Ukip leader's meeting with Mr Trump. A spokesman for Mrs May said No 10 "has been consistent that Mr Farage has no role" in the Government's relationship with the incoming US administration. Shared values: Naomi at home with her husband Michael and dog Daisy in Belfast Celebration time: Naomi with husband Michael on the night she was elected as party leader New Alliance leader Naomi Long tells Noel McAdam about her vision for the party going forward in Northern Ireland and discusses the rise of women in politics. Q. You have taken over the leadership from David Ford. How do you intend to differ from him? A. It's not really about difference. People always look for difference, I look on it as diversity. David had a different manner. I have my own way of doing things and it is really about complementing each other. We are both passionate about the same things. But over the next few years it will be for me to put my own mark on things. David has done some really good work, he has moved the party from the centre and not just stabilised it, but achieved electoral success for us. Q. Are there any specific party policies you want to re-examine ? A. We probably have the most developed policy platforms of any of the parties. Our summaries can be as long as other party's entire manifestos (laughs). Yet there are and will be issues, for example, how we build on the strong base that we have. Q. And yet the base is Belfast-centric, aren't you really an east of the Bann party ? A. We have some really good people who have joined in the west, and, absolutely, there are missed opportunities and surprise wins where we want to build. For us it's not just greater Belfast. We have limited resources as a party and we recognise that is the case. So we have to target those resources in areas where we think the chances of a seat are greatest and that has been in the last five years in the east of the province. But there is now a break in the electoral cycle which will allow us to look at other areas. Q. Would your initial focus be on the local government elections in two and a half years and where do you see the potential for Alliance growth beyond Belfast? A. I am not making a list of predictions at this point, but internally in the party we are looking at those targets. There are people out there who make a real difference in their local communities and would want to sit on their local councils. Q. You have made clear on social media and elsewhere that you are not a unionist. What are you? A. I am not a unionist or a nationalist. People see this as a binary issue. The reality is I do not define myself in those binary terms, because it does not reflect my politics which is about celebrating diversity and it is not about the politics of the border. Q. Do you have sympathy with Anna Lo's long-held views that she could favour a united Ireland? A. That's not really news any more, is it? We have known for a very long time that there are people in Alliance holding those views. It is not what defines Anna's politics or David's politics or mine, it is about building a shared future. There is a whole diversity of opinion within the party but united around the common core vision of wanting Northern Ireland to be a society in which rights are respected and each person is valued. Q. Are you happy with your public image? A. I don't give a lot of thought to my public image, I don't think politics is about image or how people present themselves, but what policies and values drive them. I am not concerned about superficial things. Q. Do you like your Ginger Ninja nickname? A. I do. I have never been anything other than happy with my ginger hair, and if I am a ninja I am happy to adopt that too. Q. Even though it is now being used by senior people routinely throughout the party? A. It was one of those ones that someone used in a tweet - I can't remember who - so I actually thought the party turned it round and started using it, to our advantage. Sometimes when people say things on Twitter in bad temper it's very easy for it to escalate, so sometimes a bit of humour is the best thing you can do. Q. Do you feel there is an attempt by the UUP and the SDLP to freeze Alliance out at Stormont? A. It depends on the issue, certainly I think the UUP attempt to reach out very publicly to the SDLP at their conference last month may well be motivated by that, but it also comes from commentators saying there needs to be a new message from the opposition. Opposition parties present their own individual positions, and coalition governments have to withstand that pressure. We have worked with the SDLP and UUP, and indeed with both parties in government, on issues we care about. If it is their aim to freeze Alliance out, the temperature has not dropped sufficiently for it to work. And it won't work. Q. After losing your East Belfast seat back to the DUP you spent a long time contemplating your future. Did you come close to thinking of giving politics up? A. I suppose it was an opportunity I had never really had, I got elected almost by surprise in 2001 and from there it was very rapid in terms of progress. I was in the Assembly within a year and a half of being Lord Mayor. It all happened very quickly and I wanted to take time to reflect and to be certain I was coming back to politics for the right reasons and because I still had something to say and was still passionate about what we want to do. So I took the time to really think that through. I did try to take a complete step back but politics is a very addictive thing to be involved in and I decided I wanted to be part of trying to be making things better. Q. And how difficult do you gauge it is to replace someone who has been leader for 15 years - do you plan that kind of time period? A. I haven't thought that far ahead. That is not a decision for me, it is for the party. Although I have been elected I have to be re-elected next year and each year after. At the moment it is about ensuring whatever changes we make, whatever challenges we face, we can achieve. I am not thinking beyond getting to that point. Q. As party leader do you think you will still engage as much as you do on social media? A. It is an interesting one. My social media is slightly different. It started in my personal area and I guess it's me, it's who I am - the mix of personal and political and I think it's a very useful way to communicate with people and get across ideas, not just when people are agreeing with you but when they are not. Q. What about the harsh comments you get from time to time? A. Some of the trolling is horrific and personally abusive, but I have always been respectful with people. It is still my intention to be very engaged in social media. Q. We now have a female First Minister, a woman PM, Scottish First Minister - what do you think about the rise of women in politics? A. It has been a long time in coming. I think it is good to see women in politics but I don't get carried away with that. When I was growing up we had a female Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher) and I shared very few of her views and disagreed about how she went about doing politics. But having a female Prime Minister was something that shaped my views on whether politics was something that women did. It is very good that young people see woman working in non-traditional roles - it is just the way of the world. I still think from the perspective of young people growing up - and having always worked in predominately male environments - having women actually improves politics. Q. Do you think there is a task in hand in reaching out to men? A. I don't know, it's not something I have had huge resistance to. I have had huge support in the party. A male colleague brought me into the party and a male colleague put my name forward for deputy leader and for running for Lord Mayor. From my perspective, the gender issue in the party has never been a barrier. Women in the party tend to do quite well, Anna Lo did the best in the European elections of all our candidates over the years and I did the best in East Belfast. Most men actually want to see women performing well, engaging in the workforce, they do not see it as a battle or struggle, That is not to say you don't encounter sexism and gender stereotypes but it is how you address those that really makes a difference. There are huge opportunities, I don't think it's a competition. Q. You and your husband Michael have been together a long time -you must have considered the impact being leader of the Alliance party will have on your personal and family life? A. Yes we have and over the years politics has in different ways impacted very directly on our home life and the time we have with family and friends But the vision we share comes from even before we were married and we are both very committed to that. I am very lucky in having a husband who is forgiving when I have another meeting to go to. We are a bit better at striking the balance and finding ourselves some time to be together. I am not a member of Sinn Fein, nor ever have been, but I can still harbour hopes that they will make moves that would be good for us all. I criticise them from outside and yet I can understand why they, within their own terms, would find some things difficult. I imagine myself sitting in an ard comhairle meeting, urging them to allow their MPs to take their Westminster seats, and I can anticipate the arguments for and against. The 'for' argument would be that they might be able to swing a vote against the immediate triggering of Article 50, which will set the timetable for the UK's departure from the European Union. Theresa May seems likely to be told by the Supreme Court that she cannot act on Royal Prerogative, but that she must put a Bill before parliament. Parliament seems unlikely to rally adequate forces against actual Brexit, but it might insist on an amendment or two to the Bill, setting down limits to how comprehensive the final exit might be. Even now, Labour and the DUP and others are saying that they will not oppose the Bill, not even having read it yet. As far as they are concerned, the Supreme Court will have secured their right to an opinion and they will have waived it. Only the SDLP and the SNP, as far as I can tell, will be there to oppose Brexit altogether. And Labour doesn't seem to have copped on yet that there is a middle way, amending the Bill and forcing May to come back with something better. Maybe they will. Maybe Sinn Fein should be using its long friendship with Jeremy Corbyn to tip the party in that direction. While it doesn't look now as if Sinn Fein's four MPs could tilt the balance, that occasion may arise if Labour stiffens its resolve a bit. Might it even be tempted to do so for the prize of having four Sinn Fein MPs on the benches to support them on other issues? The argument against Sinn Fein entering Westminster by taking an oath of allegiance to the Queen is that it would be throwing away a foundational principle. That principle is that there is one legitimate parliament in Ireland and that is the first Dail, established by the general election of 1918, in which Sinn Fein got a majority and declared Ireland an independent nation. There isn't a lot left of that principle. It was compromised by the decision to fight for - and take - seats in the Dail. It has also been made irrelevant by Sinn Fein running a devolved administration in Northern Ireland and thereby deferring to the right of the British parliament to delegate power to it. The other component of that principle is that taking seats in Westminster would involve swearing an oath of allegiance to the monarch. Yet, other republicans did that in the past, including British republicans and Republican Labour MP Gerry Fitt, as did De Valera, when he entered the Dail in 1927, declaring it "an empty political formula". A pragmatic political activist would not allow the way forward to be blocked by such trivia, knowing that the oath would not bind him or her to anything of substance. Indeed, in recent years Sinn Fein has framed its objection to taking seats at Westminster in different terms. It has said that it has always been able to achieve more through direct negotiation with prime ministers than the SDLP has achieved through joining debates and asking questions. This is the pragmatic defence of abstention. But it would fall apart if negotiations didn't prove as fruitful as debating and voting might. Take the scenario in which Theresa May puts forward a Bill to allow her to trigger Brexit and fails to pass it, because she refuses to accept amendments prosed by Labour. The SDLP has entered the debate with the determination to oppose Brexit. May would then call a general election. The SDLP would campaign for more support on the grounds that it would be turning up for the fight. Abstention would not then look like an attractive selling-point for Sinn Fein. And the fact that Sinn Fein has been defending abstention on the pragmatic argument, rather than the old principles, suggests that they know that the voters want what works. They are not ready to make sacrifices to defend the legitimacy of the first Dail - an argument that Sinn Fein has already given away. And they will wonder what's so important about not taking the oath when Martin McGuinness is starting to look like the most eager monarchist among us, shaking the Queen's hand at every opportunity and even posing proudly beside her portrait. The abstention policy has been hugely important in the past, but it has also been overturned by those who were previously most committed to it. In 1970, the IRA split over it. The Provisional IRA was formed in assertion of the refusal to recognise the Dail. But what was really going on then? The north had been ignited and the real difference between the two wings of the IRA was the question of whether to escalate. They called it "defending the Catholic community". Sixteen years later, Gerry Adams drove through a change in Sinn Fein policy on the grounds that the Provisional IRA had already decided in favour of them taking seats in the Dail. That split the movement again, though the old purists were in a small minority and their Republican Sinn Fein is now a negligible force in Irish politics. Surely, the greatest lesson of republican history is that those who preserve the pure flame warm their hands by it alone. And modern Sinn Fein wants to grow and wants to take power and has already swallowed other shibboleths for the sake of it. Well, they now have a chance to be part of the biggest row in decades. Or they can stand aside and watch the SDLP and the SNP fight for the rights of devolved regions who voted against Brexit. They may not have much prospect of winning in that fight - but when did that ever stop them? Political reputations will be made in the coming months and years as nationalists from Scotland and Northern Ireland defy the right of England to make decisions for the rest of us. Isn't that what Sinn Fein was created to do? The alternative is that we will rely on the schizophrenic partnership of Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster to impress on Theresa May the need to get the best deal for Northern Ireland, each of them hobbled by the need to hold together. And this while Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Durkan are on the battlements shouting in unison: No Surrender. A restaurant owner who vowed to leave backwards Belfast unlawfully took money from a staff members wages in a row over damaged shutters. Emma Bricknell, who owns the popular city centre bistro Made In Belfast, accused senior sous chef Michael Patton of deliberately causing the damage in an incident in April this year. The Englishwoman, who called Northern Ireland a laughing stock over its poor transport links, docked 501 from Mr Pattons wages to cover the cost of the repair work, saying he did it maliciously. Mr Patton took a tribunal case against Blondtrepeneur Ltd, trading as Made In Belfast, of which Ms Bricknell is the sole director. Employment Judge Neil Drennan ruled she had done so unlawfully saying there was no concrete evidence that Mr Patton was responsible for the damage. The tribunal was told that on the evening of April 1, Mr Patton was checking the number of diners that had been served when he noticed the shutters start to open. Thinking he had accidentally triggered the shutter fob in his pocket, he pressed the button to bring them down again. A manager came in and alerted him that an employees bicycle had become stuck under the shutters, unknown to Mr Patton. The manager asked him if he had operated the shutters which he admitted to doing. After seeing the bike wasnt damaged Mr Patton went back into the kitchen. Mr Patton told the tribunal he wasnt aware that damage had been caused to the shutters until he returned to work on April 4. Expand Expand Previous Next Close Made in Belfast restaurant Mandatory Credit Darren Kidd/Pre Kent-born Made in Belfast founder Emma Bricknell / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Made in Belfast restaurant He was then told that the owner, Ms Bricknell, was blaming him for causing the damage and in a text message conversation she accused him of acting with malicious intent and said he would have to pay for it. A manager told Mr Patton he was now barred from the premises and not required to work out his notice. He had intended to leave on April 11 having worked there for three years. A human resources consultant carried out an investigation and three other employees said they thought Mr Patton opened the shutters as a practical joke and that he may have been drinking alcohol. Despite his denials, the investigator decided that he had been drinking alcohol that evening but that he had not caused the damage deliberately. Judge Drennan said that the evidence gathered had not been properly tested and Ms Bricknell didnt give Mr Patton a chance to look at the report or to challenge the conclusions. The judge ordered that Mr Patton be paid the 501.60 that was taken from him. In January last year Ms Bricknell vowed to leave Northern Ireland for Ibiza due to licensing law red tape, social attitudes and lack of transport links to Europe and beyond. We are a laughing stock to the rest of the UK and the Republic, she fumed. Its just beaten the life out of me. You cant move a licence, you cant get a bar licence. Politicians are just useless and you just need to dissolve Stormont and put Dublin or London in charge. At time of going to press, Ms Bricknell was still living in Northern Ireland. OUTBURST: Emma Bricknell, the owner of Made In Belfast (top), hit the headlines before for criticising the city A serial child rapist is now back behind bars for allegedly breaching the conditions of his early release licence. But questions are being asked, not only about the decision to free Leo Hoad, but also why he was put in a Belfast hostel a short distance from six schools and youth clubs. Sunday Life has learned that until his arrest in July, the Fermanagh-born paedophile was living at Thompson House on the Antrim Road. The complex, nicknamed Perverts Paradise, has previously housed child sex killers like Ronnie Graham and John Clifford. It had a 2million extension added to it in 2012, increasing fears that more perverts would be moved in. After frightened locals staged protests at its doors, they claim to have struck a verbal deal with its Presbyterian Church owners that dangerous sex offenders would not stay at the hostel. But that agreement is now in tatters with the revelation that Leo Hoad was housed there during the summer, and was arrested at the complex on suspicion of breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (Sopo). One long-term Antrim Road resident told Sunday Life: The demonstrations were called off after we were assured that no dangerous sex offenders would stay at Thompson House. People will be shocked that a child rapist like Leo Hoad was living at the hostel because it is surrounded by schools. The fact that he was arrested for breaching his release licence proves that he is still dangerous. There are 84 CCTV cameras monitoring Thompson House, and sex offenders are confined to the building until 9.30am, and between 2pm and 4pm, when schools are opening and closing. But that did not stop Leo Hoad being taken into custody by police on July 18 amid claims he had breached a Sopo. The 38-year-old appeared via video-link at Belfast Magistrates Court last Thursday for an update on the case. A Presbyterian Church spokesman said that admissions to Thompson House are made by the Probation Board after a thorough risk assessment process. He added: The safety of the local community is paramount and part of the regime at Thompson House. That regime is based on the risk assessment and is robustly monitored by staff and by the designated risk manager, which is the advantage of having approved accommodation that is monitored, totally accountable and open to external inspection. Leo Hoad is considered one of Northern Irelands most dangerous paedophiles, having admitted 11 charges of rape and two indecent assaults against two children. The pervert was aged 13 when he started an eight-year sex assault campaign against his victims, who were aged just seven and eight when the abuse began. In 2012 Hoad, who is on the sex offenders register for life, was sentenced to seven years in prison and a further three years probation for his sickening crimes. He had been living in Thompson House for only a matter of weeks before being arrested for allegedly breaching the terms of his early release. A Loyalist double killer and the son-in-law of UDA boss Jim Spence have admitted running a fuel smuggling racket with nationalist criminals from west Belfast and Tyrone. Sectarian murderer Robert Brooksy Clarke, 64, and Mark Pollock, 37, pleaded guilty to conspiring to fraudulently evade customs duty at Belfast Crown Court last Wednesday. Pollock who is married to UDA godfather Jim Spences daughter Becky also admitted possessing 94,000 of criminal property. In a real hands across the barricades operation the loyalists were trading in what is understood to be Provo-supplied smuggled fuel with crooks from the Twinbrook and Lenadoon estates in west Belfast, and Coalisland. All three areas are considered republican heartlands and will lead to questions being asked of Clarke and Pollock, who will be sentenced in January. Convicted with them of conspiring to fraudulently evade customs duty on fuel, and given suspended sentences ranging from two to three years, were: Tracey Mary ONeill, 39, from Gortgonis Road in Coalisland; William George, 46, from Glenwood View in west Belfast; Paul Charles Keenan, 47, from Creeslough Park in west Belfast; Alan McVeigh, 33, from Twaddell Avenue in Belfast; Derek Stevenson, 54, from Gortnagallon Road in Crumlin; Ian Thompson, 57, from Ballykennedy Road in Crumlin; Robert Brooksy Clarke and Mark Pollocks guilty pleas on the eve of their trial last Wednesday brings to an end a lengthy probe into a major fuel smuggling racket that started in 2010. The loyalist pair who are now understood to be at loggerheads oversaw the lucrative scheme that involved cut-price dodgy diesel which originated in south Armagh being sold to unsuspecting motorists. The scam, which was based at Clarkes fuel yard on the Dundrod Road near Crumlin, continued even after he had been jailed in 2011 for murder. When the loyalist was caged for the 1973 UDA killing of Alfred Fusco, he left Pollock in charge of his business affairs. Expand Close Mark Pollock / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mark Pollock Criminal sources claim it was then that the fuel yard started being supplied with the smuggled diesel. In June 2011, customs officials raided Clarkes business, which was based in the grounds of his sprawling home, and seized documents. They also searched his office on the Shankill Road, as well as Pollocks plush house on the Belfast Road at Nutts Corner. It was there that they discovered 94,000 of criminal cash. From ledgers and financial accounts they pieced together the trail of illegal fuel that led to west Belfast and Coalisland. Robert Brooksy Clarke was first jailed in 1975 for the sectarian murder of Catholic Margaret ONeill, 58, who was shot dead by the UDA as she walked along the New Lodge Road in north Belfast. He was freed around 1990, but caged again in 2011 for the 1973 murder of ice-cream shop owner Alfred Fusco by the terror gang. Expand Close Clarke's Fuels on the Dundrod Road. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Clarke's Fuels on the Dundrod Road. But because the killing occurred before the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, shaven-headed Clarke only had to serve a nominal two year prison term. shutterstock.com Whether youre a caregiver or a parent; a Christian attorney holding back the barbarians of political correctness; or a homemaker trying to juggle twenty tasks an hour, you need strength from beyond the stars. Supernatural strength. Inner strength. Spiritual strength. As hymnist Josiah Condor put it, we need daily strength for daily needs. We take on too much; but, then, were passionate. We overbook our schedules; but, then, were committed. Wed rather be useful than bored, but theres a cost to our ardor. Exhaustion is the occupational hazard of twenty-first-century life, especially for the people of the Lord. Especially in election years like this when were standing in the gap of a crumbling nation. The writer of Psalm 84 needed strength too. He was leaving home for Jerusalem to attend one of the great Jewish festivals. He badly wanted to visit the Temple, yet he dreaded the rigor of the trip. But he consoled himself with this thought: Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose heart are set of pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion. This verse is similar to another one, which said our lives should be a pilgrimage from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV); and another that spoke of traveling from faith to faith (Romans 1:17, NKJV). These verses mark the forward progress that ought to characterize our interior lives. We should be doing better than we are, getting stronger, climbing higher. Too many of us are weakened by the worries of life when we should be fortified by the grace of God. How, then, do we go from strength to strength, from glory to glory, and from faith to faith? First, lets get the rest we need. As we get older and busier, its increasingly vital to have a reasonable bedtime, and to awaken, whenever possible, without an alarm clock. Who wants to awaken every morning to the sound of alarm? Life is alarming enough without starting the day alarmed. When youre exhausted, remember the words of Jesus in Mark 6:31: Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. Everyone occasionally needs an alarm clock, but if we have a reasonable bedtime well awaken more naturally and happily. In the end, well get more done with a bit more sleep. It might even save our lives. Robert Murray MChyene, one of Scotlands greatest preachers, died at age 29, largely due to overwork and exhaustion. He reportedly said, The Lord gave me a horse to ride and a message to deliver. Alas, Ive killed the horse and cannot deliver the message. An occasional overnight getaway, a gentle hike, and a day off can keep the horse alive. Your annual vacation (if its planned right) can add years of service. Its odd to consider it this way, but turning off your bedtime lamp fifteen minutes earlier might be one of your smartest moves of the day. Second, our daily devotions represent veritable power lines from heaven. When asked for advice, popular pastor and 20th century Christian leader Dr. Stephen Olford, once said, Never, never miss your quiet time. These words of advice should never be forgotten and we should always take them seriously. The prophet Jeremiah lived in an age similar to ours, when every national leader was worse than the previous one, when fewer and fewer people were interested in biblical answers, and when society was swirling down the tube like dirty bathwater. His secret for finding daily strength for daily needs? Jeremiah 15:16 says: When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my hearts delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty. When Elijah the prophet faltered and tumbled into a nervous breakdown, his only restorative was the still, small voice of the Lord, which came to him at Horeb as a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12). By going to bed a bit earlier, perhaps well wake up in time to have our morning coffee with the Lord and hear His still, small voice at the beginning of the day. That leads to the third suggestion for daily strengthdaylong and lifelong Scripture memory and meditation. Scripture memory and biblical meditation are forgotten disciplines for todays Christians, and the church is suffering grievously for their loss. These twin habits keep Christians going. Lets take memorization for example. Choose twelve verses on the subject of strength. They can include Deuteronomy 33:25: Your strength will equal your days. Second Chronicles 16:9 says: The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13, I can do all this through Him who gives me strength. Learn those verses by heart and meditate on them often. Once you rehearse those verses in your mind, you can see them, hear them, visualize them, pray them, claim them, and they become a sort of internal generator that powers enthusiasm. The book The Strength You Need, goes through all twelve verses to show how each is a direct power line to heaven. People are hungry for Scripture because theyre starving for strength. This is no time to go wobbly. Our election is leaving us without godly options, and our nation is at risk. Can we can turn the tides? Is America past the possibility of a revival? These times require strength. In our personal lives and in the public square, we need the strength to represent Christ with hope, joy, optimism, and freshness. We cant do that if were exhausted and exasperated. We can do it if were awakening every working to hear a word from the Lord, and memorizing and meditating on His Word day and night. In a world thats lurching from crisis to crisis, lets go from strength to strength. Lets get our rest, have our devotions, and tap into the power of Scripture memory and meditation. These are simple changes to make in our daily habits, but the ramifications are immediate. The Lord alone can give us daily strength for daily needs. He alone will impart the strength we need for our pilgrimage. You can be stronger today than you are, and you must be if youre going to turn your Valley of Baca into a place of springs. Robert J. Morgan is the pastor of the 3,000-member Donelson Fellowship Church in Nashville, Tenn., which he has served for more than 30 years. He is a bestselling and Gold Medallion-winning author with more than 25 books in print. His most recent book is The Strength You Need (W Publishing Group). Shutterstock.com Well, America, we are becoming less religious. As the millennial generation moves into adulthood more and more members are displaying less religious fervor. They are sick as business as usual and find the church to be defined by hypocrisy. About 30 percent of people believe they can find God outside of the church and 20 percent reported feeling that God is missing from church, Barna research found. Some people who once loved their church are seeing disgruntled and leadership falling into decay despite the elaborate buildings and programs. This is not about loving Godthis runs deeper as His representatives on earth are losing the very essence of the Great Commission. More people over 18 are moving towards being unaffiliated. The main drop off in Christianity has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. Each of those large religious traditions has shrunk by approximately three percentage points since 2007, the Pew Research Center found. Between 2007 and 2014, the Christian share of the population fell from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent. About 78 percent of people who once identified with Christian groups like Protestants, Catholics and Mormons have switched religions because they feel those traditions are no longer serving them. Just as followers started getting out of the legalistic churches, legalism was replaced with a focus on church growth. With this, secularism crept into the sanctuaries. What started as an ideological focus of growth has turned the church into a cash cow. What blinders are we wearing? Where did we miss it? George Barna, the founder of the Barna Research Group, unearthed that success is one of the reasons for the mess the church is in. There are 5 categories that summed it up when pastors where asked: How do they know that their church is successful? The answer was Attendance, giving, number of programs, number of staff, and square footage. If the goals are not met, just like in the corporate world, it begins to fail. Lets rewind here a minute. If we dont make these quotas the church is a failure? Do we need to go to the Book? Yes, the Book we preach from and read from called the Bible. There is the 5-fold ministry that is to prepare Gods people for works of service so the Body of Christ may be built up until we have unity with Christ. In Ephesians 4:11 the 5-fold-ministry called for some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers. This certainly wasnt listed in the answers pastors provided Barna, nor does it say for the church to be wealthy. Jesus did not even have a home and ran a ministry. Paul was a poor minister as well. He was not a failure. If they were here today the definition would be different. Pastors are not to be blamed here, either. Some of them are trying to survive on a shoe-string budget. People are demanding better worship, entertaining sermons, and teachings that are very non-confrontational. Messages on sin are not popular, and so leaders have scaled back. Weve become focused on greed and made man a focus, not God. Another reason organized religion is more divisive is it does not unify. Some believe that no one religion has it 100 percent correct. Some shared that they can pray anywhere, and dont need a domination. Other explained that they will pray to God in their own way, since many of the religious do not live by example. Also formal religion makes many people uneasy. Church is run too much like a business and we are paying the price. There is nothing wrong with keeping the lights on and wanting to see church growth. The hierarchical nature of religious groups, several people who think religion is too much like a business and others who mention clergy sexual abuse scandals as reasons for their stance, Pew reported. Church has been secularized. You walk in some churches and it feels like youre in the middle of a rock concert. The teachings are more on prosperity and there is no emphasis on commitment or sacrifice. Jonathan Walton, professor of Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity said in an interview with CNN, "When you have pastors thinking of themselves as CEOs, it's hard to tell the difference between a pastor and P-Diddy." He also was concerned how the American evangelical communities are breaking down and Christians have been quick to embrace franchised, mega-church model." What does the future look like for the church? If young people are not attending, how can the church survive? Culture is changing frantically and church needs to adapt, but in the midst of it all, its important to keep Christ at the center. We can understand the Christian concerns for the church with atmospheric forces of sin waging against us. We are supposed to counter-culture and unhealthy trends. What would Christ do? Honestly we dont know. However, the church is in a state of emergency that needs rescuing and all of us are to blame. We need to admit as believers that we have succumbed to the same snares as the church. We no longer look to God for significance but look at self-aggrandizement. Maybe we need a Moses to come down to slap us with the Word of God as he did with the 10 Commandments. However, there is good news. We can make a change. Jesus talked about the narrow gate in Matthew 7 that leads to life. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. The narrow gate is never popular. This is what makes us the salt of the earth and what happens when we as Christians and the church as a whole loses its flavor? Like any other unfinished chapter, we will all find out the ending. As we move into the New Year, lets reflect on our triumphs, but also where we are going as believers. Corine Gatti-Santillo is a freelance digital journalist, editor, and content producer. She is also the The Christian Post Voices Editor. She is also a former editor at Beliefnet.com. Shutterstock.com Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. This school of thought emphasized rationalism and logic. The Stoic philosophy has long been a secret weapon of historys greatest and wisest leaders from emperors to artists, activists to fighter pilots. People from all walks of life are seeking out Stoicisms unique blend of practicality and wisdom as they look for answers to the great questions of life. Most people know that philosophy teaches us how to live well and become better humans, but it can also help us overcome lifes trials and tribulations. Some schools of thoughts are for more abstract thinking and debate, whereas others are more practical. The principles within Stoicism provide some of the most relevant and practical sets of wisdom for people looking to discover the art of living. The Stoics focus on two things: How can we lead a fulfilling and happy life and how can we become better human beings? The goal of Stoicism is to attain inner peace by overcoming adversity, practicing self-control, being conscious of our impulses, realizing our ephemeral nature and the short-time allotted. Its crucial that we understand the obstacles we face and not run from them. Our guides to Stoicism today include its three renowned leaders: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. Here are six wisdom-filled principles that we can learn from them. Our emotions come from within. Today, I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions not outside. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations When it comes to what we feel, it is not the outside forces that make us feel something, it is what we tell ourselves that create our feelings. The realization that anxiety and stress are states within our own perceptions and thoughts give us control over our situation. Instead of just going along for the roller coaster stress ride, you have the power within your control to turn the noise of stress down a bit. There are so many people who have no idea that they are giving anxiety immense power by choosing to believe that they cannot control it and cannot make a difference. But the truth is what we feel is our occurring and we are in control of how we see things. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate Seneca, Moral Letters In the early days of what would become known as the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in and gave his first inaugural address. Panic was in the air, banks were failing and people were scared. Most of us have heard the nothing to fear but fear itself soundbite that came from FDRs famous speech, but the full line is worth looking at and applies to the difficult situations we face in life. FDR said, Let me asset my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. The Stoics were aware that fear was to be feared because of the miseries it creates. The things we fear are nothing in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we do everything in power to avoid them. Yes, an economic depression is bad but a panic is worse. The tough situations we face in life are not helped by terror. It only makes things harder. Thats why its so important that resist it and reject it if we plan on turning our situations around. We can't always get what we want. When children stick their hand down a narrow goody jar they cant get their full fist out and start crying. Drop a few threats and you will get it out! Curb your desire dont set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need. Epictetus, Discourses The mantra of our modern lives has become We can have it all. Work, family, purpose, success, leisure time are all things we want at the same time. In ancient Greece, the lecture hall was a place where students contemplated the higher things for the purpose of living a better life. It was about prioritization, about questioning the priorities of the outside world. In todays world, we are so busy jamming our hands sown the jar filled with goodies that we dont do this sort of questioning. Instead of focusing our hearts on many things, we can apply Epictetus philosophy. We should focus, prioritize and train our minds to ask: Do I need this thing? What will happen if I dont get it? Can I make do without it? The answers you have to these questions will help you relax and help you remove the needless things that make you too busy to be balanced or happy. We can benefit greatly from observing. Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations There is great power in observation. If you take the time to look at the world as an opportunity, that is exactly what you will see. Instead of looking at the world through a know-it-all lens, observe your surroundings with a beginners mind. When you do this, your entire perspective will change. Harnessing the power of observation can help you determine what to do and not do. When your heads up and the blinders are off, you have a better chance of seeing the path ahead when it comes to your projects and goals. It also enhances your learning. When we observe the environment were in, were able to gain more hand on knowledge to apply to our lives that will help us perform at a higher level. Not only should we read purposefully, but we should also apply our knowledge. Dont just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training waits of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one had made progress simply by having internalized their contents. Epictetus, The Art of Living Doing a lot of reading on a particular subject will supply a wealthy amount of knowledge that will help you develop a more in-depth awareness, but what really makes this knowledge impactful is when we apply it to our own lives. Reading is a great way to prepare your mind and can even help you avoid poor decision-making, but at the end of it must be the result of some action: a failure, a success or a lesson. The purpose of education is not just to internalize knowledge, but ultimately spark action and facilitate wiser decisions. For example, reading self-help books will make you feel inspired for a change in that moment, but are those same self-help principles guiding you when youre dealing with a rude customer, an internet troll or an episode of road rage? We should be applying our knowledge in ways that we will help us grow. We can access the wisdom of those who came before us. We like to say that we dont get to choose our parents, that they were given by chance yet, we can truly choose whose children wed like to be. Seneca, On the Brevity of Life Some of us are fortunate enough to have parents who were great mentors and role models, but that isnt the case for everyone. Maybe your parents were poor role models, or you lacked a great mentor. However, if we choose to, we can easily access the wisdom of those who came before us those who we aspire to be like. We are blessed to live in a world where some of the greatest men and women in history have recorded their wisdom and folly in books and journals. We owe it not only to ourselves, but also to the people who took the time to record their experiences to try and carry on the traditions and follow their examples. The way we live our lives and do our work should reflect that principles that we practice. Instead of constantly comparing, criticizing and consuming, focus more on creating, learning and living. The wisdom from the Stoics can help you. Lesli White is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth with a Bachelors degree in Mass Communications and a concentration in print and online journalism. In college, she took a number of religious studies courses and harnessed her talent for storytelling. White has a rich faith background. Her father, a Lutheran pastor and life coach was a big influence in her faith life, helping her to see the value of sharing the message of Christ with others. She has served in the church from an early age. Some of these roles include assisting ministry, mutual ministry, worship and music ministry and church council. Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, whose son, publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, was hacked to death by Islamic extremists, joins protesters following the attack, Nov. 1, 2015. A suspect who is in custody in connection with the killings of a secular blogger and a publisher belonged to the intelligence wing of a militant group that monitored Internet activities of its targets, a Bangladeshi police official told BenarNews. Khairul Islam, a suspected member of Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), told interrogators that its intelligence wing identified bloggers and other intellectuals as potential targets for assassination, by monitoring their online posts and mounting pre-attack surveillance operations against such people, according to the spokesman for Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP). Islam, who was arrested Friday on suspicion of involvement in the August 2015 killing of secular blogger Niladri Chottopaddhya (known by the pen name Niloy Neel) and the October 2015 killing of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan who had printed the works of secular writers was a leader of the intelligence wing of ABT, which is also known as Ansar al Islam, the spokesman said. Islam is the latest among 42 suspected ABT members to be arrested in connection with a slew of deadly machete attacks that have targeted secular writers and intellectuals in Bangladesh in recent years. Chottopaddhya was one of seven secular writers who were killed in attacks by Islamic militants between February 2013 and April 2016, with most of the killings occurring last year. Dipan was the lone fatality in a pair of attacks launched on two publishing houses in Dhaka on Oct. 31, 2015, that left three other people injured. Bangladeshi police blame ABT for carrying out attacks against people whom it has accused of defaming the religion of Islam. According to DMP spokesman Masudur Rahman, the suspect Islam confessed to being involved in the killings of Chottopaddhya and Dipan. If they find any bloggers write ups to be defamatory to Islam, they preserve it. Then they collect the personal information of the bloggers from Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media. They even monitor the daily activities of the bloggers on social media, Rahman told BenarNews. Under surveillance Members of ABTs intelligence wing would forward all objectionable materials to the wings chief for consideration. The chief, whom police did not identify, could then pass the material along to suspected ABT leader Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque, a renegade ex-army major. If he [gave his nod], that particular blogger or publisher would come under further close surveillance of the intelligence wing, Rahman said. The intelligence members would also identify the homes, offices and places frequented by the targeted blogger or publisher. After repeated confirmation, accurate information is passed on to the Askari (military) wing of the ABT. The military wing assigns a group of members to kill him with machete attacks. After the killing mission is complete, the intelligence wing is tasked with claiming responsibility on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, Rahman added. A fathers quest for justice Four ABT members entered Chottopaddhyas apartment on Aug. 7, 2015, and hacked him to death in front of his wife and sister-in-law, according to Anwar Hossain Khan, the officer who prepared an inquest report into the case. One of the killers, in the guise of a tenant, came to the house of Niloy. Within minutes, they started hacking, and killed him and fled the scene, Khan told BenarNews. More than a year after his son was killed in the attack on the publishing house, Dipans father is hoping that he will get justice. Apart from Islam, at least two other suspects have been arrested in the publishers murder. The police officers usually come to brief me about the progress of the case. I think if the police are sincere, the killers of Dipan can be punished, his father, Professor Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque, told BenarNews. A Malaysian court Monday sentenced an opposition leader to 18 months in jail for leaking part of a classified audit report about scandal-tainted state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). After finding Mohd Rafizi Ramli of the Peoples Justice Party (PKR) guilty of two charges unauthorized possession of the report and exposing it to the media the Kuala Lumpur Sessions court granted a stay of the sentence, pending an appeal. Judge Zulqarnain Hassan sentenced Rafizi to serve concurrent 18-month sentences for each conviction over the leak. Rafizi, an MP who serves as the partys vice president and secretary-general, had pleaded not guilty on April 8 following his arrest outside parliament three days earlier. The PKR party was founded by former deputy prime minister and jailed de-facto opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Sad day for Malaysian democracy those who defend the peoples interest and public good are treated in this way, PKR spokesman Fahmi Fadzil wrote on Twitter. In October, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report regarding Rafizis arrest, claiming he was investigating the governments alleged failure to make pension payments to retired veterans. He also challenged the government to confirm that the army funds investments in 1MDB did not affect its ability to make payments. Rafizi claimed he had received a document from the auditor-generals report that supports his concern that 1MDB owed money to the fund, according to HRW. Rafizi displayed the document at a news conference on March 28, but did not provide copies to reporters. A week later, police arrested Rafizi and charged him with violating the Official Secrets Act. The auditor generals report on 1MDB is classified under Malaysias Official Secrets Act. Abdul Rahman Dahlan, communications director for the ruling Barisan Nasional Coalition, said Rafizi tried a cheap stunt for personal political gain, but he knowingly committed a serious crime in doing so. It is right that he pays the price and he has only himself to blame. On Monday, New York-based Human Rights Watch called for Rafizis conviction to be overturned. The conviction of opposition MP Rafizi Ramli under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) is an unprecedented, rights abusing use of this act which can have only one purpose: to intimidate whistle-blowers into silence over the 1MDB corruption scandal, Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy Asia director, said in a statement. No one should forget that this is all about the Auditor General's annual report, which in years previous has been treated as a public document after its submission to Parliament. 1MDB has been at the heart of a corruption scandal that has plagued Prime Minister Najib Razak since July 2015 when news reports emerged that nearly U.S. $700 million linked to the fund had been deposited into his private bank accounts in 2013. Investigations over claims of money laundering and embezzlement are ongoing in Malaysia and several other countries. In January, Malaysias attorney general cleared Najib of any wrongdoing despite calls for his resignation. The prime minister has denied wrongdoing or taking any of the 1MDB-linked money for personal gain. No regrets Rafizi, 39, said he was not surprised by the verdict, but urged his supporters to remain calm adding he wouldnt have done it in any other way. Do not despair. I do not have a single regret and the most peaceful thing in life is knowing you did the right thing, he said. In the court room, Deputy Public Prosecutor Shukor Abu Bakar said laws are to be respected. If an MP like [Rafizi] acted this way, then how do you expect the public to react? Despite his conviction and sentence, Rafizi would not lose his parliament seat representing the Pandan constituency at this point because has not exhausted his right to appeal, said Gobind Singh Deo, Rafizis attorney. The federal constitution states that an MP is disqualified if sentenced to jail for a year or more or fined at least 2,000 ringgit (U.S. $460) and has not received a pardon. Chilling effect Lawyers for Liberty, a human rights and law reform group, called the sentence harsh and excessive since Rafizi was performing his duties as an elected representative. The conviction and sentence will create a dangerous chill on free speech and result in a more repressive, opaque and unaccountable government, executive director Eric Paulsen said in a statement. Paulsen questioned why the report was suddenly classified as an official secret when normally it is presented in parliament and made available to the public. While the world is moving toward more openness, transparency and accountability in the conduct of government affairs, it is quite deplorable how the authorities were so quick to punish whistle-blowers like Rafizi while taking little or no action against the massive corruption and abuse of power exposed by the 1MDB scandal, he said. Masukri Jeho, the husband of Citi-ashisoh Lateh, a Thai woman who is being held by immigration officials in Malaysia, talks to BenarNews at his home in Pattani province, Nov. 14, 2016. Forty-two Thai women who were trafficked into Malaysia are being held at a safe house in the south of the country and will be repatriated, a Malaysian official told BenarNews. The 42 are staying at a home for women in the state of Johor after being caught entering Malaysia without proper papers, according to the director of the states Department of Immigration. The Thai women are helping local authorities investigate a ring that allegedly trafficked them into the country, and they are being kept at a safe house run by the Social Welfare Department, Johor Immigration Director Rohaizi Bahari said. [A]fter all of them have given their statements in assisting the case, they will be sent back to their home country by the immigration authorities, Rohaizi told BenarNews on Monday. He declined to give more details. The Thai ambassador to Malaysia confirmed that 42 Thai women were being held at a center for women in Johor, but he only had more specific information about half of them. Twenty-one of the 42 had left Thailand in late September and are from Pattani and Yala, two provinces in Thailands insurgency-stricken Deep South. The families of this batch of 21 had reported them missing after they had left for Malaysia, where they were promised jobs as snack vendors by immigration brokers, according to relatives. Thai consular staff, on behalf of the Thai government, will be granted permission to meet them in the womens home in Johor Bahru on Tuesday, Nov. 15. We will try to seek Malaysias speediest proceeding and hope they come back to Thailand soon, Damrong Kraikruan, the Thai ambassador to Malaysia, told BenarNews, referring the capital of the Malaysian state of Johor that borders Singapore. According to a Malaysian police officer, this group is assisting local authorities investigate a case against two Thai nationals who have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking. Now, two Thai trafficking brokers are being held on human trafficking charges. For the 21 women, officials will release them home soon after interrogation, the officer told BenarNews on condition of anonymity, adding that the women would not face any charges. Worried relatives The son of one of the women who went to Malaysia said brokers had promised her a job as a snack vendor in Johor, and that she and 20 other women had crossed into Malaysia from the southern Thai province of Songkhla. There were all together 21 women travelling in two pickup trucks. They were unable to be reached, and I thought Malaysian police had arrested them because they did not have work permits, Mamagadi Sulong, the son of 57-year-old Yala resident Hamida Salae, told BenarNews. In nearby Pattani province, the husband of another woman said their five children have been crying since she left for Malaysia. My wife intended to earn money for our kids education. There are not many jobs in Thailand and when [brokers] asked her to go to Malaysia, so she went, Musukri Jeho, the husband of Citi-ashisoh Lateh, told BenarNews. When relatives of the 21 learned that their loved ones were unaccounted for in Malaysia, the brokers in Thailand asked each of them to each pay 20,000 baht (U.S. $564) as a fee to find the women, he said. Hata Wahari in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report. ein Google-Unternehmen Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern. neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke. Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten. Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen. By Bob Cunningham The fourth annual Falcon BEST robotics competition this fall at Bowling Green State Universitys Stroh Center had it all. There were teams from middle schools and high schools from all over northwest Ohio, and even one from Indiana, competing in the event. The Lathrop Co. has been a sponsor of the Falcon BEST robotics competition since its inception.It featured a sportslike atmosphere with teams friends, family members and interested onlookers cheering from the stands. There also were pep bands, mascots, flags and signs of encouragement, generating an atmosphere fitting for the achievements of aspiring scientists. Yes, its fun to cheer for science. Just ask First Solar and The Lathrop Co., sponsors of the popular event. Each company has made a $25,000 pledge and a five-year commitment to the competition. The pushing of STEM initiatives at local high schools, local colleges and at events like this has been a mission for us over the last couple of years, said Jay Lake, director of workforce development and community relations at First Solar, which sponsored its first competition this fall. We are a high-technology company, and robotics and various computers and computer systems drive how we make our product. We have a ton of fantastic, STEM-oriented career individuals here at First Solar. First Solar, an alternative energy company in Perrysburg, Ohio, has been involved in area high school STEM programs, so Lake said the company saw the sponsorship opportunity at BGSU as a natural progression. We do a lot of work with BGSU and have a great relationship with the University, and, more importantly and specific to our industry, the students who attend the school, said Steven Johnson, president of Lathrop. We just thought it was a great opportunity to engage in helping some young people get interested in science and technology, many who decide to go into construction or other related fields in the area. We thought it was a win-win to engage with students as well as engage with the University. My focus as the president is young people and their careers. Lathrop, located in Maumee, Ohio, has been involved with the Falcon BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) robotics competition since the start, donating safety goggles, vests, hard hats, and the like. The companys five-year financial commitment started in 2015. The theme of this years competition was Bet the Farm. Teams were required to develop robots that could be used to assist with agriculture and scored points having their robots complete tasks in three-minute matches as efficiently as possible Supplies for the competition were provided by the College of Technology, Architecture, and Applied Engineering, a co-host of the event along with the Northwest Ohio Center for Excellence in STEM Education. First Solar wants to be involved in the community, Lake said. We had heard a lot about the competition, he said. And thats another reason we partnered with BGSU, because the University is in our backyard. To be a company thats involved in the community and being somebody that wants to make sure the community is involved with us, you have to start in your backyard and thats Bowling Green. Johnson is happy to see the competition is growing every year. Its gotten a lot of attention and again we look at our partnership with the University: Theres things we can do to help bring excitement to the University and draw students, he said. The better students they have, the better workforce I have so were always looking for opportunities to help the University attract the best talent in the area. By Matt Markey When it was time for Max Williamson to go off to college, there was no doubt about where he would be going. A well-worn path to a great education had been laid out for him, as the last in a family of 12 children. A parade of his siblings had attended Bowling Green State University and they showed the way, while a generous aunt with a lifetime investment in higher education made certain that Max and his brothers and sisters had a home away from home during their time at the campus. My dad died when I was still pretty young, so one of my older brothers stayed home and worked the farm, but for the rest of us the other 11 we all ended up at Bowling Green, Williamson said. We found it to be a good place to go to school, and my aunt certainly played a big role in that. She didnt have any children of her own, but she did a lot to make sure we got the chance to get a nice education there. Williamson, 77, attended BGSU from 1955-59, graduating with a degree in general business. He is retired now after a long career in the insurance industry, and splits his time between a home in Columbus and a winter residence in Florida, but he maintains a strong association with the University. In fall 2016, Williamson began a four-year term as chair of the BGSU Foundation, Inc. having previously served two terms on the foundation board, and as president of the alumni board in the 1980s. Theres no question that I have a special affinity for the place, he said. Just with the family connection weve had, there is a very strong tie there. Bowling Green was obviously a big influence in our lives. The family link started with his aunt, Dr. Florence Williamson, who was one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in education from Ohio State. When she began teaching here in the 1920s, it was still called Bowling Green State Normal School. The woman the Williamson children called Aunt Flo taught graduate and undergraduate classes at Bowling Green, served as adviser to the Delta Gamma sorority chapter and was a breast cancer survivor, and an iconic figure on campus for decades. She was a very strong, very stately lady, and she always stacked her hair on top of her head and that made her look really tall, like she was six-foot-six, Max recalled. We lovingly called her Aunt Flo, and when the other students heard that, they picked up on it right away. Aunt Flo had a house very close to campus, so beginning with Larry, the eldest of the Williamson siblings, she offered free room and board to any of her nephews and nieces who wanted to leave the family farm near Cedarville, in southwestern Ohio, and go to college. You had your own room, and she would make meals in the evenings and on the weekends, Max said. She was just very generous, and very welcoming. The house was never locked, and we could come and go as we pleased. Looking back, it was a pretty good deal. So after Larry, John followed, and then Frances, the oldest sister they called Frankie. Then came Myron, Nancy, Donald, Janet and Mildred. Bob was next in line, but he stayed home to tend to the farm. Kent resumed the steady stream of Williamsons headed to Bowling Green, and was followed by Walker, and then Max. Not all of the siblings stayed long enough to graduate, but many did. Nancy was the most persistent of the bunch, returning after 20 years to earn her degree, and then become a home economics teacher in Sylvania. In our family, it was almost a given that you were going to go to college, and you were going to go to Bowling Green, Max said. Everybody did it before me, so I did it, too. Max recalled a conversation he had with his mother late in the summer that followed his senior year of high school. She asked me what I was going to do, and told me that I had better talk to Aunt Flo about college, he said. My aunt said that she would be leaving for Bowling Green in the first week of September, and that I could ride along. So my brother Walker, who was already going to school there, and I rode with her to BG. Max walked in to the admissions office on campus, signed up, and paid his $112 semester fee with money he had saved from his part-time job at a grocery store. At that time, there was no application, and no test scores. I probably couldnt get in there now, he said. Once he arrived in Bowling Green, Max went to work at the student union, and held down jobs throughout his time in college. He said Aunt Flo never pressed any of her houseguests about their schoolwork. She was a very highly educated woman, but she never put pressure on us, he said. She was never demanding, and she never asked us about our grades. She always told us, Dont let your studies interfere with your education. She was very kind, very willing, and she provided us with a comfortable environment, and did it out of the goodness of her heart. Before Max started his senior year, Aunt Flo retired from teaching, sold the house in Bowling Green, and moved back to Cedarville. All of a sudden, I had to make other housing arrangements, Max joked. Many years later, when Max returned to BGSU for a homecoming weekend, he found a flyer for a local pizza place on his windshield as he left the parking lot at Doyt Perry Stadium. He discarded the brochure and drove his wife toward the center of town so he could show her where he and his siblings had lived with his aunt while they were in school. As we crossed the tracks on Court Street, I saw that Aunt Flos house was gone, and right where it used to sit was the pizza place. Yes, Bowling Green had changed a great deal in the years since Max first arrived. But that bond first forged with the Williamson family more than 60 years ago remained strong. I always felt like it was a great place, but then I had a grand-niece from Chicago who started at the University of Illinois, but transferred to BG to get a degree she could not get at Illinois, Max said. That meant a lot to me, and it kind of reinforced that feeling that this place was something special. With much smaller families the norm today, Max agrees that the Williamson legacy at Bowling Green will be a tough one to match. Four of the siblings are still living, and when they manage to get together, the subject of Aunt Flo and the deeply rooted BG connection is bound to come up. When you grow up in a big family like that, you dont know the difference, but I certainly wouldnt want it any other way, he said. My brothers and sisters blazed that trail for me, and since then there have been nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand nephews, and even more extended family beyond that, and a lot of them have gone to Bowling Green. Its a good place where you can definitely get a good education, and weve sent a few people there, thats for sure. For Immediate Release, November 14, 2016 Contact: Diana Dascalu-Joffe, Center for Biological Diversity, (720) 925-2521, ddascalujoffe@biologicaldiversity.org Legal Protest Filed Against Fossil Fuel Auction of Public Lands in Colorado BLM Failed to Weigh Climate Impact, Raised Risk for Imperiled Fish, Plants LAKEWOOD, Colo. Conservation groups filed a formal administrative protest today challenging a Bureau of Land Management plan to auction off more than 20,000 acres of publicly owned fossil fuels in Colorado. The protest cited concerns over air and water pollution, fracking and potential harm to imperiled species including threatened Colorado River fish such as the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker and plant species such as the parachute beardtongue and the BLMs failure to consider the auctions impact on climate change. This lease sale carries the potential to produce more than 3.1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Its irresponsible for the BLM to issue new fossil fuel leases on public lands without considering the impact that extracting and burning these new sources of dirty energy will have on the climate, said Diana Dascalu-Joffe, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. Given the recent election result, the Obama administration should move immediately to halt new leasing on public lands to preserve his climate legacy. The protest called on the Bureau to halt new leasing of fossil fuels in the proposed area, asks that the agencys Dec. 8 auction be halted due to its failure to consider impacts of fossil fuel extraction on rivers and streams that feed the Colorado River. The Bureau also failed to consider the lifecycle impact that opening these new leases to development will have on climate change. Recent studies have shown that there is already more oil, gas and coal in production to takes us beyond 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Groups protesting the lease auction included the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club. Background The American public owns nearly 650 million acres of federal public land and more than 1.7 billion acres of Outer Continental Shelf and the fossil fuels beneath them. This includes federal public land, which makes up about a third of the U.S. land area, and oceans like Alaskas Chukchi Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard. These places and the fossil fuels beneath them are held in trust for the public by the federal government; federal fossil fuel leasing is administered by the Department of the Interior. Over the past decade, the combustion of federal fossil fuels has resulted in nearly a quarter of all U.S. energy-related emissions. A 2015 report by EcoShift Consulting, commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, found that remaining federal oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. As of earlier this year, 67 million acres of federal fossil fuel were already leased to industry, an area more than 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park containing up to 43 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. Last year Sens. Merkley (D-Ore.), Sanders (I-Vt.) and others introduced the Keep It in the Ground Act (Senate Bill 2238) legislation to end new federal fossil fuel leases and cancel non-producing federal fossil fuel leases. Days later President Obama canceled the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, saying, Because ultimately, if were going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, were going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. Download the September Keep It in the Ground letter to President Obama. Download Grounded: The Presidents Power to Fight Climate Change, Protect Public Lands by Keeping Publicly Owned Fossil Fuels in the Ground (this report details the legal authorities with which a president can halt new federal fossil fuel leases). Download The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions of U.S. Federal Fossil Fuels (this report quantifies the volume and potential greenhouse gas emissions of remaining federal fossil fuels) and The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions fact sheet. Download Over-leased: How Production Horizons of Already Leased Federal Fossil Fuels Outlast Global Carbon Budgets. Download Public Lands, Private Profits, a report about the corporations that are profiting from climate-destroying fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys formal petition calling on the Obama administration to halt all new offshore fossil fuel leasing. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys legal petition with 264 other groups calling for a halt to all new onshore fossil fuel leasing. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. For Immediate Release, November 14, 2016 Contacts: Amaroq Weiss, Center for Biological Diversity, (707) 779-9613, aweiss@biologicaldiversity.org Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense, (541) 520-6003, brooks@predatordefense.org Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746, nick@cascwild.org Wally Sykes, Northeast Oregon Ecosystems, (541) 263-2125, wally_sykes2000@yahoo.com Scott Beckstead, Humane Society of the United States, (541) 530-8509, sbeckstead@humanesociety.org Federal Agencies Urged to Halt Coyote-hunting Contest in Oregon's Lake County Contest Risks Killing Endangered Wolves, Breaking Wildlife Laws PORTLAND, Ore. Six wildlife conservation organizations representing nearly 212,000 Oregonians are calling on the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to stop a coyote-hunting contest planned for Nov. 19-20. The groups are concerned that in addition to being cruel and wasteful, the Lake County Coyote Calling Derby could result in killing of endangered gray wolves, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. This contest is unethical, cruel and risks violating federal law, said Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf organizer with the Center for Biological Diversity. Wolves are fully federally protected throughout the entirety of Lake County, so federal wildlife- and land-management officials have a duty to do everything in their power to protect them. The hunting contest, which awards prizes for the most coyotes killed, is being sponsored by the Lake County chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association and by Robinson Heating and Cooling. The contest will take place on both Forest Service and BLM land, which cover large portions of Lake County. Despite this the contest organizers have not sought a required special use permit. Such a permit would trigger a review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because of the risk of killing federally protected wolves, which have been confirmed in Lake County by federal and state officials and are easily mistaken for coyotes. Coyote killing contests are nothing more than the indiscriminate, wanton slaughter of wildlife, said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Eugene-based Predator Defense. Contest organizers often claim that killing coyotes will protect livestock and enhance prey populations like deer and elk. Ironically, science is telling us just the opposite. When coyotes are killed, those that survive reproduce at higher levels. The conservation groups requested that both the Forest Service and BLM suspend the contest until permits are issued, the Fish and Wildlife Service has the opportunity to ensure no wolves will be harmed, and the public has the opportunity to comment. It is completely irresponsible for these federal agencies to allow a killing contest for an animal that closely resembles the endangered gray wolf in this region, said Nick Cady, legal director of Cascadia Wildlands. Wolves are just beginning to establish a foothold in southwestern Oregon, and it would be tragic for that to be lost due to an overlooked coyote killing derby. Killing contests are cruel, wasteful, and deeply at odds with the humane values of the vast majority of Oregonians, said Scott Beckstead, Oregon senior state director of The Humane Society of the United States. The event promotes a shoot anything that moves mentality and is bound to result in the killing of non-target wildlife. We urge the U.S. Forest Service and BLM to deny permission for this event, and we urge the people of Oregon to demand that our state wildlife managers finally put an end to these festivals of cruelty. Not only do these killing contest endanger a protected species, said Wally Sykes, co-founder of Northeast Oregon Ecosystems, but they are a symptom of a general disrespect for wildlife and a poor understanding of the complex relationships of prey and predator. The request was sent by Predator Defense, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands, The Humane Society of the United States, Northeast Oregon Ecosystems and Oregon Wild. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/ Predator Defense is a national nonprofit advocacy organization with over 15,000 supporters. We have been working since 1990 to protect native predators and end Americas war on wildlife. Our efforts take us into the field, onto Americas public lands, to Congress, and into courtrooms. http://www.predatordefense.org Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadias wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion. Join our movement today. The Humane Society of the United States is the nations largest and most effective animal protection organization. We and our affiliates provide hands-on care and services to more than 100,000 animals each year, and we professionalize the field through education and training for local organizations. We are the leading animal advocacy organization, seeking a humane world for people and animals alike. We are driving transformational change in the U.S. and around the world by combating large-scale cruelties such as puppy mills, animal fighting, factory farming, seal slaughter, horse cruelty, captive hunts and the wildlife trade. http://www.humanesociety.org Oregon Wild: Protecting Oregons wildlands, wildlife, and waters for future generations. http://www.oregonwild.org Northeast Oregon Ecosystems works to protect and expand Oregons wildlife and wildlife habitat. BRUSSELS, Belgium - This year's Africa Finance & Investment Forum (AFIF) will focus on "Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Growth" and will be held for the first time in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted by the Strathmore University, taking place from 15 - 16 February 2017. Image by 123RF An expected 300 participants will converge in Nairobi, bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, financiers, market specialists, government representatives and policy makers working towards Africas growth and development. In line with growing regional and international trends, this year's edition of AFIF will focus on entrepreneurship and innovation and access to finance in key sectors such as energy, water, ICT, health and agriculture. Participants will be able to experience a 360 event, which includes an exclusive training for entrepreneurs, a dynamic market place, tailor-made B2B meetings (for all participants, speakers and partners using EMRC matchmaking programme) and the EMRC-Rabobank Entrepreneurship Award to celebrate innovation and excellence. An expected 300 participants will converge in Nairobi, bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, financiers, market specialists, government representatives and policy makers working towards Africas growth and development. At EMRC we believe that SMEs are the key drivers for growth: In developed regions they are responsible for over 50% of GDP and over 60% of employment and economies across Sub Saharan Africa follow a similar model, explains Ines Bastos, senior project manager at EMRC and heading AFIF 2017. To encourage SME growth in Africa, AFIF offers an interactive platform for the entrepreneurs making a difference, for the financiers already investing in Africa, as well as for the larger financial institutions and enterprises interested in accessing this growing market segment. This belief will be highlighted during the EMRC-Rabobank Entrepreneurship Award, which will showcase innovative projects happening in Africa and offer investors an opportunity to get to know about solid and growing business from across the continent. To further encourage strong and active business meetings, that will take place during allocated times and also informally, EMRC will organise a pre-conference training on A Road-map for Entrepreneurship Growth (13th -14th February 2017). The training is addressed exclusively to AFIF 2017 participants and will be divided in two linguistic groups (English and French). The international media will also be present to highlight these projects and to give the opportunity to speakers and partners to gain local, regional and international visibility. The African Press Organisation will be the forums African News Wire, providing extensive coverage and visibility. The prevalence rate of type 2 diabetes varies between the different racial groups in South Africa. Traditionally it was thought that the Indian population had the highest rate of diabetes, but a study suggests that it is even more common among the coloured population. The research focused on the Bellville South community in the northern suburbs of Cape Town, and showed that one in four adults in the Western Capes coloured population may be affected by type 2 diabetes. This population has a very high prevalence of diabetes. Over the age of 40, nearly one in every four individuals (28,2%) either have diabetes, or are at high risk of developing it, says Professor Rajiv Erasmus from the faculty of medicine and health sciences (FMHS) at Stellenbosch University and lead researcher of the study that was published in the South African Medical Journal. This research was a collaborative effort between the FMHS, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Walter Sisulu University, and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC). He emphasises that although the coloured population appear to be worst affected, there has been a rising trend in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes across all South African population groups. For instance, it is estimated that diabetes now affects one in every 10 black South Africans, where in the past, one in every 20 individuals from this group had diabetes. Another alarming finding in the study was that more than half of the respondents with diabetes were unaware they had the disease. This is particularly worrying because of the long-term complications of diabetes in which the eyes, heart, skin, blood vessels and kidneys are affected. The presence of diabetes will no doubt exacerbate the already high prevalence of hypertension and chronic kidney disease in our population, hamper economic activity, and stretch the limited health facilities, Erasmus warns. For the study, researchers assessed 642 randomly selected participants from the Bellville South community for type 2 diabetes and other risk factors of the metabolic syndrome a group of risk factors (such as being overweight, having high blood pressure and/or high LDL cholesterol) that raises the risk for heart disease and other health problems. All respondents were 31 years or older. In response to the findings of this study, researchers have launched various follow-up studies to uncover the reason for this unusually high prevalence of diabetes in this population, and are assessing the application of user-friendly methods of diagnosis that could simplify the screening process for diabetes. The researchers suggest that a campaign called, Know your diabetic status should be launched to actively screen subjects for diabetes. Self-service technology has gone a long way during the last decade. With the advent of social media and smartphones, coupled with the widespread availability of fast broadband, companies from all over the world have been taking advantage of low-cost digital alternatives to providing face-to-face support, particularly in customer care, banking and retail. While self-service technology is certainly something that should be embraced, it's important for corporate entities to retain a 'human' side. Digital solutions are convenient, however, they don't always lead to a satisfactory resolution to problems. Sometimes a simple conversation, or even a means for unhappy customers to vent their frustrations verbally, is necessary. Explaining the lack of self service in South Africa South Africans haven't taken to self-service in the same manner as Europeans and Americans, and often choose traditional face-to-face contact as the preferred method of communication. For example: self-service checkouts are yet to make an impact in retail, payment systems through third party internet applications aren't common, and automated ticketing is only available through a small selection of airlines. In fact, most organisations in South Africa are yet to even expand their social media into the customer support sector, believing it to be a significant waste of investment. On some level, this could be considered a positive move as the cracks are starting to show in countries that have embraced self-service. For example, in the United Kingdom the government portal (HM Revenue & Customs) has recently announced a reshuffle that will see the their already strained customer services department focus on self-service solutions. The popular opinion has been largely negative. Tax is an extremely complex topic, and if trained customer services representatives already struggle to cope with demands, there's no chance the average Joe could sort out tax problems themselves. The correlation between self-service acceptance and smartphone use Smartphones and the widespread accessibility of broadband has had a major impact on the way business is conducted. Approximately 89 percent of South Africans own either a smart or regular phone, which is comparable to the United States; however, only 19 percent use them for social networking, particularly those who can speak and read English, as opposed to 59 percent in the United States. Comparable trends can be seen in European and Asian countries. The correlation is undeniable. As social media use in South Africa is growing, perhaps in a few years self-service technology will eventually become more accepted. If statistics are anything to go by, this seems highly likely. According to Contact Telephone Numbers, UK companies like to insist that you are dealt with via email, online chat and FAQs. This is because dealing with queries by phone increases their expenditure on staffing and profit margins. This general attitude has caused widespread disdain on the British Isles, and now businesses are starting to suffer. But that's not to say that South African businesses will experience a slow decline in their level of customer care with this advent of technology. In fact, they now have greater control of their future than before. South African businesses have the rare opportunity to establish where the countries who have incorporated such technologies such as the UK are going wrong, and rectify any looming issues before they occur. Fundamentally, the pace with which the country is joining the self-service race, be it through lack of investment from the corporate sector or the reluctance of the general population, could be a major positive in the future! LONDON - Fashion designer Stella McCartney unveiled her first menswear collection on Thursday at London's famous Abbey Road recording studio, where she promised men a more free and fun wardrobe. British fashion designer Stella McCartney at the presentation of her menswear launch and womens Spring 2017 collection presentation in London on 10 November. AFP/VNA Photo McCartney chose to present the collection at the recording studio made famous by her father, Paul McCartney, and his three fellow Beatles when they named one of their albums after Abbey Road. His fashion designer daughter referred to the 1969 album cover, which shows the band walking across Abbey Road, by parading models over the same white stripes to photographers' flashes. McCartney said the venue was special both for its musical and family ties. "It really means a lot to our family this studio... seeing and hearing what's been created here, the best music in the world. "It's such an iconic place. So many people have recorded here," she said. Pink Floyd, Radiohead, the Manic Street Preachers and Blur are just some of the other bands to have recorded at Abbey Road in recent years. Trained at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, McCartney has built a reputation as a designer but has only just decided to enter the world of menswear. The collection shown at Abbey Road ranged from playful casual wear, such as blue pinstripe pyjama-like shirts and bright yellow socks, to more formal tailoring including a black suit and camel overcoat. "The challenge has been just to look at how men dress but also not over thinking it," said McCartney. "We want them to be a bit freer and having more fun with their wardrobe and also have timeless beautiful pieces at the same time." The launch was attended by British creatives such as actress Anna Friel and rapper M.I.A, as well as models Kate Moss and Twiggy. Music performances included Run-DMC, who played the well-known track "Walk this way". McCartney's womenswear collection for spring 2017 was also unveiled at the event. With the festive season looming, large retailers need to differentiate themselves from the competition and look into interactive communication solutions to engage their customers. Rean van Niekerk, founder of Metacom Customer loyalty today can be easily defined as a moving target. Shopper sentiment shifts in the wind; blowing from one retailer to another as each store uses the technology and tools they have at their disposal to catch the consumers mercurial eye. Research by Effective Measure has found that most South African consumers use their smartphones for social networking, searching for information, shopping for products and instant messaging. In fact, the same research revealed that a third of South African consumers shop from their smartphones and 48.6% of users could remember the adverts they see on their smartphone. It is a realm of untapped potential, which the retailer can harness for far more targeted and engaging conversations. A recent study by research consultancy Rare, found that the next generation of consumer places personalisation high on the scale of importance when it comes to their loyalty to any given brand, and 94% of smartphone users would save personalised mobile wallet offers and coupons. More interestingly, 82% of those prefer digital coupons to their paper counterparts, with the majority saying that being taken to a mobile coupon page rather than an ecommerce page is their preferred route after clicking on an advert. The way to the customers wallet is no longer just the price tag but increasingly through their digital heart. Content remains king and the retailer is under pressure to make it fun, relevant and, most of all, interesting. From both retailers and their customers, there is a clear trend towards wanting improved interaction and engagement, says Rean van Niekerk, founder of Metacom, an industrial communications provider offering interactive communication solutions. There is a growing need for retailers to build communities and relationships, which are designed to last. One of the biggest methods of achieving this is through loyalty programmes and content, which engage customers directly, adding that much needed stickiness to relationships forged in-store. Driving customer engagement through in-store multimedia Working closely with companies in the retail sector across Africa, the company has seen that there is a need for solutions designed to support multimedia, audio and services that are tailored to drive customer interaction. These need to extend far beyond the simple pricing board or information display, and into platforms, which can interact with customers. The retailer has to be able to communicate with customers on various levels. Imagine a world where customers come into the store and a display activates with content, which is geared towards them. It includes advertising, competitions and loyalty rewards, which they will appreciate. They can login to the stores Wi-Fi network on their smartphone, interact with the retailer to enter the competition or gain loyalty points and the relationship grows from there. Enhancing the digital experience The company has devised a solution that is more than just a visual digital experience; it includes the audio, the Wi-Fi and the content elements as well. Audio content can be customised to a specific store and what they are trying to sell and who they are trying to sell to. It changes the whole dynamic. Customers enter the store and visually interact with content, then via the in-store radio, they can hear more information, which guides them to login on Wi-Fi and access special offers or give real-time feedback. It is a proactive customer service loop, which engages with people on every level, and gives them the opportunity to build a relationship with the store. Business value What we are developing is a fully integrated platform, which incorporates each of these elements under one banner. Retailers do not need to work with multiple service providers in order to implement audio, digital, Wi-Fi and more; they can just access one fully integrated solution, which delivers content in the way that they prefer. The platform is designed with retailers specific needs in mind, allowing for enhanced service delivery and customer communication across numerous channels. The goal is to ensure that every store can engage with its customers on a richer level than ever before and the company plans to add in new services and features continually, as retailers require them. Currently under development, the new tool will be customisable and customer focused and will support retailers in becoming more engaging and interactive than before. Most retailers are struggling to understand how to deliver Wi-Fi, how to create interaction with their customers and build these relationships. Our strategy is to help them overcome these challenges and do just that proactively grow relationships and their business, concludes Van Niekerk. SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday rejected the idea that bogus stories shared at the social network paved a path of victory for President-elect Donald Trump. "The idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way I think is a pretty crazy idea," Zuckerberg said during an on-stage chat at a Technonomy technology trends conference in California. The Facebook co-founder rhetorically asked why people would think there would be hoax stories about one candidate but not the other. He also dismissed worries about Facebook users existing in "bubbles" where they only see news or perspectives echoing their viewpoints. "Voters make decisions based on their lived experience," Zuckerberg said. "You don't generally go wrong when you trust that people understand what they care about and what's important to them and you build systems that reflect that." Masoud Rezaeipoor via 123RF He added that research gathered at Facebook suggests news-filter bubbles are not a problem. The social network found that while people may have a lot of friends very much like themselves, almost everyone at Facebook has someone in their mix who breaks the mold in some way, such as religion, ethnicity, or background. However, Zuckerberg added, Facebook has also found that people are less inclined to click on links or otherwise check out shared stories that don't line up with their views. "We just tune out," Zuckerberg said of the pattern. "I don't know what to do about that." While acknowledging the importance of the election, he advised maintaining faith that most progress in innovation is made by private citizens, typically without help from the government. "These elections make a real difference in the world, but it would not be right to suggest that it changes the fundamental arc of technology or progress over time," Zuckerberg said. The News Feed at Facebook has evolved from early days of being about sharing personal tidbits with friends or family to becoming a platform for important news. Facebook continues to adapt to that shift, modifying the way it ranks stories as well as the community guidelines regarding what might be offensive, according to Zuckerberg. He conceded there was a lot that could be improved and that the process was ongoing, but contended it was misguided to put blame on Facebook. "I do think there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason someone could have voted the way they did is because they saw some fake news," Zuckerberg said. "If you believe that, then I don't think you have internalized the message that Trump supporters are trying to send in this election." Source: AFP Nigeria won't be revoking the privatisation of the country's energy sector, the minister of power, works and housing, Raji Fashola, says. "The Federal Government will respect and uphold the contract it has been committed to and inherited from the past administration. According to him, the government has nothing to gain from sending investors in the power sector packing, following calls from some quarters asking for revocation of privatisation of the sector. "If those calling for revisiting of the privatisation of the power sector meant to say improving the governance, performance and efficiency, then, I am here for that. If revisiting it will mean that distribution companies (DISCOs) should open up and investments should come in, I am for that. If it means that the entire power sector will become very efficient, I will support it. But, I will not support cancelling of the contracts we had with them. "If we revoke privatisation of the sector, investors will carry their bags and go, they will tell others that Nigeria is not reliable for investment," Fashola says. The minister, however, urged the EU-business delegates to invest in the power sector, saying that no economy would grow without investment in infrastructure. Fashola was speaking at the 5th European Union (EU)-Nigeria Business Forum, themed: Harnessing Nigeria's Potential for Economic Growth in Lagos. Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of the Gift of the Givers Foundation, has been awarded the Global Citizen Award by the international advisory firm Henley & Partners. Dr Sooliman was recognised for his efforts in developing the Gift of the Givers Foundation into one of Africas largest disaster relief organisations, raising more than $150m in life-saving aid for 42 countries around the world including war-ravaged states such as Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Bosnia. His team of 200 provide medical assistance, equipment and supplies, as well as high energy and protein supplements, food and water to millions of people each year. During the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the organisation sent four rescue teams and aid materials to the country. At one point in 2011, they were the only international aid group providing food parcels to Somalia, airlifting 180 tons and shipping 2000 tons of aid. Dr Imtiaz Sooliman (right) with Dr Christian H. Kalin (right) Innovation and inventions Even more remarkable is the organisations cutting edge innovation and invention. The Gift of the Givers designed and developed the worlds first and only containerised hospital comprising 28 units, as well as a groundnut-soya high energy and protein supplement which is used in the treatment of severe malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, TB, cancer and other life-threatening and debilitating conditions. The foundation also established an open source computer lab. In Syria, which is the main focus of the foundations relief efforts at the moment, they have erected two hospitals and are running a program to upgrade and transfer their skills to doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. Dr Christian H. Kalin, group chairman of Henley & Partners, says the Global Citizen Award is given each year to an inspirational individual who has made an extraordinary contribution towards improving the global community. Dr Sooliman is an exceptionally worthy recipient of the award as his work is not only visionary but also innovative in many ways. He has demonstrated extraordinary courage and commitment, and the work of his foundation has had a significant impact on the lives of the most vulnerable in our global community. I believe these are the most important reasons why our Award Committee has given this years award to Dr Sooliman. Global stamp of approval The Global Citizen Award consists of a specially made commemorative medal, an award certificate signed by the chairman of the independent Award Committee and a $50,000 monetary prize, of which $25,000 is donated to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and $25,000 is given to a charity of the recipients choice. Upon receiving the award, Dr Sooliman thanked Henley & Partners, saying the accolade was an important acknowledgement of the significant work being done by African non-governmental organisations (NGOs) internationally. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the continent and all that we can do. Being honoured with a prestigious award like this means we have the global stamp of approval which helps build faith and confidence in others to support African NGOs and our work in the future, he said. Eastern Free-State commercial farming enterprise, Sandstone Estates , received the 2016 Business of the Year Gold Winner Award for Tourism at the annual ROCCI/FNB Business Awards. The Roodepoort Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ROCCI) and First National Bank seek to identify and acknowledge businesses which have achieved success and embody the spirit of enterprise country wide. Sandstone Estates We are honoured and immensely proud of this award. It serves as further inspiration for our committed team to not only continue creating jobs and business success going forward but to preserve the best of our past for the future, says Mike Myers, director of the established farming estate, who represented Sandstone Estates at the awards ceremony. The Sandstone directors first got wind of their nomination for the coveted award in early September this year during a meeting with their banker, FNB, when Mohammed Cassim, segment head of FNB informed them that FNB had put Sandstones name forward as a nominee. Sandstone was subsequently invited to deliver a presentation on 26 September 2016 to a panel of judges, including representatives from FNB, SAICA (South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Chief Adjudicator), Business Partners and BEBEs Events Ellen Oosthuizen. Ninety-seven companies were nominated in 20 categories which included: Large Corporations and Listed Companies, Medium Size Businesses, SMEs, Most Promising Young Entrepreneur, and Tourism. Mike Myers (centre), receives The Gold Winner Award for Tourism from Michelle Geraghty, FNB Regional Head, Gauteng South West (left) and Marietjie Esterhuizen, ROCCI President, (right). This prestigious award comes at a time during which the Sandstone team is preparing for its major tourism event taking place from 30 March to 9 April 2017, The Stars of Sandstone Steam and Heritage Festival, which was launched in 1999. Sandstone is a popular international movie location and also draws attention as a popular events and team-building destination. It has the largest collection of 2ft narrow gauge locomotives with 30 working locomotives, the largest such collection in the world, and is supported by over 250 different types of rolling stock, from passenger trains to varied freight trains. Picture vistas of the majestic Maluti Mountains, cosmos flowers as far as the eye can see, and 30km of private railway track. Every resource available on this fertile, beautiful land, from ever-expanding cattle herds to harvesting cosmos, soya, wheat, maize, and sunflowers, is utilised at Sandstone. The teams of Afrikaner trek oxen which are bred and trained on the farm are complemented by a large cross section of working ox wagons, some of which date back nearly two centuries. Heavy rainfalls and flash floods caused extensive damage to vehicles and property in the vicinity of Linksfield and the Gilloolys interchange of Johannesburg on 9 November, with insurers declaring it a national catastrophe... Some insurers has set up facilities at salvage yards for vehicles that were submerged to be immediately assessed. Huge property losses have also been incurred, especially in the vicinity of the Jukskei River which burst its banks. While its still too early to quantify the extent of the damage, expectations are that these will be significant and that claims handling will be kicked into high gear to deal with the influx, says Mandy Barrett, manager of personal lines marketing & sales at Aon South Africa. Source: Njabulo Cele ?@njabuloc via Twitter While severe weather is not an uncommon occurrence in South Africa, what makes the events in Gauteng particularly noteworthy is the net retained exposure that the province represents. Gautengs built-up area constitutes only 0,5% of SAs land surface area, but due to the fact that the area is so densely populated, Gauteng constitutes 35% of the exposure to catastrophic events such as hail storms and flash floods. According to Aon South Africa, risk advisors and insurance brokerage, in the last four years, weather-related damage has cost the insurance industry a staggering R2,5bn in losses. As at lunchtime on 10 Nov over 150 claims had already been lodged in Aons call centre alone, and continue to pour in. Travellers are starting to get ready for their festive season trip. It is vital for these travellers to have travel insurance, whether they are flying overseas or driving across the South African border, to ensure they are covered and have assistance services in place in case of an emergency. Marcia Le Roux This is according to Marcia Le Roux, head of medical and Travel at Europ Assistance South Africa, who says that when travelling overseas, many people purchase travel insurance through their credit provider, bank or insurance provider. However, most people do not realise that they resultantly have assistance services in place as an added benefit of this insurance, which means that travel and medical assistance can be rendered to the traveller should they be caught in a difficult situation. A grudge purchase until an emergency occurs Many people may regard travel insurance as a grudge purchase, but when an unexpected emergency occurs, such as lost baggage, cancellation, and rerouting of flights or even a repatriation, assistance services will prove to be extremely helpful, she says. When a traveller experiences any type of travel emergency, assistance services will be able to facilitate and ensure a smooth process of alleviating the problem as well as provide information and advice to the traveller. This way the traveller has peace of mind that their issues will be dealt with by a professional and they do not have the burden of making new arrangements in a foreign country where they do not know the language, systems, and regulations, explains Le Roux. As an example, she says that should an individual lose their passport and be unable to board a flight home the assistance service provider will make the necessary phone calls, send the appropriate documentation, deal with passport control and direct the traveller to the right embassy. The assistance provider will essentially deal with the logistical issues to ensure that the traveller does not have to stress about the situation. Andrey Armyagov via 123RF Travelling for business? When it comes to employees travelling for business purposes, they travel to a specific country to fulfill business duties, says Le Roux. Businesses are advised to make sure that they have travel assistance services in place for their travelling employees to allow the person to continue attending to their business obligations should an emergency occur. The employee can uninterruptedly proceed with their business trip while being assured that a professional is dealing with their emergency to facilitate the arrangements on their behalf. Most insurance providers do offer these assistance services as part of their travel insurance, she says. The travellers responsibility is to contact the provider to ascertain to what extent they have assistance services at their disposal. This exercise should form part of the travellers planning ahead of their trip the same as they would ensure that their passport is in order, they need to understand how their travel insurance works, what it covers and what the assistance services offer. Travellers are advised to obtain the number of the service provider in order to get the relevant contact numbers on speed dial to ensure that any emergency can be dealt with quickly. A small issue can easily become traumatic if the traveller is not fully prepared for it, concludes Le Roux. Digital transformation is a powerful revolution that needs to happen in order to accelerate business activities, skills and models, enabling companies to fully leverage the changes and opportunities brought by new digital technologies in a strategic and prioritised manner. Leo Lintang via 123RF Driven by changing customer needs, those businesses that ride the wave and embrace digital change will survive and even gain a competitive edge, while those that do not digitilise will become irrelevant and possibly extinct. Because digital transformation is not as simple as moving business applications to the cloud, there is a need for business leadership to get involved in the transformation process from the beginning. A journey with multiple connected transitional goals, digitilisation is undertaken with the aim of continuous optimisation across processes and departments to create a business environment in which employees and decision-makers alike are empowered with the correct tools to fulfil their business function. End-to-end change is required Through the digital transformation process, an organisation must move from the traditional, manual way to a digitilised environment. This means customer interactions must also be digitilised and requires a change in business model as well all driven by the digital strategy. As the main objective is to become more internally productive in terms of customer interaction and service delivery, it is critical that the task is not carried out in an isolated manner. Digital strategy, we believe, is 50% technology and 50% leadership. Thus an organisation cannot decide to, for example, transform its sales interaction team in isolation, without applying a similar approach to the other applications of the business, like end-supply chain, end-delivery and marketing. The companys leadership team needs to be involved and must provide guidance based on the understanding that the way business happens today will change tomorrow it is this understanding that must drive the digital strategy. The company leadership needs to acknowledge the importance of digitilising customer interactions and customer data to ensure that the business can move closer to the customer in order to respond faster. This is only possible if the digital strategy is deployed simultaneously across all business-critical applications, from end to end. Change with a view for optimisation Digitilisation means, at a basic level, looking at all business documentation and interactions with a view to capture them digitally. Once that is done, its necessary to define processes to define what the business will be doing with that data in order to optimise operations. Once these processes have been established, the next logical step is to examine how a customer interaction would take place, and what changes are necessary here given that digital transformation is now underway. Because the process is more than simply moving business applications to the cloud, its necessary to critically examine business interactions, both internally and externally. The company needs to look at how they interact with their customers and suppliers, and consider how to use the information on both in such a way that they can give better service to their customers, or get better service from their suppliers. On the internal side, once businesses understand that customer needs are no longer the same it becomes possible to find new ways to deliver their services faster, through digitilisation. It becomes possible, for example, for a financial institution to launch a new product and roll out an improved product within 48 hours, based on customer feedback through digital channels simply by placing analytical software to gather negative and positive sentiment from customer-facing social media platforms. By properly defining internal business processes, data in the form of customer feedback can be used by the company to ensure that the customer needs are met and fulfilled in a way that was not possible in a pre-digital world. Change can be challenging As humans, we have a tendency to resist change, but the digital transformation cannot be refused. Given that its a change driven by shifting customer behaviour and demands, if it does not happen, it will be the end of the company in time to come and convincing business leadership of this reality is the biggest challenge in implementing digital transformation. The second challenge lies constructing analytical engines that render enormous amounts of data produced in digital interactions into meaningful output that can be used by business leaders to make informed decisions and made available across multiple customer touchpoints to customer service representatives. This is only possible if the digital transformation has been undertaken across operational environments as well, which ensures that if a customer reaches out (regardless of platform) with queries or concerns, the matter can be addressed on the channel of the customers choosing. Once the internal business processes have been optimised, innovation becomes possible and given that a companys competitive edge depends on its ability to innovate and respond to customers, it becomes undeniably clear that digital transformation is not a journey that can be avoided. Treasury is seeking professional advice on whether and how to restructure the state's airlines as well as the possible disposal of their noncore assets, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said. NJR ZA via Wikimedia Commons The possibility of merging South African Airways (SAA), South African Express and Mango or integrating them under a single holding company has been on the government's agenda for some time as a means of achieving synergies and economies of scale. Another option to be investigated by Treasury is the separate corporatisation of the airlines' international, regional or domestic routes. Appointment of advisers under way Gordhan said the process of appointing advisers was under way, but budgeting issues had to be resolved first. In a written reply to a parliamentary question by DA deputy finance spokesman Alf Lees, Gordhan outlined the terms of reference for the advisers who will be tasked with developing a group structure to realign the airline assets. These assets include a 3% stake in Airlink. The advisers will assess the following: what to do with the state's Airlink stake, and whether this should be increased or decreased; whether to establish a holding company; the corporatisation of Voyager and Cargo; the incorporation of SAA, South African Express and Mango into an integrated airline group with or without Airlink; the integration of the technical divisions of SAA, South African Express and Denel; the identification of noncore assets for disposal; the creation of a shared services division; the establishment of a separate aircraft leasing firm; separately corporatising the international, regional or domestic routes; and investment by strategic equity partners at group or subsidiary level. Myeni defends her track record While Gordhan resisted the reappointment of Dudu Myeni as SAA chairwoman, Myeni believes it is in the best interest of the airline and taxpayers that she serves her full term of office, not least because she is championing transformation. She expressed her views in a letter to the chairman of Parliament's standing committee on finance, Yunus Carrim, in response to a question posed by DA finance spokesman David Maynier during a committee hearing in September. In the letter, she vigorously defended her track record, insisting she has done nothing to harm the airline, blaming past decisions for many of its woes. "SAA's performance cannot be solely attributed to me," Myeni wrote, pointing to the fact that SAA had never been capitalised and continued to suffer from the bad decisions of the past, including that by former CEO Coleman Andrews to sell and lease back the airline's fleet. The airline had also suffered heavy hedging losses in the past and continued to do so as a result of falling global oil prices and currency movements. Myeni bemoaned the lack of economic transformation due mainly to those "hanging on to their ill-gotten unearned privilege at the expense of the national imperatives." "It is a serious concern that we preside over a state-owned company which continues to be dominated by one section of the society against the majority who receive crumbs from the R24bn procurement spend," she wrote. Myeni hits out at SA pilots "Further, I have taken a dim view of the exclusive benefits enjoyed by the pilots. None of these glaring issues have received as much as a whimper from some people. Myeni hit out at the SAA Pilots' Association, which she said was resisting attempts to restructure their contracts, which were a significant drain on SAA's cash flow. "The pilots are costing the SAA in excess of R600m per year in excessive guaranteed benefits," she said. Source: Business Day African Tails, a non profit animal welfare organisation, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with the release of the 2017 African Tails Calendar at The Barnyard Theatre on Friday 18 November. All tickets purchased through African Tails have a donation of R30 included in them and the calendars will be available to buy at the Barnyard on the night. The calendars cost R100 and the proceeds go towards ensuring that the work of African Tails continues. African Tails focuses on the sterilization of animals in township and rural areas. The organisation not only aims to uplift communities through these programmes, but also save thousands of animals being born into a life of suffering and neglect. The organisation also offers education programmes, and is involved in the rehabilitation and rehoming of animals. In 2016 thus far, African Tails has been able to sterilize well over 1,200 animals. To book your tickets call 021 510 5471. www.africantails.co.za Transport Minister Dipuo Peters has officially opened Swartkopfontein Bridge, which will make the movement of citizens between South Africa and Botswana easier as well as strengthen economic ties between the two countries. This whole project of the road and bridge construction cost R78.5m and 51 full time jobs were created over the 23-month contract period, Minister Peters said. She said the labour was sourced between the two countries, with most of the construction material used coming from Botswana. Minister Peters was supported by her counterpart in Botswana, Minister of Transport and Communications Onkokame K Mokaila during the official opening of Swartkopfontein Bridge at the Swartkopfontein Border Post in the North West on Monday, 7 November. The road was upgraded from a gravel to an asphalt surface and includes the construction of the 80-metre long Notwane River Bridge. The construction of the road and bridge to link the border posts of Swartkopfontein comes after a memorandum of agreement was signed in July 2014, in which the governments of the two countries agreed to promote cross-border trade, economic activity and regional integration. Part of the agreement included a practical initiative to upgrade roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure. The Swartkopfontein entry point is located between the commercial border posts of Kopfontein and Skilpadshek and now offers a convenient alternative for commuters who make the journey. I have no doubt that it will relieve the pressure on traffic between Zeerust in South Africa and the towns of Gaborone, Lobatse and Ramotswa in Botswana. This will lead to a safer travel experience for commuters within the region, Minister Peters said. Swartkopfontein Bridge was constructed by the agency of the Department of Transport and the South African National Roads Agency SOC Ltd (SANRAL). The national winners in the 2016 Business Partners/SME Toolkit Global Entrepreneurship Week's Business Plan Competition for Aspiring Young Entrepreneurs are Bahle Nteleki and Mazizi Njokweni. Based in Johannesburg, the entrepreneurs are behind the business idea, MB.co Podiatrists, a business that offers podiatric interventions for clients, as well as providing a variety of customised innersole accessories, orthotics and footwear modification techniques. Competition judge, Tiisetso Tsiki of Business Partners Limited (BUSINESS/PARTNERS), says that Nteleki and Njokweni, submitted a high-quality business plan, which included a strong implementable concept and catered to a gap in the market. Over and above the business plan, something else we look for is passion, dedication, drive and enthusiasm all of which are not quantifiable and they both demonstrated these traits, says Tsiki. SME Toolkit winners (in the middle from left) - Mazizi Njokweni and Bahle Nteleki with Petro Bothma, group enterprise development manager at Business Partners and Christo Botes, executive director at Business Partners Both certified podiatrists, with proven experience in the industry, this partnership has its sights set on the occupational health industry and plan to focus on individuals who are employed in industries requiring the use of safety boots. While protecting the foot from external dangers, safety footwear can cause severe complications in the lower limbs and feet, says Nteleki. Such injuries can prevent the sufferer from functioning properly in his or her role and can result in poor work performance. As part of the winners prize, MB.co Podiatry will receive R 25,000 in cash, business mentorship worth R12,000 and a smart tablet device. Regional winners This year the competition received 347 entries initially and, after completion of the workshops, 99 business plans were received for judging, from which eight regional winners were selected to contend for the overall national title. All regional winners received business mentorship valued at R6,000 each. The other regional winners this year are: Alyssa Reddy SGD Training and Consulting (KwaZulu-Natal Richards Bay): Start, Grow, Develop Training and Consulting is the brain child of 25-year-old Reddy, who realised that soft skills and human resources training was hard to come by in her home town of Richards Bay. The business is initially targeting small and medium enterprises, matriculants and employees looking to broaden their skills-set, but Reddy hopes to eventually branch out and offer her services to larger organisations and the public sector. Japhta Mokoko Jayspectrum Trading and Projects: Randfontein local Mokoko is an artistic glass designer and manufacturer who has identified a large gap in his local market for sandblasting and decorative blasting. While the target market for his glass design is wide ranging from homeowners to shopping centres and industrial parks - he will also be incorporating glass gifting into the business, making the diversity of his products a core business strength. Johnson Mthembu - Stokvella (KwaZulu-Natal Greater Durban): Mthembu is the driver behind Stokvella, a mobile app developed to address the issues of transparency, security and accountability that members of the R45bn stokvel industry face. The Stokvella system aims to put all stokvel members in control of their own monies. Mpho Rasimphi - #FYI Tutoring (Limpopo): Five years ago, Rasimphi began tutoring struggling high school learners in Polokwane in preparation for their final exams. Today, #FYI Tutoring employs university students and part-time educators and targets Grade 12 learners from local high schools by offering extra lessons in mathematics, physical science, accounting, economics and business studies. Murray Senyatsi iRez modern low cost rental apartments (Limpopo): Polokwane is the hub of tertiary education in Limpopo, attracting students from all across the province and even the country. Aspiring property entrepreneur, Senyatsi, aims to address the serious lack of quality accommodation for these students by providing low cost, well managed, safe and secure housing for students who are currently living in poor conditions and at great distances from their learning institutions. Nosisa Ndabandaba Supriim Vegan (Western Cape): Cape Town based Ndabandaba is capitalising on the healthy eating trend gaining popularity around the world, by providing wholesome vegan and gluten-free snacks to those seeking tasty, environmentally friendly food. Starting with an outlet in Cape Towns city centre, this health conscious entrepreneur aims to delight customers with junk food with a clean and healthy twist by sourcing all her organic ingredients locally and providing a 100% vegan alternative where very few options currently exist. Prudence Biziwe Jackson Chosen Fun House (Free State/Northern Cape): Chosen Fun House, founded by Jackson, assists businesses and individuals who are hosting events by taking responsibility for all activities associated with the event. This includes catering, travel and accommodation for guests, in addition to co-ordinating the event itself. Services are provided either separately or as a turnkey package, while events can range from weddings to corporate gatherings to large family reunions and holiday catering services. Celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week Now in its seventh year, the competition is in celebration of annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, taking place this week 14-20 November, which invites youth between the ages of 18 and 35 to submit their business ideas and attend one of 12 workshops held around the country. These regional workshops focus on teaching the complexities and fundamentals of compiling a business plan, as well as the basics of running a business. All 2016 entrants also received a Sales and Marketing e-Learning course from SA BusinessHub to the value of R750 each. Discussing takeaways from the various workshops, Petro Bothma, enterprise development manager at BUSINESS/PARTNERS, notes that it was evident that the young, hopeful entrepreneurs in attendance do not fully comprehend the vast amount of work that goes into developing a plan and starting a business, with the financial side of a business being largely neglected by many aspiring business owners. The latest 2015-2016 GEM South Africa report states that the low prevalence of entrepreneurial activity among the youth is of concern in the South African context. While many young aspiring entrepreneurs have the passion and ambition, they often stumble with the technicalities of starting a business. If we want to encourage our youth to become successful entrepreneurs, we need to adequately support and equip them with the basics and foundations of starting and running a business, which is the very reason why we launched this competition seven years ago, concludes Bothma. Internet company, Opera, has released its State of the Mobile Web Africa 2016 Report, highlighting mobile internet trends across the continent, including consumer browsing behaviour and app usage. Opera - known for its compression technology and mobile browsers, including Opera Mini - compiles regular global mobile web reports, shedding light on opportunities and challenges within the digital environment. Opera currently has 100 million users in Africa, with an 86.41% market share in Kenya, 71.83% in Nigeria and 53.1% in South Africa; Nigerian, Kenyan and South African Opera users collectively saved data equating to over half a billion US$ in 2016; android users make up nearly half of overall Opera Mini users in Africa; and 70% of Nigerias Facebook users access it via Opera Mini. Ghanaians, Kenyans, Seychellois and Mauritians are the highest data users with an average usage of over 160MB/month. Findings also show that visits to streaming video websites on Opera Mini in Africa have increased by 36% since 2012. Users from Tanzania (22%) are most likely to visit YouTube followed by South Africa (20%) and Ghana (19%). South Africa ranks first in Africa in terms of app usage, with a third of its population using mobile applications, followed by 31% in Ghana, 28% in Nigeria, 19% in Kenya and 18% in Uganda. Nigerians are regular social media users with 70% of Nigerias 16 million Facebook users, accessing the site via Opera Mini. In addition, Opera Mini users are accessing local news as much as 300% more than in 2014. Compression is key We believe data compression is as relevant and useful now as it was a decade ago - in fact, with the growth of smartphone penetration coupled with prohibitively high data costs, its a critical enabler, says Richard Monday, VP for Opera, Africa. The #DataMustFall movement in South Africa demonstrates that people dont feel like theyre getting value for money. The compression technology used in Opera Mini and Opera Max helps consumers save on data costs and addresses issues relating to congestion and page sizes. Ultimately, a lighter mobile web enhances usability, functionality and access - even in poor network conditions. In 2016, Operas compression technology has allowed South Africans to save approximately US$111m in data costs, with Nigerians and Kenyans saving US$280m and US$116m, respectively. Opera currently has 100 million users in Africa, with an 86.41% market share in Kenya, 71.83% in Nigeria and 53.1% in South Africa. ONEm Communications is teaming up with Al Jazeera Media Network to create a new interactive channel for their news content over ordinary mobile. Al Jazeera Media Network already reaches over 305 million households in over 140 countries and will be now be available as a valuable source of Arabic and English content on the ONEm platform. Al Jazeera Media Network is the first media conglomerate from the Middle East to join the ONEm ecosystem. ONEm enables Al Jazeera Media Network content consumers access up-to-date news through SMS and audio in both Arabic and English. ONEm provides a new internet-style interactive experience for mobile users by repurposing existing SMS and audio. This is available on both smartphones and basic feature phones. The user begins by texting #news or #aljazeera to the ONEm platform. The platform responds by starting a menu-driven SMS dialogue with the user whereby the user can select an option to read or listen to an article. Users can also search and sort by categories and view the top trending stories using fuzzy search terms. A unique feature of the ONEm service is the ability to tap into user generated content that will help news organisations such as Al Jazeera to follow up or verify trending stories. ONEm is a continuously growing global mobile ecosystem consisting of mobile operators, content providers and mobile users. Content providers such as Al Jazeera see the need to reach the masses with a systematic interactive approach that is global and not dependant exclusively on data enabled devices. Abdulla Al Najjar, Al Jazeera Media Networks executive director of global brand and communications, commented: We are very excited to announce this agreement. We have a commitment to expand on new avenues and platforms for our audiences across all avenues and we look forward to delivering content in English and Arabic with ONEm. Christopher Richardson, CEO of ONEm Communications, said, Having lived in Qatar, I listen regularly to Al Jazeera on the radio. I used to sit in the car in the parking lot to finish listening to a documentary report before going to work. Today it is a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to bring these great documentaries to others through our audio services over voice. I look forward to having Al Jazeera available to their global audience in Arabic and English. LIMA - The upcoming APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Peru may well approve the strategic study, which is part of the Beijing Roadmap to the Free-Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), said Raul Salazar, a senior Peruvian official, in an interview with Xinhua. "We have the obligation to continue our central topic, which is the approval of the collective strategic study, which was required by the roadmap established in Beijing in 2014. It is hope this year the leaders will approve the study as a step toward beginning negotiations for FTAAP," he expressed. According to Salazar, senior official of Peru to APEC, "this strategic study justifies the start of negotiations." Said document contains a mixture of initiatives destined to strengthen trade, reduce bureaucratic hurdles, permit SMEs to enter value chains, and improve connectivity, among other areas. "China has contributed largely to pushing the idea of a free-trade area. This step taken in Beijing...has forced all the members to face the reality that this is necessary for a number of reasons. Peru holds the position that we need an Asia-Pacific free-trade area. It would allow for APEC's work to be deepened and would see free-trade agreements proliferate," said Salazar. In this context, Salazar pointed out that APEC seeks for its members to voluntarily and unilaterally open up to free trade. He referred to examples such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP), both of which are references for the FTAAP strategic study. For the diplomat, APEC has already made great progress by reducing tariffs to a current average of 5.2 percent, down from over 20 percent. Work is also continuing to reduce this further for food exports. Concerning the presence of President Xi Jinping, he said that "it is a privilege that he is not only participating in the APEC meeting but is also coming for a state visit. This is a very significant choice for Peru, as it shows an emerging economy, so far away, is identified as a trusted partner." "I think that China, for a while now, has made many efforts to build a strong, consistent and structured relationship with Latin America. It began with investments, first largely to do with trade. Then, came investments in natural resources and extractive industries, which are important for trade and the Chinese economy. There is complementarity as Peru is very rich in minerals and natural resources. We feel privileged for this attention," he added. Concerning integration within the region, Salazar responded that "we are aware that physical integration has been slow across the Andes and the jungle. But we have already taken important steps towards physical integration with Brazil and the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA). We are doing our part." He also pointed to the electrical interconnection Peru has with Ecuador and its plans to supply energy to Chile as other examples. However, he admitted that China's investments would help in this regard. "I think the stimulus the Chinese government is carrying out is helping, such as the Trans-Oceanic Railway. There is a debate going on about the high costs, the benefits it would bring to Peru, and the route along which it will be built. There is also a very important decision to be taken as to how much Peru will have to invest. But the planning is being done correctly." To conclude, Salazar said this physical integration would catch up with other integration policies within the Asia-Pacific region. For example, through the APEC Engineering agreement, 14 of the 21 APEC members now allow engineering students to have their studies officially recognized by all other members. This is just one of the examples of economic and technical cooperation Salazar hopes to see take center stage at the APEC meeting in Peru. Trump and Re-Birth of a Nation These are some of the things candidate Donald Trump said: "When Mexico sends it people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people" He also said: I dont even waitAnd when youre a star they let you do itYou can do anythingGrab them by the pussyYou can do anything. Contrary to the pundits and pollsters believing that Trumps politics of bigotry, misogyny and hatred would prove to be his downfall; America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. Trumps total lack of understanding of the geopolitical landscape seemed to, like Sarah Palin before him, ingratiate him with his supporters. In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos Trump proved his ignorance of the geopolitical landscape by saying, "He's (Putin) not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down" even though Putin took Crimea from Ukraine in early 2014. President Obama was correct in saying, "What I think is scary is a president who doesn't know their stuff and doesn't seem to have an interest in learning what they don't know." President Obama also said, This choice actually is pretty cleareven though a bunch of them (Republicans) knew they shouldnt nominate himthe guy they nominated who many of the Republicans he is running against said was a con-artist and a know-nothing and wasnt qualified to hold this officethis guy is temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief and he is not equipped to be president According to CNN exit polls, 53% of white women voted for Trump while 94% of Black women and 68% of Latino women supported Clinton. According to Edison Research exit polls, college educated White women voted 51% to 45% Clinton over Trump while Non-college educated White women voted 62% to 34% Trump over Clinton. White men overwhelmingly supported Trump. College educated White men voted 54% to 39% Trump and non-college educated White men voted 72% to 23% Trump. What motivated White women to vote overwhelmingly for a misogynist who objectified his own daughter? They were born into the world of white privilege. They voted as White over their being women. On August 6, 2008, The New York Times published an article by Matt Bai entitled "Is Obama the End of Black Politics?" The premise of the article was that in 2008, 60 years after Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party over the issue of integrating the armed forces and 45 years after Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the Democratic Party delivered its nomination for the nation's highest office to an African-American, and this somehow signaled the end of black politics. Other pundits developed the narrative that with the election of Senator Barak Obama as Americas 44th President, America had truly become a post-racial melting pot. Performers like Pharrell Williams were mistakenly talking about The New Black. A fictional world where The New Black dreams and realizes that its not pigmentation: its a mentality, and its either going to work for you or its going to work against you. And youve got to pick the side youre going to be on The election of Donald Trump makes it clear that the politics of ignorance, bigotry, misogyny and hatred played well in a fictitious Post-Racial America. Trumps racist, xenophobic rhetoric resonated with his white working-class and college educated supporters because racism has been a tenet of the conservative narrative. It has been the covert sub-text to mainstream Republican dialogue, particularly since the election of President Obama. Trump took the Republican covert sub-text and made it overt presidential racist and misogynistic politics. As members of the Tea Party spat on Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), called Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) an nigger and Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass) a faggot, members of Republican leadership such as Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and former Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) did not tell the Tea Party that theres no place in the American political dialogue for such bigotry and hatred. Why? Because they did not want to risk alienating those voters. Those voters took control of the party and are now celebrating President-elect Trump. Trump called for surveillance against mosques and said that he was open to establishing a database for all Muslims living in the U.S. His presumptive nominee for Attorney General, Rudy Giuliani has called the Black Lives Matter movement "inherently racist." Giuliani was also the architect of the Stop and Frisk program. In New York police officers were empowered to detain and search people for often-vague or non-existent pretexts. The program was eventually held by the court to be unconstitutional. Giuliani has promised, "What I did for New York, Donald Trump will do for America" That will not bode well for people of color. Trumps presumptive nominee for Secretary of State Newt Gingrich is the same person who called President Obama a Mau Mau in the White House, What if (Obama) is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan anticolonial behavior can you begin to piece together (his actions)? Gingrich went on to call President Obama a conman, This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president. This recent election was as much a repudiation of the Obama legacy as a rejection of Hilary Clinton. After eight years of an African American man in the White House 53% of White women and 63% of White men decided they wanted their country back. To take it back they voted for a man who according to Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Trumps The Art of the Deal, just couldnt stay focused for more than a few minutes at a time. In a representative democracy, why would so many Americans vote for an ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic, hate-filled man to represent them? Simply put, because in this fictional post-racial America, too many Americans are ignorant, hate-filled, misogynistic bigots. The Civil War is still being waged. Dr. Wilmer Leon is the Producer/ Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program Inside the Issues with Leon, on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: [email protected]. www.twitter.com/drwleon and Dr. Leons Prescription at Facebook.com 2016 InfoWave Communications, LLC The Most Extensive and Reliable Source of Information Related to the Mexican Drugs Cartels. You will not find this level of coverage anywhere else, join us! WARNING: Posts may contain strong violent material, discretion is advised. COMMENTS: We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. An internet imagery. NEW DELHI (PTI): The Defence Ministry could in the next "few months" finalise higher defence reforms to bring in jointness among the three armed services which will include creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar admitted that the services did not want to leave their "turf" but they have "slowly" come to understand that jointness would be much better than individual separate forces. "I am very clear on it but there were certain aspects which need to be also taken along. I have to take all the three services on board. Let me be very clear, no one wants to leave his turf," he said during a book launch last night. Underlining that he was not speaking in Indian military context alone, Parrikar said across the militaries, the same situation prevailed. He added that the question was whether one will "force it down the throat" or get everyone on board. "I think, I have been discussing with the chiefs and slowly they have also come to understanding that jointness would be much better than individually separate forces," he said, seeking a "few more months". However, the Defence Minister made it clear that the final call would be taken by the Prime Minister. Incidentally, the chiefs of both the Army and the Air Force will retire this year end. Without naming any operation, he said though India has not gone for jointness, "recent operations" were quite successful joint operations. "The Air Force and the Army integrated so well in recent operations, not saying which operation. There was total synergy and there was no problem in working together," he remarked. The post of CDS was recommended in 2001 by a Group of Ministers (GoM) which was set up in April 2000 to review the national security system in the aftermath of the Kargil War. The recommendation, if implemented, would be the first major military reform by the Narendra Modi government, which has already announced significant changes in the procurement process. Sources said the appointment of CDS is aimed at promoting "jointness at the top" when it comes to planning, operations and modernisation of the military. Though India has a tri-service command, it is headed by a three-star officer who is junior to the military chiefs who are four-star. The post of the CDS is likely to be a four-star and he would be in-charge of the tri-services command at Andaman and Nicobar islands, the strategic command in-charge of nuclear weapons along with the upcoming cyber and space command. Parrikar said in the coming months the Andaman and Nicobar command will become a joint command in "real sense" as it was the "need of the hour", adding that currently there was only a "partial joint command". Stating that some joint acquisition was being done, Parrikar pointed out that jointness can save the country lot of money. "We are are replicating the same thing. Air Force does the same thing. Army does the same thing. If there is jointness, lot of things can be synchronised. "Jointness of acquisition will be advantageous. In fact we are doing some joint acquisition. Give me few more months," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had late last year called for "jointness at the top" of the military establishment. Parrikar had in March last year said that CDS was a must and hoped to propose a mechanism for the creation of the post within the next three months. The defence minister said he does not care about what people say about him taking more time even though he had given a time period. "I realised if I hurry, I will do something which will not taste well just because my ego says 'I said six months, I should force it in six months'," he said, adding he was "not there to satisfy his ego". "I am there to ensure it happens properly. So I decided that someone may say anything about it, I will do it properly. Today I am confident that I have understood," he said. KATHMANDU (PTI): Indian Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag on Sunday concluded his three-day official visit to Nepal during which he assured the country's leadership of India's commitment to capacity and capability building of Nepal's army. During his visit, Gen Singh held bilateral talks with his Nepalese counterpart Gen Rajendra Chhetri and other senior government officials on military and security issues. He was visiting the Himalayan nation, leading a delegation of the Indian Army at the invitation of Gen Chhetri. The visit was aimed at boosting India's military and security ties with the landlocked country. During his stay, Gen Singh paid a courtesy call to President Bidya Devi Bhandari and met Defence Minister Balkrishna Khand. He also called on Prime Minister Prachanda. "Army chief assured him that we are committed to capability and capacity building of Nepal Army," according to Indian Army sources. On Saturday, he visited Rupandehi district in western Nepal, where he observed "Surya Kiran" - a joint military exercise held between Nepal and Indian armies, according to a statement issued by the Nepal Army Headquarters. Such high-level visits by top Indian military officials have helped deepen military ties between the two countries as well as expand cooperation, the statement said. Indian Navy's aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya. KOCHI (PTI): INS Vikramaditya, the largest warship operated by India and the third aircraft carrier inducted into the Indian Navy, is in the process of getting ready to go back to sea as she completed her "refit works" at Cochin Shipyard Limited here. The ship, 285 metres long and 60 metres wide with 23 decks, was drydocked at the CSL on September 23. The vessel was undocked on November 5 after carrying out "a large amount of works", a Navy official said here on Friday. "The ship is now in the process of getting ready to go back to sea. She is preparing all her machinery, all her equipment, all her systems and very shortly we will be sailing off from Kochi and going back to sea," Commanding Officer of the Ship, Captain Krishna Swaminathan, said. Commenting on the "large amount of works" that have been undertaken at the CSL during the period, Captain Swaminathan said, "we are very happy to report that all the work we have undertaken at the Cochin Shipyard Limited has been undertaken more professionally and we are entirely happy with the quality of the work we have seen." The ship represents 19.82 acres of "sovereign Indian territory" and projects, promotes and protects the country's maritime interests at sea "any time and anywhere". Meanwhile, the ship, commissioned on November 16, 2013 by the then Defence Minister A K Antony, at Sevmash Shipyard, Severodvinsk (Russia), celebrated her third anniversary on Friday. As part of the anniversary, a 33km run was organised by the navy which involved 33 naval personnel. Called the 33 X 33 Anniversary Run of R33 (the ship's pennant number), the event was flagged off by Captain Swaminathan from Ernakulam Wharf. The route covered Thoppumpady, Wellington Island, Mattanchery, Fort Kochi and several scenic places en route, culminating at the wharf. "Besides being a part of ship's third anniversary celebrations, the run was also aimed at promoting team work, physical fitness and general well-being," the Navy said. Officials said the zeal and gusto of the runners rightly brought out the never-die-spirit and attitude of INS Vikramaditya. Rear Admiral R J Nadkarni, Chief of Staff, Southern Naval Command presided over the event as the Chief Guest. He felicitated the participants and addressed the crew of the ship on the occasion. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Michael Cain had nothing to do with his country voting Donald Trump president, but he couldnt absolve himself of the burden he felt. The Brandon University music professor couldnt look his neighbour in the eye when he walked out his front door the morning after Trumps improbable victory in a bitter U.S. presidential election. I realized it was shame, said Cain, an African American who recognizes the deep-seated cultural divide in the United States. Beside from the concern globally, I was so ashamed (Submitted) Brandon University Prof. Michael Cain, dismayed his country elected Donald Trump as president, said he feels shame his country overlooked the racist and misogynistic language normalized in Trump's rhetoric. Cain said his class helped him feel better after the stunning election result. that America had done that that I couldnt look at him. When he entered his first class Wednesday morning, his guilt intensified. He struggled to look at his students. Cain said he felt better when he got his Introduction to Improvisation students to sit in a circle and share. We instantly started talking in that way that is considerate, thoughtful and compassionate of people, Cain said. Man, that was such a moment. I thought it was a valuable conversation for all of us to have but I needed that because it was a human conversation it made me very, very proud to be here (in Brandon). The anger and pain Trumps critics have felt since the Republicans candidate unlikely triumph is especially pronounced among women and minority groups, who felt repeatedly maligned by Trump. Cain, who shared on Facebook his feelings of shame at Trumps victory, understands the cultural war that bubbled to the surface this election. Still, he is baffled at the level of racism, misogyny and xenophobia legitimatized in Trumps rhetoric. The fact that half of the country can overlook not one, not two, but a living continuous expression of those kinds of ideas, he said. I think to a lot of women, I think to a lot of minorities, I think they feel like I do. Some have protested. Throngs of mainly young adults demonstrated in cities across the U.S. in the days that followed, against a president-elect who has criticized immigrants, Muslims and faced repeated accusations he sexually assaulted women. He has vehemently denied those accusations. Trump won the election thanks in large part to white men and women without college degrees. In general, Trump captured 58 per cent of the white vote, while only 29 per cent of Hispanic and Asian voted for him, and eight per cent of black Americans, according to data from Edison Research. Throughout this election campaign, Cain heard his American friends suggest theyd move to Canada to escape a Trump presidency. Mostly, he believes their comments were said as a joke. After nine years in Canada working in BUs music faculty, Cain wont discourage anyone from moving north, but said they should take it seriously. They shouldnt look at Canada as a last resort when politics become intolerable. I think that does a disservice to Canada as a country when Americans say that, he said. Youre talking about a people, youre talking about a country. A country with a history. A country with a culture and a psychology. Youre talking about a full-fledged place thats not just a place you think you go to because you can no longer live in yours. Cain said it didnt take him long to realize Canada has its own cultural framework. To him, its a welcoming place where he can have heartfelt conversations with his students. This is its own place entirely and you have to respect that, he said. ifroese@brandonsun.com Twitter: @ianfroese Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The letters home from a woman hospitalized in Souris in the 1930s have become the backbone for a new book. A family friend approached me and told me about his grandmothers letters, said Terry Letienne, author of Letters from Lea. She was in Souris Hospital with an appendicitis attack. She was 28 years old, had two young boys and she wrote letters home to her mother and her husband. The letters, approximately 50 in total, needed to be translated from French to English, which Letienne was able to do. Submitted Terry Letienne launched her book, Letters from Lea, in Winnipeg in August. Letienne will be stopping at the Coles location in Shoppers Mall on Saturday, Nov. 19. There were a few terms sometimes that didnt seem quite right, but we researched enough to know we were translating properly, Letienne said. Back in the 30s, Lea probably had about a Grade 7 or Grade 8 education, I would think, so the writing was simple. Once translated, Letienne said she was able to put the letters in order and piece together what had happened over the year. Thats when I came up with the concept of writing a fiction story staying as true to what really happened as possible but fictionalizing the emotion of it what it was like to be away from her boys and what that entailed. With they blessing of the family, Letienne embarked on a three- to four-year journey of research, going through family histories, vital statistics and archives. I wanted it to be as authentic as possible, Letienne said. I also kept the letters intact to me they were so powerful just as they were. I didnt cut anything out, I kept the order, I kept the way that she wrote the letters. Sometimes they were a little disorganized in the way they were written, but thats the way she wrote it, so I left them like that. Letienne said she also learned a new approach to writing that was unlike anything shed ever experienced before. It was an emotional process, Letienne said. I needed to absorb every letter, one at a time, because it was all about the feeling of what Lea went through. So I would read a letter, and kind of internalize it and think about what would have happened after she wrote the letter and put her pencil down and I did that with every letter, the process was so different. Despite there being almost a century between them, Letienne said she felt a connection with Lea. There was a real practical side to her that showed in her letters, and there were distinct, little differences with how she wrote to her mother versus how she wrote to her husband, Letienne said. But I connected to her so quickly and I think maybe being a mom myself I just connected with this young mom who missed her kids. Submitted The book cover for "Letters from Lea" features the actual letters Lea Mhey wrote home in 1932. Letienne self-published the book in August, launching at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg. She is now starting a tour at Chapters, Indigo and Coles stores through the Prairies, stopping at Shoppers Mall in Brandon on Saturday from 1 p.m to 3 p.m. So far, readers feedback has been incredibly positive, Letienne said. Letters are such a lost art, and I think people connect to that, she said. edebooy@brandonsun.com Twitter: @erindebooy Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/11/2016 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The community of Hamiota now has a more concrete way to remember its veterans more than 750 names etched in stone. A new veterans wall was unveiled on Remembrance Day, dedicated to the Hamiota soldiers who served in the First and Second World War. The biggest job was getting all the names going through archives and reading anything that we could to find all the names, said Pete Oberlin, who organized the veterans wall. We came out with between 750 and 775 names It was a fairly time-consuming job, there were lot of details to figure out. Photo submitted by Tammie McConnell The new veterans wall in Hamiota honours the men and women who served in the First and Second World Wars. More than 750 names are listed. Oberlin suggested the idea about two years ago and was given the go-ahead to organize the project. In order to ensure no one was missed, they included anyone who enlisted from the area, Oberlin said. Theres a few (veterans) who moved to Hamiota and are long-term residents most of the names are people from Hamiota. At the time, there were a lot of transient people working on farms and such so they were enlisting from here, Oberlin said. About 75 people attended the dedication ceremony and the unveiling of the veterans wall, Oberlin said. Two veterans laid wreaths, honouring the men who fought for Canada. It feels very good (that its now completed), Oberlin said. The community really appreciates it. edebooy@brandonsun.com Twitter: @erindebooy Finance Minister Michael Noonan is expected to offer reassurances about the country's enduring appeal when he meets potential investors in the United States this week. The visit was planned following the outcome of the UK referendum on Brexit, which Mr Noonan said presented an important challenge for the Irish economy. As well as representatives from large US companies which have bases in Ireland, the minister will also meet US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and officials from the IMF and World Bank. Mr Noonan said: "Ireland has strong ties with the US and this is most evident in terms of inward investment from American companies. "I meet regularly with current and prospective investors from the US and this visit will allow me to emphasise Ireland's attractiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment following the UK's decision to exit the European Union. "Companies invest in Ireland for a broad range of reasons, not least to access the world's largest economic bloc, the European Union. "As a common law, English speaking and business friendly jurisdiction we will continue to be an attractive destination for US companies. "We will continue to look outwardly and engage with investors with a view to encouraging substantive investment in Ireland which creates high-quality employment for our people." Last month Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan expressed concern after Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster accused Dublin officials of poaching foreign investment and of talking down the Northern Ireland economy. US stocks have come back from an early loss on Wall Street and finished almost unchanged. Technology companies like Apple and Microsoft took big losses on fears about their overseas revenue, but bank stocks continued to surge along with bond yields. Technology stocks have been weak since last week's presidential election, and they fell further on Monday as investors wondered if Donald Trump's policies as president will hurt their sales in China and other markets overseas. Bank stocks built on their post-election gains as bond yields continued to rise. That paves the way for banks to make more money from lending, and government bond yields are at their highest levels since January. "The market is sniffing out the belief that some of these Trump policies may drive some better economic growth but also may in fact be somewhat inflationary," said PNC chief investment strategist Bill Stone. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 21.03 points, or 0.1%, to close at 18,868.69, another all-time high. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dipped 0.25 points to 2,164.20 after it fell as much as 0.4% earlier. The Nasdaq composite sank 18.72 points, or 0.4%, to 5,218.40. Technology companies fell sharply, with familiar names taking some of the largest losses. Apple gave up 2.72 dollars, or 2.5%, to 105.71 dollars, while Facebook declined 3.94 dollars, or 3.3%, to 115.08 dollars, and Microsoft slid 90 cents, or 1.5%, to 58.12 dollars. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, slipped 18.53 dollars, or 2.4%, to 753.22 dollars. Bond prices fell and yields jumped as investors anticipated that Mr Trump's spending plans would lead to higher inflation and more government borrowing. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note climbed to 2.25% from 2.14% late on Thursday. Bond trading was closed on Friday for the Veterans' Day holiday. The day before the November 8 election, the yield was 1.83%. That is a huge move for the benchmark rate. Goldman Sachs rose 5.24 dollars, or 2.6%, to 209.18 dollars, and Bank of America rose 1.06 dollars, or 5.6%, to 20.08 dollars. JPMorgan Chase picked up 2.82 dollars, or 3.7%, to 79.51 dollars. Mr Stone said investors are focused on potential corporate and individual tax cuts, a "wave of deregulation" that eliminates some of the rules governing businesses like energy companies and banks, and more protectionism on trade, which could hurt sales for companies that do a lot of business overseas. Investors are also pleased at the prospect of looser regulation and bigger profits. For example, Mr Trump's election could result in big changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill or to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr Stone added that corporate dealmaking could increase if Mr Trump's administration takes a looser approach to antitrust regulation. Several companies announced deals or deal offers on Monday. South Korean conglomerate Samsung said it will buy Harman International for 8 billion dollars, or 112 dollars a share. Harman makes electronics for cars including audio systems and safety and entertainment features. Its stock jumped 22.07 dollars, or 25.2%, to 109.72 dollars. German industrial equipment company Siemens agreed to buy software maker Mentor Graphics for 4.5 billion dollars, or 37.25 dollars a share. Mentor's stock rose 5.61 dollars, or 18.3%, to 36.29 dollars. Shares in communication adapter maker Digi International rose 1.75 dollars, or 15%, to 13.40 dollars after the company said it had received an offer from Belden, a communications equipment company. Digi said it rejected the bid of 13.82 dollars a share, or about 359 million dollars, because it is too low. Belden stock added 1.52 dollars, or 2.2%, to 71.22 dollars. The dollar rose against other currencies as US interest rates rose. It jumped to 108.51 Japanese yen from 106.78 yen. The euro fell to 1.0726 dollars from 1.0845 dollars. Investors are also selling companies that pay big dividends like utilities and phone companies as bonds become more appealing to investors seeking income. Verizon fell 51 cents, or 1.1%, to 46.18 dollars, and American Electric Power lost 1.27 dollars, or 2.1%, to 58.72 dollars. Oil prices bounced back from a big loss early on. Benchmark US crude slipped just 9 cents to 43.32 dollars a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, lost 32 cents to 44.43 dollars a barrel in London. In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline lost 3 cents to 1.28 dollars a gallon. Heating oil fell 2 cents to 1.39 dollars a gallon. Natural gas jumped 13 cents, or 5%, to 2.75 dollars per 1,000 cubic feet. Gold fell 2.60 dollars to 1,221.70 dollars an ounce. Silver lost 49 cents, or 2.8%, to 16.89 dollars an ounce. Copper picked up 1 cent to 2.52 dollars a pound. France's CAC 40 rose 0.4% and Germany's DAX added 0.2%. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed 0.3% higher. In Japan the Nikkei 225 jumped 1.7% after a strong reading on Japan's economic growth. The Kospi in South Korea lost 0.5% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 1.4%. We have all had one of those nights where the club finishes up but you are still not ready to give up and go home. Well in Limerick, after the clubs closed, a giddy bunch recreated the party scene in a pizza place just down the road. A Dublin man has been jailed for his role in the movement of 778,000 worth of cannabis imported from Spain and hidden under scented candles. Elliot Kidd (aged 25) of Mabel Street, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing drugs for sale or supply on June 11, 2015. His co-accused Jonathan Carberry (aged 35) and Gavin Mulvey (aged 35) were jailed last July after they also pleaded guilty to the same offence. Judge Melanie Greally imposed a sentence of seven years with two suspended on Carberry of Marlfield Green, Tallaght, after noting his previous good character. She imposed a sentence of three years with the last year suspended on Mulvey of Kiltalown Road, Jobstown, noting that he joined the scheme at the last minute and with no advance knowledge. Today Kidd was sentenced to five years with the final 18 months suspended on strict conditions including that he engage with the Probation Service for 18 months upon his release and engage with both addiction and mental health services. Judge Greally said she had taken into account Kidd's plea of guilty, his fragile psychological state at the time of the offence and his motivation for getting involve in the crime. Carberry, Mulvey and Kidd were unloading the drugs at Bath Lane, Dublin when gardai swooped and arrested them. A fourth man who was also present got away. Detective Sergeant Tom Waters told Eilis Brennan BL, prosecuting, that a customs officer with a sniffer dog found the drugs in a warehouse on June 9 last year. About 37.9kg of cannabis herb was packed in pallets under scented candles. The pallet was eventually picked up by a courier, who knew nothing about its contents. Carberry called the courier and told to meet him at a roundabout, where Mulvey paid him 70 to deliver the goods to Bath Lane. The four men were in the middle of loading the pallets into two cars when gardai arrived. The court heard that Mulvey met his friend Carberry on the morning of the offence and later agreed to join him on the job, paying the courier driver because Carberry was busy at the time. Bernard Condon SC, defending Carberry, said his client's substantial admissions to gardai formed a central part of the prosecution case. He said that the former taxi driver had no previous convictions and had been offered 200 to carry out the job. Carberry, a married father-of-two, did this because he had significant debt, including mortgage arrears. It was a catastrophic mistake, he added. Garnet Orange SC, defending Mulvey, said his client was a childhood friend of Carberry's who was essentially along for the ride. The evidence would suggest he stumbled on events as they were going along and only became aware of what was happening when events (started) happening, Mr Orange said. Mr Orange said Mulvey, a father with a close, loving family has no previous convictions. The court heard Mulvey was still recovering from a bizarre accident at home in which he broke his neck. He had only recently started working again as an alarm monitoring supervisor before the offence and gave up his job to avoid embarrassing his employer, Mr Orange said. That's a sign of his decency, he said. Damien Colgan SC, representing Kidd, said his client undertook to get involved in the offence in order to pay 300 off a drug debt. He said Kidd, who has three previous convictions, was a drug addict who lost his job as a locksmith during the recession. He thought this was an easy way for him to overcome this debt he had, Mr Colgan said. The first White House Adviser on Violence Against Women has spoken of Donald Trumps sexism. Lynn Rosenthal is addressing the Safe Ireland Summit, which is hearing from 35 international experts on domestic violence. Bold leaders in conversation with Lynn Rosenthal #safeirelandsummit pic.twitter.com/EGUpwHvRjx Women's Aid Dundalk (@womensaiddlk) November 14, 2016 Ms Rosenthal spoke of a sailing class she took, several years ago, when Mr Trump reacted to an anecdote about equality. "Two rows in front of me, red in the face, [he said:] 'My wife will never be the captain'," she recalled. "That guy has just been elected President of the United States. "And when he leans forward and shouts out 'My wife will never be the captain', he means 'Anyone who seems inferior to me, because of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion has no place in my country." Earlier at the summit, the mother of a victim of domestic homicide has called for a change in how such crimes are recorded. Maria Dempsey, whose daughter Alicia Brough was among four people murdered by John Geary in Limerick six years ago, said: "A start could be that a domestic homicide is registered as such on a death certificate. "That way, the Central Statistics Office could see these deaths as meaningful statistics." She added: "We would know then what we're facing, we would know the extent of the task we are facing as a country." Update 1.45pm: Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has said that he will be announcing plans to ease pressure on renters next month. Minister Coveney says the rate of inflation in the market is unsustainable and needs to be tackled. His comments comes as a new Savills report predicts that rents will rise by 19% in Dublin and 14% outside the capital by the end of 2018. Minister Coveney said that the situation needs to be managed carefully. Were going to announce the detail of that in about a months time, he said. But the balance is, first of all we need to recognise that some renters are under massive pressure. It is not sustainable to see rental inflation at the pace that its currently happening, and we need to respond to that, but we need to respond to it in a way that doesnt actually shut off the appetite to invest in new rental accommodation either. Earlier: Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has said that he is determined to avoid bad planning of the past in future social housing developments. Minister Coveney said that his plans for thousands of new homes will be built in mixed public-private developments. It comes as a new Savills Report predicted that rents will rise by 19% in Dublin and 14% outside the capital by the end of 2018. Minister Coveney said that good planning is key to solving the housing crisis. "I am determined to ensure that if we are going to add 50,000 houses to the social housing stock in Ireland, we are not going to do what was done in the 70s and 80s, whereby you build all the social houses in one part of a city, and you allow only private houses to be built in other parts of cities," he said. "That is a recipe for social disadvantage, but its also a recipe for political unrest, understandably, as people feel they are locked out of progress and opportunity." A Chinese national has pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing a man outside his internet cafe in Dublin city centre. The plea was accepted by the State and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 5. Let Me Tell You is a new bespoke podcast series from Hosts Daniel McConnell and Paul Hosford take a look back at some of the most dramatic moments in recent Irish political history from the unique perspective of one of the key players involved. The British Prime Minister will set out her response to the global changes signalled by Donald Trump's election victory in her first major foreign policy speech amid tensions about Nigel Farage's close links to the president-elect. Theresa May will use an address in the City of London to say that the UK can seize the opportunities presented by Brexit and the US election to become a global leader on free trade, "doing business with old allies and new partners alike". But European divisions about Mr Trump's election victory were underlined as Brussels foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini dismissed Boris Johnson's absence from a meeting of EU ministers by saying it was "normal" for a country leaving the bloc "not to be so interested" in the future of EU-US relations. Arriving in Brussels for a regular meeting of EU foreign ministers, Mr Johnson said the election of Mr Trump represented a "moment of opportunity" for Britain and for Europe. "I think there is a lot to be positive about and it is very important not to prejudge the president-elect or his administration," he said. "It's only a few days since the election has taken place. I think we all need to wait and see what they come up with. But I think we should regard it as a moment for opportunity. "Donald Trump is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it could also be a good thing for Europe and that I think is what we need to focus on today." Mrs May will use her speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet to say the UK is uniquely placed to provide leadership in the transformed modern world. She will say that the UK will not be "standing inflexibly, refusing to change and still fighting the battles of the past, but adapting to the moment, evolving our thinking and seizing the opportunities ahead". "That is the kind of leadership we need today. And I believe that it is Britain's historic global opportunity to provide it," Mrs May will say. But she will also acknowledge the anti-globalisation sentiments that helped fuel the victories of both Mr Trump and the Brexit campaign. Mrs May will say that the UK can "show the world that we can be the strongest global advocate for free markets and free trade because we believe they are the best way to lift people out of poverty ... but that we can also do much more to ensure the prosperity they provide is shared by all". She will say: "To be the true global champion of free trade in this new modern world, we also need to do something to help those families and communities who can actually lose out from it." Following high-profile corporate scandals such as Sir Philip Green's sale of BHS, Mrs May will say the UK can "demonstrate that we can be the strongest global advocate for the role businesses play in creating jobs, generating wealth and supporting a strong economy and society" but "we can also recognise when a minority of businesses and business figures appear to game the system and work to a different set of rules, the social contract between businesses and their employees fails - and the reputation of business as a whole is quickly undermined". The election of Mr Trump has presented Number 10 with a diplomatic headache as Mrs May has come under pressure to take advantage of the access that interim Ukip leader Mr Farage has to the president-elect. Number 10 has insisted that Mr Farage will have no role to play, but Tory peer and former trade envoy Lord Marland said Downing Street should use Mr Farage as a "salesman". After pulling off the political coup of becoming the first British politician to meet Mr Trump since his election win, Mr Farage hinted ministers are sounding him out about dealing with the president-elect as he revealed the Republican victor's close advisers have "reservations" about Mrs May's government. Mr Farage disclosed that members of the president-elect's inner circle were concerned about unflattering comments made by British Cabinet ministers, though Mr Trump told him he had a "nice" phone call with Mrs May. "He said he had a nice conversation, although some of his team had reservations about what members of the Cabinet have said during the election. Believe you me, his team are conscious of the comments," Mr Farage told The Daily Telegraph. The pair met at Trump Tower in New York and spent over an hour discussing the president-elect's victory, global politics and the status of Brexit, according to Ukip. The EU's response to Mr Trump's election was to convene an emergency meeting of foreign ministers - which was snubbed by Mr Johnson. Ms Mogherini barely concealed her frustration at the situation, telling reporters: "Some in Europe are surprised not when that country is absent, but nowadays that it is still present around the table of the 28. "So, I guess it is only normal for a country that has decided to leave the European Union not to be so interested in our discussions on the future of our relations with the United States." MOSCOW - As the main driving force of growth in the Asia-Pacific, China has served as a major source of dynamism within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Russian experts said. This is proven by China's activity in regional cooperation, as well as by the important role Chinese businesses have played in all spheres of economic cooperation in the region, Andrey Belov, first deputy dean of the Faculty of Economics of St. Petersburg State University, told Xinhua in a recent interview. China clearly demonstrated its interest in developing partnership in the region, while Chinese businesses have huge influence in the processes of regional integration, said Belov. At the 2015 APEC informal leader's meeting held in Manila, the Philippines, out of the total 800 companies present, nearly 150 were from China, he said. China has the political clout to promote the cooperation between Russia and other countries not involved in APEC activities, as this joint work would serve the fundamental interests of countries in the region and around the world, Belov added. China, which joined APEC in 1991, two years after its inception, has hosted APEC summits twice -- one after the Sept 11 attacks in 2001 and the other amid the Ukraine crisis in 2014. During the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, APEC member economies pushed forward the process of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) by sketching out a historic road map for the FTAAP. The meeting also adopted important documents for an integrated, innovative and interconnected Asia-Pacific. "It was there (at the Beijing meeting) that the idea of creating a free trade area including all countries in the region acquired real shape for the first time," said Oleg Timofeyev, associate professor of the Russian University of Peoples' Friendship. "Without the participation of Beijing, this platform would simply not assume the form it has now," Timofeyev said. Chinese leaders have always stressed APEC's leading role in addressing trade and economic problems in the region, never allowing it to be dragged into painful political issues, such as territorial disputes, he said. A collective strategic study on issues related to the realization of the FTAAP has been completed and the final version of the study along with recommendations will be presented to leaders at the 24th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting held from Nov 19 to Nov 20 in Lima, Peru. At the Peru summit under the theme of "Quality Growth and Human Development," the 21 APEC members will seek to make decisions to facilitate trade and investment as well as consolidate liberalization policies. Besides, APEC is capable of taking real steps to avoid confrontation and destructive competition between it and other integration mechanisms in the region, which would help establish mutually beneficial and fruitful cooperation, Belov said. Dialogue with other institutions will take place at the Peru summit, including one between APEC members and the Pacific Alliance -- a Latin American trade bloc composed of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru -- and another with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Donald Trump insists Americans have nothing to fear when he gets into the White House. He has repeated his anti-abortion stance and says he will not overturn the legalisation of same sex marriage. The president-elect has also shown no signs of weakening his policy on immigration. In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, the President-elect made it clear he intends to aggressively pursue a conservative agenda. On immigration, Mr Trump reaffirmed his campaign pledge to build a wall between the US and Mexico, although he conceded parts of it may be just a fence. And he said as many as three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or jailed. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminals and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers," he said. "We have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate." He left the door open, however, on the fate of the millions of other hard-working immigrants in the country illegally. "After the border is secured and after everything gets normalised, we're going to make a determination on the people that you're talking about who are terrific people," he said. Immigration was one of three top legislative priorities, he said, the others being action to undo Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform but to keep some aspects of it, and a bill to cut taxes and simplify the tax code. Mr Trump also pledged to name justices to the Supreme Court who are anti-abortion and pro-gun rights. "The judges will be pro-life," he told CBS. "In terms of the whole gun situation," he added, "they're going to be very pro-Second Amendment." Responding to the thousands of protesters who have massed in streets below Trump Tower headquarters, the billionaire said "I just don't think they know me". He went on to tell those Americans who are scared of his presidency: "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back." He also confirmed he would forego the $400,000 salary that comes with the office of president. "I'm not going to take the salary. I'm not taking it," he said. "I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year," he added. A nurse who helped fight Ebola faces being struck off after being accused of recording an inaccurate temperature on an airport screening form for a medic who had contracted the virus. Donna Wood had returned to the UK from Sierra Leone along with Pauline Cafferkey, who survived the deadly disease, on December 28 2014, and the pair's group were caught up in the "chaotic" screening process at Heathrow Airport, a misconduct hearing heard. Wood appeared before an independent panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Stratford, east London, facing three misconduct charges, including recording the reading dishonestly in order to hide it from public health officials. She is accused of writing down a temperature of 37.2C after a doctor, Hannah Ryan, had taken Ms Cafferkey's temperature twice, with readings of 38.2C and 38.3C. A temperature above 37.5C required further assessment by doctors at the Public Health England (PHE) screening room, the NMC's Aja Hall said. Delays in the screening process at Heathrow, which were the result of PHE staff being "not properly prepared" to handle the volume of at-risk visitors, meant Wood's group had begun taking their own temperatures, Ms Hall said. Dr Ryan had taken Ms Cafferkey's temperature and found it to be elevated. Reading the medic's statement, she said: "It was just me, Pauline Cafferkey and Donna Wood present. "I took her temperature in her left ear - it was 38.2C. I showed it to Pauline, the thermometer. "I told her to stay calm, we were both a bit panicky. "Donna was recording the temperatures on the form. "I took it again in the right ear - it was 38.3C. I asked Pauline if she was feeling OK, she said she was OK." Dr Ryan then goes on to say "I stood there in shock, it was like I was paralysed. I had no clear thought process. "Ebola is such a horrible disease, every time you have a high temperature you worry, even though you know there's no need." Ms Hall claimed Wood suggested the reading was "artificial", after Ms Cafferkey told Wood she felt "warm" on the plane, which was attributed to the fact that the Scottish nurse had been sleeping in a hoodie during the flight. Ms Hall continued: "Donna Wood broke the inertia by saying 'I'm just just going to write it down as 37.2C and then we will get out of here and sort it out'." At some point at around 5pm Ms Cafferkey took paracetamol before she left the screening area, Ms Hall said. After the group left the screening room and made it to the arrivals hall, Dr Ryan reported Ms Cafferkey's high temperature to another doctor, who recommended the Scottish medic return to be screened again. Ms Hall said Ms Cafferkey's temperature was then checked again three times by a PHE consultant and was found to be a maximum of 37.6C, meaning she was given the all-clear to travel on to Glasgow. The following day, Ms Cafferkey became "extremely ill" and was admitted to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. Wood made no admissions to any of the allegations at Monday's hearing. At the time Wood was a senior sister at Haywood Hospital in Staffordshire and was one of the first group of NHS medics to travel to West Africa. She featured in the UK's Department for International Development's promotional campaign, when she was hailed as a "hero" by then international development secretary Justine Greening. While in Sierra Leone, where the disease killed almost 4,000 people, Wood worked for Save the Children. Ms Cafferkey was cleared at an earlier hearing in September of allowing the incorrect temperature to be recorded. An NMC panel found three charges against her were not proven and her fitness to practise was not affected. It ruled her judgment at the airport in December 2014 had been so impaired by the developing illness that she could not be found guilty of misconduct. The Ecuadorian government has welcomed moves by the Swedish authorities to interview Julian Assange inside its embassy over a sex allegation. Representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and the Swedish police will be present while questions are put to the WikiLeaks founder by an Ecuadorian official today. Mr Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador and has been living inside the embassy for over four years. He believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. He denies the allegation against him and has been offering to be interviewed at the embassy. aGuillaume Long, Ecuador's foreign minister, told the Press Association: "We are pleased that the Swedish authorities will finally interview Mr Assange in our embassy in London. "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years. "Ecuador has never sought to stand in the way of any legal process in Sweden. "What we have asked from Sweden, and the UK, are guarantees that Mr Assange will not be extradited to a third country, where he could be persecuted for his work as as a journalist. "The Ecuadorian government granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012 given the risk of such political persecution and we believe that this threat remains very real." The Swedish assistant prosecutor, chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, and a Swedish police investigator will be present at the interview and have said that providing Mr Assange gives his consent, a DNA sample will also be taken. The results of the interview will be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Ingrid Isgren will not give interviews during her stay in London, it was made clear. "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorian legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. "Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview," said a statement. "I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect," said director of prosecution Marianne Ny, who is responsible for the investigation. A US judge has ordered the release of Making A Murderer's Brendan Dassey, whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series, while prosecutors appeal. US magistrate judge William Duffin ordered Dassey's release from prison contingent upon him meeting multiple conditions. The judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The state has appealed that ruling. Steven Avery Dassey's lawyer, Steve Drizin, said he had not spoken yet with Dassey, but he hoped to have him out of prison in time to spend Thanksgiving with his family. "That's what I'm focused on right now, getting him home, getting him with his family and then helping him to re-integrate back into society while his appeal plays out," Mr Drizin said. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel issued a statement saying he would file an emergency motion in the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals to put the release order on hold. Dassey's supervised release was not immediate. He had until noon on Tuesday to provide the federal probation and parole office with the address of where he planned to live. Mr Drizin would not say where Dassey plans to live. Dassey was 16 when Ms Halbach died. He is now 27. Judge Duffin ruled in August that investigators made specific promises of leniency to Dassey and that no "fair-minded jurists could disagree". He cited one investigator's comment early in the interview that "you don't have to worry about things", plus repeated comments like "it's OK" and that they already knew what happened. Mr Schimel, in his appeal, said investigators did not promise leniency and they specifically told Dassey that no promises could be made. Ms Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He is pursuing his own appeal. Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired Making A Murderer last year. The series spawned widespread conjecture about the pair's innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated calls from the public to free both men. The man accused of the terror-related murder of British Labour MP Jo Cox will stand trial at the Old Bailey later. Thomas Mair, 53, allegedly shot and stabbed the 41-year-old outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, on June 16. Police in Pakistan have arrested 10 alleged members of a criminal gang accused of flogging a transgender woman and posting a video of the abuse on social media. The arrests were made in the eastern city of Sialkot after a video of the flogging was shared thousands of times on social media, said police official Iqbal Sindhu. The video shows the gang leader pinning the woman face down on a bed with his foot and beating her with what appears to be a leather belt. At one point, while another gang member continues the flogging, the leader places his foot on the victim's neck and twists her arms. Police chief Abid Khan said five of those arrested have been charged with torture and extortion, while the other five are under investigation. The alleged gang leader, who identified himself as Jajja, told Dunya News that he was friends with the victim. "I was punishing him because he didn't refrain from his bad habits, which I pointed out to him several times," he said in an interview conducted while he was in police custody. Transgender people in Pakistan are social outcasts who are often forced into begging, dancing and prostitution to earn money. Fearing attacks, most either change their names or use only one name. TransAction, a local transgender rights group, posted a video interview with another transgender woman who identified herself as Jolie and said she was present when the attack took place. She said the gang members barged into a house where several transgender women were living, beating and torturing one of them for several hours and shaving the heads of others. Mr Sindhu, the police official, confirmed Jolie was present at the scene. AP At least six civilians have been killed in a suicide attack south of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry said. Spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said six suicide bombers tried to infiltrate the holy Shiite city of Karbala on Monday, but security forces managed to kill five of them. A Swedish prosecuting official has arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to be present while Julian Assange is interviewed about a sex allegation. Ingrid Isgren faced a battery of photographers as she stepped out of a car and walked up the steps to the front door of the embassy in Knightsbridge. She made no comment and is expected to remain for the duration of the questioning, which is being carried out by an Ecuadorian government official. Mr Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador and has been living inside the embassy for more than four years. He believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. He denies the allegation against him and has been offering to be interviewed at the embassy. Chief prosecutor Ms Isgren will be present at the interview and has said that providing Mr Assange gives his consent, a DNA sample will also be taken. The results of the interview will be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish police inspector Cecilia Redell was also due to be present. Ecuador ambassador Carlos Ortiz and one of Mr Assange's lawyers, Per Samuelson, were at the embassy for the interview. A small group of supporters stood opposite the embassy, holding up banners calling for the WikiLeaks founder to be freed. A statement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorian legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview." Swedish Director of Prosecution Marianne Ny, who is responsible for the investigation, said: "I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect." As the interview got under way, Mr Assange's cat sat in a window looking at the dozens of Assange supporters and media gathered outside. The cat has its own Twitter feed. KARACHI: The 2022 Aga Khan Music Awards concluded with the presentation of awards to 15 laureates by His Highness... NEW YORK: Taylor Swift on Tuesday announced she was returning to touring, getting back on the road for the first... KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures jumped more than 4% on Monday, rebounding from last weeks losses after... PARIS: Qatar will host one of the most hotly disputed World Cups ever from November 20. These are the main disputes... MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday confirmed Russian President Vladimir Putin will host talks in Sochi on Monday between... A 25-year-old Canberra man went on trial on Monday in the ACT Supreme Court over the alleged rape of a 19-year-old woman after they met outside Cube nightclub in Civic. A man is facing trial this week acused of raping a woman he picked up in Civic. Credit:Jessica Shapiro Kerry Roy Bye has been charged with four counts of rape, two of sexual assault in the second degree, one count of committing an indecent act and one of unlawful confinement. The eight alleged offences relate to one woman and a single incident, in the early hours of the Friday morning, on November 13, 2015. Police have called for witnesses following an attempted robbery of the Raiders Club in Weston early on November 14. Police said two staff members were approached by a man in the Raiders Club carpark on Liardet Street, Weston about 2.30am Monday morning. The man threatened the staff members with a weapon, demanding to be let into the club, but the staff were unable to provide the man access to the club and he left on foot. The offender is described as being about 180cm tall, of an average build and speaking with an Australian accent. The Australian economy and retail sector will "remain tough in the short term", says the owner of the David Jones department store and clothing brand Country Road. South African retail giant Woolworths Holdings which paid $2.3 billion for David Jones and Country Road Group in August 2014 also plans to introduce more "trans-seasonal clothing" to cope with unpredictable weather in the southern hemisphere. Taking into account Country Road Group brands Trenery, Witchery and Mimco, Australia now accounts for 40 per cent of Woolworths' operating profit. Posting weaker growth for David Jones and falling sales at Country Road Group, the retail giant said its results had been hit by "an extremely warm winter and consequent very high levels of promotion" in both Australia and South Africa. White working-class women voted for him overwhelmingly. The Harvard Business Review poring over the latest poll results found that "WWC women voted for Trump over Clinton by a whopping 28-point margin 62 per cent to 34 per cent. If they'd split 50-50, she would have won." Among the vast river of podcasts, hot takes and think pieces I've been mainlining since last week, are contributions from unknowable numbers of women, horrified and shaken to their core that a man who did not simply admit to repeated sexual assaults but privately revelled in his power and freedom to do so, is now the most powerful man in the world. And yet many Latino and black voters cast their lot in with Trump and, by extension, the alt-right white supremacist movements supporting him from the fringe. Acknowledging the reality that in America's non-compulsory voting system, any president is unlikely to attract the mandate of more than a quarter of the entire eligible voting population, Donald Trump won because he spoke directly to the working class, which is still about three-quarters white, in a language they understood because they speak it themselves. To sensitive ears it sounds harsh, boorish, ignorant, even bigoted. And at times it is all those things. But it is the kind of harsh talk you can expect to hear from a class of people, and I mean an economic class, when they feel the system has been stacked against them. It speaks to the animus which delivered the Brexit vote and it can very much sound like hate speech because hatred, not just of the Other, but of one's own wretched and diminishing circumstances, drives it. Open markets have generated staggering, almost unimaginable wealth, but not for everyone. As the old working class has been fed into the shredders of neoliberal economics, millions, tens of millions and maybe hundreds of millions of men and women around the world, have come to correctly perceive of themselves as losers. How does this economic dislocation manifest as racial or cultural conflict? Because as our economy has changed, so has the society which it is supposed to support. It shouldn't be the other way around, a society should not exist to serve an economy, but one of the triumphs of neoliberalism has been to elevate the economic above the social. This plays out in a political conflict like Brexit as a contest over controlling migration. I'm so very much enjoying the latest level of abuse online since Hillary Clinton was defeated in her run for the US presidency. It's nearly as if that loss, the loss by the first woman candidate of a major party for president, was a leave pass for new and soaring heights of online trolling and violence. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of leave pass, it's a permission slip for otherwise unusual behaviour. But I really wish it was unusual. These men are validated, vindicated and oh so very vindictive. So, aside from the tedious and somewhat lacking in imagination attacks on the appearance of women who have the hide to air their views on the internet, the use of violent language is out of control. And, as usual, if you report anything to Twitter, very little changes, despite its fake attempts at building safety on their platform with its faux campaign, Position of Strength. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has committed his state to a referendum on whether to host Australia's first nuclear waste dump, saying he will push ahead despite lukewarm public support. The referendum will effectively be a plebiscite, because it will seek an opinion rather than change the state's constitution. Mr Weatherill's announcement comes ahead of the Labor state government's formal response to its royal commission on the nuclear industry and after a "citizens' jury" appointed by the government rejected the idea two to one, saying the dump should not be built under any circumstances. Liberal Opposition Leader Steven Marshall has abandoned his earlier tentative support for the idea, saying the jury verdict rendered it "all but dead and buried". And on polling, yes that's exactly the same argument made by Tony Abbott last week about being ruled by polls citing the US and Brexit surveys. [ABC] And now my head hurts. Indonesia's police commissioner for human, child and sex trafficking says Malcolm Turnbull's resettlement deal could be a "breath of fresh air" for the people smugglers. [Amanda Hodge, David Crowe/The Australian] Crossbench Senator Nick Xenophon is still considering whether to support the Prime Minister's accompanying legislation banning any asylum seeker who has tried to travel to Australia by boat access to the country for their entire life, including for tourism. [Michelle Grattan/The Conversation] The case under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act against News Corp's Bill Leak over his cartoon on indigenous issues is on the verge of collapse. [Andrew Burrell/The Australian] Two health associations are calling for Australia to introduce a sugar tax. So far the government is rebuffing the idea as lazy policy. [Jodie Stephens/Fairfax] Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce confronted ABC host Virginia Trioli live on-air over her hot-mic comments in which she was reported to have said Trump supporters should be subjected to an IQ test. Trioli said the report was inaccurate but did not say what she actually said despite repeated questioning from Joyce. (3.30 mins in) 3. Trump's and the alt-right The President-elect's decision to appoint Steve Bannon, editor of the alt-right Breitbart News as his chief strategist is sparking a backlash, amid fears it will empower white nationalists. [Elise Viebeck, Katie Zezima/Washington Post] This came as right wing radio host Alex Jones, of Infowars conspiracy theory fame, released a video claiming Trump called him to thank him for his support during the campaign. [Shane Goldmacher/Politico] Trump "seemed surprised" by the scope of the duties Obama outlined to him would be required as President, reports the Wall Street Journal. Trump officials didn't realise they would have to replace the entire West Wing staff, for instance! Obama realised Trump needed "more guidance" and will subsequently spend more time than he planned helping Trump through inauguration day. [Michael C. Bender, Carol E. Lee] Bernie Sanders has done a round of TV interviews and says he is "deeply humiliated" that his party cannot talk to the working class from where he hails. Asked if he would have beaten Trump had he prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Sanders said: "I don't know the answer to that. Maybe, maybe not." [Rebecca Shabad/CBS] President elect Donald Trump with UKIP's Nigel Farage at Trump tower. Credit:Twitter @Nigel_Farage In Britain, 10 Downing says there'll be no "third person," specifically Nigel Farage, in the relationship between President Trump and PM May. But UKIP donor Arron Banks says May is unwise to shut the door on what's obviously a good relationship between the two. [Rowena Mason, Anushka Asthana/The Guardian] My must-read for today is John Kehoe's fantastic column on Trump and the misreading of his rise in most "elite" quarters. [Financial Review] 4. "Britain First" heard before Jo Cox's murder Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in the street on June 16 and later died. Credit:Getty Images The trial into the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox is underway at the Old Bailey in London. It's heard evidence that Thomas Mair, who charged with murdering the mother-of-two repeatedly yelled "Britain First" before attacking. Cox's murder came in the final days of the Brexit campaign. [Reuters/Fairfax] 5. Assange questioned When Wikileaks stormed to prominence it and its poster boy Julian Assange quickly became the darling of the left. Now, after his drip-feed of damaging leaks of emails relating to the Clinton campaign, the Australian-born Walkley award winner is the hero of the alt-right. One Nation's Pauline Hanson wants the new President to pardon Assange for his services rendered to last week's election outcome in the United States. [Amy Remenkis/Fairfax] Assange is being questioned at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his home of four years, by Swedish prosecutors over a rape allegation. [Nick Miller/Fairfax] And just for fun, my favourite all-time most bizarre Assange thing ever. 6. Supermoon Supermoon over Sydney Opera House, November 2016. Credit:Louise Kennerley Getting up at 1am to assemble Double Shot while in Australia means I was in bed too early to see the supermoon in all its glory last night. Sigh. Fortunately our amazing snappers were out and about capturing the sight far better than we with our smartphones ever could. [Photo Gallery] And that's it from me today, you can follow me on Facebook for more. He's the MP previously known for his rebellious streak and home-made lasagne. But on Tuesday John Barilaro known as 'Barra' to all on Macquarie Street - is the favourite to become NSW's next deputy premier. It's quite a rise for a man who until a little more than five years ago was working on his door-and-window installation business in Queanbeyan, outside Canberra. Mr Barilaro won his way onto the front bench in 2014, after being one of the most outspoken critics of the Baird government's electricity privatisation policy it successfully took to the 2015 election. The stepfather charged over the death of Queensland toddler Mason Jet Lee will make a bid to be released from custody later this week. William Andrew O'Sullivan, 35, is one of three people charged with the manslaughter of the 21-month-old boy, who was found dead at a Caboolture home, north of Brisbane, on June 11. William Andrew O'Sullivan, 35, is one of three people charged with the manslaughter of his 21-month-old stepson Mason Lee. O'Sullivan, who has been in custody since his arrest in late July, has lodged an application for bail in the Brisbane Supreme Court, which is set to be heard on Friday. AAP Melbourne Express: Tuesday, November 15, 2016 Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later. Dismiss Police in riot gear outside the Parkville Youth Justice Centre on Monday. Credit:Justin McManus In the past few hours, a Domino's Pizza driver also delivered four large pizzas to the facility. The Department of Health and Human Services later said "no prisoners got any pizza". Police in full riot gear prepare to enter the Parkville youth centre. Credit:ABC News The dog squad was also at the scene. The government said the riots had damaged the "operational capacity" of the centre but there were no injuries to staff or inmates. Riot police and dog handlers were called to the Parkville centre last November. Credit:ABC News Ms Mikakos also said that a plan to redevelop the Parkville site would be expedited but would not put a price tag on the project. She said it had become apparent that the infrastructure at Parkville was "letting us down". She also revealed that 80 per cent of the inmates at Parkville were on remand. Police were called to a "code white" at the troubled Parkville centre about 9pm on Sunday night. It is believed a number of fires were lit and fire crews and paramedics are on standby. The disturbance follows a tumultuous weekend at the centre which caused an estimated $2 million in damages after inmates ripped ceilings and walls apart on Saturday night. Sources told Fairfax Media that some of the inmates involved in Saturday's rioting had been moved to Malmsbury Youth Justice centre and to other units within Parkville. About 20 inmates at the facility were left without beds on Saturday after their cells were trashed. It is believed inmates destroyed security cameras and ripped ceilings and walls apart. Saturday night's riot came as an inmate at another prison facility attacked four prison officers, inflicting a serious neck injury. Streets in Parkville were blocked as police dealt with the riot at the Youth Justice Centre. Inmates at the juvenile facility destroyed security cameras, computers, and ripped the ceiling and walls apart during the riot, a prison source said. It's believed the sprinkler system was also severely damaged after the group broke into one of the buildings and found a sledgehammer and shovel. Computers were then thrown through the windows before the group climbed up on the roof and demanded junk food and a phone, the source said. No youth justice officers or inmates were injured during the incident. The riot only ended after police called in the dog squad. The disturbance is believed to have been started by the same youth who triggered another riot on Thursday at the centre. Community and Public Sector Union spokesman Julian Kennelly said officers had contacted the union about the riot, saying about 20 teenage inmates were involved and that the trouble centred on three residential units. 'They're packed in like sardines' Former commissioner for children Bernie Geary said the problem was that the majority of the children at Parkville were languishing on remand, "packed in like sardines", before they were found guilty of an offence. "The more they treat these young people like adult prisoners the more likely they are to act like adult prisoners," he said. "The system is failing to deal with kids in the justice system." He said for many children a stint on remand encouraged a cycle of re-offending. "There are all these kids there who are angry, anxious, scared. And they don't know what is going to happen to their lives, there are no plans, they have no ambition. They have just been herded in there, waiting for the system to catch up with them." Mr Geary called on the government to amend the Bail Act to exempt children to ensure children do not spend months on remand while awaiting sentencing. Minister for Families and Children Jenny Mikakos said since rioting began, a number of inmates had been detained and that all were contained within the facility. "There is no threat to the security of the facility being breached. There are no hostages. There are no fires. There have been no staff injuries," she said in a statement. "I want to thank Victoria Police and the youth justice staff for the work that they're doing," she said. "This behaviour is completely unacceptable and staff shouldn't have to put up with it. "We are developing a range of tougher measures to ensure we put a stop to this." She hinted that she would reveal more information about the "tougher measures" on Monday afternoon. Earlier this month, Ms Mikakos announced that any youth inmate who assaulted a staff member or was involved in any other serious incident would have the matter reported to the parole board. "We are developing a range of tougher measures to ensure we put a stop to this," she said on Sunday. State government minister Richard Wynne condemned the rioting. "The government is obviously really concerned about the events that occurred at the Youth Justice Centre ... and, in fact, we have just put on 41 staff to ensure that the centre remains secure," Mr Wynne said. Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen said paramedics were initially called to the centre due to reports of youths on a roof and were on standby but were not required. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Mike Griffin said the department would "thoroughly examine" the circumstances leading up to the incident. "The behaviour of these clients on Saturday was unacceptable and staff shouldn't have to tolerate it," he said. Changes in policy could see the riot reported to the Youth Parole Board and may affect the parole eligibility of those involved. Troubled times The centre has been plagued by violence in recent times. In September, inmates and staff clashed for three consecutive nights and several juvenile offenders threatened staff and took control of part of the centre. Amelia Banks, who lives nearby, said she heard a "police helicopter and a stream of emergency vehicles driving past with sirens blaring". She raised concerns that the rioting was becoming frequent and worried about the safety of the children and officers inside. "Whatever happens inside the centre clearly isn't working as the children who are in custody seem to be ready to riot at any given moment," Ms Banks said. Alana Marzuke, who also lives nearby, said she saw up to seven police cars at the scene. In the separate prison incident on Saturday night, four Port Phillip Prison officers were assaulted during a cell search, with one suffering a suspected serious neck injury. The prison officers were searching an inmate's cell after visiting hours to check whether he had received contraband. Paramedics were called to the Truganina prison at 7.10pm and transported the officer, aged in his 30s, to hospital. Ambulance Victoria confirmed the man was in a stable condition. Mr Kennelly said the inmate was believed to be using drugs. "If he has taken down four officers, we would suspect it was ice or something similar," he said. The prison was placed in lock-down, Mr Kennelly said. Three other prison officers were treated for minor injuries, and capsicum spray was used to subdue the prisoner. He said Port Phillip Prison's contraband detection system was inferior to other prisons around the state and called for the private operator, G4S Australia, to upgrade it. Mr Kennelly said contraband was rife in Port Phillip Prison, and this, added to overcrowding, was making it difficult and sometimes dangerous for prison officers. "Port Phillip was built 20 years ago to house 600 inmates and it is now housing nearly double that," Mr Kennelly said. Opposition corrections spokesman Edward O'Donohue said the justice system was in crisis. "Further evidence overnight that the justice system in Victoria is in crisis with young offenders rioting at the youth justice centre, while prisoners at Port Phillip are attacking staff and reportedly taking ice," Mr O'Donohue said. Prison operator G4S said it used "robust and proactive" security measures, which were having a positive impact on safety at the facility on a daily basis. On an average day in Kilmore, at least 1600 trucks travel along Sydney Street, the town's narrow and gently undulating main road, which is lined with some of the oldest buildings in central Victoria. By that count, almost 6 million trucks have passed through the heart of Kilmore since planning for a town bypass began 10 years ago, and still the community does not know when the road will be built. Residents say they are in limbo, watching truck traffic grow heavier and congestion worsen on the Northern Highway as tens of thousands of people move into new housing estates inside Melbourne's expanded northern boundary. The story so far of the Kilmore-Wallan bypass is one of plans made and action not taken. The latest violent incident at Perth's juvenile detention centre - the 10th in less than two-and-a-half months - has prompted the prison officers' union to blame it on the introduction of a rehabilitation program imported from the US. Seven detainees were involved - three who jumped out of a window trying to escape - causing an estimated $350,000 to $400,000 trashing their unit on Saturday afternoon. Banksia Hill is WA's only youth detention centre. Credit:ABC News Perth Guards used flash bombs and chemical spray to control rioting detainees. The youths barricaded themselves in, removed bricks from walls and threw them at staff, broke every reinforced glass window and pulled panelling and cabling out of the ceiling, says the Community and Public Sector Union. London: The man accused of murdering British MP Jo Cox in June was heard saying "this is for Britain" during an attack that was motivated by politics or ideology, a London jury was told at the opening of his trial on Monday. Thomas Mair, 53, is charged with Ms Cox' murder, which took place a week before Britain's referendum on EU membership and led to the suspension of campaigning for several days. A plea of not guilty was recorded on his behalf at an earlier hearing after he stayed silent when asked to enter his plea. British lawmaker Jo Cox was killed in June. Credit:AP Ms Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and stabbed on the street in the town of Birstall, part of her electoral district in northern England, as she arrived for an advice session with local residents at a library. Mair was arrested nearby shortly after the killing. He said words to the effect of "it's me" and described himself to police as a political activist, prosecutor Richard Whittam told London's Old Bailey court. Dramatic pictures have emerged of livestock huddled precariously on tiny islands after a deadly 7.8 earthquake struck New Zealand on Sunday night. In one image, three cows are stranded on a patch of land after the earth collapsed around them. The two adult cows and calf barely have room to move and face a sharp drop if they are to attempt to scramble to safety. The cows were stranded near the small coastal town of Kaikoura, about 180 kilometres north of Christchurch. A Russian fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to land on Russia's sole aircraft carrier, which is stationed off the Syrian coast, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Monday in a statement. The plane went down several kilometres from the carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, according to the Ministry of Defense. The pilot ejected and was recovered. "The health of the pilot is not in danger. The pilot is ready to carry out orders," the Ministry of Defence said. Earlier in the day, Pentagon officials said they had indications that the Russians had lost a plane, and Fox News - quoting intelligence officials - reported that the aircraft, a MiG-29K, went down after appearing to have mechanical issues shortly after takeoff. The Pentagon tracks Russian and Syrian government aircraft activity with airborne sensors and thermal-imaging satellites. Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin rang US President-elect Donald Trump on Monday night before the Kremlin issued a statement saying they have agreed to work towards "constructive cooperation", including on fighting terrorism. Mr Putin and the billionaire vowed to establish a new relationship between their two countries based on "mutual respect", the Kremlin announced, and they agreed to "assess the current unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations", develop trade and economic ties and establish joint efforts to fight international terrorism. Agreeing to stay in regular contact by phone, and to arrange a face-to-face meeting soon, Mr Putin wished Mr Trump "success in the implementation of the pre-election program, and noted his willingness to build a partnership dialogue with the new administration on the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in the internal affairs of each other". Mr Trump said after the call he was looking forward to "a strong and enduring relationship with Russia". Latest News Broker backs government schemes to help first-home buyers Single parents can secure property with 2% deposit NAB to lift variable mortgage rates The change will take effect next week Australians are missing out on $1.68 billion by failing to switch mortgages, a new study by Heritage Bank and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has found.While 67% of those surveyed recognised the importance of seeking the best deal on their home loan, only a third of respondents actually made the switch. Those that did move to a more affordable mortgage collectively saved around $718 million.The main barrier for borrowers is the perception that it is too difficult to switch, Jane Calder, general manager of marketing at the Toowoomba-based Heritage Bank, told Australian Broker.The survey found that around a third of people think it is too much trouble to switch and a further 28% think that the rewards are just not worth the time and effort, she said.That's despite people being able to save up to $3,000 a year on their home loan which adds up to a lot of money over the life of a mortgage. Brokers need to make sure people understand that switching is not that difficult and is definitely worth the effort.Calder said that Heritage had taken a number of steps which made it easier for borrowers to change home loans.Our staff are trained in what they can do to make the process easier, and are experienced in refinancing so they know how to make the process as smooth and simple as possible.We're also doing what we can to educate people about the benefits of looking around for the best deal on a home loan, the fact that it is relatively simple, and that the rewards are definitely worth the effort. Latest News Broker backs government schemes to help first-home buyers Single parents can secure property with 2% deposit NAB to lift variable mortgage rates The change will take effect next week A delegation from the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ) has held a series of talks with key government stakeholders in Canberra.Led by MFAA chairman Cynthia Grisbrook and a representation of aggregators, the meetings are part of an ongoing initiative by the Association to advocate on behalf of the broking industry to the Federal Government.Accompanying Grisbrook were Mark Hewitt of Australian Finance Group AFG ), Sam White of Loan Market Stephen Moore of Choice, Andrew Rasby or Vow/Yellow Brick Road and John Flavell of Mortgage Choice The group held meetings with Meghan Quinn, head of the Financial Services Division of The Treasury and the chief of staff of the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, Kelly ODwyer.A follow-up meeting was also held with Senator Katy Gallagher, Shadow Minister for Small Businesses and Financial Services.Both meetings were extremely positive, and both Ms Quinn and Senator Gallagher appreciated the time the MFAA took to explain the benefits of the mortgage broking industry to competition in the financial services sector, Grisbrook told Australian Broker.During the meetings, the delegation offered the perspectives of wholesale mortgage brokers and the franchisor segment of the industry, she said.Quinn will ultimately prepare advice for the Federal Government on how it should respond to the ASIC report on broker remuneration while ODwyer will shape those recommendations and determine what will be put to cabinet for final government approval.We talked through the nature of our business in depth, why current remuneration structures are appropriate and serve consumers interests, and how they provide an essential and accessible financial service to all Australians in a competitive and ethical way, Grisbrook said.During the meeting, the delegation talked about the role and structure of aggregators in the mortgage lending value chain, she told Australian Broker.The meeting was extremely productive and will hopefully position the industry well in advance of the release of the ASIC report into mortgage broker remuneration.Grisbrook added that she was also happy with her meeting with Gallagher which was arranged to introduce the Shadow Minister to the MFAA.This meeting provided an opportunity to emphasise to the Opposition the importance the mortgage broker sector holds in the small business community and to emphasise the need to preserve current remuneration arrangements, she said.These meetings are another demonstration of the MFAAs determination to represent all of our members to federal decision-makers so our voice is heard theyre an effective way to present our interests to those who matter in the policy environment.Quinn and Gallagher are also keen to meet with the MFAA again once the ASIC remuneration review has been released to discuss proposed policy responses, Grisbrook told Australian Broker. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Its Elmos World or else! The cheery, smiling face of iconic red Sesame Street muppet Elmo hides a dangerous, power-hungry despot in a mostly-Spanish language play opening at the Bushwick Starr on Nov. 17. Furry! La Furia! tracks the life of a panhandling Elmo impersonator in Times Square, fighting for dominance among his fellow costumed characters. The fall from hardworking entertainer to violent hoodlum is a classic American tale, said the shows creator. It starts from a really sincere and kind of survivalist mentality of maintaining your family and then it gets a little out of control, said Bushwick writer and director William Burke. It ultimately becomes a classic American crime story where he becomes too drunk with power. The play centers on street peddler El, who dresses as Elmo to hustle money from tourists and provide for his sick son. El treats his Times Square turf as a battle ground, using Sun Tzus combat strategy guide The Art of War to stave off would-be Elmo insurgents. Burke was inspired by a newspaper story about a man in a Cookie Monster suit who stabbed a rival Cookie Monster in a turf war. The bizarre crime sparked Burkes interest in the subculture of costumed street peddlers who pose with tourists and then demand cash in popular spots such as Times Square and Coney Island. The kid-friendly appearance of the figures can make it easy to overlook their aggressive tendencies, said Burke. Its easy to make it cartoonish, but when you go up there its quite disarming because there are all these cartoon characters, but theyre people who are really just trying to make a living and that can be totally respectable or it can get violent, he said. An English version of the play was presented in Clinton Hill in 2013, but for this production it was translated into Spanish, in part by the actor who plays El, Modesto Flako Jimenez. The show will include screens with English subtitles so that non-Spanish speakers can follow along. Many of the real people in those costumes are Spanish-speaking immigrants, so using their language makes the show more realistic, and opens it to a broader audience, said Burke. I thought it would be really compelling to do something in that language and a lot of the poetry translates really well into Spanish, said Burke. It struck me as a good way to put new life into it and connect to new audiences. Furry! La Furia! at the Bushwick Starr [207 Starr St. between Wyckoff and Irving avenues in Bushwick, (917) 6239669, www.thebu shwic kstar r.org ]. Nov. 1719, 2122, 2526 at 8 pm; Nov. 20 at 3 pm. Reach reporter Caroline Spivack at cspiv ack@c ngloc al.com or by calling (718) 2602517. Follow her on Twitter @carolinespivack. 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Yardley Friends Meeting at 65 N. Main Street in Yardley will host the documentary Organic Roots on Friday, November 18 at 7 p.m. Join director Al Johnson for a showing of this film followed by a discussion of the last 50 years of this movement. Organic foods are part of our life today and a tool in our concern for... latest news October 31, 2022 Buddy TV In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options... In the fourth episode of The Walking Dead season 7, Service, we finally check back in with Team Family in Alexandria just as Negan drops by for an early visit. This episode takes an in-depth look at how many of the characters are dealing with the new world order under Negan, and two of those characters make some impressive decisions. 4 Ways The Walking Dead Made Dwight More Interesting in The Well >>> Negan Comes A-Callin As the episode begins, Michonne wakes up and prepares for the day. She retrieves a rifle she has hidden in the fireplace and quietly leaves the house, trying not to disturb anyone. Alas, Rick is already up and sees her leave with the gun. Michonne heads out into the woods for some target practice, which she clearly needs, as she fires multiple shots but doesnt hit the one walker coming at her. She finally gives up and takes it out with her weapon of choice. We then see that the only thing Michonne managed to hit with those many shots was a poor, unsuspecting deer. (Am I the only one surprised that there are any deer left at this point? Between the walkers and people out hunting for food, how did this deer survive for so long?) Back in Alexandria, Rosita and Spencer are about to go on a supply run when Negan and his people arrive. It hasnt been a week yet, so Negan is early. Spencer opens the gate and then acts like he doesnt know who Negan is. Negan is offended but still kills a walker that approaches the community. Rick lets Negan in, and Negan makes him hold Lucille. Rick is surprised to see Daryl with the Saviors, though Daryl is clearly still a prisoner. Daryl can barely look at Rick, and when Rick attempts to talk to Daryl, Negan shuts that right down. Negan then gets uncomfortably close to Rosita, but Rosita ends their brief stand-off by walking away. Negan sends his people to check out the houses to see what Rick and Company have to offer. Rick tries to explain that they have Negans half of their supplies sorted, but Negan says he gets to choose what he takes. Negan then tells Rick to show him around. While Rick is dealing with Negan, Rosita and Spencer are preparing to leave when Dwight stops them. He strips them of their guns, their water and even takes Rositas hat. He says he wants them to go get Daryls motorcycle. He also tells them not to take too long getting back. (I suspect that anyone who felt sorry for Dwight in the previous episode is back to disliking him now. At this point, I think the only thing that could turn me around on him is if he took out Negan and all his top guys by himself.) Negan Takes the Communitys Guns Negan is just delighted by the idyllic Alexandria Safe Zone. As his people start loading up mattresses and other furniture, one of the Saviors presents Negan with the camcorder that Deanna used to tape all her interviews. Negan watches Ricks initial interview and remarks that the guy on the tape is not someone Negan wouldve messed with. Luckily for him, Rick isnt that man anymore. Negan then asks about Maggie, aka the sick girl that Negan realizes was married to Number 2. He explains his interest in her in gross detail, but Father Gabriel of all people actually comes to the rescue. Gabriel somehow thought ahead and dug a fake grave to make it seem like Maggie didnt survive her pregnancy complications. Negan is disappointed, as he was going to ask Maggie to join him at The Sanctuary. Negan and Rick then hear a gunshot, and Negan is not pleased. Negan finds Carl holding some of the Saviors at gunpoint because they are taking all of the communitys medicine. Negan is impressed with Carls courage but tells him he cannot have Carl threatening him or his people. He offers to prove how serious he is, and Carl finally backs off. Carls stunt with the gun reminds Negan of just how many guns Ricks community has. Negan decides that he cannot allow that, so he wants Rick to turn over all their guns. Rick takes Negan to the armory, where he meets Olivia. Olivia says she keeps track of all their guns and supplies. While Olivia takes Negans men to get the guns, Negan tells Rick that he will not be taking any of Alexandrias food since they have so little and they cannot work for Negan if they starve to death. Negan wants Rick to thank him for letting them keep their food rations, but Rick remains quiet. Negan asks if Rick has any guns hidden away, and Rick says theyre all there. Alas, that is not true. One of the Saviors checks the inventory and realizes that two guns are missing. Since Olivia is in charge of the inventory, Negan blames this loss on her and lets Rick know that if he doesnt find those missing guns, Olivia will die. Rick brings his people together and tells them to hand over the guns. It is clear that not all of the Alexandrians are okay with submitting to Negan, but Rick says that theres no way around it. Rick tells them, Im not in charge anymore. Negan is. Eventually, Rick realizes that Spencer is the person most likely to have stashed the missing guns. He breaks into Spencers place and starts searching it. During this search, Rick has a chat with Father Gabriel in which Gabriel tries to give Rick hope. Gabriel thinks they will get through this and find a way forward. He has faith in their people and he has faith in Rick. Rick thanks Gabriel for coming up with the ruse of Maggies death. After their chat, Rick finds a vent in the floor of Spencers home. Hidden in the vent are stolen supplies and the missing guns. Ricks relief at finding the guns is palpable. Negan Gets What He Wants Before handing over the guns, Rick sees one of the Saviors taunting Enid about the green balloons shes been keeping in memory of Glenn. Carl is clearly upset that Rick didnt step in when the Savior was bothering Enid. Instead, Ricks gives Negan the missing guns. Though Negan is pleased that everything is sorted, he tells Rick that he needs to get all of his people on board with the way things work now. If he doesnt, theyll have to go back to square one. Negan is finally ready to leave when Rick spots Michonne. He asks Negan for a minute, and Negan eventually grants his request. Rick goes to Michonne and tells her that he knows she has the rifle. He asks her to hand it over because they need to give it to Negan. Michonne tries to argue with him, but Rick says that if the Saviors learn that she has it, someone will die. Rick doesnt want to lose anyone else. Michonne begrudgingly gives him the rifle, and Rick hands it over to Negan. Negan is very happy that Rick is reading the room and getting the message. Since Rick and his people proved they can follow Negans rules, Rick asks Negan if Daryl can stay. Negan decides to let Daryl make up his mind, but when given the opportunity to speak up, Daryl remains silent. (I assume this is because Daryl knows Negan well enough by now to realize that Negan has a price for everything and Daryl doesnt want any of his friends to pay that price.) With that settled, Negan tells Rick that theyll be coming back soon, and if Ricks people dont have something interesting for them, someone will die. Negan is pleased with how everything has worked out, but he wants to hear those two magic words before leaving. Rick finally says, Thank you, and Negan makes a comment that comic fans are sure to recognize. (Quite a bit of Negans dialogue is this episode is lifted right out of the comics.) Before heading out, Negan turns his back on Rick to kill another walker, giving Rick the perfect opportunity to take him out. Alas, Rick doesnt take it, and the Saviors finally leave. Quiz: Which TV Vigilante Are You? >>> Rosita Steps Up Rosita and Spencer head back to where they last saw Daryls motorcycle. Its still hidden in the bushes where Daryl left it. While Spencer retrieves the bike, he starts complaining about how everything thats happened is Ricks fault, but they all have to live with the way things are now. Rosita ignores him and heads off into the woods. (Even I might brave the walker-filled woods to get away from that guy.) No thanks to Spencer, Rosita ends up taking out quite a few walkers in order to get one single gun. You see, Rositas absolutely furious at what the Saviors did to those she cared about, and she wants to fight back. Alas, the gun doesnt have any bullets, so her efforts seem rather pointless. When they get back to Alexandria, Dwight is happy to take Daryls motorcycle off their hands. He doesnt return their guns, but he does give Rosita back her hat. He also lets poor Daryl know that he can have his bike back as soon as he says the word. Thanks to the previous episode, we all know exactly which word, or name, Daryl refuses to say. Rick Opens Up to Michonne After Negan and the Saviors leave, Rick confronts Spencer about hoarding the guns and supplies. Instead of apologizing for stealing from the community, Spencer just cops an attitude. He even goes so far as to call out Rick for getting Glenn and Abraham killed. For the first time all episode, we get a glimpse of the old Rick as he tells Spencer that if he says anything like that to him again, he will break his jaw. Rosita also confronts Spencer about the guns. She is pissed that he let her go to such extremes to get one gun when he had two stashed away back home. Spencer talks a lot of crap about not trusting Rick and then says she was right that this doesnt have to be their life. (Heres hoping it wont be Spencers life much longer because someone will take him out.) Back home, Rick is putting together some semblance of a bed now that the Saviors took most of their mattresses. Michonne tries to talk to Rick about fighting back against the Saviors, but Rick says they wouldnt stand a chance against the Saviors numbers. Michonne suggests teaming up with The Hilltop, but Rick still thinks the odds would be in Negans favor. Rick says they have to play by Negans rules and hopefully get some kind of life. In one of the best moments of the episode, Rick then confides in Michonne about his past. He tells her about Shane and his relationship with Lori. He also tells her that he knows Shane is Judiths father. Rick says Judith is his daughter and he loves her, but he had to accept that he isnt her father. Rick says there were some things he just had to accept in order to keep everyone alive. Michonne tells him it is not his fault when people die, but Rick believes it is. Rick tells her they all have to accept this life now, and Michonne promises to try. Alas, I doubt Michonne will want to try after what she sees when she goes out beyond the walls again. Not far from Alexandria, Michonne finds the burning remains of the communitys mattresses. (I hope this snaps Michonne into action and she starts looking for a way to fight back against Negan.) In the episodes final scene, we see Rosita turn up on Eugenes doorstep with a shell casing. Since she still has that one gun, she asks Eugene to make her a bullet. (Have I mentioned how happy I am with Rositas scenes in this episode? Heres hoping the writers continue to give her an actual storyline instead of wasting her on the sidelines.) What did you think of this episode of The Walking Dead? Are you glad we finally checked back in with Team Family? What did you think of Ricks behavior in this episode? Were you pleased to see Gabriel and Rosita stepping up? Do you think Michonne will go after Negan now, and if so, who will she turn to for help? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. The Walking Dead season 7 airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on AMC. Want more news? Like our Facebook page. (Image courtesy of AMC) UB again ranked among the nations top universities in hosting international students While the election season has raised questions about America's commitment to diversity, UB recognizes the many benefits we derive from a diverse faculty and student body. Our international students contribute to that diversity in a vital, impactful way. BUFFALO, N.Y. The 2016 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, released today in Washington, D.C. by the Institute of International Education (IIE), announced that for the 14th straight year, UB is among the top U.S. institutions hosting international students. UBs total of 7,026 international students for the 2015-16 academic year places UB third in New York State, behind only New York University and Columbia and ahead of all other SUNY institutions. UB has a total enrollment of about 29,000 students. International students at UB hail from 115 different countries. The largest numbers come to the university from China, India, South Korea, Canada, Malaysia and Iran. While the election season has raised questions about America's commitment to diversity, UB recognizes the many benefits we derive from a diverse faculty and student body. Our international students contribute to that diversity in a vital, impactful way, said Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education at UB. New York State, with a total international enrollment of 114,316 students, is second among the 50 states for international student enrollment, according to the report. The figure represents an increase of 7.1 percent over last year. In 2015-16, the number of international students enrolled in U.S higher education also increased by 7.1 percent, to 1,043,839, topping one million for the first time. International students now represent just over 5 percent of the more than 20,000,000 students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. An increasing number of students are crossing the globe to gain practical, international experience that they can apply in their careers and life in a global society, said Dunnett. For example, Devashish Agarwal is in his junior year at UB, majoring in computer science with a business minor. From Agra, India, Agarwal chose UB for dual reasons: I wanted a school that offered scholarships and is very well-rated in the major rankings, he said. UBs size has allowed me to go out of my comfort zone, meeting people from around the world. That should be helpful in a career in technology management. Ling Zhai, a graduate student from China whos studying foreign and second language education, was attracted to UBs size and language programs. I wanted an opportunity to do research, she said. I am involved in a project that is about growing multi-lingualism in early childhood three and four-year olds, she said. I am finding UBs diversity to be a perfect fit in that area. You can hear many different languages just walking down the halls. Its like a small United Nations. Diversity was also high on Jin Kims list. I heard about UB from my uncle, said Kim, a senior chemical engineering major from Seoul, South Korea. Then when I was attending a community college in Washington state, a friend of mine came here. I was looking for a big university, one that was very diverse. One of my favorite things to do at UB is to go to one of the churches in the community, with a large group of people all from different countries. It is wonderful. The Association of International Educators (NAFSA) has stated that the economic contributions of international students are in addition to the cross-cultural benefits to classrooms, campus life and communities that can be seen and felt each day. Some of these contributions include: Increasing global experience at U.S. colleges and universities, something now increasingly crucial to success in all fields. Contributing billions of dollars in economic impact, along with making invaluable academic and cultural contributions. Supporting U.S. innovation through science and engineering coursework, making it possible for U.S. colleges and universities to offer these courses to U.S. students. Creation and support of jobs by international students spending in higher education plus sectors such as accommodation, dining, retail, transportation and telecommunications. According to the Open Doors report, the numbers of international students at institutions across the U.S. relying on personal and family resources as their primary source of funding rose to 66.5 percent a slight increase over 2014-15. U.S. colleges and universities also remained a primary source of funding for international students, at 17 percent, followed by 7.4 percent from a foreign government or university. The Open Doors Report is published annually by the IIE in partnership with the U.S. State Departments Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. For more data, infographics and resources on the 2016 report, visit http://www.iie.org/ Open-Doors. The 2016 Open Doors report was released on the occasion of the 17th annual celebration of International Education Week, a joint initiative of the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Education. Saniflo UK says its 2016 Building better bathrooms roadshow has been so successful that it will take to the road again in 2017 visiting new venues with new products. This year, the purpose-built roadshow truck took in 80 venues in England, Wales and Ireland from May through to October with more than 600 installers and builders visiting the truck in England and Wales, and more than 220 installers visiting in Ireland, where they chatted with the Saniflo technical and sales teams who were on hand to answer questions and discuss how installers can improve their earnings by fitting Kinedo cubicles. A direct result of the roadshow has been an increase in the number of Kinedo showroom displays being ordered, and excellent feedback from attendees including showroom and merchant staff who were taught how to build the Kinedo shower cubicles. The sessions featured installation demonstrations of the Kinemagic Design shower cubicle and product showcases of the latest Kinemagic Serenity cubicle and a customisable Kineduo shower bath. Ann Boardman, Saniflo UK customer services and marketing manager, said: Were delighted with the feedback and results of the Saniflo Building better bathrooms roadshow. Our hands-on approach has led to a direct increase in showroom displays of the Kinedo shower cubicles. Visitors were able to see for themselves just what a valuable business proposition Kinedo shower cubicles offer. Industry professionals are realising that specifying Kinedo shower cubicles means they can boost their income while offering their customers a swift and hassle-free showering solution without the need for grout or silicone. Plumb-It managing director Brian Cooper, who was also delighted with the Saniflo roadshow, added: The Saniflo roadshow has really helped to get installers on board with Kinedo shower cubicles and this is vital as theyre the ones who have contact with the end user. Im convinced that as more installers become aware of Kinedo shower cubicles and just how convenient they are, sales of the shower cubicles will continue to grow. Alibaba-backed mobile ecommerce player put out an ad on the front pages of newspapers last week congratulating Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for taking the boldest decision in the financial history of independent India. Healthcare group has plans to invest Rs 1,400 crore over the next couple of years for expansion, a top company official said here on Monday. Moreover, the company is all set to come up with the modern Proton therapy at its Chennai facility for the treatment of cancer patients in near future. "We have lined up an investment of Rs 1,400 crore over next couple of years and the investment would be made in the opening of new hospitals and expansion of already existing healthcare centres," Chairman Prathap C Reddy told reporters here. He was speaking at the inauguration of a super-speciality tertiary care hospital by the group at Navi Mumbai. "We are looking at having our own hospital at Guwahati in North-East and we have already acquired land in Jaipur for the setting of a hospital in future," he said. Talking about the forthcoming Proton therapy at its Chennai facility, he said, "work has already begun on the setting up of the Proton therapy at the group's Chennai facility and we hope that it would become operational over next one-and-half years' time." "Currently this facility was available only in two countries like China and Japan and India will become the third country to have this facility for treatment of cancer patients," Apollo Hospital's managing director Suneeta Reddy said. "We are also looking at adding oncology facility at the group's already existing hospitals at places like Vizag and Bhubaneshwar," she added. Rating agency has cut the rating for loans given by banks to Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) from A to A-, owing to lower than expected improvement in the financial risk profile. Future Consumer, food and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) arm of the Future Group, announced it was getting into the cash and carry (wholesale) business in a joint venture (JV) with the UK-based Booker Group to expand and develop Booker India. The company, with a stated goal of Rs 1 lakh crore in annual turnover by 2021, made this announcement in a BSE filing. Booker Group entered India in 2009 and has invested in creating a network of six cash and carry stores that supply food, and related merchandise to small retailers and enterprises in Maharashtra and Gujarat. It operates out of four locations in Mumbai and one each in Pune and Surat. Booker Group is the UKs leading food wholesaler, offering branded and private label goods to a little over 900,000 business customers independent convenience stores, grocers, leisure outlets, pubs, restaurants. The Group comprises Booker Wholesale, Makro, Booker Direct and Booker India, among others. Future Consumer offers a range of brands and products that includes Tasty Treat (processed food), Nilgiris (dairy & bakery), Sunkist (beverages), Swiss Tempelle (personal care), Kara (beauty-on-the-go) and CleanMate (home care). These will also now be distributed through the Booker India network. Booker India has developed one of the lowest cost distribution networks for products through its cash and carry network in India. We are now happy to join hands to leverage their expertise in engaging with small, neighbourhood retailers and reach out to them with the brands and products being developed by our organisation, said Kishore Biyani, vice-chairman, Future Consumer. Future Consumer has dedicated manufacturing facilities at India Food Park, Tumkur (Karnataka), with extensive sourcing and processing facilties across the country. The company also operates JVs with Migros Group from Switzerland and Aussie Oats in Sri Lanka, and a licensing partnership with Sukist Growers from California, USA. Its products are distributed through multiple retail chains such as Big Bazaar, EasyDay, Heritage, Nilgiris, Aadhaar, Annapurna Bhandaar, Metro Cash & Carry and Tesco Star Bazaar, beside other channels. Metro Cash and Carry and Walmart India plan to expand their base in India. Metro AG wants to double wholesale stores in the country to 50 by 2020. Walmart plans to add around 50 stores in the next five years. The board of Tata Global Beverages will meet on Tuesday and is likely to discuss the ouster of Chairman Cyrus Mistry and its impact on the companys operations. British insurer said on Monday that India's insurance watchdog had "expressed reservations" in accepting the current deal terms for the purchase by its Indian joint venture of Max Life Insurance. In August HDFC Insurance Co (HDFC Life) agreed to buy India's Max Life Insurance in an all-stock deal to create the nation's top private life insurer valued at nearly $10 billion. The deal is expected to kick-start consolidation in India's lucrative insurance sector where relatively few people hold insurance policies despite the country being the world's second-most populous nation of 1.3 billion. said that Indian mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corp, which currently owns a majority of HDFC Life, believes that the scheme of arrangement submitted to Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) complied with all applicable laws. The companies, which filed an application for IRDAI's in-principle approval for the scheme in September, propose to make suitable representations to the regulator, Standard Life said. The current terms of the deal involve Max Life being merged into its parent company Max Financial Services, which in turn would combine its entire life insurance business with HDFC Life. Analysts said regulators were likely to be focusing on the logistics of having an insurer merger with a non-insurer. The deal is set to give Max Financial Services' shareholders 2.33 shares of HDFC Life for every Max Financial share held. If it goes ahead, it would also give Standard Life about 24 per cent of HDFC Life while Housing Development Finance Corp will own a 42.5 per cent stake. Shares in Standard Life were up 1.23 per cent at 368.1 pence at 0923 GMT on the London Stock Exchange. Max Financial Services and HDFC Ltd's stocks did not trade on Monday as Indian markets were closed. Amidst the standoff between Ratan Tata and his estranged successor Cyrus Mistry, the six independent directors of chose to support the management and board of the company, instead of the chairman. In Tata Teleservices, Ratan Tatas decision to enter the all-new world of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology-based mobile telephony in 2003 while getting out of Idea Cellular, a GSM-based telecom operator, has hurt the company. Idea Cellular is now Indias third largest telecom company. The Tatas sold their 48.12 per cent stake to their joint venture partner Aditya Birla group in 2006. Indian IT will need to step up local hiring in the United States and move less work offshore putting a strain on their margins, as gears up to take over as the US President, winning the mandate over his anti-immigrant rhetoric. This would put additional burden on Indian firms such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services, who are already facing their worst growth dip in a decade. While these business are getting newer projects in areas such as cloud and digital technologies from clients in the US, the growth is not offsetting the rapid decline in traditional services that contributes four out of five dollars to their revenue. Emerald Haven Realty Limited (EHRL), the real-estate venture of the TVS Group and known as TVS Emerald, is in talks with investors to raise funds, according to a senior management official. Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app. Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006. Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more. Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them. 26 years of website archives. A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned from his three-day trip to Japan, he made an emotional appeal to the people asking them to give him 50 days time and said, "I will give you the India you desired". Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents join a rally outside the Legislative Council complex to show support for the NPC Standing Committee's interpretation of the Basic Law on Nov 13. Roy Liu /China Daily Hong Kong residents are increasingly realizing the dangers of tolerating the advocacy of "independence" for the special administrative region. This was evident in the rally on Sunday, which unambiguously demonstrated the general public's strong endorsement of the recent interpretation of the Basic Law by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. In the latest show of their abhorrence for separatism, some 40,000 Hong Kong residents took to the street on Sunday to voice their support for the interpretation of Hong Kong's Basic Law, which makes it clear and explicit that public officers who fail to take the oath of office sincerely and solemnly shall be disqualified, and that those who make a false oath or subsequently engage in acts violating the oath bear a legal responsibility. Since two separatist legislators-elect openly promoted their separatist ideas during their swearing-in for the Legislative Council four weeks ago, more than one million people have signed an online petition demanding the immediate disqualification of the two as lawmakers. And over the past few weeks, a host of civil and business organizations in the SAR have condemned the behavior of these two agitators, as well as that of a few other "pro-independence" lawmakers with numerous co-signed statements and advertisements placed in newspapers. A resdient filed a judicial review case with the High Court on Thursday, seeking to disqualify another eight lawmakers who failed to take their oath of office in a way that complies with the legal requirements as defined by the National People's Congress Standing Committee in its interpretation of Article 104 of the Basic Law. Hong Kong people have a strong reason to speak out. They are fully aware that "Hong Kong independence" is a dangerous delusion. Hong Kong people understand that "one country" is the premise and basis of "two systems". Attempts to sabotage this premise by denying the former only derail the smooth implementation of the later, which is the foundation of Hong Kong's long-term stability and prosperity. President Xi Jinping underscored the nation's determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity as one country in his Friday speech commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dr Sun Yat-sen. The overwhelming majority of Hong Kong residents see no reason to allow a small group of radicals to gamble the overall well-being of Hong Kong society on their losing bet that they would be able to rip the SAR away from the rest of the country. The Union minister said that 4,000 centres across the country would be established. is the clinical purification of blood, as a substitute for the normal function of the kidney. The minister also mentioned that the government was working to provide free for those below the poverty line. This comes at a time when the government is working on a national policy. The subsidy will be provided by the central government. At a time when there are endless queues outside and banks to exchange notes and withdraw new currency, crowdsourcing has come to the rescue to ease the common man's plight. Just as netizens contributed to crowdsource data and help people stranded during Chennai floods, this time around a twitter handle named @WoCharLog has created a website that provides you crowdsourced information about the working and crowd numbers at these All you need to do is enter the locality in the search box and it throws up the status of ATMs in that area and tells you when it was last updated. You can also update the situation of ATM you know by entering the landmark, bank name and the number of people waiting at the ATM. Although its very difficult to say how accurate the result is, people applauded and thanked the creator for the effort @WoCharLog has put in. Also, atmfinder.cms.com, a website of ATM network management company CMS, gives details of ATM found in different cities in India. But this is not as comprehensive as the atmsearch.in and doesn't show real time or current picture of the ATM nearby. Congress mouthpiece Herald may soon be launched in an online format, its newly appointed Editor-in-Chief Neelabh Mishra said on the eve of the birth anniversary of the newspaper founder Jawaharlal Nehru. A week of climate change negotiations at threatened the future of the Adaptation Fund as developed countries blocked talks on housing it in the post-2020 regime under Paris Agreement. The fund, set up in 2001 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is meant to provide developing and poor countries monies to adjust to inevitable climate changes. The Pakistani military said on Monday that seven of its soldiers had been killed in firing by Indian troops along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. "Seven soldiers embraced 'shahadat' at the LoC in Bhimber sector in cross-fire LoC violation by Indian troops late last night," said the Inter-Services Public Relations, the army's media wing. The LoC divides the Indian and Pakistan parts of Kashmir. It said Pakistani troops responded to India's "unprovoked firing" and "targeted Indian posts effectively". Pakistani authorities last week lodged protests with India and the UN military observers over the targeting of civilian population by Indian troops. Pakistan says the civilian death toll in Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. A 'Shariat protection conference' held at a nearby town decided to fully co-operate with All India Muslim Personal Law Board to 'safeguard' the Shariat act. Various resolutions were passed, one among which said the constitutionally approved Shariat act for Muslims in matters like marriage, divorce, property rights and Wakf Board administration will be strictly followed and 'safeguarded'. Another said it would oppose the at all costs, a press release from the Shariat Protection conference, held at nearby Palyamkottai, said. The state-level conference was held under the aegis of various Muslim organisations. Scholars and clergymen from various Muslim sects have opposed the Law Commission's consultation on triple talaq and (UCC). The AIMPLB, while announcing the decision to boycott the Law Commission's consultation, had criticised the Narendra Modi government for allegedly trying to divert attention from its "failures" by raising the issue of UCC. A Pune based economic think tank, ArthaKranti, which claims to have suggested to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonetize Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, wants the government to abolish income tax and 56 other taxes and replace it by a Banking Transaction Tax, or BTT, of 2 per cent on earnings. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, How to convert into white money has been trending on Google, with many Indians turning to the search engine giant for an answer. There could be sops, after the pain. Sensing the growing frustration among the middle classes and the poor in India over dry ATMs and long queues at banks after demonetisation of big notes, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is learnt to be sending out feelers to finance minister Arun Jaitley to relax the income-tax slabs, even if marginally, in the Union Budget. "This would help consolidate the BJP position among the salaried class," a source said. Indias big rural economy, which after two years of distress was on a slow path to recovery on the back of a favourable monsoon and bumper harvest, has been hit hard by the Centres sudden decision to demonetise high-value currency. November 15 will be the last day for jewellers to deposit old high-value currency notes, sources told Business Standard as the government cracks down on traders to prevent the laundering of black money. ALSO READ: The great Indian jugaad: How some are beating the Rs 1,000 note ban Chaotic scenes outside banks, automated teller machine (ATMs) kiosks and regional offices of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) continued on Sunday, as people queued up hoping to get some cash. With over 70 per cent of Odisha's gram panchayats bereft of a bank branch, chief minister Naveen Patnaik has pressed on the need for mobile banking services in unrepresented regions to cope up with the demonetisation crisis. In a letter to Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, Patnaik said, "Apart from relaxations in withdrawals for government disbursements like old age pensions which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has facilitated, I would also request you to request RBI and other banks to urgently provide mobile banking services or to set up temporary counters in unbanked gram panchayats. The state government will provide requisite support and infrastructure for this purpose." With banks struggling to cope with rush to get alternative currency, the government has extended use of old defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees and purchases from co-operative stores till November 24. Prime Minister on Monday hit out at the opposition parties over demonetisation saying the decision was aimed at tackling the menace of black money and that he had the people's mandate for the tough job. Pune-based economic think tank ArthaKranti, which claims to have suggested to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to demonetise the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, wants the government to abolish income tax and 56 other taxes and replace it by a banking transaction tax, or BTT, of two per cent on earnings. One-third of the worlds population, 2.5 billion people, have no credit score that might give them access to loans. But about a billion people in the developing world do have basic smartphones. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday tightened monitoring of depositing old notes and said will have to ensure that the customers use separate pay-in slips for depositing specified bank notes and other legal tender. Incredible India @ India International Trade Fair 2016 The Union Tourism Secretary, Shri Vinod Zutshi has inaugurated the Ministry of Tourisms Incredible India stand at the India International Trade Fair 2016, today at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. The Incredible India stand located at Hall No. 18 (Stand No.25) aims to nurture the tourism potential of less frequented destinations which are located closer to the popular destinations for attracting domestic visitors. Inaugurating the Incredible India stand the Union Secretary said The stand has been designed with an idea of promoting lesser Known destinations". Domestic tourism continues to be an important contributor to the tourism sector providing much needed resilience. There has been a continuous increase in domestic tourist visits, with the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of domestic tourist visits to all States/UTs from 1991 to 2015 being 13.63 per cent. In 2015, it grew by 11.63 per cent to reach 1431.97 million visits. And there is an encouraging sign for the Inbound Tourism too. Inbound travel to India has increased. Foreign Tourist arrivals in India during the period January- September, 2016 were 6.2 million with a growth of 10.5% as compared to the Foreign Tourist Arrival of 5.6 million with a growth of 4.8% in January-September, 2015 over January- September, 2014. This positive development is expected to continue during remaining period of this year. The Ministry of Tourism is participating in the IITF after a long gap. The attractions of the stand are two Selfie Points with the Taj Mahal and the Valley of Flowers as background. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chinese President Xi Jinping told Donald Trump in their first conversation that cooperation was the only correct choice for ties between the worlds two largest economies, with the US president-elect promising one of the strongest relationships. Xi told Trump by telephone on Monday that the two powers benefited from working together and needed to coordinate efforts to promote global economic growth, state broadcaster China Central Television reported. The pair agreed to meet soon, CCTV said. China and the USas the worlds biggest developing ... In line with his hardline immigration stance, President-elect has vowed to immediately deport up to three million undocumented immigrants, saying "we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate". "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told CBS News. "But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally," the 70-year-old business tycoon-turned politician said in an excerpt released ahead of broadcast of the interview. During the election campaign, Trump had warned that those countries which do not accept these illegal immigrants, he would enforce the legal provision of stopping of issuing of visas to people of those countries. There are an estimated 11 million documented immigrants in the country. Several hundred thousand are believed to be Indian-Americans. The President-elect said he would take a call on the fate of the rest of the illegal immigrants, after the border is secured. "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalised, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that," Trump said. "But before we make that determination...It's very important, we are going to secure our border," he said in response to a question. Trump insisted that he is determined to fulfill another campaign promise of building a wall along the Mexican border. "For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," he said. "I'm very good at this, it's called construction," Trump said. Since Trump's election on Tuesday night, the realities of actually building that wall have begun to set in and the Mexican government has publicly reminded him that Mexico will not pay for the wall. Asked about the wall, Trump transition co-chair Newt Gingrich said the wall was "a great campaign device". During his election campaign, Trump articulated a strong and tough immigration policy, which was quite opposite to that of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, which was based on compassion and providing a pathway to nearly 11 million illegal immigrants. Late on Tuesday night, as it became clear that Donald J Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election, a private chat sprang up on among several vice presidents and executives of the social network. There election of Donald Trump may allow banks to dodge the full impact of global regulators post-2008 crisis crackdown. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is racing to complete a revamp of international capital standards by the year-end. The US has pushed for strict rules to protect against future market meltdowns, whereas Europe and Japan want to rein in proposals that could hit banks with billions in costs. Basel Committee members including the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are under enormous industry pressure to soften the rules. Trumps ... Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has urged his US counterpart to revoke an executive order that labelled his country a security threat. "It is an atrocity that I hope Obama corrects before he leaves office," Maduro said on Sunday, reiterating his government's willingness to improve diplomatic ties with the US. In a message directly addressing the US head of state, Maduro said, "In spite of the arrogance, aggression and negative legacy, you, President Barack Obama, can garner the admiration and respect of Venezuela, if you have the courage to sign a decree revoking that infamous executive order that claims our beloved country is a threat," Xinhua news agency reported. The South American nation will also formally request the White House revoke the decree during an upcoming meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, so Obama "can leave with a message of peace for Venezuela", said Maduro. While ties between the two countries have been sour since Venezuela's socialist party first came to power some 15 years ago, the 2015 decree calling the South American country "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the US", marked a particular low point. A day after the US presidential election on November 8, Maduro spoke with Kerry to request the two countries establish a "positive agenda" with which to work when the administration of President-elect Donald Trump takes over in January 2017. According to company sources, from a current ratio of 70:30 between its mining versus power segments, the state enterprise has set a target of moving towards 60:40 ratio even as it looks to add more wind and thermal power capacity. At a time when availability of fresh lignite and bauxite reserves is strained, state-run Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) is turning towards its power business for increased revenue generation. "While there is a steady revenue being generated in lignite, with volumes of over 8 million metric tonnes, there are challenges in availability of fresh reserves. On the other hand, our power business is doing better. Hence, in near future, we are looking at over 40 per cent of our revenue coming from our power business," said a company official on condition of anonymity. The Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) have arrested one of the attackers of German consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, in which six people were killed. The security officials said the arrested suspect was among the three suicide bombers, who had launched a coordinated attack, reports Khaama Press. A photograph of the attacker was released by the security forces. On November 10, a vehicle laden with heavy explosives detonated in the vicinity of the German Consulate, which damaged more than 100 homes and shops. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, describing it as revenge for recent air strikes in the neighbouring province of Kunduz. Condemning the attack in strongest words, the UN mission in Afghanistan said "Attacks deliberately targeting the civilian population and violence aimed at spreading terror among civilians may amount to war crimes under customary international humanitarian law. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shocked by the gruesome murder of Dainik Bhaskar journalist Dharmendra Kumar Singh by unidentified assailants at Amra in Bihar on Saturday, the press fraternity of Arunachal Pradesh has condemned the incident in the strongest terms and urged the Bihar government to deliver justice to aggrieved family at the earliest. Singh, who was working with a prominent Hindi newspaper, was gunned down by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants on Saturday morning, making it the second murder of a journalist in the state in the past six months. In a joint statement issued on Sunday, the Arunachal Press Club (APC), Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ) and Arunachal Electronic Media Association (AEMA) expressed deep shock at the killing of Singh who had taken on the powerful local mafias in many occasions through his writings. The fraternity termed the murder as a cowardly attempt to muzzle down the freedom of speech. The media fraternity urged the Bihar government to come up with a mechanism to protect scribes in the state so that crusaders of freedom of speech are not cowed down. "The murder of journalist reflects the law and order situation of a state, it is duty the duty of welfare government of Bihar to protect the press fraternity and ensure safety of all scribes in the state" the press bodies stated in their statement. It further added that perpetrators should be brought to justice and award exemplary punishment, so that it sends message across. Expressing solidarity with media fraternity in Bihar as well as with aggrieved family, APC, APUWJ and AEMA stated that courageous and fierce writings of late Dharmendra Kumar Singh will embolden and inspired working journalists across the India. The fraternity further prayed almighty god for eternal peace of departed soul. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In view of the prevailing crisis occurring due to demonetisation drive, the Civil Defence volunteers would be deployed in the capital to felicitate people who have been standing at queues outside banks, said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday even as the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das announced that a task force is being set up for re-calibration of ATMs to expedite the process of cash transactions. He said that a special one day session of the legislative assembly has been called on Tuesday where the Delhi government would analyse and discuss about the situation and accordingly take steps to mitigate the present crisis. "Today we convened an emergency cabinet meeting, where it was decided that we will conduct a one day emergency session will to analyse the situation and accordingly take decisions," Kejriwal said, "Civil defence volunteers, a part of Delhi government, will be deployed in the state to help people who have been standing in queues with regard to providing refreshments, filling out forms, helping senior citizens and many other things," he added. Holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible for the present cash crunch, the Delhi Chief Minister said the Centre was unprepared in dealing with the crisis. "Today Centre announced that the Indian Air Force will be used to carry and distribute currency notes. It shows that government did not have any game plane to tackle the crisis. The government was unprepared in executing its plan. It shows that the government is in a precarious situation," Kejriwal said. He said that despite Prime Minister Modi's claim that the demonetisation drive would bring sleepless nights to the rich, the 'aam aadmi' (common man), instead, are having sleepless nights standing outside the ATMs. "Despite the Prime Mister's claim that the rich are having sleepless nights, it seems that the common people have been having sleepless nights. We can see them sleeping outside bank ATMs and its is Prime Minister Modi's friends who are sleeping peacefully," "The nation is unable to understand that by curbing 500 and 1000 notes and introducing 2000 notes, how will corruption and black money will get reduced," he added. Earlier, Das said the task force will have representatives of department of Financial Services and the Ministry of Home Affairs, adding the task force has been instructed to work out a strategy to expedite the whole process of re-calibration of the ATMs so that the disbursement of cash at the field level is substantially improved. "The banks have been advised to increase the cash holding limit of the banking correspondents to at least 50,000 rupees. In other cases, the banks would be encouraged to increase the cash holding limits beyond 50,000 rupees in appropriate cases. The reach of distribution of cash especially in the rural areas will improve substantially," he added. Das said to augment this further, the bank correspondents will be permitted by the banks to draw cash multiple times in a single day. Normal life has been thrown out of gear as long serpentine queues were still visible outside banks to exchange currency notes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane, Yu Xu, was killed in an accident during a routine training flight with the aerobatics team over the weekend. The engine and the flight data recorder or black box of the two-seater fighter jet J-10 has been recovered at the accident site in Yutian county on Saturday evening, reports the China Daily. According to an official, the authorities are investigating the cause of the accident. Two pilots from the Bayi Aerobatic Team of People's Liberation Army's Air Force were conducting a routine flight training on Saturday morning in Tianjin before they were forced to eject from the jet as two jets hit each other. Witnesses said the impact left a 10-meter diameter and 3-meter deep pit on the farmland at Dayangpu village of Chenjiapu. The male pilot parachuted to safety. But Yu Xu hit the wing of another J-10 and died. She was at the back seat during the training. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das has announced that a task force is being set up under the chairmanship of deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for recalibration of ATMs to expedite the process of cash transactions. "The ATMs which are being recalibrated to dispense 500 rupee notes and 2,000 rupee notes i.e. the new series of 500 rupee notes and the 2,000 rupee notes.to expedite this process as fast as possible a task force is being set up under the chairmanship of deputy governor of the Reserve Bank. It will have representatives of banks as its members," Das told ANI. Das said the task force will also have representatives of department of financial services and the Ministry of Home Affairs, adding the task force has been instructed to work out a strategy to expedite the whole process of recalibration of the ATMs so that the disbursement of cash at the field level is substantially improved. "The banks have been advised to increase the cash holding limit of the banking correspondents to at least 50,000 rupees. In other cases, the banks would be encouraged to increase the cash holding limits beyond 50,000 rupees in appropriate cases. The reach of distribution of cash especially in the rural areas will improve substantially," he added. Das said to augment this further, the bank correspondents will be permitted by the banks to draw cash multiple times in a single day. "The branch post offices will also be provided with adequate quantity of cash. Cash supply in adequate quantity will be made available in the branch post offices to disburse cash against account balances. There are about 1.3 lakh branch post offices in the country. So, 1.2 lakh banking correspondents and 1.3 lakh branch post offices put together, it works out to 2,50,000 points which will be made additionally available," he added. The Economic Affairs Secretary stated that micro ATMs will be deployed in large number of areas to dispense cash against debit and credit cards. "They will be dispensing cash up to the existing limits, which are there for the other ATMs. The weekly limits of withdrawal from bank accounts from Rs. 20,000 has been increased to Rs. 24,000 and the limit of Rs. 10,000 withdrawal per single transaction has been removed," he added. He said that this would ensure better public convenience and the members of the public do not have to travel to the bank more than once a week. "The exchange of notes which is currently Rs. 4,000.if you submit old series of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes there was a limit which had been imposed of supplying Rs. 4,000 per transaction. Now, it has been increased to Rs. 4,500. The main intention is to ensure that the smaller denomination currencies are also made available in the hands of the public," he added. Das said the ATM limits also have been increased to Rs. 2,500 in respect of the recalibrated ATMs. "ATMs which are recalibrated to dispense new 500 rupee notes or new 2,000 rupee notes, they can dispense 2,500 at a time. The current account entities which are operational will be permitted to draw Rs. 50,000 at a time. The objective behind this is to enable such entities to disburse wages," he added. He stated that the district central cooperative banks have made a representation about non-availability of adequate cash because of non-receipt of cash from the banks. "Now, in such cases the instructions have been given to the banks to supply cash to meet the requirements of the district central cooperative banks to dispense cash against balances which are available in the accounts of individuals," he added. The Economic Affairs Secretary also said it has been decided that all government departments and central public sector undertakings will maximize their e-transactions. "Wherever possible, e-transactions should be the first option and resort to cash transactions should be made only in rarest of the rare cases. This would also reduce considerable pressure on the cash requirement," he added. He said that the Reserve Bank of India has advised the National Payments Corporation of India to waive its transaction charges on all transactions which are settled through national financial switch, adding that this facility will be available till December 31. "The banks are also being advised to waive their charges for various kinds of transactions which go for similar settlements. The annual life certificate which the pensioners are required to submit during the month of November.the time limit for that has been extended till January 15, 2017," he added. Das further said that there will be separate queues for senior citizens and divyang persons in banks. "There will be separate queues for people, who are visiting the bank branches for doing transactions against their bank accounts. There will be separate queues in respect of those who are visiting the bank only to exchange the old series of notes for new notes," Das said. "Currently, the government has given exemptions to certain category of transactions where old series of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 can be accepted. This limit for such exemptions is being extended from November 14 midnight to November 24 midnight," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Expecting fireworks in both Houses during the Winter Session of Parliament starting from Wednesday, with the opposition is planning to target the government on several issues, including demonetisation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Parliamentary Party Executive will go into a huddle on Monday to chalk out strategy to counter the opposition. Party brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and president Amit Shah, will also attend the meet. Meanwhile, The Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies will also be meeting today, which will also be attended by the Prime Minister. With the opposition is set to target the government on issues like demonetisation, Kashmir unrest, and One-Rank One-Pension (OROP), the ruling party is also likely to discuss these issues. In a clear indication of the party's line in Parliament over demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes, Shah attacked opposition parties, saying they were against an exercise which has rattled those dealing in black money, fake currency, narcotics and such activities. The Congress has sought suspension of business on day one of Winter Session to discuss the demonetisation issue. Leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday said Congress MPs would raise the demonetisation issue under rules 56 and 193 during the Winter Session. Deputy leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has already given a notice for the suspension of business under rule 267 of the Rajya Sabha for a discussion on the same issue. Leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad has also given a notice under rule 267 for discussion on the issue of Kashmir unrest. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cash-crunch triggered by demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes is not only causing inconvenience to people in the country, but foreign tourists visiting here are equally troubled as they are unable to use smaller denominations. "Arriving on the morning of the November 10, and being in Delhi, we found that we were not able to get any money. The hotel had all its cash taken away and as a result they couldn't give us small denominations, which is difficult when you are a tourist walking around and you need public convenience and you want to give tips; we couldn't do any of that. The situation without any Indian money at all was very difficult. People were understanding, and even in some places, they took British pounds from us in order to be able to get over this problem. But, it really is quiet a difficulty. We are entirely reliable on credit cards. Because it's another day, and now we are in Shimla, we find that there are ATMs open.I am hoping that things will get easier," a tourist told ANI. "It's been a nuisance, we can only use credit cards and debit cards," Juliet, another tourist, said. Yesterday, foreign tourists visiting Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, were caught off guard as ticket counters refused to accept their 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, and groups of foreigners were seen chipping in with change to buy tickets. "I cannot buy a ticket because the ticket counter told me that 500 rupee and 1,000 rupee notes do not work here. I don't know how, but I cannot find a way in India", said a Chinese tourist. Most foreign tourists were also unaware of the government decision and its intricacies. They also faced a problem exchanging currency as with both banks and Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) shut; there was an acute shortage of 100 rupee notes. Domestic tourists also faced problems. In a surprise announcement, the Centre withdrew the two of its largest currency notes at the midnight on Tuesday in a bid to flush out money hidden from the taxman. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaving no stone unturned in attacking the opposition post his government's decision to scrap 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes, the Congress today alleged that the "habitual abuser" must realize that arrogance of power should not surpass the problems faced by people. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala lashed out at the Prime Minister and said that it has become his "character and style" to taunt others. "The Prime Minister is a habitual abuser himself. We respect the Prime Minister and the office he holds. Whatever abuses he may heap, which he continues to do every day on the leaders of the opposition parties, let him mock the entire country. The Prime Minister mocks the entire nation. The other day, he was sitting in Japan and mocked everybody who was getting married, who were not able to arrange their marriages. Such has become the character and style of this minister," Surjewala said. "The Prime Minister must realize that arrogance of power should not surpass the problems faced by people. Let the Prime Minister mock leaders of the Congress Party.we don't care. But let him not mock the people of this country which he is doing," he added. The Congress leader further stated that demonetisation is not an issue of an individual political party but an issue wherein the entire country has been plunged in economic anarchy by a dictatorial and autocratic Prime Minister and his government. "It is our duty to raise and champion the voice of the people in the most befitting fashion so as to highlight and bring this to the attention of the government, which currently in their arrogance of power and numbers is refusing to listen to the voice of reason and the cry and pain of the ordinary persons of this country," said Surjewala. "We will join our strength in all such voices irrespective of any ideological differences we may have with individual political parties," he added. Surjewala said that this decision of demonetisation has proved as an obstacle to 125 crore Indians. "The people are standing in long queues to take out their own money. The common people are facing a lot of hurdles due to this unplanned move. Prime Minister Modi believes he can do what he wants. But he has forgotten that the nation doesn't work according to his will but with the people's consent," Surjewala told a press conference. "The people, who are standing in queues outside banks and ATMs, are not thieves and neither do they have black money. Will Prime Minister Modi apologise to all those who have lost their lives due to this economic chaos?" he added. Surjewala alleged that those not standing in queues outside the banks and ATMs at this time are the BJP's "suited booted friends". "What's the reason that none of the BJP leaders or ministers is standing in the queue when the entire nation is standing to get their money? Doesn't it indicate who actually possesses black money? The account of the BJP must be made public for six months. If the BJP is innocent then everything will come clean," he added. Accusing the opposition of attempting to scuttle the fight against corruption, Prime Minister Modi earlier in the day vowed that he would never leave the path of truth and integrity while seeking blessings from the nation for this festival of honesty which he hailed as 'mahayagya'. "This is 'mahayagya'; this is the festival of honesty. I seek your blessings. After Pandit Nehru passed away, many prime ministers came and went but that committee report is still lost in files. Today on Pandit ji's birthday, I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family Prime Minister's never did. It's my tribute," he said. The Prime Minister, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. He invoked the nation's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary to take potshots at the Congress for raising objection to his firm decision. "Pandit Nehru, your family and party abuse me, but I am here on November 14, your birthday, to complete work left undone from your time," Prime Minister Modi said. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, Surjewala also used the occasion to criticize Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's statement that recalibration of ATMs will take up to three weeks. "It's a lame duck excuse that the Finance Minister of this country is giving to the people. You can only fool some people at some time but not all the people at all times," he said. Earlier on Saturday, Jaitley regretted hardships caused due to withdrawal of high denomination notes but advised the public to be patient. He said it may take up to three weeks for all the ATMs to operate normally as each one has to be calibrated individually to dispense the Rs. 2000 and the Rs. 500 notes besides the Rs. 100 notes. Stating that the government is constantly monitoring the situation, the Finance Minister also assured that the RBI and other banks have stacked up enough currency to replace Rs. 14 lakh crore worth of Rs. 1000 and 500 notes that have been declared invalid. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israel President Reuven Rivlin arrived here on Monday afternoon on an eight-day official visit to India at the invitation of his counterpart Pranab Mukherjee. President Rivlin, who is accompanied by his spouse Nechama Rivlin and a high-level delegation comprising officials, academicians and business leaders, was received and welcomed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport by Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Harsh Vardhan. "Filled with pride as I depart for State Visit to India to see how Israeli innovation is improving the lives of millions. Departing on a state visit to #India at the invitation of Pres. Mukherjee @RashtrapatiBhvn, with a delegation of industry, academic heads," tweeted President Rivlin before leaving for India. The Israeli President first touched down in Mumbai this morning. During his visit from November 14 to 21, President Rivlin will be meeting his Indian counterpart, who will also host a banquet in his honour. Later, Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari would call on him. On November 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral discussions with President Rivlin and will also host a lunch for him. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would call on the visiting dignitary. President Rivlin is expected to meet business leaders of both India and Israel. He will also be visiting 'Centre of Excellence' in agriculture in Karnal and participate in Agro Tech - 2016. India and Israel enjoy excellent relations marked by strong ties in the areas of economy and commerce, science and technology, research and innovation, culture and tourism, education etc. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will be arriving in Mumbai on Monday on an eight-day visit to India at the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. The Israeli President will be accompanied by his spouse Nechama Rivlin and a high-level delegation comprising officials, academicians and business leaders. During his visit from 14-21, President Rivlin will be received by President Mukherjee, who will also host a banquet in his counterpart's honour. Later, Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari would call on him. On November15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold bilateral discussions with President Rivlin and will also host a lunch for him. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would call on President Rivlin. President Rivlin is expected to meet business leaders of both of India and Israel. He will also be visiting 'Centre of Excellence' in agriculture in Karnal and participate in Agro Tech - 2016. India and Israel enjoy excellent relations marked by strong ties in the areas of economy and commerce, science and technology, research and innovation, culture and tourism, education etc, said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on November 9 in New Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Monday clarified its stance on West Bengal Chief Minister and party supremo Mamata Banerjee calling up CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and said that she is taking all steps to initiate a movement to stop the nation from heading towards financial anarchy. Stating that the West Bengal Chief Minister wants all parties to come on board and fight the government, TMC leader Derek O'Brien added that all political parties should support her in order to help the people of the nation. "Mamata di has reached out to all the political parties. We are happy that the President of India has given the time and this is a joint movement because the people are suffering. The country is headed towards financial anarchy. So, all the political parties will get together and express to the President of India how bad the situation is? So, it's not about anybody leading these. We are all going together, we will work together as movement," said Brien. "Please understand don't mention specific political parties. When the people are suffering then all political parties have to rise above their own party flags, get together. That's why Mamata di spoke to everybody today. The Prime Minister is saying hold on, give me 50 more days. We can't give him 50 more hours," he added. Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat earlier took potshots at Banerjee for calling up Yechury to join hands against the government's demonetisation move and said that this was a desperate move on part of the TMC chief as her government is involved in several scams including the Saradha chit-fund case. "The TMC is taking all these measures against the demonetisation endeavour because Bengal is neck deep in corruption courtesy scams like the Saradha," Karat told ANI. The TMC supremo created a buzz earlier on Sunday by calling up Yechury to join hands against the BJP-led NDA regime's demonetisation move. On November 8, Prime Minister Modi announced demonetisation of currency notes in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) This Children's Day Ola, India's most popular app for transportation is giving citizens of Kolkata a chance to support underprivileged children in the city. In an endeavor to help more than 30 thousand underprivileged kids, Ola, today announced an on-demand contribution drive. As part of this campaign, Ola will introduce a category icon - 'NOV 14', on its app on Children's Day. The 'NOV 14' icon will appear as an additional category on the Ola app, where customers can avail the offering at the click of a button, just like they book an Ola cab. Ola customers will be able to buy CRY (Child Rights and You) branded goodies like T-shirts, stationery kits, coffee mugs, cards and photo albums. All proceeds from the activity will be donated to CRY, to support their work towards upliftment of underprivileged children in the city. The category will be live between 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm, on 14th November 2016. Once booked an Ola cab carrying CRY goodies will appear at the customer's location, from which he will be able to purchase the goodies of his/her choice. "A majority of children are still unable to receive basic amenities in the country. CRY has been playing a pivotal role in bringing about a positive change in the lives of millions of underprivileged children across the nation; and we are extremely proud to join them and do our bit in widening the reach of this effort," said Head - East at Ola, Piyush Surana. "While Ola is constantly working towards strengthening the transportation ecosystem in the city through its smart and sustainable commuting solutions; initiatives like these fall in line with our endeavour to serve the city in a holistic manner. As an Indian company whose vision is to create mobility for a billion Indians, we feel that it is of great importance that we open up our platform for such causes and enable people to contribute seamlessly. We hope to reach more and more underprivileged children through this campaign," added Surana. "We welcome Ola on their effort towards broadening our reach to the people of Kolkata on this Children's day. Having impacted over two million underprivileged children across 23 states in the country over the last 37 years, we hope that this drive will go a long way to raise awareness among the people at large, and receive considerable support from them, which will help us reaching more children in a meaning and effective way," said Regional Director CRY East, Atindra Nath Das. CRY, a renowned organization that has worked tirelessly to protect child rights and facilitates education opportunities for the underprivileged children. Together with Ola they are aiming to reach out to hundreds and thousands of Ola users through this contribution drive. Ola and CRY have worked together successfully on several occasions. Earlier this year, Ola collaborated with CRY for the World Environment Day wherein Ola gave away ride coupons to children affiliated with CRY to attend the event at Indian Museum, Kolkata. In September, Ola also participated in CRY's book launch event. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bracing themselves for the upcoming Winter Session of the Parliament scheduled to take place between November and December 16, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said the opposition parties would be given a befitting reply in the Parliament who have questioned the government's step of demonetisation. Briefing the media after concluding the BJP parliamentary meet and the NDA meet, Naidu said the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have taken appropriate steps to mitigate the currency crunch. "People are not worried about the problems they are facing, but they are looking at the larger interests of the country. As we are trying to cleanse the economy as per the promise we made during the election 2014," Naidu said. "Allegations levelled by the opposition (on demonetisation issue) are baseless. We will answer them at the appropriate time," he added. Revealing the minutes of the meeting, Naidu said the decision taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on surgical strikes and with regards to demonetisation was appreciated by its allies. "Mood of the nation is in favour of the Prime Minister Modi government, in today's BJP parliamentary meeting and the NDA meeting, the entire parties and members have, with one voice, praised the decision of the government with regards to surgical strike and with regards to taking war against corruption and black money," Naidu added. "In the parliament we will get to know which people are on the side of black money hoarders," he said. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress member Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday said Congress MPs would raise the demonetisation issue under rules 56 and 193 during the Winter Session beginning on November 16. Apart from that, Deputy Leader of The Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has already given a notice for the suspension of business under rule 267 of the Rajya Sabha for a discussion on the same issue. According to sources, the Prime Minister who was chairing the BJP Parliamentary Party executive meeting, told the attendees to not buckle under the opposition's pressure and go ahead with the Centre's policy. Stating that the opposition was hard at work to sabotage the process of demonetisation, the Prime Minister assured that the nation has welcomed the step. The Prime Minister's assertion comes in the wake of the all out attack launched by the opposition today, as the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) joined forces in tearing down the scheme of demonetisation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Acknowledging the temporary inconvenience being caused to the general public by the government's demonetisation announcement, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, said interest is more important at the present time, and by and large, the people were in support of this initiative to end black money transactions. "I believe today that people of India stand united in solidarity to fight against black money, to fight all the corrupt and to be in solidarity with the honest of this nation," BJP leader Shaina NC told ANI. "Our Prime Minister needs to be applauded by us for the kind of emotion and commitment he has to this nation," she added. On the Prime Minister's speech in Goa yesterday, Shaina NC said, "In the most emotional speech, he has said how he wants only 15 days for the better good of public at large, and if we have to view this in totality, we must understand that there are honest and the dishonest, but are government stands with the honest and will choose that part right till the end." She said that the opposition is clearly playing politics and they are inconvenient because of the inconvenience caused to them. "I don't think the public of this country have an iota of doubt on the credibility, the commitment and the solidarity of the honorable Prime Minister," she said. "Arvind Kejriwal will say what he wants. Nobody pays heed to inconsequential selfish commentary which is only politically driven. Our PM has the integrity, the courage of conviction to lead by example, and if 50 days of inconvenience ensures 50 years of interest and good. I'm sure the people of this country will stand by our government," she added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Accusing the opposition of attempting to scuttle the fight against corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday vowed that he would never leave the path of truth and integrity while seeking blessings from the nation for this festival of honesty which he hailed as 'mahayagya'. "This is 'mahayagya'; this is the festival of honesty. I seek your blessings. After Pandit Nehru passed away, many prime ministers came and went but that committee report is still lost in files. Today on Pandit ji's birthday, I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family Prime Minister's never did. It's my tribute," he said. The Prime Minister, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. He invoked the nation's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary to take potshots at the Congress for raising objection to his firm decision. "Pandit Nehru, your family and party abuse me, but I am here on November 14, your birthday, to complete work left undone from your time," Prime Minister Modi said. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally here. Escalating his attack on the grand old party, he said that former prime minister Indira Gandhi had during the Emergency in the 1970s turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months only to stay in power. "Our enemy is printing counterfeit notes across the border. Enemy is flooding our nation with these counterfeit notes. We need to put an end to this," he added. Prime Minister Modi further said that he changed the notes into just worthless piece of paper in order to stop corruption, adding that the government has got a comprehensive crop insurance scheme for the farmers. He asserted that he was pained by the inconvenience caused and that is why he was working tirelessly to help them overcome the financial crunch. "I am saying again just give me 50 days. The bank staff is working for 18 hours a day. This is 'mahayagya', this is the festival of honesty. I seek your blessings (for success of currency ban)," he said. "Have you heard that people are throwing currency notes in the Ganga. I must warn those people, their sins won't be washed away with all this. Today poor are sleeping peacefully whereas the rich are searching for sleeping pills. There is no dearth of money in India, but we don't know where this money is kept. The troubles people are facing is disturbing me," he added. The Congress and other opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Modi of introducing an anti-poor scheme by banning Rs. 500 and 1,000 currency notes in a sudden move last week. The currency crunch that has followed has left the people standing for hours in queues at banks to draw money, which is being rationed till there are enough replacement notes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday criticized the Centre's move to ban 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pro-capitalist and pro-corporate. Gogoi told ANI, "Socialism means concern for the poor and not just few small section of society. Modi is pro-capitalist and a pro-corporate. There are low income groups and those are the worst sufferers. Price rise is on and job creation has stopped." "Everybody wants to get rid of corruption and black money. Two and a half years have passed but we did not see Modi bring back the black money. He has failed. He promised that he would bring the money back from Swiss banks within 100 days. We have not found in our account the fifteen lakhs which he promised," he added. The Prime Minister, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. The Congress and other opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Modi of introducing an anti-poor scheme by banning Rs. 500 and 1,000 currency notes in a sudden move last week. The currency crunch that has followed has left the people standing for hours in queues at banks to draw money, which is being rationed till there are enough replacement notes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Calling on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to pay no heed to the barrage of attack by the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday ordered the government to go full ahead with demonetisation and ruled out any chance whatsoever of rolling back the scheme. According to sources, the Prime Minister who was chairing the BJP Parliamentary Party executive meeting, told the attendees to not buckle under the opposition's pressure and go ahead with the Centre's policy. Stating that the opposition was hard at work to sabotage the process of demonetisation, the Prime Minister assured that the nation has welcomed the step. The Prime Minister's assertion comes in the wake of the all out attack launched by the opposition today, as the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) joined forces in tearing down the scheme of demonetisation. Earlier today, Mayawati asserted that people, who were expecting good days, are now facing bad days because of the government's strange decision to ban high denomination notes. Attempting to reach out to the poor and middle class ahead of next year's assembly polls, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that small and medium businesses have shut down courtesy demonetisation. "In the name of demonetisation, the common people are being made to suffer. Modi ji has brought miseries and pain for the poor which is extremely wrong. I would like to ask why people of the nation are being troubled like this," said Mayawati. "The economic affairs of the nation has been hampered by this decision, crores of small and medium scale businesses have been shut in the wake of demonetisation. Its seems like a country wide shutdown is being observed. The people, who were expecting 'achhe din', are now facing 'bure din' and people of the nation want freedom from all this," she added. On the other hand, holding the Prime Minister responsible for the present cash crunch, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the Centre was unprepared in dealing with the crisis. "Today Centre announced that Indian Air Force will be used to carry and distribute currency notes, it shows that government did not have any game plane to tackle the crisis, government was unprepared in executing its plan, it shows that the government is in a precarious situation," Kejriwal said. He said that despite Prime Minister Modi's claim that the demonitisation drive would bring sleepless nights to the rich, the aam aadmi (common man), instead, are having sleepless nights standing outside the ATMs. Branding the Prime Minister as a "habitual abuser", the Congress said that arrogance of power should not surpass the problems faced by people. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala lashed out at the Prime Minister and said that it has become his "character and style" to taunt others. "The Prime Minister is a habitual abuser himself. We respect the Prime Minister and the office he holds. Whatever abuses he may heap, which he continues to do every day on the leaders of the opposition parties, let him mock the entire country. The Prime Minister mocks the entire nation. The other day, he was sitting in Japan and mocked everybody who was getting married, who were not able to arrange their marriages. Such has become the character and style of this minister," Surjewala said. Prime Minister Modi, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. He invoked the nation's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary to take potshots at the Congress for raising objection to his firm decision. "Pandit Nehru, your family and party abuse me, but I am here on November 14, your birthday, to complete work left undone from your time," Prime Minister Modi said. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on Monday. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting at his residence with senior ministers past Sunday to review demonetisation and its impact. After a review by the Finance Ministry, the limit of old and now defunct 500 and 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted 2000 rupees and new 500 rupee notes was increased from 4000 rupees to 4500 rupees per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to 2,500 rupees from 2,000 rupees a day. The weekly limit of 20,000 rupees for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to 24,000 rupees. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Backing the Centre's step of demonetisation, which has caused a massive upheaval across the nation, ace music composer Anu Malik asserted that any step taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was with the intention of the betterment of the nation. Malik, who is in Kolkata for the audition of the new season of Indian Idol, expressed his support towards the Prime Minister, saying that any step taken by him was taken keeping the nation in mind. "He is a great Prime Minister and what he has done for the poor people in laudable," Malik told ANI here. Malik has joined the ranks of a large section of Bollywood who have endorsed the brave decision by the Centre. Aamir Khan, whose film Dangal is all set to hit the theatres this December, stated that he would not mind if the business of his film gets affected by demonetisation as he is looking at the larger picture ''During such situations, we should think about what is good for the country. People are facing some issues, but we should focus more on the long-term benefits of this drive. Even if this drive affects the business of my film, I would have no issues with it," he said. Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Madhur Bhandarkar, Karan Johar, Anurag Kashyap, Farhan Akhtar are some of the few big names from the Hindi film industry who have supported the Prime Minister. However, chaos continued to ensue across the nation as several citizens are complaining of facing massive inconvenience due to demonetisation and not being able to run their daily lives. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Looks like Prince Harry's lady love Meghan Markle has always had something really strong for the English guys. 'The Suits' recently gushed over her fondness for British men in a newly resurfaced interview with Esquire U.K. magazine, reports Us Magazine. In 2013, the 35-year-old beauty told the publication that she swoons whenever she sees an Englishman "dress for the cold." "I'm from L.A. so I'm used to seeing people in sunglasses and flip-flops. There's something so romantic about a man in a scarf and a knitted hat," she continued. Markle added that she like men who are genuine and a good sense of humour, "Kindness is the number one quality I look for in a man." "You can see in how he treats anyone - from a CEO to a housekeeper - and it's a reflection of how nice a guy is. Funniness and confidence come after that. ... When a guy approaches me, it's fantastic if he can make me laugh," she explained. "It's really attractive if a man has a skill that you want to improve in yourself. If you can learn from someone, then that's sexy." Other than these, what adds to her fondness is the way Brits speak, "I love how much men call you 'darling' here." The 32-year-old Royal, who started dating the actress in June, confirmed their relationship in a statement early last week, while condemning racist and sexist trolls for negative comments about her. "Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her," the statement read. "It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm. ... This is not a game - it is her life and his. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Following reports that General (Retd.) Pervez Musharraf is attempting to become the joint president of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Pakistan and its offshoot Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), graffiti in support of the former military dictator have appeared in parts of Karachi. Spray-painted scrawls such as 'Jeay Musharraf' and 'We need Musharraf' appeared in Federal B Area and Clifton, reports the Express Tribune. It is alleged that the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) is behind this campaign. The posters and graffiti started appearing in the wake of Musharraf's meeting with MQM's Khawaja Izharul Hasan, Farooq Sattar and PSP's Mustafa Kamal. Though MQM leaders and Mustafa Kamal have refuted reports of a move afoot to reunify MQM, sources privy to the development said that backdoor negotiations have started on this matter. There are also reports that former Sindh governor Dr Ishratul Ebad has opened backdoor channels to woo MQM- Pakistan leaders to work under the leadership of Musharraf. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Usman Khawaja struck half-century as Australia dug in to reach 121 for two in their second innings against South Africa before bad light ended the third day's play of the second Test at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart on Monday. After losing opener Joe Burns for a duck, David Warner (45) joined forces with Khawaja (56*) and stitched a 79-run stand for the second wicket to provide their side with some ray of hope and avoid a probable series loss in the second Test itself. At stumps, Australia were still trailing by 120 runs, with Khawaja and skipper Steve Smith (unbeaten at 18) batting at the crease. Earlier, resuming at an overnight score of 171-5, Temba Bavuma (74) and Quinton de Kock (104) continued to strengthen their side's innings as the duo shared a 144-run partnership for sixth wicket to take the first innings' lead of 241 runs after being bowled out for 326. Josh Hazlewood grabbed six wickets while Mitchell Starc and Joe Mennie scalped three and two wickets respectively. Earlier on Day One, Vernon Philander (5 for 21) wrecked havoc as he along with Kyle Abbott (3 for 41) and Kagiso Rabada (one for 20) helped the Proteas bundle out the Steven Smith led-side for a paltry 85. The second day's play was whitewashed without a ball being bowled. South Africa, who currently remain well-placed to clinch the series victory in Hobart, are currently leading the three-match Test series 1-0 following their massive 177-run win over the Smith-led side in the opening match in Perth. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The has warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi to roll back the demonetisation scheme or be on the receiving end of an angered public, who are seething with fury after being massively inconvenienced by the Centre's tectonic scheme. Speaking to the media here, leader Sanjay Raut asserted that the severe crunch being faced by the people was a very disturbing sign for the government. When told that the Prime Minister had firmly ruled out any possibility of a roll back, Raut replied saying, "then the government can face a roll back themselves. The fully stands in the fight against corruption, but if there is so much anger among the masses, then something must be wrong." Emphasising his party's stand on the matter, Raut further said that it was the common man on whom the scheme had proven to be costly, which the rich and powerful continued to languish in their palaces. "Not a single one of them has been caught, nor are they standing in the long queues. This is not about siding with the opposition but about being with the masses when they need us. All political parties must join hands and call for a roll back of the scheme," Raut said. However, calling on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to pay no heed to the barrage of attack by the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier today ordered the government to go full ahead with demonetisation and ruled out any chance whatsoever of rolling back the scheme. According to sources, the Prime Minister who was chairing the BJP Parliamentary Party executive meeting, told the attendees to not buckle under the opposition's pressure and go ahead with the Centre's policy. Stating that the opposition was hard at work to sabotage the process of demonetisation, the Prime Minister assured that the nation has welcomed the step. The Prime Minister's assertion comes in the wake of the all out attack launched by the opposition today, as the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) joined forces in tearing down the scheme of demonetisation. Earlier today, Mayawati asserted that people, who were expecting good days, are now facing bad days because of the government's strange decision to ban high denomination notes. Attempting to reach out to the poor and middle class ahead of next year's assembly polls, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that small and medium businesses have shut down courtesy demonetisation. "In the name of demonetisation, the common people are being made to suffer. Modi ji has brought miseries and pain for the poor which is extremely wrong. I would like to ask why people of the nation are being troubled like this," said Mayawati. "The economic affairs of the nation has been hampered by this decision, crores of small and medium scale businesses have been shut in the wake of demonetisation. Its seems like a country wide shutdown is being observed. The people, who were expecting 'achhe din', are now facing 'bure din' and people of the nation want freedom from all this," she added. On the other hand, holding the Prime Minister responsible for the present cash crunch, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the Centre was unprepared in dealing with the crisis. "Today Centre announced that Indian Air Force will be used to carry and distribute currency notes, it shows that government did not have any game plane to tackle the crisis, government was unprepared in executing its plan, it shows that the government is in a precarious situation," Kejriwal said. He said that despite Prime Minister Modi's claim that the demonitisation drive would bring sleepless nights to the rich, the aam aadmi (common man), instead, are having sleepless nights standing outside the ATMs. Branding the Prime Minister as a "habitual abuser", the Congress said that arrogance of power should not surpass the problems faced by people. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala lashed out at the Prime Minister and said that it has become his "character and style" to taunt others. "The Prime Minister is a habitual abuser himself. We respect the Prime Minister and the office he holds. Whatever abuses he may heap, which he continues to do every day on the leaders of the opposition parties, let him mock the entire country. The Prime Minister mocks the entire nation. The other day, he was sitting in Japan and mocked everybody who was getting married, who were not able to arrange their marriages. Such has become the character and style of this minister," Surjewala said. Prime Minister Modi, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on Monday. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Monday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prove his allegations on the opposition parties post demonetisation and said that the people of Uttar Pradesh would give him a befitting reply in next year's assembly polls for his don kind of language and failure to fulfill the promises made to the nation in the run up to the 2014 general election. BSP leader Sudheendra Bhadauria condemned the Prime Minister's remark and alleged that he is being vindictive towards the opposition. "The way Modi is speaking about the opposition shows that he is being vindictive towards them. The people of Uttar Pradesh are not accustomed to this don kind of language that he is using," said Bhadauria. Bhadauria further said the use of such language in a democracy is not acceptable, adding if the Prime Minister wants to do something then he can do it legally not by making allegations. "Now, when he is unable to fulfill his promises he is becoming like don. The people of Uttar Pradesh will give a befitting reply to him in the upcoming state election," he said. Accusing the opposition of attempting to scuttle the fight against corruption, Prime Minister Modi earlier in the day vowed that he would never leave the path of truth and integrity while seeking blessings from the nation for this festival of honesty which he hailed as 'mahayagya'. The Prime Minister, who has drawn sharp flak from a united opposition post his decision to scrap 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes, urged all to support his decision and bless him in his war against black or undeclared money. "There are some political parties that are worried over currency ban. Those against me are strong people. But I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity. Some people never say anything on your face, but behind your back they poke other people to oppose and go against you," he added while addressing a mega rally in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. The Congress and other opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Modi of introducing an anti-poor scheme by banning Rs. 500 and 1,000 currency notes in a sudden move last week. The currency crunch that has followed has left the people standing for hours in queues at banks to draw money, which is being rationed till there are enough replacement notes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Early detection of cancer is critical to improving the quality of life of those suffering from this life threatening scourge. Early detection is a surer way to add more years to a cancer patient's life. Technology companies are working on breakthrough solutions in cancer detection and treatment for the near future, a US expert in robotic surgery has said. A WHO Globocan 2012 survey placed India's cancer incidence at 10,14,934 cases with mortality number touching 6,82,830. Dr Catherine Mohr, Vice President for Strategy at Sunnyvale-headquartered surgical robot maker, Intuitive Surgical Inc., describes a Stage-1 cancer patient as one facing a 'speed bump' while a Stage-4 cancer patient is closer to 'crashing into a big brick wall', reducing the chances of survival beyond five years. A patient detected with Stage-4 lung cancer has only a 15 percent chance of survival beyond five years. Early detection of the lung cancer gives patients 80 per cent chance of living beyond five years, Dr Mohr said while speaking to 200 Indian Robotic Surgeons A Surgical Robot is especially suitable for complicated surgeries and situations needing reconstruction of body parts as it leads to significantly lower complications, readmissions and mortality as compared to traditional open surgery. Surgical Robots are changing the method of accessing the interiors of the body by unambiguously identifying and removing cancerous cells and retaining good cells. insurers in many European countries pay a premium for Robotic Surgery because the patients spend less time in hospital and are able to get back to work faster. Dr Mohr, who is also a consulting professor at Stanford School of Medicine, was presenting on 'New Horizons of Surgical Technology' at the bi-annual RSC meet at the initiative of Vattikuti Foundation, a US non profit. Experts allayed fears that a surgical robot may someday replace surgeons, saying that robots will not replace a surgeon anytime soon because a surgeon's experience and surgical judgment cannot be replicated by a machine. Today, nearly 500 robotic surgeries a month are conducted in India, ranging from removal of cancerous tissues to reconstruction of organs damaged by cancer as well as the removal of organs such as the kidney, liver, pancreas, thyroid, prostrate, and uterus. A Surgical Robot scores over conventional modes of surgery as it leads to minimal blood loss, quick healing and less pain, leading to shorter hospital stays. Surgical Robots are being used in almost all specialties involving soft body tissues. Mr Michael Hall, International Training Manager, Intuitive Surgical unveiled a plan for continuing training for existing Robotic Surgeons and induction of new surgeons. The company will join hands with Vattikuti Foundation to speed up its plan to enhance the pool of robotic surgeons to 500 by 2020. The Vattikuti Foundation is striving to grow the pool of Robotic Surgeons in the country. Mr Hall recognised 7 Vattikuti Fellows, including one international Vattikuti fellow and 27 Vattikuti Scholars. "At this year's RSC we brought in more experts in the emerging areas for Robotic Surgery--Colorectal, and Head & Neck surgery. Indian surgeons are now devising new techniques for complex robot-assisted surgeries in these areas. Robotic Surgery results in superior patient outcomes," says Dr Mahendra Bhandari, Director, Robotic Research and Education, Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, USA and CEO of Vattikuti Foundation. Dr. Emre Gorgun, an accomplished Robotic Surgeon specialising in colorectal surgery at ?the Cleveland Clinic, USA, delivered the second keynote address on the new advancements in colorectal surgery at the meet. The RSC featured 20 sessions covering specialisations in Urology (robotic kidney transplant, urology in pediatric patients, urinary incontinence among prostrate removal cases), Gynaecology (breast cancer, hysterectomy, ovarian tumours), Thoracic (lung surgery), Head & Neck (oral cancer, sleep apnea), Bariatric (including gastric bypass) and Colorectal. Challenges in preparing accomplished Robotic Surgeons and emerging technological interfaces for surgery will also be among the subjects for discussion. Over 40 surgeons from Tata Memorial Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Medanta Medcity, Apollo Hospitals, Max Hospitals, Amrita Hospital, Delhi State Cancer Institute, Asian Heart Institute, Fortis Hospitals, and others, shared best practices and notes on advancements in Robotic Surgery. Speaking about robotic surgery, each surgical robot has four arms that can reach organs and areas inside the body where human fingers cannot. Entering the soft tissue of the patient through pencil-sized holes, the arms of a surgical robot are even capable of operating on blood vessels and valves within the heart, using a suture that is thinner than human hair. The surgeon sits at a robotic console and enjoys magnified three-dimensional high-definition visualisation. Instead of long, handheld surgical tools, the surgeon controls tiny surgical instruments that have wrist movement which follow the surgeon's finger tips gently moving robotic controls and leading to very precise surgery inside their patient. "The growing interest among hospitals to equip themselves with new-age Surgical Robots especially from non-metro cities is encouraging. A steady rise in the number of hospitals adopting Robotic Surgery to nearly 40, augurs well for the patients from smaller cities who were constrained by the non-availability of cancer treatment nearer home," adds Mr Gopal Chakravarthi, CEO of Vattikuti Technologies, the Indian company working with Indian hospitals to make robotic surgery affordable to the masses in India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Commerce and Industry Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman and H. E. Tengye Lyonpo Lekey Dorji, Minister for Economic Affairs, Royal Government of Bhutan signed the Agreement on Trade, Commerce and Transit between India and the Royal Government of Bhutan in the presence of H. E. Lyonchhen Tshering Tobgay, Prime Minister of Bhutan at the Gyalyong Tshokhang in Thimphu on 12 November, 2016. The first Agreement on Trade and Commerce between Bhutan and India was signed in 1972. Since then, the Agreement has been renewed four times. The last Agreement was renewed on July 28, 2006 and was valid till July 29, 2016. The validity of the Agreement was extended for a period of one year or till the date of coming into force of the new Agreement, whichever is earlier, by exchange of diplomatic notes between the two countries. The new bilateral Trade Agreement aims to enhance trade between the two countries through trade facilitation by improving procedures, cutting down on documentation and adding additional exit/entry points for Bhutan's trade with other countries. It is also expected to further strengthen the excellent relations between the two countries. She also had a bilateral meeting with a high level Bhutanese delegation led by Lyonpo Lekey Dorji, Minister for Economic Affairs of Bhutan where both the leaders discussed various issues related to bilateral trade, transit and investment. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At meeting held on 12 November 2016 r Empee Distilleries announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 12 November 2016, inter alia, transacted the following : - K. Murali, Company Secretary and compliance officer has resigned from the service of the Company and the Board relieved him from the position of Company Secretary and compliance officer w.e.f. 12 November 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Special watch is being kept receipt of fake notes in the States bordering our neighbouring countries One of the primary objectives of cancellation of legal tender character of old series of Rs.500/- and Rs.1000/- notes was to check the menace of terror financing through counterfeit currency notes. The receipt of counterfeits/fake currency notes in Banks and Post Offices are, therefore, being monitored very closely. RBI has been advised by Ministry of Finance to set up a Special Cell to monitor the receipt of fake currency notes and inform such instances to the Economic Offences Wing of the State Police, Intelligence/Enforcement Agencies of the Central Government and also to the Ministry of Finance. A special watch is being kept on receipt of such fake notes in the States bordering our neighbouring countries. The Law Enforcement Agencies have also been advised to maintain close vigil over possible movement of fake currencies and take prompt action as and when such cases are detected by them as well as by RBI and Banks. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sales rise 71.31% to Rs 14.87 crore Net profit of Indo Thai Securities declined 77.42% to Rs 0.07 crore in the quarter ended September 2016 as against Rs 0.31 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2015. Sales rose 71.31% to Rs 14.87 crore in the quarter ended September 2016 as against Rs 8.68 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2015.14.878.68-0.74-12.900.030.40-0.180.330.070.31 Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In Chakhan Industrial Area, Pune Kingfa Science & Technology (India) announced that the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation has handed Over the possession of Plot No. F-5/5 admeasuring 120000 sq mtr of the Chakhan Industrial Area Phase -II, Village Shinde & Vasuli Tal-Khed, District - Pune to the Company, for Manufacturing Facility. The Company also has signed the lease Agreement for the said land. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Held on 12 November 2016 Sree Sakthi Paper Mills announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 12 November 2016, inter alia, has transacted the following; 1. V. N. Sridharan has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer. 2. N.Subramanian, Chennai appointed as Independent Additional Director 3. Approved availment of Incorporate loan of Rs. 7,12,00,000/- from Kailash Logistics. 4. Discussed options regarding reopening of Edayar Factory. 5. Fixed date for next Annual General Meeting on 30 December 2016. 6. Approved the Draft Director's report and Corporate Governance report. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At meeting held on 14 November 2016 TAAL Enterprises announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 14 November 2016, at 2.00 p.m. which concluded at 3.00 p.m.: - Vasant Bhat has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the Company with immediate effect. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least six civilians and six militants were killed on Monday in a suicide attack in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. The attack was carried out by six militants in the town of Ain al-Tamr, ministry spokesman Colonel Saad Maan said in a statement. Iraqi security forces killed five militants, while the sixth reportedly went into a residential building and detonated the explosive device he was wearing, killing six people and injuring another six. Ain al-Tamr was the scene of a similar attack on a wedding party in August, which resulted in the deaths of 18 people. --IANS ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police in Hyderabad booked two employees of a bank for exchanging demonetised notes worth Rs 6 lakh without identification proof. The employees of Kamala Nagar branch of Syndicate Bank in Saroornagar were booked late on Sunday after the manager lodged a complaint with the police. V. Mallesh, a clerk, handed over demonetized notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 to cashier Radhika and collected equal amount in new currency notes of Rs 2,000. This incident happened on Saturday and the same was detected by the manager during verification. Saroornagar police booked the duo for cheating and criminal breach of trust. Following suspension by the bank manager, Mallesh brought back Rs 5.6 lakh. He told the higher-ups that he spent the remaining amount. The bank officials and police, however, don't believe that the money belonged to him. Police were questioning him to know the source of demonetized notes. Under the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rules, a person can exchange maximum of Rs 4,000 demonetized notes by submitting Aadhar card or other identification proof. Iraqi forces recaptured the ancient village of Nimrud and the site of the ruins as part of the ongoing battle for Mosul, the Islamic State (IS) terror group's last major stronghold in the war-torn country. The recapture took place on Sunday, according to Colonel Mohammed Ibrahim, a spokesman for Iraq's Joint operations command. While the village was now under control by Iraqi forces, clashes were still underway to retake the town, less than a mile west of the ruins, Ibrahim told CNN. Nimrud is 30 km southeast of Mosul. Archeologists first began excavating the Assyrian city of Nimrud -- built nearly 3,000 years ago -- in the 1840s. In the decades that followed, they unearthed priceless treasures from the city, including palaces adorned with unique frescoes and giant sculptures. Last year, the IS blew up the ancient walled city. Unesco described the deliberate destruction of Nimrud as a "war crime". Nimrud flourished between 900 B.C. and 612 B.C. Buildings there "have yielded thousands of carved ivories, mostly made in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C., now one of the richest collections of ivory in the world," according to Encyclopedia Britannica's website. The famous British mystery novelist Agatha Christie accompanied her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, at his excavation in Nimrud and helped clean some of the ivories. The Iraqi and Kurdish troop offensive to liberate Mosul began on October 17 with a three-pronged offensive along the north, south and eastern fronts, which has enabled the liberation of various eastern Mosul neighbourhoods. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday hit back at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her criticism of the demonetisation move, describing her as "Queen of Saradha", referring to the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam. "The West Bengal Chief Minister is working very hard to rally the opposition against the BJP, but whether the Queen of Saradha would succeed in it or not, only time will tell," BJP spokesman Sidharth Nath Singh said here. Banerjee has called upon opposition parties to unite against the Narendra Modi government on the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes "in the greater interest of the nation" and said she has no problem in working with arch rival Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). Singh said the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo was only a "mirror image" of the Left. He also accused Banerjee of sheltering terrorists. "The guns used in the Gulshan bakery attack in Dhaka have been found to be manufactured in Malda, according to a NIA report," he said. He said the BJP was not worried as it was "standing with the truth". The BJP leader also attacked the Congress and raked up the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam. The 2010 Games were held when the Congress was in power in Delhi as well as at the Centre, and Congress leader Suresh Kalmadi was appointed the chairman of the organising committee. "It has emerged that Suresh Kalmadi was appointed chairman of the organising committee of CWG by flouting rules. The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed Kalmadi through a Group of Ministers, skirting around the rules," --IANS mak/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The cash crisis bedevilling the people after the November 8 demonetisation continued to persist for the sixth day on Monday in several north-eastern states, especially in rural and remote areas. "We are yet to get sufficient new Rs 2,000 denomination currency as well as old Rs 100 and smaller denomination notes, causing serious problems in dealing with the people. We are in touch wth the RBI to get sufficient notes of varied denominations," a top official of United Bank of India (UBI) told IANS on the condition of anonymity. "No bank in the north-east has as yet received the new Rs 500 note," he added. The state-owned UBI is a lead bank in several north-eastern states and has the largest number of chests to stock the currencies. The cash crisis is serious in remote and rural areas, where most banks have no currency notes and automated teller machines are non-functional. As majority of ATMs either remained closed or functioned at a very slow speed due to technical problems on Monday for the sixth consecutive day in the entire north-eastern region, people thronged banks since early morning to exchange the scrapped currency notes with new ones or to withdraw money. In Mizoram, long queues of men and women were seen across the state even before the banks opened at 10 a.m. and at post office counters for replacement and withdrawl of notes. Wine shops in Mizoram also bore the brunt of the cash crisis with sales declining sharply. A Mizoram Finance Department official said they held meetings with top bank officials and asked them to deal with the cash crisis and resolve the problem at the earliest. In Silchar (in southern Assam), State Bank of India's Assistant General Manager Himanka Bihari Roy and UBI's Chief Regional Manager Hirendra Narayan Ghosal urged the people in southerm Assam not to panic. Most government offices in Tripura, Mizoram and southern Assam, including electricity departments and municipal bodies, refused to take old Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 notes against various payments and taxes, forcing some people to make payments through cheques and online. "Besides people living in the rural, remote and semi-urban areas, businessmen and traders are the worst-hit. The poor, including labourers and migrant workers are in an awkward position due to cash crisis," trader Satya Narayan Kundu said. Kundu said that business volumes have dipped more than 50 per cent in cities and urban areas and over 60 per cent in rural and remote areas. "There is no ray of hope as to when the situation will improve. Bank officials are saying the situation will get better soon, but we are not ready to believe them," he added. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Assistant General Manager Sekhar Nath Chattopadhyay, in a statement issued in Agartala, urged people to go for electronic and non-cash mode of payments. "Those unable to exchange specified bank notes on or before December 30 will be given an opportunity to do so at specified offices of the RBI," Chattopadhyay said. --IANS sc/tsb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Monday gave a cautious welcome to the civil nuclear deal between India and Japan, hoping it would strengthen the effectiveness of global nuclear non-proliferation regime. "With regard to nuclear agreement signed between India and Japan on nuclear energy, we believe that on the promise absorbing international nuclear non-proliferation, all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. "At the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," Geng added. During the recent Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan, the two countries sealed a historical nuclear deal under which Tokyo would provide civil nuclear technology. The cooperation would end if India goes for nuclear tests. On India and Japan issuing a joint statement on the South China Sea, Geng said both countries should respect the efforts made by other countries to maintain peace and stability in the contested waters. "Under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction," Geng said at a press conference. Last week, New Delhi and Japan issued a joint statement on the disputed South China Sea, urging relevant parties to resolve the dispute by peaceful means. "Regarding the South China Sea, the two Prime Ministers stressed the importance of resolving the disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law including the UNCLOS," the joint statement said. In July, an international court rejected China's claims over the South China Sea in a case brought by the Philippines. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan have overlapping claims over the world's most important waterway through which trade worth $5 trillion passes every year. Beijing has rejected the ruling as illegal. --IANS gsh/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Climate change and water rights are deeply inter-connected, globally. Seasons seem to be inverting in the Himalayas where you see snow in summer and entire villages that have existed for generations have had to relocate because of water-pattern changes. That is the wisdom on offer from Buddhist leader and active environmentalist -- the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa -- the spiritual head of the 800-year-old Drukpa Order based in the Himalayas with around 1,000 monastic centres. "Climate change deeply affects water patterns, water quality and water rights. Changes in water quality, patterns and access to water are symptoms of climate change and are the first things to affect entire communities," he told IANS in an interview. On the ongoing high-level United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech in Morocco, he candidly admitted he didn't know the scientific answer to studies that strongly indicate the Hindu Kush, a mountain range extending west of the Himalayas, would be warmer. The spiritual leader said: "The community that I represent has extensive anecdotal evidence on climate change." "For example, in Ladakh, we are seeing unprecedented weather phenomenon like cloudbursts. Seasons seem to be inverting -- where you see snow in summer, and entire villages that have existed for countless generations have had to relocate because water-pattern changes," he observed. "One glimmer of hope that I have is that the local communities in the Himalayas are taking action," said the Buddhist leader, also known as the "Guardian of the Himalayas". "Many villages are participating in my joint initiative with the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Himalayan Glacier Waterkeepers, where communities monitor the quality of water with an aim to protect the waters of Ladakh and the Himalayas." Advocating the need to revisit the traditional way of life, the maroon-robed monk said: "There is a lot of green wisdom in traditional lifestyles. For example, the Druk Padma Karpo School (near Leh) incorporated both cutting-edge modern technology and traditional know-how to create one of the greenest schools in Asia. "This is a great time to marry modern technology with ancient wisdom to tackle today's challenges," he advocated. The Buddhist leader admitted the ongoing climate talks are of particular importance for both the developing and developed countries. "I often think that climate change is an opportunity for countries to build bridges and to collaborate," said the 54-year-old Gyalwang Drukpa, who heads the 17th century Hemis monastery, some 40 km from Leh town in Jammu and Kashmir. Gyalwang Drukpa, recipient of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Award, in a message to the global leaders said: "Despite all of our differences, we all share the same values of wanting a clean, green and economically thriving world." "I would encourage the participants to view their differences as strength and not something that divides them. Diversity of thought and background only makes problem-solving more robust and dynamic." Gyalwang Drukpa, who is associated with the Earth Awards Selection Committee that recognises viable innovations that improve the quality of life, said the Paris Climate Change Agreement that entered into force on November 4 is important to every country. Just two months after the flash floods that devastated Ladakh in 2010, the Drukpa Order, with around 9,000 volunteers, planted 50,033 willow saplings in 33 minutes and 25 seconds over 112,000 square yards. According to the spiritual leader, planting trees is not only impactful but also an important gesture. In a message, he said: "I hope that countries that are home to the Himalayas will collaborate on protecting the water sources of the Himalayas. This is a trans-boundary problem that affects several different religious groups, ethnic groups, countries and terrain." The twenty-second session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) and the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 12) will be held in Marrakech till November 18. (Vishal Gulati is travelling to Marrakech to cover COP22. He can be reached at vishal.g@ians.in) --IANS vg/vgu/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Monday hit out at the central government for demonetisaion of higher currency notes and asked how trade would go on without any cash. "How will traders do business when there is no cash with them because of demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes," Sisodia told reporters while inaugurating the Delhi Pavilion at the 36th India International Trade Fair (IITF) at Pragati Maidan here. He said he has requested the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) to allow the use of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at IITF for public convenience. The central government had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8. Sisodia said that common people, especially traders, are facing trouble due to the move. "There is no cash in ATMs and there are huge queues in front of banks and ATMs. "Everyone's business has collapsed because of demonetisation. How will they do business now?" Sisodia asked. --IANS ruwa-am/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Security agencies in Jharkhand are on high alert and are keeping a close watch on moves by Maoist guerrillas to turn their unaccounted money, collected in the form of levy, into "white". On November 10, police arrested Nand Kishore, a petrol pump owner from Bero on the outskirts of Ranchi. He was carrying Rs 25 lakh cash and going to deposit the money in the bank. Police intercepted him and later arrested him. During interrogation, Kishore admitted that the money belonged to the banned Maoist organization, People's Liberation Front of India (PLFI) supremo Dinesh Gope. Kishore was to deposit the money in his account in the name of petrol and diesel sales. In Jharkhand, Maoist guerrillas collect Rs 150 crore to Rs 200 crore in the form of levy, police said. "Maoists collect 5 to 6 per cent levy from development, infrastructure, mining and other sources. This money is used by the Maoist organisations and a large amount also goes to Maoist leaders. The levy is collected in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The levy money is also used to purchase arms and other things," a police officer involved in the Maoist operations told IANS. He revealed that due to heavy collection of levy, around seven Maoist organisations are "flourishing". These Maoist organisations operate in different districts he added. After the demonetisation of Rs 500/Rs 1,000 notes on November 8, Maoists are using their white-collared network to turn their black money into white, the police officer said. Police sources say that contractors, petrol pump owners, mining area contractors, officials, and leaders falling in Maoist bastion areas have been put under close watch. Police sources said the police headquarters has recommended a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to assess the assets of 10 Maoist guerrillas who are learned to have earned "huge money" in the form of levy from two coal projects - Piparwar and Amprapali. "The demonetisation is a big setback for the Maoists. We are keeping close watch on transactions of the money of Maoist guerrillas. We have activated our network to gather information of Maoist guerrillas' transactions. We will also seek the help of Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate (ED)," M.S. Bhatia, IG operations and police spokesperson, told IANS. --IANS ns/sm/rn/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In anticipation of the huge demand for lower currency notes, ahead of the demonetisation move, the Reserve Bank of India had asked banks to set up Automated Teller Machines which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. On November 2, six days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a television address to the nation that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes would become illegal from midnight of November 8, the RBI had asked banks to recalibrate 10 per cent of its ATMs to exclusively dispense Rs 100 notes. How many banks complied with this directive is not known. However, the long queues at ATMs and the resultant chaos all across the country would imply that the directive may have been ignored. In its circular DCM(CC)No 1170/03.41.01/2016-17 issued on November 2, the apex bank said that "in keeping with the objectives of Clean Note Policy and to ensure that genuine requirement of members of public for Rs 100 denomination bank notes are met, the banks should increase dispensation of Rs 100 bank notes through ATMs." Stating that as a pilot project, 10 per cent of the ATMs in the country would be recalibrated, the RBI said that "as the process involved in configuring the requisite number of machines is not complex, the banks are required to complete the exercise within 15 days" and report compliance. The RBI had also moved as early as May this year to provide incentive for setting up ATMs which dispensed only Rs 100 notes. In a circular on May 5, The central bank promised to pay 50 per cent of the cost of such ATMs up to Rs 2 lakh. --IANS hs/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to deal with demonetisation, industry body Assocham on Monday asked the government to mobilise all resources across different departments and hire retired bank staff on a massive scale to expedite the currency exchange and withdrawal of cash. "Just like general elections when staff across different departments is mobilised, different types of staff can be used for helping the over-stretched banks, grappling with the huge task of dealing with the demonitised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 and dispensing the new notes," said Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham). The best option appears to be employing the retired bank staff on a mass scale on short-term contracts of three to six months, it said. While some banks like the State Bank of India and a few others have roped in retired staff, the exercise should be done on a massive scale to deal with the situation, Assocham said. "While preference can be given by the banks to re-employ their own retired personnel, even cross -bank staff would be helpful. After all, functioning of the public sector banks is generally the same," said Assocham Secretary General D.S. Rawat. The chamber said the options should be explored to divert staff of other financial services wings and PSUs in the insurance sector for the banking operations for the moment. The PHD Chamber suggested the government to pay an advance of Rs 10,000 in cash per employee from their November salaries to government, public sector and private sector with the new Rs 500 notes. "This suggestion would also avoid overflowing queues and hardship being faced by most of the citizens and would also avoid loss of productivity due to employee absenteeism in organizations," it said in a representation submitted to the finance ministry. PHD Chamber President Mahesh Gupta said that the suggested move would amount in reducing queuing outside banks and ATMs across the country. "It would immediately make new currency available in one day without stressing banks and post offices," he said. --IANS mm/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indians spend close to $2.4 million annually to get their scientific research output published in different open access (OA) journals, authors of a new study say, raising concerns that scientists often have to cough up two months equivalent of salary to get their work into those journals. "We estimate that India is potentially spending about $2.4 million annually on Article Processing Charges (APCs) levied by those journals. To publish a paper in OA, some journals levy a charge that is equivalent to two months' salary of an assistant professor in India," Muthu Madhan of DST Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, told IANS. Criticising the practice, Madhan says it is not right, given the major part (about 70 per cent) of research funding is sourced from taxpayers. "And there is shortage of funds for research. It is not right for researchers to give part of it to rich publishers -- who overcharge anyway for the meagre services they provide and take home profits in the range 30 to 40 per cent year after year even when the economy was not doing well," he said. The authors arrived at the figure based on the data mined from Science Citation Index Expanded that revealed 37,078 papers were published by Indian researchers in 881 OA journals during the five-year period from 2010-2014. An abstract of the analysis is available in the Current Science journal, ahead of publication. "This accounts for about 14.4 per cent of India's overall publication output, considerably higher than the 11.6 per cent from the world," the study notes. It is co-authored by Siva Shankar Kimidi of the Library Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad; Subbiah Gunasekaran of the Knowledge Resource Centre, Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi; and Subbiah Arunachalam of the DST Centre for Policy Research. The authors suggest that it would be prudent for Indian researchers to make their work freely available through inter-operable repositories, a trend that is growing significantly around the world. The study does not include the expenditure on OA papers published by Indian researchers in subscription journals which make papers available on OA on payment of a fee. Raising the financial and ethical issue of paying for getting papers published in professional journals, the authors opine the funding agencies in India should "forbid researchers who are now using research grants" (funds provided only for research) to cover APCs. The analysis shed light on the fact that Indian authors have used 488 OA journals levying APC, ranging from Rs 500 to $5,000, in the five years, to publish about 15,400 papers. Use of OA journals levying APC has "increased" over the four years from 242 journals and 2,557 papers in 2010 to 328 journals and 3,634 papers in 2014. There has been a spike in the use of non-APC journals as well, but at a slower pace. More than half of these papers were published in just 13 journals. PLOS One and Current Science are the OA journals Indian researchers use most often, the authors note. Though most leading Indian journals are open access ones and do not charge APC, there is a leaning towards "foreign journals" in the pecking order. "Most Indian journals are nowhere near the top in this order. In general, researchers prefer to publish their papers in prestigious journals (as considered by the community), irrespective of the publishing country of a journal. However, most of the prestigious journals (in science, technology and medicine) are published from either North America or Western Europe," Madhan observed. To circumvent the expenditure, Madhan suggested researchers make their papers OA in two ways. "They can publish their papers in traditional professional journals that do not levy an APC and place the accepted manuscript (called post-print) in an inter-operable institutional repository. There are ways -- protocols -- by which all the distributed institutional repositories could be viewed as a single mega repository by a searcher." Institutions can also establish and maintain an inter-operable repository at a negligible cost using open source software such as EPrints and DSpace. In India, there are many institutions that have set up such repositories. Notable among them is ScienceCentral -- maintained by CSIR -- URDIP Pune, which hosts repositories for institutions of CSIR, DBT and DST, and harvests and indexes metadata of the contents in those collections. It provides a single search interface, points out Madhan. At the global level, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is a major player. The attitude, "paying money to publish papers" that the APC levying journals are trying to nurture, is dangerous for the scientific community, Madhan warned. "There is a feeling that this idea offers space for dubious publishers who exploit the scientific community and corrupt the research system, and one can no longer ignore the growth of such predatory publishing," he added. (Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in) --IANS sgh/ssp/vm/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Although India overtook the US to become the worlds second largest internet consumer base behind China last year, internet freedom declined slightly in the country, offsetting gains made in 2014 and 2015, a report revealed on Monday. According to the "Freedom on the Net 2016" report by Freedom House, a US-based think tank, both government and non-governmental entities made efforts to bridge the digital divide in India. After effective digital campaigning, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced strong net neutrality protections in 2016, prohibiting differential pricing by service providers for different content or applications. "However, other developments undermined internet freedom. Local authorities ordered service providers to temporarily shut down internet access in at least 23 reported incidents in various states. In 2016, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the use of broad powers provided to state governments under the criminal procedure code to shut down internet services," the report stated. The Supreme Court also upheld laws criminalising defamation which apply to both online and offline speech. "Arrests for online activities declined in mid-2015. But arrests increased again during the coverage period of this report (June 2015-May 2016) under other sections of the IT Act and provisions of the penal code. At least 17 people were detained for content circulated on WhatsApp, including group administrators who were not responsible for the content," the report added. Overall, internet freedom around the world declined in 2016 for the sixth consecutive year. Two-thirds of all internet users -- 67 percent -- live in countries where criticism of the government, military or ruling family are subject to censorship. "Although there were no reported instances of unlawful surveillance during the reporting period of coverage, this may be due to the extreme opacity of the regulatory framework governing surveillance. In May 2016, officials said the government's Central Monitoring System -- an ambitious nationwide mass surveillance programme -- became operational through regional monitoring centres in New Delhi and Mumbai," the report stated. In June 2015, journalist Joginder Singh died in Uttar Pradesh when assailants set him on fire after he posted allegations about a local official's wrongdoing on Facebook. Internet penetration in India continued to increase in 2016 with mobile penetration playing a significant role. "Inadequate infrastructure remains a significant obstacle to access, especially in rural areas; however, various governmental and non-governmental efforts to improve access nationwide are underway," the report said. According to the report, social users face unprecedented penalties, as authorities in 38 countries made arrests based on social posts over the past year. Globally, 27 percent of all internet users live in countries where people have been arrested for publishing, sharing, or merely "liking" content on Facebook. Governments are increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which can spread information quickly and securely," the report stated. "Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during anti-government protests," said Sanja Kelly of Freedom House in a statement. Public-facing social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been subject to growing censorship for several years, but in a new trend, governments increasingly target voice communication and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. These services are able to spread information and connect users quickly and securely, making it more difficult for authorities to control the information landscape or conduct surveillance. --IANS na/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The "Sanghiya Gathabandhana" -- an alliance of 29 Janjati and Madhes-centric parties protesting against the new constitution -- on Monday issued a 15-day ultimatum to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' to register a proposal for a constitutional amendment that accommodates their demands. Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav submitted a reminder letter on the matter to Prachanda at his office in Singha Durbar on behalf of the alliance. According to a source, Yadav, while handing over the memorandum, said: "The registration of the amendment proposal won't suffice unless it accommodates our opinion. The proposal should be agreeable to us and fulfil our demands. "We are ready to wait for another 15 days. But the proposal should be agreeable to us." In response, Prachanda assured him that he was working to register the amendment proposal in a couple of days. The Madhes-centric parties associated with the alliance have been carrying out a protest movement pressing for fulfilment of thair demands, especially demarcation of the provincial borders, citizenship and proportional inclusive representation based on population, among others. Noting that the main achievement of the Madhesi movement was the downfall of the K.P. Oli-led government, the 'Sanghiya Gathabandhana' demanded implementation of the agreement signed by the alliance, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unity Centre at the time of the formation of the present government. The memorandum further stated: "It is necessary to address the important issues as federalism, national identity, representation in the state apparatuses on the basis of population, proportional and inclusive representation, good governance, electoral system, the federal judicial system and elimination of the caste-based, regional and gender-based discrimination and inequality, in such a way that the grievances of the Madhesis and indigenous nationalities, among others, are redressed." The alliance has also mentioned in the memorandum that it would be compelled to again resort to a protest movement if the amendment proposal is not registered within the set deadline. (Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com) --IANS giri/vd/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Opposition political parties in Goa, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, on Monday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a "sham" speech with Congress Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik, accusing Modi of shedding crocodile tears. "Modi's tears appear to be crocodile tears... his action is like third degree treatment meted out to innocent citizens," Naik told the media at the Congress state headquarters here. In the course of his speech in Goa on Sunday, Modi appeared to be on the verge of breaking down while referring to sacrifices he had made for the country. The video of Modi's discomfort during his speech went viral on social media. "The demonetisation action was clandestinely disclosed by Modi to the Bharatiya Janata Party President, his key party people and industrialists close to the power centre, in advance, so that they could make necessary arrangements to legalise their funds," Naik said as he demanded a probe by the Supreme Court into the demonetising decision-making process. Naik also said Modi had let the people of India down by virtually giving overt threats from foreign soil in Japan, about tightening up the fiscal processes. "The threats given by Modi on a foreign soil indicates that he is going to take more stringent steps in future. This is dangerous and it appears that Modi is marching towards imposing fascism in the country," Naik said. The AAP also said the Prime Minister's speech had more theatrics than substance and that Modi had also mocked the people lining up at banks and ATMs. "The speech of the Prime Minister in Goa yesterday (Sunday) was mere theatrics and devoid of any serious intent to embark on a correction of the financial chaos unleashed by his unplanned demonetisation scheme," AAP spokesperson Valmiki Naik said. "Every citizen of India has been autocratically forced into a state of financial emergency, helpless to even meet his or her daily needs to run a house... AAP is shocked that Modi, instead of taking corrective action, is mocking the people lining up at banks and ATMs," he said. --IANS maya/py/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a swift action on Monday, police in Pakistan's Sialkot city have arrested nine suspects, including prime accused Jajja, for "brutally" torturing a transgender, a media report said. A case was registered against the suspects belonging to "Tinda Group" after a video showing a transgender person's brutal torture went viral, Dunya News reported. The prime accused allegedly thrashed the transgender person for organising a function without his permission. Tinda Group has forbidden the transgender community to do any function without its permission. Police have named 18 suspects in the First Information Report (FIR) while nine of them have been detained so far. As outcasts, transgender people are often forced into begging, dancing and even prostitution to earn money. They also live in fear of attacks, causing most to either change their names or use only one name to give them anonymity in the society. --IANS ahm/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has called off talks in Argentina this week as his government deals with the aftermath of a deadly earthquake. Key said on Monday that he had postponed a trip to Buenos Aires on Tuesday for a series of meetings aimed at strengthening New Zealand's trade, economic and political ties with South America, Xinhua news agency reported. However, he would attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Peru on November 19-20 if circumstances permitted. At least two people were killed when a 7.5-magnitude quake centered on the northeast of the South Island rocked much of New Zealand just after midnight on Sunday. It has been followed by hundreds of aftershocks. "The situation is still unfolding and we don't yet know the full extent of the damage," Key said in a statement. "I believe it is better that I remain in New Zealand in the coming days to offer my assistance and support until we have a better understanding of the event's full impact," he said. "My officials have conveyed our apologies to the Argentine government and I intend to call President Mauricio Macri in the next few days," Key said. The decision on whether the trip to APEC would go ahead would be made later this week. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CPI on Monday demanded an immediate review of the demonetisation of high denomination currency and instead sought action against hoarders of black money. "If the government is really sincere in curbing a parallel economy based on black money, it should take people into confidence about the WikiLeaks list of Indians holding accounts in foreign banks, the list of those with investment in foreign countries leaked in the Panama leak papers," said a statement by the Communist Party of India. "The government should take urgent action against such holders of black money," it said. The party said the new Rs 2,000 notes were causing more difficulty to the people due to shortage of notes of lesser value. The CPI demanded banks to act against corporate defaulters and publicise the names of those who had made "huge deposits" prior to the announcement of the November 8 demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "There are reports that a large number of people, including leaders of political parties, have deposited crores and crores of rupees in banks in the last month as they were aware (beforehand) of the demonetisation move. Banks should release the list of such depositors at all levels." --IANS and/tsb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US musician and rock and roll legend Leon Russell, who worked with artistes including George Harrison, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, has died. He was 74. The musician died on Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee. His website quoted his wife, Jan Bridges, as saying that he passed away in his sleep. He had suffered a heart attack in July, reports variety.com. Raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Russell had a career of more than 50 years playing southern boogie-inflected piano, writing songs, and producing. Among the hit songs he wrote were "Delta lady", and "A song for you" recorded by Ray Charles, the Temptations, the Carpenters, Amy Winehouse, and Whitney Houston. He played piano on the Rolling Stones' "Get a line on you", which he adapted from their "Shine a light" song and had a number one country hit with Willie Nelson performing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak hotel". Other notable songs written or performed by him include "This masquerade" and "Superstar" made famous by the Carpenters. Russell performed at the Concert for Bangladesh with George Harrison and Friends and toured with acts including musical duo Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, Edgar Winter, the New Grass Revival, Willie Nelson, and Elton John. His piano playing can notably be heard on Badfinger's "Day after day". He was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2011. Musicians quickly took to social media to express their condolences on Sunday. Elton John called Russell a "mentor" and "inspiration". --IANS dc/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) has warned schools from marking non-Islamic occasions such as Christmas and New Year as holidays. The ban includes forbidding the schools from providing holidays on such occasions or changing the dates of exams to suit them, Xinhua news agency reported. The education ministry directed all schools to stick to the academic calendars for exams and holidays. It warned of action against schools that violate the directive. is a Sunni-conservative state that follows Islamic rules in all walks of life. Aleppo, Nov 14 (IANS/AKI) Over dozen of religiously devout Shia militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, three Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers and dozens of Iranian militiamen have died in recent clashes in Syrias northwestern Aleppo province, according to media reports from the region. Hadi Zahid, a commander of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Zaikr Hussein of the Special Units and Mohamm Ali Mohammed Hosseini, a commander of the Commandos Unit were killed in the recent Aleppo clashes, reported al-Arabiya satellite TV. The new casualties follow the killing of Iran's state television reporter, Mohsin Khozaia in Aleppo on Saturday, al-Arabiya said. Khozaia been criticized for inciting sectarianism in his journalism. Meanwhile, rebels in the neighbouring Syrian province of Idlib released a video showing an attack targeting a group of Iranian militias with a thermal rocket killing and injuring scores of them. More than 3,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces have been killed in Syria, according to Iranian Farsi language media outlets. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday greeted the people on the occasion of Gurupurab, which marks the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Gandhi said Guru Nanak was a poet, a nationalist, a social reformer, a philosopher and a preacher who advocated brotherhood of mankind. "He believed in one god and thus urged us not to support discrimination based on religion, colour, caste and gender. In the basic teachings of Sikhism, he always upheld values of sacrifice, offering, association with virtuous and prayer," Gandhi said in a statement. --IANS spk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Sonu Sood has congratulated legendary actor Jackie Chan, who has been conferred an honorary Oscar. Sonu on Sunday night shared a post, which read that Chan was feted with the award at the eigth annual Governors Awards on Saturday. The post also read that he is the first Chinese to have received the award, which is given in recognition of "extraordinary achievements" in the film industry. "The starting point of all achievement is desire! There you are! Heartiest Congratulations. Jackie Chan," Sonu captioned the image. Sonu will soon be seen sharing screen space with Chan in the upcoming Sino-Chinese film "Kung Fu Yoga". "Kung Fu Yoga" is a part of the three-film agreement signed between the two countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India. The film, which is directed by Stanley Tong, also stars actress Amyra Dastur. It is reported that the Hindi film stars have performed some adrenalin-pumping action sequences for the movie. --IANS dc/rb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) DMK's M.K. Stalin, Leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly, on Monday criticised Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa for not expressing even words of comfort to people suffering cash crunch but focussing on their votes instead. In a statement issued here, Stalin referring to Jayalalithaa's statement issued on Sunday, said at a time when common people in the state are not able to buy their daily essentials due to currency crunch there is nothing in the Chief Minister's statement alleviating the people's problem or even providing some words of comfort. Jayalalithaa on Sunday said she had a "rebirth" because of prayers of the people and urged the AIADMK to work for the party's victory in upcoming by-elections. She said she was waiting to resume normal work after getting well soon. The 68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with fever and dehydration on September 22 and is yet to be discharged. Jayalalithaa in a signed statement urged the AIADMK activists to work hard so that the party candidates won in the November 19 assembly by-elections in Aravakuruchi, Thanjavur and Tiruparankundram constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Nellithope in Puducherry. Political parties in Tamil Nadu have welcomed the central government's move on November 8 to withdraw legal tender status of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. However, they said that people should not be put to trouble in the process. Stalin had earlier welcomed the central government's move to demonetise 500 and 1,000 rupee notes if it really helped to uplift the country's economy. Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election promise of depositing Rs 15 lakh in each Indian's bank account by recovering the black money stashed overseas, Stalin had said that the promise is yet to be fulfilled. Similarly, PMK leader and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss welcoming the demonetisation move added that black money stashed outside the country should be brought back within a short period. He said demonetisation is only one move in attacking black money and it cannot eradicate black money from the system. AIADMK's spokesperson C.R. Saraswathi said the central government should take steps to ease the trouble faced by the common man to get old invalid notes exchanged. --IANS vj/ask/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President-elect Donald Trump's advisers have dismissed the tens of thousands of protesters on the streets against his election as "professional" disruptors and called on Democratic leaders to tell them to go home, media reported on Monday. According to Team Trump, President Barack Obama, Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats need to intervene to stop the unrest unfolding from Los Angeles to Manhattan, the New York Post reported. "The President of the US, Secretary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, perhaps, others can come forward and ask for calm and a peaceful transition and ask their supporters, which are masquerading as protesters now - many of them professional and paid by the way, I'm sure - ask them to give this man a chance so that this country can flourish," said Donald Trump campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday. The appeal comes as more than 3,000 chanting, sign-waving protesters trudged from Union Square to Trump Tower along Manhattan's storied Fifth Avenue with cries of "We reject! The President elect!", joining angry anti-Donald Trump marchers across the country. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said protesters have targeted him and were "banging on my car". "I'm not sure these are even Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama supporters. I think these people are, you know, kind of like professional protesters," Giuliani said. Conway specifically singled out Senator Henry Reid for inciting unrest by saying on Friday the responsibility of healing the country belongs with Trump - "a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fuelled his campaign with bigotry and hate." "A lot of these protesters are not there peacefully, are not there because they just want to express themselves and make a point or make the difference. They are there for nefarious conditions, they're booing us, spitting on us. They're causing all kinds of havoc." Obama, Clinton and Sanders have all expressed a desire to work with Trump on a peaceful transition of power but have not condemned the protesters. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Minnesota representative Keith Ellison - an early favourite for Democratic National Committee chairman - said it's the priority of Democrats to exercise their First Amendment rights. "God bless the protesters," Booker said on NBC's "Meet the Press". Booker cautioned protesters against "turning to hateful speech, violating principles and ideals that are sacred in this country," Booker said. "We need to raise our voices, but we do not need to indulge in hate." Ellison called on the protests to "remain peaceful" but urged them to stand strong in the face of "misogyny" and racial divisions. "These folks are telling Donald Trump that if he tries to move out on his plan to have a deportation squad, to harm Americans, and if he tries to do that, we're going to be there to stand and say no," Ellison added. --IANS sm/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Dhaka cafe which was attacked by Islamic State militants in July this year, was returned to its owner on Sunday following a court order, the city police said. At least 22 people, mostly foreign nationals, were killed in the July 1 attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in up-market Gulshan area here. The police handed over the plot and cafe to Samira Ahmed, whose husband Sadat Mehedi started the Spanish cafe in 2014, Bdnews quoted Dhaka Deputy Commissioner of Police Masudur Rahman as saying. The cafe in Dhaka's diplomatic district became a popular eatery with foreigners because of its food, lakeside view and grass lawn in the adjacent area. A pizza corner and an ice-cream parlour were added later. The militants killed 20 hostages, including 18 foreigners and two policemen, before the Bangladeshi Army stormed the cafe and killed five militants to free remaining 14 hostages. The control of the cafe was taken over by the police to preserve the evidence of the militants' carnage. Following the attack, Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain said the owner of the cafe would have to face action for opening it illegally. A notice, claiming a breach of the lease contract, was also sent to the owner which did not reach her. The owner later moved court for taking control of the plot and the court issued the order in her favour. --IANS py/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Unidentified warplanes have bombed two hospitals in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, injuring dozens of people, a war monitoring group said on Monday. According to Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the airstrikes targeted hospitals in the al-Atarib and Kafr Naya districts, which suffered severe material damages, EFE news reported. These new bombings came as the pro-government Syrian Arab Army has intensified its operations in Aleppo's western and southwestern countryside following a surge in rebel offensives late in October. --IANS py/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pitching for India's message of a lifestyle with minimum carbon footprint, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave on Monday said here that wasting food is like being a "carbon criminal" and that soon campaigns will be initiated against it. "Today is (first Prime Minister Jawaharlal) Nehru Ji's birthday which is Children's Day in Inida. I request children that take only that much food into your plate that you can eat. Please don't waste food. We will soon initiate a movement in our country against wasting food and request other countries to do the same," said Dave, who arrived here ahead of the UN high-level talks at COP22. He said that the ideology of some societies where leaving some food on the plate is considered "civilsed" has to change. The minister also quoted an American scholar, stating how total food wasted in the US can feed a small African nation. "Its not just about feeding a poor. Just imagine the emissions for cooking all that food. How much carbon would've produced," he said. The minister also lauched a book "Lifestyle for minimum carbon footprint", and gave example of Gandhi, Buddha, Nalsen Mandela and others as an example of life with minimum carbon footprint. --IANS kd/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President-elect Donald Trump said he will deport undocumented immigrants who have "criminal records," a policy that is expected to affect between 1-3 million people. Trump discussed his plans during an interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes" that will air on Sunday night, Efe news reported. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. "But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally," he said. Trump's statements were more measured than during the campaign, when he took a hard-line position on illegal immigration and promised to carry out mass deportations of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US. The 70-year-old president-elect said he planned to first secure the border and would then decide what to do with the rest of the country's undocumented immigrants. "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that," Trump said. "But before we make that determination ... it's very important, we are going to secure our border." Trump said building a wall along the US-Mexican border was still a key part of his security plan but he acknowledged that "some fencing" might have to be used along certain stretches. "For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," Trump said. "I'm very good at this, it's called construction." --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Terming the spiking of Rs 500 and 1,000 currency notes as "a betrayal" of the people, the Shiv Sena on Monday asked whether people would still support Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Comparing the government's secret mission of November 8 to an "economic civil war", the Sena - a member of the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the centre and in Maharashtra - said Modi had already dropped one bomb by the demonetization. Questioning Modi's claims that the people of the country had "blessed" him for the demonetisaton step, the Sena said it was "sheer betrayal of the masses who blessed and voted him to power in 2014", said an editorial in the party mouthpieces "Saamana" and "Dopahar ka Saamana". "In order to extract the black money from a handful of industrialists, the Modi government has thrown 125 crore people on the streets. They are crowding outside banks, ATMs to get back their own money, waiting in long queues without food, water and some have even died in the process," it pointed out. "At one stroke, the government has sacrificed 125 crores at the altar of black money - are all these people corrupt and black money hoarders? How many were found standing in the queues with bundles of unaccounted Rs 500 and 1,000 notes?" The Sena said it fully supported the drive against black money but the manner in which the Modi government had implemented this scheme had led to economic anarchy in the country. --IANS qn/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Leaders of Opposition parties on Monday gathered in Parliament for a meeting to decide their strategy for the winter session of Parliament that begins on Wednesday. The ruling National Democratic Alliance also had its meeting. The man of the moment might be Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was even congratulated for his bold demonetisation move by journalists, but competing for limelight was the lone ATM on the Parliament House premises. There was no rush at the machine as Parliament House has little or no access to the public. Politicians, Parliament House staff and journalists took the opportunity to stand in short queues to withdraw cash from the machine. Parliamentary Party Executive, comprising top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, will meet on Monday to chalk out its strategy for the Winter Session of Parliament starting on Wednesday with the Opposition keen to target the government over issues like demonetisation and One Rank One Pension. Congress and TMC leaders are meeting in New Delhi on Monday evening to chalk out a united fight during the Winter Session of Parliament, commencing on November 16, against the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes by the Narendra Modi-led government. The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, and Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, would be meeting the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay ahead of an all-party meeting convened by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday, opposition sources said. TMC leader Derek O'Brien is also likely to be present at the meeting. It was not immediately clear whether other opposition parties have been invited. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on Sunday spoken to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, besides several other opposition leaders, and mooted the idea of a united fight against the Centre's demonetisation move. Congress leaders too had reached out to several parties, including TMC to chalk out a joint strategy ahead of the Winter Session of Parliament. The Congress and TMC, besides other opposition parties like CPM, CPI, SP and BSP have targeted the government, accusing it of taking the decision in haste and without proper planning and caution, leading to harassment of the common man. Keeping their differences aside, various Opposition parties met on Monday to find ways to corner the Narendra Modi-led government over demonetisation in the winter session of Parliament. Anchored by the Congress, the meeting of eight Opposition parties saw sworn enemies such as Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the same page against the Centres decision, which they termed anti-people and responsible for unleashing economic anarchy. Keeping their differences aside, Opposition parties met on Monday to find ways to corner the government over demonetisation in the winter session of . Anchored by the Congress, the meeting of eight Opposition parties saw sworn enemies such as Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the same page against the Centres decision, which they termed anti-people and responsible for unleashing economic anarchy. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy on Sunday criticised the Finance Ministry alleging "lack of preparedness" in dealing with the demonetisation of two high-value currencies and said the ministry not being in loop of decision-making is "no excuse". In a setback to Congress ahead of November 19 by-poll for Shahdol (ST) Lok Sabha constituency, over 100 of its workers today joined BJP in the presence of Madhya Pradesh Industries Minister Rajendra Shukla. "Over 100 Congressmen joined the ruling party in the presence of Industries Minister in Jaisinghnagar Assembly segment," according to a BJP release. "They joined the BJP after getting influenced by party's works and policies," it claimed. Jaisinghnagar is the part of Shahdol Lok Sabha seat. Welcoming them into the party fold, Shukla asked them to work for the victory of BJP candidate Gyan Singh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Eleven Middle East and North African countries are accusing Iran of sponsoring "terrorism" and constantly interfering in the internal affairs of Arab nations, sparking tension and instability in the region. In a letter to the UN General Assembly circulated today, the 11 countries cited Iran's support for Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon which has sent fighters to support the Syrian government. They also accused Iran of supporting "terrorist groups and cells" in Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere. They reiterated a statement by Bahrain's foreign minister in September that the only way forward is for Iran "to comprehensively change its foreign policies and end hostilities." The letter, organised by the United Arab Emirates, was signed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As many as 12 countries will participate in biennial agro-technology and business fair, CII Agro Tech 2016, starting from November 19. The 12th edition of CII Agro Tech 2016 to be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee along with Israel President Reuven Rivlin as the Guest of Honour on November 20 will showcase latest advancements in the farming technology for both businesses and visiting farmers, said a CII release. The 12 countries which are participating in the fair include US, Denmark, Turkey, Israel, Spain, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, China and South Africa. International participation is the major attraction with countries displaying latest technologies, products and services, new launches and live demonstrations of innovations happening in the industry, it said. Among the prominent experts to share their experiences in the industry include Agri-Tech specialist, Luis Mulet from UK who will be attending the fair and providing collaboration and partnering opportunities in the areas of Animal Science, Plant Science and Precision Agriculture. A special session on India-Canada partnership in Agriculture is a major highlight of the fair, which will be attended by Jeff Leal, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Province of Ontario, Canada, release said. UK, which has one of the most highly regarded agricultural technology sectors in the world, will be participating in CII Agro Tech 2016 for the first time. The partner country this time is Israel, while focus countries are Canada and Germany while guest country is Great Britain. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) today seized 3.4 kg charas, estimated to be worth Rs 34 lakh in the international market, from Kathia-Mathia village under Sikta police station of West Champaran district, police said. An SSB team seized the contraband from a place near pillar number 406/13 in the village. The smuggler, who was on a motorcycle, fled from the spot after seeing the SSB jawans, police said. The SSB handed over the seized contraband and the motorcycle to the police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) LIMA - Peru and China are in the right time to further promote their economic ties to higher level, said Peruvian economist ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the South American country. "The most important task is now to consolidate the advances in economic relations made since Peru and China began their free-trade agreement (FTA) in 2010," said Peruvian economist Fernando Gonzalez. In terms of China's vision of Peru, the director of the APEC Studies Center, explained that "China has a very clear strategy based on continued results, boosting its own production chain for industry and services, and seeing ever more sophisticated technological development." "China is a country of high efficiency. These capacities are not limited to production but extend to how to make pragmatic public policies," added Gonzalez. He said that, after the visit of Peru's Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to China in September and the upcoming visit by President Xi Jinping to Lima in November, the two countries "must resolve any problems that remain and focus on the fundamentals." According to Gonzalez, both sides need to improve cooperation in mining areas and allow China's ICBC bank to open up more financial services in the country. Moving on to the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), Gonzalez said this was an initiative to minimize divisions within the region and help to create one large free-trade zone. "This is a project that unites China and the US, and it drives to work together while managing their rivalries in the most civilized possible. This is the central topic for the future of the Asia-Pacific, for peace and prosperity in the region," he continued. It would essentially unite the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), between ASEAN, and six other Pacific economies, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The academic concluded that "it is an honor for Peru to host the one more step of the Beijing Roadmap being taken this year." Stating that around four lakh trucks are stranded in various parts of the country, the apex transporters body AIMTC today demanded immediate increasing of cash withdrawal limit from ATMs and banks to avoid crisis. All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC), claiming to have 93 lakh truckers, 50 lakh buses and tourist taxi and cab operators under its fold, said at least eight lakh drivers and conductors were severely impacted in the wake of de-legalizing of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. "Our about 4 lakh trucks are stranded across India with about 8 lakh drivers and conductors severely hit. The sudden ban on higher denomination notes have made them stand in long queques before banks in different parts. The withdrawal limit is minuscule with ATMs at many places not working and paralysing the transport business," AIMTC president Bhim Wadhwa told PTI. Demanding immediate increasing of withdrawal limits, Wadhwa warned that essential supplies like milk, vegetables, fruits and medicines would be impacted. The drivers and tourists who are en route do not have ample cash in hand and are starving on the highways with no help coming from any quarter, he said. "The road transport fraternity of India is facing its worst crisis with the banning of higher denomination notes," he said, adding, this despite transport being the highest taxpayer to the exchequer. AIMTC said that in the last fiscal, contribution of the Road transport to GDP was 4.8 per cent, which amounted to Rs 5,44,800 crore annually or Rs 1,492 crore per day. "Eighty per cent of the transport operations cost is cash based. This implies Rs 1,194 crore is required on a daily basis by the transport sector for its operations. As per the finance Act section - 6D(d) of IT Act, Rs 35,000 per truck per trip cash is allowed for en route expenses. A small operator having 10 trucks would require up to Rs 3,50,000 cash per day to tide over his requirement, which is unsustainable under the present cap," it said. With acute liquidity and financial crunch, the transportation services are poised to come to a standstill, Wadhwa said. He also said export-imports of the country was likely to be hit due to disruption in movement of vehicles to and from the ports. Besides, transporting raw materials to the industries and finished goods to the distribution centres would also get affected. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A special vigilance court today sentenced a former assistant engineer to five years in prison in a disproportionate assets case under the Bihar Special Courts Act, 2009. Special judge Ravindra Nath Tripathi handed out the sentence to Mukteshwar Ram, who worked in the building construction department, for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income to the tune of Rs 35.36 lakh. The court also slapped a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Ram, failing which he would serve a jail term for one more year. The Vigilance Department had filed the charge sheet against the engineer on October 6, 1998. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had come out with Bihar Special Courts Act, 2009 with much fanfare with a provision to confiscate properties of the corrupt officials. Earlier, properties of four such officials were confiscated in Patna and on them schools were set up. Besides the money, the Vigilance Department had seized documents for three houses owned by Ram - one in Patna and two in Bhagalpur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The security survey of the terminal-II of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) has been completed with security agencies projecting deployment of at least 600 armed CISF personnel to secure the facility from where two domestic airlines will operate. The survey was conducted by a joint team of Central security agencies, Central Industrial Security Force, Delhi Police and Bureau of Civil Aviation (BCAS), giving a thumbs up for a limited number of operations and flights to be operationalised from December last or early January from here, sources said. They said control access, deployment of gadgets like X-ray machines and scanners, security 'morchas' and installation of CCTV positions have been analysed and this will require deployment of at least 600 CISF personnel. "A report in this regard has been sent to the Union Home Ministry," they said. They said the force will also deploy its vehicle-borne quick reaction teams to respond to any terror-like or any other such attempt. Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), the joint venture firm which runs the Delhi airport, plans to expand Terminal 1 to a much bigger facility. At present, budget carriers Indigo, SpiceJet and GoAir operate their domestic flights from T1. The Civil Aviation ministry had earlier this year cleared a proposal from Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) to revive the defunct T2 and move operations of two private airlines from Terminal 1 to allow it carry out expansion work. The work is expected to be completed in the next two years. SpiceJet and GoAir are likely to move their operations to T2 once it gets functional while IndiGo is expected to continue its flight services from T1. International flights used to operate from T1 before the commissioning of the existing swanky T3. CISF is the mandated central force to secure country's civil airports and at present it provides cover to 59 such facilities including the terminal-I and terminal-III of the IGIA. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan today said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that the country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the world's attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. So far, mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. (Reopens FGN20) Pakistan's Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz also condemned the "unprovoked Indian firing" on the LoC, Foreign Office (FO) said "He (Aziz) expressed heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed," it said, adding that Aziz expressed grave concern over the recently increased frequency and duration of indiscriminate firing/shelling "from the Indian side, deliberately targeting villages and civilian populated areas". FO said that Pakistan is urging the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to send an urgent report to the UN Security Council to inform them about the serious ceasefire violations on the LoC and the unwarranted escalation of tension between the two countries. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, responding to the latest development along the shared Pak-India border, claimed that India was heating up the situation along the LoC and Working Boundary due to internal compulsions, Radio Pakistan reported. The defence minister said it was regrettable that "certain extremist elements which had come into power in India could become a source of destruction not only for their own country but the whole region". Asif urged the global community to take notice of "Indian provocations against Pakistan" as any escalation of tension between the two nuclear armed neighbours could prove catastrophic for the whole region. He added that Pakistan is using diplomatic and international forums to highlight Indian "belligerence". Pakistan army today said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in firing allegedly by Indian troops across the Line of Control. Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, the army said in a statement. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts effectively, it said. So far mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An alliance of 29 Madhes and other small parties today gave a 15-day deadline to Prime Minister Prachanda to table a proposal in Parliament to amend the new Constitution to address their grievences. Sanghiya Gathabandhan of Janjati and Madhes parties have been protesting against the new Constitution, saying it marginalises them. Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav submitted a reminder letter on the matter to Prachanda at his office in Singha Durbar on behalf of the alliance. A source close to Prachanda quoted Yadav as saying: "The registration of the amendment proposal won't suffice unless it accommodates our opinion. The proposal should be agreeable to us and fulfil our demands." "We are ready to wait for another 15 days. But the proposal should be agreeable to us," Yadav told Prachanda. In reply, the Prime Minister assured that he was working to register the amendment proposal in couple of days. Yadav's 15-day deadline has left the other leaders affiliated to Madhesi Morcha shocked as they have been reiterating that they would launch another protest if the amendment proposal was not registered by mid-November. They said that Yadav did not discuss about the 15-day ultimatum. With Yadav's new deadline, Morcha leaders, who have started boycotting Parliament meeting from Friday, have been left in perplexing situation. "We now face a moral question on what role would we play in upcoming House meetings," a Morcha leader expressed his rue. Prachanda last week had said that the amendment proposal would be tabled in the parliament before the current Nepali month 'Kartik' ends on November 15. The minority, mostly of Indian-origin, has led months- long violent protest seeking better representation in the Parliament and the federal structure of the Constitution that divides their ancestral homeland. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fernando Alonso threatened to deliberately drive into Sebastian Vettel next time they are competing to teach him a lesson about his on-track conduct. The two-time world champion plans to ensure that the under-fire German understands that "the track belongs to everybody" after the pair clashed during Sunday's rain-hit and tempestuous Brazilian Grand Prix. The McLaren-Honda driver and the four-time champion Ferrari racer were fighting for seventh position when Vettel attempted to pass Alonso on the inside at Turn 11. Alonso said he was forced off the circuit by Vettel and had to run off to avoid contact and thereby conceded a position. "There was an asphalt run-off and I used it and nothing happened, but if there's a wall there, I either drive into the wall or into him, which is what I will probably do next time," raged Alonso. "I'll crash into him and he will lose more points than me." He added: "It's okay. You just use the asphalt run-off and that's it, but one day we'll have to drive into him so he realises that the track belongs to everybody." Alonso went on to finish 10th after a costly spin following one of the re-starts relegated him to the back of the field. Vettel, who was involved in a foul-mouthed rant on the closing laps of last month's Mexican Grand Prix, finished fifth after another embittered encounter with Max Verstappen of Red Bull, who passed him on his way to third. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shocked by the murder of Dainik Bhaskar journalist Dharmendra Kumar Singh by unidentified assailants at Amra in on Saturday, the state press fraternity condemned the incident and urged the Nitish Kumar government to bring justice to the aggrieved family. Singh was gunned down by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants on Saturday morning, making it the second murder of a journalist in the state in the past six months. In a joint statement issued on Monday, the Arunachal Press Club (APC), Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ) and Arunachal Electronic Media Association (AEMA) expressed deep shock at the killing of the journalist who took on powerful local mafia on many occasions through his work. The fraternity termed the incident as cowardice and an attempt to muzzle freedom of speech. It urged the government to come up with a mechanism to protect scribes in the state so that crusaders of freedom of speech should not be cowed down. "Murder of journalist reflects the law and order situation of a state, it is the duty of the government of to protect the press fraternity and ensure safety of all scribes in the state," the press bodies stated in a condemnation statement. It also said that perpetrators should be brought to justice and be awarded exemplary punishment, so that it sends message across the board. Expressing solidarity with media fraternity in Bihar as well as the aggrieved family, APC, APUWJ and AEMA stated that courageous and fierce writings of Singh will embolden and inspired working journalists across the India. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned by prosecutors today about allegations concerning possible sex crimes committed in Sweden six years ago. Assange will be interviewed at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where he sought refuge more than four years ago, Swedish officials said. He will be questioned by an Ecuadorean prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police investigator. Prosecutors plan to ask Assange to consent to providing a DNA sample. Swedish officials are seeking information related to allegations of serious sex crimes made by two Swedish women he met in 2010. He hasn't been indicted. Assange has denied the sex crime allegations and says he fears being extradited to the US because of his WikiLeaks work. It isn't known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the US. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified government documents. One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was launched, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. By then Assange was in Britain, making it harder for Swedish prosecutors to question him. They sought an international arrest warrant for him that was issued in November 2010. Assange surrendered to police in London and was freed on bail, receiving support from a wide range of celebrities including filmmakers Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. He then moved into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, putting him out of reach of British authorities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 10 people were killed and several injured today when Nigerian police opened fire during clashes with pro-Iranian Shiites outside northern Kano, the latest round of violence involving the group, witnesses and police said. Violence broke out when police tried to disperse thousands of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) marching from Kano in Kano state, to Zaria in Kaduna state -- where they have been banned -- for the Ashura religious festival. There have been several incidents of sectarian violence involving the IMN in the past year in Nigeria, with Sunni Muslim mobs attacking Shiite ceremonies just in recent weeks. "The police arrived and started firing teargas canisters on the procession of Shiites to disperse them," grocer Ilyasu Ammani told AFP. "I saw 15 bodies sprawled on the ground before the police evacuated them," he added of the violence in Kwanar Dawaki on the outskirts of Kano. Witness Kabiru Mudassir said he saw more than "10 bodies being taken away in a police van." Nigerian police said they opened fire on the IMN crowd, who were armed with bows and arrows, after one of their officers was hurt. "They injured one of our officers and our men opened fire because they were becoming violent," said a police officer who asked to remain anonymous. "Thousands of Shiite members obstructed motorists on the highway, they disturbed innocent motorists," Kano state police commissioner Rabiu Yusuf said at a press conference. "Shiite members armed with bows and arrows and some dangerous weapons killed one policeman and injured three others," Yusuf said. "Eight Shiite members were seriously injured. They were taken to hospital and were confirmed dead." The violence comes just over a month since 10 IMN members -- who were also in the streets for religious celebrations -- were killed in the town of Funtua in northern Katsina state following clashes with security forces. In October, Kano police banned IMN from conducting street processions ahead of the annual Ashura rites. In the days before, prominent Kaduna state governor Nasir El-Rufai had banned the group as an "unlawful society", saying it was a security threat and calling for security forces to "vigorously" arrest its members. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Australian umpire Sam Nogajski today discontinued officiating in a Ranji Tropy match between Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai, as he was hospitalized for dehydration with his Indian counterpart Virender Sharma doing duty from both ends. The Aussie umpire complained of stomach ache and vomiting before the start of the second day's play here and was admitted to a local hospital as a precautionary measure. "The umpire has been admitted in a local hospital at 7 am after he complained of loose motion and stomach ache. The doctors attending him said it is a case of dehydration," KSCA Mysuru Convener Balachandra told PTI here. Earlier, KSCA officials were optimistic of Nogajski making a comeback post-lunch session, but a report issued by the hospital authorities suggested complete rest. "We were hopeful of Nogajski making a comeback and officiating from post-lunch session, but the doctors, in their bulletin, advised Nagojski complete rest," Balachandra said. "It also means he will not officiate in the match any further," he added. The doctors have advised Nogajski to visit Bengaluru for treatment, Balachandra said. "Nogajski will be taken to Bengaluru tomorrow where he will be again put under medical observation." Replying to a query, Balchandra said a local umpire has been replaced, but he is officiating only as leg umpire, whereas Virendra Sharma is officiating from both ends of the wicket. "A local umpire has been replaced, but officiating as a leg umpire. Virendra Sharma is officiating from both ends as straight umpire," he said. This is not the first time an umpire has officiated from both ends of the wicket, Balachandra said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh police today announced a bounty of 1 lakh Taka for information leading to the arrest or capture of the attackers of Hindu temples and homes amid mounting protests demanding stern action against the culprits. "We have announced a bounty amounting Taka 1 lakh (USD 1250) for information about whereabouts of the culprits," Brahmanbaria's police superintendent Mizanur Rahman told PTI. He added that 78 suspected attackers were so far arrested after detailed investigations but Hindu leaders and civil society feared that several masterminds remained beyond the ambit of law enforcement agencies. The development came amid speculation that the attacks on Hindu temples and households were staged at Nasirnagar area of the district as part of a conflict between two influential groups of ruling Awami League. "It appears that the culprits were hired to stage the attacks to harm the reputation of the other group," an official in Nasirnagar told PTI requesting anonymity. Authorities have launched an intensified campaign to track down the culprits after home minister Asaduzzaman Khan warned that none of the attackers will be spared. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had also urged the people to stand with religious minorities. "As a Muslim-majority country it is the moral responsibility of all of us to take care of the minorities," she told a conference at her office. She added: "You have to remain careful so that no such incidents, which are taking place sporadically in different parts of the country, take place anywhere in the country." Suspected Muslim extremists had earlier this month carried out two subsequent attacks ravaging nearly a dozen Hindu temples and over 20 households at Nasirnagar area of Brahmanbaria over an offensive Facebook post. The Hindu community leaders and civil society activists staged a series of protests in the capital and other major cities blasting the administration for failure to protect the minority community. The statutory National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had said that the attacks on Hindu temples and households were carried out under a well orchestrated plan. Hindu community leaders earlier said the attacks were carried out to evict Hindus from their own land creating an atmosphere of fear. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Banks across several states remained closed today being a public holiday further escalating the six-day cash crisis following the withdrawal of high-value notes and exacerbating the agony of those in desperate need to get even small amounts of money. Though banks were open mainly in the southern states there was no relief for people as they had to wait for hours to get new notes or deposit the scrapped currency. Cash-strapped people started making a beeline outside ATMs from early morning but with limited success as most of the cash vending machines are running dry and weren't refilled with money. People queued up outside ATMs early in the morning but had to return disappointed as shutters at many locations were down amid growing scuffles and heated exchanges. Today was a holiday on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti. Patience of citizens wore thin as people continued to face hardship in withdrawing cash from ATMs, braving long queues, accessing health facilities at hospitals and commuting in public transport in the national capital on a bank holiday that added to their woes. Many sections of the society including grocery shop owners, small traders, restaurant owners, are further feeling the heat as their dependence on cash is very high. Commuters also had a harrowing time, as lack of Rs 100 notes continued to cripple transaction with taxi operators, auto-rickshaw drivers and other public transport providers. A pre-paid city-run taxi counter at Delhi Airport, which other wise draws good number of passengers, today wore a deserted look. "People are not coming to book 'kali-pili' taxis with us, as they do not have ready cash, and we are not in a position to accept Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 notes," a staff at the counter said. "This is becoming unbearable now. How long can we afford to be in the queue to get money which we toiled to earn. My family is on the verge of starvation," said Damodar Kamble, who tried his luck to exchange money this morning at an ATM in suburban Vikhroli in Mumbai. Many customers made it to ATMs as early as 5 AM in anticipation of procuring few precious Rs 100 notes. There were also reports that many ATMs ran out of cash within hours of becoming operational. A housewife in Kurla, Shweta, said, "This has become a horror. It's sad..People are dying, fighting while waiting in queues." Banks and ATMs across Tamil Nadu continued to witness long queues of people waiting to exchange defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and withdraw cash today even as bankers and post office personnel struggled to ease the situation. Angry customers who were waiting for long hours to withdraw cash, pelted stones at an ATM in suburban Ponneri in Chennai as it ran out of cash, police said. In Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah took stock of the prevailing situation in the state in the wake of demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes by the central government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Unlike in the rest of the country, banks remained open in Mizoram today and long queues were seen before them like the other days since demonetisation. People lined up to withdraw money from the banks through cheques and green channels as also from ATMs, while many waited the exchange the now demonetised high value currency notes. Big and small businessmen are facing difficulty due to shortage of cash in the banks as well as in the market. Assistant general manager of the State Bank of India, Aizawl branch, Pradip Kumar Sen said of the 85 ATMs across the state, only 25 could dispense cash. Of the 46 ATMs in Aizawl city, only nine ATMs could dispense cash, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna (SSS), a partner in the BJP-led Maharashtra government, has alleged misuse of powers over slapping of an externment order against one of its key functionaries in Buldhana district. Devendra Bhuyar, who heads Vidarbha region of the pro-farmer oufit, received the order of externment under the Bombay Police Act last week in a case of alleged extortion and obstruction of government work. As per the notice, he has been barred from entering Buldhana district for the next two years. Under the provisions of the Bombay Police Act, police prepares the externment order, which is then sent to the revenue department for approval following which it is forwarded to the IG, after whose approval it is implemented by the district police. The decision has not only irked local workers of SSS, but also the entire organisation which supported BJP during the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections of 2014. Notably, Sadabhau Khot, sole SSS member in the state Legislative Council, is Minister of State for Horticulture and Marketing. Raju Shetti, SSS's founder and two-time MP, said, "This is nothing but misuse of power and unfortunately, the current government is also using the state machinery for its own purpose. I am not going to accept such treatment of my party workers, who fight for people but end up getting ill-treated over petty political grounds." Though none of the SSS leaders and party functionaries named the trouble makers, some of them claimed that local BJP leaders considered Bhuyar a threat. "I have been working as SSS worker for a long time and through my hard work I have been elevated to the post of Vidarbha chief of the SSS. Our insistence for better returns to cotton crop and soyabean has received support of farmers and the organisation is growing in Vidarbha region. The organisation's popularity is the real problem to some leaders, who ensured that I get notice of externment," Bhuyar told PTI today. If such acts continue, BJP would be in trouble because it does not have a good support in rural areas unlike SSS, he said. Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna was started in Kolhapur district. It focussed on Western Maharashtra initially by launching agitations for getting better sugarcane price. In last few years, Shetti began tapping other areas of the state such as Vidarbha and Marathwada, where cash crops like cotton and soyabean are largely cultivated. Shetti along with his party workers recently met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis requesting recall of the order against Bhuyar. "In the first meeting, CM appeared to be positive. I am meeting him again to ensure that the state administration is not used against us," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former sarpanch of Allika village in Palwal District of Haryana was gunned down by three assailants who came in a car at Baroli this evening, police said. Bharat Singh (52) was on his way back to Allika in a car with one Digambar after having a dip in the Ganga river at Garhmukteshwar nearby when the incident happened. RK Sharma, SHO, Syana police station, under whose jurisdiction the incident occurred, said enmity during panchayat elections is believed to be reason behind the attack. Digambar too is injured in the attack and is being treated at Community Health Centre at Syana Town. No Complaint has yet been filed with the police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A yellow taxi driver was arrested after a lady and her child were allegedly driven away by him from her home following an argument over Rs 10 coin change. A senior Kolkata Police officer said the accused driver Kallol Chakroborty (49) allegedly stepped up the accelerator after the woman Mayurakshi Mitra had an argument with the driver for not accepting a Rs 10 coin. The arguments broke after Mitra and her little daughter reached their New Alipore residence from South City Shopping Mall in the taxi and was paying the metered fare. As the lady protested the driver's behaviour and comments, the man allegedly suddenly started driving at high speed along Diamond Harbour Road and reached Behala ignoring her screams, the officer said. A group of youths, sitting on road corner, forced the driver to stop, took out the frightened lady and her child and handed over the driver to the police after thrashing him. Deputy Commissioner, 1st battalion, KP, Biswajit Ghosh said since the driver allegedly misbehaved with the woman and stopped her from disembarking in New Alipore police station area, he was taken to custody by the respective police station. However, the car was impounded by adjacent Behala police station since it was intercepted in that area, the DC said. The driver was being questioned based on the woman's account of events. There had been a number of complaints against yellow taxis and mobile based application service cabs of misbehaviour with passengers, including women, in the city in past few months. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan has criticised censorship in cinema, saying it is "totally unwanted" and feels television programmes are the ones which should be censored. Many television programmes, especially soap operas, are even showcasing crime on prime time after giving prior announcement, the 75-year-old Dadasaheb Phalke awardee said. He also questioned the display of anti-smoking and liquor messages on the movie screen and said if smoking and drinking were injurious to health, it should be banned. "There is no need for cinema to bear its burden," he said. "I personally feel that there is no need for censorship. It is totally unwanted. I do not think vulgarity galore in films, if there is no censorship," the "Vidheyan" director said. Pointing out the need of imposing censorship for TV programmes, the director said many channels are crossing their limits to get maximum viewership and rating. "Television is more influential than cinema now-a-days. But, the present situation is that anything can be shown on TV and there is no censorship," he said adding such programmes were giving a wrong lesson to viewers. However, he said censorship had never posed any problem to him in any of his 12 films so far. Adoor wanted the state government to implement the recommendations submitted to it by the panel, headed by himself, two years ago to revamp Malayalam cinema. The subsidy, given to filmmakers, should be enhanced according to the requirements and cost of the present day industry, he said. "Maharashtra government is giving a lot of encouragement to promote cinema. It has helped for the release of a handful of good Marathi cinema in the last 10 years," he said adding Kerala government should learn lessons from it and give more support to Malayalam films. A grading system should be implemented for state theatres and e-ticketing system should be launched there, he said. He suggesting setting up a a Kerala State Film Authority, comprising representatives of state government and cinema to deal with issues related to the industry. The multiple National and state award winner also said digital technology had not cut down the production cost of films but helped to avoid complexities in its making. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Noting that many projects get stalled due to delay in submission of detailed project reports (DPRs), Union Minister Jitendra Singh today said the government was considering simplifying the process to ensure timely implementation of centrally sponsored schemes. "The government is considering simplifying the detailed project report process as most of the times projects are delayed due to delay in submission of DPR," he said, chairing a meeting of District Development Coordination and Monitoring Committee (DISHA) to review the progress of various centrally sponsored schemes in Ramban. He said provision would be made for online submission of DPR to reduce delay in approval from various offices. The Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office directed the authorities to submit utilisation certificates in time for timely release of funds. Singh asked the Deputy Commissioner to fix timeline for electrification of all villages. He asked the departments to submit reports in writing in every meeting so that people's representatives could be made aware about the ongoing programme in their respective areas. Speaking on the issue of developing many areas in the district into religious-cum-tourist destination, Singh said a comprehensive plan should be made in consultation with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to develop Ghora Gali as heritage point. To provide benefits of all centrally sponsored schemes to the people, he asked the officers to reach out to the people and conduct special awareness camps to spread awareness about the schemes including 'Start-up India, Stand Up India', 'Atal Pension Yojana' and 'Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana'. After the legislators raised the issue of inconvenience caused to the people after the demonetisation of 500, 1,000 rupee notes, Singh assured them of opening additional counters at banks working in the district so that the people can easily withdraw new notes and exchange old ones. The meeting had a comprehensive review of progress achieved under various projects and laid stress on timely completion of ongoing works. DDC apprised the committee of the current status of all centrally sponsored schemes being executed in the district. The Minister was told that under the Swachh Bharat Mission, 901 individual household latrine units and eight community toilets have been constructed in the district till October. Besides, about 88.82 per cent expenditure has been registered in the district under the mission. The meeting was informed that 11 buildings of different middle schools have been upgraded to high schools whereas work on upgradation of 20 middle schools is in progress. Besides, tenders have been floated for implementation of Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana. This will help provide round-the-clock power and 100 per cent electrification to rural households. The minister asked officers of various departments to put in concerted efforts and work with synergy to ensure completion of works within stipulated time. "Public must be encouraged to play their role in the successful completion of these schemes and avail their optimum benefit," he said. Chicago on Monday joined several major US cities in affirming that it will remain a "sanctuary city" for immigrants, in defiance of President-elect Donald Trump. Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and San Francisco have made similar affirmations since Trump's election on Tuesday, vowing to refuse to jail undocumented immigrants in jail for deportation purposes and pledging that public services will continue to be offered regardless of legal status. "To all the children and all the families who are unsure of their place because of what happened Tuesday," Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference. "You are safe, you are secure and you are supported in the city of Chicago." Emanuel, a Democrat who was chief of staff during President Barack Obama's first term, said young undocumented people in particular will still be able to go to school and qualify for free community college education. "That speaks volumes to where our values are," he said. Trump, a Republican, campaigned on a promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. In an interview that aired on the CBS "60 Minutes" news program over the weekend, Trump said he plans to immediately deport or jail as many as three million immigrants with criminal records, upon taking office. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people -- probably two million, it could be even three million -- we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States, many of them Central and Southern Americans long-established in the country. Since 2009, the Obama administration has deported 2.4 million immigrants from the country. But Obama has also offered a reprieve to young people who were brought to the US by their parents -- so-called "Dreamers." By executive order, he granted them temporary residency rights, allowing them to go to school and work. Trump could reverse the order, and had promised to do so during the campaign. He had also promised to cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities. His rhetoric has raised alarms in immigrant communities. "Since the elections, my phone has been off the hook," said Tayna Cabrera, who heads the Illinois Dream Fund Commission, which offers scholarships to undocumented college students. "My students are terrified. Some of them haven't shown up to school," she said. Jharkhand Governor Droupadi Murmu today wished the children of the state on the occasion of Children's Day. Remembering Jawaharlal Nehru on his birth anniversary, Murmu expressed happiness at the programme initiated by Jharkhand Sasastra police, which selected school children from around rural areas of Ranchi, an official release said here. A total 723 children from 15 schools were trained by the Jharkhand Sasastra police. The Governor said she felt glad following a competition that saw the first three positions going to girls' schools. The victorious girls not only lauded their schools and families but also reflected women empowerment before the society, she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Navy today acquired its first submarines from China, as Dhaka sought to boost its naval power in the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh Navy chief Admiral Nizamuddin Ahmed received the two submarines during a ceremony at Liao Nan Shipyard in northeast China's Liaoning province's Dalian city, the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate spokeswoman Syed Taposhi Rabeya said. The type 035G class submarines will become part of the country's naval fleet at the beginning of next year, she said. The submarines will be named 'BNS Nabajatra' and 'BNS Joyjatra' respectively, Dhaka Tribune reported. Bangladesh is said to have paid nearly USD 203 million for the two submarines, the report said. Type 035G-class submarines area, also known as Ming- class, is a class of diesel-electric submarines of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. The primary weaponry for Type 035G is Yu-3 torpedo, and French sonar DUUX-5 and its Chinese-built version were used on later units, 12 of which were completed between 1990 and 1999. Bangladesh has been expanding its defence capabilities in recent years, building a new airbase close to neighbouring Myanmar, opening several new military cantonments across the country and adding new frigates to its naval fleet. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the plan to purchase two submarines in 2013 as part of her government's move to build a modern navy to defend the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. An international tribunal has settled Bangladesh's long- standing maritime border disputes with neighbours Myanmar and India, paving the way for Dhaka to invite bids from multinational firms to explore for oil in the Bay. Bangladeshi officials say that has ensured the country's sovereignty over 111,631sq-km of sea, an area nearly equal to its landmass. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A class five student of a government school here suffered a fracture on his left arm after he was allegedly dragged by his teacher and was forcibly made to sit in the classroom, police said today. The woman teacher had been suspended following a complaint by the parents of the boy over the incident at the Government Boys Higher Secondary school at Valathungal in Kollam on November 10. A report has been sent to the Deputy Director (Education), by the Headmistress following which the teacher, who took Basic Sciences, has been suspended, school authorities told PTI. The Headmistress said the boy along with some other students came to her after the science class stating that he experienced pain in his arm. When enquired, other students in the class said the concerned teacher had allegedly dragged him and forcibly made him sit, she said. The child was taken to the hospital where it was revealed that the left arm had fractured. However, the concerned teacher denied having hurt the child. She told the headmistress that she had only led the boy to his seat in the class, since he was not in his seat. The parents demanded that the teacher should apologise for the incident. Meanwhile, police said they had gone to the school today to enquire about the incident. No police complaint had been received so far from the boy's parents, they added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Class XII board examinations began peacefully in Kashmir today with nearly 95 per cent of the 32,000 students writing their papers, marking the resumption of educational activity in the Valley after schools remained shut for over four months due to the unrest. Barring a few minor law and order incidents in some places, the test on the first day was conducted smoothly at more than 450 centres across Kashmir, including 73 in the summer capital here, officials said. About 94.88 per cent of the total 31,964 students appeared in the examination, an official of Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (BOSE), which conducts the examinations, told PTI. The official said the overall attendance of the students was up by 2.56 per cent from last year. Over 480 centres have been set up for about 48,000 candidates for Class XII board examinations across Kashmir division, the official said, adding that the students who opted for the sixth paper appeared for the test today. The government had decided to hold the exams as scheduled despite demands by parents that they be put off as the unrest had disrupted educational activities in the Valley. Massive security arrangements were put in place across the Valley for the smooth conduct of the examination. However, minor stone-pelting incidents were reported at a few places in Pulwama, Shopian, Budgam, and Baramulla, which did not affect the conduct of the examinations. The miscreants were chased away by the security forces without affecting the test, a police official said. The BOSE official said the highest appearance percentage of the students was recorded in central Kashmir's Budgam district where about 96.10 per cent of the students wrote their papers. Budgam was followed by Anantnag in south Kashmir where 96.01 per cent students appeared in the examination, he said. The official said North Kashmir's Bandipora witnessed the lowest attendance at 92.80 per cent. Two other south Kashmir districts Pulwama and Shopian recorded 94.65 and 93.66 per cent, respectively. South Kashmir has been the worst hit in the ongoing unrest in the valley following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter in July. North Kashmir's Bandipora, Baramulla and Kupwara districts recorded attendance at 92.80, 93.70 and 93.10 per cent, respectively, the official said, adding Srinagar and Ganderbal in central Kashmir recorded 95.83 and 92.93 per cent attendance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The dramatic decline of Iran's Lake Urmia - once the second-largest hyper-saline lake in the world - has both direct human and climatic causes, according to new research. "Saving Lake Urmia will require both national action to improve water management, and international cooperation to address the issue of climate change," said Somayeh Shadkam, researcher at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the US and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The study was the first to compare the relative impact of climate and water management on the water flowing into the lake. Lake Urmia was once the world's second-largest hyper-saline lake, but has declined over 80 per cent in recent decades. Previous work by Shadkam and colleagues had shown that climate change threatens the lake's existence, using future scenarios of climate change to project water inflow into the lake. The new study aims to better understand the causes of the lake's decline, teasing out the relative contribution of different factors such as human water usage as well as climate-related variables, using 50 years of data from 1960 to 2010. The annual flow of water into Lake Urmia dropped by 48 per cent over the study period. Using a model of water flow into the lake, researchers found that 60 per cent of this decline was caused by climate changes, such as change in precipitation and temperature, and that the remaining 40 per cent of the decline could be attributed to water resources development, such as diverting water for irrigation that would otherwise flow into the lake. Most previous studies have indicated the dominate role of water usage in changes in the lake surface area. The study indicates that climate change and variability has contributed to the lake desiccation. That means that reduced water use without taking change in the climate into account might be insufficient in saving the lake. "Water resources and climate change are inextricably interlinked. This is just one area where an integrated systems viewpoint is vital for providing sound advice to policymakers trying to solve such pressing issues," said Pavel Kabat, Director General at IIASA. The study was published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The global drive to stave off disastrous global warming will continue regardless of who heads the US administration, Washington's top climate envoy said today on the election of climate change denier Donald Trump. "Heads of state can and will change, but I am confident that we can and we will sustain a durable international effort to counter climate change," US special envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing told journalists on the sidelines of a UN climate conference in Marrakesh. Before he was elected president last week, Trump called climate change a "hoax" and threatened to "cancel" the hard-fought Paris Agreement concluded in the French capital last December to limit global warming. Pershing said the "shape and thrust" of the new administration should become clearer in the coming weeks, adding that, "I cannot speak for the President-elect's team or to their outlook on international climate policy." "What I do know, however, is that... Parties are deeply invested in seeing this work bear real fruit," he said. "It was a global effort that made the agreement possible and the passion and the dedication that drove it," was in evidence still, Pershing added. Yesterday, US Secretary of State John Kerry made an impassioned plea for America to maintain action on global warming. "We will wait to see how the next administration addresses this but I believe we're on the right track and this is a track that the American people are committed to," Kerry said on a trip to New Zealand. Trump's election has cast a long shadow over the Moroccan climate huddle, where envoys must come up with rules for implementing the goals and plans outlined in the Paris Agreement. The pact seeks to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by cutting down on the use of planet-warming greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas. The Obama administration had been an ardent champion of the agreement, alongside China. China's envoy, Xie Zhenhua, stressed today that tackling climate was a "common and shared responsibility". "International cooperation is a must for us to address climate change," he said in Marrakesh. Observers say Trump would have three options for pulling out of the process. He could withdraw from the agreement itself, which would take four years, he could cancel the US' membership of the UN's climate convention and all its treaties, which would take 12 months, or simply ignore the US' emissions targets under the deal, which lists no penalties. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With Compat asking CCI to probe allegations of alleged unfair business ways made against Digital Cinemas and six others, KSS Digital Cinema today said it expects the Competition Commission to "take necessary steps" in this regard. The company had filed the complaint -- pertaining to alleged anti-competitive practices in the digital cinema exhibition market -- which was rejected twice by Competition Commission of India (CCI). Last week, Competition Appellate Tribunal (Compat) had set aside the CCI's decision to reject a complaint of alleged unfair business ways made against US-based Digital Cinemas Initiatives LLC, a joint venture, and its six stakeholder partners. They are The Walt Disney Company India, Fox Star Studios, NBC Universal Media Distribution Services, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Paramount Films India. "We welcome this positive move. With the review, we hope that CCI will take the necessary steps as per the directives of tribunal to help players like us to operate seamlessly and provide a platform to all competing players to mutually operate in the market," KSS Digital Cinema Ltd's CEO Rahul Kanani said in a statement. If implemented, it would further help to increase the distribution of Hollywood movies in Indian market, he added. KSS Digital Cinema is part of KSS Ltd, formerly known as K Sera Sera Ltd. The watchdog dismissed the allegations twice, in April 2015 and June this year. In a strongly-worded order dated November 9, Compat said CCI "committed serious error by declining to order an investigation". "Rationally speaking, it would have saved time and efforts of all those involved in this matter if the Commission had ordered an investigation by the director general instead of once again more or less reiterating its earlier views," the Tribunal said in the order. Compat said the "impugned order is set aside and the Director General is ordained to conduct investigation into the allegations contained in the information filed by the appellant (K Sera Sera)". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Alleging that the Centre demonetised currency notes without proper planning, Congress today held protests in Telangana against the move. The opposition party also protested against the alleged attempts by the NDA government to downgrade the contribution of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Congress leaders, led by state party unit president N Uttam Kumar Reddy, protested at the busy commercial locality of Abids. The party activists also burnt an effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion. The Congress leaders and workers organised similar protests in several districts of Telangana today, the party said in a release. Congress party is against black money, but "the manner in which Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes have been demonetised without proper planning resulted in misery to middle classes and chaos in the country," the PCC President alleged. Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Assembly K Jana Reddy, opposition leader in Legislative Council Mohd Ali Shabbir, former Rajya Sabha member V Hanumantha Rao and other Congress leaders sat on protest near the Nehru's statue at Abids, alleging that the BJP-led NDA government sought to downgrade the contribution of the first premier. An advertisement published in newspapers on the occasion of Children's Day did not have the photograph of Nehru, Hanumantha Rao claimed. He also said that it was Nehru who initiated major irrigation projects like Bhakra Nangal dam and laid the foundation for the modern India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal today accused Congress of running away from taking steps to safeguard the river waters of Punjab but said but the SAD will not "flinch from its duty" and will come out with "appropriate measures" to resolve the issue in its entirety. In a statement here, Badal, who is also Deputy Chief Minister of the state said the party core committee as well as the state cabinet, both of which were meeting shortly, would deliberate upon the steps needed to firm up the party as well as the SAD-BJP government's decision not to allow even a drop of water to go to Haryana. "We are ready to take any step necessary to stand up to this commitment", he added. The SAD president said it was unfortunate that a "frustrated" Punjab Congress president - Amarinder Singh, was "stooping so low" as to ask for the resignation of the SAD- BJP government. "You resigned from the Parliament because you had to contest the next assembly elections from Patiala. Your MLAs resigned as the party high command did not want them to be part of the proceedings of the November 16 sitting of the Punjab assembly. All this is understandable. But why are you asking for the resignation of Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal? Surely it is because you are frustrated at the turn of events and the fact that Punjabis are increasingly seeing you as the villain of the piece who was facilitated the start of work on the SYL canal," he alleged. Asking Amarinder not to act like a "sore loser", the SAD president said he could understand his "frustration". "Your hands are tied by the Congress high command which has never supported Punjab's right over its own waters", he said. He said even now Amarinder could redeem himself by supporting the steps being taken by Badal Sahab to save the waters of Punjab. "But this is unlikely. You are resorting to cheap publicity stunts to befool Punjabis instead of directing your MLAs to debate the issue in the assembly. This will only alienate you and your party further from the people", he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chinese President Xi Jinping today had a telephone conversation with US President-elect Donald Trump during which he said cooperation was the "only right choice" to bolster ties between the two major powers. In his first call since Trump won the US presidential election last week, Xi congratulated Trump on his election victory, state-run CCTV reported. Xi said tangible benefits have been brought to the people of the two nations in over 37 years of diplomatic relations. He said "cooperation has proven to be the only right choice" and reaffirmed that China attaches great importance to relations with the US, and is willing to cooperate with the US, the channel reported. Trump said he agreed about US-China relations and hopes for mutual benefits and win-win results. Trump also expressed willingness to strengthen ties. "The two agreed to maintain close contact and build a good working relationship," it added. Earlier, Xi had congratulated Trump on November 9 soon after his victory and called for cooperation between the two economies to maintain global peace and stability as well as improving bilateral ties shunning confrontation. In his earlier message to Trump, Xi hoped they could work together to boost China-US relations so as to better benefit peoples around the world. While China is the world's largest developing country and the US, the largest developed power, both, as the world's top economies, bear the special responsibility of maintaining world peace and stability and boosting global development and prosperity, and share extensive interests, Xi had said. Also Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi today said China stands ready to further promote its relations with the United States on the "new starting point" following Trump's election. Beijing was ready to push forward China-US ties on new starting point, Xinhua quoted Wang, who is currently touring Turkey, as saying. Asked whether China has made contact with Trump's team, Wang told the media in Ankarathat China maintains close contact with the US side at various levels. China, he said, is willing to continue its cooperation with the administration of outgoing US President Barack Obama, so as to ensure a smooth transition of bilateral ties to the next US administration, Xinhua reported. Meanwhile, Beijing also stands ready to communicate with Trump's team, so as to cement mutual understanding and expand consensus on bilateral cooperation, Wang said. He said Xi's message to Trump has charted the course for the future development of China-US ties, and China is ready to make joint efforts with the US side to that end, said the minister. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-owned Corporation Bank has signed an MoU with Indian Army on the Defence Salary Package which will come with a host of facilities, including free insurance cover. The MoU is tailor made to suit the requirements of serving soldiers, pensioners and families, Corporation Bank said in a statement. It will benefit a large number of Army personnel who are having their accounts with Corporation Bank and also provide them an opportunity to access modern banking facilities, it said. The bank under the agreement is providing free or concessional services including free drafts, free cheque books, free fund transfers to any bank in India through RTGS or NEFT, free ATM cards, unlimited transactions on all ATMs including that of other Banks. Free personal accident insurance cover and term insurance of up to 10 lakh up to the age of 70 years and air insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh are features offered under the MoU. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Management of a plastic manufacturing company here was today booked by police on the charge of cheating after its employee complained that he was paid his monthly salary in the recently-demonetised notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. Based on the complaint given by the employee, Kansraj Pradhan, an FIR under IPC section 420 (cheating) was registered against the company at Bhimpore police station, a statement issued by Daman police said. Pradhan, who draws a monthly salary of Rs 12,000, alleged that the company gave two notes of Rs 1,000 and 20 notes of Rs 500, which have been demonetised by the government. "Despite knowing the fact that the government has banned these notes, the management paid the salary using them, which is a crime under section 420 of IPC," the statement added. Police have warned that if any other company is found to be indulging in such crime, similar action will be taken against it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Quinton de Kock plundered a century Monday as South Africa frustrated Australia to tighten their grip on the second Test as the sun emerged on the third day in Hobart. After Sunday's second day was washed out, the Australians were hunting for early wickets to put a brake on the Proteas after they were routed for a record low total of 85 on Saturday. But de Kock and Temba Bavuma batted South Africa into a position of strength with a century stand for the sixth wicket and a 203-run lead to put even more pressure on Steve Smith's embattled team. Wicketkeeper de Kock was bowled by Josh Hazlewood just before lunch for 104 -- his second Test hundred -- off 143 balls with 17 boundaries. His stand of 144 with Temba Bavuma was the highest by a visiting team in Hobart for the sixth wicket. At lunch, the Proteas were 288 for six with Bavuma unbeaten on 74 and Vernon Philander on three. De Kock became only the fourth South African to register 50 or more in five consecutive Tests after he swept spinner Nathan Lyon for four over wide mid-on. He has proved a thorn for Australia in this series following scores of 84 and 64 in the first Test victory in Perth. Bavuma, who raised his fifth Test half-century with an edge off Hazlewood through the gully, had his second Test century in sight. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Body of a 25-year-old woman, in highly decomposed state, with her feet tied, was found in Pandav Nagar area of east Delhi. The body was found around 10 AM in the bushes near NH-24 and it seems it was dumped there around 20 days ago, said a senior police officer, adding the body was highly decomposed. The woman hasn't been identified as yet, said the officer. Police said the autopsy will determine whether she was sexually assaulted before being killed or her body was mauled by an animal, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Congress workers and leaders today paid rich tributes to former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and remembered his contribution in nation building on the occasion of his 127th birth anniversary. Terming Nehru as a "visionary par excellence", Delhi Congress President Ajay Maken said that "far sighted" steps taken by him for all-round development of the country were now bearing fruits as India was on the "fast track" of development and progress. Maken led the party leaders and workers in paying floral tributes at a portrait of Nehru during a function held at Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) office. The All India Congress Committee (AICC) Delhi incharge P C Chacko also paid tributes to Nehru during the function. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An emergency session of the Delhi Assembly has been convened tomorrow to discuss the "explosive" situation arising out of demonetisation, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said today even as he attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his 'kadak chai' remark saying the poor was being "fed poison" instead. Kejriwal said, considering the hardship being faced by people, the Delhi government has decided to deploy civil defence volunteers who will provide citizens queueing up outside banks and ATMs with water and refreshments, while also assisting them with paper work. Sticking to his demand that demonetisation be rolled back, the AAP chief lashed out at Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying the Centre has lost "all sense of proportion due to lack of any concrete plan in executing the scheme." "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." The Delhi Chief Minister said he was pained to see people struggle for cash to buy basic necessities like food items and medicines, adding government was exploring options to arrange cooked food for those in need. "We have also asked the Divisional Commissioner to explore in the next two to three days the possibility of arranging food through 'langar's for those who are having to starve due to lack of hard cash," Kejriwal said. The Delhi Health secretary has also been directed to ensure that there is no shortage in city government-run hospitals, Kejriwal said. The Cabinet meet was attended by Ministers and top officials including the Chief Secretary. He is likely to meet his Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, who has also been vociferously opposing the measure, when she arrives in New Delhi tomorrow, Kejriwal said. "It is simply a mechanism to transfer 50 per cent of the country's total black money to BJP's accounts. The intention is UP polls. They would have arrested swiss bank account holders and manufacturers of counterfeit currency had they wanted to act against black economy," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today inaugurated 'Delhi Pavilion' at the India International Trade Fair here having theme of 'Digital Delhi', showcasing government's various digital initiatives. The initiatives included online VAT registration, Swachh Delhi App, online sanction for building plans, and introduction of medicine vending machines. The AAP government's ambitious project - 'Mohalla Clinics' was also at the centre of attraction at the pavilion which also showcased reduction in power bills, free water upto 700 litres, smart school classes and Car-Free Day. Sisodia, who was accompanied by Health Minister Satyendar Jain and Environment Minister Imran Hussain, visited stalls of different departments installed at the pavilion. Government said that it is planning to switch over to e-governance completely which primarily means governance by application of information and communication technology. Among the digital works started by government are online registration of VAT and shops, mobile app for grant of Permanent VAT Registration without inspection in real time, online sanction of Building Plans for Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Warehouse buildings with Common Application Form (CAF) under Single Window Clearance System. Besides, self certification by DISCOM instead of NOC from Labour Department of Delhi government of upto 11KVA was implemented. Application for water/sewer connection can be filed online. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Days after welcoming the Centre's move to demonetise high-value currency notes, DMK chief M Karunanidhi today said it has been done without detailed assessment of its impact and the fears that it can backfire cannot be brushed aside. He also asked the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre to issue an "appropriate" reply to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's allegation of 'scam' behind the demonetisation effort. "While Prime Minister Modi's announcement (on demonetisation) can be welcomed to the extent that it was done with noble intention, the fears that it might backfire without yielding desired results cannot be brushed aside," he said. In a letter to his partymen, Karunanidhi said, "We have seen what miseries are being faced by commoners and poor over the sudden demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, a move made without detailed assessment of its impact." The DMK chief said on November 9 he had welcomed the demonetisation move but voiced concern about hardships of ordinary people, small traders, autorickshaw drivers as there are no takers for the invalidated Rs 500 notes. Citing latest reports, he claimed people are affected as movement of notes have been restricted after old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 went defunct and were replaced by Rs 2000 notes. "People are not getting or able to give change for Rs 2000 note. This only compounded their problems as banks and ATMs are buzzing with crowds," he claimed. "If the Centre is keen on eradicating black money, it should have consulted economic experts," he said, adding, "How is it fair to punish the poor when a huge amount of black money is stashed abroad." The priority should be on unearthing black money stashed abroad, Karunanidhi said and claimed that bad debts of big corporates stood at around Rs 11 lakh crore. On Kejriwal's allegation that BJP had informed its 'friends' beforehand about the demonetisation move, he said, the "Centre has a responsibility to appropriately respond" to the charge. On Modi's remarks yesterday that crores of people except the corrupt had "slept peacefully" after the announcement of demonetisation of high-value notes, the DMK chief claimed "crores of people have lost their sleep and are anxiously waiting in long queues" to exchange the scrapped banknotes. Karunanidhi also lashed out at his arch rival Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for not dwelling on this issue in her statement yesterday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Since the demonetisation of high currency notes terror funding has come down to zero and there hasn't been stone-pelting on security forces, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday. He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the "daring" move, which, he said, will also help clamp down on the narcotic drugs. "Earlier, there were rates: Rs 500 for stone pelting (on security forces in Kashmir) and Rs 1,000 for doing something else. PM has brought terror funding to zero," Parrikar said. "In the last few days after PM's daring move there hasn't been stone pelting on security forces. I congratulate PM for it," he said, speaking at an event here organised by the BJP MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar. Talking to reporters later, Parrikar said those who sponsor terror will be affected by the demonetisation. Earlier, at the event, Parrikar said, "Bhatkhalkar did not tell me beforehand that he will felicitate me." A citation was presented to Parrikar, which lauded his role in surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. It also thanked him for providing relief to people affected by land development rules in the vicinity of Central Ordnance Depots. "When I became Defence Minister, I did not think there will be things like this (dealing with COD-land issue). I thought Defence meant bang-bang on the border," he said. "Altogether, 17.38 lakh acres of land in the country is under Defence possession. Defence is the largest land owner in India," Parrikar said. "There was delay in resolving COD issue as there were concerns over security on one hand and people's concerns on the other," he said. "Whether it's border security or economic security, PM Modi has taken daring decisions," he said, adding "whatever is being done, our jawans on border are doing it, I and PM are just supporting it." "Problem of new notes circulation will be resolved to a large extent in the next four-five days," Parrikar said. In the next Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, nobody will be left with power to bribe voters, Parrikar said, without naming the ally Shiv Sena which has been critical of demonetisation. The Defence Minister said an issue should not be made out of his simplicity and his shunning various official perks. "I came to Mumbai thrice (on personal visits) and police didn't know," Parrikar said. BJP MP Gopal Shetty said he will expose Defence officers who indulged in irregularities while dealing with the COD issue. Providing relief to people in suburban Kandivli and Malad here, Parrikar had earlier this year said the local military authority (LMA) will have to respond within 30 days to applications for no-objection certificate for redevelopment and construction near the defence establishment, failing which the state government and the municipal corporation can take a call. The move was welcomed by residents of buildings within the 500-meter radius of the Central Ordnance Depot, a defence establishment spanning across 17 acres of Kandivli and Malad. Two notifications -- issued by a cautious government in 2010 in the wake of the Adarsh scam and by the ministry of defence (MoD) in 2011 -- had scuttled all redevelopment projects in the highly congested areas of Kandivli and Malad, as they made permission from the LMA mandatory for any construction within 500-meter radius of COD. The demonetisation move of the Narendra Modi government has dented the Indian currency's "prestige" and has subjected the Indian people to "ridicule from the international community", senior Congress leader Mohan Prakash claimed here today. "The decision of the Modi government to ban the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes has lowered the prestige earned by the Indian currency in the last 50-60 years. People in foreign countries are mocking us by stating that the people in India are standing in long queues for hours for a few dollars," the Congress general secretary told reporters at the airport here. Prakash said scrapping of the high-value currency notes had led to a "chaos" across the country. "This has created an unusual situation in the country. Business activities are stopped and the poor, housewives and farmers are facing trouble...The government is feeling very happy about it," the Congress leader said. Prakash said his party would "aggressively" raise the demonetisation issue in the forthcoming Winter Session of Parliament. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the nation by surprise when he announced the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from circulation as a measure aimed at curbing black money and counterfeiting. However, the sudden move triggered panic among the people who are queueing up outside banks and ATMs across the country to either deposit or withdraw money or to exchange the scrapped currency notes for lower-value tender. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Queues outside ATMs increased today as banks remained shut on account of Guru Nanak Jayanti even as several cash vending machines across the city ran dry of currency, compounding woes of the common man. Getting cash-strapped with each passing day, people did not seem impressed with the government's last night decision to increase the weekly and daily withdrawal limit from banks and ATMs. "This is becoming unbearable now. How long can we afford to be in the queue to get money which we toiled to earn. My family is on the verge of starvation," said Damodar Kamble, who tried his luck to exchange money this morning at an ATM in suburban Vikhroli. Many customers made it to ATMs as early as 5 AM in anticipation of procuring a few precious Rs 100 notes. There were also reports that many ATMs in south Mumbai localities like Lalbaugh, Parel, Dadar ran out of cash. Similar instances were reported from suburbs like Andheri, Ghatkopar and Mulund, forcing people to return home empty-handed. The nation was taken for a surprise last week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that higher denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 will be discontinued, forcing people to rush to banks and ATMs for Rs 100 notes. A housewife in Kurla, Shweta, said, "This has become a horror. It's sad...People are dying, fighting while waiting in queues." "Now, full form of ATM should be temporarily changed to 'Aayega to milega'," she said in a lighter vein. Meanwhile, private hospitals in the city, in wake of the fresh notification issued yesterday on the use of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bills till November 24, were today in a dilemma whether they should accept the scrapped currencies as there was no clarity on the issue. Management of private hospitals, raising concern, termed the notification as "confusing." Rajiv Singal, member of a trust that runs few hospitals in suburban Dahisar, said, "Private hospitals and patients are the most hit people due to demonetisation as government has failed to come up with clear-cut guidelines. Even the notification, released yesterday, is not clear on whether private hospitals should accept old notes or not." "The notification is silent on use of demonetised notes for private hospitals as it read, hospitals, pharmacy, chemist shops would be able to accept the notes till November 24," he said. (REOPENS BOM5) Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Preeti Sharma Menon, in a blog, alleged that the demonetisation exercise is a "scam" by those who had insider information about the currency ban. "People are making profit by accepting OHD (Old High Denomination) at discount or selling their assets at very high price in lieu of OHDs. "We are hearing of gold selling at Rs 50,000 per 10 gram in exchange of OHD and old Rs 500 and 1000 notes selling at a 20-30 per cent discount (Old Rs 500 notes being exchanged with new currency of Rs 350 to 400)," the leader claimed. "At a time when people want to get rid of old notes, a fundamental question comes to mind - who are these people accepting the old notes and what will they do with them," Menon said. Asserting that the poor in the country are supporting his demonetisation decision, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today took on the opposition parties, especially Congress, saying it is the corrupt who are sleepless now. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said at BJP's Parivartan Yatra here, as he continued to rally public support for his move. Scoffing at opposition for blaming him for the problems being faced by the poor, the Prime Minister said he was better aware of the hardships being faced by commoners. "You (Congress) issue statements. I feel the pulse of the poor," he said. Lashing out at opposition, he said, "Some political parties are worried after demonitisation...They used to get huge garlands of notes...Only option now is to put the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in waste paper basket." "Some people wear a smile on the face, they even say Modi ji you have done a good job. But they instigate their party workers to oppose my decision," he said, without taking any names. His apparent reference was to leaders of BSP, SP and AAP who have been critical of the move. Modi said the action will affect very powerful people people but he is prepared to fight for the poor. "I know I will face a lot of hardships as those having lots of cash are very powerful people but I have undertaken this fight for the poor," the PM said. Referring to people dumping wads of old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in rivers, the Prime Minister said, "You cannot wash your sins off just by putting currency notes in the river Ganges." "My decision is a little harsh... When I was young poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea as they like strong tea but it spoils the mood of the rich," he said amid applause from the gathering. Modi said he was aware of the hardships being faced by people in the wake of his demonetisaion decision. However, he said had it not been for people's support, the corrupt and blackmarketeers would not have been so worried today. Making his opening remarks in Bhojpuri to strike a rapport with the people of eastern UP, Modi said there was no change in the plight of people of Purvanchal since 1962 and he chose November 14 (Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary) purposely to complete the works for development of the region. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. He said some political parties are facing a major problem due to demonetisation. "There is no option left for the dishonest in the country now. I am only fulfilling the promise made at election time to fight corruption," he said. Tamil Nadu Government today requested the Centre to ask the Sri Lankan government to release over 100 fishing boats, which are still in custody of the island nation. Recalling the detention of 158 fishing boats by Sri Lanka in 2014, Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Rao in a letter to Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, said that Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had repeatedly urged the Prime Minister to take necessary steps for the release of the boats. The Tamil Nadu Government had 'unanimously' passed a resolution in December 2014, seeking early release of the boats, Rao said, adding that Sri Lankan courts had finally ordered their release in February 2015. Stating that two salvage teams were formed towards the release of the boats, he said, "the salvage operation was carried out in two phases by 355 fishermen with 54 salvage boats". Sixty four boats were salvaged with minor and major repairs and brought to India in March and April 2015. "But due to prolonged berthing, 16 were damaged beyond retrieval," he said. Despite repeated appeals by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the Centre is yet to agree to bear the losses suffered by the Indian fishermen, he said. As the fishermen association requested release of 105 boats still in Sri Lankan custody, he urged the Centre to suitably compensate them for their losses. "The cost of each fishing boat is around Rs 25 lakh. I request you to impress upon the Government of Sri Lanka to secure the early release of 105 fishing boats, which are sustaining serious damages in Sri Lankan custody and return the boats in refurbished condition", he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Eddie Redmayne said he had to explain to custom officers why he was carrying a wand in his luggage. The "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them'" star was forced to explain to border officers why he was carrying a "really sharp, scary object" in his luggage, which turned out to be the prop from the fantasy film, reported Contactmusic. "I brought it because I felt like it would be reassuring to have Newt's wand. But then we were coming through customs and I suddenly realise that a wand looks like a really sharp, scary object and then to try and explain it to a customs person, I was like, 'Have you seen the ... No?' That was a bit disastrous'," he said. And the 34-year-old actor now feels he cannot use a briefcase in real life as he doesn't want people to think he is copying his character, magizoologist Newt Scamander. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EU ministers approved a common defence plan today despite sharp differences over how far it should go, as Donald Trump's election win stoked fears about Washington's commitment to European security. Trump's campaign threat to think twice about defending NATO allies unless they up their defence spending has driven calls for the European Union to press ahead on its own, despite objections from Britain. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini insisted the plans -- to boost the bloc's ability to respond to external conflicts, help partner countries build their defence capabilities and protect EU citizens -- would not undermine NATO. "It's not about a European army, it's not about creating a new European Union SHAPE-style headquarters," Mogherini said after talks with foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, referring to NATO's own military HQ. Britain has long opposed any such moves as undermining NATO, but after its shock June Brexit vote, France and Germany jumped in with plans to boost defence cooperation that have now gained extra urgency with Trump's election victory. Mogerhini said the bloc was working on the issue long before the US vote and that it would "continue to do this in strong partnership with NATO". The meeting's final statement made no mention of a possible EU military headquarters in Brussels, but said they had asked the bloc's foreign policy service to develop a "permanent" system for coordinating civilian-military measures. The issue exposed a rift between the bloc's two biggest military powers, France and Britain, which is set to leave the EU in two years after the Brexit vote in June. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the defence plan was an "essential step forward" for Europe to show it can take defence decisions on its own in an "increasingly uncertain world". But British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon meanwhile bluntly told the EU to stop "dreaming". "Instead of planning expensive new headquarters or dreaming of a European army, what Europe needs to do now is to spend more on its own defence, that is the best possible approach to the Trump Presidency," Fallon said. British foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, said earlier that Trump's election offered a "moment of opportunity" and the EU should wait to see what he wanted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The European Union (EU) is planning to introduce a new pass for British travellers as part of a wider security crackdown to identify potential troublemakers, it emerged today. The European Commission is discussing bringing in a version of the visa waiver programme which British travellers to the US already have to apply for. Sir Julian King, European commissioner for the security union, said that plans to introduce an electronic system for travel authorisation or Esta would help identify potential troublemakers before they arrived at border control gates. "We think this is going to be a valuable additional piece of the jigsaw because it will allow us to know more about the people who are planning to come to the EU in advance so that if necessary they raise questions about either security or in some cases migration. We'll be able to intervene even before they arrive," King said. The US scheme requires international travellers who are exempt from visa requirements to apply for an Esta and pay around 10 pounds before entering the territory. It lasts for two years. According to 'The Times', if a similar scheme were to operate in the EU, British travellers could be forced to apply online before taking trips to mainland Europe. Currently British passport holders can travel throughout EU member states without having to apply for any kind of short-term visas. However, even though the UK is still in the union until Brexit officially takes place, the new visa waiver would apply as it will be to monitor people entering the so-called Schengen zone of free movement, which excludes Britain. King added: "The fact that we're having this conversation now is unfortunately timely, because Sunday is one year on from the horrible attacks in Paris which were part of a series of attacks that shocked France, shocked the whole of Europe. "It's that level of present, persistent, indiscriminate threat that led to 80-plus per cent of European citizens saying they want more action in this area. "There are a number of elements at the heart of this task; tackling terrorism is one, but not the only part of it. There's work that needs to be done on cybercrime and attacks, and serious and organised crime." "On terrorism there were a number of things already in hand." These include making it more difficult to get hold of deactivated firearms in the EU, as well as plans to criminalise travel to and from Syria and Iraq, and making changes to checks at passport control that are designed to increase the amount of information known about the traveller without slowing down the process at passport control. He said that further meetings were planned with internet service providers (ISP) in an attempt to reduce the emergence of so-called "home-grown" terror cells. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rescuers in New Zealand were scrambling today to evacuate up to 1,000 tourists stranded by a 7.8 earthquake that has caused "utter devastation" on the coast of the South Island. A navy ship was steaming towards the seaside town of Kaikoura, which bore the brunt of the quake that claimed two lives when it struck yesterday. Huge landslides have cut road and rail links to the town, where police say water is running low, power is intermittent and hundreds of people are staying in evacuation shelters. It has a population of 2,000, bolstered by an extra 600-1,000 tourists attracted by the area's popular whale-watching cruises. Officials said they were ramping up efforts to rescue the visitors, who are mostly international backpackers. Four military helicopters will begin ferrying them in small groups to Christchurch today and a C-103 Hercules is on standby to drop supplies to the stricken town. State broadcaster Radio New Zealand reported up to 50 civilian helicopters would also be drafted into the rescue effort, evacuating tourists from local rugby grounds. The HMNZS Canterbury set off from Auckland yesterday and is expected to arrive in Kaikoura early Wednesday. Commanding officer Simon Rooke said it could take up to 500 tourists. "We're going to pick them up by landing craft and sea boats and extract them to Lyttelton (in Christchurch) so they can get to a point of safety," he said. Heavy rain and driving winds were hampering clean-up efforts, although life outside the main Kaikoura disaster zone was slowly returning to normal as roads opened and power was restored. There have also been more than 800 aftershocks, some measuring more than 6.0, further complicating the work of emergency crews. Prime Minister John Key said he was shocked at the scale of the damage after flying over the quake's epicentre on yesterday. "It's just utter devastation... Months of (repair) work," Key remarked, adding that repairs would likely take "billions of dollars to resolve". The tremor, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the quake-prone South Pacific nation, hit yesterday. It triggered landslides that dumped mountains of rocky debris on the main highway and ripped railway tracks 10 metres (30 feet) off course. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Exhorting public and private steel companies facing cheap imports from global markets to evolve "joint strategies", Steel Minister Chaudhary Birendra Singh today said efforts need to be made for cost reduction and improving product quality. "My desire is that public, private sector and Ministry will have to prepare themselves to jointly face the challenges coming from abroad," Singh said while inaugurating the steel pavilion at the India International Trade Fair (IITF) here. He was referring to the spate of cheap imports in India from countries such as China, Korea, Japan and Russia, which have eroded the margins of the domestic steel producers and has impacted their sales and profits. "The entire industry will have to come up with joint strategies to take on the challenges being faced by the industry," the minister said. Government is focused on the manufacturing sector and is implementing Research and Development (R&D) projects in realms of iron and steel technology under various categories such as Plant Performance Improvement (PPI), Product Development (PD), Scientific Investigation and Development (SID), Basic Research (BR) and Technical Services (TS), Singh noted. The major efforts are directed towards cost reduction and improvement in quality of Indian steel, in order to develop and deliver high quality steel products that add value to the customer's business, across the value chain, he said. "India is the world's third largest steel maker and we are constantly working towards innovative and cost-effective R&D solutions, developing and commercialising improved processes and products, continually enhancing capability with the aim of becoming a global hub of centre of excellence," he added. Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said that in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a digital India, the Indian steel industry has taken a very proactive approach. It is enabling a seamless integration of digital technologies across processes, such as operations research, product development, robotics & mechanical engineering, mining, pelletisation, raw material handling, coke oven, sinter plant, blast furnace, long product mill, among others. Digital Revolution holds many promises, for the sector in India. It has already embedded transparency, efficiency, enhanced quality of Indian steel and most importantly improved safety standards, leading to a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, she added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The exhumation of Poland's former head of state was due to begin today, reviving a probe into a 2010 presidential plane crash that has stoked friction with Russia and caused divisions at home. Prosecutors want to check the remains were correctly identified and test for traces of explosives or combustion, as the governing rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party believes a fire may have erupted onboard before the crash. The PiS suspects the crash involved foul play, but Polish and Russian investigators have never found any evidence to support the claim. Local media say 83 of the victims' remains are to be exhumed in an investigation likely to last at least two months. The process is expected to start late today with Kaczynski and his wife Maria. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski's twin brother, then president Lech Kaczynski, was among 96 people -- most of them senior Polish state officials -- who died in the crash in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10 2010. The delegation was heading to a ceremony in Russia's Katyn forest for thousands of Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 -- a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990. Kaczynski and his wife Maria are buried in the crypt of the Wawel royal castle in Krakow where the kings of Poland and Jozef Pilsudski, the father of Polish independence in 1918, are also interred. In March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Polish suspicions as "groundless, biased and having no connection with the real circumstances of this aircraft accident." Moscow has been asked many times to hand over the wreckage and black boxes to the Polish authorities, but each time has said it will only do so when its own inquiry is finished. Poland's previous liberal government -- headed at the time by Donald Tusk, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's arch-rival -- blamed bad weather and errors by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers. But the PiS-led government, which came to power in November 2015 after eight years in the opposition, rejected those conclusions as a coverup and launched its own investigation. Only 10 per cent of Poles approve of the decision to exhume the bodies, according to a survey conducted by the IPSOS pollsters published in October. Last month, more than 200 relatives of 17 of the 96 victims wrote an open letter to President Andrzej Duda, saying they felt "abandoned and distraught in the face of a cruel and heartless act" of exhuming the remains. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The number of hate crimes reported to police increased by about 6.7% last year, led largely by a 67% surge in crimes against Muslims, according to statistics released on Monday. Civil rights groups had been raising concerns about an anti-Muslim backlash in the US even before the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, late in the year. The reporting period covers calendar year 2015, but comes at a time of heightened tensions following last week's presidential election. There have been reports of racist and anti-religious instances since Tuesday that have sparked outrage, including students at one school who chanted "white power" and a videotaped assault in Chicago that showed black men beating a white man as onlookers screamed, "You voted Trump!" In 2008, after Barack Obama was elected as the nation's first black president, there were also suspected cases of alleged hate crimes tied to the election. In 2015, there were 257 incidents of anti-Muslim bias compared to 184 incidents the prior year. The total is second only to the surge in hate crimes following the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. The increase could be due, in part, to increased reporting by victims as well as better reporting and tracking by law enforcement agencies, although the number of all law enforcement agencies sending their data to the decreased about 3% between 2014 and 2015. Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased from 5,479 in 2014 to 5,850 last year, and religious-based hate crimes increased by 23%. Jews and Jewish institutions remain the most frequent target of religious-based hate crimes, representing 53% of all those reported. Crimes against Jews increased about 9%. A fire broke out today at an ATM of Central Bank of India due to a short circuit in north Delhi's Kashmere Gate area. "A call was received at 6.24 pm today about a fire breaking out at the ATM of the Central Bank of India situated in Kashmere Gate. The ATM of the bank and the outer area of the bank, situated next to it, was partly damaged in the fire. The fire also spread to Union bank of India that is located on the first floor. Five fire tenders were rushed to the spot," said an officer from Delhi Fire Services. Police said that the fire in the bank was caused due to short circuit. The ATM has been damaged but there was no currency in the ATM. No casualties or injuries were reported due to fire that was doused within five-seven minutes after the fire tenders arrived, said a senior police officer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A French reporter was expelled from Turkey after being detained near the Syrian border in the country's southeast, his employers said. Olivier Bertrand "has arrived in Paris (CDG airport) and is in good shape", said Isabelle Roberts, head of online media Les Jours. Bertrand was detained on Friday in Gaziantep province, where he was working on a series of planned stories on post-coup Turkey. Turkish agency Anadolu said earlier that Bertrand was being held in the northwest and would likely be expelled in the evening. It said he had been detained for failing to seek proper accreditation. But it also described him as writing articles "favourable" to those allegedly behind the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Sunday said his detention was "deeply shocking, unacceptable". Other French media and internet users also threw their weight behind calls for Bertrand's release. "In a democratic country, Olivier Bertrand would have been able to continue reporting without being expelled by a government which has things to hide," said Christophe Deloire, general secretary of the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). His arrest came the same day that Turkey detained the board chairman of opposition daily Cumhuriyet, which has faced an intensifying crackdown since the failed coup. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) There is a lot to tell about India beyond reports on poverty, rape and communal violence, German Ambassador Martin Ney said here today as he felt German journalists posted in India could do better justice while covering it, which is a "meritable challenge". In his opening remarks at the Indo-German Media Dialogue, organised by DW Akademie and the German Embassy, Ney pitched for strengthening media relations between the two countries. "When my colleagues and I talk to people in Germany about India, many of those who have not spent time in India, but take the knowledge about the country from the media in Germany, ask us mostly about poverty, rape, communal violence. "Of course, there are problems in India. And people should be informed about them too. But there's so much more to tell about India," Ney said. Ney said there are "exciting" societal transformations taking place in India, which is witnessing economic reforms and offers business opportunities and advanced technology. "Without doubt, portraying India's diversity and simultaneous presence of extreme contrast, is a meritable challenge. Nevertheless, I personally feel, that German media could do better justice to India," he added. Ney described Indian media as "huge with mind boggling scale, vivid and sometimes noisy" and added the dialogue will help strengthen the media relations between the two democracies. He observed that Indian media houses don't have their correspondents deputed in Germany and depend on Anglo-Saxon agency to know about happenings in the European nation. He also asked the media houses here to have their correspondents in Germany to ensure "first hand impression". "...There is not a single Indian newspaper or TV station that has a correspondent in Germany. As a result, there is no authentically Indian voice from Germany, no Indian journalist to analyse on-the-ground whatever happens in Germany, in the service of Indian reader "... In the lights of very close Indo-German partnership in many areas, I would wish Indian media to rely on the first hand impression from Germany," he said. On the other hand, apart from freelance scribes, as many as six German media organisations have editorial departments in India, he said adding that few other German publications cover Indian affairs from Singapore and Thailand. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A confrontation over the demonetisation move is set to escalate with Congress today accusing the government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and virtually appealing to all opposition parties to put up a united fight on the issue. "Whatever may be the differences, all political parties should not shy away from voicing the concerns of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala told reporters, charging "autocratic" Prime Minister Narendra Modi with unleashing "economic anarchy". The remarks came close on the heels of a meeting Congress and seven other opposition parties had to formulate a joint strategy to corner the government on various issues including demonetisation that has caused inconvenience to the people ahead of Winter Session of Parliament beginning November 16. "This isn't an issue of a single political party but where the entire country has been plunged into economic anarchy by the dictatorial and autocratic PM and his government and it is our duty to raise and champion the voice of the people in the most befitting fashion," Surjewala said. He said that this should be done to draw the attention of the government which in its "arrogance of power and numbers" is not paying heed to reason and cry of the people. Congress also sought to take the battle on the issue to the BJP camp by daring the Prime Minister to release the bank details of the party at the national and state levels for the people to know about transactions. This, Surjewala said, was necessary as West Bengal BJP had deposited Rs one crore in the form of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes on November eight shortly before the demonetisation decision was announced. Claiming that "some select people" had prior knowledge of the demonetisation decision, Surjewala said that this is indicative from the fact that in September this year banks deposits went up by Rs 5,88,600 crore as compared to August. He also found fault with the government raising by 130 per cent the limit of the amount that could be sent abroad by an Indian national in the last two years. Accusing the Prime Minister of facilitating sending Indian money abroad, he wanted to know whom he was helping by the move which resulted in Rs 30,000 crore going to foreign countries as against Rs 10,400 crore earlier. He charged the government with unleashing "tax terrorism" which, he said, has "seriously" affected markets across the country with small traders severely hit. Targeting the Prime Minister for seeking 50 days to deal with the "crisis", he sought to know as to who created it and why there was no adequate preparation. (REOPENS DEL72) Raising a number of questions on the demonetisation move, Surjewala said it has landed people in "humongous" problems and accused the Modi government of branding the entire country as "criminals". Releasing a list of 23 people who have lost their lives over the past 72 hours, he asked whether the Prime Minister would go to each house and apologise to the families which have lost their family members on account of "economic anarchy". "What is the reason that none of the industrialist friends, top bureaucrats, Cabinet Ministers, BJP Chief Ministers or BJP leaders is standing in any line in front of any bank or ATM, while the entire nation spends entire day attempting to exchange Rs 4,000?" he asked. He alleged the actual black money lies with a "handful of industrialist friends" of the Prime Minister. With no end in sight for the cash crunch faced by millions, the government has eased restrictions on withdrawal of alternate currency and extended by 10 days deadline for use of the defunct 500 and 1000 rupee notes for paying utility and fuel bills. The Finance Ministry took a series of steps to increase cash supply in the system, including introducing a new 500 rupee note in the recalibrated ATMs. About 1.3 lakh branch post offices will be stacked with cash and hundreds of new micro cash machines will be installed across the country. Also, a Task Force was set up to expedite process of recalibration of ATMs as well as draw up action plan and ensure implementation of this action plan for quick changeover to enable them to dispense new bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2000. The measures followed ever increasing queues at banks growing even after nearly a week of the government decision to withdraw higher denomination notes. Today being a bank holiday in northern and western India, long queues are expected tomorrow with people wanting to withdraw money or swap the old 500 and 1000 rupee notes. About half of the ATMs have not yet started functioning and wherever were operational ran out of cash in no time. Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikant Das said the government has also raised cash withdrawal limit of at least three-month old current accounts to Rs 50,000 per week and ATMs would start dispensing new 2000 rupee notes within two days. The government extended use of old defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees and purchases from cooperative stores till November 24. While withdrawing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from the intervening night of November 8-9, the government had allowed use of the old currency at government hospitals, railway ticketing, public transport, airline ticketing at airports, milk booths, crematoria/burial grounds and petrol pumps for 72 hours. This list was later expanded to include payments for metro rail tickets, highway and road toll, purchase of medicines on doctor prescription from the government and private pharmacies, LPG gas cylinders, railway catering, electricity and water bills and ASI monument entry tickets. As banks struggled to give alternate currency, the deadline was extended by another 72 hours. That deadline was to end at midnight tonight, but has now been extended till November 24, he said. Old currency can also be used for purchases at consumer cooperative stores like Kendriya Bhandar with valid ID proof as also for paying court fee. But payments towards utility bills will be restricted to only individuals or households for arrears and/or current bills. No advance payments will be allowed. With banks receiving Rs 2 lakh crore in deposits in first four days, the government raised limits on withdrawals and exchange of old banknotes. The daily limit on withdrawals from ATMs has been raised to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 earlier while the weekly cap has been hiked to Rs 24,000 from Rs 20,000. Also, the restriction of daily withdrawal of Rs 10,000 through cheque or withdrawal slip has been dispensed away and such drawals would be within the overall Rs 24,000 a week limit. Old notes of value up to Rs 4,500 a day can now be exchanged as against Rs 4,000 limit previously. The notes withdrawn accounted for 86 per cent of the currency in circulation and Das said the government is stepping up efforts to ensure banknotes of all denominations are available at banks. Banks remained opened across the country through the weekend to deal with the rush. "The ATMs are progressively getting recalibrated. As and when they are recalibrated, the cash limit of such ATMs will stand enhanced to Rs 2500 per withdrawal. This will enable dispensing of lower denomination currency notes for about Rs 500 per withdrawal. Other ATMs which are yet to be recalibrated, will continue to dispense Rs 2000 till they are recalibrated," he said. Adequate cash will be made available with District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) to facilitate withdrawal from existing accounts. The cash withdrawal limits for banks will apply in case of DCCBs also. "There is enough cash in the system to meet the requirement. Members of the public are, therefore, advised not to have any sense of panic," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reviewed the supply and availability of currency notes late last evening in a meeting that went on till past midnight. It was attended among others by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Urban Development and I&B Minister Venkiah Naidu. It was also attended by the RBI Governor Urjit Patel. "The Meeting took stock of the current status of supply of cash and took certain decisions to further activate the dispensing of cash through the networks of banking correspondents, post offices, ATMs, banks and E-payment systems," an official statement said. The cash holding limit of banking correspondents has been raised to Rs 50,000 and banks will replenish the cash with them multiple times in a day as per requirement. Banking correspondents have wide presence in the rural areas. Totally there are 1.2 lakh BCs in the country. The above decisions will facilitate wider reach in the rural areas for exchange and withdrawal of cash from Bank Accounts. The government will take necessary steps for revival of NAFED while people involved in wrongdoings in the co-operative should be punished, Minister of State for Agriculture, Purshottam Rupala said today. Inaugurating the 63rd All India Co-operative Week organised by National Co-operative Union of India (NCUI), Rupala assured that he would take necessary steps for revival of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED). "The people who were involved in the wrongdoings during NAFED scam should be punished, but the institution should not suffer," he said. NAFED is currently procuring pulses on behalf of the government. NAFED had incurred bad debt of around Rs 1,600 crore in the "tie-up" businesses during 2003-06. The cooperative had provided financial support of Rs 3,945 crore to 62 private parties for trading in non-agri items and out of that, many turned defaulters. NAFED has been incurring losses because of mounting interest liability on outstanding loans due to its failed 'tie-up business'. It has been seeking a revival package from the government to run its operation. Rupala asked the NCUI to initiate steps to popularise co-operative model amongst youth. He further said that the problems which farmers are facing should be brought to government notice by NCUI. Rupala said that there is a need to consider co-operative model of development as the best model of development in the country. In this regard, he emphasised the need to disseminate success stories of Amul among the masses. The Minister said that forming co-operatives among small and marginal farmers having 5-10 acres of land is very important to strengthen agriculture operations in the country. NCUI president Chandra Pal Singh Yadav said that the co-operatives could be the best agencies for implementation of government schemes and programmes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gujarat Government today inaugurated 52 generic medicine stores across the state wherein medicines would be sold at a much cheaper rate than the market price. One such store, named as 'Deendayal Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Store', was inaugurated today inside Civil Hospital premises here by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, an official release said. Medicines sold in these stores will be 30 to 80 per cent cheaper than those being sold in the market, it said. Around 1,500 to 2,000 life saving medicines will be sold from each of these stores. Rupani said such stores would give a huge relief to poor and middle class citizens. The Chief Minister announced that his government would open 500 more stores in the next phase of expansion. Rupani also launched a mobile application - 'G-Dava', which can be used by citizens to get details about various medicines sold in generic stores as well as in private pharmacies, said the release. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Lambasting those criticising demonetisation, actor Anupam Kher today said had the issue of displacement of Kashmiri Pandits been raised as vociferously, their problem would have been solved by now. "If somebody is making efforts to make things better, let us not stop him. Let us constructively come together and support. Still if you feel troubled, then elections are due in 2019, they (people) will not allow (BJP) to come back (to power)," he told reporters here. The 61-year-old actor was here to take part in concluding function of the three-day Lok Manthan programme organised by the Madhya Pradesh government and NGO Pragya Pravah. Kher, who has Kashmiri origins, said, "Had the people of the country raised the issue of displacement of Kashmiri Pandits (KP) in the similar manner, a solution would have been found to their problem by now. "Problem is we remained silent for last 60 years on so many issues," he said referring to Emergency, 1984 anti-Sikh riots etc. Asked about people being forced to stand in long queues to withdraw money, Kher said, "You also stand in line for movie tickets. "It is very easy to criticise someone. That is the easiest thing. But for 'these' people praising somebody is quite difficult. If people think that corruption and black money is a major problem, we should praise the move," he said. Demonetisation would also tackle the issue of counterfeit currency being pumped into the country from Pakistan, he said. Kher was quick to add that he was not praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi because his wife (Kirron Kher) was a BJP MP. Kher criticised Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who won a landslide verdict on anti-corruption plank for criticising the demonetisation move. "For the last two to two-and-a-half years, he is doing nothing except pointing fingers at others," the actor said. Touching upon the much-debated 'intolerance' issue, Kher said, "These days if we talk about patriotism, some people start feeling troubled." The row over intolerance was raised unnecessarily, he said. For every Indian, the nation should be of paramount importance, Kher said, adding that every individual has unique and different identities, but the first identity is Indian. Buddhist leader Samdong Rinpoche and actor-writer Chandraprakash Dwivedi also addressed the function. As Punjab decided to hold a special Assembly session on November 16 on Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue, the Haryana government today announced to hold Cabinet meeting tomorrow to discuss the matter. Meanwhile, Haryana's main opposition party INLD stepped up the heat on the BJP-led state government by giving it an ultimatum to get the construction of the canal completed by February 23 next year. The Cabinet meeting will be held here tomorrow under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, an official spokesperson said. "The SYL issue will definitely be discussed among other things during the Cabinet meeting," Amit Arya, media advisor to the Haryana Chief Minister, said. The Haryana unit of BJP has also called a meeting of its MLAs tomorrow evening to discuss the issue, sources said. Punjab's ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is weighing its options to bring a bill aimed at scrapping all water-sharing pacts during the special session of the state Assembly on November 16. Meanwhile, INLD accused Congress and BJP of politicising the SYL issue and gave an ultimatum to the government to get the canal completed by February 23. "If the work does not start, INLD and the people of Haryana will start digging the canal," Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala said after the party's executive body meeting here. The central leaderships of Congress and BJP have been only keen to remain in by just making statements on the SYL issue, he alleged, adding, "They should make it clear if they are with Punjab or Haryana on the issue." He urged the parties to cut across political lines and put their efforts to get the canal completed in the interest of the state. "INLD will seek time from President Pranab Mukherjee to meet him in connection with the issue and demand imposition of President's rule in Punjab. The party will also request the completion of the canal," Chautala said. Political temperatures have risen in Punjab and Haryana after the Supreme Court held as "unconstitutional" the 2004 law passed by Punjab to terminate the SYL canal water sharing agreement with Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and Chandigarh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court today granted four months time to police to complete the probe into a criminal case pending against former Tamil Nadu minister and AIADMK nominee Senthil Balaji in Aravakurichi assembly constituency where election is to be held on November 19. A division bench granted the time after perusing the status report filed by the Central Crime Branch Assistant Commissioner of Police in a sealed cover, complying with its October 26 direction. The court had sought the status report while rejecting the prayer in a petition for a direction to disallow nomination of Senthil Balaji in view of the pending criminal case. While disposing of the petition, the court had said it would monitor the case and directed police to file the final report within 15 days after the three-month period. The petitioner alleged that he had given Rs 4.25 crore to Senthil Balaji, when he was the transport minister in the previous AIADMK regime, through his personal assistant for getting jobs to several persons in the department. He also submitted Balaji had issued a life threat to him when he approached him after the jobs as promised were not given. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Strengthening it's SUV portfolio, Hyundai Motor India today launched all new Tucson with an introductory price ranging between Rs 18.99 lakh and Rs 24.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The company has launched the third generation Tucson with both petrol and diesel powertrains. The manual petrol variant is priced at Rs 18.99 lakh while the diesel versions are priced between Rs 21.59 lakh and Rs 23.48 lakh. The petrol automatic is priced at Rs 21.79 lakh while the one with diesel powertrain is priced at Rs 24.99 lakh. "With the launch of all new Tucson, we aim to strengthen presence in the premium segment with strong leadership positions," Hyundai Motor India Ltd MD & CEO YK Koo told reporters here. The launch of third generation all new Tucson will create a benchmark by giving Hyundai experience to the aspirational Indian customers, he added. With over 45 lakh units sold globally, Tucson is one of the best selling SUVs in the world, Koo said. Tucson comes with 2 litre petrol and diesel engine options and new various features including a puddle lamp, downhill brake control and front and rear parking sensors. The petrol version with manual transmission company comes with 155 PS of power and delivers a fuel efficiency of 13.03 km/ litre. The petrol automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 12.95 km/ litre. The diesel variant with manual transmission offers 185 PS of power and a claimed fuel efficiency of 18.42 km/litre. The diesel automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 16.38 km/ litre. Hyundai Motor India, which crossed the 70 lakh sales milestone in domestic as well as export markets, aims to have four SUV models in its product portfolio in the next four years. The company also plans to launch a sub 4-metre compact SUV in order to fill the gap that lies below Creta. It had showcased concept compact SUV Carlino at the Auto Expo this year in February. The model is under development right now. With Tucson, the company now has three SUVs along with Creta and Santa Fe. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The India International Trade Fair has no significance this time and will not yield any tangible results as the trading community is reeling under sever cash crunch due to demonetisation, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said. Sisodia, who inaugurated 'Delhi Pavilion' at the 14-day India International Trade Fair (IITF) which began here today, said that it was a "sad event" in view of business. "It is a sad event from the point of view of trade. When there is no trade, what is the significance of the fair then? We are following a mere custom to participate in it," the Deputy Chief Minister told reporters here. Though the trade fair is a hub of business, it will not have such a result for the first time since its inception this year as traders are hassled due to the Centre's decision to demonetise high-denomination Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, he said. He alleged that due to demonetisation, there has been a significant dip in tax collection and the government was not getting sufficient revenue. "The government is not receiving revenue. Business has affected severely. People do not have money to eat food. They are sleeping outside ATMs to withdraw cash, but people who have black money are sleeping comfortably. "People's jobs are in jeopardy. What will the common people eat? It was just customary (to participate in trade fair)," he said. The theme of 'Delhi Pavilion' this year is 'Digital Delhi'. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India wants a broad outline or roadmap for the implementation of the Paris agreement to be finalised at the crucial climate change conference here, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said today. The Environment Minister, who arrived here to attend the high-level segment of the ongoing Conference of Parties (CoP22) which begins tomorrow, said India will push the world for adopting a low carbon lifestyle during discussions. Asked about India's stand on pressure from civil society groups on governments to put an end to coal usage especially with the country's heavy dependence on it, Dave said a decision cannot be reached by becoming an activist but one has to think "holistically". "Whatever goals were fixed in Paris, the countries need to make route maps of that (here). Off course it will be for the post 2020 period. But if we do not talk and decide about it today (in Marrakech) how will such big nations form their policies," Dave said. "If the Marrakech conference makes even a broad outline of it, it will be a big achievement for us and for the world as we will at least finalise the routes of the Paris agreement. We can do the detailing in the next two years. But major goals should be finalised. These are the expectations," he said on the sidelines of an event at the India Pavilion here. The CoP22 started on November 7 and will go on till November 18 as nations continue their work on strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, with the central focus on enhancing ambition, promoting implementation and providing support. Before the start of the conference, the Environment Ministry had said India will push the agenda of sustainable lifestyle at the global climate conference apart from focussing on the issue of mobilising finances, which has been its "overriding" concern, to tackle climate change. Dave said India will push the issue of following a low carbon lifestyle during the summit which all nations including developed and developing countries need to follow and asserted that unless all the countries do this, talks will not yield results. He also referred to the example of Delhi where he said despite pollution levels being high, people continue to burst crackers. "We will push for low carbon lifestyles. We had taken it up in pre-CoP meetings as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in Paris also talked about it (that countries need to decrease carbon emissions)," Dave said. "...Its like that Delhi situation, you are bursting crackers even in marriage processions but you know breathing has become a problem then how it will work. Everybody (nations) has to decrease (emissions)," Dave said. "We want to bring this issue to the notice of both developed as well as developing countries. All (countries) have to contribute," he said. India is likely to stress the urgency to take adaptation action as adaptation in the agriculture sector from the point of view of food security is a key priority for developing countries. India is also likely to push operationalisation and meaningful outcomes from the new bodies set up under the Paris agreement which includes technology framework and Paris committee on capacity building. Asked about India's stand on civil society groups urging governments to put an end to the usage of coal, Dave said, "They are raising their own points. But when you make policies for your country or for the world, one cannot do that by being activists." "One has to think about it holistically. You cannot shut down all the machinery like railways etc. They are putting up their point that is good. We will think about it in totality and then take a decision," he said. Asked how India will work on the issue of water in terms of climate change adaptation measures, Dave said India will coming out with a full agenda "exclusively" on water in 2017. An Indian national was killed and a Nepali policeman injured in an heavy exchange of fire between police and an armed group of smugglers in central Rautahat district. Acting on a tip off that a huge cache of arms was being smuggled into the district via the Lalbakaiya River embankment at Dewahi VDC-8, a police team reached the site, but the gang comprising 3-4 individuals opened fire at the team. Police also fired in retaliation and in the heavy exchange of fire a gang member, identified as Tejhilal Saha, 44, from East Champaran in Bihar, was killed and a Nepali policeman was injured, Nepali Deputy Superintendent of Police Nabin Krishna Bhandari was quoted as saying by local media. One rifle, a home-made pistol and some bullets were recovered from the possession of the deceased. Others in the group are on the run and search for them is underway. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 15-year-old Indian-origin boy hanged himself to death allegedly after being bullied in a school in the city of Leicester in the East Midlands region of England. Brandon Singh Rayat died in August but his mother, Mina Rayat, decided to speak out today at the start of National Anti-Bullying Week. "I begged doctors to hospitalise him because it was all too much. I told them he wanted to kill himself," she told 'Leicester Mercury' newspaper. "Although Brandon received help, he was never detained. His anxiety got worse so that it became a complete phobia. He wouldn't leave the house in case he bumped into anyone from school," the 44-year-old added. A full inquest into Brandon's death will take place in January. He was found hanged in his bedroom with a scarf on August 9, after several failed suicide attempts including drinking bleach as well as slashing his wrists. The teenager became suicidal after his schoolmates started calling him a "paedo" and a "faggot" as part of prolonged cyber attacks. He stopped attending Judgemeadow Community College in Leicester last November. Mina, a hair and beauty therapist who lives with her 41-year-old husband Raj, a shop worker, said: "We feel totally let down, by both the school and by the doctors. Those boys who were his friends once have killed him. They have taken his life away and they have ruined our lives. There is a hole left in our hearts and there was no need for it. He deserved better treatment. I wouldn't want any other parent to go through what I've been through." James McKenna, principal of Judgemeadow Community College, said: "The whole school was extremely saddened by Brandon's death, and our thoughts remain with his family. It wouldn't be appropriate to comment in detail in advance of the coroner's inquest, but we can say that Judgemeadow takes the welfare of its pupils very seriously and does not tolerate bullying in any form." A spokesperson for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, which runs mental health services, said: "We were deeply saddened by the tragic death of Brandon Rayat, and extend our sincere sympathies to the family once again. We met with the family immediately after Brandon's death, and their comments are reflected in the robust serious incident investigation which we have carried out." The report will be shared with the family in preparation for the inquest in January. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment further until that inquest has taken place. In the meanwhile, we remain committed to offering appropriate support to the family at this difficult time," the spokesperson said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India-China Joint Military Training exercise, 'Hand in Hand 2016' will be held here from tomorrow to November 27. The exercise is in continuation of the series of joint exercises between India and China, a Defence release issued here said today. "This will be the sixth joint training exercise by the Indian Army with People's Liberation Army of China. It is held annually, alternately, in India and China," it said. The first exercise was held in China at Kunming of Yunnan province in 2007 and the last exercise was held in October 2015 in Kunming Military Academy, Yunnan Province in China, it said. As per the release, the aim of joint training is to share expertise in drills and practices while tackling insurgency and terrorism, thereby promoting healthy military to military relations between the two armies and developing joint strategies for conducting operations in a counter terrorism environment. It also said forming part of the different levels of the military to military engagement across the entire spectrum of operations, this exercise will enrich the two contingents in further honing basic military skills. "The exercise is planned at the company level with respective battalion headquarters controlling the training. The exercise is supervised by a Joint Directing Panel comprising senior officials of both the countries," the release said. 'Exercise Hand in Hand 2016' will be conducted in three phases. The first phase consists of familiarisation with the weapons and equipment. The second phase consists of the conduct of basic training which includes combat conditioning, firing of personal weapon, support weapon and practice of drills like establishment of covert observation post, house clearing, cordon & search and humanitarian and disaster relief operations. The third phase is the conduct of joint exercise. The exercise will be attended by the senior military observers of both the countries, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China today reacted guardedly to the landmark civil nuclear deal recently signed between India and Japan, saying it should "safeguard the authority and effectiveness" of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime. "With regard to nuclear agreement signed between India and Japan and on the use nuclear energy, we believe that under the promise of absorbing international obligation of nuclear non proliferation, all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media briefing here. "At the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," he said. About the reference to the South China Sea in the joint statement issued at the end of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Tokyo, Geng said "under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction". "We have been repeating that we should come back to the right track of peacefully resolving the relevant dispute through negotiations and consultation. "We hope that the countries outside the region would respect efforts made by countries in the region and safeguard as well as consolidate the sound momentum in the South China Sea and and do more that is conducive toregional peace and stability," he said in a cautious response. On the South China Sea, the joint statement issued by India and Japan said that "the two Prime Ministers stressed the importance of resolving the disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law including the UN Convention on Law of Sea (UNCLOS)". Ahead of Modi's visit, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China hopes that India and Japan would take into consideration the "legitimate concerns" of their neighbours. China claims the whole of South China Sea. Its claims are disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israel's high court today rejected a government bid to delay the evacuation of a wildcat Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank beyond a December deadline, in a case that has drawn international concern. The Amona outpost is under a court order to be evacuated by December 25 since it was built on private Palestinian land, but right-wing politicians have called for the around 40 families living there to be allowed to remain. "The evacuation must occur before December 25," the court said in its ruling. "The court rejects the delay requested by the state." In what seemed to be a sharp criticism of the government, it further said that "the duty to obey rulings is not a matter of choice. "It is an essential component of the rule of law to which all are bound as part of the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Whether the government moves ahead with the demolition of Amona has been seen as a test case of whether it will heed international calls to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank. The government, which had sought a seven-month delay while it considered where to move the Amona settlers, is seen as the most right-wing in Israel's history. Key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition advocate settlement building while openly opposing the idea of a Palestinian state. "We're aware of the duress of the Amona residents and are acting in different ways to solve the problem," Netanyahu told lawmakers from his Likud party today. The high court ruled in 2014 that Amona, northeast of Ramallah in the central West Bank, must be evacuated. There are concerns over how any evacuation will play out. In 2006, the demolition of nine permanent houses in the outpost led to clashes between settlers and Israeli forces. With the Amona deadline in mind, a committee of Israeli ministers yesterday approved a draft bill to legalise Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land in communities that meet certain criteria. The Palestinian landowners would be offered compensation in return for the land being seized. The legislation is expected to apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 settler homes in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Six Day War and which the Palestinians want for a future state of their own. The bill must still be approved by Israel's Knesset, or parliament. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said his government's aim is to free the state from extremism and crime. Though crime has been controlled, it should be rooted out, Das said while addressing programmes of parade and Jharkhand Police Alankaran Samaroh on the eve of Jharkhand foundation day here. The chief minister announced that 10,000 police personnel and 2,500 assistant police would be recruited next year. Stating that the assistant police personnel would be deployed in extremist-hit areas, Das said they would get Rs 10,000 per month and their services would be confirmed after three years. The government would construct residential school for the children of police personnel in Ranchi, according to an official release. Likening peace and prosperity as two wheels, Das said both were required for development. The government was working to modernise the police force, he said, adding infrastructure was also being improved. To provide employment to the youth, investments were required, Das said and added Rs 24,000 crore proposals were already there. For investments peace was necessary and investments increased following prevailing of peace in Jharkhand. Das appealed to the police to pro-actively assist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign against black money. The chief minister honoured the families of martyrs and gave away prizes to the police personnel. State Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma, Additional Secretary N N Pandey, DGP D K Pandey, CM's Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar were among senior officials present at the programme. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ruling AIADMK today claimed party supremo and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's statement has created a 'wave of joy' in the state, especially among her supporters, as some workers distributed sweets outside Apollo Hospital, where she has been admitted since September 22. AIADMK Spokesperson C Ponnaiyan said Jayalalithaa was "very well" and that she will soon take over the reins of the party as well as governance. "The Chief Minister is very well and will be returning home soon. The time when governance and political work under Amma duly happens is just around the corner," he said. Speaking to reporters here, he thanked the doctors who treated the 68 year-old leader and people who prayed for her recovery. Referring to her first communication yesterday in about 50 days since being first hospitalised for fever and dehydration, Ponnaiyan said it has resulted in a "wave of joy" in the state. Another party spokesperson, Panruty S Ramachandran, said Jayalalithaa's signed statement proved she was ready to serve the people of the state again. "She has made it clear she is ready once again for public service. She has said she has taken rebirth. This shows her service to people of Tamil Nadu has not gone waste," he said. Meanwhile, buoyed by Jayalalithaa's statement, some party workers distributed sweets to members of public outside the Apollo Hospital here. Jayalalithaa had yesterday said she had taken 'rebirth' because of the prayers of the people and urged them to vote for the AIADMK in the November 19 polls to three assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry. In her first communication since being hospitalised in September, the chief minister said she did not have any grievances in view of the people's "great love" for her, and that, "by God's grace, very soon, by recovering fully, I am waiting to resume work." The AIADMK supremo was admitted to Apollo Hospital here on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration. Later, the hospital had said she was being treated for an infection with respiratory support, among others, by doctors including specialists from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and from London. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Intensifying the crackdown on laundering of illicit wealth, tax authorities are keeping a close vigil on jewellers to check if sales are being broken down into sub-Rs 2 lakh to avoid quoting of PAN. After the government banned old 500 and 1000 rupee notes, gold and bullion are said to be favoured route for laundering of ill-gotten wealth. Gold was sold as high as Rs 50,000 per ten grams last week against the market price of Rs 31,000 as gold and bullion was said to be used to convert the debunked currency. A 20-40 per cent haircut in the value of defunct currency was also being resorted to launder black money. "PAN is mandatory for jewellery sale of over Rs 2 lakh. We are keeping a watch on jewellers to see if they are breaking their sales into parts of less than Rs 2 lakh," CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra told reporters here. Necessary action and penalty, he said, would be initiated wherever violations are found. "Whether it is deposit of cash or sale of goods in old currency note, we are keeping a watch and taking steps," he said after inaugurating the CBDT pavilion at IITF. The government is reportedly also looking at asking jewellers to deposit old high-value currency notes by a set date to prevent money laundering. Also, there are fears that jewellers could show backdated cash sales. While jewellers and diamond traders usually show bills every week while depositing cash generated through sales, very high value deals in cash are often split in smaller amounts or stolen PAN number is cited on bills. Industry insiders say the modus operandi is to use unaccounted gold stock against receipt of demonetised currencies at a heavily discounted rate. Jewellers stayed open into the early hours soon after the Tuesday night announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw old 500 and 1000 rupee notes in the nation's biggest crackdown on black money, corruption and counterfeit currency. As much as 250-kg gold was reportedly sold in Mumbai within a few hours of the announcement. Finance Ministry has ordered all its revenue intelligence agencies to join the crackdown on jewellers and hawala operators besides tracking movement of demonetised currency notes. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Directorate General of Central Excise intelligence (DGCEI) have now joined the income tax department in the crackdown. The Income Tax department has sent around 600 notices to jewellers across 25 cities asking them to detail daily sales between November 7 and 10. Teams of DGCEI officials are also visiting major jewellery stores and their manufacturing units to serve notices seeking these details, sources said. Jewellers in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Vijaywada, Nashik and Lucknow are initially under the scrutiny of the DGCEI officials, they said, adding that this exercise can later be extended to other cities too. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian-origin British actor Dev Patel says his upcoming film "Lion" is special as it is hard to find performance oriented roles for someone like him. In Garth Davis' feature, Patel plays Saroo Brierley, a young Indian boy who gets adopted by an Australian family, only to find his birth mother two decades later using Google Earth. The actor said he fully committed himself to his role, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "I called my manager straight after I walked out of the audition and told him that if I get it, don't send me anything for the next eight months. Don't distract me with any other work or audition. "Journeys like this don't come around very often for someone who looks like I do," said Patel. The actor revealed that he auditioned for the role several times, including a Skype session from a bathroom. The actor said during a six-hour long audition process Davis asked him to roar like a lion. "After the audition, (Davis) said 'If we decide to go with you. I really want you to change'. He said he wanted to see a Dev Patel that no one has ever seen before." "Lion" also starring Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara is scheduled to release on November 25. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rolling out red carpet towomen entrepreneurs, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiahtoday expressed confidence that with several initiatives taken, the state would soon occupy the top slot for women entrepreneurship. He urged women entrepreneurs to explore entrepreneurial opportunities in Karnataka and make the statetheir base. "I am happy to note that Karnataka's diversity ratioin employment and entrepreneurship is amongst the best inIndia. Our eco-system is regarded as the benchmark for womento live and work and I am happy that we are in the rightdirection," Siddaramaiah said at the event "ThinkBig 2016". He said that according to the fourth Medium,Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) census, Karnataka, Kerala,Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have 51.9 per cent of the country's women-owned business indicating the potential that exists in our State and country. "I am sure with the initiativestaken up, Karnataka would soon be in the top slot...," he said. "ThinkBig 2016", which is projected to be Asia'slargest women entrepreneurship and economic empowerment summit, is being organised by Karnataka government, together with WEConnect International in India and Thinkthrough Consulting (TTC). According to the organisers, the event is aimed at bringing together more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs, 300 Industry leaders and 400 businesses and 35 top banks to connect women entrepreneurs across the globe with the "thriving" business ecosystem in Karnataka. Speaking on special attention being given to women entrepreneurs to encourage enterprise creation and industrial capacity building, he said, there has been unprecedented response from them. "Initially we thought of developing one Women's Park at Harohally near Bangalore. But, surprisingly there was a great response from all over the State to set up parks forwomen. Going by the enthusiasm generated amongst women entrepreneurs, I am sure we would have Women's Park all over the State soon," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks today with officials in Oman on efforts to end Yemen's 19-month conflict, state media in Muscat said. Kerry and Oman's Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi discussed the "peaceful and humanitarian role played by the sultanate in Yemen," ONA state agency reported. Kerry later met with Oman's ruler Sultan Qaboos with whom he discussed "regional and international developments," ONA said. The visit to Oman is one of Kerry's last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration steps down in January. The US chief diplomat has been pushing for a settlement in Yemen, where a deadly conflict between Iran-backed rebels and the government escalated after a Saudi-led coalition intervened on behalf of the government in March 2015. Oman, one of the few Arab states to have good relations with Iran, has used its links to mediate peace talks between the insurgents and the UN-recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. It is also the only Arab nation in the Gulf which is not taking part in the coalition, although it maintains good relations with regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia. More than 7,000 people have been killed and nearly 37,000 wounded in Yemen since March 2015, and the UN says millions are in need of food aid. Another 21 million people urgently need health services, according to the UN health agency. Today, 12 civilians, including a child, were killed in an air raid that targeted a convoy of three lorries in central Ibb province, while nine rebels were killed in an ambush in the same region, military and medical sources said. Five other rebels, three soldiers and one civilian were killed Sunday in renewed violence in the southwestern province of Taez, military sources said. After Oman, Kerry will travel to Abu Dhabi for talks on regional conflicts, including Syria. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a breakthrough in the kidnapping case of two brothers for extortion, the Special Task Force (STF) today arrested the main accused Ranjit Mandal alias Ranjit Don in Bihar's Lakhisarai district. Superintendent of Police (SP) Ashok Kumar said the STF acting on a tip off raided Baudh Nagar village and caught the accused from his relative's house, where he had come to attend a shraddh, with the help of local police. Mandal is the main accused in the kidnapping of two brothers - Suresh Chandra Sharma and Kapil Sharma, who are sons of a marble merchant Babulal Sharma, who hails from Rajasthan, Kumar said. The two brothers were abducted for ransom from Jai Prakash Narayan International Airport in Patna on October 22 soon after they alighted from a commercial flight for a business deal. They were hid by the abductors at a hideout in the remote jungles in Lakhsarai for four days before they were rescued by the SIT headed by Manu Maharaj, the senior superintendent of police of Patna district, on October 26 last. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Omi Vaidya's became an overnight sensation after playing nerdy 'Chatur Ramalingam' in 2009 film "3 Idiots' but did not do as many films in India and the actor cites lack of challenging roles as the reason for his absence from Bollywood. Post "3 idiots", Omi starred in just four films - "Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji", "Desi Boyz", "Players" and "Jodi Breakers", which released in 2012. The actor 34-year-old actor says though he has enjoyed his stint with Hindi films especially in terms of money, he was not getting roles which excited him enough. "I am grateful for being remembered for my role in '3 Idiots' because most people work all their lives to get that kind of fame. I got into this profession because I wanted to do something different. '3 Idiots' was very challenging as I did not know the language and I did not grow up in India," Omi told PTI over phone from Washington DC. The actor says travelling to exotic locales for his films shoots and getting to hang out with big Bollywood stars was a great experience but was not enough to convince him to continue doing big-budget movies in India. "After '3 Idiots', I did take up other projects which were enjoyable, I was paid very well and was appreciated by people. But the challenge of life is about learning constantly. Some people are just happy with making good money but I want to continue growing and for that you have to do different things. I strive on doing something different." Omi is currently busy being a hands-on father to his son, who was born last year. Besides fatherhood, he is also starring in a new Indian-American show "Brown Nation", which is an entertaining, slice of life series focused on life a struggling small IT business owner in New York. "Brown Nation" has been created and written by Matt Grubb, George Kanatt and Abi Varghese. "I had a child so these are the times you can't replace. I am just trying to spend as much time with my son and wife as I can. I am also working on projects like 'Brown Nation' which is novel and ground-breaking. I wanted to do something more challenging than the same old Bollywood films." The series will release on Netflix on November 15. Besides Omi, the series also features Rajeev Varma, Shenaz Treasurywala and Melanie Chandra. Omi, who plays Balan, the South Indian guy hired to work in the company, says "Brown Nation" will deliver a slice of typical Indian life with ironies intact. "I play Balan. It is a very different from anything that I have ever done and a show like this has also not been made before. It is an Indian show and it's going to get a place in America, besides getting a worldwide audience thanks to Netflix." Other than India-themed shows on US television and Indian origin actors, Omi is also happy to see Bollywood stars like Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone making a mark with their respective projects in America. Referring to Priyanka's FBI agent role in US TV series "Quantico", the actor says,"South Asians are typically known in the US as computer scientists, convenience store owners, lawyers or doctors. Having an Indian as an FBI agent is a very good thing. "It is great to see more Indians making a mark. Be it Aziz Ansari ('Master of None'), Priyanka or Deepika Padukone in a film. All of this is progress. We need to see more people who look like us on TV or in movies. Two men who cooperated with authorities investigating a Minnesota conspiracy to join the Islamic State group in Syria were rewarded with lighter sentences today by a federal judge, who told one of the men he hoped his lenience wasn't a mistake. Abdullahi Mohamed Yusuf, 20, was sentenced to the 21 months he's already served in jail plus 20 years of supervised release. Abdirizak Warsame, 21, didn't fare as well, but his sentence of two and a half years in prison was two years less than prosecutors sought. District Judge Michael Davis, who will sentence all nine men in the conspiracy this week in separate hearings, said it didn't make sense to send Yusuf to prison. He pleaded guilty to a terror charge and testified against several of the others. "I think we'll miss the opportunity to help this young kid," Davis said of sending him to prison. "I hope I'm not wrong." "I will not let you down, your honor," Yusuf told the judge. Earlier, Yusuf said he was "not the same naive 17-year-old" who was drawn into the conspiracy, and said he now rejects the Islamic State. "ISIL's ideology is flawed," Yusuf said. "There is nothing Islamic about their so-called state." Prosecutors had asked for 42 months, but US Attorney Andy Luger praised Yusuf for cooperating with their case and told Davis he accepted the shorter sentence. Davis was sterner with Warsame, who told the judge he had been manipulated. Davis said he didn't buy Warsame's claims that he's no longer a radical. "The problem I have with you is everything has seemed so smooth," the judge said. But he went on to tell Warsame he was getting lucky. "For the next round of sentencings, it's going to be a whole different ballgame, so count your blessings," Davis said. One more man was to be sentenced later today, and the remaining six tomorrow and Wednesday. The sentencings cap a long court case that shined a light on terrorism recruitment in Minnesota. The state, with the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the US, has struggled with the issue in recent years. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. Before that, more than 22 men were recruited to al-Shabab in Somalia since 2007. Prosecutors said the conspiracy of the nine began in spring 2014, when a group of friends began inspiring and recruiting each other to travel to Syria to join IS. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Alarmed at the use of pharmaceutical drugs like Chloral Hydrate and Alprazolam in toddy sold across 250-odd shops in the city, the Maharashtra Excise department has decided to shut them down permanently. Excise minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule has decided to allow sale of toddy only where it is produced in view of the health hazards. Chloral Hydrate is used as sedative and hypnotic drug to treat sleep disorders. Its side effects include severe liver or kidney disorders, heart problems, stomach inflammation. While Alprazolam is used in treating panic and anxiety disorders. Its side effects include dryness of mouth, slurred speech, urinary retention, drowsiness and aggressive behavior. "Henceforth, permission for toddy shops will be given at places where there are toddy producing trees," a department official said. He said that after sunrise, the toddy brought down from trees slowly begins to ferment. "As per a survey by the state Excise department, toddy sold in Mumbai was found to be mixed with Chloral Hydrate and Alprazolam. What alarmed us is that these drugs can cause side effects, if consumed when not needed," the official said. During the raids conducted by the department at toddy stalls in Mumbai, Pune, Solapur and Nanded cities, it was found that the beverage being sold was mixed with these drugs. "These two drugs are known to cause continuous state of inebriation. Besides this, another study has revealed widespread addiction among casual labourers who consume it for relaxation," he said. The official revealed that despite there being no tree in Mumbai that produces toddy, there are around 250 toddy stalls in the metropolis. Also, there have been reports in Telangana of people succumbing after consuming adulterated toddy, he said. The state Excise department, meanwhile, has begun conducting a census of toddy trees in the Maharashtra. A maximum of toddy producing trees are found in districts of Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Palghar, Sangli, Solapur, Pune and Nanded in the state. At present, the Excise department has been allowing sale of toddy, imported from other regions of the state, in Mumbai. The official said the department was contemplating making it mandatory for plantation of 1,000 toddy producing trees before applying for toddy sale license. He said that the government earns about Rs 45 crore revenue out of the sale of toddy in the state. Toddy or palm wine is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree such as palmyra, date palms and coconut palms. Maharashtra Governor Vidyasagar Rao today called upon doctors and hospitals to work in synergy to make the state the preferred destination for medical tourism, which can serve as the stepping stone for India to be a leader in providing affordable and holistic health care. Rao was speaking after inaugurating the 66th hospital of the Apollo Group of Hospitals at Belapur in Navi Mumbai, which is also the first in Maharashtra. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and State Health Minister Deepak Sawant were also present on the occasion. "Navi Mumbai is an emerging city. The state government is keen to develop it as a Smart city. With new international airport coming up here, it will come on the global map. The Apollo Hospital is opening here at the right moment," he said. Rao said today, apart from hospitals in Mumbai, hospitals in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi are increasingly attracting patients from Gulf and other foreign countries. "As a matter of fact, number of patients from abroad visiting India for treatment has been growing by 23 to 25 pc annually. The Apollo Group should make conscious efforts alongwith other hospitals to make Maharashtra the preferred destination for medical tourism in the country. For this purpose we will have to market the strengths of our health care sector such as quality, personal care and afford-ability among different countries of the world," he said. Inaugurating the Global Ayurveda Festival early this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had rightly said that India can be a leader in making affordable, holistic health care available to the world. "I personally feel that the beginning can be made from Maharashtra. I would like to assure you of all cooperation from the state government in making Maharashtra, the preferred medical tourism destination," the Governor said. "Healthy citizens are integral to building a healthy society and building a healthy economy. At a time when India is making serious attempt to break into the league of super powers in the world, it is utmost important that we have in place a world class health care system for our people. "India's doctors and surgeons are the best in the world. It fills our heart with pride when we see our doctors and surgeons having become an integral part of the health care system in the US, the UK and in many other countries. For a country of 1.25 billion people, we are producing very few doctors. There are 7 physicians per 10,000 population in India, compared to 15 in China, 25 in the US, 28 in the UK and 43 in Russia," he felt and appealed doctors to join the mission. The Government has launched the Smart cities and Smart villages programme. This goal cannot be achieved without an element of smart healthcare. Smart healthcare is integral to smart cities and smart villages. Smart does not mean high-end or costly, it means quality healthcare at affordable costs, Rao said. "We need to evolve a system that provides high quality and affordable medical care to people, particularly to the weaker and disadvantaged sections of society. A huge divide exists between rural and urban India in terms of access to healthcare. I will appeal Apollo Hospital to form a mobile team of doctors and para medical staff as part of its social responsibility," he said. Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis, who also spoke on the occasion, said that the rural region of the state was facing severe crunch in the form of manpower in health sector and shortage of doctors. This can be overcome by making use of the modern technologies, he said. He also declared that by 2018 each and every grampanchayat, school and PHC in the state would be connected through fibre and then health care services would improve. Also, this would also help private hospitals in their services to the rural populace, he said. Fadnavis wanted Apollo to partner the government in their endeavour to provide quality medical services to the villagers. He reiterated the state faced several challenges in providing best healthcare in the rural parts of the state and this would be overcome once connectivity was in place. The Chief Minister also suggested starting a skill development centre in Navi Mumbai with the assistance of the Apollo. The founder of the hospital, Dr Pratap Reddy also declared that the hospital would perform as many as 66 operations free of cost for the needy on account of being the 66th facility of Apollo in the country. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his statement that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonitisation, saying it is an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. Banerjee said while the masses have been victimised and crushed under the weight of demonetisation, many economists are now predicting the onset of recession. "This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days," she said in a statement. Speaking at BJP's 'Parivartan Yatra' in Ghazipur today, Modi said, "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while the rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills." Banerjee, who is in the forefront of the opposition's attack against the Modi government on demonitisation issue, had said she was not averse to working with arch-rival CPI(M) and other opposition parties like Congress, SP, BSP to fight against the "anti-people" government which has imposed an "undeclared emergency". She also spoke to President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday over the Centre's demonetisation move and said representatives of political parties will meet him on this issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police this evening arrested a man for killing his father by setting the house on fire at Goraj village in Waghodia tehsil of the district, 40 km from here. The accused was identified as Arjun Parmar (35). Inspector Y R Chauhan of Waghodia police station said that Arjun had a heated argument with his father Govind (65) after which he set the house on fire last evening. Govind, who was very weak, could not escape and died in the fire. Fire brigade vehicles of Vadodara municipal corporation were rushed to the spot. Arjun who fled from the spot was arrested this evening. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Maoist militia commander was today gunned down in an exchange of fire with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said. The skirmish took place in the wee hours between District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the jungles of Dornapal Police Station limits, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (Anti-naxal operations), Jitendra Shukla, told PTI. Acting on a specific input aboutthe presence of a group of armed ultras in the forest between Arlampalli and Medwahi villages, around 500 kms from here, asquad of DRGwas dispatched to the location late last night, he said. When the DRG party reached the target area in the early hours, they cameunderheavyfirefrom Maoist which led to gun-battle between both the sides,the ASP said. However, ultras soon fled from the spot. During the search, body of a naxal clad in 'uniform', a country made rifle, some 12 bore live ammunition, wire and other items were recovered from the spot, he said. The killed Maoist has been identified as Vanjam Nanda, a very active Militia commander against whom at least12 warrants issued by various courtsin grave naxal offences were pending, the ASP said. Nandahad served as the head of Janatana Sarkar group Maoists in Arlampalli, Medwahi, Tonguda and Toyapara villages of the region, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi today defended the action as one which has brought "sound sleep" to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as "insult" to people. As a belligerent Prime Minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging BJP leaders had prior information about the impending decision. Pummelling the Congress and other parties which are criticising demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left yesterday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. "Don't mislead people...I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing Emergency," he said addressing a rally in Ghazipur, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad High Court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The November 8 decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliament's winter session with representatives of seven parties-- Congress, TMC, JD(U), RJD, CPI, CPI(M) and YSR (Congress)--discussing the matter. The SP, BSP and AAP, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the "crisis" situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawati's BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. "Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Daring Modi to make public the bank details of the party at the central and state levels, Surjewala alleged that a BJP functionary O P Jha had deposited Rs one crore in party account in West Bengal in currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 on November 8, shortly before the Prime Minister announced their demonetisation. Mamata Banerjee, who has been in touch with various parties on the issue, including arch rival CPI(M), slammed Modi for his remarks that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. "This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days," she said in a statement. BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Modi's "garland of notes" remark, unleashed a no- holds-barred attack on the Prime Minister, saying he cannot tolerate that a "dalit ki beti" is presented such a garland. "He (Modi) has accepted garland of notes many times. But if a 'dalit ki beti' is offered such a garland, it it does not become palatable for the Prime Minister, it reflects his cheap mentality," she said at a hurriedly convened press conference in Lucknow hours after Modi made the remark at a BJP rally in Ghazipur. "In order to divert people's attention from his failures, Modi levels baseless allegations against his poltical opponents which is condemnable...Allegations on policy matters are different but personal ones should not be made...He cannot tolerate that a dalit ki beti is presented garland of notes," she said, adding one cannot digest what Mayawati wears. Mayawati said an undeclared "Bharat Bandh" was prevailing in the country where all economic activity has come to a grinding halt due to demonetisation. "Our party welcomes from the heart any strong action for it (against black money) but the present government in the garb of checking black money and corruption has forced the people to face immense hardships," she said. Mayawati was offered a garland of currency notes at a party rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury also sought to pick holes in the demonetisation drive, claiming that Prime Minister's stated objectives including those of tackling corruption will not be achieved with the steps taken. He also claimed that the BJP-led government had gains in UP election in mind while making the move and reiterated his party's charge that BJP leaders had prior information about the decision, referring to the West Bengal BJP depositing crores "a few hours ahead of Modi's November 8 announcement. "You discontinued Rs 1000 and Rs 500 currency notes. But, replaced it with that of Rs 2000. Nobody is able to use that note," Yechury said as he flashed a Rs 2000 note he withdrew from an ATM in Parliament premises to tell reporters that he has not been able to spend it over the past five days. "Also terrorists don't use cash, such funding is done through electronic transfers. The government should rather implement the law which was brought after 2008 terror attack in Mumbai," he suggested. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, one of the most strident critics of Modi, demanded that the measure be rolled back. "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur Modi said, "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, set to face a difficult state assembly election, said the farmers were badly hit by the Modi government's action and asked the Prime Minister to make special arrangements for them in the middle of the cropping season. "They said the measure (demonetisation) will cause pain, but whose who are giving the pain themselves did not know how much pain it will cause. First they said it will last for a week or ten days, now they are saying 50 days," Akhilesh said. As Modi battled opposition criticism, BJP ally Shiv Sena too did not pull any punches and termed the demonetisation drive as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said. Despite a show of unanimity on the issue of demonetisation, divisions persisted among opposition parties on whether they will join TMC delegation when it meets the President. "By and large there was a decision that we will work together. In such cases, it is not like will be led by a, b or c or whether we should meet the President at the start of the session, in the middle or the end," Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said after the meeting. Yechury, whose party and TMC are at daggers drawn in West Bengal, said,"The matter has to be first raised in Parliament and then we will take it forward." When asked if the opposition was united on the issue, he said,"It (unity) has to be on the floor of the House. Floor coordination cannot happen anywhere else." TMC's Derek O'brien, however, said his party will meet the President on the appointed day and at appointed hour in view of the "crisis" situation. "November 16th it is, 1:30 pm it is. I hope others will see the urgency and come back to us," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President-elect Donald Trump will be "unparalleled" friends and under their leadership Indo-US trade could reach a whopping trillion dollars a year in less than a decade, said a prominent Indian-American industrialist and Trump supporter. "I have no doubt that Trump Sarkaar (government) and Modi Sarkaar will be the best friends and the two leaders will be unparalleled friends in the history of world leadership," Republican Hindu Coalition founder Shalabh Kumar said at an event to felicitate him following Trump's election victory. Kumar expressed confidence that Trump will be president for two terms and the Modi government too will get a second term, giving both leaders at least eight years to work together at the world stage. Citing strong growth in bilateral economic cooperation, Kumar said he is confident that "under Trump Sarkaar and Modi Sarkaar, India and US trade will reach one trillion dollars per year in the next eight years." Kumar had last month organised a rally in New Jersey attended by Trump, who had said at the event that he is a "big fan of Hindus" and of India. He described Trump's stunning election win as a "second Diwali." "There is a lot of commonality between India and the US. Trump will be the best President for India, he will be best friend with India," Kumar said at the event attended by several members of the Indian-American community. Kumar stressed that areas such as electronic products will propel trade between the two nations to a trillion dollars in the next eight years. He said under a Trump administration, "lot of legislation that poses artificial barriers" to trade will be removed and India and the US will see greater collaboration in areas such as defence, energy and manufacturing as well as combating terrorism. He also expressed confidence that the Trump administration will enact strong immigration laws which will benefit the hundreds of thousands of Indians legally waiting for their US Green Cards and legal residency permits. Terming radical Islam as the "camel in the room," Kumar later told PTI that Trump is not afraid to use the words to describe the problem of terrorism confronting the world. "There is a camel in the room. A lot of people ignore the camel in the room, Trump is not afraid to call it what it is - radical Islam, extremist Islam. Radical Islam has declared a war on the free world. You have to first recognise the enemy, if you do not recognise that camel, that war and pretend that there is no war how can you fight the war," he said. He stressed that the Trump-Modi relationship "will not be just optics". Optics is "when President Barack Obama celebrates Diwali in the White House but then goes and gives F-16s to Pakistan," he said. When asked how soon will the two leaders meet, Kumar said a meeting between Modi and Trump will happen "in a timely" order. "There are a lot of pressing domestic problems that Trump faces and which he will have to address immediately such as repealing and replacing the Obamacare Act, the Iranian nuclear deal and thousands of other legislation brought in by Obama," Kumar said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A pro-Russian politician has secured a clear win in Moldova's presidential race, final results showed today, an election that many Moldovans hope will rekindle ties with Moscow. In the full count, Igor Dodon won 52.2 per cent of the vote. Maia Sandu, who ran on an anti-corruption ticket, had 47.8 per cent. Russian President Vladimir Putin invited Dodon to visit Moscow and said he looked forward to developing bilateral relations. In her first comments after the final results, Sandu said the elections were neither free nor fair and accused opponents of using "dirty methods" including the media and administrative resources, against her. She called for the resignation of authorities responsible for organising the elections. International election observers said today "fundamental freedoms (were) respected, but polarised media coverage, harsh rhetoric detracted from the process." Today, up to 3,000 mostly young Moldovans marched to the offices of the Central Election Committee in Chisinau shouting "Down with the Mafia!" Anger had also flared yesterday after Moldovans voting in Britain, Ireland, France, Italy and elsewhere lined up for hours and ballot papers ran out. Sandu said the elections had been badly organised. Dodon's victory was celebrated with fireworks early Monday in the semi-autonomous Gagauzia region, home of many ethnic Russians. Dodon, leader of the Socialists' Party, announced himself the victor at midnight Sunday and called for calm, vowing to be a president for all Moldovans, regardless of their political views. He said he seeks good relations with the nation's neighbors, Romania and Ukraine. Putin congratulated Dodon and said the outcome of the elections demonstrates Moldovans want to have a balanced foreign policy." The statement said the Russian leader is willing to develop bilateral relations within an existing friendship agreement. Romania's president, Klaus Iohannis, was cooler and more reserved in his remarks, saying the new president should fulfil his mandate "with wisdom and balance," and respect "the constitutional attributes" of the post. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The metropolis has recorded a whopping 289 per cent rise in rape cases in the last five years, according to data compiled by NGO Praja Foundation. As per figures obtained under Right to Information, 728 rape cases were registered in the financial capital in 2015-16, up from 187 in 2011-12, registering in increase of 289 per cent, Praja said in its annual report on policing and law & order in Mumbai which was released today. Similarly, 2,145 molestation cases were reported in the city in fiscal 2015-16, a manifold spike from 554 in 2011-12. Of the 712 rape cases reported across the megapolis in 2015, 448 were against children below the age of 18. Netai Mehta, Founder and Managing Director of Praja, said, "Within a span of five years, rape cases saw an increase of 289 per cent and molestation 287 per cent. The Government and Police Department should take cognisance of this data and take steps to ensure safety of women and children." The report said on an average it takes 9.2 months for a chargesheet to be submitted after an FIR is filed in a rape case and 21.3 months for a court verdict. The Praja annual survey of over 25,000 households found that people's concern for safety of women and children has been increasing over the years. The number of murder cases has come down by 7 per cent in 2015-16 to 183 as compared to 2014-15 when the figure stood at 170. But riot cases saw an increase of 28 per cent - from 353 in 2014-15 to 452 in 2015-16, the NGO said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Health Minister J P Nadda today urged the private sector to join hands with the government and be part of a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model in three areas - Prime Minister Dialysis Scheme, Free Diagnostics facilities to rural people and strengthening of National Institute of Pathology. "The government is committed to take PM Dialysis Yojna to district level for free facility for BPL and 400 centres proposals on the PPP model from states have been approved. The government cannot do it alone and reputable and leading private players like Dr Lal PathLabs need to come together," Nadda said. "The government will provide full support to private players which have expertise, brand and credibility and can provide quality and affordable facilities to a large number of people," he said. The Health Minister was inaugurating a Scientific Symposium, organized by Dr Lal PathLabs to mark the 100th Birth Anniversary of its Founder. During the inaugural session, Lt Gen M K Unni, Director General Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS) and Dr Soumya Swaminathan, DG, ICMR also highlighted the challenges and the way forward for Pathology in India. They also stressed upon capacity building, new technologies and innovations to reduce laboratory expenses and improving patients care through integration. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Natural disasters drive at least 26 million people into poverty each year and cause more than USD 500 billion in lost consumption, far exceeding the value of damage to property alone, according to a World Bank report released today. Those numbers will be driven up in the coming decades as climate change amplifies the destructive power of cyclones, flooding and drought, said the report, released on the margins of high-level UN climate talks in Marrakesh. Up to now, global calculations of the damage wrought by Nature on communities have not adequately taken into account disparities in wealth, according to the 190-page report, entitled "Unbreakable: Building the resilience of the poor in the face of natural disasters". The new approach has huge implications for how and where to best spend money to make cities and rural areas more resilient to such shocks. "One dollar in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person as a poor person," said lead author Stephane Hallegatte. "The same loss affects poor and marginalised people far more because their livelihoods depend on few assets, and their consumption is closer to subsistence level." Today, a government deciding where to install infrastructure to avoid urban flooding would logically favour a wealthy district that suffered USD 20 million of property damage over a poor one where asset losses totalled USD 10 million. But the calculation changes as soon as the often long-lasting human misery left in the wake of flooding in a slum area is factored in. Building dikes and drainage systems in the poorer area "would generate lower gains in avoided assets loss, but larger gains in well-being," the report said. The true cost of natural disasters have been vastly underestimated, it concluded. A recent UN study of 117 countries, both rich and developing, estimated total global asset losses from natural disasters at USD 327 billion (304 billion euros) a year. But if lost consumption -- when medicine or schooling for example that was barely within reach before becomes unaffordable -- is included, the bill totals about USD 520 billion annually, the World Bank found. Based on a global survey of 1.2 million people in 89 nations, the report also showed that 26 million people fall below the income threshold of USD 1.9 (1.75 euros) a day, a widely accepted measure of poverty. "This is surely a conservative figure," Hallegatte told AFP. Myanmar's Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which claimed some 140,000 lives, caused some four billion dollars in damage, according to the UN. But it also forced up to half of the country's poor farmers to sell off land and other assets to relieve debt following the cyclone, pushing them deeper and more irretrievably into hardship -- making the true cost much higher. The most deadly disasters since the start of the century -- Nargis, the Indian ocean tsunami of 2004, earthquakes in China and Haiti -- have not been caused by extreme weather events. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Acting on a tip off from the Sri Lankan Navy, an Indian naval patrol team intercepted a fibreglass boat with two armed men and chased them away when they tried to enter Indian territorial waters. "The team acted on a tip off from the Sri Lankan Navy that the boat with two armed men would try to cross Indian territorial waters," police quoted Coastal Marine Group police and Intelligence Bureau officials as saying. The incident occurred at Olaikuda area, they said. There was an exchange of fire between the two but none were injured and the Sri Lankans managed to go back to their territorial waters, they said. Marine Police and Q branch and also the IB, said they got details from some Indian fishermen who were in the area. Following the incident, CMG has intensified patrolling. Police said naval officials had told them that an enquiry was being conducted into the incident. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The personnel of the National Disaster Response Force today saved four persons from drowing in the Ganga here during Kartik Purnima. Officiating Commandant of 9TH Battalion of NDRF Ravi Kant said in a statement here that a 35-year-old devotee Ramesh Kumar was rescued from deep in the river at Kila ghat in Patna district by constable Sudhir Kumar. In an another incident, a 14-year-old boy Rajeev Kumar was rescued by constable Kanhee Singh at crowded Chimani Gha, Kant said. Similarly, two sisters were rescued at Gandhi ghat by the NDRF team, the Officiating commandant said. In an another chilling incident, an alert NDRF personnel traced a four-year-old boy who had gone missing among milling crowd on the bank of the Ganga at Gai ghat in Patna district and handed him over to his mother. Equipped with deep diving set on inflatable motor boat NDRF personnel patrolled the entire strech of the river in Patna on the occasion of Kartik Purnima. The Bihta-based NDRF team had also established medical camp at Gandhi ghat for devotees. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) House Speaker Paul Ryan and his wife, Janna, work with a technician as they stand on stage at the Quicken Loans Arena, the site of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. By of the Cleveland After being twisted and torn over Donald Trumps candidacy, Wisconsin Republicans have come to Cleveland searching for unity, something that hasnt been this elusive in quite some time. We need to unify, said party activist Mary Buestrin, a longtime member of the Republican National Committee. Its a bit disconcerting to me that I have to actually work on people (to back Trump) that should be automatically just doing this. There may be no better window into the turmoil Trump has caused in his party than the Wisconsin GOP, which was split every which way over the man who will become the Republican standard-bearer at this weeks four-day convention. The divisions are all the more striking when you consider that this state was a model of Republican solidarity during the pitched warfare over Gov. Scott Walkers tenure, with conservative leaders, conservative media, tea party activists, business groups, social conservatives, party regulars and elected officials achieving a remarkable degree of cohesion while taking and holding power in Wisconsin. Theres been a little splintering of the Walker coalition, but well get it back together, state GOP chairman Brad Courtney said. The last five or six years have strengthened the team (and) put us in a situation where we can handle something like this and get through it in a good way and not be fractured and all over the place, Stephan Thompson, a former state party director and political aide to Walker, said of his fellow Republicans. Its really just mind-boggling, said Mike Tate, who did battle with a GOP juggernaut in Wisconsin when he served as state chairman of the Democratic Party. We have two of the stronger state parties in the country, said Tate. To watch (Republicans) sort of reel and careen back and forth is in many ways a microcosm what has been happening nationally in the Republican Party which is how do we handle the Donald Trump candidacy? The party regulars who make up a large part of the Wisconsin delegation have mostly come around for Trump, out of partisan loyalty and a desire to beat Hillary Clinton. In interviews, many praised Trumps choice of running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as politically and philosophically reassuring. Assembly Majority Speaker Leader Robin Vos, who has withheld his endorsement, said after arriving here that he hopes to get behind Trump in the coming days. Our base just wants somebody who can win. Donald Trump has to show this week that he can win and I think people will unify, Vos said. Despite his clashes with Trump during the primaries, Walker will speak Wednesday night at the convention, where he plans to argue that Democrat Hillary Clinton is wholly unfit to be president, he said in an email to supporters. But prominent Republicans still couch their support for Trump more in terms of partisan obligation and political necessity than affection or enthusiasm for the candidate. One of the primary political duties with this job is not to dis-unify our party, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan told National Public Radio last week when asked about his support for Trump. There are lot of things that I dont like that Trump has said, and there are a lot of things he could have said in a better way than he did. However ...he won the nomination fair and square, said GOP congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, whose district gave Trump his biggest losing margin of any in the country in the presidential primaries. Citing his partys past success in Wisconsin, Sensenbrenner said, We run the risk (in this election) of losing everything that we have stood for as a result of disunity over Trump. Wisconsins role at this convention features several twists. The state swung hard against Trump in its April primary. Yet it will leave its stamp all over the Trump convention, with Ryan and national GOP chairman Reince Priebus presiding and six home-state Republicans speaking: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy on Monday; Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on Tuesday; Walker on Wednesday; and Priebus on Thursday. Wisconsin is the only state Trump lost that was given front-row delegate seating in the convention arena, thanks to its clout in RNC. And it has played a prominent but conflicting role in the intraparty battles over Trump. In the run-up to the convention, Wisconsin Republicans Priebus, Buestrin and fellow RNC member Steve King helped squelch efforts by anti-Trump forces to release delegates from their pledges. But Wisconsin is also home to notable Trump opponents in the party: conservative activist Eric OKeefe, an organizer of the effort to unbind delegates; Never Trump congressman Reid Ribble; and former state party chairman Michael Grebe, who gave up his slot at this convention because I do not want to be part of a process which results in the nomination of Donald Trump. That one-sentence declaration by Grebe earlier this month stung some Republicans because of his long history in the party as a former counsel to the RNC; the man who ran the 1996 national convention in San Diego; and as a political godfather to Walker and Ryan. Without naming anyone, Buestrin said she has been shocked that some good, strong party people have continued to withhold their support for Trump. I cant understand it, because Im a party person. Admittedly, he wasnt my first choice but he is now, she said. And I will work hard to elect him, and thats what they should be doing, too, instead of badmouthing him. I mean, Just keep your mouth shut. Thats the way I feel. Thiensville village president Van Mobley was one of the few elected officials in the state who backed Trump before the primary. I think in this case I had better judgment than other people about the strength of his candidacy, said Mobley, who was added to the Wisconsin delegation in Cleveland when someone else dropped out. He called Trumps double-digit defeat in Wisconsin one of the great mysteries of my life, but said, I see the party coming back together. GOP voters in the state have begun to coalesce behind Trump, polls suggest. Back in March, only 36% of Republican voters in Wisconsin viewed Trump favorably, according to a poll by the Marquette Law School. In June, 58% did. And in July, 67% do. But the partys voters are still less unified behind Trump than Democrats are behind Clinton in Wisconsin and less unified than Republicans were behind nominee Mitt Romney at this stage in 2012. A quarter of GOP voters in the state still have a negative view of Trump, and 35% remain uncomfortable with him as president. Ive always believed in politics you cant make the perfect the enemy of the good, said Sensenbrenner. Asked if that is a persuasive argument to his GOP constituents that voted by large margins against Trump in the primary, Sensenbrenner said: Well see. Follow Craig Gilbert on Twitter @WisVoter Graphic: A Trump divide Chief Minister V Narayanasamy paid floral tributes to the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru here, as teh nation celebrated his 127th birth anniversary today. Narayanasamy, accompanied by ministers and party leaders garlanded the statue of Jawaharlal Nehru at Gandhi thidal here. Several political leaders and freedom fighters were among those who paid tributes to the portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru. Meanwhile, as part of the Children's day celebrations, programmes were organised in schools across the Union Territory remembering Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Lt Governor Kiran Bedi flagged off a rally by school students at the Jawahar Bal Bhavan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A fresh proposal for settlement of Ayodhya dispute was submitted to Faizabad divisional commissioner suggesting that a temple and a mosque be built at the site. The petition, it is claimed, has been signed by about 10,000 members from both Hindu and Muslim communities with former High Court judge Palok Basu leading the initiative. Divisional Commissioner Surya Prakash Mishra, who is the receiver of the disputed site, said, "I received a memorandum regarding the dispute of Ayodhya and a bunch of photocopies containing some signatures. I have yet to decide what to do in this matter" Basu said that they were hopeful that the Supreme Court will take note of it. The petition, which has 10,502 signatures, was submitted yesterday. "We have moved this negotiation process in the Supreme Court through the authorized person (Faizabad Divisional Commissioner). We hope that the apex court will honour the public sentiments of peace and harmony," he said, adding they have proposed that the disputed site will house both Ram temple and a mosque. In its September 30, 2010 ruling, the Allahabad High Court had awarded two parts of the site, where the Babri Masjid once stood, to Nirmohi Akhara and 'friend' of Ram Lalla and one part to Muslims, which went to Sunni Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh. Basu said their "local" effort to resolve the issue started in March 18, 2010 In the past, the main litigant in Babri Masjid case, Hashim Ansari, had along with Akhara Parishad president Mahant Gyan Das discussed out-of-court settlement which broadly talked about the 70-acres of disputed premises accommodating both mosque and temple with a partition wall which will be 100 feet high. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had rejected the proposal calling it an insult to the high court. Ansari died in July this year. More than 100 kids suffering from life-threatening illnesses saw their wishes being granted at a fun-filled event organised on the occasion of Children's Day today, thanks to the efforts of NGO Make-a-Wish Foundation and tour and travel firm Cox & Kings. To help bring smiles to the faces of these children who have been undergoing painful treatment and to make them feel special, celebrations were held in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. In Mumbai, the Sion Hospital auditorium came alive with gleaming eyes and sunshine smiles as these children rejoiced dancing, singing, playing games and collecting their granted wishes. Along with employees of Make A Wish Foundation and Cox & Kings, celebrity kids from the popular comedy TV series "Tarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chashmah" joined them in the celebration. Karan Anand, Head, Relationships, Cox & Kings, said, "We are committed to help bring positivity and joy into the lives of many children every year. Today, as the nation celebrates Children's Day, this is our effort to reduce the pains and struggles of children with life-threatening illnesses and fill them with happiness and enjoyment to make them feel better." Different wishes, including bicycles, TV, remote controlled cars, mobiles and laptops, among others, were distributed to children across the nation. Deepak, Bhatia, CEO, Make-A-Wish Foundation, said the children battling grave diseases had a fun-filled time. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today heard opinion of people from different walks of life on the new liquor law in the state and said a joint sitting of the two houses of the state legislature would be called for a wider debate on prohibition. "After discussion with you all, a joint sitting of the two houses of the Bihar legislature would be called for a wider discussion on the new liquor law," Kumar said at "Lok Samvad" programme where he heard the opinion of 40 select persons from different walks of life. "We want more discussion on prohibition which has yielded good result," the CM said. Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, Excise and Prohibition minister Abdul Jalil Mastan, senior ministers Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, state police chief P K Thakur and Principal Secretary of Excise department Amir Subhani were present during the closed-door intercourse. The 40 select people, including lawyers, journalists, retired police personnel, doctors and professionals expressed their opinion as how to make the new Bihar Excise Act, 2016, which was notified on October 2 last, more effective. During the discussion, the CM categorically said there would be no compromise with the ban on liquor, spiced and domestic as well as Indian Made Foreign Liquor. Kumar said he wanted suggestions from people who had described the prohibition law as "draconian and a Talibani law" and alternative against stringent provisions. Kumar said that more than 16,000 people had been prosecuted under the liquor law, 80 per cent of whom were involved in illicit trade of alcohol. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a setback to Cyrus Mistry, independent directors of Tata Motors today did not offer unanimous support to his leadership and instead backed all decisions taken by the company, including on small car Nano, which have been criticised by the ousted chairman of Tata Sons. Unlike the backing he got from independent directors of Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) and Tata Chemicals, the words of unanimous backing to Mistry's leadership during the crucial board meeting of Tata Motors were absent from the statement that the automaker issued after the meeting that lasted over five hours. The board meeting of Tata Motors assumed significance against the backdrop of escalating feud between Tatas and Mistry as well as Tata Sons' decision to seek ouster of Mistry from key group companies. Mistry continues to be chairman of several listed companies of Tata Group even after he was removed as chairman of the holding company, Tata Sons. These companies include Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and IHCL. In a statement, the country's top automaker said: "The independent directors of Tata Motors met today to consider and review the impact and significance of recent events and media reports relating to the governance, management and business of the company." The independent directors have confirmed that all decisions taken by the board with regard to the strategy, operations and business of the company have been unanimous and executed by the chairman and the management accordingly, it added. "The independent directors have further affirmed that the company continues to be governed, supervised and managed under the guidance and direction of the board. "The management of the company and its subsidiaries have the full confidence and support the independent directors," the statement said. The statement issued by Tata Motors was in contrast to the ones issued by IHCL and Tata Chemicals which stated that independent directors had supported Mistry unanimously. Sources said one of the independent directors came with a resolution backing Mistry but after the deliberations the resolution was not carried. Other independent directors did not approve it suggesting big differences in the board over the support to Mistry. On November 5, seven independent directors of Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) had strongly backed Mistry. Tata Chemicals independent directors had also came out in support of Mistry. Tata Motors has eleven board members, including six independent directors -- Wadia group chief Nusli N Wadia, ex-CSIR Director General Raghunath A Mashelkar, Credit Bank (DCB) Chairman Nasser Munjee, former Eicher Group Chairman Subodh Bhargava, former bureaucrat Vinesh K Jairath and Kotak Investment Bank Managing Director and CEO Falguni S Nayar. Last week, taking Mistry head on, Tata Sons sought his removal as well as that of the group's friend-turned-foe Nusli N Wadia from the board of three prime listed Tata group companies -- Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals and Tata Steel. Tata Sons, which holds 26.51 per cent stake in Tata Motors, has asked the manufacturer of Jaguar Land Rover to convene an extra-ordinary general meeting of the company to consider its resolution seeking removal of Mistry and Wadia. The latest moves are seen as attempts by Ratan Tata, who was brought in as interim head after sudden removal of Mistry, to seize back control of India's largest conglomerate. (Reopens DEL106) A source, however, said the fact that Mistry having chaired the meeting points to the fact he received unanimous support from the board members. Terming outgoing US President Barack Obama as "terrific" who has a "great sense of humour", President-elect has said they did not talk about the bitterness of the recently-concluded election campaign during their meeting but discussed some tough subjects. "I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humour, as much as you can have a sense of humour talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects. We were talking about some victories, also. Some things that he feels very good about," Trump told CBS's '60 Minute' programme. Trump, 70, for the first time met Obama in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, a day after he won the general election. The meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes, but went on for 90 minutes. "This was just going to be a quick little chat and it lasted close to an hour and a half. It could have gone on for four hours. I mean, it was in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. He told me the good things and the bad things," he said, adding that among the bad things is the situation in the Middle East. "I wanted to get his full view. I got a good part of his view. And I like having that because I'm going to be inheriting that in a short period of time," he said. Obama, he said, did not ask him not to repeal his signature health care programme. "He didn't ask me. He told me the merits and the difficulties. And we understand that," he said. Trump called himself a sober person and said this is how he looked inside the Oval Office. "I think I'm a sober person. I think the press tries to make you into something a little bit different. In my case, a little bit of a wild man. I'm not. I'm actually not. I'm a very sober person. "But it was respect for the office. It was respect for the president. I never met him before, but we had a very good chemistry going. It might not be that I agree with him, but I really found the conversation unbelievably interesting," Trump said when asked about his meeting with Obama. The President-elect added that he never had an awkward moment during the meeting. "We never discussed what was said about each other. I said terrible things about him. He said terrible things about me. We never ever discussed what we said about each other," he said. Trump said he does not believe that his victory is a repudiation of Obama's presidency but of "what has been taking place over a longer period of time". "No, I think it's a moment in time where politicians for a long period of time have let people down. They've let them down on the job front. They've even let them down in terms of the war front. We have been fighting this war for 15 years. "We've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East. We could have rebuilt our country twice. You look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels and all of our airports are, like, obsolete," Trump said in response to a question. In keeping with the trade fair theme, Odisha and Bengal pavilions have highlighted various steps being undertaken for digital connectivity and e-governance in their respective states. Digital India is the theme of the 36th India International Trade Fair which was inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee here today. Odisha has taken several steps to digitally connect every nook and corner of the state for a swift service delivery mechanism, Odisha Minister for Forest and Environment Bikram Keshari Arukha said while inaugurating the Odisha pavilion. Highlighting the e-governance, Arukha said, under the digital Odisha campaign our state ensures that the government services are made available to citizen electronically. As per the Digital India theme, Odisha Pavilion has been designed and decorated to showcase various initiatives of the state government for a service delivery mechanism in various fields. The role of new technologies like electronics and IT -- especially effective e-governance initiatives, stronger online infrastructure and wider internet connectivity -- in ensuring a better, faster and more transparent public service delivery, and overall improvement in the quality of lives of people, is the highlight of West Bengal pavilion at the trade fair. Besides, Bengal is also exhibiting state's great artistic and cultural heritage, its superb handicrafts and handloom products, its prowess in power generation, industry, agriculture and tourism, the digital boost in higher and school education sector as well as its present achievements and future opportunities. Bengal pavilion was inaugurated by School and Higher Education Minister Partha Chatterjee. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's Supreme Court today ordered that a special medical board be constituted to assess the current mental condition of a schizophrenic death row prisoner. Imdad Ali, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was sentenced to death in 2001 over a shooting. Ali has spent 14 years on death row, with three years in solitary confinement in the jail hospital due to his schizophrenia, said Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non-profit organisation working to save his life. JPP said the Advocate General, Punjab and Prosecutor General, Punjab who appeared themselves in court, filed Ali's entire jail medical record since 2001 that was previously unavailable and declares him mentally unfit to be hanged. The government's counsel mentioned that the state had failed to disclose these records to the courts in the trial and appellate proceedings. The court said that it cannot look at additional evidence at this point in the proceedings and did not take the records into consideration. However, it ordered that a 5-member medical board, composed of psychologists and psychiatrists be assembled, and that a list of competent doctors be submitted to the court by all parties by Wednesday. The court also said Ali's mental condition during his trial is irrelevant as that has achieved finality in the appeal. The court chose to focus on his current mental state and whether it qualifies him as a person of unsound mind. It said that his present state of mind will show whether he deserves any leniency under the different international treaties and protocols signed by Pakistan. The next hearing has been scheduled for November 16. Earlier, last month the Supreme Court rejected a plea to cancel the hanging saying schizophrenia is not a "permanent" mental disorder. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistani troops today resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts in four sectors along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which two persons including a jawan were injured. "There have been unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistani Army in Sunderbani and Naushera sectors of Rajouri district and Pallanwala sector of Jammu district," a defence spokesman said. Pakistani troops used 82mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons on Indian positions from 1440 hours in these sectors, he said. A 67-year-old resident, Mangat Ram, was injured in Pakistani shelling in Khour area in Pallanwala sector, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. Pakistani troops also resorted firing along LoC in Khadi area of Poonch district, according to reports. One jawan was injured in the firing in Poonch. The defence spokesman said the Indian troops gave "befitting reply" to Pakistani firing. The violations of the ceasefire came after a lull of a few days on the border. On November 12, an army jawan was killed in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district. On November 10, another jawan, Satnam Singh, was killed in snipper shots from across the LoC in Machail sector of North Kashmir. On November 8, two army jawans were killed in firing and shelling along LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district. 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. 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 others 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 2003 India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement has virtually become redundant with a whopping 286 incidents of firing and shelling along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops that resulted in death of 26 people, including 14 security personnel, since the surgical strike on terrorist launch pads in PoK. There have been 186 ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops along the over 190km International Border (IB) in Jammu frontier, while 104 violations of the agreement took place along the over 500km Line of Control (LoC). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan today said seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC, prompting it to summon the Indian envoy here to warn that India's "belligerent" attitude may lead to a "strategic miscalculation". Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale this afternoon and condemned the "unprovoked ceasefire" violation by the Indian forces on the Line of Control (LoC). The Foreign Secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the Working Boundary, especially in the last two months, a statement said. He emphasised that this "belligerent attitude" of Indian forces was a "serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation", the statement added. The Foreign Secretary asked the Indian High Commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted him as saying. He underlined that the Armed Forces of Pakistan do not initiate fire, but will always respond in a befitting manner, if fired upon, the statement said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned Indian High Commissioner. Pakistan on November 10 summoned Bambawale to the Foreign Office to protest over alleged ceasefire violations and use of artillery by the Indian forces. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the world's attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. Army chief General Raheel Sharif ordered troops to "effectively" respond to firing by India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Overseas Chinese in the US are being urged to contribute to the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and play more of a role in the rejuvenation of Chinese nation. More than 100 representatives from 15 chapters of the Washington-based National Association for Chinese Peaceful Unification and officials from China gathered on Saturday in San Francisco for the organization's annual joint conference. CONGJIANG WANG/ FOR CHINA DAILY More than 100 representatives from 15 chapters of the Washington-based National Association for Chinese Peaceful Unification (NACPU), as well as officials from China gathered on Saturday in San Francisco for the organization's annual joint conference. Participants discussed the role of overseas Chinese in unifying the motherland and boosting Chinese development. Since the new leader of Taiwan took office this year, the good relationship that had been maintained between both sides across the Taiwan Straits for eight years has been greatly impeded and the interests of the Taiwan people have been jeopardized, said Ran Wanxiang, vice-president of the China Overseas Friendship Association. He told the conference that Beijing would adhere to the 1992 Consensus and firmly oppose "Taiwan independence", despite the change in Taiwan's leadership. He also said he expected overseas Chinese to take advantage of their resources to expand communication channels, promote Chinese culture and foster patriotism. "The 5,000-year-old Chinese culture is the tie connecting all Chinese in the world," said Ran. "Overseas Chinese are expected to carry forward the Chinese culture and tell the Chinese story well." He said China has realized outstanding economic development and also provides opportunities for the world. "Overseas Chinese are expected to integrate their individual development with serving the nation's great cause of rejuvenation," said Ran. "As the world's largest two economies, the US and China have far more shared interests than differences. China can contribute to world peace by realizing her own development," he added. The fate of the overseas Chinese has been closely tied with the motherland and they have been playing an important role in promoting the peaceful unification of the Chinese nation and China's economic development, said Huang Wentao, a communications director with the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council. "We have never been so close in history to the goal of reunifying the Chinese nation," he said. "The development and progress of the mainland provides the foundation for peaceful cross-Straits unification." Huang reiterated that Beijing's principles and policies concerning Taiwan are consistent and will not change after the leadership changed. "Although the road will not be smooth, the Chinese unification is inevitable. We will keep walking on the right road," he told the conference. Zha Liyou, deputy Chinese consul in San Francisco, also attended the conference. He said the whole Chinese nation, including the people of Taiwan, will benefit from the Chinese unification and rejuvenation, which is the shared goal of the people across the Straits and all the overseas Chinese. Congjiang Wang contributed to the story. SHARE By Anthony Mccartney LOS ANGELES (AP) - With his latest appeal rejected, Roman Polanski's fate once again lies in the hands of Swiss authorities. A California appeals court on Thursday rejected Polanski's bid to have his case reviewed by a special counsel or to be sentenced in absentia. The Swiss Justice Ministry had been waiting for the court's ruling before deciding whether to allow the Oscar-winning director to be returned to Los Angeles for sentencing on his 33-year-old sex case. But a Swiss official said Friday that the ministry wouldn't rush into a decision. If it ultimately approves extradition, Polanski could still lodge court appeals in Switzerland that would delay his return to the United States for months. Polanski has been under house arrest for months at his chalet in the luxury resort of Gstaad as his attorneys repeatedly sought to win the director's freedom in Los Angeles courtrooms. They have argued that Polanski shouldn't have to be present to be sentenced on one count of unlawful sexual intercourse. In their latest appeal, they argued that he should be sentenced to time served. The recent appeal focused on newly obtained testimony from a former prosecutor who felt the original judge handling Polanski's case acted improperly. That testimony remains sealed. The California 2nd District Court of Appeal dismissed Polanski's appeal without issuing an opinion. They also dismissed a petition by Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer, to have the case dismissed. The Swiss will only extradite Polanski to the United States if he faces a sentence longer than six months. U.S. prosecutors say Polanski faces up to two years in prison. It remains unclear how quickly the Swiss will rule on Polanski's extradition, although Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman Folco Galli has said a decision usually comes within a year of a person's arrest. Polanski was arrested in late September. "We first have to receive the official information from the United States, and then we will examine it," Galli told The Associated Press on Friday. "We can't make a decision based on media reports. We have to study the ruling." "We must have some patience," he added. Galli declined to say in which direction Swiss authorities were leaning on Polanski. "If it was obvious that he couldn't be extradited, we wouldn't have arrested him," he said. "But it remains open." The director could still seek to end the case in California by appealing to the state Supreme Court. His attorneys declined comment Thursday and have not indicated what their next step will be. Polanski was accused in 1977 of plying Geimer, then aged 13, with champagne and part of a sedative pill, then raping her at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanski was indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy. He later pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse. Authorities are seeking Polanski's extradition from Switzerland so he can be sentenced on the charge. The Academy Award-winning director fled the United States on the eve of sentencing in 1978. His attorneys have said he fled because the judge handling the case planned to send Polanski back to prison even though he had completed a diagnostic study ordered by the court. Polanski's attorneys have cited numerous instances of apparent misconduct in the case by the judge, who is now dead. The appeals court and a lower court judge have said there are indications of serious misconduct in how the case was handled, but neither have ordered an evidentiary hearing that could resolve the matter. Geimer, Polanski's victim, has also been advocating for the "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" director. Her appeal, which was also rejected Thursday, sought to dismiss the case because of a recent change to California's constitution that gave victims a greater role in criminal cases. Prosecutors argued that the changes did not hand victims the authority to end prosecutions. ___ AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch in Los Angeles and AP writer Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva contributed to this story. Pakistan today summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to "deplore" the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC after the death of seven Pakistani soldiers, warning that India's "belligerent" attitude may lead to a "strategic miscalculation". Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned the Indian High Commissioner this afternoon and condemned the "unprovoked ceasefire" violation by the Indian forces on the Line of Control (LoC), resulting in the death of 7 Pakistani soldiers in Bhimber area. The Foreign Secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the Working Boundary, especially in the last two months, a statement said. He emphasised that this belligerent attitude of Indian occupation forces was a serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation, the statement added. The Foreign Secretary asked the Indian High Commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted him as saying. He underlined that the Armed Forces of Pakistan do not initiate fire, but will always respond in a befitting manner, if fired upon, the statement said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned Indian High Commissioner. Pakistan on November 10 summoned Bambawale to the Foreign Office to protest over alleged ceasefire violations and use of artillery by the Indian forces. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The demonetisation issue today figured prominently at the all-party meeting convened by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan with all major opposition parties, including the Congress, wanting a debate on it in Parliament. The cross-LoC surgical strikes, policy towards Pakistan, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, besides OROP and the plight of farmers were also among issues that were raised at the meeting with parties demanding discussion on them. Major opposition parties, during the meeting which lasted over three hours, urged Mahajan to allow a debate on demonetisation on a priority so difficulties faced by the common man could be highlighted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also attended a dinner hosted by the Speaker after the all-party meeting. "Leaders of various parties have demanded discussion on demonetisation and the steps taken by the government to exchange the currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. "The situation in Jammu and Kashmir, holding of simultaneous elections to state assemblies and Lok Sabha, and state funding of polls also emerged as issues on which parties have demanded discussion," the Speaker said after the meeting. She said 22 to 23 bills are likely to be introduced in the winter session which will have 22 sittings. Mahajan also informed the representatives of various parties present that the Lok Sabha has taken a "second step" forward towards making the functioning of the House paperless. She said while a copy each of big reports, including those of the CAG would be sent to party offices, the members would invidually be sent reports online. Minimum copies of general and rail budgets would be printed. She informed that an e-portal has already been introduced for the purpose where all reports and questions are uploaded. Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said his party would give notices for adjournment, short duration discussions and calling attention motion on various issues including demonetisation, surgical strikes and government's policy towards Pakistan. Among other issues on which Congress has sought discussion include OROP, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the alleged plight of farmers, besides proposed merger of Railway and Union budgets. "The poor, salaried class, housewives, small traders and daily-wage earners are the worst sufferers of demonetisation move and their plight would be highlighted by the party," Kharge told reporters. Leaders of various political parties, including Congress, BJD, Trinamool Congress, SP, SAD, Shiv Sena, LJP, RLSP and BJP were present at the meeting. The Speaker sought their cooperation in smooth functioning of the House. Patience of Delhiites wore thin as they continued to face hardship in withdrawing cash braving long queues, accessing health facilities and commuting in public transport, with a bank holiday today adding to their woes. On the six day since the demonetisation policy came into effect, scores of ATMs across the national capital witnessed serpentine queues as the shortage of currency pinched harder on the common man's purse. With banks closed in many parts of the country, cash- strapped people started making beeline outside ATMs from early morning but with limited success as most of cash vending machines are running dry. Scuffle and heated exchanges were reported from ATMs and banks from many parts of the city, as patience of harried citizens wore thinner, who continued to reel under the financial crisis in the wake of demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Commuters also had a harrowing time, as lack of Rs 100 notes continued to cripple transaction with taxi operators, auto-rickshaw drivers and other public transport providers. A pre-paid city-run taxi counter at Delhi Airport, which other wise draws good number of passengers, today wore a deserted look. "People are not coming to book 'kali-pili' taxis with us, as they do not have ready cash, and we are not in a position to accept Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 notes," a staff at the counter said. Drivers of these economy taxis are also feeling the pinch, with their customer base further eroding, as more people are switching to taxi aggregators through online payment mode. "I used to get at least five passengers earlier, but today, I have not even reached three," said Ramesh, a driver, employed with the pre-paid taxi service. Auto-rickshaw drivers are also finding it hard to make their ends meet, even as cash withdrawal limit at ATMs has been hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. "I used to make at least Rs 700 by evening on regular days, but today I couldn't earn even Rs 300," Rajesh, an auto-ricksahaw driver, said. Many sections of the society including grocery shop owners, small traders, restaurant owners, are further feeling the heat as their dependence on cash is very high. Long queues were also witnessed at ATMs inside the premises of Pragati Maidan, where the India International Trade Fair (IITF), began today. 18 ATM kiosks have been set up by different banks this time to alleviate cash shortage faced by visitors, officials said. The mega trade fair is being held here from November 14-27. Though it was a public holiday today, banks inside the Pragati Maidan premises, were made operational to cope with the the financial crunch. People in private hospitals also continued to cope with shortage of currency, as new higher denomination notes are hard to come by. Grocery shop owners, from Azadpur Mandi to Kotla Mubarakpur markets, felt more currency heat, as Rs 100 notes and lower currency ran dry, crippling transactions. Families which have wedding due in near future, are feeling hamstrung too, as limited withdrawal of money, has put both groom and bride sides on edge. Small retailers, which were traditionally dependent on cash transactions, are finding it hard to come to grip with online mechanism. For the urban population, the Finance Ministry today said recalibration of ATMs has already started and they will start dispensing the new Rs 2,000 currency notes from today or tomorrow. However, it clarified that the higher cash withdrawal limit of Rs 2,500 is only for recalibrated ATMs. Additionally, a large number of micro-ATMs will be deployed to help people withdraw cash through debit cards. To mitigate their hardship, the RBI has started distributing new high security Rs 500 notes from yesterday. A 47-year-old peddler, out on bail, was today arrested for allegedly possessing LSD Dots and Ecstasy (MDMA), both party drugs, worth Rs 1.08 crore in suburban Kandivali, police said. Acting on a tip-off, police raided a car at Triads Road, Kandivali West and apprehended Kishore Nandan, they said. "We recovered 1,358 of LSD Dots worth Rs 67.90 lakh and 1,365 MDMA tablets from him," senior police inspector Mukund Pawar of Kandivali Police Station told PTI. "We have also seized the vehicle owned by Nandan. Police apprehended the accused when he had come to supply the drug consignment to a receiver," said the official. A probe is underway and all angles are being looked into. A few suspects are being questioned in this regard, Pawar added. Earlier Nandan was arrested by Thane Police for allegedly possing drugs. He was out on bail in that case, the police official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) I-T Department may slap a hefty 200 percent penalty on unexplained high cash deposits in banks even before annual income tax returns are filed so as to prevent black money being converted into white during the 50-day window provided for turning in the junked Rs 500/1000 notes, a Finance Ministry official said. It is also collating data on spurt in deposits in zero- balance Jan Dhan accounts and will slap a 200 per cent penalty on unexplained high value cash deposits, he said. After withdrawing old 500 and 1000 rupee notes, the government has allowed the banned notes to be deposited in bank accounts or exchanged for new legal tenders till December 30. This has led to cash balances popping up in millions of Jan Dhan accounts, opened under a government scheme for beneficiaries to get their entitlements like LPG subsidy. "Tax Department is collating data on spurt in Jan Dhan accounts. It will analyse all data and impose tax plus a 200 per cent penalty in cases of unexplained high value deposits," the official said. Under Section 12 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, tax department can ask for any information from any agency including the Reserve Bank of India and cooperative banks besides all scheduled banks. To prevent misuse of the 50-day window provided for exchange of genuine holdings of the scrapped 500 and 1000 rupee notes, the tax department may resort to imposing tax and penalty even before annual Income Tax Return (ITR) is filed, the official said. "Any unexplained source of income can be charged with tax and a 200 per cent penalty on it. That can happen before filing of ITR. No retrospective amendment is required if high value deposits are caught before filing ITR," he said. Finance Ministry has carried out series of advertisements in newspapers assuring people that their hard earned money is safe and depositing junked Rs 500/1,000 notes of up to Rs 2.50 lakh in bank accounts will not be reported to the tax department. It has also stated that farm income continues to remain tax free and can be easily deposited in bank. Small businessmen, housewives, artisans, workers can also deposit cash in their accounts without any apprehensions, it has said. On farm income, the official said the tax department will match the acre of land the person has and the deposits made in the bank account to identify any discrepancy. Revenue Secretary Hashmukh Adhia had stated last week that the government would be getting reports of all cash deposited during November 10 to December 30, 2016 above a threshold of Rs 2.5 lakh in every account. The tax department would do matching of this with income returns filed by the depositors. Any mismatch with income declared by the account holder will be treated as a case of tax evasion. "This would be treated as a case of tax evasion and the tax amount plus a penalty of 200 per cent of the tax payable would be levied as per the Section 270(A) of the Income Tax Act," he had said. A petition was filed in the Lahore High Court today seeking a directive for the government to extend the tenure of army chief General Raheel Sharif, who is set to retire this month. Petitioner advocate Ghazi Ilamuddin of Tahreek-i-Inqilab said the whole nation wants Raheel to continue as the head of the army. "Pakistan has accomplished many tasks against terrorism under his leadership. Therefore, the Nawaz (Sharif) government be directed to give an extension to Gen Sharif in the larger interest of the country," he said. The lawyer said the army chiefs in Pakistan have been given an extension in the past. The court will later fix the date for hearing the petition. The three-year term of Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel is going to expire on November 28. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif recently said the government had not discussed anything regarding an extension to Raheel or appointment of a new army chief. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pro-Russian candidate Igor Dodon was on the brink of being declared winner of Moldova's presidential runoff, viewed as an East-West choice in the impoverished ex-Soviet country. With 97 per cent of ballots counted till late yesterday, Socialist Party chief Dodon had 55.3 per cent of the votes, according to the electoral commission, with pro-European rival Maia Sandu on 44.7 per cent. "We have won, everyone knows it," Dodon told a late-night press conference. Official results were due to be announced at 0800 (local time) today. The vote marks the first time in 16 years that Moldova -- wracked by corruption scandals in recent years -- is electing its leader by national vote instead of having parliament select the head of state. Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny nation of 3.5 million people is caught in a political tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Dodon had come out top in the first round of voting on October 30 with 48 per cent ahead of Sandu, a centre-right former education minister who worked for the World Bank, with 38 per cent. The two candidates have diametrically opposed visions for Moldova's future. Dodon -- who served as economy minister under a communist government between 2006 and 2009 -- is calling for deeper ties and boosting trade with Moscow. Sandu meanwhile urged a path towards Europe, calling for the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the Russian-speaking separatist region of Transdniester, which broke away in the early 1990s after a brief civil war. Moldova signed a historic EU association agreement in 2014, and half of its exports now go to the bloc. The move was bitterly opposed by Russia, which responded with an embargo targeting Moldova's crucial agriculture sector. "I and all my friends voted for Igor Dodon since he promises to restore the strategic partnership with Russia," said Vasilii Blindu, a 70-year-old pensioner in the northern town of Balti. But Chisinau student Marcel Pruna, 22, said he backed Sandu because she will "carry out reforms in practice, not just in words". Both candidates criticised the vote as badly organised, highlighting the shortage of ballot papers for overseas voters. More than 4,000 Moldovan and international observers were on hand to monitor the vote. Turnout was 53.3 per cent, the electoral commission said. The vote comes as a Moscow-friendly general also claimed victory in ex-communist Bulgaria's presidential election Sunday, prompting Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to announce his resignation as his nominee was dealt a crushing defeat. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pro-Russian candidate Igor Dodon today emerged as winner of Moldova's presidential runoff, viewed as an East-West choice in the impoverished ex-Soviet country. With 99.9 per cent of ballots counted, Socialist Party chief Dodon had 52.3 per cent of the votes, according to the electoral commission, with pro-European rival Maia Sandu on 47.7 per cent. "We have won, everyone knows it," Dodon told a press conference overnight. The full results are expected to be announced later this week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow respected the results of the Moldovan vote and congratulated its winner. The vote marks the first time in 20 years that Moldova -- wracked by corruption scandals in recent years -- is electing its leader by national vote instead of having parliament select the head of state. Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny nation of 3.5 million people is caught in a political tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Dodon had come out top in the first round of voting on October 30 with 48 per cent ahead of Sandu, a centre-right former education minister who worked for the World Bank, with 38 per cent. They have diametrically opposed visions for Moldova's future. Dodon -- who served as economy minister under a communist government between 2006 and 2009 -- has called for deeper ties and boosting trade with Moscow. Sandu meanwhile had urged a path towards Europe, calling for the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the Russian-speaking separatist region of Transdniester, which broke away in the early 1990s after a brief civil war. Moldova signed an historic EU association agreement in 2014, and half of its exports now go to the bloc. The move was bitterly opposed by Russia, which responded with an embargo targeting Moldova's crucial agriculture sector. "Close ties united us with Moldova before but then the scope of our relations slid," Peskov told journalists Monday. "But Russia has always been and remains committed to maintaining ties with Moldova." Both candidates criticised the vote as badly organised, highlighting the shortage of ballot papers for overseas voters. More than 4,000 Moldovan and international observers were on hand to monitor the vote. Turnout was 53.4 percent, the electoral commission said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 38-year-old property dealer was shot dead while his wife critically injured in southwest Delhi's Bijwasan area when two men barged into their house and started firing indiscriminately. Prima facie, it appears that the victim Rana was shot dead because of a property dispute, police said, adding that they suspect that the killers were hired to kill him. Today, around 4.15pm two unidentified youths barged inside Rana's house on the pretext of showing interest in renting a room in his house. When Rana, who was suffering from paralysis, came out with the help of his wife the duo fought with him and later, they started firing indiscriminately at the couple. The two youths fled from the spot. After Rana's sister-in-law raised an alarm and gathered people, Rana and his wife Lalita were rushed to AIIMS Trauma centre. Rana was declared brought dead and his wife's condition is said to be critical. Rana's body has been sent for autopsy. Police said that Rana had a property dispute regarding his house. Police said that they have zeroed in on the accused and are likely to arrest them soon. Police is questioning Rana's family members and colleagues to know if he had personal enmity with anyone. CCTV footages from the area are also being scanned to gain clues in the case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab University (PU) will honour renowned actor Anupam Kher, his wife and Chandigarh Member Parliament Kirron Kher and a number of other alumni at the PU Alumni Meet on November 26. The PU alumni, who have excelled in their professions and have made significant contributions to the society in the areas of business, social service, literature, sports, science and social science, art and culture would be honoured on the occasion, said an official statement. PU Vice Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover said that renowned actor and distinguished PU alumnus Anupam Kher will be the Chief Guest on the occasion. He along with Member Parliament, Chandigarh and PU alumna Kirron Kher would interact with alumni, faculty, students and staff. In the backdrop of ongoing Balwant Gargi centenary celebrations, Anupam will converse with Kirron about their evolution as an artist. Both Anupam and Kirron studied at PU and their conversation about their life trajectory would certainly inspire the students, he added. The programme will be webcast live, he added. Grover informed that a pictorial representation of PU in the form of Coffee Table book and Souvenir is also being produced and the same would be released on the inaugural ceremony. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SHARE By Elisabeth Malkin c.2009 New York Times News Service@ TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Rony Gomez will stay home when Hondurans go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president, five months after the military and Congress ousted the last one. ''I won't vote," he said. "It would be endorsing the coup." The question is how many Hondurans feel like Gomez, a 40-year-old street vendor and former soldier. Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, condemns the elections as illegal, and predicts a low turnout that will show that he still enjoys popular support. But the de facto government that has run the country since the coup last summer argues that the elections - scheduled long before the country's turmoil began - are the only way to end the political crisis and move on. A large turnout would prove that most Hondurans agree. Many people here, weary of what they refer to as "the situation," and worried as the economy spirals downward, say they do plan to vote. ''That's how the transition starts," said Moises Bados Castellano, 67, a retired accountant and farmer. "We need democracy in this country." In the final days before the vote, the streets here were calm. Campaigning stopped at the end of last week and there was barely an election poster visible by this weekend. The flags and bunting that usually wrap the city's buildings and cars in the colors of the two leading parties before elections were also absent. The two leading candidates began running months before Zelaya was ejected and exiled, but their platforms promising to deal with the global recession, the country's stubborn poverty, mounting crime and dysfunctional schools instantly were overshadowed by the coup. Porfirio Lobo, who lost the last election four years ago to Zelaya, had a double-digit lead in the last polls. Lobo, 61, a wealthy conservative with a long political career, has danced rhetorical circles around the question of Zelaya's future. ''I think it's fundamental to have a dialogue with all the actors," Lobo told foreign reporters on Friday. "I know that at some point I will have to talk to Zelaya." But he refused to say what might happen to the multiple legal charges, including treason, that Zelaya faces. Lobo's opponent, Elvin Santos, who had been Zelaya's vice president before resigning to run for president, has been a more outspoken supporter of the coup. As the elections approached, the apparent quiet masked an underlying tension. Over the past week, homemade bombs have exploded here and in San Pedro Sula without any injuries. ''Everything seems fine, but there is a dangerous calm," said Nubia Palma, 58, a lawyer who says she will vote. "There is speculation about a whole pile of things. They could boycott the elections." At this point, a significant boycott seems to be the last recourse available to Zelaya. He has spent the past two months camped out at the Brazilian Embassy after he sneaked back into the country. The de facto government says it will arrest him when he sets foot outside the building. Zelaya spends his days on the telephone with advisers and the media. "The elections won't punish the coup," he said in an interview. "They will elect a fraudulent president." He said that he planned to ask for the results to be annulled on the basis of what he expected to be a low turnout. Along with his wife and two political advisers, there are 18 more people in the embassy, including several reporters and supporters in charge of secretarial work, cleaning and security. In their spare time, they organize chess tournaments, said Carlos Eduardo Reyna, one of the political advisers. Food is allowed in twice a day past the soldiers who are blocking access to the streets around the embassy to keep away supporters. But the large street protests organized to protest Zelaya's ouster have long since dwindled, as security forces have cracked down harshly, beating and arresting demonstrators. The government has closed pro-Zelaya broadcasters. And human rights groups report constant harassment and threats against Zelaya's supporters. U.S. officials agree that the human rights situation has deteriorated significantly since the coup. In theory, the world stands with Zelaya and his condemnation of the elections. Not a single country has recognized the government of Roberto Micheletti, who was named president by the Congress hours after Zelaya was flown out of the country. The United States, the European Union and the multilateral banks have all suspended aid to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. But the United States, which brokered a deal last month that was to end the crisis and legitimize the elections, has said that it approved of the vote going forward. But with the exception of Panama and Costa Rica - whose president had earlier tried to broker an accord - no other countries in the region have publicly said they will join the United States in recognizing the vote. The European Union has not expressed support for the vote. Under the deal that the United States worked on and that both Zelaya and Micheletti signed, the Honduran Congress was to vote on Zelaya's restoration. The two sides were also supposed to form a unity government until Zelaya's term expired, as scheduled, at the end of January. The deal quickly fell apart after Congress delayed its vote - now scheduled for Wednesday - and a unity government was never formed. U.S. officials continue to press for some version of the deal. They hope that the election could unlock the country's political paralysis. ''The newly elected government will have a vested interest that the Micheletti government did not have to engage with the international community," said Hugo Llorens, the U.S. ambassador here. But Zelaya seems little inclined to continue negotiations. ''The accord was a plan to make the elections legitimate," he said. "As long as the rule of law isn't restored, there is nothing." Rahul Gandhi is expected to attend the proceedings in a court in Bhiwandi, near here, on Wednesday in a criminal defamation case filed against him for claiming, at a 2014 election rally, that the RSS had killed Mahatma Gandhi. The case against the Congress vice president was filed by a local RSS functionary. Rahul, who is scheduled to arrive in the city tomorrow evening, will proceed to Bhiwandi in neighbouring Thane district the next morning to attend the court proceedings beginning at 10 am, Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said. "Since our leader is arriving in the city, the party workers will welcome him at the airport," he said. Addressing a rally in the run-up to the 2014 general elections in the powerloom town on the outskirts of Mumbai, Rahul had claimed, "The RSS people had killed Gandhi." He had, on September 1, preferred to face the trial as an accused in the defamation case for his remark against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, submitting before the Supreme Court that he stood by "every word" of his statement. The Congress vice president expressed his readiness to face the trial after the apex court refused to interfere with the criminal proceedings pending against him before the trial court. Rahul then withdrew the appeal filed by him against the Bombay High Court judgment refusing to quash the defamation case and summons issued to him by the trial court. The apex court also declined Rahul's plea that he be exempted from personal appearance before the Bhiwandi court which had taken cognizance of the complaint of an RSS functionary by summoning him as an accused in the case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A week ahead of the announcement on demonetisation of old Rs 500/1000 notes, the Reserve Bank had directed banks to recalibrate at least 10 per cent or 20,000 ATMs to dispense Rs 100 notes only. Banks were given 15 days to comply with the directions issued on November 2. However, before the process could be completed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to nation on the evening of November 8 announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes would seize to be legal tender from midnight. The notification said that in keeping with the objectives of Clean Note Policy and to ensure that "genuine requirement" of members of public for Rs 100 denomination banknotes are met, the banks should increase dispensation of Rs 100 banknotes through ATMs which are "widely used" for distribution of banknotes for retail use. "With a view to encourage the banks in that direction, it has been decided to conduct a pilot project wherein 10 per cent of the ATMs in the country will be calibrated to dispense Rs 100 banknotes exclusively. "You are, therefore, advised to configure/calibrate 10 per cent of your ATMs to facilitate this arrangement," said the RBI's direction to heads of all banks. There are about 2 lakh ATMs in the country. It could not be known immediately that how many banks had complied with the directions. Following demonetisation of the old high denomination notes, there has been rush to exchange the currency at bank branches and post offices. Long queues have been witnessed outside practically all ATMs in the country. In its November 2 notification, had also pointed out that a review of steps taken by banks for installing ATMs dispensing lower denomination banknotes was conducted and "found that very few banks had taken initiatives in setting up ATMs dispensing lower denomination notes including Rs 100 denomination banknotes". Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has indicated that recalibration of ATMs for dispensation of new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes may take up to three weeks. Devotees in large numbers thronged Gurdwaras in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh today to pay their obeisance to the founder and first guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev on his birth anniversary People, from different faiths, reached gurdwaras to offer early morning prayers on Gurpurab and take part in 'Langars' and 'Shabad Kirtans', besides taking dips in the holy 'Sarovars (ponds)'. The Golden Temple in Amritsar was decorated and lit up as religious fervour marked Gurpurab celebrations. In Punjab devotees thronged gurdwaras in major cities of Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Chandigarh, Mohali, Anandpur Sahib, and Bathinda. The scene was similar in Haryana, as devotees formed beelines at gurdwaras in Kurukshetra, Ambala, Sirsa, Karnal and Yamunanagar. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Sikh devotees have gone to Pakistan to observe the birth anniversary Guru Nanak Dev at the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib in Hasanabdal town in Pakistan's Punjab, Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) officials said. The Sikh guru was born at Nankana Sahib near Lahore, now in Pakistan, in 1469 and spent 14 years of his early life at Sultanpur Lodhi in Punjab's Kapurthala district. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal extended his warm wishes to the people across the globe on the occasion of Parkash Utsav of Guru Nanak Dev. In his message, the Chief Minister appealed people to imbibe the spirit of service and humility as preached by the Great Guru and strive hard for carving out a prosperous and egalitarian society by following the his precious legacy. Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar greeted people on Gurpurab. The Chief Minister described Guru Nanak Dev as an "apostle of peace and tolerance" whose teachings would continue to inspire generations. "Guru Nanak Dev strived all his life to promote social justice and equality in the society," Khattar said. He hoped this occasion would further strengthen amity and secular traditions in Haryana. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran RSS leader and leading educationalist of Saurashta region Pravin Maniar passed away at a private hospital here, family sources said today. The end came last night. Maniar (82), is survived by wife, son and a daughter. He was admitted in a private hospital since last three days and took his last breath there, sources said. Born on September 1, 1935, Maniar held various key posts in Gujarat RSS, the organisation for which he dedicated over six decades of his life. He was also involved in various educational institutes including VVP Engineering college and Sarashwati Shishu Mandir. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, and Karnataka Governor and former Rajkot MLA, Rajubhai Vala, met his family members and offered condolences. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Russia's defence ministry said today that a MiG-29K fighter crashed while attempting to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean off Syria, but the pilot survived. In a statement to Russian agencies, the defence ministry said the fighter jet crashed due to a "technical fault" a few kilometres from the carrier, but the pilot ejected and was recovered and taken aboard the ship. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Swaraj India today demanded that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes be allowed to use universally, not just at petrol pumps and in paying public utility bills, till December 31. Sticking to its support for demonetisation, the fledgling political party led by Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan said the government was "ill-prepared" in executing the measure. "Exemption currently granted to petrol pumps and government entities etc. For a few days should be extended to everyone till December 31. Till then, the public should be free to use the old notes for every transaction," it said in a statement. It said banks and ATMs were wilting under pressure as the government had not printed and transported enough bank notes of the new series and had not planned for non-calibration of ATM machines. "The experience of the first five days of the implementation of this scheme has confirmed some of the worst fears and calls for an immediate revision in the scheme. "While the announcement took the ordinary people by surprise, the powerful persons, especially those close to the ruling party, had a fair clue and had made huge deposits in anticipation of this announcement," it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A group of city-based seafarers in association with senior executives of world's leading ship management company Anglo Eastern Group has formed a four- member team to participate in 'Oxfam Trailwalker' race and pledged to donate Rs 5 lakh for education of the girl child. The event is scheduled to be held at Lonavala, a popular hill station about 125km from here, next month. The team, christened Proud Mariners, comprises Ranjit Narayanan, Deepak Correa, Sudipto Dasgupta and Vaishak Chavan. They will walk 100km in 48 hours in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Beti Bachao-Beti Padhaao' (save girl child, educate girl child) mission. In a conversation with PTI, the members said the time has come for all of us to support the PM's appeal for uplift and empowerment of girls. "Therefore, we are ready to complete the ultimate team challenge. This is our chance to make a difference in someone's life and we are proud to be participating in the Oxfam India Trailwalker," the mariners said. "Walking 100km in 48 hours is a huge challenge and we completed the trail during the 2014 Event. Our motto is 'train together, walk together' and we have formed a great team to raise funds for supporting girls' education," they added. Oxfam Trailwalker, supported by Oxfam - a globally renowned aid and development charity - is a popular event in India which is aimed at supporting social causes. Trailwalker is a global phenomena, where a team of four walk 100km in 48 hours with an objective to make a big difference in someone's life. It is mandatory for each team to raise a minimum amount before starting the event and those funds are used by Oxfam India to reduce inequality. "Our philosophy aligns with Modi's mission. We have pledged to donate Rs 5 lakh towards supporting girls' education through our initiative," they added. Oxfam, headquartered in the UK, is marking its 66th year in India this year. The charity came to India during the Bihar famine to launch its first full-scale humanitarian response in a developing country. Over the past years, Oxfam has supported civil society organisations across India. In 2008, all Oxfam activists working in India came together to form the India unit of the organisation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As the Modi government came under opposition fire over the demonetisation exercise, its two important allies--Shiv Sena and Akali Dal-- spoke in conflicting voices, with its leaders endorsing the measure at a meeting of NDA parties, but voicing reservations over the manner it was being implemented outside. The Shiv Sena, the largest NDA constituent after BJP, came down heavily on the Prime Minister in an article published in its mouthpiece 'Saamana' though Shiromani Akali Dal president and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal was temperate in pointing out the hurdles in the way towards removing black money from the system. Notwithstanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emotional appeal to people to cooperate with him to weed out illegal money, Shiv Sena described the demonetisation as "demonic and unsystematic" which has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people for the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said, adding "instead of striking at Pakistan, PM Modi has struck and wounded Indian citizens and mocked their nationalism by saluting them for bearing with the anarchy." "Black money is not held by ordinary citizens who are standing in queues but a handful of people who have parked their money in foreign banks before the demonetisation announcement. What action has been taken against them?" it said. Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Badal, while supporting the demonetisation drive voiced doubt that it will help squeeze out black money from the system in 50 days, and highlighted the hurdles it faced. "I don't think it is possible. First of all, banking system is not available in each and every corner of the country. In Punjab, yes, after every 5-6 villages there will be a bank. Look at states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha...Maybe there would not be a bank for 100 villages. "So, for them we have to be practical enough. First of all, we need to raise the limit (of withdrawal). The weekly or monthly expenditure of a person is more than Rs 4000....We have to do it in steps," he told CNN 18. Badal said for a poor person, a senior citizen or somebody in immediate need of medicine, it was not possible to stand in long, unending queues. "Maybe for them, there can be a separate system. For example, we have a very strong cooperative bank system in our state. Every village has a cooperative bank. So, I think, they should include cooperative banks also in the system (for dispensing alternative currency notes)," he said. Notwithstanding reservations voiced in the article in Saamana and Sukhbir Badal, Shiv Sena's leader in the Lok Sabha Anandrao Adsul and SAD's S S Dhindsa endorsed the Modi government's demonetisation exercise at the NDA meeting. All NDA partners welcomed the move "in one voice" and supported the decision of the government and the Prime Minister to weed out corruption, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said after the meeting. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has started a blog where he will pen and share his observations and experiences as Education minister with the people. In his blog - Education Minister's Notes, Sisodia will also flag the shortcomings of the education sector while seeking people's suggestions to bring improvements as well. "The main aim behind blog is to share my observations and experience in education sector with people at a single platform. I often visit government schools where I observe several things. I will pen them in my personal blog," Sisodia, who is also the Education minister of Delhi told PTI. Sisodia said that he wants to bring discourse on education to the main stream so that people talk about improvement of our education system. "Despite good infrastructure and other facilities in a school, our students are not able to perform good some times. I will write on what's wrong in our approach and what is missing in this sector in the blog," he also said. After took charge of Education portfolio, there have been several changes in the education sector which include sending teachers for special training, 'Chaunati 2016', swanky government school buildings. Recently, the Deputy Chief Minister had directed Information and Technology Department to provide training to government's officers on how to use Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp. The Department of the Delhi government has been directed to design the training course on social media which the officers will soon undertake. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Skygazers were heading to high-rise buildings, ancient forts and beaches today to witness the closest "supermoon" to Earth in almost seven decades, hoping for dramatic photos and spectacular surf. The unusually big and bright Moon will appear at its most impressive just as night falls over Asia, but astronomy enthusiasts will be able to see Earth's satellite loom large anywhere in the world shortly after sunset, weather permitting. The phenomenon happens when the Moon is full at the same time as, or very near, perigee - its closest point to Earth on an elliptical, monthly orbit. It should appear at its most impressive at 1352 GMT (1922 IST). It will be the closest to Earth since 1948 at a distance of 356,509 kilometres, creating what NASA described as "an extra-supermoon". From India to Australia, skygazers and photographers were seeking the best viewing spots in the region where the phenomenon will be visible first, hoping that cloudy skies and the perennial pollution that blights many Asian cities will not spoil the fun. Thousands of people were expected to head to Sydney's Bronte Beach to witness the event after author Gavin McCormack created a Facebook page to let friends know of his plans. "Bring a flask of tea... Bring a picnic, bring the kids and bring your binoculars because this is going to be fantastic," he wrote. Delhi residents were hoping toxic smog shrouding the world's most polluted capital in recent weeks would abate to allow spectacular views as the supsersized moon rises over the Red Fort, the former Mughal emperor's residence. Picnics were being organised in downtown Hong Kong for residents to watch the supermoon rise over the financial hub's famous skyline, while hikers were heading to the greener, more distant corners of the Chinese city to enjoy views with less light pollution. The landmark Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan, one of the world's tallest buildings, was set to welcome skygazers, with astronomers predicting it would be one of the biggest moons seen from the island in nearly 100 years. Special viewing events were being organised by astronomy groups, with members of one in Indonesia's Yogyakarta -- the heart of an ancient sultanate -- taking to the rooftop of their club headquarters to get a glimpse of the supermoon as it rises over the city's historic buildings. Meanwhile, professional astronomers were at the ready at observatories across the region to explain the phenomenon to curious members of the public. "We are getting students calling in, there are many who want to come," said Mario Raymundo, head of the Philippine government's main observatory. The supermoon will also mean a stronger high tide, something that gets surfers giddy with excitement, not only at the prospect of riding bigger waves, but doing so at night. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SHARE By Mohamed Olad Hassan MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Two foreign journalists freed after 15 months in captivity in Somalia arrived in neighboring Kenya Thursday. Canadian Amanda Lindhout and Australian Nigel Brennan flew out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in a chartered plane early Thursday, said Somalia's National Security Minister Mohamed Abdullahi. In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, journalists saw a convoy of vehicles, suspected to be carrying Lindhout and Brennan, leave Wilson Airport at high speed. Some of the vehicles had diplomatic license plates. Journalists were not able to talk to the pair but a police officer confirmed that Lindhout and Brennan had arrived in Nairobi. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Before leaving Mogadishu, Lindhout and Brennan met with Somalia's Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who said the journalists had been held in a part of Mogadishu controlled by Islamic insurgents. "As you were suffering in a part of the capital controlled by the insurgents, we were worried about you in our part of the capital," Sharmarke said in remarks aired on the state-owned Radio Mogadishu. "We could do nothing but negotiate. Your safety was important." At that meeting Lindhout was wearing a brown head-to-toe abaya and Brennan had grown a long beard. Journalists waiting at Mogadishu airport were not able to speak to Lindhout and Brennan before they left because the pair were in a convoy of vehicles full of government soldiers and African Union peacekeepers. Lindhout and Brennan were released on Wednesday. Police spokesman Col. Abdullahi Hassan Barise declined to say if a ransom was paid for their release. A police officer and a lawmaker said late Wednesday that a $700,000 ransom was paid for the two journalists' release. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media on the issue. It was not possible to independently verify their claim. In Australia, Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said on Thursday that Brennan "has revealed that he had been pistol whipped and locked in chains for the past 10 months after a failed escape attempt. I'm sure that all Queenslanders would join me in offering our heartfelt goodwill to Mr. Brennan and his entire family." Kellie Brennan, Nigel's sister-in-law, told reporters: "It's very hard to express the overwhelming sense of joy that we have today." Lindhout and Brennan were kidnapped in August 2008. A Somali journalist who was captured with them was freed in January this year. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has said Lindhout and Brennan are freelance journalists. Journalists and humanitarian workers are frequently abducted for ransoms in Somalia, one of the world's poorest and most war torn countries. Foreign and local workers generally travel in convoys heavily guarded by freelance militiamen. Somalia has been mired in anarchy and chaos since 1991 when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. __ Associated Press writer Tom Odula in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this report. Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy today unveiled Star Badge for certified security personnel in the private security sector (PSS). For the first time, private security guards in the country had been recognised with Star Badge, highlighting their trained and certified status, by the Security Sector Skill Development Council (SSSDC). In his address at the Security Skills and Leadership Summit 2016 here, Rudy expressed hope that Star Badge embedded with SSSDC logo and barcode will give private security forces professional confidence and special status as well. "The first and foremost task of the private security sector is to establish dignity of its security guards. That is possible through the process of smart grooming and training. It is very important for the security industry to focus on product presentation and quality services. This will take the industry into the next orbit of growth," he said. The two-day annual security conference is organised by SSSDC in association with the Central Association of Private Security Industry (CAPSI), focused on 'Kaushal Rashak -Surakshit Bharat' (Skilled Guards - Secured India), as part of its national drive to transform the private security sector from an unorganised industry to an organised one and to secure India. Rudy urged the PSS to set up quality training centres and centres of excellence across the country and make the eco-system more aspirational for the youth and security guards, according to a release by CAPSI, the apex body for security professionals. Kunwar Vikram Singh, Chairman, SSSDC, said wearing star badge will not only make the badge holder trust his inner strength and stand out but also others to trust his competence and skills. This recognition by SSSDC will also increase their salary to Rs 15,000 from the current Rs 8,000-10,000, as per the guidelines of the Labour Ministry. He said SSSDC will honour 20 lakh security guards with star badge across the country and it aims to certify the remaining 50 lakh security services personnel with required training and grooming in the next few years. The Rs 40,000-crore domestic security services are expected to be doubled and generate 50 lakh jobs by 2020, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Left-hander Sudip Chatterjee battled hamstring problems to score a gutsy century as Bengal posted a decent first innings score of 337 against Tamil Nadu in a Ranji Trophy group A encounter, here today. At stumps, Tamil Nadu were 60 for 1 having lost opener MS Washington Sundar (4), bowled by Ashoke Dinda. Bengal started the day at 190 for 3 and left-hander Agniv Pan (59) was bowled by Thangarasu Natarajan with the second new ball in the fifth over of the day. Chetterjee, who had hobbled out yesterday on a personal score of 34 after suffering from a pulled hamstring, walked in at Agniv's departure. He played cautiously in company of Shreevats Goswami (35) as the duo added 44 runs for the fifth wicket. Goswami hit six boundaries before an angle delivery from Krishnamoorthy Vignesh saw him edge one to Narayan Jagadeesan behind the stumps. Chatterjee continued calmly hitting the occasional boundaries and also taking the singles. He hit nine boundaries in all as he reached his 7th first-class hundred in 249 deliveries. He found a valuable partner in Ashok Dinda (21), with whom he added 42 runs as the duo took the score past 300 runs. Pragyan Ojha (14) also contributed a bit with the bat which all added to the final score. The 25-year-old Chatterjee has been one of Bengal's most consistent batsman in recent times. He had surpassed half-century mark in all of Bengal's previous three games with scores of 73 (vs UP), 51 (vs Punjab) and 85 (vs Railways) but the three-mark was eluding him this season. Having been in the 'A' team radar for some time, Chatterjee played a timely knock. For Tamil Nadu, Vignesh was the most successful bowler with 4/70 in 32 overs while left-arm spinner R Aushik Srinivas had 3/67 in 36 overs. When Tamil Nadu batted, skipper Abhinav Mukund was caution personified as he scored only 19 off 74 balls which had four boundaries. Mukund played a lot of dot balls -- 67 in all as he was more intent on either dead batting or leaving deliveries outside the off-stump. One drop Kaushik Gandhi was a bit more attacking reaching 25 off 50 balls with three boundaries as the duo added 55 runs in 20.1 overs for the unbroken second wicket stand. Brief Scores: Bengal 1st Innings 337 (Sudip Chatterjee 100, Agniv Pan 59, Manoj Tiwary 56, Krishnamoorthy Vignesh 4/70). Tamil Nadu 1st Innings: 60/1 (Abhinav Mukund 19 batting, Kaushik Gandhi 25 batting, Ashok Dinda 1/21). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A local court has restrained agitating students of Punjabi University from protesting or raising slogans outside the Vice Chancellor's Office. The orders have been pasted at a vantage point outside the office of the VC and students have been requested to abide by the court orders and lift their dharna immediately. The students have mainly been demanding keeping open girls' hostels 24 hours. The court passed these orders on November 11 on a petition filed by the university after hearing the counsel for the varsity and from perusal of the documents on record mainly against the leaders of the Democratic Welfare Organisation (DSO). The plea demanded permanent injunction restraining the defendants, members of their unions, their leaders and workers from holding demonstration, meetings, damaging or closing gates, doors of any department/branch of the university, deans and heads of department and obstructing the entry of various offices and residences beyond a radius of 300 metres from the outer boundary wall of the university. Meanwhile, resignations of Amaritpal Kaur (Additional Dean Students for girls), Ravneet Kaur (Additional Provost for girls) and Jaspal Kaur (senior warden) submitted by them in protest against using foul language by some of the students against them, have not been accepted by the authorities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Friendship between India and Israel is at work "day in, day out" and is not a relationship "we should be hiding", said Israeli President as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. In a wide ranging interview to PTI, the Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo- Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Rivlin said that his country was proud to "stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy". "Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil," asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on "murmurs" in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Rivlin said, "Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe that India is proud of its friendship with Israel. "Again, this is not just a friendship of leaders and governments. It is a friendship between people in all walks of life, in all fields of study, in all areas of trade. This is not a friendship we should be hiding. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out, at the very forefront of building a better world for Israelis, for Indians, and for all peoples," he said. In reply to a question on India's continued support for an independent Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital, Rivlin said, "Friends may not always see eye to eye on everything, and as friends we can agree to disagree with respect and understanding. "Israel understands and indeed shares India's desire to see a just and lasting solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians. But no solution that may ever be found has a chance of success lest we work now to build confidence between peoples," the President said, and asserted that Israel and Palestine need to work towards "direct negotiations". Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow on key bilateral and regional issues. On the long-pending FTA, negotiations for which were launched nearly five years ago between India and Israel, Rivlin said it is a "tool" that can have huge impact and boost the partnership. Swedish officials today questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for over four years, over sexual assault charges. The 45-year-old Australian national has been living in the embassy for more than four years after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador amid fears he will be extradited to the US and questioned over the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by his controversial website. Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long said, "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years," he said. After years of stalemate, representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and Swedish police officers agreed to be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadorian official based on a previously approved set of questions. A DNA sample will also be taken from Assange if he gives his consent. The results of the interview will be transcribed and reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren was photographed entering the embassy but it was made clear that she would not be giving any press interviews during her stay in London. Astatement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorean legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview". Today's interview at the embassy follows a long-drawn legal and diplomatic wrangle between Ecuador and Sweden before prosecutors consented to interview Assange in London, and then until the two sides agreed arrangements. Assange denies Sweden's allegation of rape dating back over six years. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of Assange's responses during the questioning, but not put any fresh questions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Switzerland will return to Egypt an ancient stela stolen from a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, Geneva's public prosecutor said today. The stone slab bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt. "During an inventory control in the Geneva free economic zone at the end of 2014, the federal customs identified... A granite engraving of unknown origin and alerted Geneva police, who opened a criminal case," the public prosecutor said. Egyptologist Philippe Collombert from the University of Geneva examined the artefact and it was traced to the Isis temple near the towns of Sebennytos and Mansoura in the Nile delta, the statement said. Investigators compared photographs taken by French archeologist Christine Favard Meeks at the site in the 1970s to more recent ones which "established without any doubt that the granite engraving was stolen from" Behbeit El Hagar. The tablet will shortly be handed over to Egyptian authorities. The Iseion was one of the major centres of the Isis cult in antiquity, comparable to those in the temple complexes at Philae and Abydos in Upper Egypt. Isis was venerated as the goddess of health, marriage and wisdom. She was the consort of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and the underworld. Egypt has been campaigning to have many precious artefacts housed in European museums that it considers stolen to be returned, such as the Nefertiti Bust in Berlin. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Director General of Police K Rajendra Kumar today reviewed the security scenario in Kashmir saying synergy among law enforcing agencies is must to ensure safety and security of the people. "The maintenance of law and order is also imperative to prevail congenial atmosphere in the State," Kumar said. He was addressing a meeting of senior police, para-military and intelligence officers at Police Control Room (PCR) here convened to take stock of security, law and order situation in the Valley. Stressing for greater coordination among different law enforcing agencies, the DGP said rule of law is our prime concern and JKP along with other security agencies have done a commendable job in maintaining law and order in the State during hostile situations. He said the success achieved on anti-militancy front and in maintaining law and order was due to the people's cooperation with the forces. Calling on the officers for strengthening intelligence grid, the DGP said while dealing with the situations, the cops have to take special care of the human rights and every effort should be taken to avoid collateral damages. "Better policing and the people's cooperation are mandatory to achieve desired results and police should make all out efforts to get the wholehearted support of the people of the State," Kumar said. Emphasising upon the officers to adopt an effective strategy to mount pressure on the elements inimical to peace, the DGP said while conducting operations, it should be our endeavour that common people are not put to inconvenience. He said that input sharing among different agencies is necessary to foil sinister designs of bad elements. Special DGP (Coordination, Law and Order) S P Vaid also addressed the meeting saying a comprehensive security plan has been chalked out for deployment of manpower to ensure law and order in the Valley. Earlier, IGP Kashmir Zone, S J M Gillani also briefed the meeting about security, law and order situation in the Valley. He informed about successful operations conducted by the forces in the recent days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As long queues were seen at bank branches and ATMs across Karnataka to withdraw money and exchange demonetised Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today wrote to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, requesting him to take effective steps to mitigate hardships faced by the public. The Chief Minister also made some suggestions to the Union government, based on the ground inputs he has received from the officials and banks. "There has been much inconvenience to the common public, both for exchanging the old notes and also for withdrawing cash from banks and ATMs. This is primarily on account of the fact that the banking system does not appear to have been geared up for this mammoth task given to them," he said. Suggesting that sufficient and practical measures could have been put in place in advance, he said "I hope that the Central Government and Reserve Bank of India will take immediate and effective steps to mitigate these hardships taking into account the suggestions." Siddaramaiah today took stock of the prevailing situation in the state in the wake of demonetisation by meeting senior finance department and Bank officials here. Stating that in his view the new Rs 500 notes should have been introduced first before Rs 2,000 notes, he requested Jaitley to introduce new series of Rs 500 notes immediately to give relief to the common man. He also suggested that the time limit for use of old currency for the exempted categories of payments be extended till December 30 as this period is anyway available for them for the exchange of old currency. Pointing out that medical services are in a nature of an emergency service, irrespective of them being in the government or private sector,the Chief Minister said there were instances of patients being denied treatment in private hospitals due to lack of availability of cash with them. "I suggest that private hospitals, diagnostic labs and blood banks may also be included in the exempted list. If that is not found feasible, then Banks may be directed to set up a priority counter designated for payment to these institutions using old currency based on the authentication based on admission/discharge documents & bills," he added. Siddaramaiah's other suggestions to the Finance Minister included increase the cash supply to the cooperative banking sector as per their requirement, enhanced withdrawal limits for registered traders and commission agents of the markets to enable them to pay small and marginal farmers in time. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Four-months after Bangladesh's worst terror attack on an upscale cafe here in the capital's diplomatic enclave, authorities have returned the eatery where 22 people, including an Indian girl, were killed during a bloody siege by Islamist militants. Police handed over the Holey Artisan Bakery to the owner of the plot, Samira Ahmed, yesterday, following a court order, DMP Deputy Commissioner Masudur Rahman said. Samira's husband along with his friends had started the Holey Artisan Bakery in 2014, bdnews24.Com reported. The cafe in Dhaka's diplomatic district was popular with foreigners because of its food, lakeside view and sprawling grass-lawn. The cafe was attacked by a group of militants on July 1, who took around 30 people, mostly foreigners, hostage in the cafe. The militants killed 20 hostages, including 17 foreigners, before the army stormed the cafe early next morning, and killed five militants to free the remaining hostages. Indian girl Tarishi, 18, who was among the hostages was also killed by the attackers. Two police officers were also killed in the operation. The police took control of the cafe to preserve the evidence in the aftermath of the attack. Later, questions were raised over the illegal commercial use of the property. Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain had warned that the owner of the cafe would have to face action for opening it illegally. However, the owner later moved to the court for taking control of the plot and the court issued the order in her favour. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Union Tourism Ministry's Incredible India pavilion at India International Trade Fair (IITF) aims to nurture the tourism potential of lesser known destinations which are located close to popular places, a top official said today. The Tourism Ministry is participating in the IITF after a long gap, an official release said. Inaugurating the stand at IITF, which began here today, Tourism Secretary Vinod Zutshi said, "The stand has been designed with an idea of promoting lesser known destinations." The attractions of the pavilion are two 'selfie' points with the Taj Mahal and the Valley of Flowers as backgrounds, the release said. Domestic tourism continues to be an important contributor to the tourism sector. There is also "encouraging sign" for the inbound tourism, it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SHARE By Ali Akbar Dareini TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A conservative Iranian legislator warned Saturday that his country may pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty after a U.N. resolution censuring Tehran - a move that could seriously undermine world attempts to prevent Iran from developing atomic weapons. Iran's official news agency quoted a hardline political analyst who made the same point, another indication the idea could be gaining steam. If Iran withdraws from the treaty, its nuclear program would no longer be subject to oversight by the U.N. nuclear agency. That in turn would be a significant blow to efforts to ensure that no enriched uranium is diverted from use as fuel to warhead development. The lawmaker's threat came a day after the board of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution demanding Tehran immediately stop building its newly revealed nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom and freeze uranium enrichment. "The parliament, in its first reaction to this illegal and politically-motivated resolution, can consider the issue of withdrawing from the NPT," Mohammad Karamirad was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency, referring to the treaty. "The parliament ... (also) can block the entry of IAEA inspectors to the country." Karamirad, a senior lawmaker and member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, does not speak for the government but his statements often reflect the government's thinking. His threat could be a tactic to warn the West of possible consequences if it pursues further action against Iran, such as strengthened sanctions. Another hardline lawmaker, Hossein Ebrahimi, was quoted by IRNA as saying that Iran's parliament will discuss the IAEA resolution on Sunday and will make a decision on how to react. Iran's parliament has issued similar warnings in the past, most recently in 2006 when some lawmakers threatened to pull the country out of the nonproliferation treaty during another time of increased U.N. pressure over Tehran's nuclear program. Iran backed down, and the government has said that it has no intention of withdrawing from the treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. Iran's government insists its nuclear program is meant only for peaceful purposes, though the U.S. and other Western nations suspect Tehran is seeking to acquire atomic weapons. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the U.N. nuclear agency, was also defiant Saturday in the face of the agency's fresh demands, saying on state television that Iran will limit its cooperation with the U.N. watchdog to its treaty obligations and will not cooperate beyond that. "Our first reaction to this resolution is that they (the U.N. agency) should not expect us to do what we did several times in the past few months when we cooperated beyond our obligations to remove ambiguities," Soltanieh said. He added that the country's nuclear activities will not be interrupted by resolutions from the U.N. nuclear agency's board, the U.N. Security Council or even the threat of military strikes against the facilities. Ali Shirzadian, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said his agency his ready to proceed with its nuclear projects. "Technically speaking, we are fully prepared to produce fuel required for the Tehran reactor. To begin this, we are waiting for the order from top authorities," Shirzadian told the government-run Borna news agency. Friday's resolution - and the resulting vote of the IAEA's 35-nation decision-making board - were significant on several counts. The resolution was approved by 25 members of the 35-nation board - including the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - marking a rare measure of unity from the six world powers on Iran. Moscow and Beijing have traditionally cautioned against efforts to punish Iran for its defiance over its nuclear program, either preventing new Security Council sanctions or watering down their potency. The IAEA resolution criticized Iran for defying a U.N. Security Council ban on uranium enrichment - the source of both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads. It also censured Iran for secretly building a uranium enrichment facility, known as Fordo, and demanded that it immediately suspend further construction. The resolution noted that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei cannot confirm that Tehran's nuclear program is exclusively geared toward peaceful uses, and expressed "serious concern" that Iranian stonewalling of an IAEA probe means "the possibility of military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program" cannot be excluded. The Iranian news agency also quoted hardline political analyst Mahdi Mohammadi as saying that the U.N. agency's resolution was forcing Iran to reconsider its membership in the nonproliferation treaty. "The attitude of the agency is gradually bringing Iran and the rest of the developing nations to the conclusion that membership in NPT has no benefit but damage and restriction. In this case, the question that will be raised seriously is will continuation of this path serve Iran's national interests?" IRNA quoted him as saying. Worried over immediate impact of demonetisation, trade and industry bodies have come out with a host of suggestions, including payment of advance salaries in new currency notes and hiring of retired bank officials to deal with the prevailing cash crunch. In a representation submitted to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, PHD Chamber of Commerce suggested payment or part payment of salaries in advance in cash to government, and public and private sector employees with new Rs 500 notes. "This suggestion would avoid overflowing queues and hardship being faced by most of the citizens and would also avoid loss of productivity due to employee absenteeism in organisations," the chamber said. Industry body Assocham suggested that banks should hire retired employees on a massive scale for a speedy currency swap and cash withdrawal in the wake of junking of big denomination currency notes. "Just like general elections when staff across different departments is mobilised; different types of staff can be used for helping the over-stretched banks, grappling with the huge task of dealing with the demonetised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 and dispensing the new notes," it said in an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Traders body CAIT said that post demonetisation trade across the country has reduced to 25 per cent in comparison to normal days. It called upon Jaitley for "remedial" measures to intensify adoption of electronic payments beside ensuring smooth flow of currency both t the hands of traders and consumers. Sapan Gupta, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Co said demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes is no doubt a visionary move but its impact is directly proportionate to the manner in which the transition is executed. "The government will need to ensure the necessary infrastructure is put in place at the earliest possible to really achieve its targets," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The India International Trade Fair (IITF) will not be impacted by the demonetisation scheme as more bank counters will be opened at the fair along with facility for digital transactions, Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today. "There will be no impact (of demonetisation on trade fair). Commerce Minister has directed that more bank counters should be opened. It will be done soon," Prasad said after inaugurating Digital India pavilion at IITF. Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come to bring change in the country, he said. "Now cashless transactions are being made. India is going to become a big hub of e-payments. Country is bearing week-long problem with ease. Problem is for those who indulge in vote bank politics. Under the leadership of Narendra Modi the country is changing and we will bring the change with honesty," Prasad said. He also questioned political parties which are protesting against the demonetisation scheme. "Why is the Congress party worried from the strict action against black money? Why are Mulayam Singh (Yadav) and Mayawati worried? Leave aside everyone, communists are worried. It would have been better if they would have come together in support of Narendra Modi's attack on black money," the minister said. He said that government formed SIT, brought amendments in law, gave opportunity to deposit money and now attacked black money. Talking about 'Digital India' drive, he said that with this initiative of Prime Minister the role of Digital India has widened. "Now Prime Minister has said that all payments should be transparent. With this, the role of Digital India has increased. In all fields we are strengthening Digital India," Prasad said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With their cash drying up and vehicles stranded at highways post the demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, a truckers body today asked the government to facilitate online fund transfers for payments at state borders. In a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Hydraulic Trailers Owners Association (HTOA) has also asked the government to increase their daily cash withdrawal limit from current account to Rs 5 lakh from current Rs 50,000 per account. "Our trailers are over-sized vehicles and the taxes which we have to pay at various states depend on their size and dimensions. The state transport authorities are not accepting the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. We should be allowed to make online fund transfer or through cheques or demand drafts," HTOA chairman Bharat Gandhi said. HTOA has 70 members across the country with each member having a fleet of 5-6 trailers. He said a trailer has to pay around Rs 40,000 as tolls, state entry fee for every single transport of goods. Gandhi said since the authorities are not accepting old notes, trailers are stranded which is resulting in to a business loss of Rs 100-125 crore for fleet owners as well as for the clients for whom they are transporting goods. HTOA has also requested to make all tolls free till December 31, 2016. The government today said no toll would be charged on national highways till the midnight of November 18. It has extended the earlier deadline by four days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Germany's ruling coalition backed Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the country's next president Monday, paving the way for an outspoken critic of Donald Trump to become head of state. Party leaders have been wrangling for months over whom to nominate as a successor to President Joachim Gauck, a 76-year-old pastor from the ex-communist East Germany who is stepping down due to his advanced age. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc agreed on Germany's most popular politician, Steinmeier, whose name had been put forward by his Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merkel, who was unable to put forward a viable conservative candidate, called the choice of Steinmeier a "sensible decision" that would stand for "stability, particularly in these uncertain times", during a conference call with party leaders, participants said. SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Germany's vice-chancellor and economy minister, told reporters Steinmeier was the right candidate "to uphold the good traditions of statesmanship that Germany has maintained since World War II". The new president -- a figure who is meant to transcend party politics and serve as a moral standard bearer for the nation -- will be elected on February 12 by a special assembly of MPs, delegates from the 16 federal states, and other notables. Steinmeier, 60, has emerged in recent months as the German government's most strident detractor of US president-elect Donald Trump. He warned a day after Trump's shock election that transatlantic relations would become "more difficult". "I think we must expect that American foreign policy will become less predictable for us and we must expect that the United States will be more inclined to make decisions on its own," he said. During the US campaign, Steinmeier was even more damning, saying the prospect of a Trump presidency was a "frightening" prospect for the world. He compared Trump to a "hate preacher", saying he had much in common with "fearmongers" in Germany's right-wing populist AfD party as well as advocates of Britain's exit from the EU. A veteran of the German political scene and a familiar face in world capitals, Steinmeier served as Merkel's vice-chancellor and chief diplomat during her first "grand coalition" government from 2005 to 2009. In his second stint as foreign minister beginning in 2013, he has at times drawn fire for attempting to keep the lines of communications open with Russia despite deteriorating relations over Ukraine. While his Social Democrats have praised his approach as in keeping with their long tradition of Ostpolitik, critics have accused him of being a "Russlandversteher" -- a "Russia apologist". He raised eyebrows in many capitals in June when he warned NATO against "sabre-rattling and warmongering" after it conducted military exercises in eastern Europe in response to the perceived threat posed by Russia. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Donald Trump's victory in presidential polls may deter or restrict international students coming to the US for higher education and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds to the American economy, experts have warned. After a caustic presidential campaign and Trump's vows to limit immigration, build a Mexican border wall and force Muslims to register, experts in higher education sector are bracing for a backlash among students who see the US as a less welcoming destination. Surveys of international students conducted during the presidential campaign suggested that many would be less interested in coming to the US if Trump were to become president. For example, a survey of 40,000 students from 118 countries conducted by the international student recruiting companies FPP EDU Media and Instead found that 60 per cent said they'd be less inclined to come to the US if Trump were to win, compared with just 3.8 per cent who said they'd be less inclined if his opponent Hillary Clinton won. The number of international students at US colleges and universities has hit a record high, but experts suggest that Trump's election may slow the growth of this market and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds annually to the American economy. For the first time, the number of international students at US universities exceeded a million last year, according to new figures from the Institute of International Education. The total of about 1,044,000 was up 7 per cent from 2014-15. China and India remained the top two sources of international students, but Saudi Arabia-bolstered by a government-funded scholarship programme-passed South Korea to pull into third on the list. "I think America is going to continue to welcome international students, international students are going to continue to want to come here, we will continue to want to send American students abroad as students and cultural ambassadors. I think that international educational exchange is part of the fabric of many societies, including ours," said Allan E Goodman, the president and CEO of the Institute for International Education. The Seattle-based marketing company Study in the USA also surveyed 1,000 prospective international students on the election. Of 975 responses, 639 said they'd be more likely to study in the US if Clinton were to win, while just 91 said they'd be more likely to come if Trump were elected. "Due to Trump's very explicit racist remarks, I would not feel very comfortable studying in the USA," one respondent said. If the rise of post-Brexit anti-foreigner attacks in Great Britain is any indication, the experts say, Trump's presidency-and its possible policy implications-could lead international students to look elsewhere for their educations. Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, meanwhile, have all increased international recruiting. (REOEPNS FGN 21) A survey of international students earlier this year revealed serious concerns about a Trump presidency. The March poll of 40,000 students in 118 countries by two international student recruiting firms found 60 per cent of respondents were less likely to attend US universities if Trump were elected, compared to 3.8 per cent who felt that way about Hillary Clinton. The election results may hinder international student recruiting, said Benjamin Waxman, CEO of Intead, which conducted the survey with FPP Edu Media. "It seems as though there could be the beginnings of a sea change here," he said. "The results of Brexit and the US election definitely put a message out there." In Mexico, about 80 per cent of survey respondents said they would be less likely to attend US universities during a Trump presidency. The country sent nearly 17,000 students to the US last year. The two companies plan to complete another survey soon to see how the election is influencing college choices, Waxman said. The US business of educating people from abroad is also facing other challenges, including the economic slump in China and a building spree in India, which is establishing 278 new universities that might keep some of its students at home who previously might have come to the US. A drop-off in US international enrollment, which has increased 85 per cent in the past decade as universities aggressively recruit abroad, could have significant financial repercussions. International students pumped USD 35 billion into the country's economy in 2015, according to the US Department of Commerce. Much of the money from full-tuition-paying international students serves as an important subsidy for American undergraduates. Some public universities, including Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania State, Purdue and the University of Wisconsin, have even added a surcharge to the price for international students to make up for budget cuts. Still, others offered a more optimistic message. It's worth noting that Trump himself once posted on Twitter about the benefit of retaining international students in the US, writing in an August 2015 tweet, "When foreigners attend our great colleges and want to stay in the US, they should not be thrown out of our country." "One of the core values of international education is about celebrating diversity and learning from differences," said Rahul Choudaha, the co-founder of InterEdge.Org, an international student services company. "Trump's viewpoints are insular and not in line with the values of international education. It is likely that the future policies will start looking inward and slow down international education exchanges and student mobility. Career advancement is one of the prime motivations for international students to study in the US," Choudaha added. "Trump's anti-immigrant stance may create stricter visa and immigration policies that may make it even more difficult for students to come to the US and find internship and job opportunities," he said. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Pakistan this week to enhance ties in various fields, the government said here today. The Foreign Office said Erdogan will visit the country on November 16-17 at the invitation of his Pakistan counterpart Mamnoon Hussain. "While the Turkish President has been to Pakistan on a number of occasions, this would be his first bilateral visit to Pakistan since assuming office," it said. Erdogan will be accompanied by a high-level entourage, including ministers and senior officials, as well as a large business delegation. Besides meeting with Hussain, Erdogan would be holding talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and is also scheduled to address a joint session of Parliament. The exchange of views between the two leaders would cover the entire range of bilateral matters, as well as regional and international issues. Erdogan will also travel to Lahore. The Foreign Office said that Pakistan and Turkey are bound by an exemplary relationship characterised by warmth, cordiality and mutual trust. "Frequent exchanges at the leadership and ministerial levels and growing cooperation in diverse fields are the hallmarks of the unique bonds between Pakistan and Turkey," it said. It said the leadership of both countries is committed to transforming this historic relationship into a strong strategic partnership, in line with the realities of the 21st century. It said bilateral relations between Pakistan and Turkey have witnessed tremendous growth and dynamism in recent years. Both sides are working to give powerful thrust to bilateral trade, investment and commercial cooperation as part of the efforts to build a robust economic partnership. Both countries closely collaborate with and mutually support each other at regional and international forums. The Foreign Office said that Turkey has steadfastly supported the people of "Jammu and Kashmir in their just struggle for the right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions". Turkey plays a vital and active role as a member of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, it said adding Erdogan's visit would contribute substantially to further solidifying the relationship between the two countries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Turkish warplanes on today struck Islamic State positions in and near the northern Syrian town of al-Bab while Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters inched closer to the town, one of the extremist group's largest remaining strongholds in the country, Turkish state media and Syrian activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks Syria's civil war, now in its sixth year, said the airstrikes and the shelling killed three people and wounded 30 others. The stepped-up campaign by Turkey comes after Ankara first sent ground forces into northern Syria during the summer, vowing to clear the border area both of the Islamic State group and the US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, which it views as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Since then, Turkish troops and opposition fighters allied with them have captured wide areas along the border with Turkey, cutting IS fighters off in their self-declared caliphate from the rest of the world. They have also captured dozens of towns and villages in northern Syria. Turkey's Anadolu agency reported 15 airstrikes against IS in al-Bab today, saying they destroyed two command centers, an arms depot and two buildings used as headquarters, as well as 10 defensive positions. Also, the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said Turkey-backed opposition fighters captured three villages today northwest of al-Bab and another village northeast of the town. The Observatory confirmed that four villages near al-Bab were taken, adding that the Turkey-backed fighters have captured 29 villages in the al-Bab area over the past week. The push has helped Turkish troops and opposition fighters inch closer to al-Bab, where a long battle with the Islamic State group is expected to take place soon. IS has been in the town for more than two years. Also today, Syrian government warplanes struck the last functioning hospital in the town of Atareb in northern Syria, wounding some staff members and knocking it out of service, according to the Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group. The Russian military, meanwhile, accused militants in Syria of having used chemical weapons against Syrian government troops in the city of Aleppo. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov said about 30 Syrian soldiers from the elite Republican Guards were poisoned in the attack, which he said occurred in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo late yesterday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 12 workers were injured when fire broke out at a chemical manufacturing factory in Boisar industrial estate in Palghar district today, police said. The blaze started in afternoon and soon spread to at least four nearby units in the area. It was brought under control after six hours by four fire engines. Prima facie, short circuit in the computer server room of the chemical manufacturing unit was the cause behind the incident, police said. Police said the injured workers sustained burns as chemical spilled on them in the mishap. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed two people and caused "utter devastation" in New Zealand today, with wild weather hampering rescue efforts as darkness fell. The tremor, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the quake-prone South Pacific nation, hit just after midnight near the South Island seaside tourist town of Kaikoura. It triggered a tsunami alert that sent thousands of coastal residents fleeing for higher ground across much of the country. Kaikoura, a town of about 2,000 people popular with international backpackers, was completely isolated, with telecommunications down and huge landslides cutting all access roads. Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said rescuers had to travel in by helicopter to slowly build up a clear picture of the damage. "I think had there been serious injury or suspected further loss of life, then we would have heard about it by now," he told Radio New Zealand. He added: "It looks as though it's the infrastructure that's the biggest problem, although I don't want to take away from the suffering... And terrible fright so many people have had." Brownlee and Prime Minister John Key flew over the affected area in a military helicopter. "It's just utter devastation... Months of (repair) work," Key remarked as he surveyed the landslips that dumped hundreds of tonnes of rocky debris on the main highway. Aerial footage outside Kaikoura showed railway tracks ripped up and tossed 10 metres by the force of the quake, while locals posted pictures of themselves near huge fissures that opened up in roads. One person was believed to have died at a historic homestead that collapsed at the town, while police were trying to reach the scene of a fatality at a remote property north of Christchurch. As hundreds of people prepared to spend the night in evacuation centres, rescue workers were facing deteriorating weather conditions. Heavy rain increased the risk of more landslides and strong winds made clean-up work hazardous. The treacherous conditions temporarily blocked the Clarence River with debris, which then shifted to release a "wall of water" downstream and force more evacuations. The earthquake struck at 12:02am today (local time) and was 23 kilometres deep, the US Geological Survey said. It was felt across most of the country, causing severe shaking in the capital Wellington, about 250 kilometres away. The quake ignited painful memories for residents in nearby Christchurch, which was devastated five years ago by a 6.3 tremor that killed 185 people. Key said he was well aware its impact could have been much worse. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Indian-origin Sikh, who became UK's first-ever ethnic minority judge and the first to sit on the English Bench wearing a turban instead of a horse-hair wig, has died. He was 86. Mota Singh was found unconscious last Friday and was taken to hospital but did not recover, the metro.Co.Uk reported. Paying tribute to him, his wife, Swaran Kaur, said, "He was a wonderful person who achieved so much in his life. He was so hard working." He was the first person from a minority ethnic group and first Judge to sit on the English Bench wearing a turban instead of a horse-hair wig. Singh, a Ramgarhia Sikh, born in 1930 in Nairobi, Kenya, Mota Singh was only sixteen when his father, Sardar Dalip Singh, passed away. He was forced to leave school in order to look after his family, which included his widowed mother, who was only 32 at the time, and his five younger siblings. Singh's school teachers, knowing that he was gifted, convinced his family that he should complete his matriculation. While looking after his family during the day, the judge pursued his Bar studies at night and in 1953, came to England to complete the second part of his studies. He joined the English bar in 1967 and was appointed to the bench in 1982. In 2010, Mota Singh received a knighthood from the Queen, the highest civilian honour for his services to the administration of justice and community relations. Tributes have been pouring in on Twitter, with entrepreneur Rami Ranger calling him a "great ambassador for the Sikh and Indian community". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SHARE By Khaled El-Deeb TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - A Libyan court convicted on Tuesday two Swiss businessmen of violating residency and labor laws and sentenced them to 16 months in jail with a $1,500 fine, a Libyan official said. The two were detained in July 2008 on alleged visa violations - days after Swiss police arrested Hannibal Gadhafi and his wife for allegedly beating up their servants in a Geneva luxury hotel. The sentence comes amid furor in the Muslim world over a referendum to outlaw the construction of minarets in mosques in Switzerland. The official said the two were tried by a court in Tripoli. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. No foreign diplomats or reporteres were allowed at the trial. The businessmen - identified as Max Goeldi and Rachid Hamdani - were handed over to the Swiss embassy in Tripoli earlier in November, triggering expectations they would be released and allowed to return home. The Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed sentences and said the men were tried in absention and still in the embassy. Earlier, the Libyan official said the two were present at the one day trial and were taken immediately to a prison to serve their terms. The discrepancy could not be immediately explained. The official said the men have the right to appeal. Hannibal Gadhafi was held for two days in Geneva before being allowed to return home. The complaint was eventually dropped after the two servants received compensation from an undisclosed source. Switzerland apologized for the manner of the arrest and opened itself to possible compensation claims as part of the August agreement reached in Tripoli, but later suspended the deal after repeated attempts to secure the release of Goeldi and Hamdani failed. Libya has called on Switzerland not to make any links between the case and the issue of the "aggression" on the son of the Libyan leader. The saga has badly damaged relations between the two countries and prompted calls in Switzerland for the resignation of Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, who staked his credibility on the men's release. In addition to detaining the men, Libya recalled some of its diplomats from Switzerland, suspended visas for Swiss citizens, withdrew funds from Swiss banks, stopped crude oil shipments and reduced flights to the Alpine country. Tuesday's speedy trial come two days after 57.5 percent of the Swiss population approved the ban on the minarets. Although The Swiss government opposed the initiative, the move has sparked an outcry across the Muslim world. The UN Committee Against Torture should visit Sri Lanka and conduct an independent investigation into the continued abductions, torture and sexual violence committed by the security forces, a former member of the UN special panel has said. Indian-origin Yasmin Sooka is a member of a former UN special panel on Sri Lanka's war with the LTTE. She heads the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP). Her call has come ahead of the UNCAT's meeting in Geneva this week to examine torture in Sri Lanka. "Torture and abduction are sosystematic and entrenched in the DNA of the security forces that even a realignment ofpolitical parties in parliament and the new government under President Sirisena are not able to stop these crimes. "It requires political will and a commitment on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka to carry out a comprehensive security sector reform programme which is sadly missing in Sri Lanka,"Sooka said in a statement. She was one of three in the panel appointed by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war with the LTTE which ended in 2009. Her International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) has collected testimony from 36 Tamil victims in three European countries, who have suffered abduction, illegal detention, torture or sexual violence at the hands of intelligence and security officers under the present Sri Lanka government. "In 10 of these cases the victims have already been granted asylum, meaning their cases have already been found credible by foreign governments," she said. "Overall ITJP has more than two hundred statements from Sri Lankan victims of alleged war crimes and post-war torture and sexual violence who have fled the country. The orgnisation has also begun to identify some alleged perpetrators, Sooka said. "I want the outside world to know that torture is still happening in Sri Lanka and the torture that I suffered," said a young Tamil woman abducted in a "white van" and gangraped this year in illegal detention in the north of Sri Lanka. "The international community, including the UN is under an obligation to ensure that the Government of Sri Lanka honours its commitments made in the Human Rights Council in regard to the transitional justice programme in Sri Lanka. "Overlooking the ongoing violations is not doing either the Government of Sri Lanka a favour or the victims, whose suffering should not be swept under the carpet just because of political expediency," Sooka added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the indefinite economic blockade imposed by United Naga Council (UNC) on two National Highways of Manipur entering 14th day today, prices of essential items have skyrocketed in the capital city. Over 1,000 loaded trucks are stranded alongside Mao gate on the Nagaland side and Jiribam respectively as Imphal-bound trucks are unable to head for the capital due to the economic blockade, a high-ranking police officer said. Price of petrol in black market has risen to Rs 250 per litre in Imphal and Rs 300 a litre in the hill districts of Churachandpur and Chandel, officials said. To cope with the crisis, hundreds of trucks and fuel tankers, escorted by security personnel, have headed for Jiribam sub-division from neighbouring Silchar in Assam to bring essential commodities, the officer said. Meanwhile, Irom Sharmila's newly-floated political party People's Resurgence and Judicial Assurance (PRJA) appealed to the UNC to lift the ban on humanitarian ground. PRJA Convenor Erendro condemned the blockade as it affected common people irrespective of ethnic groups and said it revealed the inefficiency of the Okram Ibobi-led Congress government in the state. The UNC has been agitating against the government decision to create Sadar Hills and Jiribam into full fledged districts, claiming it would bifurcate ancestral lands of Nagas in Manipur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Trade unions will raise the issue of minimum wage of Rs 21,000 per month for workers as well as a minimum pension of Rs 3,000 a month with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the pre-budget consultations this week. Finance Minister will meet with the unions on November 19 for the consultations, Trade Union Co-ordination Centre (TUCC) said today. The unions will raise the issue of fixation of minimum wages for all the workers across India at Rs 21,000 per month and fixation of monthly pension to the EPFO subscribers at Rs 3,000 per month, TUCC General Secretary S P Tiwari said. Besides, he added, other issues to be take up at the meeting include budgetary allocation for social security fund for 45.7 crore informal sector workers and withdrawal of foreign direct investment (FDI) from core areas like defence, railways, banking and space. Mandatory linkage of the international migrant workers to PBBY (Pravasi Bhartiya Bima Yojna) before their departure through the sending agency and revoking the new pension scheme as well as re-introducing the old pension scheme for the central government and PSU employees will also be raised, he said. "TUCC also welcomes the move of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discontinue the old currency of Rs 500 and 1000, which will stop the black money circulation in the economy and stop terror financing too," Tiwari said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As a surge of students from China begins to level off, many US colleges are expanding recruiting efforts in the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America in part to boost budgets that have come to rely on tuition dollars from international students. The number of Chinese students at US colleges rose from 62,000 a decade ago to 328,000 last year, and they still make up 31 per cent of all international students in the US, but growth is slowing. Today, the Institute of International Education released federal data showing that the number of Chinese students at US colleges grew by 8 per cent last year, the smallest uptick since 2005. Some schools are bracing for a decline, citing China's sluggish economy and sharper competition from colleges in Australia and other countries. "For a variety of factors, we're seeing a slowdown in Chinese enrollment," said Todd Maurer, a California analyst who advises schools and education companies on trends in Asia. "I think we're seeing the last years of double-digit growth." Colleges seek international students partly to boost campus diversity, but they also bring a financial perk. Most schools don't offer scholarships for international students, and charge them full tuition costs. Losing foreign students could hurt college budgets, especially at a time when some public universities are struggling with long-term drops in state funding. Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education at the University at Buffalo, said many colleges worry they depend too heavily on revenue from Chinese students. "They would be severely hurt if there was a contraction," he said. "There's no Plan B. There's no other country that would send students in those numbers." Buffalo is among many universities that have expanded global recruiting efforts in part to hedge against a possible decline from China. Along with continued work in China, Dunnett's office has turned its attention to growing countries such as Vietnam and Burma. Next year, the college plans to recruit in Iran for the first time. This year, the University of Massachusetts Amherst made its first recruiting trip to Mexico and also bolstered its work in Singapore and Vietnam. Instead of sending recruiters to China this year, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania focused on India and sent admissions officials to South America for the first time in about a decade. Other schools are exploring whether there could be a boom from sub-Saharan Africa. Nations such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Angola have growing youth populations and middle classes, two of the factors that US colleges look for, but some say the region's governments don't offer enough funding to help students study abroad. Other countries where US schools see recruiting promise include Cuba, Nigeria and India, which sent 165,000 students to the United States last year, a 25 per cent jump in a year. According to the new data from Blumenthal's group, students from Nepal and Vietnam are also among the fastest-growing groups coming to the US. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A veteran history teacher in the US has been suspended for comparing President-elect Donald Trump to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during a post-election lesson. Frank Navarro, 65, a history and special education teacher at Mountain View High School, Bay Area, California, was asked to leave during school hours after the administration received an email from a parent concerned about statements he made in the class. Navarro, who has taught at the school for 40 years and is an expert on the Holocaust, said school officials declined to read him the email and also declined his request to review the lesson plan with him. Mountain View/Los Altos High School District Superintendent Jeff Harding confirmed the incident which took place last Thursday but declined to describe the parent's complaints, The Mercury reported. "This feels like we're trying to squash free speech," Navarro was quoted as saying. "Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It's not propaganda or bias if it's based on hard facts," he said. Though Navarro said school officials, who had put him on paid leave, originally told him to return on Wednesday, Harding said he could return earlier. "I had a short lesson paralleling Hitler with Trump when Hitler was running from 1930 to 1933," Navarro told the New York Daily . "Hitler said he would make Germany great again, and Trump said he would make America great again," Navarro said. He also noted that both leaders vowed to deport foreigners. Tensions have run high throughout the Bay Area after Trump's victory, with many protesting in the streets and hundreds of students staging walkouts. The Oracle, Mountain View High's independent student newspaper, said some of Navarro's students alleged his lessons were one-sided and that Navarro said things about Trump that his supporters would find offensive. Other students defended Navarro. A change.Org petition calling for his return had garnered more than 1,200 signatures. Navarro, who is Mexican-American and was raised in Oakland, said he is concerned for many of his students during this political climate. "I've had Mexican kids come and say, 'Hey, Mr. Navarro, I might be deported,'" he said. "Is it better to see bigotry and say nothing? That's what the principal was telling me (during our conversation). In my silence, I would be substantiating the bigotry. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The vehicle parking at Dabolim airport in Goahas been made free of charge from tonight in the wake of currency-crunch in the country. "In view of the demonetisation of currency and crisis of smaller denominations of currency, Airport Authority of India as per the guidelines of government has decided not to charge any car parking fee for seven days, starting from today midnight," airport director BCH Negi told PTI. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US president-elect has said he has not given a thought yet on appointing a special prosecutor against his bitter campaign rival Hillary Clinton and instead wants to focus on major issues like jobs, health and immigration along with border security. "I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on healthcare, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. We want to have a great immigration bill. I want to focus on all of these other things that we've been talking about," Trump told CBS '60 Minute' programme that was aired yesterday. Trump said he wants to "get the country straightened away" instead of thinking about appointing special prosecutors against Clinton. "I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to hurt them. They're, they're good people. I don't want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together," he said when reminded about his campaign rhetoric. Trump said he discussed several priority issues with the House Speaker Paul Ryan during their meeting at the Capitol Hill on Thursday. "I would say there was more than one thing, there were three things, it was healthcare, there was immigration and there was a major tax bill lowering taxes in this country. We're going to substantially simplify and lower the taxes," he said in response to a question. Trump said he has made decisions about Cabinet positions, but refused to divulge any names. World leaders calling him after his election, he said, reflects America's power. "You know the amazing thing to show you the incredible nature of our country. First of all, every major leader... Has called me, I've spoken to many of them and I'll call the rest of them, but and I said, "Boy, this really shows you how powerful our country is." "France and UK and I mean everybody, all over Asia - and very, just to congratulate. But it really shows the power of our country," he said. Responding to a question, he said he has not made up his mind if he would ask for the resignation of the FBI Director James Comey for his decisions related to the investigations against Clinton. "I think that I would rather not comment on that yet. I don't -- I haven't made up my mind. I respect him a lot. I respect the FBI a lot. "I would certainly like to talk to him. And see him. This is a tough time for him. I would like to talk to him before I'd answer a question like that," Trump said when asked if he would seek the resignation of the FBI Director. "I'd wanna see, you know, he may have had very good reasons for doing what he did," he said. Trump reiterated he would defeat ISIS but refused to give any details. "All I can tell you is we're going to get rid of ISIS. Laying emphasis on promoting the Bhojpuri language worldwide, Mauritius Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth today said here efforts were being made by his country to confer the language a heritage status. "Mauritius will soon send a proposal to UNESCO urging it to include Bhojpuri language in the heritage list so that due respect could be given to our Bhojpuri language," he said. Asserting that a lot of workwas already going on in Mauritius to promote the language, the Prime Minister said, "The Bhojpuri language was even being taught to students in our schools with an aim of promoting it." Jugnauth and his wife Sarojni today visited the Bhaisasur Ghat in the city on the eve ofDev Deepawali. On a question that terrorism was being spread in the name of religion, he said it was not right to link religion with terrorism because "religion is purely associated with leading a peaceful life". He also paid floral tributes to themartyred Indian soldiershere at the ghat. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chinese President Xi Jinping has conferred a posthumous honorary title on a pilot of a fighter jet meant for China's first aircraft carrier, who was killed during a training. President Xi, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, signed an order to confer a posthumous honorary title on Zhang Chao, who died on April 27 while flying a J-15 carrier-based aircraft in a carrier-landing simulation. He was given the title "Pioneer in Building a Strong Army." Zhang, who had participated in several dozen marine patrols, joined the team of carrier-based aircraft pilots in March 2015. The whole army and armed police forces were asked to learn from Zhang's virtues such as self-discipline and being bold enough to sacrifice everything for the Party and the people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A septic tank level monitor, a 'shoe' to easily sow seeds and a device to check cleanliness of utensils -- these are among the thousands of innovative ideas from children to solve a vast range of issues confronted daily by many people in the country. Indu Manikpuri from Naxal-hit Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh is among the awardees of the 2016 A P J Abdul Kalam IGNITE Awards by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) who were honoured by President Pranab Mukherjee recently. Indu, who lost her father in a Naxal attack, came up with an idea of a septic tank level and pressure indicator so that the level of the tank is known and it can be drained before it overflows and causes many problems. It not only helps in cleaning the tank on time and maintaining hygiene, but also avoids pollution, which is a major issue in various parts of the country, said Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Science and Technology. "It is very useful for the Clean India Movement and the ministry is taking the idea forward," he says. "It was a pleasure for me to present my idea before the President and to hear his praise was the proudest moment in my life," said Indu. She got the idea when she visited her village and saw that the tank was overflowing. She also noticed that the number of toilets in the village is also increasing and with that the problem will only became worse. "Nowadays, people in rural areas are getting aware about cleanliness. They are constructing lavatories but overflowing of the septic tank is a major problem," says Manikpuri. Her idea of a septic tank pressure record aims to warn of the impending problem well in time so that the tank can be drained. Inspired by her maternal uncle, who is a farmer, Subhra Suchismita Pate from Bhubaneswar in Orissa designed shoes with drills fitted into them so that farmers can dig holes as they walk in the field to sow seeds. Her uncle suffers from acute backache after long working hours in his farms. The shoes may also contain seed compartments so that they can be easily sown and spread. The rear part of the shoes will have brushes to cover up the holes in which seeds have been sown. Sebati Kutruka from Bhubaneswar in Orissa, who was driven by her desire to help her father, designed an agricultural tool for digging sweet potato. She came up with a digger, operated by spring mechanism with a rod, so that sweet potatoes can be dug easily. Sebati wants to improvise the machine for other vegetables such as yam. Muskan Jawalkar from Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh has come out with an alternative cooler which throws air in all directions. "No manufacturer thought about it," said Harsh Vardhan. The children also came up with simple and effective solutions for issues like encouraging hand washing. Sheereen Shaikh from Delhi suggested that children be reminded with a message written on the cover of the tiffin box -- "wash your hands before you eat food" -- and with another on the inside cover-- "wash your hands after eating your food". "I saw small kids eating without washing their hands in rural and slum areas so I thought there should be a way to remind them to wash hand before and after eating," says Shaikh. "Not washing hands obviously affects personal hygiene and causes diseases," she says. Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi was also highly impressed by the idea. "Although it is very simple idea, but is very important and can help kids to remind that it is important to wash hands before and after eating. May be, it should be made mandatory to print these lines by lunch box manufacturers," she says. Maidari Devi from East Godavari in Andhra Pradesh also came up with an innovation linked to cleanliness. Devi came up with a device that would not only indicate the level of cleanliness of utensils but also reduce manual work of rinsing them. "The thought of a machine that predicts cleanliness of utensils struck me when I observed that my mother was cleaning the dishes twice," says Devi. Roshan Sodi, from Sukma district of Chhattisgarh came up with idea, to avoid any wrongdoing in the polling booth. He suggested a button in the EVMs which can transmit the total number of votes directly to the cloud server as the voting proceeds and also to district Election Commission office if required at regular interval. "We received about 55,000 innovative ideas from 458 districts from 16 states and Union territories, out of which we have selected only 31 ideas for the award," said Anil Kumar Gupta founder of the Honey Bee Foundation. "We are not just giving the awards, but also trying to turns these ideas into reality. Children are full of ideas and all they need is a platform and we are trying to provide it. They can give us innovative ideas in any of the 32 Indian languages," said Gupta who is also part of NIF. Harsh Vardhan also said, "It is wonderful to see so many different ideas from children of various backgrounds. These are not just awards, but are responsibilities to the children to help India became better." NIF, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has been actively engaged in promoting creativity and innovation with support from Honey Bee Network. SHARE KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) - A Rwandan court has granted bail to an opposition leader a day after arresting her on charges of collaborating with terrorists and "promoting genocide ideology." Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire was released Thursday but ordered not to leave the capital and to report to authorities weekly. The prosecution says they will appeal her release. Her party says she is being harassed for challenging President Paul Kagame in elections scheduled for August. Some 500,000 people died in the 1994 genocide. The massacres ended when mostly Tutsi rebels led by Kagame defeated the mostly Hutu extremists. Critics of Kagame's government argue the ruling party has used the concept of genocide ideology to discredit detractors and defeat political opponents. The company said only that its management had the "full confidence" of the board's six independent directors. Mistry is still the chairman of several key Tata companies including Tata Motors and Tata Steel after his ousting from the chairmanship of Tata Sons, the holding company of all the operating companies of the Tata group. The Tata group is now seeking to remove Mistry from Tata Motors, a battle that has also revived debate around India's corporate governance and Tata's complex structure. Tata Motors did not address the issue in a statement issued on Monday, however, noting simply that all decisions taken by the board of Tata Motors on strategy and operations have been "unanimous" and executed by the chairman and the management. The statement came on the same day the company posted its results for the three months ended Sept. 30. It made a consolidated net profit of 8.48 billion rupees, which compared with a net loss of 17.40 billion rupees in the same period last year, on total income from operations up 7 percent at 670 billion rupees. "Tata Motors ... generates a substantial profit and revenues, so it is important for Tatas to have control over the board," said Shriram Subramanian, managing director of InGovern Research Services, a firm advising institutional investors. Tata Sons on Thursday removed Mistry as chairman of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) , 73 percent controlled by the group and the conglomerate's star performer. But it has struggled to get him out at other subsidiaries where ownership is closer to 30 percent. Boards at Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals voted to keep Mistry as chairman last week. Directors of Tata Global Beverages , which co-owns and runs Starbucks coffee stores across India, meet on Tuesday. If the Tata Motors board does not oust Mistry, Tata Sons will have to turn to shareholder meetings. Tata Sons has already called for extraordinary general meetings across its companies to remove Mistry as a director, including Indian Hotels Co , Tata Chemicals Ltd and Tata Motors. Tata Sons has blamed Mistry's abrupt exit on what it called breach of trust and poor performance, accusing him of eroding shareholder value. It has also said Mistry tried to reduce the role of Tata Sons, controlled by a series of charitable trusts. Mistry has argued he tried to create internal barriers for better governance - a move that would reduce the Tata trusts' involvement in the operational issues of group companies, which he said should be controlled by their own boards of directors. The Tata trusts collectively own about two thirds of Tata Sons, while infrastructure company Shapporji Pallonji, owned by Mistry's family, is a minority shareholder in Tata Sons and he remains a director on the board of the holding company. "A philanthropy running a commercial business creates its own paradoxes," said Institutional Investor Advisory Services, a proxy advisory, in a note about the feud. Tata Sons said on Sunday said it was "crucially important" for the board members, including independent directors, to consider the future of Tata companies and its stakeholders. A spokesman declined to comment further. (Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Stephen Coates, Greg Mahlich) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chennai-based Indian Terrain is spinning a yarn around its city of origin Madras to create a unique identity for its brand and script a story that wins customer loyalty. The brand also wants to differentiate itself from the swarm of American and British labels getting into the market as it builds a national footprint. Commercial Feature is a Business Standard Digital Marketing Initiative. The Editorial/Content team at Business Standard has not contributed to writing or editing these articles. For further information, please write to assist@bsmail.in Aldi Ireland today announced it has reached a significant milestone in donating 500,000 meals to charities through FoodCloud since the partnership began. This equates to a saving of over 700,000 for the charities and community groups involved. In May Aldi announced a new national partnership with FoodCloud whereby surplus food from Aldi stores across the country would be redistributed to charities and community groups. A total of 79 Aldi stores are now participating in the programme, donating over 500,000 meals or 234 tonnes of food so far. Charities and community groups across Ireland have benefited from this initiative including the Doorway Project in Letterkenny, Irish Wheelchair Association Sligo, Cashel Social Services and Drogheda Homeless Aid. FoodCloud is a social enterprise set up to ensure that no good food goes to waste. It connects businesses with surplus food with charities in their local communities that need it through an innovative software platform. Using the FoodCloud platform, Aldi staff in a store can, in seconds, upload a description of the products available. There are charities linked up to the store through the platform and one of these charities will receive a text saying the food is available for collection. The charity then collects the food and redistributes it to people in the community that need it. FoodCloud Hubs in Cork, Galway and Dublin rescue, store and redistribute large volumes and a great variety of surplus food from the food industry to charities across Ireland. Aldi's Regional Distribution Centre in Cork is working with FoodCloud Hubs, enabling Aldi to help even more charities. Aldis Group Buying Director, Finbar McCarthy said, "We are delighted to reach this milestone of donating 500,000 meals to charity through FoodCloud, helping charities to make a 700,000 saving in the process. Even across an efficient retail operation such as Aldi, there will unavoidably be some unsold, surplus food each day. By partnering with FoodCloud such surplus food goes to a good cause." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan is currently leading a three-day (November 13-15) Trade Mission to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The mission will facilitate high-level business contacts for Irish suppliers spanning a number of key sectors including International Education, Lifesciences, Digital Media, ICT and Telecommunications, Financial Services, Aviation, Agri-technology and Business Services. During the trade mission, Minister Flanagan will promote Ireland and its world-class companies during a series of high level business engagements with private and public organisations. He will also undertake a series of engagements with representatives of the Irish business community in the region including the Irish Business Network-Saudi Arabia, the Abu Dhabi Irish Business Council, and the Dubai Irish Business Network. The 37 delegate-companies represent a wide regional spread, with participants based in Cork, Laois, Limerick, Roscommon, Kerry, Galway, Louth, and Dublin. The Trade Mission, organised jointly with Enterprise Ireland, is part of ongoing efforts to raise Irelands profile internationally, to improve the already-strong bilateral trade and investment linkages with the Gulf region and to provide a forum for Irish companies active in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to develop their relationships with customers, partners, and other stakeholders. The Trade Mission is also part of Enterprise Irelands broad drive to increase the export market penetration and diversification of Irish companies post Brexit. Speaking in advance of the visit, Minister Flanagan said, "This Trade Mission will include a number of high-level meetings and will serve to strengthen Irelands economic, political and cultural ties with these key priority markets. I look forward to working with our partners in Enterprise Ireland to produce real results for the Irish economy. Significantly, this mission is also an opportunity to reassure our important trading partners of Irelands commitment to the EU, following the UK vote last July." Source: www.businessworld.ie Ibec has today called on Government to introduce a comprehensive package of new measures to head off the worst consequences of Brexit and increased global uncertainty. The report sets out a series of urgent measures to protect Irish businesses against the precipitous decline in sterling and shore up Ireland's competitive position as a place to live, work and invest. The proposals include a new enterprise stabilisation fund, additional funding for market diversification measures, an access to finance package, trade finance measures and an expansion of online trading supports Ibec warn that the exporting industries most affected by the sterling fall are typically job intensive and deeply embedded in local economies. A review of the historical exchange rate and agri-food export relationship shows that a 1% weakness in sterling results in a 0.7% drop in Irish exports to the UK. This has already begun. Ibec's most recent trade figures for the year to August showed the value of Irish food exports to the UK fell by 8.1% annually. This fall accelerated to 14.5% annually in the two months since the referendum and has hit all categories. Ibec Director of Policy Fergal OBrien says, "While sterling strengthened somewhat last week, we expect further volatility ahead as markets react to the political twists and turns of Brexit negotiations. The Irish Government can't sit on its hands during these negotiations, while sustainable businesses fall prey to the already evident economic realities of Brexit. A comprehensive immediate response package is now needed to save jobs." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Enterprise Ireland have launched their latest 500,000 Competitive Start Fund for Female Entrepreneurs to support early stage start-ups. The fund is open to applications from female entrepreneurs or female-led start-ups active in the Manufacturing and Internationally Traded Services sectors. Now in its fifth year, the Enterprise Ireland Fund provides 50,000 in equity funding for each successful applicant. It is open for submissions and will close at 3pm on Wednesday, 23 November 2016. The purpose of the Competitive Start Fund is to accelerate the growth of female-led start-up companies that have the potential to employ more than 10 people and achieve 1 million in export sales within three years. The fund is designed to enable those companies reach key commercial and technical milestones which will ensure delivery of their product or service to an international audience. Manager of High Potential Start-Ups at Enterprise Ireland, Orla Battersby said, "This is a dedicated Competitive Start Fund to encourage more women to start businesses, providing a launch platform for female entrepreneurs in the Manufacturing and Internationally Trade Services sectors." She added, "A priority for Enterprise Ireland is to help Irish entrepreneurs with global ambition to start their businesses and the 500,000 Fund will go towards supporting the next generation of female-led start-ups to compete in export markets." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The international Startup Nations Summit, which has never been held on the European continent, will be welcomed to Cork for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2016. The Startup Nations Summit, which takes place on 19 November, is just one of many events organized for startups, entrepreneurs, policy makers and stakeholders in the startup ecosystem. Co-hosted by Cork innovates and Startup Ireland, an extensive range of events including the Global Startup Gathering will take place across Cork city and county from Spike Island to City Hall. More than 200 national and international investor-ready startups applied to participate in the CorkBIC Global Investor Challenge. The competition final will take place on Spike Island, Cork on Friday 18th November with 3 finalists pitching at the Startup Nation Summit Gala Dinner on Saturday 19th November. Among the international delegates, President of the European Committee of the Regions, Markku Markkula, will be in Cork to participate in the Startup policy discussions and US State Dept Director of Global Entrepreneurship Thomas Lersten and GEN President Jonathan Ortmans will be actively engaging with national and international delegates at the events in Cork running from 17 to 20 November 2016. Head of Economic Development at Cork City Council, Seamus Coghlan says, "Many of the worlds leading minds on startup policy and entrepreneurship will be meeting in Cork for the Startup Nations Summit. We want to demonstrate how we are here to engage and support businesses in Cork, and there is no better time than Global Entrepreneurship Week to do so" Source: www.businessworld.ie About us A requestor tenders (RFT) for A Review of Future Capacity Needs at Irelands State Airports has been published by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. This review was announced by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross TD on 22 September and concerns the long-term development of Irelands State Airports (Dublin, Cork and Shannon) to 2050. In the case of Dublin Airport only, the study is expected to recommend the timeframe for the development of new terminal capacity Terminal 3 and its appropriate design and optimum location. Tenderers will also be asked to assess the relative advantages and disadvantages of the funding and operation of Terminal 3 by the existing airport operator in comparison to being operated on an independent basis. The RFT is seeking tenders for consultants to analyse, for each of the three airports, the capacity requirements to meet forecasted passenger throughput to 2050 and to identify priorities for infrastructure provision. Speaking last week, Minister Ross said, "Irish airports, and Dublin Airport in particular, are experiencing a strong return to growth and we need to have a clear and coherent vision for the future. To ensure that our airports are prepared for the longer term, I have asked that this review consider the development of the three State Airports to 2050. Consultants will also be asked to identify and prioritise new infrastructure which will be required in the coming years." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. More than 6000 people with visual problems are living in Armenia, 500 of whom are children, director of the #14 special school for children with visual impairment Mr. Alexan Aharonyan told a press conference in ARMENPRESS. This one school for visually impaired children is operating in Armenia, where 100 children are learning from Javakhk, Nagorno Karabakh and various provinces of Armenia. Children receive complete education in the school, all subjects are included in the program. A pre-school is also operating in the school under the decree of the minister, Aharonyan said. According to him, the main issue remains the Braille textbook matter. Thanks to different organizations it was possible to publish some quantity, however its not enough. The school is solving the issue with a Braille printer. Alexan Aharonyan says one school in the country is not enough for the visually impaired. Martin Sargsyan, vice president of the Union of the visually impaired of Armenia NGO says blind people and the visually impaired have problems being employed. Previously they were employed in the production facilities of the union, however currently the production work with lesser capacity, therefore they are unable to employ many. Visually impaired people produce various products in the manufacturing facilities, however the Armenian market is small, and exporting is a problem. We hope membership to the EEU will open new prospects in terms of exports, Sargsyan said. It was announced today that Talent Jam Cork will take place on Saturday 19th November during Global Startup Gathering 2016 sponsored by Bank of Ireland. The event, taking place at the Bank of Ireland Workbench, Patrick Street will be the first held outside the United States and promises to connect up to 20 Irish tech startups seeking talent with local professionals interested in working with them. It is a one-of-a-kind, hyperlocal event for individuals, businesses and organizations to share and find great local talent. Talent Jam live events feature 1 minute, "open mic" pitches, where presenters describe their talent needs to a live audience followed by fun and impactful networking. Since founded Talent Jam has helped entrepreneurs find employees, co-founders, consultants, advisors, and even investors. It's also helped many talented people find meaningful work close to home. Talent Jam launched and has grown rapidly in the United States as an entrepreneur-friendly alternative to traditional networking events and job fairs. Speaking about the event, Workbench Manager at Bank of Ireland, Ita OSullivan said, "We are delighted to welcome the inaugural Talent Jam event to our newly opened Cork Workbench. The event provides a fantastic opportunity to connect businesses looking for talent with the rich pool of professionals in the region looking for work. Many of Ireland's best tech startups and talented professionals will connect in a truly authentic way." Source: www.businessworld.ie DocuSign have today announced the opening of their Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence in Dublin as part of their ongoing commitment to Europe and protecting their customers data and privacy. The Centre will be committed to conducting research into the latest cyberattacks and trends, while developing tools for the advanced detection of such threats. A critical focus for the Centre within the next three years will be undertaking research and development into security orchestration and automation which will directly inform advancements and innovation for DocuSigns security tools. The Centre of Excellence will play a significant role in maintaining and building upon the trust that more than 250,000 companies and more than 100 million users across 188 countries who put their trust in the DocuSign Global Trust Network to complete nearly one million transactions per day. The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland. Welcoming the new investment by DocuSign, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O'Connor said, "It is great news that a company of the stature of DocuSign has decided to open this new facility here. We have the IT skills available to enable the company to grow and to embed their operations in Ireland. Their arrival is a great vote of confidence in what Ireland has to offer and I wish the team the very best for their future in Ireland. Source: www.businessworld.ie About us It was announced last Friday that Irelands first rural digital hub, the Ludgate Digital Hub in Skibbereen, Co. Cork, will grant seed funding to online education startup, Digedu, with the company relocating from its base in Dublin to the West Cork town. As part of National Digital Week 2016, Ludgate Digital Hub recently announced a 450,000 investment package, the Ludgate Seed Capital Fund, to help startups develop and scale their business, attract new talent or develop their product or service. Digedu is the first to receive funding from this package with an investment from Ludgate of 45,000 in the business, 10% of the total seed funding. The company is an online provider of courses aimed at teaching skills for the digital age to a global audience. The funds will allow investment in the companys educational platform with the business aiming to employ ten people within the next three years. Speaking at the announcement, Founder of Digedu, Bryan Hurley said, "This substantial investment in our business at this early stage gives us the platform to develop and grow at a much quicker and efficient pace than otherwise might have been possible." He added, "Skibbereens Ludgate Digital Hub provides us with everything we need from high speed connectivity to mentorship in an exciting startup environment and is a unique opportunity for a small tech company to participate in a truly unique and inspiring initiative." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The Nation. While the broader resort-grade property market continues to reel in the wake of the prolonged global recession and resulting reductions in consumer spending, some niche segments are proving irresistible to purchasers. A recent alternative form of investment has been fractional yacht ownership. Greater Phuket has seen a steady rise in the number of private marinas over the past decade, starting with the Boat Lagoon and Yacht Haven and followed by the Royal Phuket Marina and the Ao Po, Grand Marina. A super-yacht facility is now under construction at Jumeirah Private Island. Fractional ownership offerings were launched in 2007 by the Royal Phuket Marina Cruising Club. Then the island's top boutique hotel, the Twin Palms jumped into the market with the debut of Phuket Premier Yachting last year, and most recently the Tawan Cruising Club was launched about the middle of this year. Typically, the offerings take a single vessel and divide the ownership into 10 shares. Each share represents 28 days' use. There are booking procedures to control time allotment and restrictions on use. Overhead expenses are an add-on and include the costs of crew and administration, insurance, maintenance and food and beverage consumed during time spend aboard. The companies engaged in this business often find synergies with their core activities, which include operating hotels, property-property developments or marinas. The operators say the buyers of fractional ownership shares are all foreigners, with British, French and Scandinavians in the top three and more than half of the buyers live or work in Asia. In many cases yachts are available for rent when share-owners do not wish to use their time allotments. The operators also provide private charters to outside parties at an average price of Bt 150,000 to Bt 200,000 a day. Owners are then able to offset this revenue against their annual maintenance costs. At the expiry of a five-year fractional ownership term which is considered to be the useful life of the vessel a decision is made on whether to refit the craft or sell it. In the case of sale, any residual value is shared among the owners. This is often touted as a financial gain. However, because of the relatively brief history of these schemes, residual, values remain untested. Despite the financial crisis, most high-net-worth individuals continue to give high priority to leisure and travel. While many of them are now looking at large purchases, others are tending to buy only those products they intend to use. This makes the fractional-ownership proposition both attractive and timely. Greater Phuket, with its access to Phang Nga Bay and its islands, as well as destinations like Krabi, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta, will see continued growth of yacht fractional ownership in the coming years. With the recent announcement of a new Sarasin Bridge connecting the island to Phang Nga, there is promise that yachts will be heading straight out into the Andaman Sea to such exotic locations as the Similan Islands and the Burma Banks. At the moment, fractions look to be going out to sea in increasing numbers. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has said he will resign after his party's candidate was defeated in presidential elections, BBC reports. Mr Borisov had backed the centre-right speaker of parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva, who got only 35% in Sunday's run-off vote, according to exit polls. A political outsider, the former commander of the country's Air Force Rumen Radev, won with more than 58%. He was backed by the opposition Socialist Party. Earlier on Sunday, Mr Borisov had said: "We will not participate in any way in the government if we lose today." After the exit polls gave the opposition's candidate an overwhelming lead, he said he would fulfil his promise in the coming days. "The results clearly show that the ruling coalition no longer holds the majority," he said. "We accept the will of the people and we congratulate those who have the support of the majority of the voters." The coalition that Mr Borisov formed upon re-election in 2014 is dependent on the support of centre-left and nationalist parties. President-elect Radev has said he will keep Bulgaria in Nato but has affirmed that "being pro-European does not mean being anti-Russian". His opponent, Mrs Tsacheva, was seen as more pro-Europe than him, and had referred to Bulgaria's past as a Soviet satellite as the country's "dark past". About 6% of voters ticked a "none of the above" option on their ballot paper. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on approving the agreement on joint unification of Armenia and Russias military forces. Adopt the proposal of the Russian Government on signing the agreement between Armenia and Russia regarding joint forces (troops) of the Armed forces of Armenia and the Armed forces of Russia, the document reads. According to the decree, the defense ministry of Russia is tasked with negotiating with the Armenian side with the participation of the FM of Russia, and sign the agreement after reaching a deal. The launching of this years edition coincided was commemorated by thrilling performances from musicians and theatre companies from all over the globe. ADS The 11th edition of the African Theatre Festival for Children and Young People, FATEJ was launched over the weekend at the French Institute in Yaounde. The launching of this years edition coincided with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of FATEJ and the 35th anniversary of Theatre Du Chocolat, making this years edition a very special one. Since 2004, the African Theatre Festival for Children and Young People and Theatre Du Chocolat has partnered with the International Association of theatre for children and young people, ASSITEJ to ensure that African theatres understand how to manage the art. The African Theatre Festival for Children and young people FATEJ is a biennial festival that was created in 1996 and has as objective to create a platform for African theatre companies to interact. This years festival is termed Inclusivity and will run from the 11-18 of November 2016. Activities will hold in three different towns. Yaounde, Soa and Mfou and will encompass theatre activities of all sorts. And even though the children are included in this years event, they are just to be part of the audience as it is the youths that will perform for them. The opening ceremony was graced with the presence of guest from America, Asia and Europe who came to lend their support to the African theatre companies which are here to participate at the Festival. The theatre companies which came from outside the continent included, Teatre Tre from Sweden, Ueli Bischel from Switzerland and Treteaux De Haute Alsace from France and those that came from around Africa included Theatre Claire from Burkina Faso Teatro Galagalazul from Mozambique, Rwanda and Kininso Concept Production from Nigeria just to mention a few. The venue for the launching was inspired by the fact that it was at the French Institute that the first theatre act was performed on July 4, 1981, so it was for them to reflect on how far they have come and how far they still have to go, said Mr Etundi Zeyang, Artistic director. Thrilling performances came from Cameroons Theatre Du Chocolat entitled Abole a short play and Barbara Clemance, Cameroonian Bikutsi artist based in Europe that kept the audience clapping and cheering for most parts of the evening. Cynthia Akenji NGUM Ngum (Intern) ADS | BY Ricki Green | In a huge week, composer Rafael May won Silver at London International Advertising Awards for Cadbury Marvellous Creations as his Afghanistan special launched on Channel 7. Composer Rafael May had a scorcher week last week taking the Silver Trophy for Best Original Song for Cadbury Marvellous Creations spot. May was the lyricist, composer and sound designer in the beautiful piece via SapientNitro Melbourne. Rafael was the only Australian music winner. On top of that, Channel 7 launched the Afghanistan special introduced personally by Kerry Stokes on Sunday night with Rafs gripping music and sound design. The tour de force was through Luscious Films, the War Memorial and legendary journo, Chris Masters, in one of the biggest pieces of branded content of the year. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Evidence gathered in the investigation of the criminal case on the July 29 riots in Yerevans Sari Tagh district suggests preparations and premeditation for mass disturbances were carried out the same day prior to the rally of citizens from the Freedom Square, with the purpose of breaching the police line, reaching the police seized police precinct and assist the criminal activities of the gunmen. The Prosecutor General requested the abovementioned criminal case from the Investigative Committee and sent it to the Special Investigations Service for attaching the criminal case to the ambush/hostage taking criminal case of the police precinct, and carrying out a joint investigation. "We can get overseas university students who spend all their money on books and study and not enough on themselves. We do get a lot of homeless people, but we also get people who are well-dressed, well spoken and down on their luck and you can see it." International Finance Corporation expresses interest in funding Ethiopia Djibouti fuel pipeline project The International Finance Corporation, IFC, the investment arm of the World Bank has expressed interest in financing the planned Ethiopia Djibouti fuel pipeline project. The South Africa- based infrastructure investment group, Black Rhino, has proposed to the Ethiopian government to build a 550-km long pipeline to transport diesel, gasoline and jet fuel from Djibouti port to central Ethiopia. The project is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. The Ethiopian government has reviewed and accepted the proposal in principle. Backed by the US investment group Black Stone, Black Rhino has undertaken a feasibility study on the project, which is going to be the first fuel pipeline in Ethiopia. Chief investment officer with IFC Kalim M. Shah said that IFC has an interest in financing the Djibouti-Awash fuel pipeline construction project. Shah said experts of IFC and executives of Black Rhino had discussions. We have been in discussion with Black Rhino but the project is at its early stage. It did not progress to the point where I would have something to announce right now but definitely that is a project we are interested in financing. We are looking at it and had some deliberations with Black Rhino, Shah said. He said that it was too early to further comment on the project adding IFC was also looking at the textile, leather and cement industries in Ethiopia as well. Ethiopias annual fuel import, which is growing at a rate of ten percent, has reached 3.6 million metric tons. The country so far uses tanker trucks to transport the fuel from the Port of Djibouti to central Ethiopia costing the country dearly. The governments of Ethiopian and Djibouti signed a framework agreement on the planned pipeline construction in 2015. Black Rhino has finalized the feasibility study and it has been confirmed that the project is feasible. The company is now working on the implementation study. It is set to present the final feasibility study to the Ethiopian government, which in turn will review the study and give the green light to proceed with the project if it finds it acceptable. Once an agreement is signed with the Ethiopian government another agreement will be inked with the government of Djibouti on the modalities of the pipe construction. The fuel pipeline project, known as the Horn of Africa Pipeline, includes an import facility and 950,000 barrels of storage capacity in Damerjog, Djibouti, linked to a storage terminal in Awash, Ethiopia. According to Black Rhino, the 20-inch (51-centimeter) line is capable of transporting 240,000 barrels of fuel daily. The total cost of the project is estimated at 1.55 billion dollars. The project is a 50-50 joint venture by Black Rhino and Mining, Oil and Gas Services (MOGS), a unit of the Johannesburg-based Royal Bafogeng Holdings. Financial close is expected in 2017, with construction scheduled for completion after two years. The developers need to raise at least one billion dollars debt financing. If everything goes according to plan, the project will be awarded to Black Rhino on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) terms. The developers will build the facility, operate it for 30 years and transfer it to the Ethiopian government. It is believed that the developers need to raise at least one billion dollars debt financing. A non-oil producing country, Ethiopia annually imports 3.6 million metric tons of refined petroleum products, most of it via the port of Djibouti, at a cost of $2.8 billion. Although the investment cost is high, pipeline is the safest and cheapest mode of fuel transport per one ton of oil. It is also technologically advanced as it uses IT-based monitoring systems. www.ifc.org YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Finance Minister of Armenia Vardan Aramyan says the responsibility in connection with the army relates to all of us, reports Armenpress. Commenting on the issue of keeping 1000 AMD monthly from each employees salaries for assisting the army, the Minister said we must consider our semi-state of war, thus, we must all together think about assisting the army. If a soldier, God forbid, is killed or becomes disabled, we must consider one thing that he has ensured our security, therefore, if such case happens, it means that his family is deprived of future revenues. Thats why there must be an insurance system which will be able to compensate the lost incomes to their families in the coming 20 years, the Minister said. According to him we expect incomes from other sources, but the army is important for all of us regardless of our social condition and place of residence. The Minister said the most important is that those funds are provided by the people and they must be visible, transparent, perceivable and very clear. Referring to social issues, the Minister said they have always existed and will exist since the annual per capita income is 3500 USD in Armenia. There will be the same social issues, even if we have a 10% growth every year. Since, whether we want it or not, the threshold of our life insurance is still low. Otherwise, we would be a rich country, he said. In conclusion the Minister asked not to associate the social issues with the 1000 AMD kept for assisting the army. This system shows how much the person feels responsible for the army. Lets look at this as a citizen rather than as the one having an income, since in this case there is the principle of volunteering as well, the Minister said. The company said that it has separated Cyta Hellas from the rest of the Cyta group, in order to open the prospect of strategic options with potential investment partners. The decision was confirmed by Cyprus government, which said that 100% of Cyta Hellas would be sold before Cyta itself is privatised. The government said that it would sell Cyta Hellas through a competition and that it was inviting expressions of interest from investors. Cyta has 300,000 consumer and business subscribers in Greece, where it competes mainly against Deutsche Telekom-controlled OTE. The company said in a statement: The environment of economic uncertainty and constant changes in Greece creates major new challenges daily for all the telecoms industry companies. Cyta has invested 200 million in its Greek operations over eight years, where it has built 5,500km of fibre and set up 500 service points. The company stood out in the market, it said, but reports point out that it has been consistently loss-making, and has an estimated 60 million of debts. The Cyprus Weekly newspaper quotes an unnamed source suggesting that Cyta might get no more than 30-40 million for the Greek operation. Mobile operator Wind Hellas was named in April as possibly interested in acquiring Cyta Hellas. Wind Hellas once owned by Telecom Italia and then by Orascom was rescued from financial difficulties in 2010 by a group of local investors. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The European Commission has registered a regress in Turkeys justice, human rights, freedom of speech and media, as well as in a number of sectors, reports Armenpress. The European Commission published an annual assessment report on November 9 over the major political and economic reforms carried out by Turkey necessary for the EU membership. The part of the report referring to South Caucasus and Central Asia says Turkey was vocal in its support for Azerbaijan during clashes in April 2016 in Nagorno Karabakh. The 2009 protocols on normalization of relations with Armenia are not yet ratified. The report underscores also the Turkish authorities strict and regular reaction towards the recognition of the 1915 Genocide. The authors of the report referred also to the main case launched in connection with the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, the obstacles of opening a university department for Armenian language by the Armenian Patriarchate, as well as the activity of Grey Wolves organization on hate speech against Armenians in Kars. The publication of the report was followed by the strict criticism of the Turkish authorities. Turkish Minister for EU Affairs Omer Celik even called it unconstructive and biased. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenia finds years of cooperation with NATO to be effective. Deputy Head of the defense policy department of the defense ministry Mher Isyrayelyan says the Alliance has been a very reliable partner for Armenia. We carried out our cooperation in various directions, from which I will point out our participation in the field of military cooperation in Afghanistan with 121 troops, and in Kosovo with 31 troops. Within the framework of the military cooperation, we also take part in NATO military exercises, trainings, jointly evaluate tactical capabilities and level of combat readiness. We achieved great successes in this issue, already having implemented NATO 2nd degree evaluation for our peacekeeping brigade battalion, Israyelyan said. He stressed NATO is an important partner and advisor for Armenia in the fields of defense reforms, educational, anti-corruption etc. Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact. Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. Bengaluru, November 12, 2016: CRY volunteers in Bengaluru, joined to celebrate children's day across the nation by organizing a walk to engage with the community and raise awareness on child rights. The community walk involved students and teachers from the Government Primary and High School, Yeshwantpur, along with CRY volunteers and employees. Around 250 students from the school participated in the walk. The students and volunteers engaged with parents of children and community leaders raising awareness on children's issues and also addressing queries regarding education and other child related schemes. The walk culminated at the school and was followed by an event. The children were addressed by Ms. Kripa Alva, KSCPCR Chairman (Karnataka State Commission for Protection for Child Rights), Dr. C.N. Ashwath Narayan, Malleshwaram Constituency MLA, Mr. N. Mariswamy, KSCPCR Member, Mr. Abdul Wajid Khaji, Deputy Director of Public Instruction (DDPI) and, Mr. Basavaraja Gowda, Block Education Officer (BEO) North. Suma Ravi, Regional Director CRY emphasized on the volunteer support and said, "It is the relentless passion of the volunteers towards the cause of children that drives them to organize these events to mobilize communities, spread awareness and even raise resources. We have witnessed the impact of their involvement over the years of working in our PAG (Public Action Group) areas with communities as well as schools. More children are out of labour and re-enrolled in schools, and they are equipped to stand up for their rights." "KSCPCR has been a constant support in our aim to ensure happy healthy childhoods. We are happy to have had our volunteers involved in their enrolment drives providing them unique opportunity to work for children's issues. We also would like to whole heartedly thank the management and students of Government Primary and High School Yeshwantpur for supporting our efforts and being an integral part of this initiative", she added. The event was organized at this school by CRY to emphasize the importance of government schools, since they are the backbone of India's education system, especially for underprivileged students. The commitment of the school's HMs - Ms. Dakshayani (High School HM) and Ms. Lalitha (HM -Primary school) towards welcoming any new initiative or programmes which benefits children was also commended. Talking at the event, Ms. Kripa Alva, KSCPCR Chairman said, "We constantly strive to engage with people and communities to ensure children are not deprived of their basic rights and CRY and its volunteers have always provided valuable support in the path to achieving the common goals we envisage for our children. We look forward to many such collaborations." The children also performed various cultural activities at the event, which included mime performance by CRY Volunteers and dance performances by the students of the school. About CRY CRY - Child Rights and You (formerly known as Child Relief and You) is an Indian NGO that believes in every child's right to a childhood - to live, to learn, grow and play. For over 30 years, CRY and its partners have worked with parents and communities to ensure Lasting Change in the lives of more than 20 Lakh underprivileged children. For more information please visit us at www.cry.org Children's Day: Its importance and relevance Children's Day: Tips to make the day a colourful journey Known to have one of the best educational system in the world, Finland's school education system is all set to undergo a revolutionary change. Finland is all set to remove all subjects from the school curriculum. The subject system for the schools will be introduced for senior secondary students beginning at the age of 16. Hereafter, classes will be not be held for subjects like physics, math, literature, history, geography, etc. The system will be again introduced for senior students at the age of 16. According to the the head of the Department of Education in Helsinki, Marjo Kyllonen, explained the changes, the changes being brought are something to be fit for the 21st century. The schools now are teaching the old-fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginning of the 1900s. But the needs now are different says Marjo Kyllonen. 5 subjects that should be added to the school curriculum The changes in Finland's education system is expected to be complete by 2020. The changes in Finland's education system are as follows: While the nation is celebrating children's day, children in Kashmir are amidst an earnest and serious aura as the board exams commence today for classes 10 and 12. Schools in Kashmir had initially closed for two weeks long summer vacation on July 1, but could not resume functioning due to the violence that outbroke in the valley. Hizbul Mujahideen, commander of Burhan Wani along with his two associates were killed in an encounter with security forces in a village in Kokernag area of south Kashmir's Anantnag district on July 8. Since then schools were forced to remain shut due to the prevelance of terror. The unrest has left 85 persons dead and thousands hurt while hundreds of people including students were booked under Public Safety Act (PSA) for participating in the protests. Even schools were targetted in the violence and the safety of students were at stake. The government however took the volition to conduct board exams with some relaxation for students there as they have been struggling to study under a tensed atmosphere. The students had hardly attended 90 days of school for an entire academic year but endure to give their best for the exams, in order to not lose a precious academic year. The relaxation specified is that they can cover fifty per cent of the syllabus alone for the exam or take up another exam in March, on condition that they must attempt all the questions. "All arrangements are in place for over one lakh students scheduled to appear for the 10th and 12th class examinations. While 484 exam centres have been set up for about 48,000 candidates for class 12th examination across Kashmir division, as many as 550 exam centres have been established for 5,5000 candidates for class 10th examination," an official of School Education department told PTI. HRD Minister Expresses Intention to Have Mandatory Board Exams for CBSE Class X YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan denied the reports in the media which says the Defense Ministry is going to allocate 50 million AMD for the upcoming concert on January 28, reports Armenpress. Responding to MP Naira Zohrabyans question, the Minister said: This publications data related to the concert organized on January 28, 2016 which has already taken place. And in that publication the talk is about the already organized concert, the Minister said. He informed that the Defense Ministry is going to organize a concert dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Armenias army, however, the competition is not announced yet. We will hold a concert, will invite you as well, and together will celebrate since it is the integral part of our propaganda component. However, we have not announced a competition yet, havent recognized the winner yet, as well as havent signed a contract, the Minister said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov tendered his government's resignation in parliament on Monday after his center-right GERB party candidate lost the presidential election to a Russia-friendly political novice backed by the opposition Socialists, Reuters reports. Rumen Radev won Sunday's presidential election by a wide margin, partial official results showed, helped by discontent with Borisov's failure to combat corruption, disappointment with the European Union and concerns about alienating an increasingly assertive Russia, an historic ally of Bulgaria. The resignation of Borisov's minority government is likely to result in months of political uncertainty and will probably spell an early parliamentary election in the spring - further delaying reforms and scaring away investment, analysts said. Radev, a former air force commander who says Bulgaria needs to be pragmatic in balancing the requirements of its EU and NATO membership and its relations with Russia, won 59.4 percent of the vote, the partial results showed, against 36.2 percent for GERB's Tsetska Tsacheva. Borisov said on Sunday he would not try to seek support to form a new government within the current parliament and so did opposition Socialists, making an early election virtually certain for the Black Sea state. Analysts said Bulgarians punished Borisov for trying to take over all powers in the country, but said his GERB party remains the most popular political faction, even though the Socialists have managed to narrow the gap. "At this stage, it seems that the snap polls would not produce a parliament that is very different from the current (fragmented) one," Parvan Simeonov, a political analyst with Gallup International said. If neither of three parties in the parliament manages to form a government, the outgoing president, Rosen Plevneliev, will have to appoint a caretaker government. But under the Bulgarian constitution, he would not be able to dissolve the chamber and call an early parliamentary election. This would be the first task of Radev after he takes office in January. @DisneySpain: La marca Moana esta registrada tanto en Espana como en algunos paises europeos. Por eso la pelicula Moana, sera Vaiana. Disney Espana (@DisneySpain) October 8, 2015 The reason for the name change in Italy to Oceania remains more mysterious, however. Disney Italy hasnt offered any official explanation, but the running theory in Italian media is that Disney was compelled to change the name thanks to the notoriety of Italian porn actress Moana Pozzi, who passed away in 1994 at the age of 33. Like the Disney princess, Pozzis first name had Polynesian roots; she was named after a Hawaiian island that means the point where the sea is deepest. In addition to her film career, Pozzi was the co-founder of the Italian political movement, the Love Party, and ran unsuccessfully for the mayor of Rome. Per a 2004 piece in the The New York Times that described Pozzis diverse activities: Pozzi wasand remainsItalys most revered porn star. Stunningly beautiful with a razor-sharp mind, Pozzi created a public persona that in just a few years became as popular with hormonally charged young men as with devout grandmothers.Indeed, even while Pozzi was performing in erotic cabarets and filming cheesy porn flicks, she lived a parallel life as a respected pundit on television talk shows, philosophizing about sexual freedom or holding forth on gay rights or denouncing the Mafia. Pozzi was so well known before her death that she even starred in her own animated short, Moanaland (dir. Mario Verger), about a porn star who exposes political corruption: Whatever headaches these name alterations have caused for Disney, the company is likely taking the changes in stride, since the early buzz for Moana suggests theyve got another big hit on their hands. Perhaps even as big as the career of Italys homegrown Moana. UPDATED: A Cartoon Brew reader told us on Twitter that Moana directors John Musker and Ron Clements were asked about this topic at Annecy, and confirmed that the Moana Pozzi connection played a role in the name change: The legendary Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki, who has produced his countrys top-three-grossing homegrown films of all-timeSpirited Away, Howls Moving Castle, and Princess Mononokewants to un-retire and make another feature film. Miyazakis retirement from feature animation is a bit of a running gag; he has often announced retirement after completing a film. In September 2013, he made a formal announcement at a press conference attended by over 600 journalists. Still, even with that events sense of finality, many didnt actually believe Miyazaki was finished with feature filmsand they may have been right. The news of Miyazakis pending return to feature film was the subject of an entire NHK TV special that aired in Japan on Sunday: Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao (The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki). In the show, Miyazaki not only discussed his current projecta 12-minute CG animated short Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar) that will debut at the Ghibli Museum in 2017but floated plans for a follow-up feature film. Photo: Contributed The age of digital media has changed how people get their information, and a UBC researcher wants to know exactly what has changed and where. Assoc. Prof. Jon Corbett has teamed up with Ryerson Universitys School of Journalism and Royal Roads University, to work on the Local News Research Project to examine the future of local journalism and news sources across Canada. Corbett created an interactive map that will give people an opportunity to track changes to media like a small town newspaper closing and comment on whats going on. There has been a huge transformation of media and the way people are getting their news in the past 10 years, said Corbett. We want to know what type of news are people getting, is it from the same source, and is it a credible source? We want to examine the consumption of news across the country and how it has changed. The crowdsourcing map launched in June; since then more than 800 people have used it to explore and report changes to local news outlets in communities across Canada. People can add a marker to the site to represent an event like a newspaper shutting down, or reducing the number editions it publishes a week, or even a merger of media outlets. Users can also use it to identify which media companies are scaling back or expanding local news operations. This map gives us the best visual analysis of whats happening in Canadian media across the country, says Corbett. There has been a very definite temporal change, and we can see it. The map will be used to detect geographical patterns and other trends such as whether certain types of media outlets are closing more frequently than other types. We are concerned about local news-poverty, says Ryersons April Lindgren, map co-creator and principal investigator for the project. People who live in smaller cities and towns, suburban communities and rural areas have fewer options to begin with, and in recent years their choices have become even more limited. Traditional news outlets have been hit by cutbacks, consolidations and closures, while digital-first news sites often struggle to stay afloat. Photo: The Canadian Press Immigrants and their advocates added their voices on Sunday to those who have been marching and protesting Donald Trump's presidential win. Organizers said the protest scheduled for Sunday mid-afternoon in Manhattan was about speaking out against Trump's support of deportation and other measures. It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country. Other protests were expected Sunday in San Francisco, St. Louis Philadelphia, Denver and more. On Saturday, demonstrators gathered in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as in smaller places like Worcester, Massachusetts, and Iowa City, Iowa. In Los Angeles, an estimated 8,000 people marched Saturday to condemn what they saw as Trump's hate speech about Muslims, pledge to deport people in the country illegally and crude comments about women. Protests also were held in Detroit, Minneapolis and others. More than 200 people, carrying signs, gathered on the steps of the Washington state capitol. The group chanted "not my president" and "no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA." In Tennessee, Vanderbilt University students sang civil rights songs and marched through campus across a Nashville street, temporarily blocking traffic. Demonstrations also took place internationally. A group of Mexicans at statue representing independence in Mexico City expressed their concerns about a possible wave of deportations. One school teacher said it would add to the "unrest" that's already in Mexico. About 300 people protested Trump's election as the next American president outside the U.S. Embassy near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, Oregon, a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. Protesters have gathered since Wednesday at Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Police in the city arrested five people downtown during an anti-Trump protest that wound down in the early Sunday. Four adults were cited for vandalism and a juvenile was arrested on suspicion of battery on an officer. Photo: The Canadian Press Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov announced his resignation after exit polls showed his party losing badly in Sunday's runoff presidential election. Surveys by several polling organizations showed Gen. Rumen Radev, 53, a former non-partisan chief of Bulgarian Air Force, taking about 58 per cent of the vote. "We accept the will of the people and we congratulate those who have the support of the majority of the voters," Borisov said. Tsetska Tsacheva, a 58-year-old lawyer and member of Borisov's centre-right party, had about 36 per cent. Initial results from the official vote count were expected later on Sunday. The new president will face a possible rise in migrants from neighbouring Turkey and growing tensions between Russia and the West. In the first round of voting, Radev surprisingly finished first with 25 per cent of the vote, followed by Tsacheva with 22 per cent. Bulgaria, which joined the European Union a decade ago, remains the poorest member of the 28-nation bloc. Its 7.2 million people are very much divided in its loyalties. Bulgaria belongs to NATO and the EU, but many Bulgarians still feel a cultural and historical affinity with Russia, and the country's heavily dependence on Russian energy supplies leaves it vulnerable to political pressure by the Kremlin. Borisov, whose party has triumphed in all national elections in the last decade, has said he will resign if Tsacheva loses the runoff, opening the way to an early parliamentary election. Halfway into its four-year term, Borisov's coalition government has managed to restore political stability after months of anti-corruption protests, but its popularity has faded due to the slow pace of reforms to eliminate graft and overhaul the judicial system. A political rookie, Radev has attracted many Bulgarians who are fed up with corrupt politicians. The former NATO fighter pilot who once studied at the U.S. Air War College in Alabama, has pledged to maintain Bulgaria's place in NATO but also says "being pro-European does not mean being anti-Russian." Tsacheva, seeking to become Bulgaria's first female president, was expected to continue her party's pro-Europe foreign policy. She has tried to rally other right-wing parties behind her, urging them not to allow "Bulgaria to return to the dark past" of being under Russia's thumb. Photo: Twitter - NASA Canadians may want to turn their eyes to the night skies on Monday if they want to see the moon pass closer to the Earth than it has in almost 70 years. According to NASA, the so-called 'supermoon' will be the closest full moon to earth since 1948, and it won't be as close again until 2034. The moon will be at its closest just before dawn on Monday, but will be almost equally visible Sunday and Monday nights. The space agency says at that moment, the moon can appear larger and reflects up to 30 per cent more light on Earth than when it's at its farthest point of orbit. But it says casual viewers are not likely to notice a difference. Randy Attwood of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada points out that the term "supermoon" was not coined by astronomers and that "astronomically, it's not much of an event at all." "The moon gets a little bit closer sometimes, and a little bit farther away," he told the Canadian Press. "The moon's orbit is not circular, so every month there is a point where it's about 350,000 km away and at other times its about 400,000 km away." Attwood believes that media is largely responsible for hyping up lunar events with catchy names such as supermoon, blue moon and last year's super blood moon (a supermoon combined with an eclipse). He says the only positive is that supermoons can get people out looking at the moon which still seems to hold some earthlings in its thrall. Photo: The Canadian Press Igor Dodon, pro-Moscow candidate for president, had about 56 per cent of the vote in Moldova's election Sunday, with nearly 90 per cent of the vote counted. Dodon has promised to restore ties with Moscow and he spoke in Russian in comments after the polls closed. His rival Maia Sandu, an ex-World Bank official who ran on an anti-corruption ticket, was polling 44 per cent. Dodon has tapped into popular anger with corruption under the pro-European government that came to power in 2009, particularly over the approximately $1 billion that went missing from Moldovan banks before the 2014 parliamentary elections. As results came in, Dodon urged Moldovans to be calm. "We don't need destabilization and we don't need confrontation, which somebody is trying to do," he said, speaking in Russian. "We're all living in one country, in Moldova. The next president should find this balance." Dodon's rival, Maia Sandu, an ex-World Bank economist who ran on an anti-corruption ticket, needed a high turnout to stand a chance of winning. The final turnout was 53.3 per cent, more than 4 percentage points higher than in the first round but a discouraging result for Sandu. In an unusual development, 9,000 voted in the separatist region of Trans-Dniester, where residents usually do not vote in Moldovan elections. Mouldovans lined up for hours to vote in Paris, Milan, Dublin and the London borough of Stratford, where about 700 Moldovans were unable to cast ballots. Election authorities said ballots had run out in Stratford, Bucharest, Moscow and Bologna, Italy. One electoral official in Chisinau, Sergiu Gurduza, apologized that some Moldovans had not been able to vote. Sandu called for the resignation of authorities organizing the vote and said the elections had been badly organized. If elected, she had pledged to appoint "honest, righteous people and good professionals ... this will be the first signal that things change for the better in Moldova." The former education minister, who heads the Action and Solidarity Party, says the former Soviet republic will have a more prosperous future in the EU. Dodon, who nearly won the election in the first round two weeks ago and led in recent polls, has promised to restore friendly relations with Moscow. He also has pledged to seek good relations with Moldova's neighbours, Romania and Ukraine. He has been criticized in Ukraine for saying Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, is Russian territory. Russia punished Moldova with a trade embargo on wine, fruit and vegetables after it signed a trade association deal with the EU in 2014. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. A man has set off in a bid to set the first official world record for swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, BBC reported. Ben Hooper started his 2,000-mile (3,200 km) swim from Dakar harbour in Senegal, west Africa. Mr Hooper's four-month attempt is due to end in Natal in north-east Brazil, next March. The 38-year-old long-distance swimmer from Cheltenham is hoping his sponsored Swim The Big Blue challenge will raise 1m for charity. Other people have attempted the swim, but were not ratified by Guinness World Records. Mr Hooper said he faces hazards such as storms and ocean predators. "The idea is to get across safely and I think my only real fear is if something goes mechanically wrong with me. "Beyond that I am not too worried about marine life. I am going into their world, so I need to be respectful," he said. "I've already met sharks and jellyfish and nothing has eaten me yet." Mr Hooper is swimming freestyle front crawl for up to 12 hours a day, and will have to eat 12,000 calories a day to maintain his strength. He is accompanied by two support boats. The crews include a medic, body therapist and an official observer who will be reporting back to Guinness. Nigel Taylor-Schofield, captain of one of the support vessels, said before the swim: "There are not many 'firsts' left in this world and I am looking forward to helping Ben join that exclusive and elusive club." Mr Hooper has completed 12 million metres (7,456 miles) of ocean and pool swimming in preparation. Photo: The Canadian Press Less insouciant, more policed France is a changed place since Islamic State extremists killed 130 people in the country's deadliest attacks a year ago. Fearing it's becoming more divided, too, survivors and victims' families marked Sunday's anniversary of the violence by pleading for national unity instead. Tourism is hurting, armed forces roam streets and France is still under a state of emergency that rights groups call abusive and ineffective and that the prime minister now says may be extended yet again. "We always have this fear that weighs heavily in our hearts. We always try to be careful. And every time we pass by here, we think of them," said Sabrina Nedjadi, paying respects Sunday at two cafes in her diverse eastern Paris neighbourhood targeted in the attacks. At midday, hundreds of balloons were released to honour the memories of the victims; at dusk, paper lanterns were released into the Canal Saint Martin, bearing red, white and blue lights representing the French tricolour. Onlookers, including many families with children, lined the canal and surrounding bridges, watching silently as the lanterns drifted. Some fear that France itself is adrift, its government unable to defeat the amorphous extremist enemy even as authorities encroach on liberties the French hold dear. While French warplanes are targeting IS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the state of emergency at home allows broadened police powers to search homes and monitor communications. But it could not prevent further attacks on France over the past year, including a truck rampage in Nice by a man claiming allegiance to IS. "Yes, terrorism will strike us again," Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned this weekend The International Federation for Human Rights warned in a recent report: "France is now in a situation where an 'exceptional' regime is becoming permanent, in the name of combating terrorism. But there is little evidence that this approach is working and it comes at a cost to fundamental rights." As silence descended Sunday on Paris for a series of commemorations, the son of the first victim of the attacks spoke out for tolerance in the face of hate. Manuel Dias, an immigrant from Portugal, was killed by a suicide bomber outside the national stadium during an international match Nov. 13, 2015. Photo: The Canadian Press/HO-Peace by Chocolate A Syrian refugee family who built a chocolate business in Nova Scotia had their product sampled by a special sweet-toothed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Tareq Hadhad and his father, Issam, had an unexpected meet-and-greet with Trudeau during his trip to Sydney, N.S., last week. A video of Thursday's encounter shows Trudeau embracing both men and calling the Hadhad family "an extraordinary example of the kind of strength and leadership and engagement that comes with bringing new people to Canada." "He had been following the story for a while," Tareq Hadhad said Sunday in an interview. "He was so excited. When he came, he knew our names, he hugged us ... It was a very, very special thing for us." Tareq Hadhad said Peace by Chocolate is struggling to keep up with orders since Trudeau put a spotlight on the Hadhads during a recent address to the United Nations. Issam Hadhad ran a chocolate factory in Damascus with around 30 employees, according to his son, and shipped sweets to countries all over the Middle East. Tareq Hadhad says several family members fled to Lebanon after a 2012 bombing destroyed the business his father had built over the course of more than two decades. After three years in a refugee camp, the Hadhads settled in Antigonish in January, where they were greeted by what Trudeau described to foreign leaders as "a bunch of big-hearted Canadians." Tareq Hadhad agrees with the prime minister's assessment. "We came here with nothing," he said. "We are now in a very welcoming, warm-hearted country and we're so proud to be inspiring others." With support from residents and various sponspors, the Hadhads opened Peace by Chocolate two months ago and business has been booming ever since, Tareq said. The aspiring physician said the family wants to give back to the community by hiring locals and the Hadhads have launched a crowdfunding campaign so Peace by Chocolate can expand operations in time for the holiday season. "The name itself has a very strong message," Tareq Hadhad said. "The world now needs peace, and the world now needs chocolate." Peace by Chocolate has satisfed at least one sugar craving. The Hadhads gave Trudeau five boxes of maple leaf-shaped chocolates blending Syrian and Canadian flavours for a rich, nutty taste. Photo: Twitter The Jamaican bobsled team suffered some hard luck in Calgary on the weekend, but some local businesses and a crowdfunding page have come to their aid. A group of 12 athletes is travelling through Canada and the U.S. to try and get a spot in the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea. But while competing at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary on Saturday, the group's van broke down before the they could get to their next stop in Whistler, B.C. The team was also running low on food and money. Two businesses, Mobile Data Solutions and Driving Force, have helped supply transportation for the team while a GoFundMe page has been set up to cover other costs of the trip to B.C. The story of the bobsledders showing up at the 1988 Calgary Games inspired the Disney movie "Cool Runnings." After competing in Whistler, and if they have enough money, the team will be back in Calgary from Dec. 12 to Jan. 2, before heading to Park City, Utah, and Lake Placid, New York. Photo: The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will take an important step Monday toward his ambitious goal of turning Canada into a magnet for foreign investment when he meets with some of the world's most powerful institutional investors with trillions of dollars at their disposal. Trudeau is hoping to persuade some two dozen representatives of large international pools of capital including central banks, sovereign wealth funds, insurers and pension funds whose combined assets are worth a staggering $21 trillion (Cdn) that Canada offers a stable economic and political environment in which to safely invest. He will be accompanied by nine members of cabinet, including Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi, Transport Minister Marc Garneau, and Health Minister Jane Philpott. Trudeau and four of the ministers also set to make their pitch to about a dozen Canadian investors insurance companies and big pension funds like the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in the morning before meeting with the international investors in the afternoon. Attracting billions in private-sector capital for "transformative" infrastructure projects is key to the Liberal government's long-term strategy to boost Canada's sluggish economic growth. Monday's investors' summit comes just two weeks after Morneau announced plans to launch a new infrastructure bank next year. The government has pledged to pump $35 billion into the bank over the coming decade, in hopes that every dollar of federal cash will leverage $4-5 in private funding. The creation of the bank is a key part of the pitch to investors, offering them sophisticated and varied investment tools that incorporate government financing. "There is an enormous amount of interest in making infrastructure investments," Morneau said in a recent interview. "There is a particular interest in making them in a country like ours with our stable economy, with our stable political system. So I think that there will be more than enough partners for us to find opportunities that make sense for us and for them." In addition to the infrastructure bank, the government also intends to create a new Invest in Canada Hub for attracting foreign investment; and it plans to relax some restrictions on foreign investment. The summit is being hosted by the federal government but it has engaged BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, to organize the event. BlackRock's legendary founder, Laurence Fink, is to be among the participants in the summit. It's likely no coincidence that Trudeau met with Fink in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and again in New York City in March. During a photo op at the latter meeting, Fink was heard telling Trudeau that there was "a lot of confusion in this country in investing" an apparent reference to uncertainty induced by the deeply divisive U.S. presidential election campaign which creates "probably even greater opportunities in the stable environment of Canada." Americans' stunning choice last week of the bombastic, protectionist, unpredictable Donald Trump may only magnify the appeal of Canada's comparative stability. One insider allows that "it may shift the discussion a little" at the investors' summit. Photo: The Canadian Press - File photo A Kermode bear in the Great Bear Rainforest. Christy Clark will be joining royalty for an official function on Nov. 15 at Buckingham Palace, marking the first time a premier has visited the residence of the Queen in over 40 years. The palace will be hosting The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy Initiative recognition ceremony, which will highlight the provincial government's work with First Nations, environmental groups and forest companies to balance environmental and economic aspects of the Great Bear Rainforest. "It is an honour to represent British Columbia at Buckingham Palace and receive this latest award for the achievements in the Great Bear Rainforest," Clark said in a news release. "Many people worked for many years to save this special place for future generations we consider it our gift to the world." While in London, Clark will also be attending meetings at Canada House, along with Canada's High Commissioner to the U.K., business leaders and key investors with interests in B.C. A central theme to the discussions will be B.C.'s post-Brexit trade with the U.K. and Europe. The B.C. government will also be creating a $1-million Great Bear Rain Forest Education and Awareness Trust, which will support several aspects of education on the 6.4-million-hectare rainforest on B.C.'s northern coast. That includes developing teacher and student resources centred on the Great Bear Rainforest, which is aligned with B.C.'s new curriculum and raising public awareness of the rainforest and the people who have lived in the area for over 12,000 years. The money will also go to resources management practices and to support research in the area and investing in resource management education, specifically regarding the Great Bear Rainforest. The Commonwealth Canopy was launched in 2015 with the goal of uniting the 53 Commonwealth nations to conserve forests for future generations. Photo: Twitter - Steve Darling Steve Darling, left. Former Global News anchor Steve Darling will be a BC Liberal Party candidate in the provincial election in 2017. The party announced on Sunday Darling will be running with the party in the Burnaby-Lougheed riding in the election, which is set to take place in May. I am honoured to be running for the BC Liberals in the riding of Burnaby-Lougheed. Its an exciting time for me, my family, and our province as well, Darling said in an announcement in Burnaby. For the past 18 years I have gone to work in Burnaby telling stories that matter. Now, Im looking forward to fighting for the priorities that matter, such as good jobs, a strong economy, and world-class services for young families like my own." Darling hosted Global BC's Morning News for nearly two decades, and is known as an advocate for charitable causes, attending up to 60 events a year supporting BC Childrens Hospital, Variety the Childrens Charity, ALS Society of BC, and Ronald McDonald House, according to the BC Liberals announcement. Premier Christy Clark, who joined Darling in Burnaby to announce his candidacy, echoed Darling's experience in the news industry. Now, hes stepping up and fighting for the values that built this province, because hes seen how important they are for himself," Clark said. We have a plan to put British Columbians first thats working and its qualified candidates like Steve who believe in this plan, and who will work hard to make sure that we can continue to look after the people we love." Darling joins 62 other candidates already selected to run in the May 9 election, including two others running in Burnaby. There are a total of 85 ridings in B.C. Photo: The Canadian Press - File photo At least 11 children were among 23 people killed Sunday in northern Syria as pro-government forces kept up their campaign against opposition areas in the country's north, while rebels shelled a government-held district in Aleppo city. At least eight more people were killed in a suspected airstrike on a crossing point connecting Kurdish-held areas with rebel areas in northern Aleppo province, the Kurdish security force said. The violence Sunday comes a day after government troops repelled a rebel offensive on western parts of Aleppo city launched in late October. State news agency SANA said the shelling of a western Aleppo district killed four people, including two women and a child. Aleppo has been deeply divided since 2012. The faltering rebel offensive was designed to break the siege on the opposition-held eastern Aleppo. The government siege has left an estimated 275,000 people trapped with no aid allowed in since July, amid a punishing bombing campaign. The rebel offensive started after Russia, a major Syrian government ally, said it would halt airstrikes to allow rebels and supporters to leave eastern Aleppo. The rebels refused to take up the offer and the United Nations failed to negotiate allowing aid into the besieged area, amid wide anticipation of an imminent pro-government offensive. Residents of eastern Aleppo said Sunday that for days they have received text messages urging them to leave in the next 24 hours. It was not possible to immediately verify the authenticity of the messages or who sent them. Government aircraft had previously dropped fliers on the eastern districts also urging residents to leave and make use of the Russian-declared passageways to evacuate the besieged district. Three residents said they received the messages Friday and Sunday throughout the day, denouncing the opposition and threatening residents with an attack. As of Sunday evening, Syrian Civil Defence's Ibrahim al-Haj said government artillery shelling in the al-Salheen neighbourhood of besieged eastern Aleppo killed a mother, her four children and her husband travelling in a car. Other shelling killed a child, a woman and three men in two different neighbourhoods of the besieged territory, al-Haj said. While airstrikes on eastern Aleppo city have subsided, aerial bombings of rebel-held western parts of Aleppo province continued. The Syrian Civil Defence, which operates in opposition-held areas, said one of its centres was bombed in rural Aleppo and put out of service in airstrikes on the town of Atareb. The strikes also killed three people, including two children. Meanwhile, a suspected airstrike is believed to have struck at a border crossing in Kurdish-held Afrin canton, which links the area to rebel-held parts of Aleppo province, the Kurdish security force, known as the Asayish, said Sunday. The Asayish statement, carried by the Kurdish news agency Hawar, said the bombing occurred early Sunday on a crossing used by as many as 5,000 people moving from western rural Aleppo to its north and east, mostly opposition areas. The Observatory put the death toll from the explosion there at 12. It didn't say whether it was an airstrike or an explosion. In the complex terrain of northern Syria, it was not immediately clear who was behind the bombing. Photo: Surrey RCMP The Surrey RCMP is asking for the public's help in finding a woman reported missing. Kathryn Cruickshank, 31, has been reported missing by her family, who last saw her around the end of August 2016, in Surrey. Cruickshank is described as a caucasian woman at about five feet seven inches, 160 pounds with brown hair and green eyes. She has previously gone extended periods of time without contact with her family, this most recent period is longer than usual according to RCMP Cruickshank has been known to frequent the Downtown East Side of Vancouver and the Whalley area of Surrey in the past. Anyone with information about Cruickshank's whereabouts or who has seen her is asked to call their local police, the Surrey RCMP at 604-599-0502 or Crime Stoppers. Photo: Dustin Godfrey The City of Penticton is offering unlimited yard waste pickup for a pair of weeks to help with the piles of leaves from yard cleanup. On top of the new yard waste bins, residents can put out extra bags or bins clearly labeled "Yard Waste" for pickup by the city. That will take place during the week of Nov. 14 and the week of Dec. 12. During the unlimited yard waste collection period the city is asking residents to: Place yard waste at the curb by 7:00 am on your regular garbage day. Additional yard waste can be placed in kraft paper bags and reusable containers marked as yard waste. Bundle branches using string or twine, and ensure the prunings are no more than three feet in length, three inches in diameter and 50 pounds in weight. Please leave your yard waste at the curb, as a second truck will be coming by to pick up the additional yard waste. Please leave a 3ft/1m space between carts and additional yard waste. Plastic bags will not be accepted. For more information, call 250-490-2500 or visit the city's website. Photo: The Canadian Press In the year of the outsider, Reince Priebus was the face of the Republican establishment. Yet the Republican National Committee chairman would come to earn the trust and confidence of President-elect Donald Trump, who on Sunday named Priebus as his chief of staff, along with flame-throwing media executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. The position puts Priebus at the power centre of the new Trump administration. The 44-year-old Wisconsin political operative will help guard access to the president-elect, guide policy and political decisions, and if past practice holds true, will often be, along with Bannon, the last person Trump consults before making major decisions. Priebus has no governing experience in Washington. Yet his extraordinary ability to build and maintain relationships with his party's power brokers and grassroots sets him apart from other prospective chiefs of staff. The affable and slow-talking Priebus maintains a particularly close relationship with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is also from Wisconsin. At the same time, Priebus may have been almost as popular among the Republican National Committee's 168 members, who represent many different factions of the GOP and come from every state in the nation. Trump's new chief of staff and the House speaker met in the late 1990s when Priebus was a party activist in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and Ryan was running for Congress. Priebus eventually became the party chairman of Kenosha County, the First District (the speaker's district) and then Wisconsin party chairman. He's been a friend and adviser to Ryan all these many years. Priebus was already the longest serving chairman in party history, having worked in that role since January 2011, but he easily could have been re-elected early next year had he wanted to seek another term. More than anything, he served as the chief fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, a job he did very well. He used the tens of millions of dollars he helped raise to create a nationwide voter outreach operation that fueled Trump's stunning victory. Still, his status as a party insider caught the attention of Trump supporters such as tea party leader Jenny Beth Martin. She warned on Saturday that, "No Washington insider, regardless of who it is, should serve as President Trump's chief of staff." "It's time to drain the swamp not promote insiders beholden to the Washington establishment who helped create it," she said. Priebus' ability to earn Trump's trust and confidence ultimately outweighed any political concerns. He was perhaps the only major establishment leader to stand with Trump over the campaign's final weeks as much of the political world predicted the Republican nominee would lose the election. Priebus became Trump's regular travelling companion and confidant. He was optimistic until the very end. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. Germany will provide 1 million Euros to Armenia for the program of de-commissioning (destroying) outdated armored vehicles. Mher Israyelyan, deputy head of the defense policy department of the defense ministry says the program has been approved recently in Brussels. Initial preparatory works will be carried out until the end of 2016, followed by the launch of the program, he said. According to German Ambassador to Armenia H.E. Matthias Kiesler, this is a very important program, which will assist Armenia in implementing its assumed responsibilities within the framework of Europes Conventional arms agreement. We are working hard to create that Trust Fund, with the purpose of assisting Armenia in destroying de-commissioned armored vehicles, he said. Photo: Contributed A katana sword is missing from an Alaska card shop after a burglar in a ninja outfit broke in. KTVA-TV reports security cameras filmed the costumed suspect entering the Anchorage business sometime after it closed Friday and leaving with what looked to be the Japanese-style, curved sword. Spenard Bosco's employee Erich Helmick said inventory is being checked but that so far it seems the sword is the only item missing. Helmick said the Anchorage Police Department responded to the incident and a report has been filed. Anyone with information is asked to call police. Photo: The Canadian Press - File photo Final preparations are underway to lift a sunken tug from the waters off British Columbia's central coast. The latest incident report says crews are planning to lift the Nathan E. Stewart from the ocean floor overnight Sunday, if the weather permits. Once lifted, the 30-metre tug will be placed on a salvage barge and towed from the area. The vessel ran aground and sank about 28 kilometres from Bella Bella, B.C., last month. Officials have also provided an update on how much fuel was on board when the boat went down, saying in the latest report that it was loaded with 237,262 litres of diesel fuel. The report says 107,552 litres of fuel and 2,240 litres of lubricants were released into the environment. Photo: The Canadian Press Federal Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch says she has been the victim of an apparent break-in attempt at her home in Creemore, Ont. In a statement Sunday night, Leitch says she was notified by a volunteer in her riding association that someone was purporting to know her address and was offering it up online to anyone who she says was "interested in doing me harm." Leitch, who has said she shares some ideas on immigration with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, says the "threatening activity" was reported to Ontario Provincial police on Friday night. Leitch says her home alarm sounded early Saturday and as she left the house to wait for police she noticed the garage lights were on, but they had been turned off by the time officers arrived, and no intruder was found. She said the entry closest to the garage was found to have been the trigger for the alarm and the officers speculated that someone trying to gain entry could have set the alarm off. The Ontario MP attended the luncheon portion of a leadership debate in Greely, Ont., on Sunday but she left before the debate. Spokesman Bradley Breton said Leitch left to meet with a private security consultant. "My campaign team is taking further steps at my expense to enhance security at my home and on the campaign," Leitch said. During an exchange Sunday on CTV's Question Period, Ontario MP Michael Chong who also is running for the Conservative leadership suggested Leitch was importing the divisive style practised by Trump. Leitch, who also has proposed screening newcomers for Canadian values, told Question Period that her enthusiasm for Trump does not make her a racist. Leitch has attracted headlines and some barbs from other leadership contenders for her immigration screening proposal, which she has yet to flesh out. "I am not a racist," Leitch said during the CTV segment. "I am not a person who's out groping other individuals. I do not do those things and I don't think that the Canadians who support the ideas I'm talking about do those types of things." Photo: The Canadian Press The brightest moon in almost 69 years will be lighting up the sky this week in a treat for star watchers around the globe. The phenomenon known as the supermoon will reach its most luminescent in North America before dawn on Monday. It will reach its zenith in Asia and the South Pacific on Monday. Across the international dateline in New Zealand, it will reach its brightest after midnight on Tuesday local time. The moon orbits the Earth in an oval shape. The moon will be at its brightest this week because it is coming closer to the Earth along its elliptical orbit than at any time since January 1948. The supermoon will also bring stronger than usual high tides, followed by plunging low tides the next morning. Viewers can expect to see a moon about 14 per cent larger in diameter and about 30 per cent brighter than when it's at its furthest from the earth. It won't be as big and bright again for another 18 years. NASA says its closest approach will occur at 6:21 a.m. EST (1121 GMT) Monday when the moon comes within 221,523 miles (356,508 kilometres). That's from the centre of the Earth to the centre of the moon. Full moon will occur at 8:52 a.m. EST (1352 GMT). According to the astronomy website earthsky.org, the term supermoon entered usage five years ago when the closest full moon fell on March 19, 2011. The scientific term is perigee full moon. In 2034, the moon will come even closer, within 221,485 miles. That, too, will be a supermoon. Photo: The Canadian Press The mother of a young Coquitlam man who died in a substance-abuse treatment centre says she doubts a third-party investigation into his death will hold anyone to account. Brandon Jansen, 20, died on March 7 at the Sunshine Coast Health Centre, a privately-run facility in Powell River where he was being treated for his addiction to the opioid fentanyl. The centre's chief executive Melanie Jordan will be releasing findings from a third-party investigation into his death today in Vancouver. Brandon's mother, Michelle Jansen, said the centre did not inform her about the announcement and although she doesn't know what will be presented, she says she suspects the centre will try to minimize their involvement in her son's death. Skeptical of the centre's investigation, Jansen said she is waiting for an inquest by the BC Coroners Service to understand what went wrong leading up to her son's death. Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe announced on Nov. 1 that the service would launch an inquest into Brandon's death, which is expected to occur over two weeks in January. For two years, Brandon had been struggling with an addiction to fentanyl a substance responsible for more than 60 per cent of the 555 overdose-related deaths in B.C. this year. Jansen said the Sunshine Coast Health Centre was the 11th drug-treatment centre her son attended in an attempt to kick the habit. Jansen said long wait lists and what she called inadequate treatment options available through publicly-funded facilities forced her to send her son to private programs. She said the bill for the Sunshine Coast facility was about $40,000 per month. Brandon had been there only three days when he died. Text messages on Brandon's phone showed he arranged to have a dealer drop off fentanyl to him at the centre in the hours before he overdosed and died alone in his room, Jansen said. "I put my son there thinking they had the expertise and they could take care of him and keep an eye on him and they didn't, they failed," she said. Photo: The Canadian Press The voters who made possible Donald Trump's U.S. presidential victory included people who consider themselves moderates and came around to Trump after supporting other candidates. Here's a look at some voters who helped usher in a Trump presidency: In Michigan, Patrick Burke supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the GOP primary but "jumped on in full support" of Trump as he bested the field. The 60-year-old automotive and business consultant lives in suburban Detroit's Macomb County, which was home to the "Reagan Democrats" in the 1980s. In 2012, Obama carried Macomb County by 4 percentage points. Trump enjoyed an 11 point-plus margin there. Trump stands for "making sure that if you work hard that your government is there to help you rather than hurt you," Burke said, noting that Trump's message "of prosperity and reducing the debt and a strong military and reforming immigration really resonated" with blue-collar workers. "I like the fact that he's been successful. He has built some incredible things. He has had his failures but he's had huge successes," Burke said. "I think that Trump has the vision that we need to have now to get us pointed back in the right direction." Iraq War veteran Rebecca Zbichorski, 28, of Milwaukee, is a first-time voter who supported Trump because "America needs a kick in the behind." A factory worker who gets her health care through the Veterans Health Administration, Zbichorski enlisted in the military at 18 and served nearly eight years as a Marine. She said she sees Trump as a "regular type of guy" who doesn't care what anyone thinks, which made him the best candidate to give U.S. government the "shake-up" she thinks it needs. "He's the slap in the face. He's the wakeup call," Zbichorski said. "Let the man do what he's got to do." Eileen Barlow, a 56-year-old small business owner and part-time bartender, voted for Trump because he's a businessman and not a politician. He's also not a Clinton. "My grandfather always said that what we need is a businessman in the presidential office, and that's what Donald Trump is," Barlow said as she stood behind the bar at the local American Legion post in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois. At Anthony's Barber Shop in Middletown Township, Pennsylvania, owner Anthony Canamucio's customers range from doctors to lawyers to retired steel mill guys of all races. Most of them, like Canamucio himself, voted for Trump. "We were sick and tired of elitist and career politicians," he said. Trump "spoke like people speak here when they're in my barber chair" and had positions on issues that the 50-year-old barber said mirror most of "middle America." Photo: The Canadian Press A woman cools herself on a hot summer day in Hyderabad, India. The U.N. weather agency says 2016 is set to break the record for the hottest year since measurements began in the 19th century. The World Meteorological Organization said Monday that preliminary data through October shows global average temperatures this year are 1.2 C above pre-industrial levels. That's getting close to the limit set by the global climate agreement adopted in Paris last year. It calls for limiting the temperature rise since the industrial revolution to 2 degrees or even 1.5. This year's temperatures were boosted by the El Nino weather event. The previous hottest year was 2015. WMO said 16 of the 17 hottest years have occurred this century, with the only exception being 1998, which was also an El Nino year. Photo: The Canadian Press A freight train is seen trapped by landslides following an earthquake in the area north of Kaikoura, New Zealand. New Zealand is planning to send in military helicopters and a navy ship to rescue about 1,000 tourists and hundreds of residents who remain stranded in the coastal town of Kaikoura after a powerful earthquake on Monday cut off train and vehicle access. The magnitude-7.8 quake struck the South Island just after midnight. It left two people dead and triggered a small tsunami. It also brought down rocks and mud that swept across highways and cracked apart roads. Home to about 2,000 residents, Kaikoura is a popular destination for travellers taking part in whale-watching expeditions or wanting a stopover with mountain views. But the quake knocked out water supplies and sewerage systems and left people with no easy way out. "From all directions, Kaikoura has essentially been isolated," Air Commodore Darryn Webb, the Acting Commander of New Zealand's Joint Forces, told The Associated Press. "There's a real imperative to support the town because it can't support itself." Webb said the military planned to begin using four NH90 helicopters on Tuesday that could each transport about 18 people out of the town at a time. He said a ship was also leaving Auckland on Monday night that could potentially pick up hundreds of people if weather conditions allowed. "We're going to get as many people and belongings out as quickly as we can," Webb said. He said the weather forecast wasn't looking great and the operation could take several days. He said that if needed, a C-130 military transport plane could drop fuel, water, food and other supplies to the town. Elsewhere, strong aftershocks continued to shake New Zealand on Monday, rattling the nerves of exhausted residents. Monday's quake caused damage in Wellington, the capital, and was also strongly felt in Christchurch. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes. Police said one person died in Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. Several other people suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police spokeswoman Rachel Purdom said. Prime Minister John Key flew over the destruction in Kaikoura by helicopter as aftershocks kicked up dust from the landslides below. Cars could be seen lying on their sides and parts of the road were clearly impassable. "It's just utter devastation," Key said. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Authorities in Wellington told people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress. The city's suburban rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. Photo: The Canadian Press Bulgarian Socialists Party candidate Rumen Radev Bulgaria's prime minister handed in his resignation to parliament Monday after results showed his party losing badly in the presidential runoff, opening the way for an early parliamentary election. Boiko Borisov's move comes after official results show Socialist-backed candidate Rumen Radev, a former non-partisan air force chief, winning the presidential election. "We accept the will of the people and we congratulate those who have the support of the majority of the voters," said Borisov, whose party had previously triumphed in all national elections over the last decade. Halfway into its four-year term, Borisov's coalition government has managed to restore political stability after months of anti-corruption protests. But its popularity has faded because of the slow pace of reforms to eliminate graft and poverty, and overhaul the judicial system. Radev called the result "a negative vote for the government that leads to a new political situation." Borisov's resignation would likely lead to months of difficult coalition talks among several political groupings and an early election as soon as April. The Central Election Commission said that with 99.3 per cent of the ballots counted, Radev won 59.4 per cent of the vote in Sunday's runoff, compared with 36.2 per cent for the candidate of the ruling centre-right party, Tsetska Tsacheva. A political novice, Radev attracted many Bulgarians who are fed up with corrupt politicians. The former NATO fighter pilot, who once studied at the U.S. Air War College in Alabama, has pledged to maintain Bulgaria's place in NATO but also says "being pro-European doesn't mean being anti-Russian." Photo: The Canadian Press Donald Trump has sat down for his first interviews since becoming U.S. president-elect, has shared his views on his state of mind since the stunning victory, and made announcements on his plans for the country. Here are top developments from recent days: Deportations. An estimated 11 million undocumented people live in the U.S. Trump suggested he will deport many, but not most. In his ''60 Minutes'' interview, Trump referred to the people he wants to deport as gang members and drug dealers: ''(It's) probably two million, it could be even three million.'' Criminals are already a deportation priority under the current government more than 2.5 million have actually been deported over the Obama years. Trump said he'll make a decision later about the rest, whom he called, ''terrific people.'' Urges people to stop harassing minorities. When asked on CBS's ''60 Minutes'' about anecdotes of his supporters insulting minorities, he turned to the camera and spoke directly to viewers: ''I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' If it helps, I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.'' Legislative priorities. He met last week with the Republicans who lead Congress. He told, ''60 Minutes,'' that he walked away with three legislative priorities: Health care, immigration, and tax cuts. Forgoes salary. The billionaire says he doesn't even know how much a president earns. He says he'd have to accept a salary of $1 per year, for legal reasons, but will refuse the rest of the US$400,000-a-year pay. Moral issues: Has no plan to fight same-sex marriage. Trump told ''60 Minutes,'' speaking about that issue: ''It's done.'' But he says he will push back against abortion, as he promised religious conservatives during the primaries. Trump says he'd appoint pro-life judges, and if they overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, he assumes some states would allow abortion and others wouldn't. Obamacare. During the campaign, he promised to scrap President Barack Obama's signature health law. He's now talking like he wants to build on it. After meeting with the outgoing president, he told The Wall Street Journal that he agrees with two key provisions of the law, related to coverage for children and for people with pre-existing conditions: ''I like those very much.'' White House hires. He's hired two top White House staffers. One is uncontroversial, the other more so. His chief of staff will be Republican party chair Reince Priebus. It's his senior strategist who's raising eyebrows: Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News. Kind words for Obama. ''I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humour,'' he told ''60 Minutes.'' Kind words for Clinton. He said he got a lovely phone call from his opponent Hillary Clinton, and from her husband Bill. He appeared to demur from his campaign threat to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her. ''I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to hurt them. They're good people.'' YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The Foreign Ministers of the EU member states have stressed the issue of abolishing visa regime for the citizens of Georgia and Ukraine, as well as the issue of visa liberalization with Armenia, Armenpress reports the conclusion of the meeting of the foreign ministers of the EU member states reads. The Council stresses the importance of taking necessary decisions for liberalization of visa regime with Georgia and Ukraine, reads the document. The European ministers also stated that they are waiting for an opportunity to start negotiations on visa issues with Armenia in a timely period. The Council of the European Union has already granted the European Commission a mandate to hold talks on short-term visa abolition with Georgia and Ukraine. Earlier, the European Parliament had done the same. Photo: The Canadian Press A sunken tug on British Columbia's central coast could finally be lifted from the waters west of Bella Bella. An incident report issued Sunday by the tug's owner and provincial, federal and First Nations experts estimated the Nathan E. Stewart could be removed from Seaforth Channel early Monday, weather permitting. An advisory released from the Heiltsuk Nation says salvage operations are slated to begin at 10 a.m. local time, and take about six hours. Crews have dragged the 30-metre tug into deeper water from the reef where it ran aground Oct. 13, and a large crane will be used to lift the vessel onto a barge for removal from the area. Experts also say they have completed calculations of the amount of fuel spilled when the tug went down. According to the latest report, the Nathan E. Stewart was loaded with 237,262 litres of diesel fuel when it hit the reef, spilling 107,552 litres of fuel and 2,240 litres of lubricants. Photo: CTV UPDATE: 11:50 a.m. Police say two people of interest have been arrested after a woman was shot in the back of a cab. The 29-year-old passenger in the taxi is recovering from what are described as non-life-threatening injuries. Police have not said if the woman was targeted or what may have led to the shooting. Officers with the city's major crime section are handling the case and have not said what led them to the pair currently in custody. ORIGINAL: 8 a.m. Vancouver's Gastown neighbourhood is swarming with police this morning after a woman was reportedly shot inside a taxi cab. Police shut down a stretch of Abbott Street early Monday morning after shots rang out. CTV Vancouver reports investigators were combing the roadway near Pender Street with flashlights and a man was under arrest after the back window of a Vancouver Taxi was shot out. "It was like a big 12-gauge going off, it was a gun of some sort," a nearby resident Kelvin Bee told CTV. The cab driver told CTV he had a female passenger in the taxi, but he was too shaken up to be interviewed. The Vancouver Police Department is investigating a shooting at Abbott and West Pender Street, said Const. Jason Doucette. A woman was shot just before 5 a.m. this morning and was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Vehicle traffic is asked to avoid the area and police say additional information will be provided as it becomes available. -with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: The Canadian Press Stephen Bannon, campaign CEO for President-elect Donald Trump, leaves Trump Tower in New York. President-elect Donald Trump is considering a woman and an openly gay man to fill major positions in his administration, history-making moves that would inject diversity into a Trump team. The incoming president is considering Richard Grenell as United States ambassador to the United Nations. If picked and ultimately confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post. Grenell previously served as U.S. spokesman at the UN under former President George W. Bush's administration. At the same time, Trump is weighing whether to select the first woman to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee. On his short list of prospective chairs: Michigan GOP chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, the former sister-in-law of Trump critic and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. "I'll be interested in whatever Mr. Trump wants," McDaniel told The Associated Press on Monday, adding that she was planning to seek the Michigan GOP chairmanship again. Appointing a woman to the top tier of his team and the first female GOP chief would appear to be an effort to begin to mend ties with women, who he antagonized frequently during the campaign. The appointment of Grenell could begin to ease concerns by the gay community about Vice-President-elect Mike Pence's positions on same-sex marriage during his time as Indiana governor. The personnel moves under consideration were confirmed by people with direct knowledge of Trump's thinking who were not authorized to publicly disclose private discussions. They stressed that the decisions are not final. Internal deliberations about staffing come a day after Trump made overtures to warring Republican circles by appointing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counsellor. The two men had made up the president-elect's chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus received that job, Bannon is expected to wield significant clout. Trump gave top billing to the former media executive, who led a website that appealed to the so-called "alt-right" a movement often associated with efforts on the far right to preserve "white identity," oppose multiculturalism and defend "Western values." Priebus on Monday defended the media mogul, saying the two made an effective pair as they steered Trump past Democrat Hillary Clinton and toward the presidency. He sought to distance Bannon from the incendiary headlines on his website, saying they were written by unspecified others. "Together, we've been able to manage a lot of the decision making in regard to the campaign," Priebus told NBC's "Today." ''It's worked very, very well." Trump's hires were, at first glance, contradictory, though they fit a pattern of the celebrity businessman creating a veritable Rorschach test that allowed his supporters to see what they wanted. Priebus, who lashed the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intraparty objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite. Photo: pixabay The Ministry of Transportation is hosting an open house on Nov. 21 about highway improvements in the District of Peachland. At this summer's first session, findings from the initial fact-finding stage of the study were presented. On Monday, several options to improve the existing corridor or plans for a new route will be made public. The province says they will be taking any public feedback into account when developing the final plan. The Ministry of Transportation and District of Peachland will also be sharing the findings of the Peachland Speed & Safety Study, which deals with more immediate concerns related to intersection safety and highway speeds in Peachland. The open house will be running from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday Nov. 21 at the Peachland Community Centre, 4450 6th St. Photo: Google Street View An employee of a local money store is facing criminal charges after allegedly faking an armed robbery. On Nov. 10, RCMP were called to Vernon Cash Solutions on 26th Avenue following a report that the store was held up at gun point. Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said a police investigation has determined the store was not robbed and the female employee who made the claim is now facing charges. RCMP are recommending charges of public mischief and theft under $5,000, said Noseworthy, adding the 39-year-old woman took an undetermined amount of cash and reported it stolen. Noseworthy said good old fashioned police work and the store's video surveillance led to charges being recommended against the unidentified woman. Photo: Contributed The Columbia Basin Trust, an organization that pumps tens of millions of dollars a year into the Kootenay economy, has lost its top executive. The Basin announced Sunday that Neil Muth, the CBTs President and CEO, died earlier in the week. No details were released on his cause of death. "It is with heavy hearts that the family of Neil Muth, his loving wife Cathy, and his three children in conjunction with the Columbia Basin Trust announce his sudden passing," said CBT Communications Director Delphi Hoodicoff in a written statement. "He will be remembered first and foremost as a loving husband and father." Muth has run the Trust since 2005. Born and raised in Trail, he was also a former vice-president of the BC Investment Management Corporation, and held various positions in the financial ministries of the B.C. and New Zealand governments. He also operated his own consulting company for many years. The Trust distributed more than $30 million this year to various arts, historical and community development projects in the Columbia Basin in 2016. The Trust was set up to compensate people living in the area for environmental and economic damage caused by the construction of three control and power dams along the Columbia River drainage system. The Trust earned revenues of $48 million dollars in 2015/16, compared to $29 million the previous year. Trust officials say theyll make a more complete statement in a few days. Photo: Contributed Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy Reports of property crime are on the rise in Vernon, but a couple recent thefts have police scratching their heads. Police are searching for a suspect with good dental hygiene after a break in to the 27th Street Shoppers Drug Mart. Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said at 3:30 a.m. Nov. 8 the store alarm was activated when someone broke the front window. The suspect(s) then made off with several high-end electric toothbrushes. No other items were stolen. In another case from the weird files, sometime between Oct. 29 and Nov. 8 a travel trailer was broken in to on the 6700 block of Dixon Dam Road and a Chariot Cougar II stroller and a CCM North Ridge mountain bike were stolen. The stroller, however, was missing the front wheels, handlebar and rain cover. Police are investigating both incidences and anyone with information is asked to call police 250-545-7171 or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477. Photo: CTV The BC Coroners Service has named the 38-year-old Vancouver man who was shot and killed by police last week during an incident at a Canadian Tire store. Daniel Peter Rintoul has been identified as the knife-wielding man who allegedly tried to rob the store at 2830 Bentall St. The incident saw a store employee suffer a knife wound, and in an ensuing interaction with officers, Rintoul was shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene. CTV is reporting the suspect, who was 6-foot-1 and 380 pounds, held an 82-year-old man hostage during the incident. The BC Coroners Service and the Independent Investigations Office continue to investigate the death. with files from CTV Vancouver Photo: Contributed Vernon RCMP have made an arrest in a robbery that netted the thief electronic and camera equipment. Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy said on Nov. 9 at approximately 11:40 a.m., a residence in the 7300 block of Longacre Drive in Vernon was broken into by smashing a window. A significant amount of electronic and camera equipment was stolen from the residence, said Noseworthy. Investigation led to the arrest of a 37-year-old Vernon man on Nov. 10. Police have recommended a charge of break and enter, said Noseworthy, adding the suspect was caught using good, old fashion police work and surveillance video from the home. The unidentified suspect is known to police. Noseworthy said police are investigating the possibility the man was involved in other crimes. We have not connected him to other break-ins yet, said Noseworthy. Photo: Facebook Enderby RCMP were kept busy over the long weekend, responding to a break-in and the theft of a trailer. On Nov. 11 at approximately 3:40 a.m., police were informed of a break and enter to Grant's Tackle Box on George Street in Enderby. An unknown person pried the door to the business open and stole a tower computer and a Toshiba laptop computer, said Const. Jocelyn Noseworthy. Then on Nov. 12, a grey 7x16 enclosed U-Built trailer was stolen from Bass Avenue in Enderby. The trailer had an Ontario licence plate N5881T. Numerous tools and a generator were inside, said Noseworthy. Anyone with information is asked to call Enderby RCMP at 250-838-6818 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) highly assesses the idea of creating a special fund (formed by 1000 AMD allocations by each employed Armenian citizen) for compensating the families of servicemen killed or injured in combat operations, RPA spokesperson, Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov told the reporters after the Executive Body meeting of the party. We highly assess that initiative. It pursues a goal of preaching solidarity among our citizens and is aimed at developing the idea of a nation-army, Armenpress reports Sharmazanov saying. He added that it is a very important initiative and our daily problems should not have a role here. All of us must participate in the task of reinforcing our security, he said. Referring to public concerns of possible misuse of the fund, Sharmzanov noted, The Defense Minister also referred to that issue today saying that the fund will be maximally transparent. He also announced about the readiness to allocate two of the three governmental mandates for the Board of Trustees to opposition partners, so as the public and opposition have no more concerns. Referring to the opinions that it is necessary to fight the shadow economy and corruption and allocate the sums generated from it to the fund, Sharmazanov said, Yes, it is necessary to fight shadow economy and corruption, but at the same time each citizen must participate in national affairs. He also quoted Napoleon as saying Who does not want to keep and take care of his own army, he will have to keep and feed a foreign army. To the question if this initiative means that the authorities are preparing to a war, the RPA spokesperson said, As far as there is no peace treaty, the political leadership must be ready to any scenario. We prepare our public to peace, but considering the announcements from Baku and Ankara, the necessity to reinforce our security system will face us for many years. Photo: The Canadian Press The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is showcasing handmade textiles from around the world in an upcoming exhibition that will also draw from its own extensive collections. More than 130 items will make up "a sumptuous feast for the eyes" revealing how cloth has been used to express social status, political identity and spiritual belief systems, the museum says. They include Japanese kimonos, Indian saris, Indonesian sarongs, South Pacific bark cloth, Chinese Qing dynasty robes, Maori feather cloaks and indigenous northwest coast blankets. The pieces reflect a wide range of materials and production techniques. "Layers of Influence: Unfolding Cloth Across Cultures" will run from Nov. 17 to April 9, 2017. The museum is located on the UBC campus 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver. Photo: Getty Images A man charged with a series of arsons in the Vernon area in 2014 has been ordered to stand trial on child pornography charges next year. William Munton, 55, is facing two counts of making or publishing child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. Munton taught school in the Salmon Arm area at one time, but was fired "with cause" in 2005, according to a School District 83 official. He will appear before a B.C. Supreme Court judge in Vernon to answer the charges on Sept. 25, 2017. Munton is also facing a separate supreme court trial on 19 arson charges in connection with incidents that occurred between May and November 2014. No trial date for that case has been set. Photo: RCMP The property in Cherryville searched by RCMP. In a coordinated effort early this (Wednesday) morning, officers from the North Okanagan Detachment, Air Services Division and the Emergency Response Team (ERT) from the Lower Mailand raided a residence in the 1800 block of Hwy 6 in the Cherryville area. The property was searched and the officers located one male suspect on the property. They found a two level concrete bunker with a multiple stage growing operation. Half of this operation was being powered by generator; the other half was being powered by a hydro connection. The concrete bunker was secured and the air quality of the area was checked by the (ERT) members before this very sophisticated grow operation was able to be dismantled. Officers have seized 4,608 plants. As part of this ongoing investigation they are looking into the origin of the generator. The 33-year-old male suspect from the Kelowna area is expected to face charges of Production, and Possession for the Purpose of Trafficking. The dismantling of this grow operation is part of the continuing commitment to our Strategic Priorities for the region in dealing with the production of marijuana. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 14, ARMENPRESS. A Russian fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after launching from its aircraft carrier near the coast of Syria on November 13, Armenpress reports two U.S. officials told Fox News. Three Russian MiG-29 fighter jets took off from their aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, and flew in the direction of Syria. Once airborne, one of the Russian jets appeared to have mechanical difficulties and turned around in the direction of the aircraft carrier. The Russian jet splashed down in the water while attempting to land. A Russian rescue helicopter picked up a parachute and the pilot. The pilot's status was unclear, U.S. intelligence officials said. MTN accompanies small and medium-sized enterprises in Cameroon MTN Cameroon, leader of telecommunications in Cameroon, announces the signing of a partnership agreement with the Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (APME), on Friday, 11 November 2016 in Yaounde. The ceremony organized for this event was presided at by a representative of the Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts (MINPMEESSA), in the presence of Philisiwe SIBIYA, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Cameroon and Jean Marie BADGA, General Manager of APME. Within the framework of this partnership, MTN Cameroon shall avail its technology and know-how to 20,000 Small and Medium Enterprises operating in Cameroon since 2012. The SMEs concerned by this programme shall benefit for example a pack which provides them with a website, professional email addresses and mobile phone as well as data access facilities. In addition, they will receive other products to enhance their financial, personnel and customer management. Moreover, there will be a dedicated MTN support team within APME offices across the 10 regions of Cameroon. The APME on its part, will finance access by enterprises to these solutions at the tune of 50%. Ourobjective is to ensure that all the SMEs participating in this programme become leaders in their respective sectors of activity by valorizing this productive Cameroon that we are all envisaging, declared Mr. Jean Marie Louis BADGA, General Manager of APME. Same feeling at MTN, where the wish today is to continue playing a major role in the development of the digital economy which constitutes a major challenge for the sustainable development and emergence of Cameroon, confided Philisiwe SIBIYA, CEO of MTN Cameroon. www.mtn.cm The authors also state that the 2009 protocols on the normalisation of relations with Armenia have not been ratified to date. They also address the criminal case over the assassination of Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Armenian weekly Agos, as well as the Armenian Patriarchates pressures upon the teaching of the Armenian language in schools. The report focuses also on the positive judgment issued in the lawsuit against the Grey Wolves Organisation in Kars on charges of hate speech against Armenians. The Turkish authorities have voiced a strong criticism against the document. Omer Chelik, Turkeys EU minister, has even branded it as biased and non-constructive. The full report can be accessed here. STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 14, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan said the law aims to form a special system which will ensure the compensation of the damages caused to the life or health of servicemen while defending Armenia, participating in military operations or while on military service in the line of contact. The current law regulates the relations in connection with the compensation of the damages caused to the life or health of servicemen as a result of military operations, as well as the procedure and conditions for establishment and activity of the compensation fund, the Minister said. He said the beneficiaries are the servicemen whose life or health has been damaged as a result of military operations. Servicemans being killed or missing is considered as damage caused to his life, and the servicemans loss of ability to work as a result of received injury is considered as damage to his health. If serviceman is killed or is missing, in this case his spouse, child, parents are considered as beneficiary. The special fund is going to be the base of the proposed system which will unite the state and public funds, will ensure the professional management of these funds, as well as the compensation of damages caused to the life or health of the servicemen in the expense of the allocated funds. The fund will operate under certain key principles. In particular, the collection of fees and the insurance compensations must be simple and perceivable for every citizen, they must be managed based on the professional asset management calculations. The system must be transparent in order to receive the necessary trust from the system, the Minister said adding that the compensation funds will be transferred for incidents that will be registered after January 28, 2017. In case of death or having 1st degree disability a lump-sum 10 million AMD will be compensated. In case of 2nd degree disability a lump-sum 5 million AMD will be compensated. Thereafter, there will be monthly payments. In case of officers deaths or 1st degree disability 300.000 AMD will be compensated, in case of 2nd degree disability 200.000 AMD. 250.000 AMD and 150.000 AMD respectively will be compensated for the corporal staff, 200.000 AMD and 100.000 AMD respectively will be compensated for the privates, the Minister said. He also presented the sources for the Funds financial resources. He said the financial resources will be formed from monthly 1000 AMDs of each of employees salaries, from the sales of securities, as well as from grants and donations provided for that purpose. It was January 1955, and Downs was referring to my first home leave from Papua New Guinea. I was due to depart the next day. Just out look at that peculiar bit of grassland above Daulo. Well leave just after first light so youll have plenty of time before your goodbyes. Ian Downs, District Commissioner of the Eastern Highlands, gave me one of his rare smiles. Yes, sir. Where to and for how long? BOB, I want you to come with me on a short flight tomorrow. Be at TAL at seven. Therell be a couple of Ag blokes along as well. Uh, okay sir. Good, see you then. He picked up his pen. There was no more to be said. Back in my office, I turned to all the matters that needed last-minute attention before I went on leave. The Daulo that Downs referred to was a road camp Id built at a pass at 2,492 metres, part of the Highlands Highway we were constructing. At this point, the just-built, narrow, winding jeep track crossed a major divide between Goroka and Mount Hagen.. The peculiar bit of grassland was a flat area high in the rainforest behind Daulo. Downs thought it might be suitable for a crop of pyrethrum, a daisy-like plant from which an insecticide is extracted. In other parts of the world, pyrethrum was proving to be an easy and useful village cash crop. Trials in PNG at lower altitudes had been unsuccessful, but the pyrethrum daisies Id planted at Daulo had produced a good flowering, PNGs first. The Agriculture Department was now interested in trying it as a cash crop in other upland areas. With four passengers, we took off from Goroka as planned in an old twin-engined, fabric-covered biplane, a de Havilland DH84 Dragon. The flight took only 20 minutes but, as we approached, we found the cloud-base at 2,700 metres too low to fly safely through the slight gap in the ridge which would have allowed us to over-fly the grassed area. Tony Vadim, a highly-experienced pilot, realised he could give us quick sideways glimpses through the gap by flying back and forth just below the cloud-base. After several passes, Downs shouted over the din of the engines, We cant see enough, Tony. Take us home. Tony eased back on the throttles and began descending. Almost immediately, both engines fell silent and our decline steepened alarmingly. No one said anything. Maybe, like me, they hoped this was Tonys way of losing altitude. Then, reality struck we were not under power. The propellers were just rotating in the wind. The terrain below suddenly looked very rugged indeed. My first thought was Damn! Ill miss the plain South tomorrow. Tonys not-quite-calm voice rose over the rushing noise of the air stream. Its okay. The carbys have iced up. The engines will start as soon as the ice melts. That didnt relax me nor, I suspect, the others. Apart from several sharply exhaled expletives, we said nothing, just waited anxiously. Tony began a careful turn towards a small airstrip below. The ridges and trees and some villages in the valley were getting closer. Someone said, Come on, come on. Then one engine started with a splutter, then a roar. The aircraft slewed. Then the other spluttered to life, and we were back flying under control. That was awkward, said Tony, reverting to his habitually laconic style. All okay? We could only smile weakly, but a babel of chatter burst from us with the release of tension. We wiped the sweat from our faces, formed despite the cold air. Once safely back in Goroka, Tony explained that the air immediately under a layer of cloud is very humid because it is loaded with super-cooled moisture on the verge of turning to cloud. When this air rushed into the engines unsophisticated carburettors, it formed a film of ice which built up until the engines choked for lack of air. In our case coincidently the engines had both stopped at the same time. Just as well they started quickly, he added Quickly? One of the Ag blokes said. Yeah. It was only about 30 seconds until they started. We all agreed it felt like many minutes. The longest half-minute of my life, said the Ag-man. The next day I flew to Port Moresby, then on to Sydney in the comfort of a pressurised, four-engine Qantas Douglas DC-4 Skymaster. I appreciated the difference between this aircraft and the 25-years-older Dragon. It made the flight so much sweeter. Representatives from del Lago Resort & Casino in Tyre, Seneca County will be holding a job fair specifically for veterans today in Geneva. The event will be held from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Finger Lakes Works Geneva, 70 Elizabeth Blackwell St. Interested veterans will be able to meet with del Lago staff and learn more about job opportunities available at the $440 million destination gaming resort, which will open in February. The casino also invites anyone interested in job opportunities to visit its employment center, which is located inside the Generations Bank building, 20 E. Bayard St., Seneca Falls. The employment center has more information about available positions and you can apply for jobs. Members of del Lago's human resources department will be available to conduct interviews and answer questions. The office is open from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays and from 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays. For more information about available job opportunities, visit dellagoresort.com. Inside Government with Guy Cosentino this week will feature a pair of Auburn city councilors On Tuesday, City Councilors Terry Cuddy and Jimmy Giannettino will discuss environmental issues, such as the blue-green algae in Owasco Lake and liquid landfill materials being transported through the city from Seneca Meadows landfill in Seneca County. The show will first air at 7 p.m. Tuesday on Time Warner Cable channel 12 on Tuesday and it will be replayed at the same time Thursday. It's also scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on Time Warner 12 and 90 and Verizon 31 via Auburn Regional Media Access. Beyond the Front Page with Guy Cosentino will feature an update on the Cayuga County United Ways 2016 campaign with campaign co-chairs William and Karen Speck and Karen Macier, the agency's executive director. Rob Forcey, The Citizen's publisher, will also be a guest to discuss the Warm the Children program. That show first airs at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday on Timer Warner 12 and again at the same time Thursday. It's then scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on Time Warner 12 and 90 and Verizon 31 via Auburn Regional Media Access. These programs are also streamed live and archived on the Cayuga Communty College Telcom Departments YouTube channel, Media@Cayuga. Viewers should open YouTube in a browser or app and then enter Media@Cayuga in the search bar. The shows are rebroadcast starting at 10 a.m. each Saturday morning on the colleges radio station, WIN-89 89.1 FM. Suggested questions for any of the shows guests can sent to cozguytho@aol.com. A solidarity action and rally to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline will take place from 8 to 9 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, at the Army Corps of Engineers office at the Natural Resource Center, 7413 County House Road, Auburn. Those gathered will call on the office to revoke the permits for the pipeline, which will cross ancestral Standing Rock Sioux territory in North Dakota, the tribe claims. In addition to the cultural impact of the pipeline, the tribe and a swelling protest movement have called attention to its environmental impact, as well. Those who attend the Auburn protest are encouraged to bring art and banners, and to share on social media with the hashtag #NoDAPL. For more information, RSVP to the protest on actionnetwork.org. Im reminded of a line from James Joyce: History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. The results of last weeks election were like a sucker punch to over half of the registered Americans who voted (seven million did not). Even myself, who maintains that the center part of his center-left position is vital, was steadfast against Trump. Unexpected and painful as it was, the world continues to turn. It is timely that last week I quoted Socrates quip about self-examination, as there are lessons to be learned as always. One lesson is that poor, rural white communities used to be up for grabs between Democrats and Republicans. Now it is only the Democrats' soft, exposed underbelly, ignored to its own peril. My family, the Roblees of Cattaraugus County, belong to this group, so I feel like I know them well. They live in world of disappearing jobs, changing demographics, drug abuse and domestic violence. In the small towns like Machias and Franklinville in which I grew up, the only strong support comes from the church, which is predicated on forgiveness. In some cases, they are locked in a quid pro quo relationship in which support is paid for in faith. To them, for right or wrong, four years of Clinton would mean further alienation. The Cattaraugus Roblees feel they have been left behind by the modern world. Instead of listening to them, we roll our eyes and call them stupid and backward. We mock them on television and film, and we have made no effort to address their concerns either. We talk down to them from a privileged hilltop, telling them to evolve. To this approach any American would naturally rebel. What is worse, this kind of treatment can create racists out of spite, rather than actual conviction. Yet, Trump is not the hero of my rural cousins. They despise him as much as Hillary. But to those made cynical by decades of neglect, their choice begins with the assumption that the candidates are lying, cheating, criminals. So they figure why not vote for the lying criminal who will end abortion? Why not vote for the cheater who might open up the state land for drilling so they can stop collecting welfare? As a 6-foot 3-inch white Anglo-Saxon protestant male, now with an Ivy League college education, I have perhaps the very least to worry about in America. I have strayed far from the path of the Southern Tier Roblees, but my heart is still with them in many ways. The warm bonds of family cant be severed by something as paper-thin as American politics. For me and those like me, there is a duty to use our privilege to reach out and show folks how theyve been lied to. Dont say youll leave the country, thats cowardly. The brave stay and face their problems; only the weak and fearful build walls to hide from them. More hatred and division wont win elections or make progress only inclusion can do that. The Salvation Army of Greater Chattanooga was first called upon to serve breakfast to fire crews on Thursday to the command center on Little Bend Road in Hamilton County. Since last week, The Salvation Army has placed staff and volunteers on stand-by to continue to assist crews who continue to battle wild fires in Tennessee and Georgia. Currently, The Salvation Army is loading snacks and beverages to take to the Dade County, Ga. command post to assist between meals.Meeting needs, physically, emotionally and spiritually is something The Salvation Army does every day, including at times of disaster, said Major Robert Lyle, area commander of The Greater Chattanooga Salvation Army.The community entrusts us to do the most good with their resources and we will continue to do so until we are no longer needed. Please also join us in prayer for those affected by the wild fires and for those fighting these fires.Donations are needed to continue support and can be made online at www.csarmy.org , by phone to 1-800-Sal-Army or by mailing The Salvation Army at 822 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga, Tn. 37403.For more information, contact Kimberly George, Director of Marketing for The Salvation Army of Chattanooga at 423 756-1023 or Kimberly_George@uss.salvationa rmy.org With the election of Donald Trump, the discussion about illegal immigration has become more contentious. And it was already pretty contentious. Though immigration is largely beneficial, there are plenty of concerns that simply havent been addressed. People are scared of losing their jobs, terrorist attacks, and seeing their tax dollars spent on people who, they believe, shouldnt be in the country in the first place. The truth is, very few (if any) Americans are going to lose their jobs to undocumented workers. Its much more likely that big businesses will use legal loopholes to import cheaper labor something that is widely unknown or ignored by many Americans. Illegal immigration has also largely reversed over the past eight years. Pew Research Center recently released a report detailing the declines and increases in the undocumented population, and as this chart shows, overall growth has stalled and reversed. Using data between 2009 and 2014, Pew was able to look for trends in the immigrant population. According to the report, there were 8 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. working or looking for work in 2014, making up 5% of the civilian labor force. But when you look beyond national trends and to the state level, there are some clear differences: From 2009 to 2014, when the number of unauthorized immigrant workers was stable, eight U.S. states Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada, South Carolina and Rhode Island had statistically significant declines in the number of unauthorized immigrants in their workforces, the report said. Conversely, seven states had increases in their undocumented populations. From Pews report, here are those seven states. 1. Washington Central and eastern Washington are widely rural and agricultural. That means there are plenty of opportunities for immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, to find work. Particularly in Washingtons central corridor, where production of apples, cherries, and hops are economic staples. 2. Utah You dont typically think of Utah when discussing immigration patterns, but its another largely rural state with a growing economy. Its also very conservative, which makes immigration a hotter topic than in, say, liberal Washington state. But evidently, the undocumented workforce is growing nonetheless. 3. Minnesota Like Utah, Minnesota seems like an odd choice for undocumented workers. It doesnt border the Pacific or Atlantic oceans and isnt adjacent to Mexico. But it shares a similar profile to other states on this list: largely rural, with a growing population and economy. 4. Louisiana The South has seen some significant increases in its illegal immigrant populations. Though states like Alabama have taken some pretty big steps to curb that growth, Louisiana is still seeing spikes. Opportunities in industries like agriculture, construction, and hospitality are likely catalysts. 5. Virginia Lawful and unlawful immigration to the state of Virginia has been on the rise for several years. As a response, lawmakers have been floating some ideas for dealing with it. Regardless, the states share of undocumented workers is going up. 6. Pennsylvania North of Virginia, Pennsylvania is another state with increasing immigrant populations. Yet another state with some urban cores and a great deal of rural, agricultural areas, Pennsylvanias an attractive place for new arrivals to find work. This may have played a part in the states swing from blue to red during the 2016 election. 7. New Jersey New Jersey is the final state that Pew points out for having an increased number of undocumented workers. Its a small state, with opportunities for work more than likely popping up in and around urban centers like New York City. Read more about Pew Researchs dive into Americas illegal immigration issues here. Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger More from Money & Career Cheat Sheet: Media Invite Has it already been a year since Playeum opened? An indoor playground with slides and ball pits and play structures Playeum is not. Rather, it is Singapore's first Children's Centre for Creativty and an independent charity which champions children through play and creativity. And it starts from tomorrow (15 Nov 2015)! And so after two successful exhibitions where kids got to explore speed and engage with nature , Playeum is back with a BRAND NEW hands-on installation which children can create their own stories and immerse themselves in stories from different cultures. Located at Gillman Barracks, Playeum is a museum without walls which hopes to inspire children through self-directed exploration and learning and in the process, establish a culture of meaningful and impactful play. And this is exactly what its newest exhibition, A World Full of Stories, hopes to achieve. Combining the fundamental facets of stories with play and specifically designed for children aged 1-12, the exhibition offers a series of interactive and open-ended spaces for young minds to feed their creative imagination through role play, storymaking, illustration, writing, drama and puppetry. The monkies are huge fans of Playeum so judging from the sneak preview they had at the various installations at the new exhibition, I think it is safe to say they thoroughly enjoyed the experience! 1. Story Cubes 2. Story Raft 3. Sand Play 4. Story Caves 5. Fantasy Dress-up 6. Story Writing 7. Glass Painting 8. Chalk Wall 9. Play Making Space 10. The Story Booth 11. A Film Full of Stories WOW, this has got to be the MOST number of installations ever at a Playeum's exhibition! I love how A World Full of Stories offers limitless play opportunities for every child, and of different age groups. Not only does it feed their imaginations with inspiring stories from around the world, the exhibition also inspires and encourages them to create their own new stories. Useful Information Playeum's Children's Centre for Creativity A World Full of Stories Promotions Encouraging children to employ the active use of imagination through creative expression, A WorldFull of Stories consists ofin total. Here are the fun learning experiences that kids can expect:A series of cube-shaped structures provide multiple surfaces and opportunities for story-making, creating fantasy characters and new narratives. Deliberately set up as a maze, the installation consists of various characters stuck on the walls where kids can move them around to tell their own stories.Walk to the end of the maze and kids will find an animal den that is fit for cozying, including a book corner, crammed full of storybooks for children.The centrepiece of the exhibition features a life-sized raft made from bamboo! Children can imagine being at sea by playing on a bamboo and rope raft, complete with a flag-flying mast and wheel forsteering.Kids can even design their own flags and hoist them up to fly them high in the 'sky'!They can also create a personalised, magical marine environment by crafting their ownsea creature on the walls surrounding the raft.The nautical theme continues right beside the raft, where kids will be able to experiment with kinetic sand - sand which mimics the physical properties of wet sand.For kids who enjoy role-play, head to the two immersive and multisensory cardboard caves! In the Look and Touch cave, they can revel in a magical, luminous environment and play with props to create their own alchemic stories.In the Listen and Speak cave, kids are encouraged to experiment with sound tubes, speaking cups, and voice-distortion mechanisms, all built into the fabric of the structure.One cannot simply weave stories without donning costumes. This corner offers a chance for kids to dress up as a favourite fantasy character. With plenty of materials to choose from, expect them to go into a costume fitting frenzy!Budding story writers are encouraged to pen down their own stories and post them into the red Story Mailbox. Selected stories will be featured regularly on Playeums website!Which kids doesn't love to draw on walls? Even better, how about painting on glass doors???Children can add their own chalk features and additional narrative to the chalk wall landscape, drawn by cartoonist Clio Ding.This has all along been the monkies favourite space in Playeum for the past two exhibitions and it was certainly no exception this time around. The reason? The shelves are well-stocked with a mind-boggling selection of upcycled materials like plastic bottles, ribbons, wooden sticks, and even natural materials like seeds!Throw in a host of ample tools required for that bit of crafting, and I think the monkies were all set.See what I mean?And because it is all about telling stories this time round, kids will be able to create their own hand-puppets, finger puppets, or spoon puppets using upcycled materials. And these were what the monkies created.But the creation doesn't end there. Kids will be able to use their puppets in a special puppet theatre where not only are they able to tell a story using the puppets, they can control the lighting effects and produce accompanying sounds for the audience too! Nothing like a little teamwork, eh?This interactive feature allows kids to step into a confined space, where they can share their stories through photography and video - with or without their puppets. Stories will be recorded via an iPad.Kids need a breather, or some downtime? Head to the Dark Space which will showcase a specially commissioned storytelling film, where five of Singapores finest storytellers will be orating a story from a specific culture.Featuring Sheila Wee, Nancy Leopard, Kamini Ramachandran, Karen Lee, Rosemarie Somaiah and played on a loop, kids can enjoy 30 minutes of this rich, oral art-form, within a magical space lit up with quietly glowing story icons and motifs on the surrounding walls and ceiling.Here are a few things to note if you planning a trip down:1. Entry to Children's Centre for Creativity is $22 per child (1-12 years old). One accompanying adult enters free while additional accompanying adults play $10 each.2. Although entry is for unlimited play for the day, there is a possibility that visits may be kept to 2-hours during busy periods.3. Annual Memberships available at $160 per child, which offers one year's worth of unlimited entry for one child and one adult. This also includes a 10% discount on workshops and 20% discount for additional adult price.4. There are no toilets and nursing rooms within centre. Toilets are however, located just beside once you exit the Playeum building.5. No snacks and drinks are sold on premises. There is a cold drinks vending machine beside the washrooms.6. If your kids (or you) are feeling really famished, head to Red Baron cafe opposite Playeum. It sells sandwiches, cakes and other pastries.Blk 47, Malan Road, Gillman Barracks, #01-23, Singapore 10944415 November 2016 - 30 April 2017Tues - Sun: 10am - 6pm (Closed on Mondays)$22 per child (1-12) | Accompanying adult: Free | Additional accompanying adult: $10Safra Membership Card: 20% off child and additonal adult admissionDBS Employees: 20% off child and additonal adult admissionUOB Cardholders: 20% off child admissioneXplorerkid Membership: 15% off child admissionPOSB Baby Bonus Nets Card: 1-for-1 child admission dealNearest MRT Station (5 to 10 minutes walk): Labrador Park Station (Circle Line)Nearest Bus Stop (3 minutes walk): Along Alexandra Road, Opposite Alexandra Point (Bus Stop Number 15059) - Available Buses: 51, 57, 61, 83, 97, 97e, 100, 166, 175, 408, 963 or 963E*Free Parking on Sundays. City Carrie A. Larrabee, 31, 9 Hoffman St., Auburn, was picked up on a warrant Nov. 12 and charged with five counts of second-degree criminal contempt and endangering the welfare of a child. Shawn W. Ward, 34, Auburn, was picked up on a warrant Nov. 11 and charged with first-degree identity theft, second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, second-degree forgery and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Travis J. Breedlove, 42, 19 Venice St. Apt. Left, Auburn, was charged Nov. 10 with second-degree burglary, fourth-degree grand larceny, third-degree burglary and petit larceny. Daniel L. Hopp, 23, 39 Case Ave. Apt. Up, Auburn, was picked up on a warrant Nov. 10 and charged with third-degree criminal mischief, criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation and fourth-degree criminal mischief. State James M. Latocha, 36, Auburn, was charged Nov. 11 with unlawful growth of cannabis and fourth-degree criminal mischief. Brandon L. LaFleur, 23, Cato, was charged Nov. 12 with second-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. Michael J. Bona, 31, Auburn, was charged Nov. 13 with driving while intoxicated. Timothy J. Patterson, 52, Cayuga, was charged Nov. 11 with driving while intoxicated. Jonathan S. Nagy, 38, Jordan, was charged Nov. 13 with third-degree menacing. Hydroponics is an innovative method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. (iStockphoto) More than a dozen tech startups will pitch ideas to Midwestern farmers, investors and agribusiness powerhouses Tuesday in Chicago during the first Midwest AgTech Conference. The single-day conference will showcase projects focusing on sustainability, data collection and precision agriculture. It'll be a chance to strengthen Illinois' position as a center for agricultural innovation, said Roger Royse, founder of the California-based Royse Law Firm, which organized the conference. Advertisement "This is a natural here in Illinois," said Royse, whose firm specializes in representing tech startups and sponsors similar events across the West Coast. "The biggest thing is to provide opportunities for ag-tech companies looking to make strategic partnerships or find customers." RubiconAg, Tiny But Mighty Foods, Crystal Diagnostics and Zero Gravity Solutions are among the startups scheduled to pitch. Advertisement RubiconAg, based in Greenfield, Ind., turns upcycled shipping containers into automated hydroponic growing facilities capable of producing an acre's worth of food in a space equivalent to six standard parking spots. Iowa-based Tiny But Mighty Foods sells heirloom popcorn with tiny kernels and disintegrating hulls. Crystal Diagnostics, based in Colorado, has an Ohio facility that uses technology to help detect pathogens in food. And Florida-based Zero Gravity Solutions repurposes technology designed for space to boost nutrient delivery in crops on Earth. Other startups scheduled to pitch ideas include a company that derives charcoal-like substances from organic material and a firm that synthesizes digestive enzymes found in insect stomachs to naturally break down difficult compounds. Despite Illinois' standing as a top-five agricultural producing state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, research from Ag Funder shows it has been somewhat overshadowed when it comes to ag-tech investment. Illinois startups received roughly $21 million in ag-tech investment in 2015, according to Ag Funder's research. That ranked ninth nationally but paled in comparison to the $1.25 billion California startups received the same year. U.S. ag-tech startups raised $2.2 billion overall in 2015, according to Ag Funder. Globally, they received more than $4.6 billion, nearly doubling the level of investment from the previous year. Part of the reason Illinois has lagged behind states like California, Massachusetts and New York is a gap between Illinois' agriculture and business sectors, said Lee Strom, CEO of the Food and Agriculture Roadmap for Illinois (FARM Illinois) and former chairman of the Farm Credit Administration. The state has a tremendous agriculture industry and vibrant business community, Strom said, but the two don't collaborate as often as they should. FARM Illinois has been trying to improve that relationship by bringing the state's key stakeholders together, said Strom, who is also one of the conference's keynote speakers. "In Illinois, we have the world-class hub of Chicago and a world-class agriculture sector," Strom said. "My comments at this conference will help frame what (FARM Illinois') leadership is doing to ensure that the Chicago region and the state of Illinois form a global hub for food and agricultural innovation." Advertisement Innovation related to food and agriculture has been made all the more important in recent years thanks to a long list of challenges, said Jim Slama, president of nonprofit advocacy organization FamilyFarmed. Those include increasingly resistant super-weeds, climate change and a national food waste problem. Slama, another keynote speaker, said those challenges present opportunities for startups. To encourage innovation, he founded the Good Food Business Accelerator at 1871. Ag Funder's research reported that innovation accelerators such as Slama's have contributed to a steady increase in investment activity throughout the Midwest. During the first half of 2016, for example, Illinois produced six new ag-tech startups compared to the eight it produced in all of 2015. "There's definitely been a lot of money going into ag-tech startups," Slama said. Colleen Callahan, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rural development program in Illinois, is the conference's third keynote speaker. She said her presentation will focus on how technology can aid rural neighborhoods by improving access to health care and streamlining emergency response efforts. Mobile apps can link rural patients to medical specialists in urban areas, and precision equipment such as drones can help emergency responders quickly identify accident victims in hard-to-get to locations, she said. Advertisement "That's a use of technology in rural areas that we were not familiar with," said Callahan, who grew up on a family farm in Iroquois County. "It wasn't an option before." More than 200 people are expected to attend the Midwest AgTech Conference, according to the Royse Law Firm. Agribusiness corporations represented at the conference will include Dow AgroSciences and Monsanto. The conference will be at 108 W. Germania Place in Chicago's Gold Coast. Robert Holly is a freelance writer. Twitter @robertwadeholly Amie Kuntz of Sandwich, a nurse who struggled with addiction to opiates for seven years, wants to share her story so others know "it can happen to anyone." (Denise Crosby / The Beacon-News) Amie Kuntz is not the kind of recovering addict I'm used to interviewing. But I'm darn glad I got a chance to sit down with her last week because she represents a growing segment of the population struggling to get off opiates and stay clean. That means the woman from Sandwich has an important story to share. Advertisement Unlike so many young people who fall victim to drugs as they struggle to find their way into adulthood, 34-year-old Kuntz breezed through those treacherous years and seemed to have achieved it all: A loving husband. A wonderful child. A beautiful home. A fulfilling career as an oncology and palliative care nurse. So how did this young woman, raised in a normal middle-class family, president of her 2000 class at Oswego High School and an overachiever in every sense of the word, wind up as an addict? Advertisement The fact she was "so driven" likely contributed to her addiction, says Kuntz. "And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone." Looking back after 15 months of sobriety, there is always clarity. While she experimented with alcohol and pot only minimally in high school and college, Kuntz says it was in 2009 that she began abusing pain killers after taking them to deal with an old hip injury she'd received as a dancer in high school. And life, as it tends to do, began throwing a few curve balls her way. Kuntz became a young mother; she went through a divorce from her first husband, who she married while in college; and she began suffering from burnout in a high stress career that dealt so much with pain and death. It didn't help, of course, that as a nurse she always had drugs at her disposal. "It was a perfect storm," Kuntz can now see. "I was a nurse and I was making bad choices. I put a lot of people in situations that I should not have." As her addiction worsened, Kuntz admits she could only go about five hours without needing another fix. And the more frequently she used, the higher the dosage became. No one knew the struggle she was going through - not her second husband, Donny, a construction worker; or her parents and siblings. Advertisement "They just thought I had the flu a lot," she said. Former President Clinton discusses opiate addiction at a presidential town hall in Las Vegas on Aug. 12. It came to a head in January 2014 when her husband found a bevy of pain killers in her purse. By that time, having been addicted for seven years, "I was ready to be done with this," she said. "I was very honest with him. I told him I had to get help." Kuntz spent 34 days at Rosecrance in Rockford in its abstinence program, where she met plenty of other women like her, many from wealthy suburbs who were hooked on heroin. While Kuntz herself never used the street drug, she says there really was no need to, as she had plenty of access to pain meds. "But had I needed to," she said, "I would have gone there." After completing the in-patient rehab, Kuntz was clean for four months but relapsed in July 2015 and entered the program again, including outpatient care with Gateway Alcohol and Drug Treatment in Aurora. A couple of opiate blockers, suboxone and vivitrol, became "my safety net" for eight months to help her stay sober. For the past six months, she's not had to rely on any anti-addiction meds only weekly counseling sessions and support groups. And she wakes up every day fully aware she must stay "laser focused" in order to remain "in that good place." Kuntz, who calls her journey to sobriety both "amazing" and "humbling," is ready to go public because she's convinced that "until the stigma of addiction is removed," we aren't going to beat this problem. There needs to be more education, she insisted, particularly among health care professionals who have easy access to drugs and, by nature, tend to "not take care of themselves." Advertisement Kuntz, who is now studying to become an addictions counselor, says she watches her son, an eighth-grader, like a hawk, to make sure he does not go down a similar path. And that's one reason the two of them will be attending "A Cop, a Convict and a Kid," the heroin-awareness program at 6:30 p.m. Monday at East Aurora High School that will also feature actor and stuntman Brandon Novak talking about his own struggles with opiate addiction. Yes, you could easily add a nurse to that lineup, she says with a laugh. "I want my son to see it, to be able to tie it all together," Kuntz said. "There is such an array of people there ...it really can happen to anyone." Dcrosby@tribpub.com . "Beverly Hills 90210" cast members, left to right, Jennie Garth, Brian Austin Green, Ian Ziering, Jason Priestley and Gabrielle Carteris attend the Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place first season DVD launch party held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Phil Mccarten / AP) "Beverly Hills, 90210" cast members are paying tribute to ailing co-star Shannen Doherty. Doherty is being treated for breast cancer and didn't take part in a "90210" reunion panel at the Rewind Convention in Bloomingdale, Ill., at the Hilton Indian Lakes Resort over the weekend. Advertisement Luke Perry, whose character had an on-screen romance with Doherty's, told the audience Saturday that Doherty was "a very big part of the success of the show." He added that Doherty is "not doing well right now but sometimes her contributions are minimized." Fellow cast mate Jennie Garth praised Doherty on Instagram by sharing a picture Saturday with a quote, "Fight Like A Brenda," a reference to Doherty's "90210" character, Brenda Walsh. Garth calls Doherty the "strongest lady I've ever known." Advertisement Associated Press RELATED STORIES: Your favorite TV stars from the '90s and beyond will be in the Chicago area next month Shannen Doherty shaves head amid cancer battle The Times' original review of 'Beverly Hills, 90210': Cliches and stereotypes galore "Luke Perry: "90210" guys remain good friends Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox) "The Simpsons" addressed its President Trump prediction from 16 years ago in Sunday's opening credits. (Fox) Sixteen years ago, "The Simpsons" writers predicted a Donald Trump presidency. Sunday night, in the first show to air after Trump's victory, they expressed their regret. Advertisement In the opening credits, which change every episode, Bart Simpson grimaced as he scrawled on the blackboard: "BEING RIGHT SUCKS." The Simpsons updates its 2000 prediction of a Trump Presidency... #TheSimpsons pic.twitter.com/Myf5rYb9Dj The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) November 14, 2016 It was an allusion to a prediction made in a 2000 episode, which featured Lisa as the nation's first "straight female" president. Her older brother Bart had slacked away his life, but offered a solution she was unable to see. Advertisement From the Oval Office, Lisa said: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump." Trump was just the right comedic fit at the time, episode writer Dan Greaney recently told The Washington Post's Michael Cavna. The writers were looking for a celebrity name that would sound slyly absurdist. MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR "The story was really about Bart saving Lisa's presidency," Greaney said. "Lisa has a problem beyond her ability" - the kind that only Bart could solve. Greaney said Trump "seems like a 'Simpsons'-esque figure - he fits right in there, in an over-the-top way ... He seemed kind of lovable in the old days, in a blowhard way." "But now that he's running for president, I see that in a much darker way," the Emmy-winning writer-producer said earlier this year. "The Simpsons" riffed on Trump earlier this season, in a scene that showed both major-party candidates receiving an important 3 a.m. phone call. Hillary Clinton was well prepared for the call, but Trump initially rejected it because he was busy tweeting about Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and a harsh Trump critic, according to The Post's Bethonie Butler. Advertisement He answered the second phone call, but his trip to the Situation Room was hampered by an elaborate grooming regimen. Marge definitively announced that she would vote for Clinton. Homer eventually got the hint. RELATED STORIES: 'The Simpsons' predicted a Trump presidency 16 years ago How 'Parks and Recreation' predicted the 2016 presidential election Trump names Priebus and Bannon as top White House aides, says deportations will begin immediately Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox) Kenn E. Head, from left, Omar Evans and Stephen Conrad Moore in American Theater Companys documentary play The Project(s). The impact of such works on the citys streets is difficult to quantify. (Michael Brosilow) "Crime Scene." "Crime Scene: The Next Chapter." "The Gospel of Lovingkindness." "How Long Will I Cry?" "It Shoudda Been Me." "Jabari Dreams of Freedom." "The Project(s)." "Prowess." "Track 13." They've been howls of pain, expressions of guilt, political assertions, aspirational fantasies, furious invectives hurled at a rigged, racist system, gentle tributes to those no longer living. Advertisement They've played to audiences that included bereft family members, and audiences that couldn't care less. They've been staged over the past couple of years at theaters big and small, from Lincoln Park to Pulaski Park, from North Center to the heart of Englewood. Advertisement They've been told from the points of view of those living it, and they have attempted to raise the consciousness of those who live far away from the pain. All of these plays have been about Chicago and guns. They were all written here, designed here, directed here, acted here and watched here. Kenn E. Head performs a scene from American Theater Company's production of "The Project(s)." (Chicago Tribune) Have they done any actual good? The cold, hard data would suggest they've done nothing. All you have to do is read the succinct first sentence of a news story the Tribune published on Halloween: "A bloody year for Chicago hit a new low this past weekend as 17 people were fatally shot, marking the deadliest weekend so far this year and pushing homicides past the 600 mark for the first time since 2003." What more of an indictment of the ineffectiveness of what has been a passionate, furiously engaged effort by Chicago theater could possibly exist? "I have been thinking about this a lot," says Nambi E. Kelley, the highly reflective author of one of those plays, "Jabari Dreams of Freedom," a piece staged last April at the Chicago Children's Theatre that is all about an 11-year-old boy growing up amid gun violence in Chicago, which is where Kelley grew up herself, although she now lives in Harlem in New York City. READ THE FULL SERIES HERE "Look at my situation," she says as she walks down the street. "These days, people are constantly asking me to write plays about gun violence and police shootings. I am very grateful to be asked. But in all transparency, I am just not sure what it does. This is all just a huge question for me. I feel powerless, yet it is how I pay my rent. Think about it. I make a living off people saying to me, this is a problem and what do you think about it? Advertisement There is pause. "I find it embarrassing," Kelley says. "Remember, I grew up on the South Side. What even is activism today? You can just click a link on Facebook. As an artist of color, I question that." "I am a playwright, not a politician," says Ike Holter, who wrote another of those plays, "Prowess," and has written often about inequality, racism and violence. "I can't do anything to stop someone picking up a gun." "There is a preponderance of evidence about the efficacy of arts-based work when it comes to gun violence," says Willa Taylor, the director of education and community education at the Goodman Theatre and an outspoken activist on this, and many other subjects. "But that evidence is purposefully ignored. The system is invested in keeping a level of dysfunction in certain neighborhoods that allows certain other parts of society to profit from that dysfunction, that allows there to be discussions about race that really should be discussions about class." "This culture of segregation has led to an uneven distribution of resources, love, hope," says Anthony Moseley, the creator of "Crime Scene" and its sequel for the Collaboraction Theatre Company, which toured the shows about Chicago and guns into several neighborhoods from the company's Wicker Park base. "The tides move in and out. There are waves of things getting better and then things getting worse." "There is always that feeling that you cannot do enough," says Hallie Gordon, the artistic director of the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program and the producer of many of the above plays. "Always that feeling. Look at all the kids being killed." Advertisement "This is not normal," says Moseley. "This is not how we are supposed to live on a lake in the middle of the country." Normal or not, it clearly is the way many of us are living. But is it reasonable to expect a play to stop a shooting? Is a gangbanger really likely to walk into a theater, his heart open to suggestions? Wouldn't all the money that goes into arts education be better spent, say, feeding kids a healthy breakfast? "Of course the kind of money we spend on education programs even on theater in general could help alleviate some of the poverty and some of the things that are causal factors toward the violence," Taylor says, noting the limitations of the arts but also arguing that to see this issue as some kind of zero-sum game is absurd, given the political realities. "But it would not be spent that way." So what to do? Discount the data and claim efficacy and victory? Write plays about other things? Throw up one's artistic arms in forlorn defeat? Pen frivolous musicals for perpetuity? None of those nonsolutions work for these artists. But many of them have vowed to be smarter in figuring out what they can and cannot do, what they should and should not be doing, what it is reasonable to expect their audiences to process. Take, for example, "The Burials," a recent Steppenwolf play by Caitlin Parrish that explored the devastating effect of school shootings across the country. The show was written for, and mostly played to, high school students who come to the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program. Gordon, who runs that program, was in charge of the talkbacks. Advertisement "I think early on that we really wanted to have a serious conversation about the Second Amendment, but we found the kids weren't very interested in that conversation" she says, remembering what happened this fall. "But they were very interested in the emotional impact that the shootings had on kids their age. So you can ask them to look at how many people died in Chicago due to gun violence, but that does not seem to resonate. What was working for those kids was to give them the sense that they were being heard, that they felt a little less isolated. So the question for me becomes, 'How do you take that feeling you can offer them and then use it toward activism?'" To put all that more bluntly: Theater artists generally have figured out that the issues don't resonate unless there is an emotional impact. They've similarly discerned that their audiences, especially their young audiences, have nowhere else to talk anything through. "You just cannot have this conversation in a school assembly with 500 students, following a shooting, with counselors there on call, and expect the kids to open up and talk about their feeling," Gordon says. "That is not the way the world runs, but it is what usually happens following gun violence. What we have to do is really talk to the students who come to our shows, really talk to them in a way that makes them feel like they are being respected and heard. There is violence and then there is the trauma that follows. And I'd argue the arts offer the only space for those traumatic conversations." In other words, you could argue that there would be more deaths in Chicago by gun violence were it not for these open conversational spaces in theaters, that mass post-traumatic stress syndrome would rage less checked. Reaching an individual at a piece of socially engaged art is not easy to quantify, of course, as Taylor points out at length. So these artists generally rely on innate belief. "You have to have hope," Kelley says, "that you are reaching one of these children, that you offering them the tools to deal with this mess, that you are making them see that someone cares about what they feel. You have to have hope." "I have to believe that the more stones we throw in the pond, the more there are ripples," says Moseley. "To be honest, the increase in violence that you talk about only justifies the work to me and inspires me to know that the work we are doing is even more important. As a Chicagoan and an artist, I can't walk away from this work. There is still a lot of ignorance. People have been numbed. But if you believe in the power of the arts, you know that it does do something. It does. You can get inside of people. You can." Advertisement You have to teach everyone that we are not so different from each other. You can never overrate empathy. There but for the grace of God go I. This has to be the first step. Willa Taylor, the director of education and community education at the Goodman Theatre You could argue, of course, that it is just as important to get inside of the people who may not be directly touched, for reasons of class and/or geography, by the scourge. You could argue that the most important job of the artist is not to prevent the violence, or even to talk to those who are suffering from its impact on their immediate community, but to increase the awareness thereof in other parts of the city. "You have to start with people hearing the stories of lives they do not touch," Taylor says. "You have to teach everyone that we are not so different from each other. You can never overrate empathy. There but for the grace of God go I. This has to be the first step." "All you can do is show the humanity," says Holter. "You have to let the people know who do not encounter gun violence that this is still their city and that if they do not deal with this now, they only will have to deal with the ramifications later." And you never know who is in the audience, of course. Moseley, who has taken "Crime Scene" and its sequel into violence-riven ZIP codes, talks at length about gang members walking through the door, sitting and listening, maybe putting down their guns that night. Gordon talks about waves of young Chicagoans thanking artists for listening to their point of view. There are kids with guns in their cars who find themselves on educational trips to theaters, and maybe they leave that gun alone for a night. There are police officers who go to theater. There are kids who have watched their friends die on the streets who then find themselves watching the story of one in the same situation, and maybe they feel a little better. There are people with money and other resources who go to the theater and come out with a renewed commitment to work on this issue. "All of these plays about gun violence that have been produced in Chicago," says Holter, "have reached very deeply inside a few people." Now more than ever, an artist who deals with one audience member at a time, and who loves the city of Chicago, must take that on faith. Advertisement Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@chicagotribune.com Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib MORE FROM THIS SERIES: If art can't fix problems, what good is it? From young women to famed painters, art deals with pain Advertisement Spike Lee and 'Chi-Raq' took on violence and flopped. What now? Music cringes at Chicago's carnage, searches for answers Mukuru opens first branch in Malawi International money transfer company, Mukuru, has opened its first branch in Malawi following a surge in remittances from people in the diaspora to Malawi. Speaking during the official opening, Mukuru Country Representative, Peggy Mhone, said the opening of the branch of the Malawi branch will help to complement the activities of Mukurus partners and agents. We have seen a significant increase in the number and amount of transactions being sent to Malawi. Although I cannot disclose the actual amount we handle in a month or year, I can confirm that figures keep rising, Mhone said. According to a report from the Trade and Law Centre on Moving Money Across the Borders, Malawi received a total of $38 million from the diaspora in 2015. Blantyre City Council Deputy Mayor, Wild Ndipo, hailed Mukuru for opening the Limbe branch. Ndipo said for Blantyre to develop, it needs more money, including contributions from the diaspora. This will definitely ensure easy cash transfers from the diaspora into Blantyre, thereby allowing city residents to embark on various development projects, he said. www.mukuru.com SKANEATELES In the fall of 1941, in his 17th year, Jack Howard was planning for college. Then, on Dec. 7, while walking out of a Sunday movie matinee, he heard the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He still went off to college but enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve on campus. Howard was the keynote speaker at Skaneateles Robert J. Hydon American Legion Post 239's 13th annual Veterans Day soup and sandwich supper. Not a Legion member, Howard and his service came to the attention of Post 239 Commander Eric Amberge when Howard was a passenger on the fifth Syracuse Honor Flight mission. These missions transport veterans to Washington, D.C. to see memorials dedicated to their service and sacrifice. Howard is best known in Skaneateles as husband to Ruth and as a father, grandfather and great-grandfather and also as the First Presbyterian Churchs mission point person for the Lost Boys of Sudan and past chairman of the board of the John Dau Foundation. But, before all this, he had an adventure on the high seas as a naval deck officer. Im not a hero, but I am a veteran, Howard said. In 1942 two months into Howard's studies at Dartmouth College recruiters came to campus. Howard chose the Navy V12 School because he could train to be an officer. The V12 was established on college campuses between 1943 and 1946 to train officers because there was not enough room at the Naval Academy at that time. In 1944, Howard was selected to go to midshipman school at Northwestern Universitys downtown Chicago campus. There was a two-month break before this started, so he was sent to Portland, Maine, to serve on a submarine patrol boat, the USS APc-94. At Midshipman School between July and November 1944, he lived in a high-rise dorm in downtown Chicago on Lakeshore Drive. When they went out on weekend liberty, we couldnt buy a drink or pay for a meal," Howard said. "People would pay for us and so happy to do it." Howard shipped out of New York in January 1945 on a new landing ship, LSM290, as the fifth of six officers. They headed south, where he experienced one last submarine encounter off the coast of New Jersey before steaming through the Panama Canal and into dry dock in San Diego for repairs necessitated by sailing through a hurricane off Mexico. While we were in dry dock, President Roosevelt died, Howard said. Then, on our way from San Francisco to Hawaii, Germany surrendered on May 8. So, now the whole emphasis of the United States military was to bring Japan to unconditional surrender. Arriving at the Mariana Islands, they started planning for the invasion of Japan. Their ship was going to carry Navy construction battalions and heavy equipment to establish a beach head for the troop's initial landings. But, on Aug. 8, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At first I was elated," Howard said. "Im going to go home. The war will be over. And then, the more I thought about it, all our future wars now are going to be by bombs that can wipe out whole cities. It didn't look very good. Japan surrendered after a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Plans to invade were switched to the occupation of Japan. Howard's ship sailed into Tokyo Bay on Sept. 14. It was anchored close enough to the signing of the Japanese surrender that the crew could view the activity through binoculars. Howard spoke about going ashore and mingling with the Japanese people who were frightened. The first few weeks, they didnt see any women as they had been told to hide because Americans were going to abuse them. After about a month, the Japanese realized the Americans were a peaceful people and well disciplined, so they started to come out and engage, asking for chocolate bars and trading souvenirs for American cigarettes. Howard's ship was next docked in Yokahama, where there were many orphaned Japanese children who would come to beg for food. The Americans would give them their leftovers each evening. One night, the children were back and signaling they were still hungry. Howard said all he could find was a gallon jar of pickles. The children had never seen pickles and were afraid until he opened the jar and ate one, proving it was good food. Then, they followed his lead, finishing off the jar and enjoying this treat. Afterward, whenever the kids saw him on the dock they called him Pickle. In February of 1946, the Navy demobilized. Howard was the youngest officer on the ship, so he got to stay. Because of this, he got some prompt promotions, becoming an executive officer and gaining command of the ship. It went from six officers and 65 men to three officers and 35 men all between the ages of 18 and 22. It was a lot of fun, Howard said. The regulations got pretty loose at that time. After several transportation duties between Pacific islands, Howard's ship was sent to the Philippines to be decommissioned. When that was finished, he got his orders to go home June 20, 1946. It took him 30 days to get back to Grand Central Station, which included a much appreciated 10-day layover in Hawaii. "The point I remember the most was going under the Golden Gate Bridge on a transport and thinking how lucky I am," Howard said. "I survived, and I am truly going home, as 18 months earlier I was going under the bridge in the opposite direction not knowing if Id ever come back home this way. He took a Pullman car across the country and was greeted by his sweetheart now wife at Grand Central Station. Two months later, he was back at Dartmouth studying chemistry, later teaching there before 21 years with DuPont and 36 years as a natural gas broker and consultant. This summer, Howard went to his 70-year reunion at Dartmouth at the age of 92. Next year, he and Ruth will celebrate 70 years of marriage. People were ready for Eric Witherspoon's message. The superintendent of Evanston Township High School walked into his office Wednesday and sensed it was time to speak up for unity. Advertisement "There was a lot of confusion and even anxiety among the students that morning," Witherspoon told me. "Whatever their politics, however they felt about the outcome of the election, it was widespread. And I wanted them to feel safe and loved." He quickly typed up a message to read during the 10 a.m. announcements. Advertisement RELATED: TRENDING LIFE & STYLE NEWS THIS HOUR "Once in a while it's important that we pause and reflect on who we are and reaffirm our appreciation for one another," he began. "This morning I want to remind all of you that ETHS is a safe and welcoming place for you. You attend a school where we not only respect differences, we embrace our diversity." ETHS is made up of around 3,300 students 43 percent of them are white, 30 percent are black, 17 percent are Hispanic, 5 percent are Asian and 3 percent identify as two or more races, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. "We embrace one another's race and ethnicity," Witherspoon's address continued. "We embrace one another's family background, heritage, language and culture. We embrace one another's religion and your right to your own personal customs and beliefs. We embrace your sexual orientation and your gender identity. We embrace your special needs. We embrace you and value you as individual human beings." (You can read his entire message on the Evanston Township High School site.) "I didn't want to focus on the election," Witherspoon told me. "I wanted to focus on the kids on how they could process things and remember what they have here and what this school is all about." Within minutes, students were approaching Witherspoon's office asking for a copy. Parents started calling and emailing, saying their kids had texted home about it. By Saturday, when I talked to Witherspoon, he had heard from hundreds of parents and educators around the country some asking to borrow his message, others letting him know they already had. Advertisement "I can't keep up with my email," he said. "The feedback isn't political. It's about the human spirit. This transcends politics. All of us, as Americans, know that's who we really are, and it's so important that we don't lose sight of it." Nina Kavin, an Evanston resident whose son attends ETHS, shared Witherspoon's note on her Dear Evanston Facebook page, a group she set up last year to address gun violence in Evanston. "I thought his words were so powerful and so beautiful and kind and necessary," Kavin told me. "I thought they needed to be heard by everybody." Her post has reached more than 60,000 people. "The comments are from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio," she said. "Obviously it went far beyond what my page stands for. People really needed to hear it." Witherspoon implored students to be kind to one another. Advertisement "Redouble your support for one another," he said in his message. "And even though we cannot always control what is going on in the larger world around us, we can define our own school, our own community. Let's make this school year a year of strengthening our sense of community here at ETHS, and let's reaffirm a community legacy for all the students today and for those who will follow you at ETHS." Kavin's son told her the school erupted in applause when Witherspoon finished talking. "It reminds you that we have power in our own communities," she said. "We need to look to each other and make our own communities stronger. We have our own work to do right here in Evanston, so let's do it." On Friday, Witherspoon was reading through National Connection, a daily summary of stories about education around the country. "The top story was, 'Students responding to wave of bullying and fear after the election,'" he said. "We're seeing a lot of reports of confrontations on both sides of the political spectrum. My students' well-being was my motivation, but looking back, it was also an intervention. It was a way to say, 'That's not what we're about.'" And it was a road map, when so many were desperate for one. Advertisement "It was a very divisive election you'd have to have your head buried in the sand not to know that," Witherspoon said. "I just wanted to help my students move forward into a period of healing and taking care of one another." hstevens@chicagotribune.com Twitter @heidistevens13 RELATED STORIES: More than 1,600 Chicago high schoolers witnessed history as election judges Soothing kids' fears about a Donald Trump presidency Advertisement Harvard womens soccer players response to sexist scouting report is perfection Police officers guard a gas station in the 10000 block of South Michigan Avenue, where a minivan with a shot-out window is parked early Nov. 13, 2016, in Chicago. A man was shot about one block away, in the first block of East 100th Place, and made it to the gas station, where he was transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) Two men were killed and at least 10 other people have been wounded in shootings since mid-afternoon Sunday in Chicago, according to police. Grayson Langdon, 25, was killed in South Shore on Sunday about 7:10 p.m., police said. He was attacked in the 7200 block of South Phillips Avenue, where emergency crews found him with a gunshot wound to the right arm and side, police said. Advertisement Langdon was pronounced dead on the scene at 7:30 p.m., according to the medical examiner. He lived in the 7200 block of South Cregier Avenue. About 3:40 a.m. Monday, a 26-year-old man was shot dead in Brighton Park. Police responded to the 2500 block of West 47th Street and found him on the sidewalk with gunshot wounds to the left shoulder and right leg. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead. Police did not know the circumstances of the shooting, authorities said. Advertisement Police respond to the 2500 block of West 47th Street in Brighton Park after a man was shot dead early Monday morning. Nov. 14, 2016. (WGN-TV) (Chicago Tribune) Around 5:40 p.m. Sunday, a 17-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were shot in the 6300 block of South King Drive in the Greater Grand Crossing area, police said. The boy was shot in the neck and taken in critical condtion to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. The man was shot in the left forearm and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition. In other shootings: At 11:50 p.m., a 46-year-old man was wounded after being caught in the crossfire of a shooting in Englewood. He got himself to St Bernard Hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg and told investigators he was in the 7300 block of South Stewart Avenue when two groups began shooting at each other and he was shot. He was listed in good condition. About 10:20 p.m., a 21-year-old man was shot in the Gage Park neighobrhood. He was standing in the 5200 block of South Troy Street when someone in the front passenger seat of a passing gray Jeep opened fire, shooting the man in the back. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition. About 9:50 p.m., a 38-year-old man was shot in the Kenwood neighborhood. He got himself to University of Chicago Medical Center with a graze wound to his left hand after being shot in the 1100 block of East 48th Street. No further information was immediately available. About 9:30 p.m., a 58-year-old man was shot and seriously wounded while leaving his Little Village business, police said. He was walking to his car in the 3900 block of West Cermak Road when two people approached, one of whom was armed, and they demanded his money. A fight ensued and the would-be robber shot the man multiple times. He went to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition. A 19-year-old man was wounded in a shooting about 7:40 p.m. in the 7000 block of South Emerald Avenue in the Englewood neighborhood, according to police. The man was shot in the left leg, but information about where he was treated was not immediately released. The man told police he heard shots and felt pain, and was not cooperating further with investigators, police said. In the 3300 block of South Leavitt Avenue in the McKinley Park neighborhood, an 18-year-old man was shot in the back in a drive-by shooting just before 4:10 p.m., according to a police media notification. The mans condition was stabilized at Mount Sinai Hospital. The man told police he was walking when he came up to the mouth of an alley, a dark-colored SUV drove by and someone inside fired shots, hitting him, police said. A 34-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the right hand about 3:55 p.m. in the 3300 block of West Warren Boulevard in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, according to police. The man was in his car when someone came up on foot and fired shots at him. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was in good condition. In the Austin neighborhood, a 24-year-old man was shot in the ankle in the 5000 block of West Chicago Avenue just before 3 p.m., according to police. The man told police he heard a shot and felt pain from a gunshot wound. The man went to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, where he was in good condition. No one was in custody in the shootings. State and federal health officials are seeking penalties totaling more than $100,000 from a North Side nursing home after five residents overdosed on heroin inside the facility in February, the Tribune has learned. The residents of Continental Nursing & Rehabilitation Center were hospitalized and recovered, but at least two used heroin again hours after they were returned to the facility, even though they were supposed to be on close watch, Illinois public health department inspectors allege. One of the two overdosed again. Advertisement The department also opened a new investigation into the facility after the Tribune requested information about a sixth drug overdose in September 2015. In that case, a 56-year-old resident was found on the floor by his bed with five packets of white powder beside him, a Chicago police report said. Advertisement Illinois law requires nursing homes to notify the Department of Public Health of unusual events that put patients at risk, but state officials said they learned of that case only when the Tribune filed a query about it. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, has imposed civil monetary penalties totaling $76,000 for alleged violations in the February incident. Continental is contesting an additional $25,000 fine from the state public health department, which says the facility failed to properly monitor and treat residents with drug addictions. State officials and industry representatives said they could recall no similar cluster of patients overdosing on heroin inside an Illinois nursing facility. "I have never heard of that. No question that's uncommon," said Terry Sullivan, executive director of the Illinois Alliance for Living, a professional association of facilities that treat patients with mental illness and substance abuse problems. Continental, which has housed a mix of older residents and younger adults with mental illness, did not admit deficiencies when it outlined corrective actions it would take plans that were accepted by CMS in April. "The facility has ceased admitting any residents with active substance use," its plan said. In a brief interview with the Tribune, Continental part-owner Moishe Gubin said he was not aware of any heroin overdoses or other problems at the facility. "If you are right," Gubin said, "it goes against what our mission has been." Advertisement "If you look at our company historically, we generally give good care," Gubin said. "It's not lack of resources or staff, or they cheaped out and didn't take care of people. You'll never hear about that with us." Continental is part of a rapidly growing, South Bend, Ind.-based nursing home operation that includes more than 50 facilities in eight states, records show. Their 13 northern Illinois facilities include one that earned a top, five-star rating for overall quality from CMS. Four others, including Continental, were given a one-star quality rating, the lowest possible, and police and public health inspection records have alleged unsanitary conditions and negligent care at Continental and some other northern Illinois homes. Medicaid and Medicare last year paid those 13 facilities a total of roughly $150 million, and the facilities reported a combined 2015 profit of $6 million, according to cost reports filed with the state. Similar data was not available for a recently added 14th northern Illinois facility. Outside Continental's gray and white building at 5336 N. Western Ave., a sign advertises "quality nursing services for the elderly." But the 208-bed home which last year earned $11 million from the taxpayer-financed Medicaid and Medicare programs reported to the state in March that 108 of its residents were under age 65 last year, 129 had been diagnosed with mental illnesses and 29 had felony records. Advertisement Chicago police responded to 60 reports of alleged batteries at Continental from 2011 through 2015, a Tribune analysis of police data found. Police also responded in 2014 when a 61-year-old patient broke his hips and collapsed a lung as he tried to escape the facility by rappelling from a 4th-floor window using six sheets tied together, records show. Continental immediately notified the state of that event, but the paperwork fell through the cracks, state officials acknowledge, and authorities conducted no investigation at the time. After the Tribune inquired about the case, the department dispatched an inspector who last month reported that the man was not properly supervised although he had been admitted for treatment of bipolar disorder, depression and alcohol abuse. He had been drinking in the facility just before he tried to flee and had a blood-alcohol level of more than four times the legal limit when staff found him "on the ground moaning" with a broken glass bottle and a beer can beside him, according to the state's report. Continental is contesting a pending civil malpractice lawsuit filed by the man's family. Advertisement On the day of the five heroin overdoses in February, staff at Continental suspected that residents were seeking drugs from a female visitor but did not intervene or report it, a state inspection report said. A 33-year-old resident told inspectors the visitor was a relative of a resident and sold "white powder in a small zippered baggie." The 33-year-old snorted the powder and said: "I don't remember much after that until I woke up and saw the paramedics standing over me." Another resident who also overdosed said he paid $25 for the heroin and assured the supplier that if the drugs were "good" he could triple her money "in three days at the facility," the state public health inspection report said. Continental was cited for not monitoring residents who returned to the facility from the hospital. A 46-year-old woman who told a social worker she "wants to get sober and not be an addict anymore" overdosed again her first day back. Another man nodded off during his interview with an inspector, and a fellow resident said that man "got high again this morning." In addition to the overdose incidents, police were called to Continental in October 2015 when residents alerted staff to narcotics abuse inside the facility. Staff searched rooms and recovered paraphernalia for cooking and shooting drugs that they turned over to police, records show. Advertisement Across the country, at least two heroin overdose cases have emerged in nursing facilities since last year. In a La Porte, Ind., case that remains under police investigation, a 64-year-old woman was found dazed and bleeding from the nose after ingesting heroin at the Golden Living Center in August. And in November a southern Ohio man was charged with involuntary manslaughter after allegedly supplying his wife with a fatal dose of heroin inside a nursing facility. "We're a drug-taking society, and it's only a matter of time before this gets into the nursing homes," said Dr. Harry Haroutunian, physician director at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Continental administrator Jonathan Dixon declined to discuss heroin abuse at the facility but gave Tribune reporters a limited tour of the second floor, where the overdoses took place. He said he did not have permission from "corporate" to take reporters through other parts of the home. Those second-floor rooms no longer house younger patients with psychiatric and substance abuse problems, Dixon said, only geriatric and post-operative residents. The rooms were freshly painted, and some beds had been removed to convert them from triple-occupancy to double-occupancy. The complex ownership and management structures employed by Gubin and his longtime business partner Michael Blisko limit their involvement in day-to-day operations, according to Tribune interviews and testimony they gave in civil lawsuits. The physical facilities housing Continental and other homes are owned by subsidiaries of the partners' real estate investment trust, called Strawberry Fields. Registered in the British Virgin Islands, Strawberry Fields recently raised $68 million on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to expand operations with a goal of growing by 50 percent a year, according to its public statements. Advertisement Each of the 13 homes in northern Illinois is operated by a separate company; those companies hire administrators to run the homes day to day. Gubin and Blisko own a combined 75 percent of the company operating Continental. Continental and other facilities pay a separate consulting company solely owned by Gubin and Blisko to offer suggestions about management, nursing, billing and payroll practices. The consulting company was initially called New York Boys Management, but that name caused "image trauma," Blisko testified in a civil court deposition last year. "People felt that it wasn't giving the professional identity, if you will, that it wasn't good for business," he said. The firm is now Infinity Healthcare Management, records show. Continental paid Infinity $313,818 in consulting fees last year, while the 12 other northern Illinois facilities paid Infinity $4 million in all, state nursing-home cost reports show. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Facility administrators are in charge of their buildings and free to disregard Infinity's recommendations, Gubin told the Tribune. He said he does not read state public health inspection reports about his homes. "The person who is the administrator is the one who is responsible day to day," Gubin told the Tribune. Advertisement Continental administrator Dixon later sent the Tribune an email saying: "We consistently strive to provide the highest quality of care, in a safe environment." dyjackson@chicagotribune.com gmarx@chicagotribune.com Twitter @poolcar4 Twitter @garyjmarx Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan said Sunday that an unspecified schedule conflict will prevent him from attending a meeting with Gov. Bruce Rauner and other legislative leaders that the governor called for Monday. Democratic Senate President John Cullerton also withdrew from the meeting. Advertisement "The Senate president looks forward to meeting with the governor and Republican leaders. But it would not be productive if we don't have a full complement. Hopefully, we can reschedule for Tuesday. The Senate president is available," Cullerton spokesman John Patterson said in a statement Sunday. The governor's office said the meeting will go on without the Democrats and expressed hope that they will reconsider. Advertisement The House speaker issued a brief statement late Sunday afternoon: "A short time ago, I determined a schedule conflict will prevent a meeting with the governor and other legislative leaders. We will continue to work to schedule a meeting and look forward to getting an agenda for the meeting from the governor." Rauner invited Madigan and Cullerton to the meeting along with Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno and House Republican leader Jim Durkin. Lawmakers are scheduled to return to Springfield this week for their annual veto session, following a bitter campaign season in which Republicans and Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars on state legislative races, with attack ads targeting Rauner and Madigan. Rauner said Friday that he wants to reach a budget deal with Democrats in the coming weeks. State government has operated without a complete budget for nearly 18 months. A temporary stopgap spending measure expires at month's end. Hundreds of people attend a District 211 special board meeting on Dec. 7, 2015, to discuss the settlement the Palatine-based school district approved the week before to provide locker room access to a transgender student. Many people held signs that read Separate Is Not Equal and #WeStandWithHer. (James C. Svehla / Chicago Tribune) As pundits scramble to untangle the implications of a Donald Trump presidency on a host of public policies, among the big unknowns is whether he'll seek to dismantle transgender student access protections provided by the Obama administration. Current legal challenges to those policies could render them vulnerable, experts agree, though Trump himself has given little indication of his intentions. Advertisement And while some advocates initially welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to hear a transgender student bathroom access case from Virginia, many are wary after Trump's election. It is all but certain he'll choose a conservative judge to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "I think everybody is feeling pretty nervous," said Owen Daniel-McCarter, executive director of Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, a nonprofit that works with schools on LGBTQ issues. Advertisement Since the election, the Chicago group has fielded questions about what the future might hold for issues like bathroom access, medical coverage and the ability to change genders on driver's licenses and passports. Yet, according to the alliance, more than 25 percent of Illinois students are in gender-inclusive schools, and Daniel-McCarter said such progress is difficult to reverse. "The train has left the station, and the question for districts is, are you getting on or waiting for someone to put you on it?" he asked. In a landmark case in the northwest suburbs, the state's largest high school district granted a transgender student access to the girls locker room in January following a contentious battle with the U.S. Department of Education, fiery school board meetings and threats from the government of litigation and loss of millions in federal aid. Palatine-based Township High School District 211 finally settled with federal education authorities after they found the district had violated Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination in schools, by denying the student full locker room access. The district installed private changing areas. A high-ranking Department of Education official called the agreement a "civil rights victory for all of us." But months later, a students' and parents' group sued District 211 and the federal government. A ruling in that case could come soon. In the separate case the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear next year, that of Gavin Grimm, a transgender student who sued over access to the boys bathroom, justices are expected to take up the question of whether Title IX protections extend to gender identity, as the Obama administration has argued. "This case presents difficult issues that schools are grappling with," said Adam Romero, a law professor at UCLA's Williams Institute, which focuses on gender identity issues. "On the one hand, I get that some people may not be comfortable using a restroom or locker room with someone with different anatomy. But on the other hand, many schools and workplaces have allowed transgender people to use the facilities that match their gender identity without any issue at all." Advertisement Romero said excluding transgender students "can have a profoundly negative impact on their well-being and education." Ed Yohnka is spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which is representing the unidentified District 211 student. He said it's "impossible to know" what Trump's impact on the issue might be. Trump's transition team did not respond to requests for comment. The president-elect said little on the matter on the campaign trail, though when asked on the "Today" show which bathroom transgender people should use, he responded that they should use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, however, faced backlash last year as Indiana governor for supporting a so-called religious freedom law that critics said allowed businesses to deny service to gay and transgender people. According to recent reports, Pence has indicated support for local control of transgender issues. Religious advocacy groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom were pleased at the Supreme Court's interest in the case, said Gary McCaleb, lead attorney in the lawsuit against District 211. "Locker rooms are there to protect privacy ... not to affirm a person's self-perception of their sexuality," he said. Advertisement School districts nationwide will be closely monitoring the Supreme Court's action, said attorney Jennifer Smith, of the Chicago law firm Franczek Radelet. The firm represents close to 100 districts in Illinois, including District 211. The high court provides "an opportunity for clarity," she said. "But nothing is certain by the Supreme Court taking it ... and with the new administration, it's just very up in the air." Some Chicago-area districts, including New Trier District 203 and Plainfield District 202, did not adopt a formal policy but instead address the needs of transgender students individually, officials from both districts said. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "But as with a lot of things in education, there's the legal requirement and then there is our overall mission, which is to educate all students and to provide a safe and respectful environment for all students," said Timothy Hayes, a New Trier assistant superintendent. For many transgender rights supporters who fear a Trump administration could undo years of progress under Obama, some hope still rests in the Illinois Human Rights Act, whose protections were extended to gender identity in 2006. Of the 189 charges of discrimination filed in the past 10 years related to gender identity, 12 involved educational institutions, said Illinois Human Rights Commission spokesman Michael Theodore. Four were filed by students alleging the denial of preferred bathroom or locker room access in elementary or secondary schools, he said. Advertisement Alex McCray was one such student. His downstate Williamsville district eventually agreed this year to allow transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, records show. "It goes back to being acknowledged, to being treated equally," said McCray, now 19. "It's incredible because just a year ago I was doing it alone, at a single-school level in a small town, and now it's all the way up to the Supreme Court." deldeib@chicagotribune.com Twitter @deldeib SPRINGFIELD A week after their respective political operations wrapped up tens of millions of dollars in ads vilifying the other guy, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan will be in the same room to resume discussions on Illinois' economic future. The Tuesday morning Capitol huddle will take place after days of political posturing on both sides. Advertisement Coming out of last week's election and looking toward his own re-election in 2018, Rauner called for a meeting with the four legislative leaders, and his surrogates quickly put out news releases in support of the request. Not that numerous closed-door gatherings have produced much during the long budget impasse beyond a stopgap funding agreement that expires at year's end. But asking for a meeting allowed Rauner to look like he's attempting to get something done as state's chief executive. Madigan, meanwhile, didn't respond until Sunday evening, and his spokesman didn't offer much of an excuse for declining beyond a generic scheduling conflict. That prompted Democratic Senate President John Cullerton to pull out, observing that it wouldn't be a very productive meeting without everyone in the fold. Advertisement And so Rauner went ahead and met privately Monday with Republican legislative leaders, with Democrats' refusal to participate playing into the governor's argument that they're not bargaining in good faith. By afternoon, however, Madigan moved to correct the optics. The speaker said he'd be able to huddle Tuesday, with his office noting that it was Madigan who decided what time the meeting would occur. So far, the post-election atmosphere is a lot like it was before voters weighed in last week, awarding a net gain of four House seats and two Senate seats to Republicans. Rauner and his deep-pocketed allies covered much of the cost for the GOP campaigns, while Madigan's Democrats were backed by money from labor unions and trial lawyers. After all that money was spent, the sides may now be more entrenched, beholden to the political agendas of those who helped them keep their jobs. Meanwhile, the state's historic budget stalemate has been going on nearly 18 months, sending debt soaring and threatening everything from universities to meal plans for the elderly. The two sides agreed to a stopgap spending plan in June, which had the dual benefit of letting lawmakers hit the campaign trail while keeping programs afloat through the end of the year. But that's set to expire in six weeks, and there's little indication either side is prepared to back off of the positions that's driven the divide. Rauner still is pushing for economic reforms as part of a larger deal, saying budget cuts and a tax increase alone won't put the state on a solid long-term financial footing. While Rauner's wish list has changed over time, the governor frequently has referenced limiting payouts for workers hurt on the job and curbing collective bargaining rights. Following Tuesday's election, Madigan reiterated that Democrats "will continue to protect the middle class." "Illinois residents want strong schools, funding for domestic violence shelters and veterans' homes, and a strong middle class with good wages," Madigan said last week. "I hope Republicans will finally join us to protect these priorities and help deliver the services families are counting on." Advertisement Republicans on Monday countered that it's time for Democrats to put forth their own plan, saying there have been several attempts to come to an agreement through working groups only to be stymied by leadership. They rejected the notion that Madigan may be less willing to cut a deal after he was the subject of repeated campaign attacks. "He's got a job to do on behalf of the people of Illinois," said Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno, of Lemont. "That's insane to think that because he lost seats, he shouldn't have to participate. That's an absolute dereliction of duty." The back-and-forth comes as lawmakers return to Springfield this week to deal with legislation the governor rejected or attempted to re-write through vetoes. House GOP leader Jim Durkin, of Western Springs, said that work should be put off until a budget agreement is reached, though the Senate planned to take up at least one major veto on Tuesday of a measure aimed at making voter registration automatic in Illinois. The legislation received strong bipartisan support, passing 86-30 in the House and 50-7 in the Senate. Democrats view Tuesday's planned override as a test of Rauner's strength and whether he will be able to make the veto stick despite previous support from Republicans. mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com Twitter @moniquegarcia Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday promised to protect immigrants from deportation, even as president-elect Donald Trump has pledged to remove as many as 3 million immigrants who have criminal records and are living in the country illegally. For more than three decades, Chicago has been a sanctuary city, where local laws prohibit government workers and police officers from asking about residents' immigration status. The mayor said that tradition would continue. Advertisement "To all those who are, after Tuesday's election, very nervous and filled with anxiety as we've spoken to, you are safe in Chicago, you are secure in Chicago and you are supported in Chicago," Emanuel said. "Chicago will always be a sanctuary city." That vow is running headlong into Trump, who campaigned on blocking federal funding to sanctuary cities, ramping up deportations, increasing prison sentences for those who re-enter and building a wall along the Mexican border. Advertisement But the rise of Trump and the nation's rapidly changing political landscape provides a mayor who's been trying to rebuild his image with a political opportunity in a city full of immigrants and diverse neighborhoods. Emanuel, after all, is the guy who famously offered up the credo "never let a serious crisis go to waste" as he prepared to push President-elect Barack Obama's Great Recession economic agenda in 2008. In this case, Trump's inflammatory rhetoric toward Mexicans and his immigration policies give Emanuel a political rallying point among Latinos after the mayor's popularity dropped sharply following the Laquan McDonald police shooting controversy. Many Latinos, however, still look at Emanuel with a wary eye on immigration, given his relatively late religion on the issue. In the Obama White House, Emanuel advised against pursuing immigration reform in that first year, having once called it the "third rail of politics." In the Clinton White House, Emanuel suggested hard-line immigration policies to achieve "record deportations of criminal aliens." Twenty years later, Trump has talked about the same target Emanuel backed for Clinton deporting immigrants with criminal records who are in the U.S. illegally. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired Sunday night. "But we're getting them out of our country. They're here illegally." For his part, Emanuel has not spoken to any of these specific policy proposals from Trump and the mayor has not said he'd protect immigrants with criminal records who are here illegally. Instead, Emanuel has struck a more general tone of sympathizing with immigrants who remain fearful of a Trump presidency. "Now, administrations may change, but our values and principles as it relates to inclusion does not," Emanuel said at a Monday event with immigrants' rights advocates to discuss expanding mental health services for those worried Trump will deport them or their families. "People from all faiths, all backgrounds and all parts of the world have beaten their path to the city of Chicago because Chicago offers them and more importantly, as the son and the grandson of an immigrant their children and grandchildren a chance at the American dream." Trump proposals Advertisement In his "Contract with the American Voter" prior to his election, Trump said he would take three actions on immigration during his first day in office: Cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities, start deporting more than 2 million "criminal illegal immigrants" and suspend immigration from "terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur." During his first 100 days in office, Trump has said he will introduce legislation to build a wall on the country's southern border with Mexico, enact a minimum two-year mandatory federal prison sentence for those who re-enter the country after being deported and increase penalties for overstaying a visa. It's unclear how many of those priorities Trump will push hard for, and how many turn out to be little more than campaign rhetoric or ideas he decides not to pursue while spending his post-victory political capital elsewhere. Cutting off all federal funding to sanctuary cities would require action by a Republican-controlled Congress and, if passed, could cost Chicago significantly. This year, the city is receiving a little more than $1 billion in federal grant funding for myriad programs, including early childhood education, transportation, policing, health initiatives, public assistance programs and disaster management. Next year, the city is counting on more than $1.3 billion from the federal government. The Justice Department released a report in May saying the city could stand to lose nearly $29 million in annual justice grants if found to be in violation of federal laws on detaining people to be turned over to immigration agents for possible deportation. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, of Chicago, said he worries about Trump's threat to turn off that federal spigot, but said he thinks the new president ultimately will soft-pedal that while seeking congressional backing for other initiatives. Advertisement "In the final analysis, though, I think if the president wants to do what he talks about, for example with a big infrastructure package, he's going to need support across the aisle," Quigley said on WLS-AM 890's "Connected to Chicago" show that aired Sunday. "And if he says none for Chicago, he's not going to get any support from anybody in Chicago, frankly in the Chicagoland area." Emanuel has said he's not worried about a Trump administration penalizing Chicago for its political resistance to the Republican's policies, but the mayor's immigration remarks will put him at odds with a new White House where he already will find his clout immeasurably diminished after eight years of nearly unfettered access to the Obama administration. Emanuel has supported Obama's immigration polices, including the president's 2014 executive order. That policy, which the Supreme Court blocked in June with a 4-4 tie, would have allowed as many as 5 million immigrants here without legal permission to apply for a program that would protect them from deportation and offer them work permits. The mayor also has pledged to stand up for so-called "Dreamers," those who benefited from Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that offered legal protection to about 742,000 people who were brought to the U.S. as children and stayed here illegally. Trump said during the campaign he would rescind that executive order that created DACA. On Monday, DACA beneficiary Luis Gomez, who came to Chicago from Mexico as an 11-year-old and is now studying at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said he worries about his ability to continue his studies and get a job if Trump follows through on that threat. And in an illustration of the difficulties anti-Trump forces face in building a unified front in the wake of Democrat Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid, Gomez scolded Emanuel and U.S. Rep. Gutierrez, D-Chicago. "Rep. Gutierrez, if unity is to be achieved, you need to stop categorizing and separating the undocumented community between deportables and Dreamers. I demand that you stand behind all immigrants, not just immigrants without a criminal record," Gomez said as Emanuel and Gutierrez stood directly behind him. "Mayor Emanuel, the welcoming city ordinance only protects immigrants without criminal records. I demand you extend protection in the city ordinance to those who belong to my community with a record." Advertisement Emanuel has not promised to protect immigrants with criminal records who are living in the U.S. without legal permission. And Gutierrez said such people should be deported. Years ago, Gutierrez blamed Emanuel for Obama not taking up immigration reform early in his first term. During Emanuel's first run for mayor, Gutierrez recorded automated phone calls against him and appeared in Spanish-language TV ads to proclaim, "When Rahm Emanuel could have used his power to help us, he turned his back to us and our most vulnerable families." Since then, Gutierrez has buried the hatchet with Emanuel, as the mayor has shared the congressman's position on immigration issues. Emanuel also has enjoyed widespread support from the City Council's Latino aldermen. Sanctuary policies Emanuel's public statements reaffirming Chicago's sanctuary city status come as the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and other major cities also have done so since Trump's election. The morning after Trump's victory, Emanuel took the rare step of giving a speech at the start of the City Council meeting. The mayor argued the multicultural slate of politicians who won in Illinois on Nov. 8 shows the strength of the immigrant ideals he said give the area its vitality. Advertisement Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Emanuel said he understands how Trump's win has heightened the anxiety of immigrants who are living in the country without permission and pledged to fight forcefully for immigrants' rights in light of the anti-immigrant rhetoric Trump used throughout his campaign. On Sunday, Emanuel issued a statement urging immigrants concerned about their rights to call the city's 311 center to get information about legal resources and other programs at their disposal. Chicago's status as a sanctuary city stretches to 1985, when Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order prohibiting city agencies from inquiring about immigration status when providing services. That included police not asking crime victims or witnesses about their immigration status. Emanuel went a step further in 2012, sponsoring a City Council-approved ordinance that said Chicago police could turn over information to federal immigration agents on immigrants only if they are wanted on a criminal warrant or have been convicted of a serious crime. This year, the City Council approved an Emanuel-endorsed ordinance to provide municipal ID cards to immigrants who are in the country without permission. The Chicago law prohibits police from providing U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement officials access to people who are in the Police Department's custody, unless officers are "acting pursuant to a legitimate law enforcement purpose that is unrelated to the enforcement of a civil immigration law." In practice, that means police aren't supposed to turn over immigrants living in the U.S. without permission unless they are wanted on a criminal warrant or have serious criminal convictions. Chicago's law also prohibits officers from allowing ICE agents to use their facilities for interviews or investigation. And it bars on-duty officers from responding to ICE inquiries or talking to ICE officials about a person's custody status or release date. Advertisement jebyrne@chicagotribune.com hdardick@chicagotribune.com bruthhart@chicagotribune.com Hundreds of Rutgers University students march to protest President-elect Donald Trump's policies and to ask school officials to denounce his plans on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, in New Brunswick, N.J. (Mel Evans / AP) NEW YORK Immigrants, their advocates and others opposing a Donald Trump presidency continued to protest Sunday, speaking out against the president-elect's support of deportation and other measures. Organizers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like "Hate won't make us great," and chanted, "We are here to stay." Advertisement More than 1,000 people joined the march that started mid-afternoon and extended into the evening. It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country, and even throughout the world. Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Advertisement Several hundred protesters Sunday marched around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." In Los Angeles, a few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting "Love trumps hate!" By nightfall, a few hundred people marched across downtown San Francisco's main street, blocking traffic at an intersection when they held a sit-down protest. Elsewhere in California, about 800 people marched through Sacramento and thousands others formed a human chain around the nearly 3.5-mile perimeter of Oakland's Lake Merritt. Rallies in Oakland have at times become unruly, but those who came to the lake held hands and chanted, "We reject the president-elect." In Oregon, protesters marched through Portland again Sunday night following a gathering of anti-Trump demonstrators earlier in the evening. Television footage showed dozens of chanting but peaceful marchers moving through downtown streets. Sunday night's protest came after police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during downtown protests. Demonstrations also took place internationally. On Saturday, a group of Mexicans at statue representing independence in Mexico City expressed their concerns about a possible wave of deportations. One school teacher said it would add to the "unrest" that's already in Mexico. About 300 people protested Trump's election as the next American president outside the U.S. Embassy near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, Oregon, a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. Associated Press Kelly Williams (left) and Elaina Brown (right), Child Protective Services employees, are charged with manslaughter and child abuse in the death of a 3-year-old Detroit boy. (Detroit Police Department/AP) DETROIT Prosecutors on Monday took the rare step of charging a social worker and her boss with manslaughter and child abuse, alleging they neglected to do everything required to protect a 3-year-old Detroit boy who died. Child Protective Services worker Elaina Brown and her supervisor, Kelly Williams, were arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree child abuse and neglect in the death of Aaron Minor. Advertisement Prosecutors allege that after identifying Aaron as vulnerable, Brown and Williams failed to provide a safety plan, ask police to conduct a safety check or file a juvenile court petition on Aaron's behalf. Deanna Kelley, the attorney representing Kelly Williams, said Aaron's death was "unspeakable," but every tragedy isn't "the result of a crime." Kelley added she doesn't understand why prosecutors would charge people "who have dedicated their lives to helping and protecting children." Advertisement "Human nature is to want to hold someone accountable," she said. "What's so scary is to charge them with an intentional act ... when you disagree with a judgment call." The boy's decomposing body was found in his mother's apartment in June while she was in a hospital psychiatric unit. Deanna Minor was charged in August with murder and child abuse. A competency hearing is set for Nov. 30. Brown and Williams have been suspended with pay. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Bob Wheaton said officials are fully cooperating with the investigation. Wayne County prosecutors say Brown, acting on a referral from Deanna Minor's mental health worker, visited Minor and her son in April and found the food in the home to be inadequate. Brown spoke to her supervisor after the visit and sent a letter asking Minor to contact Child Protective Services, but prosecutors allege the mother didn't do so. Authorities say Brown never saw the Minors again, and both Brown and Williams were "grossly negligent and reckless in performing their duties." Charging state social service workers, they contend, is a rare but necessary step in this case. "We must seek to hold these defendants responsible for their alleged inaction," prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement. "The ultimate result in this case was the death of a child that never should have happened." Brown and Williams are due back in court next Monday. Associated Press LONDON Prosecutors were finally able to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Monday about a possible sex crime in Sweden six years ago. They did not comment on the closed-door proceedings at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London where Assange has lived for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly to the United States. Advertisement The long-delayed interview is expected to continue Tuesday and possibly extend beyond that. Assange's version of events, and a possible DNA sample, will shape Swedish prosecutors' decision on whether to charge him. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadorean prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police investigator. Advertisement The Swedish investigation into possible sexual crimes began when two women Assange met in Sweden in 2010 complained to authorities. Some of the alleged misconduct is no longer being investigated by police because of the statute of limitations. Assange is, however, being questioned about the possible rape of one of the women who complained. He has not been indicted or charged but is the subject of an international arrest warrant. Prosecutors say no immediate decision on the future of Assange's case will be made on Monday. They also said no public statements will be made after the questioning. Assange's Swedish defense lawyer, Per Samuelsson, complained that he had been barred from the hearing. "I'm not on the list of persons that Ecuador has drawn up and allowed to be present," Samuelsson told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. "An Ecuadorean lawyer has taken up this question as a formal issue in the introduction of the hearing." WikiLeaks released a statement also complaining about the Swedish lawyer being excluded and said Assange cooperated "fully" with investigators. Assange has denied wrongdoing and says he fears being extradited to the U.S. because of his WikiLeaks work. It isn't known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the U.S. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well-known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents. Advertisement One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was launched, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. By then Assange was in Britain, making it harder for Swedish prosecutors to question him. They sought an international arrest warrant for him that was issued in November 2010. Assange surrendered to police in London and was freed on bail, receiving support from a wide range of celebrities including filmmakers Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. He then moved into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, putting him out of reach of British authorities. He has remained in control of WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign in the final weeks of her failed White House run. Advertisement Civil rights activist Peter Tatchell said outside the embassy that he and others had gathered to show solidarity with Assange and WikiLeaks. He said Assange was being "hounded" because of WikiLeaks' work in shedding light on the "terrible things" done by the U.S. government and others. Some supporters hoisted pro-Assange banners outside the embassy. Associated Press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he opens the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office. (Gali Tibbon / AP) JERUSALEM A senior Israeli Cabinet minister on Monday said the election of Donald Trump has helped create an opportunity for Israel to abandon its stated commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state. The remarks by Naftali Bennett reflect sentiment in the nationalist Israeli right wing that Trump's election could usher in a new era of relations with the United States. While the two countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because of their vastly different world views. Advertisement Bennett last week welcomed Trump's election, predicting that "the special relationship" with the U.S. would grow stronger and noting that the Republican campaign platform had no mention of a Palestinian state. "The era of a Palestinian state is over," he declared at the time. Speaking to foreign reporters on Monday, Bennett was more cautious, citing an order by Netanyahu for his Cabinet not to talk about the election in public. But he made clear that he will push his own government to rethink its commitment to Palestinian independence. Advertisement "The combination of the changes in the United States, in Europe and the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything," Bennett said. "It's no secret that I think that the notion of setting up a Palestine in the heart of Israel is a profound mistake," he added. "I believe that we have to bring alternative new ideas instead of the Palestinian state approach." Though Bennett said he didn't know whether Trump would support that view, he said it's critical that Israel now clearly define its own vision. "My expectation is not from anyone abroad," he said. "After many years, the Israeli government has to decide what do we want." Bennett's comments were also an indicator of the pressure Netanyahu could soon face to abandon his commitment to the "two-state solution" favored by Obama and the international community. For two decades, the international community has been pushing for a negotiated peace deal that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. The thinking was that Israel's continued occupation of millions of Palestinians would create a demographic time bomb in which Arabs would eventually outnumber Jews, threatening Israel's status as a democracy with a Jewish majority. After opposing Palestinian independence for most of his career, Netanyahu reluctantly endorsed the idea shortly after Obama took office in 2009. But critics, including Obama, have said that continued Israeli settlement on occupied territories have undercut this goal, and the Obama administration has at times questioned Netanyahu's commitment to seeking peace. Advertisement Bennett leads the Jewish Home party, a coalition partner that is affiliated with the West Bank settler movement. He is one of the most influential voices in Israeli politics, and both his party and most members of Netanyahu's Likud oppose Palestinian statehood on either religious or security grounds. Bennett has instead called for annexing parts of the West Bank and granting the Palestinians in other parts expanded autonomy, with new roads, office parks and economic opportunities, with Israel retaining overall security control. Israeli hard-liners welcomed Trump's election last week, noting the strong support for Israel in his campaign platform and the many pro-Israel officials who advised him during his campaign. Their spirits were further boosted after a Trump adviser, Jason Greenblatt, told an Israeli radio station last week that his boss doesn't think West Bank settlements are an "obstacle to peace." Following Greenblatt's comments, Cabinet Minister Ofir Akunis, a close Netanyahu associate, called for a renewed wave of settlement construction. But such sentiments may have been premature. Trump's unpredictability has raised concerns that he might change his attitudes once in office. Over the weekend, for instance, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would like to help broker a solution to the conflict "for humanity's sake." Advertisement In an interview with "Israel Today," a free daily owned by Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson, Trump said he believed his administration can play "a significant role" in helping the Mideast parties reach an agreement. Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that he would soon be meeting Trump. He ordered his Cabinet and lawmakers to avoid speaking to the media about the election while the incoming U.S. administration formulates its policies. Associated Press In a July 2016 file photo, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, right, arrives with his military lawyer, Lt. Col. Franklin Rosenblatt on Fort Bragg, N.C. A military judge is delaying the trial of Bergdahl on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft / AP) FORT BRAGG, N.C. A military officer testified Monday that he saw another soldier shot in the head during the 2009 search for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who's accused of endangering his comrades when he walked off his post in Afghanistan. The testimony came at a pretrial hearing at which an Army judge also agreed to delay Bergdahl's trial by several months until May 15, 2017. Advertisement Prosecutors are arguing that the judge should allow evidence of two wounded soldiers' injuries into the case to help them show that Bergdahl's disappearance effectively put other military members in harm's way. Bergdahl is charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the latter of which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Advertisement U.S. Air Force Maj. John Marx testified about a firefight on July 8, 2009, when he and several other U.S. military members were seeking information on Bergdahl's whereabouts, with members of the Afghan National Army. They were attacked after setting up a checkpoint near a town in Afghanistan. One of the two wounded soldiers cited by prosecutors is U.S. Army National Guard Sgt. First Class Mark Allen. Prosecutors said he was shot in the head and suffered a traumatic brain injury that has left him in a wheel chair. Another soldier had hand injuries and required surgery because of a rocket-propelled grenade. Marx, who said the mission's sole purpose was to search for Bergdahl, testified that he was sitting next to Allen as bullets flew overhead. "I looked at him, then I see a trickle of blood coming down his head," Marx testified. Asked where Allen was wounded, Marx pointed at his temples and said: "Right through his head." Marx testified that he later carried Allen to the medevac helicopter, describing it as "probably one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life." Bergdahl, dressed in a white shirt and blue pants, appeared stoic as he listened to Monday's testimony. Prosecutors have written in a motion that the injuries will help them show that Bergdahl endangered his comrades, one of the elements of the misbehavior before the enemy charge. They asked the judge to allow them to use the evidence in their case. Defense attorneys have argued in motions that Bergdahl was not responsible for the men's injuries, writing: "Allen's injuries were directly caused by the Taliban, not by SGT Bergdahl." Advertisement Further testimony and arguments are expected Monday afternoon. Before the testimony on the soldiers' injuries, Army Col. Jeffery Nance decided to push the trial back to May after prosecutors requested a delay. They cited the pace at which they're able to get approval to give the defense classified evidence. Defense attorneys also informed the judge that they were still waiting on software, computers and security equipment that would allow them to review some of the sensitive material. Nance expressed frustration and told prosecutors that he would call military officials as witnesses at a pretrial hearing in December if some of the issues with classified information aren't resolved. "Here's my problem folks ... We will nickel and dime this until we're not trying this case until 2020," he said. Bergdahl, who's from Hailey, Idaho, walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held captive by the Taliban and its allies for five years. The Obama administration's decision to swap prisoners for his return was heavily criticized by some Republicans. Advertisement Associated Press Democrats are rending their garments, bemoaning their failure to connect with rural and small-town America. They are supposed to feel guilty about insufficient empathy for the industrial heartland. Perhaps, but before they don sackcloth and ashes they might want to consider that this election as much as anything else was a candidate failure. We will say it once more: Vice President Joe Biden would have won this going away. Hillary Clinton did offer a jobs program, a debt-free college tuition plan, a middle-class tax cut, etc. All of these would have helped the Trump voters far more than the urban poor or coastal elites. These voters either didn't believe her or didn't like her. The blowback to dynastic policies that Jeb Bush got in the GOP primary, Clinton got in the general election. (In that sense, the primary was "rigged" to favor a weak but "inevitable" candidate.) Democrats don't need to beat themselves up; they picked a losing candidate just as the GOP did in 2008 and 2012. GOP "elites" meanwhile are being harangued for cultural insensitivity and economic callousness. On the latter count, let's get real: It's a lie that immigrants and trade caused their problems. No one should apologize for refusing to sell snake oil. (Trump ironically was the one to offer pro-business, supply-side tax cuts, so maybe this is not about economics?) What about the cultural insensitivity claim? Excuse me, but that's bonkers on multiple counts. First, the GOP is the older, white male party. It does dominate in the South. When Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., get re-elected, it's hard to argue that the GOP's educated leadership has lost touch with its grassroots. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the quintessential blue-collar Midwesterner. He got knocked out of the primaries early on. The GOP has bent over backward to the point of lunacy (e.g., arguing that states should not implement gay marriage) to cater to the electorate that eventually went with Trump. Second, George W. Bush didn't like East Coast elites either, but he was no racist, no misogynist and did not pit one group against another. He won rural whites and got an estimated 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. He did not demean or paw women. No presidential candidate has ever behaved and spoken the way Trump did. The rest of the country was entitled to assume his vulgarity, lies, bias and cruelty would be disqualifying. That they were not, but instead were rationalized, minimized or even lauded does not mean the anti-Trump side of America was dense. It means they thought better of their fellow Americans. In short, Republican "elites" and Democrats would have disagreed with Trump's policy prescriptions (which they took seriously silly them!) but not been shocked or horrified by his win had this been a battle of policy plans. They were shocked and horrified because Trump won these people over by playing to their worst instincts. He dealt out xenophobia, racism, misogyny and contempt for science and the Trumpkins ate it up. Trump defenders, and defenders of Trump supporters, argue this wasn't about white nationalism or male resentment. If so, why were these the main tools Trump used to amp up his support? Trump did what Republicans have long bemoaned. He played on class resentment. He told his voters America's economy is a fixed pie; if "elites" get more, then they get less. He cultivated excuses for white, rural social decay and economic stagnation on behalf of voters who would surely reject such rationalizations for African-American poverty. Remember, a good deal of the opposition to Trump on the right went to his character and the noxious hatreds he was stirring up in the populace. Objecting to his appeals does not make one culturally insensitive; it makes one a decent person. The way Trump won the race with zero respect for the truth, with contempt for nonwhite voters, with assaults on our democracy the #NeverTrump forces fear will now be the rule, not the exception, in presidential politics. That he won (it worked!) is no cause for recriminations against the #NeverTrump forces. It actually proves their point: Public figures who behave this way tear the fabric of our country and undermine democratic values. And Trump has done just that because it was the only way he knew to get the approval of the Trumpkins. He was certain they were not above vile tactics; he was right. Congratulations, Trumpkins: You never go wrong underestimating the American people. Just as his critics predicted, however, Trump's vague and fantastical promises are already colliding with reality. Obamacare isn't going to get repealed at least not all of it, he says. Rounding up 11-12 milllion people does not seem to be on his list of top priorities. His team is coming to the realization the Iran deal will not be ripped up on his first day in office. If Trumpkins discover Trump is just another pol who sold them a bill of goods, how will they react? We will find out in the months ahead. Some thoughts about ideology are in order. Just as Democrats need a sane Republican Party, Republicans need a responsible Democratic Party. Should the Democratic Party decide Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who marketed many of the same economic fallacies as Trump, was "right," Democrats may well go off the ideological deep end, giving Americans the choice between right-wing populism and democratic socialism. No thanks. We in the center-right sincerely hope that doesn't happen. The best way to constrain Trump would be a viable, appealing center-left alternative with whom he must compete for votes. If, however, the Democratic Party re-visits its pre-Bill Clinton errors, there nevertheless is a backup. If one party goes far, far left and the other goes nativist-populist, the center-left and center-right would need to join forces and put forth an alternative that fills in a huge ideological gap. They would: - Refuse to favor one-half of America over the other; - Advance responsible internationalism; - Understand the benefits and the downsides of centralized power, - Take the Constitution seriously; - Support civil rights and practice civility; - Defend free markets but also programs that combat poverty and promote upward mobility; and - Urge we invest in human capital so we can thrive in a globalized economy, not inveigh against modernity. If neither party is going to support that kind of approach, there likely will be a crisis in governance and a felt need for an alternative. Those who voted for Hillary Clinton and those who voted for Mitt Romney -- but saw through the flights of political fancy Sanders and Trump indulged in will need to find each other, champion these common-sense polices and practice public civility. They might even need to form a new political party. We need determined champions of moderation, fervent defenders of centrism and an unwavering commitment to decency, kindness and empathy. That's ultimately the only place from which to govern a complicated, diverse country and to cool tempers and dampen resentments. Eventually, we hope, that's where this will all wind up. Washington Post Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. After Donald Trump said he would get a special prosecutor to look into Hillary Clinton's alleged deletion of e-mails on a private server, he added that she would 'be in jail' if he was in charge of the law. Oct. 10, 2016. (C-SPAN) (Chicago Tribune) You may recall this exchange in the Oct. 9 presidential debate, when Hillary Clinton said, "It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country." To which Trump replied, "Because you'd be in jail." It wasn't clear then if candidate Trump was just grandstanding. Nor is it clear now if President-elect Trump will do what he also pledged then: "If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception." Advertisement In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after he was elected, Trump didn't list prosecuting Clinton among his priorities. Still, half the country now worries, and the other half hopes, that Trump will make good on his threat. More likely, he'll contract the job out to House Republicans salivating over the prospect of televised hearings, starting with Clinton raising her right hand, then taking the Fifth over and over again. So should President Barack Obama pardon her, pre-empting the GOP's plans for four years of show trials? Advertisement Rudolph Giuliani, mentioned as a possible attorney general, has already warned Obama off a pardon, while revealing to Fox News his firm belief that Obama and Clinton "have completely corrupted the Justice Department and the State Department" and predicting her inevitable indictment. To assess the wisdom, legality and politics of a pardon, this is where to begin: The incoming administration already has its mind made up that she committed crimes and should be prosecuted. Given that, Obama shouldn't hesitate to pardon her even if she says she doesn't want him to. Without it, Republicans will reopen the 35,000 emails turned over to the State Department. Thanks to WikiLeaks, they will rummage through thousands of emails to and from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. They will resume the search for the 33,000 emails that she said were personal and had deleted. They will second-guess FBI Director James Comey's decision that even if she had been "extremely careless" with her private server, she never intended to commit crimes. They will also subpoena years of Clinton Foundation documents in search of pay-to-play favors and conflicts of interest during her tenure at the State Department. And they won't hesitate to draw in Bill Clinton and top aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, or place in legal jeopardy many other longtime associates. Why would Republicans pursue Clinton, even though she is unlikely to run for office ever again? The simple answer is that "lock her up" energized Trump's campaign and propelled many House members' re-elections. The question, then, isn't whether Obama should pardon her, but whether he will. His lawyers will look at past presidential pardons for guidance and ask: Would he be tarnishing his legacy if he takes action? Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stands with President Barack Obama during an election eve rally on Nov. 7, 2016, in Philadelphia, Pa. (Spencer Platt, Getty Images) Bill Clinton certainly tarnished his own when, on his last day as president in January 2001, he pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich, skirting the Justice Department's usual procedures to do so. Rich's ex-wife had recently made a handsome donation to Clinton's library. The case of Hillary Clinton is entirely different. She has been investigated almost continuously for four years. But in addition to being twice absolved by the FBI, she hasn't been accused of any specific crime, let alone indicted, tried or convicted. Advertisement To those Republicans who would say a pardon proves they were right all along, Obama can cite Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon. Though Ford's action probably cost him the election of 1976, he acted to bring the country together after two years of the Watergate scandal, congressional hearings, impeachment proceedings, a Supreme Court decision and finally Nixon's resignation. Obama's lawyers will also look to other last-minute pardons, including President George H. W. Bush's Christmas Day 1992 exoneration of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others. They had been involved in the 1987 Iran-contra arms-for-hostages scandal in the Ronald Reagan administration. Bush issued the pardons after letting the legal system run its course for six years: An independent prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh, had obtained one conviction and three guilty pleas. Two other cases were about to go to trial. In his anger, Walsh revealed that President Bush was a subject of his probe, based on notes Bush had taken as Reagan's vice president, inviting accusations of a cover-up. President George W. Bush avoided similar allegations in his 2007 commutation of the 30-month prison sentence of Lewis Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby had been convicted of lying and obstructing justice in the investigation into who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, a Central Intelligence Agency operative, to a columnist. Bush waited four years for the case to go through the federal courts before acting. Obama doesn't have the luxury of waiting, as his predecessors did. The only way to head off a Republican vendetta against someone to whom we owe "a major debt of gratitude for her service to the country" as Trump said in his post-election address is with a pardon. Bloomberg View Advertisement Paula Dwyer writes editorials on economics, finance and politics for Bloomberg View. Three new members have been appointed to the Aurora University board of trustees, school officials said in a statement. Matthew Cannon, an equity shareholder in a law firm, Austin Dempsey, a real estate broker and Brian Konen, vice president of an insurance agency, will each serve three-year terms on the board. Advertisement Cannon, who graduated from Aurora University in 1994, has two decades of litigation experience, including more than seven years as a federal prosecutor, according to university officials. He is currently an equity shareholder in the law firm Greenberg Traurig, and lives in Naperville with his wife and two children. Dempsey is vice president of Batavia Enterprises, a real estate agency, and principal at BERE LLC, a brokerage, third-party management and municipal consulting firm in Batavia, according to Aurora University. He is a board member of Rosary High School, Marmion Military Alumni Association, First National Bank, Fox Valley Entrepreneurship Center and the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley, school officials said. He lives in Batavia with his wife and two sons. Advertisement Konen has worked in the insurance industry on state and national levels, and is currently vice president of Konen Insurance Agency in Aurora, according to the university. He was president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois, and is currently chair elect of the Aurora Regional Chamber of Commerce board of directors and a member of the Rush-Copley Institutional Review Board, according to the school. He lives in Sugar Grove with his wife and three sons. You are here: Home Iconic Hong Kong action director Ringo Lam has brought his latest effort, 'Sky on Fire'--- or 'Chong Tian Huo' in Chinese --- to Beijing. Hong Kong action director Ringo Lam (3rd from leftleads his all-star cast in Beijing, promoting their upcoming film 'Sky on Fire' on Sunday, Nov 13, 2016.[Photo provided to CRI] At the press conference, he described the all-star cast in this action thriller using China's five elements philosophy, of Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth. Here, he talks about the role taken on by actress Zhang Jingchu. "Her personality traits may be associated with water. It's hard to catch her. She lost control and even killed her husband." The 36-year-old actress plays a research scientist in 'Sky on Fire,' while Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu co-stars with her as a security agent. Wu's character is tasked with protecting the scientist who has created a drug that can extend one's life. The action thriller is the latest installment of Ringo Lam's 'On Fire' franchise, as a follow-up to 'City on Fire,' 'Prison on Fire' and 'School on Fire' which all came out in the late 80s. The film is set for release on November 25. Hong Kong saw an outpouring of patriotism on Sunday in a mass demonstration calling for disqualifying the lawmakers-elect who have refused to pledge allegiance to the nation and the city's Basic Law. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents join a rally Sunday afternoon outside the Legislative Council complex to show support for the NPC Standing Committee's interpretation of the Basic Law. Roy Liu /China Daily Organizers said more than 40,000 people turned up from an alliance of 1,000 organizations across the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Gathered outside the city's Legislative Council complex, they condemned in particular Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching, two lawmakers-elect, for their separatist stand and bad manners and obscenities while taking the oath of office on Oct. 12. Demonstrators also supported the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, in its latest interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law and clarification of the oath-taking procedures for all senior officials, lawmakers and judges of the SAR. Ng Chau-pei, one of the organizers of the gathering and also chairman of Hong Kong's largest labor group, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, said there were also about 10,000 people who couldn't fit in the limited space of the protest zone. On Nov. 7, the NPC Standing Committee delivered its interpretation of Article 104 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, requiring senior officials, legislators and judges to pledge allegiance to the country and the SAR, and to take their oath in an accurate, sincere and solemn manner, under penalty of their disqualification. It was the fifth time that the Standing Committee made an interpretation of the Basic Law since Hong Kong's reunification with the motherland in 1997. Hong Kong's High Court has yet to hand down a decision in the judicial review mounted by the SAR government. The government seeks to have the oaths taken by the pair declared invalid and their seats vacated. Maggie Chan Man-ki, president of Small and Medium Law Firms Association of Hong Kong, praised the interpretation as an effort to prevent possible instability caused by the pro-independence activists. Elizabeth Quat Pui-fan, a lawmaker from the city's largest political party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said the interpretation also protects the normal operation of Hong Kong's business environment. Zhang Xiaoming, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Hong Kong, made a speech on Saturday saying that, in words and in deeds, the separatist advocates acted seriously counter to the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, and challenged national sovereignty. Therefore, Zhang added, it has become necessary for the NPC to use its legitimate power in its latest Basic Law interpretation. Zhang said the NPC empowers Hong Kong courts with rights to interpret the Basic Law, but that does not supersede nor restrict the NPC Standing Committee's authority to interpret the Basic Law, especially when the issue of sovereignty is at stake. You are here: Home 280 people have been questioned since July, when a central supervision group started inspections, about environmental violations in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Untreated industrial sewage in the Tengger Desert, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, northern China, as seen on August 29, 2014. [Photo: The Beijing News] Authorities say illegal practices were detected in 41 ecological protection zones. 362 companies that were found to have violated environmental regulations have been shut down. Investigators found that grasslands in Hulunbeir and Erdos had been used illegally, and the national reserve for Relict gulls had almost lost its ecological function. "Many Inner Mongolian people have not realized the critical situation of local environments, but still think it is okay because of the high-volume environment," said Zhai Qing, vice president of the supervision group. In 2014, a company in Inner Mongolia called Ronghua Industry Trade Corporation was reported to have directly drained untreated industrial sewage in the Tengger Desert. With its environmental protection facilities unfinished, the corporation started production without permission. From May 28, 2014 to March 6, 2015, the company discharged 187,939 tons of sewage, polluting about 180 thousand square meters of land. Two owners of the company were arrested, and government officials in Inner Mongolia were investigated. You are here: Home A guideline on education, which included articles on how to deal with bullying, was released earlier this week as China pushes to address violence among students. Moves to curb school violence The guideline was jointly released by nine organs including the Ministry of Education, the Supreme Peoples Court, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. Schools must be aware of the consequences of bullying and violent incidents in schools, the guideline said. Measures were suggested in the guideline that could improve the ideological, moral, legal and psychological education of students. Officials will be held accountable for serious incidents of bullying or violence in areas under their jurisdiction. The guideline suggested that students with severe behavioral problems should be transferred to special schools suitable to their needs. You are here: Home In his role as chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping has signed an order to confer a posthumous honorary title on a fighter jet pilot. Zhang Chao, who died on April 27 when flying a J-15 carrier-based aircraft in a carrier-landing simulation, was given the title "Pioneer in Building a Strong Army." Zhang, who had participated in several dozen marine patrols, joined the team of carrier-based aircraft pilots in March 2015. The whole army and armed police forces were asked to learn from Zhang's virtues such as self-discipline and being bold enough to sacrifice everything for the Party and the people. Zhang should be an example to those who strive for a world-class military, said the order. Flash The Syrian Foreign Ministry rejected on Sunday the "accusations" recently made by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), claiming the Syrian army used chemical weapons in Syria, according to the state news agency SANA. On Friday, the OPCW's executive body voted in favor of condemning the use of banned toxic agents by the Syrian government and the Islamic State (IS) group, saying "Syrian Arab Armed Forces and the so-called Islamic State have been involved in the use of chemical weapons and toxic chemicals as weapons." Following the decision, the council determined that further inspection and verification must take place in Syria. "There is a clear determination across the international community to hold those who have used these heinous weapons to account," said British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson in a statement responding to the vote. However, the decision was opposed by Russia, China, Sudan and Iran. As for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, it said the vote was "biased," and rejected the accusations against the Syrian army's use of chemical agents. Yet, the ministry said that it will carefully study the decision before giving a final say regarding conducting further investigations in Syrian government sites. The Syrian government has always rejected such accusations, stressing that it is committed to the pledges it made when it joined the treaty of chemical weapons convention. In addition, the Syrian army repeatedly accused rebels of using chemical gas, with the latest most notable accusation in government-controlled areas in the northern city of Aleppo, where tens of people suffered from suffocation and breathing difficulties following a gas attack by the rebels. Pro-government Sham FM radio cited sources in the besieged Shiite village of Foa, in the northwestern province of Idlib, as saying that the rebels fired rockets stuffed with chemical materials which released yellow foam upon explosion in the village, adding that several people suffered from suffocation. Chemical weapons are believed to have been used in several areas in Syria in recent years, with the government and the rebels exchanging accusations. Around 1,400 people were killed when several opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs of Damascus were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin on Aug. 21, 2013, after which both the opposition and the government exchanged accusations. Also in 2013, a chemical attack hit the then government-controlled town of Khan al-Asal in the countryside of Aleppo, and several Syrian soldiers and civilians were either killed or suffered from suffocation. The government accused the rebels again, who, in turn, denied the accusation. In October 2013, OPCW officials arrived in Syria to monitor the dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal, after Damascus officially joined the OPCW Convention. The OPCW later said the government rendered its chemical weapons production facilities inoperable. The dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons was according to a U.S.-Russian understanding, the first sign of a consensus between both powers on the Syrian conflict. Since then, reports of poisonous gas attacks keep emerging every once in a while. Flash Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday met respectively with Uzbek acting President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov on the development of relations between their countries. Uzbek acting president Shavkat Mirziyoyev (L) meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 12, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Wang is on an official visit to Uzbekistan at the invitation of Kamilov, which is also his third visit to the central Asian country within the year. During the meeting with Wang, Mirziyoyev expressed gratitude for China's firm support at the current key moment, which fully reflects the high degree of political mutual trust between Uzbekistan and China, and that Uzbekistan will continue to take the path of development meeting its fundamental interests. Uzbekistan supports China in safeguarding its core interests and major concerns, and in cracking down on the three evil forces of terrorism, extremism and separatism. He said Uzbekistan is willing to strengthen and develop the comprehensive strategic partnership with China by taking joint construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road as an opportunity. At the meeting, Wang said Uzbekistan will enter a new stage of continuing with the past and opening up the future after holding the recent presidential election, and that China-Uzbekistan relationship will also enter a new period of time on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations in the next year. At this important historic moment, China is ready to fully implement the important consensus reached between the heads of state of the two countries at the 16th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tashkent in June, and enhance mutual support and strategic alignment led by joint construction of the Belt and Road, to promote the China-Uzbekistan comprehensive strategic partnership toward the achievement of more successes in the new period of time, Wang said. On the same day, Wang held a meeting with the Uzbek foreign minister. During the meeting, Wang said that his first stop in the city of Samarkand during the visit is intended to mourn late Uzbek President Islam Karimov in his home city, in commemoration of his historic contribution to the development of bilateral ties. His visit to the country is meant to express China's confidence in Uzbekistan's future and relations between the two countries, Wang said, noting that China's friendly policy on Uzbekistan will never change. He expressed the hope that the two sides will further tap potential in bilateral cooperation in production capacity, hydropower, tourism and other fields, and create new growth points, to inject fresh ideas and momentum into their ties. Kamilov said Uzbekistan will carry forward the late president's political legacy to strengthen and develop the comprehensive strategic partnership with China, maintain all-level political exchanges and promote pragmatic cooperation in various fields. Uzbekistan will firmly support China in combatting the three evil forces and enhance bilateral coordination and cooperation within the framework of the SCO, to jointly safeguard regional peace and security, he said. The two foreign ministers held a joint press conference after the meeting. Wang will proceed to Turkey to attend the first meeting of the foreign ministers' consultation mechanism between China and Turkey at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. You are here: Home Flash Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump to visit his country over the phone, local daily Hurriyet reported Sunday. After returning from a one-day visit to Belarus, Erdogan told journalists that he congratulated Trump over the phone the night he was elected. "He will take over the duty of presidency on Jan. 20, 2017. We can meet before this date if possible," said the Turkish president. "We would be pleased if Turkey is one of Trump's first visits abroad," he said, adding that Trump responded positively. Erdogan also said that Ankara and the president-elect shared a similar view on Iraq and Syria, including the issue of no-fly zone in Syria. Flash As many as 14 militant extremists were killed during military raids in Egypt's restive North Sinai province's two cities of Rafah and Sheikh Zuweid, the Egyptian military spokesman said in a statement on Sunday. "The anti-terrorist military operations destroyed five hideouts of the militants and also defused ten explosive devices that were planted to target security men," Military Spokesman Mohamed Samir said in the statement. Since the beginning of November, similar raids in the northern part of the peninsula left 26 militants dead while the security forces ruined nearly 100 explosive devices. Meanwhile on Nov. 4, a military brigadier general who served in Sinai, was assassinated, outside his home in Cairo. Earlier in mid-October, at least 20 soldiers were killed in two-day blasts. Egypt has been facing a wave of anti-security terrorist attacks, mainly centered in North Sinai, since the army-led removal of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule. Hundreds of police and military men were killed in revenge attacks, with a Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate group claiming responsibility for most of them. Flash The Iraqi security forces on Sunday recaptured a town of Nimrud near the archeological site of Nimrud from the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in south of the city of Mosul, the Iraqi military said. "The troops from the 9th Armored Division liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties," said a statement by a media office affiliated to the Joint Operations Command (JOC). The town of Nimrud, some 30 km south of Mosul, lies west of the ruins of the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud. The statement did not say whether the archeological site was also recaptured. In 2015, the ancient site was partially destroyed during a campaign of destruction against heritage sites under the control of the IS militants, in addition to other archeological sites in the ancient province of Nineveh. The archeological site of Nimrud was founded in the 13th century B.C. and became the capital of Assyrian empire. The troops advance in south of Mosul was part of a major offensive announced by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Oct. 17 to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city. Since then, the Iraqi security forces have inched to the eastern fringes of Mosul and made progress on other routes around the city. Earlier in the month, hundreds of the Counter-Terrorism Service commandos and Iraqi army made a significant progress from three directions at the eastern side of Mosul, locally known as the left bank of the Tigris River, and managed to recapture some 10 districts out of about 60 districts on both sides of the city. Mosul, some 400 km north of Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. Flash Somalia National Army (SNA) backed by AU forces recaptured El-Garas village in Bakool region of southwest Somalia on Sunday without resistance from the militant group of Al-Shabaab, officials said. Information Minister for Southwest State in Somalia, Ugas Hassan told Xinhua by phone that the operations were still underway to liberate more areas still under Al-Shabaab control including Tiyeglow town where Ethiopian troops quit in October. "Forces from Southwest State and SNA jointly carried out operation against the militants in the region and recaptured El-Garas, a key location and they are going to liberate Tiyeglow town, about 90 kilometers to Hudur town. There was no resistance from the militants, but they fled, our forces are making some developments at the moment," Hassan said. He added that the Southwest State could not tolerate the brutal actions committed by Al-Shabaab militants against residents. "We are committed to liberate and restore peace and stability in the region," he said. The latest military development came after Al-Shabaab militants beheaded five civilians outside Tiyeglow town on Oct. 31 after Ethiopian troops withdrew from there. Somali official vowed to liberate it. Flash One week after the operation began to retake al-Raqqa from the so-called Islamic State (IS), Turkey still has misgivings about the U.S. handling of the fighting against the militant group both in Syria and Iraq, while a Turkish confrontation with the Syrian Kurds is not ruled out. Ankara is concerned that Washington is trying to create a Kurdish entity along the Turkish border in northern Syria by using the IS as a tool. The fact that Turkish officials have often brought up the issue of weapons supplied by the U.S. to the Kurdish YPG is proof enough about the confidence crisis, observed Hasan Unal, the head of the Department of International Relations at the Ankara-based Atilim University. "Every joint operation the U.S. and the YPG will conduct will serve to increase the current confidence crisis," he said. Many towns and villages originally captured by the IS in civil war-torn Syria and Iraq were later liberated by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) outlawed by Turkey or the People's Protection Units (YPG), seen by Ankara as PKK's Syrian offshoot. The PKK has been waging a bloody war against Turkey to carve out an independent Kurdistan in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast for more than 30 years. The Western world is using the YPG as an apparat while justifying its position through the IS, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Abdullah Agar, a security analyst who was a member of the special forces, as saying. Despite Turkey's strong opposition to U.S. cooperation with the YPG, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched on Nov. 6 an operation to reclaim al-Raqqa. The SDF is composed to a very large extent by members of the YPG. The U.S. strategy is to put in place a Kurdish corridor, which it has failed to forge in northern Syria, from the south through the al-Raqqa operation, Naci Bestepe, a former major general of the Turkish Armed Forces, said on Ulusal TV channel. According to Unal, the U.S. used the IS threat as a pretext to be able to legitimately provide weapons to the Kurdish peshmerga and the PKK in Iraq and the YPG in Syria. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, paid last Sunday an unexpected visit to Ankara and had a nearly five-hour meeting with his Turkish counterpart. Dunford said following the meeting, to appease Ankara's opposition, that the YPG will simply isolate al-Raqqa and not move to seize it. Dunford was quoted on the Pentagon website as saying, "the coalition and Turkey will work together on the long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing al-Raqqa." Arab elements will be included in the al-Raqqa operation, the U.S. stated. The Turkish government has revealed on several occasions, following Dunford's visit, its misgivings about the U.S. keeping its promise about the YPG, which Washington sees as its ground force in Syria. While affirming that Turkey was assured by the U.S. that the YPG would only join efforts to lay siege to al-Raqqa, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated that his country would take its own measures on the ground of Washington's failure to keep its earlier promise of keeping the YPG out of the town of Manbij in northern Syria. Cavusoglu also said that Turkey is aware of the U.S. providing weapons to the YPG and that some of those weapons were seized in Turkey from the PKK. Turkey seems to be enjoying the bone thrown by the U.S., Bestepe commented on television, arguing Washington could be trying to buy time. In an earlier statement made a week ago, SDF spokesman Talal Sello said the forces were provided by the U.S. with new weapons, including anti-tank missiles, ahead of the al-Raqqa operation. He also said the SDF would attempt to take control of the city after first isolating it. Turkey had proposed earlier to the U.S. to jointly conduct the al-Raqqa operation on condition that the YPG is kept out of the offensive. Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus warned at the beginning of the past week that "the use of non-Arab forces to liberate al-Raqqa will not contribute to peace." Al-Raqqa, which is the de-facto IS capital, is totally inhabited by Arabs. Turkey would not like to see al-Raqqa to be governed by non-Arabs, said Kurtulmus. Since Syria was plunged into chaos in 2011, the YPG has secured three autonomous cantons, two of which are connected, along the Turkish border. Turkish calls to the U.S. that the YPG forces should not cross the Euphrates River to the west went unheeded and in early August, the Kurdish militia, backed by the U.S.-led coalition forces, captured the town of Manbij from the IS. The town, which lies about 30 kilometers to the west of the Euphrates, is strategically important to unite the two Kurdish cantons on the eastern part of the river with the Afrin canton in northwestern Syria. In response, Turkey launched in late August a so-called Euphrates Shield Operation to stop the YPG advance while at the same time to clear the area near its border of the IS militants. Turkish tanks and some members of the Turkish special forces, backed by some rebel groups, entered Syria and are currently pushing to close in upon al-Bab, a town under IS control. By capturing al-Bab, which lies to the west of Manbij, Turkey aims to block the YPG's way to Afrin which borders Turkey's Hatay province. Turkey is concerned that the emergence of an independent Kurdish region near its border may whet the appetite of its own Kurds. Turkey has long demanded that the YPG elements in Manbij leave the town, but its calls have fallen on deaf U.S. ears so far. Foreign Minister Cavusoglu's remarks earlier in the week reveal Turkey's growing distrust of the U.S. as an ally. Noting the U.S. had promised that the YPG would withdraw to the east of the Euphrates, he said, "we know around 200 YPG members have still not left Manbij, and we are saying to our U.S. counterparts 'Keep your promise ... You are losing your credibility in this way. Either you cannot make 200 YPG members toe the line or you do not want them to leave.'" Faruk Logoglu, a retired diplomat who held top posts in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, is of the opinion that the YPG issue between Turkey and the U.S. is for now suspended following U.S. acceptance of the use of Arab rebel groups in the seizure of al-Raqqa. As to the Manbij issue, Logoglu believes that it will become clear after the operations in Mosul and Raqqa come to an end. Turkey is concerned that the advanced weapons systems, like the anti-tank missiles provided to the YPG, could also be used against the Turkish forces in case of a confrontation. A confrontation on a larger scale is not out of the question, considering Turkey has already fired on some YPG elements in its Euphrates Shield Operation. "The possibility of a clash on the Syrian soil between the Turkish forces and the YPG is present at all times," remarked Unal from Atilim University. According to Unal, should the YPG capture al-Raqqa and attempt to carry out an ethnic cleansing against Arabs in a bid to place the area under Kurdish control, that may well set the stage for a clash. If Turkey considers eliminating the YPG forces in the Afrin canton, against which Turkey has so far taken no action, that would also mean a clash. Some analysts argue that Turkey should not only capture al-Bab, but also drive the YPG from Afrin and Manbij. "The Euphrates Shield should advance towards Afrin," commented Rafet Aslantas, the director of the Ankara-based think tank Anka Institute. According to Aslantas, who was an officer with the Turkish Armed Forces, Turkey should focus on the operation in Syria where its military is already on the ground rather than on the ongoing battle for Mosul in Iraq. Turkey's demand for being part of the Mosul campaign against the IS was rejected by the Iraqi government. Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said last weekend that Turkey would not tolerate any developments in al-Raqqa and Mosul that pose a threat to Turkey's security. Isik's remarks came after Turkey deployed a large number of tanks and soldiers on the Iraqi border as the Iraqi army is fighting to drive the IS from Mosul. Turkey already declared as its redlines the PKK's getting a base in Iraq's Sinjar and any attempt of ethnic cleansing or violence against Sunni Arabs and Turkmens in Mosul and Tal Afar. Tal Afar, a town to the west of Mosul in northern Iraq, is currently under IS control. Borders could change in the region following the ongoing civil wars in Iraq and Syria, as many argue it will be difficult for the two countries to remain united as a single entity when the wars are over. "If the Kurds seek independence, the region would get into a long and bloody period of clashes," said Lologlu, noting a lot of time is needed for the borders in this geography to get a definitive shape. He feels that the region would feel relieved if a federal system protecting the country's territorial integrity is also put in place in Syria as in Iraq. The Kurds in Iraq, who have currently their autonomous region in the northern part of the country, have long made it clear they aspire for independence. Most recently, Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said Kurds would talk about their independence with the Iraqi government following the liberation of Mosul. The Kurdish peshmerga forces are joining the Iraqi army's Mosul operation. The fate of Iraq also depends on the Iraqi Sunnis, on how they will react to the Kurdish demand for independence, and on whether they will also push for independence or agree to settle for autonomy in a Shiite-dominated Iraq. Shiites make up over 60 percent of the population in Iraq. The country is deeply divided along ethnic and sectarian lines after the U.S. occupation in 2003. Syria may break up into three parts if the Syrian government, supported by Russia and Iran, fails to regain control of the land currently controlled by the Kurds and the IS. It is widely argued in Turkey that the U.S. plans to divide Syria into three parts: a Kurdish region along Turkey's border, a Sunni region covering the central and eastern parts of the country and a Nusayri region in western Syria currently controlled by the Syrian government. "In the U.S. strategy, there is no Syrian nation-state. To be more precise, a divided Syria is (planned)," Ismail Hakki Pekin, a former three-star general who headed the intelligence unit of the Turkish General Staff, observed in his column published in the Aydinlik daily on Wednesday. In September, dozens of Syrian soldiers positioned to fight the IS near the Deir al-Zor airport in eastern Syria were killed in a U.S. airstrike. The U.S. said the planes wrongly targeted Syrian soldiers, having taken them for IS members. The Syrian government, however, argued that the air raid was conclusive evidence of U.S. support for the IS. "In this region, all 'success' is gray, because every 'success' leaves lingering residue behind," remarked Logoglu. Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday discussed China-U.S. relations with Donald Trump in a telephone conversation. Xi congratulated Trump on his election as U.S. president and expressed his willingness to work with him. Since the two countries established formal ties 37 years ago, bilateral relations have been continuously progressing, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples and promoting world and regional peace, stability and prosperity, Xi said. Facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the two countries, he said. As China-U.S. cooperation faces important opportunities and has huge potential, the two countries need to strengthen coordination, advance their respective economic development and global economic growth and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples and promote the smooth development of China-U.S. relations, said the Chinese president. As the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country respectively and as the top two economies of the world, there are many things in which China and the United States can and should cooperate, Xi said. "I attach great importance to China-U.S. relations and am ready to work with the U.S. side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world," he told Trump. For his part, Trump thanked Xi for the congratulations and said that he agreed with Xi on his views about U.S.-China relations. China is a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects, said Trump. The United States and China can achieve win-win results featuring mutual benefits, he added. Trump voiced his readiness to work with Xi to strengthen U.S.-China cooperation and expressed his belief that U.S.-China relations will witness even greater development. Xi and Trump also agreed to maintain close contact, establish a good working relationship and meet at an early date to exchange views on bilateral ties and other issues of common concern. Flash Soon after winning the election in Peru, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski embarked on his first official visit abroad, just prior to hosting the APEC Summit in Lima this November. China was his destination of choice: a decision which surprised more than a few experts and observers of international relations. China Today interviewed the President at his official residence, basking in the gentle South American sunlight, and asked his reasons for choosing China for his first foreign visit after election. "The reasons are simple," the President answered succinctly, getting straight to the point. "First, China is one of the biggest economies in the world. Second, China buys more Peruvian products than any other country. Third, I want to personally invite President Xi Jinping here to attend the APEC Summit in November." Broadening Cooperation Fields "We set great store on our relationship with China, and hope to strengthen it," the President said. "China is the main investor in the mining sector, into which we hope China can inject more capital." Thus far, the major Chinese investment projects in Peru include: Chinalco's copper mine in Toromocho; China Minmetals's copper mine in Las Bambas; and Zijin Mining Group's operation in Piura, on the border with Ecuador. Investment in these projects keeps increasing as they enter new stages of development. However, Chinese investment in Peru is concentrated so far in the mining sector. Mr. Kuczynski believes that Peru's cooperation with China could be expanded into other fields such as technology, telecommunications, and railways. "China comes top in the world for total mileage of railways, and it succeeded in building a [plateau] railway to Tibet," the President said. "We don't have such big ambitions but we are interested in building several new railways one from the Andes to the bank of the Amazon; and also around the suburbs of Lima which will become a metropolitan area in the next 15 to 20 years." Regarding the "Twin Ocean Railroad," running from the Pacific to the Atlantic, he said the project will facilitate soybean exports from Brazil to China, because it will cut transportation time from 22-23 days to 18 days. A supporter of the "Twin Ocean Railroad," the President also called for more research into implementation plans. During his visit to Peru last year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang suggested a route which would cross the northern part of Peru, while Mr. Kuczynski mentioned another possible route which would run through the southern areas of Peru and Bolivia. "This route is higher in altitude but shorter," he stated. "I think it's necessary to take a closer look at all the options." A potential cooperation in science and technology was given higher priority than the existing cooperation in infrastructure and mining. During his visit to China, the President met with representatives of Huawei, China's telecommunication giant. Facilitating Foreign Investment Peru seeks to attract more investors to stimulate economic growth. Mr. Kuczynski stressed that his country welcomes foreign investment, saying: "The Constitution of Peru stipulates that domestic and foreign investors be treated equally." Peru aims to introduce tax cuts to encourage people to reinvest profits and facilitate foreign investment. Reducing taxes takes time though, he admitted, adding that Peru is planning to lower its dividend tax within the next two or three years. The President also noted that maintaining a good relationship with indigenous peoples is very important. "In mining areas, it's vital to nurture friendships with local communities," he said, going on to explain that some villages are located in the Andes, so providing services to Andean communities is necessary in order to win their support for foreign investment. China is the biggest investor in Peruvian mining industry and Peru's largest trading partner. But its operations there are not always smooth sailing. The President said Peru will offer all the assistance it can. Chinese companies have put a lot of energy into working with communities to improve environmental protection in their mining projects in Toromocho and Las Bambas. In the Toromocho mine, arsenic levels have been found to exceed the standard limits, but this is a common problem in the plateau area. Arsenic content is high throughout the Andes mountainous region, from Alaska to Patagonia. "We are dealing with this problem now," assured the President. At the Las Bambas copper mine (owned by MMG, subsidiary of China Minmetals Corporation) the fine copper output will reach 500,000 tons in a few years' time. However, transportation relies on highways at present, with trucks on a continuous loop all day long. "In an area of 300-400 sq km, heavy trucks rumble past every seven minutes," the President said, frankly. "No one likes it." A transfer station is currently under construction at the halfway point, which will go some way towards solving the transportation problem. When the station is built, trains will transport ores from the station to the seaport. "The problem is already 50 percent solved and we are making efforts to address the other half of the problem," said the President. "We Welcome Chinese Tourists" Although China is a faraway country, expanding its presence in the Chinese travel market is key to Peru achieving its target of doubling the income of its tourism industry within the next five years. Mr. Kuczynski said he will adopt more proactive measures to attract Chinese tourists. "Peru has a rich history, abundant historical sites and picturesque natural beauty," he said. Of its 3.5 million annual tourists, most are from neighboring Chile who come to visit the Tacna in southern Peru. "We have the ability to double the number of foreign visitors," the President said. "We need to attract tourists from every part of the world, especially China, which is one of the main sources of international tourists outside of Europe and the U.S." To address the problem of the small number of Chinese tourists, he believes the first thing to do is to simplify visa regulations. The President suggested that the Peruvian government should pass new regulations allowing Chinese tourists already holding a Schengen visa, or a visa to the U.S., Canada or Mexico, to enter Peru without a visa. Mr. Kuczynski said Peru also needs to upgrade its infrastructure, and improve language and catering services to accommodate the needs of Chinese visitors. "Peru has good cuisine," he said, "but it doesn't prevent us from offering food that appeals to Chinese people, such as Cantonese food, and food from northern and southern China." The Peruvian government has the challenging job of working out tourist routes with China. It is a long journey from China to Peru, so it might be more appealing to include Peru in a package tour of Latin America, travelling from Peru to southern Chile, and then on to the Caribbean or Argentina. The President has given this matter a lot of thought and doesn't believe that finalizing the routes will be difficult. "I Trust China" This year Peru is hosting the APEC Summit for the second time, the first being eight years ago. The main goal of President Kuczynski's visit to China is to give Chinese President Xi Jinping a personal invitation to the 2016 APEC meeting. "I have two copies of Xi's monograph, The Governance of China, one of which contains Xi's autograph," Mr. Kuczynski confided, displaying a great interest in China's governmental experience. "I trust China. Their election is held every five years and leaders can serve two terms, so reform and modernization will be carried out consistently, which I think is very good." "The first thing I want to tell China is: We love China," said Mr. Kuczynski. Hundreds of years ago, Chinese people came and settled in Peru. Their food, called Chifas, is very popular. This group of ethnic Chinese maintained the traditions of their home country but also integrated very well into the local community. So, I want to say, we love China." "The second thing that I want to say is that we want to build a closer relationship with China in numerous areas including Asia-Pacific cooperation, mining, and bilateral investment," said the President. Besides minerals and ores, Peru also exports agricultural products to China. Some Peruvian agro-industrial manufacturers joined the President's delegation to China, some of whom already have business relations with China, while others have displayed a strong interest in developing business ties. "Last but not least," said Mr. Kuczynski, "I want to say: Let us unite! Though we are far apart, separated by the Pacific, the distance will be overcome during this new and exiting time." Flash Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is open to support free trade deals, including the Chinese-led Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Monday. Leo Herrera-Lim Sr., a senior assistant of the DFA-Office of International Economic Relations made the remarks during the briefing in Malacanang, the presidential palace, of President Rodrigo Duterte's attendance in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru later this week. "I think for the Philippines and President Duterte, he's been open to anything that contributes well to the Philippine economy. So we are not closing the door on any economic integration or free trade because I think we understand that free trade by itself penetrates the greater population," he said when asked if Duterte is keen on joining the FTAAP being pushed by China. He said the only thing that Duterte would like to see is that any free trade agreement would not disadvantage any of the sectors in the country. During the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, APEC member economies pushed forward the process of the FTAAP by sketching out a historic roadmap. China has been pushing for the FTAAP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). "RCEP is still alive," Lim said. Duterte will join other 20 APEC leaders in the APEC Summit on Nov. 19-20. Flagstaff police are still searching for an armed suspect who fled into the woods off Lone Tree Road after being stopped on Interstate 40 for suspected auto theft around 10 p.m. Sunday. The suspect was last seen fleeing near the ceramics building and ovens at Northern Arizona University, but after a search of several hours, police said they were unable to locate him. Residents were asked to lock their doors and remain vigilant for any suspicious activity. At this time there are no further leads and no credible reason to believe he is still in the area. The suspect was described as a white male wearing a gray tank top T-shirt, black shorts and boots. It is believed the suspect stole firearms from the vehicle because they were missing when it was searched. The vehicle was stolen out of Yavapai County, and troopers with the Arizona Department of Public Safety used stop sticks to flatten its tires. But the suspect continued driving into Flagstaff before abandoning the vehicle. Citizens are asked to call the Flagstaff Police Department at (928)774-1414 or Silent Witness at (928)774-6111 with any information on the case. Flash Governor of Pakistan's Balochistan Muhammad Khan Achakzai, who is on a goodwill visit to China from Nov 14-23, met Sun Jiazheng, Chairman of CFPD and Vice Chairman of 11th National Committee of CPPCC on Nov. 14, 2016. An Agreement of Cooperation for Building a CPEC Center of Excellence (CCE) at Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS) was also signed on the occasion. During the meeting, bilateral relations, CPEC and 65th Anniversary of Pak-China Diplomatic Relations were discussed and they reiterated the importance of friendship between the two countries. China expressed condolence over today's terror attack in Balochistan. The Governor Balochistan is leading a delegation of twenty members, mostly tribal elders, and in addition to Beijing, the delegation will be visiting Shanghai and Urumqi as well. Drinking water in Doney Park has tested positive for E. coli bacteria. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality confirmed the contamination in the Doney Park Water Company supply on Sunday morning. Residents on Doney Park water should avoid drinking tap water unless it has been boiled or should use bottled water. When boiling water, bring it to a boil for at least three minutes and let it cool before using. Boiled or bottled water should be used for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes and food preparation until further notice. According to the Centers for Disease Control, E. coli can cause diarrhea, urinary tract infections, respiratory illness, bloodstream infections and other illnesses. The types of E. coli that can cause illness can be transmitted through contaminated water or food, or through contact with animals or people. If people have diarrhea that lasts for more than three days, or is accompanied by a high fever, blood in the stool or so much vomiting that they cannot keep liquids down and pass very little urine, they are encouraged to contact their healthcare provider. Doney Park Water Company has begun flushing its water system to remove the bacteria and will inform residents when it has done so and has lifted the water boil advisory. The Coconino County Public Health Services District is working with Doney Park Water to help inform residents of any further risk to the water system. If you have further questions, please contact Doney Park Water System at 928.526.1080. China Aviation Daily | Nov. 14, 2016 Cathay Pacific and its staff have applauded the magnificent achievement of Captain Hank Cheng and the Inspiration team following the successful completion of his epic round-the-world journey onboard his homebuilt plane. Hank made local aviation history by circumnavigating the globe in "Inspiration", a single-engine RV-8 light aircraft, a flight that covered approximately 50,000 km and took in 20 countries, including Australia, the United States, France, Jordan, Oman, Sri Lanka and Thailand, before landing at Hong Kong International Airport at around 10 am today. Before his arrival in Hong Kong, Hank flew low over Victoria Harbour, providing members of the public with the opportunity to share in the spirit of the occasion. The city certainly gave "Inspiration" a warm welcome, with people turning out in force to capture the moment; their photos, videos and positive comments of the B-KOO-registered aircraft proving overwhelmingly popular across many social media platforms. Hank's historic, near three-month journey has been reliant on the professional support of the Inspiration team, a dedicated group of Cathay Pacific employees who have worked round-the-clock, monitoring the flight's progress from the Inspiration Operation Centre, which is housed at Cathay Pacific City, the airline's headquarters at Chek Lap Kok. In addition, inspired by Hank's passion to reach out for his aviation dreams, numerous colleagues across the airline's expansive global network, from airport staff, engineers, flight crew to back office staff, have provided him with invaluable support, underlining the teamwork and can-do spirit of Cathay Pacific. Cathay Pacific Chief Operating Officer Rupert Hogg said: "We are extremely proud of what Hank and all our employees involved in the Inspiration project have achieved - this is an historic moment in Hong Kong aviation and we could not be happier that their dreams have been realised. They have proved to be wonderful ambassadors for Cathay Pacific and local aviation as a whole, showing fantastic spirit, true professionalism and tremendous enthusiasm throughout. This is a very special day for everyone at our airline and it is great to see what can be done when we all work together." The Inspiration project has garnered significant interest -- both from the public and aviation aficionados -- and Hank has been eager to educate people about aviation and promote Hong Kong at every stage of the journey - two of his key objectives. For example, soon after completing the most arduous leg of his trip -- a 14+ hour transpacific flight from Hilo in Hawaii to San Carlos in California -- Hank travelled to the Future of Flight Aviation Center at Boeing's headquarters in Everett, Washington, where he shared the background and goals of Inspiration with enthusiasts at a well-attended learning session. Another instance of Hank's passion for espousing aviation and his home city came a few weeks later, when he made headlines in Karachi. Through arrangements made by Cathay Pacific staff, and after receiving a very special welcome and generous treatment upon landing in Pakistan's most populous city, he gave a series of media interviews, sharing the experiences of his flight and promoting the pioneering spirit of Hong Kong. The Inspiration project has won the respect and admiration of Cathay Pacific staff members the world over, with the team receiving a great many messages of support from across the airline's network, highlighting the airline's tight-knit international community. A colleague regarded the tour as, "A dream for you, and for many of us too ... that becomes true," while another emphasised the positive effect Inspiration has had on his family and the younger generation: "My boys are inspired by your achievement. They carry your aircraft registered red lanyard B-KOO on their school bags and share your inspiring story to all their classmates!" Added Mr Hogg: "Hank and the Inspiration team represent the spirit of Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong. We congratulate them all on this major milestone and are thankful for being able to play a role in helping to fulfill their dreams." Contributed by Cathay Pacific Airways Limited By Lena Ge, China Aviation Daily | Nov. 14, 2016 Air China has officially launched a nonstop service between Southwest China's Chengdu and Sydney, Austria, becoming the first direct route between the two cities. The flag carrier's inaugural Chengdu-Sydney flight CA429, operated by Airbus A330-200 configured with 30 business class and 207 economy class seats, took off from Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport at 10:50 p.m. on Friday. The A320 aircraft, B-6541, received an Airservices Aviation Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) monitor cross as it made its way to the international terminal after touching down Sydney Airport on Saturday noon, after a 10 and a half hour journey from Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. Flight CA429 is scheduled to depart Chengdu every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday at 10:55 a.m. and arrive in Sydney at 12:35 p.m. the following day. Following a brief layover, flight CA430 will take off from Sydney at 2:35 p.m. and touch back down in Chengdu at 10:35 p.m. "This new thrice-weekly route to Sydney marks Air China's third intercontinental flight from Chengdu and our first nonstop service between western China and Oceania," said Rui Jie, Air China General Manager Australia, "which reflected the increased demand for travel from China to Australia." With increasing demand from both the business and leisure market, Air China knows the introduction of the direct Sydney to Chengdu service will help support this demand. "As the first Chinese airline to operate into Australia and having flown between China and Australia for the last 32 years, Air China has seen firsthand the increasingly strong growth and development of services between our countries." Currently, Air China flies from Sydney to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. It also offers nonstop service from Melbourne to Beijing and Shanghai, with flights to Shenzhen due to start in January 2017. The Chengdu-Sydney flight will establish a new "bridge in the sky" to help boost economic, trade and cultural exchanges. Chengdu is Air China's second largest hub offering connections to over 47 destinations within China and international cities including Frankfurt, Paris and Rome. Sydney Airport has service from six airlines from mainland China -- Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and Xiamen Air -- flying to 13 destinations. Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific and Taiwan's China Airlines also serve Sydney. Related News: Air China to Launch Chengdu-Sydney Service in November Chengdu Adds Nine More Long-Haul Routes in World Routes Signing China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page A man works at the plant of Shimge Pump Industry Group Co Ltd in Wenling, Zhejiang province. [Photo/China Daily] More Chinese companies are using mergers and acquisitions of German ventures to grow their markets in Europe, while the German groups for their part are attracted by the prospect of making moves into the booming Chinese market. As one of the groups seeking to expand its overseas business through the takeover route, Shimge, the Zhejiang-based listed company, bought two foreign pump firmsWita Wilhelm Taake GmbH in Germany and Hel-Wita Sp. z o.o. in Poland in September for 13.5 million euros ($14.7 million), and is sniffing around for takeover targets in the US. "It's quite difficult for us to expand business in foreign markets, especially in Europe, where there is a concentration of major and mature industrial leaders. We acquired those local companies for their advanced technology, experienced staff members and existing market," said Zhang Yongqing, the strategic advisor of Shimge Pump Industry Group Co Ltd. Meanwhile, Goodbaby Group, China's biggest manufacturer and retailer of baby-care products, has already gone down a similar road with its international M& A strategy. In 2014, the company, based in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, made its first acquisition of Cybex GmbH. The takeover of the German brand of premium car seats meant a wider exposure in Europe and its entry to the high-end car-seat marketplace. "We are keen to offer high-quality and updated products, with cutting-edge design and technology for consumers, by acquiring advanced and creative brands to speed up the innovation," said Liu Tongyou, the company's vice-president and chief financial officer at the German-China Forum for Investment and M&A 2016 in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. In the same year Goodbaby Group bought US group Evenflo Co Inc. The large manufacturer of infant consumer products, including car seats and feeding bottles, was acquired for $143 million and represented a move forward in the US mid-class market. Currently about 70 percent of Goodbaby's business has been switched to international markets including Japan, North America and Europe, while the remaining 30 percent is from China. Lifted by the central government's strategy, more Chinese companies have stayed with their strategy of investing and purchasing overseas companies. Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce show that Chinese companies completed a total of 521 acquisitions worth $67.4 billion this year in 67 countries and regions covering 18 industries. The amount has already surpassed last year's total of $54.4 billion. In particular, M&A deals done by Chinese companies in Germany keep surging. A total of 37 acquisitions of German companies were completed in the first half of this year, against the total amount for 2015 of 39. One of the highlights was the Midea's 4.5 billion euro purchase of industrial robot maker Kuka. "More Chinese companies are willing to purchase small and medium-sized German family businesses for their experience and technology while German companies also need investments to pull them out of the economic slowdown," said Zhang Ning, senior associate of CMS, a global law firm covering services in 34 countries. However, there are failed examples. Statistics from consultancy PwC show that over 50 percent of overseas acquisitions failed. The report from the Ministry of Commerce also found out that only 13 percent of the overseas projects were making profits. "It is essential for companies to carry out a detailed examination of the firms into their background, financial condition and tax issues with the support from experienced law firms to avoid purchasing a failing project," said Zhang, who every week meets dozens of Chinese clients wanting to acquire German companies. File photo shows high-speed rail in China. [Photo/Xinhua] China's 600 km/h maglev (magnetic levitation) train project, launched earlier this year, is in full swing. Jia Limin, head of China's high-speed rail innovation program, said a high-speed maglev test line with a length of no less than 5 kilometers under the project is expected to be completed by 2021. CRRC Corporation Limited, China's largest rail transportation equipment maker, said it would construct the test line. In addition, Shandong province in East China plans to construct a high-speed maglev system that runs from Jinan, the province's capital city to Qingdao, which is the first operation line based on this project, Jia said. "That is the reason why we built the 5-km test line in Qingdao," he said. CRRC said in October that China was launching a bullet train project containing a 600 km/h high-speed maglev train and a 400 km/h international multimodal transport high-speed train. Ministry of Science and Technology has decided to transfer some key research projects over to enterprises, such as the CRRC, a conference on major special rail transportation projects announced in October. CRRC was the first enterprise to take on the trial projects, who received seven out of ten projects from the Ministry of Science and Technology. The company will also develop maglev trains that travel at 200 km/h under the project. China's internet economy is enjoying strong momentum, highlighted by technology upgrades, business innovation and big acquisition deals in 2016. Let's take a look at the major internet events of the year. Google's Go-playing computer program AlphaGo claimed a historic victory in the ancient Chinese boardgame over Go grandmaster Lee Sedol of South Korea in March. The computer program won four games to one in the best-of-five series. The victory has fuelled a growing interest in artificial intelligence and boosted Chinese companies' investment in the sector. Members of Qihoo 360's cyber security team won the gold "Lord of Pwn" trophy during the PwnFest contest held Nov 10-11 in Seoul, South Korea. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Chinese cyber security contestants from Qihoo 360 were crowned "Lords of Pwn" at last week's PwnFest in South Korea. PwnFest is a newly-launched vulnerabilities pwning contest run by South Korean cyber security conference organizer, the Power of Community (POC). Supported by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe and VMware, the contest provides valuable information to the companies to enable them to patch software to prevent dark-side hackers exploiting holes for malicious purposes. The $1.7 million-prize for winning the contest overall is the highest of similar competitions in the industry. Teams from Qihoo 360 Technology, one of China's largest cyber security companies, defeated rivals in the pwning challenges targeting Microsoft Edge, VMware Workstation, Adobe Flash and Google Pixel. They won the gold "Lord of Pwn" trophy and a total of $530,000 in prize money for taking home the most medals. The VMware hasn't been cracked for seven years. The targets of the contest were chosen from a variety of systems that have been updated recently, including Microsoft Edge, Android 7.0, Microsoft Hyper-V, Google Chrome, Apple iOS 10 and Safari + Mac OS X Sierra, Adobe Flash and VMware Workstation Pro 12. A joint team of Pangu, a Chinese hacking team famous for iOS jailbreaks, and JH hackers, claimed the $100,000 prize for finding the latest Safari weakness that gave them root access to Mac OS Sierra. Chen Xiaobo, one of the core members of Pangu, told the media that they still have the ability to jailbreak the latest iOS 10.1.1. The team delivered a speech named "Analysis of iOS 9.3.3 Jailbreak & Security Enhancements of iOS 10" at the POC 2016 conference which is held alongside the contest. They discussed some security enhancements in iOS 10 and new hardware-based protection for iPhone7 Plus. "In fact, iOS 10 has fixed lots of unpublished bugs and enhanced some security mechanisms such as KPP, sandbox and the kernel heap management," the team said. Another participant named Jung Hoon Lee, a 22-year-old South Korean known as Lokihardt, earnt almost $300,000 at the PwnFest competition for pwning Microsoft Edge and VMWare Workstation. Six topics from Chinese teams were chosen to be presented at the conference, covering research into the vulnerabilities of web browsers, mobile operating systems, virtual systems and autonomous driving. Four of the six were presented by teams from Qihoo 360's cyber security innovation center, including 360Vulcan, 360Marvel, 360Unicorn and 360Sky-go teams, which specialize in security research and development for operating systems and software, virtual systems, wireless and automobile industries. Zheng Wenbin, known as MJ0011, heads the vulnerability research team, which has achieved hundreds of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) from Microsoft, Apple and Adobe. Being a regular at POC, Zheng said that although the numbers of attendees and topics of POC were fewer than some of the word's high-profile hackers' events, such as Black Hat, some of the issues on the agenda were about cutting-edge technologies in the security industry. http://itmakessenseblog.com/2011/01/28/george-soros-says-he-feels-no-remorse-for-collaborating-with-nazis-during-wwii-to-send-his-fellow-jews-to-the-death-camps-steal-their-property/ Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson Billionaire left-wing extremist George Soros betrayed the Jews, worked with the Nazis has no regrets George Soros is very, very rich, and hes also a soulless sociopath, an inhumane left-wing extremist who collaborated with the Nazis in his youth. But thats just my take on the man. Based exclusively on his own words. Be prepared to be hit with revulsion. Soros betrayed other Jews and helped steal their property and send them to their tragic deaths to spare himself. And he doesnt feel any guilt about it. None. This is the face of pure evil and with whom the Democrat party has aligned itself. H/t to reader Larry, via Weasel Zippers, George Soros Says He Feels No Remorse For Collaborating With Nazis During WWII to Send His Fellow Jews to the Death Camps, Steal Their Property: viaOttawa Sun, Billionaire George Soros has made a living wrecking the lives of others. Now he wants to mess with Canadians: (Ezra Levant)- George Schwartz was born in Hungary in 1930 not the luckiest time and place to be born a Jew. Georges father Theodore tried to change the familys fortunes by changing their name to something less Jewish-sounding. It didnt help. And soon war came. When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps. To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis. First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours. Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews. By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself. George moved to London after the war and then to New York, where he became a stockbroker. Hes rich now. Forbes magazine says hes the 35th richest man in the world. Maybe youve heard of him. He goes by the name his father invented: George Soros. How does Soros feel about what he did as a teenager? Has it kept him up at night? Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? Not at all, Soros answered. No feeling of guilt? asked Kroft. No, said Soros. There was no sense that I shouldnt be there. If I wasnt doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt. A Nazi would steal the Jews property anyways. So why not him? That moral hollowness has shaped Soros life. Hes a rabid critic of capitalism, but in 1992 when he saw a chance, he speculated against the British pound, causing it to crash, devastating retirement savings for millions of Britons. Soros pocketed $1.1 billion for himself. If he didnt do it, someone else would, right? In 2002, Soros was convicted of insider trading in France, and fined millions of dollars. He admitted buying the shares, but denied it was a crime. Last year, when he made $3.3 billion off the banking collapse, he called the worlds financial crisis the culmination of my lifes work. This is a man who boasted he offered to help his mother commit suicide. Apparently he didnt see enough death in Hungary. Soros is a sociopath. But hes a sociopath with $14 billion, and he likes to spend it on politics. Sometimes his gifts are large, like the $24 million he spent in 2004, trying to defeat George W. Bush. Sometimes theyre small, like $20,000 to a woman convicted of helping terrorists. Now Soros has turned his attention to Canada. One of his front groups, called Avaaz, is lobbying to stop Sun Medias license for a TV newschannel. Soros doesnt know anything about Canada Avaaz called the Sun newspapers the Suncor newspapers but were his latest toy. Avaaz is sending a petition to Canadas TV regulator, the CRTC, claiming that thousands of Canadians want to censor the Sun and keep it off the air. The petition is a fraud its an Internet petition, and anyone can sign anyone else up without their permission. Fake names are permitted, and so are foreign citizens. And the whole campaign is run out of New York. Do you think Soros should determine what you can watch on TV? Do you think that decision should be made in New York? Is our freedom of speech just another trinket for him to buy and sell? Hasnt Soros silenced enough voices in his life? Fight back. As expressed at Weasel Zippers Theres a special place in hell for George Soros While the left-wing media freaks out about whether or not Sarah Palins youngest child is actually hers, or works overtime to fabricate lies and doctored videos about tea partiers, a REAL bad guy is being given a free pass. JournoListers are marching in lockstep, as always Soros is waaay beyond rich, so that kind of seriously eye-popping bankroll buys him a lot of coverage thanks to the state-run media and the ethics-free Democrat party. From The Guardian, George Soros gives $100 million to Human Rights Watch: The billionaire financier George Soros is giving $100 million (65 million) to Americas leading human rights organisation in a move that will enable the group to massively expand its operations around the world.READ MORE HERE>> China and the UK must learn from each other and collaborate to improve innovation, scholars and business leaders said at a forum at the University of Oxford on Thursday. The Oxford Sino-UK Innovation and Development Forum attracted more than 160 representatives from academia and commerce. Fu Xiaolan, director of the universitys Technology and Management Center for Development, said technology is changing the way in which value and profits are created, and noted that it will have a profound impact on the economy and wider society. Despite the opportunities that technology creates, it also poses challenges, such as difficulty in re-employment and risks a "lost generation" and political instability, Fu said. "Technical progress now moves faster than policy and regulation," explained Fu, who is also a governing council member of the UN Technology Bank. "We need a policy-planning mechanism to ensure inclusive growth and multi-stakeholder participation." David Burghust, managing director of Oxford University Innovation, a subsidiary of the university that specializes in IP commercialization, called for more cooperation between the two countries. "We now look actively in China for IP licensing, and some of our spinouts have Chinese backing," said Burghust, who is based in Hong Kong. He added that the institution has set up a joint venture in Jiangsu province. Stian Westlake, executive director of Nesta, a British independent innovation foundation, said the UK needs to improve its knowledge infrastructure and highlight the countrys edge. The forum was organized by the TMCD and the Institute of Science and Development at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinas national think tank. A rally for Chinese mainland banks listed in Hong Kong has cut their price gap to mainland shares in half, and that seems to be about as much as investors are willing to tolerate. In the five months through September, a gauge of the big four lenders' Hong Kong shares jumped 15 percent as southbound cash poured into the stocks, trumping the Hang Seng Index's 11 percent advance. The banking stocks are now giving up some of their gains after the discount to their Shanghai valuations narrowed to the least in more than a year. The declines signal that price equilibrium between Hong Kong and mainland shares, a prospect that's been burning arbitragers for years, may still be a long way away. With inflows into the city's shares via a link with Shanghai drying up and concerns over rising bad debts weighing on the sector, a revival of the rally in Chinese mainland banks looks unlikely in the near term. "Based on fundamentals, the sector's slowing. And there's no big catalyst (to raise share prices)," said Pauline Dan, Hong Kong-based head of Greater China equities at Pictet Asset Management, which oversaw about $154 billion as of the end-2015. "People are still concerned whether the non-performing loan cycle will deteriorate further or improve." China Construction Bank Corp recorded HK$33.4 billion ($4.3 billion) of net southbound purchases in the five months through September, while Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd lured HK$17.8 billion of net inflows. That helped the two stocks to jump 12 percent in August alone. Other companies favored by mainland buyers included HSBC Holdings Plc and Tencent Holdings Ltd. The rally has sapped the relative appeal of Chinese banks's H shares. CCB and ICBC have now fallen more than 6 percent from their September highs, exceeding the 5 percent decline by the Hang Seng Index. "The valuation gap is not very attractive," said Iris Tan, a Shenzhen-based analyst at Morningstar Inc who is among the top three forecasters for five H-share banks. While there are still some opportunities in joint-stock lenders, like China Citic Bank Corp, "investors tend to have a stronger preference for large banks due to their strong deposit base and much smaller shadow bank exposures," she said. Caution over Chinese mainland banks grew following Postal Savings Bank of China's September initial public offering, the biggest worldwide since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's in 2014. With the help of State companies that acted as cornerstone investors, the Hong Kong offering was priced at at least one time book value, compared with the 0.87 average for H-share banks, fulfilling a requirement that State firms' IPOs be priced above net assets. Despite having a larger retail client base and higher credit quality than most of its peers, the stock has since plunged 9.5 percent. While valuations are lower in Hong Kong than Shanghai, the city's bourse remains attractive for mainland firms due to a long queue for mainland IPO approvals. Zhongyuan Bank Co is planning a $1 billion first-time sale in the city, IFR Asia reported on Monday. With mainland investors curbing their appetite for mainland banks, global funds are unlikely to come to their rescue amid concern over the nation's $25 trillion pile of public and private debt. Bloomberg Maximilian Foerst, president of Zeiss China. [Photo provided to China Daily] Having been Zeiss' president of South Korea, France and China, Maximilian Foerst, has proved himself as an effective leader by presiding over a period of rapid revenue growth in all those regions during his tenure. China was the sixth biggest market for Zeiss when Foerst came to China eight years ago and now it's the third biggest market for the company. He modestly attributed their success to those companies always providing innovative products and outperforming the competitors. "China, by far, is the most dynamic market for Zeiss. Even though the country is seeing a slowdown in the economy, there is still substantial growth potential," said Foerst. He said he believes that a healthy economy cannot keep a double-digit growth in the long run and the reform China is undertaking currently is good for its sustainable development. "China cannot always rely on cheap labor to compete with foreign counterparts even though the labor advantage has helped the country's economic development in the past," he said. "Eventually, the country needs to strengthen innovation, which is what the Chinese government is encouraging right now." The word "innovation" is not new for the Oberkochen-headquartered German company which focuses on optics-related research and manufacturing. "Our company is built on innovation," said Foerst. Up to 11 percent of the company's employees are working in R&D and more than half a billion euros ($544 million) is invested in the sector annually. A staff poses with an ExoLens on a mobile phone at the Zeiss booth on the Photokina, the world's largest fair for imaging in Cologne, Germany, September 20, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] In China, it's the same. "We valued innovation a lot since the company's establishment," said Foerst. "To be closer to our customers, we established our China innovation center in 2012 in Shanghai. Currently, there are 50 engineers, of whom 98 percent are Chinese and focusing on products for expanding the Medical and Microscopy markets," he said. "Chinese engineers bring their understanding of local market requirements and the potential of the local supply chain. We hire people in the center who can turn innovative ideas into customer-oriented products," he added. "I try to help our employees realize their ideas in the company and provide them with the support to do so," said Foerst. "We do not tell them exactly what to do, as in this way they have the freedom to be innovative in achieving their targets. We recruit employees who like this type of environment, to enable both the company and the employees to be more successful at the same time." In Zeiss' 170 year's history, it has contributed to the general advance of scientific development by offering not only high-quality microscopes but innovation in many other areas. As Zeiss has continued to forge its deep relationship with progress, Foerst himself has had a deep relation with the company. He joined the company as project manager of Zeiss Group Internal Consultant in Germany in 1995 and spent more than 21 years with the company in different business units and regional markets. He said there are three main factors that determine business success. "These are how you train people, how you focus on people and how you interact with your customers. All the success we achieved in China has related to how we invested in our team to enable them to better support and interact with our customers," he said. Facing fierce competition for skilled employees in the market, Zeiss nonetheless has a much lower employee turnover rate compared with the average. Many people in Zeiss Germany have been working in the company for over 30 years. The company's global employee turnover is as low as 4 percent. In Shanghai where Zeiss China's headquarter is located, the city's annual employee turnover rate is 17 percent while Zeiss China's turnover figure is just 7 percent. "People stay with us because they see our company and their personal success in the future," said Foerst. "We are a very stable company with stable management." Zeiss is not publicly listed and the Zeiss foundation controls the company, which has given it an advantage for long-term planning and investment in high-end technologies, which may not always be conducive to short-term profit returns. Even so, Zeiss is in fact a very profitable company. For the first six months of the 2015/2016 fiscal year to March 31, the company realized a 5 percent year-on-year revenue increase to 2.3 billion euros, according to the company. Foerst said his group will keep investing heavily in China, focusing on areas that the local market needs. The company has major business segments including semiconductor manufacturing, industrial metrology, microscopes, medical technology and vision care. Pensioners gather for a Peking Opera-based group activities at a pension center in Yanjiao, Hebei province. [Photo/China Daily] Low returns on bonds and deposits, plus aging population, raise questions whether they will be able to pay obligations China will likely officially allow pension funds to be invested in the stock market within this year, with analysts saying the move will help boost market confidence while the long-term impact on risks will only gradually appear in the coming years. The first batch of provincial governments will be able to sign contracts with the National Council for Social Security Funds within this year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said earlier. Under the contracts, the NCSSF, a national social security reserve and a major institutional investor, will invest and manage the funds on behalf of the local governments. The value of China's pension funds stood at 3.99 trillion yuan ($600 billion) at the of end of last year, according to official data. Regulations allow a maximum 30 percent of the fund's total net assets to be invested in securities, including stocks. Gao Ting, head of China strategy at UBS Securities, said that the actual amount of capital entering the market initially will not be large and as a typical medium- to long-term funds, the impact on market risk preference is likely to gradually appear in the next few years. Gao added that the pension funds will likely have real estate and healthcare as their preferred sectors. For years, China's pension funds could only be invested in low-yield bank deposits and treasury bonds. Between 2008 and 2015, the average rate of investment return by pension funds was only 2.9 percent. The rapidly aging society in China also poses challenges for the management of the pension funds, sparking concerns on whether the funds would be sufficient to support the aging population. The government has been reforming the regulations on pension funds, including broadening the permitted investment channels and granting greater investment flexibility. In 2012, the central government initiated a pilot program to allow the NCSSF to manage the pension funds on behalf of local governments. Guangdong and Shandong provinces have already received regulatory approval to entrust their pension funds, worth about 200 billion yuan, to the NCSSF for investment in the domestic capital markets. It is estimated that about 240 to 300 billion yuan will initially enter the market, accounting for less than 1 percent of the overall capitalization of the A-share market. "The short-term effect will be minimal given that the initial amount of capital will be limited. But, it will help boost investors' confidence and will be positive for big-cap stocks," said Dai Kang, an analyst at Huatai Securities Co Ltd. LIMA - Peru and China are in the right time to further promote their economic ties to higher level, said Peruvian economist to Xinhua ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the South American country. "The most important task is now to consolidate the advances in economic relations made since Peru and China began their free-trade agreement (FTA) in 2010," Peruvian economist, Fernando Gonzalez, told Xinhua. In terms of China's vision of Peru, the director of the APEC Studies Center, explained that "China has a very clear strategy based on continued results, boosting its own production chain for industry and services, and seeing ever more sophisticated technological development." "China is a country of high efficiency. These capacities are not limited to production but extend to how to make pragmatic public policies," added Gonzalez. He said that, after the visit of Peru's Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to China in September and the upcoming visit by President Xi Jinping to Lima in November, the two countries "must resolve any problems that remain and focus on the fundamentals." According to Gonzalez, both sides need to improve cooperation in mining areas and allow China's ICBC bank to open up more financial services in the country. Moving on to the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), Gonzalez said this was an initiative to minimize divisions within the region and help to create one large free-trade zone. "This is a project that unites China and the U.S., and it drives to work together while managing their rivalries in the most civilized possible. This is the central topic for the future of the Asia-Pacific, for peace and prosperity in the region," he continued. It would essentially unite the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), between ASEAN, and six other Pacific economies, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The academic concluded that "it is an honor for Peru to host the one more step of the Beijing Roadmap being taken this year." BEIJING - China's retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.3 percent year on year in the first 10 months this year, slightly down from 10.4 percent for the first three quarters, official data showed Monday. Retail sales maintained steady and relatively fast growth during the period, according to a statement of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The growth was partly contributed by booming Internet-based sales, with online sales surging 25.7 percent year on year to 3.93 trillion yuan ($575 billion) from January to October. In October, retail sales grew by 10 percent, 0.7 percentage points slower than September, the NBS said. The data also showed strong consumption in rural areas last month, with retail sales expanding 10.3 percent, outpacing the 10-percent expansion in urban areas. Booming retail sales are behind China's stabilizing economy, which grew 6.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2016, steady with the first half of the year, and within the government's target range of between 6.5 and 7 percent for 2016. DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China are the most preferred emerging-market countries among young people who would like to live abroad to advance their careers, a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey presented Sunday showed. In the survey whose findings were presented in a media briefing, the two Asia countries ranked as the most preferred emerging market countries, in 11th and 12th place, respectively, ahead of the Scandinavian countries, all other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries and Singapore. The United States, United Kingdom and Canada led the list. The survey was released on the occasion of the opening day of the two-day WEF annual meeting of the global future councils, the brain storming session with over to the WEF in Davos. The survey, organized by the Global Shapers team of the World Economic Forum, surveyed around 20,000 millennials aged 18-35 about a wide range of issues concerning business, the economy, politics, technology and values. Respondents from 187 countries and territories took part in the survey, with most coming from China, the United States and India. "The UAE's appeal lies in the enviable fact that the country is increasingly synonymous with an attitude that nothing is impossible," said Adeyemi Babington-Ashaye, Head of the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum. "The UAE combines excellent opportunities for young people and start-ups with a competitive economy and sends a clear signal that, if you want to build the future, come and build it in the UAE." As a whole, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) respondents were among the most optimistic about the future impact of technology on jobs, a factor which may explain the attractiveness of countries in the region such as the UAE, said the WEF in an e-mailed statement. LOS ANGELES - COMAC America Corporation has launched the "Moore Cloud Civil Aviation Technology Solutions platform," an internet-based virtual R&D, technical consulting and technology transaction online platform. "This is one of our explorative initiatives. The internet-based R&D platform will first aim to solve talent issues we are facing for researching and developing C919, and the future wide-body aircraft project," Jin Zhuanglong, chairman of the Board of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), told Xinhua. According to COMAC America Corporation, the new platform focuses on building an internet-based and global platform for civil aviation technology transaction, virtual R&D and technical consulting. The project aims to connect project resources and human resources in both China and the United States. "Moore Cloud" platform has three-stage missions. In the short-term, about one to three years, the new platform will support COMAC Series and provide quick and accurate technical consulting services. COMAC America Corporation plans to solve 5 percent of outsourced R&D demand in the first year. Mid-term mission in about three to five years, the project aims to expand to civil aviation industry both home and abroad; And the long term mission in about five to 10 years, the project intends to extend to high-end complex system industry, and strive to build a COMAC civil aircraft "Virtual R&D Platform." The day COMAC America Corporation launched Moore Cloud platform is on Singles' Day, China's annual online shopping extravaganza on Nov 11. Seen by many as China's version of Black Friday in the United States, Singles' Day has grown into a huge battle for market share among Chinese e-commerce companies. The most eye-catching event is Alibaba Group's Global Shopping Festival. According to the company, sales on its platforms hit a record 120.748 billion Chinese yuan ($17.8 billion) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the 24-hour event on Friday. "It is amazing how much Internet has changed our life," Ye Wei, executive director and president of the COMAC America Corporation told Xinhua. BEIJING - China and New Zealand inked an agreement on Monday to mutually recognize organic food with official certification labels to facilitate organic food development and trade. China's Certification and Accreditation Administration and New Zealand's Ministry of Primary Industries agreed to mutually recognize each other's certifications for organic food imports. This is the first mutual recognition agreement for organic food certification China has signed with a foreign country. China mainly exports coffee, frozen vegetables, and pet food to New Zealand and imports dairy products, meat and fruit from the country. Under the agreement, all organic food should be marked with Chinese certification labels and codes. Official data showed that China sold organic food worth 60 billion yuan ($8.78 billion) last year. China is the fourth largest destination for New Zealand's organic food exports. MANILA - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is open to support free trade deals, including the Chinese-led Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Monday. Leo Herrera-Lim Sr., a senior assistant of the DFA-Office of International Economic Relations made the remarks during the briefing in Malacanang, the presidential palace, of President Rodrigo Duterte's attendance in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru later this week. "I think for the Philippines and President Duterte, he's been open to anything that contributes well to the Philippine economy. So we are not closing the door on any economic integration or free trade because I think we understand that free trade by itself penetrates the greater population," he said when asked if Duterte is keen on joining the FTAAP being pushed by China. He said the only thing that Duterte would like to see is that any free trade agreement would not disadvantage any of the sectors in the country. During the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, APEC member economies pushed forward the process of the FTAAP by sketching out a historic roadmap. China has been pushing for the FTAAP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). "RCEP is still alive," Lim said. Duterte will join other 20 APEC leaders in the APEC Summit on Nov 19-20. Yi Gang, vice-governor of the People's Bank of China. [Photo/Provided to China Daily] Chinese financial technology companies, which are expanding into the UK at an unprecedented rate, will get additional support from a new agreement between China and Britain. The move to link the world's two leading fintech hubs is expected to revolutionize global fintech growth, given that China is the top fintech market and the UK is a dominant fintech hub. The agreement for a so-called bridge between the two centers was signed on Friday by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and the People's Bank of China. The UK-China Fintech Bridge is a government information sharing tool established as part of the 8th UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, which took place in London on Thursday. Fintech is the sector in which technology-driven companies produce solutions to challenge the traditional banking industry. It grew rapidly after the 2008 financial crisis. London-based Level39 is Europe's largest fintech accelerator. "As regulator, we need to adapt to the rapid development of fintech and strike a balance between financial innovation and risk management," said Yi Gang, vice-governor of the People's Bank of ChinaChina's central bank. Yi made the remarks on Friday at the UK-China Collaboration in Fintech forum at London's Canary Wharf, which was attended by more than 100 fintech practitioners. Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said:"I believe the UK-China Fintech Bridge will be mutually beneficial for us and the PBoC, and will be a part of our joint efforts to promote innovation and consumer protection in both of our markets." Chen Long, chief strategy officer at Ant Financial, welcomed the bridge. "Because Chinese fintech firms' models and activities are sometimes starkly different from UK firms, we hope the bridge will help UK regulators to understand our business activities better, so they can regulate us in the UK in an effective way." Ant Financial is the fintech arm of China's ecommerce giant Alibaba. It operates China's largest online payment platform, Alipay, which entered the UK market last year. China's ecommerce and internet companies, which include Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, have been at the front of China's fintech revolution. China's alternative finance market is worth more than 98 billion pounds ($123.5 billion) and has eight of the world's 27 fintech unicorns- start-up companies worth more than$1 billion- and last year received more than 2 billion pounds of investment, according to a report released on Friday by EY (formerly Ernst& Young). Another recent report, by KPMG and the Australian investment firm H2 Ventures, noted that five of the world's top 10 fintech firms are Chinese. Ant financial topped the list. Other notable Chinese fintech firms launching offices in the UK this year include Chengdu-based BBD and Shanghai-based Wind Information, which both sellfinancial data to institutional investors. Fiat Chrysler assembly workers work on partially assembled minivans at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Windsor, Ontario, Feb 9, 2015. [Photo/Agencies] Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV gained the most in two years and General Motors Co the most in a year after President-elect Donald Trump selected a prominent critic of global warming to lead his Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Tesla Motors Inc, which is betting big on alternative energy, declined. The EPA is scheduled next year to evaluate President Barack Obama's ambitious fuel economy regulations that were originally intended to double the efficiency of the nation's light-vehicle fleet to 54.5 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2025. Myron Ebell, a director at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and a climate-change skeptic, is leading the agency's transition into the Trump administration. "We believe it is unlikely that new fuel-economy rules will be passed or that existing ones will be strengthened," Adam Jonas, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said in a report to clients. "Enforcement and preservation of current CAFE standards is unclear." That could be positive for automakers looking to sell more profitable pickups and sport utility vehicles and negative for makers of hybrids or pure-electric vehicles. Fiat Chrysler, which sells the highest proportion of light trucks among the biggest automakers, surged 9.7 percent, the most since Oct 29, 2014, to close at $7.59. GM climbed 5.7 percent, the most since Oct 21, 2015, to $32.73. Ford finished at $11.94, a 3.1 percent gain, the biggest since April 28. 'Demote' the EPA Trump will "follow the national Republican Party platform on the EPA, which will actually demote it as an agency and have it report to a joint bipartisan committee and essentially take away much of its independence," said Sean McAlinden, an automotive economist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "The CAFE rules would be canceled," he added, referring to the corporate average fuel economy standards. Even if Trump doesn't scrap it entirely, his administration may "lessen the stringency" of the four-decade old program, according to Jack Nerad, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "I would think auto companies would prefer that," he said. "They would look at that as somebody who would not put another roadblock between them and the consumer." Weaker fuel-economy rules may accelerate the shift from cars to pickups, SUVs and vans as well as reduce demand for hybrids or pure-electric vehicles. American depositary receipts of Toyota Motor Corp, the maker of the Prius hybrid line and top seller of cars in the US, fell 0.8 percent to close at $110.86, and those of Nissan Motor Co, which invested heavily in its Leaf electric car and sells the fewest trucks among the top six automakers, dropped 4.9 percent to $18.65. Tesla, the Palo Alto, California-based company that produces only electric vehicles and is buying solar-panel installer SolarCity Corp, declined 2.5 percent for a second straight day to close at $185.35. Rules request Also on Thursday, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers sent an eight-page letter to the Trump transition team with a series of recommendations, including aligning programs run by the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Inconsistent rules threaten to saddle the industry with "potentially billions of dollars in fines," said the trade group, which represents most of the world's biggest automakers including GM, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen AG. The alliance asked for a presidential panel to review all auto regulations, including fuel-economy rules, as consumers continue to reject efficient cars and electrified vehicles in favor of pickups and SUVs. "The combination of low gas prices and the existing fuel efficiency gains from the early years of the program is undercutting consumer willingness to buy the vehicles with more expensive alternative powertrains," the group said. Bloomberg A man controls a drone at a training organization in Zouping county, Shandong province, April 9, 2016. [Photo/IC] With advancement in technology, drones are likely to be used in greater numbers in mineral exploration, traffic administration, disaster surveillance and agriculture. This means that a license has become a necessity to operate them. A variety of training organizations are swarming into the burgeoning market as the demand for drone pilots is on the rise. Shenzhen D-zooom Aerotech Co Ltd, one of the biggest drone pilot training organizations, has trained more than 1,000 professional drone pilots and given drone science lessons to over 3,000 primary and secondary school students. Liu Yueping, the president of Shenzhen D-zooom said: "The research and technology of drones needs to be standardized, so it is not easy to train a qualified pilot. The types of drones are diversified and there is no standardized tutorial material to teach pilots." They have organized technology professionals to design training materials and conduct courses. According to regulations by the Civil Aviation Administration of China in 2014, the unmanned aerial vehicles operators, whose UAVs weigh more than 7 kilograms or fly higher than 120 meters, or further than 500 meters, are required to have a license issued by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, and apply to the air traffic control department for airspace and flight plans. Statistics from AOPA show there are 31 drone training organizations across the country, while the number of pilots who are licensed is less than 700. It means the majority of drone pilots are flying illegally. D-Zooom has been authorized by AOPA to issue its qualification. Liu added the students taking the training course are professionals in drone companies or people who want to enter into the field. The cost of training at D-zooom ranges from 6,500 yuan ($962) to 41,800 yuan in accordance with the type of drone, and takes 10 days to half a year. Trainees will be taught basic skills about how to operate different kinds of drones. Zhang Xiaokun, 28, a drone pilot from an aerial photography company, said "the average salary is 3,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan, and in summer peak season, we could earn more than 10,000 yuan per month." A pilot with more hours and maintenance experience could earn more. Zhang said the work is not easy as aerial photography needs to consider light and weather conditions, adding it is common to work from dawn to night. The value of China's drone industry could reach 75 billion yuan by 2025, according to a report by Beijing-based iResearch Consulting Group. Jean Xiao, a research analyst from IDC said drone manufacturers are focusing on the drone pilot training sector, such as establishing specialized training schools to cultivate talent, adding some primary and secondary schools conduct courses about drone operations to develop interest. Pizza the polar bear will be leaving this mall enclosure for an ocean park in North China. The news comes on the heels of a campaign by animal-rights activists to have him released. MAI ZI / VSHINE Pizza the polar bear will be delivered to an ocean park in North China after an impassioned global campaign to release him from a shopping mall enclosure in Guangzhou. The Humane Society International (HSI), which led the effort to set free "the world's saddest polar bear" from the confines of an aquarium at the Grandview Shopping Mall in South China's Guangdong province, announced the news in a release on Sunday. The location of Pizza's new home hasn't been disclosed, but apparently the bear will be reunited with his parents. The mall, which has maintained that Pizza is well adjusted and well fed, posted its decision on Weibo. Following is the English translation: "Due to upgrading of exhibition halls, as a testament to urban renewal of Guangzhou, a result of the harmonious collaboration between commerce and tourism, and a witness to urban compassion and hearts of love, Pizza, the bear baby' loved by millions of tourists, will say goodbye for a short period of time. He will return to the embrace of his mom and dad. "This upgrading of the facility will not however affect the normal operation of the aquarium. To say goodbye to this polar bear prince and at the request of the visitors, we shall hold a great and special farewell party for him on November 13. We shall invite all the fans of Pizza, all the staff members of the Grandview Polar Ocean Park who see Pizza as a family member, and all other experts and people who have passion for the development of ocean parks in China to come to the party and to bear witness to the touching moment at the send-off party." Qin Xiaona, director of the Beijing Capital Animal Welfare Association (CAWA), said: "It's a good decision, the right decision for Pizza, but it's not the end. Temporary is not good enough. Now we hope that Grandview will learn from this episode and move Pizza permanently so that he never again has to endure the dreadful life in a shopping mall. Pizza has some company at the mall, such as penguins and arctic foxes and wolves. "We still want to see the aquarium closed once and for all, to see all the animals moved, and we call on the Commerce Ministry to close all shopping mall zoos and aquariums and to prevent these types of zoos from being opened," Qin said. HSI and CAWA are calling for Pizza's move to be permanent. Peter Li, HSI's China policy specialist, said: "Pizza the polar bear has endured a life of deprivation and suffering in his small, artificial, glass-fronted room at the shopping mall, so the news that he's getting out at last makes me very happy and relieved for him. At last he will feel the sun on his fur, sniff fresh air and see the sky above him. "We commend the mall for being gracious enough to listen to Chinese and global voices of concern, and hope they will do the right thing for this poor bear who has already been through enough." Last month, HSI and a Chinese partner group VShine released video footage showing the polar bear exhibiting distress signs such as head swaying and repetitive pacing. williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com Chinese study estimates up to 10 million artifacts from China scattered worldwide Beijing has stepped up efforts to stop the sale of illegally obtained Chinese cultural relics by auction houses, collectors and museums. In the latest case, Yokohama International Auction, in Japan, was informed by China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage on Oct 21 that several Tang Dynasty (618-907) frescoes and manuscripts of Buddhist sutras about to go under the hammer were stolen from China in the past century. The auction house, founded by a Japanese citizen with Chinese ancestry, canceled the sale. The move was a step in the right directionno profit was madebut their return to the unidentified client shows stronger international rules are needed. A new Chinese regulation, released a day earlier, bans the auction of stolen, smuggled or looted relics. It is aimed especially at keeping such relics in China, but it also can be cited as a guideline when dealing with other countries and regions. Since 1989, China has been part of several international conventions to prevent the trade in stolen relics. "We will maintain the right of repatriation if any item is confirmed to have been illegally taken abroad," the cultural heritage administration said in a statement to China Daily. One example would be the frescoes that were to be auctioned in Japan, which are from Dunhuang, in Gansu province. They were stolen by Otani Kozui, a Japanese abbot who was part of expeditions to China between 1902 and 1913, officials said. There is reason for encouragement, according to Huo Zhengxin, a professor of international law at China University of Political Science and Law. Worldwide, many guidelines also have been issued to push collectors to pay more attention to the origin of cultural relics. "The legal circumstances are getting better," Huo said. China to build two wildlife conservation museums Xinhua | Updated: 2016-11-14 07:59 CHANGSHA - China will build two wildlife museums for storage of confiscated wildlife products, research and education, said a senior forestry official. The two museums, one in Beijing and the other in the central province of Hunan, will be centers for protecting endangered wildlife species and showcasing the country's achievements in cracking down on illegal wildlife trading, said Chen Fengxue, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration. A ground-breaking ceremony was held for the wildlife museum in Changsha, provincial capital of Hunan, on Thursday. After completion, the two museums will provide a professional platform for promoting wildlife protection, said Chen at the ceremony. Environment improved at Yangtze' headwater Xinhua | Updated: 2016-11-14 08:00 WUHAN - Surveys have found that the environment at the headwater of the Yangtze, China's longest river, has "markedly improved," with lakes expanding and wildlife thriving. Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute of Changjiang Water Resources Commission made the conclusion after analyzing the results of a survey in the heartland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau this summer. The institute's surveys show that lakes in the area are getting bigger and the number of plants and wild animals have grown over the past 10 years. The Yangtze's riverhead is part of Sanjiangyuan (three river country), home to the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Lancang (Mekong) rivers. With a fragile ecosystem, Sanjiangyuan is dubbed "Asia's water tower." From 1989 to 2015, three major lakes in the region's Hol Xil Natural Reserve swelled. The size of Hoh Sai Lake rose to 326 square kilometers from 259 square kilometers; Haiding Nor Lake expanded to 77 square kilometers from 38 kilometers; and the size of Yan Lake nearly quadrupled, according to Tan Debao from the institute. The year 2003 marked the start of improvements, Tan said. "The three lakes are separate. But in the wet season now they connect," Tan said. In addition, the plain grass, which was at one time very sparse, has spread to the hillside in the past couple of years, Tan said. The populations of endangered animals, such as the Tibetan antelope and snow leopard, have also increased. In the past 20 years, the number of Tibetan antelopes has gone from 40,000 to almost 200,000 on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Chen attributed the improved situation to increased temperatures and rainfall. The daily average temperature, highest temperature and lowest temperature at Yangtze' source have significantly risen, according to data collected from eight monitoring stations during the past 60 years. Statistics from the National Meteorological Bureau said the precipitation in areas of the region at over 4,000 meters above sea level had increased on average by 1.68 millimeters per year from 1961 to 2014. However, Chen warned that the long-term influence of the climate change needs further monitoring and research. For example, if an inland salt lake, which gets bigger, starts to flow into the tributary of the Yangtze, Tan said, "We need to be aware of the impact this will have on the Yangtze." Generous governmental spending on environmental restoration in the Sanjiangyuan area is another factor behind the improved environment. China established Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve in 2000. Five years later, a 7.6-billion-yuan (1.1-billion-U.S. dollar) conservation project was launched in the region. In January, 2014, a second-phase conservation project (2014-2020) began with financial backing of 16 billion yuan. Thanks to these efforts, the forest coverage rate in Sanjiangyuan increased from 3.2 percent in 2004 to 4.8 percent in 2012, and is expected to reach 5.5 percent by 2020. The latest plan to help better protect and manage its natural resources and wildlife is to make the area into a 123,100 square-kilometer national park in five years. Many tourism and educational projects will be limited to the edges of the park, to minimize any impact from human activity. Yu Xu, one of the first Chinese female fighter jet pilots, died in an accident on Saturday morning.[Photo/VCG] For Chinese air force pilots, flying the nation's most advanced stealth fighter jet, the J-20, is a dream. This was the case with Captain Yu Xu, one of China's first female fighter jet pilots. Yu, a member of the People's Liberation Army August 1st Air Demonstration Team, told reporters earlier this month at the 11th Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong province that she had wondered what it would be like. However, this will never happen. The pilot, 30, died in an accident on Saturday during flight training in Hebei province. By late Sunday, nearly 60 million Sina Weibo users had read the news and many paid their respects. In WeChat Moments, a mobile phone-based, Twitter-like service, many recalled how she inspired them to chase their dreams. Senior Colonel Shen Jinke, spokesman for the PLA Air Force, said all air force members deeply mourned Yu's death, while the air force will continue to faithfully fulfill its mission. The air force did not disclose details of the tragedy, but witnesses and military sources said Yu and a male pilot were conducting aerobatic training before they had to eject from their J-10 fighter jet for an unknown reason. The male pilot parachuted to safety, but Yu hit the wing of another J-10 and died. Born in 1986, Yu was from Chongzhou in Sichuan province. She joined the military in 2005 as a student at the PLA Air Force Aviation University. She graduated in 2009, becoming one of the first 16 Chinese women pilots capable of flying fighter jets. Before the 16 airwomen, all of the air force's female fliers were transport aircraft pilots. Yu took part in the National Day Parade on Oct 1, 2009, as she piloted a JL-8 trainer jet above Tian'anmen Square. In July 2012, she flew a J-10 fighter, becoming the first woman to operate the advanced aircraft. She was one of only four women qualified to fly the third-generation J-10. She had become a flight squadron commander, and fans gave her the nickname Golden Peafowl. As Beatrice has changed over the years and society evolved, so has health care. The medical industry may be one area that has changed the most in the last century and even in recent decades. Gene Sullivan, who has worked at Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center for the last 41 years, has worked through many of these changes that drastically altered his job. Sullivan is a certified surgical technologist, who assists doctors in surgery doing everything from preparing the tools to cleaning up afterward. When Sullivan began at the hospital, practices that would seem archaic today were commonplace. Needles were resharpened and reused, as were medical sponges used to absorb blood. The general trend of reusing rather than disposing of medical items is one key change Sullivan has seen over the years. When I first started, nothing was disposable; it had to be reprocessed, he recalled. Like your needles, we had a needle board and then we had all different shapes and sizesYour sponges that they would use to absorb the blood or whatever, we would wash them and they were reused. After they went through the washer we had like a lint roller and you had to roll over them to make sure there was nothing foreign on them before you reused them. Throwing away old needles was an important change toward modern medicine, but arguably the biggest in Beatrice came four years ago when BCHs new hospital opened north of town. Tom Sommers, CEO of the hospital, said the decision to build north of Beatrice was driven in part by competition from Lincoln, and speculation where development would happen. One thought that I had was the growth is going to come down Highway 77, Sommers recalled. Now how long that takes could be 10 years, that could be several years. The second thing was if the organization is going to survive, we need to be cognitive of the fact that a market that could be a threat to us is Lincoln. We need to build on the north side so people dont drive to Lincoln. The four-lane highway is a good thing as well as a bad thing. Upon entering the main door of the hospital, guests see a large reception room featuring chairs around a fireplace, sculptures and a receptionist in the tan room with wood trim. Connected to the lobby is the hospitals chapel and gift store, in addition to stairs and elevators leading to the second floor. To the left of the main entrance, along the hallway filled with large window panes, is the cafeteria area. The south wing of the hospital is composed of inpatient care, with rooms that nearly doubled those at the previous hospital in central Beatrice at 325 square feet compared to 175 square feet. Labor and delivery rooms were another highlight when the new hospital was built, with 510 square feet. This allows space for family, the patient, the baby and additional equipment, including a full bathroom with a whirlpool tub. The building was 144,000 square feet and constructed at a cost of $45 million when opened four years ago. It was put into service in February 2012 and today employs around 550 workers. Sommers said initially, the hospital was planned to be around half the size before plans were eventually increased. We happened to have the downturn in the economy and the board made a very strategic decision to proceed even though everybody got nervous, he said. The economy is down, is this the time to build a hospital? What happened was because nobody was building anything but we were, it cut our costs. We were able to expand the organization. Earlier this year, the hospital grew larger as an expansion was added to the north of the building. The $7.2 million expansion was prompted by space issues in some departments. The Women and Childrens Clinic and the Infusion Center were two areas that benefited from the 17,500-square-foot expansion. The addition relocated the Women and Childrens Clinic and the Infusion Center to the expansions first floor. The Health Information Management Department was relocated, and the Physician Clinic on the second floor was renovated. A total of 86 patient parking stalls were also part of the plan, in addition to 29 additional employee parking stalls. The hospitals roots date back to the Mennonite Deaconess Home, which was state of the art when it was completed in 1911. It served the community until 1976 when it was renamed Beatrice Community Hospital. The previous hospital was built with inpatient care in mind, though medical trends have shifted to an outpatient frame of mind. The current hospital was built to accommodate this idea of healthcare. Everybody at the time thought we wanted to expand; if you go back to the 80s when they wanted to build a new hospital, I think it was a couple hundred bed hospital, Sommers said. If it had been that big, wed be bankrupt today. Sullivan, like many BCH employees, had no doubt the new hospital would be an improvement, and added theres very little he misses about the old building. The working environment, you wouldnt believe how the morale is better, he said. Its nice, bright and cheery compared to the old place. I just enjoy that so much more I miss some of the staff and members that worked back then and the doctors, but I dont miss the building at all. Part of the reason the staff enjoys the hospital so much is they provided input to properly outfit the building. One upgrade Sullivan mentioned was that operating equipment is now no rotating booms that hang from the ceiling and can be repositioned without dragging cords on the ground. Sullivan also recalled in the old days that the hospital had a backup generator, though the system wasnt automatic like it is today. They werent like the generators now where if the lights went out theyd kick on right away, he said. Somebody had to go start the generator. We remember cases wed have to go get a flashlight and hold a flashlight up while the doctor was working until somebody could start the generator. He said storage used to be a problem at the old building, but between added storage space and the introduction of computers that led to records becoming digitized, those issues have largely gone away. Diane Vicars, BCH Marketing Director, said hospital staff isnt the only group to benefit from digital records. With the electronic health record, that has allowed us to provide the patient portal so that patients then can also see some of that electronic health record on their own computers or mobile devices, she said. That information, as we start looking at wanting patients to become more involved with their care, not only is it easier for providers and care people to see that information, but patients have easier access to that information. Before computers, Sullivan said things as simple as getting an X-ray to a different doctor for a second opinion were difficult and required a large X-ray to be physically transported for examination. In addition to adding computers, cell phones have also changed the industry as workers can be accessed easier. He recalled the days when beepers were used, and being on call meant you had to stay near a landline phone. Medical practice also changed over the years, one example being Laparoscopy procedures. The patient would have to have a long incision, now its all done with cameras and all those instruments, Sullivan recalled. Instead of having a 4-5 inch incision you have four little holes to do a gallbladder now and its all done on the screen. Your visualization is a lot better. And the healing is so much faster. You dont have that big scar now and pain control is better. While the changes have been immense over the years, the medical industry is always evolving, as Sullivan is sure more improvements are yet to come. About two weeks ago, I was in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, covering the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, commonly known as the Zhuhai Air Show. On Nov 1, the first day of the exhibition, the star was the J-20 fifth-generation stealth combat aircraft, and two J-20s performed a short routine above thousands of spectators to make their public debut. I'm convinced that every military fan, including myself, was so eager to see what the J-20 would be like that we hoped the aerobatic display by the People's Liberation Army August 1st Air Demonstration Team, which was to be held beforehand, would be short. I also believe that fewer spectators paid as much attention to the team as they did at previous Zhuhai shows because of the J-20. Now, looking at the black-and-white pictures of Yu Xu, a young flyer with the August 1st team who died in the line of duty, I think I should have watched more carefully her last "sky dance" in Zhuhai. I presume she'd understand, as all of us, including possibly Yu, were so looking forward to seeing China's fifth-generation stealth fighter jet and so happy that our nation finally has a strong air force that can prevent a repeat of the humiliating period that China endured several decades ago. I read in media reports that Yu had wished that someday she could fly a J-20. This makes me feel deeply sorry for her, but I also think she was lucky because she actually saw the J-20. Many Chinese air force pilots probably dreamed about such an advanced plane but did not live to see it. Yu once told reporters that she sometimes envied others of her age who were not PLA personnel because "when we're training hard in the air force, they're enjoying a colorful life". Yet she didn't regret choosing to be a PLA pilot. "There are no things in my youth so far that I should feel sorry for," she said. "No matter how tough the training has been, I've never feared and retreated." I owe a thank you to Yu, who will be forever young, and to her air force comrades because I know China and its people are safe thanks to them flying high in the sky to safeguard this land. One of the country's most-wanted economic fugitives, who had been on the run for 15 years in New Zealand, returned to China on Saturday to turn himself in, according to the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Yan Yongming, 47, former chairman of Tonghua Golden-Horse Pharmaceutical Co in Jilin province, who was accused of fraud and embezzlement involving $624 million ($91.6 million), fled to New Zealand in 2001 after his crime was exposed. Yan returned voluntarily to confess to his crimes, offering to return "a huge amount of ill-gotten assets" and pay a hefty fine, the top anti-graft watchdog said in a statement, without giving further details. According to the CCDI, he is the 36th fugitive to have returned to face trial since April last year, when Interpol issued "red notices" - international arrest warrants - to track down 100 Chinese corrupt fugitives and confiscate their ill-gotten gains. China placed Yan fifth on its list of 100 most-wanted fugitives. In August, the New Zealand High Court ordered an end to a money laundering investigation into Yan and a freeze of assets totaling NZ$43 million ($31 million), according to New Zealand police. The judgment follows a three-year investigation into Yan that focused on the laundering of large sums of money reportedly amassed from fraud and corruption allegedly conducted in China between 1999 and 2001, according to the police. Police said in the statement that they would end their investigation and release Yan's properties once he hands over the money, with the recovered funds to be shared between China and New Zealand. According to reports in New Zealand, both countries intend to start negotiations on a bilateral treaty for extraditing fugitives. However, sources from the Ministry of Justice said that signing such a treaty would take a long time due to complex procedures. "Yan's return once again proves there is no safe haven for fugitives, and the Operation Sky Net campaign has been tightened," the CCDI said. zhangyan1@chinadaily.com.cn Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 File photos of Fan Xiaoqin and Jack Ma. [Photo from web] A young Jack Ma look-alike has won the heart of the founder of Alibaba Group, the real Jack Ma. Fan Xiaoqin or "mini Jack Ma" is 8 years old and lives in Yongfeng County, east China's Jiangxi Province. His family circumstances are unfortunate as his mother has poliomyelitis, his father a missing leg and his grandma, Alzheimer's disease, reported jxnews.com.cn on November 13. "Mini Jack Ma" came to fame after a villager posted a video of him online in 2015. The internet exploded in remarks over how similar the boy looked to Jack Ma. Once again, with the coming of double-eleven "mini Jack Ma" won the hearts of internet once again, and netizens urged that Jack Ma should act as a beneficiary to Fan Xiaoqin, given his family circumstances. The attention and buzz caught Jack Ma's attention and he saw the similarities between himself and the boy. Just last week, he announced he would financially support Fan Xiaoqin until he graduates from university. A member of the ground crew directs the pilot of a J-15 jet fighter on the flight deck of CNS Liaoning. Zhang Kai / For China Daily Officers aboard the nation's first aircraft carrier are preparing a new generation of sailors for the PLA Navy. Zhang Zhihao reports from CNS Liaoning. CNS Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier, is currently serving as a training ship for the next generation of officers who will serve on the country's aircraft carriers. The role is paramount because the defense ministry confirmed that construction of a second carrier had neared completion on Oct 27, as per schedule. According to the website of People's Daily, Cao Weidong, a naval expert and officer in the People's Liberation Army, expects to see the second carrier finished sometime in the next two years. The training techniques and personnel on the Liaoning have been shrouded in mystery, until now. Li Dongyou, the ship's political commissar, said 42 senior officers serve on the vessel as instructors, and most of them were members of the carrier's refitting team in 2009. "Now, they are the technical backbones of their departments and role models for young recruits," he said. PLA Navy documents show that each senior officer has trained three or more squad leaders on average, accounting for 70 percent of the young officers onboard. Risking lives for knowledge These officers were either selected based on their expertise or were volunteers who "wanted to serve on a bigger ship and be a part of history", said Ruan Wanlin, 44, a first class petty officer. Although they have served in the navy for more than two decades and have combined experience of more than 450 missions, the officers said transforming the Varyag, a former Soviet Union battle cruiser, into the CNS Liaoning was the biggest challenge they had ever faced. Liu Debo, 44, a first class petty officer with 26 years experience in boiler rooms, was stunned when he saw the Soviet vessel for the first time. "It was a floating junkyard," he recalled. Originally laid down as a Kuznetsov-class carrier named Riga for the Soviet navy in 1985, the ship was renamed Varyag in 1990. The USSR collapsed before construction could be completed, so the hull was transferred to Ukraine where it lay untended until it was bought by China in 1998. In 2002, the ship arrived in Dalian, Liaoning province, where the hull, engine, and radar and electronics systems were fully upgraded. In the winter of 2009, Liu boarded the Liaoning to repair its engine - "the heart of the carrier" - but problems soon arose. "There were no design layouts, no models and no experience to rely on," Liu said. "We had to start everything from scratch." CNS Liaoning has about 20 decks, containing more than 3,600 rooms, served by about 10,000 kilometers of wires and pipes. When Liu and the team began their survey of the vessel, the interior had neither ventilation nor lights, and the maze-like tunnels were filled with broken pipes and torn, rusty metal. The teams went in with helmets, flashlights, facemasks and measuring equipment. "We climbed through every hatch, followed every pipe and drew every detail by hand. We risked our lives so that one day the ship would sail again," Liu said. Second Class Petty Officer Wang Chunhui and his team descended into the dark, pungent fuel tanks to measure their dimensions. Each carried 30 minutes of air in tanks, but most members could only endure 15 minutes because of exhaustion and fear of getting poisoned. The exception was Wang. The 38-year-old worked until his clothes were drenched in sweat and the alarm sounded on his respirator. When his young crew asked him to rest, he told them: "I have more experience than you guys; I have to do more." After a typical working day, the officers often huddled around a blackboard in a meeting room until after midnight to discuss technical details, despite the temperature often dipping as low as -20 C. Having accumulated thousands of pages of notes, some of the officers have published operation manuals and training pamphlets. On Sept 25, 2012, the vessel, now officially called CNS Liaoning, was handed over to the navy. "If we ever build a museum to the Liaoning, I hope there will be a section where our broken hardhats and dirty gloves are exhibited so future generations know the hardships we went through," said Wang Wei, a 39-year-old second class petty officer, who surveyed the ship's electrical system. Cheng Haixia is a second class petty officer aboard the CNS Liaoning. He is also morale officer, so in his free time, the 40-year-old veteran regularly checks the ship's internal message board to help solve the problems new recruits often experience. "It's a great honor to serve on China's first aircraft carrier, and I would do it even if they didn't pay me. Not everyone feels the same way, of course, so it's up to me to help them," he said. Last year, his wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and although her surgery was successful, she will be on medication for the rest of her life. However, Cheng rarely mentioned his family's ordeal to his shipmates. "Everyone has sacrificed something to be part of this ship. We wish we could be there for our families, but we have our duties to perform," he said. Jiang Xueyou, another second class petty officer, echoed Cheng's sentiments. "It's always hard to balance loyalty and filial piety," said the 38-year-old, whose mother died in 2010 while he was away working on the carrier's flight navigation system. The parents of at least six other senior officers have died since 2009. The mother of Second Class Petty Officer Wang Wei died earlier this year, while he was away at sea. The 39-year old said he was heartbroken, but he has no regrets. "I have been in the navy for more than 20 years and have seen it grow from nothing into a formidable global force," he said. "The navy has not only provided for my family, but also made me a proud man. Serving on the Liaoning allows me to be a part of naval history. " The officers have to put their families to the backs of their minds when duty calls, but they praised the support they have been given by wives, husbands and parents. Zhang Naigang, also a second class petty officer, is in charge of the system that launches and directs the carrier's planes. On Nov 23, 2012, two months after the Liaoning was officially handed over to the PLA Navy, the 40-year-old pressed the button that launched the first J-15 fighter jet from the carrier. "What an honor!" he said. "It felt like launching the Shenzhou spaceship." Military security meant Zhang was unable to tell his parents and relatives about his work. He praised his wife for her unstinting support and for being the mainstay of the family. "Half of my medals should go to my wife," he said. "I owe my family so much." A commemorative museum dedicated to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo Trials, was suggested by scholars at a two-day forum in Shanghai on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of the opening of the trials. The trials were convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for war crimes. "The Tokyo Trials defended civilization," said Gao Wenbing, the only remaining survivor who participated as a translator and assistant prosecutor. "I am 95 years old this year, but history should not be forgotten and facts should not be distorted. I hope I can see a commemorative museum in my lifetime." After World War II, the Allied Forces tried Japanese war criminals, with the proceedings playing an important role in shaping the postwar Asia-Pacific order. The trials were said to be the longest and largest in human history. A score of historians and jurists from around the world gathered on Saturday for a forum on the Tokyo Trials and world peace, hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. There were six panel discussions, with 25 scholars from countries including China, the United States, Japan, Britain and New Zealand in attendance. Also attending was Mei Xiaokan, daughter of Mei Ru'ao, a Chinese judge who participated in the Tokyo Trials. Xiang Longwan, honorary director of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Tokyo Trials research center, was quoted by chinanews.com as saying that a commemorative museum is in the preparation stage. Ending on Nov 12, 1948, the trials charged 28 defendants, mostly Japanese military and government officials, based on testimony from hundreds of witnesses and thousands of exhibits. "The proceedings laid a foundation for rules that can be applied, especially for small countries, to crimes against peace. I am not naive enough to believe that it will stop people from starting wars, but at least it might make them think twice," said Neil Boister, a professor at the University of Canterbury Law School. Zhang Jie, president of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said regional conflicts and tense situations remind us that peace remains a common pursuit. In 2011, the university established the Center for Tokyo Trial Studies in collaboration with China National Library. It is the world's first academic research institution devoted to the study of the Tokyo Trials. BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday discussed China-US relations with Donald Trump in a telephone conversation. Xi congratulated Trump on his election as US president and expressed his willingness to work with him. Since the two countries established formal ties 37 years ago, bilateral relations have been continuously progressing, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples and promoting world and regional peace, stability and prosperity, Xi said. Facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the two countries, he said. As China-US cooperation faces important opportunities and has huge potential, the two countries need to strengthen coordination, advance their respective economic development and global economic growth and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples and promote the smooth development of China-US relations, said the Chinese president. As the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country respectively and as the top two economies of the world, there are many things in which China and the United States can and should cooperate, Xi said. "I attach great importance to China-US relations and am ready to work with the US side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world," he told Trump. For his part, Trump thanked Xi for the congratulations and said that he agreed with Xi on his views about US-China relations. China is a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects, said Trump. The United States and China can achieve win-win results featuring mutual benefits, he added. Trump voiced his readiness to work with Xi to strengthen US-China cooperation and expressed his belief that US-China relations will witness even greater development. Xi and Trump also agreed to maintain close contact, establish a good working relationship and meet at an early date to exchange views on bilateral ties and other issues of common concern. Beijing ready to push forward China-US ties on new starting point: FM ANKARA - China stands ready to further promote its relations with the United States on the new starting point following the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Sunday. China stands ready to further promote its relations with the United States on the new starting point following the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Sunday. Wang made the remarks at a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, after they held the first meeting under the China-Turkey foreign ministers' consultation mechanism. Asked whether China has made contact with Trump's team, Wang said China maintains close contact with the US side at various levels, adding that it is a consensus shared by the US Republican Party and the Democratic Party to constantly develop and deepen China-US relations. China, he said, is willing to continue its cooperation with the administration of outgoing US President Barack Obama, so as to ensure a smooth transition of bilateral ties to the next US administration. Meanwhile, Beijing also stands ready to communicate with Trump's team, so as to cement mutual understanding and expand consensus on bilateral cooperation, added the Chinese foreign minister. Citing Chinese President Xi Jinping's congratulatory message to Trump, Wang said China is willing to push for greater progress in China-US ties on the new starting point on the basis of the principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. Xi's message has charted the course for the future development of China-US ties, and China is ready to make joint efforts with the US side to that end, said the minister. Female Chinese fighter jet pilot Yu Xu of the Bayi Aerobatic Team of the Peoples Liberation Army's Air Force is pictured during the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2016, in Zhuhai city, South Chinas Guangdong province, Nov 1, 2016. [Photo/IC] The engine and the flight data recorder, or black box, of the two-seater fighter jet J-10 that crashed and left one of the country's first female fighter pilots Yu Xu dead, have been recovered at the accident site in Yutian county, North China's Hebei province, an official said. Rescuers found the engine and black box Saturday evening and handed them over to authorities, said the official in charge of the military department of Chenjiapu township in Yutian. The authorities are investigating the cause, the official added, and the search work for the jet's remains ended Sunday afternoon. Two pilots from the Bayi Aerobatic Team of People's Liberation Army's Air Force were conducting a routine flight training Saturday morning in Tianjin before they were forced to eject from the jet. Two J-10 jets from the aerobatic team were training when the planes hit each other, according to media reports. Witnesses said the impact left a 10-meter diameter and 3-meter deep pit on the farmland at Dayangpu village of Chenjiapu. The plane was flying from west to east before the crash. Another plane circled twice above the site and left. The male pilot parachuted to safety. But Yu Xu, the country's first female J-10 pilot, hit the wing of another J-10 and died. She was at the back seat during the training. A medical worker at the Yutian county hospital said the male pilot was sent to hospital around 11 am on Saturday, and was discharged soon as he had minor injuries. He has been identified as 35 years old Li. Born in 1986, Yu was from Chongzhou city in Southwest China's Sichuan province. She joined the military in 2005 as a student at the PLA Air Force Aviation University, and first flew J-10 in July 2012. Fans gave her the nickname Golden Peafowl because the beautiful and versatile woman was also better at the peafowl dance. A photo showed that she performed the dance at a school party after joining in the university. Yu has joined the performance of the Bayi Aerobatic Team during the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2016, in Zhuhai city, South China's Guangdong province earlier this month. Yu did an interview with China National Radio in Zhuhai, which provided the last tape recordings of her. She said it was a happy thing to be a pilot and she has never regretted her decision. She also dreamed to become an astronaut. "I will receive hard training to realize my dream," she said. Yu's parents arrived in Tianjin Saturday evening after the army informed them of the news. They choked with tears and stayed up at Yu's dormitory room for the whole night. The parents ate nothing before their friend Du Wenbiao, a military officer, finally persuaded them to have something Sunday evening. Chongzhou city officials have also arrived in Tianjin Sunday afternoon to help the parents to deal with the aftermath. Millions of people read the news released by the Air Force at Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service in China, and paid their respect. Many have considered Yu as a model in pursuing their dreams. A victim of identity theft in Henan province has been refused admission to college because 13 years ago another woman used her ID to obtain a degree. Wang Nana first applied to Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College in 2003 after taking the national college entrance exams. She was admitted at the time, but never received her admission letter because it was intercepted by Zhang Yingying, who attended the college using Wang's name. Zhang later graduated with a certificate that carries her photograph but Wang's name and ID number, and landed a job as a teacher at a vocational school. The truth was only revealed in March last year, when nine officials were sanctioned and Zhang's student status was revoked following a police investigation. Wang, 33, now wants to attend Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College, but it recently rejected her application, citing rules and regulations that do not allow her to attend twice. "I borrowed many books and planned to read them, it is really difficult, especially at my age," she said. "For me, going to college would mean having no regrets in life, so I do not want to give up. "I am interested in majoring in education because my dream was to be a teacher when I was a girl." After her story appeared in the media, the provincial education authority put out a statement saying that it had not received any requests relating to recovering Wang's student status at Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College. A college official said on Friday that her application will be resubmitted to the provincial education authority. "I am the mother of two kids, and my family lived in Luoyang, not in Zhoukou, so whether I can go to that college is a big issue that needs careful consideration." Wang said. "But I have the right to ask the college to give me a reply." Dont like the Legislature? Buy a new one. Want to reverse the historic action lawmakers took to repeal the death penalty? Buy a referendum to change it so you can get your own way. Such is the life of Nebraska multi-millionaire Governor Pete Ricketts. Its not illegal, but its a giant step down a slippery slope. The lines of separation between the Executive and the Legislative branches of government have been blurred, if not erased. Ricketts veto of the death penalty repeal was overridden so he took $300,000 from his own very deep pockets to finance a petition drive to allow voters to decide the question. It would have been one thing for the Legislature to decide to put the question before voters. And they could have. But lawmakers voted to repeal it after 26 years of discussion and debate. When Ricketts vetoed the bill, they overrode his veto. It wasnt their first veto override. They also had their way with raising the gas tax to fund much-needed infrastructure improvements and they also overrode the governor on a measure to allow children of illegal immigrants who were brought to this country to have drivers licenses. Those combined upsets caused Ricketts to spend an additional $50,000 on candidates opposing incumbents who voted for the vetoes many of them Republicans like Ricketts and endorsed two other challengers opposing Republicans. So, did it work? Of the 11 races where he gave money (9 of them) or endorsed (2 of them) candidates, six won and five lost. Voters overwhelmingly decided to keep the death penalty which hasnt been used in years and cant be done because the state cant get the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injections. As I said, what happened in this election is not illegal. But it certainly smells. Do you imagine that the campaign contributions may have some strings attached? I mean, if somebody gives you $5,000 or more, youre going to at least give them some favorable consideration in casting a vote. The executive branch can peddle influence verbally and promise lawmakers support in many ways. But putting cash on the barrel ups the ante, dont you think? There was a classic case in the Heineman administration of a new state senator who bragged that the governor had come to visit his office and told him that he (the senator) was his man. Thats just embarrassing. The beneficiaries of the governors largesse who won: Joni Albrecht of Thurston; Bruce Bostelman of Brainard who received an endorsement and defeated targeted incumbent Sen. Jerry Johnson of Wahoo; Suzanne Geist of Lincoln; John S. Lowe Sr. of Kearney; Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn; Steve Halloran of Hastings who received an endorsement and defeated targeted incumbent Sen. Les Seiler of Hastings. Those who received money but lost: Senator David Schnoor of Scribner, an appointee two years ago, who lost to challenger Lynne M. Walz of Fremont; Lincoln Attorney Dick Clark, who lost to Anna Wishart of Lincoln; Ian M. Swanson of Omaha, who lost in his attempt to defeat targeted Sen. Rich Kolowski of Omaha; Michael J. Cook of Bellevue, who lost in his attempt to unseat targeted incumbent Sen. Sue Crawford; Karl Elmshaeuser of Ogallala, who lost in his race against Steve Erdman of Bayard. Incumbent Senators Tommy Garrett of Bellevue and Al Davis of Hyannis also lost their re-election bids. That means 17 new faces in the seats in the George W. Norris Legislative Chamber in January. Thats more than one-third of the elected senators, in case any of you are ever wondering why it seems so difficult to get anything done in the Legislature. Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative of climate change, speaks at the High-Level Forum on South-South Cooperation on Climate Change on the sidelines of the United Nations Climate Conference on Monday. [Photo by Wang Yanfei/chinadaily.com.cn] China plans to enhance financial support to developing countries to adapt to climate change through a south to south cooperation scheme, a senior official of the Chinese delegation said during UN climate talks on Monday. Speaking at the High-Level Forum on South-South Cooperation on Climate Change on the sidelines of the United Nation Climate Conference, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative of climate change, said that China would facilitate south-south cooperation on climate change by providing more financial support to developing countries through the 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) South-South Cooperation Fund. The fund, China's independent contribution on global climate finance, "represents part of China's best efforts" to actively participate in global efforts to tackle climate change challenges, said Xie. The fund was announced by Chinese president Xi Jinping during the Climate Change Conference held in December in Paris. Xie said China will use the fund to help developing countries build low carbon demonstration areas, provide personnel training and donate energy-saving renewable energy facilities, as well as promote climate-friendly technologies. "China would ensure money meets the needs of developing countries in adapting [to] climate change," said Xie. Since 2011, China has provided 580 million yuan to help other developing countries cope with climate change, through construction projects that improve capacity building activities. Xie urged developed countries to "keep pledges" on providing support to developing countries on climate adaptation through Green Climate Fund, a fund within the framework of the UNFCCC founded to assist developing countries in climate change. Working together 'only correct choice', Chinese leader tells president-elect President Xi Jinping said on Monday that "there are a lot of things" China and the United States need to, and can, cooperate on, in a phone call congratulating Donald Trump on his US presidential election victory. "Facts have proved that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States," Xi told Trump, noting that the past 37 years of diplomatic relations have brought concrete benefits to the people of the two countries, as well as facilitating global peace and stability. Since China and the US now have important opportunities and great potential for cooperation, Xi said the two countries should better coordinate in promoting the economic development of both countries and the world, and expand exchanges in all fields to bring bilateral ties forward. "During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another," a statement from Trump's presidential transition office said. "President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward." The two leaders also agreed to keep in close contact and meet at an early date. Tao Wenzhao, a researcher of Sino-US relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said mutual interests between the US and China will not be subject to US political changes. Both US parties subscribe to developing relations with Beijing. Tao said it will take time to see how Trump's China policy develops after he takes office, though the new administration "will not necessarily resort to a trade war with China", despite his statements during the campaign and pressure from many US politicians for greater containment of China. Tao said that is "because he is a smart businessman, and a trade war surely impacts both sides". Fu Mengzi, a Sino-US relations researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said there should be a distinction between Trump's statements during the campaign and his policies as president. "He knows the importance of China-US relations. He will find some 'China hands' to draft his policies toward China," he said. At a daily news conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China has remained in close communication with the US side, including Trump's team. Geng also said that China expects to expand cooperation with the new US administration at all levels and in various fields, including infrastructure construction . "The fundamentals of China-US relations will not change in the future, even though frictions may occur," Fu said. Tao said the Chinese government will continue to cooperate with the Obama administration, citing the 27th China-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade coming up in Washington, DC. Zou Shuo contributed to this story. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei temporarily clear, but pollution is forecast to return through Friday The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has entered its fifth round of heavy smog since the beginning of October, dragging down air quality and forcing governments to take tougher measures. However, top-level inspection teams continue to report violations of pollution rules by companies and weak implementation by local authorities. The smog cleared temporarily on Monday but was forecast to return and cover large areas of northern and central China on Tuesday night, lasting through Friday, the National Meteorological Center said on Monday. Beijing's air quality rose to a healthier level on Monday, thanks to winds. Some northern cities in neighboring Hebei province also saw an easing of air pollution, the center said. In some parts of the region, including Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei, expressways were closed temporarily early on Monday due to thick fog, which reduced visibility to within 40 meters. The fog eventually lifted, but air pollution remained severe. As of 3 pm, the air quality reading in Shijiazhuang had climbed to the most severe level in the six-tier alert system, according to data from the provincial air quality monitoring website. Cities in the central and southern areas of the region, such as Baoding and Handan, experienced "hazardous" pollution levels, hitting the second-highest level, and the northern part of Henan, including Zhengzhou, saw air quality hit the most severe level, according to the website of the China National Environmental Monitoring Center. Since the start of October, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has been hit by several rounds of heavy smog, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said. The region's 13 cities met the national air quality standard around 64 percent of days in October, a year-on-year drop of 6.8 percent. The concentration of PM2.5particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that is especially hazardous to human healthincreased by 13.3 percent year-on-year, the ministry said. Among the region's cities, Shijiazhuang has seen the biggest challenges. Since Oct 1, it has had the worst air quality, with PM2.5 readings 60 percent higher than the regional average, the national monitoring center said on Sunday. In October, Shijiazhuang was the worst of the 74 major cities with air pollution. In response, the ministry has sent inspection teams to Shijiazhuang and other cities to monitor their efforts to reduce air pollution. The teams have found companies in violation of government restrictions on the emission of pollutants as well as weak implementation by authorities. The burning of waste and corn straw outdoors is severe, the inspection teams found. Hebei has set strict controls on pollutant emissions, such as suspending polluting industries like cement-making plants during the heating season, from Nov 15 to March 15, while iron and steel plants and coal-fired power plants will be shut down if they cannot guarantee stable emissions. Other emergency measures taken to cope with severe smog will become regular efforts. Shijiazhuang, for example, will begin vehicle-use restrictions during the heating season, allowing about one-fifth of private vehicles to operate each day. "The detailed restrictions and implementation plan will be released soon based on cities' conditions," said an official from the provincial Environmental Department who requested anonymity. Global financial institution optimistic on Chinese market Switzerland-headquartered wealth manager UBS AG aims to continue sponsoring quality performances to enhance the international standing of the annual Beijing Music Festival. "We are delighted to see that Cameron Carpenter's recently concluded organ performance was a highlight at the 21-day festival, which presented 30 performances to audiences in the Chinese capital," said Eugene Qian, UBS Group China country head and president. The BMF has been dedicated to optimizing itself and gaining new momentum. It has not only provided quality cultural experiences, but also offered a benchmark for the sector in its professionalism and trend-setting leadership. "The annual event has offered unique cultural perspectives and developed as a strong brand. We look forward to next year, which will celebrate the event's 20th anniversary," Qian said. Over the past 10 years, the high-profile musicians invited to perform at the church concert have helped the event to build its own brand and become a highlight of the annual music festival. The company has partnered with the music gala for 13 years. This year, UBS sponsored the festival's first organ recital and debut performance by the virtuoso organist, Cameron Carpenter. At this year's Wangfujing Church Concert, Carpenter played the 'International Touring Organ' - a multifunctional digital organ made to his design by specialist organ-builders Marshall and Ogletree. Taking place on Oct 25, the recital included works by Bach, Bernstein, Piazzolla and Hisaishi, Carpenter's own arrangements of pieces by Wagner and Tchaikovsky, and an improvisation based on Chinese folk songs. The US-born composer-performer is widely acknowledged as having revolutionized organ music with his bold repertoire and dynamic performances. "He impressed the audience with his unique, delicate and bespoke organ, as well as his devotion to creating music genius, playing the instrument with both hands and feet," Qian said. Carpenter is the first concert organist in history to prefer the digital organ to the pipe organ and to champion it as the future of the instrument. He is greatly enjoying smashing the stereotypes of organists and organ music, and all the while generating unprecedented international acclaim and controversy in his field. Before the arrival of Carpenter, every year, UBS' Wangfujing Church Concert stole the limelight from the international festival, with talent such as pianist Zhu Xiaomei and the King's College Choir of Cambridge University, to name just a few. After last year, many audiences doubted that UBS could maintain these standards and continue to bring such impressive musicians and performances to the city, but the company beat their expectations. "We want to help enrich the profile of the international event, provide more support to boost its global vision and offer more popular concerts for audiences to appreciate," Qian said. UBS began to sponsor the Wangfujing Church Concert 10 years ago. Qian still remembers that the BMF's artistic director and renowned musician, Yu Long, directed the first session of the event in 2006, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem, K.626, the first of its kind to open the church concert for Beijing. "We have witnessed the festival committing and challenging itself to offering top-level music to the world, which consolidates our confidence in partnering with it in the long run," Qian said. In addition, the company hopes to honor and preserve the traditional cultural heritage building set up in 1884, meaning it cannot increase the audience capacity for the event, he said. Giving back UBS is dedicated to its longstanding role in corporate social responsibility, paying back to the needy and less privileged. "We gave rare opportunities to 35 students from No 13 Middle School in the city's suburban Shunyi district, a boarding school that supports disadvantaged children from rural and migrant backgrounds, to have interactive session with the artist, as the middle-class children from downtown frequently do," Qian said. In addition, Carpenter hosted an interactive organ-playing workshop for the students. UBS was delighted to hear students' feedback, as they said they were impressed by the concert and workshop, and will keep on enjoying classical music, tackle any challenges before them and strive to make a difference. The tradition has lasted for several years. Every year, the students treasure the opportunities and "their thirst for classical music inspires us to continue", he said. UBS' commitment to charity programs extends far beyond the above mentioned. The UBS Optimus Foundation supported 30 projects across China, with a combined donation of 260 million Swiss francs ($268 million) in 2016. Looking forward Qian said the company remains upbeat about the Chinese market, despite an economic slowdown. The bank plans to double its staff in the country by 2020, from its current number of more than 600. "We hold strong confidence in the country, which is still the powerhouse of global wealth creation, in particular its annual growth volume," he said. UBS was the first foreign institution to be classified as a qualified foreign institutional investor in China. In addition, the establishment of UBS Securities in 2007 marked the first time that a foreign bank invested directly in a fully-licensed domestic securities firm in China. yangcheng@chinadaily.com.cn At this year's Wangfujing Church Concert, a highlight of the annual Beijing Music Festival, Cameron Carpenter plays his 'International Touring Organ' on Oct 25.Photos Provided To China Daily Cameron Carpenter, born in 1981, is widely acknowledged as having revolutionized organ music. The Wangfujing Church, a cultural heritage site in Beijing, is set up in 1884 and has 300 seats. (China Daily 11/14/2016 page5) The United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing in Pacific island camps in a deal that is expected to inspire more asylum seekers to attempt to reach Australia by boat, officials said on Sunday. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not say whether he had discussed the deal with US President-elect Donald Trump during their telephone conversation on Thursday. The Obama administration had agreed to resettle refugees among almost 1,300 asylum seekers held at Australia's expense on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Another 370 who came to Australia for medical treatment then refused to return to the islands would also be eligible. Workers inspect the Min Fanglei, a 3,000-year-old bronze wine vessel, in 2014. The vessel was to be reunited with its lid after being separated for about 90 years. It was unearthed in the Hunan province in the 1920s and was traded abroad. Guo Liliang/China Daily Bronze wine vessel a success story; other treasures defy looting definition When a 3,000-year-old bronze wine vessel was shown at an exhibition in Shanghai last year, it drew a large number of viewers. A year before that, the ceremonial vessel, known as the Min Fanglei, returned to its birthplace in Central China's Hunan province to reunite with its lid after being separated for about 90 years. Unearthed around 1922 by a villager, the vessel was the subject of several transactions. It was traded abroad and changed hands among dealers and private collectors. The lid has been at Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha since the 1950s. The vessel was scheduled for a Christie's auction in New York in April 2014. A group of Chinese buyers from Hunan acquired the bronze in a closed-door deal with its European owner on the condition that it would be donated to the museum. The price was reportedly in the millions of US dollars, but the exact figure was not revealed. Tan Guobin, one of the Chinese buyers, told China Daily after the deal that the transaction price was thought to be lower than bids would have been if the auction had proceeded. The return of the bronze is an example of public institutions and private collectors working together to bring Chinese cultural relics back home. The past five years have seen an increase in the number of Chinese buyers bidding for Chinese antiques at major auctions in New York, London, Paris and elsewhere. Their participation in the global art market has not only pushed up the prices of Chinese art, but has also drawn government and public attention to lost treasures. A ban by the State Administration of Cultural Relics on the auction of stolen, smuggled or looted cultural relics underscores the official stance denying the legitimacy of such commercial transactions. One result is that Chinese buyers may become more cautious when making bids overseas. Ji Tao, an art market researcher at Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said the administration needs to further clarify what "looted" artifacts are. Some objects remain with the offspring of those who took them, while others have been traded numerous times and have been acquired by their current owners through lawful deals, he said. He added that looted objects, such as those robbed from Beijing's Old Summer Palace by British and French forces during the Second Opium War, account for a small part of the Chinese antiques available on the international market. The bulk were exported through legitimate transactions. Many Chinese artifacts that were stolen are part of museums and galleries worldwide. Unless they are offered at auction, their return home is highly unlikely, Ji said. Actor Jackie Chan poses with his Honorary Award at the 8th Annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles, California, US, November 12, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] Chinese actor Jackie Chan, British film editor Anne V. Coates, American casting director Lynn Stalmaster and American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman were presented with the Academy's Honorary Awards Saturday night to recognize their lifetime contributions to the film industry. The honors were presented at the eighth annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center. "The Honorary Award was created for artists like Jackie Chan, Anne Coates, Lynn Stalmaster and Frederick Wiseman -- true pioneers and legends in their crafts," Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said, "The Board is proud to honor their extraordinary achievements." The Cat Who Lived a Million Times. [Photo/amazon.cn] Cats, due to their mysterious lives and charming feline character, have always been popular pets. It is said that a cat may have nine lives, yet have you ever heard of a cat that lived a million times? Japanese writer Yoko Sano created such a cat in her book The Cat Who Lived a Million Times, which was introduced to China in 2004. The book has now been sold more than a million times in China. A meeting was held, to promote the writer's books, in Beijing on November 11. Writers and Sano's faithful readers shared their understanding of the book. Few people actually know Sano was born in Beijing in 1938 and moved to Dalian later. She returned to Japan at the age of 7. Having died in Tokyo in 2010, Sano came to China in 2007, and said Beijing was her hometown and that she was a Beijing person. "Her primary life was in China. And the first cat she saw is a Chinese one in a small courtyard where she lived. The cat in Sano's early memory and her affection toward the animal were also born in China," said Tang Yaming, senior editor, translator who has been a friend of the writer for more than twenty years. The picture book illustrated a cat that has one million masters in its one million lives, including an atrocious King, an old woman, a little girl and a brave sailor. Each master weeps for its passing away, yet the arrogant cat never sheds a drop of tear for them. The animal doesn't care about life and death nor love and affection. Until it meets a white cat, the cat becomes its first and last love. "I should have read this book earlier. It is a big regret that I found it until I was 30 years old," a reader named Hu Yan said on Amazon. The book earned an average 4.4 stars out of 5 on Amazon.cn and also a high score of 8.9 points out of 10 on Douban, a Chinese popular review site. "The cat in the book has a very special life journey, and it really died after truly falling in love. Sano pictured a very interesting character for readers," said Gao Hongbo, deputy chairman of the China Writers Association. According to Bai Bing, chief editor of the Jieli Publishing House, the book gave a boost to the development of picture books in China as a classic that breaks the boundaries between the world of adults and that of children. "I was very young when my mother worked on this book and can't remember clearly about the way she created the cat. And among all her illustrations, I like this book best," said the writer's son. Bernard Buckman visits China as a personal guest of Vice-Premier Wang Zhen in 1979. Photos provided to China Daily The prominent auction houses Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams may have all hosted sales during Asian Art in London - an annual 10-day extravaganza ended on Saturday in the British capital - but there is a small auction house that's set to make a big splash among the heavyweights. On Monday, Chiswick Auctions will host a sale featuring the entire collection of Bernard Buckman, a key figure in Sino-British trade relations during the second half of the 20th century. Buckman traveled to China multiple times - most notably in 1979 as a personal guest of Vice-Premier Wang Zhen - and the Englishman's 120-strong collection reflects someone who was both an enterprising businessman and keen patron of the arts. It also offers a window into China during a time when it was just opening up to the world. "Buckman went to China every year from 1953 and more frequently after around 1962," says Lazarus Halstead, Chiswick Auction's head of Asian art. "He was communicating with top government officials. No (other) Westerner had that level of access." Buckman's collection runs the gamut from snuff bottles, jades and scholarly items to paintings and furniture, with price estimates starting from around $120 and going to $36,000. Ink artist Wang Dongling's "chaos calligraphy" is on display. Photos provided to China Daily Ink artist Wang Dongling, 71, is holding two exhibitions in Beijing to show his achievements in traditional calligraphy and latest experiments with "chaos calligraphy", his unique, innovative and radical script style. At the exhibition being held at the Tiamiao temple on Monday, titled Between Heaven & Heart, Wang will display a piece work of "chaos calligraphy" in which he rewrote in white paint the Chinese divination classics I-Ching, or Book of Changes, on a 32-meter-long glass board. The script, regardless of its unrecognizable style, brings a renewed visual experience of which people focus on the rhythm of lines instead of the meaning of characters. Also on show are dozens of works written in the caoshu running script. Such "chaos calligraphy" works are also shown at another ongoing solo exhibition, titled Writing Chaos, at Ink Studio in the Caochangdi art district, through Nov 20. Also being displayed there is a video showing his creating process that is quite performing. The invention of "chaos calligraphy" reflects Wang's diligent practice over several decades and his deepening understanding of the calligraphic spirit. He was also inspired by the poetic scene of tangled stems of wilted lotus on the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. He attempts to recreate the beauty of withering between his writing of lines. 247 UNC system programs (undergraduate and graduate) were flagged as low-producing, but 200 of those were retained because the universities either had "plans to increase enrollment" or because the programs were related to the "core mission" of their respective university. Of the remaining 47 programs, 25 were flagged for a Board of Governors vote on discontinuation, and 22 were merged with other programs. An unlikely champion of more university oversight emerged at a recent University of North Carolina system Board of Governors [BOG] meeting. During a discussion about the board's long-term strategic goals on October 13, James A. Anderson, Chancellor of Fayetteville State University, urged board members to adopt more scrutiny over degree programs that fail to attract and successfully graduate students.asked Anderson.The chancellor says he's taking a bolder approach at FSU.he said.Anderson was referring to the biennial academic program review, which tasks the UNC system's General Administration with evaluating the efficiency of every degree program offered at the system's 16 schools. In total, the UNC system offers nearly 1,000 bachelor's, 700 masters, and 200 doctoral degree programs. The administration conducted the last review in 2014 and will initiate the new cycle soon.Such reviews are designed to produce a list of "low productive" degree programs. Currently, the general administration flags bachelor's programs that have produced fewer than 11 graduates in the past year, have a current upper division enrollment of fewer than 26 students, and fewer than 21 graduates in the last two years. The thresholds used to evaluate master's and doctoral programs are similar.The BOG then has the authority to eliminate those programs, more closely monitor them, or allow them to continue if they are deemed vital to the mission of the university, of "high societal need," or necessary to deliver "access and opportunity" to minority students. As the Pope Center previously reported , in 2014:State law grants the BOG authority to "withdraw approval of any existing program if it appears that the program is unproductive, excessively costly, or unnecessarily duplicative." In practice, however, the board has adopted a relatively loose oversight process, one in which individual campuses handle most of the decision-making.When campus officials argue that some of their low productive programs are critical to the success of their universities and to the state, the BOG often makes exemptions without debating those claims' legitimacy. As such, it has become more difficult to eliminate some underperforming programs, and taxpayers remain on the hook for them.Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the BOG is poised to make meaningful changes to the review process. It recently approved a plan to pilot new thresholds that consider only the number of degrees awarded over five years, rather than the three-prong approach using two years' worth of data. According to system leaders, this will result in roughly the same number of programs flagged for review.But university officials seem to be overlooking an important point. Simply having an adequate number of students isn't indicative of success. For example, a moderately popular degree program with 30 graduates a year and a large number of highly paid faculty members is no more economically efficient than a smaller program with fewer, lower-paid faculty members. A truly improved system would give policymakers more information about the resources needed to sustain degree programs.When the BOG votes to discontinue a program, cost savings are not immediately apparent. An evaluation of every available program elimination since 2011 yielded no information about whether taxpayer money was saved or increased efficiency was achieved. And when asked by board members if eliminating a certain program would result in the elimination of faculty positions, university leaders often noted that the faculty would simply continue to teach their courses or shuffle into other programs.Given the issues with the program elimination process, it makes sense for the BOG to pay more attention to the front-end of this process-when programs are initially approved.Proposals to establish new programs are supposed to follow a rigorous application process. Institutions must provide proof of the following: demonstrated capacity of the institution to deliver a quality program, student demand for the program, societal demand (employment opportunities for graduates), budget and source of funding for the proposed program, collaboration possibilities with other degree programs within the system, and relationship of the new degree program with the university's mission.BOG members are supposed to review proposals and evaluate them according to the standards above. In some instances, however, programs are approved with little or no debate about their true merits. As a result, dubious programs have filtered through.For instance, the Pope Center has found that taxpayers subsidize more than $50,000 per student enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill's Master of Fine Arts in Costume Production, a program with little benefit to the North Carolina workforce. An even more outlandish program is North Carolina State University's Global Luxury Management program, which emphasizes "experiential learning" with trips to fashion boutiques in Europe and New York.The purpose of the degree review process is to set boundaries on the types of programs that universities offer and provide better stewardship of taxpayer funds. Today, however, there is no clear-cut oversight process in place. In some instances, universities have been allowed to bypass system regulations and keep poorly performing programs; in other instances, officials have sidestepped the initial review process, which is designed to weed out dubious degree proposals.Of course, giving some latitude to campuses makes sense, since department heads and other university leaders presumably have more intimate knowledge of degree program minutiae and the short- and long-term viability of their various offerings. But by granting too much leeway to university officials, system leaders have in some instances neglected their duty to the public-they've failed to curb the self-interest of faculty who control curricula and may sometimes have goals that don't align with those of their respective universities or the system.For FSU Chancellor James. A. Anderson, the solution lies in better oversight at the system level and the campus level.he said,History shows that, in terms of its degree review process, the UNC system's Board of Governors has been at times willing to yield to pressure from campuses. While the efforts of Chancellor Anderson should be commended, it doesn't follow that other chancellors in the system will soon adopt such a bold, reform-minded stance. As such, going forward, BOG members would do well to take greater ownership of the review process and ensure that degree offerings are more efficient and that there is a more transparent accounting of their costs and benefits. Artist Sean Scully. [Photo provided to China Daily] American-Irish artist Sean Scully's installation China Piled Up is now on display in Shanghai's West Bund area as part of a project called Xian Chang (On the ground). American-Irish artist Sean Scully's installation China Piled Up is now on display in Shanghai's West Bund area as part of a project called Xian Chang (On the ground). Scully was inspired to produce the 15-meter-long work, which comprises 83 steel frames stacked atop each other, by his first visit to China two years ago and Chinese calligraphy. Through his art, Scully addresses China's rise as the steel capital of the world and its economic ties with the West, while looking at the relationship between line and space, which is also discussed in Chinese calligraphy circles. Scully says the frames in the work are also like "skeletons" of objects like boxes, and people can enter these spaces to feel an eternal power. The work, commissioned by the London-based Timothy Taylor Gallery, was produced following an invitation by the West Bund Art & Design fair, an annual event that began in 2014, and which is typically held from Nov 8-13. The installation will be on display until the end of December. Tang Yin's calligraphy scroll in xingshu, or semi-cursive script, sold for 59.6 million yuan ($8.7 million) in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily A calligraphy scroll in xingshu, or semi-cursive script, has sold for 60 million yuan ($8.7 million) at a Beijing sale of classic Chinese paintings and calligraphy. One of the "four great masters of Ming Dynasty", Tang Yin (1470-1524) composed three poems for this piece expressing his dissatisfaction at not being recognized in polite circles. It was included in the Catalog of Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy compiled in the 1980s. The calligraphy generated competitive bidding in China Guardian Auctions' "Grand View" sale. Dozens of classic Chinese paintings and calligraphic pieces went under the hammer. These increasingly rare items have attracted more interest over the last three years with buyers seeking a sound source of origin. A four-screen painting of flowers and birds by Zhu Da (1626-1705), also known as Bada Shanren, the legendary monk painter and a descendant of the Ming royal family, fetched the second biggest selling price. The painting sold for 43.7 million yuan. Guofang Tie (A Letter to Visiting Friend) by Song Dynasty poet and calligrapher Zeng Yu (1073-1135) came in third, grossing 40.2 million yuan. A biotechnology workshop was held on Nov 7 and 8 in Qingdao, Shandong province with various topics in the area of industrial biotechnology being discussed. The two-day workshop attracted around 20 German scientists and entrepreneurs from the Germany-based Cluster for Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB2021), in addition to dozens of local industrial and academic partners. The so-called "CLIB-Qingdao Biotechnology Workshop 2016" was organized by CLIB China representation, and co-sponsored by the Qingdao Science and Technology Exchange Center and the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). QIBEBT Assistant Director General Zheng Yonghong delivered a warm welcome speech. Manfred Kircher, chairman of the advisory board of CLIB2021, gave inspiring remarks. Zheng Yonghong said, "To address global energy and environmental problems, increasing efforts toward bioenergy and biotechnology have been made. Biotechnology is playing an increasingly important role in the areas of environmental protection, the chemical industry, food and health care, and so on". Speakers from CLIB2021, Chinese academia such as Shandong University, CAS institutions (including Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Institute of Microbiology, Institute of Oceanology and QIBEBT) and Qingdao-based enterprises, such as Bright Moon Seaweed Group and Vland Biotech Group, exchanged ideas and searched for potential partners. The CLIB2021 delegates also visited local star biotech enterprises, in order to promote potential international collaboration and technology transfers in the area of industrial biotechnology. "The workshop has contributed to a mutual understanding among all its participants, and it will lay a better foundation for further cooperation in biotechnology between Germany and China", said Zheng. Zheng Yonghong, assistant director general of QIBEBT, delivers a keynote speech during the CLIB-Qingdao Biotechnology Workshop 2016, which was held on Nov 7 and 8. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] 2022-10-28 Foreign enterprises remain upbeat about investment prospects in Tianjin with more capital increase in the northern China port city. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a post Republican Convention campaign event in Cleveland, Ohio, July 22, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] The US administration of President Barack Obama announced on Friday its suspension of efforts to win congressional approval for Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying it was up to president-elect Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers. Considering Trump's clear expression of opposition to the deal several times and even labeling it a "disaster", it seems likely that the TPP is now dead. Obama remarked that the US would not allow countries such as China make the global trade rules and vowed US-led domination of the process shortly after representatives of TPP member states reached a consensus in October 2015. Given that the TPP members combined account for 40 percent of the world's total economy and that China is excluded from the bloc, it has been widely believed that the TPP is aimed at containing China and excluding it from regional economic integration. However, the Obama administration's push for the TPP was not well-received in the US. Labor unions, in particular, expressed concerns about the deal, saying it would cost jobs in the US. Considering his campaign stance, Trump is expected to put domestic issues, such as how to promote economic development and employment, top of his agenda after he is sworn in as president. So his first move may be to renounce the TPP in a bid to appease his supporters. In fact, since China is the largest trader in goods, no country in the world can afford not to have economic and trade links with it. Of the 12 TPP member states, five have reached FTA agreements with China and seven are participating in the discussions for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership that is inclusive of China. No matter what strategic intentions there were behind Obama's TPP campaign, the trend of globalization will not change and any attempt to contain China will be no avail. Trade agreements must be built on the principles of common development, mutual benefit and reciprocity. --CCTV.COM A number of girls beat and kick a fellow female student who kneels down on the ground in Yongxin county, Jiangxi province. [Photo/ Weibo] ON FRIDAY, THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, along with eight other central departments, jointly published a guiding document on preventing campus violence. The document stresses that if the perpetrators break the law they should be handed over to the police. A Beijing News editorial praises this move: This is not the first time that the ministry has introduced measures aimed at curbing campus violence. As early as May, it launched a campaign to deal with the issue. Yet campus violence is still quite rampant. Several cases have even aroused nationwide concern, because the perpetrators not only beat the victims, but in some cases also removed the clothing of female victims and took photos of their naked bodies, which left psychological scars on the victims. The root problem lies in some schools insisting on punishing the perpetrators with campus discipline instead of calling the police, even though some incidents have already broken the law and the perpetrators should face legal punishments. The disciplinary penalties of the schools are, of course, much lighter than judicial punishments. The schools do not want the perpetrators of such crimes to go to court because it may harm their reputations so they prefer to "forget the bad things". They think that by turning a blind eye to any wrongdoing that happens on campus, they can cheat everybody and avoid a scandal. The problem is, the more they try to hide it, the bigger their scandal is. Worse, by trying to hide the scandal instead of solving it, the schools have actually encouraged the rampancy of campus violence. When the minors who brutalize their schoolmates get extremely light penalty because of their young age, they might commit serious crimes in the future. Some very severe criminal cases committed by secondary even primary school pupils have already shocked the nation. Among them, a most notable one must be the case of three pupils, aged from 11 to 13, who killed a female teacher in Shaodong, Central China's Hunan province. This July, a 13-year-old killed three children in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, yet he received no judicial penalty because he was under 14. Such cases should arouse our concern. It is time we solved the problem of campus violence with rule of law. Editor's note: The American Chamber of Commerce in China held a seminar on "The Next US President and Beyond" in Beijing on Wednesday. The following are excerpts from the speeches of four participants: SONG CHEN/CHINA DAILY Hope for positive Sino-US ties James Zimmerman [China Daily] This US presidential election has been about the rise of unconventional candidates. And it is not only in the United States but also over issues such as Brexit that unconventional candidates are rising in many countries. This should make us realize that people have anxieties about their future. This is a global trend, and no country can be immune to it. So China has to pay special attention to the underlying anxiety among people in the US. The US and China are the largest and second-largest economies in the world, and they need to work together. The two economies are highly integrated and interdependent. Therefore, the questions being raised on globalization are a cause for concern for their leaderships, especially because the Sino-US relationship has to be constructive and positive. James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China US President-elect Donald Trump speaks at election night rally in Manhattan, New York, US, November 9, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] Battlegrounds have been drawn this past week in the United States' historic election, and POTUS 2017 will, for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower, go to a man who has never before held public office as an elected official. With pretty much all of heartland America and the South going to president-elect Donald Trump, only the West coast and Northeast really showed any favor towards a Clinton administration. Predicted to win in most polls prior to the election, most Liberals underestimated just how disenfranchised the working class of America had become with what they saw as a corrupt political and economic establishment that had sold them out over the past two decades. With the election of Trump, Americans have made it clear that they want factories to stay in the US, a wall built to separate them from Mexico, a tougher government on Islamic extremism and immigration, and public works projects to rebuild their outdated infrastructure. Liberals and the American left have been protesting ever since Trump's declared victory, with California even threatening to 'Calexit'. However, while these bleeding-heart liberals anchored by CNN continue to cry fowl, they should settle down and think about what the possibilities are now that the political establishment is undergoing a real watershed from someone truly outside politics. Indeed, a sea change has been demanded by people fed up with the Clinton and Bush oligarchies, and eight years of Obama not really delivering on the hope on which his presidency was founded. Now, while some of Trump's most provocative comments have come at the hands of Mexico and China over trade, that does not mean the leadership in China should be mimicking the histrionics of Hillary's voting base. Trump is well known for calling China out on a perceived trade imbalance and the contention that China manipulates its currency to create an off-level playing field with the United States. That being said, the leadership in China should be glad that Trump won and not Hillary. To begin, Trump's comments are just that comments. And it is pretty evident after his victory speech and recent demeanor that Trump the president will be a much cooler head than Trump the political candidate. The most probable outcome is that jobs and factories in China with American multinationals will stay in China. Trump, however, will make it very difficult for any new companies to jump ship and move their factories to China or Mexico during his administration. Secondly, Trump is a businessman first and foremost and understands how interdependent both the USA and China are when it comes to international trade, and will not do anything drastic to change that. Any major hit to China's economy would be felt in America is well, and that could be a disaster for both countries. Ergo, slapping high tariffs on future incoming Chinese goods is improbable. Third is the Russia card. Putin and Trump have already shown a willingness to work together (which never would have been on the table with Hillary), and as such, Putin will predictably have leverage with Trump over dealings with China. If Trump were to sour China, he would also seriously risk souring Russia, which is not a likely scenario given the current climate between the two leaders. And last is the military. Most experts would agree that Hillary would have been much more Hawkish on China in regards to the South China Sea and any other geopolitical hot buttons that could have seen confrontation. Trump has talked tough when it comes to IS and the Middle East, but will most likely not want to exacerbate any current sabre rattling in East Asia. For that, China should be relieved they won't have to deal with Hillary. Alas, the seemingly never-ending election is finally over, which is something I think should make everyone in America, and those who follow politics, relieved. And in the case of China, and all those who live here, we should be more at ease with Donald Trump as the future president of the United States. The author is a freelance Writer and China Daily Contributor. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily website. Large number of students turn out in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, along with their parents and teachers, for a greening, environmental protection, tree planting activity, on April 9. [Photo/Baotou Daily] ON SATURDAY, the first environmental inspection group, sent by the central government, concluded its inspection of Inner Mongolia autonomous region, which lasted from July 14 to Aug 14. Out of the 89 protection zones in the autonomous region, 41 were found to be home to illegal activities and failed to protect the environment inside them. Beijing News comments: If you are not astonished about some natural protection zones breaking the law, surely the number of the zones involved must shock you. Almost half of all the natural protection zones are involved. Worse, this happened in Inner Mongolia where the government has paid much attention to the environment. Inner Mongolia used to suffer from expansion of its desert because of over exploitation of its forests into farmland, as well as overuse of its water resources. But over the past decade the government has introduced a number of programs to protect the environment, such as returning farmlands to woodland and establishing the natural protection zones. Establishing natural protection zones is one of the most important steps in protecting the environment. Inside the zones, the law forbids hunting, cutting down trees, and raising cattle, in order to preserve the natural resources. But such prohibitions often come at the cost of economic growth, and Inner Mongolia's economy still lags behind and it is still considered an underdeveloped region. When there is a conflict between the environment and economic interests, the local government and the local residents always tend to choose the latter. That leads to illegal activities, such as exploiting the natural resources inside the zones, which violate the law. In order to solve this problem, we need to, first of all, strengthen the rule of law. Whatever excuse local officials have, when they fail to correct, even get involved in, the illegal activities in the natural protection zones, higher authorities should punish them instead of turning a blind eye to their breaking the law. Only with strict implementation of the law can we better protect the natural environment in Inner Mongolia. Besides, it is time to offer some favorable policies to support the economic development of Inner Mongolia. Advise & Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962). Story involves a president trying to get his nominee for Secretary of State through the Senate. Its fascinating to look at Congress as it might have been so many years ago. Every senator is a white male, with the exception of one man from Hawaii, and one woman, played by Betty White in her feature film debut. The Republicans and Democrats get along quite nicely in comparison to how it is today. The two worst things you can be are a Communist or a homosexual. The Commie is played by Henry Fonda, and were so used to seeing him as the moral center that its disconcerting. His character wasnt a real Commie, of course, just someone who had a brief fling in his college years, but in 1962 thats enough (plus, he believes in peace, of all things). The gay senator commits suicide rather than reveal his secret. Most of the cast underplays, leaving the hammy stuff to Charles Laughton as a good old Southern boy. Laughton makes the most of his final film. Most of the key players are based on real-life politicians, which might have been easier to spot when the film came out. Its all a bit silly, and Im not sure how accurate is its representation of the Senate, but it moves along, never boring through its 139 minutes. Preminger even finds room for Burgess Meredith and Will Geer, two victims of the blacklist. 7/10. Arrival (Denis Villenueve, 2016). Ive liked the previous movies Ive seen from Villenueve (Sicario, Prisoners, and especially Incendies). I wrote of Incendies, Its the individual scenes, and the growing sense of discovery, that makes Incendies special. The acting by female leads Lubna Azabal and Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin adds immensely to the films power. The ending doesnt make a lot of sense on a logical scale, but it delivers an honest emotional punch just the same. I felt the same about Arrival, which benefits from Amy Adams controlled, inquisitive performance as a linguist asked to communicate with aliens. Arrival is another film in the category of Praised for What It Isnt. Its a story about aliens coming to Earth, but there is hardly any action. The special effects are mostly limited to the alien ships, which are lovely and look like flying saucers turned on their side. Most of the lead actors avoid overdoing it. All of this helps, but there isnt enough here to warrant excessive praise. Still, Adams may be looking at another Oscar nomination (she already has five). At one point, she tries to communicate with the aliens by holding up a sign that reads HUMAN and pointing to herself. And you think, yes, this person is a human, and its good to see something so basic in what could easily turn into a cheesy sci-fi flick. Ive avoided discussing the plot, which is of the Must See It More Than Once school of inscrutability. Im sure there are already websites devoted to explaining Arrival, but Im not much more interested than I was about the 2001 theories. But thanks to Adams, it was easy enough to just roll with Arrival, even if for me, it was much ado about not much. 7/10. The Stone Forest in Kunming is a thicket of limestone formations that create a topographical miracle. ERIK NILSSON/CHINA DAILY Three days of exploring Yunnan's capital reveals a land where geology, ecology and ethnology congeal to conjure a magical charm, Erik Nilsson discovers. Stone spires. Karst caves. Wild wetlands. Eclectic ethnic culture, languid lakes and fiery fare. All this, set in a city of perpetual spring, where verdant landscapes flash every shade of green and flowers crackle color like fireworks in every season. The city exists on an unparalleled plane, where geology, ecology and ethnology intersect in incredible ways. It has long been a bastion for bohemians, from ancient literati to dreadlocked hippies todayfor good reason. The place is poetry. Foreign visitors from dozens of countries can enjoy a 72-hour visa-free transit in the city. China Daily spends three days divining the magic that Yunnan's capital conjures. DAY 1: Stone Forest Countless stone daggers slice the Stone Forest's skyline, lacerating the horizon to sculpt one of our planet's most unearthly places. The karst formations have, in turn, forged the culture that dwells amid them. They serve as the fantastical fairyland setting for a fairy tale of the Yi ethnic group's Sanyi branch, in which a local shepherd rescues his true love from an evil landlord, who tragically then turns the couple to stone. The topographical miracle is worth setting aside a whole day to explore. That's not only because guides say much of their job is helping lost people navigate their way out of the rocky labyrinths. TEHRAN - Russia's Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Ivanovna Matvienko arrived in the Iranian capital city of Tehran on Sunday for multi-dimensional talks with senior Iranian officials, Press TV reported. During her two-day official visit, Matvienko will meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Matvienko is accompanied in her trip by the chairman of Russian Federation Council's defense and security committee, Viktor Ozerov, and a number of parliamentary officials, According to the report. She will bring up a variety of issues in the talks with the Iranian officials, including ways to improve parliamentary cooperation and to reinforce convergence in the Middle East to fight terrorism in Syria, Matvienko told official IRNA news agency earlier. Tehran and Moscow have stressed the importance of bolstering cooperation and taken positive steps and made great achievements in this regard, she added. File photo shows that Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong speaks at the celebration of the 65th Anniversary of China-Pakistan ties. [Photo/Xinhua] GWADAR, Pakistan - Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong said here Sunday that the concept of "one corridor with multiple passages" under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been realized as the first bilateral joint trade convoy reached Gwadar port from China's Kashgar. Addressing a ceremony celebrating the arrival of the co-organized trade convoy, Sun said this is the first time that a trade convoy successfully passed through the western part of Pakistan from the north to the south. "It proves the connectivity of local roads, and realization of the concept of 'one corridor with multiple passages'," said the ambassador. He added that the trade convoy is the best reflection of the spirits of mutual consultation, joint construction, mutual benefits and win-win cooperation, and the spirits will serve as the solid basis for the future construction of the CPEC. Sun also commented that the CPEC has entered into full implementation with remarkable progress as 16 early harvest projects are under construction and tens of thousands of new jobs have been created for local people. Meanwhile, with the loading of the last container onto the COSCO Wellington cargo vessel, Gwadar port also marked its first export of a large number of containers to overseas destinations, showing that the port has restored the designed handling capacity. For his part, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the CPEC is destined to transform the entire country and open up a world of possibilities for not just Pakistan but also Central Asian states and the rest of Asia. He said that China-proposed Belt and Road initiative matches Pakistan's "Vision 2025" and the two projects will enhance connectivity among regional countries and provide opportunities for shared development. A woman lights candles to pay respect in front of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, France, November 13, 2016 after a ceremony held for the victims of last year's Paris attacks which targeted the Bataclan concert hall as well as a series of bars and killed 130 people. [Photo/IC] China is ready to achieve more progress in China-US ties after the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday. "We're willing to communicate with Trump's team, enhance mutual understanding and broaden our consensus on cooperation," he said in Ankara at a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. Wang was there to co-chair the first meeting of the China-Turkey consultation mechanism. He told reporters that China and the US have kept close contact at all levels, and it is the consensus of both US Republicans and Democrats to develop and deepen the bilateral relationship. "We're willing to continue cooperation with the Obama administration, to ensure the smooth transition of our relationship to the next US administration," he said. In a congratulatory message to Trump on his election on Wednesday, President Xi Jinping said China is willing to push China-US relations further forward from a new starting point, on the basis of principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. "This has shown the direction for future development of bilateral ties," Wang said, adding that China is willing to work together with the US in this regard. More and more people could be lifting their spirits, the Chinese way. For Moutai, China's leading liquor producer, the new buzzwords are technological innovation and continuous expansion into overseas markets, and the brand is getting a shot in the arm in San Francisco. On Nov 12, Kweichow Moutai Group kicked off a series of celebrations by hosting a grand banquet and product exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts to commemorate the first anniversary of Moutai Day in San Francisco. A delegation led by Li Baofang, general manager of Kweichow Moutai Group of Guizhou, is on a mission to strengthen liquor cultural integration with its Western counterparts, enhance communications with global consumers and help facilitate China-US relations through a variety of platforms that involve people, business and governments on both sides. During Moutai's overseas centennial celebration held at San Francisco City Hall last year, Mayor Ed Lee named Nov 12 the city's Moutai Day. In his speech to 500 guests on Saturday night, Li reviewed Moutai's history of growth, brand development and its journey to internationalization by recalling that it had won a gold award at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition which was held "at exactly the same place where we hold the gala tonight." San Francisco remains a city of opportunity and a shrine to generations of Moutai group employees, Li said, adding "Our ancestors rarely traveled outside of the local town but all of us know the liquor we made through hard word and artisan spirit is well received throughout the world," Li said. For 100 years, the group has been sustaining the original artisan spirit, adapting to changing environments and embracing technology innovation in order to maintain the legacy of the "Moutai miracle" and Moutai's iconic ranking in China's liquor industry, Li said. Currently, Moutai products are sold in more than 60 countries and regions in Asia, Europe, the Americans, Oceania and Africa with its liquor exports reaching 614 tons by the end of August, representing a yearly growth of 12.9 percent. The group reported a net profit of approximately $2.5 billion by the end of August, a 6.7 percent yearly rise over the same period last year, according to Yuan Renguo, chairman of the group, adding that increased exports and expansion into other businesses such as e-commerce, investment and financial leasing contributed to the rise. Moutai is also known as the "liquor of diplomacy and friendship", serving as the toaster of the normalization of China-US relationship in the 1970s through to the current building of a new type of major power relationship, said Li. At the famous state dinner of 1972, then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai proposed a toast to visiting US president Richard Nixon with a glass of Moutai as the whole world looked on. "When I paid a visit to former US president Jimmy Carter and presented him four bottles of Moutai," Li recalled, "Carter said he knew the liquor and called it well-known." In June, 2013, visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping drank Moutai with his US counterpart President Barack Obama at Sunnylands as Xi initiated the concept of building a new type of major power relationship between the world's two largest economies. Through political differences and ideological variances, Moutai remains the reliable anchor to revitalize the faith in friendship, said Li. As the national liquor of China, "Moutai has played a big part in China's international relations and a significant role in celebrating major festive events and moving forward friendship between China and other countries," said Li. Strolling around the exhibit booths check the lineup of Moutai products, Mayor Lee said, "Moutai is associated with many important celebrations, celebrations of new year, celebration of birthdays, celebrations for meaningful events that bring tons of understanding between many people," he said. Calling himself a "big supporter of the success of Moutai not only in the US but the world", Li said, "when we drink Moutai, it brings us closer and can help us accomplish more than we think on the people-to-people level, on the local level, national level and international level." BEIJING - China on Monday condemned the terrorist attack in Pakistan and reaffirmed its support to Pakistan in fighting this evil. A bomb exploded at a shrine in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan district on Saturday night, killing over 60 and injuring more than 100, according to the latest figures from the Foreign Ministry. "We are greatly shocked by the number of lives lost and injuries caused," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Monday at a daily press briefing, expressing strong condemnation to the attack and extending condolences to the families of the dead and injured. He said that China opposes all forms of terrorism and will continue to firmly support Pakistan in fighting against terrorism and protecting national stability and the safety of the people. Ermenegildo Zegna, the luxury Italian menswear brand, opens a new branch in London's Bond Street, the home of many luxury brands' flagship stores. [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Ermenegildo Zegna, the luxury Italian menswear brand, is targeting overseas Chinese shoppers at a new branch it has opened in London's Bond Street, the home of many luxury brands' flagship stores. The number of Chinese tourists visiting the UK reached a new record high of 270,000 in 2015. Those visitors spent more than 586 million pounds ($738 million), according to VisitBritain, the UK's official tourism board. To better respond to the influx of Chinese customers, the new Zegna London Global Store has hired Chinese-speaking sales staff and the services of personalized consultants who can explain the brand's history and culture. Ermenegildo Zegna, the fourth-generation CEO who runs the family brand, said: "Chinese customers are one of our biggest clienteles. By offering native speaking staff , who understand the culture and the customers' needs, we are able to bring a comfortable shopping experience to our Chinese patrons." To satisfy the particular tastes of Chinese customers, the fashion house in London has stocked a wide range of luxurious menswear collections. "Chinese love light wear because they use the products for traveling, and also they adore sportswear and leather goods," said Zegna."We have a good assortment of those products in the London Global Store particularly catering to the tastes of the Chinese." The Italian company, which has its own sheep farms in Australia that supply wool to mills in Italy, opened a branch in China in 1991, becoming the first luxury apparel company to launch a store within the Chinese market. Greater China is now its biggest single market, accounting for about one third of its global sales of 1.26 billion euros ($1.37 billion) in 2015. "This would not happen if we did not take the market seriously by making the early entry, building the right store, creating the right team and keeping investing in new things," Zegna said. He believes retailers selling in the China market should never stand still and rest on their laurels, because customers keep asking for more products and services, and because competition is fierce. "To remain a leader as a menswear luxury brand in China, you have to keep renewing yourself and reinvesting in the brand to make sure that people are given superior service and a constant innovative brand proposition," Zegna said. He added that China's key stores have become a testing ground for the company as it introduces new products and ideas because Chinese customers enjoy being exposed to fresh thinking. BISMARCK, N.D. The Army Corps of Engineers on Monday said it has finished a review of the disputed Dakota Access pipeline but wants more study and tribal input before deciding whether to allow it to cross under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota. The announcement, which came amid speculation that federal officials were on the brink of green-lighting the crossing, spells further delay for the project. Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the company developing the pipeline, said earlier Monday that it expected to be moving oil through the pipeline by early next year if it got permission. The corps in July granted ETP the permits needed for the project, but in September said more analysis was warranted in the wake of American Indian concerns. The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation will be skirted by the $3.8 billion, four-state pipeline, says it threatens its drinking water and cultural sites. ETP disputes that and said last week it is preparing to bore under the river. Army Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy said in a letter to company officials and tribal Chairman Dave Archambault that "additional discussion with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and analysis are warranted." That discussion is to include potential conditions on an easement for the pipeline crossing that would reduce the risk of a spill. Darcy said the Army will work with the tribe on a timeline "that allows for robust discussion and analysis to be completed expeditiously." Army spokeswoman Moira Kelley would not elaborate to The Associated Press on whether a decision would be done by the time President Barack Obama leaves office. Donald Trump, a pipeline supporter, is set to take office in January. Archambault and ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Attorney Jan Hasselman with environmental group Earthjustice, which filed the lawsuit in July on behalf of the tribe, said he believes the Obama administration will make a decision on the easement. The 1,200-mile pipeline is to carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois. The company building the $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline said before the Army announcement Monday that it expects to finish construction by Dec. 1, except for the small disputed section in North Dakota, and could begin moving crude early next year if the government gives final approval. In an email to The Associated Press, ETP said it would finish the pipeline within 120 days of getting approval for the easement beneath Lake Oahe, the Missouri River reservoir in southern North Dakota. Also Monday, officials locked down the North Dakota Capitol after pipeline opponents gathered there, one day before groups planned more than 200 protests at Army Corps of Engineers offices and other sites across the country. Nearly 470 protesters have been arrested since August supporting the Standing Rock Sioux. ETP said it has suffered losses "in the millions" to vandalized equipment along the pipeline route in North Dakota. The company said it was taking steps to protect the pipeline from vandalism, but declined to disclose details. The rallies set for Tuesday at such places as state Army Corps offices, federal buildings and offices of banks that have helped finance the project are seeking to draw Obama's attention. The groups, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor the Earth and Greenpeace USA, want Obama to permanently halt the construction of the pipeline, the focus of confrontations between police and protesters in North Dakota for months. A United Nations group that represents indigenous people around the world said the U.S. government appears to be ignoring the treaty rights and human rights of American Indians opposing the pipeline. The Nov. 4 statement from the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues called on the government to "protect the traditional lands and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux and uphold their human rights commitments." Forum member Edward John in late October visited a camp in North Dakota that's drawn hundreds of protesters from around the globe. He said he found a "war zone" atmosphere and that "I felt as though I was in an armed conflict zone on foreign soil." Justice Department spokesman Wyn Horbuckle said the agency has been in communication with law officers, tribal officials and protesters "to facilitate communication, defuse tensions, support peaceful protests, and maintain public safety." MARRAKECH, Morocco - China will continue to play an active role in climate change with much stronger actions, while enhancing cooperation with related parties. The 22nd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) is being held in the Moroccan city of Marrakech. Participants in the meeting are expected to identify ways for a potential future coalition and adopt a declaration on health, environment and climate change. MUCH STRONGER ACTIONS China has set up an ambitious target to reach the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030, Xie Ji, a deputy chief of the Chinese delegation, said Thursday. "Many cities promised they can reach their peaking before 2030, and a few cities try to achieve the target around 2020," said Xie, adding that many industries, especially energy-intensive ones, were asked to control CO2 emissions and try to reach the peaking around 2020. Gou Haibo, another deputy chief of the Chinese delegation, said Wednesday that China would continue to uphold a development concept highlighting innovation, coordination, greenness, openness and sharing. He said that China would act positively and forcefully in maintaining the international mechanism, promoting international cooperation and combating climate change. CHINA-US COOPERATION CONTINUES China's policies will not be affected by any external changes, Chen Zhihua, a member of the Chinese delegation, said Friday. "No matter what happens in the new US government, China will continue to constructively participate in the international climate change process," Chen said. Chen was referring to concerns that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change after US President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed to cancel the agreement during his campaign, takes office in January. "We still need to wait," Chen said, adding that now is not the right time to assess it. Even if the United States withdraws from the agreement, cooperation between China and the US will continue, Chen said. "This is the attitude we hold toward the matter." Catherine Novelli, US undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said the United States and China have an "incredible working relationship" on climate issues. "And I think it would portend well for leadership for the future," Novelli said. "I think everybody acknowledges that the momentum for Paris was generated by the agreement between the US and China." Novelli also said her country would continue the existing cooperation with China after Trump takes office in January. The European Union has indicated it will work closely with China to prevent the US from backsliding on its commitment to the Paris climate agreement. The message was delivered by a 12-strong European Parliament delegation before it left for Marrakech, Morocco, for the second week of the UN climate change conference. Parties that have approved the global pact will start their first talks at the conference, and President Xi Jinping and United States President Barack Obama have signed three presidential documents to inject special political will into the approval process. Jo Leinen, vice-chair of the European Parliament delegation, said in an email on Friday that the EU and China should join forces in Marrakech to push forward the Paris agreement. Leinen said both played a key role as brokers among different "camps" in the Paris negotiations. "This time, in Marrakech, China is expected to line up with the EU," he said. "These two global powers should assume their responsibility by forming a new coalition with the aim of fighting for a progressive global climate policy." Jonathan Taylor, vice-president of the European Investment Bank, said on Friday that the bank will boost co-financing with China on climate mitigation projects, as part of future plans to raise the proportion of climate investment in developing countries to 35 percent of its overall lending in these countries by 2020. Progress can be made in building road maps for the $100 billion investment plan, he said, referring to the 2010 pledge by developed nations in Cancun, Mexico, to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate change. However, "major divergences persist" on the funding plan after a weeklong negotiation, said Gu Zihua, a representative with the Chinese delegation, amid a possible threat from US President-elect Donald Trump. Shigeru Ushio, Japan's chief negotiator, said a US withdrawal from the Paris agreement would be "serious". Kenneth Berlin, CEO of the Climate Reality Project, which was founded by former US vice-president Al Gore, warned that Trump's election could overshadow climate talks and is a disaster for international efforts to tackle climate change. "If Trump follows through with his plan to withdraw, other developed nations will need to fill the place of the US." Contact the writers at wangyanfei@chinadaily.com.cn WASHINGTON - US presidential election winner Donald Trump on Sunday told his supporters to stop harassing minorities in his first televised interview as president-elect. Trump said he was "saddened" by reports that incidents of harassment and intimidation of minorities had spiked since his election. "I hate to hear that. I am so saddened to hear that," Trump said when asked about the reports at the interview with the CBS's "60 Minutes," which was taped Friday and aired in full Sunday. Police across the country are investigating a wave of alleged hate crimes against Muslims, Hispanic Americans, black people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in the wake of the US election. Attackers professing support for Trump have been accused of numerous attacks following his shock victory, including death threats, physical assaults and racist graffiti. Among the incident is the alleged robbery of a Muslim student at San Diego State University by two men who "made comments about President-elect Donald Trump and the Muslim community" before stealing her purse, rucksack and car. There were also many reports of attacks on women wearing hijabs and Islamic dress. Trump's election victory has sparked days of protests in several major cities nationwide, and analysts believe that the demonstrations may continue for some time. The "we reject the president-elect" chant echoed far and wide again in New York City Saturday, as thousands of angry New Yorkers protested against Trump's win. The protesters, mostly young people, gathered at Union Square in force and soon marched towards the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, residence and campaign headquarters of the real estate mogul and reality show star turned politician. The police force of the city was on high alert, barricading the entrance of Trump Tower and many storefronts. Protesters have also taken to the streets of Chicago, Miami, Denver, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Louisville, Kentucky, Baltimore and other cities. While most protests have been peaceful, there have been reports of violence and at least one shooting. A man was shot and injured during a protest march in the early morning hours of Saturday in the city of Portland, the US state of Oregon, police said on Saturday. The police said in a news release that the victim was participating in the protest march when he was shot, and that he was continuing to recover from his non-life-threatening injuries. Analysts said the reason behind the widespread protests across the country is that Trump has elicited much controversy over the past year in one of the most controversial and nastiest presidential races. The question remains whether the protests will continue, fade out, or even turn violent in the days and weeks to come. "The protests against Trump will continue. Progressive forces are strongly opposed to Trump's agenda and will ferociously resist what he is doing. There is a risk that protests turn violent and exacerbate societal tensions," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua. LONDON - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faced questioning on Monday by prosecutors at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for four years, over allegations he committed rape in 2010. Swedish Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren arrived at the embassy to pose questions to Assange through an Ecuadorian prosecutor over the allegations which Assange has denied, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. Assange, who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, took refuge in the embassy in August 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden over the rape allegation. The 45-year-old Australian has refused to go to Sweden for questioning, saying he fears further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks is ongoing. Isgren and a police investigator will be able to ask questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will later report the findings to Sweden, prosecutors have said. "After the report, the Swedish prosecutor will take a view on the continuing of the investigation," they said. A Swedish appeals court decided in September to uphold Assange's arrest warrant, saying a strong public interest argument outweighed a case to set it aside based on the lengthy deadlock and a previous lack of impetus in pursuing the case. Assange's request to have the warrant overturned came after a UN panel in February said his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy equalled arbitrary detention, that he should be let go and be awarded compensation. Even if Sweden drops the investigation, however, Assange could be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain. Chinas Relations With the West: Straight Line Decline There are those who believe China's ongoing Party Congress will bode well for companies that do business in or with China. I am firmly convinced that the opposite is true and that it will used as yet another opportunity by China to show that it will not be cowered by the declining relations and sanctions/counter-sanctions between the United States / EU / Australia / Japan on the one hand, and China on the other. I see China using this Congress to let the world (domestic and external) know that it fully intends to fight back and fight back hard. In other words, this Party Congress will lead to China's decoupling from much of the world accelerating, not slowing down. WILLISTON, N.D. The timing of the Dakota Access Pipeline completion remains unclear, but some companies have built short pipelines that are ready to deliver to the four-state project. Six companies have built or proposed short oil pipelines to connect with Dakota Access in North Dakota, with three projects constructed and three others in various stages. The pipelines would deliver oil from existing terminals or facilities in North Dakota directly to the Dakota Access Pipeline. With an initial capacity of 470,000 barrels per day, Dakota Access would become the Bakkens largest oil pipeline, but the timing of the project remains uncertain as the federal government has yet to authorize construction under Lake Oahe. The 1,172-mile pipeline would deliver Bakken crude to Patoka, Ill., where oil can then be transported by the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline to Texas, providing the first direct link for North Dakota crude to Gulf Coast refineries. We certainly think Dakota Access will be the interstate highway of Bakken oil and its critically important for the future of the Bakken, said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Construction is underway now for the Caliber Bear Den Interconnect pipeline, a 5.3-mile pipeline in McKenzie County the North Dakota Public Service Commission approved on Nov. 2. The $12 million project is expected to deliver 50,000 barrels per day to a Dakota Access terminal near Watford City, with a maximum capacity of 75,000 barrels per day. Construction was scheduled to begin last week and take about a month, according to documents filed with state regulators. One Dakota Access connector, from a company with a large spill on its record, is still under consideration by the Public Service Commission. Epping Transmission Co., a subsidiary of Summit Midstream Partners, proposes to build a 3.2-mile pipeline near Epping that would deliver 30,000 barrels a day, with a maximum capacity of 70,000 barrels per day. The $6.5 million project would have two separate pipeline connections, one to deliver oil to the Dakota Access Pipeline and the second to deliver oil to the existing Divide Mainline Pipeline. A public hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Nov. 22 in Williston. Summit Midstream is the same company that owned the gathering pipeline that leaked nearly 3 million gallons of produced water north of Williston and contaminated Blacktail Creek, a Missouri River tributary. But the new proposed project would have a greater level of regulatory oversight than the produced water pipeline did when the spill was discovered in January 2015. The other Dakota Access connector pipelines are: Oasis Midstream Services constructed 19 miles of pipelines to deliver oil to a terminal owned by Dakota Access at the pipeline storage hub known as Johnsons Corner in McKenzie County. The project also can deliver oil to a facility owned by Tesoro. The $13 million project has been 99 percent complete since September, according to a report filed with the Public Service Commission. During a hearing for the project, an Oasis representative said the pipeline would transport up to 75,000 barrels per day, eliminating up to 250 trucks per day off the roads. Hess North Dakota Export Logistics constructed a 1.1-mile pipeline near Tioga to deliver oil from the Ramberg Truck Facility to a Dakota Access terminal. The $4.5 million project is expected to transport 50,000 barrels per day, with a maximum capacity of 70,000 barrels per day. Construction was completed in October with commissioning to be completed when Dakota Access is ready for operation, according to a Hess spokesman. A 15-mile pipeline project by Sacagawea Pipeline Co. in McKenzie County included a 2-mile segment to connect with Dakota Access at the Johnsons Corner hub. The $20 million project is expected to transport 75,000 barrels per day. That project has been listed as substantially complete since September, according to Public Service Commission records. Sacagawea Pipeline Co. is a joint business venture with Paradigm Energy Partners, Phillips 66 and Grey Wolf Midstream. The Public Service Commission also approved a 3.5-mile pipeline from Plains All American Pipeline that would deliver oil to Dakota Access at Johnsons Corner in McKenzie County. Construction has not begun on that project and nothing filed with state regulators indicates a timeline. A company representative could not be reached for comment. The $5 million project proposed to deliver about 50,000 barrels per day, with a maximum capacity of 150,000 barrels per day. Dakota Access constructed six oil storage terminals in North Dakota, with tanks located near Stanley, Tioga, Epping, Trenton, Watford City and Johnsons Corner. The Trenton terminal is planned to begin receiving oil on or around Tuesday, Nov. 15, according to a third-party inspectors report filed with regulators. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to announce a path forward for Dakota Access within days, according to statements made in federal court last week. BISMARCK A soft lockdown was ordered Monday, Nov. 14, at the North Dakota Capitol after a group of protesters congregated on the building grounds. The North Dakota Highway Patrol said those with key card access could still enter the building and while those inside are allowed to leave if they choose. Protesters opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline gathered on three sides of the Capitol late Monday morning. Based off of past experience, that seems to be their intent, is to unlawfully gather and interrupt government functions, said Lt. Tom Iverson of the North Dakota Highway Patrol. The Highway Patrol has posted troopers at each entrance to the building. There are about 50 protesters gathered in three different groups on the Capitols grounds. They do not have a permit to protest on the grounds, Iverson said Sir Elton is headed back to Montana for shows in Bozeman and Missoula next spring. Elton John and His Band will perform March 7 at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse and March 8 at the Adams Center in Missoula. The shows are part of an 11-city tour promoting his latest release, Wonderful Crazy Night and hits from his five-decade career. Tickets for both shows go on sale on Friday, Nov. 18, at 10 a.m. The shows are presented by AEG Live. Bozeman tickets are available at www.ticketswest.com or by phone at 1-800-325-7328. Tickets for the Missoula show are available at www.griztix.com or 1-888-MONTANA. Johns band features two longtime bandmates, Nigel Olsson, who was part of Johns original three-piece band, on drums; and Davey Johnson, who first recorded with John in 1971 and joined the band in 1972, on guitar. John is one of the most successful artists of all time, with classic hits like Your Song, Crocodile Rock, Rocket Man, and Bennie and the Jets. (Photo : Getty Images) US President-elect Donald Trump said he asked Apple's CEO Tim Cook to move its manufacturing arm in the US. Advertisement U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has told The Wall Street Journal that he has spoken with or heard from most world leaders except Chinese President Xi Jinping.Trump's spokeswoman Hope Hicks later confirmed to American channel CNN that The Wall Street report was indeed "accurate." Like Us on Facebook Advertisement There is lot of ambiguity over whether or not Chinese president Xi made a congratulatory phone call to Trump. A report by China's state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) claims that Xi called up Donald Trump soon after his victory became official. CCTV quoted Xi saying that the two countries "shoulder a special responsibility" as the world's largest developed and developing nations. "China pays high attention to the Sino-US relationship and hopes to develop a sound, long-term and stable relationship with the US," Xi was quoted saying. The Chinese leader allegedly further said that he hoped to "settle all disputes with the US in accordance with the principle of non-confrontation." China's official news agency supported this story. It confirmed that Xi sent a congratulatory message to Trump without specifying whether this message was conveyed through a phone call or other diplomatic channel. There are also unconfirmed reports claiming that several Chinese officials have said that there was no phone call between the Xi and Trump. Phone call diplomacy post-Trump victory assumes lot of importance given that the US President-elect resorted to anti-Chinese rhetoric during his election campaign. He leveled many serious allegations against China including claiming that China is stealing US jobs and resorting to cheap steel dumping. Trump's rhetoric earned him a lot of flaks from the Chinese public. Advertisement Tagsdonald trump, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, china, China and US (Photo : ScottOlson/GettyImages) The first caravan of Chinese trucks carried goods for international trade to Gwadar in Pakistan. Advertisement China's first trade convoy reached Gwadar in Pakistan on Saturday, signaling the opening of a part of the trade route between the two countries. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) forms a link between Xinjiang province in China with Baluchistan in Pakistan. The first caravan of Chinese trucks carried goods for international trade. The convoy was escorted amid tight security. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that his country would extend the best possible security to foreign investors using the Pakistan port for international trade. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Top Pakistani leaders saw off a Chinese ship departing from the newly constructed Gwadar port. The ship will take the cargo to the Africa and the Middle East. The Pakistan port is located in Baluchistan, which is currently facing an insurgency. Foreign companies have security voiced concerns over their workers in Pakistan. The country has created a special force for the purpose of guarding the new trade routes as well as the port. The port in Gwadar was funded by China, which has committed $46 billion in aggregate for CPEC. The project also includes the construction of power plants. Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan's Minister for Planning and Development, said, "This investment will help to turn around not Pakistan's economy, but also it will enable Pakistan to become self-sufficient in energy and improve its infrastructure." The port in Pakistan will provide China with easier access to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Ocean. The country currently uses the Strait of Malacca. However, with the new Pakistan port, China will be able to access the Middle East and the Persian Gulf Region as well. Advertisement Tagschina, Pakistan, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Nawaz Sharif (Photo : GerryCranham/GettyImages) Ron Dennis is fighting for his position at MacLaren. Advertisement McLaren CEO Ron Dennis faces an uncertain future due to an ongoing battle in the automotive group. The company chief is fighting a court case filed by other shareholders of the company calling for him to step down. The case against Dennis was filed by Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat and Mansour Ojjeh, a Saudi-born businessman. Ojjen and Mimtalakat own 75 percent of the company's shares between them. The major cause of the rift is believed to be a $2.08 billion bid proposed by an unidentified consortium of Chinese investors. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Dennis is believed to have supported the bid while it has been opposed by other shareholders. According to Sky News, Dennis had filed a case to secure an injunction from High Court against being sidelined until his term is over. The CEO's term is scheduled to expire in mid-January. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One boss, said Dennis might have already lost the battle. "There was a court case yesterday where he wanted to overturn what had happened and he lost the case unfortunately which is a pity because we don't want to lose Ron," Ecclestone said. Ecclestone stated that losing the case means that Dennis is effectively already out. He also added that Dennis may file an appeal against the decision and may ultimately win the appeal. However, F1 team's racing director Eric Boullier stated, "As far as we are concerned Ron Dennis is still the chairman and the group's CEO today. That's it." Dennis has been with the company for nearly 35 years. Advertisement TagsMcLaren, Ron Dennis, Bernie Ecclestone (Photo : DavidMcNew/GettyImages) The EU recently decided to impose temporary anti-dumping actions on seamless steel pipes from China. Advertisement China has expressed concerns over the European Union's protectionist stance against its steel products. The recent overcapacity in the steel sector has caused a rift between China and the European Union (EU). China is the biggest producer of construction material in the world. The EU recently decided to impose temporary anti-dumping actions against seamless steel pipes from China. The higher tariffs on Chinese steel may cause serious damage to the international trade. These tariffs may also threaten China's steel manufacturing industry. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China commerce ministry stated on its website that "The Chinese side has expressed great concerns and worries about the EU's trade protectionist tendency over steel." It further said that the country is looking to boost ties with the EU through communication. The newly imposed tariff against Chinese seamless steel pipes will be effective for six months. China has expressed hope that EU will adhere to relevant rulings made by the World Trade Organization. The EU used "analogue country" method to impose the duty. The Chinese ministry claimed that this method is unfair and unreasonable. The "analogue country" method uses the price data collected from a third country for the purpose of calculating the value of products from a non-market economy country. The new action against Chinese steel has been opposed by many countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden. China furthered its case against the imposition of high duties on its steel products by stating that the European steel industry is suffering due to slacking economic growth. It claims that Chinese imports are not the cause of the European industry's problems. Advertisement TagsEuropean Union, china, steel (Photo : Getty Images) The Toyota logo is displayed on the exterior of City Toyota May 11, 2010 in Daly City, California. Advertisement Japanese automaker Toyota recently agreed to pay more than $3.4 billion in order to settle a federal class action suit brought by owners of pickup trucks and SUVs in the United States. The plaintiffs said that frames of affected cars have the tendency to pick up rust. The proposed settlement agreement will cover nearly 1.5 million Tacoma compact pickups, Sequoia SVUs, and Tundra full-size pickups. Court papers revealed that these models received inadequate rust protection, which could lead to corrosion and end up jeopardizing the structural integrity of the cars. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement In supporting court papers, Toyota will be paying an estimated value of $3.375 billion in order to replace the compromised frames of affected trucks, according to BBC News. This includes $15,000 for each frame and inspection costs of about $90 million at $60 per vehicle. In a statement acquired by Reuters, Toyota said, "We want our customers to have a great ownership experience, so we are pleased to resolve this litigation in a way that benefits them and demonstrates that we stand behind the quality and reliability of our vehicles." The settlement agreement was reached on Oct. 31. It will cover Toyota Tacoma trucks with model years from 2005 to 2010, Toyota Sequoia models from 2005 to 2008, and Toyota Tundra between 2007 and 2008 model years. Toyota also agreed to pay attorneys' fees amounting to $9.75 million, $150,000 in costs and expenses, and $2,500 to each of the eight named class representatives and cost of advertising. Toyota is yet to announce when the company plans to initiate the recall in order to fix the affected vehicles. Advertisement TagsToyota, toyota lawsuit, class action lawsuit, toyota case, toyota class action lawsuit, Toyota truck rust lawsuit (Photo : Getty Images) A Blackberry cell phone is seen on Nov. 4, 2013 in Miami, Florida. Advertisement BlackBerry chief executive officer John Chen confirmed in a recent interview that the smartphone company is working on a new product that will sport a physical keyboard, a common feature of the company's past devices. Chen confirmed that the physical keyboard will feature the ubiquitous QWERTY keys. However, he did not provide any details about the upcoming device, although rumors claim that the smartphone will feature a classic BlackBerry design. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement According to GSM Arena, the smartphone has an internal codename Mercury and is expected to sport a 4.5-inch Full HD touchscreen display with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Powering the device is a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset with an octa-core processor clocked at 2GHz. The phone is also rumored to have 3GB of memory and 23GB of storage space. On the camera aspect, the phone will have an 18-megapixel rear facing main camera and an 8-megapxiel front facing camera for selfie shots and video calling, according to Express. The phone will have a 3400 mAh battery pack, and since it has a Qualcomm chipset, it will most likely support the company's fast charging technology. The phone is expected to run on Android 7.0 Nougat right out of the box. BlackBerry's last two flagship devices, the DTEK50 and the DTEK60, were made by TCL. So some believe that the new smartphone will be created by a third-party manufacturer as well. BlackBerry announced a new business model in September where instead of handling the manufacturing side of business, it will hand it over to a third-party manufacturer by licensing its brand and software. Advertisement TagsBlackberry, blackberry smartphone, Android, BlackBerry Android, Smartphone, Blackberry News (Photo : Getty Images) Economists have predicted that should President-elect Donald Trump make good his promise to slap a high tariff on China imports, several countries would likely be affected Advertisement If US President-elect Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promise to slap a 45% tariff on importation of China-made goods, the move would most likely hurt Japan, South Korea, and several other nations, which have become increasingly dependent on China for top export destination over the years. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement During his campaign speeches, Trump promised to impose a 45% trade tariff on all imports from China if it does not start changing its trade practices such as subsidizing the steel industry and withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). TPP is a 12-nation free trade agreement that covers mostly the US main Asian allies. The accord has effectively expired last Friday, and the Obama administration said there was nothing it could do to revive it. Growth spurt For the past 15 years, China has experienced a growth spurt that saw the country become a top export destination for many countries. During these years, China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest market for manufacturers and exporters like South Korea, Japan, and Brazil. Economists said these countries would suffer a domino effect if China suffers a slowdown due to the high tariff. If China slows down, the rest of the exporting countries would also slow down since China would be purchasing less from these nations. Trade actions Trump's future trade actions against China would definitely raise the stakes for other nations, which rely heavily on Chinese trade to prop up their economies. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese economy has performed well in the last 15 years, accounting for a third of the world's growth. Analysts said that although China's imports have declined in the past years, it still managed to purchase a large percentage of the world's exports last year. "For many countries around the world, China is now the biggest trading partner, so this kind of tit-for-tat trade protectionism with China will dampen the atmosphere for the international trading community," Yorizumi Watanabe, a trade expert and professor at Japan's Keio University, said. Advertisement TagsPresident-elect Donald Trump, China tariff, TPP, South Korea, Japan, trade actions Raise funds for the APS fine arts department via a silent and live auction featuring local student artists' works. A is for Art is the APS Education Foundation's evening event focused on raising funds for fine arts. This year's gala event will be held on Saturday, November 19, 2016 at the Sandia Resort & Casino. This unique event offers a silent and live auction featuring student artists from Albuquerque Public Schools. Students and their teachers provide guests with an insider view of their fine arts classes and discuss why fine arts is such an important part of public education. This year we ask our students and teachers, "Why invest in art education? What is art?" Pieces up for bid include watercolors, ceramics, jewelry, mixed media, paintings, photography and more - all unique and hand crafted. Students receive a 40% commission when their piece is sold, becoming professional artists at this event. Proceeds also benefit the APS Fine Arts Department and the APS Education Foundation. Auction Preview Sponsorship Brochure For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Development Manager Lawren McConnell at (505) 855-5273 or Lawren.McConnell@aps.edu. Wyomings Shoshone River below Willwood Diversion Dam is still so roiled with thick silt that its impossible to know if any fish or aquatic life has survived the three-weeklong spill. Until things clear up were in a holding pattern, said Jason Burckhardt, a fisheries biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cody. With turbidity that high, we cant see into the water to sample fish. The irrigation dam built by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1924 is located between Cody and Powell, Wyo., just off Highway 14. In mid-October water behind the dam was released to make repairs on the aged structure. As a result, a torrent of silty water was released downstream, suffocating what had been a blue-ribbon stretch of trout fishing water under 3 to 12 inches of mud. There are a lot of people mad about that, said Tim French, Park County Commission chairman. It is a big deal, said county commissioner Loren Grosskopf. Its a terrible loss, not just to fishermen but everybody. Meeting To provide residents with information, the commission has scheduled a meeting on Tuesday night at 5:30 at the Park County Fairgrounds Events Center in Powell. Grosskopf said representatives from state and federal agencies have been invited, along with the public, to discuss the rivers dire situation, to provide answers and possibly find a solution. We tried to invite everyone who knew anything about it or had an opinion, Grosskopf said. Meanwhile, Burckhardt said the river is still flowing in excess of 1,000 NTUs, a measure of turbidity. For comparison, the river above the dam is between 6 and 19 NTUs, he said. In an off-color river with only a foot of visibility, often seen after a rainstorm, water is about 20 NTUs. The longer we have that pool elevation low, the more sediment is going down and the harder it will be to recover that habitat, Burckhardt said. Silt buildup Willwood Diversion Dam backs up water for a small irrigation district of about 80 users to water 12,000 acres in the Bighorn Basin. The water behind the dam was lowered this fall to upgrade the aging structure. By lowering the water behind the dam the Shoshone River cut through decades of built-up silt, spewing the thick, muddy mixture into the river below. Burckhardt said the entire river below the dam, a section extending about 50 miles to Bighorn Reservoir, has been damaged. How badly has yet to be determined. I fish and duck hunt that area, Grosskopf said. Its really unfortunate whats happened. The aggravating thing for me is that everyone is pointing their fingers at the Willwood Irrigation District, said Todd Singbeil, the irrigation districts manager. People are throwing their trash down at us and were having to deal with it. BLM land Singbeil said the dam backs up silt that drains largely from the Bureau of Land Managements McCullough Peaks, about 23,000 acres of erosive badlands recommended for wilderness designation located about 10 miles east of Cody. He estimated that 50,000 cubic yards of silt has piled up behind the dam enough dirt to cover 31 acres in a foot of soil. We see no reason to get rid of the silt if its going to continue to build up, Singbeil said. Still, the district has looked into the cost of removal. For about $2 million the silt could be excavated and trucked away, Singbeil said. But that expense is far beyond the means of the small irrigation district, which has an annual income of only $360,000. Im not going to let this thing die, so the next generation doesnt have to worry about it, Singbeil said. But removing the dirt doesnt address the problem of silting behind the dam, he added. Thats only a short-term fix. Permit He said the irrigation district would also like to see its operating criteria changed to allow more sediment to flow downstream. Right now the dam is supposed to release water with only 10 NTUs of turbidity, what he called drinking water tolerance. Theres no possible way to operate a dam or river that way, Singbeil said. Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality officials could not be reached for comment on the sediment spill. Burckhardt said the longer that Willwood Dam keeps releasing silt-laden water the longer that sediment is choking the rivers aquatic life downstream. If something cant happen this winter, Id like them to raise the pool to stem the damage, to stop the amount of sediment going downstream, Burckhardt said. Singbeil said work on the dam should be completed by the end of the week, allowing the water level to be raised. That would buy agencies and the public time to try and find a solution to the siltation problem. Ive been out there a couple of times looking at it, Grosskopf said. Weve got to deal with whats already happened and what could happen if the gates are opened again. (Photo : Getty Images) ZTEs community poll is still open and users can share their views on why they choose stock Android than customizations. Advertisement ZTE USA plans to launch stock Android devices, filling in the gap that Google left when it announced the abandonment of its Nexus phones. In September, the North American subsidiary of ZTE unveiled a community poll that asked users if they will choose to use Android devices that offered a stock or similar to stock experience, which is usually found in Nexus models, according to Ubergizmo. A majority of the users agreed to have a stock experience. ZTE also asked why users prefer to use untainted Android. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement ZTEs poll offered participants a few options why they would choose Android, and it included the following: Quicker updates Longer support Cleaner user interface and skin Better overall performance Less bloatware Lower defects Greater dev support for custom ROMs With that community poll results, ZTE can now rekindle the Nexus feel and experience upon launching Stock Android smartphones. ZTE has been welcoming customer feedback these days, so it is possible that the company will launch smartphones that offer an almost Nexus-like experience. ZTEs community poll is still open, and users can share their views on why they choose stock Android than customizations, The Next Web reported. However, the company has not confirmed that it is working the stock Android phone at this point in time. The results of the community poll will be presented to the companys R&D team to find out if the company should create the stock Android device. The company also plan to give a reward to the participants with the most thoughtful comments. Advertisement TagsZTE, Google, Nexus, Google Nexus, ZTE Axon 7, Stock Android phone, Stock Android, Stock Android experience, ZTE Poll (Photo : US Army) U.S. Special Forces Advertisement Republican Party allies of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump are doubling down on Trump's campaign promise to enforce "Peace through Strength" by massively strengthening the United States Armed Forces, while affirming his commitment to the U.S.' Asian alliances as bedrocks of stability against Chinese aggression. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The hawkish Trump has never been known for his patience with China, which he blasted for stealing American jobs while enriching itself at America's expense. Republicans said Trump will be unwavering as he pursues a strategy of "Peace through Strength," created by former Republican and U.S. President Ronald Reagan and abandoned under Barack Obama who took office in 2008. Mike Wynne, former Air Force Secretary from 2005-2008 under President George Bush, noted the U.S. Navy has shrunk to its smallest size since World War I. The U.S. Army is the smallest it has been since before World War II. The U.S. Air Force is the smallest in its history, and its aircraft are the oldest. Wynne also alleges readiness levels across the services are the worst in a generation, with pilots facing significantly reduced cockpit time and deferring critical maintenance. Navy ships and crews are deploying as long as 10 months, while Army units are deferring critical training before deployments. In Trump's favor is the real possibility he can repeal defense sequestration that cut defense spending by 10% in 2013 and would have sliced it by 8.5% in 2021. Wynne said Trump will rebuild the Navy, now at 274 ships. Trump's goal is 350 ships, a fleet in line with the up to 346 ships endorsed by the bipartisan National Defense Panel. The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is expected to have 415 warships and nearly 100 submarines by 2030. Trump's naval program will reassure U.S. allies the United States remains committed in the long-term to its traditional role as guarantor of the liberal order in Asia, said Wynne. Wynne said there is no question of Trump's commitment to America's Asian alliances as bedrocks of stability in the region. Advertisement Tagsdonald trump, Republican Party, United States Armed Forces, Peace through Strength, ronald reagan, Mike Wynne (Photo : getty images.) China's famous polar bear has been temporarily shifted from Grandview Mall Aquarium in Guangzhou. The bear will been taken to to her original home, Ocean Park. Advertisement A three-year-old female polar bear, which gained worldwide fame as world's saddest bear, has been moved from the Grandview Mall Aquarium in Guangzhou and sent to his original home in Ocean Park. Officials of the Grandview Mall cited 'renovation work' as the reason for the relocation. Pizza - the official name of the bear - would return once the renovation work is completed. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The mall posted on Chinese social media that it would "await Pizza's return." Reports say the renovation is being done to make aquarium more habitable for Pizza. The move is apparently in response to increasing protest by animal right activists, who claim that aquarium's artificial ambiance is making pizza increasingly weak. However, Peter Li, China policy specialist at Humane Society International expressed reservation over the move. "No amount of renovation could ever make a shopping mall a suitable place for this animal, and to send him back would be cruel and heartless," he said Li claimed that the polar bear was suddenly shifted due to her deteriorating health and warned that her health would soon deteriorate to the extent that it would become difficult to display her to the public. However, he expressed joy that Pizza would at last get to enjoy the bliss of pure nature at his original habitat in Ocean Park. The female polar bear created a global stir in July after a leading animal group based in Hong Kong posted a video on its official website showing Pizza lying sadly in the mall aquarium. Many leading publications including 'Time' magazine and 'The Telegraph' unanimously described Pizza as the 'world's saddest bear. ' Advertisement TagsPolar Bear China, polar bear, World's Saddest Polar Bear, Pizza China, china What does the future of the Asian American church look like? Some 200 Asian American ministry leaders gathered in Southern California to learn and dialogue on the question during the third annual Asian American Ministry Conference. The event, hosted by Biola University's Talbot School of Theology, had previously focused on themes such as mentorship and leadership. This year, the conference focused on the theme of envisioning the future of the Asian American church. "What does the future hold for the Asian American church? I believe that there is a bright future ahead as we look at all of the talent, resources, and people involved in building towards the future," said Dr. Benjamin Shin, the director of the Asian American Doctor of Ministry cohort at Talbot, and one of the organizers of the conference. "This conference hopes to provide a small glimpse of that future today." (Photo : Christianity Daily) The Asian American Ministry Conference which took place on November 5, 2016 featured a time to pray for pastors and ministry leaders. Among the diverse range of topics discussed during the conference, which took place from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday, was the way that Asian Americans could serve to be witnesses for the gospel in this generation. Dr. Peter Cha, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School who spoke during the morning and evening plenary sessions of the conference, emphasized the need to "develop our authentic witness" in the modern day, as non-Christians express increasingly disillusioned sentiments toward the Christian community. Being a "witness" is not only about sharing the gospel in distant countries, but also doing so in America, within the societies in which we live, he explained. One of those ways to develop authentic witness as Asian Americans is to express the Asian American Christian voice, Cha said. Despite the diverse population of Christians in the U.S., Cha noted that there still exists a tendency for some to think of Christianity as 'white man's religion,' and to think of 'white people' when thinking of the church in America. "I think it will be our homework to figure out, what voice do we bring to the table?" said Cha. "I hope younger generation pastors will collaborate to form that voice." Cha also mentioned the potential role that Asian Americans have in racial reconciliation. In the aftermath of the L.A. Riots, Cha said that many Korean Americans responded and collaborated with members of the African American community. Today, Asian Americans still can serve to be a bridge among the different ethnic groups, he said. "This racial distrust will linger," Cha said, encouraging those at the conference to focus on the gospel in the process of racial reconciliation. "The gospel is a more profound way than tolerance to racial reconciliation." Cha also alluded to the idea that though some Asian Americans may have a passion to be more involved in the greater community, Asian American churches may not be giving enough room for ministers and members to be active in those arenas. Cha said that among 18,000 attendees to the Urbana Conference in 2015, about 6,000 of them were Asian Americans, which showed "a great deal of interest and passion in our community to make an impact with the gospel." "Are local churches presenting the opportunities for them to do so?" he added. "I hope that we will be able to say that all the gifts that he gave us - including our Asian American identity - we did not bury it in the ground, but stewarded it faithfully for his glory and kingdom," Cha said. Meanwhile, the conference also featured three sessions of seminars on about a dozen topics on specific ministries, including church planting, college ministry, children's ministry, global missions, worship, organizing special events, conflict resolution across generations, family ministry, and multi-ethnic church. Seventeen Asian American leaders in those respective areas were featured as speakers, including John M. Kim, church planter and current pastor of Lighthouse Bible Church Los Angeles; Steve Bang Lee, college and teaching ministries director at Living Hope Community Church; Margaret Yu, national executive director of Epic Movement; Gloria S. Lee from Menlo Church; and Angela Yee, director of mission and ministry at Saddleback Church, Irvine South campus; among others. The Asian American Ministry Conference is set to take place for the fourth time next year on November 4. press@cdaily.co.kr - Copyright , #Envision A Fiberglass Structures employee was sentenced Monday for starting a fire that caused around $6 million in damage to one of the company's buildings. Kristopher Michael Harasymczuk, 31, was given a six-year deferred sentence for a charge of negligent arson after causing a fire in the Laurel building. Harasymczuk must complete 30 days of work for the Yellowstone County Sheriff's labor detail. He must also pay $100 to Fiberglass Solutions during every month of his six year deferred sentence. Company president Robert Harris attended Harazymczuk's sentencing hearing, but said only he would be watching the situation closely. Harazymczuk had pleaded no contest to the charge after co-workers said he flicked a lighter at the factory while they cleaned themselves with an acetone solution. The fire began at about noon on Feb. 5, 2015 when one of Harazymczuk's coworkers at the factory caught fire, causing a massive blaze. The estimated monetary damage of the fire was five to seven million dollars. Harazymczuk restitution over the six years would total about $7,000. Atheist group loses hometown radio station to 24-hour Christmas music 14 November, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | MADISON, Wisconsin (Christian Examiner) The Freedom from Religion Foundation's "Freethought Radio" program is getting the boot from its hometown radio station, the Mic 92.1 FM. The reason? Ironically, the station that once hosted "Progressive Talk" programs in Madison, Wisconsin, is switching to a 24-hour Christmas music format the holiday celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus, whom the atheist group has repeatedly mocked in its "winter" displays. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is headed by the married and unbelieving duo Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, who also host the organization's radio program. They issued a press release calling the move a "bizarre shift" in programing and said they had been "unceremoniously yanked off the air locally." The Mic is not alone. Liberal talk on commercial radio has long failed to garner the audience and ad dollars conservative talk has although you'd think it would have had a better shot in Madison. "We opened up the Wisconsin State Journal the morning after the election to read the remarkable announcement that progressive talk had been banished forthwith on 92.1 FM and replaced with around-the-clock Christmas music!" Gaylor said. "It's not exactly the appropriate vehicle for Freethought Radio now." The radio station is, however, a means for making money through advertising and, according to the local media, liberal activist programming is a burden rather than a blessing. It turns out atheist programming is something few find enjoyable. "In the most recent Nielsen ratings, it (the radio station) had been drawing a 2.1 share, or less than half that drawn by WIBA-AM, home to (Vicki) McKenna, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity," the Wisconsin State Journal's Chris Rickert reported. "The Mic is not alone. Liberal talk on commercial radio has long failed to garner the audience and ad dollars conservative talk has although you'd think it would have had a better shot in Madison." There are other reasons too, as several of the local radio personalities from other stations pointed out. For one, there are "liberal listeners" and "liberal activists listeners." Liberal listeners, of which there are many, listen to National Public Radio (NPR). Liberal activists listen to "progressive talk," and there just aren't enough activists to make the shows profitable. But there's also the quality of the programming. According the newspaper, Derrell Connor, who hosts programs in Madison and Milwaukee, and is more "middle-of-the-road" in his approach, and Dave Black, general manager of UW-Madison's student radio, said liberal radio hosts may not be as good as their conservative counterparts. "Say what you want about Rush (Limbaugh)," Connor said. "Rush is good at what he does." Black said hosts on the hard left just have difficulties holding listeners because they are less effective and weaving news and commentary together. For example, in 2004 liberal talk hit the airwaves in the form of Air America. With hosts like now Wisconsin Sen. Al Franken and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the network claimed to be a counterbalance to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative hosts. It was also home to Freethought Radio. The network was a money pit and was pronounced dead six years later. Freethought Radio's removal from the air in Madison doesn't mean it is off the air everywhere. FFRF claims the program will still broadcast on a Janesville, Wisconsin, station as well as on stations in Michigan, Missouri, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Texas and in Alberta, Canada. "We're looking at this as an opportunity rather than a disruption," Dan Barker, co-president of FFRF and a former minister, said. "Stay tuned." Trump says he wants to win Israeli-Palestinian peace for 'humanity's sake' 14 November, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner) President-elect Donald Trump has said he believes he can accomplish what no president before him has establishing a peace treaty between the Palestinians and Israelis. "As a deal maker, I'd like to do ... the deal that can't be made, and do it for humanity's sake," Trump told the Wall Street Journal during an exclusive interview. The comment is only the latest in a long line of discourses on Israel and peace between the two parties discourses that have often been inconsistent. In one instance, Trump claimed he would remain "neutral" in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians because to take sides would kill any potential deal before it came to fruition. When called out by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during the primary, Trump clarified the comment, calling himself "totally pro-Israel." It's not up the United Nations to impose a solution. The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening. Trump also took a hard-right stance when speaking to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. As Christian Examiner reported, Trump claimed he would never make a deal that did not benefit Israel. He also said any deal between the two sides could not be imposed by a third party, such as the United Nations. Otherwise, Palestinian terror would be rewarded. "It's not up the United Nations to impose a solution. The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening," Trump said at AIPAC in March. Trump campaigned on his negotiating skills and is the author of the bestselling book, The Art of the Deal. He has repeatedly said he will be able to get the Israelis and Palestinians to come to the table and obtain an agreement. It appears as if his public relations offensive to entice Israel has already begun. Just prior to Friday's interview in the Wall Street Journal, Trump published a message in Israel Hayom, describing Israel as "a beacon of hope to countless people." "Israel and America share so many of the same values, such as freedom of speech, freedom of worship and the importance of creating opportunities for all citizens to pursue their dreams," Trump said in the message published by the paper. "Israel is the one true democracy and defender of human rights in the Middle East and a beacon of hope to countless people." He then touted the role his administration would have in achieving a "just, lasting peace" in the region. For that reason, Politico has reported, the Trump transition team is asking President Barack Obama's administration to maintain a hands-off approach to diplomatic foreign policy in the last days of his presidency. According to the report, an unnamed Trump "national security advisor" said President Obama should not "go seeking new adventures or pushing through policies that certainly don't match Trump's positions." The message was clear don't bind the hands of the successor. Recently, critics of the president's foreign policy have expressed fears that Obama would abandon America's pro-Israel position in favor of seeking an imposed peace through the UN. But, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again reiterated Sunday that he expects the U.S. to maintain its commitment to the idea of direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis. Some Israelis have already taken Trump's election as a signal that the dream of Palestinian statehood has ended, as evidenced by the president-elect's soft stance on Israeli settlements. According to the Washington Post, the co-chair of the Trump campaign's Israel Advisory Committee told Israeli Army Radio last week that Trump did not believe settlement activity should be condemned because it is "not an obstacle for peace." The Obama administration has frequently criticized the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Two boys who converted to Christianity from Islam in Uganda have been forced to flee for their lives due to persecution. According to ChristianToday.com, the two boys, aged 16 and 17, were driven out even by their own family members. The boys found refuge in the home of a Christian man, but that man ended up having to flee with them after Muslim extremists attacked and destroyed his home and drove him out. "I started receiving threatening messages in my phone accusing me of converting the boys to Christianity, as well as housing them in my house without the parents' permission, but I did not take it very seriously," the man who gave the boys shelter told Morning Star News. Apostasy against Islam is a serious crime in Uganda and is punishable by death. Although Uganda is not on Open Doors 2016 World Watch List of the top 50 countries where Christian persecution is worst, it is reportedly becoming more dangerous for those who hold to Christian faith. A hardline Muslim sect called the tabliqs are growing in power in Uganda, and Christian persecution ministries are concerned about the effect they will have on the Christian church in the country. Christian ministry Release International asked for prayer for the two boys and local Christians who have risked their lives to help them. Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com Publication date: November 14, 2016 Okaystop me if youve heard this story before: A Christian couple opens a bakery where, until recently, the only thing theyre known for was the quality of their baked goods. Until one day a gay client demands that they perform a service that would violate their conscience. After the couple refuses, the would-be customer files a complaint against the bakers. The case winds up in the courts, where the Christian couple loses. Its an all-too-familiar story, but this one has a few surprising twists. Firstwhere it took place: the United Kingdom, specifically, Northern Ireland. Daniel and Amy McArthur run a bakery in Belfast called Ashers. In May, 2014, a representative of a group called QueerSpace, which is, as the name suggests, an LGBT advocacy group in Northern Ireland, placed an order for a cake at Ashers. If the cake had simply been, say, a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, the story would have ended there. Ashers would have baked the cake and that would have been that. But, as you probably guessed, it wasnt that simple. The would-be customer wanted the McArthurs to put a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, along with the words Support Gay Marriage on the top. After the McArthurs declined to bake the cake, the would-be customer filed suit against them. After losing in the lower court and being fined the equivalent of $600, they appealed to Northern Irelands Supreme Court, which upheld the legal conclusions of the lower court. Writing for the court, the Chief Justice rejected the bakerys contention that fulfilling the request was tantamount to approving the message. The fact, he wrote, that a baker provides a cake for a particular team or portrays witches on a Halloween cake does not indicate any support for either. Going one step further, he continued In the present case the appellants might elect not to provide a service that involves any religious or political message. What they may not do is provide a service that only reflects their own political or religious message in relation to sexual orientation. Wow! In other words, when freedom of speech and conscience collides with issues concerning sexual orientation, freedom of speech and conscience must give way. This prompted the other twist: The British media came to the defense of the Christian bakers. The center-right Telegraph asked How have we got to the point where a law-abiding, God-fearing family running a bakery in Northern Ireland can find themselves in a lengthy court battle over a refusal to ice a political message on to a 39 sponge cake?, adding Why is the law not protecting the rights of this Christian couple? And meanwhile from the left, the Guardian said that the decision cannot be welcomed by anyone who cares about free speech. While it argued against conscience-driven blanket exemption to discrimination laws, it added that is not the only way in which this question can be examined. According to the Guardian, the McArthurs were being asked to make a statement in favour of gay marriage with which they profoundly disagreed. And here they ought to have had the right to disagree. In the Guardians opinion, compelling someone to expresseven in sugar pastean opinion they rejected with all their hearts is wrong. So while the McArthurs may have lost in the courts of law, they seem to be winning in the court of public opinion. And thats a good sign--given that many cultural trends that start across the pond wind up on these shores. Who knows, perhaps someday soon the British presss concern for freedom of religion and freedom of speech might catch on with our own media. BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions. John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview. Publication date: November 14, 2016 In the lightning strike of Donald Trumps presidential victory, the storms of local elections quietly rumbled in the background. State elections brought the passage of conservative ballot measures in red states and liberal measures in blue states. But Republican dominance crafted election nights narrative. Republicans now control all of the state legislatures in the South after winning the Kentucky House from Democrats for the first time since 1921, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Trumps victory had some level of coattail effect at the state level, as analysts predicted. Republicans maintained their dominance of state legislatures, though some decisive races remain too close to calllike in the New York Senate. One of the few glimmers for Democrats: They took both chambers of the Nevada legislature from Republicans. But in several other states, Republicans ousted Democratic governors, giving the GOP executive control of 33 states, the most since 1922. North Carolinas hotly contested governorship is still up in the air. In short, Republicans bested expectations, wrote NCSLs analyst Dan Diorio. Having already reached the peak of control in party history, Republicans will maintain a similar level of control, in a year when many expected Democrats to net seats and chambers. Less noticeable state posts could have national impact. Missouris new attorney general is Josh Hawley, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts and an evangelical. In his new role, Hawley will be defending the state in a major religious liberty case before the Supreme Court, Trinity Lutheran v. Pauley. With an attorney general sympathetic to the churchs case, its future remains uncertain. The Supreme Court hasnt scheduled arguments for the case yet, and The Cato Institutes Ilya Shapiro thinks the dispute will be settled. On ballot measures, seven states expanded the legality of marijuana. California, Nevada, and Massachusetts legalized marijuana for recreational use, while Florida, Arkansas, Montana, and North Dakota legalized it for medicinal use. Several states increased gun restrictions like background checks, while others reestablished the death penalty. Washington, Arizona, Colorado, and Maine voted to increase the minimum wage. Several states also instituted criminal justice reforms. And in one of the most significant voter decisions, Colorado legalized assisted suicide. Courtesy: WORLD News Service Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com Publication date: November 14, 2016 An Irish Christian bakery that was fined for refusing to bake a cake with engraved message supporting gay marriage has decided to appeal their case in the UK Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. A county court had initially ruled that they had discriminated against their customer in 2014 by declining a request to bake a cake with a picture of Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie along with a message 'Support Gay Marriage' and a logo of gay rights group QueerSpace. They were fined 500 in 2015 by the court. The owners of Ashers Baking Co. challenged the decision in Northern Ireland's Court of Appeals which upheld the lower court's decision. Now the bakers want to take the case to UK's highest court, but according to their lawyers they may be barred from doing so. If they are not able to appeal to the Supreme Court in London, they will try to further their case in European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. The matter will reach ECHR only on the condition that it is refused by the Supreme Court of UK. "Under the complex rules regarding appeals in civil cases, such as the Ashers case, the Court of Appeal decision seems to be final, according to the terms of the Judicature Act 1978," said Simon Calvert, spokesman for the Christian Institute who are supporting Ashers. But he added that because of the broad public implications of the case, their lawyers have urged the Court of Appeals to decide if the appeal could be sent to the Supreme Court. "In view of the complexity of these issues, however, and the wider public importance which this case clearly has, and in order to make clear that the appellants (Ashers) have exhausted their domestic remedies... we respectfully invite the Court of Appeal to consider giving a short ruling on the question of whether appeal to the UK Supreme Court is available in this case," said the letter written by Ashers' lawyers cited in Belfast Telegraph. Ashers have six branches with over 80 employees, and deliver cakes across the UK and Ireland. Donald Trump has named Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, as the next White House chief of staff, and Breitbart News CEO Stephen Bannon as the "Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President." "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," said Trump. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." Priebus is serving his third term at RNC, and is seen as an insider who manages the affairs of the party expertly. "It is truly an honor to join President-elect Trump in the White House as his Chief of Staff," Priebus said in a statement. "I am very grateful to the President-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism," he added. Many of the lawmakers who had opposed Trump during the campaign congratulated him for selecting Priebus. "Congrats to @realDonaldTrump for outstanding choice of @Reince to be Chief of Staff. This shows me he is serious about governing," Senator Lindsey Graham said on Twitter. Priebus represents the "establishment," while Bannon is generally seen as being hostile to "establishment" for his "alt right" views. In October, an article was published in Breitbart which claimed that House Speaker Paul Ryan sided with Hillary Clinton because both of them were "progressives" and held "globalist worldview." Ryan told CNN that he did not know Bannon personally, and was not worried about Bannon's apparent opposition of him. "I don't know Steve Bannon, so I have no concerns. I trust Donald's judgment," said Ryan. Media reports say that the selection of Priebus might upset those among the grassroots. Bannon on the other hand, was instrumental in promoting Trump's grassroots support. Bannon was named CEO of Trump's campaign about three months ago, and had stepped down from his role of chief executive of the conservative newspaper to focus full time on the campaign of the president-elect. I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up. Olivet Nazarene University and America's Christian Credit Union Sign Affiliation Agreement Contact: Nikole Pearce, 626-208-5411 MEDIA ADVISORY, Nov. 14, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) announced today a signed affiliation agreement between the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies (SGCS) and America's Christian Credit Union (ACCU). The agreement is an exclusive education partnership between Olivet and ACCU. The agreement will provide all ACCU staff, members and spouses a 20 percent tuition discount on SGCS programming. Olivet has already enrolled the first ACCU student who began pursuing her online bachelor of business administration in September. "At America's Christian Credit Union we strive to Reach, Serve and Teach our members and staff through Biblical principles," said Mendell Thompson, President/CEO of ACCU. "Our goal is not to be just a financial institution for our members but in reality, to be a life transforming organization for those we serve. This partnership with Olivet allows us to achieve that mission." ACCU has 90 employees and serves 86,000 members across the country with more than 5,000 branches and over 2,000 self-service locations. "As one of the nation's top Christian universities that provides education with a Christian purpose, we are honored to partner with such a great organization in ACCU," said ONU vice-president of strategic expansion, Dr. Ryan Spittal. "Olivet is pleased to align our similar missions to help transform the lives of individuals across the country." This partnership builds on Olivet's rigorous community outreach. SGCS has locations in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, offering more than 30 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs that can be completed in either an onsite or fully online format. Partnered with more than 200 organizations across the United States, SGCS has more than 150 learning locations, including five regional centers. SGCS also has a presence in Hong Kong along with partnerships in China, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Dubai UAE and Israel. Recently, ONU became a participant in the new Yellow Ribbon GI Enhancement Program, designed to improve financial aid for veterans participating in the new Post-9/11 GI Bill Program. Under the current bill, veterans' tuition is covered up to the equal amount of the highest in-state, public school, undergraduate tuition. ONU's Yellow Ribbon Program will cover additional tuition costs not covered by that bill. These funds -- up to $25,000 per student per year -- are available to traditional students as well as students within the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies, including the doctoral program. Information on the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies is available at graduate.olivet.edu About America's Christian Credit Union Someday, one of Katie Meier's students might save your life. They'll know whether to jam a tube up your nose or down your throat to help you breathe. They'll know how to give CPR and load you on to a backboard to avoid spinal damage. They might be the first person who arrives at a car wreck, or at your own home, hopping out of a red light-flashing ambulance. Meier teaches the new Emergency Medical Technician course at the Billings Career Center, a class that will put students on the doorstep of EMT certification. Students earn college credit for completing the class, which also meets state EMT certification requirements. They'll be well positioned to move into the workforce or pursue further medical training. Senior Tendra Palin is taking the latter route. She plans to attend Rocky Mountain College and pursue a career as a physician assistant. "My goal is to get certification, and I can work while going to college," she said. Students practiced ventilation techniques with simulators on Thursday, measuring from the tip of the nose or mouth to the ear for the right size tube or oral airway device. The models help simulate resistance in airways; students had to twist and wiggle the tube, and practiced swiftly removing the oral device if a patient wakes up and starts gagging. Like many medical professions, Montana has a statewide EMT shortage, especially in rural areas. While the Career Center program will likely give Billings a workforce boost, it's unclear if that will filter to other areas. Simon Hanson said he plans to join the military and work as a combat medic. I wasnt quite ready for the studying, he said, estimating that he typically spent an hour each night on the class. At first when we started, it was a lot of notes. With students funneling in from three high schools, they dont always have the same academic experience. Some took more specialized classes, like the Career Centers biomedical courses or medical careers class. Others took biology or an anatomy course. Some spend their entire morning with Meier in her medical careers course. I have kids from all backgrounds, Meier said. Typically, EMTs perform CPR and artificial ventilations, administer oxygen, perform basic airway management and spinal immobilization, check vital signs and bandage and splint wounds and fractures. With a few exceptions, they don't perform procedures that break the skin. Paramedics have more training and can perform more complex medical procedures. On Thursday, students were tested on what to do when assessing a patient's airway; based on the scenario Meier gave them, they had to demonstrate the correct way to open a nasal and oral airway and how to use suction to clear a patient's mouth of fluid. Students had to narrate each of their actions. "If you didn't say it, you didn't do it," Meier told students. "You need to nail every single thing." Someday, students might not just be working with a plastic simulator. At the end of the school year they will be able to take national certification tests in Billings and if they pass, they can move from the classroom to an ambulance. "In real life I'm probably gonna be a little frightened," Palin said, talking about working with catastrophic injuries. "I know this sounds bad, but I think I'm gonna get used to that. "Can we control ourselves, can we do our jobs? That's why we practice." home World Christian bakers seek to appeal gay cake case to U.K. Supreme Court The owners of Ashers bakery, who were found to have violated equality laws for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage message, are planning to appeal their case to the highest court in the U.K. The Court of Appeals in Belfast upheld the original ruling that the bakery discriminated against Gareth Lee, a member of LGBT advocacy group Queer Space, for refusing his order for a cake that had the slogan "Support Gay Marriage," the Evening Standard reported. Ashers owners Daniel and Amy McArthur have asked permission from judges if they can challenge the ruling at the Supreme Court. However, the legal team supporting them believe that the appeal to the U.K.'s highest court may not be possible under legislation related to appeals in civil cases. The lawyers have written to the appeal court judges requesting for a ruling to clarify the position. "In view of the complexity of these issues... and the wider public importance which this case clearly has, and in order to make clear that the appellants (Ashers) have exhausted their domestic remedies... we respectfully invite the Court of Appeal to consider giving a short ruling on the question of whether appeal to the United Kingdom Supreme Court is available in this case," the letter stated. Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, which supported the McArthurs in their legal battle, is not optimistic about the possibility of an appeal. "Under the complex rules regarding appeals in civil cases, such as the Ashers case, the Court of Appeal decision seems to be final, according to the terms of the Judicature Act 1978," said Calvert. The couple is also thinking of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights if the Supreme Court is ruled out as an option. In the original ruling, the judge ruled that religious beliefs cannot dictate the law and ordered the bakers to pay damages of 500. In their appeal, the owners argued that they objected to the message the Lee wanted to put on the cake, not his sexuality. The Court of Appeals judges rejected the argument in October and ruled that Ashers had directly discriminated Lee. Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan, contended that baking the cake would not have equated to an endorsement of same-sex marriage. The McArthurs thanked the churches and individuals who supported them in their legal battle. They stated that they "do not feel defeated or dismayed" despite losing their appeal in Belfast. home World ISIS separates families by abducting newborn babies, virgin girls, says Catholic priest A Catholic priest said that Islamic State fighters are separating families in areas under the control of the terrorist group by taking away their newborn babies and virgin girls. The jihadists kill the fathers and they force the young boys to plant bombs on the streets. Fr. Patrick Desbois, a Paris-based priest who dedicated his life to researching the Holocaust and fighting anti-Semitism, helped genocide victims of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Desbois said in an interview with The Christian Post that ISIS has killed Shia Muslims and Christians in large numbers, adding that the terror group is utilizing a "very special" strategy in its efforts to decimate entire people groups. "They dislocate the families, they take the newborn babies, and they put them in Islamist families," he told The Christian Post. He said that the jihadist group trains young children to be terrorists while the men are often shot in pits. He added that young girls are sold in the sex trade. "The young girls who are virgins are selected by doctors and sold," he said. Desbois said that the terrorists "dislocate families according to age, sexuality," adding that every member is used "in a special way." He believes that the group is very organized and he sees no sign of improvisation. The priest, who founded the humanitarian organization Yahad-In Unum, has interviewed numerous Yazidi survivors who escaped from ISIS. He has shared many of the interviews in Action Yazidis, an initiative of the organization which aims to uncover "facts of genocidal practices wherever they are found and provide a voice of protest on behalf of all victims and potential victims of genocide." Desbois said that his organization has gathered "many testimonies of girls who say they have been used as human shields." He noted that the testimonies have been cross-referenced with other sources to get a clear picture of the atrocities commited by ISIS. He believes that there are almost no Christians left under ISIS except for those who are held in captivity in territories controlled by the group. He noted that while ISIS flaunts some of its atrocities online, the group is careful not to show all of its barbaric acts. "They show beheadings, crucifixions, or when they burn people, but they rarely show when they are raping a girl, or when they are training children in terrorist camps," he said. Debois urged Christians to help refugee families fleeing from war-stricken areas and called on the government to help the victims find work. He said that one of the ways that people can help is to donate to organizations that are working to aid the victims of ISIS. home World Professor admits misquoting Christian governor in Jakarta after blasphemy protests turn violent Buni Yani, a former communications professor at the London School in central Jakarta, has admitted that he manipulated the words of the Christian governor of Jakarta to make it seem like he insulted Islam. Hardline Islamic groups have warned against voting for Jakarta Gov. Tjahaja "Ahok" Basuki Purnama in the coming Indonesian elections on the basis of verse 51 from the fifth chapter of the Koran, al Ma'ida. Some have interpreted the verse as instructions for Muslims not to live under the leadership of non-Muslims while others say that it only applies in the time of war. Purnama issued a statement in which he warned that the Quranic verse was being misused to tell Muslims not to vote for him. "Do not believe everything what people say... because often you are deceived by using verse 51 of Al Maidah (the fifth surah of the Qur'an)," he said. On Nov. 4, tens of thousands of Indonesians marched on the streets calling for the arrest of Purnama for "slandering of Islam." The event resulted in violent clashes, with at least 160 protesters and 79 police officers injured. According to Asia News, Yani confessed that he had misrepresented Purnama's statement and omitted a word "by mistake." By omitting the word "using" from the sentence, it seemed like the governor was saying that the verse from the Quran is deceiving Muslims. The professor, however, refused to admit that he was behind the protests in Jakarta. Many observers believe that the case against Purnama falls apart due to Yani's admission. A petition against the professor has gathered more than 100,000 signatures calling on the police to charge him with moral and intellectual dishonesty. "His actions are a provocation that degenerated into fury among most Muslim communities," it stated. Purnama, the frontrunner in the 2017 electoral race, is a key ally of Indonesian President Joko Widodo. The president canceled his trip to Australia following the violent clashes. Days before the protest, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose son is running against Purnama, called for the prosecution of the governor to appease the Islamist opposition. 'A Clear Attack On Freedom Of Religion': Israeli Government Backs Bill To Quieten Muslim Call To Prayer A bill to ban mosques from using loudspeakers for the Muslim call to prayer won support from the coalition government in Israel last night, after the controversial measure was backed by right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The prayer calls, traditionally announced through minarets five times a day, have been a frequent target of the Israeli right, but previous attempts to silence them through legislation have failed to garner large-scale support. But after gaining the support of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, the measure will now have coalition support as it moves to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, the Times of Israel reports. Following the announcement that the bill had passed, Jewish Home Knesset Member (MK) Moti Yogev, who instigated the legislation, thanked Netanyahu, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (also of Jewish Home), and the rest of the Government. "We have no intention to harm freedom of religion but rather to prevent the harming of people's sleep," he said. Netanyahu pointed to similar restrictions in European and even some Muslim countries as justification for the move, and claimed that Muslims were among those "suffering" as a result of the prayer calls. "The Muslims, the Jews, and the Christian are all suffering from this," he said. "I can't tell you how many times people have approached me, from all walks of Israeli society, who are crying out about the suffering that is caused by excessive noise reaching them from prayer house announcements. "Israel is a country that respects freedom of religion for all. Israel is committed to protect anyone who suffers from the excessively loud calls. That is the custom in many European cities. That is the custom also in various places in the Muslim world, where they limited the volume of the calls out of consideration for the general public." However, Arab lawmakers attacked the proposal. Joint (Arab) List leader MK Aymen Odeh called it "another bill, in a series of populist bills, whose objective is to create an atmosphere of hate and incitement against the Arab population." He added: "There are noise laws and regulations that also apply to mosques, so it's clear that the sole purpose of the bill is to mark the mosques as a problem source. It is a clear attack on Muslim freedom of religion and the continuation of a wave of persecution that the prime minister is leading." His fellow party MK Hanin Zoabi suggested that those who are disturbed by the calls to prayer should live elsewhere including Europe. "Those who suffer from the sounds of the muezzins are specifically those who chose to settle near the the mosques, and... they are invited to leave if they are suffering so much," she said. "This isn't Europe here. Anyone who feels like he is in Europe, and thinks this is Europe, should consider going there." The bill aims to prevent calls to prayer from "conveying religious or nationalist messages, or even words of incitement," and seeks to ban sound systems at all houses of prayer in the country, not just in mosques. "Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens in the Galilee, Negev, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and other places in central Israel suffer regularly and daily from the noise caused by the call of the muezzin from mosques," reads the legislation. "The noise made by these public calls disturbs the rest of the citizens several times a day, including in the early mornings and at nighttime," it says. Some 20 per cent of Israel's population are Arab most of them Muslim and the calls to prayer are a familiar sound in many parts of the country. Jerusalem is revered as a centre for all three monotheistic religions. Ancient Jerusalem Tombs Damaged In Suspected Arson Attack Two ancient tombs were severely damaged by fires outside Jerusalem's Old City in suspected arson attacks on Friday. Investigators in Israel do not know who set fire to Absalom's Tomb in the Kidron Valley, opposite the Temple Mount, and the adjacent Tomb of Jehoshephat. The tombs, which date to the Second Temple period, are among a cluster of ancient graves at the base of the Mount of Olives. Absalom's Tomb is traditionally identified as a monument to the biblical figure of the same name, though archaeologists have dated the edifice to the 1st century BC. According to the Times of Israel, the fires broke out around 4:15 pm on Friday and caused extensive damage to the 2,000-year-old structures. Assaf Avraham, the Israel Park's Authority administrator in charge of the national park surrounding the Old City's walls, said in a statement that the blazes "caused damage to values of [historic] heritage and archaeological gems of great value." He added: "We will act to the extent of our abilities with law enforcement, including the police, to find those responsible and bring them to justice." A police spokesman declined to comment on the case. The Times of Israel reported that three other suspected arson attacks targeting municipal sewage trucks also took place in East Jerusalem on Friday night, but that there was no indication there was any correlation between the fires and the suspected attack on the ancient tombs. 'Climate Change Is Not A Hoax': Christian Scientist Pens Open Letter To Donald Trump A prominent Christian climate change scientist has called on the President-elect to work with other countries in support of the Paris agreement. In an open letter to Donald Trump, atmospheric scientist Dr Katharine Hayhoe pleads with him to accept that climate change is "real" and not a hoax. Hayhoe, associate professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center, writes: "You've given a voice to the fear and anger, the anxiety and frustration of millions of US citizens. That surprises us, shocks us, and even scares us too. "But to heal a suppurating boil, we can't just slap some cover-up on it. It has to be lanced. And my hope, from the bottom of my heart, is that by doing so, you will start the healing process. "I'm a climate scientist. Thanks to decades and even centuries of careful research, we know climate is changing, we're responsible, and the impacts are serious. "I've helped write US national climate assessments that document how climate change is affecting the country's water, its energy, ecosystems, infrastructure, and even people's health. "This thing is not a hoax; it's real." The issue of climate change has divided evangelicals among themselves and also from the rest of the population in the United States. Overall, seven in ten US adults believe global warming is man-made, but among evangelicals, four-fifths do not think humans have caused it. Donald Trump is a climate change denier. His advisers during his campaign included Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a prominent oil and gas man and a climate change sceptic. Reuters reported this week that Donald Trump believes climate change is a hoax and is looking for a fast way to exit the accord so he does not have to implement the agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Hayhoe, who is from Toronto and is married to Church Without Religion pastor Andrew Farley of Texas, describes herself as an evangelical Christian. Seven years ago, Hayhoe wrote a chapter of a book by Trump advisor Newt Gingrich about climate change. The chapter was first accepted, and subsequently dropped on the request of Gingrich himself. Hayhoe writes in her letter to Trump: "I think I speak for many in the US, in Canada, and around the world, when I say that you've surprised us, you've shocked us, and you've even scared us. Why? Because your words and your actions will affect us all." She says climate change isn't fair, and disproportionately affects the poor and the weak, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. These are the very people who contributed least to the problem but bear the brunt of its impacts, she writes. She urges Trump to "work together instead of tearing each other apart". In her latest Global Weirding video, posted the day after the election, she says research shows that a person's view on climate change can be predicted by which party they belong to. The physics used to determine global warming is the same physics as that used to design Boeing aircraft, yet no-one accuses aircraft designers of perpetrating a hoax. "The science isn't political. We get the same results, whether we're Republican or Democrat." Earlier this month, Hayhoe told The Observer that she would be "alarmed" if Donald Trump won the election. Don't Panic, The Supermoon Doesn't Signal The End Of The World Today will see a 'supermoon' rise, when the moon will appear 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than usual. Depending on where in the world you live, you may already have seen it. People lucky enough to have a clear sky will see a beautiful sight tonight. In the UK the moon will appear in all its glory just before 5pm. Because its orbit is elliptical or oval-shaped rather than perfectly round, it's closer to the planet sometimes than at other times. Today sees it approach closer than at any time for the last 69 years. Some Christians see this as one of the signs alluded to in apocalyptic biblical references marking the end of the world and the coming of Christ. Is it? No. A little more detail, perhaps...? No. Oh, come on. Look: it's got nothing to do with anything in the Bible. At all. It's just that the moon is a bit closer to the earth than normal. Go and take a picture of it, unless you live in the UK. Why not in the UK? It will probably be raining. So why do people think there is something apocalyptic about it? There are biblical verses like Luke 21:25-26: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear..." Joel 2:30-31 says: "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord." Revelation 6:12 says: "I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood." Supermoon. Don't forget the supermoon, people. Is anyone up on their biblical prophecies? Is this the harbinger of the final apocalypse? We are Brisbane/MEL! (@WeAreBrisbane) November 14, 2016 It sounds terrifying. That's the idea. But serious scholars doubt that this sort of language is being used to refer to a real dissolution of the material world, and even if it is, there's no way of connecting it to actual astronomical or other events. You sound a bit sceptical. I hope I sound a bit biblical. In Genesis 1:14-19 God makes the sun, moon and stars, and they are described as "lights" they are not signs and portents. It's a way of combating the superstition of astrologers and magicians. We shouldn't fall for this kind of thing. Throughout history there have been people who've claimed to see biblical prophecy fulfilled in astronomical phenomena. They have all been entirely wrong. Earthquakes in New Zealand and Argentina today and supermoon tonight. Not saying the apocalypse is happening but the apocalypse is happening Jamie Roberts (@VincenzoJRezwah) November 13, 2016 But there have been earthquakes, haven't there? Yes, but that's probably just a coincidence; though there's a school of thought that says the increased gravitational pull of the moon could help trigger them. Either way, it's not the end of the world. What about the opening of Jesus' tomb, some say that's relevant? The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is being repaired. It's a building project, that's all again, it's not the end of the world. And what about the other thing you know, Donald Trump? Let's just leave it there, shall we? Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods Monday is decision day for the Billings City Council on One Big Sky Center. After delaying its decision last month, the council is scheduled to vote on approving a pre-development memorandum of understanding between the city and MontDevCo LLC, which proposes to build the $165 million multi-use development with help from tax increment financing and other sources. Mondays meeting begins with a closed session at 5:30 p.m., during which the city council will discuss litigation strategy. The open session will begin at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers at City Hall, 220 N. 27th St. According to a memo from Assistant City Administrator Bruce McCandless, Mondays vote will be the councils first official opportunity to endorse the project. While the agreement contains no concrete commitments or responsibilities, it does authorize staff to work with the developers to produce an acceptable development agreement by June 30, 2017, McCandless wrote. That date could be extended. In a Nov. 7 email to City Administrator Tina Volek, the developers request that the predevelopment MOU the precursor to the development agreement, which will be much more specific about what's required of both the city and the developers be extended beyond June 30, 2017, to one year beyond the council's adoption of the predevelopment agreement. The staff recommends that the council approve the predevelopment agreement. Other action The city council will also vote on a two-year labor contract with firefighters. The proposed contract, which the International Association of Firefighters Local 521 approved last month, includes a 3.2 percent cost of living boost for the first year of the contract, retroactive to July 1, and a 3 percent increase during the second year. Council members are also scheduled to vote on a proposed $24,500 raise for Volek, which would bring her annual salary to $155,000. The council extended Voleks employment contract on Sept. 26, then met privately with her on Oct. 19 to discuss a raise, which Volek has not received for several years. The city council is also being asked to endorse the Authorize Community Transformation (ACT) initiative. ACT is an organization promoting passage of a local option authority in the 2017 legislative session. If approved first by the Legislature and then Billings voters, a local option tax of up to 3 cents per dollar would be imposed for up to a decade on certain goods and services to fund specific capital improvements. According to a memo from Volek, the city council would appoint a committee to recommend projects. A 3-cent local option tax would raise about $47 million annually in Billings. That initiative, if approved, would be alongside requests by the Montana Infrastructure Coalition, a group that proposes measures including lifting the 5,500 population lid on communities eligible to enact a resort tax. Billings is a voting member of the coalition. Mondays consent agenda includes a $75,000 conditional mediated settlement between the city and the Billings Industrial Revitalization District. The settlement involves attorneys fees in a 2013 case involving the citys Board of Adjustment. Five Suspected Islamic Militants Arrested After Indonesian Church Attack That Killed Toddler Indonesian police today arrested five people in connection with a suspected militant attack on a church on Sunday that killed one infant and injured three others. Police said they were investigating possible links to ISIS. The attack in the car park of a church in Samarinda, in Indonesia's East Kalimantan province, was the latest in a series that has raised concerns over rising militancy in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation. An ISIS-linked assault in the capital Jakarta in January killed four people. Police said the attacker had been imprisoned on terrorism charges in the past and had links to existing radical networks. Children were playing in the front yard of the Oikumene Church when the suspect, Juhanda, or Jo bin Muhammad Aceng, threw the bomb, Kompas daily reported. Intan Marbun, reportedly two or three years old, suffered severe burns and died in the early hours of Monday morning. The other three children are between two and three years old, Time reported. The suspect is said to have worn a black T-shirt that read "Jihad Way of Life" during the attack on Sunday. He was previously sentenced in 2012 to three years and six months in prison for his involvement in the "book-bomb" plot in Jakarta a year before. One of the targets was a liberal cultural centre named Teater Utan Kayu. He received remission of sentence and was released in July 2014. Juhanda was arrested again in September 2014 after he was found with an ISIS flag in Parepare, Sulawesi. At the time, he was allegedly trying to find and kill his wife. "This case has opened our eyes that [the counter-terrorism agency] BNPT needs to improve its de-radicalization programme," legislator Eva Sundari said in a statement on Sunday. President Joko Widodo added that "the bomb case in Samarinda has to be investigated thoroughly." In late August, a suicide bomber tried to attack a crowded Catholic church in the Sumatran city of Medan, but the would-be bomber's vest failed to detonate. A drawing resembling an ISIS flag was reportedly found at the scene. Additional reporting by Reuters. God's Sovereignty Doesn't Mean He Controls Everything, And Here's Why Is God sovereign? Yes. Does that mean he controlled who won last week's US presidential election? No. Can these two statements both be true? Aren't there biblical texts that seem to say that God controls everything? Isn't saying he doesn't control some things a limitation on his sovereignty? A column I wrote for Christian Today last week with the title Yes, God Is Sovereign. That Doesn't Mean He Chooses Who Runs America generated an extraordinary quantity of Twitter abuse. Some might have taken exception to a slight hint of anti-Trump bias (a "serial sex pest, braggart, narcissist, bully and all-round loose cannon who has been described as the most unqualified person ever to seek high office") but in general the critiques had two main thrusts. One was that the Bible teaches God is in control of everything. The other was that if you didn't believe that you didn't believe in his sovereignty. Both are wrong. Take the biblical texts. Here are a selection of the many suggested, and why I don't think they can be used to argue God chose Trump as President: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). This doesn't say that every time there's prosperity or disaster God does it; it just says he does it. And it has nothing to do with Trump's election. "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33). An election is not the same as a roll of the dice. "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). Amen and amen. God will bring good out of evil; it's what he does. "He changes times and season; he sets up kings and deposes them" (Daniel 2:21). The clear biblical witness is that God is active in biblical history; no argument there. But whether his involvement extends to dictating the result of a US presidential election is a different matter entirely. So, you see where I'm going here. A text without a context is a pretext. We can't just lift out of Scripture a text that is specific to a particular time and place and make it universally relevant. Furthermore, we have to think about what kind of Scripture we're talking about: poetry is not designed to teach core doctrine, it reflects how God's people actually live and experience their faith. We can go badly wrong if we make it say more than it means. The Bible teaches that God works in history. It teaches that he is all-powerful and all-knowing (omnipotent and omniscient). Because he is all-powerful and could stop evil if he wanted to, and sometimes chooses not to, there is a sense in which he wills what he allows. But that is not the same as saying he desires it and this is where those who believe his sovereignty means he controls everything fall into terrible error. God does not will evil. It is incorrect to say when someone suffers it's because God has ordained it. It is wrong to say he controls everything that happens. Sovereignty does not mean that God plans everything. Just think about what it would mean if he did. It would mean God ordained the Holocaust. He ordained the slave trade. He ordained the drugs that are ruining countless lives. From the killing fields of Cambodia to the concentration camps of North Korea: all of this is God's sovereign will. The child who dies before its time, the suffering of those with incurable and life-limiting illnesses: God has done all of this. You don't think that follows? Well, you can say that of course God's sovereignty doesn't negate human free will and it's all a mystery. But here's the thing: understood like this with him in absolute control of every outcome it does. If God planned the result of the US election, it means he dictated the choices of the millions of people who voted for Trump, choosing exactly how the electoral college votes would pan out to give him the victory. Could he have done so? Of course. Did he? We have absolutely no biblical reason for thinking so. And what about the unchosen evils the illnesses, the premature deaths? Are we to assume that these too are ordained by God? There are plenty of examples in the Bible where God seems to inflict sickness or death like Miriam's leprosy in Numbers 12, for instance. There are other occasions when people just get ill or die like the Shunammite's son in 2 Kings 4. But this terrible fatalistic doctrine implies that God himself is deliberately inflicting death and disease on everyone who experiences it. It's a view that's promulgated by influential Bible teachers like those associated with The Gospel Coalition. There's a TGC podcast entitled Why 'God Didn't Ordain That Tragedy' Is Terrible News that argues this. It's a three-hander between John Piper, Matt Chandler (who has suffered from cancer) and David Platt. They talk, honestly and sometimes movingly, about suffering and their own experiences of it and of how what got them through it is the belief that God ordained it. This is described as "high view" of the sovereignty of God. One of them (I'm not always clear who's talking) says God "not only allows these things but he ordains these things for our good. We have a loving father who gives us what works together for our good." And someone says, "[If he didn't] then he's not in control, and he's not able to ensure that this is going to work together for good." And here's the logical leap that falls right into the spiritual crevasse. It's not because God plans what happens to people that he's able to help them in it and bring them through the valley of the shadow of death. It's because he is God. And he is not a micro-manager, carefully inflicting exactly the right level of pain on us for our own good; he is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. What's happened when language like this is used is that the Bible is being squeezed into the mould of human logic and philosophy. It satisfies the contributors to that podcast and I'm truly glad it helped them. But I want to say that it's not, actually, intellectually satisfying, and you are not obliged to believe it. And what about that charge that God is not really sovereign if he doesn't plan everything? Think of it like this: Suppose I have a cat, and it's sitting in the middle of the sofa where I want to sit. I can move it to the right, and I've exercised my sovereignty over the cat. I can move it to the left, and I've exercised my sovereignty over the cat. I can tell it to move, and I've exercised my sovereignty whether it does or not. Or I can sit somewhere else, and I've still exercised my sovereignty by leaving it entirely up to the cat whether it chooses to move or not. If it moves to its bowl, I'll give it water. If it meeows at the door, I'll let it out. If it claws at the furniture I'll yell and throw a newspaper at it. It can come and sit on my knee, and I'll stroke it. How is my sovereignty impaired? It isn't. The cat has free will. We are in a loving relationship at least, I tell myself it's loving on the cat's side too, but hey, it's a cat. And that is a truer picture of our relationship with God than the image of him as a puppet-master, jerking the strings of humanity to produce a particular election result while he leaves us the illusion of free will. Freedom, as I said in that much denounced earlier post, is freedom and we have to deal with it. Mark Woods is the author of Does the Bible really say that? Challenging our assumptions in the light of Scripture (Lion, 8.99). Follow him on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods Is BBC Coverage Too Christian? Corporation To 'Revamp Output For Other Faiths' The BBC is planning to increase its coverage of non-Christian religions and could broadcast Muslim Friday prayers after claims that its output is too Christian, according to The Times. Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the BBC's director-general, is reportedly inviting religious leaders to join discussions about plans for more multi-faith coverage and will appoint a senior executive, who will sit on the board of governors, to draw up new programme ideas alongside broadcasts such as Songs of Praise and Thought for the Day. The Times reported that sources had made clear that increased multi-faith coverage will not be at the expense of Christian output. However, the reported revamp comes after criticism that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were being ignored, and an internal BBC report which concluded that there was a disproportionate amount of programming on Christianity compared with other faiths. Earlier this year Aaqil Ahmed, the head of religion and ethics at the BBC who recently announced he would be leaving the corporation, told a House of Commons committee that he had prepared a report for Lord Hall outlining the religious mix. "Christianity remains the cornerstone of our output and there are more hours dedicated to it than there are to other faiths," he said. The Times said that Lord Hall was determined to do more to more represent other faiths. "Faith is remarkably important," a source was quoted as saying by the newspaper. "The BBC can and must do more to ensure that the important role faith plays is recognised and reflected in our programming." Religious leaders likely to be invited to the discussions include Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster; Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi; Harun Khan, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Hindu and Sikh leaders. Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain reportedly said that the BBC could televise Friday prayers from a mosque, cover Eid, or children attending Koranic lessons. A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: "We would love to see a programme exploring the history of Jewish-Muslim co-operation over the centuries, such as during the Holocaust when many Jews were saved by Muslims." In September, the BBC appointed the former interviewer Martin Bashir as its new religious affairs correspondent. Justin Welby Preaches At Catholic Westminster Cathedral For First Time The Archbishop of Canterbury preached for the first time at Westminster Cathedral, the heart of the British Catholic Church, on Sunday. Cardinal Vincent Nichols welcomed Justin Welby along with Catholic bishops from England and Wales for the closing of the Door of Mercy at the end of the Year of Mercy. Welby said the year, which began in December 2015, had "caught the imagination, not only in the Catholic Church, but in all churches and far beyond," according to Independent Catholic News. He added: "Mercy is the gift that goes on giving... that dissolves the hardness of hearts." The Year of Mercy was announced by Pope Francis in March 2015 and is described as "extraordinary" because it does not fit within the usual 25-year cycle of Jubilee Years in the Catholic Church. Each Jubilee Year is usually marked with the opening of the Door of Mercy in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. But for this Year of Mercy Pope Francis wanted a door in each diocese so everyone could celebrate the festival. Welby said the Door of Mercy "calls us back to receive mercy by grace and to be people of mercy". He compared it to the wardrobe door in the Narnia chronicles and said mercy opens people to a different world the Kingdom of God. Vincent Nichols, as Archbishop of Westminster, is the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and opened the Door of Mercy on 13 December 2015. Welby's first sermon at Westminster Cathedral for the closing of the door comes after a number of ecumenical initiatives to bring the two Churches together. The door has remained open throughout the Jubilee Year of Mercy, receiving pilgrims from around the country. The year will end on Sunday 20 November when Pope Francis will close the Holy Door at St Peter's Basilica. Kidnapped Mexican Priest Is Found Alive But Tortured A priest and human rights activist abducted in Mexico has been found alive but tortured, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday. Father Jose Luis Sanchez Ruiz was abducted in the state of Veracruz, said the Associated Press, the third priest to have been kidnapped since September. The other two were shot and killed. Accordng to Bishop Fidencio Lopez, Sanchez Ruiz "had been dumped, with notable signs of torture" at an undisclosed location. Residents of his home town of Catemaco protested for two days after his abduction, burning part of the town hall and a police patrol truck while demanding his release. The spokesman for the diocese, Fr Aaron Reyes, told the Milenio television news channel Sanchez Ruiz had been threatened because of his activism. The priest "had received threats in recent days because he is a defender of human rights and social causes. He has criticised the system of corruption and the crime problem in Catemaco," Reyes said. Sanchez Ruiz had taken part in a recent protest against high electricity bills. At least 31 priests have been killed in Mexico since 2006, most of them in areas plagued by drug violence. Mexico's Catholic Media Centre says Veracruz, Guerrero and Mexico states are the most dangerous for priests. Along with Michoacan, they are among the states with the worst drug-cartel problems. Row Over Release Of Gay Clergy List A row has erupted over a list of gay Church of England clergy published by a conservative Anglican group. GAFCON UK released the list on Sunday of clergy known to be in same-sex relationships or who have officiated over gay unions. Although those named have already publicly come out as gay, it is the first time such a list has been compiled and raised fears it will lead to increased abuse. The list on the GAFCON UK website said it was recently given as a briefing for conservative bishops around the world to highlight the state of the Church of England. The notes described "chaos" in each Anglican province and listed a number of "violations" of the Church's ban on same-sex marriages, as laid out in the landmark Lambeth 1.10 resolution passed in 1998. "While orthodox believers certainly hope that the Church of England does not go further in violating Lambeth 1.10, the situation in England as it currently stands is already a scandal within the Anglican Communion," said the briefing. The "partial list" catalogues "some of the ways in which Lambeth 1.10 has been violated within the Church of England". Canon Chris Sugden, a retired minister on the Church's conservative wing, told Christian Today the list was "a helpful gathering of information". He said the Church's discipline rules for clergy who broke rank were difficult and expensive to enact but said there was a "simple route forward". He called on bishops to declare they are "individually in impaired communion with those who have breached the Church's teaching and discipline in these regards". But a number of LGBT clergy raised fears the list could lead to targeting and abuse. Rev Andrew Foreshew-Cain, a married gay vicar in London who regularly receives hate mail, said the list served "no other purpose other than to make us targets in some way". Foreshew-Cain's marriage was highlighted by the list. He told Christian Today: "None of us are ashamed. I am legally married and that should be celebrated." But he said the list would "encourage the harassment of clergy and lay people" who are openly gay. "If anyone is ashamed here it should be GAFCON." Canon Jeremy Pemberton, another married gay priest named on the list, said it was "disgusting to try and target people like this". But he added he was "glad" GAFCON had made the point the CofE had crossed a line. Tracey Byrne, chief executive for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM), slammed the list as "contemptible" and added: "It is quite clear that their intention is to 'name and shame'. "This goes beyond political strategy this is a deliberate attempt to deny God's presence in the lives of real people, and to condemn them by public shaming." The list was released as senior bishops are preparing to meet in December to discuss the next steps for the Church over its ban on gay marriage. A group of bishops will bring a recommendation to the CofE's ruling general synod in February. One possible option is some form of "pastoral accommodation" that would allow liberal clergy to celebrate same-sex unions in church without an official change in teaching. GAFCON has made its opposition to any change in direction clear. The briefing on Sunday said: "To restore order and a credible Christian witness, the upcoming meetings of the House of Bishops and General Synod would need to not merely avoid going further in violating Lambeth 1.10, but it would need to take constructive steps to rectify the numerous public (and presumably private) breaches that have been strategically taken by some to undermine the teaching of the Communion." Rev James Paice, part of the GAFCON UK Taskforce, told Christian Today: "This report is shocking because it shows the extent to which revisionism has infected the the Church of England." He said CofE leaders had turned a "blind eye to blatant violations" and added more conservative Anglican leaders around the world had "concluded that the Church of England is a sinking ship". Rev Canon Andrew Gross, press officer for Gafcon Global later said: "There was never any intention to 'name and shame' individuals. How could there be? The document lists public actions taken by individuals who are very proud of what they have been doing. In many of these cases, these activists were actively courting the media in order that their violations of Lambeth 1.10 would have the greatest possible impact. "For these same activists to then turn around and claim that cataloguing each of their media blitzes is some kind of personal attack is completely disingenuine. The "naming and shaming" narrative was invented by activists in a self-serving attempt to paint themselves as victims. It is completely inaccurate." GAFCON UK incorrectly state Diverse Church "openly advocate for violating Lambeth 1.10". They do not and do not campaign for a change in Church teaching. Prayers Still Needed for 3 Christian Men Freed After Months in Iran Prison Three Christian men from Azerbaijan have finally been released after months of imprisonment in Iran, but Open Doors USA says they still need prayers from fellow believers since they can still be rearrested and imprisoned anew. The three were earlier arrested for attending a marriage ceremony, which Iranian authorities perceived to be a public display of faith, Mission Network News reported, citing information from Open Doors USA. Eldar Gurbanov, Yusif Farhadov, and Bahram Nasibov were released on bail last Sunday and were able to return to their respective families in Azerbaijan. The three Christian men were taken into custody by Iranian authorities along with seven other individuals while they were attending a friend's wedding back in June. While the others were immediately released, Eldar, Yusif and Bahram, along with another Iranian Christian, were held by the authorities without explanation in Evin Prison in northwestern Tehran, where political prisoners are usually detained. While in prison, the three Christian men from Azerbaijan were reportedly kept in solitary confinement facilities and interrogated. They were also denied any form of legal assistance, and their families were not even notified on their whereabouts. To help the detained Christians, Open Doorswhich extends assistance to persecuted Christians worldwidelaunched a petition asking the government of Iran to set them free and let them practice their religion freely. Thousands of Christians signed this petition. "We know that it's mixed with that effort, mixed with the prayers around the world that we have the amazing news that they've been released on bail. So we're praising God today for this good story!" Emily Fuentes of Open Doors USA told Mission Network News. She nevertheless urged Christians to still pray for their freed fellow faithful from Azerbaijan, saying that they are still facing threats of being rearrested for their religious beliefs. "That can happen in this country and it has. But we're thankful they're out of prison, because that's also not the fate for many Christians... Pray for them and pray that God would truly allow it so they could be set free," Fuentes said. Returning Home Still a Dream for Christians From Iraq Even After ISIS Defeat Although militant fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group have already left some parts of Iraq, Christians from the Middle Eastern country still consider returning to their homes as a faraway dream. Maha al Kahwaji, a Christian woman from Karamlesh village in northern Iraq, for instance, spoke eagerly of her home town during one of the meetings among Christians in the city of Erbil, located 40 miles away. Maha admitted though that she is not keeping her hopes up about returning home, especially in the current state that Karamlesh village is in after it was seized by the ISIS over a year ago. "I adore my village. I adore it... But to return is difficult," she told the National Public Radio. "It's not just difficult, with the tunnels, the burning of homes and the destruction. It's impossible." The experiences of others who tried to return to Karamlesh village are discouraging Maha. She has observed that most of those who attempted to go back only ended up resettling in other places. Taher Bahoo, a businessman from Karamlesh village, witnessed the destruction brought by the ISIS to his homeland when he recently visited the place. He dropped by his family house, and could not hide his sadness with what he saw. "All my life I was here," he murmured, as he looked around the house that has been ransacked. He also said that he does not want his parents to see what has become of their home. He plans to clean and repair everything to make it more livable. Bahoo also reminisced the time when he and his family were able to live in peace in Karamlesh. He is still hopeful that they will be able to return there one day. "When I was just 5, 6, 7 years age, we were playing here... It was peaceful. It's difficult very difficult to imagine what happened here... Looks like, I don't know another place," he said. Samsung Galaxy S8 release date, specs rumors: Snapdragon 830 variant to come out later in 2017? It is expected that the upcoming Galaxy S8 will come out in both Exynos and Snapdragon versions. However, the release may be staggered, as the Snapdragon variant is likely to come out later. Alleged reports out of China mention that Qualcomm has asked Samsung to manufacture the 10-nm chipset scheduled for release early next year. However, with the fiasco with the Galaxy Note 7 release, the South Korea-based tech maker had to realign its production lines in order to make its scheduled release of the Galaxy S8 in Q1 2017. The Samsung flagships are mainly run by homegrown Exynos chipsets. It is likely that Samsung will focus on the new Exynos 8895 chipset, the processor for the upcoming flagship. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has reportedly turned to another noted manufacturer, TSMC, to make the Snapdragon 830 chipset. However, there may be a slight setback for the release because of the production shift. This means that a global launch for the Galaxy S8, which will feature the Snapdragon 830 processor, is likely to be delayed. Usually, Samsung schedules both Exynos and Snapdragon-powered flagships for global rollout at the same time. Meanwhile, there are also reports that the Exynos-powered Samsung Galaxy S8 may also suffer a delayed release. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Galaxy S8 will offer a number of major improvements over its predecessor, including an AI-supported digital assistant. Reportedly, the massive changes for the new flagship will set back the release of the Galaxy S8 by a couple of months. In a revamped schedule, the new flagship is expected to come out by April at the earliest. Usually, Samsung releases its next Galaxy S flagship at the start of the year and one of its showcase products for the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC). Previous reports have mentioned that the Galaxy S8 will appear on Feb. 26, before the start of the 2017 MWC. 'Supernatural' season 12 spoilers: The Winchesters' lives at risk following funeral? The Winchesters must act fast in order to prevent another demon attack that could kill them and the other hunters in the next episode of "Supernatural" season 12. According to the synopsis for the episode titled "Celebrating The Life of Asa Fox," Dean (Jensen Ackles), Sam (Jared Padalecki) and their mother, Mary (Samantha Smith), will join a group of hunters who will commemorate the life of one of their own who died tragically. But as they mourn together the death of their fellow hunter, they will realize that a demon is bound to kill them one at a time. This means that the Winchesters must act fast to stop the demon's plan to obliterate the hunters. Reports also revealed that "Pretty Little Liars" star Kara Royster will appear in the upcoming episode. She will reportedly portray the role of Alicia, a hunter raised by a witch together with her brother Max. The episode will also see the return of Billie (Lisa Berry). The reaper was last seen in the finale of season 11, titled "Alpha and Omega," where she helped the Winchester brothers gather a huge crowd of souls that they can use as their weapon to destroy the Darkness. In the trailer for the upcoming episode, Billie will warn the hunters that "everyone dies" because of the demon. Another returning character is Sioux Falls, South Dakota sheriff Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes). She will join the Winchesters as they pay their last respects for the hunter who died in the line of duty. The Futon Critic revealed the synopsis for the upcoming episode, which reads: "When hunters gather together to celebrate the life and tragic death of one of their own, Sam, Dean and Mary must take action when a demon starts picking off hunters one by one." The episode is slated to air on Thursday, Nov. 17, at 9 p.m. ET on The CW. By the time Larry Heafner deleted his Facebook page, people had already taken screenshots of posts he'd written with comments they called racist, sexist, homophobic and otherwise offensive. The posts spread like electricity among Billings Facebook users. One post penned by Heafner, who is a co-owner of The Coffee Tavern, described sodomizing a women with a bat. Another said he concluded that any man who voted for Hillary Clinton is a homosexual. In another post, left under a viral video that showed black men assaulting a white man, Heafner wrote that "These f---ing monkeys would be hanging if I saw this s---." Eight minutes later, he added, "You don't see white people doing this s---!" Screenshots of his posts erupted on Facebook over the weekend, with some calling for a boycott of The Coffee Tavern, which has yet to open. Most of the saved posts spanned the week surrounding Election Day. In one post, he said The Coffee Tavern in downtown Billings would "never recognize a murdering whore for president" and that people who didn't like that idea could stay out of the shop. He later took back that statement related to future customers. Reached on Sunday, Heafner said he realized that he'd made offensive comments. He said he "completely" apologized and said that he'd spent the weekend reaching out to people he knows who might have been offended. "I'm not going to sit here and try to excuse my derogatory comments, because that would be ridiculous," he said. But in the middle of a social media backlash, Heafner was bothered by the notion that he would be called a racist. "I have a hard time buying that," he said. Heafner said he was wrapped up in the election cycle, which by most accounts took a tense tone in 2016. He said he "bought into the rhetoric" of some of the more extreme views. Most of his posts had political themes. Heafner repeatedly said Sunday the country is divided and that his comments fell into that contentious vein. Josh Schleining took screenshots of the original posts. Schleining was collecting multiple offensive posts in the wake of the election. He said he wasn't trying to target Heafner, but once other users started sharing Heafner's comments, the online floodgates opened. The rate of sharing startled Schleining. I feel like people took it a bit too far initially, but if you were able to still see his profile of all the things he was saying publicly, it was absolutely disgusting," he said. A day after he posted that first screenshot, Heafner's Facebook page went dark. The shared posts, comments and other reactions to Heafner's comments came by the thousands during the weekend. It's unclear how the online vitriol will affect the material world, as the opening date of The Coffee Tavern remains in question. It just can't be tolerated," said Lisa Harmon, executive director of the Downtown Billings Alliance, of Heafner's posts. "I met with my staff yesterday and was in communication with my board and just trying to understand the situation." Harmon said hundreds of messages came to her phone this weekend letting her know about the posts. She said the business development organization has yet to decide what its next step, if any, might be. Eran Thompson, who sits on the Montana advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Montana Human Rights Network Board and the Not In Our Town national board, said he wasn't shocked he was disappointed. "I think this is a microcosm of whats happening in our world," Thompson said. "Its very real, this anger and resentment toward people of color and women and people with disabilities. Thompson said that, in these situations, actions speak louder than words. He said a public apology by Heafner, as well as anti-oppression training, would be positive steps. Heafner said that his comments, which included racist and sexist ideas, don't reflect his personality. He said that his black friends and colleagues who are minorities are evidence of this. The Coffee Tavern Facebook page has been shut down in addition to Heafner's. He said the shop's opening has been postponed, but he has no intention to leave his ownership stake. He's now focused on how this will affect his business on Second Avenue North. "I just hope people can realize that I am sincere," he said of his apology. Tears Amid Rubble And Shattered Glass: Christians Return To Iraq Church Devastated By ISIS Christians openly wept as they gathered in their church in Karamles in Iraq on Sunday, which had been desecrated during two years of ISIS rule. According to Associated Press, shattered glass covered the floor, a tomb had been severely damaged and a statue of the Virgin Mary had been beheaded. Karamles was overrun by Islamic State in 2014 but was liberated three weeks ago as part of the offence to retake Mosul that began on October 17. An ancient Assyrian town less than 18km from Mosul, about a third of the Christians from Karamles have fled in the last two and a half years, but the majority now live in displaced persons camps in Kurdistan. Some returned on Sunday to take part in a prayer service at the St Addai church, led by Rev Thabet Habib. Almaz Sleiman, 54, was among them. She cried throughout the gathering. "First when you see it of course it's unsettling, and then you cry because of the situation here and the conditions we are living in now," she told AP. "Honestly I cannot describe the way I feel." Sahir Shamoun, another former resident of the town, said he and his wife had returned to Karamles to find their house still standing, but looted. "I feel great sadness," he said. "I'm not sure when or if I'll be back. I think of my children, will they have a future here? "You put the cornerstone for your home, but still you know it's not yours. But we are stubborn people, we will keep building." Father Thabet currently ministers to his displaced congregation in Erbil, but has returned to Karamles several times now. Last month, he raised a cross covered with flowers on a hill overlooking the town. "I am so happy I can do this. I'm smiling from cheek to cheek and I weep tears of joy at the same time," he said at the time, according to World Watch Monitor. "This is the trip I have been praying for, for two years now." "My dream is to bring all the Christians back to this village. Then we will worship outside on Barbara Hill; we will have the Eucharist in the open air," he added. "Everybody will see that this is the Church; this is the Body of Christ; this is Christian land. That is my dream to give a testimony to the world." These Teen Boys Converted From Islam To Christianity. Now They Are On The Run, Threatened With Death For Apostasy Two teenage boys who converted to Christianity from Islam have been forced to go on the run in fear of their lives. The Muslim persecution of the two Christian boys in Uganda is reported by Release International and Morning Star News. Already, Muslims in their village in eastern Uganda's Kibuku district have set fire to the home of a Christian adult who had given them refuge. This man's house has been completely gutted. The two boys, aged 16 and 17, fled in fear for their lives after their own parents threatened to kill them when they learned of their conversion to Christianity seven months earlier. Apostasy is a capital crime in Islamic law. The Christian adult told an area pastor that he now believed the life of his own family is at risk and said he had lost everything. "I started receiving threatening messages in my phone accusing me of converting the boys to Christianity, as well as housing them in my house without the parents' permission, but I did not take it very seriously," he said, according to Morning Star News. The arsonists left threatening leaflets behind, warning: "Be informed that we are not yet finished with you. Expect more, worse things are on the way." This man and the teen boys are now in hiding elsewhere. Release International asked for prayers for the boys and the local Christians trying to help them. Uganda did not actually make it onto Open Doors' World Watch list of the top 50 countries for Christian persecution last year or in 2014. Nevertheless, Open Doors reports that Christian persecution as a result of Islamic extremism is on the rise. Uganda might appear on the 2016 list when it is published next year. The Christian church is growing in Uganda but the charity has concerns about the "tabliqs", an evangelistic hard-line Muslim sect. Muslims have also positioned themselves strategically in key political posts as well as in finance, and sharia-compliant banking favours Muslims over Christians. In particular, Open Doors says, pressure is put on converts to Christianity from a Muslim background and an armed force established by tabliqs has orchestrated a number of deadly attacks on civilians, mostly Christians. There are also many spontaneous violent attacks on Christians. 'Utter Devastation': New Zealand Reels Under Huge Earthquake A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake pummeled central New Zealand early on Monday, killing at least two people, damaging roads and buildings and setting off hundreds of strong aftershocks. Emergency response teams flew by helicopter to the region at the epicentre of the tremor, which struck just after midnight some 91 km (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings. "It's just utter devastation, I just don't know...that's months of work," New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee after flying over the coastal town of Kaikoura, according to Brownlee's Twitter account. He described landslips in the area as "just horrendous". In a statement seen by Reuters, Key said of the likely damage bill: "You've got to believe it's in the billions of dollars to resolve." Powerlines and telecommunications were down, with huge cracks in roads, land slips and other damage to infrastructure making it hard to reach the worst-affected areas. A tsunami warning that led to mass evacuations after the original quake was downgraded after large swells hit New Zealand's capital Wellington, in the North Island, and Christchurch. Wellington was a virtual ghost town with workers ordered to stay away while the city council assessed the risk to buildings, several of which were damaged by the tremor. There were concerns that loose glass and masonry could be dislodged by severe weather hitting the capital, with 140 km per hour (85 mph) winds forecast. Hundreds of aftershocks, the strongest a 6.2 quake at about 1.45 p.m. local time (0045 GMT), rattled the South Pacific country, fraying nerves in an area where memories of a deadly 2011 quake are still fresh. Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand's ruggedly beautiful South Island, is still recovering from the 6.3 quake in 2011 that killed 185 people. New Zealand's Civil Defence declared a state of emergency for the Kaikoura region, centred on a tourist town about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Christchurch, soon after Monday's large aftershock. Kaikoura, a popular spot for whale watching, appeared to have borne the brunt of the quake. "Our immediate priority is ensuring delivery of clean water, food and other essentials to the residents of Kaikoura and the estimated 1,000 tourists in the town," Brownlee said. The Navy's multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury was heading to the area, he said. Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) said a 20-person rescue team and two sniffer dogs had arrived in the town. A second team was on standby in Christchurch, USAR said in a statement. Police in the area around Christchurch reported 19 burglaries of homes and commercial properties after the quake as residents headed for higher ground. "It is extremely disappointing that at a time when people are facing such a traumatic event and communities are coming together to support one another, there are others who are only interested in taking advantage," Canterbury District Commander Superintendent John Price said in a statement. Twin quakes Hours after the quake, officials said a slip dam caused by the quakes that had blocked the Clarence River north of the town had breached, sending a wall of water downstream. A group of kayakers missing on the river was later reported safe. New Zealand's Geonet measured Monday's first quake at magnitude 7.5, while the US Geological Survey put it at 7.8. The quakes and aftershocks rattled buildings and woke residents across the country, hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre . Geonet said four faults had ruptured, with one at the coast appearing to have slipped as much as 10 metres (33 feet). Government research unit GNS Science said the overnight tremor appeared to have been two simultaneous quakes which together lasted more than two minutes. New Zealand lies in the seismically active "Ring of Fire", a 40,000 km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90 per cent of the world's earthquakes occur within this region. Stock exchange operator NZX Ltd said markets traded normally, although many offices in the capital were closed. The New Zealand dollar initially fell to a one-month low before mostly recovering. Fonterra, the world's biggest dairy exporter, said some its farms were without power and would probably have to dump milk. Prime Minister Key postponed a trip to Argentina, where he had planned to hold a series of trade meetings ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in Peru this week, as he met disaster officials. At least one of those killed was found in a house in Kaikoura that "collapsed like a stack of cards", Kaikoura Hospital's Dr Christopher Henry told Fairfax media. Two other people were pulled alive from the same building. New Zealand media reported one of the pilots taking rescuers to the area was Richie McCaw, the recently retired captain of New Zealand's world champion All Blacks rugby team. "At one point, the railway was way out over the sea it had been pushed out by (land) slips. It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night," McCaw told the New Zealand Herald after helping fly the USAR team to Kaikoura. Who Is Stephen Bannon? Trump Appoints Far-Right Controversialist As Head Of Strategy When Barack Obama welcomed a somewhat startled looking Donald Trump to the White House last Thursday, and the two men exchanged words of improbable mutual respect, those who fear the worst out of a Trump administration momentarily appeared to have reason for respite. For it seemed, then and when Trump in the hours that followed indicated that he would retain elements of Obama's healthcare programme, that the President-elect was being tamed. But any doubts over whether he intends to implement the most extreme, politically incorrect and, frankly sexist agenda set out by any presidential candidate have been laid to rest with the appointment of Stephen Bannon as his head of strategy. The move marks the elevation of the burgeoning 'alt-right' movement which among other agendas is vociferously opposed to multiculturalism into the White House itself. So who is this man, appointed alongside and 'equal' to the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, who was made chief of staff? Bannon is the former head of Breitbart News, who stood down to work on Trump's campaign. The notorious outlet was launched in 2007 with the aim of being "unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel". A hint at its real agenda comes with the following examples of misogynistic headlines highlighted by @EverydaySexism: Just a tiny selection of the articles published under Trump's new chief strategist Stephen Bannon pic.twitter.com/jYg4nqUGuP EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) November 14, 2016 The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns to fight "anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry", has condemned Bannon's appointment, describing the alt-right movement supported by Breitbart as "a loose-knit group of white nationalists, unabashed anti-Semites and racists". Meanwhile, Bannon's elevation has provoked criticism from Trump's own party. John Weaver, a Republican political consultant, said: "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America." And the former Barack Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer noted: "Nation exhales because white nationalist only gets second most influential job in White House." Michael Wear, Obama's former faith adviser, told Christian Today: "I worked in The White House, so the idea of having Stephen Bannon in an office anywhere near that building, not to mention right next to the Oval Office, is beyond troubling. Trump says he wants to unite the country, but we've learned he says a lot of things. This action--his hiring of this man who has been so corrosive to our politics and whose views on various communities in America are a disgraceis another reminder that we the American people need to unite not on the terms of our politicians, but of basic human dignity under God." In August Bannon was made manager of Trump's campaign, in a move which was celebrated by David Duke, the former KKK leader. "Many former employees of Breitbart News are afraid of Steve Bannon," said Ben Shapiro, a former editor-at-large of Breitbart, who resigned in disgust at the site's bias in coverage of the race between Hillary Clinton and Trump. "He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: he's an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination." Shapiro wrote in August: "Trump may be his final destination. Or it may not. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition." Even his allies accept Bannon is, at the very least, a controversialist. "If there's an explosion or a fire somewhere," said Matthew Boyle, political editor for Breitbart, "Steve's probably nearby with some matches." A former Goldman Sachs banker, Bannon, 62, gained a Masters in National Security Studies and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and was an officer in the US Navy before joining Breitbart, where he hosted a radio show on its SiriusXM Patriot channel. Born into a poor family in Norfolk, Virginia, Bannon claims that his background is that of a natural Democrat. He grew up in sight of the naval yard and signed up after college before spending four years at sea aboard a destroyer. Deployed to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in 1979, he found his faith in the then president, Jimmy Carter, fading, according to the Telegraph. Bannon left the navy and instead studied for an MBA at Harvard Business School before winning a job at Goldman Sachs, one that he loved by all accounts. But in 1990 he set up his own firm, Bannon & Co., with a couple of former colleagues. The company made him rich, and he moved into Hollywood productions, becoming an executive producer of films including Anthony Hopkins's 1999 Oscar-nominated Titus. Bannon began making his own films, specialising in stories inspired by the attacks of September 11, 2001 and his own disillusionment with President Carter when he was a sailor. "I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats," Bannon told Bloomberg. "I wasn't political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter f----- things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had f----- up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster." In 2004, he made a pro-Reagan documentary called In the Face of Evil, which was celebrated by the American right, and he appeared regularly on the Murdoch-owned Fox News channel. Bannon also produced a documentary about Sarah Palin, who is tipped for a role in Trump's administration, and made films in praise of the 'Tea Party' movement. Bannon took over the Breitbart website after its founder Andrew Breitbart died of a heart attack in March 2012, aged 43. The controversial site which attracts 21 million hits a month is described by Bloomberg as "a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained." Bannon has been married three times and his second wife, Mary Louise Piccard, accused him of domestic abuse and anti-Semitism. Piccard said in a 2007 court declaration that Bannon did not want their twin daughters attending the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles because many Jewish students were enrolled at the school. "The biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend," Piccard said in a statement to the court. "He said that he doesn't like the way they raise their kids to be 'whiny brats' and that he didn't want the girls going to school with Jews." Bannon denied the allegations. But that such claims could be made about a man who is to become a senior White House staffer has filled many in Washington and the wider world with horror. If there were people who were afraid of what a Trump administration could bring to America last Wednesday, they arguably have every reason to be even more so today. Why Trump's Election Made Me Want To Stop Calling Myself A Christian I spent a considerable amount of time last Wednesday considering whether I should stop calling myself a Christian. That's not because I stopped believing in Jesus, but rather because I do believe in him. As people told me not to worry because ultimately 'God's in control', evangelical leaders laid out their own personal defences of arguably the most immoral man the US has ever elected as President, and those close to me who don't believe in Jesus asked: 'How could Christians have voted Trump in?' I started to feel seriously out of place in my own faith. I can understand some of the reasons evangelical leaders voted for Trump, and I know many have their own moral framework that would make it difficult to vote Democrat, but what stunned me to silence was the unashamed belief and assertion that Trump's victory in the US elections was undoubtedly all in God's plan. No 'flawed candidate' rhetoric, no language of tough choices and imperfections on both sides, but unapologetic endorsement backed up with pick-and-mix theology. I fail to understand how leaders who so often call for a return to morality, truth, purity, and faithful marriages can so publicly endorse a man who boasts of sexually harassing women, displays racist attitudes in front of crowds of thousands and so blatantly lies. At best it comes across as unbearably naive. At worst, arrogant and hypocritical. Why would I want in any way to associate with these hugely influential faith leaders who undoubtedly helped secure Trump's seat in the White House? Do we even profess the same faith when our differences feel like a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon? I began to wonder whether I should start calling myself 'A follower of the way' or a follower of Jesus, as Shane Claiborne advocates. Claiborne argues for Red Letter Christianity which seeks to live by the words of Jesus. Surely one who does this cannot ignore his mission statement, the Sermon on the Mount when he blesses the meek, the poor and the peacemaker qualities I have yet to see Trump exhibit. I don't want people to think that I'm part of the merry clan who supported a misogynistic, xenophobic, climate change denier into power. Those values are not my values, they are not what I read when I look in the Bible. Looking out at the world, deeply divided, fearful, disconnected and angry; they are not the values I think are going to heal us. But in my tussle with this I recognise that if I make a choice to disassociate with Christianity, I am in fact creating more divides. It's also inaccurate to state that all Christians in America voted for Trump it was white evangelicals who overwhelming supported him. Certainly many are distraught at his victory and I encourage them to raise their voices. Jesus prays that the Church will be one and if any form of unity is to come we'll have to pull together rather than apart. But, right now I need to let the rage burn through me, and the grief pour out before hope can start to live again and I seek to build bridges. This is too important to let it wash over us with platitudes and dodgy theology. It's time to dig into what Jesus said and pray he shows us the way to live according to his words. The 12th Annual Aggie 100, honoring the fastest-growing businesses led or owned by Aggies, included 34 Houston-area businesses, the Mays Business School's Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M University announced Friday night. The fastest growing company was Lone Star Bloom with revenue growth of 229 percent in 2015. The Summit Award recipient, presented to the company with the highest three-year average revenue, was awarded to Genesis Networks Enterprises. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Leave it to young writers to pull on your heart strings. That's exactly what happened at the eighth annual Writers in the Schools' "Free to Be" Gala recently held at The Astorian. Guests were moved to tears as an eight-year-old Aaron Crossland shared a story about how writing helped him during dialysis. His poem was about a brave lion named Michelle Obama. Another child talked about overcoming shyness, and yet another talked about how WITS has helped him connect with other young writers. The event was chaired by Mitra Woody and Ryan Leach with honorary chair Lisa Helfman and auction chair Beth Bernal and it honored Sara Speer Selber, founder of The Project Management Team. It had more attendance, silent auction donations, and funding than ever in organizational history, raising nearly $200,000, which will help the organization send writers into schools and community classrooms to reach an additional 3,740 children. Acclaimed poet, Outspoken Bean, emceed the night, beginning the program with an original poem. Houston First Daughter, Ashley Turner, took the stage to announce Fareena Arefeen, 17, as City of Houston's second Youth Poet Laureate, an initiative led by WITS, the City of Houston, and the Houston Public Library. Arefeen, a student at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and also a first-generation American, shared a poem about her background and love of writing. "Poetry wasn't just the esoteric words in my school textbooks; it was alive and real and right there in the apartment building where I lived, on the sidewalks where I walked, and at the gas station where my mom worked," Arafeen said. "Poetry didn't just belong to people who didn't look or sound like me; it belonged to me." The silent auction included artwork inspired by student poems, commissioned flash-fiction, and art by Nicola Parente, Marlo Saucedo and other local creatives. Guests included: Dr. Rhea Brown Lawson, Ryan Leach, Beth Bernal, Jacqueline S. Martin, Jack Sweeney, Joan and Stanford Alexander, F. Xavier Pena, Long Chu, Hon. Karla Cisneros, Hon. Mike Knox, Hon. Steve Le., Hon. Sue Lovell, Stephanie Larsen, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Poet Laureate Robin Davidson, Laura Bhatia, Grace Rodriguez, Barry Mandel and Scott Sawyer, Esther Perrine, Meredith Vela, Josephine and Bill Rice, Karen McKibben and Bill Morris, and Meredith Vela The African Children's Choir will perform at the Ecclesia Church at 1100 Elder St. in central Houston for four performances. The first performance will be Saturday, Dec. 17, at 5 p.m. The other three performances will take place on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. When a state judge in Glasgow sentenced a man to just 60 days in jail for raping his 12-year-old daughter, Montanans learned about one loophole in our sex crime laws. Less than a month after that lenient sentence was handed down, a panel created by the Legislature voted to support legislation in 2017 to close that loophole. Gov. Steve Bullock agreed that the no-prison sentence is unacceptable for this horrific crime. So that part of criminal law will be revised to provide more just and consistent sentences for this crime against young children. But Montanas sexual assault statutes havent been comprehensively updated for many years, and there are other inconsistencies and gaps. Some statutes dont fit situations Montanans encounter in 2016. Thats why the 2015 Legislature approved an interim study of Montanas sexual assault laws. The joint resolution, introduced by Sen. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, cited national statistics that nearly one in five women and one in 71 men have been raped in their lifetime. The statistics are even worse for Native Americans. The study by the Interim Committee on Law and Justice was undertaken with support from Republican Attorney General Tim Fox and the Montana University System, which has been under scrutiny in recent years for policies to prevent and respond to sexual violence. The committee voted to propose these seven bills: LC272, sponsored by Sands, revises the definition of consent in the crime of sexual intercourse without consent so that proof of force is no longer required. Instead, consent is defined in a positive fashion requiring words or overt actions indicating freely given agreement. The revised definition is similar to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the definition of consent used in Wisconsin. This bill also would create a new crime of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent, requiring proof of force and more significant penalties. LC275, also sponsored by Sands, extends the statute of limitation for prosecuting sex crimes with victims who are under the age of 18 to 20 years after the victim reaches the age of 18. LC273, sponsored by Sue Malek, D-Missoula, provides a maximum penalty of five years in prison for sexual intercourse without consent when: 1. An offender is 18 years or younger and the victim is 14 years or older, 2. The offense was a first offense, and 3. No force was used. The bill would also drop the requirement that an 18-year-old convicted of sexual intercourse without consent wouldnt have to register as a sex offender if the victim was age 14 or older and no force was used. LC277, also sponsored by Malek, would allow for termination of parental rights by court order if the parent was convicted or if the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the parent committed an act of sexual assault, rape or incest and the child was born as the result of that act. LC276, sponsored by senator and former District Judge Nels Swandal, R-Wilsall, would revise the Youth Court Act so that sexual offenders who are juveniles when convicted do not have to register as sex offenders, unless the court finds that registration is necessary to protect the public. LC274, sponsored by Rep. Ellie Hill, D-Missoula, adds the offense of distributing a visual or print medium of a person who is identifiable, engaged in sexual conduct, and who has not consented to the creation of that image. LC303, sponsored by Rep. Jenny Eck, D-Helena, revises incest law so that consent isnt a defense if the victim is under 18 years old. These committee bills represent a good faith effort to provide justice for victims and the accused. The relative ages of the victim and assailant should be taken into account. Victims shouldnt have to prove they fought their attackers. Rehabilitation of offenders should be addressed in ways that keep victim and community safety as the highest priorities. The Law and Justice Interim Committee has drafted sex offense bills that deserve full consideration and debate when the 2017 session convenes. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Memorial-area resident recognized at Art of the Pastel 2016 Caroline Ratliff of Memorial received fifth place for her painting "Georgia on My Mind" in the Art of the Pastel 2016 at The Gallery at Round Top. She received a $100 cash award and a $100 gift certificate for Richeson Art Materials at the Oct. 29 artists reception of the Pastel Society of Southeast Texas. Internationally known Cheng Lian was the awards judge for Art of the Pastel 2016. A signature member of the Oil Painters of America, Lian is an Inaugural Signature Member of the California Plein Air Painters, a Master Signature Artist of the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society and is active in additional art societies. Art of the Pastel 2017 is set for April 18-May 21 at the Center for Arts & Sciences, 400 College Boulevard in Clute. Artists, both PSST members and non-members, can submit artwork created with soft, dry pastels. Submission guidelines, deadlines, entry specifications and more details to be announced. Visit www.pastelsocietyofsoutheasttexas.org for information and to join the group. Member dues are $35 per year. The Pastel Society of Southeast Texas is a nonprofit comprised of artists who promote the beauty of soft pastel as a fine-art medium and work to educate artists and the public about pastels with demonstrations and workshops. The PSST is a member of the International Association of Pastel Societies. Service King opens in southwest Houston Service King Collision Repair Centers announced on Nov. 7 the opening of its 85th Texas location with a new repair center in southwest Houston. The center is located at 13525 Alief Clodine Road near the Westpark Tollway. The organization now operates 22 repair centers in the market with 306 locations in 23 states across the United States. All Service King Collision Repair Centers provide motorists with certified repairs and lifetime warranties honored at any location. "The Service King family is thrilled to continue providing the Houston area with superior collision repair service," said Justin Regan, Service King's Houston Market vice president. "It is important to our team to continue providing our valued customers and insurance partners with convenient options for high-quality, dependable service. The Houston area has proved a great fit for Service King and we're confident this repair center will serve as a prudent step in our growth plans." The 13,500-square-foot location has the capacity to repair 150-175 vehicles per month. Service King, with home office operations in North Texas, first expanded its family of repair centers to the Houston area in 2008. Service King is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2016. For more information on the organization and to view a full list of repair centers, visit the company online at www.ServiceKing.com and follow Service King on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Two Harris health nurses listed among Top 20 in Houston Two Harris Health System nurses are among the 20 Outstanding Nurses for 2016, an award given by the Texas Nurses Association, District 9. The pair joins honorees nominated by peers and coworkers as exemplary registered nurses from greater Houston. Matthew Schlueter, chief nursing officer, Ben Taub and Quentin Mease hospitals, and Rosalyn Jones-Waters, nursing clinical manager, Oncology, Ben Taub Hospital, were recognized during a Nov. 10 dinner and award ceremony. Schlueter, RN, MSN, MBA, NE-BC, PHN, is enrolled in a PhD program in nursing science. During his tenure at Ben Taub Hospital, his team has achieved designation as a Baby-Friendly Hospital, accreditations for Chest Pain Center and Comprehensive Stroke Center and Level I Trauma re-verification by the American College of Surgeons. Schlueter, a Heights resident, also has led Quentin Meese Hospital staff to achieve Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities designation, one of the most prestigious recognitions for a rehabilitation and physical medicine service. His focus is on maximizing safety and enhancing the quality of care provided and to create a positive environment for patients and staff. He serves as a preceptor for students and mentors staff on the importance of achieving high quality healthcare measures. Jones-Waters, BSN, RN, OCN, received her bachelor of science in nursing from Lamar University. She is an oncology certified nurse with more than 25 years of experience in roles ranging from staff nurse, oncology quality coordinator to nurse manager. In her current role, she advocates for quality patient care, mentors and empowers staff, and encourages professional development through ongoing education, participation in shared governance and involvement in professional nursing organizations. Jones-Waters, a Katy resident, serves on several interdisciplinary committees including the radiation safety committee, fall prevention workgroup, and Beacon implementation. Her unit was the recipient of a Harris Health Sapphire Luminary Award for Nursing Quality in 2016. She is a member of Texas Nursing Association and the Oncology Nursing Society- formerly serving as Houston chapter president and currently serves as chair of community outreach. Harris Health employs 2,400 registered nurses throughout its network of hospitals, health centers and specialty facilities, a majority in direct patient care roles. Of the total number, 1,146 RNs work at Ben Taub Hospital, 667 RNs work at Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and 353 in Ambulatory Care Services. Nancy Sarnoff Has Houston finally shed its reputation as a tear-down city that cares little about its oldest buildings? For the first time in 70 years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's has chosen Houston as the host city for its annual conference, a gathering of more than 1,200 leaders in historic preservation from around the country. The Greater Cleveland Chamber of Commerce is presenting computer assistance through its member, Innovative Computer Solutions, a business welcomed into the Chamber with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 9. Innovative Computer Solutions is owned by Jeremy Ewing, who has been a member of the chamber for several months. His business has been serving the Cleveland area for nearly two years. "I've just always had a passion for it [working with computers]," said Ewing. Before starting his own business, Ewing said he worked with systems for Champion Energey and the National Security Agency. The company provides services that include handling the technology, data security, IT solutions, security solutions and more. These services can be applied to computer repair, virus removal, data backup and recovery, troubleshooting, web hosting and other areas. "Most of it is the computers and networking," said Ewing. The services of Innovative Computer Solutions does not only apply to computers and networking. Ewing can also repair mobile devices and tablets. "There was a large request for mobile devices and tablets," said Ewing. Ewing can also help with security installations and cameras. He is also willing to work outside of Cleveland and has traveled as far as Lufkin for his work. Chamber Chief Operating Officer Jim Carson also complimented Ewing on his work and how it has benefited the Chamber. "He's been in to service our computers a few times," said Carson. To contact Innovative Computer Solutions call 832-543-3559 or email sales@innovativecomputersolutions.net. Visit their website at http://www.innovativecomputersolutions.net. Think you know most 11 and 12-year olds? Take another look. "Most people think when you get a group of 11 and 12-year-old kids together it will be chaos. People may expect gossip, silliness, and a general lack of focus. At Austin Memorial Library, that does not seem to be the case," said Mary Cohn, head librarian. On Tuesday afternoons, you will find their Tween Scene group hard at work. Sometimes they are working on the effects of gossip, or discussing how other kids their age are changing their world and how they can too, but this month you will find them putting together donations for Veterans. "In honor of Veterans Day, the Tweens decided they wanted to do something for veterans still in need. After brainstorming, they decided to ask for donations to take to a local VA Hospital. After a bit of research and a suggestion from a helpful Veteran, the kids picked the Fisher House Foundation as the recipient of their donations," Cohn said. "The Fisher House Foundation is exactly what you think it is -- a house that veterans and their families can stay in when they must visit the VA Hospital for longer than previously thought." The Fisher House provides lodging at no cost for the Veterans who lodged there and try to provide as much as they can to make an unexpected or even expected visit as pleasant as possible. Austin Memorial Library's Tweens are collecting toiletries to help with that goal. The Tweens will be accepting all toiletries till end of November at which point they will be packaged and sent to the nearest Fisher House along with letters and cards thanking out Veterans for all the sacrifices they made. So, swing on by, drop off some items, and maybe if you are lucky, you can meet one the incredible Tweens who are already learning the value of community service. Austin Memorial Library is located at 220 Bonham St., Cleveland. For more information, call 281-592-3920. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Students of James Street Elementary showed their patriotism on Veterans Day when they gathered in the cafeteria to hear presentations from veterans, members of Coldspring-Oakhurst CISD's JROTC students and many more. The program began with James Street Elementary teacher Laura Manshack welcoming the students and reminding them of the importance of Veterans Day. "We're here today to honor heroes," she said. Manshack took a moment to thank any veterans gathered in the cafeteria and asked them to stand so they could be recognized. She then proceeded to introduce their guest speaker named George Black. Black is a retired member of the United States Marine Corps who served in the Vietnam War. He told the gathered students stories of his time in the military and his desire to be a radar technician as well as the training required by the military. "It's tough," he said. "They put you through all kinds of misery." A radar technician performs repairs and radio reprogramming while also using preventative maintenance to help keep equipment in top shape. Black describes his experiences as being harsh, especially in boot camp. However, he stated that these experiences are not without their positive qualities. "It does teach you responsibility and individual respect for yourself," he said. Some of the students asked questions for Black to answer. The final question came from a girl who asked him why the United States became involved in the Vietnam War. Black responded with a simple, but effective, answer. "People misbehave is all I can tell you," he said. Coldspring-Oakhurst CISD JROTC Major Azzaam Rahmaan spoke after Black, describing how his experience as a veteran left him with big shoes to fill. He also addressed that Veterans Day is not only a time to honor veterans of wars past. "We want to definitely remember the folks that are still in harm's way," he said. Cadet Major Sara Coe spoke after her commanding officer and gave a presentation in regards to POWs and MIAs. She pointed to a table located behind her on the auditorium stage. The table looked as if it were about to be used for a small dinner for four people. "This table occupies the highest place of honor and embodies a great deal of symbolism," said Coe. Those present within the room bowed their heads in a moment of silence for POWs and MIAs not able to return home to their loved ones. "They are not with us today," said Coe. "Their chairs are empty but saved symbolically for their anticipated return one day. Let us remember." Four other cadets placed hats representing the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps in remembrance of POWs and MIAs of each branch. Coe continued to explain that each item on the table represents something different in regards to remembering those who are not forgotten. The white tablecloth symbolizes purity of the intention to answer the call to arms. The candle represents the weakness of a prisoner standing alone against his oppressors. The black ribbon attached to the candle serves as a reminder of those who will not be coming home. These are three of many items seen on the table that serve as reminders for the sacrifices given in the line of duty. Coe proceeded to discuss the events surrounding World War I, which was known as "The Great War." World War I ended on June 28, 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles. The fighting ended seven months earlier on Nov. 18, 1918, on the eleventh hour. "For that reason, Nov. 18, 1918 is generally regarded as the end of 'the war to end all wars,'" said Coe. The first Veterans Day was observed on Oct. 25, 1971. However, President Gerald Ford signed a law that changed the date to Nov. 11 no matter what day of the week it falls on. "The restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to Nov. 11 not only preserves the historical significance of the date but helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day," said Coe. "A celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Students of Shepherd Middle School held a special presentation on the campus gymnasium for Veterans Day, where they were surprised to learn how much both world wars impacted famous cartoonist Walt Disney. The program started with two students, Garret Cone and Austin Atchley, explaining how and why the United States celebrates Veterans Day. "They risk their lives so that we can be here talking about this today," said Atchley. The two students were followed by one of their peers named Jesse Beverly who chose to read a poem in front of other students and veteran guests. "A veteran knows life is precious," he said. "Old memories make him cry." Beverly concluded his poem by explaining how it's difficult to know how to pay back a veteran for their service and sacrifice. "Except perhaps to honor them with thanks on Veterans Day," he said. A fourth student named Christian Castillo spoke after Beverly and described the characteristics of a veteran. "It takes courage for a soldier to risk life and limb," he said. Castillo then introduced the program's guest speaker, veteran Dale Everitt. Everitt began his speech by discussing the origins of Veterans Day and its connection to the end of World War I, which many consider to have ended on Nov. 11, 1918 seven months before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. He encouraged students to give thanks to veterans. "Any of your family that's ever served is a veteran," said Everitt. Everitt continued by noting how veterans have served to protect the rights granted to United States citizens. "Remember on Veterans Day, it's the veterans who protected your freedoms in the Constitution," he said. World War I is considered to be the war to end all wars, but World War II came 21 years later. Everitt spoke about Walt Disney, who fought in World War I and how he influenced a call to arms in World War II. "He started drawing cartoons and one of his first ones was Steamboat Willie," said Everitt. Steamboat Willie is most famous for serving as the debut of famous Disney character Mickey Mouse. Germany eventually censored Mickey Mouse due to one animated short titled The Barnyard Battle featuring Mickey Mouse battling against German-theme cats. Disney decided to use Mickey Mouse as a propaganda tool during World War II. "He took Mickey Mouse, the cartoon character, and started encouraging Americans to be strong," said Everitt. "Mickey giving it all for the troops." Mickey Mouse and other popular Disney characters were shown in this regard serving the military to fight back against the Axis powers in World War II. The Nazi regime in Germany also propagandized against Mickey Mouse and Disney. Disney's work soon became banned under their regime as well as that of Benito Mussolini's regime in Italy. "The tragedy used Mickey to help win the war," said Everitt. Everitt concluded that veterans defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He encouraged students to understand and appreciate this because of the rights the Constitution and the Bill of Rights gives. "Cherish the Bill of Rights," said Everitt. "It's your future." Although his speech was done, Everitt also presented a project he is working on in regards to another fallen veteran named Robert Charles Davis. Davis lived in San Jacinto County. Everitt says the project entails finding a picture of Davis to be given to a museum in Washington, D.C. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A group of youth students at Coldspring United Methodist Church got all of their questions answered about the military on Nov. 9 as the congregation hosted a panel of seven veterans from different branches of the United States military. The Coldspring United Methodist Church youth group, known as the Matches, gathers at the church in fellowship every Wednesday night. With Veterans Day falling on the same week, the Matches were given a chance to ask seven veterans different questions about their experiences. The program is normally done one-on-one with the Matches individually interviewing the veterans. They changed it up this year with each member of the Matches asking a single question for the veterans to answer as a group. "This is the first time they did a panel," said veteran and church member Patrick Clark. Many questions were basic, such as what motivated the veterans to join the military. For Philip McCulloch Sr., a former member of the United States Marine Corp, reasons can vary from protecting one's country or flag to a number of different things. "For me personally, [it was] family," he said. World War II veteran and former United States Air Force member Richard Lapp spoke of the posters used in a campaign to encourage men to sign up in the military to fight against the Axis powers. The posters in question depict Uncle Sam drawn to look as if he's pointing at the person looking at the poster and telling them he needs them to join the military. "Uncle Sam needed me," said Lapp. Other questions focused on specific and sometimes humorous moments in a veteran's time in the military, such as when Clark described an incident where a recruit had a slight mishap with a grenade. "The kid pulls the pin, drops the grenade and throws the pin," said Clark. The recruit narrowly escaped the explosion as a training officer grabbed the grenade and threw it in time while shielding the recruit. Army veteran Frank Closs recalled an incident driving an APC when another soldier challenged him to a race to the top of a hill. Closs and the other soldier sped towards the top, but Closs realized something wasn't quite right. "Just as we got to the top of the hill, he hit the brakes," he said. The hill happened to have a steep drop, which Closs also narrowly avoided. Veterans often receive awards and commendations for their service and acts of bravery. Such is the case with the veterans on the panel, including Eugene Pavey who served in the Army during the Vietnam War. "I got a Bronze Star for my service in Vietnam," he said. Another question for the veterans asked what careers they pursued after their service ended. While some went on to find jobs outside of the military, Clark did not start out that way. "As soon as I got out I went into law enforcement," he said. Clark's time in law enforcement had him working on military installations. He described the experience as his inability to go cold turkey when leaving the military. Many of the final questions asked about how military life impacted the different veterans. Navy veteran John Davis responded by noting how it helps you find a bit of humility and understanding of what you know and don't know about life. "It really prepares you for life," he said. The veterans thanked the Matches with McCulloch telling the children that serving the nation brings with it great honor. "It's a blank check that you write to your country," he said. Local celebrity chef and restaurateur Bryan Caswell has announced that he will no longer be associated with two forthcoming dining concepts that are being backed by Houston Astros owner Jim Crane. In January it was originally announced that Caswell would partner with Crane and fellow restaurateur Bill Floyd to open dual concept Kristalla and Osso. Kristalla will be a casual Italian trattoria, while Osso will focus on Northern Italian fare. The original monikers were Brocca and II Panchina. "The Italian places have been going for a little bit, and I have the utmost respect for Mr. Crane. That place is bigger than me, for sure. I was a cog in a machine, because I love the Astros," Caswell told CultureMap, adding that this was a mutual decision. "Mr. Crane is a great guy. It just made sense, because there are other things I want to do." NAME CHANGER: New names for two downtown Italian restaurants He told that outlet that he is forming a new company, Bryan Caswell Concepts. He also explains that he will be focusing on his Midtown Gulf seafood restaurant Reef, which he launched in 2007 with Floyd as his business partner. The two are also joint owners of Jackson Street BBQ at 209 Jackson Street. Caswell separately owns Tex-Mex restaurant El Real at 1201 Westheimer and Little Bigs and 4621 Montrose. As for Floyd, he will remain the management partner at Kristalla and Osso. A spokesperson for Crane told CultureMap that the Astros owner is determined to launch a "world-class Italian restaurant in downtown Houston," which would require a dedicated executive chef. "Bryan is a wonderful chef and currently has many projects going on with his new brand that would not allow him to devote the amount of time desired for this project," the representative told that outlet. EASY ENTERTAINING: Thanksgiving to-go dishes from Houston restaurants and bakeries The Italian fare establishments garnered much fanfare because of the high-profile names with which it's associated, as well as their ideal location at a new luxury apartment tower, 500 Crawford, which is situated across from Minute Maid Stadium. The two restaurants will anchor the new building and are on track to open in December. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The faces of students could be seen gazing intently from the interior balcony overlooking the Humble High School foyer where Principal Donna Ulrich, JROTC instructor LTC Robert Rohm and JROTC cadets placed a wreath of red, white and blue flowers in front of a replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Friday, Nov. 11. The placing of the wreath marked the start of Humble High School's annual Wildcat Salute to Veterans during which students, staff, community residents and leaders convene at the school to honor United States veterans in observance of Veterans Day. The ceremony involved musical performances by the Humble High School A Cappella Choir and Band students; speeches by honored guests; and presentations of appreciation from local, state and national leaders. Among those who attended was United States Congressman Ted Poe. "As a veteran of the United States Airforce, I appreciate Humble High School doing this Veterans Day ceremony every year," Poe said. In honor of Wildcat Salute to Veterans 2016, Poe presented Humble High School with a proclamation commending their commitment to honor the nation's veterans. "Our veterans are the safeguards of liberty, freedom and a cut above the rest," Poe said. "We will always support them." State Representative Dan Huberty also made a special presentation in honor of the Wildcat Salute to Veterans. "This was an important week in our country," Huberty said. "We have a peaceful transition of power, even though you'll have people protesting and asserting their First Amendment rights, the reason you're able to do that is because of the veterans who have fought for freedom in our country." On behalf of the state of Texas, Huberty presented the high school with a state flag that had been flown over the capital in honor of the Veterans Day celebration. The city of Humble Mayor Merle Aaron echoed Huberty's sentiment, thanking the nation's veterans for protecting freedoms by serving the county. He read from the last part of a proclamation declaring Nov. 11, 2016 "Wildcat Salute to Veterans Day." "In times of war and peace alike, our veterans have served with courage an distinction in the face of tremendous adversity; demonstrating an unfaltering commitment to America and our people," Aaron said. "Many have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve this country that not only we love, but they love even more that they would give the greatest sacrifice a person can give." One of the event guest speakers was Chief Master Sergeant Retired Danny Shine who is currently the emergency management coordinator for the Michael E DeBakery VA Medical Center. In his speech, he called on students to use Veterans Day as an inspiration to show reverence and honor in their daily activities. "Students, you have an opportunity to show reverence," Shine said. "Every day you have an opportunity to do what you want to do, say what you want to say, go where you want to go, be who you want to be and that has been provided to you by our veterans; by those who served. "Remember to show reverencein the way you go about your business. Give your best in everything you do: impacting your community, serving others, living honorable and living with respect. That is what we need today." As an Humble High School tradition, a visitor at the event was chosen to be honored with a presentation of the Humble High School Challenge Coin. This year, Humble's own Lieutenant Tom Morgan was chosen as the honoree. Morgan joined the U.S. Marines at the age of 21 years old and served in World War II and the Korean War. At 96 years old, he is now the oldest living lawman not only in the state of Texas, but in the entire United States. He is currently with the Harris County Sheriff's Department. Stacey Hamlet, International Baccalaureate CAS Coordinator at Humble High School, also surprised LTC Rohm with a special acknowledgment in honor of his approaching retirement from Humble ISD in December. Humble High School junior Zaykeese Riley served as an event speaker, relaying the wisdom imparted to him by his grandmother who had served in the U.S. Army. "Not all shots are fire with weapons," Riley said. "What I truly believe she was trying to teach (me) was that the weapons that win battles and wars aren't the bullets fired by rifles, not the missiles from planes or the torpedoes from submarines; they are the hearts and souls of our soldiers and citizens which they protect. "It is my wish that each and every veteran in this room knows that your sacrifice does not go unnoticed; to show you that my generation has not forgotten you; to assure America's veterans that we will always be here to love and support you because you loved and supported us even when you didn't have to." After the ceremony, students, staff and community members joined veterans for a complimentary breakfast. Hamlet praised the students of Humble High School for living up to Shine's call to show reverence. "I'm proud to be a Wildcat today," Hamlet said. "As I looked around the room I saw students not only doing what they're supposed to, but I did see reverence today. When I looked around the room, I saw students not just paying attention, but taking what was said to heart." For more information about Humble High School visit http://www.humbleisd.net/Page/19967. The common goal of providing food to those in need brings together Katy-area churches as they join with the faith-based nonprofit Feed the Hunger Nov. 17-19 in the Katy Million Meal Pack-a-Thon. Denise Mayfield, executive director, Compassion Katy, is working with church representatives from The Fellowship, Westland Baptist and Redeemer Community. Each church will host teams of volunteers who will pack meals Nov. 17-19 in five different sessions. The cost is $56 per volunteer which is either paid by the volunteer or through donations. Mayfield said that both sponsors and volunteers are needed. Visit www.redeemercommunity.org/upcoming-events, www.thefellowship.org/resources/events/katy-million-meal-pack-a-thon or http://compassionkaty.org for information and to donate. Donations will be accepted after the event and used as seed money for next year, she said. Packages will be distributed to Katy Christian Ministries, Kentucky and Haiti. A Vimeo by Mitch Maher on the Redeemer Community Church website says this is the largest pack-a-thon ever attempted and the first to be at more than one church in an area at the same time. It began after Mayfield and Glenn Lerich, missions pastor of The Fellowship, visited RockPointe Church in Flower Mound as it conducted a pack-a-thon. Their trip was prompted by Fellowship member Jerry Weant, a former RockPointe member, who accompanied them. The result was talk of conducting a similar campaign in Katy and at the urging of Jerry L. Edmonson, lead pastor at The Fellowship, the goal was set at 1 million meals. The initial plan included five participating churches, said Lerich, but two dropped out for good reasons. That may make reaching the goal more difficult but not impossible, according to organizers. "We set the bar really high and go for it. If we don't hit the mark, we'll hit a million with the second pack-a-thon," said Mayfield. Randi Long, pack-a-thon coordinator at Redeemer Community Church, attended a Dallas pack-a-thon event in early November and watched between 150 and 160 volunteers in two hours put together 32,000 meals. Each church in Katy will have eight packing stations with each station having 25 volunteers. Each station is expected to pack 5,000 meals each session. Each package contains rice, dehydrated veggies, vitamin powder and beans. Mayfield said the package when prepared can feed six people. The food is tasty, too, said Long, who added that 50 youths in Sunday school class prepared the food as part of their Bible study. Lerich also likes the idea that the food isn't "just handed over but it's a hand up." Distribution is channeled through educational, religious and medical groups. Not only the food recipients will benefit. "I believe it (the pack-a-thon) will pull people together," said Senior Pastor Roy Meadows of Westland Baptist Church. "So many people want to do a good thing. They gravitate toward helping other people. We're calling people who are blessed to be a blessing to others." After Mayfield visited RockPointe to see a pack-a-thon in action, she said she fell in love not only with the effort to feed the hungry but also with the positive impact the drive had on unchurched people to return them to an active Christian life. Meadows and Mayfield note that while the pack-a-thon is a good example of Katy-area churches working together, it's not the first. Meadows said 13 Katy-area churches funded and provided volunteers to build two houses through Habitat for Humanity as well as helping with four other houses as part of a project that just closed out. And, there's more to come. Mayfield and Lerich talk of an April mission trip to Haiti to follow up on this month's efforts and to see what else they might do to help. When the Food and Drug Administration declared that vapor products (electronic cigarettes) were tobacco products on Aug. 8, they set in motion a two-year march towards the prohibition on the sale and availability of the products in the United States. As someone who successfully quit using traditional tobacco products in July 2013 and as the owner of a vape shop in Billings, I am asking Congress to intervene when they return to Washington after Novembers elections. Sens. Jon Tester, Steve Daines, and Rep. Ryan Zinke have already demonstrated a helpful understanding of this government overreach, as co-sponsors of legislation that would exempt cigars from FDA oversight. Unlike cigars, vapor products dont contain tobacco or even smoke. Theyre shown to be at least 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes according to the Royal College of Physicians and Public Health England, and theyre actually helping millions of smokers quit. As the owner of uBlaze Vapor, I meet smokers every day who try vapor products for the first time and never use cigarettes again. Theyre able to get the nicotine without the tar and harmful effects of smoke. Unfortunately, the recent decision by the FDA to deem vapor products as tobacco will force me to close my business and fire my 10 employees in less than two years. My path towards a tobacco-free life through a small business aimed at providing adult consumers with alternative choices may all come crumbling down. That is, unless Congress acts soon. Over the next two years, the FDA will require every vapor product on the market to undergo a retroactive pre-approval process in order to remain on the market. No cigarette maker ever had to undergo this process, which was established in 2009 with the Tobacco Control Act and was designed to prevent new tobacco products like cigarettes from hitting the market in the future. Even if the companies that provide different products to my shop could spend thousands of hours and afford the millions of dollars it will take to submit what is known as a Pre-Market Tobacco Application, there is no guarantee that the FDA will approve a single product currently on the market for sale beyond 2018. Absent a stamp of approval from the FDA, the agency has said it will begin seizing products from stores. When the TCA passed in 2009, Congress granted permission for every tobacco product on the market on Feb. 15, 2007 (the predicate date), to remain on the market forever. New tobacco products had to get permission to be sold. Unfortunately, entrepreneurship and the FDAs definition of tobacco are now at odds, with tens of thousands of businesses and former smokers (vapers) in the crosshairs. This spring, the House Appropriations Committee passed an amendment to the Agriculture Bill that would partially address the pending prohibition. An amendment sponsored by Reps. Tom Cole, R-Okl., and Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., would change the predicate date for vapor products from February of 2007 to August of 2016 (when e-cigarettes were officially deemed as tobacco). I opened uBlaze Vapor to help smokers looking for alternatives to the ineffective nicotine patch, gum, lozenge, or pharmaceutical drugs. Weve helped countless 20 and 30-year smokers finally kick their unhealthy habit. And the FDA wants to take that away, a move that would reverse decades of progress in the fight against smoking. This industry supports regulations like a ban on the sale of products to minors, the requirement that companies disclose ingredients in the products they sell, and even some limitations on advertising. To treat vapor products more harshly than cigarettes, however, makes little sense. The Cole-Bishop amendment achieves these goals without destroying an entire industry. We need Tester, Daines and Zinke to urge House and Senate Leadership to include the Cole-Bishop language in the end-of-year omnibus package. Jobs and public health are at stake. HSPVA to present fall dance concert The High School for Performing and Visual Arts Dance Department presents the HSPVA Concert Dancers in the HSPVA fall dance concert at 7 p.m. Nov. 17-18 at The Denny Theatre, 4001 Stanford, Houston. Reserved tickets are $15 and general admission tickets are $10. Visit www.hspvaboxoffice.com for tickets. The concert, featuring contemporary ballet, jazz and modern dance choreography by the HSPVA dance faculty, will also feature guest choreographed works by David Parsons of the Parsons Dance Company, New York, Texas Tech University Dance Professor, Genevieve Durham, HSPVA Dance and Juilliard graduate, Allysen Hooks, Point Park and HSPVA graduate Christian Warner and HSPVA Dance graduate and Artistic Director of VAULT, Amy Ell. The HSPVA Concert Dancers, under the direction of Janie Carothers have appeared on numerous university campuses and have toured the United States, England, Scotland and China. The company has appeared locally at the at the Wortham Center's Cullen Theatre, Miller Outdoor Theatre, Hobby Center and MATCH. Wood Carvers to meet at Bayland The Houston Area Wood Carvers Club will meet 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, at Bayland Community Center, 6400 Bissonnet. The November class is a standing relief cross taught by visiting carver, Harry Seurkamp. Advanced registration is required for this class. Pete Reittinger will be teaching at the beginners' table. Members share their art at the monthly Show and Tell. At the 45th annual Fall Show, Competition and Classes, Eric Bufkin won Best of Show and People's Choice awards for his American Goldfinch. The Best Display Table award was won by Lorraine Lewis and Randall Clements. Leroy Miller won first place in the whittling contest. Carvers and those interested in learning to wood carve are invited to attend the monthly meetings. The club meets on the third Saturday of each month at the Bayland Community Center in Houston. HAWC is a nonprofit, social organization whose members live in the greater Houston area. To learn more about the club, email carolynann@consolidated.net, visit www.houstonareawoodcarvers.com or call Preston and Carolyn Smith at 281-392-0713. Texas State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R) spoke to a group of about 50 people Thursday at a Westchase restaurant about what Texans can expect now that the nation is preparing for a Trump presidency. Bettencourt, who represents District 7, said the expected repeal of the Affordable Care Act by a Trump Administration is the most significant change Texans will feel, which he says will be a positive for the state. The attendees at the fund-raising breakfast for the Westchase District Community Fund were mostly business owners in the west Houston area whom the senator seemed to be previously familiar with based on his years as Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector from 1998 to 2008. At Cantina Loredo on Westheimher Road he spoke to a mostly Republican crowd, who cheered when he referenced Hillary Clinton and the criminal allegations that surrounded the Clinton Foundation during the Presidential campaign. "First thing that's going to happen (when Trump takes office) is Obamacare is going to be repealed," he said to more cheers from the group, along with the reversal of other executive orders passed, which he didn't name but number at 249 issued according to the United States National Archives and Records Administration. One way that will affect Texans is that the lawsuits the state has pending against the federal government, about 30 claims, he said, will be withdrawn which will bode well for the state. Of the anti-Trump protests that sprung up across the country's major cities after the race was called for Trump, he said "They should have spent more time voting and less time protesting." He said early reports from people at the rallies say that the protesters had low voter turnout. But, he added that both candidates, Clinton and Trump handled the results right. Bettencourt called Clinton's comments after conceding the election, "great". He cited western Kentucky and Pennsylvania voters as pivotal players in the election after Clinton said she would put coal miners out of business, which he said was a serious mistake as miners there took her seriously and ended up changing the election. He answered questions about local results, too. A popular topic was the Houston Independent School District measure that voters blocked, refusing to authorize HISD to forfeit millions of dollars in property taxes to the state next year, possibly allowing the state education commissioner to remove high-value commercial properties from HISD's tax base. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate UH completes transaction to purchase site The University of Houston System has completed the purchase of 46 acres in Katy from Parkside Capital. The land is located at the northeast corner of Interstate 10 and the Grand Parkway and will be developed into a campus serving West Houston. Academic programs from two UH System universities, the University of Houston and the University of Houston-Victoria, will be offered at the new campus. The 46 acres purchased by the UH System is part of a larger 125-acre site that UHS and Parkside Capital have rebranded as University Center, a master-planned, deed restricted, mixed-use development. Parkside Capital will soon begin design and construction of all interior infrastructure including streets, utilities, lighting and landscaping. "We are excited to welcome the University of Houston and UH-Victoria to University Center," said John S. Moody, Parkside Capital CEO. "We look forward to working with the UH System to create a first-class environment." The UH System will construct an 80,000-square-foot building at University Center, expected to open for fall 2019. The project is in the design phase, and construction is expected to begin in August 2017. The campus is expected to initially serve 2,000 students, but the master plan includes 500,000-square-feet of space that will eventually be able to accommodate 8,000 to 10,000 students. "Residents in this area have a need for higher education, but it can be a hardship to travel all the way across Houston in order to go to school," said Paula Myrick Short, UH System vice chancellor for academic affairs. "The UH System's expansion will give residents in parts of Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties an opportunity to earn their degrees closer to home." Expanding higher education opportunities in West Houston has long been a priority for regional leaders and the UH System, which has offered programs in the area for 30 years. UH and UHV both offer classes in Katy at separate leased locations. They previously offered academic programming at the System's Cinco Ranch site, which is being sold. The purchase of the land and the construction of the building in Katy are funded by $46.8 million in Capital Construction Bonds approved during the 84th session of the Texas Legislature. The UH System assembled a task force to assess the educational needs of West Houston, and an independent demography study was conducted to determine the ideal location of a campus that would be accessible and visible. "This site is well-suited to meet our needs," said Short. "It allows the System room to grow strategically with the population increase that is expected in this area." According to data from the Katy Area Economic Development Council, the population of the Katy area is expected to increase from 317,000 residents to 550,000 within the next 20 years, and about 200 companies are headquartered there, including many in the energy sector. Mayde Creek High to Present 'A Christmas Carol" With the holidays fast approaching, Mayde Creek High School Theatre Company cordially invites you to come see "A Christmas Carol." The classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge's journey from an inhumane and heartless grouch to a generous and caring soul with the aid of three Christmas spirits who show him the meaning of life one Christmas night. Performances take place Dec. 8-10 at 7 p.m. with an additional 2 p.m. matinee on Dec. 10. Tickets can be purchased at www.mchstheatre.org. Student tickets are $6 in advance and $8 at the door. Adult tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Gold card members may purchase tickets for $5. For more information, call 281-237-3803 or visit www.mchstheatre.org. Monty Ballard YMCA's School-business partnership supports Katy ISD children Since opening its doors in 2001, the Monty Ballard YMCA at Cinco Ranch has been devoted to the healthy minds, bodies and spirits of our community. And since opening those doors, our YMCA has also been a devoted Katy ISD Partner in Education, always on the lookout for ways to help children. It provided 243 pairs of jeans for homeless teens and 100 blankets for elementary children. The YMCA supported 80 students in the KEYS "Katy Students Run" program, helped kids receive braces at no cost to their families and provided books to children attending Camp Cinco. Through their campus partnership with Shafer Elementary, the YMCA collectively donated canned goods for Ballard House and Eternal Food Ministries along with 100 coats for children who needed them. Individually, employees serve as KEYS mentors and Sundown Elementary Carnival volunteers, while District Executive Director Brian Haines serves on the Partners in Education Advisory Board and often lends his skills as a guest speaker. But the epitome of the YMCA community outreach is their backpack drive an initiative of Greater Houston YMCAs that impacts thousands of regional children annually. This year in Katy alone, the local YMCA collected 49,351 items.that went into 2,459 backpacks.that benefited children at 32 elementaries, eight junior highs and four high schools. According to Outreach Coordinator Connie Stirgus, "When I started in 2011, we collected 250 backpacks my first year. I knew this community could do more, and we have! The generosity of Katy is sometimes overwhelming." To learn more, visit Partners in Education under the "Community" tab at www.katyisd.org. Animal Rescue Kingdom Sasha, a Maltese Mix girl, is spayed, up-to-date on her shots and heart-worm negative. The two-year-old likes to ride in a car and walks well on a leash. She is adoptable from Animal Rescue Kingdom, 2611 Charles Lane, Sugar Land. Email animalrescuekingdom@gmail.com for more information or visit awos.petfinder.com or call 832-267-5777. Newmark Homes Newmark Homes is not only helping Houston-area residents settle into their perfect homes, but also helping pets with Fort Bend County Animal Services find "furr-ever" homes. Representatives from animal services are bringing adoptable pets to Newmark model homes during several special events, plus the builder is donating $250 to the organization for each visit. A change at the top of the ballot came in Fort Bend County, when 51 percent of voters cast their ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump trailed by nearly 7 percent - garnering just 45 percent of the vote, according to unofficial election results. Fort Bend County voters typically opt for a Republican in the White House. In 2008, Barack Obama nearly overtook John McCain. He garnered 48.5 percent of the vote to McCain's 51 percent. But in 2012, 53 percent of voters cast their ballots for Mitt Romney compared to just 46 percent who voted for Obama. The Democrat's victory at the top of the ballot didn't make itself to down-ballot races. Unofficial results show Republicans dominated local races. Republican Troy Nels held on to his seat as Fort Bend County Sheriff. He garnered nearly 52 percent of the vote, compared to challenger Democrat Michael Ellison's 48 percent. That's a tighter margin than when Nels was elected in 2012, in a two-way race, also against Ellison. Then, Nels garnered 55 percent of the vote to Ellison's 45. The former mayor of Rosenberg, Republican Vincent Morales, ousted incumbent Democrat Richard Morrison. Morrison was elected in 2008. He defeated Republican Greg Ordeneaux for the seat, garnering 51 percent of voters to Ordeneaux's 49. Morrison was narrowly re-elected in 2012, again gaining 51 percent of votes to his challenger, Bruce Fleming's 49 percent. The win was narrow despite the Republican Party pulling support from Fleming, after it was revealed he had committed voter fraud. Morales was elected mayor of Rosenberg in 2011 in a two-way race. He ran unopposed for re-election in 2013 date. He opted not to seek a third term in office in 2015 because of plans to run for Precinct 1 Commissioner. Republican Andy Meyers was re-elected Precinct 3 County Commissioner. He ran unopposed. Republicans Mike Beard, Wayne Thompson and Trever Nehls were elected Constables of precincts 1, 3 and 4. Both were unopposed. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A community activist accused of punching a police horse last week during an anti-Donald Trump protest was taken into custody Monday after a Houston judge raised her bail. Shere Dore, 40, a vocal Black Lives Matter supporter who is also an advocate for the homeless, was escorted to a holding cell after state District Judge Jim Wallace raised her bail from $2,000 to $5,000. Dore had been out on bond after being jailed Thursday for interference with a police service animal. "There is no doubt that this is all about the First Amendment," said Dore's attorney, Brian Harrison. "These cases are filed in an effort to try to intimidate demonstrators against Donald Trump." He said he expects Dore's new bail to be posted in the courtroom before she is again processed into the Harris County Jail. Dore was in court Monday with Emily Garcia-Briones, another demonstrator who is accused of hiding a body camera that fell off an officer. The 22-year-old is charged with tampering with evidence. In court, prosecutors said both women were with a group of protesters marching toward Houston's City Hall when they were confronted by mounted officers. The demonstrators were in the street, not on the sidewalk, which is a violation of municipal code, prosecutors said. A mounted HPD officer on a police horse named Astro apparently warned Dore to get on the sidewalk before using the horse to push her back. "As he pushed her with the horse, defendant Dore struck the police horse in the shoulder with a closed fist," prosecutor Gavin Ellis said in court. Ellis declined to comment on the case after the brief hearing. Both protesters face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the third degree felonies, said Jolanda Jones, an attorney for Garcia-Briones. "No one hit a horse and no one hid a camera," she said. Jones, an HISD trustee, a former city council member and local firebrand, also raised the specter of police crackdowns on rallies that have cropped up across the country daily in response to the election of Trump as president. "I want the world to know that our clients are absolutely innocent. They have a First Amendment right to protest," Jones. "I think this is one of the first indications of what's going to happen with the new president." brian.rogers@chron.com twitter.com/brianjrogers Vilma Jean Goeb, mother of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, died Sunday morning at age 90 of heart failure. Goeb, of Pearland, had been married to Patricks father Charles Anthony Goeb for 56 years before his death in December 2002. The couple had moved to the Houston area to join their son in the restaurant business in the 1980s. Patrick, an only child, was obviously feeling the loss when he appeared at the Senate GOP caucus on Sunday, State Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, said on Twitter later that day. The lieutenant governor changed his last name in 1977 when he started work at a Scranton, Pa. radio station. He shared the juxtaposition of a childhood photo with a current shot last Mother's Day in celebration of Goeb, then 89. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two Texas Baptist churches may be expelled from the Baptist General Convention of Texas for their welcoming open-door policies toward LGBTQ people, reports say. The Baptist Standard reports that Wilshire Baptist in Dallas and First Baptist in Austin received letters from BGCT officials stating that because the churches had affirmed themselves with the LGBTQ people, they were "no longer being in harmonious cooperation with the BGCT." LOCAL LOOK: How Houston's LGBT community compares to other major U.S. cities The BGCT is a part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which among its core beliefs is that homosexual behavior is a sin. The Wilshire Baptist letter from the BGCT reportedly says, "Should your church choose to publicly affirm same-sex sexual behavior, the BGCT will no longer be able to accept funds from the church, seat its messengers to the annual meeting, allow the church to express affiliation with the BGCT or allow its members to serve on the BGCT boards, committees or other roles." "The outcome is not yet known, and it will not be known until after the convention messengers are seated," Wilshire Pastor George Mason told The Baptist Standard. He also told them that his church plans to send messengers to the BGCT annual meeting in Waco, Nov. 14. First Austin also received a similar letter from the BGCT, The Baptist Standard reports. LOOKING AT TEXAS: These are the most and least LGBT-friendly cities in Texas "We do not desire to argue over sexuality any further," a response letter sent to BGCT officials by First Austin reads. "As a church, we did our diligent theological work, being guided by the Spirit, meditating on scared scripture and hearing the stories and struggles of our own members. As a result of that thoughtful process, we are proudly and openly welcoming and affirming of all God's beloved children." Back in 2010 was the last time the BGCT openly scolded a church over LGBTQ issues after Dallas' Royal Lane Baptist Church stopped receiving funds from the BGCT for appointing openly gay deacons. Fort Bend ISD will hold two community meetings in November to get feedback on the attendance boundary zones for four new schools, scheduled to open by August of 2018. The district's 48th, 49th and 50th elementary schools are scheduled to open by the start of the 2017-2018 school year. The district's 15th middle school is slated to open by the start of the 2018-2019 school year. The community meetings will be Nov. 29 at Travis High School and Nov. 30 at Ridge Point High School, from 7 to 9 p.m. They are open to the public, but the attendance boundary changes are only anticipated to affect 19 existing Fort Bend ISD campuses. The meeting at Travis High School includes campuses that will be affected by the 49th and 50th elementary schools. Those schools are: Oakland Elementary, Pecan Grove Elementary, Madden Elementary, Oyster Creek Elementary, Fleming Elementary, Bowie Middle School, Garcia Middle School, Seguin Elementary, Jordan Elementary, Mission West Elementary, Holley Elementary, Crockett Middle School and Hodge's Bend Middle School. The meeting at Ridge Point will address those schools affected by the 48th elementary and 15th middle school. Those includes Schiff Elementary, Sienna Crossing Elementary, Scanlan Oaks Elementary, Heritage Rose Elementary, Baines Middle School and First Colony Middle Scohol. All of those campuses could also be impacted by classroom additions, funded by the 2014 Bond Program, that will increase the number of students who can attend some existing schools. The meeting at Travis High School may also address possible boundaries for Fort Bend ISD's 51st elementary school, which is currently in planning stages. All four new campuses were built to accommodate population growth. Fort Bend ISD's 48th elementary school and 15th middle school will be located next to each other in Sienna Plantation South. The district's 49th and 50th elementary schools are on the Grand Parkway corridor, in the Harvest Green and Grand Vista developments. The new elementary schools were funded by the 2014 Bond Program. The middle school was funded by the 2007 Bond Program. Now, Fort Bend ISD is working with focus groups to shape attendance boundary options to present during the community meetings in November. New attendance boundaries could be approved by the Fort Bend ISD board of trustees as early as January of 2017. Overwhelmingly, after losing a loved one to suicide, the survivor feels alone and isolated. Probably they have not known anyone who lost someone to suicide (or havent known that they do because stigma has prevented people from talking about this particular loss). Survivor Day gatherings help everyone know that they are not alone and that their feelings and experiences are common to all suicide loss survivors. Suicide knows no boundaries it affects so many families, schools, businesses, families of servicemen/servicewomen, American Indians and other cultures. More people die from suicide than murder in our country, and now more teenagers die from suicide than from car accidents. For every suicide, many more survivors are left trying to figure out why and dealing with sudden loss. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate THE WOODLANDS -- The 60-foot-long American flag waved majestically, framed between two fire truck ladders hoisted 75 feet in the air, as the dozens gathered below paid tribute to the country's servicemen and women at Town Green Park Friday. The Woodlands Township board member Gordy Bunch started the ceremony with an excerpt from a letter that his grandfather wrote to his grandmother while serving in Okinawa, Japan, during World War II. The letter was dated Sept. 9, 1945, just a week after the war ended. "It's swell the war is over," Bunch read. The letter went on to describe some of the carnage Bunch's grandfather witnessed when a young man from Texas was fatally shot within arm's length of him. "He hurt so bad and all I could tell him was it would be alright, even though I knew he was dying," Bunch read. "War is sure hell." Keynote speaker Brig. Gen. Brevet Constance McNabb's speech served as a call to action. She spoke of the challenges veterans face even after returning from the war zone: post-traumatic stress disorder, undiagnosed brain trauma, difficulty re-acclimating to civilian life, and all this with a lack of resources. "These are our heroes," McNabb said. "They are not likely to ask for help." McNabb explained that trauma and isolation can have a deadly impact on veterans, who commit suicide at a rate of 22 a day. "This is an epidemic of epic proportions," she said. McNabb urged the members of the audience to reach out to veterans and be persistent in showing that they are cared for. "Be a friend. Be that wingman," she said. "Knock on that door - whether they curse you out. ... They need help. They need support." She also asked employers to be mindful of hiring and working with veterans and lobbied for further investment into veterans' care programs. "Go the extra mile. Don't take no for an answer," she said. "They've earned it." HELENA Despite ballot language that might prevent it, Lewis and Clark County Commission Chairman Mike Murray wants to find out whether the voter-approved renovation of the Law Enforcement Center for jail space can proceed even though the levy that would have been used to operate it failed. If theres an inch of hope, I want to jump at that hope, Murray said. Commissioners Susan Good Geise agreed and said we have to go down every path. The commission will likely seek an opinion from the county attorneys office, as well as attorneys involved in the possible sale of bonds to finance a $6.5 million renovation of the building. We have to move forward. We have to do something, said commissioner Andy Hunthausen, who also acknowledged that the ballot language may prevent the commission from acting on voters approval of the renovation. While voters approved the renovation bond issue by a single percentage point, they rejected a 15-year levy to raise $4 million annually for operations and maintenance costs, as well as inmate programs aimed at reducing jail overcrowding. Both of this years detention center ballot issues hinged on each other. Voters were told that the ballot issues for renovation and operation costs both needed to win approval to move forward. Murray expressed regret that jail overcrowding would be unresolved when he leaves office at the end of the year. I think its unfortunate that part of the proposal was voted down, Murray said, adding that he blamed the commission for the levy's defeat. Were not adequately educating the public on the safety needs and rehabilitation needs of the inmates that we house, Murray said. I feel bad that Im leaving the problem to the other two commissioners and the new incumbent to solve, but I want to pursue that one issue, said Murray, who chose not to run for re-election after having served on the commission since 1993. Jail overcrowding has been termed a crisis by the commission, and the county budget for this fiscal year, which began July 1 and ends June 30, 2017, contains $225,000 to incarcerate overflow inmates at jails in other counties where the Sheriffs Office contracts for cells. A fact sheet issued by the county on jail overcrowding said the facilitys recent daily population exceeded 100 inmates, with another 30 held at contract jails. The county detention center opened in 1985 with space for 54 inmates, and additional beds were added to increase the sleeping space to 80. Those held locally in excess of 80 sleep on the floor. Although there are additional beds beyond the initial 54, other areas of the detention center remain cramped for inmates. County officials and those with the court system and Sheriffs Office have expressed concern for inmate and detention staff safety. This years ballot issues come on the heels of those last November that sought nearly $41 million for construction of a new facility with space for the Sheriffs Office and up to $5.3 million when fully implemented for operation, maintenance and inmate programming. Both of those 2015 ballot issues failed. If the legal opinions on the ballot language for renovating the Law Enforcement Center dont allow the county to proceed, voters could again be asked to help fund a solution to overcrowding. Limiting the number of inmates who are held would require finding more beds at jails in other counties for overflow, which will be expensive, Hunthausen said. It may mean that we put together another proposal to ask our community for help again, he added. Maybe theyre interested in just space, maybe theyre interested in just programming, he said. Another possibility is to ask voters for money to launch a pretrial services program that would screen inmates and allow a judge to better decide which inmates require incarceration pending trial, Hunthausen said. Nearly all of those who are held, county officials say, are there awaiting trial and nearly all are there on felony charges. Yet another option Hunthausen mentioned is to look for money in the countys budget, reallocating resources from other county services, to fund a pretrial services program. Geise echoed support for pretrial services and said it wouldnt necessarily have to be a part of the Sheriffs Office. The commission is interested in collecting more data on inmates, such as on the crimes theyre accused of and mental health and chemical dependency, to provide programs aimed at meeting those needs. Lewis and Clark County is one of four communities receiving state funding for a pilot project to collect data on inmates, the commissioners said. Data collection, say Geise and Hunthausen, could also offer options for those who are held because the lack money for a bail bond. A financial ability to post a bail bond means a person charged with a crime is held pending trial and can lose employment that may mean the inability to pay rent and make vehicle payments. Allowing people to be released through pretrial services instead of being required to post a bond would be less costly to the person accused of a crime and the county as well, the commissioners said. In addition to not holding an inmate at roughly $123 a day, inmates families may not be pushed to look to the county for financial assistance, the commissioners noted. But the search for solutions to ease jail overcrowding doesnt rely entirely on voters and property taxes. Working with the county attorneys office, public defenders and judges to reduce the time a person is held pending trial is also of interest to the commission, as this too would reduce the jails population, Hunthausen said. Improving the data collection on those accused of crimes offers an advantage to the county, say the commissioners, which goes beyond jail overcrowding. They see it as a way to better educate the public on why people are being incarcerated. Having more data on the types of crimes that are resulting in people being incarcerated is important, Geise said. I think that it is important for the voters to know and the taxpayers to know how many are there for violent crimes. I think that theyre going to be shocked when they see the numbers, she explained. The county wont be successful in seeking voter support until it provides taxpayers the information they want and deserve on the kinds of people who are incarcerated, she added. So many people continue to believe that if youve got a joint, were going to arrest you, were going to pick you up and put you in the slammer. I hear that comment all the time, and it is just simply not the case. CHEYENNE, Wyo. The Wyoming Business Alliance and Wyoming Heritage Foundation have created a new initiative where business people across the state will be able to help improve public education. Wyoming Excels was officially launched during Gov. Matt Mead's Business Forum at Cheyenne. "Wyoming Excels is about business engaging with educators," said Fred von Ahrens, the volunteer chairman of the initiative. Von Ahrens is vice president of manufacturing for Tronox, a company in Green River that mines trona and makes soda ash. He also is vice chairman of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation. "This initiative will allow us to get a seat at the table to support the education system," he said, and be a partner to improve education. "It's all about the outcomes for our children, so they become outstanding citizens and employees," he told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle (http://bit.ly/2fY0asQ). "It's about accountability in the system, transparency in funding and return on investment and student outcomes." Business people can help in various ways, including serving as mentors, von Ahrens said. Von Ahrens said the Daniels Fund and the John P. Ellbogen Foundation each donated money for a three-year grant totaling $510,000 to support Wyoming Excels. "This is an outstanding opportunity," von Ahrens said. "We are honored by the confidence these foundations have put in our organizations." Karren "Sparky" Turner of the Daniels Fund said Wyoming Excels will help build an educational system "that will assure the well-educated, skilled, productive workforce and citizenry." A Texas man has launched a lawsuit after a Houston police officer allegedly bashed his head into a jail cell door while he was handcuffed. The outburst of violence was all caught on camera, according to the federal civil rights suit filed this month in the Southern District of Texas. Problems started when Williams was arrested in 2014 on a misdemeanor drunk driving charge and booked in at the City of Houston jail. An officer identified in the court documents as S. Corral led Williams to a holding cell, but stopped off en route allegedly to bash the handcuffed inmate's head into a cell door. Inside the cell, Corral allegedly shoved Williams up against a wall and put him in a neck nerve hold until he collapsed. Williams bled "profusely" until medical help arrived and now, more than two years later, he still bears a scar from the alleged beating. "To cover-up his crime Officer Corral falsely charges Reuben Williams with felony harassment of a public servant for spitting on him but then, quite strangely, fails to collect the important DNA-rich saliva evidence," Williams' lawyer writes in the suit. The lawyer argues that Houston police have engaged in a pattern of excessive force - and that the lack of discipline after such incidents is tantamount to a policy allowing such behavior. Over the past 13 years, Houston police have shot and either wounded or killed people at least 250 times - but none of the officers have been disciplined or found guilty of misconduct, the documents allege. In the jails, excessive force is a "custom" - so this isn't the first time city employees were caught on camera beating jail inmates, the suit claims. "There is a pattern and practice of individuals being beaten at the jails and caught on video including the beating of John Abbott, Charles Chukwu and Trenton Garrett among many others yet the internal affairs department does nothing," the documents contend, referencing other alleged incidents of violence against inmates. "Despite changes occurring nation-wide Houston has chosen to remain in the Dark Ages when it comes to curtailing excessive force and police misconduct transparency," Williams' attorney, Randall Kallinen, said in a statement Sunday. The suit asks for an unspecified amount of damages from mental anguish as well as punitive damages plus attorneys' fees and costs. A local minister was sentenced to federal prison Monday for fraudulent use of funds - including gambling trips to Lake Charles, La. - that had been meant to help parishoners after Hurricane Ike. After admonishing Jesse R. Dunn Jr. for his lack of repentence and spending a portion of his money on a 2015 Cadillac, U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes handed down a five-and-a-half-year sentence followed by five years of supervised release. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Harris County medical examiner's office has named the victim of a fatal shooting Thursday night at a southwest Houston gas station. Christopher Barriere, 44, was known in the local rap scene as "Mr. 3-2." He was a member of the Houston group Screwed Up Click and was a recording artist with Rap-A-Lot Records. Writing in the Houston Press, local music writer Brandon Caldwell remembered Barriere as an "influencer and a hell of a rapper of the 1990s and parts of the 2000s." "3-2's verse is somber," Caldwell wrote. "There's a slow tick to it as it feels more like a eulogy and admittance of sins than anything moving towards progress." Shots were fired after an altercation at the gas station at 6610 South Sam Houston Parkway West near Rockwell, said Houston police detective M. Arrington. The gunman sped away before returning again to fire more shots. Barriere was shot in the back of the head and died at the scene, according to police and the medical examiner's office. Another victim was shot in the face and was rushed to Ben Taub General Hospital. His condition was not released. A photo posted by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on Nov 11, 2016 at 12:47pm PST The third victim was an innocent bystander. He was wounded slightly in the leg from a shotgun blast, which also peppered his pickup that was parked outside at the gas station. He was not taken to a hospital for treatment and is expected to survive. Arrington said investigators are trying to determine what led to the altercation and sparked the gunfire. They are reviewing surveillance video from the scene as well as interviewing one of the men who had driven to the station with the gunman. The suspect fired a pistol and a shotgun during the shooting. The gunman drove away in a four-door gray or light brown car. Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS or the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 CASPER, Wyo. Wyoming is planning to continue its cloud seeding weather modification program into the winter of 2018. Wyoming Water Development Commission Director Harry LaBonde told a joint meeting of the commission and the legislatures Select Water Committee that the effort for the 2017-18 season calls for 10 ground-based generators in the Wind River Mountains, with nine placed on the west flank and one on the east flank. While Wyoming is overseeing the effort, the $575,000 annual cost is split with downstream states and other entities wishing to participate. Wyomings share comes to about a quarter of the expense, or around $155,000, as most of the benefit flows to down-basin water users. The Wyoming program has been in effect for three years, but LaBonde said there is consideration of creating a broader coalition. There was some discussion in the last year about forming a coalition of states to look at weather modification in the entire basin, and setting up a structure of which projects they might fund, and the funding percentages, LaBonde said. Wyoming will continue its program in the meantime. It has been a leader in cloud seeding research, supporting a six-year, $13 million study that showed the practice could increase snow precipitation by 5 percent to 15 percent in a given area, depending on variable weather conditions. In 2015, the Legislature approved a separate $1.4 million program for cloud seeding in four ranges including the Big Horns, Laramie, Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre mountains. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Of all the interesting things to do in Houston, a tour of the Bayou Citys cemeteries is something that we cant recommend enough. A handful of cemeteries in the Houston-area, including Glenwood Cemetery and Forest Park Cemetery, are the final resting places of some of the people that helped shape the city. HOUSTON'S PAST: Vintage pictures show Houston as it was in 1977 At Glenwood, just outside of downtown, you can visit the Hughes family plot, where Howard Hughes rests with the rest of his clan. Also at Glenwood you will find the graves of Astrodome mastermind Judge Roy Hofheinz, Dr. Denton Cooley, actress Gene Tierney, and oilman Glenn McCarthy, who built the Shamrock Hotel and inspired James Deans character in Giant. Elsewhere in Glenwood you will find the Hobbys, William and Oveta, plus Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas. Hes been buried there since 1858, one of the first major interments. Also in Glenwood you will see surnames on headstones like Shepherd, Bagby, Binz, Elgin, and Gray all of who have busy streets named after them nearby. Their legacies shine on every time we are stuck in Houston traffic. EXPLAINED, FINALLY: Why does University of Houston-Downtown have an alligator as a mascot and not a cougar? Forest Park Cemetery, in southeast Houston at 6900 Lawndale, eternally hosts a who's who of Houston history like Jesse H. Jones, Lloyd Bentsen, Houston Chronicle founder Marcellus E. Foster, and Mama Ninfa Laurenzo. Eric Kayne/Freelance Influential Houston bluesman Samuel John "Lightnin'" Hopkins is also buried with the rest of those swells, interred in Section 23 in Jan. 1982. He has simpleton stone with an acoustic guitar carved into it. WILD HISTORY: The true story of when Dennis Hopper came to Houston and nearly killed himself We looked for where Houston's Dr. James "Red" Duke is buried only to find that he's at Austin's Texas State Cemetery, where Stephen F. Austin, Barbara Jordan, and Chris Kyle were laid to rest. Sam Houston is at Huntsville's Oakwood Cemetery, if you feel like going by to say hello to our city's namesake on the way to Dallas. Joe Holley / Houston Chronicle Other major cemeteries in Houston like Founders Memorial Park (1217 West Dallas) and Hollywood Cemetery (3506 North Main) are both worth spending an afternoon exploring in. You will likely find some of the names that adorn some of Houstons most-popular streets and institutions. Over at Hollywood Cemetery you will find the final resting places of Lawrence Shipley Sr. and his wife Lillie Shipley, a couple that helped changed the way we all eat donuts in Houston. Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. He's an intolerable native Texan with too much ink in his skin and too much brisket stuck in his teeth. Steve Bannon, the one-time head honcho at the alt-right website Breitbart.com, has been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be his chief strategist and top counselor. Other political lighting rods have filled that job (or one similar to it) - most notably Texan Karl Rove for President George W. Bush. But none have come with the rhetorical baggage that Bannon brings with him. This website is intended for U.S. visitors only. The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p. The adage The more things change, the more they remain the same has never been truer than in todays political climate. The division, the unrest, the protests, the threats, the name calling -- its all old hat in the context of American political history. But many people today dont know that. For a country that invented the internet and then populated it with a bazillion bytes of historical data, we have a remarkably short historical attention span or desire to look it up online. Yet, there are numerous websites available that serve as repositories for digitized newspapers. Some are free, some are not; but all offer a chance to survey the front pages of history going back to the 1600s. And, because most of these archives are searchable, you can quickly home in on information in seconds that, prior to the internet, would have taken numerous trips to a public or college library and hours slogging through rolls of microfilm or microfiche. A little online research can help give context to the 2016 presidential election when measured against history. For example, many are saying Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton surely stands as one of the greatest political upsets in history. But that really depends on how far back your sense of history goes. In the 1948 presidential election, Democrat Harry Truman scored the "Most Amazing Upset In U.S. History" over Republican Thomas Dewey, according to the headline in the Harrisburg (Pa.) Telegraph. Read a few more papers of the time, and youll discover nearly all the polls pointed to a victory by Dewey. Election pundits were certain, even on Election Day, that Truman would lose -- and lose big. But the American public voted otherwise. Sound familiar? It's also worth noting that, after those "shocking results," Dewey supporters did not stage numerous protests across America chanting "Not my president," or shouting "Impeach Truman," or beating and burning effigies of Truman. Another common observation of the 2016 election is that the close results reflect a deep divide among Americans, something that hasnt been seen in recent times -- except in the 1960 presidential election. Democrat John Kennedy defeated Republican challenger Richard Nixon by about 300,000 votes in what was then the closest election in American history. The newspapers of the time talked about the deep divide in America as reflected by the nearly even results. The candidates were aware of the split as well. So, when Kennedy emerged the winner, challenger Richard Nixon "urged all Americans to unite behind their next president, John F. Kennedy," according to The Pittsburgh Press on Nov. 9, 1960. Again, sound familiar? Many also have called the 2016 presidential campaign one of the nastiest in history. Perhaps, but a search of the online newspaper archives suggests, if anything, 2016 was no different from many, many previous campaigns, including those in 2012 and 2008. In fact, in 1998, according to various editions of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, that years presidential election campaign was the nastiest in history. So were the 1978 presidential race, the 1928 campaign and the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate for the job he'd held just a few years earlier. And media bias? Heck, what happened in 2016 is nothing compared to the wicked partisanship shown by newspapers during Abraham Lincoln's presidential campaigns in 1860 and 1864. Northern papers painted him as no less than God's right-hand man, while Southern papers depicted him as the spawn of Satan -- and those were the moderate publications. The more you look back on past elections, the more you realize how little has changed over the centuries. That we happened to have a few decades here and there of moderate campaign civility is more an aberration than the norm. Presidential campaigns have always been "the worst in history." Its just that many of us don't remember or care to. But the internet and newspaper archives can help us remember. Here are a few of the best digitized newspaper repository sites worth visiting: Chronicling America http://bit.ly/2eQr6Z8 Free digitized collection of newspapers from across America ranging in years from 1789 to 1922. Small Town Papers http://bit.ly/2fJmsd8 A free collection of 250 newspapers nationwide with digitized versions dating back to 1846. New York Times Archive http://nyti.ms/2eLjOCO A free, online, text only archive of The New York Times articles from 1851 to the present. A pay service, features a very deep and well indexed collection of major and minor papers from around the nation dating back to the 1700s. Newspaper Archive http://bit.ly/2fkuIDj Another pay service featuring a deep and well-indexed catalog of newspapers going back to the 1700s. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. Pipeline protesters took their message to the doorsteps of both state and national government on Monday, marching from the Capitol to the federal courthouse. "They have brought their battle to us. We will bring it to them," Magdalena Rios told several hundred protesters gathered in a circle on the Capitol lawn in the late afternoon. The protesters began their organized, hours-long rally at the Capitol around 11:30 a.m., marched south to the block of Third Street between Rosser Avenue and Avenue A around 1 p.m., then returned to the Capitol around 3 p.m. A few protesters went inside the federal courthouse in hopes of speaking with the judge and getting their message across to the federal government. "I informed them that the federal judge had gotten the message," said Paul Ward, U.S. marshal for North Dakota. The protesters were asked to leave, which they did politely, he said. Gathered in the street outside the courthouse, one group of protesters composed largely of non-natives and people willing to be arrested formed a distinct perimeter around a second group, composed mainly of native people and elders. People took turns speaking to the group as about 50 law enforcement officers looked on from the outer perimeter. "When we put out the call, America answered. And we are grateful that the American people are here," Robert Eder, a veteran from Fort Peck, told the crowd. "It may not be utopia, but it is the best country in the world, because our ancestors white, black, red and yellow have stood together to dispel and displace racism and hate and greed. "Thank you for being here, taking the time out of your lives to show America that our resources are not for sale to anyone with money," he continued. "Water is sacred; water is precious." Andrew Sigman stood on the outer line in an effort to shield people in the center from getting arrested. "We're exercising our white privilege," said Sigman, who in a previous interview suggested white people have been treated more favorably by the police during the protests. Julia Johnson, of Pittsburgh, also joined the outer line. "My indigenous brothers and sisters did that for me in the Black Lives Matter movement," she said. Though the protesters did not have a permit, no one was arrested, North Dakota Highway Patrol reported. There's a large number of them, and we dont have the resources to necessarily deal with such a large crowd," Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson said. Our officers are being patient with them. Rios said one protester who had intended to lead the march was arrested while driving to Bismarck, but Morton County Sheriff's Department spokesman Rob Keller could not confirm that. The Capitol was put on a "soft lockdown," meaning only employees with key cards could go in and out. The federal courthouse was also locked down while protesters stood outside, according to Ward. St. Mary's School was put into "shelter in place" mode while protesters marched by, according to Gerald Vetter, president of Light of Christ Catholic Schools. Police blocked roads to keep traffic away from where people were marching. They ultimately stopped the forward march at Rosser Avenue, which officers on scene said was done to maintain traffic on the busy thoroughfare. Bismarck residents looked on as the protesters passed their homes and offices. Some pulled out their cellphones to record the march on video, while others peered from upstairs windows. "I thought it'd be a lot smaller," said Roberto Morales, who stepped out of his Bismarck house to watch the protesters go by. "I like it. It's pretty cool." "I'm sure they're being heard, rather than before it was always just the cops and them not interacting with the community," Morales added. Others were more frustrated by the protests, which blocked city streets throughout the day. "I agree that water is life," said Christina Dukart. "This kind of thing with protests blocking roads is kind of frustrating." One Bismarck woman broke into tears of fury as she looked on at the protesters in the middle of Third Street, while another man called out simply, "I don't care!" The demonstration took place a day before protest actions are scheduled for locations around the world as opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline aim to convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers not to issue a permit to allow the pipeline to be placed under the Missouri River. Bismarck Tribune reporters Blair Emerson and Nick Smith contributed to this article. Caritas Cehia in cautarea unui expert/unei experte sau unei echipe de experti in prestarea serviciilor de consiliere psihologica (pe segmentul burnout) pentru echipa mobila de prestare a serviciilor psiho-sociale pentru refugiatii ucraineni Here is a selection of letters and emails weve received since December 5. Please send correspondence to letters@cjr.org, along with your name, address, and any relevant affiliation. THE MANY MEANINGS OF AUDACIOUS Paper makes audacious decision to highlight silent epidemic I feel your use of audacious in the headline of the article on the Palm Beach Posts series, Generation Heroin, gives the wrong impression. While audacious can mean intrepidly daring and marked by originality and verve, it also means recklessly bold and contemptuous of decorum, which is how many are taking it. As you are aware, in this era of clickbait and fake news, people often dont take the time to read the links, but cast judgement based on headlines alone. As the CJR article makes the rounds, people are saying it is a terrible thing the paper did when, if fact, it was quality journalism. I would encourage you to reconsider your headline for this and future articles. I expect CJR to be a standard bearer for quality journalism in an era when such quality is scarce. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Sincerely, Rebecca Abma Hawthorne, NJ DIGITALS NOT JUST FOR THE YOUNG Print is dead. Long live print. Im 62 and I havent willingly read an actual paper anything in years. I read Kindle books on my iPad, my local paper online (where they cluelessly try to emulate the paper by making me turn pages), and I read stories from around the world, often on my laptop because the iPad keeps getting indigestion from JavaScript. The company I work for went paperless years ago, so I dont use or file paper at work, either. Since this is CJR, I will note that my local paper offers stories of poor quality written by unedited millennials of dwindling ability. I recently choked over a story about a car accident where the deceased was referred to as the dearly departed. This from a paper that wins awards from the Georgia Press Association. If you have a paper-only edition, Im not buying or reading because paper is really, really, really inconvenient. You have to look for it, you have to protect it from the puppy who likes to eat it, and filing it is a real pain. I quit using the library years ago. You had to go get a book, take care of it, and return it. Not only that, but if they didnt have it, you had to wait for an interlibrary loan. Lets not talk about going to the bookstore and turning your head sideways so you can read the titles with your tri-focals, because I quit bookstores, too. I use Evernote to clip online articles I like, and it is easy to tag them by subject. I never search hard to find any article I read some time ago that was about something. Trying to cram a newspaper in a three-in-one printer/scanner/fax machine is a no-go. Most of what passes for trying to get me to pay for content online is ludicrous. I join the millions of online porn users, using the incognito feature of the Chrome browser to avoid paywalls, and visit the decidedly non-prurient pages of the London Times, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, and others. Id happily pay a few bits per article, but everyone wants me to cough up $30 to $40 a month to get all the fabulous local content about cities Im not ever going to spend much time visiting. At some point, someone will work this out. Probably someone who works for radio because they have already had to figure out how to stay in business after losing a mass market. In fact, my local radio station group has a news site that carries better and more current content than my local paper. There will always be people who like paper, just like all those people who like jazz. I suspect most of them will be in France. Merrill Guice merrillguice.com THE MEDIA AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS Surprised by Trump win? Stop ignoring the white working class This frame of the white working class being ignored or misunderstood is lazy and easily disproved. White working class voters are not ignored and do not have it worse relative to the black working class, Latino working class, female working class, immigrant working class, or any other cross-section you want to examine. White voters of almost every education and income level voted for Trump. The white working class is a euphemism and distraction from the reality that Trump ran a bigoted campaign. CJR is not going to provide valuable guidance for the media if you keep regurgitating simplistic and disproven memes from election night. Hussain Rahim THE STORY BEHIND A COURT RULING Documentary filmmakers fear more legal challenges in Trump era The writer correctly states that in 2010, a federal judge ordered documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger to turn over hundreds of hours of footage and outtakes from his film Crude after a request from Chevron. However, you neglect to mention that the outtakes provided evidence of misbehavior by the plaintiffs lead attorney Steven Donziger, expert witnesses, and Ecuadorean officials in a lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador. In ordering the footage be turned over, the court found that Berlingers outtakes were not shielded by journalists privilege. The court explained that, because Berlingers film was solicited by the plaintiffs for the purpose of telling their story, and that changes to the film were made at their instance, Berlinger failed to carry his burden of showing that he collected information for the purpose of independent reporting and commentary. The court also found that information contained in the footage could not be considered confidential. To confuse Berlingers movie with independent journalism is a distortion. The footage might still be on Berlingers cutting-room floor had the court not enabled the truth to be exposed. Respectfully, Dave Samson General Manager, Public Affairs Chevron Corporation FIGHTING FAKE NEWS A simple step to make news sites more secure Just read your excellent piece on use of HTTPS. Along the same lines, adoption of a certificate of authenticity for other electronic access types (e.g., email attachments, printed documents, PDF files) could create a bedrock of trusted information. The Verisign trust logo was remarkably helpful and likely a necessary driver for the wide acceptance of e-commerce. I see this project as an extension and logical continuation of that effort. If journalists, large Web content providers, and aggregators cooperated, they could quickly take the lead in deflating the fake news generators and distributors. A trustmark would exist for the benefit of the information consumer, not for intermediaries to limit or quash free speech. It would not indicate truth, but would identify the originator and possible owner of the information. After the election, I signed up for an online subscription to The New York Times. Not that I needed it, but to support them. Everyone wont do that. Helping readers understand the value of sourced, researched, well-written, and edited news is difficult, but critical. In my view, the Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Web media outlets would be great standard bearers, as would CNN and perhaps even Fox. My objective is to talk less and take more action to support our clearly dazed democracy. Im hoping you have folks there who are similarly motivated. Sincerely, Mark Bonine San Jose, CA SATIRE VS. LIES How Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert blazed a trail for Trump The writers notion of what constitutes fake news is tone deaf. What rock is he living under? Fake news is whipped up from whole- (or half-) cloth of lengthy, detailed, deliberate lies shared with the credulous to gain political advantage over what is inconveniently true. This lie machine has made a huge difference in politics. Examples abound at snopes.com. Colbert and Stewart are satire. Their programs showed footage of public figures saying whatever they said. Stewart and Colbert dished out morality dressed in comedy. The audience understood. And no, the media does not have to choose between Trump as mastermind, Trump as commerce central, or any other definition of Trump. Trump himself doesnt know what he is. A medium that was not subservient to commerce might have followed its nose to a journalism that improved public understanding of how democracy is shackled to commerce, and prevented the travesty of Americans being forced to choose between the presidential candidate of Goldman Sachs (D) and the candidate for US president of Goldman Sachs (R). I wish CJR would concern itself with this: Todays journalists are co-promoting with Trump the language bridge alt-right, which will walk millions in the fake-news/coal-country/patriot/strong-father contingent out of the Republican bag and into fascist territory. Cass Martinez There is a bitter irony in your piece on Stewart, Colbert, and fake news, which complains bitterly about fake news while getting history so terribly wrong. It shows colossal ignorance of history. It is a piece that is so bad you may want to consider retracting it. The author writes: American freedom has always been synonymous with American business; at this moment in history, they are virtually identical. No repressive regime, whether the product of a coup or a slow strangulation of liberties, was spawned by businessmen. You dont have to be a communist to recognize that this is completely false; you only have to consider the history of slavery in the US and around the world. In the slave trade, human beings were bought and sold and served as both money and capital. That is just one example. Hitler was helped into power by political conservatives and businessmen, and fascism in general is a totalitarian system that usually supports and protects a small business elite, including military dictatorships. Individual rights and freedoms are established by governments and the law. Nineteenth-century liberals were pro-market and pro-capital, but sometimes radically anti-democratic. That is just on the facts. The thesis is equally terrible. To suggest, somehow, that a couple of comedianswho often presented actual news while mocking itpaved the way for deliberate misinformation and propaganda is shooting the messenger. Unless this was written as some kind of satire of fake news, it does a disservice to journalism as well as to history. Dougald Lamont Winnipeg, Canada This is the most asinine thing Ive ever read in CJR, and an incredible insult to the intelligence of everyone: Yet it was Stewart and Colbert who helped create the atmosphere of fake news (formerly known as gossip, rumor, dis-, or misinformation) that helped elect Trump, and that currently has the media up in arms.In retrospect, Colberts bizarre appearanceas a legitimate witness in the House of Representatives before a judiciary subcommittee on farming and immigration was a precursor to another reality-TV buffoons election to the White House.Their more general contempt for every aspect of the democratic political process was the liberal version of the cynicism and the nihilism that helped project Trump into the Oval Office. I can only assume that the writer is suffering from a severe defect in cognition, or else has never, ever heard/seen Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, which predate The Daily Show and the The Colbert Report by years. Phillip Lozano THE VALUE OF CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK 10 resolutions for managers leading newsrooms in 2017 While we will not be on the Trump beat, much of what you wrote can yet apply to the smaller newsrooms in more remote areas such as ours. Number 10 piqued my interest greatly. I admit Im not always the best with the feedback. Indeed, we get mired down in the day-to-day operations and the need to stomp out the forest fires, so much so that we often end the day with Damn! Howd we get a paper out? There is always room for improvement. Indeed, we may not be in a position to give great pay raises (in an industry that doesnt give great pay to begin with), but maybe we can be better and more properly influence the desired results with proper feedback. Thanks for sharing that piece. Richard S. Whiting Executive Editor Index-Journal Greenwood, SC Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review. Secrecy about the Thai kings health has long fueled rumors of his death, which his subjects discussed only euphemistically and in hushed tonesat least in public. When his end finally arrived last month, speaking freely about the topic got even harder. The king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, was adored throughout his 70-year reign, and his mourners were genuinely bereft. But there was another reason nobody spoke ill of the dead: Doing so could have amounted to a felony. Thailands lese-majeste law is the most draconian of its kind in the world. It makes defaming, insulting, or threatening the king, queen, heir apparent, or regentthe official who takes on an absent kings dutiespunishable by three to 15 years in prison; following a 2013 Thai Supreme Court ruling, the law also covers deceased monarchs whose legal status has expired. But there is no clear definition of what constitutes an insult to the monarchy. King Bhumibols death has ushered in an era of uncertainty and trepidation for Thailand, which has lost a unifying figurehead amidst a protracted political crisis. The lese-majeste law presents a special quandary for journalists; the government has been particularly sensitive to reporting related to the succession of the kings heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, 64. Most large news organizations with foreign bureaus in Thailand have stories about the king cleared by a legal department before publishing; some omit bylines to protect their reporters. Others simply covered the news of the kings death from a distance. New York Times San Francisco-based correspondent Thomas Fuller characterized the crown prince, who is expected to succeed his father in December, as not retaining the loyalty and support of the Thai people, prompting Thai Consul General Pornpang Kanittanong to send the paper a letter of complaint. Sign up for CJR 's daily email BBC Thailand correspondent Jonathan Head, who has been reporting from Thailand for over a decade, expected the kings death to be sensitive, but he wasnt anticipating calls on social media to mob his office. There were no factual errors in Heads reports, in which he announced the kings death from amongst a throng of well-wishers holding vigils outside the hospital where the king was treated for years. Yet Head was summoned by a government spokesman who informed him that the tone of his coverage had been offensive because he had not expressed sufficiently strong emotions on air. Head explained that he considered weeping on-air unprofessional. The government spokesman, meanwhile, told CJR the meeting never happened. The lese-majeste law is something we all live with, says Head, who has faced threats of being charged with lese-majeste before, but never been formally accused. Inside and outside Thailand, reporting this story would be very different if we didnt have this law. Among the topics of journalistic and public interest that are off limits are the kings cooperation with a number of military governments after coups; the mystery surrounding his brothers fatal shooting, which allowed him ascend to the throne at 18; the fact that many of his policies designed to help the poor may have been counterproductive; that his irrigation policies may have contributed to recurrent and damaging floods; or any misbehavior by his heir. Thai citizen or not, anybody can accuse anyone else of defaming the royal family. Once that happens, the accused are in an inescapable Catch 22. Out of respect for the monarchy, each complaint must be followed by a formal investigation; police who dont do so could find themselves accused of defaming the royals. At trial, the exact nature of the insult may not be repeated, for fear of yet another violation of the law. Almost all the accused plead guilty in the hope of a lenient sentence or a royal pardon, which can only be granted by the king himself, a frequent occurrence, at least under the former ruler. Though no foreign journalist has been jailed over such charges, three local journalists have been found guilty of royal defamation. There have also been reports of torture involving lese-majeste suspects, as well as mysterious deaths in custody. Last year, a factory worker faced up to 37 years in jail for liking an image with disparaging comments about the kings dog on Facebook; he is out on bail awaiting trial. A recent report by Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, which has taken on the unenviable task of defending lese-majeste suspects, criticized the governments decision to try such cases in military court. A member of the group is currently under investigation for alleged sedition. Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn shares his late fathers love of dogs; it was revealed in a WikiLeaks cable that he once promoted his pet poodle, Foo Foo, to the military rank of Air Force Chief Marshal. A home video of the dogs birthday party leaked in 2007, showing the princes consort wearing nothing but a thong while feeding the dog cake, was blocked by internet censors who deemed it unflattering to the monarchy. Thailands king is largely a symbolic figurehead who retains limited powers as head of state. The current self-appointed prime minister, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who came to power in a bloodless coup in 2014, retains broad political powers as head of the government. The ruling military junta has applied lese-majeste laws with unprecedented scope and severity: 70 cases of lese-majeste have come under investigation in the last two years. Since the kings death, 25 people have been accused of defaming the royals, mostly involving comments on social media. By the end of October, as the country prepared for the princes succession, eight warrants had been issued for lese-majeste violations. Shawn Crispin, Southeast Asia representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, says the country has entered an especially intolerant period in terms of free expression. My sense is the law will be enforced more vigorously before the crowning [of the prince] and as the junta tries to steer a smooth and stable royal succession, he tells CJR. The CPJ is particularly concerned by the ramped-up government monitoring of online and social media, royalist mobs that violently threatened people who were insufficiently sympathetic during the initial one-month government-mandated mourning period, and a justice ministers open approval of such mobs. In five recent incidents around the country, people suspected of having insulted the king were physically harassed by mobs. In one of those cases, a woman believed to be suffering from mental illness was forced off a bus and slapped. The juntas zeal to enforce the law is ironic given that the late king himself pushed back on how the lese-majeste law was being applied. In his 2005 birthday address, he stated he would welcome public criticism. It is hard to imagine a similar sentiment from Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, who, following his divorce, exiled his children and used the lese-majeste law to jail his ex-wifes family members for insulting the monarchy. Its difficult for people unfamiliar with the role the king plays in Thai society to understand how deeply people there revere their king, says David Streckfuss, an independent academic specializing in Southeast Asian studies who is based in northeast Thailand. Some lese-majeste cases might simply be cases where people are not showing the expected grief, he noted, including by wearing black; standing still on public transportation when the kings song is played at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily; wai-ing, or bowing with hands clasped in prayer, before the kings picture; or even crying at memorial events. Companies and individuals are treading carefully. During the initial mourning period, the government requested that people wear somber clothing; black dye stations were set up around the capital, Bangkok, so people could dye their clothes. Thai paint company Beger turned its website black-and-white for several days, making its myriad color offerings visible only as shades of gray. The royal defamation law had the potential to render colors a violation, so the company proactively switched to grays as a show of respect. Dominic Faulder, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, points out that in addition to the law of lese-majeste, there are other ways for the government to undermine critics or political foes, including a full suite of defamation laws, exceptional powers granted by the interim constitution to the military junta, and a law that criminalizes messages sent by electronic devices that are deemed threatening to national security. Instead of protecting only the most senior royal figures from attack and affront, as was intended, lese-majeste is being used to protect against perceived attacks on the greater monarchical institution itself, says Faulder, who has worked as a journalist in Thailand for decades, and has come under attack from royalists as well as anti-royalists. Ironically, this often serves to damage the very entity they claim to be protecting. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Gabrielle Paluch is a 2016 Overseas Press Club Fellow, and spent six years working as a freelance reporter in Southeast Asia. A recent graduate of Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism, she is currently based in NYC covering real estate. A powerful earthquake struck New Zealands South Island early Monday, shaking awake residents, causing damage to buildings and prompting emergency services to warn people along the coast to move to higher ground to avoid tsunami waves. The magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck in a mostly rural area close to the city of Christchurch but appeared to be more strongly felt in the capital, Wellington, more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) away. The quake was followed by a number of strong aftershocks. The quake knocked out New Zealands emergency call number, 111, for about 10 minutes, police reported. It caused items to fall from shelves and windows to break in Wellington, and forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. New Zealands Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management reported that a tsunami wave struck at about 1:50 a.m. and warned residents living in low-lying areas anywhere along the countrys east coast to move to higher ground. The ministry had earlier sent out a message on Twitter saying there was no tsunami threat to the country. But then it sent out another message situation has changed tsunami is possible before reporting that a tsunami had, in fact, hit. There were no immediate reports of any major damage or injuries in Christchurch. But the quake brought back memories of a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that struck the city in 2011, destroying much of the downtown area and killing 185 people in one of New Zealands worst disasters. But Mondays quake was centered farther away from the one in 2011, which caused damage worth an estimated $25 billion. As Mondays quake hit, Christchurch resident Hannah Gin had just sat down in her living room to watch a replay of this weekends All Blacks versus Italy rugby match when her house started shaking. Upstairs, her mother let out a scream. Gin, a 24-year-old lifelong Christchurch resident, is accustomed to quakes, so she said she sat calmly and waited, figuring the rumbling would stop in a few seconds. Instead, the shaking just went on and on for at least three minutes, according to the clock on her phone, she said by phone. The quake was far less violent than the one that struck her city in 2011, Gin said, adding that there was no jarring up and down or side to side, just a long, rolling sensation. But it went on for much longer than the typical quakes that strike the area, she said. She was less concerned about running for cover than she was about vomiting from the motion sickness, she said with a chuckle. I could hear the sliding door sliding back and forth and weve got washing hanging up and I could see the washing moving, Gin said. It just kept going and going. Her house, which was damaged in the 2011 quake, did not appear to have sustained any new damage from Mondays quake, she said. She said she had heard from many of her friends who live in the city, and all were safe. As far as I know, everyones fine, she said. Were all just really shaken. In Wellington, 214 kilometers (132 miles) north of the quakes epicenter, power was knocked out in some places, and some windows were smashed and some chimneys collapsed. The quake, which struck just after midnight Sunday, was centered 93 kilometers (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). Earthquakes tend to be more strongly felt on the surface when theyre shallow. New Zealand sits on the Ring of Fire, an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. (Associated Press writer Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.) Read more on past New Zealand quakes: Lessons Learned From the Canterbury, New Zealand Earthquake Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A pedestrian advocacy group again seeks safety improvements after a Mississippi State University student was struck Saturday night. Police arrested 22-year-old Jaleen Jenkins for aggravated DUI, driving with a suspended license and no proof of insurance, and have jailed him on $50,000 bond. Emily Case, a freshman political science major from Virginia, is recovering at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Starkville in Motion President David Harned tells the Commercial Dispatch that the collision again shows the need for work along Blackjack and Oktoc roads. The area, on the southeast side of the university campus, has developed rapidly with 1,600 student apartments, putting more walkers and cyclists on roads now choked with traffic. In the short term, the best thing to do is to turn that entire area into a school zone and add more lighting and striped areas for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross. For the long term, that whole area needs to be redesigned in a way to safely handle the traffic, he said. Students say the road needs a crosswalk. On Monday, Ffion Price was among Mississippi State students crossing Oktoc and Blackjack roads near where they join in a roundabout. Its pretty bad for a lot of the time, said Price, a second-year kinesiology graduate student. You get some drivers who do stop, but you get a lot of people that dont. Oktibbeha County had proposed taxing area properties to add sidewalks, crosswalks, lighting and other safety improvements in 2014. But they never moved forward, in part because a third apartment complex expected to provide property taxes was never built. District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer said the county may discuss paying for improvements using a recent property tax increase for roads. Weve still got Blackjack Road on our radar, but it all comes down to money, he said. AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron DJ pleaded guilty Monday in the beating death of a bar patron who complained of loud music. Robert Jarvis, 65, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the Jan. 8 death at Zodiac Bar on Triplett Boulevard, the Summit County Prosecutor's Office said. Jarvis punched Forrest Ryan in the head three times after Ryan complained of loud music. Jarvis ran from the bar after Ryan lost consciousness, police said. Ryan, 39, of North Canton, died of blunt force trauma to his head after paramedics took him to Akron General Hospital, the Summit County Medical Examiner's Office said. Akron police arrested Jarvis after he returned to the bar. Jarvis' sentencing is scheduled Dec. 28 in Summit County Common Pleas Court. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Monday's crime and courts comments section. BROOK PARK, Ohio -- City officials honored Brook Park's military veterans Friday morning by renaming a bridge on Snow Road the Veterans Memorial Bridge. The bridge is located between State Route 237 and Interstate 71 in front of the Ford Motor Company Cleveland Engine Plant. Thirty flags symbolizing the branches of service, along with the United States and POW MIA flags, whipped in a brisk wind as Mayor Tom Coyne dedicated the span alongside veterans, city administrators and council representatives. Permanent signs denoting the new name stand at each end of the overpass. Brook Park police officer George Kosakowski, known by many in the community as Officer Kos, initiated the project and received support from American Legion Post 610, Brook Park City Council and the mayor. Military veterans, Brook Park city officials and Mayor Tom Coyne gathered atop the newly renamed Veterans Memorial Bridge on Veterans Day. "This is a small memento of thanks to each person and their families who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country and our freedom," Coyne said in a press release. "This is an opportunity to recognize them and give a daily reminder of what Brook Park, Ohio, signifies." A luncheon to honor veterans was also held on Veterans Day as part of Veterans Awareness Week. The meal was offered by council representatives Jim Astorino, Julie McCormick, Jan Powers and Tom Troyer inside the Brook Park Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. Approximately 35 veterans attended, joining together in conversation and sharing memories of their military service. Air Force veteran and Brook Park resident Scott Kreidler, 62, served his country from 1974-78. "I wanted to talk to the people and veterans and see what their service was like," he said. Richard Novak, 80, served in the U.S. Army from 1956-58. "I served in the time of the Cold War," Novak recalled. "I was in Germany for about a year and a half. There were some problems with Russia, and people were more concerned at that time." Cecil "Van" Vandegrift, 79, also served in the U.S. Army but as part of its security forces from 1960-62. Military veterans attended a luncheon on Veterans Day inside the Brook Park Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. "I think it's an honor to serve to preserve our peace," Vandegrift said. "I would even recommend to young people, even though they aren't drafted, that they should serve." Councilman Troyer explained the importance of the event. "The veterans gave their time and energy for our country, and honoring them is the right thing to do," he said. Gov.-elect Doug Burgum has named Mike Nowatzki, Forum Communications Bismarck bureau reporter, as the communications director on his gubernatorial staff. Nowatzki has worked as a reporter for Forum Communications for 18 years, beginning as a reporter for the Worthington (Minn.) Daily Globe in 1998. He joined The Forum in 2002 before staffing Forum Communications Bismarck bureau in 2013, where he covered state government. With a deep understanding of North Dakotas challenges and opportunities, Mike is uniquely qualified to advance our agenda of balancing the budget without raising taxes, diversifying the economy and implementing the Main Street Initiative, Burgum said in a statement released Monday. Mike is a strong communicator and we look forward to having him join our team. Nowatzki, a native of Edinburg and graduate of the University of North Dakota, said hes looking forward to the job. Doug Burgum is a visionary who has spent his life working to foster innovation and make North Dakota even more exceptional, Nowatzki said in a statement. I am truly honored by this opportunity and excited to get started. Nowatzki will become the medias point of contact Dec. 15, the day Burgum takes the oath of office as North Dakotas 33rd governor. Nowatzki lives in Bismarck with his family. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cuyahoga County Council is expected Tuesday to approved a 10-year, power-purchase agreement with Cleveland Public Power that includes buying locally generated wind and solar power. The clean energy would come from a yet-to-be-constructed wind farm in Lake Erie and a solar farm to be built on a brownfield in the Cleveland area. "There's no question in my mind that it will pass," Council President Dan Brady said of the legislation. Advocates hope the Icebreaker six-turbine wind farm will encourage the placement of more wind turbines in the Great Lakes and that Northeast Ohio will become a manufacturing center for the industry. What are the terms of the agreement? The agreement with Cleveland Public Power is complex. It would provide 20 to 23 percent of the electricity to 17 county buildings, including the Justice Center complex in downtown Cleveland and the Juvenile Justice Center at the corner of Quincy Avenue and East 93rd Street. The agreement also calls for the county to construct a solar farm on a brownfield and for the farm to provide power to the county. The location of the brownfield has not been determined, but three in Cleveland and one in Brooklyn are under consideration, said Mike Foley, director of the county's department of sustainability. The 10-year contract with Cleveland Public Power would cost an estimated $68 million, but the expectation is that it will ultimately be extended over 25 years for a total cost of about $166 million. Estimates have the county saving $2.5 million to $3.2 million over that time period, Foley said. What do council members say? Councilman Charles Germana said he likes the idea of converting a brownfield into an energy-producing solar farm as well as the potential for new jobs should the Great Lakes become home to more offshore wind projects. So does councilman Dale Miller. The legislation "gives us a chance to play a part in developing two important industries, wind power and solar power," he said. Councilman Jack Schron declined to say how he will vote, but said the biggest selling point is the promise of jobs. But if those jobs don't materialize, he said, the deal with Cleveland Public Power will need to be reconsidered. Schron said it's very likely that the energy landscape will be much different in several years. Councilman Dave Greenspan said he is leaning toward voting for the project, in part because he believes the county has provided sound financial numbers. What's the timetable for Icebreaker? Approvals for the project that would be constructed 8 to 11 miles from Cleveland's harbor are still needed from the Ohio Power Siting Board and the U.S. Department of Energy. Developers expect construction on the project to begin in 2018. The wind farm is being developed by the nonprofit Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., but plans call for the project to be turned over to the U.S. subsidiary of a Norwegian wind development company to bring it to fruition. Icebreaker is designed to produce 21 megawatts of power. It already has a commitment from Cleveland Public Power to buy 25 percent of the wind energy produced, while American Municipal Power has agreed to buy 30 percent. The county's purchase would come to 8.6 percent of the wind farm's output. Tim Ryan.JPG Niles Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan says he is considering a run for House Democratic Leader. (Sabrina Eaton, Northeast Ohio Media Group) WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan is considering a run for the top Democratic leadership post in the U.S. House of Representatives following his party's loss of the White House in last week and its failure to gain many legislative seats, a spokesman said. Colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives have urged the Niles, Ohio, Democrat to seek the job held by California's Nancy Pelosi, said Ryan's spokesman Michael Zetts. Ryan is considering it. "A lot of them are looking for change," Zetts said, adding that Ryan "has the utmost respect" for Pelosi and considers her a mentor. Zetts declined to say who had been urging Ryan to run, referring reporters to a Huffington Post opinion piece that said he "speaks the language of disaffected blue collar voters and is also the kind of young scrappy fighter who could go toe to toe with a President Trump." Breaking: Youngstown's @RepTimRyan is being urged to challenge @NancyPelosi & he just might do it. Here's y he shld https://t.co/jryVYke7Nv Krystal Ball (@krystalball) November 13, 2016 "He is taking it seriously," said Zetts. "He is having conversations, but he hasn't made any decisions." Although Ryan has been a member of Congress since 2003 and serves on the House Appropriations Committee, he has not held any prior positions in the House Democratic party's leadership hierarchy. And while Pelosi routinely raises more than $100 million for Democratic candidates in each election cycle, Ryan's "Penguin PAC" and congressional campaign combined gave less than $40,000 to Democratic candidates and committees over the past two years, according to data compiled by PoliticalMoneyline.com. In past years, Ryan repeatedly floated his name as a potential candidate for U.S. Senate and Ohio governor at junctures when his party did not have an incumbent seeking re-election to those posts. A senior Democratic aide suggested Ryan is putting his name in the mix to boost his profile for a potential gubernatorial run. When asked whether Ryan is considering a run for governor in two years, Zetts said Ryan has "not been talking about that, but it is always something that people are calling on him to do." Pelosi announced last week that the party will conduct its leadership elections on Nov. 17. Zetts said that Ryan was among several dozen Democrats who asked Pelosi to postpone the leadership election so Democrats could better decide how to react after last week's election results. While making calls to ask that other Democrats sign a letter urging a delay of the leadership election, Zetts said "a lot of members urged him to run." Zetts said Ryan subsequently withdrew his name from the letter because he didn't want the effort to be perceived as veiled endorsement for his candidacy, and wrote Pelosi a private letter to request the delay. A Pelosi spokesman declined comment on Ryan's interest in the race and said the leadership election is still scheduled for Thursday. osuintlstudent.jpg An international student studies at Ohio State University, ranked first in Ohio and 18th in the nation for international student enrollment. (Ohio State University ) CLEVELAND, Ohio - The number of international students enrolled in U.S. universities in 2015 exceeded 1 million for the first time. The growing number of students are primarily from China, India and Saudi Arabia, according to the annual Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, published by the Institute of International Education. The 1,043,839 students enrolled in U.S. colleges in 2015 represented a 7.1 percent increase from 2014, the report said. See the data below or click here if on a mobile device. Ohio has the eighth-largest foreign student enrollment with 37,752 students, a 5.6 percent increase from 2014. The state rank has remained unchanged for several years. Most students came into the state from China (39.1 percent), India (17.7 percent) and Saudi Arabia (13.4 percent). Ohio State University had 7,117 international students, ranking first in the state and 18th in the U.S. The University of Cincinnati ranked second in the state with 3,932 international students. It was followed by Kent State University (3,397 students), Case Western Reserve University (2,447) and Wright State University (2,439). U.S. colleges seek international students to bolster enrollment and their budgets, for those students generally pay full tuition and fees. While Saudi Arabia, which ranked third, sent 61,287 students to the U.S. in 2015, many colleges have seen declines in enrollment this year as the country's new king, facing steep declines in oil prices, greatly reduced government-sponsored scholarships. The Saudi scholarship program, which is funded through 2020, includes room, board, tuition and travel and living costs. Here are highlights from the report 2015 is the 10th consecutive year of international student growth. There are now 85 percent more international students studying in the United States than 10 years ago. International students now represent just over 5 percent of the more than 20 million students enrolled in colleges. More than a third of international students studied engineering, math or computer science. China remains the top sending country, with almost twice the number of students in the U.S. as India. The expansion of a government scholarship programs led to 8.2 percent more students coming from Kuwait. Students from China, India, and Saudi Arabia represent approximately 53 percent of the international students in the United States. Students from Iran increased by 8.2 percent to 12,269, the highest U.S. enrollment by Iranians in 29 years, but still significantly lower than the peak of more than 50,000 students in 1979/80. The largest drop was students from Brazil, which declined 18.2 percent, primarily due to the freeze in a government program which had sponsored many students. About 75 percent of all international students receive the majority of their funds from sources outside of the United States, including personal and family sources as well as assistance from their home country governments or universities. In 2015, 255 colleges hosted 1,000 or more international students, compared to 143 in 2005. More than 313,000 U.S. students received credit last year for study abroad during 2014-15, an increase of nearly three percent over the previous year. Europe continues to host more than half of all for U.S. students going abroad, with about a third of all U.S. students choosing the United Kingdom, Italy, or Spain. For more data, infographics and resources on the 2016 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, visit www.iie.org/ Open-Doors. Cleveland Connects The panel begins at 6 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Westfield Insurance Studio Theater at the Idea Center at Playhouse Square, with a reception preceding it at 5 p.m. Admission: Free, but seating is limited, so register at cleveland.com/clevelandconnects. Watch live online: Check back here to watch a live stream of the program beginning at 6 p.m. Watch on TV: WVIZ/PBS will broadcast the program Nov. 14 beginning at 7:30 p.m. The Ohio Channel will broadcast the program Nov. 20 at 9 a.m. and Nov. 22 at 10 p.m. Listen on radio: 90.3 WCPN will broadcast the program at 9:00 p.m. Nov. 14. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The first 2,000 days of life is the most formative for the development of a child. Monday evening a panel of experts will discuss what Northeast Ohio has learned the last 365 or so days about those 2,000 days and what action the region needs to take to better foster development. Here's a look at the panel. Akram Boutros is the CEO of The MetroHealth System, the public hospital system most focused on care for the poor. Boutros assumed his post in June 2013. He has more than 20 years of leadership experience in large community hospitals, specialty hospitals and academic medical centers. Sharon Sobol Jordan is chief of staff for Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish. She previously was president and CEO at The Centers for Families and Children, one of the oldest and largest nonprofit organizations in Northeast Ohio. Under her leadership the organization served 20,000 people each year through 18 different locations across Greater Cleveland. Experts agree that the region's awareness of the importance of early childhood development has been raised. That's important given that child development in the first 2,000 days sets a child's course for the rest of their life. Four experts in child development, from left, Akram Boutros, Sharon Sobol Jordan, Eric Gordon and Thea Wilson, will gather Monday to discuss what needs to happen next. Eric Gordon is the CEO of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. He took the job in June 2011 after serving as the district's chief academic officer for four years. As CEO, he is responsible for the leadership and daily management of Cleveland's 39,000-student school district. Thea Wilson is the vice president for children and families at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland. Wilson is responsible for managing the operations of Early Head Start, Head Start and Parental Involvement programs. Wilson has nearly 40 years of early childhood development experience in a public school system and spent 11 years in administration. For a year, cleveland.com, 90.3 WCPN, WVIZ/PBS ideastream, and The Plain Dealer have explored the science, best practices and economics of early childhood education as part of Cleveland Connects: The First 2,000 Days, sponsored by PNC Bank. Together the partners have produced dozens of stories for online, print and broadcast on topics including measuring pre-school quality, the costs associated with running quality pre-K programs, the importance of good nutrition for kids, the dangers of lead paint and the benefits of breastfeeding. That effort also has included a pair of panels broadcast on WCPN and WVIZ by ideastream. Monday's panel discussion will ask three questions: What are the top assets and challenges affecting children who are 5 years old or younger? What has been done over the last year to address those challenges? Looking ahead, what requires more attention and effort and on what targets should the region focus? The panel will be moderated by Mike McIntyre, the host of WCPN's "The Sound of Ideas." Bill Isler, CEO of The Fred Rogers Company and a longtime professional educator and advocate for children, presented the keynote address at the first forum in the 2,000 days series. "If any society is going to continue to be great, it is going to be a result of what our children do in the years to come," Isler said then. Preparing them in those first 2,000 days is a responsibility "of all of us. Not some of us. All of us." Isler will deliver a special message to the panel for Monday's forum. JBM5101(c)Jean-Baptiste-Millot.jpg Not a Baroque toccata or fugue in sight. Instead, Sunday afternoon at the Cleveland Museum of Art, organist Jean-Baptiste Monnot performed arrangements of music by Prokofiev, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, and Mussorgsky. (Jean-Baptiste Millot ) By MARK SATOLA CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Sunday afternoon's recital by organist Jean-Baptiste Monnot on the Cleveland Museum of Art's McMyler Memorial Organ offered an unexpected program of transcriptions of Russian music. Not a Baroque toccata or fugue in sight. Monnot, who is in his early thirties, performed arrangements of music by Prokofiev, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. Most of the transcriptions were by the eminent French organist and composer Jean Guillout (born 1930), although Monnet also demonstrated his own skills translating piano music by Scriabin for the king of instruments. The artist holds important posts on either side of the Atlantic, as titular organist of St. Ouen Church in Rouen (where he is in charge of a magnificent Cavaille-Coll instrument), and as artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. Louis in New Orleans. Add to his resume important teaching posts and a raft of well-received recitals, and you have a sense of the anticipation that preceded his appearance Sunday. As an arranger, Guillout is nothing if not adventurous, more than willing, in fact, to take risks, and his version of Prokofiev's Toccata in D Minor for piano set the tone for Monnot's hour-long program. Without the sharp, percussive attack characteristic of the piano, it was left to Monnot to bring out the motoric rhythm and propulsion of the piece, which he did to good effect, displaying considerable elan as he flew through the music and its many abrupt changes of register. Monnot's own transcriptions of two well-known early piano pieces by Scriabin found the music's pathos underscored by the timbre of the instrument, with judicious application of tremulo to add a vocal quality to Scriabin's singing lines. Monnot, of course, played these two hothouse orchids with depth of feeling and understanding. The transcription of the Scherzo from Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony presents some problems for the performer, mostly having to do with the amount of activity that two hands and two feet must accomplish. With, perhaps, the impetuosity of relative youth, Monnot set himself a breakneck pace that inevitably resulted in some minute interruptions of the rhythmic impulse as Monnot's hands flew from manual to manual and registration combinations were applied. The final result, however, was triumphant, and Monnot's achievement not a little heroic. Sunday afternoon's recital marked the third time Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" had been played in the Cleveland area in the space of a week, the first time in its original version by pianist Alexander Ghindin and the second an unlikely but surprisingly successful transcription for solo guitar by Kazuhito Yamashita. The work has very likely had more arrangements, ranging from appropriate to bizarre, than any other composition. Guillou's arrangement for organ, made in the late 1980s, is well-regarded and highly effective, and Monnot played it with panache. To single out individual moments of felicity would simply entail listing the work's ten sections, but special note must be made of the languorous serenade of "The Old Castle," the fleet impressionism of "Tuileries" and "The Marketplace at Limoges," the weighty oratory of "Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle" and the heavy and heroic tread of "Bydlo," all of which demonstrated Monnot's exceptional interpretive skills. Of course, the hell-for-leather chase of "The Hut on Fowl's Legs (Baba Yaga)" and the brazen climax of "The Great Gate of Kiev" could hardly fail to please, and Monnot proved an ideal interpreter of Guillot's all-stops-out rendering. Not surprisingly, considering Monnot's mighty labors over the course of the recital, there was no encore. MOUNTAIN VIEW, California -- A history and special education teacher was put on paid administrative leave last week after he gave a lesson comparing the rise of Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. A parent sent an email to administrators at Mountain View High School expressing concern after Frank Navarro, who has been teaching there for 40 years, gave the lesson, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Navarro said the parent complained that he told kids that "Donald Trump grabs p----," a claim he denies. He also said the parent mistakenly believes he said Trump was Hitler, sfgate.com reports. "This parent said that I had said Donald Trump was Hitler, but I would never say that," Navarro said. "That's sloppy historical thinking." But a student tells the high school's newspaper, the Oracle, that when he tried to tell Navarro that he agrees with some of Trump's policies, Navarro told him to "shut up or said something super rude." Navarro, a Mexican-American, denies making the comments to the student. "This feels like we're trying to squash free speech," Navarro said. "Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It's not propaganda or bias if it's based on hard facts." Many students and others are defending Navarro, the Mercury News reports. A petition on change.org calling for his return had more than 22,000 signatures as of early Sunday morning. The Mountain View/Los Altos High School District superintendent tells the Mercury News that Navarro could return to the classroom as soon as Monday. Deputy Killed IStanislaus County Sheriff's deputy Dennis Wallace and his wife, Mercedes, stand at Gemperle Fields in Turlock, Calif., in February 2016. Dennis Wallace, a 20-year-veteran, was fatally shot at point-blank range Sunday as he checked on a report of a suspicious van parked near a fishing access spot outside the city of Hughson. (Joan Barnett Lee, Modesto Bee via AP) MODESTO, California -- A 37-year-old man accused of shooting a sheriff's deputy twice in the head was captured Sunday after a statewide manhunt, reports say. David Machado Jr., 37, was caught in an alley in Lindsay, Calif., after he attempted to rob a woman of her purse outside a convenience store, about 150 miles from the scene of the deputy's shooting, the Sacramento Bee reports. Machado is accused of killing Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Dennis Wallace, 53, on Sunday morning, according to Fox News. Sheriff Adam Christianson tells reporters that Wallace was checking on a report of a suspicious van Sunday morning near Hughson, which is about 10 miles southeast of Modesto. Wallace discovered the vehicle was stolen and called for backup. Moments later, he was shot twice in the head, before backup arrived. "We know the gun used in the crime was in direct contact with [Wallace's] head when the trigger was pulled twice," Christianson said during a news conference, according to Fox News. "This was a direct execution." Authorities say Machado is a known criminal and already was wanted on a felony warrant for unspecified crimes. Police tell reporters that after shooting Wallace, Machado carjacked a 2009 Kia Rio and also robbed a convenience store before attempting the purse robbery. Wallace was a 20-year veteran at the sheriff's department, the Associated Press reports. He had a wife and children. "Where does it stop? Where does it end?" Christianson said. "These men and women put their lives on the line every day to stand between good and evil." If you'd like to comment on this post, please visit the cleveland.com crime and courts comments section. DSC07465.JPG North Olmsted resident Tim Labrado, mission director at Friends Church, poses with Chuck and Ann Palmer, also of North Olmsted, with some items for the Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. The Palmers are area coordinators for the project and members of Friends Church. (Carol Kovach, special to cleveland.com) NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - "It's in our blood." That's how Ann and Chuck Palmer describe their 16-year involvement with Operation Christmas Child. The Olmsted Falls couple, who are members of North Olmsted Friends Church, are area coordinators for the ministry, which means they are responsible for operations in 10 Ohio counties. Volunteers move in assembly-line fashion to fill shoeboxes at North Olmsted Friends Church. "We like to do this," said Ann Palmer. "The children here are doing something to help children around the world." Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse, a non-denominational Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham. The Palmers said Operation Christmas Child demonstrates God's love in a tangible way to children in need around the world. On Nov. 12, dozens of volunteers from North Olmsted Friends Church, American Heritage Girls (an organization similar to Girl Scouts) and the community spent hours packing the OCC shoeboxes. The goal is to prepare 9.6 million shoeboxes across the country and 12 million worldwide for distribution this year to children in more than 150 countries and territories. Ann Palmer said the children are suffering from poverty, natural disasters, war, terror, disease and famine. "For many, these are the first gifts they will receive," she added. Chuck Palmer and other volunteers spent a few days assembling hundreds of red, white and green OCC shoeboxes. The local group purchased the boxes in bulk, then assembled and stacked them in neat rows along a wall in the church hall. He said sometimes people bring their own boxes and fill them. Tom Dubowski of North Olmsted, left, helps North Olmsted resident Terry Graffis load filled cartons onto a two-wheeler before heading to the parking lot where a truck awaits. Volunteers decide if they want to prepare a box for a girl or a boy and they select one of three age groups: 2-4, 5-9 or 10-14 years old. Then they select the appropriate items to fill the box. Each box includes a coloring book, school supplies, hygiene items including a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, wash cloth and comb; an article of clothing and a toy. Boxes also may contain notes of encouragement. After filling the boxes, volunteers offer a prayer for those who will receive them. Chuck Palmer said in addition to the boxes filled on Nov. 12, hundreds of additional filled boxes will be brought to the church this week. The congregation will offer prayers for the boxes' recipients before they are prepared for shipping. The American Heritage Girls, who meet in Rocky River, made no-sew fabric purses for the boxes. A Friends Church member sewed cotton dresses and another volunteer crocheted or knitted items, including hats, to be added to the boxes. In addition, prisoners at Grafton Correctional Institution sewed cloth dolls and crafted thousands of small, wooden toys for the boxes. Ann Palmer prepares small sewing kits containing thread, needles, a small pair of scissors, buttons, snaps and other small items. Sheila Farrell of North Ridgeville packs filled boxes into a shipping carton. "They really appreciate those items," she said. Friends Church members collect items for the boxes throughout the year. The Palmers said a collection box is placed in the church and members are informed about what item will be collected that month, hygiene, toys, school supplies, etc. the boxes are stored at the church until needed for packing the shoe boxes. "In February, people fill jars with their loose change to help pay for the shipping costs for the boxes," Ann Palmer said. Those who fill the shoeboxes have no idea where they will wind up, the Palmers said. A bar code is attached to each box. The code is scanned in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of nine processing centers in the United States. By tracking the bar code online at samaritanspurse.org/occ, local OCC volunteers can learn to which country their shoeboxes were shipped. Filled shoeboxes are placed into packing cartons, which are stacked in tractor-trailer trucks for transport to Charlotte. Once received at the processing center, each box is checked to ensure there is nothing harmful inside, placed back in the shipping cartons and those cartons are stacked in shipping containers, which are sent to various countries. Dave Swartz of North Ridgeville, OCC collection center coordinator, said about 350 packed cartons, each containing about two dozen shoeboxes, will fill a truck trailer. "We hope to fill four semis this year," he added. American Heritage Girls pray over some filled gift boxes. It takes about five to six weeks to assemble, fill, collect, process and ship the boxes around the world, Chuck Palmer said. Once the boxes reach their destination, Ann Palmer said volunteers bring them to the children. "Everyone gets a comic-type book that tells about Jesus," she said. The books are prepared in more than 75 languages. After the youngsters read the books, she said there is a countdown and then they all open their shoeboxes at once. "It's a scene filled with joy," she said. The Palmers have visited missions in the Philippines and Somalia and witnessed the children opening the boxes. "They are so excited; it's like bedlam," she said. "If it's 100 degrees and the box contains a knit hat or gloves, they wear them because they are so excited. No one knows what's in the boxes, so it's always a big surprise." Chuck Palmer said a 12-week discipleship program to teach the children about Jesus and Christianity follows distribution of the boxes. Since its creation in 1993, the Palmers said Operation Christmas Child has collected and delivered more than 135 million shoeboxes worldwide. "The only place I can think of where we haven't sent boxes is Antarctica," Chuck Palmer said. Visit samaritanspurse.org/occ for more information on the ministry, to make a donation, pack a shoebox gift online, track a filled box or upload a photo and note of encouragement. Bernie Sanders said he is "humiliated" by the Democratic Party's inability to connect with working class voters. Donald Trump speaks with Vladimir Putin by phone. Mike Pence pushes for email privacy. Read more in today's Politics Extra. Sanders' humiliation: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Monday he is "deeply humiliated" by the Democratic Party's inability to connect with white working-class voters, reports Politico. President-elect Donald Trump successfully tapped into the anger and angst of this demographic, helping propel him to the presidency over Democrat Hillary Clinton. "I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business," Sanders told CBS This Morning. "It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." Ellison announces: U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota formally announced his candidacy to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee, according to Politico. In a statement released Monday, Ellison said that if elected, "I will work tirelessly to make the Democratic Party an organization that brings us together and advances an agenda that improves people's lives." The congressman, who played a prominent role in Sanders' presidential campaign, has already been endorsed by Sens. Sanders, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also said Ellison would make a "terrific" chairman. Improving relations with Russia: Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation Monday that relations between their countries were "unsatisfactory" and vowed to work together to improve them, the Kremlin said in a statement, according to The Washington Post. The statement said the two leaders discussed combining efforts in the fight against terrorism, talked about a "settlement for the crisis in Syria" and agreed their aides would begin working toward a face-to-face meeting between them. Pence pushes for email privacy: Vice President-elect Mike Pence is seeking to keep secret the contents of an email relating to Indiana's participation, at his behest, in a lawsuit to block President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration, reports Politico. Pence's efforts to shield an email from public scrutiny, which have so far been upheld by state courts, follow an election in which Clinton was hounded for her use of a private email server. Obama affirms Trump's commitment to NATO: President Obama said Monday that the United States would remain the world's "indispensable" power and that President-elect Trump had told him he was committed to NATO, reports CNN. "In my conversations with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships," Obama said in a press conference before his last international trip as president. Obama also said it would not be appropriate for him to weigh in on all of Trump's appointments because it would be incompatible to his desire to provide a smooth transition of power to his successor. "I think it is important for us to let him make his decisions. The American people will judge over the course of the next couple of years whether they like what they see," he said. In need of further assistance: Obama will spend extra time prepping Trump ahead of transferring the keys to the White House in January, according to a Wall Street Journal report. During their meeting last week, Trump seemed surprised by the scope of the job. Reporter Michael C. Bender said Trump aides did not know that the entire West Wing had to be hired. Obama concluded that Trump needs more guidance and plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do, people familiar with the matter said. Stop it: Trump said Sunday he was aware of reports that some of his supporters may be harassing Latinos, Muslims and members of other minority groups, and said that development just stop immediately, reports NBC News. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Trump said such behavior represented only a "very small amount" of his support, but that any was unacceptable. "Don't do it," the president-elect said. "That's terrible, because I'm going to bring this country together." To reinforce the point, Trump looked directly at the camera and demanded, "Stop it." Women's and LGBTQ rights: In the same interview, Trump weighed in on two of the most controversial social issues the Supreme Court has ever considered, reports CNN. His answers about same-sex marriage and abortion could leave conservatives worried. Trump indicated he is "fine" with the high court's opinion legalizing same-sex marriage and called it "settled," but committed to appointing justices who want to change the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling affirming abortion rights. He said if the decision is overturned, the issue will be returned to the states. When asked about women who would not be able to get an abortion, Trump said, "Well perhaps they have to go to another state." #NeverTrump: Two Democratic members of the Electoral College have launched a last-ditch attempt to stop Trump from winning the presidency, reports Politico. Bret Chiafolo of Washington state and Michael Baca of Colorado have launched what they have dubbed "Moral Electors," an attempt to persuade 37 of their Republican colleagues to bail on Trump - just enough to block Trump's election and leave the final decision to the House of Representatives. They already have the support of a third elector, Washington State's Robert Satiacum. Trump and Christie: In CNN's upcoming book, "Unprecedented: The Election that Changed Everything," CNN reporters reveal that Trump told New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2015 that he did not expect to make it in the GOP primary season past October. At that point, Trump would endorse Christie, according to a Christie adviser. "I think they always had an understanding that the first one out would probably endorse the other," the adviser said. cassandramcdonald Republican state representative candidate Cassandra McDonald surprised Republicans with an election night Facebook post stating that she is a "Democrat through and through," sharing a photo of herself at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally. McDonald later resigned from the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County's central committee. (Facebook) COLUMBUS, Ohio--Republican state representative candidate Cassandra McDonald resigned from the Cuyahoga County Republican Party Central Committee last week after making a revelation on social media: she's actually a Democrat. McDonald revealed herself on Facebook after losing to Democratic Rep. Kent Smith in House District 8. Smith won re-election with about 80 percent of the vote. "You believed in me enough to earn your vote running as a Republican even though I am a Democrat through and through," McDonald wrote in an election night post accompanied by a photo showing her at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally. McDonald later stated that she resigned from the Republican Party on Friday after "only being affiliated with them during the primary election for the most part." She explained: "I ran on the Republican ticket because I knew that if Trump won, it was vital to begin building a stronger presence of minority representation in legislation within the Republican party. ...Understand that we continue to elect people in office who are true Republicans at heart, but have concealed themselves to be Democrat. The only thing I did was flipped the script of what has been done for so long." Republican Party of Cuyahoga County spokesman Doug Magill confirmed that McDonald resigned from the county GOP's central committee, which she joined within the past year. "She got past our scanning committee," Magill said. "Apparently she just wasn't honest with us. It's kind of unfortunate, but things happen." Magill said McDonald "kind of disappeared on us" about a week or two before the election. He said he believes she was disturbed that the Republicans nominated Donald Trump for president. "But at no point did she tell us that she was a Democrat through and through," Magill said. "That was news to us on Facebook." McDonald told cleveland.com on Monday morning that she wouldn't be available to speak until later in the day. But on Facebook, she called her legislative campaign a "wonderful experience. "This is the beginning of a very successful career in politics," she wrote. At least 300 people gathered at the state Capitol on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon to show their support for law enforcement officers policing the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. "They're working to protect all of us, not just the farmers and the ranchers and the small town people that live in the area of the protest," said Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who spoke at the rally along with Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley. "They're protecting the protesters, too. They're protecting the very right to protest." "But the key is this: When we exercise our First Amendment rights, it needs to be done peacefully," Hoeven continued, his comments met with cheers from the crowd. Hoeven made special mention of the diverse law enforcement agencies police, sheriff's departments, highway patrol, National Guard, corrections, emergency services, Bureau of Criminal Investigations, federal agents and their families, who have been involved in the protests since August. "When we have a long event like we've had ... our spouses are serving, too. And the anxiety that goes with that, that's service for those families, as well," he said. The event began with about two dozen motorcyclists from the Patriot Guard and the Christian Motorcyclist Association circling the crowd, which was made up of officers, their families and supporters. Among the motorcyclists was Butch Kramer, of Bismarck, who noted the long-standing stress for the officers. "They've had a tough time here the last few months," Kramer said. "We want them to know that we love them, we care about them and we pray for their protection." Though not all shared the same views about the pipeline, many said they approved of the job police have performed, despite the criticism police have received from protesters, tribal leaders and civil liberties groups, who believe the response has been heavy-handed and militarized. "I absolutely support Kyle Kirchmeier and all the work that police have done," said Ann Kreidt, of Hebron, who believes the pipeline should be rerouted. Kreidt is worried a spill would contaminate the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's water supply -- one of the key motivators behind the protest -- but she's been frustrated by some of the protesters' actions, which she believes has forced police to use tactics like pepper spray and tear gas. "It makes me sad ... They could have tried harder to do it by the right means, to follow the right way to do it, rather than slashing tires and closing highways," she said. "I'm your tree hugging liberal that also loves cops." Dennis Allen, of Mandan, is for the pipeline, which he believes is a relatively safe way to transport oil. He's also for protest: He's rallied for legalizing marijuana and repealing Obamacare. But he's angry that the protests have led to road closures, which have affected farmers and ranchers, and thinks police are justified in their actions. "I don't like it," he said of the riot-control policing. "But what was the instigating factor? So far, it's always been 'trespassed onto private property, refused to move.' They start damaging things all because they're protecting the water? That's not good enough." Bismarck Police Officer Scarlett Vetter attended the rally in her uniform and said it was meaningful to be thanked for her work. She said many other officers who couldn't be there would learn about the event and feel the support through reports on social media. "Unfortunately, when I deal with the community, it's always for my job, whether taking enforcement action or responding to calls," she said. "It's kind of nice to come here as a police officer on a more positive note." BX067_5647_9.JPG Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks to the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association October 4, 2016 as the CPPA and the Ohio FOP announce their endorsement of Donald Trump for President. ( David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com) President-elect Donald Trump's administration could affect Cleveland's police reform settlement. Analysts examine how Trump turned out the vote in rural Ohio, while Hillary Clinton couldn't make up the difference. Both Democrats and Republicans were caught by surprise after Tuesday's election results. Read more in today's Ohio Politics Roundup, brought to you by Robin Goist. Say goodbye to the consent decree? The new U.S. Justice Department under President-elect Donald Trump's administration would have a difficult time dissolving Cleveland's police-reform settlement - but that doesn't mean some, including the police union, won't try, writes cleveland.com's Eric Heisig. Trump's repeated comments about strong police and his surrogates' backing of controversial policies such as stop-and-frisk policing won him an unusual endorsement from the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the union representing the city's rank-and-file officers, and the same union whose president sits on a board responsible for making reform recommendations. The endorsement - in a city where residents voted overwhelmingly last week for Democrat Hillary Clinton - created a rift between the union and a separate group that represents black officers on the force. "I'm not sure what to expect about how it might be," said Matthew Barge, who heads a team monitoring the city's progress under the consent decree. "Ultimately, the most important participants remain the city and the police department." Steve Loomis, a Trump supporter and Cleveland police union president, appeared emboldened Thursday about the effect Trump's victory could have on the department. He said the union's attorneys are "looking at the possibilities, if there are any possibilities, for some kind of change to the consent decree." Northeast Ohio's Muslims express concern: Comments that Trump made on the campaign trail regarding a potential shutdown of Muslim immigration, and his remarks about requiring Muslim registration and identity cards, are still valid in the minds of the 3.3 million American Muslims, including some in Cleveland, reports The Plain Dealer's Brian Albrecht. "I've been here 36 years and this is the first time I feel scared for America and for us (Muslims)," said Maha Droubi, a member of the local Syrian community who helped organize NEOSOS, a group aiding Syrian refugees settling in Northeast Ohio. "What I'm afraid of is that the hate toward Muslims will be more obvious, more clear." "The culture of America is not built upon hate and anti-immigrant sentiment and sidelining a religious community, which Trump has done," said Ahmad Deeb, director of the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent. Cleveland.com's Peter Krouse also talked with some members of Cleveland's Muslim community on Election Night, as it was clear that Trump would emerge victorious. Twitter S/O: The president-elect gave a shout out to Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Twitter Sunday. Governor John Kasich of the GREAT, GREAT, GREAT State of Ohio called to congratulate me on the win. The people of Ohio were incredible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016 Yep, you read that right: THREE greats. The post was the third and most enthusiastic in a series of posts in which Trump recognized congratulatory messages he has received from his former critics, including 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney and former primary rival Jeb Bush. And he has good reason to be thankful: Trump's performance in Ohio surprised politicos in the Buckeye State, including those in the Ohio GOP and Trump's campaign. Republicans react: "I thought he'd win Ohio, but I didn't think it would be by as much as it was," said Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, according to The Toledo Blade's Jim Provance. "I think a lot of us maybe missed some of the extra appeal that Donald Trump had even with Democrats, and then... Republicans still came out and voted for Donald Trump, even if they might not have liked him that much," said Borges, who supported Kasich during the primaries and had been a harsh critic of Trump. "They wanted change." Democrats were also caught by surprise. After Tuesday night's results, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper pointed to Trump's campaign message, "Make America Great Again," and how, "I don't think on our side there was ever that same simple, positive message that got our voters excited." Aaron Pickrell, Clinton's senior campaign adviser in Ohio, was also convinced until 10 p.m. Tuesday that the former secretary of state would be the next president. "We went into the election in Ohio a couple points down. It was 43-41 [percent] with a lot of undecideds," he said. "Undecideds broke for Trump about 80-20, which is crazy." Florida, Florida, Florida: Meanwhile, Trump's campaign was scrambling Election Night to mobilize an Ohio-led team to rush to Florida when it appeared the Sunshine State might be headed toward a recount similar to what decided the 2000 presidential election, writes The Columbus Dispatch's Darrel Rowland. Robert Paduchik, the man who engineered Trump's easy win in Ohio, also managed George W. Bush's successful Ohio campaigns in 2000 and 2004, so he was a part of the team that traveled to Florida for the recount 16 years ago. "I thought we were going to do a recount in Florida. I got a call from our war room in New York saying, 'Man, Florida is going to be under 50,000 (votes separating Trump and Clinton), and we're going to need a crew down there. Can you put a crew together...?' "I was ready to pack a bag and hop on an airplane. That's why I only had one beer. I thought I might be jumping on a plane somewhere," Paduchik told The Dispatch. Analyzing the Mahoning Valley's vote: Although Clinton eked out a three-point victory in Mahoning County, she would have been crushed by Trump were it not for the city of Youngstown, writes The Vindicator's David Skolnick. The county's largest city delivered 17,905 of Clinton's 56,188 votes in Mahoning, which was one of only seven in Ohio to go blue this year. In 2012, President Obama didn't lose a single precinct in Youngstown, or in the suburbs of Austintown and Struthers. Clinton still managed to sweep every precinct in Youngstown, but she only won 9 of 12 in Struthers - winning one by 3 votes and losing another by 1 vote. In Austintown, she won 18 precincts, lost 14 and tied in one. Just north of Mahoning: Trumbull County, which voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008 and 2012, backed Trump this year. Cleveland.com's Andrew J. Tobias went there last week to ask voters about their county shifting from a former Obama stronghold to supporting the GOP candidate. "It's voters like these, betting that Trump will deliver on his promises to revive American manufacturing, who ultimately helped Trump win the industrial Midwest and send him to the White House," Tobias writes. From the industrial to the rural: Trump flipped the Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania by boosting the rural vote, and Clinton just couldn't make up the difference, reports cleveland.com's Jackie Borchardt and Rich Exner. Take Michigan's rural Lake County, for example. Obama won the county in 2012, 52 to 47 percent, but Trump flipped it this year with 59 percent of the vote compared to Clinton's 36 percent, according to the unofficial count. Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, expects Ohio to lean Republican in future presidential elections because of its demographics. While the three major cities of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland are reliably blue, those Democratic voting populations are smaller than in other states' large cities. Kondik, a Northeast Ohio native, also pointed to Ohio's Appalachian region, which bolstered Trump's win, for the state's growing Republican shift. He predicts Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will take Ohio's spot as battleground swing states. More red for a reason: Cleveland.com's Rich Exner and Peter Krouse analyze factors such as education, race, religion, immigration and union membership to help explain the political differences between voters in Ohio and those in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meet Stephen Hadley: Former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley - a South Euclid native - has repeatedly been listed among the candidates Trump is considering for defense secretary, and cleveland.com's Sabrina Eaton has five things to know about him. Get Battleground Briefing, our FREE politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox: Sign up here. Tips or links? Send here. Follow along on Twitter: @robingoist COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The man Gov. John Kasich entrusted as the state's first ever director of Medicaid is stepping aside after six years. Medicaid Director John McCarthy is leaving sometime in December to "pursue opportunities in the private sector," Kasich's office said Monday. Former state Rep. Barbara Sears, a Sylvania Republican who previously worked on healthcare and Medicaid legislation, has been tapped to replace him. Sears resigned from the House earlier this year to join Kasich's Office of Health Transformation. Nearly 3 million poor and disabled Ohioans receive health insurance coverage through Medicaid. Ohio will spend more than $19 billion this fiscal year on the program -- a little more than half of the state's total general revenue fund spending. Under Kasich, the Medicaid department became an independent cabinet agency and McCarthy was its first director. McCarthy oversaw the state's expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The department has saved Ohio taxpayers more than $3 billion and slowed growth of the program to 3.3 percent, according to the Kasich administration. "I'm grateful we've had John leading one of our largest state programs over the majority of my time in office, and thanks to his leadership, our most vulnerable Ohioans are better served and the program now rests on strong financial footing," Kasich said in a statement. Sears served in the Ohio House as the majority floor leader and chairwoman of the House Insurance and Joint Medicaid Oversight committees. When House Republicans opposed expanding Medicaid, Sears was an outspoken supporter of the move, which has added more than 630,000 people to the program. Kasich said Sears has consistently shared his vision for health care and worked with his administration on reform. "She has the right combination of expertise, temperament and leadership ability to guide Medicaid forward and I'm glad she's agreed to take up this responsibility," Kasich said. shaker heights high.png The ACLU of Ohio has asked the Shaker Heights City School District to reconsider a decision to discipline two students for social media posts. (File photo) SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio - The ACLU of Ohio has asked the Shaker Heights City School District to reconsider a decision to discipline two students for social media posts made after the presidential election. The district disciplined the students Thursday for social media posts showing another student making derogatory statements about black Americans, the ACLU said in a statement. Superintendent Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings Jr. called the incident "unacceptable" in a statement posted on the district's website. It came at the end of a week that was "trying for many," he said. "Emotions are raw and running high. It's clear that a community like Shaker Heights is not immune," Hutchings said. "As a community and as a school district, we have an opportunity to model civility and mutual respect even as we disagree." But disciplining the students violates their First Amendment rights, the ACLU said. "Unfortunately, school officials decided to punish these students for exercising their free speech rights," ACLU of Ohio senior policy director Mike Brickner said. "It's disappointing that instead of using this situation as an opportunity to teach young people about free speech and racial justice, school officials resorted to punishing these students for standing up for their convictions." One of the students has already served a one-day in-school suspension. The second student is scheduled to serve her suspension Tuesday, but the ACLU is asking the school district to reverse its decision to suspend her. Neither of the students made threats or personal attacks in the posts. The students made the posts off-campus and outside of school hours, the ACLU said in a letter to the school district. "While it is important to respect the privacy of a person's communication, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a broadly posted message," the ACLU said in its letter to the school district. "Moreover, a school social media usage policy must give way to the higher dictate of the Constitution, especially where the expression concerns important matters of public interest." Shaker Heights High School Shaker Heights High School dismissed early Monday as police investigated a threat. (Plain Dealer file photo) SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Shaker Heights High School students were dismissed early Monday as police investigated three anonymous bomb threats, the school district said. The school dismissed students at 12:10 p.m. as a precautionary measure. The Shaker Heights Police Department is searching the building but has not found any evidence of a credible threat, , the Shaker Heights City School District said in a statement. It's unclear whether the threats are connected to the district's decision to discipline two high school students for social media posts made after the presidential election. The posts showed another student making derogatory statements about black Americans, according to the ACLU oh Ohio, which has asked the district to reconsider the discipline. "We take these things very seriously. We are fully cooperating with the police," Superintendent Dr. Gregory Hutchings Jr. said Monday in the school district's statement. "We are saddened that people have taken it upon themselves to disrupt our educational process. We will get through this together." Students are awaiting pickup at Woodbury Field along South Woodland Road. The school will provide accommodations for any students unable to be picked up. The threats caused the school to go into a precautionary lockdown at 10:45 a.m. Shaker Heights police are in the process of completing a full sweep of the building. No other schools within the district are affected. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Monday's crime and courts comments section. This is Up and Down, where we give a brief thumbs up and thumbs down on the issues from the past week. Up Despite problems with a summer hailstorm, a $500 million urea fertilizer plant northwest of Beulah is moving forward. The Basin Electric Cooperative project has been a big boost for Mercer County. Taxable sales for the county were up 17 percent, compared to a 26 percent decline for the rest of the state. The project has provided jobs along with customers for the communitys businesses. Its a win situation for everyone involved. Down During the recent Dakota Access Pipeline protests at least seven journalists have been charged. While its understandable that law enforcement can have difficulty knowing who is a journalist during chaotic events, the charges should be closely reviewed. The case against Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was dismissed and the other cases seem similar. Journalists follow the story and sometimes it takes them into the middle of the action. It can be difficult enough for journalists covering a story without the threat of charges hanging over them. Up North Dakota voters on Tuesday easily approved Measure 5 that allows the use of medical marijuana. The Tribune Editorial Board along with many law enforcement and medical groups recommended the defeat of the measure. The vote gets a thumbs up because it reflects an electorate that studied the issue and made their own decision. North Dakota, considered by outsiders as a predictable conservative state, has never been afraid to split a ballot. For many years we elected an all-Democratic congressional delegation while picking mostly Republicans for state offices. We hope the state voters never lose their independent streak. Down Protesters upset over the election of Donald Trump closed part of the Interstate in the Minneapolis area. Similar action was reported in several other areas of the country. During the campaign there was concern over whether Trump would accept the results of the election. Now that hes won, its the other side that cant accept the outcome of the process. Selecting a leader can be messy and losing hurts, but the process needs to be respected. Americans witnessed a remarkable run by Trump. Not everyone likes it, but they need to accept it. Up Kirsten Baesler, state superintendent, met last week with her Student Cabinet. The 20 students from around the state, ranging from fourth grade to college freshmen, are providing her feedback on a variety of topics. Baesler says shes serious about taking their advice and thats a good thing. Too often students get left out during discussions on curriculum and policy. The learning process works a lot better when everyone involved buys into it. If you run a small business, now is the time to shore up your finances and take advantage of available deductions to cut your tax bill. Bear in mind, you're wrapping up this year's books. Advisors say it's too early to see how the Trump administration will shape the tax regime in 2017. Hero Images | Getty Images "For 2016, we can play by the rules we have available to us now," said Gavin Morrissey, managing partner at Financial Strategy Associates in Needham, Massachusetts. "Small-business owners should re-evaluate things in 2017, once we know the new tax rules under Trump." Though the end of the year is a good time for even regular 9-to-5 employees to do some tax planning, it's especially critical for owners of small businesses. In part, that's because entrepreneurs are responsible for paying their estimated state and federal taxes on time. They're also on their own when it comes to setting up and funding their retirement plans in a timely fashion. "Take the end of the year to clean up your books, reconcile your cash, and when you are ready to talk about taxes, we can do so intelligently," said Dave Burton, a certified public accountant at Burton & Company in Hollywood, Florida. Here are a few suggestions that will get you through the last few weeks of the year. Know what you owe In a perfect world, entrepreneurs would pay their estimated state and federal taxes, including Social Security and Medicare levies, on a quarterly basis. In reality, it's easy to overlook these payments, especially if your cash flow is hard to predict. Since quarterly taxes for the final three months of 2016 are due on Jan. 15, take the time to make sure you've properly deducted the levies and that you're accounting for any late fees and penalties the IRS may impose if you missed a payment. Working with a payroll company can also help you simplify things. "Let's say you were supposed to pay $10,000 throughout the year," said Burton. "You can go to the payroll provider, have them deduct the $10,000 and pay it to the IRS as additional withholding." Set up your retirement plan Once you've determined what you owe in taxes, think about how you can save. While most folks may know that a 401(k) or an IRA will allow you to save on a tax-deferred basis, did you know that you can also save on taxes by setting up a retirement plan? Contributions you make as an employer to a SIMPLE IRA, a SEP IRA, or a solo 401(k) are tax deductible. Be aware of the differences between these three retirement plans. If you are your own boss with a SIMPLE IRA, you can save up to $12,500, plus a catch-up contribution of $3,000 if you're 50 and older. You can also contribute either a 2 percent fixed contribution or a 3 percent match. You can save even more aggressively in a SEP IRA and a solo 401(k). Because you're the employer and the employee of your small business, you can save up to the overall limit for defined contribution plans: 25 percent of your earnings, up to $53,000 in 2016, plus a $6,000 for catch-up contribution if you're 50 and older. That $53,000 includes the $18,000 maximum you can defer into a plan as an employee, as well as other employer contributions and matches. Talk to your advisor or your accountant to determine which of these plans is right for your business. Accelerate or defer Depending on how your clients pay, you may be able to defer receipt of income this year, which could help you save on taxes. Many sole proprietors use cash basis accounting, meaning you report income when you receive payment. Consider scheduling your billing so that clients pay you in early 2017 for work you performed in late 2016. This way, you receive the money in the new year. "Let's say that you provide a service on December 20," said Morrissey. "You can send the bill toward the end of the month, and you won't receive payment until January." "I hope he really does bring the country together and work together here in Washington, D.C., in more of a bipartisan way to get things done," Case told CNBC's " Squawk Alley " on Monday. "I also hope he builds a bridge between the innovators in places like Silicon Valley, and people all across the country. .... We need to make sure the job creation, the innovation, the energy of this economy are broadly dispersed. And I think part of the frustration we saw last week with the election is a lot of people feeling left behind." While President-elect Donald Trump 's victory has roiled Silicon Valley, it shows why California's tech elite need to stop treating middle America like "flyover country," said Steve Case, co-founder of AOL. Steve Case, chairman and chief executive officer of Revolution and co-founder of America Online, speaks during the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, March 14, 2015. Trump's election shocked many coastal tech CEOs and investors, who said they were "terrified" and called the results "tragic." Trump got about 20 percent of the vote or less in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, The New York Times reported, giving most big tech companies little exposure to the pro-Trump populace. Case is the chief of a technology investment firm that looks to fund start-ups outside liberal Silicon Valley including many areas where Trump managed to dominate the polls. After traveling across the country, Case said he's seen how entrepreneurs in middle America feel about how Silicon Valley treats the status quo in core industries like agriculture. "It's not just President-elect Trump reaching out to Silicon Valley it's also Silicon Valley reconnecting with the rest of the country, because this has been an area of frustration," Case said. "They do feel left out. They really do feel left behind. They feel like people are talking past them, even calling them the flyover country. But the next wave ... of innovation, will be in sectors in agriculture and health care and education." Case endorsed Hillary Clinton for president earlier this year, citing her promises to invest in education and technology-driven jobs, promote high-skilled immigrants, and rein in the national deficit. Clinton, unlike Republican rival Donald Trump, released a detailed plan on technology and innovation. Still, Case said, venture capitalists have a role to play in building bridges in areas with Trump strongholds. It starts by focusing on funding jobs all across America, he said. "If you're an entrepreneur in Detroit or Des Moines or Madison or many other parts of the country, it's much harder than if you're in San Francisco or New York," Case said. "So they too feel left out. And because start-ups really create the jobs. ... We need to support entrepreneurs everywhere." watch now iPhones and other U.S. goods could suffer sales hits in China if President-elect Donald Trump goes through with his "naive" plan of slapping a large import tariff on Chinese products, a state-backed newspaper warned on Sunday. During his election campaign this year, Trump spoke of a 45 percent import tariff on all Chinese goods while failing to outline how it would work. Should any such policy come into effect, China will take a "tit-for-tat approach", according to an opinion piece in the Global Times, a newspaper backed by the Communist party. "A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. U.S. auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and U.S. soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S.," the Global Times article read. Apple has not responded to CNBC's request for comment. A man holds his new iPhone 7 at an Apple store in Beijing. Thomas Peter | Reuters But the Chinese newspaper was not convinced Trump would go through with his suggestion, calling it "merely campaign rhetoric" and questioning its legal validity. U.S. law dictates that presidents can only impose tariffs of no more than 15 percent for a maximum of 150 days on all imports. Trump ally and the driving force behind the U.K.'s Brexit from Europe Nigel Farage has blasted the European Commission (EC) president for his call to create a European army. Following the U.S presidential election last week, EC president Jean-Claude Juncker said Europe had to recognize the need to take care of its own defense needs. "The Americans, to whom we owe much, will not ensure the security of the Europeans in the long term. We have to do this ourselves," Juncker told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday night. "That is why we need a new start in the field of European defense, up to the goal of setting up a European army." However anti-European Union campaigner and ally of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, has told Sky News that Juncker's plan is laughable. "You've got Jean-Claude Juncker using the election of President Trump as a means of trying to destroy Nato by pushing his ridiculous dream of a European army," he said Monday. The Brexit leader also argued that Europe's criticism of Nato provided more of a security threat than Donald Trump in the White House. "But the more we hear from the European Union that they wish to brush Nato aside, the more I think it will be wrong to view Trump as being a threat to our security, but increasingly the European Union that is." U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has himself criticized Nato on the campaign trail, stating he wanted other member countries to pay more in to the defense alliance organization. Farage said he agreed with Trump's stance as there had been no proper review of the organization since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage, a supporter of Donald Trump, told CNBC on Monday he found the U.S. president-elect to be reflective on the task ahead and concerned about how to create jobs and wealth. "Don't underestimate this guy," Farage said on "Squawk Box." "He's made a big, big success of his business career. And he intends to be a successful president, and I think he may well be." Farage, the former and now interim leader of the U.K. Independence Party, met with Trump in New York on Saturday at Trump Tower, suggesting he could act as a go-between to help smooth British-American relations. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is not expected to meet with Trump until early next year. Farage has suggested May's criticisms of Trump in the early days of the campaign could damage ties with Washington. Trump's surprise victory has often been compared to the poll-defying June vote by British citizens for the U.K. to leave the European Union trading bloc. "What Trump believes in, as I believe in, is nation-state democracy that we should be controlling our own borders; making our own laws; and yes, trading with each other, cooperating with each other, being good neighbors,' Farage said. During the U.S. race, Farage showed up at some of the presidential debates in support of Trump and appeared with the Republican on the campaign trail. watch now Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage visited Donald Trump at his home on Saturday, after suggesting he could act as a go-between to help smooth British relations with the U.S. president-elect. British Prime Minister Theresa May is not expected to meet the incoming leader until early next year and Farage has suggested her criticisms of Trump in the early days of the campaign could damage ties with Washington. "We're just tourists!" Farage, head of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), told reporters as he waited for an elevator to take him up to the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City. He later tweeted a photograph of himself with Trump standing in front of a pair of golden doors and smiling broadly, the president-elect giving the camera a thumbs-up. "It was a great honor to spend time with @realDonaldTrump," Farage tweeted. "He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President." @Nigel_Farage Trump's election campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said: "I think they enjoy each other's company, and they actually had a chance to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world." In a separate photograph posted on Twitter, UKIP donor Arron Banks, Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam, and Gerry Gunster, an American whose advocacy firm worked on the Brexit campaign, were also pictured with Trump and Farage. May - who spoke to Trump by phone on Thursday - and her predecessor David Cameron last year described Trump as "divisive" and "wrong" over his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. At that time he was not considered likely to win the presidency. In a leaked diplomatic telegram, sent on Nov. 9 and printed in the Sunday Times newspaper, Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, said he believed Britain had built better relationships with Trump's team than other foreign diplomats. "(Trump) is above all an outsider and an unknown quantity, whose campaign pronouncements may reveal his instincts, but will surely evolve and, particularly, be open to outside influence if pitched right," he said. "We should be well placed to do this." While the British government has congratulated Trump on his election, the head of the opposition, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said he should "grow up" on the immigration issue and recognize that the U.S. economy depends on migrant workers. "The treatment of Mexico by the United States, just as much as its absurd and abusive language towards Muslims, is something that has to be challenged and should be challenged," Corbyn, whose wife is Mexican, told the BBC on Sunday. UKIP, which has only one member of parliament in London, said Farage and Trump spent more than an hour discussing Trump's victory, global politics and Brexit. A UKIP official has suggested Farage could even be the next ambassador to the United States, but British media reported that May's office rejected the idea of any role for Farage, citing unnamed sources who described him as an "irrelevance". A day after Trump's election victory, Farage called on the real estate mogul to reverse "loathsome" Barack Obama's policy by making Britain his top priority. Farage said he had been pleased at Trump's "very positive reaction" to the idea that a bust of former British prime minister Winston Churchill be put back in the Oval Office. He has also joked about sexual assault allegations against Trump, urging him to "schmooze" May but not touch her. He proposed that in any meetings between the British and American leaders, he could attend to be the "responsible adult to make sure everything is OK." Farage, who spoke at a Trump rally during the election campaign, had predicted the former reality TV host would tap into the same dissatisfaction among voters that led to Britain deciding on June 23 to leave the European Union. Trump made repeated references to Brexit during his campaign, saying it had highlighted the desire for change among voters frustrated with traditional politics. FARGO -- Beth Gravalin knows what its like to face a potentially dangerous crisis while working with someone who suffers from mental illness, chemical dependency or both. As a former, longtime employee of Southeast Human Service Center in Fargo, she was front and center during whats believed to have been the first incident of a gun being fired at the facility. In 2008, Gravalin tried to convince a distraught and suicidal client to drop a gun, after the person fired a shot in a vehicle parked outside the center. She was leaning into the vehicle when police arrived to subdue the client. Shes found herself reliving those tense moments recently, in the wake of an incident this summer in which a counselor was trapped in her office at Southeast for nearly three hours with an armed man who later fatally shot himself. Gravalin said both incidents reveal safety shortcomings at the facility, one of the eight state-run centers across North Dakota that offers services such as drug and mental health treatment on an income-based sliding scale. Officials dispute her claim that the center has gaps in security. But Gravalin believes not much has changed in the eight years between those two gun incidents to make the setting more secure for clients and staff. My goal in this is safety, Gravalin said. In light of what has happened its still an issue. Earlier incident A little after 4 p.m. on June 30, 2008, Gravalin was summoned to help a nurse whod gone outside to talk with a client in a vehicle in the parking lot of Southeast at 2624 9th Ave. S. According to a police report, the man was agitated because hed come to the center to pick up medication, but didnt receive it because he was intoxicated. The nurse saw the man pull a gun from between the seats and point it at his head. While she tried to reason with him, police say he fired a shot through the roof of the vehicle. Gravalin was walking up to the vehicle when the shot rang out. I told the young nurse to go inside, and that I would talk to the client, she said. As Gravalin tried to de-escalate the situation, she heard sirens in the distance and knew police were on their way. She said she told the client, This can go one of two ways. This could go really bad or you could give me the gun now. According to police, when an officer arrived he ordered the man to drop the gun, but he resisted. As the officer grabbed his arm to push the gun away, the man agreed to unload the weapon. When he did so, the gun dropped to the floor of the vehicle. The police officer told me, Go get the gun, Gravalin said. So I ran around the car and opened up the passenger door while the officer wrestled with the client, and I grabbed the gun. She told police she didnt feel threatened during the incident, but another officer noted in the police report that Gravalin was visibly shaking as she stood with the gun in her hand. Gravalin said the incidents in 2008 and this summer show Southeast isnt adequately prepared to deal with certain crises. We didnt have an active shooter policy at the time (2008) and didnt develop one for some time afterward, she said. Russ Korzeniewski is the risk manager at the Department of Human Services, an umbrella state agency that includes Southeast. He said a written protocol on active shooter response was disseminated to all DHS staff in April 2012, and an online video on the topic became available for them in January 2014. Gravalin maintains any safety videos were not specific to client situations. Only recently has there been face-to-face lockdown training for Southeast employees. Korzeniewski said hes done those group training sessions at each of the states eight regional human service centers over the past month and a half. But the information has always been out there for staff, he said. Jeff Stenseth, regional director at Southeast, said since August, the facility has taken or will take other safety steps, including installing a public address system to alert everyone in the building in the event of an emergency. No way to alert others According to the police report for the Aug. 18 incident recently obtained by The Forum in an open records request, a man whod shown up for a counseling session at Southeast about 4 p.m. walked into the counselors office, closed the door and then told the female employee he had a gun and wanted to take his own life or force police officers to do so. Before officers were able to pull off a tense rescue of the woman, and the man fatally shot himself, she was trapped with him for several hours while other employees in the building were unaware of her situation. Gravalin said the fact that no one knew the counselor was potentially in danger is one of the ongoing safety issues for employees, who often meet with clients behind closed doors. Our offices were not equipped with panic buttons, per se that if somebody was distraught within the premises, we couldnt alert anybody, Gravalin said. Police say it was the counselors husband who alerted them that night, after his wife didnt show up for dinner after work. He tried calling and texting her, and finally received a message that she was still at Southeast and in trouble. When the husband and police arrived at Southeast, they told a security person there who they were looking for. The police report indicates the security officer had no knowledge of the situation, and no idea which office the woman worked in. They should know whos in their building, they should know where they are, Gravalin said. Stenseth said up until this incident, the security guard wasnt expected to know office locations of more than 200 employees. Now, that guard carries a cellphone issued by Southeast that employees can call. All staff have that number programmed into the phones in their group rooms or individual offices where evening services will be provided, Stenseth said. The police report also reveals how many other people were in the building while the counselor was trapped in her office. With the standoff still underway, an officer was told by an exiting employee that another co-worker was holding a group session with four to five clients in a second floor conference room, just 20 feet from the man with the gun. The employees and clients got out safely. Stenseth said since then, theyve shrunk the footprint of where evening sessions take place, holding them on the first floor only. He said theres also a checkout process for staff when they end their work day. If an emergency happens in the building during the day, Stenseth said a message can be sent to all staff via phone, computer or cellphone. And the public address system, for which theyre seeking bids, would allow them to do a building-wide announcement, Stenseth said. Whistleblower role Beth Gravalin spent more than 28 years at Southeast working with the most seriously mentally ill and chronically chemically dependent. Her most recent role was as director of its Extended Care Program -- a job she held until 2013 when she resigned, partly due to frustration over unresolved safety concerns, she said. Before her resignation, Gravalin wrote a letter to then-interim DHS executive director Maggie Anderson detailing those concerns, but said she felt they werent heard. Our review shows proper steps are being and will continue to be taken to protect the safety of patients and employees, Anderson, who is now the executive director of the agency, stated in a response letter sent to Gravalins attorney in February 2013. Gravalin said shes most concerned about the safety of caseworkers, many of them women and recent college graduates. She thinks they should have state-issued cell phones for safety. She also points to the metal detector and law enforcement presence at the entrance to the Cass County Courthouse, where Cass County Social Services is located. She said that agency works with many of the same people as Southeast. Stenseth isnt sure that kind of security is appropriate for Southeast. He said they have to be cautious not to criminalize people seeking health services. We look at that balance, wanting to be a welcoming place for clients struggling with behavioral health, Stenseth said. Gravalin now works as a nurse in the Minnesota lakes area. She said she didnt publicize her concerns about Southeast earlier out of self preservation. I wanted to work in mental health, said Gravalin, who considered the field her calling. She thinks being a whistleblower has changed that. Ive come to the realization, though, that Im probably not going to get another job in mental health, she said. Anti-Trump protesters gather outside City Hall to protest the president-elect Donald Trump by chanting, 'Not my president, not my president,' in Los Angeles, Calif., on Nov. 9, 2016. No state has seen more people get health insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare in the past three years. As a result, California stands to see the biggest increases in the number of people without health coverage if president-elect Trump follows through on threats he has made to completely repeal the ACA. It could be California screaming the loudest if President Donald Trump says "You're fired!" to the Affordable Care Act. "We have the most to lose," Kominski said. "We've basically cut the number of uninsured in a little bit more than half, which is enormous progress," Dr. Gerald Kominski, head of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told the Los Angeles Times in a story about the threat Trump poses to the Golden State's newly insured. The Times story notes that as of now, 4.6 million California residents have health coverage that is funded by Affordable Care Act programs. That includes people who buy private individual health insurance plans sold on the state-run Obamacare exchange, or who joined California's Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, after the ACA authorized federal funding to expand coverage to more poor people. California would lose $20 billion in funding from the federal government if the ACA is completely repealed, the story said. Whether Trump will actually seek full repeal after he takes office in January remains to be seen.In the past several days, Trump has made several statements about Obamacare. In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night, Trump said Obamacare "will be repealed and replaced" in one fell swoop. "And it'll be great health care for much less money," Trump said. But in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Friday, Trump said, "Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced." Trump's interview with the Journal came after he met with President Barack Obama at the White House last Thursday. Trump was quoted by newspaper as saying that Obama suggested keeping certain parts of the ACA, and "I told him I will look at his suggestions, and out of respect, I will do that." Trump said he is in favor of maintaining the ACA's bar against insurers denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions, and also supports keeping the provision that allows adults until age 26 to be covered by their parents' health plans. Sohu CEO Charles Zhang. VCG | Getty Images For all President-elect Donald Trump's anti-China talk, Chinese business leaders say they're looking forward to working with a "businessman." "You, know, he's good at making deals, 'The Art of the Deal,' right, so reaching a deal that's beneficial for both sides" will be key, Charles Zhang, CEO of Chinese internet search giant Sohu.com , told CNBC. "I think it's important to sit down and talk. That's ... a positive side of the Trump presidency." "I wouldn't worry," added Zhang, who has a doctorate degree in experimental physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spoke this past weekend on the sidelines of the MIT-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum, where Chinese business executives and fund managers were mostly upbeat about growth prospects for Chinese companies. watch now "Winter is the best time for a start-up," more than one China-based venture capitalist said at the conference. U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled almost $660 billion in 2015, according to an estimate from the U.S. Trade Representative website. The United States had a trade deficit of $336.2 billion with China last year. Claiming he can create more U.S. jobs, Trump has called for a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports and says he wants to label the country a currency manipulator. His campaign platform states that the U.S. Trade Representative should bring trade cases against China in the U.S. and the World Trade Organization. "The Chinese are looking at Trump 'glass half-full," Charles Freeman III, nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, told CNBC in a phone interview Monday. "There certainly was a perception that values and U.S. security interest were more important than economic interests for the current and maybe previous administration," he said. I think a little caution would be in their best interest ... There is a lot of political pressure on President-elect Trump to follow through on his promises. Timothy Heath senior international defense research analyst, Rand Corp. Uncertainty continues to cloud the future of the U.K. financial services industry as it assesses how to continue working once the country -- and with it the City of London -- leaves the European Union. The decision to leave the EU has been a headache for the City as it could lose the so-called "passporting rights" the possibility to sell and trade in euros and across Europe while only overseen by U.K. authorities. Several EU representatives, including President Francois Hollande of France, have said that the euro-clearing business could only happen in the EU and overseen by the European Central Bank - which would mean that London would lose a significant part of its financial business. Reports in The Times over the weekend suggested that Citigroup , which manages $1.8 trillion assets, was planning to send 900 employees from London to Dublin to continue operating in Europe. Last week, news emerged that also Goldman Sachs was considering moving some assets and operations from London to Frankfurt. In both scenarios, the investment banks would be under the ECB's supervision once Britain officially exits from the EU and could continue their euro-operations. "We are looking at our options obviously," a spokesperson for Citigroup told CNBC on Monday over the phone. "But we are not looking for space in Dublin and we are not moving 900 people there," the spokesperson added, denying the Times report. However, the worries across the financial services industry are clear and the future of the City is not looking bright. Entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis Travels to Cuba to Meet Business Owners Surviving and Thriving Under an Oppressive Communist Regime A Rare Look Inside the Groundbreaking Changes Taking Place in Cuba ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. November 7, 2016 On CNBC's hit primetime series "The Profit," entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis puts his own money on the line to help save and grow struggling American businesses. Now, he's headed to Cuba, one of the last holdouts of communism, to tell the stories of a remarkable group of men and women experiencing their first taste of freedom as entrepreneurs. In a special episode, "The Profit In Cuba," airing Tuesday, November 15 at 10PM ET/PT, Marcus travels to Cuba at a time of historic change, and profiles this new breed of business owners determined to succeed. "The Cuban people have an amazing spirit," said Marcus Lemonis. "Seeing how small business functions in a communist country gave me an understanding of what's really happening in Cuba. Their tenacity and resolve despite staggering obstacles is the heart and soul of what makes that country work." New laws in the country that allow for private business ownership have launched a wave of pioneer capitalists. In shops, factories, farms and homes, Marcus meets them to learn about their opportunities and challenges firsthand, and offers his expertise. A woman formerly employed by the state as a dentist now makes several times her old salary running a bakery with her brother. The new venture is doing quite well, though to Marcus' astonishment they explain that they often have no access to chocolate. When it comes to running a business in Cuba, there are obstacles everywhere, including a longstanding U.S. trade embargo, broken supply chains, scarce resources, sporadic internet service, and intense government control and interference. Marcus visits a clothing designer who's prevented by law from opening a store; a restaurant owner whose license limits him to fifty seats; and an aspiring artisan who was forced to move her business on orders from the state. These entrepreneurs have defied circumstances that would be unthinkable for most Americans. Despite these problems, some half a million Cuban citizens are benefitting from the new laws, and in a nation where the average income is roughly $25 a month, many have already improved their way of life. Mitch Weitzner is Senior Executive Producer and Vice President of Long Form Programming. Reid Collins Jr. and Meghan Lisson are Producers. Amber Mazzola is Creative Consultant. Nikhil Deogun is Senior Vice President and Editor in Chief of Business News for CNBC. For more information, visit http://www.cnbc.com/the-profit-in-cuba/. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram! #TheProfitCuba #TheProfit European oil companies might be thinking twice about returning to Iran's oil fields with Donald Trump bound for the White House, according to Helima Croft, head of commodities strategy at RBC Capital Markets. French oil giant Total announced last week it would lead a consortium that includes the China National Petroleum Corporation to develop Iran's South Pars gas field. Others have told CNBC they are interested but waiting until the investment outlook becomes clearer. Iran's oil production has grown steadily over the last year to about 3.7 million barrels per day following the lifting of sanctions that hobbled its crude exports. But the recent presidential election puts a question mark over its continued recovery, Croft said. "Iran has ramped up. Iran is back to pre-sanctions levels, but can Iran do much more without foreign investment? And this is where the Trump election becomes very, very important," she told CNBC's "Power Lunch." Croft questioned whether European oil majors will be willing to invest in projects to further boost Iranian oil production in the wake of Trump's victory. Trump threatened during the presidential campaign to rip up the deal Iran reached with international negotiators last year to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. With Trump in office, the European energy firms lining up to develop Iran's massive oil and gas reserves face a big risk: that his administration will exploit provisions in the nuclear accord that would put back in place sanctions that penalize companies that invest in Iran's oil and gas sector. Trump could set that process in motion by refusing to certify that Iran is compliant with the terms of the deal, RBC said in a note last week. Iran has twice exceeded limits on the amount of heavy water it is allowed to possess, though the U.S. energy secretary and State Department have said Iran has immediately sought to correct the problem. RBC, however, said a Trump administration "may not be so magnanimous" and could use a technical violation to snap sanctions back into place. A gas flare on an oil production platform is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf. Raheb Homavandi | Reuters The cost of doing nothing would even higher, according to the group's analysis; by 2025, the impact of lost business, higher transportation costs and other economic headwinds would wipe out some $4 trillion in gross domestic product, and some 2.5 million jobs. Since the 1960s, when the federal government began winding down construction of the Interstate highway system, federal spending for public projects has steadily fallen as a percent of GDP. Faced with rising pension costs and tax-weary voters, state governments have also been cutting infrastructure spending as a share of the economy. Over the last half decade, state and local government spending on capital projects dropped from its high of 3 percent of U.S. GDP to less than 2 percent in 2014, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Now, as Republicans take control of the White House and both houses of Congress, there's renewed momentum to tackle the task of infrastructure repair and upgrades. But conservative Republicans remain leery of borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for the new spending, adding to the rising federal debt. Duke Energy has agreed to pay $27 million to settle a lawsuit over the power producer's abrupt firing of its newly installed chief executive in 2012. Duke had agreed to install Progress Energy head William Johnson a chief executive of the combined company as part of the terms to buy Progress. But within hours of the deal closing in July 2012, the new Duke board met and fired Johnson, reinstating former Duke CEO James Rogers. Johnson left with a pre-negotiated $44 million severance package. Shareholders soon sued Duke, arguing the decision to fire the CEO was reached in May 2012 and concealed from the public, investors and regulators. A Delaware judge in August denied Duke's bid to end the case, finding the plaintiffs plausibly argued that the defendants might have concealed information about their actions from the public and regulators. The settlement will be "funded by certain insurers" and does not include admission of any liability or wrongdoing by Duke, according to a court document filed Nov. 9. Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell: Harman International Samsung is buying the U.S.-based automobile technology company for $8 billion in all-cash transaction. It is the biggest-ever overseas acquisition for a South Korean company. Mentor Graphics Mentor is being bought by Germany's Siemens for $4.5 billion in cash, or $37.25 per share. Mentor is a maker of computer software used in designing computer chips. Pfizer The drugmaker's Celebrex arthritis drug is at least as safe as prescription-strength doses of ibuprofen and naproxen, according to the results of a 10-year study. Novartis Novartis is considering the sale of its Alcon eye care products division, according to the drugmaker's chairman Joerg Reinhardt. He told a Swiss weekly newspaper that the division has not done as well as the company had expected. Toyota The automaker agreed to settle a case involving truck rust for up to $3.4 billion. The settlement involves various Tacoma, Tundra, and Sequoia models that were alleged to have poor rust protection. Johnson & Johnson J&J saw mixed results for an experimental drug designed to treat rheumatoid arthritis when compared to Abbvie's best-selling Humira treatment. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise The former chief financial officer of Autonomy was indicted for allegedly making fraudulent claims ahead of Hewlett-Packard's 2011 purchase of the software company for $11 billion. HP eventually took an $8.8 billion writedown on the deal, and successor company HPE sold off parts of that business earlier this year. Duke Energy Duke will pay $27 million to settle a lawsuit over its firing of William Johnson in 2012. Johnson had been head of Progress Energy when it was acquired by Duke, and was set to be CEO of the combined company. However, he was fired within hours of the deal's closing. Coca-Cola Coca-Cola may become a takeover target of beer brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev , according to a story in the Sunday Telegraph. People close to Ab InBev CEO Carlos Brito told the paper that following consolidation in the beer industry, Brito is looking at different beverage targets. Chico's FAS , L Brands , Kohl's The retailers were upgraded by Citi to "buy" from "neutral," on the thesis that likely tax reform under a Donald Trump administration will provide a bump for retail in general and these companies in particular. SciClone Pharmaceuticals Shareholder GL Management has offered to acquire the drugmaker for $11.18 per share in cash, compared to Friday's close of $9.85. GL holds a 9.3 percent stake in SciClone. Amazon.com Amazon announced the expansion of its Home Services business into 20 new markets, including Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. Citigroup Morgan Stanley upgraded Citi to "overweight from "equal weight" based on the idea that tax cuts coupled with stronger economic growth under the Trump administration will benefit banks in general, while pointing to Citi as particularly undervalued. Viacom Viacom was downgraded to "hold" from "buy" at Brean Capital, which questions the value of a possible combination between Viacom and CBS , as well as the probability that this will occur. Lockheed Martin Stifel upgraded the defense contractor to "buy" from "hold," based on expectations for defense spending under a Trump administration. Square The mobile payments company was upgraded to "overweight" from "sector weight" at Pacific Crest, based on the firm's bullish stance on mobile payments in general and Square's ability to increase profit margins and generate substantial cash flow. Europe's current obsession about the surprise election of Donald Trump could soon be eclipsed by a raft of elections across the continent, experts have told CNBC. "We will probably stay obsessed with Trump for a bit longer But we're eventually going to turn back to Europe, which is clearly where the future political risk in the future lie," Daniel Morrison, senior investment strategist at BNP Paribas, told CNBC on Monday. "The likelihood of populist parties gaining in Europe is now higher than it was before because of Trump, where that leads, who knows, but in addition to the elections we already now we will have in Germany, in France, and the Netherlands, who knows, we may have them in Italy, in the U.K., in Spain, all that is going to potentially weight on the markets," he added. At the start of next month, the future of the Italian government will be in the spotlight. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has proposed a referendum to change the country's constitution and warned he would resign if voters did not approve his changes. For the coming year, France, Germany and the Netherlands crucial countries in shaping the European Union will be under the spotlight early next year as they elect new leaders amid rising support for populist movements. Political instability in Spain, where a small minority government could struggle to pass legislation, and Brexit rivalries inside the U.K. could spark further concerns. Several EU leaders met Sunday evening to discuss what the victory of Donald Trump meant for Europe's political direction, but both Britain and France refused to attend the informal gathering. "The UK's Leave vote and Trump's election have left the EU struggling to find a unified and coherent voice," Lena Komileva, an economist at G+ Market economics, told CNBC via email. "At worst, the threat of the economic nationalism in France and Italy could threaten the EU's own survival. The markets are not pricing any of this yet, but this is the next big threat on the horizon," she added. It is difficult to predict how the relationship between the U.S. and the EU will unfold, including on trade and climate change. The first European politician President-elect Trump met was Nigel Farage, interim leader of the U.K. Independence Party, the driving force behind the British departure from the EU. "If Trump now wanted to look statesmanlike to Europe, receiving Farage was probably the worst thing he could to," Carl Bildt, the former Swedish Prime Minister said on Twitter. Tweet 1 It will take years of litigation to determine the meaning and boundaries of Marsy's law, prosecutors and defense attorneys say. "Were going to start uncovering those scenarios where the rights of the defendant are getting trampled on by the implications of Marsy's Law," said Jackson Lofgren, president of the North Dakota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Measure 3 which added more than a dozen crime victims' rights to the state constitution won handily on Tuesday with 62 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results, though it was opposed by the people charged with enforcing it, including police, prosecutors and victims' advocates. Similar measures also passed in South Dakota and Montana. Lofgren, a former prosecutor, said he expects defense attorneys to quickly begin challenging the measure in court, especially in misdemeanor cases and at bond hearings. The constitutional amendment expands the definition of a victim meriting services to include victims of theft and other misdemeanors, and possibly witnesses to crimes. It also gives victims the right to be heard at all hearings relating to a person's release and sentence. But bail hearings often happen just hours after an arrest, Lofgren notes. And many people accused of misdemeanors show up for their bail hearings and ask to plead guilty on the spot. Now, the question arises: What if the prosecutor can't get in touch with the victim before these fast-moving, critical decisions? "Those defendants are going to have to challenge, in state or federal court, that their constitutional rights are getting trampled on by the provisions of these vague Marsys Law provisions," Lofgren said. Prosecutors see these potential issues, as well, and are waiting on guidance from court decisions about what to do. "If we have a bond hearing in 15 minutes and can't get a hold of the victim, I dont know how the court can proceed with the hearing," said Richard Riha, Burleigh County State's Attorney. Riha is anticipating litigation over this, with different courts creating different rules around the state. He also expects the new provisions to slow the justice system and lead to defendants spending more nights in jail. "Prosecutors will have to say, what have I all done to make sure notification went out and (find out) if the person wants to speak to me," said Aaron Birst, executive director of the North Dakota State's Attorney's Association. In the longer-term, both groups anticipate legal battles around victims' new right to refuse information requests from defense attorneys. If a victim says he or she does not want to give a deposition relatively rare occurrences in criminal cases a prosecutor may be in the position of having to fight for that in court. McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson noted that victims may also take their rights into their own hands, bringing ethical and legal complaints when they think their rights have been violated. "You have those kind of people that will use the things in Marsys Law as a sledgehammer," he said, taking advantage of their new found rights to launch complaints against judges and prosecutors. Kathleen Wrigley, chairwoman for the measure and the wife of Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley, said Tuesday that she believed a constitutional amendment was the answer to laws protecting victims that are "arbitrarily ignored." "There have been so many victims that have told me their stories about not being heard at sentencings or parole hearings," she said. "They are afraid and they want their voice to be heard." Wrigley contends the new rules are clear, concise and tailored to North Dakota. "The discretion of law enforcement, defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges is not at all diminished or compromised by Marsys Law," she said. "The right to be heard doesnt mean or equate to the right to be believed, of course not." As it stands, Marsy's Law is set to go into effect on Dec. 8 and many in law enforcement and victim services are scrambling. A number of state's attorneys held a conference call Wednesday afternoon to discuss next steps, Birst said. As a start, they will begin printing flyers and cards to give victims about their rights. On Wednesday, the attorney general is hosting a meeting of prosecutors and law enforcement to discuss more substantial changes, he said. Riha said he began outlining a new plan for Burleigh County the day after the election. Fast notifications for victims of misdemeanor crimes is one of his most pressing concerns. The city attorney does not have his own victim advocate, and he said he may need more staff to shore up the new demands. "We dont have the manpower," he said. "We might have to make it up as we go along." Darla Juma, president of the North Dakota Victims Assistance Association, said her group also will meet this week to figure out next steps. And Burleigh County Sheriff Pat Heinert, who appeared in TV ads in favor of the measure, said he is developing a "Marsy's Card" with victims' rights outlined. Officers will be required to hand the card to crime victims and may undergo additional training on how to treat victims. But he's less worried than the attorneys. For officers interacting with crime victims, "Its going to add minutes; not a lot of time, he said. Chuck Smith, right, and Tripp Keber, the founders of Dixie Brands, in Denver, Nov. 7, 2016. The company makes Dixie Elixirs bottled beverages infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana as well as THC-infused chocolates, drops and topical lotions. Almost all small-business owners dream of the day when they can expand nationally. This has proved to be a unique challenge for those in the marijuana industry because the products they create are illegal under federal law, and the checkerboard of states that permit marijuana sales have complex and constantly changing regulations. Dixie Brands, a company in Denver that creates drinks and other products using marijuana, is aiming to navigate those hurdles and become one of the first companies in the industry to build a national presence. Voters on Tuesday brought that dream a little closer to reality. California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada approved adult-use (a new term for recreational use) marijuana. Florida, Arkansas, North Dakota and Montana voted to legalize or expand medical marijuanause. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia now have some sort of allowed use. More from The New York Times: Californians legalize marijuana in vote that could echo nationally Where cellphones are lifelines, start-ups spy opportunities Start-upsfor the end of life The legal cannabis industry is dominated by small businesses operating in individual states, so these new laws could open significant prospects for entrepreneurs. And for the companies that can figure out how to operate in multiple states, the opportunity is tremendous. GreenWave Advisors, a financial research and advisory firm based in New York, estimates that marijuana product sales in the United States will be $6.5 billion in 2016 and about $30 billion in 2021, if products derived from marijuana are legalized in all 50 states in some capacity. Chuck Smith and Tripp Keber, who founded Dixie Brands seven years ago, have been taking steps to be at the forefront of the growing market. The company makes Dixie Elixirs, bottled beverages infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. It also makes THC-infused chocolates, drops and topical lotions. All are sold at licensed recreational pot shops and medical marijuana dispensaries. Low-dose "awakening" and "relaxing" mints containing five milligrams of THC (half a serving) are among the company's top sellers. Most of the company's revenue comes from Colorado. Because of federal laws on controlled substances, one challenge to expansion is that products cannot cross state lines, so a pot brownie baked in Oregon, for example, cannot be sold in neighboring Washington, even though the product is legal in both places. Add the complications of financing as well as unique packaging, distribution and marketing laws for each state, and establishing a national brand seems daunting and expensive. Some states require marijuana businesses to be owned by in-state residents, further impeding multistate expansion. Also, because the industry is in its infancy, rules are changing constantly, including regulations governing packaging, food production and agriculture management. When Colorado recently required all marijuana food products to be stamped with a THC symbol, Dixie Brands had to create all new molds for its chocolates and discontinue their Dixie Roll product, which is similar to Tootsie Rolls, because it could not be stamped efficiently. The new rule requires a THC stamp on all packaging as well. "These changes are costly for small businesses," said Joe Hodas, chief marketing officer for the company. In addition, because of federal laws, marijuana companies cannot open bank accounts, cannot use credit cards and cannot deduct business expenses from their federal taxes. Giant safes full of cash and pickups by armored cars are the norm. Many companies in the marijuana industry had been started by product aficionados with little business experience. As legalization spreads, the industry is quickly drawing more business professionals, as evidenced by Mr. Smith and Mr. Keber, who began their endeavor with experience in corporate finance, marketing and management. When recreational marijuana joined medical marijuana as a legal market in Colorado in 2014, they were poised to expand Dixie Brands by adding to their line of products. Since that time, the number of employees has expanded from 20 to 100 and sales have increased about sixfold. Expanding beyond Colorado, however, has taken creativity. Two years ago, in their first move outside of the state, the pair found a licensing partner to produce Dixie products in California. After a year, the founders decided to take a more hands-on approach. "Our partner wanted to manufacture other companies' products as well as ours, and we wanted more focus on absolute quality and consistency," Mr. Smith said. "To have total legal, financial and operational control, we decided we would need to control the manufacturing and distribution facilities in any state we expanded to." To make this happen, Mr. Smith had to find a way to work within regulations that require owners of marijuana businesses to be residents of the state. He decided that Dixie Brands would own and run anything that did not "touch the plant" and therefore was not subject to local ownership regulations. A local partner would grow and process the marijuana, but only for Dixie Brands, and only under the company's strict instructions. Consistent product quality is critical, Mr. Smith said. "Coca-Cola in Denver and Seattle taste exactly the same, and we want Dixie Elixirs and our other products to have that reputation." Each new manufacturing site will cost about $2 million, according to Mr. Smith. The Dixie holding company will own and control a building that they will rent to the partner as well as the equipment that will be leased to them. All of the noncannabis raw materials and packaging, and the accounting, marketing and legal services, will be provided by Dixie Brands. The state-based partner will own the marijuana itself and employ the personnel who work with the marijuana in any form: plants, concentrates, finished products and the like. This will allow Dixie to control the business while maintaining a clear separation from the federally illegal aspect of it. That separation also protects their investors and gives the company flexibility to react to changing state and federal regulations. To finance the expansion, Mr. Smith says he has tapped a handful of investors from among the 30 who have funded his efforts over the last seven years. Those sources helped to open manufacturing facilities in Arizona and Nevada last month, and one is scheduled to open early next year in Washington State. For efficiency as it enters new locations, Dixie Brands follows the most stringent state's laws in each area of its operations. For example, Colorado has the strictest packaging requirements encompassing child-safety measures, clear dosing and single-serving packaging. The state also bans cartoon or other child-friendly images, and has many other regulations. Dixie Brands uses those packaging rules for the products they make in every state. "If it is safe enough for Colorado, it will work for the other states," Mr. Smith said. The company also uses the cleaner carbon dioxide extraction method to strip the oils from the plants instead of butane, even though it is not required everywhere. GroupMe, the Microsoft -owned messaging app that was used for a racist cyberbullying attack last week at the University of Pennsylvania, said it removed the messages instantly and is investigating the case. A number of black freshman students at Pennsylvania was targeted on Friday from a GroupMe account in Oklahoma. Multiple publications, including Philly.com, said the students were added to a list that referenced lynching in the subject and came from users with names like "Daddy Trump." GroupMe, which is part of Microsoft's Skype unit, lets users send out group messages from their phones for free. "As soon as we became aware of the chats taking place on GroupMe which violated our terms of service, we took action and removed the chats," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mailed statement Sunday night. "We're investigating to determine which user accounts will be suspended." Since Republican Donald Trump, a graduate of Penn's Wharton School of Business, won the presidential election, there have been numerous protests across the country, opposing his expressed views on immigrants, minorities and women. The antiglobalization sentiment that heavily influenced the U.S. presidential election and Brexit makes it essential to accelerate global interest in entrepreneurship, according to a report released today. The 2017 edition of the Global Entrepreneurship Index, which is being released today in connection with the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week, has found there is a "race to the top," with leaders passionate about economic growth driving their countries' efforts to foster entrepreneurship, according to Jonathan Ortmans, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship, and president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, which produces the index with the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute in Washington, D.C. However, it is important to continue to democratize entrepreneurship, given "rising nationalism driving a nationalistic movement sweeping America and the European Union as countries threaten to tighten their borders and reexamine free trade, the report says. There is a strong correlation between a country's score in the index and its GDP and a country's digital evolution, according to the report, which found that improving the conditions that support entrepreneurship by 10 percent could add $22 trillion to the global GDP. "It's all about competing for job creation and economic growth," Ortmans said. The GEW this year ranked 155 countries on the health of their entrepreneurial ecosystem. The top 10 countries, ranked by the quality of entrepreneurship and the extent and depth of their supporting global ecosystems, are (1) the United States, (2) Switzerland, (3) Canada, (4) Sweden, (5) Denmark, (6) Iceland, (7) Australia, (8) the U.K., (9) Ireland and (10) the Netherlands. Switzerland, which was in eighth place last year, saw the most dramatic rise among the countries in the top 10, with its score driven by the quality of local start-ups and "very strong" scores in high-growth firms, product innovation and the application of new technologies. Both China and India, where the middle class is growing, also saw significant growth. China jumped 12 places on the list, to No. 48, while India landed at No. 69, rising by 29 places. "The good news for the global economy is both China and India are strengthening their entrepreneurial ecosystem," given their large populations, said Zoltan Acs, a professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and founder and president of the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI). Together India and China are home to more than one-third of the world's population. Belize, a nation on the eastern coast of Central America that is suffering from high unemployment and a heavy foreign-debt burden, suffered the biggest decline in its score, dropping 36 points to No. 113 on the list. Argentina, struggling with weak economic growth and high unemployment, saw the second biggest drop, diving 22 spots to No. 83. The bottom of the list was dominated by developing countries. Chad, an African country that is heavily dependent on volatile oil revenue and plagued by corruption, was No. 137, in last place on the list. Public sector embraces entrepreneurship This year 169 countries are celebrating GEW, with 10,000 people expected to take part in 35,000 events, activities and competitions. U.S. embassies and consulates are planning and participating in events in 75 countries to help strengthen their economies. The events will culminate in a finale in Cork, Ireland, at the Startup Nations Summit, where a new tool will be unveiled to help policymakers around the globe share innovative policies and programs that are helping entrepreneurs start high-impact companies. "We're now seeing a much larger number of public-sector leaders government at the national and local level jumping in and asking, `How do we tackle this and build stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems?' whether from rudimentary things like business regulations improvement, focusing on an R&D innovation agenda, a more sophisticated way to raise early stage financing or high-skilled immigration," said Ortmans. "They are all now experimenting. That is having a bigger impact on early stage entrepreneurship." Some new developments include U.S. government plans to form a policy staff secretariat to host a ministerial summit on entrepreneurial growth each March, as well as the expansion of Startup Nations communities around the world. One percolating trend has been greater interest among entrepreneurs in entering highly regulated industries, such as health care, energy and education, to solve problems in those sectors, according to Ortmans. "This army of entrepreneurs is putting themselves to work on new problems," he said. "The new problems are the much harder ones to crack." We're now seeing a much larger number of public-sector leaders government at the national and local level jumping in and asking, `How do we tackle this and build stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems?' Jonathan Ortmans senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation How enterprising innovators are rushing to fill unexploited niches varies with the opportunities they spot across borders. With the drought crisis afflicting many countries, William Janssen, 48, a Dutch entrepreneur who lives in Dubai, saw an opportunity to help. The mechanical engineer and his team came up with Desolenator, a solar-powered device for purifying water from any source, including seawater. His company, based in the U.K., is looking to launch its product in California and one other market next year. "We have a very experienced international team of people who have worked across several continents," said Janssen, whose company won the Startup Open competition, part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, last year. "That is a prerequisite for us to be successful in our line of work." Geert Slachmuylders, founder of Turbulent, an Antwerp-based start-up that created a micro-hydropower plant that provides clean energy, speaks at The Pitch, a live pitch competition during the 2015 Startup Nations Summit in Monterrey, Mexico. Source: GED Many of these globalists aim to help solve big societal issues. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. student John Lewandowski, 26, is bringing innovation to the world of medical diagnostics. He is CEO and founder of Disease Diagnostic Group, a six-person start-up based in Boston and Buffalo, New York, that has developed a device for the rapid assessment of malaria. The company, a finalist in last year's Startup Open competition, has so far tested the device about the size of an iPhone case in India and is looking to do larger clinical trials in Nigeria and Singapore later this year. "Getting the first prototype out there was challenging from a global perspective," says Lewandowski. To cover the costs, Disease Diagnostic Group has funded its work largely through grants and the winnings from start-up competitions, raising $1.5 million to $1.75 million in non-equity cash to date, according to Lewandowski. So far, its efforts are paying off. The company, which started about two years ago, expects $150,000 to $200,000 in revenue this year, says Lewandowski. "To have positive revenue at this point is definitely something that not a lot of start-ups have," he said. The entrepreneurship movement is growing in all parts of the globe, thanks to emissaries who promote the benefits of start-up creation as a trigger for economic growth. To encourage thought leadership in this field, the Global Entrepreneurship Network will this be awarding the Startup Nations Award for Groundbreaking Policy Thinking at the Startup Nations Summit in Cork, Ireland, on Nov. 19. In addition to Zoltan Acs at GEDI, the finalists include Caleb Carr, 22, who started a nonprofit called Students for Intellectual Property Rights while studying at University of Colorado. His group lobbies to prevent universities from taking ownership of student start-ups created on their property and has provided legal help to students trying to defend their stake. Companies such as Google , Snapchat and Facebook faced challenges on this front. "Universities have realized students can have the next big app or little piece of technology that can make millions," said Carr. "Universities want a piece of that." President Barack Obama said Monday that President-elect Donald Trump had expressed a "great interest" in maintaining America's core strategic relationships. Those continued relations include U.S. participation in NATO, Obama indicated during a news conference at the White House. "In my conversation with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships, and so one of the messages I will be able to deliver is his commitment to NATO and the Transatlantic alliance," Obama said. "There is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship, and a recognition that those alliances aren't just good for Europe, they're good for the United States and they're vital for the world." Obama also reflected on Trump's upcoming transition into the White House, saying the presidency is bigger than any one person. When asked about Trump's appointment of Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist, Obama said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on every appointment the president-elect starts making. When pressed on how he thought Trump would perform as the 45th U.S. president, Obama struck an optimistic tone, "He's sincere in wanting to be a successful president," Obama said. "I think he's going to try as best he can to make sure he delivers." The president said issues raised by Trump during his campaign, such as immigration and trade, have to be approached differently when governing than when campaigning. "We do need to make sure that we have an orderly, lawful immigration process, but that if it is orderly and lawful, immigration is good for our economy," Obama said. "It keeps this country young, it keeps it dynamic." When asked if he has any concerns about a Trump presidency, Obama said he "absolutely" has concerns. He added that he doesn't think Trump is ideological, but is ultimately pragmatic, which is something that can serve him well as long as he has good people around him and a clear sense of direction. Obama will depart today for his final foreign trip as president, visiting Greece for the first time, Germany and Peru. This is breaking news. Please check back for updates. President Barack Obama offered some prescriptions for his own Democratic Party on Monday, suggesting that maybe this year's campaigners had not focused enough on the grassroots. Democrats, the president implied, should be able to win over more Americans, if only they would get out more into the rest of the country. "I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them. And one of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere," Obama said. "We have to work at a grassroots level, something that's been a running thread through my career." Democrats were unable to win majorities in the House or the Senate, and presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suffered a surprising defeat to Republican Donald Trump. Obama cited his own career successes in explaining what successful grassroots campaigning looks like. "I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa, it was because I spent 87 days going to every small town, and fair, and fish fry, and VFW hall. And there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points," Obama explained. "There're some counties that maybe I won that people didn't expect because people had a chance to see you and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for." So, Obama said, the challenge facing the Democrats "is how do you dig in there and create those kinds of structures so that people have a sense of what it is that you stand for." Samsung Electronics said on Monday it had agreed to buy Harman International Industries for about $8 billion, a leader in connected car solutions, for about $8 billion, marking a major push into the auto-related technology. Harman shares rose more than 25 percent in premaket trade on Monday. Samsung said in a statement it will acquire Harman for $112.00 per share in cash, which represents a premium of 28 percent to Harman's Friday closing price. It said the deal would "give Samsung a significant presence in the large and rapidly growing market for connected technologies, particularly automotive electronics, which has been a strategic priority." The deal comes at a time when Samsung's mobile phone business has been hit hard by the disastrous withdrawal of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7. Underscoring Samsung's interest in the auto sector, the electronics giant has had talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles over a potential sale or partnership for its Magneti Marelli auto parts maker, sources have said. Steve Bannon, former president of the incendiary Breitbart News and more recently chief executive of Trump's campaign, is taking on a role as Donald Trump's "chief strategist and senior counselor." Bannon's new position was listed above the announcement of RNC chair Reince Priebus as Trump's new chief of staff on a statement issued Sunday. It said Bannon and Priebus would be "equal partners." More from NBC News: Trump's Pick of Bannon as Chief Strategist Sparks Backlash Presidential Campaign Brings the Alt-Right Out of Shadows Prosecutor Probes Trump Campaign CEO Bannon's Voter Record There was no shortage of reaction. Evan McMullin, who ran for the White House as an independent and won 21 percent of the vote in Utah: Evan McMullin tweet John Weaver, a top strategist for Ohio Governor John Kasich: John Weaver tweet Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League: Jonathan Greenblatt tweet Greenblatt praised Trump's choice of Priebus, but bashed Bannon's new role. "It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the 'alt-right' a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the 'people's house,'" he added. Joel Pollak, who worked for Bannon at Breitbart: Joel Pollak tweet Pollak told NBC News that the soon-to-be White House chief strategist was not anti-Semitic, racist or anti-woman. He called Bannon a champion of a diverse range of conservative voices. Marion Le Pen, the granddaughter of the founder of France's far-right National Front party: Marion Le Pen tweet The Council on American-Islamic Relations: CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad that Bannon's appointment adds fuel to the fire of racial and ethnic hatred and division in America. "The appointment of Stephen Bannon as a top Trump administration strategist sends the disturbing message that anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and White nationalist ideology will be welcome in the White House," Awad added. "We urge President-elect Trump to reconsider this ill-advised appointment if he truly seeks to unite Americans." CAIR National tweet The organization said Bannon "promoted conspiracy theories that "paint a dark and paranoid picture" of American Muslims. Breitbart News traffics in misogynistic and racist stories targeting women, people of color and immigrants." A spokesman for Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader: "President-elect Trump's choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump's White House," Adam Jentleson said. "It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide ... Sworn testimony in a court case alleged that Bannon committed violent domestic abuse and stated that he 'didn't want the girls going to school with Jews.'" Scot Vorse, a longtime friend and ex-business partner of Bannon: Vorse drew a distinction between what he described as Bannon's inclusive personal views and Breitbart's "provocative" ones. The Southern Poverty Law Center: The Southern Poverty Law Center tweet U.K.-based journalist Andre Walker: Andre Walker tweet The New York Observer columnist added that Bannon would be "superb" in his new position. "Within the context of risks caused by the incidents and of social tension, our citizens who live in the U.S., or who are considering travelling there, should be cautious," the ministry said in a statement. Turkey warned its citizens about travel to the United States on Saturday in response to what the foreign ministry called increasingly violent protests against President-elect Donald Trump. Demonstrators planned to gather again on Saturday in U.S. cities nationwide to protest against Trump, whose election they say poses a threat to their civil and human rights, a day after a protester was shot in Portland, Oregon. Last month, the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning on Turkey, ordering family members of consulate employees in Istanbul to leave the country, citing threats against U.S. citizens. There has been growing tension between the two NATO allies after repeated calls from Turkey to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for a failed coup in July. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday he hoped for an improvement in bilateral ties after Trump's victory, and again called for Gulen's extradition. SOUTH GLENS FALLS >> Thank you for your 29 years of service to New York State. Rest easy. We have the watch. The words rang out over a silent, grieving crowd at the Saratoga National Cemetery in Schuylerville on Monday before Trooper Timothy Pratt, a veteran of the New York State Police, was put to rest. He was 55. Hours prior, thousands gathered at the Saint Michaels Catholic Church in South Glens Falls to honor the fallen trooper, who died Oct. 26 after a vehicle struck him while he was assisting another driver. The incident occurred in front of the Wilton State Police barracks. A truck had pulled into a middle turning lane on Ballard Road, unsure of where they were going. Pratt had pulled into the Ballard Road Elementary School driveway and walked over to the truck to assist. Upon stepping down from the truck, Pratt was hit by the oncoming car. This unexpected tragedy has brought together not only the Capital Region community, but the law enforcement community throughout the country. Members of law enforcement agencies from across New York and beyond gathered Monday to remember one of their own. Gov. Andrew Cuomo was also among those who attended. While Pratt was a nearly 30-year veteran of the force, he was known for so much more than his badge and his duty. Aside from family, close friends and the law enforcement community, members of the Harley Owners Group also paid their respects. According to friend of the family Judy Provo, Pratt was an avid Harley-Davidson enthusiast, and would lead the Americade motor-rally from Albany to New York City each year. Hes going to be missed, Provo said. I dont think they could have fit everyone in here who knew him. Great guy, but he wont be forgotten. They couldnt fit everyone who knew him, or didnt know him. Those who didnt know him personally, like Harley Owners Group members Jack Herring and Robert Twilley, still showed their support. It is a testament to just how much Pratt was respected in various communities. In his passing, those communities have become one. Its impressive to see motorcycles and officers from all over the country, Twilley said. Provo has a stronger connection to Pratt and his family, as both her and Pratts fathers were troopers together. Pratts late father, Edward Pratt, retired from NYS Police in 1970 as a zone sergeant in Troop G, the same troop that Pratt spent his entire career. He was always smiling, Provo said. Was always the first to help anybody, to do anything. If it had to be done, dont ask, because hed be thereits a great loss to the community. Pratt is survived by his fiancee, Susan Clark, and three children, James, 31, Sarah, 29, and Shane, 27. Provo, despite the somberness of the day, was happy to talk about her late friend. Talking about people keeps them alive, Provo said. Memories do keep people alive, as long as you talk about them. Did Pope Francis just publicly endorse Communism? Recent comments have prompted many to suggest he has. During an interview with Eugenio Scalfari, they had the following exchange: [Scalfari:] You told me some time ago that the precept, Love your neighbour as thyself had to change, given the dark times that we are going through, and become more than thyself. So you yearn for a society where equality dominates. This, as you know, is the programme of Marxist socialism and then of communism. Are you therefore thinking of a Marxist type of society? [Francis:] It it has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians. Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom (emphasis added) Actons director of research, Samuel Gregg, suggests that theres something else going on. In a recent article for The Stream, he begins: Marxists, Marxist ideas and Marxist regimes have brought death and destruction to millions. Yet according to Pope Francis, if anything, the communists think like Christians. Whats going on here? He goes on to note that though some have accused the Pope of Marxist sympathies, that is simply not true: For one thing, Francis has specified that Communism is a mistaken idea. Back in a 2013 interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, the pope stated that Marxist ideology is wrong. Likewise, the Argentine home-grown theology of the people which has influenced Franciss thought explicitly rejects Marxist philosophy and analysis. Nor has Francis hesitated to canonize Catholics martyred by Communist regimes. Hes even conferred a cardinals hat upon an Albanian priest, Father Ernest Troshani Simoni, who was twice sentenced to death by Enver Hoxhas dictatorship one of the very worst Communist regimes. These arent the words or actions of a Communist fellow-traveler or apologist. Rather than offering a ringing endorsement for Communism and Marxism, Gregg offers this interpretation of the popes remarks: One possible interpretation of the popes words about Communism is that they reflect his belief that some people are drawn to Marxism because they regard Communism as being on the side of the worlds underdogs. During a 2015 interview, the pope suggested that Communists were, in a way, closet Christians. They had stolen, he said, the flag of the poor from Christians. These themes resurfaced in a more recent interview of Francis this time conducted by the self-described atheist, the 92 year-old Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari. Caution is advised when reading any of Scalfaris interviews. Scalfaris renditions of his conversations with prominent figures are based on memory rather than notes or recordings. Thats bound to raise questions about the veracity of whats written (not to mention the prudence of talking to Scalfari, but thats a different matter). Scalfaris questions are also designed to encourage the pope to make controversial remarks. In most cases, Francis politely deflects them. Gregg points out that communism, by definition, is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity: In the first place, Marxism is rooted in atheism and philosophical materialism. Christianity is not. Thats a rather fundamental and irreconcilable difference. Second, virtually all Marxist thinkers and practitioners Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, etc. hold that the ends justifies the means. Small o orthodox Christianity, with its insistence upon moral absolutes which admit of no exception, specifically refutes that claim. Third, Marxism, Marxists and Marxist movements dont see the poor as Christianity does: i.e., as human beings who need to be loved and assisted. Instead Communism views the poor like all human beings as simply moving-parts of the dialectics of history. The economically less-well off, from a Marxist standpoint, have no intrinsic worth by virtue of their poverty or status as human beings. Such a materialist and instrumentalist perspective is light-years away from Christianitys view of those in poverty and human beings more generally. The problem, according to Gregg, is that while Pope Francis is no Marxist, his imprecision with language lends itself to generating the type of confusion thats arisen from this interview. So too does the popes tendency to conflate economic equality with poverty, which occurs in several places in the interview. But poverty and inequality are not, Gregg points out, the same thing. He concludes with this thought: One of Pope Franciss many paradoxes is that, while he consistently and rightly denounces any idolatry of wealth and the type of materialist mindset which reduces everything to economics, the pope often articulates curiously economistic explanations for the worlds ills. Material poverty is something all Christians must be committed to working to reduce. Lets not pretend, however, that Christians and Marxists think the same way about poverty or equality for that matter. The simple truth is that they dont. Read Does Pope Francis really believe that Communists think like Christians? at the Stream The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Foundation adds another $25M to Kinder Institute The Kinder Foundation is giving the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy another $25 million, bringing its total to $60 million. Donna James Leads a Bold Plan to Revive Victorias Secret James has a proven record as a C-suite executive and adviser. Now, shes guiding the lingerie giant toward a more inclusive, financially sound future. When you show someone Apple's new 13-in MacBook Pro -- the one with the virtual Touch Bar -- the first thing they'll want to do is play with the darn thing. They'll adjust the screen brightness or turn up the volume. Launch some apps to see the virtual buttons change. And slide their fingers along it to see how it feels. And they'll probably agree that, as innovations go, this is one cool update to a laptop line that was long overdue for an upgrade. But that's not the only big change to the 13-in. model that I've just unboxed -- or the larger 15-in. models due to arrive later this week. Here's what would-be buyers eyeing the new MacBook Pro are most likely to notice. The Space Gray aluminum body is flat-out gorgeous, and marks a welcome break from aluminum-and-black look of previous models. The Retina screen is not just brighter, but shows more saturated colors than any Retina screen I've used. (For the first time, I had to turn the brightness down a couple of notches.) The keyboard is, well, different. It's flatter, shallower and has a hollow-sounding "click" when keys are pressed. The Trackpad, where you spend a lot of time navigating through apps, clicking and pinching and swiping, is indeed huge compared to previous models. Oh, and there are exactly four ports -- two on each side -- and an old-school audio jack. The USB-C-style Thunderbolt 3 ports represent a leap into the future, and they mean you're almost certainly going to need adapters to connect up older peripherals, whether it's an external monitor, a backup drive, an external keyboard or even a thumbnail drive. (There's a reason .) But it's the Touch Bar, which Apple execs highlighted when the new MacBook Pros were unveiled on Oct. 27, that sets this laptop apart from earlier models. The Touch Bar replaces the function keys at the top of the keyboard with a lighted strip that dynamically changes depending on what application you're using. It also returns to the MacBook Pro something that's been missing from Macs in recent years: fun. By combining the company's usual attention to detail and design with a bit of whimsy, the Touch Bar showcases technology in a way that makes you want to discover just what happens when you use it. The Touch Bar and Touch ID Nestled at the top of the keyboard where the function keys used to be, the new Touch Bar is the design change for this generation of MacBook Pros. (There is also the 13-in model with normal function keys.) And it really is useful -- though it's going to require retraining some muscle memory to get the most out of it in day-to-day use. The Touch Bar is essentially a thin, horizontal, full-color OLED touch screen that offers various functions that change as you move through apps or macOS Sierra. (The display is 2170 x 60 pixels, and is set up so that the optimum viewing angle is 45 degrees.) Select the desktop with your cursor, and the Touch Bar lets you do things like increase and decrease the screen brightness or audio, access Siri or skip through the tracks playing in iTunes. Launch the Mail program and you can tap the Touch Bar to start a new email, reply to someone, file an email or mark something as junk. It even suggests words based on the context of what you're writing, just as iOS does on the iPhone when sending texts and emails. The TouchBar also allows you to tap a virtual button and then use it as a slider (such as when changing the screen brightness). Functions change instantly and the Touch Bar is always well-lit (there's no separate brightness control for it). The finish makes it feel like one of the keys on the keyboard -- albeit a very, very wide one. You can even customize it by dragging icons from the display to the Touch Bar. Ken Mingis The Touch Bar can be customized by dragging and dropping "key" icons from the screen to the keyboard. So it's cool, and it works as billed. But is it useful? Yes, although in limited ways at the moment. Once more apps are updated to take advantage of it -- Microsoft has already said it plans to do just that with its Office suite -- it'll be even more useful. So it has great potential, as long as you remember to use it fully. Touch ID is useful in a different way. Integrated at the right-side end of the Touch Bar, it works pretty much as Touch ID works on the iPhone or iPad. You hold your finger on the sensor until it reads your fingerprint pattern, and then you can use it to unlock your MacBook Pro or make online purchases. Setting it up is simple, and it's worked every time I've used it (though I haven't tried to authenticate any purchases with it yet). Ken Mingis The Touch Bar points to the Touch ID button to remind you it can be used to unlock the computer. And The Touch ID button also doubles as a Power button. You don't need it, since the MacBook Pro comes on when you raise the screen. But in the event of a crash requiring a hard restart, you just hold down the Touch ID button for 16 seconds. Screen, keyboard and trackpad Apple didn't spend a lot of time talking up the new Retina display last month, but its execs should have. The screen is noticeably better than the one in the last-generation MacBook Pro. The scaled resolution is unchanged in the 13-in. model, meaning it's still 1680 x 1050 pixels. But the brighter screen and the wider P3 color gamut deliver vibrant colors and incredibly sharp text. Apple says the new screen is 67% brighter, offers 67% greater contrast -- and yet it's also more energy efficient. To me it looks like the difference between a high-end 4K TV (last-year's MacBook Pro) and an OLED 4K TV (this new one). The difference is that dramatic. As for the keyboard, I'm a little less celebratory. This is the second generation of the one that debuted on the smaller MacBook last year. It has a butterfly mechanism that allows the keys to be shallower (and consequently lets Apple slim down the laptop's thickness by several millimeters). The key travel is flatter than in the past, and it's going to take some getting used to. I'm certainly able to type as fast as before, and the full-size keyboard has keys with individual LEDs that light up in the dark. That means there's no light bleed around them, and make for an upscale, polished look. But the clicky sound of the keys is louder than I'm used to, and undercuts the design. If noisy keys bug you, type on one before you buy. They should appear in Apple stores in the next week or so. Ken Mingis The oversized keys are backllit with individual LEDs. Here, the Touch Bar shows some of the options when Mail is open. Note also the oversized trackpad. As for the new Trackpad, it's huge -- roughly 50% larger than in the past. That allows you to more easily use pinch and scroll motions to navigate through the OS and apps. And Apple's palm-rejection software seems to work just fine. I have yet to have a problem where resting my hand on the trackpad led to unwanted input. All USB-C, all the time One of the big concerns for would-be buyers involves Apple's decision to do away with the various ports. USB-A, SD card slots, Ethernet, display ports -- they're all gone, replaced here with the USB-C ports. Sure, the audio jack means you can use your old headphones (or wireless ones), but even something as simple as connecting an iPhone or iPad to sync with the laptop requires an adapter. That mismatch is rather un-Apple-like. That said, the ports are Thunderbolt 3 port, meaning they can carry up to 40Gbps of data and you connect any device to any port. Want to plug in the charging cable on the right side instead of the left? (I do.) You're in luck. You can also connect multiple external monitors. But if you have a lot of peripherals -- anything from an external display to a backup drive or keyboard -- you'll need an adapter. That may explain to drop prices on the various adapters and dongles it sells. As for me, I only ever plug in my Time Machine backup drive, an iPhone and an iPad. And I already have a mini-port replicator that allows me to connect to USB-C. The port issue matters to potential buyers, but I wouldn't let it stop you from getting the new MacBook Pro. The line-up and specs Apple actually unveiled three new MacBook Pros last month. There are two models with the Touch Bar -- the 13-in. and 15-in. versions -- and a 13-incher that has traditional function keys. That latter model has two USB-C ports instead of four, but otherwise offers all of the other updates; it won plaudits from Computerworld's Michael deAgonia. If you don't care about the Touch Bar, that's the Pro for you. Plus, it starts at $1,499 -- a full $300 less than this model. If you do want the Touch Bar, you're going to pay. The least expensive MacBook Pro with it (the one I've been using) starts at $1,799. The cheapest 15-in. model is $2,399; like this one, it comes with just 256GB of storage. You can also custom-order a MacBook Pro and get a slightly faster processor and up to 2TB of SSD-based storage. Or you can spend $2,799 and get 512GB of storage, a faster quad-core i7 processor and a slightly better Radeon Pro graphics card. That's the one I bought for myself. All 13-in. models start with 8GB of RAM, but for $200 more, you can double that to 16GB; all 15-in. models come with 16GB of RAM. That's more than enough for what most people will need, but it has prompted concerns among some users about whether it will be enough in a few years. (Given the memory compression in macOS Sierra, I expect it to be just fine down the road, but your mileage may vary.) If you want to max out a MacBook Pro, you can opt for a speedier processor (the dual-core i5 in the 13-in. model maxes out at 3.3GHz; the quad-core i7 in the 15-in. model tops out at 2.9GHz); upgrade the GPU; and get a 2TB SSD. It'll cost you $4,299, plus tax. Spend wisely. Ken Mingis The Touch Bar also shows tabs when Safari is in use and you can select them with a quick tap. Odds, ends and final thoughts The launch of this year's MacBook Pro caused a lot of consternation among the Mac faithful, with complaints focused on higher prices, the wholesale move to USB-C, storage limits on entry-level models and a 16GB ceiling on RAM. Those latter two prompted my colleague, Computerworld freelance writer Michael deAgonia, to go on an extended rant during my "Mingis on Tech" show. (See the video below.) He's not alone; columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has doubts as well. Other non-buyers are upset that the traditional Apple start-up chime is gone (no longer needed since the MacBook Pro powers up as you raise the lid); some also lament the loss of the lighted Apple on the backside of the display. Still others wanted more powerful GPU cards. Those are generally valid concerns -- I'll miss the familiar Mac start-up BOING -- but they miss the larger point. By its nature, any laptop design involves compromises. Thin and light means less room for a big battery (or different ports). A faster CPU or GPU could mean more heat. A different keyboard means added thickness. And on and on. Even so, Apple says that sales of the new model have been brisk, and delivery dates are already stretching into December. So someone is buying these things. Just take a look at excited buyers on this Macrumors forum trying to figure out when their new laptops will arrive. (The 15-in. model I ordered 10 minutes after the Oct. 27 event ended is set to arrive Thursday. I got the shipping notice yesterday.) Having spent a few days with the smaller MacBook Pro, I'm confident I made the right choice. The new look, updated internals, the super-bright screen and the innovative Touch Bar all deliver in spades. Battery life seems to match Apple's 10-hour estimate. The SSD drive really is super speedy. That being the case, I'm curious to see whether deAgonia changes his tune after he's had some time with a 15-in. Touch Bar model for his upcoming review. Samsung may be down, but its not out it seems deeply committed to the mobile industry and this morning announced a new deal to take on Cupertino: an $8 billion purchase of Harman International. Drive by If this deal goes through it will be the biggest acquisition Samsungs made. Its biggest was apparently an $800 million purchase of AST. The investment means it has bought itself the chance to become a big cheese in future automotive systems, a direct challenge to Apples CarPlay and to Google Auto. CarPlay is already in use by over 40 automakers with numerous vehicles now being made available with it built-in. Apples worked hard to achieve such scale, but now it looks like Samsung has bought it in one -- Harman reached major deals with Fiat Chrysler and General Motors, has $24 billion of orders booked and its equipment is already in use in 30 million cars. The plan Samsung says Harmans experience designing and integrating sophisticated in-vehicle technologies, as well as its long-term relationships with most of the worlds largest automakers, will create significant growth opportunities for the combined business. Samsung hopes to bring its knowledge, experience and distribution channels to the deal. It seems pretty clear that Samsung is now as keen on getting into the connected car segment as Apple has reportedly been. It even created an automotive business division last year, and recently invested in Chinese automaker, BYD. "The vehicle of tomorrow will be transformed by smart technology and connectivity in the same way that simple feature phones have become sophisticated smart devices over the past decade," Young Sohn, Samsung's president and chief strategy officer, said in a statement. Android hurt too Will it be good news for Googles in-car Android plans? I dont think so. I imagine Samsung will use connected vehicles as an inflection point through which to increase the presence of its own open source OS, Tizen. It knows it must create its own unique identity if it wants to build a sustainable position in mobile and it doesnt have that with Android, as everyone offers the same thing and competes on price. Apples uncertainty Its unclear what kind of an impact the move will have on Apple. Apple and Harman have an extensive history, way back at the turn of the century Apple CDO, Jony Ive, designed the iSub subwoofer system to accompany the Harman Kardon Sound Sticks. I seem to recall these were designed on the back of a napkin at a meeting, but this may well be apocryphal. Apple may want to consider that by entering the automotive market with CarPlay and Apple Car it may have created a competitor from an ally. Looking forward Apples continued attempt to expand across multiple industries means it is creating competition in every space in which it operates. This could be great for consumers who should benefit from a range of cutting edge product designs, but Apple wont win in every sector. I presume that Tim Cooks company right now is pushing at every boundary in its attempt to identify those it can shift. Meanwhile, it looks like Apple and Samsung are taking their competition to the streets, quite literally. Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and join the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple? Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know when fresh items are published here first on Computerworld. Nadhim Zahawi is a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and MP for Stratford On Avon. The idea of a President Donald Trump is met with a mixture of anxiety and confusion in Britain. It is safe to say that if this election had been held in the UK, with the same two candidates and their same policy platforms, Clinton would have won a landslide. The wilder and more surprising pronouncements that Trump has made during this campaign have been widely and breathlessly reported in this country, with many policies that would never be considered by political leaders in the UK. These have included advocating torture, suggesting the carpet bombing of ISIS and targeting their family members, banning people from the country on the basis of their religion and starting a trade war with China, among others. That is why most people in the UK could not see any other result than a safe Hillary Clinton win, and now cannot understand why anyone would vote for a man advocating these policies. But when we view this election through the prism of hindsight, it becomes clear that its result was a classic case of its the economy, stupid and a desire for change, as swathes of the traditionally Democrat voting areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan turned red. Weve heard regularly in the last few days about the left behind voters in the Rust Belt, and we will hear more about them as analysts delve deeper into the data, but the reality is a simple one. These voters grew up in factory towns, where the local steel mill or car plant has provided solid, steady and skilled employment for generations, but have now been shut down. They havent seen the owners go bankrupt or the companies go out of business: instead, they just hear about new factories opening up in Mexico. They then hear various Governments and politicians over a number of years, including Clinton, talking about the benefits of free trade, and they have seen only the downside. The reality is that free trade does provide huge national benefits, but it is no argument to someone who has lost their job and 100 per cent of their income, that this has helped national GDP growth move along at two or three per cent. Trump came along as a politician who offered them something new: he claimed he would rip up trade deals like NAFTA and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal. He is now rumoured to be planning the largest economic stimulus in American history. If youre one of these workers, why wouldnt you vote for the candidate offering that opportunity? If youre working in a minimum wage job after years of skilled, well paid labour, or if youve been unemployed for years, then why not give it a chance? As Trump himself said: What the hell do you have to lose? Arguments that his disruption of free trade, or inexperienced management of the economy will only make things worse, are much less convincing to those who already believe they have lost it all. The desire for change also spread to the middle classes, too, with the poor implementation of Obamacare, and Trumps has promised to change the system. Many workers saw their insurance premiums going through the roof, and in some cases have experienced a decrease in service too. Even those who previously considered themselves financially comfortable have suddenly found themselves struggling to get by, or have been willing to risk a fine rather than pay the insurance premium. The overall policy is the right one, and much needed; but its poor implementation has undermined its popularity. Importantly, Trump has now suggested he will maintain important sections of Obamacare, including banning insurance companies from refusing applicants with pre-existing health conditions. It remains to be seen how it will be possible to remove the bad parts of Obamacare while preserving the beneficial aspects, but once again Americans wanted to vote for the candidate who promised to give it a go. Voter in the U.S, like their counterparts in the UK, are concerned about immigration. However, just as over here, it is not the most important issue. For the most part people want to have control over the rules of immigration, and they want these rules to be stuck to if they are not, after all, then that undermines the whole immigration system. This is where the desire for more border security comes from in America. In 2012, the Department for Homeland Security estimated that there were 11.4 unauthorised migrants in the country. In 2014, the Border Patrol reported apprehending 486,651 inadmissible non citizens, with 99 per cent of these cases occurring on the south-west border with Mexico. It is easy to write these concerns off as racism (as Matthew Parris among others has done), and indeed there will be racists taking advantage but many of those who switched to Trump had previously voted for Obama. The majority of voters just want control of the numbers of people who enter the country, and want to decide on the criteria they must match. When hundreds of thousands of people are trying to get into the country outside of the legal structures in place, you can understand why many desire better and more permanent physical obstructions. Again, the giant cost and engineering difficulty of Trumps wall will, most likely, cause his vision to be compromised, but voters want action to be taken. He offered that action. Clinton, perhaps inevitably, became the continuity candidate always a risk in any election. Not just because she was a Democrat following Obama, but because she was a career politician saying broadly what politicians from both parties have been saying on these subjects for decades. Her traditional approach made an ever-starker contrast with the unorthodoxy of Trump, and she came to rely on support from Barack and Michelle Obama to provide more personality on the campaign train. It wasnt enough. This is not about elites versus a man of the people. This is about understanding the real impacts on communities and what they want, rather than just listening to those who say a policy is working the question has to be: work for who? Trump spoke to these voters who have suffered economic pain, who had become frustrated with Government policy and who have been taken for granted for too long, and said: why not vote for me? Whatever your view of Trumps campaign and the policies he advocated, it is welcome to see him adopting a more pragmatic and consensual approach now that he stands on the threshold of office. And now that hes won our Government is right to set about building bridges, working together and strengthening the ties between our two countries. He is the President of the United States, so we must work together and create a new special relationship. I hope we will. As horrified members of the Establishment on both sides of the Atlantic struggled to come to terms with the prospect of President Donald Trump, the British Foreign Secretary had a message for his beloved European friends and colleagues: I think its time we snapped out of the general doom and gloom about the result of this election and the collective whinge-arama that seems to be going on in some places. One of Boris Johnsons strengths, displayed both in his journalism and in his politics, is the speed with which he reacts to a moving story. He saw that refusing to accept Trumps victory would be the height of stupidity. By coining a term unknown to diplomacy whinge-arama and refusing to attend yesterdays special EU meeting to discuss Trumps victory, Johnson advertised the British Governments welcome to the President elect. He had himself been extremely rude about Trump in the past, as when he remarked that Donald Trump is clearly out of his mind. But times have changed, and Johnson now points out that Trump wants to do a free trade deal with us, which is a great opportunity. The possibilities are not, however, all good. As Paul Goodman pointed out yesterday, Trump has cast the future of NATO into doubt. If isolationism triumphs in Washington, we could soon find ourselves needing to construct a new, European system of collective security. Foreign policy experts have cautioned in recent days that strategic differences between Europe and the United States could widen as a result of Trumps victory. So Johnson finds himself at the centre of events, which is exactly where he likes to be. He is deeply involved both in Brexit and in the linked question of how to handle Trump. The temptation presents itself to make an audacious bid to elbow Nigel Farage aside, and become Trumps best friend in Britain. When Harold Macmillan was Minister Resident at Allied Forces HQ in Algiers during the Second World War, he would describe to new arrivals from London, such as Richard Crossman, how to deal with the Americans, who under General Eisenhower were in overall command of the Anglo-American forces: We, my dear Crossman, are Greeks in this American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. We must run AFHQ as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius. Johnson will be well aware of this vainglorious analogy, made by his fellow classicist and Balliol man. One hopes he will also bear in mind the enthusiasm with which the Americans helped to wind up the British Empire. The Foreign Secretary revels in uncertainty. As he himself once told an interviewer, There comes a point when youve got to put the dynamite under your own tram tracksderail yourself. See what happens. His whole life has been a preparation for being unprepared. So at a time when scant preparation has been made for Trumps presidency or indeed for Brexit, and foreign policy cannot consist of business as usual, his temperament might be thought to suit him to be Foreign Secretary. Foreign policy experts tend, however, to find him a reprehensible figure. One former diplomat, whom I had always imagined to be a man of peace, said of Johnson, Id push him off his bike if I saw him in the street. The experts (at least those who have not actually worked with him) accuse him of lack of self-discipline, lack of content in his vapid assurances, insistence on seeing foreigners as raw material for jokes, the belief that he can bullshit because hes very bright, and the height of irresponsibility for drawing up no plan for Brexit. To them, he is the British version of Trump. Johnson has long been scorned by his opponents as a clown, but now they hate him for having persuaded the British people to vote No. In some ways, this is to Johnsons advantage. He is underestimated by his critics. They are determined to see him as flippant, unreliable and incompetent. But it makes writing about him rather difficult. For as soon as one suggests that this priggish, pedantic, hysterical onslaught on him is absurdly overdone, and he has the potential to become a great Foreign Secretary, one is liable to be dismissed as a mere apologist. While working on the first and most frivolous biography of him, Boris: The Adventures of Boris Johnson just updated to include the drama of the referendum and the 20 stirring days in which Theresa May became Prime Minister and Johnson Foreign Secretary I took care to include the evidence one would need to make the case both for and against him. When the book first came out, Johnson described it in a genial tone as rubbish, a verdict with which Michael Gove now concurs. It is heartening to find they can agree on something. The much wider question is whether as Foreign Secretary Johnson can win the respect of his critics. And here James Landale, diplomatic correspondent of the BBC, points to the possibility that Johnsons friends, or colleagues, could be more subversive than his enemies: Now every government has a court jester and Boris Johnson will never be able to escape that title. But his role in this government is crucial. He is there to convince the international community that Britain is not turning its back on the world post Brexit, that Britain has a positive role to play in global affairs. And to do that he needs to be taken seriously. Many foreign politicians and diplomats that I speak to tell me they are pleasantly surprised when they meet the Foreign Secretary for the first time. They talk of the man behind the caricature the cultured, over-educated intellectual who often speaks a bit of their language and who can be thoughtful when he is not gripped by banter. The problem is that many others who have not met the Foreign Secretary in person often still see him as a kind of upmarket Nigel Farage, a Eurosceptic clown with clout. So to do his job, Britains diplomat-in-chief needs every bit of credibility he can lay his hands on. He is already the butt of many jokes. The last thing he needs is his prime minister adding to the mirth. That was written after Johnson accepted an award from the Spectator. He diminished the envy people might feel of him by comparing himself with characteristically exaggerated self-deprecation to Michael Heseltines Alsatian dog, whose life had unexpectedly been spared, though only for a day. The Prime Minister seized the chance to remind him: Boris, the dog was put downwhen its master decided it wasnt needed any more. All very funny, and appropriate to the occasion, but can diplomacy be conducted in this style? Ten days ago, Johnson visited his German opposite number, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin. The BBC asked Steinmeier: I wonder, are you running out of patience with Britain? Johnson interjected: Hes not running out of patience, I can tell you. This sounded wrong, at once impertinent and defensive, for as Steinmeier himself avowed, he was not particularly amused by Johnsons decision to back Brexit. Members of the British foreign policy Establishment reckon Johnson has not got room for buffoonery now, and warn that he has not got much leeway with quite a large group of people. Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blairs chief of staff, observed after the American presidential election that Donald Trumps use of conciliatory words is a bit like listening to Boris Johnson trying to be serious its not really very convincing. Such condescending dismissiveness is widespread among the chattering classes. But it says more about them than it does about Johnson. If they could bring themselves to look at him in a fair-minded way, they would admit he is a humane practitioner of the long-established though always evolving tradition of British politics. They should be giving thanks that Brexit is in the hands of such a liberal-minded Conservative. Im sure Boris doesnt want to change his style, one elder statesman said, and Im sure he knows he has to do it. His habitual style, both in politics and in journalism, is to handle some grave theme in so light a manner that it does not weigh on the spirits of his audience. Comedy is placed at the service of a message which could be stated in its baldest form in a sentence or two, and is usually rather serious. Having reread many of his articles, I can confirm that very few of of them fail to make some thoughtful point, but that he has a compulsion to conceal the seriousness of his intent. As Gove once put it in a Portrait written for a collection of Johnsons journalism: The use of laughter as a tool of political seduction is the quintessential Johnson manoeuvre. So successful, or over-successful, is this Wodehousian camouflage that he is still widely seen as a Bertie Wooster figure. That is how he sounded in Michael & Boris: The Two Brexiteers, a radio play by David Morley broadcast on Wednesday of last week, with Alistair McGowan playing Johnson, and Gove portrayed as a disloyal version of Jeeves. Though capable of adapting his tone, learning from setbacks, and indeed preserving a diplomatic silence and veiling his intentions, Johnson is quite unfitted to adapt his style in order to become, in T.S. Eliots words, an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse He will never subside for very long into the monstrous verbiage, an affront to the wider public, in which foreign affairs are discussed by conventionally serious people. And where did wooing the Germans get David Cameron? For much of his Bloomberg speech, the then Prime Minister gazed directly at the German ambassador, whose approval clearly meant much to him. Cameron took enormous trouble, via Ed Llewellyn, to avoid offending Berlin by demanding too much, but in the end Angela Merkel was nothing like as helpful as the British had hoped. The dreary old EU orthodoxies the kind of thing Johnson has scoffed at for decades reasserted themselves, including a lot of pious and inflexible guff about the four freedoms, along with no sympathy for the national freedom to control ones own borders. Johnson is now in charge of a department which has suffered, with the popular vote to leave the EU, the most crushing blow to its world view and self-esteem since Sir Anthony Eden cut the Foreign Office out of his secret diplomacy and launched the Suez venture. On Johnsons first day at the office, he addressed the entire staff. He was then asked what lunch he would like to be brought to him in his grandiose room. He went instead to the canteen, a practice he has continued since, and which people really notice. Hierarchy is tempered by camaraderie. Vast quantities of paper descend on a Foreign Secretary, but Johnson calls in the officials who produce the paper and talks to them. He wants the people who work for him to enjoy themselves: an instinct which not all ministers possess, or are capable of showing. As one official puts it, The Foreign Office is like a labrador. If you show it a bit of love, it will be eternally loyal. And Boris has tickled its tummy very well. At the Conservative Party Conference, he delivered one of the few speeches worth listening to (here is the YouTube version), a grand survey of European history since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which began with a comic account of being told by his Russian opposite number: It was you guys who imposed democracy on us in 1990. The Foreign Secretary went on to insist (a frequent refrain) that we are not leaving Europe, and delivered a paean of praise to Britain as a soft power superpower, which went down so well that he elicited a cheer from the Conservatives in Birmingham for the BBC as the single greatest and most effective ambassador for our culture and our values. When Michael Cockerell profiled the Foreign Office, he interviewed Lord Renwick (Diplomatic Service 1963-95), who observed: The toughest negotiations any Foreign Secretary has are always with his own Prime Minister. Prime Ministers generally prefer to run foreign policy from Number Ten: one thinks not only of Eden but of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. On Brexit, this will undoubtedly be true of May, and David Davis will be determined to play his part too, as will Liam Fox. But if I were working in the Foreign Office, I think I would reckon that Johnson, with his irrepressible urge to be in the thick of it, has a better chance than some quieter, more diplomatic figure of averting the departments marginalisation. Johnsons mortal weakness in the recent leadership contest was that he failed to inspire trust, even from Gove, his companion in arms during the referendum. May won because she was seen as the most trustworthy candidate: a function above all of her steadiness as Home Secretary. Can Johnson establish a similar record as Foreign Secretary? In order to carry out that job successfully, he will need to do so. Brexit depends on British ministers being seen as trustworthy, for only then can durable agreements be reached. As Talleyrand, one of the most brilliant of all diplomatists though not himself a byword for fidelity, put it at the end of his life: The sight of Nigel Farage standing with Donald Trump in front of gold elevator doors has sent some UKIPers into an excited frenzy. They hail him as close friends with the President-elect, the original Mr Brexit, the bridge between Westminster and Washington. It feels like good news for UKIP. Its certainly good news for Farage, but that isnt necessarily the same thing as good news for his party. Also on the visit to Trump Tower was Arron Banks, the multi-millionaire founder of Leave.EU. Why was Banks there? In part, he was along for the ride. He regretted missing Farages trip to the Republican convention, and loved every minute of the later visit when the outgoing UKIP leader spoke at a Trump rally. Banks makes no secret of his love of adventure and his new-found addiction to politics, so was unlikely to pass up the prospect of this trip. But it would be a mistake to simply dismiss it as (just) another boozy field trip. Trump looms large in Bankss thinking about his own political work in the UK. He loves Farage, but dislikes much about UKIP. The tendency for some of its leading figures to disagree with him rankles, and the tiresome restrictions of having to consult and persuade colleagues dont sit easily with someone who views himself as a self-starter who answers to no-one. As he wrote recently: UKIP started the ball rolling, but the world has moved on. With its remorseless infighting, and absence of a clearly defined mission, it is not fit to spearhead a great national movement in its current form. Its too traditional. Structurally, it is a mess, held together by rubber bands and by the extraordinary stamina of one man, Nigel Farage. It is clear that something new is required. For some time, Banks has been testing the ground for the idea of setting up his own political party. He now prefers the term movement, citing Momentum. Corbyns revolutionary guard isnt an ideal inspiration it, too, is engulfed in factionalism and struggles even to win internal Labour elections. Bankss search for a more victorious example to follow has led him to Trump. Here is someone who shares a love of outraging polite society, has embraced Farage, and has just won an election victory more through the air war than through a traditional ground game. In the referendum campaign, Banks found that building a campaigning machine capable of fighting the ground war is rather harder than coming up with tweets that wind up the media, so the idea that the latter could be a winning formula excites him. Trumps victory has convinced him that even if he could bend it to his will, which he cant, UKIP wouldnt be an effective vehicle for replicating this success in the UK. He now appears ready to turn that from a threat in the UKIP leadership race into action. According to an article in The Times: Arron Banks, a close friend of Nigel Farage and a major Ukip backer, is considering ditching the party he funds and creating a new movement that would stand 200 parliamentary candidates against the 200 worst, most corrupt MPs Mr Banks said that this new group would not take explicit party positions, and instead the candidates would stand on a one-term promise to push through fundamental change in Westminster. Among the ideas he thinks his new movement could support would be forcing through a change of the rules so that MPs can only hold office for two terms, abolition of the House of Lords and pushing for an elected senate, and insisting on a lower age limit of 40 for MPs to stop career politicians. Its a very simple agenda: to destroy the professional politician. I like the idea of clearing the place out, setting new rules, maybe reducing the number of MPs. Not a party from the left or right. Just to clear out the worst lot, Mr Banks said. This is why that Trump visit heralds bad news for UKIP. Not only could they lose their major donor, but he wants to put his money and his organisation including many UKIP volunteers to work on a rival project in which his word goes. Worse, Farage himself could decamp to lead this new push he wants his life back, but he is enjoying this latest glory lap and could well be tempted to become the figurehead for Bankss new movement. Their target voters would be exactly the same as those targeted by UKIP, and it seems inevitable that their shared dislike of Douglas Carswell would see UKIPs only MP become a target for their campaign. The idea itself, of course, isnt novel. Banks cites Martin Bell as his inspiration (which gives him another chance to have a crack at his other pet hate, Neil Hamilton). After the expenses scandal, a few independents such as Esther Rantzen tried to mimic Bell but fell flat. Banks, of course, is mulling a well-funded national campaign to support such challengers. But someone has also tried that idea before. The fact that most readers wont have heard of the Jury Team rather demonstrates its failure to cut through. Launched in 2009, it had a lot of similarities with Bankss plan. Like Banks, its multi-millionaire founder, Sir Paul Judge, believed that the time was ripe for a movement of non-politician candidates to cut through on a motto of cleaning up politics. Like Banks, Judge promised a group of wealthy donors to ensure the Jury Team was well-funded. Like Banks, Judge demanded not that his candidates share any political world-view, but that they sign up to a programme of democratic reform including term limits for MPs. Like Banks, Judge cited Bells example and even managed to sign him up as a figurehead of the campaign. If Judges analysis was right, he had a golden opportunity. Faith in party politics was at an all-time low. Events in Westminster were the talk of every pub in the land you would have been hard-pressed to find a voter who didnt know that MPs had claimed for porn, duck houses and moat-cleaning. People were angry, and the main parties had struggled to find a convincing answer. Surely a well-funded insurgency couldnt fail? The Jury Team is now forgotten, which demonstrates how badly it crashed and burned. It proved hard to find decent candidates, and harder still to knit them together into anything coherent while simultaneously maintaining the principle that they were independents rather than compelled to toe a party line. A leadership that did what it wanted without a grassroots party to answer to predictably didnt have any way to learn or improve its strategy. Meanwhile, the main parties proved rather more resilient than expected, and the vast majority of voters went into the polling booth in 2010 mulling whether they wanted Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats to govern, not whether they wanted a loose coalition of independents to impose term limits on MPs. So not only is the idea not new, but it failed the last time it was tried. Banks might outperform Judge, of course he has more money, a pre-existing organisation and Farage would be a far more famous figurehead than Martin Bell. But the structural challenges of candidate selection, message coherence and a reliance on good judgement from an unaccountable centre are still in place. UKIP insiders question whether Leave.EUs mostly UKIPer activists would fight against their own party. Furthermore, the fact remains that voters might not like parties but they do innately understand what they are, know broadly what they stand for and tend, even now, to vote for them. The demand for such a campaign is also questionable; the Vaz story is no expenses scandal, Trump is far from universally popular in the UK, and while its easy to talk about riding a Brexit wave, the General Election is still supposedly four years away. Banks could yet do UKIP serious damage, though. They already face a financial cliff when British MEPs are abolished, and have struggled to retain members during the chaotic leadership race. Losing their major donor and their most famous face at the same time would hurt but losing them to a rival operation which will compete with them for dissatisfied voters would only make the blow worse. Close The Windows Server 2016 patch, just like the monthly updates, won't differ much, but might suffer from some shortcomings. In late October, a "Patching with Windows Server 2016" blog was set up by Microsoft to explain the details about the patch, and when the server is getting it. Basically the server will be getting the patch in the form of two updates that would be done on different days of the month. Windows Server 2016 Cumulative Updates For the installation, there would be a security update at first, followed by a quality tested update some weeks later. Cumulative updates with security patches arrive by the second Tuesday of each month, and the quality fix updates arrive on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Both the updates will contain all the past security updates and quality fixes, as Microsoft puts it. Microsoft earlier had a different update model for security patches and quality fixes, for its older servers and clients. These servers included the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2012. This time around, the older Windows products will be getting the security updates and fixes on the same day. Many organisations have expressed dismay for these security updates, as they arrive superseded. What that means is that the quality update consists of the security patches in the security updates, making these security updates as unnecessary. Organisations can delay the supersedence of those updates, however System Center Configuration Manager 2007 users won't be able to modify the rules of the patch management system, Microsoft explains. The 2016 Server update is more malleable as it easily permits organisations to look out for security updates, if that is what they want. Customers would be able to choose a security only update, rather than patching all the cumulative updates. Other Monthly Updates Preview updates for the Windows Server 2016 would arrive by the third Tuesday every month and these updates apply to Server. Moreover, the Server 2016 would be getting .NET framework monthly rollup, which are cumulative and arrive on second Tuesdays. There are two versions of rollups, one that has quality fixes and security patches, and another one which only has security patches, and both arrive on the same day. Automatic Updates are Defaulted on Server 2016 The Server 2016 will be getting automatic updates by default for downloading the cumulative updates. However, organisations can select when to install these updates, if they are using Windows Server Update Services. This control provided to organisations, is important because the Server 2016 updates arrive as "optional" updates, and later they become "recommended". This is done for providing a testing period for IT pros. Users can also use the Server Configuration tool (Scongif.cmd) for managing Windows Updates behavior. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close 'Rick And Morty' Season 3 might premiere soon as recent news on the show reveal that half of the animation has already been done, iTechPost reported. The future of 'Rick And Morty' seemed bleak amid controversies surrounding the show's explicit content. News of cancellations of the show did frequent rounds of the media since the last Season 2 of the famous animation series aired back in 2014 with no news of a release date for Season 3 of 'Rick And Morty.' 'Creative differences' has been one of the most reported reasons for the hiatus of the show. However, these rumors were debunked by one of the producers, Dan Guterman, who said that they have already finished half of the animations of the upcoming Season 3 of 'Rick And Morty.' He even mentioned that all of the creative team are on one page and they can't wait to premiere Season 3 of 'Rick And Morty' soon. According to Christian Daily, the earlier release date was pegged at Dec. 2 for Season 3 of 'Rick And Morty,' as fans speculated that it would make for a perfect Holiday gift by the creators of the show. However, with no confirmation yet on the release date, it is uncertain as of now, when Season 3 of 'Rick And Morty' will release, December or later. In a report by Cinema Blend, writers Erica Rosbe and Sarah Carbiener admitted that half of 'Rick And Morty' Season 3 might be ready in animation already, so there are chances the show will air in December as previously stated day of release. However, without further confirmation from Adult Swim or from the creators, fans are still kept guessing that their favourite show would premiere soon. Stay tuned to Counselheal for recent news, updates and spoilers of 'Rick And Morty' Season 3. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure. WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more. Continue Reading Below Advertisement The thing is, you might not even realize the glasses are getting smaller, because businesses use every trick in the book to make them look and feel the same as always. Not only do bars and restaurants swap 14-ounce glasses for 16-ounce glasses while charging you more for the beer, but those glasses are often topped off with more foam and have thicker bottoms to ensure maximum cheapassness. You're receiving less than the 16 ounces you ordered, and a good percentage of that wasn't even drinkable (unless you like drinking solid glass). The Wall Street Journal "The 14-ounce one is just very insecure about its height, that's all." Continue Reading Below Advertisement Is that even legal? Eh, not really, but no one cares. In 2013, Michigan legislators proposed a law to force anyone selling pints of beer to actually give you a pint of beer -- only to find out that this brand of bullshit is, technically, already forbidden by consumer protection laws. You know, the ones no one can be bothered to enforce. The same thing happened in other states, like Maine, where the governor actually vetoed an "Honest Pint" bill and called on pissed-off beer enthusiasts to simply not support the establishments that shortchange you. RESULTS: Brazilian Grand Prix - Race results Fernando Alonso has threatened not to back out of moves with Sebastian Vettel in the future even if it means they collide after accusing the Ferrari driver of running him off the circuit during the Brazilian Grand Prix. The pair were disputing seventh place on lap 42 when Vettel initially passed at turn ten, only for a better exit by Alonso to get him back alongside around the outside as they rounded the long turn 11. However, with Vettel running his Ferrari to the kerb, Alonso was forced off onto the run-off before re-joining behind. Though there was to be no investigation into the incident, an angry Alonso says he will take matters into his own hands in future instances if it comes down to the difference between hitting a wall or colliding with him. "I don't think there will be any action against Vettel today, as they haven't said anything yet," the Spaniard said after finishing tenth. "There was a run-off in tarmac and I just used it, but if there was a wall for sure I would have either hit the wall or hit him, which is what I'll do next time. I'll hit him and he'll lose more points than me. POINTS: The F1 Drivers' & Constructors' standings after the Brazilian GP "In the rain we don't have the same visibility as in the dry, the mirrors were wet too, so I couldn't see anything behind me. In the end nothing happened, I went down the tarmac run-off but there will come a day in which someone will have to hit him so that he understands the track is for all of us." Alonso's scathing words comes as Vettel faces growing pressure about his driving tactics in a year that has in turn seen him criticise a number of other drivers, namely Max Verstappen. Vettel was penalised at the Mexican Grand Prix after he was judged to have 'moved under braking' - a rule he had previously campaigned for - though Ferrari is appealing the decision. Even so, Vettel himself was upset with what he felt was an unfair pass by a charging Verstappen during the closing stages of the Interlagos race when the Red Bull driver forced him wide at Juncao as they disputed sixth. "I think I was racing him side-by-side, he saw me, I still had a little bit of my nose ahead. He was much faster so it was about the corner where you get past. I don't think it was correct." Latest Tweets from Crash.net & GPF1rst Pizza, the worlds saddest polar bear, will be moved from a small glass cage in a Chinese mall to an ocean park in North China where he was born, reuniting him with his parents. Photo by Maizi/VShine 1.9K shares Humane Society International, which works around the world on issues ranging from fighting wildlife trafficking to ending the dog meat trade and abuse of farm animals, is celebrating a number of victories in recent days: Vietnam destroys two tons of ivory and rhino horn Vietnam sounded a clarion call against elephant and rhino poaching this past week by destroying nearly two tons of ivory and rhino horn, along with a number of wild tiger and bear body parts confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade. Vietnam is one of the worlds largest consumers of rhino horn, and this is a major victory for HSI, which has been working with the Vietnamese government since 2013 to reduce ivory and rhino horn demand in the country. The ivory and rhino horn destroyed in Vietnam are estimated to be worth more than $7 million and came from the slaughter of an estimated 330 African elephants and 23 rhinos. The event featuring the destruction of the ivory and rhino horn took place ahead of the Hanoi Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade, which begins this week. Participants at the conference will call for tangible and unified action against the illegal wildlife trade. Ha Thi Tuyet Nga, director of the CITES Management Authority of Vietnam, said she hoped the destruction event would convince citizens in Vietnam and around the world to stop buying ivory and rhino horn and instead lend their voices to the call to protect elephants and rhinoceroses in the wild. Vietnam now joins 20 countries in four continents that have destroyed their seized ivory and rhino stockpiles, with 26 such events taking place since 2011 alone. These actions come in the midst of an unprecedented poaching and trafficking crisis that threatens elephants and rhinos: between 2010 and 2012, poachers killed an estimated 100,000 elephants to feed the global demand for ivory. Elephants in Central Africa have experienced a 65 percent reduction in their populations, and they will be wiped out if the poaching continues. In September 2016, the Great Elephant Census, the first pan-African aerial survey of savanna elephants in decades, revealed a disturbing 30 percent decline of the species since 2007. As for rhinos, only about 29,000 rhinos of five species remaining in the wild, even as poaching of these iconic animals for their horns continuing to escalate. Over the past decade, poachers killed more than 6,000 rhinos across Africa, with more than 1,300 poached in 2015 alone. And the problem is spreading, as evidenced by the emergence of new poaching hotspots where poachers did not previously target rhinos. HSIs multi-faceted campaign to reduce the demand for rhino horn in Vietnam has reached an estimated 34 million peopleapproximately one third of the countrys population. According to national poll results, over the three years of the campaign, the percentage of people who believe that rhino horn has medicinal value, and those who use and buy rhino horn, has decreased significantly. HSI recently opened an office in Hanoi to expand and enhance our work on wildlife and other pressing animal protection issues in the country. Pizza, the worlds saddest polar bear, gets a reprieve In another positive development over the weekend for HSI and its partners, the Grandview Mall in China announced it will move Pizza, dubbed the worlds saddest polar bear, from a small glass cage in the mall to an ocean park in North China where he was born, reuniting him with his parents. HSI released a video last month that showed Pizza exhibiting signs of mental distress in his unnatural surroundings a small, glass-fronted enclosure inside a mall with no snow or ice. The polar bear spent most of his day pacing in his enclosure, even as children and adults banged on the glass wall to get his attention and take selfies with him. His only contact with the world outside was an air vent in the wall. Although mall authorities are saying this is a temporary move while the mall is renovated, HSI and its local partners in China are urging the mall to make it permanent. This is a sign of real progress, a clear indication that our collective voices have been heard, but it is not the end of the story. No amount of renovation can ever make a shopping mall a suitable home for a wild animal like a polar bear. So we applaud the authorities at Grandview Mall for making the decision to release Pizza into what we hope will be a better living environment, and you can be sure that we will be monitoring the situation closely. McDonalds South Africa to go cage-free starting next year We have one more HSI victory to celebrate today, in South Africa. McDonalds South Africa has announced plans to begin phasing in cage-free eggs at all of its restaurants starting next year. In South Africa, most egg-laying hens are confined in wire battery cages, where each hen has about the space of a single sheet of paper to spend her whole life. This latest move will spare thousands of animals each year from a miserable life. HSI has worked with food industry leaders around the world on their recent cage-free egg pledges, including Sodexo and Compass Group two of the worlds largest food service providers and Arcos Dorados, the largest McDonalds operator in Latin America. Security News Kaspersky Takes Aim At Microsoft, Alleging Antitrust Violations Around Anti-Virus And Windows 10 Updates Sarah Kuranda Share this Kaspersky Lab is taking aim at Microsoft, alleging the software vendor is edging out competitors in ways that violate antitrust laws with its latest Windows 10 update. Kaspersky alleged that it was only given one week to make its software compatible with the latest security updates to Windows 10. The Moscow-based company said that included automatically deactivating all other anti-virus software and replacing it with Windows Defender anti-virus, limiting the number of anti-virus companies on a PC to one (other than Defender), as well as urging customers to replace compatible anti-virus alternatives with Windows Defender. Kaspersky alleged Microsoft is also limiting the ways for anti-virus companies to alert customers when renewals are due. Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., did not respond to requests for comment. [Related: Here's Who Made Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant For Endpoint Protection Platforms] In a blog post late last week, Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said he used to respect Microsoft's efforts to increase the security of its operating system, but the recent moves by the company have "left me very disappointed and dismayed." He said the changes make it clear that Microsoft's previous steps around security and overhauling of its operating system were part of a move to squeeze out independent software vendors. "The trend is clear: Microsoft is gradually squeezing independent developers out of the Windows ecosystem if it has its own application for this or that purpose," Kaspersky said in the blog post. "In doing so, Microsoft is acting against the interests of users since a lot of its products are of inferior quality." On Friday, the Russian antitrust authority opened an investigation into the issue, saying it will look into whether Microsoft violated country laws that prohibit companies from using their market position to prevent competitors from operating against them. In a statement about the investigation, Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Anatoly Golomolzin said the agency is looking into whether Microsoft's actions lead to an "unreasonable advantage" for the vendor. "Our task is to ensure equal conditions for all participants on this market," Golomolzin said in a statement. Kaspersky said he has also urged the European Union to take action. Kaspersky said he is pushing for Russia and the European Union to require Microsoft to provide updates to software developers well in advance of their release, inform users of incompatible software before updates, and ask users for permission before enabling Windows Defender. "Diversity of an open ecosystem is an essential condition of its security. Competition gives rise to new ideas; technologies get polished, infrastructure gets developed, and all-round security gets raised," Kaspersky said in his blog post. "I hope we can find a resolution to this issue. I hope that we can work together with Microsoft not only for the benefit of the independent development community, but also and more importantly for those who trust us to protect them in the evolving threat landscape. Our companies need to be fighting cybercriminals together instead of fighting each other, and I have hope that this is still possible," he continued. CRN reached out to other major anti-virus vendors, including Intel Security, Symantec and AVG (now part of Avast), about their own offerings and if they intend to file a lawsuit but had not heard back as of press time. The concerns from Kaspersky come as Microsoft builds on its security portfolio, including making acquisitions and rolling out "enterprise-level security" changes to its new Windows 10 operating system. Microsoft has also received a lot of pushback for its efforts to push users to upgrade to Windows 10, with customers complaining about constant upgrade reminders and advertising for promoted third-party applications. This push has led to reports of some users turning off the upgrade option entirely, which would leave them out of the loop of critical security updates. Solution providers said the lack of warnings and instantaneous updates are concerning especially around the impact it could have on third-party anti-virus offerings they sell to their customers. One solution provider executive, who partners with Kaspersky and other anti-virus vendors but did not want to be named, said this type of push could have major implications for customers, especially those with large deployments of anti-virus offerings. "Do you just let your car manufacturer push automatic updates to your car? No, because you could be driving it," the executive said. "You need to understand what these things could be and what the impact could be." Another concern, the executive said, is that Microsoft's anti-virus offering is "not something I would recommend" based on its third-party ratings. In its 2016 Endpoint Protection Platform Magic Quadrant ranking, Gartner named Microsoft as a "niche" player, saying it is a "reasonable solution" for those already invested in the Windows ecosystem but still relies heavily on signatures, making test results "very low," and lacks other security capabilities. The executive said it is important for solution providers to understand what is running on their customers' environments and how changes by Microsoft around security impact those offerings. "You have to understand what your business runs on, the technology it runs on and how it's impacted. Everyone has their whole lives on the platform, but they dont understand the platform from a security and an update perspective," the executive said. Shenzhen, China, has a new state-of-the-art cruise port as Prince Bay was inaugurated into service as the SuperStar Virgo sailed from the port on Nov. 12. The facility is a key component of the Shekou Cruise Centre (SCC), a comprehensive transportation hub with air, land, air and rail. Shenzhen is Chinas fourth largest city by GDP and is located strategically in the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. About 200 people attended the opening ceremony, including management from Genting Hong Kong and Carnival Corporation. The development is located in Shenzhens Shekou Industrial Zone which is owned by China Merchant Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings (CMSK). The SCC development also includes museums, hotels, commercial offices and residential spaces. Ang Moo Lim, president of Star Cruises, told Cruise Industry News that the SuperStar Virgo would sail from the port offering both three- and six-day cruises every Friday and Sunday, respectively, through the end of 2016. But, since its a new port, we will be adding different length cruises in 2017, said Lim, adding pricing would be similar to sailings from Hong Kong and Nansha. An agreement between Genting Hong Kong and CMSK not only calls for the two to partner in the homeport operation at Prince Bay, but also explore recruitment, supply chain and more. Lei Gong, vice president, CMSK, said that was the time was right to development Shenzhen into a state-of-the-art cruise port. CMSK also has investments in cruise ports in Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai and Xiamen, essentially covering 90 percent of the local cruise market. The model in Shenzhen, he said, combining various service sectors and real estate development, will become the standard for other areas. Among other stated plans to invest in their own cruise brand and own cruise ships, Gong declined to comment, but did say their intention was to extend the value chain. Fincantieri has reported net income of 7 million euro on revenues of 3.2 billion euro for the nine-month period ended Sept. 30, 2016, compared to a net loss of 195 million euro on revenues of 3.0 billion euro for the same period last year. From its various business segments, Fincantieri also reported that its shipbuilding division contributed approximately 2.4 billion euro in revenue of which 1.5 billion came from cruise ships and the balance from naval vessels. The offshore segment generated 732 million euro in revenue, and equipment, systems and services, 193 million euro. The shipbuilding group did not break out net income from each segment, but did say that shipbuilding contributed 138 million euro EBITDA out of a total EBITDA of 185 million euro for the nine months. Offshore contributed 37 million euro and equipment, systems and services, 32 million euro, while so-called other activities had a 22 million euro negative impact on EBITDA. The company has a total order backlog of 21.8 billion euro, covering approximately 5.2 years of work with 106 ships. Among other developments during the period, Fincantieri and the labor unions agreed on what it called incentive tools linked to individual performance and company results, which are expected to lead to greater efficiency. In July, Fincantieri signed an agreement with China State Shipbuilding Corporation for a joint venture to develop and sell cruise ships for the Chinese and Asian markets. These vessels will be built in China. Subsequently, in September, Fincantieri signed a non-binding agreement with Carnival Corporation and CIC Capital Corporation for the construction of the first new cruise ships to be built in China for the Chinese market. Fincantieri delivered five cruise ships during the first nine months of the year (and subsequently one more), and has five under construction, scheduled for delivery in 2018, four for 2019 and 2020, and has two more for delivery beyond 2020. A U.K. official has ordered the extradition of a British man to the U.S. on charges of hacking government computers belonging to NASA and the Department of Defense. Lauri Love, a 31-year-old hacktivist, has been fighting his extradition, but on Monday, U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd signed the order. "Mr. Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting U.S. military and federal government agencies," the U.K. Home Office said in a statement. The U.S. originally charged Love in 2013 for allegedly stealing confidential data from thousands of government employees, including Social Security numbers and credit card details. U.S. investigators accuse Love and his accomplices of causing millions of dollars in damages. Loves defenders, however, claim he breached the U.S. government computers to protest the suicide of activist Aaron Swartz, who at the time was also facing hacking-related charges. Love fears that he wont face a fair trial in the U.S. "I would say my prospects of due process in America are essentially zero," Love has previously said. But this September, a U.K. judge paved the way for Loves extradition to the U.S., despite worries that he may attempt to commit suicide. Love has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and has a history of depression. Although the U.K. home secretary had the final decision on the matter, she found no conditions to bar Love from being sent to the U.S. Three U.S. courts have filed extradition requests for Love. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 99 years. However, his legal team has previously said that Love will seek permission to appeal his extradition to the U.K.'s High Court. We can't seem to find the page you are looking for. You may have typed the address incorrectly or you may have used an outdated link. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Despite the appearance around the state's larger cities, Connecticut's overall safety is rather high according to a new report. Connecticut was named one of the safest states in America in a new report from 24/7 Wall St. Other regional states led the list as well, including Vermont ranking the safest state, Maine ranking as the second safest state, and Virginia ranking third. Among the most dangerous states were Alaska, Nevada, and New Mexico. The report collected data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2015 Uniform Crime Report Program to determine the nation's safest and most dangerous states. Specifically, the report looked at violent crime and murder rates from 2011 to 2015. Check out the slideshow above to see how Connecticut compares to the nation's safest havens. To read 24/7 Wall St.'s full report, click here. Despite metropolitan figures, the report said a correlation between financial prosperity and crime may have attributed to Connecticut's low crime rate. "Just 10.5 percent of people live in poverty, the sixth lowest rate, and the typical household in Connecticut earns $71,346 annually...," the report noted. "Connecticut is one of the many states and communities where financial prosperity has likely contributed somewhat to the relatively low violent crime levels." The reported noted that Bridgeport, Conn., holds one of the higher violent crime rates in the state, which numbers, "well over 600 incidents per 100,000 people." Yet, larger cities still played a part in violent crime rates. Related: Connecticut's drunkest city has been named In Alaska, the violent crime rate in Anchorage was the state's largest contributing factor. "High violent crime levels across Alaska are driven by the prevalence of criminal activity in Anchorage, one of the state's major cities," the report state. "More than 1,000 crimes were reported per 100,000 people in the city last year, dwarfing the national violent crime rate of 383 incidents per 100,000 Americans and higher than the vast majority of U.S. cities." Nevada's high ranking among the most dangerous states was also attributed to, "criminal activity in Nevada's more densely clustered areas," or Las Vegas and Reno. Perhaps most importantly, the report emphasized that a lack of economic and employment opportunities largely contributes to higher violent crime rates. The report said communities and states with lower crime rates typically have better economic and social conditions. William Chris Vineyards One of the producers that Mike Wilson visited was William Chris Vineyards, located on U.S. 290 in Hye, in what's considered the heart of Texas Wine Country. It's an estate winery, meaning that all the wines use grapes grown in the William Chris vineyards. (Submitted) Mike Wilson, one of the partners of The Vineyard and Brewery at Hershey, said he saw for himself what a thriving wine industry can do for a region after attending the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference last week. 'Merlot Mike' and 'Miss Merlot' dance up a storm in Luckenbach, Texas, made famous by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. 'Wineries brought tons of wines there and they were paired with brisket and such (the star of the show was a great rose was Becker Vineyards,' Mike said. "It's interesting," he said of his impressions of Texas Hill Country, where the conference ran from Tuesday until Thursday, including a panel on social media that included Wilson. "You can tell it's emerging wine country because it was nothing but peaches and antiques before . . . and now all these wineries are popping up, and it's really making a splash in terms of redefining things for them. . . . It really does make a huge impact, and not just tourism." Wilson said he was told that the area around Fredericksburg, where the conference was held, has seen the explosion of new wineries drive up the price of the housing market. "It has really made a big impact in that town," he said. Fredericksburg is the seat of Gillespie County, located a bit south of what would be considered the center of the huge state. That area, like other parts of Texas, is seeing rapid growth in an industry that now has a a $1.9 billion annual impact on the economy, a third of which is due to wine tourism, according to the Texas Wine & Grape Growers Association. That's being fueled by more than 3,500 acres of vines and around 350 bonded wineries. Wilson said he and his fiancee, who joined him on the trip, had a chance to sample a number of Texas wines, including "some great Tempranillos, some pretty cool red blends. We even had a Montepulciano," he added, talking on the phone from San Antonio on Friday. "There's some interesting stuff going on down here that I would never have thought of." One of his favorites, he said, was the William Chris Winery in Hye, near the site of the conference. His panel, called Social Media Marketing and Online Advertising for Wine Tourism, was scheduled for three hours on the first morning of the conference, and more than 100 people attended. Working with colleague Robyn Scott, they spent time talking The conference in Fredericksburg, Texas, took place from Nov. 8-10. about social media outlets and which ones tend to work for the wine industry and which don't, on how to focus your time and not waste resources, and how to build a brand and increase sales. "I just went over things like don't hand over the keys of your brand to someone who's young, just because you assume they understand social media," he said, "and that got into the whole experience and having one voice for your brand and making sure you engage with customers." He said the best workshop he attended was put on by someone from the New York Times, who focused on the rapidly increasing value of mobile. "I guess my takeaway from that is that mobile is the new social media, even thought people are still catching up on social media," he said. Wilson said he already has been invited to speak at next year's conference, at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in California's Sonoma County. The 10th annual event, which used to be called the Wine Tourism Conference, will take place from Nov. 6-8, 2017. As for what he'll bring back to The Vineyard and Brewery at Hershey in Dauphin County's Londonderry Township, which uses social media as well as any winery in the region, he quoted a lesson that he said has served their business well since in opened in the summer of 2012. "Just to never lose sight of the fact that the most important thing is the customer experience," he said. "Always reinforcing that is good. You never want to become complacent in your efforts, and just keeping your eyes and ears open for things that people seem to do well and never losing sight of who you are and your brand. Complacency is our enemy." ATLANTIC SKIES: Stellar asterisms eye-catching pretenders to the constellation throne and just part of the bigger picture Most everyone, or at least most amateur astronomers, are familiar with the constellations in the night sky to some degree. Many, however, may not be familiar with the numerous asterisms in the night sky. What is the difference between a constellation ... Atelka, a business process outsourcing (BPO) provider in Canada, uses a force of nearly 3,000 employees to offer customer contact support for its enterprise clients throughout four Canadian provinces, including Atelkas home of Quebec. TeleTech, a global service provider that also focuses on BPO, announced this past week that it has closed its acquisition of Atelka and added that companys capabilities to its own Customer Management Services division. Kenneth Tuchman, the CEO of TeleTech, commented in his companys announcement about how this joining of forces allows TeleTech to better serve customers in several regions of Canada. Our acquisition of Atelka is part of our strategy to bring our holistic customer engagement platform to key geographies, Tuchman began. With Atelkas strong management team, outstanding employees, and several long-standing client relationships, we now have a solid foundation for growth in the important Canadian market, he continued. Likewise, Atelka CEO Tom Loberto said this acquisition is beneficial for his company because of the resources it will receive from his new parent company. Atelka will now have access to the full TeleTech line of services, which Loberto indicated will make a welcome addition to those Atelka already serves its large number of corporate clients. Though Atelka has not made TMC news much in the past, it has seen its share of notable partnerships that made headlines. On the other hand, one can see TeleTech as a dominant figure in the BPO market through its own strategic partnerships and industry awards. This year alone, TeleTech has also seen its placement as a Leader in a Gartner Magic Quadrant study and the dispersion of its own study that tried to capture moments of wow to link positive customer experiences with company loyalty. This latest pairing seems to speak volumes about TeleTechs intentions to solidify its own position as a global service provider. Meanwhile, it also shows how a smaller company, Atelka, can offer value to a larger competitor by being a strong player in its own regional market. Edited by Alicia Young The entire seven-member school board of a small Virginia city has resigned. The resignations came last week, after the city council in Franklin, Va., asked board members to submit their resignations over incompetence in the performance of their duties, according to the Virginia Pilot. The issue relates to the school boards financial management, the paper reported. The city council gave the school district an additional $343,000 in the 2014-15 school year to help financially. But it appears that the school board didnt need the money as it had a $151,000 surplus at the time, not counting the money the council gave it, the paper said. The district also ended the last fiscal year with an estimated $481,000 deficit. On Nov. 1, the city council passed a resolution calling for all the board members to resign, and to do so by Nov. 7. The school board disagreed with the city council. Before handing in their resignations, however, they voted on Nov. 4 to fire superintendent Willie Bell, without cause , the local ABC affiliate reported. An interim superintendent Kelvin Edwards has taken over. In a Nov. 4 letter announcing the change in district leadership, Edwards said the deficit in question had not been incurred by wrongful or willful misconduct by any member of this administration. As always we are continuously working on our practices and procedures to be fiscally sound, he wrote. That same letter expressed disappointment with the city councils request for the resignations, and sought a joint meeting between the two parties. Edwards also sought to reassure the community in a Nov. 9 note posted on the school districts website. With the resignation of the entire School Board, we are facing a situation that is unprecedented in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Edwards wrote. The challenge now before city and school leadership is the need to provide clarity and certainty around the governance of the school division. The Virginia Pilot reported that the city hopes to appoint the new school board members in time for the school boards Dec. 15 meeting. The district has an estimated 1,300 students, with one elementary, middle, and high school. Democrats saw a surge in new voters in Pennsylvania as midterms near What happens now that Georgia voters have resoundingly rejected Governor Nathan Deals school takeover plan? Deal is not giving up, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. According to the paper, the governor plans to continue to push for improvements in chronically low-performing schools, though he didnt say what steps he plans to take. Deals signature education proposal to create a statewide district that would take over low-performing schools was defeated by a vote of 60-40 on Tuesday , according to unofficial results from the Georgia secretary of states office. The ballot question would have changed the Georgia constitution to allow officials to create the district. It was not my failure, the paper quoted Deal as saying about the ballot questions defeat. The failure of this passing is impacting on those 68,000 children who are still stuck in chronically failing schools. Were going to see what the local jurisdictions are willing to do about that. The ball is totally in their court right now. The onus will now be on school districts, many of which adopted resolutions opposing the proposed statewide district, to show they can improve those chronically low-performing schools, Deal said. The new district would have consisted of schools that received F grades for three years under the states school accountability system. A superintendent, appointed by the governor, would have been in charge of selecting the schools to include in the district. The law allowed the superintendent to pick up to 20 eligible schools annually. The superintendent would have had the option to close schools, turn them into charters, or work with districts to improve them. A coalition of political and education groupsincluding teachers unionsopposed the measure and spent about $5 million to defeat it, according to the AJC. School districts and other opponents had railed against the possible loss of local control and tax dollars they said would have resulted from the creation of the new district. The governor and his allies had argued that the proposal, which was based on Tennessees Achievement District and Louisianas Recovery School District, was an effort to provide better school options for about 68,000 students. UPDATED By Denisa Superville and Madeline Will Thousands of students have walked out of classes since Wednesday to protest the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. Students from Omaha Central High School and Northwest High School in Omaha, Neb., were among the latest on Friday morning, when students at the two schools walked out in protest, the Omaha World-Herald reported. Central students singing national anthem pic.twitter.com/VnvKchOIH1 -- Erin Duffy (@eduff88) November 11, 2016 On Thursday, thousands of students from 16 Los Angeles, Calif., high schools staged walkouts , the Los Angeles Times reported. To date, students have walked out in Seattle; Des Moines, Iowa; and Phoenix, Ariz. We just wanted to show that we are completely in opposition to everything that Donald Trump stands for, Maddy Peterson, a 17-year-old high school senior at Inderkum High School in Natomas Unified School District in Sacramento, who was among the group of students who walked out of class on Thursday, said in an interview with Education Week. Peterson, who is white, and a few dozen other students chanted phrases like, Not my president, Love trumps hate, No justice, no peace, and Black lives matter during their protest. Natomas Unified School District is one of the most diverse in the country, Peterson said, and most students were strongly against Trump. After the election, everyone was very scared and disheartened, she said. We felt let down by not only the government, but also the voters, she said. It was jarring to know that so many people agreed with what [Trump] was saying. It was unfathomable to us. Trump, the president-elect, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, made comments during the campaign that singled out specific groups, including characterizing some Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals and calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country. Educators say some students, including immigrant students and students of color, are fearful that they would be targeted. Immigrant students came to school on Wednesday worried that they or their families would be deported. Muslim students, LGBT students, and students of color feared they would face harassment, some educators said. Incidents of bullying and harassment of Muslim and minority students have been reported since the election. Graffiti, including ""#whitesonly, Trump Train, and "#gobacktoafrica were found on a bathroom door in Maple Grove Senior High School in Maple Grove, Minn., the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. The Granite School District in Utah was also investigating reports of harassment. We are receiving a handful of reports that students are being harassed as a result of the election outcome. Not acceptable. Please report! -- Granite School Dist. (@GraniteSchools) November 9, 2016 No student in our schools should be made to feel unsafe or intimidated. Use the SafeUT app or report to administrators. -- Granite School Dist. (@GraniteSchools) November 9, 2016 In an interview with Fox 13 Salt Lake City, two sisters, Angelica and Aylin Gomez, who are students at Kearns High School in the Granite City School District, told the station that rude and negative comments were directed at Hispanic students the day after the election. You need to get back to Mexico, one of the sisters told the station, describing comments they heard at school. To tamp down on fears, district administrators, including in Boston and Albuquerque, N.M., have sent letters to their school communities. This weeks presidential election has left some of our students and families feeling anxious and afraid, Albuquerque superintendent Raquel Reedy wrote. The emotionally charged rhetoric we all heard over the last several months was unfortunate and likely wont be forgotten any time soon. Students at Omaha High School on Friday carried American, Mexican, and gay pride flags, and held signs with messages such as Love Trumps Hate, the Omaha World-Herald reported. They also chanted, not my president. School administrators in Omaha allowed the students to protest, though they told the paper that the protest was not sanctioned by the district. Most of us are 15, 16, 17 years old, Nick Koehler, a student, told the Omaha-Herald on Friday morning during the walkout. We feel like we dont have a say ... By doing this, students have a voice. Brian May is not happy. Writing on his blog last week, the veteran Queen guitarist raged: Back in the insanity that is London. Was woken up by horrible noise of leaf-blowers. Went out to see an army of six men in orange jackets disturbing the peace with the awful noise of the blowers. I marvelled at this, for various reasons. First, it is a miracle that May was woken by the noise of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelseas leaf-blowers. Most rock stars of his vintage May is 69 have long ago lost much of their hearing. Decades of performing at ear-shattering volume have seen to that. Their sleep would not be disturbed by a bomb going off outside their front door. Which takes me to my second point of wonderment. Does Brian May ever stop to think how much the noise generated by his and other rock bands is a curse for millions of people who dont like it and from which they find it increasingly difficult to escape? Does Brian May, pictured, ever consider the impact his music has on those who dislike it Mr May took to his blog to complain about a group of workmen using leaf blowers. (File photo) I am one of those millions, so this is personal. It is not, though, a criticism of those who do enjoy rock music. If they want to spend hundreds of pounds on a weekend in a muddy field being subjected to the stuff, having spent hours stuck in queues of traffic getting there, Ive no wish to stand in the way of their pleasure. The trouble comes when their pleasure is the local residents pain in the ear drums. A few years ago a man called Leith Penny became my hero when he pulled the plug on a pop concert in Hyde Park. To be precise, Westminster Councils Mr Penny ordered the amplifiers to be switched off on the stroke of 10.30pm, while the performers were still belting it out to 80,000 fans. Mr Penny pointed out that 10.30pm was when the organisers had agreed with the council to end the concert and that such licences are granted to protect residents in the area from noise late at night. For this he was roundly abused by the fans as a killjoy. The then London mayor Boris Johnson joined in the criticism of Mr Penny. But when Radio 5 lives producers ran an instant phone-in about this alleged outrage, they did not get the calls they might have expected, denouncing it as the spiteful act of a town-hall jobsworth. Instead, they were inundated with calls from those who had suffered from the effects of living near the sites of rock concerts. Some complained that the colossal noise from the events actually caused their houses to vibrate: so imagine what it did to the inside of their heads. It is the constant, relentless percussive beat of rock music amplified to plane- taking-off levels which makes so many of us feel disoriented and even distressed. This matter used to cause some dissent on family car journeys when my daughters were younger. They would want to hear pop, and certainly not the classical music that I preferred. The argument was generally settled when I would make the offer that they could impose their music (though I did not use that term) for an hour, if I were then allowed to subject them to Radio 3 for a similar period. Their horror at that prospect meant they would usually agree to complete musical disarmament so there would be no radio on at all. I considered this a victory, not least because it could result in actual conversations on journeys. Nowadays, people have headphones, with the courteous idea that other travellers should not have one persons musical taste (or lack of it) inflicted on them. But my own experience as a regular train user is that many of those who listen to heavy rock music do so at such a level that anyone in the same carriage can hear the constant tsss, tsss, tsss of the percussion as it blasts its way through even the protective shield of the headphones. Last week, on such a journey, I became sufficiently irked by this that I asked the headphones-wearing man sitting opposite if he could, please, turn the volume down a bit. Oh, can you hear it? he asked, displaying the lip-reading skills which rock fans must surely find essential. Only all the time, I replied, with what I hoped came across as good humour. Her Majesty chose to wear ear plugs when she was subjected to a rock concert at Buckingham Palace to mark her 60 years on the throne. No wonder she looked so content Perhaps the answer is for those of us who are din-intolerant to wear ear plugs ourselves. But then we wouldnt be able to hear the things we need to, such as announcements by the guards. Still, I note that this was the real Queens approach when Brian Mays group and others subjected her to a rock concert at Buckingham Palace to mark her 60 years on the throne. Her Majesty spent the entire event wearing ear plugs. No wonder she looked so content throughout. The most abominable imposition of cacophony does not come in trains, however, but in shops, restaurants and even sporting events. The soundtracks that are belted out are still commonly referred to as Muzak. But Muzak was originally designed to be blandly inoffensive. The US Army used rock music in Guantanamo Bay as a form of psychological warfare Perhaps it is just that I have become even more of an old duffer as I close in on my 60th birthday; but it does seem that, increasingly, such canned music is of a sort and at a volume which makes it difficult even to think clearly. Probably this is deliberate, with the idea of confusing the consumer into making purchases without proper consideration. But with me, it has the opposite effect. At a recent visit to the main London branch of Topshop in Oxford Street, the background blast was so pulverising, I fled immediately, rather than make the Christmas present purchases for my daughters that Id intended. Am I oversensitive to noise? Perhaps; my pastime is chess, in which complete silence is mandatory. But dont forget that rock music is now recognised as a form of torture: it was played at deafening volume to extract confessions from al-Qaeda suspects at the U.S. Army detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. Sergeant Mark Hadsell, of the 361st Psychological Operations Company, revealed: They cant take heavy metal. If you play it for 24 hours your brain starts to slide, your will is broken. I dont think leaf-blowers would have had the same effect. DONALD TRUMP: FROM BRUNETTE TO HAIR FORCE ONE It was only when studying the photographs of the younger Donald in many newspaper biographical spreads the day after he was elected that I noticed the truly deceptive thing about the Trump rug Acres of newsprint have been devoted to the hairstyle of the U.S. President-elect. Most of it has been concentrated on Donald Trumps comb-over which is certainly distinctive. Some of it ruminated on whether Trump was actually bald and why, if he wanted to disguise that fact, he chose such a bizarre way of doing it. In fact, all the hair you see is his own. It was only when studying the photographs of the younger Donald in many newspaper biographical spreads the day after he was elected that I noticed the truly deceptive thing about the Trump rug. Until about 2000, his hair was dark brown. He is or rather was a brunette. That year, however, he had it dyed to what can only be described as cigar-stained-teeth blond. Over the next decade or so, it then oscillated between various forms of rust-effect, pleasingly autumnal if you like that sort of thing. But by 2013 it returned to the weirdly unnatural yellow which we saw throughout his presidential campaign. This is perhaps a sign of how different our two nations are: a man whose hair is so obviously insincere could never be elected to the highest office in this country. Advertisement In those parts of the U.S. where capital punishment is still on the statute book, reports of executions are never complete without the details of the last meal ordered by the condemned. Last week, it was only the prospect of political death that faced both candidates for the U.S. Presidency. But I feel readers should know what each of them chose on Tuesday night as their final meal while waiting for the voters to decide their fate. You could call it the Trump Effect. Whatever anyone may think about the maverick billionaire (whose fitness for the US presidency seems highly questionable, to put it mildly), his election has had at least one salutary influence on politicians at home and abroad. More even than the Brexit vote or the rise of populist parties throughout Europe, it has highlighted to a shocked liberal elite just how frustrated voters have become over the way their deepest concerns have been ignored. Nowhere is this clearer than over mass immigration. For decades, mainstream politicians have dismissed as racist anyone who voiced legitimate worries about the effects of radical demographic change on jobs, wages, housing and public services. The election of Donald Trump, pictured here with his family, has shown how frustrated voters have become over having their deepest concerns ignored by the political elite Meanwhile, they sneered at tolerant patriots, accusing them of jingoism for expressing a love of country, British culture and traditions. Indeed, convinced of their moral superiority, they sought to silence debate by attributing the lowest possible motives to anyone who disagreed with them. Yet already there are signs that Trumps victory may be shaking them out of their complacency. Even Jeremy Corbyn, whose attitude to migration has been the more, the merrier, was muttering yesterday about understanding public concerns. Meanwhile, Theresa May is to put her finger on the heart of the issue today when she says: People see their communities changing around them and dont remember giving their permission. Is it too much to hope that politicians are waking up to the vital importance of consulting and listening to the people before they act in our name? At last, a beads biopsy In a significant victory for the Mails Ban the Beads campaign, the Chief Medical Officer is to launch an investigation into the effects on human health of plastic poison microbeads, which contaminate seafood on a dramatic scale. This paper warmly welcomes the study. But how infinitely preferable it would have been to conduct it before, not after, manufacturers of washing powders and other products allowed hundreds of tons of these minuscule plastic particles to wash into our seas each year. The Mail has campaigned against the use of micro beads which can contaminate seafood For nine-and-a-half weeks after 15-year-old Arthur Heeler-Frood disappeared, Facebook stubbornly refused to help police track him down, refusing to reveal whom he contacted the night before he left home. Only now, after pressure from the Press, does the internet giant seem willing to cooperate. Isnt it truly breath-taking that a company which promotes a touchy-feely image could for so long put its commercial interest in clients confidentiality above the safety of a vulnerable minor and the tears of his anguished parents? Days after a retired judge savaged Scotland Yard for giving credence to a suspected fantasists allegations of a VIP child abuse ring, it emerges that 21 officers and staff from Wiltshire Police are still investigating claims against Sir Ted Heath. Two observations: 1) they appear to have unearthed not a scrap of evidence; and 2) the former prime minister died 11 years ago. Have they really no more pressing claims on their time? Keith Vaz, pictured, was able to claim 81.90 for a return train trip to London from his constituency on a day when he was 1,400 miles away on a visit to Tunisia Adding to the indictment against Labours Keith Vaz, the Leicester MP is said to have charged taxpayers 81.90 for a return trip from London to his constituency on a day when he was 1,400 miles away in Tunisia! Yesterday, a former solicitor general called on Mr Vaz to stand down from the Commons justice committee while police investigate his involvement with drug-taking rent boys. Embattled Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe is due to meet former Tory MP Harvey Proctor tomorrow. Proctor was wrongly accused of child rape and murder in the Westminster VIP paedophile ring inquiry, and Hogan-Howe is finally making a long overdue apology in person. After 15 police officers raided his cottage last year on the Duke of Rutlands estate at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, Proctor lost his position as the dukes private secretary as well as the grace-and-favour cottage that went with it. Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor was wrongly accused of child rape and murder in the Westminster VIP paedophile ring inquiry Embattled Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe is due to meet former Tory MP Harvey Proctor The officers only evidence was spurious claims from a witness called Nick, who has been exposed as a fantasist and is now facing calls to be prosecuted. I lost my job and my home, Proctor told me yesterday. It has been devastating, and unrepairable. I have received death threats and am destitute. I have no money. He has been relying on friends, first staying with some in Spain and now living with others in Britain. An appeal has been set up on a JustGiving page by his friends in the Tory Party. If there were any justice, the Metropolitan Police ought to be paying compensation for the trauma they have put this innocent man through. Hopefully, they will. But until they do, its up to others to help Harvey through some very difficult months, reads a statement on the appeals page. Hogan-Howe, who is quitting next February, seven months early, should hang his head in shame. In Tony Blairs government there was a plan for a new team of super bobbies who would be offered cash incentives to stay on the beat rather than be promoted into desk jobs. Nothing came of it, of course, but that never harmed Justin Russell, who was one of the political advisers at the Home Office which dreamed up the idea. ED'S FOX-TROT COALITION Twinkle toes Ed Balls, whos made it to the next round of Strictly Come Dancing, says his success is down to a cross-party alliance. Im supported by Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Theresa May and George Osborne. That is one hell of a coalition of support. Comrade Corbyn, eat your heart out. Advertisement Russell is now Director General, Prisoner and Offender Management Policy at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on a six-figure salary. Hes working for Justice Secretary Liz Truss, who is seen as way out of her depth by many MPs. With the ministrys blessing, Russell is advertising for 30 policy officers yes 30! on salaries of up to 40,000, plus the usual gold-plated civil service pension and perks. The recruitment spree will cost around 2 million a year at a time when prison-staff shortages have been blamed for riots at Bedford prison and an inmate was murdered in Pentonville, from where two convicts also escaped. Lord Rose, the former M&S chief who headed the pro-Remain Britain Stronger in Europe during the referendum, says businessmen should stick to business and politicians to politics. They certainly should in his case. Rose was so useless in his campaign that he all but disappeared from public view as referendum day neared. And on the rare occasions he did campaign, he blundered spectacularly, getting the name of his outfit wrong four times in one TV interview. Trump card Labours first female acting leader Margaret Beckett, who temporarily replaced John Smith when he died in 1994, said on TV: I feel horrified and terrified by Trump victory. The horror is for today and the terror for tomorrow. Many Labour MPs feel the same over Jeremy Corbyns election as Labour leader. And guess who nominated him for the leadership? Yes, Margaret Beckett. No small talk, then, Mrs T? Legendary broadcaster Sir Jimmy Young, who died last week aged 95, was often referred to as Mrs Thatchers favourite interviewer. They crossed swords 14 times on his Radio 2 show. Legendary broadcaster Sir Jimmy Young, who died last week aged 95, was often referred to as Mrs Thatchers favourite interviewer But reports of their friendship always bemused the great man who was nevertheless impressed by her ability to multi-task: She used to sweep in with her papers and talk animatedly when we were on air, he explained. Gwen Ifill, a trailblazing journalist who was one-half of the first all-female team to anchor a network TV news show, died on Monday after a battle with cancer. She was 61. As the co-anchor, with Judy Woodruff, of the PBS NewsHour, Ifill often introduced segments on education produced by Education Week Video, the shows main partner on education news for the least year and a half. Gwen was a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change, Sara Just, the executive producer of PBS NewsHour and senior vice president of WETA, the public TV station in the Washington market that co-produces it, said in a statement. She was a mentor to so many across the industry, and her professionalism was respected across the political spectrum. She was a journalists journalist and set an example for all around her. Ifill, a New York City native, got her start on newspapers such as the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Boston Herald American, before moving on to The Washington Post and The New York Times, where she was a White House correspondent. She was a congressional and political correspondent for NBC News before moving to PBS, where she was also the moderator of Washington Week. Speaking at a news conference this afternoon in advance of a multi-continent foreign trip, President Barack Obama praised Ifill as an extraordinary journalist. I always appreciated Gwens reporting, even when I was at the receiving end of one of her tough and thorough interviews, Obama said. Whether she reported from the convention floor or the field, whether she sat at the debate moderators table or at the anchors desk, she not only informed todays citizens but she also inspired tomorrows journalists. She was an especially powerful role model for young women and girls who admired her integrity, her tenacity, and her intellect, the president said. Photo: Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of the NewsHour on the PBS television network, attends an awards ceremony last year in New York. (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP-File) Katy Finn is like any other woman her age: she loves spending times with her friends, fussing over her dog Poppy and going for long walks. But Katy, 21, spent years battling mental health problems before finally managing to overcome the demons that left her starving and huddled on her bathroom floor, her limbs covered with self-inflicted wounds. Here the writer and charity campaigner reveals how OCD and anorexia took over her life - and how she managed to wrestle herself out of the grasp of serious mental illness. Then... Katy Finn, 21, a writer and charity campaigner from Buckinghamshire, is pictured here while she was battling anorexia And now... After years of suffering Katy overcame her illnesses, and now works with an OCD charity to help raise awareness of her condition 2012 was going to be my year, I thought as I lay in bed on New Years Eve. I couldnt wait to go back to school and tell everyone about the amazing party Id been to. I wanted to see the look on their faces when I told them how Chris had kissed me at midnight or how Angela and I had danced the night away. Finally theyd see that I was popular, sexy, adventurous and most importantly, one of them. What did it matter if none of it was real? All that mattered was how it looked and Id settle for nothing less than perfect. But perfection doesnt exist and it didnt take long until the cracks in my story brought my whole life crashing down. A person with OCD exercises control in order to feel safe. Some sufferers do this by turning lights on and off, others check theyve locked doors and yet others tap objects to cancel out unwanted thoughts. Ive had OCD since I was seven, but my control was about people. It didnt start out that way. It began with getting dressed. Id put one sock on then take it off. Id turn it inside out and put it back on again. I had hundreds of little rituals that grew ever more time consuming. It was the only way I could feel safe. However, the older I got, the more elements of life I couldnt control, like my weight, whether people liked me or what my friends said about me. When I tasted humiliation for the first time I decided I never wanted to experience it again. The world was dangerous and unpredictable, so I opted out of reality and created a world I could control. Katy at her most ill time. She ceated fake Facebook profiles for an imaginary boyfriend and best friend so her friends would accept her - but they found out the truth Rather than make myself vulnerable to rejection, I invented my own social group. That way when I wasnt invited to a party or spent the weekend alone I could tell people Id been with my other, better friends. So I added fake contacts to my phone and told people about the weekends I spent drink and partying with my gang. In reality I spent every evening carrying out an obsessive exercise regime and praying Id be ill the next day so I didnt have to go to school. For a while it was okay. I never confused reality and fantasy. I knew I was telling lies - I just didnt care. But I was addicted to control and, like any addict, I craved more. That was when I set up Facebook pages. The first and most detailed account was for Angela Price, my feisty best friend who always had my back. I spent hours scouring Google to find the perfect image to pass as a profile picture. I settled on a silhouette of a dancer. It couldve been anyone but the important thing was, no one could prove it wasnt Angela. Katy just after she dropped out of school. She sank into a deep depression and turned her obsessive energy inwards as she had no-one else to control Chris, my fictional boyfriend, who made the sting of any past rejection slightly less painful, didnt do Facebook. He was too cool for that. In reality I knew I couldnt find another picture without raising suspicion. I had a cover for everything and I knew the backstories of all my characters so Id never get tripped up. In the end it didnt matter. I was found out. I stumbled across a group chat between my friends. The heading read: Reasons Angela and Chris Arent Real. They went on to list the flaws in my story and with each bullet point I felt the knot in my stomach tighten. I had been caught. Yet still I couldnt stop. I lied to cover my lies until even I couldnt remember what was real. Eventually I couldnt do it anymore. My plan had failed and there was no going back. I couldnt undo the lies Id told. So I did what any scared person does when theyre confronted with danger, I ran. Katy at school. Rather than make herself vulnerable to rejection from other people, she invented her own social group. That way when she wasnt invited to a party or spent the weekend alone she could tell people she'd been with her other, better friends Aged 16, I dropped out of school and sank into a deep depression. With no one left to control I turned my obsessive energy inwards. Clearly I was the problem so I set about fixing myself. I believed I was fundamentally wrong and had to make myself better. To me, that meant cleaning out the filth inside me that the rest of the world found so repulsive. I showered extensively every day, scrubbing my body until it bled and massaging in soap until my skin was a broken mess. It wasnt enough. I wanted to feel completely hollow so food had to go. It contaminated me and if I wanted to be loved I had to stop eating it. I spent the next four years trying to make myself perfect so when I re-emerged I wouldnt be rejected again. But I was never thin enough or clean enough so I didnt emerge. I stayed in the house only getting out of bed to exercise, self-harm and clean obsessively. Katy at her lowest weight. At that point she didn't leave the house and only got out of bed to exercise, self-harm and clean obsessively Katy while she was in treatment. She was diagnosed with severe OCD, which had caused anorexia and a multitude of other problems Then I hit rock bottom. I was curled up in the corner of the bathroom, two stone underweight with slash marks up my arm. I was unable to move because the floor was contaminated. I couldnt carry on like this and, not for the first time, I seriously considered ending my life. After two hours, a thought struck me, you need help. Somehow, I stood up, unlocked the door and went to find that help. My GP referred me to an eating disorder service. I was marked as high priority and within a month I began treatment. I was diagnosed with severe OCD, which had caused anorexia and a multitude of other problems. Katy a month before she left school. She left because she realised that none of her friends believed her stories about her fake boyfriend and friends, after discovering a group chat titled Reasons Angela and Chris Arent Real Now aged 21 Im a different person. I went from being reclusive to filming for television shows. I started driving lessons, made new friends and began working with OCD Action. I am living the life of a normal girl in her twenties. I see now that my OCD, far from keeping me safe, kept me isolated and trapped. Life would have been very different if Id got help sooner. I never knew I had OCD even though it was destroying my life. Yet Im one of the lucky ones. I had a supportive family and doctors who never gave up on me. When I went in for my hair appointment with Johnny Ramirez and Anh Co Tran on a recent Saturday, I knew I was in for a long day. The sought after Beverly Hills-based duo behind Ramirez Tran Salon (Johnny colors and Anh cuts) were visiting New York City for a few days, and I had been warned to block off the entire day for my cut and color. 7:30 AM: I arrived at their pop-up space in the Mark Garrison Salon on Manhattan's Upper East Side and was met by Johnny's first assistant (he had five that day), Andrea. Lighten up! When Dailymail.com beauty director Lindsey Unterberger, 33, wanted to take her dark brown hair blonde, she went to Beverly Hills-based duo Anh Co Tran and Johnny Ramirez She sat me down, assessed my hair (a dark brunette that was 100-percent virgin - meaning it hadn't been colored before) and asked me to pull up my 'goal' photo on my phone. Going to see Johnny without first doing your homework is unthinkable. Even before you make an appointment, he requires you to fill out a questionnaire about your hair and what you're hoping to accomplish with color. Then, he asks everyone to scroll through his Instagram feed to find her 'goal' hair. I showed up with 17 screengrabs of color he had done that I liked. Andrea helped me narrow it down to two to show Johnny. It would, however, be another four hours before I met the man himself. Hair-spo: Lindsey showed Johnny these two photos from his Instagram feed to use as inspiration, but Johnny was concerned that her haircut was too different for it to work Next, Anh's first assistant (he only brought three), Ramon, stopped by to chat about my cut. I didn't want anything drastic, just some weight off the ends and a few layers to show off the color. 8:32 AM: Anh likes to cut hair dry, so his team blow-dried my frizzy mane until it was straight but not flat. 'I want to see how your hair naturally falls,' Anh said of his technique. 'I'm working with your cowlicks. I'm working with your hairline. I'm working with all the problematic things you feel about your hair.' As for why he doesn't flat-iron the hair like some dry-cutting stylists, Anh said that when you flat-iron the hair, 'you're manipulating the texture of the hair and you're making it too flat. When it's too flat, it doesn't have the movement in it.' He finished my cut in a record 16 minutes and said he'd see me again in another five or six hours. Again, I asked what could possibly take that long. 'You'll see,' was all he said. Snip, snip: Before her color began, Lindsey sat down with Anh for a quick cut that he said would give her hair movement and show off her soon-to-be highlights You could've foiled me: To lighten Lindsey's base color, stylists first highlighted her hair using a traditional approach but took paper-thin sections Minutes later, I was in a different chair and two women from Johnny's team were putting what looked like traditional highlights in my hair. 'This is just to lighten your base,' one of them told me. 'We make sure that the sections we take are paper, paper fine.' HAIR TRANSFORMATION BY THE NUMBERS 175: Foils used 17: Number of times I switched chairs 1,000: Dollars spent* 10: People who touched my hair 786: Minutes at salon *Johnny and Anh provided their services at no cost, but the cut would have been $400 and the color $600 Advertisement I waited another 20 minutes for the lightening agent to do its thing and was then taken back to the shampoo bowl where the back half of the 84 foils in my hair were removed and my strands rinsed. I was then escorted back to a styling chair where the remaining front foils were hit with the heat from a blow-dryer to make the color even. Back I went to the shampoo bowl where the rest of the foils were removed and I had my first wash of the day. 10:43 AM: A team of stylists then blow-dried my now-lighted hair. They tagged in and out like a perfectly choreographed dance routine, something I would come to find was essential to making sure all 15 clients of the day were taken care of. When they had finished, I looked in the mirror and saw an insanely blonde, almost grey-haired woman looking back at me. It was not a good look. I was assured my final result would be nothing like it. Round one: The result of Lindsey's first highlights was not what she was hoping for, but Johnny's team assured her the final look would be nothing like it At this point, I entered a waiting game of musical chairs, moving one chair closer to Johnny's station each time he finished a client in front of me. 12:04 PM: Eventually, I met the colorist-in-chief. I could see him sizing me up as he asked to see my goal photos again. As he scrolled through him, he kept saying, 'this won't work; it's not your haircut'. It was at this moment that I realized what a true collaboration Anh and Johnny have. Like volleyball players, Anh sets up the hair during the cut, so Johnny can spike the ball with his color. It's the kind of hair you can dress up or dress down, but it's still going to look good and it will last for a long time, too. -Johnny Ramirez The pair have been working together for the better part of ten years and can pretty much communicate in hair, no words necessary. 'What Anh and I do is very old school,' Johnny said. 'The kind of hair he and I do, it's the kind of hair you can dress up or dress down, but it's still going to look good and it will last for a long time, too.' The twosome have even trademarked a name for their aesthetic: lived in hair. 'OK, so if my goal photos won't work with my new cut, what should I do?' I asked Johnny. 'I think you just surrender. Surrender your hair to the process,' he told me. I took that to mean I should just trust him to do what he thought was best, so I agreed. Living that highlight life: The key to Johnny's 'lived in color' is his ability to assess his client's skintone and eye color and then strategically place the foils for a beachy or sunkissed effect While he began to gently tease sections of my hair and highlight them again, a process he called 'doing the tips', I quizzed him about what he was doing. 'I consider skintone, eye color and placement,' he explained of his work. 'I always look at the inside of the wrist to determine the person's skintone, where it doesn't get a lot of sun. When people talk with their hands, I can already see it right away. 'Yellow and pink don't complement each other,' he continued, 'so for those with pink undertones, you have to stay with cooler hair tones.' When you have hazel eyes and neutral undertones, as I do, you have more options. 'You're not limited to just one thing. You can push the envelope for sure,' he said. Lucky me! 'But is there anyone who won't look good with a lighter hair color?' I asked him. Do I look hot right now? Teasing sections of hair in order to apply a transitional color is all part of the Ramirez process 'That's like saying, "Is there anyone out there who won't look good coming back from an amazing summer vacation somewhere?"' he answered. 'There is always something, maybe not the big punch, but something subtle - it's the difference between beachy and sunkissed. It's like going to Chanel. You may not want the whole outfit, but you'll find something. Maybe it's a scarf or necklace but there's something.' But as little foil balls of highlights hung in my eyes, Johnny emphatically said that although everyone will look good with a version of his 'lived in hair' look, not everyone can have it. If someone comes in with severely damaged hair and wants to go platinum, for instance, he'll try to talk them out of it, but if they're adamant, he'll send them away - even those clients who have waited years for an appointment or traveled incredibly long distances to see him. 'I'm not going to be the one that melts her hair,' he said. This was not an empty threat. He was sending home a 'classic bleach and tone' as I got from his chair. While I waited for the second round of color to lift, I ate the lunch I had ordered to the salon - common practice for Ramirez Tran clients. 1:58 PM: I was ushered back to the shampoo bowl where 75 foils were removed. 'This has to be almost over,' I thought to myself, sensing that climbing-the-walls feeling creep in. It wasn't. Round two: Lindsey thought she wanted an ashy blonde color, but once it was done, she realized she wanted something more caramel I got yet another blow-dry and then a few of the color assistants teased small sections of my hair so they could apply a 'transition' color, so the highlights would blend seamlessly into my base color. I looked like a Chia Pet that got stuck in an electrical socket. 3:17 PM: Back at the shampoo bowl, someone (at this point I'd stopped keeping track of who) brushed the mats out of my hair and then rinsed and toned it. I went back to a styling chair where the front pieces of my hair are blown dry (again), before being escorted back to Johnny's station for a color check. I wasn't thrilled at this point, but I was ready to throw in the towel if it meant getting the hell out of the salon. 4:49 PM: No such luck. Johnny didn't love it either, and he put another 16 foils in my hair. The blow-dry, wait, foil removal, brush-out, rinse and tone process repeated. Rinse and repeat: At 7 PM, Lindsey had been at the salon for nearly 12 hours and her scalp was beginning to hurt My scalp felt like it was going to disintegrate, as I sat down for blow-dry number God only knows. 6:22 PM: I had been at the salon for 11 hours and I was still not happy with the result. My hair look too ashy, which I thought I wanted but didn't actually like when I saw it on me. Johnny's assistant Andrea agreed. She darkened my base and used something known as 'Lava' to make the blonde pieces more caramel. Forty minutes later, Andrea was happy with the color, Johnny was happy with the color, and most importantly, I was happy with the color. But the day, which has now become night, is still not over. Free at last! After 13+ hours in the salon, Lindsey finally saw the 'lived in' color of her dreams Turn around: Anh alternated waving techniques to give Lindsey his signature loose waves No follow-up needed: Johnny told Lindsey her color would last for seven months to a year, making the time she put in at the salon well worth it 7:26 PM: Remember when Anh told me in the morning that he'd see me again before I left? True story. Ramon blow-dried my hair and Anh came back over to inspect it. He made a few snips to tweak the haircut to better suit my highlights. The last step in the insane process was the signature Anh 'lived in' waves. He used a combination of waving techniques (see video below) to get perfectly placed bends that showed off the artistry of both the cut and the color. 8:36 PM: I left the salon more than 13 hours from the time I had arrived. New research has backed up what we already know to be true that there is a big discrepancy between our real age and the age we feel: what scientists term our subjective age. According to the findings, this gap between reality and fantasy is a whopping 13 years. And those who feel more youthful tend to live longer. Here, six writers tell us what age they are in their heads... New research has backed up what we already know to be true that there is a big discrepancy between our real age and the age we feel: what scientists term our subjective age I'M 68, BUT INTEND TO STAY 35 IN MY HEAD! As a fashion PR supremo, Lynne Franks inspired the character of Edina Monsoon in sitcom Absolutely Fabulous LYNNE FRANKS As a fashion PR supremo, Lynne Franks inspired the character of Edina Monsoon in sitcom Absolutely Fabulous and is now a successful businesswoman, author and authority on womens empowerment. She has two children, six grandchildren and a new relationship. For the past 20 or 30 years, Ive stubbornly considered myself to be around 35 years old. Those mid-30s were a good age because my whole life was ahead of me even if I didnt appreciate it at the time yet I still had sufficient life experiences to give me a modicum of wisdom. So its not really surprising that aged 35 in my head I still rush into huge life changes without too much regard for the consequences. Earlier this year, I started living with a new partner after only knowing him for nine days (were still together, fortunately). We have a new home in Somerset, an area I had only experienced through visits to the Glastonbury Festival and didnt know at all. Im planning several new businesses, as well as writing a new book. I dont believe Im the only baby boomer whose life still includes going to music festivals and travelling to exotic islands for holidays. Those of us approaching the big 70 who are fortunate enough to have good health (and most of our own teeth) may not be quite the ravers we were in the Seventies and Eighties, but we are still inspired by the music, fashion and art that came of age at the same time we did. If Mick Jagger can still prance around the stage at 73, then why cant I boogie on down when I feel like it? I may not want to be a new parent, like Mick or Ronnie Wood, but dancing around the kitchen table with my grandchildren is still a world away from my own mothers grandmotherly style. I admit my body hasnt quite kept up with my youthful emotions and ideas. I do have increasing aches and pains, and weight in places I didnt know weight could live. Despite this, I intend to stay 35 in my head until my body finally gives out and I can no longer pretend to myself that the vital, energetic, fun, younger me is anything but a memory. AT 74, I NOW REALISE 60 WAS MY PRIME SUSAN HILL Susan Hills novella The Woman In Black has been running in the West End for 27 years and has been made into a hit film, too, starring Daniel Radcliffe. Hill is married, with two daughters. What does it mean, to feel ones age? Intermittently achy joints and longing to be in bed by 9pm? Then I am definitely 74. But I can still touch my toes, stand on one leg for ages and recite the alphabet backwards. I have written three books in the past year, so mentally, I am surely still in my 50s. Susan Hills novella The Woman In Black has been running in the West End for 27 years and has been made into a hit film, too, starring Daniel Radcliffe The age one feels and would like to remain has nothing to do with the life events of the time. Some hard things happened in my 40s, I was near death on several occasions, but I much preferred them to my 30s. I loved my children dearly as children, but I actually prefer them now they are young women, which means the best of life began when I was 60. Things began to look up. I felt calmer. I accepted things. I was ambitious, but no longer competitive not that I ever was much, especially as a writer. Art is not a competition. After 60, I started eating well and never counting a calorie. It shows, of course. I dont care a jot. I also stopped hating my face and body, which is ironic because, back when I did hate it, I was far better looking, not to mention slimmer, than I am now. Work was important but when a writer has children, the books have to fit round school runs and homework assistance. Come 60, I could focus on writing. It was the age when ideas began to multiply and that hasnt stopped. At 60, I realised it didnt matter what anyone thought or said about me. I enjoyed having more time to myself. I could do anything. I bred Border Terriers, did a Masters in theology. It was the start of a rich, fruitful, calm phase of life. Sixty it is. Susans new collection, The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories, is published by Profile. I FEEL LIKE IM HALF MY 68 YEARS DEBORAH MOGGACH Deborah Moggachs novel These Foolish Things was the inspiration for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith Deborah Moggachs novel These Foolish Things was the inspiration for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Moggach is married to her third husband and has a son and daughter. When I was little, I thought 34 was my ideal age. At 34, I would know the secrets of being a woman; I would be a proper grown-up with a hairstyle and painted nails. Then 34 arrived and I didnt feel grown-up at all and my hair was still a mess but I was utterly happy. It felt the perfect age and my children were the perfect ages: five and six. I had experience under my belt and yet anything seemed possible. And though Ive been happy since then Im basically a happy person 34 is where Ive stuck. This can be embarrassing. My children are now 39 and 40 and, when Im with their friends, Ill join in the conversation, presuming Im one of them, until theres a pause and I realise what an idiot I look. This partly stems from being a single parent. Partners have come and gone, but I basically brought up my son and daughter alone. This means that Ive regressed to their ages. A single mother is more a friend than a proper parent. For better or worse, its a different relationship: youre chums in a way you cant be when youre that unit known as Mum and Dad. So my age has always been fluid and its hard to believe Im 68, until I look in the mirror. Then there has been the added complication of the men in my life. After my marriage, I fell in love with a man who was 18 years older than me. Our first date was going to buy him an orthopaedic mattress. I loved his wisdom and his interesting past. But I lost track of my age. Sometimes, when I was with him and he was moaning about his prostate, I felt young and sprightly. At other times, I felt I had speeded up to his more advanced age, commiserating with him and feeling elderly myself. Then, after he died, I fell in love with a man who was 15 years younger than me. Weirdly enough, the same thing happened. I felt both younger and older than my years and could hardly remember what age I was supposed to be. Now, Im married to somebody my own age and, at last, I have settled down to being 68. This is very companionable. But the stubborn fact remains: emotionally, I still feel 34. Deborahs most recent novel, Something To Hide, is published by Vintage. IVE NOT AGED A JOT PAST 21, EVEN AT 66 JENNI MURRAY Broadcaster and author Jenni Murray is best known for presenting BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour Broadcaster and author Jenni Murray is best known for presenting BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour. She is married with two sons. My actual age, according to my birth certificate, is 66 although it gives me a shock every time I say it. At 66, my grandfather had retired, received his golden clock from the pit where hed worked all his life and, together with my grandmother, who wore only what she considered age appropriate, planned a quiet life with a sense of impending doom. To me, retirement is a dirty word. I cant imagine how I would fill my life if I wasnt doing the work I love and I have no idea what age-appropriate fashion would be. I wear leggings, tops and flip- flops or trainers, none of which would look out of place on the 20-year-olds I meet in the office. There are times when I am painfully aware of the fact that I am no spring chicken. Its usually when I wake up in the morning and every muscle cries out: No, no, go back to bed! Its an act of supreme self-will that persuades me to keep on keeping on, knowing that the aches and stiffness will ease as long as I keep moving. I think in my heart, I havent yet passed 21. My eye make-up hasnt changed since 1966, when I copied Dusty Springfield. My current haircut bears a striking resemblance to the Vidal Sassoon style made famous in the Sixties by Mary Quant. Now the children are grown up and gone, I can accept invitations to any social event I choose. I dont have to get home early or worry that Im neglecting my responsibilites I dont have any! I still read the authors I loved when I was 21: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Pearl S. Buck. Im as likely to have Dusty or Joan Baez or The Beatles playing as Beyonce and, yes, I still dance around the sitting room when Im alone. I still ask: Do I look OK in this? no more confident in my body image now than I was then. I only look in the mirror when I have to, and that hasnt changed since 1965. I guess you could say Ive never grown up. Jenni Murrays new book, A History Of Britain In 21 Women, is published by Oneworld. FORGET 54... IM STILL ONLY 33 JILL DAWSON Jill Dawson is the best-selling author of nine novels, including The Great Lover, about the poet Rupert Brooke Jill Dawson is the best-selling author of nine novels, including The Great Lover, about the poet Rupert Brooke (chosen as a 2009 Richard and Judy Summer Read). Jill is married with two sons and a foster daughter. Yesterday, I went swimming in a cool, green English river. In my teens or 20s, Id have been horribly self-conscious hanging around in broad daylight in my swimsuit. But at the age of 33, something magical happened: I grew up. My mother always said (proudly) that she never felt grown up. Inside, she felt exactly the same as she did at 13. Her declaration used to make me shudder 13 for ever! The age of anxiety and self-consciousness. I hoped that having children would make me feel like an adult but, when I had my son at 26, little changed. I was still hopeless at everything. I couldnt drive. I was in a rubbish relationship, but had no money or job and felt I couldnt leave. I wanted to be a writer. What made me grow up? It was an unexpected bonus of ending that relationship, aged 30. Being a single parent was the making of me. I had to get a job and learn to drive. Over the next three years, I did a part-time Masters in writing and got a distinction. I published my first novel, Trick Of The Light, in 1996. And at the end of that year, I fell in love. So inside, thats who I feel I am. The woman I grew into at 33. Her friends told her: 'things will rapidly improve the more love a child gets' Growing up, I always thought I would give birth to a child, but I always thought Id adopt as well. So when I finally adopted my daughter, Tuesday, four years ago, it wasnt second best. I hadnt minded which way it happened adoption or birth child. For years, people had asked me lots of questions about why I didnt have children: Was I going to have them? Was I going to get married? I was asked these questions when I was with one partner, then when I was on my own. Its hard to face those questions if you really do want to have children. Its intrusive. A mother at last: Lauren Child, author and illustrator of Charlie And Lola Of course, youre much more likely to be asked if you want children if youre an author of childrens books, as I am. My Charlie And Lola and Clarice Bean books had become quite popular, and people seemed to be surprised that I wasnt a mother as though it wasnt possible to write for children without having had any. Its almost as though theres something wrong with you if you either dont have them or dont want them. I was around 41 when I decided to go down the adoption route as a single woman. I was dating Adrian, my partner, at the time he is now my daughter Tuesdays legal father but it was something I did very much on my own. It was just where Adrian and I were at the time dating, rather than living together as we are now and, of course, adoption is a big decision to make. Above: Lola on a spacehopper. Lauren says she was around 41 when she decided to go down the adoption route as a single woman None of my friends thought for a minute: How is she going to cope? Everyone was incredibly supportive, especially my family. I told myself that people cope in far trickier circumstances than I was in and so I knew I could do it. It helped that I had no doubts. I knew I wanted a child more than anything else. I was driven by that. There were times when I wished I was the kind of person who didnt really mind not having a child. But I did really mind. I felt I have to do this. Going through the process of getting Tuesday was like a job in itself. It took five years and was very up and down. Writing Ruby Redfort, my teen detective series, helped, but I was very anxious most of the time. You are worrying about it all the time. So much of your headspace is taken up with Should I be phoning someone? Should I be filling out a form? and generally being on edge. You dont know if it is ever going to happen. The unknown is so difficult. And the wait its a very long wait. Adopting in Britain was not possible for me because, in this country, its difficult to do it as a single woman. They also like to match you with a child who is culturally the same and, in a place like London, where the children are ethnically diverse, this was another difficulty. My age also counted against me. It wasnt for want of trying to adopt in Britain, but it just wasnt possible. Above: Charlie and Lola. The author says: 'I hadnt even considered adopting from Mongolia, but I went there in 2008 as part of my work as an Artist for Peace with Unesco' Actually, I really didnt mind where I adopted from, but there are only so many countries where you can. I hadnt even considered adopting from Mongolia, but I went there in 2008 as part of my work as an Artist for Peace with Unesco. The people I was working with were so lovely, I started asking questions about whether I would be able to. I was overwhelmed by the support I got there. There was no tutting and saying: You shouldnt adopt a child from our country and take her to your country. They made me think: Im right to do this. The adoption process took four years almost the same time as it would have done in Britain. Finally, in 2012, I got a call to say that Id been matched with a little girl. Tuesday was in a care centre. When I went there to pick her up, a nurse walked past me holding this beautiful little girl with plaits. She was about two-and-a-half. I thought: Oh, imagine if she was my daughter! Id be over the moon. And then the nurse returned and I was handed her and told: This is your daughter! She sat in my lap and was silent. Funnily enough, she looked a bit like Lola from Charlie And Lola. My Mongolian friends said: We think you drew her, Lauren! And then the nurse returned and I was handed her and told: This is your daughter! It was an extraordinary experience. The whole thing felt surreal. And then, after all the paperwork is signed, you go home together. The flights home two, including a stopover in Seoul were traumatic. There was a lot of screaming and not much sleep. I counted every minute of those 15 hours in the air. I have never been so relieved to step off any form of transport. By the time I walked through immigration, I was unable to speak without tears rolling down my cheeks. The tough-looking man behind the desk was very nice and started chatting to me in such a kind way that I lost it completely. But I kept thinking: If I find this traumatic, what on earth must she be feeling? Back home in London, Tuesday never wanted me to leave her side. She had to sleep with me and often slept on my head. Sleep was not sleep any more. It was lying on the floor and dozing. Adapting was hard for her. I just wanted to make it better for her, for her to be all right, but I also knew that it was going to take time. That was the hardest thing. No one could fix it immediately. Above: Charlie and Lola. She says: When I look back, its hard to believe that Tuesday is the same child as the one I brought back on the plane. And thats what my Mongolian friends had told me: things will rapidly improve the more love a child gets' Adrian and my friends were incredible and, actually, although everything wasnt perfect we would have tantrums, all normal, but with fostering or adoption you dont necessarily know what the cause is Tuesday is an amazing child and everyone adored her. When she was four, I suddenly saw that everything was totally different from how it had been. It had all got so much better, but the process had been so gradual. When I look back, its hard to believe that Tuesday is the same child as the one I brought back on the plane. And thats what my Mongolian friends had told me: things will rapidly improve the more love a child gets. Adrian is very involved in the parenting. He takes Tuesday to school most mornings, and I am lucky I can work from home. Now that shes at school, she tells people shes half English and whole Mongolian. Thats her way of describing it, not mine. She loves to draw and, often, after I have picked her up from school, she will come with me to the room where I do my illustrating and work alongside me. Im working on an illustrated book on dogs and shes drawing the dogs for me. With my last book, she coloured in some numbers so beautifully that I used them as the endplate. I am always talking about nature and nurture with my friends. I think so much of who you are is already in you. Obviously, it can be drawn out, but there are things that are just in us. Tuesday is just like me when I was a child: totally passionate about drawing its something we can do together. They chose very well for me because there could not be a child I love more. I mean, shes perfect. I cant imagine life without her. As told to Louise Carpenter This winter, a slew of lifestyle gurus and stocking-filler books are urging us to practise 'hygge', the Danish art of cosiness and contentment, and snuggle up like modern-day Vikings. Just last week, 'hygge' made it into the Collins Dictionary, proving that its cultural domination is complete. But I simply can't get on board with this smug Scandi obsession. The truth is, home-grown British cosiness knocks hygge into a cocked hat. This winter, a slew of lifestyle gurus and stocking-filler books are urging us to practise 'hygge', the Danish art of cosiness and contentment, and snuggle up like modern-day Vikings So, no, I don't want to nest amid stripped Nordic floorboards and reindeer skin throws when I can have a velvety carpet and tartan wool rugs, thank you. I'll pass on a Danish pastry in favour of a buttered crumpet and a roaring fire. After all, cosy is what we Brits do best. We're the country of smoky evening fogs and dark steaming pubs, rain-lashed windows and shepherd's pie in the oven, Sunday night costume dramas and The Vicar Of Dibley. What other country would, in survey after survey, vote not a glossy penthouse flat, or a flashy great mansion, but a snug little bungalow their favourite type of home? Where else could a sedate televised baking competition be the most-watched show of the year? We even dish up murder as cosily as possible, with our queen of crime Agatha Christie setting her fiendish plots in sleepy villages, to be cracked by unlikely white-haired sleuth Miss Marple. As for the hygge hoopla about relishing the small things in life, what a joke! As for the hygge hoopla about relishing the small things in life, what a joke! It took an American, the writer Bill Bryson, to observe: 'The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely enlivened when presented with a hot beverage and a small, plain biscuit.' And there's no need to warn us off tricky topics, hygge-style, when a whiff of confrontation has most of us curling our toes in embarrassment, and the nation's favourite conversation starter is the weather. All this Danish finger-wagging is making me feel quite un-hyggelig. Many women in the workplace will have experienced it; the moment you're talking in a meeting, pitching an idea or solution, and then get talked over by a man. To add insult to injury, sometimes the culprit will later pitch the same idea you did, and be the one to get credit for it. It's a common phenomenon, one that has been dubbed 'manterrupting'. Not impressed: Women are fighting against 'manterrupting', when men interrupt them frequently 'Imma let you finish': Kayne West very famously manterrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs (above) And it's not just everyday office workers who experience this either, with powerful women all over the world fighting against it. Who could forget that moment at the VMAs when Kayne West jumped on stage to interrupt Taylor Swift? Or the 55 times Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton in the first US Presidential Debate? It's not new either. In a study by the University of California in 1975, researchers recorded everyday conversations men and women had in public places like cafes and supermarkets. They found in conversations between men and women, 47 out of the 48 interruptions were made by men. Frequent: In the first US presidential election (above) Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton 55 times HOW DO YOU FIGHT MANTERRUPTERS? Follow the advice of White House staffers and support other women by amplifying their ideas Introduce a no-interruptions rule at staff meetings Continue speaking even when interrupted until the person gets the message Advertisement One woman, however, is trying to fight manterruptions one at a time. Shivani Gopal, who had a long career in the financial-services industry and is now the founder of website The Remarkable Woman, says that manterruptions are more harmful than they first appear. 'In a nutshell, manterruption is the unnecessary interruption of a woman speaking by a man. We speak up, only to be shot down by a louder, more forceful male colleague,' she told News Local. 'Interruptions are in essence a verbal assertion of power enabling the interrupter to take the floor of the conversation' 'Interruptions are in essence a verbal assertion of power': Some women are now employing tactics to try and stop manterrupting The remarkable woman: Shivani Gopal (above) says she has experienced manterrupting frequently To try and combat this, female staffers in The White House came up with a clever way to stop manterrupting and ensure their voices weren't overlooked. Whenever one woman made a good point, another would amplify it by repeating it and crediting it back to the woman who said it, according to The Washington Post. This helped to prevent interruptions and colleagues getting undue credit for another's ideas. It's a tip that Ms Gopal says she believes works, along with a couple of others to stop manterruptions. The entrepreneur says that another tactic is to just keep talking and not let the interrupter speak, or talk to your boss about continual offenders. Amplification: Female White House staffers came up with a tactic where they reinforced other women's points to prevent manterrupting Alternatively if you are the boss, implementing rules to prevent interruptions in meetings can go a long way to helping. This is particularly important in industries that are male dominated, and could help to retain good female talent. Wrapped up: Elle Macpherson looking glamorous Making the best of a bad job is a great British characteristic, at least thats what I was telling myself as I trudged into a biting wind along Regent Street the other day. Hellish weather, dark mornings and early nightfall are with us, bringing with them the certainty that messing around with flimsy fashion, such as the strappy shoes Id foolishly gone out in, is no longer an option. Now is the time to armour-up with serious footwear. Bravely onward into the minefield of ugly shoes we go. Because when it comes to getting a proper winter armoury together, shoes are by far the most problematic purchase. Scarves, gloves and hats are the easy bit, readily available everywhere. Footwear that can cope with rain, ice, snow, slush and slippery pavements is a whole other issue if you want to retain a modicum of self-respect on the style front. High-heeled boots are fine to a point, and I love them as an answer to autumnal weather, but I dont want to risk ruining my best on a salt-strewn road. Besides, tottering around on heels looks ridiculous when arctic conditions hit. Not to mention being dangerous. So, whats the answer? Finding an acceptable compromise between practicality and style is annoyingly tough in the British High Street. Hiking boots and wellies have their place for country walks, obviously. But the kind of deep-tread, fake-fur-lined, bad-weather boots served up by companies in this country have a depressing old-lady look about them, which is just a bridge too far. Hence why I was on Regent Street heading towards U.S. firm J. Crew, which is well used to tooling up its customers for fashion survival through the serious onslaughts of North American winters. Its answer is an excellent example of the hybrid between a Chelsea boot and a welly the stealth welly if you like. It passes as a classic-but-cool fashion choice but is also properly, comfortably rain-proof. The fact that this seasons version is in matte black rather than shiny plastic is a further bonus. Point being: they look good with a slim, tailored trouser-suit and an overcoat for any woman on the daily commute; something U.S. retailers take into consideration for their legions of professional customers. For the best example of the stealth welly, look at J. Crews Matte Chelsea Rain Boots (68, jcrew.com). Hunter has also waded in with its Chelsea Wellies, 80, although these are definitely as you might expect from a welly company more obviously rubbery than the J. Crew design. WET WEATHER BOOT RULES Slim-leg trousers work best with short boots as they will tuck inside at the ankle. Beware hybrid boots with obvious welly-style toes these dont look at all chic. Curb the urge to buy coloured rubber boots, youll be in circus clown territory. When buying black boots, always go for the most matte finish available. Advertisement Another style merge in the quest for dry feet is the biker-boot-cum-Wellington. Just like the now ubiquitous biker jacket, the biker boot has now been reworked to suit all ages. The French have this one nailed. Wellington company Aigle has a couple of good examples in its range. For a short, unadorned shape try Aigles Miss Juliette Bottillion Boots (75, office.co.uk). Or for a slightly longer and more literal biker style, look at Aigles Miss Julie Wellies (100, also available at office.co.uk). Zadig & Voltaire, the French mid-market High Street brand, is also, Ive discovered, a really good source of durable, low-heeled boots for tramping around soggy pavements. Id recommend this seasons motorcycle-strapped Roady Rubber Boots (zadig-et-voltaire.com). Designer shoes, industrial-strength hairspray and moisturising lotions worthy of a Nobel Prize. Every month young men are splashing hundreds of dollars on items such as these in an expensive effort to look their best. And new research has revealed that not only are men willing to fork out to look good, but they are spending more on beauty than the fairer sex. Preening: A new survey has found that men are spending more than women on clothes and beauty products A new nationwide survey by Suncorp Insurance has found that men in their 20s are spending more on clothes, shoes and personal care than their female counterparts. The survey of 1,000 found that males in their 20s will splash an average of $493 every month to look good, compared with females, who spend an average of $390 a month. 'Men are much more into fashion these days,' social researcher Mark McCrindle told the Adelaide Advertiser. 'And when it comes to appearances it is not just aftershave any more, it is all sorts of cosmetics, from moisturiser and hair product to perfumes.' Forking out: Women spend an average of $390 a month to look good, while men spend an average of $493. Mr McCrindle said the most obvious indicator of the trend could be seen in the personal care aisle at the supermarket. 'You only have to go to the hair product section at supermarkets to see the male section as full as the female,' he said. Suncorp Regional Manager Danniele Sim said the results illustrated the changing priorities of today's young adults. 'Our research shows that people in their 20s face conflicting financial priorities such as wanting to save for a house deposit, eating out and taking holidays,' she said. Nearly 50,000 people have since liked the candid comparison photo She also encouraged her followers to love their bodies, whatever size She said that she thinks the photo on the right is more beautiful In the photo on the left, Ms Crabbe is fully made up; then bare-faced A recovered anorexic has drawn praise on Instagram, thanks to an affirming message encouraging other women to love themselves, whatever size or shape they are. Megan Jayne Crabbe, 23, from Essex, posted a raw comparison photo on Instagram last week, with the opening line: 'I think that one of these pictures is more beautiful than the other. But it's not the one you think.' The accompanying photos show Ms Crabbe stood tall and slim on the left, and then sitting down, with visible stomach rolls and make-up-free, on the right. In both photos, she is smiling. Scroll down for video Raw: Megan Jayne Crabbe, 23, from Essex uploaded a raw comparison photo to Instagram (pictured), in which she encouraged other women to love themselves Happy: Ms Crabbe struggled with anorexia in the past, which she has written about on her website - she now describes herself as a 'body positive warrior' 'One would be called curvy, the other fat,' Ms Crabbe wrote on her detailed caption with the split photo. I think it's more beautiful just to be yourself 'One looks like a "before", the other looks like an "after". One will inspire people to tell me that I'm unhealthy, unworthy, unlovable. 'The other will be praised, admired, desired. And even though I've spent my life believing that the version of me on the left is more valuable than the version on the right, I've changed my mind now. 'I think it's more beautiful just to be yourself.' Change: Ms Crabbe said she had spent her life thinking she had to be one way (pictured left: when suffering with anorexia and right: now) - now she thinks it's beautiful to be yourself Viral: These days, Ms Crabbe has more than 300,000 followers on Instagram, who follow her profile for its advice and body-positive messages Moving forward: 'The rolls on my stomach, the cellulite dotting my thighs, my face bare and my mind free from what anybody else wants me to be,' Ms Crabbe posted Ms Crabbe went on to say that the photo on the left is 'posed', 'polished' and 'unnatural': 'It was taken with all the pressures of what a "perfect" body should look like in mind,' she said. 'In the picture on the right, I am relaxed. I am content. I am celebrating all the parts of myself I've been taught to be ashamed of for my whole life. The rolls on my stomach, the cellulite dotting my thighs, my face bare and my mind free from what anybody else wants me to be. And that freedom is beautiful 'The rolls on my stomach, the cellulite dotting my thighs, my face bare and my mind free from what anybody else wants me to be. 'And that freedom is beautiful.' Ms Crabbe, who wrote on her website about her struggle with anorexia and who now describes herself as a 'body positive warrior', regularly shares realistic photos of herself and others to her 318,000 Instagram followers. And this message has resonated as much as many of her posts, with nearly 50,000 likes already. 'I spent so many years of my life counting calories, working out and starving myself to get to a size 8 and all of that time I was miserable and low,' one person wrote. 'I love the message you are putting across. You are beautiful!'. Resonating: Ms Crabbe's message has resonated hugely with her followers online, where close to 50,000 people have liked the message and shared comments Personal stories: 'I spent so many years of my life counting calories, working out and starving myself to get to a size 8 and all of that time I was miserable and low,' one person wrote Similar: Other women have since taken to social media to share similarly candid comparison photos of themselves, too (pictured) Other women have since taken to social media to share similarly candid comparison photos of themselves, too. 31-year-old self-described 'fitness junkie', Ashlie Molstad, also posted a split shot in similar poses. 'Same girl. Different angles,' she posted to her 10,000 Instagram followers. 'I say that the real magic happens when we embrace who we are, at every angle and size.' A prominent breastfeeding advocate has hit out at critics who say she is 'a crazed lactivist who wants to drown humanity in her boob milk'. Author Meg Nagle said that just because she supported breastfeeding, it did not mean she judged other mothers who fed their babies with formula. The mother-of-three, who runs the popular Milk Meg blog, said she was more concerned with whether infants were fed, rather than how they were fed. Scroll down for video Sick of it: Breastfeeding advocate Meg Nagle (pictured) hit back at critics who branded her a 'crazed lactivist' Most importantly: While Ms Nagle was a strong supporter of breastfeeding, she said the most important thing was whether a baby was fed or not 'You know what I'm sick of? People assuming International Board Certified Lactation Consultants are "anti" formula,' the certified lactation consultant wrote on her Facebook page. 'That we are crazed "lactavists" who want to drown humanity in our boob milk. That we judge women who bottle feed and talk about them like they are idiots. 'Get with it people, we don't spend time worrying about people who don't want to breastfeed.' Not bothered: The mother-of-three said she was not bothered about mothers who did not wish to breastfeed The mother-of-three, who caused a stir earlier this year when she admitted she breastfed her nephew, said the baby's well-being was always the most important thing. 'I love hearing women tell their stories about how they persevered and continued breastfeeding through incredible challenges,' she wrote. 'And I know in my heart of hearts that how we feed our babies does matter. Causing a stir: Ms Nagle said the best thing for mothers and babies would always be different depending on circumstances 'What is best for us and our babies individually might differ between people. 'However, I will forever advocate for breastfeeding, cuddling our babies, answering their cries and feeding a baby when they are hungry. This post is by Adriana Martinez, the Interim Director of Operations for the Innovation Lab Network at the Council of Chief State School Officers. A few weeks ago, I packed my bags and ventured into New England for the first time. At first, I was unimpressed with New Englands main attraction, the colorful foliage, which was the main conversation starter of all the small talk and the center of all the New England jokes. I quickly changed my mind, however, as soon as I was on a bus on our way to Pittsfield Elementary . As our bus driver maneuvered our incredibly large bus through tiny and windy roads of rural New Hampshire, I was captivated by the moment, excited by the oranges, purples, and reds around me, and the schools I was about to see. If youre familiar with the Innovation Lab Network (ILN), you can easily guess why I was in the New Hampshire on a bus visiting schools. If youre not familiar with the ILN, this is a network of twelve states facilitated by the Council of Chief State School Officers dedicated to transforming public education to by centering student needs within personalized learning and competency-based education systems. This small corner of the world has garnered incredible attention over the last couple of years for their work in competency-based education and performance assessment, known as the PACE pilot. I was joined by curious education leaders from across the nation clamoring to visit schools to see first-hand the transformation taking place in New Hampshire. As a longstanding member of the ILN and a national leader, New Hampshire was a natural site for convening our network, comprised of senior state education agency leaders and local practitioners. When we convened all the education leaders representing twelve states committed to transforming education and advancing learner-centered learning, we had the opportunity to collectively reflect on our achievements and challenges to date, and to look ahead to the future (and make jokes about leaves, too). People may think the PACE pilot, or the Performance Assessment for Competency Education pilot, is the main attraction New Hampshire has for education policy. The pilot offers the state and its districts a fantastic opportunity to learn about the process of assessment and how assessment informs student learning. But lets be clear: PACE is only the tip of the iceberg of whats going on in New Hampshire. What allows New Hampshire to stand out as a leader in public education is its relentless spirit and willingness to be innovative and focus on what students need. When Pittsfield Elementary opened its door to us, they werent there to showcase their PACE work; they were there to showcase nascent work around personalized learning, something called NG2 or no grades no grades. NG2 represents a concept that moves away from grade levels as the central organizing structure for moving students through their learning trajectory and moves away from letter grades (A-F) as the main indicator of student learning. Instead, students move through their learning at flexible paces that meet students where they are. Students move on when they demonstrate proficiency, not when they achieve a minimum letter grade. The work at Pittsfield Elementary only started this year, but already I could see the impact it was having on students. Moving towards a system that is flexible and that emphasizes student learning rather than grades impacts children in several ways, most notably by empowering students to be agents of their own learning. Some of the work New Hampshire is leading in personalized learning was stimulated through collaborative learning with their ILN peers in Wisconsin. Last year, our Annual Convening gathered this same group of state leaders in Milwaukee to view personalized learning in action. Following that meeting, state leaders in New Hampshire knew they could learn more from these schools and organized a series of school visits so that their educators could learn from their colleagues in Wisconsin. As the work around personalized learning and NG2 is beginning in New Hampshire, state leaders are making plans to collaborate with the Institute for Personalized Learning in Wisconsin to work on leadership development, in an effort to better support this work. Other examples of powerful collaborative learning can be seen in other states in the Innovation Lab Network. This coming spring, Kentucky will send their own cadre of educators to Wisconsin schools to learn about their practices and lessons learned in order to build connections among peer educators and support the implementation of personalized learning within their state. This is the power of our network in action: our states inspire and push each other to raise the bar for kids, they commit to learning together, and supporting each other along the way. This group of states, and many more, will lead the nation as they prepare for a new era in education marked by our transition to implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Many states, including those in the Innovation Lab Network, will leverage ESSA to advance student-centered learning in bold and innovative ways. As I left New Hampshire and made my way back home to DC, I felt energized and hopeful for our future--and not just because of the beautiful leaves. I encourage you to join us along this journey! The ILN recently launched a newsletter where we will share updates from all of our member states and insights from projects led by the ILN. Some of these projects include work were leading around Educator Competencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching and leadership; our collective exploration on equity and personalized learning; a new project were coordinating on career readiness and competency-based education; and our work to support states in ESSA implementation through innovative approaches to accountability and assessment. Finally, you can always learn about the work and journeys of our states through our interactive site Next State of Learning . Photos by Adriana Martinez. Ms Cromer told Daily Mail her priorities have shifted since having kids She launched it in Woolworths in March, and looks set to turn over $1m And so, she came up with a healthy smoothie base product with no sugar After having children, she decided she wanted to raise a healthy family Imagine having an idea, making it into a business, and turning over what looks set to be AUD $1 million dollars in the first year. That's what Sydney-based mum-of-three, Natasha Cromer, has done thanks to her idea for a healthy breakfast product. Desperate to find something tasty, but also healthy and nutritious for her kids, she had an idea to make smoothie bases, with 'no sugar, no additives and no nasties [sic]'. These days, you're more likely to see her brightly-coloured products in the aisles of supermarkets like Woolworths than you are in her own Maroubra-based kitchen. Healthy: Sydney-based mum, Natasha Cromer (pictured), came up with a healthy breakfast idea after having children Business plan: After she had her three kids (two pictured), Ms Cromer knew she wanted to feed them healthy, filling breakfasts - rather than sugary cereals However, Ms Cromer, 41, told Daily Mail Australia she wasn't always so health-conscious. 'Before I had my three children, Ben, Finlay and Matilda, I wasn't all that healthy myself. Like most women, I wanted to be healthy, but I was also busy, and didn't have the time to dedicate to my health 'Like most women, I wanted to be, but I was also busy, and didn't have the time to dedicate to my health. 'I think when any mother has children, their priorities come into sharp focus.' And so, sick of the sugary cereals and breakfast products which dominate the supermarket aisles, Ms Cromer decided to come up with her own smoothie-based breakfast option. She created smoothie bases that 'crunch down all of the best parts from muesli - the oats, the chia seeds and the almonds - and omits the bad bits like sugar,' Ms Cromer said. The bases are simple, with clean ingredients and no additives, and are blended together with milk and fruit to create a breakfast smoothie. Simple but delicious: Ms Cromer's smoothie bases (pictured) 'crunch down all of the best parts from muesli - the oats, the chia seeds and the almonds - and omit the bad bits like sugar' Shift: Ms Cromer said her priorities have shifted somewhat since she has had children - she didn't used to be all that healthy through her twenties, but now is much more so Nutritional focus: 'I think when any mother has children, their priorities come into sharp focus,' Ms Cromer said Flavour tests: The mother tried out lots of flavour combinations (pictured) at home, and invested $300,000 of her own money into the business Several months later, and after lots of testing flavour combinations from her home and investing $300,000 of her own funds, Wholey Foods Breakfast Smoothies launched to market. In 2015, with the financial backing of a private group of investors, Ms Cromer took the idea to Woolworths, who put the product on the shelves in March. Ms Cromer's background in consumer goods marketing was an advantage, but she still hasn't paid herself a salary, putting any profit straight back into the business. Success: In 2015, with the financial backing of a private group of investors, Ms Cromer took the idea to Woolworths, who put the product on the shelves in March 'It's challenging, I'm not going to lie,' she said. 'I have to wear many different hats and am expected to be across all of the business at all points, even over the weekend,' she said. 'But the feedback from other customers has been amazing - to inspire others towards being a little bit healthier is great.' Looking forward: While Ms Cromer hasn't yet paid herself a salary, putting all profits back into the business, Woolworths predict she will turn over $1m in the first year with Wholey Foods Creative: Meanwhile, the products can also be turned into smoothie bowls (left) for other variations on a healthy breakfast Advice: When it comes to business advice, Ms Cromer (pictured) says if you have a good idea 'you should be brave and go for it', so that you don't regret it Meanwhile, Wholey Foods continues to go from strength to strength. Woolworths have forecasted that her brand will turn over more than $1 million in retail sales in the first year, and Ms Cromer loves receiving positive feedback every day. 'My three kids love the smoothies, and I love the fact that I know I'm giving them something that's good for them and will fill them up,' Ms Cromer said. 'If you've got a good idea, my advice is just be brave and go for it. You may regret it otherwise.' She has been favouring an edgier style of late with her last engagement seeing Queen Letizia rocked a studded leather top. However, the Queen of Spain opted for a sensible aesthetic for her conference in Madrid this afternoon. The mother-of-two wore a formal fitted two-piece suit in charcoal grey for her engagement in the Spanish capital. Queen Letizia harked back to her days as a news reader today opting for a VERY formal ensemble as she attended a conference in Madrid The snug-fitting suit showcased the royal's famously slender frame during her outing on Monday. Letizia, 44, paired her elegant ensemble with a pair of simple black patent pumps as she stepped out this afternoon. The former journalist who is attending the 'Women in top executive posts' conference at the BBVA Building, paired her outfit with pearl coloured accessories. The Spanish royal is attending the 'Women in top executive posts' conference at the BBVA Building The mother-of-two wore a formal fitted two-piece suit in charcoal grey for her engagement in the Spanish capital She could be seen wearing a pair of white drop earrings and carrying a cream coloured clutch with agate detailing. The royal, who has been favouring a curlier hair style of late, today swapped her boucles for a poker straight blow dry. The queen attended her engagement without the company of her husband King Felipe VI this afternoon. The royal paired her slimming ensemble with a a pair of white pearl drop earrings Letizia joined Spanish Health, Social Services and Equality Minister, Dolors Montserrat (left) for this afternoon's presentation However, she was not without company joining Spanish Health, Social Services and Equality Minister, Dolors Montserrat for this afternoon's presentation. The royal was given a front row seat at the conference where she was seen applauding the female executives today. Letizia's formal aesthetic today is world's away from the rock chick vibe she emulated last week. On Friday Queen Letizia showed off her more edgy side in a studded black leather peplum top. The royal brightened up her outfit with a cream clutch bag decorated with agate detailing The royal was given a front row seat at the conference where she was seen applauding the female executives today The royal was joined by her husband King Felipe as she attended the Francisco Cerecedo' journalism award at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. The royal was clearly keen to vamp up her look for the night out, wearing a 225 leather top featuring studded detail at the wrists, waist and neckline. Known for champion native designers, it's no surprise the edgy item came from the Spanish brand Uterque. She kept to a dark colour palette, teaming the garment with slim dark trousers and black patent heels. Mother-of-two Letizia carried her essentials in a small clutch bag, which also featured stud details to complement her top. Queen Letizia of Spain, 44, showed off her more edgy side in a studded black leather peplum top King Felipe VI of Spain and Queen Letizia of Spain attend the 'Francisco Cerecedo' journalism award at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid The royal was clearly keen to vamp up her look for the night out, wearing the leather top which features studded detail at the wrists, waist and neckline King Felipe cut a more sombre figure in a dark suit and purple tie And she vamped up her usual natural look, rocking a smoky eye and glossy berry lips. Meanwhile, her husband King Felipe cut a more sombre figure in a dark suit and purple tie. The event held at the Ritz is an annual occurrence, which sees a journalist honoured by the Association of European Journalists. This year Italian writer and columnist Claudio Magris was the recipient of the prestigious prize. The Spanish royal vamped up her usual natural look, rocking a smoky eye and glossy berry lips. A smiling Queen Letizia looks flawless as she attends a journalism awards ceremony at The Ritz in Madrid Tonight's outing comes as King Felipe prepares for a controversial state visit to Saudi Arabia It's been a busy week for the royals who opened the annual Carlos III: The Keys of a Reign symposium in Madrid on Monday. The Queen used the outing as an opportunity to recycle, sporting a favourite Hugo Boss skirt and jacket combo she has worn on four previous occasions. King Felipe is due to set off for Saudi Arabia in the next few days for an official visit. However, the upcoming trip is not an altogether popular prospect among Spanish politicans. Tommy Hilfiger has praised model Gigi Hadid as the embodiment of the 'American dream girl next door', after facing a backlash over comments he made about her not being as thin as other models. The designer, 65, opened up about his appreciation of the supermodel in an interview with Hello! magazine to celebrate the release of his memoir American Dreamer: My Life In Fashion And Business. Pictured at his home at New York's Plaza hotel with wife Dee, 50, it was a chance to show off the stunning apartment with views of Central Park and is brimming with rare pieces by artists such as Andy Warhol. Scroll down for video Tommy Hilfiger, 65, pictured at his home in new York's Plaza Hotel with his wife Dee, 50 'She doesn't really fit': 21-year-old supermodel Gigi Hadid wore an oversized red, white and blue poncho because casting directors said she wasn't 'quite as thin' as the other models Opening up about 21-year-old supermodel Gigi, the designer said that when the she first walked for him in his 30th anniversary show, he knew she had something special. 'She is wholesome, built like a woman, yet fresh,' he explained. 'She is smart, funny and humble and we loved that.' He added that the rising star was extremely hands on with the creation of her fragrance The Girl. Describing her Southern California style as 'sporty, sexy with great taste', he added: 'She is definitely a girl with a bright future.' Gigi recently defended the designer, telling Access Hollywood that designer was 'rooting' for her and wanted her in his show because he loved her curves Gigi Hadid was forced to cover up in a large poncho during New York Fashion Week at the Tommy Hilfiger Fall 2015 show after a casting director said she 'wasn't as thin' as the other girls. However the model defended the designer, telling Access Hollywood: 'Tommy was rooting for me and... regardless of what the stylist of that season said or what he put me in. 'Tommy wanted me in the show, and Tommy was pushing for me and Tommy loved my curves.' Gigi wore an oversized red, white and blue poncho on the runway as she sauntered down the catwalk. 'More accepting': The next season Gigi rocked the runway in a skimpy bikini for the designer The designer received backlash earlier this month after comments he made regarding his team's decision to put her in the garb. 'Our casting director said she doesn't really fit,' Hilfiger, 65, began. 'Because you know, she's not quite as tall as the other girls, she's not quite as thin, so they put a red, white and blue poncho on her.' Tommy Hifliger heaped praise on Gigi Hadid in this week's issue of Hello! magazine He continued: 'Covered a lot of her body, unfortunately, but it received millions of hits.' The bold coloured frock went on to become a best-selling item by the high end apparel line. Hilfiger told Yahoo: 'So I said you know, why don't we ask her to design a line with us? So I said, "Gigi, come design this with me, we'll do a Gigi, Tommy Hilfiger line."' Speaking to Access Hollywood the genetically-gifted stunner said: 'When Tommy said it last week it was in context of a larger story that wasn't shown in that video.' 'The next season I wore a bikini on the same runway with the same stylist of the show that had previously put me in a poncho,' Gigi went on to further prove her point that Hilfiger was on her side. The first series of Planet Earth, aired in 2006, also faced accusations of 'faking' The BBC has revealed that breathtaking Planet Earth II footage that appeared to show a wild golden eagle's view of a mountainous habitat was actually filmed using a captive bird that lives in a wildlife sanctuary in France. The tame eagle, known as Slovak, was filmed swooping over the Alps at speeds of up to 200mph - taking viewers with it via a 'lipstick' camera strapped to its back. In a video on its website, the BBC confirms that Slovak, who resides at the Park les Aigles du Leman, was turned into a cameraman using his professional bird trainer. In the second hour-long episode on Sunday, the predator, which boasts a seven-foot wingspan, was seen dive-bombing through the mountains to feed on the corpse of a red fox; footage viewers said left them 'lost for words.' Bird's eye view...but stunning footage gained in Sunday night's episode of Planet Earth II used a trained bird named Slovak, from a wildlife sanctury in France, and a professional eagle trainer who helped attach a 'lipstick' camera to its back Revealed! The BBC's spin-off web clips show how trainer Jaques-Olivier Travers used a 4K lipstick camera strapped to his trained bird Slovak to capture the exhilarating footage It isn't the first time the Planet Earth series has been accused of 'creating' scenes. A former cameraman for the first series of the nature documentary, which aired in 2006, revealed that footage was 'faked' for dramatic effect and even admitted scenes showing a polar bear giving birth had actually taken place in a zoo. And last year, it emerged that a volcanic eruption scene in another BBC show, Patagonia: Earth's Secret Paradise, had been doctored. So is the BBC simply up to its old tricks? Or are nature documentaries simply 'making movies', as Sir Attenborough himself once suggested. It certainly appears the technique for 'creating' footage has been employed again in Planet Earth II. A 'how we did it' video currently on the BBC's website explaining in more transparent detail how Slovak was used in the new eagle scenes. This time, they employed bird trainer Jaques-Olivier Travers, who fitted a miniature 'lipstick' camera to a young golden eagle called Slovak. The footage they returned with offered a glimpse of the high-altitude world, from the perspective of a soaring eagle. When combined with footage of wild birds, the on-board camera shots give us the true sensation of what it feels like to fly above the Alps at 5,000metres. Trickery: Mr Travers explains how the spellbinding footage is achieved using Slovak, who lives in a wildlife sanctuary But fans watching the BBC wildlife documentary took to social media to express their disbelief over the footage, with some even suggesting the footage was 'fake' Bird handler Travers explains: 'For this footage, we decided with the producer since the beginning to use an on-board camera. We'd have to train the bird to carry this camera on its back. 'You can't see it, but he has a small harness all around his body, very well adapted to his body. We've fixed a small camera, a very light one, and the shape is perfect. And now Slovak is ready to become a cameraman.' He added: 'At the end I think the result is really amazing. I'm very proud [of] the bird, I think he did an amazing job and I think people will be very surprised to see for the first time what an eagle can see when he flies from a very high location.' Si r David Attenborough also revealed in the Planet Earth II Diaries spin-off that they had recorded the stunning footage with the help of paraglider Aaron Durogati, who wore a specially designed helmet camera to film the perspective of a diving eagle by jumping off a 3,000m mountain full of crevasses. Some viewers expressed their disbelief, with Charl writing: 'Man, Planet Earth 2 was mental last night. They strapped a camera to an eagle. GANDALF VISION OR WHAT?' He explained: 'Revealing a new perspective on the life of golden eagles in the mountains would take two very different approaches. 'A traditional wildlife crew set out to film wild eagles closer than ever before, whilst an aerial team aimed to capture the hunting flights of eagles high in the mountains.' The veteran wildlife presenter and naturalist told how they adopted an 'extreme approach' to capture the footage. Fans watching the footage have called the scenes some of the best they've watched, which is reflected in the viewing figures; the show garnered 10.6 million viewers on Sunday evening. Taking to Twitter, Gav wrote: 'Those shots from the back of the eagle on Planet Earth II are some of the best things I've ever seen.' Daniel Fahy claimed he was 'lost for words' while The Real Ray Niland added: 'Unreal television. Eagle with a gopro at 200mph. #PlanetEarth [sic.].' THIS IS HOW WE FAKED IT! MEET SLOVAK'S TRAINER... In an extra clip on the BBC's website, Mr Travers explained: 'For this footage, we decided with the producer since the beginning to use an on-board camera. We'd have to train the bird to carry this camera on its back. Raptor conservationist Jaques-Olivier Travers who helped the BBC capture a bird's eye view of what a golden eagle might see - using his trained eagle Slovak 'You can't see it, but he has a small harness all around his body, very well adapted to his body. We've fixed a small camera, a very light one, and the shape is perfect. And now Slovak is ready to become a cameraman.' He added: 'At the end I think the result is really amazing. I'm very proud [of] the bird, I think he did an amazing job and I think people will be very surprised to see for the first time what an eagle can see when he flies from a very high location.' Advertisement Narrator David Attenborough revealed: 'Revealing a new perspective on the life of golden eagles in the mountains would take two very different approaches Others expressed their disbelief at the cameramen's skills with Charl writing: 'Man, Planet Earth 2 was mental last night. They strapped a camera to an eagle. GANDALF VISION OR WHAT?' MailOnline has contacted the BBC for comment. A former cameraman for the first series of the nature documentary, which aired in 2006, revealed that footage was 'faked' for dramatic effect and even admitted scenes showing a polar bear giving birth had actually taken place in a zoo. Veteran wildlife cameraman Doug Allan lifted the lid on how the dramatic birth was produced, saying he understood why people felt 'deceived' after the BBC aired behind-the-scenes footage of the polar bear having her cubs in a protected setting with zoo professionals on hand. He said: I think the BBC didnt handle it the best. On their website there was a video showing how it was done, but they didnt quite bring enough attention to it [in the actual series]. It wasnt obvious.' Daniel Fahy claimed he was 'lost for words' while The Real Ray Niland added: 'Unreal television. Eagle with a gopro at 200mph. #PlanetEarth And last year, it emerged that a volcanic eruption scene in another BBC show, Patagonia: Earth's Secret Paradise, had been doctored. Awe-inspiring footage claimed to show a 'dirty thunderstorm' during the eruption, with lightning strikes flashing through a cloud of volcanic ash. But it was in fact made by splicing footage of two different volcanic eruptions together, one which happened in 2011 and the other in 2015. Another BBC documentary: Human Planet: Deserts Life in the Furnace, last aired in August 2014, was also exposed for misleading viewers, when a seemingly savage wolf was revealed to actually be semi-domesticated. Staff at the corporation were subsequently forced to undergo an 'anti-fakery' course afterwards. Governing body The BBC Trust's report said staff working in the broadcaster's flagship Natural History Unit would be banned from working on future shows until they completed the new course. Even the most dedicated home cooks will have indulged in a Saturday night takeaway at least once in their lives - but not former Great British Bake Off judge Mary Berry. The 81-year-old national treasure says she's never brought home a curry, Chinese or even a pizza - and always cooks at home. 'You wont believe this, but I havent ever had a takeaway, revealed the Buckinghamshire home economist, who has published more than 75 cookbooks. Mary Berry, pictured above at the National Television Awards this year, says she has never eaten a takeaway before - and would never eat Christmas dinner at a restaurant Her love of home-made meals means she's also ruled out ever dining out for Christmas dinner one year. 'Absolutely not,' says Mary, speaking on the set of a new Food Network show, James Martins Christmas With Friends. 'I totally understand other people who eat out, but I have no wish to.' There's still six weeks to go until Christmas but Mary Berry already knows what her husband Paul is buying her. I have the same thing every year and its an IOU, says Mary, who has been married for 50 years. I think its a brilliant thing to do. Then, when we go on holiday and have all the time in the world, I can go into a shop and see something I really shouldnt have and he says, Great, thats your present done. Speaking about what her husband buys her for Christmas, Mary, who has been married for 50 years, said: I have the same thing every year and its an IOU' 'I used to have things like wallets given to me when I had a perfectly good wallet at home. It works for us. Mary Berry says to 'cook the potatoes to perfection on Christmas Eve, drain them of any fat, and put them where the family wont pinch them when theyre warm (stock image) Mary will spend the festive season with family. Last Christmas, she and Paul went to her daughter Annabels house. I cooked the turkey at home, says Mary. It takes an hour to drive there so I cooked the turkey to absolute perfection and it did its resting in the boot of my car. 'I covered it with foil, a towel and a few anoraks. The gravy was in a thermos. The star cook admits that she's frequently asked for cooking tips. People often want to know how they can get everything in the oven at the same time on Christmas Day, she says. I say cook the potatoes to perfection on Christmas Eve, drain them of any fat, and put them where the family wont pinch them when theyre warm. 'Then, you can just pop them back in the oven on the day to crispen them up. I have the same thing every year and its an IOU, says the former Great British Bake Off judge, who has been married to Paul Hunnings for 50 years If you often wake up in the middle of the night the impact could be more serious than bleary eyes the next day. A major study suggests people who fail to sleep all the way through the night are at increased risk of heart complications. The research, which draws on data from more than 14million patients, concluded that people who report frequent night-time awakening have a 26 per cent increased chance of developing an irregular heartbeat. The condition, known as atrial fibrillation, is a major cause of strokes and heart failure. Adults who often awoke at night were 26 per cent more likely to develop an irregular heartbeat, new research suggests The research team, from the University of California San Francisco and the University of Michigan, also found that people who suffer insomnia, meaning they struggle to get to sleep at night or did not get enough sleep in total, had a 29 per cent increased risk of atrial fibrillation. Scientists suspect sleep disruptions put extra stress on the chambers of the heart. This could be because of the way key hormones are regulated during the sleep-wake cycle. Emerging evidence suggests that sleep affects the metabolism and hormone balance of the body - affecting cholesterol, insulin, blood pressure and inflammation. The part of the brain which regulates heartbeat and blood pressure - the autonomic system - could also be affected by irregular sleep, scientists think. Doctors previously thought sleep was only likely to affect cardiovascular health if someone was suffering from sleep apnoea - which causes snoring and dangerous pauses in breathing at night. But the researchers behind the new study took sleep apnoea into account when they calculated their results, and found heart risk remained even among people who did not have the condition. Lead author Matt Christensen, who analysed the results of three huge datasets with a combined 14million records, said: The idea that these three studies gave us consistent results was exciting. Separately, he also tracked 1,131 people, analysing the quality of their sleep by monitoring rapid-eye movement - a key indicator of deep sleep. The condition - known as atrial fibrillation (AF) - can lead to strokes, heart failure and other deadly complications That showed that having less rapid-eye movement sleep than other sleep phases during the night is linked to higher chances of developing atrial fibrillation. Mr Christensen, who presented his findings yesterday at the American Heart Associations Scientific Sessions meeting in New Orleans, said: By examining the actual characteristics of sleep, such as how much rapid-eye movement sleep you get, it points us toward a plausible mechanism. A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP REALLY DOES PAY OFF After a restless night, you can find yourself struggling to concentrate at work the next day. But it appears that a lack of sleep could be more costly than ever realised. A study suggests that additional time sleeping can raise your salary by thousands. Researchers from Williams College in Massachusetts and the University of California at San Diego say that a one-hour increase in sleep each week can raise wages by about half as much as an additional year of education. Advertisement There could be something particular about how sleep impacts the autonomic nervous system. Co-author Dr Gregory Marcus said: Ultimately, even without a clear understanding of the responsible mechanisms, we believe these findings suggest that strategies to enhance sleep quality, such as incorporating known techniques to improve sleep hygiene, may help prevent this important arrhythmia. The researchers said getting enough physical activity, avoiding too much caffeine, and having a regular evening routine could all contribute to better sleep. Earlier this year psychiatrists at the University of Freiburg found that sleep plays an essential role in resetting the connections of the brain each night. The revelation of this nightly recalibration provided a major insight into why sleep is so crucial for different aspects of the way the mind and body works. It explains why people cope so badly with a lack of sleep, displaying a major decline in cognition after just one sleepless night. Cannabis users age faster than those who avoid the drug, a new study claims. A study of just over 1,100 people found the drug has a significant affect on the cardiovascular system, accelerating the build-up of cholesterol in the arteries. It means a 30-year-old cannabis smoker, for example, has the biological age of a 33-year-old, the University of West Australia researchers claim. The study is the first of its kind to look at marijuana's impact on biological ageing. Its release on Monday coincided with a report presented to the American Heart Association, which looked more closely at how cannabis weakens the heart muscles. Scroll down for video A 30-year-old cannabis smoker, for example, has the biological age of a 33-year-old, University of West Australia researchers claim Lead researcher Professor Stuart Reece said he was stunned by the results. 'We found that for those who used cannabis over a long time, not only does it age you, it increases ageing at an exponential rate over time which is alarming,' Professor Reece said. 'The level of cannabis exposure in the group studied was much higher than we have seen reported before in other studies for developed nations.' Professor Reece said it was concerning that this was the first study to look at the long-term effects of smoking cannabis on the cardiovascular system and there were comparatively few studies across the world looking at its long-term effects. 'It is important to the health of populations worldwide that such research be continued, with the study highlighting the large-scale costs to the health system from cannabis use,' he said. Professor Reece's study, published in the British Medical Journal, emerged a day after a US study detailed the strain cannabis has on the heart. Researchers at St Luke's University Hospital Network analyzed data on 33,000 patients with cardiomyopathy, a sudden weakening of heart muscles, between 2003 and 2011. The illness is typically brought on by severe stress or grief. But according to lead research Dr Amitoj Singh, at least two cases in their study were partly brought on by marijuana. 'There have been many reports of heart attacks, strokes and the two cases of (stress cardiomyopathy) that have been linked to marijuana,' he said. Presenting his data at the American Heart Association's annual meeting, Dr Singh argued for caution as marijuana legalization spreads across the country. He warned young marijuana users do not typically display the tell-tale symptoms of cardiac risk, but he claims his data shows they have a higher risk of having one. Dr Singh's study concluded that marijuana users are two times more likely to suffer a heart attack. However, the majority of users in the study paired marijuana with tobacco and most suffered from depression. 'This is a retrospective study, so we cannot determine causation,' Dr Singh admitted. Dairy giants could be shamed into taking some yoghurt pots off shelves and downsize others in an attack on sugar by health watchdogs. Public Health England, which has been put in charge of part of the Government's Childhood Obesity Strategy, is alarmed that sugary yoghurts are fuelling weight gain. Like fizzy drinks, many flavoured yoghurts are packed with sugar, however they will not be subject to the Government's planned sugar levy. PHE has suggested that manufacturers should to cap the size of single serve pots of yoghurt at 125g. Public Health England is alarmed that sugary yoghurts, such as Nestle Smarties yoghurt pots, which contain 22.68g of sugar, are fuelling weight gain. Like fizzy drinks, many yoghurts are packed with sugar, however they will not be subject to the Government's planned sugar levy. Oreo Vanilla yoghurts contain 20.64g of sugar It also wants to slash the average amount of sugar in yoghurt from the current figure of 11.05 per cent to 8.8 per cent by 2020. Industry insiders are said to be furious at what they have called an 'appalling' attempt to demonise dairy products. They point out that yoghurt, milk and cheese contain important nutrients, including calcium and vitamins. There are concerns that a huge number of popular yoghurt products will have to undergo a dramatic recipe change or disappear from shelves. PHE has no legal powers to require the companies to change, however it could shame those that fail to fall into line. A number of children's yoghurts are too sweet based on the PHE targets. These include Petits Filous Raspberry & Strawberry Fromage Frais at 11.9 per cent sugar; and Munch Bunch Fromage Frais with Strawberry Puree and Vanilla Flavour at 13.4 per cent. HOW MUCH SUGAR IS TOO MUCH SUGAR? The average fizzy drink can contains more sugar than someones entire recommended daily allowance, researchers have discovered. Experts from Queen Mary University, London, found the average carbonated sugar-sweetened soft drink sold in the UK contains 30.1g of sugar per 330ml can more than seven-and-a-half teaspoons. But the Department of Health advises that: over-11s consume no more than 30g of sugar a day; children aged between seven and ten no more than 24g; and four-to-six-year-olds no more than 19g. Advertisement Muller Corner Trackstars yoghurt is both too big at 135g and too sweet at 13.8 per cent sugar. And Nestle Smarties split pot yoghurt is 18.9 per cent sugar. Research by The Grocer magazine has identified a list of other well-known products that do not meet the PHE standards. For example, Skyr Pear Apple & Cinnamon, is too big for a single serving at 150g. The same applies to Muller Corner Toffee Hoops at 135g; Danone Danio Passion Fruit at 150g; Fage Total Greek Yoghurt at 170g; The Collective Russian Fudge at 150g; Tesco Finest Scottish Raspberry at 150g. The Oreo Vanilla Yoghurt is too sweet at 17.2 per cent sugar 17.2g per 100g. The same is true of Muller Corner Toffee Hoops at 18.4 per cent sugar; Danone Danio Passion Fruit at 11.7 per cent; The Collective Russian Fudge at 14.6 per cent; and Tesco Finest Scottish Raspberry at 12.7 per cent. The Grocer said: 'PHE wants all single-serve yoghurt pots to be capped at 125g and separately is calling for average sugar levels to be cut to 8.8 per cent by 2020. The body wants to slash the average amount of sugar in yoghurt from 11.05 per cent to 8.8 per cent by 2020. Disney Frozen Strawberry Yogurt Pouches currently contain 10.5 per cent Petits Filous Raspberry & Strawberry Fromage Frais contain 11.9 per cent sugar THE 10 WORST OFFENDING YOGHURTS Yoghurt in the dock Pack Sugar (%) Sugar (per pot) Teaspoons Nestle Smarties split pot 120g 18.9 22.68g 5.7 Oreo Vanilla Yoghurt 120g 17.2 20.64g 5.16 Muller Corner Trackstars yoghurt 135g 13.8 18.63g 4.66 Munch Bunch Fromage Frais with Strawberry Puree and Vanilla Flavour 85g 13.4 11.39g 2.85 Strawberry and Raspberry Flavour Yogurt Frubes 70g 13.2 9.24g 2.31 Thomas and Friends Strawberry Fromage Frais with Added Vitamin D 45g 12.0 5.4g 1.35 Petits Filous Raspberry & Strawberry Fromage Frais 85g 11.9 10.12g 2.53 Disney Frozen Strawberry Yogurt Pouches 70g 10.5 7.35g 1.84 Rachel's My First Yoghurt 90g 9.6 8.64g 2.16 'As these bestselling examples show, one way or another yoghurt manufacturers are currently falling short, demonstrating the scale of the changes required if the industry adheres to the proposals. 'The controversial plans could result in hundreds of products being slimmed down or removed from shelves if companies agree.' Research by The Grocer found 43 per cent of all single-serve yoghurts currently fall foul of the PHE proposals. Some 382 out of 892 were over 125g. This included 87 per cent of Muller Rice products, 75 per cent of Muller Corner pots, 42 per cent of all Rachel's products and 29 per cent of Yeo Valley yoghurts. Some 60 per cent of yoghurts in supermarkets 470 out of 670 had too much sugar. There are concerns that products, such as Thomas and Friends Strawberry Fromage Frais, which contains 12 per cent sugar, will have to undergo a dramatic recipe change PHE plans to publish a barometer of the top 20 big yoghurt sellers and carry out regular monitoring of single-serve pot sizes. Families will be able to use this to see which companies and products meet its health standards, so putting commercial pressure on firms to fall into line. One dairy industry insider told the magazine: 'It's appalling the way PHE has failed to recognise the health benefits of this sector. 'The loser in all this is going to be the consumer because you will see big range reductions.' PHE has been holding a series of meetings with food industry bosses to set out sugar reduction targets. One source told PHE bosses that there would be a consumer backlash if yoghurt pots are cut in size. Strawberry and Raspberry Flavour Yogurt Frubes currently contain 9.24g sugar - 13.2 per cent of their total content 'If the size of pots comes down without price reductions across the board, then consumers will accuse them (the industry) of exploitation,' he said. The war on yoghurt sizes could be the first of many to come, with portion control emerging as a key weapon set to feature in discussions on biscuits, cakes, chocolates and sweets. PHE said it has not set any firm targets, but has made a number of proposals to start a conversation with manufacturers on how to reduce sugar levels in the nine groups of food that contribute most to sugar consumption in children. It said there are three ways to deal with the issue, taking sugar out, reducing portion sizes and encouraging consumer to switch to low sugar alternatives. CAN YOU RUN UP THE STAIRS? Yes. Im fitter than Ive ever been. For ten years now, Ive had a personal trainer twice a week for an hour at a time. He makes me do a lot of high-intensity and strength-building exercises such as planks and sit-ups. I also cycle everywhere, including the five-mile journey to work. I picked up the habit in the Seventies at the height of the IRA troubles. Other journalists were stuck in cabs in traffic, and Id beat them to the story because I got there first on my bike. Scroll down for video Jon Snow (pictured) at the BAFTA Nominees Party in London this year. The Channel 4 news presenter says he has had a personal trainer for the past ten years GET YOUR FIVE A DAY? Generally I do. I have porridge every morning topped with nuts, sultanas and fresh raspberries and blueberries and I snack on fruit to stop my energy from lagging. ANY VICES? Any good bakery is a disaster for me. Pastries and crusty soft bread are my biggest weakness. EVER DIETED? Ive never really felt the need to watch my weight. I went to a wedding a few weeks ago and I thought Id try on my wedding suit from when I got married seven years ago and it fitted perfectly. Im 6 ft 4 and weight around 14 st 5 lbs. TAKE ANY SUPPLEMENTS? Lots! I take fish oil for brain function, vitamin D for my joints, vitamin C for my immune system, DHEA (a natural steroid) to improve my memory and turmeric to prevent arthritis and headaches. I dont know if they make a difference, but I take them every day. Jon, pictured with his wife Precious Lunga at a private party in London last year. 'I tried on my wedding suit from when I got married seven years ago and it fitted perfectly,' he said WORST INJURY? I get knocked off my bike about once every three years. A few months ago someone opened a taxi door into me, but thankfully I just had superficial injuries. As a child, the worst injury I had was tearing a ligament in my leg when playing rugby. Because I was very tall in the lineout, I was an obvious target. ANY FAMILY AILMENTS? My dad died of a stroke aged 74 and my mother died of Alzheimers at 84. Ive been told theres no genetic reason for me to be concerned. It was hard seeing my mother decline, you just had to develop patience. She was an accomplished pianist and she could still play Christmas carols a long way into her illness. The TV presenter with his award for best new coverage on behalf of Channel 4, which he won this year. He says his mental pain threshold is high, because of the things he sees as a reporter COPE WELL WITH PAIN? I think Im pretty good. Certainly my mental pain threshold is high it has to be seeing the things I see as a reporter. TRIED ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES? Ive never tried any of them. My wife Precious got me into yoga. I do it to help clear my mind, but I dont do it regularly. EVER BEEN DEPRESSED? No. Im a pretty positive person. I always look for the upside of a situation no matter how bleak it may first appear. HANGOVER CURE? I dont drink enough to get a hangover. I got hepatitis A (a liver infection) while covering an IRA siege in the Republic of Ireland in the Seventies. There was a tap leading into a cow trough which we drank from and the water turned out to be contaminated. Jon, photographed at the Royal Festival Hall, London. He says he does not drink much these days, as he got a liver infection while covering the IRA in the seventies I was sent to an isolation ward for a week and I couldnt drink for six months afterwards. It lowered my threshold for alcohol. I only have a glass or two of really cold rose. WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT? Nothing, my head only has to come into contact with the pillow and Ill go to sleep. BIGGEST PHOBIA? Im marginally claustrophobic, I have a nightmare of being the first journalist selected to go into space. LIKE TO LIVE FOR EVER? It would depend on my health. Definitely not if Id lost my wits and I couldnt get around. Jon Snow supports the charity Beanstalk, which provides one-to-one literacy support to children struggling with their reading. Ask Colin Greaves to think back to his wedding day or his first kiss, and all he can see is a blank screen. The same thing happens when he tries to picture his wife or childrens faces, or his last holiday. Its just an empty black space, says Colin, 53, a psychologist from Bath. Thats because Colin, a married father-of-two, cannot visualise things in his brain: his minds eye is essentially blind. The minds eye allows us to form mental images in our brain for instance, being able to visualise what the McDonalds arches look like or remembering someones face when youre away from them. Ask Colin Greaves (pictured) to think back to his wedding day or his first kiss, and all he can see is a blank screen. Its just an empty black space, says Colin, 53, a psychologist from Bath According to experts around 2 per cent of the population lack this ability, a problem that was recently given a name aphantasia (from the Greek words a, meaning without, and phantasia, the capacity to form images). The condition was first identified last year by neurologists at the University of Exeter and since then, a number of large studies across Britain have looked at why people lack this ability and what implications it may have on their wellbeing. Some experts suggest it could affect learning, navigation and memory, as the ability to create mental images is important in helping us use these skills. Studies have suggested the ability to visualise uses some of the same brain pathways we use when seeing through our eyes the difference is that the minds eye circuitry is also connected to the areas that control memory as this is what we call upon to activate the mental image. The exact mechanism for creating mental images is not completely clear, explains Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology at the University of Exeter: But we do know that if I tell you to imagine an apple, you have to decide to do that and this means the voluntary decision-making brain areas the parietal and frontal lobes are activated. A command is then sent from there to the temporal and occipital lobes, which are normally activated when you see something. 'The memory areas are also activated because we have to draw on visual memory to develop this mental image. Aphantasia is caused by a failure somewhere in this network. Over the years there have been sporadic reports in scientific journals about this condition, but it was only properly identified recently. According to experts around 2 per cent of the population lack the ability to visualise things, a problem that was recently given a name aphantasia The story of aphantasia started in 2010 when Professor Zeman published a medical report about a 65-year-old man who had come to see him complaining he could no longer visualise relatives faces or create images in his brain as he read books. The man had been able to do this until a procedure to treat a narrowed coronary artery. Doctors suggested he had experienced subtle brain injury, such as a mild stroke, which led to aphantasia. After he published his research coining the term aphantasia, Professor Zeman was inundated by messages from thousands of people who said they too couldnt visualise anything and he set about studying the problem in a project involving several thousand people affected. He used scans to monitor their brain activity when they were trying to visualise, as well as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, where people are asked to imagine things such as a sunset or a friend and then rate the vividness from one to five. Colin says he doesn't feel aphantasia affects his life too much. According to experts, most people dont even know they have it Those who score the lowest are thought to have aphantasia. Preliminary results of his study published last year showed the causes varied some people were born without this capacity (Professor Zeman says many reported they had close relatives who were affected so there may be a genetic basis); others developed it later. Some people with aphantasia describe symptoms of autism. Other scientists who have analysed the patient case histories suggest some cases may stem from brain injuries or other trauma. Aphantasia may also be the result of psychological or neurological problems, such as depression or chronic anxiety. Writing in the journal Cortex last year, the researchers, from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, suggested that people with aphantasia should undergo brain scans and assessments such as those used for mental health problems. Eleanor Maguire, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, is looking at how a lack of mental imagery is linked to memory. We believe differences in imagery are important enough to investigate, as imagery may have important implications for psychology and memory, she says. Most people dont even know theyre missing this vital brain function. Colin only realised he had this internal blindness when he was in his 30s and talking to a friend who went into a lengthy description of how something worked I was completely lost. Colin Greaves believes his brain does actually have the ability to visualise as he dreams normally, sometimes vividly In some ways it doesnt worry him: I dont feel it really affects my life too much, although it is quite sad I cant bring to mind my childrens faces or memories of childhood holidays. 'But at least I have photos to look at and these are very important to me. He believes his brain does actually have the ability to visualise as he dreams normally, sometimes vividly. When I am awake there is something in my mind which inhibits this ability. It feels like a physical block. If that could be lifted in some way with training, I would love that. In the meantime, I have to make do with my dreams. A Maryland state lawmaker is pushing for a state ethics charge against the superintendent of the Baltimore County school district after he retweeted a call for schools to protect non-white students the day after the election. As headlines began piling up around the country about harassment of students in schools and immigrant students fears of deportation following the election of Donald Trump, Superintendent Dallas Dance retweeted this advice from Joshua Starr, CEO of Phi Delta Kappa International and the former superintendent of the Montgomery County, Md., schools. Educators: tomorrow pls show your muslim, black, latino, jewish, disabled, or just non-white Sts, that you love them and will protect them! -- Josh Starr (@JoshuaPStarr) November 9, 2016 Parents and members of the public responded, calling the message racist and propaganda. The next day, Dance also tweeted this Education Week article about the school climate challenges educators faced the day after the election. The Election Is Over, But for Teachers, Hard Conversations Are Just Beginning //t.co/aDogJCDjEd via @educationweek -- S. Dallas Dance (@DDance_BCPS) November 10, 2016 In response to the Starr retweet, Maryland Del. Pat McDonough said he is calling for an ethics charge against Dance, ABC affiliate WMAR reports. McDonough explained his intent in a statement. Superintendent Dance implied that the President Elect is racist and guilty of all the slanderous attacks made by the national media. That is a partisan political position that does not allow for opposing viewpoints. By exercising bias against white students, Dance has violated his contract with Baltimore County and his trust with its citizens. "Would Superintendent Dance ask for special treatment for white students if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency after referring to some of their parents as "irredeemable deplorables?" Dance shared this post last week in response to the controversy. As the Superintendent of one of the largest most diverse school systems in our country, I always lead from an equity lens with an intense focus on all student populations and ensuring they feel welcome and supported. Education is not void of politics and during the last two years, our country has had one of the most divisive campaigns in modern history. Comments were made that disenfranchised several groups of students we serve in Baltimore County Public Schools. As our nation moves forward, it is our collective responsibility to make sure all students feel safe and know we are their advocates. As I continue leading our school system and as a member of several educational organizations, my continued focus is to work with local, state and national government representatives to move public education forward for all students." A photo posted by S Dallas Dance (@ddance06) on Nov 11, 2016 at 3:56am PST Related reading on the election, Donald Trump, and school climate: Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. My daughter, 45, is very ill with what could be Lyme disease. Shes been told it can be diagnosed only in Germany. Could she travel there under the NHS, or will we have to pay 2,000? She remembers being bitten by a tick in 2005. She has been taking antibiotics, bought on the internet, and has been referred to a chronic fatigue clinic. Can you advise? Howard England, Basildon, Essex. Lyme disease is an infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which can be transmitted to humans via a tick bite How worrying for you. Lyme disease is a complex subject and there is a wealth of misinformation about it. Lyme disease is an infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which can be transmitted to humans via a tick bite (though being bitten by an infected tick does not necessarily mean you will become infected). The infection has three phases. The early, localised stage is where there is a characteristic skin rash known as erythema migrans a red circle resembling a bullseye that gradually gets bigger. In most cases, if a patient is known to have had a tick bite, Lyme disease can be diagnosed at this early stage based on the symptoms alone. If the disease is not treated, the second phase, called early disseminated, may follow weeks or months later. This involves multiple skin lesions several of these bullseye circles or a widespread rash. The phase after that, which can occur months or even years later, is known as late Lyme disease. This is when the bacteria have spread to other organs. Symptoms can include arthritis and neurological problems such as tingling, numbness, headaches and weakness. There may also be paralysis of the facial muscles or complications involving the heart. For most patients, in any of these phases antibiotics are effective at eliminating symptoms and preventing complications. But some people may have headache, fatigue and aches and pains that do not resolve immediately with treatment and which can develop after treatment has finished this is known as post-Lyme disease syndrome. In most cases, if a patient is known to have had a tick bite, Lyme disease can be diagnosed at this early stage based on the symptoms alone However, the symptoms should gradually clear over a few months without further antibiotics. Whats needed instead is skilled medical support. As a GP, I have come across patients with fatigue, vague muscle or joint pains, tingling or weakness, who have been diagnosed by someone else with chronic Lyme disease. This is a term some people use to describe persistent symptoms such as these, usually when there is no confirmed infection. But this is a controversial diagnosis and there is disagreement among experts over whether this condition exists. The patients I have seen have usually turned out to have fibromyalgia not an illness due to infection or inflammation, but thought to be related to changes in the way the central nervous system processes pain messages. There is no specific test or scan to diagnose fibromyalgia. However, with Lyme disease there are tests we can do at any of the three phases, though they can neither definitively prove nor exclude it. They are merely an aid to diagnosis. Lyme disease has three phases. The early stage is where there is a characteristic skin rash known as erythema migrans a red circle resembling a bullseye that gradually gets bigger The standard approach is a two-tier test on a blood sample to look for antibodies to the disease. The first step is an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (known as ELISA). If the ELISA is negative, no further tests are needed. But if it is positive, the same sample is tested by a Western blot test. One problem is that 5 per cent of healthy people will have a positive ELISA result even if they dont have any symptoms. If there is also a positive Western blot test, all this proves is that a patient has seen Borrelia burgdorferi at some stage. Having antibodies in the bloodstream does not prove the patient has the illness any more than chicken pox antibodies in my blood prove I have chicken pox now. Write to Dr Scurr To contact Dr Scurr with a health query, write to him at Good Health Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email drmartin@dailymail.co.uk - including contact details. Dr Scurr cannot enter into personal correspondence. His replies cannot apply to individual cases and should be taken in a general context. Always consult your own GP with any health worries. Advertisement Blood tests can only be interpreted in the correct setting. The diagnosis of Lyme disease also depends on a patient having known symptoms of the disease. As you are aware, some doctors do not believe current lab testing is sensitive enough. Independent laboratories abroad offer other types of tests though the NHS does not accept the results. You may be referring to the immunoblot test offered in Germany. A blood sample can be sent by post, so theres no reason why it should command a high fee. Without knowing the details of your daughters symptoms, it is difficult for me to give an informed decision about how to proceed. I do have concerns about prescription drugs bought online as there is no quality control and you cant be sure they contain the active ingredient or are even safe. But my key point remains: the diagnosis is not just as simple as a blood test. The context in terms of symptoms is most important. My testicles have really enlarged. Is this normal in a man of my age (82)? I had a vasectomy in my early 40s. Could this be a cause? Im still grieving for my wife, who died last year after 59 years of marriage. Name and address supplied. A reader has contacted Dr Scurr about his enlarged testicles, and wonders if the cause could be the loss of his wife, as they were married for 59 years and he is still grieving Im sorry you have had this added concern at such a sad time, but I hope I can reassure you the swellings, known as hydrocoeles, are not sinister or uncommon. You can confirm the diagnosis using a small torch but choose the kind that uses light-emitting diodes or LEDs, rather than old-fashioned lightbulbs, because these will not burn you. In a darkened room, apply the torch directly to the swelling. If the entire lump glows brightly known as transillumination this proves the swelling contains fluid, the hallmark of a hydrocoele. (If the swelling is solid, it will not transilluminate and it would be advisable to see a GP for a referral to a urologist, but this is unlikely.) A hydrocoele forms when there is a gradual build-up of fluid in the membrane (the tunica vaginalis) that surrounds the testicle. This membrane is a continuation of the peritoneum, the thin layer of tissue lining the abdomen. You can diagnose hydrocoeles using a small torch but choose the kind that uses light-emitting diodes or LEDs, rather than old-fashioned lightbulbs, because these will not burn you Babies are often born with hydrocoeles that disappear in the first few months of life. Why the fluid should accumulate in a man of your age is not clear, but it is unlikely to be due to your vasectomy, and is common with age. When a hydrocoele occurs in much younger men, we have concerns about whether it might be testicular cancer. In older people with hydrocoeles in both testicles, this is very unlikely. In the past, GPs or surgeons would drain hydrocoeles in adults. But the fluid invariably comes back, so this is no longer common practice. Hydrocoeles need treatment only if they are uncomfortable or inconvenient. A two-year-old girl was kidnapped from a village in Punjab by three men and strangled to death as she didnt stop crying, police said. The three men accused of the crime have been arrested and the toddler's charred body has been recovered, investigating officers revealed on Sunday. Roshni was allegedly kidnapped from her stroller in Khothran, near Phagwara, by three men with muffled faces on Friday when her grandfather, Ran Dares Singh, was walking in front of their house in the village's Saffron Enclave. Police in Punjab have arrested three men in connection with the kidnapping and killing The trio was arrested at a police check post when they were coming on a motorcycle from Munna village side. They tried to flee but were overpowered, said police. Police said those arrested have been identified as Goel Kumar alias Gori, Harman Kumar alias Happy, and Rishi. It's alleged that they confessed that the girl, who was taken to the village Nadalon from Khothran, was strangled on the same day as she did not stop crying. They also admitted that they had burnt her body on paddy straw to eliminate any evidence, police said. In presence of Duty Magistrate Bhupinder Singh, Tehsildar Garhshanker, police recovered the girls charred body on Sunday near Khothran village. She was kidnapped for purpose of a ransom, it's claimed. Police said IPC Sections 302 (murder), 364-A (kidnapping for ransom, etc), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) were added to the case. In her first direct communication since being hospitalised in September, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has said she has been reborn because of peoples prayers and urged them to vote for the AIADMK in the November 19 polls. "I have taken rebirth because of your prayers and worship. I would like to share this happy news with you in the first place, she said in a statement released by the AIADMK. Stating that she does not have any grievances in view of peoples great love for her, she said, by Gods grace, very soon, by recovering fully, I am waiting to resume work. In her first direct communication since being hospitalised in September, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has said she has been reborn because of peoples prayers urging them to vote AIADMK Exhorting party workers, she asked them to work in full swing for the victory of AIADMK in the November 19 polls for Aravakkurichi, Thanjavur and Thirupparankundram constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Nellithope Assembly segment in Puducherry. Amma's followers are touching fanatical heights praying for her recovery Though she could not directly meet cadres and functionaries working in these constituencies and the general public, my heart and thoughts are with you always, she told them. Without elaborating, she asked party workers to understand the nature of this statement and work with a sense of duty for making MGRs winning symbol of two leaves bag a huge victory. She said cadres should work for the victory of AIADMK nominees by a huge margin of votes. Jayalalithaa said the cadres should consider the partys victory as a victory for each one of them. Quoting a lyric from an MGR era song, she said AIADMKs victory should resound in all the directions. I am eagerly waiting for news of such victory. The chief minister had been in hospital since September 22. Trump takes in a tour of the White House Those who believe America has a credible democratic electoral system need to rethink their position. The point is not that a system that elects Trump is a travesty, but that the system itself is archaic and absurd. In the Constitution of 1789, Article II created a collegium with a votevalue equal to the elected members in Congress (Senate and Representatives) of a state. The votes of each state collegium were counted in proportion to the whole. It was State law that was to decide the manner and process of the election. Disenfranchisement Of course, the Supreme Court did monitor and strike down extended residence requirements (Dunns case 1972), allowing in two later cases of 1973 a 20-day residence period. Again in Carrington (1975) the Supreme Court struck down Texas provisions against soldiers voting. But the Supreme Court did not strike down literacy requirements (Guinn (1915), Lassiter (1959)). Disenfranchisement due to inability to interpret the Constitution was also struck down (Davis (1949)). The US Civil Rights Acts (1957-60) was upheld in Katzenbach (1966). The point was that elections including those of the President were in the hands of the States. The most startling example of the failure of the system was Bush v Gore (2000) when Bush had an edge of 527 votes. There was a final date for results to be declared, but it was clear that Gore would have won if all legitimate votes were counted. Presidential electoral democracy was thwarted because the State controlled the elections. A biased Supreme Court used this excuse to declare that Bush won. The dissents of Ginsburg and Stevens in the Supreme Court speak volumes, and exposes all that is rotten in Americas system of Presidential elections. U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House But look at the process as it has evolved: elections with fanfare for the Republic and Democratic party nominees (takes over a year). Then another four months till the selection between party nominees. The States follow different systems. Some follow "winner takes all". So theoretically a higher vote of 49% vote would triumph over a 48% loser, making the entire 48% vote of that candidate irrelevant to the final result. Some states take into account the popular votes. Some distribute the vote to the county or district. What an absolutely, disjointed, absurd farce. Clinton had won the popular vote with 47.64 per cent vote (59,132,664 total votes against Trump, who had 47.54 per cent vote-share (59,007,205 total votes) but lost the electoral college by 218 against 276. This shows systemic failure. The attack on her began from her own competing colleague in the Democratic Party (Bernie Sanders) who called her a liar and trickster raising the question of her official mails from the Clinton Foundations server. Trump's stupidity, cluelessness and bawdiness touched people who found he spoke the common language of many Americans with ineffable charm Caricature Trump picked on this even though just before the election ended, the CBI cleared Hillary in this regard. This attack, Tricky Hillary, came to stick. And she huffed and she puffed but this charge did not come crashing down. But she had one advantage: she had policies on health, foreign affairs, antiracism, pro-women and children, supporting homosexuality and the disadvantaged and a liberal grant of citizenship to those in America and those entitled to come in. She was steadfast in the election on these issues. But there was something in her overgrown smile, and academic approach which did not connect with audiences including her own supporters who were fuelled by their enthusiasm. Trump was a joker to be laughed at: his utter lack of experience, bawdy remarks about touching womens bottoms, cluelessness on policies and programmes. But yet his stupidity, cluelessness and bawdiness touched people who found he spoke the common language of many Americans with ineffable charm. Obviously, a large number of Americans like these sort of things. His only declared policy was to make a wall to keep Mexicans out, from his own money and to end terrorism by targeting all Muslims. He was a real life caricature, discarded by some prominent members of his own party. World's apart: Trump and Clinton debate America's future Propaganda Americans have a way of propagating that what was terrible was really good, even a triumph of democracy. Till the eve of the elections, it was thought that the elections were meaningless and the worst ever. After the election, the result was proclaimed as the triumph of American democracy which allowed those outside mainstream parties to win the crown. Trump was now a hero. He had appealed to the blue collar workers who took to his brief on immigrants, increasing jobs by bringing back out-sourcing and propagating religion based racism. Was, this a triumph of democracy and the will of the people? Hardly. Hillary had won, albeit barely, the popular vote but lost the collegiate vote. The entire collegium system foolishly allowed each State in America to follow its own inconsistent methods of democracy. Winner-takes-all does not reflect democracy. It converts a closely contested vote for the loser to be reduced to zero in the final counting. The triumph of populism by undemocratic machinery is the negation of democracy. Thousands of anti-Donald Trump protesters, including many pro-immigrant groups, hold a demonstration outside of a Trump property as New Yorkers react to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States We are witness to the rise of authoritarianism. Trump, Putin, the dictators of the South and South East, the RSS supported Narendra Modi, and the fascist national parties in England and Europe. Israels militarized democracy is fascist to the core. The Spring revolutions of the Middle East have surrendered their cause. Where are we heading? To Trumpistan, the new, dystopian reality. Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh has vowed to protect every last drop of the states water Hitting out at the Badal government over the Supreme Courts ruling on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link issue, Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh today vowed to protect every last drop of the states water. Addressing a rally at Khuian Sarwar village near Abohar, the tail-end of Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal, he asked SAD MLAs to quit the assembly and said the state polls should be held next month itself to prevent Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal from further violating the atmosphere of the state. He vowed to protect the last drop of Punjabs water, and declared not a drop will be spared till their last breath. On the Chief Minister's assertion that he (Badal) is ready to face the bullet in order to protect Punjab's water, Amarinder alleged that in 1984, Badal had made such claims but when the time came to fight for the state he went into hiding, leaving the people to fend for themselves. He also alleged that the Chief Minister has destroyed the state out of sheer personal greed and cannot be allowed to remain in power. Asserting that implementation of the SYL verdict will finish off the 2 lakh families and 2 lakh agricultural labourers who farm 10 lakh acres of land in the state, Amarinder alleged that SAD had 10 years to battle the case in the court effectively but failed to do anything. The dried-up riverbed of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal. The Supreme Court says Punjab has no right to unilaterally terminate water-sharing agreements over over the Satluj-Yamuna Link Canal with neighbouring states. He added that they (SAD) were only interested in creation of Punjabi Suba in order to rule a Sikh-dominated region for their vested interests and asked why did Badal not tell the court that Punjab had no water to spare, with all the glaciers having melted, the state Congress chief asked and reiterated his demand for the establishment of a new tribunal to assess the quantum of water available with the state. Referring to the controversial Clause 5 of the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, Amarinder alleged Badal is misleading the state on the issue by making fraudulent claims on scrapping it. The Captain accused Badal of playing with the sentiments of the people and alleged that removal of the clause would not be acceptable to the BJP-led Central government, of which SAD is a part. Karnataka is 17 months away from facing its next assembly polls and the BJP is quietly mobilising support at the grassroots level for its campaign, Congress-free Karnataka. Led by former CM BS Yeddyurappa, the BJP believes that this unique campaign over the next few months will help the party in consolidating its votes as well as making inroads into the Congress bastions. Yeddyurappa, who has been absolved from the majority of the corruption cases filed against him, feels that the BJPs prospects of returning to power are strong. Former CM BS Yeddyurappa is leading the Congress-free Campaign in Karnataka The campaign will be intensified from January when Yeddyurappa tours Karnataka. The Congress government has its own share of problems and these have become rallying points for the BJP leaders. Yeddyurappa makes it a point in every public speech to corner and humiliate Congress leaders. He has been drumming up support from within the party to make the campaign effective in order to regain lost ground, especially in coastal and north Karnataka regions. The principal objectives of the campaign include reviving the Hindutva agenda to gain public sympathy. It 'may be too late for' Siddaramaiah to react if he ignores the BJP campaign in the run up to the state going to the polls Members of the BJP and its affiliates, including the RSS, Bajrang Dal, and VHP, have been instructed to invoke issues affecting the majority. Embedded in the Hindutva agenda is the support for the party cadre. Any attacks or assaults on member organisations are being glorified, particularly in strongholds. The latest incident, wherein a Bajrang Dal leader alleged a petrol bomb attack on his car by miscreants in the Kodagu district on Monday, is likely to remain in news for a week at least, as the party leaders want to make an issue out of it. Such incidents have been on the rise in the past 10 months, with the BJP seizing every opportunity to politicise the issue. Congress is yet to find a suitable replacement for Home Minister G Parameshwara, who also happens to be the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) Last week, it was the controversial birth anniversary celebrations of Tipu Sultan. Last month, it was the murder of party cadre R Rudresh that kept the BJP leadership busy. The murder, followed by the political fallout, prompted the police to impose prohibitory orders in Bengaluru, once again attracting the nations attention. The BJP is alleging that political violence against its cadre has increased in the past 18 months. The party intends to make this issue its poll plank. While investigation by the police into these attacks is still on, the BJP has shortlisted six deaths of its workers to be highlighted in its public meetings and party forums. Senior BJP leaders say that the Congress-free Karnataka campaign aims to bring the pitfalls of the ruling Congress involving Hindutva issues to the public domain. Many of them say that the BJP should maintain the momentum throughout 2017 to reach its goal. Yeddyurappa has enlisted the support of younger leaders in the party to ensure that the momentum is maintained by picking on incidents that are not in the limelight. It will be interesting to see how Siddaramaiah counters this campaign over the next two years. The chief minister has been dismissing such campaigns as daydreams of the BJP, but it is a fact that the campaign will impact the Congress during the elections. The Congress is already facing it share of trouble, including rebellion within the party, ministers getting caught in scams or on the wrong side of the law. Siddaramaiahs hands are full, managing the government and the party affairs. Congress insiders feel that it will be too late for Siddaramaiah to react if he ignores the BJPs campaign now. But first, the Congress has to set its house in order. The party is yet to find a suitable replacement for Home Minister G Parameshwara, who also happens to be the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). Unless the KPCC gets a new leader who can focus on countering the BJP politically, Siddaramaiah alone cannot take on Yeddyurappa. Kannada film industry's credibility at stake The death of two wellknown Kannada film actors during the filming of movie Mastigudi near Bengaluru, brought to the fore the poor safety measures and standards adopted by filmmakers. Anil Verma, 31, and Raghav Uday, 38,drowned after leaping from a helicopter while shooting the climax to the action film last week. While the stuntmen and doubles dont even have basic insurance cover, the film industry has done little to enforce safety measures. Anil Verma, 31, and Raghav Uday, 38, both drowned during the stunt. A criminal investigation has opened following their deaths Body injuries and threat to life have become occupational hazards for stuntmen, and the credibility of the Kannada film industry is at stake with the Karnataka Film Chambers of Commerce (KFCC) is promising to clean the system. What happened to Uday and Anil because of the alleged negligence of the filmmakers is unpardonable. Mastigudi, which featured actors Kriti Kharbanda, Amulya, and Duniya Vijay, was in its last phase of shooting. Anil Verma taking a photo with Raghav Uday stood in the background moments before the stunt which cost both of them their lives The action sequence was directed by Ravi Verma, who has also executed action scenes for Shah Rukh Khans Raees and Rock On 2. It is alleged that Ravi Verma pocketed Rs 3 lakh to ensure adequate safety for the film shooting sequence. But when the two actors, who barely knew how to swim, jumped into the TG Halli reservoir from a chopper, the boat which was supposed to pick them failed to start. The two were seen jumping from the helicopter in a stunt which was to prove tragic While the boatman struggled to start the engine, the actors drowned in front of the media, which was invited to cover the record-attempting sequence. Actors close to the action master admitted that Ravi Verma had become overconfident. Did this behaviour change cost the lives of the two actors? Only the police probe will establish the truth. Both Uday and Anil were known for their negative roles in Kannada movies. The fate of Mastigudi, one of the most-talked-about Kannada movies, is unknown. Green activists take centre stage Conservationists have again taken over the Karnataka governments job, as the bureaucrats seem to show little interest in protecting the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats, one of the best habitats for tigers. Instead of handing over the forest land to the Karnataka government, the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd (KIOCL), which stopped mining in the Western Ghats in 2005, tried to set up a resort, invoking the wrath of conservationists and courts. The conservationists, led by Wildlife First, referred the matter to the High Court of Karnataka, which noted KIOCL had no authority to retain possession of the land, as the mining lease had expired. Controversy surrounds Kudremukh National Park and the possession of the land The government has now woken up and initiated the process to take possession of the land. Tiger expert and wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth had objected to the setting up of the resort. In October 2002, the Supreme Court directed KIOCL to wind up operations and quit the area (Kudremukh National Park - KNP) within three years. But KIOCL continued to squat. The government continued to ignore taking possession of the forest land from the KIOCL, which in turn partnered with a private company to develop a resort on 281 acres in the KNP. Tea sellers, vegetable vendors and neighbourhood grocery stores are among those in India unzipping their e-wallets as the country struggles to cope with 86 per cent of its total currency in circulation being swept away by demonitisation. Hundreds of small vendors and businesses have switched to mobile and online payment services that are expected to more than double their annual growth after the government banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes to crackdown on black money. While a number of payment gateways, such as Paytm and Freecharge, are already in big demand, wholesale retailer Metro Cash & Carry is working on tying up with digital wallets to offer payment options to small traders and kirana shop owners. Hundreds of small vendors and businesses have switched to mobile and online payment services that are now expected to more than double their annual growth Nandu Gupta from Saharsa in Bihar, who runs a tea stall in Noidas Sector 16-A, has prominently displayed his phone number for customers to pay through e-wallets. I have nothing to hide, he said. What I accepted in notes can now be paid online. All the more, I dont have to deal with hassles of loose change. I wish my wholesaler can accept the same way. He has flatly refused and I am looking for another. The demand is being fuelled by the fact that India is one of the fastest-growing markets for smartphones in the world and is expected to become the second largest market by next year, replacing the United States. The BJP-led government is promoting the use of mobile payment systems following the decision to take Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes out of circulation Bela Jain, a resident of the Rajendra Nagar colony in central Delhi, paid her istriwala (presser) online on Monday. I found it very strange when he asked me to pay him through Paytm. Thanks to him I had to download the app, but which I now am using for many purposes, she said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made financial inclusion one of his highest priorities, particularly in the countryside. To jump start the effort, the BJP-led government is promoting the use of mobile payment systems. People have been queuing for hours to exchange their now defunct notes for new currency, and businesses have been struggling to cope with the reduction in money in circulation Laxman Kachi, a tea seller, has also started using an e-wallet to cope with the lack of currency in circulation in India. Two days ago, one of my customer told me about an e-wallet service and advised me on its usage. He helped me to download the app and later helped me to register as a merchant, said Kachi. He has been able to mop up Rs 700 using the digital wallet service. In order to beat the acute cash crush, even doctors are accepting consultation fees through mobile payment, though reports are mixed about their enthusiasm for such transactions. Many, therefore, gave consultations for the fee to be paid at a later date when new currency notes would be readily available. Doctors also told Mail Today that patients at OPDs across several private hospitals too had taken a hit. But, to help the patients, doctors have started accepting payments via online options. Patients do not have enough cash to pay consultation fees. We are accepting payments through Paytm, cheque as well as Real-Time Gross Settlement Systems (RTGs) and other online transaction systems. We are not taking money from those who do not have any means to pay, and they can give it later, said Dr Vikas Maurya, senior pulmonologist at west Delhis BLK Super Speciality Hospital. A volunteer offers tea to people queuing up at an ATM outside a bank The father of a patient at the Capitals Sir Ganga Ram Hospital paid his sons consultation fee with digital money. I didnt have enough cash and my son needed urgent treatment. Therefore, I paid the money on Paytm, said Nand Kumar from Faridabad, who had come to the hospital after his six-year-old sons fractured arm. Grocery shops and milk booths have gone cashless, too. Mother Dairy booths are using digital payment services to avoid the hassle of providing loose change. People come to us with Rs 500 notes. It was getting very difficult to return change so we started accepting e-wallets, said a Mother Dairy booth manager in east Delhis Patparganj area. Even parking facilities at tony malls in areas such as Vasant Kunj, Saket and even Noida and Ghaziabad have started accepting plastic money. While the nations nascent digital economy has received a big push from India's currency crisis, experts have warned that cyber criminals too have sensed an opportunity. As the volume of online transactions soars, concern over increases in credit and debit card cloning has also gone up. India has already witnessed a steep rise in financial frauds over the past few years, and with more users and high-value transactions, such attacks on payment gateways and digital crime are bound to escalate, experts have said. Experts warn online fraudsters have now got huge opportunities to take advantage of India's rush to use digital money platforms Deep Shankar, a cyber crime expert who works with the state police in cyber investigation, said: As there is a currency crisis, people are using their credit/debit cards at every possible place, but most are not aware of what to check before making online payments and what details they need to keep secret. "A large section of technologically unaware people are now forced to use technology which will be misused by cyber crooks." Another cyber expert, Kislay Choudhary, has already noticed a spurt in financial fraud. He said that so far, only the educated and technologically sound section of the populace was using digital modes of payment. With people having to queue for hours at banks and businesses unable to give change or take money, India is fast turning to mobile and online transaction platforms But due to demonetisation, the poorer and rural sections have been forced to do online transactions, putting them at greater risk. Many fake bank links promoting currency exchange are doing the rounds on social media. There are a couple of mobile wallets available for free download which are not secure, and even some malicious apps can track the moves a user makes, Choudhary said. Even the police believe that the intensity of cyber attacks and the number of financial frauds targeting new users will shoot up. In frantic scenes across India, people have struggled to exchange their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, which Modi's government has banned to crackdown on black money This is a transition phase where lots of new users will turn towards digital transactions. Cyber criminals will create fake websites, clone cards and create malicious apps to steal money, Triveni Singh, a cyber crime investigator and additional superintendent of police with the Uttar Pradesh special task force, told Mail Today. According to a study by ASSOCHAM-RNCOS, the digital payment sector might register unprecedented rise. It says that the volume of digital transaction in India is likely to witness an exponential compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 90 per cent to reach 153 billion by 2022 as against three billion in 2016. Cyber investigators say that high awareness is required as India is marching towards plastic money. Even small vendors such as tea sellers are embracing digital technology to cope with the cash crisis Prashant Mali, a cyber security expert, said: Since cash holdings in bank accounts have grown manifold, it is likely that criminals would attempt to siphon them off at one go. "Multiple mobile applications having digital wallet details are a cause for worry too. There are many rogue apps which pose a huge threat to digital transactions through mobiles." At present, the mobile banking segment contributes the largest share of 49 per cent in the Indian mobile payment market with over 386 million transactions worth Rs 4,000 billion in 2016. But experts and police believe that the intensity of cyber attacks and the number of financial frauds targeting new users will shoot up With demonetisation, digital payment platforms have seen a huge surge in transactions as well as downloads in the last few days. Acknowledging the threat their new customers possess, leading companies claim to have high-tech security features in compliance with RBI guidelines. FreeCharge has various security features built into its wallet, which makes them extremely secure. Its usage is growing by leaps and bounds and given that lakhs of new users are joining in recent days, we are taking steps to create awareness for convenient and safe usage, said a FreeCharge spokesperson. A senior lawyer appointed to assist the Supreme Court in the 2012 Nirbhaya fatal gangrape case has urged the judges not to send the four death row convicts to the gallows, saying they are too young to be hanged. The SC is hearing the appeals of Mukesh,24, Pawan, 20, Vinay, 22 and Akshay, 29, challenging the punishment handed down by the trial court and confirmed by the Delhi High Court for a crime that shook the country, stirred global outrage and brought focus on Indias attitudes towards and treatment of women. In written submissions, amicus curiae (an impartial adviser) Raju Ramachandran pointed out that the apex court had held in the famous 1980 Bachan Singh case that a balance sheet of mitigating and aggravating circumstances have to be drawn before sentencing a person to death. Raju Ramachandran was appointed by Supreme Court as an impartial adviser in the case He contended that the young age of the convicts, the fact that they had no criminal antecedents and how the crime was not pre-meditated were mitigating factors in their favour. Ramachandran, a known anti-death penalty activist who had earlier represented 26/11 death convict Ajmal Kasab and Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon in the Supreme Court, also contended that the four men should be given a last chance to reform. The crime was not premeditated, he said. There is no evidence on record to deem the rape and murder was a pre-planned act. "The accused did not know victim and had any occasion to believe she would be present at the relevant spot on the fateful day. "Trial court failed to even consider this factor which has been treated as a mitigating factor. In 2012, five adult men and a juvenile lured the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist and her male friend onto a bus in Delhi, where they repeatedly raped the woman and beat both with a metal bar before dumping them on a road. The woman, later dubbed Nirbhaya (meaning fearless), died two weeks later of her injuries. Four of the adults were sentenced to death while the fifth hanged himself in prison. On August 31, 2013, the juvenile was convicted and sentenced to three years in a reformation home. He was released in December last year. In 2012, five adult men and a juvenile gang-raped a 23-year-old physiotherapist in a bus in Delhi. Four of the adults were sentenced to death while the fifth hanged himself Arguing that the convicts had no criminal antecedent and so should be granted a chance to reform, Ramachandran said both the trial court and high court ruled out the possibility of reform and rehabilitation solely on grounds the crime was brutal. He pointed out to the court that the sole evidence relied on by both the trial court and HC to demonstrate criminal antecedent was the robbery of a carpenter the convicts had committed, for which they have been sentenced to 10 years. He said the FIR filed in that case after a long delay was not convincing and an appeal filed by the convicts is also pending. Hedge fund numbers are set to drop this year as investors plough cash into cheaper and more predictable alternatives. A study by Singapore firm Eurekahedge revealed that fund closures around the world were on track to outpace openings for the first time in more than 16 years. It said 566 had been shuttered in the first nine months of the year, compared to 518 start-ups. Withdrawl: 566 hedge funds were shuttered in the first nine months of the year, compared to 518 start-ups Hedge funds, which hold billions of UK investors' cash, have seen the highest levels of investors taking their cash out since the global financial crisis in 2008. The company put it down to rising complaints about high fees and poor performance. Head analyst Mohammad Hassan said: 'Performance is the main issue that's putting a lot of pressure on existing hedge funds. 'Many are below their high water marks and are struggling to make money and cover costs.' The average fund has earned 2.9 per cent so far this year, after returning 1.7 per cent in 2015. Many of those which finished last year in the red have still not made back their losses. Hassan said investors were increasingly turning to cheaper automatic trading firms run by computer algorithms as they sought better value for money. Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey saw assets at his flagship fund shrink by 60% Meanwhile, tougher regulations have chipped away at many funds' profitability. US hedge fund Perry Capital closed the doors on its flagship fund in September after 28 years of investing. The fund ran around 12billion of investors' money at its peak in 2007, but by this year that had fallen to 3.2billion. The fund was down 12 per cent last year. Chesapeake Partners blamed regulation when it stopped trading in June following an 18-month period of losses. The hedge fund, one of a handful with a female manager, shut up shop after 25 years. Renowned UK hedge fund manager Crispin Odey saw assets under management at his flagship fund shrink by 60 per cent in the first nine months of the year. The number of closures is in sharp contrast to last year when 877 hedge funds were formed across the globe, compared with 833 which were liquidated. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the appeal of a group of Kansas parents and students who object on religious grounds to the states adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards. The group alleged in a lawsuit against the Kansas state education department that the standards, developed by 26 states based on a framework published by the National Research Council, address religious questions by removing a theistic viewpoint and creating a non-theistic worldview in science instruction in the public schools. The lawsuit by a group called Citizens for Objective Public Education said that in addressing questions such as where do we come from?, the Next Generation standards rely on an orthodoxy called Methodological Naturalism or Scientific Materialism and a variety of other deceptive methods to lead impressionable children, beginning in kindergarten, to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic answers, as the group said in its Supreme Court appeal. The group argued that Kansass 2013 adoption of science standards based on the Next Generation Science Standards and the National Research Councils framework constituted an unconstitutional government establishment of religion and also violated the First Amendment free exercise of religion rights of the families. A federal district court held in 2014 that the group and its members lacked standing to bring the suit because the alleged injuries were abstract. In an April decision , a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, unanimously upheld the district court and rejected COPEs theories of legal injury. COPE does not offer any facts to support the conclusion that the Standards condemn any religion or send a message of endorsement, the 10th Circuit court said. And any fear of biased instruction is premised on COPEs predictions of school districts responses to the Standardsan attempt by COPE to recast a future injury as a present one. The U.S. Supreme Court asked Kansas to respond to COPEs appeal, and the state stressed that curriculum decisions remain a matter for local school districts. Although Kansas law requires the state board of education to establish curriculum standards, locally elected school boards remain free to determine their own curricula, said the brief filed by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt. He added that COPE had not alleged that any children involved in the suit attended school districts where the science standards had been implemented. The Supreme Court issued a short order on Nov. 14 declining without comment to hear the groups appeal in COPE v. Kansas State Board of Education (Case No. 16-229). Plans are back in motion to build a new giant skyscraper in the City of London after Brexit put a pause on planning. Axa Investment Managers Real Assets is understood to be ready to push forward with the development at 22 Bishopsgate. The tower is set to stand 919ft tall nearly 100ft shy of the Shard with 62 storeys and an estimated construction cost of 450million. Reach for the sky: How the AXA tower at 22 Bishopsgate will compare with existing skyscrapers Axa said in April that it would work with its joint venture partner Lipton Rogers to complete the project in 2019. But fears over Brexit had led to concerns about whether the duo would pull out of the project. Axa had said it would 'revisit the options' in the event of a Brexit vote. The firm has now confirmed it will push on with the project as London is 'one of the leading global centres for international business.' But religious watchdogs in Israel have said plan is ' The Israeli Prime Minister has been accused of restricting religious freedom after backing a law to limit the volume of calls to prayer from mosques. Benjamin Netanyahu said he would support the draft bill to silence the calls, which was then adopted by a ministerial committee. The bill now faces three readings in parliament before becoming law, but religious watchdogs have labelled the plan 'unnecessarily divisive.' The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured, has been accused of restricting religious freedom after backing a law to limit the volume of calls to prayer from mosques It is believed that the bill would stop the use of public address systems from mosques to issue the calls to prayer. But while the draft bill applies to all houses of worship, it is seen as specifically targeting mosques. And Mr Netanyahu said: 'I cannot count the times - they are simply too numerous - that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused by the excessive noise coming from the public address systems of houses of prayer.' Israel's population is roughly 17.5 per cent Arab, most of them Muslim, and they accuse the Jewish majority of badly discriminating against them. East Jerusalem is also mainly Palestinian and traditional calls to prayer by muezzins through public address systems can be heard in the city. And the Israel Democracy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, has spoken out against the proposal. The minaret of a mosque in the West Bank village of Lubban Ash-Sharqiya in Israel. It is believed the bill will ban mosques from using public address systems to issue their calls to prayer On Sunday, one of the watchdog's officials accused Israel's right-wing politicians of dangerously using the issue to gain political points under the guise of improving quality of life. Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya wrote in Israeli newspaper Maariv that 'the real aim' of the bill 'is not to prevent noise, but rather to create noise that will hurt all of society and the efforts to establish a sane reality between Jews and Arabs.' It comes as Netanyahu heads what is seen as the most right-wing government in Israeli history. However, a ministerial committee has defied his wishes and voted to support a separate bill to allow settlers in the ocuppied West Bank to remain in homes built on privately owned Palestinian land. Israel's Supreme Court had ruled the government must evacuate dozens families from the Amona settlement and return the land to its Palestinian owners but right-wing lawmakers want to pay them compensation instead and allow the settlers to stay. The government has sought an extension for the end-of-year evacuation so it can find somewhere else for settlers to live, but the lawmakers who support the settlers' wish to remain, presented the bill to try to circumvent the ruling. Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians want those territories along with the Gaza Strip for a state but peace talks have stalled since 2014. Ex-cop was spurred on to take on A former police officer hopes to make history by swimming every mile of the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America. Ben Hooper set off yesterday from Dakar, Senegal, and has a swim of 1,635 nautical miles, or nearly 2,000 land miles ahead of him. The British ex-policeman, 38, has been preparing for the challenge for three years. Ben Hooper set off yesterday from Dakar, Senegal, and has a swim of 1,635 nautical miles, or nearly 2,000 land miles ahead of him Flanked by two boats and a crew of less than a dozen, Hooper aims to be the first person to swim every mile of the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent, stepping on land again in March 'This is for my daughter,' said Hooper, who filled a water bottle with sand to keep for the 8-year-old who he said inspired the swim. 'It's been a long time coming.' His journey began on Sunday around 10:30am on the beach outside the Monaco Plage hotel in Dakar and he aims in finish in Natal, north east Brazil in March 2017. Flanked by two boats and a crew of less than a dozen, Hooper aims to be the first person to swim every mile of the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent, stepping on land again in March. As well as training extensively Hooper has also gathered a crew for the Big Blue, the main boat on which he will eat and sleep when he is not swimming. He will spend about eight hours each day powering through waters infested with sharks and jellyfish. Water has played an a surprisingly important role in Hooper's life. 'I nearly drowned when I was 5 in a swimming pool in Belgium,' he said. 'Ever since I've had this affinity with water. It was the calmest I've ever felt.' Hooper said he experienced a bout of depression about three and a half years ago and decided to turn his life around for his daughter. So he looked to water. 'Nobody had swum a full ocean,' he explained. 'More people have landed on the moon than have tried this, so at that point I thought maybe this is my calling. As well as training extensively Hooper has also gathered a crew for the Big Blue, the main boat on which he will eat and sleep when he is not swimming. He will spend about eight hours each day powering through waters infested with sharks and jellyfish Inspired by British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Hooper said he hopes to motivate others, especially children, to swim Hooper's journey began on Sunday around 10:30am on the beach outside the Monaco Plage hotel in Dakar and he aims in finish in Natal, north east Brazil in March 2017. 'If I can inspire myself, other people and raise money for charity, why not do it?' Inspired by British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Hooper said he hopes to motivate others, especially children, to swim. Funding for the expedition has taken time, and the launch was set back several times as various crew members dropped out and the boats faced mechanical issues. 'See you in Brazil,' Hooper said to supporters as he stood in sea at Dakar, before eventually swimming off into the sunlit waters toward his goal 'This will be a major achievement overall,' said Nigel Taylor-Schofield, the captain of Big Blue. 'If anybody can accomplish this, it would be Ben. He is very determined.' The crew, including a paramedic, will track the miles, and Hooper has said if he gets to Brazil with the help of currents, he will swim until he fulfills the full Atlantic mileage. The challenges - be it marine life, dehydration, and more - will be vast, but Hooper says his biggest fear is letting the team and his daughter down. For motivation he will listen to a playlist on customized earphones that he said will include eurotrash music, Eminem and The Script's Hall of Fame. Hooper will also wear various gear that helps camouflage him from sharks and a tracking device so supporters can follow his nearly five-month swim online. Julian Assange was finally quizzed yesterday over claims that he raped a woman but Swedish prosecutors were barred from asking him questions. In farcical scenes, investigators travelled to Ecuadors London embassy where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up since jumping bail in 2012. But Swedens assistant prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and police inspector Cecilia Redell were only allowed to listen as the fugitive was asked pre-prepared questions by an Ecuadorian government representative. Scroll down for video. Julian Assange was finally quizzed yesterday over claims that he raped a woman but Swedish prosecutors were barred from asking him questions It came just 24 hours after Assanges celebrity friend, former Baywatch star and Playboy model Pamela Anderson, 49, was seen delivering snacks to his hideout. The interview will influence the decision over whether the Swedish inquiry will continue. It is not clear whether Assange consented to a DNA sample being taken. The extraordinary situation could help break the deadlock over Britains most expensive and unwelcome house guest. The Australian hacker has been living in a cramped room in the diplomatic mission in Knightsbridge, central London, since June 19, 2012, after claiming asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden to face the claims. Meanwhile the taxpayer-funded bill for police posted outside the building around the clock topped 12.5million. But even after that vigil ended last year, Assange remained inside saying he fears American authorities would try to extradite him to the US to be quizzed for leaking secret military documents. Assange is accused of raping a woman, named in legal papers as SW, at her home in August 2010. He denies the claims, which relate to a visit he made to Stockholm in August 2010 to give a lecture, and believes they are politically-motivated after WikiLeaks released covert files on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren arrives at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Mr Assange will be quizzed over rape allegations The Swedish prosecutor and other officials will be present when Mr Assange is quizzed inside the embassy in Knightsbridge Last night Wikileaks released a statement saying Assange had co-operated fully after Sweden took his statement on the allegations for the first time ever. But in an odd agreement thrashed out with Ecuador, the Swedes were not allowed to question the rape suspect directly. Instead questions were submitted in Spanish and put to him by an Ecuadorean prosecutor. No follow-up questions were allowed. Results of the interview will be sent from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Ecuadors UK ambassador Carlos Ortiz was in the embassy during the interview, which lasted nearly four hours, as well as Assanges lawyers. But frustration is mounting at how long the stand-off has lasted. A Whitehall source said: This has already cost the UK a huge amount, has been dragging on for years and he is facing very serious charges. This impasse has got to end. It came just 24 hours after Assanges celebrity friend, former Baywatch star and Playboy model Pamela Anderson, 49, was seen delivering snacks to his hideout As prosecutors arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, supporters of Mr Assange also gathered Many of his supporters tied banners to the fence of the building calling for the WikiLeaks founder to be freed Police officers outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Swedish authorites are interviewing Mr Assange And Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: The law is the law and Assange has got to go through due process but the fact is that sheltering Assange has incurred huge costs to the UK. After the interview, a statement from the Swedish prosecutors said the probe was subject to confidentiality. But Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, leading the inquiry, said: I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview. Guillaume Long, Ecuadors foreign minister, said: This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days. A WikiLeaks statement said: For the first time since August 2010, Mr Assange was finally able to give his statement in relation to this allegation. He has done so in part to ensure the Swedish authorities have no further excuse not to discontinue their preliminary investigation. Assange denies the allegations but if convicted, he could face up to six years in jail. A European Arrest Warrant for him remains in place and can be enforced as soon as he steps out on to the street. Sainsbury's has joined this year's trend for upbeat festive ads with an animated tale about a father who makes it home in time for Christmas, accompanied by the singing of James Corden. Hard-working father Dave is the star of the three-minute and 20 second ad as he comes up with a plan to clone himself to get his work done in time to join the family festivities. The musical-style campaign uses state-of-the-art stop frame animation, which required 800 tiny models of Dave's face to portray his full range of expressions. The latest ad will screen on TV for the first time tonight at 9.15pm during ITV's I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! Hard-working father Dave (centre with hat) is the star of the three minute 20 second ad as he comes up with a plan to clone himself to get his work done in time to join the family festivities The musical-style campaign uses state-of-the-art stop frame animation, which required 800 tiny models of Dave's face to portray his full range of expressions Flight Of The Conchords star Bret McKenzie, who won the 2012 Oscar for best original song for The Muppets, composed the tune The Greatest Gift For Christmas Is Me, sung by talk show host Corden. The campaign will help raise funds for accommodation for the families of children being treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity chief executive Tim Johnson said: 'The money raised will enable us to help more families be together when they really need to be, by providing dedicated accommodation close to the hospital. 'This is a vital resource, enabling parents and carers to be at their child's bedside within minutes, at whatever time of the day and night.' Sarah Kilmartin, head of broadcast communications at Sainsbury's, said: 'Supporting Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity felt like a very natural extension of this as we know that the families at the hospital face more difficulties than most to spend time together as a family, at Christmas and all year round.' Flight Of The Conchords star Bret McKenzie sung by talk show host Corden The campaign will help raise funds for accommodation for the families of children being treated at Great Ormond Street Hospital The Christmas advert features the talents of entertainer James Corden on vocals The supermarket's Christmas 2015 ad featuring children's book character Mog the Cat notched up almost 37 million online views. The exclusive Mog's Christmas Calamity book topped the UK best-selling book charts for four weeks running. In 2014 Sainsbury's, which always waits until after Armistice Day to release its Christmas campaign, partnered with the Royal British Legion for an ad based on Christmas Day 1914 when British and German soldiers laid down their weapons and met on neutral territory. A University of Alabama student accused of raping a teenage girl in a dorm room has been arrested. Joseph Tyler Pitts, 19, was charged with first-degree rape on Sunday. The 18-year-old female victim, who is also a student at the university, told police she had been drinking with Pitts on Saturday night when she lost consciousness. Joseph Tyler Pitts, 19, has been charged with first-degree rape after he was accused of raping an 18-year-old girl in a University of Alabama dorm room on Saturday night The victim was awakened by two friends after they came into a room and allegedly saw Pitts having sex with the unconscious girl. She told investigators about the incident at DCH Regional Medical Center early Saturday. Pitts is being held at the Tuscaloosa County Jail on a $30,000 bond. It's not clear if Pitts has an attorney. The victim, who is also a student at the university, told police she had been drinking with Pitts on Saturday night when she lost consciousness Police say Pitts was allegedly caught having sex with the girl by two of her friends Slain bikie turned musician Bronson Ellery wanted to turn his back on his criminal past and concentrate on becoming a death metal star. But the ex-Bandidos gang member was was found dead last Friday along with his ex-girlfriend Shelsea Schilling in the northern Gold Coast suburb of Southport. Police are now treating the deaths of Ellery and Ms Schilling as suspicious after early stages of the investigation suggested a double homicide, not a murder-suicide, and a postmortem is expected to be carried out on both bodies on Monday. Scroll down for videos Bronson Ellery (pictured) turned his on back the Bandidos bikie gang to concentrate on his music But it wasn't supposed to end this way. In 2014 as Solitary Son, his one-man hardcore rock act, Ellery released his music on the Internet and hoped to become a rock star. The response was underwhelming and his songs got scathing reviews on YouTube, however Ellery - also known as the Lizard Man - wasn't about to give up. 'Since then I've disabled all comments on my YouTube videos. There were a lot of haters! It's easier to hate than like, I think,' he told Noisey.com in 2015. 'As soon as one person says something negative about it, the rest follow. It was probably 15-year-old kids on their computers at home who don't know anything about music.' Ellery (right) was found dead last Friday along with his ex-girlfriend Shelsea Schilling (left) in the northern Gold Coast suburb of Southport In 2014 as Solitary Son, his one-man hardcore rock act, Ellery released his music on the Internet However music critics said his songs were 'atrocious' and that he made 'silly videos' He persevered, and a stint in prison last year gave him the chance to write new material, which Ellery believed would eventually propel him to fame and fortune. In March 2015 Ellery he left prison after spending four months in custody for trying to bully a man into withdrawing a complaint to police. He used this time to write the new material for his debut album Searching Souls that he released later in 2015, and claimed it was 'a lot better and heavier than my previous stuff'. 'I do the singing, screaming there's more screaming now in this new stuff,' he told Noisey.com. 'I'm 100% dedicated to it and I won't stop until I get there.' But his music still did not generate any attention with hard rock website Metalsucks describing his music as 'atrocious', and that he made 'objectively bad music and equally-silly videos'. Whether or not Ellery's new material was an improvement is irrelevant now. But Ellery persevered and continued to make his music and hoped for a big break Before concentrating in his music Ellery was an associate of the Bandidos bikies Ellery (pictured right with Ms Schilling) claimed the bikie gang turned on him at their clubhouse It may not have been a success but at least his music had ensured he'd left the Bandidos bikie gang in 2014. He told Noisey.com in 2015 he now hated them after he claimed they turned on him at their clubhouse. 'They just turn on their own. They've done it to heaps of other members in the past. They reckon some place thought I burned down their tattoo shop, which I didn't, so instead of fighting them because they were scared to, they just got rid of me,' he said. He described the club as 'a bunch of guys that try and act hard with tattoos' with nothing better to do with their lives. 'They join a gang and call it a name and wear the t-shirts and walk around town thinking they're tough when they're really not,' he said. Before he spent four months in jail for trying to bully a man into withdrawing a complaint to police, Ellery had served several stints behind bars. He described the club as 'a bunch of guys that try and act hard with tattoos' It was reported that the couple had 'caused one another a bad energy' He made headlines in 2012 when he was charged with public nuisance following a brawl with members of the Finks outlaw motorcycle gang at Harbour Town shopping centre, the Gold Coast Bulletin reports. 'My son doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs but he's judged by the artwork on his face,' his mum Suzi said at the time. Police had said Ellery hoped the arrest would be covered in the media to increase exposure to his single, In Memory of Us. But it received a bad reception, with critics panning the singing, production and quality of it. Ms Schilling would have been 21 years old on November 30. The quiet Gold Coast girl had completed a diploma in beauty therapy at the Australian National College of Beauty in Brisbane in 2013. It was reported that in recent months the couple had 'caused one another a bad energy' and had a a 'toxic love'. An internationally renowned Middle Eastern scholar at UC Berkeley has been accused of sexual assault, after a student filed a complaint. Architecture professor, Nezar AlSayyad, 61, allegedly placed his hand on the female student's upper thigh before suggesting they become 'close friends' and take a trip to Las Vegas, according to the investigation. A report obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle found that AlSayyad's conduct 'can be seen as an attempt to 'groom' (the student) for the possibility of becoming a romantic or sexual partner,' wrote lawyer Eve Fichtner, an independent investigator hired by the University of California. Architecture professor, Nezar AlSayyad (pictured), 61, has been accused of sexually assaulting a student at UC Berkeley. An investigation discovered that nearly all of the student's allegations were upheld. AlSayyad has denied all of the allegations against him The five-month investigation was completed in October as investigators discovered nearly all of the student's allegations were upheld. From 2012 to 2014, AlSayyad held social invitations and gave out hugs in order to position himself as the student's protector, the Chronicle reported. This particular reports only details the complaints of one student. But the Chronicle found that two others complained about AlSayyad. One of the students alleged they had sex more than 20 years ago and she felt taken advantage of, but her complaint was never investigated. Earlier this year, another student accused him of nonsexual misconduct. That investigation is pending. Not only did a UC Berkeley (pictured) student file a complaint about AlSayyad's behavior, bit two others did as well. One students said the two had sex and she felt taken advantage of, while a third student accused him on nonsexual misconduct AlSayyad, who has denied the allegations said in an interview that that administrators are overreacting for fear of being perceived as soft on sexual harassment. On Friday, The Chronicle learned that campus officials have barred AlSayyad from teaching next semester. But AlSayyad told the newspaper that he is unaware that he will not be teaching this spring. 'If true, I will not accept it, as it presumes I did something wrong when I did not,' he said. The investigation concludes at a time when scrutiny of sexual harassment cases on college campuses has been heightened. Advertisement Frightened New Zealanders have been forced to go into survival mode, stocking up their shelves and fridges after an enormous 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck overnight. Felt throughout the country, the quake hit 15km north of Christchurch, on the South Island, in the early hours of Monday, killing at least two people and causing a two-metre tsunami as well as powerful aftershocks. As the sun rose on Monday morning, worried residents flocked to local shops and supermarkets to stock up on essentials such as food, water and medical supplies. Within hours shelves were left completely bare as customers shopped in case of the worst. At the Four Square supermarket in Hanmer Springs, not far from the epicentre of the quake, locals queued out the door and quickly bought 3,600 litres of water, forcing management to begin rationing items. Scroll down for video Terrified New Zealanders have stocked up on essential items such as food and water following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake Shoppers at the Four Square supermarket in Hanmer Springs, near the epicentre of the quake, bought anything and everything they could get their hands on when the store opened on Monday morning The store's owner John Dawber told Daily Mail Australia people had left the shelves empty of bread and had also stocked up on fruit, vegetables, meat and bought more than 3600 litres of water John Dawber (pictured), the store owner at Four Square supermarket in Hanmer Springs, said they had begun rationing items Mr Dawber said he had rushed to his supermarket just minutes after the quake to begin the clean up so it could open early The force of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake ripped up State Highway 1 (pictured) from Picton to Kaikoura on the east coast The store's owner John Dawber told Daily Mail Australia he had rushed to the store shortly after the quake to ensure it was ready to open early. 'Obviously I worried about my family first, but once I made sure everyone was safe in my own house, I said to my wife: "I've got to get the supermarket open",' Mr Dawber said. 'It's the heart of community, I had to get it open and so I was in there at about 12.30am and we cleaned until 4am. 'Bread, fruit, vegies, meat and snacks were among the first items to go and it was lucky I had a Christmas supply of water in already because we've sold four pallets. 'We're just making sure we're being sensible and rationing water and milk, because we don't want panic buying going on or one person buying everything.' While the town was hit hard by the quake, Mr Dawber said they were in a far better position than those in other parts of the country. The enormous earthquake caused major damage to roads around the South Island, and also triggered a tsunami A two-metre high tsunami struck at Kaikoura just before 2am on Monday local time. So far two people have died in the quake There was widespread damage to shop fronts and buildings across New Zealand caused by the quake which struck shortly after midnight local time The force of the earthquake caused shipping containers to tumble from this shipping yard in Christchurch, near the epicentre People across the country were evacuated from buildings after the quake, which lasted for a number of minutes, hit The first wave of the tsunami arrived at Kaikoura just before 2am on Monday local time, according to the NZ Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management. Prime Minister John Key ordered a military helicopter to the Kaikoura region after it became cut off. 'We don't have any indications at the moment to believe it will rise, but we can't rule that out,' he said. The Civil Defence has warned 'destructive waves' will continue and people on the country's east coast have been ordered to move to high ground. Although, those alerts have now been downgraded to 'coastal warnings'. New Zealand lies on the Ring of Fire, a zone of areas prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, that circles the Pacific rim. In 2011, Christchurch was hit by a major 6.3 magnitude quake that killed 185 people and flattened the city. Residents at the Quest Hotel on the The Terrace, Wellington, were evacuated from their rooms in the middle of the night Health chiefs are secretly planning to close hospitals, a report warns today. Casualty and maternity units would also be axed to tackle a budget crisis. The Kings Fund said NHS England was considering contractions and closures across the country. The respected think-tank said even some of those drawing up the proposals feared they were a recipe for disaster. Patient groups, doctors and nurses have been excluded from key meetings and NHS bosses have tried to stop details being given out under freedom of information laws. Health chiefs are secretly planning to close hospitals according to a report by the Kings Fund One manager described the level of secrecy as ludicrous. Another said: Where are the real people in this? For south-west London, the sustainability and transformation plans call for one of five hospitals to be axed: St Georges, Kingston, Croydon, Epsom and St Helier. In the West Midlands, the hospital maternity units at Birmingham Womens or Heart of England would either shrink or close. The Health Service is already struggling to cope with a rising, ageing population and A&E and labour wards are particularly overstretched. Chris Ham, chief executive of the Kings Fund, said: How credible is it to take hospital beds out when our acute hospitals at the moment are running really, really hot? He said it was a heroic assumption to think that proposals to care for more patients at home would work. And he said closures would cause huge anxiety for the sick, and leave some MPs in fear of losing their seats. Draft versions of about a third of the plans from 44 trusts have been published or leaked. Many are considering closing A&Es, maternity units, cancer wards and cardiac departments some will shut entire hospitals. Managers claim patients will be better off in larger hospitals with top-performing departments employing specialist staff. Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHSs medical director, defended the process, saying problems would only get worse without rapid action. Many trusts said they had been told by NHS England, which runs the Health Service, not to involve patients and staff until necessary. Managers have been told to say the plans are exempt from immediate release because they will be published in due course. However Sarah Hayward, who leads Camden Council, published the plan for North Central London on the local authoritys website, warning she had serious reservations about the surrounding secrecy. Casualty and maternity units are to be axed by health chiefs in an effort to tackle a budget crisis (file photo) There has been no political oversight, and minimal public and patient engagement, she said. That lack of public, patient and political involvement is why I am publishing this document on our website. It is vital that there is full transparency in Camden as this work progresses. The Kings Fund said three out of the four health districts it had looked at had hired management consultants to help. Dr Tajek Hassan, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said: Furtively producing plans without involving those who are or should be at the heart of the NHS, the patients, is wholly unacceptable and will not result in effective or sustainable services. Dr Mark Porter, council chairman of the British Medical Association, added: Any plans about the future of the NHS must be drawn up in an open and transparent way, and have the support and involvement of clinicians, patients and the public from the outset. At this stage nobody can be confident that this has happened. Above all, the Government must not use these transformation plans as a cover for further starving services of resource and patients of care. Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association said: There are many assumptions in these plans about cutting services, which will impact on care. This puts patients at risk. The Health Service is already struggling to cope with a rising, ageing population and A&E and labour wards are particularly overstretched (file photo) Jonathan Ashworth, Labours health spokesman, also condemned the lack of public involvement. But Sir Bruce said: This is not a moment to sit on our hands. There are straight-forward, and frankly overdue things we can do to improve care. If we dont, the problems will only get worse. It is self-evident that the NHS in every part of the country needs a clear plan to take advantage of these new opportunities and ensure it spends every pound of taxpayers money wisely. The Kings Fund publishes its report on the plans today. It will say: National leaders did not want draft proposals to be made public until they had agreed on their content. It is clear from our research that plans have been developed at significant speed and without the meaningful involvement of frontline staff or the patients they serve. Patients and the public have been largely absent from the process so far. Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, has threatened to bring outsiders into areas where health chiefs drag their heels. In some parts of the country the reality is we are short of leadership capable of engaging with the task ahead, he told a meeting at the Kings Fund in London last week. In some places weve probably got to think about how we upgrade the talent that weve got at our disposal. Should Banks Be Liable for Effects of Bad Loans? When a person defaults on a loan, they may lose their home and have their credit rating ruined. But the effects of the default may not be limited to just that person -- enough loan defaults can be felt across an entire city. That's what the city of Miami is claiming in a lawsuit filed against Wells Fargo and Bank of America, trying to hold the lenders liable when irresponsible loans cause broader economic damage. The suit was initially dismissed by a trial court, but now the Supreme Court will review whether Miami can sue for discrimination, on the basis that predatory lending has harmed the city as a whole. Miami Blight Miami's central claim is that irresponsible mortgage loans given to unqualified or under-qualified black and Hispanic residents led to defaults, which then caused the city to lose tax revenue and spend more for social services. Essentially, the banks were discriminating against minority borrowers by giving them too much credit at too high a cost. This led to more abandoned or vacated dwellings, blighting the city and contributing to substandard housing and segregation, according to groups supporting the lawsuit. One supporting brief filed by a trade union for police officers and firefighters put the consequences in stark terms: "A toddler drowns in the swimming pool of his neighbor's vacant house. A firefighter dies falling through the floor of a vacant building. A gang take over an empty house ... to advertise prostitution." Where Do You Stand? But before Miami can even make that argument, the Supreme Court must decide whether the city can even act as "an aggrieved person" and sue the banks. And then there is the logistical concern of this lawsuit opening the floodgates for others. Miami isn't the only city trying to recoup the costs of bad loans. The Economist notes that Baltimore and Memphis have already settled similar lawsuits, and dozens more, from counties as well as cities, are in the works. And both the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, and the lead attorney for the banks warned that a victory for Miami in this case could mean a tidal wave of lawsuits from tens of thousands of other cities. Related Resources: A couple forced to call off their engagement as the brides parents did not approve have tied the knot nearly 65 years later. Davy Moakes, 86, and Helen Andre, 82, met and fell in love at art college and he proposed in 1951. His fiancees parents refused to give their blessing, fearing he would struggle to provide for his family if he became an artist and the wedding was scrapped two years later. Davy Moakes, left, and his new wife Helen Andre had planned to marry 63 years ago but her parents refused to give her permission to marry Mr Moakes, who was training to be an artist Helen, right, originally married Tony Rollings, left, who died at the age of 62 from cancer Helen, left, and Davy, right, had originally got engaged in 1951 but split up two years later But after five marriages between them, the pair were reunited last year with the help of Miss Andres daughter Debbie Williams, and finally married in a register office in Ripley, Derbyshire, on Friday. Talking from their honeymoon in Cyprus yesterday, the new Mrs Moakes said: I couldnt be happier all my dreams have come true. When I was 19 and my mother and father stopped me marrying him I was heartbroken They wanted to decide who I married, not me. They were quite Victorian like that. I have loved Davy my whole life, but now Ive got him. Im enjoying every minute of it. I feel like a teenager again, it really is like nothings changed. Fittingly for a couple who met at art college, their reunion was sparked by a sculpture. Helen's parents Gertrude and Alan West prevented their daughter marrying Mr Moakes Following her third husbands death in 2010, Mrs Moakes had moved to live with her daughter in Alfreton, Derbyshire. On a visit to nearby South Normanton where she had first met Mr Moakes she noticed a sculpture with the signature Adrian Moakes. A search on social media revealed that the creator, 57, was her former fiances youngest child. Her daughter contacted the senior Mr Moakes, who was living in Doncaster, but he was nursing his second wife Margaret, who had Alzheimers disease. Following her death 18 months ago, contact was made again to pass on condolences. Mr Moakes later moved to Alfreton and proposed in October. He said yesterday: Its so strong, the love between us. Even after all this time, it still feels the same. Its just perfect, its just how it was. The groom, who became an artist in his late 60s after a career teaching art and then in design, was 21 when the couple first met. They became engaged the following year and planned to marry when she was 19 until her parents Adrian and Gertrude West intervened. Three years later, in 1956, the pair almost rekindled the relationship when Mr Moakess father bought two tickets for a local dance. But Mr and Mrs West locked her in her bedroom to stop her attending. Mr Moakes described their objection as very unfair but there was nothing we could do about it, unless we were to run away, so we drifted apart. He married cooking teacher Rosemary Latham in 1957 and they had two children. Meanwhile, Mrs Moakes qualified as a dress designer and set up her own business before her wedding in 1960 to Tony Rollings, with whom she had three children. She twice bumped into Mr Moakes at Round Table dances in Sheffield in the mid-1960s. A whopping 71 people were arrested in Portland during the fourth night of anti-Trump protests that saw police hurling flash grenades and tear gas on demonstrators. Authorities say most individuals failed to comply with several lawful orders to vacate city streets in the downtown area of the city. In addition, projectiles including road flares and bottles were thrown at police officers throughout the evening. A police vehicle was also spray painted with an anti-Trump message. Five people were given criminal citations, while 67 people were booked into the Multnomah County Jail. A total of nine people did not have a mugshot photo taken by authorities. Scroll down for video Pictured: (Top L-R) Michelle Ann Bach, 18; Nathan Willard Prime, 25; Nathaniel Prieto, 22 (Middle L-R) Noah Hochman, 30; Patrick Sottlemyre, 27; Reegan Margaret Okeefe, 18 (Bottom L-R) Robert Quandt, 27; Robert Wilson, 24; Scarlett Maddox, 24 Pictured: (Top L-R) Grant Victor Frey, 27; Gregory Thomas Liascos, 42; Jacob Snook, 24 (Middle L-R) Jacob Walter Pegg Lee, 31; James Adam Weinberg, 25; Jeremiah Barquet, 21 (Bottom L-R) Joel Samuel Brown, 25; John McKay, 20; Jordan Torrey Johnson, 27 Above protesters are detained by police after a protest against US President-elect Donald Trump in Portland on Saturday night Everyone arrested on Saturday was also charged with a traffic citation for Failing to Obey a Police Officer. At 11pm on Saturday, a large group of people were apprehended by officers at the intersection of Southwest Stark Street and Broadway. A large city bus was used to transport the majority of people jail. The people arrested range in age from 18 to 54 years old. Before the fourth night of protests began against president-elect Donald Trump, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and Police Chief Mike Marshman called for protesters to stay home and to voice their opinions with the election in other ways. Pictured: (Top L-R) Daniel Robert Vega, 21; David Lewis, 19; Dennis Dale, 54 (Middle L-R) Donovon Lyle Flippo, 21; Eric Rivera, 22; Erik Batterson, 27 (Bottom L-R) Evan James Bond, 25; Evan Todd Wellington, 33; Graham Parks, 35 Pictured: (Top L-R) Ahmed Mohemed Salah, 22; Alexa Nelson, 22; Anthony Alexander Hurley, 27 (Middle L-R) Bao Vrong, 29; Benjamin Bolen, 32; Carlene Beatrice Houk, 22 (Bottom L-R) Carlos Andres Arias, 27 and Chris Michael Russell, 32; Daniel Michaels, 28 Above demonstrators are detained by police in Portland on Saturday night during the fourth night of anti-Trump protests in the city. It is unclear if any of those who are pictured above were actually arrested 'Going to the streets for another night is not going to keep Donald Trump from taking office. It isn't going to change anything,' Hales said. 'If you're upset with the election, please don't come out and protest. 'We are done with criminal activity in this city. It's time to move on and to move forward.' In order to control the huge crowd of protesters, police resorted to using tear gas and flash grenades. Pictured: (Top L-R) James Mattox, 27; Robert J. Baker, 27; Chynna Marie Draeger, 24 (Middle L-R) Anna Christell Ogier, 25; Daniel Lee Garrett, 43; Bianca Marie Ferreria, 29 (Bottom L-R) Jake Bartlett Winchester, 26; Randal Lee Smith, 38; Taylor Ej Thomas, 19 Pictured: (Top L-R) Joseph Owan Gibson, 33; Justin Sean Tuli, 22; Katharine Mae Moore, 38 (Middle L-R) Kenneth Lee Shields, 37; Kevin Grigsby, 30; Lars Timothy Linge, 18 (Bottom L-R) Mario Villanueva, 18; Martin Farias, 20; Matthew McGowan, 21 Since the protests started after the election, one person was shot, several buildings have been vandalized, traffic was disrupted and more than 40 people had been arrested total prior to Saturday night. The person who was shot suffered non-life-threatening injuries and is being treated at a local hospital. Police arrested two 18-year-old men in relation to the shooting. They were charged with attempted murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Above police block off an area during a protest against US President-elect Donald Trump in Portland, Oregon on November 12 Pictured: (Top L-R) Seneca Cayson, 19; Sydney Hobbs, 18; Taylor Joan Horton, 20 (Middle L-R) Tyler Joseph Boyes, 21; Tyson Lee Williams, 20; Ulizes Escobar, 18 (Bottom L-R) William Kerr, 29; Zoe Rain Barber, 24 During Friday night's protests in the city, police arrested 17 people. Outside of Portland, several other anti-Trump demonstrations took place in cities such as Los Angles, New York, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Washington DC and Phoenix on Saturday. Of all the protests in the cities, Portland has seen the most violent demonstrations. Above a demonstrator gestures a peace sign after a protest against US President-elect Donald Trump in Portland on Saturday night Pictured left is Ariyuana Robinson, 18, and right is Daniel Michaels, 28 The smiles in the photograph say it all. A jubilant Nigel Farage and his closest Brexiteer allies grin as they celebrate meeting president-elect Donald Trump. Standing outside the breath-takingly opulent gold-and-diamond front door of the 80million penthouse in Trump Tower, New York, the British quartet - Ukip donor Arron Banks, Mr Farage, Leave.EU communications chief Andy Wigmore and former Ukip aide Raheem Kassam - look on top of the world. And they have even given their gang a nickname - the 'Brex pistols'. The sight of Mr Farages beaming visage alongside Mr Trump has caused consternation not just in Downing Street but in capitals throughout the EU. Theresa May has had to be content with a mere telephone call from Trump and even then she had to wait until nine other countries leaders were called, although at least she was ahead of Germany and France. Nigel Farage (pictured centre with Donald Trump) met the president-elect in his Trump Tower penthouse with Ukip donor Arron Banks (second from left), Leave.EU communications chief Andy Wigmore (second from right) and former Ukip aide Raheem Kassam (right). Mr Trump's pollster Gerry Gunster (pictured left) helped with the Brexit campaign and also joined the gathering on Saturday night in New York In contrast, Farage was given a tour of new leader of the free worlds New York home with its floor-to-ceiling marble, gilded columns and pilasters, its gaudy crystal chandeliers dripping with gilt, and a huge fresco depicting the Greek god Apollo crossing the heavens in his chariot. Farage and four of his close allies from the referendum campaign were mesmerised by the lavish surroundings they found themselves in a Renoir on the wall was magnificent, commented one of them, while the bronze classical statue of Eros and Psyche was striking and the views overlooking Central Park were the best in New York. Trump enlisted Farages help during the campaign because, like him, Farage was a political outsider and had stunned the political establishment over Brexit. Farage spoke at a political rally in Mississippi for Trump in August, and Trump had famously issued that clarion cry: Its gonna be Brexit plus, plus, plus! The invitation for Farage to join Trump in New York came in the early hours of Wednesday when it was clear Hillary Clinton was heading for a shock defeat. It was offered by Steve Bannon, chief executive of the Trump campaign, who has been hotly tipped to play a key role at the White House. Farage was already in the US because he had been making a speech in Florida and was scheduled to appear on chat shows. Arriving at Trump Tower on Saturday, he had expected to have talks with some of the victorious campaign team, and perhaps come back for a brief chat with Trump the following day, the president-elects diary permitting. A selfie taken outside Trump Tower and posted on Twitter shows (left to right) Mr Kassam, Mr Banks, Mr Farage and Mr Wigmore. Mr Kassam tagged it 'The Brex Pistols' But that was not what took place at all. Farage and his partys visit coincided with an anti-Trump protest of 30,000 people outside Trump Tower and a nervous US Secret Service ordered the building to be locked down. No one was allowed in or out for four-and-a-half hours. At one point, Farage and his team ventured on to a 21st-floor balcony for a cigarette, looking down on the milling mob of protesters. Security ordered them in, fearing they could be a target for snipers. It was as he was drinking coffee with Bannon that Trumps campaign manager Kellyanne Conway walked past. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Farage, whose performances in Mississippi and on TV had gained him notoriety among the Trump team. Conway tipped to be White House Press secretary embraced Farage and said simply: Lets go and see the president. He wants to see you. They took two escalators to reach the penthouse then Farage and his party were ushered in around 4pm. They left about an hour later having organised selfies in front of Trumps gold-and-diamond door. A triumphant Nigel Farage is relishing becoming the first foreign party leader to meet president-elect Donald Trump Its real gold, you know, they were told. And worth more than my house, quipped one of them, a multi-millionaire, in return. After the Brexit result, this was the coup of Farages life. So how did the 52-year-old, who has failed seven times to be elected to the Commons, manage it? He beat not only prime ministers and presidents but also many senior Republicans in the race to break bread with the man who, in two months time, will be the most powerful on the planet. The key lies not just with larger-than-life Farage, whose friendship with Trump was formed in the heat of battle on the campaign trail in Mississippi. But also with the four others who posed outside the apartment door. Each had a role to play. Theresa May has had to be content with a mere telephone call from Trump Businessman Arron Banks, 50, is a former Tory donor who switched sides to Ukip in October 2014. He had been planning to give the party 100,000 as an introductory gift, but upped the donation to 1million when former Tory leader William Hague condescendingly claimed he had never heard of Banks. It was a serious error by Hague. Banks, who made his fortune in insurance and owns diamond mines in South Africa, became utterly committed to the Brexit campaign. He wanted not only to secure an exit from the EU but also to humiliate David Cameron and the Tory high command especially after they embarked on Project Fear. He put 6.5million of his own fortune into the campaign for Brexit and recruited other rich businessmen to his Leave.EU cause. One key appointment by Banks was Gerry Gunster, a Washington political strategist, who has worked on dozens of referendums in the US and boasts a 90 per cent success rate. On joining Leave.EU, Gunster advised making immigration a priority and targeting disaffected white voters who feared for their jobs and had seen wages driven down by EU migrants. Crucially, Gunster knew leading figures in the Trump campaign and was at Trump Tower with Farage at the weekend. He was stood on the far left of the group picture. Mr Kassam last month quit the Ukip leadership contest after it emerged he had posted offensive misogynistic messages about rivals on social media. The 30-year-old has been London editor-in-chief of US news website and radio station Breitbart since May last year. He was chief adviser to Farage in the run-up to the last general election, in which the party received 4million votes and pushed the Lib Dems into fourth place. It just so happens that Steve Bannon the senior Trump aide who invited them to New York in the first place is the most powerful figure at Breitbart in the US. And it was Breitbart that helped expose the recent sexting scandal involving the husband of a key Clinton aide, Huma Abedin which Hillary Clinton blamed this weekend for her defeat. Farage was already in the US because he had been making a speech in Florida Kassams misogynist leanings have an echo in Trump, of course. He had to apologise to Suzanne Evans, who is running for the Ukip leadership, after describing her as a wrinkly old ginger bird. He once called for SNP leader Nicola Sturgeons legs to be taped together so she could not reproduce. Another gold-plated connection came through 50-year-old Mr Wigmore. A businessman who works closely with Banks, he is a diplomat with the Belize High Commission in London working in trade and industry. His pedigree includes running his own media company, a stint as a TV reporter, and working in the presentation department of Conservative central office. Like Banks he became disillusioned with the Tories over their EU policies. More than ten years ago he successfully sued former justice secretary Michael Gove over allegations about his private life. Gove paid 10,000 in damages. After the Republican Convention in July, when Trump was endorsed as candidate, the hard-drinking Wigmore and Farage were celebrating in a bar in Ohio late at night. Wigmore introduced Farage to staff of Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, one of the few Republicans publicly backing Trump. They got on so well they were invited to meet Bryant the following month. Four weeks later Farage, Banks, and Wigmore met at Heathrow to fly to the US. They downed three cappuccino martinis, one of Farages favourite drinks. On the plane they got through four bottles of red wine. They were picked up in a blacked-out limousine with security staff and whisked off to meet Bryant and his wife Deborah at their colonial-style mansion. In the car an aide of the governor talked Farage through the schedule, which included an interview on Mississippis main radio station, a visit to the Mississippi government headquarters, lunch with supporters and a speech at a private fundraising event with Trump and his backers. It was to be billed Mr Brexit meets Mr Trump. In his book The Bad Boys Of Brexit, Banks reveals Farage dominated the fundraiser. The guests could not get enough of Nigels 25-year battle against the EU and victory in the referendum. Farages speech was given a standing ovation. Banks book says: Trump called Farage back on stage and showered him with plaudits and drew parallels between the Brexit campaign and his own. Farage was given a tour of new leader of the free worlds New York home with its floor-to-ceiling marble, gilded columns and pilasters Trump then got Farage to speak at an event in front of a crowd of 15,000 people later that same day. Trump dropped the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had initially been scheduled to make the speech. Farage duly whipped the crowd into a frenzy when he said Trump could and would win. You can beat the pollsters in this presidential race. We did it with Brexit. You can do the same. If I was an American citizen I wouldnt vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me. In fact, I wouldnt vote for Hillary Clinton if she paid me. The crowd went wild. Trump loved it. After the speech, as Trump was heading to his private jet for the next leg of his exhausting election tour, he saw Farage, Banks and Wigmore and said: Those boys look like trouble. Back in Britain, Farage was publicly criticised by senior Ukip figures for embracing Trump. They feared that it would damage the Ukip brand and they criticised him for becoming involved in an overseas election. Farage told me last night: Anyone who knows Donald Trump says he is very loyal to people who have been loyal to him. Trump knew members of my own party turned against me. He appreciated what I had done. Meeting with us on Saturday was payback. As for my own role, I would say that some of the noises about Trump coming out from the children advising Theresa May are so juvenile. Downing Street should be having a constructive conversation. If I can help that I will. After Farages success in Mississippi, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway studied details of all the private polling in the referendum. They talked to Gerry Gunster. They finessed their message about the impact of immigration on jobs and ruthlessly targeted white working-class voters who had traditionally voted Democrat. They also closely studied Farage speeches and interviews, deciding to make a virtue of Trump being despised by the establishment of the Republican Party. As the Clinton camp wheeled out ever more celebrities from Madonna to Bruce Springsteen Farage and Banks told Trump to boast about the fact they were fighting on their own against the rest. Banks, who is now considering severing his Ukip funding, said that, whatever Downing Street decides about Farage, he will be a player. Trump and Farage are both charismatic. He can talk to Farage knowing they are not rivals but have the same outlook. Its why he called himself the Brexit president. When we walked into the penthouse one of the first things Trump said was: Do you think my win is as big as Brexit? Farage replied: Brexit was the first brick in the wall. Your victory is massive. Farage joked this week about the prospect of a job with Trump: If he did offer me something I would quite like to be his ambassador to the European Union. I think I would do that job very well. The deal to send refugees from Nauru and Manus Island to the US could be cancelled by President-elect Donald Trump on day one, the head of a prominent anti-immigration think tank has warned. Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, has said, 'Trump will nix this on day one', The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the 'one-off' deal on Sunday, which would see refugees on Nauru and Manus Island resettled in the US, an alternative to them returning to their home countries or remaining in detention indefinitely. Mark Krikorian (pictured), head of an influential US anti-immigration think tank, has warned President-elect Donald Trump could cancel Australia's deal to send refugees from Manus Island and Nauru to the US The deal, announced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday, would see refugees from Manus Island and Nauru (pictured) resettled in the US Mr Turnbull acknowledged the likelihood of a negative reaction from Mr Trump. He has not said how many refugees will be sent to the US and the deal is yet to be publicly announced in Washington. Mr Krikorian told Fairfax Media the deal between the two countries was 'difficult to justify'. 'I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either. My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival,' he said. Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, has said, 'Trump will nix this on day one'. Pictured are asylum seekers in detention on Manus Island When announcing the deal on Sunday Mr Turnbull (pictured) acknowledged the likelihood of a negative reaction from Trump Mr Krikorian also acknowledged the benefits for Australia in the deal and said: 'I'm not sure why this is a good idea for the US - it's absurd. I'm not sure why we'd be taking them off your hands.' Mr Turnbull has said the amount of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru will have to fit within America's existing annual intake. Mr Turnbull said the deal had been struck with the Obama administration some time ago, and the issue had not been raised with President-elect Donald Trump (pictured) He insisted the deal was struck with the Obama administration some time ago and the issue has not been raised with president-elect Mr Trump. 'We deal with one administration at a time. You don't discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration,' Mr Turnbull said on Monday. But Downing St flatly dismisses the idea saying they are already forging 'warm' relations with Donald Trump Theresa May brutally slapped down calls for Nigel Farage to be used as a go-between with Donald Trump today. Downing Street flatly dismissed the prospect after the jubilant Ukip leader was pictured with the US president-elect at his opulent New York penthouse. Pressure has been growing for the government to take advantage of Mr Farage's bond with the incoming commander-in-chief. But the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman pointed out that Mr Trump has already said he wants a Reagan-Thatcher style relationship with Mrs May. 'I don't remember there being a third person in that relationship,' the spokeswoman added. No10 also fuelled speculation that Mrs May could visit the US to meet Mr Trump even before he formally takes over from President Barack Obama in January. Theresa May, pictured on a visit to Diabetes UK offices today, has been under mounting pressure to give Nigel Farage a role as a go-between with Donald Trump There have been growing signs of splits at the top of government in recent days, with one senior Whitehall source warning thePrime Minister it would be 'churlish' not to take advantage of Mr Farage's links with Trump. They said the close connection between Mr Trump and the Ukip leader meant the PM should consider using his expertise. 'While he is clearly not going to be an official representative, it would be churlish to rubbish him completely,' the source said. Downing Street stressed Mrs May had a 'warm' phone conversation with the president-elect last week, in which he said he wanted a relationship similar to that of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Asked whether Mr Farage's bond with Mr Trump could be exploited, the PM's spokeswoman said: 'We have established routes of engagement with the president-elect and his team... 'There are well established channels for that relationship between the elected leader of the US and the PM, and we intend to continue with that route.' No10 declined to rule out a meeting between Mrs May and the Republican before he takes over at the White House - saying only that they would 'set out dates in due course'. Mr Farage said he was 'extremely optimistic' about a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal after meeting Mr Trump and his advisers, claiming he had persuaded Mr Trump to restore a bust of Winston Churchill removed by Barack Obama to the Oval Office. Mr Farage posed with the billionaire US president-elect over the weekend just days after No 10 rejected reports he could play a formal role in Anglo-American relations But he warned Mrs May had to 'mend some fences' as the Trump camp was aware her chiefs of staff Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy had been 'very rude' about the president-elect on social media. In New York yesterday Mr Farage hinted ministers were sounding him out about working for the Government in some capacity. In a swipe at British officials who have dismissed his links to Mr Trump, the Ukip leader said: 'It would appear that the apparatchiks in Downing Street keep saying very negative things about me. I'd have thought that's just a little bit short-sighted, frankly. One senior Whitehall source told the Prime Minister it would be 'churlish' not to take advantage of Mr Farage's links with Trump Downing Street said there would be no place for Mr Farage in the relationship between Mrs May (pictured on a visit to Diabetes UK offices today) and Mr Trump 'I would have thought, in the national interest, they perhaps ought to bury their personal enmity towards me and we ought to have a constructive conversation.' He told Sky News: 'If I'm wanted by anyone in London to help, I would help.' Mr Farage's currency is high with the Trump camp, which had been inspired by his role in Brexit. PM URGED TO FORGE THATCHER-STYLE TIES WITH DONALD TRUMP Theresa May should use the Thatcher-Reagan relationship as a template for forging ties with Donald Trump, a former foreign secretary has said. Sir Malcolm Rifkind said the PM should follow the example of the first female British prime minister. 'I think Theresa May has a very important opportunity. She has already spoken to the president, she has been invited to Washington early in Mr Trump's term of office and that's excellent,' senior Tory Sir Malcolm told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'The immediate requirement, in a sense - and I don't want to exaggerate this - but it is to try and do with Mr Trump what Margaret Thatcher did with Ronald Reagan. 'Margaret Thatcher was able to persuade Reagan as to the need to have dialogue with Mr (Mikhail) Gorbachev and because she was the Iron Lady he listened to her in a way that he wouldn't have listened to anyone else.' He said Mrs May should use her influence to convince Mr Trump of the importance of Nato. Advertisement Within hours of the election result last week, Steve Bannon, Mr Trump's presidential campaign chief, admitted the Brexit vote had resounded with many of their supporters. 'Nigel Farage is a hero to these people,' he said. Last night some senior Tories reacted with incredulity at the prospect of Mr Farage securing an official or semi-official role. Former party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'From what I've seen of Nigel Farage he doesn't fly by aircraft, he flies by ego. If he's so keen to get a job with us let's hope it's a good one like our representative in Outer Mongolia.' Crispin Blunt, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said it was 'completely implausible' the Ukip leader would take up such a role as he suggested. 'I think there's a fantastic opportunity actually for a decent relationship for the United Kingdom with the new administration and no need for Nigel,' he told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1. But ex-defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said it was a 'mistake' not to use Mr Farage. 'We are living in unconventional times,' he said. 'We should use all means at our disposal to forge a connection with the man who will be leader of the free world. 'As we leave the EU, this relationship will be of even more importance. If Nigel Farage has an entree with the president-elect, then fine let's use it. He's not a criminal.' Former UK trade envoy Lord Marland suggested Mr Farage could be a 'salesman' for Britain. He told BBC Radio 5 Live that Mr Trump will want to 'turbo-charge' the relationship between the US and the UK. Former UK trade envoy Lord Marland suggested Mr Farage could be a 'salesman' for Britain. Another senior Whitehall source brushed off Mr Farage's transatlantic adventures. 'Farage is an MEP who went over there. This is not something we are thinking about,' the source said. But Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said Mr Farage's meeting was a humiliation for Mrs May. Donald Trump may only live in the White House part-time as he is so fond of his New York apartment, it has been claimed. A source told the New York Times Mr Trump was 'talking with his advisers about how many nights a week he will spend in the White House'. Stroke patients are being failed at nearly a third of NHS hospitals, an audit of treatment reveals today. Thirty-two per cent of hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were given the bottom two grades of D or E for their stroke care between April and July this year. Any delay in the critical first few hours after a stroke can be devastating, vastly increasing the chance that patients will be left permanently disabled or even die. Stroke patients are being failed at nearly a third of NHS hospitals a new report has revealed And the care they receive afterwards including speech therapy, physiotherapy and home assessments are crucial if they are to recover fully. Yet thousands of patients each year are let down by hospitals which do not treat them quickly enough, or leave them languishing without care when they are sent home. Hospitals are rated on ten standards, including the speed at which stroke patients are scanned when they arrive at hospital, the quality of the treatment and whether they receive adequate physiotherapy, speech therapy and aftercare. An estimated 150,000 people have a stroke each year in Britain. A quarter die within a year, and of the survivors, half are left with disability, which can include paralysis, speech problems and personality changes. The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme, which publishes its latest results today, found that 62 hospitals 27 per cent of the 228 in the audit were given a D rating. This indicates that between 31 and 40 per cent of stroke patients in the hospitals care were not treated to the expected standards. An estimated 150,000 people have a stroke each year in Britain and a quarter of patients die within a year (stock pic) A further 12 hospitals, 5 per cent of the total, were given the bottom rating of E, suggesting more than 40 per cent of patients were not hitting treatment targets. The Royal College of Physicians, which conducted the audit, stressed that 18 per cent of hospitals more than ever before were hitting the A grade, meaning more than 90 per cent of patients were treated according to guidelines. But Juliet Bouverie, chief executive of the Stroke Association, said: Its very worrying that there are still 74 hospitals receiving the lowest two ratings of D and E. These are often persistently poor-performing hospitals, with small stroke units. Its no wonder that almost half of stroke survivors tell us they feel abandoned. We very much welcome this positive news that more hospitals than ever are achieving the highest possible rating for their stroke care and salute the teams and clinicians responsible for making this much needed improvement. However, the fact remains that its still only 18 per cent of hospitals less than one in five. Any delay in the critical first few hours after a stroke can be devastating, vastly increasing the chance that patients will be left permanently disabled or even die (stock pic) Stroke care has dramatically improved over the past decade, with the creation of a national network of specialist units. But experts stressed that care falls gravely short with smaller hospitals often lacking access to crucial equipment and staff. Fast treatment is vital when someone has had a stroke, with every minute of delay killing more and more of the brain. Yet the audit has also found that more than 7,400 people one in 11 of those admitted to NHS hospitals with a stroke last year had to wait more than 12 hours even before they received their first scan. In the worst hospitals, 36 per cent of patients had to wait for more than 12 hours before receiving a brain scan. Mrs Bouverie said only 30 per cent of patients receive the mandatory six-month review. Professor Tony Rudd, national clinical director for strokes at NHS England, said: NHS stroke care and stroke survival are at record levels with more hospitals achieving the highest possible scores than ever before. Knives and metal poles were used as weapons as chairs were also thrown Mother and father got involved in ten-person brawl at Mt Bundy Station Ten people including four members of the same family were involved in a vicious drunken fight at a wedding over the weekend, police say. Knives and metal poles were used as weapons while chairs were also hurled through the air at Mt Bundy Station, in Northern Territory, on Saturday night. It is believed that two brothers, aged 21 and 28, began fighting at around 10pm before their mother and father also joined in. Ten people, including a mother, father and two brothers from the same family were involved in a drunken fight at Mt Bundy Station, Northern Territory, on Saturday night (file image) Ten people were eventually sucked into the violent brawl, according to NT News, before police arrived to break it up. Officers are now interviewing members of the family to try and establish whether any charges will be laid. It is not clear what caused the two brothers to start fighting. No serious injuries were reported. The two brothers are believed to have started the brawl which eventually included ten people wielding knives, metal poles and chairs (Bundy Station, pictured) Duty Superintendent Louise Jorgensen said: 'The matter is being investigated. Police attended to make sure everyone was safe and that there were no serious injuries. 'Its a Territory wedding that appears to have got out of hand.' Countess of Wessex was among many who found themselves moved to tears during Remembrance Sunday Advertisement The majesty of the moment never loses its power, whether youre a tough-as-old-boots ex-soldier, a face in the crowd or a member of the Royal Family. The Countess of Wessex was among many who found themselves moved to tears yesterday as the Queen led the nation in commemoration at the Cenotaph. While communities came to a respectful standstill for Remembrance Sunday services up and down the country, there were, for once, grounds for celebration, too. For there, tucked away in the official Ministry of Defence bulletin for the occasion, was the annual list of UK Armed Forces operational fatalities (deaths on operations, from injuries on operations or from terrorism) since Remembrance Sunday last year. Total: 0. The Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Countess of Wessex attend the commemoration on Remembrance Sunday in Whitehall Kate Middleton and Camilla exchange words during a lull in the Remembrance Sunday order of events in central London The Countess of Wessex (left) was among many who found themselves moved to tears yesterday as the Queen led the nation in commemoration at the Cenotaph. The Queen (right) laid her wreath yesterday Falling poppies and a series of war poems are projected onto Big Ben for Remembrance Sunday commemorations That has happened only once before since the end of the Second World War in 1968. Many people will forever associate 2016 with tumultuous geo-political upheavals but, if this statistic remains the same until the end of December, this should also go down as a blessed year for our Armed Forces. Whitehall was looking magnificent in the morning sun which was beaming straight into the Queens face as she faced the Cenotaph in Whitehall. It recently emerged that her poppy wreath had been made a little lighter for this years event, a tiny adjustment in honour of her 90th birthday this April. Yet the real challenge has never been the weight of the wreath. It is walking backwards down steps in front of millions of onlookers. Successive Lord Chancellors used to face the same problem at the State Opening of Parliament when they were expected to reverse from the Throne without turning their back on the Sovereign. In recent years, however, that tradition has been abandoned and the Lord Chancellor now turns round rather than risk a tumble. Regardless, the Queen steadfastly refuses to turn her back on the Cenotaph. All the senior members of the Royal Family were present. The Duke of Edinburgh followed the Queen with his wreath (and permitted himself a brief about-turn, though, at 95 and wearing a sword, no one was going to object). Looking on from a Foreign Office balcony were the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Countess of Wessex. On the next-door balcony a group of political spouses included Philip May making his debut alongside Dame Norma Major and Boris Johnsons wife, Marina. Down below, Prime Minister Theresa May led the political and diplomatic wreath-layers for the first time. Her predecessor, David Cameron, was relegated to the second row with former PMs Tony Blair and Sir John Major (Gordon Brown being elsewhere). Mrs May was followed by Jeremy Corbyn. Unlike last year, when the Labour leaders barely discernible nod of the head became a heated national talking point, he made a perfectly respectful bow after laying his wreath. It should also be noted that he sang the National Anthem, just as he did the previous evening at the Royal British Legions stirring Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall where he stayed on to meet veterans at the post-show reception. Mr Corbyn has wisely worked out that there really is no point giving his critics ammunition at the most sacred moments in the national calendar. The Duke of Edinburgh followed the Queen with his wreath (and permitted himself a brief about-turn, though, at 95 and wearing a sword, no one was going to object) Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair with Cherie Blair on their way to the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday There had been several intensely moving moments during Saturday nights event, including a short film of Sea Cadet Beth Molyneux, 11, writing a poem in honour of her late father, Lt Cdr Ian Molyneux GM, who was shot dead in his submarine in 2011. Whereupon she entered the hall with her brothers to recite it. There were so many equally poignant scenes during yesterdays Royal British Legion parade down Whitehall. More than 8,500 marchers had come from afar; former Royal Navy Wren Carol Asam had flown from West Virginia. BBC viewers may have seen Emma Fisher, widow of Warrant Officer Ian Fisher, killed in action in 2013, talking about raising two young boys without him. And there she was yesterday, marching proudly with the Staffordshire Regiment. A few yards in front of her, leading the Cheshire Regiment contingent, was one of yesterdays oldest participants, Jimmy Gallimore, 98. Theresa May's husband, Philip May, speaks to Norma Major, the wife of former Tory prime minister John Major Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, with prime minister Theresa May and former prime minister John Major During the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940, several of his pals were executed by the SS in the notorious Wormhoudt Massacre while Jimmy was taken prisoner. He endured near-starvation in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland and escaped twice. The second time was successful, after he was taken in by a brave Polish family, who risked summary execution by hiding him in a storeroom while German troops were sleeping in the same house. Yet during yesterdays two-minute silence, Mr Gallimores thoughts, as ever, were on the scene which still haunts him most a young German soldier mortally wounded in the middle of the battle and screaming for his mother. This has been a year of big anniversaries, not least the 100th of the Battles of the Somme and Jutland. The latter is perhaps best-remembered for the heroism of 16-year-old Jack Cornwell, awarded a posthumous VC. Yesterday his great-great-nephew, Able Seaman Alex Saridis, was part of the Royal Navys marching contingent. But many had other dates on their minds. Army Catering Corps veterans had come to honour the 75th anniversary of their indispensable unit (motto: We Sustain) and all who had died in its service. I also spoke to Arnold Jeacock, 60, a former Able Seaman in the Royal Naval Reserve, who was marching in honour of his fellow crew members in HMS Fittleton. Its 40 years since the minesweeper collided with the frigate HMS Mermaid during a Nato North Sea exercise with the loss of 12 crew. Mr Jeacock, who couldnt swim and wasnt wearing a lifejacket, narrowly escaped while his friend, Ian Hewison did not. I always think of him and the fact he should have survived because he had a young family and I didnt, said Mr Jeacock, who lost a leg in a traffic accident six months later. It does mean Im sometimes a little out of step. But Ive been coming here for the past 20 years. If youre going to march for your mates, the Cenotaphs the place to do it. Helping hand from one VC hero to another Some of the warmest applause at yesterdays Royal British Legion parade greeted the inspirational sight of one holder of the Victoria Cross being helped by another, writes Robert Hardman. Sergeant Bill Speakman VC, 89, formerly of the Black Watch and the SAS, was wreath-layer for the 30-strong contingent from the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Pushing his wheelchair was Lance Sergeant Johnson Beharry VC, 37, formerly of the Princess of Waless Royal Regiment. Private Speakman, as he then was, became the very first person to be decorated by the Queen at the first investiture after her succession. In 1951, he had been attached to the Kings Own Scottish Borderers at the height of the Korean War when part of the regiments position came under a ferocious Chinese attack. Veteran Johnson Beharry pushes fellow veteran William Speakman-Pitt during the Remembrance event at the Cenotaph. Both men are Victoria Cross holders Pte Speakman gathered up a pile of grenades and half a dozen comrades and proceeded to drive back one assault after another. Though severely wounded in the leg, he had his wounds bandaged and went straight back into the thick of it, leading further charges to the crest of a crucial hill. The citation for his VC reads: He was, by his heroic actions, personally responsible for causing enormous losses to the enemy, assisting his Company to maintain their position for some four hours and saving the lives of many of his comrades... Private Speakmans heroism under intense fire throughout the operation and when painfully wounded was beyond praise and is deserving of supreme recognition. He went on to join the SAS before leaving the Army and moving to South Africa. Years later, he came back home and is now a much-revered Chelsea Pensioner. Yesterday, his minder (as if he needed one) was Lance Sgt Beharry, who performed two outstanding acts of bravery in Iraq in 2004. While driving his platoon commanders armoured vehicle, it was battered by a series of rocket attacks. Unable to communicate with the injured occupants of the vehicle, Pte Beharry battled on through the ambush for more than a mile, sustaining serious injury himself, and then jumped out several times under fire to drag his comrades to safety. Having recovered from his wounds, he was driving the lead vehicle in an assault weeks later when it was caught in another ambush. He was so badly injured that he lost consciousness, but not before moving the vehicle and its occupants out of harms way. Advertisement BBC presenter Andrew Marr was yesterday forced to defend the broadcasters decision to show an interview with French far right leader Marine Le Pen on Remembrance Sunday. Critics accused the BBC of insulting the memory of Britons who lost their lives fighting fascism. Marr conceded his interview with Miss Le Pen for his BBC1 political show was controversial, but said it would not honour the fallen to censor someone who could become the next big challenge to Western security. Several protesters stood outside the BBC yesterday morning to demonstrate against Marine Le Pen's appearance Marine Le Pen, pictured, appeared on a pre-recorded interview on yesterday's Andrew Marr Show on BBC 1 Andrew Marr pre-recorded the interview with Le Pen although protesters still braved the Sunday morning chill Before the pre-recorded interview was screened Marr told viewers: Now I know this morning some people are offended and upset that I have been to interview Marine Le Pen, and that we are showing this interview on Remembrance Sunday. I understand that but I would say this Le Pen could, under some circumstances, become the next French president in the spring. This week, in the immediate aftermath of the Trump victory, she has declared that the whole world has changed and that her brand of politics is on the march. What does that mean? In the end we are a news programme and I dont think the best way to honour the fallen is to fail to report on the next big challenge to Western security. Dozens of protesters from Unite Against Fascism gathered outside the BBCs studios in central London. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke briefly to them before going on the programme. He said many were angry because of the language used by Miss Le Pen about minorities in France. Labour education spokesman Angela Rayner said on Twitter: Marine Le Pen speaking on Marr Remembrance Sunday? Why not interview our veterans who fought fascists & lost so many comrades? So wrong BBC! Jamie Reed, a Labour backbencher, said: The point isnt airing Le Pen. The point is deliberately choosing to do so today. Sickening and deliberate. Le Pen said she hoped she would be able to follow president-elect Donald Trump's shock victory in the United States Tristram Hunt, a senior Labour MP and historian, said: As we commemorate those who gave their lives fighting fascism, it is pretty grotesque to have Marine Le Pen on Marr on Remembrance Sunday. There is a time and a place. Remembrance Sunday is neither the time nor the place. He added: The war vs the Kaiser was, in part, a war vs fascism. Le Pen signals a return to those dark impulses. Miss Le Pen predicted she would become president of France in the third part of a global revolution after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the US. She also took a swipe at Ukip for attempting to distance itself from her National Front party, telling Marr there was not a hairs breadth between them on immigration and the European Union. Miss Le Pen also said that no more migrants would be welcome in France, as the country was full up. Suzanne Evans, who is running to be Ukip leader, distanced her party from Miss Le Pen. Now Lidl has applied to open a store next year - further down same road Waitrose has permission for 30,000 sq ft store, meant to be open in 2014 While others prefer Waitrose and wouldnt set foot in budget store Lidl Living by a Waitrose can add 40k to homes - but some are not impressed Waitrose and Lidl are at war over plans to build rival stores half a mile apart. And the battle has been joined by well-heeled residents who stand to benefit. Even though living near a Waitrose can add up to 40,000 to house prices ten times what a Lidl adds some in the historic market town of Shrewsbury say the middle-class supermarket is overrated and they prefer the offerings at its budget rival. Waitrose and Lidl are at war over plans to build rival stores half a mile apart in Shrewsbury Others insist they wouldnt set foot in Lidl. Waitrose has permission to build a 30,000 sq ft store in Oteley Road, which should have been completed in 2014. Lidl has applied to open a store, due to open next year, further down the same road. It already has one store in Shrewsbury and Waitrose is not happy about the added competition. Waitrose bosses asked Shropshire Council to throw out the application for the new Lidl, or they would reconsider their development. But Lidl has accused its rival of procrastination and claims the stalled Waitrose project may never go ahead. Chris Smith, from Lidls planning department, wrote to Shropshire Council: The proposed Lidl store has not singularly brought the viability of the approved Waitrose into question. If the Lidl scheme were to be refused planning permission Waitrose still does not offer any guarantee to deliver [its] store. Locals in Shrewsbury, where four or five-bedroom houses can cost upwards of 450,000, are divided over which store should go ahead, with some wanting both. Even though living near a Waitrose can add up to 40,000 to house prices, some in the historic market town of Shrewsbury (pictured) say the middle-class supermarket is overrated Retired textile business owner Peter Sower, 77, and wife Christine, 75, a former accounts administrator, live opposite the proposed Waitrose site. Mrs Sower said: Quite frankly Waitrose is overrated. It doesnt have anything the others dont have, and is overpriced. We spend quite a lot of time on the Continent and Lidl has things that none of the others have. The added value doesnt make a difference to us - weve got money stowed away from our last house sale and we wont move again. Salesman Martin Cooper, 55, admitted to being a bit of a snob who would usually choose Waitrose, but added: Id give Lidl a go, you can get manuka honey there for 4, while its 17 in Asda. Other residents were devastated at the prospect that the Waitrose would not be completed, with their house prices suffering as a result. Waitrose has permission to build a 30,000 sq ft store in Oteley Road, Shrewsbury, while Lidl has also applied to open a store on the street Julie Forbes, 58, who lives with husband Douglas, 59, a plumbing engineer, between the two sites, said: There are some good bargains at Lidl, but I dont think we would set foot in there to be honest. Waitrose is better suited to this sort of area. Stuart Jardine, Lidls head of property in the UK, said Lidl had no opposition to the Waitrose store and added: Our proposed store would improve choice for local shoppers and we believe that Lidl has a unique offering that differs from many grocery retailers. Therefore, a Lidl supermarket would complement existing stores in the local area. Ontario Judge Bernd Zabel displayed contempt for his position and its political impartiality by showing up for work the day after the US election in a Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" hat, which he wore, and then perched on his bench. Osgoode Hall law professor Gus Van Harten has filed a formal complaint with the Ontario Judicial Council, saying the judge is now "tainted" and should not preside over cases where the litigants are "women, Mexicans, Muslims and persons with disabilities" because Trump campaigned by disparaging and attacking these groups. Matthew Green, Hamilton's first black councillor, commented on that implication that the judge's authority is tainted, saying that if he'd been convicted by the judge, he'd be seeking an appeal. He, too, called on Zabel to step down from the bench. "Given the divisive nature of the recent American election with its clear racism, sexism and xenophobia, if true, this alarming display by a Canadian judge only serves to underscore the distrust many Canadians feel in our own so-called 'justice system,'" Green said. Law professor wants Ontario judge disciplined for reportedly wearing Trump hat [CBC] (Image: Washington Post) (Thanks, Ed!) They have had to abandon the cliff top home, lucky it didn't fall into the sea Her mother said it was 'like someone picked up the house, started shaking' She was thrown from bed when the 7.8 earthquake struck early on Monday Tessa Prentices' family home was ruined during the New Zealand quake Tess Prentice thought it was the 'end of the world' as her family were thrown out of their beds when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake wreaked havoc their house. She and her parents huddled together and sobbed after the massive quake struck their cliff-top home in North Canterbury, New Zealand, in the early hours of Monday. 'It was like someone picked up the house and started shaking us,' her mother, Dr Anthea Prentice, told the New Zealand Herald. Tess Prentice stands in front of her wrecked North Canterbury home after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that rocked New Zealand early on Monday When police later arrived to check on them, the family were advised to leave immediately. They were lucky their house did not slip down the cliff into the sea. 'Plenty of people over the years have said, "Oh that's close to the edge", but I've always felt quite safe here,' Dr Prentice said. They intended to leave after collecting a few items from the home, which had been ruined in the quake. Walls had collapsed, holes in the roof appeared, the chimney fallen down and doors wrecked. Two people died after the massive earthquake struck New Zealand, sparking a tsunami warning and has leaving some towns cut-off. The quake, located near Hanmer Springs in North Canterbury at a depth of 15km, struck minutes after midnight and more than 250 aftershocks have since rattled the country. Prime Minister John Key said two people were confirmed fatalities after the quake but it was not yet clear if both were as a direct result of the tremor. The quake comes almost six years after a destructive 6.3 earthquake that killed 185 people in Canterbury early in 2011. Houses in New Zealand pictured after the earthquake, perched on a hillside above land that has slipped away The US Embassy in Afghanistan has closed following a deadly attack on an American military base. In a statement late Saturday, the embassy says it will be 'closed for routine services' Sunday 'as a temporary precautionary measure.' The unusual decision comes after four Americans two soldiers and two contractors were killed in a suicide attack Saturday on the Bagram Airfield, around 30 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The US Embassy in Afghanistan has closed following a deadly attack on an American military base. The decision comes after four Americans two soldiers and two contractors were killed in a suicide attack Saturday on the Bagram Airfield (pictured) near the capital, Kabul The explosion occurred around 5.30am local time as military personnel and others were gathering for a 'fun run' organized in conjunction with Veterans Day, according to NBC News. Officials have not identified the casualties. Response teams are continuing to treat the wounded and investigate the incident. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which they also said was carried out by a suicide bomber inside the base. A spokesman for the insurgent group said the attack had been planned for four months. Two days earlier, insurgents attacked the German Consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing six people and wounding more than 100. The US Embassy in Kabul regularly warns Americans against travel to Afghanistan, where a Taliban-led insurgency is in its 16th year. The insurgency has become more virulent since most international combat troops withdrew in 2014. Donald Trump gave his first TV interview since being elected president on 60 Minutes Sunday night, and revealed where he stands on a number of the issues he spoke about during the months leading up to the election. Host Lesley Stahl grilled him about potential Supreme Court appointees, accusations that his supporters have harassed African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and gay people, and whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Clintons like he has pledged. The President-elect said he would appoint pro-life judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court and make abortion a states issue. Trump also confirmed his intention to build a wall on the border with Mexico and pledged to deport two to three millions undocumented immigrants whom he believes have criminal records. And for the second half of the interview Trump was joined by his family, with his four oldest children stating that they would not have jobs on their father's administration. Trump has so far appointed RNC head Reince Preibus as his White House Chief of Staff and former Breitbart boss Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. Preibus also hinted at the fact that Trump's son-in-law would be a close adviser to the president-elect during an interview on Today Monday morning. Scroll down for video Sit down: President-elect Trump's first TV interview since election aired Sunday evening President-elect Trump appeared on 60 Minutes with his children, who said they would not be working in his administration, and wife Melania Tough questions: Host Lesley Stahl (above) grilled him on a variety of topics and campaign promises Getting serious: Trump pledged to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court ON ABORTION Stahl asked whether Trump would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal across the United States and invalidated state laws restricting access to the procedure. Trump pledged to appoint pro-life justices and said he was himself pro-life. He then predicted that, should Roe v Wade be overturned, abortion would become a states' rights issue again. This means women would be able to get abortions in certain states, but would be prevented from doing so in other states - as has not been the case in 43 years. 'But then some women won't be able to get an abortion?' Stahl asked. 'Yeah, well, they'll perhaps have to go, they'll have to go to another state,' Trump replied. When Stahl pressed him further, asking whether this status quo was okay, he added: 'Well, we'll see what happens. 'It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.' Trump will have to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia's replacement. Given the ages of the current justices, he could have to appoint four in total during his presidency. Trump matter-of-factly envisioned an America in which women could have to travel to a different state to get an abortion in his first interview as president-elect ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE The president-elect said he was 'fine' with same-sex marriage remaining as the law of the land and insisted the issue had already been settled by the Supreme Court. Trump wouldn't say whether he supported marriage equality but said it was irrelevant to question his stance because same-sex marriage has already been entered into law. 'It's done. It - you have - these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They've been settled. And I'm - I'm fine with that,' he said. Trump said that gay Americans would not have to worry about losing the right to marriage equality ON APPOINTING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Trump dodged a question about whether he would actually appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private server - a promise he made during his campaign. He said he didn't want to hurt the Clintons and called them 'good people'. Trump said he wanted to focus on healthcare and immigration instead of narrowing down on his former opponent - even though thousands of his supporters had called for him to 'lock her up'. The president-elect declined to say if he would fulfill that promise but said he would give a 'very, very good and definitive answer' on his next 60 Minutes interview with Stahl. ON TELLING HIS SUPPORTERS TO STOP HARASSING PEOPLE Stahl confronted Trump with allegations made against his supporters. They have been accused of harassing African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, gay people and of using racial slurs in several instances against the country. Trump first said he was 'very surprised' to find out about the accusations and that he 'hated' to hear them. When Stahl asked if he wanted to say anything to his accused supporters, Trump replied: 'I would say don't do it, that's terrible, because I'm going to bring this country together. She brought up accusations that supporters have harassed Latinos and Muslims and Trump added: 'I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, "Stop it." If it - if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.' For the second half of the interview Trump was joined by his wife Melania (above) Trump's children said that they would not take roles in his administration ON HIS SECRET PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS Trump refused to say how he intends to get rid of ISIS. He has repeatedly declined to clarify his strategy and during Sunday's interview, as he did during most of his campaign, simply repeated that he and his administration would 'destroy' the terror group. 'You have said that you're going to destroy ISIS. Now, how - how are you going to?' Stahl asked. 'I don't tell you that. I don't tell you that,' Trump replied. Stahl pressed him, after which he added: 'I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to tell them anything. I don't want to tell anybody anything.' ON HIRING LOBBYISTS The president-elect responded to criticism about hiring lobbyists to take care of his transition after pledging repeatedly to drain what was seen as the establishment's swamp. Trump swore lobbyists were the only people available for hire, adding: 'Everybody's a lobbyist down there.' 'Everything, everything down there-- there are no people-- there are all people that work -- that's the problem with the system, the system,' he continued. He pledged to 'clean up the system', adding: 'I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.' ON BUILDING THE WALL Stahl asked Trump whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes'. He admitted that a fence could be used in certain areas instead of a wall. 'I'm very good at this, it's called construction,' Trump added. The president-elect then said he would begin his immigration policy by deporting or incarcerating undocumented immigrants whom he says have criminal records. He wasn't sure yet what would become of undocumented immigrants who do not have a criminal record. 'After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that youre talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are going to make a determination at that,' Trump said. Stahl (pictured shaking Trump's hand) asked the president-elect whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes' ON MEETING THE OBAMAS Trump opened up about his 90-minute meeting with President Barack Obama after the election. Their conversation was supposed to last only 15 minutes but the two men spoke for an hour and a half. The chat, according to Trump, could have continued for four hours. 'I mean it was - just - in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. And he told me - the good things and the bad things, there are things that are tough right now,' Trump said. He and Obama talked about the Middle East, the president-elect revealed, before calling Obama 'very smart and very nice' and praising his 'great sense of humor.' Stahl asked whether the meeting was awkward, given the searing attacks Trump and Obama launched at each other during the campaign. 'We never discussed what was said about each other', Trump said, adding there had been 'zero' awkwardness from his standpoint. 'And that's strange. I'm actually surprised to tell you that. It's - you know, a little bit strange,' he said. ON REPEALING OBAMACARE Trump said he would keep some parts of Obamacare, such as the measure that protects people with pre-existing conditions, which the president-elect called 'one of the strongest assets' of the law. He then pledged to simultaneously repeal and replace Obamacare. 'It'll be just fine. we're not going to have, like, a two day period and we're not going to have-- a two year period where there's nothing,' he said. 'It will be repealed and replaced. And well know. And it'll be great health care for much less money.' ON TONING DOWN HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT Trump promised that his Twitter account would change now that he is the next president. 'I'm going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I'm going to do very restrained,' he said. He praised social media for helping his campaign. 'I think it helped me win all of these races where they're spending much more money than I spent,' Trump said. 'I think that social media has more power than the money they spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that.' ON NOT TAKING VACATIONS AND NOT ACCEPTING THE SALARY Trump predicted he and his administration wouldn't be 'very big on vacations because there was 'so much work to be done'. He said he wouldn't take the $400,000 presidential salary. I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year,' Trump added. ON PEOPLE BEING AFRAID OF HIM Trump believes those who are afraid of him are only afraid because they don't know him. He said some protesters were professionals - a claim he also made on Twitter Friday, the day the interview was taped. When Stahl asked what he would say to those demonstrating against him, Trump replied: 'Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don't be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. The alcohol was due to be sent for Two Northern Territory police officers have been disciplined after seizing alcohol from a remote community before drinking it back at the police station. The police officers were dobbed in after an 'anonymous tip', according to Ombudsman NT's annual report. The officers were said to have seized a 'substantial amount' of alcohol from the community before returning to the station. The officers were said to have seized a 'substantial amount' of alcohol from the remote community before returning to the station (stock of a remote community) The alcohol was scheduled for destruction but was only completed once the officers returned to a major centre the next day. During that time the officers are said to have ingested some of the alcohol but no evidence was found suggesting the officers had or had not drank the grog. Due to the lack of evidence no legal proceeding were undertaken. A senior police officer was found to have not suitably supervised the two officers and all three were disciplined. The investigation prompted a review of the systems in place and suggested a number of new guidelines be put in place. The new rules include the establishment of alcohol disposal points at police stations with suggestions that these be monitored by CCTV, instructions on when and how to store and record seized alcohol and also how to destroy it. The alcohol was scheduled for destruction but was only completed once the officers returned to a major centre the next day This is the revolting moment a mother-of-six discovered maggots crawling all over Coles frankfurters that she had just fed to her children. Fiona Van Dam, from Perth, said she bought the pre-packed hotdogs from the Pinjarra store on Friday before making them into sandwiches on Saturday. She fed the franks to several of her older children and her husband before noticing there were maggots on the sandwich she was about to feed her two-year-old. Stomach-churning video shows dozens of the creatures crawling over the outer skin of the hotdog, which she appears to have flattened out to get into the sandwich. While at first there does not seem to be anything wrong with the hotdog, Mrs Van Dam then moves part of the frank to reveal what is underneath. Dozens of the little creatures can be seen crawling around on the frankfurter skin as it sits on a chopping board. Mrs Van Dam wrote: 'If you have a weak stomach I strongly suggest you don't watch this video. This is the disgusting moment mother-of-six Fiona Van Dam found maggots crawling over a frankfurter she had just served to her children and husband 'I bought pre-packed cocktail franks from Pinjarra Coles yesterday and this is what they are like. All they could offer as compensation was a $6 dollar refund. 'Several of our children, my husband and I ate them before we found this one which we had given our two-year-old!' A Coles spokeswoman said: 'We take the quality of the products we sell seriously. 'Our national quality team has advised the contamination appears to be consistent with common housefly larvae. This has most likely occurred after the frankfurt was cooked at home, as larvae could not survive the heat of the cooking process. Chaotic scenes have erupted at a troubled juvenile prison, with up to 20 teenage inmates still missing after they broke out of their cells. Police are trying to subdue the young detainees at the Parkville Youth Justice Centre in Melbourne on Monday for a second consecutive night of riots. Around a dozen young offenders have barricaded themselves inside a unit, with a number of fires reportedly lit. Tactical police in riot gear and dog squad have been called in as firefighters and paramedics remain on standby after 'a disturbance' broke out on Sunday night. Tactical police in riot gear are trying to subdue up to 20 teenage inmates on Monday Tactical police in riot gear have been called to Melbourne's Parkville Youth Justice Centre Police remain on scene at Parkville Youth Justice Centre after a second night of rioting Several inmates had climbed onto the roof of one of the centre's units, with some armed with tools. Ambulance Victoria has confirmed they haven't treated anyone for injuries. The latest riot comes after teenage detainees rioted at the same facility on Saturday evening, with media reports suggesting the inmates climbed on roofs and caused significant damage. Around 20 inmates trashed their cells before they smashed security cameras and ripped off walls and ceilings. Youth Affairs Minister Jenny Mikakos condemned the behaviour on Saturday, and said the government was developing a range of tougher measures to put a stop to it. Around dozen teenage prisoners are still barricaded inside the justice centre on Monday Tactical police in riot gear and dog squad have been called in after a 'disturbance' broke out Opposition spokeswoman Georgie Crozier says rioting at the two youth justice centres in Victoria has become commonplace. 'They (the government) need to step in and fix this mess because there is riot after riot nearly every weekend,' she told 3AW on Monday. The Department of Health and Human Services said it is working to resolve the incident and added there was no threat to the community and the centre's perimeter is secure. 'All young people are contained within the facility,' the DHHS said in a statement. 'The behaviour of these clients is unacceptable and staff shouldn't have to tolerate it.' Last month, several young offenders (pictured) managed to climb onto the roof of the Melbourne facility where they smashed property with metal bars In her BBC programme she demonstrates how to microwave the fruit When she judged the Great British Bake Off, Mary Berry made it clear that shortcuts would not be tolerated. But when she is at home, it seems the rules do not apply, as the 81-year-old cook has revealed her favourite kitchen cheats including an ingenious way to easily juice a lemon. In her BBC programme, The Mary Berry Story, shown over the weekend, she demonstrates how to microwave the fruit to loosen the juice with minimal effort. She explained: I dont use a microwave very much, but one thing I find its very useful for is taking the juice out of lemons. I find that if Ive got to make something like a lemon tart, using five lemons or something, to get the juice out takes an awful lot of effort. I havent got these great, strong muscles, so this is where a microwave earns its keep. The simple method involves cutting the lemon in half, putting it in a bowl and heating it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Miss Berry is known for her simple, easy-to-follow recipes, and is not afraid to admit that at home she cuts corners now and again, including using shop-bought pesto and puff pastry. The TV star, who quit Bake Off after its move to Channel 4, will be serving up more of her cooking secrets in her new show, Mary Berry Everyday, which was announced yesterday and will air in the spring. The simple method involves cutting the lemon in half, putting it in a bowl and heating it in the microwave for 30 seconds Miss Berry recently told Prima magazine that her favourite Christmas lunch shortcut is to prepare the vegetables the day before, like in a hotel. She said: You cook them to perfection then run them under cold water to stop them cooking. Arrange on a big platter and reheat them when the time comes to serve lunch. UK holidaymakers could be forced to pay 10 for a visa to go to other EU countries as part of a security crackdown. The European Commission is discussing introducing a version of the US visa waiver programme to boost security. International travellers heading to the US are usually exempt from a visa but have to apply for an electronic system travel authorisation known as an Esta. UK holidaymakers could be forced to pay 10 for a visa to go to other EU countries as part of a security crackdown This costs around 10. EU chiefs want to introduce a similar scheme across to help them identify troublemakers and would-be terrorists entering the continent. But it would apply to people entering the so-called Schengen zone, which excludes the UK - meaning British travellers would also have to pay to travel to other EU countries. Sir Julian King, European commissioner for the security union, said proposals for a European pre-clearance system would be presented this week. 'We think this is going to be a valuable additional piece of the jigsaw because it will allow us to know more about the people who are planning to come to the EU in advance so that if necessary they raise questions about either security or in some cases migration,' Sir Julian said. 'We'll be able to intervene even before they arrive in some cases.' Plans had been mooted over the summer that suggested Britons would have to apply for visas to travel throughout continental Europe once the UK leaves the EU. But the 26-nation passport-free Schengen zone, which does not include the UK, could operate a visa programme similar to the US waiver before Brexit. An electronic system travel authorisation could be introduced. Pictured: Arromanches, France Currently British passport holders can travel throughout member states without having to apply for short-term visas of any type. The Esta proposals are part of a broader response to calls for greater security across the continent following recent terror attacks in Europe - and comes one year on from the Paris atrocities. Sir Julian said: 'The fact that we're having this conversation now is unfortunately timely, because Sunday is one year on from the horrible attacks in Paris which were part of a series of attacks that shocked France, shocked the whole of Europe. 'It's that level of present, persistent, indiscriminate threat that led to 80-plus percent of European citizens saying they want more action in this area. 'There are a number of elements at the heart of this task - tackling terrorism is one, but not the only part of it. There's work that needs to be done on cyber-crime and attacks, and serious and organised crime.' He also said the EU was working with Internet Service Providers to tackle ISIS and other 'unpleasant' material. He said ISPs were being asked to 'identify stuff and talk to them whether according to their rules and procedures it should be taken down. Part of Europol, the internet referral unit, has referred thousands of items over the last 12 months and in nine out of 10 cases ISPs have taken it down.' He added: 'Unfortunately Daesh (Islamic State) and some of their agents are working in the community to try and spread their message and try and radicalise individuals - we have to work against that.' The Big Six energy firms have been accused of misleading the public over profits with some reportedly making up to seven times the amount they declared. A secret report produced for Energy UK, which represents suppliers, suggests some companies are making up to 24 per cent profit, rather than the 3.3 per cent announced earlier this year. The report, seen by The Sun, shows the cost of providing fuel to an average household cost around 844 in 2016. A report produced for Energy UK, suggests some companies are making up to 24 per cent profit, rather than the 3.3 per cent announced earlier this year But with many customers opting for standard variable tariffs, they can be paying up to 1,172 a year to some suppliers, leaving a profit margin of 272 or 24 per cent. Energy Secretary Greg Clark last night vowed to summon Energy UK for a meeting. 'This report appears to confirm my concern that the big energy firms are punishing their customers' loyalty rather than respecting it,' he told The Sun. 'Customers who are loyal to their energy supplier should be treated well, not taken for a ride. They must treat customers properly or be made to.' In June, energy firms told investigators at the Competition and Markets Authority that they made profits of just 3.3 per cent, or 37. They blamed the high bills on customers failing to shop around for the best tariffs, with too many on standard variable tariffs wasting a collective 1.7billion a year. But the industry body has now been accused of using the findings of the report, produced by top accountancy firm PwC, selectively and ignoring the profits, something it strenuously denies. Energy Secretary Greg Clark last night vowed to summon Energy UK for a meeting The Sun claims it has used the original report and used the energy industry's own figures to show the profit margins on their common standard tariffs. But a spokesman for Energy UK claimed the newspaper has misinterpreted the report, which it said was commissioned using publicly available data to provide a guide on how different elements such as wholesale, network, policy and operational costs make up an average energy bill. They said the report used the accounts of major energy suppliers which were provided to the regulator, Ofgem, and which showed average profits of 4 per cent. 'The purpose of the report is simply to help understand how the different pressures on an average bill have changed over recent years. 'It was not intended to present, or to hide, how much profit different firms make across their various tariffs. 'Energy UK rejects completely any implication that the report was changed to alter the perception of supplier profit. A family is mourning after a teen accidentally backed over and killed his 75-year-old grandmother on Sunday. The 17-year-old boy was reversing an SUV closer to the house, so his grandparents would have an easier time getting into the home, when he knocked over Chandrawati Lathan. She was walking behind the car in the Floral Park area of Queens, New York, at the time, according to NY 1. Seventeen-year-old Jadesh, who often took care of his grandparents, accidentally backed over his grandmother in the driveway of their Queens home (above), say police The Queens home in Floral Park, above, was the scene of tragedy as a teen accidentally killed his beloved grandmother The teen is only identified as Jadesh by the New York Daily News. He reportedly lived with his grandparents and often helped them out. On Sunday, neighbors said the trio were dressed up to go out. Neighbor Basheer Ally, 56, said that the teen was backing into the driveway only to help his elderly relatives. A neighbor said the teen was only trying to get the car closer to the house The teen was backing the SUV (above) closer to the door's entry for the convenience of his grandparents, said a neighbor 'The grandson was backing up so the grandparents could more easily get into the car and the grandmother didn't notice. He didn't have time to see her,' he told the outlet. The woman was rushed to Northwell Health Long Island Jewish Medical Center but later died of her injuries. Researchers at UT Austin have analyzed a deep depression on Mars that differs from a typical crater. The Hellas depression may in fact be an ancient ice cauldron, where a glacier forms over an active volcano, creating a chemical-rich environment that could support life forms. A second formation in Galaxias Fossae has similar depth and is also worth a closer look, according to researchers: While the Galaxias Fossae landform morphology is consistent with an impact origin, the large volume of removed material in North Hellas is less consistent with an impact origin and is interpreted to have resulted from volcanic melting of ice. The possibility of liquid water formation during or subsequent to volcanism or an impact could generate locally-enhanced habitable conditions, making these features tantalizing geological and astrobiological exploration targets. Ice cauldrons occur on earth, and they oven have unique local ecologies, like this one called Katla in Iceland: The full paper is available here. A Funnel on Mars Could Be a Place to Look for Life (via R&D) Robin Bailey will no longer host her popular breakfast radio show after what the station calls a 'disagreement on terms' - but she says she's been 'blindsided'. Bailey has hosted the Robin, Terry and Bob 97.3FM Breakfast show in Brisbane for the past decade but on Monday, her departure from the show was announced, two years after her husband committed suicide. ARN National Content Director Duncan Campbell said in a statement the company was disappointed she was leaving after being unable to agree on terms. But Bailey said Monday morning was the first she knew of it - and it was not a joint decision. Scroll down for video Robin Bailey is leaving 97.3FM after a disagreement over terms She said she had been negotiating the terms of her contract for 'some time' and believed they were progressing well, Mamamia reported. 'The announcement today that I am leaving the 97.3FM breakfast team has come as a complete shock. I have been blindsided by ARN's decision not to renew my contract.' She said she expected a more respectful approach to the process and thanked her listener for their support. Meanwhile, Mr Campbell said: 'Robin has had a great ten years on-air with 97.3 and we're sad to see her go. 'While we worked hard to keep Robin as part of the team, we're disappointed that we were unable to agree terms.' Bailey during her son Finn's 16th birthday, when she praised him for his resilience after her husband, his father, committed suicide in 2014 As of 2017, she'll no longer work at the station. Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher are to remain and will be joined by a new host. ARN intended to provide information about the new version of the show in the near future. ARN's National Content Director Duncan Campbell said in a statement they were unable to renew the contract due to both parties. 'ARN tried very hard to keep Robin at 97.3. While we won't comment on specific elements of contract negotiations for privacy reasons, what we can say is this negotiation was ongoing for a long period of time with Robin's management,' he said. 'We are very disappointed we weren't able to agree to terms, but unfortunately, based on the information ARN was consistently given throughout the negotiation process, we were led into a position where we were unable to proceed with contract renewal.' Bailey's husband of 16 years Tony Smart committed suicide in September 2014 after a long battle with depression. Robin Bailey with fellow breakfast show hosts Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher (stock image) Her male co-pilot ejected safely and survived the accident in Hebei The 30-year-old was the first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane in a crash, but hit the wing of another jet She ejected from her aircraft Yu Xu was killed during an aerobatics training exercise on The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane was killed in a crash during an aerobatics training exercise, state-run media reported Monday. Yu Xu, 30, a member of the Chinese air force's 'August 1st' aerobatic display team, ejected from her aircraft during a training exercise in the northern province of Hebei at the weekend, the China Daily newspaper said. She hit the wing of another jet and was killed, it said, although her male co-pilot ejected safely and survived. Yu Xu (pictured) was one of only four female pilots in China capable of flying domestically made fighter jets Johannes Eisele (AFP/File) A picture circulated by media shows Yu Xu enjoying her leisure time when she was off duty According to People's Daily Online, the accident took place at around 9:45am on November 12 when two aircraft, including the one Ms Yu was piloting, were performing above the city of Tianjin. Debris of the crashed jet was found in the Dayangpu village near Tangshan city in Hebei Province. No explosions were heard before the crash, according to the report. 'As one of only four female pilots in the country capable of flying domestically made fighter jets, her death comes as a tremendous loss to the Chinese air force,' the Global Times newspaper said. Ms Yu, from Chongzhou in south-west China's Sichuan province, joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in 2005, reports said. She graduated from training four years later, one of the first 16 Chinese women pilots qualified to fly fighter jets, the China Daily said, and in July 2012 was the first woman to fly the J-10. Fans dubbed her the 'golden peafowl', it added. Yu Xu, the first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane, was seen in her high school graduation photo in 2005 (circled) This picture taken on November 11, 2014 shows Chinese female J-10 fighter pilot Yu Xu getting ready to perform at the Airshow China in Zhuhai Ms Yu was seen as a pioneering trailblazer in a country which enshrines women's rights but where traditional values are still widespread. Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social media service posted pictures of candles in her memory, with thousands mourning her death. 'We praise her not as an individual, but for the spirit she transmitted to us, becoming the ideal vehicle for everyone's hopes,' wrote one user. Others raised questions about the crash. 'Rather than stirring up emotion, the most important thing is to investigate why this accident occurred, was it a problem with the design problem in the fighter, or in the rules of operation, or in inadequate training,' wrote one. 'Only by ascertaining the causes can we ensure it doesn't happen again.' Yu Xu was a member of China's 'August 1st' jet aerobatic squadron Frederic Brown (AFP/File) Ms Yu rose to become a flight squadron leader and according to the Global Times dreamed of becoming an astronaut. She was one of two female members of the August 1st team - named for the date of the founding of the PLA - pictured at China's premier air show in Zhuhai two years ago. The pair strode to their fighter planes in lock-step with male pilots, all wearing identical green jumpsuits and sunglasses. At the time the China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Yan'an, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, as saying: 'Female pilots have learned to fly cutting-edge fighter jets in the Chinese air force. 'It means the air force has diversified its pilot pool and can recruit more female pilots.' Social media has been flooded with tributes to Chinese fighter pilot Yu Xu (R) Johannes Eisele (AFP/File) Ms Yu appeared again at this year's show earlier this month, according to reports. The official news agency Xinhua quoted Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke saying all its personnel were 'deeply regretful and mournful' at her 'unfortunate death'. The J-10 is a workhorse of the Chinese air force. Two of the fighters conducted what the Pentagon called an 'unsafe' intercept of a US spy plane over the East China Sea in June. A retired schoolteacher who organised a holiday to Thailand so he could sexually abuse children will be released from prison in three years. Bryan Douglas Cole, 72, was also 'obsessed with the violent sexual abuse and torture of children', which angered Victorian County Court judge Mark Dean. 'You are a sadistic pedophile who has been unmasked,' he told Cole during sentencing on Monday. Retired schoolteacher Bryan Douglas Cole, 72, has been jailed for organising a child sex abuse holiday in Thailand. Stock image. In an Australian legal precedent, Cole pleaded guilty to preparing and planning sexual intercourse with a child in another country. For planning a child abuse holiday in Thailand, the Melbourne man was sentenced to five years' in jail, with a minimum three-year non-parole period to be served behind bars. Justice Dean said Cole held hundreds of images and videos of the 'repugnant and depraved' abuse of children that were uncovered on computers, USBs and an iPhone, which police seized during raids in March this year. An 18-month old girl was among the children abused in the videos, the court was told on Monday. Among the videos police retrieved was one the FBI deemed as 'one of the most depraved ever made'. During an earlier hearing, Crown prosecutor Krista Breckweg said she had only encountered one or two cases that could be worse than Coles, the Herald-Sun reported. 'Its vile,' she said. Cole, a high school teacher from 1967 to 1984, had pleaded guilty to four child pornography charges, one count of preparing to engage in sexual intercourse with a child outside Australia and transmitting communications to a child under 16. Judge Dean said online chat logs between Cole and other abusers showed the former teacher was 'obsessed with the violent sexual abuse and torture of children'. Justice Mark Dean described former teacher Bryan Douglas Cole as a 'sadistic paedophile' who showed no regard for children. Stock image. Bryan Douglas Coles was 'obsessed with the violence sexual abuse and torture of children,' the Victorian County Court was told on Monday The judge also suspected Coles' trips to Thailand and Cambodia in 2014 and 2015 were done for 'sex tourism'. 'You regard the children as little more than objects,' Justice Dean said. He said Cole was more morally culpable as a former primary and high school teacher and education administrator. Cole had travelled to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka for work to recruit students, the court heard. A psychologist has diagnosed Cole with a sex sadism disorder, paedophilia and anxiety from a recent prostate cancer diagnosis. Coles' defence barrister Pardeep Tiwana said a recent prostate cancer diagnosis and unemployment, after a career as a teacher without complaint, had caused the offending. 'I ask you treat him as a man of good character,' he said. The sentence took into account the 12 days Cole had already spent in custody. She admitted her husband has repeatedly 'crossed a line' on Twitter Melania Trump sat down with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl for the segment Future first lady joined her husband's first TV interview as president elect Melania Trump admitted she thought her husband had repeatedly gone too far on his Twitter account during her first televised interview as future first lady. She appeared next to her husband on Sunday night in the 60 Minutes interview, which was taped on Friday at their penthouse in Trump Tower. When grilled by host Lesley Stahl about Trump's often-inflammatory social media activity, Melania said she asked him to tone it down 'all the time'. But she conceded that he rarely listens to her advice and 'will do what he wants to do on the end'. Melania Trump appeared next to her husband Sunday night in a 60 Minutes interview, which was taped Friday at their penthouse in Trump Tower (pictured) 'Well, sometimes he, it got him in trouble. But it helped a lot as well. He had unbelievable following,' Melania said when pressed about Trump's Twitter account. Stahl then asked: 'So you never say to him, 'Come on'?' To which Melania replied: 'I did. You know, of course, I did many times, from the beginning of the campaign. 'Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn't.' Trump interjected, saying: 'I'm not a big tweeter. I mean, I don't do too many, but they hit home. And they have to get a point across.' Stahl then asked: 'If he does something that you think crossed a line, will you tell him?' The future first lady (pictured during the interview) said she told her husband 'all the time' when he went too far on Twitter, but admitted that ultimately he did as he pleased And Melania responded saying: 'Yes, I tell him all the time. 'I think he hears me. But he will do what he wants to do on the end [sic]. He's an adult. He knows the consequences. And I give him my opinion. And he could do whatever he likes with it.' Despite her husband often using his Twitter account to insult those who had crossed him, Melania insisted fighting online bullying was her prime concern. 'I think it's very important because a lot of children and teenagers are getting hurt,' Melania said. 'And we need to teach them how to talk to each other, how to treat each other and to, to be able to connect with each other on the right way [sic].' The president-elect appeared to have lost control of his Twitter account days before the election. Melania (pictured with her husband during the interview) called Michelle Obama a 'gracious host and said the two had talked about raising children in the White House Gawker's Real Real Donald T account, which filters out only the tweets sent from Donald Trump's Samsung Galaxy, showed that he stopped tweeting in person on October 20. Barack Obama took a jab at the Trump campaign's apparent lack of trust in their own candidate. 'Now, if somebody can't handle a Twitter account, they can't handle the nuclear codes,' Obama joked during a rally. 'If somebody starts tweeting at three in the morning because SNL made fun of you, then you can't handle the nuclear codes.' The president-elect appeared to have regained control of his Twitter account on Wednesday, the day after the election. He used it to bash the protesters who have rallied against him, accusing them on Friday of being professionals paid by the media. Donald Trump later walked back his message, saying he loved the fact that 'small groups of protesters' had passion for the country. TOP TRUMPS: FIVE OF THE DONALD'S BIGGEST TWITTER FAILS 1) When Trump re-tweeted a picture of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West - after mistakenly believing they were a fan's parents. 2) Trump's attempt to attack Hillary Clinton over her first general election advert, fell flat on its face after he tweeted a typo. 3) He had a meltdown when Barack Obama won the 2012 US election. 4) When he got a little too involved in Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's break-up. 5) He landed himself in hot water during Hurricane Sandy, when he appeared to try to leverage the disaster to make Obama release his college records. Advertisement He used his Twitter account to blast the New York Times in three different tweets Sunday, saying the newspaper's coverage of his campaign had been 'bad' and 'inaccurate'. The future presidential couple said they had asked for all of the Trump children's permission before going ahead with the campaign. They said their son Barron, 10, was aware of the election and was 'very proud' of his father. Stahl then asked Melania about her meeting with Michelle Obama on Thursday. Melania assured her she hadn't felt any awkwardness during their conversation. Melania called Michelle a 'gracious host', 'very warm' and 'very nice' and said the two had talked about raising children in the White House. The Slovenian-born future first lady said she would discuss with her parents, who now live in the United States, whether they would move to Washington, DC with the family. Trump gives wide-ranging first TV interview as President-elect and tells divided America: 'Don't be afraid' During Trump's first televised interview as president-elect, he touched on a wide range of topics giving a first glimpse of what his presidency might look like. He was grilled by Stahl about potential Supreme Court appointees, accusations that his supporters have harassed African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and gay people, and whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Clintons like he has pledged. Trump confirmed his intention to build a wall on the border with Mexico - although he conceded it might be a fence in some places - and pledged to deport two to three millions undocumented immigrants whom he believes have criminal records. The one-hour conversation, which aired on Sunday, was taped at his penthouse apartment inside Trump Tower. Donald Trump's first televised interview since the election aired Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes. Host Lesley Stahl (left) grilled him on a variety of topics and campaign promises ON ABORTION Stahl asked whether Trump would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal across the United States and invalidated state laws restricting access to the procedure. Trump pledged to appoint pro-life justices and said he was himself pro-life. He then predicted that, should Roe v Wade be overturned, abortion would become a states' rights issue again. This means women would be able to get abortions in certain states, but would be prevented from doing so in other states - as has not been the case in 43 years. 'But then some women won't be able to get an abortion?' Stahl asked. 'Yeah, well, they'll perhaps have to go, they'll have to go to another state,' Trump replied. When Stahl pressed him further, asking whether this status quo was okay, he added: 'Well, we'll see what happens. 'It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.' Trump will have to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia's replacement. Given the ages of the current justices, he could have to appoint four in total during his presidency. Trump matter-of-factly envisioned an America in which women could have to travel to a different state to get an abortion in his first interview as president-elect ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE The president-elect said he was 'fine' with same-sex marriage remaining as the law of the land and insisted the issue had already been settled by the Supreme Court. Trump wouldn't say whether he supported marriage equality but said it was irrelevant to question his stance because same-sex marriage has already been entered into law. 'It's done. It - you have - these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They've been settled. And I'm - I'm fine with that,' he said. ON APPOINTING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Trump dodged a question about whether he would actually appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private server - a promise he made during his campaign. He said he didn't want to hurt the Clintons and called them 'good people'. Trump said he wanted to focus on healthcare and immigration instead of narrowing down on his former opponent - even though thousands of his supporters had called for him to 'lock her up'. The president-elect declined to say if he would fulfill that promise but said he would give a 'very, very good and definitive answer' on his next 60 Minutes interview with Stahl. ON TELLING HIS SUPPORTERS TO STOP HARASSING PEOPLE Stahl confronted Trump with allegations made against his supporters. They have been accused of harassing African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, gay people and of using racial slurs in several instances against the country. Trump first said he was 'very surprised' to find out about the accusations and that he 'hated' to hear them. When Stahl asked if he wanted to say anything to his accused supporters, Trump replied: 'I would say don't do it, that's terrible, because I'm going to bring this country together. She brought up accusations that supporters have harassed Latinos and Muslims and Trump added: 'I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' If it - if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.' ON HIS SECRET PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS Trump refused to say how he intends to get rid of ISIS. He has repeatedly declined to clarify his strategy and during Sunday's interview, as he did during most of his campaign, simply repeated that he and his administration would 'destroy' the terror group. 'You have said that you're going to destroy ISIS. Now, how - how are you going to?' Stahl asked. 'I don't tell you that. I don't tell you that,' Trump replied. Stahl pressed him, after which he added: 'I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to tell them anything. I don't want to tell anybody anything.' ON HIRING LOBBYISTS The president-elect responded to criticism about hiring lobbyists to take care of his transition after pledging repeatedly to drain what was seen as the establishment's swamp. Trump swore lobbyists were the only people available for hire, adding: 'Everybody's a lobbyist down there.' 'Everything, everything down there-- there are no people-- there are all people that work -- that's the problem with the system, the system,' he continued. He pledged to 'clean up the system', adding: 'I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.' ON BUILDING THE WALL Stahl asked Trump whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes'. He admitted that a fence could be used in certain areas instead of a wall. 'I'm very good at this, it's called construction,' Trump added. The president-elect then said he would begin his immigration policy by deporting or incarcerating undocumented immigrants whom he says have criminal records. He wasn't sure yet what would become of undocumented immigrants who do not have a criminal record. 'After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that you're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are going to make a determination at that,' Trump said. Stahl (pictured shaking Trump's hand) asked the president-elect whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes' ON MEETING THE OBAMAS Trump opened up about his 90-minute meeting with President Barack Obama after the election. Their conversation was supposed to last only 15 minutes but the two men spoke for an hour and a half. The chat, according to Trump, could have continued for four hours. 'I mean it was - just - in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. And he told me - the good things and the bad things, there are things that are tough right now,' Trump said. He and Obama talked about the Middle East, the president-elect revealed, before calling Obama 'very smart and very nice' and praising his 'great sense of humor.' Stahl asked whether the meeting was awkward, given the searing attacks Trump and Obama launched at each other during the campaign. 'We never discussed what was said about each other', Trump said, adding there had been 'zero' awkwardness from his standpoint. 'And that's strange. I'm actually surprised to tell you that. It's - you know, a little bit strange,' he said. ON REPEALING OBAMACARE Trump said he would keep some parts of Obamacare, such as the measure that protects people with pre-existing conditions, which the president-elect called 'one of the strongest assets' of the law. He then pledged to simultaneously repeal and replace Obamacare. 'It'll be just fine. we're not going to have, like, a two day period and we're not going to have-- a two year period where there's nothing,' he said. 'It will be repealed and replaced. And we'll know. And it'll be great health care for much less money.' ON TONING DOWN HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT Trump promised that his Twitter account would change now that he is the next president. 'I'm going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I'm going to do very restrained,' he said. He praised social media for helping his campaign. 'I think it helped me win all of these races where they're spending much more money than I spent,' Trump said. 'I think that social media has more power than the money they spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that.' ON NOT TAKING VACATIONS AND NOT ACCEPTING THE SALARY Trump predicted he and his administration wouldn't be 'very big on vacations because there was 'so much work to be done'. He said he wouldn't take the $400,000 presidential salary. I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year,' Trump added. ON PEOPLE BEING AFRAID OF HIM Trump believes those who are afraid of him are only afraid because they don't know him. He said some protesters were professionals - a claim he also made on Twitter Friday, the day the interview was taped. When Stahl asked what he would say to those demonstrating against him, Trump replied: 'Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don't be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. Pauline Hanson said it was an underarm throw 'blow out of Pauline Hanson's controversial adviser James Ashby is accused of throwing a phone at a fellow senior staffer during an argument. Mr Ashby allegedly walked into the office of One Nation Senator Rod Culleton last Wednesday and quarrelled with his chief of staff Margaret Menzel. The pair were discussing a proposed Facebook livestream but things got heated when Ms Menzel asked him to put his proposal in writing. Pauline Hanson's controversial adviser James Ashby (R) is accused of throwing a phone at a fellow senior staffer during an argument Mr Ashby allegedly walked into the office of One Nation Senator Rod Culleton (pictured) last Wednesday and quarrelled with his chief of staff Ms Menzel claimed the argument became 'personal and repetitive' until Mr Ashby 'completely lost the plot' and threw the phone at her. The veteran staffer dodged the projectile and told Daily Mail Australia she would have been injured if she didn't have such good reflexes. 'I heard the thud when it hit the carpet behind where I was standing, it was thrown with significant force,' she said. 'There was no question of his intent.' The argument and phone throwing were said to be witnessed by two other staff but not Senator Culleton himself. The incident was reported to parliamentary officials. Senator Derryn Hinch jokingly called it 'Russell Crowe territory' on Sunrise on Monday in reference to an infamous 2005 incident in New York. The pair were discussing a proposed Facebook livestream but things got heated when Mr Ashby was asked to put his proposal in writing The actor was arrested for throwing a phone at a hotel desk clerk, cutting him below the eye, when he could not get through to his wife Danielle Spencer. Senator Hanson on Monday downplayed the incident involving the man she has jokingly called her 'adopted son' as an underarm throw that had been 'blown out of proportion'. Margaret Menzel claimed the argument became 'personal and repetitive', until Mr Ashby 'completely lost the plot' and threw the phone at her ' It was an underhand throw. That is the news of the day, heaven help us, how my advisor threw his phone underhanded,' she told Seven News. 'How pathetic it is, if you want to talk about something else, but if this is more important to the nation, go ahead.' Ms Menzel told DMA she was 'disappointed but not surprised' by Senator Hanson's comments. 'I wouldn't be tolerating bullying of any kind by my staff. She ought to at least have acknowledged his behaviour was unacceptable,' she said. 'I will tolerate some, but not this level - especially when it is unprovoked.' She said other staff were concerned by Senator Hanson's 'inappropriate' comments, as well as Mr Ashby's behaviour. Ms Menzel said Mr Ashby made many inappropriate comments during the argument and said her colleague 'should ask if his boss, who is a few years older than me, is "old and washed up" as well'. Senator Derryn Hinch jokingly called the incident 'Russell Crowe territory' in reference to when the actor was arrested (pictured) for throwing a phone at a hotel desk clerk in 2005 Senator Hinch made the joke on Sunrise on Monday morning The openly gay Mr Ashby is no stranger to controversy, accusing his former boss, disgraced ex-speaker Peter Slipper, of sexual harassment in 2012. The alleged phone throwing comes amid heightened tensions in the party over accusations Mr Culleton was not legitimately elected. Senator Hanson said in Parliament last week her embattled colleague should face should face the High Court - and that he would 'not be too happy' with her for saying so. Senator Hanson said in Parliament last week that Senator Culleton should face should face the High Court over allegations he was not legitimately elected (pictured in happier times) Culleton perhaps should not have been allowed to run for office because of a conviction for stealing a truck driver's $7.50 key. Ms Menzel said problems in the party had been escalating for some time and the latest incident undermined its promise to be different from the big parties. She insisted her boss was being treated 'abominably' and was not going anywhere. An African-American veteran had his meal at Chili's snatched away from him by a manager after he says he was accused of being a fake soldier by a white man wearing a Donald Trump shirt. Ernest Walker, who served in the 25th Infantry Division in the US Army, said he was in Dallas eating a free meal given out by Chili's on Veterans Day when an elderly man in a Trump shirt approached and asked him if he was in the 24th Unit. 'No, 25th,' Walker said he replied. ''They didnt let you blacks over in World War II.' Thats exactly what he said to me,' Walker told CBS 11. Scroll down for video Veteran Ernest Walker, far right, was denied a meal at Chili's in Dallas after he says another customer wearing a Trump shirt told the manager he was fake The manager, whom Walker identifies as Wesley Patrick, is heard on video questioning the man's service dog 'He said he was in Germany, and that they did not let blacks serve over there,' Walker wrote on Facebook after the incident. African-Americans did serve in World War II although officially segregated from white soldiers, according to The National World War II Museum. After the man left, Walker, who recounted the incident on Facebook, said he was approached by a manager who told him that the elderly man had complained that Walker couldn't be a 'real soldier' because he was wearing his hat indoors. He identified the manager as a man named Wesley Patrick and filmed the altercation. Walker, above, as he served in 25th Infantry Division Tropic Lightning Walker's service pooch, Barack, was with him when the incident occurred - despite wearing his red service dog vest, the manager questioned whether the pup was really a service dog Walker received thousands of messages of support on his Facebook wall After Walker provided the manager with his military ID and his discharge papers, the manager began to question whether the dog who was with Walker, was a real service dog. The dog, named Barack, was wearing his red service vest and his certified service dog tags. In the video, Walker repeatedly asks the manager, who is trying to get him to leave, whether he had just showed him his military papers. The manager refuses to answer. Finally, the manager says 'No' but people nearby speak up to say he had seen them. The manager then takes away Walker's meal. 'I was grossly offended, embarrassed and dehumanized,' said Walker. 'This overzealous manager comes out, and instead of talking to me man-to-man, he treated me as if I was a black man stealing a meal. Honestly, thats what it looked like,' he told CBS Local. As protesters gathered outside of the Cedar Hill Chili's on Saturday, the chain restaurant issued an apology, saying: 'We are aware of the situation that occurred at our Chili's Cedar Hill restaurant on November 11th. Our goal is to make every guest feel special and unfortunately we fell short on a day where we serve more than 180,000 free meals as a small token to honor our Veterans and active military for their service, hence these actions do not reflect the beliefs of our brand. We are taking this very seriously and the leaders in our company are actively involved with the goal of making it right. Since the incident occurred, we have extended an apology and we are reaching out to the guest.' Walker says he has received no personal apology, however. 'They still haven't validated me as a soldier,' he told . 'I just need him to say 'I see your ID, I see your DD214, and I respect you as a soldier, and as a man and as a customer,'' he told NBC5. Thousands of people offered their support for Walker on his Facebook page, with many soldiers saying they would boycott Chili's in solidarity while hundreds excoriated Chili's on its Facebook wall. A Master of Wine has given his tips on the best wines on the market for under $20. Rob Geddes, from Sydney, has been immersed in every aspect of the wine industry for more than 30 years as an author, consultant, speaker, judge and educator. He is one of 20 Master of Wines in Australia today. But not many people can afford to buy some of the classics, so Mr Geddes was happy to point people in the right decision when it came to the best bargains. Mr. Mick Rose 2016 (left) and Peter Lehmann Sauvignon Blanc 2016 (right) were two of Rob Geddes' bargain buys 'Sauvignon Blanc is the largest selling white wine in Australia and the top 10 bottled white wines in Australia are all from New Zealand,' Mr Geddes told Daily Mail Australia. 'But Australian Sauvignon Blanc has started to grow at a great rate too. A lot more people are now drinking domestic Sauvignon Blanc.' With this in mind, he plumped for the Peter Lehmann Sauvignon Blanc 2016 as one of the homegrown wines to select at $19. In Australia, 30 per cent more rose was sold last month than a year ago, and it is this wine that is becoming more popular in recent years. Founded in 1886, Angove Family Winemakers is one of Australia's most successful wine businesses. Their Angove Organic Shiraz 2016 (left), and Angove Organic Merlot 2016 (right) also provide good value for money Mr Geddes, a Master of Wine, is well respected in the Australian wine industry 'Rose pale dry has got a lot of people's interest up, but one of my favourites is Mr. Mick Rose 2016, which you should be able to buy for around $16,' Mr Geddes said. As for affordable red wines, Angrove was the one that appealed most to Mr Geddes. Founded in 1886, Angove Family Winemakers is one of Australia's most successful wine businesses - a fifth generation family company - in South Australia. KNOWING A GOOD WINE Smell: Even before you take a sip, stick your nose in the glass and take a whiff does it smell like wine? Does it smell fruity or perhaps floral? It's important. Balance: When a wine is in balance, none of the components of acidity, tannin, alcohol, or fruit stand out as the main event. They compliment each other. Depth: The first taste is just the start of the experience. With a good wine you'll be able to detect different layers of flavour. This would suggest a multi-faceted wine with several layers of flavour. Advertisement 'They make a lot of good wines and they make a lot of good wines under $20,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'There's a combination of factors why it's so good. It's family-owned. They have great attention to detail. For something under $20 you want something that's got fresh flavours, ripeness and is easy to drink. 'At that price you're working across many different pallets and different types of preferences.' For this reason he chose the Angove Organic Shiraz 2016, and Angove Organic Merlot 2016 at around $17 a bottle. 'It's very hard to make under $20 red wine in large quantities of red wine every year, but Angrove, and certainly South Australia, has a stranglehold on these kind of wine,' he said. As for affordable red wines, Angrove was the one that appealed most to Mr Geddes (top right) Another red wine he rated was Hewitson Ned & Henry's Shiraz. At $24 is slightly more expensive but worth it. Mr Geddes has recently been awarded various titles including visiting professor at China's A&F Northwest University, and Ambassador of Jumilla and the grape Monastrell. Now in its 34th Edition, Australian Wine Vintages (also known as 'The Gold Book') is the essential guide to discovering the best local wines this year, no matter the price point or your level of wine knowledge. Written by Mr Geddes, it provides detailed tasting notes of over 3500 wines from Australian and New Zealand in print, and over 13,500 in the App version. To visit Mr Geddes' website, click here. Paul Bromwich, 54, was captured in the Staple Hill area of Bristol this morning after absconding from HMP Leyhill One of three dangerous prisoners on the run from serving sentences for crimes including rape, grievous bodily harm and robbery has been arrested. Admi Headley, Wayne Maycock and Paul Bromwich absconded from HMP Leyhill in South Gloucestershire on Sunday but Bromwich was captured in the Staple Hill area of Bristol this morning. The 54-year-old was sentenced for rape in 2001. Avon and Somerset Police said Bromwich had been assaulted and had suffered serious facial injuries for which he was being treated in hospital. A force spokesman said: 'We can confirm that one of the three absconders was found this morning at about 7.30am in Page Road, Staple Hill. 'Paul Bromwich had been assaulted and suffered serious facial injuries. He was taken to hospital, where he remains receiving treatment. 'We are keen to hear from anyone who was in the Page Road area this morning at about 7.30am who may have seen an altercation.' The two other prisoners - Admi Headley and Wayne Maycock - remain at large and are considered to be a risk to the public. The trio were last seen at HMP Leyhill, a Category D open prison at 4.45pm on Sunday and have links to the Manchester area, said the force. Greater Manchester Police is on alert after the disappearance, less than a week since two men escaped from HMP Pentonville in north London, who have now been apprehended. Headley, 34, who was sentenced in 2006 for rape and robbery, is described as black, 5ft 10in tall, of slim build with brown eyes and short black hair. He has a tattoo on his left arm. The two other prisoners - Admi Headley (right) and Wayne Maycock (left) - remain at large and are considered to be a risk to the public The men went missing from HMP Leyhill (pictured), south Gloucestershire, on November 13 Maycock, 33, - was jailed in 2006 for GBH - is white, 6ft 3in tall, of medium build with green eyes and brown hair. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder and scars on his forehead and both arms. Police urged anyone who sees Headley or Maycock to phone 999 and tell the call handler they are phoning in relation to log 1050 of 13/11. Trump children plan to keep taking care of his business in New York City She appeared on 60 Minutes along with siblings Eric, Donald Jr and Tiffany Ex-model said she was passionate about advocating for women - but 'not in a formal administrative capacity' Ivanka Trump said she was not planning on working at the White House Ivanka Trump vowed she would not become a part of her father's administration in an interview aired on Sunday. The former model and businesswoman, who was a regular sight on her father's campaign trail, said she just wanted to concentrate on 'being a daughter'. She took part in the 60 Minutes interview along with her half-sister Tiffany, their brothers Eric and Donald Jr and the future first couple. Ivanka, 35, told host Lesley Stahl she was 'very passionate' about advocating for women - 'but not in a formal administrative capacity'. Scroll down for video Donald Trump's children (from left to right) Tiffany, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka joined him and his wife Melania for a 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday evening 'I'm going to be a daughter. But I've - I've said throughout the campaign that I am very passionate about certain issues. And that I want to fight for them,' she said. 'Wage equality, childcare. These are things that are very important for me.' She said she was 'very passionate' about education and promoting 'more opportunities for women'. 'So you know there're a lot of things that I feel deeply, strongly about. But not in a formal administrative capacity,' Ivanka added. Instead, the Trump children plan on staying in New York City and keep taking care of their father's business. Both Ivanka and her father said it didn't matter whether his campaign had damaged the Trump brand. Ivanka (pictured during the interview) denied she would become part of her father's administration. Instead, the Trump children plan to keep managing his business The former model and businesswoman (far right), who was a regular sight on her father's campaign trail, said she just wanted to concentrate on 'being a daughter' Wealthy Trump Tower residents have said they wanted to move out after protesters starting occupying their doorstep in the days after the election, a real estate broker told the New York Post. Residents at Trump Place in New York City signed a petition in October asking for the then-GOP nominee's name to be removed. Bookings at Trump hotels went down by 59 per cent during the first half of 2016, according to travel search engine Hipmunk. But neither Ivanka nor the president-elect think this matters. 'This is so much more important and more serious. And so I- you know, that's the focus,' Ivanka said on 60 Minutes. 'I think what Ivanka's trying to say, "Who cares? Who cares?" This is big league stuff. This is our country, her father continued. 'Our country is going bad. We're going to save our country. I don't care about hotel occupancy. It's peanuts compared to what we're doing.' Tiffany (left, second row), Trump's youngest daughter, who made fewer appearances on the campaign trail than her older siblings, also took part in the 60 Minutes interview During Trump's campaign, Ivanka was often credited with softening the tycoon's image and she was even heralded as the 'greatest asset Trump has'. She was forced to defend her father over claims of sexual abuse and apologized about his 'inappropriate and offensive' comments from a 2005 interview. Ivanka also insisted her father is 'not a groper' in an angry response to a New York Times article that accused him of mistreating women. The other Trump children also said they wouldn't be part of their father's administration. Eric predicted that, now that the president-elect has had to step away from his business, he would rely on his children more than ever. Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric are all executive vice-presidents at the Trump Organization. Rudy Giuliani, a senior Trump adviser, told CNN's Jake Tapper on State Of The Union that Trump couldn't put his business in a blind trust because that would put his children out of a job. Eric (right, back row) predicted that, now that the president-elect has had to step away from his business, he would rely on his children more than ever Blind trusts enable people in public office to have their private business interests handled by an independent entity so as to avoid conflicts of interest. 'He would basically put his children out of work. Theyd have to go start a whole new business, that would set up the whole set of new problems,' Giuliani said. The Trump children cannot work in their father's administration because of rules against nepotism, which Giuliani took to mean they would be out of a job if they couldn't keep working at their father's business. 'And remember they cant work in the government because of the government rule against nepotism, so youd be putting them out of work,' Giuliani added. Tiffany, Trump's youngest daughter, who made fewer appearances on the campaign trail than her older siblings, took part in the 60 Minutes interview. She called his campaign and victory awe-inspiring. When Stahl asked the Trump children to describe the night of their father's victory, Ivanka said: 'It is hard to put into words the experience or the emotion when your father becomes president of the United States of America. 'We had enormous pride, joy. It's incredibly exciting.' Eric meanwhile recalled seeing 'the states falling' and bringing in more electoral college votes. He said the family high-fived and exchanged hugs while their father was the calmest. Trump gives wide-ranging first TV interview as President-elect and tells divided America: 'Don't be afraid' During Trump's first televised interview as president-elect, he touched on a wide range of topics giving a first glimpse of what his presidency might look like. He was grilled by Stahl about potential Supreme Court appointees, accusations that his supporters have harassed African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and gay people, and whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Clintons like he has pledged. Trump confirmed his intention to build a wall on the border with Mexico - although he conceded it might be a fence in some places - and pledged to deport two to three millions undocumented immigrants whom he believes have criminal records. The one-hour conversation, which aired on Sunday, was taped at his penthouse apartment inside Trump Tower. Donald Trump's first televised interview since the election aired Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes. Host Lesley Stahl (left) grilled him on a variety of topics and campaign promises ON ABORTION Stahl asked whether Trump would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal across the United States and invalidated state laws restricting access to the procedure. Trump pledged to appoint pro-life justices and said he was himself pro-life. He then predicted that, should Roe v Wade be overturned, abortion would become a states' rights issue again. This means women would be able to get abortions in certain states, but would be prevented from doing so in other states - as has not been the case in 43 years. 'But then some women won't be able to get an abortion?' Stahl asked. 'Yeah, well, they'll perhaps have to go, they'll have to go to another state,' Trump replied. When Stahl pressed him further, asking whether this status quo was okay, he added: 'Well, we'll see what happens. 'It's got a long way to go, just so you understand. That has a long, long way to go.' Trump will have to appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia's replacement. Given the ages of the current justices, he could have to appoint four in total during his presidency. Trump matter-of-factly envisioned an America in which women could have to travel to a different state to get an abortion in his first interview as president-elect ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE The president-elect said he was 'fine' with same-sex marriage remaining as the law of the land and insisted the issue had already been settled by the Supreme Court. Trump wouldn't say whether he supported marriage equality but said it was irrelevant to question his stance because same-sex marriage has already been entered into law. 'It's done. It - you have - these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They've been settled. And I'm - I'm fine with that,' he said. ON APPOINTING A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Trump dodged a question about whether he would actually appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private server - a promise he made during his campaign. He said he didn't want to hurt the Clintons and called them 'good people'. Trump said he wanted to focus on healthcare and immigration instead of narrowing down on his former opponent - even though thousands of his supporters had called for him to 'lock her up'. The president-elect declined to say if he would fulfill that promise but said he would give a 'very, very good and definitive answer' on his next 60 Minutes interview with Stahl. ON TELLING HIS SUPPORTERS TO STOP HARASSING PEOPLE Stahl confronted Trump with allegations made against his supporters. They have been accused of harassing African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, gay people and of using racial slurs in several instances against the country. Trump first said he was 'very surprised' to find out about the accusations and that he 'hated' to hear them. When Stahl asked if he wanted to say anything to his accused supporters, Trump replied: 'I would say don't do it, that's terrible, because I'm going to bring this country together. She brought up accusations that supporters have harassed Latinos and Muslims and Trump added: 'I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' If it - if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.' ON HIS SECRET PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS Trump refused to say how he intends to get rid of ISIS. He has repeatedly declined to clarify his strategy and during Sunday's interview, as he did during most of his campaign, simply repeated that he and his administration would 'destroy' the terror group. 'You have said that you're going to destroy ISIS. Now, how - how are you going to?' Stahl asked. 'I don't tell you that. I don't tell you that,' Trump replied. Stahl pressed him, after which he added: 'I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to tell them anything. I don't want to tell anybody anything.' ON HIRING LOBBYISTS The president-elect responded to criticism about hiring lobbyists to take care of his transition after pledging repeatedly to drain what was seen as the establishment's swamp. Trump swore lobbyists were the only people available for hire, adding: 'Everybody's a lobbyist down there.' 'Everything, everything down there-- there are no people-- there are all people that work -- that's the problem with the system, the system,' he continued. He pledged to 'clean up the system', adding: 'I mean, the whole place is one big lobbyist.' Stahl (pictured shaking Trump's hand) asked the president-elect whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes' ON BUILDING THE WALL Stahl asked Trump whether he would actually have a wall built on the border with Mexico, to which Trump replied with a definite 'yes'. He admitted that a fence could be used in certain areas instead of a wall. 'I'm very good at this, it's called construction,' Trump added. The president-elect then said he would begin his immigration policy by deporting or incarcerating undocumented immigrants whom he says have criminal records. He wasn't sure yet what would become of undocumented immigrants who do not have a criminal record. 'After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that you're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are going to make a determination at that,' Trump said. ON MEETING THE OBAMAS Trump opened up about his 90-minute meeting with President Barack Obama after the election. Their conversation was supposed to last only 15 minutes but the two men spoke for an hour and a half. The chat, according to Trump, could have continued for four hours. 'I mean it was - just - in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. And he told me - the good things and the bad things, there are things that are tough right now,' Trump said. He and Obama talked about the Middle East, the president-elect revealed, before calling Obama 'very smart and very nice' and praising his 'great sense of humor.' Stahl asked whether the meeting was awkward, given the searing attacks Trump and Obama launched at each other during the campaign. 'We never discussed what was said about each other', Trump said, adding there had been 'zero' awkwardness from his standpoint. 'And that's strange. I'm actually surprised to tell you that. It's - you know, a little bit strange,' he said. ON REPEALING OBAMACARE Trump said he would keep some parts of Obamacare, such as the measure that protects people with pre-existing conditions, which the president-elect called 'one of the strongest assets' of the law. He then pledged to simultaneously repeal and replace Obamacare. 'It'll be just fine. we're not going to have, like, a two day period and we're not going to have-- a two year period where there's nothing,' he said. 'It will be repealed and replaced. And we'll know. And it'll be great health care for much less money.' ON TONING DOWN HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT Trump promised that his Twitter account would change now that he is the next president. 'I'm going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I'm going to do very restrained,' he said. He praised social media for helping his campaign. 'I think it helped me win all of these races where they're spending much more money than I spent,' Trump said. 'I think that social media has more power than the money they spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that.' ON NOT TAKING VACATIONS AND NOT ACCEPTING THE SALARY Trump predicted he and his administration wouldn't be 'very big on vacations because there was 'so much work to be done'. He said he wouldn't take the $400,000 presidential salary. I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year,' Trump added. ON PEOPLE BEING AFRAID OF HIM Trump believes those who are afraid of him are only afraid because they don't know him. He said some protesters were professionals - a claim he also made on Twitter Friday, the day the interview was taped. When Stahl asked what he would say to those demonstrating against him, Trump replied: 'Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don't be afraid. You know, we just had an election and sort of like you have to be given a little time. President-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping established a 'clear sense of mutual respect' in a telephone call on Sunday night, Trump's presidential transition office said early on Monday. In a statement, the office said Trump thanked Xi for his congratulations after winning Tuesday's presidential election over Democrat Hillary Clinton. 'During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another, and President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward,' it said. However, the state-run Global Times reported that Xi told the billionaire businessman that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the two countries, claiming he would be a 'naive' fool to launch an all-out trade war against China. President-elect Donald Trump (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) established a 'clear sense of mutual respect' in a telephone call on Sunday night, Trump's camp said In a statement, Trump's (above) office said the Republican thanked Xi for his congratulations after winning Tuesday's presidential election over Democrat Hillary Clinton Trump had lambasted China throughout the U.S. election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 per cent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Back in August at a rally he accused Beijing of 'the greatest theft in the history of the world.' His election has injected uncertainty into bilateral relations at a time when Beijing hopes for stability as it faces daunting reform challenges at home, a slowing economy, and a leadership reshuffle of its own that will put a new party elite around Xi in late 2017. 'The facts prove that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States,' China Central Television (CCTV) cited Xi as telling Trump. 'The two sides must strengthen coordination, promote the two countries' economic development and global economic growth, expand all areas of exchange and cooperation, ensure the two countries' people obtain more tangible benefits, and push for better development going forward in China-U.S. relations,' Xi said. In addition, it's been alleged that if the real estate mogul 'wrecks' the trade agreement, a number of US industries will be impaired. 'A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US,' the Global Times reported. 'Making things difficult for China politically will do him no good. 'Finally the new president will be condemned for his recklessness, ignorance and incompetence.' 'Countermeasures' and a 'tit-for-tat approach' from Beijing allegedly would be triggered immediately by any new tariffs inflicted by Trump. However, the state-run Global Times reported that Xi (above) told the billionaire businessman that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the two countries and he would be a 'naive' fool to launch an all-out trade war against China In addition, CCTV said Trump told Xi he was willing to work with China to strengthen U.S.-China cooperation and that he believed U.S.-China relations can 'definitely achieve greater development'. The two agreed to maintain close communication, meet soon, and exchange views on issues of concern to both sides, CCTV said. Last week,the country's foreign ministry used more diplomatic language to warn the Republican not to 'square up' to Beijing, The Guardian reported. Foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told reporters last week: 'I believe that any US politician, if he takes the interests of his own people first, will adopt a policy that is conducive to the economic and trade cooperation between China and the US.' A 100-year-old woman has been pulled alive from the rubble of her farmhouse after it was brought to the ground by New Zealand's massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Margaret Edgar was asleep inside her country home with her son and daughter-in-law when the enormous tremor struck in the early hours of Monday morning. The impact of the quake not only completely destroyed her 20-room farmhouse, but also caused all three inside to be trapped beneath the rubble. Sadly the collapse killed Ms Edgar's son Louis, however she and her daughter-in-law managed to be pulled alive from the rubble by rescue crews after a lengthy search. Scroll down for video Margaret Edgar, 100, was incredibly pulled alive from the rubble of her home which was reduced to rubble by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand on Monday The old farmhouse Ms Edgar had lived in since 1952 was brought to the ground by the quake. Her son Louis was killed by it's collapse, while her daughter-in-law also survived The centenarian had lived at the popular Elms homestead, near Kaikoura, since 1952, stuff.co.nz reports. Ms Edgar had reportedly run a camp at the property with her son and daughter-in-law. The incident occurred near where a tsunami up to five metres high hit at around 2am on Monday morning in the wake of the earthquake. So far New Zealand prime minister John Key has confirmed there have been two deaths as a result of the earthquake. The enormous earthquake caused major damage to roads across New Zealand Tessa Prentice, 20, also had her family's home massively damaged in the earthquake Police are also searching for a truck driver who has not been heard from since 12.30am, just after the first quake hit. The man is believed to have worked for Christchurch-based trucking company STL Linehaul Ltd. A spokesperson for the company said there was 'a whole heap of drivers' in the area and they were working busily to account for their whereabouts. A road lies burried beneath tonnes of dirt after a mountainside collapsed along the New Zealand coast, near Kaikoura More guests are seen here huddled under yellow blankets in the early hours of Monday 'No chance': ABC Insiders host Barrie Cassidy was adamant Trump could not win the election. He did 'Donald Trump cannot win'. 'No chance'. 'You can 'stick a fork in him, Trump's done'. 'See ya later, d***head'. Those are the very confident words of some of Australia's most prominent journalists and commentators before Donald Trump proved them all wrong last week. Several of the country's most respected media identities are eating humble pie after boldly predicting a Hillary Clinton win at the U.S. presidential election. Barrie Cassidy, the host of the ABC's Insiders program, had long dismissed the idea Trump could win, pointing to U.S. opinion polls. 'No chance,' he said of Trump's chances in September. He even declared Mrs Clinton was winning on election night. 'It's going to be an early night after all,' he tweeted just before midday Tuesday (AEDT). 'Trump cannot win. The nightmare is over. Scroll down for video From 'no chance' to President: Donald Trump will be the 45th leader of the United States Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton was pegged as the frontrunner in the presidential race. She lost the Electoral College - but won the popular vote Cassidy continued: 'Trump is not defying the polls anywhere. Clinton on the other hand demonstrably is'. But the 'nightmare' was just beginning. The major U.S. TV networks called the election for Trump about 2.30pm. 'Hillary had called trump (sic) and conceded,' Mr Cassidy wrote. Hours before Election Day had started, Fairfax Chief Correspondent Paul McGeough was similarly sure of the outcome. 'On Wednesday, Americans will awake from a nightmare,' he wrote last week. 'Donald Trump will not be their president. 'Trump is likely to be a sore loser, ready to inflict serial new nightmares on the U.S. before he's done with politics'. Long before polls had closed, News Corp Australia's foreign affairs expert Greg Sheridan said: 'This election has been over for weeks'. 'You can take it to the bank - the American election is effectively all over, Hillary Clinton has won,' Mr Sheridan said. 'She is ahead in the polls and every technical, financial and logistic advantage lies with her. 'Donald Trump has given everyone a tremendous fright, but he cannot pull off victory from here.' 'Donald Trump will not be the president': Both Fairfax chief correspondent Paul McGeough and former Liberal staffer Peta Credlin were certain Hillary Clinton had the election won News Corp foreign affairs expert Greg Sheridan said the election was 'effectively all over' - with Mrs Clinton winning - before the polls had even closed Bruce Wolpe, an aide to former prime minister Julia Gillard, said the American people were blessed with too much wisdom to elect Trump. Julia Gillard's chief of staff Bruce Wolpe said Clinton would win and 'take the country forward' 'The American people in their wisdom will not allow themselves to be led into the abyss by a person so dangerous and destructive of American democracy and values something he has proved every day he has been a candidate for President of the United States. 'It is Hillary Clinton who will claim victory, and take the country forward.' Peta Credlin, a Sky News commentator, agreed Mrs Clinton would win. 'She will win the election tomorrow because she's not Donald Trump. 'But she won't win it well enough because she's Hillary Clinton'. Some 18 months before the U.S. election, writer Anne Summers (left, with former prime minister Julia Gillard) said of Trump: 'He is popular but he won't be president' They were joined in their definitive statements by SBS writer Alex McKinnon, who declared Trump was 'done' weeks before the election. Writing after the last presidential debate, he said: 'It's over. 'Not just the third and final debate, but the prospect, however slim, of Donald Trump becoming the 45th President of the United States. 'We can relax - just for a moment - and let that fact really sink in.' Long even before that, writer Anne Summers said the billionaire property developer was 'popular but he won't be president.' '(Trump) won't be the Republican nominee, but he could well be a third-party candidate who splits the conservative vote. 'This is what happened in 1992 when the Texas industrialist Ross Perot won 19 per cent of the popular vote and, as a result, is widely seen as having delivered the White House to Bill Clinton,' she said. Both Waleed Aly (left) and U.S. Studies Centre senior fellow Tom Switzer (right) believed Hillary Clinton would probably win Just prior to the vote, Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair said the 'accurate' polls appeared to show Clinton by a nose. 'If the latest US election polls are accurate - and they've been very accurate in recent elections - we're looking at a narrow Hillary Clinton victory on Wednesday. 'If the polls are wrong, and the big rally crowds and evident enthusiasm among Trump supporters are more accurate guides, we could be looking instead at a Trump blowout.' The Project host Waleed Aly said Clinton would 'probably' be the winner. As did U.S. Studies Centre senior fellow Tom Switzer, who said she had the 'electoral arithmetic' locked up. 'I clearly spoke too soon': Clementine Ford saw a Hillary Clinton victory in-the-making - but later retracted her remarks As the results rolled in last Tuesday, Fairfax columnist and feminist author Clementine Ford believed the idea of 'President Trump' was coming to an end. 'Donald Trump's presidential chances grow weaker by the minute. See ya later, d***head,' she said. Hours later, she admitted: 'I clearly spoke too soon. 'Not over yet but holy F***.' Mr Trump clinched at least 290 Electoral College votes, more than the 270 needed to win. He will be sworn in as the nation's 45th president January 20. A top ISIS commander has branded Donald Trump 'a complete maniac' whose hatred towards Muslims will aid their cause. Abu Omar Khorasani, who heads up the terror group in Afghanistan, said Trump's shock election victory would be used to recruit disaffected youths in the West. Jihadists plan to use Trump as a propaganda tool to rally thousands of new fighters and inspire terror attacks across the world. A top ISIS commander has branded Donald Trump 'a complete maniac' whose hatred towards Muslims will help aid their cause 'This guy is a complete maniac,' Khorasani told Reuters. 'His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands.' At one point during his campaign, Trump called for a 'total and complete' ban on Muslims entering the US. The president-elect later backtracked and said he would temporarily suspend immigration from countries that have 'a history of exporting terrorism.' Khorasani described President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with at least a little brain in comparison to Trump. He added: 'Our leaders were closely following the US election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so.' Trump has already featured in one video (shown) released by ISIS to claim responsibility for the Brussels attacks Trump has already featured in one video released by ISIS to claim responsibility for the Brussels attacks. It showed an image of Trump going up in flames as he repeated his declaration that Brussels was a 'horror show'. Trump talked tough against militant groups on the campaign trail, promising to defeat 'radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War.' But he has offered few details on his plans to combat various radical groups, including IS, the Taliban and al Qaeda, which represent a wide spectrum of political views. 'He does not differentiate between extremist and moderate Islamist trends and, at the same time, he overlooks (the fact) that his extremism will generate extremism in return,' Iraq's powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement. Sadr's political reform movement, which commands thousands of followers, is a staunch opponent of the radical Sunni movements IS and al Qaeda, and unlike them has not waged or promoted attacks in the West. Abu Omar Khorasani (centre), who heads up the terror group in Afghanistan, said Trump's shock election victory would be used to recruit disaffected youths in the West The US has seen a handful of attacks inspired by Islamist militant groups, including the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who called a TV station swearing allegiance to ISIS. Officials have warned the country will likely face a higher risk of similar attacks as IS urges supporters to launch attacks at home instead of joining its fight in the Middle East. Al Qaeda, which has proven resilient more than 15 years after launching the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has yet to comment on Trump's victory. The militant group will likely respond after Trump's first speeches as president, anticipating they will be able to exploit his comments to win support, said Hisham al Hashemi, who advises the Iraqi government on Sunni jihadist movements. 'Al Qaeda is known for its recruitment strategy that heavily quotes speeches of the White House and other Western officials,' he told Reuters. Trump's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements from the militants. Jihadists plan to use Trump as a propaganda tool to rally thousands of new fighters and inspire terror attacks across the world Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr (pictured) said Trump does 'not differentiate between extremist and moderate Islam' Even if Trump tones down his anti-Muslim comments when he takes office in January, analysts say his statements during the campaign trail were enough to fuel the militants' propaganda machine. 'Militants will still use those quotes,' said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. 'The key thing militant groups, particularly Islamic State and al Qaeda, depend on for recruitment purposes is convincing Muslims in the Western world that the West hates them and won't ever accept them as part of their society.' A senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan said the group, whose resurgence is undermining efforts to end America's longest war, had kept track of all of Trump's speeches and anti-Muslim comments. 'If he does what he warned in his election campaign, I am sure it will provoke Muslim Ummah (community) across the world and jihadi organisations can exploit it,' said the militant leader, who declined to be identified because of strict Taliban policy that only its official spokesman can make statements. Shortly after Trump's victory, several jihadist sympathisers took to social media to declare this as an opportunity for their cause. A teen's Sweet 16 party turned sour when a shooting broke out, leaving four people wounded and one man seriously injured at the party in Connecticut. More than 300 people were celebrating the milestone birthday at the Circolo Sportivo, an Italian-American club at 2500 Park Avenue in Bridgeport, when shots rang out as crowds milled in the parking lot around 10:45pm Saturday, reported WFSB. Five victims, four male and one female, were rushed to the hospital. Five people were shot at the Circolo Sportivo Italian American Club on Saturday night The club had been rented for a Sweet 16 party and booze wasn't served but that didn't stop mayhem, above, glass on the door can be seen smashed in following the melee Police say gatecrashers in a car with a New York license plate sparked a fight and shot into the crowd None had life threatening injuries but one man was in serious condition after being shot in the legs, according to CT Post. The names and ages of the victims weren't immediately available. The melee reportedly started after some unwanted guests had crashed the party. A fight broke out inside the club and then moved to the parking lot outside, according to the outlet. Bridgeport Police Chief Armando Perez blamed the club for not hiring extra security for the evening. 'This was so preventable,' he said. Glass on the door is shattered after the shooting. Police chief Armando Perez says the incident could have been much worse if the suspects weren't such 'poor shooters' Perez said there were at least two suspects involved in the shooting and they arrived in a car bearing New York plates. Most of the party-goers were in their teens or early twenties, he said, and that witnesses said that guns had been displayed during the party and that other shots were fired near the street. 'We are upset,' one club member who declined to give his name told the outlet. 'This is our social home. But I guess its the same old story. Its crazy. How do these kids get these guns?' The member said that the club had been expecting approximately 100 people but instead triple that showed up. 'They get it out on Facebook,' another club member said/ 'Its not the clubs fault. It was far more than we wanted.' Perez said the shooting could have been much worse but for the suspects' apparent lack of aim. 'Its a good thing they are poor shooters,' he said. Trisha Meyer was arrested last week for endangering her 14-year-old daughter after police found dangerous animals roaming around their Houston, Texas home A mother who let exotic and dangerous animals roam around her home has been charged with endangering her 14-year-old daughter. Trisha Meyer was arrested last week after police found she allowed three tigers, a cougar, a skunk, a fox and several monkeys to wander freely through her home in Houston, Texas. Police were initially called to her home after she allegedly scammed a California man who had tried to buy a kitten from her for $3,000. They found the dangerous animals roaming through the living room, bedroom and kitchen as her teenage daughter petted some of them, Click2Houston reports. Meyer admitted to police the animals could be dangerous and that some of the monkeys were 'vicious' and one attacked people. Scroll down for video Police found Meyer allowed three tigers, a cougar, a skunk, a fox and several monkeys to wander freely through her home Meyer admitted to police the animals could be dangerous and that some of the monkeys were 'vicious' and one attacked people She said the animals walk around freely in her home and she only locks up the tigers when she goes out. Police found Meyer had the correct permits for the tigers, but not for the skunks and foxes. She was arrested on November 7 after fleeing to Nevada. Her animals were confiscated and placed in the care of BARC Animal Shelter and Adoptions. Meyer is facing charges of theft and endangering a child. She is being held on a $2,000 bail in the Nye County, Nevada, Jail. A burglar dressed as a ninja and broke into a comic book and game shop in Alaska so he could steal a traditional Japanese sword. The suspect is seen walking into the Bosco's store in Anchorage and swiping the Katana, a weapon used by the samurai. Staff told KTVA it was the only item taken during the break-in on Friday morning. Depending on the type of sword and handle, the item can be priced from anywhere between $50 and hundreds of dollars. It is unclear how much the missing sword was worth. Scroll down for video The ninja appeared to get into an empty room used by the comic book store - surveillance cam caught the suspect entering through a window on the top left Once in a storage space, the ninja slunk towards the main shopping room In a video of the burglary posted to YouTube, the suspect dressed in a black, gray, and white striped 'ninja' costume can be seen sneaking into an empty room and appearing to enter the store through a window. The stealth 'ninja' then enters what appears to be a storage room, and then the main shopping area. The suspect appeared to know exactly where the sword was kept. Helmick said the point of entry has been beefed up but wouldn't elaborate. The suspect, circled right) grabbed a white Katana sword and exited He also said the Anchorage Police came to the scene immediately, but added that since a police officer was shot the day after the strange theft, he did not expect the sword-stealing ninja to be top priority. 'It was fun watching them on the video footage go about what must have been a very hair raising task,' he said of police. Anyone with information is urged to call the Anchorage police at 907-786-8900 or contact Bosco's. Seen holding the sword (right) the suspect took off into the dark of the early morning Shortly after the shooting, a third woman walked into the hospital with a gunshot wound, as police Police are investigating a tragic shooting in Florida which left two women and a child death and two others injured. The deadly shooting happened in the Moncrief area of Jacksonville in front of the Lil' Albert Food Store around 6:00pm on Sunday, WJXT reported. Four people - a man, two women and an infant - were shot inside of a car that was located on Cleveland Road near the Cleveland Arms Apartments. One of the women died in the car before she could be transported to the hospital. Scroll down for video Heartbreaking: The deadly shooting happened in the Moncrief area of Jacksonville in front of the Lil' Albert Food Store around 6:00pm on Sunday (scene above) Four people - a man, two women and an infant - were shot inside of a car that was located on Cleveland Road near the Cleveland Arms Apartments (scene above) Director of Investigations and Homeland Security for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Ron Lundeay said the other three victims were rushed to UF Health Jacksonville where the other woman and infant died a short time later. Lundeay said shortly after the shooting, a third woman walked into the hospital with a gunshot wound. Police believe that she was involved in the same shooting. Her and the man's condition is unknown at this time. Police are investigating the incident and suspect that it was related to an earlier dispute between two women. Lundeay said that all five victims were shot with a handgun. He also said other people may have been shot but they are unable to definitively say as of Sunday night. 'It's heartbreaking to know that an infant was shot and killed. It's a sad day for Jacksonville,' Lundeay said of the incident. One of the women died in the car before she could be transported to the hospital. The other three victims were rushed to UF Health Jacksonville where the other woman and infant died a short time later (scene above) Police are investigating the incident and suspect that it was related to an earlier dispute between two women. The identities of the victims have not been released and authorities have not released the name of the shooting suspect (scene above) 'It's a sad day for everyone who lives in this area and it's a sad day for those that are out here investigating this terrible crime.' Officers stayed on the scene for hours searching for evidence, canvassing the neighborhood, interviewing witnesses and processing evidence. It's unclear how many shots were fired. The identities of the victims have not been released and authorities have not released the name of the suspect. If anyone knows anything about this crime, or has any description of any potential suspects, please contact the sheriff's office at 904-630-0500. She has taken the iPhone to Apple and they are investigating the issue She suffered second degree burns and claims the iPhone caused the scar Horrific burns on a pregnant woman's arm caused by an iPhone 7 have highlighted the dangers of overheating electronics. Melanie Tan Pelaez, a mother from Sydney, claims she suffered second degree burns from her smartphone after falling asleep with it while it was charging. In the morning she awoke with a pins and needles sensation in her right arm before spotting the bright red burns and welts and heading to hospital, The Daily Telegraph reported. Scroll down for video Horrific burns on a pregnant woman's arm claimed to be caused by an iPhone 7 have highlighted the dangers of overheating electronics Ms Tan Pelaez went to the hospital and she was told to check around her bed to find what could have caused the mark of the burn, which she thinks was an iPhone (Stock Image) Ms Tan Pelaez went to the hospital and she was told to check around her bed to find what could have caused the mark of the burn. After inspection and checking what fits with her burns she thinks the iPhone 7 and the power cord were the cause of the second degree burn. After finding what could be the cause, Ms Tan Pelaez went to Apple, according to News.com.au. 'Apple took my phone and details, but said it couldn't have been the phone because it didn't have a distinct smell,' she told the publication. 'I then got a call from a member of the executive team who told me they were now handing the matter and had sent the phone to a senior technician in California for testing.' After inspection and checking what fits with her burns she thinks the iPhone 7 and the power cord were the cause of the second degree burn (Stock Image) The horrific burns have left her with a scar, which she has now been to the plastic surgeon to find out her options. Ms Tan Pelaez took to Facebook to make sure others were aware of her terrible incident. Apple are working with her to investigate the incident. American Apparel has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in just over a year. The retailer has agreed to sell its American Apparel brand to Canadian clothing manufacturer Gilden Activewear in a deal worth $66million. The cult fashion brand founded by Dov Charney has struggled to overcome years of losses and rising competition online. American Apparel has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in just over a year American Apparel listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100 million to $500 million, according to a Delaware court filing. Canadian manufacturer Gilden Activewear said it had agreed to buy the American Apparel brand and certain assets for about $66million. However, Gilden said in a statement that it will not be purchasing any retail stores. The retailer has agreed to sell the brand to Canadian clothing manufacturer Gilden Activewear in a deal worth $66million The bankruptcy filing allows American Apparel to hold an auction for its assets and business under which Gildan's proposed acquisition would constitute the initial bid. Last week, it was announced that American Apparels UK business would be put into administration amid tough trading conditions across Britain and America. American Apparel filed its first bankruptcy in October 2015 following a steep drop in sales and drawn out legal battle with found Charney, who was ousted in 2014. The sister of controversial nightclub owner John Ibrahim and former bikie boss Sam Ibrahim has admitted plotting with her de facto partner to supply guns. Jazz Dior, 46, and Elvis Mileski, 44, pleaded guilty in the District Court in Sydney today to one charge of conspiring with each other to unlawfully supply firearms in early 2014. An agreed statement of facts tendered in court said phone taps captured Mileski negotiating to obtain firearms and sell them with Dior's help between January and March 2014. Jazz Dior has pleaded guilty to plotting to supply drugs with her de facto partner in early 2014 Ms Dior is the sister of nightclub owner John Ibrahim (pictured) and former bikie boss Sam Ibrahim The couple were arrested in April 2014 after police raided properties in Sydney and the Illawarra region. At the time of the raids police said they seized 18 weapons, including an M1 military-grade assault rifle, a standard rifle, three pistols, two shotguns and 11 handguns. According to the agreed facts, a February 2014 phone tap picked up Mileski telling Dior that he needed another $23,000 on top of the $10,000 he had for six 'brand new things, in the boxes', meaning firearms. He told Dior the price of each was 'five and a half' and he'd already 'knocked off 15K on the deal'. Ms Dior and her solicitor, Abbas Soukie, leaving the Downing Centre Court, after Ms Dior pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to unlawfully supply firearms The couple were arrested in April 2014 after police raided properties in Sydney and the Illawarra region Mileski was heard saying he needed to hire a car to pick up the goods rather than use his and Dior's car, because he didn't want to take risks. Later phone intercepts captured the couple discussing when Mileski planned to pick up the firearms. The pair are due to face a sentence hearing in June next year. After they pleaded guilty the Crown applied to revoke their bail, but Judge Paul Conlon refused the bid. He noted they had previously offered to forfeit sums of money as security, and ordered they begin reporting to police twice a week to further reduce the risk of a bail breach. The embattled Sydney property developer has spent past month in Europe Embattled Sydney property developer Salim Mehajer has been publicly arrested by local police in the Spanish party island of Ibiza after an argument with a taxi driver. Footage obtained by A Current Affair shows the former deputy mayor of Auburn being handcuffed with two friends and then bundled in the back of a police car. According to ACA, police were called to the scene after Mehajer reportedly spilled icecream and takeaway food inside a taxi and then attempted to kick the driver. The 30-year-old can be seen showing his phone to the officers, who wait for backup to arrive before handcuffing the trio and taking them into custody. Mehajer has spent the past month travelling Europe, posting countless modelling shots of his time spent in Lebanon, Greece, Italy, France and Spain on Instagram. It's believed the arrest took place on Friday evening Ibiza time, although it is unclear whether any charges have been laid. Scroll down for video Embattled Sydney property developer Salim Mehajer has been publicly arrested by local police in the Spanish party island of Ibiza Mehajer and two of his friends were reportedly arrested after a heated argument with a local taxi driver, who claimed the trio spilled food inside his car Mehajer was handcuffed and taken into custody after a conversation with Spanish police Salim Mehajer has had a tumultuous year, including a public split from his wife Aysha Learmonth - who later filed an apprehended violence order against him. The nine-month order was taken out by police on Ms Learmonth and her brother-in-law Ben Miller's behalf after she left the couple's marital home earlier this year. Just days before he left overseas, Mehajer's appeal against an AVO banning him from approaching the father of a Lindt Cafe siege survivor was dismissed. Last week the Daily Telegraph reported that Salim Mehajers parents owe almost $10 million in unpaid taxes and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is moving towards declaring them bankrupt. Mohamad Mehajer, 60, and Amal Mehajer, 56, who are involved in their son's property development business, owe the ATO $9,966,817 in unpaid taxes and interest. It's believed the arrest took place on Friday evening Ibiza time, although it is unclear whether any charges have been laid Mehajer has spent the past month travelling Europe, posting countless modelling shots of his time spent in Lebanon, Greece, Italy, France and Spain on Instagram A horrified bystander who mistook a short film scene for a murder scene has called police to report a public beheading. A film crew were filming a scene at a car wash in Condell Park, South-West Sydney, in which an actor playing an intersection car cleaner is kidnapped. A would be Good Samaritan saw the spectacle and called triple-zero, whereupon two police car swooped on the scene. A horrified bystander has mistaken a short film scene for a murder scene outside a Sydney carwassh A NSW police spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia they attended the scene before piecing together the mix-up. The crew were filming a comedy project called Windscreens: The Australian Dream for the short film contest Tropfest. Co-producer Michael Papaeleftheriou told Daily Telegraph the crew were lost for words when the police cars hurtled into shot. 'It was just one character in shot, the rest were crew,' He said the film is about a windscreen cleaner and his battle for business with the car wash owner. 'It's basically about a windscreen cleaner at an intersection with homemade traffic lights,' he said. The NSW National's deputy leader Adrian Piccoli has announced he is stepping down from his position, just hours after deputy premier Troy Grant quit. Mr Grant confirmed he was leaving his position on Monday afternoon following poor numbers in the upcoming Orange by-election and an anticipated spill motion tomorrow. Mr Piccoli followed suit on Monday night, but said he hopes to keep his role as education minister. Scroll down for video The NSW National's deputy leader Adrian Piccoli (pictured) announced on Monday night he is stepping down from his position, just hours after deputy premier Troy Grant resigned Mr Grant (pictured) confirmed he was leaving his position on Monday afternoon following poor numbers in the upcoming Orange by-election and an anticipated spill motion tomorrow 'I won't be standing as deputy. I've had eight years. I hope to remain as the Minister for Education, but that's a question for the new leader, whoever that might be,' he told the Daily Telegraph. 'Mr Grant has done a fantastic job in sometimes difficult circumstances. He's an incredibly loyal and ethical operator, that's why I've always backed him,' he continued. The casualties come as the vote count for Saturday's by-election puts the Shooters Fishers and Farmers party within range of winning the seat held by the Nationals for almost 70 years. The unprecedented 35 per cent primary vote swing against the party put the heat on, and Mr Grant was due to face a leadership spill at Tuesday's party room meeting. The deputy premier said he stepped down in a bid to give the government an opportunity to 'pause and reset'. 'No one encouraged me to go. I spoke to my colleagues about it and I just didn''t want the turmoil to continue,' Mr Grant said. Mr Piccoli (pictured with NSW Premier Mike Baird) followed suit, but said he hopes to keep his role as education minister He said he was 'incredibly saddened' by Mr Grant's decision (pictured) Monaro MP John Barilaro is expected to fill the vacant leadership role and become deputy premier. Mr Picolli's role is also up for grabs. Unrest within the Nationals' party room had been swirling for months, as Mr Grant's backing of Mr Baird's now-scrapped greyhound racing ban was publicly slammed by fellow MPs. Nationals MP Andrew Fraser told Nine News on Monday Mr Grant 'just wasn't connecting to the people.' I think when you make decisions in cabinet without taking with the partyroom, it's evidence that youre not listening to constituency, he said. The controversial policy and forced local council mergers have been blamed as the main contributors of the disastrous by-election result. Unrest within the Nationals' party room had been swirling for months, as Mr Grant's (second from right) backing of Mr Baird's now-scrapped greyhound racing ban was publicly slammed by fellow MPs Mr Baird admitted he should be held accountable for the 'terrible' coalition outcome. He said he was 'incredibly saddened' by Mr Grant's decision. 'I know what a great man Troy Grant is. I think he's done an incredible job for his community, and his leadership in the last state election was second to none,' Mr Baird said. The government would learn from the by-election, he said, but reversing the deeply unpopular council amalgamations was off the table. Mr Baird (pictured) admitted he should be held accountable for the 'terrible' coalition outcome Labor leader Luke Foley said it was unfortunate Mr Grant was being thrown under the bus over the greyhounds debacle. 'They're trying to make poor old Troy Grant walk the gang plank to get the heat off Mike Baird (but) it's the policies of Mr Baird that have driven this government near to a cul-de-sac,' he said. With just 204 votes to be counted, Shooters candidate Phil Donato is on track to win Orange on 50.3 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and Nationals candidate Scott Barrett is on 49.7 per cent. Labor preferences favour the minor party and it's expected the Shooters will secure their first lower house seat when the final results are announced later this week. Donald Trump and his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway who has spoken out warning Trump haters Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is being warned he should be 'very careful' when criticizing incoming American President Donald Trump. With some suggestions of legal action against the 76-year-old Democrat Mr Reid following his damning statement released on Friday, one of Mr Trump's closest advisers Kellyanne Conway has spoken out. Mrs Conway, 49, a Republican campaign manager, strategist, and pollster, has said that the outgoing Senate should be 'very careful' as is comments were 'incredibly disappointing'. Speaking to Fox News Sunday Mrs Conway said: 'I find Harry Reid's public comments and insults about Donald Trump and other Republicans to be beyond the pale. 'They're incredibly disappointing.' In Mr Reid's statement last week following Trump's election he commented 'The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America. 'White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump's victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America. Scroll down for video Speaking to Fox News Sunday Mrs Conway said she was 'disappointed' with Mr Reid's comments especially for someone who has been in politics for so long 'I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics.' But concerns have been raised that president-elect Trump and his advisers are already threatening legal action to silence critics. When asked in the interview with Fox News Sunday if Mrs Conway was filing a lawsuit, she added she was: 'calling for responsibility and maturity and decency for somebody who has held one of the highest positions in our government, in a country of more than 300 million people.' Mr Reid's office responded president-elect Trump wants 'to try to silence his critics with the threat of legal action,' which he said should shock and concern Americans. Mr Reid's office responded to the interview raising concerns that already Mr Trump's advisers were trying to silent critics with threats of legal action There have been protests against the election results throughout America, in particular in areas including New York, California, Oregon and North Carolina with some celebrity faces. Some violence and concerning comments have also emerged including a protest in Portland Thursday night which turned into a riot and led to 25 people being arrested. A reporter covering an anti-Trump protest in Oakland, California was left with a fractured cheekbone and abrasions Wednesday night after four men, whom he said were masked anarchists, assaulted him. And in North Carolina, a student at Elon University wrote 'Bye bye Latinos hasta la vista' on a classroom whiteboard Thursday. In addition a senior Al-Qaeda figure celebrated Trump's win on Twitter, calling it an 'important step' for the terror group. Trump will officially become president on Inauguration Day on January 20, 2017. Mr Trump (left) pictured with President Barack Obama (right) at the White House Thursday Vouching for the successor he never imagined having, President Barack Obama on Monday said the United States under Donald Trump would remain the 'indispensable nation' for global security and praised the president-elect for vowing to maintain America's alliances. 'There is no weakening of resolve,' Obama said before departing on a three-nation trip that was supposed to be his grand valedictory tour. Instead, he will now confront concerns about a Trump presidency in Europe and Latin America and have to reassure nations about a man who Obama only a week ago derided as 'woefully unprepared for the job' who 'can't handle the nuclear codes.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Committed: President Obama said his successor had told him he was committed to 'strong and robust' NATO partnerships 'There is enormous continuity ... that makes us that indispensable nation when it comes to maintaining order around the world,' Obama said at a news conference at the White House. Relationships and policies go beyond presidents, he said, adding that military officials, diplomats and intelligence officers would cooperate with their foreign counterparts as before. And Obama tried to soothe any fears about the security direction in which Trump wanted to take America, after Trump appeared to question the validity of NATO and other overseas U.S. commitments at various points in his campaign. During his meeting with Trump, Obama said Trump 'expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships,' including 'strong and robust NATO' partnerships. Even as he visits Germany, Greece and Peru, Obama said his team would accelerate efforts to ensure a smooth transition to the Trump administration. Drug addict prisoners claim their lives have been turned around by a high-priced monthly injection. But sceptics question its effectiveness and say the manufacturer has aggressively marketed an unproven drug to corrections officials. Prisons, including Sheridan Correctional Centre in Sheridan, Wyoming, are experimenting by giving inmates addicted to opioids a single shot of Vivitrol. Christopher Wolf had already served prison time for nonviolent crimes when he was ordered into treatment for a heroin addiction by a judge who suggested Vivitrol. Three months later, the 36-year-old from Centerville, Ohio, is clean and working full time as a cook. He now suggests the medication to other addicts. 'I don't have cravings,' Mr Wolf said. 'I see how much better life is. It gets better really fast.' Scroll down for video Prisoners in Sheridan Correctional Centre in Sheridan, Wyoming, United States, are being given an injection to help with opioid addiction but some critics say it is an unproven drug The drug given in the buttocks, lasts for four weeks and eliminates the need for the daily doses common with alternatives such as methadone. But each shot costs as much as $1,000, around 800, and because the drug has a limited track record, experts do not agree on how well it works. Joshua Meador, 28, an inmate at Sheridan hopes to get into the Vivitrol program before his release in January. Before incarceration, he abused both older treatment drugs. When given take-home doses of methadone for the weekend, he would sell them for heroin. He said: 'When I'm on Vivitrol, I can't get high. 'The drug has no street value or abuse potential.' Proponents say Vivitrol could save money compared with the cost of locking up a drug offender - about $25,000 (approx 20,000) a year for each inmate at the Sheridan Correctional Center, 70 miles southwest of Chicago. Dr. Joshua Lee, of New York University's medical school, said more evidence is needed to determine whether the medication can help substantial numbers of people and whether it's worth paying for, but the early results are encouraging. 'It sounds good, and for some of us, it feels like the right thing to do,' said Dr Lee, a leading researcher on the treatment. WHAT DOES VIVITROL DO? Vivitrol targets receptors in the brain's reward system, blocking the high and extinguishing urges. In some programs, prisoners get an injection before release, then follow-up shots from any clinic. Advertisement Vivitrol is emerging as the nation searches for ways to ease an opioid epidemic that affects more than 2 million Americans and an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. prison population. Many experts view prisons - where addiction's human toll can be seen most clearly - as a natural place to discover what works. For decades, researchers have recognized addiction as a relapsing brain disease with medication an important part of therapy. But most jails and prisons reject methadone and buprenorphine, the other government-approved medications for opioid addiction, because they are habit-forming and can be abused. David Farabee of the University of California at Los Angeles, who leads a Vivitrol study in a New Mexico jail, commented: 'You couldn't design something better for the criminal justice system. 'There's been pushback with other medications, people saying, "We're just changing one drug for another. That argument goes out the window when you're talking about a blocker" like Vivitrol.' Joshua Meador, 28, (pictured) an inmate at Sheridan hopes to get into the Vivitrol program before his release in January Prison systems in Illinois, Vermont, Wyoming and Wisconsin are trying the drug on a small scale. Michigan is offering Vivitrol to parolees who commit small crimes, if addiction is the reason for their new offense. The federal Bureau of Prisons ran a field trial in Texas and plans to expand the program to the Northeast next year. The drug's manufacturer hopes prisons will be the gateway to a larger market. Also known as extended-release naltrexone, the medication won Food and Drug Administration approval for alcohol dependence in 2006 and in 2010 to prevent relapse in post-detox opioid users. The evidence for giving Vivitrol to inmates is thin but promising. In the biggest study, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about 300 offenders - most of them heroin users on probation or parole - were randomly assigned to receive either Vivitrol or brief counseling and referral to a treatment program. After six months, the Vivitrol group had a lower rate of relapse, 43 percent compared with 64 percent. A year after treatment stopped, there had been no overdoses in the Vivitrol group and seven overdoses, including three deaths, in the other group. The results, published in March in the New England Journal of Medicine, have been promoted by the drugmaker, Ireland-based Alkermes, as it markets Vivitrol to U.S. correctional systems. Yet addiction is stubborn. When the injections stopped, many in the study relapsed. A year later, relapse rates looked the same in the two groups. 'It does suggest six months wasn't enough,' said Dr Lee, the lead author. T.J. Voller was a Vivitrol success story - until he died from a heroin overdose. After Vivitrol was approved by the FDA, Voller talked about getting the shot with The Associated Press and Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a CNN segment. The 30-year-old was back at work and seemed proud of his recovery. But after 10 months on Vivitrol, he died of a heroin overdose. In some cases it hasn't worked with one man T.J Voller originally being a success story but after 10 months on Vivitrol he died of a heroin overdose. Pictured, exterior of Sheridan Correctional Centre 'He was alone for the weekend and picked up that needle one last time,' said his mother, Kathi Voller of Raynham, Massachusetts. Advocates argue that inmates have a constitutional right to all FDA-approved addiction medications throughout their incarceration. Sally Friedman, legal director of the New York-based Legal Action Center, which is looking for a test case to bring to court, commented: 'Treatment should be offered from the moment they are brought into the system.' Physicians have learned to be cautious about pharmaceutical company marketing, said Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Not so for criminal justice officials, who may be too trusting, Mr Kolodny said. Sally Friedman, legal director of the New York-based Legal Action Center, which is looking for a test case to bring to court, believes 'treatment should be offered from the moment inmates are brought into the system' 'When the drug company sends someone in to give them a talk and buy them pizza, they think they're getting a scientific lecture,' he said. Alkermes spokeswoman Jennifer Snyder said the company's sales team helps educate corrections staff and community care providers only after they have shown interest in Vivitrol. There's widespread agreement that counseling, support groups and treatment for underlying problems such as depression are crucial for Vivitrol patients, said Dr. Joseph Garbely of Pennsylvania-based Caron Treatment Centers, which supports medication-assisted treatment and prefers Vivitrol. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is holding talks with EU counterparts in Brussels today (pictured) but snubbed a 'crisis' summit last night Boris Johnson hailed Donald Trump's bombshell victory as a 'good thing for Britain' today after snubbing a crisis summit called by the EU to discuss the US result. Arriving for regular talks with European counterparts in Brussels this morning, the Foreign Secretary said there was 'a lot to be positive about' in the billionaire's victory. After condemning the 'whinge-o-rama' by European politicians, Mr Johnson urged them to seize the 'moment of opportunity' instead of carping. The session in Brussels today is expected to be awkward after the UK, France and Hungary chose to boycott an emergency discussion of the implications of Trump's shock victory last night. In a pointed jibe as that session wrapped up, the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini - who chaired last night's session - said of the UK's absence: 'I guess it's only normal for a country that has decided to leave not to be so interested in our discussion on the future of our relations.' Scroll down for video Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg voiced alarm at Mr Trump's criticism of the alliance during the US election campaign. Mr Stoltenberg warned bluntly of the dangers of American isolationism, writing in the Observer: 'This is no time to question the partnership between Europe and the United States. 'Going it alone is not an option.' But Mr Johnson said today: 'I think it's a good thing if everyone steps up to the plate and spends a little bit more. Boris Johnson, pictured talking to Belgian foreign minister Dider Reynders (middle) and Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni, right at a meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels today, hailed Donald Trump's bombshell victory as a 'good thing for Britain' today after snubbing a crisis summit called by the EU to discuss the US result last night The meeting on Sunday was called after Donald Trump (pictured on CBS News of Friday night) won the presidential election CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl interviewed Mr Trump, his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka 'The UK is now a major, major player. I think it is a good thing if other European countries step up and spend a bit more.' Asked about Donald Trump's victory, he added: 'There's a lot to be positive about. It's very important not to prejudge the president-elect and his administration. It has only been a few days. We should regard it as a moment of opportunity. 'Donald Trump is a deal maker and I think that will be a good thing for Britain and it can also be a good thing for Europe.' Confirming that Mr Johnson would not attend the crisis summit at the weekend, a Foreign Office spokesman told MailOnline: 'There is a regular Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday where a range of issues can be discussed in the normal way. 'We do not see the need for an additional meeting on Sunday because the US election timetable is long established. Boris Johnson, pictured at a meeting of European foreign ministers in Brussels today, said there was 'a lot to be positive about' in the billionaire's victory as he arrived this morning Boris Johnson talks to his Finnish counterpart Timo Soini at the European meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels this morning 'An act of democracy has taken place, there is a transition period and we will work with the current and future administrations to ensure the best outcomes for Britain.' EU President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday that the events of 2016 - including the historic Brexit vote in June - were a 'warning sign for all who believe in liberal democracy'. He urged the EU to 'finally get our act together'. But Trump's election has made it harder to regroup, given that Europe - while trying to stay pragmatic in dealing with Washington - has no idea what to really expect from the billionaire. Tusk warned during the referendum campaign that 'Western political civilisation' was at risk. Rattled European leaders have issued calls, after both Brexit and the Trump win, for Europe to seize its own destiny and tackle what they have dubbed a 'polycrisis'. It comes as Prime Minister Theresa May was warned by a leading German politician that she is 'delusional' if she believes she can get a good trade deal from Trump, 70. Boris Johnson is taking part in what are expected to be tense talks in Brussels today But Ms Mogherini struck a more upbeat tone after the talks last night. 'We are looking forward to a very strong partnership with the next administration, we've decided together to engage with the incoming administration even from this very first week of transition,' she said.. Boris Johnson risked upsetting his European counterparts by telling them to end the 'collective wing-orama' at Donald Trump's election victory 'It's not up to us... it's up to the next US administration to define to define their own position,' she said following the two-and-a-half hour meeting. 'For the moment it's not a wait and see attitude we can afford having, because the world goes on, Europe goes on, crisis goes on, but also opportunities we can take go on,' she said. Axel Schafer, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Social Democrat coalition party, said Mrs May's hope that President-elect Trump will look favourably on the UK will come to nothing. Referring to the shock election of Mr Trump, Mr Schafer told The Times: 'What changed is the likelihood of a speedy and preferential trade deal between UK and US. 'Even before Tuesday the chances were rather low, now the hope for this kind of deal seems delusional.' The pointed remarks came after ministers talked up the chances of a close working relationship with the surprise winner of the race to the White House. Mr Johnson said the Republican's victory over Hillary Clinton is a 'great opportunity for the UK' to build closer economic ties with America. He suggested that the President-elect would be good for Britain as the country attempts to agree new free trade deals following Brexit. Speaking on a whistle-stop tour of capitals in eastern Europe and the Balkans, Mr Johnson lashed out at European leaders for taking a more negative approach to Mr Trump's election. He said: 'I would respectfully say to my beloved European friends and colleagues that it's time that we snapped out of the general doom and gloom about the result of this election and collective 'whinge-o-rama' that seems to be going on in some places.' Following the election result, he revealed that he spoke to Vice-President-elect Mike Pence and added that the pair discussed the 'importance of the special relationship' between the two countries. Mr Johnson, who previously described Mr Trump as being 'out of his mind', also praised him as a 'deal maker'. A Foreign Office source told The Sun: 'The rest of Europe has been churlish and sniffy about Trump's victory. We haven't - that puts us in a much better place.' Axel Schafer (pictured) a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Social Democrat coalition party, has said Mrs May is 'delusional' if she thinks she will get a good trade deal Mr Schafer said Mrs May's hope that Donald Trump (pictured) will look favourably on the UK will come to nothing The tone was in marked contrast to that of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who seemed concerned about Trump's appointment - along with other leaders who have reacted with alarm. He said: 'Mr Trump, during his campaign, said that Belgium was a village somewhere in Europe. 'We must teach the President-elect what Europe is and how it works. I believe we'll have two years of wasted time while Mr. Trump tours a world he doesn't know. 'The Americans, as a general rule, have no interest in Europe', Juncker said in his remarks to the students. He added: 'The trans-Atlantic alliance, and the Nato alliance, is called into question, so it could be quite pernicious. 'With regards to refugees and other non-Americans, Trump has an approach which in no way coincides with the approach in Europe.' And Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon is set to tell Britain's Nato allies to spend more money on defence. The Telegraph reports that Sir Fallon will use a Brussels summit of defence ministers to urge countries to scrap plans for an EU army because Trump might withdraw his support. Trump - during his campaign - said that America could refuse to help Nato allies unless they fulfil obligations and 'pay their bills'. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his party would vote against triggering Article 50, which formally launches withdrawal negotiations with the EU, unless there was a guarantee that the final Brexit deal with Brussels is put to a fresh referendum. He insisted he respected the decision made by voters in favour of leaving the EU but said nobody should have a deal 'imposed' upon them. Although the Lib Dems only have eight MPs they have more than 100 peers in the Lords, which could spell trouble for the Government if judges rule that a full Act of Parliament is required before Article 50 can be triggered, as the legislation would have to clear both Houses. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) said: 'I think that we'll waste time for two years while Mr Trump tours a world that he is completely unaware of' The comments came as Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron (pictured) said his party would vote against triggering Article 50 MPs from other parties - including a Labour frontbencher - have indicated they would be prepared to oppose Article 50. The Government is challenging a High Court ruling that Parliament must have the final say on triggering Article 50 with a hearing in the Supreme Court next month, arguing that prerogative powers could be used to trigger Article 50. An outline of the grounds for appeal published by the Brexit Department said the High Court was mistaken and should have accepted 'the Crown retains the power to give effect to the result of the EU referendum' by taking the 'first step in the process' by notifying that it is triggering Article 50. The Government's lawyers will argue that 'in any event, the continued existence of the power to take that first step is clearly established and authorised by Parliament'. However, the Guardian reports that Government lawyers are looking at deploying new tactics when they try to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the High Court ruling. The legal team could argue that Parliament can reverse the Article 50 decision at any point, meaning its sovereignty has not been infringed, and Mrs May can trigger the process herself, the newspaper has suggested. A Government spokeswoman said: 'Our position is clear: the country voted to leave the EU and we will respect the will of the British people. 'The Government told the High Court that as a matter of firm policy, once given, the Article 50 notice would not be withdrawn. Because legal proceedings are under way it would not be appropriate to comment further.' Meanwhile, Britain could seek associate membership of the North American Free Trade Area, according to the Daily Telegraph. Mr Maughan, from County Durham, has now been awarded 35,000 But the photographs on his laptop were a result of a computer virus He was charged with possessing indecent images and sent for trial A grandfather who was wrongly branded a paedophile after child pornography was found on his laptop has been awarded 35,000 by police - because the images were a result of a computer virus. John Maughan, 65, was working in Abu Dhabi when he was contacted by detectives ordering him to return home to the UK. Officers wanted to quiz him about 609 images of child pornography which had been discovered on his computer in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Detectives seized the device and on his return to the country Mr Maughan was charged with possessing indecent images and sent for trial. John Maughan, 65, was working in Abu Dhabi when he was contacted by detectives Officers wanted to quiz Mr Maughan about 609 images of child pornography which had been discovered on his computer The investigation began in January 2008 when a friend of Mr Maughan's long-term partner, Theresa McManners, called police to claim she has found the images while looking on the laptop. The woman was on his computer because she wanted to check the device over mistaken claims Mr Maughan was having an affair. But the case against him collapsed when an independent examination of the computed revealed it contained 251 potentially toxic files - including 55 Trojan viruses - which were not picked up by officers. Mr Maughan later sued Durham Police for malicious prosecution after it emerged a detective investigating the case insisted no virus had been found on the laptop. An expert then discovered that the computer was in fact riddled with malware. After an eight year legal battle he was awarded 15,000 compensation plus 20,000 costs in an out of court settlement. When he was fighting to clear his name, Mr Maughan's father passed away and his partner of 35 years was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and was admitted to a nursing home. He also claimed his home was vandalised after a brick was thrown through his window. Mr Maughan said his friends shunned him and he lost his 100,000 a year career helping to fix a $1billion expansion project in Habshan Abu Dhabi in the UAE for GASCO, a National Oil Company. He said: 'I went from having a great career and a loving home life to a situation which cannot get much worse. 'How I'm still living is beyond me, I've just lived day by day by day and it's all been put on me at no fault of my own. 'The mistakes police made during their inquiries were unforgivable and left me walking around my own hometown thinking "is anyone looking at me?"' 'All the major electrical engineering projects I was involved with were immediately and totally trashed by Durham Constabulary. Mr Maughan and his partner Teresa McManners were photographed on holiday in Egypt in 2009 Mr Maughan (pictured with his partner Miss McManners) has now been awarded 35,000 'To get this result now against an uphill battle with the police who were determined to defend the case against them no matter what, feels like a miracle and should now clear my name in the eyes of the public and allow me to get on with rebuilding the rest of my life.' The investigation began in January 2008 when a friend of Mr Maughan's partner called police to claim she has found the images whilst looking on the laptop. He had already left the the UK to work in Dubai for four months but officers seized the computer and arrested Mr Maughan on return to the UK the following April. He was quizzed and charged with 18 offences and a detective filed a report wrongly stating there were no viruses on the computer. But Mr Maughan instructed a computer expert who found 251 separate viruses and blamed the appearance of the images on 'spyware.' A police computer expert was also instructed and uncovered the malware. Mr Maughan was on bail for over a year after a 10,000 surety was offered by his father but he was ordered to give up his passport making it impossible for him to return to work. The charges were dropped at Durham Crown Court in May 2009 after prosecutors studied the expert reports and he sought 200,000 from police for aggravated damages. He added: 'I cannot stress the magnitude of the overall stress and effect this has had on myself and my family. 'My partner has gone through hell and the torment she has had to endure is unimaginable - yet she stuck by me throughout. 'It seemed the police were determined to use taxpayers cash to defend themselves leave me a broken man. I have gone from earning a good salary to receiving pension credits. 'Whilst I'm pleased to get some financial recourse the amount of money is an insult after what we've been through. A stone (pictured) was thrown through his window after he was named locally in County Durham The investigation began in January 2008 when a friend of Mr Maughan's partner, Miss McManners (pictured), called police to claim she has found the images whilst looking on the laptop 'If the proper tests had been done at the time them we would not be here now. I got named locally as a man who had indecent images and it was humiliating. One night at 1am a brick came through my window. 'Even though I cleared my name it feels like mud sticks and I'm not going to able to work anymore after what happened. 'Everything I worked for which put me in such a good position had all been trashed now. We could have had a nice life, I worked for it and earned it and it was totally wasted.' In his report computer expert Jonathan Wheatley said: 'In my 15 years as an IT professional, I have never experienced a computer so heavily infected with malicious software. 'It is difficult to establish with any degree of certainty the nature of the damage which may have been done during the time that the computer was in operation. 'An unprotected computer on the internet is vulnerable to many and varied forms of attack.' In legal documents from Leeds County Court, Durham Police agreed to pay 35,000 but did not admit liability. Aaqil Ahmed, the broadcaster's head of religion and ethics The BBC is to increase its coverage of religions in a bid to counter claims it is biased towards Christianity. Earlier this year, the corporation accused itself of being too Christian in its output - and that it was considering adding programmes for Muslim, Hindu and Sikh audiences. Aaqil Ahmed, the broadcaster's head of religion and ethics, compiled a report following consultation with non-Christians who expressed their belief that the BBC is disproportionate in its religious content. The feeling is that while there are plenty of shows that celebrate Christianity, there are too few for other faiths. BBC director general Lord Hall was handed the dossier and is believed to be giving thorough consideration to its suggestions. He is now inviting religious leaders to be part of discussion to make their coverage more multi-faith. A BBC source said: 'Faith is remarkably important. The BBC can and must do more to ensure that the important role faith plays is recognised and reflected in our programing. 'The BBC will do more to represent faiths across the broad, and has specifically rejected the notion of in any way diminishing what it does around Christianity.' Following the publication of the report in May, Ahmed said in a statement: 'Christianity remains the cornerstone of our output and there are more hours dedicated to it than there are to other faiths. 'Our output in this area is not static, though. It has evolved over the years and we regularly assess it.' As it stands, religious programming across the BBC includes the likes of Songs of Praise, Sunday Morning Live and The Life of Muhammad on television. Moral Maze, Beyond Belief and Thought for the Day feature on radio. Safe: Songs of Praise presenters Pam Rhodes, Aled Jones and Diane-Louise Jordan Ibrahim Mogra (left) of the Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the news, while Lord Carey (right) admitted he was wary of the changes Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the news and said the BCC could show Friday prayers from a mosque. The Board of Deputies of British Jews told The Times: 'We would love to see a program exploring the history of Jewish-Muslim co-operation over the centuries, such as during the Holocaust when many Jews were saved by Muslims.' In the summer, Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, admitted he was wary about any such changes. He said: 'There is a real feeling by Christians of being let down by the Establishment. Oscar Pistorius has been transferred to a new prison in South Africa after demanding a move to a jail which has recently had new bath tubs installed. The South African government confirmed that the former Paralympian had been moved at his request to the facility, which they say is better able to accommodate disabled offenders. Double leg amputee Pistorius is serving a six-year prison term for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day in 2013. Oscar Pistorius has been transferred to a new prison in South Africa after demanding a move to the jail which has recently had new bath tubs installed Prosecutors have appealed the sentence, which they say is too lenient. Pistorius, 29, had been serving time in the Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria but has now been moved to the nearby Atteridgeville Correctional Centre, which recently installed bath tubs during upgrades for disabled criminals. The Department of Correctional Services says the Atteridgeville prison houses offenders serving up to six years in prison, and has rehabilitation and development programs for inmates. Officials say Pistorius's disability previously required that he be held in a Kgosi Mampuru remand centre lacking such programmes. Pistorius, 29, had been serving time in the Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria but has now been moved to the nearby Atteridgeville Correctional Centre Pistorius demonstrates walking without his prosthetic legs during his trial. His new jail ecently installed bath tubs during upgrades for disabled criminals The former athlete's prison transfer comes just a month after officials confirmed he had been secretly freed to join his family at a boutique hotel for a memorial service for his grandmother. He was allowed out of the maximum security prison for four hours, under armed guard, for the celebration of Gerti Pistorius's life last month. Double leg amputee Pistorius is serving a six-year prison term for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, pictured, on Valentines Day in 2013 The shamed Olympian was given 'compassionate leave' to attend the event because he wass considered 'low risk' by management at Kgosi Mampuru jail. But as news of Pistorius' leave emerged, reaction appeared predominantly negative amid accusations that the athlete's 'white privilege' and status had led to him getting special treatment. Meanwhile, last week, South Africa's Supreme Court (SCA) told state prosecutors and the defence to argue their case over the six-year sentence for murder handed to Pistorius in open court. He was sentenced to six years in prison in July after being found guilty of murdering Miss Steenkamp on appeal last December, in a case that has attracted worldwide interest. Legal experts had expected the SCA to issue a ruling on whether prosecutors have the right to challenge the sentence but instead said both parties should first argue their case in court. The court did not set a date for the appeal hearing. State prosecutors, led by advocate Gerrie Nel, say the sentence was too lenient as the jail term was less than half the 15-years they sought. State prosecutors are challenging his sentence which they say is too lenient. It was orginally handed down by trial judge Thokozile Masipa, pictured In his arguments at the trial, Nel said Pistorius had shown no remorse for the 2013 shooting. Lawyers for the gold medallist, known as the 'Blade Runner' for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, say he did not deliberately kill model and law graduate Steenkamp. The athlete originally received a five-year sentence for a manslaughter conviction, that was upgraded to murder on appeal. Trial Judge Thokozile Masipa, who sent Pistorius to the six-year jail term, dismissed a request by Nel to appeal Pistorius' sentence, saying she was not persuaded that there was a reasonable prospect of success at another court. Germany's foreign minister has been backed to become his country's next president, despite once referring to Donald Trump as a 'hate preacher'. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a 60-year-old Social Democrat, will take over the largely ceremonial role as head of state from Joachim Gauck, whose five-year term ends in February. While normally studiously diplomatic, Steinmeier strongly criticised US President-elect Donald Trump during the American election campaign. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is pictured waving as he arrives for talks with Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, in Warsaw earlier this year Asked in August about the rise of right-wing populism around the world, Steinmeier targeted those who 'make politics with fear'. He cited supporters of Brexit, the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, promoters of Britain's exit from the European Union, and 'the hate preachers, like Donald Trump at the moment in the United States.' Following Trump's election, Steinmeier said the Republican's victory meant 'nothing is going to get easier. A lot will get harder.' He said Germany would seek dialogue with the Trump administration, but warned that American foreign policy would likely become 'less predictable.' German news agency DPA said today Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democrat party would back Steinmeier's nomination for the post. Together with the votes of Steinmeier's own SPD party the 60-year-old political veteran would likely have enough support to win a vote among the 1,260 delegates who elect Germany's next president on Feb. 12. Steinmeier (left) with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, at a cabinet meeting last year. They are expected to work comfortably with each other desperate being in rival parties A veteran of the German political system and a familiar face in world capitals, Steinmeier served as Merkel's vice-chancellor and chief diplomat during her first 'grand coalition' government in 2005-2009. In his second stint as foreign minister beginning in 2013, he has at times drawn fire for attempting to keep the lines of communications open with Russia despite deteriorating relations over Ukraine. While his Social Democrats have praised his approach as in keeping with their long tradition of Ostpolitik, critics have accused him of being a 'Russlandversteher', or apologist for Russia. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, left, and his wife Elke Buedenbender arrive for an official state dinner with the Queen in Berlin last year Allies raised eyebrows in June this year when he warned Nato against 'sabre-rattling and warmongering' after it conducted military exercises in eastern Europe in response to the perceived threat posed by Russia. But SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel said Steinmeier had earned widespread respect and the necessary trust required to fill the post. Steinmeier first gained national attention in 1998 when he became chief of staff to Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. Steinmeier (right) will succeed 76-year-old Joachim Gauck (left) when he steps down from the job in February He was credited with keeping a sometimes chaotic centre-left government running smoothly and seeing through a package of economic reforms and welfare-state cuts in 2003. The reforms, launched at a time of high unemployment and economic stagnation, were credited with helping fuel growth and make the economy more resilient, but critics said they fuelled social divisions. He won widespread respect in 2010 when he took a few weeks away from politics to donate a kidney to his wife, Elke Buedenbender, a judge at a Berlin administrative court. Steinmeier's promotion would leave a void in the foreign ministry, where he led efforts to resolve conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Dr Unt Tun Maung, 45 (pictured arriving at Hull Crown Court with his wife) has been cleared of sexual assault on appeal A married GP who spent six months in prison for groping a teenager's breasts at a walk-in centre has been cleared at retrial after arguing that it was a 'terrible misunderstanding.' Dr Unt Tun Maung, 45, was jailed in April last year for attacking a 19-year-old girl when she visited the centre in Teesside complaining of chest pains. The devout Buddhist was accused of cupping the woman's breasts after telling her to remove her bra. But the father of one has now been cleared of sexual assault after winning a retrial. Speaking outside court, the doctor said he felt 'very relieved'. He added: 'I want it to be publicly known, because since my conviction was quashed, I have not been legally allowed to say anything by the court.' The doctor was suspended from practice in October 2013 and faces another hearing over whether he can work again. During the trial, the court was told how the woman had gone to the walk-in clinic in July 2012 with-flu like symptoms. She told the jury that he examined her ears and throat before asking her to bend forwards and place a stethoscope under her blouse. She claimed that he then told to remove her blouse before flicking her bra and saying: 'Can you remove these'. The woman alleged he then put his hand on her breasts and 'cupped them for a while'. But Dr Mung insisted it had been an innocent misunderstanding and that he had simply been listening for echoes in the chest restricted by fluid. He also denied asking the teenager to take her bra off or that it was ever removed. Defence barrister Felicity Gerry, QC, said: 'There was no cupping or groping of either of the breasts. 'I suggest it was a proper medical examination and this has all been a terrible misunderstanding. ' After the doctor was jailed for 18 months, his family and friends campaigned for his innocence and won a retrial. Dr Maung (left and right, outside court) was jailed in April last year for attacking a 19-year-old girl when she visited a walk-in clinic in Teesside complaining of chest pains. But the father of one has now been cleared after a retrial heard it was a 'terrible misunderstanding' The father of one, from Chester-le-Street, County Durham, had spent six months behind bars when the appeal was granted. The High Court quashed his conviction after it emerged the woman had sat in the public gallery during the trial, before being recalled to give evidence. At the latest hearing, a jury of six women and six men took just two hours to find him not guilty of sexual assault. Dr Maung, who had worked in Sunderland, Teesside and Hartlepool hospitals, wept in the dock as the verdict was given. The court heard Dr Maung came to the UK in the late 1990s qualifying as a GP and working in practices and hospitals across the north east as a locum. His late father was a professor of surgery in Burma and his mother was also a doctor. Character references said he is a 'loyal, dedicated, and kind' person who was brought up with a strong ethical code. He meditates five times a day and is a leading figure in the Sunderland Buddist centre. A fellow GP at court said: 'Dr Maung deserves to have been able to prove his innocence because he was wrongly convicted in the first trial. 'Doctors, not just in this country, but from abroad have supported him and we want to thank them for that.' Despite making an immediate complaint, the NHS was criticised for 'shocking delay' in not reporting it to the police for 12 months. Following the trial, Dr Maung said he was prevented from commenting further due to a pending hearing before the General Medical Council. Ukip donor Arron Banks plans to bankroll 200 Commons candidates to 'drain the swamp' of Westminster careerists and corruption. The insurance tycoon, who was with Nigel Farage for the first British meeting with Donald Trump on Saturday, has long planned a 'movement' he hopes will emerge from the Brexit vote. And Mr Banks now believes there is sufficient anti-establishment feeling across the UK to launch his move against the '200 worst, most corrupt MPs'. Arron Banks, second left alongside President-elect Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and other top Ukip staff on Saturday, plans to stand candidates against 200 of the 'worst' MPs in Westminster The billionaire told The Times he will support the candidates on a broad platform with few specific policy aims beyond reforming the Westminster system. Mr Banks plans to make Keith Vaz his first target amid calls for the Labour grandee to quit the justice committee over police investigations into allegations that prompted his resignation from the chairmanship of the home affairs committee in September. He said: 'You would rate MPs by (undesirability) with Keith Vaz at No 1, and field a great candidate, a military guy, doctor, someone who has done something with their life. 'It would be a one-off attempt to drain the swamp. It would be highly amusing to tease career politicians with a hot poker.' He added: 'Its a very simple agenda: to destroy the professional politician. I like the idea of clearing the place out, setting new rules, maybe reducing the number of MPs. 'Not a party from the left or right. Just to clear out the worst lot.' Mr Banks suggested he could endorse reforms such as two term limits for MPs, abolition of the House of Lords and a minimum age limit of 40. The funding would initially come from Mr Banks - who gave a 1million to Ukip and spent around 7million on the EU referendum - but he has networks of other donors who contributed to the Brexit cause. Mr Banks suggested he could endorse reforms such as two term limits for MPs, abolition of the House of Lords and a minimum age limit of 40 Pressure on Mr Vaz grew over the weekend and Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who voted against Mr Vaz's appointment two weeks ago, told MailOnline everything he had warned MPs about when the Labour grandee bid for his position on the committee had come to pass. He said: 'I said matters relating to his resignation from the Home Affairs Committee were not resolved. 'He brings Parliament into further disrepute. He should stand down. 'I'm also calling on Jeremy Corbyn to do the right thing and suspend Keith Vaz from the Labour Party until any police investigation is concluded.' A woman who dressed a mannequin up for company at dinner parties has put the dummy up for sale after finding a real boyfriend. Bernadette, from Sydneys eastern suburbs, posted the strikingly handsome dummy, named Desmond, on a local Facebook buy and sell group. The IT worker told Daily Mail Australia the post has been met with an outpouring of offers but nobody has yet to pay the $150 pricetag for the hauntingly lifelike figure. A woman has taken to social media to sell a strikingly handsome mannequin up for sale on Facebook We moved in together around September when I got the lease for my house. He was just around for some company while I advertised the other rooms, Bernadette said. But Desmond assumed a more romantic role when she began using him as a date for dinner parties. I'd also dress him up for home dinners so I wasn't the 3rd wheel, she said. The snapshot with the post shows the mannequin brooding in a hallway sporting a pair of superman briefs. She bills him as a 'beautiful mannequin with gorgeous eyes,' describing him as '6"2 height with dark tan'. Other images show the doll dressed in a Jamaican beanie and wetsuit, and donning a feathered Native American war bonnet in another. Bernadette hopes Desmond finds a new home, but for now he is keeping pride of place in the hallway. There has been interest but nothing offering what he is worth, she said. Bernadette said she dressed up the mannequin for company at dinner parties But Price dismissed the petition, saying 'no one owes me an apology' Almost 35,000 signatures on petition asking for an apology to Price Steve Price has dismissed a petition demanding The Project offer him an apology after he was the victim of 'leftist bullying' during the show's US election debate. The broadcaster was at the epicentre of public debate when he mixed heated words with former Labor staffer Jamila Rizvi on Ten following the shock election result. The pair clashed after Price claimed Rizvi interrupted him as the panel discussed Hillary Clinton's loss, prompting host Carrie Bickmore to tell him to 'change his tone.' Speaking on The Project on Monday night, Price cleared the air, saying 'no one owes me an apology for anything' and 'I'm a big boy I can look after myself.' Scroll down for videos Broadcaster Steve Price has dismissed a petition demanding The Project offer him an apology after he was the victim of 'leftist bullying' during the show's US election debate last week Price (left) shared a tense exchange with former Labor staffer Jamila Rizvi (right) following the shock US election result after he was 'interrupted' 'A lot of people have been very outraged on my behalf today. Someone started a petition that I know nothing about, media are reporting stories that I've been somehow bullied on this show last Wednesday night,' Price said. 'I don't feel that I was bullied at all, no one on The Project owes me an apology for anything - I'm a big boy I can look after myself. Let's get on with the program.' His reaction was in response to a petition with just under 35,000 signatures urging the hosts of The Project to apologise to Steve Price live on air. The petition, which was shut down on Monday night after 'reaching its target', outlined that Price was abruptly cut off and 'insulted' by Jamila who was speaking with an 'outrageous tone'. It also claimed Price was silenced for the remainder of the discussion due to the 'abuse' and 'degradation' he suffered on that night. 'I'm a big boy I can look after myself': Price said he wanted no apology from The Project after the controversial clash and requested that they 'get on with the program' The heated exchange last Wednesday was in the aftermath of Donald Trump winning the U.S. election. Wearing a t-shirt with Hillary Clinton's logo, Ms Rizvi said she was in 'shock' at the result and 'sad' the US hadn't voted in a female president. After host Carrie Bickmore outlined how women had voted, she seemingly directed to Ms Rizvi for comment - however Price interjected, saying the breakdown showed the underlying discontent within non-metro America. 'Well what that shows you is the people in real America, small town America, weren't buying the bulldust coming out of the elites,' Price began to say, before he was cut off by Rizvi. 'Sorry can we cut this bull**** about the idea of there being a real America,' the news.com.au columinst said. Price attempted to jump back in, however his efforts were ignored as Ms Rizvi continued to lambaste Price's idea of a 'real America'. 'All America is real - and the question I believe was to me - if you live in a city or you live in a small town you're still American,' she said. The show's host Carrie Bickmore (right) was forced to intervene in the verbal stoush, telling Price off for using 'that tone' Rizvi pointed out the question was initially addressed at her as the studio audience let out a collective 'woah' One Ms Rizvi had finished talking, Price then went on the attack. 'This is the reason why Donald Trump won, because people like you lecture and heckle people,' he said. Clearly taken aback by Price's comments, Ms Rizvi 'apologised' as the studio audience let out a collective 'woah', before host Carrie Bickmore intervened. 'Pricey, we were talking to Jamila and you don't need to keep that tone,' Bickmore said. 'I apologise, I thought I was on to be interviewed, so...' Ms Rizvi said. Never one to back down from his views, it was the former shock jock Price who had the last word against Kevin Rudd's former media assistant. 'Well I thought I could speak without being interrupted, but anyway, carrying on,' he said. Ms Rizvi has since unpublished her Facebook page after reportedly receiving torrents of online abuse. A baby boy who was born after his twin brother is officially older than him. Samuel Peterson was born 5Ib 13oz at 1:39am on November 6. His twin brother Ronan arrived at 5Ib, 14oz, 31 minutes later at Cape Cod Hospital in Massachusetts. Parents Seth and Emily Peterson with their twin boys Samuel and Ronan who were born at Cape Cod Hospital in Massachusetts But Ronans official birth was recorded as 1.10am - because the clocks went back at 2am. Speaking to ABC News the twins mother Emily Peterson hopes it will not spark a constant rivalry between the two over who was actually born first. The 32-year-old, who lives with her husband Seth and two-year-old daughter Aubrey, in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, told ABC News: It literally took me a day to wrap my head around it. I didn't realize it was quite that big of a deal until my nurse turned around and said I've been working here 40 years and haven't seen anything like that. Mr Peterson who is a trooper with the Massachusetts State Police commented: I said earlier that night that they were either going to be born on two different days or the time change was going to come into play. According to the hospital legally they must give the actual time of birth. Posting on the hospitals Facebook page Michael K. Lauf, president and CEO of Cape Cod Healthcare, told ABC News: The Peterson twins birth story was a remarkable occurrence. The outline of Tasmania was the only state missing from the map A tourist has captured a beautiful picture of the sunset without realising the bushes surrounding it shaped the outline of Australia. Kelly Matthews, an emergency services phone operator from Derby, in Western Australia, traveled to Darwin for a friend's wedding when she took the photo. Soon after arriving, Ms Matthews headed to the Esplanade, in Bicentennial Park to get a snap of the sunset. Kelly Matthews posted this photo of the sun setting from Darwin's Esplanade on Facebook. Her friends pointed out that the outline of the trees resemble the map of Australia, the only state missing was Tasmania 'I put it on Facebook and straight away all my friends said 'that looks like a map of Australia,' Ms Matthews said in a report by the BBC. The outline shows Western Australia, South Australia and the Great Australian Bight, Victoria, New South Wales and a slightly skewed Queensland and Northern Territory. Unfortunately, Tasmania's outline was not part of the tree's natural formation, which social media users pointed out. Ms Matthews said taking this photo was the perfect to mark her milestone of visiting every state and territory in Australia (stock image) One man wrote: 'Tasmania absent as usual.' 'Mate, just go there and cut a hole in the bush,' a woman replied back. A couple who noticed money going missing from their home set up a CCTV snare and were shocked to find their friend of over ten years was the culprit. Tracey Christmas, 52, was spotted in the act after the family grew suspicious of money going missing - even confronting their own young son for answers. The married couple, who want to remain anonymous, say they have been left with trust issues since the ordeal as they considered Christmas a part of the family. Christmas was sentenced to a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, after pleading guilty to two counts of theft and two counts of attempted theft. The shocking footage shows horse riding instructor Christmas, from Biggleswade, Beds., hunting for a hidden key before finding it and stealing 30 in cash Tracey Christmas, 52, was spotted in the act after the family grew suspicious of money going missing - even confronting their own young son for answers The shocking footage shows horse riding instructor Christmas, from Biggleswade, Beds., hunting for a hidden key before finding it and stealing 30 in cash. The CCTV later caught Christmas attempting to steal two other times, before she was seen again quickly going through the woman's hand bag and taking 50. The female victim, 50, said she felt sick watching the footage and claims she had even discussed money going missing with Christmas - who was her friend for over ten years. The woman, who lives in Guilden Morden, Cambs., with her 56-year-old husband, said: 'In retrospect we feel stupid that we have not realised what was going on at the time but we had no reason to suspect her. 'It's the disappointment that someone has cultivated a friendship simply for their own monetary gain. 'For us it makes you think how could we have been so blind? But Tracey was seen as a family member and spent more time at our home than at her own. 'I think her sentence is appropriate but it has not affected her life at all, she just keeps clean for a year and it doesn't make any difference on her life. 'I was really angry. I felt really physically sick watching somebody I knew going through my personal possessions. 'We would like to think that we can trust people again but unfortunately it affects how we deal with other people that come into our house now.' The CCTV later caught Christmas attempting to steal two other times, before she was seen again quickly going through the woman's hand bag and taking 50 The couple claim the CCTV had been up for less than a week and caught Christmas on four different occasions stealing or attempting to steal. Cambridge Crown Court heard on August 30 how Christmas grew close to the family after being employed to look after their horses and do odd chores around the house. Paul Brown, prosecuting, said: 'The defendant also babysat for the couple's son, who is now nine-years-old, and looked after their house when they were away. 'However, she did not have free reign of the house and there were areas she was not allowed into. 'The family involved in the case became concerned about money going missing from the house and decided to install CCTV. 'They became suspicious; even confronting other family members and workers at the house over the missing money.' On March 9 this year, the defendant was caught on CCTV entering a room in the house in Guilden Morden, Cambs. Christmas denied the offences when confronted face to face by the family involved - but eventually admitted them once the family told her she had been caught on CCTV. She said she would pay the family back by direct debit and they 'wouldn't need to involve the police', but the family thought it was too late for that. In police interview, Christmas, who had no previous convictions, admitted the offences. The court was told how her 'clear and stupid' breach of trust caused arguments within the family and made her victims feel 'physically sick' once they saw the CCTV of her rifling through their things. The female victim added: 'It is just upsetting and we feel angry that she is probably living her life as normal and we now can't trust people. 'You always like to think you see the best in people but now we sort of tarnish everyone with the same brush.' Magistrates handed Christmas, from Biggleswade, Cambs., a 20 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months. Vile behaviour: BBC reporter Manpreet Mellhi has hit out at two racist Sainsbury's shoppers she claims hid bags of pork scratchings in her basket after wrongly thinking she was Muslim A BBC reporter has hit out at two racist Sainsbury's shoppers she claims hid bags of pork scratchings in her basket after wrongly believing she was Muslim. Manpreet Mellhi, 32, was born in Britain and her family heritage is Sikh, with her father and maternal grandparents hailing from India and her mother from Kenya. The BBC Radio Gloucestershire reporter told how she was in a Sainsbury's supermarket when she became aware of two people chuckling in her direction. She later looked down at her basket to find two packets of pork scratchings had been placed there. Ms Mellhi believes the incident may have been an attempt to mock the Muslim religion because eating pork is forbidden in Islam. The journalist, from Cheltenham, took to social media site Twitter after the incident and wrote: 'To person who dropped two bags of pork scratchings into my basket in Sainsbury's: your pitiful Saturday activity backfired. I'm not Muslim.' She later said the 'bizarre' incident had offended her and added: 'It shocked me a bit. 'I think it was deliberate, though I couldn't say 100 per cent, but nothing about it was a normal situation. 'Did people want to offend me? I don't know. Did they think it was funny? Probably. 'Had I been a Muslim or had it happened to a Muslim then I would have found it more offensive than I did. The journalist took to Twitter and wrote: 'To person who dropped two bags of pork scratchings into my basket in Sainsbury's: your pitiful Saturday activity backfired. I'm not Muslim' Racist stunt: Ms Mellhi, a reporter for BBC Radio Gloucestershire, believes the incident may have been an attempt to mock the Muslim religion because eating pork is forbidden in Islam 'It's sad for someone to go into a supermarket on a Saturday and mock somebody.' Earlier this year another BBC news presenter was left in 'utter shock' after suffering racist abuse in her home town when she was called a 'P***'. Sima Kotecha, 36, who is from Basingstoke, Hampshire, said that she had not heard the word used in the area since the 1980s. The incident followed a 57 per cent rise in 'hate crimes' since the EU referendum result, which saw Britain decide to leave. In particular, police have been investigating a number of attacks on Poles and Muslims. Data has revealed the NATO countries who are not spending enough on defence to warrant Donald Trump using US forces to protect them from an attack. The President elect caused alarm during his election campaign by suggesting Washington would think twice about coming to the aid of an endangered NATO ally if it had not paid its dues. The alliance has set a target for its members of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence - but the likes of France, Germany and Canada are among more than 20 members not meeting the objective, figures show. Data has revealed the NATO countries not spending enough on defence to warrant Donald Trump using US forces to protect them from an attack The alliance has set a target for its members of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence - but the likes of France, Germany and Canada are among more than 20 members not meeting the objective, figures show Even Eastern European NATO members Latvia - bordering Russia - and neighbouring Lithuania are projected to spend less than the target level in 2016. Slovakia and Hungary - both bordering Ukraine - do not meet the 2 per cent recommendation either, according to defenseone. Mr Trump provoked alarm earlier this year by saying that the military alliance was created to confront a threat - the Soviet Union - that no longer exists and has called the alliance 'obsolete' and a bad deal for America. He argues that the US gets too little out of decades-old security partnerships like NATO, which is anchored in Europe but traditionally led by America. In an interview earlier this year he said he would look to see whether countries had 'fulfilled their obligations to us' before deciding whether to come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack. The President elect caused alarm during his election campaign by suggesting Washington would think twice about coming to the aid of an endangered NATO ally if it had not paid its dues In an interview earlier this year Trump said he would look to see whether countries had 'fulfilled their obligations to us' before deciding whether to come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack The 70-year-old also hit out at EU countries who are not paying their share of the bill for NATO. America picks up more than 70 per cent of the cost. Britain, Greece, Estonia and Poland are the only other four of the 28 members to have signed up to the spending target. But the likes of France (1.8 per cent), Canada (1 per cent) and Germany (1.2 per cent) are not reaching the suggested level of expenditure. Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg spend less than 1 per cent on defence, the statistics show. Portugal, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and Canada all spend between 1 per cent and 1.4 per cent. Meanwhile, France, Turkey, Norway, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia spend between 1.5 and 1.9 per cent of GDP of defence. Yesterday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg issued a stark warning that 'going it alone is not an option' following Trump's stunning US election victory. Mr Trump provoked alarm earlier this year by saying that the military alliance was created to confront a threat - the Soviet Union - that no longer exists and has called the alliance 'obsolete' and a bad deal for America. Soldiers are pictured during a NATO exercise in Poland this year NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg issued a stark warning that 'going it alone is not an option' following Trump's stunning US election victory 'We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation,' Stoltenberg wrote in The Observer as he outlined NATO's strengths, amid concerns over the president-elect's position on the US-led alliance. 'This is no time to question the partnership between Europe and the United States.' Stoltenberg noted that the only time NATO's self-defence clause - 'an attack on one is an attack on all' - has been invoked was after the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. More than 1,000 European soldiers serving in Afghanistan 'paid the ultimate price' in an operation that was 'a direct response' to the attacks, he added. He said NATO had made possible the 'integration of Europe' and ended the Cold War, adding: 'European leaders have always understood that going it alone is not an option.' The alliance continues to play a key role in fighting terrorism and has responded in recent years to 'a more assertive Russia', Stoltenberg added. In September, Dias was named Elle Magazine's editor-in-residence and given her own digital 'zine called Marley Mag Goal of Dias' literacy campaign is to promote diversity in children's literature Dias, a seventh-grader from New Jersey, delivered an hour-long speech to staff and led an hour and a half-long workshop for 50 middle-schoolers Marley Dias, creator of #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign, spoke at an event in Poughkeepsie, A New York school district paid an 11-year-old child advocate $6,500 plus expenses for delivering a keynote address at an event and hosting a student workshop last week. The Poughkeepsie City School District hired Marley Dias to speak during the superintendent's conference day last Tuesday. On Wednesday, the board voted 3-1 to retroactively approve Dias' consultant agreement at its meeting. Pint-sized speaker: Marley Dias, an 11-year-old literacy advocate, delivered the keynote address at the superintendent's conference day in Poughkeepsie last Tuesday Girl power: Dias also led an hour and a half-long workshop about diversity in children's literature for 50 middle-schoolers The Poughkeepsie City School District's board voted 3-1 to retroactively approve Dias' $6,500 speaking fee, but not without a fight Dias is a literacy advocate who launched the popular #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign last year to draw attention to the lack of racial diversity in children's literature. She gave an hour-long speech to staff before leading an hour and a half-long workshop for 50 middle school students. Classes were not in session on Tuesday due to of Election Day. Superintendent Nicole Williams defended her decision to hire Dias as a speaker at Wednesday's meeting, saying that the girl's resume is 'tremendous' and the district shouldn't discriminate because she's 11 years old, reported The Poughkeepsie Journal. Dias was paid through funding from a federal education program. Board Trustee Felicia Watson was the only person to vote against the agreement with Dias, saying that her fiscal responsibility was to the district and that the girl's speaking fee was 'exorbitant.' Book lover: Dias, pictured left posing with her award at the 5th Annual Foundation for Letters Gala at IAC Building on October 19, and right at the Variety's Power Of Women Luncheon, launched her #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign last year Dias, pictured attending the African Health Now 'Gift of Life' Benefit at Chelsea Piers Sunset Terrace on October 20, had set out to collect and distribute 1,000 books about black girls Some local parents and taxpayers also questioned the board's decision to hire the 11-year-old literacy advocate in light of the districts financial woes. At least 80 per cent of attending students in the distinct are considered economically disadvantaged, and it has been relying on state aid for more than 65 per cent of its budget. The cash-strapped Poughkeepsie School District has been struggling to fill multi-million budget gaps, forcing administrators to cut job and increase class sizes. In responding to her critics, Superintendent Williams argued that given that fact that 90 per cent of the districts students are below reading level, there is a dire need to motivate them to read, which is why Dias was brought in on Tuesday to give her presentation. Williams added that the 11-year-old keynote speaker delivered a message to students and teachers that was 'just as powerful as any adults.' Marley Dias, a seventh-grader at Roosevelt Middle School in West Orange, New Jersey, launched her children's literacy campaign in 2015 after noticing a dearth of black female protagonists in the books she read, reported NJ.com. A study by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin has found that fewer than 10 per cent of children's books published in 2015 had a black person as the main character. Empowered: Dias' campaign has drawn the attention of prominent African American women, including First Lady Michelle Obama (left) and Oprah Winfrey (right) Thrilled: The 11-year-old activist seemed excited to have met pop star Miley Cyrus (left) Dias, an avid book lover, set out to collect and distribute 1,000 books about black girls. A year into her initiative, the precocious 11-year-old has far exceeded her initial goal, collecting more than 8,000 books, which she then donated to her school library and to schools across the US and in places like Jamaica and Haiti. Marley's campaign promoting diversity in children's literature has drawn the attention of national media and offered her a chance to meet First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. In September, the 11-year-old landed her dream job, having been named an editor-in-residence for Elle Magazine's website, which launched a pop culture and lifestyle digital 'zine for Dias called Marley Mag. In the blink of an eye, I've gone from being a book nerd in West Orange, New Jersey, to an Editor-in-Residence in New York City, Dias wrote in a welcome letter for Elle.com. I've always said that books have taken me on many adventures, but none of those adventures have been quite like this one. Keeping it 100: Dias is pictured above posing with former Comedy Central talk show host and comedian Larry Wilmore Familiar faces: In April, Marley was photographed with Rihanna at the Black Girls Rock! event in New Jersey. In October, she took a selfie with Common at a concert in Philadelphia For her debut issue, Dias interviewed Oscar-nominated writer-director Ava DuVernay and prima ballerina Misty Copeland. In October, Dias spoke to then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who shared an amusing story from her childhood about how a barber accidentally chopped off her hair, forcing her to wear a fake ponytail to school. The presidential hopeful also offered Dias some words of wisdom about ambition, reported The Grio. Star in the making: Despite her tender age, Dias has been busy making appearances around the country at various high-profile events and glamorous soirees 'I would say that when you have a big dream or youre trying to solve a big problem, there will always be people who tell you that you cant,' Clinton told Dias. 'Heres my advice: dont listen. Keep striving for your goals, and remember that its good to be ambitious. Theres nothing wrong with knowing what you want and going after it.' Despite her tender age, Dias has been busy making appearances around the country at various high-profile events and glamorous soirees. On November 11, just days after the event in New York, she headed to Boston to speak at the Inbound 2016 business conference. In late October, Marley attended Variety's Power of Women luncheon in Beverly Hills. Marley's mother is Dr Janice Johnson Dias, who holds a PhD in sociology from Temple University with a specialization in urban and political sociology. Dr Dias is president of the GrassROOTS Community Foundation - a social action organization co-founded by Black Thought, of The Roots fame. Workers set to be punished in public included a Employees from a Chinese sales company - including a pregnant woman - were forced to eat live worms after they failed to reach their sales targets, according to Chinese media. Pictures have emerged showing these sales workers having to drink Chinese rice wine which contained squirming mealworms in front of their colleagues. The incident took place in Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, on November 8, according to Huashang Daily. Employees from a Chinese sales company were forced to eat live worms soaked in hard liquor after they failed to reach their sales target According to the report, 50 to 60 employees, all wearing yellow uniforms, gathered at a public square in Hanzhong to witness the punishment. Many of them were holding leaflets promoting building materials and construction services. The employees worked for a sales group named 'Ai Jia', or 'home loving' in Chinese. The sales group was jointly formed by 10 construction companies, a participant told a reporter of Huashang Daily. A man, thought to be a supervisor, carried two plastic bags in his hands. He announced the names of the employees who had failed to bring in enough clients for the companies the day before. In one of the plastic bags held by the man, there were a large number of live mealworms. In the other, there were chopsticks, glasses and two bottles of Baijiu, a hard liquor which is around 40 to 60 percent alcohol. The man poured the Baijiu into glasses. He then used chopsticks to put mealworms into the glasses of wine. Employees who had missed their sales targets were ordered to drink the mixture in front of their work colleagues. One employee told the reporter from Huashang Daily: 'Today we are punished to eat mealworms. 'For every client we missed, he has to eat four worms.' Every morning, employees at the group set a business target for the day. If they fail to hit the target, they will receive punishment on the following day. A pregnant female employee, who had also missed the sales target, refused to drink the mixture of hard liquor and live worms. She said: 'I can't eat worms now, I can't drink either, unless I don't want my baby.' Eventually one of her male colleagues received the punishment on behalf of her. A pregnant employee was also told to eat the worms and drink the wine, but she refused Five to six employees ended up eating the worms and the public punishment attracted the attention from onlookers. Apparently, this was not the first time staff from the company had been given cruel punishments. 'Other than worms, we have also eaten live squid and ants before,' one employee revealed. A man, surnamed Cao, claimed that the employees were 'willing to receive punishment'. Mr Cao is the owner of a bathroom equipment company, which jointly formed the sales group. Another company owner however said the punishment was a 'special form of encouragement'. Employees were ordered to drink the wine containing worms in front of their work colleagues According to the article 88 of China's employment contract law, employers are not allowed to humiliate and give corporal punishment to workers, Chinese government said on its website. The employer shall be liable for compensation if any harm is done to the worker, said the article. The labour inspection bureau of Hanzhong city told reporters of Huashang Daily that forcing employees to eat live mealworms was regarded as a kind of physical punishment. The workers should report the case to labour department, said one official from the labour inspection bureau. The unusual punishment has sparked criticisms from users of Weibo, a popular social media platform. One user said: 'Does eating worms help improve business?' Another one joked: 'If I worked there, I would pour all the worms onto the head of the boss.' Syed Hoque (pictured outside the Old Bailey) is said to have supplied cash to the terrorist, his nephew Mohammed Choudhury, and discussed the beheading of enemies A group of UK-based Islamic extremists used charity convoys taking food and medicine to Syria as a cover to smuggle money to terrorists, a court has heard. The four men allegedly sent 4,500 to a fighter with Al Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra so he could buy a sniper rifle and other military equipment. They also plotted to set up a 'night team' of terrorist snipers in the war-torn country, it was claimed. Syed Hoque, 37, is said to have supplied cash to the terrorist, his nephew Mohammed Choudhury, 26, and discussed the beheading of enemies. Mashoud Miah, 27, is said to have acted as a 'fixer' while Mohammed Hussain, 30, and Pervez Rafiq, 46, allegedly sourced equipment to be sent to Syria on charity convoys. Prosecutor Annabel Darlow QC told the Old Bailey: 'The defendants made use, or so it would appear, of aid convoys as a means of moving money and other property out of the United Kingdom to Syria. 'The prosecution do not suggest that the aid convoys themselves did not have an overall charitable purpose, or that those participating did not intend by the provision of food and medicine to help the civilian population suffering in Syria. 'However the convoys would have provided a useful conduit for these defendants to abuse the spirit of the convoys to convey money and property to terrorists.' Miss Darlow added: 'This is not about helping orphans in Syria... this is about arms.' The plot was uncovered when Hoque and his wife Nazia Khanom were stopped at Heathrow Airport on their return from Bangladesh on 5 August 2014. Analysis of the contents of their phones later revealed Whatsapp chats to Hoque's nephew Mohammed Choudhury, who was fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra, the terrorist wing of Al Qaeda in Syria. Messages are said to have showed that Hoque had supplied his nephew with money and discussed buying a Dragunov sniper rifle, AK-47 and a nightscope. Messages are said to have showed that Hoque had supplied his nephew with money and discussed buying a Dragunov sniper rifle, AK-47 and a nightscope Choudhury had left the UK for Cairo in September 2012 and did not return on the booked flight for July 2013, instead making his way to Syria. Miss Darlow said: 'Syed Hoque was only too aware that his nephew was engaged in military conflict and that he sought by violent means the death and destruction of the Syrian President and his supporters. 'Hoque actively encouraged Choudhury in these goals and repeatedly both provided and offered to provide financial and other support to Choudhury.' In one chat Hoque even tried to 'reign in some of Choudhury's worst excesses' by advising him to behead his enemies but not mutilate them, jurors heard. Detectives also found a list of equipment which Miah was trying to gather together, including a satellite phone, SatNav, iPad, laptop and Kestrel ballistics software to help a shooter fire more accurately. 'This was a list of equipment which would be of enormous use to someone based in a region such as Syria, where normal communications had broken down,' said Miss Darlow. A search of Hussain's home uncovered a notebook referring to 3,000 and a to-do list mentioning a range finder and satellite phone. Hoque allegedly sent the 3,000 to Syria on a Children in Deen convoy leaving the UK on 25 July 2013 and 1,500 on an Al Fatiha convoy leaving the UK on 21 December 2013. He also offered to help Miah raise funds for his plan for a night team of snipers, the court heard. On October 16 2013, shortly after one charity convoy set off, Choudhury told Hoque that he was going on an IED training course and asked him to try and get hold of a night scope with the 'greatest zoom'. But by December 21, he had changed his mind. Hoque asked told him: 'Try and save some of the money I have to buy a car there, and also, remember the 3000 for the Dragunov [that] Abu Issah [Miah] had? He said he would buy a sniper rifle for you. Did he buy it for you? If not he can still give you the 3000. 'I told him to buy a sniper for you as you didn't have any, he said he would but I'm not sure if you reminded him.' Choudhury said he would rather have a car: 'No, he didn't buy it n Dragunov is not good, but from the 3000 I bought a AK [assault rifle] for 1800 abwt 5 mnths ago...I can borrow a sniper [rifle] from da kateeba [squad]. I jst need a car.' Nevertheless, Miah was still focused on creating a team if night fighters, boasting on January 30 2014 that he had 'created a nyt [night] team' adding that it 'cost a lot of money.' 'How can I send [a little money]?' Hoque responded. He asked Choudhury: 'Have you gone on night missions yet with your team? How many brothers?' 'Not yet cause still need to buy some stuff,' Miah replied. 'Its very expensive but it will be very effective inshallah. There is no nyt team at all amonst da brs [brothers] so get ur hands on dis.' Hoque, of Stockingstone Road, Luton, denies three counts of entering into an arrangement to supply money or property to terrorists. Miah, of Aston Street, Limehouse, east London, Hussain, of Galsworthy Avenue, Limehouse, and Rafique, of Basil Street, Huddersfield, all deny one count of entering into an arrangement to supply money or property to terrorists. The mother who posted a photograph of her chance meeting with Hillary Clinton in the woods after the Democrat's election defeat has insisted the shot was not staged. Margot Gerster was accused of 'faking' the encounter in an attempt to boost Clinton's public image after it emerged it was not the first time the pair had met. But Ms Gerster, from Westchester, New York, insisted the meeting on a Chappaqua hiking trail - the day after the shock result - was a compete coincidence. 'It was very random. In 100,000 years, I would have never expected running into Hillary Clinton in the woods,' she told the New York Post. Margot Gerster (left) has insisted the photograph of her chance meeting with Hillary Clinton in the woods after the Democrat's election defeat was not staged 'It was a very positive experience for me and a lot of other people. That's why I posted it.' She confirmed she had met the politician before when her mother hosted a fundraiser in Clinton's honor at Crabtree's Kittle House in Chappaqua. Ms Gerster said she was aged 14 or 15 when she was pictured posing for a photo inside the restaurant, which is one of the politician's favorites. It was this picture that prompted speculation the meeting in the woods may have been set-up. But the mother dismissed claims she was a long-time ally of the Clintons who had orchestrated the heartwarming snap. 'If I were long-time friends of the Clintons, I wouldn't be keeping that a secret. I'd be bragging about it to everyone I know,' she said. She confirmed she had met the politician before when her mother hosted a fundraiser in Clinton's honor at Crabtree's Kittle House in Chappaqua The picture was taken when Ms Gerster was out hiking with her young daughter in the upstate New York town of Chappaqua - where the Clintons have a home. Clinton was said to have been out walking her dogs with former president Bill Clinton, when Ms Gerster spotted them. The former first lady was beaming from ear to ear in the picture and appeared to have had the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders. In her caption, Ms Gerster wrote that she was 'so heartbroken' after the Democrat's loss. 'I've been feeling so heartbroken since yesterday's election and decided what better way to relax than take my girls hiking,' Ms Gerster wrote. The picture was taken one day after Clinton conceded her shock election defeat 'So I decided to take them to one of favorite places in Chappaqua. We were the only ones there and it was so beautiful and relaxing. 'As we were leaving, I heard a bit of rustling coming towards me and as I stepped into the clearing there she was, Hillary Clinton and Bill with their dogs doing exactly the same thing as I was. 'I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking Phoebe with me to vote for her. 'She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk.' A New York man was taken to hospital after his girlfriend pushed him onto Manhattan subway tracks during an argument, police said. The 41-year-old man was briefly hospitalized after he was shoved onto tracks at the Union Square subway station on Monday around 6am. His 30-year-old girlfriend fled the station and the man told responding officers he had fallen into the trackbed, according to the New York Daily News. Scroll down for video A 41-year-old man was briefly hospitalized after he was shoved onto tracks at Union Square subway station (file photo) on Monday around 6am Monday's incident comes just a day after a New Jersey man was arrested for pushing his friend Mike Allison (pictured) onto subway tracks on sunday where he was injured by a train Allison suffered head and foot injuries after being struck by an oncoming, northbound No. 2 train, police said. He is pictured being removed from the scene early Sunday The man was not struck by a train and was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was treated for minor injuries and released. The incident comes just a day after a New Jersey man was arrested for pushing his friend onto Manhattan subway tracks where he was injured by a train, police said. Aaron Clary, 25, of Newark turned himself in and has been arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter and assault, police said on Monday. He and two other men were 'highly intoxicated' when he pushed his pal Mike Allison, 54, during an argument early Sunday at 7.30am, police said. Sunday's incident occurred at the 18th Street subway station in Chelsea, police said. The victim, the suspect and a third friend were all 'highly intoxicated' police said Allison suffered head and foot injuries after being struck by a northbound No. 1 train as it entered the 18th Street subway station in Chelsea, police said. When police arrived at the scene, they found Allison on the tracks, pinned under the train. He was alert and conscious when he was removed and taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment where he is in stable condition, according to police. Allison told police he could not remember what happened and that he had been shoved onto the tracks, the New York Post reported. The third friend and a booth clerk reportedly witnessed the push. The victim was alert and conscious when he was removed and taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment where he is in stable condition, according to police Following the incident, Aaron Clary, 25, of Newark turned himself in and has been arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter and assault, police said on Monday It is not clear at this time why Clary and Allison had been fighting. Clary and his friends had been drinking at Peter McManus Cafe a block away before the incident took place, a police source told the New York Daily News. The trio had reportedly been drinking since 5pm on Saturday before the Sunday morning incident. Following the incident, No 1, 2 and 3 trains were running with service changes in both directions before regular service resumed around 10am, amNewYork reported. Britain last night declared victory as European defence chiefs killed off plans for an EU army with its own military headquarters in Brussels. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told fellow ministers they should now instead heed Donald Trumps call for them to spend more on building up their own military capabilities. But he played down the newly elected Presidents campaign warning that they should not expect protection from Nato if they do not meet defence spending targets. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, pictured, warned his EU counterparts that Britain will veto any plans which will undermine Nato while the country remains a member of the union Boris Johnson was in Brussels today for talks with counterparts over future defence plans Arriving for the meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, Mr Fallon said: Instead of planning expensive new headquarters or dreaming of a European army, what Europe needs to do now is spend more on its own defence. That is the best possible approach to the Trump presidency. Britain meets the two per cent commitment, other European countries need to increase their own defence spending. Brussels officials had drawn up a blueprint of steps towards creating a European army including the building of a military command base. But Mr Fallon had warned Britain would veto any proposals that would threaten Nato while it still remains an EU member. Last night he claimed success as plans for future defence cooperation were watered down after a string of countries backed the British stance. He said: Its moving our way. Were avoiding a new military headquarters, the level of ambition seems to have been tempered. So we have moved a long way from the initial concerns about an EU army. And that is not simply Britain, there was resistance around the room from a large number of member states. The level of ambition has clearly changed. During the U.S. presidential election Mr Trump provoked alarm by saying he would look to see if Nato member countries had 'fulfilled their obligations to us' before deciding whether to come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack. Mr Johnson, pictured in Brussels today, told reporters that the UK would not seek to block closer military cooperation within the EU, despite concerns about undermining NATO Mr Johnson shared a laugh with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni (pictured right) and Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders (pictured centre) at the summit today Under Natos collective defence rules, members are all bound to protect each other if one came under attack. Mr Fallon last night said European countries need not worry so much about Mr Trumps election if they stepped up their defence spending, but dismissed his warning as campaign rhetoric. Every successive American administration has played its leadership role in Nato, I dont expect a Trump-led White House to be any different, he said. Only five of Natos 28 members (Britain, Estonia, Greece, Poland and the U.S.) are currently on target to meet their commitments to spend two per cent of their national income on defence. US president-elect Donald Trump caused alarm during his election campaign by suggesting Washington would think twice about coming to the aid of an endangered NATO ally if it had not paid its dues Figures show that Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg currently achieve less than one per cent. Mr Fallon said: We all made that commitment at the Wales summit [in 2014]. Some 20 countries have started to increase their defence spending, but only 10 I believe have set out firm plans to meet the two per cent in addition to the five that meet it at the moment. So that is 15, only half of the 28 are actually committed to the 2pc and that is not good enough. The EUs foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini last night insisted The European Union is a superpower but she dismissed claims she had wanted to create an EU army. A man who was dumped by his fiancee has had a legal bid to reclaim the cost of an engagement ring he bought her squashed in a civil tribunal. Bilal Omari, from Canberra, first approached the family of Melbourne woman Fadwa Yassine with the proposal of an arranged marriage in 2014. The pair celebrated an engagement party in May last year, during which the ring and other gifts were exchanged, but the relationship broke down five months later. It's believed the engagement was called off after Mr Omari refused to relocate to Melbourne, which Ms Yassine's father understood to have been a mutual agreement. Mr Omari took legal action against his former fiancee when she refused to return the ring, asking for the value of the ring and other gifts plus interest. Canberra man Bilal Omari took his former fiancee Fadwa Yassine to court to reclaim the costs of the engagement ring after their arranged relationship broke down (stock image) Documents recording the former couple's legal dispute were filed in the ACT's Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT). Senior ACAT member Graeme Lunney dismissed the claims, meaning Ms Yassine can keep the engagement ring, but ordered both parties to pay their own legal fees. 'In my view there was not a unilateral withdrawal by one party in breach of a prior promise, but a recognition by two people that their relationship had reached a tipping point, and in the absence of any further action was over,' Mr Lunney said. 'Consequently, in my view there was no 'breach' that occurred in the ACT which would give this Tribunal jurisdiction in the proceedings brought by the applicant. 'It was mutual recognition of an unhappy state of affairs that was beyond repair. In those circumstances the Tribunal lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate the dispute.' Slater and Gordon's head of family law Heather McKinnon told news.com.au that the court's classification of an engagement ring as a gift or an investment piece was crucial in determining where it ended up in the event of a break-up. 'You don't go to court and pay $20,000 to $30,000 in lawyer's fees over a $5000 ring. You do it if it's of significant value,' Ms McKinnon told the publication. 'Usually it's with arranged marriages where big money changes hands, so these relationships are more likely to give rise to disputes. 'Often people go overseas to get the diamond and bring it back to Australia to get the ring fitted, so then it rises in value considerably.' Mark Krikorian thinks the deal will be shut down under Donald Trump A prominent US anti-immigration think tank does not believe deal will last Mr Turnbull said they will deal with The Turnbull government's new refugee deal struck with the U.S. should go ahead under president-elect Donald Trump according to the prime minister. Malcolm Turnbull said he was 'confident' the new deal to take refugees from Manus island and Nauru detention centres to the U.S. under a deal struck with the Obama administration would go ahead. Issues were raised after president-elect Donald Trump fervently campaigned on putting up a wall to keep Mexicans out. Scroll down for video Speaking on the ABC's 7.30 Mr Turnbull was only willing to tackle one administration at a time as the issue had not been discussed with Mr Trump A prominent US anti-immigration think tank has warned the deal won't last Mr Trump's first day as president (Stock Image) But, speaking on the ABC's 7.30 Mr Turnbull was only willing to tackle one administration at a time as the issue had not been discussed with Mr Trump. 'We deal with one administration at a time. You don't discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration,' he said. Up to 1600 refugees at the detention camps are eligible to move to the U.S., but the timing and number of people is up to the U.S. government. Asked if the deal will go ahead if no action has taken place before Trump is in office on January 20, Mr Turnbull was adamant. 'You are entitled to speculate about that, but I'm confident that the arrangements that we've set in place will continue,' he said. Labor leader Bill Shorten said the opposition would take a 'constructive approach'. A prominent US anti-immigration think tank has warned the deal won't last Mr Trump's first day as president. 'My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival,' Mark Krikorian, executive director of the influential Centre for Immigration Studies, told Fairfax Media. Malcolm Turnbull said he was 'confident' the new deal to take refugees from Manus island and Nauru detention centres to the U.S. under a deal struck with the Obama administration would go ahead (Stock Image) 'I don't expect any Republicans will defend it; I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either.' Refugee Council president Phil Glendenning described the deal as a vital first step. But One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson is not happy. 'I feel for the American people. They are going to get these refugees, that it is not their responsibility at all,' she told the Seven Network. A leading German socialist has caused fury after calling on Jeremy Corbyn to block Brexit. Axel Schafer, the politician in charge of Brexit for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), said Mr Corbyn had made a 'big mistake' by promising to back the triggering of Article 50, which sets in motion the two-year process for leaving the EU. Amid increasing fears that MPs could defy June's referendum, he accused the Labour leader of abandoning the 48 per cent of voters who backed staying in the EU in June's referendum and urged him to rethink his approach. But his controversial intervention has enraged Brexit supporters. Tory MP Peter Bone told MailOnline that Mr Schafer should 'but out of our politics and get his own house in order'. Jeremy Corbyn (pictured at the BBC's studio in central London yesterday) has been urged to block Brexit by Labour's sister party in Germany Mr Corbyn confirmed yesterday that he will instruct Labour MPs not to oppose Theresa May's plan to trigger Article 50 early next year. But more than 80 MPs are threatening to defy June's Brexit vote by voting against Brexit in Parliament, which will go ahead if the Government loses its appeal against the High Court ruling that said MPs and peers must be consulted before Article 50 is triggered. Mr Schafer said Labour should oppose Britain's departure from the EU because a majority of the party's voters backed Remain. He told The Times: 'It is a big mistake of Corbyn to say the majority of the people were in favour, therefore the Labour Party supports Brexit.' Mr Schafer added: 'Of course they have to vote against Brexit. If the majority of people are in favour of this, Labour should say, "OK, we are sorry but we cannot follow always the majority". Otherwise this is the end of different parties.' His comments drew an angry reaction from Tory MPs. Axel Schafer (pictured), the politician in charge of Brexit for the Social Democratic Party, said Mr Corbyn had made a 'big mistake' by refusing to block Brexit Mr Bone said: 'German MPs shouldn't stick their noses in our politics... don't stick your oar in and get it wrong.' 'At least Corbyn's had the sense to accept the will of the people. I think he's [Mr Schafer] probably part of the European elite and completely out of touch.' He added: 'What you don't do is get involved in another country's elections and start telling them what to do. 'It is part of the European elite that they think they know best and they think they know better than us. 'He should butt out of our politics and get his own house in order.' Mr Schafer's intervention will embolden Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, who is leading the growing number of MPs and peers committed to blocking any vote on triggering Article 50. The coalition of 84 Lib Dem, SNP, SDLP and Labour MPs are expected to amend the Government's Article 50 bill with demands for a second referendum. They will only vote for Article 50 if the Government gives the public a vote on the final deal. The plot threatens to derail Mrs May's timetable for leaving the EU by spring 2019. Tory MPs have called on Mrs May to call their bluff by calling a snap election to give her a mandate for triggering Article 50, but Downing Street has repeatedly ruled out calling an election before 2020. Jeremy Corbyn (pictured alongside Theresa May at yesterday's Remembrance Sunday ceremony in central London) has promised not to seek to 'frustrate' the Government's timetable for triggering Article 50 Mr Corbyn pledged not to join the coalition of MPs demanding a second referendum and said that despite demanding assurances from the Government on workers rights and access to the single market, he said he will not seek to 'frustrate' the Government's timetable for triggering Article 50. Nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of Labour voters backed remaining in the EU but Mr Corbyn told the Andrew Marr Show yesterday that Labour will 'respect the referendum' result. 'Therefore, there is going to be a departure from the European Union,' he said. 'We will demand that we have market access, workers' protection, consumer protection, environmental protection, justice issues through the European Court.' More than half of voters (57 per cent) believe MPs should act in line with the referendum result when the Commons decides on leaving the EU, with 30 per cent saying they should go with their consciences. Donald Trump wavered on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server after the catchphrase 'lock her up' was frequently chanted at his rallies. Trump said he was 'going to think about it', adding, 'They're good people. I don't want to hurt them,' during an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday. Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani also weighed the possibility and acknowledged a case against Clinton 'might look like a vindictive prosecution' even though he wanted 'equal justice under the law'. Scroll down for video Donald Trump wavered on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server Trump's first TV interview since the election aired Sunday evening (pictured, on 60 Minutes) After supporters continued to chant 'lock her up', Trump said in July: 'I've been saying let's just beat her on November 8th. But you know what, I'm starting to agree with you.' He left many viewers stunned during the second presidential debate in October, when he told Clinton she'd be in jail if he were 'in charge of the law in our country'. He said: ' If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your [email] situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.' On Sunday, Trump was unsure about whether he would follow through during his first sit-down interview since the elections. 'I'm going to think about it,' he said, promising that he would have a 'very, very good and definitive answer' on his next 60 Minutes interview with host Lesley Stahl. Trump said: 'Um, I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on healthcare, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. 'We want to have a great immigration bill. And I want to focus on - all of these other things that we've been talking about.' He told Stahl that while his opponent 'did some bad things', the Clintons are 'good people'. 'I don't want to hurt them,' Trump said. Clinton's (left) use of a private server dogged her throughout the campaign, with Trump supporters frequently chanting 'lock her up' (right, FBI director James Comey) He left many viewers stunned during the second presidential debate in October, when he told Clinton she'd be in jail if he were 'in charge of the law in our country' Giuliani also called it a 'tough decision', weighing both options before saying it would be up to the next attorney general - a position he could very well be appointed to. He told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday: 'As a lawyer, I hate to use the 'on the one hand, but the other,' but on the one hand, you don't want to disrupt the nation with what might look like a vindictive prosecution, even though it might not be. 'On the other hand, you want equal justice under the law, and if she has violated the law you know, the FBI never completed the [Clinton] foundation investigation. 'That's, as far as I know, that's still an ongoing investigation. They completed the email investigation, but not the Foundation investigation.' Giuliani said: 'I don't know if that will be me or not, but the next attorney general would have to figure that out.' But even then, Giuliani said the decision would most likely be passed onto an independent counsel, before adding: 'Or maybe that you want to sort of put that behind you. I don't know, that's a tough decision.' Giuliani (pictured) said: 'I don't know if that will be me or not, but the next attorney general would have to figure that out' In July, FBI director James Comey announced while Clinton was 'extremely careless' in her use of a private email server, 'no reasonable prosecutor' would bring a case against her. But on October 28, just 11 days before the elections, Comey sent another letter to Congress announcing the FBI had uncovered emails possibly related to its earlier probe. Comey told lawmakers the Sunday before the election that the bureau had found no evidence to warrant criminal charges, but Clinton said the move only motivated Trump supporters. Giuliani was referring to a federal investigation centered around claims the Clinton Foundation doled out favors in exchange for donations while Hillary was Secretary of State. The FBI stalled the investigation, in addition to another one linked to Trump's campaign for fear of influencing the presidential election in either direction, only for Comey to break step with the precedent set throughout the summer. Business / Companies by Thobekile Zhou The controversial Dema Diesel Power Plant is consuming 25 million litres per month which is all imported duty free, a parliamentary committee heard today (Monday).However, the Dema project consumes 12 million litres of diesel per month to produce 100MW.The multimillion dollar Dema Diesel Power Plant was meant to consume 24 million litres of fuel per month.The plant is said to be a priority under Zim-Asset.However, during the commited session, Zanu PF Zvishavane-Ngezi MP John Holder queried why the 25 million litres for Dema project is being permitted to be imported duty free instead of the prescribed 12m litres.In response, a Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Agency ( ZERA) official said the "extra" fuel is for emergency purposes.Sakunda Holdings, which has partnered with President Robert Mugabe's in-law Derrick Chikore, brother to Simba was awarded the contract, initially pegged at $194 million a year, without going to tender.The project was mooted by government last year as a measure to ease acute power shortages which saw households and industry endure rolling power cuts that helped decimate local industry. After Donald Trump's stunning election victory, Twitter has erupted with funny memes imagining Vice President Joe Biden's last laugh at the White House. The memes hilariously imagine Biden coming up with ploys to prank president-elect Trump before he takes office in January. They also shed light on Biden and President Barack Obama's close relationship as his eight years in office come to an end. Scroll down for video After Donald Trump's stunning election victory, Twitter users have come up with hilarious memes imagining Vice President Joe Biden coming up with ploys to plank Trump The memes imagine Biden having a last laugh at the White House before Trump takes office In one meme, Biden says he is going to ask Trump if he wants something to eat before adding, 'and then I'm going to offer him knuckle sandwiches' Some of the amusing memes made reference to Trump and the so-called 'birther' movement he fueled that questioned whether Obama had been born on US soil and was thus eligible to be president. In one scenario, Biden and Obama are seen walking down a corridor as Biden holds onto Obama and says: 'C mon you gotta print a fake birth certificate, put it in an envelope labeled "SECRET" and leave it in the oval office desk.' In another meme, the pair are seen smiling as they look at photos on Joe's phone before he mentions another trick up his sleeve. Some of Biden's imagined pranks included replacing the toiletries with travel size bottles for Trump's tiny hands', Biden wanting to play 'The Imperial March' when Trump arrives at the White House and setting up booby traps 'Biden: Haha in this one im asking u to leave a fake birth certificate for him to find,' to which Obama replies, 'lmao'. 'It got so many likes,' Biden says before Obama senses an oncoming ploy and quickly shuts it down with 'Joe no.' Another, showing Biden speaking with both fists raised while Obama stands behind he tells Obama he is going to ask Trump if he wants something to eat. Obama tells him 'that's nice' before he says: 'And then I'm going to offer him knuckle sandwiches.' In other pranks, users imagined Biden suggested painting the Mexican flag in the office, removing the letter 'T' from all the keyboards so they can only type 'Rump' Some of Biden's other imagined pranks include replacing the toiletries with travel size bottles for Trump's tiny hands', Biden wanting to play 'The Imperial March' when Trump arrives at the White House and setting up booby traps. In one meme showing Biden's meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, he is seen telling him that he will never be better than him as a vice president, reminding him he is the 'king of memes.' Twitter users also came up with memes showing Obama and Biden's close relationship, including one where they are holding hands in front of Pence. 'Joe, why are you still holding my hand,' Obama asks. 'I wanna freak Mike Pence out,' Biden replies before telling Obama 'to roll with it. In other memes, Biden has conversations with Vice President-elect Mike Pence telling him he will never be as great as a vice president as him and that he refuses to call Trump 'Mr President' Trump was elected America's 45th president in 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. His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House. The Republican blasted through Democrats' longstanding firewall during last week's election, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that had not voted for a GOP presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others. His election has led to demonstrations across the country, with protesters taking to the streets for a fifth straight day on Sunday to protest against Trump. Trump will enter the White House on January 20. Barbaro's father and cousin - who shared his name - were also gunned down in gangland related murders Barbaro's father and cousin - who shared his name - were also gunned down in gangland related murders A luxury Audi believed to be linked to the underworld murder was found on Advertisement An underworld crime figure with extensive family links to the Italian mafia has been shot dead in a clinical 'execution-style' murder in Sydney's south-west. The murdered man has been identified as Pasquale Barbaro, 35, a well-known crime kingpin who narrowly avoided an attempted hitman execution in Leichhardt last year. Police were called to Larkhall Avenue in Earlwood at about 9.40pm on Monday night and arrived to find his heavily tattooed body lying on the footpath in a pool of blood - almost a year to the day since he was shot at on a Leichhardt street but survived. The 35-year-old consultant was killed outside the home of another suspected Sydney crime identity, construction industry figure George Alex, the Daily Telegraph reported. Scroll down for video Mr Barbaro, 35, was a well-known crime kingpin who narrowly avoided an attempted hitman execution in Leichhardt last year Sydney crime figure Pasquale Barbaro has been shot dead in Sydney's south-west on Monday The murdered mans namesake, grandfather Pasquale Barbaro, was shot during a gangland hit in Brisbane in 1990. His cousin, also a Pasquale Barbaro, was shot dead during the Melbourne gangland wars in 2003. Officers from the New South Wales Riot Squad were seen performing a sweep of the area for any further evidence on Tuesday morning. Investigators believe this hit was targeted and a police source told the publication that Barbaro had been shot in the head. The Daily Telegraph reported that Barbaro was rumoured to be a high-ranking informant to the Crime Commission. Half an hour later police responded to reports of a burnt-out luxury Audi Q7 nearby, which they suspect was involved in the brutal murder Mr Barbaro narrowly avoided an attempted hitman execution in Leichhardt last year Officers from the New South Wales Riot squad were seen arriving at the scene of the shooting on Tuesday morning The team were ordered to scour the area for any evidence that could lead to an arrest A key suspect in the failed hit against Mr Barbaro last year was underworld killer Hamad Asaad, 29, who was gunned down in front of his 12-year-old nephew in his own driveway just last month. Half an hour later emergency services were called to a vehicle fire at Goddard Park, roughly twenty minutes away, where an Audi Q7 was on fire. Police suspect the burnt-out luxury car - valued at roughly $100,000 - was involved in the brutal Earlwood murder. The fire was extinguished by NSW Fire & Rescue crews and crime scenes have been established at both the scene of the fire and the shooting. Horrified neighbours piled into the Earlwood street on Monday night after hearing 'five gun shots' echo in the street. Police have cordoned off the street so investigators can search for evidence Two officers scrounge through a bush outside the scene of an underworld shooting Officers have been at the scene since being alerted to the shooting at 9.40pm on Monday Two officers get down on the ground to search underneath a car on the street where a man was shot on Monday night Investigators want to leave no stone unturned as they search for evidence relating to the murder of Pasquale Barbaro 'I was watching TV inside and just heard what sounded like somebody banging something next door - but it was five gun shots,' neighbour Theo Paraskevaides said. 'By the time I sort of come out, I was half asleep ... I went out to the back yard and didn't see anything. I came out to the front and saw a couple of people outside and that's when I ... realised that somebody had been shot. 'I've been here all my life. It's one of the quietest streets in Earlwood. It's quite shocking to be honest.' Another woman told Nine News she heard the gunshots from inside her home but had no idea someone had been slaughtered until going outside. She said her friend saw two hooded men fleeing in a car. An abandoned silver Mercedes sat in the middle of the road with its brake lights on and front door open not far from where Barbaro lay face-down on the footpath. Suspected underworld killer Hamad Asaad (pictured), who was gunned down just weeks ago, was a key suspect in the attempted hit on Mr Barbaro Horrified neighbours piled into the Earlwood street on Monday night after hearing 'five gun shots' Just weeks ago underworld hitman Hamad Asaad, 29, was gunned down in front of his 12-year-old nephew in his own driveway in Sydney's south-west. The killer was the key suspect in the shooting of gangland boss Walid 'Wally' Ahmad who was executed in broad daylight at Bankstown in April. But Asaad was also a key suspect in the non-fatal shooting of Pasquale Barbaro in Leichhardt on November 9 last year. In 2004 Pasquale Barbaro and his father Giuseppe 'Joe' Barbaro were both jailed for their roles in an elaborate drug ring supplying methamphetamine. Barbaro appeared in the Downing Centre District Court just last week where he applied to have his bail continued ahead of a court trial for serious drug charges. Barbaro and three others were due to trial early next year on charges of manufacturing 2kg of the drug ice. Police allege the group manufactured the drug on properties near Goulburn and at Cobbitty, in Sydneys southwest, between October 2010 and November 2011. Barbaro has been on bail since he was charged in 2012. President-elect Donald Trump is said to considering conservative radio show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham to be the face of his press operation in the White House. Two sources familiar with the discussions told The Hill that Ingraham was on Trump's short list for White House press secretary. Ingraham aided Trump with his debate prep and spoke at the Republican National Convention. She's close to Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and her deputy David Bossie. They waged war against the Clintons in the '90s, founding what Hillary Clinton would famously describe as the 'vast right wing conspiracy' working to discredit her husband. President-elect Donald Trump is said to considering conservative radio show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham to be the face of his press operation in the White House Ingraham aided Trump with his debate prep and spoke at the Republican National Convention (pictured) Clinton revived the term in her 2016 campaign, saying the same actors were out to get her family now - they're just better funded than they were when her husband held the White House and operating in the open. Along with Conway, Bossie, and The Drudge Report's Matt Drudge, Ingraham helped publicize allegations of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton, Ingraham's ex-boyfriend, Keith Olbermann, the liberal commentator told GQ in October. Conway says she has been offered a job in Trump's administration but has declined to say what she will be doing. The only positions Trump has formally announced are chief of staff, which he gave to RNC chairman Reince Priebus, and senior adviser, a title he gave to campaign CEO Steve Bannon. Bannon was on leave from Breitbart News. He was to return to the right-wing publication after the election but accepted the White House job on Sunday instead. It is unknown what role Trump's campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks will have in the administration. She is still managing his media operation. Ingraham has said nothing publicly to indicate that she's thinking about stepping aside from her own media empire to join the Trump administration and she has not been seen inside Trump Tower by reporters staking out the lobby during business hours. Other expected administration officials like Conway and Rudy Giuliani have been observed coming and going from Trump's headquarters and namesake building in Manhattan. Throughout the campaign, Trump had a confrontational relationship with the media, frequently referring to national outlets as 'corrupt' and alleging that they were in league with Clinton. He blacklisted outlets from his events that wrote articles he said were based on lies, though he eventually dropped the ban. Ingraham confronted the media in her RNC speech for their treatment of the GOP White House candidate. 'To all my friends up there in the press, you all know why in your heart Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. You know it,' she said. 'You know why he won it? Because he dared to call out the phonies, the frauds and the corruption that has gone unexposed and uncovered for too long.' Ingraham has said nothing publicly to indicate that she's thinking about stepping aside from her own media empire to join Donald Trump's administration and she has not been seen inside Trump Tower by reporters staking out the lobby Ingraham served as a speech writer in Ronald Reagan's administration. A former defense attorney, she also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The conservative pundit has worked for CBS News and MSNBC, where she hosted the program 'Watch It!', and now appears on ABC News' 'This Week' in addition to Fox News. Her first book, published in 2000, The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places, took aim at the former first lady for pushing a form of feminism that 'rewards dependency' and 'celebrates victimhood.' The fourth of her five books , The Obama Diaries, satirizes the forty-forth President of the United States through fake journal entries. The Laura Ingraham Show has aired on the radio since 2001. She also owns and operates the LifeZette news site. A jilted husband accused of stabbing of his estranged partner became 'obsessed' with her, believing she had cheated on him, his retrial has heard. The Crown's case is that Northern Territory man Darren Ashley stabbed his ex-partner Kirsty Ashley 27 times in May 2012 because he was 'intensely angry' she had left him. 'The accused became obsessed with Kirsty. He contacted her 297 occasions over a two-week period before she sought a restraining order,' prosecutor David Morters told the NT Supreme Court in his opening statement on Monday. Darren Ashley is accused of the stabbing his estranged partner Kirsty Ashley in May 2012 Mr Morters said the accused believed Mrs Ashley ended their 16-year relationship because she was having an affair with her boss at the local auto shop in Alice Springs. The court heard Ashley assaulted and stalked his victim in the weeks leading up to the killing. Then on the morning of May 15 he entered Mrs Ashley's brother's house, where she was staying at the time, and was on the phone to her stepdaughter. About 11.13am her stepdaughter heard a 'blood curdling scream' from Mrs Ashley before the line went dead, Mr Morters said. The Northen Territory Supreme Court heard that Ashley became obsessed with her and stalked her for two weeks before stabbed her 27 times Ashley then used a knife he had brought plus a number of other knives from the home to kill Ms Ashley in a 'frenzied attack'. Mr Morters said Ashley then allegedly planted a ceremonial 'elvish' sword beside the victim's body and 'dipped it in a pool of blood to send police down the wrong path'. He then burnt his clothes and ditched the knives in a drain, Mr Morters said. Ashley also allegedly hid the victim's phone in a hollow log, which police later discovered after calling it. Kirsty ended their 16-year relationship. Ashley believed that she was cheating on him with her boss The court heard Ashley turned up to Alice Springs police station on the day of the murder saying was being hounded by a Bandidos bikie pursuing a bad debt. 'He handed over a note suggesting his life was in danger from a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang,' Mr Morters said. 'It's a desperate attempt by the accused to shift the blame.' Ashley allegedly planted a ceremonial sword next to the victims body and dipped it in a pool of blood send police down the wrong track The Crown will use forensic samples from the accused's blood found at the scene and on Ms Ashley's telephone and jumper as evidence. Witness testimony from police and family members including the victim's mother, who discovered Mrs Ashley's body, will also form part of the case. Justice Dean Mildren told the jury the matter is a retrial. He never saw the film, which opens with his death on a motorbike in 1935 He was the famous war hero immortalised by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia - but did not live to see the epic movie depicting his triumph in the Gulf. However, a previously unseen letter, reveals that author TE Lawrence always knew his efforts to help the Arabs to victory against the Turks in the First World War, would become legend. Consoling a friend over the death of his son in the campaign against the Ottoman Empire, he wrote: 'Some day that little business in Arabia will be famous.' The letter, written to friend F.J. Seaton on Christmas Day in 1918, is one of two in a lot expected to fetch 15,000 at auction in London tomorrow. Richard Fattorini, of Sotheby's, said: 'It was a very personal letter especially as he consoles his friend about the death of his son. It was never intended for publication. The last line about the Arab Revolt one day being famous is a classic understatement and is a fantastic sign off.' In a letter to a friend (pictured), he predicted that the victory in Arabia would one day be a legendary story, just months after a momentous triumph in Damascus, Syria The letter, which comes as a lot also including a rare picture of TE Lawrence in Arab dress (left) (left), refers to the campaign which inspired movie Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole(right) The lot also includes a rare image of author and archaeologist Lawrence in Arabian dress and photos of the Arab rebels taken by an Australian soldier, Frank Porter. Lawrence's efforts were initially overshadowed by the millions of men killed in the war with Germany and it wasn't until 1919 that the real story of his remarkable feat became known. A lecture tour of his exploits with photos and film footage of an area rarely seen by those in the west captivated the world and turned him into a celebrity. The story of his genius strategy to help the Arabs to victory against the Turks, allied with Germany in the First World War, became well known in Britain. But he died in a motorcycle accident in 1935, and never got to see the famous epic that won seven Oscars, starring Peter O'Toole as Lawrence alongside Omar Sharif. The movie starts with Lawrence's death and immortalised him as a war hero, telling the story of his campaign from 1916-1919. And while he never saw the movie, the letter reveals that for the first time that he knew that tales of his battles alongside the Bedouins would live on. The lot also includes photos of the rebel Arab rebels taken by an Australian soldier, Frank Porter, showing the hordes preparing for battle atop camels In this photo, the legions of Arabs rising up against the Ottoman Empire prepare for battle Images show hundreds of fighters lining up on the hill behind what appear to be Arab officers This image, appearing to show dignitaries at an airport in the region, is also included in the lot A WAR HERO WHO HATED PUBLICITY: ASTONISHING LIFE OF TE LAWRENCE Legendary: TE Lawrence barefoot in the desert during the campaign. He was just 46 when he died During the First World War the Turks, allied with Germany and facing the end of their old empire, were beset by an Arab revolt which Britain wanted the Arabs to win. Gifted operator TE Lawrence would become a crucial part of that plan. Born in north Wales in 1888, he learned Arabic on an archaeological dig in Syria. As he spent three years there in the run-up to the war he became sympathetic to the Arab people, who had lived under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman empire for centuries. When the war broke out in 1914, Lawrence became an intelligence officer based in Cairo and two years later the hostilities spread into an Arab revolt. The British Colonel became the adviser to the son of the revolt's leader, Sherif Hussein of Mecca. Renowned for his cunning tactics, Lawrence's small band of forces hit supply routes which distracted Turkish troops from the fighting they were supposed to be doing. His efforts were vital in helping Sherif Hussein's forces win a victory which enabled them to establish a unified state spanning large parts of the Arabian peninsula. The story would later be immortalised by Peter O'Toole in the epic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. After the war Winston Churchill appointed Lawrence as an adviser, but he quit the role as he hated the publicity it gave him. Advertisement The last line about the Arab Revolt one day being famous is a classic understatement and is a fantastic sign off The letter is dated Christmas Day 1918, shortly after his return from Arabia at the end of the First World War and before he became a household name. Mr Fattorini, of Sotheby's, said: 'The two letters are signed by Lawrence, one under the name TE Lawrence and the other under his pseudonym TE Shaw. 'The first letter is really important as it is a reflective but newsy account written in the year of his return from Arabia. 'The recipient, F.J Seaton, was somebody he knew very well, somebody he fought alongside. Peter O'Toole (right) starred as Lawrence of Arabia in the 1962 film as the officer who disrupted supply routes 'It was a very personal letter especially as he consoles his friend about the death of his son. It was never intended for publication. 'The last line about the Arab Revolt one day being famous is a classic understatement and is a fantastic sign off. 'This letter is unpublished and is unrecorded and unknown by Lawrence scholars. The man convicted of sexually assaulted and brutally murdering British student Meredith Kercher has spotted in a restaurant in Italy laughing and joking with friends while on leave from prison. Rudy Guede, 29, was jailed for 16 years for stabbing to death the 21-year-old in her flat in Perugia. She was found dead in her flat, with 47 knife wounds. Tusciaweb reported that Guede, who was jailed in 2008, had been spotted in a restaurant in Viterbo, after being granted temporary release from the nearby Mammagialla prison. Rudy Guede (pictured, left) enjoyed a meal with friends in a restaurant in Viterbo, Italy, while on a 36 hour leave from prison It is not the first time he has been allowed out of prison. In June he was granted leave for the first time as a reward for his 'good behaviour' in prison and spent some of the time working at a volunteer centre. He has been out twice more since then, but had to stay in a halfway house but on the fourth occasion he was allowed to have breakfast, lunch and dinner outside the hostel. Rudy Guede (left) has so far served only eight years of his sentence for the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher (right), who was stabbed 47 times at her flat in Perugia Guede, an Ivory Coast-born drifter, fled to Germany after the murder but was arrested and extradited after his bloody fingerprint was found on a pillow at Meredith's home. He admitted he was in her flat on the night of the murder but claimed he was in the bathroom when the crime was committed and heard screams. Guede sought to pin the blame on Meredith's American flatmate, Amanda Knox, and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. They were both jailed for murder but were later freed after their convictions were quashed. Guede, who has joint Italian and Ivorian citizenship, was spotted dining with friends at a classy restaurant in the Italian city of Viterbo Guede was pictured this week wearing a grey T-shirt under a checkered shirt as he chatted and dined happily with friends. He ate an assortment of bruschetta and pasta, apparently chosen by himself, and drank wine and Coca-Cola. Guede is understood to have graduated with a degree in history and the environment during his time in prison. Hungry and thirsty: Rudy Guede was allowed out of his halfway house for most of the day during a 36 hour period of leave Earlier this year Guede, who was jailed for 16 years in 2008 for killing Meredith Kercher, was freed from prison for the first time for 'good behaviour' The Ivory Coast-born drifter was originally granted temporary release from Viterbo's Mammagialla prison to attend a volunteer centre for prisoner assistance Guede is the only person to have been definitively convicted of Miss Kercher's murder in Perugia in 2007 Wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, he looked relaxed and happy as he was greeted upon his release in June this year Earlier this year Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Guede as saying: 'I will again be able to feel the sun on my skin and look out of the window without bars before my eyes. 'Thirty-six hours, each one of them precious. I thank everybody who has had faith in me.' Amanda Knox, who was convicted and later acquitted of the killing, previously said she was disappointed by the decision to release Guede from prison, all be it temporarily. Rudy Guede (pictured during an appeal hearing in 2009) has been granted 36 hours outside prison for good behaviour while serving 16 years for the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Italy Guede was convicted of killing Miss Kercher (above) who was stabbed 47 times at her flat in Perugia in Italy She said: 'I regret that Rudy Guede has never regretted it [the murder] and I hope that those who granted him permission [to leave jail] did it for social reintegration.' Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years in jail in 2009. However, they were acquitted in 2011 after evidence used against the pair was found to be flawed. American exchange student Amanda Knox (left) and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito (right) were initially found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years in jail in 2009, but definitively acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court last year Knox immediately returned to the United States protesting her innocence, but in January 2014, the Italian courts overturned that acquittal and reinstated the guilty verdict. However, the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court and their conviction was definitively overturned in March last year. Knox has since taken her case against Italian police to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming she was mistreated during the murder investigation. A nurse who volunteered to fight Ebola put the public at risk by hiding her colleague Pauline Cafferkey's high temperature on the flight home, a tribunal heard today. Donna Wood is said to have backed up Ms Cafferkey's claim that she 'felt warm' on the flight home after 'sleeping in a hoodie on the plane.' Wood allegedly intentionally mis-recorded Ms Cafferkey's elevated temperature - the first symptom of the deadly Ebola infection - during the 'chaotic' screening process on their return to the UK from Sierra Leone on December 28, 2014. Misconduct hearing: Donna Wood, a nurse who volunteered to fight Ebola, put the public at risk by hiding her colleague Pauline Cafferkey's high temperature, a tribunal heard today She appeared before an independent panel at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in Stratford, east London, facing three misconduct charges, including recording the reading dishonestly in order to hide it from public health officials. Wood, who could be struck off, is accused of writing down a temperature of 37.2C after a doctor, Hannah Ryan, had taken Ms Cafferkey's temperature twice, with readings of 38.2C and 38.3C. A temperature above 37.5C required further assessment by doctors at the Public Health England (PHE) screening room, the NMC's Aja Hall said. Delays in the screening process at Heathrow, which were the result of PHE staff being 'not properly prepared' to handle the volume of at-risk visitors, meant Wood's group had begun taking their own temperatures, Ms Hall said. Dr Ryan had taken Ms Cafferkey's temperature and found it to be elevated. Reading the medic's statement, she said: 'It was just me, Pauline Cafferkey and Donna Wood present. 'I took her temperature in her left ear - it was 38.2C. I showed it to Pauline, the thermometer. 'I told her to stay calm, we were both a bit panicky. Donna was recording the temperatures on the form. 'I took it again in the right ear - it was 38.3C. I asked Pauline if she was feeling OK, she said she was OK.' Dr Ryan then goes on to say 'I stood there in shock, it was like I was paralysed. I had no clear thought process. Ebola nurse: Wood is said to have backed up the claim by Ms Cafferkey (pictured) that she 'felt warm' on the flight home after 'sleeping in a hoodie on the plane' 'Ebola is such a horrible disease, every time you have a high temperature you worry, even though you know there's no need.' Ms Hall claimed Wood suggested the reading was 'artificial', after Ms Cafferkey told Wood she felt 'warm' on the plane, which was attributed to the fact that the Scottish nurse had been sleeping in a hoodie during the flight. Ms Hall continued: 'Donna Wood broke the inertia by saying "I'm just just going to write it down as 37.2C and then we will get out of here and sort it out".' At some point at around 5pm Ms Cafferkey took paracetamol before she left the screening area, Ms Hall said. After the group left the screening room and made it to the arrivals hall, Dr Ryan reported Ms Cafferkey's high temperature to another doctor, who recommended the Scottish medic return to be screened again. Ms Hall said Ms Cafferkey's temperature was then checked again three times by a PHE consultant and was found to be a maximum of 37.6C, meaning she was given the all-clear to travel on to Glasgow. The following day, Ms Cafferkey became 'extremely ill' and was admitted to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. Dr Ryan said today she was not trying to 'circumvent' the screening procedure in place at Heathrow airport for arrivals from at-risk countries. She described the symptoms of the 'painful and distressing' disease Ebola as including fever, muscle and joint aches, gastrointestinal problems and vomiting, as well as the most severe symptoms of bleeding from the mouth, ears or eyes. Dr Ryan said all volunteers were 'very aware of the risks' and that they were trained to not put themselves or others at risk of infection. She said the mortality rate at the treatment centre in Sierra Leone, which was around 40 per cent, was more than many medical professionals from the UK were used to dealing with, adding: 'We saw lots and lots of people die. It's a painful and distressing disease.' Dr Ryan told the NMC that none of the volunteers were given any details of the screening process they would have to undergo during their training. The day after returning home, Ms Cafferkey became 'extremely ill' and was admitted to hospital, where she was diagnosed with Ebola. She is pictured in February this year She said her temperature was checked at least five times on 27 December 2014, twice in Sierra Leone, twice in transit and once more at Heathrow. She also said that volunteers in the West African country would occasionally give incorrect readings above the 'flag point' of 37.5C, when security staff at the medical centre left the thermometers out in the sun. Dr Ryan said Ms Cafferkey did not finish her final meal in Sierra Leone, but that this was not unusual, describing her as 'a vegetarian who didn't like vegetables.' She said when she landed at Heathrow she went to passport control and was then 'waved straight through to baggage reclaim', before thinking it was a 'little odd' that none of her colleagues had made it through. She said there were at least 35 other healthcare workers waiting to be screened at the PHE-run screening point, which was not 'properly prepared'. Dr Ryan told the hearing that it was a colleague, Dr Mark Wilcox, who said words to the effect of 'If it's only a temperature you need, why don't we take each other's?' WHAT IS EBOLA? Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever that can be contracted by humans and other primates. Symptoms start between two to three days after the sufferer comes into contact with the virus. Initial symptoms include fever, sore throat and headaches. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa started in March 2014. The epidemic killed 11,315 people across Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the US and Mali. Liberia declared it was free of Ebola in June 2016, which meant there were no known cases in any of the affected West African countries. Advertisement She said they were 'just trying to help' and it was 'not an attempt to circumvent the procedure. Dr Ryan said she took Ms Cafferkey's temperature twice at Heathrow and both times it was over the 37.5C threshold and added she recalled 'Donna stood next to me on my left.' She said: 'I assumed that [Donna Wood] had seen what was on the thermometer....because I held it up in front of me. Ms Hall asked: 'Did Donna Wood react?' Dr Ryan replied: 'I don't recall her reaction really.' She said: 'At the time, I didn't feel safe in the screening area. I felt that we needed to get out of there. 'I was definitely not trying to cover up.' Dr Ryan told the hearing that she had overheard someone that she believed to be Wood saying Ms Cafferkey had taken a paracetamol and that it could mask her elevated temperature. 'I overheard someone said that Pauline had taken a paracetamol, and I thought it was Donna, and commented that taking paracetamol might mask a higher temperature,' she said, adding: 'I knew that what we had done wasn't right and could potentially lead to difficulties.' Ms Hall asked what it was that Dr Ryan felt they had done wrong. 'We allowed an incorrect record of Pauline's temperature to be made when she was originally screened.' Asked who recorded PC's temperature, Dr Ryan said: 'I don't have an image of it in my mind.' Ms Hall asked: 'Who had hold of her form?' Dr Ryan replied: 'Donna.' She was also asked if it was Wood who suggested they mis-record Ms Cafferkey's temperature and 'get out of there'. Dr Ryan replied: 'I am certain it was Donna said something. I'm not certain what she said.' Asked what her reaction was, she said: 'I basically didn't react. I didn't do anything, didn't object or say anything.' Ben Rich, cross examining, suggested that Dr Ryan could not know for certain whether Wood looked at the thermometer after Ms Cafferkey's temperature was taken. Dr Ryan replied: 'I would agree with you. I don't have a clear image in my mind.' Mr Rich also asked whether the digital thermometer was capable of storing previous results which were saved in its memory, to which Dr Ryan agreed. Donna Wood broke the inertia by saying "I'm just just going to write it down as 37.2C and then we will get out of here and sort it out" Aja Hall, of the Nursing and Midwifery Council Mr Rich suggested Dr Ryan could have pressed the wrong button and recalled a previous reading that was not Ms Cafferkey's. Dr Ryan also admitted that she didn't 'clearly remember who it was who took [her] temperature.' Mr Rich suggested that Dr Ryan's memory was not very accurate and therefore she might not have been the one to take Ms Cafferkey's temperature. She replied: 'My memory was not very accurate for the event of who took my temperature, but I have a very clear memory of taking Pauline's temperature. Dr Ryan also told the tribunal that she faces a General Medical Council disciplinary hearing on Match 20, 2017. Wood made no admissions to any of the allegations at Monday's hearing. At the time Wood was a senior sister at Haywood Hospital in Staffordshire and was one of the first group of NHS medics to travel to West Africa. She featured in the Department for International Development's promotional campaign, when she was hailed as a 'hero' by then international development secretary Justine Greening. While in Sierra Leone, where the disease killed almost 4,000 people, Wood worked for Save the Children. Ms Cafferkey was cleared at an earlier hearing in September of allowing the incorrect temperature to be recorded. An NMC panel found three charges against her were not proven and her fitness to practise was not affected. It ruled her judgment at the airport in December 2014 had been so impaired by the developing illness that she could not be found guilty of misconduct. Up to 80 per cent owned by overseas investors and most are Chinese Sydney's new pocket of luxury along the stunning harbour has become a magnet for foreign investors. Up to 80 per cent of Barangaroo has been snapped up by overseas buyers and most of them are wealthy Chinese investors, according to The Daily Telegraph. The pull is so luring for rich Chinese buyers, auctioneers and agents are selling apartments on Barangaroo Avenue for almost double the price they were bought off the plan just three years ago. Barangaroo is one of Sydney's luxurious new pockets on the Sydney Harbour (Stock Image) The pull is so luring for rich Chinese buyers, auctioneers and agents are selling apartments on Barangaroo Avenue for almost double the price they were bought off the plan Prices for Barangaroo apartments have nearly doubled in three years according to Raine & Horne Real Estate City Living Draw cards of stunning views, modern architecture, a central location and a new $2 billion casino has been too tempting for foreign buyers The new glamour pocket of Sydney has been whispered for some time now, but the draw cards of stunning views, modern architecture, a central location moments away from the CBD and a new $2 billion casino has been too tempting for foreign buyers. Matt Mifsud, Raine & Horne Real Estate City Living, has two apartments for sale in the Alexander and Anandara towers and both properties have doubled in value in three years. One of the main draw cards for Sydney's Barangaroo living is the incredible harbour views (Stock Image) Agents say because architects, builders and designers have not held back in producing an incredible luxurious hub (Stock Image) His two bedroom apartment was $1.875m back in 2013 and has jumped to $3.15m, and the three bedroom penthouse soared from just under $4 million to $6 million. 'For Chinese buyers, part of the appeal is the status of living in Barangaroo,' Mr Mifsud told the publication. 'It's attracting buyers from China and other countries not only because of its quality but the precinct it's in.' According to Mr Mifsud's colleague, head of auctions James Pratt, Chinese investors wanting to buy apartments in Sydney's 2000 postcode often don't even travel to Sydney as they know of the quality. He said this is because architects, builders and designers have not held back in producing an incredibly luxurious hub. To cap off the desire for foreign investors to throw their money at the Sydney property market, two up-and-coming residential and commercial towers plus the casino have created noise. To cap off the desire for foreign investors to throw their money at the Sydney property market, two up-and-coming residential and commercial towers plus the casino has created noise (Stock Image) Girl X was repeatedly raped by carers before fatally overdosing in 2014 The boy has been buried at a cemetery just metres from Girl X, 15 Police and the NSW Ombudsman are reportedly investigating the death , died on March 26 2015 under the care of Sydney A young boy has died while under the care of the same foster home agency who ran the home where Girl X infamously died of a drug overdose in 2014. Police are investigating the death of the five-year-old boy housed in a Uniting Care run foster home in Pennant Hills, north west Sydney, on March 26 last year, reported the Daily Telegraph. The boy has been buried at a cemetery just metres from Girl X, 15, whose harrowing tale of sexual abuse and drugs sent shockwaves through the nation. Afive-year-old boy has died while under the care of a notorious foster home agency A spokeswoman for Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard told the publication a review of the death was undertaken finishing in December 2015. 'As FACS advises this is currently a police matter, he is unable to comment further,' the spokesperson said. The NSW Ombudsman is also reviewing the circumstances of the death, with speculation there may be a public inquest in January. Uniting Care ran the foster home which house abused teen Girl X, who had allegedly been raped repeatedly by carers before she died from an overdose of drugs given to her by an older man. A male case worker, with 26 years' experience, told an inquest into her death the horrible circumstances of Girl X's life included some of the worst treatment of a child he'd seen. Predatory adults coming and going through the home had used her in their drug dealings, and probably for prostitution, and introduced her to criminals, he said. The boy has been buried at a cemetery just metres from Girl X, 15, (pcitured) who was also living in a Uniting Care foster home The harrowing tale of sexual abuse suffered by Girl X (pictured: an older man running into her foster care room) sent shockwaves through the nation A mother delivered her baby herself and dumped the child on a freezing doorstep in a Tesco carrier bag, a court heard. The baby girl was found at 8am in the morning suffering from hypothermia and was lucky to survive. She was adopted and the police never discovered who the mother was until she was arrested six years later and matched to the child through her DNA. A woman received an 18-month community order after being convicted of abandoning her baby daughter on a doorstep in Flaxman Road, Camberwell, pictured Prosecutor Martin Whitehouse told Inner London Crown Court: This is in many ways is very sad and in some respects reminds one of a chapter in Dickens. The woman, from Camberwell, south east London, had a son with her long term partner and got pregnant during a brief fling. She delivered the tiny girl as her son slept in another room before putting her in a bag. In February 2009 this lady left the child in a carrier bag on the doorstep of a house in Flaxman Road, Camberwell, Mr Whitehouse said. She was found at 8am, suffering from hypothermia. Mr Whitehouse said the February of 2009 was particularly cold and the baby was lucky not to have more serious physical effects from the temperature. Last year the mother, in her 20s, was arrested for her part in a fraud after putting her bank details into a bogus charitable website. Her account was used to swindle 27,000 out of an elderly woman in Kent. By coincidence, last year, the defendant was arrested on a completely different matter of fraud allegations, said Mr Whitehouse. And of course there were fingerprints and DNA left in the carrier bag and in clothes in which the child was wrapped. Mr Whitehouse said it was an unusual case of its kind as usually babies are abandoned as the mother is wanting to have a fun lifestyle. He said his woman was depressed and faced difficult circumstances. Siobhan Molloy, defending, said that as yet, no charges had been brought against the woman for the fraud. She (the victim) appealed to what she thought was a charitable website for help, provided her bank account and it was used in fraud, said Ms Molloy. The child was found wrapped in a Tesco carrier bag in an incident that was 'reminiscent of Charles Dickens' (file picture) Ms Molloy said the mother had left the newborn at the front door at 7am and the child was found just before 8:30am. She was in denial when she was pregnant, you may ask why she did not go to hospital, she was not in her right mind, she said. The child is now hopefully living a blissfully ignorant life. The baby girl was fostered and later adopted and the mother, who was openly weeping in court, has had no contact with her since. She brought with her to court a letter written to the child to give to social services to be opened, if the child so wished, when she turns 18. The court heard how the woman often thinks of her daughter especially on her birthday. The judge Mr Recorder Peter Rouch QC said he did not believe the case should be classed as long term abandonment. He told the woman: That is when you leave a child for a week like if you go on holiday to Ibiza or something like that. At the time, according to a psychiatrist, you were suffering from depression and in the circumstances you did not face up to the pregnancy, you were in denial. You self delivered and then wrapped her in a Tesco carrier bag and left her at the door. The baby was found, taken to hospital, attended to by the hospital, looked after, fostered and later adopted. The judge said she had no previous convictions and no issues with drugs or alcohol. A psychiatrist says you need specialist help as you have not come to terms with what happened in 2009, he said. London Inner Crown Court (pictured) heard the woman was suffering from depression at the time and a judge spared her a jail sentence They have recommended you seek help in a voluntary basis. The woman could have faced up to 26 weeks in prison but the judge spared her jail and instead handed her a community order for 18 months. She will have one to one sessions with a supervising officer. Mr Rouch said it was vitally important that her supervisor was given the psychiatric report. Hopefully if that is done your supervisor will encourage you to seek the help you obviously need. Go to your general practitioner who will direct you to the appropriate professional who will give you the help you want. The woman was convicted under Section 1.1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 for wilfully abandoning a person under 16. Entertainment / Music by Future Moyo aka Jamelah The award winning Kezi born - United Kingdom based actress Samantha Ncube Mahlangu has been nominated for another award in film under the actress of the year category for Zimbabwe Music And Arts Awards UK 2016, (ZIMAA UK).On her first award she said it was a "pleasant surprise ," now Speaking from her base in UK,she said that she is humbled by the unwavering support shown by fellow artists and fans . "I am honoured to be celebrated by my own country," she said.Apparently the former Donkwe Secondary School student says she never attended any formal training in film,in fact her cousin Musa James naturally spotted the inherent talent and automatically casted her via her connections in film industry. She thus joined the industry by chance in 2012 ,and her debut film was entitled "Amazansi" produced by Lawrence Mthinsi,a Zimbabwean lawyer-turned film producer in UK. From there her acting matured with age like wine and now she finds herself mentoring the upcoming producers cutting across different continents.Switchbod Arts Magazines learns that during her four years in the film industry ,Mahlangu has featured in numerous Nigerian movies which finally landed her the first award from the Cameroonian film and Movie Academy early this year.Recently she featured in a Nollywood UK movie and also in another film with "Uwadi Production," where she acted alongside Mzansi actor Kagiso Module who is popular for his role as Mangaliso Nyathi in the famous Mzansi soapie "Scandal."Mahlangu is known for her motivational messages to upcoming artists, and through Switchbod platforms she has always tried to uplift the struggling young artists."Artists must not give up, they must keep pushing and learn from others," she further told Switchbod.She also challenged the women to stand up for themselves and be counted amongst the pacesetters.Now she dreams of setting up an orphanage, school,and a modeling agency in Zimbabwe. She says all her charity passion is derived from her field of study in Applied Social Sciences where she holds a BA (honours) degree .To vote for this Bulawayo'finest follow these guidelines below: But some have called the campaign offensive saying the term is demeaning to men The phone lines will be manned by feminists, comedians and scientists Term refers to when a man talks to a woman in a Swedish women who believe they have been the victim of 'mansplaining' in the workplace can now report it to a dedicated union hotline (file picture) Swedish women who believe they have been the victim of 'mansplaining' in the workplace can now report it to a dedicated union hotline. Unionen, which represents more than 600,000 private sector workers, is persuading female members to report instances of male colleagues explaining things to them in a patronising manner. The term 'mansplaining' is used when someone explains something to another, usually a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising. And according to The Local, the hotline will be manned by feminist politicians, comedians and scientists, who will advise women what to do. Unionen launched the hotline campaign in an article, where they explained that a study by the American Psychological Association found that men 'tend to overestimate their intelligence to a much greater extent than women.' The article also claimed that the hotline would help both men and women 'handle this kind of behaviour in your workplace.' They also told the Local in a statement: 'The purpose of the campaign is not to point fingers or to blame all men. 'The campaign is intended to make us all, men and women, aware of this phenomenon and hopefully to start a change together. 'Everyone wins when we expose suppression techniques and talk about them.' The term 'mansplaining' is used when someone explains something to another, usually a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising (file picture) However, many Swedish workers say they are offended by the campaign saying the term 'mansplaining' is demeaning to men. Many of the union's workers, especially men, say using negative language does not promote equality. A teenage girl had her jaw broken in two places when she was savagely beaten by a gang of youths for reportedly removing her headscarf. A shocking video shows the mob attacking the 15-year-old as teenagers take turns to slap her until she spits blood. The savage attack happened at a shopping centre in Vienna, Austria where Sharia police from the Muslim Chechen community are known to operate. A horrific video showing a group of teens savagely beating up a 15-year-old girl has recently emerged online, racking up millions of views in just a couple of days Two girls can be seen repeatedly slapping their victim as she defiantly stands with her hands in her pockets, refusing to run or fight back fearing the beating would get worse. A third girl with brown hair, wearing a white jacket, was then seen rubbing her hands together before slapping the teen. Then the victim was hit by a boy and was seen spitting out blood onto the floor. She was reportedly taken to hospital following the attack last Wednesday and was being treated for a double jaw fracture. The footage showed a gang of four youths taking turns to assault the teenage girl while she stood with her hands in her pockets The video was posted to Facebook following the attack and has since gained close to three million views. The Austria edition of The Local reported that four people were being investigated by the police. Ringleaders of the gang are said to be a 16-year-old Chechen boy from and a 16-year-old girl from Austria. According to reports, the girl, who was seen spitting blood at the end of the video, had her jaw broken in two places According to the report, the Chechen boy went to the police on Saturday and said he was involved in the assault. Vienna police spokesman Paul Eidenberger said: 'We know the youngsters, they were already involved in similar cases in Lower Austria.' He's the man behind the campaign that has set Twitter alight to give Californian voters a referendum on going it alone in the wake of last week's election. Along with thousands of social media mentions, 30-year-old Louis Marinelli now also has the backing of some of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters Iranian-born billionaire venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, 42; entrepreneur David Morin, 36, whose fortune is estimated at $100m; and Orange County-based Google designer Marc Hemeon, 41. But while the rest of the US was glued to their TV screens as last week's drama unfolded, Marinelli, a former Republican voter from Buffalo, New York, wasn't even in the country. Scroll down for video Louis Marinelli (left) is the former English teacher behind Yes California, which aims to give the state its independence from the United States. Marinelli is pictured campaigning for his cause on his Facebook page Marinelli, who was born in New York, needs to collect a million signatures in order to propel an independence referendum onto the ballot in 2019 Instead, he was in Russia's capital, Moscow, where he wants its first embassy. 'I need to get away sometimes,' Marinelli, who now calls San Diego home, told DailyMail.com. 'I don't like living under the U.S. flag and it's not healthy for me to be around all the negativity that you see in the country, in the politics, every day. 'For my own personal development, I sometimes just need to get away.' But by his own admission, Marinelli's trip to Moscow wasn't all about time off. The 30-year-old former English teacher is also in the process of setting up an international office for Yes California! the separatist campaign he spearheads in the Russian capital. 'For now, it will house [campaign] representatives,' he explains. 'Then hopefully, when we get independence, it will become an embassy instead.' Marinelli's journey from Republican New Yorker to Californian independence campaigner is an interesting one one that, unsurprisingly, has its roots in Russia. It was to Russia he traveled in 2007 after finishing high school for a stint as an English teacher, working first in Samara in the west of the country and then Kazan, in the semi-independent republic of Tatarstan. In 2009, he moved to Russia's historic capital St. Petersburg and studied at the university there, which counts both President Vladmir Putin and his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, among its former students. Although he returned to the U.S. to live in California in 2011, it was in Putin's heartland that he realized that 'not everyone thinks Americans are good guys'. 'I hadn't realized before then,' he continues, 'that the way the world sees America isn't the same as how we see ourselves.' Inspired: The Calexit campaigner studied at Vladimir Putin's alma mater and found living in Russia 'that the way the world sees America isn't the same as how we see ourselves.' Along with thousands of social media mentions, 30-year-old Marinelli now also has the backing of some of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters including (right) entrepreneur David Morin, 36, whose fortune is estimated at $100m, and billionaire venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, 42 (left) Orange County-based Google designer Marc Hemeon, 41, is also a Calexit supporter So enamored of the former Soviet Union's largest member state was Marinelli that he briefly contemplated citizenship and is now married to a Russian woman named Olga. But Russia aside, Marinelli has another passion, albeit one he says he wishes he didn't - politics. Although originally a registered Republican, he was immersed himself in the Democratic Party as a teenager, volunteering for the 2004 primary campaign of John Edwards. Later, he became an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage but ultimately concluded he was wrong, resigned from the National Organization for Marriage. In April 2011 he apologized to the LGBTQ community for his years of activism much of it done remotely from Russia against them. While largely unsuccessful, Marinelli's early political experiences did have the result of sharpening his acute disappointment in the U.S. system of government. By 2014, by then back in America for three years, Marinelli had concluded that the way forward for California, his adopted home state, was United Kingdom-style devolution and ultimately independence. San Diego-based Marinelli was in Moscow on election night, taking time off - but also laying plans for a Californian embassy Home to just over 39 million people according to the most recent figures, California is the most populated state in the U.S. and one of the wealthiest. If it became independent, it would, in terms of GDP, become one of the world's top 10 richest countries displacing France which currently occupies sixth place. California is also a Democrat stronghold, last plumping for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988, and voting for Hillary Clinton in this year's contest by a margin of 28 percentage points. Unsurprisingly, the election of Donald Trump has been greeted with howls of outrage and protests in nearly all of its major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. Since the election results were announced, interest in 'Calexit' as the independence movement has been nicknamed has shot up, with 13,000 new voters joining the Yes California! Facebook group, the same again following the campaign's official Twitter, and 10,000 new volunteers pledging their support. The campaign needs a million signatures in order to propel a referendum onto the ballot in 2019 Since the election results were announced, interest in 'Calexit' as the independence movement has been nicknamed has shot up Marinelli is hoping to capitalize in anti-Trump dissatisfaction All of which, as an understandably gleeful Marinelli points out, bodes well for the campaign's stated aim of getting an independence referendum on the ballot for the spring of 2019. 'The first thing we need to do and the thing we're focusing on right now is establishing a mandate from the people of California for independence,' he explains. The plan includes getting volunteers out on the streets to collect the million signatures required to propel an independence referendum onto the ballot in 2019. After that, assuming the vote goes in Yes California's favor, Marinelli says the state will declare independence and invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights essentially demanding the right to self-determination and then recognition of the result from other nation states. 'There's going to have to be some kind of a transition period of negotiation where a lot of details are ironed out between Washington [DC] and [state capital] Sacramento,' adds Marinelli. 'But all that is way down the line so first of all, what we're focusing on is getting the ballot measure qualified for 2018, step one, and step two, getting the actual ballot measure passed in 2019.' The concept of a state withdrawing from the Union is nothing new. Indeed, as recently as April this year, Republicans in Texas overturned an attempt to force a vote on whether the state should secede at a local party convention. Alaska, New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii also have separatist movements, while an outfit called the Cascadia Independence Movement proposes turning Oregon, Washington State and the Canadian province of British Columbia into its own country. In 1982, Key West, in Florida, declared itself independent as the Conch Republic motivated by a Border Patrol roadblock across Highway 1, the road from Miami to Key West, aimed at stopping illegal immigrants from Cuba reaching the mainland. The new 'country' immediately declared war on the U.S., symbolically broke a loaf of stale Cuban bread over the head of the nearest Marine, and then surrendered one minute later. It then went on to demand a billion dollars from America in 'foreign' aid. In 1982, Key West, in Florida, declared itself independent as the Conch Republic after the Border Patrol set up a roadblock aimed at stopping illegal immigrants from Cuba reaching the mainland. This sign greets arrivals at the Key West International Airport In this 2006 picture Peter Anderson, left, self-appointed Republic of Conch secretary general, raises stale Cuban bread while charging toward the Old Seven Mile Bridge in Marathon, Florida in a symbolic seizure of the historic structure Now back in the arms of the Union, the Conch Republic still issues souvenir passports but ran into trouble in 2001 when it transpired that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta was in possession of one at the time of the attacks. But the checkered past of American separatist movements to date isn't enough to put off Marinelli who says California is a different prospect entirely. 'We are a separate nation already,' he insists. 'It's clear in our mentality, it's clear in our culture, it's clear in our history. Those are things that make us different from the Americans. 'It's not that we disagree with the Americans on everything but there is certainly some gap between an American and a Californian. 'There's a geographical gap [in the deserts and mountains west of the Mississippi River] but also there's a state of mind that's different. 'In California, we support things like diversity, tolerance and equality and then the Americans go ahead and elect someone like Donald Trump I think there's a huge gap there between our two states of mind.' Nonetheless, Trump's election, which precipitated the latest round of calls for independence in California, as well as in neighboring Oregon, isn't seen as entirely bad thing by Marinelli. He agrees with Trump on the question of maintaining good relations with Russia and says that as a businessman, the president-elect is more likely to be able to strike a deal. Hillary Clinton, he says, suffers from a 'Cold War, antiquated mindset' and would have gone into the White House seeing Putin as an adversary from the outset. But in all other respects, he says that Californians have little in common with the newly minted leader of the free world. 'We are open to immigration into California, it's a very diverse place, and it's a very important part of our culture and our economy I'm talking about immigrants themselves,' he says. 'An independent California will be a place that welcomes immigrants from other places around the world, a place that welcomes refugees from places around the world. I think that's kind of exciting.' Under Marinelli, California would become a 'progressive' paradise along the lines of Denmark - a constitutional monarchy famous for its well-funded welfare state - where money would be lavished on healthcare, education and quality of life, but diverted away from the military. Other measures would include the use of the U.S. dollar and a 'gold card' system for immigrants from within and without the United States. Cooperation with other countries, including Trump's America, is also important. 'Donald Trump may not be the President by [the time California becomes independent] but if he is, then we're willing to work with and be friends with any country in the world even the Americans,' says Marinelli. 'What we don't want to do is follow the Americans into every war that they start. I know there's a couple of countries that follow America into every war that they start and we're not going to do that. 'We're going to stand by and protect and preserve our principles as Californians and among those would be the idea of peace and cooperation between countries.' Marinelli, who says he will renounce his U.S. citizenship and become exclusively Californian if the independence referendum goes his way, says Trump's election is indicative of a problem 'with the soul of the country'. But for all that, he isn't totally sorry that the Democrats' worst nightmare has come about. 'We believe in our hearts that independence for California is the best result and the best thing we could do in the long run for California,' he says. 'So if it takes the election of Donald Trump to convince Californians to get on board with this campaign, then from that perspective, we say, OK, maybe it's a good thing that Donald Trump was elected. Video rant: Melyssa Jo Kelly, 65, went on a bizarre rampage against police in Iowa A 65-year-old Iowa woman has gone viral for a video she filmed of herself tearing down a group of police officers who were mourning a fallen comrade. The bizarre rant occurred at the Brewhemia cafe in Cedar Rapids on November 6. The woman, Melyssa Jo Kelly, started filming herself inside the coffee shop, as she took issue with three officers who had black bands over their badges. The band is worn by officers who have lost a colleague in the line of duty. However Kelly slammed the cops for caring about one of their own, and not a black man, Jerime Mitchell, 37, who was shot by police in a traffic stop in Cedar Springs a few days earlier. 'We got the popo wearing the black thing on her badge. Guess she's sorry a couple of cops got whacked in Des Moines,' Kelly says. Attacked: These are two of the officers that Kelly took issue with, accusing them of ignoring the shooting of a black man in the days prior Pointing at a female officer in the cafe, Kelly continued: 'But she doesnt give a s--- about the man who is in critical care at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics with a bullet in his neck from one of the wonderful and vicious thug brothers in blue.' 'Of course we know that the pig does whatever it wants, whether its streaming live or whatever. The only thing that ain't live about the popo (sic) is they way they kill people and get away with it,' Kelly said. The police try and get Kelly to move on after the owners of the cafe asked her to leave and she refused. The cops threatened to arrest her for trespassing, but eventually gave her a warning. When the female officer said Kelly's behavior is comical, she says to her: 'Then why don't you go and die laughing.' On her Facebook page, where she posted the video, Kelly is vocal in her political views, especially of her hate of Donald Trump and her support of the Black Lives Matter campaign Melyssa Jo Kelly (left) was accusing police of ignore the shooting of Jerime Mitchell, 37, who was shot by police in a traffic stop in Cedar Springs a few days earlier As Kelly is escorted out, begrudgingly, she says: 'Dont pretend like you serve and protect, you b**** out of my way, popo (sic).' On the way out, Kelly says she is disabled and screams for the officers to let out of her 'Get this jacked-up, trigger-happy pig off me,' she yelled. Out on the street, Kelly continues: 'I say f*** the police, now and forever more. Spending tax dollars protecting killers and f****** with people. F***the police.' Scene: The bizarre rant occurred at the Brewhemia cafe in Cedar Rapids on November 6 As of Saturday afternoon, the video has been viewed more than 160,000 times. Court records show that Melyssa Jo Kelly has been ordered to pay fines in Iowa for at least four counts of disorderly conduct, two counts of interference with official acts and one count of trespass. The nation's Roman Catholic bishops are urging President-elect Donald Trump to adopt humane policies toward immigrants and refugees. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said serving and welcoming people fleeing conflict and violence is part of their identity as Roman Catholics. Church leaders said they would continue to offer that aid. Trump talked tough about immigration on the campaign trail, including proposing building a wall along the border of U.S. and Mexico and deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants. Scroll down for video Election time: Bishops are meeting in Baltimore to elect their own president in succession to Louisville's Archbishop Joseph Kurtz (center) Prayers: The bishops said they were praying for the president-elect, who used a CBS 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night to distance himself from elements of his migration platform He later distanced himself from those statements. In an interview with CBS' '60 Minutes' broadcast Sunday night, he said he would focus on deporting people with criminal records beyond their immigrant status. The bishops made the plea Monday, at the start of their annual fall meeting in Baltimore. Pope Francis, who became involved in a public dispute with Trump during the campaign, has offered no comment so far on the presidential election's outcome However the tone of the bishops' statement suggests an attempt to reconcile the very divergent views of their flock. Exit polls suggest that among those who voted, a majority of white Catholics voted for Trump, but that two-thirds of Hispanic Catholics voted for Clinton. Although the church has seen its Hispanic membership grow significantly, to an estimated 34 per cent in 2014, according to Pew Research, it remains majority white. It is also disproportionately over-represented in the north-east, which includes Pennsylvania, where Trump pulled off a surprise victory. Fortified border: One of the protected section of of the border, at Tijuana Deportations: Mexican illegals who were rounded up are sent across the border at Laredo City And in other north-eastern states where Clinton won, areas which voted for Trump were often disproportionately Catholic, such as Staten Island, the New York borough which bucked the ultra-liberal city's overall trend. The president of the Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, of Louisville, Kentuck, marked the election of Trump as president by saying 'millions of Americans who are struggling to find economic opportunity for their families voted to be heard'. 'Our response should be simple: we hear you,' he said. And after it the chairman of the conference's committee on migration, Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, issued a carefully-worded statement on the issue which suggested an attempt to reach some sort of compromise on the issue. 'I personally pledge my prayers for Mr. Trump, all elected officials, and those who will work in the new administration,' he said. 'I offer a special word to migrant and refugee families living in the United States: be assured of our solidarity and continued accompaniment as you work for a better life.' He added in which appeared designed to be accommodating towards the Trump view: 'We stand ready to work with a new administration to continue to ensure that refugees are humanely welcomed without sacrificing our security or our core values as Americans.' American Catholics have built a vast network of aid and advocacy programs for immigrants and refugees. U.S. bishops are especially attentive to the issue given that Latinos comprise about 4 in 10 U.S. Catholics and are already a majority in several dioceses. Archbishop Joseph Tobin of Indianapolis, Indiana, had opposed a request from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, that the Catholic church stop settling Syrian refugees in the state. Tobin brought an Iraqi refugee to a meeting with the governor, who is now the vice-president elect. Tobin is one of three U.S. church leaders whom the pope will make cardinals in a ceremony Sunday in Rome. Ukraine's bid to join the EU took a new twist today when semi-naked pictures of the country's deputy interior minister in charge of European integration were revealed. British-educated Anastasia Deeva, 24, was already under fierce attack in Kiev for being too young for the job, and to have been appointed without proper vetting - which her boss dismissed as 'bigotry' and 'ageist'. Now Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has defended the married minister's topless photographs, claiming critics were 'asexual' or obsessed by moralising. Tasteful: The naked pictures were found on Anastasia Deeva's social media by Ukrainian journalists investigating allegations she was in a relationship with her boss, something which an Interior Ministry source has denied He said her pictures were 'private' and taken when she was a student, a time when she also worked as an aide to various Ukrainian MPs. Despite this, the revealing photos remained on her social media after her appointment as being one of the key figures in the Ukrainian government's aim of integrating with the European Union. A source in the ministry denied she was in a relationship with her boss after a flurry of social media speculation. Anastasia Deeva (pictured, right) has been defended by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (left) 'That she is having an affair with Avakov - it's all nonsense,' said the source. Ukraine's deputy speaker Irina Gerashchenko said: 'The question is not about the nude photos. 'People can take any pictures they like and the photographs cannot be the basis for any appointment or dismissal. The pictures of Ms Deeva are a mixture of artistic (left) and jokey (right, with spaghetti dangling from her mouth) but were not removed from social media after her appointment as a minister 'Nor is the question about hypocrisy, which, like sexism, we really should overcome together. The question is about violation of procedures,' added Ms Gerashchenko. She claimed the deputy minister was appointed 'without any competition' and her official CV contains 'wrong data'. Journalist Konstantin Stogny wrote: 'I'm terribly sorry...but is this really the next head of the law enforcement agency (Interior Ministry) in Ukraine? Many politicians in Ukraine feel that Anastasia Deeva (pictured) is not qualified for the role 'I'm not trying to moralize on what is bad or good. I'm just trying to understand the trends.' She has also faced criticism for her expensive taste in Western clothes brands. Mr Avakov hit back saying that in Soviet times the position would have been held by a 'real monster - and she is just a girl.' Mr Avakov has defended her 'high capacity for work and communication skills' and pointed out she was fluent in French and English She had a 'high capacity for work and communication skills', an excellent Masters degree and was fluent in English and French, he said. She was facing attack because of her young age, she said but her appointment had been approved by the Cabinet. 'Photo albums, thrown onto the Internet with such an effect, feed low feelings,' he said. Anastasia Deeva (pictured, left, during a meeting in parliament) had previously lived in Sweden, where she worked on green technology 'Has a student no right to private photos? It is bigotry - or you are incorporeal or asexual, or moralising on her bright clothes and bare lines?' Deeva spent her childhood attending a school in 'a small town near Manchester', according to her social media. She said: 'The first time I earned money, when I was 8 years old, was when our Ukrainian delegation in the UK collected money to build a house for street children.' The images of Ms Deeva (pictured) are believed to date from her student days and are artistic, rather than pornographic She later switched to study in Kiev doubling up as a political aide to MPs for the party headed by toppled pro-Russian dictator Viktor Yanukovych. Her first official work was when she was 18 - she became an aid to a deputy. Her husband, Grogory Deev, 33, co-owner of an advertising agency, has not commented on the images. Meghan Markle wasn't always sure about which prince she preferred. Footage has been recovered from a quick-fire interview which shows her struggle to pick between Prince William and Harry - just months before her royal romance blossomed with the latter. The American actress was speaking to Hello! in a live Periscope question and answer session last October, in Canada. She was asked by the reporter: 'Prince William or Prince Harry?' in the Periscope video The 35-year-old divorced Suits actress shook her head, laughed and replied: 'I don't know'. It was not until the reporter prompted her by saying 'Harry?', that she picked her favourite. Giggling again, she answered: 'Harry? Sure' She was asked by the reporter: 'Prince William or Prince Harry?' The 35-year-old shook her head, laughed and replied: 'I don't know'. It was not until the reporter prompted her by saying 'Harry?', that she picked her favourite. Giggling again, she answered: 'Harry? Sure'. Markle, who has yet to comment on her royal romance, also talked about social media abuse something the Prince Harry spoke out about on her behalf in his statement last week. She added: 'If we treated ourselves as well as we treated our best friend, can you imagine? It would be so much better.' Meanwhile, Prince Harry's new girlfriend didn't have enough time to meet the Queen this weekend because of her acting commitments. The Mail exclusively revealed images of Meghan this week out in Kensington, near Harry's home at Kensington Palace Prince Harry was not sitting next to his new girlfriend Meghan Markle and instead put his thumb up while standing next to Princess Charlene of Monaco Markle's work meant she could only spend two days in London with her prince. The Suits actress jetted off to Canada to continue filming the legal drama and wasn't around to link up with Harry and attend England's rugby match against South Africa on Saturday evening. Markle's visit to London followed Harry's own trip to Toronto to spend Halloween with his new girlfriend. A source close to the prince, 32, told the Express: 'It was only a mini-break because she's got filming commitments. 'There's been a lot of talk of her being introduced to the Queen and Prince Charles but there simply hasn't been time.' Steamy footage of Meghan Markle has emerged of her lying naked in bed with co-star Patrick J Adams in series three of the hit American show Suits Harry had to make do with sitting next to Princess Charlene of Monaco, 38, during the Autumn International - which England won 37-21 The Mail exclusively revealed images of Meghan this week out in Kensington, near Harry's home at Kensington Palace. Harry had to make do with sitting next to Princess Charlene of Monaco, 38, during the Autumn International - which England won 37-21. Bookies slashed their odds that the prince and the US actress would be seen together at the 82,000-seater stadium to see the squad take on the Springboks after Ms Markle was spotted in Kensington on Thursday. Markle's visit to London followed Harry's own trip to Toronto to spend Halloween with his new girlfriend The 35-year-old has jetted off to continue filming the legal drama Suits and wasn't around to link up with Harry and attend England's rugby match against South Africa on Saturday The pair are said to have been dating for several months but have not been seen in public together. While she was shopping, Harry, 32, was at a solemn ceremony at the Field of Remembrance outside Westminster Abbey. of the trust for the grandchildren after filing a lawsuit earlier this year Three of Sumner Redstone's five grandchildren are set to take on bigger roles in the media empire created by their grandfather while all five will be receiving equitable disbursements from his multi-billion dollar trust after his death. The three children of Sumner's daughter Shari Redstone - Tyler Korff, Brandon Korff and Kimberlee Korff Ostheimer - are all now directors on the board of their grandfather's company National Amusements. And after a lawsuit was filed this summer by Sumner's granddaughter Keryn Redstone, it has been ruled that she, her sister Lauren Redstone Ellis, and their three cousins will all receive equal disbursements from Sumner's trust. Those will not come however until after the deaths of Sumner and his first wife Phyllis, and their two children Shari and Brent according to an article about the family in The Wall Street Journal. And the National Amusement stock would not be received until the youngest grandchild is 60, which means it will be at least another 30 years until the grandchildren and any children they have might start to see a large portion of the trust. Scroll down for video In the money: Sumner Redstone's five grandchildren will receive equal disbursements from their grandfather's multi-billion dollar trust (32-year-old Brandon Korff left, 30-year-old Tyler Korff right) It will be split between the three children of Shari and Brent's two daughters (l to r: Sumner, Keryn, Phyllis and Lauren Redston, Kimberlee and Brandon Korff in 1997) Shari's three children are also now directors on the board of National Amusements (34-year-old Kimberlee left) while Keryn and Lauren (right) have no role in the family company The Wall Street Journal article also reveals that the transition of power at Sumner's company happened thanks in part to his 30-year-old grandson Tyler. It was Tyler who reportedly reached out to former Viacom chief executive Philppe Dauman after he filed a lawsuit when he was removed from Redstone's trust, and convinced him to step down from his role at Viacom. Tyler, a lawyer and rabbi, always had a good relationship with Dauman despite the executive's open disdain for Tyler's mother Shari. Shari was also the only board member who voted against Dauman when he was elected as the Executive Chairman of Viacom earlier this year, taking over for Redstone. The two met in secret with their lawyers and after 'hundreds of hours of negotiations' reached a deal that would replace Dauman and overhaul the company board. Now that the transfer is done, the Redstone family has an 80 per cent voting share at both CBS and Viacom. Keryn and her sister Lauren, who works in public policy and lives in Washington DC, do not have any position in the family business. Their father Brent was bought out of his shares in 2006 after filing a lawsuit against his father and the company. Shari said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: 'All of my children - Kim, Brandon, Tyler, as well as my niece LeeLee - played significant roles in the results that we achieved this past year. 'We were all of the same mindset and share a common goal.' She did not however make any mention of her niece, likely as a result of the lawsuit filed by the young woman earlier this year. It was Tyler, 30, who worked behind closed doors with Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman to get him to step down earlier this year (Kimberlee, Shari, Sumner, Brandon, Tyler and Jason Ostheimer in 2012) Redstone, 93, is worth a reported $5billion (above with exes Sydney Holland and Manuela Herzer in 2012) Keryn asked for $6million in a Massachusetts court filing, in which she accuses her aunt of taking advantage of Sumner's deteriorating health. The 34-year-old previously went after her aunt this past April by filing a declaration in support of Sumner's ex Manuela Herzer as she challenged the competency of the billionaire mogul. In that court filing Keryn accused Sheri of threatening to kill her, said her grandfather told her that Shari's husband Ira had been stealing from the company and claimed that Shari once said while standing by Sumner's hospital bed: 'If he gets sick, don't take him to the hospital. Let him die at home.' Keryn also said that Shari pushed for a 'do not resuscitate' order on her father despite the fact that Sumner 'vehemently objected.' Keryn filed legal papers in Massachusetts Probate Court joining the competency suit that was filed in May by Dauman and longtime Viacom director George Abrams. Shari is described as a 'thankless child' and 'unfit to lead two media conglomerates valued at over $40 billion' in the papers, which go on to state: 'Shari does not have the requisite business judgment and abilities to serve as chairman of the three companies.' She is also accused by Keryn of ruining Sumner's legacy. 'One of the cardinal tenets of Sumner's succession planning is that Shari -- whom he did not respect as a business woman and did not trust her ability or desire to commit to sound principles of corporate governance - would never succeed him or be able to wield control over these two public companies,' wrote Keryn's lawyer Pierce O'Donnell in the suit he filed in Massachusetts. O'Donnell previously represented Herzer in her case against Shari. President Barack Obama is embarking on one last tax-payer funded journey abroad on Monday. The seven-day trip will see Obama visit Greece for the first time and stop through Germany for meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European Union leaders on his way to Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. A lame duck president since last Tuesday's national election, Obama is using the week-long escape, that includes a leisurely visit to the Parthenon, to drag his policy agenda over the finish line and convince America's allies that the United States will not tear up binding, international agreements in the age of Donald Trump. He'll use his final overseas speech to tout the United States' economic growth under his leadership, the White House says, and try once more to put a positive light on globalization. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO President Barack Obama is embarking on one last tax-payer funded journey abroad on Monday. The seven-day trip will see Obama visit Greece for the first time and stop through Germany for meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European Union leaders Merkel and Obama are seen talking during Obama's last visit to Germany - in June of 2015 for the G7 summit. Obama lounges on a bench outside of Elmau Castly in between sessions Obama always planned to travel to Greece and Peru this month to attend APEC. The White House added the stop in Germany to 'signal our solidarity with our closest allies in the world' The U.S. president had steadfastly promised world leaders that Trump would not win the White House as he pushed them to make commitments to combat climate change, accept his Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, that will govern trade in the region and sign on to a nuclear deal with Iran. Obama said time and time again that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, need not be afraid that the United States go back on its promise to defend its allies. As it turned out, Obama was wrong. Americans voted to elect his political nemesis and ideological opposite. The liberal president is now racing against the clock to salvage what he can of his legacy. Obama always planned to travel to Greece and Peru to attend APEC, where he'll meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit. The White House added a leg in between to Germany to 'signal our solidarity with our closest allies in the world,' a White House official said. In meetings with the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain, the White House says Obama will stress his administration's 'support for a strong and integrated and united Europe' and 'reinforce our support for the approaches that have been taken over the last eight years to try to promote economic growth, economic security, and global cooperation.' 'First and foremost, focused on trying to ensure that his successor gets off to a good start and has the opportunity to succeed,' Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, Ben Rhodes, said during a conference call. Obama cast Trump as 'uniquely unqualified' to lead the country on the campaign trail and urged voters not to give him access to the county's nuclear arsenal. Just as he told the nation on Wednesday that it must unite behind the president-elect, Obama will go hat in hand to European leaders this week and convince them to work with Trump. Obama cast Trump as 'uniquely unqualified' to lead the country on the campaign trail and urged voters not to give him access to the county's nuclear arsenal. Just as he told the nation on Wednesday that it must unite behind the president-elect, Obama will go hat in hand to European leaders this week and convince them to work with his nemesis The sitting president will tell them that 'no matter our preferred choice may have been in the election, right now we as Americans have a stake in seeing this incoming administration succeed, and frankly, the world has a stake in seeing America succeed, given the leadership role that we play.' 'Look, we certainly expect that the election will be the primary topic on peoples minds everywhere we go,' Rhodes said. He added, 'I think, frankly, that would have been the case no matter what the result. But I think that will be more so the case, given the direction that the election took.' Despite Trump's victory at the ballot box on Tuesday, the president 'will be running through the tape on January 20th,' Rhodes and other advisers to Obama have said. 'We certainly know the positions that were taken throughout the course of the campaign. We will, of course, fully continue to implement our commitments under the Iran deal and under the Paris agreement,' Rhodes told reporters on Friday, making reference to a treaty the U.S. signed that demands a reduction of carbon emissions. Rhodes said the current administration recognizes that Trump and his aides will make their own decisions about those policies and it respects their right to do that - but the sitting president will not stop following the blueprint he laid out just because his party lost the election. President-elect Trump met with President Obama at the White House last week for 90 minutes. They told press afterward they discussed a range of foreign and domestic policy issues. Trump indicated that the talk with Obama had an effect and that he would be looking to the exiting executive for counsel. Staffers were excluded from the Oval Office discussion. However, Rhodes says 'the main focus of their conversation,' was a discussion of the transition period, which lasts just over two months and the 'diverse array of challenges' the country faces. Among the topics they discussed was the 'complexity in how we're dealing with the terrorist threat, how we're implementing the Iran deal, how the situation in Syria is unfolding, as well as the issues in Europe related to the refugees and NATO.' Congress has not yet voted on Obama's 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal. Republicans on Capitol Hill favored it and joined forces with the Democratic president to get Obama the authority he needed to continue negotiating it. Trump campaigned against the trade deal in the states that won him the election. So did Clinton and congressional Democrats, further crippling legislative attempts to pass the accord. Obama is taking time off from policy-pushing in Athens, Greece to visit the Parthenon House Speaker Paul Ryan backs the agreement but promised this summer that it will not come up for a vote before Obama leaves office. 'We still think the TPP makes sense for America for economic and national security reasons, and that it's important that we stay engaged in the region,' Wally Adeyemo, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economics said during the Friday preview of the president's trip. The White House official said the administration intends to 'talk about how we can work together over the course of the remaining days of this administration to solidify the partnership with those countries.' Obama is also slated to deliver a speech in Greece and hold a town hall for young people in Peru, in addition to government meetings in Germany. 'We had not written the speech in advance of the election, so I can't say that we're editing it,' Rhodes admitted in the Friday call. The senior administration official said that the president would, however, dedicate a significant portion of his remarks to globalization as he did at his final United Nations General Assembly. 'That will include, frankly, acknowledgement of our election results, the Brexit election results, and the sense that we've seen in a number of countries,' he said, 'there are challenges as people feel like decisions are made beyond their control, in some cases, as economies change, as inequality has persisted and, in some cases, has grown.' Obama is also expected to talk about the 'enormous progress' the United States has made since he took office in 2009, 'climbing out of the enormous economic hole, going from the depths of a Great Recession to years of job creation and economic growth, and narrowing inequality.' 'We believe that we've set a good direction at home even as we also worked with countries around the world to stabilize the global economy which had been in a free fall, including many of the partners that we'll be meeting with,' Rhodes said. The White House official contended that 'even with all the progress we've made, we recognize, no matter what had happened in November that more work needed to be done. The Philippine President, who sparked concern on his war on drugs, warns ISIS he would forego human rights Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned on Monday that Islamic State militants driven out of Syria and Iraq could set up in his country, and if that happened he would forego human rights obligations to keep his people safe. Duterte said the southern Philippine province of Mindanao was already a hotbed of rebellion and banditry and he was worried about "looming terrorism" and an influx of extremists who could exploit the insecurity. 'Once the terrorists of the Middle East are deprived of the land area, the real estate area where they can sleep ... they will wander to other places and they will come here and we have to prepare for that,' he said during a speech at a law enforcement agency. Scroll down for video Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has warned ISIS he will take action if they attack and won't let his people suffer 'Remember, these guys, they do not have an iota of what is human rights, believe me. 'I will not just simply allow my people to be slaughtered for the sake of human rights, that's bulls**t.' Human rights have been a touchy subject for President Duterte, who has vented daily fury at activists and Western governments that have shown concerns about his war on drugs and the high death toll. A native of Mindanao and mayor of Davao City for 22 years, Mr Duterte said there was a "very strong" Islamist rebellion there and Abu Sayyaf rebels were taking hostages almost every day. Abu Sayyaf is holding 21 captives, most of them foreign, and despite an ongoing military offensive to wipe them out, its piracy and kidnappings continue unabated. Mr Duterte said the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia were working closely to keep foreign extremists at bay. A native of Mindanao and mayor of Davao City for 22 years, Mr Duterte said there was a "very strong" Islamist rebellion there and Abu Sayyaf rebels were taking hostages almost every day. Pictured, ISIS member in Iraq On Friday, he warned that he may use his executive power to tackle lawlessness in the Philippines by suspending habeas corpus, a legal safeguard against arbitrary arrest and detention. The constitution allows 60-day suspensions "in case of invasion or rebellion, when the public safety requires it" and would permit arrests without warrant and detention without charge for three days. Mr Duterte mentioned habeas corpus on Friday in the context of both the southern unrest and his war on drugs and said building cases for arresting suspects took too much time and resources. News / Local by Alice Dube Three soldiers based at 1 Infantry Brigade in Bulawayo allegedly fatally assaulted an Insiza man after squeezing his testicles over a bicycle.The gruesome incident happened on Saturday.The trio Fighter Mwembe (30), Bright Nyoni (28) and Ntandoyenkosi Sibanda (26) have since been arrested.Their alleged victim is Josiah Sithole.According to reports, before the incident the soldiers were doing maintenance work at Mapolisa Brigade in Fort Rixon.However, when returning from a beer drink at Masudu Business Centre they spotted their colleague Emmanuel Mkhize laying drunk along the dust road.He was next to Sithole's bicycle."When they failed to wake up Mkhize, the trio decided to take the bicycle with them for safekeeping."The owner of the bicycle arrived and demanded his bicycle."The soldiers refused to give him the bicycle claiming that it belonged to their colleague. A misunderstanding led to the deadly attack" Wreckage was recovered but the pilot ejected and is in a safe condition It had taken off from the flagship aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov Aircraft is thought to have suffered mechanical problems before crashing A Russian navy jet crashed in the Mediterranean after taking off from Putin's flagship aircraft carrier which was sent to support Assad in Syria. The Russian defence ministry confirmed the MiG 29 fighter came down close to the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier yesterday afternoon after suffering mechanical problems. It is believed that the jet had attempted to land on the vessel following a training mission, but was unable to and instead plunged into the water. The MiG 29 fighter came down close to the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier yesterday afternoon after suffering mechanical problems (file picture of a Russian MiG 29) According to Fox News, two US intelligence officials said that a rescue helicopter then picked up a parachute and the pilot, who the Russian defence ministry confirmed is safe after he ejected and was taken aboard the carrier. The wreckage of the aircraft is believed to have been recovered but Russian officials confirmed flights over the Mediterranean would be continuing. The crash deals a significant blow to the Russians, who are planning to launch airstrikes against rebel-held areas of Aleppo in Syria from the aircraft carrier. It comes just days after a flotilla of Russian warships sailed to the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast after being sent to back up a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad. The commander of Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, Sergei Artamonov, said last week via videolink that the ships are now in the 'designated zone... in the eastern Mediterranean' and 'are now jointly carrying out tasks, manoeuvering to the west of the Syrian coast'. The battle group has travelled from the North Sea through the English Channel in the biggest such naval deployment in recent years as part of Russia's military intervention in Syria. It is believed that the jet had technical problems and attempted to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov, pictured, but was unable to and instead plunged into the water Russia has been flying a bombing campaign in Syria for the past year in support of President Assad and has deployed a naval contingent to back up its operation. The naval task force has been monitored closely by NATO, whose chief Jens Stoltenberg voiced concern the ships would be used to support the Russian military operation in Syria and 'increase human and civilian suffering.' Armtamonov confirmed days ago that aircraft are already taking off from the ship's deck to view the conflict zone. 'Flights are being carried out from the deck... they are working on coordination with the shore port,' he said. A bizarre claim that Donald Trump was born in Pakistan before being adopted and taken to America has emerged online. Pakistani news channel Neo News ran an extraordinary report suggesting that the President-elect was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan in Waziristan in 1946. Viewers immediately ridiculed the story, which was aired on Neo News last month before the election but has recently re-surfaced. Pakistani news channel Neo News ran a bizarre report suggesting that the President-elect was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan in Pakistan in 1946 In the news report, the presenter claims: 'Believe it or not, Presidential candidate Donald Trump was born in Pakistan and not in America.' The news channel also showed a picture of a young blond boy, which they claimed was a young Trump in Pakistan. The bizarre theory is that Trump was taken to London by a British-Indian army captain, after his birth parents died in a car accident, before being adopted and taken to America in 1955. Social media users took to Twitter to mock the news report. The presenter claims: 'Believe it or not, Presidential candidate Donald Trump was born in Pakistan and not in America' One person tweeted: 'Seriously!????!!! . Pakistani news channel claims Trump was born in Pakistan !!! Seriously ????' Another said 'This is insane', while one person simply added: 'Lol... Pakistani media is reporting donald Trump was born in Pakistan!' A series of unfounded tweets appear to be have been behind the report, with one person suggesting that Trump had been born into a Muslim family. Social media users took to Twitter to mock the report, with one person writing: 'Seriously????' Hanna wrote: 'Donald Trump born in #Muslimfamily in Shawal Valley North Waziristan June 14th 1946, name was Dawood Ibrahim Khan.' Prior to standing for President, Trump himself had for months fueled conspiracy theories over whether Barack Obama was born in the US, and thus eligible to be president. An exasperated Obama called this nonsense and held a press conference in 2011 to show off his birth certificate, which stated that he was born in Hawaii. Protest have taken place in a French town after a pensioner was allegedly sexually assaulted by a Sudanese boy shortly after his arrival from Calais. The 67-year-old woman was unloading her shopping in the coastal town of Arzon, in Brittany, when the 16-year-old approached. Prosecutors say they had a brief conversation in broken English before he kissed her, touched her left breast and then ran off. The 67-year-old woman was unloading her shopping in the coastal town of Arzon (file picture), in Brittany, when the 16-year-old approached The incident sparked anger online amid calls for a protest, according to reports in France. The woman told police she was 'not afraid' but wanted to report what had happened to her, said Francois Touron , prosecutor of Vannes. He said the minor had arrived at a local reception centre from Calais. Police say the minor had arrived at a local reception centre from Calais, following the destruction of the sprawling Jungle migrant camp (file picture) The teenager will next appear in court in March accused of sexual assault. News of the assault, on Thursday evening, sparked controversy on social media, Le Figaro said. There were calls for a demonstration today at the town hall 'to oppose the reception of migrants', the newspaper reported. It comes just weeks after French authorities launched a clear-out of the Calais migrant camp, re-housing refugees in new accommodation across France. Ten men from Brazil and Paraguay are set to be deported after investigators busted an illegal cigarette operation which was costing the taxpayer 138million a year. HM Revenue & Customs officers and West Midlands Police raided an illegal cigarette-processing factory on an industrial unit in Birmingham. The illegal operation could churn out 35million cigarettes a month and was costing the taxpayer almost 138million every year in lost duty and taxes. Ten men from Brazil and Paraguay aged between 26 and 40 were arrested by Immigration Enforcement officers for immigration offences and are set to be deported. A raid led by HM Revenue & Customs has resulted in an illegal cigarette making factory being closed down The factory in Birmingham, West Midlands, was churning out around 35million cigarettes a month The cigarette-processing factory (left and right) was discovered following a joint operation Inside the factory, officers found four lorry loads of processed and raw tobacco, cigarettes and packaging materials. They also removed machinery used to process cigarettes and paperwork. A nearby residential address was also searched. Stuart Taylor, Assistant Director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: 'Tobacco fraud costs the UK 2.4 billion a year in lost tax, money that should be funding vital public services in the UK. 'We continue to work with other enforcement agencies to reduce the availability of illicit tobacco. Don't let criminals profit by undermining legitimate retailers.' Sajeela Naseer, Head of Trading Standards for Birmingham City Council, said: 'This operation shows partnership working at its best. 'Together we've taken action on illicit tobacco fraud and this factory alone had the potential to deprive HM Treasury of millions of pounds. HMRC officers and West Midland Police also removed machinery used to process cigarettes The cigarettes were then packaged inside the factory which was set up on an industrial unit Ten men from Brazil and Paraguay are set to be deported after investigators busted the operation Investigations are still ongoing, and anyone with any information about the smuggling or illegal sale of tobacco can report it to HMRC 'Birmingham Trading Standards will continue its investigation in relation to the suspected counterfeit cigarettes found during the operation.' Officers from HMRC, along with Birmingham City Council Trading Standards, Immigration Enforcement, the Government Agency Intelligence Network and West Midlands Police carried out the raid on Tuesday and Wednesday last week. Donald Trump's son-in-law will play a significant role in the next presidential administration, according to the man the president-elect has named as his chief of staff. Reince Priebus said Monday morning on NBC's 'Today' show that Jared Kushner, who married Trump's elder daughter Ivanka in 2009, is among the advisers who will hold the most sway in the Oval Office. Priebus did not say Kushner will be hired to work for the administration, but made it clear that he has his father-in-law's ear and would be 'very involved in decision-making.' An anti-nepotism law dating from 1967 makes it illegal for federal government executive office-holders, including the President of the United States, to hire relatives to work under them. Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will be 'very involved in decision-making' after the Republican takes over the White House, according to the new chief of staff Reince Priebus, who will take over the West Wing fom his role chairing the Republican Party, put Kushner in the same class of Trum-whisperer as himself and chief strategist Steve Bannon Kushner, shown with Trump on Election Night, was instrumental behind the scenes as the billionaire businessman grew his campaign from a shoestring to a powerhouse The law has never been tested in court, however, and was likely breached when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife to run his administration's ill-fated 'Hillarycare' health insurance reform task force. The Trump transition team announced Sunday that Priebus would take the chief of staff position, with Steve Bannon serving as chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. The two positions have diverging duties: While Priebus will serve as Trump's gatekeeper Bannon will be a blue-sky thinker and all-around Trump Whisperer. 'The chief of staff is generally responsible for the day-to-day operations of the White House,' Priebus said Monday. 'But in regard to advising the president, I think if people understand President Trump, he likes taking opinions from a lot of different people. He's not a person that just listens to one person and does whatever that one person says. He decides.' 'So in advising the president,' he continued, 'I would suspect that me, Steve Bannon I think that Jared Kushner, obviously, his son-in-law's going to be very involved in decision-making. So that's the kind of president Donald Trump's going to be.' Kushner, along with Ivanka and her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, are already members of the presidential transition advisory team. Kushner (left) married Ivanka Trump (right) in 2009. The pair are pictured leaving their New York City apartment on Monday morning Kushner, shown with then-campaign CEO Steve Bannon during a September rally in Canton, Ohio, help set up Trump's digital operation and wrote speeches for him Kushner (2nd from right) is an integral cog in the Trump family, although he runs his own separate real estate development firm The 35-year-old real estate developer, publisher and investor accompanied the president-elect to Washington on Thursday when he met with President Obama and congressional leaders. He was seen walking on the White House grounds with current chief of staff Denis McDonough while Obama and Trump met in the Oval office. Kushner's roots in the Trump presidential campaign ran deep. He set up the campaign's digital operations and wrote at least two policy speeches along the way. He also advised the future president on Israel policy. Kushner was raised in the Orthodox Jewish faith; Ivanka Trump converted when they married. Kushner walked the White House grounds with current Chief of Staff Denis McDonough last Thursday while President Obama and President-Elect Trump met in the Oval Office A Trump transition spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Kushner's formal or informal role in the coming administration. Priebus told a Fox News Channel audience on Monday that his own slot in the West Wing is 'an operations role and it's an advisory role. Running the White House, everything from protocol to the daily routine to communications, policy, the presidents agenda and Congress.' A California doctor wanted by authorities for allegedly defrauding the states Medi-Cal health insurance program out of millions of dollars faked his own death and used forged passports to evade justice for over a decade, according to law enforcement officials. Tigran Svadjian, an Armenian immigrant who completed his medical studies in New York before opening up a clinic in Southern California, fled to Russia in 2002 after prosecutors thought they had successfully persuaded him to cooperate in their investigation of him and dozens of other alleged co-conspirators. Svadjian and other doctors who were believed to have had ties with Russian and Armenian organized crime figures were under investigation for allegedly overbilling the state of California for medical tests, the Los Angeles Times reported. Federal agents in California were faxed this death notice from the lawyer of Tigran Svadjian, a doctor from Newport Beach who was suspected of defrauding the state's health insurance program When federal agents confronted Svadjian in 2002 with evidence that he had been involved in the scheme, the doctor was given a choice either face charges that carried a penalty of 10 years in prison, or cooperate with the government by wearing a wire and going undercover in exchange for a reduced sentence. Svadjian agreed to the offer, but before he could proceed, he told authorities that he needed to fly to Russia to visit his ailing mother. Authorities were only notified in late October of that year that Svadjian died of pneumonia. The US embassy in Moscow had filled out a death certificate for Svadjian, whose lawyer had faxed it over to federal agents in Sacramento. Officials say Svadjian paid $200 for a death notice from a Moscow morgue and then obtained a fake Russian passport and relocated to the Egyptian resort town of Hurghada (above) Thinking that Svadjian was dead, it took over 10 years before prosecutors sought to dismiss charges against him. His assets were then handed over to creditors, and his wife and two children moved on with their lives. Officials, however, would be in for a shock, as it was learned that while in Russia, Svadjian paid $200 in order to obtain a fake death certificate from a Moscow morgue. He then got hold of a forged Russian passport with the name Vasily Petrosov. Soon afterward, he relocated to Egypt, where his father was a citizen. Svadjian then took up residence in Hurghada, a Red Sea resort town that had transformed into a tourist hotspot. There he was earning a living as a part-time scuba instructor. Svadjian was traveling to Russia through Ukraine, last year when authorities in Kiev (above) noticed he had a fake Lithuanian passport. He was then arrested upon his return to Egypt Eventually, he met and fell in love with a Russian woman from the Black Sea coastal town of Sochi. Things were moving along swimmingly for the couple, who welcomed their first child. In late 2015, his girlfriend was pregnant once again, though this time complications would arise. Since she would need a Cesarean section, the couple decided that she would be better off receiving treatment back in Russia. Svadjian and his girlfriend agreed that she would return to Russia and wait for him there. The only problem was that Svadjian did not have a passport. His fake Russian passport was confiscated after he tried to renew it years before. So he had obtained another fake passport this one Lithuanian from a friend in Egypt. Svadjian, the US national, became Petrosov the Russian. He was now Viktoras Cajevkis of Lithuania. Cajevkis boarded a flight from Egypt to Ukraine, which was supposed to be a stopover en route to Russia. Officials in Kiev, however, noticed that he was traveling on a fake passport and repatriated him to Egypt, where authorities were waiting to arrest him. Local police searched his apartment and found the fake Russian passport as well as an invalidated American passport that contained his real name. Soon after, police notified US officials from the American embassy in Cairo that they held a suspect who could be of interest. The officials, among them an FBI agent and other diplomatic investigators, interviewed Svadjian in Hurghada. It was there that Svadjian revealed his true identity and told of how he had faked his own death. Svadjian was extradited to the US and is currently in a jail cell in Los Angeles awaiting trial. Authorities who had thrown out the evidence against him in the original indictment will now seek to charge him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Ron Gomes, 33, was jailed for ten years A stalker who plotted to kidnap a woman he met on Twitter then 'chain and cage' her as his sex slave has been jailed for ten years. Robin Gomes, 33, broke into the woman's house in Powys, Mid Wales, after developing 'sadistic fantasies' about her after they met on Twitter and struck up an online relationship. Cardiff Crown Court heard she confronted him with a hunting rifle, which went off as Gomes wrestled it from her hands just moments before police burst through the door. The court heard they had previously met up in person for a night together but the woman, 31, told Gomes she didn't want a romance. Gomes then developed his plan to kidnap, enslave and rape the woman. Prosecutor Phillip Warren said: 'He claimed he was her master and she his slave. He says he finds sexual gratification in the suffering of others. 'He said she was an object to him, something to be trained and used properly, and she wasn't allowed to object to them having sex.' Mr Warren said initially their relationship 'flourished' after meeting online and they agreed to meet up in Bristol. She described Gomes as 'attentive and complimentary' and they spent the night at a hotel together. But the next morning she made it clear to him she didn't see their relationship going any further. Gomes then began bombarding her with abusive messages accusing her of sleeping with other men. He eventually used the internet to track down where she lived, and began turning up at her countryside home to tell her he 'loved' her. Police were called and gave him a harassment warning, and he was arrested later that day when he tried to return again. The court heard Gomes continued to send the woman offensive messages despite being charged with stalking. In one he wrote: 'I'm going to f*** you so hard that I scar you.' At Cardiff Crown Court (pictured), Gomes was given a 10-year extended jail sentence, to serve seven-and-a-half years before he can apply for release Prosecutor Mr Warren said: 'He broke into her home with the intent of committing a sexual offence. 'He hired a car, tracked her down, and the suggestion is that there was a degree of reconnaissance beforehand, indicating significant planning.' Mr Warren said Gomes banged on the door, which caused the woman to get a hunting rifle from her gun cabinet, dial 999 and barricade herself in her bedroom. The court heard Gomes broke through her door and shouted: 'Where are you, you little b****?' When he reached the landing she tried to fire the gun at him, but it failed to go off as she had left the safety catch on, allowing him to lunge at her and take the weapon. You wanted to chain and cage her. You admitted you would have raped her if necessary Gomes pushed her into her bedroom and onto her bed, before the gun fired through a pillar in the room. He told her she 'needed to be taught a lesson' just as officers burst into the home and arrested Gomes while the woman was left 'crying uncontrollably.' Gomes later admitted being a 'sexual sadist' who 'found sexual gratification in the suffering of a partner', and had come to the woman's home to 'stop her misbehaving.' In a statement read out in court the woman said she had been left feeling like a 'zombie', and now receives psychiatric treatment for anxiety. She said: 'I lost about a stone in weight in the week after the attack. I've struggled to eat and to sleep. 'I have nightmares and check my house to make sure that he's not there.' Gomes, of Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, admitted stalking and intent to commit a sexual act. Trudi Yeatman, defending, said Gomes suffers from both personality and delusional disorders but had 'improved' his behaviour since the attack in July 2014. Judge Michael Fitton told Gomes he was 'manipulative and devious' and had never showed any remorse. Judge Fitton said: 'You've said this woman was your 'c*** bucket', nothing more than a hole to have sex with. 'You wanted to chain and cage her. You admitted you would have raped her if necessary. 'Yours was a planned offence with sadistic excitement of inflicting fear into your victim. 'You are dangerous in that you represent a risk of serious harm to the public in the future.' He gave Gomes a 10-year extended jail sentence, stating he would serve seven-and-a-half years before he could apply for release. A 46-year-old woman from Washington state was helping a little girl after a suspected DUI crash when another vehicle struck and killed her over the weekend. Trina Morgan, of Darrignton, was driving along Highway 530 west of Arlington at around 5.20pm Saturday when she came across a disabled vehicle that struck a guardrail. Morgan pulled over and went to check on the occupants of the vehicle, discovering a 9-year-old girl in the backseat. The driver of the Hyundai appeared to be intoxicated. Scroll down for video Good Samaritan killed: Trina Morgan, 46 (left and right), was killed Saturday in Washington stater while rescuing a child from a wrecked car after a suspected DUI accident A Hyundai operated by a suspected drunken driver, and carrying a nine-year-old girl, struck this guardrail on Highway 530 Morgan was driving along the highway when she saw the wreck and went to help, removing the child from the disabled vehicle Morgan helped the girl out of the vehicle, and the two were walking along the road when another car struck them both from behind. The nine-year-old sustained a minor injury to her ankle, but Morgan was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials with the Washington State Patrol say the driver who ran over Morgan and the girl likely will not face any charges in connection to the deadly collision. The station KING5 reported that the 37-year-old driver of the Hyundai has been charged with a DUI and released. His relationship with the nine-year-old girl is unknown at this time. Gayle Thompson, Morgan's mother, told KIRO7 she bears no ill will towards the driver who took her daughter's life. Morgan and the girl were walking along this road when another car struck them from behind, killing the woman and slightly injuring the girl Mother's grief: Gayle Thompson, Trina Morgan's mother, says she does not bear ill will towards the driver who killed her daughter 'She was doing what any mom would do,' Thompson said. 'It's a child. There's a car. There's an accident. Is there something I can do to help? And that is what she did. She went and helped them. And in that brief second of a moment, she lost her life.' Morgan's friend and neighbor Sherrie Baker sounded a similar note, telling her station KOMO News she was not surprised that the 46-year-old woman was killed trying to help a child. After The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump would become president of the U.S. back in 2000, the latest episode seemed to express their regret in being right. In the opening credits of Sunday night's episode - the first to air since Trump's victory - Bart Simpson scowls as he writes 'being right sucks' on a chalkboard. The Simpsons confirmed the opening credits, which change every episode, was in fact in reference to the 'Bart to the Future' episode which aired 16 years ago. 'The Simpsons updates its 2000 prediction of a Trump Presidency... #TheSimpsons,' the show tweeted. Scroll down for video The Simpsons updates its 2000 prediction of a Trump Presidency... #TheSimpsons pic.twitter.com/Myf5rYb9Dj The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) November 14, 2016 After The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump would become president of the U.S. back in 2000, the latest episode seemed to express their regret in being right. Bart Simpson is shown scowling as he writes 'being right sucks' on a chalkboard during Sunday night's episode The first Trump reference appeared in the Bart to the Future episode, which aired on March 16, 2000, and he was later referenced in another clip called Trumptastic Voyage. The iconic cartoon's creator, Matt Groening, said: 'Trump was of course the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and thats still true. Its beyond satire.' Dan Greaney, a writer for the Simpsons, also told The Hollywood Reporter that the clip had a dark message behind it. He said: 'It was a warning to America. That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. 'It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane. The Simpsons predicted Donald would become US President 16 years ago in an episode called Bart To The Future in March 2000 In Bart To The Future Lisa Simpson says: 'Weve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. How bad does it get?' The cartoon foretold a Trump presidency in a surreal episode where Bart is given a window into the future - and found a country brought to its knees by financial mismanagement and a crime wave ushered in by Trump. The episode's alternate universe reveals that Trump, who will be 84 in 2030, left the country in an impossible amount of debt, and reliant on foreign aid from Europe and China. In the episode's vision of the future, America is also at the mercy of an army of genetically-enhanced thugs, brought about by Trump programs designed to help the nation's youth which dramatically backfired. The only person who can save the shattered United States is none other than the newly-elected President Lisa Simpson. The cartoon foretold a Trump presidency in a surreal episode where Bart is given a window into the future - and found a country brought to its knees by financial mismanagement and a crime wave ushered in by Trump Lisa's staff, including a grown-up Milhouse, let her know in graph form that her country is broke due to her predecessor Despite her lofty ambitions to 'refill the oceans' and build the world's biggest book-mobile, her biggest task becomes rescuing the nation from its crippling debt. In the first clip, Lisa sits in the White House as she says: 'Weve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. How bad does it get?' Her staff let her know in graph form that her country is broke due to her predecessor. Lisa is later forced to announce an enormous tax hike in an attempt to right Trump's wrongs, which kills her approval ratings. It also does nothing to placate the nation's creditors. But the nation is eventually saved by Bart, a failed musician in the future vision, who uses his well-practiced ability dodging debt repayments to win the U.S. a reprieve. In August, The Simpsons released a two-minute clip parodying the famous '3am call' video released during Clinton's 2008 run for president. The iconic cartoon's creator, Matt Groening, said: 'Trump was of course the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and thats still true. Its beyond satire' The Simpsons video shows both Clinton and Trump reacting to emergency calls while mocking everything from Trump's appearance to his quick temper and Twitter antics. The video is based on a 2008 campaign ad for Clinton that asked: 'It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Not long after Trump's controversial campaign launch, The Simpsons published a short video in July featuring Homer and Trump in close quarters. In the video Homer was slipped $50 by a campaign official to cheer on Trump at the launch, riffing on real-life allegations that Trump had paid for support. However, overexcited fans shunted him right behind Trump as he made his way down an escalator - prompting Homer to get sucked inside his much-commented-upon hairdo, where he found other lost souls including Amelia Earhart. As soon as he was expelled from Trump's hair-vortex, Homer was collared by security guards and dumped back in Springfield. A video on social media has also recounted the similarities between a real-life Trump moment and a scene from the cartoon showing them both giving a thumbs up as they get on an escalator. The Simpsons released a clip in July poking fun of Donald Trump and showed him and Homer Simpson in close quarters The video also shows the Trump cartoon character on Simpsons waving to a crowd as the real-life Trump also waves to the crowd while going down an escalator A video on social media has recounted the similarities between a real-life Trump moment, right, and a scene from the cartoon, left, showing them both giving a thumbs up Trump's triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House. The Republican blasted through Democrats' longstanding firewall during last week's election, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that had not voted for a GOP presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others. Boris Johnson, pictured in Brussels today, was branded 'shameless' after he argued Turkeys application to join the EU should not be cancelled despite its threat to bring back the death penalty Boris Johnson was today accused of shamelessness after he argued Turkeys application to join the EU should not be cancelled despite its threat to bring back the death penalty. During the Brexit referendum campaign, the Foreign Secretary repeatedly warned about the dangers of allowing the predominantly Muslim nation to join the bloc. But today he urged fellow EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels not to overreact to its capital punishment plan by ripping up its membership bid. Arriving for the meeting, Mr Johnson said: Obviously Turkey remains a matter of some concern and its very very important that we should not push Turkey into a corner. We should not overreact in a way that I think is against our collective interest to whats going on in Turkey. Mr Johnson argued that EU countries including Britain had kept the death penalty on their statue books until the 1980s and 1990s. But the EUs foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini firmly reminded him that capital punishment is not allowed under its accession rules. An EU diplomat tonight said Mr Johnson was shameless for defending Turkey after making its membership application an argument against Britain remaining in the bloc just months ago. Austria has led calls to suspend Turkeys EU membership bid because of its crackdown on alleged supporters of a failed military coup in July. Today Boris Johnson, pictured with his Belgian counterpart Dider Reynders in Brussels, urged fellow EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels not to overreact to its capital punishment plan by ripping up its membership bid Arriving for the meeting, Mr Johnson, pictured speaking to Finnish foreign minister Timo Soini, said: Obviously Turkey remains a matter of some concern and its very very important that we should not push Turkey into a corner' Its foreign minister Sebastian Kurz said: I am not for the continuation of entry negotiations and I believe that this Turkey does not have a place in the European Union. An EU official said leaders would review the situation in Turkey at a summit next month, but added: It would have to be a majority vote to stop the talks and it's clear there is no majority at this stage. In September, on his first visit to Turkey since becoming Foreign Secretary, Mr Johnson said Britain would help Turkey in any way become a member of the EU now it is leaving. During the campaign he called for David Cameron to give a guarantee he would veto Turkeys accession because of concerns it would lead to a flood of migrants into the country. Turkey began accession talks in 2005 but progress has been slow due to disagreements including over its human rights record. Britain abolished the death penalty for murder in 1965, but rare crimes such as high treason and piracy involving attempted murder remained theoretically punishable by death until 1998. A Foreign Office source said: The Foreign Secretary was in no way defending [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan but simply stating the facts. News / National by Staff reporter Zimbabwe People First leader Dr Joice Mujuru was not in the first group of 74 female recruits who joined the liberation struggle in 1974 and only received basic military training for three weeks under the "Chimbi-Chimbi" programme, a commander who trained the first group of Zanla female freedom fighters, Francis Komboni Gondo, has said.Instead, Dr Mujuru, Gondo said, only received basic training from one of 12 instructors picked from the first 72 female recruits. Gondo, whose Chimurenga name was Elias Hondo said Dr Mujuru was not part of the first group of 74 female recruits who joined the liberation struggle in 1974, with 72 of them eventually going for military training at Nachingweya Camp in Tanzania."This Chimbi-Chimbi was meant to just introduce these comrades to some of the basic war tactics. The only female comrades who received proper training are these 72 who trained at Nachingweya. They were trained for four-and-a-half months. Ndivo vakadzi vakanyatsobikwa. From then on, most female comrades received short training. Just to know the basics."When these female instructors finished training, other female comrades like Joice Mujuru, were later taken to Chifombo, then to Mozambique. Their role was to train other women," said Hondo.This is contrary to claims by Dr Mujuru who has been presenting herself as a veteran of the liberation struggle and a sharp-shooter who gunned down a helicopter during one of the battles at the war front. In an interview published by our sister paper, The Sunday Mail under the column, Chronicles from the Second Chimurenga, Gondo said some of the first female freedom fighters later trained Dr Mujuru under the "Chimbi-Chimbi" programme."I had been appointed as Zanu representative in Botswana. The representative who was there Dick Chikara, was moving to London. When I got to Lusaka, while waiting for Richard Hove to change my passport from the Tanzanian passport to obtain a Zambian passport, the first group of women recruits arrived in Lusaka. That was 1974," said Gondo.He said the commanders agreed that they could not just handover the female recruits to anyone fearing they could be abused. The women, he said, were put under his leadership and Joseph Khumalo (Mazhamba) with instructions to take them to a Frelimo camp in Tanzania called Nachingweya where the late Samora Machel used to stay.Gondo explained that before training, women recruits were examined first to check whether they were not pregnant."This was the first female group to go for military training. And this was the only group of female comrades that received proper military training. If you check, these female comrades up to this day havadadi. It's because of the training they received which others later failed to receive."He said he took the group through political orientation while other instructors taught them the drills and other such exercises."During examination, one of the females named Tichahwina was found pregnant and it emerged that Rex Nhongo (the late Mujuru) had made her pregnant. They had met in 1973. Tichahwina was sent back to Lusaka and was accompanied by Gwitira. We were left with 73 female comrades. After a few weeks, another female comrade, Concilea developed heart problems and was taken back to Lusaka. We were left with 72 female comrades."The women excelled in their drills and behaved like their male counterparts that they even made a strong impression on Machel. They stayed at Nachingweya for four and half months, he said.Hondo explained the rules against promiscuity: "We actually said 'usaite cheupombwe.' But people indulged anyway. It was not allowed but this happened. There was a system in some instances where some commanders would just say to some of the female comrades, 'Iwe huya kuno. Watova wangu.'"He said he had proposed love to one of the female comrades but the proposal was turned down because she was already involved with someone at the war front."Some commanders abused their positions but this was later as the war unfolded, especially at the war front. Many commanders later did this. Anoti haana kuita, those are blue lies," said Gondo.The female recruits, he said, were trained mainly by Frelimo instructors. Their training was the same with what their male counterparts went through."Vaiti kana vofora vachiimba ivo vana Suzan Rutanhire ava, iweka iwe. Even the politics that we taught them was the same that male comrades were going through at Mgagao. This was the first group of female comrades to go for military training under Zanu. On their passout parade, chairman Chitepo came together with Tongogara. I remember Samora Machel speaking highly about me and Khumalo."After the passout parade, Tongo instructed him to identify 12 female comrades who would become instructors and members of the General Staff. He said he first picked on the female comrade whom he had proposed love to.Some members of the 12 included Andy Garikai, Suzan Rutanhire, Revai, Vimbai ( who was later killed during Badza's time), Apronica Chinyandura, Loveness Chidhakwa and Cathrine Garanewako."These 12 instructors are the ones who later trained other female comrades who included Joice Mujuru. Joice and these other female comrades received training for three weeks only. We used to call it Chimbi-Chimbi. People like Rugare Gumbo, Henry Hamadziripi, Kumbirai Kangai, Richard Hove and other went through this Chimbi-Chimbi training but the male comrades received training for male instructors. This camp was 25 miles out of Lusaka." A West Virginia mayor and local executive are facing mounting pressure to resign over a racist post about Michelle Obama. 'It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I'm tired of seeing a Ape in heels,' wrote Clay County Development Corporation director Pamela Ramsey Taylor shortly after Donald Trump was elected as president. Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling responded: 'Just made my day Pam.' Clay County Development Corporation director Pamela Ramsey Taylor and Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling are facing mounting pressure to resign over a racist post about Michelle Obama. 'It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I'm tired of seeing a Ape in heels,' wrote Taylor Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling responded: 'Just made my day Pam' Video courtesy of WSAZ 3 The post was deleted but not before it was shared hundreds of times on social media. Taylor has also suspended her Facebook account. The two women have since apologized for their remarks. 'My comment was not intended to be racist at all,' Whaling said in a statement to The Washington Post. 'I was referring to my day being made for change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me know that I'm not of any way racist! 'Again, I would like to apologize for this getting out of hand!' Pamela Ramsey Taylor also said sorry on her Facebook account, which she has set to private. Earlier, their comments sparked a huge furor in the small county with many branding the post 'racist' and 'vile' and demanding that both officials stand down. A petition calling for Whaling and Taylor to be fired from their positions has already reached more than 14,000 signatures. Tinna-Jamie Conner, addressing the two officials, said in a Facebook post: 'Here's a news flash for you deplorable classless beings. OUR First Lady, Michelle Obama personifies and exudes beauty, grace, class, intelligence, humility, strength, patience, passion and HOPE. It has sparked furor in the small county with many branding the post 'racist' and 'vile' and demanding that both officials stand down 'Neither of you idiots could hold a candle to her on your hottest day. Say what you will, but your hate and racism is ugly.' Dianne Degen Joyce added that Taylor's comments was not only 'vile' but incorrect. Others agreed: 'That goes without saying. Michelle Obama is the epitome of class, grace and style,' Celeste DuMas Reinhard said. Some Facebook users pointed out that president-elect Trump's wife Melania had previously stripped off for modelling jobs, while Michelle Obama had been involved in politics. Others simply demanded Taylor and Whaling be fired. Robin Brown said: 'Women can and SHOULD make them lose those jobs. They should be publicly humiliated.' Both women involved have apologized publicly on Facebook. Taylor described Michelle Obama (left) as an 'ape' and said she was looking forward to having a 'classy, dignified' First Lady in Melania Trump (right) Whaling issued a statement to Eyewitness News about the incident. 'I would like to apologize for any unintentional harm caused by my comment,' Whaling's statement said. 'My comment was not intended to be racist at all. I was referring to my day being made for the change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me, know that I am not in any way racist! Again, I would like to apologize for this getting out of hand!' DailyMail.com's calls to the Clay County Development Corp. and Clay Town Council went unanswered. Drug addict and satanist Stefano Brizzi kept his aviator sunglasses on during his interview with police. His trial heard the Italian 'cannibal' answered the door to his stinking flat in south London in just a pair of sunglasses and some pink pants. Newly-released footage taken after his arrest shows Brizzi sitting nonchalantly speaking to police, his eyes hidden by the glasses. Newly-released footage shows Stefano Brizzi wearing sunglasses in his police interview He is asked what he did between the time PC Gordon Semple went missing and when his flat was raided. Nodding, he replies simply: 'Erm, no comment.' The footage was released after Brizzi was convicted of murder by a majority verdict today following a trial at the Old Bailey. Brizzi's gruesome plot to dispose of PC Semple's body was uncovered thanks to CCTV gathered from around the capital. Jurors were shown footage of him shopping for tools including a giant bucket to plunge and dissolve his body parts in acid. Other parts were roasted, boiled and perhaps even eaten before police were alerted to the foul stench from his London flat. Brizzi had placed a leg in a roasting tin in the oven, and traces of PC Semple's DNA were also found on a set of chopsticks. A bone believed to belong to the PC was found with a suspected bite mark in a kitchen bin. The killer was obsessed with TV series Breaking Bad, which inspired his murder plot Chilling: CCTV footage shows Stefano Brizzi shopping for a bin to dissolve the body of PC Gordon Semple DNA from the alleged victim was found on the blade of a blender, cooking pot, chopping board and grease in the oven of the Italian's kitchen, the Old Bailey heard. PC Semple, 59, was on duty when he arranged to meet Brizzi, via Grindr, for 'hot, dirty' sex on the afternoon of April 1. Following the alleged murder, neighbours on the Peabody Estate in south London noticed a 'revolting smell' coming from Brizzi's flat. On April 7, Brizzi was described by his neighbour Martin Harris as being 'cool as a cucumber' when he stopped by to inform him police had been called 'because of the stench', the court heard. When police were called, Brizzi answered his door in nothing but a pair of pink underpants and aviator sunglasses and told officers: 'I've tried to dissolve the body - I've killed a police officer.' Two officers arrived to find bottles of chemicals scattered in the hall and 'blue-green liquid' in the bath with 'flesh-coloured globules floating in the water', his trial heard. One of the officers looked inside a bin liner on the floor and saw a human hand, the court heard. CCTV: PC Semple at Blackfriars Station on his way to Brizzi's Southwark flat for sex The defendant said he had HIV and had been told by Satan to 'kill, kill, kill', the prosecutor said. Talking to the officers at his flat, Brizzi said: 'I was talking online about Satan as a fetish - and crystal meth takes me to Satan. 'I am from a Catholic family so when I found I was gay, I found out I was from Satan. I loved crystal meth and wanted to meet someone who talked about Satan.' Brizzi later allegedly claimed he had disposed of some body parts he had been unable to break up by taking them on his bicycle to a quiet spot by the River Thames. A human foot was later discovered by the Thames riverbank at Bermondsey Wall and body matter recovered from drainpipes in Brizzi's block. Michael has also been charged with assault and battery against his wife A Kansas woman who pleaded guilty to murdering her seven-year-old stepson last year has been sentenced to life in prison. Heather Jones, 30, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder in the death of Adrian Jones, whose remains were found in the family home in Kansas City last November. Jones was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole in 25 years. She was also sentenced to an additional five years and eight months after pleading guilty to two counts of child abuse. The boys remains were discovered while police were responding to a domestic disturbance at the family's home. Scroll down for video Heather Jones (left), 30, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse. Her husband, Michael A. Jones, 44, is scheduled to stand trial in February Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman has declined to address media reports that the boy had been fed to the pigs, but he said the crime scene was "one of the worst things" investigators had ever seen. The boy's father, Michael Jones, has pleaded not guilty to premeditated first-degree murder and other charges in the death of the boy, who was his biological son from another relationship. He is due to stand trial in February. Michael Jones, 44, and Heather Jones, 30, were arrested after police were notified Adrian was missing and then found human remains in a barn on the property, according to Gorman. They were arrested after police were notified Adrian was missing and then found human remains in a barn on the property Dead mice, cages full of rats, syringes, rat poison and pornographic videos are just some of the things that were found inside the home where the couple lived with the boy and six girls. Property owner Jennifer Hoevers, who rented the home to Michael and Heather, said she was shocked and disgusted when she went inside the property for the first time since theyd been jailed. It took my breath away, she told FOX 4. Fast food wrappers everywhere. Theres milk, rotting food everywhere. Hoevers said Michael and Heather Jones were polite and respectful and showed interest in eventually buying the rural Kansas City home when they began renting over two years ago. But now the $500,000 residence that Hoevers and her husband, who is currently deployed, put their entire life savings into has been trashed. We had a lot of hopes and dreams for it, she said. We wanted someone else to enjoy it. We saw that they had kids. Having little kids myself, I dont know how anybody could allow their kids to live like this. Michael has also been charged with aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a firearm against Heather. Police responded to a domestic violence call to the home on November 25 after Jones allegedly shot his wife. Heather Jones' father, Jeff Coon, said his daughter called him on Thanksgiving and told him Michael had killed the little boy and it would be 'all over the news'. 'He fed him to the pigs, is all she said,' he told the Kansas City Star. 'She just told me it was going to be all over the news, and thats the last time we talked.' Coon only learned days later that his daughter had been telling the truth. 'I dont know if I didnt want to believe her,' he said. 'She was just calm, just like were talking now. Thats why I never gave it another thought.' Because of his estrangement with his daughter, Coon had not seen Adrian for two years. 'I just dont understand what that little boy had done to get what he got. Theres no reason for it,' he said of the young boy's death. There were six girls living in the Jones home at the time. They ranged in age from younger than two to ten-years-old and have since been placed in protective custody. The babysitters for the family claimed that multiple people contacted the Kansas Department For Children and Families with concerns about the children and their living conditions. Michael Williams, Heather Jones' brother, alleged that Michael had abused his wife and the children in the home for years. 'There are bullet holes in the walls of that house,' he told NBC News. 'So I'm sure you can understand what terror may have been going through that household daily.' Tributes also poured in from Speaker Paul Ryan and scores of fellow broadcasters Gwen Ifill, the respected PBS news anchor, has died at the age of 61 after losing a battle with cancer. Ifill, who was best known as the NewsHour co-anchor and managing editor of PBS talk show Washington Week, passed away surrounded by her family in a Washington hospice on Monday. The respected newscaster had moderated two vice-presidential debates, between John Edwards and Dick Cheney in 2004; and between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in 2008. Earlier this month PBS announced she would be taking time off for health reasons but had kept her battle with cancer private. Scroll down for video Long-time journalist and newscaster Gwen Ifill died aged 61 on Monday after losing her battle with cancer Ifill was best known as PBS's NewsHour co-anchor, pictured interviewing President Obama who paid tribute to her today 'I am very sad to tell you that our dear friend and beloved colleague Gwen Ifill passed away today,' WETA TV President and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller wrote in a staff-wide email obtained by Politico. 'I spent an hour with her this morning and she was resting comfortably, surrounded by loving family and friends... Earlier today, I conveyed to Gwen the devoted love and affection of all of us at WETA/NewsHour. Let us hold Gwen and her family even closer now in our hearts and prayers.' President Barack Obama described Ifill as a friend, a 'powerful role model' and an 'extraordinary' journalist with 'integrity', in a touching tribute speech. She and her NewsHour co-host, Judy Woodruff (L) pictured at the Women's Media Awards on November 5, 2015, where Ifill accepted a Lifetime Achievement award The respected newscaster had moderated two vice-presidential debates, between John Edwards and Dick Cheney in 2004; and between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in 2008 (pictured) PBS journalist Gwen Ifill was the moderator during the vice presidential debates in 2008 between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin 'She gave her country a great service,' he said in a speech today at the White House. Ifill never married not had any children. When asked about in 2008, she still seemed hopeful. 'I don't know why I'm not married,' she told TIME. 'I just know I will be, so I don't sweat it.' Sadly she never got the chance to fulfill that wish. She died on Monday - just two days before she was scheduled to receive a prestigious award, the John Chancellor Award, at a Columbia University ceremony, reports. She was born to immigrant parents, her father Urcille Ifill, a Barbadian who immigrated from Panama, and her mother, Eleanor, immigrated from Barbados. Ifill also had five siblings, all older. OBAMA'S TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO GWEN On a personal note, Michelle and I want to offer our deepest condolences to Gwen Ifill's family and all of you, her colleagues, on her passing. Gwen was friend of ours. She was an extraordinary journalist. She always kept faith with the fundamental responsibilities of her profession; asking tough questions, holding people in power accountable and defending a strong and free press that makes our democracy work. I always appreciated her reporting even when I was at the receiving end of one of her tough and thorough interviews. Whether she reported from a convention floor or from the field, whether she sat at the debate moderator's table or at the anchor's desk, she not only informed today's citizens but she always inspired tomorrow's journalists. She was an especially powerful role model for young women and girls who admired her integrity, her tenacity and her intellect. And for whom she blazed a trail as one half of the first female anchor team on network news. Gwen did her country a great service. Michelle and I join her family and her colleagues and everyone else who loved her in remember her fondly today. Advertisement The broadcaster was diagnosed with cancer sometime between late 2015 and early 2016, according to her close friend Michele Norris. She shared the news with family and friends but decided she wanted to keep her diagnosis private. In April, PBS announced she was taking a two month leave of absence for 'ongoing health issues.' Norris revealed today that those issues arose due to complications from her treatment. Yet she was back at work the next month, and within weeks had secured an exclusive interview with Obama. However, she was forced to take another leave of absence last week where she traveled to a hospice in Washington, Rockerfeller said in the email. PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger described Ifill as 'one of America's leading lights in journalism.' In a statement, he said that she was one of the reasons that people felt like they could trust the media. 'Her contributions to thoughtful reporting and civic discourse simply cannot be overstated,' he added. 'She often said that her job was to bring light rather than heat to issues of importance to our society. Gwen did this with grace and a steadfast commitment to excellence. 'Our sorrow at her passing is a part of our profound gratitude for all that she did for our system and our nation. It was an honor to know Gwen and to work with her. All of us at PBS express our sincere condolences to Gwen's friends and family.' NewsHour's executive producer Sara Just described Ifill as a 'journalist's journalist' who set a high standard for everyone to follow. Many of her colleagues, fellow broadcasters and politicians have already begun paying tribute to the well respected journalist. NBC Nightly News' Lester Holt said he was 'very sad' to hear of Ifill's death. 'Gwen represented the best of broadcast journalism,' he said. 'Our hearts are broken.' Ifill never married but was still close with her family including her cousin Sherrilyn Ifill President & Director-Counsel of LDF (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund) She was the youngest of six children, born to her immigrant parents Urcille and Eleanor (pictured with older brother Earle Ifill) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan tweeted that he was also 'saddened' to hear about Ifill, 'an incredibly talented and respected journalist.' Pete Williams, of MSNBC, broke down in tears on air as he reported the death of his 'dear friend'. 'Gwen would want me to get this together,' he said as he fought back tears, describing how the talented newspaper reporter got her first job in TV with MSNBC. 'S he was one of the most successful women in journalism. She has so many awards in her office you could barely see out of window,' he joked. Meet the Press Daily's Chuck Todd said he was 'heartbroken' over the loss. 'She owned every beat she was on, whether at the @nytimes @NBCNews or @NewsHour or anywhere else,' he tweeted. CNBC reporter John Harwood described the 61-year-old broadcaster as a 'terrific friend and colleague, whip-smart newspaper reporter and skilled broadcaster, holder of best BS detector I ever saw.' Tamron Hall, Co-Host the TODAY Show, added she was 'heartbroken' to learn that her 'hero' had passed away. Her Newshour co-host Judy Woodruff has not yet commented on the loss. Ifill began her career in the late 1970s as a political newspaper reporter at a time when black and female reporters were rare. Ifill joined PBS in 1999 where she became the moderator of the PBS program Washington Week in Review and co-anchor for PBS NewsHour Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is interviewed by broadcaster Gwen Ifill during the 2011 Fiscal Summit Many of her colleagues, fellow broadcasters and politicians have already begun paying tribute to the well respected journalist Ifill also wrote for some of the country's most esteemed newspapers, including The Washington Post and the New York Times, before transitioning to broadcast journalism in 1994 with MSNBC. She told the New York Times in 2013, shortly after she and Woodruff were named the first women co-anchors of NewsHour, that she hoped that her breakthrough into journalism and broadcasting would inspire others. 'When I was a little girl watching programs like this I would look up and not see anyone who looked like me in any way. No women. No people of color. 'I'm very keen about the fact that a little girl now, watching the news, they see me and Judy sitting side by side it will occur to them that that's perfectly normal- that it won't seem like any big breakthrough at all.' Ifill served on the board of the Harvard Institute of Politics and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She was also a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Museum of Television and Radio. A federal judge on Monday ordered Making a Murderers Brendan Dassey released from prison. The Wisconsin man, now 27, was serving a life sentence for the 2005 murder and sexual assault of Teresa Halbach after confessing as a sixteen-year-old. In August, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin ruled that police tricked the intellectually disabled teenager into describing how he supposedly helped rape, stab, shoot and dismember Halbach on his uncle Steven Averys orders. And he has now ordered Dassey be released while prosecutors appeal that ruling. Dassey has until noon Tuesday to provide the address of where he plans to live and his lawyer said he hopes to have him out by Thanksgiving. But hours after the decision to release Dassey, the Wisconsin Attorney General said he would file an emergency motion to block Dassey's release. Scroll down for video A federal judge has ordered that Brendan Dassey be released from prison immediately. Dassey is pictured on the left, being led from Wisconsin court on March 3, 2006. He's pictured on the right in his 2006 police interview Dassey's supposed confession to the murder of Theresa Halbach was one of the most shocking moments of the December 2015 documentary Making a Murderer. Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan. Theresa Halbach (pictured) was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan Viewers saw police officers apparently coerce Dassey - the teenager with an IQ of 70 - into confessing to the murder of Halbach along with his uncle Steven Avery. The documentary also heavily suggested that Avery was framed for the murder by police officers with a grudge. In freeing Dassey, Magistrate Judge William Duffin held that investigators made specific promises of leniency to Dassey and that no 'fair-minded jurists could disagree.' He cited one investigator's comment early in the interview that 'you don't have to worry about things,' plus repeated comments like 'it's OK' and that they already knew what happened. Dassey was memorably shown complaining in the documentary that he would miss Wrestlemania after his confession. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 after his arrest in March 2016. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He's pursuing his own appeal. Dassey will not be allowed to contact his co-defendant and uncle Steven Avery (pictured left in a recent jail picture, and on the right in a 1985 mugshot) Dassey has been in jail since March 2006. He's pictured above being led to the Manitowoc County Courthouse on April 16, 2007 Dassey's Attorney Steve Drizin, would not say where Dassey plans to live and said he had not spoken yet with Dassey. 'That's what I'm focused on right now, getting him home, getting him with his family and then helping him to re-integrate back into society while his appeal plays out,' Drizin said. Dassey's brother Brad also issued a statement, saying, according to Channel3000.com: 'My brother is one step closer to the freedom he DESREVES! My heart is pumping beyond belief and I'm extremely ecstatic to hear he'll finally get a taste of freedom until things are completely resolved. Despite what people say, I love and care about my brother, Brendan. I always have and always will.' Dassey will also be barred from obtaining firearms or controlled substances and has been ordered not to have contact with Halbach's family, or Avery. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said in a statement Monday that he will file that motion with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A federal judge ordered Dassey released while prosecutors appeal a ruling that overturned Dassey's conviction in the 2005 slaying of photographer Teresa Halbach. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped Avery with the crime. The state has appealed that ruling. Avery's lawyer Kathleen Zellner had earlier tweeted that Dassey would be released today, but then deleted it. A man accused of raping and murdering a 4-year-old girl has been publicly lynched. The alleged paedophile was arrested in Reyes, northern Bolivia after police found a missing girl's body earlier this week. Furious locals refused to wait for his trial and took justice into their own hands. Furious: Harrowing video footage shows the gang forcing the bars of the jail open A mob stormed the police station and dragged the man into the street where locals hanged him on a tree. Harrowing video footage shows the gang forcing the bars of the jail open before grabbing the helpless man. The mob started beating him and dragged him through the streets. The man was hanged just minutes later. Police officers were outnumbered and failed to stop the public lynching. Shocking: The man accused of raping and murdering a 4-year-old girl was dragged through the streets Violent: Locals then grabbed the helpless man and pulled him through the streets to hang him The 4-year-old victim whose death incensed the community was not a local but was visiting the area with her parents for her grandmother's funeral. Ivan Zambrana, the department director of the Special Force for Crime Fighting, told local media: 'The dead bodies, both the girl's and the lynching victim's, have been moved to Palos Blancos [near Bolivian capital La Paz], we are investigating the case.' Nobody has been arrested for the lynching, but the police are currently questioning locals and using social media videos of the incident in tackling the case. Gruesome: Bystanders took videos on their phones as the man was left dead in the street Incredible footage has emerged from the front lines of the fight against Islamic State as French forces came to the rescue to destroy a suicide vehicle. The video, filmed by Riam Dalati near Raqqa, shows a vehicle making quick progress across the desert. That truck is a Suicide Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device, or SVBIED, and it is seen accelerating at some speed toward the cameraman, while there are shouts in the background. The vehicle, a Suicide Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device, is heading towards its target, the allied forces After realising that the missile launched by Kurdish forces has missed the target, French special ops are quickly on the case. The small cloud of smoke is just the beginning The missile fired by French operatives explodes, taking its target of the car with it in a cloud of smoke It is being driven by a Islamic State suicide bomber. To the left of the car, the video shows a white light, a wire-guided missile, being fired from a ATGM launcher. But the missile launched by Kurdish fighters in the YPG misses its target. Panicked voices can be heard in the video's background, before French special forces save the day. Cheers can be heard on the video as the allied forces, made up predominantly here of Kurdish fighters, celebrate The panic that had arisen when the forces realised their missile had not hit its mark is soon replaced by relief A small cloud of smoke appears behind the car, which is still powering through the desert towards its own target. Then the dramatic explosion takes place, close behind the vehicle. French Special Operations have fired a missile at the suicide truck, saving the day after the first miss. It could have been a Javelin missile, a US made 'fire and forget' weapon. Cries and shouts of relief can be heard in the background as one man shouts 'Yes!' when seeing what has happened. On November 6, the RAF joined the fight for Islamic States de-facto capital Raqqa. US intelligence sources say the terror groups attacks against Western targets are being plotted from the Syrian city, adding urgency to coalition plans to launch an attack. Speaking as the operation got under way, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the RAF would be involved in a two-pronged attack in Iraq and Syria. He said: Were supporting Iraqi-led forces defeating Daesh (IS) in Mosul and the RAF will support the Raqqa operation as it develops. Our strikes are making a difference in Mosul now and our sophisticated surveillance effort is helping give the coalition a vital edge in Syria. Duran Williams Kajiama was fatally stabbed on Saturday evening The distraught mother of a 17-year-old stabbed to death on his way to a birthday party has told how battling medics used 40 bags of blood in a bid to save him. And the man who found him said that people just walked by the teen as he held the youth's hand and tried to keep him talking. Duran Williams Kajiama was fatally stabbed in an alleyway a short walk from his house on Saturday evening. As he staggered back to try and get home, he collapsed in the street and was helped by 30-year-old Nathan Hickmott, who battled to comfort him and stop the bleeding while the ambulance came. Another boy, 16, was also stabbed in the back and neck nearby but survived. Speaking at the family near the scene in Dagenham, east London, Duran's mother, Beatrice Mushiya, told of the pain and regret of losing her son. She said: 'I can't believe it. I was not expecting this. I know very little about what happened. I know he was going to a friend's birthday party. 'He left home, and the next thing for me was to get a phone call from the police saying they had taken him to hospital. 'They just said that he had been stabbed and that he was unwell.' Beatrice rushed to hospital to be at her son's side, but found him in theatre for a number of hours while doctors desperately tried to stop the bleeding. She said: 'But in hospital, they just couldn't stop the blood. They said they had used 40 bags of blood, but he just kept bleeding. He was attacked in an alleyway a short walk from his house (the block of flats pictured) on Saturday evening Floral tributes were left outside for the 17-year-old, who his mother described as a 'polite, respectful' boy 'They couldn't keep the blood in him.' Beatrice said her son, who had turned 17 just last month, would 'do no harm to anyone'. She said: 'He was a lovely boy. I'm not just saying that because I'm his mum - he was lovely to everyone. 'He was polite, respectful, he loved his music, gentle. I just can't believe it. It doesn't feel real. 'But I wasn't there to help him. That's where I should have been. But I wasn't. And I will live with that every day for the rest of my life. 'It's awful. I wouldn't wish this on anybody, to go through what I am going through. 'I cannot describe the pain. He was incredible, such a good boy. Never been in prison, no trouble, never done anything to anyone.' Duran had planned to train as an engineer, Beatrice said, adding that he was currently a student at Palmer's College in Essex. She said: 'I will stand in front of the local community and talk about this, what can be done to prevent this, what can we do, how can we help our youths. 'What can we teach them, between us, our families, our communities and as a nation. 'We need to do something about this. Knives need to be stopped. It's not the answer. It's not a game. Look at us - this is the result. Ruined families..' Mr Hickmott had just left his home nearby when he noticed Duran lying on the floor bleeding profusely. He said: 'A few people were just walking past him. But I stopped and spoke to him, managed to get his name, and he told me how old he was. 'I held his hand and he looked at me. He was squeezing my hand. I looked at him, because I've been stabbed so I know. 'I told him, 'brother. I have been in your position'. I told him to be strong and that I knew what he was going through. 'Only one other man stopped to help - everyone else walked by. The man who found him said that people just walked by the teen as he held the youth's hand and tried to keep him talking 'When I discovered him, you could see he was still in shock. 'Obviously, I rang the ambulance and they told me what to do, to roll him onto his back, put pressure on his wound, keeping speaking to him. 'Because I was calling the police all night to ask, and they just kept saying he was in theatre and they would update me.' Mr Hickmott visited Duran's mother on Monday morning because he wanted her 'to know that he wasn't alone'. He told her: 'I did the best I could. I'm so sorry. 'You could see he was scared. But when he saw there was someone there helping him, he wasn't scared no more. Advertisement Hamburg has spent 3.9 million equipping its anti terror officers with new equipment over fears of jihadi-style attacks. Officers from the BFE arrest unit displayed their new Haenel assault rifles and heavy-duty ballistic protection helmets and body armour at a special press conference in the city. The city has also purchased the Survivor 1 armoured personnel carrier for anti-terror police operations. Hamburg city fathers have spent 3.9 million providing new equipment for their anti-terrorist police officers Officers have been equipped with new Haenel assault rifles and heavy-duty body armour and helmets for added protection The officers will be transported in new Survivor 1 vehicles which can cope with chemical or biological attack The SK4-rated ballistic protection is capable of stopping a round fired from an AK-47 assault rifle. The Survivor One can deal with chemical, nuclear and biological warfare agents., protecting the officers inside from exposure. Some 70 officers are to be supplied with the additional body armour and helmets to protect them in the case of an attack. According to NDR.de, the decision to equip the police with the heavy-duty equipment was due to the ongoing threat posed by ISIS. In mid July, the city ordered 280 near assault rifles and sub-machine guns for officers. Earlier this month, German police raided locations in three states and detained nine asylum seekers suspected of being part of an organized Chechen crime ring, MDR television reported. Police had said earlier that the raids were staged in Dresden, Leipzig, Pirna and Radeberg in the eastern state of Saxony as well as locations in the neighbouring state of Thuringia and the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. City authorities decided to provide the new equipment due to the ongoing threat posed by jihadi terrorists such as ISIS The new helmets and body armour are capable of stopping a bullet fired by a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle Some of the officers have been equipped with Heckler and Koch MP5 assault rifles as well as body armour and helmets The police action followed an October 25 operation in which refugee centres and 12 homes in Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia states were stormed on suspicion that they were housing people involved in financing terrorism. Police said the suspects arrested this month were predominantly Russian citizens of Chechen origin and involved in organised criminal activities such as bodily harm, blackmail, illegal restraint and harassment. Last month the ISIS news agency Aamaq claimed 'a soldier of the Islamic State' stabbed two people in Hamburg on October 16. Two teenagers, a 16-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, were sitting on the waterside of a Hamburg lake that day, when a man approached them from behind, stabbed the boy several times with a knife and then pushed the girl into the water. In July, Hamburg decided to invest in a further 280 assault rifles for their police officers to counter the ongoing terror threat ISIS has claimed several attacks in Germany since the summer claiming the life of one 16-year-old boy in Hamburg The ISIS news agency Aamaq has sent a number of threats to Germany claiming their terrorists will target the country The attacker fled afterward. The boy was taken to a hospital where he subsequently died. The girl who was pushed into the water wasn't injured, but was taken to a hospital for psychiatric treatment after the attack. Authorities claimed only one person had been stabbed in the attack. In July, two attacks carried out in Germany by asylum seekers were claimed by ISIS. Five people were wounded in an axe rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach. Both of the attackers were killed. Earlier this month, a 16-year-old German-Moroccan girl went on trial for allegedly stabbing and wounding a police officer in Hannover at the behest of ISIS. A Syrian migrant who was suspected of planning to carry out a bomb attack killed himself in prison two days after being arrested this month in Leipzig. News / National by Staff reporter The government is negotiating with the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development for $35,7 million for the Zhove irrigation project in Beitbridge.The project will develop infrastructure for intensive citrus production on 2 520 hectares of land and is expected to benefit 5 000 households upon completion, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement on Friday.The project is in line with the government's policy thrust to eradicate poverty, which resulted in the launch of the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper in September 2016, Chinamasa said.The mission was in the country for two weeks until Saturday on an appraisal mission of the Zhove irrigation project.Chinamasa said the government was also negotiating for technical assistance and an economic feasibility study for the construction of two district hospitals in Harare. It is a murky underground world that involves digging a lot of dirt and setting traps for the enemy. But these molecatchers arent the double-dealing spies of John Le Carre novels. Their quarry isnt human, merely the pesky burrowing mammal that digs up lawns and damages plants. Yet the molecatching business is not immune from cloak-and-dagger rivalry and claims of treachery. It has led to a bitter clash involving two of Britains half-dozen female molecatchers, with accusations of lack of professionalism, shoddy animal welfare and mafia tactics. Louise Chapman, a molecatcher, admits she has 'shaken up' her profession. She is pictured here with her dog who accompanies her throughout her daily work calls The feud centres on three organisations that represent or train those employed in the lucrative trade, where each kill can be worth 60. Ann Chippendale, who founded the Association of Professional Mole Catchers, claims her rival Louise Chapman, head of the British Mole Catchers Register, is an embarrassment to proper professional molecatchers. Miss Chapman claims her detractor, who used to belong to the Register, is deranged and jealous of her because she is a newcomer. Meanwhile the Guild of British Mole Catchers is suggesting its rivals fail to check traps every day as they should to prevent unnecessary suffering to moles. It in turn is accused of inventing the title master molecatcher to drum up business. Details of the squabble surfaced, bizarrely, in one of the most respected US publications, the Wall Street Journal. It said Lancashire-based Miss Chippendale, 55, questioned Miss Chapmans professionalism. The mole catching industry is regulated by three trade bodies who have all become involved in some form of insult trading in the last few weeks. File photo of a mole The Registers training was flawed, she claimed, as members were being given inaccurate information on mole breeding. This is believed to refer to Norfolk-based Miss Chapmans belief that female moles bred twice this year instead of the normal once. Miss Chippendale told the WSJ: Shes taking their money but shes not really doing the work. I am not happy about it and would say things to her face. Miss Chapman, 48, told the Mail: Ive got no idea why shes doing this. I dont bad-mouth people because Im a professional. Those that do, obviously arent and feel threatened in some way. Martin Noble who is Secretary of the Guild of British Mole Catchers said he is trying to promote the right way of mole catching The former teacher, who began training for the job in 2010, said anonymous messages have been left on her phone, including one that said: You keep off my patch. If not, there will be trouble. She claims rivals dislike her because she is an outsider who has shaken things up by exposing underhand tactics such as taking dead moles to jobs and claiming they were freshly caught. The divorcee seen this year on Dave TVs Deadliest Pests Down Under tackling crocodiles and snakes suspects someone from the Association reported her to the Advertising Standards Authority, claiming her slogan Norfolks only lady molecatcher was untrue. Miss Chapman changed it to Norfolks very own lady molecatcher. She dismissed the Guilds animal welfare claims, saying modern traps kill moles instantly. Guild secretary Martin Noble, 56, also from Norfolk, said: Were trying to promote the right way of mole-catching. He said it was the first rift among molecatchers for more than a decade. Two flight attendants have been injured after a plane nearly collided with a suspected done as they approached a Toronto airport. A Porter Airlines flight was forced to take evasive action when an unidentified object was spotted in its path as it flew into Toronto's Billy Bishop airport at 7.30am on Monday. The two flight attendants sustained minor injuries and were taken to hospital for treatment. They have since been released. A Porter Airlines flight was forced to take evasive action when an unidentified object was spotted in its path as it flew into Toronto's Billy Bishop airport at 7.30am on Monday The Bombardier Q400 turboprop was carrying 54 passengers and four crew members, including the two flight attendants, from Ottawa when the incident unfolded. The aircraft was flying at an altitude of about 9,000 feet at the time. The airport is located just off Toronto's downtown core. Officials from Canada's Transportation Safety Board confirmed an investigation will now take place. The Bombardier Q400 turboprop was carrying 54 passengers and four crew members as it flew into Toronto's Billy Bishop airport (pictured) on Monday The say the object involved in the near miss was likely an unmanned aerial vehicle. Porter spokesman Brad Cicero says the pilots' initial assessment was that it looked like a balloon. After debriefing, they believe it was possibly a drone. Prince Philip looked in good spirits as he opened the new Design Museum in London today. The Duke of Edinburgh, 95, spoke with schoolchildren and guests including Sir Terence Conran at the opening of the 83million building in Kensington. The royal, who has a life-long interest in architecture and engineering, was shown a collection of the most popular everyday objects from around the world. Lifelong passion: Prince Philip was shown a collection of the most popular consumer goods from around the world. Pictured with Alice Black, Deputy Director of the Design Museum Committed: The Duke of Edinburgh, 95, pictured today, continues to carry out royal duties Engaged: The prince speaks with two schoolgirls in uniform at one of the museum displays Special guest: Prince Philip with Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum on Monday They included the London Underground roundel, an egg cup, a pair of yellow washing up gloves and a bike from China. But it was the inclusion of a red bucket that tickled the duke, who commented on the item as he chatted to guests. The items were all chosen from suggestions from the public. Visitors will be able to see the free permanent display of its collection when the museum opens to the public on November 24. Lively: The Prince meets Sir Terence Conran at the museum opening in west London today Enthusiastic: The royal, pictured today, has a keen interest in design and architecture Prince Philip has long been fascinated with the fields of engineering and design. In a recent interview he revealed the high esteem in which he held those who created the everyday objects around us. He said: 'The whole of our infrastructure, from sewers to power supplies and communication, everything that wasn't invented by God is invented by an engineer.' Philip is an enthusiastic supporter of the Royal Academy of Engineering, founded in 1976, and became its senior fellow with the first meeting held at Buckingham Palace. Unveiling: The Prince with a plaque in his name ahead of the public opening on November 24 President Barack Obama delivered a veiled rebuke to Hillary Clinton today for spending the summer and much of the fall taking it easy as Donald Trump barnstormed the nation. The two-time winner Electoral College winner said he was victorious in Iowa, a mostly white state, 'not because the demographics dictated' it, but because he spent 87 days going to 'every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW hall.' Some counties he may have lost by fewer votes because he dropped in, the president said. Others he may have won unexpectedly because he spent so much time there. 'And the challenge for a national party is how do you dig in there and create those kinds of structures so that people have a sense of what it is that you stand for.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO President Barack Obama delivered a veiled rebuke to Hillary Clinton today for spending the summer and much of the fall on her laurels as Donald Trump barnstormed the nation That's 'increasingly difficult to do' through a national press strategy, he said. Conversations in the party about grassroots efforts and building a bottom up party will 'contribute to stronger outcomes in the future,' he assessed. 'And I'm optimistic that will happen.' Democrats who are 'feeling completely discouraged' by last Tuesday's election, Obama said, should remember that 'things change pretty rapidly.' 'But they don't change inevitably. They change because you work for it,' he said. Clinton spent considerable time in Iowa as she prepared to competed in the Democratic caucuses there against Bernie Sanders. She visited Des Moines three times and Cedar Rapids once in the general election. She also made a stop in 'Quad Cities' area, though her rally was technically in Illinois. Clinton's campaign wrote off the swing state that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 and spent her time trying to win over North Carolina, a state he lost in 2012, and Pennsylvania instead. Not only did she lose all three of those states, Clinton held one or no rallies a day while Trump conquered the country and lost most of the Midwest, never even visiting Wisconsin which turned red as a result. 'We have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grassroots level,' Obama said today. The president was taking questions for the first time since his former secretary of state lost her electoral battle against Donald Trump this afternoon. 'When your team loses, everybody gets deflated. And it's hard, and it's challenging,' he acknowledged. But he said, 'I think its a healthy thing for the Democratic Party to go through some reflection.' His party is looking for a new election chief to manage the Democratic National Committee. 'I think it's important for me not to be big footing that conversation,' Obama said of the intra-party debate. But he also said the party would benefit from 'new voices.' Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, an African-American representative who comes from the progressive wing of the party and is Muslim, put forward his name today. Ex-DNC chair Howard Dean was the first candidate to formally put himself in the running. Dean ran the party when Obama was elected. Democrats also won the House and the Senate under his oversight. 'How we organize politically, I think is something that we should spend some time thinking about,' he said. 'I believe that we have better ideas. But I also believes that good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them.' Clinton earned the most voters overall. But she fell behind in the Electoral College count that legally determines the outcome. Obama suggested during his news conference on Monday afternoon that Clinton didn't excite her supporters the way Trump did as he complimented his successor. Recalling their conversation in the Oval Office last week, Obama said he told the president elect that he was impressed by Trump's ability to generate enthusiasm. 'I think that to the extent that there were a lot of folks who missed the Trump phenomenon, I think that connection that he was able to make with his supporters,' Obama said, 'that was impervious to events that might have sunk another candidate, that's powerful stuff.' Obama is leaving the country tonight for a seven-day trip to Greece, Germany and Peru. He'll speak to White House reporters who travel with him overseas again. 'I figured why wait,' Obama said at the top of his remarks. 'I know that there's a lot of domestic issues that people are thinking about,' Obama said, indicating his desire to 'clear out some of the under bush' so that journalists will stick to foreign policy questions at his upcoming news conferences and 'don't feel obliged to tack on three other questions, too.' A reporter told him that's likely to happen anyway, leading to laughter in the White House briefing room. Obama said he's 'aware' - and is 'trying out something new.' The lame duck president is using the week-long excursion to drag his policy agenda over the finish line and convince America's allies that President-elect Trump is unlikely to tear up binding, international agreements. Obama suggested during his news conference on Monday afternoon that Clinton didn't excite her supporters the way Trump did as he complimented his successor Obama cast Trump as 'uniquely unqualified' to lead the country on the campaign trail and urged voters not to give him access to the county's nuclear arsenal. He told the nation on Wednesday that it must give the president-elect a chance. 'We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country. The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy,' he said. 'And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world.' The president said his party must learn from its 'mistakes' in this election and 'do some reflection.' 'We lick our wounds, we brush ourselves off, we get back in the arena. We go at it. We try even harder the next time,' he said. 'The point, though, is, is that we all go forward, with a presumption of good faith in our fellow citizens.' He said Monday that Democrats 'should not waiver' in their 'core beliefs and principles.' President Putin has welcomed a new relationship with America based on 'equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in each other's internal affairs', following a phone conversation with president-elect Donald Trump. The incoming president spoke last night with Vladimir Putin, who has challenged U.S. policy on a variety of fronts and whose government U.S. officials have said tried to influence the election in Trump's favor. The leaders also agreed to a face-to-face meeting, marking a thaw in relations between the two countries. According to the Kremlin, the two leaders agreed that Russo-American relations were in an 'extremely unsatisfactory state' and pledged to improve the situation. Trump's glowing remarks about Putin coupled with suspicions that Moscow used cyber attacks to gain him an advantage in the election has put the relationship of the two leaders under scrutiny. Incoming US president Donald Trump has agreed to a face-to-face meeting with Russia's Vladamir Putin, marking a thaw in relations between the two countries News of the call broke just as President Obama was preparing to address reporters before leaving on his final overseas trip, which takes him to Greece and Peru. Putin and Trump agreed to work towards 'constructive cooperation,' the Kremlin said, according to a Reuters report. The men plan to stay in touch by phone and also will meet face-to-face, in a new phase of a key relationship certain to have ramifications around the globe. Russia caused an international crisis with its incursion into Crimea, a move that subjected Putin's regime to European, international, and U.S. sanctions. Sanctions the administration slapped on his regime even targeted some of the oligarchs close to Putin. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken with President-elect Donald Trump, and discussed 'constructive cooperation,' according to the Kremlin Scroll down for video Russia under Putin sent arms and air power into Syria to bolster the regime of President Bashar al Assad, even as the U.S. and a coalition of allies is supporting rebels fighting his government as well. Trump hailed Putin throughout the campaign, including during the presidential debates. News of the call broke just as President Obama was preparing to address reporters before leaving on his final overseas trip, which takes him to Greece and Peru 'I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin. And I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Russia He does have an 82% approval rating,' Trump said at an NBC forum. Host Matt Lauer noted that Putin had annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, and backed Assad, among other things. 'Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time? I think when he [Putin] calls me brilliant, Ill take the compliment, OK?' Trump said, responding to a quote of Putin lauding the GOP candidate. Trump hailed Putin repeatedly during the presidential campaign Trump hailed Putin's leadership during the campaign and compared it favorably with how he said President Obama led the U.S. TRANSMISSION FROM VLADIMIR: Trump and Putin spoke by phone, according to the Kremlin SADDLE UP: The two leaders spoke about joining forces against the world's No. 1 enemy 'international terrorism and extremism' the Kremlin said WHAT'S INSIDE? Russian matryoshka dolls of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump for sale in a Moscow souvenir shop Trump also said during the campaign that Putin had been a 'leader.' 'Certainly in that system, hes been a leader, far more than our president has been,' Trump said. It remains to be seen whether Trump will be more open to Putin having freer reign to have a sphere of influence in eastern Europe. Asked this summer about defending NATO allies, Trump said, 'If they fulfill their obligations to us ... the answer is yes.' According to the Kremlin, the two men agreed current U.S.-Russia ties are 'unsatisfactory,' the Associated Press reported, and spoke about cooperation on a 'broad range of issues.' The agreed to fight agains the No. 1 enemy, 'international terrorism and extremism' and a solution of the conflict in Syria which U.S. officials believe Russia has helped prolong through it's support of Assad and bombing campaign in Aleppo. Justin Ross Harris' ex-wife opened up in an emotional Facebook post, hours after he was found guilty of leaving their son Cooper to die in a hot car back in 2014. Leanna Taylor, who took the stand in defense of her ex-husband, insisted she was 'not ok' and that the verdict hadn't brought her peace since it couldn't erase the pain of losing her child. She wrote a devastated message warning other parents that they, too, could lose their children by leaving them in a hot vehicle. Her impassioned defense also attacked the public for judging her. 'I don't care what your opinion is of me! It does not matter! Your opinion will never bring back my son,' Taylor wrote on her Facebook profile. Scroll down for video A court has found Justin Ross Harris (pictured Monday) guilty of leaving his son Cooper to die in a hot car back in 2014 Harris' ex-wife Leanna (pictured with him and their son Cooper) opened up in an emotional Facebook post Monday in the hours after the verdict Cooper, pictured sleeping shortly before the day he died in one of the images shown to the jury, baked to death on June 18, 2014. Harris left the 22-month-old in a hot car for seven hours while he worked at his Home Depot job in Marietta, Georgia Harris (pictured in court on Monday) will likely now spend the next 30 years in a Georgia state prison. He will be sentenced on December 5 'For those of you who want to know if I am ok. The answer is no. I have not been "ok" since the moment I was told my son was dead. 'I have not been "ok" since the moment my life was put on this path that has led to Ross being found guilty of maliciously murdering our child,' Taylor wrote on her Facebook profile. 'So now you may be saying 'justice has been served.' And you are allowed your right to that opinion. 'But guess what, you can convict every parent that this has ever happened to, and I can promise you 2 things... #1 it will never bring our children back and #2 it will not prevent this from happening in the future.' Taylor urged fellow parents to ask themselves what could be done to prevent more deaths like Cooper's in the future. 'So-called "justice" will never bring back my son. Nothing will ever take that pain away,' she continued. 'And nothing will ever feel worse than living with the knowledge that his pain and his death could have been prevented.' Taylor and Harris' son Cooper baked to death on June 18, 2014 after Harris left the 22-month-old in a hot car for seven hours while he worked at his Home Depot job in Marietta, Georgia. Temperatures inside the car approached 120 degrees, according to expert witnesses for the prosecution. After 21 hours of deliberation over four days, the jury said that they found Harris guilty on all eight counts which had been set against him, in their first vote. Harris, 35, was charged with malice murder, two counts of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, and second-degree cruelty to children. Cooper's father will likely now spend the next 30 years in a Georgia state prison - and possibly until the day he dies. The case gripped Georgia and drew national attention after investigators cast doubt on Harris' claim that his son's death was a tragic accident of lapsed memory - something his defense team stuck to throughout testimony. But investigators said he may have wanted the toddler out of his life to allow him to carry on a string of extramarital affairs. The first of eight counts in the indictment charged that Harris did 'unlawfully and with malice aforethought cause the death of Cooper Harris'. In addition to the malice murder charge, Harris was also convicted of felony murder for killing his son while committing another felony - first degree cruelty to children. The indictment also charged that Harris maliciously caused his son 'cruel and excessive pain.' Harris was further convicted of sexual exploitation of children - also a felony as well as two counts of dissemination of harmful material to minors, which are both misdemeanor crimes. Harris showed little emotion as the verdicts were read out, closing his eyes at one point and appearing to sigh at another. JUSTIN ROSS HARRIS' EX-WIFE FULL FACEBOOK POST 'For those of you who want to know if I am ok. The answer is no. I have not been "ok" since the moment I was told my son was dead. 'I have not been "ok" since the moment my life was put on this path that has led to Ross being found guilty of maliciously murdering our child. 'So now you may be saying "justice has been served." And you are allowed your right to that opinion. But guess what, you can convict every parent that this has ever happened to, and I can promise you 2 things...#1 it will never bring our children back and #2 it will not prevent this from happening in the future. 'Next summer, as this begins to happen over and over again, ask yourself, "what can be done?!" The problem is not the parent! The problem is a society that refuses to believe this can happen to them! Wake up! Accept it! And by accepting it you will be protecting your child! I don't care what your opinion is in my situation. 'I don't care what your opinion is of me! It does not matter! Your opinion will never bring back my son. So called "justice" will never bring back my son. Nothing will ever take that pain away. And nothing will ever feel worse than living with the knowledge that his pain and his death could have been prevented. 'Be the wise parent, and accept that this can happen. And you will never have to walk the path that my family has had to walk. And I pray YOU never have to walk this path." Advertisement Harris looked down as the verdict was read out If Harris is sentenced to the maximum penalty for his convictions, he could be facing more than 100 years behind bars, court officials said HOW ROSS HARRIS REACTED AFTER BEING FOUND GUILTY Ross Harris looked stunned and then stoic as the court clerk read the verdict form, one 'guilty' after another for a total of eight convictions Monday afternoon. Harris showed no other emotion as Judge Mary Staley Clark questioned each juror as to the certainty of their decision. Once the jury was dismissed and court was adjourned, defense attorney Maddox Kilgore joined his client in the courthouse holding cell. They prayed together. 'Ross didn't say one word. Not one word about what happened in that courtroom,' Kilgore shared with journalists outside the courthouse as the late afternoon sun faded. 'He talked about Cooper. He talked about how much he misses him. He talked about how much he'll continue to miss him,' Kilgore shared in a quiet, solemn voice as he tried hold back tears. His client was finally able to grieve his son's death, he said. 'We've got the greatest system of criminal justice in the world. It's the envy of the world and we are so proud to be a part of it,' Kilgore said. 'Sometimes there are breakdowns in the system. When an innocent person is convicted, there have been some breakdowns. That's what happened here,' he continued. From the moment Kilgore met Ross Harris following Cooper's death in 2014, Kilgore and his team 'never once wavered in our absolute belief he's innocent,' he said. Cobb County Assistant Prosecutor Chuck Boring had a different perspective. 'It's hard to accept that someone is capable of such evil. He had malice in his heart absolutely,' he told reporters. During a post-trial conversation with attorneys, jurors said they were almost unanimous in their decisions at the outset of their deliberations. Those on the fence wanted to discuss the case more fully, he said. In what was described by court officials as 'spirited' conversations coming from the jury room, deliberations stretched over four days for slightly more than 21 hours. With 1,150 items presented as evidence, several jurors said it was the totality of the evidence rather than one element in particular, Boring said. Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds said his prosecution team hoped at first that Cooper's death was not an intentional act. Cobb investigators believed 'something is very wrong about this case,' he said. 'Today is not a victory, nor is it a day we celebrate,' Reynolds said in his statement. 'Today is a monumentally sad day. I believe justice was served today on behalf of young Cooper Harris.' As for Harris' ex-wife Leanna, Boring said his office would 'leave that to the Cobb County Police.' Though initially considered a suspect in Cooper's death, no evidence emerged that implicated her, police said. She divorced her husband earlier this year but testified as a witness for his defense. Advertisement Evidence showed that Harris sent images of his erect penis to underage women and asked a teen girl to text images of her genitals to him. He also sent explicit, detailed verbal descriptions and narrative accounts of sexual excitement and sexual conduct, prosecutors charged. If Harris is sentenced to the maximum penalty for his convictions, he could be facing more than 100 years behind bars, court officials said. The 'malice murder,' 'felony murder' and 'cruelty to children, first degree' charges each carry a life sentence with parole eligibility after 30 years. Video of Harris and his son Cooper were shown to the jury in an often emotionally fraught trial But Judge Mary Staley Clark could impose life sentences without parole -- and Harris could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Harris turns 36 later this month. Police said Harris and his son shared breakfast at a Chick-fil-A on the morning of June 18, 2014. Instead of taking his son to a company-owned day care center after their meal, Harris drove a short distance to his job as a Home Depot web developer, Harris admitted to police. He parked his car and locked the doors with his son still inside, strapped to his child safety seat on the SUV's rear seat, Harris admitted to investigators. The windows were up. The temperature inside reached over 120 degrees, according to trial evidence. Cooper died of hyperthermia during the 7 hours Harris worked inside his office. Harris told police he forgot to take his son to day care after breakfast, but prosecutors argued Cooper's death was deliberate and intentional. Maddox Kilgore, Carlos Rodriguez and Bryan Lumpkin gave the Ross Harris murder case everything they had to save their client. 'If it's an accident, it's not a crime,' said defense attorney Maddox Kilgore Chuck Boring, assistant Cobb County prosecutor, reminded the court Monday of the eight counts against Harris Harris (pictured Monday) had a 'double life' and was obsessed with sex, the state argued. He longed for a life free of children, marriage and responsibility, prosecutor Boring told the jury Cooper (pictured) died of hyperthermia during the 7 hours Harris worked inside his office. The temperature inside reached over 120 degrees, according to trial evidence Kilgore and his team hoped the jury would see that Cooper's death was an accident and a tragedy that could happen to anyone. They brought in defense a memory expert witness who testified that a 'U-turn' in traffic, necessary to navigate outside the Chick-fil-A restaurant, could have created a memory lapse and caused Harris to forget his plan to drive Cooper to a nearby day care center. Instead of making a left-hand turn to the child care facility, Harris kept driving straight, the expert explained. Harris was likely on 'auto-pilot' and drove the .6 mile 'well-worn' path to his job completely forgetting that his son was still in the car, he said. Cooper could easily have fallen asleep in those moments, Harris' attorneys suggested. Prosecution evidence showed Harris 'sexted' other women constantly, up to and including the day his son died -- and even exchanged texts with another woman while his son struggled to breathe in the stifling summer heat. Harris had a 'double life' and was obsessed with sex, the state argued. He longed for a life free of children, marriage and responsibility, prosecutor Chuck Boring told the jury. Cooper's death was deliberate and intentional, he argued. Harris, 35, was charged with malice murder, two counts of felony murder, first-degree cruelty to children, and second-degree cruelty to children Among the prosecution's witnesses were a former prostitute and several women who were teenagers when they embarked on affairs with Harris. Harris' ex-wife appeared for the defense and told the court he had 'destroyed my life'. Prosecutors also pointed the finger at suspicious computer activity, saying Harris had researched hot car deaths online. But an expert in digital forensics and data recovery, called as a defense witness, said that his research of Harris' computers did not reveal any searches by him about 'hot car deaths' or 'how hot a vehicle must be for a child to die inside it'. Harris himself declined to testify. The red car seat in which Harris' son Cooper died was among the evidence assessed by jurors Defense attorney Kilgore (pictured talking after his client's conviction) hoped the jury would see that Cooper's death was an accident and a tragedy that could happen to anyone Assistant prosecutor Boring (pictured Monday after Harris' verdict) said: 'It's hard to accept that someone is capable of such evil. He had malice in his heart absolutely' In sometimes emotional testimony, jurors heard how Harris screeched to a stop in a shopping center parking lot after leaving work that June day and frantically yelled for help. He screamed, 'What have I done?' as bystanders helped to pull his lifeless son from the back seat of his silver Hyundai Tucson to administer CPR. The court heard from police and crime scene investigators that Cooper was already sweat-soaked and lifeless as Harris drove away from his office after work. The car windows had been rolled up as he left the car park, and jurors heard testimony about the 'smell of death' and a urine-soaked diaper that likely filled the car on that after-work drive. During testimony jurors viewed the car that was both crime scene and murder weapon. The viewing included Cooper's red safety seat mounted inside, only inches from where Harris sat. Cooper's legs were bent and stiff from rigor mortis when police arrived. The jury was shown videos of Harris at the police station shortly after Cooper's death. He paced around the small interrogation room known as 'the box.' They heard him wail, 'Why, God, why? Oh, God!' several times, to no one in particular. Harris will be sentenced on December 5. Defense attorney Kilgore said appeals will be filed. He moved for a mistrial several times during the course of the trial. A medical examiner has determined that a 16-year-old Texas girl who went missing with her boyfriend last week and was later found dead in the woods had been stabbed to death. Kirsten Nicole Fritch disappeared on Tuesday before the bodies of her mother and sister were discovered in their home in Baytown, Texas. Her boyfriend, 21-year-old Jesse Dobbs, was arrested in Texas City hours later after walking in to Shenanigans bar covered in sweat and asking for a glass of water. Scroll down for video Slaughtered: Kirsten Fritch (left), 16, had been stabbed to death before her body was found in the woods in Texas City Thursday, two days after she vanished with boyfriend Jesse Dobbs (right) The teenager's mother Cynthia Morris (right) was found shot dead in her home in Baytown 30 miles away on Tuesday with her other daughter (not pictured) So far, Dobbs has only been charged with resisting arrest. Police say he is considered the only person of interest in the three killings. The Galveston County Medical Examiner's Officer confirmed on Friday that Fritch's cause of death was sharp force injury, reported the station KTRK. The teenager had sustained multiple stab wounds to her chest, neck, abdomen and face. There was no word on the murder weapon. Dobbs went on the run after allegedly shooting dead his girlfriend's mother and her 13-year-old sister. Cynthia Morris, 37, and Breanna Pavilicek were found at their home on Tuesday after Morris's mother called police to share her concerns. The medical examiner's office has stated that Morris was shot in the torso and neck while Pavilicek suffered gunshot wounds to her head, neck and right shoulder. Police said Dobbs' grandmother told them she and Morris did not approve of a relationship between Dobbs and Fritch. Dobbs, 22, was named as a person of interest in their deaths as an amber alert for Kirsten was sent out The girl's body was found in woodland behind Shenanigans bar in Texas City (above) on Thursday Barbara DeRamus told KENS5 that her granddaughter, who was an orchestra musician and had plans to study medicine in college, had met Dobbs online a couple of weeks before the murders. A short time after the two started dating, the 21-year-old moved in with Fritch's family, but her mother wanted him out. 'He just seemed like a lowlife,' DeRamus said. 'I thought what was Kirsten doing with this idiot.' The 21-year-old has two children from a previous relationship, and earlier this year he was charged with domestic violence against the children's mother, who claimed that he was a methamphetamine addict. 'I believe he murdered my daughter and my innocent 13-year-old granddaughter,' said the grandmother. 'I hope he rots in hell.' Police were searching for the gun used in the shootings, according to The Houston Chronicle. Police issued an amber alert for Kristen on Tuesday and shared an image of her mother's car which they said had gone missing It took police just half an hour to locate her body in woodland on Thursday morning (above) as supplied by KHOU11 Dobbs was arrested in Texas City 30 miles away after entering the bar sweating profusely without shoes and asking for a drink of water. It took officers only 30 minutes to find Kristen's body on Thursday. Investigators had issued an Amber Alert for Fritch, sharing her photograph and a photograph of her mother's car - a cream 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser. The girl's mother and 13-year-old sister were found dead in their home in Baytown on Tuesday at 11am (above) Authorities have arrested a man accused of dragging a woman out of her car after their vehicles crashed in northern Virginia and raping her during a two-hour attack. Roberto Carlos Flores Sibrian, 26, was arrested last Thursday at a construction site in Sanford, North Carolina, the Stafford County Sherriff's Office said in a statement. Sibrian, who is reportedly an illegal immigrant, is charged with rape and aggravated sexual battery in the October 31 attack in Fredericksburg, the statement said. Scroll down for video Roberto Carlos Flores Sibrian, 26, was arrested last Thursday at a construction site in Sanford, North Carolina and has been charged with rape and aggravated sexual battery He is accused of dragging a woman out of her car after their vehicles crashed in northern Virginia, dragging her into a ditch (pictured) and raping her during a two-hour attack On October 31, a woman was driving down Kings Highway/Route 3 when the suspect struck her car, forcing her off the road between 2.45 and 3.15am, according to NBC News. After the crash, Sibrian allegedly pulled the young woman out of the car, dragged her to a ditch and sexually assaulted her for two hours, police said. Following the attack, the suspect fled the scene leaving behind his shirt and the victim called 911 for help. Authorities received about 100 leads in connection to the crime, according to the sheriff's office. On October 31, a woman was driving down Kings Highway/Route 3 when the suspect struck her car, forcing her off the road between 2.45 and 3.15am After the crash, Sibrian allegedly pulled the young woman out of the car, dragged her to a ditch and sexually assaulted her for two hours, police said. He fled the scene, leaving behind his shirt (pictured), police said Sibrian is being detained in North Carolina on a $100,000 bond and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer. A sheriff's office spokeswoman said she did not have any further details about his immigration status. However, the suspect did not have a permanent address and was living in the Fredericksburg area before the crime, authorities said. It was not clear if he had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. The investigation is ongoing. Labor MP Kate Ellis said they spend too much time travelling Warned that politicians needed to pay more attention to their electorates Politicians have warned that if local members and political parties continue to ignore voters, Australia could see the rise of their own Donald Trump. On ABC'S Q&A on Monday night the panel was asked whether the 'Trump phenomenon' could make its way Down Under as dissatisfied voters look for alternatives. Labor MP Kate Ellis warned that while we shouldn't be concerned about Pauline Hanson becoming Prime Minister, 'cynicism about politics' was at an all-time high, as politicians spent too much time travelling and bickering between themselves. Scroll down for video Australian politicians have warned of a 'Donald Trump phenomenon' in Australia 'Everybody can see that the level of cynicism about politics in Australia has reached a high,' she told the program. Ms Ellis said there was a 'real issue about people not trusting their members of parliament' across the country. 'And frankly if you look at the past decade or so you can understand why people might feel like members of parliament have been more focused on each other, their internal divisions, than on the issues that matter to the people of Australia.' The Labor MP said politicians were spending too much time travelling, and too little time actually speaking to the people in their electorates. Labor MP Kate Ellis said politicians were spending too much time travelling, and not enough face-to-face with voters 'I suspect that in times past, people would have had more face-to-face contact with their members of parliament. 'There are people who talk about the town hall meetings that they go to. You could ask the questions, engage and debate,' Ms Ellis said. 'Perhaps with people flying here, there and everywhere, with social media, there's not as much of that direct contact. 'We need to turn it around because our democracy relies upon the Australian public having faith in it,' she added. During the program the panel was also asked whether One Nation leader Pauline Hanson could follow in Trump's footsteps and become prime minister. The panel was also asked whether One Nation leader Pauline Hanson could follow in Trump's footsteps and become prime minister Ms Ellis and Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce both agreed that she couldn't, but warned that ignoring voters could lead to a similar Trump phenomenon. 'I respect the half a million people who voted for One Nation but it's a lot harder running the show than talking about the show,' Mr Joyce said. 'I don't think we should all start getting the Pauline for PM merchandise ready,' Ms Ellis joked. 'But that's not to say that we shouldn't heed the warning, and make sure we do look at the rising levels of inequality.' The bodies of former Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria are to be removed from their tomb in Krakow after dark on Monday, the first of more than 80 exhumations planned on prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. The exhumations are part of a new investigation into the crash ordered by Poland's conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, which is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president's twin brother. Post-mortems will be carried out to determine the cause of the deaths and of the crash, identify all the remains and check for explosives, since some of Kaczynski's followers believe that a planned blast downed the aircraft, killing all 96 aboard. Lech Kaczynski, right, and his wife Maria, left, were killed with the aircraft they were travelling in crashed in bad weather approaching a Russian military airstrip on April 10, 2010 Conspiracy theorists, including the current head of Poland's ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who also happens to be the late President's twin brother, believes the Russians are responsible The Russian-built Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft was approaching Smolensk airport with much of Poland's senior leadership on board when the jet crashed killing all 96 people on board Kaczynski has cast doubt on earlier investigations - carried out by both Poland and Russia - which concluded that the crash was an accident caused primarily by bad weather and pilot error. Kaczynski has for years encouraged a conspiracy theory suggesting Russia carried out an assassination with the support, or at least the consent, of the Polish prime minister at the time - Donald Tusk, now the president of the European Council. Kaczynski wants to take Tusk, his nemesis, to court and is seeking evidence against him. He said: 'There will not be a free Poland, a truly free Poland, without the truth, without a proper honoring of those who died, without a closure of this case which has cast such a long shadow on our national and social life.' The bodies of Kaczynski and his wife, Maria Kaczynska, will be removed from their alabaster tomb at the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the resting place of many of Poland's kings and writers. Jaroslaw Kaczynski and the presidential couple's daughter, Marta Kaczynska, are to attend. Forensic experts will remove the bodies of President Kaczynski and his wife to test them for traces of explosive residue over claims the aircraft was brought down by a bomb Jaroslaw Kaczynski, right, believes his twin brother Lech, left, was murdered in the crash The remains will then be transported to a forensics laboratory at Krakow's renowned Jagiellonian University for a series of tests, including computer tomography and DNA tests. Scientists will also look for the presence of explosives to check the belief held by many Kaczynski supporters that the plane, a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 operated by the Polish air force, disintegrated in mid-air in an intended explosion. Prosecutors say they plan to exhume and perform similar post-mortems on a total of 83 bodies through the end of 2017. Four bodies were cremated, while nine other bodies were already exhumed in 2011 and 2012 after families protested major errors in autopsy reports carried out by the Russians right after the crash. It turned out six victims had been buried in the wrong graves. The Russians have said the mistakes occurred due to the fragmented state of the bodies, but to many Poles they are proof of wrongdoing by the Russians, suspicions fueled by Moscow's refusal so far to return the plane's wreckage and the flight recorders to the Poles. Prosecutors claim the exhumations of the victims' bodies is necessary because of mistakes made by Russian authorities during the original post mortem process The bodies of 83 of the crash victims will be examined over the next 12 months Law and Justice, which assumed power a year ago, says Tusk's team neglected to have each of the bodies examined, out of disregard for the late president, a political rival, and out of concern that the findings could anger Russia's President Vladimir Putin - something Tusk and members of his Civic Platform party deny. The exhumations are proving controversial, with most Poles dismissive of the conspiracy theories, and some relatives aghast at the thought of their loved ones being exhumed. Families of 17 of the victims wrote in an open letter: 'We stand alone and helpless in the face of this ruthless and cruel act. 'The forceful exhumations constitute a violation of a taboo existing in our culture that calls for the respect of the bodies of the dead.' The tragedy occurred April 10, 2010, when the presidential delegation was traveling to honor 22,000 Polish officers who were murdered by the Soviet secret police at the start of World War II in the Katyn forest and elsewhere. The delegation included government members, politicians, military commanders and the relatives of officers slain in the wartime massacre. News / National by Stephen Jakes Some concerned citizens have written a letter to Tourism and Hospitality Minister Walter Mzembi asking him to p[-robe the issue of government officials who are frustrating visitors into the country through applying stringent regulations some of them drawing large sums of money from the visitors.The visitors letter posted on Facebook by one Tanai Forest states that it is such a pity that there are government officials who do not encourage visitors to Zimbabwe."Like the senior lady at the Victoria Falls customs office. We were traveling through Zimbabwe spending a few nights and obviously spending money in this country. We were asked to pay a deposit for inverters going through to South Africa for repair. This surprised us as there is no duty or vat on solar goods," said the visitors in a letter."Not wanting to delay our journey we paid the deposit of $370. We then inquired if the refund would be in cash, the customs official could not guarantee the refund would be in cash on our exit. We then requested that we be refunded to return to Zambia and go to South Africa via Botswana. The customs official then explained that the money could not be refunded as it had to be banked although it was sitting in the cash box!"Forest said they asked her if it was not possible to cancel the receipt and return their money."She said it was not possible and that we should exit Zimbabwe between 8am and 5pm and we would be refunded. As we had now spent 3 hours at Vic Falls border post we decided that instead of exiting at Plumtree we would exit through Kasane nearby and get our money and continue through Botswana," the visitor said."When we exited at Kasane the customs officer there explained we could only get our refund from Vic Falls as all deposits were kept in the safe and returned once goods have been exited and proof supplied. This is a surprise as one officer is saying they are kept in the safe to be refunded in return and the other is saying it needs to be banked."Forest said they will definitely be returning to Vic Falls to claim their refund and they will see who is telling the truth!"If this is how they treat visitors no wonder nobody wants to visit Zimbabwe," Forest said. The former deputy premier of New South Wales Troy Grant has blamed the anti-establishment Donald Trump effect for costing him his job. The ex police inspector stepped down as Nationals leader, following a record 35 per cent swing against his party at Saturday's Orange by-election. He was replaced by the member for Monaro, John Barilaro, who was elected unopposed on Tuesday morning with Niall Blair as deputy, defeating Andrew Fraser. Mr Troy said the 'Trump effect' had seen voters in the rural electorate turn against his party, which had held the previously safe seat in the state's central west since 1947. 'Its the anti-establishment protest vote, I definitely saw it Saturday,' he told The Daily Telegraph. 'It wasnt the only reason. There was the cumulative decision-making government had made that people had the s**s with.' Scroll down for video Former New South Wales deputy premier Troy Grant (pictured) has blamed the 'Trump effect' for a record 35 per cent swing against the Nationals at the Orange by-election U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's surprise win has been invoked to describe a strong swing against the Nationals in the state's central west The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party looks set to pick up the seat, following anger in regional NSW about an abandoned greyhound racing ban and council amalgamations. Nationals candidate Scott Barrett's failure in Orange also saw Education Minister Adrian Piccoli step down as deputy Nationals leader. Awkwardly, Mr Grant is the godfather of new leader Mr Barilaro's daughter Sophia, mirroring a toxic personal situation in the federal Labor Party, between 2010 and 2013, where former prime minister Kevin Rudd was the godfather of bitter caucus rival Wayne Swan's son Matt. 'Theres no secret Barra and I are mates, Im godfather to his daughter Sophia Grace, nothings changed,' Mr Grant said. The member for Monaro John Barilaro was elected unopposed as the new leader of the New South Wales Nationals Unmuzzled: anger at the New South Wales government's earlier plan to ban greyhound racing has been blamed for the drubbing the Nationals suffered at the Orange by-election Mr Grant, who held the police and racing portfolios, stepped down as deputy premier on Monday afternoon in a bid to give the government a chance to 'pause and reset'. 'No one encouraged me to go. I spoke to my colleagues about it and I just didn't want the turmoil to continue,' he told reporters in Sydney. Premier Mike Baird on Monday admitted he should be held accountable for the 'terrible' coalition outcome. 'I know what a great man Troy Grant is. He's done an incredible job for his community, and his leadership in the last state election was second to none,' he said. Premier Mike Baird (pictured right) has praised outgoing his outgoing deputy Troy Grant The premier said the Liberal-National coalition government would learn from the by-election drubbing but added it had no plans to reverse the deeply unpopular council amalgamations. Labor leader Luke Foley, whose party preferenced the Shooters in the Orange by-election, said it was unfortunate Mr Grant was sacrificed over the greyhounds debacle. 'They're trying to make poor old Troy Grant walk the gang plank to get the heat off Mike Baird (but) it's the policies of Mr Baird that have driven this government near to a cul-de-sac,' he said. With just 204 votes to be counted, Shooters candidate Phil Donato is on track to win the party's first ever lower house seat of Orange on 50.3 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, with the Nationals on 49.7 per cent. Megyn Kelly has revealed that her five-year-old daughter claimed she was 'afraid' of Donald Trump. The Fox News host writes in her upcoming memoir Settle For More that before one of the Fox News debates she was standing backstage when her daughter Yardley said to her: 'I'm afraid of Donald Trump. He wants to hurt me.' When Kelly asked why she would say and told her that was not true, the young girl replied: 'Well, he wants to hurt you, so he wants to hurt me too.' Scroll down for video New story: Megyn Kelly (above) reveals in her new memoir that he daughter was afraid at Donald Trump during the election Reassurance: When Kelly told the five-year-old (center with her brothers) that was not true, she said: 'Well, he wants to hurt you, so he wants to hurt me too' In the book, Kelly writes that her troubles with Trump began shortly before that first debate, which she had been selected to moderate by then-Fox news CEO Roger Ailes. Kelly claims that Trump became angry with her over a segment she ran on her show The Kelly File, and demanded that she personally phone him to address it or else he would not show up for a previously scheduled appearance on the program. When Kelly did call Trump, she claims he told her: 'I almost unleashed my beautiful Twitter account against you, and I still may.' Kelly also writes about how some people began to perceive Trump around the time of the first debate, stating: 'Folks were starting to worry about Trump - his level of agitation did not match the circumstances. 'Yes, it was his first debate. But this was bizarre behavior, especially for a man who wanted the nuclear codes.' Then, in the aftermath of the debate and Kelly's question to Trump about his treatment of women, the president-elect did unleash his 'beautiful Twitter account' against Kelly. Kelly's memoir Settle For More will be released in bookstores Tuesday He attacked the host on social media and in interviews, saying at one point that Kelly 'had blood coming out of her ears, blood coming out of her wherever.' Some on his staff also called for a boycott of Kelly's Fox News program. 'Every time he started in, Id get a call from Roger [Ailes] (who was getting calls from Trump),' writes Kelly. 'Was I being fair to Trump? Was I being too hard on him? He felt the bar for skeptical Trump coverage should be higher.' Fox News did little to combat Trump's attacks writes Kelly, thought she does note that Ailes would speak to Trump daily 'trying to calm him down.' That was a huge shift from the way Trump behaved at the start of the campaign writes Kelly in the book, claiming that the billionaire businessman offered her free vacation and travel shortly after he first announced he would be entering the race in June of last year. Trump offered to send Kelly and her husband Douglas Brunt to Mar-a-Lago for a weekend, and also tried to pick up the tab for a weekend staycation the Fox News host enjoyed with girlfriends at the Trump Soho in New York City she claims in the book. Busy girl: Kelly posted a photo on Monday after signing books in Manhattan (above) Troubles: Kelly also details the problems Trump (above) had with her prior to the first debate in the book 'I was not the only journalist to whom Trump offered gifts clearly meant to shape coverage. Many reporters have told me that Trump worked hard to offer them something fabulous - from hotel rooms to rides on his 757,' writes Kelly. She referred to that as one of the 'untold stories of the 2016 campaign.' November has already gotten off to a banner start for Kelly, who kicked off the month by learning she had managed to beat all other cable news programs in the key demographic this October. Among individuals aged 25 to 54, Kelly pulled in an average nightly audience of 641,000 viewers, putting her 20,000 viewers ahead of fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. And with Kelly lining up a number of high-profile interviews and appearances prior to her book's release, there is also much speculation as to whether or not she will stay at Fox News when her contract is over next July. Obama on Monday urged President-elect Trump not to deport 'DREAMers' brought here as kids who 'did nothing wrong' He previously called for going after 'bad hombres' here in the U.S. Mayors of Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago vow to keep 'sanctuary' status where they don't turn over people to federal authorities because of their immigration status The nation's three largest cities are vowing to maintain their 'sanctuary' status in defiance of President-elect Donald Trump's call to deport up to 3 million undocumented 'criminal' immigrants who came here illegally. The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department said Monday the department had no plans of departing from its policy of not stopping people based on suspicion of their immigration status. The mayors of LA and New York have said they maintain to keep their cities' 'sanctuary' status, and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel declared that the Windy City will 'always be a sanctuary city.' All three cities are heavily Democratic and have large immigrant populations. 'To be clear about what Chicago is, it always will be a sanctuary city,' Emanuel said on Monday. President-elect Donald Trump says a crackdown might deport two to three million immigrants who came here illegally and who have criminal records but three top cities aren't planning to change the way they handle enforcement After campaigning on a crackdown on illegal immigration, Trump told CBS' '60 Minutes' in an episode airing Sunday that he would focus on 'criminal' aliens first. 'What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,' Trump said. 'But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally.' Trump has listed immigration as one of his immediate priorities, although House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Sunday: 'We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump is not planning on that.' In 2014, the U.S. deported fewer than 200,000 criminal aliens. Big city mayors Bill de Blasio and Rahm Emanuel are vowing to keep the role of 'sanctuary' cities President-elect Donald Trump says as many as 3 million 'criminal' immigrants without documentation could be incarcerated or deported Trump's statement drew an immediate backlash from three of the largest cities in America. In so-called sanctuary cities, members of law enforcement aren't required to report to the feds people who came here illegally when they come across them. In New York, mayor Bill de Blasio is considering scrubbing the city records of people applied for city-issued ID cards, in what is being cast as an effort to keep the information out of the hands of the Trump administration, the New York Post reported. 'We are not going to sacrifice a half million people who live among us, who are part of our community,' said de Blasio, referencing immigrants living in the city. 'We are not going to tear families apart.' In Los Angeles, police officers are prohibited from approaching someone to determine their immigration status, as the LA Times reported, and in practice don't hand people over to the feds for low-level crimes. President Obama told reporters Monday he has urged Trump not to deport 'DREAMers' who got brought here by their parents. Obama urged Trump to 'think long and hard before they are endangering the status of [people] who, for all practical purposes, are American kids,' Obama said. 'These are kids who were brought here by their parents. They did nothing wrong. They've gone to school, they've pledged allegiance to the flag. By definition, if they're part of this program, they are solid, wonderful young people with good character.' He didn't directly respond at a White House press conference to a part of the question dealing with what would happen to data collected by the feds among applicants for a special status under Obama's executive order for people who were brought here illegally as kids. About 728,000 people registered under the program, Bloomberg News reported. LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Monday, following the release of Trump's comments: 'I dont intend on doing anything different. We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebodys immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.' It isn't yet clear whether a Trump administration, backed by a GOP Congress, could use the power of the purse to tug at sanctuary cities to bring them in line. Trump has threatened to withdraw funds from sanctuary cities something de Blasio called 'dangerous.' President Barack Obama delivered a series of patronizing backhanded compliments to President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday during a lengthy White House press conference conducted before his final trip abroad as America's leader. While he praised Trump for pulling off 'one of the biggest political upsets in history,' Obama scolded his Republican successor for believing he can deliver on his campaign promises. 'I think that he successfully mobilized a big chunk of the country to vote for him,' Obama told reporters. But 'regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up.' 'And those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick. Because reality has a way of asserting itself.' President Barack Obama on Monday dismissed the idea that President-Elect Donald Trump can accomplish what he set out to when he moves into the White House in January An unapologetic Trump campaigned on ambitious pledges mostly to dismantle Obama's legacy but the outgoing president patronized him during a lengthy press conference Trump campaigned on an no-holds-barred agenda of dismantling much of Obama's agenda including immigration reforms put in place without congressional input, a widely criticized Iranian nuclear deal and an Obamacare system whose pilings have grown shaky. But the president suggested the billionaire's poetic rallies can never jive with Washington's messier prose. 'I think it'll be important for him to have the room, to staff up, to figure out what his priorites are, to be able to distinguish between what he was campaigning on and what is practical what he can actually achieve,' Obama cautioned. 'You know, there are certain things that made for good good soundbites, but don't always translate into good policy. And that's something that he and his team will wrestle with in the same way every president wrestles with.' Ultimately, Obama hinted, he believes Trump is more a realist than a principled conservative despite connecting with a previously disengaged voting base on the strength of broad promises. Obama spoke to reporters before leaving for his final overseas trip as president, and they had questions aplenty about his Republican successor Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, scuttle the White House's Iran nuclear deal, roll back a list of immigration executive orders and 'drain the swamp' in Washington 'I think that connection that he was able to make with his supporters that was impervious to events that might have sunk another candidate that's powerful stuff,' Obama said. 'I also think that he is coming to this office with fewer set hard-and-fast policy prescriptions than a lot of other presidents might be arriving with.' Trump beat Hillary Clinton decisively by vowing to repeal and replace government-controlled medical insurance, upend eight years of foreign policy and dismantle corrupt revolving doors between government and the lobbying class. Obama suggested it was all an act, and seemed to admonish Trump not to trust his own instincts in the Oval Office. 'I don't think he is ideological,' the president said. 'I think ultimately he's pragmatic in that way. And that can serve him well as long as he's got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction.' He also implied that Trump's forceful attitude could get him in trouble quickly. 'Whatever you bring to this office, this office has a habit of magnifying and pointing out. And hopefully then you correct for it,' he said. The president complimented Trump on his upset victory over Hillary Clinton but scolded him for thinking he can actually get things done in the Oval Office 'There are going to be certain elements of his temperament that will not serve him well unless he recognizes them and corrects them,' Obama continued. 'Because when you're a candidate and you say something that is inaccurate or controversial, it has less impact than it does when you're President of the United States. Everybody is paying attention. Markets move.' 'National security issues require a level of precision in order to make sure that you don't make mistakes. And I think he recognizes that this is different. And so do the American people,' Obama said. The president said that while he still has 'concerns' about turning the White House over to a brash Republican who attacked him vigorously for more than 16 months, two factors are likely to slow Trump down. One is the lethargy and intransigence of Washington itself even though Trump will inherit a Congress run completely by the GOP. Obama said Trump may find it difficult to reconcile what his screaming throngs expect from him on the one hand, and what Washington will practically permit on the other 'The federal government and our democracy is not a speedboat. It's an ocean liner, as I discovered when I came into office,' Obama said. 'It took a lot of really hard work for us to make significant policy changes, even in our first two years when we had larger majorities than Mr. Trump will enjoy when he comes into office.' The other is a midterm election right around the corner that could dissolve his legislative majorities as quickly as Obama's disappeared in the 2010 tea party wave. 'I think he's going to try as best as he can to make sure that he delivers. Not only for the people who voted for him, but for the people at large,' Obama said. Every day after school, 12-year-old Chen Xiaohua can be seen sitting in a phone booth on a street of Jiaxin city - rain or shine, snow or sleet. The teenage girl has been using the light from the public facility to write her homework for the past four years, reported People's Daily Online. Diligent Xiaohua, a fifth-grade pupil at a primary school, does so in order to wait for her parents, who are sanitation workers, to get off work and go home together. Studying hard: 12-year-old Chen Xiaohua, from China, does her homework in a phone booth Pictures have emerged showing the schoolgirl sitting on a square cushion while reading a text book placed on an old chair. Xiaohua uses the chair as a desk. According to the report, the images were taken near the Chinese Medicine Hospital in Jiaxing. Her father, Chen Fukang, told a reporter from Chengdu Business Daily that her daughter had done homework in that phone booth since the first grade. He rarely saw people using the public phone. Both Fukang and his wife are sanitation workers and they work on the streets nearby. They want their daughter to wait for them in the phone booth, according to Fukang. The father explained that his family were original from Anyue county, in south-west China's Sichuan Province. He said he and his wife did not want his daughter to do homework alone at their rented home because they worried about Xiaohua's safety. He added: 'I finish work every day at 10pm, and my wife needs to work at a restaurant until 8pm after she finishes sweeping the streets. 'We get off work too late. There is a river next to our home, which we rent, and children have fallen into the river in the past. 'We worry about accidents.' Tough choice: Xiaohua's father told his daughter to wait for him in the booth so they could go home together after he finishes sweeping the streets Xiaohua's mother, Li Dailan, picks up Xiaohua from school at around 3:50pm and takes her to the phone booth on East Zhongshan Road. Around the same time, Fukang would put a cushion and an old chair in the phone booth for his daughter to use. He told the reporter: 'The two pieces of furniture were picked up by me. The chair can be used as a desk, and the cushion as a seat.' According to Fukang, Xiaohua does homework in the phone booth between one to three hours daily. He said she often had to use the light from the light booth in winter because the street lights only came on at around 5:30pm. However the toughest times were in summer, according to the father, because Xiaohua would get many mosquito bites from sitting in the open air. The sanitation worker then said: 'In our hometown, the only way for one to change their life is through studying. 'I too hope my daughter can go to university. At least she should stay in school for as long as possible. That way, [she] won't be at a disadvantage when she enters the society.' However, the father said Xiaohua's grades had not been good, which worried him and his wife. Fukang's elder son works in Kangding city in Sichuan and his elderly mother stills lives in their hometown. The United States would become 'a kind of rogue country' if it pulls out of an international agreement to combat global warming, leaving the world more vulnerable to droughts and other climate extremes, warned Mary Robinson, a former Irish president and human rights advocate. 'It would be a tragedy for the United States and the people of the United States if the U.S. becomes a kind of rogue country, the only country in the world that is somehow not going to go ahead with the Paris Agreement,' Robinson said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Sunday. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, has promised to pull the United States out of that global climate accord, which was agreed last year by 193 countries and which came into effect earlier this month, just in advance of his election. Scroll down for video Mary Robinson made the claims at U.N. climate talks in Marrakesh, saying it would be a 'tragedy for the United States and the people of the United States' THE GREEN CLIMATE FUND The Green Climate Fund pledges are part of a wider effort by rich countries to mobilize $100 billion annually for poor countries, announced by Clinton in 2009 when she was U.S. secretary of state. The plan calls for scaling up financing to that level by 2020. So far rich countries say they're about two-thirds there, though many developing countries challenge that assessment. Climate activists are calling on rich countries to raise their contributions, fearing that withdrawing U.S. funds could have a domino effect. Advertisement The deal aims to hold climate change to 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius of warming by moving the world economy away from fossil fuels. The agreement provides for $100 billion a year in international funding from 2020 to help poorer countries develop cleanly and adapt to the already inevitable impacts of climate change. Robinson, who now runs a foundation focused on seeking justice for people hit hard by climate impacts despite having contributed little to the problem, said she was confident other countries would continue their backing for the accord regardless of any action taken by the United States. 'I don't think that the process itself will be affected (if) one country, however big and important that country is, decides not to go ahead,' she said on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Marrakesh, due to end on Friday. But a pullout could mean a 'huge difference' to already difficult efforts to gather enough international finance to help poorer countries develop their economies without increasing their emissions, 'which is what they want to do', she said. 'The moral obligation of the United States as a big emitter, and a historically big emitter that built its whole economy on fossil fuels that are now damaging the world - it's unconscionable the United States would walk away from it,' she said of the threat to withdraw from the Paris deal. However, Robinson said she sympathised with Americans who had lost their jobs in polluting industries such as coal, many of whom supported Trump in his election campaign. Mary Robinson made the claims at U.N. climate talks in Marrakesh. 'Clearly they're hurting at the moment,' she said, calling for assistance to help such workers retrain and win new jobs in a clean energy economy. 'But it's not a future to go backward into coal and have higher emissions in the United States,' she warned. 'The impact of that will be felt by poor communities and poor countries all over the world.' As a U.N. envoy for El Nino and climate change, she said she had been in dry regions of Honduras where women told her they no longer had water as a result of worsening drought. WHITE HOUSE 'COMMITTED' TO PARIS DEAL The Obama administration remains committed to implementing the Paris agreement on climate change and the Iran nuclear deal through its final months, the White House said on Wednesday after the presidential election victory of Republican Donald Trump. 'This administration will be committed to implementing those policies through January 20th, and we will live up to the commitments that we have made in each of those areas as we do so,' White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing. Advertisement 'I saw the pain on the faces of those women. And one of the women said to me, and I'll never forget, 'We have no water. How do you live without water?' ... I'm hearing that all over the world,' she said. If the United States backs away on adopting clean energy, it also would be handing China the leadership role in a key new industry, she said. 'That's not what so many states, businesses, cities and academic communities and local communities want in the United States,' she said. She urged Americans upset about the proposed changes in U.S. policy to make their voices heard. Global emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years. The latest figures raise hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change. Researchers say the slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions is mainly caused by declining coal use in China. But they have cautioned that it is unclear whether this is a permanent trend, or a temporary blip. Scroll down for video Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years raising hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change 'It is far too early to proclaim we have reached a peak,' said co-author Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 per cent this year. That would mean emissions have levelled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. 'This could be the turning point we have hoped for,' said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. 'To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen.' The slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions is mainly caused by declining coal use in China. But researchers have cautioned that it is unclear whether this is a permanent trend, or a temporary blip (stock image used) WHAT THE STUDY FOUND The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 per cent this year. That would mean emissions have levelled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. The authors of the study attributed the slowdown mainly to a decrease in Chinese coal consumption since 2012. Advertisement The authors of the study attributed the slowdown mainly to a decrease in Chinese coal consumption since 2012. Coal is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions. Chinese emissions were down 0.7 per cent in 2015 and are projected to fall 0.5 per cent in 2016, the researchers said, though noting that Chinese energy statistics have been plagued by inconsistencies. Mr Peters said it remains unclear whether the Chinese slowdown was due to a restructuring of the Chinese economy or a sign of economic instability. 'Nevertheless, the unexpected reductions in Chinese emissions give hope that the world's biggest emitter can deliver much more ambitious emission reductions,' he said. A girl carries a sign saying 'Climate justice for all' as she takes part in a protest against climate change coinciding with the Climate Conference taking place in Marrakech WILL DONALD TRUMP IMPACT CO2 EMISSIONS? The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States the world's No. 2 carbon polluter could also have an impact. US emissions fell 2.6 per cent last year and are projected to drop 1.7 per cent this year, as natural gas and renewables displace coal in power generation, the study showed. But it's unclear whether those reductions will continue under Trump, who has pledged to roll back the Obama administration's environmental policies, including the Clean Power Plan, which was meant to reduce carbon pollution from US power plants. Advertisement China, which accounts for almost 30 per cent of global carbon emissions, pledged to peak its emissions around 2030 as part of the global climate pact adopted in Paris last year. Many analysts say China's peak is likely to come much earlier and may already have occurred. 'The continued decline of China's carbon dioxide emissions, combined with knowledge of structural change in the energy system, does indicate that carbon dioxide emissions from China may have peaked, however a few more years of data is needed to confirm this,' said Bill Hare, of Climate Analytics, a separate group that monitors global emissions. But even if Chinese emissions have stabilized, emissions in India and other developing countries could push global emissions higher again. India's emissions rose five per cent in 2015, the study said. The election of Donald Trump as president of the US the world's No. 2 carbon polluter could also have an impact. US emissions fell 2.6 per cent last year and are projected to drop 1.7 per cent this year, as natural gas and renewables displace coal in power generation, the study showed. But it's unclear whether those reductions will continue under Trump, who has pledged to roll back the Obama administration's environmental policies, including the Clean Power Plan, which was meant to reduce carbon pollution from US power plants. Other researchers not affiliated with the study stressed that it's not enough for global emissions to stabilise; they need to drop toward zero for the world to meet the goals of the Paris deal. 'Worryingly, the reductions pledged by the nations under the Paris Agreement are not sufficient to achieve this,' said climate scientist Chris Rapley of University College London. Advertisement Two people are brought into a city hospital on the same night after being found walking around completely naked. Were not ashamed of our bodies, one explains matter-of-factly, when questioned about their outlandish behaviour. A mother gives birth to a baby en caul, that is, still moving around in its amniotic sac. Nurses mutter that this means the healthy child will have psychic powers. The satellite is orbiting as close to Earth as it has done for almost 70 years tonight, but Monday is expected to be the best evening for capturing a rare close-up of the moon Although the countryside is the best place to see the night's sky in all its glory, there was still some stunning scenes over London landmarks such as the Eye There was also a stunning scene behind Canary Wharf as the supermoon emerged this evening when the Sun went down The capital's centre, including The Gherkin, can be seen here underneath the supermoon. Gazers in the south-east of England in particular are advised to get out tonight while they can still enjoy a clear night The moons orbit is elliptical rather than perfectly circular, so as the moon moves around the Earth it is sometimes a little bit closer and sometimes a bit further away from us. It is seen here above the 02 Arena, south-east London The supermoon can be seen here through the clouds behind the Emirates Air Line cable car, in London's Docklands A funfair ride spins around in London, with the enlarged lunar shining in the background A commerical jet flies in front of the moon on its approach to Heathrow airport in west London on. The moon can be seen in incredible detail behind it In prisons and on the streets, men become more fractious and prone to violence. Meanwhile, vets report a huge increase in the number of dogs and cats being ferried in with injuries. In Africa, its people who are the victims as lions go on the rampage. WHAT IS A SUPERMOON? Supermoons are new or full moons that occur when the orbit of the moon brings it particularly close to Earth. For this reason, it appears to be bigger than normal - by about 10 per cent. We usually get between four and six supermoons a year, but this November is special because the moon will be closer to Earth than at any time this century, and we won't get as near again until 2034. Advertisement Logic dictates there could be no possible link between such disparate events and trends, and yet some suggest the connection is right up there in the sky all of them occurring under the baleful glare of a full moon. Such strange tales loom particularly large tonight as were due to see the biggest, brightest supermoon or perigee full moon, to give it its technical name in nearly 69 years, as the Moon passes closer to the Earth than it normally does on its oval-shaped orbit. According to Nasa, this will be especially super, as its the closest full moon to Earth since 1948 and we wont see another like it until November 25, 2034. The Moon should appear 30 per cent brighter and 14 per cent bigger than when it is furthest away from us (known as a micro moon). The supermoon will reach its closest point to Earth at 11.23am today. But the best chance to see it is, unsurprisingly, around sunset. However, Met Office meteorologist Marco Petagna warns those in the South and West may be disappointed because of cloudy weather. Those in the East and North may manage to catch a glimpse. The best areas for cloud breaks will be in the East and on high ground, particularly the East of Scotland, North-East of England and eastern parts of Wales, he says. Spectacular photographs of the biggest supermoon for generations are already being captured, such as Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire - and the best is yet to come Other photographers took the opportunity to clamber up rural landscapes like Beacon Hill near Loughborough to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon The differences in apparent size and brightness amount to few percent but they can enhance the already beautiful sight of the full moon, pictured here rising near Glastonbury The supermoon was also seen on the other side of the Atlantic - pictured here above the US Capitol building Many things will be changing at the White House over the next few months. Barack Obama was at least able to see the moon closer than any president will for 18 years Its glow can be seen here over the Manhattan Bridge, New York. It could be even bigger tomorrow night if the clouds can stay out of the way We usually get between four and six supermoons a year, but this one is special because the moon will be closer to Earth than at any time this century, and we won't get as near again until 2034 (again seen here above Washington DC) Residents in Washington DC (left) Longport, New Jersey (right), were also able to catch a good glimpse of the phenomenon The moon will have a stronger than usual effect on tides due to its proximity and greater gravitational pull, although the difference is likely to be just a few inches. So, could this most foreboding of lunar phases also affect our behaviour and not just be the stuff of fairy tales and horror films? Centuries of folklore have enshrined the full moon as the time for witchcraft and sorcery. Werewolves turned when they saw one, mad people howled at them and they were blamed for all manner of wild behaviour. Indeed, the word lunacy comes from the Latin name for the Moon and its goddess, Luna. James Bond creator Ian Fleming was not the only writer to exploit the mythology when, in From Russia With Love, he created a villain, assassin Red Grant, who felt compelled to kill at the full moon. With all this in mind, scientists have traditionally been wary of even daring to suggest that a full moon really does affect humans and animals, for fear of being declared lunatics themselves. And yet, the belief persists that there is a connection. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that, in hospitals across the U.S., medical staff are convinced that full moons are harbingers of chaos in their emergency rooms and delivery wards. Doctors and nurses said full moon nights prompted a surge in patient admissions, particularly involving psychotic episodes, as well as strange injuries and women going into labour under unusual circumstances. In addition to the caul baby and naked night-time street wanderers, a hospital nurse in San Antonio, Texas, recalled a full moon night when so many high school students were rushed in all suffering from food poisoning that the hospital ran out of beds to put them in. Some hospitals put more staff on at full moon and ban doctors from taking days off. John Becher, an A&E doctor in New Jersey and Philadelphia for 40 years, became so convinced by the phenomenon that he didnt want to work on full moon nights. HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH A SUPERMOON PERFECTLY Bill Ingalls, Nasa's senior photographer Bill Ingalls, Nasa's senior photographer, says composition is key. 'Don't make the mistake of photographing the moon by itself with no reference to anything,' he said. 'I've certainly done it myself, but everyone will get that shot. 'Instead, think of how to make the image creativethat means tying it into some land-based object. 'It can be a local landmark or anything to give your photo a sense of place.' Is it hopeless to attempt a supermoon image with a smartphone camera? Ingalls says, it's all relative. 'For me, it would be maddening and frustrating - yet it may be a good challenge, actually. You're not going to get a giant moon in your shot, but you can do something more panoramic, including some foreground that's interesting. 'Think about being in an urban area where it's a little bit brighter.' To get the right light balance of the moon on newer iPhones and other smartphones, 'Tap the screen and hold your finger on the object (in this case, the moon) to lock the focus. 'Then slide your finger up or down to darken or lighten the exposure.' For digital SLR photography, Ingalls uses the daylight white balance setting for capturing moonlight, since sunlight is being reflected. Advertisement Many medical staff had their own theories for why the full moon affects us. Michelle Schusky, a veteran radiologist, put it down to the composition of the human body. Our bodies are 70 per cent water and, because the moon moves the oceans, it moves the water in your body people flip out, she said. Sceptics have suggested they are victims of so-called confirmation bias they notice it happens to be a full moon on a night when odd things happen, but ignore the full moon nights that are deadly dull. For all that, the Suns effect on humans and animals is enormous, giving us the 24-hour circadian rhythm, a cycle that dominates so many creatures existence everything from appetite and mood to sleep quality. That is well accepted in conventional science. Is it really so irrational to assume that the Moon influences us, too? Professor Ernest Naylor, a marine biologist at Bangor University in Wales, thinks its perfectly reasonable. In his recent book, Moonstruck, he argues that scientists are too frightened of ridicule to study Moon-related phenomena. He says that many marine animals, such as crabs, lobsters, oysters, midges and some fish, live in synchronicity with the Moon, not the Sun. Their daily behaviour, movement and habits are aligned with the lunar day, which, by one definition, is 24 hours and 50 minutes. Since the movements of the Sun are embedded in our genes, it wouldnt be surprising if there are Moon-related genes in our system, he told me. Nobody has yet unequivocally demonstrated this [in humans], but Moon-related rhythms certainly occur in other animals and plants. Nevertheless, some claims made about the effect of full moons do stretch credibility. In 2009, a Tory MP told the Commons that surgeons refused to operate during full moons because they knew blood wouldnt clot (the Royal College of Surgeons suggested the claim was nonsense). However, some studies support the idea of the influence of the full moon. An analysis of 12,000 cases at a busy animal medical centre in the U.S. found cats and dogs were admitted with injuries far more frequently on full moons 28 per cent higher for dogs and 23 per cent for cats. Casualty departments in the UK registered twice as many visits from people with animal bites during full moons than on other nights, according to a 2001 survey in the British Medical Journal. African lions are more likely to attack humans immediately after a full moon, found another study (though researchers reported that lions had trouble catching prey when the Moon was at its brightest, making them all the more hungry by the time the full moon had waned). The moons orbit is elliptical rather than perfectly circular, so as the moon moves around the Earth it is sometimes a little bit closer and sometimes a bit further away from us (pictured here above Sydney, Australia) The supermoon rises above the Motherland Calls statue on top of the Manayev Kurgan commemorating the WWII Battle of Stalingrad The supermoon in all its glory as Brazilians flock to a beach in Rio de Janeiro to see it shimmering in the night's sky The silhouettes of two men can be seen posing for surreal-looking images in Istanbul, Turkey, where one man looks as though he is floating The supermoon rises above Hefer Valley, in Israel, this evening as photographers all over the world took the opportunity to capture it And it was not just Brits who were getting in on the act, with the supermoon also snapped above Russia, such as this example over a statue of Lenin The moon behind this castle in Madrid appears up to 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than an average full moon The moon rises behind a sculpture of Don Quixote De La Mancha in Munera, near Albacete, Spain People, too, can become more aggressive around the full moon, according to research by Sussex Police. In 2007, Brighton police chiefs announced they would put more officers on the streets on summer full moon nights. As far afield as Poland and the U.S., officers claim to have experienced the same unsettling trend. A three-month psychological study of 1,200 prison inmates in Leeds found that violent attacks increased during the days on either side of a full moon. Menstruation is one area in which many have long detected a lunar influence, but scientific studies have contradicted them, saying the womans monthly menstrual cycle is connected to a full moon only in that both occur once a month. Sleeplessness, however, is another matter. Some studies found people slept less during a full moon, even when they couldnt see it and were not aware that one was present. In April, a Canadian study of 5,800 children in countries around the world (including the UK) found that, on average, they slept five minutes less on full moon nights. Yes, it was a small amount of sleep loss, but still significant, said the study, which called for further research into whether there is science behind the myth about full moons affecting certain people. Sex with robots is predicted to become so popular that it will eventually overtake human intercourse by around 2050. An expert has revealed that robot sex will be 'mind blowing', and the bots could even improve your skills in the bedroom. While there have been concerns that the sexbots will replace human relationships, Matt McMullen, CEO of RealDoll, a sex doll manufacturer, suggests that this is not the case. He believes robots will become an option for people looking to spice up their love lives. Scroll down for video While there have been concerns that the sexbots will replace human relationships, Matt McMullen, CEO of RealDoll, a sex doll manufacturer, suggests that this is not the case. He believes robots will become an option for people looking to spice up their love lives HOW SEX WILL CHANGE A report earlier this year claims: By 2030, most people will have some form of virtual sex as casually as they browse porn today. By 2035 the majority of people will own sex toys that interact with virtual reality sex. 'Sexbots' will start to appear in high-income, very wealthy households as soon as 2025. Sex with robots will be more popular than human-human sex in 2050. Love and the act of sex is set to become increasingly separate, with relationships increasingly becoming based on more than just sex. Advertisement McMullen spoke to the Daily Star about what sex with robots will really be like. His San Francisco-based firm currently sells realistic sex dolls for around $5,000 (3,857) a unit. It recently launched a project harnessing AI to create sexbots that have customisable personalities and can talk to their owners in romantic as well as entraining ways. McMullen said: 'It's going to be an amazing new experience that no one has ever had before. 'We're trying to create the desire to have sex beyond the physical. 'In order for people to find themselves attracted to the AI she's really funny, she makes me laugh, she has the same interests as me. 'So then blokes want to take it to the next level to give them that feeling "I'd really like to have sex with her."' Mr McMullen says that sex with robots could even help to improve skills in the bedroom, by making people less afraid to be adventurous. He said: 'Having sex with the robot is only going to help you with your skills. 'It will get you to last longer in bed, try different positions and be more adventurous.' But Mr McMullen suggests interactions with robots will go beyond sex, and men could even seduce, charm and chat the sex robot. Interactions with robots will go beyond sex, and men could even seduce, charm and chat the sex robot. Pictured is the Roxxxy sex robot, with Douglas Hines, its creator He said: 'People might have sexual fantasies about bondage or threesomes or specific fetishes but this is a whole new thing altogether. 'People will think, I've had sex with women now I'm going to have the chance to have sex with a robot. 'To actually engage in a conversation with an AI in its own right is really cool. 'But to throw in the possibility you can seduce the AI and have sex with a robot I think it's an intriguing idea to most people. THE COST OF SEXBOTS REVEALED Neal Slateford, co-owner of online sex toy retailer Lovehoney, sees a future where sexbots are mainstream. 'The technology is developing all the time, and the early robotic toys they have created are still out of the price range of most people - costing around 6,000 ($7,777),' he said. 'Prices will inevitably come down, and we envisage selling mass market robotic toys in around three years' time. They could be really brilliant products - and let's face it, it is the safest way to have a threesome with your partner and not end up in the divorce courts.' San Francisco-based RealDoll currently sells realistic sex dolls for around $5,000 (3,857) a unit. It recently launched a project harnessing AI to create sexbots that have customisable personalities and can talk to their owners in romantic as well as entraining ways. Advertisement But other experts have expressed concerns that sex with robots could become addictive. Joel Snell, a robotics expert from Kirkwood College in Iowa, said: 'Robotic sex may become addictive. 'Sexbots would always be available and could never say no, so addictions would be easy to feed. Advertisement The biggest supermoon in living memory will grace our skies tonight. But a cloudy outlook across the UK and other countries could obstruct the once-in-a-lifetime view for people around the world. To see your chances of spotting the historic supermoon, check your location on this interactive map which gives forecasts and monitors weather and cloud coverage in real-time. Scroll down for video BEST PLACES TO SEE THE SUPERMOON IN THE UK On Monday morning, much of the Earth appeared covered in a blanket of cloud, and for some this looks set to continue into the evening. The whole of the UK looks set to be covered in a cloak of cloud cover for most of the night, according to the Met Office. 'Monday evening and overnight Monday night is the best chance to spot it in Europe,' according to a Met Office spokesman. Although the sky will be cloudy, there are likely to be cloud breaks in Eastern Scotland, North East England and East Wales, he said. Advertisement Called MeteoEarth, the 3D globe shows forecasts and live weather across the world. Selecting the 'Cloud Cover' icon on the left hand side will reveal which parts of the world will have the clearest view of the moon this evening. MeteoEarth.com was launched two years ago by MeteoGroup, headquartered in London, one of Europe's leading private weather companies. Data is pulled live from a forecast model by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. On Monday morning, much of the Earth appeared covered in a blanket of cloud, and for some this looks set to continue into the evening. The whole of the UK looks set to be covered in a cloak of cloud cover for most of the night, according to Meteo Earth and the Met Office. A Met Office spokesman said: 'Monday evening and overnight Monday night is the best chance to spot it in Europe.' Although the sky will be cloudy, he said there are likely to be cloud breaks in Eastern Scotland, North East England and East Wales. Cloud cover would stop the moon from appearing as bright as it might otherwise, and if it is thick enough could block the view entirely. Many European countries will also have an obstructed view. Meanwhile, people in the US look set to enjoy a clearer view when the sun goes down. Further east, those in northern India will have the best cloud-free view, according to the Meteo Earth predictions. Some north west and south eastern states are predicted to have heavy cloud cover today at the time the supermoon is expected to peak, including Florida, Virginia and Oregon, according to forecasts issued by the NOAA. But for the rest of the US the cloud cover is forecast to be minimal. Experts suggest that, provided that the sky is clear and you have a view to the south, the moon will be clearly visible. For an even better view, try viewing from a spot with as little light pollution as possible. Participants in a Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb walk down the western span of the famous Australian landmark as the supermoon rises Today the moon will be the closest to Earth it's been since January 1948. During the event, it will appear up to 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than an average full moon. The supermoon as seen from Northen Shropshire last night The whole of the UK looks set to be covered in a cloak of cloud cover for most of the night, according to Meteo Earth (pictured left forecast at 8:10 PM GMT) and the Met Office. Many European countries will also have an obstructed view. Further east (shown right) those in countries surrounding Iran, Pakistan and northern India will have the best cloud-free view South America and some north west and south eastern states in the US are predicted to have heavy cloud cover when the sun sets (pictured). But for the rest of the US, including the central states, the cloud cover is forecast to be minimal WHAT IS A SUPERMOON? Supermoons are new or full moons that occur when the orbit of the moon brings it particularly close to Earth. For this reason, it appears to be bigger than normal - by about 10 per cent. We usually get between four and six supermoons a year, but this November is special because the moon will be closer to Earth than at any time this century, and we won't get as near again until 2034. Advertisement WHEN CAN YOU SEE IT? The supermoon will arrive today. It will be the second supermoon of the year, the first having already happened on October 16, and the third expected on December 14. At 8.09 PM GMT (3.09 PM ET) the moon will be the closest it has been to the Earth since 1948, at a distance of around 217,000 miles (350,000 km). This will be when the moon is at its biggest and brightest during the day. But the whole of the UK looks set to be covered in a cloak of cloud cover around 8PM GMT, according to the Met Office. Even if your view is not clear, Slooh Observatory will be doing a live broadcast. 'I've been telling people to go out at night on either Sunday or Monday night to see the supermoon,' said Noah Petro, deputy project scientist for NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. 'The difference in distance from one night to the next will be very subtle, so if it's cloudy on Sunday, go out on Monday. Any time after sunset should be fine. 'Since the moon is full, it'll rise at nearly the same time as sunset, so I'd suggest that you head outside after sunset, or once it's dark and the moon is a bit higher in the sky. 'You don't have to stay up all night to see it, unless you really want to!' At 8.09 PM GMT (3.09 PM ET) the moon will be the closest it has been to the Earth since 1948, at a distance of around 217,000 miles (350,000 km). This will be when the moon is at its biggest and brightest during the day. But the whole of the UK looks set to be covered in a cloak of cloud cover around 8PM GMT, according to the Met Office Some north west and south eastern states in the US are predicted to have heavy cloud cover today at the time the supermoon is expected to peak, including Florida, Virginia and Oregon, according to forecasts issued by the NOAA (pictured) Supermoons are new or full moons that occur when the orbit of the moon brings it particularly close to Earth. For this reason, it appears to be bigger than normal - by about 10 per cent FIVE SUPERMOON FACTS It was not until 1979 that Astrologer Richard Nolle first defined the supermoon, which is now a widely-used term, as 'a new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90 per cent of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit'. The moon has to be 226,000 miles (363,711 km) away from the Earth to be considered 'super' which normally happens only once every 14 months. However, there will be no supermoons in 2017. Because of its close proximity to the Earth, the moon's surface appears a lot bigger when a supermoon occurs, which makes for stunning photography. A winter supermoon is supersized, as the Earth is closest to the sun in December each year, which means its gravity pulls the moon closer to the planet making it appear brighter and larger than those that occur during the rest of the year. Supermoons will get smaller in the future as the moon is slowly propelling itself out of Earth's orbit, moving 1.5 inches (3.8cm) further from the Earth each year. Advertisement WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO VIEW IT? Experts suggest that, provided that the sky is clear and you have a view to the south, the moon will be clearly visible. 'Like any full moon it will rise above the ground in the East at sunset and reach its highest point in the sky at midnight before descending to set with the rising sun,' Colin Stuart, astronomy author, told MailOnline. 'This is the same for everyone on Earth.' For an even better view, try viewing from a spot with as little light pollution as possible. The extraordinary visual effect of the moon is more pronounced when viewed near the horizon. 'The moon will look particularly big when seen close to the ground. It isn't actually bigger, but due to an effect called the moon Illusion it appears like it is,' Mr Stuart said. 'So if you can view it rising from a location with an unobstructed Eastern horizon free from trees and buildings you're more likely to see it at its 'biggest'.' 'You don't need any special equipment to see it the supermoon just your eyes and a clear, cloud-free view of the sky,' Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich told MailOnline. 'The moon usually appears most impressive when it's close to the horizon, so look out for it as it rises in the eastern sky around 6pm on the evenings of November 13th and 14th.' 'Many people these days don't have a connection with the night sky because light pollution ruins our view of space from built up areas,' Mr Stuart said. 'Something as easy to see as an unusually bright full moon is a great way to spark people's interest in astronomy and think about how our solar system works. 'Hopefully that will make them curious about seeing more of the wonders of the universe for themselves.' Shadows of two men seen in front of the supermoon in Turkey. The sight of a perigee moon happens when the moon is full and makes its closest approach to Earth The moon's orbit is elliptical rather than perfectly circular, so as the moon moves around the Earth it is sometimes a little bit closer and sometimes a bit further away from us WHY WILL THE MOON APPEAR LARGER? The moon's orbit is elliptical rather than perfectly circular, so as the moon moves around the Earth it is sometimes a little bit closer and sometimes a bit further away from us. 'If a full moon happens to occur when the Moon is also at its closest point then it will look slightly larger and brighter than usual this is what is popularly known as a 'supermoon',' Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich told MailOnline. 'It's a natural part of the moon's cycle and happens around once a year. 'The differences in apparent size and brightness amount to few percent but they can enhance the already beautiful sight of the full moon, making a supermoon worth looking up for.' For this reason, it appears to be bigger than normal - by about 10 per cent. We usually get between four and six supermoons a year, but this November is special because the moon will be closer to Earth than at any time this century, and we won't get as near again until 2034. During the event, it will appear up to 14 per cent bigger and 30 per cent brighter than an average full moon. A winter supermoon is supersized, because the Earth is closest to the sun in December each year, which means its gravity pulls the moon closer to the planet making it appear brighter and larger than those that occur during the rest of the year. The best time to view a super moon is when the moon is low on the horizon where 'an illusion will occur that makes it look unnaturally larger,' according to AccuWeather. Since the moon's orbit is elliptical, one side (perigee) is about 30,000 miles (48, 280 km) closer to Earth than the other (apogee). An American Airlines passenger plane passes in front of the moon, as seen from Whittier, California yesterday. Monday morning's supermoon will be the closet a full moon has been to the Earth since January 26, 1948 The supermoon captured yesterday at an old military airfield in Denmark. Always surrounded by an aura of mystery, the moon and its possible influence over human behaviour has been object of ancestral fascination and mythical speculation for centuries DOES A SUPERMOON AFFECT OUR HEALTH? THE 'LUNATIC' EFFECT Always surrounded by an aura of mystery, the moon and its possible influence over human behaviour has been object of ancestral fascination and mythical speculation for centuries. While the full moon can't turn people into werewolves, some people do accuse it of causing a bad night's sleep or creating physical and mental alterations. Dr Niall McCrae, a mental health researcher at King's College London, has spent years studying the phenomenon. He told MailOnline he was first inspired to write his book 'The Moon and Madness' because looking back through archives he found a lack of research into the link between a full moon and mental health issues in the early 19th century. It appeared people were trying to distance themselves from the folklore, he said. But, in stark contrast to this, mental health nurses Dr McCrae spoke to told of strong beliefs that at the time of a full moon, patients were more restless and agitated. He said years ago, when mental health hospitals were buildings far away from cities placed on hills, with no curtains, the idea of a full moon affecting their sleep is very plausible. Once one patient was woken by the light from the moon, they could become anxious or agitated and disturb other patients, causing a scene. 'In this environment, it's not unbelievable that moonlight can be a disturbing factor,' he said. In the Bible, people described as 'lunatics' who fell to the ground, shaking, during a full moon might have been suffering from epileptic fits, he added. Nowadays, he says, mental health care has changed and with different treatment, along with medication and artificial lighting, patients are less likely to be affected by the light from the moon. To establish if lunar phases affect humans, an international group of researchers studied children in to see if their sleeping patterns changed or if there were any differences in their daily activities. The research studied a total of 5,812 children from five continents, and the results were published in May this year. The researchers found, in general, nocturnal sleep duration around full moon compared to new moon reported an average decrease of five minutes (or a one per cent variant). Another study found healthy adults slept for 20 minutes less time during a full moon, Dr McCrae told MailOnline. Advertisement DOES THE MOON AFFECT THE WEATHER? Some argue the moon has an impact on the weather, but the evidence shows this is not significant. 'The weather isn't affected by the moon,' Dr Marek Kukula told MailOnline. 'However the moon does affect the tides and, because the moon will be at its closest point to the Earth, high and low tides may be slightly more extreme than usual around the date of the supermoon - but only by a few centimetres. Dr David Harland, space historian and author, said: 'It's possible that the moon may be a kilometre or two closer to Earth than normal at a perigee, but it's an utterly insignificant event. ' Previous supermoons took place in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005 - all years that had extreme weather events, conspiracy theorists say. The tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia happened two weeks before the January 2005 supermoon. And on Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy laid waste to Darwin, Australia. But Pete Wheeler of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy greeted warnings of an impending apocalypse with scepticism before the supermoon in 2011. 'There will be no earthquakes or volcanoes erupting, unless they are to happen anyway,' he told news.com.au at the time. 'Earth will experience just a lower than usual low tide and a higher than usual high tide around the time of the event, but nothing to get excited about.' During a full moon, the sun and the moon are pulling on Earth from opposite sides - making the chances of any dramatic tidal events unlikely. While the full moon can't turn people into werewolves, some people do accuse it of causing a bad night's sleep or creating physical and mental alterations. Image of the supermoon over Brisbane on Monday 'WEREWOLF' BIRDS HUNT USING LUNAR TIDES Myth and folklore feature tales of werewolves being affected by phases of the moon, and it appears this behaviour isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. Coastal wading birds shape their lives around the tides and new research shows different species follow prey cycles tied to our lunar satellite. Experts now plan to study how their prey responds to such tidal forces to learn more about this behaviour. Advertisement DOES A SUPERMOON CAUSE MOOD SWINGS OR LACK OF SLEEP? While the full moon can't turn people into werewolves, some people do accuse it of causing a bad night's sleep or creating physical and mental alterations. To establish if lunar phases affect humans, an international group of researchers studied children in May this year to see if their sleeping patterns changed or if there were any differences in their daily activities. The research studied a total of 5,812 children from five continents. The children came from a wide range of economic and sociocultural levels, and variables such as age, sex, highest parental education, day of measurement, body mass index score, nocturnal sleep duration, level of physical activity and total sedentary time were considered. Data collection took place over 28 months, which is equivalent to the same number of lunar cycles. These were then subdivided into three lunar phases: full moon, half-moon and new moon. The findings obtained in the study revealed that in general, nocturnal sleep duration around full moon compared to new moon reported an average decrease of five minutes (or a one per cent variant). No other activity behaviours were substantially modified. 'Our study provides compelling evidence that the moon does not seem to influence people's behaviour,' said Dr Jean-Philippe Chaput, from the Eastern Ontario Research Institute. Another study found healthy adults slept for 20 minutes less time during a full moon. Historically, full moons have been linked to a lack of sleep because of the bright light that shines from them. WHY ARE WE SO FASCINATED BY THE SUPERMOON? Always surrounded by an aura of mystery, the moon and its possible influence over human behaviour has been object of ancestral fascination and mythical speculation for centuries. Myth and folklore feature tales of werewolves being affected by phases of the moon. 'Folklore and even certain instances of occupational lore suggest that mental health issues or behaviours of humans and animals are affected by lunar phases,' Dr Chaput said. 'Whether there is science behind the myth or not, the moon mystery will continue to fascinate civilisations in the years to come,' he added. One study found healthy adults slept for 20 minutes less time during a full moon. Historically, full moons have been linked to a lack of sleep because of the bright light that shines from them. Image of the supermoon by Albert Dros News / National by Stephen Jakes Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has threatened business in Matabeleland North for operating in the province and failing to attend the ruling Zanu-PF fundraising meeting in Victoria Falls which was meant to boast the party's coffers ahead of the conference set for Masvingo next month.A hand full of business operators attended the fundraising gig held in the resort town over the weekend amid fury by the VP who openly expressed discontent ver their conduct."There are a lot of business or companies operating in this province and we can not have companies operating here failing to plough back to the society," he said.The threats come amid reports that Zanu-PF officials and traditional leaders in other parts of the country are already forcing villagers to contribute $0, 50 each towards the Zanu-PF conference.The Matabeleland North provincial fund raising dinner was supposed to raise $50,000 towards the party's 16th annual National Peoples Conference to be held next month in Masvingo.The dinner tables at Elephant Hills Hotel were priced at $20,000 for the platinum category, $15,000 for gold, $10,000 and $5,000 for bronze and silver respectively. This year could be the warmest since records began, thanks to a strong El Nino and fossil fuel emissions, the UN's weather agency has revealed. According to the World Meteorological Orgnaization (WMO) global warming has stoked more floods, fires and rising sea levels. It made the claims today at climate change talks in Marrakesh, overshadowed by Donald Trump's election win. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said that 2016 will be the warmest since records began in the late 19th century, with average surface temperatures 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial times, driven by a strong El Nino and man-made carbon emissions President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and a source in his transition team says he is seeking quick ways to pull the US out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to shift the world economy away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. The WMO said this year would be the warmest since records began in the late 19th century, with average surface temperatures 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial times. Sixteen of the 17 hottest years recorded have been in this century. 'Another year. Another record,' WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement in Marrakesh, Morocco, where almost 200 nations are discussing ways to slow climate change. The heat, with impacts such as melting Greenland ice and damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, was stoked by an El Nino weather event in the Pacific early in the year and by man-made greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels. 'The extra heat from the powerful El Nino event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue,' he said. This year has seen severe drought hit some regions in the US, with California baking in the heat as crops feeling the strain and lakes dry out HAS GLOBAL WARMING SLOWED DOWN? Many reports have emerged recently of a slow down in the increasing rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Data show that the rate of growth has been lower than expected, which scientists attribute to a number of factors, including carbon hungry plants soaking up CO2 from the atmosphere. Figures released this week by climate scientists also show the slowdown could be explained by some of the world's largest nations weaning themselves off of coal - such as China. However, while the rate of increase has slowed, the data show the overall trend is one of average temperatures rising. There is also the threat posed by melting permafrost, which could pump tons of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, exacerbating the warming. Environmentalists and climate scientists are also concerned that US president-elect, Donald Trump, will backtrack on agreements to curb the country's emissions, made in Paris last year. The Paris Agreement set a target of a global average increase of no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. It also includes promises from wealthy nations and the world's biggest polluters to fund protective measures in regions expected to be worst hit by climate change, including island nations and areas of the developing world. Advertisement The Geneva-based WMO said it was 'very likely' that 2016 would be the hottest, barring a freak chill in coming weeks. The Paris deal, backed by almost 200 nations including the United States but rejected by Trump, has an overriding goal of limiting the rise in temperatures to 'well below' 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times, ideally 1.5C (2.7F). Earlier today, a scientific report projected that world carbon dioxide emissions were expected to stay flat for the third year in a row in 2016 and that US emissions would fall by 1.7 per cent in 2016, driven by declines in coal consumption. President Barack Obama has made fighting climate change a key policy and the US was the driving force behind the design of the Paris Agreement. 'Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen,' said Taalas. 'Once in a generation' heat waves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones,' he said. The most damaging weather event in 2016 was Hurricane Matthew, which killed more than 500 people in Haiti, it said. The Yangtze basin in China had its worst summer floods since 1999, killing 310 people and causing an estimated $14 billion (11.1 bn) in damage. Record daily temperatures were recorded from South Africa to Thailand. Canada had its worst recorded wildfire in May around Fort McMurray, Alberta. Data from the UN refugee agency said 19.2 million people were displaced by weather, water, climate and hazards such as earthquakes in 2015, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence, it said. New analysis suggests the C ring is between 15 and 100 million years old Its icy rings make Saturn one of the most memorable-looking planets in the solar system. But despite studying them intensely, researchers are still unsure exactly when the iconic rings formed. Now a new study suggests the rings were created between 15 to 100 million years ago. This suggest they may be a chance they formed when dinosaurs roamed the planet between 230 and 65 million years ago, making them billions of years younger than we previously thought. Scroll down for video They make Saturn one of the most memorable-looking planets in the solar system, and scientists have been fascinated by the planet's icy rings for years. Now a new study suggests the iconic rings could be billions of years younger than we previously thought HOW SATURN GOT ITS RINGS Research published last month suggests the clumps of rock and ice that make up the rings we consider almost synonymous with the planet now, actually started out life as different planets altogether. The study suggests the rings of Saturn, along with those surrounding Neptune and Uranus, are made up of pieces of Pluto-like dwarf planets that strayed too close to the giant worlds long ago. Advertisement None of the other existing origin scenarios predict the rings are any younger than 3.8 billion years old. Researchers at Cornell University studied an almost forgotten set of data, collected 10 years ago by Nasa's Cassini mission. The rings are predominantly composed of water ice particles, up to several feet in size, but these particles are continually 'polluted' by bombarding micrometeoroids. 'Water ice comprises the bulk of Saturn's rings, yet it is the small fraction of non-icy material that is arguably more valuable in revealing clues about the system's origin and age,' the researchers wrote in a new study, published in the journal Icarus. In the study, Cornell's Zhimeng Zhang and co-authors studied a set of data collected early in Cassini's mission. The instruments used measured the entire ring composition, rather just the surfaces' icy layers. Saturn's C ring is the most 'polluted' due to its relative low mass, making it easier to acquire a higher proportion of non-icy material. In the study, Cornell's Zhimeng Zhang and co-authors studied a set of data collected early in Cassini's mission. Artist's impression of Cassini pictured 'This makes the C ring ideal for investigating ring contamination and piecing together age and history,' Zhang told SciNews. After sifting through reams of data, the authors showed most regions in the C ring contained between 1 and 2 per cent rocky silicates. Combining this with estimates of the micrometeoroid flux places the C ring somewhere between 15 and 100 million years old, billions of years younger than expected. 'None of the current origin scenarios predict the rings are likely younger than 3.8 billion years old,' said Zhang. 'This will force a rethinking of ring origin models.' When kids refuse to eat their greens, it might not entirely be their fault. Humans are hard-wired to choose red food such as meat over green foods like broccoli, according to a new study. Colour helps us decide whether or not to eat something, the research says, because the first bite really is taken with the eyes. Humans are hard-wired to choose red food such as meat over green foods like broccoli, according to a new study. Colour helps us decide whether or not to eat something, the research says, because the first bite really is taken with the eyes EATING WITH OUR EYES Humans are hard-wired to choose red food such as meat over green foods like broccoli, according to a new study. Colour helps us decide whether or not to eat something, the research says, because the first bite really is taken with the eyes. 'According to some theories, our visual system evolved to easily identify particularly nutritious berries, fruits and vegetables from jungle foliage,' said Raffaella Rumiati, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and coordinator of the new study. Advertisement The study, by the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, was published today in the journal Scientific Reports. It says vision is the main sense we use to guide us in food choices. 'According to some theories, our visual system evolved to easily identify particularly nutritious berries, fruits and vegetables from jungle foliage,' said Raffaella Rumiati, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and coordinator of the new study. 'We are visual animals, unlike others, dogs, for example, who depend on their sense of smell.' 'We are particularly efficient at distinguishing red from green. 'It is mainly the colour of food that guides us, and our experiments show how. To date, only a few studies have been focused on the topic.' 'In natural foods, colour is a good predictor of calories,' added Study author Dr Francesco Foroni. 'The redder an unprocessed food is, the more likely it is to be nutritious, while green foods tend to be low in calories.' Researcher Giulio Pergola added: 'The participants in our experiments judged foods whose colour tended towards red as higher in calories, while the opposite was true for greens. The study, by the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, was published today in the journal Scientific Reports. It says vision is the main sense we use to guide us in food choices. Green and red apples pictured WOULD YOU EAT A KALETTE? Kalettes (pictured),are nutty and sweet tasting and are a cross between kale and the traditional sprout A new vegetable has been harvested in time for Christmas as a more appealing alternative to the Brussels sprout. The creations, called 'Kalettes' are nutty and sweet tasting and are a cross between kale and the traditional sprout. The veg, which is sold in mainly 200 gram packs, can be steamed or stir fried in two to three minutes. Farmers have been growing the vegetable for three years and it was previously called 'Flower Sprout'. In the UK, Kalettes are grown by Drysdale, Kettle Produce and Staples Vegetables in the areas traditionally dedicated to brassicas: Lincolnshire, the south west and south east Scotland and Aberdeenshire. Advertisement 'This is also true for processed, or cooked foods, where colour loses its effectiveness as an indicator of calories.' Prof Rumiati added: 'Cooked foods are always preferred because, compared to natural foods, there is more nutrition for the same quantity. 'With cooked foods, however, the dominance of red over green no longer provides reliable information, which might lead us to believe that the brain would not apply the rule to processed foods. 'On the contrary, it does, which hints at the presence of ancient evolutionary mechanisms from before the introduction of cooking.' 'The preference for red over green is not observed with non-edible objects. 'This means that the colour code of the visual system activates correctly only with food stimuli.' She said that the findings could even help in the fight against obesity, adding: 'Much is being done today to encourage healthier eating, for example, trying to convince the people to eat foods lower in calories. 'Some countries propose bans on certain types of products, such as carbonated soft drinks and high fat foods. She was found on a beach on the Menai Straits in Turtle belongs to one of either two rare species from the Gulf of Mexico One of the world's rarest tropical turtles is 'lucky to be alive' after being washed up on a chilly Welsh beach thousands of miles away from her tropical home. The female turtle, part of a rare species usually found swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, is being warmed up by vets at a specialist sea zoo. Named Menai, she is believed to be either a Kemp's ridley turtle, the rarest sea turtle species in the world, or an Olive ridley, a species which has never before been found in the UK. One of the world's rarest tropical turtles is 'lucky to be alive' after being washed up on a chilly Welsh beach thousands of miles away from her tropical home. The female turtle, part of a rare species usually found swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, is shown being warmed up by vets HOW DID MENAI GET THERE? The turtle is thought to have been carried across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream together with strong westerly winds. She became stranded on the shore at the Tan-Y-Foel beach on the Menai Straits at Anglesey, North Wales - and has been named Menai by experts looking after it at the Anglesey Sea Zoo. 'It is most likely that the turtle has lost her way on her journey through these warmer seas, possibly due to recent strong wind and currents, as sea turtles are known to travel vast distances,' said a spokeswoman for the Sea Zoo. Advertisement The two species are difficult to tell apart, but both are usually found in warm waters more than 4,000 miles (6,437km) away, in the waters around Florida and Mexico. She was found on the shore at the Tan-Y-Foel beach on the Menai Straits at Anglesey, North Wales - and has been named Menai by experts looking after her at the Anglesey Sea Zoo. The turtle is thought to have been carried across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream together with strong westerly winds. Menai is being rehydrated and gradually warmed, but zoo staff warned that while she was responding well to treatment, she remained in a serious condition and may not survive. A spokeswoman for the Sea Zoo said: 'The Kemp's ridley turtle is a critically endangered species, being the rarest sea turtle in the world, and the Olive ridley turtle is also extremely rare, and has never previously been recorded as stranding in the UK. 'Both of these endangered turtle species are found in warm and tropical waters as far north as Mexico and the southern part of the USA but neither would be expected to survive in the cooler seas here in the UK. 'Tropical turtles such as the Olive ridley and Kemp's ridley are more commonly found in temperatures of 25-30C and at this time of year our local sea temperatures approximately 8C are far too cold for these tropical species to tolerate. 'It is most likely that the turtle has lost her way on her journey through these warmer seas, possibly due to recent strong wind and currents, as sea turtles are known to travel vast distances. The turtle, pictured, is thought to have been carried across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream together with strong westerly winds The species turtle, that was found washed up on the beach in North Wales (shown right), is usually found in warm waters more than 4,000 miles (6,437km) away, in the waters around Florida and Mexico (left) She became stranded on the shore at the Tan-Y-Foel beach on the Menai Straits at Angelsey, North Wales - and has been named Menai by experts looking after her at the Angelsey Sea Zoo (pictured) A spokeswoman for the Sea Zoo said: 'The cold and windy weather here is unsustainable for such species of turtles to survive, and it is lucky that Menai was found alive' Menai is being rehydrated and gradually warmed, but zoo staff warned she remained in a serious condition and may not survive 'The cold and windy weather here is unsustainable for such species of turtles to survive, and it is lucky that Menai was found alive, as many of the tropical turtles washed up around the UK are found dead.' There are only 30 record incidents of Kemp's Ridley turtles being stranded on Irish and British beaches in the past. Zoo director Frankie Horbo said: 'We were stunned that this magnificent creature was washed up on the beach right outside the sea zoo - it was as if she was asking for our help. 'If she had stranded elsewhere and not been found quickly, she would certainly have died. 'Our staff are working hard to rehabilitate our turtle and we hope that she will survive and be able to be flown back and released in warmer waters once she is strong enough.' Turtle expert Rod Penrose, of the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, said the turtle's size was key to its survival. He said: 'This individual is much larger than any other Kemp's ridley turtle documented as stranding in the UK, previously we have always recorded juveniles here. 'The fact that it is a larger animal has probably contributed to the fact that it is still alive despite the cold temperatures it has experienced.' U.S. internet companies including Facebook and Amazon have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent on Monday by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet's Google , Uber and Twitter, represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign. 'The internet industry looks forward to engaging in an open and productive dialogue,' reads the letter, signed by Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, and seen by Reuters. Firms including Facebook, Google and Amazon have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting encryption and, immigration reform. WHAT THEY WANT The letter includes support for: Strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations Upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency Maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. Immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. Advertisement Some of the policy goals stated in the letter may align with Trump's priorities, including easing regulation on the sharing economy, lowering taxes on profits made from intellectual property and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market. Other goals are likely to clash with Trump, who offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector during his campaign. They include supporting strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations, upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency, and maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. The association seeks immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. DONALD TRUMP'S CLASHES WITH SILICON VALLEY Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple products over the company's refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings Trump's often-shifting policy proposals on the campaign trail frequently alarmed tech companies and sometimes elicited public mockery, such as when Trump called for closing off parts of the internet to limit militant Islamist propaganda. Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple products over the company's refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon, and demanded that tech companies such as Apple manufacture their products in the United States. Advertisement Though Trump made tougher immigration policies a central theme of his campaign, he has at times shied away from arguing against more H-1B visas for skilled workers, saying in a March debate he was 'softening the position because we need to have talented people in this country.' While urging support for trade agreements, the letter does not mention the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump has repeatedly assailed with claims it was poorly negotiated and would take jobs away from U.S. workers. The technology sector supported the deal, but members of Congress have conceded since the election it is not going to be enacted. Trump's often-shifting policy proposals on the campaign trail frequently alarmed tech companies and sometimes elicited public mockery, such as when Trump called for closing off parts of the internet to limit militant Islamist propaganda. Trump has also urged a boycott of Apple products over the company's refusal to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation unlock an iPhone associated with last year's San Bernardino, California, shootings, threatened antitrust action against Amazon, and demanded that tech companies such as Apple manufacture their products in the United States. Apple is expected to boost the screen size of its iPhone - but keep its physical dimensions the same. The firm is set to unveil the most radical redesign of its flagship handset so far for the iPhone's 10th anniversary in 2017. The latest rumours claim it will have a radical edge to edge curved screen - and a screen size boost. Scroll down for video Apple firm is expected to unveil the most radical redesign ever of its flagship handset for the iPhone's 10th anniversary in 2017. Pictured are two concept drawings Barclays Research analysts Blayne Curtis, Christopher Hemmelgarn, Thomas O'Malley, and Jerry Zhang says the screens will allow the handsets to maintian the same overall size as the current 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models The analysts, citing sources 'within Apple's supply chain' said 'iPhone 8 design didn't sound 100% locked down but we believe the move is to a bezel-less design with screen sizes getting larger and curved edges in the original envelope. 'The iPhone 8 moves to 5' (from 4.7') and the Plus moves to 5.8' (from 5.5').' In the research note obtained by MacRumors, the analysts said only the 5.8-inch model will use OLED display technology, which can be sharper, brighter, and more energy efficient than LCD technology. It comes days after experts predicted the iPhone 8 will also have wireless charging. Foxconn Technology Group in New Taipei City, Taiwan is making wireless charging modules to go with Apple's next iPhone, due for release in 2017, according to an industry source familiar with the matter, Nikkei has reported. 'But whether the feature can eventually make it into Apple's updated devices will depend on whether Foxconn can boost the yield rate to a satisfactory level later on,' the source told Nikkei. It is not clear whether Apple would offer a wireless charging plate, along the same lines as the one made by Samsung for its Galaxy S smartphones. But a patent application, filed by Apple with the US Patent and Trademark Office in September showed images of a round charging device with a concave top, similar to the plastic wireless charger used by the Apple Watch. The patent was first filed in late 2015 but was only just published last month. While the patent is largely focused on brushing and polishing tools for metallic cylindrical and contoured devices, it also refers to an 'inductive charging station', notes Patently Apple. A patent application, filed by Apple with the US Patent and Trademark Office in September showed images of a round charging device with a concave top, similar to the plastic wireless charger used by the Apple Watch (pictured) It appears that the polishing tools are being developed specifically for a wireless charging station with a metal finish, which would match the iPhone. 'In describing how the tools would work, the application includes multiple illustrations of a charging station used to provide electrical current to another device via inductive power transmission,' notes Mac Rumours. END OF THE HOME BUTTON? A patent granted to Apple recently revealed technology that places the home button underneath the display. The innovation uses an electrostatic lens that connects the connect the screen and sensors, allowing the device to accurately read fingerprints on the screen. Depending on the position of these lenses, relative voltage and shape, the layer or layers are able to shape or bend the electric field associate with the user's finger, reports AppleInsider. These specially designed lenses would also reduce the spreading of the electric field of a user's finger when placed on the screen, as this type of bending can sometimes offset a fingerprint's natural dispersion. Advertisement 'An inductive transmitter coil wraps around a metal core and is designed to pair with a receiver coil and charge the battery in the electronic device'. Previous rumours have suggested new MacBook computers could include a wireless charging module on which the device can be placed to power it up. Last week it was revealed Apple is set to launch three versions of the iPhone 8 next year, including a new 5inch handset. Citing a supply chain source, Nikkei said Apple will release the three iPhones in the following 5.5 inches, 5 inches, and 4.7 inches (14cm, 12.7cm and 11.9cm). Apple recently killed the headphone jack and its next victim could be the home button, according to previous rumours. A patent awarded last month describes technology that is capable of scanning fingerprints almost anywhere on the screen of an iOS device - making the home button obsolete. The latest application suggests using a special lens behind the display that connects the screen and sensors, allowing the device to capture an accurate print reading. Rumours of Apple doing away with the iconic home button are not groundbreaking - many believed the firm would leave it out of the iPhone 7 design. Apple killed the headphone jack and its next victim could be the home button. A recent patent describes a special lens behind the screen that scans fingerprints anywhere on the surface These specially designed lens (pictured) would also reduce the spreading of the electric field of a user's finger when placed on the screen, as this type of bending can sometimes offset a fingerprint's natural dispersion Advertisement There was a time when the word boutique and Peckham could never be associated with each other. But those days - the days of Del Boy's Only Fools And Horses Peckham and The Nag's Head pub - are a distant memory. Peckham has become one of the hippest areas in south London and the recently refurbished Victoria Inn is a 15-room testament to that. Peckham has become one of the hippest areas in south London and the recently refurbished Victoria Inn (pictured) is a 15-room testament to that The Victoria Inn serves up hearty fare in a convivial atmosphere. Ted enjoys devilled kidneys with pickled Scottish girolle mushrooms and a 10oz Rib eye steak with herb crusted bone marrow Ted loves the stylish black-and-gold cushions on the bed, the smart headboard, the bedside plug and USB points, the cool local art on the walls and the Magimix Nespresso machine It sits on the corner of one of the trendiest streets in the area Bellenden Road and has been there since 1878, but a recent makeover makes it one of the most stylish and best-value - places to stay for miles around. Rooms here, after all, start at just 90 a night. Including breakfast. What's more, to stay here is to be ensconced in a completely tourist-free area of London, yet it's just minutes away from major attractions such as The Shard and Buckingham Palace by train and Tube. I stay on a Saturday night with my girlfriend and we're shown to our room on the top floor by a very chirpy member of staff. She leads us up delightfully creaky, thickly carpeted stairs to a double room that has pleasingly Scandi-cool decor and a great view of The Shard. Victoria Inn sits on the corner of one of the trendiest streets in the area Bellenden Road (pictured) and has been there since 1878, but a recent makeover makes it one of the most stylish and best-value - places to stay for miles around. Rooms start at just 90 including breakfast. Ted's room features hip sideways (and diagonal) tiling and a rain shower (right) I love the stylish black and gold cushions on the bed, the smart headboard, the bedside plug and USB points, the cool local art on the walls and the Magimix Nespresso machine (that you can also use to make tea). Plus, it's spotless, along with the en-suite bathroom, which features nice hipster sideways tiling and a rain shower though the water pressure isn't brilliant. And a sink-side soap dish would be handy. But overall, it's a dapper bedroom that we happily get snug in. Until hunger strikes. So we descend to the bar for a feed. In a convivial atmosphere and flanked by exposed brickwork, filament light bulbs and black-and-white floor tiling we tuck into some nicely crafted, hearty fare - with possibly the biggest forks I've ever witnessed in a restaurant. Devilled kidneys with pickled Scottish girolle mushrooms and toasted hazelnuts is a very tasty starter. And my 10oz Rib eye steak with herb crusted bone marrow for mains is just the ticket on a cold night, with juicy, succulent meat. For dessert I choose a malted chocolate fondant that also tickles the taste buds. The food at Victoria Inn is cooked well and diners tackle it with enormous forks, Ted reveals The pub serves up a great evening meal for Ted and he also enjoys a very good breakfast, the sausages being a highlight To stay at the Victoria Inn is to be ensconced in a completely tourist-free area of London, yet it's just minutes away from major attractions such as The Shard and Buckingham Palace by train and Tube Afterwards sleep comes easily and in the morning we park ourselves at one of the window booths in the pub for breakfast something that is clearly no afterthought here. It's done properly. This is evidently not news to the locals - we notice several groups coming in for breakfast. I feast on a superb full English (my other half opts for Severn Wye smoked salmon with scrambled eggs) with seriously tasty sausages, Orkney black pudding and field mushrooms, and smooth coffee. Not only is the food decent, but the pub really lends itself to paper perusing. We completely lose ourselves in the Sunday column inches as the chefs push out one spinach-laden plate after another (they're a healthy lot round here). Some of the best nearby activities also happen to involve food and drink. Bellenden Road is chocka block with artisanal offerings in these departments, including restaurants Artusi (excellent cooking here) and The Begging Bowl (a ferociously popular Thai eatery) and the delightfully old-school General Store, which sells beautifully baked loaves, cheese, wine, beer and fruit and veg in just the way your parents would remember. Neighbouring hot spots include Thai restaurant The Begging Bowl (pictured here opposite the pub), another fine eatery called Artusi and a wonderful artisanal grocers called the General Store Just 10-minutes away by foot, meanwhile, is a restaurant that I think is one of the best in London Peckham Bazaar. It offers a Balkan-influenced menu with dishes cooked to an exceptional standard, always rammed with flavour and there's a superb wine list, too. In the summer good times can be had nearby at Frank's Cafe, a pop-up bar that pops up on the roof of a multi-storey car park, with Instagramable views of the city as standard. For seriously good wine, a 15-minute walk to East Dulwich's buzzy Lordship Lane will bring you to the terrific La Cave de Bruno shop (where you can quaff on tables outside) and the brilliantly bistro-y Toasted. Just 10-minutes away by foot from Victoria Inn is a restaurant Ted hails as one of the best in London Peckham Bazaar (pictured) Toasted (pictured) in East Dulwich is a short walk from Victoria Inn and serves up delicious wine by the tank-load Dulwich Picture Gallery is within easy striking distance of Victoria Inn. The Duchess of Cambridge is pictured here paying a visit in March 2012 Artusi (pictured) on Bellenden Road is one of the many establishments that help make it a hot spot for locals For culture vultures, the renowned Dulwich Picture Gallery (visited recently by the Duchess of Cambridge) is easy to reach by train from Peckham Rye station which is just five minutes by foot from Victoria Inn. Just go two stops to North Dulwich and saunter from there. Travelling to major tourist attractions is also a cinch from Peckham Rye as there are direct trains to London Bridge (for the Shard), Victoria (from there the likes of Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park are easy to get to) and Shoreditch (the trendiest district in Europe). Peckham may not be everyone's cup of tea some bits are gritty - but the Victoria Inn, with its boutiquey credentials and transport connections offers a brilliant alternative to shacking up in a bland chain hotel in the city centre. JetBlue has taken a step back in time and given one of its planes a retro paint job. One of its Airbus A320s was given a one-of-a-kind paint scheme designed to celebrate the iconic jet age of air travel and to highlight 'JetBlue's innovative style', the company said. To create the look, JetBlue dug into an archive of popular logos and notable companies from the mid-1960s to essentially reverse-engineer the JetBlue brand and envision what the customer-friendly carrier of today might have looked like some five decades ago. To create the look, US-based JetBlue dug into an archive of popular logos and notable companies from the mid-1960s to essentially reverse-engineer the JetBlue brand 'The 1960s were rich with sleek but bold graphics and style characteristics of today's JetBlue brand,' said Jamie Perry, vice president marketing, JetBlue. 'With that in mind our team broke from our tradition of timeless designs and instead imagined a look to celebrate this iconic era of aviation and what JetBlue may have looked when it would have been introducing humanity to air travel.' The aircraft design features bold JetBlue orange and blue 'speed stripes' down the length of the Airbus A320, a popular characteristic of 1960s aircraft paint schemes. Above the window line 'JetBlue Airways' is printed in a font consistent with a typeface widely used in the time period. 'The 1960s were rich with sleek but bold graphics and style characteristics of today's JetBlue brand,' said Jamie Perry, vice president marketing, JetBlue The aircraft design features bold JetBlue orange and blue 'speed stripes' down the length of the Airbus A320 For inspiration, JetBlue designers spent several days at New York's Lubalin Archive at the Cooper Union poring through original advertisements, graphics, images and fonts from the 1960s But perhaps most notable is the aircraft tail. Absent is a simple airline logo or icon. Instead, JetBlue's RetroJet tail features three colors and a lively 1960s jazz-inspired font that would have stood out among other airlines of the time. 'It's a jet age take on JetBlue's hallmark tails of today,' the carrier added. For inspiration, JetBlue designers spent several days at New York's Lubalin Archive at the Cooper Union poring through original advertisements, graphics, images and fonts from the 1960s. The team looked to leading brands for guidance on common themes and design elements that were widely used and associated with 1960s style. In 2014 Qantas unveiled a Bowing 737-800 aircraft with a retro-themed 70s livery, as a tribute to 70 years of the iconic flying kangaroo logo. Travelling the world is one of life's greatest luxuries, but when you're stuck at the back of a queue of three busloads of tourists, it can feel like total misery. Often, when holidaying in a popular tourist destination, it can be hard to avoid busy crowds, scams and dodgy food. But by travelling smart, there are ways to avoid succumbing to tourist traps. Scroll down for video Seasoned travellers have been sharing their tips for avoiding tourists traps on holiday. They suggest avoiding dressing like a tourist and keeping expensive cameras and phones out of sight Seasoned travellers have been sharing their tips for getting an authentic vacation experience in the online forum Quora. Tips include avoiding anything that is written in English if it isn't the local language, steering clear of tour buses and dressing like a hippy. The theory is that by blending in and looking out for where the locals congregate, travellers are most likely to avoid any con artists looking to make some money out of a lost foreigner. If you're the type of person who regularly finds yourself trapped in tourist hell on holiday, then the following tips could save your next vacation... Many expert travellers suggest getting up early to beat the tour buses to any popular tourist destinations Go out late for dinner Richard Guy, who describes himself as a frequent flyer, said: 'Tourism is a hungry and tiring business, so it's understandable that most people want to have their dinner at about 6.30pm. But in many countries, this is a very odd thing to do - the Spanish, for example, rarely head out of the house for the evening until 9pm. If you ask for dinner at 6.30pm, you're just marking yourself out as a tourist and many of the best places will not even be open until 7.30, let alone filled with locals. Create an itinerary based on your interests, not the most popular attractions Seth Mohan, a travel blogger said: 'Tourists look at the results on the first page of google and follow the recommendations, but travellers find less popular sites with a niche focus that theyre interested in. 'For example, choose an itinerary based around yoga, architecture or craft brewing and this will often lead you towards like-minded locals and open doors to authentic cultural experiences.' Dressing like a backpacker can allow tourists to travel without attracting attention from scammers who like to target wealthy people Dress like a local or a backpacker Simona Rich, a travel writer said: 'Dont wear expensive clothes or you might attract unwelcome attention. 'Similarly, try not to show off expensive cameras and smartphones. 'Try to avoid wearing anything that tourists wear and instead blend in with the locals or opt for a backpacking style.' Set your alarm really early Jack Trotter, a travel writer said: 'Even places that are tourist traps can be awesome if you get there early enough to beat the crowds . 'Most tour groups run between 11am and 4pm, leaving a large window of time for you to get a jump on the large groups. Some experts suggest avoiding certain popular tourist destinations completely because the crowds will taint the experience 'Youll rarely see a tour group up at sunrise to go do an epic activity - take advantage of this.' Avoid popular holiday destinations completely Crystal Linn, a regular traveller said: 'Tourist traps will always occur in the big tourist destinations like London, Dublin and Edinburgh. 'Although there might not be as much of an attraction in the less touristy areas, there are some gems. 'I went to Limerick in Ireland and the city was delightful after visiting Dublin - it still had architectural pieces and was surrounded by beautiful green hills, but best of all, I got more of a real sense of a normal Irish town there than I did in Dublin.' Cities like Prague are often best seen in the winter as there are less crowds Travel in the off-season Andy Kerr, trainee pilot said: 'The best way to travel is during the off-season. 'For example, Prague in November is lovely, and not all that cold - there's still people out playing for money on the streets, and plenty to do, but you can walk from one end of the city to the other without feeling like a target. 'Prague in summer... is hell. Everywhere you look, there are other tourists and someone is always trying to sell you something, show you something, get your attention.' Research local scams before your holiday Paulo Abreu, who runs a travel website, said: 'Research the area youre visiting for known scams. 'Travel forums are packed with reports from other travellers so the main scams are already known.' One expert suggested that restaurants where food is advertised using large photographs are best avoided if you are looking for an authentic experience Avoid anything that is written in English if that isn't the local language Ieva Strupule, who charters boats for tourists globally, said: 'Learn the language well enough to order from a menu in the local language because you don't want to be choosing places that offer a menu translated in four or more languages. 'If someone on a street persistently tries to get you in a restaurant, it is one to avoid. Destinations included in the offer are Barcelona, Bordeaux and Frankfurt Ryanair is hoping to tempt thousands of Brits to book last-minute European breaks this month with a flash sale on its mid-week flights. The low-cost airline is selling 5 tickets to 170 destinations across the continent as part of a 'Fiver Monday' sale. There are more than 20,000 seats on offer to passengers, as log as they are willing to travel on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but customers only have until midnight tonight to make use of the offer. Ryanair are hoping to tempt thousands of Brits to book last minute European breaks this month with a flash sale on their mid-week flights They can travel out of the UK from 12 airports, including London Stansted, Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham International, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Derry, East Midlands, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Destinations included in the offer are Barcelona, Bordeaux, Frankfurt and Luxembourg. Only last week, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary revealed Ryanair would be slashing fares by up to 15 per cent this winter to combat the fallout from Brexit. The outspoken boss hinted the fare reductions could last as long as 18 months, with Ryanair using lower fuel prices and cost cutting to help pay for price cuts, as the airline aims to fill seats at whatever price it can to win market share. Ryanair is selling 5 tickets to 170 destinations across the continent as part of a 'Fiver Monday' sale O'Leary told Bloomberg TV: 'We are looking at a year where as far as we can see air fares will keep falling. We are looking at extraordinary fare declines.' Fares have already fallen by 10 per cent in the last six months alone, helping boost Ryanair's profits by seven per cent and increasing passenger numbers over the period. O'Leary described the price falls as 'good news for customers, not so good news for shareholders', but added that the latter would have to 'learn to live with it for the foreseeable future'. Ryanair is looking to drum up the firm's UK traffic numbers before Brexit fully kicks in. Despite it being a European airline, Britain remains a key market for the Irish carrier. News / National by Staff Reporter A row over seven expensive Botswana padlocks spilled to the courts last week after a Glen View landlord accused her former tenants of stealing her padlocks.Rachel Garan'anga dragged Chrispen Kawere and his wife Agnes Muganhu to Mbare magistrates' court.Garan'anga said the padlocks under despute where imported from Botswana."There were seven padlocks fitted on doors when they moved in and when they moved out I was not around" she told magistrate Gladys Moyo."I only noticed that the padlocks were missing when I came back."I bought those padlocks in Botswana so they are not cheap quality".Garan'anga said the pair have to explain "what they did to my padlocks".However, Kawere denied the accusations saying they found no padlocks.They bought their own."When we were about to move out we notified her that we were going to remove it since it was ours and she agreed but we were surprised when she came with the police stating that we stole her padlocks" he said.They pleaded not guilty and subsequently acquitted. She was no doubt left devastated following her split with ex husband Karl Stefanovic after 21 years of marriage. But according to New Idea, Cassandra Thorburn is open and 'excited' to getting back into the dating scene, with friends wanting to 'set her up.' 'It's as if she has been given a new lease on life now,' a source told the publication. Scroll down for video New beginnings: Karl Stefanovic's ex Cassandra Thorburn is reportedly open and 'excited' to getting back into the dating scene, with friends wanting to 'set her up' after her split with the Today Show star 'It's very early days, but Cass has some close friends who would love to set her up,' the insider said. 'She is excited to see where it goes,' they added. Meanwhile, Cassandra has recently signed with celebrity agent Max Markson in a bid to revive her career as a media personality. Moving forward: 'It's as if she has been given a new lease on life now,' a source told the publication Confirming the news to Daily Mail Australia recently, Max said: 'Cass is an outstanding journalist with over 20 years experience in radio, television and of course writing.' The Sydney PR king went on to explain that the mother-of-three will be 'using her experience as an opinionated columnist and on-air TV and radio presenter' to relaunch her career. It's also been rumoured recently that Cassandra may appear on Today's rival show, Channel Seven's Sunrise. Over: The pair made headlines in recent weeks when they ended their 21-year marriage Cassandra recently spoke to Mum Central about her and Karl's split, confirming the end of their relationship. 'I'm grieving the loss of my relationship. The loss of my best friend and life partner,' she said. 'I'm just like every other mother and wife who is going through a marriage break up, only I have the added anxiety of having the spotlight thrust in my face at a time when what myself and my children really need is privacy,' she added. Cassandra was a stay at home mum and has slammed critics who questioned why she decided to give up her career to raise her children. Last week, Channel Nine boss Darren Wick confirmed Karl will be taking at least a month off work as he deals with family issues. And according to Karl's manager the TV star is 'happy' about the break. 'I think any of us would be happy to take a holiday at the end of the year,' he said. Time for a rest! Last week, Channel Nine boss Darren Wick confirmed Karl will be taking at least a month off work as he deals with family issues Reports emerged back in September that Karl had separated from Cassandra, a former ABC journalist, after 21 years of marriage. An insider has hinted that their dicey relationship may become a lot uglier as the pair prepare to split their assets in divorce proceedings. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, a 'long term associate' of Karl and Cassandra said: 'If she really wanted to tip the bucket on Karl, she could... Cassie really is holding the cards in this... it is going to cost Karl a lot of money.' A source previously told New Idea that Cassandra plans on fighting to keep the $7 million mansion the pair purchased a month before splitting. It is understood the Logie-winning presenter moved out of the family home. Representatives for Cassandra have been contacted for comment in relation to this article. Although she was unable to attend due to her battle with breast cancer, Shannen Doherty's spirit was very much present during the reunion of Beverly Hills, 90210. The original cast members of the 90's series gathered on Saturday for REWind Con in Bloomingdale, Illinois. And stars Luke Perry and Jennie Garth made an effort to keep Shannen in their thoughts during the event. Scroll down for video 'Fight like a Brenda:' The original cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 had a reunion at REWind Con in Illinois on Saturday as Jennie Garth shared a heartfelt message for castmate Shannen Doherty who couldn't make it to the event as she is battling cancer Throwback: Jennie pictured with the 48-year-old actress who played Brenda Walsh in the 90's series together back in 2009 The 45-year-old actress - who recently told her supporters about radiation treatments late October - spent a quiet Saturday instead with her husband and film producer Kurt Iswarienko. Co-star Jennie kept Shannen very much included, however, as she posted a heartfelt message to Instagram. The 44-year-old, who played the rival to Shannen's character, Brenda Walsh, wrote: 'To my soul sister @theshando strongest lady i've ever known. then and now. i used to be threatened by your spirit, now i'm in awe of it. you've taught me a lot about speaking my mind and not being afraid of my power. i'm so grateful that young me got to be friends with you. but especially "old" me! the best is yet to come on this crazy journey!! love you! #fightlikeagirl #fightlikebrenda #aries.' Shannen also re-posted the message to her social media adding: ' I'm so proud of this friendship and the mutual respect and admiration we have for each other.' The whole gang: The classic series had a ten-year run from 1990 to 2000 At home: Shannen spent her Saturday with her husband and film producer Kurt Iswarienko; she recently told her fans about being done with chemotherapy and is now on to radiation Luke, who played love interest to Brenda on the show, also showed his support and said to the fans: 'None of us are up here today without Shannen. Shes been through a lot. Shes not doing well right now but sometimes her contributions are minimized.' He added: 'Shes been thrown under the bus. Ive been accused of driving it. But shes a very big part of the success of this show. She taught me a lot. Im glad she was my scene partner. She was great at what she did in the character with me.' Luke and Jennie were both joined by other cast members for the panel discussion with fans including Jason Priestley, James Eckhouse, Tori Spelling, Christine Elise, Gabrielle Carteris, and Vincent Young. Supportive: Cast member Luke Perry, who played love interest to Brenda on the show, also gave a tribute to Shannen during the event saying: 'None of us are up here today without Shannen. Shes been through a lot...' 'Here we are:' Vincent Young also shared a photo from the event to his Instagram posing with his former co-stars Reunited: Fans got a treat during the panel discussion Ever since announcing the devastating news in February 2015, the brave actress has consistently updated her undergoing treatment via social media, strengthening her fellow cancer patients worldwide. She's revealed that the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes and has had a single mastectomy over the spring. After posting about being done with chemotherapy, strong-willed Shannen- who was honored with the American Cancer Society's Courage Award last week - wrote on Instagram: 'Sometimes it seems like chemo will never end. Sometimes you wonder if you have the courage to face cancer and all that comes with it. Dig deep. The courage, strength and tenacity is there inside us all...' They play a married couple on the long running Australian soap, Home and Away. And single actors Lisa Gormley and Dan Ewing have explained their sizzling chemistry. Lisa, 32, told New Idea that they get along in real life like a house on fire, but insists it's platonic. Scroll down for video 'It looks like there's sexual tension': Single actors and Home and Away co-stars Lisa Gormley and Dan Ewing (seen in August) have spoken about their sizzling chemistry 'It looks like there's sexual tension, but it's definitely not real,' the brunette told the publication. According to the magazine the pair were 'flirty' when they posed up together for their latest photo shoot and called each other 'baby.' Meanwhile, Dan said the chemistry viewers see on the show between the pair is real. Steamy! Dan said the chemistry viewers see on the show between the pair is real (seen on the soap) 'You just can't fake that kind of chemistry, it was there from the start,' Dan said. 'We argue, we cry, we laugh, but Lisa is a great influence on my life.' Dan also told the publication Lisa helped him through his marriage split and was there for him when he broke up with ex Marni. He added they keep in touch via Facebook when not working and he cheekily likes to 'try her patience' at times. Meanwhile, Lisa said she open to love, whether it be with a male or a female. His support: Dan also told the publication Lisa helped him through his marriage split and was there for him when he broke up with ex Marni On the soap, Dan plays the tattooed bad boy Heath Braxton, while Lisa plays his love interest Bianca Scott. The pair's characters are married and shared a baby together, a son called Rocco, who died of sudden infant death syndrome. Dan has been on and off the show since he first left the soap to pursue his Hollywood dreams in 2014. Last year he moved back to Australia after his LA stint. Dan first had a brief role on the show as Reuben in 2007, before later coming back as Heath. He previously told The Fix about life in the US and said he and his family weren't enjoying living in LA. Former flame: Dan is seen here with his ex, Marni, with the pair announcing their split earlier this year 'To be honest, with a family, we're not overly big fans of living in the US just because of the medical system, education and whatever,' he said. Dan and wife Marni announced their split earlier this year. 'I was a grumpy old fool and I was really hard to deal with,' Dan recently toldKIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O. 'We were in the States and I wasnt having a good time...I was just unhappy,' he added. The personality said he 'didn't appreciate what I had' and still loves Marni. He and Marni wed in Sydney's Manly in 2012 and share son Archer, two. On the first floor of Buckingham Palace, with views down the great avenue of the Mall, is a guest room that must evoke very mixed emotions for Her Majesty the Queen. It was in the Buhl Room, as it's known, that Prince Philip stayed on the night the royal couple announced their engagement in July 1947 and there, too, that the Queen gave birth to Prince Charles a year after their wedding. But alongside such happy memories the room has a darker association. For it was there that, on the morning of Sunday, September 23, 1951, the Queen's father, George VI, became the focus of one of the most remarkable episodes in palace history. It was the day when the country's top surgeons, having erected a temporary but fully equipped operating theatre, battled to save him from lung cancer. The scene from Netflix's The Crown where doctors operate on George VI The story is told in The Crown, the much-hyped 100 million TV series about the early years of our monarch's reign. Watching it unfold, you might suspect that director Stephen Daldry, best known for the film Billy Elliot, has made liberal use of dramatic licence. After all, it seems unlikely that such a life-threatening procedure would have been carried out just along from the balcony where the Royal Family make their public appearances. But that is exactly what did happen, and the production team wanted to make the scene as authentic as possible. And if there seems to be something eerily convincing about the medics wielding their scalpels on the King's chest, that's because Daldry cast in the roles a team of real-life surgeons from Guy's Hospital in London, 'operating' on a highly realistic silicone replica body. In normal life, the surgeons work together regularly on organ transplants. Professor Nizam Mamode plays lead surgeon Sir Clement Price Thomas, a chain-smoker and grocer's son from Wales, in whose hands the course of British history lay. Like his colleagues, Professor Mamode had no acting experience. N ot that much was required once filming began at the palatial Goldsmiths' Hall in the City of London, a stand-in for the real Buhl Room. 'It did feel for us very much like we were standing there doing a real operation,' he says, adding that the experience gave him great admiration for Sir Clement and his assistants. 'Ideally, you treat every patient in the same way. But it would not have escaped their minds that they were in Buckingham Palace and operating on the King, and that would have created a huge amount of stress.' Alongside the psychological pressure, operating at the Palace also presented the surgeons with an unexpected practical problem, according to Karin Ort, the eldest granddaughter of Sir Clement. 'He realised that he might be disturbed by the changing of the guard below the room in which he was operating, so he insisted that the change-over should be carried out at St James's Palace instead.' Her grandfather's expertise was called upon after the King developed what one courtier described as 'that awful cough' in the months after he opened the Festival of Britain in May 1951. Claire Foy and Jared Harris play Queen Elizabeth II and King George VI He was then 55 and his health had suffered as a result of the stress of the abdication crisis, not to mention World War II. It didn't help that he was also a heavy smoker, said to get through 50 cigarettes a day but even after tests suggested the presence of a malignant tumour in his left lung, the word 'cancer' was never mentioned. The King certainly knew he was seriously ill, though. In the opening shots of The Crown, he is seen coughing blood into a toilet bowl. Not to mention cancer was standard practice at the time and, although informed that his condition would require the removal of one lung, the King believed this was down to a blocked bronchial tube. The royal desire for privacy had led to many operations being performed at the palace Edward VII had an appendix removed there, for example. But this was a much more serious procedure. Sir Clement initially resisted the idea and understandably so, according to Professor Mamode. 'He would effectively be operating in a makeshift theatre,' he says. 'Hopefully, you would have everything you needed, but if someone had forgotten something, it wouldn't be just around the corner as it would be in a hospital.' In the end, Sir Clement agreed to work at the Palace on condition that he could exactly replicate the equipment and layout of his operating theatre at Westminster Hospital. In fact, he insisted on setting up two identical theatres, one in an adjoining room in case of an unforeseen emergency. In The Crown, the operating table is positioned directly beneath huge chandeliers, in a room hung with oil paintings. As the Buhl Room is not open to the public, we don't know how accurate this is. But whatever the furnishings were, it's certain that the King was not exposed to dust and dirt in the way this might suggest. W e know this because the assistant anaesthetist was Dr Cyril Scurr, father of Dr Martin Scurr, who writes the Mail's weekly 'Ask the Doctor' column in Good Health. Prof Mamode, centre, and the team from Guy's who appeared in the TV drama 'My father was very discreet and didn't tell me much about the operation at all,' Dr Scurr says. 'But I do know that they erected a sterilised canvas structure around the table.' The task of transporting numerous oxygen cylinders, mobile lights and sterilising equipment was co-ordinated by theatre superintendent Sarah Minter, who later recalled the thrill of looking out of the palace window and seeing the crowds gathering as a bulletin about the operation was posted to the gates. If the King could hear the hubbub as he was prepared for the anaesthetic, it must have added to his already considerable anxiety. As Dr Cyril Scurr described many years later: 'The most touching thing was that when we went to put him to sleep in the morning, he had all the Sunday papers around him, and they were all hazarding a guess that he'd got cancer of the lung. 'He was a timid sort of person who I think was very apprehensive about the operation more, perhaps, than most people because he had a biblical quotation in his own hand on his bedside table, 'Put your trust in the Lord' and that sort of thing.' Since a patient needs to be as calm and relaxed as possible before being put under, this was hardly a desirable state of affairs. But the King's worries were well-founded, according to Professor Mamode. 'The complication rates from that sort of surgery were pretty high at that time, so there was a good chance that he may not have survived the operation,' he says. He and the rest of his team were reminded of some of the reasons for those complications as they were transported back in time for the filming. One was the white gowns with which they were provided by the costume department seen increasingly spattered with blood as the operation went on. 'Today, the gowns we wear are impermeable to protect us from the patient's body fluids and to protect them from our sweat and infection,' says Professor Mamode. 'In those days they were using linen and cotton, which is clearly not as effective in terms of sterility.' Other things felt more familiar. Although modern treatments for lung cancer are far more likely to involve chemotherapy, radiotherapy and minimally invasive 'keyhole' surgery, it is sometimes still necessary to carry out the kind of operation which the King underwent. This involved removing the lung through a large incision in the chest wall. Most surgeons will have made such an incision at some point in their career, and the instruments used have changed little over time. Like the real thing, the filming took place on a Sunday, with the Guy's team working in their spare time. The difference was that Sir Clement completed the removal in about three hours a quarter of the time it took to capture the scene on camera. During the real operation, the King's wife, Queen Elizabeth, (later the Queen Mother) and daughter Princess Margaret were at the Palace throughout. Princess Elizabeth, our present Queen, was then aged 25 and waited at her nearby home, Clarence House, with Prince Philip and their young children, three-year-old Prince Charles and Princess Anne, who was only a year old. He could easily have died on the operating table Towards the end of the operation, they were called to the Palace to be told that the King had survived. As his family took in this good news, the job of clearing up began. And those who have already started watching The Crown, which is available via the online TV channel Netflix, may have been shocked to see a nurse removing the King's diseased lung from a specimen bowl and wrapping it in an old newspaper, presumably prior to disposing of it. This is inaccurate, according to the Mail's Dr Scurr. 'My father told me that he put the lung in a bottle of formalin and took it back to the pathology lab at Westminster Hospital in a taxi,' he says. When Sir Clement left the Palace that afternoon, it was in his own car, and he was so distracted by all that had happened that he crashed into another vehicle on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. Fortunately, the police didn't prosecute the man whose efforts on behalf of the King would soon be rewarded with a knighthood. Sadly, the King died the following February from a coronary thrombosis (a clot blocking the flow of blood to the heart). This may have been a delayed complication of the surgery, or might have happened anyway. We shall never know but he could easily have died on the operating table five months previously, depriving him of the time he needed to put his house in order and pave the way for his daughter to become our Queen. For that, Sir Clement and his team could congratulate themselves on a job well done. And so, it seems, can the makers of The Crown, which is already being acclaimed for its lavish sets and spellbinding acting, in particular Jared Harris's anguished but heroic George VI. After a series of seconds-long teasers, Paramount Pictures finally released the first full trailer for Ghost in the Shell on Sunday. The 2070-set reimagining - hitting UK/US theaters March 31 - is a live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 anime feature and Masamune Shirow's 1989 manga series. The two-minute preview recreated the 'shelling' process that robo-cop The Major/Motoko Kusanagi (Scarlett Johansson) initially undergoes in a lab. Scroll down for video Robo-cop: After a series of seconds-long teasers, Paramount Pictures finally released the first full trailer for Ghost in the Shell on Sunday Hitting UK/US theaters March 31! The 2070-set reimagining is a live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's 1995 anime feature and Masamune Shirow's 1989 manga series 'You were dying. We saved you and now you save others,' Juliette Binoche's Dr. Ouelet explained in voiceover. Not unlike Wolverine or Jason Bourne, the Major's existential journey involves uncovering her mysterious past and figuring out what she was before. The gun-filled clip gave fans an action-packed, lingering look at Motoko's invisible armor otherwise known as a thermoptic suit. The four-time Golden Globe nominee - who turns 32 this month - resembled an Ex Machina bot with her flesh-coloured puzzle-pieced attire. Resuscitated: The two-minute preview recreated the 'shelling' process that The Major/Motoko Kusanagi (Scarlett Johansson) initially undergoes in a lab Juliette Binoche's Dr. Ouelet explained in voiceover: 'You were dying. We saved you and now you save others' 'I know I have a past': Not unlike Wolverine or Jason Bourne, the Major's existential journey involves uncovering her mysterious past and figuring out what she was before Not-so-stealth entrance: The gun-filled clip gave fans an action-packed, lingering look at Motoko's invisible armor otherwise known as a thermoptic suit 'Actually, I was kind of scared of the thermoptic suit. I thought that it was going to be, I don't know, extremely uncomfortable,' Scarlett said during the Nerdist Twitter Q&A on Saturday. 'It wasn't the most comfortable, but it wasn't unlike wearing the Black Widow suit. It actually moved a little bit better. It was okay. Although, it was hot when you didn't want it to be and cold when you wanted to be warm, so that was the only unfortunate part.' When the Danish and Polish-descended actress was first cast, fans and media action groups accused producers of 'whitewashing' the iconically Japanese character. Fembot: The four-time Golden Globe nominee - who turns 32 this month - resembled an Ex Machina bot with her flesh-coloured puzzle-pieced attire Scarlett said during the Nerdist Twitter Q&A on Saturday: 'Actually, I was kind of scared of the thermoptic suit. I thought that it was going to be, I don't know, extremely uncomfortable' She continued: 'It wasn't the most comfortable, but it wasn't unlike wearing the Black Widow suit. It actually moved a little bit better' Scarlett added: 'It was okay. Although, it was hot when you didn't want it to be and cold when you wanted to be warm, so that was the only unfortunate part' Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Ming-Na Wen condemned Johansson's casting in April as 'whitewashing of Asian role.' And Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu worried it 'reduced race to mere phys appearance as opposed to say culture, social experience, identity, history.' In fact the only prominent (non-robotic) Asian face in Sunday's trailer was Takeshi Kitano as Section 9 Chief Daisuke Aramaki. Lost in translation? When the Danish and Polish-descended actress was first cast, fans and media action groups accused producers of 'whitewashing' the iconically Japanese character 'Nothing against' her: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. star Ming-Na Wen condemned Johansson's casting in April as 'whitewashing of Asian role' Nope: And Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu worried it 'reduced race to mere phys appearance as opposed to say culture, social experience, identity, history' Boss man: In fact the only prominent (non-robotic) Asian face in Sunday's trailer was Takeshi Kitano as Section 9 Chief Daisuke Aramaki On Sunday in Japan, Ghost in the Shell director Rupert Sanders defended casting the Captain America actress due to her 'baked in cyberpunk aesthetic.' 'I think whenever you cast someone someone's going to be critical about it,' the 45-year-old philandering filmmaker said onstage Tokyo's Tabloid. 'To me it was, you know, I stand by my decision - she's the best actress of her generation and I was flattered and honored that she would be in this film. So many people who were around the original anime have been vehemently in support of her because she's incredible and there are very few like her.' 'I stand by my decision': On Sunday in Japan, Ghost in the Shell director Rupert Sanders (R) defended casting the Captain America actress due to her 'baked in cyberpunk aesthetic' The 45-year-old philandering filmmaker said onstage Tokyo's Tabloid: 'So many people who were around the original anime have been vehemently in support of her because she's incredible and there are very few like her' Sunday's sneak peek showcased the film's Caucasian-heavy ensemble including Juliette Binoche (L) as Dr. Ouelet, Pilou Asbk (M) as Batou, and Michael Wincott (R) as a baddie 'Everything they told you was a lie. They did not save your life. They stole it': There was only a quick, shadowy glimpse of Michael Pitt as Kuze with his visible throat gears Sunday's sneak peek showcased the film's Caucasian-heavy ensemble including Juliette Binoche as Dr. Ouelet, Pilou Asbk as Batou, and Michael Wincott as a baddie. There was only a quick, shadowy glimpse of Michael Pitt as Kuze with his visible throat gears. 'Everything they told you was a lie. They did not save your life. They stole it,' Kuze warned. The Ancient One: Hollywood studios are notorious for misappropriating Asian culture, characters, and stories and replacing them with white actors like Tilda Swinton as a 'Celtic- Tibetan' mystic in Doctor Strange Ponytailing: Next year's $135M-budget medieval Chinese epic The Great Wall selected Matt Damon to star as a 'European mercenary' Lame: More examples of tacky cinematic whitewashing include Cameron Crowe's Aloha with Emma Stone (L) and the Wachowski's Cloud Atlas with Halle Berry (R) Hollywood studios are notorious for misappropriating Asian culture, characters, and stories and replacing them with white actors like Tilda Swinton as a 'Celtic- Tibetan' mystic in Doctor Strange. Next year's $135M-budget medieval Chinese epic The Great Wall selected Matt Damon to star as a 'European mercenary.' Katherine Heigl is expecting her third child in January. And on Sunday the 37-year-old actress was seen stocking up at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, California with her husband, Josh Kelley, 36. The star hid her full-grown pregnant bump underneath a loose black tank top and cropped leggings as she strolled along on the warm November day. Scroll down for video Bumping along! Katherine Heigl sported her pregnant bump on Sunday at the flea market in Pasadena with husband Josh Kelley The Grey's Anatomy alum completed her look with a green hat, sunglasses, and black-and-white sneakers. Prepared to make some purchases at the market, Katherine reached into her camel-colored leather purse and pulled out what appeared to be a small red wallet. Behind her, Josh - wearing a dark grey tee, cargo shorts and green trainers - carried a large cart for their goodies. Shopping spree: The 37-year-old actress kept it black in a loose tank top, cropped leggings and black-and-white sneakers. She topped it off with a green cap and sunglasses Ready to buy! The former Grey's Anatomy star pulled out what appeared to be a red wallet from her camel-colored leather purse Third's the charm! The blonde beauty announced in June she was expecting her first biological child; Katherine and Josh also raise two adopted girls, Naleigh, seven, and Adalaide, four Her two daughters, seven-year-old Naleigh and four-year-old Adalaide, were not seen with their parents, leaving the husband and wife to enjoy their alone time. And Katherine certainly values that as she posted a selfie to her Instagram last week writing: 'I'm not a very confident selfie taker but I couldn't resist trying to capture this rare adults only moment between @joshbkelley and I as the sun sets this beautiful November evening in LA! #kidsarewatchingtv #muchneededalonetime.' The couple - who tied the knot in 2007 - later welcomed adopted daughters Naleigh from South Korea in 2009 and Adalaide in 2012. The 27 Dresses star announced she was pregnant with her first biological child back in June. Alone time: The mom-of-three posted a selfie with her husband last week documenting their much-needed alone time as she wrote in the caption Scary! The Knocked Up star posted a fun Halloween photos with her two girls Meanwhile, the mom-to-be has been busy working on upcoming CBS drama Doubt, which also stars Laverne Cox and Elliott Gould, set to premiere in 2017. On the upcoming series, per CBS's description, Katherine plays Sadie Ellis, a brilliant attorney at a boutique firm who starts to fall for her charismatic client, Billy Brennan, an altruistic pediatric surgeon accused of murdering his girlfriend 24 years ago. The busy actress will also star in upcoming film Unforgettable alongside Rosario Dawson and Whitney Cummings. She had been stumping for Hillary Clinton in a desperate last minute drive to get more votes. So perhaps that explains why Anne Hathaway looked so glum as she headed out for a fancy birthday dinner with her handsome husband Adam Shulman in New York on Saturday. The Les Miserables favourite was downbeat despite the fact she was eating out at a fancy French restaurant Le Cirque with her reality television personality pal Olivia Palermo. Scarlet woman: Anne Hathaway wore red as she went to a birthday meal with husband Adam Shulman in New York on Saturday The newly-minted 34-year-old was looking great for her age in a red satin dress that showcased her knockout figure, a fur coat and towering gold stilettos. Her beefcake jewellery designer other half meanwhile looked masculine in a classic tuxedo and leather shoes combo. They were joined at the eatery by self-styled model and socialite Olivia Palermo, who was escorted by her German model other half Johannes Huebl. Perhaps the reason Anne was so glum is her beloved presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has only just suffered a landslide loss at the polls. It came despite the Oscar-winning actress stumping for the Democrat nominee at Temple University earlier this week Fur goodness sake: Even the fact she was going for a slap-up birthday meal was not enough to cheer glum Anne Friends in high places: They were joined by Olivia Palermo and her husband Johannes Huebl She was so keen to drum up extra votes she even ended up singing Happy Birthday to student and fellow Scorpio Ewan Johnson. According to the more cosmically inclined the latter means they can be caring and sensible, though they are also said to be self-pitying, stubborn and opinionated. The touching campus moment, which was caught on video, saw the actress, who ironically was wearing a 'proud to support Madam President' shirt, already mid-song as the crowd sings with her. And she really made his day on the second 'happy birthday to you', wrapping her arms around the strapping young lad's waist and giving him a tight squeeze while resting her head on his shoulder so they are cheek-to-cheek. Typical Scorpio: The Hillary Clinton fan seemed to be self-pitying after seeing her candidate lose in a landslide on Tuesday They've been enjoying time together in Sydney where they also confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that they are indeed dating. And on Monday, The Bachelor's Megan Marx and Tiffany Scanlon enjoyed climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge together. The two blonde beauties - who hail from Perth - cosied up to one another as they soaked up the idyllic view. Scroll down for video Taking their love to new heights! On Monday, The Bachelor's Megan Marx (R) and Tiffany Scanlon (L) enjoyed climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge together Clad in their climbing jumpsuits, the duo were all smiles as they made their way to the top of the bridge. Megan stunned with her hair in a chic side braid, showing off a golden tan and wearing minimal makeup. Tiffany meanwhile, had her long locks tied up into a low ponytail and wore light face paint. Loving it: Clad in their climbing jumpsuits, the duo were all smiles as they made their way to the top of the bridge Blowing a gale! Tiffany had her long locks tied up into a low ponytail and wore light makeup Megan shared a snap of herself online, describing Sydney as a 'pretty thang' (sic). Tiffany meanwhile said the experience was a tick off the 'bucket list.' 'Today I ticked another item off the bucket list - the @bridgeclimb on Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bonus I got to do it with my girl! Thankyou so much for the experience,' Tiffany wrote in part of her post. Bikini babes: The pair have been enjoying some time together in Sydney (seen here at Bondi Beach) Sweet: The pair confirmed their romance to Daily Mail Australia on Friday For months Megan and Tiffany have dropped hints they are in a same-sex relationship with one another. And on Friday, the busty girlfriends officially confirmed their romance at the Maxim Hot 100 party at The Star, Sydney. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the event, Tiffany confessed that the pair fell in love during a holiday in Bali, Indonesia in June. 'While we were in the show, it was just a friendship. It probably wasn't until we were in Bali together that it was like ''Oh, this is more'',' said Tiffany. Speculation: For months Megan and Tiffany have dropped hints they are in a same-sex relationship with one another Going strong: Tiffany confessed that the pair fell in love during a holiday in Bali, Indonesia in June (seen here on The Bachelor) Her partner Megan also confessed she wasn't expecting to fall for another woman while filming the TV dating series, starring Richie Strahan. 'We had very different experiences when we were on the show. Obviously I found Tiffany very attractive but I was there to get to know Richie,' she said. 'But instantly we knew there was a very strong connection. I was so excited to meet her in Bali,' Megan added. The couple revealed 'no one seemed to notice' they had become more than friends during that fateful holiday - and it took 'months' for anyone to find out. 'It started in June and it wasn't until October that people noticed! So it was quite a long time,' Tiffany revealed. She's the straight-talking legal eagle on The Real Housewives of Melbourne. But Gina Liano seemed a little taken aback by her own thoughts as she spoke about posing nude on magazine covers on Monday's The Morning Show. The 50-year-old, who appeared naked on the cover of Stellar magazine, admitted she'd never have done that in her 30s, because it would send the wrong message and look more sexualised. She instantly backtracked after realising she took an accidental swipe at fellow reality TV lawyer, Anna Heinrich, who recently posed nude for Women's Health. Scroll down for video Whoops: Gina Liano (pictured) said she'd never have posed naked for Stellar magazine in her 30s as it'd send the wrong message, but instantly backtracked after realising it may have sounded like a swipe at Anna Heinrich Quickly realising Anna, who appeared on the segment prior, is just-shy of turning 30, Gina quickly noted it's different when it comes to 'wellness magazines'. 'I wouldn't do this at the age of 30, which is about where [Anna] is and the reason that I say that is because I wouldn't have wanted it to be a sort of raunchy shot, and I think if you're around that age it could give off that [vibe],' Gina explained to co-hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies. However, the Melbourne beauty was very quick to add: 'NOT that that's happened in a wellness magazine... but at my age, I think it's more of a glamour shot and that was the basis of doing it'. Straight shooter! The straight-talking barrister almost seemed a little taken aback by her own thoughts as she spoke about posing nude on magazine covers on Monday's The Morning Show It's different: Quickly realising Anna, who appeared on the segment prior, is just-shy of turning 30, Gina quickly noted it's different when it comes to 'wellness magazines'. Gina appeared on the cover of Stellar's Sunday issue, in which she also admitted that while outside of her comfort zone, she hoped to inspire other women of her age. For the 50-year-old it seems this particular stage in her life has always had a special meaning for the barrister. 'I thought of who I wanted to be when I was 50,' she recalled of her 18-year-old self. Reality TV starlet: The 50-year-old is a firm fixture among the Real Housewives of Melbourne cast 'That seemed to be a number that kept coming up. What do you look like? What do you feel like? What are you wearing? That was my point of reference. At 50, where are you going to be? Who are you?' So it seemed a poignant time for the mother-of-two to strip down and reveal the naked truth about her life at this age. Meanwhile, The Bachelor's Anna Heinrich, posed as part of a series in the December issue of Women's Health magazine, aimed at empowering body confidence in young women. Baring all! Anna Heinrich opened up about her past body-image demons as she posed naked on the latest cover of Woman's Health magazine, to inspire confidence in others Some hesitations: The blonde beauty, who is also a criminal layer, told The Morning Show she had some reservations before posing for the shoot 'Every year that I get older I become more confident, I love myself more, I love my body more, and I just hope that everyone can kind of get to that stage,' Anna explained. However, the reality TV starlet who is also a criminal layer, told The Morning Show she had some reservations before posing for the shoot. 'Probably my only major concern was my legal career and no-matter what I do, I take that into consideration,' she told Larry and Kylie, also admitting she first spoke with family and friends before agreeing to pose naked. Women's Health magazine is on sale now. They began dating in February this year. And it appears Dave Billsborrow and Cortnee Spessot's romance has gone from strength to strength, with the couple now living together in their first home. 'First drinks in our first home. Cannot wait to have many more firsts with you...' Cortnee shared via Instagram along with a photo of the pair sitting on the floor of a semi-furnished room. Scroll down for video 'Our first home': Dave Billsborrow and his girlfriend Cortnee Spessot have taken their relationship to the next level after moving into their first home together Former Bachelorette contestant Dave, 31, appears to be holding a beer can in one hand while wrapping his arm around his girlfriend. Cortnee meanwhile, held a champagne flute in her hand as she snuggled up beside her beau. The genetically-blessed couple both cut relaxed figures, with Cortnee sporting a pair of Calvin Klein tights and a black jumper while Dave wore shorts and a black T-shirt. Congratulations: Cortnee's friends took to the comments section of her Instagram post to congratulate the pair on their 'grown up' milestone Going strong: Former Bachelorette contestant Dave gushed about his girlfriend, telling Daily Mail Australia things were 'going great' The couple were visibly overjoyed as they celebrated their milestone, later telling Daily Mail Australia that they were renting the unit. With most of the room still looking bare, the pair sat on the carpeted floor in front of a glass coffee table as they enjoyed the celebrations. 'We're really similar': The 31-year-old plumber credited the strength of their romance to similarities in their personalities They also had a makeshift sound system set up in the corner next to a lamp. Friends and followers alike took to the comments section to congratulate the couple, with one writing: 'So exciting!! Can't wait to see it! Xx' 'Yay!! Can't wait to come see it. So grown up,' another wrote. Close: Dave first rose to fame as a contender for Sam Frost's (right) heart in The Bachelorette in 2015 In August, the plumber told Daily Mail Australia his relationship with Cortnee was going strong. 'It's going great. She's a beautiful person and I'm really happy,' he gushed at Cruise Bar's party in Sydney. 'We're really similar,' Dave added, while Cortnee echoed his comment and revealed their relationship is 'really great.' Reality exes: Dave briefly dated Sam Frost's best friend and former Bachelor contestant Sarah-Mae Amey Dave and Cortnee started dating nine months ago, shortly after his split from former Bachelor contestant Sarah-Mae Amey. He dated the floral stylist for just four months after being introduced by mutual friend and former Bachelorette, Sam Frost. Sarah-Mae has also moved on from her reality TV beau, currently dating E-commerce manager Dan Small. Opinion / Columnist The so much hyped American election has come and gone. Who would have known that the people were so much dissatisfied with the American establishment? They voted for Donald Trump showing their contempt for the establishment. The raised middle finger was unambiguously clear for the whole world to see.One cannot disregard the people's concerns, take their lives for granted for over a very long time and expect the people not to react.This should have been the message the Zimbabwean opposition got from the American election. Unfortunately, our opposition and civic organisations are far more concerned about their funding which is threatened by a Trump presidency.We must rephrase this anti-establishment rhetoric to suit our local context and re-energise our support base. We can and we must win elections against the Zanu PF rigging machinery. It's not like we have never been there before, we beat them hands down in 2008.Zanu PF is vulnerable and it knows it. There is too much infighting and a glaring lack of cohesion within the party and its hierarchy. We must utilise this moment, 2018 is not far, elections are upon us and boycotting is not an option. We boycotted all the by-elections and neither did that stop the sun from rising nor did the AU or SADC lose any sleep over it.We must wake up and make hay whilst the sun shines. Zanu PF is already preparing for 2018 elections. It has realised the impact and implications of its fight with the war veterans, which is why it is now frantically trying to woo them back by splashing $20 million on new vehicles.Contrast this with the opposition which is still in disarray. It's less than two years before the next elections and the opposition does not have a plan. Instead of concentrating on making the coalition a reality which is supported by nearly everyone, some members within the opposition are throwing new ideas up for discussion. This proposed National Transitional Authority (NTA) has become nothing but a distraction to the opposition. I have no doubt whatsoever that Tendai Biti and his party have good intentions but we must not forget the road to hell is paved with good intentions.Since this idea is already in the public domain the sooner we can conclude this discussion the sooner we can start concentrating our energies on the creation of the coalition.What is NTA?For the Benefit of those who may not be aware of what this National Transitional Authority is I will recap just a few pointers so that we can be on the same page. Tendai Biti, his party and a few other intellectuals are saying that Zanu PF cannot be defeated through elections under the current conditions. They also think that the opposition is too weak to demand electoral reforms or to mount a credible challenge against Zanu PF 2018. Thus, in their view the only viable way to ensure free and fair elections in the future, is for all political players and civic actors to negotiate and create an authority that can manage the economy and the transitional period. The NTA is to be comprised of apolitical technocrats and guaranteed by AU and SADC.Why would Zanu PF Give Up and Accept this Transitional Authority?This whole proposal hinges on Zanu PF's willingness to give up power and capitulate to this new authority. Forgive my ignorance but I have tried and failed to understand what magic trick would be used to force Zanu to agree to this arrangement.I have asked leading and prominent members of PDP the very same question but no answers were forthcoming. How then do they expect ordinary citizens to buy into this idea when they cannot answer this primary question?AU and SADC are the Guarantors of this NTAExpecting the AU and SADC to play a significant role in this NTA is contrary to reason. I thought Tendai Biti at least learned something during the Global Political Agreement negotiations which were facilitated by AU.Let me put it bluntly, the AU and SADC are neither interested in democracy nor in regime change. Their philosophy is plain and simple 'they believe in the sovereignty of each individual state and in the case of conflict within the state they believe in peace at whatever cost'.As far as they are concerned, Mugabe won democratic and peaceful elections in 2013. The AU and SADC no longer have the will nor the desire to take on Mugabe on this issue. Mind you South Africa which is one of the most influential countries within both the AU and SADC is facing its own challenges. There is massive social unrest in South Africa and Zuma is battling for his own survival in the ANC.I so much doubt that the South Africa government would want to add anything on its plate at the moment.The legitimacy of the TNATendai Biti attempted to answer this question in some video that was posted online. In his view, this question was a non-issue, he said the NTA could be treated in the same way the Global Political Agreement (GPA) was treated in 2008.I find this response quite surprising coming from a democrat, how can the issue of legitimacy be a non-issue in any political discussion? Is he forgetting that the political parties that negotiated the GPA derived their legitimacy from the March 2008 elections which were deemed free and fair by everyone?So, if we are not going to have elections in 2018, where would those who are going to negotiate this NTA derive their mandate from? If the mandate is to be derived from the 2013 election, then Zanu PF has got almost all the political bargaining chips in its hand. In any case, this presents legitimacy issues since the parliament's term of office will be coming to an end.Mugabe will not be negotiated out of powerTo visualise Zimbabwe's present day dilemma we must borrow from Antonio Gramsci who said 'Our crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born'.We are all in agreement that Mugabe and Zanu PF are an impediment to Zimbabwe's progress and development yet we have never been able to force them out of power.Mugabe will not be negotiated out of power, he is so much preoccupied with a strong desire to die in power. He is not even prepared to hand over the reins to one of his lieutenants. When are, we going to wake up and smell the coffee?If the opposition is serious in its quest to remove Mugabe and Zanu PF from power, then it must come together without fail. They must sign a memorandum of understanding with one another and start organising protests, demanding clearly stated electoral reforms. A united opposition must go into Zanu PF stronghold campaigning mainly on Zanu PF corruption and exposing the lavish lifestyles they are living at the expense of the rural folk.Let no one be fooled, removing Mugabe and Zanu PF from power is not be a stroll in the park. But this is not a fight we can afford to shy away.----------Whitlaw Mugwiji is a political analyst for- a center for political analysis, commentary and investigative journalism She's a busy model, TV host, entrepreneur and mom of four. But Heidi Klum made time for the P.S Arts' 17th Annual Express Yourself fundraiser on Sunday at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. The 43-year-old model, who opted for minimal makeup, kept it casual in a leopard print button up with jeans and knee-high boots. For a good cause: Heidi Klum made time for the P.S Arts' 17th Annual Express Yourself event on Sunday at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica The former Victoria's Secret Angel showed off her svelte physique in distressed dark wash denim bottoms. Heidi added a chic black and gold belt as well as boots that grazed her calves. The mother of four tucked in a leopard printed collared shirt, adding a gold pendant necklace and tasseled handbag. She styled her tresses loose, choosing a center part and slight wave. Pretty lady: The 43-year-old model, who opted for minimal makeup, kept it casual in a leopard print button up with jeans Strike a pose: The former Victoria's Secret model showed off her svelte physique in distressed dark wash denim bottoms; seen with artist Shakuntala Zakheim The TV host, who wore just a touch of makeup, brought her four children with her to the annual fundraiser. Heidi has four kids: sons Henry, 11, and Johan, nine, and daughters Helene, 12, and Lou, seven. The America's Got Talent judge shared a snap of herself with her four children at the event. Also at the event was Ali Landry, who looked lovely in a striped jumpsuit with Converse sneakers. Having a good time: Henry, Helene, Johan, Heidi and Lou seen having a blast at the fundraiser Flawless: Also at the event was Ali Landry, who looked lovely in a striped jumpsuit with Converse sneakers The model, 43, brought her three children: Estela, nine, Marcelo, five, and Valentin, three to the event. Actor Adam Scott donned a cuffed blue button up with black jeans and sneakers for the afternoon fundraiser. Garcelle Beauvais looked pretty in a colorful blazer, adding a white T-shirt, cuffed jeans and velvet boots. She wore her dark tresses sleek and opted for kohl lined lids, rosy blush and nude glossed lips. The actress, 49, posed on the carpet with her nine-year-old twin sons Jaid and Jax. Family first: The model brought her three children: Estela, nine, Marcelo, five, and Valentin, three to the event; from l to r: Valentin, a friend, Estela, Ali and Marcelo Ready for some fun: Actor Adam Scott donned a cuffed blue button up with black jeans and sneakers for the afternoon fundraiser What a beauty: Garcelle Beauvais looked pretty in a colorful blazer, adding a white T-shirt, cuffed jeans and velvet boots Devoted mother to her boys: The actress, 49, posed on the carpet with her nine-year-old twin sons Jaid and Jax Beautiful family: She wore her dark tresses sleek and opted for kohl lined lids, rosy blush and nude glossed lips Rebecca Gayheart, 45, donned ripped jeans with a blouse and hat as she posed with daughters Billie, six, and Georgia, four. Switched At Birth actress Constance Marie, 51, posed with daughter Luna, seven, before heading inside. Model Tess Holliday arrived wearing a floral blouse with a black skirt and tan sandals. Actress Katie Leclerc, who also stars on Switched At Birth, wore a floral blouse with black jeans and a denim jacket. Smiles ear to ear: Rebecca Gayheart, 45, donned ripped jeans with a blouse and hat as she posed with daughters Billie, six, and Georgia, five Glowing: Switched At Birth actress Constance Marie posed with daughter Luna, seven, before heading inside Wow: Model Tess Holliday arrived wearing a floral blouse with a black skirt and tan sandals She triumphed on this year's Great British Bake Off. And while cookery books and further TV appearances are no doubt beckoning, Candice Brown has no plans to give up the day job just yet. The PE teacher has revealed to Hello! Magazine that her students were shocked when she returned to work after her win, with many assuming she was a millionaire after she wowed judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood with her baking skills. Looking glam! GBBO winner Candice Brown poses for a chic photoshoot alongside her boyfriend Liam Macaulay for Hello! Magazine Candice triumphed over rivals Andrew Smyth and Jane Beedle to win the final series of the baking show to air on the BBC before it moves to Channel 4. The baking enthusiast, 31, said the children have been teasing her about her win, telling Hello! magazine: 'When I went into school after the final was on TV the kids went: 'Why are you in, miss? You're a millionaire!' Not giving up the day job: The PE teacher has revealed that her students were shocked when she returned to work after her win, with many assuming she was a millionaire Candice also addressed rumours that she has got engaged to her boyfriend Liam Macaulay, telling the magazine: 'We'll get married one day but there's no rush.' 'We'll have kids too ... Family is very important to us both ... We want it all.' She added that Macaulay has kept her grounded during her whirlwind rise to fame, saying: 'Liam is my biggest support. He tells me every day that he's so proud of me.' Winner: Candice triumphed over rivals Andrew Smyth and Jane Beedle to win the final series of the baking show to air on the BBC before it moves to Channel 4 The final of this year's series has become the most-watched programme on television since 2012. A total of 15.9 million people saw Brown win the BBC cookery competition, new figures show. Read the full article in Hello! out now. He's been dashing around New York for the past few days promoting his major new movie Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. But on Sunday Eddie Redmayne was back on home soil, jetting into London's Heathrow in time for Monday's big UK premiere of the Harry Potter prequel. The actor looked a tad tired as he wheeled his overflowing luggage trolley through arrivals after his transatlantic flight. Magic man: Eddie Redmayne was back on home soil, jetting into London from NYC on Sunday in time for next week's UK premiere of his new film Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them Eddie, 34, dressed smartly for his flight, keeping warm against the chilly UK weather in a tweed jacket layered over a dark sweater. His trolley was piled high with bags, with the Oscar winner wheeling his own luggage to his onward transportation. It's been a hectic few days for the leading man, who hit the red carpet for the world premiere of his new movie on Thursday. Meanwhile, The Theory Of Everything star revealed one of the rehearsal tactics he employed to make sure he was delivering a convincing performance for the Harry Potter enthusiasts, earlier this week. He's got baggage: The actor looked a tad tired as he wheeled his overflowing luggage trolley through arrivals after his transatlantic flight Speaking to TimeOut on Wednesday, the star revealed that he spent a lot of time talking to himself whilst travelling on the London underground, pretending to speak to the magical characters that appear in the film. The actor elaborated on the fact that the creatures in the story were added during post-production. 'Sometimes wed have almost War Horse-style puppets for the rehearsal. But it varied, and sometimes it just involved having little Pickett the Bowtruckle, who is a stick insect, and he would be on my hand. Dapper: Eddie, 34, dressed smartly for his flight, keeping warm against the chilly UK weather in a tweed jacket layered over a dark sweater A little pick me up: The Oscar-winner looked to be in fine form as he stepped out in London the following day, despite being up at the crack of dawn Keeping it casual: Eddie rocked a causal autumnal look as he stepped out into the brisk pre-dawn air for an interview at BBC Radio 1 A pick me up: Clutching a coffee in his hand, the star looked to be wide awake and ready for action A man for his fans: Despite the cold and the early hour the actor's fans were out in force, though he was more than happy to reward them with a chat and some autographs On fine form: Eddie was still in great spirits at the end of his busy day promoting the film as he stopped by The One Show Sitting pretty: The leading man was joined on the sofa by his co-star Katherine Waterston Good to see you! Eddie enjoyed a close chat with The One Show host Alex Jones Super chic: Katherine looked fabulous as she headed out and about in London Leading man: Eddie stars as eccentric wizard Newt Scamander who is the future author of the textbook Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 'Id be on the tube in London, imagining talking to this thing, and suddenly realise Im being stared at. On taking on the role in the mega-franchise, the star of The Theory Of Everything earlier revealed that being offered the role without having to audition excelled the pressure he felt playing the part. 'With the thrill comes the paranoia that youre going to get fired after day one,' he explained. 'I was convinced I would lose the job. This is how neurotic actors work! But certainly fear is always there. Its what makes you work harder.' In town: Eddie's co-star Dan Fogler looked in good spirits as he made his way through Heathrow On Sunday, a host of actors from this year's independent films converged at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles for the Indie Contenders Roundtable at AFI FEST. Audi presented the festival and The Hollywood Reporter held the discussion, which included such celebrities as Chris Pine, Sally Field and Viggo Mortensen. Kate Beckinsale, who this year starred in the Jane Austen-based Love & Friendship, was a showstopper in a wintry yet LA chic outfit that stressed her slim figure. Belle of the ball: On Saturday, Kate Beckinsale was a showstopper among the celebrities at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles for the Indie Contenders Roundtable at AFI FEST Her tiny black tank top tightened at her impossibly flat midriff and had been tucked into trousers from Rebecca Vallance that draped over her precipitous legs. Its waistband cinched about her svelte waist, and white polka dots were spattered all over its sheeny black field. Streaked with what appeared to be highlights, the 43-year-old's wavy brown hair cascaded freely about her black butterfly sunglasses. Fellow indie star: The Love & Friendship leading lady (left) cosied up to Chris Pine (right) for the cameras Just pants: That day Beckinsale was spotted at the airport wearing the same Rebecca Vallance Mortimer Palazzo Pants Sloping neckline: The Star Trek Beyond actor appeared this year in an indie Western entitled Hell Or High Water At the afternoon reception held for the guests, she cosied up for photos with her FPine, who'd been in Hell Or High Water this year. The Star Trek Beyond star had allowed a grey-tinged beard to spread over his face, and had slicked his hair back for the day's festivities. A charcoal jumper with a wide, sloping neckline emphasised his toned figure, and his sleeves were rolled up almost to the elbow, baring his well-built forearms. Dynamic duo: The 36-year-old (right) also stood for photos with Rebecca Hall (left) Indie bona fides: The 34-year-old's starred this year in Christine Black form-fitting trousers rounded out his ensemble, clashing against the white trainers he'd pulled on. He also did a bit of posing with Rebecca Hall, who's starred in Christine this year and whose neckline fell far enough to bare a bit of her midriff. Diagonal pale blue stripes wound their way up and down the pink background of her dress, and she accessorised with a drop necklace. When you got it: Her neckline fell to reveal part of her enviably flat midriff Her stilettos were largely white, though their laces, which crossed each other over bare skin on each foot, were black. The 36-year-old Into The Woods actor also got around to standing for photos with Miles Teller, who burnished his independent bona fides this year in Bleed For This. For Sunday's event, he wore a deep green jacket that appeared to be made of velour and left it open over a white T-shirt. Hobnobbing: Hall (right) sat for a bit and had a chat with Sally Field (left) Trio: The Norma Rae star (right) was sat alongside Margo Martindale (left) and Ruth Negga (right) Like Pine, he'd pulled on a pair of tight black trousers, though he matched them by way of a pair of gleaming black boots. Hall did some mingling of her own, at one point settling down for a conversation with the Norma Rae star. The 70-year-old had slipped into a scarlet jumper with its sleeves slightly rolled up, adding a splash of glitz via a long gold pendant. Social butterfly: The Into The Woods actor (left) also took photos with Miles Teller (right) Keeping the sign company: This year, he's been in the indie film Bleed For This Field, who this year appeared in both My Name Is Doris and Hello, let her hair flow freely about her spectacles and had grown in a bit of a fringe. She'd cut rather a dapper figure on Sunday, selecting a pair of checked slacks patterned in three different shades of grey. On the bench with them were Margo Martindale, who this year was in the John Kraskinski-directed The Hollars, and Ruth Negga, star of Loving. That smouldering stare: Adam Driver was also among the celebrities on the panel New work: The Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens actor had appeared this year as a bus-driving poet in Paterson The 65-year-old had pulled on a colourful abstract-patterned blouse reminiscent of Doris Roberts, augmenting the look with a pair of charcoal slacks and black shoes. For her part, the 34-year-old bared her midriff from beneath a sequined crop top with white, blue and black stripes and a gold hem. Her pleated, baggy pair of navy trousers were cut high enough above her ankle to provide a full view of her chic black stilettos. Silver fox: Viggo Mortensen had left a couple of buttons of his white dress shirt open over his chest Golden hem: The Loving star bared her midriff from beneath a sequined crop top with blue, black and white stripes Meanwhile, Adam Driver's jumper was navy at the front and black at its back and its neckline. His hair he'd slicked back, and his goatee held its position on his face. Dark grey trousers stressed his toned legs. The man who this year appeared as a bus-driving poet in the film Paterson popped on a pair of worn-looking black dress shoes for Sunday's occasion. Ensemble: The ennead of performers all stood together for a group photo outdoors Seating arrangements: Inside, once the panel discussion got going, the Underworld star found herself sat next to the The Lord Of The Rings actor Mortensen, who'd led the cast of Captain Fantastic this year, left a couple buttons of his white dress shirt open over his chest. The 58-year-old buttoned up a dressy charcoal blazer over his top, which he'd teamed with slightly faded zaffre jeans and glinting Persian blue shoes. At the outdoor reception held by the Roosevelt, the ennead of performers all stood together for a group photo. Dapper: The Norma Rae star had donned a pair of checked slacks in three shades of grey Busy woman: This year, she's appeared in both My Name Is Doris and Hello She has a penchant for more daring and revealing outfits. And Margo Stilley was sure to maintain her trademark style on Sunday as she flashed plenty of skin at the 62nd Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The How To Lose Friends and Alienate People actress, 33, headed to the bash at the Old Vic Theatre in a semi-sheer lace midi dress, which racily revealed her bra and a pair of hotpants underneath. Scroll down for video Vampy: Margo Stilley, 33, headed to the 62nd Evening Standard Theatre Awards on Sunday in a semi-sheer lace midi dress Flash of skin: The raunchy dress left little to the imagination as it racily revealed her bra and a pair of hotpants underneath The dress was mostly demure upon first glance, falling softly to knee-length and featuring a soft frill at the top which covered her shoulders. However the look was made far sexier by its semi-sheer lace material - serving to reveal her much raunchier ensemble underneath. The actress sported a pair of black hot pants beneath the intricate fabric, which cinched in at her waist to flatter her petite figure and left almost all of her long legs on show. Sophisticated: The dress was mostly demure upon first glance, falling softly to knee-length and featuring a soft frill at the top which covered her shoulders All eyes on me: The actress sported a pair of black hot pants beneath the intricate fabric, which cinched in at her waist to flatter her petite figure While a large frill fell softly across her bust, the flimsy material meant her lacy pink brassiere was left in full display, upping the racy vibe further. The dress then wrapped around her frame with rigid black piping before skimming her figure softly to its ruched hem. Keeping the dress the main attraction, Margo kept her accessories simple by adding just a pair of patent pointed court shoes and a matching black choker. Think pink: While a large frill fell softly across her bust, the flimsy material meant her lacy pink brassiere was left in full display, upping the racy vibe further Accessories are key: Keeping the dress the main attraction, Margo kept her accessories simple by adding just a pair of patent pointed court shoes and a matching black choker Protecting herself from the chilly autumn weather, the American beauty layered a chic black coat on top, which was adorned with a glamorous feather stole. The Reverb star swept her hair back into a chic up do and adding a slick of red lipstick as an elegant finishing touch. The star is no stranger to revealing outfits - having arrived the Gabrielle's Angels Foundation UK Gala back in 2013 in a floor-length frock that flashed her derriere to the crowds. EVENING STANDARD THEATRE AWARDS 2016 - THE WINNERS Best Actor: Ralph Fiennes, The Master Builder (Old Vic) & Richard III (Almeida) Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress: Billie Piper, Yerma (Young Vic) Best Play: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, co-written by Jack Thorne, JK Rowling & John Tiffany (Palace) Best Musical Performance: Glenn Close, Sunset Boulevard (Coliseum) Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical: Jesus Christ Superstar, Regents Park Open Air Theatre Milton Shulman Award for Best Director: John Malkovich, Good Canary (Rose Kingston) Best Revival: No Man's Land, Wyndhams (dir Sean Mathias) Best Design: Gareth Fry with Pete Malkin (sound design), The Encounter (Complicite/Edinburgh International Festival/Barbican) Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright: Charlene James, Cuttin It (Young Vic/Royal Court) Emerging Talent Award: Tyrone Huntley, Jesus Christ Superstar (Regents Park Open Air Theatre) Beyond Theatre Award: Sir David Attenborough for his contribution to broadcasting Editor's Award: Good Chance Theatre Lebedev Award: Sir Kenneth Branagh for his Plays at the Garrick Advertisement Glamorous: The Reverb star swept her hair back into a chic up do and adding a slick of red lipstick as an elegant finishing touch Figure-hugging: The dress then wrapped around her frame with rigid black piping before skimming her figure softly to its ruched hem The brunette, who hails from Conway, South Carolina, is best known for her roles in How To Lose Friends and Alienate People and TV series The Trip, which also starred Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. She also famously starred in Michael Winterbottom's film Nine Songs in 2004 - which sparked controversy for its nude scenes and portrayal of sex. At the time, The Guardian branded it the most explicit film ever to be given a rating. However she has remained relatively quiet on the acting scene since then, having only partaken in short films since 2014. The evening at the awards marks the star's return to London - who moved to LA in 2013 after residing long-term in Mayfair. Hattie Morahan played Rose Coyne, pictured, in the drama of a 1943 boyhood memoir My Mother And Other Strangers (BBC1) Rating: The Next Great Magician (ITV) Rating: Roaring low over the meadows of rural Northern Ireland, a Boeing Flying Fortress darkened the skies at the opening of My Mother And Other Strangers (BBC1). Another thundered overhead, moments later, so low the local children could almost reach up and touch the wheels. Then another. In the village high street, nobody covered their ears. The earth didnt shake from the battering of the four gigantic propellors on each plane. In fact, the blades of grass in the meadows didnt even tremble. These werent actual World War II bombers, but computer-generated images, projected on to the scene like a digital slideshow. And they looked about as real as the trampolining foxes in the John Lewis ad. That proved to be the failure of this entire drama, a boyhood memoir set in 1943. None of it was quite believable. The situation was historically accurate: American airmen arrived at a base near the north-south border, and stirred tensions with the villagers many of them IRA sympathisers who regarded the British, not the Germans, as their enemy. But the story was as computer-generated as the aircraft. Hattie Morahan played Rose, who ran the local stores, while her husband Michael (Owen McDonnell) took care of the pub. ITV's The Next Great Magician was as if a giant trick had been played on the viewer Rose was English, an outsider, so naturally the Republicans, with their cloth caps, scrawny scarves and glowers, would gather around her shop counter to buy tobacco in a threatening manner. Even Michael treated her as if she didnt belong. Rose felt lonely and being lonely, went for windswept coastal walks. Where, inevitably, she met a handsome American airforce captain with sad eyes. Aaron Staton, best known for playing the ad exec with an eyepatch in Mad Men, was the captain. He made a dutiful appearance on BBC Breakfast last Friday, when every question seemed to surprise him. WEEKEND'S BAD TIMING: Dan Snow trekked to the northernmost peaks of the Rockies at the climax of Operation Gold Rush (BBC2). Trouble was, there were better mountains over on BBC1s Planet Earth II with snow leopards and grizzly bears. Sorry Dan, you peaked on the wrong day. Advertisement I thought that was just the actors Aw shucks persona, but hes exactly like that in the drama, too, so perhaps he was in character. While Aaron was being flummoxed by the Irish accents and everything else, the other airmen were wasting no time. They drank the pub dry, they taunted the menfolk over Eires neutrality, and fulfilled every Yanks-go-home cliche short of handing out nylons. Roses 16-year-old daughter was swept off her innocent feet, of course, to her parents disapproval. She is far too young to even consider a serious relationship, declared Rose, lapsing into the jargon of 21st-century therapists. Meanwhile, her adolescent son watched it all, silently and quite creepily, as boys planning to write their memoirs do. If you ever find an unspeaking 12-year-old gazing intently at you, beware hes storing you up to be a character in a second-rate costume drama. Silent, intense schoolboys often grow up to become conjurors, and there were half a dozen of them on The Next Great Magician (ITV) plus one ex-schoolgirl. Katherine Mills was easily the best of the acts, with a comic routine where she took an unsuspecting member of the public on a date that turned into an on-the-spot wedding. But the act crowned winners was a couple of Scottish stand-up comedians whose magic consisted of vomiting up liquids. It was not just unpleasant, it was unimpressive. Why they were chosen was not explained. There were no judges, and no public vote: the magicians picked a winner among themselves, in a backroom. Since they were discussing the secrets of magic, we were not privileged to eavesdrop. That left the whole show feeling like a trick had been played on viewers. And probably it had, since the overall winner will be granted an hour-long TV special ITV bosses are hardly likely to leave that to the whim of a bunch of illusionists. There were celebrities in the audience to add some pizzazz, though more care should have been taken to book people who actually like watching magic. She's a busy working mother, juggling raising her two-year-old daughter with her modeling and acting career. And on Sunday, Neighbours star Jodi Anasta, 31, squeezed in a quick workout at a Sydney park with daughter Aleeia watching on. For the outing, the single mother showcased her trim pins in tiny exercise shorts before her little girl joined in, enjoying a sweet run along together. Scroll down for video One hot mumma! On Sunday, Neighbours star Jodi Anasta squeezed in a quick workout at a Sydney park with daughter Aleeia watching on Showing off a golden tan, the brunette beauty teamed her shorts with a black tank top. Jodi - who shares Aleeia with her ex, former NRL star Braith Anasta - tied her long locks back off her face and into a pony tail. She appeared to be wearing minimal makeup and covered her eyes with chic cat eye sunglasses. Look at me, mummy! For the outing, the single mother showcased her trim pins in tiny exercise shorts before her little girl joined in, enjoying a sweet run along together Looking fit! Showing off a golden tan, Jodi teamed her shorts with a black tank top and runners Working up a sweat! She appeared to be wearing minimal makeup and covered her eyes with chic cat eye sunglasses Apple of their eye: Jodi shares Aleeia with her ex, former NRL star Braith Anasta Case of the ex: Jodi is seen her with ex-husband Braith Anasta Jodi dressed her mini-me daughter in black pants and a black T-shirt, with the pair running along the water's edge. The star appeared in high spirits as she played with Aleeia. They eventually sat by the water and relaxed, with Jodi pulling off her shoes and socks. At one point, the stunner was seen doing star jumps laughing as she worked on her figure. Matching! Jodi dressed her mini-me in black pants and a black T-shirt, with the pair running along the water's edge Getting into it! At one point, the stunner was seen doing star jumps laughing as she worked on her figure Time to relax: They eventually sat by the water and relaxed, with Jodi pulling off her shoes and socks Making exercise fun: The star appeared in high spirits on the day In April, it was revealed that former Home and Away star Jodi was returning to acting, having scored a gig on Channel 11's Neighbours. 'As an actor in Australia, I am thrilled to be working,' Jodi told The Daily Telegraph as she revealed her new role. 'The biggest hurdle for me right now is "will my brain fit all these scripts in and will I deliver?"' Jodi made her debut on the soap in July and is playing school teacher Elly Conway. Speaking about her character, she told the publication at the time: 'She is a little bit wild and has an unconventional way of teaching so all these great layers of naughtiness but with a heart of gold.' Doing well: In April, it was revealed that former Home and Away star Jodi was returning to acting, having scored a gig on Channel 11's Neighbours Back to it: 'As an actor in Australia, I am thrilled to be working,' Jodi told The Daily Telegraph as she revealed her new role On Ramsay street: Jodi made her debut on the soap in July and is playing school teacher Elly Conway Parental duties: In September, Braith told Yahoo7Be that he is the primary carer for Aleeia and takes care of her from Monday to Friday In September, Braith told Yahoo7Be that he is the primary carer for Aleeia and takes care of her from Monday to Friday. 'I have her every week, Monday to Friday, I'm a lucky dad and she's amazing, she's a beautiful girl who is growing up quick so I'm very, very lucky,' Braith told the publication. Jodi films Neighbours in Melbourne while Braith is based in Sydney. The ex NRL player said that there is absolutely no animosity between he and his ex-wife and they remain friends. The juggling act: Jodi films Neighbours in Melbourne while Braith is based in Sydney On good terms: The ex NRL player said that there is absolutely no animosity between he and his ex-wife and they remain friends Kicking back: Jodi removed her shoes and socks as she basked in the sunshine with Aleeia Something's funny! The pair both laughed as they sat near some adorable pet pooches 'The amazing part is Jodi and I are 50/50 split down the line, there is no animosity there, we get along really well and Aleeia sees that and sees that we are still friends,' Braith said. 'It's a good relationship and it's a happy one,' he said. Last month, Braith told Daily Mail Australia he was spending Father's Day with his tiny tot and spoke about how she is growing up in the public eye. He said he'd give her some advice and will always be there to support her. Friendly: Braith described his and Jodi's relationship as 'a happy one' Opening up: Last month, Braith told Daily Mail Australia he was spending Father's Day with his tiny tot and spoke about how she is growing up in the public eye Sweet: He said he'd give her some advice and will always be there to support her Hard working: Jodi used to star on Home and Away Going seperate ways: Braith and Jodi announced their split in December 'I'll be really positive and supportive for her and tell her block it out, not worry about it,' he said. 'I'll be proud of her no matter what, you've just go to reassure that. It's not all about being successful, it's about being happy.' Braith and Jodi announced their split in December last year, after tying the knot in October 2012. The pair said at the time they were going to co-parent their little girl. Moving forward: The pair first tied the knot in October 2012 Their focus: The pair said at the time they were going to co-parent their little girl She's best known for her role as Sue Ellen Ewing in iconic '80s series Dallas. But 30 years on, Linda Gray, 76, has returned to TV screens, this time on Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. In images released of her first scenes playing Tabby Maxwell-Brown, Linda is seen receiving a phone call in her plush Los Angeles home - the call which will bring her to Chester. Icon: Dallas star Linda Gray, 76, has returned to TV screens, this time on Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks, in scenes to be aired on Monday on E4 She will first appear in the soap on Monday's episode when Tabby's daughter Marnie Nightingale, played by Lysette Anthony, calls her at her home across the pond. Marnie found herself in financial trouble after investing in a property development scam and the only person who can bail her out is mother, Tabby. However, when Marnie's son, James invites Tabby over to the UK, Marnie pales knowing Tabby will not approve of her getting back with ex-husband, Mac Nightingale. Hollywood: In images released of her first scenes playing Tabby Maxwell-Brown, Linda is seen receiving a phone call in her plush Los Angeles home - the call which will bring her to Chester We are family: She will first appear in the soap on Monday's episode when Tabby's daughter Marnie Nightingale, played by Lysette Anthony, calls her at her home across the pond In scenes during Hollyoaks' E4 episode at 7pm on Monday, Marnie bites the bullet and calls Tabby to break the news that her and Mac are back together. But how will Tabby react? Talking about her Hollyoaks role, Linda said, 'I'm thrilled to be going from one iconic series to another. Hollyoaks viewers are going to love it when Tabby whips up a storm just like Sue Ellen did.' Hollyoaks executive producer, Bryan Kirkwood said: 'When we came to discuss who could possibly play Marnie's mother the list was very small. Lysette Anthony has fast become a fabulous soap b***h so having Linda Gray play her mother, Tabitha is the perfect fit.' In trouble: Marnie found herself in financial trouble after investing in a property development scam and the only person who can bail her out is mother, Tabby Reunited: Linda looks glam as her character meets up with family, including granddaughter Ellie Nightingale, played by Sophie Porley The actress, 76, is best known for her role as Sue Ellen Ewing, the wife of Larry Hagman's infamous character JR Ewing in the 1980s series. She is also a former United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and starred as Mrs. Robinson in the Broadway and West End productions of The Graduate in 2001. Her legs were famously used in the original movie poster for The Graduate, starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. Linda will first appear on E4, Monday 14th November and Ch4, Tuesday 15th November. TV icon: Talking about her Hollyoaks role, Linda said, 'I'm thrilled to be going from one iconic series to another On Saturday night, Nikki Reed was among the hostesses of the 4th Annual Recognising Heroes Awards Dinner and Gala thrown by Unlikely Heroes. Naturally, her dashing husband Ian Somerhalder was her special guest at The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas. The couple glowed on the red carpet, the 28-year-old dazzling in a pleated floral Tadashi Shoji gown, complete with a zigzagging hem. Dynamic duo: Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder glowed on the red carpet of the 4th Annual Recognising Heroes Awards Dinner and Gala thrown by Unlikely Heroes Sections of black lace encircled her neckline, which fell off her shoulder, as well as her waist and her elbows. She'd let her wavy brown hair fall free, and completed her ensemble with a pair of stylish black stilettos. Meanwhile, her husband of one year cut a dashing figure in a white dress shirt he'd unbuttoned a bit over his chest. His pale grey blazer had a rather grainy pattern, as well as dark grey stripes running down it, and he'd buttoned it up despite pairing it casually with dark jeans. Woman of the hour: The 28-year-old, who wore a black chiffon gown by Tadashi Shoji, was one of the hostesses held at The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas Top brass: The former Mrs Paul McDonald (left) also stood for the cameras with Unlikely Heroes' founder Erica Greve Worn pine green shoes did the trick for him as far as footwear, and he put an arm about his wife for photos once they found themselves sat at a table inside. Back at the red carpet, the former Mrs Paul McDonald also did a bit of posing with Unlikely Heroes' founder Erica Greve, who matched a black cleavage-baring gown with a black clutch. In a rather star-studded group photo indeed, Mr and Mrs Somerhalder, as well as Greve, stood alongside hostesses Savannah Chrisley and Anjela Johnson. A besuited Kenyon Coleman and his wife Katie Coleman, who served as Event Chairs, also joined in on the picture. Septet: (from left) Event Chairs Kenyon Coleman and Katie Coleman stood alongside hostess Savannah Chrisley, special guest Somerhalder, Reed, Greve and hostess Anjelah Johnson He is a living legend in the movie world. So it was only natural that Jackie Chan be recognised by some of the most famous action men of all time. The 62-year-old actor was the recipient of an honourary Oscar Award at the 8th Annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Game recognise game: Jackie Chan accepted an honourary Oscar Award from Sylvester Stallone at the 8th Annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday night It was a momentous event at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center as he was given the shiny gold trophy by fellow iconic action man Sylvester Stallone. The 70-year-old actor known for his role in the Rocky franchise even raised Jackie's arm and pointed to him as a sign of respect. The Rumble In The Bronx star definitely gave his all in his performances as he said during his acceptance speech: 'After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films -- I broke so many bones -- finally this is mine!' Happy night: The 62-year-old actor finally received Hollywood's biggest prize at the event at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center Ecstatic: Jackie said: 'After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films -- I broke so many bones -- finally this is mine!' Pals: Jackie and the 70-year-old actor hammed it up backstage after the presentation Champs: After the event Sly took to his Instagram to post this photo with the caption: 'The great Jackie Chan. One of a kind. Hopefully we will be working together real soon! We still very much love what we do even if it still does HURT!' He also roused the audience with an anecdote about realizing how badly he wanted an Academy Award after going to Stallone's house 23 years earlier and touching, kissing and smelling the American actor's Oscar statuette. After the event Sly took to his Instagram to share a photo of he and Jackie from the event as he even hinted a possible project together. The Rambo actor wrote: 'The great Jackie Chan. One of a kind. Hopefully we will be working together real soon! We still very much love what we do even if it still does HURT!' Touching: Arnold Schwarzenegger also took to the picture-sharing sight to post this throwback photo from their 2004 flick Around The World in 180 Days Dapper: The 69-year-old actor was at the event in a black suit with a white dress shirt and blue tie Seal of approval: Tom Hanks also gushed about the native of Hong Kong as he told AFP at the event: 'Jackie Chan has the wisdom of the East and the discipline of a master martial artist.' They were not the only action movie royalty in attendance as Arnold Schwarzenegger also shared the table with them during the event. The 69-year-old former Governor of California also took to the picture-sharing social media to post a throwback image on set of 2004 flick Around the World in 80 Days. He wrote: 'Congratulations to my great friend Jackie Chan on his fantastic honor - after 200 movies, you certainly deserve this Oscar. You always inspire.' Jackie's Rush Hour co-star Chris Tucker was also on stage as he recognised the veteran actor for his contributions to the film industry. Dynamic duo:Jackie's Rush Hour co-star Chris Tucker was also on stage as he recognised the veteran actor for his contributions to the film industry Bonding: The two had a grand time on stage together Working relationship: The 45-year-old actor was more than happy to be there for his pal Tom Hanks also gushed about the native of Hong Kong as he told AFP at the event: 'Jackie Chan has the wisdom of the East and the discipline of a master martial artist.' Chan, known for his comic timing and acrobatic fighting style, has appeared in around 200 movies since becoming a child actor in his native Hong Kong in the 1960s. He broke out to American audiences with 1996's Rumble In The Bronx and has made his name with films including Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, Kung Fu Panda, The Karate Kid and the Rush Hour franchise. Showing his style: Jackie looked handsome in all black Opinion / Columnist Are we truly equal to exercise the democratic right to vote and in determining government policy?The answer to that is clearly that we are not. It is judicious in the Zimbabwean context to opine that the taxpayer and the youth should ideally be at the forefront of determining government policy. Their voice must be heard through decisive and active participation in the country's democratic processes through voting.The reason is predicated on the fact that, the burden of financing a government rests solely on the shoulders of the taxpayer. The government debts are on the shoulders of the youth. The youth and the taxpayer must truly vote to ensure that they have a government they desire. Subsequent to voting they must direct that the fruits of their labour, present and future, be used for the economic and social health aspirations they resonate with.The fundamental flaw and evil of the "one man one vote" model is the fact that the taxpayer is forced to pay for ideals diametrically opposed to their own. This is true in Zimbabwe as it is without doubt that the non-tax payers or those who are beneficiaries of the taxpayers sweat (often called government largesse) have their ideals driving government policy.It is politically expedient and morally reasonable to afford each and every eligible citizen the right to vote yet the defect of the same is the trap of people voting themselves benefits at the expense of others. Frederic Bastiat said, live "the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else."A man should have a right to the fruits of his labour. It is viciously wrong to take the money of rational economic men to support ideals they are absolutely opposed to, such an intrusion by force which is a violation of individuals' rights. Yet the Zimbabwean youths,taxpayers,self-employed and employers have abdicated their role to stop thieves,corrupt,incompetent, and semi illiterate politicians lording over the society .It is the voters with rights and but no attendant obligations that direct government policy. Apathy is winning the political contest. The apathetic eligible voters are supported in this unfairness by those who vote for benefits and rights devoid of expenses and obligations.The political parties must drive a disruptive message that when it's said the "government" has assumed a US$1.3 billion RBZ debt it's a euphemism that they have encumbered the youth with a debt to be supported by future tax payments. The same applies to the IMF, AfDB, IMF, AFREXIM bank debts and domestic borrowings by the government. Soon they will make the youth assume debts for US$200million bond notes, Tel-One, Air Zimbabwe, NRZ and many other parastatals. The same applies to the cost of corruption.The youth have no one to blame but themselves for failing to make an electoral impact by voting for government whose policies they ascribe to. The youth and taxpayer unfortunately sit on terraces doing key board analysis and social media activism. They don't do that in UMP, instead they vote in numbers.Treatment of every post-election through useless protests by cry bullies is just plainly an emotional breakdown, freak-out and crippling feeling of failing to cope with an electoral defeat self-inflicted by apathy. Even if protesting cry bullies burn tyres, break windows, stop traffic in Robert Mugabe way, get international attention and cause some level of sanctions, we all know that it achieves nothing .We all have to agree that apathy won the elections. Despite the anger Robert Mugabe is our president and ZANU PF presides over our country.The assemblage of inconsequential social media activists and protestors is an act of simply writhing in feigned agony akin to demanding pudding before dinner. Activist including but not limited to NERA, #this flag, #ourconstitution and many others should be reminded that by 2018 they must serve a starter to their constituency. The starter is that of ensuring a level playing field by deploying a message that drive people register as voters.The politicians and their activists' appendages must additionally craft a good and irresistible message to drive people to actually exercise their vote.Its these actions that are the first stages in levelling the playing field before dinner is served. Making people claim their cote is a good starter.Hashtag movements are led by people who are not serious and rational but rather by people who are simply happy to be unhappy. The movements should rather expend intellect and energy in deploying a message to fight apathy. Just to put this into context out of over the three million potential voters in Bulawayo and Harare just over a one million are registered voters.In a society where people are presumed equal the refusal to exercise a vote is an action in complicity to give a voice to those who choose to vote. If an illiterate or corrupt politician becomes your MP, a million hashtag will change nothing. The MP will simply lord over you despite your level of literacy or morals.Our current system of seems not to be effective. It would be ridiculous to allow the ignorant be able to limit how smart you are, the weak to place shackles on your arms to limit your strength, the short to legally force you to stoop or the unattractive to require the attractive to wear hoods over their faces. We would dismiss this out of hand as absurdity and yet we allow those who pay no taxes to have a greater voting voice, as well as those who have little understanding of political, economic, foreign policy or financial issues to lord over the direction of our countryIt's telling that the employer and the employee continue to invest in "democracy at the workplace" with monthly contributions to employee unions and employer confederations. The employer and the employee have little or no interest in sponsoring national democratic processes only until there is no industry to employ and industry to be employed.It is critical that the employer and the employee being stakeholders of the national discourse should use the same model to allow cause voluntary monthly contributions to political parties that speak to employee or employer aspirations.Strength of political parties just like workers unions is determined by their financial back bones. As it is, most of political parties speaking to taxpayer and youth aspirations are broke whilst there is an obsession with democracy at the work place.After voting the government does not reciprocate by treating the voters as equals, choosing instead to tax some more than others (some not at all), to provide different levels of aid and to apply laws and regulations differently. Government morphs from the protector of an environment where equal opportunity exists to the arbiter of "equality." It is legally sanctioned inequality in pursuit of equality. It's great to vote to direct government policy and then hold the parties to their electoral manifestos.The knowledge that SI 64 of 2006 was just an instrument to thank employers who "lobbied" the government and sponsored a certain political dispensation is a sure way to inform industry, taxpayers and the youth that it's never a level playing field unless you level the field by sponsoring your ideals and participating in the voting process and sponsoring your parties.The challenge that we seem to have is that political parties so far seem impotent and incompetent to coin new and disruptive messages against voter apathy. The youth and the taxpayer should be the centre of this new message.In 2013 I didn't hit the streets in protest as I accepted the will of the electorate and I sucked it up. It sucks to lose. Impotent rage has little results whilst all we all do is being key board analyst and social media activists. The majority of us simply do not vote for the change we wantIt is just my view and as with all views, it comes with both upside and downside aspectsBrian Sedze is the Chairman of Africa Innovation Hub and President of Free Enterprise Initiative. He can be contacted on brian.sedze@gmail.com She announced she was expecting a second child via a surrogate in July. And Sally Obermeder celebrated on Sunday with a baby shower. The Daily Edition host, 43, invited her close friends and media 'besties' for the stylish event held at Darling Point. Scroll down for video 'My heart is full of love': Daily Edition co-host Sally Obermeder celebrates baby shower with media 'besties' on Sunday in Darling Point after announcing she was expecting via surrogate following being cleared of breast cancer in 2012 Stylish Seven ladies! Sally invited her close friends and media 'besties' for the stylish event, including Samantha Armytage She documented the 'amazing afternoon' by uploading more than 20 images and videos to Instagram. In the snaps there were chopsticks with heart-shaped labels laid out for each guest to enjoy the Asian dining experience. Sally captioned one of the images, in part: 'My heart is full of love and my belly is full of yum cha. If that's not the most perfect day I don't know what is.' 'The most perfect day': Sally captioned one of her images, in part: 'My heart is full of love and my belly is full of yum cha' Personal touch: In the snaps there were chopsticks with heart-shaped labels laid out for each guest to enjoy the Asian dining experience Bloomin' beautiful! The table was decorated with a crisp-white theme and a beautiful floral centerpiece provided by Seven presenter Kylie Gillies The table was decorated with a crisp-white theme and a beautiful floral centerpiece provided by Seven presenter Kylie Gillies. Referring to her belly again in the post, she added: 'Baby Obermeder might not be in my belly but he/she is absolutely in our heart.' Sally is expecting her surrogate child in the coming weeks and has openly spoken about the process. Guests of honour: She highlighted some of her guests in an Instagram image slideshow, claiming they were her 'besties' joining in on the celebration of 'Baby O' Media gal pals: Among her media pals was Channel Seven journalists Samantha Armytage and Adene Cassidy, as well as Channel Seven producers In a large slideshow of images, the TV personality showcased the majority of the guests in attendance. Among her media pals was Channel Seven's Samantha Armytage and Adene Cassidy, as well as Channel Seven producers. She captioned the Instagram 'Flipagram' production that highlighted her Sunday: 'Most amazing afternoon with besties celebrating the impending arrival of Baby O.' It's a surprise! The mother is still referring to her soon-to-be child as 'Baby O' to avoid revealing its gender to friends, fans and family 'Some thought the colour was a hint': Sally said her light-blue and purple frock made guests think she might be expecting a particulate gender While the mother is still referring to her soon-to-be child as 'Baby O' to avoid revealing the gender, she claims guests saw her outfit as a potential clue. She wore a semi-sheer dropped hemline dress with bell sleeves that rustled in the breeze as she twirled. In a video where she is seen twirling in the light blue design, she said: 'Thank you @leemathewsau for this most perfect dress for the baby shower....loved it ... some thought the colour was a hint. Hmmmmm.' Cute announcement! Sallys four-year-old daughter Annabelle helped announce with the announcement that they'd be expecting another child by holding up a sign that read 'I'm going to be a big sister' The media personality, who was cleared of breast cancer in 2012, announce she would be expecting a second child in July, with a sweet family photo on Instagram. Sallys four-year-old daughter Annabelle could be seen holding up a sign, confirming the new addition to the family. The sign read: 'I'm going to be a big sister.' Trying for a sibling: Sally has previously spoken out about her struggles with trying to conceive a sibling for her daughter The brunette beauty added in the post that she was thrilled to be welcoming her second child after previously speaking about her past struggles to conceive a sibling for her daughter. Marcus and Sally wed in 2001 and the day before Sally gave birth to Annabelle in 2011, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After eight months of chemotherapy, she was given the all clear. She's the Sunrise presenter who is known for her mostly conservative style. But Samantha Armytage shook things up on Sunday and put on a leggy display as she stepped out in Darling Point for a friend's baby shower. Her very little black dress gave onlookers a glimpse of the presenter's bronzed pins, suggesting she's been making the most of the warm Sydney weather. Scroll down for video Leggy display: Sunrise presenter Samantha Armytage flaunted her bronzed legs as she stepped out for a friend's baby shower in Darling Point on Sunday The 40-year-old teamed her thigh skimming black dress with a pair of black strappy flats, adding to her relaxed look. She added a touch of glamour by accessorising with thick silver and gold bangles, large gold hoop earrings and a pair of rounded aviators. To add a splash of colour, the media personality painted her nails with a bright red polish. Relaxed weekend: Sam paired the little black dress with a pair of strappy black flats to complete her summery look Accessories: She added a touch of glamour by accessorising with thick silver and gold bangles, large gold hoop earrings and a pair of rounded aviators Sam pulled her blonde tresses back off her face and secured them in a high ponytail. It appeared things were looking up for the breakfast television star, who appeared happy as she leaned over a balcony. Using one hand to hold a glass of champagne, Sam held the other on her hip as she peered off the ledge with a curious look on her face. What's going on down there? With a glass of champagne in one hand and the other hand on her hip, Sam stood on a balcony looking bemused at what was going on below The baby shower was for fellow Channel Seven presenter Sally Obermeder. The 43-year-old was diganosed with stage three breast cancer just a day before giving birth to her first child, Annabelle Grace, in 2011, reported the Daily Telegraph. Now clear of the disease, Sally wanted to extend her family. She will be having her second child by surrogate, as doctors told her it was 'far too dangerous' for the television personality to conceive on her own, according to News.com.au. Guy Sebastian has revealed that none of The X Factor Australia judges get along. The 35-year-old made the admission on The Morning Show, after he said recently that he has beef with co-star and rapper Iggy Azalea. Guy was quizzed by The Morning Show's co-host Larry Emdur if all the judges are getting along, with Guy saying: 'Not really, no, especially after last night.' Scroll down for video Awkward! Guy Sebastian has revealed on The Morning Show on Monday, that none of The X Factor Australia judges get along Guy's short and sweet response made Larry's co-star Kylie Gillies burst out laughing as Guy chuckled. He added during the chat that on Sunday's episode, he 'cracked it a little' because he gets annoyed when the other judges tell their acts to not listen to criticism. 'Every time you give them a bit of constructive criticism, the other judges take it personally,' Guy said. The line-up: Seen (from L to R) are judges Iggy Azalea, Adam Lambert, Guy, Mel B and host Jason Dundas 'They always go, "don't listen to that," but I think that's the worst message to give to kids...You've got to listen to the criticism,' he said. On Sunday, Guy and Iggy appeared to have a little tiff when Iggy - who has no remaining acts - joked that Guy Sebastian should have been nicer to her throughout the show as she now has the swing vote. 'Iggy, all your acts are gone on the show. You know are in a very powerful position, you are the unbiased judged,' said host Jason Dundas. 'Guy should have sucked up to me a little bit harder,' Iggy responded quickly. Being honest: Guy was quizzed by The Morning Show's co-host Larry Emdur if all the judges are getting along, with Guy saying: 'Not really, no, especially after last night' Guy who didn't seem unimpressed by this, added: 'Revenge? Is that what it is?'. The father of two took another swipe at Iggy when Jason asked her if she was 'excited' about her new role on the panel. Guy, who mentioned that he let Iggy have 'a mouthful' for sending Chynna home, said: 'I think the title is "The loser", the first "loser" of X Factor.' 'You will be the second loser. I will make sure that he is on the loser team,' she quipped. The claws were out! On Sunday, Guy and Iggy appeared to have a little tiff Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Guy questioned the blonde haired rapper's interest in the show, saying her behaviour says otherwise. 'I think it reflects poorly on the show when it seems someone is not invested in it. That's as narky as I'm going to get,' he said last week. He's also previously told the publication they are just complete opposites. 'We're just not similar people at all and I definitely have to bite my tongue,' he said. Not holding back: Speaking to The Daily Telegraph , Guy questioned the blonde haired rapper's interest in the show, saying her behaviour says otherwise Meanwhile, judge Adam Lambert told Nova 96.9's Fitzy & Wippa that Iggy is a 'little crazy'. 'She's just a tough nut to crack... and she is a nut! She's a little crazy,' he said. Former Spice Girl Mel B, she downplayed rumours of a feud between her and Iggy to Who Magazine. 'I come from a group that preached girl power. It isn't fair to presume we're not going to get along just because we're both women,' the Mel said. She added: 'People want to pit us against each other... but I've met Iggy before and she's lovely. I think we're going to have fun.' She attended an Unlikely Heroes event in Dallas just one day earlier with husband Ian Somerhalder. And Nikki Reed somehow found a way to stun twice on a weekend in completely different cities. The 28-year-old looked gorgeous as she attended American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) SoCal's 2016 Bill of Rights Dinner in Beverly Hills on Sunday night. Scroll down for video Stunning: Nikki Reed looked gorgeous as she attended American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) SoCal's 2016 Bill of Rights Dinner in Beverly Hills on Sunday night She rocked a racy off-the-shoulder number at the event held at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in the ritzy Los Angeles neighbourhood. The Twilight actress sported the white top featuring a large grid design along with flowy black trousers. She teamed the look with a pair of strappy black leather heels while holding on to a matching clutch. Pretty: The 28-year-old actress rocked a racy off-the-shoulder number at the event held at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in the ritzy Los Angeles neighbourhood Nikki accessorised with multiple rings on her fingers along with stud earrings. Her straight, medium length brunette tresses were worn down flowing over her shoulders as her natural, complimentary make-up was topped off with a swipe of bright red lip. She was not the only star at the event as she was joined by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Dapper: Joseph Gordon-Levitt looked good in a dark grey suit Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! Brady Bunch actress Maureen McCormick was also at the event in a black top with a shiny metallic silver midi skirt Evergreen: The 60-year-old actress looked fantastic at the event The 35-year-old actor looked dapper in a charcoal grey shirt with a brown checked design. He finished off the look with a crisp white dress shirt, brown tie and matching leather dress shoes. Brady Bunch actress Maureen McCormick was also at the event in a black top with a shiny metallic silver midi skirt. The ACLU Bill Of Rights Dinner is an annual event where the organisation comes together to celebrate its victories, honour its leaders and inspire the community. Rebecca Gayheart is a busy mom to two little girls. But the 45-year-old still made time to support the P.S Arts' 17th Annual Express Yourself fundraiser on Sunday at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. The Jawbreaker star donned a wide-brimmed hat and cheeky tee that read, 'You had me at bonjour,' to the children's charity. Scroll down for video Showing support! Rebecca Gayheart attended the P.S Arts' 17th Annual Express Yourself fundraiser on Sunday at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum attended the star-studded event with her daughter Billie, six, in tow and a friend. She teamed the black shirt with light was distressed cropped skinny jeans that bared holes in each knee. The ripped denims flashed a glimpse of her lean, slender limbs beneath. 'Hello' hot mama! The 45-year-old actress donned a wide-brimmed hat and cheeky tee that read, 'You had me at bonjour,' to the children's charity Leggy blonde! The Beverly Hills 90210 alum slipped into distressed skinny jeans which encased her slender stems Rebecca skipped the cosmetics and allowed her youthful appearance and natural beauty to shine through. A small leather designer handbag with black and white Adidas sneakers rounded out her casual chic ensemble. Little Billie looked precious as she held her mum's hand while they took to the red carpet. She wore a white sundress with thin black stripes, light-up gold sneakers from POP Shoes and her blonde hair in relaxed curls. Girls' day out! The Jawbreaker actress attended the star-studded event with her daughter Billie, six, in tow and a friend Rebecca and her husband of 12 years, Eric Dane, 44, share Billie and four-year-old Georgia together. Also in attendance at the benefit was Heidi Klum, Ali Landry, Garcelle Beauvais, plus-sized model Tess Holliday and Switched At Birth actresses Constance Marie and Katie Leclerc. The afternoon gave adults and children an opportunity sample signature bites from Los Angeles best restaurants and caterers. According to their site, the event 'ensures that P.S. Arts will continue to thrive in a community that encourages creativity and the opportunity for all children, regardless of background, to express themselves.' Playboy model Ashley Kirk denied ever dating Geoffrey Edelsten, but now even more texts between her and the disgraced Australian millionaire have emerged to prove it. The messages show the 26-year-old begging for help with her bills as she sends the wealthy doctor her 'press kit' because she needs 'to make millions'. Geoffrey has confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the messages are authentic, and has expressed his disappointment in the whole situation, which saw the woman deny they were ever together. Scroll down for video Drama: New text messages between Geoffrey Edelsten and Ashley Kirt show the 26-year-old begging him to send her money to pay for her bills 'She just told lies,' he explained on Monday. 'I don't have anything to do with her anymore, I don't respect her, and that's it.' In one bizarre message, Ashley claimed 'everyone says I look like Margot Robbie' and that she was almost cast in the Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort himself because of it. The new series of texts, which include messages from Ashley requesting he cover her phone bill because 'it's very expensive every time u call me (sic) ', also feature a number of risque photographs of the busty blonde. Upset: Geoffrey confirmed that the messages are authentic, and has expressed his disappointment in the whole situation, which saw the woman deny they were ever together Out there: The texts include messages from Ashley requesting he cover her phone bill because 'it's very expensive every time u call me (sic) ', as well as a number of risque photographs One of the sexy pictures sent to Geoffrey included Ashley stretching out across her white sheeted bed, dressing in nothing but a pair of white fish-net stockings. Another was a topless mirror selfie of the busty model, who covered her ample assets in the picture by wrapping her arm around her chest region. At one stage in early October, Ashley's requests for money were denied, and she immediately threatened to leave her older boyfriend. 'Babe I'm really in debt w credit from with hospital bills can u help me please (sic),' she wrote. Busty: One of the sexy pictures sent to Geoffrey included Ashley posing topless in a mirror selfie but she covered her ample assets by wrapping her arm around her chest region Cash: At one stage in early October, Ashley's requested Geoffrey to send her $5000 to cover her hospital debt, despite him sending her $2500 days earlier for 'urgent matters' Geoffrey responded saying he would try to help out, and asked for a minimum amount he could send her. The model immediately requested $5,000 because her power had been shut off, but when her boyfriend responded that it's too much money and offers to send a smaller amount, she reacts poorly. 'What can u [sic] do? I have tried to stay with you and have been loyal,' she stated. After much convincing, Geoffrey caved and sent his partner $2,500 to cover 'urgent matters'. Needy: She regularly told the businessman her phone had been maxed out because of the hefty bills, leaving him offering to pay her bills Beauty sleep: In the set of messages, Ashley professed her love, after what appears to have been an unsolicited five am phone call: 'Sorry I just love u so much (sic)' 'I sent you today $2500 for urgent matters and I'm saving Iasik...Where will we meet when I'm there next week,' he messaged her. She quickly replied: 'Thank u so much babe u have no idea what that means to me (sic).' In the latest set of messages, much like the last, Ashley is not afraid to profess her love. In one set, after what appears to have been an unsolicited five am phone call, she apologises for waking him up with a text saying: 'Sorry I just love u so much (sic)'. Gushing: At a later date, she admitted to Geoffrey that 'I love u now. More (sic)' Improvement: Throughout the range of back and forth messages between the pair, Geoffrey gloated to the busty beauty about transforming her life into something 'fantastic' 'What can u do? I have tried to stay with you and have been loyal (sic),' she continued. Throughout the range of back and forth messages between the pair, Geoffrey gloated to the busty beauty about transforming her life into something 'fantastic'. She explained to the former doctor she wants to be a 'successful business woman,' he replied: 'I believe you will be a fantastic success'. 'I love you Ashley and I want to do all I can for you and be part of your life,' he continued to gush. Goals: She explained to the former doctor she wants to be a 'successful business woman,' he replied: 'I believe you will be a fantastic success' Meet up: Geoffrey also took the opportunity to gloat about his 'own career', describing himself as an 'experienced doctor, lawyer and celebrity to star' In more embarrassing text messages that were leaked late last week, the pair's relationship seemed to be one in which she hoped to make a million dollars from a TV appearance with the doctor. 'I want to make lots of money,' Ashley, 26, said in one text, which Geoffrey, 73, later confirmed to Daily Mail Australia are authentic. 'So I never have to be poor ever again.' Later in the text thread, the pair discussed an interview with A Current Affair, for which Ashley seemed disappointed to find that she would not be getting 'a million' for it. 'Any idea what they would offer... Hopefully it's a lot,' she asked Geoffrey. Helping hand: Geoffrey also attempted to help the beauty gain a working permit in Australia so she could relocate to Melbourne to be with him 'I wish it will be much more modest as a 20 minute segment of show,' Geoffrey replied. 'So not a million,' the wannabe actress asked with a crying face emoji, 'well that sucks'. 'Why ruin my name for less would it be half(sic)?' she added. Other messages saw the one-time Playboy model slamming Geoffrey's ex-wife Gabi Grecko, who is believed to have become involved with the doctor after meeting him on a 'sugar daddy' website. 'I'm a great girl I really am,' she wrote, 'not like ur ex she sounds horrible (sic).' Jetting off in style: He also attempted to organise flights on an Air United flight for Ashley Throughout the interaction, Geoffrey told Ashley that he loved her, and she said it back. The leaked text messages also suggested that they were trying to arrange the transport of her pet to Australia, so she could be with Geoffrey in Melbourne, who gushed about his beloved home town. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia via telephone, Geoffrey claimed he did not meet Ashley on a 'Sugar Daddy' website but rather at a Sofitel hotel. He also denied leaking the texts himself, though admitted he had 'told many friends about them' and one might have leaked them online. Crossing paths: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia via telephone, Geoffrey claimed he did not meet Ashley on a 'Sugar Daddy' website but rather at a Sofitel hotel Geoffrey, who is 47 years Ashley's senior, confirmed to that he was dating the glamour model last month. 'We have a lot in common and there is sensational chemistry between us,' said the former medic. 'She's gorgeous, articulate and fun and is attracted to me, I believe, because I've a lot to offer,' he added. But following the comments, Ashley strongly denied she was romantically involved with Geoffrey - and demanded he apologise. Ashley had told previously told the Herald Sun: 'I feel taken advantage of and I definitely feel used. I'm not going after a 73-year-old man. He's been going after me. Dating: Geoffrey, who is 47 years Ashley's senior, confirmed to that he was dating the glamour model last month but she later denied the claims Awkward: Ashley had told told the Herald Sun : 'I feel taken advantage of and I definitely feel used. I'm not going after a 73-year-old man. He's been going after me' 'He's made me look like a gold digger and I'm completely not. I'm upset about that. I never wanted money. I never said that,' she added. In Ashley's version of events, Geoffrey first reached out by asking her to play one of his ex-wives in a film about his life. When asked what he thought of Ashley's complaints about being labelled a gold digger, he responded, 'she is'. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ashley's rep for comment and they declined to comment. Reasoning: In Ashley's version of events, Geoffrey first reached out by asking her to play one of his ex-wives in a film about his life His past: Geoffrey previously said he met Ashley on a business trip to America a couple of months ago, following his split with ex-wife Gabi Grecko (pictured) Geoffrey previously said he met Ashley, who hails from Michigan, on a business trip to America a couple of months ago. Geoffrey met his ex-wife Gabi Grecko in New York City in 2015. Daily Mail Australia later confirmed that Gabi and Geoffrey actually met on a 'Sugar Daddy' website, which connects young women to rich older men. Geoffrey said he met Ashley in Los Angeles, but the circumstances are not yet clear. Meanwhile, it appears Ashley is Geoffrey's type, with the businessman's estranged wives, Brynne and Gabi, being over 40 years his junior. Fans of Edgar Wright can rest assured that work on his forthcoming film Baby Driver is chugging way. Lily James, its leading lady, was photographed for the first time on Sunday shooting a scene for the crime comedy in Atlanta. She was dressed in the denim coat she's been spotted in before whilst on set for the film, as well as an adorable yellow dress. Roadside set: Lily James was photographed on Sunday shooting a scene from her upcoming film Baby Driver in Atlanta Her voluminous and wavy strawberry blonde hair fell free over that denim coat, which featured a large collar and wool lining. Beneath it was a bright yellow lacy dress, which was cut off above the knee to give a generous view of the 27-year-old's svelte legs. Grey socks barely protruded out from under her dark brown boots as she stood on what looked like a roadside set covered with black tarpaulins. The shoulders of giants: Baby Driver is the forthcoming feature written and directed by Edgar Wright and stars the 27-year-old with such names as Ansel Elgorg, Jon Hamm and Jamie Foxx Ansel Elgort will lead the cast as a man who gets rooked into driving the getaway car for what appears to be an inevitably disastrous heist. Other members of the celebrity-strewn cast include Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey, Jon Bernthal, Jamie Foxx and Eiza Gonzalez. Baby Driver is slated for release in American cinemas on 11 August 2017, and will open in Britain a week later. A ways off yet: The crime comedy's slated for an American release 11 August 2017 and will open in British cinemas a week later It is an exciting time for the British actress as rumours of a big-screen outing for Downton Abbey have been circulating since before the much-loved period drama ended in 2015. Lily recently added more fuel to the fire when she revealed she 'hopes' to be involved in the film during an interview on Lorraine. Kim Kardashian was warned by her mother Kris Jenner that she could die trying to give birth again on Sunday's episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. The 36-year-old reality star was considering having a surrogate carry her third child with rapper Kanye West. 'The best thing is that I could have a new baby and have no one know, and live my life for a good year before we announce it,' she told Kris. Surrogacy option: Kim Kardashian considered having a third child via surrogacy on Sunday's episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians Kim had decided that she would like to have a third child, despite her traumatic pregnancies and births thus far. She visited a doctor to see if her body could 'withstand' another pregnancy. He told her that the risks were real. 'You could bleed to death,' chimed in Kris. Some concern: Kris Jenner shared her concerns about using a surrogate Medical opinions: Kim met with two doctors as she explored pregnancy options But Kim was set on having another baby because of Saint West. 'He's so cute I'm like ''Oh my god I need to have another one'',' she said, before rushing off to get a second opinion. The second doctor also warned her about 'postpartum hemorrhage' and suggested a surrogate. So cute: The reality star said her cute son Saint inspired her to have another one 'A surrogate makes sense,' he told her. 'I want to have my own baby but I truly don't know if my body can handle it one more time,' she told her sister Kourtney. Kourtney told her that if she used a surrogate 'no one would have to know'. Secret baby: Kourtney planted the idea that Kim could have a baby in secret via surrogacy 'You could have a baby for an entire year and no one would know,' she mused. Kim clearly liked the idea and began investigating further. She then met with a woman called Natalie Gerber, who had used a surrogate for twins after having a child naturally. Great idea: Kim liked the idea of having a baby in secret 'If I had a surrogate would I love them the same? That scares me,' Kim asked. Natalie, who had also birthed one child, told her that it wouldn't be a problem. 'It's not the easy way out,' she assured her. Good question: Natalie Gerber answered Kim's questions about surrogacy 'I have to talk it over with my husband, just see what I believe God is, like, putting in my life and what is meant to be for me,' she decided. Wearing her new grill for the first time Kim talked it over with her mother. 'It's distracting talking to you with the grill, I don't know whether to look at your grill or your boobs,' said Kris, 61. New grill: Kim talked to Kris about considering surrogacy wearing a grill The show had opened with Khloe, 32, being courted by Snoop Dogg's 19-year-old son Cordell Broadus. 'I'm taking you out to eat. What you want some crab or some steak, what you want?' he asked. She decided to make him 'work for it'. Smooth move: Cordell Broadus asked Khloe Kardashian out Rap star: Snoop Dogg and Kendall were working on a project together Model Kendall Jenner was with will.i.am, shooting a video for Where Is The Love. 'It's a direct response to the gun violence that has been happening recently,' said Kendall, 21. She lip synced to the song while her mother bopped along in the production booth. Gun violence: Kendall participated in a will.i.am music video related to gun violence Over lunch Kendall and Khloe decided to use their 'platform' for social change. 'I'm very passionate about stricter gun laws,' said Kendall, who said she felt 'obligated' to take action. Khloe suggested a family 'pow wow' so they could all pick one issue to advocate. Taking a stand: Khloe and Kendall decided to use their platform for social change Rob warned Kendall that if she spoke out she could face being trolled. 'If you get involved in that type of stuff you're definitely going to get some backlash, a lot of people have completely different views that are opposite to you, so you're going to get a lot of hate,' he told her. 'You're a young, powerful woman so you gotta be prepared for the negativity as well,' said 29-year-old Rob. Be prepared: Rob Kardashian told Kendall to be prepared for a backlash 'I feel like if I get involved it's going to do more damage than actually help,' she pondered. Kim advised her to 'stand up for what she believes' but expect a lot of 'hate'. They met with women from Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America. Meeting up: Kim invited Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America to meet with her and her family 'The more we can get this message out the better,' said Kim. 'F*** the backlash,' she added. Lucy McBath whose son Jordan Davis, 17, was shot and killed at a gas station in Florida was among the mothers who they met. Surviving mother: Lucy McBath talked about her teenage son Jordan Davis who was shot and killed in Florida Senseless death: Jordan was shot at a Florida gas station during an argument about loud music She gave a rousing story about the 2012 senseless death of the black student who was gunned down during an argument over loud music. Relatives of victims killed in massacres such as Sandy Hook and San Bernardino also spoke out, leaving Kourtney in tears. Kendall decided it would be 'irresponsible' of her not to speak out. Getting emotional: Kourtney, Kris, Kim and Khloe listened intently Late arrival: Kendall arrived late to the meeting but was glad she took a stance 'I'm going to go for it,' she resolved. Kris Jenner decided to film her mother Mary Jo Houghton, 82, talking about her life in a long interview for posterity. 'My mom is my best friend,' she said, noting that her mother has many 'interesting stories' that she'd like to preserve in a 'legacy video'. Legacy video: MJ laughed while recording her legacy video Kris wanted Anderson Cooper to do the interview, but Khloe thought Kris should do it herself. 'Anderson is hot, she loves Anderson,' protested Kris. The family matriarch was worried she'd cry all the way through it. Emotional wreck: Kris lost it while interviewing her mother 'I'm going to be an emotional wreck,' she said, but Khloe talked her into it. Kris broke down when her mother asked her what was her 'biggest fear'. 'I don't want to say it,' she sobbed. Her too: MJ also teared up while being interviewed by Kris 'Just losing someone,' she blubbered. Kendall asked MJ how many people she'd slept with. 'Fourfour that I remember,' she answered. Good questions: Kim and Kendall teamed up to interview MJ Mother and daughter: Khloe and Kris also asked MJ questions A sneak peak of next week's episode showed Rob getting parenting lessons. Kris also was shown getting into a car accident. KUWTK continues next week on the E! network. She reunited with her former flame in May in the same week that her divorce from rapper husband Professor Green was finalised. And Millie Mackintosh was mixing business with pleasure as she accompanied beau Hugo Taylor on an exotic trip to Mauritius over the weekend. The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, showcased her enviably toned physique in a skimpy berry bikini as she worked her magic in front of the camera while modelling for Hugo's sunglasses line, Taylor Morris. Scroll down for video Model behaviour: Millie Mackintosh showcased her toned physique in a berry bikini while modelling for boyfriend Hugo Taylor's sunglasses line in Mauritius over the weekend Perching on the edge of a swimming pool, Millie displayed her tanned washboard abs as she posed in front of a picture-perfect backdrop of the Indian Ocean. The fashion designer wore her auburn locks tumbling around her shoulders in loose waves and sheltered her eyes from the sun with a pair of oversized shades. Millie is holidaying in Mauritius with boyfriend of six months, Hugo, 30, as well as his business partner Charlie Morris and Toby Huntington-Whiteley, the younger brother of supermodel and actress Rosie, 29. On Saturday, the ex-reality star treated her social media followers to another sizzling image as she lounged on a sandy beach in a barely-there white bikini. 'How I would like to spend every Saturday': The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, showed off her abs in a tiny white bikini in another sizzling social media snap Beach babe: Millie covered up in a striped kaftan as she took a break from shooting The designer's tiny two-piece featured ruching along the bra and revealed a tantalising amount of cleavage. With one hand placed behind her head, the brunette beauty appeared entirely serene against the tropical backdrop. Letting her statement swimwear speak for itself, Millie simply rocked a pair of mirrored round-eye shades. She captioned the idyllic shot: 'How I would like to spend every Saturday @beachcomber_hotels #taylormorristravels #Mauritius'. The reality star has further cemented her relationship with Hugo, who she met on Made In Chelsea in 2011, by going on holiday together. Turn around, bright eyes: The designer looked ethereal in a white maxi dress as the group headed out for a spot of dinner Cheeky! The brunette beauty toasted to her imminent arrival in paradise with some champagne on the plane Clearly excited for the trip, the sunglasses designer shared snaps of their flight in first class. Smiling for the lens, the couple posed alongside supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's model brother Toby. Millie's beaming appearance comes after Janet Street-Porter branded her 'childish' for ruining her wedding dress in a bid to get back at ex-husband Professor Green. The former reality star is thought to have ripped up her 1,500 evening dress from the day she wed Professor Green and smeared blood all over it for a Halloween costume. But 69-year-old Janet called the stunt 'horrible' when it came up in discussion on Loose Women on Thursday. Flight squad: Smiling for the lens, the couple posed alongside supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's model brother Toby Catching some sleep: Clearly excited for the trip, sunglasses designer Hugo shared snaps of their flight in first class 'It's horrible to make a statement like that, it's childish,' said Janet, acknowledging the her jibe at her ex-husband. Millie got a second wear out of the ivory Grace Loves Lace gown for the spooky festivities at Albert's in West London last month, but she defaced it to play dress as the jilted bride. The beauty first wore the stunning dress on her wedding day to the chart-topper, whose real name is Stephen Manderson, in Somerset back in 2013. The Sun reported on Sunday that the former Made in Chelsea star '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. Millie and Pro Green announced their split in February after just over four years together and their two-and-a-half-year marriage was dissolved in just 30 seconds in May. Inseparable couple: The former Made In Chelsea star took to social media to share a blissfully happy snap of herself with her 'love' Hugo on Tuesday In a 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.' They were granted a decree nisi at Central London Family Court with Millie citing 'unreasonable behaviour' as the reason for their split. Just one week after their divorce was finalised, the beauty went public with her ex-boyfriend Hugo and has been documenting their romance across social media ever since. Millie and Stephen started dating in November 2011 after the rapper saw her on the cover of men's magazine FHM. The rapper contacted Millie through her agent and they had their first date at the Groucho Club in Soho. Transformed! Millie was criticised last week for ripping her wedding dress 'to shreds' for a Halloween costume They went public at the Brit Awards in February 2012, with Stephen proposing on holiday in Paris just over a year later. The couple tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at Babington House in Somerset in September 2013. Pro Green recently lashed out at Millie in his new track Eye On The Door, rapping about their lack of sex life, drug use and hinting that cheating was to blame for their split. But in spite of his very public bashing of his ex-wife, the musician admitted last week that splitting from Millie felt like experiencing 'a death. He told the i newspaper on Friday: 'Of course whether youre happy somethings finished or not, it doesnt change the fact that it does still feel like theres been a death. 'An energy thats always been in your presence is suddenly no longer there and youre an idiot if you think thats not going to affect you.' Her due date is just around the corner. And on Monday, Teresa Palmer attempted to cover her large baby bump as she dressed in loose-fitting clothing during a day out in Adelaide, South Australia. While holding onto her son Bodhi's hand during the outing, the 30-year-old actress covered her belly with a patterned T-shirt and a black cardigan, which fell loosely over her slender frame. Scroll down for video Countdown is on: Teresa Palmer covers her large baby bump in loose-fitting clothing during a day out in Adelaide, South Australia with her son Bodhi on Monday She paired the casual garments with a pair of denim skinny jeans and black leather flats. While wearing her blonde locks out with a natural wave, Teresa slipped a beanie over her head as she hid her eyes under a pair of tinted sunglasses. As she flung her son's school bag over her right shoulder, she held onto Bodhi's little hand as they walked down the pathway. Dressing down: The expected mother covered her belly with a patterned T-shirt and a black cardigan while slipping into a pair of skinny jeans Every so cute: Bodhi also looked adorable during the outing as he was dressed in faded trousers and a light khaki button-up jacket The toddler looked adorable as he was dressed in leopard print grey joggers and a light khaki button-up jacket. Days earlier, Teresa took to Instagram to exposing her large baby bump as she had one of her final check-ups at a doctor's clinic. The Australian beauty shared on the social media site her excitement over a recent turn to Australia for the impending birth. 'I'm back to doing Vlogs for my #35week update!' Teresa began the caption. Ready to pop! Days earlier, Teresa exposed her baby bump as she documented one of her final check-ups at a doctor's clinic on social media 'This week I talk about our big move to Australia AND I show you around our property! You also get introduced to a very special guest!' 'In the video I discuss a birth complication that's come up, the birth preferences we settled on and more! Pandemonium this week & all captured in this weeks update,' the actress continued, alongside the hash-tag #yourzenmama. The family flew out of LA on November 2 to head to Teresa's hometown in Adelaide, where News Corp has reported the family recently purchased land and property. It was a risky move for the nurturing blonde, who was nearing the cut-off point for flying. Down Under: The family of nearly four flew out of LA earlier this month to head to Teresa's hometown in Adelaide, where they have recently purchased land and property Jet setting: It was a risky move for the blonde, with the actress revealing: 'I am flying back to Australia at exactly 36 weeks pregnant, which is the cut-off point' 'I am flying back to Australia at exactly 36 weeks pregnant, which is the cut-off point,' she told the paper. Teresa, Mark, Bodhi and the unborn baby boy will remain in Australia for the Christmas season before returning to LA. The actress revealed on her blog that her doctor had pushed forward her due date, the baby now expected to enter the world on November 27. Opinion / Columnist "A coalition can trump Mugabe and Zanu PF in 2018" argued Moses Chamboko in The Zimbabwean. The article was inspired by the events in America. Zimbabwe's electoral system and that of America are as different as chalk and cheese as Chamboko readily admitted."In 2008, it took the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) six weeks to release the results of an election in which only 3.2 million people had voted," he wrote. "Given that last week's American election attracted 133 million voters, going by their 2008 counting rate, it would take ZEC five years to count these votes, by which time another election would be due!"He pointed out other glaring difference between the US elections and ours; how no one was ever harassed, beaten much less killed to force the people to vote one way and not the other; etc.So the challenge in Zimbabwe is how to stop Zanu PF election shenanigans and machinations which have stopped the trumping of Mugabe and Zanu PF again and again already!"We have two tools to make this happen:" offered Chamboko "register to vote in huge numbers and turning up to vote as well as making progress on the coalition front."Are we not going round and round in circles here?How will registering and voting in huge numbers force ZEC Officials to count any faster than the six weeks and, more significantly, stop them "cooking" the results. We all know that it took six weeks to announce the result, as contrast to counting the votes; ZEC finished the counting in less than 24 hours. However, ZEC could not announce the result because President Mugabe did not want the true count known and accept defeat.Still, he could not instruct ZEC to announce the "cooked up" figures straight away either. He was not sure if MDC had carefully collated the election results themselves and would therefore successful challenge the cooked up figure in a court of law. Archbishop Desmond Tutu suggested that MDC should demand the release of the results but Tsvangirai in his infantile wisdom disregarded the advice. After six weeks of diddling and stringing MDC along it was clear there was total confusion in the MDC camp and they would accept whatever result ZEC announced. The cooked results showed there was no clear winner and so a run-off would be required.President Mugabe had used the six weeks to perfect his operation "Mavhotera Papi!" (Whom did you vote for!) All the security services were mobilized to back the war veterans, the storm troopers spear heading the operation; civilians were harassed, beaten, raped and over 500 killed in a ruthless move to force the people to vote for Mugabe in the run-off.The violence was so bad Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the race; the voters were herded into Polling Stations like castle and instructed whom they should vote for; Mugabe got 98% or some such figure of the vote. ZEC took less than 24 hours to count the votes and announced the results! Proof, ZEC officials have no problem counting the votes as long as the result reaffirms the no regime change mantra!During one unguarded moment President Mugabe bleated out that Tsvangirai had gunned 73% of the votes in the March 2008 vote. So as long as it is a Zanu PF controlled ZEC that is tasked to count and announce the votes the talk of trumping Mugabe and Zanu PF is a waste of time!Zimbabwe's whole electoral process is geared to deliver no regime change and the challenge before us is to implement all the democratic reforms designed to end the tyrannical controls ZanuPF has over not only ZEC officials but other State Institutions like the Police, Army, CIO, Judiciary, Public Media, etc. to force them to deliver free, fair and credible elections.The Zanu PF vote rigging machine is very well funded and very sophisticated, it is five or ten blocks ahead of the stone-broke, corrupt and incompetent opposition simpletons. We must therefore concentrate all our efforts on demanding the implementation of all the democratic reforms not wasting time, money and space listening to simpletons second guessing the weaknesses of the Zanu PF vote-rigging juggernaut!In 2013 Tsvangirai refused to listen to SADC leaders who warned against taking part in the elections with not even one reform implemented. Mr. Know-It-All did not listen and we all know the elections were blatantly rigged and landed us all in this political and economic nightmare. We would be very foolish indeed if we went into the next elections again with not even one reform implemented on the basis on a half-cock ZUNDE plan of mass voter registration and uniting an opposition we already know hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.By noon of voting day in 2013 Tsvangirai was already admitting the elections were rigged; we will be foolish to let that happen again in 2018.Mugabe has been rigging elections for the last 36 years and yet time and time again we have gone into election knowing the elections will be rigged and lo behold the elections were rigged every time.The political and economic consequence of another rigged Zimbabwe election in 2018 will cause unthinkable suffering, worse than what we are seeing in the country today. SA will beat President Trump in building a border by building one to stop the hordes of Zimbabwean economic and political refugees flooding across the Limpopo River!A lot has been said about America's recent elections but no one will dispute that they were free, fair and credible and thus a true reflection of the will of the people. The same is true of America's past elections. To therefore hope that Zimbabwe's next elections will too be a true reflection of the democratic will of the majority of Zimbabweans knowing fully well that Zanu PF will rig the elections just as they have done in the past is plain foolish!We must implement the democratic reforms is we are serious about ending the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship. DIY SOS star Nick Knowles has been spotted moving personal items into his estranged wife Jessica's home. The 54-year-old TV presenter cut a low-key figure as he toted clothes and bags into her house on Sunday, sparking reconciliation rumours following their turbulent separation in January. His stunning former spouse, 28, who has battled cervical cancer during the split, followed Nick as they headed into the house during the apparent move. Scroll down for video Moving on in: DIY SOS star Nick Knowles has been spotted moving personal items into his estranged wife Jessica's home Nick and Jessica, who share a 26-year age gap, began dating in 2009 before marrying in September 2012 and they share two-year-old son Edwin, although they announced their devastating split earlier this year. In September, the TV star set tongues wagging when he was seen cuddling up to Emmerdale actress Gemma Oaten after the TV Choice Awards. Releasing a statement last month, he broached the topic of his troubled relationship with Jessica, as he said: 'This year we have faced a miscarriage, the break down of our marriage and cancer without being disrespectful about each other at any point.' Despite their split, Nick was seen heading into Jessica's home on Sunday while holding on to mounds of clothes, a rucksack and wash bag while his stunning ex-partner was hot on his heels in a chic midi dress. Back for good? The 54-year-old TV presenter cut a low-key figure as he toted clothes and bags into her house on Sunday, sparking reconciliation rumours following their turbulent separation in January Happier times: Nick and Jessica, who share a 26-year age gap, began dating in 2009 before marrying in September 2012 and they share two-year-old son Edwin, although they announced their devastating split earlier this year MailOnline has contacted a representative for Nick for comment. Included in Nick's October statement was a reference to his fling with Gemma, as he continued that it was 'something that happened (in the space of less than one week) during a turbulent, traumatic time and more to the point - whilst we were separated.' He finished the emotional message in support of Jessica, admitting: 'As always, our answer is united, as are we. We have enjoyed eight years as best friends and nothing will change that.' The star explained Gemma was also devastated to hear he was working on his relationship with estranged wife Jessica, after he allegedly told her there was no chance of a reconciliation. Together? In September, the TV star set tongues wagging when he was seen cuddling up to Emmerdale actress Gemma Oaten after the TV Choice Awards Despite Nick's claims, defiant Gemma said: 'I thought it was a real relationship and he wasnt afraid to let others know.' Gemma's claims came after Nick revealed he is working through issues with his estranged wife - who revealed shortly before that she was battling cervical cancer. Last month Nick told The Mirror: 'I have a relationship with Jessica and we are best friends. We are working through things.' He once again touched on his relationship with Gemma, explicitly stating: 'Gemma and I are not dating. We went on a date. The nature of my work means its very difficult to go on a date without everybody making a much bigger deal of it.' That was then... He finished the emotional message in support of Jessica, admitting: 'As always, our answer is united, as are we. We have enjoyed eight years as best friends and nothing will change that' Focusing on the important things: Nick and Jessica wed in Rome in 2012, and when they announced their separation in January they stated that their 'focus continues to be the happiness of our son Eddie' Nick and Jessica wed in Rome in 2012, and when they announced their separation in January they stated that their 'focus continues to be the happiness of our son Eddie.' The couple first met when Jessica's parents asked Nick - the host of DIY SOS and 5 Star Family Reunion - to help kick-start her career in 2009, and romance blossomed despite their age gap. They were the only group to make it to the X Factor semi finals to battle head-to-head with the final five in a bid to secure a spot in the Grand Finals. But on Monday night, Brooke, Tayla and Elishia were sent home after reaching the bottom two AGAIN. The underdogs mentor and X Factor judge Mel B appeared disappointed having to watch both Beatz and Vlado reach the bottom two admitting it was a 'shock' to her. Scroll down for video 'I'm so upset': X Factor judge Mel B was visibly disappointed when she was told both her teams made it into the bottom two and had to compete for a place in the final four 'Oh, I'm so upset to see both of these amazing acts in the bottom two. I mean, they are Underdogs and they have worked their butts off, both of them. Beatz performed Destiny's Child, I'm a Survivor while Vlado stunned the judges with his rendition of Cold Water by Major Lazer. Despite their efforts, Vlado secured a spot with the final four after Guy nailed the final nail in Beatz Coffin sending them packing after their performance. 'Yeah, look, I've said Beatz you are my favourite girl group we have ever had,' he started. 'They are underdogs and they worked their butts off': Beatz and Vlado were voted into the bottom two after competing head-to-head in a battle to secure a spot in the Grand Final Shocked: Mel B was noticeable distressed to see both her teams having to compete against one another - wishing the outcome was different 'You are so full of beans and I know I was hard on you last night and I said we haven't really seen much from you on the stripped back level. 'It's always been high energy and same/same,' he continued. 'I've also been critical of you, Vlado. I said your vocals have suffered at times, and I also kind of get a little bit bored of the performance side of things. Superstar: Vlado made his best attempt to win the hearts of the judges to stay in the running to be crowned winner for 2016 with his rendition of Cold Water by Major Lazer Iconic: Beatz performed the popular Destiny's Child song I'm A Survivor to reiterate that even if they lose that they'll be back in the music industry in no time 'So, there's definitely pluses with both of you but there's stuff that worries me, too,' he added. Taking his time, Guy made the decision to send Vlado to the Grand Final saying he made his decision around who he believed would be most relevant in the industry. 'The thing that always makes me make a decision in this instance is who do I see as relevant right now for the industry. Difficult: Taking his time, Guy made the decision to send Vlado to the Grand Final saying he made his decision around who he believed would be most relevant in the industry Lucky: Mel B luckily did not have to make a decision with Adam Lambert and Iggy Azalea both siding with Vlado for the Grand Final as well 'I'm going to go with my gut and the act that I'm going to send through to the grand final is Vlado,' he finished. Mel B made said her final words to the girls appearing upset that she had to see one of her teams leave the competition. 'I know how hard these ladies have worked and they have literally given everything time and time and time again. Tearful goodbyes: Vlado was seen hugging the girls in Beatz when they did not make it to the final four Goodbye, but not forever: The remaining four joined the hug and said goodbye to the girls in Beatz who vowed they would be back 'I want to be in their gang. They have my cell phone number. We are constantly talking and texting. So, you are not going to see the last of me. Meanwhile, Amalia, Isaiah and Davey were first to be voted into the final four after Australia cast their votes after last night's episode. The final five battled it out singing killer tracks and curveballs to impress the judges and X factor fans across the nation. Former contestants: Samantha Jade and Cyrus joined forces to sing their single Hurt Anymore at the live decision on Monday night's episode Singing duo: Australian pop stars The Veronica's joined the star studded list of celebrities joining the contestants on Monday night's episode and sang their single On Your Side With Beatz receiving the same feedback as Monday night, with judges less than impressed with their 'same-same' performances. Also joining the teams on Monday night's show were The Veronica's and former X Factor contestants, Little Mix and Samantha Jade and Cyrus. The Veronica's stunned fans as they sang their single On Your Side and Samantha Jade and Cyrus teamed up with their single Hurt Anymore. Winners: 2011 winner of the British X Factor Little Mix performed their hit Shout Out To My Ex as they promoted their new album Glory Days Joining forces: Little Mix performed their single alongside the final five before final decisions were cast for the top four Little Mix performed their single Shout Out To My Ex while performing with the final five before final decisions were cast for the top four. X Factor Grand Finale week starts on Sunday at 8pm and then on Monday at 7.30pm the winner for 2016 will be crowned. She is famed for her scanty outfits and fearless exposure of her figure. And Lady Victoria Hervey made sure she stuck to her tried and tested style as she soaked up the sun during a trip to Palm Springs in California on Friday. The 40-year-old model and IT girl sported a barely-there cut-out swimming costume which came unfastened as she emerged from the pool - leading to an eye-popping exposure of her entire chest. Scroll down for video Oh dear! Cheeky! Lady Victoria Hervey made sure she stuck to the stuff she knows as she soaked up the sun during a trip to Palm Springs in California on Friday Victoria, who is the daughter of the late 6th Marquess of Bristol, has never been shy of showing off her physique - often storming red carpets in ensembles which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. Friday's sun worshiping session was no exception as she sizzled poolside in her chic one-piece - which shockingly came unfastened as she emerged from the cool water. Enjoying a dip, she pulled her best Bond girl impression as she emerged from the pool - although things went very wrong when she suffered a wardrobe malfunction. The belted swimsuit fell from Victoria's shoulders and exposed her entire bare chest - showing perky assets which far defied her age. Loving life: The 40-year-old model and IT girl sported a barely-there cut-out swimming costume which came unfastened as she emerged from the pool - leading to an eye-popping exposure of her entire chest Shocking behaviour: The blonde beauty grappled with the swimsuit yet appeared relatively unfazed by the catastrophic snag which would no doubt mortify many She's a lady! Despite her awkward flash, Victoria oozed confidence as she emerged from the water Hold on tight: The blonde beauty had little concern for her flash as she stepped out of the water She sure loves to shock! Lady Victoria is famed for her scanty outfits and fearless exposure of her figure The blonde beauty grappled with the swimsuit yet appeared relatively unfazed by the catastrophic incident which would no doubt mortify many. With her bleach blonde tresses worn in a chic bouncy blow-dry, Victoria seemed to have no intentions of dipping into the water fully, to ensure she kept her tresses perfectly coiffed. Despite the mishap, she was later seen laughing while reclining on a sun lounger and peeling on a chic pair of oversized sunglasses. Cool customer: The socialite took a break from the balmy climes to enjoy a relaxing swim Chilled out: Victoria was in pure relaxation mode as she lay back on a lounger Coiffed: With her bleach blonde tresses worn in a chic bouncy blow-dry, Victoria seemed to have no intentions of dipping into the water to ensure she kept her tresses perfectly coiffed Laughing it off: Victoria, who is the daughter of the late 6th Marquess of Bristol, has never been shy of showing off her physique - often storming red carpets in ensembles which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination Sizzling: Lady Victoria, who is known for her glamorous sense of style, recently told the Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare that English women struggle to be sexy Lady Victoria, who is known for her glamorous sense of style, recently told the Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare that English women struggle to be sexy. 'Women in London are too conservative and dont have the courage to wear sexy outfits. Its an English thing,' she said, 'I grew up in the South of France so I have a much more international approach.' Victoria added that she still leads by example, sporting an array of sheer ensembles at parties recently, she said: 'Its empowering to dress provocatively'. Her body confidence put her in good stead during her modelling career, which saw her work for the likes of Christian Dior. Sense of style: 'Women in London are too conservative and dont have the courage to wear sexy outfits. Its an English thing,' she said. 'I grew up in the South of France so I have a much more international approach' Body confidence: Her body confidence put her in good stead during her modelling career, which saw her work for the likes of Christian Dior Pure relaxation: The famed beauty appeared to have made a friend as a pup was spotted catching some shade under her lounger Her stint on The Only Way Is Essex was a case of blink and you'll miss it. But George Harrison ensured she attracted plenty of attention as she enjoyed a recent beach break in Barcelona, Spain. The former TOWIE star, 21, turned heads as she showed off her svelte physique in a sizzling cut-out monokini while strolling along the city's white sands. Scroll down for video Beach babe: George Harrison ensured she attracted plenty of attention thanks to her sizzling choice of swimwear as she enjoyed a recent beach break in Barcelona, Spain The blonde bombshell boasted a full face of make-up and warded off the sun in a wide-brimmed straw hat as she frolicked in the water. George, who joined the cast of The Only Way Is Essex in 2014 for just one series, wore her peroxide blonde locks in a sleek straight style. Despite heading for a dip in the water, she maintained her make-up - including a taupe lipstick and lashings of mascara. Her racy black one-piece revealed every inch of her toned body thanks to cut-outs at the waist and a perilously plunging neckline. Making a splash: The former TOWIE star, 21, turned heads as she showed off her svelte physique in a skimpy cut-out monokini while strolling along the city's white sands Always glam: The blonde bombshell boasted a full face of make-up and warded off the sun in a wide-brimmed straw hat as she frolicked in the water October sun: George, who joined the cast of The Only Way Is Essex in 2014 for just one series, wore her peroxide blonde locks in a sleek straight style Stretching out in the sand, the blonde reality star later shielded her eyes with oversized black sunglasses. George starred in just three episodes of TOWIE in 2014 - during which she went on several dates with Tom Pearce. She was also linked to Lewis Bloor, but producers felt the tenuous romantic storylines weren't enough to secure her a more permanent role on the ITVBe show, especially when Tom left the show. Brief stint: Georgia starred in just three episodes of TOWIE in 2014 - during which she went on several dates with Tom Pearce A source told Beamly: 'Every cast member sits down with producers before each new series to talk about their future but George was told bosses didnt believe she had big enough storylines coming up.' Since her brief stint on the show, Georgia has enjoyed many beach breaks this year, including further trips to Spain and an exotic location in Thailand. Keeping fans up to date with her holidaying, she recently shared a steamy Instagram snap of her pert behind in a silver bikini during an Ibiza getaway. She is still a regular face among the familiar ITVBe crowd, having known Lewis Bloor since the age of 14. Spanish sizzler: George recently shared a steamy Instagram snap of her pert behind in a silver bikini during an Ibiza getaway Her elder sister is the country's undisputed queen of the catwalk and she's carving out a career as a successful model in her own right. But Lottie Moss was looking worlds away from her usual glamour as she prepared to fly home from Barcelona's El Prat airport after a fun-filled girls' weekend with her friends. The teen model, 18 - who is the younger half-sister of Kate Moss, 42 - was rocking an off-duty look for her flight, looking youthful and fresh-faced as she went make-up free while leaving the Spanish city. Scroll down for video Natural beauty: Lottie Moss was looking worlds away from her usual glamour as she prepared to fly home from Barcelona's El Prat airport after a fun-filled girls' weekend with her friends Wearing her tousled blonde locks scraped back from her face, Lottie nailed jet-setter chic in an on-trend suede aviator jacket. The beauty flaunted her lean legs in a pair of blue skintight jeans with a frayed hem and rocked simple black Nike Air Max trainers. Lottie, who made her first public appearance at Tophsop Unique in 2014 with big sister Kate, went incognito with a pair of mirrored shades as she strolled through the terminal. Looking worlds away from her chic red carpet appearances, the Calvin Klein model toted her belongings in a large gold bag. Jet-setter: The teen model, 18, - who is the younger half-sister of Kate Moss, 42 - was rocking an off-duty look for her flight, looking youthful and fresh-faced as she went make-up free Model behaviour: The Calvin Klein model looked worlds away from her chic red carpet appearances (pictured in September at an amfAR event in Milan, Italy) The star looked somewhat worn-out from her trip to Barcelona, which was to celebrate a friend's 21st birthday. Posting a snap of the girls enjoying drinks on Instagram, she wrote: 'Had an amazing time in Barcelona with the girls.' Lottie is rumoured to be dating Made In Chelsea star Alex Mytton, 25. The pair have been inseparable for the past few weeks, hitting London bashes together on numerous occasions. Lottie has immersed herself with Alex's Made In Chelsea crowd following a romance with Alex's friend, Sam Prince. Girls just wanna have fun: The star looked somewhat worn-out from her trip to Barcelona, which was to celebrate a friend's 21st birthday The blonde beauty has been linked to several suitors in the past - having enjoyed lunch in June with pop star Conor Maynard, and flirted with Geordie Shore star Ricci Guarnaccio on Twitter. It was only at the end of July that Lottie was seen cosying up to boyfriend Josh Goldin outside Conchiglia restaurant in London. The then loved-up pair were seen leaning in for plenty of kisses on the street outside the eatery - although they had fuelled rumours of a potential split that same week after both retweeting messages about infidelity. And, back in February 2015, Lottie caused controversy on Twitter when she wrote to her followers after a night-out at 4am: 'You know it's a successful night when you throw your drink in your ex boyfriends face.' Alex, meanwhile, has had ill-fated long-term romances with two of his Made In Chelsea co-stars, Binky Felstead and Nicola Hughes, both of which ended in him admitting to having been unfaithful. She was a favourite to win the 2016 series of Strictly Come Dancing at the outset. But a 'heartbroken' Daisy Lowe found herself putting on a brave face as she headed out into London on Monday, less than 24 hours after getting the boot from the show. Having been up early to tell her pal Nick Grimshaw and his Radio 1 listeners about her exit, the model, 27, then headed out for a stroll in an ab-flashing ensemble. Scroll down for video Down and out? A 'heartbroken' Daisy Lowe found herself putting on a brave face as she headed out into London on Monday, less than 24 hours after getting the boot from the show 'I'm pretty heartbroken but I'm really proud of myself because I actually managed to survive eight weeks of it,' Daisy told her BFF on his breakfast show. 'I loved every minute of it and I'm never going to stop dancing. It created the most mental adventure of my whole entire life.' Following her morning with Grimmy, Daisy headed out into the capital and braved the cold weather in a casual yet chic affair. Teaming a cropped white jumper with a pair of high-waisted denim skinny jeans, the face of Triumph lingerie flaunted her envy-inducing flat tummy. Putting on a brave face? Having been up early to tell her pal Nick Grimshaw and his Radio 1 listeners about her exit, the model, 27, then headed out for a stroll in an ab-flashing ensemble Kitting herself out with a snazzy pink mac to combat the rain, Daisy ensured had a seasonally swish edge to her look. She rounded her wardrobe off her trademark biker boots, which she wore laced-up tight to the top. The newly-single star, who split with boyfriend Bradley 'Frankie' Wade just a week before her exit, hid her gaze under a pair of over-sized black sunglasses. Heartbreaking: 'I'm pretty heartbroken but I'm really proud of myself because I actually managed to survive eight weeks of it,' Daisy told her BFF on his breakfast show Ab-flashing fashion: Teaming a cropped white jumper with a pair of high-waisted denim skinny jeans, the face of Triumph lingerie flaunted her envy-inducing flat tummy Wearing her raven locks in her customary tousled and teased manner, the ballroom vixen left her hair free to blow in the breeze. The billboard beauty allowed her naturally striking looks to shine through, with Daisy opting for a minimal palette of make-up. Despite having bombed out of the show in the dance-off against Olympian Greg Rutherford, Daisy was able to muster a big beaming smile. Rain, rain, go away: Kitting herself out with a snazzy pink mac to combat the rain, Daisy ensured had a seasonally swish edge to her look Natural beauty: Wearing her raven locks in her customary tousled and teased manner, the ballroom vixen left her hair free to blow in the breeze However, she looked utterly devastated to be leaving the competition just one week before the vaunted Blackpool special, on Sunday night. The model's Saturday night salsa to Groove is in the Heart with Aljaz Skorjanec failed to win over the public. And the couple found themselves in the bottom two, for the third time in as many week, against Greg and Natalie Lowe. Out: She looked utterly devastated to be leaving the competition just one week before the vaunted Blackpool special, on Sunday night Bottom two: The model's Saturday night salsa to Groove is in the Heart with her pro partner Aljaz Skorjanec failed to win over the public After hearing she was facing the dreaded dance off yet again, Daisy told host Tess Daly: 'I'm just hoping it's not the third and final one! I love that dance,' before turning to her partner Alkaz and telling him 'I'm sorry.' 'I think you did an incredible job', he told her. 'And we're gonna do it again.' Judge Darcey advised Daisy to soften her knees and work on her balance issues but mostly to 'sell it and embrace it with that wonderful confidence you gave on Saturday night.' First dance off: he couple found themselves in the bottom two against Olympian Greg Rutherford and Natalie Lowe, with both couples receiving the same score the night before Greg meanwhile looked relatively calm ahead of his debut dance off where he performed his Pasa Doble again, telling Tess 'we'll hopefully get through any of the mistakes we had during the first try.' Both Daisy and Greg got emotional as they expressed how much they wanted to make it Blackpool, with Greg saying 'it's hard to put it into words. It would be amazing to make it to next week.' In the end the judges vote saw Craig and Darcey vote to save Greg, with Craig exclaiming that he and Natalie had 'totally and utterly nailed the dance,' the second time around. Emotional: After hearing she was facing the dreaded dance off yet again, Daisy told host Tess Daly: 'I'm just hoping it's not the third and final one!' Second time around: Greg meanwhile looked relatively calm ahead of his debut dance off, telling Tess 'we'll hopefully get through any of the mistakes we had during the first try' Tense: Daisy, Aljaz, Greg and Natalie waited nervously after their dances as the judges voted Bruno though voted for Daisy, declaring the dance off to be a 'clash of titans,' which resulted in head judge Len having the casting vote. Len explained: 'Obviously because it's a split decision that shows the closeness of this competition. However I have to go with my brain and not my heart and my brain says the most polished and technical performance is Greg and Natalie.' 'I've loved every minute,' Daisy said after the decision. 'Thank you so much for everything...and this one, my dear friend,' she added as she hugged Aljaz, who told Daisy: Close call: In the end the judges vote saw Craig and Darcey vote to save Greg, while Bruno went for Daisy, leaving the casting vote with head judge Len who voted for Greg Going out on a high: 'I've loved every minute,' Daisy said after the decision. 'Thank you so much for everything' Saying goodbye: Daisy hugged Greg as she prepared to head to the dance floor one last time 'Thank you, you've been the most joyous in rehearsals, you've taught me so much. You're the most beautiful person inside out, you're a beautiful dancer.. 'Thank you for making this Strictly experience unforgettable for me.' Meanwhile Ed Balls exclaimed 'we did it' as he and partner Katya Jones made it through after leaving viewers, and the judges, speechless with their Gangnam Style salsa the night before. Flower power: Daisy ensured she gave it her all as she performed an energetic salsa to Groove Is In The Heart on Saturday night Impressive: Tied with the same number of points was Greg and Natalie who performed a powerful Pasa Doble Daisy ensured she gave it her all as she performed an energetic salsa on Saturday night. After Aljaz warned 'we're both quite tall so its sometimes tricky to get the lifts quite right', viewers were watching with baited breath, but needed not to worry. Despite some wobbles, their salsa proved to be drama free and they recieved positive comments from the judges. Head judge Len Goodman was particularly positive, exclaiming: 'Who better to give us some flower power than a Daisy!' Crowd pleaser: Meanwhile Ed Balls exclaimed 'we did it' as he made it through after leaving viewers, and the judges, speechless with their Gangnam Style salsa the night before He continued: There was a little mistake but you carried on so well done to you!' Meanwhile, Bruno referenced the fact the BBC's most beloved baker in the audience as he said: That salsa... I'm sure Mary Berry would approve wouldn't you darling!' Craig Revel Horwood wasn't quite as forthcoming, pointing out: 'The footwork was haphazard and continually disjointed, the lifts were great but transitions were sticky.' He did heap on some praise, however, as he continued: 'My darling, you are so supple, I love those leg extensions!' Lost for words: The standout moment of Saturday night went to Ed Tribute: Sunday's show also featured a moving dance telling the story of Madge and Basil Lambert, who met and fell in love during WW2 And whilst it may not have been her best score, Daisy still earned a respectable 31 points. Danny Mac's Argentine Tango with Oti Mabuse which some of the judges deemed too 'aggressive', was the top performing routine of the night. Whilst Darcey and Craig believed the dance had too much attack and scored the pair nine points each, Len and Bruno were in awe of the routine, both scoring 10. Closing the show was Louise Redknapp and Kevin Clifton, who outdid themselves with their American Smooth. Too much? On the other end of the spectrum was Danny Mac's Argentine Tango with Oti Mabuse which some of the judges deemed too 'aggressive' Bruno remarked: 'You looked the part and the danced the part!' But whilst Len remarked that they could expect a 'big score' the pair failed to top the leaderboard with just 37 points, which lead to their fellow dancers screaming the pair had been 'undermarked'. The standout moment of the night went to Ed Balls, who performed a show-stopping salsa to Gangnam Style with Katya Jones. Claudia announced after Ed had made it through that during next week's special in Blackpool, the former MP will jive to Great Balls of Fire, after being lowered from the ceiling playing a piano. She has been accused of 'leftist bullying' Steve Price on The Project last week. But on Monday, Carrie Bickmore put the drama behind her as she caught up with her loving grandfather in Adelaide. In a photo posted to Instagram, the 35-year-old beamed with happiness as she cuddled up to her pop while planting a gentle kiss on his cheek. Scroll down for video Loving: Carrie Bickmore beamed with happiness as she cuddled up to her grandfather while planting a gentle kiss on his cheek in her latest social media post While her grand-parent showed off a wide smile for the front-facing camera, the mother-of-two flaunted her natural beauty through minimal makeup. As she rested her reflective sunglasses on her head, she slicked back her brunette locks and tied them in a tight bun. Alongside the loving photograph, Carrie gushed: 'The catch ups are never as frequent as I'd like but always put a smile on my face. Happy times: Alongside the loving photograph, Carrie gushed: 'The catch ups are never as frequent as I'd like but always put a smile on my face. Love you poppa' Firing line: Over the last week, Carrie has come under fire for 'bullying' The Project's guest Steve Price during the Presidential election last week 'Love you poppa. Your selfie game is strong #adelaide #grandparents #generations.' Last week, Carrie came under fire for 'bullying'The Project's guest Steve Price during the Presidential election. Following the shock election result, Steve was at the epicentre of public debate when he mixed heated words with former Labor staffer Jamila Rizvi. The pair clashed after Steve claimed Jamila interrupted him as the panel discussed Hillary Clinton's loss, prompting host Carrie to tell him to 'change his tone.' Tough: At the time, Steve was at the epicentre of public debate when he mixed heated words with former Labor staffer Jamila Rizvi, prompting Carrie to tell him to 'change his tone' Since the series of events, a petition was formed to force Carrie and her team at The Project to issue Steve with a formal apology after he was the victim of 'leftist bullying' during the show's US election debate. But on Monday, Steve dismissed the petition demanding The Project offer him an apology. While appearing on the Network 10 program, Steve cleared the air, saying 'no one owes me an apology for anything' and 'I'm a big boy I can look after myself.' The always-fashionable Jaime King was among the star-studded guests to attend Glamour magazine's pre-Women Of The Year Awards dinner on Sunday night. The 37-year-old actress and former model put on quite a stylish display at the intimate dinner, hosted at Barneys New York, in Los Angeles. Jaime looked like the belle of the ball oozing ladylike glamour in a long lace gown that featured yellow tulips. Belle of the ball! Jaime King was among the star-studded guests to attend Glamour's 2016 Women of the Year pre-dinner at Barney's in Los Angeles The willowy beauty, who shares sons James, three, and Leo, one, with director husband Kyle Newman, opted for full on glamour for the evening. Jaime's gorgeous strapless gown cinched her lithe waist in furthermore before bursting forth in a voluminous skirt featuring two tiers with different hemlines. Every square inch of the taupe-colored fabric was covered in beautiful and delicate lace embroidery work. And yellow tulips decorated the entire bodice along with the trim of the first tulle tier. Romantic glam: The 37-year-old actress and former model flaunted her gorgeous lace gown which featured dual hemlines and rows of yellow tulips At one point, the cheerful beauty playfully grabbed the first layer of the dress and twirled around to show off her feminine frock. Jaime completed her romantic look with satin and crystal embellished closed-toe pumps. The blonde bombshell wore her lengthy tresses in a lovely up-do showing off a beautiful pair of long chandelier jewels dangling from her ears. Pretty as a petal: The blonde bombshell completed her feminine look with a lovely up-do showing off a beautiful pair of long chandelier jewels dangling from her ears The natural beauty wore minimal make-up but added a pop of color to her pout with a shade of pink lipstick which contrasted with her red nails in a chic way. The intimate fashion event was held as an introduction to this year's annual awards ceremony. It was hosted by editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, Cindi Leive, who mingled with the stars, as well as CEO of Barneys, Mark Lee. Prime spot: Jaime was seated directly across from editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine, Cindi Leive, who hosted the evening along with Barneys CEO Mark Lee (not pictured) Mingling: Guests in attendance also included Girls and Netflix's Love star Gillian Jacobs (right), who like Jaime sported a floral design Jaime had a prime spot at the dinner table as she was seated directly across from Cindi. At one point, the Pearl Harbor actress shared an intimate moment with the host of the evening as they held hands over the table and smiled fondly at one another. Guests in attendance also included Girls and Netflix's Love star Gillian Jacobs, who like Jaime sported a floral design. She has been in 'beast mode' to prepare for the upcoming Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. So Adriana Lima enjoyed a bit of well deserved time off as she made a few purchases in Miami on Sunday. The 35-year-old supermodel appeared as though she just stepped off the catwalk as she flaunted her endless bronzed legs in a peach mini dress. Scroll down for video She's an Angel! Adriana Lima looked heavenly when she stepped out for a bit of shopping in Miami on Sunday afternoon The Victoria's Secret Angel donned the pretty floral frock which included a ruffled hemline and sleeves. She added a bit of height to her statuesque frame with strappy platform wedge heels. Adriana balanced a pair of dark shades, camel leather handbag and cell phone with a case that read, 'Team Lima,' in one hand and a small brown shopping bag in the other. She's a peach! The 35-year-old Victoria's Secret Angel appeared as though she just stepped off the catwalk as she flaunted her endless bronzed legs in a floral mini dress The Brazilian beauty's long dark tresses cascaded in relaxed waves down her back and she rounded out her chic ensemble with a dainty gold choker. Opting for minimal cosmetics, the Salvador-born stunner went with a touch of rosy blush and slick of pale pink glossy lip. On Saturday, the genetically-gifted model took to Instagram and shared two make-up free selfies with her 8.6million followers. 'Let the f***ing beast in me out': The supermodel posted a selfie on Saturday as she headed to the gym to train for the upcoming Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 'Beast Mode': The Brazilian beauty posted a flawless make-up free selfie to her 8.6million Instagram followers post-workout 'Let's go let the f***ing beast in me out #BeastMode,' she captioned an image of herself while driving to the gym. Post-workout, the mother of two finished with: 'I am fire.' Adriana can be seen ruling the runway in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show which will air be broadcast on CBS December 5 at 10pm. The old adage states that a picture is worth a thousand words. And Behati Prinsloo certainly seemed to think that was true, as she took to Instagram on Monday morning. The Victoria Secret model posted a photo of her and husband Adam Levine with their baby daughter Dusty Rose. The blonde beauty, who has been married to Levine since 2014, didn't bother with a caption - instead she posted the sweet snap along with a series of emojis. Picturesque: Behati Prinsloo posted a cute photo of her and husband Adam Levine with their baby daughter Dusty Rose on Monday morning In the photo the couple are standing on a quaint beach as they look out towards the water. Behati wore a pair of denim jeans and a cap as she carried her baby daughter, while her husband opted to wear a pair of pineapple designed black shorts. He put his arm around his wife as they both gazed at the ocean. Magical: Behati gave birth to Dusty Rose on September 21 and will walk the November Victoria Secret Fashion Show The Victoria Secret angel is getting ready to walk the runway for their annual fashion show. Musical guests for the iconic show include Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and The Weeknd. Jasmine Tookes is the lucky model this year who will be wearing the $3 million fantasy bra, complete with 9,000 gemstones and 450 carats. Golden couple: Behati and Levine have been married since 2014 The bra took 700 hours to make and the elaborate piece of clothing was designed by Eddie Borgo. This year t he Angels are heading to France for their first-ever Parisian Fashion Show at the iconic Grand Palais. He is understood to be on good terms with ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift some two months after their whirlwind romance ended in abrupt separation. But Tom Hiddleston, 35, appeared to be in equally good company on Sunday afternoon as he stepped out with a strikingly similar UNICEF colleague in leafy Hampstead. The dashing actor - who works as an ambassador for the children's rights and emergency relief organisation - flashed a beaming grin as the pair walked side by side through the affluent North London suburb. Scroll down for video In good company: Tom Hiddleston was joined by a blonde UNICEF colleague during a day out in Hampstead, north London on Sunday afternoon Evidently braced for plummeting winter temperatures he sported a thick hooded top beneath a smart black jacket while passing the time with his female pal. Busy Tom, a favourite to succeed Daniel Craig as iconic secret agent James Bond, appeared to clutch a script under one arm as they strolled past a local cafe. Walking alongside the actor, his blonde friend - who bore a passing resemblance to pop star Taylor - stayed warm in a jaunty bobble hat and thick winter coat. A warm front: Evidently braced for plummeting winter temperatures the actor sported a thick hooded top beneath a smart black jacket as they walked through the affluent suburb Main man: Busy Tom, a favourite to succeed Daniel Criag as iconic secret agent James Bond, appeared to clutch a script under one arm as they strolled past a local cafe Looking good: Walking alongside the actor, his blonde colleague stayed warm in a jaunty bobble hat and thick winter coat She added to her seasonal look with a pair of skinny black jeans, while chunky brown ankle boots rounded things off. Seemingly in high spirits, the blonde offered onlookers a pleasant smile as the pair idled on the pavement, where they were joined by a second UNICEF colleague. His latest outing was rather more subdued than his spate of high profile public appearances with ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift. Upbeat: Seemingly in high spirits, she offered onlookers a pleasant smile as she idled on the pavement with a second UNICEF employee Lookalikes: The pretty blonde bore a passing resemblance to Tom's recent ex, pop star Taylor Swift Three's company: Tom appeared to be upbeat during his latest outing on Sunday afternoon The Night Manager star hit the headlines when he and Taylor, 26, split in September - with the pop star telling Dailymail.com that she felt 'uncomfortable' with his desire to be 'so public' about their romance. Tom had reportedly asked Taylor to the Emmy Awards, but she began questioning whether he was with her for 'the right reasons' and ultimately decided to call off the relationship. The couple got together shortly after Taylor's split from Calvin Harris, leading Tom to insist their relationship wasn't a 'showmance' in July. Low key: However his latest outing was rather more subdued than his spate of high profile public appearances with ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, he said: 'The truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we're very happy. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt.' Tom has been focusing on his return to screen of late - jetting to Australia to film the next Marvel installment, Thor: Ragnorak. The British actor will reprise his role as Thor's evil adopted brother Loki in the flick, which is set for release in November 2017. Corey Sligh has been arrested and booked for child molestation. The former The Young And The Restless star, 28, has been accused of molesting a girl who was under the age of 10. The arrest took place on October 14 in his home state of Georgia, but was only reported by TMZ on Monday. He was released the same day on a $22,000 bond. It was added that the alleged molestation occurred from April until September of this year. Caught: Corey Sligh has been arrested and booked for child molestation, according to TMZ. Here he is seen in his mug shot taken on October 14 On set: The actor play a bartender on the CBS soap opera. Here he is seen on the top left It is not known how many times the actor attacked the girl during those five months. The child's parents reported the sexual abuse on September 24. Documents were filed to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. Reps for The Young And The Restless did not return calls to DailyMail.com Happy day at work: In this Instagram photo the star is seen on the set of Y&R Sligh was in the news in 2014 when he was intentionally run over by a car in a Rite Aid parking lot in West Hollywood by two men. After being hit, he was then beaten up, which caused him to be hospitalized. The incident occurred on Thanksgiving Day. The crime: The former The Young And The Restless star, 28, has been accused of molesting a girl who was under the age of 10 Not a one-time incident: It was added that the alleged molestation occurred from April until September of this year. Here he is seen in two head shots shared on social media A man named Nikola Ilic, 24, was arrested and charged with battery. Dusan Lilic, 26, was also arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and was held in lieu of $85,000 bail. Sligh was treated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering multiple injuries including a broken arm. Hate crime? Sligh was in the news in 2014 when he was intentionally run over by a car in a Rite Aid parking lot in West Hollywood by two men The actor had been a regular fixture on The Young And The Restless playing a bartender and waiter on the soap opera. Sligh and his girlfriend Alisa Berhorst were delivering a Thanksgiving meal to a friend who had to work when they came across a vehicle being driven recklessly in the drugstore parking lot. Lilic and Ilic crashed the car nearby while allegedly trying to flee and were later arrested. As his alter ego Deadpool, he's smart-talking, confident and wise-cracking. But Ryan Reynolds admitted to GQ that he secretly suffered from stress from making the superhero comedy, as he was named their 2016 Man of the Year. The 40-year-old actor - who welcomed his second daughter with Blake Lively in September - told the publication he was diagnosed with anxiety after finishing filming. Anxious: Ryan Reynolds admitted to GQ that he secretly suffered from stress from making the superhero comedy, as he was named their 2016 Man of the Year 'When it finally ended, I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown. I literally had the shakes', he told the publication. The star - who lives with Blake and their two children in upstate New York - explained: 'I went to go see a doctor because I felt like I was suffering from a neurological problem or something. And every doctor I saw said, "You have anxiety." 'I say this with the caveat that I completely recognize the ridiculously fortunate position that I am in. But the attention is hard on your nervous systemthat might be why I live out in the woods. 'And I was banging the loudest drum for Deadpool. I wasn't just trying to open it; I was trying to make a cultural phenomenon'. Anti-hero: Ryan spent 11 years fighting to have Deadpool made - and was vindicated when the movie grossed $782.6 million worldwide, against a budget of $58 million The actor posed for the magazine with his character's costume underneath a $4300 Dior Homme suit, teamed with a crisp white shirt also by the designer brand. His mischievous sense of humour is clearly intact, as he joked about the moment he fell for his now-wife Blake Lively, when asked by the publication when he knew she was the one. 'Probably after the sex,' was his glib reply. The star then corrected himself and revealed: 'No, we were hanging out at this little restaurant in Tribeca thats open really late, and this song came on and I was just like, "Want to dance?" 'No one was in there, so it was just totally empty. And it was just one of those moments where halfway through the dance, it was like, "Oh, I think I just crossed a line." And then I walked her home. And, uh, you know, I dont really need to go into what happened after that.' In good company: Usain Bolt also graces the cover of GQ's Man of the Year issues Stellar: GQ's other Man of the year cover star was screen legend Warren Beatty Ryan spent 11 years fighting to have Deadpool made - and was vindicated when the movie grossed $782.6 million worldwide, against a budget of $58 million. 'Ive been on the train for 11 years trying to get it made,' he explained to the publication. 'Once the test footage leaked, that created a groundswell of support. And the studio responded to that groundswell by saying, "Okay, heres the absolute bare minimum amount of money that we will give this character. Let us know when the movies done."' he added. The star revealed that the budget was so tight that they couldn't afford to buy the props they needed for the scenes. 'Theres two moments in the movie where I forget my ammo bag. Thats not because Deadpools forgetful. Thats because we couldnt afford the guns that were about to use in the scene,' he explained. 'We made our production budget back on Friday [after the Thursday midnight premiere]. Theres a certain vindication that comes with that, especially because the studio - granted, under different regimes - for years just kept telling us to go f*** ourselves sterile.' Couple: His mischievous sense of humour is clearly intact, as he joked about the moment he fell for his now-wife Blake Lively (pictured in February) Ryan - who graces the cover of their Man of the Year issue as well as Usain Bolt and Warren Beatty - has a family of his own with Blake, whom he married in 2012. However, he says that his relationship with his own now-late father was estranged for ten years. 'I had a rough ten-year patch with my father. So we were estranged,' he explained, adding: 'From my earliest memory of him, my father was that stereotypical tough guy. But it was just a veneer. The hardest part for me is that he was always kind of a mystery. I just dont feel like I ever had a real conversation with him. 'But I actually that sort of epic moment that only happens in films, where I saw him before he died and closed the loop as much as I could.' Ryan - whose first married was to Scarlett Johansson from 2008 - 2011 - says he has his own happy family ending. 'Im on the precipice of having a real American family,' he told GQ, 'I mean, I always imagined that would happen, and then it happened. Every idiotic Hallmark-card cliche is true.' He returned to the world of red carpets earlier this week, after laying low in light of his tumultuous divorce from Angelina Jolie. But Brad Pitt looked more than happy to be back on the scene on Monday, as he jetted to Shanghai, China for another screening of his new drama Allied. The 52-year-old actor appeared to be in better spirits than ever as he answered questions about the new WWII drama - after taking endless selfies with adoring fans on the red carpet. Scroll down for video Back and better than ever: Brad Pitt, 52, appeared to be in better spirits than ever as he attended a screening for new war drama Allied in Shanghai, China on Monday Say cheese! The star happily chatted and took selfies with fans on the red carpet - appearing in better spirits since split from Angelina Jolie The hunky actor was sure to give back to his fans from the other side of the world, as he spent a long amount of time chatting and taking selfies with them on the red carpet. Known for being a heartthrob from his youth, Brad looked handsome as ever in his stylish all-black outfit - proving he has only got better with age. The star dressed in an incredibly dapper black three-piece suit, formed of perfectly tailored trousers and a clean cut blazer. Still hunky: Known for being a heartthrob from his youth, Brad looked handsome as ever in his stylish all-black outfit - proving he has only got better with age Keeping the look toned down, he opted for a matching black shirt underneath and layered a casually stylish scarf on top. Brad tied his look together with smart patent black brogues, to maintain the slick and suave feel throughout. The screening reportedly marked Brad's first public press appearance in China since he was banned from the country over a controversial film of his over 20 years ago. According to CBS News, the Chinese government reportedly didn't like his 1997 film, 'Seven Years in Tibet,' because of its portrayal of harsh Chinese rule in the Himalayan region. All black everything: Keeping the look toned down, he opted for a matching black shirt underneath and layered a casually stylish scarf on top However things with the Ocean's Eleven actor appeared to be on better terms, as he later headed inside to answer questions about the new war drama, Allied. The blockbuster, set for release next week, follows Canadian intelligence officer Max Vatan (Pitt) and his marriage to French Resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour, played by Marion Cotillard. The couple are then hit by war, and threatened with accusations that the French beauty is actually a spy for the Germans - with Vatan then setting out to clear her name. Big comeback: The screening reportedly marked Brad's first public press appearance in China since he was banned from the country over a controversial film of his over 20 years ago His co-star Marion Cotillard gushed of working with the Troy star during a press interview on Friday - in light of rumours that the pair had enjoyed a romance behind the scenes on set. '[Brad is] such a good man,' she said, explaining he had a heart of gold. 'Of course he's an amazing actor. He's such a good person that it's really not difficult to get along with him.' Brad announced he was separating from long-term partner Angelina Jolie as promotional proceedings for the film were kicking off - which caused speculation of an affair between him and the French actress to swirl. Big hitter: Allied, set for release next week, follows intelligence officer Max Vatan (Pitt) and his marriage to French Resistance fighter Marianne, played by Marion Cotillard However Marion took to her Instagram page in a rare post to staunchly confirm that such a romance did not take place. She wrote: 'This is going to be my first and only reaction to the whirlwind news that broke 24 hours ago and that I was swept up into. 'I am not used to commenting on things like this nor taking them seriously but as this situation is spiraling and affecting people I love, I have to speak up'. She went on: 'Many years ago, I met the man of my life, father of our son and of the baby we are expecting. He is my love, my best friend, the only one that I need.' But first, let me take a selfie: The hunky actor was sure to give back to his fans from the other side of the world, by spending lots of time chatting and taking selfies on the red carpet Marion went on to wish Brad and Angelina 'peace in this very tumultuous moment,' in her lengthy Instagram response. Angelina, who has six children with partner-of-12-years Brad, filed for divorce the day after an alleged altercation on a plane between Brad and their eldest son Maddox. However after laying low amid the difficult divorce proceedings, the Moneyball star finally returned to the public eye on Wednesday for the LA premiere of the film - and was open with his gratitude to fans for their support. He told E! News of the difficult few months on Wednesday: 'It's really sweet, everyone has been really kind out here. It's really nice to have all the support.' In a Monday morning tweet Alec Baldwin accused NBC of failing to allow Saturday Night Live to endorse Hillary Clinton. The day before the 58-year-old actor looked understandably morose as he strolled with his family in the Hamptons neighborhood of New York. In his arm was his son Rafael. Also with the Blue Jasmine star was his wife Hilaria, 32. Scroll down for video Time away: Alec Baldwin, 58, and wife Hilaria, 32, spent their weekend at the Hamptons on Sunday as they were spotted picking up coffee with their one-year-old son, Rafael The actor made his statement about NBC after Time television critic Daniel D'Addario criticized the program in a series of tweets on Sunday. D'Addario wrote in his final tweet: 'This show chose at every turn to display about as little courage or decisiveness as possible, beginning with having Trump host last Nov.' Baldwin, who has been playing Trump on the sketch comedy show this season, responded by writing: 'How naive you are @DPD_, SNL tell people who to vote for? Don't think that doesn't cross their mind. But NBC execs kill that.' Baldwin said about Trump last week on The Brian Lehrer Show: 'I don't hate Trump, but he's not somebody I admire, so it was more difficult.' Not as cold? The 30 Rock actor, carrying his son in his arms, wore a half-sleeve black shirt and dark grey slacks as he picked up some coffee for the morning Fall fashion: The yoga instructor donned a long black puffy coat, paired with dark tights and black boot heels as she sipped on her Starbucks coffee NBC and Saturday Night Live did not respond to requests for comment. Saturday Night Live has never formally endorsed a candidate for president. The actor was dressed in a half-sleeve black shirt, which he paired with grey slacks and leather shoes, as he carried his son and a cup of coffee. The yoga instructor covered up a bit more in a long black down coat, leggings and boot heels that she accessorized with a long green scarf. Live: Alec as Trump and Kate McKinnon as Clinton on SNL in October She held a brown paper bag in one hand and sipped on her Venti Starbucks cup in the other while a black leather purse hung off her arm, as if she was headed to a business meeting. Hilaria's wavy brown locks were styled down and pushed back by dark sunglasses. And it was no surprise to see the happy couple in the Hamptons as Alec recently completed renovating their 18th century farmhouse that they bought back in 1995. Telling Elle Decor how he wants to spend more time upstate and less in NYC, the 30 Rock star said: 'I think about how much I used to work, and how much I used to make that the priority... Now this is the priority,' as he referred to his family. A voice: Hilaria posted a post-election photo on her Instagram last week in light of the recent election and negative comments the mother-of-three has received Meanwhile, both Alec and Hilaria have been active on social media in light of the recent election. The actor - whose received acclaim for his Donald Trump impersonations on NBC's SNL- has expressed his disappointment with the presidential election on Twitter. However, he tweeted: 'The thing to focus on now is our families. To love those that were put in our lives to care for. Also our respective health, work and faith.' Hilaria on the other hand - who has been hit with a wave of criticism for working out only a few weeks after giving birth - decided to use all the negativity that's spurred from her posts and from the election as a positive. Posting a yoga pose on Instagram with her husband she wrote: 'Never silence an opinion that is respectfully stated. Having differing opinions is normal, important, and part of our incredible democracy.' She was an outspoken supporter for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. And on Monday Lena Dunham continued to speak out against President-elect Donald Trump during the 'Election 2016: What Just Happened?' panel of the Glamour Women of the Year Summit which was held in Los Angeles. The 30-year-old tried to process the shocking turn of events alongside New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, activist and Dolores Huerta Foundation president Dolores Huerta, and moderator Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend. Ready to give her two cents: Lena Dunham dressed all in black as she arrived at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles on Monday to be a part of the 'Election 2016: What Just Happened?' panel during the Glamour Women of the Year Summit Lena jumped right into the discussion, which was shared on Facebook, speaking passionately about the fear she is feeling following the Trump's victory. She did not hold back, saying: 'I think so many women are feeling scared, unsafe, ignored by the fact that somebody who is a predator, and is openly a predator, will soon be residing in the White House.' She added: 'That's a very terrifying fact that we are all going to have to reckon with every single day, and it can't be separated from his policy. It can't be separated from his politics.' Speaking out: The actress, who was an outspoken supporter of democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, shared her opinions on the shocking election results No holding back: Lena said that 'so many women are feeling scared, unsafe, ignored by the fact that somebody who is a predator, and is openly a predator... will soon be residing in the White House' Lena continued: 'It can't be separated from any issue, because it cuts to the heart of what he feels about human beings. Women are human beings.' Lena wore a long-sleeved, black jumpsuit, which featured a plunging V-neck front and black straps. She teamed the trendy jumpsuit with a pair of classic, black pumps, and kept her accessories simple. Dressed to impress: The Girls creator looked stylish in a black jumpsuit and coordinating Schutz pumps as she joined her fellow accomplished women onstage for the panel In good company: Lena was joined on the panel by New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, activist and Dolores Huerta Foundation president Dolores Huerta, and moderator Lizzie O'Leary The Girls creator wore her shoulder-length, brunette tresses styled in soft waves, and showed off a nude lipstick. On Friday, days after keeping mum about the election results, Lena shared her devastation at the loss to her website/newsletter Lenny Letter. 'At home I got in the shower and began to cry even harder. My boyfriend, who had already wept, watched me as I mumbled incoherently, clutching myself,' she shared. Captivated: Lena could be seen listening intently as fellow panelist Dolores spoke on Monday But, in the post, labeled 'Don't Agonize, Organize,' Lena also encouraged everyone to be prepared to fight back against any injustice. Meanwhile, Lena's panel was one of many slated for Glamour's big event, which also features appearances by Issa Rae, Rebecca Minkoff, Chrissy Metz, Ariel Winter, and Maria Shriver. She's been with her partner Kurt Russell since 1983. And on Monday, Hollywood star Goldie Hawn got very candid about their sex life when she appeared at press conference in Melbourne. The 70-year-old revealed details of a shared night in Aspen, Colorado, revealing: 'It was very romantic.' Scroll down for video 'It was very romantic': Hollywood star Goldie Hawn got very candid about her sex life with partner Kurt Russell when she appeared at press conference in Melbourne on Monday According to KIIS, the Private Benjamin star said she and Kurt were about to get intimate when their 1987 romantic comedy came on the television. The blonde beauty and mother of Kate Hudson said the pair then decided to watch the film. Meanwhile, Goldie also spoke about her relationship with ex husband Bill Hudson, who she was married to from 1976-1982. Speaking up: According to KIIS , the Private Benjamin star said she and Kurt were about to get intimate when their 1987 romantic comedy came on the television.(seen at the press conference) Sizzling on screen! The pair are seen here in the film Overboard The pair share two children, Hollywood star Kate and son Oliver. According to KIIS, Goldie said the couple's relationship was falling apart when she filmed the 1980 movie, Private Benjamin. She said she struggled to 'keep it together.' Opening up: Goldie also spoke about her relationship with ex husband Bill Hudson, (pictured) who she was married to from 1976-1982 Goldie is in Australia to perform a comedy show and to promote her MindUP program. MindUP is a school curriculum created by the Hawn Foundation as a tool to teach young kids the key to happiness and mindfulness. On Monday night, Goldie appeared on The Project and said despite now being Hollywood royalty, when she grew up she thought her life would be 'normal.' 'I thought my life would look like a normal, what we call, a normal person,' she said. 'I got married, I had children, I had a white picket fence, I had my own dancing school and I lived happily ever after,' she adding, describing what she meant. 'That's what I thought when I was 17 and 18, and 19. And then things suddenly changed.' He is set to make his acting debut on the set of Neighbours in the role of Jodi Anasta's on-screen ex-boyfriend. And The Loop host Scott Tweedie, 28, has revealed he felt overwhelmed while filming his scenes for the long-running soap, which also stars the likes of Olympia Valance, Alan Fletcher and Ryan Moloney. 'I was a little star-struck on the set [of Neighbours],' he confessed to TV Week. Scroll down for video 'I was a little star-struck': Scott Tweedie, 28, revealed he felt overwhelmed while filming his scenes for the long-running soap Neighbours 'But I've met a lot of the cast before, so it was a bit easier,' he added. He also revealed to the publication that he felt anxious about his acting abilities during filming, saying: ''Am I doing a good enough job for the other actors to bounce off?' I just didn't want to let the team down.' The handsome showman is set to play the role of Jodi Anasta's on-screen ex-boyfriend Derek in his cameo appearance this week. Spoiler alert! In the episode, which airs on November 18, Elly Conway (Jodi Anasta) will receive a text message from her ex Derek out of the blue, telling her that he is travelling to Erinsborough from Sydney to visit her According to Confidential, producers have been impressed with Scott's performance during filming, with a source claiming that it won't be his last appearance on Neighbours. In the episode, which airs on November 18, Elly Conway (Jodi Anasta) will receive a text message from her ex Derek out of the blue, telling her that he is travelling to Erinsborough from Sydney to visit her. According to Digital Spy, Elly will accidentally chat about the impending visit within earshot of her obsessive admirer Angus, prompting him to fly into a jealous rage. In glamorous company: Scott is set to make his acting debut on the set of Neighbours in the role of Jodi Anasta's on-screen ex-boyfriend Old flames: Despite Angus' attempts to foil the catch-up, Elly and Derek manage to rekindle their romance for a brief moment Angus hatches a plan to stop Elly's date from occurring, asking his friend Piper Willis to send a fabricated text message to her from a 'parent' who needs a tutor for their child. His attempts to sabotage the meeting fall flat, however, with Elly and Derek finally rekindling their romance for a brief moment. However, the date soon descends into chaos as the pair launch into a bitter argument. That was fast! However, the date soon descends into chaos as the pair launch into a bitter argument Former Home And Away star Jodi joined the cast of Neighbours in April this year. She told The Daily Telegraph at the time: 'I've been very much actively pursuing a major acting role. I have been doing classes and auditioning intensely for probably three or four months.' 'It is nice to be a working actor and know I've got a couple of years at the same thing and working with such incredible actors in this cast,' she said of her new full-time gig. New Zealand PM cancels Argentina trip after quake New Zealand Prime Minister John Key cancelled a trip to Argentina Monday after a powerful 7.8 earthquake rocked his South Pacific nation, but still hopes to attend an APEC summit in Peru. Key was scheduled to travel to Buenos Aires on Tuesday on a trade mission but said he wanted to stay at home until the scale of the quake's destruction was known. "The situation is still unfolding and we dont yet know the full extent of the damage," said the New Zealand leader, who has confirmed at least two quake-related deaths. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, seen in October 2016, said he would personally call Argentine President Mauricio Macri to explain why he could not travel to a meeting with him after a 7.9 magnitude earthquak hit New Zealand November 14, 2016 Prakash Singh (AFP) "I believe it is better that I remain in New Zealand in the coming days to offer my assistance and support until we have a better understanding of the event's full impact." New Zealand officials have apologised to their Argentinian counterparts and Key said he would personally call President Mauricio Macri to explain the situation. He added that he would still attend the November 19-20 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Lima "if circumstances permit". The jolt early Monday was one of the most powerful recorded in quake-prone New Zealand but Key said its impact appeared far less than a 2011 temblor in Christchurch that killed 185 people. Trump seeks to calm protests -- and reassure own camp Donald Trump sought in his first televised interview as president-elect to reassure Americans fearful of a crackdown on minorities -- while assuring his core supporters he will not let them down on gun rights, abortion or immigration. The Republican billionaire -- whose shock election on a populist and anti-immigration platform has spurred days of protests -- told demonstrators they have no reason to fear his presidency. "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back," he said in the interview with CBS's "60 Minutes." Melania Trump (L) listens to her husband US President-elect Donald Trump speak to the press at the US Capitol on November 10, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP/File) Trump said he was "saddened" by reports that incidents of harassment and intimidation of minorities had spiked since his election -- and called for it to end. "I hate to hear that. I am so saddened to hear that," Trump said when asked about the reports. "If it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it." Millions were expected to tune in to "60 Minutes" for clues on how the populist billionaire will govern, and how far he intends to convert his strident campaign slogans into hard and fast policy. Trump sent out clear signals to his core electorate on a string of flashpoint issues. He reaffirmed plans to aggressively deport or jail as many as three million undocumented immigrants -- those with criminal records, he said. Trump also said he stood by his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border -- although he said it could include some fencing. And on the key issue of the Supreme Court -- where one of nine seats is currently vacant -- he vowed his nominees would support abortion restrictions, and defend the constitutional right to bear arms. "The judges will be pro-life," Trump told CBS. "In terms of the whole gun situation," he added, "they're going to be very pro-Second Amendment." But he also signalled that he would not seek to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. "It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean its done," Trump said when asked on CBS's "60 minutes" if he supports marriage equality. "And I'm -- I'm fine with that," he added. And in a final conciliatory gesture, the billionaire said he would forego the $400,000 salary that comes with the function of US president. "I'm not going to take the salary. I'm not taking it," he said. "I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year," he added. 3 Political Uprisings And What They Owe To Social Media Most of us couldnt survive day-to-day without the internet and its host of benign distractions. But for many others, the internet is quite literally a survival tool one that connects them with the rest of the world and gives them a voice to speak out against tyranny. And since the world now seems gripped by unprecedented political turmoil, its worth a look at how the internet and social media specifically has helped protests and political uprisings gain traction all across the world, from the Dakota Access Pipeline to the war-torn streets of Aleppo. ADVERTISEMENT Dakota Access Pipeline via Twitter/Allen Brown One of the most contentious political issues currently underway on American soil is the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which threatens a burial ground and water source used by the Sioux people living on the Standing Rock Native American Reservation. Yes in 2016, were still arguing about the merits of building new pipelines. Those arguing for construction point to crude oil and natural gas as inoffensive stopgaps to see us through until America gets serious about renewables. Those opposed to the pipeline suggest that the cost of the pipeline would be better spent on wind or solar farms, and that eminent domain is a terrible excuse for an oil company to seize and perform construction on land privately owned by American citizens. Either way, the burden of proof is now on Dakota Access, LLC, which has to prove the pipeline would perform a public service and that it has thoroughly addressed the standard safety concerns for a project of this magnitude. Whatever your feelings on the matter might be, theres little question DAPL protesters have been grateful for the soapbox afforded them by social media. People all across the country have been checking in at the Standing Rock Reservation on Facebook in an attempt to 1) Confuse local police officers hoping to track would-be protestors and 2) Stand in (virtual) solidarity with the protesters in South Dakota and their supporters. The demonstration has now reached a fever pitch, with Senator Bernie Sanders openly encouraging the President to halt the pipeline indefinitely. Thanks to the internet, this messy issue is getting the attention of all the right people. Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War via Twitter/Zaher Sahloul Elsewhere in the world, social media is bringing attention in areas of conflict where the stakes are even higher. The Arab Spring has been an absolutely monumental event in recent history. It has helped to topple brutal dictatorships and bring awareness to Arab civilians throughout the world that there are entire hidden communities dedicated to rooting out corruption and weakening religions stranglehold on politics and public discourse. The Arab Spring reverberated throughout the world, but held special significance for Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Although messy and complex conflicts rage on in several of these countries, Tunisia has made the successful transition to democracy. But that would never have been possible if the internet hadnt allowed these would-be revolutionaries to collaborate. ADVERTISEMENT Fear is the greatest enemy to a cause like this one. When whats being fought against is so entrenched and so powerful, simply knowing others out there share your vision for the future is strength enough. Thats the role Twitter played in Arab Spring and continues to play in the Syrian Civil War that resulted from it. People know now that they dont struggle in isolation, and that their problems have the attention of world governments that can help bring an end to the bloodshed. In other words, if Syria goes on to follow in Tunisias footsteps, it will be because their revolution was emboldened by modern communication technology, which helped accomplish that which would have been impossible in another time and place. Black Lives Matter Twitter/Thomas D Bradley Finally, no roundup of social media-backed revolutions would be complete without mentioning Black Lives Matter. You may be as troubled as I am by the pushback this movement has received from Americas conservative wings, but thats a discussion for another time. For right now, its worth merely reflecting on this loosely affiliated groups understanding of the power of social media. Consider for a moment the message sent by Philando Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, when she live-streamed the aftermath of his death on Facebook. Its hard to believe that Castile was just one of scores of black men killed by white cops this year, but his story was unique in the speed with which it was spread and the method used to do so. America knew what was happening even before the blood was dry, which is as remarkable as it is chilling. This is an extreme example, to be sure but its incredibly instructive. The world has grown much smaller in just a few short years, and we owe it all to modern technologies. Without the Internet, police brutality, abusive pipeline companies and their (literal) attack dogs, murderous dictators and racist Presidential candidates would all still hold sway in their respective corners of the globe, unopposed. Technology gives us a voice and with that voice, unity. Next time you hear a friend rhapsodizing about how contemptible social media is and how alone it makes us, point them in the direction of DAPL, or Syrians on the ground in Aleppo, who are proving that technology can be something more than a distraction. Top photo: Twitter/Allen Brown More from BUST Why The Dakota Pipeline Matters Inside Standing Rock, The Most Important Native American Protest Of Our Time #NoDAPL 100 Women Of Color Leaders Want You To Sign This Pledge Holly Whitman is a feminist writer and political journalist, originally from London but now based in Washington DC. Her work has been featured on Feministing, Fortune, Babble, Yahoo Finance and more. You can find her on Twitter at @hollykwhitman or at her blog, Only Slightly Biased. After massacre, Central African town yearns for peace A month after rebels killed dozens of civilians in Kaga Bandoro, residents of the Central African Republic town still live in fear despite the presence of UN peacekeepers in the country and the prospect of nationwide disarmament. Returning to the scene of the massacre for the first time, Sylvie pointed to the ruins of the small home she built in what was a settlement for 8,000 civilians displaced during years of unrest. "That's where I lived for three years," she said, recovering a comb from the scorched ground between the low walls of now roofless huts. A UN helicopter flies over the newly formed camp for internally displaced people, in Kaga Bandoro, on October 18, 2016 Edouard Dropsy (AFP/File) On October 12 the predominantly Christian settlement was attacked by remnants of the mostly Muslim rebel "Seleka" coalition, which overthrew the national government in March 2013, only to be dislodged the following January. In apparent reprisal for the death of one of their own, the attackers killed at least 37 people and set fire to the camp. "People were burned on the spot, like two children and a grandmother over there," said site watchman Michel Kenze, near a pump where children were drawing water. After the attack, victims' corpses were left in the open to be eaten by wild pigs and other animals. Thousands of survivors, including Sylvie, fled to set up another camp between a base of the UN's MINUSCA peacekeeping force and the runway of the town's airport. - No longer in school - Sylvie now makes ends meet selling peanuts and fritters in a marketplace opposite the MINUSCA base. On the edge of the runway, young girls sing songs and play games. They are not in school. "We had just started the school year on September 19. On October 12, an education inspector was killed. After that, inspections shut down," said an aid worker with MINUSCA. "Civil servants had returned (to Kaga Bandoro), but they went back to Bangui after what happened," said local government official Paul Fradjala, who never ventures far from the UN base. The large country's army, police and government have a very limited presence outside the capital, Bangui. In 2013, Seleka's coup led to the formation of "anti-Balaka" vigilante units, drawn from the Christian majority, which began to target Muslims. Both sides committed widespread atrocities in different parts of the country, even after Seleka was chased from power. "We want peace, we want the armed groups to be disarmed," Sylvie said in her new home, a hut made from plastic sheeting where she stores her few possessions: a notebook, a jerrycan and an old mosquito net. A national programme to disarm fighters in CAR was officially launched a year ago, but in practice little has been done since to actually collect weapons or demobilise combattants. Sylvie no longer dares to visit Muslim traders on the far side of town over a bridge guarded by a few Pakistani UN troops -- members of the MINUSCA contingent accused of standing by as last month's massacre unfolded. The Muslim quarter is busy with shops selling food and clothes, a motel and a garage fixing motorbike taxis. In this part of town, Seleka fighters, along with gunmen from neighbouring Sudan and Chad, rub shoulders with civilians, residents say. "In the displaced persons' camps, there are also armed men among the civilians and MINUSCA sees and knows about them," counters Idriss Al Bachar, a young Seleka leader. - Tax on cattle - As much as he condemns the October massacre, Bachar is not in favour of disarmament, arguing that the rights and safety of the Muslim minority -- between 15 and 20 percent of the country's 4.5 million people -- are not yet guaranteed. "There is a climate of impunity in CAR, where members of armed groups and militias alleged to have committed appalling human rights abuses and crimes under international law, move freely throughout the country and continue to fuel violence," Amnesty International's Central Africa Researcher, Ilana Allegrozzi said Friday. There is an economic aspect to this impunity, according to Azrak Mahmat, an official in Kaga Bandoro's cattle market. "I pay 11,000 CFA francs ($16) in tax to Seleka for every head of cattle, he said. "When I load my vehicle to go to Bangui, the anti-balaka threaten me as well", he added. In the town's Muslim quarter, Abdelkarim, 56, and his Christian neighbour, Isakho Ndenga, 71, have enjoyed a decades-long friendship that has survived civil war and sectarian violence. Could they be an example for their country? "Inch Allah", the Muslim replies. If God wills it. A man builds a tent at the newly formed camp for internally displaced people, in Kaga Bandoro, on October 19, 2016 Edouard Dropsy (AFP/File) Exiled writer Nasreen fears for Bangladesh's future Having herself been the subject of fatwas and forced into exile by fundamentalist critics of her writing, Taslima Nasreen despairs at the wave of assassinations of secular bloggers in her native Bangladesh. "You know Islamisation started in Bangladesh in the 1980s and in the 80s I was very worried," recalls the prize-winning poet and novelist in an interview with AFP in New Delhi. "I wrote about Islamic fundamentalists. I said that they should not go unopposed or they will destroy our society, that's exactly what's happened now." Exiled author Taslima Nasreen has not set foot in her native Bangladesh for 22 years Sajjad Hussain (AFP) It's 22 years since Nasreen last set foot in Bangladesh, having been forced to flee in fear of her life after tens of thousands of Islamists took to the streets to denounce her writing. Her novels and essays had brought her no shortage of enemies and she upset the government by railing against rights abuses and the treatment of women. She infuriated Islamists with her fiercely pro-secular views. She was feted abroad, winning the European parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1994, but the government back home filed a case against her for hurting religious sentiment. After three separate fatwas calling for her execution were issued, Nasreen fled first to Europe before moving to Bangladesh's giant neighbour India. Her plight is all too familiar to a new generation of secular writers whose blogs criticising fundamentalism have been met with fury by Islamist groups. Dozens have either been murdered with machetes, gone into hiding or fled with their families to Europe and the United States. No one has been convicted of any of the attacks although some suspects have been killed during raids by the security forces. Bangladesh, which gained its independence in 1971 after winning a war of secession against Pakistan, is an officially secular nation. But Nasreen says Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has made the same mistake as her predecessors by failing to stand firm against hardliners who want the country to be defined by religion. "I am very worried. Bangladesh was born as a secular state but now it's a kind of fundamentalist state," she said. "Islamic fundamentalists are very powerful, they can kill anyone if they want. "And because those atheist bloggers criticise Islam -- they criticise other religions too -- but because they criticised Islam they were hacked to death and the government didn't take any action against those killers," she added. - Living with fear - As someone who lives round-the-clock with protection, Nasreen says it's important not to allow oneself to be overwhelmed by fear. "I think I've got used to it, you have to," she said inside her small apartment, armed guards stationed outside. "Of course every time a fatwa is issued I get shocked, I get sad, I get scared and then you know you have to live your every day life. "You cannot think of death all the time, then it's not a living. If I think of death all the time then I would not have been able to write so many books." Since her first collection of poetry came out in 1982, Nasreen has had more than 40 books published. Arguably her most famous work was the 1993 novel "Lajja" (Bengali for Shame) which was about the persecution of a Hindu family living in Bangladesh, where more than 90 percent of the population is Muslim. Nasreen's latest book "Exile" is a memoir about how she was hounded out of the Indian state of West Bengal a decade ago following protests by Muslim groups who tried to force her out of the country for good. She remains effectively persona non grata in West Bengal and her enmity for her critics is as sharp as ever. "Who are they to decide who can stay in India and who cannot? ... Those people committed a crime but you are punishing me for no fault of mine," she says animatedly on her rocking chair. "They issued a fatwa, put a price on my head -- which is illegal in India -- but nobody was punished for that. I was punished for that, the victim was punished." Nasreen's home is dotted with stickers and banners with slogans of the causes close to her heart, such as "Proud To Be A Feminist" and "Atheism Cures Religious Terrorism". A book of cartoons from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is displayed prominently on her coffee table. - Right to offend - Twelve people were shot dead in Charlie Hebdo's offices in January last year by Islamist gunmen who had taken offence to cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Nasreen argues the right to offend is a fundamental part of freedom of expression. "Many of my books, people say they hurt their religious feelings," she said. "But I think that if we believe in freedom of expression then we should believe also that everybody should have the right to express their opinions and everybody has the right to offend others and nobody has the right to live their entire life without being offended. "Freedom of expression cannot exist without the right to offend." Islamist groups have targeted Bangladeshi writers and activists whose work has criticised fundamentalism Luck deserts Australia in second Test against South Africa Luck deserted Australia in their desperate bid to salvage the second Test with South Africa snaring the vital wicket of David Warner in unfortunate circumstances in Hobart on Monday. Warner, who was seeking redemption after his reckless dismissal in the opening over of the first innings, lost his wicket while at the forefront of Australia's fightback. At stumps on the third day the home side were 121 for two, still 120 runs behind the Proteas, who have been in control of the Test since routing Australia for 85 on Saturday. South Africa's Kyle Abbott (R) celebrates his first wicket of Australia's Joe Burns on the third day's play of their second Test, in Hobart, on November 14, 2016 Saeed Khan (AFP) Usman Khawaja was unbeaten on 56, his ninth Test half-century, with skipper Steve Smith not out 18. Warner flung his head back in despair when a ball from Kyle Abbott hit his hip and ricocheted off an elbow onto his stumps when he was on 45. It gave the Proteas a huge fillip after Warner and Khawaja had recovered the innings with a 79-run stand after the loss of Joe Burns in the first over. Burns lasted just four balls before he was caught behind, tickling at one wide down the leg-side from Abbott. "We've done well with the bat, two unlucky dismissals, but that happens in cricket and the boys have shown some good fight, digging in even though the ball is nipping around a fair bit," Australian paceman Josh Hazlewood said. "A really good partnership in the morning, a good first hour and that will go a long way to having a good day tomorrow." Khawaja played some lovely shots in his vigil, providing great support for his captain Smith, who top scored with an unbeaten 48 in the first innings shambles. - De Kock century - Australia face a mighty struggle to prevent South Africa, already 1-0 up, from claiming their third successive series in Australia with only next week's day-night third Test in Adelaide still to play. South Africa earlier extended their first innings lead to 241 before they were all out for 326 with Quinton de Kock plundering a century and Hazlewood finishing with six for 89. After Sunday's second day was washed out, the Australians chased early wickets but de Kock and Bavuma batted South Africa into a position of strength with a century stand. The swashbuckling wicketkeeper, likened to Australian Test great Adam Gilchrist, was bowled by Hazlewood just before lunch for 104 off 143 balls with 17 boundaries. His stand of 144 with Bavuma was the highest by a visiting team in Hobart for the sixth wicket. "Obviously, I'm happy with what we've done and what we've achieved, but the game has only gone past halfway and we still have a lot to do," de Kock said. "The Aussies looked very determined in their second innings so we have a lot to play for." De Kock has scored 540 runs in 2016 in just nine Test innings and leads the year's international averages with 80 having been unbeaten twice. He became only the fourth South African to register 50 or more in five consecutive Tests after he swept spinner Nathan Lyon for four over wide mid-on. Shortly after lunch, Tembo Bavuma was surprised by a rearing delivery to spoon an easy catch to Nathan Lyon at point and give Joe Mennie his first Test wicket for 74. Vernon Philander was the last man out for 32 off 28 balls, caught behind off Hazlewood. South Africa's batsman Quinton de Kock celebrates his 100-runs on the third day's play of their second Test match against Australia, in Hobart, on November 14, 2016 Saeed Khan (AFP) Kerry in Oman for Yemen peace efforts US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks Monday with officials in Oman on efforts to end Yemen's 19-month-old conflict, state media in Muscat said. Kerry met with Oman's ruler Sultan Qaboos to discuss "the conflict in Yemen and the urgent need to find a durable political settlement to ease the suffering of the Yemeni people", said US State Department spokesman John Kirby. They welcomed a peace roadmap proposed by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed that was rejected by Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, he added. John Kerry's visit to Oman was one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration steps down in January Mark Ralston (AFP) Kerry also "expressed the United States' deep appreciation for the helpful role Oman played in securing the recent release of US citizens held in Yemen". Oman maintains good ties with Iran which is accused of supporting Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels. Muscat is also a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), led by regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which backs Hadi's internationally-recognised government. It has mediated the release of several Westerners held in Yemen, the latest being an American identified as Wallead Yusuf Pitts Luqman who was transported to Muscat from rebel-held Sanaa on an Omani military aircraft on November 7. Oman is the only GCC member not taking part in the Saudi-led military coalition bombing rebels in Yemen since March 2015, but it still maintains good ties with Saudi Arabia. Kerry's visit to Oman was one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration steps down in January. The US chief diplomat has been pushing for a settlement in Yemen, where the deadly conflict between rebels and the government escalated after the Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened on the side of the government. Oman has also used its links to mediate peace talks between the insurgents and Hadi's government. More than 7,000 people have been killed and nearly 37,000 wounded in Yemen since March 2015, and the UN says millions are in need of food aid. Another 21 million people urgently need health services, according to the United Nations. On Monday, 12 civilians, including a child, were killed in an air raid that targeted a convoy of lorries in central Ibb province, while nine rebels were killed in an ambush in the same region, military and medical sources said. Heavy pollution shuts schools in Iran's capital Iran shut schools and apologised to tourists Monday as its cities were hit by choking levels of air pollution. A blanket of brown-white smog descended on the capital Tehran on Sunday, blocking views of the mountains that line its northern edge and forcing many of its 14 million residents to retreat indoors or don face masks in the street. The pollution in Tehran hit 156 on the Air Quality Index of deadly airborne particles, over the 150 considered "unhealthy" for the general public. In tourist hotspot Isfahan the level hit 167. Exhaust fumes from millions of cars and motorcycles that ply Tehran's roads account for 80 percent of its pollution, which increases in winter as emissions fail to rise above cold air Officials apologised to foreign visitors for the bleak conditions. "We hope our people's hospitality wipes the grey image of Tehran's beautiful attractions from their minds," the capital's tourism boss Rajab Ali Khosroabadi told the ISNA news agency. Kindergartens and primary schools in Tehran were ordered to stay closed Monday and Tuesday, and traffic restrictions were tightened. Ambulances were deployed to wait in the busiest and dirtiest areas amid warnings that children, the elderly and those with existing health conditions were at particular risk. "Since no one does anything, every year the problem gets worse. The government should block old cars. We must improve public transport," Zeynab Nazari, a first-year sociology student, told AFP. Every year, Tehran suffers some of the worst pollution in the world when cool autumn temperatures cause an effect known as "temperature inversion". The phenomenon creates a layer of warm air above the city that traps pollution from some 10 million cars and motorbikes. The latest smog cloud is expected to hang over the city until Wednesday when forecasters hope winds will move the stagnant air, an official told state television. Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf rode the metro to work Sunday in a bid to encourage people to use public transport. Despite having around 100 stations, Ghalibaf says the metro is not sufficiently funded by central government, forcing millions to rely on cars. Pollution has become a political football in recent years, with conservatives and reformists blaming each other for the problem. Hardliners accuse reformist vice-president Massoumeh Ebtekar, who heads the environmental protection agency, of not doing enough. Ultra-conservative daily Vatane Emrooz said Monday that 70 percent of deaths in Tehran were linked to pollution. Ebtekar, in an Instagram post, said various measures to reduce factory pollution and provide cleaner petrol had led to "significant" improvement. Still, weather conditions and heavy congestion remain a blight. Two traffic restriction zones -- introduced in 1979 and 2005 -- have done little to solve the problem. Local carmakers have been reluctant to introduce cleaner engines, while foreign firms have been kept out by international sanctions. In 2014, almost 400 people were hospitalised with heart and respiratory problems caused by pollution in Tehran. Nearly 1,500 others required treatment. The health ministry estimated that pollution in 2012 contributed to the premature deaths of 4,500 people in Tehran and about 80,000 across the country. Manning is currently serving her sentence at a men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas suicide twice while in prison, most recently last month Imprisoned transgender soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years behind bars for leaking classified U.S. documents, has asked President Barack Obama to reduce her sentence before he leaves office, according to reports. Manning, originally named Bradley, was convicted in August 2013 of espionage and other offenses after admitting to handing classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning, who has already spent half a dozen years in prison, said she is not asking for a pardon and understands that the conviction will stay on her record, according to a statement accompanying the petition, which was published by the New York Times on Sunday. Scroll down for full statement Former Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning (left) has filed a formal petition, asking President Obama (right) to release her from prison for time served. She was convicted in August 2013 of leaking thousands of military documents to Wikileaks 'The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members,' she said. Manning, whose suicide attempt last month was her second while in prison, spoke of the hardships she has undergone while serving in the military as a person coming to terms with her gender identity. The 28-year-old private has repeatedly decried her treatment in the men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where she is appealing her sentence. While hailed by supporters as a hero for exposing what they see as U.S. abuses in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Manning has been denounced by prosecutors as a traitor who put her country and comrades at risk. Manning's petition included letters of support from Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in 1971 as well as journalist Glenn Greenwald and former military commissions chief prosecutor Morris Davis. Obama has just over than two months left in office before newly elected Donald Trump becomes president. Pakistan says India killed seven troops in Kashmir The Pakistani military accused India on Monday of killing seven soldiers in cross-border fire in disputed Kashmir, in what appeared to be an unusually high toll after months of surging tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours. "Seven (Pakistani) soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom) at the Line of Control (LoC) in Bhimber sector in a crossfire LoC violation by Indian troops late last night," the military said in a statement. "Pakistani troops while responding to Indian unprovoked firing targeted Indian posts effectively." Tensions across the long-disputed de facto Himalayan border between India and Pakistan reached dangerous levels in September STR (AFP/File) Following the incident Pakistan summoned the Indian High Commissioner to protest the killing of the soldiers. "The Foreign Secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the Working Boundary, especially in the last two months," said a statement issued by the foreign office. "The Foreign Secretary asked the Indian High Commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness," the statement said. However the Indian army alleged that the ceasefire violation was initiated by Pakistan. "There was a brief ceasefire violation, initiated by Pakistan in Naushera sector, which was effectively retaliated last night," Col N N Joshi, Indian Army spokesman in the Kashmir region told AFP. Tensions across the long-disputed de facto Himalayan border reached dangerous levels in September, when India blamed Pakistani militants for a raid on an army base that killed 19 soldiers. India said it had responded by carrying out "surgical strikes" across the heavily militarised border, sparking a furious reaction from Islamabad, which denied the strikes took place. There have since been repeated outbreaks of cross-border firing, with both sides reporting deaths and injuries including of civilians, though the deaths of seven soldiers in what appeared to be one such incident is relatively high. The border skirmishes come against the backdrop of months of protests against Indian rule of Kashmir, sparked by the killing of a popular rebel leader in July. Nearly 90 people, most of them young protesters, have been killed in clashes with security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir since then. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accused India of carrying out the latest cross-border skirmishes in an effort to distract the world's attention from the violent protests. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," he added in a statement. Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both claim the Himalayan territory in full and have fought two wars over the mountainous region. DR Congo PM resigns but opposition wants Kabila to quit Congolese Prime Minister Augustin Matata resigned Monday to make way for an opposition figure to take his place following a controversial deal that effectively extends the president's term in office. The decision to delay presidential polls until at least late 2017 was part of a deal agreed in October by the government and fringe opposition groups that has been boycotted as a sham by the mainstream opposition. The deal, which followed a "national dialogue", was aimed at calming soaring political tensions. Augustin Matata Ponyo, then Democratic Republic of Congo prime minister, pictured during an interview in Kinshasa on April 13, 2015 Federico Scoppa (AFP/File) "I have offered my resignation as well as those of the members of my government... to respond to the spirit and the letter of the accord," said Matata as he left a meeting with President Joseph Kabila. The opposition has accused 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. Kabila will address the situation on Tuesday when he speaks to parliament to discuss "the state of the nation", according to a statement read on state media. Vital Kamerhe, who led the fringe opposition bloc that participated in the national dialogue, is the favourite to succeed Matata as prime minister. Following a meeting with Kabila, Kamerhe said that the nomination of a new premier was "imminent" and the formation of a new opposition-led government would be complete within a week. - 'Get on board' - He added that the opposition groups which boycotted the "national dialogue" could still "get on board at any moment. We are still open". The main dissident coalition Rassemblement (Gathering) -- which has rallied around veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi -- has rejected the deal that followed the "national dialogue" and stepped up its calls for Kabila to leave office by December 19 when his term ends. Tshisekedi's UPDS party said the resignation was meaningless. "The UDPS notes the resignation of Mr Matata," said spokesman Augustin Kabuya, adding that it "will however not resolve the crisis. "The Congolese people don't want a new prime minister to be named but that Mr Kabila quits power" next month, he said. The country has been in a state of crisis since disputed elections in 2011 returned Kabila to office for a second term. A 2006 constitutional provision limits the presidency to two terms. Violent anti-Kabila protests on September 19 and 20 triggered by the political instability claimed 53 lives, according to the UN. A UN Security Council delegation in the country has called for a peaceful transition of power following the government's decision to delay elections. Kabila took power in 2001, 10 days after the assassination of his father, the then-president, Laurent Kabila. Joseph Kabila was first elected to a five-year term as president in 2006. He then won a hotly-disputed election against Tshisekedi in 2011. Malaysia opposition MP sentenced to jail over 1MDB leak A prominent Malaysian opposition politician was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail on Monday for leaking a classified document on a corruption scandal involving the prime minister. The conviction of Rafizi Ramli, who has a record of exposing government corruption, was sharply criticised by the opposition and rights groups as a worrying use of a state-secrets law. Rafizi was convicted of violating the country's Official Secrets Act by revealing parts of an Auditor-General's report into the scandal swirling around the state-owned fund 1MDB. Allegations that billions of dollars were misappropriated from the 1MDB fund have triggered a scandal in Malaysia embroiling Prime Minister Najib Razak Manan Vatsyayana (AFP/File) Prime Minister Najib Razak is fighting allegations that billions of dollars were looted from 1MDB, which he founded in 2009. The case has sparked investigations in several countries including the United States. The Auditor-General's report had been declared a state secret by the government, drawing accusations from critics that the unprecedented move was part of a cover-up. Rafizi, a parliament member and vice-president of the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People's Justice Party) plans to appeal. If the conviction is not set aside on appeal, he would be ruled out of elections due within the next 18 months. Rafizi has long been a thorn in the side of the ruling coalition, which has controlled Malaysia since independence in 1957, repeatedly exposing government malfeasance. "The conviction and sentence will create a dangerous chill on free speech and result in a more repressive, opaque and unaccountable government," the Malaysian legal activist group Lawyers for Liberty said in a statement. Najib, who denies any wrongdoing, has cracked down on critics to contain the scandal and last year brought domestic investigations to a halt. BBC cancels Morocco debate on Islam and politics The BBC has been forced to move a debate on Islam and politics from Morocco to another country because of problems over filming permissions, the broadcaster has said. "Global Questions, our highly respected and internationally renowned current affairs programme, had planned to travel to Casablanca in Morocco for a debate about Islam's place in politics", the BBC told AFP on Sunday. "Unfortunately, for unforeseen reasons related to permissions, we will no longer be filming this debate in Morocco but plan to take it to an alternative country," a spokesperson said. The BBC was forced to move a debate on Islam and politics from Morocco to another country because of problems over filming permissions Carl De Souza (AFP/File) French-language Moroccan newspaper l'Economiste said the episode would instead be filmed in Tunisia. A flagship BBC debate programme, Global Questions is presented by Sudanese-British journalist Zeinab Badawi and broadcast on both television and radio. The broadcaster said the episode was to be an "informed and balanced discussion" of the role of Islam in politics in Morocco and the region. It was to feature a "high-profile panel of political, civil society and religious figures", it said. The programme had been set to be recorded in late September for broadcast on December 4. Bangladesh buys two submarines from China Bangladesh took delivery on Monday of its first submarines, bought from China, as it seeks to boost its naval power in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh paid a reported $203 million for the two submarines, a deal that reflects the country's growing economic and defence ties with Beijing. Armed forces spokeswoman Taposhi Rabeya said they would become part of the country's naval fleet at the beginning of next year. Bangladesh has paid China a reported $203 million for two submarines, a deal that reflects the country's growing economic and defence ties with Beijing STR (AFP/File) "This is the first ever addition of submarines in Bangladesh defence force," she told AFP. Bangladesh has been expanding its defence capabilities in recent years, building a new airbase close to neighbouring Myanmar, opening several new military cantonments across the country and adding new frigates to its naval fleet. In 2013 the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina signed a billion-dollar deal with Russia to buy fighter training jets, helicopters and anti-tank missiles. Hasina announced the plan to purchase two submarines the same year as part of her government's move to build a modern navy to defend the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. A UN tribunal has settled Bangladesh's long-standing maritime border disputes with neighbours Myanmar and India, paving the way for Dhaka to invite bids from multinational firms to explore for oil in the Bay. Bangladesh officials say that has ensured the country's sovereignty over 111,631 square kilometres (43,100 square miles) of sea, an area nearly equal to its landmass. Coalition advisers help alliance fight for IS Syria bastion On the roof of a house in northern Syria, a foreign soldier from the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group monitors progress towards the jihadist bastion of Raqa. He is one of a few dozen advisers from the international coalition helping a Kurdish-Arab alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces advance towards IS's Syrian stronghold. The advisers are leery of journalists, demanding that an AFP photographer stop taking photographs and leave when they spot him. Fighters from a Kurdish-Arab alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces pictured in the northern Syrian village of al-Huriya on November 11, 2016 near the front line of fighting against jihadists of the Islamic State group Delil Souleiman (AFP/File) SDF sources say that around 50 foreign troops are involved in the operation, which began on November 6, primarily to guide anti-IS coalition air strikes. AFP journalists on the ground have seen soldiers with US markings on their uniforms, along with others speaking French. The coalition's press office declined to detail the number of its forces on the ground, or their nationalities, but confirmed they were playing a wide-ranging role in the fight for Raqa. "As part of the coalition's commitment to advise, assist and accompany the SDF, we are asked to help with operational planning, the coordination of air strikes, arranging troop movements, training and supplying equipment to the SDF for the isolation of Raqa," a spokesperson told AFP. In the village of Al-Huriya, one adviser peers through binoculars at the fighting in the nearby village of Al-Heisha, which SDF fighters eventually wrenched from IS control on Friday. On radios, SDF fighters can be heard relaying details to commanders about their progress and where they might need help from the coalition aircraft flying constantly overhead. - 'Civilian human shields' - "The forces advancing on the ground give us coordinates close to the targets," says SDF commander Ahmed Osman, in the yard of another house that has been turned into a command centre. "They calculate the distances between them and the mercenaries and work out where the fire is coming from, then they send us the coordinates and we transmit them to the coalition so the targets are hit." The strikes are sometimes used against one of IS's favoured weapons: suicide car bombs. "Sometimes we take them out with our weapons, but other times coalition aircraft strike them after we tell them the coordinates," Osman says. The US-led coalition began strikes in Syria in September 2014, and has worked closely with Syrian Kurdish-led forces to push IS from large swathes of territory. Such cooperation has angered Washington's NATO ally Turkey, which considers the main Syrian Kurdish YPG militia a "terrorist" group, and is currently waging its own offensive inside Syria, targeting both IS and the Kurds. On the ground, SDF vehicles speed through the desert towards the front line, despite the mortar rounds IS fires as it struggles to hang on to Al-Heisha. "Our comrades are preparing for an attack, and the mercenaries are firing mortars, but planes are over the region now," says Akid Kobane, another SDF commander. Kobane says the air strikes are a key part of the SDF assault, considered a precise way to target IS while minimising civilian casualties. "IS is using civilians as human shields," he says. "We're not using heavy weapons in the battle for Raqa, we're relying on personal weapons and the coalition's strikes." - Concealing car bombs - In a bid to protect themselves, some civilians have raised white flags on their roofs, but there have been allegations of civilian deaths in air strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, reported at least 20 civilians killed in coalition strikes on Al-Heisha on November 9. An SDF spokeswoman at the time dismissed the report as IS propaganda, although the coalition said it was investigating the incident. Civilians who have fled the fighting confirm that IS is embedded among local residents. "There are always strikes on areas where Daesh (IS) is present... and Daesh hides itself, even among children," says 38-year-old Amsha at a makeshift camp for displaced civilians outside the town of Ain Issa, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Raqa. "Our children are terrified when the planes are overhead. We've a little girl who shrieks 'Plane, plane!' each time she hears one and runs to hide," she says. "Daesh would hide explosive-packed cars between houses to try to conceal them from the planes," adds Ghada, in her twenties. "The jihadists would tell us they had no problem dying, so why would they care if civilians are killed alongside them?" Japan, S. Korea ink controversial intelligence deal South Korea and Japan reached a controversial deal Monday to share defence intelligence, Japanese officials said, despite protests from opposition parties and activists in Seoul. Japan controlled the Korean peninsula as a colony from 1910-1945, with the legacy of the harsh rule marring relations with both North and South Korea today. South Korea and Japan were on the verge of signing a deal in June 2012, but Seoul suddenly backtracked, with Japanese media blaming anti-Japanese sentiment among the South Korean public for the move. A South Korean (L) and a Japanese flag pictured at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul in September 2006 as delegations hold a meeting to discuss their maritime borders Kim Jae-Hwan (AFP/File) Both sides reopened talks last month following North Korea's continued advances in its nuclear and missile programmes, which are seen as a threat in both countries. Officials meeting in Japan's capital "reached a working agreement and conducted a provisional signing," Japan's foreign ministry said in a statement, without providing details. "We will continue making final arrangements toward the official signing," the statement said. The issue remains divisive in South Korea and the timing comes as the country has seen massive street demonstrations calling for the resignation of President Park Geun-Hye over a domestic political scandal. The deal has been fiercely opposed by South Korean opposition parties and civic activists, citing Seoul's failure to seek public support and historical sensitivities. "Japan, which once occupied the Korean peninsula and enslaved Koreans with its military might, is still not admitting a lot of its past atrocities," the main opposition Democratic Party said in a statement Monday before the agreement was announced. "This deal is an unpatriotic, humiliating deal that is opposed by our own people and not accepted by history." The party also voiced concern over Japan's growing military ambitions under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, describing the deal as "the first step towards allowing and recognising Japan's military rise." However Tokyo lauded the agreement, saying the move was "important" for checking North Korea's power. "It is important that Japan and South Korea cooperate to deal with North Korea's nuclear and missile issues," top Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters. At least 10 Nigerian Shiites killed in clashes with police At least 10 people were killed and several injured Monday when Nigerian police opened fire during clashes with pro-Iranian Shiites outside northern Kano, the latest round of violence involving the group, witnesses and police said. Violence broke out when police tried to disperse thousands of members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) marching from Kano in Kano state, to Zaria in Kaduna state -- where they have been banned -- for the Ashura religious festival. There have been several incidents of sectarian violence involving the IMN in the past year in Nigeria, with Sunni Muslim mobs attacking Shiite ceremonies just in recent weeks. Police patrol in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, on September 17, 2014 Aminu Abubakar (AFP/File) "The police arrived and started firing teargas canisters on the procession of Shiites to disperse them," grocer Ilyasu Ammani told AFP. "I saw 15 bodies sprawled on the ground before the police evacuated them," he added of the violence in Kwanar Dawaki on the outskirts of Kano. Witness Kabiru Mudassir said he saw more than "10 bodies being taken away in a police van." Nigerian police said they opened fire on the IMN crowd, who were armed with bows and arrows, after one of their officers was hurt. "They injured one of our officers and our men opened fire because they were becoming violent," said a police officer who asked to remain anonymous. "Thousands of Shiite members obstructed motorists on the highway, they disturbed innocent motorists," Kano state police commissioner Rabiu Yusuf said at a press conference. "Shiite members armed with bows and arrows and some dangerous weapons killed one policeman and injured three others," Yusuf said. "Eight Shiite members were seriously injured. They were taken to hospital and were confirmed dead." The violence comes just over a month since 10 IMN members -- who were also in the streets for religious celebrations -- were killed in the town of Funtua in northern Katsina state following clashes with security forces. In October, Kano police banned IMN from conducting street processions ahead of the annual Ashura rites. In the days before, prominent Kaduna state governor Nasir El-Rufai had banned the group as an "unlawful society", saying it was a security threat and calling for security forces to "vigorously" arrest its members. - 'Intentional heavy-handedness' - The IMN seeks to establish an Islamic state through an Iranian-style revolution and has been in conflict with the Nigerian government over the years. In December 2015 the group fought against soldiers for two days in the city of Zaria. The fighting left over 300 IMN members dead while leader Ibrahim Zakzaky was left partially paralysed and blind in one eye. Amnesty International later accused Nigeria's military of acting "unlawfully" by shooting "indiscriminately" at unarmed protestors. Experts warn that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's response to the issue is stoking tension at a time when security forces are overstretched fighting Boko Haram jihadists in the northeast and Niger delta militants in the south. "I see a pattern of intentional heavy-handedness in dealing with this group," Jos-based political analyst Chris Ngwodo told AFP. "You have a situation where the Nigerian state only has hammers in its toolkit, and sees people as nails to be hammered in or out of existence," Ngwodo said, adding that he fears history will repeat itself. Jihadist group Boko Haram took up arms against the Nigerian government following a 2009 crackdown on the group that killed leader Mohammed Yusuf. Complicating the picture is growing concern that northern Nigeria is becoming the latest battleground in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, after violent clashes in the region in the past six months between supporters of rival groups from the two main branches of Islam. "Is this part of escalating Saudi influence on Nigerian policy? Is this part of efforts to remit or degrade Nigerian Shiites as a proxy for Iran?" Ngwodo said. Governments around the world have stepped up efforts to block or censor social media and messaging applications, in a new blow to internet freedom, a watchdog group has said. The Freedom on the Net report by the activist group Freedom House said online freedom declined in 2016 for a sixth consecutive year, amid new restrictions on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and social networks. A staggering two-thirds of all internet users live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to censorship, the report found. Two-thirds of all internet users live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to censorship, the new report found. A map showing the worst offenders (dark red) and the least (pale pink) is shown. Grey countries were not assessed THE REPORT IN BRIEF Internet freedom around the world declined in 2016 for the sixth consecutive year. Two-thirds of all internet users, 67 per cent, live in countries where criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to censorship. Social media users face unprecedented penalties, as authorities in 38 countries made arrests based on social media posts over the past year. Globally, 27 per cent of all internet users live in countries where people have been arrested for publishing, sharing, or merely 'liking' content on Facebook. Governments are increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which can spread information quickly and securely. Advertisement The US was ranked fourth and the UK eighth in the overall comparison of how 'free' the internet is 65 different countries, while Estonia took the number one spot. 'Popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been subject to growing censorship for several years, but governments are now increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram,' said Sanja Kelly, director of the study. Messaging apps have become increasingly popular tools for activists, and many of them can offer encrypted communications which make it more difficult for the users to be monitored, the report noted. 'The key reason for the block of these apps is preventing users from disseminating news during periods of unrest,' Kelly said. The report said 34 of the 65 countries assessed in the report have seen internet freedom deteriorate since June 2015. Some of the notable declines were in Uganda, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador and Libya, while online freedom improved in Sri Lanka and Zambia and in the United States, due to the passage of a law limiting collection of telecommunications metadata. Governments in 24 countries limited or blocked access to social media and communication tools, up from 15 in the previous year. Even some democratic governments have been targeting applications that use encryption features seen as a threat to national security, like WhatsApp. The report said 34 of the 65 countries assessed in the report have seen internet freedom deteriorate since June 2015. Green countries are free, yellow are partly free and blue are not free CHINA'S 'DRACONIAN' CYBERSECURITY LAW Last week China passed a controversial cybersecurity bill, tightening restrictions on online freedom of speech. The bill also imposes new rules on online service providers, raising concerns it is further cloistering its heavily controlled internet. The legislation, passed by China's largely rubber-stamp parliament and set to take effect in June 2017, is an 'objective need' of China as a major internet power, a parliament official said. The law is largely focused on protecting the country's networks and private user information. But it also bans internet users from publishing a wide variety of information, including anything that damages 'national honour', 'disturbs economic or social order' or is aimed at 'overthrowing the socialist system'. A provision requiring companies to verify a user's identity effectively makes it illegal to go online anonymously. Companies providing online services in the country must provide 'technical support and help' to public security organs investigating 'crimes', which would normally include those related to speech. Advertisement WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption on its messages and calls, faced restrictions in 12 of the 65 countries analysed, more than any other app. 'Although the blocking of these tools affects everyone, it has an especially harmful impact on human rights defenders, journalists, and marginalized communities who often depend on these apps to bypass government surveillance,' said Kelly. China was the world's worst offender for a second year, according to the report, followed by Syria and Iran. Freedom House criticized a new Chinese law that allows for seven-year prison terms for spreading rumors on social media, a charge often used to imprison political activists. It said some users in China belonging to minority religious groups were imprisoned for watching religious videos on mobile phones. The report said authorities in 38 countries made arrests based on social media posts over the past year, an increase of more than 50 per cent since 2013. Prison sentences imposed in some countries exceeded ten years. Some have been jailed for merely sharing or 'liking' content on Facebook. 'When authorities sentence users to long prison terms for simply criticizing government policies online, almost everyone becomes much more reluctant to post anything that could get them in similar trouble,' Kelly said. Globally, 27 per cent of all internet users live in countries where people have been arrested for publishing, sharing, or merely 'liking' content on Facebook. Social media users face unprecedented penalties, as authorities in 38 countries made arrests based on posts At least 15 countries temporarily shut down internet or mobile networks as another way of limiting online activism, the report said. Some governments broadened the range of censorship to include images, caricatures and even emojis deemed offensive by regimes, Freedom House said. In Egypt, for example, a student who posted a photo depicting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with Mickey Mouse ears got a three-year prison term. 'When faced with humorous memes and cartoons of themselves, some world leaders are thin-skinned and lash out,' said Kelly. EU sanctions 17 Syrian ministers, central bank governor The European Union on Monday placed 17 Syrian ministers plus the central bank governor on a sanctions blacklist targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad over attacks on civilians. They face travel bans and asset freezes for "being responsible for the violent repression against the civilian population in Syria, benefiting from or supporting the regime, and/or being associated with such persons," an EU statement said. EU leaders agreed at a summit in October to increase sanctions against the Assad regime, citing devastating attacks on Syria's second city of Aleppo, and added 10 top military and government officials to the list. EU leaders agreed at a summit in October to increase sanctions against regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (pictured) But suggestions they might also sanction Russia, which has backed long-time ally Assad's offensives against rebel forces and flown many of the missions against Aleppo, were dropped after sharp differences emerged. The decision brings to more than 230 the number of Syrian individuals hit with travel bans or asset freezes, it said. Israel settlement ruling sets new challenge for PM Israel's high court Monday rejected a government bid to delay the evacuation of a wildcat Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, in a fresh challenge for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Amona outpost is under a court order to be evacuated by December 25 since it was built on private Palestinian land, but right-wingers in Netanyahu's cabinet have called for the around 40 families living there to be allowed to remain. "The evacuation must occur before December 25," the high court said in its ruling. "The court rejects the delay requested by the state." Israeli settlers start to build a new illegal outpost north of the West Bank Palestinian village of Ain al-Baida on October 25, 2016 Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP/File) In what seemed to be a sharp criticism of the government, it said that "the duty to obey rulings is not a matter of choice. "It is an essential component of the rule of law to which all are bound as part of the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." Whether the Netanyahu government moves ahead with the demolition of Amona has been seen as a test case of whether it will heed international calls to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank. The government, which had sought a seven-month delay while it considered where to move the Amona settlers, is seen as the most right-wing in Israel's history. Key members of Netanyahu's coalition advocate settlement building while openly opposing the idea of a Palestinian state. "We're aware of the duress of the Amona residents and are acting in different ways to solve the problem," Netanyahu told lawmakers from his Likud party on Monday. Settlements are seen as a major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state. Some 400,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, compared with about 2.6 million Palestinians. The United States, the European Union and UN officials have warned that settlement building is eating away at the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict. Netanyahu is concerned that controversy over settlements could provoke an international backlash and possibly prompt US President Barack Obama to seek a Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before he leaves office on January 20. - Threat to two-state solution - Israel's high court ruled in 2014 that Amona, northeast of Ramallah in the central West Bank, must be evacuated. There are concerns over how any evacuation will play out. A committee of solidarity with the Amona settlers announced late Monday that "thousands" of supporters would be mobilised to block their evacuation. In 2006, the demolition of nine permanent houses in the outpost led to clashes between settlers and Israeli forces. With the Amona deadline in mind, a committee of Israeli ministers on Sunday approved a draft bill to legalise Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land in communities that meet certain criteria. The Palestinian landowners would be offered compensation in return for the land being seized. The legislation is expected to apply to between 2,000 and 3,000 settler homes in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Six Day War and which the Palestinians want for a future state of their own. The bill must still be approved by Israel's Knesset, or parliament. It had been pushed forward by Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the hardline Jewish Home party, days after he said the idea of a Palestinian state was over after Donald's Trump's election as US president. Palestinian leaders denounced the bill and pledged to take the issue to the UN Security Council. Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki accused the Israeli government of seeking to "impose facts on the ground and create new realities by legalising the illegal actions that it commits". The Palestinians also sharply criticised a separate bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayers at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem, a measure government watchdogs have called a threat to freedom of religion and a provocation. "The recent Israeli measures are going to lead to catastrophe in the region," said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not. The Israeli government differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not. Those like Amona are considered outposts as they have not been given Israeli government approval. A boy walks in a wildcat Jewish settlements built on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank on November 14, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP) Trump ready to lead: new chief of staff President-elect Donald Trump is prepared to lead America and the Republican-controlled Congress is ready to work with him, his new chief of staff Reince Priebus said Monday. In his first 100 days in office Trump wants to address fighting illegal immigration, cutting taxes, "getting his arms around" US foreign policy and America's place in the world and changing President Barack Obama's landmark health care law, Priebus told ABC. "I think we have an opportunity to do all of those things, given the fact that we have the House and the Senate and we have an eager Congress ready to get work done," Priebus said. Reince Priebus (R) shakes hands with Republican President-elect Donald Trump (L) during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York City Jim Watson (AFP/File) Trump himself said Sunday in his first interview since his stunning upset election win last week over Hillary Clinton that he plans to move aggressively in pursuing a conservative agenda. The interview on the CBS program "60 Minutes" provided Trump with his first post-election forum to talk about what he will do after taking office January 20. It also allowed him to try to reintroduce himself after an ugly, name-calling campaign has sparked protests in cities across the United States. Trump, 70, is a real estate developer with no experience at all in government, and during the campaign he showed little familiarity with foreign or domestic policy issues, speaking only in generalities as he pledged to revive the economy and otherwise "make America great again." Priebus on Monday was asked about a Wall Street journal report that Obama plans to spend more time with Trump than is common in US presidential transitions because he thinks Trump needs more guidance. The two men met at the White House last week to start talking about the handover of power. "What I see is a president-elect that is getting prepared," said Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and one of many in the party who clashed with Trump during the campaign. "I see a staff in New York that is very busy doing the best job that they can for the American people," Priebus said. "And I see President-elect Trump being very calm and cool and collected -- and prepared to lead the American people." Switzerland to return stolen ancient stela to Egypt Switzerland will return to Egypt an ancient stela stolen from a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, Geneva's public prosecutor said on Monday. The stone slab bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt. "During an inventory control in the Geneva free economic zone at the end of 2014, the federal customs identified... a granite engraving of unknown origin and alerted Geneva police, who opened a criminal case," the public prosecutor said. An ancient stela bearing a relief design was stolen 30 years ago from the Iseion temple at the Behbeit El Hagar archeological site in Lower Egypt Fabrice Coffrini (OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR/AFP) Egyptologist Philippe Collombert from the University of Geneva examined the artefact and it was traced to the Isis temple near the towns of Sebennytos and Mansoura in the Nile delta, the statement said. Investigators compared photographs taken by French archeologist Christine Favard Meeks at the site in the 1970s to more recent ones which "established without any doubt that the granite engraving was stolen from" Behbeit El Hagar. The tablet will shortly be handed over to Egyptian authorities. The Iseion was one of the major centres of the Isis cult in antiquity, comparable to those in the temple complexes at Philae and Abydos in Upper Egypt. Isis was venerated as the goddess of health, marriage and wisdom. She was the consort of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and the underworld. UAE jails Emiratis up to 10 years for Islamist links A UAE court Monday jailed two Emiratis up to 10 years for their links to a "terrorist" organisation seen as a branch of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, media said. The first defendant was handed a 10-year jail term after he was convicted of playing a "leading role" in a "banned secret group," the official WAM news agency reported. The local Gulf News daily said in its online edition that he was found guilty of joining the outlawed Al-Islah group, which authorities accuse of activities aimed at overthrowing the government and seizing power. The United Arab Emirates is a member of the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS jihadists in Iraq and Syria since September 2014 He will remain under surveillance for three years after serving his prison term, both sources said. The same Abu Dhabi-based Federal Supreme Court sentenced another Emirati to seven years in prison after it convicted him of joining the same organisation, running one of its offices in the Gulf country, and promoting its ideology, the sources said. The United Arab Emirates in 2013 sentenced 69 activists to up to 15 years each in jail following a mass trial that saw them convicted for their links to Al-Islah. The trial was the largest in the history of the UAE, where authorities have cracked down on dissent and calls for democratic reform in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings that swept other countries. Also on Monday, the same court sentenced a citizen from Comoros Islands to three years in jail after he was found guilty of promoting the Islamic State group, the Gulf News said. The man drew slogans and symbols on public law promoting the jihadist group as well as "slanderous and degrading phrases about state officials", it added. The United Arab Emirates is a member of the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS jihadists in Iraq and Syria since September 2014. Mauritania anti-slavery activists appeal jail terms The appeal of 13 anti-slavery activists in Mauritania began Monday under heavy security as defence lawyers called for their case to be thrown out due to "legal inconsistencies", including torture in custody. A court in Zouerate, northern Mauritania, will consider whether the sentences of three to 15 years in prison handed down in August to members of a group fighting hereditary slavery were justified. Defence lawyer Bah Ould M'Bareck, acting for the members of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), said his team had "raised the procedural exceptions that we judge to be sufficient to have (the case) thrown out." Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement ahead of the appeal that those convicted were not even present the day of the Nouakchott protest Ahmed Elhadj (AFP/File) The lawyer said the activists had been "submitted to torture" while in custody, an assertion repeatedly made by the accused themselves. The court decided to add the procedural claims to the main case, which opened on Tuesday evening, with the first three accused pleading not guilty, M'Bareck said. The case is due to continue on Tuesday with more accused giving evidence, followed by speeches from the prosecutors and defence lawyers. The 13 were initially convicted by a judge in the capital, Nouakchott, of using violence, attacking security forces, gathering while armed and membership of an unrecognised organisation. The campaigners were arrested between June 30 and July 9 after a protest by a Nouakchott slum community that was being forcibly relocated as the city prepared for an Arab League summit on July 25. About 10 police officers were injured during the demonstration, according to local officials. The slum was home to many so-called Haratin -- a "slave caste" under a hereditary system of servitude whose members are forced to work without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants, despite an official ban. Seven of the slum's residents are also appealing against their sentences. IRA supporters flooded the court on Monday, according to witnesses contacted by AFP, following a morning sit-in closely watched by police. Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement ahead of the appeal that those convicted were not even present the day of the Nouakchott protest. "This is an open and shut case of the government trying to silence anti-slavery activists in Mauritania," said Kine Fatim Diop, Amnesty International's West Africa campaigner. "From the outset this trial has been marred by irregularities, and allegations of torture that have not been investigated," Diop added, calling the legal proceedings a "farce" that had not proved criminal responsibility on the part of the activists. Climate momentum will continue: US envoy on Trump vote The global drive to stave off disastrous global warming will continue regardless of who heads the US administration, Washington's top climate envoy said Monday on the election of climate change denier Donald Trump. "Heads of state can and will change, but I am confident that we can and we will sustain a durable international effort to counter climate change," US special envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing told journalists on the sidelines of a UN climate conference in Marrakesh. Before he was elected president last week, Trump called climate change a "hoax" and threatened to "cancel" the hard-fought Paris Agreement concluded in the French capital last December to limit global warming. US special envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing speaks at the UN World Climate Change Conference 2016 in Marrakesh, on November 14, 2016 Fadel Senna (AFP) Pershing said the "shape and thrust" of the new administration should become clearer in the coming weeks, adding that, "I cannot speak for the President-elect's team or to their outlook on international climate policy." "What I do know, however, is that... parties are deeply invested in seeing this work bear real fruit," he said. "It was a global effort that made the agreement possible and the passion and the dedication that drove it," was in evidence still, Pershing added. On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry made an impassioned plea for America to maintain action on global warming. "We will wait to see how the next administration addresses this but I believe we're on the right track and this is a track that the American people are committed to," Kerry said on a trip to New Zealand. Trump's election has cast a long shadow over the Moroccan climate huddle, where envoys must come up with rules for implementing the goals and plans outlined in the Paris Agreement. The pact seeks to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by cutting down on the use of planet-warming greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas. The Obama administration had been an ardent champion of the agreement, alongside China. China's envoy, Xie Zhenhua, stressed Monday that tackling climate was a "common and shared responsibility". "International cooperation is a must for us to address climate change," he said in Marrakesh. Observers say Trump would have three options for pulling out of the process. He could withdraw from the agreement itself, which would take four years, he could cancel the US' membership of the UN's climate convention and all its treaties, which would take 12 months, or simply ignore the US' emissions targets under the deal, which lists no penalties. Russian fighter crashes in Mediterranean: defence ministry Russia's defence ministry said Monday that a fighter jet crashed while attempting to land on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean off Syria, but the pilot survived. In a statement to Russian news agencies, the defence ministry said the MiG-29K fighter crashed due to a "technical fault" a few kilometres (miles) from the carrier. The pilot ejected and was recovered and taken aboard the ship. "The pilot's health is in no danger. The pilot is ready to carry out missions," the ministry said, quoted by Interfax news agency. A plane comes in to land on the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in international waters on October 19, 2016 The defence ministry did not say when the incident occurred, but said the plane was taking part in training flights. It stressed that flights were still going ahead from the aircraft carrier despite the accident. "The flights of aircraft from the carrier are continuing in accordance with the set tasks," it said. The ministry released a statement after US broadcaster Fox News reported the crash, citing US officials. The Mig-29K is a multi-functional plane developed in the Soviet era and is used to strike targets both in the air and on the ground. Russia acquired 24 MiG fighters last year. It also deploys Sukhoi bomber planes in Syria. The Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier arrived in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast as part of a flotilla of ships sent to reinforce Russia's military in the area, its commander confirmed on state television. The ship's commander Sergei Artamonov said in an interview broadcast Saturday on Rossiya-1 television that planes had been taking off from the ship's deck "practically every day for the last four days" to survey the area. The flotilla has sparked concern from NATO that it will be used to take part in air strikes on Syria. The fleet cancelled a plan to refuel at a Spanish port after Madrid came under pressure to refuse permission. Russia has been flying a bombing campaign in Syria for the past year in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad and has deployed a naval contingent to back up its operation. Officially, 20 Russians have been killed in combat so far. International warships to help New Zealand quake relief Warships from the United States, Canada and Australia have been drafted in to help earthquake relief efforts in New Zealand after a 7.8 tremor devastated parts of the South Island, officials said Wednesday. The ships were due in Auckland this week for celebrations marking the New Zealand navy's 75th anniversary but have instead been diverted to the disaster zone. "It's heartening to see overseas partners so willing to alter their plans and offer their assistance," Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said. A handout photo from November 15, 2016, shows a New Zealand Defence Force helicopter evacuating tourists from Kaikoura stranded by an earthquake SGT Sam Shepherd (New Zealand Defence Force/AFP) Brownlee said Wellington had also accepted unspecified aid from the Japanese and Singapore militaries in the wake of the quake that claimed two lives and caused massive infrastructure damage when it hit Monday. New Zealand military helicopters on Tuesday started airlifting the first of 1,200 holidaymakers trapped in the seaside town of Kaikoura, which bore the brunt of the seismic jolt. The navy ship HMNZS Canterbury is expected to arrive later Wednesday and Brownlee said he was also sending three other New Zealand vessels. He said the international vessels were Canada's HMC Vancouver, Australia's HMAS Darwin and the US destroyer USS Sampson. The Sampson is the first US warship to visit New Zealand waters in 33 years, ending a ban sparked by a Cold War-era diplomatic spat over Wellington's ban on nuclear-powered vessels. US Secretary of State John Kerry said on a visit to New Zealand on Sunday that its presence was a historic moment marking "the normalisation of our security cooperation". The international rescue mission's top priority is evacuating tourists trapped in Kaikoura, which has been cut off after huge landslides severed road and rail access. The town has a population of 2,000, which was bolstered by tourists, mostly international backpackers attracted by the area's popular whale-watching cruises. Police say water is running low, power is intermittent and hundreds of people are sheltering in evacuation centres. Military helicopters airlifted out about 200 to nearby Christchurch on Tuesday and the warship Canterbury will take up to 500 on Wednesday. Prime Minister John Key said rescuers would deliver much-needed supplies to the town before starting a clean-up that was likely to cost billions of dollars. "It's more water and food, it's more chemical toilets, it's fixing up the road access, getting those tourists out and then ultimately the big clean-up job," he told TVNZ. - 1,200 aftershocks - Auckland holidaymaker David Foulds said he was relieved to get out of Kaikoura after the frightening ordeal. "We thought it was some guys shaking the car, we didn't know what it was," he told AFP. "It (the car) was jumping up and down. It frightened the life out of me." The tremor, one of the most powerful ever in the quake-prone South Pacific nation, hit just after midnight on Monday morning, with more than 1,200 aftershocks complicating relief efforts. The quake triggered numerous landslides that dumped mountains of rocky debris on a main highway and ripped railway tracks 10 metres (30 feet) off course. Huge fissures opened up in roads and some houses were rocked off their foundations. New Zealand's official GeoNet said reconnaissance flights had noted between 80,0000 to 100,000 landslips. "The landslides that have occurred as a result of the earthquake remain dangerous. Material can move at any time," it said in warning people to be cautious. - Trump call - One person died at a historic homestead that collapsed at Kaikoura, with another killed at a remote property north of Christchurch. Experts said the relatively low death toll was because the quake was centred on a sparsely populated area and hit at night, when people were in their homes. It was felt across most of the country, causing severe shaking in the capital Wellington, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) away. The tremor ignited painful memories for Christchurch residents, which was devastated five years ago by a 6.3 tremor that killed 185 people. Key flew over the quake's epicentre on Monday and said he was shocked to see such "utter devastation". The New Zealand leader admitted he was concerned that tourism, the country's biggest export earner, would take a hit after images of the damage flashed around the world. "People worry about earthquakes," he said, adding that many world leaders had phoned him to offer condolences. But in the chaos that followed the quake he missed a call from US President-elect Donald Trump. "I didn't see it. It was a crazy time," he said. "Look he is trying to make contact and that'll happen sometime pretty soon... I'll keep my phone on." Graphic showing a regional map of New Zealand following for the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Monday John SAEKI, Laurence CHU (AFP) Monday's jolt was one of the most powerful ever recorded in quake-prone New Zealand Alex Perrottet (Radio New Zealand/AFP) UN envoy warns West Bank camp could 'explode' The UN's top official on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process said Monday he was concerned the West Bank's largest refugee camp could "explode" if intra-Palestinian clashes worsen, during a rare visit to the Balata camp. In what his officials said was the first visit in "years" by a top UN official to the camp near Nablus in the northern West Bank, Middle East peace envoy Nikolay Mladenov met with civil society figures and politicians including those believed to be opposed to President Mahmud Abbas. Balata has seen an uptick of violence in recent weeks, with Palestinian security officials attempting a series of raids to capture alleged criminals in the camp -- leading to gunbattles. Middle East peace envoy Nikolay Mladenov met with civil society figures and politicians including those believed to be opposed to President Mahmud Abbas in the northern West Bank Haidar Hamdani (AFP/File) Analysts say Abbas sees the camp as a base for support for his political rival Mohammed Dahlan, who is currently in exile in the United Arab Emirates. Mladenov said he had visited the camp to send a message that the "international community is watching" the situation on the ground. "If you forget about these communities they will explode," he said in an interview with AFP. Balata, where 30,000 people live in 25 hectares (62 acres), is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank and played a key role in previous Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, against Israel. The lives of residents have worsened as the camps have been left behind economically compared with major Palestinian cities, said Mukhaimer Abusada, professor of politics at Azhar University. "Dahlan, who is the main competitor against Abu Mazen, has exploited the situation in the camps by offering some assistance to those in the camps," said Abusada. Dahlan, Fatah's former strongman in Gaza, was expelled from the party in 2011 but is now believed to have strong support in a number of key Arab states in the battle to replace Abbas, who is 81 and has been in power 11 years. Mladenov met with local civil society leaders and teachers and also the camp's Popular Committee -- a political leadership body -- in a meeting closed to the media. Abusada said a number of the committees members were believed to be allied to Dahlan. Mladenov stressed the UN was not interfering in Palestinian politics but was trying to stop political differences crossing "over into an environment that becomes violent in which Palestinians stand against other Palestinians with weapons". "Our role is to be able to talk to everyone and to send everyone a very clear message that violence is not the answer." He added the UN remains supportive of Abbas's efforts to bring a peaceful resolution to the conflict. "Abu Mazen is the person most committed to non violence and a peaceful resolution. If he is undermined that will affect the Palestinian cause," he said, using the Arabic nickname for Abbas. In the run-down camp residents were wary of talking politics but one who did not want to be named said the Abbas-run Palestinian Authority was deeply unpopular. Britain approves extradition of alleged hacker to US Britain's interior minister on Monday ordered the extradition to the United States of a man accused of hacking into thousands of US government computers. Lauri Love, 31, faces three separate charges for allegedly hacking into the networks of the US Federal Reserve, US Army and NASA, among others, in 2012 and 2013. Interior Minister Amber Rudd paved the way for his extradition nearly two months after a British court ruled he could be sent for trial in the US. Lauri Love, pictured in July 2016, faces three separate charges for allegedly hacking into the networks of the US Federal Reserve, US Army and NASA, among others, in 2012 and 2013 Justin Tallis (AFP/File) "On Monday 14 November, the Secretary of State, having carefully considered all relevant matters, signed an order for Lauri Loves extradition to the United States," an interior ministry spokesperson said in a statement. "Mr Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting US military and federal government agencies." Love has 14 days to appeal against the extradition order, the ministry told AFP. He could face a lengthy prison term if convicted but does not risk being sentenced to death. US prosecutors argue that Love disseminated the personal information of American citizens, including serving members of the military. A judge granted the extradition request in September after considering issues including prison conditions and Love's health. IS commander wanted by Italy arrested in Sudan: lawmaker A veteran commander of the Islamic State group who was convicted in Italy of terrorist recruitment has been arrested in Sudan, an Italian lawmaker said Monday. Giacomo Stucchi, a senator who chairs the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's secret services, said Italian intelligence had played a key role in tracking down the jihadist known as Abu Nassim, a Tunisian national who was until recently reported to be leading a group of IS fighters around the port of Sabratha in Libya. "I would like to express my satisfaction over the anti-terrorist operation that has led to the arrest in Sudan of the Tunisian terrorist Moez Fezzani," Stucchi said, using Abu Nassim's real name. Abu Nassim lived in Italy for most of his 20s. He subsequently fought in Afghanistan and Syria before reportedly moving to Libya in 2014 Ashraf Shazly (AFP) Abu Nassim lived in Italy for most of his 20s. He subsequently fought in Afghanistan and Syria before reportedly moving to Libya in 2014. He first arrived in Italy in 1989 to work on building sites. Suspected of trying to radicalise and recruit other Arab immigrants, he disappeared in 1997 and resurfaced in Pakistan, on his way to join the late Osama bin Laden's forces in Afghanistan. He was arrested by US forces in 2001 and held at the Bagram airbase detention facility. From there he was was transferred to Italy in 2009 after prosecutors filed charges of terrorist recruitment related to his previous stay. He was acquitted in 2012 and deported to Tunisia, only to be convicted on appeal in his absence the following year. By then he was already fighting in Syria. US students walk out of classes to protest Trump win Hundreds of students in several US states, including California and Maryland, walked out of classrooms on Monday to protest Donald Trump's election as president. Students in east Los Angeles, some of them carrying signs that read "Rise Up" and "Together We Stand" as well as American and Mexican flags, marched peacefully to a plaza in Boyle Heights, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Similar marches were organized in Portland, Oregon as well as in Silver Spring, Maryland, reflecting the emotions that are still running high one week after Trump's presidential win. Students from East Los Angeles high schools march to Mariachi Plaza to protest against President-elect Donald Trump on November 14, 2016 Frederic J. Brown (AFP) The protest in Los Angeles took place despite calls by school officials for students not to walk out of classes and to find other ways to express their anger at the election result. "Although it has been nearly a week since the presidential election, many students remain concerned about the outcome and want their voices to be heard," said Michelle King, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. "These are important conversations that need to take place. We want our students to know they are not alone. However, it is critical that students not allow their sentiments to derail their education or for their actions to place them in danger." In Maryland, local media showed hundreds of students from five high schools marching through the city of Silver Spring, some carrying signs that read "Not My President" and at times blocking traffic. Bystanders shouted words of encouragement while some motorists honked their horn in approval. The students could be heard chanting "we reject the president-elect." Maryland school officials said the students all face disciplinary action unless they have an excused absence from their parents. Monday's protests follow similar demonstrations that have taken place across the country in the wake of Trump's election, which will go down as the biggest upset in modern political history. Protesters have denounced Trump's often-inflammatory campaign rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims and women. "We will not accept Trump's sexism, racism, his put-down of LGBT folks," one student told the ABC7 news channel in Los Angeles on Monday. Evelin Miranda, 16, of Los Angeles,said she was scared for her parents who are immigrants. "I want to tell people that we don't want Donald Trump as our president," she told the Los Angeles Times. "Because he's racist and I have immigrant parents and I'm afraid that I might lose them." Trump initially denounced the protests against him, saying they were "incited" by the media but then reversed course on Friday and praised the demonstrators for their "passion for our great country." Hollywood honors Japanese samurai actor Toshiro Mifune Hollywood celebrated the life of legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune on Monday, honoring him with a star on its iconic Walk of Fame two decades after his death. Mifune rose to stardom through Akira Kurosawa's classics, including "Rashomon" (1950) and "Seven Samurai" (1954), with masculine portrayals of powerful warlords that earned him a reputation as the world's best samurai actor. He died in Tokyo at that age of 77 in 1997. He had been mostly confined to his home since suffering a heart attack five years earlier. Rikiya Mifune, grandson of Toshiro Mifune (R), and his father Shiro Mifune attend the posthumous star ceremony for Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune in Hollywood, on November 14, 2016 Chris Delmas (AFP) His death shocked Japan's cinema industry, which took pride in him as its most presentable actor in international cinema, fondly calling him "Mifune of the world." Kurosawa cast Mifune in leading roles in all but one of 17 films he made between 1948 and 1965. "Rashomon," in which Mifune played a cynical bandit, won the Grand Prix award at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. Mifune played a peasant-turned samurai leading farmers' resistance against bandits in "Seven Samurai," which inspired two Western remakes, both titled "The Magnificent Seven" (1960 and 2016). Born in Qingdao, China, on April 1, 1920, to a photographic studio owner, Mifune joined film company Toho Co. in 1946 after serving six years in an Imperial Japanese Army aerial photography unit during World War II. He appeared in around 170 feature films, including such foreign productions as Terence Young's "Red Sun" (1972) and Steven Spielberg's "1941" (1979). He also starred in the 1980 popular US television mini-series "Shogun," based on James Clavell's bestselling book. Mifune's last role on the silver screen was in "Fukai Kawa (Deep River)" in 1995, in which he portrayed a man tortured to the last moment of his life by his experience eating one of his comrades during war. He left assets of 630 million yen (then $5.4 million), according to local tax officials. "My grandfather passed away when I was nine so the memories I have of him are mainly as a grandfather figure, but I remember him as a gentleman at home," said his grandson, the actor Rikiya Mifune. "He would talk in a gruff and manly manner and always have perfect posture, like a true samurai, even at home." His life is the subject of documentary "Mifune: The Last Samurai," screened at the American Film Institute's AFI Fest this year. It is set to be released in US theaters on December 2. Rise in racist incidents points to Trump-emboldened backlash A surge in reports of racist incidents has minorities and civil rights groups worried that Donald Trump's election as US president has emboldened hate groups. Swastikas and Nazi slogans scrawled on a Philadelphia storefront, xenophobic chants at a New York high school, threatening letters in the mail, insults on college campuses: reports like these have proliferated since November 8. "I have a scarf on. Passed by someone on the platform today and he says, 'Your time's up, girlie,'" journalist Mehreen Kasana wrote on her Twitter account. Asked about the outbreaks of anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic bullying, US President-elect Donald Trump said in a CBS interview that he was "saddened to hear that" Andrew Renneisen (Getty/AFP/File) Hispanics -- the target of Trump's most incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign -- appear particularly vulnerable, as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) noted in tracking the rise of harassment of minorities. Asked about the outbreaks of anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic bullying, Trump said in a CBS interview aired Sunday that he was "saddened to hear that," adding it was "a very small amount." "If it helps, I will say this and I'll say it right to the cameras. Stop it," he said. - 'Pack your bags' - "'Build a wall' was chanted in our cafeteria Wed at lunch. 'If you aren't born here, pack your bags' was shouted in my own classroom. 'Get out spic' was said in our halls," a teacher in Washington state told the SPLC, a non-profit that monitors the activities of hate groups in the United States. SPLC collected reports of more than 200 similar incidents between Election Day on November 8 and Friday, against African Americans, women, and members of the LGBT community. "It doesn't compare to the civil rights movement. No one is blowing up churches," SPLC president Richard Cohen told the New York Times. "But I don't think theres any question that there's been an increase." Anti-Muslim attacks increased by 67 percent in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a report released on Monday. Education institutions around the country, some with liberal reputations, have reported disturbing incidents in recent days and have sent out emails assuring their communities they are taking action to counter them. Some incidents have involved graffiti on bathroom walls, including a modified version of Trump's campaign slogan: "Make America White Again." - Emboldened extremists - The insults have included some of the worst slurs against blacks and Latinos as well as words of contempt for homosexuals. "Seig Heil" and Nazi swastikas appeared spray-painted on a storefront in south Philadelphia a day after the election. Swastikas also appeared in Brooklyn, prompting police to open an investigation. "Acts of violence in our beautifully diverse city will not be tolerated," the New York mayor's office said on its Twitter account. Some incidents have involved more than verbal violence. A Muslim student at San Jose State University in California reported that a white man tried to rip off her veil, nearly choking her. Another student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor told of being accosted by a man who threatened to set her on fire with a lighter unless she took off her Muslim headdress. In the city of Missoula, Montana, tracts from the American Nazi Party accusing Jews of controlling the media were distributed in residential neighborhoods. The local synagogue asked the police to increase security. Despite the tense climate, Trump picked firebrand Steve Bannon, a darling of white supremacists, to be his chief strategist. Choosing him for a top White House post "only further emboldens the extreme fringes during this very tense time," warned Oren Segal, head of the Anti-Defamation League. US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan: ICC prosecutor US forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan from 2003-2004 by torturing prisoners in what appeared to be a deliberate policy, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday. Unveiling the results of a lengthy initial probe into atrocities in Afghanistan, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide "imminently" whether to ask to launch a full-blown investigation -- and take the world's only permanent war crimes court into uncharted territory. She stressed that the Taliban militia and the affiliated Haqqani network, Afghan government forces and US troops as well as the CIA all appeared to have carried out war crimes since the Islamic militia was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001. American soldiers wait to board helicopters at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan in 2003 Kamal Kishore (Pool/AFP/File) And she blamed the Taliban and its allies for the deaths of some 17,000 civilians since 2007 to December 2015 in a brutal insurgency with "numerous attacks" on schools, hospitals and mosques. But for the first time, Bensouda highlighted allegations of "war crimes of torture and related ill-treatment, by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency". There was a "reasonable basis to believe that" during the interrogation of detainees, "members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture" as well as cruel treatment and rape. - Complex investigation - If Bensouda does ask judges to authorise a full-scale inquiry, the tribunal would be taking on its most complex and politically controversial investigations to date. But the United States has not ratified the court's founding Rome Statute, and it is unlikely Washington would cooperate in any investigation which would expose US forces for the first time to the glare of an ICC probe. And while the US has been leading calls for those behind atrocities in the Syrian conflict to be brought to justice in The Hague, there is little chance of any US soldiers ending up in the dock here. The former administration of president George W. Bush authorised the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques --including waterboarding -- after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Their use was abolished by President Barack Obama when he took over the White House in January 2009. But the ICC could be set for a collision course with president-elect Donald Trump, who has said he is in favour of such harsh interrogation techniques and may re-authorise their use. War crimes allegedly carried out by US forces were "not the abuses of a few isolated individuals," Bensouda insisted in her annual report to the 124 states that belong to the ICC. Rather it appeared "these alleged crimes were committed" as part of "a policy or policies aimed at eliciting information through the use of interrogation techniques involving cruel or violent methods". The aim was to "support US objectives in the conflict in Afghanistan". Detailing her office's initial findings, Bensouda said "at least 61 detainees" were subjected to "torture (and) cruel treatment" by US armed forces in Afghanistan between May 1, 2003 and December 31, 2014. "Members of the CIA" also appeared "to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment... and/or rape on the territory of Afghanistan" as well as in secret detention centres in Poland, Romania and Lithuania between December 2002 and March 2008. - Moving out of Africa - Any prosecutions of Afghan forces could also be complicated by a general amnesty law passed by the Afghan parliament which came into force in 2009. The ICC was set up in The Hague in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes in cases where national courts are unwilling or unable to act. The report was released just ahead of Wednesday's opening of the annual conference of the tribunal's state parties, set this year to be dominated by the shock defections of three African nations, with Bensouda under pressure to widen the geographic scope of her investigations. Kabul recognised the court's jurisdiction in February 2003, authorising Bensouda's predecessor Louis Moreno-Ocampo to probe atrocities on its territory. But some African nations have led a chorus to quit the tribunal, accusing it of bias. Of the 10 current full ICC investigations, nine are based in Africa. The other is in Georgia, pitting the ICC against Russia which is also not a signatory. Obama says Trump soon to face sobering 'reality' check President Barack Obama cautioned against dire predictions for Donald Trump's presidency, saying his Republican successor faces a reality check if he tries to enact his most controversial campaign promises. The outgoing Democratic leader made his comments on Monday at a wide-ranging news conference before he embarked on a farewell visit to Europe to reassure worried allies about a man he once warned was "unfit" to lead the United States. Trump's election win last week over Hillary Clinton has been met with euphoria among his supporters, but also with a wave of protests across the nation that are unusual for the world's leading democracy. US President Barack Obama (R) meets with Republican President-elect Donald Trump at the White House on November 10, 2016 Jim Watson (AFP/File) The 70-year-old Republican billionaire -- who takes office in just nine weeks -- was holed up in his home office in Manhattan with his inner circle, working to shape his new administration. While admitting that he had "concerns" about his successor, the message Obama delivered on Monday was designed to comfort those still ill at ease with Trump -- and a lesson for the billionaire populist in the art of the presidency. Trump, a real estate developer and reality TV star who has never held political office, has threatened to shake up America's most important international relationships. But Obama said that deporting millions of immigrants, tearing up mutual defense treaties with NATO and Japan, and unraveling global deals on Iran's nuclear program and the environment were not as simple as delivering tub-thumping rhetoric. "Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up," Obama said. "Reality has a way of asserting itself," he added, offering his view that Trump is pragmatic rather than ideological. Obama said that during a meeting with Trump at the White House last week, he had told the president-elect that his actions can move markets, tanks and public sentiment. "I emphasized to him that, look, in an election like this that was so hotly contested and so divided, gestures matter," Obama said. "It's really important to try to send some signals of unity, and to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign." "Do I have concerns? Absolutely. Of course, I have concerns. He and I differ on a whole bunch of issues. But the federal government and our democracy is not a speedboat -- it's an ocean liner." - 'Pragmatic' - Amid dire predictions about the end of the republic and the global order, Obama said that Trump's inexperience in politics and lack of intellectual baggage could be an asset. "I don't think he is ideological. I think ultimately he is pragmatic in that way," he told reporters at his first news conference since the Republican mogul defeated his Democratic rival Clinton in last week's presidential election. "And that can serve him well as long as he's got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction," he continued. Trump made his first two key appointments on Sunday -- onetime Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus will be his White House chief of staff, and anti-establishment media firebrand Steve Bannon his chief strategist. The appointment of Bannon -- the head of ultra-conservative Breitbart News who has championed the so-called "alt-right" perspective -- has raised hackles, with Jewish and Muslim leaders expressing concerns. Asked about Trump's choice of Bannon, Obama gave a pass. "It would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making if I want to be consistent with the notion that we're going to try to facilitate a smooth transition," he said. More cabinet-level appointments will be rolled out this week, Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told reporters in New York. Making the vital choices for Trump's cabinet has sparked intense infighting, CNN reported, with one source calling it a "knife fight." The New York mogul has also spent time calling world leaders as he begins to develop ties with America's allies -- and adversaries. "Getting his arms around foreign policy" is one of Trump's four top priorities, along with health care, immigration and taxes, as he prepares for his first 100 days as president, Priebus said. "I see President-elect Trump being very calm and cool and collected. And prepared to lead the American people," Priebus -- seen as an establishment counter-weight to Bannon -- told ABC's "Good Morning America." Obama said that Trump had already conveyed a "commitment to NATO" that seemed to run against his campaign promises. "In my conversation with the president-elect, he expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships," Obama said. During a visit this week to Europe, and then Peru for a summit with Asia-Pacific leaders, Obama said he would be able to tell allies "there is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship." "This is a time of great change in the world, but America's always been a pillar of strength and a beacon of hope to peoples around the globe. And that's what it must continue to be," he said. Candidates for cabinet and other positions in a new US administration Jean-Michel Cornu, Vincent Lefai (AFP) US President Barack Obama said that Donald Trump had already conveyed a "commitment to NATO" that seemed to run against his campaign promises Saul Loeb (AFP) Good Samaritan killed, 2 injured helping stranded drivers ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) The Washington State Patrol is urging people to be careful when helping stranded motorists, after two separate accidents on Snohomish County highways left one good Samaritan dead and two others injured. The Seattle Times reports (https://goo.gl/daOog5 ) that the accidents happened with a span of about 20 minutes Saturday evening. Washington State Patrol Sgt. Mark Francis said the first involved 46-year-old Trina Morgan, of Darrington, who was killed on Highway 530. Morgan had stopped to help a disabled car, and as she was helping a 9-year-old girl another car struck them both. Morgan was killed but the girl suffered only minor injuries. In a second accident, 29-year-old Kyle Digges, of Lynnwood, and 32-year-old Jessica Bart-Greenough, of Mountlake Terrace, stopped to help after they saw a truck lose a wheel on State Route 2 near Snohomish. Another car hit the disabled truck, pushing it into the pedestrians. Both were hospitalized. Francis says that if possible, people should use safety devices such as road flares when stopping to help. ___ China's Xi reaffirms US relations in talk with Trump BEIJING (AP) Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed the importance of relations with the United States in a phone conversation with President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, opening communication with a politician who had been strongly critical of China during his campaign. State media reports say Xi congratulated Trump on his election in their Monday talk and said cooperation was the "only correct choice" for China and the U.S., the world's two biggest economies. "At present, there is an important opportunity and huge potential in China-U.S. cooperation," Xi told Trump, according to the reports. Trump had accused China of unfair trade practices and currency manipulation during the election campaign, threatening to slap a 45 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Despite that, Chinese state media largely favored Trump over his Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton. She was disliked in Beijing over her promotion of the U.S. "pivot" to Asia that is viewed by China's leaders as an attempt to contain their country's rise to global prominence. Beijing's rivalry with Washington largely boils down to economic issues, especially China's $334 billion trade surplus with the U.S. and accusations of unfair subsidies for exporters and the condoning of intellectual property theft. The sides are also opposed over security in east Asia, particularly China's assertion of its territorial claims in the South China Sea where it has been creating new islands atop atolls and coral reefs. Beijing has also closely aligned its foreign policy with Russia, putting it at odds with the U.S. over issues, including the civil war in Syria and the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses in South Korea. Aside from his criticisms of Beijing, Trump had touted his business dealings with Chinese companies, although he is not known at present to have any major investments in the country. Syrian refugees regret move to Gaza GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) Like millions of Syrians, Wareef Hamedo fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security. But in a decision he now regrets, he chose to go to Gaza. Hamedo's family is among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, ineligible for most social services granted to Palestinians but also unable to travel abroad. "We are trying to get out of Gaza to any European country or where a Syrian refugee can find care," said Hamedo, a chef from Aleppo who is an unofficial spokesman for the Syrian families here. "Gaza was a phase for the Syrians. We came to it because of the conditions that forced us to." In this Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Syrian refugee, Majed al-Attar, poses while showing his expired Syrian passport and Palestinian identification documents at his family's rented house in Rafah, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. The al-Attar family is among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) About 250 families from Palestinian refugee camps in Syria made their way to Gaza in the first two years of the Syrian civil war. As Palestinian refugees, they were eligible for services such as health care, education and food assistance from UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees. About two dozen Syrian families also chose to migrate to Gaza after initially fleeing to Egypt. As the situation in Egypt deteriorated, they entered neighboring Gaza through smuggling tunnels. Some managed to leave before the Egyptian army shut most of the tunnels in 2013. But half still remain. Egypt closed the tunnels following the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who had been a close ally of Gaza's Hamas rulers. The loss of the tunnels, along with a devastating 50-day war with Israel in 2014, caused Gaza's economy to collapse. Unemployment has soared, and the cash-strapped Hamas government has failed to provide shelter for the Syrians. "We got many promises, but nothing was made," Hamedo said. While UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees, the main international body assisting displaced Syrians is the U.N. refugee agency, which has no offices in Gaza. The Palestinian territories also have no official Syrian diplomatic mission, so the families can't renew passports or register their newborns. And because they entered Gaza illegally through the tunnels, they have no way of exiting. With no legal status, work or aid, the Syrians can do little but wait for a miracle to leave. Majed al-Attar wistfully recalled his life in Damascus, where he said he had a spacious home, two cars and a warehouse full of cement and building materials. His expired passport is full of Jordanian, Egyptian and Saudi stamps he collected in his business travels. The house and its surroundings were hit from the air "and everything was wiped out," the 49-year-old said. So, he moved with his wife and child to Egypt in 2012. In the run-up to the 2013 military overthrow of Morsi, things quickly deteriorated, and the options were to join migrants on "the death boats" to Europe or move to Gaza, he said. The second option seemed smarter since his wife is originally Palestinian and had relatives in the Gaza border town of Rafah. In Gaza, al-Attar was displaced again during the 2014 war, when he had to flee bombing and sleep in U.N. school shelters for several weeks. "It was a disaster for us," he said. Now unemployed, he cannot afford to buy kindergarten clothes for his son who was born here in 2014. The boy has no official documents or citizenship, only a hospital notification that shows his name and date of birth. Most of the money he earns as a day laborer goes to the rental of a half-finished, sparsely furnished apartment. His wife managed to qualify for some UNRWA benefits, including schooling for the boy, but most benefits are out of reach because al-Attar is not Palestinian. "I regret coming here," he said. "We just hope to get out from here next month or the month after with my wife and children to live in dignity and freedom and with a secure future for them." As Gaza struggles to rebuild damaged homes, over 11,200 families are still displaced after the 2014 war with Israel. That has made it even harder for the Syrian families to find adequate shelter. Amer Foura's family, originally from the southwestern Syrian city of Deraa, has found shelter in a hospital. His wife, Kholoud, a 39-year-old mother of five, has developed muscular dystrophy and is now hooked up to a respirator at Gaza's Al-Wafa hospital. Her husband and children sleep in beds and mattresses in her hospital room. "I have lived in Al-Wafa hospital for about a year and a half," said the husband, who is unemployed. "My only home is Al-Wafa since it's able to provide and take care of me. The Syrians scrape by with menial jobs and occasional donations from local charities. Hamedo, the chef, is full of nostalgia, spending time daily flipping through pictures from his life in Aleppo, where he ran a restaurant called Cafe D'alep. He pointed to a photo of a blond woman. "This was my girlfriend. She died in an airstrike," he said. He enjoyed some initial success in Gaza, opening a restaurant that enjoyed early popularity, but ultimately went out of business because of the weak economy, constant power outages and shortages of cooking gas. He has since married a local woman and last month, they had their first child, a girl. "We just need to get the basics secured in our stay here," he said. In this Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Syrian refugee Majed al-Attar carries his son Esam while his wife Manal holds the hand of their son Abdel Ghani, as they walk to the UNRWA clinic in the Rafah refugee camp, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in their homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. They are among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Abdel Ghani al-Attar, left, recites poetry to his classmates at a kindergarten in Rafah, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. Their family is among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Nov. 1, 2016 photo, Syrian refugee Kholoud Foura, who has developed muscular dystrophy, poses with her husband and their children, while tied to the bed and hooked up to a respirator, at Al-Wafa hospital, in Al Zahra City, central Gaza Strip. The family have slept in beds and mattresses in her hospital room for about a year and a half. Like millions of Syrians, the Foura family fled the civil war in their homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. They are now trapped in the war-battered territory, ineligible for most social services granted to Palestinians but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Syrian refugees, Abdel Ghani al-Attar, right, and his brother Esam, play at a kindergarten not far from their family house in Rafah, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in their homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision the family now regrets, they chose to go to Gaza. They are among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Manal al-Attar, helps her son Esam, to be tested by a Palestinian doctor at the UNRWA clinic in the Rafah refugee camp, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. They are among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Nov. 1, 2016 photo, Wareef Hamedo, a Syrian refugee, holds his newborn baby, Ilya, while posing for a photo with his wife, Maha Abu Alkas, in their house in Gaza City. Like millions of Syrians, Hamedo fled the civil war in his homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision he now regrets, he chose to go to Gaza. Hamedos family is among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, ineligible for most social services granted to Palestinians but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) In this Monday, Oct. 31, 2016 photo, Majed al-Attar, a Syrian refugee, and his wife Manal wait for the doctor to treat their children, Esam and Abdel Ghani, at the UNRWA clinic in the Rafah refugee camp, Gaza. Like millions of Syrians, the al-Attar family fled the civil war in their homeland in search of safety and security, but in a decision they now regret, they chose to go to Gaza. They are among 12 Syrian households that found refuge in Gaza after the civil war erupted in 2011 and are now trapped in the war-battered territory, but also unable to travel abroad. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) Recent developments surrounding the South China Sea BANGKOK (AP) A look at recent developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves: ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region. ___ TRUMP'S ADVISER SAYS U.S. WILL CONTINUE TO KEEP CHINA IN CHECK President-elect Donald Trump still hasn't made his foreign policy objectives clear, but his senior adviser on national security says the U.S. won't abandon its Asian allies to China's "overreach." James Woolsey, in an opinion piece published in the South China Morning Post on Thursday, said the new administration would need to reverse defense budget cuts and make sure the U.S. was still the leading military force in the world. "The U.S. sees itself as the holder of the balance of power in Asia and is likely to remain quite determined to protect its allies against Chinese overreach," said Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton. "China should realize that our reflexes in Asia are not driven by territorial ambitions." Over U.S. objections, Beijing has moved to cement its claim to most of the South China Sea, including by building artificial islands and military airstrips atop coral reefs. With Trump's election, many analysts said Trump's isolationist foreign policy will give China more maneuvering room to pursue its territorial claims in the East and South China seas. During the election campaign, Trump in April said that China's building of man-made islands in the disputed waters was a sign of Beijing's disrespect for America. ___ NEW PHILIPPINE ENVOY TO CHINA SAYS DEAL POSSIBLE The new Philippine ambassador to China says it's possible to achieve a settlement with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea. Jose Santiago "Chito" Santa Romana says his country could learn from Vietnam and the former Soviet Union, which managed to reach a detente with China through good political relations and quiet diplomacy despite quarrels over territory. Vietnam, however, continues to be entangled in the dispute over the Paracel Islands while making progress with China over other border issues. "The basic lesson is, if you use hardball tactics with China, expect the same. ... So when you say, 'What is ours is ours,' they will say the same thing. And if you don't yield, and if you combine it with just megaphone diplomacy and forcing your way, expect that there'll be a stalemate," he said at a forum in Manila organized by the state-run China Daily. He said the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte is separating the disputes from economic relations with Beijing. Duterte's groundbreaking visit to Beijing resulted in China allowing Filipino fishermen back in the waters around the disputed Scarborough Shoal, which China seized from the Philippines in 2012, a year before Manila launched and won an international arbitration case against China's claims. However, China's coast guard has remained at the shoal and Filipinos are not allowed to fish inside the lagoon. Santa Romana said that Scarborough was just an "informal, friendly understanding," and there is a need to slowly formalize it and establish rules of engagement between the coast guards of the countries. "The Chinese, of course, still maintains their effective control because they have a sovereignty claim," he said. "But now the Philippine coast guard is trying to have a roving presence so that, eventually, we could say we have not given up our sovereignty claim when we resolve it diplomatically." ___ CHINA SAYS SOUTH CHINA SEA HAS STABILIZED China says tensions in the South China Sea have eased because of "friendly cooperation" with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang says managing differences through negotiations is "is back on the right track," the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Lu noted that China has border treaties with 12 out of its 14 land neighbors, and that as long as they are "sincere and patient, most differences can be handled through consultation and negotiation." ___ Myanmar says 34 people killed after they attacked troops YANGON, Myanmar (AP) Myanmar's government said Monday that 34 people were killed after they attacked government troops in Rakhine state over the weekend, but residents of the villages belonging to the Muslim Rohingya minority said the victims they saw were unarmed civilians. The government has been conducting counterinsurgency operations since nine police were killed in attacks last month on guard posts along the border with Bangladesh generally blamed on Muslim insurgents. Tensions have been high in Rakhine since fighting in 2012 between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. The government said in a statement that 28 people described as violent attackers were killed Sunday in Maungdaw district. An earlier statement said six attackers died on Saturday, in addition to two government soldiers. The attackers weren't identified, but the army has aligned with Rakhine Buddhists against the Rohingya. A Rohingya from Kyein Chaung village contacted by phone said he saw a police truck taking at least six bodies from the village on Sunday. Other villagers, also speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety, said the people whose bodies they saw were completely unarmed. Nay San Lwin, a blogger based in Europe who has closely monitored Rohingya developments since 2012, said some villagers possess weapons such as swords and knives, but it was unclear whether they were used against the soldiers. "Since the violence last month, villagers have been accused of burning their own houses. Villagers are hiding in the forest. No one dares to live in their own house because of the arrests and killing," said a teacher from Kyein Chaung village, who insisted he not be named. Human rights groups accuse the army of abuses against the Rohingya minority, including killings, rapes and burning of homes. More than 100,000 Rohingya are still living in squalid camps for the internally displaced after being driven from their homes in 2012. Although Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, they are widely regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and the government denies citizenship to most. A local police officer refused to answer any questions related to the situation, saying he was not allowed to say anything. The Rakhine state government also refused to comment. The central government statement said in one incident Sunday in Gwason village, "Seven violent attackers wielding with machetes ran towards the troops in order to attack. The troops returned fire, killing six." It said soldiers and border guard police were later "attacked by about 20 violent aggressors equipped with machetes and wooden clubs while the security forces were conducting the clearance operation in Dargyizartaung village." It said the troops fired on them and killed 19. The earlier statement said clashes began Saturday morning when government troops were ambushed by about 60 attackers armed with guns, knives and spears. It said the troops were outnumbered in a later battle against 500 armed men, but prevailed when two air force helicopters joined the fight. Trump win prods European diplomats to seek greater role BRUSSELS (AP) Britain's foreign secretary says Donald Trump's U.S. presidency could be a "moment of opportunity" for Europe, even as other EU diplomats worry about Trump's isolationist, protectionist promises. Boris Johnson spoke Monday before EU foreign ministers' talks in Brussels. The top diplomats held a special meeting Sunday night about the U.S. election, and they hope to boost Europe's role in world affairs until Trump's plans become clearer. Johnson, who championed Britain's exit from the EU, said Trump "is a deal maker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it can also a good thing for Europe. I think that's what we need to focus on today." British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, center, speaks with Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, right, and Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Juhani Soini, left, during a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. EU foreign ministers meet Monday to discuss strained ties with Turkey and trans-Atlantic ties after the U.S. election results. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Other foreign ministers said Europe should focus on boosting its own defense, tensions with Turkey and war in Syria. European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini speaks with the media as she arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. EU foreign ministers meet Monday to discuss strained ties with Turkey and trans-Atlantic ties. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson looks toward the media prior to a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. EU foreign ministers meet Monday to discuss strained ties with Turkey and trans-Atlantic ties after the U.S.election victory of Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Greeks prepare security measures ahead of Obama visit ATHENS, Greece (AP) Greek authorities were preparing draconian security measures Monday ahead of a two-day visit by U.S. President Barack Obama, including the deployment of thousands of police, road closures and restrictions on protests. Obama is due in Athens Tuesday morning for talks with the country's political leadership. He is scheduled to deliver a speech on Wednesday before heading to Berlin as part of his last major trip abroad. Greek police announced a ban on public gatherings in central Athens, as well as near the city's international airport and a southern suburb where one of the city's luxury hotels is located, effective from several hours before Obama's arrival until his departure. Police patrol outside Zappeio Conference Hall in Athens, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Thousands of police are to be deployed in Athens for draconian security measures during a two-day visit to Athens by President Barack Obama starting Tuesday. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis) At least 5,000 police are to be deployed, including teams with sniffer dogs, while major avenues and roads in central Athens will be closed to vehicles and at times to pedestrians. Parking restrictions were to go into effect Monday night. Anarchist and left-wing groups are planning protest marches. A communist party-linked union slammed the ban on demonstrations "against the representative of imperialist powers" and called for mass participation in a central Athens rally planned for Tuesday evening. "Nobody can remain apathetic before the visit of the hawk of war," the PAME union said in a statement. An armed anarchist group has called for "attacks and clashes" to disrupt Obama's visit. In a website posting Friday, the Conspiracy Cells of Fire group urged anarchists to "return a little of the violence we receive daily." The group has claimed responsibility for a string of bomb attacks on judges, police and other figures of authority, causing minor injuries but no fatalities. Extensive violent demonstrations greeted the last official visit to Greece of a sitting U.S. president, by Bill Clinton in 1999. Many leftists in Greece regard the U.S. with misgivings, stemming mostly from America's backing of the military dictatorship that governed the country from 1967 to 1974. Obama's visit comes just days before the Nov. 17 anniversary of the junta's 1973 bloody crackdown on a student uprising. The anniversary is marked by an annual protest march to the U.S. Embassy, which frequently turns violent. Greece's left-led coalition government, struggling to pull the country out of six years of a vicious financial crisis that has devastated its economy, has hailed Obama's visit as being of "huge importance" for both Greece and Europe. It has expressed the hope that U.S. pressure could persuade some of its more reluctant international creditors, such as Germany, to grant significant debt relief, without which it says Greece cannot hope to recover economically. Greece has been relying on emergency loans from three consecutive multi-billion euro (dollar) international bailouts since 2010. In a briefing note last week on the visit, Greece's press ministry said that the United States, "and particularly of President Obama," had supported Greece on several issues including "on the issue of dealing with Greek debt, as a decisive step toward a period of development and prosperity." Rights organizations have urged Obama to use his visit to highlight Europe's response to the refugee crisis. Reluctance by many richer European countries to take in refugees has left more than 60,000 people stranded in Greece, living in often poor conditions in overcrowded camps, particularly on eastern Aegean islands. Obama should "shine the spotlight not only on abysmal conditions for the tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Greece, but also on the failure of world leaders to adequately address the wider global refugee crisis," John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Europe director, said in a statement. Human Rights Watch said Obama "should call on EU leaders to defend universal human rights and show greater responsibility for refugees." A couple pass by a fence outside Zappeio Conferenence Hall in Athens, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Thousands of police are to be deployed in Athens for draconian security measures during a two-day visit to Athens by President Barack Obama starting Tuesday. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis) Witnesses: Ex-cop's initial account contradicted by video CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) The trial of a fired white South Carolina police officer in the shooting death of a black motorist entered a third week Monday with prosecution witnesses testifying the officer's initial account of the shooting differed from dramatic cellphone video seen widely on the internet. Michael Slager, who turned 35 on Monday, faces 30 years to life if convicted of murder in the shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott as Scott ran from an April 2015 traffic stop in North Charleston. The trial is being heard by 11 white and one black juror. Michael Slager, right, confers with his attorneys, during his trial at the Charleston County court in Charleston, S.C., Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Slager, a white police officer is accused in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist. (Grace Beahm/Post and Courier via AP, Pool) Over the weekend, another predominantly white jury deadlocked in another police shooting after a traffic stop. Prosecutors will decide within the next two weeks whether to retry former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing in the July 2015 shooting 43-year-old Sam DuBose. Levi Miles, who works as an investigator for Slager's original attorney David Aylor, testified Monday that state investigators interviewed Slager several days after the shooting. The interview took place in Aylor's office. During that interview, Miles testified he played the part of Scott as Slager and he demonstrated for the state agents how the two men wrestled before the shooting. He demonstrated again Monday, getting on the floor of the courtroom as he re-enacted Slager's account. Miles testified that, according to Slager, Scott got control of the officer's stun gun and pointed it at Slager. Miles testified Slager said the two men were close together at the time of the shooting. The interview occurred before Slager had seen a cellphone video taken by a bystander that shows Scott falling to the ground dozens of feet away from Slager after being shot five times in the back. Aylor dropped his representation of Slager once the video became public and Slager was charged with murder. Also at the initial interview in Aylor's office was Angela Peterson, an agent for the State Law Enforcement Division. Peterson said that Slager said the two men wrestled over the Taser and Scott came at the officer with the stun gun. She said Slager told investigators he was scared, fatigued from chasing after Scott and worried that if he was hit by the stun gun Scott would get his service pistol. Peterson said Slager described getting up off the ground, shuffling to his left and Scott starting to turn away as Slager started firing. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson listens to Judge Clifton Newman in Charleston, S.C., on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, as the trial of Michael Slager, a white police officer accused in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist, enters its third week. (Grace Beahm/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool) Turkish warplanes attack IS stronghold in northern Syria BEIRUT (AP) Turkish warplanes on Monday struck Islamic State positions in and near the northern Syrian town of al-Bab while Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters inched closer to the town, one of the extremist group's largest remaining strongholds in the country, Turkish state media and Syrian activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks Syria's civil war, now in its sixth year, said the airstrikes and the shelling killed three people and wounded 30 others. The stepped-up campaign by Turkey comes after Ankara first sent ground forces into northern Syria during the summer, vowing to clear the border area both of the Islamic State group and the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, which it views as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. FILE - In this 2004 file photo the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier seen in the Barents Sea, Russia. The Russian military says one of its the MiG-29 fighter jets based at a Russian aircraft carrier currently near Syria's shores has crashed on a training mission, but its pilot has survived. (AP Photo, File) Since then, Turkish troops and opposition fighters allied with them have captured wide areas along the border with Turkey, cutting IS fighters off in their self-declared caliphate from the rest of the world. They have also captured dozens of towns and villages in northern Syria. Turkey's Anadolu news agency reported 15 airstrikes against IS in al-Bab on Monday, saying they destroyed two command centers, an arms depot and two buildings used as headquarters, as well as 10 defensive positions. Also, the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said Turkey-backed opposition fighters captured three villages on Monday northwest of al-Bab and another village northeast of the town. The Observatory confirmed that four villages near al-Bab were taken, adding that the Turkey-backed fighters have captured 29 villages in the al-Bab area over the past week. The push has helped Turkish troops and opposition fighters inch closer to al-Bab, where a long battle with the Islamic State group is expected to take place soon. IS has been in the town for more than two years. Also Monday, Syrian government warplanes struck the last functioning hospital in the town of Atareb in northern Syria, wounding some staff members and knocking it out of service, according to the Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group. The Russian military, meanwhile, accused militants in Syria of having used chemical weapons against Syrian government troops in the city of Aleppo. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said about 30 Syrian soldiers from the elite Republican Guards were poisoned in the attack, which he said occurred in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo late on Sunday. Konashenkov said Russian military officers took samples at the site of the attack, which revealed that the militants used munitions containing chlorine. He urged the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to quickly send its experts to the site. The OPCW and the U.N. have found that the Syrian government and the Islamic State group have both used chemical weapons in the conflict. The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons, while its ally Russia has questioned the evidence turned up by international investigators and vowed to block sanctions on Damascus. "Terrorists in Aleppo have increasingly often used chlorine against Syrian soldiers and civilians," Konashenkov said. "However, politicians in France, and, particularly, in Britain, who care so much about Aleppo in public, aren't seeing those crimes." "Or, more specifically, they want to cast Syrian authorities as the culprits," Konashenkov added. The Russian military also announced that one of its fighter jets, a MiG-29k, based on a Russian aircraft carrier near Syria's shores, has crashed on a training mission but that the pilot survived and was rescued without injuries. The plane crashed into the eastern Mediterranean on approach to landing on Sunday. The Defense Ministry said the loss would not affect the carrier's operations around Syria. The aging vessel arrived to the eastern Mediterranean last week to augment Russia's air deployment over Syria. A punishing, year-long campaign that activists say have killed thousands of civilians and devastated civil services in opposition areas has tipped the conflict in the Syrian government's favor. NATO has expressed concern about the Russian carrier group's deployment, saying the move could presage an increase in the number of Russian air raids in Syria, particularly around the besieged city of Aleppo Also Monday, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard accused the U.S. of destroying an Iranian-supplied weapon's factory in Aleppo, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. The Revolutionary Guard's Aerospace Force acknowledged the existence of an Iranian-supplied missile facility in Syria in 2014. ___ Ukraine's police chief resigns, complains of gov't pressure MOSCOW (AP) Ukraine's police chief, who was driving reforms through the country's notoriously corrupt police force, has resigned after a year in the job, complaining of government pressure. Khatiya Dekanoidze, who also was a deputy interior minister, told a televised news conference Monday that her official powers were "not enough for dramatic changes." Dekanoidze complained of pressure by government officials and members of parliament who "interfered" in police work. One of the pledges of the new Ukrainian government, which took over in February 2014 after pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, was to combat rampant corruption in Ukraine's police. FILE In this Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016 file photo head of the National Police of Ukraine Khatiya Dekanoidze, centre, speaks with police officers during National Police Day in Kiev, Ukraine. Dekanoidze, who was driving reforms through the country's notoriously corrupt police force, has resigned Monday Nov. 14, 2016, after a year in the job, complaining of government pressure. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File) Actress Woodley's pipeline protest trial is delayed 1 month MANDAN, N.D. (AP) Trial has been delayed by a month for actress Shailene Woodley, who faces charges in North Dakota related to her protest against the Dakota Access pipeline. The "Divergent" star was among 27 activists arrested Oct. 10. She livestreamed her arrest on Facebook. She's pleaded not guilty to criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, both misdemeanors that carry a maximum punishment of a month in jail and a $1,500 fine. Woodley was to stand trial on Jan. 25. Court documents show trial has been rescheduled for Feb. 22 because her attorney had a conflict. FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2016 file photo, actress Shailene Woodley is led to a transport vehicle by a Morton County Sheriff's deputy after being arrested at a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline near St. Anthony, N.D. Woodley's trial has been delayed from Jan. 25, 2017 to Feb. 22 because her attorney had a conflict. She has pleaded not guilty to criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, both misdemeanors. (Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP, File) Poland exhumes president, wife killed in 2010 plane crash WARSAW, Poland (AP) The bodies of former Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife have been removed from their tomb in Krakow, the first of more than 80 exhumations planned on prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. The exhumations that began late Monday are part of a new investigation into the crash ordered by Poland's conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, which is led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president's twin brother. Post-mortems will be carried out to determine the cause of the deaths and of the crash, identify all the remains and check for explosives, since some of Kaczynski's followers believe that a planned blast downed the aircraft, killing all 96 aboard. Kaczynski has cast doubt on earlier investigations carried out by both Poland and Russia which concluded that the crash was an accident caused primarily by pilot error on approach to landing in dense fog. Kaczynski has for years encouraged a conspiracy theory suggesting Russia carried out an assassination with the support, or at least the consent, of the Polish prime minister at the time Donald Tusk, now the president of the European Council. FILE =In this April 18, 2011 file picture the alabaster tomb of the late President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria Kaczynska who were killed, with 94 other prominent Poles, in a plane crash April 10,2010 in Smolensk, Russia. are seen in the vaults of Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, Poland, The bodies of the presidential couple are being exhumed after dark on Monday, 14 November 2016, for examination on orders from the prosecutors, who are investigating the crash. Also remains of 81 other victims will be exhumed because findings from autopsies carried out in Russia are flawed and unreliable, prosecutors say. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) Kaczynski wants to take Tusk, his nemesis, to court and is seeking evidence against him. "There will not be a free Poland, a truly free Poland, without the truth, without a proper honoring of those who died, without a closure of this case which has cast such a long shadow on our national and social life," Kaczynski said last Thursday. According to the PAP news agency, the bodies of Kaczynski and his wife, Maria Kaczynska, were removed from their alabaster tomb at the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the resting place of many of Poland's kings and writers. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the presidential couple's daughter, Marta Kaczynska, and experts were seen arriving at the site to attend the exhumation. Priests were to say prayers during the procedure. The media had no access to the site. Shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday, hearses were seen leaving the Wawel Cathedral area, PAP said. The remains were to be taken to a forensics laboratory at Krakow's renowned Jagiellonian University for a series of tests, including computer tomography and DNA tests. Scientists will also look for the presence of explosives to check the belief held by many Kaczynski supporters that the plane, a Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 operated by the Polish air force, disintegrated in mid-air in an intended explosion. Prosecutors say they plan to exhume and perform similar post-mortems on a total of 83 bodies through the end of 2017. Four bodies were cremated, while nine other bodies were already exhumed in 2011 and 2012 after families protested major errors in autopsy reports carried out by the Russians right after the crash. It turned out six victims had been buried in the wrong graves. The Russians have said the mistakes occurred due to the fragmented state of the bodies, but to many Poles they are proof of wrongdoing by the Russians, suspicions fueled by Moscow's refusal so far to return the plane's wreckage and the flight recorders to the Poles. Law and Justice, which assumed power a year ago, says Tusk's team neglected to have each of the bodies examined, out of disregard for the late president, a political rival, and out of concern that the findings could anger Russian President Vladimir Putin something Tusk and members of his Civic Platform party deny. The exhumations are proving controversial, with most Poles dismissive of the conspiracy theories, and some relatives aghast at the thought of their loved ones being exhumed. "We stand alone and helpless in the face of this ruthless and cruel act," the relatives of 17 victims wrote in an open letter. "The forceful exhumations constitute a violation of a taboo existing in our culture that calls for the respect of the bodies of the dead," said Malgorzata Rybicka, the widow of Arkadiusz Rybicki, a lawmaker with Civic Platform, in an interview with the Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic magazine. "It also shows the lighthearted approach to the feelings of the families." However, Malgorzata Wasserman, daughter of Zbigniew Wasserman, a lawmaker who perished, called the exhumations "a procedural must" given that Poland carried out no autopsies as the stunned nation watched the dozens of coffins, draped in white-and-red national flags, arrive from Russia in 2010. The Russian autopsy report on her father described him as having the healthy liver of a young man when in fact the 60-year-old had only part of his liver left after an operation. The tragedy occurred April 10, 2010, when the presidential delegation was traveling to honor 22,000 Polish officers who were murdered by the Soviet secret police at the start of World War II in the Katyn forest and elsewhere. The delegation included government members, lawmakers, military commanders and the relatives of officers slain in the wartime massacre. The symbolism of the mission only added to the national grief and the suspicions. FILE - This Sunday April 11, 2010 file photo shows the wreckage of the Polish presidential plane which crashed early Saturday in Smolensk, western Russia. The bodies of former Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife are to be removed from their tomb in Krakow after dark on Monday Nov. 14, 2016, the first of exhumations planned on most of the 96 prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev, File) FILE - In this Sunday July 13, 2008 file photo, Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria attend a formal dinner after a Mediterranean Summit meeting at the Petit Palais in Paris. The bodies of former Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife are to be removed from their tomb in Krakow after dark on Monday, the first of exhumations planned on most of the 96 prominent Poles killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File) In this picture taken Saturday Nov. 12, 2016 the grave stones of some of the victims of the 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other prominent Poles, at the Powazki Cemetery, in Warsaw, Poland. The bodies of Kaczynski and his wife Maria Kaczynska are being exhumed after dark on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016 for examination on orders from the prosecutors, who are investigating the crash. Also remains of 81 other victims will be exhumed because findings from autopsies carried out in Russia are flawed and unreliable, prosecutors say. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) In this picture taken Saturday Nov. 12, 2016 the grave stones of some of the victims of the 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other prominent Poles, at the Powazki Cemetery, in Warsaw, Poland. The bodies of Kaczynski and his wife Maria Kaczynska are being exhumed after dark on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016 for examination on orders from the prosecutors, who are investigating the crash. Also remains of 81 other victims will be exhumed because findings from autopsies carried out in Russia are flawed and unreliable, prosecutors say. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) FILE - In this file photo taken April 16, 2011 at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, the coffins of the late President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria Kaczynska who were killed, with 94 other prominent Poles, in a plane crash April 10,2010 in Smolensk, Russia are seen. The bodies of the presidential couple are being exhumed after dark on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, for examination on orders from the prosecutors, who are investigating the crash. Also remains of 81 other victims will be exhumed because findings from autopsies carried out in Russia are flawed and unreliable, prosecutors say. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) German foreign minister tapped to become next president BERLIN (AP) Germany's foreign minister, who once referred to Donald Trump as a "hate preacher," was tapped Monday to become the country's next president. Frank-Walter Steinmeier would take over the largely ceremonial role as head of state from Joachim Gauck, whose five-year term ends in February. Chancellor Angela Merkel said her center-right Union bloc would back Steinmeier's nomination for the post, calling it an important signal "particularly in times of worldwide turmoil and instability." FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2016 file photo German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier waves to the press as he arrives for talks with Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, in Warsaw, Poland. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, file) Together with the votes of Steinmeier's own center-left Social Democratic Party, the 60-year-old political veteran would likely have enough support to win a vote among the 1,260 delegates who elect Germany's next president on Feb. 12. Social Democratic Party leader Sigmar Gabriel told reporters Monday that Steinmeier had earned widespread respect and the necessary trust required to fill the post. Steinmeier is regularly ranked among Germany's most popular politicians. While normally studiously diplomatic, Steinmeier strongly criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during the American election campaign. Asked in August about the rise of right-wing populism in Germany and elsewhere, Steinmeier slammed those who "make politics with fear." He cited the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, promoters of Britain's exit from the European Union, and "the hate preachers, like Donald Trump at the moment in the United States." Following Trump's election, Steinmeier said the Republican's victory meant "nothing is going to get easier. A lot will get harder." He said Germany would seek dialogue with the Trump administration, but warned that American foreign policy would likely become "less predictable." Steinmeier first gained national attention in 1998 when he became chief of staff to Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. He was credited with keeping a sometimes chaotic center-left government running smoothly and seeing through a package of economic reforms and welfare-state cuts in 2003. The reforms, launched at a time of high unemployment and economic stagnation, were credited with helping fuel growth and make the economy more resilient, but critics said they fueled social divisions. He won widespread respect in 2010 when he took a few weeks away from politics to donate a kidney to his wife, Elke Buedenbender, a judge at a Berlin administrative court. Steinmeier's promotion would leave a void in the foreign ministry, where he led efforts to resolve conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, declined to comment Monday on a possible replacement for Germany's top diplomat. ____ Follow Frank Jordans on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2016 file photo German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier laughs as he waits for the arrival of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah at the foreign ministry in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file) FILE - In this July 15, 2015 file photo German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrive for the weekly cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file) FILE - In this June 24, 2015 file photo German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, left, and his wife Elke Buedenbender arrive for an official state dinner for Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, in front of Germany's President Joachim Gauck's residence, Bellevue Palace, in Berlin. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file) Portugal calls for exhibitions from old shipwreck in Namibia JOHANNESBURG (AP) A Portuguese official says it's impossible to put a price on the booty of the Bom Jesus, a 16th century Portuguese ship carrying gold, silver and elephant tusks that was discovered in 2008 along the Namibian coastline. Teresa Ribeiro, Portugal's secretary of state for foreign affairs, says the artifacts found in the remains of the shipwreck have a "unique historical value." The Portuguese news agency Lusa quotes Ribeiro as saying during a trip to Namibia that the archaeological site is securely maintained in line with international standards. Ribeiro says she has told Namibian authorities that exhibitions from the shipwreck should be held in both Portugal and Namibia. School district pays 11-year-old $6,500 for keynote speech POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (AP) A New York school district paid an 11-year-old child advocate $6,500 plus expenses for serving as keynote speaker for staff and hosting a student workshop last week. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports (http://pojonews.co/2fy4E5l ) the Poughkeepsie City School District hired Marley Dias to speak during the superintendent's conference day last Tuesday. The board voted 3-1 to retroactively approve Dias' consultant agreement at its Nov. 9 meeting. The girl from West Orange, New Jersey, created the popular #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign to draw attention to the lack of racial diversity in children's literature. She gave an hour-long speech to staff before leading an hour and a half-long workshop for 50 students. Superintendent Nicole Williams said at Wednesday's meeting that Dias' resume is "tremendous" and the district shouldn't discriminate because she's 11 years old. Dias was paid through funding from a federal education program. ___ The number of hate crimes reported to police increased by about 6.7 per cent last year, led largely by a 67 per cent surge in crimes against Muslims, according to FBI statistics released Monday. Civil rights groups had been raising concerns about an anti-Muslim backlash in the U.S. even before the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, late in the year. The reporting period covers calendar year 2015, but comes at a time of heightened tensions following last week's presidential election. Hate crimes against Muslim increased 67 per cent last year. Above, Muslim student Mariam Nomair speaks to reporters, after being harassed for wearing a hijab at her Los Angeles high school last week There have been reports of racist and anti-religious instances since the presidential election that have sparked outrage, including students at one school who chanted 'white power' and a videotaped assault in Chicago that showed black men beating a white man as onlookers screamed, 'You voted Trump!' And Mariam Nomair, a 16-year-old high school student in Los Angeles, said she has been the target of racist abuse since the election of Donald Trump. Nomair a Muslim student at El Camino High School said she had been targeted for her religion before, but that the abuse has gotten worse since Tuesday. In one instance, a male student walked up to her as she was walking to class and tried to rip her hijab off of her head and she was called a terrorist. In 2008, after Barack Obama was elected as the nation's first black president, there were also suspected cases of alleged hate crimes tied to the election. In 2015, there were 257 incidents of anti-Muslim bias compared to 184 incidents the prior year. The total is second only to the surge in hate crimes following the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001. The increase could be due, in part, to increased reporting by victims as well as better reporting and tracking by law enforcement agencies, although the number of all law enforcement agencies sending their data to the FBI decreased about three per cent between 2014 and 2015. Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased from 5,479 in 2014 to 5,850 last year, and religious-based hate crimes increased by 23 per cent. Palestinian leader visits Turkmenistan for the 1st time ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AP) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is visiting Turkmenistan, an energy-rich ex-Soviet Central Asian nation, for the first time. Abbas, speaking after Monday's talks with Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, said they discussed issues related to the Mideast peace settlement. Abbas said the Palestinian delegation will also attend a Mideast peace conference hosted by France. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not attend the conference later this year, arguing that direct talks should resume between the two sides. Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, right, shakes hands with visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Alexander Vershinin) Abbas also said he has "high hopes" for prospective Mideast peace talks in Moscow, but gave no details. Study details economic benefits of planned new Roma stadium ROME (AP) Roma's planned new stadium would deliver nearly 20 billion euros ($21.7 billion) in additional revenues to the Italian capital over the next decade, according to a university study on the severely delayed project. The privately financed 1.6 billion euro ($1.7 billion) project would also increase Rome's gross domestic product by 18.5 billion euros ($20 billion) by 2026, according to research by Rome's Sapienza University. "This is one of the most ambitious urban regeneration works that Rome and Italy has ever seen," Giuseppe Ciccarone, Sapienza's dean of economics, said Monday. However, the start of construction has been delayed for years with approval for the Serie A stadium, training center and surrounding business and entertainment park slowed at municipal and regional levels. James Pallotta, Roma's American president, first presented the stadium plan in March 2014, saying then that it would be ready for the 2016-17 season. The stadium site in Tor di Valle is about halfway between downtown and the Leonardo Da Vinci airport. With a design inspired by the Colosseum, the stadium is slated to seat 52,500 and be expandable to 60,000 for major matches. Roma currently shares the 72,000-seat Stadio Olimpico with city rival Lazio. The 125-hectare (300-acre) area for the new stadium will also include a training ground for Roma, three high-rise office towers, plus parks and commercial and entertainment areas. The study also said that the stadium project would reduce the average unemployment rate in Rome by nearly one full percentage point, with about 1,500 workers employed during the construction phase and a further 4,000 as parts of the project become operational. Once fully operational, up to 20,000 people will be employed across the stadium and business park. A social worker and her boss have been charged with manslaughter and child abuse by prosecutors who say they failed to protect a toddler who was found decomposed in a Detroit apartment. Elaina Brown and her supervisor, Kelly Williams, were arraigned Monday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree child abuse and neglect in the death of Aaron Minor. The three-year-old boy was found decomposed inside an apartment he shared with his mother Deanna Minor after she checked herself into a local mental institution. While Deanna Minor faces a number of charges including murder, prosecutors said Brown and Williams failed to provide a safety plan or request police check-in, even after they identified him as vulnerable. Elaina Brown (left) and her supervisor, Kelly Williams, (right) were arraigned Monday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree child abuse and neglect Three-year-old Aaron Minor (pictured) was found decomposing in a bed by a maintenance worker who noticed a foul smell 11 days after his mother was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit The boy's mother (pictured left and right, at arraignment) was charged with felony murder, second-degree murder, first and second-degree child abuse, and failure to report dead body According to Aaron's grandmother, Deanna, 28, was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit on May 16, WXYZ reported. Deanna was found unresponsive on a lawn outside the Madison Estates complex, and she was treated without medical personnel realizing her toddler was inside. Aaron's body was found decomposing in a bed 11 days later by a maintenance worker who noticed a foul smell. The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office ruled that his death was a homicide, but autopsy and toxicology tests came back inconclusive, with no signs of trauma inside the apartment, authorities said. Brown and Williams, who worked for Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services, were arraigned Monday and held on $25,000 personal bond. Prosecutors allege the social workers failed to provide a safety plan, ask police to conduct a safety check or file a juvenile court petition. Both social workers, who were ordered not to be around children during their arraignment on Monday, have been suspended with pay. Brown had only been working with the state department for a year, while Williams has been an employee since 1995. Deanna was arrested in August and charged with felony murder, second-degree murder, first and second-degree child abuse, and failure to report a dead body. Deanna could face a maximum sentence of life without parole. Deanna (pictured with Aaron) was found unresponsive on a lawn outside the Madison Estates complex, and she was treated without medical personnel realizing her toddler was inside 30,000 chickens culled in Germany after bird flu detected BERLIN (AP) German authorities say a flock of 30,000 chickens has been destroyed in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein after a strain of bird flu was detected in their enclosure. The animals were killed Sunday and Monday as a precaution to try to contain the H5N8 strain of the virus, which can easily spread among birds but is not known to infect humans. The state on Monday announced new protective measures, including ordering special protective clothes to be worn in stalls, and the complete cleaning and disinfection of all vehicles used to transport poultry. Ahead of the Christmas season with high demand for goose, duck and chicken, farmers are concerned about the impact of an outbreak. Israel is embarking on a major archaeological expedition to find yet undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls, an Israeli antiquities official said Monday. Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority said a government research team will spend the next three years surveying hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, the arid region where the Dead Sea Scrolls, the world's oldest biblical manuscripts, were preserved for thousands of years and discovered in 1947. The collection is considered the crown jewel of Israeli antiquities. Scroll down for video Israel is embarking on a major archaeological expedition to find yet undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls, an Israeli antiquities official said Monday. Pictured, Roi Porat, an Israeli student of archaeology, works near remains of a cave found at the West Bank archeological site Qumran In a move that is bound to stir controversy, the researchers may also excavate Dead Sea-area caves in the West Bank, Ganor said. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast War, and the Palestinians want the territory to establish an independent state. Some of the scrolls were remarkably in tact (like the War Scroll above), but others were reduced to little more than fragments. This has meant much of the text in the manuscripts still remains a mystery Ganor discussed details of the project with The Associated Press ahead of an official announcement. The expedition will begin in December and will be funded by the Israeli prime minister's office, Ganor said. A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The upcoming expedition will be the first large-scale archaeological survey of the area since Operation Scroll, an effort in 1993 to find any remaining Dead Sea Scrolls hidden in an area of the West Bank before Israel transferred partial control of the area to the Palestinian Authority. The Dead Sea Scrolls (The Psalms Scroll pictured) have given researchers an insight into early Biblical texts and key moments in history. Some of the parchments, however, have become damaged and new techniques are revealing text that is hidden beneath blacked edges and damaged corners THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: THE GREATEST FIND OF THE 20TH CENTURY Discovered between between 1946 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 ancient manuscripts containing parts of what is now known as the Hebrew Bible, as well as a range of extra-biblical documents. They were first found by shepherd Muhammed Edh-Dhib, as he searched for a stray among the limestone cliffs at Khirbet Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea in what was then British Mandate Palestine - now the West Bank. The story goes that in a cave in the dark crevice of a steep rocky hillside, Muhammed hurled a stone into the dark interior and was startled to hear the sound of breaking pots. Venturing inside, the young Bedouin found a mysterious collection of large clay jars, in some of which he found old scrolls, some wrapped in linen and blackened with age. The texts are of great historical and religious significance and include the earliest known surviving copies of biblical and extra-biblical documents, as well as preserving evidence of diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. Dated to various ranges between 408BC and 318AD, they are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus and bronze. The scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups. 'Biblical' manuscripts, which are copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible comprise 40 per cent of the haul. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a caves in the limestone cliffs at Khirbet Qumran (pictured) Other religious manuscripts, including known documents from the Second Temple period like the books of Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, and Sirach, that were now included in the Bible comprise 30 per cent of the identified scrolls. The so-called 'Sectarian' manuscripts - previously unknown documents that shed light on the beliefs of Jewish groups of the time - like the Community Rule, War Scroll, Pesher on Habakkuk, and the Rule of the Blessing, make up the remaining 30 per cent. While some of the writings have survived as nearly intact scrolls, most of the archive consists of thousands of parchment and papyrus fragments. Advertisement No scrolls were found in that undertaking. According to Ganor, archaeologists also hope to find other antiquities dating back to as early as 5,000 years ago, as well as from the 1st-century Jewish-Roman war and the 2nd-century Bar Kochba revolt, when Jewish fighters battling the Roman army sought refuge in the desert. Last summer, Israel carried out a three-week excavation of the so-called Cave of the Skulls in the Judean Desert, after catching a group of six Palestinian men digging illegally at the site in 2014. A government research team will spend the next three years surveying hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, where the Scrolls, were preserved for thousands of years and discovered in 1947. Above, Dr. Adolfo Roitman presents a part of the Isaiah Scroll The Palestinians were believed to be digging for more Dead Sea Scrolls. In recent years, ancient manuscripts have trickled onto the local antiquities market, and looters are believed to have plundered them from Dead Sea-area caves, prompting the government initiative. 'We know there are more,' Ganor said, speaking of undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls. 'Most of the places haven't been reached.' Court sidesteps issue of social media account authentication HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped the issue of how social media accounts should be authenticated in criminal cases, in a ruling upholding a murder conviction. The court issued a 6-0 decision in the appeal of Derrick Bouknight, who argued prosecutors didn't adequately prove a Facebook account they used as evidence was his. His appeal noted how easy it is to create fake accounts, hack into accounts and doctor photographs. While courts in other states have issued varying opinions on how to authenticate social media accounts, Connecticut justices instead said evidence against Bouknight was overwhelming and he didn't prove the admission of the Facebook evidence had a substantial effect on the jury's verdict. Bouknight, 27, is serving a 70-year prison sentence for fatally shooting a man in New Haven in October 2010. A judge allowed into evidence photos from a Facebook account that police said was Bouknight's. The photos showed Bouknight wearing a baseball cap and a glove that were similar to a cap and glove witnesses said the killer was wearing when he shot William Baines in a dispute over a $100 debt. Bouknight's lawyer, Richard Condon Jr., said the trial court judge never found that Bouknight created or maintained the Facebook account or posted the photographs. He said the Facebook photos made Bouknight look like a "thug" and portrayed him in a negative light to jurors. The court did say, however, that there was "ample" evidence including witness testimony that indicated the Facebook account was Bouknight's. Condon said Monday that he could not immediately comment because he had yet to review the decision. Bouknight has never said whether the Facebook page was his. Prosecutor Timothy Costello said it was the second case in which the Supreme Court avoided deciding on standards for admitting social media evidence. "Eventually a case will get up there where they will have to confront it," he said. The issue has not made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 40 states have based their evidence authentication rules on the federal rules of evidence, which allow for the authentication of evidence through the testimony of witnesses and circumstantial evidence. Some states, including Maryland, have taken a tougher approach. The Maryland Court of Appeals said in a 2011 case that social media evidence can be verified in several ways, including having profile creators testify the accounts are theirs, searching computers used to create profiles and having social media companies verify profile creators. Iowa State president had earlier 'hard landing' AMES, Iowa (AP) Iowa State University President Steven Leath damaged a private plane in a hard landing in 2014, 11 months before he banged up a university aircraft in remarkably similar fashion, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Leath was flying in gusty conditions on Aug. 11, 2014 and "landed hard" in a crosswind, causing propeller damage that he discovered the next day, according to university records released under the open records law. The documents show that the university didn't fully disclose information about both incidents in its application for aviation insurance earlier this year. It's not clear whether this might affect the policy, which covers millions of dollars in liability and damage for both university planes. The policy, which cost $51,000 in premiums, contains a warning that it will be voided "if you have concealed or misrepresented any material fact." FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2012, file photo, Iowa State President Steven Leath speaks during his installation ceremony in Ames, Iowa. Documents obtained by The Associated Press under the open records law, shows Leath damaged a private plane in a hard landing in 2014, 11 months before he banged up a university aircraft in similar fashion. Leath damaged the university plane in a hard landing in July 2015 in Bloomington, Ill. (Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register via AP, File) Despite the 2014 incident, Leath was cleared to fly solo on the university's newly purchased Cirrus SR22 single-engine plane just two months later, records show. Leath damaged that $498,000 plane in a hard landing in July 2015 in Bloomington, Illinois, while he and his wife were flying home from a North Carolina vacation. He also blamed that incident on windy conditions. AP's revelation of that accident and other questionable trips by Leath, a private pilot, has prompted the Iowa Board of Regents to conduct an audit of university flights. Authorities are awaiting the audit's conclusions before determining whether to open a criminal investigation of Leath, who paid back $17,500 for accident costs and vowed to stop flying himself. Leath has expressed regret but denied violating policies or a law barring the use of state assets for private gain. Leath's spokeswoman, Megan Landolt, declined to identify the plane Leath was flying during the August 2014 landing and where it happened. She said no school resources were involved in the incident, which came to light six months later when he listed a "hard landing with prop damage" on his pilot history in the university's 2015 insurance application. Learning about the 2014 incident "surprised us as it was not reported to our office at the time it occurred," Deb Cramer, an insurance coordinator at the university's risk management office, wrote in a February 2015 email obtained by AP. She asked the university's insurance agent, LMC Insurance and Risk Management, whether the incident had to be disclosed on the application as an aviation loss. An LMC representative told Cramer that the incident was considered a loss and that divulging it wasn't expected to "have a negative impact on the renewal" of the university's policy with State National Insurance. When Leath got into the 2015 accident, the school didn't file an insurance claim and paid the $14,000 bill to repair the plane's wings itself, calling it a business decision to avoid a premium hike. After that insurance policy expired in February, the university switched its carrier to Catlin Insurance. Leath and the university were less forthcoming on their 2016 application than they were a year earlier, although it's not clear whether that led to lower rates or better coverage. The pilot history form signed by Leath asked him to disclose details of all prior accidents and incidents as a pilot, including dates, and warned that concealing material information was "a fraudulent insurance act" subject to criminal and civil penalties. He listed the 2015 landing in Illinois, noting that it triggered a Federal Aviation Administration test ride that he passed. But he left off the 2014 incident. The university also attested in the application that it had no "aviation losses" during the last three years, even though the 2015 accident would have qualified and it had divulged the 2014 landing as a loss the previous year. Landolt said Leath didn't need to disclose the 2014 incident to the university's aviation insurance broker, Nasom Associates, since he had done so in the prior year's application. Catlin spokeswoman Christine Weirsky said details of client policies are confidential. "As far as what impact non-disclosure would have, we can't comment on that. It's an aspect of their coverage," she said. Scott Williams, an aviation attorney who is not affiliated with the school, Leath or Catlin Insurance, said it's always best to over-disclose. But he said he doubted Catlin would have a solid legal reason for denying coverage, though it might try in the event of a claim. ___ Follow Ryan J. Foley on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rjfoley Ukrainian lawmaker punches colleague at parliament meeting MOSCOW (AP) A Ukrainian lawmaker has punched his colleague in the face, the latest brawl in the nation's raucous parliament. Opposition Bloc head Yuri Boiko first listened calmly as Radical Party head Oleh Lyashko was denouncing him as a Kremlin agent in Ukraine during Monday's meeting of parliamentary leaders. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet, grabbed Lyashko by the neck and hit him in the face with his fist. As Lyashko again took the floor, calling Boiko a "Moscow louse," Boiko hit him again. Others pulled them apart, and Verkhovna Rada speaker Andriy Parubiy warned Boiko that he could be barred from attending parliament meetings. Police: Woman, child lived with tigers, 'vicious' monkeys HOUSTON (AP) A woman faces a child endangerment charge after tigers, a cougar and other exotic animals were found in the Houston-area home she shared with her 14-year-old daughter. Trisha Meyer was arrested last week in Nevada, where she is jailed pending extradition to Texas on the child endangerment charge. Jail records don't list an attorney to speak on Meyer's behalf. Houston police raided Meyer's home in September after a complaint that she failed to deliver on the $3,000 sale of an exotic kitten. Officers found the tigers and cougar, plus a skunk and a fox. They said her daughter was petting some of the animals. She only had permits for the tigers. ACLU: Don't punish Ohio student who exposed racist posts SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) A civil rights organization is asking an Ohio high school to rescind discipline leveled against a student who tried to expose a schoolmate's racism by reposting the classmate's remarks. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio said Monday it had asked Shaker Heights school officials to cancel a one-day, in-school suspension Tuesday against one of two teenage girls accused of being disruptive for reposting the schoolmate's comments. The other teen served her suspension last week. The Shaker Heights schools superintendent wrote on the district's website that the situation has been addressed but wouldn't comment further on student discipline. The Latest: Attorney: Dad innocent in son's hot car death BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) The Latest on the murder trial of a Georgia man whose toddler son died in a hot car (all times local): 5:30 p.m. The defense attorney for a Georgia man convicted of murdering his toddler son after leaving him in a hot car says he's certain his client is "not guilty of what he's been convicted of." A jury Monday found Justin Ross Harris guilty of malice murder and other crimes in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 5. Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore told reporters Harris didn't talk about the verdict when his lawyers came to his holding cell after the verdict was read. He said Harris only talked about how much he misses his son. Kilgore says Harris "can now begin the grieving process he's not been able to go through the last two-plus years." Kilgore says he plans to appeal the verdict and ask for a new trial. ___ 4:55 p.m. The lead prosecutor in murder trial of a Georgia man convicted of murdering his toddler son after leaving him in the back of a hot SUV says the jury was almost unanimous when their deliberations began. Chuck Boring told reporters Monday that he spoke with some jury members after the verdict and was told they were almost unanimous when they began deliberations, but wanted to take time to review the evidence. A jury on Monday convicted Justin Ross Harris of both malice and felony murder, among other charges, in the 2014 death of his 22-month old son, Cooper. Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, will be sentenced on Dec. 5. "It wasn't one thing that they said, 'This proves malice,' " Boring said. "It was everything." Jurors seen leaving the courthouse declined to speak with reporters. ___ 4:25 p.m. The Cobb County district attorney says the conviction of a Georgia man who left his son in a hot SUV to die is not a reason to celebrate. Vic Reynolds said in a statement Monday, "Today is not a victory, nor is it a day we celebrate. In fact, today is a monumentally sad day." A jury on Monday convicted Justin Ross Harris of both malice and felony murder, among other charges, in the 2014 death of his 22-month old son, Cooper. Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, will be sentenced on Dec. 5. Lawrence Zimmerman, an attorney for Ross' ex-wife, says he was disappointed by the verdict but that Harris has a strong appeal, adding that the case had no winners. ___ 3:55 p.m. A Georgia father convicted of murdering his toddler son showed little emotion as the verdict was read. A jury on Monday convicted Justin Ross Harris of both malice and felony murder, among other charges, in the 2014 death of his 22-month old son, Cooper. Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, will be sentenced on Dec. 5. Harris was also found guilty of child cruelty and of sending sexual text messages to a teenage girl and asking for nude photos of her pubic area. Malice murder carries a prison term of life with or without parole. ___ 3:15 p.m. A Georgia father has been found guilty of murder in the 2014 death of his toddler son who perished after being left in a hot car. A jury reached its verdict Monday in the trial of Justin Ross Harris. The former Home Depot web developer's 22-month-old son, Cooper, died after Harris left the boy in his SUV while he was at work June 18, 2014. Harris was charged with malice murder after investigators concluded he left his child to die on purpose. They also charged him with felony murder, which does not require proof of intent to kill. He was found guilty of both murder charges. Defense attorneys said the boy's death was a tragic accident. ____ 9:30 a.m. A jury has resumed deliberations in the murder trial of a Georgia man whose toddler son died after being left for hours in the back seat of a hot car. Jurors returned Monday morning to the courthouse in coastal Brunswick to begin their fourth day of deliberations in the case of Justin Ross Harris. He is charged with malice murder and other crimes in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. Prosecutors say Harris intentionally killed his son to escape from family responsibilities while he sought sexual affairs outside his marriage. Defense attorneys say Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, loved his son and the boy's death was a tragic accident. The jury deliberated Tuesday through Thursday last week without reaching a verdict. ___ 2:45 a.m. Jury deliberations are entering their fourth day in the trial of a Georgia man charged with murder after his toddler son died in a hot car. Jurors are scheduled to resume weighing evidence Monday morning in the case against Justin Ross Harris. The metro Atlanta web developer is charged with malice murder and other crimes in the June 2014 death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. Prosecutors used the month-long trial to make a case that Harris intentionally killed his son to escape from family responsibilities while he sought sexual affairs outside his marriage. Defense attorneys say Harris, who moved to Georgia from Alabama in 2012, loved his son and the boy's death was a tragic accident. Poland signs deal to buy 2 US-made Gulfstream VIP planes WARSAW, Poland (AP) Poland has signed a 440.5 million-zloty ($108 million) deal to purchase two small U.S.-made Gulfstream G550 planes to fly government members and other top politicians on foreign visits. New planes for the government have been a pressing need for some 20 years, as Soviet-made planes were phased out due to age. One of the two remaining Tu-154 aircraft crashed in 2010, killing President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others. Two chartered Embraer planes are in use now. Poland's Defense Ministry on Monday signed a deal with Savannah, Georgia-based Gulfstream Aerospace for the delivery of two 16-seat planes by mid-August 2017. They are capable of flying nonstop across the Atlantic, as was Poland's requirement. A bid by French company Dassault Aviation was rejected. For Kenneth Lonergan, an ambivalent moment in the sun NEW YORK (AP) The filmmaker and playwright Kenneth Lonergan, a self-described "ultra-naturalist" whose eloquently empathic stories tremble with the richness of daily life, began his writing career, surprisingly, awash in science fiction. He was (and still is) a die-hard Trekkie. He has seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" more than 50 times, he estimates. One of his early plays (unproduced so far) is about two spacemen spinning through the universe for years after their ship was disintegrated. Lonergan would lead Matthew Broderick, his best friend since high-school, from their Upper West Side neighborhood to the Ziegfeld Theatre to see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." ''He liked to sit about two or three rows back and just get blasted by it," recalls Broderick. Lonergan's plays and films, talky and naturalistic, employ nothing like Spielbergian grandeur. But they can nevertheless, on a purely human scale, just as surely overpower in their fullness of life, in their warm, melancholic intimacy. This image released by Roadside Attractions and Amazon Studios shows Casey Affleck, left, with writer-director Kenneth Lonergan during the filming of "Manchester By The Sea." (Claire Folger/Roadside Attractions and Amazon Studios via AP) "Life is full of very interesting, small details that usually get skipped over for the sake of economy," Lonergan, rumpled and genial, said in a recent interview in Soho, not far from where he lives with his wife, the actress J. Smith-Cameron and their 10-year-old daughter. "And those little details dictate all sorts of things in life. When I skip over them, there's not much left." That sensitive eye has made Lonergan, 54, one of the most celebrated playwrights of his generation, and a figure of cultish ardor for his first two films: the luminous sibling drama "You Can Count on Me" and the ambitious New York masterwork "Margaret." The latter was embroiled for years in a law suit and disagreements with the distributor, Fox Searchlight, and received only the scantest of theatrical releases. Lonergan's favored longer edit has steadily gained in stature. Now, cinematic redemption is at hand. Lonergan's new film, "Manchester by the Sea" (in theaters Friday), is already one of the most acclaimed movies of the year, roundly pegged as an Oscar favorite. It stars Casey Affleck as a janitor whose brother's death returns him to his Massachusetts fishing village hometown, a homecoming that resurfaces a trauma from the past. His brother's will names him guardian of a teenage son. The film, toggling between the past and present, runs on two rails at once, leading to a heartbreaking portrait of a tragedy's long, unshakable shadow. "I was a little chagrined to work on it because these things have happened to real people, and worse, and you sometimes wonder if you have any right to be making it into a fun story for people to compliment you on," says Lonergan with a chuckle. "Then I figured why not, it's worth talking about, it's worth trying to look at and be truthful about and respectful of." The idea of the film was first brought to Lonergan by Matt Damon (who co-stars in "Margaret") and John Krasinski. They hoped Lonergan would write it and Damon would direct and star. Time passed and schedules got complicated, and ultimately Lonergan took up directing, too, with Damon (now a producer) handing the role to his longtime friend, Affleck. It was, to a certain extent, a lifeline out of the debilitating saga the "unrelenting difficulties," Lonergan says of "Margaret." "I certainly saw the value in giving him a good job, but my motives were probably far more selfish than that," says Damon. "He's my favorite writer." "Manchester by the Sea" drew raves at its Sundance Film Festival premiere, where Amazon plunked down $10 million for distribution rights. Being the toast of Hollywood would put some in the mood for celebration. Not Lonergan. "He's a curmudgeon, as everyone says," says Broderick. "Kenny said, 'I don't know if I feel good because I improved myself and I feel better or if it's because everyone's telling me I'm great.' That definitely doesn't hurt. As we get older, you can really appreciate this is a wonderful time for him and he should enjoy it. And he should use it to make whatever he wants." Affleck, who starred in a London production of Lonergan's "Youth in Revolt," describes Lonergan as allergic to sentimentality and artificial convention. "He talks about the characters like they're friends of yours you've known your whole life," says Affleck. "It just seems like human beings and at the end you're sobbing and you're not sure why because people have just been fighting about whether to order pizza or not. It's a magic trick." Lonergan, though, is less mystical about his process. When he gets stuck, he says, he tries to think pragmatically about his characters, the way an actor might. Did she have dinner yet? Would she have needed to make that phone call? Some of the scenes in "Manchester by the Sea" came out of Lonergan simply driving up and down Cape Ann to figure out how his characters would have gotten around. "I've always just tried as hard as I could to do whatever was necessary to access whatever secrets that I didn't know about that were inside of me," says Lonergan. "You do certain steering of that. But mostly what I hope is you're like: 'That would be cool.' And you don't know why and you don't ask why." How does he steer himself? Lonergan smiles. "I don't know. I've forgotten how." ___ Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP HP Enterprise ordered to keep working on Rhode Island system PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) A judge has ordered Hewlett Packard Enterprise to continue working on a long-delayed project to build a new computer system for Rhode Island's Division of Motor Vehicles. Superior Court Associate Justice Michael Silverstein on Monday issued a temporary restraining order at the state's request to block the Palo Alto, California-based company from walking off the unfinished job. The judge notes the sharp divide between the parties over the contractual obligations, the company's threat to walk away and the harm the state would suffer. The state sued HP Enterprise this month, saying it has paid more than $13 million for a computer system that hasn't been fully delivered. The sides met for court-ordered mediation. UNICEF teams up with writers for children's rights UNITED NATIONS (AP) The United Nations Children's Fund has teamed up with over 200 prominent writers from around the globe to commemorate Universal Children's Day. U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday that novelists, playwrights and poets have contributed tiny stories of around seven lines each for the campaign ahead of UNICEF's 70th anniversary on Dec. 11. Nigeria's Chimamanda Adichie, Brazil's Paulo Coelho and Britain's Christina Lamb were among the authors who contributed stories on the theme: "What I want from every child." The weeklong campaign, which was conceptualized by Finnish first lady Jenni Haukio, ends on Nov. 20 the anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, celebrated as Universal Children's Day. "As writers we are able to advocate through the simplicity of storytelling. With this worthy and necessary campaign, we advocate for the protection of the rights of precious children all over the world," Adichie said in a statement. Lamb tells the story of playing Cat's Cradle with an Afghan girl who has fled the Taliban and now lives in a camp on a Greek island "which is sunny and safe," but which she can't leave. "I take the string between my fingertips and manage a simple back and forth and she takes it back smiling and with a skillful move fashions a string butterfly. But when she passes it again and I try to make a Jacob's Ladder, it has been too many years and the string gets tangled and she walks away a sad princess," Lamb writes in her story. The campaign comes at a time when UNICEF says 50 million children have been uprooted from their homes due to conflict, poverty and climate change and 263 million children are out of school. "It is shocking to see that the lives of many children are still so heavily impacted by the horror of conflict, inequality, poverty and discrimination. I hope these Tiny Stories can remind the world that we must sustain our commitment to all of these children whose lives and futures are at stake," UNICEF spokesperson Paloma Escudero said in a statement. ____ Minnesota driver blames Trump for DWI arrest MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A Minnesota motorist had a novel excuse for her drunken driving arrest: She blamed Donald Trump. Police in the Minneapolis suburb of Lino Lakes said the 33-year-old woman rammed into two vehicles stopped at a traffic light Wednesday afternoon. The Star Tribune reported that the woman told officers she was upset over the election and they should let her go home. Police Capt. Wayne Wegener said the woman was referencing Trump's victory the night before. The next stage: Will anti-Trump marches become a movement? WASHINGTON (AP) Demonstrators upset over the election of Donald Trump have marched in cities around the country over the past week, and some are making plans to be in Washington for his inauguration Jan. 20. But whether marches will become a movement is an open question. At this early stage, the protesters who have taken to the streets to brand Trump a bigot and a sexist and chant "Not my president!" appear to be mostly venting their frustrations and do not seem to have coalesced behind overall leaders or a common set of demands. Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin, who as an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society helped organize an anti-Vietnam War demonstration that brought thousands to Washington in 1965, said the anti-Trump protests by themselves "are not the makings of a movement." High school students protest against the election of President-elect Donald Trump on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Students from several Los Angeles schools have walked out of classes to protest the election of Donald Trump as president. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) "A movement requires that clusters of people take responsibility for creating vehicles that can carry through, focus energy, develop priorities, strategize, recruit, figure out how to govern themselves," Gitlin said. For that to happen, a critical mass of protesters has to "transform their mindset from protest into successful politics, which is much less exciting," he said. Gitlin said that means "dirtying our hands in winning local and state battles which are instrumental to changing the national balance." On Monday, hundreds of students decrying Trump's election walked out of schools in Denver, Los Angeles and Silver Spring, Maryland, after a weekend in which thousands of people demonstrated around the country and scores were arrested. Protesters threw rocks at police in Indianapolis and hurled bottles and other objects in Portland, Oregon. Marchers have also converged on Trump Tower in New York, the president-elect's transition headquarters. Among other things, the demonstrators have condemned Trump's behavior toward women and his stand on immigration and civil liberties. Ralph Young, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia who teaches a course on dissent in America and has written two books on the topic, said it is too early to predict what the marches might become. Once Trump becomes president and starts making policy decisions, that could crystalize opposition and focus people's attention on certain issues, he said. If the anti-Trump demonstrations are going to become a movement, they also need leaders who can articulate their grievances, he said. That's one thing the Occupy Wall Street movement against economic inequality never really achieved a proper organization, Young said. Jamie Henn of the group 350, which organizes protests to fight climate change, said liberal activist groups are still scrambling to figure out how they will push back against a Trump presidency. "There is definitely stuff coming together and being planned that looks like the messy process of everyone and their mother throwing up something on their Facebook page," Henn said. Henn said liberals haven't seen the need for this level of mobilization since the run-up to the Iraq War. But activists remember glumly how little a dent their big marches against the invasion made then, and may use different tactics this time. Some groups are already trying to come together, though there are differences of opinion, said Greg McKelvey, a protest organizer in Portland, Oregon. McKelvey said demonstrators are trying to organize with counterparts in New York; Washington; Austin, Texas; Oakland, California; Boston; and a few other cities. Some activists want to prevent Trump somehow from becoming president, while others feel that's inevitable and instead want to insulate their communities from his policies, McKelvey said. He said his group, Portland's Resistance, aims to make sure city and state governments are working on issues such as limiting climate change, pushing for better health care and dealing with racial disparities in policing. Trump's election has made activists out of people who haven't been part of any organized demonstrations before. Olivia Antezana, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Maryland at College Park, had never been to a demonstration before creating and promoting a "Not My President" event on Facebook. By Monday afternoon, 18,000 people had indicated on Facebook that they would be going to the event in Washington on Inauguration Day. "I will say I certainly underestimated it," Antezana said. Still, Antezana said she is not sure what she will do after the demonstration she is planning is over. She doesn't plan to join a political campaign, she said, though she would like to keep up with activism. Right now, she said, she has another priority: school. ___ Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Washington; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Andrew Selsky in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report. ___ Follow Jessica Gresko on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jessicagresko. Protesters walk a street during an anti-Trump protest downtown Santa Ana, Calif., Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016. The sign, center, reads, "We refuse to accept a fascist United States." (Ana Venegas/The Orange County Register via AP) High school students protest against the election of President-elect Donald Trump on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Students from several Los Angeles schools have walked out of classes to protest the election of Donald Trump as president. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) In complete reversal, Obama refuses to criticize Trump WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama on Monday abandoned his dire warnings and dark predictions about his newly elected successor and urged Americans to give President-elect Donald Trump time to rise to the daunting responsibilities of the office, breaking sharply from his Democratic allies who have quickly condemned Trump's first major decisions. In his first extended remarks on the election that pounded his party and his legacy, Obama sought to reassure an anxious world and nation about his successor's commitments to alliances, at times appearing almost sanguine about a future Trump administration. Although he would not explicitly say Trump was qualified for the office, he said he believed the first-time officeholder would do his best to unite the nation, calling him pragmatic. He refused to wade into a political firestorm over Trump's decision to name a far-right conservative media mogul as a top adviser. And he expressed hope that the weight of the presidency will force Trump to overcome his shortcomings. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in the Brady press briefing room at the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) "He has won. He's going to be the next president and regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up," Obama said. "And some of his gifts that obviously allowed him to execute one of the biggest political upsets in history, those are ones that hopefully he will put to good use on behalf of all the American people." Obama's refusal to criticize his successor was a 180-degree reversal from the rhetoric of his campaign takedowns. Only a week ago, as he campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Obama said Trump was "woefully unprepared for the job" and couldn't "handle the nuclear codes." Obama's latest remarks bore little resemblance to the calls for resistance coming from other Democrats and many of Obama's supporters. As they come to grips with Trump's surprising win, many Democrats have seized on a call not to accept or "normalize" the actions of a man who ran a divisive campaign that included charges of racism, sexism and other offensive rhetoric and actions. But Obama, who was the target of some of that rhetoric, has embraced the role of national hand-holder. Both in private and in a brief statement last week, Obama has suggested that Democrats should buck up and move on. He's cast Trump's election as in line with the usual zig and zag of politics. On Monday, as he prepared to embark on a three-nation trip abroad, Obama went so far as to vouch for Trump and his foreign policies. Although Trump campaigned as a harsh critic of NATO, Obama said Trump sounded a different note when they met in the Oval Office last week. Obama said the Republican "expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships," including "strong and robust NATO" partnerships. "There is enormous continuity ... that makes us that indispensable nation when it comes to maintaining order around the world," Obama said. Relationships and policies go beyond presidents, he said, adding that military officials, diplomats and intelligence officers would cooperate with their foreign counterparts as before. Obama acknowledged he had offered advice to Trump, saying he emphasized the need to shift from campaigning to governing, and the importance of resetting the tone after a contentious election. "I don't think he is ideological," Obama said. "And that can serve him well as long as he has got good people around him and he has a clear sense of direction." Obama suggested he would continue to offer his advice. He said he would urge Trump "to think long and hard" before making good on his promise to upend Obama's program that deferred deportation for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children. Asked about one of Trump's most contentious moves since his triumph, appointing Steve Bannon as chief strategist and senior adviser, Obama said it was up to the president-elect to appoint a team. "It's important for us to let him make his decisions," Obama said of the choice of Bannon, a man celebrated as a force for the far right. But adding a hint of worry, Obama said he counseled Trump: "It's really important to send some signals of unity." Whereas Obama hailed Trump's "impressive" ability to speak to voters, he also delivered a subtle critique of Clinton's campaign. He said Democrats must broaden their focus beyond just swing states after an election that left the Senate and House in Republican hands, as well as most of the nation's governor's mansions. He rejected the idea that demographic advantages would lead to all-but-assured victories for the party, saying it must rebuild at the local, state and national levels. "We're going to have to compete everywhere," he said, reflecting on his own 2008 win in Iowa, a state that went for Trump this time. "We're going to have to show up everywhere." Clinton kept a relatively light campaign schedule until the final weeks of her campaign, mostly attending smaller events in battleground states. Her campaign focused heavily on motivating the Democratic base of female and minority voters, rather than swaying independents. "Good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them," Obama said. While Obama is in Germany, Greece and Peru, he said his team would accelerate efforts to ensure a smooth transition to the Trump administration. He stressed that he would try to strengthen the American economy over his final two months, and all but acknowledged he would not take any dramatic action to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in his final weeks in office. "One of the things you discover about being president is that there are all these rules and norms and laws and you got to pay attention to them. And the people who work for you are also subject to those rules and norms, and that's a piece of advice that I gave to the incoming president," he said. President Barack Obama smiles during a news conference in the Brady press briefing room at the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) A timeline of events in the Brendan Dassey case MILWAUKEE (AP) A judge has ordered the release of Brendan Dassey in a case profiled in the Netflix series "Making a Murderer." The judge's decision came after he overturned Dassey's conviction in August. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin says Dassey should be allowed to go free while prosecutors appeal his August decision. It wasn't clear how quickly Dassey would be released. Here are some key events in the case: ___ Oct. 31, 2005: Teresa Halbach, 25, of St. John in Calumet County, a photographer for Auto Trader Magazine, goes to Avery's Auto Salvage near Mishicot to photograph a minivan for sale by Steven Avery's sister. Evidence later shows Avery called asking for her to come, using his sister's name. FILE - In this March 3, 2006 file photo, Brendan Dassey, is escorted out of a Manitowoc County Circuit courtroom in Manitowoc, Wis. Dassey, whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series "Making a Murderer" was ordered released Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, from federal prison while prosecutors appeal. Dassey's supervised release was not immediate and is contingent upon him meeting multiple conditions. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File) Nov. 3, 2005: Halbach's family reports her missing. Nov. 5, 2005: Halbach's cousins find her vehicle under brush and auto parts in the Avery salvage yard. Charred bone fragments found in a burn pit later are determined to be her remains. Nov. 8, 2005: Avery tells reporters he fears authorities are trying to frame him for Halbach's slaying because he sued Manitowoc County officials for $36 million for wrongful conviction. Avery spent 18 years in prison for rape before DNA evidence cleared him of the crime and he was freed in 2003. Nov. 9, 2005: Avery is arrested and, based on past convictions for burglary and other crimes, charged with possessing firearms as a felon. Authorities say two guns were in his trailer home. Nov. 15, 2005: Avery is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and mutilating a corpse. Feb. 14, 2006: Authorities announce Avery has settled his lawsuit against Manitowoc County officials for $400,000. March 2, 2006: Avery's nephew Brendan Dassey, then 16, is charged in adult court with being a party to first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and first-degree sexual assault. Prosecutors base the charges on a videotaped statement in which Dassey detailed the killing, saying he and Avery raped and killed Halbach and burned her body. He later recants the statement. Jan. 29, 2007: A judge dismisses sexual assault and kidnapping charges against Avery because Dassey may not testify at his trial. Jan. 30, 2007: A judge says defense attorneys can tell jurors that Avery was wrongfully convicted of rape and may use as evidence a vial of his blood found unsecured in the Manitowoc County courthouse. Defense attorneys say discovery of the vial supports their claim that blood was planted to frame Avery. Feb. 12, 2007: Avery's trial begins. March 12, 2007: After the prosecution and defense rest, the judge dismisses the false-imprisonment charge, saying he doesn't think the jury has enough evidence to find Avery guilty. Avery has not taken the witness stand. Dassey also does not testify in Avery's trial. March 18, 2007: After deliberating for nearly 22 hours over three days, jurors convict Avery, now 44, of first-degree intentional homicide and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Avery is acquitted of the charge of mutilating a corpse. April 16, 2007: Dassey, now 17, goes on trial before a jury selected in Dane County. April 20, 2007: Prosecutors play Dassey's videotaped confession for the jury. April 23, 2007: Dassey testifies in his own defense, saying he lied when he gave the statement but doesn't know why. Avery does not testify. April 25, 2007: After 4 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury convicts Dassey of being party to first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and second-degree sexual assault. Sentencing is scheduled Aug. 2. June 1, 2007: Avery is sentenced to life in prison with no possible parole. Aug. 2, 2007: Dassey is sentenced to mandatory life in prison with a possibility of parole set for Nov. 1, 2048. December 2015: Netflix releases the series "Making a Murderer," in which the filmmakers cast doubt on the legal process used to convict Dassey and Avery. Authorities involved in the case have called the 10-hour series biased, while the filmmakers have stood by their work. Aug. 12, 2016: A judge throws out Dassey's conviction, ruling that investigators coerced a confession using deceptive tactics. He gives prosecutors 90 days to decide whether to retry Dassey. Social worker, boss charged in death of Detroit 3-year-old DETROIT (AP) Prosecutors on Monday took the rare step of charging a social worker and her boss with manslaughter and child abuse, alleging they neglected to do everything required to protect a 3-year-old Detroit boy who died. Child Protective Services worker Elaina Brown and her supervisor, Kelly Williams, were arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree child abuse and neglect in the death of Aaron Minor. Prosecutors allege that after identifying Aaron as vulnerable, Brown and Williams failed to provide a safety plan, ask police to conduct a safety check or file a juvenile court petition on Aaron's behalf. This undated photo provided by the Detroit Police Department shows Kelly Williams, a Child Protective Services employee, whom is one of two women charged Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, with manslaughter and child abuse in the death of a 3-year-old Detroit boy. (Detroit Police Department via AP) Deanna Kelley, the attorney representing Kelly Williams, said Aaron's death was "unspeakable," but every tragedy isn't "the result of a crime." Kelley added she doesn't understand why prosecutors would charge people "who have dedicated their lives to helping and protecting children." "Human nature is to want to hold someone accountable," she said. "What's so scary is to charge them with an intentional act ... when you disagree with a judgment call." The boy's decomposing body was found in his mother's apartment in June while she was in a hospital psychiatric unit. Deanna Minor was charged in August with murder and child abuse. A competency hearing is set for Nov. 30. Brown and Williams have been suspended with pay. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Bob Wheaton said officials are fully cooperating with the investigation. Wayne County prosecutors say Brown, acting on a referral from Deanna Minor's mental health worker, visited Minor and her son in April and found the food in the home to be inadequate. Brown spoke to her supervisor after the visit and sent a letter asking Minor to contact Child Protective Services, but prosecutors allege the mother didn't do so. Authorities say Brown never saw the Minors again, and both Brown and Williams were "grossly negligent and reckless in performing their duties." Charging state social service workers, they contend, is a rare but necessary step in this case. "We must seek to hold these defendants responsible for their alleged inaction," prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement. "The ultimate result in this case was the death of a child that never should have happened." Brown and Williams are due back in court next Monday. ___ Follow Jeff Karoub on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffkaroub . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/jeff-karoub . Lin-Manuel Miranda rules out starring in opening West End run of Hamilton The creator of hit Broadway musical Hamilton has ruled out starring in the opening run of the West End version of the show. Lin-Manuel Miranda said casting was under way to find an actor to play American founding father Alexander Hamilton in the London production. Miranda, who has been filming the sequel to Mary Poppins in the UK, said he was hopeful that West End theatregoers will get a "great production". Lin-Manuel Miranda arrives at the 2016 Governors Awards (AP) He told the Press Association: "We're starting the casting now to find an amazing European cast for Hamilton, an American musical. That is really exciting. "I can't wait. We've got a year to get our act together." Asked whether he planned to star in the opening run of the West End production, Miranda replied: "No, I don't think so. "We're going to try and find the best Hamilton we can. I'll be there cheering on opening night and I'll be there for rehearsals. "I think I'll probably just stick around after we've finished filming Mary Poppins and help get that set up." Theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh, who is bringing Hamilton to the West End, told The Telegraph last month that Miranda will be appearing in the London run, although not necessarily at the start. Miranda, who was speaking at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles, wrote Hamilton and starred in the lead role before leaving the Broadway show in July. The critically-acclaimed production won 11 Tony Awards, including best musical, and received the Pulitzer Prize for drama earlier this year. The story is based on Ron Chernow's biography of Hamilton, an immigrant from the West Indies who was George Washington's aide and helped shape the US constitution. Celebrity fans include President Barack Obama, Star Wars director JJ Abrams and rapper Jay Z. Nigel Farage's easy access to Donald Trump is provoking tension among Tories as he offers himself up as a deal broker between Downing Street and the next incumbent of the White House. After spending more than an hour with the president-elect, the interim Ukip's leader insisted Theresa May should stop running him down and instead use his closeness to the tycoon-turned-next US head of state to "put the national interest first". "The problem is that No 10 keep on putting out press statements saying that I'm irrelevant. I would have thought that in the national interest I might just be able to broker a coming together of these parties that don't know each other at all," Mr Farage told the BBC. Nigel Farage was the first British politician to meet Donald Trump after his election triumph (Nigel Farage/PA) The provocative intervention came after the president-elect's invitation to Mr Farage to become the first British politician to visit him at Trump Tower in New York sparked infighting among prominent Tories. After Downing Street insisted the outgoing Ukip chief would have "no role" in the Government's dealings with the incoming US administration, Tory peer, and former trade envoy, Lord Marland said Downing Street should use Mr Farage as a "salesman". "Anything we can do at any level to rebuild that relationship will be to Britain's advantage, and if Mr Farage happens to be one of the people who encourages that relationship then so be it. "Any manufacturer would use its best salesman to try and help get a market for them and if No 10 decides that that's the person, then fine," he told the BBC. The view was in marked contrast to prominent Tory Crispin Blunt who insisted "there is no need for Nigel" in Downing Streets's dealings with the new US administration. After pulling off the political coup of spending time with Mr Trump as he put together his new administration, Mr Farage hinted ministers are sounding him out about dealing with the president-elect as he revealed the Republican victor's close advisers have "reservations" about Theresa May's government. Asked if he had contact with Cabinet figures regarding his close ties to the incoming president, Mr Farage told Sky News: "I am not going to go into whatever private phone calls I may, or may not, have had with individual ministers." Mr Farage disclosed that members of the president-elect's inner circle were concerned about unflattering comments made by British Cabinet ministers, though Mr Trump told him he had a "nice" phone call with Mrs May. "He said he had a nice conversation, although some of his team had reservations about what members of the Cabinet have said during the election. Believe you me, his team are conscious of the comments," Mr Farage told the Daily Telegraph. The pair met at Trump Tower in New York and spent over an hour discussing the president-elect's victory, global politics and the status of Brexit, according to Ukip. Mr Farage used US media appearances to warn Mrs May that she needed to "mend fences" with Mr Trump after the "quite rude" things said about him by leading Tories. Smoking in cars with children: Ban sees just one fine issued in past year Only one fine was issued in the year after a crackdown on smoking in cars with children was launched, an investigation has found. It became illegal in England and Wales to smoke in a car or other vehicle with anyone under the age of 18 present from October 2015. Motorists and passengers were warned they could face a 50 penalty when the new regime was unveiled. Figures suggest enforcement has been minimal since the ban came into place in October last year But research by the Press Association indicates that enforcement has been minimal. In the 12 months after the law was imposed, only a single penalty was issued, according to r esponses to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from 42 police forces in England and Wales. O ther cases were dealt with by verbal warnings. Under the scheme, police can pass information to local authorities who can issue penalty notices and collect fines, according to the Department of Health. The Local Government Association said it was not aware of any fines being handed out by councils over the issue. The Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said it has been "really difficult" for members to enforce the law - arguing that a "piece of the jigsaw is missing" as police do not have the power to issue on-the-spot fines. FOI requests were sent to forces asking how many fines and warnings had been issued in the year after the rule took effect. Only Northumbria Police gave a figure other than zero for fines, reporting one case involving a driver. Three forces - the Met Police, Dyfed Powys and Devon and Cornwall - gave figures on warnings, with two, six and three respectively. Merseyside Police received reports of two alleged offences in moving vehicles, in Sefton and St Helens, but the drivers were not traced. Essex Police said its stance is to deal with offences with a verbal warning, while in its response Greater Manchester Police said it was "unclear from the legislation who can issue such fines on whose behalf", adding: "As it stands an officer would be unable to summons for the said offence until all is agreed and a devised system is in place." The new legislation, which took effect on October 1 last year, was introduced to protect children from the effects of second-hand smoke. Simon Clark, director of the smoker's group Forest, described the law as "useless and redundant", adding: "Not only is it unenforceable, the impact on public health is almost zero. "Even before the ban very few people smoked in cars carrying children. The overwhelming majority of smokers know it's not considerate. They don't need busybody politicians telling them how to behave." A study looking at compliance levels found that more than eight out of 10 people knew about the new law and all those interviewed agreed it should exist. A Department of Health spokesman said: "We have always been clear that the measure of success for this legislation will be in changes in attitude and behaviour, not the number of enforcement actions. "It is encouraging to see that recent reports show compliance is high and the new law is popular. "The police can use the traffic offender report to pass information to local authorities who can issue the fixed penalty notice and collect the fines. "Information on this process has been sent to police forces who already use these for a variety of traffic related offences." Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said it is a "social law", adding that 87% of adults support the ban on smoking in cars with children "so we would expect a high level of compliance, even without a large enforcement effort". 9% of footpaths difficult or impossible to use, Ramblers warn Almost a tenth of footpaths in England and Wales are difficult or impossible to use, according to a survey by walking organisation the Ramblers. The results of the charity's "Big Pathwatch" found that more than half (56%) of footpaths are well-kept and signposted, but more than a third (35%) were in need of improvement. Some 9% were difficult or impossible to use, the survey by v olunteer "citizen surveyors" found. The Ramblers urged the public to help keep public footpaths well maintained The volunteers walked every path in almost half the total area of England and Wales, assessing the condition of footpaths in each one kilometre square area, and recording features found on the paths. They were also asked to rate how much they enjoyed their walks, and they uploaded more than 46,000 photos to provide evidence of the features they had reported. More than half the features - some 59,000 - were negative, including muddy, ploughed or potholed paths, unsafe stiles, gates or bridges, heavy undergrowth, overhanging plants and trees, and particularly missing, broken or misleading signs. But 45% of features were positive, with attractive views coming top of the list. The Ramblers said that while local authorities were responsible for maintaining paths, rights of way were competing with other services for funding in increasingly squeezed council budgets. There has been a 20% cut in the workforce looking after footpaths over the last five years, the Ramblers said, and everybody had a part to play in looking after them. The charity's director of advocacy and engagement, Nicky Philpott, said: "Walking is great for our health and mental well-being. It's a cheap form of transport and exercise, and a well maintained path network could provide the solution to some of the country's biggest challenges. "The results of the Big Pathwatch show that while many paths are well-kept, a significant number are in serious need of improvement, with many of these completely blocked or very difficult to use, resulting in people having to abandon their journey and turn back." She said the Ramblers should be at the forefront of solving problems, working with local authorities, using findings from the Big Pathwatch and deploying the charity's volunteer path maintenance teams to help maintain "this key community asset". Half of alcohol sold in Scotland is below impending minimum price rules At least half of alcohol sold in Scotland does not meet the impending minimum pricing legislation, figures show. More than two-thirds (69%) of the volume of spirits currently sold is below the 50p per unit threshold, according to analysts Nielsen, who looked at till sales data in almost 1,200 Scottish stores. More than two-thirds of beer (67%) is also below the threshold, followed by cider (51%). MSPs passed legislation at Holyrood in 2012 to bring in minimum pricing, which would initially be set at 50p per unit Just 3.4% of wine sales would be impacted, Nielsen found. Blended Scotch on average will need to rise in price by 20% to meet the threshold, while vodka will have to go up by 16.3%, according to the study. Nielsen senior client manager Marika Pratico said: "Wine is, by far, the least impacted and so has the most to gain from minimum pricing. "Overall, wine will need to raise prices by the least amount, thus, it becomes more affordable relative to other alcohol." She predicted there could be an increase in cross-border alcohol shopping among the Scottish to England and Ireland, where prices would be cheaper, "mirroring what many Britons already do with the annual Calais run". In October the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled against a challenge led by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), which argued that minimum unit pricing is a breach of European Law. The SWA is considering whether to appeal the decision at the UK Supreme Court in London. Jo Cox 'killer' shouted: This is for Britain, court told A far-right extremist screamed "This is for Britain" when he killed MP Jo Cox in a "cowardly" attack at the height of the EU referendum campaign, a court heard. Gardener Thomas Mair, 53, allegedly repeatedly shot and stabbed the 41-year-old Labour politician outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, on June 16. Opening his Old Bailey trial, Richard Whittam QC told jurors how mother-of-two Mrs Cox had supported the Remain campaign leading up to the referendum on June 23. Jo Cox was shot and stabbed outside her constituency surgery in June On the afternoon of Thursday June 16 2016, she was to hold a surgery in the library in Market Street, having visited a local school and a care home. As she arrived, Mair launched his "cowardly" gun and knife attack, Mr Whittam said. Mrs Cox was shot three times and suffered 15 stab wounds, jurors were told. Mair was allegedly heard by a number of witnesses to shout repeatedly "Britain First". During the attack, a 77-year-old local man risked his own life in an effort to save hers, the court heard. Bernard Carter-Kenny was stabbed once by Mair with the same knife that he used to stab Mrs Cox, the prosecutor said. Emergency services arrived within minutes and she was given an emergency thoracotomy as she lay in the street, the court heard. Mr Whittam told jurors that Mair carried out his "pre-meditated murder" for an ideological cause. Items found at Mair's home in Lowood Lane, Birstall, showed he had "strong political and ideological interests", Mr Whittam said. The court heard that Mair had used the computers at the same library in the weeks leading up to the killing to access websites. In May, Mair accessed the Wikipedia page of "far right" online publication Occidental Observer which covers "politics and society from a white nationalist and anti-Semitic perspective", the court heard. On June 13, he looked at the Twitter and Wikipedia pages for Mrs Cox, and the Wikipedia page for Conservative Ian Gow, whose killing by the IRA made him the last sitting MP to be murdered until that point, jurors were told. He went on to view information about former foreign secretary William Hague, another Yorkshire-based Remain supporter. Mr Whittam said Mair also looked at information on .22 gun ammunition, including answers to the question: "Is a .22 round deadly enough to kill with one shot to a human head?" The next day, Mair looked at websites on "matricide" - the murder of your own mother - Nazi material, the death penalty in Japan, political prisoners and the human liver and spinal column. Jurors saw CCTV footage from the library showing Mair arriving to use the computers on June 15, the eve of the attack. The prosecution alleges that late that afternoon he researched right-wing politicians as well as the Ku Klux Klan and civil rights activists killed by its supporters. Mr Whittam said Mair also accessed sites covering "Israel and prominent Jewish individuals", Palestine, coffins, the Waffen-SS and more information on .22 ammunition. On the morning of the killing, Mair was seen by a neighbour leaving his home wearing a white baseball cap, green jacket and dark trousers. Jurors were shown more CCTV footage of him making his way along the road. Mrs Cox arrived for her surgery with her manager Fazila Aswat and senior caseworker Sandra Major at 12.50pm. Mair launched his attack two minutes later in front of shocked passersby. Mr Whittam described it as a "dynamic, fast-moving and shocking incident". Shelly Morris, who was the first to call 999, reported hearing "a loud bang like a popping sound" and "a loud piercing scream", jurors were told. She allegedly saw a man with a large steak knife with a jagged blade, which he wielded in a "stabbing motion". The attacker stood over a figure and fired a gun twice, according to her account. Ms Aswat saw Mair come up behind the MP and stab her, then shoot her with the gun. He proceeded to attack Mrs Cox and Mr Carter Kenny with the knife before firing again at the politician, Mr Whittam said. Ms Aswat hit Mair repeatedly with her handbag but was forced to retreat. She allegedly heard the defendant shouting: "This is for Britain, Britain will always come first." Ms Major heard him say "we're British independence" and "Keep Britain independent", jurors were told. Mair denies Mrs Cox's murder, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon - a dagger. Mair also pleads not guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Bernard Carter-Kenny on the same date. Mair said "it's me" when he was arrested by two police officers less than a mile from the scene of Mrs Cox's murder, the court heard. After he was cuffed he was searched and ammunition was found in a clear plastic bag. He is then said to have told the officers the knife and gun were in a black holdall he was carrying. When one of the officers pulled the sawn-off gun from the bag, Mair turned to him and said: "I am a political activist", Mr Whittam told the jury. The prosecutor said: "Thomas Mair clearly held views that provided him with a motive - utterly misplaced of course. "The prosecution suggests that motive was such that he killed her because she was an MP who did not share his views." Companies warned of 1.2bn-a-year cost of hard Brexit A "hard Brexit" will cost UK companies an extra 1.2 billion a year, it has been estimated. The Open Britain group, which is campaigning for Britain to keep the closest possible ties with Brussels, said that would be the cost of UK withdrawal from the EU's free trade agreements with some 50 countries. Labour former Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson said: "A hard Brexit could lead to a 1.2 billion bombshell for British businesses. Lord Mandelson said the EU is a leader in global free trade "The billion-pound bill for losing access to trade deals with over 50 countries would be footed by businesses and passed on to consumers with higher prices in the shops. "Leave campaigners talk about all the free trade deals we can sign outside the EU but do not appreciate the value of those we already have. The EU is a leader in global free trade and we should seek to preserve its benefits, as far as is possible. Big Six energy firms 'making six times more profit than they say' Energy firms have been accused of making more profit than they say, following an investigation into companies' finances. Suppliers are said to be overcharging families and making six times the profit they admit to publicly, according to a probe by the Sun newspaper. The allegations are based on a report commissioned by Energy UK, w hich represents power firms, by accountancy firm PWC. Energy firms have been accused of making more profit than they say The newspaper said it obtained an original copy of the report which is said to show that the cost of supplying a home with gas and electricity "falls well below" what families pay with the Big Six energy firms. It reportedly shows costs to suppliers - such as buying gas, running call centres and power lines- amount to 844 per year to provide fuel to one household in 2016. But the majority of families with the Big Six are on so-called standard variable tariffs - and are paying as much as 1,172 with some suppliers, the paper said. This leaves a profit of 272 - a margin of 24% if VAT is removed, the paper worked out. Energy UK cites on its website calculations by industry regulator Ofgem that op erating margins in 2015 were equal to around 4% of a bill. But the paper accused Energy UK of cherry-picking parts of the report to put on their website which failed to include details of the profits. Energy UK said it "rejects completely any implication that the report was changed to alter the perception of supplier profit". A spokesman said: "The report used the publicly available consolidated segmental accounts of major energy suppliers which are provided to the regulator, Ofgem. These accounts show average profits of 4% and that figure appears on the Energy UK website. "The purpose of the report is simply to help understand how the different pressures on an average bill have changed over recent years. It was not intended to present, or to hide, how much profit different firms make across their various tariffs." It was "never intended to provide a commentary- positive or otherwise - on energy supplier margins", it added. Business Secretary Greg Clark said he would be calling Energy UK to a meeting to discuss the findings. "This report appears to confirm my concern that the big energy firms are punishing their customers' loyalty rather than respecting it," he said. "Customers who are loyal to their energy supplier should be treated well, not taken for a ride, and it's high time the big companies recognised this. Farage condemns 'petty party politics' as No 10 snubs Trump go-between offer Nigel Farage has accused Downing Street of allowing "petty party politics" to get in the way of the national interest, after he was given the cold shoulder over his offer to act as a go-between with US President-elect Donald Trump. Number 10 dismissed suggestions that the Ukip leader might become the "third person" in the relationship between Mr Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May, insisting that the Government already has "well-established" channels of communication. Mr Farage scored a huge political coup in becoming the first British politician to meet Mr Trump after his election victory, and said he was ready to play a "constructive" role in fostering close UK relations with the new regime at the White House. Nigel Farage scored a huge political coup in becoming the first British politician to meet Donald Trump after his election victory But Mrs May's official spokeswoman p ointed out that the Prime Minister has already had a phone conversation with Mr Trump, in which he invited her to visit Washington at the earliest opportunity and voiced his hopes of striking up a relationship comparable to that between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "The president-elect talked about enjoying the same relationship Reagan and Thatcher did," said the spokeswoman. "I don't remember there being any third person in that relationship." In response, Mr Farage told LBC radio: "It just amazes me that those ghastly little apparatchiks that work in Downing Street put out statements like this. It just goes to show they are not really interested in the country or the national interest, they are more concerned about petty party politics and trying to keep me out of everything. "If you think of America in terms of a business and think of them as a client we want to do business with. What would you do? You would use the person who has the connections. Nobody in this administration in the UK has any connections with the Trump team at all, and yet they are prepared on behalf of the country to cut off their noses to spite their faces." Mr Farage, who spent around an hour with the president-elect in his Trump Tower home in New York, said he had only gone to the US to meet "old friends" in the politician's team and did not expect to meet Mr Trump himself. Conservative former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said it was "not sensible" to ignore Mr Farage, and the May administration should "think out of the box" about their relations with Washington. "If Nigel Farage is well-connected with Donald Trump - as it would appear that he is - then we should certainly be talking to him," Sir Gerald told BBC Radio 4's World At One. "I am not suggesting a formal role for him but I certainly do think it is worth talking to him." Mr Farage appeared to hint he had spoken with ministers about his contacts with Mr Trump. Asked whether any Cabinet members had sounded him out, he told LBC "Not really", though he declined to explain his comment. Pressed over whether Mrs May saw a role for Mr Farage, the PM's official spokeswoman said: "We have established routes of engagement with the president-elect and his team. Our diplomatic staff have been building those contacts and links in the run-up to the election ... Relations between the two teams are working well." And she brushed off suggestions that ministers could be briefed by Mr Farage on his meeting, telling reporters: "It seems to me that there are pretty widespread reports of his visit to Trump, so I'm not sure they need to speak to him - they could just read the British press." The spokeswoman said she "did not recognise" reports that Mrs May was disappointed that the UK embassy in Washington, led by ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, had not got closer to Mr Trump's team during the election campaign. "The Prime Minister has welcomed the work that the diplomatic team have been doing at the embassy in Washington and the engagement from our ambassador to the US and his team with the teams of both candidates in the run-up to the election," she said. The spokeswoman went on: "This is about the relationship between the Government of the United Kingdom and the president-elect and the office of the White House as it will be once he is inaugurated in the United States. There are well-established channels for that relationship between the elected politicians, the elected leader of the US and the Prime Minister of the UK and we intend to continue with that route." Mr Farage said that the election of Mr Trump represented a "fantastic opportunity" for the UK which could give it extra clout in Brexit negotiations under Article 50 of the EU treaties. "He is a really devoted Anglophile," said the Ukip leader. "He loves this country and he was talking about where his mum comes from in Scotland and how beautiful the countryside is and he has investments in this country. "I think, talking not just to him but to his team, there is no question that they want the relationship between the US and UK to be back where it should be - because Obama very much downplayed it. "I think we have got a fantastic opportunity here, a chance to do a trade deal with the USA. And the prospect of that - I think - strengthens our negotiating hand in Brussels after Article 50 is declared, so this is really important stuff." Mr Farage dismissed Sir Kim as an "arch-europhile" and said that Mr Trump's team had "very long memories" about disobliging comments about the president-elect made by Cabinet ministers including Mrs May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during the election campaign. "I genuinely, honestly think I could play a constructive role here," said the Ukip leader. "But if I'm not wanted, what can I do? "I don't want anything, I'm not asking for anything. I'm just saying that actually I can help with something that I think is very, very important." Mr Farage said he did not believe that Steve Bannon - the Breitbart News chairman who has been appointed a senior adviser to Mr Trump, is a "white supremacist", as critics have claimed. And he said that while there "may be a bit of truth" in reports of a spike in hate crimes since the election, it was being "exaggerated" by Mr Trump's opponents. Former chancellor George Osborne backed Mrs May's position. Asked if he would hire Mr Farage to build bridges with Mr Trump, Mr Osborne told ITV's The Agenda: "Absolutely not, I mean Theresa May is a very sensible person who is not going to do that. "The British Prime Minister or the British Government cannot contract its foreign policy out to Nigel Farage." Mr Osborne urged Mrs May to focus on Brexit rather than relations with Mr Trump. "For the first time really the most important decisions over the next few years are going to be about our relationship with Europe, not about our relationship with the United States," he said. Breaking Bad fan Stefano Brizzi found guilty of murder of Pc Gordon Semple A Breaking Bad fan who strangled a police officer during a bondage sex session and tried to dispose of the body in an acid bath has been convicted of murder. Stefano Brizzi, 50, admitted he was inspired by his favourite TV series as he tried to get away with killing 59-year-old Pc Gordon Semple by dissolving his flesh. Following an Old Bailey trial, the former Morgan Stanley IT developer was found guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to two after the jury had deliberated for more than 30 hours. CCTV of Stefano Brizzi purchasing items at the Leyland Store in Southwark Street, London Brizzi, who gave no reaction as the jury delivered its verdict, will be sentenced on Friday, December 9. The court heard how the defendant met his victim on gay dating app Grindr and arranged a "hot dirty sleazy session" at his flat near London's Tate Modern gallery on April 1. According to Brizzi, Pc Semple died when a dog leash he had been wearing as part of a sex game slipped. But a pathologist concluded that while strangulation was a possible cause of death, it would have taken minutes rather than moments, as the defendant had claimed. In the days after the killing, crystal meth addict Brizzi was caught on CCTV buying buckets, a perforated metal sheet and cleaning products from a DIY store. He then set about dismembering the body and stripping the flesh. Meanwhile, Pc Semple's long-term partner Gary Meeks raised the alarm and reported him missing when he failed to return to their home in Dartford, in Kent. Neighbours complained about the stench coming from Brizzi's flat and eventually called police who came across the grisly sight of "globules" of flesh floating in the bath, bags containing bones and a part of Pc Semple's head, and pools of human fat in the oven. Brizzi, who was wearing pink underpants and sunglasses, was arrested as officers realised the enormity of what they had found. The court heard there was evidence in the kitchen that Brizzi had chopped up the Inverness-born officer with a variety of utensils and may have even used chopsticks to eat morsels of cooked meat. Following his arrest, Brizzi admitted killing and trying to dissolve the body of a policeman because "Satan told me to". During the killing, he said he had turned away a man on his doorstep who had arrived for a sex party organised on Grindr. Brizzi said: "I was right in the middle of strangling Gordon and I said to him 'Look, this is not the right time now, people are falling ill and it's a mess'." The Italian also told police that he had "chucked" some of Pc Semple's body into the Thames and thrown away his police badge and belongings. A human foot was later found by a member of Thames Mudlark Club near Bermondsey Wall. The court heard that Brizzi was addicted to crystal meth, which had cost him his job at financial giant Morgan Stanley. He had gone to Crystal Meth Anonymous meetings, but upset people by wearing a Breaking Bad T-shirt as the show "glorified" the drug. He told the group he believed in the Devil and liked satanic rituals and he bragged of his bondage sex encounters. In his home, police found a mask and dog leash with Pc Semple's DNA on it as well as a copy of the Satanic Bible. Giving evidence, Brizzi, who has HIV, told jurors of the difficulties of being a gay man brought up in a religious Italian family. The youngest of three siblings, his Tuscan father was a civil servant and his uncle was a Catholic priest. He told jurors that Pc Semple died in a "state of erotic bliss". his lawyer, Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC, insisted he was no "monster" and could not have eaten Pc Semple's flesh as it was covered in chemicals. Throughout his evidence, Brizzi wept and cried out "I'm sorry" as he was confronted with what he had done. He had earlier admitted a charge of obstructing a coroner by disposing of the body. Pc Semple's brain and other internal organs have never been found. Malcolm McHaffie, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said: "Stefano Brizzi is an evil and calculating man who intentionally killed Gordon Semple and then made gruesome attempts to dispose of his body. "He cynically lied to the court and the jury claiming that Mr Semple's tragic death was caused when a sex game went horribly wrong and that he had taken drugs which caused him to try to cover up the death. This was all fabricated by Brizzi to evade justice. "In taking steps to fully understand Brizzi's lifestyle, we scrutinised many thousands of social media messages. Piecing together the events of that evening was equally challenging, bearing in mind the extreme lengths that Brizzi went to to remove traces of his crime and cover his tracks. "However, built on the foundation of a strong police investigation, and detailed toxicology and pathology evidence, we put a very strong case before the court and Brizzi has now been brought to justice for his terrible crimes." Pc Semple's family said in a statement: "Gordon was a loyal and much loved long term partner, brother, brother in law, uncle, cousin and friend to all. "We were devastated when the news broke of Gordon's murder and the circumstances which are still incredibly hard to deal with. It is still insurmountably upsetting. "At Gordon's funeral we met many of his friends and work colleagues - we were proud to hear how fondly they thought of Gordon. "Gordon will be sadly missed by our family. Gordon, we miss you so much, may you rest in peace." Chief Superintendent Peter Ayling said: "The responding officers and all those involved in the investigation into Gordon's death have been affected by it, made all the worse by knowing he was a colleague. "Sadly, it is clear from the investigation that Gordon, a man who had dedicated the last three decades of his life to policing London, was behaving on duty in a way that no police officer should. Gordon held a position of trust, and he broke that trust. Pledging allegiance to England over Fiji was down to money - Nathan Hughes Nathan Hughes admits his decision to pledge national allegiance to England was motivated by the financial rewards on offer. Fijian-born Hughes became available for the Grand Slam champions in June after qualifying on residency grounds and made his debut off the bench in Saturday's 37-21 victory over South Africa. Members of the Fiji squad who will run out at Twickenham this weekend are paid a mere 60 a day, a sum dwarfed by the 22,000 England players receive for each international. Nathan Hughes, centre, said his decision to play for England is to support his family The figures involved have resulted in Hughes adopting a hard-nosed professional outlook on rugby knowing that he must provide for his family. "I would love for Fiji to have more resources, but it is the way it is. They just have to deal with it and live on whatever they have got," Hughes said. "There is a big difference and that is why people want to play rugby and how they survive. "It is their bread and butter. That's the decision I made - I play my rugby to support my family and put shelter over their heads. "Back home it has all been positive comments, everyone happy and proud of the decision I have made. Last week was exciting for me and my family." Despite the financial basis for his decision to represent England, Hughes insists the 26 minutes he played against South Africa were not without poignancy as he celebrated a proud moment in his career. "I feel English now. I can say I'm an English person now. It was exciting to get the nod to come off the bench and represent England, I can say it's my country now," Hughes said. "It was huge and it was emotional. I live here in England, it is where my family is now. This is home for me. "I will not sing both anthems, I'll only be singing the national anthem, God Save the Queen. "It has been a long time coming but now the time is here, I've got my first cap and I'm excited to get more." Hughes, an explosive number eight bristling with raw potential, is set to start in the back row against the nation of his birth on Saturday and realises that this guarantees special treatment at Twickenham. "I do understand it. If you're an Islander, and I have this opportunity to play against Fiji, you know what is coming. You take it and you have got to give it back. They'll know it's coming too," he said. Iraqi Kurds' destruction of Arab villages could be war crime -HRW ERBIL, Iraq, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State in northern Iraq unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime, U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said on Sunday. The Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi armed forces have faced a common enemy in Islamic State since the militants took over large parts of Iraq in 2014. Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters make up the 100,000-strong, U.S.-backed alliance currently battling to retake Mosul. But animosity persists, going back to decades of mistreatment of Kurds by ruling Arabs in Baghdad, especially under Saddam Hussein. Reuters found last month that Kurds are using the battle against Islamic State to settle old disputes and grab land in ethnically mixed territory separating the Kurdish region in the north from the majority Arab south. Human Rights Watch said in its report that violations between September 2014 and May 2016 in 21 towns and villages within disputed areas of Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces had followed "a pattern of apparently unlawful demolitions". The areas are nominally under the jurisdiction of Baghdad but are controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The Kurdish region has taken in more than 1 million people from elsewhere in Iraq, who have been displaced by the conflict, most of them Sunni Arabs. The KRG has denied any systematic policy of destruction of Arab homes, but said peshmerga had carried out demolitions for security reasons such as clearing booby-trapped homes. The HRW report is based on more than a dozen field visits and interviews with over 120 witnesses and officials. Analysis of satellite images suggests property destruction targeted Arab residents long after any military necessity for such actions had ended. "In village after village in Kirkuk and Nineveh, KRG security forces destroyed Arab homes - but not those belonging to Kurds - for no legitimate military purpose," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW. The satellite imagery provides evidence of destruction in 62 other villages following their capture by Kurdish security forces, but HRW said a lack of witness accounts made it difficult to determine cause and responsibility in those instances. Kurdish officials have stated their intention to absorb land recovered from Islamic State into their autonomous region and prevent Arab residents from returning to areas "Arabised" decades ago by Saddam Hussein. Dindar Zebari, the head of a KRG's committee tasked with responding to international reports, said authorities had carried out a thorough investigation, examining cases in individual villages. "There was a strategic intention for the destruction of houses or a number of these villages," Zebari told reporters in Erbil. "(The) large presence of IEDs placed in these areas, especially in civilian properties, has been a huge cause of the destruction following the liberation process. "Sometimes we have no choice ... before entering a village you destroy as much as you can to make sure everything is safe." Zebari attributed much of the rest of the damage to U.S.-led coalition air strikes on IS positions or to exchanges of artillery fire during fighting. He said militiamen allied to the peshmerga had demolished some homes in apparent revenge, but denied peshmerga participation in those cases. Citi preparing to move 900 staff to Dublin from London -Sunday Times LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - U.S. bank Citi is preparing to move up to 900 jobs from London to Dublin as part of its contingency plans for Britain's exit from the European Union, the Sunday Times reported. The newspaper said the bank held a board meeting in Dublin last month, and cited sources in the Irish capital as saying Citi was exploring options for office space there. "They have been testing the Irish political and regulatory regime on a macro level," it quoted one source as saying. Mauritanian clerics urge for blogger's death penalty to be applied NOUAKCHOTT, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Muslim clerics in Mauritania on Sunday urged the authorities to execute a blogger who was sentenced to death in 2014 for apostasy after writing a blog post on Islam and racial discrimination. Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir's article touched a nerve in Mauritania, a West African country with deep social and racial divisions. He was tried for apostasy and received the death penalty despite having repented and saying his article was misunderstood. According to the U.S.-based Freedom Now rights group who provide Mkhaitir with legal counsel, the blog post appears to have been the first he published. Prior to his arrest he worked as an engineer for a mining company and was not an activist, Freedom Now said on its website. Mauritania has not applied a death penalty since 1987 but on Sunday, the influential Forum of Imams and Ulemas on issued a fatwa, or Islamic decree, calling for Mkhaitir to be killed. It condemned "Mkhaitir and his heresy, recalling that the legal penalty in his case is death, with no exception made for his repentance," according to a statement. "We demand that the competent authorities apply the law: kill him and bury him in conformity with the law of God." Rights groups like Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders have campaigned for Mkhaitir's pardon and release. Trial to begin of man accused of murdering British lawmaker before Brexit vote LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The trial of the man accused of murdering British lawmaker Jo Cox a week before Britain voted in June's referendum on membership of the European Union is due to begin on Monday. Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and repeatedly stabbed in the street as she arrived for an advice session with constituents in the town of Birstall, part of her electoral district in northern England. The murder of Cox, a former aid worker who had been an ardent supporter of staying in the EU, shocked Britain and led to the suspension for several days of referendum campaigning which had been growing increasingly bitter. Thomas Mair, 53, is charged with murder, causing grievous bodily harm to a 77-year-old man who tried to help the lawmaker, and possession of a firearm and a dagger. At a hearing in October, he declined to respond when asked if he was guilty so the judge recorded not guilty pleas. At the first court hearing following his arrest, Mair had said his name was "death to traitors, freedom for Britain" and the case, due to last three weeks, is being treated as a terrorism matter. His lawyer has also previously told London's Old Bailey central criminal court where the trial is being held that medical issues would not feature in the defence argument. Cox's murder briefly united politicians divided over the EU question in condemnation and also led to questions about the security of lawmakers in their constituencies, their home electoral districts. How Malaysia allows child abuse to go unpunished By A. Ananthalakshmi KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Most complaints of child sexual abuse in Malaysia do not lead to successful prosecutions, largely due to weaknesses in the nation's criminal justice system, police, lawmakers and child welfare groups say. According to classified data Malaysian police compiled and shared with Reuters, 12,987 cases of child sexual abuse were reported to police between January 2012 and July of this year. Charges were filed in 2,189 cases, resulting in just 140 convictions. The data doesn't show how many people were involved, or what happened in the cases where there were no convictions after charges were filed. No details were disclosed in the cases where there were convictions. Child rights advocates have long pushed the government to publicly disclose data on child sexual abuse to increase awareness so action can be taken to address what they call a growing problem. A veil was lifted in June when a British court handed Richard Huckle 22 life sentences for abusing up to 200 babies and children, mostly in Malaysia, and sharing images of his crimes on the dark web. The reason the Malaysian government doesn't publish child sexual abuse data is because it is protected under Malaysia's Official Secrets Act. The government provides data on child abuse only at the request of a member of parliament. "We don't want people to misinterpret it," said Ong Chin Lan, the head of the Sexual, Women and Children Investigation Division of the Malaysian national police. The government doesn't want to unduly alarm the public about possibly high numbers of child abuse cases, she explained. It is unclear how Malaysia's number of reported cases compares with its neighbours, some of whom are also reluctant to disclose a high incidence of child sexual abuse. Thailand's government declined to provide data to Reuters. A senior health ministry official, who did not want to be identified, said it could "make Thailand look bad". Cambodia, long known as a destination for travelling paedophiles, also does not disclose official data. CRIMINAL JUSTICE WEAKNESS Weak policing and child protection laws make it difficult to punish child abusers in Malaysia, leading to inadequate investigations and low convictions on the reported cases, according to officials and child welfare groups Reuters interviewed. They also say a significant number of child sexual abuse cases are never reported because of taboos around child sex abuse and mistrust of authorities. In 17 years of operation, PS the Children, Malaysia's biggest NGO dealing with child abuse, has seen zero convictions on the cases it has handled, its founder Madeleine Yong told Reuters. "There needs to be improvement in the criminal justice system if we want to encourage more people to report, otherwise we will re-victimize the child," she said. Ong at the sexual crimes unit said police take every case of child sexual abuse seriously and "all cases are investigated in detail". Police blame weak laws and rules governing court evidence that give little weight to children's testimony as the reason most cases never result in charges. Malaysia does not have a law specifically prohibiting child pornography and defines rape narrowly as penile penetration. "Grooming" - touching and befriending children as a prelude to sexual abuse - draws no legal penalties. By contrast, Indonesia's parliament has passed legislation authorising chemical castration, minimum sentences and even execution for convicted paedophiles. Thailand introduced stricter laws against child pornography last year. A Child Sexual Crimes bill, expected to be introduced to parliament by the end of the year, would widen the definition of sexual crimes to include online abuse, and make such crimes easier to prosecute. It would also set up a special court to deal with child sex abuse cases more quickly. THE DARK WEB Foreign paedophiles could be targeting Malaysia as other countries around the region strengthen child protection laws and step up enforcement, some experts said. Snow White Smelser, programme officer at the child sex offences team in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) East Asia headquarters in Bangkok, said paedophiles compare notes and share information online about countries, where they can operate most freely. Elena Martellozzo, a London-based criminologist who specializes in child sex abuse on the internet, said Huckle could have chosen Malaysia "because it was not on the radar, or perhaps it's where he found it easier to get work permits, visas and some work opportunities". Typically, children are sexually abused by someone they know - a neighbour, a relative, a caregiver, or someone like Huckle, who according to court testimony groomed children in an impoverished ethnic Indian neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur. But increasingly, paedophile activity is moving into the online world, police say. Australian detectives who investigate paedophiles in the region believe Malaysia has become one of Southeast Asia's biggest centres for the transmission of child pornography on the Internet. Team Argos, the Australian detective unit that found Huckle in the dark web in late 2014, made a startling discovery from the team's scouring of online paedophile networks: the unusual number of internet addresses in the Kuala Lumpur area transmitting child sexual abuse material from the dark web. The dark web is a vast virtual space within the Internet, which requires special encryption tools to access. The Brisbane, Australia-based detectives found 1,000 transmissions of child pornographic materials from the Malaysian capital over a 24-hour period last year, according to Argos data provided by the UNODC. It was the second-largest transmission location in Southeast Asia after Bangkok's 1,800 - Bangkok's population of 8.2 million is more than four times that of Kuala Lumpur's. The Malaysian capital is a "high concern" location for the distribution of child sexual abuse materials, said Smelser at the UNODC. Philippines police boss says U.S. guns deal on after Duterte U-turn MANILA, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The Philippines police will push ahead with the purchase of 26,000 assault rifles from a U.S. supplier, the police chief said on Monday, following an about-face by President Rodrigo Duterte, who previously said the deal would be scrapped. Duterte had a week ago expressed anger at "fools" and "monkeys" in Washington seeking to block the deal and said he would cancel it himself. But Duterte's police chief said he revoked that decision, apparently after Republican Donald Trump's surprise win in the U.S. presidential election. "(The president) told me to continue the deal," Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Dela Rosa, told a news conference. "The processing of documents are going on smoothly ... we have the blessing of the president to continue the transaction." Dela Rosa did not say why Duterte had changed his mind, but he said there would be a new president in Washington and "he and Donald Trump are friends". Aides to Ben Cardin, who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last month said the State Department had been informed Cardin would oppose the deal during the prenotification process, effectively putting the brakes on it. Cardin was reluctant for the United States to provide weapons to the police given concern about alleged human rights violations in Duterte's war on drugs, which killed 2,300 people in its first four months. The tough-talking Duterte has been incensed by U.S. concerns about a drugs crackdown he says is needed to save his country from ruin. He has regularly berated the Obama administration but has expressed a desire to work with Trump. Dela Rosa said it was possible the president would scrap the guns deal if there were an intervention in Washington. Poland - Factors to Watch Nov. 14 Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Monday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour): ECONOMIC DATA The statistics office will publish October consumer price index data at 1300 GMT. Also, at the same time, the central bank will publish October M3 money supply and September current account data. ZLOTY The current weakening of the Polish zloty is beneficial for exporters and is not a threat to the economy as long as the currency stays within its range of the last year, Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday. BREXIT VOTE Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told Rzeczpospolita daily that British firm won't relocate their headquarters to Poland after Brexit vote, as Poland is not a part of the euro zone. But he also said that up to several dozen thousands new jobs will be created in Poland next year by companies currently located in the UK, as they relocate their HR, IT, accounting, and risk and data management functions. PGE, ENEA, ENEA Poland's biggest energy firm, state-run PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna, may bring to court its smaller, also state-run, competitor Enea, as Enea cancelled companies' contract regarding green certificates settlements, Rzeczpospolita said. SANTANDER Santander's Executive Chairman Ana Botin said in an article published in Rzeczpospolita that banks need more clarity regarding capital requirements in order to make sure monetary policy works efficiently. She also said that global regulations should be more flexible and adapted to current conditions. Otherwise they may be seen as not fair. TAXES Polish government plans to track with satellites lorries with alcohol, petrol and cigarettes in order to improve tax collection by more than 100 billion zlotys ($24.45 billion) in 10 years, Gazeta Wyborcza daily said. EU FUNDS Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi suggested Italy may attempt to block EU funds for countries that are not interested in taking migrants, Gazeta Wyborcza daily said. ROAD CONSTRUCTION The European Commission has approved Polish road construction plans, supported by EU funds, worth about 350 million euros to facilitate better transportation on the Baltic-Adriatic Sea axis, Puls Biznesu daily reported. ENERGY MINISTRY Poland's energy minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski may be replaced by energy group Tauron's supervisory board member Wojciech Myslecki, as the Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wants to have bigger influence on the energy ministry, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily said. TAURON Poland's second biggest energy firm Tauron Polska Energia is considering bond issue worth more than 800 million zlotys, its Chief Executive Officer Remigiusz Nowakowski told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. ****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Nov 14 MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. VEDOMOSTI www.vedomosti.ru - The board of directors of Transaero, a Russian air carrier that went bankrupt last year, has supported a plan to set up a new airline in order to help Transaero creditors. - Russia's state arms trader Rosoboronexport may receive new chief executive Alexander Fomin who will replace Anatoly Isaikin by the end of the year, Vedomosti cites people familiar with the matter. - Russia's federal agency for property management considers involving possible buyers of state property into the preparation process for state firms' privatisation. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - Russia's Constitutional court will review a request from Russia's ministry of justice to condemn as impossible a ruling of the European court of human rights to pay former YUKOS shareholders 1.87 billion euros. The hearing is scheduled for December 15. ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA - Russia's public activists found out that the state had spent about 227 billion roubles ($3.46 billion) on "dubious procurements" in the past three years. MOSKOVSKY KOMSOMOLETS www.mk.ru Prosecutors question Julian Assange at Ecuador embassy in London By Paul Sandle and Guy Faulconbridge LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Prosecutors on Monday questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for four years, in an investigation into allegations that he committed rape in Sweden in 2010. Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing a flood of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, fled to the embassy for fear that, if extradited to Sweden, he could be sent on to the United States and face a long prison term there for leaking U.S. secrets. Swedish Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren spent around four hours in the embassy, where she posed questions through an Ecuadorian prosecutor, before leaving without making comment. Ecuador, which helped Assange avoid extradition by granting him asylum after he fled to its London legation, agreed to help Swedish prosecutors question Assange, who has denied the rape allegation. "Today, after six years of offering his statement to the Swedish authorities, Julian Assange has finally been afforded the opportunity to do so," WikiLeaks said in a statement. But it complained that Assange's Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, was not notified or summoned to attend the session, and his absence was "a clear breach of process". A member of Assange's legal team, Melinda Taylor, said procrastination on the part of Swedish investigators had denied Assange any right to clear his name. "As a result of six years of delays and over four and a half years of illegal and arbitrary detention, Mr Assange is today faced with (a) Hobson's choice: either he gives a statement in which his health, memory and psychological state are severely impeded, or, he is denied once more, an opportunity to be heard," she said by email. The 45-year-old Australian has refused to go to Sweden for questioning, saying that would expose him to further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks continues. In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents in what became one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Assange made international headlines in early 2010 when WikiLeaks released classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. EMBASSY QUESTIONING Under conditions agreed by Ecuador, Isgren and a police investigator asked questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will then report the findings to Sweden, which will then decide whether to continue the investigation. Samuelson, Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he had been barred from the meeting. "Ecuador refuses to let me in and insists that the questioning will continue without my presence, against my client's wishes to have me there," he told Reuters. While Assange's Ecuadorean defence lawyer appeared to be present, Samuelson said he still hoped to be admitted if the interview continued. "But a good chunk of questioning has already taken place as far as I understand," he said. A Swedish appeals court decided in September to uphold Assange's arrest warrant, saying a strong public interest argument outweighed a case to set it aside based on the lengthy deadlock and a previous lack of impetus in pursuing the case. Assange's request to have the warrant overturned came after a U.N. panel assessed in February that his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy amounted to arbitrary detention, and said he should be let go and be awarded compensation. U.S. FDA rejects Dynavax's hepatitis B vaccine; shares sink By Ankur Banerjee Nov 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected Dynavax Technologies Corp's hepatitis B vaccine for the second time in three years, casting doubts on the drug developer's ability to bring its main drug to the market on its own. Shares of the company, which has no drug on the market, plunged as much as 72 percent to $3.20, their lowest since late 2008. Dynavax Chief Executive Eddie Gray said on Monday the company would meet with the FDA "as soon as possible" to discuss concerns raised by the agency in a "complete response letter". "However, the time and resources that will be required to gain approval leads us to consider that we may not be able to advance this program on our own and we are moving swiftly to identify a potential pharmaceutical or financial partner," Gray said. The company said the FDA, in its letter, sought information about certain "adverse events" during clinical trials, among other clarifications. Dynavax, which had $109.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of Sept. 30, had an earlier marketing application for the vaccine, Heplisav-B, rejected in February 2013. A positive late-stage study in January paved the way for Dynavax to resubmit its application for the vaccine. However, the FDA in September had canceled an advisory committee meeting meant to discuss Dynavax's vaccine, in order to provide the agency more time to review pending issues. Investors interpreted the cancellation of the meeting as a sign that there were unresolved issues with Heplisav's application that could jeopardize its approval. The FDA acknowledged in its letter that it had not yet fully reviewed Dynavax's responses to the agency's clarifications, the company said on Monday. There was no request from the FDA for additional clinical trials and there were no apparent concerns about rare serious events, the company said. Dynavax said it expects the review period for a possible resubmission of its application would be six months. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 850,000-2.2 million people in the United States suffer from chronic hepatitis B virus infection. About 786,000 people worldwide die each year from hepatitis B virus-related liver disease, according to the CDC. Dynavax reported encouraging early-stage data for its cancer immunotherapy last week. The company is also developing a treatment for asthma. IMF's Egypt loan shows extent and risks of its Middle East role By Andrew Torchia CAIRO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A $12 billion loan by the International Monetary Fund to Egypt highlights the extent of the multilateral lender's re-engagement with the Middle East and the risks of a backlash against governments carrying out painful reforms return for the aid. From the late 1980s through the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, the IMF was vilified in the region as an agent of Western big business pressuring countries into austerity policies that impoverished their populations while benefiting foreign bankers. After IMF-inspired spending cuts triggered riots in Algeria, Jordan and Sudan, many governments shunned cooperation with the Fund. At least one Egyptian minister privately compared it to British imperialists who seized the Suez canal. The loan to Egypt, approved on Friday, shows how much has changed. The IMF, touting a new, softer image, is now a key part of efforts to shore up many Middle East economies; as well as Egypt, it is providing billions of dollars of support to Iraq, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, and advising Algeria on reforms. For the first time, it is also giving detailed advice on a large scale to rich oil exporters in the Gulf such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, on issues including the introduction of value-added tax to boost non-oil revenues. That is good news for investors, who are reluctant to put money into the region without the IMF's seal of approval. But it exposes the IMF and its partner governments to public anger if they fail to solve deep-rooted economic problems. Mohsin Khan, who headed the IMF's Middle East department from 2004 to 2008, said its re-engagement with the region was tricky because while the Fund knew how to fix state finances and external deficits, it was - like economists in general - less expert at reducing inequality and creating millions of jobs. "Governments are undertaking difficult economic reforms. If after a few years they haven't succeeded in improving living standards, people will point fingers," said Khan, now senior fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for The Middle East at the Atlantic Council in Washington. EGYPT The shift towards the IMF is partly due to huge economic pressure: the turmoil of the Arab Spring slashed investment in poorer countries while the plunge of oil prices from mid-2014 squeezed the Gulf's energy exporters. In the past, poorer countries preferred loans, aid and migrant workers' remittances from the Gulf, which attached political conditions to its aid, to money from the IMF, which demanded tough economic reforms. By hurting the Gulf's finances, cheap oil has made that model unsustainable. But the IMF itself has also changed. It is less insistent on dogma such as freeing currency rates, and more focused on reducing poverty and inequality, said Bessma Momani, senior fellow at Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation, who is writing a book about the Fund. For example, last week Cairo floated its currency and hiked fuel prices - classic IMF policies. But to limit the pain for poorer citizens, it plans - with IMF acquiescence - to boost spending on a consumer subsidy scheme and keep the price of bread flat, which will slow the drive to cut its budget deficit. "I think we've learned," Masood Ahmed, who ran the IMF's Middle East department from 2008 until last month, said of its role in the Middle East. In the past, the IMF sometimes focused solely on macroeconomic numbers such as deficits and growth rates; it now looks more at other issues which can affect the macro picture, such as poverty, he said. After the Arab Spring, Ahmed mounted a public relations campaign to improve the IMF's image in the region, launching an Arabic-language blog to explain its policies and meeting frequently with politicians and journalists. Reham El Desoki, senior economist at regional investment bank Arqaam Capital, said that partly as a result of such efforts, the IMF's ties with Egypt had changed since the 1990s. "The relationship has developed. It's more of a partnership than a carrot and stick relationship," she said. Khan said the IMF had changed because it was shocked by the fragility of economies during the Arab Spring, as rapid growth rates evaporated and investment dried up overnight. "The Arab Spring had a humbling effect on the staff of the Fund." So far, the IMF appears to have succeeded in avoiding the public outrage that marked many of its past forays into the region. Ordinary Egyptians are complaining about the fuel price hikes but few are blaming the Fund, and many say they understand the need for austerity. Coming years may test that success, however. The three-year Egyptian loan may just be the start of a long-term financial burden; many economists think it will have to be renewed. Syria and Yemen will need aid when conflicts there eventually end. Meanwhile, the IMF will be caught in the middle as governments in both oil importers and exporters cut back welfare benefits. Fuel prices are expected to rise further and new taxes to be imposed in many countries. Syrian rebels battle each other north of Aleppo By Tom Perry BEIRUT, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border on Monday as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to President Bashar al-Assad's advantage with the government tightening its grip on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, sources on both sides and a group that reports on the war said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said headquarters and checkpoints held by the Levant Front had been seized in the fighting, which a Levant Front official said had forced the group to withdraw some fighters from a battle with Islamic State in the nearby city of al-Bab. The fighting in Azaz, some 60 km (35 miles) north of Aleppo, also prompted Turkey, which backs a number of FSA rebel groups, to close the border crossing at Oncupinar. Adjacent to Bab al-Salam in Syria, it is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey. Rebel officials described the fighting as a blow to the opposition in the Aleppo region. Many of the insurgent groups operating in the Azaz area also have a presence in eastern Aleppo, where rebel groups had also clashed on Nov 2. The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes and Shi'ite militias including Lebanon's Hezbollah have been waging a fierce campaign against the insurgents in the city, before the war the country's most populous. MAJOR WEAKNESS Rebel infighting has been a major weakness of the anti-Assad revolt since its earliest days. Rebel factions have been divided by both ideology and local power struggles. Jihadist groups have crushed less well-armed nationalist factions, while Islamists have also fought each other, notably in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus this year. Sources on opposing sides of Monday's fighting gave different accounts of events. The Levant Front official described it as an attack on his group by rivals including the Nour al-Din al-Zinki faction, which also fights under the FSA banner but has coordinated closely with Islamist groups. He called the confrontation a potentially lethal blow to the rebellion. A source on the other side of the conflict said groups including Ahrar al-Sham and the Zinki group had launched a campaign to "cleanse" northern Syria of groups that were guilty of acting like gangs. A statement declaring the start of the campaign identified targets including the leader of the Levant Front and the head of its security office. Earlier this month, rebel factions clashed in eastern Aleppo itself. In that clash, the Zinki group and the allied jihadist Jabhat Fateh al-Sham tried to crush the Fastaqim faction, which is part of the FSA. Fateh al-Sham changed its name from the Nusra Front in July and said it was breaking its formal allegiance to al Qaeda. Officials from Ahrar al-Sham did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Syrian army and its allies have completely encircled eastern Aleppo this year, and in September launched a major campaign aimed at seizing the insurgent-held areas. Air strikes batter two hospitals in Aleppo countryside -monitor, medic BEIRUT, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Air strikes hit two hospitals in rebel-held territory west of the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, and a number of patients and medics were wounded, a monitor and doctor said. Western countries and human rights activists have accused the air forces of the Damascus government and its Russian ally of repeatedly targeting hospitals, bread lines and other civilian infrastructure in territory controlled by the rebels. Both Moscow and Damascus have denied doing so and say their air campaign is directed against military targets belonging to the rebels, who they describe as terrorists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said warplanes pounded the town of Atareb overnight and into Monday, knocking the hospital out of service. There were five air strikes on the hospital that destroyed operations and waiting rooms and damaged ambulances in what was the fourth aerial attack on the facility this year, according to the Observatory. It was the sole hospital in Atareb and at least 60,000 people live in the town and surrounding area, it said. The strikes injured many patients, said Osama Abo Ezz, a general surgeon and Aleppo coordinator for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which partially supports the hospital. "They were at the hospital for check-ups," he said. Warplanes also hit and disabled Ansar hospital in Kafrnaha, 15 km (10 miles) from Atareb, marking the third air strike on that facility in the past month, the Observatory said. There were no initial reports of deaths in either attack. Adham Sahloul, a SAMS advocacy officer, said there have been seven attacks on hospitals in rural districts of Aleppo and Idlib provinces since Friday. While Syrian and Russian authorities have denied any deliberate targeting of hospitals, Moscow's deputy foreign minister accused rebels recently of using civilians and "so-called hospitals" as human shields and setting up medical facilities in cities without correctly marking them. Rebels, supported by Turkey, the U.S. and Gulf monarchies, are fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, whose military, backed by Russia's air force, has used jet and helicopter strikes extensively in the five-and-a-half-year war. On Monday, insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to Assad's advantage with the government tightening its grip on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo. Guinea Bissau president says will dissolve government BISSAU, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Guinea Bissau's president said on Monday he would dissolve the government and appoint another soon, as part of a plan to end political deadlock that has gripped the country for over a year. Prime Minister Baciro Dja was appointed in May to ease tensions that have paralysed the West African country's political institutions since August 2015, the fourth prime minister in nine months. He has failed to win the full support of his ruling PAIGC party. "I will dismiss this government and appoint without delay a prime minister who must form an inclusive government," President Jose Mario Vaz said. "I hope to put an end to another episode of instability in our country." It was not clear when the government would be dissolved and who would take over as prime minister. The former Portuguese colony has seen nine coups or attempted coups since 1980. The turbulence has helped it become a major transit point for cocaine trafficked from South America to Europe. Political rivals in September agreed to a road map to ease a crisis that has prevented parliament from agreeing budgets and blocked international aid to the poor, cashew-exporting country of 1.7 million. Nigerian police, Shi'ite Muslims clash in Kano state, at least nine dead By Nnekule Ikemfuna KANO, Nigeria, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Police said nine people were killed in clashes between Shi'ite Muslims and police during a religious procession in northern Nigeria on Monday, but the minority sect said dozens of its members lost their lives. The clashes occurred on the outskirts of Kano, a city in a state of the same name, as members of the country's largest Shi'ite group, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), conducted an annual procession to Zaria in neighbouring Kaduna state. It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the sect. A judicial inquiry in August reported that 347 IMN members were killed and buried in mass graves after clashes with the army in December 2015, and two sect members were killed in processions in Kaduna state last month. Kano state Police Commissioner Rabiu Yusuf told reporters that nine people died in Monday's violence - eight IMN members and a policeman. He said several people were injured, including four police officers. "At first we used tear gas on them. They attacked one of our personnel, who sustained a fatal injury," he said. Yusuf said IMN members used the dead policeman's weapon to fire at officers and they had "no option" but to use live ammunition in response. Ibrahim Musa, a spokesman for the IMN - whose 1980s founders were inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Shi'ite Iran - said policemen opened fire on a peaceful crowd and killed "close to" 100 people including women and children. "We view the unwarranted killings by the police as a continuation of the army pogrom started in Zaria last year," he said. The exact death toll was unclear, he added, because most of the bodies were "ferried away by the police, possibly for mass burial". Last month the Kaduna state government declared IMN as an "unlawful society" on the grounds that its processions were a danger to peace, and said anyone convicted of being a member of the sect could be imprisoned for up to seven years. Human Rights Watch estimates that IMN has around 3 million members. The sect's leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, has been held without charge since December following the clashes with the army in Zaria. Security analysts have drawn some parallels between the IMN and Boko Haram, the Sunni Muslim jihadist group whose insurgency began in 2009 after security forces killed hundreds of its members and its leader Mohammed Yusuf died in custody. Old and worn out, U.S. coal-fired power plants easy prey for gas: Kemp By John Kemp LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration has been blamed for the closure of a record number of coal-fired power plants across and heavy job losses in the mining industry. Since the current administration began in January 2009, more than 400 coal-fired power units have closed across the United States and around 33,000 coal-mining jobs have disappeared. Coal now accounts for only a third of electricity generated in the United States down from almost half when the president took office. The administration's opponents criticise it for waging a "war on coal" to support cleaner forms of energy including wind, solar and natural gas. The administration's supporters credit it with forcing the closure of power plants that were a major source of air pollution as well as greenhouse gases (http://tmsnrt.rs/2eT5xUI). But the reality is most of the coal-fired units that have closed since the president took office were very old and inefficient and would likely have closed anyway. OLD AND WORN OUT The average coal-fired power unit closed during the Obama administration started generating electricity in 1960 and almost all of them began generating before 1971. So most of the retired units were already over 50 years old and had been producing power much longer than the typical generating unit (http://tmsnrt.rs/2eT8oNf). The average retired unit had a capacity of just 80-100 megawatts, much smaller than the 500-1,000 megawatts now considered the minimum efficient size for a coal plant. Aging power plants require much more maintenance to keep them running safely which means they are typically available to generate for far fewer hours each year than more modern ones. Most components in a coal-fired power plant will show wear and tear as a result of prolonged operation and eventually need replacing ("Coal-fired electric power plant life extension", Martin Marietta, 1986). Power plant components are subjected to high pressures and temperatures, repeated cycles of heating and cooling, constant exposure to steam and corrosive impurities including sulphur. The result is a range of damage including creep, fatigue, erosion and corrosion. Boiler tubes and drums, main steam lines, turbine blades and forgings, scrubbers and generator winding supports are among the expensive items that need replacing. Power companies must make a commercial decision whether to incur large capital costs to extend the life of existing coal plants or replace them with other sources of generation. MORE FLEXIBLE WITH GAS In practice, it has been cheaper to replace coal-fired power plants with combined-cycle gas turbines which are quicker and cheaper to build, easier to run, and offer more generation flexibility. CCGTs can ramp their production up and down much faster than coal-fired units making them much more suitable for load-following and two-shifting operations (running during the day while switching off at night). CCGTs are therefore much more attractive for generators needing flexibility to operate in deregulated wholesale power markets. Most new thermal power plants built in the United States since the early 1990s have therefore been fuelled by gas and employ a CCGT design. Cheaper gas prices thanks to the shale revolution have entrenched the advantage of gas-fired power generation even further. Coal units might have survived if demand for electricity had continued growing, in which case it might have made sense to keep them running while building gas-fired power stations to meet incremental demand (http://tmsnrt.rs/2fqZiLy). But growth in electricity demand has been slowing for decades. Consumption has been essentially flat since 2007, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (http://tmsnrt.rs/2fhgq6D). In a stagnant electricity market, coal-fired power generation has been pitted head to head with natural gas, and lost. CONTINUED DECLINE LIKELY Most utilities and independent power producers have opted not to extend the life of coal fired units when the time for the next major refit has arrived. The Obama administration's encouragement of more solar and wind generation, both by utilities and by households, has worsened the predicament for coal-fired generators. Stricter pollution and emissions regulations for new power coal-fired power plants (finalised) and existing ones (currently being challenged in court) have added to the compliance burden for coal-fired plants. But most of those power plants would have retired in any case because it was no longer commercially viable to keep them running. Coal retirements look set to continue in the medium term even if the forthcoming Trump administration ends the "war on coal". The average age of coal-fired units still in operation is 39 years (the capacity-weighted average unit first operated in 1977). By contrast, the average age of combined-cycle gas units is just 13 years (the median plant began generating in 2003). Very few new coal-fired power units have been constructed in recent years and it is hard to see that changing unless gas prices rise significantly or the demand for electricity starts growing faster. EU puts Syrian central bank governor under sanctions By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The European Union extended its sanctions on Syria on Monday, banning the country's central bank chief and its finance minister from travelling in Europe and freezing their assets in a further step to isolate President Bashar al-Assad. The decision to target Central Bank Governor Duraid Durgham and Finance Minister Maamoun Hamdan, along with 16 other government ministers, made good on the EU's threat last month to increase sanctions on Syria over the bombing of Aleppo. Diplomats said targeting the country's finance chiefs was aimed at pressuring Assad and limiting the central bank's ability to obtain financing. The bloc already has a ban on dealings with the central bank, as well as an oil embargo and arms embargo. The European Union singled out as central bank governor Durgham as "responsible for providing economic and financial support to the Syrian regime." Hamdan, among those picked in a government reshuffle in July, was put under sanctions along with Syria's ministers responsible for areas such as electricity, water, industry and information. The decision now puts a total of 234 people and 69 companies and institutions under sanctions for what the bloc said was "repression against the civilian population in Syria." While the European Union has no military role in the conflict in Syria, it is the biggest aid donor and is facing a migration crisis sparked partly by those fleeing war in the Middle East. The 28-nation bloc accuses Assad of war crimes for the bombing of schools, hospitals and civilians in the country. EU criticises Turkey but not ready to halt membership talks By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS, Nov 14 (Reuters) - European Union foreign ministers on Monday criticised Turkey's crackdown on alleged supporters of a failed military coup in July but Austria's call to suspend Ankara's EU membership bid failed to garner enough backing. As the 28 EU foreign ministers met in Brussels, President Tayyip Erdogan said he was ready to hold a referendum on whether to continue the membership talks and reiterated that he would restore the death penalty - a move sure to scupper the EU talks - if his parliament passed such a law. Turkey has suspended, dismissed or detained at least 110,000 people, including soldiers, judges and teachers, since the coup. Critics of President Tayyip Erdogan accuse him of using it as a pretext to crush dissent, a charge he denies. "I am not for the continuation of entry negotiations and I believe that this Turkey does not have a place in the European Union," said Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. Luxembourg and Belgium were also critical of Turkey, but the bloc's most powerful members, France and Germany, support continued engagement, arguing that ending the accession negotiations now would do more harm than good. "...Turkey is too important to us - not least because of the close personal times between our two countries - that we could afford to renounce dialogue, particularly in these difficult times," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters before leaving for a one-day visit to Ankara. Boris Johnson, the foreign minister of Britain, which intends to leave the EU, also cautioned against over-reaction to events in Turkey, a large, strategically important, mainly Muslim country on the EU's southeastern flank. "We should not push Turkey into a corner, we should not overreact in a way that is against our collective interests," he said. Despite its increased concerns over human rights and press freedoms in Turkey, the EU has often toned down its criticism of Erdogan and his government, whose cooperation it needs to keep low the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe via Greece from Turkey. More than 1.3 million people arrived in Europe last year, triggering bitter disputes between EU member states over how to handle them. The deal with Turkey, though much criticised by rights groups, has reduced the influx to a trickle. "RED LINE" An EU official said the bloc's leaders would review the situation in Turkey at a summit scheduled for Dec.15-16. "It would have to be a majority vote to stop the talks and it's clear there is no majority at this stage," the official added. Some EU countries said the bloc would lose any residual influence it has over Turkey if it suspended talks, but also voiced concern over a possible restoration of the death penalty, previously scrapped by Ankara as part of its accession drive. "It is important to keep the membership negotiations ongoing since it is the only way to influence Turkey," Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini told reporters. "(But) everybody understands that if it goes on like this, Turkey will not become a member of the EU. The death penalty is the absolute red line for the EU." Steinmeier said: "We cannot decide for the government in Ankara whether they will slam the door on the EU and turn away from the West. That is Ankara's responsibility. If they decide to reintroduce the death penalty, then that would be a clear signal that they want to permanently close the 'EU file'." Turkey has often threatened to walk away from the migration deal if the EU does not deliver on its side of the bargain by relaxing visa rules by the end of the year for its citizens visiting Europe. Ankara has also accused the EU of failing to show sufficient solidarity with it over the failed coup, in which more than 240 people were killed. Erdogan blames a U.S.-based Muslim preacher, Fethullah Gulen, and his supporters for the putsch. Gulen denies any connection with it. Diplomats said Johnson spoke out during Monday's discussions for a transactional relationship with Turkey, which some took as meaning he thought human rights were of secondary importance. Relatives of eleven suspected members of the "Aava" gang, who were arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) in Jaffna, lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) stating that the arrests were illegal. The eleven youths were arrested in Jaffna on charges of being involved in anti-social activities and criminal activities connected to the Aava group. SLHRC Jaffna District Investigation Officer Thangavel Kanakaraj said the relatives claimed it was illegal to arrest the suspects under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and take them to Colombo when they were charged with robbery. On Il Full moon day, the first 60 Arhants were sent on Buddhist Missionary activity by the Buddha. Charata Bhikkave, Charikan, Bahujana Hitaya, Bahujana Sukhaya, Lokanukampaya Attaya Hitana Sukhaya Devamanussanam, Ma Ekena Deva Agamitta Desetha Bhikkave Dhamman Adikarayanam Puriyosana, Kalyanam Pariyosana Kayanan Satthan Sakyanjawan Kevala Paripunnan Parisudaan Brahamachariyam Pakasetha. Oh! Bhikkus, For the Welfare of the many for the contentment of the Many, through sympathy and kindness to the folk, go forth, and spread Buddha Dhamma for the benefit of Deities and Human Beings. Significance of Il Poya The other significant happenings on Il Poya day are the announcement of Maithree Bodhisatta, who received Niyatha Vivarana to be the next enlightened one or the Future Buddha. The three Jatila brothers, Uruwela, Nadi and Gaya Kasyapa, who lived in an hermitage by the side of River Neranja entering the Buddhist Sangha. Ascend to heaven by the Buddha known as Festival of Devaharohana . Agasaw [Chief Disciple] arhant Sariputta visited the mother in his home to town and Passed away on this day. The laying of the foundation to construct the first stupa, Thuparama Dagoba in Sri Lanka in Anuradhapura, where the right canine tooth, [the Dakunu Aku Datuwa] relic was treasured on an Il Poya day. The month is also known as the Cheevara Masaya. The offering of Katina Cheevaraya, which is considered a highly meritorious act, takes place during the month of Il. The end and the climax of the Rainy Season, and of the Retreat Period or Vassana, is marked on Il Full Moon day. Buddhist Monks who performed Pasuvas terminate the retreat period of Vassana on this Il Full Moon Poya Day. Why didnt the Buddha Say Why didnt the Buddha say, Oh Bikkhus, go to the kings assembly and help them run the country; get paid by royal treasury and seek Disapamokships in Thakshilas , obtain duty-free horse carriage permits and sell them to the rich; run occult shops in templesetc, Do not go ahead on what has been acquired by repetitive hearing; nor upon custom; nor upon gossip; nor upon what is in chronicle or scripture; nor upon guess or deduce; nor upon a maxim or adage; nor upon specious logic or reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a view or notion that has been pondered over; nor upon anothers seeming capability or competence; nor upon the reflection, The monk is our tutor. Kalamas, when you yourselves be acquainted with: These things are of good quality, excellent; these things are not blamable; these things are admired and commended by the wise; embarked on and observed, these things guide to benefit and contentment, enter on and stand for, in them. - Kalama Sutta Chief disciple Sariputta The passing away of Sariputta, Senior Disciple occurred on Il Poya day. A week before the occurrence, he visited his beloved mother, in the village Nalaka, in the Magadha Province. She did not believe in the Triple Gem, but in another faith called Brahminism. With a determination to make his mother realize Dhamma he preached relevant portions. After listening to the sons sermon, she attained Sotapanna or the first stage towards liberation. Regarded as the chief disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha who leads in Wisdom, Arhant Sariputta passed away after the successful mission. Ven. Sariputta Thera died while the Buddha was still alive. Sariputta Theras modesty was another exceptional feature of his character. When Rahula the seven-year-old novice Bhikkhu warned him noticing his robe touching the ground, Ven. Sariputta stood before the little Samanera, and turned towards the Buddhas monastery and with linked palms, said: Sadhu, Sadhu in recognition of the little ones deed. Responding to the request for ending his life, the Buddha said: Please do what is opportune, Sariputta. He left Jethavanaramaya following a long journey arrived at his home in Nalake, where he fell gravely il lying on the same place where he was born. He delivered a sermon on the merits of the Buddha, to the mother named Sari who was instantly converted; she found fault with the son and blamed him for not enlightening her earlier on such an amazing command and magnificence! Ven. Sariputta gathered his robe around his body, covered his face, lying on the right side he attained Parinibbana on Il full moon day. Wasteful, Noisy extravagant Katina Peraheras How blinding a belief can be was the idea that sprung to me when I was compelled to witness a Katina Perahera at 4.00 am when it paraded the streets zigzagging through a network of byie roads and mains on its way to the temple? It covered a good three Kilo metres, though the actual distance from the Dayakes house to its destination was only a couple of hundred metres. Professional borukakulkarayas, fire-ball acrobats, drummers, dancers, whip crackers, numerous other showmen and elephants hired at Rs. 75,000 per animal/day are being engaged for the purpose of carrying the Katina Robe to the temple. It is time we stop all wasteful extravagant items conducted in the name of the enlightened one. A famous temple in my area according to reliable sources had spent four and a half million rupees for this years event. Surely these funds collected from devotees could be put to better use. The hospitals are without medicine, childrens homes neglected for want of funds for upkeep. Basic facilities are deprived to senior citizens living at Elders Homes. Clearly, the noise we create is beyond tolerable limits and in complete violation of noise pollution norms of Buddha Dhamma apart from local bye-laws. The Buddha says in Bhayabherava Sutta, that even the crackle of foliage by a falling stem in the forest shivers the heart. The sound pollution caused by Perahera and all night pirith chanting over public address systems are a real menace. It was during King Devanampiyatissas rule that they imported drummers from South India, under the influence of Hindu priests, for presenting thevawa to sacred Bodhi tree, the Sri Mahabodhiya. The bad habit of whipping and thumping the skins extracted from goats, monkeys and monitors, especially slaughtered for the purpose, has become a Buddhist tradition coined, Shabda Pooja[noise offerings?] of which neither the Buddha nor his pristine Dhamma has anything to do with. Ehipassiko One specific characteristic of the Dhamma is the invitation to all, not to believe the doctrine or philosophy in it, but to come and examine, scrutinize the validity of the analysis and cure of the circumstance offered to. Acknowledgment should come if and only when one is convinced and realised for oneself that the healing is wholesome and exceptional. Buddha taught us how to be impartial and balanced observers; the practice of awareness and mindfulness of the moment. We have a never-ending longing to satisfy our sense organs. That is why man is always biased and suffers in this never-ending Sansara. It was a voice I had never heard before, but one that belonged to a man who has been a political associate and a staunch friend for almost half my life. It was a call from London, a call I had not anticipated despite certain unhappy truths and was certainly not ready for. I found the voice strangely unfamiliar even though I knew who it was. Krishantha, I am in London. I came here from Geneva. My daughter is not doing too well. The doctors have said they are going to stop medication and that shes not going to make it. Karu Jayasuriyas voice broke then as he tried to retain his legendary composure. The grief was too much. There was nothing anyone could do. Karu knew this. He said my logical mind says theres no hope, but my emotional mind is hoping for a miracle. There was nothing anyone could do for his younger daughter Indira, who was at that moment breathing her last in the Princess Royal University Hospital near Farnborough, Bromley. Karu has always been there in a moment of crisis; for many people and for me too. The best I could do was to be with Karu during this most tragic moment of his life. And so I immediately left for London. Indira had been given approximately 24 hours to live, but survived for eight days, defying all logic and astonishing the medical staff of the facility. They said her response was absolutely atypical on all counts. Her father had been there right along, arriving around 5 am and leaving close to midnight on most days. I saw things in that hospital room that were truly unbelievable, things that were unutterably sad and things which told me there was hope for humanity. This is a short account of those eight days. I saw Karu Jayasuriya by his daughter. He held her hand throughout the time he was there. On the other side of the bed was his older daughter Lanka, holding her sisters other hand, never once leaving the hospital. Every now and then Karu would get up, kiss his little girl and sit down. He would cry softly for a while and then go quiet. Indiras husband Martin would arrive and give an account of his day and that of their children to his unconscious wife. He held in his grief. His love was apparent. Clearly they had always been there for each other and were very much in love. I was to learn during those eight days that Indira, until her last moment of consciousness and clarity, had planned everything to the extent that planning was possible: her funeral, the songs she felt should be sung at the weddings of her children, although they were just four and one-and-a-half-years-old and how life after she was gone should be. Meticulous and duty-conscious were the words that came to mind. They invariably brought to mind the ways of her distraught father. Lankas husband, Navin Dissanayake, would come in with their daughters. He consoled her. The love and caring in that room was beyond description. Navins girls were probably old enough to know what was happening. They wiped their aunts face. I couldnt help admiring their charm, their caring and the way they conducted themselves. Obviously, Lanka and Navin had brought them up well and I believe something of their maternal grandfather is embedded in their genes. It was the same with Indiras children. Something told me they were very blessed and special children considering the extraordinary circumstances in which they were born and the incredible courage and humanity of their mother. Amazingly, throughout this difficult time, Karu never failed to attend to his official duties as much as possible. He answered or returned almost every call he got. Some inquired about his daughter, while others, oblivious to what he was going through, talked business, were it parliamentary issues or matters of the Constitutional Council. Karu never once betrayed, in either voice or word, the immense grief he was suffering. He was cordial, composed and as always, efficient. His face was that of an inconsolable father, his voice was that of a duty-conscious public servant. It was as though his heart and mind were absolutely unconnected. How he managed, I cannot understand, unless it had something to do with his deeply Buddhist upbringing and the quality of equanimity he had cultivated over many years. From time to time, he would inquire about people around him, whether they had eaten, whether everything was okay. He would even ask me about the situation in the country and despite his emotional state, he went to the extent of inquiring about my family back home and how my wife was managing with the kids without me. He was thankful to the doctors, nurses, medical staff and everyone else who did something, however small, to help his daughter. I could not think of a worse thing to happen to a father. I just could not fathom how he could be so thoughtful towards a world that had been so unjust to him. But he thought, imagined, uttered his regrets. His emotional mind persuaded him to note Indiras temperature and tell Lanka, a doctor herself, nangige una vadi vela vage (her temperature has gone up) or nangige una bahala nahane (her temperature is not coming down). He worried about Lanka too, whether she had enough rest and was eating well. He made sure he spent time with his grandchildren, Lankas as well as Indiras. " He held her hand throughout the time he was there. On the other side of the bed was his older daughter Lanka, holding her sisters other hand, never once leaving the hospital" Indira survived eight days. Those closest to her were present; her father, sister, brother-in-law, husband, children, nieces, cousins and friends. Even the friendships I saw were extraordinary. Towards the end there was mostly silence except for the soothing chant of pirith. How she survived for so long and why she had to suffer will always remain a mystery. Indira was a vegan. She lived an unblemished life. She overcame a cancer and thereafter had a child. She was pregnant with her second child when a second cancer was discovered. She postponed treatment because she wanted the baby to have the best chances possible for a healthy life. She sacrificed much and never complained. She suffered but even in her suffering, celebrated life, or rather the lives of those who were closest to her heart, her husband and their two children. Perhaps Karu would draw an explanation from Buddhism. Perhaps he would tell himself that it was the karmic power one brought into this life that determined how long one lived, how one lived and the quantum and temper of the joys and sorrows that had to be endured. Lanka perhaps had an inkling of what was happening for at one point, she said gently, thaaththa, nangige athin allagena innakota nangita yanna amaaru athi (it might be difficult for her to let go while you hold her hand). She probably felt that the release from the burden of her impossible condition was being held back by love and that love required her family to let go. Karus response was soft and immediate. His logical mind and emotional mind reconciled their differences. Ehemada loku duwa.ow mata therenava... eth thava poddak allan indala atha arinnada? (Is that so. yes, I understand... but is it alright if I held her hand for just a little while longer?). He let go. And she let go in return. And in that letting go, they made peace with themselves and one another, I felt. She passed away in the presence of loved ones. Peacefully. The Jayasuriya family was there for each other in their most tragic moment. They faced the entire process with love and dignity. I felt that in some inexplicable way, Indira would have left in peace, knowing that her entire family and all those who cared for her unconditionally were together, strong and united. I accompanied Karu back to Sri Lanka. I uttered whatever words I felt might help alleviate his sorrow, even though I felt I would fail miserably. And I remembered the voice that came over the phone, the voice from London that I had heard eight days before, the unfamiliar voice of someone who had been like a father to me. It was the voice of a wonderful and utterly distraught father. It is not a voice I want to hear again but I am glad I heard it. It was the voice of an incredible human being. A father to two girls, both beautiful and wonderful, one by his side and one gone beyond the reach of caress, both forever resident in his heart. I am glad I was privileged enough to be by his side for the long, sad and educational eight days in a hospital room. A leading foreign embassy located in Colombo has complained to the Foreign Affairs Ministry that residents living in the neighbourhood were pelting stones at the embassy premises across the parapet wall. Sources said the embassy had reportedly complained to the police as well as the Defence Ministry over the incident. The embassy was built on a land which had been previously occupied by squatters and there was a controversy over the ownership of the land for the past couple of years. The pelting of stones had been reported on several occasions. (Thilini De Silva) The US Geological Survey said the magnitude-7.4 quake hit just after midnight (11:02 GMT on Sunday), some 95km (59 miles) from Christchurch. The ministry of civil defence has warned people on the east coast of the South Island to move to higher ground in case of tsunamis. Christchurch is still recovering from the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city centre. New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The Herald newspaper said the tremor was felt all the way to Wellington, where sirens sounded and people fled buildings into the streets, some of them crying. Early reports suggest some houses in Cheviot town, near the epicentre, have been damaged. A resident of Christchurch said the tremor lasted a "long" time. "We were asleep and woken to the house shaking, it kept going and going and felt like it was going to build up," she told AFP news agency. A magnitude-7.1 quake struck 169km (105 miles) north-east of Gisborne on the North Island in September, sparking a tsunami warning. It caused some damage to property, but no injuries. (BBC) Prior to the opening of the economy, due to import restrictions local industrialists of all grades and descriptions revelled in the demand for their local products. The import restrictions in addition helped many technically skilled entrepreneurs to venture to fabricate machines capable of turning out spare parts in great demand for vehicles; wood-working machines; arc welding plants; generators; and other machinery and equipment for workshops. The selling prices were reasonably low and within the reach of modest income earners. "Commencing of an umbrella turning out project in Hambantota with working females preferring several, umbrellas to match their dresses, the sales capability was not an issue" Machinery and equipment that were fabricated for rice milling, prompted many local businessmen with capital to commence rice processing mills all over the paddy growing areas. Transport of produce improved with the importing of Lorries; perhaps on restricted basis. The local banks, with the two State Banks leading in their obligatory duty to help the local ventures, adopted a risk bearing approach to provide finance at reasonable rates of interest with Central Bank awareness. Consumer preference over a period shifted to local products and-the price difference created a local product preference. Thus legislation alone cannot promote and protect local industry, unless with the promoted local production, the duties on imported items are increased limiting imports and a promotion of local product buying preference is also promoted. The previous Government at the peak of its popularity did not request its financially capable supporters to commence a few employment creating industries. Considering the female population in the Southern Province, commencing of an umbrella turning out project in Hambantota with working females preferring several, umbrellas to match their dresses, the sales capability was not an issue. Several other items relating to males and females, including cotton sarongs and footwear could have been commenced, thus providing employment opportunities mainly to the young in their home locations. The present government too seems to have not canvassed the cash rich and capable persons to commence industrial units for items in popular demand. Both governments had cash-rich supporters who had earned from gambling and investment related pursuits and preferred State owned organizations and private organizations to serve in their directorates with a safe investment and with assured annual dividends, rather than venture to commence an industry in unknown locations, risking their gambling and investment related earnings. "Legislation alone cannot promote and protect local industry, unless with the promoted local production, the duties on imported items are increased limiting imports and a promotion of local product buying preference is also promoted. " Dr. Palitha Kohona, with his internationally-related knowledge in a lengthy article on Daily Mirror of October 26, has expressed his profound knowledge mainly in relation to legislative support desired for the protection of local industry. But a government cannot frequently release statements and expect a growth in local industrial investment without assured competitive import protection and preferential local goods sales and purchases promotion. Dr. Kohona had said, The inadequacy of institutional support has been a major reason for Sri Lankan exporters being placed at a disadvantage The institutional support could include government institutions and their officers and banks and their management and officers. For any support inadequacy of banks, the investor could seek Central Bank intervention not as a complainant, but where applicable to obtain redress. The institutional deficiency, specially relating to banks is a hackneyed thought of a few who are not directly involved in business ventures. He had also stated that with a 1.2 billion population; Securing effective market access to India is vital for Sri Lanka. But it is a challenging confrontation, considering the Indian peoples strong faith in the desire to use products manufactured in India, and in his own belief that; many developed countries straining to enter the Indian market place because of the undoubted potential it offers. Thus the export growth of our products to the Indian market may confront many unanticipated hurdles. In attempting to access the Indian market, with various agreements, we may be blindfolded and open our market to Indias advantage and the promotion of local industrial production in medium ventures and rural level small ventures left to battle a challenge in marketing their products with India and China dumping their low production-cost goods. Steel Corporations Lanlo spoons and other local items will feel the heat of Indian and Chinese competition. Locally manufactured dry cell batteries are not found in shops for sale, is the corporation closed? Instead of local green tea bags, some prefer imported green tea bags, a cash-rich house wives pride preferential. "The present government too seems to have not canvassed the cash rich and capable persons to commence industrial units for items in popular demand" A writers letter on Preferential Purchasing published in the Daily Mirror of Sept. 28, referred to two local products; Sometime in 2010, I purchased two locally assembled table clocks, and about a year ago purchased a locally-assembled mini-fridge, name indicating the reputed company but the recent newspaper advertisements of both institutions not reveal the availability of the two locally-assembled products. Similar attempts made to assemble products locally may have been abandoned, due to the high cost of importing the necessary components. The IDB made a noteworthy contribution. Often collaborating with banks and the authorities should prompt the IDB to take a more active role to promote new industrial ventures. Former member of the UN special panel Yasmin Sooka has said the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) should visit Sri Lanka and conduct an independent investigation into the continued abductions, torture and sexual violence allegedly committed by the security forces, the Indian Express today reported. Indian-origin Yasmin Sooka is a member of a former UN special panel on Sri Lankas war with the LTTE. She heads the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP). Her call has come ahead of the UNCATs meeting in Geneva this week to examine torture in Sri Lanka. Torture and abduction are so systematic and entrenched in the DNA of the security forces that even a realignment of political parties in parliament and the new government under President Sirisena are not able to stop these crimes. It requires political will and a commitment on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka to carry out a comprehensive security sector reform programme which is sadly missing in Sri Lanka, Sooka said in a statement. She was one of three in the panel appointed by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war with the LTTE which ended in 2009. Her International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) has collected testimony from 36 Tamil victims in three European countries, who have suffered abduction, illegal detention, torture or sexual violence at the hands of intelligence and security officers under the present Sri Lanka government. In 10 of these cases the victims have already been granted asylum, meaning their cases have already been found credible by foreign governments, she said. Overall ITJP has more than two hundred statements from Sri Lankan victims of alleged war crimes and post-war torture and sexual violence who have fled the country. The orgnisation has also begun to identify some alleged perpetrators, Sooka said. I want the outside world to know that torture is still happening in Sri Lanka and the torture that I suffered, the news article said quoting a young Tamil woman allegedly abducted in a white van and gang raped this year in illegal detention in the North. The international community, including the UN is under an obligation to ensure that the Government of Sri Lanka honours its commitments made in the Human Rights Council in regard to the transitional justice programme in Sri Lanka. Overlooking the ongoing violations is not doing either the Government of Sri Lanka a favour or the victims, whose suffering should not be swept under the carpet just because of political expediency, Sooka added. (The Indian Express) Soon after the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka and the influx of Tamil refugees into Tamil Nadu, the training of Tamil militants began in Tamil Nadu with the knowledge and patronage of the Tamil Nadu government. Indias national intelligence agencies started their training program only in 1984, when New Delhi felt that Tamil Nadus initiative in the matter might not be in the overall Indian interest, says Air Marshal (Rtd) Bharat Kumar in his book Operation Pawan: Role of Airpower with IPKF. The training of Tamil rebels had commenced in Tamil Nadu with full knowledge and in some cases, under the patronage of the state government. New Delhis suggestion to rein in these Tamil groups were not acceptable to Tamil Nadu leaders. Since the Central government could not afford Tamil Nadu invading Sri Lanka, various Indian intelligence agencies also got into the act from 1984 onward. It was better that the Indian state got involved in Sri Lanka rather than the Tamil Nadu government because of obvious repercussions, Bharat Kumar says. Unlike Tamil Nadu leaders M.G.Ramachandran and M.Karunanidhi, Indian Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were not for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka. They saw the arming of the Tamil militants as an instrument to pressurize the Sri Lankan government to find a permanent solution to the Sri Lankan Tamil problem. This is why, even as the training of Sri Lankan Tamil militants was going on India in 1984, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sent, in December that year, an undisclosed number of Indian warships to patrol the Palk Strait. Quoting Edgar OBallance, The Cyanide war: Tamil Insurrection in Sri Lanka 1977-88, Bharat Kumar says: He (Rajiv Gandhi) also decided to reduce the flow of arms from Tamil Nadu to Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka. And on 29 March 1985, the Indian Coast Guard began selectively stopping and searching craft suspected of ferrying weapons across the Palk Strait. However, despite these steps, by early 1987, there were fears of the LTTE becoming too strong. India launched Operation Tiger in November 1986 to disarm LTTE cadres in India and to take over their communication equipment .This action took place just before the SAARC summit in Bangalore. But to generate goodwill before the summit, where Rajiv Gandhi wanted LTTE chief Prabhakaran and Sri Lankan President J.R.Jayewardene (JR) to meet and thrash out issues, the seized equipment were released. When the JR-Prabhakaran talks broke down with JR saying a firm no to the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces to form a single Tamil-speaking province, and Prabhakaran sticking firmly to his demand for an independent Eelam, Rajiv Gandhi developed an aversion for Prabhakarans intransigence, and became more favorably inclined to Jayewardenes views. By 1986, the LTTE had established its dominance in the Northern peninsula, subjugating the rival Tamil militant groups and at the same time defending the peninsula against the Sri Lankan forces. The situation worsened in January 1987 when the Tigers announced a plan to establish a separate administration in Jaffna and the Sri Lankan government immediately imposed an embargo on food and fuel supplies to the North creating near famine conditions.(Indian Express) A product of his era with gifted talents One may wonder whether there is anything left to write on Eng. B. D. Rampala, the late General Manager of Ceylon Government Railways (CGR), because so much more has been written by individuals related to the railway sector as well as to the profession of engineering. Eng. Rampala et, this writer thinks that some more things can be said of this person considered by many as an Icon in the Sri Lankan Railways. What has been written so far mostly touches his persona from a one side: i.e. his extraordinary talents as an individual to dogmatically emphasize the importance of taking his character as an example. This writer is of the view although not entirely anew, that, Eng. Rampala can best be understood in the light of international setting of his industry, within which he worked and his ability to make breakthroughs and introduce new technology into CGR (now Sri Lanka Railways or SLR). In order to achieve this target, he had to overcome conservatism inherited from more than two hundred years of colonial rule. The writer is interested in this piece because roles played by individuals such as Eng. Rampala in various industries make lasting imprints on the journey of mankind. Imprints left by Eng. Rampala as a technocrat and a change agent are etched in our society to date. It is worthy to remind ourselves and take cue from those legacies to do whats much needed in the country, especially in the public transport sector. Biography Bamunuarachchigae Don Rampala was born on 14 November 1910 and grew up at his ancestral home in Moraketiya Junction, Pannipitiya. He received his education initially at the English Mixed School in Kottawa. Then he went to Nalanda College Colombo and completed his Senior Cambridge Examination at Ananda College. Ceylon Government Railways- Golden Era of B.D. Rampala and the Way forward by Ranjith L. Dissanayake states that Mr. Rampala entered the Colombo University College and completed his examinations in Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Physics. After a few months training in the Police Department he joined the Ratmalana Railway Mechanical Engineering Department of the then CGR as a Special Apprentice in 1931. He sat and passed the Bachelor of Science Degree of the University of London as an External Candidate in 1933. He then got qualified as an Engineer on private study by obtaining the Associate Membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in October 1935. Eng. B.D. Rampala was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) in 1949, the first Ceylonese (as Sri Lankans were then called) for the post. In 1955 he became General Manager of Railways (GMR) at the age of 45, a position he was to hold for 14 years up until his retirement in the late 1960s. He was the GMR having the second longest term of office. The striking fact that comes into light is that Eng. Rampala was not interested in becoming an engineer because of higher social esteem but because he understood it is the best area where he can perform to the full. That is, he chose the profession not due to just inner passion but it would suit to him. Eng. Rampala was elected the President of The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL) in 1958. In fact, this was the year the bus industry was nationalized and the centenary of Ceylon Government Railways. He was also instrumental in establishing the Ceylon Transport Board along with Vera de Mel. Every year, IESL celebrates Eng. Ramaplas service to the nation with a Memorial lecture conducted at its premises, open to the public. His Role Like any other leading character Eng. Rampala was also a product of his time and era. But his ability to grasp new trends in the rail industry and commitment to apply them superseded the conservative ways of approaching and looking at new technology, which still holds its sway in general. By the time Eng. Rampala was given the task of fulfilling responsibilities of CME at CGR, the British Railway had already been in existence for more than two hundred years. Historical records state that Britain is the first nation to use steam locomotives in rail transport, while the idea of wooden-railed wagon-ways originated in Germany as far back as in the 16th century. By the late 1940s, the steam locomotives were though still in operation had started to show difficulties in their ability to cater to modern day needs because railway itself was becoming a popular mode of traveling. So, in one way or other a breakthrough was a need of the day at the time. Railway professionals internationally were able to give a solution to the issue with the introduction of diesel locomotives. Here comes the role of Eng. Rampala in CGR, which most of people including the engineering professionals in Sri Lanka would like to consider as if it was a result of pure individual talent. Instead, this writer holds the position this man had no boundaries in keeping updated with the latest developments in technology and that made him an icon in the field. He had the courage to introduce the latest advances in railway to this tiny island which speaks a great deal of his acquaintance with the enormous knowledge in the subject. In fact, the all-sided knowledge of the field gave him the gift of courage to apply the same practically. Then comes the role of the individual. Most of the railway nomenclature, like Udarata Menike, Yal Devi and Ruhunu Kumari made their first appearance in Eng. Rampalas day and in fact they are his creations. This is not a case of just giving names and signing birth certificates but came from a broad vision that railway should be a subject of public endeavour. It has been a sort of annual practice that Eng. Rampala is memorialized but only from the side of his positives. But if the present day railway community wanted to get examples from this person so that they are able to get ready to modern day challenges including electrification of the railway - Sri Lanka Railways (SLR) should give careful attention to his merits and demerits as well. Because Eng. Rampala would have his own share of demerits coming in a long career in a professional area which always expects the best even from the most capable. After all he was human! This area, however, cannot be discussed here in detail because of a major reason: The writer is not well-versed about his approaches to every issue to comment as that area is not well researched and recorded apart from some sort of tittle-tattle. Similarly, his approach to administrative issues definitely emerged since he was the GMR at a tumultuous period created by political factors. In this vein, most of the writers so far have emphasized his administrative capabilities only categorically. Considering these and other details which cannot be grappled in an article like this, Eng. Rampala should be taken as an example of a vision that human capabilities ultimately makes it possible to utilize scientific and technological advances for the common good of society. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's November 2016 visit to Tokyo has marked a new era in the already historic India-Japan relations. The country's strategic community has been looking at Japan's technical capacity in the strategic field ever since 1968, when PN Haksar as secretary to the then PM Indira Gandhi wrote about seeking Japan's nuclear capabilities in his notes. PM Modi is concluding a significant visit to Japan, where a historic nuclear cooperation agreement has been signed. Japan will now be opening its nuclear technology to India providing nuclear reactors and other aspects like fuel, components, et al. Westinghouse (US nuclear reactor makers) is majority-owned by Toshiba (almost 90 percent) and a substantial emerging entity in China's nuclear market, involved with as many as four AP1000 nuclear power plants. The Nuclear Power Cooperation of India Limited (NPCIL) has already been linked to Westinghouse for six of the AP1000s, which was the outcome of PM Modi's visit to Washington DC in June 2016. The other end of the nuclear yarn leads from the French nuclear tech entity AREVA, run jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and French entity Electicite de France (EDF). AREVA was nearing bankruptcy in middle of 2015. The nuclear industry of France and Japan is in challenging times and the future pace of nuclear energy in the countries is uncertain. Japan operates 42 nuclear reactors with another four under construction and another three (ABWR-Advanced Boiling Water Reactors) planned for future construction. There are other kinds of nuclear mart intricacies. For instance, Japan Casting and Forging Corporation also provides components for the French nuclear industry. Many French reactors are made by Japanese manufacturers using Japanese steel forging. The search for new markets is driven by financial survival of these industries by capturing emerging nuclear mart in India and China. Other emerging markets are Turkey, Vietnam, et al. There is much historical symmetry pulling the two sides together in this strategic cooperation since India had consistently held during the Cold War era that Japan's nuclear industry had been unfairly and heavily burdened by US regulatory requirements and the NPT. The US, during the Jimmy Carter years, tried to put brakes on the plutonium reprocessing technology in which Japanese industry had invested as much as three billion dollars in the late 1970s. Thus, the historical understanding India has provided to the need for Japan to have an independent and strong nuclear power programme was a constant that the latter could cite to critics of the new agreement within Japan. The nuclear agreement is a sure verifier that India-Japan relations are making the transition from their Cold War dynamics of warm, earthy understanding underlined by the geo-economic vector of Japan, which continuously invested in India's future. However, Japan was mostly circumspect of strategic opportunities being floated by Indian prime ministers and preferred to keep pragmatism to mould the bilateral balance. Shinzo Abe is perhaps the first Japanese Prime Minister to approach India from an ideological perspective and not merely from one of pragmatism. It began with PM Abe's grandfather, PM Nobusuke Kishi, whom Nehru had invited to India in 1957. Kishi in turn invited Nehru to Japan. PM Kishi was a "cold warrior" and PM Abe in many respects inherits that ideology, but both had seen India through pragmatism and geo-economics. This is now verifiably changing. PM Abe's clarity on foreign policy vision can be placed within the "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity" found in the diplomatic bluebook of Japan's ministry of foreign affairs. Within this, PM Abe has evolved an upgrade of India-Japan status, which has implications for both the countries' China policy as well as, to some extent, Japan's Russia policy. These will become increasingly important in the light of more inward-looking US foreign policy administration expected under President-elect Donald Trump. Here, India-Japan relations would give the two countries an added strategic impulse needed to approach southeast Asian countries that are increasingly looking to modify their status with the major nuclear powers. As for India's nuclear weapons programme, the very fact that the agreement has taken place knowing that India is currently on its way to develop a comprehensive deployable status for its nuclear triad delivery platforms is, in itself, a signifier that Tokyo accepts New Delhi's nuclear deterrence requirements. It is known to Japan that India's principal nuclear adversary was China ever since the former's nuclear weapons' programme was launched covertly in 1968. India's department of atomic energy had even written a brief for the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in 1970 about the possibility of tactical nuclear weapon exchanges between India and China in the Himalayan region in a situation where Chinese troops would be frustrated in a possible aggressive incursion into India and may resort to use of tactical weapons. PN Haksar, as secretary to PM Indira Gandhi, had written in 1968 that "nuclear 'stand-off' with China was essential as soon as possible" and that it had the ability to strike the industrial heartlands of China with long-range ballistic missiles. Thus, as mentioned earlier, Japan is aware of the built-in deterrent requirements in India's nuclear weapons program. On the other hand, India is a strong supporter of PM Abe's push for a shift in the status of Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution, which limits the country's defence capabilities and deployment options to secure its national interests in the current global security environment. November 3 also marked the 70th anniversary of the promulgation of Japan's Constitution, which was essentially forcefully grafted by US general Mc Arthur onto Japan's post-war political consciousness. Modi chose Japan as the first country for an overseas visit after taking over as Indian PM in 2014. However, what would be the status of such ambitious agreements if India were to conduct a nuclear test? India must not give up its autonomy to conduct nuclear explosives underground testing as part of any such agreement - this can be secured through indirect language in the pacts, which allows both parties to vent disagreement while remaining committed to long-term nuclear cooperation. Delek US Holdings, Inc. engages in the integrated downstream energy business in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Refining, Logistics, and Retail. The Refining segment processes crude oil and other feedstock for the manufacture of various grades of gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, asphalt, and other petroleum-based products that are distributed through owned and third-party product terminal. It owns and operates four independent refineries located in Tyler, Texas; El Dorado, Arkansas; Big Spring, Texas; and Krotz Springs, Louisiana, as well as three biodiesel facilities in Crossett, Arkansas, Cleburne, Texas, and New Albany. The Logistics segment gathers, transports, and stores crude oil, intermediate, and refined products; and markets, distributes, transports, and stores refined products for third parties. It owns or leases capacity on approximately 400 miles of crude oil transportation pipelines, approximately 450 miles of refined product pipelines, an approximately 900-mile crude oil gathering system, and associated crude oil storage tanks with an aggregate of approximately 10.2 million barrels of active shell capacity; and owns and operates ten light product distribution terminals, as well as markets light products using third-party terminals. The Retail segment owns and leases 248 convenience store sites located primarily in West Texas and New Mexico. Its convenience stores offer various grades of gasoline and diesel under the DK or Alon brand; and food products and service, tobacco products, non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, and general merchandise, as well as money orders to the public primarily under the 7-Eleven and DK or Alon brand names. It serves oil companies, independent refiners and marketers, jobbers, distributors, utility and transportation companies, the U.S. government, and independent retail fuel operators. Delek US Holdings, Inc. was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. Ecopetrol S.A. operates as an integrated energy company. The company operates through four segments: Exploration and Production; Transport and Logistics; Refining, Petrochemical and Biofuels; and Electric Power Transmission and Toll Roads Concessions. It engages in the exploration and production of oil and gas; transportation of crude oil, motor fuels, fuel oil, and other refined products, including diesel, jet, and biofuels; processing and refining crude oil; distribution of natural gas and LPG; sale of refined and petrochemical products; supplying of electric power transmission services; design, development, construction, operation, and maintenance of road and energy infrastructure projects; and supplying of information technology and telecommunications services. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 9,127 kilometers of crude oil and multi-purpose pipelines. It also produces and commercializes polypropylene resins and compounds, and masterbatches; and offers industrial service sales to customers and specialized management services. It has operations in Colombia, the United States, Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos and changed its name to Ecopetrol S.A. in June 2003. Ecopetrol S.A. was incorporated in 1948 and is based in Bogota, Colombia. Provident Financial Services, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Provident Bank that provides various banking products and services to individuals, families, and businesses in the United States. The company's deposit products include savings, checking, interest-bearing checking, money market deposit, and certificate of deposit accounts, as well as IRA products. Its loan portfolio comprises commercial real estate loans that are secured by properties, such as multi-family apartment buildings, office buildings, and retail and industrial properties; commercial business loans; fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgage loans collateralized by one- to four-family residential real estate properties; commercial construction loans; and consumer loans consisting of home equity loans, home equity lines of credit, marine loans, personal loans and unsecured lines of credit, and auto and recreational vehicle loans. The company also offers cash management, remote deposit capture, payroll origination, escrow account management, and online and mobile banking services; and business credit cards. In addition, it provides wealth management services comprising investment management, trust and estate administration, financial planning, tax compliance and planning, and private banking. Further, the company sells insurance and investment products, including annuities; operates as a real estate investment trust for acquiring mortgage loans and other real estate related assets; and manages and sells real estate properties acquired through foreclosure. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 96 full-service branch offices in northern and central New Jersey, as well as in Pennsylvania and New York counties. The company was founded in 1839 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. Royal Bank of Canada operates as a diversified financial service company worldwide. The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, including auto financing, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses. This segment offers financial products and services through branches, automated teller machines, and mobile sales network. Its Wealth Management segment provides a suite of advice-based solutions and strategies to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, and institutional clients. The company's Insurance segment offers life, health, home, auto, travel, wealth, annuities, and reinsurance advice and solutions; and business insurance services to individual, business, and group clients through its advice centers, RBC insurance stores, and mobile advisors; digital, mobile, and social platforms; independent brokers; and travel partners. Its Investor & Treasury Services segment provides asset servicing, custody, payments, and treasury services to financial and other investors; and fund and investment administration, shareholder, private capital, performance measurement and compliance monitoring, distribution, transaction banking, cash and liquidity management, foreign exchange, and global securities finance services. The company's Capital Markets segment offers corporate and investment banking, as well as equity and debt origination, distribution, advisory services, sale, and trading services for corporations, institutional investors, asset managers, private equity firms, and governments. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation provides a range of financial products and services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Securities Services, Market and Wealth Services, Investment and Wealth Management, and Other segments. The Securities Services segment offers custody, trust and depositary, accounting, exchange-traded funds, middle-office solutions, transfer agency, services for private equity and real estate funds, foreign exchange, securities lending, liquidity/lending services, prime brokerage, and data analytics. This segment also provides trustee, paying agency, fiduciary, escrow and other financial, issuer, and support services for brokers and investors. The Market and Wealth Services segment offers clearing and custody, investment, wealth and retirement solutions, technology and enterprise data management, trading, and prime brokerage services; and clearance and collateral management services. This segment also provides integrated cash management solutions, including payments, foreign exchange, liquidity management, receivables processing and payables management, and trade finance and processing services. The Investment and Wealth Management segment offers investment management strategies and distribution of investment products, investment management, custody, wealth and estate planning, private banking, investment, and information management services. The Other segment engages in the provision of leasing, corporate treasury, derivative and other trading, corporate and bank-owned life insurance, renewable energy investment, and business exit services. It serves central banks and sovereigns, financial institutions, asset managers, insurance companies, corporations, local authorities and high net-worth individuals, and family offices. The company was founded in 1784 and is headquartered in New York, New York. Energizer Holdings, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, markets, and distributes household batteries, specialty batteries, and lighting products worldwide. It offers lithium, alkaline, carbon zinc, nickel metal hydride, zinc air, and silver oxide batteries under the Energizer and Eveready brands, as well as primary, rechargeable, specialty, and hearing aid batteries. The company also provides headlights, lanterns, and children's and area lights, as well as flash lights under the Energizer, Eveready, Rayovac, Hard Case, Dolphin, Varta, and WeatherReady brands. In addition, it licenses the Energizer and Eveready brands to companies developing consumer solutions in gaming, automotive batteries, portable power for critical devices, LED light bulbs, generators, power tools, household light bulbs, and other lighting products. Further, the company designs and markets automotive fragrance and appearance products, including protectants, wipes, tire and wheel care products, glass cleaners, leather care products, air fresheners, and washes to clean, shine, refresh, and protect interior and exterior automobile surfaces under the brand names of Armor All, Nu Finish, Refresh Your Car!, LEXOL, Eagle One, California Scents, Driven, and Bahama & Co; STP branded fuel and oil additives, functional fluids, and other performance chemical products; and do-it-yourself automotive air conditioning recharge products under the A/C PRO brand name, as well as other refrigerant and recharge kits, sealants, and accessories. It sells its products through direct sales force, distributors, and wholesalers; and through various retail and business-to-business channels, including mass merchandisers, club, electronics, food, home improvement, dollar store, auto, drug, hardware, e-commerce, convenience, sporting goods, hobby/craft, office, industrial, medical, and catalog. Energizer Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri. Bank of Montreal provides diversified financial services primarily in North America. The company's personal banking products and services include checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and financial and investment advice services; and commercial banking products and services comprise business deposit accounts, commercial credit cards, business loans and commercial mortgages, cash management solutions, foreign exchange, specialized banking programs, treasury and payment solutions, and risk management products for small business and commercial banking customers. It also offers investment and wealth advisory services; digital investing services; financial services and solutions; and investment management, and trust and custody services. In addition, the company provides life insurance, accident and sickness insurance, and annuity products; creditor and travel insurance to bank customers; and reinsurance solutions. Further, it offers client's debt and equity capital-raising services, as well as loan origination and syndication, and treasury management; strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and recapitalizations, as well as valuation and fairness opinions; and trade finance, risk mitigation, and other operating services. Additionally, the company provides research and access to markets for institutional, corporate, and retail clients; trading solutions that include debt, foreign exchange, interest rate, credit, equity, securitization and commodities; new product development and origination services, as well as risk management advice and services to hedge against fluctuations; and funding and liquidity management services to its clients. It operates through approximately 900 bank branches and 3,300 automated banking machines in Canada and the United States. Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Emera Incorporated, an energy and services company, through its subsidiaries, engages in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity to various customers. The company operates through Florida Electric Utility, Canadian Electric Utilities, Other Electric Utilities, Gas Utilities and Infrastructure, and Other segments. It generates electricity through coal-fired, natural gas and/or oil, hydro, wind, solar, petroleum coke, and biomass-fueled power plants. The company is also involved in the purchase, transmission, distribution, and sale of natural gas; and the provision of energy marketing, trading, and other energy asset management services. In addition, it transports re-gasified liquefied natural gas from Saint John, New Brunswick to consumers in the northeastern United States through its 145-kilometer pipeline. As of December 31, 2021, the company's electric utilities served approximately 810,600 customers in West Central Florida; 536,000 customers in Nova Scotia; 132,000 customers in the island of Barbados; 19,000 customers in the Grand Bahama Island; and 35,700 customers in the island of Dominica, as well as gas utilities and infrastructure served approximately 445,000 customers across Florida and 542,000 customers in New Mexico. It also provides insurance and reinsurance services to Emera and its affiliates, as well as offers financing services. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Halifax, Canada. The Clorox Company manufactures and markets consumer and professional products worldwide. It operates through four segments: Health and Wellness, Household, Lifestyle, and International. The Health and Wellness segment offers cleaning products, such as laundry additives and home care products primarily under the Clorox, Clorox2, Scentiva, Pine-Sol, Liquid-Plumr, Tilex, and Formula 409 brands; professional cleaning and disinfecting products under the CloroxPro and Clorox Healthcare brands; professional food service products under the Hidden Valley brand; and vitamins, minerals and supplement products under the RenewLife, Natural Vitality, NeoCell, and Rainbow Light brands in the United States. The Household segment provides cat litter products under the Fresh Step and Scoop Away brands; bags and wraps under the Glad brand; and grilling products under the Kingsford brand in the United States. The Lifestyle segment offers dressings, dips, seasonings, and sauces primarily under the Hidden Valley brand; natural personal care products under the Burt's Bees brand; and water-filtration products under the Brita brand in the United States. The International segment provides laundry additives; home care products; water-filtration systems; digestive health products; grilling products; cat litter products; food products; bags and wraps; natural personal care products; and professional cleaning and disinfecting products internationally primarily under the Clorox, Ayudin, Clorinda, Poett, Pine-Sol, Glad, Brita, RenewLife, Ever Clean and Burt's Bees brands. The Clorox Company sells its products primarily through mass retailers; grocery outlets; warehouse clubs; dollar stores; home hardware centers; drug, pet and military stores; third-party and owned e-commerce channels; and distributors, as well as a direct sales force The company was founded in 1913 and is headquartered in Oakland, California. Tyler Technologies, Inc. provides integrated information management solutions and services for the public sector. The company operates in three segments: Enterprise Software; Appraisal and Tax; and NIC. It offers financial management solutions, including modular fund accounting systems for government agencies or not-for-profit entities; utility billing systems for the billing and collection of metered and non-metered services; products to automate city and county functions, such as municipal courts, parking tickets, equipment and project costing, animal and business licenses, permits and inspections, code enforcement, citizen complaint tracking, ambulance billing, fleet maintenance, and cemetery records management; and student information and transportation solutions for K-12 schools. The company also provides a suite of judicial solutions comprising court case management, court and law enforcement, prosecutor, and supervision systems to handle multi-jurisdictional county or statewide implementations, and single county systems; public safety software solutions; systems and software to automate the appraisal and assessment of real and personal property, as well as tax applications for agencies that bill and collect taxes; planning, regulatory, and maintenance software solutions for public sector agencies; software applications to enhance and automate operations involving records and document management; and data and insights solutions. In addition, it offers software as a service arrangements and electronic document filing solutions for courts and law offices; software and hardware installation, data conversion, training, product modification, and maintenance and support services; and property appraisal outsourcing services for taxing jurisdictions. The company has a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services for cloud hosting services. Tyler Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Plano, Texas. Investigating crime scenes is almost always a finicky job, but when a case leads police into the water, searching for evidence and preserving biological material can suddenly seem impossible. Thats when one Greene County deputy straps on his flippers and oxygen tank, and enters a new world. Greene sheriffs Investigator Scott Murphy is one of an elite few who can process an underwater crime scene and preserve any forensic evidence that might still be in the watery scene. Last month, after an intense four-day class, Murphy, 43, was certified in Underwater Crime Scene Investigations, putting the Sheriffs Office on a list of just eight agencies in Virginia with the certification, according to Sheriff Steve Smith. You never know when we could use it here, Smith said. He will also be available to other agencies. Its not something that a lot of other departments have, so I figured it was a good investment. This is providing a service thats probably not going to be needed very often, but when it is, its great to have it, he said. Not just any diver can take the UCI course, though, said Murphy. It is limited to seasoned divers who have other advanced certifications, and as a former deep-sea diver for the Navy, Murphy was a perfect candidate. From the second I started diving, I loved it, Murphy said. Ive assisted other agencies with body recovery. And I love being an investigator theres no better job in the world. I love doing what I do, so when I got the chance to incorporate the two things I love doing, I jumped at the chance. Hes a good investigator; he always does a good job, Smith said. If deputies want to get into other fields of expertise, we encourage that. It helps build morale and helps make their job a lot more fun. Were all for that. *** The UCI course was created 25 years ago by Mike Berry, an experienced public-safety diving instructor who is coordinator of the Virginia State Police Search and Rescue Dive Team. There are just four UCI instructors in the world two in Virginia, one in Louisiana and one in California. In their training, UCI investigators first begin their searches at the waters edge by interviewing other investigators, witnesses and suspects. They also look for scratch marks, shoe or tire marks and drag marks near the source of water. When they finally enter the water, UCI divers use search patterns to look for anything as large as a car to items as small as a half-inch-long shell casing, Murphy said. We can cover 99 percent of an area, Murphy said. It takes time and its a rigorous process, but we can find them. But along with recovering evidence, such as a gun or knife, or a body, we train in how to preserve the evidence, so that we can still draw forensic information from it, such as hair follicles or fingerprints, he said. According to Murphy, testing done by the FBI has shown that an item can be underwater for as long as 75 days and still be able to produce fingerprints. In the past, when people have gone in the water and looked around, they might find a knife and they bring it up, Murphy said. Once you take it out of the water, youve taken it out of its crime scene state. By touching it, you can be destroying evidence, like fingerprints or blood. When we do recover items from water, they are recovered in the water they were found in, he said. We use special evidence-collection containers so that, if we find a gun, that gun is stored in evidence submerged in the water it was found in. That water can have forensic information that can help us solve the crime. While DNA typically deteriorates fairly quickly in water, it is still possible to collect hair follicles and fingerprints from items that have been underwater, Murphy said. Biological material can make the difference in criminal cases, and Murphy said UCI investigators can help solve cases that might once have gone unsolved. Our goal for searches is to be very detailed, to notice if theres ever a dead spot that we havent looked in, Murphy said. Its very important that were detailed so we can articulate in court to a judge or jury exactly what we did that we have everything documented. So many crimes have gone unsolved because investigations have led to the water and they havent had the proper training on how to handle that crime scene. *** For Murphys training, he went to a four-day class in Fredericksburg, held at a deep, dark quarry. After a day in the classroom covering topics such as safety and crime scene procedures, Murphy spent three days underwater, learning how to see with his hands. If I went into Green Mountain Lake looking for an item with my eyes, I would never find it, Murphy said. So, in the class, they put you in cold water with three feet of silt at the bottom and black out your mask so you cant see anything. Everything is done by feel. Youd be surprised, he said. We did searches throughout the class where we were in 2-foot deep silt and you can find a little pocket knife or shell casing. Wed do that over and over and over. Before joining the Greene County Sheriffs Office three years ago, Murphy spent seven years at the Staunton Sheriffs Office. When he came to Greene and was offered the opportunity to become an investigator, Murphy said, he was excited for the chance to spend his days figuring out puzzles. Police work in general is just something Im passionate about, Murphy said. I like serving the community and helping people. A lot of investigation is thinking thinking about how somebody did this, what I would have done in that situation which allows you to really use your head to figure things out. In the investigations department, you have that time and ability and resources to do that, he said. Theres no better job in the world. While the Sheriffs Office paid for the training, Murphy said he uses all of his own diving equipment which is just fine with him, he said, because he knows who takes care of it. Being able to mix his passions for investigating and diving was an opportunity he just could not pass up. A lot of places have dive teams, but they dont have UCI-certified investigators, Murphy said. A diver can go in the water and do what you tell him to do, but a UCI investigator can go underwater and work a crime scene. Theres a big difference. After two years of operation, the areas first long-term shelter for survivors of human trafficking is closing. According to those involved with The Arbor Charlottesville, a variety of factors led to the decision, while the scourge of human trafficking remains present in Central Virginia. The Arbor opened in late 2014 with the mission of taking in adult female survivors of human trafficking and providing them with safe, long-term housing, specialized case management and counseling. According to Seth Wispelwey, The Arbors executive director, the program was intended to equip women not only to recover from their trauma, but to empower them to live on their own safely, autonomously and positioned for long-term flourishing. While two women have successfully moved through the shelters programming and into stable situations, The Arbors board unanimously voted last month to dissolve the organizations nonprofit status and suspend its operations at the end of this year. Speaking on behalf of the board, chairwoman Lisa Lorish said in an email: This decision was a very difficult one to reach for The Arbors board because all of the evidence continues to show that trafficking is a growing problem and that there is a significant need for services to assist survivors. Wispelwey said the decision to shut down the safe house came from a mix of things the level and specificity of required staffing became unsustainable, he said, while the availability of affordable housing in the city proved to be limited. On top of that, shelters for human-trafficking victims are still new concepts; The Arbors mission had the organization steering into relatively unchartered waters. This is resource-intensive work and there are no national standards for it, Wispelwey said. The Arbor as a mission and organization is at the prow of this ship that a lot of people around the country are figuring out in real time, and its urgently necessary work. But sometimes when youre at the prow of a ship, you get splashed with some iced water, he said. When The Arbor was first being developed, a needs-based assessment of the region led the organization to focus on aiding foreign-born Latinas who had survived human trafficking. Not long after opening, however, The Arbor began taking in a variety of clients based on a hefty influx of referrals. Wispelwey said that as recently as this fall, hes received more than a handful of calls about referrals from people within the Charlottesville area. Theres such a great need, and The Arbor opened up with a specific purpose in mind but as soon as they opened up, because there are so few beds specifically dedicated to this, the calls came in flying, Wispelwey said. So [of course], the original staff and founders said yes. Getting away from that core mission, while well intentioned, had an inverse effect on the organizations long-term development strategy. The Arbor ran into further issues when it came to housing as part of the road map to recovery, the shelter aimed to find affordable housing for its clients once they were able to leave the safe house. But affordable housing can be difficult to come by in the Charlottesville area. Nonetheless, The Arbors two years of operation proved fruitful. Of the five women who came through The Arbors doors, two have successfully graduated from the program. Wispelwey said he can now pay forward lessons learned from The Arbors pioneering mission to a broader stage. Hes been on conference calls with similar entities around the country to develop national standards for aftercare services programs and intends to publish a resource document of what weve learned, what our experience was and strong recommendations for anyone who wants to pick up the baton and carry this work forward in an effective, dynamic and sustainable way. Still, the dissolution of The Arbor limits the resources available to human-trafficking survivors in the region. In the past 20 years, the Albemarle County Police Department has made 54 arrests in which human-trafficking charges were placed. Jerry Schenk, a detective in the departments special victims unit, has worked with victims of human trafficking firsthand, and said he was saddened to hear of The Arbors closure. Over the past couple of years, I have met and gotten to know some of the staff there and have been encouraged by their passion for people and dedication to the victims healing process, Schenk said. The Arbor and its staff will truly be a missed resource in the area. Albemarles commonwealths attorney, Robert Tracci, said his office will continue to aggressively prosecute human traffickers. Theres already at least one case of human trafficking on his plate in June, a grand jury indicted 33-year-old Quincy M. Edwards on 10 charges of commercial sex trafficking, alleging that Edwards was involved with a high-level prostitution operation in the county. That case is set to go to trial in March. Providing shelter and counseling to these survivors is essential to their physical and emotional recovery, Tracci said in an email. I share The Arbors hope that its work over the last two years will promote additional efforts to support survivors of human trafficking in the Albemarle-Charlottesville community. After The Arbor officially shutters at the end of the year, it will donate any remaining funds to Thistle Farms in Nashville, Tennessee, a pioneering organization in this field that operates a residential program and provides advocacy services for women healing from prostitution, trafficking and addiction, according to Lorish. Updated at 8:20 p.m. A letter signed by 469 students, staff and faculty at the University of Virginia is asking administrators to stop quoting founder Thomas Jefferson in university-wide emails. The letter came in response to an email, sent by university President Teresa A. Sullivan, the day after the election. Sullivan asked students who were upset by the result not to become cynical about Americas democratic system, and instead to affect change. By coincidence, on this exact day 191 years ago November 9, 1825, in the first year of classes at UVa Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes, Sullivan wrote. I encourage todays UVa students to embrace that responsibility. The petition to Sullivan which The Cavalier Daily reports originated in the psychology department says members of the community are disappointed in the use of Thomas Jefferson as a moral compass. The letter recounts Jeffersons involvement in the universitys racist history Jefferson and many faculty members owned slaves in the early years of UVas existence and cites instances in which Jefferson reaffirmed his view that blacks are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind. Although the letter acknowledges Jeffersons importance and role in UVa tradition, the writers ask Sullivan to reconsider quoting him in emails. For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotations in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality, and civility that you are attempting to convey, the letter reads. In a response sent out Monday afternoon, Sullivan said she agreed with the idea conveyed by Jefferson in that particular quote the idea that UVa students would go on to lead our Republic, she wrote. Quoting Jefferson (or any historical figure) does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time, such as slavery and the exclusion of women and people of color from the University, reads Sullivans statement. Students at a Board of Visitors protest Friday who were there mainly to demand protection for undocumented students and workers also were upset about the universitys valorization of Jefferson. Among their list of demands was that the university stop idolizing slave owners. Later, after the group was asked to leave the Rotunda, third-year student Maria Rincon told the crowd that Sullivans use of a Jefferson quote had the opposite of the intended effect. Quoting a racist rapist isnt going to make me feel better, Rincon said. Using Jefferson quotes in university-wide communications, at the start of ceremonies, at meetings of the Board of Visitors is a tradition at UVa. People on different sides of a debate at UVa often will both mine quotes from Jeffersons writings to support their points of view. Sullivan said the ideals of Jefferson live on, even as the university has evolved to include women, gays and people of all religious persuasions and ethnic groups. All of them belong at todays UVa, whose founders most influential and most quoted words were all men are created equal, reads Sullivans statement. Those words were inherently contradictory in an era of slavery, but because of their power, they became the fundamental expression of a more genuine equality today. Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor in the department of history, said he doesnt endorse the letter. We need to engage with Jefferson, not to pretend that this complex, deeply flawed figure did not exist or has nothing to say to us, Onuf said. Pakistan is turning them back. Thousands who spent their life savings on a bid to resettle in Europe are being told it's time to head home. Inside Afghanistan, tens of thousands have become internally displaced in recent months as fighting between the Taliban and government security forces rages in several provinces. The refugee crisis could reach unprecedented numbers, with as many as 1.5 million returning home, many involuntarily, by the end of the year, according to humanitarian organizations. Yet, there is no plan to adequately address this humanitarian emergency. Its scale and the international community's dismissive attitude toward the plight of vulnerable Afghans is shameful. Pakistan, home to 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees and some 700,000 undocumented Afghans, has begun to crack down on those refugees living in the country without permission. By the end of this year, as many as 360,000 could be forced to return to Afghanistan, if current rates hold, according to the United Nations refugee agency. This year's number of returnees is about four times higher than last year's. Among those caught in Pakistan's toughening stance is Sharbat Gula, the subject of a famous photo that was published on a cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985. That photo was taken at a refugee camp in Pakistan when she was about 12. Ms. Gula, now in her 40s, was recently arrested and deported back to Afghanistan because she had been living in Pakistan without legitimate papers. As Afghans become ever more hopeless about the future of their country, a rising number have set out on long and perilous journeys to Europe. Last year, 213,000 Afghans made it to Europe, where leaders have been grappling with the even larger influx of Syrians. While Syrians are not being forced to return home, European leaders last month struck a deal with the government of Afghanistan to establish a mechanism for the return of tens of thousands of Afghans who have failed to get asylum or legal residency in Europe. Under the deal, the Afghan government agreed to accept even citizens who fear for their safety if they were to return home. Those who go back home, often having spent all their money on smugglers, face grinding poverty and violence. For many, the only option is to pitch a tent in one of the country's bulging and poorly serviced refugee camps. The United Nations refugee agency has been making desperate pleas to donors for more assistance as winter approaches. Last month, it said it needed $181 million to cover basic operations in the months ahead. Fulfilling that need immediately is the least the international community can do. Beyond that, it will need to rethink its long-term approach to Afghan refugees and how to resettle more abroad in the years ahead. The New York Times Where to start? News that the University of Virginia Student Council is taking special steps to give students a safe space for processing post-election emotions prompts a variety of responses. Lets start where some of the students surely are starting: with a reported increase in hate crimes this fall. Some of the despicable and cowardly acts include the word terrorist being written across the wall near a room occupied by two Muslim students, while a star with the word Juden an apparent reference to the Holocaust was spray-painted on the side of a building in an apartment complex near the university. It is suspected that the hateful rhetoric spewed forth in the presidential campaign also helped spur the hateful vandalism. When even on-duty police officers mock and taunt students who are protesting for better protection against hate crimes as allegedly happened at UVa on Tuesday no wonder students feel the need for a safe space. The election results might liberate even more violence against minorities immigrants, LGBT people, those with disabilities, women anyone who has felt disparaged by the language of this election, according to the Student Council statement. With the aid of Dean of Libraries John Unsworth, the Student Council therefore set up the auditorium in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library as a place where students experiencing such a sense of threat could congregate to talk about their feelings and experiences. It is worth saying here, loudly and clearly, that all spaces should be safe spaces for expression especially at a university, where the pursuit of knowledge, as well as of subjective truth, should be encouraged. That includes minority viewpoints of all types and all political persuasions. But at this moment in time, those who are feeling threatened are students who hold liberal viewpoints. If it takes a safe room at a library to ensure that they feel safe in expressing their opinions, then so be it. The other beneficial aspect of the safe-room concept is that it gives students a chance to vent emotions that otherwise might erupt into more harmful behaviors. Weve seen protests, vandalisms and arrests elsewhere following the election; far better to talk through any feelings of fear, dismay or confusion than to act on them inappropriately (as the hate-inspired vandals did). A letter from Student Council wisely addressed the mental health aspect of dealing with such feelings, which blindsided many Americans, young and old, who did not see the election results coming. To those struggling, please reach out for support, the letter said. It is okay to feel sad, angry, frustrated, scared. It is truly unfortunate that the perceived need exists for a safe space that expressions of hatred have intimidated some people into feeling unsafe to express their own opinions in the public forum. Until we can solve that larger problem, the immediate solution created by the council is a smart response. While Cyrus Mistry was removed as the chairman of the Tata Sons, he continues to remain chairman in several listed Tata group firms. Mumbai: The capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is closely monitoring the current feud between Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry with both the camp fighting it out in the open to wrest the management control of listed Tata group firms. While Cyrus Mistry was removed as the chairman of the Tata Sons, he continues to remain chairman in several listed Tata group firms. According to sources familiar with the development, the regulator is more concerned with the protection of the interest of public shareholders and alleged violations of corporate governance norms. The regulator is keeping a close tab on the developments happening at the board level as well as at the extraordinary meeting of shareholders convened by Tata Sons seeking the removal of Mr Mistry from the board. Sebi has also received representations from several institutional investors, investors associations and corporate governance firms. Last week, TCS ousted Mr Mistry as chairman and appointed Ishaat Hussain in his place. However, Mistrys camp retorted saying that the due process of law wasnt followed while removing and appointing a new chairman. Additionally, Tata Sons had issued a notice for convening an extraordinary meeting of shareholders of Tata Steel and Tata Motors for the removal of Mr Mistry and Nusli N Wadia from the board of the respective firms. The ongoing tussle gained further momentum after a section of the independent directors of Indian Hotels and Tata Chemical affirmed their faith in the leadership of Mr Mistry and the current management team. The real issue is of allegations and counter allegations, questions on governance, independence and so on. All issues must be clarified by Tata, as the investors, stakeholders and regulators need to know the truth. Not only this, the reputation of Tata brand is at stake now. And they are duty bound to their stakeholders to bring the facts out so as to minimise damage, said J.N. Gupta, MD at Stakeholders Empowerment Services, a corporate governance firm. Tata Motors posts Rs 848cr In second quarter Profits Tata Motors on Monday reported consolidate profit after tax of Rs 848 crore for the September quarter, riding on robust sales of its British arm Jaguar Land Rover across various overseas markets. It had posted a consolidated loss after tax of Rs 1,740 crore in the July-September period of last fiscal, Tata Motors said in a statement. Consolidated net revenue in the second quarter of 2016-17 was up 6.94 per cent at Rs 67,000 crore, as against Rs 62,647 crore in the year-ago period. JLR posted strong sales in all the regions, the company said. On standalone basis, Tata Motors net loss widened to Rs 631 crore for the quarter under review, compared to Rs 289 crore in the year-ago period. Standalone net sales were at Rs 11,406 crore as against Rs 11,794 crore. New Delhi: As banks struggle to swap banned currency notes, Kerala today demanded bank status for the state treasury and primary cooperatives and said the sudden demonetisation move causing hardship to public could have been avoided by giving advance notice. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his Finance Minister TM Thomas Issac met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to highlight the hardship caused by the November 8 decision to withdraw old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "We have demanded that state's treasury should be given the status of banks. As also, for Kerala, the 3,000 primary cooperatives (be given bank status)," Issac said after the meeting. Such a status, he said, has already been given to district banks. "Without similar status to primary cooperatives, the situation in Kerala cannot be resolved," he added. Stating that demonetistaion will help get rid of fake notes and control black money, he said black money kept in cash is only about 20 per cent or so of the whole illicit wealth in the country. "But our position has been, this could have been done without creating so much trouble for the people and the economy," he said. He said if an advance warning that at some particular date in future the demonetisation will take place, could have reaped the same impact to curb black money with some few more arrangements. "That would have been much better." Elaborating on measures that can control blackmoney, he said know-your-customer or KYC norms should be strengthened and land registration norms tightened. He said after giving timelines for these, it would have helped reap similar benefits. In a letter to Indian Banks' Association (IBA), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said the decision to withdraw the high-value notes was taken without proper planning or preparation. Vadodara - Two leading bank unions today criticised the government over demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, saying the move has led to "financial chaos" across the country. In a letter to Indian Banks' Association (IBA), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said the decision to withdraw the high-value notes was taken without proper planning or preparation. They also highlighted heavy work pressure on employees and officers at bank branches in the wake of demonetisation which has led to customers rushing to exchange the now defunct notes. "Chaotic situation is prevailing at the bank branches and this is unbearable for both customers as well as bank employees and officers," S Nagarajan, General Secretary of AIBOA, and C H Venkatachalam, his counterpart at AIBEA, said in the letter to IBA, the apex body of bank managements. There is a huge shortage of Rs 100 notes which are now in great demand for routine needs, while most customers are not willing to accept the new Rs 2,000 bill, they said. "The Centre and the Reserve Bank must be fully aware that already there is a huge gap between the indent and supply of Rs 100 notes. "For example, in 2015-16, as against the indent of 535 crore pieces of Rs 100 notes, the supply received was only to the tune of 490 crore pieces," according to the letter. "One cannot understand the reason behind banning the existing Rs 500 notes and not providing new supply of Rs 500 notes in time," it added. Most of the 2.20 lakh ATMs across the country are closed or partly functional. This has put additional pressure on the staff and customers are compelled to visit branches to withdraw cash from their accounts, the two unions said. Nagarajan and Venkatachalam requested the IBA to ensure the RBI supplies adequate cash in denominations of Rs 100 and new Rs 500 notes to ease pressure on banks and provide relief to customers. BEIJING: China's second richest man has been moved by the plight of a young kid - his look-alike - and has decided to financially support the eight-year-old's studies. Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, himself was an English translator before he shot to fame with the company that placed him among the richest persons on the planet. His was a quintessential rags-to-riches story. Ma was moved by the plight of Fan Xiaoqin, or "mini Jack Ma", who lives in Yongfeng County in east China's Jiangxi Province. The kid's photo became an instant hit on Internet with netizens comparing him to the billionaire businessman. The child's family circumstances are unfortunate as his mother suffers from poliomyelitis (polio), his father a missing leg and his grandma from Alzheimer's disease. Last year, a villager posted a video of "mini Jack Ma" online and the Internet exploded in remarks over how similar the boy looked to Ma. With the coming of double-eleven (11/11 Singles Day) sales of Alibaba, "mini Jack Ma" won hearts on the Internet once again, and netizens urged Ma to support the kid, given his family circumstances, state-run People's Daily reported. The buzz caught Ma's attention and he saw the similarities between himself and the boy. He later announced to financially support the kid until he graduates from university. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country grew by over 30 per cent to USD 21.62 billion during the first half of 2016-17. New Delhi: Export growth of 4.62 per cent in September was a "very significant development", bringing hope to exporters who are battling depressed demand globally, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today. Arresting 2-month fall, exports grew by 4.62 per cent to USD 22.9 billion in September riding on the sectors such as engineering and gems and jewellery. "So there is hope, there is definitely prospect for our exporters who are struggling and also performing in a very difficult situation," Sitharaman said at the inauguration ceremony of the India International Trade Fair (IITF). Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country grew by over 30 per cent to USD 21.62 billion during the first half of 2016-17 on account of government's policies, reinforcing India's image of a "shining star", she said. "Because of the policies of this government, very clear and policy driven, not discretion driven policy of the government, the FDI has improved, the flow of capital into the country has improved," she said. "India has clearly sustained its image in the last 2.5 years as a shining star, is performing and showing the growth which is required and actually proving as an the engine of the global growth itself," Sitharaman added. She said there will be a lot of successful economic activity during the IITF, being held here from November 14-27. Commerce Secretary Rita Teoatia said the fair is designed to fuel trade, foster investments and incubate joint ventures in technology intensive sectors as well as to forge new industry-academia collaborations and partnerships. Mumbai: Let's accept it. All of us, at some point during our childhood, have been tough on our teachers in school, for which we have been equally punished. Today, as we celebrate Children's Day, Alia Bhatt recalled a cute incident from her childhood. Speaking at an event on November 14, the actress took a trip down her memory lane and recalled how she was once punished to clean the desk for a week for a mischievous act. "I was given a punishment to clean the desk for one week. What I did waswhich one shouldn't do but I used to go to school and sleep in the bathroom. So one day the teacher caught me sleeping in the bathroom. She went to check why is this girl missing. Then I had to wipe the desk for a week. Very bad thing to do. So please don't sleep in class, sleep at home," Alia Bhatt said. Well, we absolutely relate with you, Alia and we are sure, some of you, at this point must be having a "Been there, done that" moment, no? Still from the video. Mumbai: In case recently you walk into a convenient store and are startled to find people posing as mannequins, dont be alarmed. Nothings wrong with them. You just walked into a stage plan where everyone is pretending like they are made of plastic. Why, you ask? Well, because they are performing their best for the mannequin challenge which has taken over internet. The internet is flooded with videos of people pretending to be mannequins. The challenge basically is about you, along or with a group of friends, sitting, standing or posing without flinching or moving a single part of your body. No, even the eye roll doesnt count. So far we have seen some of the amazing mannequin challenge videos featuring Michelle Obama with LeBron James and Cleveland cavaliers, Beyonce, Kevin Hart, Paul McCartney, Blac Chyna, and now, Bollywood star Varun Dhawan has also joined the bandwagon! The actor celebrated Childrens Day in a very happening way by taking up the mannequin challenge. Here's the video: Completed the #mannequinchallenge with all these little ones on #childrensday. Happy children's day to you all . pic.twitter.com/iKLjWO65vh Varun Dhawan (@Varun_dvn) November 14, 2016 Meanwhile, here are some of the best mannequin challenge videos! A video posted by kellyrowland (@kellyrowland) on Nov 7, 2016 at 9:13am PST Who has heard of the #mannequinchallenge ? Grab some friends this week and create your own version! A video posted by Zach King (@zachking) on Nov 5, 2016 at 8:02am PDT #MannequinChallenge complete @wayne215 @justtrain1 @cbuys6 @william_lam__ @korean_dinosaur #movewithhart #HustleHart A video posted by Kevin Hart (@kevinhart4real) on Nov 4, 2016 at 5:35pm PDT That James is a real crowd pleaser. #MannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/EwqD2z5xhy The Late Late Show (@latelateshow) November 8, 2016 Soooo. This happened! Last night at @chefmichaelmina test kitchen for #internationalsmoke and they're on to the next! @ayeshacurry congrats! #mannequinchallenge A video posted by Wardell Curry (@stephencurry30) on Nov 6, 2016 at 1:28am PST Dream Team #mannequinchallenge A video posted by Blac Chyna (@blacchyna) on Nov 10, 2016 at 2:50pm PST Eddie Redmayne in a still from 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'. Mumbai: Actor Eddie Redmayne said he had to explain to custom officers why he was carrying a wand in his luggage. The 'Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them' star was forced to explain to border officers why he was carrying a "really sharp, scary object" in his luggage, which turned out to be the prop from the fantasy film, reported Contactmusic. "I brought it because I felt like it would be reassuring to have Newt's wand. But then we were coming through customs and I suddenly realise that a wand looks like a really sharp, scary object and then to try and explain it to a customs person, I was like, 'Have you seen the ... No?' That was a bit disastrous'," he said. And the 34-year-old actor now feels he cannot use a briefcase in real life as he doesn't want people to think he is copying his character, magizoologist Newt Scamander. All eyes seem to be on Tollywood now, especially after the I-T raid on Baahubali filmmakers. Many believe that real estate businessmen, politicians and the likes who have unaccounted cash flow have been routing/pumping money into the industry. Suddenly, theres a spurt of businessmen-turning-film producers. However, Tollywood is tight-lipped over this issue. Raising his voice against the I-T raids, filmmaker Thamma Reddy Bharadwaj, says, There are several big fish in the country, but targeting the film industry each time is not fair. When a film collects high revenues, the government hasnt bothered to ask the producers how they collected so much money. And after a year or so, they raid their offices. Brag to end Off the record, sources admit that the Baahubali team was caught in the tax storm after reports on the roaring business done by part 2 in terms of music rights, distribution rights etc. came out. It was already in the news that Baahubali part 1 had made a whopping Rs 650-crore-plus business! So, will filmmakers stop bragging about their collections henceforth? Earlier, the biggest achievement of a movie was Rs 100 days, then it became silver jubilee and so on. These days, the day one reports itself are Rs 30-crore opening day collection, Rs 45 crore weekend collection... Actors also allegedly accept a part of the payment in cash and the remaining in cheque, when they walk the ramp for designers. (Photo: Tamannaah at Lakme Fashion Week) Unimaginable amounts are rumoured as top actors remuneration as in Rs 9 crore for Pawan Kalyan and Rs 12 crore for Mahesh Babu. Every actor seems to be earning in crores. Black and white Apparently, only 30-40 per cent of the remuneration is in cheque or wire transfers that are accountable an arrangement that suits both the actors and producers. The rest is given as cash. Some actresses prefer gold bars, said a source. For a very long time, land has been the most popular payment to actors. Big actors accept land as a major portion of their pay. Depending on the star and their bankability, the value of the land becomes higher. Several actors are known to own vast lands not just in the city but in the surrounding areas as well most of it are their remuneration. Houses, apartments and other properties are also common modes of payment, reveals a source. Its perhaps easy to register land than stashing money! Precious pay Gold biscuits, silver bars and other expensive commodities like luxury vehicles are another form of remuneration. Gold and diamonds are generally a favourite with actresses. An actors sister has suddenly started a jewellery line; gold bars are perhaps used here! Afterthought In the current scenario, how will producers account for the remuneration paid to actors and how do the latter do it? Film-makers hope that actors will opt for a pay cut, at least for the time being. Bollywood not worried I dont think the film industry will be affected in the long run. The corporate structure of transactions in Bollywood has been in place for a decade now and transactions have been happening via cheques for a long time.- Bejoy Nambiar, director Not every film earns Rs 100 cr and beyond. If a film earns Rs 100 cr, it is the net collection. It is just 50 per cent of the total cost earned by the producers and filmmakers. One should also evaluate the production cost of the film. Its a silly, age-old notion that there is a lot of cash in the film industry. We get our money from studios, and whether that is abroad or home-grown, the transactions are done via cheques. The rest of our funds come from multiplexes and single screen theatres.- Kunal Kohli, director and producer With inputs from Suresh Kavirayani and Rohit Bhatnagar It was earlier reported that actress Raashi Khanna is being bombarded with offers in Kollywood since she started shooting for her first film with Siddharth. And it seems shes keen to start her new innings properly. She started off thinking it may not be tough to mouth the dialogues because she is familiar with Tamil movies and listens to songs as well. But reality struck her on the sets of the film, shares a source. As someone who puts in hard work whenever needed, Raashi has now decided to prepare herself. She has hired a tutor to teach her the language and has been learning the nuances from him for a while now. With two films up her sleeve already, she is trying to put in maximum effort, the source adds. Actress Ritika Singh made a stellar entry into cinema with the Tamil film, Irudhi Suttru (Saala Khadoos in Hindi). Now, shes set to make her foray into Tollywood with Guru, the Telugu remake of the film, starring Venkatesh. Sources say she will be playing a Pawan Kalyan fan in the film. Ritika was seen as a fan of Dhanush in the original. But this time, shes going to appeal to the Telugu sensibilities by playing a hardcore fan of Pawan Kalyan. In fact, the film will feature a scene with the actors cut out in it," shares a source. The film has been primarily shot in Visakhapatnam, with Sudha Kongara Prasad reprising her role as director. Vamsi Krishna bagged his first film quite effortlessly. When I was travelling on a flight, director Gautam Menon was seated next to me. He saw me and asked about my interest in films, recalls Vamsi. Realising it was a chance that would not come to many, he immediately said yes to Menon. That was in the year 2003 when Gautam made the film Gharshana with Venkatesh. Vamsi Krishna played one of the cops in the film. Born and brought up in Visakhapatnam, Vamsi Krishna completed his graduation from Gitam and went to the UK for his MBA. Interestingly, his parents are doctors as are all his cousins and uncles. Nearly ten people in my family are doctors, but I am the only one who chose acting as a career, says Vamsi. After his MBA, he wanted to start his own business, but at that time, this film came along. After my debut film, I worked really hard and learnt that its not easy to get good roles when you dont have any backing, he says. But I was confident that I would get through one day with my hard work and talent, says Vamsi. Though he has acted in nearly 25 films in the last 12 years, he got noticed only in Darling and most of Trivikrams films. Even though he played one of the leads in Tejas 2006 film Oka Vichitram, it failed at the box-office. He then tried his luck in the Tamil movie Thadaiyara Thaakka a few years back. I got good roles in Tamil and now I am playing the main villain in many Tamil films, says Vamsi who says he prefers keeping a low-profile in the industry. I dont have friends in the industry and dont party too. After my work is done, I just go home. If there is no work, I go to the gym, he says. He admits, I am still waiting for a good break in Telugu, though I am doing small roles here. But it is the Tamil industry that is offering good roles to Vamsi, as he has signed nearly a dozen Tamil films. I also signed a Kannada film with Shivaraj Kumar where I am playing a villain, he says. After his debut film, Vamsi recalls that his friends discouraged him by telling him that the film industry would never encourage an outsider like him. But I wanted to prove them wrong. I struggled initially like many others as I didnt get good pay, but I had to survive here. My parents helped me financially at that time and luckily they encouraged me when I chose acting as my profession, says Vamsi. A lack of awareness and finances are said to be factors responsible for the same. Chennai: India is home to 12 million blind people, of whom a majority suffer from diabetic retinopathy. Of the 12 million blind Indians, a large portion of them are in Tamil Nadu. A lack of awareness and finances are said to be factors responsible for the same. With this years World Diabetes Day focusing on the theme Eyes on diabetes, doctors are working towards creating awareness on the fact that ones eyes can also be affected by diabetes. According to medical statistics, after seven years of being diagnosed with diabetes, 50 per cent will definitely develop diabetic retinopathy, while 85 per cent will get the condition after 15 years. The statistics indicate the importance of regular check-ups in order to get right medication at the right time. A significant section of society is unaware of the implications of diabetic retinopathy at an early stage in their life. People do not go to the doctor early enough. At the early stage, diabetic retinopathy does not cause blindness. However, in the advanced phase, when a person experiences a defective vision, it will be too late for the patient to regain that lost vision, said Dr Lionel Raj, Head, Medical Services, Dr Agarwals Foundation, Tirunelveli. I had trouble with my vision a little after I was detected with diabetes. Along with a complete health check-up each year, I check my eyes, said 61-year-old J. John, a diabetic. Creating awareness on the link is not the only solution. Diabetes is a very expensive disease and the government should provide free health care facilities to the poor in order to bring down the burden, he said. According to Prof Amar Agarwal, CMD, Dr Agarwals Group of Eye Hospitals, nearly 80 per cent of blindness is avoidable if treated in time. Ignorance about the disease is the reason why Tamil Nadu and the country as a whole has such a high number of blind people, he said. According to city resident Sebastian Giorgi, the Venice's population drops by about 1,000 per year. (Photo: Pixabay) Dozens of Venetians waved maroon and yellow flags and carried empty suitcases on Saturday during a symbolic demonstration to highlight an exodus of residents from the lagoon city, where tourist hordes can make everyday life challenging. Images of narrow Venetian alleys clogged with visitors during the All Saints holiday weekend filled Italian papers last week, rekindling a debate about limiting access to the city through a booking system. Venetians have long complained that food shopping and other daily errands have become increasingly tricky as the city focuses on meeting the needs of the more than 20 million tourists who are estimated to visit it every year. "This is not a protest against tourism, it's a protest against the policies that the city has followed in the last 40 years," Venetian resident Andrea Castelli said. "We don't want to leave the city, we are Venetian, we want to live here so we are asking the City of Venice to help us to stay in Venice," he added. Donning a red cloak lined with ermine fur and a brocade cap Castelli dressed up as the Doge, the historic leader of the Republic of Venice. After leading a procession of people carrying a giant red cardboard suitcase and wheeling their own bags, the Doge climbed onto a gondola and symbolically left the city. According to city resident Sebastian Giorgi, the city's population drops by about 1,000 per year. Protesters hung a banner that read "#Venexodus" on the Rialto bridge and glued to their trolleys signs that said 'Without Venetians? Don't call me Venice anymore." An electronic display in a pharmacy's shop window showed the number of residents at 54,926. Next to it, a sign said Venice had a population of 174,808 in 1951 which had fallen to 60,704 by March 2008. As well as the congestion caused by tourists, Venetians blame short-term tourist rentals for inflating housing costs. "Venice is a fragile city, fragile structurally and physically but also when it comes to its social fabric," resident Federico Permutti said. "If you add to that the lack of housing for locals and a wild proliferation of accommodation offered to tourists, you can understand that the situation is unbearable for those who live here." A man in the US has set a new Guinness World Record for the largest collection of fossilised faeces after amassing around 1,277 pieces of dinosaur excreta from nine countries. George Frandsen, now 36, has been collecting these unusual specimens way back when he was a college student of palaeontology. He has been able to amass poop from as many as 15 states in the US and eight different countries. His largest piece of coprolite, also known as fossilised faeces, weighs about 1.92 kg. It was produced by an ancient crocodilian species and was discovered in South Carolina. Each coprolite from Frandsens collection was inspected by a professional palaeontologist and was documented at the South Florida Museum in the US, according to reports. Its entry in the Guinness World Records will appear in the 2017 edition. New Delhi/Islamabad: Continuing the blame game, India and Pakistan on Wednesday summoned Deputy High Commissioners of each other to express concern over ceasefire violations even as India protested the manner in which the information of eight of its officials in Islamabad was made public, thereby, endangering their security and safety. The Ministry summoned the Deputy High Commissioner of Pakistan and conveyed the strong concern of the Government of India on the continued violation of ceasefire along the International Border and the Line of Control by Pakistan, MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi. "Despite calls for restraint, Pakistan forces have committed 16 ceasefire violations since 3 November 2016 alone. As a result, there have been three fatal casualties during this period among Indian security forces. "The Government conveyed that such loss of life is unacceptable and is strongly protested. In addition, the injuries to civilians during the shelling by Pakistan forces are deplorable and strongly condemned," he said. Swarup said India has also protested the manner in which the photographs of eight officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were prominently displayed in newspapers in the wake of factually incorrect allegations by Pakistan government, and conveyed that this is against basic norms of diplomatic practice and courtesy, besides having the potential to endanger their security and safety. "It is expected that the Pakistan side will desist from such actions in the future and will ensure the safety and security of all members of the High Commission of India in Islamabad and their families," Swarup added. Earlier, in Islamabad, Foreign Office (FO) said Director General (South Asia & SAARC) Mohammad Faisal summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner J P Singh to "strongly condemn the unprovoked ceasefire violations on November 8 by the Indian Forces on the Line of Control (LoC) in Khuirata and Battal sectors". This is the sixth time in over two weeks that the Indian Deputy High Commissioner was summoned to the FO. The FO said the violation by India resulted in the death of four civilians, including a woman and a 10-year-old girl, besides causing injuries to seven others. On his part, Singh protested against the unprovoked firing from Pakistani Rangers, saying it was primarily to give cover to infiltrators. He also said casualties on the Indian side include both civilians and security forces in the ceasefire violations by the Pakistan. New Delhi: The Finance Ministry on Monday announced that ATMs across the country will start dispensing higher denomination currency, including the new Rs 2,000 note, from either today or tomorrow. The focus of the Govt is to activate all channels whereby cash is dispensed to the public, said Shaktikanta Das, Economic Affairs Secretary, while addressing a press conference in the national capital. To ease the problems of the common man, the government also announced that a large number of micro-ATMs will be deployed across the country to cater to the millions lining up for cash. Das said that higher cash withdrawal limit of Rs 2,500 would only be for recalibrated ATMs. "Number of recalibrated ATMs will be enhanced within the next few days, a task force is being set up under the Deputy RBI Governor," Das said. RBI has informed enough cash is available in system, there is no need for panic; situation will ease in coming days, he added. He announced that banking correspondents will be now allowed to withdraw cash multiple times as opposed to only once a day earlier. Banks will also be increasing the cash holding limit of banking correspondents to Rs 50,000. Patna: A day ahead of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's 'Lok Samvad' to seek suggestions on liquor law, BJP today aired its 'objections' to some of the "draconian" and "Talibani" provisions of the law. "After the Patna High court dismissed the old and draconian liquor law (Bihar Excise (Amendment) Act, 2016), the Bihar government has sought suggestions from public to bring amendments to the new liquor law (Bihar Prohibition & Excise Act, 2016) to stand legal scrutiny in the Supreme Court," senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said in a statement. BJP, the principal opposition, has been in support of the liquor law from day one but it was opposed to some of the draconian and 'Talibani' provisions of the law, Sushil Modi, the former Deputy Chief Minister said. The party has already given its suggestions in both the houses of state legislature for bringing amendments into the provisions of the existing liquor, he said. The provisions on which the party has severe objections included imposition of collective fine, Sushil Modi said while suggesting that action must be taken against the erring person but the entire village cannot be held guilty for the fault committed by some. Similarly, the quantum of punishment must be in conformity with the crime, he said adding that liquor law has provisions which are even harsher than the crime for murder and rape. Sending entire family to the jail in the event of recovery of an empty bottle besides seizure of the premises for recovery of a liquor bottle are harsher provisions which must be done away with, Mr Modi said. The BJP leader asked when there is a prohibition in the state, what is the point in exporting liquor to other states, and suggested the state government should come out with provisions to compensate those who invested in the liquor industry as per the government's policy. "Although, the government has not invited BJP to the Lok Samvad programme but despite this, we are reiterating our suggestions through media," Mr Modi said. New Delhi: Claiming that the Opposition was trying to sabotage the good work done by the government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Monday asked BJP Parliamentarians not to buckle under pressure from the Opposition. Stating that the opposition was hard at work to sabotage the process of demonetisation, the Prime Minister assured that the nation has welcomed the step. He also told the lawmakers that the credit for demonetisation wouldnt rest with him alone, but would go to all parties which stood with government. The Prime Minister's assertion comes in the wake of the all out attack launched by the opposition today, as the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) joined forces in tearing down the scheme of demonetisation. The meet was attended by the Prime Minster, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the BJP president Amit Shah among others. Speaking after the meeting, Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said that the allegations levelled by the opposition on demonetisation issue are baseless and that the government will answer them the appropriate time. Reiterating the governments commitment to the move, he added, "There is no chance of rethinking. Mood of the nation is in favour of Modi government. Everyone agreed that this is a historic decision. This is but a temporary pain for larger gain. In the parliament we will get to know which people are on the side of black money hoarders, he added. Union Minister Ananth Kuamr also said that all NDA allies extended their support to the PM on the demonetisation issue during the meeting. The saffron party believes that the demonetisation of Rs 1000/500 currency notes has generated a positive public mood but inconvenience caused to the masses, who have been queueing up for hours outside banks and ATMs for cash, has become a handy issue for the Congress, the Left, TMC, SP and BSP among others, who met leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad earlier today to discuss strategies on tackling the Centre in the Parliament. Hyderabad: The CBI has orally asked all vigilance wings of banks to keep a tab on their staff following information that managers and other employees are conniving with black money racketeers and allowing multiple exchanges of demonetised notes against the RBI quota. Incidents have been reported at Hyderabad and Guntur wherein multiple exchanges of Rs 4,000 is being done with different ID proofs. CBI sources said that they can book cases only if specific complaints are filed. A top CBI source said, We have learnt about bank staff, along with black money racketeers, using multiple ID proofs for mass exchanges of demonetised notes in multiple names. We havent received any specific complaint. We have asked internal vigilance wings of banks to keep tabs on the staff. Central government banks and postal department employees come under the purview of the CBI probe. Cant track driving licence Banks have no mechanism to check how many times a person visits as there is no link with the driving licence database of the RTA. ED sources said, Auto-rickshaw drivers in the city are mostly off the roads. Racketeers are using them for their driving licenses by paying Rs 200 to Rs 300 each time for standing in queues for Rs 4,000. Even in rural areas, agricultural labourers are being used to change demonetised notes at banks and post offices. In the past, the main litigant in Babri Masjid case, Hashim Ansari, had along with Akhara Parishad president Mahant Gyan Das discussed out-of-court settlement which broadly talked about the 70-acres of disputed premises accommodating both mosque and temple with a partition wall which will be 100 feet high. (Photo: file) Faizabad/Ayodhya: A fresh proposal for settlement of Ayodhya dispute was submitted to Faizabad divisional commissioner suggesting that a temple and a mosque be built at the site. The petition, it is claimed, has been signed by about 10,000 members from both Hindu and Muslim communities with former High Court judge Palok Basu leading the initiative. Divisional Commissioner Surya Prakash Mishra, who is the receiver of the disputed site, said, "I received a memorandum regarding the dispute of Ayodhya and a bunch of photocopies containing some signatures. I have yet to decide what to do in this matter." Basu said that they were hopeful that the Supreme Court will take note of it. The petition, which has 10,502 signatures, was submitted yesterday. "We have moved this negotiation process in the Supreme Court through the authorized person (Faizabad Divisional Commissioner). We hope that the apex court will honour the public sentiments of peace and harmony," he said, adding they have proposed that the disputed site will house both Ram temple and a mosque. In its September 30, 2010 ruling, the Allahabad High Court had awarded two parts of the site, where the Babri Masjid once stood, to Nirmohi Akhara and 'friend' of Ram Lalla and one part to Muslims, which went to Sunni Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh. Basu said their "local" effort to resolve the issue started in March 18, 2010. In the past, the main litigant in Babri Masjid case, Hashim Ansari, had along with Akhara Parishad president Mahant Gyan Das discussed out-of-court settlement which broadly talked about the 70-acres of disputed premises accommodating both mosque and temple with a partition wall which will be 100 feet high. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had rejected the proposal calling it an insult to the high court. Ansari died in July this year. The maximum number of CBI requests, around 25, is pending with the USA. But at the same time, it has executed agencys 28 LRs, which too is maximum, sources said. New Delhi: Response to letters rogatory (LRs) or judicial requests through Interpol by the CBI, the nodal agency in the country for the purpose, is a crucial cog in its wheel when it comes to probing high-profile cases with fugitives or information about them lying in other countries. And, official sources reveal, most of those wanted by law in India seem to be headed to the USA. The country, dealing with maximum number of requests from the agency, has responded positively. Sources said the USA tops the list of countries in terms of numbers of LRs awaiting response, despite also being the country to have responded to maximum number of requests. Some of these LRs have been pending for several years, while the reply in many others is being awaited for the last few months. The LR is a formal request issued by a competent court to a foreign court and processed by the Ministry of External Affairs on behalf of the investigative agencies to obtain data about individuals and entities. The maximum number of CBI requests, around 25, is pending with the USA. But at the same time, it has executed agencys 28 LRs, which too is maximum, sources said. In fact, in certain cases, the response from the US has been very quick, they added. Delays in response on LRs prove to be a major stumbling block in agencys investigations in many high profile cases. The second on the list is the UAE with highest number of pending LRs. It seems to have history of sitting on the LRs, sources said. As per latest figure, the UAE has 24 LRs pending. NIA sources revealed that they did not know of any such Mahrashtra based couple who had travelled to Iraq to join the terror organisation and that the authorities were going through all records to determine their identity. (Photo: AFP) New Delhi: Interrogation of an ISIS supporter who fought for the terrorist organisation in Mosul has revealed the first ever confirmed presence of an Indian woman in the conflict zone. According to a report, the new information came to light when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogated Tamil Nadu resident Subahani Haja Moideen. The 31-year-old was arrested earlier this year while attempting to arrange for explosives from Sivakasi. Moideen told the interrogators that he met an Indian couple from Maharashtra during his five-month stint in Iraqs Mosul, adding that he chanced upon them in a public space. He said he hardly saw any Indians in the war-ridden city, may be two to three. Moideen said according to his inputs, India was not in the immediate list of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS. He was a low ranking cadre but says that whatever information he gathered did not suggest that the ISIS leaders had any plans for India. They were more interested in targeting western countries, the report quoted an NIA official as saying. NIA sources revealed that they did not know of any such Mahrashtra-based couple who had travelled to Iraq to join the extremist organisation and that the authorities were going through all records to determine their identity. The authorities were also trying to determine if the couple had travelled form India directly, or made transit to Iraq through another country. Moideen, during his interrogation revealed that he had travelled to Iraq in April 2015 but returned in September. He claimed that he came back to India because he was troubled by the amount of violence that he witnessed in Mosul. Two of his friends were charred to death in front of him after they were struck by shelling, he added. Moideen was not under the NIA scanner before or after he came back from Mosul. He was nabbed after the authorities chanced on him during an investigation into another case, where six men owing allegiance to ISIS had plotted to kill high court judges and senior RSS leaders. Earlier this year, 21 people from Kerala travelled to Afghanistan to join ISIS. The group included three women and six children but the whereabouts of these people are unknown. New Delhi: In respite for the millions who are scrambling across the country to exchange their old notes and pay their utility bills, the Government on Monday announced that old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes can to be used until November 24 for certain transactions. Exemption on old series of Rs 500, 1000 notes for certain categories extended till November 24 midnight, said Shaktikanta Das, Economic Affairs Secretary. The time limit to use old notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees as well as purchases from co-operative stores was set to expire on November 14 (tonight), but in a huge relief, the government has extended the deadline by ten more days. The the government had allowed use of the old currency at government hospitals, railway ticketing, public transport, airline ticketing at airports, milk booths, crematoria/burial grounds and petrol pumps. This list was later expanded to include payments for metro rail tickets, highway and road toll, purchase of medicines on doctor prescription from the government and private pharmacies, LPG gas cylinders, railway catering, electricity and water bills and ASI monument entry tickets. TS Congress president Uttam Kumar Reddy is being led away by cops during a protest against demonetisation in Hyderabad on Monday. (Photo: DC) Hyderabad: Congress workers took to the streets to protest the demonetisation of high-value currency. TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy led the protests in the capital. Police blocked the protesters from taking out a rally from Abids and took them into custody for some time. Party workers raised slogans like Modi hatao, desh bachao and burnt his effigy. Speaking to mediapersons at the Gandhinagar police station, Uttam Kumar Reddy accused the Prime Minister of enforcing a financial emergency in the country by implementing an unplanned decision. He said that the demonetisation of high-value notes had brought misery to the common people, especially the poor, middle-class, housewives and farmers. New Delhi: The demonetisation woes of the common man has united Indias Opposition parties. In a major step that signalled Opposition unity, at least on this issue, the Congress and seven other Opposition parties, including West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjees Trinamul Congress, decided to corner the government in Parliaments Winter Session, that starts on Wednesday. The leaders of the Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U), CPI, CPI(M), JMM and YSR Congress met in the room of Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad at Parliament House on Monday evening and decided the issue would be raised on Wednesday, the first day of the session. Leading the demonetisation charge is West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who is expected to arrive in Delhi on Tuesday, on the eve of the session, and lead a delegation to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday. On Monday, Ms Banerjee lashed out at the PM over his statement at the Ghazipur rally that the poor were enjoying a sound sleep after the demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to ordinary people across the country. She claimed the masses had been victimised and crushed under the weight of demonetisation, while many economists were now predicting the onset of a recession. Other Opposition leaders such as BSP chief Mayawati and AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal have also criticised the governments move and are devising their own strategies to target the Centre. BSP supremo Mayawati lashed out at PM Modi, saying the people were being forced to face burey din (bad days). Stung by Mr Modis reference to garlands of notes, Ms Mayawati unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on Monday, alleging that the PM could not tolerate the fact that a dalit ki beti (daughter of a dalit) was presented such a garland. She also called Mr Modis Ghazipur rally a flop show, claiming that the crowd was brought from Bihar. The confrontation between the Centre and the Opposition is expected to start from the first day of the session. New Delhi/Ghazipur: Defending his governments demonetisation order, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted on Monday that the poor in the country were supporting his move against corruption, black money and fake currency. Admitting that it was a little harsh and that people were facing inconvenience, Mr Modi attacked the Opposition, mainly the Congress, for misleading the people and asked if corruption and dishonesty should be allowed in the country. Scoffing at the Opposition for blaming him for the problems faced by the poor, Mr Modi said he was better aware of hardships faced by ordinary people. The PM said he knew he was up against the powerful, but vowed to continue his fight for the poor, farmers and villagers, as the Opposition parties joined forces to corner the government on the issue in the Winter Session of Parliament starting Wednesday. Addressing the BJPs Parivartan Yatra rally in Gazipur in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Mr Modi said while the poor were enjoying sound sleep after the decision, the rich were running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills. Will fulfil Nehrus dreams, says Modi In a dig at the Congress, the PM recalled that Congress governments had imposed the Emergency, stifling the rights of the people and the media, and banned chavanni (25 paise coins). Under which law did they ban chavanni? ... Its another thing that they couldnt move beyond chavanni ... You took the step as per your stature, we did what matched ours, Mr Modi said. Invoking the name of Indias first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on his 127th birth anniversary, the PM said he had purposely chosen this date for his visit to UP to launch projects. You (Nehru) are no more, the leaders from your party and your family are levelling false allegations... still, on your birthday, I am starting work to complete your unfulfilled desire for the development of India, Mr Modi said. He said at the rally: My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for kadak (strong) tea, but it spoils the mood of the rich. The PM said while there was no dearth of money for development, the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should be. Hyderabad: On Sunday afternoon, people gathered under the Attapur Bridge near Rajendra Nagar. They were looking for bags of abandoned cash reportedly thrown by a car driver minutes ago. As the crowd became bigger and as vehicle movement got hit, someone informed the police, and they soon reached the place. The cops dispersed the crowd. The police team also searched the area thoroughly and found nothing. On Saturday evening, another crowd created a block on Warangal highway. A large number of people gathered near the Central Power Research Institute (CPRI) in Medipally. A police team had to be dispatched to disperse the crowd. People searched for cash bags thrown by someone from a car, but they could not find anything. Similar incidents took place in other parts of the city in the last three days after the Centre demonetised high-value currency notes. Rumours about abandoned bundles of demonetised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 are the new headache for the police. Anonymous people are also calling police stations and emergency numbers to inform about abandoned stash. But the information always proves wrong. In Attapur, someone standing on the bridge shouted to passersby that a man threw bags under the bridge and drove away. People then started looking for cash. The man, who spread the rumour disappeared by the time police came there, a police officer said. At Medipally, a rumour spread in a nearby village and people gathered. Seeing the crowd, motorists stopped and joined the search, said inspector K. Jaganath Reddy. The police does not know who spread the rumour. Police said that it was very easy to fool crowds as there is a notion that stash holders might abandon cash. People hope to get the abandoned cash and exchange it in bank. Hyderabad: The steep fall in revenue earnings of the state government due to the impact of demonetisation has set alarm bells ringing in both the Telugu states. While Telangana state government has pegged loss at over Rs 6,000 crore, AP has estimated it at over Rs 4,000 crore in the next four months. With indications of TS governments revenues falling by a whopping 50 per cent this month alone, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is likely to announce some tough decisions to bail out the government from the current financial crisis. Mr Rao has been holding meetings with senior finance officials for the past three days. He is said to be in favour of imposing drastic fund cuts for development programmes, welfare schemes, salaries and pensions. An announcement on imposing cut in salaries for MLAs, MLCs, ministers is on the cards first before doing the same for employees to avoid criticism from TS government employees unions. Head of a business empire and now US president: by combining these two roles, billionaire Donald Trump could face conflicts of interest of an scale unprecedented in American political history. The Republican elected to the White House made his fortune by building a network of hotels, office towers and luxury apartment buildings as the head of the Trump Organisation. His real estate empire is primarily located in the United States, but also extends to countries such as South Korea and Turkey. Managing political relations with such US allies while president risks creating a curious mix of competing goals. The Trump Organisation is not publicly traded, so many of its activities are closed to scrutiny. But the US media have reported it has financial ties with people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who the real estate mogul praised leadership during his campaign. For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia, Trump tweeted in July. The potential for conflicts of interest from Trumps business activities are not limited to countries like Russia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump has received some $2.5 billion in loans from Deutsche Bank since 1998. But the US regulators are in negotiations with the German bank over imposing a possibly multi-billion dollar fine for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. This raises questions about how the Trump administration will react if it inherits the case, and whether the new presidents business interests will be considered. Accusations of conflicts of interest are not new in US politics. They tainted the administration of president George W. Bush, whose vice-president Dick Cheney, until his appointment in 2000, headed the Halliburton oil services and logistics company, which went on to win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the US invasion. Further, heavy damage was averted as several canals were cleared as part of the Mission Kakatiya programme. (Photo: Sudhakar Reddy/DC) Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Monday urged the Centre to release adequate financial assistance to Telangana which had incurred heavy losses due to the unseasonal rains that occurred all over the state last September. He said the preliminary assessment done by the government had pegged the loss at over Rs 2,700 crore and a detailed assessment was being prepared which would be sent to the Centre soon. He was interacting with a Central team, which visited the state to assess the damage caused by heavy rains by touring districts for two dyas. The Central team was headed by Union joint secretary (home), Dilip Kumar. The team visited Siddipet, Karimnagar, Sangareddy and other districts to assess damage. Mr Rao explained informed the Central team about the heavy rains that occurred last September, which caused serious damage to crops and basic infrastructure. The amount of rainfall that was received was about 31 cms on a particular day. Further, heavy damage was averted as several canals were cleared as part of the Mission Kakatiya programme. Or else all canals would have breached due to the heavy inflows that they had received due to the torrential rains, Mr Rao said. He explained governments palns of reviving about 46,000 lakes. Mission Kakatiya had yielded good results and prevented lakes from breaching during the heavy rainfall. However, there were some lakes which were not covered under Mission Kakatiya have suffered damage which also became detrimental to the standing crops. Several roads and bridges were damaged, he added. The CM also informed them about the damaged caused in Hyderabad due to heavy rains. He said the government had already spent about Rs 150 crore in the city for the restoration of roads, power lines and other infrastructure. Mr Kumar said the team had personally visited the affected regions and made a preliminary assessment. He assured the CM that they would do their best to help the State. He said the team would submit a detailed report to the Centre on the matter. Chennai: Less than a year after the floods that struck their livelihood, fishermen in the state face a similar crisis as the demonetisation move by the Union government came as a rude shock to the fishing industry. Every day, fishermen go to the sea and get fishes worth Rs. 15 crore of business. By selling them across the coast and providing for exports, we were usually able to do a business of at least Rs. 10 crore daily. After the notes of Rs. 500 and Rs 1000 were declared non-legal tenders, the fishermen are the worst hit, said Nanjal P Ravi, of the National Union of Fishermen Association. The business is not making Rs 10 lakhs daily, leave alone Rs 10 crores, he continued. He added that though fishermen are able to get essential commodities on credit, the business and means to livelihood has been hurt badly. There is no money for diesel, nets, no money to pay workers. Not everything can be brought by NEFT and RTGS when half the people don't have bank accounts, he added. The crisis has led to a fall in fish prices, but the non-acceptance of Rs. 500, Rs. 1000 has reduced sales. I sell fish on Sundays and from 8 am to 11 am I usually manage to sell over 15 kg of fish. But today the sales were abysmal. I have managed to sell about 4 - 5kg of fish. People are ready to buy in exchange for old notes of Rs 500 but I am not accepting those. I have taken a hit on my earning, said K. Raji at Saidapet. Fishermen hope that steps would be taken to mitigate the situation. The ones who buy fish from us for exports are doing so on credit. Even if they transfer money, how will all fishermen be paid without them having accounts? lamented a union member. On Saturday evening, they consumed alcohol and magic mushrooms, which are readily available in the hills and which are said to give a high. Kodaikanal: A night of revelry involving alcohol and magic mushrooms at a camp fire lit inside a room in a cottage in the hill station led to the death of two youths, including a college student, while three others in the group were in a critical condition in Theni hospital on Sunday morning. A group of 12 students from Kerala were in Kodaikanal for a two-day picnic. On Saturday evening, they consumed alcohol and magic mushrooms, which are readily available in the hills and which are said to give a high. They went to a room in the cottage later and lit up a camp fire using charcoal. Around midnight, seven of the group left to go to their individual rooms while five students slept in the room where they had lit the camp fire. The smoke emanating from the camp fire engulfed the entire room in the night. When a few students visited the room around 5 am to wake them up, they found five of their colleagues lying unconscious on the floor. They immediately alerted the cottage owner, the police said. With the help of the locals, the police rushed them to the government hospital in Kodaikanal. The doctors declared dead student Thomas (21) and the driver who brought them from Kerala to the hill, Jibin (26). Three other students Anil (21), Melvin (22) and Vinu (22) were rushed to the Theni Government Hospital. The condition of the three students was also critical, the police said. Their parents have also been informed. THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The UDF has expressed concern over the financial emergency imposed on the country by the BJP-led government through demonetisation creating hardship for the people. Protesting against the decision, the front will observe a black day on Thursday and take out a march to the Accountant-Generals office at statue here. The UDF leaders, at a meeting held at Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala's official residence here on Monday, blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the current economic situation in the country. The meeting decided to support the LDF government to tackle the crisis in the state and asked it to take concrete steps in that direction. The Sabarimala season begins on Wednesday and the pilgrims will be affected. The state government should open control rooms at the secretariat and collectorates to solve their problems, said Mr Chennithala. Former chief minister Oommen Chandy flayed the BJPs propaganda against the co-operative sector in the state. The two Congress MLAs, V. T. Balram and K. S. Sabarinathan, who had lauded Mr Modis steps, would have realised that those who queued up before the banks do not have black money with them, said Mr Chandy. The UDFs reaction to the demonetisation came after it faced attack for keeping mum in the beginning. A Congress leader told DC that the UDF leaders had woken up from their slumber late. After the meeting, Mr Chennithala, Mr Chandy, Muslim League leader P. K. Kunhalikutty and KPCC vice-president M. M. Hassan held talks with Reserve Bank officials on easing the difficulties of the people. Major Oposition parties meet at New Delhi to deliberate on demonetisation and other issues to be raised at Winter Session of Parliament (Photo: Twitter) New Delhi: Seeking to corner the government in Parliament on the demonetisation issue, major opposition parties, including arch rivals TMC and CPI(M), on Monday held deliberations to finalise a common strategy alleging that the decision was a "scripted scam" which was leaked to the ruling BJP much in advance. The meeting, held in the chamber of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, saw rivals TMC and Left coming together with leaders of YSR Congress, JMM, RJD and JDU to discuss ways to put the Government on the mat in Parliament. The leaders decided to meet again tomorrow to finalise a common strategy as today's meeting remained inconclusive in absence of leaders from BSP, SP, DMK and NCP. The Winter Session of Parliament starts from November 16. After the meeting, Azad said there was consensus among parties against black money but equally everyone felt that the Government had leaked the demonetisation information to the ruling BJP and a "scripted scam". "There was consensus against black money in the meeting but everyone was against the way demonetisation was implemented. It came suddenly and the information was leaked to the ruling party while other parties learnt of it only two hours before it was to roll out. This is a scam and we will raise it in Parliament," Azad said. Asked if opposition parties will join the TMC delegation to the President on November 16, Azad said, "The question is not who is going with them or who is leading. The question is when to go, which date to go, whether to go mid-session or later." To a question about whether there was consensus on anything in the meeting, Azad said there was consensus on questioning the Government over the way the decision was leaked to the ruling party. "There is a difference between us and the Government so far as logic of demonetisation goes. The Government says it has done what it has done whether people live or die. We are saying we are against black money but also against the way demonetization was implemented. "The government leaked it to the ruling party. Rest of the parties were told only two hours in advance. People are also being inconvenienced all over. We will meet again tomorrow to discuss these issues since all parties were not present today. We don't have to evolve a one day strategy. It has to be a strategy for the whole session," said Azad. Donald Trumps victory upended pollsters and shocked the global community anxiously awaiting the outcome of an extremely raucous and personalised election. The leaders of Americas Republican Party had surmised, after losing to President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, that to win in an ethnically diversifying country they would have to broaden their base. Mr Trump, however, did just the opposite by consolidating white majority support by an unabashedly anti-minority and bigoted campaign. The Economist magazine, which had denounced Mr Trump prior to the election, writes that he has contempt for conservative orthodoxy and harbours a dystopian vision, bigotry and anti-intellectualism. It concludes that if he has not rewritten the rules of electioneering, he has certainly flouted most of them. His new electoral alliance, transcending traditional party lines, dredges economic fears and racial anxiety of the white majority, that will shrink by 2050 from 61.8 per cent of the population today to 46.6 per cent, if current immigration policies persist. In his victory speech, he called them the forgotten men and women. Though the last-minute intervention by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke Hillary Clintons momentum and distracted attention away from Mr Trumps sex tapes, she really lost as she did not represent the change which most people sought. His win mirrors a global trend towards the rise of chauvinistic leaders, often highly divisive but certainly autocratic, who rally their nations using past hurts or contemporary angst. Those falling into this category would include Russias Vladimir Putin, Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Chinas Xi Jinping and Indias Narendra Modi. Waiting in the wings are Trump clones like Marine Le Pen, leader of the xenophobic National Front in France, often dubbed Trump Lite. Mr Trumps apparent threat to the existing geo-economic order, stems from his economic and foreign policy pronouncements in the campaign, a lot even contemptuous of the traditional Republican Party platform. For instance, he condemns all trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), that integrated the Mexican and Canadian economies with that of the US. On foreign policy, he advocates a retreat from US exceptionalism a bedrock of the US worldview as the deemed custodian of liberty and freedom worldwide. Mr Trump instead preaches America First and an isolationist stance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her congratulatory message, conditioned partnership on respect for human dignity, racial equality and tolerance. A similar message went from the European Union. These are surprisingly blunt signals to the putative leader of the Western alliance. From the fog of electioneering some elements of his putative foreign and domestic policies are emerging. In his victory speech he was moderation incarnate, advocating partnership and not confrontation with nations willing to get along with us. Having campaigned against Nafta he would have to at least review if not discard it. The Mexican peso has plunged in anticipation and Canada, which sends three-quarters of its exports to the US, is understandably nervous. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was to tie the US to 11 partners in the Asia-Pacific region and provide geo-strategic underpinning to containing China, is now in limbo. Japans Lower House had already approved the TPP. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is rushing to engage Mr Trump in the US even before his inauguration to seek clarity about all elements of the US-Japan alliance. Mr Trumps praise of President Vladimir Putin and signal to Nato allies that to obtain US protection they must commit greater resources increases uncertainty in Europe, already facing universally rising anti-establishment feelings, of which Brexit was a signal. His iconoclastic suggestion, which he may now drop, that Japan and the Republic of Korea could acquire nuclear weapons if they need for self-protection to offset reduced US commitment may undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, not entirely an unwelcome prospect from Indias perspective. The Trump approach to the Islamic world is also laden with paradoxes. He has scoffed at Sunni Gulf sheikhdoms and yet also wants to undo the nuclear deal with Iran. At the same time he wants ISIS obliterated, though it seems extremely unlikely that he would be prepared to commit troops for this. He is unlikely to press Israel as Mr Obama did on illegal settlements. But President Obama engaged Iran realising that the US could not counter ISIS without committing troops in West Asia unless the Russia-Iran axis, supplemented by US-boosted Iraqi and Kurdish forces operating under US air cover, was unshackled in northern Syria-Iraq. A group called Hindu Americans for Trump had invited him to a New Jersey temple in a town largely inhabited by Gujarati-origin Indians. Was it PM Narendra Modis outreach to Mr Trump using the RSS and Gujarati links? If so, it is a welcome move. India will have to watch carefully Mr Trumps policy towards East Asia, including China, Europe, including Russia, and West Asia, mainly Iran. India and Pakistan would perhaps figure lower on his initial list of priorities. On trade and economics, India must monitor his policy on visas, taxing of outsourcing firms and other protectionist steps that may present both challenges and opportunities. Trump Inc has real estate links in Mumbai and Pune. He is also at heart a transactional businessman whom India can engage as he carries little baggage of Cold War links to Pakistan. Mr Modi must find the first opportunity to meet him to develop chemistry and sell a shared vision of 21st century Asia. India-US ties are flourishing but still lack economic and technological depth. Some unfinished business still lingers such as Indias permanent membership of the UN Security Council, Nuclear Suppliers Group and enhanced defence links. Can Mr Modis Make in India be meshed with Mr Trumps America First to craft, what President Obama once called, the defining partnership of the 21st century? History beckons both. Last week defence minister Manohar Parrikar had created a flutter when he appeared to cast doubts on Indias nuclear doctrine of no first use framed after the 1998 test by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. The minister, and the defence ministry, then hastily clarified that the doctrine hadnt changed, and that Mr Parrikar was only expressing his personal view. But doubts persist that the minister may have been deployed by his party, the government or RSS to send up a trial balloon. Quite apart from the fact that in our system a minister cant express an individual opinion on an important public issue, particularly one so sensitive as the nuclear question, there are other reasons why Mr Parrikars comment cant be taken to be in the nature of an Upanishadic speculation or thinking aloud by an inquisitive soul. On his return from Japan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly extolled his defence minister as one of the brightest jewels in his government. The commentariat thought Mr Parrikar had done enough to earn a censure. His seemingly unwise comments had come even as a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was due in Vienna to consider the Indian application for membership. Equally worrying, the personal observation came while the PM was engaged in clinching a sensitive civil nuclear agreement with Japan, that has been deeply suspicious of India for its 1998 test since this country is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But none of this mattered to Mr Modi, who publicly praised his defence minister. Besides, the BJPs 2014 manifesto had appeared to openly question the nuclear doctrine, and this had been commented on then. The document made plain its intention to study in detail Indias nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it to make it relevant to the challenges of current times. From its early Jan Sangh days, the saffron party has been in favour of India being a robust nuclear-capable nation. Given its far-right nationalistic outlook, the BJP is likely to have swallowed the no first use doctrine explicated in 1999 as a bitter pill, given the global disapprobation that followed our nuclear test, specially from the United States, with which the then Vajpayee government sought the closest possible relationship. For a party that lays a premium on appearing militarily strong, to the BJP mindset no first use is likely to sound vegetarian and weak, though the doctrine makes eminent sense. Its essence is that India will not deploy nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state; and in dealing with the latter it wont be the first to use the bomb. This implies having a credible nuclear deterrence. In light of this context, the government needs to quickly clarify its position in Parliament. In a surprise move, the government last week derecognised the existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, and while policymakers and senior Reserve Bank officials were preparing for this for a long time, it was kept secret from the public to take away any advantage that hoarders of unaccounted money, terrorist financiers, counterfeit operators, money launderers and the like, might have had. The government has vigorously defended this move as a bold step to counter black money and promote digital payments, and is certain of its net positive impact on the economy in the long term. At the same time, critics of the move have denounced it, pointing out that black money is not a stock problem, as most of it does not actually remain stashed in cash, but is likely to be invested through front companies, in benami real estate, gold, and is thus unlikely to be recovered to any significant extent through the ongoing exercise. This discussion on the long-term economic impact has overtaken the narrative, with the challenges being faced by honest taxpayers and law-abiding consumers to obtain the new currency notes getting pushed to the background and appearing to be nobodys business. Such concerns are being summarily brushed aside as teething problems or a minor inconvenience that consumers are expected to bear in the larger interest of the health of the economy. Such apathy to the difficulties faced by the common man is not new and appears to be an inherent feature of government policy decisions that often look at the larger long-term picture, but ignore the short and medium-term impact on different sections of society. This points to a larger systemic malaise of inadequate planning and preparation to deal with implementation-linked challenges of policy decisions. As a result, despite the governments claims of banks, post offices and ATMs being flush with new currency notes within days of this decision, the reality is starkly different. Banks have been repeatedly suspending all exchange operations temporarily to manage crowds. Long serpentine queues are visible outside bank branches as well as ATMs, with the latter frequently getting dry of cash in little to no time. Shortage of staff to load ATMs is adding to the misery. Several ATMs are facing technical glitches, being unable to dispense notes of less than Rs 100 or the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. Hospitals and medical shops are not accepting the old currency notes and the latter are often shutting down before their usual time, resulting in lack of proper medical care. Low-income consumers without any valid identify proofs and bank accounts are the worst hit, and are often left with no avenues of currency exchange. Those who are fortunate enough to have the new `2,000 notes are facing difficulties in using them due to the lack of adequate legal change in the market. A lack of focus on transition and implementation-related challenges is not unique to the ongoing demonetisation exercise, but has been a common feature of all major reform measures in the past. Many residents of Delhi will remember the long queues for compressed natural gas after the mandatory shift of public vehicles from polluting diesel to CNG, and with insufficient outlets available to dispense the new fuel. Another example is that of the Goods and Services Tax. While a consensus appears on the long-term positive impact of GST on the economy, the limited focus on sensitisation of consumers and SMEs, and on building capacity to address implementation-related chal-lenges could do unintended harm. Similarly, while all agree that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is expected to facilitate exit and unlock capital, lack of engagement with the public on issues like debt mediation, addressing infrastructure and capacity constraints at debt recovery tribunals could pose difficulties in achieving its objectives. On the same lines, while the government claims to have taken several measures to facilitate the ease of doing business and access to credit for small and medium enter-prises, in spite of our sugges-tions no structured mechani-sm to take stakeholder feedback and measure perfor-mance of entry and middle-level government officials could result in sub-optimal outcomes. Going back to the demoneti-sation scheme, the only places chosen for currency exchange are RBI offices, bank branches and post offices. While the first two do not have enough touch points in rural India, it seems that adequate cash is yet to reach the post offices. Recognised non-bank players (some of whom have obtained payment banks and small banks licences) have offered to operate as currency exchange, deposit and withdrawal points after necessary KYC checks. It seems that the government has not yet warmed up to this idea. As a result, the poor are being forced to get the currency exchanged from moneylenders and hoarders at a loss on account of the commission that is being charged. It is essential for the government to think through all the implementation-related challenges of its policies. It must periodically take stakeholder feedback and conduct mid-course correction to ensure benefits reach the intended beneficiaries. For instance, the government could have planned for dedicated touch points in this case at places like schools and hospitals. There should be no problem in co-opting non-bank financial service providers in this initiative. Further, it should be remembered that if consumers are expected to bear the inconvenience during the transition period, they expect the government to come clean with the impact of this move on the economy. The government must proactively declare the extent of black money and counterfeit currency seized as a result of this initiative and how it plans to curb similar illegal activities in the future. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg again rejected the idea that the social network affected the US presidential election. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg again rejected the idea that the social network affected the US presidential election, saying late Saturday it is "extremely unlikely" news hoaxes changed the outcome. Ensnared in a string of content controversies in recent months, Facebook has insisted that it is a technology company, not a media firm. But scrutiny of the site has heightened since the surprise election of Republican Donald Trump on Tuesday, with critics alleging the site helped spread lies via fake news stories and hoaxes. Zuckerberg has vehemently defended the network against such criticism, calling the idea that Facebook affected the election "crazy" at a conference on Thursday. He echoed that stance in his late Saturday post, though he said the company would do more to prevent fake news. Such hoaxes represent a sliver of content shared on Facebook and because they are not limited to partisan views or politics, it is unlikely they could have changed the election's outcome, Zuckerberg said. "Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 per cent of what people see is authentic," he said, noting the network's goal is to "give every person a voice." Still, Facebook has launched work to enable people to flag hoaxes and fake news, the statement said. Facebook has faced a number of content controversies this year, including international outcry after it removed an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, a decision that was later reversed. The thorniest content issues are decided by a group of top executives at Facebook. Questions over content policing have returned to the fore in the tense days since the election, which has led to protests against Trump and his proposed policies in major US cities. Ahead of the Nov. 8 election, Facebook users saw fake news reports erroneously alleging that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and that a federal agent who had been investigating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was found dead. Senior management have launched a conversation to examine Facebook's involvement in affecting opinions and votes, The New York Times reported on Saturday, saying a group of vice presidents and executives began discussing late Tuesday the company's role in the election's outcome. Facebook's policy team was called together and the firm plans to address staff concerns at a broader meeting, the paper reported, citing anonymous sources. Facebook representatives were not immediately available to comment on the report. "After the election, many people are asking whether fake news contributed to the result, and what our responsibility is to prevent fake news from spreading," Zuckerberg said on Saturday. "These are very important questions and I care deeply about getting them right." Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. "The Muslim religion allows the use of these methods in certain circumstances, especially if the health of the baby and mother are at the heart of the thought process," says Ibrahim. (Representational image) Kenya: Swaddled in colourful hijabs the women exchange puzzled looks and suppress embarrassed giggles. "You're sure it's halal?" asks one, peering at a collection of birth control pills, condoms and IUDs. Such everyday forms of contraception are little known and rarely seen in Kenya's arid and neglected northeast, an overwhelmingly poor, conservative and Muslim part of the country where most people are pastoralist ethnic Somalis. A study of early marriage by the charity Save the Children found that just two percent of the population of Wajir county uses contraception -- compared with a national Kenyan average of 58 percent -- due to modern contraceptive methods being seen as a breach of Islamic principles. But Deka Ibrahim, a female Islamic teacher, explains that contraception is halal, permissible, as she talks to a group of 40 newly-weds and mothers sitting on the dusty concrete floor of a dark room that is the village's tiny maternity centre. One woman feeds her child while others absentmindedly fidget with the long sleeves of their austere outfits, revealing intricately painted henna tattoos and fake diamond bracelets. "The Muslim religion allows the use of these methods in certain circumstances, especially if the health of the baby and mother are at the heart of the thought process," says Ibrahim. She adds however that according to this interpretation of Islam there are conditions for using contraceptives: they must be temporary, spousal approval is required, and, she reminds them, abortion is illegal in Islam as well as in Kenyan law. As a government nurse goes on to explain how to use the different devices, Halima, 16, the mother of a nine-month-old girl listens intently. "I want to have more children, but not now. I want to wait until my child has grown up a bit and I'm sure she is healthy," Halima says. Tradition vs health Here, maternity and tradition are issues that burn as hot as the sun beating down on the sandy soil and dry thorn bushes outside, issues that sideline women and can endanger their lives and those of their children. More than four in 10 women in northeast Kenya are married before their 18th birthday, their youth leading to increased problems in pregnancy, labour and birth. Making the situation worse is that most deliveries are home births, unsanitary and without qualified midwives. On top of that, the average woman has eight children, a large brood -- like a herd of livestock -- seen as a symbol of wealth in Somali culture. "When an adolescent girl becomes pregnant or there is not enough space between pregnancies, the risk of complications is high," says Sulekha Mohamed of Save the Children, adding that 98 percent of women in northeast Kenya are circumcised, heaping further risk on giving birth. "If you are pregnant four months after giving birth, your body has not had time to recover," she says. Religion to the rescue A 2014 demographic study showed perinatal deaths in Kenya's northeast were more than 50 percent higher than the national average. Since then religious leaders have been co-opted into battling the statistics. "Historically, in our culture, men take many wives and women have many children, so family planning is seen as a foreign idea, a colonial Western idea to limit the population," says Mursal Abdiwahab, the khadi of Wajir in charge of the Muslim family court, who ruled that contraception is halal. "Our role as religious leaders and learned people is to explain what Islam allows or not." The message seems to be getting through. In the first three months of this year, 3,177 women joined the family planning programme, a major increase from the 1,382 participants in the same period the year before. Safiya, a 28-year-old mother of four, says she wants "more children, because that is what my religion dictates," but after learning that contraception is permitted in Islam she is now spacing out her pregnancies. "Before, I was very sick, very bad in the first months of pregnancy, but this is no longer the case." Back at the maternity clinic, Fatuma, 25, lies on a bed. After several weeks of reflection, and with her husband's blessing, she readies herself for the insertion of a contraceptive device. "Since my religion accepts family planning, I'll use it for the good of my health," she says, and with that the nurse slides a blue curtain in front of the bed. She turns to the male journalist with a benevolent smile saying, "This, it stays among the women." Since Tuesday's shock election triumph, Trump had appeared to tone down his rhetoric, notably suggesting he might be willing to reconsider a pledge to scrap President Barack Obama's signature health reform. (Photo: AP) New York: Donald Trump plans to immediately deport or jail as many as three million undocumented immigrants, the Republican said Sunday as he set out his priorities as America's head of state in the first television interview since his election. Millions were expected to tune in to Trump's full interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" for clues on how the populist billionaire will govern, and how far he intends to convert his firebrand slogans into hard and fast policy. Since Tuesday's shock election triumph, Trump had appeared to tone down his rhetoric, notably suggesting he might be willing to reconsider a pledge to scrap President Barack Obama's signature health reform. But he made clear in excerpts of Sunday's interview that he still intended to crack down on the undocumented, focusing on people with criminal records. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people -- probably two million, it could be even three million -- we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump said. He also said he stood by his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border -- although he said it could include some fencing. Experts estimate there are as many as 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States, many of them Central and Southern Americans long-established in the country. Trump's stance stood in opposition with comments by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Sunday the focus under a Trump administration would be on securing the border, not rounding up immigrants. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Ryan told CNN. Appointment 'imminent' Since his election on the back of an incendiary anti-immigrant campaign, thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets daily, worried that Trump will put his rhetoric into practice. The billionaire's Trump Tower residence in Manhattan was picketed for four straight days by, with similar protests across the United States. The tower has been a hive of activity as the real estate mogul huddles with his transition team to shape his cabinet -- appointments expected to play a crucial role in setting the tone of an administration led by a 70-year-old political novice. Trump faces a colossal task in hammering out cabinet picks and filling hundreds of other top government jobs ahead of his January 20 inauguration. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has said the announcement of White House chief of staff -- the powerful gatekeeper to the president -- is "imminent." Top contenders include Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, who Trump has credited for helping engineer his unlikely election win. 'Hold him accountable' Democrats have been despondent in the wake of an election they were certain of winning, but vowed Sunday to oppose Trump -- despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. "Our job now is to hold him accountable," said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. "If Mr. Trump has the courage to take on Wall Street, to take on the drug companies, to try to work forward, go forward to create a better life for working people, we will work with him, issue by issue. "But if his presidency is going to be about discrimination, if it's going to be about scapegoating immigrants or scapegoating African-Americans or Muslims, we will oppose him vigorously," Sanders declared. An ABC News/Washington Post poll out Sunday shows that 74 percent of Americans accept Trump's election as legitimate, but that number fell to 58 percent among supporters of his defeated rival Clinton. Trump has shown some willingness to soften his more strident positions. His U-turn on Obamacare -- he now says he may simply amend a law he once branded a "disaster" on the stump -- was prompted by his White House meeting with the outgoing president earlier this week. He told CBS and The Wall Street Journal he may maintain some of the program's more popular elements, such as a ban on insurance companies denying coverage because of so-called pre-existing health conditions. Asked by the paper whether he would, as threatened, name a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton over her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Trump deflected, saying his priorities were "health care, jobs, border control, tax reform." Not long ago Trump was leading crowds in chants of "Lock her up!" Hate groups The Republican has yet to respond, however, to mounting calls to reassure Americans who fear a xenophobic crackdown under his authority. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, tracked more than 200 incidents of election-related harassment in the three days following the vote, with many more allegations emerging on social media. Tens of thousands have signed an SPLC petition urging Trump to clearly distance himself from hate groups. The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane, Yu Xu, was killed in an accident. (Photo: AFP/File) Beijing: The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane, Yu Xu, was killed in an accident during a routine training flight with the aerobatics team over the weekend. The engine and the flight data recorder or black box of the two-seater fighter jet J-10 has been recovered at the accident site in Yutian county on Saturday evening, reports the China Daily. According to an official, the authorities are investigating the cause of the accident. Two pilots from the Bayi Aerobatic Team of People's Liberation Army's Air Force were conducting a routine flight training on Saturday morning in Tianjin before they were forced to eject from the jet as two jets hit each other. Witnesses said the impact left a 10-meter diameter and 3-meter deep pit on the farmland at Dayangpu village of Chenjiapu. The male pilot parachuted to safety. But Yu Xu hit the wing of another J-10 and died. She was at the back seat during the training. Islamabad: Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif on Monday ordered troops to "effectively" respond to firing by India across the Line of Control (LoC) after the death of seven Pakistani soldiers. The army chief was in Jhelum near Rawalpindi to attend the funeral prayers of the dead soldiers, according to army spokesman. He was given a briefing by the senior commanders about the latest situation on the LoC. General Raheel said on the occasion that army "will continue to respond effectively" and it ordered that it should "leave no stone unturned to defend motherland". Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that Pakistan responded effectively to the Indian fire and "it would have surly killed Indian troops." He claimed that India was hiding its losses on the LoC. Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday said seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC, prompting it to summon the Indian envoy here to warn that India's "belligerent" attitude may lead to a "strategic miscalculation". Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale this afternoon and condemned the "unprovoked ceasefire" violation by the Indian forces on the Line of Control (LoC). The Foreign Secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the Working Boundary, especially in the last two months, a statement said. He emphasised that this "belligerent attitude" of Indian forces was a "serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation", the statement added. The Foreign Secretary asked the Indian High Commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted him as saying. He underlined that the Armed Forces of Pakistan do not initiate fire, but will always respond in a befitting manner, if fired upon, the statement said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned Indian High Commissioner. Pakistan on November 10 summoned Bambawale to the Foreign Office to protest over alleged ceasefire violations and use of artillery by the Indian forces. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the world's attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. Army chief General Raheel Sharif ordered troops to "effectively" respond to firing by India. Raheel said that army "will continue to respond effectively" and it ordered that it should "leave no stone unturned to defend motherland". Pakistan's Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz also condemned the "unprovoked Indian firing" on the LoC, Foreign Office (FO) said "He (Aziz) expressed heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed," it said, adding that Aziz expressed grave concern over the recently increased frequency and duration of indiscriminate firing/shelling "from the Indian side, deliberately targeting villages and civilian populated areas". The Foreign Office said that Pakistan is urging the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to send an urgent report to the UN Security Council to inform them about the serious ceasefire violations on the LoC and the unwarranted escalation of tension between the two countries. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, responding to the latest development along the shared Pak-India border, claimed that India was heating up the situation along the LoC and Working Boundary due to internal compulsions, Radio Pakistan reported. The defence minister said it was regrettable that "certain extremist elements which had come into power in India could become a source of destruction not only for their own country but the whole region". Asif urged the global community to take notice of "Indian provocations against Pakistan" as any escalation of tension between the two nuclear armed neighbours could prove catastrophic for the whole region. He added that Pakistan is using diplomatic and international forums to highlight Indian "belligerence". So far, mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. A Pakistani officer says police have arrested 10 members of a criminal gang who flogged a transgender person. (Photo: AFP/Representational) Islamabad : A Pakistani officer says police have arrested 10 members of a criminal gang who flogged a transgender person and posted the incident on social media. Iqbal Sindhu says Monday's arrests were made in the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot after a video of the flogging was shared thousands of times on social media. The gang's leader, identified as Jajja Butt, is seen in the video flogging the transgender man, who lay face down on a cot screaming in pain. At one point, while another gang member continues the flogging, Butt places his foot on the victim's neck and twists his arms. A transgender woman in Pakistans Sialkot city was flogged by the leader of a criminal gang. (Photo: Screengrab) Islamabad: A transgender woman in Pakistans Sialkot city has revealed the atrocities they suffered at the hands of members of a criminal gang who were arrested on Monday in connection with the flogging of one of the transgender women. The leader of the criminal gang flogged a transgender woman at her home in front of a few other people, who intervened to protect her. He later posted a video of the abuse on social media. According to reports, one of the transgender women identified as Jolie was present at the crime scene. She said the gang members dragged them all out after flogging the victim and took them to another transgender womans house. She said the gang members barged into a house where several transgender women were living, beating and torturing one of them for several hours and shaving the heads of others. She alleged that the men forced them to drink their urine, raped them and beat them up with shoes. The gang members were arrested in the eastern city of Sialkot after the video of the flogging was shared thousands of times on social media, said police official Iqbal Sindhu. The video shows the gang leader pinning the woman face down on a bed with his foot and beating her with what appears to be a leather belt. At one point, while another gang member continues the flogging, the leader places his foot on the victim's neck and twists her arms. Police chief Abid Khan said five of those arrested have been charged with torture and extortion, while the other five are under investigation. The alleged gang leader, who identified himself as Jajja, told Dunya News that he was friends with the victim. "I was punishing him because he didn't refrain from his bad habits, which I pointed out to him several times," he said in an interview conducted while he was in police custody. Transgender people in Pakistan are social outcasts who are often forced into begging, dancing and prostitution to earn money. Fearing attacks, most either change their names or use only one name. TransAction, a local transgender rights group, posted a video interview with Jolie. Sindhu, the police official, confirmed Jolie was present at the scene. Surging crowds outside banks showed no signs of abatement on Sunday. Frayed tempers were seen outside many banks on Sunday as queues started shaping up as early as 5.30 am. Banks in central Delhi like Chandni Chowk and Connaught Place, too, say long queues despite the weekend day off in offices. In middle class colonies like Malviya Nagar, there appeared to be signs of the situation turning into a law and order problem even as specially deputed policemen tried their best to manage the crowd. There were many who returned disappointed. The bank has closed down due to shortage of cash, complained a customer outside Bank of Maharashtra on Shahjahan Road. Shortage of Rs 100 notes continued to be the biggest problem as many ATM machines were found unfit for loading the new currency notes that are less wide than the phased out notes. A household waste collector complained of being forced to feed on bread and remaining empty stomach for two days. No eatery is excepting the old Rs 500 note and I do not have time to queue up outside bank, said Ravinder, who works in colonies like Hauz Khas and Panchsheel Park. Bank staff has also started complaining, privately, about the maddening rush and work load. DH News Service Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday claimed there is an emergency like situation in the country due to the demonetisation of Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes and demanded the decision should be taken back immediately. He accused the Prime Minister of mocking the people standing in queue in his speech at Goa and demanded apology from him. The PM made a speech in Goa and sought 50 days to abolish the problems faced by the common people. But this has increased the nervousness among the people. People are not in a condition to wait for even 50 hours and are dying of hunger despite having money. There is a situation of emergency in the country, said Kejriwal. When he had announced this decision, he said things would be normal in two days. The next day he said things would take another 10 days to normalise. Yesterday, Arun Jaitely said it would be take three weeks and now the PM is saying that it would take 50 days, he said. The BJP slammed Kejriwal for allegedly provoking people over the demonetisation and threatened legal action if he did not observe restraint. Expressing his displeasure on Modis speech in Goa where the PM got emotional, Kejriwal said, I was very disappointed when I heard the PMs speech. He said people who are involved in big scams like 2G, coal scam are standing in the queues. I would like to ask the PM whether the people who committed suicide resemble D Raja and Kanimozhi? Small farmers, housewives stood in the queues. Do they look like Suresh Kalmadi? By saying this the PM mocked the people who have been standing in the queue. PM should appologise The CM demanded that the Prime Minister should apologise to the people of the nation for such remarks. He also alleged that Modi has befriended the corrupt people in the country and is not taking any action against them. Modi has repeated many times that 1.25 crore people are honest, a few lakh people are dishonest. Then why dont doesnt he apprehends these dishonest people. Why are the rest of the people being harassed, he alleged. Kejriwal alleged that no action has been taken against those who are in the possession of blackmoney as promised before the elections. Before the elections the PM had promised that he would put Robert Vadra behind the bars. All the corrupt people would be sent to jail. But now Modiji has struck friendship with them. He has not made any attempt to bring even a single penny from the Swiss Bank, he said. He accused the government of inaction against 648 people whose name was mentioned in a list of blackmoney holders in the country which included the high and mighty. I demand that the government sits down and takes the matter seriously. There is no seriousness except drama and false promises. The matter should be taken seriously and take out some solution in the next 24 hours or else the country is going downhill, he said. Kejriwal said if Modi wants to bring demonetisation, then he should come with proper planning and enough resources to meet the demands. He narrated the plight of the common people including transporters, daily wagers and farmers who have been adversely affected by this decision. Delhi BJP President Satish Upadhyay said that it is time Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal restrains himself from provoking people on the issue of scrapping of notes or be prepared to face legal consequences. All these days we thought that Kejriwal's desperation due to loss of cash funds stacked for Punjab & Goa elections will subside and he will get back to senses. Unfortunately, today evening he crossed all limits by saying that this may soon aggravate into a law & order problem. It seems he is trying to provocate people, Upadhyay said. South Korea's Kia Motors Corp is likely to announce its plans for the Indian market over the next six months as it finalises finer details on the product mix, production, sales and marketing strategies. According to the sources, as and when it decides to set up operations in India, the car maker may set up a plant with an initial production capacity of 2.5 lakh per annum with an option of scaling it up later. "It will take some time to come up with final decision on India entry. It should at least take around six months to announce it formally," a source said. The company would, however, need more time to actually start rolling out vehicles as it would need to establish manufacturing operations. Kia, a part of the Hyundai group, is scouting for land in various states, including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. When contacted, a company spokesperson said: "We at Kia Motors are continually evaluating potential locations for overseas manufacturing facilities, including India, to secure additional engines for future growth. However, as of now no concrete plans have been finalised." It is understood that the company is working on how to overcome the challenge of having a clear distinction for its product portfolio from that of Hyundai, which is already the second the largest car manufacturer in India after Maruti Suzuki India. The source said, "When it comes to sales network Kia will have its own dealers."Kia also plans to manufacture its engines in India, whenever it decides to open shop there, the source added. Kia' global production capacity currently stands at over 3 million units while Hyundai's global production capacity is around 5 million vehicles annually. Globally, Hyundai shares parts and vehicle underpinnings with Kia, which it acquired in 1998. Hyundai sells several low-priced vehicles in India, which could pose a challenge in terms of market positioning for Kia, which sells a range of vehicles including a compact crossover utility vehicle brand, Sportage; an urban crossover brand, Soul; compact car Rio; and mid-size and luxury sedans under the brand names Optima, Cadenza and K900. Kia also has hybrid and electric vehicles on offer in some countries. Notwithstanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emotional appeal to people to cooperate with him to weed out illegal money, Shiv Sena today described the demonetisation as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. Lashing out further, the ruling ally said instead of striking Pakistan, Modi has wounded Indian citizens who do not have any black money and the few who actually possess illegal funds have safely parked it in foreign banks. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said. The Sena alleged that the path adopted by Modi to halt black money flow is "demonic" and "unsystematic" that has resulted in "financial anarchy" in the nation. "Instead of striking Pakistan, PM Modi has struck and wounded Indian citizens and mocked their nationalism by saluting them for bearing the anarchy," it said. "Black money is not held by ordinary citizens who are standing in queues but a handful of people who have parked their money in foreign banks before the demonetisation announcement. What action has been taken against them?" it said. Today, roads are empty, shops have no business, vegetable markets have no buyers, labourers have no work and petrol pumps are slowly getting shut for lack of change, the junior alliance partner said. Modi, in an impassioned plea to the nation yesterday, asked for 50 days to weed out the ill-gotten wealth in India. Blending emotion with aggression, the PM mounted a counteroffensive against the opposition over demonetisation of high-value currency notes, promising more anti-graft measures in future "even if I'm burned alive". With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi today defended the action as one which has brought "sound sleep" to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as "insult" to people. As a belligerent Prime Minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging BJP leaders had prior information about the impending decision. Pummelling the Congress and other parties which are criticising demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left yesterday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. "Don't mislead people...I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing Emergency," he said addressing a rally in Ghazipur, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad High Court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The November 8 decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliament's winter session with representatives of seven parties-- Congress, TMC, JD(U), RJD, CPI, CPI(M) and YSR (Congress)--discussing the matter. The SP, BSP and AAP, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the "crisis" situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawati's BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. "Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Daring Modi to make public the bank details of the party at the central and state levels, Surjewala alleged that a BJP functionary O P Jha had deposited Rs one crore in party account in West Bengal in currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 on November 8, shortly before the Prime Minister announced their demonetisation. Mamata Banerjee, who has been in touch with various parties on the issue, including arch rival CPI(M), slammed Modi for his remarks that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. "This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days," she said in a statement. BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Modi's "garland of notes" remark, unleashed a no- holds-barred attack on the Prime Minister, saying he cannot tolerate that a "dalit ki beti" is presented such a garland. "He (Modi) has accepted garland of notes many times. But if a 'dalit ki beti' is offered such a garland, it it does not become palatable for the Prime Minister, it reflects his cheap mentality," she said at a hurriedly convened press conference in Lucknow hours after Modi made the remark at a BJP rally in Ghazipur. "In order to divert people's attention from his failures, Modi levels baseless allegations against his poltical opponents which is condemnable...allegations on policy matters are different but personal ones should not be made...he cannot tolerate that a dalit ki beti is presented garland of notes," she said, adding one cannot digest what Mayawati wears. Mayawati said an undeclared "Bharat Bandh" was prevailing in the country where all economic activity has come to a grinding halt due to demonetisation. "Our party welcomes from the heart any strong action for it (against black money) but the present government in the garb of checking black money and corruption has forced the people to face immense hardships," she said. Mayawati was offered a garland of currency notes at a party rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury also sought to pick holes in the demonetisation drive, claiming that Prime Minister's stated objectives including those of tackling corruption will not be achieved with the steps taken. He also claimed that the BJP-led government had gains in UP election in mind while making the move and reiterated his party's charge that BJP leaders had prior information about the decision, referring to the West Bengal BJP depositing crores "a few hours ahead of Modi's November 8 announcement." Pakistan today said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops across the LoC following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that the country is "fully capable" of defending its territory against "any aggression". Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to "unprovoked" Indian firing and targeted Indian posts "effectively", it said. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the "latest violation of Line of Control (LoC) by the Indian forces" and said "it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days", Press Information Department Pakistan said. "We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression," it quoted Sharif as saying. The Prime Minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to "uselessly divert" the world's attention from the "grave human rights situation" in Kashmir. So far, mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. Banks across several states remained closed today being a public holiday further escalating the six-day cash crisis following the withdrawal of high-value notes and exacerbating the agony of those in desperate need to get even small amounts of money. Though banks were open mainly in the southern states there was no relief for people as they had to wait for hours to get new notes or deposit the scrapped currency. Cash-strapped people started making a beeline outside ATMs from early morning but with limited success as most of the cash vending machines are running dry and werent refilled with money. People queued up outside ATMs early in the morning but had to return disappointed as shutters at many locations were down amid growing scuffles and heated exchanges. Today was a holiday on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti. Patience of citizens wore thin as people continued to face hardship in withdrawing cash from ATMs, braving long queues, accessing health facilities at hospitals and commuting in public transport in the national capital on a bank holiday that added to their woes. Many sections of the society including grocery shop owners, small traders, restaurant owners, are further feeling the heat as their dependence on cash is very high. Commuters also had a harrowing time, as lack of Rs 100 notes continued to cripple transaction with taxi operators, auto-rickshaw drivers and other public transport providers. A pre-paid city-run taxi counter at Delhi Airport, which other wise draws good number of passengers, today wore a deserted look. "People are not coming to book 'kali-pili' taxis with us, as they do not have ready cash, and we are not in a position to accept Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 notes," a staff at the counter said. "This is becoming unbearable now. How long can we afford to be in the queue to get money which we toiled to earn. My family is on the verge of starvation," said Damodar Kamble, who tried his luck to exchange money this morning at an ATM in suburban Vikhroli in Mumbai. Many customers made it to ATMs as early as 5 AM in anticipation of procuring few precious Rs 100 notes. There were also reports that many ATMs ran out of cash within hours of becoming operational. A housewife in Kurla, Shweta, said, "This has become a horror. It's sad..people are dying, fighting while waiting in queues." Banks and ATMs across Tamil Nadu continued to witness long queues of people waiting to exchange defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and withdraw cash today even as bankers and post office personnel struggled to ease the situation. Angry customers who were waiting for long hours to withdraw cash, pelted stones at an ATM in suburban Ponneri in Chennai as it ran out of cash, police said. In Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah took stock of the prevailing situation in the state in the wake of demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes by the central government. Donald Trump's victory in presidential polls may deter or restrict international students coming to the US for higher education and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds to the American economy, experts have warned. After a caustic presidential campaign and Trump's vows to limit immigration, build a Mexican border wall and force Muslims to register, experts in higher education sector are bracing for a backlash among students who see the US as a less welcoming destination. Surveys of international students conducted during the presidential campaign suggested that many would be less interested in coming to the US if Trump were to become president. For example, a survey of 40,000 students from 118 countries conducted by the international student recruiting companies FPP EDU Media and Instead found that 60 per cent said theyd be less inclined to come to the US if Trump were to win, compared with just 3.8 per cent who said theyd be less inclined if his opponent Hillary Clinton won. The number of international students at US colleges and universities has hit a record high, but experts suggest that Trump's election may slow the growth of this market and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds annually to the American economy. For the first time, the number of international students at US universities exceeded a million last year, according to new figures from the Institute of International Education. The total of about 1,044,000 was up 7 per cent from 2014-15. China and India remained the top two sources of international students, but Saudi Arabiabolstered by a government-funded scholarship programmepassed South Korea to pull into third on the list. "I think America is going to continue to welcome international students, international students are going to continue to want to come here, we will continue to want to send American students abroad as students and cultural ambassadors. I think that international educational exchange is part of the fabric of many societies, including ours," said Allan E Goodman, the president and CEO of the Institute for International Education. The Seattle-based marketing company Study in the USA also surveyed 1,000 prospective international students on the election. Of 975 responses, 639 said theyd be more likely to study in the US if Clinton were to win, while just 91 said theyd be more likely to come if Trump were elected. "Due to Trumps very explicit racist remarks, I would not feel very comfortable studying in the USA," one respondent said. If the rise of post-Brexit anti-foreigner attacks in Great Britain is any indication, the experts say, Trump's presidencyand its possible policy implicationscould lead international students to look elsewhere for their educations. Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, meanwhile, have all increased international recruiting. Hyundai Motor India plans to launch an entry level SUV in the first half of 2019 as it looks to strengthen its presence in the fast growing segment. The company, which today launched all new Tucson with an introductory price ranging between Rs 18.99 lakh and Rs 24.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), has already three SUV models in its portfolio, including Creta and Santa Fe. "We aim to launch an entry level SUV in the first half of 2019. It will be below Creta. So, we will have four SUVs in our product range," Hyundai Motor India Ltd MD & CEO YK Koo told reporters here. SUV sales have been growing all over the globe, including China and Europe, and is also going to be a very popular segment in India as well, he added. Hyundai is currently developing a sub 4-metre compact SUV in order to fill the gap that lies below Creta. It had showcased concept compact SUV Carlino at the Auto Expo this year in February. When asked about vehicles with alternate fuels, Koo said the company has asked its global R&D centre to look into possible models for the country. "Hyundai has strong portfolio of electric and hybrid vehicles. We are planning to unveil a hybrid product during the 2018 Auto Expo," he added. Commenting on the Tuscon launch, he said with the introduction of the SUV the company is aiming to strengthen its presence in the premium segment. The company has set a target of selling 500-700 units of the model per month. Hyundai has launched the third generation Tucson with both petrol and diesel powertrains. The manual petrol variant is priced at Rs 18.99 lakh while the diesel versions are priced between Rs 21.59 lakh and Rs 23.48 lakh. The petrol automatic is priced at Rs 21.79 lakh while the one with diesel powertrain is priced at Rs 24.99 lakh. "The launch of third generation all new Tucson will create a benchmark by giving Hyundai experience to the aspirational Indian customers," Koo said. With over 45 lakh units sold globally, Tucson is one of the best selling SUVs in the world, he added. Tucson comes with 2 litre petrol and diesel engine options and new various features including a puddle lamp, downhill brake control and front and rear parking sensors. The petrol version with manual transmission company comes with 155 PS of power and delivers a fuel efficiency of 13.03 km/ litre. The petrol automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 12.95 km/ litre. The diesel variant with manual transmission offers 185 PS of power and a claimed fuel efficiency of 18.42 km/litre. The diesel automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 16.38 km/ litre. Two leading bank unions today criticised the government over demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, saying the move has led to "financial chaos" across the country. In a letter to Indian Banks' Association (IBA), All India Bank Officers' Association (AIBOA) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said the decision to withdraw the high-value notes was taken without proper planning or preparation. They also highlighted heavy work pressure on employees and officers at bank branches in the wake of demonetisation which has led to customers rushing to exchange the now defunct notes. "Chaotic situation is prevailing at the bank branches and this is unbearable for both customers as well as bank employees and officers," S Nagarajan, General Secretary of AIBOA, and C H Venkatachalam, his counterpart at AIBEA, said in the letter to IBA, the apex body of bank managements. There is a huge shortage of Rs 100 notes which are now in great demand for routine needs, while most customers are not willing to accept the new Rs 2,000 bill, they said. "The Centre and the Reserve Bank must be fully aware that already there is a huge gap between the indent and supply of Rs 100 notes. "For example, in 2015-16, as against the indent of 535 crore pieces of Rs 100 notes, the supply received was only to the tune of 490 crore pieces," according to the letter. "One cannot understand the reason behind banning the existing Rs 500 notes and not providing new supply of Rs 500 notes in time," it added. Most of the 2.20 lakh ATMs across the country are closed or partly functional. This has put additional pressure on the staff and customers are compelled to visit branches to withdraw cash from their accounts, the two unions said. Nagarajan and Venkatachalam requested the IBA to ensure the RBI supplies adequate cash in denominations of Rs 100 and new Rs 500 notes to ease pressure on banks and provide relief to customers. Rolling out red carpet to women entrepreneurs, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today expressed confidence that with several initiatives taken, the state would soon occupy the top slot for women entrepreneurship. He urged women entrepreneurs to explore entrepreneurial opportunities in Karnataka and make the state their base. "I am happy to note that Karnataka's diversity ratio in employment and entrepreneurship is amongst the best in India. Our eco-system is regarded as the benchmark for women to live and work and I am happy that we are in the right direction," Siddaramaiah said at the event "ThinkBig 2016". He said that according to the fourth Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) census, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have 51.9 per cent of the country's women-owned business indicating the potential that exists in our State and country. "I am sure with the initiatives taken up, Karnataka would soon be in the top slot...," he said. "ThinkBig 2016", which is projected to be Asia's largest women entrepreneurship and economic empowerment summit, is being organised by Karnataka government, together with WEConnect International in India and Thinkthrough Consulting (TTC). According to the organisers, the event is aimed at bringing together more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs, 300 Industry leaders and 400 businesses and 35 top banks to connect women entrepreneurs across the globe with the "thriving" business ecosystem in Karnataka. Speaking on special attention being given to women entrepreneurs to encourage enterprise creation and industrial capacity building, he said, there has been unprecedented response from them. "Initially we thought of developing one Women's Park at Harohally near Bangalore. But, surprisingly there was a great response from all over the State to set up parks for women. Going by the enthusiasm generated amongst women entrepreneurs, I am sure we would have Women's Park all over the State soon," he added. China today cautiously backed India-Japan nuclear deal signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Tokyo visit, saying all countries are entitled for peaceful use of nuclear energy if they meet the international non-proliferation obligations. Beijing also reacted mildly to the references to South China Sea in the India-Japan joint statement, reiterating its earlier stand that countries outside the region should respect efforts made by China and other contestants to resolve the dispute. "With regard to nuclear agreement signed between India and Japan and on the use nuclear energy, we believe that under the promise of absorbing international obligation of nuclear non-proliferation, all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told media briefing here. "At the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," he said. Contrary to the write-ups in the official media here prior to the recent signing of the civil nuclear deal, Geng made no reference to the media criticism of Japan selling its nuclear technology shedding its past objections. Japan has traditionally adopted a tough stand on proliferation issues having been the only victim of atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. India is the first country which has not signed nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with which Japan has signed the civil nuclear agreement. China opposes India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), citing India's refusal to sign NPT. An article in the state-run Global Times earlier criticised Japan for relaxing its rules to sign civil nuclear deal for India and said that selling nuclear technology to New Delhi will "taint Tokyo's reputation of advocating for a nuclear weapons-free world". About the reference to the South China Sea in the joint statement issued at the end of Modi's visit, Geng said "under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction". "We have been repeating that we should come back to the right track of peacefully resolving the relevant dispute through negotiations and consultations. "We hope that the countries outside the region would respect efforts made by countries in the region and safeguard as well as consolidate the sound momentum in the South China Sea and and do more that is conducive to regional peace and stability," he said in a cautious response. On the South China Sea, the joint statement issued by India and Japan said "the two Prime Ministers stressed the importance of resolving the disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law including the UN Convention on Law of Sea (UNCLOS)". Ahead of Modi's visit, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China hopes that India and Japan would take into consideration the "legitimate concerns" of their neighbours. China claims the whole of South China Sea. Its claims are disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Pakistan on Monday said seven of its soldiers were killed in unprovoked firing by Indian troops across the Line of Control, prompting it to summon the Indian envoy here to warn that New Delhis belligerent attitude may lead to a strategic miscalculation. Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in a reported ceasefire violation by the Indian troops late on Sunday night, according to a statement by the Pakistan army. Pakistani troops responded to unprovoked Indian firing and targeted Indian posts effectively, it said. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale on Monday and condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violation by the Indian forces. The foreign secretary deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations at the LoC and the working boundary, especially in the past two months. He emphasised that this belligerent attitude of the Indian forces was a serious threat to regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation. Chaudhry asked the Indian high commissioner to convey to his government that it must stop the provocative firing and observe the ceasefire. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted him as saying. He said the armed forces of Pakistan do not initiate fire, but will always respond in a befitting manner if fired upon, the statement said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned the Indian envoy. Pakistan on November 10 had summoned Bambawale to the Foreign Office to protest the reported ceasefire violations and use of artillery by the Indian forces. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country was fully capable of defending its territory against any aggression. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the latest violation of the Line of Control by the Indian forces and said it is unfortunate that the Indian forces have continuously violated the ceasefire agreement at the LoC, said Press Information Department, Pakistan. Warning from across the border Pakistan summons Indian envoy second time in a week Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserts his country fully capable of defending territory against any aggression Pak army chief orders effective response to Indian firing Bangladesh Navy today acquired its first submarines from China, as Dhaka sought to boost its naval power in the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh Navy chief Admiral Nizamuddin Ahmed received the two submarines during a ceremony at Liao Nan Shipyard in northeast China's Liaoning province's Dalian city, the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate spokeswoman Syed Taposhi Rabeya said. The type 035G class submarines will become part of the country's naval fleet at the beginning of next year, she said. The submarines will be named 'BNS Nabajatra' and 'BNS Joyjatra' respectively, Dhaka Tribune reported. Bangladesh is said to have paid nearly USD 203 million for the two submarines, the report said. Type 035G-class submarines area, also known as Ming- class, is a class of diesel-electric submarines of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. The primary weaponry for Type 035G is Yu-3 torpedo, and French sonar DUUX-5 and its Chinese-built version were used on later units, 12 of which were completed between 1990 and 1999. Bangladesh has been expanding its defence capabilities in recent years, building a new airbase close to neighbouring Myanmar, opening several new military cantonments across the country and adding new frigates to its naval fleet. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the plan to purchase two submarines in 2013 as part of her government's move to build a modern navy to defend the resource-rich Bay of Bengal. An international tribunal has settled Bangladeshs long- standing maritime border disputes with neighbours Myanmar and India, paving the way for Dhaka to invite bids from multinational firms to explore for oil in the Bay. Bangladeshi officials say that has ensured the country's sovereignty over 111,631sq-km of sea, an area nearly equal to its landmass. BJP and its allies today strongly backed the government's demonetisation decision on which Prime Minister Narendra Modi ruled out any rethink as the parties prepared to take on the opposition in the winter session of Parliament beginning November 16. Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters after the meeting that there was no rethink on rendering the high-value currency notes illegal, saying the government's crusade against black money and corruption will be carried to its logical conclusion. The NDA allies decided that they will take on the opposition parties criticising the demonetisation move by countering each of their allegations during the session. They also decided not to be defensive as people have supported the decision and are willing to face inconvenience. Modi received a big thumbs up from NDA allies who threw their weight behind him in supporting the demonetisation move as well as the surgical strikes across LoC in September. Earlier, Modi got support from his own partymen at the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting which discussed the steps taken by him to curb corruption and black money. The Prime Minister told the NDA allies that there was no need to be defensive on demonetisation as there is widespread support for the move and people are ready to face hardships for larger gains. He also urged the NDA allies to go to the public and explain its benefits in the long run in curbing corruption and black money. He told the parties that the credit for the move does not go to him personally but to all parties who have stood by the government, adding he will continue to take the drive forward as the steps taken by him have given hope to people that things will improve. At the NDA meet, after the introductory remarks by the Prime Minister, Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan congratulated him on the "bold and decisive" step to demonetise high denomination currency notes. He said it will help reduce the rich-poor divide in the country. Paswan was followed by all other allies who supported the move and lauded the PM for the step, besides the surgical strikes across the LoC. To show that the NDA was united, the government made leaders of various parties speak to media in support of demonetisation. The leaders who supported the government include Shiv Sena leader Anandrao Adsul, LJP leader Ramvilas Paswan, SAD leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, RLSP leader Upendra Khushwaha and TDP's Thotha Narsimam, besides those from north eastern parties. "The NDA constituents told the Prime Minister that they will stand by him till the fight against corruption is taken to its logical end. They also appreciated the steps taken by the Finance Ministry to extend help to the people in solving inconvenience cause by the demonetisation decision," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said. He said, "The session will be a befitting forum to tell people about the crusade against corruption and will show which party favours corruption and which is against it." He said all NDA partners welcomed the move "in one voice" and supported the decision of the government and the Prime Minister to weed out corruption. Kumar said black money was also being used for anti-India activities and terrorism. Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said "false propaganda" was being spread to derail the reform process and gave the example of rumours about salt scarcity. He said while the total salt production was 220 lakh tonnes, the domestic consumption was only 60,000 tonnes and thus there was no shortage. He also rejected the charge made by the opposition that PM Modi had disclosed the demonetisation plan to his partymen and took the opposition by surprise, saying these things have no basis and thus need not be answered. "Many opposition parties are welcoming the move and if there are some opposing it, it will be known who is standing with the hoarders and the corrupt," Naidu told reporters. He said in BJP Parliamentary Party and NDA meetings, all have spoken in one voice in favour of the surgical strikes and the "bold, historic step of waging war against corruption and black money." "Everybody supported the decision and said the government should move forward. They are ready for temporary pain for larger gains. People are not worried but they are looking at larger gains of economy," he said. BTI Payments, operator of the second largest white lable ATM brand India1, is working overtime to take on the demonetisation challenges, and has made it clear that it is going ahead with its expansion plans. We have established a war room to take on the challenges as our opreations are in the rural hinterland across the country. Within three days of the announcement of demonetisation, BTI Payments withdrew Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currencies from its 4,200 ATMs across the country, said the company CEO and Managing Director K Srinivas in an interaction with DH. White label ATMs, which started operation with RBI policy guidelines in June 2012, are non-bank cash machines operated by private companies that essentially operate as outsourcing partners of banks. Indicash, owned by Tata Payment Solutions of Tata Communications, is the biggest white label operator, and currently, 13,000 such ATMs are working across the country. He said that the companys 100-odd employees are working overtime along with banks, cash-in-trasit companies and IT partners like IBM and Mphasis to make ATMs work seamlessly. Srinivas said the company is also finding it difficult to source currency. We are currently present in 10 states and source currencies from a dozen banks. But currently, even banks are also finding it difficult to get money, he said. The BTI Payments chief said the company is changing the cassettes which can accommodate new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. We do hope recalibration of cassettes will be solved within a week to 10 days, he said. He pointed out that the company is going ahead with its expansion plan. Within one-and-half years we will reach our target of 9,000 white label ATMs spread across the country. Each ATM will have an approximate investment of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, he said. To take on the challenges of expansion, the company is ready to increase its headcount as per the requirement. President Pranab Mukherjees recent three day visit to Nepal was historic. He became the first Indian president in the last 18 years to visit Nepal. Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari received and saw his Indian counterpart off at the Tribhuvan international airport. The Nepal government had announced a holiday on Nov 2 on the visit. Mukherjee held wide-ranging discussions across the Nepals political class, sending a clear and strong message to the people of the Himalayan country that India will support Nepal in its pursuit of peace, stability and development. His message reaffirming New Delhis desire to strengthen the relationship with Nepal has assumed huge significance in the light of the fact that relations between the two countries have been much tensed in the recent past. This can be gauged from the fact that despite Indias proactive efforts to help Nepal in the aftermath of the earthquake in April 2015, Nepalese recoiled at the presence of Indian media on their soil, charging the Indian government with indulging in a cheap public relations exercise. In Sept 2015, Nepal accused India of supporting the Madhesi people, who began protesting against the new constitution ad-opted by the Constituent Assembly-II, and blocked all the entry points with India, leading to a huge shortage of essential items including medicines and others. Then prime minister K P Oli himself accused India of carrying out an unofficial blockade in Nepal. In fact, Oli became so much critical of New Delhi that he started fostering engagement with China during and the post-political crisis. This shift in Nepals policy became clear when just after his visit to India in February this year, Oli went to China in March and agreed, among several other things, to work with the Chinese government to carry out major projects under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. These developments, in turn, raised serious questions about the Modi governments neighbourhood first policy. While things did appear to improve in the relationship between New Delhi and Kathmandu, Nepal once again faced the problem of political instability when the Oli government lost a majority in the 601-member parliament. While the ouster of Oli sent some relief to the Indian government given his tilt towards China, some experts and diplomats expressed apprehension about the future of the relationship between the two countries under the new Nepalese government led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. There were indeed some compelling reasons, one being his inclination towards China. His strong clamour for review of all the bilateral treaties with India, including the 1950 India-Nepal friendship treaty, further increased the gulf between the two countries. However, unlike in the past, Prime Minister Prachandas approach has been highly encouraging for India this time. He has publically acknowledged that Nepals relations with India are unique and their bilateral ties cannot be compared with the relationship between Nepal and any other country including China. He even conceded that it was his political inexperience that prevented him from developing close engagement with India during his earlier tenure as prime minister. Trust and engagement Prachandas changed views about New Delhi became very much visible when he visited India in September, after taking over office. These developments indeed provided an opportunity for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to silence his opponents who had argued that his governments policy had completely failed to foster a sense of trust and engagement in the relationship with Kathmandu. It is in this positive background that President Mukherjees visit to Nepal took place, aiming to use the conducive atmosphere to enhance the bilateral ties. During his visit, Mukherjee conveyed to the Nepali leadership that India was ready to share its experiences in building an inclusive constitution, and that the two countries set up cooperation mechanisms to complete the ongoing infrastructure projects speedily. He also made several anno-uncements including Indias decision to allow Nepali students to pursue graduate and post-gr-aduate courses in the IITs on a regular basis from 2017 onwar-ds. This in turn would help boost people-people engagement between the two countries. Another reason for the Modi government to engage Kathmandu at the highest political level is Chinas increasing investment in the infrastructure, energy and other sectors of Nepal. There is a consensus among Indian strategists and experts that as Pakistan already enjoys goodwill with some sections of the Nepalese, Chinas involvement in the Himalayan country could facilitate the emergence of a Ch-ina-Nepal nexus against India. The Modi government has also realised the need to sustain the dialogue process with Nepal to ensure that the interests of the Madhesi region, which has close cultural and family ties with the people of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, should be reflected in its new constitution. As the visit of Mukherjee has infused a new momentum into the relationship between the two countries, it should be hoped that his mission of friendship would further direct the two countries to scale up the relationship in the future. (The writer is with Southern Asia Studies, Pondicherry University) Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) working president Dinesh Gundu Rao, on Monday, came down strongly on the Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. Addressing reporters here on Monday, he said, by demonetising the currency notes, the Prime Minister has literally left everyone in the country cash-strapped. The former minister said, Narendra Modi has been talking about fighting black money, eradicating corruption for a while now. How far it has been successful, he questioned. Those who have black money will not fall into the trap so easily. But, the poor and middle-class people are affected. Modi, who announced the demonetisation of currency notes to control black money, should explain what action he has taken against his party leaders, who are accused in corruption cases, he said. The authoritative and arbitrary rule of Modi has resulted in a financial crunch in the country. The dramatic speech delivered by him at a meeting on November 13, has exposed his attitude, Dinesh Gundu Rao said. Unrest in Kashmir valley and killing of soldiers by Pakistan has continued even after the surgical attack by the Indian Army. Modi, in an effort to divert the peoples attention, has made an abrupt and sudden decision to scrap currency notes, he added. Puppet of Shah Dinesh Gundu Rao said, the Prime Minister has turned into a puppet in the hands of Amit Shah, national president of BJP. The BJP ministers are not informed, in prior, about the major decisions being taken, he alleged. Speaking about the Sangh Parivar, he said, they have been disturbing peace in the state and the country. There is a need to educate the people about the divisive forces to save the secular fabric and integrity of the nation, he felt. Sait episode Commenting on Tanveer Sait, who is facing allegations of viewing sleazy images on his mobile phone, Dinesh said, stern action would be taken if the minister is found guilty of wathcing pornography during the public function. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will take a decision, he added. District in-charge Minister A Manju, and MLC M A Gopalaswamy were present. DH News Service Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary to hit out at the Congress for ignoring the plight of the poverty-ridden Purvanchal (eastern region of Uttar Pradesh). Laying the foundation stone for a rail-cum-road bridge over the Ganga in Ghazipur district, a project that was put before Nehru more than five decades ago, Modi said: Your (Nehru) party (Congress) leaders may be levelling false allegations against me, but I have paid you (Nehru) the real tribute on your birth anniversary... No one else has done so, Modi said, addressing a meeting at Ghazipur, about 350 km from Lucknow, on Monday. Modi said in 1962, the then MP from Ghazipur Vishwanath Singh had narrated the plight of the poverty-ridden region in his speech in the House. The people in this region are so poor that they take out wheat grains from dung, Modi said, quoting Singhs speech. He said that Nehru, who was the then prime minister, had set up a committee to study the problems of the region. The committee had submitted its report with recommendations. Since then, the state (Uttar Pradesh) gave eight prime ministers to the country. I am the ninth one...nothing was done about the report, Modi said. Aap (Nehru) to garibon aas ko files mein daba kar chale gaye... mai use pura kar raha hoon, (you left for heavenly abode leaving the report buried under files... I am fulfilling the task). It took more than five decades to fulfil the aspirations of the people of the region, Modi said. Referring to the likening of the demonetisation to a financial Emergency, the prime minister said that the Congress government had imposed an Emergency in the country, which lasted for 19 months. The entire country had been turned into a prison. The newspapers were acted against...editors were imprisoned, he said. Your (Congress) government had also demonetised chavanni (25 paisa coin). Did I question that? You did according to your capability and we did according to ours, he said. DH News Service Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday ruled out any rollback of the demonetisation of currency notes, despite opposition appeal for giving some relaxation to avoid inconvenience to people. Modi expressed his governments resolve against black money before the NDA and the BJP parliamentary party executive meetings held separately on Monday evening. The month-long winter session of Parliament starts from Wednesday. The NDA parliamentary party came out with a resolution to support the Centres decision on currency ban, even though the Shiv Sena and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) have expressed displeasure over the move. Punjab Deputy CM and SAD leader Sukhbir Badal told a newschannel that though he was with Modi, the crackdown was unworkable and cash crunch was hitting people hard. The rural women were the worst impacted, Badal said. Modi, who has appealed people to have patience for country's interest, told NDA leaders that he alone wont get credit for the currency ban but also all the political parties which stood by the government on this initiative. Other than NDA, Odisha ruling BJD and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumars JD(U) have reacted in favour of the Centres move to cleanse finance system. The party has also decided to argue against opposition parties Congress, TMC, AAP, Left and RJD wanting to raise the issue in the winter session. There was discussion on taking initiative taken by the government to its logical conclusion. The government will address the nation on this issue through Parliament, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar told reporters after the meeting at the Parliament library got over in the evening. Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu too made it clear that there is no chance of rethinking on the issue. Kumar also said at the NDA meeting chaired by Modi, all allies extended their support to him on the demonetisation issue. DH News Service PM slams Oppn for instigating people Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday accused the Opposition parties of instigating people on the issue of demonetisation, DHNS reports from Lucknow. He said the poor are with him, even as he urged people to be patient and help him in his fight against the menace of corruption. Addressing a meeting at Ghazipur, about 350 km from here, Modi said his prescription for eradicating black money from the country was bitter, but it had been liked by the poor though the rich were against it. Mujhe bachpan se kadak chai banen ki adat hai...garibon ko kadak chai achhi lagti hai, lekin amiron ke taste bigar jata hai (In my childhood, the poor used to tell me to make strong tea... the poor liked it, but the rich found it bitter), he said. Slamming critics, he said, The poor are sleeping peacefully after the demonetisation decision, but the rich are making rounds of the market looking for sleeping pills. The Opposition parties on Monday signalled closing of ranks against the Narendra Modi government for putting the common man through unprecedented hardship by demonetising Rs 500 and 1,000 notes and denying full access to his savings. Arch rivals Trinamool Congress and CPM shook hands at a meeting of the Opposition leaders convened by senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad to work out a joint strategy for the Winter Session of Parliament beginning on Wednesday. Trinamool leaders Derek OBrien and Sudip Bandopadhyay discussed parliament strategy with Azad, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI national secretary D Raja, JD (U) veteran Sharad Yadav, RJDs P C Gupta and YSRCPs Ram Mohan Reddy. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had taken centre stage in countering the Modi government on demonetisation and even sought an appointment with President Pranab Mukherjee to submit a protest memorandum demanding a rollback of the decision. However, the Left parties appeared uncomfortable to join the coalition led by Banerjee, prompting the Congress to seize the initiative. In such a case, it is not led by A, B or C. It has to be decided who should go, when to go (to the President), Azad, the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, told reporters when asked about Trinamools plans to meet President Mukherjee. The Opposition leaders will meet again on Tuesday afternoon to take a final call on the strategy to be adopted in Parliament. The leaders of the SP, BSP, DMK and the NCP were not present today. They would be coming tomorrow (Tuesday), Raja told reporters. Prime Minister Modi chaired separate meetings of the BJP Parliamentary Party and NDA leaders and told them not to be defensive over demonetisation. The entire country is with the government, Modi said, urging them to fight the Opposition. Azad said the Opposition was with the government in its fight against black money, but was opposed to the manner in which demonetisation was being implemented. The Congress claimed that the BJP had leaked information about the decision to scrap Rs 500 and 1,000 notes to its party units and well-wishers a month in advance. The government has shut the country, said Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, while Yechury and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal criticised Modi for saying in a speech that poor people are sleeping peacefully after the decision. DH News Service NGOs and human rights organisations have petitioned President Pranab Mukherjee against the possible appointment of a BJP leader, Avinash Rai Khanna, as a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Expressing serious concerns, the All India Network of NGOs and Individuals, working with National and State Human Rights Institutions (AINNI), said any candidate who is part of a political party should not be appointed a member of the NHRC, as it is responsible for examining complaints of rights violation by functionaries of the government. Appointing a member of the ruling political party to the NHRC would also affect the very integrity, credibility and authority of the institution meant to protect human rights of citizens, it said in a memorandum to Mukherjee. Urging the Presidents intervention, it wanted Mukherjee to direct the appointment committee to ensure that due process of appointment to NHRC is followed. The memorandum came against the backdrop of reports that Khanna has been cleared by a selection committee comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and opposition leaders in Parliament among others. The memorandum also noted that never in the past 23 years has there been a civil society representative appointed in this position and the last woman member in the NHRC had completed her term in 2004. This goes against the principles of plurality and diversity in composition as mentioned in the UN Paris Principles, it said. The appointment of Mr Khanna, an office-bearer in the current ruling political party and a former member of the Upper House of Parliament, sends a wrong message to the people of India and challenges the independence of the NHRC, they said. This appointment is contrary to the universally accepted human rights standards evolved under the aegis of the United Nations. It is also detrimental to the functioning and reputation of the NHRC and such measures lead to the formation of a serious trust deficit in the institution itself. It will erode the public faith in the institution, which has been declining steadily over the past 10 years, it added. Union ministers from Karnataka and senior BJP leaders may not attend the wedding of former minister and mining baron Janardhana Reddys daughter Brahmani, which will be held at Palace Grounds in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The party leadership felt that the leaders should stay away from the lavish wedding as it would send wrong signals at a time when people are standing in long queues to exchange money following demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. However, it was not clear whether any direction has been given to the party leaders. I have decided not to attend the wedding in the current situation, said a Union minister. When our government is fighting against black money, we should not attend any big event, he added. Busy in session The Union ministers will also be busy with the Parliaments winter session beginning on November 16. Janardhana Reddy, who is facing cases related to illegal mining and has been released on bail, has invited all senior leaders of the party and some Union ministers to the wedding. All bulk drug consignments from China are under the scanner of the Drugs Controller General of India because of their poor quality and invalid documents. Last week, the health ministry changed its rules to allow import of drugs through two new sea ports Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Hazira port in Gujarat as well as handling the material at Khohdiyar inland container depot in Gandhinagar following the recommendations of an expert panel. The move would increase the work load of Central Drug Standards and Control Organisation (CDSCO), which is keeping a close eye on the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), also known as bulk drugs, imported from China. Out of 2,000 types of API imported in India, more than 60% are from China. Most of the cases of sub-standard drugs, drugs with dubious origin or suspected label are coming from China. To check such infiltration, we have put China on the radar, said a CDSCO official seeking anonymity. The special watch on Chinese imports was initiated in the recent months after the drug regulator found several deviations, including fake certificates of good manufacturing practices, spurious materials, and quality failures in Chinese consignments. A government plan to set up a CDSCO branch office in China with four inspectors for auditing the material bound for India could not be realised as Beijing denied permission. Now we found clandestine (Chinese) operators pushing spurious or poor quality drugs labelled under the name of authorised importers which compromise patients safety. It is often found that the drugs are not sourced from the original manufacturers, whose names are referred to in the documents, a source said. Some of the fraudulent consignment cases were referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation for prosecution. The CDSCO created a new risk-linked drug inspection mechanism to selectively pick drug samples imported for inspection. Many risks were identified with Chinese API, the official said. While most of the bulk drugs are imported through 14 major ports, the Drugs Technical Advisory Board in February 2015 cleared the new ports and the container depot to receive the imported consignments carrying drugs. DH News Service While most of the bulk drugs are imported through 14 major ports, the Drugs Technical Advisory Board in February 2015 cleared the new ports and the container depot to receive the imported consignments carrying drugs Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday defended Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait who has come under attack from the Opposition parties for reportedly watching sleazy pictures on mobile phone during Tipu Jayanti in Raichur November 10. Prima facie it appears that he (Sait) has not committed any mistake. The minister has explained to me that he was going through updates on Tipu Jayanti celebrations held in Mysuru, Kodagu and other districts, Siddaramaiah told reporters after participating in Jawaharlal Nehru birth anniversary celebrations at the Vidhana Soudha here. He said that he has directed the cyber crime wing of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to look into the charges against Sait. Appropriate action will be taken based on the CID report, he added. Opposition parties, the BJP and the JD(S), have been demanding that the chief minister should immediately drop Sait from the Cabinet. Asked whether he has submitted a report to the Congress high command on the issue, Siddaramaiah said Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president G Parameshwara has apprised the high command of the matter. State Congress leaders were in for embarrassment when one of the party workers openly condemned Sait for reportedly watching sleazy pictures and demanded action against him. Congress worker Manjula Nagaraj said that the party was once led by great leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The Congress should take action against Sait without any delay, she said at the top of her voice when the party leaders had gathered to celebrate the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at the KPCC office. Parameshwara immediately said that appropriate action will be taken by the party. Crop loss relief Siddaramaiah said that he would write another letter to the Centre seeking its immediate intervention to provide relief to the state farmers who have suffered heavy crop damages due to both drought and flood conditions. As many as 139 taluks are reeling under drought, and the state has already submitted memorandums to the Centre. Dr A V V Lakshmi, a professor of gynaecology, and her husband Vijayasaradhi, who were on the run since October 25 following the death of postgraduate medical student B Sandhya Rani (27), were arrested in Bengaluru on Monday. Sandhya had committed suicide by injecting herself a lethal dose of anesthetic drug, alleging harassment by Dr Lakshmi who was teaching at Guntur Government Medical College. In a diary, Sandhya accused her of harassment. She had also written separate letters to her husband, a pediatrician, her two brothers and the police in which she mentioned Dr Lakshmi several times. Police also arrested a realtor Tella Haribabu of Guntur who reportedly helped the couple to escape to Puducherry after Sandhyas death. The couple had discarded their mobile phones and SIM cards and avoided using debit/credit cards all these days, DySP Guntur (West) M Saritha said. The two were caught while they were traveling in a car. The state government will waive interest on farm loans if defaulting farmers pay the principal till March next year. Speaking after inaugurating a programme to mark the 63rd All-India Co-operation Week here on Monday, Co-operation Minister H S Mahadeva Prasad said that the state government had waived Rs 2.66 crore borrowed by farmers to sink borewells in case the borewells did not yield water. By disbursing Rs 10,400 crore, Karnataka stands second in the country in terms of extending financial assistance through co-operative institutions. Madhya Pradesh tops the country by disbursing Rs 11,000 crore as short-term crop loans, the minister said. Calling upon people of all sections of society to participate in the co-operative movement, the minister said that at present 3.60 lakh BPL cardholders and 3.34 lakh Scheduled Castes/Tribes were involved in the co-operation movement. He said that sector had been functioning in a transparent manner and there was still room for improving its performance. Sahakara Ratna awards were conferred on S R Lakshmikantha Reddy, the president of Merchants Souharda Sahakara Bank, Chitradurga; Shivanagouda S Biradar, director of Karnataka State Co-operative Federation; T M Chanrashekharaiah, vice president of Karnataka State Co-operative Apex Bank and M N Ashwathanarayana, a retired official of the department of co-operation. Minister for Higher Education Basavaraj Raya Raddi, Lok Sabha member Sanganna Karadi and MLA K Ragh-avendra Hitnal were present. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with the House speaker, Paul Ryan, could help secure early legislative victories. In selecting Priebus, Trump passed over Stephen Bannon, a right-wing media provocateur. But the president-elect named Bannon his senior counselor and chief West Wing strategist, signaling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Bannon and a continuing disdain for the Republican establishment. The dual appointments with Bannon given top billing in the official announcement instantly created rival centres of power in the Trump White House. Bannons selection demonstrated the power of grass-roots activists who backed Trumps candidacy. Some of them have long traded in the conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages of Breitbart News, the website that Bannon ran for much of the last decade. Bannon brings to the post a background that includes misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and allegations that he threatened his wife with retribution if she testified in the criminal case, according to a police report and court records. The grass-roots activists may be angered by the selection of Priebus as chief of staff, viewing him as a deal-maker who will be too eager to push the new president toward compromise on issues like taxes, immigration, trade, healthcare and environment. In a statement on Sunday afternoon, the transition team emphasised that the two men would work as equal partners to transform the federal government. The arrangement appeared aimed at ensuring that both men would be required to sign off on many decisions jointly. And Bannon was assured that he reports directly to Trump, not to Priebus. The simultaneous announcement and competing lines of authority are consistent with Trumps management style in his businesses and in his campaign: creating rival power structures beneath him and encouraging them to battle it out. It is also a reflection of who has the ear of the president-elect: his children, and especially his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Both had argued that the chief of staff job should not be held by someone too controversial, according to several people familiar with the decision-making inside the transition effort. Kushner is likely to wield great influence over the new president regardless of whether he holds a formal title. The New York Times China has again prodded India to sign a new Code of Conduct for Border Control even as it remained non-committal on demarcating the de facto boundary between the two nations. New Delhi is cautiously assessing if the proposed code of conduct would in any way restrict itself from building infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which acts as a de facto border between India and China in the absence of a mutually agreed boundary, sources told DH. China renewed its push for the code of conduct during its recent engagements with India. President Pranab Mukherjees meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 26 saw China stressing the need for improving the management of its border with India and upgrading measures to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC. Xi raised the issue again during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Goa. Chinas State Councillor Yang Jiechi suggested discussion on the Code of Conduct when he had a meeting with Modis National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in Hyderabad on November 4. Doval and Yang are at present Special Representatives of India and China for negotiations on boundary dispute and strategic consultations. Their discussion in Hyderabad on November 4, however, focused more on ironing out the newer wrinkles in bilateral relations. They agreed to hold the 20th round of boundary negotiation in New Delhi next year. An official told DH that the recent standoff between border guards of India and China on the LAC at Demchok in Jammu and Kashmir could be a ploy by Beijing to nudge New Delhi to agree on a Code of Conduct on Border Control. The standoff at Demchok started after the border guards of China protested against a project to build an irrigation canal in the territory claimed by India. Sources in New Delhi said India was not averse to discussing a new document to ensure peace and tranquillity along the disputed LAC with China, but it would do so only after ensuring that its sovereign right to develop infrastructure on its territory remained protected. DH News Service Despite the over four-month unrest, opposition from separatists and fear of appearing unprepared for exams, nearly 95% students across Kashmir took their Class XII board examinations on Monday. Out of 31,964 students enrolled for appearing in the examination, 30,213 appeared in todays (Monday) paper at 484 exam centres across the Valley, Zahoor Ahmad Chatt, chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education, told reporters. He said 98% students appeared in the exams in south Kashmirs Anantnag district, which remained the epicentre of the ongoing unrest. Authorities had made elaborate security arrangements for the smooth conduct of the examinations as there was apprehension of violence. Among the students who opted for the November session instead of March, despite schools remaining closed for four months, were thousands of girls. Who would miss the opportunity of 50% rebate in syllabus? one girl told DH outside Kothi Bagh Higher Secondary School in Srinagar. We had not even covered 50% of the syllabus. It is an effort on our part to take the exam for 50% syllabus, Saba, another student, said. Nearly one lakh students are scheduled to take the boards, amid heightened security arrangements. Over the past month, a debate was raging on whether the exams should be held now or in March. While the government was for holding the exams in November, some of the students, backed by separatist groups, were protesting against the decision and wanted it to be conducted in March. The government, however, said that those students who are unable to appear for the exams in November can take it in March, but with the full syllabus. The schools in the Valley went on a two-week summer holiday on July 1, but could not resume functioning due to the unrest, which was triggered following the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8. More than 30 schools have been torched over the past two months. Most of the buildings were gutted mysteriously after the state government started, in futility, efforts to resume school and college work. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday urged the Centre to take immediate measures to introduce Rs 500 currency notes to provide relief to the common man. In a three-page letter to the Union Finance Minister Arund Jaitely, he said people are facing problems due to non-availability of currency notes of smaller denominations. Release of Rs 2,000 currency notes has not mitigated the problems of people. Hence, they are struggling to get smaller denomination notes by standing in long queues, he added. The chief minister has suggested that the time limit for use of old currency notes for exempted categories be extended till December 30. It can be done as people have been already given time till December-end to exchange old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Use of old currency notes should be allowed not only in government hospitals and pharmacies but also in private hospitals, diagnostics labs and blood banks. Priority counters If that is not found feasible, then banks may be directed to set up a priority counter designated for payment to these institutions using old currency based on the authentication, he added. Steps should be taken to ensure supply of cash to co-operative banking institutions as farmers are dependent on them. Besides, minimum withdrawal limits for registered traders and commission agents of the APMC markets may be enhanced to enable them to pay small and marginal farmers, Siddaramaiah suggested. Earlier, speaking to reporters after participating in Jawaharlal Nehru birth anniversary at the Vidhana Soudha here, the chief minister said people are facing lot of inconvenience as the Centre failed to take precautionary measures. State Congress president G Parameshwara hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for inconvenience caused to people by demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, saying that measures being taken by the Centre are taking a toll on the countrys economy. Nobody is against bringing in changes. We dont oppose actions against black money. But, there is no place for dictatorship in democracy. The economy has been badly affected due to Modis decisions, Parameshwara stated. Speaking to reporters after taking part in Jawaharlal Nehru birth anniversary programme at the KPCC office, he said that a child lost its life in Hyderabad as its parents could not get cash to pay for the treatment. Members of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) will go on strike across the country on Wednesday in protest against the draft National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill which proposes to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI). In Bengaluru, close to 300 doctors associated with the IMA will protest in front of Mahatma Gandhi statue, Maurya Circle, from 11 am to 1 pm, and then submit a memorandum to the chief minister, the health minister and the governor. Dr K K Aggarwal, secretary general, IMA, said protests would be held in every district in the country. The IMA says the bill is against democracy. No one can convert a regulatory body into a nominated body. The proposed bill provides for establishing a nominated body in place of the MCI. This is unacceptable, he said. Doctors also want a Central law to protect medical professionals from violence while they are on duty. Opposing a provision in the draft bill that states that even a single-doctor clinic must register separately, Aggarwal said, If clinics are to be treated as an establishment, they will have to follow the corporate structure. Why have another registration under the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010, when a doctor already has one under the State Medical Council, he asked. Doctors are also opposing another provision in the draft bill that states that there shall be no penalisation for clerical mistakes in various acts such as the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act. Besides, compensation (fee) must not to be decided by the income of the patient to avoid any discrimination in the treatment of the poor and the rich, the IMA said. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has called a special session of the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday to discuss the crisis resulting from Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision to demonetise of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. He pulled out Rs 250 from his pocket to highlight the cash crunch that people, including him, are facing due to the Centres poor planning to implement the November 8 demonetisation that has forced people to queue up outside banks and ATMs. The revenue department may see if it is possible to offer free meals for those who were being forced to go without food due to problems related to exchange of currency notes, he told reporters. Poor people are losing sleep over exchanging currency notes. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep," Kejriwal said. He pointed to the plight of farmers and traders suffering due to cash crunch and questioned why the country's 125 crore people were being targeted instead of the few lakhs allegedly possessing black money. Slamming the Centre for the hardships being faced by the public, Kejriwal said the Delhi government has decided to deploy civil defence volunteers for offering water and assistance to people waiting outside banks and ATMs. The AAP leader repeated his demand for a roll back of demonetisation and said Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have let down people due to poor plan to execute the scheme. Complete anarchy all over. But Modi is very stubborn. He will not change even if the country suffers, said Kejriwal in a tweet later. Kejriwal also expressed his willingness to discuss a joint strategy against the demonetisation along with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday. How are the traders going to continue their business when the withdrawal limit is so low. What about the farmers who are supposed to harvest their crop in the next one week, he asked. Leader of Opposition in Assembly Vijender Gupta of the BJP expressed surprise on calling of the special session of Assembly on Tuesday. Convening of special session by the Delhi government without duly informing the members, despite Monday being public holiday, is totally in violation of dignity and decorum of the House, he said. DH News Service Gupta said the Centres demonetisation step is a bold initiative to bring back thousands of millions of black money but the AAP came to power in the name of ending corruption has taken no step to eradicate it during last 20 months. He said the BJP will expose every political conspiracy of the Delhi government and give a befitting response to their moves which damage the initiative of Prime Minister Narender Modi to eradicate corruption in the country. Fourteen-year-old Nithin H A from Arameri village in Kodagu who received the Hoysala Bravery award for rescuing his friend, Sufiyan, from drowning has only one regret. I could not save Salahuddin who had also fallen in. The two boys had accidentally fallen into the pond when Nithin acted swiftly, extending his umbrella and pulling Sufiyan in. Unfortunately, his umbrella broke and he could not rescue Salahuddin. Nithin was presented the award at a ceremony organised by the Department of Women and Child Development in Jawahar Bal Bhavan, where children from across the state were felicitated for their achievements. Four other children- Sukanya K S from Bagepalli, Chiranth D R from Shikaripur, Shreyas N Rao and Shashikumar G M from Mysuru- were conferred with the Hoysala and Keladi Chennamma awards for their presence of mind to save the lives of others. They each received a cash prize of Rs 10,000, a memento, citation and a medal. Exceptional talent in the fields of art, sports, music, culture, innovation and scholastics was recognised through the Exceptional Achievement Award presented to 17 children, who had been recommended by the state government for the National Award. Seema Ningappa Shettar from Indiranagar, Bengaluru, realised that rural schools lacked funds for lab equipment like microscopes. In the regular microscope, only one person can view the specimen at a time. So I made a digital microscope which uses a mobile camera and a convex lens. It is much cheaper than other microscopes. she explained. The Class 9 students innovation won her the fifth-place at Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE), organised by Ministry of Science and Technology. The Department also conferred Child Welfare Awards on four individuals and four institutions for their commendable service in the field of child welfare. Akshara Foundation, Bengaluru; Anthyodaya Social Service Society, Bagalkot; Margadarshi Society, Kalaburagi and Parents Association of Deaf Children received the award which carried a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, a memento and a citation. Srirama Reddy from Byrapalli, Kolar, Sridhara Hande from Udupi, Nagarathna Sunila from Belagavi and Santhosh Bapu from Bidar received the award for their work in education, arts and healthcare for children. They received cash prize of Rs 25,000 each. Guest lecturers working in 412 government first-grade colleges across the state would go on protest on Tuesday seeking better job security and higher pay. Out of 14,531 guest lecturers under the association, 4,000 of them have decided to boycott invigilation duty for the ongoing degree exams. Srinivasachar N, president, Karnataka Association of Guest Lecturers of First Grade Colleges, said that even as the exams might not be disrupted completely, not all invigilators would report to work. We are seeking job security. Besides this, a hike is also overdue. We have given representations to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah twice. However, there has been no response. When we met him, he had assured us that he would look into the matter once the Cauvery issue is sorted out. There has been no communication yet, he added. The guest lecturers were also assured that a committee comprising writer Baragur Ramachandrappa, IAS officer Bharat Lal Meena and representatives from the association would be formed to look into this. This is yet to materialise. Srinivasachar argued that Haryana, Tripura and Delhi have regularised guest lecturer posts. Also, he said that there was disparity in pay. While in the other states, guest lecturers earn between Rs 22,000 and Rs 25,000, those in Karnataka are paid between Rs 9,500 and 11,500. The state government is saving Rs 1.5 crore a month through this. Salary not paid. Srinivasachar said that even as it is the fifth month of the academic year, guest lecturers have not received even a months pay. The chief minister speaks of delivering social justice. Nothing can be more unjust than this. How can we run a household with this pay? Srinivasachar questioned. Guest lecturers will take part in a protest rally on Tuesday starting from the City Railway Station. They would then lay siege to the chief ministers residence. Mayor G Padmavathi took BBMP chief engineer Siddegowda to task for the choked stormwater drain near the Gaali Anjaneya temple on Monday. Padmavathi visited Gaali Anjaneya Temple following complaints that the desilting of the stormwater drain has not been carried out for quite long time. The choked drain is responsible for the flooding in the temple. After giving an earful to Siddegowda, she directed him to remove the silt at the earliest. Regarding the effluent treatment plant to stop sewage flowing into the drain, officials told the Mayor that the Palike has paid the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) Rs 25 lakh for the plant, but the work has not started yet. She told officials to pursue the matter with the board and get the work completed. Padmavathi also visited the underpass near the KHB Colony in Govindarajnagar which is going on at a snail's pace. Corporator of the ward Umesh Shetty sought the Mayor's intervention to complete the project. Irked with the complaint, the Mayor sternly warned the officials to finish the work at the earliest. Chief engineer of Palike's project division, K T Nagaraj, told the Mayor that the work would be over by April. The Mojo on the Mojave American Apparel , which announced last week that its UK business was going into administration, has filed for bankruptcy in the US for the second time in just over a year. The group voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will continue to trade as it negotiates a possible sale of its assets to Canadian clothes manufacturer Gildan Activewear. Gildan said on Monday that it has entered into an agreement to buy the worldwide intellectual property rights to the American Apparel brand and certain assets from the fashion company for around $66m in cash. Gildan will also separately purchase inventory from American Apparel to ensure a seamless supply of goods in the printwear channel as it integrates the brand within its Printwear business. However, Gildan will not be purchasing any retail store assets. The closing of the transaction is subject to approvals by the American Apparel bankruptcy process and customary conditions, and is expected to occur in the first quarter of next year. Gildan said: The American Apparel brand is a highly recognised brand among consumers and within the North American printwear channel. The American Apparel brand would represent a strong complementary addition to the company's portfolio of brands. The acquisition will create revenue growth opportunities by leveraging Gildan's extensive distribution network in North American and international printwear markets to further increase the brand's penetration in the faster growing fashion basics segments of these markets. In addition, with American Apparel's strong heritage as a consumer brand, the company will evaluate potential wholesale opportunities for leveraging the brand within its Branded Apparel business. Barack Obama 's last foreign visit as president of the United States will be focused on cash-strapped Greece , and he said on Sunday that the country needs to receive "meaningful debt relief" in order to ensure stability in the eurozone. The European Union is coming under increasing pressure following Britain's anticipated exit from the bloc, and Greece is still reeling from a debt crisis which has left its finances crippled. Many European leaders have argued intensely about the correct manner in which to approach the Greek issue, but outgoing president Obama says it is clear that further relief is the only method which guarantees a return to prosperous times for Greece. "I am a strong believer that to make reforms sustainable, people need hope," he told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. "The International Monetary Fund has said that debt relief is crucial to put Greece's economy on a sustainable path and set the stage for a return to prosperity." Other leaders have called for fundamental reform of economic legislation in Greece, but Obama added that this must be kickstarted with a nominal writedown. National debt currently stands at 330bn, 180% of its GDP. "I will continue to urge Greece's creditors to take the steps needed to ensure the country is well placed to return to robust economic growth, including by providing meaningful debt relief," he said in the interview. "Getting that done would not only fuel the Greek economic recovery, it would show that Europe can make its economy work for everyone." Obama's visit will come at a time when he perhaps has the least power available to a president, known as the "lame duck period" while the newly-elected Donald Trump waits to take over. Trump may not be so conciliatory towards Greece's debt problems when he moves into the Oval Office in January of next year, having espoused various isolationist policies during his election campaign. Richard Branson has warned that if Donald Trump were to introduce all the policies that he maintained during his presidential election campaign in the US there would be disastrous consequences. The owner of the Virgin Group told Fortune that perhaps the most worrying aspect of a Trump victory is his attitude towards climate change, but if he chooses to surround himself with "decent people", then he can be a success during his four-year term. "What I pray is that he surrounds himself with decent people, and that he will want a presidency that he can be proud of," Branson said during the interview. "He's going to have to compromise, because if he pursues the policies he talked about when he was elected, I think it would backfire horribly." He added that it now becomes the responsibility of business leaders to ensure that investment in clean energy and the fight against climate change continues, despite Trump's apathy towards the issue. "When you have a new government that doesnt believe in global warming, it's going to be up to us business people to make sure we create tens of thousands of jobs in the clean energy space," Branson said. The Paris Agreement came into effect earlier this month, but Trump has suggested that he may pull the United States out of the ground-breaking accords, putting the deal in jeopardy. Markets in Asia finished mixed on Monday, with Japan leading the region as the yen weakened and Tokyo released some positive economic data, while a series of deadly earthquakes saw the New Zealand dollar face a volatile session. The Nikkei 225 was up 1.71% to 17,672.62, with the yen remaining weaker against the greenback - it was last 1.21% weaker at JPY 107.94 per $1. During the session, Japans third quarter gross domestic product numbers were released, showing the domestic economy grew 2.2% year-on-year. That was more than double the Reuters-polled estimate for a 0.9% uptick. On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite was up 0.44% at 3.210.10, and the Shenzhen Composite added 0.3% at 2,144.30. There was mixed economic data out of Beijing during the session, with fixed asset investment rising ahead of market expectations in the year-to-date to October, by 8.3%. Industrial output and retail sales both missed forecasts for October, at 6.1% and 10% respectively, compared to Reuters-polled estimates for 6.2% and 10.7% growth. Chinese conglomerate LeEco broke its losing streak on Monday, settling up 1.77%. The technology firm had faced pressure in recent weeks, after its founder wrote to staff admitting the wide-reaching operation was facing cash shortages and funding problems. Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index was down 1.37% at 22222.22, while South Koreas Kospi finished down 0.51% at 1,974.40, as the countrys presidential crisis grew. Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets over the weekend, calling for president Park Geun-hye to step down after she admitted to allowing private individuals to influence her. The markets were still focused on a different president, however, with analysts pointing to evidence investors were taking a gentle approach to reacting to his taking over of the reins. The market will remain alert to any news on President-elect Trump's policies and possible appointments, noted National Australia Banks co-head of FX strategy Ray Attrill. In this regard we may be due for something of a reality check. Oil prices were lower towards the end of Asian trading hours, with Brent crude last down 0.31% at $44.61 and West Texas Intermediate losing 0.44% at $43.22 per barrel. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was off 0.47% at 5,345.70, with the hefty financials and materials subindexes dragging on the benchmark, down 0.53% and 1.31% respectively. Of the major banks, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Westpac Banking Corporation both went ex-dividend, sending their shares down 1.45% and 3.17% respectively. The sunburnt countrys gold miners were also softer, with Evolution Mining plummeting 9.65%, Newcrest Mining off 7.08% and Northern Star Resources sliding 9.16%. It was a continuation of the losses seen in the safe haven metal since late last week, when golds appeal faded as the markets realised a hasty reaction to Donald Trumps win in the US presidential election was unwarranted. The ASX gold subindex was down 7.94% for the session. New Zealands markets were quite literally shaken up after an extraordinary series of earthquakes rocked much of the country - with the most violent tremors focused on the South Island and the capital city of Wellington, where the NZX is based. The S&P/NZX 50 still finished higher, adding 0.6% to 6,737.76, though the expected cost of the earthquake weighed in insurance stocks, with Tower down 7.06%. Infrastructure damage was most pronounced in the northern part of the Canterbury region, as well as in the Nelson, Marlborough and Tasman areas, with a number of state highways blocked off and railways lines severed. There was also substantial structural damage in the coastal town of Kaikoura, with one building collapse killing at least one person, and a tsunami of two metres threatening the area for a time. The extent of the damage in Kaikoura would not be known for some time as all roads and railway routes remained impassable, though tourists in the popular whalewatching destination were being airlifted out. Weakness in the Kiwi dollar was also felt as a result of the shaking - it was last 0.39% behind the greenback at NZD 1.4106 per $1. Analysts compared the weaker dollar to the reaction seen after the much more devastating and deadly Christchurch earthquake in February 2011. Sharp falls in the currency in the days following the February 2011 earthquake were reversed in subsequent weeks and months as anticipation of insurance payouts from overseas and the positive economic impact of the rebuilding of Christchurch were factored in, Ray Attrill noted. On the other side of the Tasman Sea, the other down under dollar was also weaker, last retreating 0.08% to AUD 1.3259 per $1. Stocks had trimmed most of their earlier gains come midday on Monday as sovereign bond yields continued moving higher, with investors trying to digest the implications of the new US administration for America's economic policy. At 1210 GMT, the FTSE 100 was up by 0.23% or 15.73 points to 6,745.34. In an interview with CBS's 60 minutes, aired on 13 November, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would appoint Reince Preibus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, as his chief of staff. Some analysts suggested that was a market-friendly outcome. Nonetheless, Trump's decision to retain his controversial campaign chairman, Stephen Bannon, as a senior counsellor, was described by the BBC as his "keeping an outsider devil on his shoulder". As regards economic policy, analysts at Morgan Stanley optimistically said that under the most likely scenario, trade protectionism would go little further than strong rhetoric and Trump would deliver measurable tax reform and infrastructure spending that, on net, provide a healthy lift to the economy and enable a pick-up in the pace of monetary policy normalisation. In such a scenario, GDP growth is lifted by 0.3 percentage points in both 2017 and 2018, while the Federal Reserve would hike rates two times in 2017 and three times in 2018, Morgan Stanley said. However, other analysts broached the possibility of more adverse scenarios as well. As of 1205 GMT the yield on the benchmark 10-year gilt was up by 10 basis points to 1.46% and that on French debt of a similar maturity by 11 basis points to 0.86%. Linked to the above, on Monday ratings agency Moody's said the outlook for government debt markets around the world in 2017 was "negative" based on its expectations for continued low growth and a shift towards fiscal stimulus that would increase already high public sector debt. Meanwhile, oil prices were again heading lower. West Texas Intermediate was off 1.59% to $42.73 a barrel and Brent crude was losing 1.13% at $44.25. On the corporate front, housebuilder Taylor Wimpey advanced as it said in a trading update that the UK housing market remained resilient, despite the implications of Brexit still being unclear, and reported strong trading in the second half. Irish distribution and business support services company DCC surged after reporting a rise in half-year revenue and saying full-year operating profit is likely to be ahead of market expectations. Legal & General was on the front foot after announcing the completion of a 1.10bn pension buyout deal with Rolls-Royce. Standard Life gained ground despite saying that the possible combination involving its Indian joint venture, HDFC Life, and Max Life Insurance Company, Max Financial Services and Max India, had hit a roadblock. Bookmaker William Hill pushed higher after saying it expects full-year adjusted operating profit to be at the top end of its guidance, while Tesco rallied as HSBC upped its stance on the stock to buy from hold. Irish convenience food group Greencore was a high riser after reporting a jump in full-year revenue and earnings as it hiked its dividend and announced the proposed acquisition of Peacock Foods for an enterprise value of $747.5m. Shares in gaming software development company Playtech rose as it agreed to buy Consolidated Financial Holdings for up to $120m a deal it said will enhance its position as it continues to build a B2B offering in its financials division. Market Movers FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,750.32 0.30% FTSE 250 (MCX) 17,458.24 0.08% techMARK (TASX) 3,310.97 0.05% FTSE 100 - Risers DCC (DCC) 6,285.00p 4.14% Barclays (BARC) 208.85p 3.52% Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 208.00p 3.17% Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 337.50p 3.15% Wolseley (WOS) 4,630.00p 2.93% Legal & General Group (LGEN) 236.30p 2.78% Prudential (PRU) 1,513.00p 2.40% Capita (CPI) 563.00p 2.27% Dixons Carphone (DC.) 333.80p 2.24% Aviva (AV.) 461.50p 2.17% FTSE 100 - Fallers Polymetal International (POLY) 804.50p -3.83% Mediclinic International (MDC) 733.00p -3.68% National Grid (NG.) 931.10p -2.57% Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,535.00p -2.42% Sky (SKY) 770.50p -2.22% Severn Trent (SVT) 2,132.00p -2.07% United Utilities Group (UU.) 861.50p -1.99% Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 5,840.00p -1.93% SSE (SSE) 1,455.00p -1.89% Fresnillo (FRES) 1,408.00p -1.88% FTSE 250 - Risers Greencore Group (GNC) 327.60p 12.23% Playtech (PTEC) 913.00p 3.46% Shawbrook Group (SHAW) 256.40p 3.05% OneSavings Bank (OSB) 318.00p 2.91% Crest Nicholson Holdings (CRST) 448.60p 2.80% GVC Holdings (GVC) 642.00p 2.64% G4S (GFS) 249.50p 2.59% JRP Group (JRP) 127.90p 2.32% Paragon Group Of Companies (PAG) 348.60p 2.32% Stagecoach Group (SGC) 204.90p 2.14% FTSE 250 - Fallers Centamin (DI) (CEY) 136.10p -3.54% Pennon Group (PNN) 770.00p -3.08% Tullow Oil (TLW) 239.30p -3.04% Hochschild Mining (HOC) 239.70p -2.88% AO World (AO.) 165.10p -2.71% Hill & Smith Holdings (HILS) 1,210.00p -2.58% Countrywide (CWD) 197.30p -2.47% Mitchells & Butlers (MAB) 276.10p -2.27% DFS Furniture (DFS) 221.20p -2.12% Countryside Properties (CSP) 234.10p -2.01% Germany has reported much increased interest from financial institutions looking to move to the country following the UK's vote to leave the European Union. After reports that numerous banks were looking to up sticks from London and cross the water to the continent or Ireland, the German financial centre of Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, has been pitching itself as the best option. "Frankfurt is a love at second sight. But a love that lasts all the longer," said state secretary Thomas Steffen, a senior finance ministry official, from a banking conference on Monday, according to Reuters. "I have to say that we at the finance ministry are registering an increasing number of requests. And we are very, very open to such discussions," Steffen said. Reuters reported last week that Goldman Sachs is mulling a move of some of its operations from London to Frankfurt, while prior to the referendum, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon said he may move around 4,000 jobs outside the UK if Brexit hit the bank's ability to do business in Europe. Anthony Browne, chief executive of the British Bankers Association, said last month that many bigger banks were preparing to relocate out of the UK in the first few months of 2017 amid fears that 'passporting' rights for financial companies would be withdrawn if the UK pursues a 'hard Brexit'. Greencore reported a jump in full-year revenue and earnings as it hiked its dividend and announced the proposed acquisition of Peacock Foods for an enterprise value of $747.5m. In its preliminary results for the year to the end of September, the company said revenue was up 10.6% to 1.48bn, or 5.9% higher on a like-for-like basis, while group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation were up 13.9% to 138.4m. Convenience Foods revenue grew 6.6% on a LFL basis to 1.44bn and Greencore proposed a final dividend of 4.10p per share, giving a total dividend of 6.65p per share, up 8.1%. Greencore said it saw continued strong momentum across UK and US food-to-go activity, with 10.5% like-for-like revenue growth, well ahead of market performance. Also on Monday, the group announced the proposed acquisition of Peacock Foods, a US convenience food manufacturer which generated revenue of around $1bn and adjusted EBITDA of $72.1m in the year to September. Greencore said the deal has the potential to transform its market and channel position in the US and create a strong platform for long-term profitable growth. The acquisition will be funded by a fully underwritten rights issue offered to qualifying shareholders to raise a total of 439.4m and new debt facilities of approximately 200m. Chief executive officer Patrick Coveney said: This has been another year of strong performance for Greencore, and these results should be seen as a clear indication that our strategy of focusing on the UK and US Convenience Foods markets is continuing to work well. In the UK, we have delivered substantial like-for-like growth against the backdrop of a challenging retail market and an uncertain economic environment, and in the US we now have a business that is primed to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. Given the underlying commercial momentum across the group, our strong market positions, the transformational acquisition of Peacock Foods in the US that we have announced separately today, and our recent new business wins, we are confident about Greencore's future prospects." Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. IT service provider Wistron ITS has reported record revenue, operating profit and net profit for the first half of 2022 and it remains optimistic about the overall market demand and... 4 takeaways from Fox News town hall with Tim Ryan, J.D. Vance Republican J.D. Vance and Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan participated in a town hall in Columbus hosted by Fox News Tuesday night. Subscriber content preview SPOKANE (AP) U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse and numerous other Republican lawmakers have sent a letter opposing the removal of four dams on the Snake River to restore wild runs of salmon. The lawmakers sent the letter on Thursday to members of the House Appropriations Committee, asking that money be retained in the federal budget to operate the dams. Newhouse represents central Washington. . . . Subscriber content preview Photo by Legacy Partners [enlarge] Legacy Partners said it has sold the 177-unit Milehouse apartments in Redmond for $68.45 million. . . . Subscriber content preview FEDERAL WAY The 136-unit Brightwater Apartments sold for $18.7 million, according to King County records. The seller was Brightwater Apartments Inc., associated with original developer Daniel Lim. The buyer was FSC Brightwater Associates LLC, affiliated with investor FSC Realty of Beverly Hills and apartment manager Westwood Residential, of Frisco, Texas. . . . Banks laden with Rs2,00,000-cr of demonetised notes, no money to disburse Even as people of all denominations lined up to draw cash from banks and ATMs, banks across the country are reported to have collected over Rs200,000 crore (about $30 billion) in deposits in the days since 9 November. But, with the banned bills accounting for 86 per cent of money now out of circulation, banks are now under increased pressure to replenish cash after the Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes were demonetised in a surprise move on 8 November. ATMs ran dry a few hours after banks replenished cash of lower denominations, which were soon exhausted with people drawing all they could using all sorts of cards and in umpteen numbers. Banks reported more than 70 million transactions through midday on 12 November, according to a finance ministry statement. With the rush to book train and plane tickets over after announcement that refunds will not come in the form of new currency, even on Sunday, people were seen queuing up to deposit cash in hand. However, ATMs ran empty for cash withdrawals. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, meanwhile, said there is adequate money in the currency chests at more than 4,000 locations and these will be loaded into ATMs after re-configuration of dispensing machines will be completed within two weeks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. "A big regret is that people are getting inconvenienced, but currency replacement of this magnitude will cause some problems," Jaitley said at a press conference in New Delhi on Saturday. "There are long, but orderly queues. Such a big currency replacement can't be done overnight." Lenders have been caught unawares by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unexpected announcement of the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes as part of a crackdown on tax evasion and accumulation of ill-gotten wealth. Jaitley urged people not to rush to banks immediately and wait for a few days and to conduct financial transactions using electronic transfers, checks and credit and debit cards. State Bank of India, the country's largest, got deposits of about Rs47,868 crore, Jaitley said. It handled Rs54,370 crore of cash transactions in all, including deposits, withdrawals and exchange of banknotes, starting Thursday till 12:15 p.m. on Saturday, Jaitley said. SBI and its associates account for about 20 to 25 per cent of the nation's banking transactions, he said. Jaitley also said, it was a deliberate policy move by the government not to reconfigure 200,000-odd ATMs beforehand as it would have only helped to leak government's moves. The finance ministry also claimed that about 1,20,000 out of the 2,00,000 ATMs are operational, and are dispensing Rs100 rupee notes, which looked an exaggeration considering the fact that at least in Mumbai, most of the ATMs remained cash-less on Sunday as well. The newly-established solar-powered mobile phone towers in Jharkhand's Naxal-hit areas are empowering security forces as well as tribals and helping to counter the influence of extremists. Not only have they improved the movement of security forces but also allowed them to more effectively neutralise extreme-Left Naxalites or Maoists who had created a reign of terror in the area, reports the Press Trust of India. "Earlier, Naxals would demolish cellphone towers or cut their power supply, thereby hampering communication in the entire area. "Now, the Central Reserve Police Force provides round-the-clock security to these towers which are solar-powered," Assistant Commandant, CRPF, Matlong Krishna Choubey said. These newly-established towers are powered by solar energy and the batteries can supply power for at least a week in a single charge, he said. They are interconnected with other towers through latest wireless technology and provide signals in a radius of five kilometres. "The movement of CRPF troops are effective now due to the establishment of these cellphone towers. Our informers are now able to provide us vital information regarding movement of Naxals, who have largely been neutralised here in Latehar," Chaubey said. The establishment of these cellphone towers is hailed as a major victory against Naxals who never wanted the villagers and the government to connect. Locals said that in some parts of Latehar district, they can even surf internet in 4G speed and complete their net-related work through smartphones. However, most parts are connected by 2G services as of now. "We can fill job-related forms and access government schemes through our cellphones. These solar-powered cell phones come handy," local resident Shiv Yadav told PTI. As part of the NDA government's ambitious plan to strengthen communication flow in tribal and Naxalite areas in India, state-run telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has established as many as 2199 solar-powered mobile phone towers in 10 Naxal-infested states. The programme was approved by the government in 2014. The 2,199 towers were to be set up before December 2016 and the work has already been completed. Israel President Reuven Rivlin lands in Mumbai for six-day India visit Israel president Reuven Rivlin flew into Mumbai today on his six-day visit to this country, during which he will visit sites of several joint project besides discuss areas of cooperation between the two countries. Rivlin, who is accompanied by his wife and a large delegation of businessmen and academicians, will leave for New Delhi later in the day. Rivlin will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agrotech conference in Chandigarh. Rivlin will pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in Mumbai and lay wreaths at memorials for Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi and for Indian soldiers, who fell in the World War I in Israel and the Middle East. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks on 26 November 2008. He will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. Indian and Israeli universities are also expected to sign around 15 MoUs in the field of research besides promoting exchange of faculty between the two countries during Rivlin's visit. Rivlin will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of cooperation and joint projects between the two nations. Promoting education ties between the two countries will be one of the top agendas of discussion and the MoUs to be signed between educational institutions will include both general and specific. ''The focus of general MoUs will be more towards faculty exchange. There are 15 MoUs in the pipeline between Israeli education institutions and some of the top Indian universities like Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mumbai University and OP Jindal University among others,'' said minister counsellor, head of public diplomacy, Embassy of Israel, Ditza Froim. ''By unique MoUs, we mean the ones that are related to promoting joint research between the two countries. In 2013, a joint research programme was started between the two countries under which researchers from both nations joined hands to work in areas of life sciences and chemistry. The idea now is to further strengthen the research programme in areas like agriculture, food security and entrepreneurship and give more grants to students,'' she added. Addressing Israeli media before his departure, Rivlin termed India as a ''close friend'', and described the two countries as places of ''innovation and inspiration''. ''I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common,'' Rivlin said late yesterday, just before leaving for New Delhi. ''Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer,'' he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes presidents and senior representatives of 13 Israeli academic institutions who are expected to sign 15 separate agreements between Israeli and Indian educational institutions. ''The issue of international cooperation in higher education and the expansion of academic ties between Israel and the world in particular with India is one of the central aims of the multi-year plan for higher education in Israel,'' said Yaffa Zilbershats, head the Council for Higher Education's budget committee. The expansion of academic ties would include student exchanges, joint research projects and the founding of inter-institutional fora to promote academic cooperation between Israeli and India universities and colleges, he noted. Rivlin, in the past, has complimented the Indian students in Israel, saying ''they are among the best'' of the lot. ''India represents a great challenge for Israeli to strengthen cooperation and partnership with their Indian counterparts,'' said Shraga Brosh, President of Manufacturers Association of Israel, who is heading the business delegation. ''I have no doubt that this will be a fruitful visit and forge long-lasting economic partnerships which will strengthen and help grow the bilateral trade between the countries'', Brosh said. Israel has been the second largest supplier of defence equipment to India for many years and its ''timely'' supply of Indian requirements during the Kargil War has earned it the tag of a 'reliable' partner. Donegal County Councillor, Sean McEniff, who took ill in Gran Canaria, was flown back from the sunshine island to Dublin on Saturday night. The long-serving politician is still on a ventilator and in an induced coma in a Dublin hospital, but his condition is stable, according to the family. In a brief statement issued yesterday afternoon, the McEniff family said: "The family would like to acknowledge the continued messages of good wishes and prayers for Sean's recovery. The family would also like to thank the medical professionals of Clinica Rocca in San Agustin who did an excellent job of caring for Sean in Gran Canaria." Cllr. McEniffs son Conor McEniff, told the special sitting of Ballyshannon District Court on November 3rd that his father might never be able to give evidence in a continuing case before the court. Cllr. McEniff was summonsed as a witness in the case, which involves former Bundoran Town Councillor Florence McNulty (56) of The Palace, Main Street, Bundoran, who is charged with allegedly assaulting Garda Helen Munnelly. Her son Joseph McNulty (34) of 85 Doran Close, Bundoran is charged with alleged threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour as is her husband, Thomas McNulty (57) of Main Street, Bundoran. All charges relate to an incident which occurred at Bundoran Town Council offices on February 10th, 2014. Under oath, Conor McEniff told the court, "My father is in an induced coma in a Spanish hospital. "He is not ever going to be able to give evidence in this case. He has serious heart conditions and is not able to deal with any stress. Even if he comes out of the coma in the next few weeks he probably won't be allowed to fly for another few weeks. The incident happened on Thursday last and he was due back in Ireland on Tuesday last. His heart specialist has told him that he is in no fit state to give evidence." All defendants have given evidence and have denied all charges. Judge Kelly adjourned the case until December 9th for a full update on Cllr. McEniff's health. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. Home Four wheelers Mercedes-Benz R&D Center India Celebrates 20 Years oi-Sreejith Mercedes-Benz Research and Development Center India (MBRDI) is celebrating 20 years of in 2016. The Center was inaugurated in 1996 in Bangalore. Now, MBRDI is the largest R&D center for Daimler outside of Germany - with respect to the number of employees. {photo-feature} Home Two wheelers Benelli To Launch A Scrambler And A Tourer In India During 2017 oi-Rajkamal Benelli entered India recently and has seen very good success in the country. To keep the sales momentum going, the Italian motorcycle manufacturer has decided to launch two motorcycles the TRK 502 and the Leoncino. {photo-feature} Whether youre a freelancer, entrepreneur or a virtual worker, one thing you probably love about your job is the ability to work wherever and whenever you want. Youre not beholden to the 9 to 5 office life of the average corporate worker bee. Its great, right? Perhaps not always. Undoubtedly youve had days where your motivation to work has been sorely lacking. Flipping through Netflix is way more fun, and you can always pick up the slack in the evening or so you tell yourself. And then there are the days when you miss having coworkers to chat with. Even eating lunch by yourself all day, every day can get a little lonely. So you skip out of your home office and head for the nearest coffee shop. But youre distracted by someone in the corner loudly taking a call, and the bustle of traffic is overwhelming. You end up people-watching for a solid half hour before you realize you havent gotten a lick of work done. Amid all your concentration troubles, you start to wonder if that corporate office life is pretty good after all. Co-working Keeps Things Professional Well, parts of office life are nice, and others can definitely be tossed by the wayside. Co-working is a concept that tries to combine the best of both worlds. A co-working space is a shared office for freelancers and anyone else who needs a professional atmosphere to focus on their work. When co-working was still in its infancy, the work spaces were rather basic. There may have been desks, couches and a kitchen. These days, co-working offices have gotten a major facelift. Regus Australia, for example, has a receptionist that can field phone calls for you and accept your business mail, giving you a big boost in professional credibility. Its also more common for meeting rooms to be available, as well as snack bars, phone centers (where you can talk without disrupting your fellow workers) and office equipment like photocopiers and fax machines. If your line of work means that you consult with clients in person, you might feel like your home office doesnt give the professional vibe you want. Nor does a coffee shop, which doesnt lend much privacy. Instead, tell your client to come to your office at your co-working space. Youll benefit from a professional first-impression and all the amenities you could ask for, including projectors to help you give a presentation, or white boards to help you brainstorm ideas. In fact, if you have a small team of employees but dont want to spend money on the overhead of your own personal office, purchasing a co-working membership for each of your employees is an excellent choice. Social Perks of Co-Working Of course, the biggest incentive that co-working has to offer is the ability to socialize and make business connections. You can network locally and pick up new gigs via referrals. For example, your co-worker might be a freelance graphic designer who has a client with web coding needs. Your co-worker knows youre a coder, and refers her client on to you. Professional development events might be sponsored by the co-working space, giving you free or low-cost access to unique learning opportunities. And of course, you can participate in office parties throughout the year. Who doesnt love an excuse to eat sweets and drink wine? But you can also form lasting friendships at the water cooler. And because youre no ones boss or manager, nor are you competing for a promotion with anyone, you dont have to feel awkward about being friends with the people around you. Rules for Peaceful Co-working Co-working spaces typically operate with membership plans. For example, you can choose to drop in on limited days of the week, or upgrade for 24/7 access. Some spaces employ a cleaning crew, a caterer or on-site IT support. Others require members to pitch in to keep the space neat and tidy, to bring their own food and to troubleshoot their own IT problems. With co-working gaining popularity, however, the perks are becoming more and more competitive. Full-service co-working spaces are definitely trending. But each space will also have its own etiquette, whether spoken or unspoken. For example, some spaces tolerate more noise than others. But if there are multiple private rooms available, use one to take your conference call. Likewise, if you are the sort of person who needs almost complete silence in order to concentrate, plan on bringing sound cancelling headphones, listening to ambient music or stuffing yourself in a remote corner of the office. Know that everyone around you is trying to concentrate or get in the zone. Your neighbor might be annoyed if you break his or her concentration to ask how to format something in Word. Try to figure it out on your own first, and then ask someone who seems to be taking a break or whom you are confident can help you. Following kitchen etiquette is extremely important in a co-working space, as it is in any office. If you didnt bring it or it is not obviously for everyone, dont touch it. Theres no faster way to get on someones bad side than to eat the snack theyve been looking forward to all afternoon. In short, if you need to refresh your work life, try getting out of your home office and join a co-working space. About the Author: Cathy Habas is a professional writer, editor and Spanish-English translator. She collaborates with entrepreneurs from around the world to market their innovations and to reach a diverse audience. Cathy is also a member of the Build Niche Links writing team. At COP22 event, Nicholas Stern says agriculture and climate change inextricably linked The private sector must play a key role in addressing climate challenges in the agricultural sector and in helping farmers reduce their own impact on the climate, a conference on the sidelines of the United Nations COP22 climate talks in Marrakesh heard today. At the event staged by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Food and Climate Change: The Role of the Private Sector leading climate specialist Nicholas Stern said agricuture and climate change were inextricably linked. He noted that food production methods were already changing as a result of the risks posed by climate change. The private sector was aware that continued profitability of the food and agricultural sector depended on the preservation of environmental resources that were vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The momentum generated by last years Paris climate agreement and the new Sustainable Development Goals agreed in 2015 presented a valuable opportunity for private sector agricultural and food actors to take an active role in finding solutions to the common challenges which lie ahead, he said. The EBRDs Managing Director for Economics, Policy and Governance, Mattia Romani, told the conference that the Banks investments in agribusiness were all in the private sector, supporting the EBRDs drive to make food production more sustainable, improve resource efficiency and reduce waste. The EBRD supports the agribusiness sector and it is one of the priorities in Egypt. More videos The EBRD had observed changes in the way agribusiness companies addressed the global challenge of climate change and environmental issues in general. Clients were seeking to increase competitiveness by being more efficient with water and energy, developing environmentally friendly land-management practices and the promotion of biofertilisers, bioenergy and other eco-products. Such developments could not happen in a political vacuum and support from the public sector was necessary, he said, pointing to remaining gaps in government legislation which had the potential to distort competition both within and between countries. Water and energy pricing are important, and so are public policies aimed at making sustainable use of resources, protecting vulnerable resources, creating infrastructure that facilitates adaptation to climate change, and developing appropriate financial mechanisms, Dr Romani said. The EBRD has been supporting the development of market economies since its creation in 1991 and is now active in 36 countries across three continents from Mongolia in Central Asia to Morocco on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, from Estonia on the Baltic to Egypt on the Mediterranean. In helping to promote efficient, robust and resilient economies, the EBRD has placed a high priority on ensuring food security and energy efficiency and combating climate change. It has financed close to 600 transactions in the agribusiness sector, exceeding 10 billion of cumulative investment. At the same time the Bank is firmly committed to increasing its climate finance. Under its Green Economy Transition approach the EBRD is aiming to scale up its green economy investments from 30 per cent of the total portfolio today to 40 per cent by 2020. Part of our success will depend on the private sectors willingness to undertake investments in this area, and agribusinesses are key, Dr Romani told the conference. The past several days have been a bit of a blur for me. I sat down to write out my feelings several times immediately following the election to no avail. So, I finally decided to sit with my thoughts for a few days and listen to what others had to say. During my moment of reticence, I heard numerous explanations regarding why the next President of the United States is going to be Donald Trump. As a lifelong Detroiter, I expected and heard the narrative that Black Detroiters cost Hillary Clinton the election. Then I heard the story of how the arrogance of the Democratic Party cost Hillary the election. Then it was that white men who werent being heard by President Obama or Hillary Clinton voted for Donald Trump and that their wives simply voted with their husbands. I also heard that many Trump supporters feelings were hurt because Hillary called them a basket of deplorables, so that solidified their votes for Trump. I have listened to folks say that all Trump supporters are rape apologists, racists, misogynists, women haters, self-hating women, self-hating Latinos, and self-hating Blacks. I have witnessed Trump supporters say that supporters of Hillary are stupid. I have listened to 3rd Party supporters say that both sides are stupid for voting for Trump or Hillary and I have heard non-voters call all three stupid for buying into a system that has failed to represent them. My point is that there is enough blame to go around and according to everybody, somebody else is to blame for this recent election and our current conditions in America. On April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered what was in my opinion, one of his bravest and most profound speeches, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In that speech, Dr. King said in part: I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on lifes roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on lifes highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Dr. King knew that, not only did Americans need to make a radical shift in their thinking and ways of being, but that they needed to be challenged to challenge a system that would create beggars in the first place. This, I believe, is where most of us have failed. It is not about who can get more of the pie, or a piece of the pie at all. Its about the illusion that the pursuit of the pie holds the key to our liberty and justice. Its about the fact that conditions of oppression and struggle have been fostered in far too many communities through oppressive policies, so we have folks scrambling all over the globe to find sanity at the expense of other human beings. It is about our internalization of materialism in such a way that even poor folks seek to oppress other poor folks. Its about our internalization of the sort of individualism that would allow us to go on about our days while tens of thousands go without food, clean water, or a roof over their heads. Its about our blatant disregard for the earth for our personal benefit. I am a proponent of Black Lives Matter and, yes, I do believe that the dangerous terrorism narrative that has been allowed to permeate the media and households across the globe has put far too many activists in danger. Yes, I do believe that the hatred that has been perpetuated during this election cycle towards Muslims, Black people, people with disabilities, the LGBTQIA community, Mexicans, and women has sparked a nasty violence reminiscent of a society that I have to believe most of us do not want to revisit. I also believe that fear, just as much, if not more than hatred is responsible for most of the violence we have witnessed the past several years and I believe that the constant bombardment of ratings-inspired sensationalism in the media has fostered this fear which is emblematic of a lack of imagination and a resolute opposition to human beings coming together for the good of all humanity. Its time we checked ourselves, Democrats, Republicans, Third Parties, non-voters all of us, because we have yet to actually witness a true democracy and a vision for this country that represents us all. This failure is all of ours to share as a burden. We have not undergone the radical revolution of values Dr. King called for. We have not begun the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. We have failed to put people before profit and, for that, we have struggled at every turn to humanize our society and make conditions more livable for everyone and the earth. Just days before Dr. King was assassinated, he had this to say: Ive come upon something that disturbs me deeply. We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know we will win. But I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house. Im afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had. And Im afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears the soul of this nation. I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house. Dr. King was right about the struggle ahead for Black people in America. But, as another Ancestor James Boggs argued: I love this country not only because my ancestors blood is in the soil, but for the potential of what it can become. We who believe in freedom cannot think about this country as a corporation or as an organization we reluctantly belong to. We have to shed the culture of violence that this country was founded on. We have to shed the character of a country that would make invisible the Indigenous population even as they struggle for their lives at Standing Rock. We have to start thinking as the 99% while rejecting the values of the 1%. We have to become a country that makes it moot for Black people to have to affirm their lives. Its time we started thinking about this country as a place filled with people trying their damnedest to figure out what it means to be human. The giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism must consistently be struggled against and it is going to take all of us tackling the parts of these systems that each of us has internalized. This election cycle has indeed been brutal, but not nearly as brutal as we have become towards one another. Its time we all did better. [CC image credit: Gage Skidmore | Flickr] The status of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange grew a bit murky on Tuesday after the group accused the U.S. State Department of pressuring Ecuadorian officials to block him from posting additional emails linked to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Ecuadorian foreign ministry on Tuesday acknowledged placing temporary restrictions on Assanges access, saying in a statement that it did not wish to interfere in a foreign election. It also said that it was acting on its own and not in response to any outside pressures. Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 to shield himself from two outstanding sex assault charges stemming from a 2010 trip he made to Sweden. He has continued to lead the WikiLeaks organization from there. WikiLeaks earlier on Tuesday had accused U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry of pressuring his counterparts in Ecuador to crack down on the email leaks during a round of peace negotiations to end the decades-old conflict between Marxist FARC rebels and the Columbian military. Kerry held private meetings with Ecuador during a sideline period in negotiations with Columbia that began on Sept. 26, WikiLeaks claimed. The John Kerry private meeting with Ecuador was made on the sidelines of the negotiations which took place pricipally on Sep 26 in Colombia. WikiLeaks (@WikiLeaks) October 18, 2016 Assange lost his Internet connection at the Embassy at 5 p.m. on Saturday GMT, shortly after the group published Clintons Goldman Sachs speech, WikiLeaks said in an earlier tweet. We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs. WikiLeaks (@WikiLeaks) October 17, 2016 Code Blue WikiLeaks initially claimed that a state party intentionally severed Assanges Internet link and that it had activated the appropriate contingency plans. WikiLeaks also released three tweets called pre-commitment 1: John Kerry, pre-commitment 2: Ecuador and pre-commitment 3: UK FCO. Each tweet included what appeared to be alpha-numeric cryptokeys, more than 60 characters long. The tweets set off a frenzy of speculation, including rumors that Assange had died. However, that rumor was quickly shot down. Assange had warned for several months that he would release information that was damaging to Clinton before the November presidential election. Method and Madness The method and motivation of the various actors in this most recent drama left Troy Hunt, a Microsoft regional director and MVP, at a loss as to exactly what happened this weekend. Seems a bit weird to me Ecuador has granted him asylum, he told the E-Commerce Times. Why pull his Internet? And how was the U.S. able to do it when hes holed up in a building in London? Or was it political pressure rather than technical means used by the U.S.? Kerry had nothing to do with Assanges loss of Internet access, according to State Department spokesperson John Kirby. While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks is false, he said. Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period. US Will Strike Back Assange made headlines earlier this year when WikiLeaks was connected to suspected Russian hacks of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton and her associates, as well as network intrusions of several Democratic Party organizations. The leaked emails are part of the Russian governments targeted campaign to undermine the confidence in the U.S. presidential election and possibly influence the outcome, according to U.S. government officials and cybersecurity experts. The Obama administration earlier this month officially accused the Russian government of orchestrating the cyberattacks and promised to deliver a proportional response. Officials at Ecuadors U.S. embassy referred us to the countrys Foreign Ministry, which did not respond to our request to comment on this story. WikiLeaks recently released a new batch of emails belonging to longtime Clinton associate John Podesta, who is the current chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign and was chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and counselor to President Barack Obama. Microsoft earlier this week said it had fallen victim to Strontium, its code name for the Russian hacking group also known as Fancy Bear, which has been linked to recent attacks on Democratic Party systems. The group launched a spear phishing attack that targeted vulnerabilities in both the Windows operating system and Adobe Flash, according to Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsofts Windows and Devices Group. The attack, first identified by Googles Threat Analysis Group, involved two zero-day vulnerabilities in Flash and the down level Windows kernel, he explained. It used the Flash exploit to gain control over browsers, elevate privileges to escape the browser sandbox and install a backdoor to gain access to a users computer. Microsoft is working with Google and Adobe on a patch and plans to release the fix by Nov. 8, when the next update is scheduled, Myerson said. Those who use Microsoft Edge on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update are known to be protected from versions of the attack observed in the wild. Microsoft recommended that users upgrade to Windows 10 and said that those who enable Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection will be able to detect the attempted attacks. Googles Disclosure Google should not have disclosed the vulnerability before the patches were made available, according to Myerson. We believe responsible technology industry participation puts the customer first, and requires coordinated vulnerability disclosure, he said. Googles decision to disclose these vulnerabilities before patches are broadly available and tested is disappointing and puts customers at increased risk. Google on Monday revealed the Microsoft and Adobe vulnerabilities, noting that Adobe already had updated Flash to address the flaw. The Adobe patch is available through the Adobe updater and Chrome auto update. Google, per its policy of seven-day disclosure of actively exploited critical vulnerabilities, reported the remaining critical vulnerability in Windows, noting that it was being exploited in the wild. The vulnerability was a local privilege escalation that could be used as a security sandbox escape, noted Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard of Googles Threat Analysis Group in an online post. They urged users to make sure that Flash was auto updated, or to manually update if necessary. They should make sure to apply Windows patches, when available, Mehta and Leonard also wrote. Election Jitters The new attacks came at a sensitive time in the United States, with the presidential election less than a week away. Federal and local officials have made a major effort to ensure the public has confidence in the electoral system. Thus far, 48 states and 36 county and local governments have taken up an offer by the Department of Homeland Security to assist local governments with ensuring that the state and local election systems are protected against cyberattacks, DHS spokesperson Scott McConnell told TechNewsWorld. The states of Illinois and Arizona were targeted more than a month ago by a suspected Russian hack that impacted 200,000 voters in the Illinois voter registration database. There is little risk of a foreign hacker impacting the actual outcome of the race, but there are fears that a new round of cyberattacks could impact the level of confidence in the integrity of the system. While the actual fallout is hard to predict, its important to look at the chaos that Russian hackers have allegedly been sowing in the past couple months, said Bryan Burns, vice president of threat research at Proofpoint. This group has access to multiple zero-day vulnerabilities, which are always very powerful, as no patches exist, he told TechNewsWorld. The potential fallout, especially with the election just a week away, is quite concerning. Its no secret that the fossil fuel industry funds climate denial organizations and pseduo-scientists. Regardless, its always nice to have proof that deniers are hired guns. The latest batch of evidence comes from Peabody Energy, the biggest coal company in the U.S. Its gone bankrupt and the related court documents list those to whom they still owe money. Try to contain your surprise: many of the usual suspects in the deniersphere show up. Unfortunately, the amounts owed and dates arent listed, so we dont know how much money was supposed to change hands or when. But we do know there is a funding relationship between the coal giant and the climate deniers. There are individual scientists listed, ones we know and love, like Willie Soon, the denier who accused legitimate scientists of prostituting science when hes the one thats received more than a million dollars for his work finding potential non-fossil-fuel excuses for climate change. Theres also Richard Lindzen, who was part of Peabodys failed social cost of carbon lawsuit (which is probably what the company owed him money for). Roy Spencer, keeper of the UAH Satellite record is listed, probably also for his involvement in the Minnesota case (something already revealed by Greenpeace) but perhaps more. And no list of deniers-for-hire would be complete without James Taylor of Heartland, who in the past has admitted that 40 percent of his funding comes from the fossil fuel industry. While thats the only mention of Heartland (meaning Peabody didnt fund the group directly or if it did its already paid up) a number of other organizations have outstanding debts from Peabody. Among them are CFACT, home of Marc Morano of climatedepot. Theres the CO2 is good group Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, FOIA-harassment legal group Energy & Environment Legal Institute (formerly the American Tradition Institute, before they got embroiled in a campaign finance scandal) and a raft of anti-renewable legislation groups, like ALEC, the 60 Plus Association, Edison Electric Institute, George C. Marshall Institute and others. Instead of heeding literally decades of warnings that coal use would need to end to stave off climatic catastrophe and attempting to transition into the profitable renewable business, Peabody funded groups to tell the public what it wanted to hear: that climate change is no big deal or even good for us, so we can keep burning coal forever. Ignoring science for sycophants? No wonder they went bankrupt. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Uncovered Documents Reveal MSNBC Show Worked to Promote Fracking Noam Chomsky: The Doomsday Clock Is Nearing Midnight New Website Helps Connect the Dots Between Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change The Climate Costs of Offshore Oil Drilling Denmark produced 42 percent of its electricity from wind power in 2015, even though two major wind farms were offline, according to official data from Energinet, Denmarks transmissions systems operator. Thats the highest figure recorded to date worldwide and 3 percent higher than the record Denmark set for wind production in 2014. Denmark has been rapidly increasing its overall percentage of wind energy over the last decade from 18 percent in 2005. Photo credit: Energinet In fact, two western regionsJutland and Funensupplied more electricity from wind than they consumed for the equivalent of 60 days last year. Wind supplied 55 percent of electricity in the western part of the country and 23 percent in the eastern region. Hopefully, Denmark can serve as an example to other countries that it is possible to have both ambitious green policies with a high proportion of wind energy and other renewables in the energy supply, and still have a high security of supply and competitive prices on electricity, the countrys Minister for Energy, Utilities and Climate Lars Christian Lilleholt told The Guardian. Denmark sets wind power record, aims at 50% #renewables by 2020 https://t.co/QjI4qJO2LT pic.twitter.com/6HjRtmuYqk UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) January 19, 2016 According to Energinet, 2015 was a particularly windy year, which helped Denmark set the new record. But Denmark has been rapidly increasing its overall percentage of wind energy for more than a decade. The fact that we are now generating surplus power 16 percent of the time in the Western Danish power grid illustrates that we can benefit from imports and exports across borders to an even greater extent, Carsten Vittrup, an adviser to Energinet, said. Denmark sells excess energy mainly to Norway, Sweden and Germany. The European Wind Energy Association hailed the news. These figures show that we are now at a level where wind integration can be the backbone of electricity systems in advanced economies, Kristian Ruby, the European Wind Energy Associations chief policy officer, told The Guardian. The Scandinavian country appears to be on track to reach its goal of producing half of all electricity from wind by 2050. Globally, renewable energy saw more money invested ($329.3 billion) and more capacity added in 2015 than ever before, according to data released last week from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Renewables, especially wind and solar, have soared in recent months even amid plummeting fossil fuel prices. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Costa Rica Powers 285 Days of 2015 With 100% Renewable Energy Renewable Energy Soars Amid Plummeting Fossil Fuel Prices Nicaragua Joins Clean Energy Revolution, Vows 90% Renewables by 2020 Revolutionizing Battery Storage Key to Fast Tracking Renewables By C.J. Polychroniou On Nov. 8, Donald Trump managed to pull the biggest upset in U.S. politics by tapping successfully into the anger of white voters and appealing to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself. But what exactly does Trumps victory mean and what can one expect from this megalomaniac when he takes over the reins of power on Jan. 20, 2017? What is Trumps political ideology, if any and is Trumpism a movement? Will U.S. foreign policy be any different under a Trump administration? Some years ago, public intellectual Noam Chomsky warned that the political climate in the U.S. was ripe for the rise of an authoritarian figure. Now, he shares his thoughts on the aftermath of this election, the moribund state of the U.S. political system and why Trump is a real threat to the world and the planet in general. Q. Noam, the unthinkable has happened: In contrast to all forecasts, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton, and the man that Michael Moore described as a wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath will be the next president of the U.S. In your view, what were the deciding factors that led American voters to produce the biggest upset in the history of U.S. politics? A. Noam Chomsky Before turning to this question, I think it is important to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on Nov. 8, a date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human history, depending on how we react. No exaggeration. The most important news of Nov. 8 was barely noted, a fact of some significance in itself. On Nov. 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) delivered a report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco (COP22) which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreement of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along with other dire reports and forecasts. Another event took place on Nov. 8, which also may turn out to be of unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were barely noted. On Nov. 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the governmentexecutive, Congress, the Supreme Courtin the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history. Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand. Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing. During the Republican primaries, every candidate denied that what is happening is happeningwith the exception of the sensible moderates, like Jeb Bush, who said its all uncertain, but we dont have to do anything because were producing more natural gas, thanks to fracking. Or John Kasich, who agreed that global warming is taking place, but added that we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it. The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trumps top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obamas temporary block on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the worlds largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trumps victory, registered a 50 percent gain. Trump Wins, Renewable Energy Investments Lose and Dirty Energy Stocks Surge https://t.co/Znp7VxlB7X @BusinessGreen @Ethical_Corp EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 10, 2016 The effects of Republican denialism had already been felt. There had been hopes that the COP21 Paris agreement would lead to a verifiable treaty, but any such thoughts were abandoned because the Republican Congress would not accept any binding commitments, so what emerged was a voluntary agreement, evidently much weaker. Effects may soon become even more vividly apparent than they already are. In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make todays pale in significance. With considerable justice, Bangladeshs leading climate scientist said that These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States. And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment. These catastrophic consequences can only increase, not just in Bangladesh, but in all of South Asia as temperatures, already intolerable for the poor, inexorably rise and the Himalayan glaciers melt, threatening the entire water supply. Already in India, some 300 million people are reported to lack adequate drinking water. And the effects will reach far beyond. https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/770944319964471296 Reagans racist fabrications about welfare queens (by implication Black) stealing white peoples hard-earned money and other fantasies. Sometimes failure to explain, itself a form of contempt, plays a role in fostering hatred of government. I once met a house painter in Boston who had turned bitterly against the evil government after a Washington bureaucrat who knew nothing about painting organized a meeting of painting contractors to inform them that they could no longer use lead paintthe only kind that worksas they all knew, but the suit didnt understand. That destroyed his small business, compelling him to paint houses on his own with substandard stuff forced on him by government elites. Sometimes there are also some real reasons for these attitudes toward government bureaucracies. Hochschild describes a man whose family and friends are suffering bitterly from the lethal effects of chemical pollution but who despises the government and the liberal elites, because for him, the EPA means some ignorant guy who tells him he cant fish, but does nothing about the chemical plants. https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/798172082710319104 Americans with real family values who see their familiar country as disappearing before their eyes. One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the U.S. population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies. The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their languageReagans folksy style of making little jokes while eating jelly beans, George W. Bushs carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100-degree heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (its unlikely that he talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievancespeople who have lost not just jobs, but also a sense of personal self-worthand who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason). One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs that the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly mis-described as free trade agreements in the media and commentary. With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of peoples minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by and for the people. To read Chomskys answers to non-eco-related questions, click here. Reposted with permission from our media associate Truthout. By Matthew Savoca Imagine that you are constantly eating, but slowly starving to death. Hundreds of species of marine mammals, fish, birds and sea turtles face this risk every day when they mistake plastic debris for food. Plastic debris can be found in oceans around the world. Scientists have estimated that there are more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic weighing more than a quarter of a million tons floating at sea globally. Most of this plastic debris comes from sources on land and ends up in oceans and bays due largely to poor waste management. Plastic does not biodegrade, but at sea large pieces of plastic break down into increasingly smaller fragments that are easy for animals to consume. Nothing good comes to animals that mistake plastic for a meal. They may suffer from malnutrition, intestinal blockage or slow poisoning from chemicals in or attached to the plastic. Many seabird species, including the blue petrel (Halobaena caerulea), consume plastic at sea because algae on the plastic produce an odor that resembles their food sources. J.J. Harrison Despite the pervasiveness and severity of this problem, scientists still do not fully understand why so many marine animals make this mistake in the first place. It has been commonly assumed, but rarely tested, that seabirds eat plastic debris because it looks like the birds natural prey. However, in a study that my coauthors and I just published in Science Advances, we propose a new explanation: For many imperiled species, marine plastic debris also produces an odor that the birds associate with food. A Nose for Sulfur Perhaps the most severely impacted animals are tube-nosed seabirds, a group that includes albatrosses, shearwaters and petrels. These birds are pelagic: they often remain at sea for years at a time, searching for food over hundreds or thousands of square kilometers of open ocean, visiting land only to breed and rear their young. Many are also at risk of extinction. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, nearly half of the approximately 120 species of tube-nosed seabirds are either threatened, endangered or critically endangered. Although there are many fish in the sea, areas that reliably contain food are very patchy. In other words, tube-nosed seabirds are searching for a needle in a haystack when they forage. They may be searching for fish, squid, krill or other items, and it is possible that plastic debris visually resembles these prey. But we believe that tells only part of a more complex story. A sooty shearwater (Puffinus griseus) takes off from the oceans surface in Morro Bay, California. Mike Baird / Flickr Pioneering research by Dr. Thomas Grubb Jr. in the early 1970s showed that tube-nosed seabirds use their powerful sense of smell or olfaction, to find food effectively, even when heavy fog obscures their vision. Two decades later, Dr. Gabrielle Nevitt and colleagues found that certain species of tube-nosed seabirds are attracted to dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a natural scented sulfur compound. DMS comes from marine algae, which produce a related chemical called DMSP inside their cells. When those cells are damagedfor example, when algae die, or when marine grazers like krill eat itDMSP breaks down, producing DMS. The smell of DMS alerts seabirds that food is nearbynot the algae, but the krill that are consuming the algae. Dr. Nevitt and I wondered whether these seabirds were being tricked into consuming marine plastic debris because of the way it smelled. To test this idea, my coauthors and I created a database collecting every study we could find that recorded plastic ingestion by tube-nosed seabirds over the past 50 years. This database contained information from over 20,000 birds of more than 70 species. It showed that species of birds that use DMS as a foraging cue eat plastic nearly six times as frequently as species that are not attracted to the smell of DMS while foraging. To further test our theory, we needed to analyze how marine plastic debris smells. To do so, I took beads of the three most common types of floating plasticpolypropylene and low-and high-density polyethyleneand sewed them inside custom mesh bags, which we attached to two buoys off of Californias central coast. We hypothesized that algae would coat the plastic at sea, a process known as biofouling and produce DMS. Author Matthew Savoca deploys experimental plastic debris at a buoy in Monterey Bay, California. After the plastic had been immersed for about a month at sea, I retrieved it and brought it to a lab that is not usually a stop for marine scientists: the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science at UC Davis. There we used a gas chromatograph, specifically built to detect sulfur odors in wine, beer and other food products, to measure the chemical signature of our experimental marine debris. Sulfur compounds have a very distinct odor; to humans they smell like rotten eggs or decaying seaweed on the beach, but to some species of seabirds DMS smells delicious! Sure enough, every sample of plastic we collected was coated with algae and had substantial amounts of DMS associated with it. We found levels of DMS that were higher than normal background concentrations in the environment and well above levels that tube-nosed seabirds can detect and use to find food. These results provide the first evidence that, in addition to looking like food, plastic debris may also confuse seabirds that hunt by smell. When Trash Becomes Bait Our findings have important implications. First, they suggest that plastic debris may be a more insidious threat to marine life than we previously believed. If plastic looks and smells like food, it is more likely to be mistaken for prey than if it just looks like food. Second, we found through data analysis that small, secretive burrow-nesting seabirds, such as prions, storm petrels and shearwaters, are more likely to confuse plastic for food than their more charismatic, surface-nesting relatives such as albatrosses. This difference matters because populations of hard-to-observe burrow-nesting seabirds are more difficult to count than surface-nesting species, so they often are not surveyed as closely. Therefore, we recommend increased monitoring of these less charismatic species that may be at greater risk of plastic ingestion. Finally, our results provide a deeper understanding for why certain marine organisms are inexorably trapped into mistaking plastic for food. The patterns we found in birds should also be investigated in other groups of species, like fish or sea turtles. Reducing marine plastic pollution is a long-term, large-scale challenge, but figuring out why some species continue to mistake plastic for food is the first step toward finding ways to protect them. Matthew Savoca is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis. Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation. Swedens Vattenfall set a world record for the lowest price ever paid for offshore wind power. The state-owned energy company bid EUR 49.9 (or $54) per megawatt-hour to develop the Danish Kriegers Flak, a 600-megawatt offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea, about 15 kilometers off the Danish island Mn. Kriegers Flak. For comparison, the average cost of offshore wind is around $126 per megawatt-hour. Kriegers Flak, the worlds first offshore electricity Supergrid Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark The Kriegers Flak is set for operations by 2022 and will be Denmarks largest offshore wind farm. The farm will be able to supply 600,000 households with renewable energy, or 23 percent of all Danish households. As a pioneer in wind power, having installed its first turbines in the mid-1970s, Denmarks latest renewable energy project puts the country on track to meet its 2020 goal of getting 50 percent of its power from renewables. The nation plans to ditch fossil fuels entirely by 2050. The announcement is an essential milestone for our ambition to increase our production of renewable power, Vattenfall CEO Magnus Hall said. We are already the second largest offshore player globally. The winning bid of EUR 49.9 per megawatt-hour proves that Vattenfall is highly competitive and brings down the costs for renewable energy. Kriegers Flak, expected for operation by 2022, is a 600 megawatt offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea. Vattenfall Vattenfall has now won tenders for three major offshore wind farmsHorns Rev 3, Danish Near Shore and Kriegers Flak. The company invested between 1.11.3 billion EUR in Kriegers Flak, pending a final investment decision. Our winning bid for Kriegers Flak is 58 percent below the original cap of EUR 0.12. For the Danish Near Shore project the bid was also substantially below its cap, Vattenfall head Gunnar Groebler said. Proceeding with these two projects, Vattenfall provides Denmark with a cost efficient contribution to meet the countrys climate targets and customerss demand for renewable energy. Denmarks newest offshore wind farm will be constructed in a 132-square-kilometer area in the Baltic Sea, an area that will be home to the worlds first Supergrid. The area actually consists of three sections dedicated to wind power development in Germany, Sweden and Denmark. The Supergrid will ideally supply cheap renewable energy to a large swath of European consumers and enable electricity trading between individual countriesall while decreasing Europes need for imported fossil fuels. The idea is that its always windy somewhere. In close partnership with their regional neighbors, Sweden and Germany, the Kriegers Flak area in the Baltic Sea, has been chosen as the first place in the world to have an offshore electricity grid, Denmarks Ministry of Foreign Affairs website boasts. The planned 600 megawatt offshore wind farm will act like a Supergrid, eventually being able to transmit renewable energy through power grids to all three countries. The Supergrid would serve three purposes: Bring renewable energy to European consumers, strengthen regional energy markets and increase the security of supply by providing transmission capacity. According to a Vattenfall press release, the Swedish part of Kriegers Flak has a building permit that expires in 2018 and the German part has not yet been tendered. The November supermoon has gained attention around the world for its beauty, but is also bringing high water to flood-prone regions from South Florida to Maine. Kevin Baird/Flickr The moon, which follows an elliptical orbit, is at its closest approach to the Earth since 1948. The full moon, in alignment with the Earth and sun, combines with the unusually close distance to create a strong gravitational pull. In South Florida, where king tides routinely flood low-lying areas, the National Weather Service issued a coastal flood advisory through 4 p.m. Wednesday. The highest tides are expected for Tuesday and Wednesday. Coconut Grove already had six inches of water in the street by Sunday night. #supermoon affecting high tides and causing flooding in Jax. pic.twitter.com/CWzNcofP8Z Amber Krycka (@AmberKrycka) November 13, 2016 Further up the coast, Jacksonville Beach and Saint Augustine began to flood yesterday as well. Weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce warned that coastal areas in Georgia and South Carolina could be at risk. Flooding in the Boston area is expected, where the highest tides will come on Tuesday around 11 a.m. Maine is on alert as well. Rain and easterly winds are forecast across the Northeast tomorrow, exacerbating the effects of the the moon and tides. The sea level along coastal Massachusetts has risen four inches since 1950. Along South Florida, seas may rise 10 inches by 2030 from their 1992 levels. Flooding events in Miami Beach have jumped 400 percent in the past 10 years. During Octobers king tides, Charleston, Savannah and Miami all experienced flooding. It has become routine for saltwater to invade homes and basements and parking garages in South Florida. Fish can be seen swimming in the streets during king tides. Roads get washed out. During a campaign debate in October, Sen. Marco Rubio denied that climate change has anything to do with sea level rise or Floridas regular flooding events. Now re-elected for another six-year term, he has refused to meet with 15 Florida mayors who asked in January for a meeting to discuss the climate change risks they are facing. https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/788849806907146240 expand=1] Scientists expect the supermoon to make things even worse. That additional gravitational pull has caused our high tides to be a little bit higher than they would have been without that supermoon, said Dr. Tiffany Troxler, director of Florida International Universitys Sea Level Solutions Center, in an interview with CBS News. Photographs of the supermoon have been posted since last night as skywatchers enjoy the show. The next time the moon gets this close will be in 2034. [instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BMzEhJjjZwK/?tagged=supermoon2016 Donald Trumps advisers are exploring alternatives to bypass the four-year waiting period to back out from the Paris agreement, a member of the transition team told Reuters. The options include withdrawing from the parent treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, entirely or issuing a presidential order to delete the U.S. signature from the climate deal. Before leaving for Marrakech on Sunday, Sec. of State John Kerry said that the Obama administration would do everything possible to implement the global agreement before Trump takes office. In an interview, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Europe should respond with a trade war and institute a carbon tax for U.S. products if Trump backs out. Backing out of the Paris agreement isnt the only anti-environment plan Trump has been touting. He has also said he wants to dismantle the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and revoke the Clean Power Plan. Trumps man-in-charge of leading the transition at the EPA is Myron Ebell, a known climate denier who opposes the Clean Power Plan and advocates for opening up more federal lands to logging, coal mining and oil drilling. He is a director at fossil-fuel-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute and leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, which focuses on dispelling the myths of global warming. One scholar points out that Trumps attempts to weaken the EPA are reminiscent of Reagans appointment of Anne Gorsuch Burford to head the agency, whose attempts to dismantle EPA in the early 1980s resulted in heavy criticism and pushback. For a deeper dive: Trump: Reuters, The Hill, ThinkProgress, Guardian, Slate, Bloomberg, New York Times Kerry: AP, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Mashable, VOA News Commentary: Guardian editorial Myron Ebell: Washington Post, New York Times, Undark, Cosmopolitan For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News. (Photo: Screen grab from Bolivia President Evo Morales presents the gift to Pope Francis)Bolivia President Evo Morales seeks to present Pope Francis with a crucifix mounted on a hammer and sickle on July 9, 2015. Pope Francis is a champion of the poor, but he was not impressed when his Bolivian host President Evo Morales sought to give him a gift of a crucifix mounted on a hammer and sickle. The Pope rebuked Morales after the left-wing South American leader presented him with the crucifix mounted on the international symbol of the avowedly atheist creed of communism July 9, The Telegraph reported. Morales is an anti-clerical champion of indigenous rights, has taken decisive steps to empower Bolivia's 36 native groups and embed their rights in the country's constitution, International Business Times reported. The Bolivian president has also acted to change the constitution in 2009, making the Catholic nation a secular country and removed the Bible and cross from the presidential palace when he took office in 2006. "That's not right," the Pope noted, The Telegraph said. It said the slight was more notable as the Argentine leader of the Catholic Church had praised the social and economic reforms of Morales when he arrived from Ecuador on the second stage of a three-country tour of South America. In Santa Cruz at a Mass for hundreds of thousands of people in Bolivia, said on July 9 that everyone had a moral duty to help the poor, and that those with means could not wish they would just "go away," Reuters reported. "If one can apply the term to a 78-year-old prelate who has turned lack of ostentation into an art form, then Pope Francis is a rock star," The Economist comments in its latest edition. It said the eight-day tour of the papacy and the first to Spanish-speaking America - may do more than underline the popularity in his home region of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. "It may add political definition to his papacy." Francis' words have stirred supporters of liberation theology, a set of leftist ideas that were influential in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote The Economist. Francis accelerated beatification of Oscar Romero, a Salvadorean archbishop who was gunned down by a right-wing death squad while celebrating mass in 1980 and is a hero to the left. "Yet Father Bergoglio always rejected Marxism and violent revolution, which some leftist priests supported. "Rather than embracing liberation theology, he is reinterpreting it for a post-Marxist age. Romero's 'option for the poor wasn't ideological but evangelical,' says the Vatican. "The Pope's criticisms of free-market capitalism chime both with traditional Catholic social doctrine and with Peronism, Argentina's populist-nationalist political movement, to which he was once close," wrote the weekly newspaper. It continued that the biggest test of the Pope's political skill will be whether he can help to bring about a peaceful and democratic transition in Venezuela. There, "the unpopular government of Nicolas Maduro faces likely defeat in a parliamentary election this year - if it is free and fair." Francis leaves July 10 for Paraguay, the last stop on his "homecoming" trip. Even as collaboration between UK and India was repeatedly highlighted at the recently concluded technology summit in Delhi, the British visa policy for international students and professionals remained the most debated topic. Figures have shown that Indian students opting for higher studies in the UK have drastically reduced, causing concern among the British academic world. Many academics are being vocal about their views and are campaigning hard to woo back Indian students to their universities. Keith Burnett, president and vice-chancellor, University of Sheffield, said: There is dismay among the Indian community as we talk stronger trade ties and further collaboration between the countries; they ask, UK wants our trade but not our children? He further added that education is and must remain without borders. Echoing similar views, Charlie Jeffery , senior vice-principal , University of Edinburgh , added, How can you talk about free trade and curb the mobility of people? Mobility is vital for any successful international engagement. To reassure international students that they are welcome in the UK, Sheffield launched `WeAreInternational.' Now over 100 universities and organisations across the UK have joined forces to advocate for international students, staff, research and collaborations in higher education. The campaign states: We are committed to ensuring our universities remain diverse, inclusive communities of international scholarships open to students and staff from across the world. We will continue to ensure our research knows no geographical boundaries and our students and staff from around the world are able to celebrate their own cultures and friendships. The Edinburgh University Students Association runs a project titled EUSA Global, which aims to enhance the global community for all students on campus, in the city and beyond. The blog shares global stories of the university community both on campus and overseas. Anton Muscatelli, principal and vice-chancellor, University of Glasgow, is optimistic that a post-Brexit UK will be forced to take a more liberal stand to meet its economic goals. Post-Brexit, higher education should be in the forefront. And since we are talking stronger trade ties, you have to encourage the flow of people, ideas and talent. Rajesh Agrawal, deputy mayor of London for business, said: In the aftermath of Brexit, it is more important than ever that companies in London and across UK have access to global talent that is needed for economic prosperity. Recently, the UK announced changes in the tier 2 intra-company transfer category where professionals have to meet a higher salary threshold which may impact a large number of Indians especially in the IT sector. Agrawal has requested Theresa May, British Prime Minister, to relax the rules on Indian visas for highly skilled workers going to Britain. He further added that London had benefitted a lot from international students and professionals and the city would continue to welcome them. The academics and Agrawal reiterated that international students should not be included in the migration targets. According to a recent report by the Universities UK (UUK), At a time when Britain is seeking to promote industries that can take advantage of global growth driven from beyond Europe, our higher education sector should be challenged and supported to increase its share of the rapidly expanding international student market. This is why it was always a mistake to include the student migrant flow within a target to reduce total immigration numbers. The report reveals that there is strong public support for international student migration, and that people seem to understand the economic and educational benefits brought to Britain by those who come to study. The report says that 75% think that international students should be allowed to stay and work in Britain after graduating from British universities, using their skills for the benefit of the economy, for at least a period of time. Around 59% of the public says the government should not reduce international student numbers, even if that limits the governments ability to cut immigration numbers overall, while only 22% take the opposing view. As Kilolo Moyo-White watched her 8th grade students walk through the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, she felt a sense of awe. Seeing the exhibits last month felt like an affirmation of her identity, she said, which was also felt by her students from the Global Leadership Academy Charter School in Philadelphia, most of whom are black. It was just a transformative moment for them to be able to see themselves in that history and to be able to connect it so quickly to whats happening in our society today, Moyo-White said. For some, I think that was a little upsetting and troubling. But I think they were also calmed by the beauty of the museum and the fact that this museum is honoring that hard work, those trials and tribulations, instead of just shading over it. The museum, which cost $540 million and took 11 years to come to fruition, opened on Washingtons National Mall Sept. 24. While the exact number of school groups that have visited since then was not readily available, educators and students are already flocking to the museum to see the stories of influential African-Americans from past and present. Next year, the museum, which has offered educational programming for several years before there was a physical building, will formalize additional resources for students and teachers, including official school tours. Candra Flanagan, the coordinator of student and teacher initiatives, said the museums education staff wanted some time to observe what exhibits crowds would gravitate toward. Also in 2017, she said, the museum will roll out more tools for educators, such as previsit guides, online activities, and other information sources to support classroom learning. The museum also plans to host one-day thematic workshops for teachers about various topics in history or history education four to six times a year. Meanwhile, many of the stories and collections in the museum are on the museums website. Teaching Tolerance, an educational project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has developed a free tool kit for teachers that compiles some of the available resources they can bring to their classrooms. Adrienne van der Valk, the deputy director of Teaching Tolerance, said the museums resources are designed to help educators start a dialogue about race with their students, from a historical perspective. I think they allow you to tell the story of American history through an African-American lens, van der Valk said, particularly if youre a white teacherthats not your lens. I think having a set of robust, vetted tools to bring that history to the classroom is very important. Telling a Complete Story The museums exhibits add context to the school curriculum and give educators an opportunity to share a complete story of African-American history and culture, she said. The stories in the museum are those of resilience, triumph, culture, and identity, van der Valk said. Upsetting exhibits in the museumsuch as images of lynchingsare marked by a red border and a sign warning visitors of graphic content. I think that one of the considerations that we take with the material is to look at the humanity that is involved in the story and find the triumph in the story, even if its a hard story, the museums Flanagan said. I think sometimes we think that children cant take in something thats serious or hard or dark. I think children can take it in. Its a matter of using age-appropriate language and connecting it to something they can understand, like fairness, justice, and inclusion. In fact, the museum has an education initiative geared to children from birth to 8. Flanagan said research shows that children as young as 6 months see differences in people, making it important for them develop a positive identity early on. For the past three years, the museum has offered a workshop for teachers on talking about race in the classroom. Eighty-two percent of teachers are white, while just over half of U.S. public school students are nonwhite. The conversation about race and racism is not a conversation that needs to happen just among African-Americans, Flanagan said. We want all teachers to feel involved in this conversation and not outside of it because theyre not a person of color or theyre not teaching students of color. Uncomfortable Conversations Teachers have different comfort levels in discussing race, Flanagan said. She said some teachers discuss slavery as an economic institution and ignore the racial aspect. One of the museums goals, she said, is to help teachers become comfortable talking about race in historical ways: Thats the first step to talking about it in a contemporary way. During the National Council of Social Studies annual conference in Washington in December, the museum plans to offer a session on discussing race in class. Lauren Funk, a social studies teacher at Nashoba Brooks School, a private, all-girls middle school in Concord, Mass., will attend that workshop. She said she teaches in an affluent community and tries to work with her students to acknowledge their privilegespecifically, she said, white privilege. I think we have to lean into that discomfort, Funk said, having our kids actually know that this matters and these conversations need to be had, but also providing a safe space to kids who might be marginalized. Funk said she tries to teach students that as much progress as has been made with race in the United States, things are not yet perfect. "[Talking about race] can be challenging work, she said. It can feel overwhelming and isolating as a teacher. I think its really helpful to connect with other educators but also get support from organizations and individuals. She said the museum exhibits tie into her spring-semester curriculum: implementing change in an imperfect democracy, with a focus on civil rights. Funk is taking her students to visit the museum in January as part of a trip to the presidential inauguration. I think its probably going to be a hard experience for some of the students, but I also think itll be an important one, Funk said. I think there will be some disturbing truth in there, but also some emphasis on the joy in the [African-American] experience and the pride in the experience. When teachers walked into their classrooms the morning after Donald Trump claimed the presidency in a stunning victory, they had their work cut out for them. Some students were jubilant, with many wearing Make America Great Again hats and shirts in celebration. Others were angry and upset, with some crying in class. Immigrant students, or those from immigrant families, expressed fear that they or their family members would be deported under the Trump administration. In a handful of schools, including in Berkeley, Calif.; Phoenix; and Des Moines, Iowa, studentsand in some cases, teachersstaged walkouts in protest of the Republican nominees win. Educators even reported physical outbursts and confrontations as emotions ran high. Now, teachers must work to ease divisions in their classrooms. They must soothe the fears of their students of color, while giving all students space to process their feelings about the elections outcome. For many educators, that seems like a hefty task after the long, bitter campaign season. And while there are certainly teachers who supported Trump, many others said they were reeling from the outcome themselves while trying to comfort their students. I normally draw a big sense of hope from my kids. Even when the world is awry, being a teacher gives me a lot of hope, Christina Torres, who teaches 7th and 9th grades in Honolulu and who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton, said the day after the Nov. 8 election. I think today, thats going to have to be my job. That feels like a big ask of my own heart. "[Teachers need to give students] space to process, space to be afraid, space to love them, but were going to be the ones to help provide them the tools, said Torres. That just feels hard today. A victory by Clinton, which most opinion polls had pointed to, would have provided a ready-made lesson about the nations first woman presidentthe successor to its first black president. The victory by Trump, the tough-talking real estate mogul and political novice, told a more complex tale about America and its anxieties and aspirations. While some teachers opted to remain quiet about the election results, many said they felt they had no choice. Students were deeply invested in this election, teachers said. Jessie Sennett, a 5th grade teacher on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, said her students, who were distraught, knew the results when they walked into the classroom: They didnt have to be told, which is surprising, because a lot of them dont have internet, TV, phones. But they knew. Many teachers said they devoted some class time on Wednesday to reflection, via journaling, drawing, or talking. Elizabeth Simison, who teaches high school English in rural Colchester, Conn., said Trump won her county by just 96 votes. That almost-even division made a conversation with her students feel even more necessaryand difficult. She began each of her classes with 15 minutes of open discussion. Students were quiet at first. Then, they started talkingquestioning the Electoral College, voicing fear for LGBT and minority communities, evaluating media biases, and considering the effect of the new president on foreign and domestic policies. They wondered how long it might take the country to get back on track, and then tried to define what back on track meant. Just knowing that this is so important and giving students the floor to embrace that and talk about it in such a reasonable way felt really important to us, Simison said. Worries About Trump Effect In recent months, educators have pointed out a Trump effect in schools: a spike in anxiety among students of color , particularly immigrant students and students from immigrant families, which teachers have attributed to the Republican candidates inflammatory words about Muslim and Mexican immigration. Teachers say they fear an uptick in racially or ethnically motivated bullying. And indeed, in the days after the election, some educators have already reported instances of students telling their Hispanic peers that they will be deported, or their Muslim peers that they are not welcome in the United States. See Also Complete Coverage: 2016 Election What do you tell kids about being a bully when the president is a bully? said Torres, who is also an opinion blogger for Education Week Teacher . What do you tell kids about mocking disabled people when he has done that? RaShawna Sydnor, who teaches 6th to 8th graders in Baltimore, said her students were astonished that Trump was elected president after his sexually crude or derogatory comments about women and allegations that he had committed sexual assaults. They are troubled by the idea that a man who has these attributes could be the president. Some of the things he does, they could get in trouble for, said Sydnor. That discrepancy bothered Anne Gunden, an 8th grade teacher in Valley Center, Kan., so much that she started crying in class on the day after the election. Her students largely support Trump, she said, but she thought it was important for her to tell them that regardless of politics, mimicking Trumps language is inappropriate. "[I told them] I was struggling to understand how on earth I would be able to demand respectful communication from my students if they were to have an elected leader who uses such divisive rhetoric, Gunden said in an email. I voiced my hope that we might hear less of this kind of language coming from Mr. Trump now that he has been elected, she said, but I also pointed out that even if his language doesnt change, it does not make it OK to use in our classroom. Ciara Miller, a 10th grade social studies teacher in Pasco County, Fla., had to defuse a confrontation between two studentsa Trump supporter and a Clinton supporterthe day after the election. I said, no ... we talk about how much we want tolerance and expect it from others, Miller said. She told both students to be respectful of other opinions. And she asked the Trump supporter to consider that students who supported Clinton were hurting. It was at least an opportunity to teach students how to handle conflict, Miller said. Coming Together In the weeks ahead, teachers should focus on reassuring all students that theyre safe, said Maureen Costello, the director of Teaching Tolerance, an educational project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And, she said, teachers should work to rebuild their own classroom communities while trying to return to a sense of normalcy. In a sense, really echoing what the president-elect has said [in his victory speech]: Its a time to come together, Costello said. Teachers Tweet Some reactions to the election: @zdeibel Having difficulty teaching engagement, empathy, and understanding when opposite traits win the presidency. @BethTimbal My plan is to... 1. Give students a safe place and time to debrief their emotions. 2. Pose some thoughtful and guiding questions. 3. Listen @jharalsonedu My teaching plan for today includes reminding #ELL Ss that our school is always + forever a safe space for them to learn, grow, be, do. Kyle Redford, a 5th grade teacher in Corte Madera, Calif., and an opinion blogger for Education Week Teacher, said she played Clintons concession speech for her students. Upon viewing it, her students, who were initially upset about Clintons loss, said they felt more encouraged about the future and were willing to give Trump a chance. One student, Redford recounted in an email, said: Even if we are young, we can still make a big change because we live in a democracy. We can still fight for the things we believe in. Teaching Tolerances Costello said teachers should now focus on encouraging their students to be active citizens. Voting is not the only thing citizens do, she said. Reminding students of the checks and balances in government feels particularly important, teachers said. Deborah Gesualdo, a music teacher in Malden, Mass., said she has been reassuring her students of a peaceful transition of power. I keep reminding them that no matter who you support in an election, its important to respect each other, she said. And I think we as adults have to set that example, because were seeing a lot of disrespect in general in the country right now. The role of education, teachers said, will be especially important as the country tries to move forward. How do we as a nation begin to heal from here? Torres, the teacher in Hawaii, said. Theres never been a more important time to be an American teacher. The Luxembourg EIB Climate Finance Platform has been welcomed as an international model for increasing climate investment using limited public sector support and representing a key step to tackle the challenge of limited equity investment in climate projects. The new initiative will enable climate focused investment funds to support high-impact climate projects around the world and bring in additional support from private investors who otherwise could not back more challenging climate schemes. Access to public funds to reduce investment risk is essential to scale up climate finance from private investors. Initiatives such as the new Luxembourg-EIB Climate Finance Platform represent a clear model for others to follow, said Elvira Lefting, Managing Director of fund manager Finance in Motion. The contribution of the new Luxembourg EIB Climate Finance Platform to unlocking new climate investment and address the limited availability of equity investment in climate projects was outlined to representatives of countries, financial institutions and international fund managers at the COP 22 climate conference currently being held in Marrakesh, Morocco. Governments around the world have limited public budgets and unlocking private investment is essential to address climate change. Luxembourg is pleased to work with the European Investment Bank, the worlds largest lender for climate related investment, to support the Luxembourg-EIB Climate Finance Platform. highlighted Carole Dieschbourg, Luxembourg Minister of the Environment. This new initiative will support Luxembourg based climate investment funds to support high-impact climate projects inside and outside Europe and be managed by the European Investment Bank, the worlds largest financier for climate related investment. Mobilising new investment for projects that help tackle climate change is a global challenge. Here at COP 22 in Marrakech the global community is starting to implement the historic Paris Climate Agreement and sharing experience of successful initiatives such as the Luxembourg-EIB Climate Finance Platform will strengthen similar efforts elsewhere around the world. At a time when political leadership on climate is needed, it is essential for Europe to show how climate challenges can be turned into opportunities through exciting new initiatives such as this. Considering the importance of our financial centre, it is only natural that Luxembourg is a frontrunner in shifting towards sustainable investments. added Minister Dieschbourg. Earlier this month Luxembourg ratified the Paris Climate Agreement and Luxembourg has agreed to contribute EUR 30 million to this new initiative as a key element of Luxembourgs climate finance engagement. Luxembourgs overall dedicated international climate finance contribution represents EUR 120 million, corresponding to EUR 215 per inhabitant, making Luxembourg one of the biggest per capita donors. This contribution comes on top of official development assistance. Scaling up private finance is a priority of the global climate agenda and a key focus is to increase the impact of the European Investment Banks own climate financing. Simply speaking if private investment is not mobilised, efforts to tackle climate change will fail. confirmed Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice President. Luxembourgs environment minister Carole Dieschbourg and Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna formally launched the Luxembourg EIB Climate Finance Platform with EIB President Werner Hoyer last month. Successful effort to tackle local challenges of a changing climate and increase the impact of investment require innovative financing. This new initiative will help unlock new climate focused equity investment in regions most vulnerable to climate change Monique Barbu, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to combat desertification. Over the last five years the European Investment Bank has provided more than EUR 90 billion for climate related investment and EIB climate finance reached a record high in EUR 20.7 billion in 2015. Prior to COP 21 in Paris the European Investment Bank adopted its first Climate Lending Strategy which reinforced the climate related impact of all EIB financing activity. China-based Foxconn is the primary site where Apples iPhone is produced. China threatened to prevent American trade if U.S. president-elect Donald Trump imposes his campaign promise to place massive tariffs on the countrys imports. China-based Foxconn, which has nearly 1.5 million workers, is the primary site where Apples iPhone is produced. China could step in and stop or disrupt production if Trumps threatened tariffs are made official. One of the most notable pledges that Trump made during his campaign was to order what he referred to as defensive tariffs of 45% on Chinese imports and to force Beijing to officially declare itself a currency manipulator. At a rally in Florida in August, Trump suggested these tariffs would force China to stop the cheating. An op-ed published in Chinas state-run newspaper, Global Times , warned that the Peoples Republic would adopt a tit-for-tat approach, which would result in the country no longer buying American goods, including the ever-so-popular Apple products. It read: A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. U.S. auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and U.S. soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. Trump as a shrewd businessman will not be so naive. None of the previous presidents were bold enough to launch an all-out trade war against China. They all opted for a cautious line since it's most consistent with the overall interests of the U.S., and it's most acceptable to U.S. society. A report conducted at the end of 2015 found that an estimated 131 million iPhones are in use in China, more than any other manufacturer. Data released by the Chinese government noted that Apple had 16.8% of the market, a point higher than Samsung, and 1.2% more than China-based Xiaomi. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president the first time, the U.S. issued a 35% import tariff on Chinese tires. This urged retaliatory tariffs on chicken and car exports. Both China and the U.S. suffered losses as a result, the Global Times said. From then on, the Obama administration waged no trade war against China. If Trump imposes a 45% tariff on Chinese imports, China-U.S. trade will be paralyzed. Source: Ars Technica Learn more about Electronic Products Magazine Police issue advice on avoiding burglaries Police are urging Isle of Man residents not to make themselves easy targets for burglars. The Isle of Man Constabulary issued advice on not becoming a victim of burglary on its Facebook page. The police advise making sure valuables are not on display, while considering technology such as CCTV, alarms and lighting timers. The constabulary has been using its social media accounts to share tips on avoiding crime over the last couple of weeks as part of its Time To Change campaign. Trump can get us the China deal we deserve By Dr. Peter Morici To win the presidency, Donald Trump promised to cut taxes, boost energy production, roll back excessive business regulations and much more, but nothing would deliver more punch for growth and jobs than his promise to fix America's broken trade policy. The economic reasoning behind free trade is simple. Lowering tariffs and other barriers to international commerce raises productivity by permitting businesses and workers to specialize more at what they do best. For the iPhone, that's why Apple keeps in America product design, software development and some sophisticated parts manufacturing but outsources to Asia many other components and assembly. If US foreign sales approximately equaled purchases from abroad, Americans would be a lot richer, because workers in exporting industries are about 10 percent more productive than those competing with imports. Sadly, our trade deals have not worked out that way dating back to the 1947 General Agreements on Trade and likely through the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. Lowering tariffs and other barriers to international commerce raises productivity by permitting businesses and workers to specialize more at what they do best. In 2015, US foreign sales totaled $2.3 trillion and that permitted Americans to buy a like amount of foreign goods and services. The resulting productivity gains from greater worker specialization lifted US GDP by some $240 billion. However, American imports totaled about $2.8 trillion, and the $500 billion trade deficit destroyed 4 million jobs that were not replaced by exports. On net, lost demand for US-made goods and services directly reduced GDP by $260 billion and at least another $130 billion if we count in lost spending by idled workers and shuttered businesses. Those losses overwhelmed the productivity gains from trade and the benefits consumers receive from purchasing less expensive consumer goods. The trade deficits with China and on petroleum account for virtually the entire US imbalance thanks to Chinese currency manipulation, restrictions on American-made products and investment, and US government constraints on transportation projects like the Keystone Pipeline and on the production of domestic oil and gas. President-elect Trump would be well within his executive powers to temporarily impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports to leverage renegotiation and better enforcement of the 2001 US-China bilateral agreement that facilitated China's membership in the World Trade Organization. He could free up some energy projects through executive order but would need congressional approval to instigate expanded drilling in many areas. Still, working with Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Democrats from energy-producing states, making America energy independent is well within his grasp. None of this would require very much additional federal spending, but it would generate a lot of new revenues to help pay for Trump's proposed tax cuts. Eliminating the trade deficit would boost GDP by at least $500 billion or at least 2.5 percent and create about 4 million good paying jobs over three to five years. The longer term effects of eliminating trade deficits are even more profound. Most of the additional economic activity gained from eliminating the trade deficit would be in manufacturing. That sector supports a lion's share of research and development (R&D) spending the wellspring of American innovation, international competitiveness and productivity growth. Eliminating the trade deficit could easily boost R&D enough to permanently increase economic growth by 1 or 2 percentage points. As a former US trade official, I know our negotiators work hard to ensure new trade agreements create at least as much in new exports as additional imports but too many of our trade agreements simply don't measure up or are not adequately enforced. For example, the 2001 agreement permits China to maintain a 9.6 percent average tariff on imports, whereas the US average duty is 3.5 percent. And Presidents George W. Bush and Obama repeatedly denied industry pleas to take substantive action against China's undervalued currency. Now President Obama would like congress to ratify the recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other nations. However, consider the impact of the US-Korea Free Trade Pact. Since it was inaugurated in 2011, the bilateral trade deficit is up about $16 billion and more than 130,000 jobs have been lost. No one should want to withdraw America from global commerce economic isolationism merely limits consumer choices, stifles competition and encourages stagnation. Getting a fair and balanced deal for American workers was a winning campaign strategy for Trump and for America's future, because it makes good economic sense. Peter Morici is a business professor at the University of Maryland and from 1993-95 served as director of economics at the United States International Trade Commission. Home Hit the ground running, and cleaning By Daniel M. Ryan Late Tuesday night, we saw the impossible realized. Donald Trump, facing at least as much bias as Barry Goldwater in 1964, won the election. The candidate that so many said would not win, won. He won against a media so hostile, they're now scrambling. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the in-trouble New York Times is so rattled that he sent out an apology letter (!) to subscribers who haven't already taken a hike. Others are scrambling to figure out why they were so wrong. From what I read, they've learned very little. The only ones who have an inkling are the Bernie Sanders supporters. The rest have only figured out that they're part of a machine that's floated up in the air and become a flying echo chamber. They're slowly beginning to figure out that they're part of The Cloud Minders. In a very real way, 2016 has been the year that the looked-down-upon Troglytes found their champion and won. Some of the pampered pets of the Obama years took to the Trump victory by rioting. Thankfully this is a blessing of the partisanized times the paid rioters tore up and harassed the citizens of blue cities. If you're ensconced in a red zone, you only saw them on Youtube. One of the weak points of the Conservative mind is complacency in victory. I have to confess that I watched my share of meltdowns. It is enjoyable to think of the freaked-out opposition as spoiled children or big babies, while not wondering if they're more like unruly teenagers who need to be grounded. Part and parcel of this complacency is the Conservative brand of magnanimity: going out of our way to reassure the defeated that their scary nightmares are only figments of their imaginations. As much as some of us like to quote Conan the Barbarian, we act quite predictably when we hear the lamentations of their women. This tendency of ours is so ingrained, it's always led to Conservative reform being muffled. There's another reason, which Milton and Rose Friedman wrote an entire book about back in 1983. Although it's now a period piece, the central lesson of The Tyranny of the Status Quo is still relevant: the uniform tendency in government [is] to reverse the declared policies of leaders whether left or right. In the first six to nine months following their election, Reagan, Thatcher and Mitterand too, initiated big changes. Soon, each was frustrated by the "Iron Triangle" which preserves the status quo. In the triangle's corners are the direct beneficiaries of laws, the bureaucrats who thrive on them, the politicians who seek votes The takeaway of the book is that the system of government returns to an equilibrium after the first six to nine months of a new Administration. (The above quote comes from the dust flap of the hardcover edition.) The Trump transition team seems to be aware of this new phenomenon. According to the Daily Caller, construction of The Wall is slated to start in March. That's well within the six-to-nine-month timeframe. Since Trump sees The Wall as his new Wollman Rink, it's a safe bet we'll see The Wall. In addition - an advantage due to him not being a conventional small-government Republican - he's going to benefit from active support in both the FBI and border-control bureaucracies. He's the boss they're going to love. So, in the areas of deportation and border control, the Trump Administration will have finessed the Iron Triangle. (It remains to be seen if there's enough residual patriotism in the Veterans' Administration for him to prevail there too.) President Trump will show us what it's possible for a President to do with a co-operative bureaucracy. Thankfully, he's businessman enough to know that the art of management definitely includes incentivizing and rewarding good performance. But sadly, the above exceptions will reinforce the rule. The Iron Triangle, though bent, will not be broken. He'll see this when he tries to implement his promise to repeal Obamacare. I'm sure you can guess many of the excuses: "too radical," "it'll encourage the wrong people", "businesses already count on it," and so on. It would be wise of Trump and the GOP to press forward and repeal it outright. There's a yuge trust gap between the Pubbies and the base: a simple bill "The Affordable Care Act is hereby repealed" will do a lot to narrow it. It would enable the Beltway crowd to return to the Heartland and say, "You see? We did get it done when we got the Presidency." I'm sure the Trump transition team will have a ready-to-go replacement by the time Mitch McConnell has to decide whether repairing tattered trust is worth invoking the nuclear option. There are two other crucial reforms needed, which I'm focussing on because they're the kind of low-level repair work that's easy to slough off or go easy on. The first is crucial to another Trump goal bringing back jobs and the second is crucial to limit the vote fraud we all know is there. Clean Up E-Verify Remember the botched Obamacare Website? One of the reasons why it was such a mess is that the programmers had to create an interoperability hub that harnessed a whole slew of incompatible record systems some of which didn't work all that very well. It's true that a lot of the blame for the botching belongs to the Obama Administration. But the important reason going forward is the creakiness of the underlying systems. There've been a lot of folks demanding that E-Verify be made mandatory. If this legislation is to be part of the Trump Plan, then it's very important to make sure that the underlying database is cleaned up. A long time ago, John Kenneth Galbraith quipped: "One of the uses of depression is the exposure of what auditors fail to find." Remember 2008-09? One of the problems that surfaced as a result of the real-estate collapse was the fact that the mortgage-title records were a godawful mess. Think about it: those records, the very foundation of all those fancy CDOs, were a shambles. In some cases, enough of a mess that the salvage squads had no idea what they were entitled to collect on. Americans look up to entrepreneurial and action-oriented people. This gives America a huge advantage. But it comes with downsides, like sometimes forgetting the importance of "cost centers." At least one small brokerage firm went down in the bear market of 1970s because its back-office records were a jumbled chaos. Imagine yourself as a managing partner of a firm that's gone bankrupt without you even knowing it. Given that record-keeping is unglamourous enough to overlook, it's a good mind-the-downside bet that the E-Verify records need a thorough and meticulous clean-up. Better to find the mistakes now than to find out the hard way should E-Verify be made mandatory. Clean Up The Voting Records Thanks to Project Veritas Action and a lot of public-spirited citizens, we've found out that voting fraud is all over the place. As with E-Verify abuse, voting injustices thrive in a swamp of shoddy records. The fact that Donald Trump and the republicans prevailed is not an excuse to let this slide: the opposite is true. Republican victories, both at the federal and state level, mean that it's more possible than ever to do something about this festering boil boiled over. Moreover, there are encouraging signs that some Dems are worried about the same problem. For one, this New York City Commissioner of the Board of Elections. Cleaning up the voting rolls and ensuring their integrity, despite what trash talk you've endured, is a bipartisan issue. It's well worth every Pubbie in office to push it hard. If necessary, it can be sugared by opining that one of the reasons why poor folks don't vote that much is because they're afraid that their names aren't in the registry. A thoroughgoing audit would include getting in touch with them and assuring them that they are listed as legal voters. Sharpen The Axe "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." Now that the Pubbies have a chance to finally tackle all those festering growths, Abraham Lincoln's wise words are more needed than ever. Gavin McInnes recently said that even in a cool job like his, the bulk of it entails reading spreadsheets and overseeing minutiae like making sure the connector cables work. Accordingly, a great reform like cracking down on voting fraud will be a great botch unless a lot of time and care is spent on sharpening the axe. By Drs Friedmans' iron-triangle rule, the Trump Administration has six to nine months to get it started and rolling. Happily, getting the records straight is something that bureaucracy can do without overturning it. Like better enforcement of the law and the borders, it's a policy that that's best effected by working with the bureaucracy corner of the iron triangle rather than banging on it. With this, President-Elect Trump's business talents will prove to be a real boon. Daniel M. Ryan, as Nxtblg, is shepherding the independently-run Open Audi Initiative Prediction Market Shadowing Project. He has stubbornly assumed all the responsibility and blame for the workings and outcome of the project. Home "Third parties" in Canada a reassessment (Part Four) By Mark Wegierski In the 2011 federal election, the NDP won 103 seats, thus becoming a "second party" the so-called Official Opposition. The Liberals were reduced to 34 seats, about the lowest number they have ever held in the federal Parliament. However, in the 2015 federal election, the Liberals came roaring back with a majority, and the NDP were reduced to 44 seats. In light of the 2015 federal election campaign, a partial reassessment of the role of the NDP in Canadian politics may be called for. They were certainly more "centrist-tending" in the 2015 federal election than the Liberals particularly under the leadership of Tom Mulcair who promised a balanced budget unlike Justin Trudeau, who said he was quite willing to run a deficit. While the NDP may have in earlier decades been the "ice-breaker" for left-liberalism and the so-called "progressive" agenda it is actually the Liberal Party (particularly today) that is carrying out that agenda to ever greater degrees. Nevertheless, one of the biggest illusions of Canadian politics is that the federal and provincial New Democratic Parties and the extra-parliamentary left-wing coalition groups that often work with the NDP -- are comparatively weak, and rarely able to significantly exercise power. Until the breakthrough federal election of 2011, when they won 103 seats (59 of them from Quebec), the NDP had held only about 25 to 30 seats (out of a total of about 300) in the successive federal Parliaments. In the 2015 federal election, they were reduced to 44 seats. Currently, they hold one provincial government (unexpectedly, Alberta). However, they have great influence on municipal politics, especially in Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Until the federal election of 2011, the official NDP might have appeared to be a comparatively minor force in Canadian politics. There had also been some talk in the 1990s of the supposed triumph of free-market neoconservatism in Canada which would appear to make things more difficult for the NDP. The facts are that the NDP possesses an unusual degree of ideological strength and depth rarely seen in any of the other Canadian parties, and so has had more real influence, never holding the federal government, than, for example, the federal Progressive Conservatives. Though never holding the federal government, the NDP was able to effect such major, transformative changes in the Liberal and federal P.C. parties (especially in social and cultural areas) that it hardly needed to be in power. The NDP has counted on the support of tens of thousands of university and college professors, journalists, civil servants, dedicated social activists, and teachers all of whom wielded a far greater amount of influence on politics and social life, than the large number of more "average" people who supported the centre-right Reform Party in the 1990s, or the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1980s and before. And, quite apart from the gradual percolation of their social and cultural ideas into Canadian society, the NDP has been able to enter into highly advantageous political collaborations with the Liberal Party, at critical junctures in Canadian politics. The NDP has often been able to put significant political pressure on the Liberal Party. They also significantly influenced the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario during the Bill Davis era (1971-1985). This has usually meant that the Liberals (or sometimes, P.C.'s) have largely carried out NDP policies. Until the 2011 election, the NDP had appeared to be in retreat, with the apparent triumph of free trade and fiscal or economic conservatism. Even with the NDP's breakthrough in 2011, the Conservatives were, after all, able to win a strong majority. However, it could be argued that the perception of a right-wing triumph in Canada in 2011-2015 is highly misleading. Indeed, the Conservatives were decisively swept away in the 2015 federal election, without having accomplished much. The facts are that social conservatism (focussing on upholding notions of traditional nation, family, and religion) is very weak in Canada. Most people embrace the latest variants of multiculturalism; high immigration; feminism; and gay rights. To a social conservative, the triumph of fiscal conservatism, is all-but-irrelevant when compared to the cultural, social, moral, spiritual, and religious crises of late modernity. Ironically, old-fashioned social democracy, such as that represented in Canada by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the much-different precursor to the NDP -- could be seen as largely socially-conservative. While ferociously fighting for the working class, and for social programs that benefited the broad Canadian majority, it largely supported traditional notions of nation, family, and religion. What has occurred since the 1960s, however, is the transformation of old-fashioned social democracy into left-liberalism. While becoming ever more conciliatory to capitalism and fiscal conservatism, it at the same time took increasingly hostile outlooks towards traditional notions of nation, family, and religion. Its claim to represent the working-class majority became less and less credible. The savants and elitists who represented the leadership of the New Democratic Party realized that they could exercise meaningful power within the structures of current-day capitalism. And the things they increasingly cared about was not the well-being of the working-class majority, but rather the trendy new issues of multiculturalism, feminism, and gay rights, which had been of comparatively little interest to traditional social democracy. Indeed, such cutting-edge theorists as Frantz Fanon raged against the traditional working class. Today, one sees the NDP wrapping itself in the cloak of compassion, decency, and concern for "average, ordinary people" when it could be argued that it has acted largely against the working majority of Canadians for over three decades. In those places where it has avoided the excesses of left-liberalism (for example, in Saskatchewan), its success has been largely congruent with the remnants of social conservatism. However, the typical impact of the NDP in Canada, when deployed in support of the excesses of left-liberalism, appears in its own way as damaging to society as the consumerism and globalization which it sometimes quite aptly criticizes. Regardless of the recent, partial return of fiscal or economic conservatism in Canada, the NDP had earlier been able to fundamentally transform the social and cultural ideas and policies of the Liberal Party and most of the P.C. Party (and thereby of most of the country) away from social conservatism. It could therefore be argued that its outlooks have triumphed in social and cultural matters. At the same time, it has partially continued the CCF traditions of fighting for a more generous welfare state whose universality is now being undermined not only by fiscal conservatism but ironically, also by the NDP-led social and cultural directions of promoting "designated groups" rather than the commonweal. It could be argued that the NDP has, in the last four to five decades, been Canada's most influential and idea-generating party. The history of the NDP in Canada on the left, and of the Reform Party on the right, may be of some interest to those who would wish to study whether it is possible that a relatively successful, "third party" movement could ever get underway in the United States and what its potential impact on the U.S. polity might be. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home White reporter contends darkskinned people can't control themselves By Michael R. Shannon Samantha Sunne had an authentically gritty New York City experience during a recent visit. She "spent four hours curled in a ball, balancing on a narrow wooden benchtrying to avoid the freezing cinderblock walls and the cold cement floor, splattered with cigarette butts and rotten food." This is just the kind of firsthand experience writers used to crave, but Sunne is not too happy about her brush with the NYC justice system. Maybe it's because they refused her request for a glutenfree cell. Samantha doesn't contend she was innocent the Hillary defense her contention is the offense is guilty. Sunne writes in the Washington Post that in the wee hours she was riding the Atrain and propped her feet up on the seat in front of her. The next thing she knew it was Eric Garner all over again. Only Sunne was arrested by a woman, didn't resist the arrest and, except for exposure to secondhand tobacco products, she was none the worse for wear. But that's not how she sees it: "I became one more victim of nuisance laws,' regulations that criminalize small misbehaviors that don't hurt anyone." The left characterizes these ordinances as "nuisance laws" when the statutes only inconvenience lawbreakers. A better term would be "respect your neighbor" laws, but leftists are completely unwilling to make any contribution to public order if doing so has even the slightest influence on their personal preference at that particular moment. Instead Sunne takes a law designed to keep seats in the NY subway clean and ready for tired behinds and morphs it into yet another sinister plot to keep the black man down. She explains, "On its face, this might not seem like a big deal everyone wants clean subways and orderly cities. But criminalizing small acts can have major consequences for nonwhite and low-income people, who are disproportionately arrested and convicted for these infractions." How is Samantha's viewpoint regarding the "nonwhite" population's adherence to the law any different from that of the Klan? The Klan thinks "people of color" can't control their sexual urges and Sunne evidently believes minorities lack the selfcontrol necessary to resist the urge to break the law. It's just in their nature. If you ask me Sunne and her fellow traveler's mindset is the real bigotry. These laws aren't designed to inflict discrimination on blacks or browns; they are designed to establish a baseline for public behavior. Besides, even in the Post not everyone is in agreement that enduring a gritty nonchalance toward behavior norms is worth it because the resulting atmosphere makes visits to the big city so much more authentic for leftist tourists. Natalie De Vincenzi writes, "We need security cameras on all Metro cars[cameras] could hold accountable the teenagers who threw objects at me on the train." Now I'm sure Samantha would object and saying throwing objects, as opposed to throwing curses, is assault and not a nuisance. But that's the big problem with disorder. It has a tendency to escalate. Samantha's delicate feet on the seat are quite a bit different from say Michael Brown's. I'm sure Samantha would be happy to remove hers when the little old white lady asked, but I'm not sure grandma would even bother to ask Brown. Public order laws are designed to protect the elderly, the infirm, the young, the female and the wimpy, while restraining the unruly. Politely asking the impolite to behave puts a burden on people that most are too timid to assume. That's when the government acts. "Nuisance" laws aren't like Obamacare. Obamacare makes you buy health insurance or the government penalizes you. "Nuisance" laws don't require you to polish seats on the subway with anything other than your behind. Rather than acknowledging how much better city life has been since the implementation of the "Broken Windows" theory of policing, people like Sunne delight in attempting to reverse the major gains made in public safety over the past two decades, by attributing the progress to "flawed and unfair" police tactics. And by flawed I mean raciallybiased, for as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, racism is the first refuge for the leftist. What's more, the critics offer no alternatives for replacing police tactics that have saved lives and rescued communities. Instead these "journalists" are like Tom and Daisy Buchannan in The Great Gatsby, "careless people, Tom and Daisy they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr (at) gmail.com. He is also the author of Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!). Home South Africa remained firmly in control after day three in Hobart, where Australia went to stumps still needing 120 runs to make South Africa bat again, with eight wickets in hand Australia 85 and 2 for 121 (Khawaja 56*) trail South Africa 326 (De Kock 104, Bavuma 74, Hazlewood 6-89, Starc 3-79) by 120 runs Scorecard and ball-by-ball details 85 and 2 for 121 (Khawaja 56*) trail326 (De Kock 104, Bavuma 74, Hazlewood 6-89, Starc 3-79) by 120 runs On the first day, this Test was on some sort of stimulant. On the second day, it swallowed a sedative. And on the third day, it took a mood-stabiliser, as a degree normality resumed. There was neither the chaos of Saturday's 15 wickets, nor the dreariness of Sunday's wash-out, but rather something in between: seven wickets, a couple of rain delays, a Quinton de Kock century, and a fightback of sorts from Australia's batsmen. But still South Africa remained in control. The situation at stumps was this: Australia had reached 2 for 121 in their second innings, with Usman Khawaja on 56 and Steven Smith on 18. David Warner had made 45 and Joe Burns a duck, and each would consider themselves unfortunate in their modes of dismissal. South Africa's fast men asked searching questions of Australia's top-order batsmen, who at last had a few answers. But they were still a long way from climbing out of the hole they dug on day one. At the close of play Australia still needed 120 more runs to make South Africa bat again. That will be their first goal on day four. Only then can they consider building a target, and thus have any hope of salvaging a positive result from the Test. And although South Africa showed hints of frustration late on day three, as Vernon Philander convinced Faf du Plessis to chance a couple of fruitless reviews, there remained plenty in the pitch for Philander and his colleagues. After South Africa had been dismissed for 326, with a lead of 241 runs, Australia's second innings started miserably as Burns fell for a duck in the first over when he tickled an attempted leg-glance off a wide Kyle Abbott delivery through to de Kock. It creates a precarious position for Burns, who was dropped in Sri Lanka, recalled for this Test to replace the injured Shaun Marsh, and will fly out of Hobart with 1 and 0 to his name. Warner and Khawaja were watchful during a 79-run partnership, though they were often tested by Philander, Abbott and Kagiso Rabada. Balls seamed and swung, whizzed past edges or narrowly missed the stumps. But for 21 overs the pair survived, even when Warner's edge off Abbott flew towards third slip, where Dean Elgar ducked under the flying ball, perhaps having lost sight of it, to the astonishment of the rest of the cordon. Abbott eventually had his man when Warner was tucked up by a shortish delivery at his ribs, and tried to work it behind square on the leg side. The ball bounced off Warner's hip and then ricocheted off his elbow and back into the stumps. But if Warner felt he was unlucky, Abbott had at least had reward for South Africa's plan to tuck Warner up in that region. Khawaja, who was particularly strong through the cover and point regions, brought up his half-century from his 91st delivery and for the first time in the match, an Australian had reason to raise his bat. There had been a nervous moment early in Khawaja's innings when Warner pushed to point and took off for a single, and Khawaja gave up on making his ground as Temba Bavuma threw - and missed. Earlier, Josh Hazlewood had completed the second six-wicket haul of his Test career as South Africa were bowled out for 326 shortly after lunch. De Kock and Bavuma were the key batsmen on the third day, compiling a 144-run sixth-wicket stand that added to Australia's frustration after the entire second day was lost to Hobart's rain. South Africa started the morning five down and added a further 117 runs to their total in the first session for the loss only of de Kock. And even that took until the fourth-last over before lunch, when on 104 de Kock played a tired-looking drive against Hazlewood and missed a ball that moved back in, and was bowled. Already de Kock had done more than enough damage. His fifth consecutive Test innings of fifty or more placed him in elite company: only Hashim Amla, Alan Melville, Hansie Cronje and Jacques Kallis (three times) among South Africans had achieved that feat before . He brought up his century from his 139th delivery with a single worked through square leg, and he was strong through the leg side right throughout his innings. De Kock's poise during this series has been notable, as has Bavuma's patience and ability to halt any momentum Australia's bowlers might have thought they were getting. Here, Bavuma occupied the crease for 204 deliveries, more than the 197 balls that comprised Australia's entire first innings. Bavuma was calm at the crease and struck eight fours on his way to 74, before extra bounce and a leading edge to the off side belatedly gave Joe Mennie his maiden Test wicket. Despite their contrasting batting styles, Temba Bavuma and Quinton de Kock showed the temperament to spend time in the middle, underlining a key difference between the two sides South Africa got an early sighting of the future on the third day of the Hobart Test and the good news is that it appears bright. In Temba Bavuma and Quinton de Kock , they have a middle-order pair who balance caution and creativity, and at 26 and 23 years old respectively, could serve them for at least the next five years. Both have roots in Johannesburg, the city of gold, where they each attended prestigious sporting schools - Bavuma was at St Davids, de Kock at King Edward VII - and played for the Lions. But it is here in Hobart, some might say the city of cold, where their Test tryst has truly blossomed. They put on 144 together, the highest sixth-wicket partnership by a visiting team at the Bellerive Oval, and stretched South Africa's lead to what may turn out to be a match-winning one. Quinton de Kock on... His partnership with Bavuma: "We have grown up batting together. We understand each other well. We are good friends. We get along well too. It's nothing new to us. We were just going about our business and we respect the way each other bats. Facing spin: Nathan [Lyon] is a quality bowler. It's just one or two shots that flew into my head that I played. Instinctive shots. He bowled really well to me. To be a spinner in Australia is not easy. You must understand he has done exceptionally well and you must respect that. Dean Elgar's dropped catch: I just saw Dean duck. I didn't know whether to laugh or to do what at that point. He is a great slip fielder. He can make mistakes. He is going to take some blinders. He will take one or two key catches. South Africa's chances of winning: We are fairly confident, but it's not going to be easy. They are batting really well. We're going to have to see what happens tomorrow. Usman has a good game plan and Steve Smith always does well. There's a lot of work ahead. In a morning session that ground Australia's attack down, Bavuma and de Kock underlined the difference between the two sides. It's not just that South Africa's batsmen have the temperament to spend time in the middle, it's that their newer batsmen do. Australia's middle-order has not yet shown that temperament. It isn't the first time on this tour that Bavuma and de Kock have done this - in Perth, South Africa were 81 for 5 when the pair come together and added 71, which helped the visitors move to 242. In Hobart, when Bavuma and de Kock came together on the first day, South Africa were already ahead. They had recovered from 76 for 4, when Bavuma had walked in to bat, to 132 for 5. Bavuma was on 28 off 51 balls, had survived a few early scares and earned the praise of former South Africa captain Graeme Smith. "I love Temba Bavuma, keep going big man," Smith tweeted. If South Africa were to extend their advantage, Bavuma needed a partner and that's where de Kock was crucial. They complemented each other perfectly. Bavuma has already shown an appetite for a fight. In Perth, he spent two hours and 17 minutes helping Faf du Plessis save South Africa from a first-innings collapse. He has an ability to absorb pressure. De Kock has the capacity to transfer pressure back to the bowler. He is an energetic player who does not allow anyone to dictate his approach. Perhaps, he has a bit of the David Warner license to play his natural game, but he does not abuse that. He is inventive, risk-taking and quick-scoring. With a stubborn batsman at one end and a busy one at the other, Australia spent the morning session under the pump. They were able to make things look more difficult for Bavuma, especially in Mitchell Starc's opening spell. He moved the ball away, probed the area outside off stump, trying to incite the drive, but Bavuma was not tempted. He is a compact player with a tight technique, who makes the opposition work for his wicket. Josh Hazlewood almost claimed it - he got a ball to kick up and Bavuma nearly played on while trying to fend it. He survived and got two off the next ball to reach his second fifty on this tour. De Kock had begun the day 10 runs behind Bavuma, but caught up quickly. His fifty came off 70 balls, and then he surged past Bavuma. While Bavuma fought through the 50s, de Kock raced to 80. He created run-scoring opportunities by playing late, piercing gaps and maintained a consistent scoring rate throughout his innings. De Kock's first fifty had taken him 70 balls and the second took 69. "Instinctive shots" is how he described what he did on Monday. Compare that to the 119 balls Bavuma faced for his fifty, and you have an idea of the difference between them. For a team, having two players of this calibre is ideal and the results are showing. In this year, de Kock has scored 560 runs in six Tests at an average of 80.00, while Bavuma has accumulated 465 runs in seven Tests at 58.12. Hashim Amla - 611 runs at 55.54 - is the only South Africa batsman to have scored more runs in 2016. Quinton de Kock and Temba Bavuma's 144-run stand was the highest for the sixth wicket by an overseas pair in Hobart Cricket Australia/Getty Images Among de Kock's knocks was a maiden hundred in Centurion and five successive scores of fifty or more, including this century. His consistency has cemented him in the Test XI and comparisons with the best are mushrooming. The most notable one is with Adam Gilchrist, and now that de Kock has scored a second Test century, on Gilchrist's birthday and at the same ground where the former Australia wicketkeeper scored his maiden hundred, those could continue. He maintains it's not something he is trying to do. "I don't try and be like him. That's just the way I play. I don't see myself being like him. I just see the ball, hit the ball. I have my own game plan. Some days, I can get off to a good start and keep a good momentum. Some days, I have to grind it out," de Kock said. On other days, Bavuma does the grinding. He has been spoken of as a batsman similar to Gus Logie, partly because of his height, mostly because of his fight. By lunch, Bavuma had faced 201 deliveries. Australia's entire first innings lasted only 197. Younited Italia, Nicola Manzari e il nuovo Coo, Luca Faccini e Head of Growth e Domenico Petraroli e General Counsel INTERVIEW with Eberhard Rhein (Senior Advisor, European Policy Centre, Brussels) EUBULLETIN: At the 2015 summit in the French capital, delegates from nearly 200 countries finalized the Paris Agreement, the worlds first global climate pact. During the present 22nd climate change summit or COP22 in Marrakesh, representatives from the signatory countries are working behind the scenes to come up with the rulebook for implementation of the Paris deal. Can you sum up what has been achieved in this process so far? Eberhard Rhein: Marrakesh Conference is the first conference after the signature and the ratification of the Paris Agreement. The new agreement means an enormous progress compared to anything we have had over the past 30 years. And, increasingly, the world will have to wake up to the challenge of climate change because it is happening around us everywhere, whether in tiny Europe or in big Asia. So, we will have to change our way of life, our way of thinking and, above all, our way of generating our energy. Within the next 30 years, our energy must become less and less composed of fossil forces. We must reduce our overall energy consumption, which must be much more effective in terms of housing, insulation of housing, it must be much more effective in terms of what we use as instruments for heating. What is now particularly important is the investment in housing and in buildings. Our buildings, especially in America and also in certain parts of Europe, are lousy; there is too much squander of energy because there are not even the double or triple windowpanes. EUBULLETIN: Much of the world was eagerly awaiting results of US presidential election, but it was in Marrakech where the wait was particularly poignant. What can we expect now that the Republican nominee, who called climate change a hoax and reiterated that he would cancel last years Paris Agreement, prevailed over rival Hillary Clinton, a strong supporter of climate action? Eberhard Rhein: Contrary to what has in the last few days been written in the media, there is no danger of the United States falling out of line, and even though Trump has boasted that the US will refute the Paris Agreement, they have signed and ratified it. Of course, any country can refute the agreement or withdraw from the agreement but it takes at least three years of time after the notification of the countrys withdrawal. So, nothing can happen to the US participation in the Paris Agreement at least before 2019 and by then even in the US, the atmosphere will not be the same because I bet the US will realize that the climate change affects its agriculture, affects its way of life. So, therefore, I am pretty optimistic even though even within Europe, and for example in Germany, there is an in-fight between industry and labour on the one hand and the people who are convinced that we have to do something about the climate change. This is what I would say on the present stage of climate change and the related policy. EUBULLETIN: The European Unions contribution to the fight against climate change consists of a range of measures adopted by the EU members it is called Europe 2020 Strategy. Has this package, which focuses on emissions cuts, renewables and energy efficiency, yielded any tangible results? Eberhard Rhein: In solar and wind energy field, technological progress is very fast and the prices are falling so that in a few years, the solar energy produced in optimal locations will be cheaper than the conventional sources of energy. You can also see one example: in Germany, one of the biggest conventional electricity producers has just posted 6 billion euros loss because it had to write down all the fossil input and replace it by renewable energy. And they built four entirely new companies for that purpose that will replace the old one. So, this is a change that is good and I hope countries like Poland and the Czech Republic that are still at the very beginning of that process will look at whats going on in the rest of Europe. But in Europe we will have to continue this fight and we will have, together with the Chinese, currently the biggest producer of solar energy panels, show the American that they cannot play a separate role. EUBULLETIN: Do you agree with many experts who say that the current conference in Marrakesh plays probably a more important role in this process that the Paris summit? Eberhard Rhein: I have just looked up where we now stand with the Marrakesh conference but it is still too early to say because the conference in Marrakesh will last until the end of the next week. The important things have not happened this week but they will happen in the coming week. It has just been going on for the first few days, which is just one of the big theatres. But also during the Marrakesh conference, people will see perhaps somewhat symbolically the worlds most important and largest concentrated solar power plant complex, which is located precisely in Morocco. EUBULLETIN: Talking about this well-known major solar plant field in Morocco, have the North African countries themselves taken some substantive steps in moving toward using more renewable sources of energy? Eberhard Rhein: They use solar and also small wind farms because they have a very long 2000-kilometer coast with ideal wind conditions. But I have mentioned the worlds largest solar power plant that is projected to gradually replace conventional energy generation in the country. So, Morocco is the only country in Northern Africa and in fact in the whole Africa that is leading the way in changing the whole power industry. Morocco is a leader in all of Africa. President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said on Friday (11 November), when speaking at a conference in Luxembourg, that Donald Trumps victory posed a danger for the ties between Europe and the United States. In his opinion, US President-Elect was ignorant of the EU and its actions. Mr Juncker suggested that The election of Trump poses the risk of upsetting intercontinental relations in their foundation and in their structure. Mr Junckers remarks generally reflected the shock among European leaders at the election of Mr Trump who had claimed, among other things, that there was no such thing as climate change, praised Russian President Putin and questioned the principle of collective defense in NATO. Mr Trumps commitment to Western security is among Mr Junckers greatest worries who warned against the pernicious consequences of President-Elects statements. Mr Juncker said that Americans generally did not have much interest in Europe, recalling one of Mr Trumps statements in which he referred to Belgium as to the city. We will need to teach the President-Elect what Europe is and how it works, said Mr Juncker and brashly added that he thought we will waste two years before Trump tours the world he does not know. EU ministers met on Sunday (13 November) during an emergency meeting discussing how to handle the relations with Washington over key issues. The EU has been working closely with the Obama administration on constructing economic pressure on the Kremlin over the Ukraine conflict and the Iran deal, forcing Tehran to scale back its nuclear program. EU diplomats admitted that the election of Mr Trump is a big unknown for the old continent, saying that for the first time in decades EU governments have very little idea what the next US Presidents foreign policy will look like. To that end, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier stressed that Europe must prepare for a less predictable US foreign policy. Announcement Coincides with World Diabetes Day INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) and Lilly Diabetes are partnering on a three-year, 6 million euro commitment designed to drive new research and education to better support people with diabetes, the organizations announced today. The Foundation is a not-for-profit organization governed by the executive committee of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). Lilly Diabetes is a business within Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Company . EFSD, EASD and Lilly have partnered for years in seeking out solutions for people with diabetes, and the agreement announced today is a comprehensive commitment among the organizations. This collaboration provides a wide range of programmes and a prize, covering and recognizing diabetes research and education, with a special focus on the support of young scientists and clinicians in Europe. The collaboration will include the following: Albert Renold Prize: This annual prize for outstanding achievements in research on the islets of Langerhans will be awarded during the annual EASD conference. Robert Turner Course: Focused on clinical research in diabetes, this course offers young researchers the opportunity to be trained by an outstanding team from Oxford University on the basic requirements for clinical research. Open Research Fund: As part of this major effort to combat diabetes each year, the EFSD/Lilly European Diabetes Research Programme will support areas of basic or clinical diabetes research. Fellowship Programme: This programme will encourage innovative research in the fields of diabetes and its complications, and promote excellence in medical education. Scientists Training Course: This course will promote emerging talents in the field of diabetes research, and foster diabetes research throughout the world, offering a hands-on, practical approach. Nearly 415 million people around the world have diabetes, including an estimated 60 million across Europe, according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF). "EFSD is delighted that the strong collaboration with Lilly continues to thoroughly explore all areas of diabetes research. Diabetes is one of the defining health problems of the 21st century, and, despite the great efforts being made, it still remains insufficiently understood," commented Professor Juleen Zierath, President of EASD/EFSD. "Research for prevention, care and a cure is the only way to save lives and improve the well-being of the incredible number of people with diabetes in the world," said Professor Stefano Del Prato, chairman of EFSD. "EFSD supports the most dynamic research in diabetes in collaboration with industry and strives across the European Region to keep diabetes and research into this devastating chronic disease under continuous focus. The program just launched with the support of Lilly is another step forward to link science, research and education, and to attract younger investigators in a very competitive field." "Our commitment to people with diabetes started more than 90 years ago when we partnered with the University of Toronto to deliver the first insulin to people with diabetes," said Jeremy Morgan, vice president of Lilly's international diabetes business. "And while there have been tremendous advancements in treatment options and awareness, gaps remain. Millions of people with diabetes are not treated adequately and, in some cases, are not even aware they have diabetes. We are looking forward to this new collaboration working hand-in-hand with EFSD to continue the important work dedicated to bridging these gaps." "With this new collaboration, we aim to further strengthen the private-public collaboration in the research field and to make a contribution to top-quality education," said Robert Heine, M.D., Ph.D., Distinguished Lilly Scholar, Lilly Diabetes. This enhanced commitment coincides with World Diabetes Day, which was created in 1991 by IDF and the World Health Organization in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat posed by diabetes. World Diabetes Day became an official United Nations Day in 2006 with the passage of United Nation Resolution 61/225, and occurs annually on Nov. 14. About EFSDThe European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) was created by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) to provide funding in all areas of diabetes research across the entire European Region. The aims of EFSD are to encourage and support groundbreaking diabetes research and to promote the next generation of leading diabetes researchers. More information about EFSD can be found at: www.europeandiabetesfoundation.org [enlace] About EASDThe European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) was founded in 1965 and is based in Duesseldorf, Germany. It is one of the largest networks for diabetologists worldwide with the mission to promote excellence in diabetes care through research and education. EASD membership is open to health care professionals, scientists and nurses as well as students from all over the world who are interested in the field of diabetes. More information about EASD can be found at: www.easd.org [http://www.easd.org/] About Lilly DiabetesLilly has been a global leader in diabetes care since 1923, when we introduced the world's first commercial insulin. Today we are building upon this heritage by working to meet the diverse needs of people with diabetes and those who care for them. Through research and collaboration, a broad and growing product portfolio and a continued determination to provide real solutions--from medicines to support programs and more--we strive to make life better for all those affected by diabetes around the world. For more information, visit www.lillydiabetes.com [http://www.lillydiabetes.com/] or follow us on Twitter: @LillyDiabetes. About Eli Lilly and Company Lilly is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at www.lilly.com [http://www.lilly.com/] and newsroom.lilly.com/social-channels [enlace]. Refer to: Simon Mueller; simon.mueller@easd.org; +49 211 758 469 0; EASD Jennifer Hoopingarner; jennifer.hoopingarner@lilly.com; 317-741-8811; Lilly Diabetes Logo -- enlace [enlace] Web site: http://www.lilly.com/ With Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking the entire nation by surprise on November 9 when he announced the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, the first ones to encash on the decree were the mobile wallet companies. Within just a few minutes of the announcement, players such as Paytm, Freecharge, MobiKwik, Ola Money and others, came out with quirky social media posts to engage with their customers and urged them not to panic and instead go cashless. On the following day, full page ads in national dailies were also taken up these players, where they pledged their support to this policy and spoke about the ease of cashless transactions. Aggressive advertising: Paytm used Narendra Modis picture in their ad campaign and congratulated him for taking the boldest decision in the financial history of independent India. Using the hashtag Ab ATM nahin, #PaytmKaro the brand ran full page ads in mainline papers. Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal took pot-shots at the brand through his tweet where he talks about it being the biggest beneficiary of PMs announcement. To which, the CEO of the company, Vijay Shekhar even responded. Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik, said, I believe this is the best marketing campaign which India could have asked for both fintech and mobile wallet companies. Yes we are promoting it in a big way because it has never happened before that the government is promoting cashless payments. It is a very opportune moment for us and we have just launched our print campaign Khatam Karo ATM Shaytm. Switch to MobiKwik wallet for your daily spends, which we will run for some time. While a lot of these brands are targeting the customers, PayU India comes to the rescue of small and medium businesses, who are also grappling with stress, post the sudden withdrawal of the above mentioned currencies from the market. The brand has launched two apps-PayUmoney Seller App and Sellfie, both aimed at enabling the merchants to accept payments digitally. Increase in traffic, user base and merchant enquiries: One of the major problems in this category has always been awareness, but after the PMs announcement, all the mobile wallet companies have seen a tremendous increase in traffic, in their number of downloads and the number of merchant enquiries have also seen a spurt. Infact, Paytm saw an overwhelming 435 per cent increase in overall traffic as consumers increasingly took to using the Paytm wallets for their transactions. The company also registered a 200 per cent hike in number of app downloads and 250 per cent surge in number of overall transactions, all this within hours of the decision being made public. Within 24 hours of this announcement Pay U Indias transactions increased to 85 per cent. Enquiries by merchants also shot up by 50 per cent. While the brands average daily transactions amount to 12 lakhs daily, they are anticipating the same to increase by 25 lakhs in the upcoming months. Commenting on how this decision will impact the mobile wallets, Amrish Rau, CEO, PayU India, said, I certainly believe that the recent announcement by the PM to remove Rs 500 and 1000 notes will have a positive impact on the use of mobile wallets in India. The market is maturing today, people have access to smartphones and internet and we only expect the infrastructure to improve henceforth. So, from an industry point of view we certainly foresee an increase in the utilisation of mobile wallets and digital payments adoption in India." FreeCharge reported a sharp 12X overnight jump in the average wallet balance on the following day of the announcement, as consumers loaded up their wallets. MobiKwik registered 40 per cent growth in app downloads within 18 hours of the announcement of currency withdrawal. Additionally, user traffic and merchant queries went up by 200 per cent among its over 35 million users. Another e-wallet service, Oxigen Services witnessed significant increase in the load money transactions by up to 40-45 per cent during the first half of the day following the announcement and the company expects to see a spike in the short term. Sunil Kulkarni, Deputy Managing Director from the company said, This situation is going to stabilise to a new normal which should be at least 40-45 per cent of the pre-announcement period. The average ticket size is also expected to jump by 50 per cent going forward. All this is because people will become more comfortable to adopt digital wallets for their cashless transactions. Wallet on Delivery: A lot of the e-commerce companies have been facing the heat of the recent announcement as Cash on Delivery (COD) accounts for the bulk of online shopping in India. Most of these companies have temporarily discontinued their COD Services. In order to tackle this, FreeCharge has launched Wallet on Delivery, so Snapdeal customers can pay using their FreeCharge wallet on the delivery of their goods. MobiKwik also announced via email that it will offer a MobiKwik wallet on delivery option for online sellers. Paytm even mentioned on Twitter that it is working with courier companies to enable Wallet on Delivery, also known as Paytm on Delivery services. Will the companies benefit in the long run or is their celebration short lived? Experts speak: Commenting on this, Hitesh Gossain, CEO, Onspon.com, said, Yes, the e-wallet companies are expected to benefit the most from this decision. This can already be seen from their marketing and advertisement pattern. This demonetisation decision was taken to curb the problem of unaccounted cash in the market and move India towards a 'cashless' economy. But definitely, there will be a major jump in the number of users using theses e-wallets, especially for the next month or so. They also provide an alternative payment mode to people who do not have bank accounts. With these e-wallets now integrated with all major e-commerce companies, this is a good opportunity for the e-wallets to make the users used to their payment method and make them repeated users. The long-term impact of this decision remains uncertain, however, the signs are encouraging for such companies. Rohan Agrawal, Senior Consultant at RedSeer Consulting, said, Demonetisation is aimed at curbing black money and has brought liquidity crunch currently. This has led to sudden increase in usage of cash-less options (credit cards, debit cards, net-banking, mobile wallets etc.). Combine this with the infrastructure requirements and promotional offers, mobile wallets shall witness high trial and usage, which was already evident in the first two days. In the short term, the top nine markets will have higher usage of mobile wallets owing to liquidity crunch. In the long term, customer acquisition and engagement during the short term will help in overcoming the inertia and drive the awareness levels. It will definitely drive the adoption rates for the mobile wallets in the long term. According to Saurabh Uboweja, Brand expert, Founder & CEO, Brands of Desire, the biggest beneficiary of this announcement is not only the mobile wallets, but also the organised retailers like Big Bazaar, who have been actively promoting electronic transfers. People who will suffer in the short term are the unorganised sector, like the local kiranas. But they will also join hands with e-wallets eventually. So today, where majority of the transaction happens in cash, I think by 2020, almost 50-60 per cent of transaction would be electronic, he said. But in a country, where 90 per cent of the transaction happens in cash and where half of the population dont even have a bank account, how easy it is to change the behaviour of the consumers to shift to digital payments? Gossain added, This demonetisation decision is not against the usage of cash but against the unaccounted cash in the economy. However, ultimately and by default India is moving towards a cashless economy. Though, definitely there would be a change in the transaction pattern atleast in the short run, with inadequate liquid cash in the economy. However, in the long run, the transaction pattern would differ across income sectors. Majority of the lower sector of the economy do not have a bank account or do not have much knowledge about alternative electronic/digital payment methods. Therefore, cash would still play an important role for them. If we look at the upper and middle class, definitely, the usage of electronic and digital transactions would increase in the near future. But to say, there would be a dramatic shift in the transaction pattern is a little premature. Read more news about (ad news, latest advertising news India, internet advertising, ad agencies updates, media advertising India) In an interview with exchange4media, Richard Ingleton, COO, Kantar and Preeti Reddy, CEO, Kantar Insights, South Asia, talk about the sheer diversity of Indian consumers posing as a challenge to market research businesses and the global importance that India commands when it comes to the business. Excerpts: How popular has the use of big data become in the Indian context and which industries are driving that trend? Preeti Reddy: Big Data is todays absolute buzzword. Most of our clients are using it in one way or the other. Largely what they have been doing is using their own data which includes transactional data, sales data etc. Lately clients have started talking to us about using primary data and other multiple sources of data with own data, which is something the big data is all about. What we are finding is that the usage of big data for strategy and for bringing better options for consumers is higher among the service businesses like telecom, finance and retail. Our FMCG clients have been a little slower in coming to it. Moreover, India is a very large backend market and provides backend services like advanced analytics on big data to markets like the US and the UK. So, the use of big data is common among the non FMCG clients, the FMCG clients are just getting there. Richard Ingleton: What you see happening, almost everywhere, is clients struggling with the volume of data. The concept of big data is nice but applying that data to specific business problems is still something which we have not yet codified. In marketing, I think people are still struggling to bring multiple data sources to predict brand strategy, they are still struggling to find out which part of the consumer journey they can best influence. In many cases they are struggling to use it to calculate price points. Some businesses, which are big data businesses, are generally good at it from a functional marketing perspective. However, its still hard to see codified, consistent solutions anywhere in the world. Does the sheer diversity of Indian consumers pose as a challenge to market research businesses? Also, what are some critical areas in which market research firms have evolved over the years? Richard Ingleton: We are increasingly trying to move towards helping the marketers to make decisions in the moment. The ability to understand a consumers context and to send a message which is relevant to a particular moment is the trick that many marketers are pursuing. When you look at India, given the diversity of this place, having one marketing method alone isnt going to work and it often is challenging to understand consumers with such limited approach. As we know, market research firms are chiefly concerned about what people buy and why they buy. Historically, the only way to do market research has been through surveys and there are many different ways to do that. Now, I can know not just why people buy what they buy, particularly the why factor, simply because there are a lot of things I can do now, like mapping consumption patterns, using smart technology and many other things. The way the market research is conducted is evolving fast and we have dedicated teams to figure out how we can keep moving forward. What I have observed is that in less mature markets or the non-western markets, people dont want to spend too much time on strategising. They want to know what to sell, where and at what price now and are not spending time on strategy like the western markets would, but with time that may change soon. Moreover, when the world is changing so fast and it is almost too complicated to understand sometimes. Earlier, the path to purchase was relatively simpler, but now the situation is entirely different. So, for marketers, the consumer behaviour complexity has become bigger than ever before and so we have to move faster to understand the insights that we offer to clients. Preeti Reddy: What Richard said applies to India, especially when it comes to need for speed and need for greater experimentation. This has shrunk the strategy time for clients. A client today is saying that I would prefer 80% accuracy faster than to have 100% accuracy slower. So, those are the kind of trade-offs that we are making in the interest of speed for clients. It is also important to use the data that we already have than to generate new data every time. So, the ability and skill to look at multiple data points and connect them is the other change that we are witnessing in the case of what we offer to our clients. How enduring are the insights that you offer and what kind of lifecycle do such insights have? Richard Ingleton: If you look at the market research data closely, it is the context which changes and that gives rise to new data possibilities. So, understanding how I can go after those universal desires in a context makes sense for my consumers and those are the insights that we share with our clients. Preeti Reddy: Even clients now can predict how long certain equilibrium is going to last and they have competition coming from all sides. So, while there are some enduring principles or fundamentals, however, there is also need that the tactic of that strategy is much faster and for that to happen we have to create a lot of agility. Has digital complicated the data gathering game? Richard Ingleton: It has got more complicated for sure. When you add a new variable to any equation it gets more complicated. We have added e-commerce and social media to the things that we need to understand the consumer, so it has got more complicated. At the same time, it doesnt mean that we cant solve it. Many information industries are evolving at the moment in the way that they have become more complex and the fact is that we have got to deal with it. Preeti Reddy: I keep saying that this new empowered digital consumer is like friends with benefits. At one level they are far more empowered, while on the other hand they are giving you information voluntarily and we have to develop the ability to make sense of all the information that they are giving us. Earlier, we had to give incentives to people for their opinion and here are these digitally empowered people who are voluntarily doing so. Now, we are working towards harnessing and leveraging that information in a holistic way. How would you explain the future trends in market research? Richard Ingleton: The fact that we are in the business of understanding consumers will never change. For me there are two things that will change, one is about not just bringing together these disparate data sources in a coherent way, but also being able to analyse them. The second one is to what extent can we automate everything--from data collection to insights delivery. As the machines get more intelligent, you can expect to do more in the automated way. So, these are the two big changes that I foresee for my industry. Preeti Reddy: The other trend that we will see in the coming time will be related to the kind of people that we will need in the research industry. Some of the old divides of the research business like quantitative, qualitative and analysis, all of that may actually disappear. When you will have data so freely available and data becomes a commodity, the value that we add to a client has to be the meaning that you extract from that data and the ability to do that will become extremely important. What are Kantars plans for India? Richard Ingleton: India is one of our nine focus countries and there are many reasons why it is so. One is the quality of people that we can develop in India. The second is the economic opportunity. But most importantly, it is the social opportunity by improving the life of the people through the public work that we do, like the sanitation schemes or the schemes related to infant mortality. We are also witnessing the emergence of local giants in the developing markets which is a good development and India is witnessing it along with markets like China, Indonesia and Mexico. Preeti Reddy: Talking about India, you can expect greater use of technology in the way that we work. As Kantar in India, we are the largest when it comes to the research business with all the big brands that we have here. Some of the changes that we need to bring to the industry, Kantar in India will drive it, because we have the scale the will and the wherewithal to do that. Read more news about (marketing news, latest marketing news,internet marketing, marketing India, digital marketing India, media marketing India, advertising news) Again - you being able to work depends on your husband's visa not some agreement. What visa will he be moving to the US on? Uscis.gov is the official site and gives details about Employment Authorization Document aka EAD for spouses. Relying on a corporation to 'take things into account' can work or not. IRS.gov gives info about federal taxes, Google State New York and City New York. We have some posters who live in the city. Maybe they will chime in. Human resources should be able to give you details. Your perks are taxable items. You receive income in non- monetary formats that is taxable. Bev can shed more light into this as taxes are her forte. Have items such as flights, moving household, temporary housing, separation and return to Italy, .... been discussed? Google if NY City falls under 'right to work'. Request to read the fine print of the health insurance package. This is nothing unusual. What is covered, what are coming-pays and deductibles, what network of physicians is available? Is it medical only or medical/dental/vision? Has it been specified what kind of housing will be provided or at what dollar equivalent? My first question would be is washer/dryer in the apartment? If your husband needs to drive to work is parking available? I know nothing about the Italian retirement system. Do your research on putting it on hold, ... whatever has to be done. Contact the school district and ask what exact documents you need from the Italian school and if you need translations/certified translations. Hello, Whilst the UK is still part of the EU your wife is considered the 'non-eu spouse of a EEA citizen' as such she has the right to travel with you within the EU and the only thing you would need is proof that: 1) you're married and 2) you are travelling together or that she intends to meet you there. the UK and Cyprus are both non-schengen countries so ideally and if you had time, you should apply for a cyprus provisa/visa. Thsi will streamline things for you.. however, it is your right to travel with just the marriage ceritficate. Check on europa(dot)eu and you will see examples. its a very quick google but im not allowed to post links sorry. Albert1970 said: First of all: Thanks Steve! Next question will be; where to live. Being single, I like some activity around me and I dont like to commute long and I have no license (yet, still have to find out how get lessons in Dubai). The company is in the Al Karama area so any suggestions are welcome. Click to expand... Get your license in the Netherlands before coming out here. Once you have a valid Dutch license you can easily convert it into a UAE license.The driving lessons out here are pretty piss poor, apparently. The agencies fail everyone as many times as possible to make money off of them.But if your office is near a metro stop (Karama has one) you can find a place to live near a metro and take the metro to work. Many people don't drive in Dubai at all, taking taxis or metro instead. Uber and Careem (private taxi service) are also very popular.You have a healthy housing budget so for a place near a metro stop and not far from Karama I would look at the BurJuman apartments (upscale, above an upscale mall, one stop away), or any of the towers along Sheikh Zayed Road by the WTC, Emirates Towers and Financial Centre metro stations.Downtown is one more stop away but the only towers within reasonable walking distance of the metro is the Burj Lofts. IT's a much more "upscale" if that appeals to you.Come to Dubai and look around. You'll soon know what works for you. This is one of those things where you might do well to plan with Brexit in mind. At the moment, banks in the EU are not allowed to charge "extra" for bank transfers coming from or going to an EU country. They can, however, make a charge for changing currencies. I can at the moment, make a bank transfer payment directly into a UK account without any additional charges (other than for the exchange of euros to sterling or vice versa).Once the UK Brexits (or whatever it's going to do), the banks can add their own fees for a transfer into or out of a non-EU country. An exchange service is often able to withdraw the funds from one bank in one country, and deposit the "translated" amount into a bank in another country so that it appears that both transfers are locally based, thus avoiding the bank transfer fees.For the moment, though, you need to ask the agency that is paying your pension what provisions (if any) they have for paying pensions directly into a "foreign" account. Don't know about the UK, but for example, the US Social Security pension can be paid directly from the US Consulate in Paris. Because of the amount they handle each month for retirees here in France, they tend to get the best exchange rates available. If there is no provision for direct deposit here in France, you may want to take a look at this site (it's a comparison site for lots of FX services - each with their own pluses and minuses): Best Way to Send Money Abroad to UK, Europe, USA, Australia, Singapore, UAE & More Cheers,Bev A strong and growing job market in New Zealand is creating more opportunities for employment and careers, according to new information released by the Government.New Zealand is popular with international skilled workers looking to emigrate and growing numbers are choosing to do so and the data from the latest Building Skilled and Safe Workplaces report is encouraging. The New Zealand economy has added 35,000 more jobs in the last quarter alone. We now have the second highest employment rate in the entire OECD. This gives us a great platform to work with employers and other stakeholders to lift employment for people of all ages to levels we havent seen before, said Steven Joyce, education and employment minister.Although the programme is aimed at people already in New Zealand it is a sign that jobs are out there, according to recruitment experts.It comes at a time when more young people from around the world are going to study in New Zealand and the international education industry is now worth $4.28 billion, up from $2.85 billion in 2014, according to the latest figures from the education department.The number of international students increased in all regions between 2012 and 2015 with Auckland seeing a rise of 55%, Canterbury a 71% rise and Waikato numbers grew by 45%. They are spending more on tuition fees and living costs with the top source countries being China, India, Korea and Japan.This demonstrates the growing importance of international education to New Zealand. While economic value is obviously important, international education brings much wider benefits to our institutions, our communities and our country. International students add a rich diversity to our learning institutions, and help to connect New Zealand to the world, said Joyce.New Zealand is a trading nation. The relationships and networks developed with people from around the world through international education play a vital role in New Zealands business relationships with other countries. The relationships being formed now will help to secure New Zealands trading, investment and education links and contribute greatly to our future prosperity, he explained.The growing demand for New Zealands world-class education shows that our small country is seen as a big player in the education industry. We must continue to develop and sustain our international education sector and add to our reputation as an innovative, prosperous and welcoming nation, added Joyce.The Government is currently consulting with industry representatives on a revised International Education Strategy for New Zealand. The new strategy will seek to underpin the quality of the student experience and to realise the full social, cultural and economic value for New Zealand.Joyce pointed out that it means the Governments key growth goals for international education is well on its way to being met with a target of $5 billion by 2025. Chattanooga entrepreneur John L. Kerns announced his candidacy for City Council in District 9. Mr. Kerns said, For the last few months Ive received overwhelming encouragement from our neighbors in District 9 and across Chattanooga. Im pleased to answer their call, and offer new energy to voters in our district, as well as leadership that listens on City Council. Mr. Kerns said that his campaign will focus on four main issues: crime reduction, closing Chattanoogas opportunity gap, creating the Smartest City in the South, and ensuring that Chattanooga remains the Scenic City for generations to come. This is a critical point in the history of our city. Chattanooga has done some great things in the last 20 years, but that success hasnt touched every neighborhood, or benefited every taxpayer, like it should, he said. The campaign will hold a kick-off celebration Thursday, at 5:30 p.m. at the Archway Building at 2523 Glass St. Refreshments will be provided, and everyone is invited. Mr. Kerns, who resides in Highland Park with his wife Sara, chose Chattanooga in 2009 and is associated with Preferred Care at Home, which now has 75 employees and was a finalist for the Chattanooga Hamilton County Small Business of the Year Award in 2015. He is active in the Highland Park Neighborhood Association, a graduate of Leadership Chattanooga, and vice chairman of the board of directions for Welcome Home of Chattanooga. Monday, November 14, 2016 This guest blog post was written by Sarah Rickerd, founder and owner of Carry Your Heart Jewelry and Gifts. How do you say a good goodbye when you never said hello? On April 23, 2013, I held my daughter Lena Grace, stillborn at seven months gestation, for twenty minutes, creating a sacred space for us amidst the beeps and blips of hospital monitors that would hold the entirety of our relationship together in this world. With the two year-old son I now have at home, twenty minutes is nothing. Twenty minutes is an episode of Daniel Tiger that buys me enough time to get the dishes in the dishwasher. Its the time required for me to negotiate that yes, you do in fact have to wear pants to church. To wrap the whole of a relationship into twenty minutes strains my understanding of the word relationship. And yet, its a reality that I share with the hundreds of thousands of families who experience pregnancy loss every year. As I joined the club no parent wants to be a part of, I learned that one in four confirmed pregnancies ends in a loss even today, in our age of modern medicine. Ten times as many babies are lost to stillbirth as are lost to SIDS, and fewer than half of the 26,000 families affected by stillbirth are given an explanation for the deaths of their children. I learned these statistics not just through my own reading and support group participation, but through my first professional position within the funeral industry the one I took four months after the loss of my daughter. I guess you could say I leaned into death (Sheryl Sandberg wouldve been proud). To be able to relate to the funeral directors who were my companys customers, I studied the process of burial and cremation the exact process Id had to choose for my daughter four months earlier. I learned how firms support families after their losses in order to develop the aftercare materials wed offer on our funeral home websites, taking comfort myself from the content I wrote for others. The members of the peer support group I was a part of were understandably skeptical of my all-in approach to grief and healing; not, as I believed, because they didnt think Id be up to the task, but because, as I learned, many of them had had extremely negative experiences with funeral homes. Take the story below from my friend Sharon, which I recently had the chance to share at NFDA 2016: When I gave birth to Gabriel, his heart had stopped just a few hours prior. He was full term and looked like a perfect baby who happened to have his eyes closed. The nurses gave him a bath and wrapped him up in a blanket and put a hat over his gorgeous curls. As painful as those moments were, I held our son, wrapped in his blanket and wearing his blue hat. I was really terrified of death, and dead bodies, and I was too scared to kiss him. I worked up the courage to kiss him on his head, but only on his hat. Since I never saw him naked, my memory of him is tied to his only clothes- that blanket and hat. The very blanket and hat that the funeral director disposed of, without asking us. As I continue my funeral industry work now through my company Carry Your Heart Im regularly gutted by stories like these; stories of careless, negligent treatment by the very funeral professionals we entrust to guide parents through the unimaginable reality of losing a child. Im in the process of turning my NFDA session material into a continuing education course, and my company is working tirelessly to develop grief support materials for families facing pregnancy loss that well distribute online and through funeral homes. Ive said it more than once before: the last thing I wanted was a calling. And yet, here I am, doing the work I believe must be done, fueled by my daughters memory. I named my company Carry Your Heart because thats where her memory lives. As long as Im alive, I carry her memory in my heart and everything I do in this world is a reflection not just on me, but on her as well. Nearly three and a half years out from my daughters loss, my grief is curiosity. The jagged edges of our loss have dulled into wondering who the person whose absence the wound of grief represents would have been. Would she be a bossy big sister to a second child who would have come in my sons place? Would she have his messy hair and stubborn streak? Whoever she would have been, I hope shed be proud of me. Sarah Rickerd is the owner of Carry Your Heart Jewelry and Gifts. Learn more at www.CarryYourHeart.net. If you have a fancy educational background, the tempting thing is to go into a glamorous field, full of smart people with equally good educations. Maybe investment banking, consulting or a stint with a hedge fund? I tried all that. Because Im a slow learner, I realized late that theres got to be a better way. It took me awhile to figure out the following: Dirty jobs might be a smarter bet for making money. Thomas Stanley, author of best-selling personal-finance book The Millionaire Next Door, certainly thinks so. He encouraged entrepreneurs to take on dirty jobs. Stanley tells the story of junkyard owner Richard with his $700,000 annual income and $10 million net worth as the quintessential model to follow. Seek businesses that might have little to no competition, Stanley urges, because they lack the prestige that attracts the brightest minds. My friend Bryant did just that. Bryants Ivy League education initially took him to book publishing in Brooklyn, which while not as lucrative as other high-status jobs is definitely full of bright shiny minds. Then a buddy lured him down to the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas in 2007. Hes been knee-deep in the oil field services industry ever since and just started a side business cleaning rail cars, called CRU Railcar services. Rail-car cleaning He and his boss got inspired because they move sand into the oil field in South Texas via rail, and they found existing services to periodically clean their train cars expensive, slow and unreliable. Heres some background on cleaning rail cars: Rail cars that move the products of the oil and gas business have to be cleaned before carrying anything else and/or being put into storage. If the rail car previously hauled diesel but will move heavy sour crude in the future, then a professional cleaner has to completely scour the inside of the car. If the car moved propane before but will be retired into a rail yard for storage, the whole thing has to be cleaned as well. This is a dirty job. Its also dangerous, scary and complicated. During my field trip to his offices 30 minutes south of my house, Bryant and his team of five other roughnecks all wore the company uniform: The left-pocket nametags stitched on nylon with reflective safety stripes give them a look somewhere between old Astros jerseys and bowling team shirts. Its the kind of thing his book-publishing hipsters buddies might wear in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but in a totally ironic way. Theres no irony to Bryants pret-a-porter style. This job kills. Two cleaners in Illinois died after succumbing to fumes in 2014, while another two in Nebraska were blown up in 2015. Materials left inside the cars are highly explosive. Two brothers in San Antonio died in June after inhaling fumes inside a tank car they were cleaning. A Houston Chronicle investigative report in 2014 found the tank-cleaning business to be highly risky, with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the main regulatory agency, unable to keep track of cleaning companies or their safety standards. In reading reports of accidents on the job, a haphazard approach to risk appears common. Attention to detail Bryants attention to detail when it comes to risk, by contrast, impressed the heck out of me. Bryant walked me through the process hes created for cleaning fuel cars. Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot. First, they assume the air inside a fuel car is totally incompatible with human life. All cleaners breathe only from oxygen tanks, like scuba divers underwater. As a backup, they carry five-minute emergency tanks in the event of a failure. A spotter stands over a hole in the top of the train car at all times, watching for any signs of trouble. The spotter stands next to a crane for lifting an unconscious body, while an electronic monitor for air toxicity runs at all times. In addition to the spotter, a rescue person stands by, with his own oxygen supply at the ready, in case of trouble. That covers the air problem. Then theres the explosion problem. To hack at dried petroleum that might cake the fuel tank floor, the cleaners use a spark-proof shovel. Shovels are just one method. Train cars arrive in a wide variety of dirty states, having carried any number of oil and gas products. In tests, Bryants team has found that only trial and error can determine what cleans the cars best. Sometimes a splash of diesel loosens the gunk. Sometimes a high-pressure water hose that would cut off your limbs works best. Sometimes, he reports, the simple household cleaner Dawn is magically effective. Seek dirty jobs Many things will determine the success or failure of your new business venture: the cost of materials, your ability to make the big sale at the right time, the difficulty of finding investment capital, your skill in hiring and retaining key people, and, of course the sign of the zodiac under which you were born. But one of the things that could save you as you screw up everything early in your business venture is the quality of your competition. In a sense, this is just another restatement of the old bear and the two hunters joke. You dont necessarily have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your competition. If you can choose a field where the competition is thin, youve got a good chance of thriving. Bryants rail-car cleaning business is dirty, dangerous, claustrophobic and complicated. I would not do it for anything in the world. I also have a hunch theyre going to clean up on the competition and make a lot of money. Michael Taylor is a former Goldman Sachs bond salesman and writes the finance blog Bankers-Anonymous.com. Twitter: @BankerAnonymous This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As the list price of a pair of EpiPen devices soared to more than $600 this summer, people scurried to find alternatives, occasionally throwing caution to the wind. Some bought cheap syringes filled with epinephrine, the medication in EpiPens; others made homemade auto-injectors, following the steps in a popular YouTube video. Few people, though, have turned to the one true alternative known by the brand name Adrenaclick. The Adrenaclick auto-injector checks all the necessary boxes: The government declared it safe; national pharmacies sell it; and its list price is a third less than the EpiPens. But selling a drug takes far more than that. The story of Adrenaclick is paved with blunders and missed chances, leaving it a largely unknown bit player with a single-digit share of the market. Six companies in succession have owned Adrenaclick since an earlier version became available 13 years ago, but few invested significant money in marketing. It has been sold under multiple names, and at one point it was taken off the market for more than a year. Recently, its owner, Impax Laboratories, has struggled to keep up with scant demand, resulting in sporadic shortages. During the same period, Mylan, the maker of EpiPens and the target of the publics furor over the price increases, has done almost exactly the opposite turning what was once considered a throwaway product into a prodigious moneymaker through branding and shrewd market expansion. EpiPen is like Kleenex its ubiquitous, said Brian Chapman, a consultant for ZS Associates, a pharmaceutical marketing firm. What theyve done with that brand has been amazing. Impax has been moving to make Adrenaclick a competitive alternative. The company is striving to expand access to Adrenaclick by upgrading the outdated production line, improving the distribution system and lobbying states to make it easier for patients to get the product from pharmacists. Doctors say they have struggled to keep track of the product, and its availability, over the years. The product now called Adrenaclick got its start in 2003 as the Twinject, an EpiPen alternative that was designed to deliver two doses of epinephrine in the event that users needed a second one. But the Twinject was confusing and difficult to use; and after a series of design changes, it evolved into the Adrenaclick. The Food and Drug Administration approved those changes in 2009. By then, however, Mylan had begun its push to expand sales of the EpiPen. Executives there saw untapped potential in the product soon after taking ownership of it in 2007. EpiPen, which was approved by the FDA in 1987, already had good name recognition, but the market was relatively small. By 2007, it had annual sales of only about $200 million. Since then, Mylan has succeeded in turning the EpiPen into a $1-billion-a-year product by raising prices and expanding the market through advertising, lobbying and giveaways to schools, practices that have all come under scrutiny as anger about its high price has grown. As the EpiPen became a blockbuster product, the Adrenaclick struggled to keep up, capturing only about 1 percent or 2 percent of the market. In 2013, after a period when the Adrenaclick was off the market, its owner at the time, Amedra Pharmaceuticals, made the tactical decision to stop competing directly with the EpiPen and instead created an identical, but generic, version of the Adrenaclick. That move allowed insurance companies to begin covering the Adrenaclick as a generic product, lowering the out-of-pocket costs to most patients to $10 to $20. The list price for a pair of generic Adrenaclick pens, which uninsured customers may have to pay, is about $400, compared with more than $600 for a pair of EpiPens. Coupons for both products can lower the price further. Impax inherited the Adrenaclick, along with its generic version, in 2015 as part of a larger acquisition. Rather than investing in a costly marketing campaign, the company has opted to lobby states to make the generic Adrenaclick more widely available. Douglas Boothe, president of the generics division at Impax, says the company sees an opportunity in a little-known provision that allows pharmacists in 21 states to fill a prescription for an EpiPen with the generic version of Adrenaclick, even though the two are not identical. He acknowledges, however, that many pharmacists are not aware his product exists, which is a major hurdle. The company also said it was spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade its assembly line to meet heightened demand for the product after the EpiPen price increases. It now holds 7 percent of the market, Boothe said. Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot. Certainly the news has been a great form of awareness, he said. However, he added, weve been very prudent with how weve distributed the product. Boothe rejected arguments that the Adrenaclicks chances for success were limited. This is not a flash in the pan for Impax, he said. We think this is a sustainable opportunity for us, and were making investments accordingly. Still, the Adrenaclick has such a low profile that even people who consider themselves knowledgeable consumers said they were surprised to learn recently of its existence. Barbara Hollinger, a 57-year-old retiree and quilter in Northern Virginia, carried an EpiPen for 20 years because she is allergic to yellow jacket stings. But she said she became irate about the cost of EpiPens, which her insurance was forcing her to pay for out-of-pocket. Theres got to be a better way, she remembered thinking. So when I asked my doctor if there was a generic, she said, Yeah, but nobody ever prescribes it. After a few false starts at her local CVS, her quest was a success. With her insurance, the product cost her $5. CVS now says the product is available in all of its pharmacies nationwide. Victory is mine! Hollinger declared in an exuberant post on Facebook a few days later. The post has since been shared nearly 160,000 times. The thud of cartridges hitting their roof and skidding off the edges at night led to mornings of outdoor cartridge collecting. Theyd sweep around their house to pick up the debris ghosts of the war raging around them. Nan Maos family was in Burma, living in the middle of what is often described as one of the longest-running civil wars. They fled to Malaysia as undocumented immigrants in 2006. We honestly feared for our lives, Mao said. In 2010, the United Nations identified Mao as a refugee and shipped her to the United States, her husband by her side and her 7-month-old baby cradled in her arms. That same year, MacArthur High Schools Steve Davidson started the MacTEACH program with eight student volunteers. Now, Nans baby is 6 years old. His name is Sai, and he along with at least 300 other low-income children and families, mostly Latino or Burmese, are helped by more than 150 MacTEACH students. Davidson, an English teacher at the North East ISD school, has received numerous honors since founding the club: runner-up for Texas Teacher of the Year last year and this years Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award one of only 12 teachers to receive it in the state. About 60 high school students, children and adults pack into MacArthur Highs library on Tuesday and Thursday nights for MacTEACHs Neighbor to Neighbor program. On Tuesdays, students teach young children violin for the first hour. After that, the sliding notes of the violin are replaced with the giggles and whispers of children getting homework help. Meanwhile in the far corner, two high school students teach English to about five Burmese adults. My expectation and my hope is that this is the last year well be able to use the library. My hope is well grow too big for it, said Davidson, situated at one of the study tables one recent Tuesday evening. Hes had to purchase six more violins for students and said the number of people looking for their help continues to grow through word of mouth. The Burmese refugee involvement in the club started when Dorothy Grayson, a volunteer at Northeast Baptist Church, realized that the educational support she gave the refugees in the summer simply wasnt enough. There was one young girl in particular whose struggles represented the last straw for Grayson. She looked at me one day and she just broke down crying. I was like Auggh! Grayson said, grasping her head in exclamation. It was so, so sad. So I said, I just need some more help here. She had heard of Davidsons program so she gave him a call. And he did what hes been doing for years, what he considers his life motto: he said yes. This is what I live for. I get up every day for this. If I get a divorce, its going to be because of MacTEACH, said Davidson. The club is entirely volunteer-based. The tools to succeed How are you, teacher? said Mao, 38, to Davidson while placing a hand on Graysons shoulder. She had just arrived to pick up Sai from tutoring. Grayson took her hand and held it in her own. We call him Crazy Sai, Davidson said. Hes crazy, we love him so much. Grayson said that the English as a second language program through the district can be competitive and also structured in a way that makes it difficult for parents who work long days to schedule appointments. The Neighbor to Neighbor program at MacTEACH is a way around that, she said. Mao was part of the original group that was tutored at the church by the students, before they moved to the library for more space. When she first moved to San Antonio, Mao was lost and lonely. She was constantly afraid with no English and little knowledge of American customs, getting around the city for basic activities such as going grocery shopping was a living nightmare. Before I didnt know these good people, I was scared and I cried in my bed at night, Mao said. It was a fellow Burmese who told her about Grayson, and through her, about MacTEACH. The programs tutoring lessons gave her English language skills and a sense of community, she said. And armed with those tools, she began to emerge. You know when you go to the jungle and you dont know which way you have to go? And suddenly you find out the way, how do you feel? You feel very happy, she said. Davidson smiled at her, quiet. When I hear stories like that, its like how could I even think of leaving? he said later. Student fulfillment For the last half hour on Tuesday, Sai had finished with his homework and got to play a game of Sorry! with his 17-year-old tutor, Alisa Vorpahl. Theyre the helpers to everybody, Sai said of his tutors, fidgeting in his seat and shooting looks at the board game he was eager to get back to. Davidson said when he asked Sai what his favorite subject in school was last year, he named one of his tutors instead of an actual class. The MacTEACH students volunteerism spans from the local to the global. The club has a MacTEACH Mini-Mall, which donates goods to low-income or at-risk MacArthur High students and also holds fundraisers for children in Honduras, Uganda and soon, South Sudan. They also tutor elementary students before school and struggling high schoolers during lunch. Of all the hard times Im going through now, a lot of times I ask myself, and my mom asks me, Why are you even doing this? Youre not getting anything from it, youre not getting anything for college. said Mia Self, 17, MacTeachs student director. And I sit here and look at all these kids and I see their smiles and I see everything that were doing, and I cant imagine doing anything different. sfosterfrau@express-news.net 10/24/2022 Believers Baptist Church will hold its annual Old Fashioned Fall Festival this Saturday, from 12-3 p.m. All are invited. The church is out in the country in Catoosa County. The address ... more This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two Fort Hood soldiers were among four people killed in a bombing last weekend at Bagram Air Base that capped days of violence targeting Western facilities around Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. John W. Perry, 30, of Stockton, California, and Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt, 20, of Tamaroa, Illinois, served with Fort Hoods 1st Sustainment Brigade, which deployed to Afghanistan late last summer along with the divisions headquarters. Two contractors also died, and 16 U.S. troops and one Polish soldier were wounded in the Bagram blast by a suicide bomber with an explosive vest, the Pentagon said. The Taliban claimed responsibility. NBC News said the incident occurred as people were gathering for a Veterans Day fun run. I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of the fallen, and I want to reassure the loved ones of those injured that they are getting the best possible care, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement. For those who carried out this attack, my message is simple. We will not be deterred in our mission to protect our homeland and help Afghanistan secure its own future. Days earlier, six people were killed and more than 100 were wounded at the German Consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, the Associated Press reported. Perry and Iubelt were among more than 1,500 Fort Hood soldiers in Afghanistan and 3,200 worldwide, post spokesman Chris Haug said. Perry joined the Army in 2008 and was a 1st Cav test, measurement and diagnostic equipment maintenance support specialist who had been at Bagram two months or so. He was on his second deployment to Afghanistan, having served there from August 2010 to July 2011. Iubelt joined the Army last year and was a 1st Cav motor transport operator. He was on his first deployment, arriving in Afghanistan in September. So far this year, 13 American troops have died in Afghanistan. KERRVILLE Hoping to avoid a lawsuit like one unfolding in Austin, Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard wants county commissioners Monday to reconsider their refusal to allow a freethinker group to display a banner outside the courthouse in December. We owe it to the taxpayers not to fritter away their money on a lost cause, said Pollard, an attorney, asserting case law supports Kerrville Freethoughts bid to display its placard on the grounds where a nativity scene is erected every holiday season by local Christians. We couldnt win it if it went to court, which it would, Pollard said. The banner purports to celebrate the Bills of Rights and Winter Solstice, but many Christians see it as mocking their faith. It depicts Benjamin Franklin, the Statute of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington gazing on the Bill of Rights in a faux nativity style. Illuminating the characters is a sun a round seal overhead that says Freethought Secular Government. Happy Winter Solstice, it said, in part, Let us also honor the birth of our Bill of Rights, which reminds us there can be no freedom OF religion without freedom FROM religion in government. It was provided to the local group by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national organization that is suing state leaders over the removal of a similar display from the state Capitol last December. Everyone in the community deserves an equal opportunity to share and express their beliefs, said Sam Grover, an attorney with the Wisconsin-based group. Kerrville Freethought is simply asking to place their own display on equal terms with the religious display already allowed on county property. But that request is likely to face opposition Monday, judging by the cheers from roughly 200 spectators over the 5-0 vote by commissioners and Pollard on Sept. 26 against hosting the banner. If you let anyone trample on a holiday that we celebrate as our true president and king, Jesus Christ, his birthday, you are going to take away all the morality of distinction, and you will destroy this nation that stands for God, resident Daniel Thompson told commissioners then. The emotional reaction echoes sentiments heard last December regarding a similar display, featuring figurines, that was set up in the Capitol rotunda in Austin where a nativity scene also has been exhibited. The foundation had secured permission from the State Preservation Board to display its exhibit from Dec. 18-23 but Gov. Greg Abbott spurred its early removal, asserting it ran afoul of regulations that say Capitol exhibits should promote a public purpose, such as public health, education, safety, morals, general welfare and security. Subjecting an image held sacred by millions of Texans to the foundations tasteless sarcasm does nothing to promote morals and the general welfare, Abbott said in a Dec. 22, 2015 letter to John Sneed, head of the preservation board. To the contrary, the foundations spiteful message is intentionally designed to belittle and offend, which undermines rather than promotes any public purpose a display promoting the bill of rights might otherwise have had, Abbott wrote. The foundation said the display was intended to educate the public and celebrate the 224th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, along with celebrating the Dec. 22 solstice and educating people about the religious and nonreligious diversity within the state. Its federal lawsuit, filed Feb. 22, accuses Abbott and Sneed of unconstitutional censorship, viewpoint discrimination and lack of due process, and asks U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks to enjoin them from excluding the display in the future, and to award the plaintiff nominal damages plus attorney fees. Attorney General Ken Paxton, in defense pleadings, asserted, The question presented is whether FFRF has a constitutional right to demand state support for its effort to mock Christians and said Capitol exhibits are properly evaluated as government speech, not private speech. If the court does deem the display to be private speech, Paxton argues the Capitol is a limited public forum where a government entity may impose restrictions on speech so long as those restrictions are reasonable and viewpoint neutral. Refusing to allow the banner to be displayed serves the states legitimate interest in not associating itself with speech that demeans a number of its citizens, he said. Back in Kerr County, Pollard agreed to revisit the issue after Grover, the foundation lawyer, told him the county risked legal liability over denying Kerrville Freethought equal access to the courthouse grounds. David Whitsett, the Kerrville Freethought representative who appeared before commissioners seven weeks ago, expressed optimism that the banner would be approved Monday. He blamed the opposition to it on the misplaced belief that it attacked Christianity. It is not intended to be mocking or disrespectful, said Whitsett, who also is a foundation member. zeke@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Mayor Ivy Taylor on Sunday outlined several accomplishments during her first term, and described her vision for San Antonio as she announced her bid for re-election. Before Taylor took the stage at CAST Tech High School on the Fox Tech campus downtown, she won praises from supporters, including former Secretary of State Hope Andrade and Councilman Joe Krier, both Republicans. Brian Dillard, an East Side resident whose wife used to work for Taylor at City Hall, said hes known the mayor for years and lauded her for a progressive mindset, and her ability to dig into policy. Taylor is an urban planner by trade and a former city employee. Most importantly, Ivy wants for all San Antonio what she wants for the East Side and thats for every San Antonian to get ahead, he said. Krier, who has been one of the mayors staunchest allies, called Taylor the best mayor in the U.S., and said shes been a leader who focuses on back to basics projects and who dealt the death blow to the controversial streetcar project a few years ago. He often cites Taylors work on convincing the federal government to fund a new federal courthouse here, along with her push to ensure Google Fiber made good on plans to build a super-fast network in San Antonio. Perhaps most importantly, when folks like me were ready to give up on getting a contract with our police union she went behind the scenes and she got that deal done, Krier said. In her speech, Taylor said one of her proudest accomplishments has been working with Bexar County, local industry leaders and the Alamo Colleges to invest in high-quality workforce development. Her push for city funding nearly nudged out community safety-net social services in this years budget, but city officials were able to pull together money to support workforce development and not cut social services. Thats the heart of my vision for our city to do whats within the power of city government to prepare our people for good-paying jobs that will allow them to stay here, raise families here, and retire here, she said. To ensure that employers have the skilled workers they need to bring to bring jobs or add jobs right here. We also must see that our most vulnerable residents and neighborhoods are protected from the downsides of growth. Taylor said her vision for San Antonio is expansive and stretches from North to South and East to West. It encompasses one San Antonio, she said. Taylor has been mayor since she was appointed to the position in 2014, when then-Mayor Julian Castro left to become the U.S. housing secretary. After telling her council colleagues that she didn't intend to seek the office in the 2015 election, she reversed course and ran an insurgent campaign against several well-known and well-funded politicians. Taylor and former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, emerged from the general election for a head-to-head runoff. Van de Putte, who is now business partners with Andrade, said earlier this year that the voters got it right when selecting Taylor over her. Taylor is entering the 2017 election cycle with a significant war chest. In July, she reported in campaign-finance documents having nearly $200,000 on hand. Though no one else has officially entered the race, there's been persistent speculation that Taylor may face at least one challenger, if not two, from the council ranks. Both councilmen Ron Nirenberg and Rey Saldana have often been rumored to be mulling over whether to challenge Taylor. Because all 10 council seats and the mayor are on the same biennial ballot, a council member cannot keep his seat and run for the higher office. Besides the mayoral and council races, local voters will go to the polls on May 6 to decide whether to approve an $850 million bond program, the largest in city history. jbaugh@express-news.net Twitter: @jbaugh Authorities in the Mexican state of Coahuila have secured significant prison sentences for two men they say were involved in a 2011 massacre carried out near the Texas border by corrupt police and members of the Zetas drug cartel. Details of whats been called the Allende Massacre, named after a town near the Rio Grande, have trickled out in U.S. court cases, including the trial last summer in San Antonio of a Zetas middle manager. By some counts, hundreds of people were forcibly taken and murdered, and their bodies were destroyed as the Zetas wiped out anyone connected to a group of traffickers who were cooperating with the U.S. government. On Saturday, Jose Angel Herrera, the assistant attorney general for disappeared persons, announced that a judge had ordered German El Canelo Zaragoza Sanchez to spend 80 years in prison and Fernando El Panone Hernandez Reyes to spend 75 years in prison on charges of aggravated kidnapping. In a report earlier this year, the state said it had identified 23 people who were kidnapped and killed over two days in March 2011 in Allende and that authorities had detained nine suspects. Investigators have identified 14 people responsible, seven of them municipal police officers and the other seven members of the Zetas, Herrera said Saturday. Sanchez and Hernandez are the first suspects to be punished in Mexico for their part in the massacre. The state is committed to guaranteeing peace and tranquillity, Herrera said in his statement. The announcement was an effort by the administration of Gov. Ruben Moreira to show steps are being taken to punish those responsible for the mass disappearance. The killings happened months before Moreira took office, but the state has been subject to harsh criticism, in part because so little information has been released about the massacre. Many of the details about the killings emerged during a series of money laundering and drug trafficking trials of Zetas associates in Texas, culminating in the July trial of Marciano Millan Vazquez in San Antonio. Millan, who was the regional leader for the Zetas in Piedras Negras, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, was convicted of drug conspiracy and killing while engaged in drug trafficking, among other charges. He faces up to life in prison when hes sentenced in January. During the trial, other traffickers testified that Millan was present as Zetas operatives rounded up family members and associates of former smugglers who were cooperating with the U.S. government. One trafficker, Adolfo Efren Tavira, testified that he saw as many as 40 people gunned down at a compound in Piedras Negras on the orders of Zetas leader Miguel El 40 Trevino Morales, who was arrested and jailed in Mexico. When a San Antonio Express-News reporter and photographer visited Allende last year, abandoned and heavily damaged buildings sat untouched, mementos of the massacre. Ana Maria Sandoval, a resident of Allende, told journalists that in 2011 a gangster named El Canelo she didnt know his real name ruled the town with an iron fist. Sandoval said El Canelo was responsible for the kidnapping of two of her sons, one of whom never returned. Staff Writer Guillermo Contreras contributed to this report. A group calling itself San Antonio Stands with Standing Rock will stage its fourth protest this week against Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the company building a $3.8 billion pipeline over nearly 1,200 miles. The route goes under the Missouri River, across four states and on land sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux. The Dakota Access Pipeline will carry fracked crude oil that proponents say will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, create thousands of jobs and be safer than transporting it in trucks or by rail. The San Antonio group, led mostly by college students, some of them Native Americans, is one of many surfacing across the country, galvanized by images coming from North Dakota, where police, company-hired security and National Guardsmen have clashed with protesters, who call themselves water protectors. Think rubber bullets and pepper spray. Think fires and rock-throwing. Think dogs with bloodied snouts. If the San Antonio group manages to get all its supporters downtown at 3 p.m. Tuesday, its numbers may grow beyond the 50 that attended the last action. Theyre propelled by several issues. As young environmentalists, theyd rather the United States move away from its dependence on fossil fuels altogether, not just its dependence on foreign oil. Theyd rather see the country move to alternative forms of cleaner energy. A pipeline 1,300 miles away matters, they say. Theyre driven, too, by the violation of treaties the United States signed with tribes more than a century ago. Theyve become students of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 that involves Standing Rock. And they want the nation to address long-standing Native American grievances. Boundaries on reservations have been pushed back over time, they say, and promises broken. Their movement isnt just about the Dakota Access Pipeline. Its about the cumulative impact of centuries of disregard for native peoples. Theyve formed a coalition with other millennial-led groups in El Paso, Dallas, Houston, Austin and areas of New Mexico. They call themselves College Students of Texas Mobilizing for Standing Rock, and in early January they plan to travel to North Dakota. Each group will raise funds to charter buses, and from Dallas, they plan to caravan together to join the protests on the ground. Daryn Ocean-Sun Rinterra, a Northwest Vista College student with Navajo and Squamish roots; and Sawyer Jolly, a UTSA senior whos not Native American, are leaders of the loosely organized group wholl meet in front of the Bank of America building downtown. Theyll carry signs that say Water is Life and #NoDAPL, the hashtag that has connected protesters to other activists and supporters across the country and other parts of the world. The students were galvanized, in particular, by a video by Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman that went viral and subsequently aired on mainstream news networks. Rinterra said most of the groups interactions with the public so far havent been what he has expected. Hes prepared for questions about water and environmental degradation. He has braced for pushback on the struggle for indigenous rights. Instead, he has been taken aback by people expressing surprise that Native Americans are still here, he said, as if theyre extinct. Its not an uncommon misconception. Native American protests have a long way to march before theyll be recognized or understood. During the groups last protest, for example, a driver from a mail and package delivery company shouted, Black lives dont matter at them, Rinterra said. Theyll gather Tuesday on Convent Street in downtown San Antonio to try spread and clarify their message again. WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump appeared to soften some of his hardest-line campaign positions on immigration on Sunday, but he also restated his pledge to roll back abortion rights and used Twitter to lash out at his critics, leaving open the possibility that he would continue using social media in the Oval Office and radically change the way presidents speak to Americans. In his first prime-time television interview since his upset victory Tuesday, Trump repeated his promise to name a Supreme Court justice who opposed abortion rights and would help overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized them, returning the issue to the states. Asked where that would leave women seeking abortions, Trump said on the CBS program 60 Minutes, Well, theyll perhaps have to go theyll have to go to another state. On immigration, he said the wall that he has been promising to build on the nations southern border might end up being a fence in places. But he said his priority was to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants he characterized as dangerous or as having criminal records, a change from his original position that he would deport all of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. President Barack Obama has deported more than 2 million unauthorized immigrants during his time in office. Trump said that unauthorized immigrants who are not criminals are terrific people, and that he would decide how to handle them after the border is secure. The House speaker, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, echoed the president-elect, saying on Sunday that there would be no deportation force, something Trump had promised to create early in his campaign. Thats not what were focused on, Ryan said on CNNs State of the Union. Trump also said he considered the Supreme Court decision last year that validated same-sex marriages as settled, and that he was fine with that. He endorsed popular aspects of President Barack Obamas health insurance law, including a provision that requires coverage of people with pre-existing medical conditions and one that allows young people to remain on their parents plans until the age of 26. But even as he appeared to inch toward the political center, Trump used a series of postings on Twitter to argue that the New York Times coverage of him has been BAD and very poor and highly inaccurate. He falsely stated that the Times had issued an apology to readers, an apparent reference to a letter to readers from Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its executive editor, Dean Baquet. The letter noted the unpredictable nature of the election and said the Times aimed to rededicate itself to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. In the letter, The Times posed a series of what it called inevitable questions, including, Did Donald Trumps sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? Trump also claimed that the newspaper had been losing thousands of subscribers over its campaign coverage. In a Twitter message in reply to Trump, the New York Times Co. said it had seen a surge in new subscriptions since the election four times the pre-election rate. Were proud of our election coverage & we will continue to hold power to account, the company said. Trump, in another Twitter post, said The Times had falsely reported that he believed additional nations should acquire nuclear arms. However, in an interview in March with The Times, Trump, asked about the North Korean threat to its neighbors, said he thought the United States allies might need their own nuclear deterrent. If Japan had that nuclear threat, Im not sure that would be a bad thing for us, he said. Later, he added, The bottom line is, I think that frankly, as long as North Koreas there, I think that Japan having a capability is something that maybe is going to happen whether we like it or not. His posts on Twitter were a striking public display from a man who, after winning the election, had worked to project an air of seriousness and self-discipline, first in a victory speech early Wednesday and then in an Oval Office meeting the next day with Obama, whom he called a good man for whom he had great respect. But by Thursday evening, Trump was using Twitter to complain about demonstrations against his victory, saying they were being mounted by professional protesters, incited by the media, and branding them as very unfair! The social media sniping unparalleled in the history of presidential communication suggested Trump plans to bring his confrontational style of speaking to Americans to the White House, working to undercut news outlets that do not comport with his views, silence his critics and elevate his own standing. On Sunday, he selected Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a site known for its nationalist, racially charged and conspiracy-laden coverage, to be his chief strategist and senior counselor. It was only one indication of the extraordinary nature of the president-elects tactics and those of his inner circle. In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump suggested he would not hold to the long-standing post-Watergate tradition of presidents refraining from interfering in FBI criminal matters, hinting that he would quiz the director, James B. Comey, about his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server before deciding whether to dismiss him. Im not sure, Trump said when asked if he would seek Comeys resignation. I would have to see he may have had very good reasons for doing what he did. In an interview on Friday with The Wall Street Journal, Trump did not rule out prosecuting Clinton. On Sunday, his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, warned that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the minority leader, could face legal action for having said that Trumps election had emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America. Trump has said he is proud of how he has used social media to create his own version of events and communicate it to his followers. He suggested in the 60 Minutes interview that he is reluctant to surrender that platform when he takes the oath of office in January. Im not saying I love it, but it does get the word out, Trump said of Twitter during the interview, adding that his millions of followers on various social media sites had given him such power that it helped him win the election. When you give me a bad story, or when you give me an inaccurate story, Trump added, I have a method of fighting back. He said, however, that he would be very restrained in his Twitter posts should he continue to make them as president. Trump is a highly public scorekeeper of his own accolades and accomplishments, and his elevation to the highest office in the land has not changed his instinct to crow about the smallest details. During the interview, Trump boasted that since his election, he had built up his social media following by tens of thousands of people. Im picking up now I think I picked up yesterday 100,000 people, Trump said. The interview, which also featured Trumps wife, Melania, and adult children, showed a side of the president-elect that he did not display during the campaign a man awed and somewhat intimidated by the enormity of the office to which he had just laid claim. Ive done a lot of big things, Ive never done anything like this, Trump said. It is it is so big, it is so its so enormous, its so amazing. Trump said he had been inaccurately portrayed as a little bit of a wild man during the campaign, and he promised that he would be able to tamp down some of his more heated rhetoric as president. But he suggested that he would still use such tactics to galvanize his supporters, just as he did during his bid for the White House. Sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated, he said. I dont want to be just a little nice monotone character. Well, we told the world who we are. Now, we can only hope that Donald Trump isnt who he revealed himself to be. That its all been an act. Anger won. Anxiety won. But lets not fool ourselves; sexism, racism and xenophobia were rewarded. And Hillary Clinton turned out to be more politically flawed than the polls indicated. Yes, much of that was helped along by 11th hour meddling by the FBI on the matter of emails followed by what amounted to a too-late oops but mostly due to nearly 25 nonstop years of vilification that made every transgression seem like a new Watergate, though none really was. Politically, these flaws were real enough. In a fact-free, pants-on-fire lying zone, perception reigns. But it was mostly a deep miasma of angst and hunger for change that propelled Donald Trump into the presidency. An equally deep layer of angst now envelops all those voters who witnessed what was clearly a campaign that traded on sexism, racism and xenophobia. And that leads to an inescapable conclusion. That is who we are as a nation. Correction. In the initial count, Clinton appears to have narrowly won the popular vote. So it is what nearly half of us believe who we are. They will give the characteristics different names not racism, but law and order; not xenophobia, but making America great again by scapegoating those people; not sexism, just boys will be patriarchal boys. Here is what weve told the world. Were OK with a president who brags about sexual conquest, whether the approaches are welcome or not. We are OK with a president who knows next to nothing of policy, global or domestic. Who admires a certain Russian strongman, whose hacking has also been rewarded. Look for more. We are OK with a president who said he would jail his political opponent and hinted that there were Second Amendment solutions to her very existence. Global warming? A hoax, of course, foisted on us by the Chinese. That is what we the American voters have just told an incredulous world, which was prepped a bit by the identical anti-immigrant fervor sweeping much of Western Europe. Think of it as Brexit, American style. And all that soul-searching predicted including by me for Republicans? Well, it should happen anyway because Trump just staged a coup, but my fear is that, in Trump, the party will have found a winning formula involving hucksterism that will be replicated until the last angry person calms down. This will not be pretty for minorities and women. But payback for those Republican leaders who will have been viewed as only lukewarm in their support for our new Supreme Leader will not be pretty, either. So there still might be intraparty warfare. Democrats will be playing the what-if game. What if Bernie Sanders had been the nominee? What if it was anyone except Clinton, a candidate whose unfavorability ratings were only slightly below Trumps? And what if Clinton had actually chosen Julian Castro as a running mate? She won by just 5 percent in Tim Kaines Virginia. I note that Trump won heavily Latino Texas barely in double digits, 10 percent. And Latinos apparently made a difference in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, all of which Clinton won. California is already solidly blue. That leaves Arizona, which Trump won also by single digits, 4.3 percent. This is a harbinger for the Southwest. What looks like a win today might not look so stylish in the future. But here is the biggest takeaway from this election. Post-racial? Not even close. All those divisions we thought we had grown out of ... we simply havent. Despondent? Dont be if, after your vote, you can look yourself in the mirror. o.ricardo.pimentel@express-news.net Twitter: @oricardopimente Correction: An earlier version contained a tweet attributed to former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, in which he urged voters to turn out to thwart Hispanic and black voters. It was a fake. He did not post any such tweet. CHI Memorial Medical Group announces that Susan Fisher, M.D. has relocated her practice, previously inside CHI Memorial Convenient Care - Cleveland, to CHI Memorial Primary Care Associates Cleveland. With a specialty in internal medicine, Dr. Fisher provides primary care, diabetic care, disease prevention and wellness maintenance. She welcomes new patients. This new office is another opportunity for us to help create a healthier community, says Glyn Hughes, president, Mountain Management. Dr. Fisher offers a personal approach to care that will help guide you through your health journey. CHI Memorial Primary Care Associates - Cleveland is located at 3780 Ocoee Place NW, Cleveland, TN 37312. Appointments are available Monday Thursday from 8:30 a.m. 5 p.m. For more information, or to schedule an appointment with Dr. Fisher, call (423) 472-2273. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. With a swirl, sniff and a sip, Denise Gardner, Penn States enologist, can discern almost all there is to know about a particular variety of wine. Though shes trained to pick up on even the most subtle notes of vanilla or cedar in a chardonnay or merlot, Gardners no snob: She says her favorite kind of wine is the one in her glass. As the Universitys resident enologist a person who studies the science of wine and winemaking its her job to help Pennsylvania wineries and winemakers perfect their grape-to-glass blends. I spend my days educating local industry members about wine styles, how to incorporate sensory analysis into their processes and to identify problems and opportunities in their winery operations, said Gardner, who worked in France and California before joining Penn State Extension. I am trained in the chemistry and microbiology of wine, so if a winery has a question and cant find an answer, Im usually one of their first points of contact. Penn State Extension is an educational network that gives community members and businesses access to a broad range of agriculture-related resources and expertise. As part of this mission, Gardner and her viticulture colleagues in the College of Agricultural Sciences use a variety of technology for researching and testing wine in campus labs and for teaching winemaking to students in the Universitys food science program. They also connect with industry members in 67 Pennsylvania counties via educational workshops and their popular Wines and Grapes U. blog. As a popular destination for winemakers and wine enthusiasts, Pennsylvania is the nations fifth largest producer of grapes with more than 14,000 acres dedicated to growing the fruit. According to the Pennsylvania Winery Association, the wine industry contributes $1.9 billion annually to Pennsylvanias economy and brings more than a million tourists to the states roughly 250 wineries. Since high school when she first learned about a pest that nearly decimated Europes wine industry in the 1800s Gardner has been passionate about helping winemakers navigate the complexity of the winemaking process. Winemaking is an art and a science. Each seasons batch is different, and the work that goes into creating the flavors you want varies based not only on the type of grape, but the climate, weather, soil, pests and disease that particular year, Gardner said. The process is still very hands on and traditional in the sense that decisions have to be made on the fly, and years of experience, knowledge and palate count for so much. You hold on to the vintage years that are the greatest, and then others you do the best you can to make a more typical style. Once a year, each of Pennsylvanias (mostly boutique-sized) wineries start the process by deciding when to harvest their grapes, usually in September or October. After being picked, the fruit is crushed within 24 to 48 hours before being placed in fermentation tanks where alcohol is derived from the grapes sugar. Next, the wine is placed in oak barrels or steel tanks to be clarified: a process in which tannins, dead yeast cells, and proteins are extracted through fining and filtration. To age, the wine goes back into oak barrels (to develop a smooth, round flavor) or steel tanks (for fruitier whites) before being bottled. Because the entire process can take six months for a white or rose and years for certain reds, Gardner says its difficult to automate. Unlike beer, cider and milk in which its possible for a computer program to move a product through a series of steps like clockwork wine is much more variable in how its created and, ultimately, tastes. One of the ways Gardner helps winemakers streamline the inherent variability of their craft is through sensory analysis, in which chemicals in wine are analyzed through a series of tech-infused science experiments. The process involves measuring the sugar and acid concentration of grapes before theyre picked as well as the wines nutritional content, sugar, sulfur dioxide, acetic acid, and yeast microflora, along with other metrics. Some wineries also use automated systems such as autotitrators (to test pH and/or acidity) and analyzers to assess various chemical constituents. Sensory analysis helps us test consumer taste preferences, identify trends, evaluate the differences between wines, and characterize wine flavors and aromas, Gardner said. By enabling winemakers to measure the differences in their products from year to year, sensory analysis helps them incorporate numbers-based decision-making into their processes. For example, having access to analytics can help a winery decide when to pick their grapes in a particularly hot or cold season, which has a ripple effect on the outcome of that years wine. We had a really, really dry year in 2010, and almost none of the winemakers in the state had ever dealt with a situation where they saw such aggressive and fast ripening, Gardner said. Based on some of the data that year, everyone picked earlier than was optimal and a lot of high alcohol, very fruity red wines suddenly emerged. You just have to go with it. Gardner, a frequent traveler, leads workshops in wine cellars, tasting rooms and labs across the state, and she and her colleagues publish how-to and research articles on their blog and share updates via Twitter and Facebook posts, which she says reach nearly every industry member in the state (and as far away as South Africa and Australia). The grape growers and winemakers in Pennsylvania are some of the most talented people I know, Gardner said. From year to year, they dont know what kind of weather theyll be up against, like they do in California and Australia for example, and they have to continuously adapt. Sensory analysis and analytical testing are valuable resources, but ultimately, no number will be able to tell you what to do to make quality wine or production decisions. In recent years, Gardner says theres been a boom in the number of wineries opening across the state thanks to increasing market interest, quality improvements and wines that adhere to global styles. In Pennsylvania, youre never more than an hour away from the closest winery and theres something for everyone. We have such a variety of grapes here from chambourcin and gruner veltliner to muscat that each winery is able to add their own touch and truly develop a signature style, she said. And because wine is a reflection of the year and place those grapes are grown, each glass of Pennsylvania vintage is like a little piece of history. The Prairie Doc: Men, you can thank women for your good health The farming sector has become worried at recent concerns over declining cream production, with the National Farmers Union warning 'unsustainable farmgate prices' as the key reason why. The cream production industry has endured difficult conditions during the past five years. Highly volatile dairy prices and heavy discounting of milk prices by supermarkets have squeezed industry revenue and profitability. The industry has also been affected by changing consumer preferences, as consumers have shifted away from full-fat products in favour of low-fat and skimmed alternatives. These conditions have resulted in consolidation activity among industry participants. Unsustainable farmgate prices have lead to reduced production NFU dairy board chairman Michael Oakes has responded to recent concerns over UK cream production: We have long warned that unsustainable farmgate prices would lead to reduced production and in turn less choice for consumers of high-quality British dairy products. Manufacturers will do their upmost to ensure British milk and other fresh dairy products, such as cream and butter, will be on retail shelves this Christmas but this may mean moving milk away from cheese production which will impact on future cheese availability. The UK dairy sector has been under significant pressure over the past two years due to low prices that has affected the vast majority of dairy farmers. Farmgate milk prices have recently started to rise but dairy farming is a long-term business and it will take more than a few milk price increases to instil confidence back into the sector. This situation is not beneficial to farmers or the public so we need to find better ways of managing volatility for the benefit of all to ensure we see great British, Red Tractor-assured dairy products on shelves for the long-term future. Milk processors are 'sitting on stocks' The Rural Payments Agency has indicated that 1800 UK farmers are looking to reduce production by 112 million litres this autumn. NFU Scotlands Milk Committee Chairman Graeme Kilpatrick said there is "every justification" based on commodity prices, production levels and futures prices "for every dairy farmer in Scotland to be getting 25p per litre now and not in three or four months time." "The price increases announced in recent weeks are welcome but they neither go far enough or fast enough in our opinion and leave almost all producers woefully short of a profitable milk price," Mr Kilpatrick said. All dairy farmers in Scotland are acutely aware of where commodity prices for cheese, butter, cream and powder have shifted to in a matter of a few weeks. "The unacceptable delays seen in milk buyers passing the benefits of the price lifts back to their suppliers is creating huge concern and frustration at farmer level. "Some of those milk processors will be sitting on stocks of cheese, butter or powder, made with incredibly cheap milk, and are now set to make a windfall on them based on rapidly increasing market prices. "Farmers cannot be left behind to continue producing at a loss," Mr Kilpatrick concluded. Lidl is now a firm part of the local retail scene across the UK, and two farming unions have organised events promoting produce to its consumers. The Ulster Farmers Union deputy president, Ivor Ferguson, said he was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for local growers given the rise of Lidl. We were encouraged that Lidl appear to share our view that there is a real opportunity to develop the market for fresh produce from Northern Ireland farmers, packers, and processors, said Mr Ferguson. UFU said they were encouraged by Lidl's vision for fresh produce Growers have faced challenges in the recent past, because of poor returns, and Mr Ferguson said this had been made worse because of difficulties securing land for crops. This is down to the complexities of the conacre system. Before committing to often expensive land growers need reassurances from retailers that they wont face further downward pressure on prices, said the UFU deputy president. He said Lidl appeared positive about fresh produce, recognising that local growers supply top quality vegetables and potatoes. They obviously want the best for their customers and I believe they are keen to use local supplies to grow the market, said Mr Ferguson. Ensuring customers have faith in every step of sourcing policy is an important part of the Fruit and Veg Pledge Promoting high quality Scottish produce Farmers in Scotland took produce to their local Aldi store at Perth on the weekend to encourage shoppers to support the industry and buy Scottish produce available on their doorsteps. The promotional event saw NFU Scotland members and farmers speak to customers and offer a range of samples for consumers to try, including: Scotch Lamb, Scotch sirloin steaks, vintage cheddar, oatcakes and chutney. Roddy Kennedy, NFU Scotlands Regional Chairman for East Central, and local farmer, commented: There has been a lot happening this year to promote the high quality Scottish produce available to consumers and we are continuing in our work to speak to consumers about where their food comes from. This event is part of a wider roadshow NFU Scotland has organised at supermarkets and farmers markets across the country in recent months. We encouraging shoppers to buy Scottish, support their farmers and our industry. Our produce is some of the best in the world and is available right on their doorsteps." Fruit and Veg Pledge Lidl announced in summer its commitment to the National Farmers Union Fruit and Vegetable Pledge. Championing best practice in the fresh produce sector, the code is designed to cultivate strong and long-standing relationships between retailers, intermediaries and growers. The commitment shows a working goal towards a sustainable approach for all of its growers. Lidl says it has gained an 'in-depth understanding of the importance of developing long-term relationships with growers'. The supermarket says this enables them to invest and grow, contributing to a profitable British fresh produce sector. Ali Capper, NFU horticulture and potatoes board chair said: "We are delighted that Lidl has publicly committed to our pledge, highlighting its commitment to long-term supply relationships, equitable distribution of reward along the supply chain, and fair and respectful trading relationships. "Our goal is to generate integrity, honesty and openness across the market and that can only come from the key asks within our pledge which includes price certainty, transparent working and strong, long term relationships that are fair for everyone involved." Fifteen senior medics have written to the UK government calling for urgent action to tackle the 'routine misuse' of antibiotics in farming. Signatories to the letter, which was published today in The Telegraph to coincide with World Antibiotic Awareness Week, include the President of the Royal Society of Medicine - Babulal Sethia, the President of the British Medical Association - Professor Pali Hungin, and the Presidents of ten Royal Colleges and Societies. Coordinated by the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics and Medact, the letter states: We urge the government to immediately introduce a UK-wide ban on the routine preventative mass medication of animals, and to urgently curb farm use of the critically important antibiotics. 'Clear need for domestic policies which ensure that antibiotics are used judiciously in human and animal medicine' Use of antibiotics in intensively farmed livestock, particularly of pigs and poultry, accounts for nearly 90% of all farm antibiotic use in the UK. It remains legal in the EU to routinely administer antibiotics to whole groups of livestock before any disease has been diagnosed within the group. Professor Maureen Baker, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: GPs and our teams are doing an excellent job of reducing prescriptions for antibiotics, with the latest NHS figures showing a 2.6m decrease in UK general practice last year. But its not just the healthcare sector that has responsibility for curbing resistance to antibiotics; the agriculture sector must also play its part. If antibiotics continue to be given to livestock when they are not needed it will put patients at risk all over the world. We support the recommendations outlined in this letter and would urge the Secretaries of State to take them into serious consideration. 'There is a real risk that, if we do nothing, modern medicine as we know it will be undermined,' said Leadsom Banning of routine antibiotic use in farming In March 2016, the European Parliament voted for an EU-wide ban to all routine antibiotic use in farming. Forthcoming negotiations between the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Commission will consider this proposal. Letter signatories urge the UK government to take a strong stand in these discussions, and to ensure that, post-Brexit, such measures are enshrined in UK law. Professor Jane Dacre, President of the Royal College of Physicians said: In the light of the UKs forthcoming exit from the EU, there is a clear need for unambiguous domestic policies which ensure that antibiotics are used judiciously in human and animal medicine. The use of important antibiotics to routinely mass medicate groups of livestock does not constitute judicious use, and should have no place in any antibiotic-reduction strategy for the UK. MPs have also recently spoken out on this issue. Following the revelations in September of multi-drug resistant E.coli on supermarket meat, 57 MPs from across the political parties have signed an Early Day Motion calling on supermarkets to ban the routine preventative use of antibiotics in their supply chains. However, only Waitrose has so far clarified that it prohibits such practices. Professor John Middleton, President of the Faculty of Public Health concluded: The evidence linking the overuse of antibiotics in farming and resistance in human bacterial infections is extremely compelling. It is clear that more needs to be done to limit veterinary prescribing. The government must now listen to, and act on, the concerns of the medical community - and place public health at the heart of considerations around the future UK farm antibiotic-use policy. 'Modern medicine as we know it will be undermined' Andrea Leadsom, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said: "There is a real risk that, if we do nothing, modern medicine as we know it will be undermined." "The UK will work closely with different individual sectors to ensure that appropriate sector specific reduction targets are agreed by 2017 so that future reductions are greatest where there is most scope. Encouraging best practice and responsible use of antibiotics, which safeguard animal health and welfare, is a must," the government report said. Earlier this year, Dairy UK launched a package of new measures for the dairy industry as part of its ongoing commitment to the prudent use of antibiotics. The aim is to deliver "safe and wholesome" dairy products to consumers across the UK, according to the trade association. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has also pledged to help countries develop strategies for tackling the spread of antimicrobial resistance in their food supply chains. The misuse of drugs, associated with the emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant micro-organisms, places everyone at great risk, the FAO has said. And British pig producers are making progress in the sector's commitment to record and control the use of antibiotics in the industry, data shows. In less than two months, antibiotic data for over 1.2m pigs has already been contributed by pig producers to the British pig industry's new on-line medicine book. "The levy-funded on-line electronic medicine book is the most important strand of the Stewardship Programme," said Dr Georgina Crayford, who leads the National Pig Association's recently-launched Pig Industry Antibiotic Stewardship Programme. East of England farming co-operative Fengrain has joined forces with Crisp Malting Group to create a state-of-the-art new malting barley storage facility in Norfolk. Fengrains four new silos at Crisps Great Ryburgh site will provide storage for 10,000 tonnes of malting barley. The maltsters at Crisp will use this to produce 7,700 tonnes of premium quality malt, this in turn can be used by brewers to create 120 million pints of beer. Rob Munro, Fengrain managing director, says: The opening of this great new storage facility reflects the fact our co-operative is growing. Clinking glasses Rob Munro (left) with Adrian Dyter We already have 900 members and this significant investment by Fengrain opens up opportunities for even more growers in the East Anglia region. They, too, will be able to benefit from our unique marketing proposition and excellent relationship with Crisp and other customers. The new silos enable direct delivery at harvest time from the farm to the customer. This avoids time-wasting, resource-intensive double handling. It means that the barley can be dried and stored in perfect conditions from the outset. All this helps attract best available premiums for members. The silos will bring benefits in terms of quality controls and convenience, says Bob King, commtrcial director, Crisp Malting Group, their installation on our site will also reduce haulage saving around 20,000 HGV miles and 27,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Boom in craft brewing The boom in craft brewing is driving demand for premium malt malt is barley that has gone through the three-step process of steeping, germinating and kilning. Malts range in colour and character from extra pale to crystal to black, according to the length of time and temperature of the kilning. To produce the best malt we must have top quality malting barley all year round, says Bob King, excellent storage conditions are absolutely crucial and this joint venture will provide them. Weve been working with Fengrain and its members over many years. Positioning their silos on our site shows the commitment from both parties to a long-term partnership. The deal secures high quality, local raw materials for us. It increases our capacity so we can meet the growing demand for our malt from craft brewers across the country and abroad. Britain is the worlds number three malt producer and we are one of the countrys main exporters. Our famed malt is sent to brewers and distillers across the world, so people everywhere are tasting a little bit of East Anglia as they sip their beer or whisky. Previously, barley was being transported to and stored at Fengrains headquarters at Wimblington - or being stored on farms then transported to Fengrain for onward movement to Crisp. The National Farmers Union has called upon industry bodies to discuss how access to the right inputs is vital for the future of oilseed rape. The oilseed rape harvest in 2017 could fall to its lowest level in 13 years, according to new figures, and is an important crop for many arable farmers. Organisations from across the industry are meeting at NFU headquarters in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire tomorrow [15 November] to discuss how working together can help to resolve growing issues with oilseed rape. These issues include insect control without access to neonicotinoid seed treatment and a continuing decline in farmers planting the crop. NFU advisers will be speaking about the emergency use applications in 2015 and 2016 New figures from AHDB show that the net oilseed rape area for harvest 2017 could be the lowest for 13 years with only 557 Kha predicted. This would mark the fifth year that the planted area for oilseed rape has fallen. Discussions will include Rothamsted Research speaking on cabbage stem flea beetle resistance, AHDB Cereals on its work in developing integrated crop management techniques with oilseed rape and plant breeders on improving the performance of oilseed rape and its economic sustainability. NFU advisers will be speaking on the emergency use applications in 2015 and 2016, as well as what might be necessary to help improve the success rate of applications. NFU combinable crops board chairman Mike Hambly said: It is vital for the industry to work together to tackle the growing problems that oilseed rape presents to farmers and to the supply chain. As we move to a year where it looks like the area of oilseed rape will decline for a fifth year in a row, it is abundantly clear that there is a lack of confidence among farmers to plant the crop and that is something that we need to address. Oilseed rape can be an important crop for the sector and it has good demand. There are clearly difficulties with the crop and coming together as an industry we can agree on a proactive plan to move forward and tackle this issue head-on. The widow of a farmer who was killed when he was kicked by a bullock will get no compensation after a judge ruled that the animal could not be blamed. William Richards, 72, was tending to a group of bullocks in the yard at his farm at St Allen, near Truro, when he kicked by the hind legs of one of them, London's Appeal Court heard. His widow, Gillian Richards, campaigned through the courts for at least 325,000 compensation from the farm's insurers. But the judge ruled that her husband was "wholly to blame" for the accident. Judge Carr said there was 'no doubt' that Mr Richards got 'dangerously close to the bullock's back legs, and did so in a confined space'. An 'experienced stockman who knew the risks posed', he would have been kicked 'many times' during his farming career. 'Wholly to blame' "The only possible conclusion is that Mr Richards was wholly to blame for the accident." Challenging that ruling at the Court of Appeal, his widow's barrister, John Snell, said: "The judge fell into error in determining that, if no-one else was at fault, then the deceased must have been wholly at fault. The judge did not find as a fact that the deceased had provoked the bullock into kicking. The accident was partly due to the deceaseds fault and partly due to whatever it was that caused the animal to kick out." But Lord Justice Moore-Bick said that 'animals of this kind behave unpredictably' particularly in confined spaces. "I do not think it is arguable that the action of the animal itself can be regarded as a relevant cause of the accident or as diminishing the degree of fault on Mr Richard's part. I do not think this ground of appeal could have any real prospect of success. I refuse permission to appeal," he said. Convert 10% of arable land to agroforestry, Woodland Trust says As part of the efforts of Chattanooga 2.0, the Chattanooga Interfaith Council will host an education summit focused on the faith based communitys work supporting schools and families. The summit will include two expert panels with a keynote on the impact a coalition of faith based leaders and organizations can have on education outcomes in a community. Panelist will include: Kirk Kelly, Hamilton County Department of Education; Donna McConnico, Signal Centers; Stacy Lightfoot, Public Education Foundation; Gladys Pineda-Loher, Chattanooga State Community College; David Steele, Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce; Bill Rush, YMCA; Mary Grey Moses, First Centenary United Methodist Church Inner City Ministry; Christian Patino, La Paz Chattanooga; Julie Baumgardner, First Things First and Cedric Jackson, Emerald Youth Foundation. The education summit will be held Monday at the Oak Street Center, 433 Oak St. Registration and a light dinner will be from 5:30-6 p.m. and the speaker and panels will be from 6-8:30 p.m. The earthquake measured 7.5 on the Richter scale By Diego Flammini Assistant Editor, North American Content Farms.com An earthquake measuring 7.5 (out of 10) on the Richter scale hit parts of New Zealand over the weekend and it appears dairy farmers were significantly impacted. According to NZ Herald, about 30 farms wont have milk picked up due to road access. Some farmers are sharing resources to get their cows milked. Its got to be done, dairy farmer Justin Slattery told NZ Herald. Especially at this time of year the cows are in peak production. So you just have to keep milking them. Slattery said, when the earthquake hit, his cows began moaning and groaning. Slattery said hes using his neighbours milking shed to milk his 520 cows and will continue to do so until power is restored at his farm. The farming community is showing it can rally and rebound when faced with adversity. Everyone is pitching in. Farmers are being bloody generous actually and pitching in, sharing generators and helping out where is needed, he said. The earthquake triggered a number of landslides, and at least one resulted in farm animals being stranded. Captured footage shows three cows isolated on a patch of land surrounded by destruction from the quake. On his Facebook page, Chris Brown, a celebriary veterinarian from Australia, said rescue efforts are underway to save the animals. According to the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, about 95 per cent of the countrys milk is exported and is valued at NZ$13.7 billion (US$9.7 billion). Creekside at Shallowford was selected as a Caring Star of 2017 as part of an annual nationwide program honoring service excellence. The recognition was based on consumer ratings and reviews posted on Caring.com, the senior care website. Creekside at Shallowford was one of the 34 Holiday Retirement communities recognized among the best in this years distinguished awards. Of senior living providers, Holiday Retirement had the highest number of communities named a Caring Star. Creekside at Shallowford captured an average rating of 4.5 or higher (on a scale of 1 to 5) in at least 10 or more reviews from family, seniors and others considering senior living options, including assisted living and Alzheimers care, while also meeting other top qualifying criteria for the honor. We couldn't be more proud of Creekside at Shallowford for earning this prestigious award and being recognized for its service excellence, said Lilly Donohue, CEO at Holiday Retirement. The Caring Star award clearly demonstrates the communitys commitment to high-quality service and care. According to various studies from Caring.com, online consumer reviews are weighted heavily by the majority of family caregivers when researching senior living communities. The Caring Stars awards program helps families narrow senior living options for their loved ones to the retirement communities most-acclaimed by families like theirs. "Congratulations to Holiday Retirement for its 34 communities that achieved this service excellence award after earning many accolades from residents and their loved ones on Caring.com," said Karen Cassel, CEO of Caring.com. "This important milestone speaks volumes about the positive difference Holiday Retirement is making in serving seniors, and we join with Holiday Retirement in celebrating this accomplishment. Creekside at Shallowford is at 7511 Shallowford Road. For more information, call 485-9933 or visit holidaytouch.com/our-communities/creekside-at-shallowford. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visits troops at Fort Bragg The commander of Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps said, "Welcome Home," to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when he arrived on post Tuesday. Previous Next The Theta Phi Chapter of Sigma Kappa Sorority, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), received the Sigma Kappa Founders Award, given to the most outstanding Sigma Kappa chapter in the nation, for the second consecutive year. The national organization selects one collegiate chapter to receive the award as a fitting tribute to the sororitys five founders. The Founders Award is presented to the chapter that has duly honored Sigma Kappas ritual and lives the sororitys values of friendship, loyalty, service, and personal growth. Kristen Marin, Theta Phis Chapter president, and Kinsey Glenn, Theta Phis executive vice president accepted the award at the sororitys national convention held in Las Vegas. The members of Theta Phi attribute their continued success to the chapters dedication to community service, campus involvement, and time and effort dedicated by chapter members and alumnae advisors. Collectively, the members of Theta Phi dedicated over 17,000 hours of community service to local organizations and in support of their national philanthropies and held over twenty development programs for their memberships and students on campus. For the third consecutive year, Theta Phi has received the sororitys most prestigious collegiate award, a three-star standards of excellence rating. Each collegiate chapter is assessed annually using defined criteria aligned to Sigma Kappas values to measure chapter success in areas such as academics, leadership, and skill development. Theta Phi was one of three Sigma Kappa chapters across the country that exceeded national requirements and demonstrated exceptional performance in areas such as membership, philanthropy, scholarship, public relations, ritual, recruitment, programming, alumnae relations, and campus involvement. This award is a reflection of the passion, hard work, and dedication to excellence displayed by our membership, said Ms. Martin. On behalf of our chapter, I would like to thank the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Greek community at UTC, our advisors, and especially the staff of UTCs Office of Student Development for their continuous support and encouragement. Theta Phi will continue to work hard to leave a lasting legacy within our campus and the Chattanooga community. For more information about the Theta Phi chapter of Sigma Kappa, visit http://utc.sigmakappa.org/. Join NYU Laws Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement on Wednesday, November 30 from 5 pm to 7 pm as a panel of remarkable individuals share the experiences that resulted in their own federal criminal convictions for white collar crimes. Adding further insights will be an FBI Supervisory Special Agent and a former federal prosecutor. The panel will identify inflection points in business decision making and compliance processes where questions, interventions, knowledge or relationships could have helped them make better, more ethical decisions. Wading Into the Gray: Compliance and Enforcement Lessons When Good People Make Bad Decisions A Roundtable Discussion with Rashmi Airan, Richard Bistrong, Walt Pavlo, and FBI SSA William McMurry Moderated by PCCE Executive Director Serina M. Vash. _____ November 30, 2016 5:00-7:00 p.m. New York University School of Law Lester Pollack Colloquium Room Registration required _____ Rashmi Airan spent five and a half months in prison for bank fraud in conneciton with a case involving a client of her law practice. Shes now is an inspirational and motivational speaker. Richard Bistrong, the CEO of Front-Line Anti-Bribery LLC and a Contributing Editor to the FCPA Blog, is a former FBI/UK Cooperator. He spent fourteen and a half months in prison for violating the FCPA. Hes now an anti-bribery consultant, writer and speaker. Walt Pavlo, Jr. is the founder and creator of Prisonology.com, a consulting and expert testimony firm for lawyers and defendants on the post-conviction process of the federal justice system. Pavlo is recognized as one of the leading commentators and speakers on white collar crime and federal criminal cases. Supervisory Special Agent William McMurry has been a Special Agent with the FBI for more than twenty years. In July 2015 he was selected as the supervisor of a newly formed International Corruption Squad in the New York Field Division. He supervises investigations involving violations of the FCPA and AML laws. Serina M. Vash is the Executive Director of NYU Law Schools Program on Corporate Compliance & Enforcement. She served as Acting Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, Senior Litigation Counsel in both the Organized Crime/Gang Unit and the National Security Units. He has lectured throughout the country on criminal investigations, criminal prosecution, crime prevention and business ethics. Register for the program here. Houston-based driller National Oilwell Varco, Inc. reached a settlement with the DOJ, the Commerce Department, the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for trade sanction violations reaching back to 2002. The company and subsidiaries Dreco Energy Services Ltd. and NOV Elmar agreed to pay $25 million to resolve potential criminal and civil offenses. The companies entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Texas that included a $25 million penalty. National Oilwell Varco or NOV said in a securities filing the $25 million penalty for the universal settlement was preliminarily agreed in 2010. The company didnt say why the final settlement took six more years. OFAC announced its enforcement action Monday (November 14). The company said in a securities filing last week it entered into settlement agreements with the agencies on November 9. OFAC said its penalty against National Oilwell Varco was about $6 million but was deemed satisfied by the companys payment of the $25 million criminal fine to the DOJ under the NPA. From 2002 to 2005, NOV approved at least four Dreco commission payments to a U.K.-based entity related to the sale and export of goods from Dreco to Iran. From 2006 to 2008, there were two deals worth about $13 million involving sales to Iran. From 2007 to 2009, Dreco engaged in 45 transactions valued at about $1.7 million involving the sale of goods to Cuba. There was one transaction with Sudan worth about $20,000 in 2005 or 2006. OFAC said NOV didnt voluntarily self disclose the offenses. The four commission payments to an agent involved in the Iran trade were egregious, OFAC said, because senior-level finance executives within NOV approved them. NOV appears to have willfully blinded itself to the consequences of its approval by acquiescing to Drecos deliberate non-identification of Iran in its communications with NOV, OFAC said. National Oilwell Varco trades on the NYSE under the symbol NOV. * * * NOVs disclosure about the settlement in its Form 8-K filed with the SEC on November 9, 2016 said, On November 9, 2016, National Oilwell Varco, Inc. (NOV) entered into settlement agreements to resolve investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement regarding NOVs compliance with U.S. export trade laws and regulations. NOV will pay a total of $25 million to resolve the investigations, an amount which was preliminarily agreed upon in 2010 and which was fully accrued around that time. These matters were previously disclosed in NOVs annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. ____ Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. I always wanted to be a writer or poet. It all began with the first story I wrote when I was six years-old. It was about 15 pages long and was about a cat, a witch and a spaceship. I remember being so proud that it was so long, and spent much time counting the words over and over again. When I grew up, my love for writing translated into a career in journalism, before I moved into communications. But being able to create a story from scratch and see it published as a book, is by far the best thing I have done. Nicola J Rowley I always thought that I would write adult fiction but I never sat down and wrote more than an odd chapter here and there. When my son was born, within weeks I started reading to him. It makes me incredibly happy to see the enjoyment he now gets from turning the pages, learning new words and going on special adventures. I would love to help instil a similar love of books and reading in all children, no matter what their age. I love to laugh and smile. Happiness is really addictive. And there's nothing better than to surround yourself with like-minded people. Being kind to others is really important to me. Even if it's just a small gesture like a smile, a simple act of kindness can make a big difference to someone else. My head is always swimming with new ideas and characters, and I draw on inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. James and the Amazing Gift is loosely based on my son, who, as a baby was incredibly chilled and happy. Aside from this, I like to run and get a lot of ideas whilst I'm jogging past the horses in the fields first thing in the morning. I like nothing more than to curl up with a good book and just lose myself in the characters and storyline. I am surrounded by children's books at home, so when I get the chance, it is good for me to retreat into a good adult novel. One of my fondest memories from my childhood was when I was introduced to Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. It is etched upon my memory, and began a lifelong love of all things poetry related. To this day, I still have the books that I created my own versions of Cinderella in. I have been fortunate enough to travel a lot. I love Sydney, New York, and Hoi An in Vietnam and would definitely like to return to all of them. But for me, one of the biggest highlights was getting to meet mountain gorillas in the wild in Rwanda. There's something so beautiful and incredibly special about being close to wild animals in their own habitat. I also run a successful photography business, specialising in children and family, weddings and commercial imagery. It's another passion of mine. I guess you could say - I always need to have a creative outlet. I enjoy nothing more than to be surrounded by my friends and family. I am lucky to have some incredible people in my life, and my long-standing friendships mean the world to me. Jackie Chan has received an honorary Oscar. Jackie Chan The 'Rush Hour' actor hailed his recognition at the Eighth Annual Governors Awards a "dream" come true after being recognised by the Academy for the first time in his 56-year career. Accepting the accolade from Tom Hanks, Michelle Yeoh and Chris Tucker, he said: "My dad always said, 'Son, you get so many movie awards in the world, when are you going to get one of these?' Then I just look at my dad. 'Ha, ha, ha. Dad, I only make comedy action movies.' " The 62-year-old actor recalled seeing Sylvester Stallone's Academy Award statuette when he had a meeting at the 'Expendables' star's home 23 years ago and admitted it made him "really want one". He recalled: "I touched it, kissed it, smelled it... I believe it still has my fingerprints on it. "Then I talked to myself, 'I really want one.' Finally, (Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs) called and I said, 'Are you sure?' " Jackie went on to thank his fans and vowed to keep making movies, even though he's been left injured many times because of his work. He said: "After 56 years in the film industry, making over 200 films, I've broken so many bones, finally this is mine. I want to thank you, Hong Kong, such an incredible city, my hometown, my hood, who make me. "China, my country, I am proud to be Chinese. Thank you, Hollywood, for all of those years teaching me so many things, and also make me a little bit famous. I'm just honored to be here." Other honourees at the event, which took place at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles on Saturday (12.11.16) night, included film editor Anne V. Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The star-studded guest list for the ceremony included Nicole Kidman, Warren Beatty, Emma Stone, Lupita Nyong'o, Ryan Reynolds, Viola Davis, Andrew Garfield, Dame Helen Mirren, Richard Gere, Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, Kate Beckinsale, Lily Collins, Marion Cotillard, Felicity Jones and Sir Ben Kingsley. This November a moving true life story is coming to cinemas screens; directed by Amma Asante, and staring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, A United Kingdom tells the incredible true story of Seretse Khama, King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. A United Kingdom As the film heads to cinemas this November 25th we take a look back at other incredible true life stories that have been adapted for cinemas. 127 Hours Starring James Franco, 127 Hours is a survival drama directed by Danny Boyle, the director behind Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Franco plays adventure mountaineer climber Aron Ralston who becomes trapped in a canyon in Utah. The film documents the drastic and desperate measures Ralston's had to resort to in order to survive. The film is adapted from the 2004 book written by Ralston titled Between a Rock and a Hard Place. The film was a hit during the 2010 awards season and was nominated for six Academy awards. Schindler's List Steven Spielberg's emotional 1993 film Schindler's List tells the incredible true life story of Oskar Schindler a German business man who saved many of his Jewish workers from the Nazis. The powerful film is shot entirely in black and white aside from poignant scenes which see a young girl in a red coat. The film's main cast provided moving performances with Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley playing Schindler's business associate Itzhak Stern and Ralph Fiennes playing Nazi member Amon Goeth. The film often features in "Best Film" lists and is currently placed 6th in IMDBs list of the top 250 films of all time. Captain Phillips Tom Hanks plays Captain Richard Phillips in a film which documents the true events of a 2009 hijacking of an American container ship by Somali pirates. The pirates commandeered the ship taking the crew hostage before holding Phillips captive on a lifeboat. It is no surprise that Tom Hanks provides a dramatic performance as Captain Phillips however the breakout star of the film was Barkhad Abdi who played lead pirate Muse in his first ever acting job . Abdi was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at both the Oscars and Golden Globes and he went on to win the BAFTA in the same category. Erin Brockovich Julia Roberts won an Oscar in 2001 for her leading role as Erin Brockovich in the film of the same name which is a dramatization of real events which saw the single mum fight against Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) after discovering that the company's works contaminated the local water which poisoned local residents. The real life Eric Brockovich has noted that the film is 98-99% accurate. Did you know that the real Erin had a role in the film as a waitress named Julia? Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaguhey kick started the McConaissance with his incredible dramatic performance in Dallas Buyers Club which saw him sweep the board during the 2014 awards season winning the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance as Ron Woodruff, a Texan who played the system to give himself and fellow AIDS patients the medication that they needed. Jared Leto played patient Rayon, whilst not based on a real person, Leto too received much praise for his award collecting Best Supporting Actor at both the Oscars and the Globes. 12 Years a Slave 12 Years a Slave tells the incredible true story of musician and freeman Simon Northup who lived in 1840s New York who was tricked and sold in to slavery by two gentleman whom he travel with to DC for a music job - Northup was a talented violinist. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Northup and documents his harrowing years in slavery which saw him moved from plantation to plantation encountering the brutality of owners until he was eventually freed. The powerful moving film picked up multiple awards including Best Picture, Best Performance by a Supporting Actress from Lupita Nyong'o and Best Adapted Screen Play for John Ridley. Philomena After finding herself pregnant in 1950s Ireland Philomena was forced by her parents to live in a convent, here she gave birth to her son and worked for numerous years. Against her wishes the nuns gave her son up for adoption without allowing Philomena to say goodbye. This was a secret she had kept from her family for 50 years until one drunken Christmas. From here, a chance meeting with journalist Martin Sixsmith saw the pair embark on a 5 year quest to find her son, which surprisingly for both, led to a remarkable journey. Judi Dench stared in the title role of the adaptation of Philomena's story whilst Steve Coogan played Martin Sixsmith. Coogan adapted the screenplay from Sixsmith's book documenting their journey titled The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a Fifty Year Search. Everest Everest is a retelling of the 1996 expedition to Everest which saw multiple adventure groups get caught up in the furore of Mother Nature, a horrific storm that claimed many lives - at the time this was the deadliest natural disaster in Everest's history. Jason Clarke plays Rob Hall leader of the Adventure Consultants group whilst Jake Gyllenhaal plays the leader of competitor group Mountain Madness, who both lead their groups to the summit before they were caught in the storm. David Breashears, a fellow climber who was at base camp during the storm and who helped with the rescue, served as one of the film's co-producers. David was on the mountain in 1996 co-directing and photographing the first ever IMAX film short on Mount Everest. The Kings Speech Colin Firth bagged his first Oscar in the King's Speech a film about how King George VI worked alongside his speech therapist to conquer his fear of speaking in public and mask his speech impediment following his unexpected ascension to the throne. The film was nominated for an incredible 12 Oscars and went on to win 4 - Best Film, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Firth starred alongside Geoffrey Rush who played Lionel Logue his speech therapist and Helena Bonham Carter who played his wife Queen Elizabeth, both received Oscar nominations for their dramatic performances. A United Kingdom is in UK cinemas 25th November The Duchess of Cornwall has "never" had a large group of women look after her. Prince Charles and Camilla The 69-year-old royal recently visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with her husband Prince Charles in a bid to show their support to women in leadership and to help promote religious tolerance, and they were accompanied by an all-female protection team who were handpicked from the UAE's elite to protect them, which the Duchess found "extraordinary". Speaking to the Daily Mail about her entourage, the Duchess - who is also known as Camilla Parker-Bowles - said: "It's fascinating. It is quite extraordinary to have them. I have never had four women looking after me [and] they are the most incredible women." Camilla has revealed she quizzed a few of her guards including Shaima al Kaabi, Basima al Kaabi, Hannan al Hatawi and Nisreen al Hamawi on their venture, and was surprised to learn the females had conquered Mount Everest. She added: "The first one had climbed Everest. I said 'How long did it take?' and she said 16 days! It's quite remarkable." And images of Camilla and Charles were previously shared on Clarence House's Instagram account. Alongside one image of Camilla surrounded by her guards who adorned the traditional hijabs and abayas walking out of the Emirates Palace Hotel, it read: "Her Royal Highness with her all-female protection team during #RoyalVisitUAE From left to right: Shaima al Kaabi, Basima al Kaabi, Hannan al Hatawi, Nisreen al Hamawi and Salama al Remeithi. Earlier this year Shaima, Nisreen and Hannan also achieved the remarkable feat of conquering Mount Everest. (c)Clarence House (sic)." And the couple - who married in 2005 - have publicly thanked the UAE for their stay. Alongside an image of the couple shared on social media, which sees Camilla wear a traditional bright blue ensemble, read: "Thank you for the wonderful welcome United Arab Emirates! The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall are now off to Bahrain, the final country on their Royal tour. Follow #RoyalVisitBahrain for updates (sic)." Prince Harry's girlfriend Meghan Markle didn't have "time" to meet the Queen and Prince Charles during her visit to the UK. Meghan Markle The 35-year-old actress - who confirmed she was dating the 32-year-old royal last week - recently jetted over to England, and although a plan was supposedly in place for the 'Suits' star to meet with her beau's grandparents her trip was cut short on Thursday (10.11.16) due to work commitments, which forced her to miss out on the family gathering and fly home to Toronto, Canada, immediately. Speaking about the brunette beauty's vacation and failure to meet the 90-year-old monarch to The Daily Express newspaper, an insider said: "It was only a mini-break because she's got filming commitments. "There's been a lot of talk of her being introduced to the Queen and Prince Charles but there simply hasn't been time." Although Meghan has only been living in Canada for a few years, she has been pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoys leaving there. Speaking previously, the Los Angeles-born star said: "I've enjoyed living in Canada [where 'Suits' is filmed] for the past five years." Meanwhile Meghan - who divorced from Trevor Engelson in 2013 after two years of marriage - has revealed her mantra is to not follow something through until the end or drag something out unnecessarily if she doesn't think it will last for a long time in the future. Speaking previously about the motto's she believes in, she said: "My mantra is, 'Don't give it five minutes if you're not going to give it five years.' "[And] there's a great quote from the artist Georgia O'Keeffe that resonates with me: ' I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain, and I am quite free." Two out-of-state visitors who were vacationing in Gatlinburg this summer have pleaded guilty in Sevier County court for charges of intentionally feeding a black bear. On Friday, July 8, Billy Harden, 40, and Dawn Cantrell, 27, from Nashville, In., were vacationing at 417 Silverbell Ln. in Gatlinburg when they and their two juvenile children decided to hand feed a yearling black bear. After posting photos of the act on Facebook, a local news station picked up the story, which was brought to the attention of TWRA. Wildlife Officer Scott Reasor, who is assigned to Gatlinburg as the bear enforcement officer, responded to the area and cited both Harden and Ms. Cantrell for feeding a black bear. They appeared in Sevier County General Sessions Court on Oct. 27 and pleaded guilty to the charges. Judge Dwight Stokes assessed fines of $200 each with adjoining court costs of $270 each. Officer Reasor said, Feeding bears eventually results in them becoming completely habituated to approaching people and ultimately becoming dependent on humans as a food source. Once this happens, they lose interest in natural foraging and have to be removed from that environment and in some extreme cases, euthanized. This year, TWRA has documented 603 black bear incidents as of September. The majority of these cases were simple bear sightings, yet others range from garbage issues and property damage to bears struck by vehicles and orphaned cubs. Fortunately, TWRA has only reported four incidents involving aggressive bears. In recent years, two separate incidents reveal just how dangerous the intentional feeding of bears can be. In 2009, a 74-year-old woman in Colorado, who had previously been warned against feeding bears by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, was found mauled to death and partially eaten by a black bear in her back yard. In 2015, an 85-year-old woman from Montana was attacked inside her home by a bear she had been actively feeding. She died from her injuries within days of the attack. Sales for the three months ended October 1, 2016 at fashion marketer Michael Kors dropped 3.7 per cent to $1.09 billion, as against 1.13 billion in the prior fiscal's second quarter. Of this, retail net sales rose 12.1 per cent year over year to $597.2 million, driven primarily by 198 net new store openings since the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2016.In the second quarter of fiscal 2017, gross profit declined 3.0 per cent from a fiscal ago period to $644.7 million, and as a percentage of total revenue stood at 59.2 percent, compared to 58.8 per cent in the second quarter of fiscal 2016. Sales for the three months ended October 1, 2016 at fashion marketer Michael Kors dropped 3.7 per cent to $1.09 billion, as against 1.13 billion in the prior fiscal's second quarter. Of this, retail net sales rose 12.1 per cent year over year to $597.2 million, driven primarily by 198 net new store openings since the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2016.# According to the company, foreign currency translation and transactions favourably impacted gross profit margin by approximately 80 basis points.Net income for the reporting quarter was down at $160.9 million, or $0.95 per diluted share, vis-a-vis $193.1 million, or $1.01 per diluted share in the earlier fiscal's same period. (AR) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Americhem, a global provider of colour and additive and engineered compound solutions for the polymer industry, recently completed a survey of verified customers and users of Americhem products in partnership with TechValidate. Americhem gathered more than 750 data points that will help the company better understand their customers' needs and perceptions.The company also discovered several key business benefits that illustrate why organisations should be tapping into their customer bases for insights. Americhem, a global provider of colour and additive and engineered compound solutions for the polymer industry, recently completed a survey of verified customers and users of Americhem products in partnership with TechValidate. Americhem gathered more than 750 data points that will help the company better understand their customers' needs and perceptions.# The first benefit is to find out why customers choose a company over competitors. The TechValidate survey of Americhem customers, for example, asked customers who had evaluated one or more of eight competitive companies why they chose Americhem. Answers such as product consistency and product performance in manufacturing were common.The second benefit was to find out if customers would recommend a company, and why. Trusted recommendations carry a lot of weight when decisions around suppliers and partnerships are made, so understanding why a company is or isn't being recommended is important. Americhem found out that their customer service excellence was just as important as their product integrity for generating recommendations, for example.According to the third benefit, a company needs to find out what case study opportunities one might be missing. One may know about some customer success stories, but chances are there are positive results about which you have never heard. One organisation stated Americhem had enabled it to introduce and maintain a visual effect portfolio that generates over $250 million in revenue, for examplea strong story to tell.The fourth benefit was to find out about localised business wins within the organisation. Especially in nationwide or international organisations, it can be difficult to track small-scale successes that positively impact customers. For instance, one R&D department representative stated that the team at Americhem's Texas plant went out of the way to get the customer masterbatch on short notice.According to the fifth benefit, a company has to find out more about customer needs, challenges, and decision-making. Many people think they know what their customers need and want, as well as how they make the decisions they do. Conducting a detailed survey, however, allows the company to hear firsthand what the true driving forces are. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Bracker, Switzerlands leading supplier of rings and travellers for ring spinning systems and a member of the Rieter Group, is set to present a variety of new textile machineries at India ITME 2016, the India international textile machinery exhibition, to be held from December 3 to 8, 2016, at the Bombay exhibition and convention centre, Mumbai.The highlight at ITME will be the Berkol multigrinder. The entire range of top rollers and long cots used in a spinning mill can be processed on a single machine. Any execution of centre guided top roller is ground fully automatically on the Berkol multigrinder. With this system, one can achieve a grinding capacity of up to 150 top rollers per hour, while leaving the Berkol multigrinder unattended for as long as 30 minutes. In addition to the automatic grinding of top rollers, with the Berkol multigrinder, one can also benefit from the semi-automatic grinding of long cots with up to 490 millimetres axis length. Bracker, Switzerland's leading supplier of rings and travellers for ring spinning systems and a member of the Rieter Group, is set to present a variety of new textile machineries at India ITME 2016, the India international textile machinery exhibition, to be held from December 3 to 8, 2016, at the Bombay exhibition and convention centre, Mumbai.# Bracker will also unveil Berkol 63, a new cot dedicated to spinning compact yarns. It enables constantly outstanding yarn values throughout entire lifetime. Excellent fibre guidance is given due to softness of compound without showing lapping tendencies. Besides the introduction of the new cot, other types were optimised to offer highest market standards in terms of price/performance ratio.The company will also present the new Starlet plus traveller with its improved coating shows a better resistance against corrosion. This is of high importance in challenging spinning conditions like high humidity or aggressive fibres. As a result, the service life can be extended by up to 50 per cent. These travellers, which are suited for the entire yarn count range, are especially recommended for spinning viscose , CO/CV blends, PES, and dyed fibres. During the entire service life, the yarn quality values remain constant.Other products, which Bracker will present at ITME, will include Titan and RedOrbit spinning rings, as well as Starlet, Pyrit, and Zirkon travellers. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) in India is considering promoting solar powered spinning yarn charkhas under off grid and decentralised solar programme. For this initiative, manufacturers and developers of solar powered charkhas have been requested to send their comments on the technical specifications, accompanied with designs by the ministry.This was informed by a media agency, which quoted an official of the MNRE ministry, who added that it is possible, to eliminate the hard work involved in the manual operation of charkha, while also increasing the wage earning capacity. The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) in India is considering promoting solar powered spinning yarn charkhas under off grid and decentralised solar programme. For this initiative, manufacturers and developers of solar powered charkhas have been requested to send their comments on the technical specifications, accompanied with designs by the ministry.# According to the official, use of solar energy can usher in a new era for spinning charkhas and also for persons involved in the trade , particularly for those living in the rural areas, since charkhas are being mainly operated in rural areas. (AR) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# In addition to being manufactured in a sustainable manner, the Motex 15000 consumes less energy, has better safety features, and minimises waste, while offering better operational efficiency and maximum return on investment. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# The new model enables the processor to achieve even drying and heat setting at higher evaporation rates with optimum energy utilisation, which translates into lower operating cost per metre of fabric. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# The Motex 15000 also achieves consistent and reproducible results across the length and width of the fabric, even with larger overfeed adjustment range up to 80 per cent. It ensures higher stretch, irrespective of the higher GSM of the fabric and is equipped with pin protection flapper for knitted fabrics. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# The stenter requires lubrication once a year or even later, while offering easy access and retrieval of operating and maintenance manual through GUI. Its higher squeezing capability ensures optimum pick up percentage for specific processes like wet on wet finish with desired add on, resulting in better productivity. It comes equipped with a 'Tilting Trough' with optimised capacity to reduce drain losses. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# Inspiron has also recently unveiled a R&D Centre near Ahmedabad, which will undertake sustainable development projects to produce products of the best quality, innovative and user friendly technology, to meet and preferably surpass customer expectations. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# Attached to the R&D Centre is also an Incubation Centre, which is equipped with a demo stenter for mills to undertake trails and test out their unique ideas, while also validating them under actual working conditions, before venturing into commercial production. Inspiron Engineering, a hot air stenters manufacturer, will showcase a next generation stenter, the Motex 15000 at the upcoming India ITME in hall 5, stall C1. The Motex 15000 has been developed with unprecedented features and state-of-the-art aesthetics. It offers 15 per cent higher drying efficiency and higher operating speed compared with Motex 4560.# The Incubation Centre is equipped with a laboratory, library and conference-cum-training room and is manned by a team of process technologists and design professionals. (RKS) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India OrganoClick AB, a Swedish company that develops functional materials based on environmentally friendly fibre chemistry, has entered into an agreement to acquire all shares in the Sweden-based Biokleen Miljokemi AB, a chemical technology firm that focuses on eco-labelled cleaning and maintenance products for wood, home, house, and car care.The acquisition is part of OrganoClick's growth strategy and adds to the existing product portfolio another strong brand as well as a sales force for Swedish paint dealers. OrganoClick AB, a Swedish company that develops functional materials based on environmentally friendly fibre chemistry, has entered into an agreement to acquire all shares in the Sweden-based Biokleen Miljokemi AB, a chemical technology firm that focuses on eco-labelled cleaning and maintenance products for wood, home, house, and car care.# The total price OrganoClick paid for Biokleen Miljokemi AB is SEK 16 million. The payment is proposed to be made by SEK 4.75 million in form of 823 224 shares in OrganoClick at a share price of 5.77 SEK / share and SEK 11.25 million in cash. The share price is calculated as an average share price during the period September 26 to October 26, 2016, with a discount of about 5 per cent. The final agreement was signed on 10 November, 2016. The cash will be financed through a combination of loans and a proposed directed emission of shares. The acquisition is expected to be completed in December 2016.Biokleen Miljokemi products are used for washing off mould, algae, and dirt from facades, roofs and wooden decks. This is a great addition to OrganoClicks' existing wood treatment products. A number of Biokleen products are eco-labelled with the Swedish Swan and the product for algae and mould cleaning has been named Best in Test by the Folksam Test for mould cleaning products.The agreement is conditioned upon that the extraordinary general meeting of OrganoClick resolves a share issue as part of the payment for Biokleen Miljokemi AB. The acquisition is thus expected to be completed in December 2016, after the decision is made to issue the shares by the OrganoClick extraordinary general meeting.The acquisition also provides a substantial contribution of sales, cash flow, and profit for OrganoClick. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Wacker Chemie AG, German chemical company, has announced that Wacker China has started up its new pilot reactor for vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions at its Nanjing site (Jiangsu province), China. The new facility will help Wacker expand local research and grow to its regional portfolio of application technology and customer services.The investment needed for the pilot reactor amounts to around 2.4 million. The Group's goals for the project is to meet growing demand in China and Asia for high-quality polymeric binders and to strengthen its position as one of the world's leading manufacturers of VAE dispersions and dispersible polymer powders. Wacker Chemie AG, German chemical company, has announced that Wacker China has started up its new pilot reactor for vinyl acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions at its Nanjing site (Jiangsu province), China. The new facility will help Wacker expand local research and grow to its regional portfolio of application technology and customer services.# The pilot reactor serves as a research facility for custom-made VAE dispersions and dispersible polymer powders, which go on to be used in the construction, adhesives and coatings industries, among others. The experienced local technical team, supported by the state-of-the-art equipped technical centre in Shanghai, can now cooperate even better with Wacker's customers to develop first-class products with consistent high quality, optimise production processes and shorten developing periods. In this way, Wacker will be able to meet rising demand for high-grade polymeric binders in China and Asia, while continuing to grow its local expertise, application technology, and customer service.Peter Summo, president of Wacker said, Our objective is to work with our customers to develop first-class solutions adapted to local needs and, in that way, to contribute to Wacker's growth going forward. Wacker is now one of the world's few VAE manufacturers that can support customers in China from the development lab all the way up to large-scale production.Paul Lindblad, president of Wacker Greater China said The new facility will allow us to strengthen our role as a leading technology partner for numerous key industries and to underscore our long-term commitment to China.Located at Wacker's fully integrated polymer site in Nanjing, this ultramodern facility is state-of-the-art, as it is home to a completely automated monitoring and control system. Wacker already manufactures its VINNAPAS VAE dispersions and dispersible polymer powders in Nanjing products are used, for example, for formulating high-quality adhesives, low-odour, environment-friendly interior paints and for energy-saving building solutions such as external thermal insulation composite systems. Other applications include tile adhesives, plasters, paper coatings, carpet applications, and technical textiles. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India By expanding development assistance through our Ministry of Economy, the European Union has demonstrated confidence in Governments financial management and ability to drive effective and targeted development across a wide-range of sectors. We can now ensure that our joint development programmes with the EU have the most direct impact possible for our people the men and women whose hard work forms the backbone of our growing economy, said the Attorney-General. The European Union is looking to expand direct budget support to Fiji through the Ministry of Economy to fund a range of collaborative development programmes. This announcement followed a meeting between Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and an EU delegation.The EU delegation consisted of the Head of Unit of Centralised Operations, Central Asia, Middle East/Gulf and Pacific, Mr. Jobst Von Kirchman, the Development Coordinator for the Pacific Region, Mr. Mathias Reusing, Head of Cooperation, Mr. Christopher Wagner, and the EU Ambassador to Fiji and the Pacific, Mr. Andrew Jacobs.The meeting included discussions on cooperative strategies for developing Fijis agriculture sector particularly how direct budget support from the EU would assist sugarcane and other farmers. GUIDELINE - APPLYING FOR A POSITION WITH THE FIJIAN CIVIL SERVICE On 22 January 2016 the Fijian Civil Service introduced Open Merit Recruitment and Selection. The focus of the changes is to ensure that the best eligible applicant for each position is appointed to the position. All positions in the Fijian Civil Service are available for open competition, and eligible, qualified people are encouraged to apply. Eligibility will be specified in the advertisement and job description, but is generally Fijian Citizen, under 55 years of age, of good character with a clear police record, in sound health and able to demonstrate a commitment to the values of the Public Service (as stipulated in the Fijian Constitution). NEW: Click here to view the FIJIAN CIVIL SERVICE SALARY BANDS LIST OF CIVIL SERVICE VACANCIES MOC 37/2022 - MEDIA ASSISTANT (TECHNICAL) Closes on: Thursday November 10, 2022 @ 3:00PM FJST MOC 36/2022 - MEDIA ASSISTANT (PRODUCTION) Closes on: Thursday November 10, 2022 @ 3:00PM FJST MOC 35/2022 - MEDIA ASSISTANT (MEDIA MONITOR/NEWS) Closes on: Thursday November 10, 2022 @ 3:00PM FJST Lisa Haydon has posted a picture on her Instagram account in which she is seen in bed along with Sapna Pabbi and an unidentified male actor for a quirky photoshoot. Lisa has made her followers put on their thinking hats to identify who the actor is as both Lisa & Sapna have covered his face. Well, can you guess who the actor is? If yes please leave your comments!! She captioned her image as, "Long day at work 3 hour scene in bed with a mysterious actor." Of course, her followers are doing their best to find out who the actor is and some commented that it's Arjun Kapoor while others said that it is Sushanth Singh Rajput. However, none of them are right and we'll have to wait for Lisa's post to know who the actor really is. Nail-biting! Sunny Leone Tweets On Donald Trump Vs Hillary Clinton Election Results! Lisa Haydon tied the knot to the love of her life Dino Lalvani in October in a fabulous beach side wedding. Lisa looked gorgeous and the whole wedding looked like a dream! We wish the couple a happy married life and may they live hapilly all through their lives. Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Service is set to launch the Tennessee Move Initiative. This will be a collaborative effort among the Departments Division of Mental Health Services and Division of Hospital Services, to provide intensive and customized care coordination services to individuals in long-term units within Tennessees state owned regional mental health institutes. This statewide initiative will feature a local team in each Grand Division across the state of Tennessee. After an announcement of funding, the Department has chosen and contracted with the following community providers to implement the Tennessee Move Initiative: West Tennessee: Alliance Healthcare; Middle Tennessee: LifeCare Family Services; and East Tennessee: Helen Ross McNabb Center. "The primary purpose is to successfully transition identified individuals to community based housing by providing short-term intensive support services; our partnering Community Mental Health Centers will develop, implement, and monitor this Initiatives programming. In direct partnership with the state owned regional mental health institutes, the local teams will ensure individual, family, and housing provider support while connecting and coordinating with natural and formal supports within the individuals home community," officials said. Essential Functions of Tennessee Move Initiative Local Teams: Work closely with state hospital staff to engage long-term individuals ready for discharge; Work in close collaboration with treatment provider to coordinate care; Assist in securing benefits and resources; Work in collaboration with state hospitals in securing housing if needed; Connect to community resources (Peer centers, Psychosocial, Supported Employment, etc.); Coordinate care with all providers (case manager, therapist, prescriber, etc.); Provide 24/7 support to the individuals, their families, and housing providers; and Work with community providers in moving individuals to a more independent levels of living. Serving patients in the community setting is a priority for our Department, said Marie Williams, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Anytime a person can be served in a more familiar environment, the better off the person will be. I am really excited about this Initiative in our State because it focuses on providing treatment where it belongs, in the community. For more information, visit www.tn.gov/behavioral-health. Shahid Kapoor is all set to share the screen space with Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone for the first time, in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati. The actor is said to be essaying the role of Raja Ratan Singh, the Rajput ruler and husband of queen Padmavati (Deepika), in the period drama whereas Ranveer will be playing Alauddin Khilji, the medieval-era Delhi sultan, who falls in love with Padmavati. At a recent event, Shahid revealed that he will start shooting for the movie in a couple of weeks. The Rangoon actor was quoted saying, "I will start shooting for 'Padmavati' in a couple of weeks. I haven't started it yet, but it is an amazing honour to work with Bhansali ji. I love his films, I think he is a fantastic filmmaker. I am very excited about the role he has offered me. This is the first time that Deepika and I will be working together which is great. This is the first time me and Ranveer will be working together, which is great." He further added, "Padmavati is a really big film. It is a challenging film to do as an actor. After working with Vishal Bharadwaj, working with Bhansali is an amazing place to be. I feel very fortunate." On the other hand, Deepika too says that Padmavati is going to be an extremely difficult film for her to do. A couple of days ago, Ranveer had given us a glimpse of his look from this film.. Padmavati is slated to release on 17th November, 2017. Hollywood actress Dakota Johnson has recently expressed her wish to get married, but secretly. The actress wants to follow the footsteps of her parents and grandparents when it comes to marriage. Dakota said, she has been highly inspired by the story about how her parents and grandparents got married secretly, and she wants to carry the tradition forward. "That's not dissimilar to how mum and dad married the first time. Maybe I should continue the tradition and get secretly hitched to a semi-suitable male? If it doesn't work out the first time, I'll just do it again with somebody else," said Dakota. Dokota's grandmother Tippi Hedren said, "Peter and I had another wedding in a beautiful Lutheran church on Long Island. The pictures are too cute for words, it looks like two children getting married. He was 19 and I was 22. And Mum was married at 18! I'd better get to work." Tippi continued, "Here's this slick young actor, charming and handsome as you could find - he had it all. And my little girl involved with that? That was asking way too much. She is very wilful though. She eloped, too". "I remember exactly where I was when I found out. We had a phone on the wall by the staircase at our house and I got this call. 'Hi Mum! It's Melanie. I'm with Don. Guess What? We just got married!' I cried, 'Oh no.'" Tippi added further. Week after week on Bigg Boss 10, the fights between VJ Bani and Lopamudra Raut don't seem to end; they pick a fight on any small thing and their ugly spat is turning things nasty on the show. Lopa and Bani's fight has been going on since a very long time and any attempt to resolve things is only adding fuel to the fire. Bani losing to Lopa in the Khusti task and becoming her sevak for 24 hours, has definitely led to her ego getting hurt. On seeing Lopa supporting Manu, Manveer and Monalisa during the nomination process, Bani taunts Lopa saying that she supported the wrong team and she doesn't know what she is doing. Quite annoyed with Bani's comment, Lopa gets furious and tells her that Bani has no right to tell her what she is supposed to do and the she should avoid talking to her. And, just to take revenge for this and the punishment that Bani had given her last week, Lopa uses her power saying that Bani will have to serve her food. Responding to this, Bani tells her that she is breaking a rule by talking in English and she decides to punish her but Lopa doesn't seem to be affected by this. Things change even ugly when Manu, Monalisa and Lopa are in the luggage room and discuss about Bani's behavior. Bani on the other hand is outside the door and listening to the entire conversation, and cannot control her laughter. Both the ladies are poles apart and do not like each other due to ego issues. Lopamudra thinks Bani does not deserve to be in the house because she is fake, where as Bani thinks that Lopa is good for nothing and she doesn't really pay a heed to anything she says. More fights might pop up as time passes, on Bigg Boss 10. HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/13/16 -- Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in security software, today announced it received the highest score in the Current Offering category among the fifteen vendors evaluated in "The Forrester Wave: Endpoint Security Suites, Q4 2016" report. Trend Micro believes that being named as a leader by Forrester's report affirms the merits of having a complete endpoint protection portfolio and marks yet another point of independent industry validation of Trend Micro's technology leadership. Trend Micro received the highest score possible in the Product Roadmap and Go-To Market Strategy criteria, garnering an overall score of 4.7 out of 5 in the strategy category. The report also states, "Overall, Trend Micro's current portfolio, combined with its short- and long-term road maps, aligns very well with the current and (likely) future needs of enterprise buyers." "Receiving these scores in an independent evaluation from such a well-respected research firm is an important recognition and I believe it is confirmation that our endpoint security suite delivers the protection enterprises need," said Kevin Simzer, executive vice president, sales, marketing and business development for Trend Micro. "Customer references were also taken into account, and it is my view that the user feedback further validates our 'maximum protection, minimum impact' value proposition." In addition to providing the best endpoint security technology available today, Trend Micro has the right vision to develop sophisticated techniques to combat the threats of tomorrow. Earlier this month, the company released its new class of cyber threat defense, XGen endpoint security, which complements Trend Micro's proven optimized protection with high-fidelity machine learning. Using a single or incomplete set of techniques can leave gaps in a company's security posture, but the evolving threat landscape demands a comprehensive, multi-layered endpoint protection strategy. This is exactly what XGen offers. With 28 years of experience and more than 155 million endpoints protected, this latest release demonstrates Trend Micro's unwavering commitment to innovation in the area of endpoint security. Visit Trend Micro to access a copy of the full report. Company logo http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/3868 About Trend Micro Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cyber security solutions, helps to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Our innovative solutions for consumers, businesses, and governments provide layered security for data centers, cloud environments, networks, and endpoints. All our products work together to seamlessly share threat intelligence and provide a connected threat defense with centralized visibility and control, enabling better, faster protection. With more than 5,000 employees in over 50 countries and the world's most advanced global threat intelligence, Trend Micro enables users to enjoy their digital lives safely. For more information, visit http://www.trendmicro.com.hk/. MEDIA CONTACT: Claudius Lam Trend Micro + 852 2866 4362 (Office) + 852 9022 0876 (Mobile) Email Contact KARIYA, JAPAN, Nov 14, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - DENSO Corporation today announced that it and Imagination Technologies (LSE: IMG) (hereinafter "Imagination"), headquartered in Hertfordshire, UK, are undertaking joint research on hardware multithreading that enables a processor (CPU) to execute multiple processes concurrently. The companies agree that this technology can provide an advantage for next-generation in-vehicle electronic systems.With recent developments in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving technologies, various in-vehicle components and functions have been computerized to ensure integrated control, and many computers (electronic control units or ECUs) have been built into vehicles. In general, LSIs (large-scale integrated circuits, which are a type of semiconductor device) incorporate two or more CPUs, and so the required performance of CPUs has become increasingly complex.Imagination develops and licenses intellectual property for semiconductor system-on-a-chip(1) devices (SoC IP cores), and has world-class multithreading technologies that are integrated into its MIPS CPUs. DENSO has decided to launch a joint research programme with Imagination in order to implement multithreading more efficiently for interconnections between ECUs in particular.DENSO has been developing technologies and products to help create a society free from traffic accidents. Based on these technologies, DENSO will continue to contribute to building a safe and secure automotive society for all people around the world, not just for drivers and pedestrians.(1) A design technique for integrated circuits to integrate necessary functions on semiconductor chipsAbout DensoDENSO Corporation, headquartered in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan, is a leading global automotive supplier of advanced technology, systems and components in the areas of thermal, powertrain control, electronics and information and safety. Its customers include all the world's major carmakers. Worldwide, the company has more than 200 subsidiaries and affiliates in 38 countries and regions and employs nearly 140,000 people. Consolidated global sales for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, totaled US$39.8 billion. Last fiscal year, DENSO spent 9 percent of its global consolidated sales on research and development. DENSO common stock is traded on the Tokyo and Nagoya stock exchanges. For more information, go to www.globaldenso.com, or visit our media website at www.densomediacenter.com.Source: DensoContact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. 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. Hitachi Ltd Corporate Communications Tel: +81-3-3258-1111 TOKYO, Nov 14, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi welcomed leaders from its particle therapy centers across the world to its second Users' Meeting, held in Tokyo on November 9th and 10th. Members from twelve world-class particle therapy facilities in the United States, Japan and Asia including those which are going to have Hitachi's system in the future joined the meeting to share their experiences with management, engineering teams and fellow users of Hitachi's systems.Particle therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy which offers less invasive treatments for cancer therapy compared to other forms of treatments such as surgery with minimal side effects allowing for even the elderly to undergo treatments and enabling faster rehabilitation. As a result, demand for particle therapy systems is increasing all over the world. In April 2016, insurance coverage of particle therapy treatments in Japan was extended to include pediatrics and certain bone cancers - further evidence of it becoming widely recognized and promoted as an effective cancer treatment. Hitachi continues to partner with the world's most advanced treatment centers where over 12,000 patients have been treated to date with its systems and has established a reputation of high reliability with a proven track record. This year, Hitachi received orders from National Cancer Centre Singapore and Hong Kong Sanatorium Hospital Eastern District Advanced Medical Centre, further expanding the particle therapy business globally.Hitachi's Users' Meeting has been held since 2015 and is where the world's leading radiation oncologists, medical physicists and other medical professionals gather to share clinical experiences, opinions and requests regarding the system with Hitachi to refine the particle therapy system roadmap. This year, participants shared details about their facilities followed by a series of discussions regarding system performance and usability in an effort to achieve even more patient-friendly and effective treatments. Topics included patient throughput improvement and incorporating diagnostic imaging systems such as MRI and CT. Participants also described details of treatment and the impact of health insurance in various regions.Dr. Shirato of Hokkaido University, who has co-developed their proton therapy system with Hitachi in 2014 commented, "We intend to continue our joint research and development activities with Hitachi. I also have high expectations on Hitachi that the comments and discussions from this year's meeting will help them further develop their particle therapy system."Masaya Watanabe, Vice President and Executive Officer, CEO of Hitachi's Healthcare Business Unit, commented, "Leading edge particle therapy was achieved through Collaborative Creation between Hitachi and Hokkaido University. Moving forward, we intend to expand partnerships across many users and to continue these Users' Meetings to listen to the voice of the customer."Hitachi will continue to strive to provide superior systems as a leading company in particle therapy though future Users' Meetings and collaborative activities with users. Hitachi hopes to contribute to the medical community by providing solutions truly needed by users through high value and improving medical quality and efficacy through healthcare innovation.About Hitachi, Ltd.Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society's challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal 2014 (ended March 31, 2015) totaled 9,761 billion yen ($81.3 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at www.hitachi.com.Source: Hitachi, Ltd.Contact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Monday. The yen fell to nearly a 2-week low of 135.14 against the pound, nearly a 4-month low of 108.49 against the Swiss franc and more than a 5-month low of 107.59 against the U.S. dollar, from Friday's closing quotes of 134.21, 107.79 and 106.59, respectively. Against the euro, the yen dropped to 116.17 from Friday's closing value of 115.69. The yen edged down to 76.35 against the NZ dollar, from an early 5-day high of 75.77. Against the Australian and the Canadian dollars, the yen edged down to 81.26 and 79.33 from last week's closing quotes of 80.39 and 78.72, respectively. If the yen extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 138.00 against the pound, 109.00 against the franc, 109.00 against the greenback, 117.00 against the euro, 79.00 against the kiwi, 83.00 against the aussie and 81.00 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The New Zealand dollar weakened against most major currencies in the Asian session on Monday. The NZ dollar fell to a 5-day low of 1.5257 against the euro, from Friday's closing value of 1.5248. Against the U.S. and the Australian dollars, the kiwi dropped to a 1-month low of 0.7074 and nearly a 2-week low of 1.0649 from last week's closing quotes of 0.7110 and 1.0590, respectively. If the kiwi extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.56 against the euro, 0.69 against the greenback and 1.08 against the aussie. 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) - Japan's final industrial production data for September is due to be released in the Asian deals at 11:30 pm ET Monday. Ahead of the data, the yen fell against its major rivals. As of 11:25 am ET, the yen was trading at 115.96 against the euro, 134.87 against the pound, 108.32 against the Swiss franc and 107.41 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. New release supports global collaboration, open science and takes the guesswork out of journal submissions PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters today announced the availability of EndNote' X8, the next iteration of the leading software for researchers, librarians and students to find, manage and create bibliographies, citations and references to research smarter. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160929/413983LOGO Research collaboration has taken on a whole new meaning in the digital age. From 1998 through 2011, papers with 50 or more authors doubled in quantity from roughly 500 per year to more than 1,000. With research on the rise, the latest version of EndNote addresses this trend and enables researchers to work smarter to produce novel research no matter where their location. EndNote X8 now includes support to share an entire EndNote research library, including references, PDFs and annotations with up to 100 people. Collaborators can add to, annotate and cite from the shared library in real-time, with unlimited cloud storage at no additional cost. A built-in activity feed allows users to identify new members and to track the latest changes made to the library by their collaborators. "Our goal is addressing the needs of the market and in particular the end users," said George Kowal, head of researcher solutions at Clarivate Analytics. "X8 does exactly this in support of enabling their research to move forward more effectively with enhanced collaboration." With competition to get published at an all time high, delays due to mismanaged references are nonexistent when the right references are only a click away. EndNote keeps its users in step with the constantly evolving world of scholarly research and publishing by providing the ability to search, organize and share reference materials, as well as automatically format bibliographies, cutting down on the time spent collecting research and writing manuscripts, patent applications and grant proposals. In addition, with EndNote's manuscript matcher, users can reduce the risk of publication rejection by identifying journals where their research is most likely to be accepted based on an analysis of tens of millions of citation connections in Web of Science', a collection of meticulously indexed data from thousands of journals, across hundreds of global publishers. "As the industry's premier reference management resource, EndNote plays an integral role in today's demanding research landscape and the shifting trends in multi-disciplinary and global research collaboration," said Jessica Turner, global head of government and academia at Clarivate Analytics. "With 4 million users from over 100,000 companies and academic institutions worldwide, we recognize the important part EndNote plays in the research process and remain fully committed to providing our customers with the best reference management solution for the future." EndNote X8 is available for Mac and Windows and syncs seamlessly with EndNote online and the EndNote iPad application. For more information on EndNote, or to request a free 30-day trial, visit: endnote.com/downloads/30-day-trial. Learn more about Growing Together: Research Collaboration and Technology, on State of Innovation, and read the report that examines factors that have influenced the rise of collaboration, along with resources that can track and illuminate research partnerships across the globe. Clarivate Analytics Clarivate' Analytics accelerates the pace of innovation by providing trusted insights and analytics to customers around the world, enabling them to discover, protect and commercialize new ideas, faster. Formerly the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, we've been assisting our customers for over 60 years. Now as an independent company with over 4,000 employees, operating in more than 100 countries around the world, we remain expert, objective and agile. For more information, please visit us at Clarivate.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clarivate-analytics-advances-scientific-research-process-with-the-release-of-endnote-x8-300361841.html Beginning on Tuesday, the City of Chattanoogas Household Hazardous Waste Facility will expand its hours to be open five days a week. The facility, located at 3925 N. Hawthorne St., will now be open Tuesday through Saturday from 8 a.m. Common acceptable items include: Batteries Computers Fluorescent bulbs Motor oil Oil-based paint Pesticides Pool chemicals Smoke alarms For more information, call 311, or visit www.chattanooga.gov/recycling. Distributed for Group Lease Public Company Limited by M T Multimedia Co., Ltd. Orn-anong ("Fah") Pattaravejkul Tel: +66-2-612-2081 # 129 Mobile: +66-86-884-4458 E-mail: ornanong.p@mtmultimedia.com Website: www.mtmultimedia.com BANGKOK, Nov 14, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Thanks to continuous expansion of its growing regional businesses, SET-listed digital finance firm Group Lease Public Company Limited ("GL", SET:GL) has reported a new record-high net profit of 260.41 million baht for the third quarter ending September, which represents a whopping 73.29% increase from the same period last year.This marks the eight consecutive new quarterly record-high profits for GL, which prides itself as the first Thailand-based financial services company that has developed a highly efficient digital finance platform now being used to support its business expansion into Thailand's neighboring countries of CLMV plus Indonesia and Sri Lanka.GL Chairman and Chief Executive Mitsuji Konoshita noted that the Q3 profits would have been considerably higher at nearly 300 million baht if it had not been for one-time fees impact from several acquisitions.He added that these acquisitions - particularly the 29.99% stake GL acquired in Commercial Credit & Finance Plc (CCF), a leading and highly profitable finance firm listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange - will help raise GL's profits to substantially higher levels beginning in Q4.CCF has projected to make a full-year profit of US$24 million this year and GL will start booking its share of the profits in Q4 from its 29.99% stake.The chairman of GL's executive board Tatsuya Konoshita explained further that the Q3 profits were also dragged by about 40 million baht of interest expenses for a new batch of US$130 million convertible debentures (CDs) that were issued for subscription by GL's strategic partner in Indonesia, J Trust Asia (JTA).He said the results have shown improvement in all fronts, with the Cambodian operations continuing to be the star performer while the relatively new operations in Indonesia have, surprisingly, turned positive in this quarter.A rough breakdown of the Q3 profits shows the Cambodian operations (which combine the regular leasing of motorcycles and agricultural machineries plus loans to SME businesses) contributing the largest portion of about 130 million baht, followed by Thailand operations (about 100 million baht), plus another 15 million baht each from the Thai subsidiary Thanabun and GL Laos.On top of acquiring the 29.99% stake in the listed Sri Lankan finance firm CCF, GL is also mounting a full-scale expansion into Myanmar by taking over a micro-finance firm and partnering with local business tycoon U Aung Moe Kyaw, owner of Century Finance and the country's leading liquor group Myanmar Distillery, to expand into a broad range of other financial services.Raising more funds to support the company's aggressive regional expansion, it recently decided to issue additional CDs totaling US$70 million in private placement (PP) - comprising of US$50 million to be subscribed by its strategic partner JTA and another US$20 million for an affiliate in Sri Lanka, Creation Investments Sri Lanka (Creation SL). Carrying three-year maturity, the conversion price for these CDs is set at 70 baht per share.About Group Lease PCLGroup Lease Public Company Limited was established on 6th May 1986 and listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand in 2004 (SET:GL). The company has expertise in hire-purchase of motorcycles, as it has been in the motorcycle leasing business for over 20 years, with motorcycle brands for financing including Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki.In 2007, the APF group became the major shareholder holding around 65% of total shares. In 2012, GL announced a long-term business plan to become the leading finance company in the Southeast Asian region. To do so, GL formed Group Lease Holdings Pte. Ltd. (GLH), a Singapore holding company, as headquarters for its expansion in other countries. For more information, please visit www.grouplease.co.th.Source: Group Lease PCLContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. DUBLIN, Nov. 14,2016 /PRNewswire/ --DocuSign announced today the opening of its Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence in Dublin as part of its ongoing commitment to Europe and protecting its customers' data and privacy. The Centre will be committed to conducting research into the latest cyberattacks and trends, while developing tools for the advanced detection of such threats. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151102/283113LOGO The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland. A critical focus for the Centre within the next three years will be undertaking research and development into security orchestration and automation, which will directly inform advancements and innovation for DocuSign's security tools. As a result, the company's customers and employees will benefit from DocuSign's ability to respond even faster to rapidly evolving threats. Welcoming the new investment by DocuSign, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O'Connor TD said, "This new Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence will be a valued addition to Ireland's existing strengths in the ICT sector. We are very keen to attract a wider range of specialist IT companies, especially in Cybersecurity, as we are all very conscious of the crucial importance of being able to deal with Cybersecurity threats. It is great news that a company of the stature of DocuSign has decided to open this new facility here. We have the IT skills available to enable the company to grow and to embed their operations in Ireland. Their arrival is a great vote of confidence in what Ireland has to offer and I wish the team the very best for their future in Ireland." "Our customers are committed to undertaking digital transformations which are underpinned by a high level of security and trust," commented Eoin Hinchy, director of Information Security at DocuSign. "This trust can only be built on a weight of cybersecurity intelligence and a culture of constant innovation that ensures their data is safeguarded. With the proliferation of cyberattacks continuing to grow every day, it is essential to stay ahead of these challenges and mitigate any risk. This is exactly what the research and development and the customised security tools from the Centre of Excellence will help us do." Tapping further into the Irish talent pool as well as an array of security experts including analysts, developers and researchers from large institutions within both the public and private sectors, DocuSign's Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence will be pivotal to keeping DocuSign at the cutting edge of innovation in the cybersecurity field. Beyond further strengthening DocuSign's security offering, the initiative will also strengthen protection for the broader community as a result of bringing together the top minds in cybersecurity to develop tools and share intelligence. Welcoming today's announcement Martin Shanahan CEO IDA Ireland said, "DocuSign's Cyber Security Centre of Excellence marks another important contribution to Ireland and to the continuous improvement of cyber security practices around the world. Ireland is becoming a leading location for companies, like DocuSign, dedicated to fighting cybercrime and other "next generation" threats. I wish Eoin and his team the continued support of IDA Ireland as it grows over the coming years." The Centre of Excellence will play a significant role in maintaining and building upon the trust that more than 250,000 companies and more than 100 million users across 188 countries who put their trust in the DocuSign Global Trust Network to complete nearly one million transactions per day. For more information on DocuSign, visit https://www.docusign.co.uk/ Contact: Michael Creane/Mitch Lowes/Sara Chandran docusign@madebychameleon.com About DocuSign, Inc. DocuSign is changing how business gets done by empowering anyone to send, sign and manage agreements anytime, anywhere, on any device with trust and confidence. DocuSign and Go to keep life and business moving forward.For more information, visit www.docusign.com, call +1-877-720-2040, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Copyright 2003-2016. DocuSign, Inc. is the owner of DOCUSIGN and all of its other marks (www.docusign.com/IP). All other marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners. JSC VTB Bank / Miscellaneous - Medium Priority VTB Group announces IFRS results for 3Q 2016 (news with additional features) 14-Nov-2016 / 07:54 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. *VTB Group announces IFRS results for 3Q 2016* 14 November 2016 VTB Bank ('VTB' or 'the Bank'), the parent company of VTB Group ('the Group'), today publishes its Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements as at 30 September 2016, with the Independent Auditor's Report on Review of these Statements. Andrey Kostin, VTB President and Chairman of the Management Board, said: 'VTB Group delivered net profit of RUB 34 billion in 9M 2016, more than double the bottom-line result for 6M 2016. This steady improvement in profitability reflects the continued recovery in the Group's core revenue generation. 'Operational efficiency also played an important role in this strong set of numbers as we started to benefit from the synergies created by the merger of Bank of Moscow. We expect to achieve further synergies and greater efficiency going forward, following the recently-approved decision to merge VTB24 into VTB Bank. 'We are impressed by the development of Post Bank, with more than 3,600 offices opened in 1,075 localities covering 60 Russian regions in under one year. This rapid expansion is enabling us to significantly enhance the Group's retail franchise. 'VTB Capital remains Russia's go-to investment banking operation, with continued leadership across DCM, ECM and M&A league tables for the first nine months of the year. 'VTB Group as a whole continues to maintain a solid balance sheet and strong capital ratios, leaving us in an excellent position to support our clients across all sectors of the Russian economy.' *FINANCIAL AND OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS* *Income Statement* _RUB *9M 2016* *9M 2015* *Change, % * *3Q *3Q *Change billion_ 2016* 2015* , % * Net interest 310.4 196.0 58.4% 103.4 85.9 20.4% income Net fee and 55.9 54.0 3.5% 19.3 21.4 (9.8%) commissio n income Operating income before 361.1 293.8 22.9% 124.1 123.0 0.9% provision s Provision (146.7) (136.9) 7.2% (43.8) (57.0) (23.2%) charge* Staff costs and administr (171.6) (161.4) 6.3% (55.3) (55.6) (0.5%) ative expenses Net profit / 34.1 (10.9) - 18.7 6.2 201.6% (loss) _*Includes provision charge for impairment of debt financial assets and provision charge for impairment of other assets, credit related commitments and legal claims._ - Net profit in 9M 2016 was RUB 34.1 billion, supported by improved core revenue generation as net interest income and net fee and commission income continued to grow. - VTB Group net interest income increased by 58.4% year-on-year to RUB 310.4 billion in 9M 2016, as repricing of assets and liabilities supported a recovery in net interest margin to 3.7% for 9M 2016, up from 2.4% in 9M 2015. Net interest margin for 9M 2016 was unchanged from 6M 2016 at 3.7%. - The Group's Retail business and Transaction banking (as part of Corporate-Investment banking and Mid-Corporate banking) were the two main drivers of the 3.5% year-on-year growth in net fee and commission income to RUB 55.9 billion. - For 9M 2016, the Group's provision charge grew significantly slower than net interest income, increasing 7.2% year-on-year to RUB 146.7 billion. The Group's cost of risk, taking into account provisions for credit related commitments (the annualised ratio of the provision charge for loan impairments including provision charge for impairment of credit related commitments to average gross loans and average credit related commitments), was 1.9% in 9M 2016 compared to 1.8% in 9M 2015. - In 9M 2016 the Group benefitted from ongoing cost management efforts as well as synergies from the Bank of Moscow merger. Staff costs and administrative expenses for 9M 2016 amounted to RUB 171.6 billion, an increase of 6.3% year-on-year. After the end of the reporting period, on 2 November 2016, the VTB Supervisory Council voted to merge the Group's retail banking arm VTB24 into VTB Bank. This is expected to help the Group achieve significant cost reductions by optimising the structure of the Group's retail business in Russia and creating synergies from the merger of operations, including regional networks. - The Group's annualised costs-to-average assets ratio was 1.8% for 9M 2016, unchanged from 9M 2015, while the ratio of costs to operating income before provisions improved to 47.5% for 9M 2016 versus 54.9% for 9M 2015. *Statement of financial position* *30 Sep *30 Jun *31 Dec *Change in *Change in _RUB billion_ * 2016* 2015* 9M 2016, % 3Q 2016, % *2016* or p.p.* or p.p.* Total assets 12,359.2 12,333.5 13,641.9 (9.4%) 0.2% Loans and advances to customers, including 9,409.7 9,362.5 10,110.0 (6.9%) 0.5% pledged under repurchase agreements (gross) _Gross loans to legal 7,288.3 7,319.6 8,150.0 (10.6%) (0.4%) entities_ _Gross loans to 2,121.4 2,042.9 1,960.0 8.2% 3.8% individuals_ Customer 8,000.9 7,859.1 7,267.0 10.1% 1.8% deposits _Deposits from legal 5,077.3 5,009.0 4,383.6 15.8% 1.4% entities_ _Deposits from 2,923.6 2,850.1 2,883.4 1.4% 2.6% individuals_ NPL ratio 7.2% 7.1% 6.3% 0.9 p.p. 0.1 p.p. Tier 1 CAR 13.5% 13.3% 12.4% 1.1 p.p. 0.2 p.p. Total CAR 15.4% 15.1% 14.3% 1.1 p.p. 0.3 p.p. - The Group's loan book contracted by 6.9% during 9M 2016 due to a decline in loans to legal entities during the first quarter of 2016 that was driven by repayment of several large FX-denominated loans in 1Q 2016 as well as the strengthening of the Russian ruble in the period and the corresponding revaluation of loans denominated in US dollars and other currencies. In 3Q 2016, the loan book grew for the second quarter in a row, increasing 0.5% despite a 0.1% reduction overall for the Russian market during the same period. - Retail lending continued to gain momentum, as loans to individuals increased by 8.2% during 9M 2016 (up 3.8% in 3Q 2016), and stood at RUB 2,121.4 billion as of 30 September 2016. - The Group's NPL ratio was 7.2% of gross customer loans, including those pledged under repurchase agreements (the 'total loan book'), as of 30 September 2016, compared to 7.1% at 30 June 2016 and 6.3% as of 31 December 2015. The allowance for loan impairments was 7.5% of the total loan book as of the end of 3Q 2016, versus 7.4% on 30 June 2016 and 6.7% as of 31 December 2015. The NPL coverage ratio remained at a comfortable 102.9% at 30 September 2016, versus 103.9% as of 30 June 2016, and 105.8% as of 31 December 2015. - Customer deposits grew by 10.1% in 9M 2016, driven by 15.8% growth in corporate deposits during the period. Growing deposits helped to further improve the Group's balance sheet, with customer deposits representing 73% of total liabilities as of 30 September 2016, up from 60% at year-end 2015. As of 30 September 2016, the Group's market shares in Russia in retail and corporate deposits stood at 11.2% and 24.8%, respectively. - The Group continued to reduce its reliance on wholesale funding, with the share of debt securities issued in total liabilities decreasing to 3.9% as of 30 September 2016, down from 4.2% as of 30 June 2016 and 5.1% as of 31 December 2015. Since the beginning of 2016, VTB and its subsidiaries have made repayments on their international public debt totalling USD 2.2 billion. After the end of the reporting period, on 17 October 2016, VTB Bank launched an overnight bond programme on Moscow Exchange. The Group expects that this tool will have a positive impact on its borrowing costs in the future. - VTB maintained solid capital adequacy ratios. As of 30 September 2016, the Group's total and Tier 1 capital adequacy ratios were 15.4% and 13.5%, respectively, versus 15.1% and 13.3% as of 30 June 2016, and 14.3% and 12.4% as of 31 December 2015. *KEY BUSINESS SEGMENT HIGHLIGHTS* *VTB Group key segments in 9M 2016* _% of the *Corporate-Investment *Retail *Mid-Corporate Group banking * business* banking * total*_ Assets 44.8% 26.3% 5.3% Loans and advances to 61.5% 24.1% 7.5% customers (net) Customer 39.4% 43.3% 8.5% deposits Revenues from 47.9% 33.2% 6.9% external customers Net interest 25.8% 46.1% 8.3% income Net fee and commission 19.5% 65.0% 12.4% income Provision 38.7% 41.3% 17.4% charge** Net operating 28.9% 63.4% 3.3% income Staff costs and 25.4% 53.2% 9.1% administrati ve expenses _*Before intersegment eliminations_ _**Includes provision charge for impairment of debt financial assets and provision charge for impairment of other assets, credit related commitments and legal claims._ - Corporate-Investment banking (CIB) delivered RUB 11.8 billion of net profit in 9M 2016. The Retail business posted a positive net result of RUB 35.1 billion for the period. Conservative lending policies and a cautious business environment continued to put pressure on Mid-Corporate banking during 9M 2016. Net loss of Mid-Corporate banking for 9M 2016 was RUB 8.0 billion. - The loan book in the Retail business continued to grow in 9M 2016, primarily driven by mortgage lending and consumer loans. Mortgage lending growth in 9M 2016 was driven by increasing consumer activity and the (MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires November 14, 2016 01:55 ET (06:55 GMT) HKTDC Communication and Public Affairs Department Joe Kainz Tel: +852 2584 4216 Email: joe.kainz@hktdc.org HONG KONG, Nov 14, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - The HKTDC Hong Kong Optical Fair 2016 ended on a high note with a record number of buyers attending the three-day event. Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and co-organised by the Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association, the fair's 24th edition drew more than 15,000 buyers from 100 countries and regions, up 2.4 per cent over the previous year. Buyers from several ASEAN and emerging markets recorded satisfactory growth, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Iran, Brazil and Mexico. The number of buyers from mature markets such as Canada, Australia, Korea, Spain and Sweden, also saw good growth, underscoring Hong Kong's position as a prime trading platform for the global eyewear industry."The total number of visitors to the fair increased this year, and there was satisfactory growth in the number of buyers from various countries," said Benjamin Chau, Deputy Executive Director, HKTDC. "This shows that the Hong Kong Optical Fair is essential for eyewear promotion and sourcing and continues to play an important role as a trading platform for the global eyewear industry. The trading atmosphere was very good at the fairground. Buyers eagerly sought the latest eyewear designs, products and equipment."Brand Name Gallery spotlights 3D printing and high-tech eyewearThis year's Brand Name Gallery featured more than 220 international brands and designer collections. Among the dazzling array of fashionable eyewear were high-tech eyewear and eye-care products, which were once again highlights of the show.3D printing is becoming a new wave in the eyewear industry. Hong Kong exhibitor Chang's Optical Asia Ltd featured ic! berlin's 3D-printed, special edition sunglasses at the fair. The sunglasses were created to mark ic! berlin's 20th anniversary. The company, which is also the distributor for 10 top designer brands such as DITA and Orgreen, also featured wooden spectacles from Italian brand FEB31st, which allow consumers to customise their frames by adding their names, signatures, graphics and words on the side. "Mainland consumers like personalised eyewear products," said Mabel Sze, the company's Brand Manager. "With buyers coming from all over the world, the Optical Fair provides an excellent trading platform for us to introduce high-end, distinctive eyewear products and build our brand."Korean brand Sodamon, which won the Good Design Award in Korea and Australia, brought its Fugu sunglasses collection, made with lightweight materials that allow the sunglasses to float in water. With a business presence spanning Asia, Europe and North America, this exhibitor joined the fair for the first time with a view to expanding into the mainland market. Justin Cha, Sodamon's manager of foreign division, considered Hong Kong an important gateway to the Asian and international markets. On the fair's first day, Mr Cha found potential buyers from the Philippines and Taiwan, where they planned to bring Sodamon's products to local department stores.Spanish company Eyewear From Barcelona SL debuted at the Optical Fair last year and successfully promoted its designs to the mainland, India and several other Asian markets. The returning exhibitor doubled the size of its booth this year. It met many mainland buyers and was actively seeking distributors in Indonesia and Thailand.Record exhibitor attendanceThis year's Optical Fair gathered a record of more than 780 exhibitors from 29 countries and regions. The Chinese mainland, France, Italy, Japan, Korea and Taiwan set up group pavilions to showcase stylish eyewear products. Among them, one of the exhibitors from the French pavilion, Oxibis Group, is the designer, manufacturer and distributor of various brands that are represented in 35 countries and regions. General Manager Jerome Colin and Area Export Manager Julien Daubry hailed the fair as the best in Asia. Their existing Asian distributors were at the fair and the company is also looking for new distributors who are active in other markets. They will participate in the fair next year too.To cater to growing demand for protection against harmful blue light emitted from digital devices, especially for youngsters, many relevant products were featured at the fair. Swiss Lens Laboratory (HK) Limited has launched the Amour 420 SF lenses and sales professional consultant Michael Fung said they had received numerous enquiries from buyers. "The Hong Kong Optical Fair provides an important platform for us to launch new lenses and collect customer feedback. By demonstrating the effects of our new lenses at our booth, we have received positive responses from customers all over the world and reaped onsite orders. This year we have got more enquiries from North Africa and the Middle East."Vibrant eyewear marketIranian buyer Star Optical's Chairman Reza Shamsababdi visited the Hong Kong fair to source the latest eyewear products. With a population of 80 million, he said, Iran is a huge market for the eyewear industry, estimating that nearly half of the country's population wear sunglasses. On the first day of the event, the company placed approximately HK$150,000 worth of orders with suppliers from the mainland, Korea and Taiwan.Optica Next operates 12 shops in Russia. Company President Alexander Golubkov said Russian consumers favour classic styles and dark colours. He was happy to have found some potential frames and sunglasses suppliers from the mainland, Hong Kong and Europe.Optical Korea Co., Ltd from Korea sells various eyewear products online. Company Vice President Hyun-mo Jung said the HKTDC's business matching service helped the company find two potential suppliers of plastic frames. The company planned to buy 4,000 pairs in assorted colours and styles from each supplier. "The Hong Kong Optical Fair is the best place for the industry to source new products that are good quality and of competitive price. I can easily find styles that meet the tastes of Korean consumers."The HKTDC organised a number of eyewear parades, buyer forums, seminars and networking cocktails during the fair to help industry professionals expand their networks. The 14th Hong Kong Optometric Conference was held on 10 November, with the theme "Advancement in Ophthalmic Treatments", attracting about 900 participants.Fair website: http://hkopticalfair.hktdc.com/Photo download: http://bit.ly/2g9s3gRTo view press releases in Chinese, please visit http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/tcAbout HKTDCThe Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The HKTDC is the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and services providers. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China and throughout Asia. The HKTDC also organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in overseas markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdcTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdcLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. PARIS (dpa-AFX) - AXA (AXAHY.PK) announced it has entered into an agreement with Marsh to sell Bluefin Insurance Group Ltd, its P&C commercial broker in the UK. The price for the disposal would amount to 295 million pounds or 340 million euros. AXA said the proposed transaction should generate a negative exceptional P&L impact of 66 million euros, which would be accounted for in net income. Bluefin is a leading insurance broker, providing services to private individuals, small businesses, and large corporates in the UK, employing approximately 1,500 colleagues based in 45 locations. 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. GALWAY, Ireland, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- With a substantial growth of 19 percent in visitor numbers and a fully booked exhibition area, Medtec Ireland closed its gates on 5 October, 2016. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438694LOGO ) (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130723/629764-a ) With this, the B2B trade show with the longest tradition in Ireland, was able to confirm its position as independent satellite of Europe's leading trade show of the medical device industry, Medtec Europe in Stuttgart. This year's event focused strongly on innovations, support mechanisms for start up companies and on vivid international exchange. This approach to display latest product innovations and solutions along the entire supply and production chain of medical devices resulted in a diverse range of international exhibitors and attendees. Most foreign exhibitors and visitors were from Germany, Canada and France, but decision makers from Russia and Libya were also present. Not least as a result of the fact, that the organizer UBM has completed its marketing team with German, English and French native speakers. As expected, one of the main topics discussed was how the industry will react on the challenges induced by Brexit and on its influence on the British and Irish Medtec market. Anne Schumacher, Brand Director Medtec concludes, "The special path that we are following with Medtec Ireland within our portfolio, of course received some tailwind by the recent developments in the British economic region. Excellent re-booking figures for next year's event give us an indication of the boost we are receiving in the aftermath of Brexit." "Apart from that, the two European trade shows feed each other. In 2016, we have registered 31% more visitors from UK and 29% more visitors from Ireland. This effect is visible in the opposite direction as well," Schumacher concludes. German engineering companies like Kiefel GmbH, Koerting Nachf. Wilhelm Steeger GmbH & Co. KG and ET Elastomer Technik GmbH were part of this year's exhibition in Galway. "All eyes on Stuttgart now" was the message at the end of this year's Medtec Ireland. After successfully conducting Medtec Ireland, UBM now is looking forward to the 16th Medtec Europe, to be held 4-6 October, 2017 in Stuttgart. And the European Medical Technology flagship already promises to be the largest Medtec Europe ever conducted. Most certainly as a result of the geographical expansion is the increased number of many companies from European core markets such as Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and the UK, exhibiting at Medtec 2017 for the first time, next to exhibitors from emerging markets like Russia and Tunisia. Apart from reaching out internationally, the continuous growth and diversification of the provided content is a vital part of the Medtec strategy. The clear focus lies on innovations in medical devices and solutions. Aside from features like the Innovation Tours, the organizer has further developed and expanded the "Start-Up Academy", a competition for young innovative Medtec companies. The Start-Up Academy winner benefits from free exhibition space, 2000 Euro and a mentoring program. Medtec Europe is known as the "trade show with the personal added value" and this concept will be endorsed even more dedicatedly with the coming show.For three days, Medtec offers a comprehensive educational agenda, developed in close corporation with leading German institutions and partners, such as VDMA. Especially for engineers in R&D and automation can use their time efficiently between education, networking and business generation. Read more here: http://www.medteceurope.com/europe/de/bildung UBM EMEA UBM EMEA connects people and creates opportunities for companies across five continents to develop new business, meet customers, launch newproducts,promote their brands and expand their markets. Through premier brandssuch as Medtec, CPhI, IFSEC, Ecobuild, Seatrade, and many others, UBM EMEA exhibitions, conferences, awards programs, publications, websites and training andcertificationprograms are an integral part of the marketing plans of companies across seven industry sectors. UBM EMEA is committed to the continual improvement of sustainability To ensure long-term profitability, UBM EMEA aims to be a leader in sustainable business, aligning all key business decisions with our sustainability strategy. UBM EMEA sees it as fundamental that we are conscious of the impact that our actions have on the environment and the communities in which we operate. UBM EMEA strives to manage its impact by ensuring that the principles of sustainability are at the core of all our activities. A corner stone to our journey towards sustainability is our certification to the ISO 20121 Sustainable Event Management System. UBM EMEA is one of the first major organisers to successfully implement and certify our sustainable event management system against the International Standard ISO 20121. Medtec Europe Medtec Europe is one of the leading B2B trade shows for medical devices and components in Europe, providing direct access to newest medical technologies and solutions along the entire supply chain of medical device development and production. Excellent learning opportunities and diverse possibilities for matchmaking and networking within and between the different segments complement the Medtec Experience and draw over 6500 visitors and over 600 exhibitors from 64 countries each year. Medtec Europe, is going to be held for the 16th time, from April 4-6 2017 in Stuttgart, Germany. READING, United Kingdom, 2016-12-02 14:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ:EPAY), a leading provider of financial technology which helps businesses pay and get paid, today announced an important win at this year's Banking Technology Awards ceremony.The Bottomline Universal Aggregator was recognised with the award for the Best Instant Payment Service Initiative. A highly secure, fully outsourced, multi-payment channel platform, it supports the recently accredited Faster Payment Service.Designed to give banks, corporates, governments and non-financial banking institutions an easy plug-in to an array of payment clearing and settlement systems around the world, this unique service helps decrease operational risk, improve compliance and cut costs and inefficiencies.Ed Adshead-Grant, General Manager, Payments & Cash Management, Bottomline Technologies said "We're honoured to have been acknowledged with this prestigious recognition. But the real winners are our customers. They've made an informed choice in adopting the Universal Aggregator and we're proud to provide them with a quick, easy and affordable way to directly access the various UK payment schemes."Now in its 17th year, the Banking Technology Awards mark the highest level of professional and commercial achievement in deploying and exploiting all forms of IT in financial services. Considered the premier event for recognising technology innovation in banking and financial services, the awards are selected by an expert judging panel that has a justifiable reputation for their independence and rigour.About Bottomline Technologies Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ:EPAY) helps businesses pay and get paid. We make complex business payments simple, secure and seamless. Businesses and banks rely on Bottomline for domestic and international payments, effective cash management tools, automated workflows for payment processing and bill review and state of the art fraud detection, behavioural analytics and regulatory compliance. Headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, we delight our customers through offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Businesses around the world depend on Bottomline solutions to help them pay and get paid, including some of the world's largest systemic banks, private and publicly traded companies and Insurers. Every day, we help our customers by making complex business payments simple, secure and seamless. For more information, visit www.bottomline.com.Bottomline Technologies and the Bottomline Technologies logo are trademarks of Bottomline Technologies, Inc. which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other brand/product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.Contact for Media:Henry Goodwin (001) 603.501.5311 henry.goodwin@bottomline.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/18/16 -- Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. ("Kirkland Lake Gold") (TSX: KLG) would like to thank shareholders for their support of the proposed business combination with Newmarket Gold Inc. ("Newmarket") and reminds those shareholders that haven't yet voted, to vote FOR the Newmarket transaction before 10:00 a.m. (Toronto time) on November 23, 2016. "We thank shareholders who have already voted in favour of the Newmarket transaction and remind those who haven't that your vote matters regardless of how many shares you own. Kirkland Lake Gold's business combination with Newmarket is about more than just the combination of two assets, it is about leveraging the combined technical expertise, cash flow and financial strength over the long term. We believe this combination will result in an improved market presence and positions the combined company as a new low-cost, mid-tier producer that provides a compelling value proposition for shareholders," said Tony Makuch, President and CEO of Kirkland Lake Gold. The Newmarket Merger is Best for Long-Term Value Creation The business combination between Kirkland Lake Gold and Newmarket is the only offer before shareholders. The Company believes that it presents a clear and compelling opportunity to create sustainable long-term growth which will result in increased shareholder value for Kirkland Lake Gold shareholders. Key benefits for shareholders include: -- Creation of a new low-cost, diversified mid-tier gold producer. The business combination with Newmarket is anticipated to result in the creation of a larger, more diversified company with a portfolio of high- quality assets including 7 mines and 5 mills, all located in stable, mining friendly jurisdictions. The pro forma company is expected to produce over 500,000 ounces of gold in 2016. The increased and diversified production profile in conjunction with the aggregated reserves of the combined company should provide shareholders with enhanced leverage to the price of gold. -- Attractive production profile anchored by three high-grade, low-cost operations. The combined company is expected to have a significant and growing gold production profile. Production will be anchored by the Macassa, Fosterville and Taylor mines. Combined production in 2016 from these three mines alone is expected to be over 330,000 ounces, with cash costs of under US$600/oz and AISC below US$800/oz. -- Driving growth in two world class mining jurisdictions. The combined company will be well positioned for sustainable growth through exploration potential in underexplored, well established gold camps in Australia and Canada. The combination creates a second operating platform to further evaluate growth opportunities in another stable mining jurisdiction supported by a strengthened balance sheet. The expected cash flow generation of the combined company can support accelerated exploration, development and/or investments to increase production. -- Stronger financial position. The combined company will have a stronger financial position and greater cash resources than Kirkland Lake Gold alone. Based on Q3, 2016 financial reporting for the nine months ending September 30, 2016, on a pro forma basis Newmarket and Kirkland Lake Gold have a combined cash position of approximately $320 million and the combined company is expected to generate significant free cash flow, which will provide greater financial strength and flexibility. In addition, the combined company will have the ability to cross pollinate best practices to drive cost savings across its portfolio. In addition, shareholders are reminded that the leading independent proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC, reaffirmed their recommendations that shareholders of Kirkland Lake Gold vote in favour of the proposed business combination with Newmarket. How To Vote Kirkland Lake Gold shareholders with questions or that need help with voting are encouraged to contact Kingsdale Shareholder Services at 1-877-659-1824 toll-free within North America, or 1-416-867-2272 (for collect calls outside North America), or e-mail at contactus@kingsdaleshareholder.com. Shareholders must vote their proxies before 10:00 a.m. (Toronto time) on November 23, 2016. About Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. Kirkland Lake Gold is a Canadian focused, intermediate gold producer with assets in the historic Kirkland Lake gold camp, and east of the Timmins gold camp along the Porcupine-Destor Fault Zone, both in northeastern Ontario. The company is currently targeting annual gold production of between 280,000 to 290,000 ounces from its cornerstone asset, the Macassa Mine Complex and the Holt Mine Complex which includes the Holt, Holloway and Taylor mines. The company is committed to building a sustainable mining company that is recognized as a safe and responsible gold producer with quality assets in safe mining jurisdictions. The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information This press release contains statements which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of Kirkland Lake Gold with respect to future business activities and operating performance. Forward-looking information is often identified by the words "may", "would", "could", "should", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" or similar expressions and include information regarding: (i) expectations regarding whether the proposed transaction with Newmarket will be consummated, including whether conditions to the consummation of the transaction will be satisfied, or the timing for completing the transaction, (ii) expectations for the effects of the transaction or the ability of the combined company to successfully achieve business objectives, including integrating the companies or the effects of unexpected costs, liabilities or delays, (iii) the potential benefits and synergies of the transaction with Newmarket and (iv) expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking information is not based on historical facts but instead reflect Kirkland Lake Gold's management's expectations, estimates or projections concerning future results or events based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates of management considered reasonable at the date the statements are made. Although Kirkland Lake Gold believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking information are reasonable, such information involves risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such information, as unknown or unpredictable factors could have material adverse effects on future results, performance or achievements of the combined company. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information are the following: the ability to consummate the transaction with Newmarket; the ability to obtain requisite regulatory and shareholder approvals and the satisfaction of other conditions to the consummation of the transaction on the proposed terms and schedule; the ability of Kirkland Lake Gold and Newmarket to successfully integrate their respective operations and employees and realize synergies and cost savings at the times, and to the extent, anticipated; the potential impact on exploration activities; the potential impact of the announcement or consummation of the transaction on relationships, including with regulatory bodies, employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; the re-rating potential following the consummation of the transaction; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; changes in applicable laws; compliance with extensive government regulation; and the diversion of management time on the transaction. This forward-looking information may be affected by risks and uncertainties in the business of Kirkland Lake Gold and market conditions. This information is qualified in its entirety by cautionary statements and risk factor disclosure contained in filings made by Kirkland Lake Gold with the Canadian securities regulators, including Kirkland Lake Gold's annual information form, financial statements and related MD&A for the financial year ended December 31, 2015 and its interim financial reports and related MD&A for the period ended September 30, 2016 filed with the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although Kirkland Lake Gold has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Kirkland Lake Gold does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information except as otherwise required by applicable law. Contacts: Media: Ian Robertson Kingsdale Shareholder Services Executive Vice President, Communication Strategy Direct: +1 416-867-2333; Mobile: +1 647-621-2646 irobertson@kingsdaleshareholder.com Investors: Suzette N Ramcharan, CPIR Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. Director of Investor Relations Direct: +1 647-361-0200; Mobile: +1 647-284-5315 sramcharan@klgold.com BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- Burns & Levinson partner Robert J. O'Regan won a major appellate victory as the conservator for Alice Migell whose nearly $5 million estate was pilfered by one of her sons. The November 2, 2016 decision by the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld judgments from Middlesex Probate and Family Court, that returned real estate and approximate sale proceeds that the son kept after selling real estate from a trust. The decision also upheld criminal contempt convictions against the son and his wife, Andrew and Kai Sun Migell, for their transferring assets to put them out of reach to satisfy what was owed. The Appeals Court will also require the son and his wife to pay O'Regan's legal fees. The original lawsuit was filed in 2009 after O'Regan was appointed as Alice Migell's guardian. O'Regan recovered real estate valued in excess of $2 million in addition to approximately $400,000 that Andrew Migell kept from selling the trust's real estate. The returned property included a vacation home in Hull, a house in Wayland, and rental property. An investigation revealed, and an earlier judgment against them determined that Andrew and Kai Sun Migell worked to take for themselves virtually all of the assets that Mrs. Migell had, either in her own name or as her inheritance following the death of her husband to whom she had been married for over 40 years. The Probate and Family Court ruled in 2013 that Andrew and Kai Sun Migell had orchestrated a "continuous, willful campaign of fraudulent, obstructionist behavior designed to separate Mrs. Migell from her assets which should have been available to cover the costs of her 24-hour care necessary for the preservation of her mental and physical well-being." In 2013, the Probate and Family Court also ordered Andrew and Kai Sun Migell to pay $512,680 in attorneys' costs that Mrs. Migell incurred to recover her own property and to defend against their attempts to impoverish her after they "set out on a ruthless campaign to totally and utterly deprive his elderly, ailing and recently widowed mother of her entire estate." The Appeals Court had upheld this decision in 2014. "This was one of the worst cases of elder abuse that I have seen in over 30 years of practicing law. Alice Migell was 83 years old and suffering from dementia when we went to trial to regain control of the assets she needs to live the rest of her time with dignity and comfort," said O'Regan. "I feel fortunate to have been able to serve the Court and to help Mrs. Migell recover her funds and property. I hope this case sends a message that exploitation of the elderly and infirm will not be tolerated. Anyone who takes advantage of the most vulnerable people in society should be held accountable for the harm they cause. That is what this Appeals Court decision stands for." About Burns & Levinson LLP Burns & Levinson is a full-service law firm with more than 125 attorneys based in Boston, with additional offices in Providence and New York, as well as in the Merrimack Valley/North Shore, Metrowest and South Shore areas of Massachusetts. The firm has grown steadily and strategically throughout the years and has become a premier law firm with regional, national and international clientele. The firm has expertise in corporate law, finance, venture capital, private equity, intellectual property, labor and employment, tax, bankruptcy, real estate, design and construction, public-private partnerships, energy, environmental, business litigation, government investigations and white collar crime defense, and a large private client group, including estate planning, probate and trust litigation, divorce and other family law issues. In addition, the firm has a wholly owned subsidiary office in Montreal, Quebec, to service its Canadian clients. For more information, visit Burns & Levinson at www.burnslev.com. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3079982 Contact: Amy Blumenthal Blumenthal & Associates 617.879.1511 amyb@blumenthalpr.com Kristen Weller Director of Marketing & Communications 617.345.3555 kweller@burnslev.com MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- GFK Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "GFK") - (TSX VENTURE: GFK), is pleased to announce that the fall trenching program on the Kellar Lake showing area was successful and has returned encouraging gold grades. A new gold bearing vein was identified, which brings the total to three gold bearing structures in the Kellar Lake showing area, highlighting a possible new stacked NNE gold bearing fault system with associated conjugate EW gold bearing structures. The 2016 work program was designed to expand the historical work and locate new veins. Mechanical stripping was carried out over vein No-1 to expose the maximum length of the vein. Over 460 metres of strike length was stripped and the structure remains open in all directions. The vein varied in width from 0.5 to over 3.6 metres including the mineralised and silicified contact zone. The vein strikes NNE-SSW and dips to the east at approximately 75 degrees. Channel samples were taken at 5.0 metre intervals across the mineralised zone, where ever possible. The full width of the zone was not always accessible for channel sampling. The following table is a summary of the best individual or composite assay results from over 139 channel totaling 310 individual samples oriented perpendicular to strike: Vein No-1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weighted Avg Extent Zone Channel # g/t Au Length m Sampled ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 3.16 0.59 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 6.45 0.29 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 17.96 0.93 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 3.01 1.30 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 4.78 0.89 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 9.07 0.63 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53 2.58 2.07 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55 3.31 2.61 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57 5.58 0.62 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58 2.05 1.66 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62 3.62 1.58 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65 2.68 1.88 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 67 6.19 1.36 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 7.73 0.76 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 73 4.89 1.63 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 104 3.94 1.17 Partial ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 112 4.74 3.59 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Complete assay results table, location maps and detailed trenches maps can be found at the links indicated at the end of the release. Vein No-1 and structure was lost both to the north and south due to thick overburden, however the historical IP survey carried out on lines 800 feet apart did show continuity and other parallel similar anomalies. Vein No-2 is located 480 metres to the SW from the end of the trench on No-1 vein and was discovered during early exploration programmes in the area. It strikes NE-SW and was exposed in the past over a length over 100 metres. The vein varies in width from 5 to 50 centimetres. According to historical reports from SIGEOM public database, chip samples taken by Meston Lake Resources in 1980 along strike returned values ranging from 1.0 to 81.0 g/t Au. Thick overburden prevented early explorers from following this trend along strike. In 2016, no work was done on this vein due to an early snowfall. However, follow-up exploration will be done on this vein during the next phase of the exploration program. Vein No-3 is a new gold bearing E-W vein discovered during the fall trenching program. It was discovered in a small exploration trench located 60.0 metres to the east of vein No-1. The vein was exposed over a length of 15 metres. Late in the program a small hand-dug trench located another exposure of this vein 60.0 metres further east for a total estimated length of 120 metres. The vein continues to the east however thick overburden and an early heavy snowfall ended the work program at this time. Further mechanical stripping will be done on this new vein. The following table gives the results of the preliminary channel/chip sampling done on this vein. Vein No-3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weighted Avg Extent Zone Channel # g/t Au Length m Sampled ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 139 5.41 1.04 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 135 3.66 0.54 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 137 1.74 0.73 Full ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The discovery of a new gold bearing vein during preliminary exploration work on the Kellar Lake showing and the consistent significant grades returned so far justified the commissioning of a detailed IP survey to define the extent of the known veins and find new ones. Next phase will include trenching and diamond drilling. HISTORY OF THE KELLAR SHOWING Kellar Vein No-1 was discovered in 1936 by George E. Kellar a prospector working for Prospector Airways. They reported finding visible gold and traced the vein by digging small pits for a distance of 1,600 feet. Work was abandoned due to the project's remoteness at the time. However, work resumed on the property after a road was built to Chibougamau to service the mines in the area. The property became accessible by a short float plane flight from a base at Cache Lake. According to historical reports from SIGEOM public database, in the early fifties, several pits were cleaned and resampled which returned grab sample results varying from 3.4 to 23.8 g/t Au. A small portable drill was then brought-in to test the vein at depth. A number of companies returned over the years to resample the old trenches reporting similar results. This was then followed by a wide spaced IP survey that was carried out over the main showing area. It identified the No-1 vein structure and several other parallel anomalies which may indicate a stacked vein system. A limited drilling program with small core diameter tested the coincident IP anomaly / Vein No-1 structure in the early eighties with mitigated results. No further work was reported on this showing since. Grizzly is a gold property which consists of 136 mining claims covering an area of 7,371 hectares located approximately 35 kilometers northwest of the town of Chapais. The area is underlain by rocks of Archean age of the Gilman and La Treve formations. The property contains more than 10 historical gold showings and occurrences associated with EW and NNE trends with grades varying from 1 g/t to up to 46 g/t. Very limited exploration work such as basic prospecting, mechanical trenching and shallow drilling was done over the property. Samples collected during the 2016 fall exploration programme were dispatched from Chibougamau to Accurassay's Rouyn-Noranda Laboartory for processing. Standard and blank QA-QC samples were introduced in the sample series at regular intervals in the field. All samples were processed according to Accurassay's internal quality control procedures. They were analysed following standard pyro-analyses technics "Fire Assay-Atomic Absorption". Samples which returned values equal or greater than 10.0 g/t were reanalysed by gravimetric method. GFK fulfilled the asset purchase agreement between Probe Metals Inc. and GFK Resources Inc, dated July 19, 2016, by paying an amount of $100,000 to Probe Metals Inc. as a final good standing payment required there. GFK also completed the acquisition of a 100% ownership in three properties, Vezza, Vezza North and Bachelor Extension properties, in exchange for 3,000,000 common shares of GFK. Probe Metals Inc. kept a 2% net smelter returns (NSR) on all 3 properties; half of that royalty (1%) can be bought back at any time by GFK, at its sole discretion, for an amount of $1,000,000. Mr. Louis Morin, CEO, states: "GFK is committed at exploring for gold within high potential discovery areas. We are very pleased by those initial results, generated from those quality properties recently added within our portfolio. We are optimistic about the results we obtained. Those provide a strong incentive to continue our work program within those areas." Mr. Tony Brisson, B.Sc., P.Geo. is acting as qualified person (as defined by NI 43-101) for GFK and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. About GFK Resources Inc. GFK Resources Inc. is a mining exploration company focused on discovering high quality gold deposits within strategically located properties within proven mining camps, sometimes close to existing mines in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt located in north-west Quebec and north-east Ontario - one of the most prolific gold deposits areas in the world. GFK holds assets in Val-d'Or and Chibougamau areas. GFK acquired quality assets along the Casa-Berardi-Cameron Gold Break - a proven environment with strong potential for new gold discoveries and where exploration costs are low. Casa-Cameron properties are adjacent to Bachelor Gold Mine and Vezza Gold Mine. More recently, GFK acquired new properties, all easily accessible by a good road network: Fecteau property, located in the active Urban-Barry townsip, Winwin property, located in the neighbourhood of Iamgold/Tomagold Monster Lake property and Grizzly property, located in Chibougamau mining camp. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains statements that may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information may include, among others, statements regarding the future plans, costs, objectives or performance of GFK, or the assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. In this news release, words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "plan", "estimate" and similar words and the negative form thereof are used to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether, or the times at or by which, such future performance will be achieved. No assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information will transpire or occur, including the development of the Grizzly Property, or if any of them do so, what benefits GFK will derive. Forward-looking information are based on information available at the time and/or management's good-faith belief with respect to future events and are subject to known or unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other unpredictable factors, many of which are beyond GFK Resources Inc.' control. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions include, but are not limited to, those described under "Risk Factors" in GFK's management discussion and analysis for the year ended August 31, 2015, a copy of which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, and could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. GFK does not intend, nor does GFK undertake any obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking information contained in this news release to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise, except if required by applicable laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the figures associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/GFK-Release-Figures.pdf. To view the data table associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Table_1_Kellar_channels.pdf. Contacts: GFK Resources Inc. Mr. Louis Morin CEO (514) 591-3988 Previous Next Jasper Highlands, the residential mountain top community in Kimball, Tn., has improved its Public Protection Classification rating to the best in Marion County, Class 4, over the course of only eight months. The new rating is a drastic improvement from the previous rating of Class 10 which the newly-formed volunteer fire department inherited due to nearby departments electing to no longer cover the mountain. The volunteer Jasper Highlands Fire Department went through an evaluation with the Insurance Services Office in order to review and update the fire districts applicable classification rating. This improvement could translate into lower insurance rates of up to 70% for residents of Jasper Highlands. The JHFD is proud that they have also implemented the first team of EMS responders in the county through their dedicated team of volunteers. This team has put in over 1,000 hours of training led by James Wessel and Lowell Hardin, who together have more than 50 years of experience in fire service, said John Thornton, owner and developer of Jasper Highlands and CEO of Thunder Enterprises. We strive to offer our community the best of the best in every respect, and we are proud to have an extremely strong team of volunteers led by Chief John Roth to protect our residents, and also provide a substantial amount of savings for home owners through insurance reductions because of our excellent ISO rating of 4/4x. Last year, the Foster Falls Volunteer Fire Department voted not to cover Jasper Highlands; however, Thornton contracted with James Wessel, founder and President of Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus in Huntsville, who began scouting for dedicated team members and purchasing top-of-the-line trucks and equipment for the development. The newly-appointed Public Protection Classification rating is a reflection of the dedication to service, and commitment to the Jasper Highlands community. According to reports from December 2015, only 80 fire departments out of 921 in the state of Tennessee have a better rating on a 10-1 scale than Jasper Highlands. The majority of fire departments scored between Class 5 and Class 9 in 2015. From start up to a Class 4 is unheard of and is a direct testament to Thornton, the development and the volunteers who selflessly put in hours upon hours of their own time to train and serve, said James F. Wessel, president of Jasper Highlands Fire Department. The benefit of Jasper Highlands new rating goes directly back to the community. Achieving a Class 4 rating confirms that together we have made this a great fire department. When reviewing, the ISO takes into account water supply, fire prevention tactics, equipment, training and personnel, and the organization judges against a national standard. For more information about the JHFD and Jasper Highlands, visit TNLand.com. The European Magazine Business Awards 2016 Recipients Award Recipients Category Abdul Rahman Law Corporation Shariah Compliant Law Firm of the Year - Singapore African Open Sky Private Aviation Company of the Year - Africa Akerton Partners Financial Advisory Firm of the Year - Spain Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait K.S.C.P Retail Bank of the Year - Kuwait Alea Global Group Advisory Firm of the Year - Kuwait Alinma Bank Shariah Compliant Bank of the Year - Saudi Arabia Alshamel Travel Corporate Travel Company of the Year - MENA Amlac Islamic Finance Firm of the Year - Dubai Apex Insurance Reinsurance Company of the Year- MENA Argon Asset Management Asset Management Company of the Year - Africa Asia Green Development Bank Ltd International Bank of the Year - South East Asia Asia Plantation Capital Forestry Investment Company of the Year Avanzia Taxand Tax Firm of the Year - Malta AvaTrade Best Affliate Program, Best Broker Awraq Investments Fund Management Company of the Year - Jordan BAF Latam Trade Finance Fund Agriculture Fund of the Year - LATAM Banca March Private Bank of the Year - Europe Banco Finantia Investment Bank of the Year - Portugal Banco Interacciones Financial Institution of the Year - Mexico Banco Privado Atlantico Europa Innovative Bank of the Year - Europe Banque Marocaine du Commerce Exterieur S.A. Bank of the Year - Morocco Barents Re Reinsurance Company, Inc. Bond Reinsurer of the Year - Europe, Reinsurance Company of the Year - LATAM BCI Mozambique Bank of the Year - Mozambique Bee'ah Environmental Management Company of the Year - MENA Blom Bank S.A.L. Bank of the Year - Lebanon, Corporate Bank of the Year - MENA Capital Alliance Investment Bank of the Year - Sri Lanka Capital Trust Limited Real Estate Company of the Year - Sri Lanka Carlisle Management Company SCA Fund Management Company of the Year - Luxembourg Chevez, Ruiz, Zamarripa y Cia., SC Tax Firm of the Year - Mexico CHL Capital Fund Management Company of the Year - Chile Colfondos S.A. 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Construction Company of the Year - Republic of Guinea Gulf Bank Best Banking Rewards Program - MENA, Corporate Bank of the Year - Kuwait Hasan Shakib Al-Jabri, Sedco Capital Islamic Finance Personality of the Year - MENA HELLENIC REPUBLIC ASSET DEVELOPMENT FUND Global National FDI Program Helsinki Capital Partners Fund Manager of the Year - Finland Herculis Partners Alternative Investment Boutique of the Year - Switzerland International Capital Management AG Asset Management Firm of the Year - Liechtenstein Invest Edinburgh Best in FDI - Europe Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia CSR Public Company of the Year - Southeast Asia, Most Transparent Public Financial Institution of the Year - Southeast Asia J Equity Partners Shariah Compliant Investment Firm of the Year - Bahrain Kasikorn Bank Innovative Bank of the Year - Thailand KBR Argentina S.A Boutique Advisory Firm of the Year - Argentina KMG Capital Markets Ltd Fund Structuring Firm of the Year KSI Mexico Accountancy Firm of the Year - Mexico Manuel Osa Nsue Nsua, National Bank of Equatorial Guinea Banking CEO of the Year - Guinea Ecuatorial Marie-Christine Lambin Fund Manager of the Year -Luxembourg Max O Cisse, African Open Sky Aviation CEO of the Year - Africa MDO Management Company SA Independent Fund Management Company of the Year - Luxembourg Mocambique Previdente SGFP, S.A. Pension Fund CEO of the Year - Mozambique Mothobi Seseli, Argon Asset Management Financial CEO of the Year - Africa Nastrac Group Consultancy Firm of the Year - Singapore National Bank of Equatorial Guinea Business Bank of the Year - Guinea Ecuatorial Nina Alag Suri, Nastrac Group Female Business Personality of the Year - Singapore Natal Joint Municipal Pension/Provident Funds Best Performing Pension Fund of the Year - South Africa Old Mutual Investment Group Alternative Investment Company of the Year - South Africa OmniPay Inc Payment Solutions Provider of the Year - Philippines OPEN Cleantech Investment Company of the Year - Europe People's Bank Bank of the Year - Sri Lanka Picton Fund Distribution Company of the Year - LATAM PPS Portfolio Performance Ltd Consultancy Management Company of the Year - Brazil Puente Capital Markets Company of the Year - LATAM, Wealth Management Company of the Year - LATAM RCB Bank Limited International Bank of the Year - Cyprus RHB Islamic Bank Berhad Shariah Compliant Finance Company of the Year - Malaysia Sai Gon Joint Stock Commercial Bank Commercial Bank of the Year SEDCO Capital Asset Management Company of the Year - Saudi Arabia Sentinel Retirement Fund Pension Fund of the Year - Africa South Andes Capital M&A Advisory Firm of the Year - Chile Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers Pension Fund Administrator of the Year - Nigeria Steevensz Beckers Tax Lawyers Tax Firm of the Year - Caribbean Sterling Bank Islamic Bank of the Year - Africa Takaful Ikhlas Berhad Takaful Company of the Year - Malaysia UAE Exchange Centre L.L.C FX & Payment Solution Firm of the Year - UAE UBL FUND MANAGERS LIMITED Most Customer-Centric Asset Manager - Pakistan UFX FX Broker of the Year University of Whitewater Best in Distance Learning VAsB Asset Management Fund Management Company of the Year - Slovakia Wafasalaf Finance Company of the Year - North Africa Warba Bank Bank of the Year - Kuwait Xeon International International Investment Company of the Year - Europe Zuhair Al Atout, Apex Insurance CEO of the Year - Jordan Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 14, 2016) - American CuMo Mining Corporation (TSXV: MLY) (OTC Pink: MLYCF) (CuMoCo or the Company) announces the signing of an agreement to earn 100 percent interest in eight unpatented mining claims known as the Calida Mine Property located in southeastern Idaho. "We are extremely pleased to add the Calida Mine Property to our portfolio. This is a highly prospective gold, silver and copper property that has significant historic drill results and has the potential of being developed in a relatively short period," said Shaun Dykes, President and CEO of CuMoCo. The Calida claims cover several significant mineralized gold, silver, and copper veins that range in width from 1.5 meters (5 feet) to more than 30 meters (100 feet) and have been exposed on the surface for approximately 4,267 meters (14,000 linear feet). The agreement gives CuMoCo a ten-year option to earn 100 percent interest by making a series of payments. An initial payment of $40,000 US dollars has been made and ongoing payments consist of the following in US funds: -$40,000 on or before 90 days of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before six months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 12 months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 18 months of the effective date. -$50,000 on or before 24 months of the effective date. -$50,000 every six months until commercial production or ten years. -$1 million at the start of commercial production. The Calida agreement includes a variable buyout price, the Actual Exercise Price (AEP), that is based on the number of ounces of gold equivalent as defined in an independent 43-101 pre-feasibility or feasibility study. The AEP has a minimum price of $10 million dollars for one million ounces of gold equivalent, rising at the rate of $10 million dollars for each one million ounces of gold equivalent to a maximum price of $50 million dollars for greater than five million ounces of gold equivalent. The property has been extensively explored for the past thirty years. Exploration has included drilling 23 holes in 1983 as well as thorough trenching and sampling. A total of ten mineralized veins have been identified on the property to date. Significant intersections from the drilling are listed below: Hole Vein From To Width From To Width Au Au Ag Ag Cu meters meters meters feet feet feet g/T oz/t g/T oz/t % W-3 Main 84.7 125.0 40.2 278 410 132 5.5 0.160 232.8 6.80 4.30 M-1 Main 94.5 137.2 42.7 310 450 140 5.1 0.150 145.7 4.25 1.30 R-2 Main 65.5 126.5 61.0 215 415 200 4.6 0.133 173.8 5.07 2.22 CA-1 Calida 115.8 125.0 9.1 380 410 30 6.7 0.194 231.1 6.74 4.45 F-1 F-Vein 55.8 57.3 1.5 183 188 5 14.1 0.410 538.3 15.7 0.59 H-3 H-vein 54.9 58.8 4.0 180 193 13 8.6 0.250 256.5 7.48 3.92 In 2009, an independent resource calculation using the historic data was completed which defined a resource of 8,059,304 tons grading 0.168 ounces gold/ton, 6.12 ounces silver/ton and 2.86 percent copper. The 2009 resource is considered an historical resource, as a technical report on the resource was never filed although the calculation was completed. It is the qualified person's opinion that the resource is reliable having been done by a reputable independent third party who verified data and checked assays. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource. The Company is not treating the resource as a "current resource" and does not intend to rely on this resource but will use it as a guide. Examination of available data indicates a target area of at least 100 meters (328 feet) wide, 1500 meters (4921 feet) long and 500 meters (1640 feet) deep that contains gold with copper bearing mineralization. CuMoCo has constructed a three-dimensional model of the veins and has identified a preliminary exploration target of between 8 and 30 million tonnes grading between 5 and 10 grams per tonne gold, 150 to 200 grams per tonne silver and 2 to 3 percent copper. The Company intends to further the exploration and cautions that the target, the potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature as exploration work done to define Mineral Resources as defined by NI 43-101 has been insufficient. It is uncertain if further exploration will result in establishing the existence of Mineral Resources. "It is important for our shareholders to know that we remain completely focused on developing the CuMo Project and advancing its towards production," said Dykes. "Being a significant gold property, the Calida Mine provides an excellent opportunity to add value to the Company for its ongoing negotiations with Chinese or other investors." Shaun Dykes, M.Sc. (Eng); P.Geo (#20044), a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101, is responsible for the review of all scientific and technical information contained in this release. About CuMoCo CuMoCo is focused on advancing its CuMo Project towards feasibility and establishing itself as one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Management is continuing to build an even stronger foundation from which to move the Company and the CuMo Project forward. For more information, please visit www.cumoco.com and www.cumoproject.com For further information, please contact: American CuMo Mining Corporation Shaun Dykes, President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: (604) 689-7902 Email: info@cumoco.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Forward-looking information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including, but not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such as the Company's ability to successfully negotiate the Definitive Agreement with the Chinese Partners, the Company's ability to move the CuMo Project through development to feasibility and production, and for the Company to become one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Forward-looking information is based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including the result of exploration activities, the ability of the Company to raise the financing for a feasibility study and to put the CuMo project into production, that no labour shortages or delays are experienced, that plant and equipment function as specified that the Court will not intervene with the Company's proposed exploration activities at the CuMo Project, and the ability of the Company to obtain all requisite permits and licenses to advance the CuMo Project and eventually bring it into production. 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 prediction, projection or forecast 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 molybdenum, silver and copper; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents, including the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016. 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. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 14, 2016) - Rockridge Capital Corp. (TSXV: RRC) (the "Company") announces also announces that it has amended its proposed private placement financing by increasing the price from $0.11 per share to $0.20 per share. As a result, the Company proposes to issue up to 10,000,000 common shares at a price of $0.20 per share for total proceeds of $2,000,000 (the "Offering"). The Company may pay finders a fee and issue finders warrants in connection with the Offering. The proceeds of the Offering will be used for mineral exploration on the Company's properties and working capital purposes. For more information, please contact Gunther Roehlig, CEO and President at (604) 683-0911. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ROCKRIDGE CAPITAL CORP. "signed" _______________________ Gunther Roehlig CEO and President Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- Trevali Mining Corporation ("Trevali" or the "Company") (TSX: TV)(LMA: TV)(OTCQX: TREVF)(FRANKFURT: 4TI) has released financial results for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2016. Third quarter ("Q3") EBITDA(1) increased significantly from the preceding quarter to a record $14.8 million, with income from operations of $10.6 million, and the Company posted a net profit of $2.4-million, or $0.01 per share, for the quarter. Q3 marked a major milestone for Trevali as the Caribou zinc mine in New Brunswick commenced Commercial Production. This release should be read in conjunction with Trevali's unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three months and nine months ended September 30, 2016, which is available on Trevali's website and on SEDAR. All financial figures are in Canadian dollar unless otherwise stated. Q3-2016 Results Highlights: -- Record EBITDA(1) of $14.8 million, up 80% from the Second Quarter 2016 ("Q2") -- Income from mining operations of $10.6 million an increase of 103% from Q2 -- Net income of $2.4 million or $0.01 per share -- Record total concentrate sales revenue of $57.5 million, up 99% from Q2 -- Total cash position of $16.9 million -- Consolidated Q3 mill throughput of 402,039 tonnes resulting in record quarterly production of 32.4 million payable pounds of zinc, 9.7 million payable pounds of lead and 362,776 payable ounces of silver at site cash costs(2) US$0.40 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq")(3) produced or US$46.73/tonne milled -- Provisional realized commodity selling prices for Q3-2016 production was US$1.03 per pound zinc, US$0.87 per pound lead and US$19.40 per ounce silver at International Benchmark terms under the Company's offtake agreement with Glencore -- Q3 Santander site cash costs(2) US$0.33 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq")(3) produced or US$36.33/tonne milled, in line with 2016 cost guidance of US$35-38 per tonne milled -- Q3 Caribou site cash costs(2) US$0.46 per pound of payable Zinc Equivalent ("ZnEq")(3) produced or US$58.88/tonne milled "Trevali had a transformative quarter during which we declared Commercial Production at our Caribou zinc mine in New Brunswick," stated Dr. Mark Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO. "While our Santander mine in Peru continues to post strong, consistent results including very significant exploration upside, we are particularly proud of our Caribou team. In summary, Caribou has overcome both technical and exceedingly challenging financial hurdles during the first half of 2016 to successfully commission the operation. This includes posting positive Q3 operational results despite the mine not yet being fully ramped. This is an encouraging indicator of the upside at Caribou as we continue to ramp toward the full nameplate 3,000-tpd operating rate. Caribou has been steadily increasing performance and throughput in Q4 in tandem with strengthening zinc and lead commodity prices." Q3-2016 Financial Results Conference Call The Company will host a conference call and audio webcast at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 15, 2016, to review the Q3 financial results. Participants are advised to dial in 5-minutes prior to the scheduled start time of the call. Conference call dial-in details: Toll-free (North America): 1-877-291-4570 Toronto and International: 1-647-788-4919 Audio Webcast: http://www.gowebcasting.com/8118 Summary Financial Results ($ millions, except per-share amounts) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues $57.5 $27.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Income from mining operations $10.6 $1.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net income (loss) $2.4 ($3.4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic Income per share $0.01 ($0.01) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consolidated Production Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015(i) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Mined 397,864 175,560 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Milled 402,039 197,289 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 32,384,913 14,848,026 Lead lbs (pounds) 9,718,926 7,785,192 Silver Oz 362,776 285,962 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 47,333,137 27,473,893 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.40 $ 0.28 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 46.73 $ 38.67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i)Q3-2015 Production statistics reflect only Santander mining operations Consolidated Sales Statistics: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015(ii) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 30,659 16,694 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead Concentrate (DMT) 10,439 6,828 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Zinc lbs 27,031,229 15,215,705 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Lead lbs 9,570,802 7,996,297 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Silver Oz 349,366 290,228 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 43,934,000 $ 20,595,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc $ 1.03 $ 0.78 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead $ 0.87 $ 0.73 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver $ 19.40 $ 14.80 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 41,618,528 28,143,580 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (ii)Q3-2015 Sales statistics reflect only Santander mining operations (1) EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is calculated by considering Company's earnings before interest payments, tax, depreciation and amortization are subtracted for any final accounting of its income and expenses. The EBITDA of a business gives an indication of its current operational profitability and is a NON-IFRS measure. (2) Refer to Non-IFRS Measures in the September 30, 2016 Management Discussion and Analysis. (3) ZnEq Payable Pounds Produced = ((Zn Payable lbs Produced x Zn Price)+(Pb Payable lbs Produced x Pb Price)+(Cu Payable lbs Produced x Cu Price)+(Au oz Payable Produced x Au Price)+(Ag oz Payable Produced x Ag Price))/Zn Price. (4) ZnEq Payable Pounds Sold = ((Zn Payable lbs Sold x Zn Price)+(Pb Payable lbs Sold x Pb Price)+(Cu Payable lbs Sold x Cu Price)+(Au oz Payable Sold x Au Price)+(Ag oz Payable Sold x Ag Price))/Zn Price. (All metal prices are the average realized metal price for the period). (5) Revenues include prior period adjustment. Santander Zinc Mine, Peru Santander Production Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Mined 192,815 175,560 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Milled 216,551 197,289 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Head Grades % Zinc 4.61% 4.45% Lead 1.08% 2.11% Silver - Oz (ounces)/ton 1.26 1.79 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Recoveries % Zinc 89% 90% Lead 84% 89% Silver 67% 77% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concentrate Produced DMT (dry metric tonne): Zinc 18,403 15,954 Lead 3,745 6,610 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concentrate Grades % Zinc 48% 50% Lead 53% 56% Ag - Oz/ton 53.1 41.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 16,608,275 14,848,026 Lead lbs (pounds) 4,141,582 7,785,192 Silver Oz 192,431 285,962 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 23,603,577 27,473,893 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.33 $ 0.28 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 36.33 $ 38.67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Santander Sales Summary: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 18,133 16,694 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead Concentrate (DMT) 3,718 6,828 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Zinc lbs 15,947,830 15,215,705 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Lead lbs 4,119,533 7,996,297 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Silver Oz 188,504 290,228 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 24,415,000 $ 20,595,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc $ 1.04 $ 0.78 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead $ 0.86 $ 0.73 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver $ 19.42 $ 14.80 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 22,857,248 28,143,580 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the third quarter Santander continued to operate at steady state 2,000 tonne-per-day nameplate, with daily production commonly exceeding this by approximately 15-20%, and culminating with record quarterly zinc production of 16.6 million payable pounds, plus 4.1 million payable pounds of lead and 192,431 payable ounces of silver. Approximately 216,551 tonnes of mineralized material was processed through the mill with underground mine production of approximately 192,815 tonnes. Q3 cash costs were approximately US$36.33 per tonne and in-line with the 2016 annual cost guidance of US$35-$38 per tonne milled. (Please refer to Non-IFRS Measures in the September 30, 2016 Management Discussion and Analysis). Santander's 2016 production guidance remains at 57-60 million pounds of payable zinc in concentrate grading approximately 50% Zn, 20-23 million pounds of payable lead in concentrate grading approximately 52-55% Pb and 800,000-1,000,000 ounces of payable silver. The Company completed its approximately 11,000-metre 2016 underground Santander drill program at the end of the third quarter. Due to the positive exploration results the Company has increased the drill program by an additional 3,500 metres for Q4-2016. It is anticipated that the program will continue to define and potentially expand the newly discovered Rosa, Fatima and emergent Oyon lead-silver-zinc zones in addition to the Magistral zones that all remain open for expansion at depth. Caribou Zinc Mine, Canada Caribou Production Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Mined 205,049 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tonnes Milled 185,488 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Head Grades % Zinc 5.91% - Lead 2.62% - Silver - Oz (ounces)/ton 2.26 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Recoveries % Zinc 78% - Lead 56% - Silver (in lead concentrate) 36% - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concentrate Produced DMT (dry metric tonne): Zinc 17,908 - Lead 6,973 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concentrate Grades % Zinc 48% - Silver - Oz/ton 4.48 - Lead 39% - Silver - Oz/ton 21.45 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Production: Zinc lbs (pounds) 15,776,638 - Lead lbs (pounds) 5,577,344 - Silver Oz 170,345 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Payable Produced(3) 23,729,560 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Site Cash Cost(2) per Equivalent Payable Zinc lb Produced (USD$)(3) $ 0.46 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash Cost(2) per Tonne Milled (USD$) $ 58.88 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Caribou Sales Statistics: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q3-2016 Q3-2015 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Concentrate (DMT) 12,526 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead Concentrate (DMT) 6,721 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Zinc lbs 11,083,399 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Lead lbs 5,451,269 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payable Silver Oz 160,862 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues (USD$)(5) $ 19,519,000 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Average Realized Metal Price (USD$): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc $ 1.03 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lead $ 0.88 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver $ 19.38 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zinc Equivalent lbs Sold(4) 18,761,280 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trevali declared commercial production at its Caribou Zinc Mine in New Brunswick as of July 1, 2016. As the Company transitioned to commercial production in the third quarter, focus continues on ramping operations towards 3,000-tpd nameplate design levels in addition to exploring longer-term mining opportunities including re-tendering of contractor operations to better reflect the transition from commissioning to commercial operations. Caribou remains on track to produce 37-41 million pounds of payable zinc, 14-15 million pounds of payable lead and 380,000-420,000 ounces of payable silver in H2 (July 1-December 31, 2016). Head grades remain unchanged and are anticipated to be 5.9-6.2% Zn, 2.5-2.7% Pb and 65-70 grams/tonne Ag. Operating cash costs will be a key focus, as the site continues to ramp to full design levels, and are expected to modestly decrease as the Company continues to renegotiate major mining and supplies contracts, as well as normal course operational optimization and efficiency gains as the mine continues to ramp to full production. Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance EurGeol Dr. Mark D. Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO, and Paul Keller, P.Eng, Trevali's Chief Operating Officer, are qualified persons as defined by NI 43-101, have supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release. Dr. Cruise is not independent of the Company as he is an officer, director and shareholder. Mr. Keller is not independent of the Company as he is an officer and shareholder. ABOUT TREVALI MINING CORPORATION Trevali is a zinc-focused, base metals mining company with two commercially producing operations. The Company is actively producing zinc and lead-silver concentrates from its 2,000-tonne-per-day Santander mine in Peru and its 3,000-tonne-per-day Caribou mine in the Bathurst Mining Camp of northern New Brunswick. Trevali also owns the Halfmile and Stratmat base metal deposits, located in New Brunswick, that are currently undergoing a Preliminary Economic Assessment reviewing their potential development. The common shares of Trevali are listed on the TSX (symbol TV), the OTCQX (symbol TREVF), the Lima Stock Exchange (symbol TV), and the Frankfurt Exchange (symbol 4TI). For further details on Trevali, readers are referred to the Company's website (www.trevali.com) and to Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of TREVALI MINING CORPORATION Mark D. Cruise, President This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States private securities litigation reform act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Statements containing forward-looking information express, as at the date of this news release, the Company's plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations, or beliefs as to future events or results and the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation to, update such statements containing the forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements and information include, but are not limited to statements as to: the intended use of proceeds in connection with the Offering, the accuracy of estimated mineral resources, anticipated results of future exploration, and forecast future metal prices, expectations that environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, socio-economic, political, marketing or other issues will not materially affect estimates of mineral resources. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements contained in this news release and the company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in spot and forward markets for silver, zinc, base metals and certain other commodities (such as natural gas, fuel oil and electricity); fluctuations in currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar and Peruvian sol versus the U.S. dollar); risks related to the technological and operational nature of the Company's business; changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and political or economic developments in Canada, the United States, Peru or other countries where the Company may carry on business in the future; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected geological or structural formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding); risks relating to the credit worthiness or financial condition of suppliers, refiners and other parties with whom the Company does business; inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance, to cover these risks and hazards; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses and permits and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining, diminishing quantities or grades of mineral resources as properties are mined; global financial conditions; business opportunities that may be presented to, or pursued by, the Company; the Company's ability to complete and successfully integrate acquisitions and to mitigate other business combination risks; challenges to, or difficulty in maintaining, the Company's title to properties and continued ownership thereof; the actual results of current exploration activities, conclusions of economic evaluations, and changes in project parameters to deal with unanticipated economic or other factors; and increased competition in the mining industry for properties, equipment, qualified personnel, and their costs. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty or reliance on forward-looking statements. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such statements or information, other than as required by applicable law. Trevali's production plan at the Caribou Mine is based only on measured, indicated and inferred resources, and not mineral reserves, and does not have demonstrated economic viability. Trevali's production plan at the Santander Mine is based only on indicated and inferred mineral resources, and not mineral reserves, and does not have demonstrated economic viability. Inferred mineral resources are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is therefore no certainty that the conclusions of the production plans and Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) will be realized. Additionally, where Trevali discusses exploration/expansion potential, any potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature and there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource. We advise US investors that while the terms "measured resources", "indicated resources" and "inferred resources" are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the US Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize these terms. US investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the material in these categories will ever be converted into reserves. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities described herein have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the securities laws of any state and may not be offered or sold within the United States, absent such registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. The TSX has not approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release. Contacts: Trevali Mining Corporation Steve Stakiw Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications (604) 488-1661 / Direct: (604) 638-5623 sstakiw@trevali.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- Fortress Paper Ltd. ("Fortress Paper" or the "Company") (TSX: FTP) is pleased to announce a major investment to advance its strategic project of utilizing birch to manufacture dissolving pulp at the Fortress Specialty Cellulose Mill located in Thurso, Quebec (the "Project"). Birch trees grow abundantly across Canada and are considered an underutilized species of tree. The Project will ensure a better use of the mixed forest in the local region, increase economic activity, and result in other ancillary economic benefits. The Project is estimated to cost approximately $19.7 million in total, with $9 million to be funded by the Government of Canada through a non-repayable contribution. The remainder of the Project's total cost is expected to be financed by the Company with cash on hand, operating cash-flow and other investment incentive programs, such as the Hydro Quebec "Rate L" tariff. The Company anticipates that the Project will be completed in the first quarter of 2018, and is expected to result in an incremental annual production capacity increase of 8,500 ADMT in 2018 and 17,000 ADMT in 2019 compared to current production capacity. Yvon Pelletier, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fortress Paper, commented: "We are delighted with the support of the federal government. This investment highlights the innovative and transformative potential of producing dissolving pulp using birch. The Project demonstrates our commitment to pursuing strategic initiatives that build long-term shareholder value." About Fortress Paper Fortress Paper operates internationally in two distinct business segments: dissolving pulp and security paper products. The Company operates its dissolving pulp business at the Fortress Specialty Cellulose Mill located in Canada, which has expanded into the renewable energy generation sector with the construction of a cogeneration facility. The Company operates its security paper products business at the Landqart Mill located in Switzerland, where it produces banknote, passport, visa and other brand protection and security papers. This news release contains certain forward-looking information that reflect the current views and/or expectations of the Company with respect to its expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about its business and the industry and markets in which it operates. The reader is cautioned that statements comprising forward-looking information are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Examples of such forward-looking information that may be contained in this news release include: the operational results and production capacity increases expected from the Project, the ancillary economic benefits expected from the Project, and the expected sources of funding for the Project. Assumptions underlying the Company's expectations regarding forward-looking information contained in this news release include, among others: that the completion of the Project will achieve the operational results expected by the Company, that there will be a viable market for dissolving pulp, that the cost of the Project will not materially exceed the Company's estimates and that Fortress Paper will have sufficient financing to fund the Project. Persons reading this news release are cautioned that statements comprising forward-looking information are only predictions, and that the Company's actual future results or performance are subject to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation: that there will be insufficient funds available to finance the Project or that the Company will be unable to complete the Project without additional funding; that there will be unforeseen disruptions to the completion of the Project; that there may be downturns in the market for dissolving pulp; that the Project will not achieve its intended operational results; and other risk factors listed from time to time 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 statements comprising forward-looking information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Fortress Paper does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking information, except as required by applicable securities law. Contacts: Fortress Paper Ltd. 604-904-2328 info@fortresspaper.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) welcomes the 2016 Ontario Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review, and expects that the implementation of a highly-skilled workforce strategy will play a role in stemming the growth of precarious employment. The OFL calls on the government to ensure that it continues the work for fairness that it has initiated through the Changing Workplaces Review and its report on the Gender Wage Gap. "The government's commitment to the development of its highly-skilled workforce strategy is one element of stopping the growth of precarious work," said OFL President Chris Buckley. "The OFL recognises that precarious work occurs in all sectors. Contract and temporary work is common in low-wage jobs but also occurs in high-skill jobs. All Ontarians need to be treated fairly at work." An increased rebate for first-time homebuyers is a positive development for many, but without stable employment, few Ontarians will feel secure making the investment in a home.1.7 million Ontarians continue to face part-time, low-wage, temporary or contract work. The OFL urges the Ontario Government to use the Changing Workplaces Review to ensure that all workers are protected at work so that every job is a pathway out of poverty. A lack of childcare is proven to prevent women from reaching their full potential in the workplace. The OFL applauds the announcement of 3400 new childcare spaces, and reiterates its call that any services developed under this new mandate must be publicly funded and delivered in order to guarantee higher quality and more accessibility for parents, as well as unionization for childcare employees. The OFL also continues to urge the government to immediately halt the sale of Hydro One, ensuring that Ontarians maintain ownership of the public services that generations of Ontarians have worked to pay for. www.ofl.ca, www.twitter.com/oflabour, www.Facebook.com/OFLabour Contacts: Ontario Federation of Labour Meagan Perry Director of Communications Phone: 416-894-3456 Email: mperry@ofl.ca JACKSONVILLE, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 11/14/16 -- Green Energy Enterprises, Inc. (OTC PINK: GYOG) ("GYOG" or "the Corporation") announces that it has entered a Settlement Agreement to settle a significant amount of its debt. The Corporation is working toward our debt elimination initiative; we look forward to our market capitalization rebounding to reflect the strength and value of the Company. On August 18, 2016, V2IP, Inc., a Florida registered foreign corporation (the "Plaintiff") was granted by the Circuit Court of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, in and for Polk County, Florida Civil Division, an Agreed Order Approving Settlement Agreement and Stipulation for Dismissal against Green Energy Enterprises, Inc., (the "Defendant") to settle a collection action against the Defendant. Under the terms of the Settlement Agreement (the "Settlement") Defendant will issue and exchange securities for debt with the Plaintiff. Plaintiff owns bona fide claims ("Claims") against Defendant in the aggregate amount of Four Hundred, Four Thousand Dollars and Zero Cents. Plaintiff has agreed to the Settlement and believes that it to be sufficiently fair. Defendant's board of directors has considered the Settlement and has resolved that its terms and conditions are fair to, and in the best interest of, Defendant and its stockholders. The securities of the Defendant shall be issued to the Plaintiff in exchange for the Claims Plaintiff has against Defendant and shall be issued in accordance with the Settlement which is in accordance with Section 3(a)(10) of the Securities Act and Rule 69W-500.014 F.A.C. and shall be freely tradable and unrestricted. Please feel free to contact Green Energy Enterprises, Inc. by email at Donnell@GreenEnergyEnt.com or Donnell J. Vigil by telephone for information or investment opportunities. Green Energy will continue to update our shareholders and the investment community as we progress. ABOUT GREEN ENERGY ENTERPRISES, INC. Green Energy Enterprises, Inc. owns and operates 4 wholly owned Subsidiaries. 1) FLIGHT OPERATIONS Based out of Jacksonville Florida, the corporation owns and operates two (2) flight and drone training schools. The schools, A-Cent Aviation, Inc. and Atlantic Aviation, Inc. focus on continuing education. A-Cent is SEVIS/SEVP (http://www.ice.gov/sevis/) certified to provide training to foreign students. Both flight operations use the certified Cessna Pilot Training curriculum for our flight students (http://www.cessna.com/learn-to-fly.html). Atlantic Aviation is an FAA Part 61 flight school and tailors its training to recreational flying and aircraft rental. A-Cent is an FAA Part 141 flight school (www.faa.gov), operates an FAA Part 91 Commercial Air Tour Operation, Computer Assisted Testing Service (CATS) (http://www.catstest.com) and a Comira testing facility (http://www.comiratesting.com). We offer flight training, drone training, bi-annual reviews, sight-seeing tours, photography flights and will accept VA benefits under the GI bill (http://www.gibill.va.gov/). A-Cent provides light sport training and ground instruction for individuals and corporations seeking to operate Drones commercially and assist with drafting FAA Exemption 333 filings. Atlantic Aviation, Inc. is a recipient of an AOPA Excellence Award for 2012 and recognized as one of the top 50 flight school in the country. (http://flighttraining.aopa.org/awardwinners/2012winners.html). Both flight operations offer Light Sport training and are the only Light Sport training school in the Northern part of Florida. Schedule a Romance Flight with A-Cent Aviation or an Intro Flight with A-Cent or Atlantic Aviation. Look for discount offers we provide through Groupon (www.groupon.com), Living Social (www.livingsocial.com) or Local Flavor (www.localflavor.com). GYOG also owns a holding company Quasar Aircraft Corporation which holds and manages the aircraft used in GYOG's flight operations. Text "Start" to (904) 310-4829 for offers, deals and updates on new programs and aircraft available offered by A-Cent Aviation, Inc. 2) HYDROPONIC GROW STORE GYOG owns, Grow Your Own Greenz, Inc., a hydroponic grow store in Colorado and is an ancillary service provider to the legal medical marijuana industry and organic agriculture industry. The Company sells everything needed to facilitate a one-stop shop for full hydroponic grow systems, equipment, supplies and nutrients. We offer trimmer rentals, installation and delivery. No job is too small or large for our knowledgeable staff to handle. Feel free to give us a call to answer questions about your grow. We have beginner grower deals available for the first time grower. Visit our Ecommerce site (www.GYOGz.com). Website: coming soon www.GreenEnergyEnt.com www.GYOGz.com www.A-CentAviation.com www.flyatlanticaviationinc.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GreenEnergyEnt http://www.facebook.com/A-CentAviation http://www.facebook.com/GrowYourOwnGreenz Twitter: @GreenEnergy_Ent @GYOGz This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. under take no obligation to update such statements. Contact: Green Energy Enterprises, Inc. Telephone: (904) 207-6503 or (904) 207-6502 Email: Donnell@GreenEnergyEnt.com Shruti Haasan has filed a complaint against a cyber stalker who has been sending her derogatory messages, some of them laced with threats, on her twitter handle. According to a report by The New Indian Express, the actor filed an FIR against the stalker, which was submitted to the Cyber Crime grievance cell at the City Police Commissioners office in Chennai. The stalker was identified as Dr K G Guruprasad, a Karnataka-based doctor at the Hasan Institute of Medical Science. In the two-page complaint, Haasan stated that the stalker made accusations about the actors character and maligned her personal life. She also alleged that the stalker abused her constantly and even threatened to stab her if he managed to get near her. As per the same report, Haasan stated that the cyber stalking began on 7 September and has been going on since then. She also attached screenshots of the messages sent by the stalker in order to substantiate her claim. A senior police official who is handling the case admitted that the language used in the messages was extremely foul and derogatory. The police official added that Haasan might know the stalker personally as she has provided the email address and contact number of the accused in the complaint. However, her complaint does not explicitly state familiarity with the stalker. According to a report by the Times of India, Haasan was attacked by a stalker at her Bandra flat three years ago. Thus, it is clear that this is not her first encounter with stalking and that is why she is presumably taking police action to prevent the situation from getting worse. American Paper and Twine Company opened its doors in Nashville 90 years ago and is kicking off its 90th Anniversary Celebration with an employee event Saturday in Hendersonville. "Nathan Doochin, along with business partner Milton Lockenbach, founded AP&T on Nov. 19, 1926 with one truck and a focus on customer service. The company has since grown to become the Southeasts leading wholesale supplier and distributor of janitorial, packaging, disposable food service, safety and office products. Nathans son, Bob, joined the company in 1962 and has served as Ppesident and CEO since 1982," officials said. We feel honored and fortunate to be celebrating 90 years, Bob Doochin said. This company has navigated its way through the Depression, wars, recessions, technology advancements and Nashvilles continued growth to emerge stronger than ever. Many things have changed since 1926 but the basic principles of business that my father lived by havent changed delivering quality products at competitive prices with the best possible customer service. AP&T started on the 500 block of Third Avenue before moving to Public Square and then to its Second Avenue location (now occupied by the Wildhorse Saloon) in 1937. The company remained there until 1974 when it moved to a building on Centennial Boulevard. AP&Ts current Nashville home is a 150,000-square-foot facility on Cockrill Bend Boulevard. In addition to its Nashville headquarters, AP&T also operates full-service distribution facilities in Chattanooga, Memphis, Little Rock, Knoxville, Atlanta and Florence, helping its fleet of trucks deliver products all over the Southeast. "AP&T now boasts more than 300 employees who are dedicated to delivering customized business solutions and superior service," officials said. In conjunction with the celebration, AP&T has created a commemorative 90th Anniversary logo and is launching a new website, which details the history of the company over nine decades, showcases the evolution of products it has sold over the years and highlights what has made AP&T the success it is today. In addition to this weekends employee event, AP&T is planning an event to celebrate with its vendors this fall. The new high-security Rs 500 notes were released to banks for distribution on Sunday and the lenders have been asked to make separate arrangements for the elderly. New series of Rs. 500 denomination notes introduced today in New Delhi at SBI Parliament Street Branch. pic.twitter.com/4CNKpm2246 Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) November 13, 2016 Banks have been advised to make separate arrangements for the elderly and women, a senior government official told PTI. Some branches like SBI main branch in Delhi have started distribution of Rs 500 notes. Only Rs 2,000 notes, apart from Rs 100 and below, have been available since Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday night announced the surprise decision to demonetise higher denomination notes. The new Rs 500 note is expected to ease pressure on banks cash position and improve liquidity in the market. According to the Central Bank statement, the new Rs 500 banknotes bears the signature of Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel. The stone grey-coloured note bears the year of printing 2016 and the Swachh Bharat logo printed on the reverse. The new Rs 500 note is different from the earlier in colour, size, theme, location of security features and design elements. Here are some key features: Obverse: 1. See through register in denominational number 2. Latent image of the denominational number 3. Denominational number in Devnagari 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, Government's signature with Promise Clause and RBI emblem shifted towards right 7. Portrait and electrotype watermark 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: Intaglio or raised printing of Mahatma Gandhi portrait, Ashoka pillar emblem, bleed lines and identification mark continue 11. Circle with Rs 500 in raised print on the right 12. 5 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 with slogan 16. Language panel towards centre 17. Red Fort an image of Indian heritage site with Indian flag 18. Denominational numeral in Devnagari on right Delhi: New Rs 500 notes issued (Visuals from SBI branch,Parliament street) pic.twitter.com/SsYxKJu0BR ANI (@ANI_news) November 13, 2016 New Rs 500 notes issued, visuals from a bank in Bhopal. pic.twitter.com/biWBCzjQYA ANI (@ANI_news) November 13, 2016 With inputs from PTI By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's efforts to improve the lives of its children are failing due to meagre government spending on the youth, Nobel peace laureate and child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi said on Monday, as the country marked its annual "Children's Day".Children's Day, or Bal Divas, coinciding with the birthday of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is marked by events such as cultural performances in schools."Our nation has the world's highest number of malnourished children, child labour and children vulnerable to sexual offences, (yet) it is unfortunate this section of the society receives the lowest budgetary allocation," Satyarthi said."All our efforts for the development of children fail with such disproportionate investment," he said in a statement.Children make up more than 40 percent of India's almost 1.3 billion population, yet only four percent of the budget is allocated to under-18s, he said.India has made considerable progress in curbing the exploitation of children over the last decade. It has introduced laws to protect children and ensure their schooling, as well as a range of social welfare schemes. But activists say implementation is lacking in combating issues such as child labour and sexual exploitation. A February 2015 report by the International Labour Organization puts the number of child workers in India aged between five and 17 at 5.7 million, out of 168 million globally.More than half are in agriculture, toiling in cotton, sugarcane and rice paddy fields where they are often exposed to pesticides and risk injury from sharp tools and heavy equipment.Over a quarter work in manufacturing - confined to poorly lit, barely ventilated rooms in slums, embroidering clothes, weaving carpets, making matchsticks or rolling beedi cigarettes. Children also work in restaurants and hotels, washing dishes and chopping vegetables, or in middle-class homes, cleaning and scrubbing floors.Other crimes against children are also a serious concern, say activists. There were over 94,000 crimes against children recorded in 2015, an increase of more than five percent from the previous year, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).Crimes included murder, infanticide, kidnapping and abduction, abandonment and procuration of minor girls. Almost 30 percent were sexual offences, including rape, said NCRB data. Satyarthi, whose charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) is credited with rescuing more than 80,000 enslaved children, said a child goes missing in India every eight minutes. He appealed to legislators across all political parties to devote one day to the discussion of child rights during the last session of parliament this year, which begins on Wednesday."Although significant progress has been made for the protection of child rights, critical challenges continue due to gaps in policy and their implementation," he said."The fight against child labour, child trafficking and child sexual abuse need higher political will," added Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai. (Reporting by Nita Bhalla, editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR, India Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed by Indian shelling across the frontier in the disputed Kashmir region overnight, Pakistan's military said on Monday, as tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours simmer.Pakistan's military media wing, ISPR, said in a statement the seven soldiers were killed in the Bhimber sector on the "Line of Control" de facto border in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A spokesman for India's army said its soldiers had responded to Pakistani firing on Sunday night. "There was a brief ceasefire violation initiated by Pakistani in Noushera sector which was effectively retaliated last night," the spokesman told Reuters, declining to comment on any Indian casualties. He also said there was ongoing firing between the two countries' forces on Monday along another part of the frontier. Relations between Pakistan and India have been strained for several months, while cross-frontier shelling has intensified in recent weeks leading to deaths of civilians and soldiers stationed along the disputed frontier.Tensions have been fraught since July when India-administered Kashmir was rocked by street protests after the killing of a militant leader there. Islamabad launched an international campaign to highlight alleged rights abuses by Indian security forces in Kashmir, while New Delhi blamed Pakistan for fanning the unrest.New Delhi also blamed Pakistan-based militants for a deadly attack on an Indian army base in the region in September, a charge Islamabad rejected. Several days later, India said it had carried out "surgical strikes" on militant bases across the border. Pakistan dismissed the claim as "an illusion".Kashmir lies at the heart of the tension between India and Pakistan and the countries have fought two of their three wars over the region since partition and independence from Britain in 1947. (Reporting by Drazen Jorgic and Fayaz Bukhari; Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes in NEW DELHI; Editing by Nick Macfie) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Hyunjoo Jin and Miyoung Kim | SEOUL SEOUL Samsung Electronics has agreed to buy Harman International Industries in an $8 billion deal, marking a major push into the auto electronics market and the biggest overseas acquisition ever by a South Korean company.The transaction highlights Samsung's efforts to break into the high-barrier automotive industry where it has little track record and also marks a strategic shift for the electronics company, which has previously shunned big acquisitions."An M&A deal this big is a first for us. But it shows that under Jay Y. Lee, the company is changing and open to new ways to grow," a source familiar with the deal told Reuters, referring to Samsung Electronics' vice chairman. The purchase of the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of connected car and audio systems is part of Samsung's search for new growth areas as its smartphone business - scarred by the withdrawal of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 - slows. The greater use of electronics and software in vehicles, and the ability of cars to connect to smartphones and other devices, is offering technology companies with new business opportunities. "We have been studying the automotive market for some time. We conclude that organic growth will not get us where we want to go fast enough," Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics, said on a conference call. "Samsung will not get into the business of manufacturing cars," he said.Samsung, a maker of chips, displays, smartphones and TVs, agreed to acquire Harman for $112.00 per share in cash, a 28 percent premium to the U.S. company's closing price on Friday.Harman shares rose 25.6 percent to their highest level in more than one year in early trading. "Harman was missing, in our opinion, a meaningful presence in displays and cockpit electronics; Samsung has these," Baird Equity Research said in a report.But investors in Samsung had reservations about the purchase price. "Samsung is using its huge cash pile to pull ahead of rivals in the auto technology market. But it remains to be seen whether Samsung will be able to grow into a company that will be able to compete with the likes of Bosch and Continental," said fund manager Park Jung-hoon of HDC Asset Management, which owns Samsung Electronics shares. Harman's products, which provide infotainment, telematics, connected safety and security services, are used in more than 30 million vehicles made by automakers such as BMW, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), according to its website.Harman earns around two thirds of its revenue from its automotive-related business, and its automotive order backlog as of end-June stood at $24 billion, more than three times annual sales of $6.9 billion in fiscal year 2016.Samsung created an automotive electronics business team a year ago to look for opportunities in this area. This year it invested $450 million in Chinese automaker and rechargeable batteries firm BYD Co Ltd.Separately, Samsung has held talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) over a potential sale or partnership for the latter's Magneti Marelli auto parts maker, sources have said. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Miyoung Kim; Additional reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Jacqueline Wong and Jane Merriman) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The ongoing chaos because of the demonetisation drive has led to law and order problems in parts of the country. Over a hundred people were booked for pelting stones and clashing with the employees of a bank in Sujru village in Uttar Pradesh over exchanging of old currency notes, police said on Sunday. Three persons sustained injuries in the clash that broke out after cash-strapped people gathered outside the bank, to exchange the now defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes after the Centre's demonetisation move, turned violent, they said. Police reached the spot and dispersed the angry mob. A case has been registered against more than a hundred people in this connection, a police official said. Home Minister Rajnath Singh also called the chief ministers of at least ten states to review the law and order situation, according to The Hindu. Two elderly men standing in seemingly unending queues at banks suffered heart attack and died in a tragic fallout of demonetisation of high-value currency notes as hassled people continued to descend on ATMs and banks in droves leading to arguments and scuffles. A 69-year-old man died in Madhya Pradeshs Sagar town after suffering a heart attack while standing in a queue to exchange demonetised currency notes outside a bank, police said. Another report of such death was received from Limdi town of Surendranagar district in Gujarat where a 69-year-old man died after heart attack. Mansukh Darji was standing in a queue outside a Bank of India branch in Limbdi when he suddenly collapsed. Over 12,000 Delhi police, Rapid Action Force and paramilitary personnel were deployed on Sunday to maintain law and order as a large number of people queued up to withdraw money or get their notes exchanged at various banks and ATMs. Owing to a Sunday, there was more crowd outside banks and ATMs, and personnel of Delhi police, RAF and paramilitary forces were ensuring that people stay in queues and maintain law and order, a Delhi police official said. "More than 12,000 personnel of Delhi police were manning banks and ATMs across the city. They were ensuring that people stay in queues. We are committed to maintain law and order in the city," Delhi police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat said. Police control room received several calls from people complaining about they being jostled in the queue, ATMs running out of cash and overcrowding in the banks. Police also issued an advisory on its Twitter handle, asking people not to believe on rumours, related to withdrawal of money and demonetised notes, spreading thick and fast. It kept an eye on social media to identify the rumour mills. With inputs from PTI Rahm Flouts Trump, Vows To Keep Chicago 'Sanctuary City' For Immigrants By Stephen Gossett in News on Nov 14, 2016 2:55PM Photo: Tyler LaRiviere The City of Chicago vowed on Sunday to remain a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants, joining other cities that have pushed back against Donald Trump on the issue. Trump in September pledged to stop federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities. "Since the Presidential Election, there has been a sense of uncertainty among many immigrant communities in Chicago and across the nation. I want to assure all of our families that Chicago is and will remain a Sanctuary City, said Mayor Emanuel in a statement on Sunday evening. Chicago has been a city of immigrants since it was founded. We have always welcomed people of all faiths and backgrounds, and while the administration will change, our values and our commitment to inclusion will not." Trump has claimed that sanctuary cities protect violent immigrants (did you see that one coming?); and he said he would withhold federal dollars from noncompliant cities. Block funding for sanctuary cities ... no more funding. We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths," Trump said at a speech in September, according to CNN. "Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars, and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities." Emanuel and a group of aldermen are set to hold a press conference on Monday to discuss the statement and reiterate calls that Gov. Bruce Rauner also push back on Trumps sanctuary-related funding threat. (Rauner) decided to play politics and talk about banning Syrian refugees well before the Trump campaign had taken off," said Ald. Ameya-Pawar (47th Ward) on Friday, according to the Sun-Times. My question is, where are you on this? Are you going to fight for the city and ensure that all of our funding stays in place because we are a sanctuary city? Are you going to stand up for Chicago and to a president-elect who is essentially threatening to eviscerate programs in major cities across America? Other cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minneapolis have made similar re-endorsements of their sanctuary status in recent days. Kolkata: Criticising the demonetisation drive, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of insulting the poor by saying they are "sleeping peacefully". Terming demonetisation as a "killer for (the) common people", she said that a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had been lost since this was announced a week ago. "The PM said in his speech that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," she tweeted. Modi also said that it was those with ill-gotten money who were running from pillar to post and buying sleeping pills. Banerjee called for an end to the demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. "My humble suggestion is not to make the people suffer," she said. "This is a killer for the common people. The economy has already lost a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore in only six days." She said economists had predicted that monetisation could lead to an onset of an economic recession. "While common people have been victimised and crushed under weight of demonetisation, many economists now predicting an onset of recession," she added. The PM in his speech had said the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste 1/2 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 14, 2016 My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this 2/2 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 14, 2016 While common people have been victimised & crushed under weight of 'demonetisation', many economists now predicting onset of recession 1/2 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 14, 2016 This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost to the economy in only six days 2/2 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 14, 2016 With inputs from IANS Donald Trumps victory in the US presidential elections came as a total surprise not just for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, but even many of his supporters. If rumours are to be believed, Trump himself was in a subdued mood the whole evening until Florida turned in his favour. News of his success has been met with what can only be described as a meltdown among his detractors across the political spectrum. To be fair, Trump is certainly not the first unqualified occupant of the Oval Office; he may not even be the least qualified. The reason we feel his victory to be an affront to civilisation is that he is boorish insouciantly and publicly. Trump is an indication of all that is broken with America, not in just that people would vote for him but that they would be angry enough with the establishment to even consider such an obviously unfit character. Given the United States' military and economic reach, Trumps victory will undoubtedly affect the world but thankfully less so than ordinary Americans. The question in this part of the world is, how will a Trump presidency affect India? With its quasi-pivot to Asia, the United States has been heavily involved with several countries in Indias vicinity. Washingtons ties with Delhi have also gone from strength to strength since the George W Bush administration. Despite ebbs and flows, an Indo-US partnership has become a bipartisan issue. Nonetheless, Delhi and Washington have had difficulty seeing eye-to-eye on several points of mutual interest due to differing priorities. There is room for cautious optimism that Indo-US goals will align further under President Trump. Trump is probably the first tenant of the White House who has had no experience whatsoever in public office, be it as a small town mayor, in the military, or elsewhere. As such, he comes to office with no ideological baggage one wonders if he has even seriously thought about some of Americas challenges to have definitive views on them. Even during the primaries and campaign, the then presidential candidate's responses to questions could only be described as abstract expressionism. In such an environment, it is difficult to predict what policies Trump will pursue. There have been, however, a couple of motifs that have been consistent in his messaging. For example, he has repeatedly hinted at mending relations with Russia. According to Trump, the United States has been fighting an old Cold War they understand rather than the new Cold War they are in with China on which they are yet to get a grip. This bodes well for Delhi because it stops Vladimir Putin from being nudged into the embrace of Xi Jinping. Additionally, it allows India greater room in proposing important projects like the International North-South Trade Corridor that need Moscows support. A less antagonised Russian bear may even prove to be a useful ally against the Taliban, the ISI, and Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan. On Pakistan, Trump has promised a far tougher stand but he will be the first American president to deliver on such a promise. Despite several scholars disproving the mistaken American belief that the US needs Pakistan in that region, influential elements in the US government have been reluctant to jettison Islamabad even after many provocations. While a realistic US appraisal of Pakistan is something to look forward to, its historical probability is low. There is a concern that the United States will shun their alliance responsibilities under Trump. This has been the indication with not just Nato but also in East Asia. However, the president-elect called the South Korean premier soon after the election results were confirmed to assure her of Americas continued support. In all likelihood, Trump would just like to see America's allies pull their weight a bit more. This is a complaint Washington has had for a long time, though what exactly pulling their weight would entail in terms of increased independence from alliance policies was never clear. Trumps hawkish views on China reinforce the belief that he will not abandon US allies in the region. Admittedly, he has veered away from the traditional US course of discouraging independent nuclear arsenals. Yet this would also require willingness from the other side to embark on such an ambitious and politically fraught programme, something both sides may be able to ultimately avoid. The future of trade pacts such as the Trans Pacific Partnership and TPIP are also unsure. They have been on weak legs even before the US election season but the incoming president's hostility to them is well known. He would either let negotiations lapse or at best reopen the technical aspects of the treaty for further discussions, thereby punting the TPP's coming into force down a few years until the end of his term or into his second term. Either way, this is good tidings for India, who would lose billions standing outside the pact. It allows Delhi's mandarins time to strategise a response, be it via joining the trade pact or bracing for the fallout by negotiating free trade agreements of its own. Another area of concern is Trumps belief that Iran got off too lightly in the nuclear deal negotiated last year. He has done both, threatened to tear up the agreement and police it closely too. If Iran is baited out of the deal by an obstructionist Trump White House, it is not sure how much support from the world community further sanctions on Iran will have. This could get thorny for India but this is not a purely Trump problem Republicans have been saying similar things ever since negotiations began. India will have to persuade its American partner of the wisdom of restraint and the favourable ripples it could have in other hotspots such as Syria. The most visible feature of Indo-US relations arms sales and joint military exercises will most certainly not go wanting. Defence stocks are up in the United States after Trumps victory as the budgetary cuts enacted by his predecessor are thought to be on the chopping block. Foreign sales will make domestic defence spending more affordable and India is keen to modernise its military. Beyond the monetary aspect, it also makes little sense for the United States to plan a more robust policy in East Asia while discouraging local partners to take a more proactive role in what will always primarily be their security. Washingtons most reliable partners will be those most concerned and powerless in the face of China's rise, the states around the Indo-Pacific Ocean rim and warmer relations with Russia will not be of much use here. Perhaps the greatest tussle will be over the economy, but that is also a mixed bag while Trump has promised to curb immigration and slash the H1B skilled worker visas, he has also called India a land of economic opportunity and even invested in some real estate in the country. Trump will, like previous administrations, pressure India on opening up its economy further and doing more to protect intellectual property. The question is how much effort he will put into this challenging aspect of Indo-US relations. All this assumes, of course, a certain modicum of rationality, a desire to deliver on election promises made, and a sound staff probably taken from the Bush years. But Trump is a neophyte to this stage and all bets could be off in which case much of this speculative exercise could be just gibberish and we are in for a very bumpy ride over the next four years. The recent robust steps in demonetisation undertaken by the Government of India to unearth black money, inter alia, also throws up impediments to those external hostile quarters who are actively engaged in paralysing Indian economy and financing Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) chiefly for terror-financing. These steps are expected to deal a severe blow to such actors and their machinations. The modus operandi of terror financing has hitherto been to use formal and non-formal banking channels, money value transfer services, NPO or NGO sectors, real estate, government funds etc. It is hoped that the current measures to curb terror financing will prove as an effective deterrent and will contain the ongoing menace. FICN is smuggled via the land, sea and air routes. According to authoritative sources, the trend in circulation of FICN is principally from Pakistan to West Asian countries and Bangladesh. Also, from Gulf countries to Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. FICN is further smuggled into India from these countries . It's interesting to note that value of FICN in circulation was estimated to be Rs 400 crore and importantly, the value had remained stationary for the past four years. Meanwhile, attempts are being made by inimical forces to infuse FICN worth Rs 70 crore into the Indian economy annually. Out of this figure, a third of the FICN being infused is seized. The detection rate of fake Rs 100 and Rs 500 notes was around the same, and higher than the detection of Rs 1,000 notes by around 10 percent. To contain this threat, the Indian establishment, seeking international cooperation, has aligned with Bangladesh forming a Joint Task Force through SoP and MoU. In 2015-2016, Bangladeshi authorities, in a major operational drive, arrested seven Pakistanis and seized FICN amounting to Rs 14,12,30,000. This is no mean statistic. The NIA has been actively working towards reaching the bottom of the problem as as part its campaign. FICN kingpin Mozzamel Haque, a Bangladeshi, was arrested in December 2015 confirming the Bangladeshi nexus. The most significant feature of the whole nefarious syndicated network is the role of Pakistan deserving universal condemnation. Undoubtedly, Pakistan is the main source of printing of high quality FICN. Such super-high quality currency printing machines cannot be in the possession of an individual or with an organised group. These sophisticated machines are available only with an established government. We can, therefore, safely infer that Pakistan, as part of its state policy, is printing high quality FICN aimed at undermining credibility of Indian currency notes, ostensibly to fund terrorism. These arguments are further buttressed by the fact that a majority of those arrested in smuggling and circulating FICN in Southeast Asia and India's neighbouring countries (especially Bangladesh) are Pakistani nationals. Through a professional investigation carried out recently, there were unique similarities between FICN samples and Pakistan's legal tender, strongly confirming Pakistan as the main source of FICN. Bangladeshis and villages on the border with Bangladesh too have been active in these crimes. Out of 18 cases of FICN, eight cases are crucially traced to Bangladeshi borders. Three Bangladeshis involved in the FICN racket are still at large. Seizures of FICN have been mainly carried out at the borders of Bongaon (in West Bengal), Shillong, South Garo Hills and Malda among other points. These prove that India-Bangladesh borders are active conduits in this trade . A quick glance at the trends in FICN circulation reveals that originating in Pakistan, it reaches Dubai and as per the criminal cases registered, the network was traced to Kerala and Hyderabad. Simultaneously, Dubai to Sri Lanka is also a favoured route. A Sri Lankan named Abdullah Mutsari was detained in Sri Lanka with FICN worth Rs 2 crore. From Bangladesh FICN was circulated to the states of Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra and Karnataka. In addition to these, Indian investigators have successfully found out that from Nepal, FICN regularly reached Jamnagar (the police had seized FICN worth Rs 1.26 lakh there), Ahmedabad and Siddharthnagar among other locations. Now that it's proven beyond doubt about the Pakistani State's complicity in engineering such a vast FICN network to subvert the Indian economy and fund terror, the government attempted to demonetise and introduce currency of newer denominations with changed hallmarks. It has to be closely monitored as to how Pakistan now moulds its blueprint to continue with the FICN flow. Recent Indian steps must be a dampener, albeit for the time-being, to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and its collaborators as they have been caught by surprise. Nevertheless, Indian agencies should not lower their collective guard and be prepared to foil any Pakistani designs to fund terror with FICN . On Pakistan's part, it is highly unlikely it will easily abandon its acts of terror-funding as it enjoys complete State patronage and its agenda to hit its adversary hard. Hence for India, it calls for more stepped-up intelligence. The author is a retired IPS officer and a security analyst. Views are personal Srinagar: Stirring the hornet's nest, the ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) said on Sunday that the four months of civilian unrest in Kashmir valley was a conspiracy to dethrone Mehbooba Mufti and her PDP-BJP coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir. They also added that who died during the agitation were innocent. Senior party leader and MP, Muzaffar Hussain Baig said the party will not be cowed down by "nefarious designs aimed at our economic subjugation, degradation of ethics and values". These four months were the most dark and oppressive months. But God is witness that it was a conspiracy against Mehboobaji. It was a conspiracy to defame PDP. They conspired to kill Burhan (Wani). May Allah have maghfirat (for dead) ... they took a man's life to dislodge Mehboobaji," Baig said while addressing a gathering outside the party headquarters in Srinagar, without naming anyone. Baig's comments on the civilian killings in Kashmir over the last four months are in sharp contrast with the position that PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has taken on the issue. She had said that those who died during clashes with security forces "had not gone to buy toffees or milk". In a show of strength at a time when Kashmir is reeling under shutdowns and curfew, this was the first ever public rally by the PDP, which has faced criticism from all sides for civilian casualties and failing to contain the agitation following the killing of the Hizbul Mujahideen commander in early July. The PDP leaders who addressed the gathering underscored the need to push the agenda of peace and development through reconciliation and dialogue. The PDP leaders, once again, tried to impress that if there was ever a prime minister in India who not just enjoyed the mandate of the people but had the capacity and will, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, they said, can address the vexed issue of Kashmir. We have not aligned for the sake of chair. We know if there is any Prime Minister who is going to solve the problem of Kashmir, it is Modi. It is our Agenda of Alliance that has kept us intact. If our agenda is bypassed, we will throw this chair on that very same day, Baig said to a thundering applause. Sundays rally comes at a time when the separatist leadership, spearheading a four month long agitation against New Delhi, is struggling to keep the momentum alive with the vehicular traffic slowly returning to the roads in many parts of capital Srinagar and other towns and villages of Kashmir, despite calls of shutdown by the Hurriyat. At least 94 people have been killed in 128 days of unrest in the Valley following the killing of Burhan Wani on 8 July. Thousands, including security forces, have been injured in clashes between forces and protesters. According to doctors, over 1,100 protesters suffered injuries in eyes due to pellets. Addressing the gathering, Baig said Kashmir issue will be solved only by your votes and not by stone pelting. Those who have lost their lives were innocent people and they hardly knew what they were doing. PM Modi went without an invitation to Pakistan and sat with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif because he had promised PDP that he would take the dialogue forward. But Pakistan reciprocated by attacking Pathankot. How are cordial relations possible in such atmosphere? But still we believe the dialogue is the only way forward, he said. The two countries cant prosper until they resolve the Kashmir dispute and it was for this purpose that our party came into being-to resolve this conundrum. Taking a dig at Hurriyat Conference, Baig, while pointing towards the flea market which was thronged by hundreds of people on Sunday, said the people have told the Hurriyat that they are not with 'Hartal politics'. This is a mazaq (joke). There is no hartal (strike)," he said, pointing towards shoppers in the market. Earlier, the Hurriyat Conference had hit out at the PDP, terming the party as a "local stooge" of "Indian rulers" whose "hollow slogans of religious freedom, individual liberties and equal rights is nothing but the age old deceitful slogans of the imperialistic mind set which they have been using to fool others. The Hurriyat Conference said the local government has purposefully joined hands with the preachers of Hindutva to implement the Nagpur agenda. They have waged war against the whole community by forcefully preventing people from their prayers. The PDP, however, called upon all the stakeholders to focus on political means and through the medium of well-established democratic institutions to "wriggle the state out from the brink of abyss". Manohar Parrikar often finds himself in the news for the wrong reasons. A seemingly harmless book launch presented the latest opportunity for the Indian defence minister to enjoy some limelight yet again. However, at least this time, the brouhaha was entirely manufactured with little reason in sight. In what appears to be a response to a question at the launch of The New Arthashastra: A Security Strategy for India, Parrikar expressed the view that the logic of a well-defined and written security doctrine eluded him. #WATCH: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar answers a question on nuclear strategy pic.twitter.com/1f0lTJaJw9 ANI (@ANI_news) November 10, 2016 Why would one, he pondered out loud, not only restrict oneself to a set of responses but also open up the playbook to one's enemy? Parrikar gave the example of nuclear policy why would India tie itself down to a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) position? In his view, India's leaders should merely state that India is a responsible nuclear weapons state and any potential use would be after careful deliberation. The defence minister was vehement in declaring these views to be his private thoughts and that the countrys nuclear policy had not changed. In fact, he went as far as predicting, half jokingly, that it would be splayed all across newspapers the next day that a change in doctrine had been made. He was not wrong within minutes of his comments hitting Twitter, policy wonks were condemning his casual attitude towards nuclear deterrence and even the thought of straying from a nuclear NFU. Parrikar's most egregious sin appears to have simply been that his views were not popular among those who would don the hat of experts; nothing the defence minister said was actually either surprising or extraordinary. Given the situation, the criticism levelled against Parrikar comes off as petty and motivated. First, the accusation that the minister should not have aired his personal opinion on so sensitive a subject it should be noted that even as he answered the question asked of him, Parrikar categorically stated that there was no doctrinal shift and he was only expressing his views as an individual. It was not a later clarification by his office to put the minister in the clear. More to the point, is it surprising that not just the defence minister but even several other senior officials in the present regime may have private views that differ from the stated government policy? After all, this administration saw it fit to include the country's nuclear doctrine in its election manifesto surely there would be a few who question the wisdom of the present strategy? And if so, what delicate balance has been upset if these doubts are expressed right alongside a disclaimer that no strategic shift has been envisaged in the short term? Second, Parrikar has been skewered for doubting the value of a nuclear NFU and his preference for ambiguity has been derided as confusion. The nuclear NFU has become almost an article of faith among Western think tankers, though the United States has refused to adopt such a posture itself despite an overwhelming conventional superiority over most of its rivals. British and French nuclear postures are also more ambiguous on the matter than Chinese or Indian nuclear doctrines. It is commonly acknowledged that India needs to revise its doctrine that has lain virtually unchanged since its formulation soon after the Pokhran II nuclear tests. The opposition, however, is to abandoning the NFU. Indian planners cannot take such objections seriously for the only posture that will satisfy some corners is unilateral and unconditional nuclear disarmament. Instead, Delhi must look to the peculiarities of its threat matrix and decide upon a strategy that suits the subcontinent best. For example, Parrikar has a valid point when he says that an unequivocal NFU restricts his options in case of war; it would be like showing the enemy your playbook. Instead, a defensive-use-only posture might offer the desired flexibility and ambiguity while retaining some degree of responsibility. Some of these decisions will need to take into account other factors, such as the extent of Indian conventional superiority over its likely foes, its ability to manufacture reliable and accurate tactical nuclear weapons, and a clear understanding of its objectives in various scenarios. Admittedly, these are conversations to be had in private but there is little stability to lose before a country that has on umpteen occasions nonchalantly expressed its willingness to use nuclear weapons as a first resort. The sort of stability international scholars advocate is laudable but can only be achieved with mature states. A nuclear NFU and a clearly articulated military doctrine are indeed excellent confidence building measures but they must be deserved, not exploited. The real tragedy of this little non-incident is that it is a reminder of Indias inability to think and act strategically towards long-term objectives, the aversion of the state's holy cows to expert scrutiny, and a bureaucratic opacity that would make Brussels proud. Though the Indian defence minister raised some pertinent questions on Indias nuclear doctrine, it is unlikely that much comes of it. Patna: A day ahead of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's 'Lok Samvad' to seek suggestions on liquor law, BJP on Sunday aired its 'objections' to some of the "draconian" and "Talibani" provisions of the law. "After the Patna High court dismissed the old and draconian liquor law (Bihar Excise (Amendment) Act, 2016), the Bihar government has sought suggestions from public to bring amendments to the new liquor law (Bihar Prohibition & Excise Act, 2016) to stand legal scrutiny in the Supreme Court," senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said in a statement. BJP, the principal opposition, has been in support of the liquor law from day one but it was opposed to some of the draconian and Talibani provisions of the law, Sushil Modi, the former Deputy Chief Minister said. The party has already given its suggestions in both the houses of state legislature for bringing amendments into the provisions of the existing liquor, he said. The provisions on which the party has severe objections included imposition of collective fine, Sushil Modi said while suggesting that action must be taken against the erring person but the entire village cannot be held guilty for the fault committed by some. Similarly, the quantum of punishment must be in conformity with the crime, he said adding that liquor law has provisions which are even harsher than the crime for murder and rape. Sending entire family to the jail in the event of recovery of an empty bottle besides seizure of the premises for recovery of a liquor bottle are harsher provisions which must be done away with, Modi said. The BJP leader asked when there is a prohibition in the state, what is the point in exporting liquor to other states, and suggested the state government should come out with provisions to compensate those who invested in the liquor industry as per the government's policy. "Although, the government has not invited BJP to the Lok Samvad programme but despite this, we are reiterating our suggestions through media," Modi said. CM Nitish Kumar would interact with people on Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 during his Lok Samvad programme on Monday. A number of people have sent their feedback to the state government on prohibition in Bihar. The Bihar government had invited suggestions on the provisions of Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 between 1 and 13 November. Kumar, however, dismissed speculations of the state moving back on the new liquor law and asserted that there was no question of "diluting" the law after advertisements of excise department appeared seeking public opinion on it. CM's remarks had come in the wake of excise department's advertisement in newspapers seeking opinion of the public on Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 that was notified on 2 October. So Just How Much Pizza Did Chicago Scarf Down During The World Series? By Anthony Todd in Food on Nov 14, 2016 7:27PM Giordano's Celebration Pizza. Photo via Facebook. By Calley Nelson Any event that produces what was professed to be the seventh-largest gathering in human history to celebrate has got to have some ancillary effects, right? How about pizza delivery? Can you imagine how much pizza must have been ordered during those final Cubs games? Well, rather than imagine, we asked some of largest pizza places in Chicago to tell us how much pizza Chicago managed to eat. Four Chicago Pizza joints reported unprecedented, record-breaking sales during the final games of the World Series. We talked to them about the lines, orders and celebration leading up to the Cubs big win. Lou Malnatis, River North, 439 N Wells St. Appeal: A tourist and family favorite for deep-dish. Busiest game: 10/28 Sales: The River North location catered huge orders to downtown Chicago businesses during the parade. One company ordered over $5,000 worth of pizza! Craziest happening: Lou Malnatis won a few bets on the cubs winning the World Series: the owner of a Cleveland pizzeria poured sauce on his head after the Indians loss and the Archdiocese of Cleveland ordered pizza for more than 100 underserved Chicagoans. Dimos, Lakeview, 3463 N Clark St. Appeal: Late night vegan or mac & cheese slices. Busiest game: 10/28 through 10/30 Sales: Over 7,000 slices were sold during the three World Series home games. Craziest happening: People ordering whole pizzas from the bathroom line outside the restaurant. Bacci Pizza, Lakeview, 950 W Addison St. Appeal: Jumbo pepperoni and sausage slices an arms length from Wrigley Field. Busiest games: 10/25 and 11/2. Sales: Nearly 11,000 slices were served. Craziest happening: People waited more than 30 minutes for a single slice. One man who patiently waited his turn ordered 16 jumbo slices then dropped them all on the floor. Giordanos, Lakeview, 1040 W Belmont Ave. Appeal: The Chicago Cubs team favorite. Busiest game: 11/2. Sales: W and Cubs-branded pizzas sold out three times, then the Cubs themselves ordered 600 pizzas. Craziest happening: The staff ended up delivering pizza ordered in the Lakeview neighborhood on foot. The demonetisation drive of the Narendra Modi government is expected to flush out black money. By demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, the government has rendered illegal 86 percent of the currency in circulation, totaling Rs 14.2 lakh crore. Most analysts believe that after the demonetisation drive is over, and the last date of December 30 has been crossed, the RBI may actually find that 30 percent of the Rs 14.2 lakh crore did not get deposited in banks. Thus, this would be the money that could not get laundered. In effect, the entire demonetisation drive is expected to achieve two concrete results. First, it would allow the RBI to write off Rs 5 lakh crore, and thus reduce the quantum of black money floating around in cash by the same amount. Second, it would get around Rs 9 lakh crore into bank deposits. The governments expectation is that this money could be harnessed for productive purposes, and the black money ogre would have been controlled. Really? Figures that are already in public domain show that the entire demonetisation exercise could have been avoided. The government could have unearthed a lot more black money and filled its coffers with much more money had it just followed up on the accounts filed by around 8 lakh assessees. Who are the 8 lakh assessees? Just look at the table below, and you will see how the number of people who filed income tax returns declaring agricultural income swelled from 2.46 lakh assesssees in 2009 to 4.25 lakh in 2010 to 6.56 lakh in 2011 and then to 8.12 lakh people in 2012. The agricultural income bit is extremely important, because all agricultural income is totally exempt from income tax. Since many of the assessees of 2009 are also likely to have filed their returns in the subsequent years, one can safely assume that the total number of assessees whose returns need to be examined will be just around 8 lakh. But who are these 8 lakh people? That is something we do not know. All that we know is that the total income declared by them in 2011 and 2012 was a stupefying Rs 874 lakh crore. That represents over 125 years of total taxes garnered by the government in any given year. The average income declared by each assessee during those years was an equally unbelievable Rs 30 crore and Rs 80 crore respectively. Obviously, even if you take the most fertile land with the most expensive crop, average incomes of Rs 80 crore are not easy to come by. Something is amiss. Even if one assumes that only 30 percent of the amounts declared were roped in as taxes, the government would have got Rs 262 lakh crore. That would have been higher than the Rs 5 lakh crore the government hopes to impound as black money and the Rs 9 lakh crore it hopes to garner by way of incremental deposits. What this means is that instead of pursuing 8 lakh people, the government decided to target 1.25 billion people. In fact, the entire saga of these agricultural income declarations would not have come to light, had it not been for an RTI request filed by the former I-T officer. The retired Income Tax (I-T) officer Vijay Sharma decided to file an RTI (Right to Information) request for disclosing the names of people who had filed agricultural income returns for (you wont believe this) Rs 2,000 lakh crore. The figures he got showed an exponential increase from 2004 to 2013, touching a total of almost Rs 2,000 lakh crore. He then asked the income department to release the names of the top 100 names of the people who had filed such returns. His request was denied. He then decided to file a public interest litigation (PIL) petition with the Patna High Court in Bihar. This matter was duly reported by media in March 2016. The court was supposed to hear the petition in April this year. But there is no further news from that front. Almost simultaneously, the Income Tax Department gave out a different set of figures (see table) which was dutifully reported by the media. More interestingly, on 10 March 2016, the IT department sent out a circular (LETTER F.NO.DGIT(S)/DIT(S)-3/AST/PIL MATTER/AGRICULTURAL INCOME/97/2015-16) to all its offices stating the following: Kindly refer to subject matter. 2. It has been noticed that several assesses have declared income from agriculture of more than Rs 1 crore in the income tax return filed for earlier years especially from AYs. 2011-12 to 2013-14. 3. In this regard, there is a PIL matter pending before Honble Patna High Court wherein concerns have been raised that a few assesses may be engaged in routing their unaccounted/illegal money in the garb of agricultural income thereby not only claiming exemptions on such income but also engaged in the money laundering activities. 4. Since agricultural income is only used for rate purposes, it was noticed that in a few such high value cases, taxpayers may have inadvertently made data entry errors while filling up the fields for agricultural income. 5. Therefore, it is requested that the assessing officers may be directed to (i) Verify whether the taxpayer may have made a data entry error while filling up the return. (ii) Wherever scrutiny assessment is completed, AO may provide feedback based on assessment records. (iii) In cases where proceedings u/s 143(3) are pending, assessing officers may be informed to thoroughly verify the claims. 6. The list of cases having agriculture income more than Rs.1 Crore along with jurisdictional details is placed at itaxnet at the following path : Resources Downloads Systems Verification of Agriculture-Income You are requested to kindly send a status report in this regard after verification as mentioned above. This feedback may be urgently provided to this Directorate before March 20th, 2016 so that we can report the correct figures of claims of agricultural income to the Honble Patna High Court. 7. This issues with the approval of Pr. DGIT(S). To date, there has been no further information on this subject. Nor is it known whether the declarations are indeed agricultural income, or whether they have sought refuge under the taxpayers may have inadvertently made data entry errors. The only statement was one made by Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh in the last week of May 2016, that there is no plan to tax agricultural income. And just yesterday, while addressing a rally of farmers in Maharashtra, Prime minister Modi also reiterated that there would be no tax on agricultural income. But that raises two questions. First, do the returns filed actually represent agricultural income? Should the onus of proving that it is indeed agricultural income rest on the assessees since there were voluntary returns filed by them? Second, if they are mis-declarations, shouldnt the minimum tax of 30 percent be levied on them along with applicable penalties as well? The government is silent. So is P. Chidambaram, who was minister of finance at the time these huge amounts were declared as agricultural income. As a result all people suffer from the consequences of demonetisation that could have been avoided by just targeting some 8 lakh people. The research pertaining to the data contained within the above piece may be found at this location Delhi: Next years National Film Awards are going to be slightly different: Along with the actors, various politicians are going to be in the running for the best actor award. All the politicians who are on record praising the decision to ban old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be in consideration for this award. This was confirmed to Faking News by a source at the directorate of film festivals. Politicians from the ruling coalition will get extra credit for their acting. We realised that we cant restrict ourselves to films alone, acting is acting, no matter where you do it. These politicians are in front of a camera, they are saying they are happy with this step against black money, this is top class acting. Even Leonardo diCaprio will give his Oscar to these guys if he sees this excellent performance, an official at the directorate said. Read the full story here New Delhi: An emergency session of the Delhi Assembly has been convened on Tuesday to discuss the "explosive" situation arising out of demonetisation, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday even as he attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his 'kadak chai' remark saying the poor was being "fed poison" instead. Kejriwal said, considering the hardship being faced by people, the Delhi government has decided to deploy civil defence volunteers who will provide citizens queueing up outside banks and ATMs with water and refreshments, while also assisting them with paper work. Sticking to his demand that demonetisation be rolled back, the AAP chief lashed out at Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying the Centre has lost "all sense of proportion due to lack of any concrete plan in executing the scheme." "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." The Delhi Chief Minister said he was pained to see people struggle for cash to buy basic necessities like food items and medicines, adding government was exploring options to arrange cooked food for those in need. "We have also asked the Divisional Commissioner to explore in the next two to three days the possibility of arranging food through 'langar's for those who are having to starve due to lack of hard cash," Kejriwal said. The Delhi Health secretary has also been directed to ensure that there is no shortage in city government-run hospitals, Kejriwal said. The Cabinet meet was attended by ministers and top officials including the Chief Secretary. He is likely to meet his Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, who has also been vociferously opposing the measure, when she arrives in New Delhi on Tuesday, Kejriwal said. "It is simply a mechanism to transfer 50 per cent of the country's total black money to BJP's accounts. The intention is UP polls. They would have arrested swiss bank account holders and manufacturers of counterfeit currency had they wanted to act against black economy," he said. Kejriwal said the Delhi government was exploring accepting Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in Delhi's pavilion at the International Trade Fair but decided against it as any such decision falls under the jurisdiction of the Centre. "The amount of corruption and black money generated in the last four days has surpassed the amount that was amassed in the last four months. The scheme has acted as a tonic for racketeers and brokers. "He (Modi) has three best friends Ambani, Adani and Sharad Pawar. He took Pawar's blessings to fight black money yesterday. There cannot be a bigger irony. "Modiji talks of arranging a wedding in Rs 24,000. How much money was spent in Jaitleyji's daughter's wedding? They spend in crores and ask us to spend Rs 24,000," he said, flashing a Rs 50 note at the end of the presser, saying "this is all what I am left with". The Delhi Chief Minister said the scheme could have been implemented in a better way and wondered why the country's 125 crore people were being targeted instead of the "few lakhs". "How are the traders going to continue their business when the withdrawal limit is so low. What about the farmers who are supposed to harvest their crop in the next one week," he asked. Mumbai: Rahul Gandhi is expected to attend the proceedings in a court in Bhiwandi, on Wednesday in a criminal defamation case filed against him for claiming, at a 2014 election rally, that the RSS had killed Mahatma Gandhi. The case against the Congress vice president was filed by a local RSS functionary. Rahul, who is scheduled to arrive in the city on Tuesday evening, will proceed to Bhiwandi in neighbouring Thane district on Wednesday morning to attend the court proceedings beginning at 10 am, Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said. "Since our leader is arriving in the city, the party workers will welcome him at the airport," he said. Addressing a rally in the run-up to the 2014 general elections in the powerloom town on the outskirts of Mumbai, Rahul had claimed, "The RSS people had killed Gandhi." He had, on 1 September, preferred to face the trial as an accused in the defamation case for his remark against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, submitting before the Supreme Court that he stood by "every word" of his statement. The Congress vice president expressed his readiness to face the trial after the apex court refused to interfere with the criminal proceedings pending against him before the trial court. Rahul then withdrew the appeal filed by him against the Bombay High Court judgment refusing to quash the defamation case and summons issued to him by the trial court. The apex court also declined Rahul's plea that he be exempted from personal appearance before the Bhiwandi court which had taken cognizance of the complaint of an RSS functionary by summoning him as an accused in the case. BEIRUT Air strikes hit two hospitals in rebel-held territory west of the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, and a number of patients and medics were wounded, a monitor and doctor said. Western countries and human rights activists have accused the air forces of the Damascus government and its Russian ally of repeatedly targeting hospitals, bread lines and other civilian infrastructure in territory controlled by the rebels. Both Moscow and Damascus have denied doing so and say their air campaign is directed against military targets belonging to the rebels, who they describe as terrorists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said warplanes pounded the town of Atareb overnight and into Monday, knocking the hospital out of service.There were five air strikes on the hospital that destroyed operations and waiting rooms and damaged ambulances in what was the fourth aerial attack on the facility this year, according to the Observatory. It was the sole hospital in Atareb and at least 60,000 people live in the town and surrounding area, it said. The strikes injured many patients, said Osama Abo Ezz, a general surgeon and Aleppo coordinator for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which partially supports the hospital. "They were at the hospital for check-ups," he said. Warplanes also hit and disabled Ansar hospital in Kafrnaha, 15 km (10 miles) from Atareb, marking the third air strike on that facility in the past month, the Observatory said.There were no initial reports of deaths in either attack. Adham Sahloul, a SAMS advocacy officer, said there have been seven attacks on hospitals in rural districts of Aleppo and Idlib provinces since Friday. While Syrian and Russian authorities have denied any deliberate targeting of hospitals, Moscow's deputy foreign minister accused rebels recently of using civilians and "so-called hospitals" as human shields and setting up medical facilities in cities without correctly marking them. Rebels, supported by Turkey, the U.S. and Gulf monarchies, are fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, whose military, backed by Russia's air force, has used jet and helicopter strikes extensively in the five-and-a-half-year war.On Monday, insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to Assad's advantage with the government tightening its grip on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo.The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, left half the country's pre-war population homeless, dragged in global powers and given space to Islamist militant groups to consolidate their organisations and plan attacks abroad. (Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. New York: President-elect Donald Trump vowed Sunday to move aggressively on a conservative agenda in filling Supreme Court vacancies, cracking down on immigration and cutting taxes, but also sought to reassure worried Americans they have nothing to fear from his presidency. Setting aside the strident tone of his campaign, the 70-year-old Trump assumed a gentler manner in his first television interview since his shock election, saying he was "saddened" by reports of harassment of Muslims and Hispanics, and telling the perpetrators: "Stop It." The interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, which was taped Friday and aired in full Sunday, offered Trump an opportunity to reintroduce himself after an ugly, name-calling campaign and surprise victory that sparked protests in cities across the United States. "I just don't think they know me," the billionaire real estate mogul said at one point, of the thousands of protesters who have massed in streets below his Trump Tower headquarters with signs that read "Not our president." Told that many Americans are scared of his presidency, Trump said: "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back." Conservative agenda On the issues, however, Trump made it clear he intends to aggressively push a right-wing agenda, pledging to name justices to the Supreme Court who are anti-abortion and pro-gun rights. "The judges will be pro-life," Trump told CBS. "In terms of the whole gun situation," he added, "they're going to be very pro-Second Amendment." He will have an immediate opportunity to fill a vacancy on the court left by the death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obama's attempt to fill the seat was blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate. On immigration, Trump reaffirmed his signature campaign pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico, although he conceded parts of it may be just a fence. And he said as many as three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or incarcerated. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers," he said. "We have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," he said. Conciliatory notes He left the door open, however, on the fate of the millions of other hard-working immigrants in the country illegally. "After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that you're talking about who are terrific people," he said. Immigration, he said, was one of three top legislative priorities he has discussed with House Speaker Paul Ryan, the others being action to undo Obama's signature health care reform and a bill to cut taxes and simplify the tax code. Trump had previously indicated he would keep some aspects of Obamacare, including a ban on insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. There were other conciliatory notes as well. He signalled that he would not seek to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. "It's law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean its done," Trump said when asked if he supports marriage equality. "And I'm I'm fine with that," he added. He also confirmed he would forego the $400,000 salary that comes with the office of US president. "I'm not going to take the salary. I'm not taking it," he said. "I think I have to by law take $1, so I'll take $1 a year," he added. Conspiracy-mongering Earlier Sunday, Trump made his first high level appointments, naming anti-establishment firebrand Steve Bannon his top strategist and top Republican Reince Priebus his White House chief of staff. The choices suggested Trump, a political novice, intends for his new administration to preserve the populist edge that won him the White House, tempered by political pragmatism. Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, is a seasoned political operative with close ties to Ryan, the House speaker. But Bannon, the campaign chairman in the final months of the Trump campaign, is CEO of the right-wing, conspiracy-mongering Breitbart News website known for withering attacks on the Republican elite. It has also likened abortions to a "Holocaust," railed against Muslim immigrants, and once advised female victims of online harassment to "just log off" and stop "screwing up the internet for men," illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child. In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump made no promises to tone down his own rhetoric as president. "I don't want to be just a little nice monotone character," he said. Newt Gingrich, a member of Trump's inner circle, said he would advise the president-elect to "swing for the fences." "This is a city which if you don't shove it as hard as you can while you have momentum, it will just surround you. I mean, the swamp doesn't want to be drained. And the swamp will just suck you in if you let it," he said on CBS's Face the Nation. Despondent Democrats are vowing resistance despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. "Our job now is to hold him accountable," said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. Trump's Win Could Halt Police Reform Efforts In Chicago By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Nov 14, 2016 7:43PM Last year's Laquan McDonald protest (Photo by Braden Nesin/Chicagoist) One of the most concrete ways that Donald Trump's presidency could affect Chicago almost overnight is in its efforts to reform its police department. The Department of Justice opened an investigation into the city's police department last year in the wake of a video showing Laquan McDonald being gunned down police. As with many aspects of his campaign, Trump has offered few specific policy details on the subject of law enforcement. During his debates with Hillary Clinton, he repeated that he was the "law and order" candidate and expressed an admiration for racist "stop and frisk" policies that have been deemed unconstitutional. But everyone is expecting big changes when Trump is sworn into office: The DOJ is about to be blown apart.I hope #Baltimore gets away from the pandering of community policing and back to focused enforcement. Tony Barksdale (@deputybarksdale) November 9, 2016 Even though Chicago's crime issues have become something of a punching bag for Republicans and Trump himself, the president-elect has said that the federal government should take a more hands-off approach to local law enforcement. In a written response to questions from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (pdf), he wrote, "National attention does not mean national involvement of the federal government. If a state or local jurisdiction asks for help from the Department of Justice or other federal agency, then my administration will assist. Otherwise, local issues should remain local." This approach would represent a 180-degree turn from the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division under Obama. His administration has used its executive power to go after local police departments accused of violating civil rights more aggressively than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bushparticularly since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson at the hands of police and the ensuing riots in 2014, according to the Guardian. Decrees that are already in place in cities like Miami, Newark and Seattle would be to reverse and would likely to continue under Trump, William Yeomans, a former senior official of the Civil Rights Division, told The Marshall Project. However, he says ongoing investigations into cities like Chicago or Baltimore could be dropped or drastically reduced in scope. This especially true given the kinds of candidates that have been shortlisted for U.S. Attorney General, like Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Yeomans told The Marshall Project, "I can't imagine anyone less sympathetic to police enforcement to Giuliani." If the current administration hurries up and finishes its report on Chicago and other cities by January, experts say it would be tough for the incoming administration to ignore. Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer tells WBEZ, "At that that point the new administration is going to have a pretty scathing report, and its going to be dumped in their lap. And its going to be pretty hard to ignore that no matter who the attorney general is." If the Obama administration doesn't finish up their report in time, that could leave Chicago's efforts at police reform in limbo. Mayor Emanuel initially balked at federal oversight before he changed his mind. That's not surprising given that Emanuel likely suppressed the release of the Laquan McDonald tape until after a bruising reelection. Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot told WBEZ that she believes reform efforts will continue no matter what happens at the DOJ. But Cramer says federal pressure is necessary to make lasting change in the department: "The Emanuel administration can try and put through certain things...but at the end of the day, its going to be hard to implement the necessary changes around police reform without a federal judge, a federal consent decree and a monitor...being implemented by the federal government." ERBIL, Iraq A mixed Kurdish and Yazidi armed force said on Monday it had dislodged Islamic State (IS) militants from five Yazidi villages west of Mosul in an offensive that began on Saturday. It coincided with a larger, ongoing Iraqi government and Kurdish offensive to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, from IS with aerial support from the U.S.-led military coalition. Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim militias are also in the Mosul campaign, battling IS to the west of the city.Islamic State overran the five villages in 2014 when it swept over Sinjar mountain and the surrounding region inhabited by Yazidis, killing, capturing and enslaving thousands from the Iraqi religious minority.U.S.-backed Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces took back Sinjar in 2015 but the area south of the mountain remained in the hands of the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants.The offensive launched by the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) aims to take back all Yazidi villages south of Sinjar, the group's administrative chief, Hassan Saeed, told Reuters. Saeed, a Yazidi, said the offensive had not been coordinated with Shi'ite militias known as the Popular Mobilisation. The YBS is affiliated with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its military operations could upset Ankara, which has said it will not allow Sinjar to become a base for the group. The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is classified as a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and the United States.Yazidis speak Kurmanji, the same language as the Kurds of Syria and Turkey. Their beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. The Nineveh region surrounding Mosul is a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities - Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, Sunnis, Shi'ites - though Sunni Arabs comprise the overwhelming majority. (Reporting by Isabel Coles in Erbil; editing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Abu Anas DHAKA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - For much of his early life on Bhola, an island in south-central Bangladesh, Mohammed Abul Kalam battled poverty and a hostile river that twice engulfed his homestead.Now, as a resident of a "bastee", or private slum on the western edge of the capital, Dhaka, he faces new challenges: the trade-offs he has made on the family's health, education and security in exchange for being near a source of work. "I came here because I found no other way," Kalam said, sitting on the floor of his tin shack.The story of how he swapped rural farming for survival in one of Dhaka's burgeoning slums on privately-owned land reflects the precarious situation of up to half a million Bangladeshis estimated to migrate to the capital each year.Kalam's journey began when the Meghna River wiped out his home for the second time, sending the family deep into debt after he borrowed $765 from moneylenders to build a new house.His neighbours told him, "Go to Dhaka", suggesting that in order to pay to marry off two teenage daughters, he would have to leave his home in Madras, on Bhola, home to more than two million people, a third of whom live below the poverty line.With empty pockets, he and his family set off on the 18-hour trip by river to the capital, where he was taken on by a garment washing factory to carry clothes in a role that was a far cry from his old life paddy farming in his village.Earning just $76 a month, Kalam struggled to make ends meet and, four months into the job, he left to take up other work demolishing buildings with a hammer and a shovel, he said.This paid a little over $6 a day but the work was irregular and eventually he had no alternative but to find work for his two eldest daughters with a garment producer in Mirpur district.There, his teenage daughters cut sewing threads and checked clothes for alterations for $51 a month - less than the industry minimum wage of $68.RURAL EXODUS Kalam and his family are not alone. According to the World Bank, each year up to half a million rural migrants stream into Dhaka for work, swelling the ranks of the urban poor.Experts say more than three-quarters of new arrivals end up living in a bastee - owned by private landlords who provide some services - as squatter settlements on public land have disappeared amid demolitions and evictions by authorities. Since Bangladesh declared independence in 1971, the city's population has quadrupled to around 20 million. By 2050, it is projected to reach more than 35 million. Three years on, life for Kalam and his family is far from comfortable. He and his wife sleep on the concrete floor of their one-room shack to leave space for four children who share a bed. The family share a toilet with 10 households and risk fire by cooking with an electric stove as they have no gas.Even a brief burst of rain sends water into the bastee, which is spread out over five acres of low-lying land."(My) sorrows have a beginning but no end. I have lost everything, but the greatest loss is my daughters' education," said Kalam, reflecting on his life in the city.PRIVATE SLUMS The family rents their room for $32 a month and the landlord takes care of some services, including electricity and water - important in a city where slum-dwellers on public land often have to pay "mastaans", powerful local figures, for utilities.Experts say the failure to re-house inhabitants evicted from homes in public settlements that have been demolished partly accounts for the boom in privately-owned slums. "Slums are being cleared, but slum dwellers stay behind - they are not leaving Dhaka," Khondker Rebaca Sun-Yat, executive director at advocacy group the Coalition for the Urban Poor (CUP), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A 2014 census found that nearly 60 percent of slums in the north and south of Dhaka are built on private land, but urban experts and rights groups estimate the figure at 80-90 percent.Sun-Yat blamed centralised development that focuses services and industries in urban areas for the rise in private slums. "Cities have sources of income. You build infrastructure in cities; how can you expect rural people not to come to cities?" she said. "If rural areas had income sources and mills and factories, people wouldn't have come to Dhaka," she said.Nevertheless, she warned that cities would "become paralysed" if slum-dwellers returned to their place of origin.The development of Dhaka reflects a wider rise in the numbers of urban poor and what economists call the "non-monetary" conditions of poverty, such as overcrowding, vulnerability, poor security and poor sanitation, experts say. In comparison to rural poverty, urban poverty is surging. The number of urban poor in Bangladesh rose to 8 million from 6 million between 1991 and 2010, the latest period for which data is available. In contrast, the number of rural poor went down in the same period, to 46 million from 55 million.Nine in 10 slum-dwellers in Dhaka were born outside the capital, while one-fifth are poor, according to initial results of a 2016 urban slum survey conducted by the World Bank. Tenure in privately-owned slums is no more secure than in public squatter settlements, according to Salma A. Shafi, treasurer of the Centre for Urban Studies, a thinktank in Dhaka."The tenants (in private slums) have no security as rents are raised according to the owner-developers' whims," she said. "Without any contractual agreement or legal support, tenants have no power."'SUB-HUMAN CONDITIONS' Mosharraf Hossain, Minister of Housing and Public Works, is among those who believe migration to urban areas of Bangladesh is now "unnecessary" as wages have risen in rural areas.He said the city was not in a position to absorb more rural migrants given the poor state of its sewerage network, which covers just two-fifths of the city's population."It's better not to have slums," Hossain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at his ministerial office in central Dhaka. "Slum people are living in sub-human conditions, near the rail lines. This is unnecessary."The government was piloting a low-cost housing project in Mirpur, which would be scaled up if successful, he said. Kalam said he was prepared to move to another private slum nearby - even for more rent - if he had to, but he did not want to leave Mirpur, where he and his daughters earn their living."I never expected my daughters to support me," he said. "Instead, I dreamed they would continue their education." (Reporting by Abu Anas, Editing by Jo Griffin; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Paul Sandle and Guy Faulconbridge | LONDON LONDON Prosecutors on Monday questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for four years, in an investigation into allegations that he committed rape in Sweden in 2010.Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing a flood of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, fled to the embassy for fear that, if extradited to Sweden, he could be sent on to the United States and face a long prison term there for leaking U.S. secrets.Swedish Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren spent around four hours in the embassy, where she posed questions through an Ecuadorian prosecutor, before leaving without making comment.Ecuador, which helped Assange avoid extradition by granting him asylum after he fled to its London legation, agreed to help Swedish prosecutors question Assange, who has denied the rape allegation."Today, after six years of offering his statement to the Swedish authorities, Julian Assange has finally been afforded the opportunity to do so," WikiLeaks said in a statement.But it complained that Assange's Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, was not notified or summoned to attend the session, and his absence was "a clear breach of process". A member of Assange's legal team, Melinda Taylor, said procrastination on the part of Swedish investigators had denied Assange any right to clear his name. "As a result of six years of delays and over four and a half years of illegal and arbitrary detention, Mr Assange is today faced with (a) Hobson's choice: either he gives a statement in which his health, memory and psychological state are severely impeded, or, he is denied once more, an opportunity to be heard," she said by email.The 45-year-old Australian has refused to go to Sweden for questioning, saying that would expose him to further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks continues.In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents in what became one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history.Assange made international headlines in early 2010 when WikiLeaks released classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. EMBASSY QUESTIONING Under conditions agreed by Ecuador, Isgren and a police investigator asked questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will then report the findings to Sweden, which will then decide whether to continue the investigation. Samuelson, Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he had been barred from the meeting. "Ecuador refuses to let me in and insists that the questioning will continue without my presence, against my client's wishes to have me there," he told Reuters.While Assange's Ecuadorean defence lawyer appeared to be present, Samuelson said he still hoped to be admitted if the interview continued. "But a good chunk of questioning has already taken place as far as I understand," he said. A Swedish appeals court decided in September to uphold Assange's arrest warrant, saying a strong public interest argument outweighed a case to set it aside based on the lengthy deadlock and a previous lack of impetus in pursuing the case.Assange's request to have the warrant overturned came after a U.N. panel assessed in February that his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy amounted to arbitrary detention, and said he should be let go and be awarded compensation.Even if Sweden drops the investigation, however, Assange could be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain. (Additional reporting by Peter Nicholls and Daniel Dickson; editing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. For the past several days several cities of the United States of America have erupted in protests. In cities as varied as New York, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, St Louis, Philadelphia, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago and many others, thousands of marchers have joined processions running for several miles. These protestors, while carrying banners expressing myriad opinions yet united by the F word prefixing the rest of the slogan, have appeared odd as they gave vent to Donald Trump, just elected at the end of the bitterest presidential contest in American history. Public display of disapproval of the President-elect that began within hours of the stunning verdict on 9 November is now slated to continue at least till his inauguration in January and maybe even beyond as protestors ire shift from his election to policies in office. When I first heard about the first protests and that people had marched through American cities with banners proclaiming Not My President and others expressing similar stance, my first reaction was to wonder about the futility of the exercise. Subsequent slogans that began with the F word and ended with the displayers-choose-the-rest combinations: raging from Trump, Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, the police, the electoral vote system, and even you; reflected impotent rage of the Trumps opponents, maybe even, admirers of Hillary Clinton (many held signs #ImStillWithHer) because there was no way they could reverse the process. As a Wall Street Journal journalist wondered where do these protests go from here? and concluded that it is tough not to see the angry lot end up as a fizzle and burn out like a shooting star, I still held a candle for this indomitable spirit of dissenters in democracy. While deliberating over this piece for the past few days, I recalled ironically a line of reasoning put forward by a person least expected to come to assistance while untying complex issues of democracy and dissidence and that too in the immediacy of an electoral verdict: Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2012 when I was interviewing him for my book on him, Modi said: In democracy the ultimate goal of protest is to spread lok siksha (peoples political awareness or education). And that has to be basic goal. This is not the angrez sultanat (foreign rule) that every public action must be an agitation. Making people aware should be the basic aim. It is not necessary that every agitation should be successful it is not necessary that all the time there will be so much anger against our own government all the time but this process every time will educate people. The process of political awareness building is a continuous process and this must continue. Using Modis logic, the protests, despite not being an organised effort, and that the actual opposition to the Trump presidency will come from the development in the Democratic Party, who is elected as the partys National Committee chairperson and the partys ability to assess how it chose the wrong candidate and allowed a campaign to become Trump-centric, has a social and political purpose. This purpose underlines that democracy gives each citizen the right to question the collective mandate within moments of its being delivered. Only, care must be taken that opposition should not violate the rule of law and be subversive. Trumps immediate reaction was that of a leader satiated in triumph. He tweeted: Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair! He forgot that in 2012, after President Barack Obama was re-elected, an incensed Trump took to Twitter: We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided! Probably his campaign team now reminded him of past indiscretion and consequently, a day later Trump sent a placatory Tweet: Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud! We may have reasons for holding a diminishing view of America as a democracy and an even poorer opinion of its people and leaders, including the one who has just become a President-elect. But, the public stance to allow and accept dissent (as displayed by Trump) holds lessons for every political leader and party in India who owe their positions to the democratic wisdom of the people. Yet, they neither conduct affairs of their parties on democratic lines nor are willing people the right to grant people their right to protest or criticise. Because it runs the government with a clear majority of its own and because he is the most powerful premier of India in recent decades, Modi and his party must be more open to criticism and not slam every public protest as anti-national. Because he is comparatively a more public prime minister than most of his predecessors, and because he loses no opportunity to publicise his programmes and initiatives besides attacking adversaries, he too must accept the right of other parties and people to voice disagreement with government policy. Criticism must be seen as an opportunity to strengthen ones defences to ward off accusations and also as a form of safety-valve to ensure that pent-up steam is released without attracting charges of treason. It will only be good for the countrys democratic health and ensure that subversion is not considered as the only way to oppose the system. If the right to protest is considered legitimate, even contrarians will realise that protests have a limited purpose. The writer is a Delhi-based writer and journalist. He authored Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times and Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984. Twitter handle: @NilanjanUdwin By Patrick Johnston | SYDNEY SYDNEY From Beijing to Berlin, star gazers around the world admired the supermoon - the largest, brightest full moon in nearly seven decades - as it made its way across the skies on Sunday and Monday.In Australia, some sky-watchers climbed to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to get a closer view of the moon as it ducked between the clouds over the city. Astronomers said it was closer to Earth than at any time since 1948. The supermoon, also known as a blood moon, was produced when the shadow of Earth cast a reddish glow on the moon, the result of a rare combination of an eclipse with the closest full moon of the year. For more than an hour on Sunday night and early on Monday morning, Earths shadow blanketed the full moon as the planet passed between the sun and the moon.The brilliant white glow of the moon slowly transformed into a dim red, a coloring caused by Earths atmosphere scattering sunlight into the shadow. "I think the last time I can remember this sort of (activity) is when I was very small, when Hale-Bopp came. Back then my parents took me (to watch)," said Hsieh Wei-Ting, 36, who lined up with scores of people in Taipei to look at the moon through telescopes in the Taiwanese capital. "It was like climbing a mountain to look at the stars." In New York City, the Chrysler Building lit up when the supermoon set behind the Art Deco-style skyscraper, and photographers captured the moon rising over the U.S. Capitol dome in Washington D.C.In Boston, real estate agent Jamie Iacoi filmed video from his roof deck on Sunday. "At one point, the planes were flying right through the middle of the moon. It was so cool to see in person," Iacoi said.Spectators lined up in France, Israel and Germany to watch the moon rise behind famous monuments like the Eiffel Tower, Dormition Abbey, and the Brandenburg Gate. The full moon also shone over Jakarta in Indonesia and Thailand's Bangkok while in the Philippines, park-goers watched the spectacle in Manila.The next supermoon-lunar eclipse combination will not happen until 2033. (Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Patrick Johnston in Singapore and Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Tom Perry | BEIRUT BEIRUT Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border on Monday as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to President Bashar al-Assad's advantage with the government tightening its grip on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, sources on both sides and a group that reports on the war said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said headquarters and checkpoints held by the Levant Front had been seized in the fighting, which a Levant Front official said had forced the group to withdraw some fighters from a battle with Islamic State in the nearby city of al-Bab.The fighting in Azaz, some 60 km (35 miles) north of Aleppo, also prompted Turkey, which backs a number of FSA rebel groups, to close the border crossing at Oncupinar. Adjacent to Bab al-Salam in Syria, it is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey.Rebel officials described the fighting as a blow to the opposition in the Aleppo region. Many of the insurgent groups operating in the Azaz area also have a presence in eastern Aleppo, where rebel groups had also clashed on Nov 2.The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes and Shi'ite militias including Lebanon's Hezbollah have been waging a fierce campaign against the insurgents in the city, before the war the country's most populous. MAJOR WEAKNESS Rebel infighting has been a major weakness of the anti-Assad revolt since its earliest days. Rebel factions have been divided by both ideology and local power struggles. Jihadist groups have crushed less well-armed nationalist factions, while Islamists have also fought each other, notably in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus this year. Sources on opposing sides of Monday's fighting gave different accounts of events.The Levant Front official described it as an attack on his group by rivals including the Nour al-Din al-Zinki faction, which also fights under the FSA banner but has coordinated closely with Islamist groups. He called the confrontation a potentially lethal blow to the rebellion.A source on the other side of the conflict said groups including Ahrar al-Sham and the Zinki group had launched a campaign to "cleanse" northern Syria of groups that were guilty of acting like gangs. A statement declaring the start of the campaign identified targets including the leader of the Levant Front and the head of its security office. Earlier this month, rebel factions clashed in eastern Aleppo itself. In that clash, the Zinki group and the allied jihadist Jabhat Fateh al-Sham tried to crush the Fastaqim faction, which is part of the FSA. Fateh al-Sham changed its name from the Nusra Front in July and said it was breaking its formal allegiance to al Qaeda. Officials from Ahrar al-Sham did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Syrian army and its allies have completely encircled eastern Aleppo this year, and in September launched a major campaign aimed at seizing the insurgent-held areas.Rebels launched a counter attack last month, aimed at the city's government-held western districts. But that has failed, with the army and its allies on Saturday recapturing the last piece of territory they had lost. (Writing by Tom Perry; editing by John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Washington: President-elect Donald Trump is in for a quick wake-up call and will have to adjust his temperament when he confronts the realities of his new job on 20 January, President Barack Obama said on Monday. In a news conference at the White House, Obama said the freewheeling Trump could not be as outspoken as he was during the long and bitter campaign that ended last week with the Republican's surprise win over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Subdued and carefully choosing his words, Obama gave what appeared to be dispassionate advice to his successor free of much of the partisan rancour that marked the election campaign. "This office has a way of waking you up," Obama said. "Those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick because reality has a way of asserting itself." The two men met in the Oval Office last week to begin the transition of power. Obama said on Monday he believed Trump would be pragmatic in office and not approach the country's problems from an ideological perspective. "There are going to be certain elements of his temperament that will not serve him well, unless he recognises them and corrects them," Obama said. "Because when you're a candidate and you say something that is inaccurate or controversial it has less impact than it does when you're president of the United States. Everybody around the world is paying attention. Markets move," he said. Obama declined to wade into a controversy over Trump's appointment of right-wing firebrand Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist, saying it would "not be appropriate" for him to comment on Trump's appointments. But Obama, who criticized Trump's temperament during the campaign, said it was important for Trump to send signals of unity after the hard-fought campaign. He said the political gifts that allowed the Republican to execute his upset of Clinton would be put to good use in the White House."I've been encouraged by his statements on election night about the need for unity, his interest in being president for all people," Obama said. "In an election like this that was so hotly contested and so divided, gestures matter." Anger on Bannon's appointment Democrats, civil rights groups and even some Republicans slammed Trump for choosing Bannon as a key aide, saying it would elevate the white nationalist movement into the top levels of the White House. Making his first appointments since last week's upset win, Trump picked Bannon as his chief strategist and counsellor, and Washington insider Reince Priebus as his chief of staff on Sunday, saying the two would share the task of steering his administration as "equal partners." The choice of Priebus was seen as a conciliatory signal of Trump's willingness to work with Congress. But critics blasted the selection of Bannon, who spearheaded a shift of the Breitbart News website into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online group of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites."There should be no sugarcoating the truth here: Donald Trump just invited a white nationalist into the highest reaches of the government," said Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who called on Trump to rescind the choice. Democrats and advocacy groups on the left called Bannon a promoter of racism and misogyny who is backed by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. The Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said Bannon's appointment sent "an alarming signal that President-elect Trump remains committed to the hateful and divisive vision that defined his campaign." Even some conservatives and Republicans voiced dismay on Bannon. Evan McMullin, who ran as a conservative independent presidential candidate, wondered on Twitter if any national Republican leaders would condemn the pick of "anti-Semite" Bannon. John Weaver, a top strategist for Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich, tweeted that the "racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America." Kasich was one of 16 Republican presidential hopefuls Trump defeated in the party primaries. Priebus defended Bannon on Monday, calling him a wise and well-educated former naval officer and saying he had not encountered the sort of extremist or racist views that critics are assailing. "He was a force for good on the campaign," Priebus said on Fox News, adding they were in agreement on "almost everything" in terms of advising the president-elect. Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager and a senior adviser, told reporters in New York she was offended by the reaction to Bannon. She described him as a "brilliant tactician." Fervent Trump backers counting on the wealthy real estate developer to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders may be disappointed he has named Priebus as chief of staff, a position that serves as gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president. Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, over the past year led Breitbart News in a charge against the Republican Party establishment, including Priebus' friend Paul Ryan, the speaker of the US House of Representatives. Police in New York on Monday were investigating two cases involving swastikas drawn or painted in public spaces, as civil rights activists said there had been a surge in hate crimes following last week's election. Local media reported hundreds of students walked out of a high school to protest Trump on Monday in Silver Spring, Maryland, and students gathered at the University of Washington in Seattle to protest Trump. The president-elect, a businessman who has never held public office, and his transition team are working on picking members of his Cabinet and the heads of federal agencies. Among those reported to be under consideration for top posts are former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as a possible secretary of state or secretary of health and human services; Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W Bush, as a possible defence secretary; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as attorney general; and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as interior secretary. By Susan Cornwell and Alana Wise | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Democrats, civil rights groups and even some Republicans slammed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday for choosing right-wing firebrand Stephen Bannon as a key aide, saying it would elevate the white nationalist movement into the top levels of the White House.Making his first appointments since last week's upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump picked Bannon as his chief strategist and counsellor, and Washington insider Reince Priebus as his chief of staff on Sunday, saying the two would share the task of steering his administration as "equal partners."The choice of Priebus was seen as a conciliatory signal of Trump's willingness to work with Congress after he takes office on Jan. 20. But critics blasted the selection of Bannon, who spearheaded a shift of the Breitbart News website into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online group of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites."There should be no sugarcoating the truth here: Donald Trump just invited a white nationalist into the highest reaches of the government," said Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who called on Trump to rescind the choice.Democrats and advocacy groups on the left called Bannon a promoter of racism and misogyny who is backed by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan."It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the alt-right- a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists - is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house'," said Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League.The Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said Bannon's appointment sent "an alarming signal that President-elect Trump remains committed to the hateful and divisive vision that defined his campaign."Even some conservatives and Republicans voiced dismay. Evan McMullin, who ran as a conservative independent presidential candidate, wondered on Twitter if any national Republican leaders would condemn the pick of "anti-Semite" Bannon.John Weaver, a top strategist for Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich, tweeted that the "racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America." Kasich was one of 16 Republican presidential hopefuls Trump defeated in the party primaries ahead of last Tuesday's election.Priebus defended Bannon on Monday, calling him a wise and well-educated former naval officer and saying he had not encountered the sort of extremist or racist views that critics are assailing. "He was a force for good on the campaign," Priebus said on Fox News, adding they were in agreement on "almost everything" in terms of advising the president-elect.Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager and a senior adviser, told reporters in New York she was offended by the reaction to Bannon. She described him as a "brilliant tactician" who was the general in charge of Trump's campaign.Hardline Trump backers counting on the wealthy real estate developer to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders may be disappointed he has named Priebus as chief of staff, a position that serves as gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president.TRUMP MANAGEMENT STYLE Throughout his career Trump has often pitted competing staff factions against each other to get a wide range of views. "He likes taking opinions from a lot of different people. He's not a person who just listens to one person and does whatever that one person says. He decides," Priebus said on NBC's "Today Show."The early stages of Trump's unorthodox presidential campaign were marked by frequent clashes between Paul Manafort, an experienced political insider, and brash manager Corey Lewandowski. Both eventually resigned.Since the election, Trump has softened one of his major campaign promises of building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. In an interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Trump said he would accept some fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall.Trump also sought to play down the divisive nature of his candidacy and said Americans alarmed by his election had nothing to fear. "Don't be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. But certainly, don't be afraid," he said. Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, over the past year led Breitbart News in a charge against the Republican Party establishment, including Priebus' friend Paul Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.The Breitbart attacks on Ryan continued on Sunday, with an article denouncing Ryan's comment on CNN that "we are not planning on erecting a deportation force.""Speaker Ryan is now telling voters that he will not enact a central part of Trump's mandate," a Breitbart article said.In the "60 Minutes" interview, Trump said he would move to deport up to 3 million immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records.Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets for a fifth straight day on Sunday to protest against Trump. Police in New York on Monday were investigating two cases involving swastikas drawn or painted in public spaces, as civil rights activists said there had been a surge in hate crimes following last week's election.The president-elect, a businessman who has never held public office, and his transition team are working on picking members of his Cabinet and the heads of federal agencies.Among those reported to be under consideration for top posts are former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as a possible secretary of state or secretary of health and human services; Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush, as a possible defence secretary; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as attorney general; and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as interior secretary. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Peter Cooney, Bernadette Baum and Frances Kerry) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Angus McDowall and Tom Perry | BEIRUT BEIRUT Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were poised to begin an assault to try to drive Islamic State from the Syrian city of al-Bab, two of their commanders said on Monday, a battle that could also prompt new fighting with Kurdish groups that are competing for the area.Further escalation in the complex, multi-sided conflict in northern Syria has the potential to undermine a campaign supported by an international coalition led by the United States to oust Islamic State from its Syrian capital of Raqqa.Al-Bab is fast becoming a major faultline in the war in northern Syria, bringing Free Syrian Army rebels backed by Turkish armour closer than ever to frontlines held by the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies in nearby Aleppo."There is nothing between us and al-Bab," said one of the rebels, a commander in one of the groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner taking part in the Turkey-backed Euphrates Shield operation in north Syria that began in August."If not in hours then in a very few days we will be inside al-Bab," the commander told Reuters, declining to be identified. The Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday cited residents saying areas surrounding al-Bab were being struck by Turkish and FSA artillery. Another FSA commander who identified himself by the nom de guerre, Abu Assad Dabiq, said rebels were less than 3 km (2 miles) away.The main struggle in Syria's civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite militias against Sunni rebels backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies. They are all fighting against Islamic State. Further complicating the warfare in northern Syria, Turkey and the FSA rebel groups it backs are also set against a Kurdish-dominated alliance of militias that has fought Islamic State since 2015 and recently began a campaign to take Raqqa. GOVERNMENT ALLIES' WARNING Al-Bab is located 30 km (19 miles) south of Syria's border with Turkey and the same distance from Aleppo, meaning its capture could help rebels to advance against pro-government forces besieging their comrades inside the city. The city of al-Bab had a population of 63,000 before the war according to a 2004 census by Syria's Central Bureau of Statistics and is a hub for major roads in the region north of Aleppo. "God willing with the capture of al-Bab, we will be on the outskirts of the (Aleppo) industrial zone and the outskirts of the Kweiras air port, and the outskirts of the infantry college, meaning in direct contact with the regime," the rebel commander, who declined to be identified, said. However, allies of the Syrian government late last month warned Turkey against an advance towards their positions to the north and east of Aleppo, saying any such move would be met "decisively and with force".The Syrian government is backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militia. Al-Bab also sits between two Kurdish-ruled enclaves and its capture would thwart Kurdish ambitions to join them, something some Syrian Kurds regard as necessary to advance their goal of protecting Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria.While Turkey's launch of the Euphrates Shield campaign in August was partly aimed at pushing Islamic State from border areas after the jihadist group shelled Turkish towns, it was also intended to prevent the Kurdish enclaves from joining. RAQQA CAMPAIGN Ankara regards the main Kurdish militia group YPG as being an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey and is listed by the United States and European Union as a terrorist group. The YPG and allied groups have also tried to advance towards al-Bab in recent months from their two enclaves to the west and east but remain about 20 km away on each side. The YPG is the strongest element of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed alliance of armed groups fighting against Islamic State which last week began an offensive against territory held by the jihadist group north of Raqqa. Turkey and the YPG have both insisted that the other should have no part in the Raqqa campaign. The push against Raqqa has already been complicated by concerns that the central role of Kurds in the battle for the mostly Arab city would play into Islamic State propaganda. Last week, the Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa, one of the few Arab groups involved in the fighting in that area said it would not take part in the campaign because there were too few Arabs involved. "We are not satisfied that the campaign should start this way," Mahmoud al-Hadi, head of the group's political office, told Reuters. Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, the spokeswoman for the SDF's Raqqa offensive, in comments to reporters on a social networking site on Saturday said she believed there were "sufficient" Arabs taking part in the campaign. The United States has said Arabs must play the central role in any push to take Raqqa.Turkey has also said that after the Euphrates Shield operation captures al-Bab, it will target Manbij, a city 40 km to the east that has been held by forces allied to the SDF for months. That could prompt a much wider escalation between Turkey and Kurdish groups that could in turn foil efforts by the United States to orchestrate an SDF assault on Islamic State in Raqqa."As for what is happening in al-Bab, it has an impact one way or another on our campaign," said Ahmed of the Raqqa offensive. (Reporting By Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, editing by Peter Millership) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. When a 3,000-year-old bronze wine vessel was shown at an exhibition in Shanghai last year, it drew a large number of viewers. Workers inspect the Min Fanglei, a 3,000-year-old bronze wine vessel, in 2014. The vessel was to be reunited with its lid after being separated for about 90 years. It was unearthed in the Hunan province in the 1920s and was traded abroad. [Photo / China Daily] A year before that, the ceremonial vessel, known as the Min Fanglei, returned to its birthplace in Central China's Hunan province to reunite with its lid after being separated for about 90 years. Unearthed around 1922 by a villager, the vessel was the subject of several transactions. It was traded abroad and changed hands among dealers and private collectors. The lid has been at Hunan Provincial Museum in Changsha since the 1950s. The vessel was scheduled for a Christie's auction in New York in April 2014. A group of Chinese buyers from Hunan acquired the bronze in a closed-door deal with its European owner on the condition that it would be donated to the museum. The price was reportedly in the millions of US dollars, but the exact figure was not revealed. Tan Guobin, one of the Chinese buyers, told China Daily after the deal that the transaction price was thought to be lower than bids would have been if the auction had proceeded. The return of the bronze is an example of public institutions and private collectors working together to bring Chinese cultural relics back home. The past five years have seen an increase in the number of Chinese buyers bidding for Chinese antiques at major auctions in New York, London, Paris and elsewhere. Their participation in the global art market has not only pushed up the prices of Chinese art, but has also drawn government and public attention to lost treasures. A ban by the State Administration of Cultural Relics on the auction of stolen, smuggled or looted cultural relics underscores the official stance denying the legitimacy of such commercial transactions. One result is that Chinese buyers may become more cautious when making bids overseas. Ji Tao, an art market researcher at Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said the administration needs to further clarify what "looted" artifacts are. Some objects remain with the offspring of those who took them, while others have been traded numerous times and have been acquired by their current owners through lawful deals, he said. He added that looted objects, such as those robbed from Beijing's Old Summer Palace by British and French forces during the Second Opium War, account for a small part of the Chinese antiques available on the international market. The bulk were exported through legitimate transactions. Many Chinese artifacts that were stolen are part of museums and galleries worldwide. Unless they are offered at auction, their return home is highly unlikely, Ji said. As the quintessential 'woman in cheongsam', television royalty Chen Shu wants to be known for her versatility, writes Raymond Zhou. Chen Shu's upcoming role is that of a queen in a lavish costume drama. [Photo / China Daily] Chen Shu is hailed by many in China as "the most beautiful woman in cheongsam". Over the past decade, she has been associated with roles in television hits that required her to wear the Mandarin gown popularized in early 20th-century Shanghai. Chen, 39, could well rest on her laurels of period drama set in that recent past, where her beauty and elegance are guaranteed to impress, but her versatility easily transcends that retro style. She has surprised many by venturing into contemporary drama, playing Huang Lei's first love in the latest hit drama A Love for Separation. "Can you imagine I have never played in costume dramas set in ancient times?" she asks. With her dance background, she can bring something special to fantasy tales popular with today's youth. Her upcoming role in such a series is that of a queen, and she projects at once grandness and subtlety with sometimes a mere look and at other times with slow, dancelike movements. She is mesmerizing in a way Turandot casts her spell over Calaf in the classic opera story. The production has wrapped up recently. "I can't wait for audience reaction," she enthuses. "It will hit the screen in summer 2017." Samsung Electronics and Harman International Industries, Incorporated, popular for its connected car solutions today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Samsung will acquire HARMAN for $112.00 per share in cash, or total equity value of approximately $8.0 billion. This is the biggest overseas acquisition ever by a South Korean firm. HARMAN said that approximately 65% of its $7.0 billion of reported sales during the 12 months ended September 30, 2016 are automotive-related. After the deal, Samsung will gain significant presence in Connected Car market, particularly automotive electronics, which has been a strategic priority for the company. Samsung said that it expects the combination to deliver significant growth opportunities and benefits to customers by leveraging Samsungs and HARMANs complementary technologies, resulting in increased market penetration across important end markets. Upon closing, HARMAN will operate as a standalone Samsung subsidiary, and continue to be led by Dinesh Paliwal and HARMANs current management team. The agreement has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. After approval by HARMAN shareholders, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, the deal is is expected to close in mid-2017. Commenting on the latest acquisition, Oh-Hyun Kwon, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Samsung Electronics, said: HARMAN perfectly complements Samsung in terms of technologies, products and solutions, and joining forces is a natural extension of the automotive strategy we have been pursuing for some time. As a Tier 1 automotive supplier with deep customer relationships, strong brands, leading technology and a recognized portfolio of best-in-class products, HARMAN immediately establishes a strong foundation for Samsung to grow our automotive platform. Dinesh Paliwal is a proven global leader and, in our extensive discussions, we have developed deep respect for him, his strong senior leadership team and HARMANs talented employees. HARMANs sustained track record of rapid growth fueled by technology leadership and an unmatched automotive order pipeline reflects its commitment to innovation and customers. Dinesh Paliwal, HARMAN Chairman, President and CEO, said: This compelling all-cash transaction will deliver significant and immediate value to our shareholders and provide new opportunities for our employees as part of a larger, more diversified company. Todays announcement is a testament to what we have achieved and the value that we have created for shareholders. Samsung is an ideal partner for HARMAN and this transaction will provide tremendous benefits to our automotive customers and consumers around the world. Combining Samsungs strengths in leading-edge displays, connectivity and processing solutions with HARMANs technology leadership and long-standing customer relationships will enable OEMs to provide new offerings for their customers. Partnerships and scale are essential to winning over the long term in automotive as demand for robust connected car and autonomous driving solutions increases at a rapid pace. This transaction will bring HARMAN and Samsungs complementary strengths together to accelerate innovation in this space. More broadly, this investment underscores the strength of HARMANs employees, as well as our success and leadership across our markets. We look forward to working together with Samsung to elevate experiences for consumers worldwide. Source Will Donald Trump follow through on his threat to shut down imports from Mexico? Right now, it's not clear exactly what kinds of programs President-elect Trump will choose to push once he takes office, or how far he'll be able to get with some of his more outside-the-box ideas. It seems pretty clear, though, that he'll try to deliver in some way on one of his most frequently repeated promises: to renegotiate or dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If he succeeds, that will be a costly headache for Ford Motor Company (F 0.22%), General Motors (GM 0.26%), and just about all of the other big global automakers. Here's why. What Trump has promised to do about NAFTA First, let's look at what President-elect Trump might try to do. In his 7-point trade plan, Trump said that if elected, he would: Tell NAFTA partners that we intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. If they don't agree to a renegotiation, we will submit notice that the U.S. intends to withdraw from the deal. Eliminate Mexico's one-side backdoor tariff through the VAT and end sweatshops in Mexico that undercut U.S. workers. Trump also famously castigated automakers generally and Ford in particular for building new factories in Mexico and not in the United States. He even suggested that he'd try to enact a 35% tax on vehicles imported from Mexico. One way or another, it seems clear that Trump will try to end free trade between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. That means (again, if he's successful) that vehicles coming into the U.S. from Mexico would face a tariff -- probably a steep one. That would disrupt a lot of commerce and affect a lot of automakers. There are a lot of vehicles coming into the U.S. from Mexico Since official reports of exports and imports are tallied in terms of financial value, it can be hard to tell exactly how many cars and trucks are imported into the U.S. from other countries. But we know there are a lot of them: According to figures from the Mexican Automotive Industry Association, about 79% of the 2.9 million vehicles built in Mexico this year through October were exported. About 86% of those exports, just under 2 million, went to North America, and the vast majority of those were sent to the U.S. There are more coming: According to a recent report from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), new factories under construction in Mexico will push the country's total production capacity over 5 million vehicles a year sometime in 2018. Those factories are getting built because right now, it makes very good business sense for American automakers to build cars and trucks in Mexico and then import them into the U.S. Why automakers have been building factories in Mexico The list of auto factories in Mexico is a long one, and it has been growing quickly in recent years. Just since 2014, Mazda, Honda, Volkswagen and Audi, and Hyundai, and Kia have all opened plants in Mexico. There are more on the way: Ford, Nissan, BMW, Volvo, and Toyota all have Mexican factories under construction or in the works now. They'll join GM, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCAU), and other vehicle manufacturers that have had factories in Mexico for several years. But why Mexico? Lower-cost labor is part of the story, but there's quite a bit more to it: Free trade with other countries: Thanks to free-trade deals, exports from Mexico are exempt from tariffs in 44 other countries, including the European Union (counted as one "country"), versus just 20 from the United States. That makes it an appealing base for any company that wants to produce goods (global small-car models, for instance) for export. Thanks to free-trade deals, exports from Mexico are exempt from tariffs in 44 other countries, including the European Union (counted as one "country"), versus just 20 from the United States. That makes it an appealing base for any company that wants to produce goods (global small-car models, for instance) for export. Free trade with the U.S. -- and easy shipping: One of those 44 countries is the world's second-largest auto market, the United States. Because it shares a huge border with Mexico, shipping vehicles from Mexican factories to U.S. dealers is relatively simple and inexpensive. One of those 44 countries is the world's second-largest auto market, the United States. Because it shares a huge border with Mexico, shipping vehicles from Mexican factories to U.S. dealers is relatively simple and inexpensive. Lower-cost, but highly qualified, workers: Yes, Mexican workers are paid less, averaging a little over $8 an hour in wages and benefits while their American counterparts make about $46. But they're also well-qualified: Mexico has made huge strides toward an educated workforce, with over 90,000 engineers and technicians graduating annually. Yes, Mexican workers are paid less, averaging a little over $8 an hour in wages and benefits while their American counterparts make about $46. But they're also well-qualified: Mexico has made huge strides toward an educated workforce, with over 90,000 engineers and technicians graduating annually. Robust existing infrastructure: The number of factories already operating in Mexico means the country has a rich network of suppliers, logistics companies, and other resources that automakers seek. Mexico also has good deep-water ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, facilitating longer-distance exports. Long story short: If you're manufacturing vehicles that can be sold in many global markets -- in particular, small cars, small SUVs, and heavy trucks -- and you do business in the U.S., there's a strong business case for building those vehicles in Mexico. But that business case changes in a hurry if NAFTA goes away and the U.S. imposes tariffs on Mexican-made vehicles. How a tariff would put Mexican-made cars at a huge disadvantage in the U.S. While Mexico's free-trade agreements and established infrastructure are a big part of why automakers are attracted to Mexico, the cost advantage is real. But it might not be as large as you think. Here's a real-world example. For a while, Ford built Fusions for the U.S. market in two factories, one in Michigan and one in Mexico. Not everything is cheaper in Mexico: Labor and locally made parts cost less, but some other things (including shipping to U.S. dealers) cost more. Overall, CAR estimated that the Fusions built in Mexico cost Ford $1,200 less per car than the ones built in Michigan. That difference in cost is profit for Ford -- or looked at another way, it's margin that Ford can use to price the Fusion more aggressively, as it is doing now. At the moment, competition in the Fusion's segment (midsize sedans) is fierce. The Fusion's average transaction price is about $22,500 right now, according to J.D. Power data made available to The Motley Fool. That's still higher than the average of the Fusion's competitors (about $21,800), reflecting Ford's pricing discipline and the fact that the Fusion was recently revamped. But Ford probably isn't making a ton of money on Fusions at that price, even Mexican-built ones. Profit margins on individual products are closely held secrets, but we can estimate that Ford's overall profit margin on the Fusion is probably around 8% right now, or in the neighborhood of $1,800 per car. (Its profit margins on smaller vehicles are almost certainly thinner.) A 35% tariff would add an average of $7,875 per car, leaving Ford deep in the hole. Ford can't just pass that on to consumers, because the Fusion competes (fiercely) with vehicles made in the U.S. and elsewhere. Even adding a few thousand dollars to its price would drop it out of consideration for a lot of potential buyers. So, why can't Ford just live with the $1,200-per-car cost disadvantage and make those Fusions in the U.S.? Why the Detroit automakers don't want to build new U.S. factories The short answer is that Ford doesn't have room: Most of Ford's U.S. factories, and those of its rivals, are running near full capacity. Most are making (more profitable) trucks, SUVs, or luxury vehicles. (Ford no longer makes Fusions in Michigan; that assembly line now builds more-profitable Lincoln Continentals instead.) If Ford was forced to build Fusions in the U.S., it would have to build a new factory. But here's the thing about auto factories: They cost a lot of money no matter how busy they are, and the market for new cars is cyclical. It can cost a billion dollars or more to build a new auto factory -- but that's just the beginning. The industry rule of thumb is that an auto factory becomes profitable when it's at or over 80% of "capacity," which in the industry's lingo means two shifts working five days a week. Most of Ford's (and GM's and Fiat Chrysler's) U.S. factories are at or above capacity right now because the U.S. new-car market is very strong. That's why Detroit's profit margins in North America have been so high. But it won't last. Remember, history shows us that the new-car market is cyclical. In fact, we're probably past the peak of the current cycle, which means sales (and therefore production) will drop at some point. By limiting the number of factories it operates, and running them flat-out when times are good, Ford (and GM and the others) can keep most of them above that break-even line when sales drop, as they do in a recession. If the recession is prolonged or severe enough, some will fall below that 80%-of-capacity break-even line. When that happens, a U.S. factory will lose more money per day than a Mexican factory, because its fixed costs (including labor) are higher. Also, because of Mexico's network of free-trade agreements, it's possible that Ford (or whoever) could keep a Mexican factory above break-even during a steep U.S. recession by building products for export to some of those 43 other markets with which Mexico has free-trade deals. That's harder to do from the United States. The upshot: An end to NAFTA would be expensive and disruptive To sum up: Right now, if the automakers are going to build factories to supply the U.S. market, it makes much more sense to build them in Mexico instead of the U.S. Changing that by taxing vehicles imported from Mexico, as President-elect Trump has said he will do, would force the automakers to spend billions on new U.S. factories, depleting their cash reserves and exacerbating their losses when the economy turns south. It would increase the costs of manufacturing small and midsize mass-market vehicles for the U.S. market. Some of those costs would be passed on to consumers, making the least-expensive new vehicles more expensive than they are now. On the other hand, it would create U.S. manufacturing jobs -- assuming the automakers don't find ways to bring the cars in from elsewhere, or to increase the use of automation in their existing factories. Will it be worth it? We may find out. Over the 2016 holiday season, both Target (TGT 0.21%) and Wal-Mart (WMT -0.45%) have doubled down on the idea that people will place orders online and pick them up in store. Both are trying to improve the process with dedicated staff, but the question is how big demand will be aside from the holidays. In this clip from Industry Focus: Consumer Goods, host Vincent Shen is joined by Motley Fool contributing writer Daniel Kline to dig into some of the facts behind this growing customer-service method. The two look at the opportunity and debate whether the idea has any merit outside of the holiday season. A full transcript follows the video. This podcast was recorded on Nov. 8, 2016. Vince Shen: A somewhat related topic around in-store pickup, and how some of the more traditional big-box retailers are leveraging this, I want to touch on this, again, related to the growing popularity of this delivery method for customers. About 20% of Americans, in a PwC survey, say they use in-store pickup on a regular basis, which really surprised me. About half of the survey respondents use in-store pickup occasionally. So some of these traditional big-box retailers -- think Wal-Mart, think Target-- they have to deal with a lot of the challenges of integrating ship-to-store, in-store pickup capabilities into their established retail layouts. So, thinking of, how you optimize your staffing, how you store your inventory, how you separate your work spaces. But I would argue that [Amazon.com] has an advantage here, in that they're building their stores around this concept. Dan Kline: They are. The chief person for this is either the person who feels their product is going to get stolen if it's delivered to their door, or, in the case of where I've used pick-up in-store at Target, when my wife wanted to pick up the sheets at our vacation condo, but have me pick them up. So she ordered them in Connecticut; I picked them up in Florida, same day. Now, what Target's doing to facilitate this is, they're going to have dedicated personnel, at least for the holiday season, devoted to doing this, because the problem with pickup in-store has been, it's a bit like when you go to Panera Bread and they have the Order Ahead, yet no two stores do it the same way, and you never know where your bagel is. So you walk into Target, and basically, you were a pioneer doing something that the person behind the counter didn't necessarily know the procedure for. Maybe it was in the layaway area, maybe it was in the set-aside area, maybe they had to go pick it off the store shelves. So absolutely, they have stepped up how they do this, but I do think it's something that -- the holiday season, it makes a lot of sense. You need things faster; you want gifts when you want them. If it's the hot TV, you want to make sure you have already ordered it so you don't go to the store and have it be out. But is there really a huge demand for this in August? Shen: OK. So, you mentioned some of the potential top- and bottom-line impact. Jeremy Bowman, one of our Fool.com contributors, he has a really interesting piece on some of these developments that we've discussed at Amazon. He dug a little deeper into the numbers to estimate what the potential financial impact a 2,000-store network could have for the company. He uses some comparable metrics and numbers from leading grocery chain Kroger. The idea is, 2,000 locations, assuming about 30,000 square feet of retail space, and what Kroger can generate per square foot, currently, in sales -- it's about $40 billion of grocery revenue. So I think, in the last 12 months, Amazon has had about $120 billion in revenue. So that's significant. Granted, this would be over many, many years in order to get to that. Kline: And what's the margin on that? Shen: Exactly. That's, I think, the point that Jeremy really hits -- significant addition to the top line, but in terms of those razor-thin margins, think 2%-3% for the grocery industry overall. That's adding less than $1 billion to the bottom line while using those benchmark figures. So, you see, it is not going to be this huge profit driver for the company. But even if it doesn't scale to that thousands of locations, it's just part of [Jeff] Bezos' strategy to get Amazon to be a bigger and bigger part of your life. Kline: The question comes down to, how can they leverage their user base? I'm a Prime member; so are about 25% of all Americans. If they can message to me and get me into that store, where perhaps I'm going to pick up my groceries, maybe I'm going to get a new Kindle, and maybe they can sign me up for an AWS account, all at the same time, while providing the ability to return without putting it in a box. If they can leverage all of those things, I see convenience. But that's not cheap. One of the reasons Amazon is cheaper is, they don't have the customer-service expense of a physical store, because it's all automated. If you want to do a return, you click "return" and it sends you a shipping label, and you send it back, and a robot puts it away. So I can see how it would work, but it does seem like a lot of effort for nothing. I would rather see 2,000 bookstores. Remember when Thanksgiving meant fun times and good food with family and friends? These days, most of us barely get a chance to digest our turkey before heading out to stores or going online in an attempt to snag some coveted goods at a discount. And though the idea of rising at the near-crack of dawn and battling crowds at popular retailers is enough to make most of us want to stay in bed, these days, you don't even need to leave your house to get in on the Black Friday action. An estimated 205 million Americans went shopping last year over Black Friday weekend, slightly more than half of whom limited their purchases to those acquired online. But while Black Friday may be known for offering the lowest prices of the year, in reality, it's one of the worst times to shop. The lure of Black Friday You've got to hand it to the folks who market those Black Friday deals -- they're generally pretty good at what they do. The goal of a typical Black Friday retailer is to attract customers by offering a few key products at a so-called discount. Then, once those "deals" run out, the retailers have still got you in their hooks because you're already in their stores or on their sites, at which point you're more likely to buy something else -- even if it's not on sale. One thing to keep in mind about Black Friday is that the advertised "deals" tend to be very limited in quantity. Even if you're willing to camp out in a store parking lot to be one of the first people in line when the doors open, you might still lose out on the products you were hoping to buy. And that's when Black Friday retailers really start to capitalize. Speaking of deals... So let's talk about those bargains that are too good to pass up: a flat-screen TV for $200 that normally goes for $400! A gaming system for $150 that usually sells for double! How can retailers afford to part with these products for such little money? The answer is: They can't, and they don't. See, what many retailers do is offer lower-quality versions of popular products specifically for Black Friday. These inferior versions are known as derivatives, and they're typically made with cheaper materials and parts that enable retailers to offer them at such low prices. Purchasing a derivative means running the risk that a so-called name-brand product will fail you the minute its warranty runs out, so be sure to do your research before you buy. Specifically, you may want to think twice about buying a TV on Black Friday, especially one that's only available at a single retailer and whose model number has magically never existed before. What about the savings? Of course, not all products sold on Black Friday are derivatives. A lot of the products you'll see online and in stores are the same items you'll see year-round, in which case it probably pays to jump on what could be the lowest prices of the year, right? Wrong. The Wall Street Journal studied pricing data across a wide range of product categories, and it found that most items are offered below Black Friday price points at different times throughout the year. For example, there's data suggesting that you're more likely to get a better deal on a new car in April than on Black Friday. Meanwhile, flat-screen TVs often get discounted the most the week before the Super Bowl. And if you're buying jewelry for that special someone in your life, you'd best wait till after Valentine's Day, when you're likely to score the deepest discount. Of course, there are always exceptions, and if you play your cards right, you might come away with a deal so fabulous you'll need to resist the urge to tweet about it. But if your plan for Black Friday is to visit your favorite retailers, either in person or online, and snatch up every product in sight, there's a good chance you'll wind up overpaying for most items and busting your budget in the process. Remember, buying an $80 toaster oven you don't need for $40 isn't saving $40; it's wasting $40. So if you do insist on doing some Black Friday shopping, make a list and stick to it. Otherwise you might come home with a mountain of debt, and that's no way to ring in the holiday season. For many retirees and pre-retirees, Social Security will play an integral role in ensuring that their month-to-month expenses are taken care of. A recently updated Gallup poll showed that nearly 9 in 10 current retirees count on Social Security income to some degree each month, while around 80% of surveyed pre-retirees expect to do the same in retirement. However, Social Security's future is still very much up in the air. While the program isn't going bankrupt, demographic shifts, which include the retirement of baby boomers and lengthening life expectancies, could wind up pushing benefits lower across the board. The latest report from the Social Security Board of Trustees has forecast that a 21% drop in benefits would be needed to sustain the program through 2090. Since workers and seniors simply can't count on Congress to get a fix in place, they need to be focused on ways to increase their Social Security benefits come retirement. The obvious way to boost your Social Security income is to simply wait to file for benefits. Social Security benefits grow by approximately 8% on annually, though your monthly distribution is dependent on your individual full retirement age, or FRA. Your FRA is a dynamic number that's based on your year of birth, and it represents the point at which you become eligible for 100% of your benefits. Retire before your FRA, and your benefit could see a reduction of 25% to 30% from what it would be at your full retirement age. Wait until age 70, the point at which benefits stop accruing, and it could be anywhere from 24% to 32% higher than at your FRA. Waiting as long as possible means a juicier benefit later. Four unconventional ways to boost your Social Security income But there are other, unconventional ways you can boost your benefit. Here are four such methods. 1. Pull a Social Security mulligan It's a rule I'd bet most retirees and pre-retirees aren't aware of, but Social Security allows seniors a do-over should they regret taking their benefits early. Social Security Administration Form 521, officially known as the Request for Withdrawal of Application, allows seniors to withdraw their request for Social Security benefits within the first 12 months following the filing of their application to receive benefits. There are two key catches here. First, Form 521 has to be filed within the first 12 months of claiming benefits -- an important requirement. Second, you'll need to pay back every cent you and your family may have received from the SSA based on your earnings history in order for your withdrawal claim to be undone. If you pay back what you received from the SSA, then it'll be as if you never filed a claim in the first place, and your benefits will continue growing at roughly 8% per year. A Social Security mulligan is a particularly smart move for seniors who've struggled to get a job in their early to mid-60s, but wound up landing a well-paying job a few months after signing up for Social Security benefits. 2. Work yourself into a higher benefit check Seniors may also not be aware that if they file for benefits before reaching their FRA and earn over a certain amount, the SSA can withhold some, or all, of their benefits. This year, the SSA is allowed to withhold $1 in benefits for each $2 in earned income over $15,720 for individuals receiving benefits who have not reached their FRA. If you'll reach your FRA in 2016 but have not yet done so, the SSA can withhold $1 in benefits for each $3 in earned income over $41,880. Based on a recent press release from the SSA, these thresholds are increasing to $16,920 (or $100 extra a month) and $44,880 ($250 extra a month), respectively, in 2017. On one hand, these thresholds reduce your expected take-home pay if you're still working and hoping to double-dip with your Social Security benefit. On the other hand, you don't lose this money if it's withheld by the SSA: It's returned to you after you reach your FRA in the form of a higher monthly benefit payment. Thus, you may be able to work between ages 62 and 66, save a few extra dollars, and have your withheld benefits translate into a bigger monthly benefit upon hitting your full retirement age. 3. Be mindful of where you retire and how much you make A third unconventional method to boost your Social Security income is to move to or retire in a state that has a tax-friendly policy toward Social Security benefits and retirement income in general. Some people may not be aware that the federal government does indeed tax Social Security benefits. If an individual earns more than $25,000 annually, or joint filers more than $32,000 annually, the federal government subjects a percentage of Social Security benefits to ordinary income taxation. Anything below these levels is free of federal taxation. This means a little tax planning, such as leaning on a Roth IRA during retirement, could be worthwhile. A Roth IRA doesn't count toward your adjusted gross income, and eligible withdrawals are tax-free for life. More importantly, 13 states also tax Social Security benefits. Nine of these states have varying degrees of income exemptions, while four -- Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, and West Virginia -- mirror the federal tax schedule for Social Security benefits. If you avoid these states during retirement, you may be able to decrease what you'll hand back in taxes, meaning more money remains in your pocket. 4. Use your kids to boost family Social Security benefits A final unconventional way to increase your household's Social Security income is to take advantage of children's benefits for Social Security when available. It's quite uncommon, but in cases in which a parent is old enough to qualify for Social Security (age 62 and up) and certain criteria are met, children can receive up to half of the parent's benefit to avoid reduction in the benefit that the parent receives. In order to qualify, children would need to be: Unmarried Under the age of 18 Under the age of 19 and still a full-time student in high school Or, 18 or older and disabled (with the disability beginning before age 22) It should be noted that adopted and dependent stepchildren can sometimes qualify. Likewise, children can in some rarer cases qualify for benefits based on the earnings history of a grandparent who is their guardian. The more common situation involving Social Security and children's benefits occurs when a parent dies, with the survivor benefit for children being up to 75% of the parent's Social Security benefit. Nonetheless, if you're of Social Security retirement age and your kids also qualify, you may be able to substantially boost your household income. A young Jack Ma look-alike has won the heart of the founder of Alibaba Group, the real Jack Ma. File photos of Fan Xiaoqin and Jack Ma. [Photo from web] Fan Xiaoqin or "mini Jack Ma" is 8 years old and lives in Yongfeng County, east China's Jiangxi Province. His family circumstances are unfortunate as his mother has poliomyelitis, his father a missing leg and his grandma, Alzheimer's disease, reported jxnews.com.cn on November 13. "Mini Jack Ma" came to fame after a villager posted a video of him online in 2015. The internet exploded in remarks over how similar the boy looked to Jack Ma. Once again, with the coming of Double Eleven Shopping Festival, "mini Jack Ma" won the hearts of internet once again, and netizens urged Jack Ma to support Fan Xiaoqin, given his family circumstances. The attention and buzz caught Jack Ma's attention and he saw the similarities between himself and the boy. Just last week, he announced he would financially support Fan Xiaoqin until he graduates from university. The bursting of the housing bubble late last decade led to a significant decline in home construction, which pummeled the stock prices of publicly traded construction companies. Despite that devastating blow, homebuilding has risen out of those ashes, with building starts and new home prices rising steadily over the past few years. That said, the market is not yet back up to its prior level, let alone anywhere near the peak. Because of that, the market has plenty of room to grow, which suggests that construction stocks should do well as the recovery continues to take hold. Image source: Getty Images. The state of the home construction market When the housing market fell started to fall off a cliff in 2007, it began a multiyear overcorrection in supply. As the following slide shows, the market has been undersupplying household demand for several years and projects to continue to do so for the foreseeable future: Image source: Lennar investor presentation. This production deficit should lead to higher prices for homes as well as increasing demand for construction-related materials and supplies. While that steady rebound should benefit the entire construction market, some companies are in a stronger position to lead the way, with the following five standing out above the rest: Construction Stock Ticker Symbol Market Cap What Makes It a Top Construction Stock Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) $22.8 billion Largest lumber supplier in the country Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE: SWK) $17.4 billion Diversified hand and power tool maker D.R Horton (NYSE: DHI) $10.7 billion America's largest homebuilder since 2002 Lennar (NYSE: LEN) $9.3 billion One of America's largest homebuilders Eagle Materials (NYSE: EXP) $3.8 billion Major manufacturers of concrete and wallboard Data sources: Weyerhaeuser, Stanley Black & Decker, D.R. Horton, Lennar, and Eagle Materials. Don't miss the forest for the trees Most people would not consider a timberland real estate investment trust (REIT) as a construction stock. That is especially after Weyerhaeuser split-off its homebuilding business to merge it with Tri-Point Homes in 2014. That said, because Weyerhaeuser is one of the largest timber, land, and forest products companies in the world, it is in a prime position to profit from the continued recovery in the construction market. For example, as the largest timberland owner in the U.S. -- controlling more than 13 million acres -- Weyerhaeuser benefits in several ways from a rise in new home construction. First, its timber business benefits from rising saw log prices, with every $5 per ton increase adding $75 million to its bottom line. Second, as land values rise, it can sell more of its timberlands for higher and better uses, such as residential development projects. Furthermore, Weyerhaeuser is one of the country's leading wood product manufacturers and, like its timber business, these operations benefit from increasing demand and rising prices. For example, every $10 per million board feet improvement in lumber prices due to an improving housing market drives a $40 million incremental improvement to Weyerhaeuser's bottom line. Needless to say, Weyerhaeuser has the potential to be a significant beneficiary as the construction market continues its recovery. Image source: Getty Images. Building a brand one acquisition at a time Stanley Black & Decker, likewise, might not be considered a pure construction stock but it makes building possible. In fact, it is the No. 1 tools and storage brand in the world, making it the tool company to own in a housing rebound. Currently, new and existing residential construction accounts about 35% of the company's tools and storage business, while commercial construction accounts for another 12%, which gives investors plenty of upside exposure to those markets as building activities improve. Meanwhile, the company continues to acquire additional tool companies, which provides it with the potential to accelerate earnings and revenue growth should construction activities take off. Nobody builds more homes than D.R. Horton According to the National Association of Homebuilders, D.R. Horton is America's top homebuilder for both closings and revenue, which is a spot it has laid claim to since 2002. The company currently operates in 78 markets across 26 states, closing more than 38,500 homes over the past year. Furthermore, its homes run the gamut of $100,000 starter homes to $1 million mansions. Needless to say, an investment in D.R. Horton provides pretty broad exposure to the housing sector. Despite its already large size, D.R. Horton has plenty of room to run. The company continues to ramp up production and currently has a huge inventory of more than 25,000 models, specs, or sold homes under construction as of the end of June, nearly double its inventory at the same time in 2012. Additionally, it controls a substantial land position, consisting of more than 200,000 acres of owned and optioned land, which supports double-digit revenue and pre-tax profit growth for the foreseeable future. Suffice it to say, America's largest homebuilder is well positioned to cash in as housing continues to heal. Building its way to the top Lennar is the country's second-largest home builder, which is a title it has held since 2014 when it wrestled it away from PulteGroup. However, at roughly 25,000 annual home closings, there is still a pretty wide gap between it and top homebuilder D.R. Horton. However, Lennar recently announced the acquisition of fellow homebuilder WCI Communities(and its 1,100 annual closings) to help close that divide. The WCI Communities transaction expands Lennar's footprint in several key growth markets of Florida. Looking ahead, Lennar is moving into a mid-cycle stage where it sees its growth moderating a bit from 15% to 20% down to 7% to 10% as it harvests its strong land position. However, this pivot should drive up it is cash flow generation as it spends less to acquire land. That strategic shift, as well as the company's focus on creating operational efficiencies, should drive profit growth in the years to come. Image source: Getty Images. Cementing its future position While Eagle Materials is not the largest construction materials company, it does offer investors diversification into two key building products: Cement and wallboards. Cement is a widely used building material for sidewalks, foundations, and driveways, while gypsum wallboard is the most commonly used product for interior walls and ceilings. Demand for both products should continue to grow along with the construction market. That certainly has been the case in recent quarters, with Eagle Materials' cement business reporting record operating earnings due to rising cement prices thanks to robust demand. The company is particularly bullish on cement these days, which is why it recently spent $400 million to acquire a cement plant in Ohio to boost its annual capacity by 20%. Meanwhile, its gypsum wallboard and paperboard segment benefited from rising prices and sales volume during the quarter. It sees both trends continuing due to the general strengthening of the construction market. Investor takeaway While the residential construction market has improved since the financial crisis, America still isn't building enough houses to meet long-term demand. That means construction activity should continue growing, which should drive demand for building materials like wood, cement, and wallboard, as well as for tools. Meanwhile, top home builders should also win because they will need to build more houses, which they should be able to sell at higher prices, therefore capturing higher profits. Suffice it to say, a portfolio of top construction stocks should do very well in an improving construction market. Forget the 2016 Election: 10 stocks we like better than Weyerhaeuser Donald Trump was just elected president, and volatility is up. But here's why you should ignore the election: Investing geniuses Tom and David Gardner have spent a long time beating the market no matter who's in the White House. In fact, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Weyerhaeuser wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of November 7, 2016. Matt DiLallo owns shares of PulteGroup and Weyerhaeuser and has the following options: short April 2017 $20 calls on PulteGroup and short April 2017 $30 puts on Weyerhaeuser. The Motley Fool recommends Eagle Materials. 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. In this segment from Market Foolery,Chris Hill is joined by Bill Barker and Jim Gillies as they consider the growing challenges at Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: VRX), which has seen scandal after scandal tank its stock price and reputation. The question remains: Does Valeant still have value, or a future, as a public company. A full transcript follows the video. This podcast was recorded on Nov. 1, 2016. Chris Hill:Let's start with, in honor of Jim Gillies, as though this were timed, Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Once upon a time, the largest public company in Canada, which, as you pointed out on a previous episode of Market Foolery, that's kind of the ... Jim Gillies:As soon as you hear that. Hill:That's the death knell for any public company in Canada. Gillies:That's not a bank. Hill:That's not a bank. Gillies:Yeah. Hill:If you're the No. 1, you're the biggest public company, it's time to short that stock. Gillies:Yeah, titles previously held by Nortel, Research in Motion, and BRIUS. Barker:Who is it now? Gillies:It's back to being Royal Bank of Canada. Hill:Valeant Pharmaceuticals, former CEO Micheal Pearson, and former CFO Howard Schiller are the subjects, not of a soon-to-be released biopic film. No, they're the subjects of a U.S. criminal probe, proving once again that the market's reaction may be the best indicator of how to view this news.Shares of Valeant up a little bit on this. Gillies:They were down a lot more yesterday, when this news started filtering out. Hill:Where is this company going? Is this company in any legitimate danger of going away altogether, or when you look at this company, do you think there is value here, that they need an entirely fresh start, if at all possible, and there is a way forward for this company? Gillies:That's a lot of questions, it's a big question, and it's a company that I have, frankly, not had the greatest love for, so I'm kind of tainting myself here when I say I've never liked the company, never got the story, watched with dismay as it was a multi-bagger before, of course, crashing down 90%. I think their debt load, they've got 30-odd billion dollars in debt. That is going to necessitate the company as going to need to change. I think they're currently trying to figure out ways. The new CEO came over from, I think his name is Joseph Papa, fromPerrigoor somewhere, another company. He's trying to revamp the company. Bill Ackman, the activist investor, who was now former CEO, disgraced CEO Mike Pearson's bestest buddy for a while there before forgetting his name. They're trying to right the ship, and I don't think that Valeant in its present form can survive. I think it's another case of a lesson of when you are trying to gain the system where the party on the other side of the transactions that you are affecting is a large, powerful entity called United States government. In a lot of cases, this was basically -- they were jacking the prices on the drugs, and the ultimate payer is the government, who has pushed back. I think for other examples of that particular phenomena, you can look at the for-profit educators, which have largely been run out of business or otherwise decimated. I think that when you get into that situation, you probably should expect the government to push back and push back hard. If you have been doing things of a quasi-legal nature, which is certainly the suggestion of what's going on now with Valeant, you should probably expect to take the probes that Mr. Pearson and Mr. Schiller are currently experiencing. Hill:Thank you for reminding me that Bill Ackman is still involved in Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Gillies:He's on the board. Hill:As aChipotleshareholder, I was worried that he was going to be spending a lot of time trying to... Gillies:Fix Chipotle? Hill:... exert influence at Chipotle. It's nice to know that he has other fires he's trying to put out. Bill Barker, what about you? When you look at Valeant Pharmaceuticals, is there anything ... I mean, this is, for those unfamiliar, this is an untraditional pharmaceutical company in that typically, pharmaceutical companies are plowing a lot of money into research, looking for that next blockbuster drug. Valeant's path to growth was almost entirely through acquisition, so I'm just curious what you see when you look at Valeant. Bill Barker:I am just reminded of the Oscar-nominated song from South Park, "Blame Canada". Gillies:It was an Oscar-nominated song? Hill:It was. Barker:Yeah. That's about as much as I have on this one. I think that ... Gillies:You cannot blame Canada for this, this was an inversion of an American company. Barker:I can blame Canada. Hill:Have you met him? Of course ... Barker:I can blame Canada. You're just dodging it. After promoting this company all those years, like you and every other Canadian, and now it's going to take the good and hard work of U.S. regulators ... Gillies:Criminal prosecutors. Barker:... and criminal prosecutors to bring one of the many Canadian criminals to justice. If only we had enough time to get the rest of them, is my feeling. Bill Barker has no position in any stocks mentioned. Chris Hill owns shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Jim Gillies owns shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Jim Gillies has the following options: short January 2017 $82 calls on Royal Bank of Canada. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill and Valeant Pharmaceuticals. 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. If at first you don't sell or spin off, try, try again. In September, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) announced that it had decided not to split its legacy drug business off from its higher-growth innovative health segment. Now Reuters has reported that the healthcare giant is considering either selling or spinning off its consumer healthcare business. My advice is this: Go for it, Pfizer. Image source: Getty Images. Good for shareholders Pfizer ultimately decided against spinning off the legacy essentials health business because the company's management thought staying together would be better for shareholders. The company must now go through the same thought process in determining whether or not to divest the consumer healthcare business. I think moving ahead would be good news for shareholders. Based onEuromonitor International's retail sales data, in 2015 Pfizer had the fourth-largest consumer healthcare business in the world. The company claimed two of the 10 biggest-selling global consumer brands with Centrum and Advil. According to Reuters, sources say that Pfizer believes the business could be worth up to $14 billion. In the first nine months of this year, Pfizer's consumer healthcare business generated sales of $2.46 billion. However, this reflected a slight decrease from sales in the prior-year period. Pfizer's shareholders need growth to drive the stock higher. Consumer healthcare isn't delivering that needed growth right now. My view is that Pfizer could put the $14 billion or so that it has invested in its consumer healthcare business to better use. That amount coincidentally matches what the company paid to buy Medivation. Now, Medivation's Xtandi is one of Pfizer's key sources for future growth. Unlocking the money currently tied up in the consumer healthcare business could allow Pfizer to make more growth-oriented investments. Spin vs. sell Merck (NYSE: MRK) chose to sell its consumer healthcare business back in 2014 rather than spin off the unit as a separate company. The transaction provided over $14 billion to the big drugmaker, making more money available for later acquisitions of Cubist and Afferent Pharmaceuticals. While Merck hasn't been a stranger to spin-offs, the company chose to sell its consumer healthcare unit. Perhaps one key factor behind Merck's decision was that there was a willing buyer ready to fork over a lot of cash (namely,Bayer). That could be a consideration for Pfizer, also. Reckitt Benckiser Group PlcCEO Rakesh Kapoorpublicly stated in late 2015 that his company would be "very interested" in potentially buying Pfizer's consumer healthcare business should it become available. Kapoor's comments were made when Pfizer was in the midst of attempting to acquire Allergan. Although that deal ultimately fell through, Reckitt Benckiser could be a ready buyer should Pfizer look to sell. Of course, Pfizer will need to thoroughly examine all of the financial pros and cons of spinning off the consumer healthcare business versus selling. There can be tax advantages associated with spin-offs that outright sales don't enjoy. However, if Reckitt Benckiser or another party is primed to buy and offers the right price, a sale could be the better option for Pfizer. What will Pfizer do? I had hoped that Pfizer would spin off its established health business earlier this year. The company chose to do otherwise. Reuters reported that inside sources at Pfizer said the evaluation of next steps was in an early stage and that the company might decide to keep its consumer healthcare business. That's similar to language Pfizer used when deliberating about spinning off its established health business. At this point, it's anyone's guess what Pfizer will do. I think, though, that parting ways with its consumer business might be more palatable than spinning off its legacy drugs unit. Selling to consumers requires a different business model and mindset than selling prescription drugs. That could tilt the decision more toward a sales or spin-off of the consumer healthcare business. Merck hasn't regretted its consumer healthcare sale. Pfizer wouldn't, either, in my opinion. I'll say it again: Go for it, Pfizer.Your shareholders deserve it. Forget the 2016 Election: 10 stocks we like better than Pfizer Donald Trump was just elected president, and volatility is up. But here's why you should ignore the election: Investing geniuses Tom and David Gardner have spent a long time beating the market no matter who's in the White House. In fact, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Pfizer wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of November 7, 2016. Keith Speights 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. Trump triumphs [By Zhai Haijun / China.org.cn] After one of the most bitterly fought elections in U.S. political history, Donald Trump has emerged victorious. However, many would agree that the toughest job now is how to lead and pull together the increasingly 'divided' States of America. The post-election protests against Trump now going on in major cities such as San Francisco and Chicago point to how deep this divide truly is. Indeed, it looks like more citizens voted for Clinton than for Trump though the U.S. Electoral College system gave him the most electoral votes and hence the win. The division in the U.S. occurs along many fault lines. The first is geographic. The democrats dominated the upper East and West coast states while Republicans dominated the middle, north and south. Another aspect of geography is urban versus rural. The more conservative rural areas tended to go for Trump while big city populations favoured Clinton, except in rust-belt areas where globalization and the GFC have taken heavy tolls on jobs and manufacturing. Educationally, those with university qualifications tended to vote Clinton while the working class sided with Trump. Clinton's unfortunate description of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorable" suggested an "elitism" and "hubris" that was offensive to many U.S. citizens who saw professional politicians such as Clinton as seriously out of touch. Related to educational attainment is class. The statistics show that over the last decade middle class Americans have seen jobs disappear, wages stagnate, homes lost and debts increase. There is intense anger by these groups who feel they have been ignored. Race and ethnicity were also a big part of this campaign. There were unfortunate and hurtful comments made about American Muslims, Latinos and other immigrants. Various racial and ethnic groups from both right and left extremes received great attention. Tolerance, acceptance, celebration of diversity and other more positive values seemed to take a back seat against blame, hatred and victimization. The white working class seemed in this election to protest by voting for Trump and change. Gender was also a factor in many people's minds. Some argued that one should vote for Clinton because she was a woman; while others rejected Clinton because she was a woman. Yet, notwithstanding that Clinton lost this election, all would acknowledge that she advanced the cause in major ways by winning her party's nomination and the popular vote. Religion was also a factor. In addition to the Islamic factor mentioned above, it is significant that the evangelical heartland of the South voted very strongly in favour of Trump. The U.S. remains a very religious country and recent democratic leftist reforms in relation to marriage, abortion and complete removal of religion from public life have been opposed by many for whom religion remains a central part of their lives and a core belief. Clinton, as a former First-Lady, Senator and Secretary of State, was definitely an "insider." Trump, as a business person who has never held political office of any kind, is definitely an outsider. Washington insiders versus outsiders was thus yet another divisive theme as reflected by Trump's comments about "draining the swamp." Indeed, the approval rating of Congress is at an all-time low and after eight years of one party being in power, it is a healthy thing to bring in new people with fresh ideas and perspectives. Both the Sanders supporters on the "left" and Trump supporters on the right were united only in their opposition to politics as usual. Inward looking U.S. versus external engagement. Donald Trump is a domestic populist. His rhetoric advocated for re-negotiating important trade treaties such as NAFTA, rejecting the TPP, building a wall on the border with Mexico and requiring NATO and other allies to carry their fair share of the burden of defence. Interestingly, this vision contradicts the views of many traditional Republicans who favour free trade, promote globalization and want a strong America playing a proactive leadership role in the world. An inward looking U.S. could also pose major challenges for world stability, globalisation, trade and world peace. Hopefully, the many extreme and inflammatory comments made in the heat of an election will be tempered by reality and guided by experienced experts who will be part of Trump's new team. Environment versus development. In contrast to President Obama's strong commitment to reduction of global warming and promoting alternative sources of energy, Trump was critical and sceptical of this agenda and promised to re-invigorate coal. Finding a middle-path through environmental issues will be a huge issue for Trump and could greatly impact the Paris Climate accord. Social versus traditional media. It was also interesting in this election how social media (e.g. Trump's use of Twitter and "reality TV" strategies played central roles. This contrasted with traditional media and polls that seemed out of touch and either failed to see or did not want to see the groundswell that arose and led to an unexpected Trump victory. For China-U.S. relations in this new context, it will be important for China to re-double efforts to engage with the new administration and seek to strengthen partnerships, maximize mutual advantage, work through differences and find a common path forward. Donald Trump is supposed to be a great negotiator. Successful negotiators know that genuine "win-win" outcomes are the ones that last and go on to strengthen relationships that lead to productive outcomes. Having now won the election, the momentous challenge ahead for President-elect Trump will be how to put the "united" back into the U.S. Hopefully, it will be true of this election that what is said in elections is often tempered by reality and the need to compromise once a person is in office. Eugene Clark is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/eugeneclark.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. A Republican senator helped his constituents get around this weekend by moonlighting as a driver for the ride-sharing service Uber. In a series of tweets, Ben Sasse of Nebraska explained his decision to get behind the wheel by saying he works "alongside and for" the people of the Cornhusker state. Sasse says the money he earned is going to charity. As a senator, he's not allowed to make any money outside his congressional service. Sasse worked late Saturday night and found that at least a few of his fares had been partying a little too much. He quipped, "if you throw up in an Uber, the surcharge can be substantial." But the risk has rewards. He says it's a "market incentive to get drivers to agree to" Saturday night shifts. The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin has warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Ukraine could siphon off gas intended for European consumers in the coming winter. Putin warned Merkel in Monday's call that the risk of Ukraine's "unsanctioned draw-off" of the Russian gas supplied to European consumers via a transit pipeline could increase during what is forecast to be a cold winter. The Kremlin said the EU and Russia will continue discussions. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Past gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine have led to cutoffs. One standoff in 2009 caused serious disruptions in winter supplies to EU countries. Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine brought relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbors to the verge of full rupture. Some police departments are relaxing age-old standards for accepting recruits. They are lowering educational requirements or forgiving some prior drug use to try to attract more people to their ranks. The changes are designed to deal with decreased interest in a job that offers low pay, rigorous physical demands and the possibility of death, all while under public scrutiny. There's also the need to lure more minorities. The Connecticut State Police is among the agencies wrestling with diversity. Blacks and Hispanics comprise about a third of trooper applicants and about a quarter of the state's population, but only 10 percent of the force. An Associated Press review finds that only 28 African-Americans and 38 Hispanics have graduated from the academy since 2004. In this segment from the Rule Breaker Investing podcast, David Gardner continues to share some of his Foolish thoughts on this divisive political climate. This time, he ponders the idea of conscious capitalism, the non-profit vs. for-profit dichotomy, and the question of organizational purpose. In a perfect world, even non-profits would have a better handle on their bottom lines. A transcript follows the video. 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. This podcast was recorded on Oct. 19, 2016. David Gardner:You know, four years ago, I attended a conference called the Conscious Capitalism Conference in Austin, Texas. It's held every year. In fact, my brother is there this week as we speak. I'm just back here in Alexandria doing my podcast. But Adam Braun (who's the founder of an organization called Pencils of Promise, which The Motley Fool has done some good stuff with in the past), Adam stood up in front of the crowd and said something I thought was wonderful. He said he doesn't like it when people call Pencils for Promise a "non-profit" or a "not-for-profit". He doesn't like that. He thinks of his organization as afor-- in this case,for-purpose. And I like that a lot because I don't tend to frame things up in terms of for-profit and not-for-profit too much. I think that what really unites most organizations is a purpose; whether it's The Motley Fool, whose purpose is to help the world invest better. Whether it's the purpose of the organization that you might work for, or whether it's Adam's Pencils for Promise, every organization has a purpose. And my hope for every organization is when possible (and it's not), when possible to earn a profit in pursuit of its purpose. I realize that sometimes, especially when I was going through college, it seemed like for-profit corporate was greedy, and wrong, and you know, lots of my peers in college would not have been voting for that. And by contrast, and somewhat Dickensian comic contrast, in my mind, not-for-profit, so-called, was thought of as really a wonderful, wholesome thing. Save the world. Altruistic. And all the really good people go to work for those. Well, now, 30 years removed from college, I can say with confidence that if every not-for-profit (or for-purpose, in Adam Braun's words) organization could earn a profit; I wish for it that it would, for the dynamics that we just described. In fact, if you think about the difference between owning a house and renting, you'll recognize where I'm headed, here. I think when you are for-profit, you have shareholders (they might be private, or you might be a public company), and they're owners. They have an owner's mentality. When it's really done well (and we try to do that really well as Fools), we're patient, long-term minded, and we feel like owners, and we treat that stock, and the system itself, like a house that we're going to keep clean, because it's our house. By contrast, I think a weakness of things that don't earn profit or can't earn profit is that they are ultimately unsustainable, relying on people to give. Now the good news is, I hope you give. I try to give, too. I hope you try to give to good organizations that you respect and that you want to sustain, but the truth is that if organizations aren't earning a profit, then they rely on your and my altruism. They rely on our generosity, and they hope that we'll be more generous every year. And darn it, when the stock market goes up, I think we can do a good job with that over the course of time (to give a little bit more every year). But it's still a weakness of the model if you are CEO of one organization or the other -- I think I, anyway, I'm not going to choose for you -- I would choose the thing that earns profits, because then you can reinvest in yourself and grow in a sustainable manner. And so, that's one of the things that I love about business, and to get back to my point: At the end of the day, we should be judging all organizations not by whether they're earning a profit or not, but by what their purpose is, how big their purpose is, and how effective they are at fulfilling it. So, that's ultimately how I think I score how any organization has done. But the difference between, I think, the common view (which is that for-profit things are greedy and not-for-profit things are cool); at least in my experience, that doesn't really resonate. 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. To a roaring crowd at the Fox News Republican presidential debate last January, Texas Senator Ted Cruz vowed to "repeal every word" of Obamacare. Though Cruz ultimately lost the presidential nomination to Donald Trump, the man then considered the underdog, the significance of Cruzs sentiment was not lost on the American people. Forty-seven percent of voting Americans, and 83% of those who voted for Trump, think the 2010 federal health care law went too far, according to Fox News exit polls on Election Day. Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is reportedly being considered for a top position in a Trump administration as either Attorney General or Secretary of State, went so far as to say Obamacare is what ultimately gave the businessman the edge over Hillary Clinton on November 8. Being part of the campaign, we put [Obamacare] up front in all of Donald Trumps speeches for the last two or three weeks...That seems to me to be the thing that moved the votes, he said Sunday in an interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Trump has repeatedly made the promise to repeal and replace the health care law, and now that he has won the citizens mandate, his supporters are expecting him to fulfill that promiseand fast. Late Friday, Trump announced during an interview with the Wall Street Journal he will make health care a priority, though he is not opposed to keeping parts of the Affordable Care Act intact, including coverage for pre-existing conditions and allowing children to remain under the parents plans until the age of 26. This is a far cry from Cruzs battle call to repeal every word of the law. Should Trump supporters be worried about the President-elect softening his stance? The answer is yes, according to Michael Cannon, the Cato Institutes director of health policy studies. "Trump basically endorsed keeping Obamacare's central and most harmful provision," he told FOXBusiness.com. "If he sticks to that position, it means he has abandoned repeal. His base will interpret that as complete acquiescence and conclude Trump is no better than the rest in Washington." On the other hand, unraveling President Obamas signature domestic policy achievement may not be as easy as the businessmans supporters believe, even with single party control over the legislative and executive branches. The Republican base that got Donald Trump into the White House may be in for a rude awakening. Screaming repeal it at a rally is easy. Actually crafting hundreds of pages of legislation that clears four to five Congressional committees, the best-funded lobbying groups in Washington, and manages to secure 218 votes in a very fractured House majority is much, much tougher, Adam Beck, Assistant Professor of Health Insurance at The American College of Financial Services, told FOXBusiness.com. There are two ways President-elect Trump can go about repealing the Affordable Care Act, though neither of them will be quick nor easy. The Republicans do not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, meaning they would need to swing eight to nine votes from the Democratic side in order to pass legislation. That is unless, as the Democrats infamously did in 2010, the Trump administration rams a bill through Congress with no approval from the other side of the aisle. It is conceivable they could do this on a straight party-line vote, hold the House [caucus] together. You have to nuke the filibuster in the Senate, and just go straight party-line all the way, Paul Howard, senior fellow and director of health policy at the Manhattan Institute, told FOXBusiness.com. Though as President Obama found out that can be an unpopular option. Merely six years after his groundbreaking legislation was enacted, it became the rallying cry for the opposition party, possibly even catapulting a political newcomer into the Oval Office. The other option is reconciliation. Reconciliation is a legislative process allowing certain matters to be expedited by forbidding a filibuster, which means the Senate would only need 51 votes for approval. However the scope of this process is limited to assessing certain tax, spending and budget measures. As it pertains to the healthcare law, this means anything tax-related could be addressed, according to Beck. This could be a January 21 or January 22 initiativethey will be able to repeal anything that they can put through reconciliation, Beck said. The individual mandate, which is essentially a tax provision. Thats going to be gone. The employer mandate, gone. The tax subsidies that fund the exchange are going to be gone. Because of the promises Donald Trump has made to his supporters, Beck believes he will be under a ton of political pressure to get the repeal part of the Affordable Care Act through right away, which could give way to a lot of chaos. While Trumps administration may be able to begin the repeal process immediately, the replace part will be a little more difficult especially since they have yet to unite behind a coherent replacement plan. Trump has outlined some traditional Republican bullet points such as HSAs, purchasing insurance across state lines and reestablishing high-risk pools; far from a comprehensive alternate policy proposal. Another potential hurdle for the Trump administration: Time. Health care reform was the Democrats seminal policy objective for decades, and it took them equally as long to pass something that is now facing repeal. The real challenge [will be] finding something the Republican coalition is going to coalesce around that fulfills their promise both to repeal and replace, and finding something that can actually pass the Senate, Howard said. However, as Howard pointed out, philosophical splits run deep in the GOP, which will make it harder for the Republicans to coalesce around a singular plan while holding the caucus together in the House. Aside from simply getting the Republicans to rally around one common health care proposal, a bigger challenge could be getting leaders from across the aisle to step up to the negotiating table. The $64,000 question is what is the Democratic calculus right now? Is it to come to the table and deal? Or do you say this is President Obamas signature domestic policy achievement, it is incredibly popular on the left and theres a lot of discontent here. So does the Warren, Sanders wing of the party go to Chuck Schumer and say we're not compromising on anything? Howard asked. It took years to get Obamacare up and running and now Trump wants to upend the certainties consumers, health care providers and insurers were finally coming to terms with. We dont know what to expect and that can create a lot of disruption, Howard warned. Ford (NYSE:F) became a lightning rod of the 2016 presidential race, as Donald Trump hammered the automaker for expanding its manufacturing operations in Mexico. The president-elect also targeted other automakers and manufacturers for doing the samepart of Trumps broader criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The top car-producing states in the nation ultimately sided with Trump, who swept through the Rust Belt on Election Day. In Michigan, the epicenter of Americas auto industry, Trump won a state that hadnt supported a Republican candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. The Republican nominee also took Ohio, the second-largest car producer among the 50 states, with relative ease. A similar story played out in Indiana, whose vehicle production is slightly ahead of Kentucky this year. Overall, the seven states that have manufactured the most cars so far this year all lined up behind Trump: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Missouri. It was apparent that Trumps message resonated with voters who work in manufacturing. According to Fox News exit polls, union households supported Hillary Clinton by an eight-point margin, below President Barack Obamas lead of 18 points in 2012. The results marked the lowest union support for a Democrat in the past 20 years. Trump carried 52% of the union vote in the battleground state of Ohio, far better than former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneys 37% support. About half of Ohio voters believe trade with other countries costs American jobs, while 32% said trade creates jobs. Among those who think trade hurts jobs, 67% backed Trump. An internal poll by the United Auto Workers union showed 28% support for Trump before the election, and another 6% of members were undecided. However, during a press conference following Trumps victory, UAW President Dennis Williams conceded that the unions poll may not have accurately reflected Trumps overall support among auto workers. Consider that Trump likely garnered support from voters who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector, including car factories. Trump successfully reached those Americans by targeting NAFTA and what he characterized as imbalanced trade deals that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. For car companies, Mexico has become another critical region for manufacturing, particularly for small cars. Compacts generate smaller profits at their price point, so companies such as Ford have moved production of most small cars to Mexico. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (NYSE:FCAU) has gone a step further. The Italian-American firm will stop building the Chrysler 200 and Dodge Dart in two plants in Michigan and Illinois at the end of this year. CEO Sergio Marchionne was seeking a partnership with another car maker who could make the midsize sedans, but no deal has materialized. Ford made its own move official in September, announcing that all small cars would be produced in Mexico. Earlier this year, Ford detailed plans to invest $1.6 billion to build a new assembly plant in the country. Trump has threatened to push for tariffs as high as 35% on cars imported from Mexico, arguing that a tax is necessary to encourage companies to focus on building cars in the U.S. Ford CEO Mark Fields defended the companys record, arguing that manufacturing moved to Mexico was replaced with other models built in the U.S. Chairman Bill Ford revealed in October that he met with Trump to discuss the matter. After Trumps victory, Ford released a statement saying it agrees with Trump that it is really important to unite the country and we look forward to working together to support economic growth and jobs. Likewise, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Republicans will focus on adjusting U.S. taxes on border adjustments rather than imposing tariffs. A group representing the industry has already reached out to Trumps transition team to suggest changes to federal fuel-efficiency rules that are seen as overly burdensome, among other proposals. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which includes top automakers like Ford and General Motors (NYSE:GM), said the regulations are a substantial challenge for car companies, according to a letter cited by multiple reports. Also, Williams expressed a willingness to work with the Trump administration on trade policies, saying his position on the issue is right on. "Beverly Hills, 90210" cast members are paying tribute to ailing co-star Shannen Doherty. Doherty is being treated for breast cancer and didn't take part in a "90210" reunion panel at the Rewind Convention in Chicago over the weekend. Luke Perry, whose character had an on-screen romance with Doherty's, told the audience Saturday that Doherty was "a very big part of the success of the show." He added that Doherty is "not doing well right now but sometimes her contributions are minimized." Fellow cast mate Jennie Garth praised Doherty on Instagram by sharing a picture Saturday with a quote, "Fight Like A Brenda," a reference to Doherty's "90210" character, Brenda Walsh. Garth calls Doherty the "strongest lady I've ever known." On Friday, CBS Lesley Stahl sat down with President-elect Donald Trump for a wide-ranging interview that covered myriad topics following his historic election win. The 60 Minutes interview aired on Sunday, and clips promoting the exclusive were shared by CBS ahead of the program. Some viewers, however, are questioning why CBS did not immediately post a clip in which Trump told any of his supporters who are reportedly harassing minorities to stop it! Stahl told Trump some of his supporters are allegedly harassing Latinos, Muslims. Trump replied, I am so saddened to hear that and I say stop it. If it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the camera: stop it! Trump tells supporters responsible for violence to 'stop it' and CBS releases various other bits of footage but holds that for two days. Archie Bland (@archiebland) November 14, 2016 I wonder why @CBS sat for two days on a Trump interview in which he asks his followers, finally, to stop committing acts of violence. Andy Jones (@andyojones) November 14, 2016 CBS gets Trump to say stop it (PRESIDENTIAL!) to his crazy followers and SITS ON IT FOR 48 HOURS. CBS deserves whatever punishment he doles. Mark Waid (@MarkWaid) November 14, 2016 Some CBS viewers wondered why the network didnt air the clip sooner as reports have claimed some Trump supporters have attacked members of minority groups following his election win. Mini conspiracy theory bubbling that CBS sat on Trump's quote condemning violence. This is so dumb. Trump was free to comment at any time!! Choostas (@Choostas) November 14, 2016 The way I see it - CBS has documented proof Trump knew about the attacks since at least Friday, but has still not said anything else. Brad Brisco (@BradBrisco) November 14, 2016 Some voices in the Twitterverse, however, defended the network, saying Trump could have spoken out about the issue at any point. Ahead of Sundays 60 Minutes episode, the network shared a clip that focused on Trump's comments about ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. CBS told FOX411 regarding the criticism: "This interview was full of newsworthy material and we released a quote on the issue that affects millions of Americans and that was his statement on ObamaCare." "60 Minutes" also tweeted at least two other clips ahead of Sunday's airing. The clips, which were shared on Twitter, focused on Trump's conversations with Hillary and Bill Clinton after the election. A North Carolina television station said Sunday it will review its policies and procedures after receiving flak over censoring some of parts of the Saturday Night Live broadcast hosted by comedian Dave Chappelle. Steven Hammel, the vice president and general manager of the NBC affiliate WRAL, confirmed that the audio outages were intentional and in line with their obscenity, decency, and profanity policy. Our broadcast operators have a 10-second delay button they can choose to use. During 'Saturday Night Live' on NBC, guest host Dave Chappelle used 2 of those words on 9 different occasions and they were silenced, Hammel said in a statement. Obviously, 'SNL' is a live show so we had no prior indication about what would be said during the broadcast. We understand this caused disruption during the program. We wanted our audience to know this was a station decision, not the network's, and why we made that choice. He added in a statement later Sunday: This is an opportunity for us to review those policies and procedures. We will, and will consider viewer input as we do that." According to the Raleigh News & Observer, the audio outages occurred during Chappelles opening monologue and a spoof of The Walking Dead, which featured old characters Chappelle portrayed on the short-lived Chappelles Show. Saturdays episode was an emotionally-charged episode which featured Chappelles return to the sketch comedy stage since his departure from Comedy Centrals Chappelles Show. Chappelle kicked off the show with a monologue about the election and gave a message of hope in regards to Donald Trumps victory and a recent visit he made to the White House. Chappelle told of attending a recent BET-sponsored White House party attended mostly by African-American guests. He recalled how rare it was in past centuries for blacks to be allowed to visit the White House, adding that he relished seeing "how happy everybody was, these people that had been historically disenfranchised." "It made me feel hopeful, and it made me feel proud to be an American, and it made me very happy about the prospects of our country," Chappelle said. "So, in that spirit, I'm wishing Donald Trump luck, and I'm going to give him a chance," he said. "And we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one, too." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from the Raleigh News & Observer. President-elect Donald Trump was shunned by many stars in Hollywood but a few celebs stuck by him throughout the election, such as Antonio Sabato Jr., Stephen Baldwin, and Scott Baio, to name a few. Sabato Jr. told FOX411 Trump can call on him for anything he needs during his presidency. I believe in his message and that is the type of change we need for this country. Now that he is in the White House, I am going to keep supporting him and if his campaign needs me for anything speeches or showing up whatever needs to be done if he needs me I am there. Wanda Sykes booed off stage after anti-Trump remarks at charity benefit Meanwhile, Baio and Baldwin expect to be punished in Hollywood for their support of Trump, even though he has won the election. Personally if I dont ever work again and Donald Trump is now president-elect Im good," Baio said on "Justice with Judge Jeanine" on Sunday. Baldwin hinted that he hopes to remain close with the president-elect. Weve come up with an idea: The two Fresh Princes of the White House, starring Scott Baio and Stephen Baldwin," Baldwin joked. "We may need to be adopted by President Trump at this point. Thats how bad the situation is. Michael Moore storms Trump Tower demanding meeting with president-elect However, Dan Gainor, VP of business and culture for the Media Research Center, said pro-Trump stars may want to distance themselves from the president-elect. I think the media will work hard to make association with Trump toxic especially in Hollywood. The rational reaction by Tinsel town would be to admit they are out of touch with much of America. Unless they are willing to do that, I think Hollywood may well punish famous Trump supporters. Variety Senior Editor Ted Johnson expects Trump will stand by his famous supporters. Everything I have heard and read is that Trump values loyalty. He should too, as a lot of these figures took a pretty big beating during the campaign by going to the mat for him. Remember, there were a lot of conservative celebrities who just sat this one out and didn't want to get into the partis fray. North Carolina TV station reviewing policies after censoring parts of 'SNL' Jill Stanley Cohen, founder of celebrity legal news site ProofwithJillStanley.com, agrees that Trump will keep his famous friends nearby. Donald Trump will certainly keep his loyal Hollywood friends close; That doesn't mean they will be appointed to cabinet positions or be named the next ambassador to France." No matter what's in store for their friendship, Sabato Jr. doesnt expect Trump to slow down anytime soon. He said the president-elect is just getting started. Ive talked to Donald Jr., I told him and his family how proud I am of him and his father and to tell him I send my congratulations. Flash Rumen Radev, a candidate backed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, won the presidential runoff in Bulgaria, two exit polls showed on Sunday evening. According to Alpha Research agency, Radev is expected to have 58.1 percent of the votes against 35.3 percent for the GERB party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva, and 6.6 percent preferred the option "none of the above." Gallup International anticipated 58.5 percent for Radev, 35.7 percent for Tsacheva, and 5.8 percent "none of the above." The official results are expected to be announced on Wednesday and the new president will take office in January. As many as 21 candidates participated in the presidential elections. Incumbent President Rosen Plevneliev, who won the last presidential elections in Bulgaria in October 2011 as a candidate of the GERB party, has decided not to run for a second five-year term "for personal reasons." The 53-year-old Radev has been a professional jet fighter pilot since 1987 when he graduated from the country's air force university. He has also graduated from the Military Academy in Bulgaria and an Air War College in the United States, and holds a PhD in military science, flight training and air combat simulations. Throughout his career, Radev has held various positions from junior pilot to the commander of the Bulgarian air force, the last one from June 2014 to August 2016 when he retired from the army. Radev demonstrated his skills as pilot in October 2014 when, during a flying show at Sofia Airport, he performed with MiG-29 breathtaking aerobatic elements such as "Cobra" and "Bell." The buck has a green score of 308 3/8 inches. The word in the woods is Stephen Tucker of Gallatin, Tennessee may just be the most famous (or blessed) whitetail hunter in the world after he reportedly leveled his muzzleloader and killed what could be the largest whitetail shot in the world a 47-point monster (yeah, thats 4 and 7)just days after his gun misfired and he passed on a questionable shot on the same animal. Tucker, 26, told The Tennessean he saw a big buck (estimated to be 3 years old) and tried to shoot it last Saturday, but the powder charge didnt go off. The salt in his proverbial wound was he spied the same deer later that day, but he didnt get what he felt was a clean and ethical shot. 15 Big Bucks Tagged on the Best Day of the Rut 2016 "I was just hoping I would see him again after I passed up the shot the second time I saw him," Tucker said. "My thinking was the second time I saw him was as far away as he was and as big as he was, I wanted to make sure that I killed him. I didn't want to cripple him. I said to myself, 'If I cripple him, nobody will get to kill him.' The last thing I wanted to do was be the guy who crippled a deer like that, Tucker told the Tennessean. Two days later, on November 8, Tucker got got his third chance and made a 40-yard shot on the giant buck. When the smoke cleared, and the tape measures started calculating inches, Tucker realized he might have tagged something special, and he notified the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). "There's no doubt it's going to be the new state record; I mean, that's an absolute," TWRA District 21 captain and official Boone & Crockett Club scorer Dale Grandstaff told the paper. "As far as the world record, (the rack) is about an inch over the world record." Hunter Impaled by Elk Rack in ATV Accident Grandstaff scored the nontypical rack at 313 2/8-inches gross. The net score after deductions was 308 3/8, according to the Tennessean. While Grandstaffs thoughts are a little premature (Boone & Crockett requires a 6o-day drying period before calculating official antler scores), the green tabulation certainly bests the Tennessee record of just over 244, set by Dave Wachtel in 2000. Time will tell if it knocks out Tony Lovstuens world record Iowa deer that scored just over 307 5/8 inches (net) in 2003. "I realize there's only a possibility that it's going to be a world record; all we're worried about right now is that it's the state record," Tucker said. "If it is the world record, that would be great. But I'm not getting my hopes up on that." A NASCAR racer and several drivers crew members paid tribute to a North Carolina boy who died last week after battling leukemia. Jake Leatherman, 5, had always wanted a NASCAR-themed funeral, and his wish was granted on Nov. 9. NASCAR racer Joey Logano, Matt DiBenedetto, Ryan Ellis J.J. Yeley, and crew members from the teams of Kyle Busch, Aric Almirola, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. attended the boys funeral, which took place in Hickory, North Carolina. Instead of coats and ties, some attendees wore driver firesuits and crewmen uniforms. Loganos wife, Brittany, learned about Leathermans story after seeing a Facebook post by a Charlotte TV reporter. "She had just watched the video, and told me about him and how he was a big race fan," Joey told NASCAR.com, "and I thought it would be cool if we could do something for his funeral." The couple provided a small race suit with Leathermans name on it and, because the boy was a fan of Richard Petty, the racing champions famous No. 43 car number. "We all came together and were all there for him, but we didn't get to meet him and give him his race suit and how cool he would have thought that was," Joey told NASCAR.com. "To see all his heroes and pit crew members there that day would have been very special." Holidays are a double whammy when it comes to gaining weight. Not only do many of us overdo it in the calorie department this time of year, but now Israeli researchers have also uncovered another potential cause of holiday-related weight gain: the jet lag you suffer while traveling. So how exactly are a growing belly and your red-eye flight to visit your aunt across the country connected? Your gut bacteria. You know how jet lag prompts your body to feel like it's 6 a.m. even when the clock says it's noon? That travel-related clock chaos is throwing off your gut bacteria, too. And that impacts a lot, considering researchers are now calling the gut the "second brain" because it regulates everything from mood to weight and weight-related issues. According to the researchers, disrupting your natural circadian clock (through both changing light-dark cues and altered eating habits) also changes the rhythms and compositions of your gut bacteria. More: 9 Weird Things Killing Your Gut The researchers first tested their theory on mice and found that disrupting the mice's microbiomes by inducing jet lag led to weight gain and diabetes-like metabolic issues in the animals. These findings were echoed in a case study of two jet-lagged humans making the trek from the U.S. to Isreal. The researchers found that the humans' gut microbiome had shifted to favor the growth of bacteria that have previously been associated with weight gain. "These findings provide an explanation for a long-standing and mysterious observation that people with chronically disturbed day-night cycles due to repetitive jet lag or shift work have a tendency to develop obesity and other metabolic complications," says Eran Elinav, MD, researcher with the Weizmann Institute of Science. Fortunately, there are easy ways to get over jet lag quickly, says Mark Moyad, MD, MPH, author of The Supplement Handbook. First, forget the sleeping pills. "While these medications do cause drowsiness, they don't necessarily promote deep sleep or improve the quality of sleep," he says. Also, keep in mind that not all jet lag is created equal. "Flying east is usually worse because you lose time," he says. "Going from Michigan to Europe or the Middle East, you lose five to eight hours, which means bowel habits, meals, and other daily rituals get thrown off. Flying west, you gain time, so it is usually easier to adjust because there's still time during the day for your body to take care of its normal rituals." Here, we have Dr. Moyad's seven tricks to get over jet lag faster: 1. Melatonin Dr. Moyad says taking 0.5 to 5 milligrams before bedtime can help you sleep better until you adapt. While your brain makes the melatonin hormone naturally to help you sleep, there are plenty of factors that can throw off your natural production. "[When it comes to jet lag,] timing is critical," says Dr. Moyad of taking melatonin for jet lag. "If you take it too early, you'll fall asleep too early and delay your adjustment to local time. Take it at bedtime every night until you adjust to the new time zone." More: 15 Relaxing Things You Should Do Before Bed While you shouldn't take melatonin more than you need to (as it is possible to develop a tolerance to it), it's safe to use melatonin to proactively avoid jet lag. By taking a dose of melatonin at your projected bedtime in the new time zone, your body can get a head start on adjusting. Traveling with your family? Three to 5 milligrams before bed is a safe dose for kids, but keep in mind that your kid may need less. A few tips on buying melatonin supplements: "Don't be lured by pricey combination products," he says. "So many companies combine it with two or more ingredients and claim that it works better than melatonin by itself. Don't fall for it!" Talk to your doctor about melatonin if you're on antihypertensive mediation, are on warfarin, or have epilepsy. 2. Limit the alcohol Maybe enjoy the big Thanksgiving game without a beer (or with fewer beers) this year. "It might make you drowsy," says Dr. Moyad, "but alcohol reduces deep and refreshing sleep and even REM (dream) stage." He also points out that drinking can lead to fragmented sleep (even if you don't notice it) and more disruptions due to nighttime bathroom breaks. 3. Ease up on caffeine in the evening "Caffeine stays in the body (in large amounts) for about five to six hours," explains Dr. Moyad. "So if you're reaching for a java jolt between 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. or later, you may still be feeling the effects at midnight." More: 6 Things You Should Never Do Before Bed 4. Keep cool A cool temperature is one of the body's triggers for sleep, explains Dr. Moyad. Fortunately for you, it's winter so all you have to do is crack a window and let the sleep breeze in. More: 50 Ways to Sleep Better Tonight 5. Sign up for a 5K or other exercise Dr. Moyad says that having a regular exercise routine is a great way to help you fall asleep at the end of the day. In fact, studies have shown that any kind of exercise, whether it's intense or gentle (like restorative yoga), can have a beneficial effect. 6. Unplug Calming down your brain with acupressure or meditation can help with turning off a restless brain. Try these calm-down drinks to help you relax, naturally. And be sure to turn off your phone several hours before bedtime, since the light from electronics can mess with your sleep cycle. 7. Don't waste your time (or money) with... Kava or kava kava. This antianxiety supplement is getting a reputation for damaging the liver. Dr. Moyad says it's not worth it, considering there are safer options. Other supplements Dr. Moyad suggests avoiding are passionflower, hops, wild lettuce, Jamaican dogwood, California poppy, and skullcap because there is a lack of scientific evidence that they're effective, despite the marketing claims. This article originally appeared on RodaleWellness.com. Retired Marines Cindy and James Hufford took on an unexpected role when they stepped in to raise their 2-year-old grandson, who suffers from numeours medical issues. "He was pretty much neglected since he was born, since we got him. You see that and you can't allow it," Cindy told Fox 46. The Rock Hill, South Carolina, couple said the alternative to taking in Ryley was putting him in a foster home. The Huffords did not disclose why their son could not care for the child. Cindy herself grew up in an orphanage. Ryley suffers from severe scoliois, a rare genetic disorder, and digestive disorders that require him to be fed through a tube in his stomach. "Our mission in life is to try and figure out what's going [ON?] to make Ryley happy and how do we solve Ryley's medical issues," James told the news channel. Doctors say Ryley may need a potentially life-threatening brain surgery because his brain has shifted to one side, but his family said the toddler is simply too weak to undergo the procedure. Their proposed solution is a cranial band helmet, to help correct the problem, but their insurance doesnt cover the cost. "He's a baby, he's small, he's vulnerable, and obviously you want him to live, ," James told Fox 46. You don't want to break him in some kind of fashion and you want him to be comfortable. Is it scary? he added. Every day. On Saturday, All Things Possible Ministry hosted a fundraiser for Ryley. All proceeds will go toward purchasing a cranial helmet and a special P-Pod chair designed to allow children with special needs interact with family while also offering postural support. "The mission in life is honestly not only to take care of him but get him to smile because when he does, it will melt your heart," James told Fox 46. Nathanaelle Bernard was two months short of the due date for her first child when Hurricane Matthew crashed through her town overlooking the Caribbean Sea along Haiti's southwestern coast. The storm, with its 145 mph winds, destroyed her small home of cinder blocks. Powerful waves carried away most of her belongings, including the clothing and blankets she had managed to collect for her baby. She's now anxiously awaiting the birth amid the ruins of her town, with even food and fresh water scarce. "I always had this dream my child wouldn't want for anything," the 19-year-old said on a recent morning, her face glowing with sweat as she cradled her swollen belly. After a pause, she added: "It was a nice dream." She shares a makeshift hut with five members of her extended family and her precarious situation is emblematic of an alarming situation across Haiti's southwestern peninsula in the wake of the storm. The U.N. Population Fund says nearly 14,000 women are due to give birth in the next three months amid widespread shortages of meat, clean water and housing in an area where poor sanitation has created ideal conditions for cholera and other diseases. Even in the best of times, pregnancy and childbirth is risky in Haiti, which has the highest maternal mortality ratio in the Western Hemisphere. Many rural women give birth at home, often with untrained midwives who administer care using leaves made into tea, smoke or steam. The Haitian government, with international assistance, has implemented programs that have helped reduce the maternal death rate by nearly half over the past decade. But, with 359 women dying for every 100,000 births due to complications, Haiti is on par with countries such as Ethiopia and Madagascar, according to the U.N. Many experts fear the advances have been rolled back by Hurricane Matthew, which made landfall on the peninsula Oct. 4. The government says the storm killed 546 people and destroyed the crops and livestock that people like Bernard and her family depend on for survival. "It is tragic that a single storm can tear up so much of this progress, and that in a single day we can be set back by years," said Marielle Sander, representative for the U.N. Population Fund in Haiti. Throughout the disaster zone, health clinics and hospitals have been badly damaged and medicine is in short supply, adding what Sander calls a "lethal combination" of factors that threaten pregnant women and newborns, especially those born with complications. At the general hospital in Les Cayes, the region's largest city, about a dozen pregnant women sought care on a recent morning, some complaining about symptoms of high blood pressure. Expecting women in Haiti are disproportionately threatened by disorders such as eclampsia and pre-eclampsia, which bring high blood pressure and can cause seizures, heart failure and hemorrhaging. "Before the hurricane we didn't have enough antibiotics and other medication. But now the situation's harder. We need more of a lot of things," said Lucie Naomie Lafortune, the ward's head nurse. Bernard occasionally gets shooting pains in her stomach, retreating to a bed in the shack her uncle built from scavenged materials after the family's home was destroyed. She curls up with her eyes shut tight, taking acetaminophen she got from a nurse. She tries her best to push out negative thoughts. But that's tough to do while undernourished and with little protection from any number of diseases stalking people here, including the mosquito-borne Zika virus that can cause serious birth defects if women are infected while pregnant. Romual Saint-Jean, the 27-year-old father of her unborn child, moved Bernard to her uncle's coastal village from Port-au-Prince after she contracted typhoid in early 2016. They believed Coteaux's salt air and slow-paced life would do her good. Now, he desperately wants to move the family overseas but has no idea how that might happen. Saint-Jean, who lost his $300-a-month job in July as a Portuguese-Haitian Creole translator for Haiti's U.N. peacekeeping mission, is struggling to find work. "I don't see a future here," he said after returning from another discouraging job-hunting effort in the capital. The young couple met last year in the back of a "tap-tap," colorfully painted group taxis that connect Haitians to jobs, markets and each other. Saint-Jean told buddies he thought he had met his future wife. Pretty soon, Bernard was pregnant. They were happy and excited, even if the baby wasn't planned. But the pressures are growing and she sometimes has to steel herself to hold back tears. "I worry most about nutrition," said Bernard, who subsists mainly on rice, corn meal and bean sauce. "How can my baby be strong if I'm not eating well?" Associated Press journalists accompanied Bernard to the public hospital in the wrecked town of Port Salut, where she got a free checkup. But she couldn't afford an ultrasound to find out the baby's sex before delivery. Some of the young couple's happiest times are debating names. With a pealing laugh, Nathanaelle said she only knows it won't be Fabienne or Fabiola if it's a girl because she dislikes names that begin with "F." A Pentecostal pastor recently placed his hands on her swollen belly and suggested Jonas if it's a boy. Grimacing slightly as she hoisted herself from a wooden bench, she prepared for the most relaxing part of her day: Lowering herself into the gently lapping sea and giving her swollen ankles a rest. Bernard knows her family's immediate prospects are not good. But when she's floating in the shallows she meditates on what remains. "We lost the things we had. But we're not lost," she said after drying herself on the sandy beach where she and her neighbors bury their waste. "We're alive. Our baby is alive. And that's what's most important." Prolonged exposure therapy is a common form of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in U.S. veterans and active-duty soldiers, but researchers in central Florida are taking the approach to a new level with virtual reality (VR). Iraq War veteran Bruce Chambers, who was one of the first patients to go through the three-week program at the University of Central Florida (UCF), said the therapy has reduced his paranoia, and made him a better father and husband, Fox 35 Orlando reported. It changed my life, Chambers told the news station, and if it can change my life, it can change another soldier's life. Called the UCF Restores program, the regimen guides patients through group and virtual reality therapy, and, like, prolonged exposure therapy, places the veterans back into the traumatic experiences that triggered their PTSD. Symptoms of PTSD include flashbacks, nightmares, depression, an increased risk of suicide, hyperarousal, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Dr. Deborah Beidel, founder of UCF Restores, described the program as intense, but the advantage is that we can really take care of this disorder, and treat this disorder thoroughly and effectively in a short period of time, she told Fox 35. The therapy aims not to erase veterans traumatic memories but to eliminate the stress that accompanies those thoughts. Beidels research suggests 66 percent of patients find success with the program, Fox 35 reported. With virtual reality, Chambers relived the PTSD-inducing moment when he hit a 400-pound improvised explosive device (IED), was knocked unconscious and got ambushed during a 15-month tour in Iraq. As he sat in a chair that shook him to simulate the explosion, familiar smells from the day like car exhaust and burning flesh were also replicated. He relived the moment repeatedly until his anxiety diminished, Fox 35 reported. I think other people need to hear about this because its changing lives, Chambers told the news station. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Ken Felix has a lot of faith in people. He spent 40 years as a veterinarian, treating every size and type of animal from parakeets to hippopotamuses, and relished the freedom from lawyers and insurance companies that his medical-doctor friends couldnt enjoy. Most of all, he liked his clientele. Physicians treat everybody everybody gets sick, Felix, 68, told FoxNews.com, but [as veterinarians] we only see the people who care enough about their animals to bring in their animals, and theyre all nice people. Felixs faith in humans was tested in May 2015, when he suffered a life-threatening bike crash in his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, that led doctors to detect then use video-assisted surgery to remove his stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer. Felix smoked as a teen but hadnt taken a puff in nearly 40 years, and he hadnt been presenting any symptoms of his cancer. The father of two and grandfather of five doesnt chalk up his post-treatment survival to karma, but he does think good fortune had something to do with it. So do his doctors. Unfortunately, for the majority of patients, when [lung cancer] is found curable, its found by luck, Felixs oncologist Nathan Pennell, director of the lung cancer medical oncology program at the Cleveland Clinic, told FoxNews.com. By the time patients present with symptoms, such as pain and weight loss, its often spread and is not curable, so it was really lucky that we had picked this up. The bike accident left Felix with 12 fractures in eight ribs, a fractured shoulder blade, a concussion, and a flail chest, wherein a portion of the ribcage detaches from the chest wall, usually due to severe blunt trauma. I cant tell you how many miles Id ridden and never crashed, said Felix, who at that time had indulged in 30-, 40- and 50-mile rides on the backroads of the Pennsylvania countryside. I shouldnt have bragged. A post-accident scan indicated a lesion on his left lung, which doctors eventually diagnosed as stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer, and treated with radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. Its never safe to smoke for any amount of time, so anyone whos smoked is at a higher risk [of lung cancer], Pennell said. He added that after 15 years of quitting smoking, an individuals chance of developing lung cancer drops to twice that of a never-smoker as opposed to about 20 times that of an active smoker. Ten to 15 percent of lung cancer patients have never smoked. First operated on at UPMC Hamot in Erie, Felix had five titanium plates, with six to eight screws each, implanted on the left side of his chest. At the time of the crash, doctors at UPMC noticed the lesion but initially suspected inflammation due to the rib fractures. A month or so later, they performed a navigational bronchoscopy and took a biopsy to confirm it was inflammation, but the doctor asked Felix to return in another year so he could check on its status, he recalled. Doctors did a PET scan and a CT scan, as well as a percutaneous biopsy, in which they stuck a needle in his chest, and test results indicated an EGFR mutation, which 40 percent of nonsmokers with lung cancer also have, Pennell said. Through online research, Felix knew he had a 14 percent chance of surviving five years, but he didnt waste any time feeling sorry for himself. He asked a cousin who practices oncology in Detroit for advice and received a referral to the Cleveland Clinic, where Pennell recommended two cycles of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation followed by surgery. The regimen eradicated nearly all of the cancer, so Felix underwent two additional weeks of radiation. As if luck had struck him again, Felix didnt suffer common chemo side effects like nausea or vomiting. I am just lucky, Felix said. His surgeon Dr. Daniel Raymond, thoracic surgeon and chief quality officer for thoracic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, said the subsequent operation took seven hours, or three times as long as video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) typically does. During VATS, surgeons insert a small camera called a thoracoscope and surgical instruments through tiny incisions in the chest wall. The camera transmits images from inside the chest to a video monitor, which helps to guide the surgeon through the procedure. Although VATS has been practiced since the early 90s, and one-third to one-half of all lung resections for cancer are done with VATS, Felixs surgery was unique because of his prior injury, which made his ribs less compliant, and led to scarring in his chest from blood retention. Raymond and his team used a cardiopulmonary bypass machine as a backup and had vascular surgeons on hand during the operation to input stents in case Felix started bleeding. The challenge is that as the complexity gets higher, the chances of a successful video surgery is less, Raymond told FoxNews.com. We were working in a confined space, and his chest is what wed call hostile his lung was scarred to his chest wall, and it was a difficult operation. Typically during VATS, surgeons make one incision through which they place the camera and two others through which the instruments go. But because Felixs ribs were noncompliant, his surgery was trickier, Raymond said. In [Felixs] circumstance, the skin incision was the same, but we were going between multiple rib spaces because the ribs were so tight together [that] we could barely get one instrument between them, he explained. Typically, you can put two fingers through a working port incision. In his circumstance, we could not get a finger between the ribs. The ribs were essentially fixed in place due to his prior trauma surgery. The other challenge Raymond and his team faced was the cancers proximity to Felixs blood vessels. To dissect the cancer, surgeons had to sacrifice the vagus nerve, which branches to the left vocal cord. Following surgery, Felix could not talk, but he underwent a vocal cord medialization procedure to temporarily correct the issue and begin speaking again. In December, hell undergo an additional procedure to permanently fix his vocal cords. Because he was in good shape, Felix recovered within four days of his VATS procedure, surpassing Raymonds expectation that he would need seven days to recover. His recovery was incredible, Raymond said. It is a testament to the fact of what happens when you are in great shape. In addition to his physical condition, its his mental condition. He is one of those people who has an indomitable spirit, and things can never get him down. Although 40 to 50 percent of patients with stage 3 lung cancer will be cured with the aggressive treatment regimen that Felix received, only 15 to 20 percent of people with Felixs non-small cell lung cancer are cured with it. But Pennell thinks Felixs physical health may put him at an advantage. For people who are healthy enough, and whose cancer is limited enough, and can go through these three types of treatment, the outcomes tend to be better, Pennell said. Felix said he feels great and is proud that he weighs the same today as he weighed when he had his bicycle accident. He credits surviving the crash and the surprise cancer to his commitment to fitness and eating healthy, as well as his good genetics. He also credited the people on his support team, including his wife Jan and doctors, and his positivity. And then theres a thing called luck, Felix said. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 DANVILLE, Calif. Mike Baughman considered himself one of the lucky ones, returning from Vietnam without any major injuries or psychological scars. But after falling ill nearly a half-century later, he found out he did not escape the war after all. The 64-year-old is among hundreds of veterans who have been diagnosed with a rare bile duct cancer that may be linked to their time in the service and an unexpected source: parasites in raw or poorly cooked river fish. The worms infect an estimated 25 million people, mostly in Asia, but are less known in America. They can easily be wiped out with a few pills early on. Left untreated, a cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma can develop, often killing patients just a few months after symptoms appear. The US government acknowledges that liver flukes, endemic in the steamy jungles of Vietnam, are likely killing some former soldiers. Ralph Erickson, who heads post-deployment health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said about 700 cholangiocarcinoma patients have passed through the agencys medical system in the past 15 years. Claims from 307 veterans requesting benefits have been submitted over that period, and yet the vast majority 3 out of 4 have been rejected, according to data obtained by the Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. The VA requires veterans to show medical conditions are at least as likely as not related to their time in service to receive financial help, but doctors note that often isnt easy with bile duct cancer caused by liver flukes. The parasites typically go undetected, sometimes living for more than 25 years without making their hosts sick. The body reacts by trying to wall off the organisms. This causes inflammation and scarring and, over time, can lead to cancer. The first symptoms are often jaundice, itchy skin and rapid weight loss. By then, the disease is usually advanced. If American doctors better understood bile duct cancer and the potential risks to those who served in Vietnam, they could use ultrasounds to check veterans for inflammation, and then surgery might be possible for some of them, said Jeff Bethony, a liver fluke expert at George Washington University. Early is key, he said, adding he regularly receives desperate letters from veterans family members. The VA should be testing for this. Once diagnosed, most men dont realize there may be a connection to their service in Vietnam. The few who figure it out often spend their final months fighting for recognition and benefits, leaving them feeling angry and abandoned, as many did when they first came home from the war. Hard to believe, Baughman said in his living room, flipping through a photo album from his war days. I dodged all those bullets, then get killed by a fish. Baughman had just turned 19 when his draft number came up in late 1970. He was soon deployed to central Vietnam near Hue to do reconnaissance in the mountains. Although he was the youngest in his Army unit, he quickly became one of its most valuable members. The Vietnamese like to shoot the first guy in line, and last guy, Baughman said. And so thats what I trained to do: Be the first guy in. He would walk point clearing thick jungle with a machete and, thanks partly to growing up hunting in the hills of West Virginia, he proved gifted at noticing the smallest twig or leaf brushed out of place by the enemy. It was his job to spot booby traps and potential ambushes. Often on long missions, sometimes forced to sleep outside with sheets of monsoon rain pelting down, his unit would run out of rations and go fishing for dinner near the border with Laos. We would throw a grenade in the water, and then scoop them off the river floor, Baughman said. We called it fish on a stick.' The men would use a helmet and a tiny blue smokeless flame to cook the fish as best they could, but it never really got done. Years later, when he returned home, those makeshift meals became just another story he would tell about roughing it in Vietnam. He went on to earn a masters degree and became a successful engineer in Silicon Valley working for Atari, Apple and others. In October 2013, he was about to remarry and decided to get a long-overdue physical. He felt fine, but his blood work indicated there might be a problem with his liver. Further testing revealed he had bile duct cancer. After researching the condition online, Baughman was convinced that worms ingested decades ago in that raw fish on a stick were now killing him. He turned to the VA for help, and his private physician wrote a letter highlighting the potential connection between the worms and the disease. He went to a VA doctor as well, who also acknowledged liver flukes were one of the main risk factors for the cancer but concluded there was no evidence of infection from Baughmans service time. He was twice denied benefits in 2015, and is waiting for the results of his latest appeal. Liver flukes are found mainly in parts of Southeast Asia, China and South Korea, where residents and tourists alike risk infection from specific types of freshwater fish such as tilapia and carp. In one location in Laos, researchers found liver flukes which can survive pickling and fermentation in about 60 percent of villagers, and in some parts of Vietnam, up to 40 percent were infected. Experts say its hard to know how many people in the region may be dying from cholangiocarcinoma caused by the parasites because there are few cancer registries. In northeastern Thailand, where many villagers have a taste for the sour fish dish pla som, new bile duct cancers affect about 85 in 100,000 people, the worlds highest recorded rate. Little research has been conducted outside of Thailand, where mobile clinics routinely perform bile duct ultrasound screenings in hard-hit areas. Once cancer is detected, surgery is sometimes an option, depending on the tumors location. Liver transplants typically arent performed due to organ shortages and poor prognosis. In the United States, cholangiocarcinoma is extremely rare, with roughly 5,000 people diagnosed each year, including some Asian immigrants who ate infected fish in their native countries. Liver flukes arent the only risk factor for the disease; others include hepatitis B and C, cirrhosis and bile duct stones. But some physicians say for Vietnam veterans diagnosed decades after US-backed Saigon fell to communist forces in 1975, the cancer is as likely as not tied to their service time. And by VA standards, that should be enough to receive benefits. It is the only way to explain it, said Dr. Banchob Sripa, a leading expert on the disease at Khon Kaen University in Thailand. He said doctors in the US and Australia, which also sent troops to the war, have contacted him for help in determining whether the parasites are to blame for veterans cancer. More than 100 appeals for cholangiocarcinoma dating back to the early 1990s are on the VAs website. Though Erickson said there have been no significant case increases among veterans in recent years, data collected following an AP inquiry showed the number of benefit claims has increased sixfold since 2003. Claims hit a high of 60 last year, with nearly 80 percent denied. Decisions appear to be haphazard. Some are approved automatically. Others, presented with the same evidence, are denied. For instance, some rejections were based on the fact that parasites were not found in stool samples, but those tests were conducted years after the worms would have died. Other claims were dismissed because the veteran did not report his illness within a year of leaving Vietnam, yet symptoms typically dont appear until decades later. VA officials say while theyre sympathetic, its up to the men to prove that liver flukes from Vietnam are killing them. They say because the cancer remains rare, it would be unrealistic and onerous to carry out regular screenings. This is still a legal process that both the VA and the veteran have to go through, and we will look at each case and all the evidence that is presented to us and make a determination at that point, said Steve Westerfeld, a spokesman for the VAs Veterans Benefits Administration. Certainly any veteran has an opportunity to appeal. Many do, sometimes two or three times before either getting approved or giving up. Its discouraging to fight for something that you think should probably be available for people who actually went over and served, Mike Brown of Valencia, California, told the AP earlier this year after learning he had bile duct cancer. He died last month at age 68, just days after finding out the VA had approved his claim. Often, its the widows who are left fighting. Its bad enough, said Anne Petitti, whose husband, Mario, died from the disease in 2010, just a few months after being diagnosed. They shouldnt be put through the wringer or have to go through all the red tape. She eventually won her fight with the VA, and set up a Facebook page to help other veterans navigate the system while also cataloging new cases. How much veterans, or their families, are compensated depends on many factors, including to what degree the illness is affecting their ability to have productive lives. An unmarried veteran can get nearly $3,000 a month, but some spouses said they get about half that amount. For many, its not about the money. Its about raising awareness, both among veterans and the VA, and receiving recognition for their service. Most vets understand very quickly its a terminal disease and that they dont have much time, Petitti said. Baughman talks about his own future with caution, even though hes already beaten the odds: He was supposed to have died last November. The illness forced him to stop working, and his medical bills have skyrocketed from all the tests, radiation and chemotherapy. Hes luckier than some because he has good insurance. Hes not in touch with most of the guys from his old unit, but he worries about them too. Unlike todays troops, those who served in Vietnam were shunned when they came home. Its one more reason having this medical condition recognized by the VA matters so much to him. Itd be nice to have me win my little battle, he said. But I want the government to do it for everybody. Donald Trump has tapped Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to be his White House chief of staff. What does this say about the nascent Trump administration, other than blue laws not applying to presidential transitions? Here are four takeaways: 1. Respect. Anyone closely following the election couldnt miss that Priebus and Trump had a good working relationship far smoother than the hot mess that was Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and ugly revelations of the Democratic National Committee chairs playing favorites. Priebus didnt stack the debate deck against Trump. In early October, after the release of the audiotape that nearly sank Trumps campaign, Priebus held a 14-minute phone call with RNC members telling them, in effect, not to abandon ship. Trump also owes Priebus and the RNC for a multi-year ground game that paid dividends last Tuesday. In must-have Florida, for example, nearly 300,000 Republicans were added to the voter registration rolls since the 2012 election (Trump carried the state by 120,000 votes). Nearly 1,800 paid staff and trained organizers worked the Sunshine State; nearly 6.5 million volunteer voter contacts were made. Small wonder the two hugged it out on Election Night. Lets chalk this up to professional respect in that regard, little different than the simultaneous hiring of Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist and a soon-to-be announced role for Kellyanne Conway, the latter two key campaign insiders. 2. The Trump Card Is Andy Card. Going back to its modern-day inception during the Truman administration, there hasnt been a standard-issue White House Chief of Staff. Bill Clinton brought in a pal from his Arkansas kindergarten days a Washington outsider from a Fortune 500 gas company whom everyone described as nice. Mack McLarty didnt make it until the first midterm election, replaced by Budget Director Leon Panetta, the ultimate Beltway insider. Barack Obamas first chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel like Panetta a product of Congress, but with an edgy temperament. Obama wanted a bad cop whod keep a Democratic Congress in line. If Trumps choice echoes any recent presidency, it might be the Bush 43 White House. Andy Card, President George W. Bushs first chief of staff, was the timekeeper and gatekeeper. He controlled the schedule, oversaw the West Wings operations and made sure the trains ran on time. Widely respected around town for his political smarts and his personal integrity, Card lasted on the job for five-plus years (two years is more the norm). This sounds like Priebus job role, with one added responsibility: hell be the one making calls to GOP congressional leadership and the extended world of the RNC to keep the troops in line. 3. Not All "Swamp" Creatures Are Alike. To those having a conniption because Trump went with someone whos a Washington fixture, the choice is a reminder of the reality of life inside the White House: in order to fly the plane, you need someone in the cockpit whos attended flight school. Nearly six years as the RNC chair means Priebus knows how to run a political organization, can deal with oversized personalities and is sensitive to Washingtons rhythms. Just as important: smart national committee chairmen keep their egos in check and do their best to stay out of the news. An effective White House chief of staff operates the same way (John Sununus penchant for generating bad headlines was a constant headache in the Bush 41 presidency). 4. A Collective Deep Breath. The choice of Priebus neither guarantees a successful first term nor assures the worst presidency since Harding. What it is: a smart first step. Once Trump is through with this first round of inner-circle hires surrounding himself with much of the same crew that delivered the election there will another round of appointments. At that point, well find out whos in charge of policy, communications, congressional relations and legal affairs. Well also know more about the various White House fiefdoms i.e., which deputies have what portfolios. Stay tuned. Theres never a dull day in the world of Donald Trump even on Sundays. U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage -- one of the masterminds behind the Brexit campaign -- was pictured beaming with President-elect Donald Trump Saturday. He has good reason to be in high spirits as the new occupant of the White House could be the man to save Brexit -- which is already in mortal danger. It was a great honour to spend time with @realDonaldTrump. He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President. pic.twitter.com/kx8cGRHYPQ Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) November 12, 2016 Just as liberals in the U.S. are already trying to find ways to overturn Trumps victory by attacking the Electoral College, in the U.K. they have been doing the same ever since the British people comfortably voted to leave the European Union in June. The soy-sipping Guardianistas who dominate Britains chattering class -- after calling relentlessly for either a second vote, or for the referendum to be ignored entirely -- have now picked up a significant victory. A London investment banker has convinced an activist High Court (you know about those, right America?) to determine that in order to even begin negotiating an exit from the E.U. the issue must be first be voted on by Parliament -- made up of MPs who, for the most part, would never have voted to leave the E.U. in the first place. This means that from now until the vote in probably early 2017, the mainstream media, left-wing activists and members of the London and European establishment will unload every weapon they have in their arsenal to force MPs to betray the voters. While Prime Minister Theresa May -- herself a Remainer but one who is committed to Brexit -- will try and keep her party united, it is likely many will buckle and join the opposition parties in voting to shut down Brexit. This is where President-elect Trump could make the difference. Britain is now isolated in Europe, with its European allies on one side treating it like a leper, and a skeptical Obama administration shuffling away on the other. Before the vote, Obama famously said Britain would be at the back of the queue if it voted for Brexit, and sure enough the special relationship has apparently stagnated since then. Britain needs an ally fast, and Trumps America could come to the rescue. Just as Margaret Thatcher gained the ability to face down Europe knowing she had the support of Ronald Reagan, Theresa May could do the same if Trump stands with her. So what should Trump do? First he should embrace the U.K. fully. There are signs he is going to do so already, both by his welcome of Farage and his invite for Theresa May to visit America as soon as possible -- despite some negative statements by May and some of her government in the past. When she visits, a strong expression of solidarity, a renewed commitment to the special relationship, and a promise to stand shoulder-to-shoulder through the Brexit process should all be on Trumps to-do list. Second, he should use Americas power as a trading power to insulate Britain from the ravages of the economic traps Europe is laying for the U.K. Britain is one of the strongest economies in the world; if Europe refuses to trade with Britain in a post-Brexit tantrum, America should step up. It is in Americas interests for the Trump administration to offer the best trade deal it can possibly afford to the U.K. and to offer it quickly. In his excellent piece on the US-UK relationship, strategist and advisor Lee Cohen notes that the US-UK bilateral investment relationship is the largest in the world, with nearly a million American jobs provided by British companies based in the U.S. and investment into the U.K. amounting to just under $600 billion in 2012. Trump should move hard to expand upon this, and couple it by threatening to withdraw favorable trade deals from European countries trying to sabotage Brexit. Doing so will boost the U.K. economy (nixing the predictions of the naysayers who predicted post-Brexit armageddon), will stifle European opposition and will soothe the nerves of the London financial market. Additionally, it will prove an argument that Brexiteers have been making for a while -- we dont need to be part of Europe to make good deals with big countries like America, as we can do it by ourselves. But it would not just be charity by Trump to make Brexit a certainty -- in fact it could be a legacy-defining moment as he pulls Americas closest ally from the fundamentally anti-American E.U., and closer to itself in a way that will benefit Washington. A Britain free of its European shackles would realign its focus to America, becoming more pro-American and a better ally in military and trade. America saw how valuable a close alliance would be during the Thatcher-Reagan years, where the pair allied up to defeat the Soviet Union, and during the Clinton-Blair and Bush-Blair years where the foreign policies of the respective presidents were bolstered and legitimized on the world stage by unwavering British support. The same is true of a Trump-May alliance -- a realigned Britain would be more likely to go along with Trumps proposed NATO reforms, his plan to defeat ISIS, and would be less likely to put pressure on the administration for not going along with the business-sapping deals such as the Paris climate change agreement. It would be a wise and savvy move for the president-elect to jump to the aid of the politically besieged British center-right. By doing so, he will emerge with Theresa May as a strong prime minister and a grateful ally, heading a government with a pro-American, pro-trade, pro-small government vision, and one more than willing to walk side-by-side with President Trump. Trump may be the only person who can save Brexit -- he should get to work as soon as possible. Editor's note: The following column originally appeared in The Hill newspaper and on TheHill.com. What happens to Democrats in the Trump era? In the 1992 presidential election, after three straight terms of Republicans in the White House, Bill Clinton successfully remade the Democrats into a party of political centrists to regain the support of so-called Reagan Democrats. When Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 nomination to the future President Obama, he challenged her centrist politics from the left. He attacked her Senate vote in support of the war in Iraq and war-weary Democrats rallied to him. With Obama leaving office, the Democrats are losing his anti-war focus and the personal popularity that allowed him to hold the Democrats together. The president enjoys a sky-high job approval rating among his fellow Democrats. So, who replaces him as the working leader of Democrats in Washington? And what is the Democrats new guiding ideology? The leading candidate to lead the party out of the darkness is Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). He is widely expected to be the next Senate Minority Leader. But his strong ties to Wall Street are guaranteed to give the most liberal members of his party heartburn. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), with 30 years in Congress, is expected to remain the top Democrat in the House. But the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House lost the majority in 2010 and failed to recapture it in any of the three elections since then. Over at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), there is also a leadership vacuum. Former chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (Fla.) was forced out after WikiLeaks published embarrassing emails showing DNC staffers trying to help Clinton defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primaries. Donna Brazile, the current DNC chairwoman, is under fire for emails, again released through WikiLeaks, that claim to show she shared presidential debate questions with the Clinton campaign while a paid contributor at CNN. At the moment, Democrats are a people distressed at the reality that millions of Americans voted for Trump and did so with full knowledge of his long list of insults, bullying, racist comments and failure to pay taxes. Exit polls showed voters selecting him despite their overwhelming conclusion that he lacks the judgment and experience to be president. I sincerely hope the president-elect lives up to his promise to bind the wounds of division. Patriotism dictates that Democrats rally behind him and pray for his success as our nations leader. I am trying. It is also good to remember there are lots of Democrats out there. Clinton won the popular vote even as she lost the Electoral College. If Trump really does try to improve the employment situation for working class people, Democrats should be ready to support him, a recent piece by D.D. Guttenplan in The Nation argued even while they develop the power to pressure him on immigration and climate change. Democrats need a revived party with a strong leader, as well as a clear message that allows them to stand as the loyal opposition to Trump Republicans. One way to find the leader is to consider the best Democrat to run against Trump in 2020. International Business Times last week listed six names for the job: Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio); Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Clintons running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.). I want an uncompromising fighter who understands the values of our base, of our party, and of our nation, Markos Moulitsas wrote at the Daily Kos last week in a blog post on who should be the next DNC Chair. I want a champion who will rebuild the party in all 50 states. I want a hero that will support a whole new generation of new party leaders, candidates, activists and voters. And I want anger. But that may just be the day-after me speaking. In a Facebook post last Wednesday, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged activists to take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people, because they have failed us miserably. Any Democratic member of Congress who didnt wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness thats about to begin, Moore wrote. The progressive populist wing of the Democratic Party, as currently led by Sanders and Warren, has a real opportunity in the coming months to execute a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, just as Trump took over the Republicans last year. The internal power struggles within the Democratic Party provide clues to how the partys congressional leaders will deal with pressing issues like pending trade deals, where progressives like Sanders and Warren may find common cause with Trump in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then there is the Supreme Court, where an all-out fight will be required after Senate Republicans never even had a hearing to consider Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland. Other Trump GOP agenda items like the repeal of ObamaCare and sweeping tax cuts will require progressives to go to the barricades. They will need new ideas and strong leadership and it is not at all clear that their current roster is up to the challenge. Bernie and Elizabeth, the party is yours for the taking. The opening is there for you to channel all of the pain and anger among Democrats. Will you seize it? The effort to make Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison the next leader of the troubled Democratic National Committee gained momentum Sunday with a key endorsement from outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, as Ellison defended his party by saying Donald Trumps hate and poison caused its election defeat. My friend Keith Ellison is a terrific leader and a strong progressive who knows how to get things done, Reid said in a statement. Now is the time for new thinking and a fresh start at the DNC. Now is the time for Keith. Ellison, a Muslim and co-leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has yet to officially announce a bid for the post. But he already has the backing of progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, as well as incoming Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Not only is (Ellison) one of the most progressive members of the Congress, but he also understands that the future of the Democratic Party has got to be grassroots activism, Sanders, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, told USA Today last week. Leaked documents on the eve of this summer's Democratic National Convention showed DNC Chairman Debbie Wassserman Schultz favored eventual party nominee Hillary Clinton over Independent-turned-Democrat Sanders, which resulted in the Florida congresswoman being forced to resign from her post. The DNCs problems continued in the later stages of the campaign when emails that WikiLeaks hacked from the Clinton campaign showed acting DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile, also a paid CNN contributor, had given Clinton questions from a CNN debate and a town-hall style event. CNN cut ties with Brazile after the emails came to light. Former DNC Chairman, presidential candidate and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley are also considering a bid for the post. OMalley was also a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, and he publically complained that Wasserman Schultz had limited the number of debates to protect the front-running Clinton. The DNC chairman is usually appointed by a Democratic president and is primarily responsible for raising money for party candidates up and down election ballots. Ellison, who said he could make a decision as early as Monday about whether to compete for the post, would face a Republican Party that controls the White House, Congress and more than 30 of the country's 50 governorships. Ellison suggest on NBCs Meet the Press that Clinton lost and fellow Democrats had made only modest gains in the House and Senate because Americans "have been looking at 40 years of flat wages. "The truth is, we have got to make America work for working people again, he continued. We have to make that our job number one. Ellison also said no way in the world is Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who upset Clinton, a champion of working people. I don't know any good thing this guy has ever done, and yet because he was able to throw hate and poison on Hillary Clinton, he was able to somehow prevail, Ellison also said. I'm not going to get up here [and] cast fault on Democrats. The first of roughly 60 newly elected Senate and House members began arriving Monday on Capitol Hill bringing luggage and briefcases and optimism about a quick deal on infrastructure and other bipartisan projects after a contentious White House race that still divides the country. I think we might be able to get more common ground than people anticipate. I certainly hope so because our country needs it more than ever, incoming Florida Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist said between exiting a cab and heading for House freshman orientation. Crist, a former Republican and Florida governor, was among several incoming House members enthusiastic about Democrats and Republicans agreeing on a multi-billion-dollar spending package to create jobs and improve the countrys crumbling roads, transportation hubs and other infrastructure. COTTON: TRUMP, CONGRESS NEED TO REDUCE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION While President Obama took heat for years for his costly stimulus package that backed similar projects, infrastructure spending was touted this year by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I know that President-elect Trump has talked about the fact that our airports and seaports need to be fixed, as well as our highways and byways, Crist also said. So Im optimistic about that. Monday also marked the return of sitting senators and House members, who after a two-month recess for the elections have just six weeks to pass a budget to avoid a government shutdown. On the Senate side, Sen.-elect Catherine Cortez-Masto, who won the seat in Nevada of fellow Democrat and retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, was on Capitol Hill, with the six other new members still arriving. "I'm honored to be the Senate-elect for the great state of Nevada," Cortez-Masto said during a brief press conference with Reid. "Thank you." Perhaps the most activity in the upper chamber centered on the arrest of several demonstrators outside the office of New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the expected next Senate minority leader. One of the demonstrators told Fox News the group was made up of disaffected millennials who hold Wall Street-backed Democrats partly responsible for Trump's victory over Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. They sat outside Schumers office and called on him to withdraw his leadership bid. House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy told Fox News that Trump -- whose promise to dismantle the Washington establishment helped him win the White House -- is going to shake this place up. McCarthy, the No. 2 Republican in the GOP-controlled House, declined to say how his chamber will pass a spending bill to keep the federal government fully operational after Dec. 31, though it will almost certainly take the form of a stopgap measure known as a continuing resolution. Trumps victory and Republicans keeping control Nov. 8 of their Senate majority will certainly help the GOP achieve its goals of further securing the southern U.S. border and finally getting to repeal and replace ObamaCare. Neither issue is expected to face any sort of final vote in this so-called lame duck session of Congress. However, McCarthy, of California, suggested the House will be working on the issues long before Trump is sworn in Jan. 20. House Republicans still have their internal vote for House speaker scheduled for Tuesday and are likely to nominate GOP Rep. Paul Ryan for another term, despite rumblings from some of the most conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill about delaying the vote or an outright change in leadership. The announcement Sunday that Ryans Wisconsin hometown friend and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will be Trumps chief of staff may have helped blunt those efforts. Even Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Monday he'll back Ryan for the post. Meanwhile, a group of about 25 House Democrats on Monday reportedly asked for a delay on voting to reappoint House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat predicted her party would retake control of the chamber but won only a handful of seats. Our data and ground game and Trumps momentum was a recipe for success up and down the ticket, Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday. The House will have 59 new members, though incoming New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter has already served in Congress. And four races remain undecided. The Senate has six new members, including three newly-arriving Democrats: Cortez-Masto, Kamala Harris of California, and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. The three others come from the House: Reps. Todd Young, R-Ind.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. Fox News' Kara Rowland and Chad Pergram contributed to this report. Calling the office of the presidency bigger than any one person, President Obama on Monday said the influence America has on a global scale will not be erased by the outcome of one election and added that Donald Trump told him the U.S. would reaffirm its commitment to the NATO alliance. As a candidate for president, Trump said other members of the treaty organization did not contribute enough for the protections it gets in return. Trumps position seemed to change on the topic in recent days. Obama called the president-elects new support of NATO one of the most important functions he will be able to relay during his upcoming three-country tour. There is no weakening of resolve, Obama said. HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP COULD SAVE BREXIT Domestically, Obama admitted last weeks major losses for the Democratic Party across the country were a political blow but encouraged his party not to waver on our core beliefs and principles. When your team loses, everybody gets deflated, Obama said. He added, Its important for me not to be bigfooting that conversation. Monday marked the first time Obama has taken questions from the press since Trumps election win last week. The president was also questioned on the status of his legacy laws, including ObamaCare, under a Trump administration and a Republican House and Senate. Now that Republicans are in charge, theyve got to take a look and say, lets see, Obama said. We got 20 million people who have health insurance who didnt have it before. Health care costs generally have gone up at a significantly slower rate since ObamaCare was passed than they did before, which has saved the federal Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars. The president then dodged a question about concerns some minorities and other groups have about Trumps decision to name Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and economic adviser. I think its fair to say that it would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making if I want to be consistent with the notion that we are going to try to facilitate a smooth transition, he said. However, he did note that during his 90-minute meeting with Trump last week, he told him it was important to send signals of unity early on. But the people have spoken, Obama said. Donald Trump will be the next president, the 45th president of the United States. And it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflects his politics. Those who didnt vote for him will have to recognize that thats how democracy works. Thats how this system operates. Just days ago, Obama and Trump were attacking one another on policy issues. Trump ran his campaign on promises to gut most of Obamas signature policies. The president spent the majority of the 2016 presidential election season calling out his now-successor, saying he was temperamentally unfit for the job. Since then, Obama has said his main goal going forward would be to facilitate a smooth transition of power. Following the press conference, the president will head out on his last major trip abroad where hell likely face similar questions from his foreign counterparts. And though Obama has urged unity and said the U.S. must root for Trumps success, the presidents trip to Greece, Germany and Peru forces him to confront global concerns about the future of Americas leadership. "The mood of Greek people for this political change is 'wait and see,'" said Nikos Pappas, a minister of state with close ties to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in an interview. He said there was surprise in Greece, as elsewhere, about Trump's victory, but added: "Everybody would be expecting the U.S. government is going to continue to be on our side." Obama's trip, planned when it seemed certain Hillary Clinton would win, had been designed to reassure the world that the U.S. had regained its footing after a toxic campaign that unnerved foreign capitals, noted Heather Conley, a Europe scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Now the president has the unenviable task of telling his counterparts and explaining what Europeans are now coining 'the Trump effect,'" Conley said. For months, Obama lent credence to those concerns as he urged Americans to reject Trump. Standing alongside Singapore's prime minister in August, Obama said Trump was "woefully unprepared" because he lacked "basic knowledge" about critical issues in Europe, Asia and the Mideast. And during a visit to Japan, Obama said world leaders were rightfully "rattled" by Trump. Now, Obama must reassure the U.S. and other countries that somehow, it will all be OK. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A key member of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team and a top adviser on matters involving immigration told FoxNews.com Monday the incoming administration will likely move to deport illegal immigrants upon arrest. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a key player in several high-profile immigration measures and court cases, advised Trump on immigration during his campaign and will likely have a key role in shaping the new president's policies. Kobach said Trump is likely to scrap the Obama administration's approach of deporting only those who have been convicted, a policy he said releases dangerous people back into U.S. communities. The most extreme criminals are deported while criminal arrestees not yet convicted are turned loose, said Kobach. [Under the new proposal,] criminal arrestees will be deported, there will be immediate improvement in safety for all Americans. Kobach stressed that Trump must sign off on decisions involving enforcement policies, but said candidate Trump signaled clearly what President Trump will do. Ultimately its his call, Kobach said. There will be a great deal of consistency between the platform and President-elect Trumps policies that is, with the caveat that every decision is the presidents decision. Kobach spoke to FoxNews.com a day after Trump appeared on CBSs 60 Minutes and said that dealing with immigration would be among his first priorities upon taking office in January. He said he would focus on getting criminals off the streets and out of the country, building a wall though part of it might be a fence, he said and that later he would turn his attention to what to do about other illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes. After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, were going to make a determination on the people that theyre talking about who are terrific people, Trump said. Theyre terrific people, but we are going make a determination at that. But before we make that determination . . . its very important, we are going to secure our border. Some 12 million people are believed to be living in the United States illegally. Roughly 40 percent entered on visas and did not leave when they expired. Kobach said that Trump will be able to boost enforcement of existing immigration laws right away by undoing Obamas executive actions, and giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents more support and freedom to arrest, detain and deport people such as those with criminal records. Obama ordered ICE agents to stop doing their jobs, said Kobach, who represented ICE agents in a lawsuit challenging Obamas executive actions. The morale of ICE is the lowest morale of any federal agency. Kobach, who was a force behind Trumps vow to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and have Mexico pay for it, said that Trump will have the mandate and supportive Congress, with Republicans having control next year of both chambers, to make immediate changes in the immigration system. Americans think our laws need to be followed, he said. President-elect Trump is in a unique position. He has the mandate from the American people to end illegal immigration and secure our borders for once and for all. Asked where the Trump administration might draw the line on criminals whether a tougher approach would lead to the detention and deportation of only those arrested for felonies, or for lesser crimes, as well Kobach declined comment. Kobach added that he did not want to get into details prematurely that had not yet been hammered out or that would put Trump on the spot. Kobach's appointment to the transition team has raised speculation that he might be named to a post in the Trump administration, but he declined to comment on the prospect. Advocacy groups are girding for a pitched battle with the Trump administration over illegal immigration, and are warning that deportations - even of criminal suspects - will break up families. This will rip apart families and become one of the darkest chapters in American history, all because he wants to throw red meat to his hard core white nationalist base, said Frank Sharry, executive director of Americas Voice, a Washington D.C.-based group. His talk of 'criminals' is a strategy to throw sand in the faces of the American people in hopes of covering his tracks. Its up to all of us to make sure he doesnt get away with it. Few people have been more influential in state-level and nationwide efforts to push for stricter immigration enforcement than the 50-year-old Wisconsin native. Kobach, who holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford, co-authored Arizona SB 1070 anti-illegal immigration law, which led to similar legislative efforts in several other states after Congress repeatedly failed to fix the system and address border security. Kobach served as chief adviser on immigration and border security in the U.S. Department of Justice, and helped shape enforcement programs after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which screened people seeking to enter the United States from countries where Al Qaeda was active. Kobach predicts that under Trump, local police and federal immigration agents will work more closely. They play a vital role on being the eyes and ears of the federal government, he said. Most of the arrests by ICE in the past would come from local law enforcement. Conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham is among the potential candidates being considered for the position of White House press secretary under the Donald Trump administration, according to a senior source within the Trump transition team. Ingraham has been a vocal Trump supporter and spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. While a Republican source close to Ingraham added that it is a possibility, other sources said there are other candidates also being eyed for the position. Sean Spicer, who is chief strategist and communications director for the Republican National Committee, and Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller also are being considered. A senior aide to the Trump team added that while Ingraham is being considered, there is friction between those who want people from the RNC to run the White House versus those who want Trump campaign figures to run it. GIULIANI FAVORITE FOR TRUMP'S SECRETARY OF STATE There has been widespread speculation about whom Trump will pick to fill the various positions in his administration during the frantic period between the election and inauguration. President-elect Trump already has chosen RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, and controversial former Breitbart head Steve Bannon as chief strategist. A senior Trump aide confirmed to Fox News that Richard Grenell, former U.S. spokesman at the U.N. under the Bush administration, is being considered for the position of U.N. ambassador. Should Grenell be chosen, it would make him the first openly gay U.S. ambassador. For other positions, the source said banker Steven Mnuchin is being considered for Treasury secretary, while Ben Carson is being considered for either secretary of Education or Health and Human Services. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are all being considered for Cabinet picks, while retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is also being considered for a top post in the administration. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is also being considered for a top post, but it is not clear what that could be. Fox News Carl Cameron and Serafin Gomez contributed to this report. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday appointed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff. Trump also announced that campaign CEO Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, will be his chief strategist and senior counselor. Trump said that Priebus and Bannon will work as equal partners" -- as they did in the campaign -- to make the federal government much more efficient, effective and productive. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory, Trump said. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again. The appointments suggest Trump appealing to traditional Republican circles and the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Bannon thanked Trump for the job, saying he and Priebus will extend their partnership in Washington to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda. Priebus said Trump will be a great president for all Americans and expressed his gratitude for the being able to serve the president elect and the rest of the country in helping create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace ObamaCare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism. Priebus was one of Trumps most loyal lieutenants during the real estate mogul's up-and-down campaign that resulted in many Republicans, particularly GOP candidates seeking reelection, distancing themselves from Trump. In Trumps victory speech after his upset win over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, he notably praised Preibus efforts and loyalty. Reaction to Trumps picks from both parties was quick. Choice of @Reince as COS over Bannon seems like a strong signal that @realDonaldTrump is taking a more conventional, conservative path, tweeted David Axelrod, a top campaign and White House adviser to President Obama. South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was vanquished by Trump in the Republican presidential primaries and did not support his campaign, tweeted, Congrats to @realDonaldTrump for outstanding choice @Reince to be Chief of Staff. This shows me he is serious about governing. However, California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted: Selection of Steve Bannon for senior WH role unsurprising but alarming. His alt-right, anti-Semitic, misogynistic views don't belong in WH. And John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America." Priebus, an attorney, is a former RNC general counsel and chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party. He was elected RNC chairman in 2011 and has deep ties to GOP congressional leaders, particularly House Speaker and fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan. Under Bannon's tenure, the Breitbart News site pushed a nationalist, anti-establishment agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right -- a movement often associated with white supremacy and a defense of "Western values." Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people -- a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones. An ex-wife of Bannon said he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he "didn't want the girls going to school with Jews." A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements. Neither Priebus nor Bannon bring significant policy experience to their new White House roles. Bannon was notably given top billing in the press release announcing the appointments, a curious arrangement giving that White House chief of staff is typically considered the most powerful West Wing job. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policy making, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk. They're often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made. Fox News' Carl Cameron, Danny Jativa and Joseph Weber and the Associated Press contributed to this report. One of Reince Priebus' first duties after being named chief of staff by President-elect Donald Trump was to defend another of his new boss's appointments, Stephen Bannon. Bannon, the bare-knuckle media executive who led conservative news site Breitbart until taking on the role of Trump's campaign CEO in August, is credited with blazing a populist path that helped make Trump the president-elect. But his appointment as chief strategist and senior counselor prompted critics to charge he could propel Trump down a more xenophobic path. Priebus, speaking Monday on "Fox & Friends," said he and Bannon are on the same page when it comes to advancing the agenda of a Trump administration, and downplayed the criticism. "He was a force for good on the campaign," Priebus said. "I haven't seen any of these things that people are crying out about. ... It's a good team, it works." TRUMP REPEATS VOW TO BUILD BORDER WALL Critics are pointing to opinion and editorial stances by Breitbart during his decade-long tenure and charging his prominence in a Trump White House would bring more than just populist nationalism to the White House. Stephen Bannon was the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill, the Southern Poverty Law Center tweeted. Trump should rescind this hire. In his victory speech, Trump said he intended to be president for 'all Americans.' Bannon should go. Bannon was reportedly under consideration for the role that went to Priebus, whose selection as chief of staff was mostly met with praise. White House insiders like David Axelrod, former top White House adviser to President Obama, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham praised Trump for the appointment. While Priebus is seen as a consensus builder who knows how to navigate Capitol Hill, Bannon will have Trump's ear. A bomb-thrower who relishes fighting with his political opponents, Bannon's fiery rhetoric is believed to have found its way into Trump's rally speeches as his campaign barnstormed the country leading up to his upset victory over Hillary Clinton Nov. 8. The Anti-Defamation League also expressed its outrage over Bannons appointment, calling it a sad day. "We call on President-elect Trump to appoint and nominate Americans committed to the well-being of all our country's people," the groups chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said, according to The Washington Post. California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted: Selection of Steve Bannon for senior WH role unsurprising but alarming. His alt-right, anti-Semitic, misogynistic views don't belong in WH. The Council of American-Islamic Relations called Bannon an "anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and White nationalist alt-right extremist." While opposition to Bannon from Democrats and CAIR might be expected, John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, also piled on. "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office," Weaver tweeted. "Be very vigilant, America." Bannon was the executive chairman of Breitbart News and under his reign the website pushed a nationalist, anti-establishment agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right -- a movement often associated with the defense of "Western values." Bannon pushed Trump to paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people -- a message that carried Trump to the White House. Bannon's rise has led critics to dredge up past controversies, including a report that his ex-wife of Bannon said in the 1990s that he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he "didn't want the girls going to school with Jews." A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements. Bannon thanked Trump for the job, saying he and Priebus will extend their partnership in Washington to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda. I want to thank President-elect Trump for the opportunity to work with Reince in driving the agenda of the Trump Administration, he said. We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory. We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda. Bannon was notably given top billing in the press release announcing the appointments, a curious arrangement giving that White House chief of staff is typically considered the most powerful West Wing job. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policy making, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk. They're often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made. Priebus told Fox News he was "honored" to be chosen and said Trump wants to "do the American people proud." Its really important that all Americans understand that he is the president for everyone, he said The Associated Press contributed to this report. A large, unidentified metal object fell from the sky Nov. 10 in the remote mountainous region of Myanmar. The cylindrical object, which is about 12 feet long and 5 feet in diameter, blasted into the village of Lone Khin, near a jade mine. Villagers woke early in the morning to a loud boom and vibrations, when the object fell to the ground. Though no one was injured, the UFO ripped through a jade miner's tent, and afterwards, the smell of burning filled the air, according to The Myanmar Times. "Initially, we thought it was a battle. The explosion made our houses shake. We saw the smoke from our village," Lone Khin villager Daw Ma Kyi told The Myanmar Times. Unidentified piece of an aircraft, believed to be an engine, falls near Hpakant jade mine | #Myanmar https://t.co/W2im1NOCdh pic.twitter.com/NFRCJiAYM5 The Myanmar Times (@TheMyanmarTimes) November 11, 2016 Aerial object At first glance, the object looks like it may have come from an aircraft. "I think it was an engine because I found a diode and many copper wires at the tail of the body," villager Ko Maung Myo told The Myanmar Times. "It also looks like a jet engine block." However, government officials say that they haven't identified the object and are sending experts to examine it. One former government official with the Department of Aviation said that the image shown on Facebook of the metal "UFO" looked more like a rocket booster than part of a commercial plane. Just yesterday China announced the successful launch of a Long March Rocket 11 into space, along with five satellites and an experimental X-ray pulsar navigation spacecraft, Spaceflight Insider reported. The XPNAV-1 (an acronym for Maichong Xing Shiyan Weixing), a 530-pound spacecraft fitted with solar arrays and two detectors that use X-ray emissions from pulsars to navigate, is meant to identify the locations of spacecraft in deep space. Space debris is a regular part of satellite and rocket launches. Though the odds of any individual person getting struck by detritus is low, the odds that it hits one of the 7 billion people on Earth is surprisingly high: After the launch of a school bus-sized satellite in 2011, Mark Matney, a scientist in the Orbital Debris Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, previously told Live Science that the odds of anyone being hit by that debris immediately after the launch were approximately one in 3,200. Space is littered with junk from past exploration. All told, there were at least 500,00 pieces of space junk marble-size or larger that are orbiting our planet in 2010, though most pieces are on the small side. Of that space junk, more than 20,000 pieces are larger than a softball, according to NASA. In 2012, Switzerland proposed building a kind of space janitor to clean up some of that debris. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. National Geographic Channels new event series MARS mixes documentary with scripted drama to explore the colonization of Mars in the year 2033. Former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison is involved with the series and shared with Foxnews.com SciTech the advice she gave the actors portraying these space travelers. If youre using words like nominal and contingency what do they really mean? she explained. Here are some things about personalities what should you know about space and Mars to be comfortable? What is it like? And even doing some exercises about what does it feel like if youre walking in a new place or have been zero G for a long time and then its up to them to take that and move that along. STRANGE FEATURE ON MARS IS A GOOD PLACE TO LOOK FOR LIFE, STUDY SAYS Actor Ben Cotton plays the commander of the fictional Daedalus ship that heads to Mars in 2033 and spoke about the conditions while filming: Morocco was where we shot all the exterior stuff and it was challenging from the heat. It was hot. There were days it was 125 degrees in the desert and then you put the suit on, the helmet on, you start to lose your mind a little bit because you cant see straight but we had a great time. And President of the Mars Society Robert Zubrin discussed what information we have from the Mars Desert Research Station in terms of what the conditions on the red planet would be like. THE FUTURE OF SPACE: TOP ISSUES FACING PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP What were really doing at the Mars Desert Research Station is what we call an operational simulation more than a technical engineering simulation, but we find out how you would run a mission on Mars, he said. So for example what weve discovered by running it a number of ways is the mission has got to be led from the front, that is, the commander of the mission is the commander of the crew. We dont even call our mission control mission control anymore we call it mission support - they are there to support the crew - this has got to be led from the front. He also adds that when it comes to mobility systems there is a preference for ATV-size vehicles that enable a much more informal relationship with the environment in your space suit where you can reach down and pick up a rock and either throw it back or bring it back to sample. SEE THE 1ST COLOR PHOTOS OF EUROPE MARS LANDER'S CRASH SITE As for that 2033 date, Dr. Jemison, who was the first African-American woman in space, stresses we call it a human mission to Mars not a manned mission. When it comes to issues at hand, she adds that there are engineering challenges, but the engineering challenges to me are not as great as the public commitment and those challenges because as we do that then we are able to say heres how it benefits life on Earth. MARS premieres November 14th on National Geographic Channel, which is majority owned by 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News. Scientists may very well be drooling over a tasty bear monitoring method in Alaska, and the key ingredients are bear saliva and salmon. The technique involves gleaning genetic information from salmon that brown bears have munched on, and researchers report that it works better, and is cheaper, than previous methods like using feces to identify the bears. Luckily for science, bears dont always finish their salmon meals, and that means that the fish carcasses are a great place for scientists to get ursine DNA, according to a new study. When salmon are plentiful, bears rarely eat the entire fish. In some cases, they only eat the brain, and weve found that swabbing along the edges of the braincase gives us the best results for extracting DNA, Rachel Wheat, first author on the new study, said in a statement. We also had success with swabbing inside distinct bite holes, and in the muscle tissue where the bears have stripped the skin off the salmon. WHY I GOT MY DNA TESTED The researchers focused on two types of salmon, chum and sockeye, in two watersheds in southeast Alaska, and got their data from 156 fish bodies. As a comparison, they also took swabs from bear scats. It turns out that they were more likely to get genetic information from the fish carcasses than the bear feces: more than 50 percent of the fish provided bear DNA, compared to just 35 percent from the bear scat. The saliva method was also much cheaper, with the fishs braincase providing better info than bite holes. The technique is a promising method towards monitoring animals like bears, according to the study, which was published this month in the journal PLOS ONE. This advance will help allow us to more effectively and more economically study one of the largest bears on the planet, Wheat said in the statement. Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger Police say a weekend shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Connecticut left four people wounded and one man seriously injured. Officers arrived at a club in Bridgeport around 10:45 p.m. Saturday for a report of a disturbance. Police say a group of unwanted guests had crashed the party. A fight broke out inside the club and then moved to the parking lot outside. Police say five people were shot by at least two shooters. Four people were taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening. A man was hospitalized with serious injuries but is expected to survive. No one was immediately identified. Police say at least two suspects were behind the shooting. The incident is under investigation. A New York man imprisoned for 20 years for a killing he said he didn't commit has gotten the case dismissed, though he didn't get the vindication he wanted. Bronx prosecutors said Monday they're dismissing the charges against Richard Rosario. He was freed in March after prosecutors agreed his ex-lawyers hadn't done enough to find 13 alibi witnesses. In June, prosecutors said they would drop the 1996 case. Rosario then made an unusual request to keep it open. He wanted a ruling saying that newfound evidence favored his claim of innocence, not just that his ex-lawyers made mistakes. The change would allow for seeking a particular form of wrongful-conviction compensation. A judge said no last week. Lawyer Chip Loewenson says Rosario is glad to be free of the case. Police say a University of Alabama student accused of raping a teenage girl in a dorm room has been arrested. Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit Capt. Gary Hood tells Al.com on Sunday that 19-year-old Joseph Tyler Pitts is charged with first-degree rape. Hood says an 18-year-old female, also a student at the college, told police she was drinking with Pitts and lost consciousness. Hood says the teen said she was awakened by two friends, who saw Pitts on top of her and having sexual intercourse with her. The teen told Tuscaloosa investigators about the incident at DCH Regional Medical Center early Saturday. Pitts is being held at the Tuscaloosa County Jail on a $30,000 bond. It's not clear if Pitts has an attorney. The online vitriol directed at President-elect Donald Trump is getting worse, and critics say social media companies should do more to rein it in. Since Trump's stunning Election Day victory last week, social media hashtags like #AssassinateTrump and #Killtrump have proliferated. Over the weekend, a protester near Trump Tower held aloft a sign calling for future first lady Melania Trump to be violated, echoing a trending hashtag #RapeMelania. This is another example of social media platforms being used to radicalize people, said Eric Feinberg, of GIPEC, a software company that monitors illegal activity and terror-related social media accounts told FoxNews.com. Terror groups such as ISIS have long utilized this strategy to recruit and radicalize. STUDENTS ACROSS US STAGE MASS PROTESTS Now anti-Trump anti-government groups are using the same tactic to recruit, radicalize and compensate to cause civil disobedience and unrest in our cities while overburdening the workload of law enforcement in these cities," he added. Within the social media realmparticularly on Twitterdozens of calls to kill Trump have been circulating, with some even calling for both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to be assassinated by their Jan. 20 inauguration. Those who support Trump took to Twitter as well, mostly to voice anger over the social media platform's perceived hypocrisy. They noted hashtag #HillaryForPrison was blocked during the campaign, while #AssassinateTrump was not. So its ok to trend #AssassinateTrump, but anti-Hillary hashtags were removed immediately, reads one tweet from @TrumpTrain09. #AssassinateTrump was trending yesterday and now "Rape Melania" is trending today. Liberalism is a mental disorder and needs to be destroyed pic.twitter.com/1RqpBWxKy6 Deplorable Vet (@KGBVeteran) November 13, 2016 Twitter censors pro-Trump trends but allows garbage like "Rape Melania," #AssassinateTrump, #NotMyPresident, etc., to trend, reads another tweet from @DukeNukemSez. Some users said Twitter could bear the blame if something bad occurs. If something ever happens to @realDonaldTrump b/c of the stupid trend #AssassinateTrump, @twitter employees shd be charged as an accessory, reads one tweet from @Ima_Deplorable. Social media is not the only place where the violent rhetoric has surfaced since Election Day. In Oakland, Calif., last week, demonstrators rioted and graffiti saying Kill Trump was found spray painted in several places according to the New York Post. Sources told the newspaper that the Secret Service intends to investigate all social media postings deemed to contain credible threats while adding that there is a difference between one saying that they intend to kill the president and someone suggesting that someone else should. Generally, indirect threats are not prosecuted. A California history teacher was placed on leave Thursday after a complaint over a lesson where he compared President-elect Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The Monterrey Herald reported that Frank Navarro was asked to leave in the middle of the day after a parent sent an email to Mountain View High School expressing concerns over the comparison. The areas Superintendent Jeff Harding confirmed the incident, but refused to detail the complaint. Navarro has taught at Mountain View for 40 years. Hes an expert on the Holocaust. He told the paper that school officials didnt disclose what the parents complaint was. They also declined to review the lesson plan. This feels like were trying to squash free speech, he said. Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. Its not propaganda or bias if its based on hard facts. The complaint comes in the midst of the uproar over Trumps Election Day victory over Hillary Clinton. The Democratic nominee won the states 55 electoral votes. Navarro had received complaints in the past about his lessons being one-sided, but insists that his plan was based on facts and not opinion. I said (to school officials), Im not pulling these facts out of my hat. Its based on experience and work and if Im wrong, show we where Im wrong. And there was silence, he said. School officials originally told Navarro to return Wednesday, but Harding said he could return as early as Monday. A petition on Change.org to bring Navarro back garnered more than 1,000 signatures. Navarros controversy came on the same day as Milpitas High School Principal Phil Morales was placed on administrative leave for using profanity about Trump during a student walkout. Mountain View High School is about 16 miles from Milpitas High School. Click for more from the Monterrey Herald. The Pentagon is denying full enlistment bonuses to several interpreters who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago with the California National Guard, saying the interpreters were unfit for the military service they had already performed, the Los Angeles Times reported. The enlistment bonuses up to $20,000 each were promised to dozens of Arabic, Dari and Pashto speakers. The Times reported Saturday that the Pentagon even relaxed age and health standards in order to attract more candidates starting in 2006. But those lowered standards later gave the military cause to deny the bonus, according to interpreters interviewed by the newspaper. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: DON'T SEEK REPAYMENT OF BONUSES As far as I know, its only the interpreters who didnt get paid, Arabic interpreter Khatchig Khatchadourian said. They think were stupid because we are immigrants. Khatchadourian said the military still owed him half of his promised $20,000 bonus. CALIF. NATIONAL GUARD REPORTEDLY CAN'T FIND 4,000 SOLDIERS WHO RECEIVED IMPROPER MILITARY BONUSES Some of the 44 interpreters affected said they were unemployed, with others claiming they suffered from post-traumatic stress or other ailments sustained during their deployments to war zones. But a California National Guard spokesperson told the Times the bonus dispute revolved around missing paperwork. The complexity arose in cases where neither the soldier nor the Guard could locate a copy of any agreement, although work was done by the soldier that likely would have given rise to a bonus payment, Col. Peter Cross wrote in an email. The interpreter issue came on the heels of a larger scandal the Times broke last month regarding the Pentagon demanding repayment of enlistment bonuses from 10,000 California National Guard soldiers. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has since suspended the repayment program and set up an appeals process. The parent company of Chili's said it wants to make things right after a veteran had his free meal taken away on Veteran's Day. Ernest Walker posted a video to Facebook on Friday of a manager taking away his meal at a Chili's in the Dallas suburb of Cedar Hill. The Army vet writes that the meal was taken away after another diner raised questions about the uniform Walker was wearing. Walker said the manager took his meal even after he showed him his military ID and discharge papers. Walker said he bought the fatigues he was wearing after he was discharged as a tribute to his service. Brinker International, which owns Chili's, told KDFW-TV that it's taking the matter "very seriously." Walker's lawyer was set to meet with the company Monday. The future of deradicalization programs in the U.S. is at a pivotal juncture this week, when a federal judge in Minnesota will decide the appropriate sentence for nine convicted Islamic State sympathizers. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, a senior federal judge in Minneapolis, took an unprecedented step before the sentencings. He asked a deradicalization expert from Germany to come to the U.S., interview six of the nine defendants, all Somali-Americans in their 20s, and determine whether they would be candidates for a reduced sentence. If Judge Davis decides to send any of the defendants into a deradicalization program instead of prison, it could set the model for other federal officials grappling with how the legal system should treat young people with a desire to join Islamic State. It also would raise uncertainties about the logistics of such a program, including who would fund it or be responsible for any failures. Since early 2014, more than 100 Americans have been arrested on charges related to Islamic State. These defendants are mostly U.S. citizens in their early 20s and often convicted of crimes that carry a maximum of decades in prison, meaning they will be released back to society as middle-aged adults. Law-enforcement officials are recognizing that the previous solution of a lengthy prison sentence isnt right for everyone. Given their youth, many Islamic State sympathizers still have time for rehabilitation, defense lawyers say, but federal prisons lack counseling geared specifically at terrorism disengagement. The nine men facing sentencing next week were accused of supporting Islamic State to varying degrees. Many of them bought plane tickets to Turkey with Syria as the ultimate destination, and were arrested and detained by law enforcement before they could board planes. Some were convicted by a jury, while others pleaded guilty and testified against their friends at trial in hopes of a more lenient sentence. Since there is no precedent for this, Judge Davis would have wide latitude to set the parameters of any deradicalization program. He also could give guideline prison sentences to every defendant. Any sentence he gives could be overturned by an appeals court. Click for more from The Wall Street Journal. A military officer testified Monday that he saw another soldier shot in the head during the 2009 search for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who's accused of endangering his comrades when he walked off his post in Afghanistan. The testimony came at a pretrial hearing at which an Army judge also agreed to delay Bergdahl's trial by several months until May 15, 2017. Prosecutors are arguing that the judge should allow evidence of two wounded soldiers' injuries into the case to help them show that Bergdahl's disappearance effectively put other military members in harm's way. Bergdahl is charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the latter of which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. U.S. Air Force Maj. John Marx testified about a firefight on July 8, 2009, when he and several other U.S. military members were seeking information on Bergdahl's whereabouts, with members of the Afghan National Army. They were attacked after setting up a checkpoint near a town in Afghanistan. One of the two wounded soldiers cited by prosecutors is U.S. Army National Guard Sgt. First Class Mark Allen. Prosecutors said he was shot in the head and suffered a traumatic brain injury that has left him in a wheel chair. Another soldier had hand injuries and required surgery because of a rocket-propelled grenade. Marx, who said the mission's sole purpose was to search for Bergdahl, testified that he was sitting next to Allen as bullets flew overhead. "I looked at him, then I see a trickle of blood coming down his head," Marx testified. Asked where Allen was wounded, Marx pointed at his temples and said: "Right through his head." Marx testified that he later carried Allen to the medevac helicopter, describing it as "probably one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life." Bergdahl, dressed in a white shirt and blue pants, appeared stoic as he listened to Monday's testimony. Prosecutors have written in a motion that the injuries will help them show that Bergdahl endangered his comrades, one of the elements of the misbehavior before the enemy charge. They asked the judge to allow them to use the evidence in their case. Defense attorneys have argued in motions that Bergdahl was not responsible for the men's injuries, writing: "Allen's injuries were directly caused by the Taliban, not by SGT Bergdahl." Further testimony and arguments are expected Monday afternoon. Before the testimony on the soldiers' injuries, Army Col. Jeffery Nance decided to push the trial back to May after prosecutors requested a delay. They cited the pace at which they're able to get approval to give the defense classified evidence. Defense attorneys also informed the judge that they were still waiting on software, computers and security equipment that would allow them to review some of the sensitive material. Nance expressed frustration and told prosecutors that he would call military officials as witnesses at a pretrial hearing in December if some of the issues with classified information aren't resolved. "Here's my problem folks ... We will nickel and dime this until we're not trying this case until 2020," he said. Bergdahl, who's from Hailey, Idaho, walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held captive by the Taliban and its allies for five years. The Obama administration's decision to swap prisoners for his return was heavily criticized by some Republicans. The Latest on sentencings in Minnesota for men convicted of plotting to join the Islamic State group (all times local): 3:10 p.m. A federal judge has sentenced a Minnesota man who was part of a conspiracy to join the Islamic State group in Syria to 10 years in prison. Zacaria Abdurahman (ab-dur-ah-mahn) drew the harshest sentence of the three defendants who appeared before U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis on Monday. While Abdurahman pleaded guilty, he did not cooperate with the government against the other members of what Davis called a "terrorist cell." Asked why he chose not to cooperate, Abdurahman said he wasn't willing to testify against his former friends. He said he's a man of principal. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence. Davis told the defendant he was giving him less partly because his parents have become active in the campaign against terrorist recruiting in Minnesota's large Somali community. ___ 1:10 p.m. A Minnesota man who was part of a conspiracy to join the Islamic State group in Syria has been sentenced to 2 years in prison. Abdirizak Warsame was the second man in the conspiracy to be sentenced by a federal judge in Minneapolis, and got a tougher sentence than the first who was released from jail with time served. Warsame told District Judge Michael Davis that he was manipulated. Davis told Warsame he didn't buy his claims that he was no longer radical, and felt his cooperation with authorities was a matter of convenience. Warsame had sought 18 months, while prosecutors asked for 4 years. Seven other men awaiting sentencing for the conspiracy that prosecutors said began in spring of 2014. ___ 11:30 a.m. A Minnesota man who admitted plotting to join the Islamic State group in Syria has been sentenced to time served by a judge who said he hopes to see the man rehabilitated. Abdullahi Mohamed Yusuf is the first of nine men being sentenced in Minneapolis this week in the plot. The 20-year-old pleaded guilty more than a year ago of conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State group, and testified against some of the others. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sentenced Yusuf to the 21 months he's already served in jail, plus 20 years of supervised release. Davis said it didn't make sense to send Yusuf to prison because the government would miss a chance to help him. Yusuf promised the judge he wouldn't let him down. Prosecutors had asked for 42 months, but U.S. Attorney Andy Luger praised Yusuf for his cooperation and said he accepted the sentence. ___ 10 a.m.: A federal judge in Minnesota this week will sentence nine men who were convicted of plotting to join the Islamic State group in Syria. The men are to be sentenced in groups of three Monday through Wednesday. Prosecutors are seeking just a few years for defendants who cooperated with them and as many as 40 years for those who didn't. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sought evaluations on the men to determine how likely they were to pursue terroristic activities in the future. Minnesota has the nation's largest population of Somali immigrants and has struggled in recent years to stop recruiting of its young men by terror groups aboard. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. A man who fatally shot a rape suspect he was trying to turn in to police was found guilty of manslaughter on Monday. David Carlson claimed he fired his gun in self-defense in October 2013 as he held Norris Acosta-Sanchez at gunpoint so a neighbor could call police. Acosta-Sanchez had been charged in Rockland County with statutory rape of a teenage girl and had been staying at a summer cabin by Carlson's home near the Pennsylvania border. Carlson, 46, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter by a jury in neighboring Orange County after more than seven days of deliberations. He faces a maximum of 25years in prison when he is sentenced in January. While Carlson's supporters say he's more a victim than a vigilante, prosecutors said he was the aggressor. "Justice was done," Acosta-Sanchez's relative Charles Nieves told the Middletown Times Herald-Record after the verdict. Carlson had been trying to help police catch Acosta-Sanchez in the days leading up the shooting. Acosta-Sanchez had fled police after they let him go back to the cabin he was staying in to get his wallet. Defense lawyers said Acosta-Sanchez showed up at Carlson's home before the shooting. They said Carlson came out with his shotgun, and the two men began walking to a neighbor's house so Carlson could call police. Carlson was remanded to county jail on bail of $500,000 bond or $250,000 cash. A Pittsburgh woman has been charged with endangering her four children after police say they found them alone in an apartment with no beds, no food and one working light. Court records show 34-year-old Takoya Parker was charged after the children were found Saturday, though it's unclear if she's in custody and no defense attorney is listed. Police said they found the children ages 10, 6, 5 and 3 after being asked to check on their welfare. They say the apartment was in disarray and the children said they hadn't eaten and didn't have a phone number to contact their mother. When police contacted Parker at work, she allegedly told officers she could leave and to "just take them." Police and child welfare caseworkers have placed the children in a neighbor's care. A Pennsylvania painter injured when he fell into the 500,000-gallon tank of a municipal water tower has been rescued by crews and will be taken to a hospital. Victim rescued from O'Hara Twp water tower! He was lowered 100 ft on a board down middle column to safety, conscious when he came out. #WPXI pic.twitter.com/geAJoifuDr Aaron Martin (@WPXIAaronMartin) November 14, 2016 Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials were investigating the accident Monday in O'Hara Township, near Pittsburgh. Township police Superintendent James Farringer says the tank had been drained for painting. The worker was hurt when scaffolding collapsed about 12:30 p.m. inside the tank atop the tower, about 200 feet high. The name of the worker and the contractor he works for haven't been released, but they were hired by the Fox Chapel Water Authority. Donald Kendrick, an operations supervisor with the authority, says the man was complaining of a possible broken arm and a back injury. He was rescued shortly before 3 p.m. Police say they've arrested a New Jersey resident who's accused of pushing a man onto Manhattan subway tracks, where he was injured by a train. The New York Police Department says three men were "highly intoxicated" when a member of the group was pushed during an argument Sunday morning. Police said Monday that Aaron Clary of Newark turned himself in and has been arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter and assault. There was no immediate information on an attorney who could comment on his behalf. Mike Allison suffered head and foot injuries when he was pinned under the train at West 18th Street in Chelsea. The president of the university founded by Thomas Jefferson is being asked to stop quoting Thomas Jefferson. A Friday letter signed by 469 students and professors objected to University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan quoting the third U.S. president and Declaration of Independence author in a campus email because Jefferson owned slaves, The Cavalier Daily reported. I think that Jefferson is often celebrated for his accomplishments with little or no acknowledgement of the atrocities he committed against hundreds of human beings, said Asst. Psychology Prof. Noelle Hurd, who drafted the letter. MIDTERM OPTIONAL FOR STUDENTS DISTRAUGHT OVER TRUMP WIN Though Jefferson penned the line all men are created equal, Hurd said Jeffersons words communicated to me a message of exclusion. The trouble started for Sullivan due to a Nov. 9 email she sent to try to urge unity following the presidential election. NYU BRINGS BACK PROFESSOR WHO BLASTED PC CULTURE, GIVES HIM A RAISE Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes, Sullivan wrote. I encourage todays U. Va students to embrace that responsibility. The student-professor response acknowledged that Jefferson's legacy had inspired some students and faculty to come to the University, however, "others of us came here in spite of it." Politics Prof. Lawrie Balfour, who signed the letter, said Jeffersons words have often troubled her during her 15-year tenure at the University. Again and again, I have found that at moments when the community needs reassurance and Jefferson appears, it undoes I think the really important work the administrators and others are trying to do, Balfour said. The Cavalier Daily could not immediately reach Sullivan for comment. Jefferson, who also served as a U.S. vice president and secretary of state, founded the University of Virginia in 1819 and was involved with the University until his death in 1826. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 A social worker and supervisor have been charged with manslaughter and child abuse in the death of a 3-year-old Detroit boy. Child Protective Services employees 24-year-old Elaina Brown and 47-year-old Kelly Williams have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree child abuse and neglect related to the death of Aaron Minor. Prosecutors announced the charges Monday. A state spokesman says Brown and Williams have been suspended with pay. Deanna Minor, Aaron's mother, was charged with murder in August, two months after Aaron's decomposing body was found in their apartment while she was in a hospital psychiatric unit. Prosecutors allege Brown and Williams, the supervisor, didn't provide a safety plan or ask police for a safety check, and failed to file a juvenile court petition. The Associated Press is reaching out to attorneys representing Brown and Williams. A Texas woman was charged with theft and child endangerment after police found exotic animals living in the same house as her and her 14-year-old daughter. Click 2 Houston reported that Trisha Meyer was arrested Monday after a months-long investigation into her Houston home found that several wild animals live in the home. Houston police said three tigers, a skunk, a fox as well as several monkeys were found. The investigation started on Sept. 26 after Meyer tried selling a kitten to a man in California for $3,000, but never gave him the kitten after receiving the cash, according to the station. The Houston Chronicle reported that an officer with the Houston Police Major Offenders Animal Cruelty Squad showed up at Meyers house with a Texas Game Warden. The officials were greeted by the exotic animals. Police said Meyer had permits for the tigers, but none the skunk or the fox. BARC Animal Shelter and Adoptions took the animals into protective custody. Meyer added that she only locks up the tigers when she leaves the house. According to the Chronicle, a BARC spokeswoman said Meyer fled the Houston home to Las Vegas with all of her animals. She was finally found and arrested in Nye County, Nev. Her tigers were confiscated. According to the station, Meyer was being held on $2,000 bail in the Nye County Jail Click for more from Click 2 Houston. Three Minnesota men convicted of plotting to join ISIS received prison sentences Monday ranging from 10 years in jail to time served. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis gave the 10-year sentence to Zacharia Abdurahman, who pleaded guilty but did not cooperate with the government against the other members of what Davis called a "terrorist cell." MINNESOTA JUDGE'S PLAN TO DE-RADICALIZE TERROR DEFENDANTS DUBIOUS, EXPERTS SAY Prosecutors had sought 15 years in jail for Abdurahman, who said he wasn't willing to testify against his former friends. Davis told Abdurahman he was giving him less partly because his parents have become active in the campaign against terrorist recruiting in Minnesota's large Somali community. Earlier Monday, Abdullahi Mohamed Yusuf, 20, was sentenced to the 21 months he's already served in jail plus 20 years of supervised release. Abdirizak Warsame, 21, didn't fare as well, but his sentence of 2 years in prison was two years less than prosecutors sought. The judge said it didn't make sense to jail Yusuf, who pleaded guilty to a terror charge and testified against several of the others. "I think we'll miss the opportunity to help this young kid," Davis said. "I hope I'm not wrong." "I will not let you down, your honor," Yusuf told the judge. Earlier, Yusuf said he was "not the same naive 17-year-old" who was drawn into the conspiracy, and said he now rejects ISIS. "ISIL's ideology is flawed," Yusuf said, using another acronym for the terror group. "There is nothing Islamic about their so-called state." Prosecutors had asked for 42 months, but U.S. Attorney Andy Luger praised Yusuf for cooperating with their case and told Davis he accepted the shorter sentence. Davis was sterner with Warsame, who told the judge he had been manipulated. Davis said he didn't buy Warsame's claims that he's no longer a radical. "The problem I have with you is everything has seemed so smooth," the judge said. But he went on to tell Warsame he was getting lucky. "For the next round of sentencings, it's going to be a whole different ballgame, so count your blessings," Davis said. Davis will sentence all nine men in the conspiracy this week in separate hearings. The remaining six will be sentenced Tuesday and Wednesday. The sentencings cap a long court case that shined a light on terrorism recruitment in Minnesota. The state, with the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the U.S., has struggled with the issue in recent years. The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Syria in recent years. Before that, more than 22 men were recruited to al-Shabab in Somalia since 2007. Prosecutors said the conspiracy of the nine began in spring 2014, when a group of friends began inspiring and recruiting each other to travel to Syria to join ISIS. Some succeeded in making the trip, but others didn't. Six of the nine pleaded guilty. Three went to trial and were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder outside the U.S., which carries a possible life sentence. The sentences sought this week ranged from just a few years for defendants like Yusuf, who admitted wrongdoing and was cooperative, to 40 years in prison for Guled Ali Omar, who was described as a leader. Davis, who has handled all of Minnesota's terror conspiracy cases, had several defendants evaluated by a German scholar on deradicalization and was taking those findings into consideration as he passed sentence. Several community members wrote to the judge seeking leniency for some of the defendants, including Ilhan Omar, just elected in Minnesota last week as the nation's first Somali-American state legislator. She wrote that imprisoning the men for decades could backfire and urged Davis instead to focus on rehabilitation. The Associated Press contributed to this report. UC Berkeley has barred a once-respected Middle Eastern Studies scholar and architecture professor from teaching after a five-month-long investigation found that he sexually harassed a student, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday. From 2012 to 2014, 61-year-old Nezar AlSayyad allegedly acted inappropriately toward a student under his guidance, putting his hand on her upper thigh while driving home after getting drinks, even going so far as to invite her on a trip to Las Vegas as close friends. The Chronicle obtained a 52-page report detailing the accusations. DARTMOUTH PROFESSOR GETS 5 1/2 YEARS FOR CHILD PORN The student, 34-year-old Eva Hagberg Fisher, said she wanted to step forward because, If my speaking up can shine a light on this person and maybe he cant do it to someone else thats my goal. This behavior from a male professor towards a female student in the close confines of a car demonstrated physical conduct of a sexual nature as well as the opportunity for Ms. Fisher to provide sexual favors or respond favorably to his subtle sexual advance, said Eve Fichtner, an independent investigator hired by school. NYU BRINGS BACK PROFESSOR WHO BLASTED PC CULTURE, GIVES HIM A RAISE I have absolutely done nothing wrong, AlSayyad said. I actually feel terribly victimized. I almost left school, and had years of self doubt, Hagberg Fisher added. And when I trace it back, it all goes to him. This was not the only accusation leveled at AlSayyad. Another woman claimed he took advantage of her through sex while she was a student 20 years ago. A third accused him of nonsexual misconduct this past spring. An investigation is pending, and he has denied all allegations. University officials blocked the professor from teaching this coming spring, the Chronicle reported. He reportedly makes a salary of $210,000 and has received a slew of honors since he joined the university in 1985, but the newspaper suggested he may resign soon. AlSayyad, however, said hed heard nothing indicating that the school has tried to stop him from teaching. If true, I will not accept it, as it presumes I did something wrong, when I did not. President-elect Donald Trump and his future Chinese counterpart had a cordial conversation Sunday, but it did little to reverse growing tension built on Trump's campaign vow to revisit trade policies that he said leave America at an unfair disadvantage. In what analysts described as an early warning shot, Chinese state media suggested Beijing could slash imports of American goods -- including iPhones -- if the U.S. imposed steeper tariffs. "Large orders for Boeing planes would switch to Europe, U.S. auto sales in China would face setbacks, Apple phones would essentially be crowded out, and U.S. soybeans and corn would be eradicated from China," the Global Times wrote in an editorial. WHO WILL TEST PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP FIRST ON WORLD STAGE? Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Trump on his election and said cooperation was the "only correct choice" for China and the U.S., the world's two biggest economies. "At present, there is an important opportunity and huge potential in China-U.S. cooperation," Xi told Trump, according to the reports. IRAN AND CHINA SIGN MILITARY COOPERATION AGREEMENT Trump's office said in a statement early Monday that Trump thanked Xi for his well wishes on his election. "During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another and President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward," the statement said. During the election campaign, Trump accused China of unfair trade practices and currency manipulation and threatened to slap a 45 percent import tariff on Chinese products. He said China's building of man-made islands in disputed waters in the South China Sea was a sign of its disrespect for America, and vowed to bulk up the U.S. military. "Trump, coming from a business background, is very astute. We do not believe he will treat China-U.S. trade so childishly," the Global Times editorial continued. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the two sides agreed to maintain close contact, build good relations and work toward a meeting between Xi and Trump "as soon as possible." "What I want to point out is that China always maintains close communication with the U.S. side, including Mr. Trump's team, and we will carry on doing that," Geng said at a news conference. Xi and President Obama are scheduled to meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru next week. Beijing's rivalry with Washington largely boils down to economics, especially China's $334 billion trade surplus with the U.S. and American accusations of unfair subsidies for exporters and the condoning of intellectual property theft. The sides are also opposed over security in east Asia, particularly China's assertion of its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has closely aligned its foreign policy with Russia, putting it at odds with the U.S. over issues including the civil war in Syria and the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses in South Korea. Aside from his criticisms of Beijing, Trump has touted his business dealings with Chinese companies, although he is not known at present to have any major investments in the country. Trump's embrace of a more isolationist foreign policy could also benefit China by weakening U.S. support for longtime Asian allies such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, according to analysts. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Nearly 80 letters written by Anne Franks father, shining a light on his tough battle to preserve her legacy after the Holocaust, are currently up for sale. The messages from Otto Frank also described in detail his struggle to promote Israels standing in the world, and his reaction after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The asking price for the collection: $35,000. HANDWRITTEN LETTER FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO BE SOLD As a teenager, Anne Frank hid with her family in an Amsterdam apartment to stay away from the Nazis during World War II, all while writing in her diary. She was arrested in 1944 and died in a concentration camp the next year. Her father survived the Holocaust, and died in 1980. One of Otto Franks top priorities: keeping the Anne Frank Foundation fully funded so that future generations could continue to learn her story. I cannot continue to carry the burden principally alone and we have to find a way to be able to go on. I never want to accost Jewish people for this purpose, as I think they should give as much as possible for Israel, therefore I have to choose other sources, he wrote. NEW VR FILM WILL TAKE VIEWERS INSIDE ANNE FRANK'S HIDING PLACE Anti-Semitism and Israels standing in the world clearly were also very important to him. The Arabs learned from Hitler that repeating lies is rewarding. People believe them at last! And the countries who know the truth are too cowardly to repulse the lies with the exception of Israel itself. Otto Frank fought hate and detested war, keeping the message he felt his daughter represented. She was constantly on his mind, evident in all of his letters. It is necessary to spread Annes message for peace and understanding and to teach the younger generation whereto prejudice and discrimination are leading. He also apparently considered Kennedy a hero. After the president was shot and killed in 1963, Frank responded, All of us are terrified, it is a detesting crime. We looked up to Kennedy, we admired him, his ideals, his humanity. The Raab Collection, which announced the sale, has managed political artifacts, dispatches and documents from titans of history including Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Napoleon. Donald Trump divided Europe last night as France joined Britain in snubbing emergency EU talks on the blocs approach to him. French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault followed Boris Johnson by ignoring the special summit in Brussels on the U.S. President-elect. OPINION: TRUMP'S INCREDIBLE VICTORY IS A SECOND BREXIT (ONLY BETTER) Hungarys foreign minister also boycotted the talks, saying the reaction of some in the EU was bordering on hysterical. Foreign Secretary Johnsons aides said he saw no point in attending the talks planned as a precursor to the regular EU Foreign Affairs Council today. A Foreign Office spokesman said he would not go to the meeting but would attend a regular Foreign Affairs Council meeting. A senior UK official will be sent in his place, reports the BBC. PM SAYS UK WILL CHAMPION FREE TRADE IN CHANGING WORLD A Foreign Office spokesman told the broadcaster: The Foreign Secretary will not attend the meeting convened for Sunday. There is a regular Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday where a range of issues can be discussed in the normal way. We do not see the need for an additional meeting on Sunday because the U.S. election timetable is long established. An act of democracy has taken place, there is a transition period and we will work with the current and future administrations to ensure the best outcomes for Britain. On Friday the Foreign Secretary, who previously said the brash billionaire is clearly out of his mind, said it is time to snap out of the doom and gloom surrounding his election. BoJo, who has also said Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. showed his "stupefying ignorance", told reporters in Serbia that "people should focus on the opportunities... and not the problems." After speaking to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Boris said: "I would respectfully say to my beloved European friends and colleagues that it's time that we snapped out of the general doom and gloom about the result of this election and collective 'whinge-o-rama' that seems to be going on in some places. Boris remarks are in stark contrast to those of EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. He said Mr Trump's election risked upsetting EU ties with the U.S. "fundamentally and structurally." Juncker told the BBC: "We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works", adding that two years would be wasted while Mr Trump "tours a world he doesn't know." Prime Minister Theresa May, who spoke to Mr Trump, has also had to skirt around her previous description of Mr Trump's Muslim ban idea as "divisive, unhelpful and wrong." Mrs May has faced criticism from opposition politicians, who are mostly horrified at Mr Trump's election, for not following the lead of Angela Merkel. This story first appeared in The Sun. A young British-Pakistani woman reportedly was raped by her husband and left fearing for her and her childrens lives after a Sharia court forced to her reveal her address and to try and get back with him. "Lubna," which is not her real name, had already obtained a legal divorce through the British courts from her violent husband, but after her mother was pressured by the Muslim community in which they lived in London, she was forced to seek a Sharia divorce as well. First the clerics tried to persuade her to attempt a reconciliation with her abusive husband. Then, after they disclosed her address, he threatened to kill her, kidnapped her children, and subjected her to an horrific rape that left her needing an abortion, reports MailOnline. EYE FOR AN EYE? IRANIAN THUG BLINDED FOR THROWING ACID IN 4-YEAR-OLD GIRL'S FACE Lubna, who was brought up in the north of England in a middle-class family, reportedly was sexually and physically abused by her husband who she joined with under an arranged marriage. But after he left her to pursue a new life in America with a new woman, Lubna decided she would file for divorce through the British legal system. WOMEN UNITE TO TAKE 'HONOR' OUT OF KILLING IN PAKISTAN She was given a restraining order to protect her from her furious husband who had returned to the UK to fight the split and was granted custody of their children. Her nightmare began however when her estranged husband told a prayer meeting at her local east London mosque that she was a loose women being pimped out by her widowed mother. Although at least one imam knew the horrific background to her marriage, a group from the mosque visited her family to persuade her to return. When that failed, the imam, an old family friend, put more pressure on Lubna to go to the Sharia court near Londons Regents Park. To avoid shaming her devout Muslim mother Lubna agreed but the judges didnt care about the plight shed suffered at her violent exs hands and repeatedly told the young woman and her mother to be silent. Speaking to the One Law for All campaign which is working to ban Sharia courts to improve Muslim womens rights, Lubna said: The court was incredibly difficult. My mother and I were repeatedly told to be silent. None of the information from the civil proceedings, including non-molestation orders, was admissible in the Sharia court. When my ex-husband said he wanted a reconciliation, the judges said I should comply. I tried to tell them about the violence and abuse I had suffered throughout the marriage, but was advised to be quiet. My mother was also silenced. She faced intrusive questioning about the last time she had sex with her husband crucial, the judges told her, to determine exactly when their relationship had ended. She was also forced to disclose her address. Astonishingly however when Lubnas mum sought advice from Islamic scholars in Pakistan and India they told her a civil divorce was sufficient to end the marriage. As a result they never finished the Sharia divorce and the young Muslim went on to try and rebuild her life. For more than 30 years Sharia courts enforcing Islamic law have been operating quietly across Britain. But two official inquiries have put them in the spotlight amid accusations that they discriminate against women. Very little is known about them, even their number. One study by the University of Reading puts it at 30, while the British think tank Civitas estimates there could be as many as 85. Sharia courts or councils, as they prefer to be called, mainly pronounce on Islamic divorces, which today make up 90 percent of the cases they handle. They range from groups of Muslim scholars attached to a mosque, to informal organizations or even a single imam. But while they are aimed at helping resolve family and sometimes commercial conflicts within the Muslim community, some stand accused of undermining womens rights. Campaigners cite instances where courts have refused to grant religious divorces to women who are victims of domestic abuse, and accuse them of legitimizing violence, including marital rape, as was the case with Lubna. Click for more from The Sun. A Pakistani officer says police have arrested 10 members of a criminal gang who flogged a transgender person and posted the incident on social media. Iqbal Sindhu says Monday's arrests were made in the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot after a video of the flogging was shared thousands of times on social media. The gang's leader, identified as Jajja Butt, is seen in the video flogging the transgender man, who lay face down on a cot screaming in pain. At one point, while another gang member continues the flogging, Butt places his foot on the victim's neck and twists his arms. Transgender people in Pakistan are social outcasts often forced into begging, dancing and prostitution to earn money. A Portuguese official says it's impossible to put a price on the booty of the Bom Jesus, a 16th century Portuguese ship carrying gold, silver and elephant tusks that was discovered in 2008 along the Namibian coastline. Teresa Ribeiro, Portugal's secretary of state for foreign affairs, says the artifacts found in the remains of the shipwreck have a "unique historical value." The Portuguese news agency Lusa quotes Ribeiro as saying during a trip to Namibia that the archaeological site is securely maintained in line with international standards. Ribeiro says she has told Namibian authorities that exhibitions from the shipwreck should be held in both Portugal and Namibia. Lusa says Ribeiro was planning on Monday to visit the Namibian central bank, where a vault contains coins from the Bom Jesus. Russian President Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump spoke over the phone Monday to discuss future efforts to improve the U.S.-Russian ties, the Kremlin and Trump's office said. "President-elect Trump noted to President Putin that he is very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia," Trump's office said in a statement. The Kremlin said that Putin congratulated Trump on his victory and expressed Russia's readiness to "establish a partner-like dialogue with the new administration on the basis of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in domestic relations." TRUMP'S ELECTION BOOSTS KREMLIN HOPES FOR BETTER RELATIONS Trump's office said that Putin called him to "offer his congratulations on winning a historic election." "During the call, the two leaders discussed a range of issues including the threats and challenges facing the United States and Russia, strategic economic issues and the historical U.S.-Russia relationship that dates back over 200 years," it said. In its readout of the phone call, the Kremlin added that both Putin and Trump agreed that the U.S.-Russian ties are in "extremely unsatisfactory" condition now. "They spoke for active joint work to normalize ties and engage in constructive cooperation on a broad range of issues," it said, adding that Putin and Trump emphasized the need to develop trade and economic cooperation to give a strong basis to U.S.-Russia relations. RUSSIA POISED TO UNLEASH NEW SYRIA STRIKES FROM THE SEA, US OFFICIALS SAY Putin and Trump also agreed on the need to combine efforts in the fight against their No. 1 enemy "international terrorism and extremism" and discussed the settlement of the Syrian crisis in that context, according to the Kremlin. It said that Putin and Trump agreed to continue phone contacts and to plan a personal meeting in the future. Trump said during the presidential campaign that he wants to be friends with Russia and join forces in the fight against the Islamic State group, yet he outlined few specifics as to how he would go about it. President Barack Obama began his presidency with a goal to "reset" ties with Russia, but they eventually plunged to the lowest point since the Cold War over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Throughout the campaign, the Kremlin insisted that it had no favorites and rejected the claims of interference in the U.S. election. Russia's state-controlled media, however, made no secret of their sympathy for Trump. A Russian fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after launching from its aircraft carrier near the coast of Syria Sunday, two U.S. officials told Fox News. Three Russian MiG-29 fighter jets took off from their Soviet-era aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, and flew in the direction of Syria. Once airborne, one of the Russian jets appeared to have mechanical difficulties and turned around in the direction of the aircraft carrier. The Russian jet splashed down in the water while attempting to land. A Russian rescue helicopter picked up a parachute and the pilot, who'd bailed out safely, Russian defense officials said. The MiG-29 was designed in the late-1970s to counter the U.S. Air Forces F-15 and F-16. It entered service in the early 1980s. The news of the crash came a day after state media claimed Russia was preparing its Tu-95 and Tu-160 long-range bombers for imminent strike missions in Syria. The Russian Tu-95 Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack, according to their NATO call signs, have been operating in Syria since 2015 and are based at Engels Air Force base in southern Russia near Kazakhstan. The Blackjack is a supersonic variable-sweep wing long range bomber and more advanced than its 1950s-era Bear counterpart, which is propeller driven. Last week, Fox News was first to report Russia was close to launching a new round of airstrikes in Syria from the aircraft carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean and southern Russia using long range bombers. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Staying in? We've got you covered Get the recommendations on what's streaming now, games you'll love, TV news and more with our weekly Home Entertainment newsletter! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Disgraced runner Oscar Pistorius has been moved to a different prison because of his disabilities. The Paralympian requested a transfer to a site that was better able to accommodate his specific needs. Pistorius has been transferred from Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria to the nearby Atteridgeville Correctional Centre. The jail has recently installed bath tubs during upgrades for disabled criminals. Officials said the double-amputee had been held in a Kgosi Mampuru remand centre because it accommodated his disabilities. Unlike the Kgosi Mampuru, the Atteridgeville prison has rehabilitation and development programmes for inmates. The 29-year-old is serving a six-year prison term for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home on Valentine's Day in 2013. Click for more from Sky News. Turkish state media and a Syrian activist group say Turkey's warplanes have struck Islamic State positions in and near the northern Syrian town of al-Bab. Turkey's Anadolu news agency reported 15 airstrikes against IS in al-Bab on Monday, saying they destroyed two command centers, an arms depot and two buildings used as headquarters, as well as 10 defensive positions. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the airstrikes and shelling killed three people and wounded 30 others. Turkish troops crossed into northern Syria earlier this year, vowing to clear the border area of IS as well as U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara views as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Ukraine's police chief, who was driving reforms through the country's notoriously corrupt police force, has resigned after a year in the job, complaining of government pressure. Khatiya Dekanoidze, who also was a deputy interior minister, told a televised news conference Monday that her official powers were "not enough for dramatic changes." Dekanoidze complained of pressure by government officials and members of parliament who "interfered" in police work. One of the pledges of the new Ukrainian government, which took over in February 2014 after pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, was to combat rampant corruption in Ukraine's police. The overhaul of the national police has so far been the new government's most visible reform with the entire Kiev traffic police corps disbanded and replaced by a new force last year. Brightway Insurance Opens Offices In Arizona And Georgia Today Brightway Agencies Offer More Choice And Expert Counsel November 14, 2016 // Franchising.com // JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Brightway Insurance continues to grow as its second location in the Grand Canyon State is opening today. Veteran Insurance Agent, Shauna Summ, is the proud Owner of Brightway, The Shauna Summ Agency in Phoenix, Ariz. Brightway is the seventh largest privately held Personal Lines independent insurance agency in the country. Also today, Mo Hassan is opening the doors to Brightway, The Hassan Agency in Kennesaw, Ga. Inspired by the successes his uncle, Hasan Mehedi, has experienced as a Brightway Agency Owner in Florida, Hassan decided that opening a Brightway Agency would be a great fit for him and the people in his community. Mehedis agency in West Palm Beach, Fla., is a top 25 Brightway agency in terms of annualized premium. Were thrilled to have Mo Hassan and Shauna Summ as our newest Brightway Agency Owners, said Brightway President, Talman Howard. Shauna has a solid reputation for providing expert counsel to her customers, and Mo is a real go-getter who has a passion for running his own business and being an integral part of his community. A team of experts stand behind Shauna and Mo to provide support through customer service, carrier relationships, marketing, accounting and technology so they can focus on taking the time to get to know each of their customers and finding them the right insurance solutions. Brightway, The Shauna Summ Agency is located at 21620 N 19th Ave., Suite A10 in Phoenix, Ariz. (near the West Deer Valley Road intersection). For more information, visit BrightwayShaunaSumm.com. Brightway, The Hassan Agency is located at 2615 George Busbee Parkway Suite 10-D in Kennesaw, Ga. (across the street from the Town Center at Cobb). For more information, visit BrightwayMoHassan.com. In addition to Brightways two newest agencies, Brightway, The Landers Agency celebrated with a ribbon-cutting event on Nov. 2. Agency Owner, Kandie Landers, opened the agency at 650 South Cherry Street, Suite 102 (at the corner of Cherry Street and Exposition Avenue) in Glendale, Colo., July 11. For more information, visit BrightwayLanders.com. Brightway agencies offer customized Home, Condo, Renters, Auto, Flood, RV, Motorcycle, Boat, ATV, Umbrella, Business and Life insurance policies from twice as many insurance carriers as do other independent agencies. With more than twice as many insurance carriers to choose from, Brightway agencies outsell other independent insurance agencies two to one. About Brightway Insurance Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance retailer selling through a network of franchised independent agencies throughout the country. With more than $430 million in annualized premium written, the company is the nations seventh largest privately held Personal Lines independent insurance agency. Brightway began franchising operations in 2008 and has since grown to 770 people in 12 states serving customers in all 50 states. In 2015, Forbes recognized the company as Americas No. 1 Franchise to Buy. Additionally, the company was named a top franchise three years in a row by Entrepreneur magazine and one of the fastest-growing private companies in America nine consecutive years by Inc. 5000. Learn more about Brightway at Brightway.com, and find us on Facebook and LinkedIn. SOURCE Brightway Insurance Contact: Courtney Heidelberg 904-405-1883 courtney.heidelberg@brightway.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Fuddruckers And Regional Franchisee, Roth Foods Inc., To Debut New Pennsylvania Fast Casual Restaurant In Manheim On November 14 MANHEIM, Pa. - Nov. 11, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Texas-born heritage brand, Fuddruckers, will soon have a fourth home for the "World's Greatest Hamburgers" in Pennsylvania thanks to a partnership with regional franchisee, Roth Foods Inc. Proprietor Jeff Roth is putting the final touches on the new 4,500-square-foot fast casual restaurant in Manheim in preparation for the November 14 debut. Roth also owns and operates a Fuddruckers in Hershey, PA. Located at 2001 Strickler Road, adjacent to the Hampton Inn & Suites Mount Joy/Lancaster West off Highway 283, the restaurant will feature seating for 130 guests and decor that references Fuddruckers' classic, Americana origins, including whimsical elements ranging from arcade games to roadhouse signage. According to Peter Tropoli, Chief Operating Officer of Luby's, Inc., "We're incredibly grateful for the generous reception we've had in Manheim, as well as the support and local expertise of Roth Foods Inc. in making this pre-opening such a smooth process. We're excited to be expanding in Pennsylvania and eager to become part of this community, welcoming guests with a warm and engaging ambience and great food ideal for family gatherings, business lunches and date nights." About Fuddruckers Since 1980, Fuddruckers has been obsessed with making the world happier, one great hamburger at a time. Grilled-to-order burgers feature always fresh and never frozen, 100% USDA premium-cut beef with no fillers or additives. Delicious, sesame-topped buns are baked from scratch on-site throughout the day to achieve the perfect combination of crisp crust and melt-in-your-mouth texture. And while burgers are the signature, the engaging menu offers variety for many tastes with an array of sandwiches, platters and salads. No matter what they choose, customers can customize their meal with a trip to the legendary Build Your Own produce bar, which features fantastic fixings like sun-ripened tomatoes, lettuce, sliced onions, dill pickles, pico de gallo and classic cheese sauce. About Luby's, Inc. Luby's, Inc. (NYSE: LUB) operates restaurants under the brands Luby's Cafeteria, Fuddruckers and Cheeseburger in Paradise and provides food service management through its Luby's Culinary Services division. The company-operated restaurants include 91 Luby's Cafeterias, 74 Fuddruckers restaurants, eight Cheeseburger in Paradise full service restaurants and bars and one Bob Luby's Seafood Grill. Its Luby's Cafeterias are located primarily in Texas. In addition to the company-operated Fuddruckers locations, Luby's is the franchisor for 112 Fuddruckers franchise locations across the United States (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Mexico, Panama, Italy, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Luby's Culinary Services provides food service management to 23 sites consisting of healthcare, higher education and corporate dining locations. SOURCE Fuddruckers ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Second Hyatt Place Hotel Set To Open In The United Kingdom Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will mark the second Hyatt Place hotel in London [start[]CHICAGO Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a franchise agreement with M&L Hospitality for a Hyatt Place hotel in London, to be managed by Cycas Hospitality. Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will mark the second Hyatt Place hotel and the fifth Hyatt-branded hotel in the United Kingdom. The Hyatt Place brand is rooted in extensive consumer insights indicating that guests seek stylish, comfortable, seamless experiences that accommodate their lifestyles and familiar routines. To embody this, the brand offers casual hospitality and purposeful service in a smartly designed, high-tech and contemporary environment. We are delighted to collaborate with M&L Hospitality to bring the second Hyatt Place hotel to the U.K., said Peter Norman, senior vice president, acquisitions and development Europe, Africa and Middle East (EAME) and Southwest Asia for Hyatt. The opening of this hotel will mark a significant milestone for Hyatt as the Hyatt Place brand continues to expand worldwide and offer more choices to our guests in key gateway cities. Expected to open in early 2017 following an extensive renovation of the existing building, Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will be located at the doorstep of Heathrow Airport, providing guests with a relaxing and uncomplicated place to pause before beginning the next leg of their journey. M&L Hospitalitys collaboration with Hyatt continues to expand with the opening of Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport in the U.K., said Neil Maxwell, chief executive officer, M&L Hospitality. After extensive upgrades to the hotel, including a full refurbishment of all guest rooms and public areas, we believe the Hyatt Place brand is the right fit for the hotel and Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will exceed guest expectations while visiting or passing through London. Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will offer: 350 spacious guestrooms, including a plush Hyatt Grand Bed, media and work center with a 42" flat-panel HDTV and comfortable Cozy Corner sofa-sleeper Gallery Hosts unique to the Hyatt Place brand who are available 24/7 24/7 Gallery Market offering grab n go items, such as snacks and sandwiches Coffee to Cocktails Bar featuring specialty coffees and premium beers, as well as wines and cocktails Meetings Spaces offering seven flexible, high-tech meeting/function space that can accommodate 2-100 delegates 24-hour StayFit Gym featuring fully stocked exercise equipment Odds & Ends program for forgotten items that guests can buy, borrow or enjoy for free Free Wi-Fi and public computers with remote printing throughout the hotel Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will be managed by Cycas Hospitality. This is a trusted, global brand for Heathrow Airport and we know that guests will enjoy our plans for new, intuitive levels of service which will mark this hotel apart from its competitors on the strip, said John Wagner, director, Cycas Hospitality. There are more than 260 Hyatt Place hotels spanning five continents, 16 countries and more than 150 cities. For more information, please visit www.hyattplace.com. The term Hyatt is used in this release for convenience to refer to Hyatt Hotels Corporation and/or one or more of its affiliates. About Hyatt Place Hyatt Place, a brand of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, combines style, innovation and 24/7 convenience to create a seamless stay with modern comforts. There are more than 260 Hyatt Place locations in the United States, Armenia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Honduras, India, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Thailand, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram, and tag photos with #HyattPlace and #WhySettle. About M&L Hospitality M&L Hospitality is a Singapore-based real estate investment trust with an international portfolio of best-in-class hotels. M&L Hospitality has experienced exponential growth since the trust acquired the Four Points by Sheraton in Sydney in 2009, which will be rebranded as Hyatt Regency Sydney on 1 December 2016. Its portfolio now contains 13 hotels in operation and a further 3 hotels under construction, due to open in 2017, with properties in Singapore, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. M&L Hospitalitys hotels are in prime, central locations in international gateway cities. They are operated by the most recognisable international brands, including Accor, Hilton, IHG, Rezidor, Starwood, Hyatt, Travelodge and Swissotel. M&L Hospitalitys hotels are modern, functional, and appeal to the corporate, leisure and MICE markets. About Cycas Hospitality Cycas Hospitality is a hotel management company specialising in extended-stay hotels in the UK and across Europe. It combines real world, first-hand experience of hotel management with expertise in real estate investment and development. For more information please visit http://www.cycashospitality.com About Hyatt Hotels Corporation Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 12 premier brands and 679 properties in 54 countries, as of September 30, 2016. The Company's purpose to care for people so they can be their best informs its business decisions and growth strategy and is intended to create value for shareholders, build relationships with guests and attract the best colleagues in the industry. The Company's subsidiaries develop, own, operate, manage, franchise, license or provide services to hotels, resorts, branded residences and vacation ownership properties, including under the Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Andaz, Hyatt Centric, The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Hyatt Ziva, Hyatt Zilara and Hyatt Residence Club brand names and have locations on six continents. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.com. Forward-Looking Statements Forward-Looking Statements in this press release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results, performance or achievements may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as may, could, expect, intend, plan, seek, anticipate, believe, estimate, predict, potential, continue, likely, will, would and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by us and our management, are inherently uncertain. Factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from current expectations include, among others, the rate and pace of economic recovery following economic downturns; levels of spending in business and leisure segments as well as consumer confidence; declines in occupancy and average daily rate; the financial condition of, and our relationships with, third-party property owners, franchisees and hospitality venture partners; the possible inability of third-party owners, franchisees or development partners to access the capital necessary to fund current operations or implement our plans for growth; risks associated with potential acquisitions and dispositions and the introduction of new brand concepts; changes in the competitive environment in our industry, including as a result of industry consolidation, and the markets where we operate; general volatility of the capital markets and our ability to access such markets; and other risks discussed in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, which filings are available from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These factors are not necessarily all of the important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any of our forward-looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which are made only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any of these forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, new information or future events, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable law. If we update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that we will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. SOURCE Hyatt Place Media Contact: Allison Mack Hyatt +1 312 780 5933 allison.mack@hyatt.com Simone Loretan Hyatt Europe, Africa and Middle East and Southwest Asia +41 44 279 1226 simone.loretan@hyatt.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus MADISON Republicans will have their biggest majorities in the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly in decades when the legislative session begins in January. Heres a look at what they likely will face: How big are the Republican majorities? Republicans emerged from Election Day with a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly and a 20-12 edge in the Senate. Senate Republicans could still gain one more member; the race between Republican Dan Kapanke and Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling remains too close to call. Senate Republicans unanimously chose Scott Fitzgerald, of Juneau, as majority leader on Thursday. Hes served in that capacity since the 2011-13 session. Robin Vos is expected to retain his position as Assembly speaker when Republicans in that chamber meet to make their leadership choices Monday. What will the GOP tackle first? Crafting the next state budget. Gov. Scott Walker is expected introducev his executive budget by mid-February. The Legislatures Joint Finance Committee will then spend months revising the spending plan. The final version will then go back to Walker for his signature. Fitzgerald and Vos will have to move quickly to pick who will serve on the finance committee. Whats the biggest budget issue? Undoubtedly, it is the $1 billion shortfall in the states transportation fund. Walker has said he wont raise the gas tax or fees to fill the gap without cutting taxes elsewhere. He plans to include a proposal in his executive budget that deals with the shortfall by delaying major projects and borrowing. Fitzgerald likes that approach, but Vos has criticized it as a short-sighted political solution. The stage is set for a bruising intraparty battle. Health insurance? Republicans will have to deal with the local fallout from changes president-elect Donald Trump makes to the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas signature health insurance overhaul. Trump has said he wants to repeal the law. About 240,000 Wisconsin residents are enrolled in health plans sold on the federal marketplace and could lose coverage. Both Fitzgerald and Vos said its too early to tell what might happen, but they expect to have to adjust. Vos has said he wants to increase coverage but do it in a way that doesnt distort the marketplace in creating winners and losers like Obamacare did. Fitzgerald said he expects a full repeal, which will put pressure on the states to find coverage for people. He would like to make any adjustments as part of the state budget but said wholesale changes will be difficult. School funding Assembly Republicans have called for reviewing the states school-funding formula and considering moving functions from the state Department of Public Instruction to local districts, which could result in DPI staffing cuts. They also want to explore creating so-called education savings accounts. In other states that use such accounts, eligible children receive several thousand dollars from the state to pay educational expenses. The money can be used for private school tuition, books or other expenses. University of Wisconsin System Republicans will have to decide whether to extend a University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze. The GOP has frozen tuition for four straight years and cut $250 million from the system in the last state budget. System leaders have asked Walker to lift the freeze and give them an additional $42.5 million in the upcoming budget. Concealed weapons Vos sounds like hed be open to revisiting whether to allow people to carry concealed weapons on school grounds, which is currently a felony. Republicans last year drafted a bill that would allow concealed carry on school property and let districts decide whether to allow it inside their buildings. Vos didnt advance the measure because it came so near the end of the session. But he said after the election that people who carry concealed are legitimately worried about getting arrested when they drop their children off at school. Prevailing wage Vos has talked about doing away with the prevailing wage, a law that sets minimum salaries for construction workers on public projects. Republicans included provisions in the last state budget that eliminated requirements that local governments pay workers the prevailing wage for work on government projects. Tax cuts Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the states largest business group, is pushing the GOP to reduce income taxes. Scott Manley, WMCs vice president of government relations, said taxes especially need to be reduced for top earners. Fitzgerald has said one of the Senates priorities will be reducing the tax burden on Wisconsin residents. Assembly Republicans Forward agenda includes plans to form a task force on reducing taxes and to create a sales tax holiday. The number of economic development projects that the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance has helped bring to the area has accelerated from zero to 44 since 2014. And its already working on 13 projects for fiscal year 2017. We do joke that we have too much going on and will have to start turning stuff away, FRA President Curry Roberts told attendees at the alliances annual membership meeting Thursday at the University of Mary Washingtons Jepson Alumni Executive Center. The Fredericksburg Regional Alliance is a public-private partnership that markets the region to economic development prospects. It helped bring $127.5 million in capital investments to the area in 2015 that created 250 jobs, and $200 million in investments this year that will create 400 jobs. So far, its projected to bring $93 million and 304 jobs in 2017. Roberts said that interest from the retail/hospitality sector was down slightly from 2015 to 2016 and ticked upward in the office and professional sector. But the lions share of interest64 percent this yearremains in industrial warehouses. An example is Harris Teeters decision last year to invest $95 million to establish a 1.5 million-square-foot food distribution operation in Caroline County. With a little bit of luck, were actually going to run out of existing buildings on the warehouse and industrial side in the region. Were probably going to have to start talking about some spec construction in the region, he said. We have some interest in spec industrial development. Roberts said that the inventory of industrial warehouse space is also limited statewide, so building some speculative industrial warehouse space would help us to get a little bit ahead of that curve. One of the regions greatest advantages in attracting businesses, other than its location, is its relatively low local tax burden compared to Northern Virginia. It is more in line with the local tax burden per capita in the Richmond region and the Roanoke Valley, he said. One of our challenges is we are often just lumped in with Northern Virginia and many times that means were excluded before were even looked at, Roberts said. He said that showing potential investors a tax burden comparison is a major piece of the alliances marketing efforts. Sometimes we simply summarize this by simply saying, were as far north as you can go on 95 and have a southeastern business climate, Roberts said. That seems to resonate with prospects. FRA supplied 75 percent of the funds that area localities needed to do site-readiness studies for large tracts of land. These included the 70-acre Hylton property in Fredericksburg, the 227-acre University of Mary Washington property in Stafford County and the 300-acre Taylor property in King George County. The alliance also helped Caroline and Spotsylvania counties with funds to do a study of the 1,174-acre Orrock-Simms property, which spans the borders of both counties. It wasnt enough to perform a detailed assessment, but FRA applied for and will receive a $5,000 Virginia Business Ready Sites Program grant to help pay for it. Located at the intersection of Interstate 95 and State Route 606, this working farm owned partly by Del. Bobby Orrocks family, is one of the largest single pieces of available property in Virginias site inventory. Roberts said that the assessment should be completed by the end of the year. The alliance is also working with the University of Mary Washingtons Center for Business Research and others on several research projects in the region over the next two years. These include: cybersecurity, the cost of traffic congestion to governments and businesses in the region, and how much of the regions job growth can be attributed to regional versus national factors. The center will also look into the regional economic impact of the naval bases at Dahlgren and Indian Head, Md. , Roberts said. MADISON Wisconsin Democrats reeling from historic losses in Tuesdays election and grappling with how to bounce back say they need to do a better job articulating their vision, particularly to working and middle-class workers who used to be reliably on their side but no longer are. Democratic strategists, office holders and party leaders also warn against overreacting, saying the unexpected stronger turnout for Donald Trump helped other Republican candidates in the state who otherwise would have lost. I didnt know a single Democrat or progressive that woke up Wednesday that wasnt mad as hell, said strategist Patrick Guarasci, who lives in Milwaukee and worked for Democratic politicians and liberal groups. That fear, that anger, needs to be welled up inside every person and focused into action. That will help us as we find our way through these next few steps in what we need to do. The path forward will not be easy for Democrats, and how they respond to the drubbing they took this year will be put to the test soon. In 2018, Democrats will be defending a U.S. Senate seat held by Tammy Baldwin and possibly trying to prevent Republican Gov. Scott Walker from winning a third term. Walker hasnt said definitively whether he will seek re-election. The Democratic losses in this election were both unexpected and deep. Hillary Clintons loss in Wisconsin was the first time since 1984 that the Democratic presidential nominee didnt carry the state. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnsons win over Democratic former Sen. Russ Feingold marks the first time since 1980 that a Republican has won election to the Senate in a presidential year in Wisconsin. Republicans increased their majority in the Assembly by one seat, giving them their largest numbers since 1957. And Republicans gained at least one seat in the state Senate, resulting in their strongest majority since 1971. Taken together, it was the worst election for Democrats in Wisconsin since 2010, when they lost the governors office, a U.S. Senate seat and control of both chambers of the Legislature in one night. I think people in general are tired of the same old style, said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, whos been in Congress since 2013 after a 12-year career in the state Assembly. Democrats should have never lost in winning over working and middle-class voters with their vision for improving the economy, said Pocan, whose district includes the Madison area as well as more rural counties in the south-central part of the state. There is justifiable anger among those people, many of whom were attracted to Trump, that they have been left behind, Pocan said. Sachin Chheda, a liberal strategist from Milwaukee, agreed with Pocan that Democrats need to do a better job articulating their message. We need, clearly, to do a better job explaining why our policies will make lives better for people who arent voting for us, Chheda said. If we think its right and people dont believe it, then we need to do a better job explaining it. Democrats were confident the typically higher turnout in presidential years would propel them to victory this year. Democratic turnout was lower in urban areas for Clinton this year than it had been for Obama in 2012, and Trump outperformed her in more rural parts of the state. Its been obvious for a few years but it exploded on Tuesday, said Tim Cullen, a 72-year-old former state senator from Janesville who is preparing to run for governor. The Democratic Party has to speak clearly to rural small towns in Wisconsin and America. More also needs to be done to motivate African American, female, Hispanic and young voters in Milwaukee, Guarasci said. The most important thing is people dont give up and they continue to fight, said Scot Ross, director of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now. They need progressives and Democrats out there fighting because this stuff, these issues, matter. Cullen was optimistic that Democrats will bounce back in the 2018 midterm elections. Even though it looks like were at a political bottom, Cullen said, things can change very quickly in America and in Wisconsin. On Election Day in Rochester, New York, the grave of womens suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was almost completely covered by red-white-and-blue I Voted stickers. Some visitors left flowers or thank you notes. Hundreds most expecting Hillary Clinton to become the first female president visited Anthonys grave Tuesday to pay their respects to a woman best known for her fight to see women get the right to vote. At Forest Hill Cemetery on Madisons Near West Side, the grave of Wisconsin womens suffrage activist Belle Case La Follette did not go unloved. Darin Hall, the cemeterys lead worker, found two I Voted stickers on La Follettes grave Tuesday morning, as well as a little American flag. When Karen Thompson, who works in the cemeterys office, shared Halls photo of the grave with a reporter and copied the public information officer for Madison Parks, Parks operations manager Lisa Laschinger ordered the stickers removed. Prior to your call from this morning, Madison Parks was not aware of any movement or activity that would take place at the grave today, nor did we grant permission for the stickers to be placed, Parks spokeswoman Ann Shea wrote in an email. Out of respect for Ms. La Follette, her family and her grave, and to help protect the stone from damage, the I Voted stickers have been removed. One other sticker went up on the gravestone later in the day and was also removed, Shea said. Bob Kann, a Madison resident who wrote the 2008 childrens book, Belle and Bob La Follette: Partners in Politics, said he doesnt know whether stickers damage a gravestone, but understands the citys rationale for removing them. Its a trivial issue given the magnitude of the threat now posed to the world with the change in the countrys leadership, Kann said. Belle would immediately move into fighting mode about bigger issues. When she fought for womens suffrage, she knew it would take a long time. And she was in the trenches. And shed be horrified about many things our new (President-elect Donald Trump) has said and done, he maintained. While Belle La Follette (1859-1931) isnt an unknown figure in Madison or Wisconsin, more people knew about her husband, Fighting Bob La Follette, than knew about her, Kann said. Shes heroic and had an opportunity to be the first female senator in the country, or one of the first, but turned it down, he said. In 1931, the New York Times called Belle Case La Follette probably the least known yet most influential of all the American women who have had to do with public affairs. Not only was she an early anti-war and womens suffrage advocate, but she was an important adviser to her husband, a Progressive leader who served as governor of Wisconsin, as well as in both houses of Congress. She edited a section of her husbands magazine, now known as The Progressive, and wrote a massive, two-volume biography about him. Her rectangular gravestone in section 4 at Forest Hill is in a plot with nine other La Follettes. On Wednesday, the day after the election, the flat markers were easy to overlook, all set into the earth and unadorned. Kann called Belle La Follette presidential caliber material, adding that he would never underestimate her capabilities. Even her husband, Bob, said she was the brainiest member of the family and I agree, but people dont know about her. Belle La Follette would be appalled that Hillary Clinton didnt win, Kann said, but shed just move on. Lets dig in and keep fighting. IM NOT a Bigfoot expert, but at $1,000 per speaking engagement, I am willing to learn. According to a Nov. 2 Associated Press story, the executive director of the University of New Mexicos Gallup campus raised a few eyebrows when he spent more than $7,000 in taxpayer money on a two-day, on-campus Bigfoot conference. The wire service called UNMs Dr. Christopher Dyer an avid Bigfoot hunter in his spare time who says he only pursues the mythical creature when he isnt on the job, which means if hes hanging around the school bookstore one day and spots Sasquatch, its only a coincidence. Dyer called the conference the largest and most well-attended event in the history of this campus and defended its cost. People use monies from the taxpayers to do research. For Bigfoot or whatever, he said, according to AP. A post-conference, off-campus hunt for Bigfoot by the executive director and some of his companionsalso paid for with UNM fundsyielded no sightings of the hairy mythical beast and Dyer admitted that taxpayers probably didnt get a lot of bang for their buck with the failed expedition, if only because of lousy weather. Id have to say it was pretty much a blown waste of money because we did not find evidence because of the snow. It was just impossible to get around out there. So in that case, yeah would we spend money on that again? Absolutely not, he said. UNM President Robert Frank wasnt happy about the expense. Dr. Dyer needs to be much more thoughtful about how he undertakes these activities, he said in what I imagine to be his best Dean Wormer from Animal House impersonation. The type of expedition that just took place was not appropriate and will not occur in that manner again. The AP said the school was on the hook for advertising for the conference, meals for guest speakers, airfare and per diem. Self-professed Bigfoot expert Dr. Jeff Meldrum was paid a $1,000 honorarium plus expenses, according to the story. Self-professed? Wait a minute ... maybe I am a Bigfoot expert, if self-professing is what it takes. The following is an unpaid advertisement for the newly formed Acme International Bipedal Humanoid Speakers Bureau, of which I am executive director: Do you need a self-professed Bigfoot expert to speak at your next university conference, Rotary meeting or family reunion? If you have $1,000, Im just the man for the job. Hello, I am Scott Hollifield, executive director of the International Bipedal Humanoid Speakers Bureau and I have been a Bigfoot expert for the last two-and-half minutes. During that time, I have extensively studied this amazing creature, his habitat, his elusive nature and what I might be able to buy with one thousand extra dollars. And now, I am available to share that knowledge with you for only $1,000, the cost of meals, airfare and all the cashews I can eat. I really like cashews. During my informative and entertaining presentation, I will answer such Bigfoot-related questions as: Does Bigfoot have a difficult time finding shoes? What is the relationship between Bigfoot sightings and blood-alcohol content? If Bigfoot fought the Loch Ness Monster, who would win? Following my presentation, I will lead a select group of individuals on an expedition to locate Bigfoot. We shall leave no stone unturned, searching every pub, brewery and gentlemans club in an effort to locate this magnificent beast and buy him a round. To book an engagement, just contact me at the International Bipedal Humanoid Speakers Bureau, where our motto is, Were self-professed but were still the best (that you can get for $1,000). Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com. New Spiritual Story Book Released! By Saharra White-Wolf November 14, 2016 Saharra White-Wolf is launching Her brand new book, "The Inside World", available through Through Amazon and Barnes & Noble online at on Saharra's website www.SaharraWhiteWolf.com. Targeted for fans who want to learn more about compassion for self and creating a better world for themselves. -- Shamanic Practitioner and Certified Reiki Master Saharra White-Wolf is launching her brand new book, "The Inside World". The book is available today through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and online at on Saharra's website www.SaharraWhiteWolf.com. It is expected to become a big hit with fans of the Spiritual world, who seek compassion for self, and wants unconditional self-love. More information on the book can be found here: www.SaharraWhiteWolf.com This is the first book White-Wolf has authored in "The Inner Knowing Trilogy." The book was written as our society is going through an intense period, it is more important than ever that people and children become aware of the spiritual support system, which exists around us at all times. There's also particular excitement about this launch because she wants the readers to feel inspired by the story and awaken their curiosity about the spiritual realm. She wants readers to know that love is the most powerful energy on the planet. Through compassion, self-doubt can be cleared and we can start shining our light, which will create a better world for us and our children. The Inside World sets its main focus on Saharra's true experiences through her shamanic studies. There has not been a book quite like this written which takes place in different dimensions and realms with three different text colors guides the reader through the different realms. Readers will likely find a particular interest in this story about a boy, who was chosen from the spirit world to change the vibration of love on Planet Earth. It's a story about how he connects with the spirit beings, follows their guidance and grows out of self-doubt, finds self-love, and changes the vibration of Love on Earth. The book's cover art was created by Laura McClanahan and The Inside World is being released by Balboa Press. Saharra White-Wolf has a background in and is a shamanic practitioner, certified Reiki Master and teacher, hospice nurse and life guide. This helped shaped the creation of the book and this story was inspired by Saharra's life, her work with clients, who seek connection with the spirit world, and by her children. . When asked about why they wrote the book, White-Wolf said: "My wish is to inspire and touch others on their spiritual Quest." White-Wolf has hopes that in this book you will discover how to find self-love through compassion. The heart is the key to the universe. She lives her life holistically and she is the mother of three, born and raised in Austria. In a recent interview, the author made a point of thanking Laura McClanahan, the artist and illustrator for her part in the creation of the book, saying: "Thank you Laura McClanahan, www.lauramcclanahan.com for your unique artistry that is showcased for the first time with the book design cover and illustrations." Those interested in learning more about the book and Saharra can visitwww.SaharraWhiteWolf.com. Saharra White-Wolf is launching her brand new book, "The Inside World", available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble online and on Saharra's website. Targeted at fans of the Spiritual world who are seeking to learn more about compassion for self and creating a better world for themselves and their children. More information is available at the website: www.SaharraWhiteWolf.com For more information, please visit http://SaharraWhiteWolf.com Contact Info: Name: Saharra White Wolf Organization: AWAKYA, LLC Address: Bridge Street Release ID: 145679 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Astro Guide Launches New Website Astro Guide is please to announce the launching of its newly designed and mobile friendly website. Users are now able to find timely information on astrology trends and forecast. http://astro-guide.com -- Astro-Guide is pleased to announce the redesign and launch of its website www.astro-guide.com. The new site is user friendly and mobile friendly. Astro Guide website provides information for aficionados and debutantes of astrology studies. Users will find astute information on how best to find quality information on astrological topics. As part of its objective to provide essential information on astrology, Astro Guide offers ongoing newsletters for members to stay informed of the latest development in the modern astrological interpretations. Ferguson, owner of Astro Guide, explains "people are seeking reliable information of astrology, and want to the best resources to either learn astrology to be self-reliant in forecasting charts or alternatively how to avoid subpar astrologers who do not have the training or experience required for expert advice, Astro-Guide fills this need." Based on both ancient and modern astrology traditions, the website is intended for people who are interested in learning more about themselves and want to discover the higher self as seen through the astrological chart. Through deeper understanding with the chart knowledge one understands the core of the self and learns about the evolution of consciousness. Ferguson continues "This critical time in the world needs for the consciousness of humanity to evolve, untold numbers of people want to know the nature of being, the essential truth and are on the path of transformation." A visitor to the website will find various methods to find how astrology can guide them along with modern and traditional teachings. In addition one can join the newsletter memo to be informed of continuing developments and the latest postings. According to Ferguson "It is very important to bring more awareness of the validity of astrology in order for people to discover ones true inner nature to help transform the world". In addition to timely articles of astrological significance the website offers how to methods on interpreting an astrology chart. The website also provides an array of useful links to free programs to get started in understanding how astrology works. Part of the resource includes basic astrology tools such as access to create an astrology chart or astrology software programs. For more information, please visit http://www.astro-guide.com Contact Info: Name: Mark Ferguson Organization: Astro Guide Address: PO Box 1928 Release ID: 145687 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cummins Standby Generators Dealer Air & Liquid Cooled Models Announced The renowned Buckeye Power Systems announced its leading range of reliable and premium quality Cummins standby air- or liquid-cooled generators in a wide range of sizes and voltages to suit different residential, commercial or industrial settings, backup power needs and budgets. -- Nationally recognized Buckeye Power Systems announced its leading and diverse range of top standby generators from the world leader in power generation products, Cummins Power Generation, a unit of Cummins, Inc. 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The range of Cummins standby generators provided by Buckeye Power Systems include air-cooled, liquid-cooled and diesel generators available in a wide range of sizes and voltages, from 8kW to 150kW and higher, supported by expert advice from its friendly and experienced staff committed to helping clients find the best and most suitable backup power solution for their particular needs and budget. Free estimates and consultations with the Buckeye Power System team along with more information on the full range of standby and portable generators, transfer switches or generator parts available can be requested at 901-379-8097 or through the website provided link above along with up-to-date standby generator rankings, extensive tips and advice on standby generator installation costs, and choosing an installer. David RIchey, president of Buckeye Power Systems explains that "in our experience selling standby generators to homeowners and industry, Cummins gets a 5-star rating consistently. Over 3,000 of the nation's home builders have also awarded Cummins with Builder magazine's Brand Leader award for each of the past four years. Cummins generators can be found at online stores like ours or big box stores like Home Depot but our best advice to customers is to develop a relationship with a factory-authorized dealer where you will benefit from solid advice and factory-trained technicians. We encourage customers to call us for rock bottom pricing on specific models." For more information, please visit http://buckeyepowersystems.com Contact Info: Name: David Richey Email: david@buckeyepowersystems.com Organization: Buckeye Power Systems, LLC Address: 1245 Big Orange Rd. Phone: (901) 379-8097 Release ID: 145667 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Office 2016 Promo Code Launches Microsoft Holiday Sale And Previews Black Friday Deals Office 2016 Promo Code had received a new suite of exclusive offers from Microsoft designed to help people get the best value over the holidays, with previews of the upcoming Black Friday deals. -- Microsoft is one of the biggest technology brands in the world, and their products are used every day by over a billion people. As such, the demand for their products is always high, and people are always looking to source them at the best price. Fortunately, Office 2016 Promo Code has been in business for a decade, offering the best money saving deals on Microsoft software and hardware available online. The site has now launched Microsoft Office Promo Code as part of the Microsoft Holiday sale, as well as offering previews of incoming Black Friday deals. The new holiday discounts include amazing moneysaving deals on the latest Office 2016 suite, the brand new Surface Studio package, the latest Xbox One S and associated game bundles, desktop and laptop machines, together with a whole of host of accessories and other Microsoft products, all dedicated to making life easier at home, school and in the workplace. The website also has information on the forthcoming deals for the Microsoft Black Friday 2016 online event, designed to help people get the same amazing deals they can in stores without having to fight their way through the ravenous crowds. The deals are already looking amazing, and individuals should sign into the site as early as possible to secure them before they expire. A spokesperson for Office 2016 Promo Code explained, "We are thrilled to have received these great offers and incentives direct from the Microsoft Store, so that our users can make huge savings when they come to buy the products they need from Microsoft. With the holidays approaching, many people are looking at gaming systems and laptops to provide the ultimate gift. We can help them make their budget stretch further. Black Friday will be the ultimate savings day, so we encourage all users to get on the site early morning to be the first to get amazing offers." About Office 2016 Promo Code: Office 2016 Promo Code is an online resource center dedicated to helping people get the very best deals available online for Microsoft products and services. The website is frequently updated by a committed team of researchers, who have established special relationships with the Microsoft Store over more than eight years, to successfully secure exclusive deals and offers. For more information, please visit http://www.office2016promocode.com/ Contact Info: Name: PRWhirlWind Organization: PRWhirlWind Source: http://marketersmedia.com/office-2016-promo-code-launches-microsoft-holiday-sale-and-previews-black-friday-deals/145720 Release ID: 145720 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) By Stef Gijssels We love solo bass albums, and it seems that they keep coming in great numbers. The overview below is indeed nothing more t... Free Freightnet Membership List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours. National Bible Week Commemorating 75th Anniversary with Special Reading of the Bible on Floor of the US House of Representatives National Bible Association with Rep. Doug Lamborn (CO) host bi-partisan event to include readings from the Bible on Tuesday November 15th, 2016. WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- In commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of National Bible Week, a bi-partisan event will be held on the floor of the US House of Representatives and will include readings from the Bible. Led by U.S. Congressmen, Doug Lamborn of Colorado Spring, CO., the event will be held in the afternoon hours of Tuesday November 15th, 2016 and will include the reading of passages from three different Bibles: A Catholic Bible A Jewish Bible A Protestant Bible WHO: Members of the House of Representatives led by U.S. Congressmen, Doug Lamborn of Colorado Spring, CO., in partnership with National Bible Association. WHAT: Bi-Partisan Commemoration Event of 75th Anniversary of National Bible Week WHEN: 3pm ET exact time may vary depending on potential House schedule overruns. WHERE: The Floor of The House of Representatives DAY OF POINT OF CONTACT: Elise Inman - (e) : Elise Inman - (e) einman@nationalbible.org (p) 615 775- 6902 The National Bible Association is a non-profit, educational association operating in the public square that provides a platform for our Nation's Leaders to encourage people to read the Bible. The National Bible Association was created in 1940 by a group of business and professional leaders in New York City. Their purpose was to find hope for America while war raged in Europe. Today, the strength of National Bible continues as an association of dedicated members who encourage Bible reading locally, through events and special projects, and nationally, through media campaigns. This is done primarily through our three main program areas: International Bible Week (previously National Bible Week), Media & Literature, and Awards and Recognition. Our goal is to encourage everyone to read the Bible and raise awareness of the Bible's importance and relevance to our nation as a whole, as well as in the lives of individuals. Story Highlights Identity theft and credit card hacking remain greatest worries Worries about terrorism up 8 points from 2015 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are about as worried as they were last year about being victims of a host of different crimes. Their fears have increased on three of the 13 crimes that Gallup asked them about in both years: being a victim of terrorism, being attacked while driving and getting mugged. Americans' Worries About Various Crimes, 2015 vs. 2016 How often do you, yourself, worry about the following things -- frequently, occasionally, rarely or never? How about ... ? 2015 2016 Change % Frequently or occasionally worry % Frequently or occasionally worry (pct. pts.) Being a victim of terrorism 27 35 8 Being attacked while driving your car 17 23 6 Getting mugged 25 30 5 Your home being burglarized when you are not there 39 43 4 Being sexually assaulted 16 20 4 Having your car stolen or broken into 40 43 3 Being the victim of a hate crime 19 22 3 Being a victim of identity theft 69 70 1 Having a school-aged child of yours physically harmed while attending school 33 34 1 Your home being burglarized when you are there 25 26 1 Getting murdered 17 18 1 Being assaulted/killed by a coworker/employee where you work 7 8 1 Having the credit card information you have used at stores stolen by computer hackers 69 69 0 Having your email, passwords or electronic records hacked into -- 64 -- Oct. 5-9, 2016 Gallup Worries about nearly all of these crimes have varied since Gallup first asked about them in 2000, but almost all are within three percentage points of their historical averages. One issue -- fear of being the victim of a hate crime -- is on the high end of its 13% to 22% range since 2000 and is up three points from last year, but this is within the margin of error. Crimes that Gallup introduced to the list in more recent years -- identity theft (70%) and credit card hacking (69%) -- have not varied much, and remain atop the list of Americans' crime worries. Concerns about email and password hacking (64%), new to the list this year, also rank near the top of the list. Worries About Being Victim of Terrorism at Highest Since 2009 More than a third of Americans (35%) say they frequently or occasionally worry about being a victim of terrorism, the highest since 2009, when the same percentage reported this level of worry. This is not as high, however, as concerns about terrorism in the first five years after 9/11, which ranged from 38% to 47% -- the latter being the high reached immediately after the terrorist attacks. Increased concern about terrorism this year comes after a shooter in San Bernardino, California, took 14 lives last December and a shooter in Orlando, Florida, killed 49 people in June -- the latter being the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Bottom Line For the most part, Americans' worries about being the victim of a variety of crimes are at about their respective averages, and none of them have decreased since last year. Gallup reports that household crime victimization is at a new high and Americans' perceptions of crime in the U.S. remain elevated. Americans slightly favor law and order when it comes to the priorities of the criminal justice system, and President-elect Donald Trump's emphasis on this in the 2016 campaign may have been a factor in his success at the ballot box. If, as president, he is successful in bringing a greater sense of general security for Americans, their concerns about various crimes may decrease. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 5-9, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,017 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends. Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works. Coldplay Latest News & Update: Beyonce Snubs Duet Track? Chris Martin Explains Why Coldplay's Chris Martin recently asked Beyonce to sing a Coldplay track. Beyonce turned down the offer and Chris Martin explains why. Coldplay Latest News & Update: Beyonce Snubs Coldplay Coldplay is a British rock band that was formed in 1996. Chris Martin serves as its lead vocalist and keyboardist and Jonny Buckland serves as its lead guitarist. Guy Berryman later joined the band as bassist, Will Champion joined as drummer and backing vocalist and Phil Harvey was referred as the official fifth member of Coldplay. Coldplay's Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow once had a double date with Beyonce and Jay-Z. This shows that they are on good terms and are working together well. However, according to TV3, Beyonce turned down Chris Martin after he asked her to sing the new Coldplay song "Hook Up" together. Coldplay Latest News & Update: Beyonce Says Song Is Awful In Billboard, Chris Martin explains why Beyonce turned him down and snubs the track. When she was asked to sing the song, she replied and told him that he likes him in the sweetest possible way. She added that the song "Hook up" is awful and she politely showed them the door. With this, the duet between Beyonce and Coldplay did not happen. This is actually not the first time that a Coldplay song was turned down. In 2014, David Bowie also declined a duet with the band. Chris Martin once sent him a song but David replied that it is not their best song. Unlike Beyonce, they had no chance to collaborate and sing with David Bowie again. Coldplay Latest News & Update: Beyonce Sings With Coldplay The Irish Examiner reports that after Beyonce turned down Coldplay, then eventually agreed to sing a song. Coldplay ended up singing with the pop superstar as they performed the hit song "Hymn For The Weekend." Samsung Galaxy S8 Release Date, Leaks & Updates: Model Numbers Out? Devices Could Be Company's Rescue After Note 7 The Samsung Galaxy S8 is one that could be the saving grace of the company after what transpired recently. That being said, replacements are in order for those troubled-though there are some who may not quite like the move just yet. For those uninformed, a worldwide anomaly was caused by the faulty batteries of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, wherein a many experienced the dread of smoking and even igniting batteries alike. With such an awful tragedy that befell the good company, the next series of mobile phones in line may be the key, namely the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the models beyond it. According to Tech Times, the Samsung Galaxy S8 series has been leaked along with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. Such model numbers are the SM-G950 and SM-G955 for the Samsung Galaxy 8 and the SM-N950 is to be made for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 respectively. Apart from these leaks, some speculations suggest that there will be a critical move that will change the face of the said mobile phone line, which is the use of the Exynos chipset. Reports claim that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will don the aforementioned chipset, made by Samsung themselves and have been utilized for quite a notable time. Being the flagship devices of the South Korean company, Exynos and Qualcomm are both recognized as remarkable variables to this day. That, however, might be changed soon enough as early as next year due to Samsung's goals to creating a new powerful Exynos with the Shannon 359 modem-though it is yet to be confirmed. Even with the supposed release of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and presumably the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the Shannon 359 modem may take a while longer. That being said, all the information surrounding these devices are advised to be taken only with a grain of salt for now. Samsung Electronics News & Update: Galaxy S8 Maker Involved In Political Scandal; Market Share Going Down, Outpaced By Apple? Samsung Electronics, one of the top rival of Apple, is believed to be facing a crisis this year. 2016 already looked to be worst for Samsung's history not to mention the selling of exploding smart phones and washing machines that hurt consumers including a broken jaw and injured shoulder. Furthermore, Samsung Electronics has just been reported to be involved in a South Korean political scandal investigation . A report illustrated by CNBC states that South Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Samsung Electronics as part of a political scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her close friend, Choi Soon-sil , who is allegedly to have exerted improper influence in state affairs. In fact it was confirmed by BBC , that there were allegations that Samsung Electronics gave money to the daughter of Choi Soon-sil. It can be remembered that Choi's daughter is currently undergoing an equestrian training in Germany. Samsung HQ raided by prosecutors as South Korean political scandal deepens https://t.co/BEq6U5aoSD The Guardian (@guardian) November 8, 2016 Samsung is having another bad day. Fiery Phones, exploding washing machines and now raided in #SKorea's biggest political scandal. pic.twitter.com/IriqYM6SYF Jim Clancy (@ClancyReports) November 8, 2016 It is claimed that Samsung Electronics' executives were asked by Park to provide donations of 3.5 billion won ($3 million). Moreover it was believed that, being caught in a dilemma, Samsung Electronics would likely grant such request because of such political influence of the President. Indeed, if prosecutors would find hard evidence proving that Samsung Electronics has transferred money to Choi Soon-sil and her daughter, then a crisis of consumer confidence would then follow through. Clearly if this would happen then Samsung Electronics would go down and Apple will be able to outrun the company. Will Apple outrun Samsung's market share? UFC Latest News & Updates: Connor McGregor Becomes First Fighter in UFC History to Hold Two Weight Class Titles Simultaneously Connor "The Notorious" McGregor is the first fighter in the UFC's 23-year history to hold two weight class titles simultaneously. He is currently the reigning featherweight champion and is the new lightweight champion after he defeated Eddie Alvarez in convincing fashion in the main event of UFC 205. Although McGregor wasn't able to rearrange the facial structure of Alvarez like he said he would, the fighter dominated Alvarez the entire fight, landing his left hand and a few combinations to the face of Alvarez. Alvarez went down three times in the first round before 'Big' John McCarthy ended the fight in the second round when he went down for the fourth time. McGregor even taunted Alvarez in the second round. He occasionally put his hands behind his back, daring Alvarez to try and hit him. It didn't take look before Connor McGregor put Alvarez out for the win when he hit a solid punch to the face. "My dream has become a reality," said McGregor. When the belt was presented to him, McGregor once again displayed his "badass" antics. "I spend a lot of time slinging everyone in the company, I've ridiculed everyone on the roster, I'd like to take the time to apologize to absolutely nobody. A double champ does whatever the (expletive) he wants," the UFC fighter said. Connor McGregor is now 21-3 in his MMA career and 8-1 in the UFC. He's lone loss came against Nate Diaz earlier this year, a loss which the Dublin native avenged five months later. He's also won 17 of his last 18 fights. Last year, he was asked what will happen if he does win the lightweight title. "If I go up to that lightweight division, there's no way in hell that I'm vacating my belt (featherweight title)," said McGregor. "There will be a belt on one shoulder, and a belt on the other," he added. For more UFC news and updates, keep it here on Gamenguide. Facebook Latest News & Updates: Experts Say Facebook's 'Fake News' Highlights Need For Social Media Revamp The proliferation of "fake news" on Facebook has prompted experts to take action on the urgent need for a new social media legal framework. Experts warn that the proliferation of misinformation is an enormous problem and might have tilted the last US Elections. A report from Fox News has quoted Keith Altman, a lawyer at 1-800 Law firm, that such misinformation can lead to future problems and social media platforms should start a call to action regarding "fake news." Facebook's Trending Topics were easily taken prey by high-profile fake news after the social media platform implemented the algorithm feed last summer. Facebook Latest News & Updates: Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook From Tilting The National Elections In an article written by the Wall Street Journal, the co-founder of Facebook and its current CEO defends the social media platform of tilting the US elections. People who joined the conference held at Half Moon Bay, California had a chance to listen to Mark Zuckerberg's rebuttal of Facebook manipulating the elections through "fake news." He told participants that it was a crazy idea and the content of "fake news" in Facebook was very small. It was noted that a false article regarding the firing of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and a fake article regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks was trending all over facebook. In other occasions, a seemingly inoffensive hashtag was linked to videos that showed inappropriate content. Social media platforms are protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that basically protects people that post "fake news" and gives them immunity from criminal liability. Facebook Latest News & Updates: Section 230 Must Be Revisited & Social Media Legal Framework Should be Updated Keith Altman of the 1-800 Law Firm also suggested to revisit Section 230 and recommends that they should be clearly defined. He also told Fox News that the unrestrained nature of social media platforms like Facebook that enables users to share and view content from any source should have a new legal framework. Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program Latest News & Update: OS Ready For Galaxy S7, S7 Edge Users! Update Not Useful? Months have passed since Android 7.0 Nougat was launched to Google phones such as Pixel and Pixel XL but not to other Android smartphones. Now, Samsung S7 and S7 Edge users can somehow experience the new update as Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program arrived. But, is it true that the new OS is not useful? Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program Ready For Galaxy S7, S7 Edge Users! Samsung's official website noted that Samsung electronics is now offering Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program. The said program was released last November 9 to Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge users who are residing in Korea, U.K., and U.S. Also, the said launching includes consumers live in China. While Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program is rolling, the smartphone users can get to experience the OS update with Samsung's latest UX. They can also leave feedback or suggestions for its reliability and performance. This is meant for improving and enhancing all the gray areas before it'll be officially launched to all smart handsets that use Android. Furthermore, it has been cited that in using the Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program, clients will be on a first come, first-served basis. Samsung's patrons who happen to have an active Samsung account and meet the requirements may apply and get the OS update by downloading it using Galaxy app. The Galaxy app can be downloaded on Google Play. Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program Not Useful? Rumors about Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program being not useful are indeed false. In fact, most Android smartphones are going to receive the said update. All One Plus high-end phones will be having the updated OS soon. The beta version was recently launched to One Plus units and results were noted in Geekbench. Meanwhile, Mobipicker cited that Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program on LG devices will also arrive except for LG V10. The update for that specific device may come in March 2017. But for LG G5, the latest OS will land this mid-November. Though there's no official release date for Android 7.0 Nougat, users can now experience the feel and changes of the latest OS using Android 7.0 Nougat Beta Program. Smartphone consumers are now getting more excited as it was speculated that the update will be released in January 2017. Star Wars Rebel Season 3 Episode 8 Spoilers, News & Update: Hans Solos Millennium Falcon Seen? Admiral Thrawn Back! Rebels In Danger? Fans will be in for a big surprise in the coming "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8. In the new installment, a spaceship that exactly looks like the legendary starship Millennium Falcon will be seen. Is Hans Solo will appear in the animated TV series? Unfortunately, the new trailer of "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8 doesn't confirm the appearance of Hans Solo in the said episode. However, a ship that exactly looks like the Millennium Falcon is set to appear. According to Melty, the vehicle that will be seen in "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8 is a YT-2400 Freighter used by smugglers because of its invaluable speed and efficient use. The Millennium Falcon, on the other hand, is a YT-1300f light freighter that has a similar design with Hans Solo's ship and often deemed as the "fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy." In Episode 7, fans get to see the Imperial Super Commandos. While in "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8, the Ghost crew will meet the Iron Squadron, a group of young pilots. Aside from that, "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8 will mainly focus once again on the adventure of Ezra and Sabine. They, too, will be joined by Thrawn. Grand Admiral Thrawn will be seen in two episodes and it looks like he brings a lot of troubles to the two young Rebels crew. Meanwhile, Comic Book reported that the animated series has been in a week hiatus to give way the U.S. presidential election, in which Donald Trump wins. But, fans will finally get to see "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8, finally, this coming Saturday! "Star Wars Rebel" has been known for following the story of The Ghost's team and their fight against the Empire to keep the Rebellion alive. With the return of Admiral Thrawn, the Rebels will be up to something very dangerous in "Star Wars Rebel" Season 3 Episode 8 that will air on Nov. 19 on Disney XD. 'Prison Break' Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Alexander Mahone Returns? Familiar Faces Coming Back to Help Michael; Plot Details After eight years of waiting, Fox's "Prison Break" Season 5 will finally be returning to the screens soon, and fans are excited for Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) comeback. Even more exciting is that, alongside the soon-to-be escapee of Yemen's Ogygia Prison, a lot of familiar faces and names are also returning to the series. But which ones would make or break Michael's escape from prison? Here's the rundown of everything you need to know about "Prison Break" Season 5 news, updates, spoilers, release dates and more. What to expect from 'Prison Break' Season 5 "Prison Break" Season 5 will focus mainly on Michael Scofield's return from the dead, as he is found alive and well, albeit jailed, in Yemen's Ogygia Prison. This after he got into trouble with terrorist group ISIS, which framed him for crimes he did not commit. In a reversal of roles fitting for the series' reboot, this time it's his brother Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) who will be bouncing him out of prison. The "Prison Break" Season 5 trailer showed both of him making plans and strategizing how to get out of prison, which involves waiting for Yemen's government to collapse as well as running an extremely complicated escape plan with electricity. Who will be returning to 'Prison Break' Apart from Wentworth Miller, Sarah Wayne Callies and Dominic Purcell are also returning to "Prison Break" Season 5, according to a report from International Business Times. Several familiar faces will also be returning, such as Amaury Nolasco, who plays Sucre, and Rockmond Dunbar (C-Note), both of whom are Fox River escapees. Robert Knepper will also be returning to "Prison Break" Season 5 as T-Bag, while Paul Adelstein will be playing Kellerman. Sadly, William Fichtner's Alexander Mahone will not be returning to the series, as writer Paul Scheuring was unsure of how he will be written into the series. Excited about Michael's return? "Prison Break" Season 5 will be returning to Fox on January 2017. Google Pixel & Pixel XL News & Updates: Two Security Flaws Revealed by Hackers In One Month Although the Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones were previously claimed to be as secure as iPhones, a group of Chinese hackers easily hacked the device in one minute. The Google Pixel smartphone's security was tested during the PwnFest hacking competition in Seoul, South Korea on Nov. 11, 2016. Motherboard reported that previously, Adrian Ludwig, director of Android security at Google, claimed that the Google Pixel was just as secure as iPhones. Ludwig said that for almost all threat models, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL and iPhone are almost identical in terms of their platform-level capabilities. The Register revealed that Ludwig was proven wrong, however, by a group of white hat hackers from China, who quickly hacked a Google Pixel at the hacking contest in Seoul. The hackers, who work at security solutions firm Qihoo 360, unveiled an exploit that caused the breach and provided them with full remote access and entry to personal information stored in the Google Pixel. The exploit started the Google Play store and then opened Chrome to display a web page that read, "PwnedBy 360 Alpha Team." The hackers were awarded $120,000 for the Google Pixel feat. Aside from the Google Pixel, a number of app exploits were also revealed during the hacking competition. Qihoo 360 also hacked Adobe Flash quickly, showing a combination decade-old, use-after-free zero day and win32k kernel fault. The hack only took four seconds. The updated Safari browser of Apple running on MacOS Sierra was also compromised by Pangu team hackers. The group is well-known for featuring free modern iOS jailbreaks. The team earned $80,000 for using a root privilege escalation zero day to attack Safari in 20 seconds. At the end of the day, Qihoo 360 raked in a cash prize of $520,000. In October 2016, rival white hat hackers at Keen Team ofTencent were also able to hack the Google Pixel at the Mobile Pwn2Own event in Japan. Google allegedly worked immediately to fix the revealed exploits on the Google Pixel. The Chrome bug was reportedly patched within 24 hours of the contest and the changes have already been provided into the stable branch by the Chrome team. More updates and details on Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL are expected soon. Alaskan Bush People Season 4 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Special Episodes Airing In November Proves Season 4 Is Coming! Plot Contrary to previous speculations that "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 could be cancelled, it appears that fans may indeed expect an "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 release date to be announced soon. As proof, a special episode has been recently aired to whet the appetites of viewers for the upcoming fourth season. Special Episodes Airs Ahead Of 'Alaskan Bush People' Season 4 Air Date In fact, a special episode has just been aired by Discovery ahead of the official "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 release date. The first part, which was aired last November 9, is not yet a part of the fourth season but may be considered as a teaser to what's in store next season. 'Alaskan Bush People' Season 4 Cast Causes Cancellation Rumors Apparently, it was some of the "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 cast members themselves which seem to have been the cause of the cancellation rumors. For instance, many were concerned that eldest son Matt could be causing trouble for the show, reports Morning Ledger. Matt Brown is said to be facing a worsening alcohol problem. In fact, he was already sent to rehab last season which sparked rumors that his absence may be affecting the show. With an "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 release date still unannounced at the moment, Matt's problem with alcohol was once again seen as one of the possible reasons for the show's rumored cancellation. But Matt is not the only "Alaskan Bush People" Season 4 cast member that fans are blaming should the cancellation rumors prove to be correct. Another sibling, Bam Bam Brown is reported to be dating the show's producer which could seal the show's fate. 'Alaskan Bush People' Season 4 Air Date But the recent specials should prove once and for all that Discovery is still very interested in airing the show. In fact, another special episode, also known as "Alaskan Bush People: Bushcraft Chronicles," will be airing this coming November 15, 2016, titled "Shelters." For now though, Discovery is still to announce a definite "Alaskan Bush People: Season 4 release date. However, it is a good sign that the reality series is already listed as returning for the 2016-2017 TV season. 'House Of Cards' Season 5 Preparing For Kevin Spacey Departure? Patricia Clarkson Mystery Character Faces Off Against Robin Wright's Claire Underwood? People are already beginning to fear that Frank Underwood will not last long in "House of Cards" Season 5. Kevin Spacey might soon leave the political drama, but does this mean that Robin Wright will become the new lead of the Netflix series? Things might not go too smoothly for Claire Underwood even if Frank is no longer in the picture. There are speculations that Patricia Clarkson's mystery character will prove to be tough competition for Claire. Is Kevin Spacey Leaving 'House Of Cards' Season 5? What Will Happen To Frank Underwood? GamenGuide has previously reported on speculations that "House of Cards" Season 5 will be the show's last season. Some believe that the series is running out of creativity due to the departure of creator Beau Willimon. In addition to that, Kevin Spacey might be preparing to abandon the Netflix drama. But what will happen to Frank Underwood in "House of Cards" Season 5? A few fans think that Kevin Spacey's character will end up getting assassinated, which could set up Claire Underwood's rise to power. However, Robin Wright's First Lady might need to face off with Patricia Clarkson's mystery character. Will Claire Underwood Make A New Enemy Out Of Patricia Clarkson's Character In 'House Of Cards' Season 5? The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Patricia Clarkson will be joining the cast of "House of Cards" Season 5. The "Maze Runner 3" star and Campbell Scott from "Royal Pains" were both confirmed in major roles when the series returns on Netflix. But is it possible that Clarkson's character will get on Claire Underwood's bad side? There are speculations that Patricia Clarkson will portray someone who could go up against Claire Underwood in "House of Cards" Season 5. Does this mean that another woman will compete with Claire to ultimately become the leader of the free world? Do you think Kevin Spacey should remain in "House of Cards" Season 5? Will Claire Underwood have trouble dealing with Patricia Clarkson's character? Let us know in the comments below. A second route, which will service downtown to Alamitos Beach, will launch on Nov. 10. Sept. 6, 1922 Nov. 3, 2016 Minnie Lee Aldrich, 94, of Lebanon died Nov. 3. Minnie Lee was born in Oakland, California, in 1922. She married her husband, Charlie, in 1939 at the age of 16. They were together for 46 years until he passed away in 1985. They raised four wonderful boys in Castro Valley, California. She moved to Lebanon in 1994. Lee was a very intelligent little girl, being offered the chance to attend college at the age of 10. She was president of Aldrich Construction in Castro Valley. She also enjoyed speed reading, cooking, and drinking strawberry milkshakes. She was also a big NASCAR fan and a great poet. Lee always had many wonderful stories for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was very spirited and never at a loss for words. She had a sharp mind and quick wit until her last days. Her love, hugs and stories will be missed by many. She is survived by her sons, Charlie, Ed, Thomas and Jimmy Aldrich; nine grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. A celebration of life will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 26, at Brookdale, 181 Fifth St., Lebanon. Given an opportunity to help the Oregon Legislature balance the state's budget by passing a flawed tax measure, voters demurred: Measure 97, which would have slapped a 2.5 percent tax on gross sales above $25 million for certain Oregon corporations, was rebuffed in last week's election. Voters in only two of Oregon's 36 counties supported Measure 97, and we bet you can identify the two: Multnomah and Benton, where the measure squeaked through, 52 percent to 48 percent. In Multnomah County, it passed, 57 percent to 43 percent. The measure failed in every other Oregon county. In Linn County, 72 percent of the electorate voted "no." Had the measure passed, it would have generated about $3 billion in revenue a year, and supporters said the money would have gone to health care, K-12 education and senior services. Now, though, legislators will gather next year to face a $1.4 billion shortfall in the two-year budget cycle that begins July 2017. And it gets worse: Sooner or later, they'll have to come up with the cash to pay for the high school dropout programs that voters approved in Measure 98. The other measures voters approved last week at least have funding sources they'll take the cash from lottery revenue, money that in some cases had been earmarked for economic development. (We remain troubled, by the way, by our increasing willingness to budget the state's revenue through the initiative process; the end result will be to thoroughly hogtie the people in the best position to consider all of the state's priorities and to write a budget that takes all of those into account. But we'll return to that topic another time.) There is a little bit of good budgetary news: The state currently is on the "boom" side of its notoriously steep boom-or-bust cycle. We'll get another look at the budget outlook for the state on Wednesday, when the state Office of Economic Analysis issues its latest revenue forecast. It might help, but no one expects the additional tax revenue to fill the $1.4 billion gap required for the state to maintain its current services and programs through 2019. The thumping that Measure 97 took statewide will make it harder for legislators to entertain notions of tax increases; early signs are that Gov. Kate Brown will not include any of those in the budget she submits on Dec. 1. She has said, however, that the budget would include "a number of heartbreaking cuts." But this is not the time to walk away from the hard work required to overhaul the state's tax system and to deal with the issues that are driving big increases in expenses, notably the state's Public Employees Retirement System. We'd start by taking another look at a proposal floated last year by Beaverton Sen. Mark Hass, who pitched a plan to replace Oregon's corporate income tax with a new commercial activity tax. Hass said at the time the proposal might raise $500 million a year. It could be a starting point for fresh discussion. We'd take another hard look at the some of the PERS ideas floated by legislators such as Sens. Betsy Johnson and Tim Knopp and Rep. Dan Rayfield. Finally, it could be that Oregon taxpayers have voted the way they have in part because they truly want to see a smaller state government. They might be fine with some of the cuts Brown has in mind, but the first step is for her to spell out, as clearly as possible, what exactly that entails. (mm) Ready to chow down? Here are three Corvallis food challenges that residents can belly up to: China Blues Lucky Sevens, Roxys Dawg Pack and Tommys Beaver Buster Breakfast. For China Blue assistant manager and server Terry Yeung, the Lucky Sevens meal makes good business sense and is great publicity. It does draw people in, Yeung said, adding that Oregon State University students were most willing to test their stomachs superpowers. Bill Enwright, owner of Tommys 4th Street Bar & Grill, said that eating challenges are a novelty, and people like to watch them. But they're no easy feat. Everybodys got a friend who thinks he could eat anything, like, he could eat a horse. Usually, they find out they cant, he added. Tommys and China Blue started offering their challenge meals in 2007, when the television show Man V. Food regularly highlighted such offerings. (Tommys was set to be profiled by the show until a fire temporarily closed the business in 2009, Enwright said.) Since the television show has been off the air, the popularity of the Beaver Buster Breakfast has waned somewhat, Enwright said. We were doing quite a few of them every week. Now, its kind of one of those deals where you can go a month and nobody tries it, and then in a week, six people try it, he added. The challenges: China Blues Lucky Sevens challenge includes more than seven pounds of different Asian chicken dishes, which must be consumed in less than an hour. The winner gets not only a picture on the restaurants wall of fame but a cash jackpot, which currently stands at $800. An extra $100 is added to the prize each month that there is no winner. The largest jackpot the business has given away is $1,600. (The winner still has to pay for the $27.99 meal, however.) If a challenger doesnt finish, Its a good family sharing tray, Yeung said. China Blue is at 2307 N.W. Ninth St. For more information, call 541-757-8088 or go to www.chinabluerestaurant.com. Roxys Dawg Pack challenge features one of each specialty dog on the menu for a total of 4.5 pounds of food. Those who can eat the entire challenge in one hour get refunded the $39 cost and get displayed on a wall of fame, said Maggie Stout, an employee at the business. We only get a few people a year who actually do it, she added. Corvallis residents or OSU students who beat the top time on the board get a $100 prize. Roxy Dawgs is at 1425 N.W. Monroe St. For more information, call 541-207-3351 or go to www.roxydawgs.com. Tommys Beaver Buster Breakfast includes 7.5 pounds of omelets, pancakes, breakfast meats, biscuits and gravy and more. And the meal is served on a pizza pan. I figured out what a typical family of five would have for breakfast, Enwright said. Challengers have an hour to eat the breakfast, and those who finish get the meal for free as well as a spot on the wall of fame there. Youll get your photo taken whether you finish or not, and the wall of shame at the business has far more pictures. Since 2007, there have been only seven "studs" and hundreds of "duds." Contestants also get a T-shirt whether they finish or not. The Beaver Buster Breakfast costs $24.99. Tommy's 4th Street Bar & Grill, 350 S.W. Fourth St., can be contacted at 541-754-7622. An Iraq veteran and Peace Leadership Director with the Nuclear Age Peace will speak at the Whiteside Theatre Tuesday night. Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate and author of five books, will speak about war and peace and ways society can move forward in troubled times. The event, at 7 p.m. at 361 S.W. Madison Ave., is free and open to the public. His talk will be followed by a discussion with four panelists: Donald Nisbett, commanding officer, with the Oregon State University Navy ROTC; Nana Osei-Kofi, director of the Difference, Power, and Discrimination program at OSU; Ann Mbacke community consultant with Linn-Benton Health Equity Alliance and the California Ethnic Disparities in Health Coalition; and Joseph Orosco, OSU co-director of the Annares Project for Alternative Futures and a philosophy professor. Turkey bingo, an event that raises money for Philomath Middle Schools sixth-grade outdoor school program, will run from 5-8 p.m. Friday in Philomath High Schools auditorium. Turkeys, prizes, silent auction, food and beverages will all be part of the event. Bingo starts at 5:30 p.m. The PHS foods program plans to prepare traditional bingo food plus a limited number of turkey dinners. Violent attack in Cologne : Homeless man set on fire Cologne Police were unable to save a burning homeless man by the Rhine on Sunday morning. The incident has caused concern amongst Colognes homeless. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken On Sunday afternoon nothing remained of the tragedy that must have played out under the Cologne Hohenzollern Bridge in the early hours of Sunday except a pair of disposable gloves used by the emergency services and a black mark on the ground. According to police, a 29-year-old homeless man suffered a violent death here. Police said the perpetrator or perpetrators then set the mattress on which the man was lying on fire. The police themselves discovered the burning man on Sunday morning at around 1.30am in the immediate vicinity of the Rhine promenade and the Cologne Philharmonic Hall. Officers from the additional forces put in place to patrol the Old Town, particularly at weekends, after the horrific events of last New Year, noticed the fire and hurried under the bridge. They extinguished the flames and called the fire brigade. An emergency doctor confirmed the death of the 29-year-old. The Cologne police immediately set up a murder squad. The victims body was examined during the night by forensics. Police said the outcome of the post-mortem was that the man died from external influences. Remembrance Day : Mayor Sridharan urges solidarity Bonn At a Remembrance Day service in Bonn, the Mayor asks people to show solidarity to migrants as victims of todays conflicts. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken The World Wars are history, but memorials like the war cemetery in Lommel, Belgium, ensure young people like Tim Florian Hildenbrandt will never forget their consequences. In a war cemetery you become aware that a person lies beneath every cross, said the pupil from the Marie-Kahle secondary school on Sunday at a memorial event for the national Remembrance Day at the Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery). The student had visited Lommel with his classmates and described his impressions in a speech. Fellow pupil Maximilian Maus remembered the courage of Marie Kahles, who helped Jewish neighbours during the Nazi era and had to flee Germany. Lena Minze and Katharina von Schmude spoke of the concept of Remembrance Day. Remembrance means we will never forget you, they said. We want to learn from the past, and summon the courage never to let it happen again. Lord Mayor Ashok Sridharan reminded people: There is no alternative to peace. We must stand up for it, especially as Germany witnesses the consequences of war, violence and hunger through migrants today. They have endured sorrow and lost family members. Through this, Remembrance Day unfortunately has a completely new relevance. Sridharan said their need should not be prolonged through rejection. Lets greet the people who have come to us with an open mind and Rhineland composure. Article Protecting the worlds oceans an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs. What is Paytm Nearby feature Paytm, just after the demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes in India has launched the Nearby' feature. This option allows its users to easily locate merchants who accept Paytm thereby helping those who are running low on cash. How do I use it Using it is a pretty straight-forward affair. All you have to do is to open the Paytm app or website and then look for the closest merchant in your vicinity under the new Nearby option. This way you can purchase food, goods or other essential items by using the wallet instead of hard cash. Click Here for New Tablets Best Online Deals 200,000 merchants already support this feature Currently, according to the company, there are 200,000 merchants listed under the Nearby feature and 800,000 more merchants will be added in short time. So, locating the vendor shouldn't be a big problem, at least not as big as standing in line for hours to know that the ATM is out of cash. Users can also Add Cash Along with helping the users locate the nearest vendor, the feature also allows its users to Add Cash' by pointing the nearest branches of Axis and ICICI banks to load cash into their Paytm Wallets. Paytm sees 200% rise in app downloads Following the ban of Rs. 500 and 1000 notes in the country, Paytm has announced that it recorded an increase in traffic by 435% with the increase in app downloads by 200% which all resulted in a 250% increase in overall transactions. Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals Rs. 500, Rs. 1000 Ban Effect: Paytm Creates Record with 5 Million Transactions per Day News oi -Prajith Paytm is hugely benefiting from the demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes. It appears as if the demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes is turning out to be great for the mobile payment platform, Paytm. The company has announced that it has touched 5 million transactions per day and is on its way to process over 24,000 crores. The sudden lift in the transactions can be attributed to the infamous ban of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes in India. As a result, people opted for mobile payments instead of credit and debit cards and hence the uplift. SEE ALSO: Exchange Your Old Notes With the Help of This New Facebook Messenger Bot The country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced the demonetisation of Rs. 500, Rs. 1,000 notes. And ever since this measure was brought into existence, it's been chaos all over the country. Indian citizens have been expressing their anger for the sudden implantation of this act without a proper plan. SEE ALSO: Reliance Jio SIM Common Problems: How to Escalate Complaints The company further announced that it has witnessed a 700% lift in traffic with a 1000% increase in the amount of money being added to the Paytm Wallet. Additionally, it has reported an increase of 300% in app downloads. Kiran Vasireddy, Senior VP for Paytm has stated that "I am very excited to announce that Indian consumers are now using Paytm in more scenarios than ever before. Owing to the overwhelming response from customers and merchants alike, we have set bolder targets in merchant acquisition, and are aiming to target 5 million merchants by the end of the financial year." Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals Best Mobiles in India Metal Body! This has become much of a normal thing with the smartphones releasing these days. The posted images suggest that the upcoming Nokia smartphone will feature metal chassis with Nokia branding on the bottom. Dual Cameras? As stated earlier, the phone will feature a metal body and it also has two holes on the rear panel. The interesting part is, one hole is for the camera and the other is for LED flash, however, the hole is quite larger than the normal flashlight hole. So, we presume that Nokia will launch a phone with dual camera considering the market. Click Here for New Tablets Best Online Deals Resembles the iPhone The posted images further show that the smartphone will look like exactly like the Apple iPhone 7 with the antenna bands on the top and bottom of the phone. It looks like Nokia is taking design cues from the Cupertino giant. Will this Be the Nokia D1C? Checking out the previous leaks, the news was all about a Nokia phone named as D1C'. Some rumors suggested that the Nokia D1C is not a smartphone, but a tablet. However, later on, it was again listed as a smartphone with a 5-inch or 5.5-inch display. Can we Witness a Nokia Phone this Year? We might! According to a Nokia executive, the company is planning to release three to four smartphones by the end of this year, however, later on, the focus was shifted to MWC 2017. So, we aren't sure about the release date as of now. Source Beware! Google Pixel Hacked in Less than a Minute News oi -Samden Sherpa Googles new flagship smartphone, which runs the latest Android 7.0 Nougat operating system, supposedly succumbed to a team of hackers in less than 60 seconds. Not many days have passed since the launch of the Google Pixel smartphone, it seems the smartphone is not immune to hackers who want to infiltrate the device. While Pixel is the company's flagship product and is being considered possibly as the best Android smartphone to date. Surprisingly, it has just been hacked in less than 60 seconds. SEE ALSO: Real Life Images of Huawei Mate 9 Pro Leak Online: Dual-Curved Display Revealed As it happened, at a security conference in Seoul on Friday, a team of white-hat hackers from China's Qihoo 360, an internet security company, hacked into Google's brand-new Pixel phone in less than a minute. The hackers demonstrated an exploit that cracked open the Android and gave them full remote code execution capability as well as access to personal information such as messages, phone calls, contacts and photos. Considerably, the team from Qihoo used a zero-day vulnerability to remotely install code on Google's sought after device. As a result, the exploit launched Google Play Store and then Google's mobile version of Chrome before displaying a messaged that read "Pwned by 360 Alpha Team." The team also won a cash prize of $120,000 for the hack and now Google has to hit their drawing board in trying to figure out how to fix the security loophole. The good news is that the Goggle Pixel users do not have to worry about their phones being remotely accessed or their data being stolen. Fortunately, the Qihoo team belonging to the white-hat hackers group was only interested in displaying their skills and cashing in on the bounty offered by Google. SEE ALSO: 5 Most Commonly Asked Questions About WhatsApp on Quora and Their Answers Pixel owners can relax as a patch should be released soon and their phones will no longer be vulnerable to this particular attack. However, the hack just proves how critical it is for our phones to have a good security feature. It is even more frightening as these security vulnerabilities can give cybercriminals the authority to eavesdrop on victims, digitally pick their pockets, and utilize their devices in a wrongful manner Additionally, with this level of apparent vulnerability for even the most high-end devices such as the Google Pixel itself, it pays to remember: always keep your devices updated and patched with the latest updates. Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals Best Mobiles in India Airtel, Vodafone and Idea m-wallet Transactions Increased by 50% Following Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 Ban News oi -Sneha After the ban of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes by Narendra Modi, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea's m-wallet services have experienced up to 50% growth in just 4 days. After Narendra Modi decided to ban Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 Indian notes, the only rescue for people have been m-wallet online transactions. Almost everyone has been dependent on m-wallets rather than on cash, which in turn increased the transaction by up to 50% in just 4 days. The ban on high denomination notes has highly profited the telecom industry, especially Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea Cellular. SEE ALSO: Exchange Your Old Notes With the Help of This New Facebook Messenger Bot Yes, the m-wallet transactions of these telcos have seen a major rise and have increased by up to 50% in the past 4 days ever since Narendra Modi's historic move to ban Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000, as reported by the Economic Times. m-wallet Have Been a Saviour Soon after Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes were banned by the Modi, most people didn't have any cash with them. This lack of cash situation resulted in the increasing profit for the wallet service, as the m-wallet transaction has been the only option to continue the daily activities without being affected by the cash ban. Notes Ban Profited the Telcos The demonetization has been extremely profitable for the telecom companies, especially their wallet business including Airtel, Vodafone, and Ideas. The m-wallet business should see a minimum 40% to 50% growth in the next two quarters. Click Here for New Tablets Best Online Deals How Did The m-wallet Service Helped? After the ban of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes, the only way that enabled the mass led an unaffected life, are the wallet services. These wallet services are mainly offered by the telecom operators, which everyone can install on their smartphones as an app, which will help them pay utility bills, buy movie tickets, recharge mobiles, and top up DTH and other necessary services. Telcos Are Planning To Improve Their Wallet Service Telecom operators like that of Bharti Airtel said that growing wallet services would boost the growth of a digital payment ecosystem and in turn accelerate India's move to a cashless economy. As per ET, one of Airtel's official asserted that they are planning to add more merchants in order to boost the m-wallet usage levels and also has plans to roll out banking services very soon. Future of Wallet Services A study by an Assocham-RNCOS states that the value of mobile payment transactions in India will exceed by Rs. 2,000 trillion in FY22 from a shade over Rs 8 trillion in FY16. This will, in turn, boost cashless transactions with the increased use of digital wallets, debit and credit cards. Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals Best Mobiles in India 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. DAYTON, Ohio, Nov. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CareSource, a nonprofit health plan, has named a new executive to its leadership core team. As Chief Consumer Officer, Tony Tomazic will drive the strategy for all CareSource consumer interactions. The new executive position was created at a time of rapid expansion for the health plan, which has grown to serve 1.5 million members in four states. As CareSource continues to expand into more markets and launch new products, Tomazic is charged with building on the company's 27-year history of member-centric health coverage. He will lead the company's strategy to deliver an extraordinary experience while ensuring the health plan differentiates itself from competitors. In his role, Tomazic will oversee CareSource's Enterprise Marketing and Communications, Consumer Experience, Life Services, Consumer Advocacy Group and the CareSource Foundation. Tomazic's background demonstrates a multifaceted depth of talent in science, arts, leadership and business. He has served as an executive leader in health care for both payer and provider organizations. Most recently, he was at St. Luke's Health System in Boise, Idaho, where he served as Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, and oversaw marketing and innovation. At Humana in Louisville, Kentucky, Tomazic was Director of Consumer Innovation. "Prominent throughout Tony's impressive career trajectory is his passion for delivering an unsurpassed consumer experience through high-impact, brand-building programs and services," said Pamela Morris, CareSource President and CEO. Tomazic's extensive education includes a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Physics from Vanderbilt and Belmont University, attending the U.S. Naval Engineering School, a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Humanities from Western Kentucky University. About CareSource CareSource is a nonprofit health plan nationally recognized for leading the managed care industry in providing member-centric health care coverage. Founded in 1989, CareSource is one of the nation's largest Medicaid managed care plans. Today, CareSource offers a lifetime of health coverage to more than 1.5 million members across four states including offerings on the Health Insurance Marketplace and Medicare Advantage plans. Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, CareSource has a workforce of 3,100 employees. CareSource is living its mission to make a lasting difference in its members' lives by improving their health and well-being. CareSource understands the challenges consumers face navigating the health system and works to put health care in reach for those it serves. For more, visit caresource.com, follow @caresource on Twitter, or like CareSource on Facebook. A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=41879 WWIII? The US is threatening to shut down Russias electrical grid For weeks, the US has threatened to retaliate against Russia for allegedly hacking John Podestas email. Russia has denied the attack, and concrete evidence of their involvement has yet to surface. Joe Biden has confirmed that the US has made Vladimir Putin aware that our government would respond to Russias supposed threat at its own discretion. NBC News reported on top secret documents outlining the US governments plans to engage in cyber attacks against Russias civilian infrastructure. The documents claimed that the United States advanced cyber weapons are prepared to take down Russias entire power grid, including telecommunication networks and even the Kremlins own command systems. These reports were initially spawned by concerns that Russia might launch cyber attacks on November 8th to disrupt our election. While that did not happen, and there no evidence that suggests Russia has any ill intentions planned for the future, The US is still on the offensive possibly trying to trigger World War 3. While officials are assuring the media that if the US attacks, it will only be in response to an attack on us the Clinton camp has been very quick to label many of its misfortunes as a Russian plot. Any attack against Russia will likely be seen as an act of war. On November 7th, it was reported that the US had already penetrated Russias networks supposedly in an effort to be prepared for any election day attacks on the homeland. It seems that the majority of the concerns regarded negative information about Hillary Clinton spreading across the internet and we all know how the powers that be bent over backwards to protect her image. Russia now expects an explanation from US officials as to why there are reports indicating that Pentagon cyber-offensive specialists have hacked Russias power grids, telecommunications networks and the Kremlins command system. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson 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. Its disturbing to see that NBC would report on the US penetration of crucial Russian infrastructure, knowing that possible repercussions may exist. Is this another step towards an ever-looming World War 3? Well see. Sources: GovtSlaves.info Independant.co.uk RT.com VANCOUVER, November 14, 2016 - Cruz Capital Corp. (TSXV: CUZ) (OTC Pink: BKTPF) (FSE: BRO2) Further to the news release October 5, 2016 the Company has set the close of business on November 18, 2016 as the record date for the Forward Split and November 16, 2016 as the effective date of the Forward Split. Therefore, in order to receive the split, you must purchase and hold the shares as of close of market on November 15, 2016. The Forward Split Cruz is proposing is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.James Nelson, President of the Company states, "We are looking forward to the split occurring this week. We feel that the liquidity will increase substantially therefore providing more opportunities for the company to access additional capital and appeal to a larger group of investors. The ratio being proposed will be 3-1. For example, this means that if you are a shareholder of record of 10,000 shares you would then hold 30,000 shares upon completion and approval of the split. We feel that cobalt will be one of the most compelling sectors of 2017 and are pleased to be at the forefront of this growing sector. Cruz is fully funded for its current operations and we have been successful at closing one property sale to date, thus providing Cruz with increased capital with no dilution to the shareholders. We anticipate commencing operations shortly."Cruz is actively engaged in acquiring and developing Cobalt Assets Globally. Cruz has acquired numerous high grade cobalt assets located in North America. Seven cobalt projects are in Canada and one in Idaho. The goal of the company is to make Cruz the foremost cobalt project generator and developer on the TSX Venture Exchange. Management feels that cobalt is at the early stages of a significant bull market and we are pleased to be positioning Cruz at the forefront of this cycle.If you would like to be added to Cruz's email list please send an email to info@cruzcapitalcorp.com or twitter @CruzCapitalCorp James Nelson, President 604.899.9150 www.cruzcapitalcorp.com twitter @CruzCapitalCorp This press release contains forward-looking information that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of Cruz, such as statements that Cruz: (i) intends to undertake a forward split of its common shares. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and Cruz's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information, including the TSXV not approving the forward split or delays caused in obtaining such approval. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Except as required by law, Cruz does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release SOURCE: Cruz Capital Corp. VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - November 14, 2016) - GoldQuest Mining Corp. (TSX VENTURE: GQC) (FRANKFURT: M1W) (BERLIN: M1W) ("GoldQuest" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the independent Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") on its 100% owned gold/copper Romero Project in the Dominican Republic was filed on SEDAR. A summary of this PFS was announced on 27 September 2016. Highlights include: Internal Rate of Return (IRR): Post-tax 28% (Pre-tax 39%) Net Present Value (NPV) @ (5%): Post-tax $203 million (Pre-tax $317million) All-in Sustaining Cost (AISC): Co-product basis $595/oz of Gold Equivalent Capital Expenditure (Capex): Pre-production $158.6 million Sustaining incl. closure $92.3 million Total $ 250.9 million Payback: 2.5 years Maiden Probable Mineral Reserves of 7.03 million tonnes containing: 840,000 ounces of gold 980,000 ounces of silver 136 million pounds of copper All figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated, with a DOP/USD exchange rate of 46:1 and metal price assumptions of $1,300/oz gold (Au), $20/oz silver (Ag) and $2.50/lb copper (Cu). The PFS envisages a 2,800 tonnes per day ("tpd") project, encompassing a ramp-accessed underground mining operation employing a standard crush, grind and flotation process plant, located approximately 3 km south of the mine, producing a marketable copper concentrate product with significant gold and silver credits with an annual gold equivalent production averaging 109,000 ounces per year. "We are pleased to file the full PFS and we look forward to aggressively advancing the project through permitting and final feasibility while we investigate expansion opportunities to improve," stated Bill Fisher, Executive Chairman of GoldQuest. " Our exploration drilling program is ongoing which provides further opportunities for growth beyond the mine plan in this PFS. Results will be released on an ongoing basis." The PFS was prepared under the direction of JDS Energy & Mining Inc. ("JDS"), an industry-leading, international engineering firm, with extensive experience in both the construction and operation of mining projects. The study was supported by a team of internationally recognized technical firms. The PFS mine plan includes 7.03 million tonnes grading 3.72 g/t Au, 0.88% Cu and 4.33 g/t Ag after accounting for dilution and mining recovery, with contained metal totaling 840,000 oz of gold, 135.9 million lbs Cu (61,700 tonnes) and 980,000 oz of silver. The waste rock mined totals 900,000 tonnes, with all waste rock returned underground as backfill by year five. The mine design includes a 5.0 m x 4.5 m ramp access with production coming from a combination of 75% long-hole mining, 16% cut & fill mining and 9% from development. Mine scheduling targets the highest in-situ value areas of the deposit early in the mine life. Off-site infrastructure for Romero is planned to include upgrading a 23.5 km access road connecting the site to the local, paved road network, with a 69 kV Transmission Line connecting to the national power grid. Concentrate is planned to be exported from the port of Puerto Viejo. Mineral Reserve Estimate for Romero Project Mine Reserves Tonnes Au Ag Cu Au Eq (1) (Cut off $70NSR) (2) (g/t) (oz) (g/t) (oz) (%) (M lb) (g/t) (oz) Total Probable 7,031,000 3.72 840,000 4.33 980,000 0.88 136 4.9 1,117,000 1. Gold equivalent metal prices $1,300/oz Au, $20.00/oz Ag and $2.50/lb Cu 2. Cut-off NSR metal prices: Cu $2.50/lb Au $1,250/oz Ag $17.00/oz; Recovery: Cu-96.8 Au-71.7 Ag-54.4, Payable: Cu-96.5 Au-90.0 Ag-95.0, TCRC: $257.83/dmt, Cu concentrate 20% The Probable Mineral Reserves are the economically minable portions of the Indicated Mineral Resource as demonstrated by this PFS About GoldQuest GoldQuest is a Canadian based mineral exploration company with projects in the Dominican Republic. GoldQuest is traded on the TSX-V under the symbol GQC and in Frankfurt/Berlin with symbol M1W. 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 press release. Qualified Person The scientific and technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Jeremy Niemi, Vice President of Exploration of GoldQuest and a Qualified Person under NI43-101. For further information with respect to the key assumptions, parameters and risks associated with the results of the PFS, the mineral resource estimate and other technical information with respect to the Romero project, please refer to the Technical Report available at www.sedar.com. The following qualified persons, as that term is defined in NI 43-101, have prepared or supervised the preparation of their relevant portions of the technical information in this news release and the related Technical Report to be filed: The technical information contained in this news release is based upon information prepared by Mr. Makarenko, P. Eng. and Ms. Kelly McLeod, P. Eng. of JDS Energy & Mining Inc. with the exception of the Mineral Resources which were prepared by Mr. B. Terrence Hennessey, P.Geo., of Micon International Limited. Each of these individuals is a Qualified Persons and independent of GoldQuest as defined by NI 43-101. Cautionary Language and Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this press release are "forward-looking" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward looking information. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the PFS, the results of the PFS, including the mine plan, the production schedule, infrastructure, capital and operating costs and financial analysis, opportunities to enhance the project economics, the advancement of Romero, the potential of the remaining resources and surrounding area, opportunities for growth beyond the mine plan, plans for Romero South, , the Company's plans and exploration programs, including the timing of such plans and programs, and the merits of the Company's mineral properties. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "envisages", "assumes", "recommends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "indicate" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon the current belief, opinions and expectations of management that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and other contingencies. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, among others, the assumptions and risks associated with the results of the PFS, timeliness and success of regulatory approvals, market prices, metal prices, availability of capital and financing, general economic, market or business conditions, as well as other risk factors set out under the heading "Risk and Uncertainties" in the Management's Discussion and Analysis dated December 31, 2015, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Nov 14, 2016) - Search Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE:SMY) ("Search" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the closing of the third and final tranche of its previously announced private placement. Further to its news releases dated September 13, 2016, October 11, 2016, October 26, 2016 and October 31, 2016, the Company has completed the third and final tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") raising gross proceeds of $90,055 by the issuance of 1,286,500 units (the "Units") at $0.07 per Unit. Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (a "Share") and one share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional common share in the capital of the Company (a "Warrant Share") at a price of $0.14 per Warrant Share for a period of 12 months from the closing of the Offering. Certain directors of the Company (the "Directors") purchased 315,000 Units under this tranche. With the completion of the three tranches, the Company has issued 12,276,500 Units for gross proceeds of $859,355. The expiry date for the Warrants issued in the three tranches of the Offering will be November 14, 2017. Greg Andrews, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, states, "Search is very pleased to close this oversubscribed private placement. I would like to thank our current shareholders who participated and welcome our new shareholders. It is a testament to the quality of our project and management team that Search can attract capital to continue to advance the Critical Rare Earth District in Southeast Labrador (the "District"). With the expected conclusion of the pilot plant in the upcoming months, it is anticipated that Search will be able to provide interested refineries and new separation technology providers with actual mixed rare earth concentrate processed from the FOXTROT deposit. We look forward to the next phase of developing this District." All securities issued pursuant to the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus one day from the date of issuance, in accordance with applicable securities legislation. The proceeds from the Offering will be used to complete environmental assessment applications and for general working capital requirements. No finder's fees or commissions are payable in connection with the financing. As the Directors are considered to be "related parties" of the Company, the issuance of Units to the Directors will be considered to be a "related party transaction" under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). All of the independent directors of the Company, acting in good faith, considered the transactions and have determined that the fair market value of the securities being issued to the Directors and the consideration being paid is reasonable. The Company intends to rely on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(a) or (b) of MI 61-101. About Search Minerals Inc. Led by a proven management team and board of directors, Search is focused on finding and developing resources within the emerging Port Hope Simpson Critical Rare Earth Element (CREE) District of SE Labrador. The Company controls a belt 70 km long and 8 km wide including its 100% interest in the FOXTROT Project which is road accessible and at tidewater. Exploration efforts have advanced "Deepwater Fox" and "Fox Meadow" as significant new CREE prospects very similar and in close proximity to the FOXTROT discovery. While the Company has identified more than 20 other prospects in the District, its primary objective remains development of FOXTROT by confirming proprietary processing technology at the pilot plant level (in progress) and delineation of prospects that will ensure competitive-low cost production beyond the 14-year mine life contemplated in the preliminary economic assessment of FOXTROT completed in April 2016. The FOXTROT Project has a low capital cost to bring the initial project into production ($152 M), a short payback period, and is scalable due to Search's proprietary processing technology. All material information on the Company may be found on its website at www.searchminerals.ca and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com About CREE's Identified as Neodymium (Nd), Europium (Eu), Terbium (Tb), Dysprosium (Dy) and Yttrium (Y) this valuable subset of the complete series of seventeen rare earth elements is considered critical due to high demand and/or constrained domestic supply. Containing unique properties which enhance the performance of a range of innovative technologies, CREE's are essential components in the development of permanent magnets and a variety of other components used in renewable energy, green technology automobiles, medical devices, electronics and agricultural production. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information. This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating the future operating or financial performance of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to, among other things, the use of proceeds of the Offering, the timing of the expected conclusion of the pilot plant and the effect that the pilot plant will have on the Company. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the respective parties, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation, the risk that the management of the Company may decide to use the proceeds of the Offering in a different way and the risk that the conclusion of the pilot plant is delayed. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these times. Except as required by law, Search does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law. ALBION Carla A. Kaufman, 78, of Albion, passed away Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016, at the Good Samaritan Society-Albion. Funeral services will be held 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at Akron Presbyterian Church, rural Albion, with the Revs. Ray and Mary Avidano officiating. Interment will follow at Akron Bonanza Cemetery. Visitation will be 5-7 p.m. Tuesday at Levander Funeral Home in Albion. Condolences may be sent to the family at www.levanderfuneralhome.com. Carla Ann Kaufman was born on May 2, 1938, in Exeter to Alvin Printiss and Matie Neola (Chambers) Gentry. She was baptized and joined the Exeter Congregational Church on April 11, 1954. Carla attended Exeter Public School and graduated from there in 1956. On March 5, 1956, Carla was united in marriage to Arthur Robert Bob Kaufman at Hebron. Following their marriage, they lived in Friend and together owned and operated a bar known as The Pub in the 1970s, later moving to Gretna in 1976. In 1984, they moved to Akron. Following Bobs passing in 1994, Carla continued to live at Akron until moving to Albion in the mid-1990s. For many years Carla also wrote a column in the weekend edition of The Columbus Telegram that many people enjoyed reading. Carla enjoyed reading, sewing, quilting, writing and being a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She also enjoyed spending time at Ericson Lake at her cabin and fishing there. She was a member of the Albion Area Writers Club and Jolly Neighbors Club, and attended services at the Akron Presbyterian Church. Carla is survived by her daughter, Vicki Luscomb of Albion; three grandchildren, Cody Luscomb of Elgin, Chanse Luscomb (Scarlett Booth) of Greeley and Casey (Michael) Dodds of Cedar Rapids; 12 great-grandchildren; one brother, Boyd (Jan) Gentry of North Platte; and many nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends. She was preceded in death by her parents; husband, Bob; daughter, Valerie Hoover; son, Bradley Kaufman; and five siblings. And just like that, it was over. The two Oregonians who proposed a ballot measure asking Oregon to secede from the union have submitted paperwork to withdraw their petition.Christian Trejbal, one of the petitioners, said over the phone Friday that the response to the proposed measure was not what he had hoped."We have received death threats," said Trejbal, though he adds it wasn't just the negative feedback that made him and his co-petitioner Jennifer Rollins decided to withdraw. It was also some of the supporters.On Thursday night, he said, "we watched violence unfold on the streets.""That's not the kind of conversation we were trying have," he added, "so we're pulling it."Trejbal said the goal of the petition was to engage in a "high-minded conversation.""The political landscape right now is not amenable to the sort of conversation we were trying to have," he said.When asked if the people trying to intimidate and harass him win with the withdrawal of the petition, he said, "In some regard yeah, they win."But Trejbal also said that "once things settle down," he and Rollins plan to reassess the situation and see how else they can begin a civil civic conversation.Does this mean a dream of an independent west is dead? Maybe not."We did hear from a lot of people that were interested in the idea," Trejbal said. "If one of them takes up the mantle, I wish them luck.""If we learned one thing in this," he added, "it was just how easy it is to file an initiative petition and get the ball rolling." Washington state lawmakers got a wake-up call. A tax incentive package theyd approved in 2013 for aerospace giant Boeing -- largely regarded as the most expensive incentive deal in history -- was actually on pace to surpass its estimated $8.7 billion cost. According to a Department of Revenue report, the deal, which extends to 2040, had already amounted to half a billion dollars in giveaways in just the first two years alone. In other words, the state was losing out on a whole lot more money than it had planned.And the kicker? Just months earlier, Boeing had announced plans to cut roughly 4,000 jobs in Washington. The year before, the company had transferred thousands more jobs out of the state.Some lawmakers were livid, openly contemplating whether the state should consider revoking the tax breaks if the company didnt add back some jobs. (Boeing, for its part, says it has continued to invest in the state, including $1 billion last year for a plant to build its new 777x aircraft.) But on the whole, response from officials and local media was measured. Most lawmakers said that in the bigger picture, the company was still good for Washington. While deeply disappointed in the job losses, state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, who has long pushed for greater transparency in the states incentive deals, says he still stands behind the Boeing agreement. The overall return on investment for taxpayers, including ensuring the future of aviation in our state, he says, is overwhelmingly strong by any standard or definition or criteria.The fact that Washington lawmakers can even have this conversation puts them at an advantage over most other states legislators. In the vast majority of states, officials simply do not know how well their tax incentives programs are working, or how much the deals are actually costing them. They dont have the data. Washington does, thanks to a tax preference auditing program, already one of the most robust in the nation, that was made even more transparent with the passage of a 2013 law. For the first time, lawmakers and citizens know just how much individual companies receive in tax benefits -- in other words, how much the state gives up in foregone tax revenue from them.Some other states have begun to take a harder look at the incentives they give out. Delaware has initiated a biennial tax preference evaluation. Louisiana takes a yearly look at key incentive programs. Most states, however, just havent reported that kind of information with any sort of regularity.But thats about to change. New nationwide accounting rules now require state and local governments to report all economic development incentives programs -- like Boeings -- as foregone tax revenue. Beginning with fiscal 2017s annual financial reports, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is requiring governments to report things like the total number and value of tax abatements that year, the criteria that businesses must meet, and how the government will get that money back if the goals arent achieved (commonly referred to as clawback provisions). Reporting the annual value of these abatements will clearly show their effect on governments bottom lines.In terms of transparency, the impact of this accounting shift will be seismic. One reason Washingtons discussion about tax breaks is so intense is because it has an incredibly high number of them compared to other states: nearly 700 separate incentives programs, up from just over 500 a decade ago. But every state has plenty of its own programs. One prominent estimate, calculated byin 2012, figured that state and local governments give up more than $80 billion annually in corporate tax breaks. While that estimate includes some measurements that the new accounting rules wont cover, the new regulations will still highlight billions of dollars that governments forego every year.Washington offers a sneak peek at the debate other states and localities could soon be having. State tax deals are public information, but they tend to trickle out in one-off reports and news headlines; most states dont collect or report on them annually in any kind of comprehensive way. And few places really review clawback provisions once a deal is in place. Now, lawmakers and citizens everywhere may find themselves engaged in the kinds of conversations that have taken place in Washington state for the past decade, an ongoing attempt to assess whether tax incentives are really worth what states think they are.to companies for decades, either to entice them to move there or convince them to stay. The tax breaks have long been public information, but the practice has gotten more scrutiny in recent years because of the growing number of eye-popping deals. Since 2008, the average number per year of deals valued at more than $75 million has doubled, compared to the previous decade, according to Good Jobs First, which follows corporate tax subsidies. Meanwhile, their aggregate annual cost has roughly doubled as well, averaging around $5 billion. In addition to the Boeing deal, the list includes Nevadas $1.25 billion tax break that wooed Tesla Motors in 2014 and an income tax break Oregon awarded to Nike in 2012 worth approximately $2 billion over 30 years.Critics debate whether these deals are good policy -- or whether they even really work. Some say theyre simply a Band-Aid approach to compensate for a government tax structure that isnt business-friendly. Others say that the incentives dont actually result in any net economic gain because corporations simply move around like pieces on a chess board. One example of that futility is in metropolitan Kansas City, which straddles Kansas and Missouri. The two states have long competed against each other to woo businesses across the state line -- AMC Theatres, Applebees and JP Morgan Retirement are just a few businesses that have crossed the border in recent years.But whether or not incentives are smart policy, its been difficult for most states to even say whether they achieved what they were supposed to, thanks to a lack of transparency and accountability on the deals. Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs Firsts executive director, says he often holds up Washington state as a good example of accountability, particularly for its history of annual reports on its tax incentive programs. Regular performance auditing came to Washington state in 2005 via a citizens ballot initiative directed at the state auditor's office. A year later, legislators decided to require similar audits of Washingtons tax preferences program and tasked the legislative audit office with the job. The legislative audit office typically evaluates about 25 tax incentive programs each year, looking at the stated purpose of the program and determining whether or not its meeting that goal. The office then presents its recommendation to a seven-member citizen commission, which hears public testimony on the audit. Both the audit office and the citizen commission present their findings to the legislature.This process has led to real changes in Olympia over the past decade. On 12 occasions, either the audit office or the citizen commission has recommended that legislators get rid of a certain tax break; on nine of those occasions, the lawmakers agreed. They also terminated two other programs and allowed an additional eight to expire based on audit findings. One of those was a high-tech research and development tax credit for capital investment and operating expenditures. The audit team, working with outside economists, analyzed how many new jobs could actually be attributed to the credits. The basic finding, says legislative auditor Keenan Konopaski, is this preference does create some jobs, but the job effect is not very big. It provided a solid piece of information, and I think that was enough to start a debate on, Is it worth the price tag?The audits were making a difference, but they also unearthed a consistent problem: Its hard to track the progress of a program when lawmakers dont outline what the intended effect is supposed to be. More than a third of the tax incentive audits simply recommended that lawmakers go back and clarify what it was a given program was supposed to achieve. In many cases we were pretty lazy in past years, rubber-stamping a companys request for a tax break, says Sen. Carlyle, who was the author of the states tax break transparency law. We didnt have vigor.For the audit process to have real teeth, it was clear to Carlyle that the state needed more transparency and specificity regarding its expectations of what companies where supposed to deliver in exchange for their tax breaks. He pushed through his 2013 bill, which requires lawmakers to outline what the expectations are for any future tax incentive program. It also meant, for the first time, that incentive data would be linked to specific companies, which led to the new disclosures about Boeing from the state Department of Revenue. Transparency categorically changes the conversation to, Whats the value and return on investment? Carlyle says. In other words: Does the damn thing work?Thats a question most states cant answer right now. In most places, once the ink is dry on tax deals, theyre rarely tracked with any consistency. Back in 2000, Good Jobs First released a report that looked at 122 audits of state economic development programs in 44 states. It found that auditors were having trouble doing their jobs because they are hampered by lack of data and objectives. Things have improved somewhat since then, says LeRoy, but its been a painstakingly slow process. Massachusetts, for example, has been particularly slow at revealing any information about the hundreds of millions of dollars it foregoes each year. For the last half-decade, Massachusetts State Auditor Suzanne Bump has tried -- so far unsuccessfully -- to get the authority to see business tax returns so she can audit the effectiveness of incentives programs.Now that governments will be required to report on their tax breaks with greater transparency, they could start to look more like Washington -- to a point. The new rule, known as GASB 77, doesnt require governments to analyze their tax programs, as Washington does. And states wont have to report tax giveaways on an individual company basis, as Washington has begun doing. And the rule doesnt necessarily mean that the lost tax revenue will have any bearing on budget discussions. Even Washington doesnt use the information in budgeting very often, except during times of shortfalls or funding crises.But GASB 77 does require states to tally up all their incentives as lost revenue. And it does call for reporting clawbacks: Officials must outline what their expectations are when a tax break is offered, and if those expectations arent met, the tax incentive may be revoked. Governments without a history of tax break transparency will likely have sticker shock when the full impact of their foregone tax revenue is released. States like Washington, says LeRoy, are better positioned. States where they have already had the big debates will perhaps be out the gate sooner, he says. They are certainly more prepared to take advantage when the data comes online.The full impact of these incentives will hit most governments beginning later next year when fiscal 2017 reports are released. But it will likely take a few years for the data to sink in, as it did in Washington. Its important to remember that the evolution in Olympia was a 10-year process: tax program audits that led to greater transparency, which led to more specific clawback provisions and expectations with company-specific reporting. That will likely be the pace for other states going forward, even those that want to move quickly on tax transparency.And none of this necessarily means states will come to see tax incentives as a bad idea. Indeed, as the conversation in Washington has matured over the past decade, many people have taken a more measured view of tax breaks. Rather than eyeing them suspiciously as giveaways, the release of regular information has allowed lawmakers -- and to some extent the public -- to see them as an investment.That, says GASB chair David A. Vaudt, is the whole point of requiring incentives reporting: to provide a truer, fuller picture of a governments financial health. Officials will be able to see tax breaks as not just one-offs, but as investments that impact their bottom line. Its also up to each government to decide what to do with the new information. But eventually, lawmakers everywhere could be asking the same questions those in Olympia are now: Was our investment worth the price? President-elect Donald Trump named Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, to head their transition team, abruptly replacing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday amid increasing signs that the effort to prepare the next White House is off to a rocky start.Trump also took the unusual step of naming his three oldest children and his son-in-law to top posts, moves certain to create potential conflicts of interest given that his attorney said Trump would put his children in charge of his assets while he is president.The transition team is always crucial, but especially so for the first president elected without experience in either government or the military. In addition to recruiting thousands of people to staff the White House, Cabinet agencies, embassies and other key government posts, the transition team needs to make sure Trump is briefed and prepared to take responsibility for the government and for implementing his policy initiatives as soon as he is inaugurated in just 76 days."You need to have your team on the field when the clock starts," said Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington nonprofit that focuses on good-government practices. "This is not simply about achieving the policy promises; it's also about keeping us safe. Transitions are the point of maximum vulnerability for our nation."The effort is almost always well underway before a new president is elected, given the complexity and critical nature of the job, even as candidates know the work will be in vain if they are not chosen by the voters. Legislation passed in 2010, and updated in 2015, formalized much of the process for the transition from George W. Bush to Obama after the 2008 election, considered one of the smoothest in history. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton formed transition teams months ago that began working with the White House on first steps toward a potential handoff."One of the biggest dangers is that people will underestimate the scope," said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who ran Mitt Romney's transition team in 2012.That may have happened in Trump's case. Following Trump's meeting Thursday at the White House with the president, several Obama officials privately noted the extent to which Trump and his staff seemed unprepared to discuss basic aspects of staffing a new administration and daunted by the extent of the challenges ahead. A follow-up meeting between Trump aides and White House transition officials scheduled for Friday was canceled, a senior Obama aide said.To be sure, some of the observations made by White House officials could be colored by partisan differences or concern that Trump appears set to dismantle Obama's legacy achievements. Many had counted on a smoother transition to a Clinton administration in which top personnel would likely include former coworkers.Trump's decision to elevate Pence to run his transition team was one of several announced Friday.Pence has proved a loyal second to Trump, backing him when other establishment Republicans were critical and finding ways to explain some of his more controversial statements in public. A former member of the House, Pence also has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other top Republicans on Capitol Hill.Christie's departure came after the recent convictions of two former top aides for creating a traffic jam leading to the George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor who would not endorse him to be reelected New Jersey governor."The mission of our team will be clear: Put together the most highly qualified group of successful leaders who will be able to implement our change agenda in Washington," Trump said. "Together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding this nation."Christie was retained as a vice chair of the team, along with several of Trump's most visible campaign advisors: Dr. Ben Carson, a former GOP primary rival; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).Sessions, who may be the most hard-line member of the Senate on immigration, has long been among Trump's most influential advisors. Stephen Miller, a former top aide to Sessions, has been Trump's top policy advisor and will take a similar role in the transition team. Rick Dearborn, Sessions' chief of staff, was named as the executive director for the transition team.The team also includes Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's campaign chief who is on leave from heading the arch-conservative Breitbart News. Several prominent business people, including Peter Thiel, one of the only major figures in Silicon Valley to endorse Trump, were named, as was Pam Bondi, the Florida attorney general who solicited and accepted a $25,000 campaign donation from Trump's family foundation in 2013, four days after Bondi said her office was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University.Rep. Devin Nunes, the Tulare Republican who leads the House Select Intelligence Committee, was also given a top spot. He could be a key bridge for Trump and the intelligence community, which has been reluctant to rally behind Trump.Trump's children and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who guided him throughout the campaign, appear to have retained their influence in an official capacity. Kushner's presence at the White House on Thursday drew notice from Obama's staff when he asked, as they toured the West Wing, how many of the individuals there would remain into the next administration. Nearly all will depart along with the president.Briefing reporters Friday about the president's trip next week to Greece, Germany and Peru, Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor, repeatedly referred to the imperative of fully educating the incoming administration about the major foreign policy issues Trump will face."The main focus of the conversation [between Trump and Obama] ... was determining how to make the best use of this transition period to fully brief up the president-elect and his team," he said. "There's a great deal of complexity."Trump's spokespeople did not respond to calls and emails asking about his preparation.Passages on Trump's transition website, GreatAgain.gov, were copied from the site of the Center for Presidential Transition, a nonprofit that had consulted with both campaigns about the transition, Politico reported."It's in everybody's interest to have a good transition," said Martha Kumar, the director of the White House Transition Project. "We're living in a world of great vulnerability. You can't afford to not prepare well." Joining other cities around the country, Chicago is pledging to remain a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants, an act of defiance in the face of Donald Trumps past promise to cut off those cities from federal funding.In sanctuary cities, local law enforcement officials arent required to alert U.S. Immigration and Customs authorities about the immigration status of individuals with whom they come in contact.On Monday, Chicago's elected officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, are expected to hold a news conference to formally discuss how the city will retain its sanctuary status. Aldermen are expected to call on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to pressure Trump to back off his vow to interfere with funding.Across the country and in Chicago and Illinois ... young men and women [are] very distraught about this, Chicago Alderman Danny Solis told POLITICO Illinois on Sunday.Solis is among those planning to attend the news conference with Emanuel. "Theres some people, though I disagree with them, but I have some respect for Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus," Solis said, referring to the House speaker and the RNC chairman who will serve as Trump's chief of staff. "Im hoping that those guys have much more influence on Trump and what needs to be done not only on his first 100 days, but in his term." Amid a national push for greater police accountability, voters in several major cities have approved measures to create or strengthen civilian oversight of law enforcement.The trend reflects growing public demand for independent reviews of misconduct claims after deadly police encounters in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore and New York spotlighted police use-of-force and interaction with minorities.Voters in New Orleans, Honolulu, Miami and San Francisco passed plans Tuesday to bolster existing civilian oversight programs. In Oakland, California, voters created a powerful civilian-run police commission to investigate problems within the department reeling from a sex scandal involving several officers.Denver voters added provisions to the city charter to protect the existing independent monitor system. The measure makes it impossible for officials to cut the position without another public vote. On Friday, in the morning, at the Shrine of Remembrance, Ann Street, Brisbane, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended and laid the first wreath at the 2016 Remembrance Day Ceremony. Following, at Government House, the Governor received the Honourable Peter Wellington MP, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland; Mr Neil Laurie, Clerk of the Queensland Parliament; and Mr Michael Watkin, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Queensland Parliament, for the presentation of bills for Assent. Following, at Government House: the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey welcomed the Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, Premier of Queensland, who presented to the Governor and Mrs de Jersey her proposed appointments to the Ministry; the Governor officiated at a formal ceremony for the swearing-in of 2 Ministers of the State and 1 member of the Executive Council of Queensland; the Governor presided at a special meeting of the Executive Council and then officiated at a formal ceremony for the appointment of two Assistant Ministers; and then, the Governor, with Mrs de Jersey, hosted a reception in honour of the Palaszczuk Ministry. In the evening, at the Queensland Club, Air Commodore Mark Gower OAM, Official Secretary, attended the annual Queensland Club Remembrance Day Dinner and delivered the Remembrance Day address. At the Governors request, Air Commodore Gowers speech may be read here. On Saturday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC received His Excellency Dr Janos Ader, President of the Republic of Hungary; His Excellency Dr Attila Gruber, Ambassador of the Republic of Hungary to Australia; and Dr Maria Haszonicsne Adam, Director-General of the Office of the President. In the evening, at the Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended Opera Queenslands performance of Kiss me, Kate. On Sunday, in the evening, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs Kaye de Jersey attended Evening Eucharist at St Johns Anglican Cathedral, Brisbane. Description GIS 14 November, 2016 : The Hotline 139, dedicated to domestic violence, is now toll free so as to enable victims of domestic violence to seek assistance even when their telephone have run out of credit or have zero balance. The Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Marie-Aurore Perraud, made the announcement in Port Louis on Friday 11 November 2016 during a press conference to present the calendar of activities in the context of the International Day Against Violence Against Women, commemorated on 25 November annually. The hotline 139 has been operational on a 24 hr basis and as a paid service since 2007. She commended the telephone operators for their support regarding the free telephone service for victims of domestic violence and stressed that people calling the toll free number will be provided prompt and timely assistance by officers of the Ministry. She added that a poster and sticker campaign will be launched to inform people about the toll-free hotline 139. Regarding the slogan retained for this years commemoration - Aret Violans Domestik (Stop domestic violence), the Minister stated that it was chosen because of the increase in the number of cases of domestic violence in Mauritius. She pointed out that prior to the launching of the campaign, several initiatives against domestic violence have been taken including the proclamation of the Protection from Domestic Violence (Amendment) Act on 1st September 2016, and sensitisation programmes on the new provisions of the Act held in women empowerment centres across the country. She underlined the leading role that religious leaders can play in addressing domestic violence, and announced that she would meet them to discuss on the way faith communities can fight domestic violence. We are also working with authorities from Reunion Island to set up an Observatory for gender-based domestic violence, she said. Mrs Perraud stressed that the calendar of activities elaborated by the Ministry in collaboration with the private sector and the civil society to commemorate the International Day Against Violence Against Women aims at raising awareness of the population on the necessity of not condoning or even tolerating domestic violence. Calendar of activities The activities comprise the coming into operation of the Domestic Violence Information System (DOVIS) on 16 November 2016. DOVIS is a web-based computer system for registration of reported cases of domestic violence that will be used as a tool to monitor and assess record, as well as generate specific reports on such cases. They also include a colloquium for Magistrates on Domestic Violence: The Justice System on 25 November 2016; a National Video Clip Competition on the theme Aret Violans Domestik in collaboration with the Mauritius Film Development Corporation from 14 November to 21 November 2016, and the broadcasting of the winning clip on the MBC/TV from 25 November to 10 December 2016; a training session for journalists on media coverage of domestic violence; and the screening of a short film on domestic violence. STAMFORD A Greenwich woman and a New Canaan teen won the Miss Connecticut USA and Miss Connecticut Teen USA crowns this weekend at the Stamford Marriott Hotel and Day Spa. Olga Litvinenko, 26, a Greenwich resident and graduate of Syracuse University who runs her own marketing firm, was named Miss Connecticut USA. Lana Coffey, 18, of New Canaan, captured the Miss Connecticut Teen USA crown. Litvinenko was crowned Miss Connecticut Teen USA in 2007 while a junior at Greenwich High School. Fotolia / McClatchy-Tribune News Service The Connecticut Department of Public Health joins with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in observing the ninth annual Get Smart About Antibiotics Week from Nov. 14 to 20. During this week, participants will raise awareness of the threat of antibiotic resistance and emphasize the importance of appropriate antibiotic use across all types of health care settings. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in a way that reduces the effectiveness of antibiotics and is a serious threat to Connecticut residents. Antibiotics are critical for medical care and save thousands of lives every year in Connecticut, said DPH Commissioner Dr. Raul Pino in a news release. It would be a great human tragedy and public health disaster if this precious resource could no longer save lives. That is why DPH, healthcare providers, and facilities across the state are joining the fight against antibiotic resistance. The best way to avoid antibiotic resistance is to strictly follow doctors recommendations on how to properly use antibiotics. I urge Connecticut residents follow their doctors prescriptions and to learn more about the proper way to use antibiotics. The $510,000 Crista Freeman had raised from angel investors served her well: The money helped her Phin & Phebes artisanal ice cream reach stores around New York City. After four years, she was ready to expand -- but could barely afford to do it. Once she buys ingredients, it can take up to six months for her customers to finally pay her. When the product gets manufactured, she says, Im burning through cash. Sure, she could have applied for a loan from a traditional online lender, but those credit lines average less than $250,000. She needed more. And she didnt have time to deal with securing a bank loan. Related: 4 Things to Consider Before Investing in Other Entrepreneurs Thats where P2Binvestor helped. Its an online lender that puts a modern twist on factoring, which well get into later. In this case, P2Binvestor gave Freeman a $500,000 credit line. With that money, heading into the spring, she could aggressively grow her business and not worry about cash flow. Heres the scoop on this service. Who its for P2Binvestor offers a $250,000 to $10 million revolving line of credit to food manufacturers, wholesalers, fashion retailers, subscription software companies and other U.S. business-to-business startups. To be eligible, startups must be at least a year old and have at least $500,000 in annual revenue or $50,000 in monthly revenue. P2Binvestor will then look at collateral -- such as inventory, receivables and ongoing customer contracts -- to determine the size of the loan. The idea is to make getting $1 million as easy as getting $50,000, says Krista Morgan, P2Binvestors cofounder and CEO. Since launching in 2014, the Denver-based lender has extended $300 million in credit to 82 companies. The average loan is $750,000. How it works A quick lesson on factoring, which has a history going back centuries. Traditionally, factoring isnt technically a loan; rather, a company in need of money (say, one that makes ice cream) sells its customers orders (from the people who want ice cream) to a financial institution at a discount (say, 90 cents for every $1 worth of orders). That way, the ice cream company has the money to fulfill the orders, and the finance company is responsible for actually collecting on the invoices. Related: Use These Strategies to Get Paid More Quickly P2Binvestor works in a similar way, in that it evaluates a companys invoices. But rather than buy up the orders, it extends lines of credit. P2Binvestors annualized rates range from 12 to 18 percent, decreasing as a company becomes a safer credit risk. Borrowers sign a one-year agreement on the credit line, with no penalty for early repayment if the borrower opens a new credit line with a bank. How it makes scale happen Besides covering operating costs and payroll in a pinch, the credit line will help Phin & Phebes sell a projected $2 million worth of ice cream this year to more than 2,000 stores in the U.S. -- including Whole Foods, Safeway and Walmart. Weve been able to grow revenue this year by around 170 percent, Freeman says. Now, that's cool. Related: This Maker Aggressively Expanded Her Business Without a Traditional Loan. Here's How. All About Sports And Start-Ups Before You Pitch Investors, Ask Yourself These 4 Questions Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Drinks at 304 OReilly, a bar where the tenets of traditional mixology are more or less ignored. Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky In Cuba recently, sitting in the back of a teal Chevrolet Bel Air that was older than my parents, I asked a cabbie where I could go to see the magic of Havana, something tourists and especially the American tourists who now arrive in the communist island nation in increasing numbers dont typically see. His eyes lit up and he said one name, OReilly, with such reverence and mysticism that he might as well have said mogwai or El Dorado. On a street named after an Irish-born inspector general of infantry for the Spanish Empire, the small bar called 304 OReilly as is communist style, the name is the address is staging something of a drinking revolution in Vieja, Havanas Old Town neighborhood. To start, it is a gin bar, extraordinary in a nation devoutly fixated on its rich heritage of rum, and on being the birthplace of the daiquiri and the mojito. But 304 OReilly flouts convention in another way: It is an ambitious 21st-century bar that more or less ignores all tenets of mixology, and not just because its specialty cocktail prices hover around $8. There are no $43 martinis infused with San Francisco fog here. Instead, the bars owners have freed themselves from mixologys trying exactitude. Thats not to say the drinks here are whatever sloshes into the nearest glass. There is care, and dedication. 304 OReillys approach might more accurately be called whimsology, mixologys impressionist cousin, less bothered with ounces and jiggers, more taken with moxie and mojo. In fact, to be true to its Latino roots, the approach is best described as duendology, an approach based on duende, an untranslatable concept that roughly means supernatural enchantment. In Havana in particular, it plays on the Cuban aesthetic of making do with whats available and finding beauty in the disarray. You want to know who developed our cocktails? asks Wilson Hernandez, a 28-year-old civil engineer turned head bartender. The customers. Id introduce them to something and theyd like it, but say, If you did this or that it would be better. The power is with the customers. We are not gods here. He laughs, running his hands through his Afro ponytail. Youre not in a temple. Youre in a bar. A collection of drinks at 304 OReilly. Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky The garnish game is strong. Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky The quanto basta approach harkens to a freer-wheeling time when Americas best-loved bartender was Isaac Washington on The Love Boat. These are not drinks you pour into precious little cocktail coupes. The Habana Londres is a London-inspired gin-and-tonic that resembles a single-serving scorpion bowl, with Beefeater, tonic, and a wedge of lime, of course, as well as Maraschino and a dollop of blue frozen daiquiri. The Jimmy Hendricks contains cucumber and rose petals. The Sweet Jabali has cherry and cinnamon. Even a plain gin-and-tonic often arrives with vanilla beans and rose petals. And all of the drinks are garnished with limes whose half-peeled rinds entwine the cocktail in a manner that suggests they seem to have somehow read the Kama Sutra. The menu also includes a Jager-made mojito, a Kentucky mojito (with Jim Beam), and something called a Muevelo Muevelo literally Move It Move It a mint-pineapple sorbet served atop chunky watermelon juice in the manner of a Miami Vice, albeit virgin. A simple frozen-mango daiquiri might come sprinkled with maraschino-infused pineapple chunks. The bar was started in 2013 born, really, because the place feels that alive by two brothers, Julio Cesar and Jose Carlo Imperatori, 42 and 40 years old, respectively. Jose Carlo, who resembles Zach Galifianakis if he played the Dude, had been toiling at a government bar and seized the opportunity when Cuba began allowing private management. Julio, taller, leaner, and with sunglasses perennially sitting atop his shaved head, typically travels the country sourcing produce when hes not glad-handing regulars. Business boomed, and they were able to open a bigger satellite branch, El Del Frente (The One Out Front), across the street last December. The anomalous, puckish nature is not limited to the actual bar, either. When asked what is in their Jedi salad the chalkboard menu has a Darth Vader mask affixed atop it a waitress replied that its mostly lettuce and tomatoes with some carrots and cucumbers; when I tell her that it sounds ordinary, and ask what makes the mix so Jedi, she simply answers, Its Jedi if you believe its Jedi. Outside 304 OReilly in Havana. Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky The goal is more important than the math. Its half luck, says Enrique Suarez, the 28-year-old heap of dimples and muscles whos usually manning the bar, of the drink-making process. But mostly witchcraft, he adds, pulling out a green-and-yellow beaded bracelet from his pocket, symbolizing Olofi, the king god in the local Yoruba pantheon. Asked if he has a cocktail of his own design or is working on one, he flashes a look of genuine confusion. Why would I make my own drink? he asks. A drink named for me? Or dictated by me? Every cocktail I make has my name on it. You will choose it again at another place and it will not be the same because it will not be mine. Everything I make here is mine. And you will like it because you have never had your cocktail the way I make it. Look,Julio begins, mixology is great for chemists. But its science. Its exact. Its math. He pauses for a moment. And, really, its cold, mechanical. Why would I want this place to be a factory when what it needs to be is an oasis? That approach might be gaining fans beyond the island. As much as buzz can be built in Havana Yelp and Zagat are not exactly de rigeur yet I spotted an uneasy sign on my last visit: a sticker in OReillys doorway flaunting its top choice decree by Lianorg, a kind of Chinese Zagat. The revolution is spreading, comrades. Making drinks at the bar. Photo: Noah Friedman-Rudovsky The shirodashi pork ramen: pork belly marinated in bulgogi sauce, chicken broth with dashi and miso, seasonal greens, scallions, wakame, menma and half a tea-stained egg. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev New York is theres no question about it saturated with great ramen. But that hasnt stopped city slurpers from itching for an outpost of Londons obsessed-over noodle chain Wagamama, especially since it landed in Boston nearly a decade ago. It enjoys an unusually sterling reputation for a pan-Asian noodle chain and its fans include Dave Chang, who credits a meal at one of the London locations with inspiring him to become a chef. Now, New Yorkers wishes will be granted this Wednesday, when Wagamama opens its first location here. And this is just the beginning, as a second East Village restaurant has been in the works since summer. Naturally, its going to be big. The restaurant, which overlooks Madison Square Park, occupies a sprawling three-floor space. It features the trademark Wagamama aesthetic that influenced Chang: an open kitchen, communal tables, and stools. As for the food, the fusion-y menu is straight-up 90s retro, sort of like the best possible version of that suburban Japanese restaurant you went to with your parents. The ramen here isnt yuzu-shoyu with chicken chashu, but instead inspired by Indo-Chinese chili chicken or served with pork belly marinated in Korean bulgogi sauce. Some dishes are more straightforward, like pork-and-water-chestnut gyoza, but that border-crossing style is well-represented across the menu. Its seen in sides like steamed buns with Korean barbecue beef, teppanyaki dishes like teriyaki soba, grilled duck donburi, and green curry made with coconut and lemongrass. The chili squid is fried squid dusted with shichimi, a traditional mix of seven spices, and served with a chile-cilantro dipping sauce. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev Firecracker curry: snow peas, red and green peppers, onions, and hot red chiles served with white rice, sesame seeds, scallions, shichimi, and a lime wedge. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev The banana katsu is fried panko-coated banana with a scoop of salted-caramel ice cream and caramel sauce. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev Drinks include the Lemongrass Collins, made with gin, soda, sugar, and fresh lemon juice. Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev See the influence? Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev Wagamama, 210 Fifth Ave., nr. E. 26th St.; 212-920-6233 Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password. Stay logged in Help Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby. 09:44, 30 OCT 2022 Millions in political donations fueled by matching bonuses at Boston law firm by Andrea Estes and Viveca Novak, Open Secrets/Boston Globe, October 29, 2016 Jon Tester didnt come all the way from Montana for the scrambled eggs and bacon. The senator, virtually unknown in Boston, was in a conference room at the Thornton Law Firm that June morning to cash in at one of the most reliable stops on the Democratic fundraising circuit, a law firm that pours millions into the coffers of the party and its politicians. Tester, a massive, jovial man who raises livestock on his family farm, was more compelling than many of their other breakfast guests, all of them political candidates the firm hoped would defend the interests of trial attorneys. But the drill was basically the same. The personal injury lawyers listened politely for a few minutes, then returned to their offices. And Tester walked away with $26,400 in checks. But a striking thing happened the day Tester visited in 2010. Partner David C. Strouss received a payment from the firm labeled as a bonus that exactly equaled his $2,400 contribution to Testers campaign, the maximum allowed. A few days later, partner Garrett Bradley until recently the House assistant majority leader in the Massachusetts legislature got a bonus, too, exactly matching his $2,400 gift to Tester. This pattern of payments contributions offset by bonus payments was commonplace at Thornton, according to a review of law firm records by the Spotlight Team and the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based non-profit that tracks campaign finance data. From 2010 through 2014, Strouss and Bradley along with founding partner Michael Thornton and his wife donated nearly $1.6 million to Democratic party fundraising committees and a parade of politicians from Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada to Hawaii gubernatorial candidate David Ige to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Over the same span, the lawyers received $1.4 million listed as bonuses in Thornton Law Firm records; more than 280 of the contributions precisely matched bonuses that were paid within 10 days. CSC Spreadsheet: Thornton Lawyers gave to $13,000 to David Ige, $4,000 to Shan Tsutsui, and $21,000 to Neil Abercrombie between 2010 and 2014Total Contributions $38,000. That payback system, which involved other partners as well, helped make Thornton the 11th-ranked law firm nationally for political contributions in 2014, according to data analyzed by the Center, even though the firm is not among the 100 biggest in Massachusetts, much less the U.S. Thornton, through a spokesman, said its donation reimbursement program was reviewed by outside lawyers and complied with applicable laws. Campaign finance experts said that without reviewing the firms records, they cannot say the payback system breaks the law, but it raises numerous red flags. Thats because reimbursing people for their political donations is generally illegal, several experts said. When political donors are repaid for their donations, it can conceal the real source of contributions, and enable the unnamed source of the funds to exceed state and federal contribution limits. And in some states Massachusetts among them political donations to state candidates from corporations and partnerships such as Thornton Law Firm are flatly illegal. Reimbursing donors is among the most serious campaign violations in the view of both the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice, said Daniel Petalas, an attorney who served as acting general counsel of the FEC until September. Using straw donors to make contributions is illegal, said Larry Noble, general counsel of the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center and a former general counsel of the FEC. People can go and have gone to prison for this. Thornton officials declined to comment, instead hiring a former federal prosecutor to respond to the Globes questions. The ex-prosecutor, Brian Kelly, said that the bonuses should not have been called bonuses at all because they were paid from the lawyers own money. He said an accountant deducted the payments from their equity, or ownership, in the firm. When lawyers leave Thornton Law and cash in their equity, he said, their financial settlement with Thornton would be reduced by the amount of the bonuses. Kelly provided a written statement from Michael Thornton saying that an error made internally led to the payments being called bonuses. Thornton said he changed the way they were labelled after several years in 2015 when he discovered the mistake. Its obviously not a crime to make lots of donations to politicians and they certainly did that, said Kelly. But their donation program was vetted by prior counsel and an outside accountant and the firm made every effort to comply with all applicable laws and regulations. However, campaign finance experts were skeptical about the system Kelly describes, saying it could allow partners to go years before repaying the firm for the bonuses. Regulators could view the bonuses as open-ended loans, they said, making them hidden and illegal contributions from the law firm. I think they need to be very careful, said James Kahl, former deputy general counsel of the FEC. The big red flag is monies being advanced and the truing up doesnt happen for many years. Kelly, who gave varying explanations of the reimbursement policy since first being asked about it in July, declined to provide a copy of a legal opinion that he said justified the repayment program. He also declined to say whether lawyers who left the firm were required to pay when the bonuses they received exceeded their equity in the firm. But one thing is certain: The policy was so complicated that at least some lawyers at the firm didnt understand it, said former employees. They were just happy to get their money back. *** Michael Thornton, a former Marine who served in Vietnam, made his name in the law by becoming a national leader in handling asbestos-related cases, especially those in which victims suffered mesothelioma, a rare but deadly cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Thornton lawyers have handled thousands of such cases, made millions, and even helped to underwrite research into mesothelioma. But that pipeline of profits was threatened just over a decade ago when some leading politicians, including President George W. Bush, moved to limit damages in class action lawsuits and to allow the victims of asbestos exposure to file their claims for compensation directly to a national trust fund bypassing lawyers who typically receive a third of any award. Thats when Thornton learned the power of political donations. The firms partners contributed heavily to mostly Democratic politicians who, they hoped, would thwart efforts to create the trust fund. If it passed, the firm would close, said a former employee who feared retaliation if his name were used. Hence the beginning of the political donations. They gave more and more each year, from $257,300 to federal candidates and the Democratic party in the 2003-2004 election cycle to nearly $1.1 million a decade later, according to the Center quadrupling their contributions. Thornton is a small firm usually 10 or fewer equity partners but the lawyers punch well above their weight in political fundraising. In the two year election cycle ending in 2014, for example, lawyers at Thornton Naumes, as the firm was then called, donated more than much larger multi-national firms such as Greenberg Traurig a Miami-based law firm that claims 38 offices and 2,000 attorneys. Over the course of three election cycles 2010, 2012 and 2014 Thornton partners contributed more than $3.4 million to candidates and the party nationwide, especially Democratic Senate candidates who opposed overhauling the asbestos litigation system. The partners have been major benefactors to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the partys Senate fundraising arm. From 2007 through the middle of this year, Thornton partners gave the DSCC, which has higher contribution limits than do candidates, more than $1.5 million. Just one Republican senator has collected contributions from Thorntons lawyers. Lindsey Graham, an idiosyncratic South Carolinian and former trial lawyer himself, received $62,800 over the last decade. Graham helped peel away enough GOP support in the Senate to ensure the trust fund bills death on Valentines Day, 2006, according to former Senate aides. Thorntons lawyers were especially generous to Vice President Joe Biden, one of Washingtons strongest advocates for trial lawyers, contributing more than $78,000 to his campaigns from 2003 to 2008. During President Obama and Bidens reelection campaign in 2012, Michael Thornton hosted a fundraiser for the Obama Victory Fund at his house in Cambridge where Biden was the guest of honor. Some of the biggest donors some Thornton partners gave $20,000 were escorted into a private room and offered the chance to be photographed with Biden, said someone who was there. Thornton records show the lawyers were reimbursed for those donations. Vice President Joe Biden was a favorite of Michael Thorntons. Biden collected $78,000 for his campaigns from 2003 through 2008. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Thornton declined to speak to the Globe and the Center, but he has been vocal about his support for Biden, who once chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and twice helped block legislation that would have established the asbestos trust fund. Sen. Biden has been a trial-lawyer advocate for many terms in the Senate, Thornton was quoted as saying in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2008. We represent victims, we think its in the best interest of our clients if they have an opportunity to go to court. Sen. Biden agrees. Once Michael Thorntons willingness to raise large amounts of money became known among lawyers and politicians, the American Association for Justice, the trial lawyers Washington-based lobbying group, increasingly turned to the firms lawyers for help, even for little known candidates running in states far from Boston. At first it happened every three or four months, and then it was sometimes three or four times each month, even though the threat of asbestos litigation reform had faded, said the former employee who requested anonymity. As the number of fundraisers started piling up, partners began to grouse. Even though Thornton called the contributions voluntary, partners felt pressured to give, according to the former employee. After all, Michael Thornton was the firms lead partner with enormous sway over what the other partners were paid. So, according to three former employees, Thornton Law Firm adopted the donation reimbursement system. Bonus checks that were reviewed by the Globe made clear that the payments were for political donations, with notations giving the name of the politician the partner had donated to. The Globe and the Center for Responsive Politics reviewed records covering payments to three senior partners Thornton, Bradley and Strouss who are among the top shareholders in the firm. Then, the Globe and the Center matched the bonuses against federal, state and local campaign records. Campaign contribution and law firm records from 2010 through 2014 show that Thornton donated the most, and the firm gave him bonuses that matched not only his donations, but at least 33 made by his wife, Amy, who runs an investment fund. The couple donated just over $1 million between 2010 and 2014 and Thornton received $862,450 in off-setting bonuses. Michael Thornton, through a spokesman, denied that the law firm reimbursed his wifes donations. Bradley made donations of $340,535 and received almost as much in bonuses $339,000 over that period, the records shows. David Strouss gave $205,150 over the five years and received almost the same amount in bonuses $197,150. By donating as individuals, lawyers for the firm were able to collectively give far more to individual candidates in a single year than the firm could have donated directly under federal law. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York received $52,000 from Thornton partners over a 10-day period in 2013. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) Over a 10-day period in 2013, for example, Thornton partners gave $52,000 to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a subcommittee chairman on the Senate Judiciary Committee 20 times as much as the $2,600 that the partnership itself could have donated. (Corporate contributions are illegal under federal law, but partnership contributions are not.) In 2012, the lawyers gave Warren $42,200, 16 times as much as the firm could have given her directly. Thornton lawyers also donated more than $260,000 to state and local politicians in Massachusetts from 2010 to 2014. If those donations were determined to have actually been made by the firm because the lawyers were reimbursed they would be illegal since political contributions from corporations or partnerships are prohibited in Massachusetts. Theres no indication that any of the politicians who received Thornton donations knew anything about the law firms questionable reimbursement system. *** The Federal Election Commission does allow partners in a law firm to donate to political campaigns, but only if the funds clearly come from the partners own money. According to FEC rules, a partnership can contribute on behalf of its partners, but then must promptly deduct the amount of the donation from the next profit sharing payments to the partners called partnership distributions. Thats not what Thornton did. Brian Kelly, Thorntons outside counsel, said the firms practice is legal because, at the end of each quarter, the firms accountant deducts the political donations from something called the capital account of each partner with the firm. The capital account is a way for the accountant to keep track of the partners share of equity in the firm. The deductions from the capital account are on paper only, Kelly acknowledged. When partners leave the firm, they may be entitled to a payment from the capital account that Kelly says is reduced by the amount of reimbursements received. But reimbursing partners out of their equity in the firm as Kelly said Thornton did is likely illegal, said Brett Kappel, a Washington D.C. lawyer who specializes in campaign finance. If they were legitimate contributions, they should have been deducted from their partnership distributions, Kappel said. Senior partner Bradley abruptly resigned his position as assistant majority leader in the state House of Representatives on June 27 after the Globe had begun asking questions about his firms business practices. His decision stunned colleagues, coming so late in the election cycle that there was no time to take his name off the November ballot. Bradley explained at the time that Michael Thornton was retiring and he was being promoted to managing partner of his law firm. As a result, he wanted to focus on his legal work. Thornton is now chairman of the firm. I wouldnt have the time to do this (legislative) job the way it should be done because of the promotion, Bradley explained to Statehouse News Service. Its bittersweet for me. Some campaign finance experts say they expect Thorntons reimbursement system is likely to raise suspicions among regulators and law enforcement officials alike. The use of the word bonus for these payments combined with the fact that they so closely matched the amounts and timing of the donations would certainly capture the attention of the general counsels office at the FEC and given how much was involved, the public integrity section at the Department of Justice, said Kappel, the Washington campaign finance lawyer. The Globe and the Center could not find another law firm that used a similar reimbursement system Thornton itself stopped the reimbursements when the Globe and the Center began asking about it. Ive been a partner at two law firms and have made many political donations, said Leonard Kesten, a partner at Brody, Hardoon, Perkins and Kesten in Boston, but Ive never seen anything like this. It seems very peculiar. Meanwhile, in the Senate, measures to change the asbestos litigation system continue to pop up. Earlier this year, the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act passed the House, but ran into opposition from Schumer of New York, a top recipient of Thornton donations. It died in committee. ---30--- CRP researchers Doug Weber and Alex Baumgart contributed to this story. Content licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License by OpenSecrets.org NY Post: Boston shadow donor scandal casts shadows on Democrats nationwide OS: Hillary Clinton, senatorial candidates among politicians returning donations from Thornton Law (but no mention of Ige, Abercrombie, or Tsutsui) One dead, seven injured in Albanian refinery blast A large explosion and fire killed a worker and injured seven others at the ARMO refinery in Ballsh, southern Albania, on November 10. Police said a malfunctioning hydrogen valve caused the explosion, with pressure at the valve three times normal levels. The defect had been reported earlier but had not been repaired, local media sources claimed. Stock image The seven injured workers are being treated for severe burns, and the condition of two was described as life-threatening. Damage was estimated to be around $1 million, according to local news reports. Prosecutors were investigating "a failure to observe technical rules". The Ballsh plant was reopened in September 2016 after a period of bankruptcy and closure. The refinery, with a capacity of one million tons per year, is now managed by an offshore company registered in the Virgin Islands. tralian Sales and Promotions and its director Paul Ainsworth have been found to have breached sham contracting laws.The fundraising company hired a 26-year-old British backpacker on a 417 working holiday visa as a charity collector, even though they treated him as an independent contractor.This was despite them knowing the Fair Work Act required them to classify and pay him as an employee.Australian Sales and Promotions has held contracts with charity and not-for-profit organisations to conduct fundraising activities on their behalf.The company have now been penalised $100,000 in the Federal Circuit Court, while Ainsworth, the companys sole director and part-owner, has been penalised a further $24,000.The penalties are the result of legal action by the Fair Work Ombudsman who said the action sends a message about the seriousness of sham contracting.The backpacker ended up being underpaid $7853 in basic employment entitlements for four months of charity collecting work performed in 2013, mostly at Sydney shopping centres.Australian Sales and Promotions and Ainsworth told the charity collector he was an independent contractor operating his own business and required him to obtain an Australian Business Number (ABN) and invoice another company operated by Ainsworth (PMA Unit Pty Ltd) to receive payment.However, the charity collector had never operated a business before and had no sales experience and the company exercised a high degree of direction, supervision and control over his duties.The charity collector was paid on a commission basis, earning a daily rate as low as $50 to $67. As a casual employee, he was actually entitled to the minimum hourly rate and casual loadings.The charity collector ended up lodging a complaint, with the Fair Work Ombudsman investigating.However, the Fair Work Ombudsman commenced legal action because of the seriousness of the contraventions and because the company had clearly been put on notice not to misclassify employees as contractors.Judge Robert Cameron found that the company and Ainsworth had deliberately contravened the Fair Work Act.He added that it was their intention to enjoy the financial benefit of paying (the charity collector) as an independent contractor while also enjoying the power and authority of an employer in the control it exercised over him in the course of his work.Persons should understand that attempting to evade the minimum employment conditions provided by the Fair Work Act by contriving to make employees independent contractors can have serious financial consequences of an adverse kind, said Judge Cameron. BY FRANK TAYLOR / Carolina Public Press But as Carolina Public Press analyzed the results in Western North Carolina precincts, one divide emerged as more important than any of the rest: urban vs. small town and rural. That finding comes in part because the most readily accessible data was for geography. Components of other things, such as wealth, education and race, will have some overlap with this divide based on population density. But the divide is so pronounced for this geographic divide in county after county that its difficult to discount. Even when Democrats carried or competed closely in urban centers, Republicans dominated by wider margins in more thinly populated outlying areas of smaller towns and rural communities. Only the Asheville/Woodfin/Black Mountain and Boone Democratic votes were strong enough to outnumber the Republican votes in their overall counties. Another trend that emerged was the strength of the Democratic vote in college areas, including around Appalachian State, Western Carolina, the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Brevard College. This may correlate to a combination of liberal professors, young millennial students and ethnically diverse student and staff populations. Or it could be seen as voters further removed from educational institutions rejecting elite political ideals. An exception to the rural/urban divide came in two counties with large Native American populations in rural precincts, where Clinton either led or was very competitive. To better understand what happened throughout the region, CPP has broken down the counties into three population groups: Three counties of 75,000+ population: Buncombe, Henderson and Burke; Eight counties of 25,000 to 75,000 population: Rutherford, Haywood, Watauga, McDowell, Jackson, Macon, Transylvania and Cherokee; Eight counties of less than 25,000 population: Madison, Polk, Avery, Mitchell, Yancey, Swain, Clay and Graham. Limited information Before examining the trends in each of these counties, an important caveat demands attention. The numbers available at this point for precinct-level analysis do not include early votes, mail-in absentees and provisional ballots. The totals for each county and the state do include early votes and mail-in absentees that arrived before Election Day. Late absentees and provisional ballots will be totaled later this week when the county boards of election canvass the results. Its due to those ballots that several other statewide races, including governor, remain too close to call. In some other recent previous elections, the early vote leaned heavily Democratic because emphasis on the early vote has been an important party strategy. For the same reason, in some locations the Election Day vote might skew Republican. As a result, the precinct-level discussions that follow cannot take the early vote into account. Its certainly possible that some precincts that currently appear to have gone narrowly for the Republican candidate actually went for the Democratic candidate, which will become clear some time later when the state and local election boards can assign those votes to precincts. Although it would run counter to recent election trends, its also equally possible that some precincts that narrowly went for the Democrat actually went for the Republican. So the analysis that follows is the based on the best information thats available, but is necessarily incomplete. Counties with 75,000+ population In Buncombe County, Hillary Clinton claimed a 54 percent majority of votes, thanks primarily to heavily Democratic Asheville, the regions largest city. But this narrow majority was a strong showing without being the landslide she needed from urban counties to have been more competitive statewide. Clintons problem in Buncombe was that beyond Asheville, she carried few of the countys small-towns and rural precincts. Clinton did have an edge in the western portion of Black Mountain and the town of Woodfin. But elsewhere Donald Trump had strong support, including the incorporated towns of Montreat, Weaverville and Biltmore Forest. Unincorporated communities like Candler, Enka, Leicester, Swannanoa, Barnardsville, Arden, Fairview and Avery Creek all went for Trump. The demographics of those places dont tell a simple story. Some areas like Candler are home to many lower-income low-education white voters who were expected to back Trump. But Biltmore Forest, where the wealthy and highly educated voter pool didnt match up as clearly with the supposed Trump demographic, also went solidly for the Republican candidate. While the overall outcome was very different in Western North Carolinas second-most populous county, Henderson, where Trump won more than 60 percent of the vote, the same divide between the Democratic core city and rural outlying areas applied. Hendersonvilles precincts went for Clinton. But the rest of Henderson County was Trump country, from small towns like Laurel Park, Fletcher, Mills River, Flat Rock and Bat Cave, to the countys many unincorporated communities. Burke County followed precisely the same script. Trump took 67 percent of the vote, but Clinton carried the precincts in the largest city, Morganton. In all other small towns and rural areas of Burke, Trump was dominant. Counties with 25,000 to 75,000 population Eight of the 19 counties in Western North Carolina have populations between 25,000 and 75,000, based on population estimates the U.S. Census Bureau released in September. With one exception, these counties were favorable to Trump and undoubtedly contributed significantly to his statewide edge in North Carolina. The largest in this group is Rutherford County, which is geographically unique, transitioning from rolling Piedmont in the southeast around Spindale, Ellenboro and Forest City to high foothills near Rutherfordton, Sunshine and Bostic, then rugged mountainous terrain along the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge further northwest near Lake Lure and Chimney Rock State Park. This geographical diversity equates to economic and social diversity, with agricultural areas, mill towns and resort communities all having distinct personalities. Rutherford County is also relatively ethnically diverse for WNC, with a more substantial black portion of its population than in many other counties. Republicans are only slightly more numerous than Democratic registered voters, though many unaffiliated voters may lean Republican. Even so, Trump enjoyed a landslide in the Rutherford vote, claiming 72 percent to just under 25 percent for Clinton. While Trump carried every precinct, his support was weakest around Spindale, at about 54 percent and the Lake Lure/Chimney Rock area at about 60 percent. Haywood County has just under 60,000 residents in terrain thats decidedly mountainous, with a mixed economy of industry, agriculture and tourism. Despite the lack of any substantial ethnic diversity, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a substantial amount in Haywood. It didnt matter in the presidential contest, as Trump carried Haywood with more than 60 percent of the vote. Clinton carried only the Central Waynesville precinct, at the heart of the county seat. Watauga County, home to Appalachian State University, was a bright spot for Democrats in Western North Carolina, with Clinton edging past trump by a few hundred votes. But she only claimed a 47.2 percent total to Trumps 45.7 percent in Watauga, doing little to make up his much stronger advantage through most of the region. The urban/rural divide was as pronounced as ever in Watauga, with Clinton racking up modest victories in Boone precincts, but Trump scoring well in the less densely populated areas. In McDowell County, Trump led Clinton by nearly 10,000 votes, comparable to President Obamas statewide margin of victory in 2008. Clinton received less than a quarter of the vote in McDowell and failed to carry any precincts. She was strongest in one central Marion precinct where Clinton and third-party candidates combined to deny the Republican an outright majority, though he still led with a 30-vote plurality. Jackson County, home to Western Carolina University, went for Trump, though he emerged with just under 53 percent of the vote, less than in most of the regions other mid-sized counties. Unlike the rural-urban divide that appeared elsewhere, the educational center of Cullowhee was the strongest location for Clinton here, where she narrowly carried a majority of the precinct. While Trump led in other precincts, the outcome was closely contested in the countys northernmost area, which has a substantial Native American population. More than two-thirds of Macon County voters chose Trump, who carried every precinct in the county along the states Southern border with Georgia. Clintons percentages were best in the county seat of Franklin, but even then she received less than a third of any precincts votes. Although Trump carried Transylvania County, like neighboring Jackson the result was closer than in many other WNC counties, with the president-elect claiming 59 percent of the votes to about 37 percent for Clinton. The Democratic nominee carried a majority in three precincts in the largest town, Brevard, home to Brevard College, but she trailed badly in most other parts of the county. Trump was especially dominant in Cherokee County where he had nearly 77 percent of the vote, while Clinton claimed only about 20 percent. Trumps support fell below 70 percent only in the countys solitary appreciable population center, the small town of Murphy. Counties below 25,000 population In the regions eight smallest counties, with virtually no sizable towns, the Trump vote was pervasive. These victories may be small because the populations dont add up to much in comparison to the margins in bigger counties. But when Clinton carried a large county like Buncombe by 19,000 votes with a 54 percent to 40 percent age, the margins in these small counties where Trump generally won more than 60 to 78 percent of the vote, start to add up and surpass Clintons weaker margins in the areas where she was strongest. Trump carried all precincts in Madison County with 60 percent of the countywide vote. However, he led Clinton by just a slim margin in the precinct around Hot Springs. The only other precinct where Clinton did better than 40 percent of the vote was in the largest town, Mars Hill, home to Mars Hill University. Trump had nearly 62 percent of the vote in Polk County, on the South Carolina line. However, the town of Tryon went narrowly for Clinton. Yancey County on the Tennessee line saw Trump claim 64 percent to just 32 percent for Clinton. However, the countys southernmost precinct around the town of Burnsville gave Trump only a narrow majority of about 54 percent. Just to the northeast in Avery County, Trump was much more dominant with about 76 percent of the vote, claiming more than 90 percent in several precincts along the state line. Only in three precincts near Newland did Clinton score better than 20 percent. While the peak of Mt. Mitchell is actually in Yancey County, one of Trumps highest points may have come in nearby Mitchell County where he garnered almost 78 percent of the vote versus less than 20 percent for Clinton. She performed moderately better in the southern portions of the county, but wasnt competitive anywhere in Mitchell. Swain County, home to the majority of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, is unique among western counties as the only one with a substantial ethnic minority Native Americans make up about 29 percent of the population. Although Trump won the county easily with about 58 percent of the vote, Clinton led in the eastern precinct around Cherokee, with a 48 percent plurality. Clay County may not have many voters, but they overwhelmingly backed Trump, who scored about 74 percent of the vote to just under 23 percent for Clinton. Clintons best showing was in the precinct that includes the southern portion of Hayesville, but even there she could claim only about 27 percent of the vote. Graham is the regions smallest, but it was the most heavily lopsided in favor of any candidate, with Trump taking almost 79 percent of the vote to just 18 percent for Clinton, who did not break 20 percent in any precincts. Third parties Some early analysis of the vote in WNC speculated that Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson might pick up some sizable vote totals from voters who had previously backed libertarian-leaning Republicans, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. That didnt happen. Johnson did relatively well in Watauga County with more than 4 percent of the vote and nearly that level of support in two counties with large Native American populations, Swain and Jackson. While still miniscule, that was well above the 2.7 percent support Johnson received statewide. Green Party candidate Jill Stein didnt make the ballot in North Carolina and was forced to run as a write-in, potentially blunting her ability to grab votes in places like Buncombe, which has been a haven of green activism in the Southeast. The usual plethora of write-in protest votes also could be expected, with perpetual also-ran Mickey Mouse vying with Harambe the gorilla and others vying for throw-away votes in what was billed as one of the most consequential votes in U.S. history. Why the West mattered Most of North Carolinas voters do not reside in the 19 counties that CPP defines as Western North Carolina, but in the other 81 counties, especially in the great Piedmont Crescent of densely populated counties that stretches along Interstate 85 from Charlotte to Greensboro to Raleigh. Those populous areas mostly went blue, or bluish-purple. Rural suburban counties like Cabarrus, Alamance and Lee went for Trump, but not by the large margins seen in the West. Coastal areas, like the mountains, were red. The heavily African American counties in the northeastern corner of the state and along the central southern border remained their traditional blue. Trump won the state with a roughly 177,000 vote advantage. About half of that margin came from the 19 WNC counties, with the rest coming from the rural interior counties or those along the coast. The Republican candidates ability to mobilize pockets of rural voters into a winning statewide majority, as well as the Democratic candidates inability to excite sufficient numbers of urban voters, shaped the outcome in this election, one in which North Carolina was a pivotal state. Whether one loves or hates the outcome, the mountains loomed large and refused to be forgotten. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket By Bob Garver Of all the surefire blockbusters of 2016, Trolls was probably the one I was dreading the most. If youre a parent whose kids are this films target audience, youve probably been dreading it too. This is a film designed to revive an annoyingly cute toy line that we all thought we had left in the past. And the early trailers didnt help: nauseatingly colorful little goofs with their trademark wispy hair dancing up a storm. Every adult knows that the most sickening part of animated kids movies, even the good ones, is the inevitable dance party at the end. The bad news is that Trolls is every bit the buffet of cinematic junk food you think it is. The good news is that you go numb to it pretty quickly, and then you can appreciate the things the movie does right. Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) throws a big obnoxious party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her father (Jeffrey Tambor) saving the entire troll race from being eaten by their mortal enemy, the hideous Bergens. An unhappy troll named Branch (Justin Timberlake) warns her that if the party is too bright and loud, it will lead the remaining Bergens right to them. Poppy brushes him off, throws the party, and watches as her friends are carried off by the Bergens royal chef (Christine Baranski), who was banished for letting the trolls escape 20 years ago and is now bent on redemption and revenge. The airheaded Poppy has at least inherited her fathers determination to never leave a troll behind, so she sets out on a mission to save her friends. But she cant do it alone, so she drags survivalist Branch along to help her. The two dont get along at first, because shes an optimist and hes a pessimist. Also, she loves to sing and he hates it. Everybody who actually thinks that the character voiced by Justin Timberlake wont love singing by the movies end, please do a backflip now. Poppy and Branch hatch a plan to save the captured trolls by helping a lowly Bergen kitchen maid named Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) woo her crush, the miserable King Gristle (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who is perpetually unhappy because hes never gotten to eat a troll. Maybe if Poppy and Branch can help Bridget and Gristle fall in love, they wont need to eat trolls to be happy and then everybody can be happy without anybody getting eaten. Everybody, that is, except the poor chef who was just as troll-hungry as everyone else in the kingdom and had to be homeless for 20 years. The movie cant think of an outcome where she can be happy, so it just treats her as a villain unworthy of happiness. The story is entirely predictable, from the celebrations to the hardships to the supposed twists to the gradual relationship between Poppy and Branch. Along the way there are musical numbers and hair gags aplenty. Some of the songs are fun (I laughed heartily when Poppy took a request literally), but this movie cant come up with nearly as many interesting things to do with hair as say, Tangled. Much more imaginative is the danger that Poppy and Branch face on their way to the Bergen kingdom. A wide variety of creatures want to eat the trolls, but theyre so greedy that they end up eating each other. This leads to some delightfully dark humor, as the filmmakers probably wanted to reward themselves for putting up with so much cutesiness in other scenes. Trolls is mostly kiddie stuff, though adults will be able to appreciate a handful of scenes. Im not saying it ever gets to that next level where adults can watch it by themselves and find value in it, but it shows occasional flashes of brilliance. And Im not above saying that a tiny bit of the constant happiness is infectious. Two Stars out of Five. Trolls is rated PG for some mild rude humor. Its running time is 92 minutes. Contact Bob Garver at [email protected]. And check out more reviews at the newly-updated www.bobatthemovies.com. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket (Bloomberg) Hedge funds and some of the worlds biggest emerging-market bond investors are girding for a fight with Mozambique and its other creditors. The countrys attempt to reach a restructuring agreement by the end of the year suffered a blow when a group of five investors, who hold 60 percent of its $727 million of Eurobonds, said the notes should be treated differently from loans to two state companies and talks couldnt begin until an International Monetary Fund program was in place. To read this article: Sebastian Tynkkynen, the chairperson of the Finns Party Youth, has been charged with ethnic agitation and breach of the sanctity of religion for publishing a series of inflammatory writings on Facebook. Tynkkynen in his writings is considered to have disparaged, slandered and threatened Muslims and offended them by defaming and disgracing several holy aspects of Islam, according to a press release from the Office of the Prosecutor General. The outspoken politician, who was relieved of his duties as deputy chairperson for lashing out at his party leadership roughly a year ago, has denied the accusations. He appeared on a live stream broadcast on Friday, accusing the legal system of not treating all religions equally and claiming that the only religion that can be criticised and even disparaged is Christianity. Toiviainen, meanwhile, reminds that the freedom of speech does not afford policy-makers participating in the public debate the right to employ hate speech against an entire religious group, as by doing so they breed contempt and religious intolerance-based hatred. The Finns Party is no stranger to charges brought against its members. Teuvo Hakkarainen (PS), a second-term Member of Parliament from Viitasaari, was charged with ethnic agitation earlier this month for a writing published on Facebook, while Terhi Kiemunki (PS), a Councillor for the City of Tampere, is facing the same charge for a blog published earlier this year. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Roni Rekomaa Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi A leading homelessness campaigner has said that Dubliners who lived in the tenements were afforded more dignity than families forced to share a hotel room. Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, who has worked with the homeless community for decades, said something must be done urgently to stem the flow of people into homelessness. Awful "It's not that they are in a B&B. They have one room and there might be three, four or five children. They have no place to play, no place to cook," she told the Herald. "They don't mix with others. It isn't like having a room in a hotel. It's awful. Housing Minister Simon Coveney has consistently said the Government's new policies on homelessness will need time to work, but Sr Stan said more urgent action is needed. "Really, they have to think about something immediately to stop the flow," she said. "Secondly, they need an immediate response to people, to provide them with a decent place to stay where they can live with dignity. "It's about rent, really, and something needs to be done about that. Otherwise, the numbers will just increase and increase. "A year ago I was here saying this. This is the job of the politicians - that's what we elect them for. "I hear people say, 'Sure, aren't they grand', but it's not like you or I taking a room in a hotel. It's totally different. "Go back to the worst days of the tenements where you had all of the families living in one building. "At least they had the dignity of a community. They knew each other, they grew up with each other. Community "This is totally different. They are in rooms separated from other people. It's quite different." Sr Stan was speaking at the launch of Focus Ireland's Christmas Appeal, as the charity revealed its teams have helped 230 families and almost 450 children in Dublin to secure a home this year with the help of the homeless executive. Donations to the charity can be made at focusireland.ie or by calling 1850 204 205. The new image, in Banskys distinctive style, on a mural Has famous underground artist Banksy paid a visit to a Dublin community for his latest installation? Kilbarrack community centre members who work with young people certainly think so. The Kilbarrack Coast Community Programme (KCCP) is a youth project with support from the HSE and Department of Social Protection. The group works with young adults with drug, alcohol and gambling addictions and provides after-school programmes for younger children. Disappointed However, when access to an overflow car park beside the centre was recently blocked off by a newly-installed metal fence, the children were denied a playground. Manager and psychotherapist at KCCP, Tiernan Williams, said the young people were disappointed when they saw the fence. "There was always an agreement that we would have access (to the playground)," Mr Williams said. In response, young people at the centre prepared a short film entitled Kilbarrack's Ode To Banksy, which was uploaded to YouTube. "The lads appealed to Bansky as they liked his social conscience," said Mr Williams. Shortly after making their appeal, a new image in the distinctive style of Banksy appeared on a recent mural to commemorate the Easter Rising 100 years ago. Nobody has claimed responsibility, but many believe it to be the work of the activist. Mural "We don't know if it's him but it's definitely in his style. "Local security men (at the adjacent shopping centre) saw three guys in balaclavas the night before (it appeared)," Mr Williams said. The new work on the mural has since been transferred inside the community centre but Mr Willams said the team had not yet decided what to do with it. "We might put it up for sale, we're still undecided. "It could be used to raise funds for a proper playground," he said. Elidas and wife Elvyra with Chance and Bucci who were saved by brave firemen Picture: Gerry Mooney Two pet dogs survived a blaze that destroyed a first-floor apartment, thanks to firefighters. Yorkshire terriers Chance and Bucci owe their lives to Dublin Fire Brigade and the vets who treated them for free at the Hillcrest Veterinary Hospital and University College Dublin (UCD). Owners Elidas Kekys (36), an IT worker, and his wife Elvyra Kekiene (32), a store manager, expressed their gratitude to everyone who helped save them. The incident happened at the couple's apartment in Waterville, Blanchardstown, when they took their daughter, Ieva (3), for a doctor's appointment, leaving a dehumidifier on. "We came back about two hours later and the whole apartment was on fire. It was an electrical fire, we think, started by a dehumidifier fault," said Kekys. "I told a fireman that the dogs were inside, but they couldn't find them. "I said to try looking under the bed. I have a friend who's a fireman and he said that's where dogs hide. "They went back and they found them under the bed. They were both unconscious but still breathing." After getting the dogs out, the firefighters gave them oxygen before they were transferred to the veterinary hospital in Coolmine. "The dogs were not in good shape," said Mr Kekys. Bucci made a good recovery after two days, but Chance was still fighting for his life. The dogs were transferred to UCD where they received specialist care and are now home with the family, who have moved to Sandymount. Bravery Mr Kekys said they wanted to thank the firefighters for their bravery and the staff at Hillcrest and UCD for an "extraordinary job". He said vet Fiona O'Leary cared for the dogs at her home on the first night and, singled out Stephanie Larkin and Mark Coulter for special praise. "We felt we had to keep those dogs alive as they were all the family had left after losing their home," said Ms O'Leary. "Luckily, all five of them from the family are still around." Ibrahims next hearing will be on his 21st birthday Taoiseach Enda Kenny says he will again speak to the Egyptian president over the African country's continued detention of Dublin student Ibrahim Halawa. It will be the latest in a series of contacts in the case between Mr Kenny and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mr Kenny has twice raised the case in face-to-face meetings with el-Sisi and has also written to him over delays in Halawa's trial, which was delayed again yesterday. The case has been adjourned until December 13, Ibrahim's 21st birthday. Disappointed Mr Kenny said he was very disappointed at the 16th adjournment in the case and he said el-Sisi had told him that he could not interfere in Egypt's judicial process. "He [el-Sisi] has said he can only use his presidential pardon powers once the case has been delivered on," said the Taoiseach. He said the Government is also supporting an appeal for the student's deportation to Ireland under Egyptian law 140. "I am concerned about this. It seems to be a case of a different issue every time there is a postponement of the case. We would like to see the case heard so that there can be a conclusion to it," said Mr Kenny. "It is my intention to contact president el-Sisi again as a matter of urgency, probably in the next week." Halawa was arrested in August 2013 at a protest in a mosque in Cairo. Egypt has denied claims he has been tortured. The case was adjourned at the weekend because some of the 493 co-accused were unable to appear in court. The student's London-based barrister Katie O'Byrne said she wasn't surprised by the latest delay in the case. Evidence "It is not legitimate to hold a trial for 494 people in a mass trial and it is not legitimate to delay a case for three-and-a-half years," said the lawyer. "We're not aware there is any evidence at all against our client, which underlines the point he cannot have a fair trial." She told RTE news it is still unclear what specific charges Halawa faces because of the limited documents released by the Egyptian prosecutors. Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said he spoke to the Egyptian ambassador at the weekend to protest about the latest delay in the case. Ireland's Ambassador to Egypt, Damien Cole, led an Embassy observer team at the hearing. Embassy officials have attended all hearings to date. "Our understanding is that the trial has been adjourned until December 13 as a number of the defendants were not present in the court. This is linked to heightened security concerns in Cairo, following planned protests," said Mr Flanagan. "Our priority remains to see this young man returned to Ireland and to his family as soon as possible. "The Government will continue to use every possible opportunity to underline our concerns about this case to the Egyptian authorities, both bilaterally and with the EU and other partners." Halawa has spent 1,184 days in prison. Amnesty International has declared him a prisoner of conscience based on its own eye-witness evidence "that he could not have carried out the acts he is accused of". Acclaimed director Jim Sheridan said he is deeply saddened by the ongoing gangland feud between the Hutch and Kinahan gangs that has erupted in his old neighbourhood. The 67-year-old is the eldest of seven siblings who grew up in a modest house on Seville Place in Dublin's north inner city. Despite his success as Ireland's most prolific film maker - with six Oscar nominations to his credit for such films as My Left Foot, In The Name Of The Father, The Field and In America - Sheridan has never forgotten his roots. Over the last year, the area has been blighted by an unprecedented wave of gangland violence. Speaking to the Herald at the opening of the Dublin Arabic Film Festival - which he curated - on Friday night, Sheridan said he is still in touch with his old friends and neighbours from the area, whom he said are "all upset and scared to go out" following the spate of gangland murders in the area. While he said his old stomping ground around Sheriff Street was always a bit of a war zone, he said he is dismayed by the gangs' brutality during the feud which has claimed 10 lives so far. Fighting "It's very upsetting but it's kind of about people who live outside Ireland and their interests are not in this country," he told the Herald. "I think the people are fighting each other over territory outside of Ireland, drug control maybe, I don't know. "But it's manifesting itself here and it's very sad. You'd like to see it end. "It's just sad to see what's happening to that area of the city," he said. "I love Ballybough, I love Sheriff Street. But sure there's been a war in Sheriff Street for years and years," he said. It has been in and around Mr Sheridan's old street, Seville Place, where gardai have mounted heavily armed Emergency Response Unit (ERU) checkpoints to prevent further gangland violence since the Regency Hotel shooting spree. Children are being forced to walk to school past armed gardai brandishing Koch MP7s - a new breed of so-called Personal Defence Weapon that can penetrate the type of body armour and armoured vehicles used by underworld thugs. The checkpoints are part of round-the-clock patrols in the north inner city and south-west city where the Hutch and Kinahan gangs are based. The government has intervened in the north inner city area and a task force is examining ways to improve the area. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has also spent time meeting community leaders there. The scene close to where the attack took place in Swords A young woman on her way to work narrowly escaped serious injury during an early-morning assault in a Dublin suburb. The attack took place in Swords shortly before 7am yesterday when the woman, aged in her 30s, was assaulted by an unknown man. She managed to escape from her attacker and a cyclist was able to help her. Shaken It is understood the victim escaped with minor injuries but was left "very shaken" by the incident. A source said gardai did not know whether the motivation for the attack was a sexual assault or a robbery. CCTV in the area has been collected and is being examined by officers investigating the incident. The attacker has been described as a man wearing a grey hoodie. The area is close to a number of businesses and is usually busy with traffic. Gardai are appealing for witnesses to the incident or to people who may have seen a man matching the attacker's description in the area to get in touch. "Gardai would like anyone who was in the area of the R132, particularly between Balheary Road and Seatown Roundabout, to contact them at Swords Garda Station on 01 666 4700," a spokesman said. Local Independent councillor Justin Sinnott said he has been fighting for an increase in garda numbers in the area. "What strikes me most of all is we're seeing an incremental increase in that type of crime and it comes down to the fact that resources in the guards, especially in north Dublin, are very, very stretched," he said. Complaints "When you see incidents like this, it does come back to how are we detecting this type of crime and are we resourcing the police enough?" He said he has been receiving an increasing number of complaints about minor crimes, which he fears feed into bigger incidents such as yesterday's attack. "It's having a kind of a snowball effect that is concerning and incidents like this are deeply concerning. It's really troubling," said Mr Sinnott. A guide to voter rights in Indiana. What you need to know before you cast a ballot elections This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/ An army jawan onboard the GT Express said he was thrown out of the speeding train in Betul district by three men after they looted Rs 100 notes from him. The Andhra Pradesh-bound jawan, identified as Mallikarjun Nupur, was shifted to district hospital Betul for treatment. Meanwhile, government railway police (GRP) ASI Sheikh Maqsool denied Nupurs claims, accusing him of changing his statements and that when questioned, the jawan had not been sure about how he had fallen off the train. Armed men loot sacks of salt in Morena Sacks of salt kept outside shops at two locations in Morena were reportedly looted by unidentified men amid rumours about shortage of the essential commodity. However, no complaint has been registered so far, police said. The incidents took place at Sabji Mandi (vegetable market) and Jiwajigang Market under Kotwali Police Station area around midnight, eyewitnesses said. Masked men in pick-up vehicles came to the two markets, where shopkeepers keep gunny bags of salt outside their outlets at night, and looted those, eyewitnesses said. The shopkeepers have not yet reported about the loot. If they approach us we will investigate the matter, Kotwali police station inspector Ajay Chanana said. Two days ago, the Centre had dismissed rumours of shortage of salt in the market and said adequate stocks are available across the country. New Rs 500 notes rolled out in Bhopal The State Bank of India branch in Bhopals TT Nagar rolled out the first set of the newly issued Rs 500 notes on Sunday. With this, the people will have some respite. The work will be faster now. Till now, we were only giving Rs 100 notes. It was also taking up a lot of time. The people were really excited to receive the new Rs 500 note. It is a historic moment for all of us, a bank employee said. It is a relief for us because small vendors and shopkeepers are not accepting Rs 2,000 bills due to a liquidity crunch, but it is easy to get change for Rs 500, said Savita Joshi, a housewife. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said there is enough cash available in small denominations at banks, adding that the people must not be anxious and need not come over to banks repeatedly to draw and hoard cash. The Reserve Bank of India assures members of the public that enough cash in small denominations are also available at the Reserve Bank and banks. The Reserve Bank urges that public need not be anxious; need not come over to banks repeatedly to draw and hoard. Cash is available when they need it, RBI said in a statement. RBIs announcement comes as anger of the public intensified on Sunday, with banks struggling to dispense money. Cong workers serve water, tea to people in queues With residents facing major hardships due to the paucity of cash in the wake of the demonetisation move, the Congress in Madhya Pradesh set up stalls outside some banks on Sunday and served refreshments to those standing in long queues. We had put some stalls in front of banks in the state capital, including Jahangirabad and Bairagarh localities, and served water and tea to people, especially senior citizens, said Congress district president and state unit party general secretary PC Sharma. The days when actresses used to hide their baby bumps are long past, thanks to the likes of Kareena Kapoor Khan and Genelia DSouza. Kareena made headlines when she walked the ramp with a baby bump at a fashion week a few months ago. A source reveals that the actor is all set to flaunt her body again, but on the cover of a reputed womens magazine this time. Kareena was recently seen on the cover of a bridal magazine with her husband, Saif Ali Khan. But for her next cover, Kareena is going solo. She sported traditional clothing on the cover of the magazine earlier, but she will now be seen in a long, flowy gown on the upcoming cover. The actor shot for the cover last week and the issue will be released in December, the source says. #comingsoon#hellomagazine#october#cover #sisterlove @hellomagindia @manishmalhotra05 A photo posted by KK (@therealkarismakapoor) on Oct 1, 2016 at 1:29am PDT The source adds that the new cover will be the actors last shoot for the year. Kareena was signed to appear on 11 magazine covers, and the number then went up to 14. The actor has been in demand by this particular womens magazine for a long time. But as she was busy with other shoots and advertisement endorsements, this shoot couldnt pan out until this month. The ultimate showstopper #babysister#stunninglybeautiful#behindthescenes#backstage#lfw2016#grandfinale #bothinsabyasachi@sabyasachiofficial@tanghavri A video posted by KK (@therealkarismakapoor) on Aug 28, 2016 at 10:46am PDT Kareena could not be reached for comment. Writer-director Sujoy Ghosh is ready with the sequel of his National award-winning film Kahaani (2012). In his sixth film as director, Sujoy has once again cast his muse, Vidya Balan. Anxious about his film and glad about his friendship with the actor, Sujoy explains about his process of creating women-centric stories. With Kahaani 2s release being around the corner, how does it make you feel? I am feeling a bit scared. Prior to the release, there are many other things that you (film-maker) are doing and once the film releases, the feeling is similar to how a child grows up and leaves home. If its a good film, people will appreciate it. The definition of sequels or franchise films in Bollywood is not definite For Kahaani 2, I would say its in the same genre of Kahaani. It took us so long to find the right story to make another film with the Kahaani stamp. The first film was an audience property as it doesnt belong to me or Vidya. here is the #Kahaani2Trailer for you.. we hope we haven't let you down.. with love & gratitude..https://t.co/p3Pn2Cv1Ik sujoy ghosh (@sujoy_g) October 25, 2016 Kahaanis success did wonders for Vidyas career. How did it work for you? Kahaani did nothing for me. But it gave happiness to my mother who felt her son was finally doing something. My familys happiness means a lot as when I am working on a film, they suffer a lot as they put up with me and my work timings. So, its great when they get a chance to celebrate. In an interview, Vidya said she appreciates the way you understand women and your characters arent gender stereotypes. I was fortunate to be brought up by two mothers (birth mother and foster mother) and they are incredibly strong people who have struggle and fight it out in life. They have inculcated in me to respect other women and see them as individuals. They do everything that any human being can do, so it reflects in my stories. I dont consciously make women equal to men but I think my writings reflect my understanding of women. I didnt notice this till Vidya pointed out. sunday morning love you with MEHRAM.. https://t.co/WXsRImqvq8 sujoy ghosh (@sujoy_g) November 13, 2016 SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two leading bank unions criticised the government on Monday over demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, saying the move has led to financial chaos across the country. In a letter to Indian Banks Association (IBA), All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) said the decision to withdraw the high-value notes was taken without proper planning or preparation. They also highlighted heavy work pressure on employees and officers at bank branches in the wake of demonetisation which has led to customers rushing to exchange the now defunct notes. Chaotic situation is prevailing at the bank branches and this is unbearable for both customers as well as bank employees and officers, S Nagarajan, general secretary of AIBOA, and CH Venkatachalam, his counterpart at AIBEA, said in the letter to IBA, the apex body of bank managements. There is a huge shortage of Rs 100 notes which are now in great demand for routine needs, while most customers are not willing to accept the new Rs 2,000 bill, they said. The Centre and the Reserve Bank must be fully aware that already there is a huge gap between the indent and supply of Rs 100 notes. For example, in 2015-16, as against the indent of 535 crore pieces of Rs 100 notes, the supply received was only to the tune of 490 crore pieces, according to the letter. One cannot understand the reason behind banning the existing Rs 500 notes and not providing new supply of Rs 500 notes in time, it added. Most of the 2.20 lakh ATMs across the country are closed or partly functional. This has put additional pressure on the staff and customers are compelled to visit branches to withdraw cash from their accounts, the two unions said. Nagarajan and Venkatachalam requested the IBA to ensure the RBI supplies adequate cash in denominations of Rs 100 and new Rs 500 notes to ease pressure on banks and provide relief to customers. As panic spread with ATMs turning dry and thousands queuing up at banks to withdraw and exchange cash, the government has set up two separate panels-- one under the Reserve Bank of India deputy governor SS Mundra and the other one, a seven member team comprising seven secretaries and joint secretaries of the finance ministry. While the RBI panel will monitor the recalibration exercise of the ATMs so that they can start dispensing currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2000 at the earliest, the committee of finance ministry officials will focus on currency distribution in the rural areas. The number of ATMs which will be recalibrated and which can dispense Rs 2,000 notes will be stepped up and to make this whole process faster, to expedite this whole process, a task force was decided to be set up under the chairmanship of deputy governor (of RBI), Shaktikanta Das, secretary, department of economic affairs said at a press conference. There are 2.17 lakh ATMs in the country. Most of them still need to be recalibrated to be able to dispense the new currency notes that come in different designs and features. Meanwhile, senior officials in the finance ministry have been also allocated different states and banks with the purpose of reviewing the situation on a daily basis. Das said that the officials have been asked to come up with action plan to resolve the situation. With the demonetisation exercise hitting its sixth day on Monday, things were far from normal with citizens facing different problems of liquidity. Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had held a meeting with senior ministers and government officials to review the progress of the demonetization exercise. The operation to mop up old 500 and 1,000 notes will end on December 30, but the government will continue to monitor your bank accounts for large cash transactions well beyond that date. The stated purpose of demonetisation is a surgical strike on black money. This is part of the governments on-going war against illegal money circulating in the economy, said revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia. But we will not stop at this, there are several other proposals being considered to stub out black money. The basic principle of the action plan drawn up by finance ministry is to monitor all data relating to cash transactions and cash holdings of individuals, and for this purpose the government will keep a hawks eye on cash withdrawals and deposits. The 2.5 lakh limit on cash deposits will be increased, but will be accompanied by silent scrutiny. Strict monitoring of cash withdrawals and deposits at banks will be deterrent for large cash holding among people, said a senior finance ministry functionary. He said there is no end-date after which such scrutiny would be tapered off. In effect, any cash transaction of that you make would be noted. At present, Reserve Bank of India mandates all banks to maintain suspicious transaction reports (STR) for all cash transactions above 10 lakh. Simply put, if an individuals cash deposits or transactions in a bank total over 10 lakh in a financial a year, the data will be captured in the STR and shared with financial intelligence unit under the finance ministry. The limit of 10 lakh will now be reduced. Till December 30, all cash deposits over 2.5 lakh are being monitored, after that this limit will be increased but it will be lower than 10 lakh, said a senior officer in the finance ministry, who did not wish to be named. Any mismatch of deposits with declared income will attract 30% tax and 200% penalty, with imprisonment being a possibility, the official said, adding a likely figure being discussed is 6 lakh per year. The Union Budget of 2016 had mandated that the PAN would need to be quoted for jewellery purchases on cash above 2 lakh. To tighten the system further, sources in the government say that now, jewellers will be asked to disclose their stock holding and sales at regular intervals. These are mainly jewellers who have been on the radar of the intelligence departments, the official quoted earlier told HT. The SIT has already proposed that PAN be mandatory for all cash transactions above 2 lakh. Real estate and gold are the two additional focus areas for the government after cash, to stamp out black money from the economy, said Girish Vanvari, national head of tax for KPMG. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday that the government will next crackdown on benami property that is, property that the buyer does not register in his own name, holding it in the sellers name with a power-of-attorney that makes subsequent sale easier. The property buyer saves on stamp duty, and the seller, who takes a big part of the payment in unaccounted and undeclared cash, saves by not paying tax. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON International industrial and metals group Liberty House has formally reopened a steelworks in Wales that shut down a year ago when its former owner, Caparo Steel Products, went into administration. Liberty is resuming the production of steel structural hollow sections and tubes at the plant in Tredegar with support from the Welsh Government in a move that will create around 70 new jobs directly and many more in the supply chain. Liberty House is one of the leading suitors for Tata Steels UK assets, whose sale process is currently underway, including negotiations with pension funds. Wales first minister Carwyn Jones, who was accompanied by Libertys executive chairman, Sanjeev Gupta, at the event, described it as a great boost for the area and for the steel industry in Wales. The site, which includes a 100,000 tonnes a year rolling mill, was one of a number of former Caparo Steel Products sites acquired by Liberty from the administrators in late 2015. Liberty is investing 3.7 million in refurbishing and updating the facility which is backed by 600,000 business finance from the Welsh Government. Gupta said: The steel industry globally continues to face severe challenges. The sharp rise in raw material prices means that margins for producers are worse than ever and we foresee challenging times ahead. However the United Kingdom is a mature market with customers demanding sophisticated products and exemplary service. We have the skills and capability here to serve our home market with high quality products on a competitive basis provided we can operate on a level playing field against our international competitors. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Delhi: If you thought that public sector units always lead by example, think again. Theres at least one area where they are missing the yardsticks by at least a mile corporate governance. Sebi regulations and the Companies Act, 2013 have laid down specific rules on corporate governance. But surprisingly, companies where the government still holds majority stake, do not comply with this. An analysis of the top 32 central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), which are part of the BSE 500 companies (excluding public sector banks), shows that as many as 26 companies do not have the mandated number of independent directors on their boards.In another case, as many as seven CPSEs did not have a woman director on board as of March 31, 2016. SEBI (LODR) Regulations, 2015 require at least half of the board of directors to be independent, if the chairman is an executive director; according to rules, it is compulsory to have at least one woman director on board. Sample this. Public sector major GAIL, which has a board size of 10, has only four independent directors and no woman director as of March 31, 2016. The last woman director had quit the board in January 2016. GAIL, a CPSE under the petroleum ministry, said in its annual report 2015-16: Government of India is seized of the matter pertaining to appointment of the requisite number of independent directors including woman director on the board of the company. The Government of India is in process of selecting requisite number of independent directors including woman director. NHPC, MMTC, Container Corp and Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilisers are among the central PSUs, which do not have adequate number of independent directors and woman director on board. At least 215 independent directors either resigned or were not re-appointed since 2013-14, according to Prime Database. According to corporate governance experts, the process of appointing a director on the board of a CPSE is an elaborate process. Both the department of personnel and training (DoPT) and the home ministry are involved in the process along with the nodal ministry that governs the concerned company. In case of a vacancy, the nodal ministry recommends at least three people for each post to the DoPT. A search committee headed by the DoPT secretary finally selects the candidate. The panel comprises the DPE (Department of Public Enterprises) secretary, secretary of the nodal ministry (which governs the CPSE) and 2 non-official members. A top official of the DoPT told HT that there were a quite a few vacancies, and these would be filled very soon. We are in the final stages of inter-ministerial consultations and this process would be concluded very soon, said the official quoted above. The companies mentioned in this story did not respond to HTs requests for comments. During 2015-16 (till November), the search committee had met six times and recommended names for filling up 143 positions of non-official directors on boards of various CPSE, according to the annual report (2015-16) of the Department of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise. The government, being the largest shareholder, is not showing any intent. The ministries and the bureaucracy take inordinate times in appointing directors, said Shriram Subramanian, managing director of InGovern Research, a proxy advisory firm. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs exempts CPSEs from various corporate governance disclosures otherwise mandated by the Companies Act, 2013. Some of these exemptions include exemption from pay-ratio and board evaluation disclosures in annual reports and exemption from restricting independent directors from having pecuniary relationships with the said companies. Sources in the above mentioned companies, on conditions of anonymity, said while most CPSEs are listed companies, in spirit they are dependent mostly on the government for even their day-to-day functioning. Fewer independent directors on boards of listed companies also lead to non-compliance of corporate governance measures, such as independence of crucial committees (see graphic). 12 CPSEs do not have enough independent directors in audit and nomination and remuneration committees; Also, six CPSEs do not have a single independent director on corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee. Both these are against Sebi rules. Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), for instance, could not constitute these three crucial committees for the entire financial year as independent directors resigned one after the other. The audit committee had become non-functional as a result, no audit committee meetings were held in financial year 2015-2016. according to SCIs annual report for 2015-16. Similarly, CSR and nomination and remuneration committees were also not constituted and no meetings were conducted in the whole of last financial year. CPSEs are governed by the ministry, despite being listed companies; the accountability has not really changed for them. The ministry and the listed CPSEs are still accountable to Parliament. Consequently, market expectations and Sebis rules become secondary. But CPSEs must appreciate that public shareholders have expectations regarding governance standards, and on this, investors must not be short-changed, says Amit Tandon, managing director, institutional investor advisory services (IiAS), a proxy advisory firm. (with inputs from Aloke Tikku and Suchetana Ray) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The board of Tata Motors appeared to stay clear of an escalating feud between ousted Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry and group patron Ratan Tata on Monday, with independent directors unanimously approving the decisions taken by company, including on its small car, the Nano. The board meeting had assumed significance after Tata Sons, the Tata groups holding company, called for emergency general meetings to remove Mistry and independent director Nusli Wadia from Tata Motors. Mistry continues to be chairman of some group companies, including Tata Motors. The independent directors have confirmed that all decisions taken by the board with regard to strategy, operations and business of the company have been unanimous and executed by the chairman and the management accordingly, a Tata Motors statement said. Read | Tata Sons stooped low in doubting independent directors: Cyrus Mistry The stance indicates that Tata Sons and the chairman of Tata Motors did not escalate Mondays meeting, preferring to let matters be. People close to Mistry said the Tata Motors statement in a way backs what we have been saying that actions taken by Mr Mistry have improved the company. But others said the boards support for Nano, a pet project of Ratan Tata, should be seen as a setback for Mistry, who had criticised the strategy behind what was once the worlds cheapest car. Men ride a motorbike as they come out of a past a Tata Motors car plant at Sanand, Gujarat. (REUTERS) To be sure, however, the stand of the board of Tata Motor is a departure from that of the board meetings of Indian Hotels and Tata Chemicals, where independent directors supported Mistry, prompting censure from Tata Sons in the form of calls for the removal of Mistry and Wadia as directors. The independent directors have further affirmed that the company continues to be governed, supervised and managed under the guidance and direction of the board, the Tata Motors statement added. Read | Tatas say devious Mistry tried to gain control of group companies The management of the company and its subsidiaries have the full confidence and support of the independent directors. The countrys largest commercial vehicle maker swung to a consolidated net profit in the second quarter of FY 2015-16, backed by strong sales at Jaguar Land Rover and improved performance of new passenger car models launched by the Indian subsidiary. Tata Motors is crucial for the Tata group as 90% of its profits come from JLR and Tata Consultancy Services, which underscores the Tatas desire to have control of the automaker. Read | More support for Mistry after Indian Hotels episode? Tatas cautious SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Tata Motors is scheduled to hold its board meet today at 1:00 pm to approve second quarter results. The board meeting is also likely to discuss specific items regarding the removal of Cyrus Mistry and Nusli Wadia as directors of Tata Motors. On Nov 11, Tata Motors said it has received a requisition and a special notice, under Sections 100(2)(a) and 115 of the Companies Act, 2013, from Tata Sons for convening an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) for considering and passing resolutions for the removal of Mistry and Wadia as directors of the company. Tata Sons is the promoter company of Tata Motors its shareholding represents 26.51% of Tata Motors voting capital. The boardroom battle for control of the Tata group, which surfaced on October 24 after Tata Sons approved a resolution to oust Mistry as group chairman, has seen a series of charges and counter charges traded publicly between Tata Sons and Mistry. Mistry continues to be chairman of some group companies including Tata Motors. The battle intensified when independent directors of two group companies Indian Hotels and Tata Chemicals issued statements of support for Mistrys leadership, prompting Tata Sons to call for EGMs to oust him as director. Such a move will require shareholder approval and hence the notice for an EGM. The move to remove Wadia has been taken as Tata Sons has indicated that the veteran industrialist has been leading independent directors to support Mistry. Tata Motors, which also owns the highly profitable Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) unit, is crucial for the Tata group. The conglomerate gets 90% of its profits from TCS and JLR, which underscores the Tatas desire to have control. Big protests after elections are usually the hallmarks of countries with weak democratic systems. The United States can take justifiable pride in its robust electoral institutions and its centuries of continuous democratic practice. In the wake of Donald Trumps election, however, demonstrators have flocked to the streets of cities and university campuses across the country. An imminent Trump presidency has so alarmed many Americans that rallies against the president-elect may become a fixture of civic life in places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. These protests are not meant to challenge the legitimacy of the election (even though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly two million, Trump won the electoral college fairly). Rather, the protests send a clear message of disapproval. Huge swathes of the country see his presidency as abominable and as posing an unprecedented threat to the nation and the world. Read | Is Trumps tough plan on immigration cracking? My wife and I joined over 25,000 people on November 12 in a march up New Yorks Fifth Avenue to Trump Tower, the skyscraper which, if reports are to be believed, Trump would like to use as the headquarters of his presidency rather than the White House. Protestors had assembled at Trump Tower every day since his victory. An astonishingly thin-skinned man, Trump initially bristled at these demonstrations, dismissing marchers as professional protestors stirred by the media. Later, possibly coaxed by his staff into a more magnanimous mood, he tweeted that he respected the expression of free speech. Trumps attempts at presidential grace so far are stiff and unnatural, their veneer of decorum not masking the churning bile beneath. As happens in most public gatherings in New York City, the crowds that mobilised against Trump were remarkably diverse. The caricature of the liberal in American politics and the one deployed by Trump and his surrogates during the campaign is of an effete urbanite, typically white, well-off and out-of-touch. A city like New York helplessly belies such stereotypes. We marched alongside people of many ages, races, classes, and religions, from Spanish-chanting Puerto Ricans to black families pushing strollers to white men demanding shelter for refugees to students yelling about womens rights. It may be that manifestations of this kind become more pointed in the coming months, voicing concrete demands or pushing for specific legislation. But the protests in this first week since Trumps victory are still inchoate, swelling out of shock and surprise, a mustering of the varied, multicultural citizenry his campaign traduced. We were united by our horror at the elections outcome and by the resolve that in the absence of many traditional checks and balances, Trumps presidency must be challenged by an engaged public. Read | Trump to forgo $400,000 salary as US president, says will take $1 a year When he becomes president on January 20, Trump will have considerably more power than Barack Obama had for much of his presidency. Both houses of Congress are in Republican hands. Trumps agenda can be forced through the legislature that his party controls. After appointing a new Supreme Court justice, Trump will have a conservative-leaning judiciary as well. The many atrocious policy ideas floated through his campaign include the forceful deportation of over 10 million migrants; the use of torture; withdrawal from a gamut of international treaties and the shirking of Americas responsibilities to its allies; engaging in trade wars; reintroducing stop and frisk police practices that unconstitutionally target black and Latino males; abandoning efforts to curb climate change; banning Muslim immigration and creating a registry to track Muslim Americans; attacking organs of the press he deems antagonistic; and encouraging other nations to develop nuclear weapons. This mooted platform is the stuff of nightmares, altogether authoritarian, racist, xenophobic, and likely to spawn chaos at home and abroad. Even if just dimly reflected in the actions of his presidency, it promises barbarity and disaster. Read | Trump appears firm on agenda, says Americans have nothing to fear Trump is not just another president. He is a man who, by all accounts, has never read a book, has proven singularly incapable of basic human empathy, has exploited his employees, built his political career on racist smears of Obama, and stands accused by numerous women of sexual violence. The Ku Klux Klan is organising rallies across the country to celebrate his win. Of all the many ascendant Right-wing forces in western politics, Trump is the most extreme, the least disciplined, and the most empowered. And yet the democratic process is allowing Trump to be normalised. Obama graciously accepted him into the White House. In defeat, Clinton urged the country to unite under his stewardship. The broadcast media is beginning to place Trump within the benign frame of elected office. This isnt surprising. No matter how abhorrent, Trump is wholly the product of the democratic process. That is why I suspect there will continue to be protests across the country, to wake the public not only against the policies of this improbable president, but against the system that enthroned him. Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories. The views expressed are personal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Room number 101 at the School of Social Sciences (I) in Jawaharlal Nehru University is locked. On the door is a poster with a couplet by poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. So what if my pen has been snatched away from me, I have dipped my fingers in the blood of my heart. So what if my mouth has been sealed, I have turned every link of my chain a speaking tongue, reads the poster. The office of professor Archana Prasad, chairperson of Centre for Informal Sector and Labour studies (ISLS), the room has been locked since the day she was named in the murder of Chhattisgarh resident Shamnath Baghel. On November 4, Baghel was stabbed by alleged Maoists outside his house in Nama village, Bastar, Chhattisgarh -- over 1,500 kilometres away from Prasads first floor office in Delhi. Nandini Sundar, a professor in Delhi Universitys sociology department, is also named in the FIR. While the two have gone on leave, a Chhattisgarh police team is in the city to summon them for investigation. Last week, police claimed Baghels wife blamed the two professors for her husbands death. Baghel had filed a complaint seven months ago, accusing them of inciting villagers against the government. At Delhi university sociology department, Sundars colleagues are busy getting signatures on a petition against Chhattisgarh police. They say the police are framing the two professors. They have got 250 signatures, most of them sociologists from across the country. She has been framed for exposing human rights violations in the state against tribals. She is a genuine researcher who has travelled extensively. Through her PILs, the marginalised tribal people have found avenues to voice their grievances. She is being targeted because her view is contrary to that of the state, her colleague Satish Deshpande said. Deshpande said Sundar has been working for the tribals over two decades. Wife of journalist Siddhartha Vardarajan, Sundar was one of the petitioners in the case that led the Supreme Court to ban the state-sponsored vigilante group, Salwa Judum, in 2011. Read: Chhattisgarh top cop threatens HT journalist over Bastar reporting Sundars first book was on the anthropological history of Bastar. Her colleagues said she has been with Delhi University since 2005. Known to be an expert in tribal affairs, Sundar was a member of many fact-finding committees sent to states across India. One of her colleagues said that contrary to police allegations, her recent book, The Burning Forest: Indias war in Bastar, has been critical of Maoist actions. Read her latest book, she takes a neutral stand on the issue of Maoists. Sociology involves field work, which is why she has travelled across the country and not just Bastar. All of us travel to villages and interact with marginalized people, said Sudha Vasan, associate professor. Vasan said Sundar recently travelled to Jharkhand on a project. Should we stop travelling and meeting people? At JNU, the teachers union has been holding meetings to condemn the FIR against Prasad and firefight the state oppression. A JNU alumna, she had earlier worked at Jamia Milla Islamia University. She joined JNU in 2013. Till September, she was the chairperson of the ISLS. She is an expert on the history and study of tribals in India. She recently visited Maharashtra with our students for a research on how workers of informal sectors have no protection from the state, said her colleague Pradeep Shinde. A member of the research advisory committee of the ministry of tribal affairs said most of her books focus on modern tribal identity and development of societies in contemporary India. We are completely behind her and condemn the FIR. She is a writer and not a murderer. The state is targeting academicians, said Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Union President Bikramaditya Choudhary. Last Tuesday (November 7), when news broke out about the FIR against the two professors, Prasad reportedly applied for leave the next day till Friday (November 11). But she has not returned yet. Both her cell phones were switched off. There was no response on her residential landline. Inspector General (Bastar) SRP Kalluri told HT that the two professors would have to join investigation. Our teams are in different states, including Delhi, investigating the case. The charges against them are serious. If they do not join investigation, we will approach court for a warrant against them. Read: DU professor Nandini Sundar booked for murder of Chhattisgarh tribal Over the last few days, all talk inside the School of Social Sciences was about the professors and Bastar police. Twice on Wednesday (November 8), students gathered outside the chairpersons office when there were rumours of cops reaching the university campus. Near Prasads office, a group of students could be seen reminding passers-by of poet Martin Neimoller and his words: First they come for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communistthey came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. They came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialistThen they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Its Childrens Day and the Delhi governments project of enabling every child to read at the basic level comes to an end. But, work for the Capitals education minister, Manish Sisodia, has just begun. In conversation with HT, Sisodia talks about their flagship Chunauti scheme, the challenges they continue to face and the way forward. By November 14, all students in Delhi were supposed to know how to read under Chunauti 2018. What has been the result of this two-month long programme? From the reports given to me, I can say we have been able to turn more than 50% non readers into readers. They might not be too good at it, but have surely picked up the basics. However, an assessment will be conducted by school teachers only on November 15 and 16. By Thursday, I expect the accumulated data to reach me. After that, a third-party assessment of the entire system will be done by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT). Results from the schools and SCERT will be collated and then a final announcement will be made on November 30. Read: How a non-reader at a Delhi govt school turned into a reader What after November 30? Tailor made solutions wont work. Based on the outcome, we will see how to move further. Once a school achieves 100% readability, we will reshuffle the students in Class 7. The division of readers and non readers would go. I am sure there will also be aspects where we will have to improve upon. The second component of Chunauti, where Class 9 students are being helped, will go on. In that we, have identified students who cant read or have failed twice or more. Groups have been made for their special training. But, we wont let them sit for the regular exams in schools. They will be given study material and uniforms and will have to attend school from Monday to Friday. But they will be made to appear in their final exams in our Open School. This is because the level of curriculum toughness in Open School is lower than the regular schools. So, they will be able to pass, which we hope will boost their confidence. I plan to go big on the Reading Melas. Parents and youngsters are coming forward to teach children how to read. Read: New readers at Delhi govt schools make slow, steady progress What challenges were you confronted with? I faced challenges from officials of my own department. There has been a lot of mid-level resistance. Our system is slave of curriculum. When we were discussing how teachers would themselves have to take the responsibility, officials were worried about how they would complete their syllabus. We had to remind them repeatedly, focus on the basics first. We follow a system where teachers are given a timeline for chapters to be completed and also the way it is to be taught. I believe, teachers must be given some freedom so that they themselves take interest and also teach students in fun ways. Until that is achieved, I feel the no-detention policy for students up to Class 8 does not fit. We are not ready for it yet. Improving the quality of students is being taken care of, but what is being done for teachers? Apart from their subjects, the focus is on motivation. So, we have created a group of 200 Mentor Teachers for all our 1,011 schools. We picked up one best teacher from groups of five schools each. These mentors will be guiding teachers. The most important thing is that teachers need to improve their communication skill with students. Government data suggests schools are largely overcrowded. What is being done about it? We are creating more classrooms. 6,000 have already been built, whereas, 1,500 will be ready by the end of this month. 1,500 more will be ready in January. The Delhi government has called a special session of the Delhi assembly on Tuesday to discuss the fallout of the Centres decision to scrap 500 and 1000 notes even as chief minister Arvind Kejriwal reiterated his demand for the immediate withdrawal of the demonetisation scheme. Delhiites struggled for the sixth day for cash as banks and ATMs remain closed on Monday on account of the public holiday for Guru Purab. The chief minister chaired a hurriedly called cabinet meeting at his residence at which the state government decided to deploy about 5,000 civil defence volunteers to assist people standing in queues outside bank and ATMs with water and refreshment. The deployment will be done in a day or two, chief minister Kejriwal said. I have directed the divisional commissioners to explore possibilities of providing food to those in need and distress, Kejriwal told reporters after the cabinet meeting. Continuing his tirade against the Narendra Modi government, the CM referred to the announcement that cash was being dispatched to remote corners in IAF aircraft and said it showed how the Centre was now in a panic mode due to lack of proper planning. Kejriwal, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of the scheme, said only dalals (touts) were making merry amid the nationwide crisis and honest people were queuing up outside banks for their own money. We demand an immediate withdrawal of the scheme. The government can bring it later with better planning, Kejriwal said. The AAP leader warned the Centre that the continuation of the scheme risks a law and order problem and the Union government needs to come out with a solution soon. Read: Kejriwal, Sisodia rally behind traders, visit wholesale hubs Running down the Prime Ministers call seeking 50 days from the countrymen to cleanse the economy, Kejriwal said people were not ready to grant even 50 hours due to their sufferings. He said the decision had hit all sectors, including business and agriculture besides daily livelihood. I met several traders on Sunday who told me how difficult it has become for them to run their business with the withdrawal cap of R 24,000 per week. Farmers have been hit and there are uncertainties about how they would buy seeds, fertilizer etc. We dont see any solution coming, he said. The BJP criticised the announcements by the Delhi government. Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay said there is no logic to call an assembly session on the subject, which is not related to the Delhi government. It is a political drama. Kejriwal often calls assembly sessions on issues which has no connection with the Delhi government. It is established that Kejriwal is worst affected by the decision of demonetisation, he said. The deadline set by the Delhi government to enable children in its schools to read and write draws to an end on Monday but the jury is still out on the success of the scheme. When the deadline was set on September 5, many claimed that no concrete results would be achieved in such a short span; but many schools claimed they did make some progress. Hindustan Times spoke to teachers, students, parents and government officials to find what impact the scheme had on the ground. In July 2016, about two lakh students of Class 6 from 1,011 schools under the Directorate of Education were surveyed and it was found that 74% could not read a paragraph from their Hindi textbook, while 46% could not read a simple story prescribed for Class 2 students. Their English language and Math skills were no better either. Close to half the students could not subtract, if it involved borrowing and 5% had difficulty identifying even single digits. Read: Faced resistance from my own department over Chunauti scheme: Sisodia On September 30, schools conducted baseline tests, which examined students oral and reading skills in Hindi and English and tested their Math skills. The students were regrouped into readers and non readers by October 3, to give special attention to non readers. The teachers and principal at the Shaheed Hemu Kalani Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, claim that of the 59 students in classes 6 to 8 that they had identified as non readers, all except 7-10 students have shown some progress. Initially, I had 12 students in my class, of which three were absolute beginners. These students could not even identify the letters of the alphabet. Some others could read simple words, but could not read and comprehend longer sentences or complex paragraphs, claimed Vishnu Kumar, the class teacher of Class 8 non reader Nishtha section. Similarly, Vanadana Verma, who handles the Class 6 non reader section, said that she had 15 students. After a lot of individual attention, special exercises and sheer hard work, all my students have shown some progress, said Verma. Ali Raza is my star student. He is an Afghani, who could not even identify characters when he first came in. He can now read whole sentences and complex paragraphs. He faces some difficulty in pronunciation because of his different accent but his progress still has been remarkable, said Verma. Read: How a non-reader at a Delhi govt school turned into a reader The school officials maintain their work was no cakewalk. The first week was the hardest. We had to rebuild their entire basics. We had to start from scratch and teach them the letters of the alphabet, and ensure that they recognised and understood maatras, said Verma. Something had to be done. If we hadnt taken a pledge when we did, nobody would have. It is a big task but even if a few students benefit from the new scheme, is it not worth it? We were aiming for the moon so that even if we fall, we would land among the stars, said Saumya Gupta, director, DoE. While the results at Shaheed Hemu Kalani Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya sound promising, others claim it is just that; too good to be true. Literacy is not a mechanical exercise. Reading is not a skill that you can learn in a few weeks. It is a cognitive and linguistic practice that requires that you not only decode the letters and the words, but also be able to understand its complexity and meaning, claimed Janaki Rajan, professor at Jamia Millia Islamia. It needs to be seen if the students are just parroting the texts that have been taught to them in class. If they cant read any fresh, unseen texts, then we cant claim that they have made progress. Then it becomes training, not real education, said Rajan. Gupta claimed that though schools have been tracking the progress of students by conducting regular tests every week, the government will independently reassess all the students after Childrens Day. We will do test checks, and try to ascertain schools claims of progress. We should have definite data by the end of November, said Gupta. As arguably the most eccentric person to hold the most powerful political post in the world, every action of Donald Trump is being held up to tight scrutiny. Politicians everywhere regularly make promises and announce policies on the campaign trail that they dilute or jettison once they come to power. At times, the policies enacted are the polar opposites of what has been said in public. This practice has become so widespread that it is a reason why voters have turned to mavericks like Mr Trump there is an aura of authenticity about these non-establishment political figures. Read | Safety pins: A pointed show of solidarity after Trump election Mr Trump has been particularly difficult to read because he often took contradictory positions during the campaign. So far, he seems to be holding to three elements of his campaign platform. One is to make it much harder for immigrants to enter the United States most strikingly by building a physical wall on the Mexican border and to crack down on illegal migrants. Two, to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership and broadly shift the US to a trade policy in which unilateral actions are more prevalent. Three, to divest the US of its international obligations under the Paris agreement and other climate change deals. On the other hand, he has already begun watering down his earlier opposition to the healthcare programmes of US president Barack Obama and it evident that a Trump administration will be far more muscular in its approach to China and the Islamic State than the outgoing administration. It helps to realise that Mr Trumps positions are not necessarily as out of sync with present trends than they may seem. He has announced he will expel three million illegal immigrants in the US. That resonates: Many Americans support immigration, but few support migrants who break the law. More importantly, it is a policy already in place. The Obama administration has expelled more illegal migrants than any presidency in recent history 2.9 million between 2009 and 2015. The US-Mexico border is already a fortified barricade and adding more cameras and barbed wire will make little material difference. Read | Pences transition job could signal key role in White House The real issue will be whether Mr Trump will also put restrictions on the movement of highly-skilled migrants that India is concerned about. On this, he has blown hot and cold. The new administration is on more touchy ground, and not allied with public opinion, in declaring climate change to be a falsehood. It remains to be seen whether Mr Trump will put his policy where his mouth was in this area. What seems evident so far is that the president-elect is prepared to defy not only mainstream opinion but his own party leadership in certain policy areas. But he is not above moderating his stance. Where and why he moves between insurgency and the status quo, however, remains unclear. State board examinations for class 12 students commenced in strife-torn Kashmir on Monday morning amidst tight security, as 94.53% of those expected to take the exams on the first day turned up. Following debates over holding exams in either November or March, the state government in an unprecedented decision decided to hold the Class 10 and 12 board exams twice in November with 50% syllabus and in March with the full syllabus for students who fail to appear this time. On the first day, the chemistry exam was held under the science stream, Arabic, Persian and economics under the arts stream while commerce conducted entrepreneurship and economics papers. According to the data provided by the Jammu Kashmir State Board of School Education (JKBOSE), 32,044 students were expected to appear on Monday out of which 30,292 turned up. A senior board official said that those who had opted to appear for exams but could not turn up will have a chance to reappear in the March session of the exam. Out of the 50,000-odd students registered under the state board for class 12, some 48,000 had opted to appear for the November session of the exam. On Monday morning, as students revised for the last time, security forces stood guard around the exam centres. Some students said that they were worried about their safety because they heard rumours of stone-pelting but the presence of security forces relieved them. Most of my men were on the ground to ensure students or parents are not harassed, coerced or stopped from reaching the exams. All went well, except for a couple of incidences of miscreants trying to disturb the examination in south Kashmir and in these places the parents themselves chased away the trouble-makers, said DGP (law and order, coordination) SP Vaid. Read | Kashmir students to sit for board exams starting Monday amid tight security Anxious in the morning as to whether the paper would reflect a relaxed syllabus as announced by the government, the students came out of the halls in the evening happy and many said that the paper was easy. Shahbaz Ahmed, a science student, said that he was happy with the question paper because of there were sufficient alternative questions and added that the government has adhered to what it had promised anyone who has studied 50% of the syllabus will be able to answer 100% questions. I had opted for the November session of exams because firstly, we get a syllabus relaxation and secondly, we get enough time to prepare for competitive entrance exams, said Ahmed, who is an engineering aspirant. Even in the troubled south Kashmir region, exams were held without any major incidence of law and order problems. Instructions on how to go about the paper were not written but the examiners explained to us the same, said Vijdan Ahmed, a class 12 student from south Kashmirs Shopian district. He also said: We were very scared till now regarding how the question papers will be, but after todays paper and because the instructions were explained, everyone is happy. Ahmed added that some students in the region have complained of harassment by miscreants while leaving their homes for exam centres. Shopian superintendent of police, Tahir Saleem Khan, however, said they had not received any such complaints and added that they had sanitized an area of radius 200 metres around every centre beyond which paramilitary and army troops patrolled the areas. A class 12 student from north Kashmirs Sopore area said that her exam was not up to the mark because during the ongoing unrest she could not complete even the half the syllabus required for the exam. Parents, waiting outside exam centres, told HT that they will be anxious throughout the duration of the examination because they feel the situation in the Valley since July 8 have not been conducive for education. Students have undergone a traumatic experience in the last four months and perhaps they are not psychologically ready for the exams. But appearing in March would have meant that preparation for competitive exams could be paralysed, said Mir Zahoor, the father of a Class 12 student. Read | Education in Kashmir faces another challenge: Almost 20 schools burnt in unrest How do you pick a country to study in? First, you want English to be commonly spoken there. You want a country that is safe, has a credible university system and scholarship options. It would help if living there was affordable. And finally, youd ideally like a country whose culture was easy to adapt to. For decades, the UK checked all these boxes. It also had a large Indian-origin population, to make adjustment easier. But a May 2016 report by research firm MM Advisory shows that while the number of Indian students heading abroad is rising steadily, the number headed to the UK has fallen by 10% over the past two years. That number is expected to drop further by 2018, as Britain prepares to leave the EU, mainly because employment opportunities to foreign students will become even more limited. Previously non-EU students were allowed to remain in the UK after finishing their studies. Now, Indian students must leave the country and apply for a work visa if they wish to return, says Namita Mehta, undergraduate services manager and partner at education consultancy The Red Pen. NEW DIRECTIONS Some of this slack is being picked up by the usual suspects the US and Australia. The US saw 29%more Indian students this year, and Australia is now the second favourite choice, a position previously held by the UK, says Maria Mathai, director of MM Advisory. Over the past two years, the number of Indian students headed to Australia has risen by 20% and the number of those heading to New Zealand has risen by the same margin. These countries have relaxed visa norms and fees are considerably lower than the US and the UK. Countries such as Spain, Germany, France and Denmark are also emerging as alternatives. These countries had almost all their courses taught in native languages until a few years ago, says Rohan Ganeriwala, co-founder of study-abroad consultancy Collegify. Now they have many courses in English. Several universities in Germany and Spain do not require knowledge of the native language at all. This, coupled with lower costs, is luring Indian students away from the UK. Sara John, 21, picked Germany for her Masters in engineering. My family was not sure if I would be able to adjust to a non-English-speaking country, she says. I was confident about going to the University of Ulm. I had done my homework, researched the course online and discussed it with counsellors. Finally, partly because it cost about half of the fees in the US, I decided to just take the plunge. She is currently in the second year of her course. Most universities offer a semester ticket, which lets you travel to Germanys North-Rhine Westfalia region via local trains and buses for free, she says. There are fewer activities on campus, so travelling is the best way to combat boredom. Read: Brexit: How Britain leaving the EU may change the face of travel forever CHOICES FROM THE EAST AND THE WEST Even China is seeing the number of Indian students jump. In 2015, 13,578 Indian students headed to China, up from just 765 a decade ago. Most of them pursued medicine and clinical courses, says Grishma Nanavaty, counsellor at study-abroad consultancy ReachIvy. Lower tuition fees, good accommodation, classes taught in English and proximity to India are what account for the upswing. Germanys relaxed immigration norms for international students, prompted by its low population growth, is a boon to students from India. In 2013-14, about 10,000 Indian students headed to Germany for research-driven courses, says Mathai. After they completed those courses, most got a visa for 18 months to explore job opportunities, Nanavaty says. Culture should be an important factor when considering a country for study, says Nanavaty. When it comes to non-English-speaking destinations, you need to do thorough research and be sure you will be able to adapt, she says. Your university may not have the native language as admission criteria, but you will still have to learn it to fit in. Nanavaty suggests connecting with alumni and international students studying at the university to understand the culture, actual job prospects and visa provisions. Ruchi Panchal, 20, went to pursue MBBS at the Smolensk academy in Russia after she didnt get admission at a good college in India.The degree is valid in India and course content is contemporary, she says. But settling into the cold northern nation was not easy. It took me a while to adapt to the language, she says. But I wasnt treated like an outsider and the students and the faculty were welcoming. I now have friends from Russia and China and we all know each others native languages, she says happily. Read: Brexit vote: All you need to know about Britains referendum on leaving the EU SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The number of Indian students going to the UK might have dwindled in five years, but the US continues to be their most sought after destination. Their number was pegged at 1.66 million in the current academic year, a 25 % spike from the last. This makes Indians the fastest growing foreign students group in the US. The inflow of Indian students to the US registered a decline from 2011 to 2014, but it has witnessed an increase since 2015. The last academic year had witnessed an increase by 29.4 %. US officials attribute it to the easing of entry norms and the highest priority the country accords to people-to-people contact. The dip in UK-bound students due to tightening of post-study visa norms may have also played a role. The number of Indian students to the UK halved to 2000 in five years primarily due to restriction in post-study visa. Nearly 85% of Indian students head to five countries: the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. China and Germany are also emerging as destinations. Though Chinese top the charts of foreign students with 3.28 million, the rate of increase is only 8 %, according to the Open Doors report published annually by the Institute of International Education in partnership with the US Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Fashion designer-filmmaker Tom Ford says he had no clue anything like homesexuality existed in the world before he turned 17. The Nocturnal Animals filmmaker, who married Richard Buckley in 2014 after 28 years together, said he had happy relationships with women when he was young and only understood his sexuality when he went to New York as a teenager, reported Female First. Ford interacting with his fans at the premier of Nocturnal Animals at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. (Reuters) It was only when I went to New York when I was 17 that I realised I was gay. Before then, I had girlfriends, I was happy with them and they were happy with me. I suppose I didnt really imagine that homosexuality even existed back then. Then I went to New York and it was, Oh. Right. Thats what it is. Ford, 55, said. The designer is a father to four-year-old son Alexander and feels he took the decision to become a parent at the right time. Im tired of being me and Im ready to give more time to another person. Thats why Im happy now to be a father. Its absolutely the right time in my life, I couldnt have had a son when I was 40 - I was probably too drunk, for one thing. In winter time, snow-covered mountain landscapes offer an ideal setting in which to discover mindful hiking: a slow and meditative way of walking that combines contemplation of nature and corporeal sensations to achieve a heightened state of mental and physical relaxation. More focused than traditional trekking, mindful trekking combines a deliberate awareness of oneself and the surrounding landscape. Using sophrology, yoga and meditation techniques, mindful trekkers treat each step as a cue to fix their attention on different parts of the body with the goal of achieving a heightened state of relaxation. At the same time, the technique aims to intensify perception of sounds, smells, and colours in the surrounding environment. Mountain guide and sophrologist, Daniel Zanin, who regularly accompanies groups in the French Alps, the Himalayas and the North African desert, explains the synchronized walking and breathing procedure that trekkers use to enhance consciousness. Breathe in through your nose for the first three steps, hold your breath as though you were under water for the fourth step, and then, over the next three steps, breathe out through your nose until your lungs have emptied completely. Then repeat this cycle for as long as is comfortable. Using this technique, trekkers can slow their heart rates and fully oxygenate all of the cells of the body. Mindful trekking is yet to develop as an organised activity in India. There arent any official or registered groups as yet that can slow trek you through the mountains. However, Not far from Chambery in the Chartreuse range of the French Alps, new enthusiasts eager to discover the benefits of this contemplative art of walking can embark on introductory treks and snowshoe treks, led by Zanin, or shorter walks led by psychotherapist Florence Ratat, another independent trainer in the region. Zanin is also associated with a team of guides, who came together in 2001 to create the Ecole de la marche hill walking school, who lead half-day, full-day and longer mindful treks in Frances Vosges, Pyrenees, and Northern Alps regions. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. French actor Marion Cotillard says actor Brad Pitt is a good man. The 41-year-old, who was rumoured to be the cause of the split between actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and stars alongside Pitt in Allied, feels he is such a good person, reports ET Online. Marion Cotillard (L) and actor Brad Pitt attend the fan event for Paramount Pictures' Allied at Regency Village Theatre on November 9, 2016 in Westwood, California. (AFP) Brad is such a good man. Of course hes an amazing actor. Hes such a good person that its really not difficult to get along with him, Cotillard said. The actor says that working with Pitt was nerve-wracking, as she worried about how she would sound in the original reading. Im always super nervous, because Im like, Oh, my God, if my reading is really bad, what are they going to think? Cotillards defence of Pitts personality comes after Pitt was cleared of child abuse allegations. He was accused of striking his 15-year-old son Maddox on board a private jet in late September while under the influence of alcohol. Follow @htshowbiz for more Wooden carts and horses in the front yard, mooing cows in the barn, walls with hand painted frescoes and food being cooked on a stove fired by cow dung cakes this is not a set for a period drama, but a residential school for boys in the heart of Sabarmati in Ahmedabad. Canada-based Nandini and Rajeev Vishwakarma wanted an education for their two sons that would equip them with life skills, without alienating them from Indias spiritual and traditional heritage. After months of research, they flew down to Sabarmati in Gujarat with their sons, nine-year old Kuber and Shiva who is five. Their stop was the Hemchandra Sanskrit Pathshala, a Gurukulam (residential school) for boys run by a Jain trust. Most of the students here are in the age group of 6 to 18 years. The Vishwakarmas were convinced that the Gurukulam imparted the holistic education they were looking for. And so, Kuber is now at the Gurukulam with 100 other kids. But what sets the Gurukulam apart is that the 5,000 square yard campus, nestled in a residential pocket of Sabarmati, is a trek back in time. A unique campus Stone floors are plastered in cow dung as it is supposed to have anti-radiation properties, walls are whitewashed with lime, food is organically produced, milk comes from the 60-odd cows in the barn; in the kitchen, cow dung cake is the cooking fuel and ash works as a detergent. Electricity is the only modern energy source, though its judicious use is underlined several times over. Education is imparted in Sanskrit, Hindi and Gujarati. No fee is charged from students. There are annual holidays and breaks, but no school leaving exams or certification from any school board. In the Gurukulam kitchen, cow dung cake is used as cooking fuel and ash works as a detergent. Milk comes from the 60-odd cows in the barn. (Smriti Kak Ramachandran/HT Photo ) Why then did the Vishwakarmas Nandini, a nurse and Rajeev, a former journalist pick the Gurukulam? The system of education in Canada can only help them earn a living, but we want them to know the essence of life yoga, meditation and values, says Nandini. The Sharmas from Singapore too picked the Sabarmati Gurukulam for their 11-year old son Krishendu. The exams were hard, education was expensive and overall I was stressed, says Krishendu about his school in Singapore. Six months at the Gurukulam, the boy who loved to read and play games on the iPad, says hes happy to be stress free. I miss books (English books are not allowed until the students turn 16), but otherwise I dont miss the video games or TV, he says with the composure of a grown-up. Started in 2008 by Jain businessman and philanthropist, Uttambhai Shah, and run entirely on donations with no affiliation to any school board, the Gurukulam does not follow the pedagogy of the Macaulay system says, principal Deep Koirala. The accent here is on ancient Indian learning, the Vedic methods of mastering the arts and sciences; students are taught metallurgy or space science based on what the scriptures say. Skills that matter The system of education has endeared the Gurukulam to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which has been pushing for a similar pattern of learning. How relevant or prudent is this learning methodology at a time when students are exposed to computer-aided learning and developments in sciences? Students of the Gurukulum are way ahead of their counterparts in private schools, says Mukul Kanitkar, joint organising secretary of RSS-affiliated Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM). He says not only can they compete with their counterparts in streams such as maths and science, but have an edge over them when it comes to life-skills. They can identify herbs, use their hands to create things, weave cloththey are equipped for the world, Kanitkar says. The BMS, in the forefront of pushing for a change in Indias education policy and removing western influence from history, is spearheading the revival of ancient forms of learning rooted in Indianess. It has found in the Gurukulam an idea that needs incubation. It mentors the Gurukulam, and plans are underway for propagating the concept. An arts class in progress. (Smriti Kak Ramachandran/HT Photo ) Model school A similar set up has been started for girls a little distance away from the Gurukulam, where 225 girls are enrolled. This too is run by a Jain sect. Gurukuls run by religious trusts have also come up in Maharashtras Kaneri where there are 100 students and in Rajasthans Jodhpur which has 50 students. About 10-15 organisations that have land and resources approached us to set up Gurukuls; some IITs and IIMs have envisaged interest too. But right now, we cannot expand as this is not a commercial enterprise. In Sabarmati we have a student teacher ratio of 100:150. We are now focusing on orienting right Acharyas (teachers), he says. Even as Kanitkar holds out the Gurukul model as an answer for undoing the frailties of western learning concepts adopted by Indian schools, he is categorical in wanting to keep the government out. We think sarkar and bazaar (government and businesses) should not have anything to do with imparting education, he says. For the RSS, implementation of teaching in the mother tongue and a push for revisiting the knowledge in the Vedas, the gurukul system also offers a shot at inculcating nationalism. Though most of the gurukuls are controlled by religious sects, nationalism, bordering on anti-west sentiments is a perspicuous presence. Take the case of 10- year-old Manjit Singh, a student at the Gurukulam who earlier went to a school in Alwar; he says the Gurukulam is unlike the vinashkari (destructive) education system started by the British. The traditional gurukul system that produced Kings like Lord Ram was destroyed by the British and if we move away from our culture we will also be destroyed, says the aspiring musician with a reasoning that belies his age. Astrologer Mohan Bhai Patel taking a class on astrology. (Smriti Kak Ramachandran/HT Photo ) At the Gurukulam Kautilyas treatise on governance Arthashastra, Vedic Maths, music, arts and ayurvedic medicine are part of the curriculum as is astrology There are no cramped classrooms, groups of students are taught together based on their mental ability and proficiency. A music class, for instance, could have students from 6 to 16 learning together Students from the age group of 6-18 are enrolled For recreation there is the traditional gymnastics (Malkhamb) and horse riding Degree of learning The lack of certification is not a deterrent for most here; though some students opt to enroll in the National Open School system for a certificate. No students have passed out yet from the Gurukulam, but most want a career in fine arts, music; with some wanting to become monks. We do not discourage students from enrolling as private candidates, but a majority is happy with the learning outcome here, says Koirala, himself a product of a gurukul. The Gurukulam also doubles up as an ecosystem for organic practices, a throwback to what was followed centuries ago. Jeetu Bhai Balad, a trustee, has converted a portion of the complex into a repository for ancient knowledge. On the top floor of a building are workshops for creating special paper and ink used for writing scriptures. We are reviving ancient practices that were eco-friendly. We want to cut down on chemicals that are poisoning the environment and life, he says. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Villagers of Nama in Chhattisgarhs Bastar region have disputed police claim that Delhi University (DU) professor Nandini Sundar had visited the region as part of a Maoist delegation and instigated the murder of a local tribal early this month. Sir, Nandini Sundar se kya? Hum tow Maovaadi se dushmani le rahe hain (Sir, what can we have against Nandini Sundar. Our enmity is with the Maoists, a villager told HT. Shamnath Baghel, a local associated with a village resistance group ranged against the Maoists, was killed by unidentified assailants on November 4, prompting the Chhattisgarh police to book Sundar along with 10 others for the murder. Police said Baghels wife had filed a complaint with the police naming Sundar. Sundar, at the forefront of a campaign against police excesses in Bastar, has dubbed the police action as a gross abuse of power. Academics and rights activists say the Chhattisgarh police carry a grudge against Sundar for petitioning the Supreme Court against their excesses. Baghels wife, Vimala, too has rejected the police version, telling a TV channel that she had not identified anyone among the attackers and had not named Sundar in her complaint. Vimala gave birth to a child a day before her husband was killed. Villagers said none of them had seen the assailants. It was 9.30 pm when they came that day. They killed him within five minutes and fled away. We had no time to react, one of them said. Police in Bastar also claimed that Sundar had visited the village in May under a fake name and warned the residents against supporting the police in their anti-Maoist drive. The villagers some of whom included members of Baghels extended family said Sundar on the contrary had advised them to stay clear of both the Maoists and the police. Usne aisa bola .. ki ek taraf kuan hai ..ek tarah khai hai..dono se bach ke raho ( She told us that on one side there is well and on the other side there is a trench. Stay clear of both), a villager, who did not want to be named for safety reasons, recollected. They also contradicted the police claim that Sundar had visited Nama as part of a Maoist delegation. Un log kahe hum manavadhikaar kee taraf se aayein hain (those people said they had come on behalf of civil rights group), a villager said. Tribals of insurgency-hit districts of Chhattisgarh, where more than 3,500 people have reportedly been killed in the past 10 years because of the unending conflict, say they are caught between the Maoists and the police, accusing both of atrocities in the event of not toeing their line. Bastar is among the worst affected regions of the state. SRP Kalluri, Bastars controversial inspector-general of police, dismissed the villagers version. In any case, we dont care a damn about what you write, he told HT. Sundar said last Tuesday that the FIR against her was patently absurd. The battle lines are drawn, and the Centre and the Opposition are set to clash in the winter session of Parliament over the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes. The session will start on Wednesday and continue till December 16. The governments key agenda passage of financial reforms of the goods and services tax could face stiff competition for time as its drive against black money threatens to disrupt Parliament. The Opposition has mounted pressure on the government, while peoples patience wore thin as they waited in long queues for hours outside banks and ATM kiosks to withdraw money after 86% of the total currency in circulation by value was scrapped from November 9. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee spoke to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday evening to ensure a united Opposition against the demonetisation drive. Banerjee also spoke to Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, CPI(M) boss Sitaram Yechury and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal. The chaos, which the government promised will go away in about a month, has given the BJPs rivals a platform to unite before Parliaments winter session. West Bengal chief minister Banerjee is looking at an ambitious front comprising the Trinamool, Samajwadi Party, AAP, RJD and the Left parties to demand a rollback. The plan is to corner the government over the plight of the people. The face-off is also expected to dominate the all-party meeting on Monday evening, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet leaders from across the political spectrum. Trinamools Derek OBrien and Congresss Anand Sharma have already served notices for discussions on demonetisation on the floor of the House. If the united Opposition decides to create chaos in Parliament, it might be too difficult for the National Democratic Alliance government to pass the GST Bill during the winter session. The only silver lining for the government is the BJD and JD(U) have not joined the Opposition ranks. We have supported the demonetisation drive, said BJDs Lok Sabha floor leader Bhartruhari Mahtab. Sources in the government say there is little chance of a rollback of the decision to scrap the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes. In an impassioned speech on Sunday, Modi had asked people to give him 50 days to sort out the glitches, saying he left his home and family to serve the nation. President Pranab Mukherjee has also publicly supported the governments move and appealed to the people not to panic. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Its been four days since Indian banks started dispensing new currency notes. But despite standing in long queues, braving the weather, many people still went back home empty-handed. So, a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, people are scurrying for cash by trick or toil. Here are 10 tricks people are employing across the country. 1. Making friends with benefits Tired of standing in line, people in Delhi have started befriending the ATM guards. They leave their phone numbers behind, asking the guard to call them as soon as the ATM machine is refilled. The guard gets a handsome tip in return for this favour. Paanwalas near ATMs offer similar services. Who doesnt need some usable cash these days? 2. Office assistants are life savers! People who run small offices are sending their office staff to stand in banks queues in Mumbai. At one time, several members from the same establishment stand in one or more queue to make sure the flow of money continues. 3. Wheres granddad? Senior citizens have a dedicated, much shorter queue in many places. Theyve become the big earners for families this week in Mumbai as they are able to get money much quicker than the rest. 4. Petrol pumps get cunning Some petrol pumps in Thane are allowing people to swipe their credit or debit cards and give the customers cash instead of fuel. This fuel is then sold in black market by the pumps to keep their books in order. 5. Kal nakad, aaj udhar A new udhaari, or credit, system has developed in several neighbourhoods in Bhopal. Green grocers, milkmen, kirana shops, and even restaurants are allowing credit to regular customers. 6. Take my place At some places in Bhopal, migrant labourers are being used to get the money exchanged. Contractors are giving them Rs 100 as wages to stand in queue to get the permitted Rs 4,500 exchanged. 7. God comes to the rescue Some churches in Kochi, Kerala, have opened their offering boxes, advising believers to return the money once the shortage is over. 8. Broke students earn an easy buck In Lucknow, students are using the opportunity to get some extra cash. They are using their own IDs to stand in queues, and changing other peoples money for a cut. 9. Air travel on cards? Not really Some people in Lucknow have chosen to book advance air and train tickets for upper-class travel. They plan to cancel these tickets later in exchange for new cash. 10. Salaries come early Owners of plywood factories in Yamunanagar district are paying salaries in advance to the workers to adjust their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. We have decided to pay advance salary of about six months to the workers so that they can deposit it into their bank accounts as there is no monitoring for below Rs 2.5 lakh in every account, said an accountant of a plywood factory located on Yamunanagar-Radaur road. Banks across 18 states remained closed on Monday on occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti and ATMs werent stocked with money, sparking fears that public anger will rise over a cash crunch following a decision to scrap large-denomination currency. Queues of people waiting to withdraw or exchange cash had got longer over the weekend and many say the crowd will swell manifold when banks re-open on Tuesday. But given the pressure on the banking system following Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprise move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, a few state-run banks are running skeletal branches active on Monday, said a banker with the State Bank of India. Banks are open in south Indian states, Gujarat, Tripura, Goa and Kerala among others. But in large swathes of the country, ATMs werent refilled with money a serious problem given the growing resentment among people about the lack of cash at hand. Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday assured people that banks will operate at full capacity on November 14 in states where Guru Nanaks birthday is not a holiday. But the trouble is that is more than half of Indian states and union territories, it is a bank holiday. Our bank branches are operational in 18 states to serve the customers uninterrupted after the demonetisation was announced, the Axis Bank spokesperson told Hindustan Times. Experts also fear a full-day holiday might throw the entire process of currency circulation out of gear. It may also take more time to refill ATMs with cash once they reopen on Tuesday, leading to more chaos. SRP Kalluri, Chhattisgarhs controversial inspector-general of police, has threatened Hindustan Timess Raipur-based journalist for seeking clarifications on academic Nandini Sundars alleged involvement in a tribal mans murder in Bastar this month. Aap log aise karenge to hum aapko jaane hi nahi denge ..mere reference se aap gaye the, (If you all do like this, we will not let you visit you went with my reference to Bastar), an angry Kalluri told Ritesh Mishra. Mishra had asked him for a comment after local residents in Bastars Nama village--where tribal man Samnath Baghel was killed--told HT that they had nothing against Sundar, who was booked for murder along with 10 others. Kalluris words had an ominous ring as journalists have been at the receiving end in Bastar for what activists say are persistent attempts by the local police to intimidate the media. Four local journalists have been arrested since last year while a visiting BBC newsman was forced to leave the district. Another was forced to flee the region after being accused of having Maoist links. The spate of arrests and the resultant outcry forced the Chhattisgarh government to curtail polices powers to arrest journalists. However, the police in Bastar set a precedent last month when they publicly burnt effigies of activists critical of them. Bastar is among the worst-affected regions of insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh where both Maoists and the police face accusations of rights abuses. Access to interiors of Bastar is largely controlled either by the police and its sponsored local vigilante groups or the Maoists. Insisting that the police had enough evidence against those booked, Kalluri told Mishra that he would not entertain him any further. You write whatever that comes to your mind. We dont care a damn. For you, Bastar is a mazaak (joke). Mishra had called Kalluri after visiting Nama where Baghel, a member of a local anti-Maoist resistance group, was killed on November 4. Police subsequently booked Sundar and the others for the murder, saying the Delhi University professor had visited the village as part of a Maoist delegation some months earlier and threatened Baghel not to support the police in their campaign against the insurgents. Mishra, who had informed Kalluri about his plans to visit Nama, was told by villagers that they had not seen the killers of Baghel and had no complaints against Sundar, an author and activist who had moved the Supreme Court against police excesses in Chhattisgarh. They also disputed police claim that Sundar had visited as part of a Maoist team and said she had introduced herself as a rights activists. The government relaxed cash withdrawal norms on Monday to help small businesses and the rural poor, but a bank holiday in 18 states and empty ATMs piled more misery on people from last weeks surprise recall of high-value banknotes. The latest decisions are part of government efforts to ease a cash crunch following the abrupt withdrawal of 500-and 1,000-rupee bills by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fight counterfeiting and black money or wealth hidden from taxmen. The announcements came after a meeting chaired by Modi late on Sunday. But with banks closed and ATMs dry they did little to help the situation on Monday. Read | Demonetisation has ended terror-funding, stone-pelting in Kashmir: Parrikar Banks were open in south Indian states, Gujarat, Tripura and Goa, among others. In the rest of the country, most ATMs werent even refilled, sparking fears the crowds will swell manifold when banks reopen on Tuesday. But Modi on Monday reiterated an appeal to the people to bear with him, saying demonetisation will ultimately benefit poor Indians. After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while the rich are running from pillar-to-post to buy sleeping pills, he said, speaking at a public rally in Uttar Pradesh. I am trained to make kadak (strong) tea since my childhood and I know poor people like this type of tea, while the rich feel its bitterness, he said, referring to his childhood days as a tea seller. But the less-than-perfect execution of the demonetisation plan has seen a united opposition sharpen its attack against the move ahead of the winter session of Parliament starting Wednesday. At the all-party meeting, the opposition leaders raised concerns over the demonetisation scheme and sought to debate it on priority in Parliament. Earlier in the day, top parties, including the Congress, Janata Dal (United), Trinamool Congress, and the Left parties, met on Monday to draw up a common floor strategy against the government. The opposition has called for rolling back the plan, saying the move will not help fight black money but only put people through hardship. Leftist activists shout slogans against Indian prime minister Narendra Modi as they carry his effigy, decorated with posters of rupee notes, during a protest rally in Kolkata on November 14, 2016. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 14, urged Indians to give him more time to resolve a cash crunch that followed the withdrawal of high-value banknotes from circulation, as rival politicians lashed out at his handling of the crisis. / AFP PHOTO / Dibyangshu SARKAR (AFP) Hours before that, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das threw a lifeline to millions of traders crippled by a cash crunch and those in the countryside with limited access to banks. He said businesses with current accounts active for three months can withdraw Rs 50,000 a week. The government also allowed a network of so-called banking correspondents, who travel to rural areas to provide people with access to banking services, to carry more cash. Read | New notes in ATMs soon, withdrawal limit raised: 10 updates on demonetisation ATMs will start dispensing new Rs 500 notes by Tuesday, Das said. He said an extended daily limit of ATM cash withdrawals Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 will apply to only re-calibrated machines. The process of updating ATMs to dispense the new currency which come in a fresh design and size is expected to take up to three weeks. Political activities in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh have slowed down after the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. Some political parties, which had already announced the dates of rallies or public meetings before high denomination notes were scrapped last week, have either cancelled or deferred their programme. A case in point is that of the second phase of chief minister Akhilesh Yadavs Vikas se Vijay Rath Yatra. It was scheduled to start from Jhansi on Monday. The Samajwadi Party (SP) is now reworking the dates for the second leg of the yatra in Bundelkhand region of UP. We will release the revised schedule of the rath yatra in a day or two, said SP spokesperson and cabinet minister Rajendra Chowdhary told HT. He said the campaign to highlight the achievements of the Akhilesh Yadav government, which was flagged off by SP patriarch from Lucknow on November 3, would restart by November-end now. The party has two other important events lined up: birthday celebrations of its national president Mulayam Singh Yadav, who turns 78 on November 22, in Lucknow and launch of the poll campaign by Mulayam, a day later from Ghazipur in eastern UP on November 23. The birthday celebrations are expected to be low-key. The Janeshwar Mishra Trust headed by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, which has decided to organise the birthday bash, has just one billboard outside its office congratulating netaji (Mulayam) on his 78th birthday. The Samajwadi Party is not the only political outfit whose plans have been hit. The Congress move for early distribution of party tickets for 2017 assembly elections will also be delayed now to mid or end of December or even more. Initially, the Congress proposed to begin distribution of tickets by November-end or early December. Yes, we wanted to declare our tickets early. But we will delay the announcement of tickets by a week or two in view of prevailing situation in view of union governments decision to demonetize Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. We are concerned about peoples problems. The situation is going from bad to worse. We will begin the exercise of distributing tickets after watching the situation for some time, said state Congress chief Babbar on telephone. Also, the partys plan to send 200 teams of Dalit leaders to reach out to nearly 8000 Dalit-dominated villages across the state has been delayed. We are concerned about the problems being faced by the people now. We do not want to upset the people by being seen pursuing political agenda when they are facing serious problems. We will rework our programme now, said a senior party leader who did not wish to be named. The Congress Rahul Sandesh Yatra had ended in different districts on November 10. After that, the party had proposed to send teams to Dalit dominated villages. The party is yet to work out a final date to send them to the villages. UPCC scheduled caste department chairman Bhagwati Chaudhary said: We will send the teams soon. Anticipating a rough ride in the winter session of Parliament over the demonetisation move, the BJP turned the tables on the Opposition on Monday by questioning their intent in opposing the move. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told NDA allies that there was no need to be defensive on the governments decision as there is widespread support for it and people are ready to face hardships for larger gains. He urged NDA allies to go to the public and explain the long-term benefits of demonetisation in curbing corruption and black money. Union minister Venkaiah Naidu said the opposition parties who have criticised the Centres move would be given a befitting reply in Parliament. People are not worried about the problems they are facing, but they are looking at the larger interests of the country, he said. Later in the day, at the all-party meeting chaired by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, almost all opposition parties said demonetisation had not been properly implemented and had led to chaos. Read | Oppn meets to chalk out plan to corner Modi over demonetisation in Parliament Congresss Lok Sabha leader Mallikarjun Kharge said, At the meeting, leaders raised issues like the surgical strike inside Pakistan and that the suicide of a jawan over OROP. Some members demanded a debate on alleged gagging of freedom of speech and the merger of the railway budget. Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandopadhyay slammed the government for scrapping high-value banknotes without any back-up plan. Mamata Banerjee will go to the President on November 16. PM should have held wider consultations with state governments. Though the Telengana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) appreciated Modis plan, it also said implementation was poor. Read | Oppn attacks Modi over demonetisation, Mamata seeks anti-BJP front Earlier, the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, labelled the demonetisation move a scripted scam. It came suddenly and information was leaked to the ruling party, he alleged. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury demanded that old banknotes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 remain legal tender till December 31 to give relief to people. He further alleged that Modi is aware of who had stashed black money abroad, but is not making them public. Read | Battle lines drawn over demonetisation, govt braces for stormy winter session The website and database of Indias consulate in New York have allegedly been hacked by the same hacker who dumped data from seven Indian missions in Europe and Africa online last week. The hacker, who goes by the name Kapustkiy on Twitter, claimed responsibility for hacking the Indian consulates website on Monday. The leaked database, containing names, email IDs and phone numbers of mission staffers, was published on pastebin.com. At the time of filing this report, the database was still available to the public on pastebin. There was no immediate word from the external affairs ministry. Kapustkiy told HT about the data dump: It could have been way worse, believe me. It could be entries of around 7500 people, but I decided to leak only 400 entries belonging only to the employees. Read | Websites of 7 Indian missions hacked, data allegedly put online The hacker claimed the whole database was not posted online out of respect for the privacy of people whose data was hosted on the site. According to the hacker, the database contained complete addresses and zip codes as well. I dont want to cause any damage, just want them to pay attention to the security on their websites. I have tried to reach out to them multiple times but they only respond when the media reports these hacks, the hacker added. The websites have a SQL vulnurability. Even a six-year-old could breach it, Kapustkiy had told HT about the previous hack that targeted seven Indian missions in Africa and Europe. A SQL vulnerability is a security flaw in a database. A hacker inserts malicious content into the database by using forms on the website, accessing the website code or via email. This malicious content compromises the security of the database and gives the hacker unfettered access. An example of such an attack was the Sony hack of 2011 when one million accounts and passwords were released online. Its not hard to fix it. You just have to be aware of such things because most of the time you want contact them and say that they have vulnerabilities, they just ignore you, Kapustkiy added. The hacker claimed to be under the age of 18 and a resident of the Netherlands. The hacker calls himself a grey hat and claimed the hack was an attempt to inform administrators about vulnerabilities on their websites. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON All government schools along the International Border and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir will reopen on Tuesday, the state government said on Monday. More than 400 schools along the border in Kathua, Samba, Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts will start functioning from Tuesday, divisional commissioner of Jammu region Dr Pawan Kotwal told Hindustan Times. Pakistan had been targeting civilian areas and that is why the schools were shut but for the past over a week, some normalcy has returned to the border areas. Therefore, keeping in view academic loss of children, the government has decided to reopen all the schools along the IB and the LoC, a home department official said. Read | Amid J-K crisis, board exams to be held twice, students can choose Nov or Mar The state government on November 1 had ordered closure of government schools in the border areas over repeated shelling and firing from Pakistan. As many as 174 schools in Jammu district, 84 in Balakote sector of Poonch district, and 45 schools in Samba district were closed since then. The government is keeping a close watch on the situation, the source said about the possibility of Pakistan again targeting civilian areas. Pakistan has been violating the ceasefire agreement with impunity since the Indian Army carried out surgical strikes on terrorist launch pads across the LoC on September 29. Read | Arsonists strike again: 25 schools torched in Kashmir during ongoing unrest The surgical strikes were Indias response to a terrorist attack on the Uri air base on September 18, a couple of months after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter, resulting in mass protests in the Kashmir Valley. As many as 37 schools were torched during the unrest. Following political debates over holding exams in either November or March, the state government in an unprecedented decision decided to hold the Class 10 and 12 board exams twice in November with 50% syllabus and in March with the full syllabus for students who fail to appear this time. However, according to the data provided by the Directorate of School Education, out of total 126,593 students, 105,719 students (over 80%) opted to appear in this months exams. Some 48,000 students appeared for the Class 12 exams at 484 centres on Monday, and more than 55,000 will take the Class 10 exams from Tuesday. Read | Class 12 state board exams begin amid tight security in Kashmir SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON An Indian national was killed and a Nepali policeman injured in a heavy exchange of fire between police and an armed group of smugglers in central Rautahat district. Acting on a tip-off that a huge cache of arms was being smuggled into the district via the Lalbakaiya river embankment at Dewahi VDC-8, a police team reached the site, but the gang comprising of about four individuals opened fire at the team. Police fired in retaliation, killing a gang member -- identified as 44-year-old Tejhilal Saha from Bihar -- and injuring a Nepali policeman, deputy superintendent of police Nabin Krishna Bhandari. A rifle, a home-made pistol and some bullets were recovered from the deceased. Others in the group are on the run and search for them is underway. On Saturday afternoon, from the complex of Saraswati Vidya Mandir School in Lucknows Nirala Nagar, BJP president Amit Shah flagged off 75 high-tech video raths. It had, along with the partys lotus symbol, a sign which read UP ki Mann ki Baat. The stated objective was simple. Get people to contribute ideas, articulate local grievances and problems, express aspirations. This could be done by giving a missed call to a number and recording ones message; or by accessing free Wi-Fi when the rath is near and making submissions online; or by filling in physical forms and depositing it in 15,000 Aspiration Boxes to be placed all across the state. This would then be used to frame a vision document for the state, explained Shah. The real objective, as a BJP official explained, is two-fold. It will enhance our visibility and connect us with millions of people. And it will give people ownership of the party and its agenda. The fact that the rath would have a life-size cut out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the campaigns slogan was a take-off on the PMs radio show, was done to cash in on his popularity. Read | BJP to kick-start campaign for change in UP, to cover all 403 assembly segments The innovative campaign tool is just one element of the larger BJP campaign strategy in UP. The party has decided to invest all its energy in the state which catapulted Modi to prime ministership, with an absolute majority, in 2014. At the state level, however, the BJP has not been in power for over a decade. And despite being called a Hindi-heartland party, never has it completed a term in office in UP (nor, for that matter, has it ever won Bihar on its own). The election of 2017, BJP has decided, is its best chance to correct that gap. Success will be a vindication of the Modi governments record. And a setback will erode the PMs capital and make things tougher for 2019. HT tracked Amit Shah in Lucknow on Saturday, and spoke to a range of party leaders and strategists to piece together its planwhich hinges on setting the agenda, getting the social combination right with focus on 60% of the demographics, making a rural push, building a robust booth-level organisational network, and massive public outreach. Setting the Agenda Shahs day began at an event organised by HTs sister publication, Hindustan, in Lucknow. He was addressing a national audience on television, but also the citys influential political, business and opinion-making elite. His message had four key threads. The first was: Try us out. The country has seen governments run by Congress, Communists, and regional, family- and caste-based parties, and us. Compare and judge, he declared, citing BJPs governance achievements in MP, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. UP itself had seen the Congress, BSP and SP, and the BJP, he appealed, deserved a chance. The second thread of the speech hinged on how everyone else was bad. It is time for politics of performance rather than politics on caste, dynasties, appeasement and vote-banks. In one sentence, Shah targeted multiple rivalsSP and Congress on the dynasty question, of particular relevance in the backdrop of the family feud in SP; SP and BSP on caste politics; and all three parties for appeasementwhich is a code, in the BJP lexicon, for appealing to the Muslim vote. Read | For BJP, Cong, Uttar Pradesh election a dress rehearsal for Lok Sabha polls The third thread was governance. When asked for his priority if elected to power, Shah said law and order. This would result in investment, infrastructure and employment. BJP is convinced that law and order is the single most important issue in both urban and rural UP, given SPs image as having provided patronage to goons. But here it faces tough competition from BSP, where Mayawatis term has been marked by law and order. To burnish BJPs credentials on this count, Shah often recalls the term of Kalyan Singh. But whether the younger generation can relate to it is questionable. And the fourth was how BJP had provided a strong anti-terror and anti-corrupt government at the Centre. Shah claimed the move to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes had been a setback for terrorists, Naxalites, fake currency networks, those in arms and narcotics businesses. A party official subsequently told us, In one stroke, it has ended the perception that we are a pro-rich, suit boot ki sarkar. We are aware of the suffering, but it is ten days of pain, and this inconvenience will dissipate and people will praise us for both the surgicals we have doneagainst Pakistan and black money. Getting the 60% But while the narrative and agenda constitute an important element in determining elections, the key in India is often getting the social combination right. A key party strategist told HT, In the last two years, our entire focus in UP has been expanding the social base. UP has, very broadly speaking, 20% general castes, 40% backwards, 20% Dalits, and 20% Muslims. Our politics was confined to 20% general castes: the Brahmans, Thakurs, Banias. A section of the OBCs were with the BJP under Kalyan Singh, but they drifted away. This was reflected in the 2012 election, when the party won just over 15% of the vote. (In 2014, by contrast, it went on to win 42%). But now, he argued, the BJP had systematically expanded into other constituencies. Ideally, we would like to do politics of the 100%, but for now, we are focusing on 60% of the demographic. This would be all communities besides 20% Muslims, 10% Yadavs with SP and 10% or so Jatavs with BSP. This 60% is bothered about crime, corruption and existing caste politics of SP and BSP; we speak their language. And this focus has manifested itself in concrete ways. The official pointed out that BJP has won all the 17 reserved constituencies in 2014, including two Jatavs, Mayawatis core caste base. 26 out of the 28 OBC candidates who contested on the party ticket won. Recognising that many won because there was a Modi wave, the party decided to make these changes more institutionalised. Read | Yadav feud SPs fixed match to divert attention from Akhileshs failures: BJP The state president, Keshav Prasad Maurya, is an OBC. The official said, 37 out of 75 district chiefs are OBCs or Dalits. 30% of all our state units now consist of these groups. These communities will come to us when they see their faces reflected. The main party hoarding now has four faces: Rajnath Singh (Thakur), Kalraj Mishra (Brahman), Uma Bharati (Lodh), and Maurya (Kuswaha). And in ticket distribution, this balance will be maintained. The party will have to give Dalits tickets in 85 reserved constituencies in any case the bulk would be to communities besides Jatavs. Given the old loyalty of upper castes, they would get more than their share of population. But a conscious effort would be made to give non-Yadav OBCs more tickets. (In Bihar, the party gave over two dozen tickets to Yadavs hoping for a split in Lalu Prasads vote, which did not happen. It is unlikely in UP.) The party is also organising 200 backward gatherings, where representatives from two constituencies would merge into one meeting. The Kuswaha-Saini-Maurya-Sakya vote is 12% and they are solidly with us. The Lodh vote, which got disturbed in 2012, is back. We also have more Kurmi leaders than any other party from Santosh Gangawar to Vinay Katiyar to our ally Anupriya Patel, said another party official. In west UP, anecdotal evidence suggests that Jats are unhappy with BJP on a range of issues, from reservations and Haryana agitation to cane prices for which they blame the Centre as much as the state. But the party leadership feels that despite disillusionment, Jats will vote for the party in the polarised post-Muzaffarnagar landscape. Issues like the alleged migration from Kairana, which was rebutted by independent reports, are proof that BJP would be happy to stoke this. No caste group votes homogeneously, as CSDS data and political scientist Gilles Verniers work on UP has shown. But getting even half or two-thirds of the voters of a caste group on ones side boosts the fortunes of a party. BJP hopes to achieve precisely this with Brahmans, Thakurs, Banias, Lodh, Kurmi, Kuswaha, Jats, Valmiki and Pasi voters of UP. BJP national president Amit Shah with UP state BJP president K P Maurya during 'UP Ke Mann Ki Baat' function in Lucknow on Saturday. (PTI) The Rural Push The party strategist quoted above admitted that BJPs other weakness was its strong urban focus. There have been efforts to correct this structural legacy too. The BJP decided to put up candidates close to the party for district panchayat elections. Out of 3,100 seats, he said, BJP contested in about 2,800 seats. We won 347 seats, lost 324 by 100 votes or less, and came second in another 300 seats. This, BJP feels, has achieved multiple objectives. For one, the party registered a presence in the rural political landscape. Two, it has created a pool of 2,800 rural leaders who are willing to carry the party flag, out of which close to 1,000 are significant power players in their respective areas. Given UPs significantly rural population, this is the beginning. The idea is to create leadership of the future and expand our base. Two other groups have been identified as potentially separate vote-banks who need to be wooed with a different set of promises. The fact that women voted in large numbers for Modi in 2014, and Nitish Kumar in 2015, is making BJP realise they increasingly exercise independent agency. The party hopes to woo them with the law and order plank, since lawlessness affects their security almost immediately. The second such group is the youth. BJP has a handicap hereit does not have a youth face like Akhilesh Yadav, and is seeking to address this gap through separate youth-centric meetings, the promise of delivery on development and Modis image. Organisation and Outreach The BJP has been enhancing its presence at the booth level. Out of 147,000 booths in the state, it claims to have set up 121,000 units. Six events, at the regional level, with approximately 20,000-25,000 booth-level chairmen, have already been held, each addressed by Amit Shah. A second round of meeting was held at the constituency level, with 70-97% of booth unit workers present on an average. A third round of meetings, at the mandal level which has about 100 booths, is to be held. And a final round at the sector level, which is home to 10 booths, will be held in close to 12,500 sectors. The booth level worker is the key on polling day. He mobilises voters, ensures smooth polling, organises transport if necessary, and gives instant feedback. By the time election approaches, we would have set up, checked, cross-checked and institutionalised these mechanisms at the most micro level, says the party strategist who has a key role in the UP elections. And amidst all this, the party has launched four Parivartan Yatras to cover all 403 assembly constituencies, over 160 days. When asked about reports that these yatras had not drawn sufficient crowds, a leader explained, These yatras are stopping in multiple places, everyday. Instead of getting a huge crowd at one place, the idea is to go directly to the people. Every day, if you add it all up, they are connecting thousands of people. Modi would address six sabhas in the course of these yatras. This plan is only till the end of December. We would have through Mann ki Baat, yatras, big and small mass meetings, youth, women and backward centric gatherings reached out to a crore voters. And then, depending on how politics evolves and the response, the party will chalk out its plan for the final two months of the campaign. Crowds gathered during BJP rally at Ramabai Ambedkar rally in Lucknow on September 21, 2016. (Deepak Gupta/ Hindustan Times) The Leadership Challenge The key question BJP has had to confront in the UP election is about its CM face. This is quite ironical, for the party is a victim of its own success. It presidentialised campaigns, and now is facing a challenge when it does not have a face. The official explanation is they would go with collective leadership. And that the party had not declared a candidate in Haryana and Maharashtra, yet won. But the whisper in the BJP corridor is that declaring a CM face would upset the careful plans of building a wider social alliance. If an upper caste face is projected, the OBC outreach may dissipate; if an OBC is picked, upper castes may get alienated and even backwards of other communities may not be as energised. The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no obvious, acceptable face in the state with the stature to compete against an Akhilesh Yadav or a Mayawati. The other challenge for the party will be Muslim consolidation in favour of one particular party. In Bihar, this tilted the scales and BJP would be hoping that the Muslims split between SP and BSP. Our reading is that in the west, Muslims may go with BSP and in the centre and east, they may prefer SP, a party official said. A strong Dalit-Muslim alliance is the partys nightmare since in a triangular contest, it could give Mayawati a strong 30% plus vote share. But BJP feels that this is unlikely: SP remains in the fray, and there are contradictions between Dalits and Muslims and votes would not get transferred easily. There is another difference from Bihar. Because there were no other competitors for the minority vote, their concerns were deliberately downplayed to avoid counter Hindu mobilisation. The clamour for Muslim votes in UP opens up this door in UP. UP has also generally been more ripe for communally polarisation than Bihar. Would the BJP sharpen it further? No, we would not have to do much. As SP, BSP and Congress do more to win the Muslim vote. Hindus will get naturally irritated and consolidate, argued one of the leaders HT spoke to. But the most important challenge for the BJP would be operationalising the grand plan it has designed for UP 2017. From setting the agenda to carving out the wide social coalition of the 60%, from selling sudden moves like demonetisation to becoming attractive for the young, from sustaining the organisational momentum to tackling unanticipated events, its real test starts now, as the campaign heats up. Read | BJP firms up poll strategy in UP, to focus on non-Yadav OBCs SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi whether after 50 days, every citizen would get Rs 15 lakh each in their bank accounts, as he had promised in his 2014 election campaign. Prasad was reacting to the PMs appeal to people to give him 50 days and brave the limited inconvenience after his November 8 announcement to demonetise old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes. In a series of tweets on Sunday evening, Prasad said if people, after all this action, still did not get Rs 15 lakh each in their bank accounts, it would mean it was a furgical strike (farcical strike) and a fake encounter of the common man. He sought an assurance from the PM that every individual account would be credited with Rs 15 lakh each after recovering black money within the next two months. Casting aspersions on Modis intention to root out corruption, he also questioned the governments prudence in introducing Rs 2000 denomination notes. Taking potshots at the PM, Prasad tweeted, Defaulter poonjipati paanch sitaron mein, aam aadmi kataron mein aap videshi nazaron mein. Aur aap ye keh rahein ho jo kataron mein hain wo chor-nakare hain? (Defaulter industrialists are in five-star hotels, common man are in queue and you are sightseeing abroad. And, you say that those standing in queues are rogues and useless people?) Referring to the post demonetisation cash crunch, Prasad said while pushing the country into such a crisis, the PM had initially said it would be only for a few days. Thereafter (Arun) Jaitley (Union finance minister) said it would be for 15 days and now you say 50 days. The poor are struggling, Mr PM, Prasad said in another tweet. Without mentioning specific cases of public anger, he said the situation had become explosive. There have been instances when people, standing in queues at banks and ATMs, have engaged in brawls and also damaged ATMs for lack of cash. While reiterating that he, too, was against black money, Prasad said the governments implementation of its decision was skewed, putting the common man to severe hardship. Prasad asked if the government would make public after 50 days the figures on the number of deaths due to shock, lack of food and medical treatment for want of cash in hand despite having money in their bank accounts. While questioning the PM if it was a ploy to save big industrial defaulters, the RJD chief sought to know from Modi the debt they owed to banks and what action was the government taking against them. With people standing in serpentine queues for hours to exchange old high banknotes with small currency, Prasad also sought to know from Modi how much productivity and manhours have been lost so far. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If you spot Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal or his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Bannerjee in the Parliament complex, dont rush to say hello or click their pictures, at least not without permission. This is part of the guidelines issued by the Lok Sabha secretariat for TV reporters and photographers. If they do, they run the risk of getting suspended from covering Parliament for two days. Ahead of the winter session of Parliament from Wednesday, the press and public relations wing of the Lok Sabha secretariat issued an exhaustive set of dos and donts for the media, which includes not interacting with anyone who is not a minister or a member of Parliament without prior permission. Media persons will not interact/interview/photograph anyone else other than ministers/members of Parliament without permission from the press & public relations wing, say the guidelines issued on Wednesday. Parliament officials, however, say there is nothing new about these guidelines. According to the guidelines, mediapersons are forbidden to talk without permission of the PR staff to former MPs or ministers, CMs, MLAs and prominent personalities who visit the Parliament complex. Journalists will also have brush up on what they can and cant do while covering the proceedings in Parliament. They are supposed to take reactions from or interview MPs at earmarked places only. Reporters may take prior appointments with ministers/MPs and request them to approach the designated media stands for interviews/reactions. Designated areas for mounting camera and recording bites will be sacrosanct and speaking to MPs or ministers on or off the record elsewhere is forbidden. Read | Battle lines drawn over demonetisation, govt braces for stormy winter session In an attack on Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said eastern Uttar Pradesh would have seen the development required in the region had the HM Patel Commissions recommendations had been implemented five decades ago. Speaking at the BJPs Parivartan Yatra rally in Ghazipur, Modi on Monday said he had launched several schemes that would ensure development and end poverty in the region. The Prime Minister said his government would construct roads and bridge, besides completing the laying of a railway track between Tadighat and Mau. The Congress ignored recommendations of the Patel commission, which was set up by Pandit Nehru, to ensure development in Ghazipur and adjoining areas. But I have started implementing all recommendations on the birth anniversary of Pandit Nehru. The Patel commission was set up during Nehrus tenure as prime minister in 1962 after a local MP, Vishwanath, brought attention to the plight of the poverty-stricken people in Parliament. Such was the condition, Vishwanath said, that the poor had to pick up wheat grains from dung and grind them to satiate their hunger. The Patel commission had recommended construction of roads, bridges and laying of a railway line, but none of these was done. Implementation has begun today since construction of bridge on the Ganga has started today, Modi said after laying the foundation for rail-cum-road bridge on the river Ganga on Ghazipur-Mau-Tadighat rail route. He also laid the foundation stone for doubling of the railway track between Ghazipur and Ballia, and flagged off the superfast Shabd Bhedi Express between Ghazipur and Kolkata. I have come here on November 14 deliberately to expose those who did not work towards fulfilling what Pandit Nehru had wanted to do. Today on Pandit Nehrus birthday, I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family PMs never did, he said, referring to the plan for the rail bridge over the Ganga in Ghazipur. Talking about the steps taken by his government for the development of eastern UP, he asked: Who imagined the fertiliser plant in Gorakhpur will get fresh lease of life? This government has done it. Poorvanchal has got AIIMS also. Modi began his speech in Bhojpuri, and to reiterate the states significance, added that he was the ninth Prime Minister from Uttar Pradesh. I salute this land(Ghazipur) which gave birth to Vir Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in the 1965 war, he said. Opposition parties, including the Congress and Trinamool Congress, have been attacking the BJP-led NDA for bringing misery upon the common man through the demonetisation move. For the past five days, people have spent hours waiting in long queues outside banks and ATMs to exchange their now invalid banknotes and withdraw money. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit said on Monday no surgical strike in Pakistan could isolate the nation. Dialogue process must continue between India and Pakistan to find a solution to all the problems. Peace process cannot move ahead without solving Kashmir issue, said Basit while replying to a query from the audience during an interactive session. Replying to a query on surgical strike in PoK by the Indian Army on September 29, Basit categorically denied any such operation. Had there been a surgical strike by the Indian Army, Pakistan would have replied till now, said Basit. Nobody can isolate Pakistan. The country is competent enough to safeguard its interest in the international community, he said. Read | Pakistan says 7 soldiers killed in cross-border firing by India On charges of cross-border terrorism and Pakistan fomenting trouble in the Kashmir Valley, Basit said there was a similar perception about India in his country too. Pakistan is the worst sufferer of terrorism. We are victims of terrorism like no other country. There is a perception in Pakistan that India is behind all this. In Pakistan, we have a narrative that India wants to destabilise our country, claimed Basit. He said people in Pakistan were mature enough and no longer fell prey to anti-India rhetoric. Political parties in Pakistan do not get votes on anti-India remarks, said Basit. He, however, insisted that confidence-building measures should continue to ensure dialogue process between the two countries. Basit also claimed that underworld don Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan. The Pakistan high commissioner was in Lucknow to attend an event organised by a web news portal. Read | 286 ceasefire violations by Pak post surgical strike: BSF official A largely united Opposition is looking to pressure the government into rolling back the demonetisation, even as peoples patience wears thin in waiting hours outside banks and ATM kiosks to withdraw money. On Monday, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was on a war footing to cobble together an ambitious united front against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, apparently willing to sidestep temporarily a deep-seated rivalry with the CPI(M) for a joint campaign on a pro-people issue. The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste. My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this, the TMC supremo said in a series of tweets after Prime Minister Narendra Modi justified the demonetisation move in Ghazipur. Read | Poor people sleeping peacefully but corrupt troubled: Modi on demonetisation Banerjee said while the masses were being victimised and crushed under the weight of demonetisation, many economists are now predicting the onset of recession. This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days, she said in a statement. Sources said Banerjee was trying to communicate with leaders of all Opposition parties, including Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury. On his part, Yechury sought to pick holes in the governments move, claiming that its stated objectives will not be achieved with the steps taken, urging the government to allow old currency notes for public and state utility till December 31 to give some relief to the people. He also alleged that Modi knows the name of the people who have stashed 90% of the black money abroad, but is still not making them public. No one carries bags to fund terrorism; it is more via online transfers. Nobody is accepting this new currency. So, what is the use of introducing them? he said. Read | New notes in ATMs soon, withdrawal limit raised: 10 updates on demonetisation However, the CPI(M) remained non-committal on Mamatas offer to join hands, saying it would wait to know the governments stand in Parliament and see who stands where on the issue. Aam Aadmi Party convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal demanded immediate scrapping of the demonetisation scheme. Traders are complaining how to continue business for 50 days with Rs 24,000 per week cap on withdrawal, Kejriwal said after an emergency cabinet meet at his residence. People are not ready to give 50 days to PM Modi, he needs to find a way or there is a threat of serious law and order situation. Describing the Centres move to demonetise high-value currency notes as an economic emergency, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati said Modi should stop emotionally blackmailing people who were facing hardships due to his decision. It is good that Modiji has left his family and village for the country but that does not mean that he would take immature decisions which are against the public interest and stick to them, she said in a statement. The Prime Minister had surprised everyone last week by announcing that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes which constitute 86% of the total currency in circulation would no longer be legal tender from November 9 in the governments effort to curb black money and corruption. The ensuing chaos, which the government promised will go away in about a month, has given the BJPs rivals a platform to unite before Parliaments winter session, which begins on Wednesday. In a rare display of unity, opposition parties joined hands on Monday to corner Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament over the Centres demonetisation move. The Congress, Janata Dal (United), Trinamool Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Left parties and YSR Congress huddled to chalk out a strategy for the winter session that begins this Wednesday and continues till December 16. Their grounds for opposing the demonetisation is that it has led to economic anarchy and miseries for the common man. All parties agreed to attack the government, but did not reach a consensus on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjees proposal to hand over a protest memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee. The Congress, Left and the JD(U) are of the opinion that a momentum should be built first inside Parliament for at least a week and then meet the President. (But) our party chief has already sought time from the President on 16 or 17 November, said a Trinamool party member. The Opposition has decided to adopt a two-pronged attack on the ruling side: plight and harassment of the common people due to governments inefficient mechanism to deal with the cash crisis, and how the BJP had prior information about the ban as its Bengal unit deposited large sums of money hours before the PMs announcement on November 8. Read | Oppn attacks Modi over demonetisation, Mamata seeks anti-BJP front There is a broad consensus on several issues, said Anand Sharma, Congress deputy leader in Rajya Sabha. The parties will meet again on Tuesday but its is unlikely that a united delegation will go to the Presidents house this time. We will meet the President anyway. Mamata Banerjee is coming to Delhi on Tuesday evening, a Trinamool leader said. The demonetisation has helped Opposition parties stitch a rare pact since last March when Congress president Sonia Gandhi led 14 parties in a march to Rashtrapati Bhavan to protest against the anti-farmer land bill. Given the animosity, the governments key agenda for this session to pass the financial reform of the goods and service tax (GST) faces uncertainty over the other financial measure to drive out black money. If a united Opposition decides to create chaos in the Houses, it may be difficult for the NDA government to pass the GST bill in the winter session of Parliament. Read | Battle lines drawn over demonetisation, govt braces for stormy winter session Sources said that two different protest plans have been drawn in the meeting for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The plans are based on the strength of the Opposition in the respective house, said a Left leader. Mamata, who is also the Trinamool Congress chief, spoke to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday evening to ensure the Opposition presented a unified front. Banerjee has also spoken to RJD chief Lalu Prasad, CPI(M) boss Sitaram Yechury, and her Delhi counterpart, Arvind Kejriwal. The only silver lining for the government vis-a-vis the Opposition is the that BJD and JD(U) have not joined this coalition. We have supported the demonetisation drive, said BJDs Lok Sabha floor leader, Bhartruhari Mahtab. People have been struggling to get liquid cash since Modis surprise announcement last week effectively rendered Rs 1000 and 500 notes of no value. In the past six days, scenes of chaos became common across cities where long queues outside banks, post offices and ATMs clogged roads. In many cases, despite waiting for more than an hour, people came away without being able to exchange or withdraw money. Read | Cash crunch woes: Banks shut across 18 states, ATMs run dry In the face of public ire, Modi asked people to give him 50 days to sort out the glitches in an impassioned speech on Sunday. The opposition, on other hand, has been badgering the BJP-led government for sparking a financial anarchy. Also read | Poor people sleeping peacefully but corrupt troubled: Modi on demonetisation Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in what officials described as unprovoked firing by Indian troops along the Line of Control (LoC), with the Foreign Office summoning the Indian envoy to lodge a protest. The militarys media arm said on its Facebook page that the soldiers died in Bhimber sector of the LoC in a ceasefire violation by Indian troops late on Sunday night. It added, Pakistani troops while responding to Indian unprovoked firing targeted Indian posts effectively. On Monday afternoon, army chief Gen Raheel Sharif attended the funeral prayers for the seven soldiers at Kharian Cantonment on the outskirts of Jhelum city. The militarys chief spokesman quoted Sharif as saying that Pakistan will continue to respond effectively (and) leave no stone unturned to defend (the) motherland. The Foreign Office summoned Indian high commissioner Gautam Bambawale on Monday afternoon to lodge a protest against the firing on the LoC, with spokesman Nafees Zakaria saying India must stop all ceasefire violations. We reserve the right to befittingly respond to Indian aggression, he added. Read | Indian aggression may lead to strategic miscalculation: Pakistan In Jammu, officials said Indian troops had fired in retaliation after Pakistan pounded Indian outposts and border villages on the LoC with heavy machine guns and mortars. Sources said 22 Pakistani soldiers were also wounded in the skirmish. In a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed grief at the loss of lives because of ceasefire violations by Indian forces. Paying tribute to the dead soldiers, he said: We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression. Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to distract the worlds attention from the grave human rights situation in (Kashmir). He described the unrest in Kashmir as an indigenous uprising against Indian occupation and said the Indian government is failing to read the writing on the wall. Indian and Pakistani troops have repeatedly exchanged fire on the LoC, with both sides reporting deaths, including of civilians, after Pakistani militants ambushed an army camp in Uri and killed 19 soldiers. Bhimber in Poonch district was one of the sectors from where Indian forces launched surgical strikes on militant hideouts across the LoC, on September 29 after the Uri attack. Following the death of the Pakistani soldiers on Sunday, the Pakistan Army targeted border areas such as Naushera, Sunderbani and Pallanwala. The cross-border firing spread to Poonch on Monday afternoon, where a commando of 9 Para was wounded. The 27-year-old commando, Vinay Devrai of Uttarakhand, was said to be stable. There is unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistani army. They are using 82mm mortar shells and automatic weapons. Indian troops are responding befittingly, military spokesperson Lt Col Manish Mehta said. Indian troops damaged at least three Pakistani posts, reports said. Read | Zero tolerance for cross-border firing, infiltration: India to Pak The firing escalated on a day the Jammu and Kashmir government announced the reopening of more than 400 schools along the border, which were shut on November 1 in the wake of shelling by Pakistani forces. The skirmishes come against the backdrop of months of protests in Kashmir over the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani in July. The two countries have expelled diplomats as Pakistan continued to push an anti-India line at global forums. (With inputs from Ravi Krishnan Khajuria in Jammu) Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with senior ministers in the early hours of Monday to review demonetisation and its impact. The meeting at Prime Ministers residence was attended by home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley, information and broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu, power, coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the finance ministry. The meeting came amid continuing chaos and growing public anger across the country over limited cash availability following the surprise demonetisation of two higher value currency notes by Modi. There was little respite for cash-starved people queueing up outside banks and ATMs yesterday, with branches witnessing unprecedented rush since early morning and leading to arguments and scuffles. The RBI has informed that there is enough cash available in the system, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das told ANI after the meeting. Earlier in the evening, after a review by finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs 2000 and new Rs 500 notes was increased from Rs 4000 to Rs 4500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. The weekly limit of Rs 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs 24,000. The maximum limit of Rs 10,000 per day on such withdrawals has been removed, the ministry said in a statement. Micro ATMs will be deployed in large number of areas to dispense cash against debit and credit cards, Das said, adding that there would be special queues for disabled and senior citizens. He also told ANI that a special task force has been formed to expedite the process of recalibrating ATMs, which is expected to take up at least two weeks. Read| Give me 50 days over scrapped notes, punish me if problems persist: Modi Full full coverage on black money crackdown, click here Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a special meeting in the early hours of Monday to take stock of the governments demonetisation scheme that is aimed at draining illegal cash from the economy. The move under which the Centre has withdrawn old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes has sparked chaos and confusion across the country with millions of consumers queued outside banks and ATMs. After the PMs meeting late Sunday, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das in a press conference on Monday talked in detail about the changes in cash withdrawal norms. Below are the 10 key points: 1) ATMs will start dispensing new Rs 2,000 notes from Monday or Tuesday 2) There will be separate queues at banks for those who want to deposit and those who want to exchange cash 3) Daily cash withdrawal limit abolished, weekly limit up to Rs 24,000 4) Micro-ATMs will be introduced that will dispense cash on credit or debit cards 5) ATMs that have been re-calibrated to dispense new currency will have a daily withdrawal limit of Rs 2,500 6) Businesses with current accounts active for more than three months can withdraw up to Rs 50,000 a day 7) Banking correspondents will be allowed multiple withdrawals a day with an upper limit of Rs 50,000 per transaction 8) Old notes will continue to be accepted at pharmacies, airports, petrol pumps, railway stations, toll booths until November 24 9) Special task force will be set up to re-calibrate Indias 220,000-strong ATM network 10) Daily cash exchange limit has been stretched to Rs 4,500 from Rs 4,000 Read| Withdrawal limits at banks, ATMs raised; new Rs 500 notes launched For full coverage on black money crackdown, click here Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national vice-president Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe drew flak on Monday for saying people sometimes die waiting in queue for ration. He was responding to a question on deaths of people outside banks waiting long hours to exchange or deposit demonetised currency. Sahasrabuddhe, who is also the state BJP affairs in-charge in MP, was quick to add that they were not insensitive to the problems being faced by the people. A retired government employee, Vinod Pandey, 69, collapsed outside the Union Bank of Indias Makronia Branch in Sagar city a few days back. He was later declared dead at a nursing home. In Madhya Pradesh alone, at least three peoples deaths have been directly or indirectly linked to the demonetisation drive. Read | Two die in Kerala while waiting to exchange notes; cops say deaths accidental In a surprise move last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes comprising 86% of the currency in circulation by value will no longer be legal tender from November 9, resulting in long queues outside banks and ATMs running dry. Sahasrabuddhe dubbed the Prime Ministers decision a satyagrah, undertaken to address the problem of black money. He said he expected the people to bear the inconvenience and participate in the movement. The BJP leaders apparently insensitive remark came when asked if the government knew that the people would die in this so-called satyagrah. Read | 72-year-old man goes to deposit banned notes, dies outside Mumbai bank During the informal interaction with journalists at public relations minister Narottam Mishras house in Bhopal, Sahasrabuddhe also faced a volley of questions on hardships being faced by the people across the country. He was unable to answer many of the pointed questions, including on what people could do if they required large amounts for a forthcoming wedding, but he assured that a feedback from the interaction will be conveyed to the concerned people. Sahasrabuddhe instead alleged that corrupt people affected by the governments decision were trying to defame it. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A tippler in Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu pulled a fast one on employees of a liquor store of the state-run Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) as he slipped in a fake Rs 2000 note and got away. Local police say that the man used a photocopy of the new Rs 2000 note at Maruthada village near the town. There was a power cut in the area so staff was unable to see the note properly, they said. The salesman even returned Rs 1,800 in change to the tricky customer. Officials spotted the forgery and alerted the police after the Tasmac manager tried to deposit it in a bank. This is the second such incident since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation on November 8, and the roll out of new Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes. On Saturday, a vegetable vendor in Karnatakas Chikkamagalur was reportedly cheated by a customer who also used a photocopy of the new note. The move against black money has hurt Tasmac, a cash cow in a state which currently faces a deficit of Rs 9,154 crores. Tasmac outlets in many areas have reported sales losses of 15-20% . Bizarrely, it has also led to a complaint by the Madhu Kudippore Vilippunarvu Sangam, or TN Liquor Consumers Awareness Association which submitted a formal request to the Chief Ministers office to allow the Tasmacs to accept old notes as they were technically government services. Though Tamil Nadu is in a comparatively better position than the rest of India with the highest number of ATMs per capita (there are 23,728 registered ATMs according to RBIs website) it has also been similarly affected by the shortage of cash and new notes. Daily wage workers are finding it difficult to come up with exact change for their liquor needs, said the associations secretary M Chellapandian. If government-owned transportation corporations are willing to accept the old currencies during this transition period, why cant the Tasmacs do the same? D Dhanasekaran, general secretary of the Tasmac Employees Union, confirmed that all of the states 6,195 outlets were given strict instructions to not accept the old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. Every department has been hit by the currency change, he told HT. While sales data isnt available yet, we believe that these losses will stop in another few days once the new notes are in common circulation. With the arrest of two people, Indore police on Sunday claimed to have cracked the sensational double murder of a bed-ridden man and his wife inside their flat in the posh Apollo DB City apartment. The arrests were made after going through 40 CCTV footage and visitors entry register, a police officer said. Shrichand Mittal, 74, and Shanti, 68, were stabbed multiple times and found lying in a pool of blood on November 5. Accused were identified as Manoj alias Bablu Choudhary, a resident of Beena Nagar in Indore and his aid Dharmendra Rajput, a resident of Barva Khurram in Rajgarh. They were arrested from Arandiya village while they were coming to Indore from Dewas. Easy way to make money was the prime motive behind the double murder Easy way to make money was the prime motive behind the double murder, deputy inspector general of police Santosh Kumar Singh told the media. He said police control room got information about the murder on November 6 between 1 and 2 am. Soon after getting information, Lasudiya police along with a Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) team rushed to the spot. During preliminary investigation, the FSL team did not find any evidence of forced entry, but saw dragging marks on Shantis body and on the floor. Probably, the accused dragged her before or after the murder. After going through footages of 40 CCTV cameras and visitors entry register, police noticed that Suresh Choudhary visited Mittals flat on November 4 and 5, but gave different mobile numbers at the time of registry. Both the mobile numbers are non-functional, Singh said. When police closely looked into the number, they found that first five digit of both the numbers are same, but last five digit had similar number and re-arranging all the number, police got 25602, which matched Choudharys mobile number mentioned in his record with police. Notably, Indore Kotwali police on May 5 booked Choudhary in connection with a robbery case. During interrogation, both the accused confessed to their crime. Police said Choudhary was familiar with the Mittals as a hospitality and care private company had sent him to their house between August 4-6 as a caretaker. Choudhary, who befriended Rajput three years back in Shajapur, said they went to Mittals flat on November 4, but failed to accomplish their goal after they felt presence of somebody else in the flat. Next day, they went to Mittals flat again, but Rajput withdrew. Then Choudhary alone went to the flat and murdered the couple. Police recovered two mobile phones, cash and one camera from their possession. Regular security audit at residential townships over next two weeks In the aftermath of the Apollo DB City double murder case, Indore police is mulling regular security audits at residential townships to avoid similar crimes in future, and will strengthen vigilance on agencies that provide security staff to residential townships, police said on Sunday. Addressing mediapersons at police headquarters in Indore, Santosh Kumar Singh, deputy inspector general of police (DIG), said, We have marked six police stations under which a majority of residential townships are located in the city. Police will conduct audit of security arrangements at all the residential townships in the next two weeks. The department has appointed in-charge officers of the respective police stations as nodal officers. Singh said the members of residential townships will be encouraged to create WhatsApp groups that include local police and crime watch, in order to increase people-police engagement. The police saw loopholes in security arrangements while investigating the Apollo DB City double murder case, Singh said. The security guard at the main entrance did not bother to question why the same person is providing two different mobile numbers. He hardly cross-checked if the number given by the accused was correct or not, by giving a missed call, he said. Singh said that the Hospitality and Care Private Limited Company had hired Manoj Choudhary without verifying his criminal background. Police will verify the records and background of securtiy personnel deployed by agencies providing security services, he said, urging the residential townships to issue duty slips to whoever enter the premises, only after thorough verification of the details furnished. In a bid to provide respite to the city as it struggles with demonetisation, the Maharashtra government has directed banks to arrange mobile vans in cities and the interiors of the state where old notes can be exchanged within the permissible limit. It has asked universities, including University of Mumbai and Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education (MSBTE) to direct colleges to accept exam and tuition fees in cheques instead of a demand draft and pay order. Further, farmers have been allowed to carry vegetables up to 50kg for free in all State Transport (ST) buses up to November 24. The government has also decided to extend the deadline for accepting old currency notes for payment of utility bills, including for electricity, water and property tax, until November 24 midnight. It has also decided to extend toll tax exemption for another four days, which means people will not have pay toll on any of the roads across the state, including Mumbai, until November 18 midnight, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis declared on Monday. Earlier, the state had declared a toll tax exemption up to November 14 midnight. The decisions were taken in a meeting called by Fadnavis to review the situation. The cash crunch has created unprecedented trouble for citizens as banks have been unable to provide enough currency. This has led to chaos and anger among people forcing the chief minister to convene the high-level meeting, including Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials to find some solutions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A three-member committee formed under the joint director of the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) will investigate whether the Jeevan Jyot Hospital in Govandi failed to provide primary treatment to the newborn who succumbed later on its way to Rajawadi Hospital. The probe will begin on Tuesday afternoon. The infants parents, who waited for more than 36 hours after its birth to avail neonatal care, blamed the hospital for not handing over the infants medical file containing its treatment history. They said the hospital also refused to accept demonetised notes worth Rs2,500, a part of their bill. DHS officials said the committee will include a paediatrician from Sir JJ Hospital and Grant Medical College, and a representative from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The focus will be on whether the doctor provided primary treatment to the infant and its mother. The committee will visit the hospital in a day or two to investigate, said Dr Satish Pawar, director, DHS. Health Ministry sources said a paediatrician was included in the committee to go through the course of treatment and patient records. The specialist will check if the doctor despite having the skill and equipment to treat the infant refused only because the family offered to pay the bill in demonetised notes, to establish medical negligence on the doctors part, said an official. Dr Sheetal Kamath, from Jeevan Jyot Hospital, who allegedly refused to treat the patient, said she gave the infant and its mother primary treatment and referred them to Sion Hospital as they did not have enough money. The family denied that Dr Kamath advised them to take the infant to Sion Hospital for specialised neonatal care. How could we take the child to Shatabdi or Sion Hospital when we didnt have the medical records? asked Jagdish Sharma, father of the infant , when asked why they waited for more than 36 hours to avail treatment for the 1.6-kg newborn. A hospital in Santacruz has inaugurated one of the largest newborn intensive care units (NICU) in the country. Surya Hospital added 65 new beds to their existing facility on November 14, taking the total number of NICU beds to 150 with all the facilities required to take care of newborn children. Commenting on this, city doctors said that more hospitals should expand their NICUs given the shortage of beds for premature babies. Around eight lakh newborn babies succumb to death every year in India. In Maharashtra, the child mortality rate is nearly 24 (per 1,000 births). Out of these, two-thirds are premature born babies, said Dr Bhupendra Avasthi, founder of Surya Hospital. He added that India witnesses the maximum number of neonatal deaths in the world. The doctors also said that mothers who become pregnant through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) have high chances of delivering preterm babies. There are high chances of twins and triplets though IVF. It is noted that mother bearing twins and triplets has increased chances of delivering prematurely, Dr Avasthi said. State health minister, Dr Deepak Sawant who was present at the launch, said that his wife had delivered two preterm babies, who died because of lack of proper facilities in the city. That time the doctors said that if we were abroad, the babies would have probably survived. Since then I have been focusing on developing NICUs across the state, he said At present, a baby born at 23-weeks and weighing 460 grams to parents from Africa, is the youngest baby in the NICU ward. The first hour after the birth is critical. During this time, if preterm babies are given the good facilities and an environment where they are prevented from getting infections, the chances are that they will survive and have normal growth, said a paediatrician from the hospital. Last month, when students from various city colleges visited schools run by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), they were in for a surprise. Contrary to their expectations, they found most of the schools equipped with the required infrastructure. The visit, which was part of an effort to involve youth in achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, was arranged by the Indian chapter of Global Citizen, a non-profit in New York. Under this initiative, the students visited 100 BMC schools across 24 wards and took stock of their infrastructure. They inspected classrooms, laboratories and toilets and, on Saturday, submitted a report of their findings to the BMC. While many students, who had signed up for the activity, did so for a chance to attend a musical concert by rock band, Coldplay, the activity turned out to be a fulfilling experience. Arfa Shaikh, an MBA student of KJ Somaiya College, Vidyavihar, said, Our visit to Pali Chimbai School in Pali Hill was an eye-opener. The school has good computer facilities, and even a virtual classroom. The students are taught basic computer programming, which is not taught in many private schools. Ankita Bhatia, a volunteer from IEC College, Bandra, said this initiative turned out to be a good learning experience. We got to observe how the underprivileged children learned. We spoke to them and their teachers, who told us about the pros and cons of studying in civic schools. The students also said that these schools need to improve their infrastructure. In some schools, the children are cramped into small classrooms, while the toilets are unhygienic, they said. I would often complain about facilities in my school, but now, I am grateful, said Bhatia. Arnav Sahni from the policy team of Global Citizen India said that the organisation is trying to mobilise youth to work for quality education, gender equality and water sanitation three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the country. We use popular culture as a hook to ensure mobilisation on a large scale. We want youngsters to not just come for the concert, but also to get involved in social causes, he said. Following its study of BMC schools, the group hopes to make industries allot some of their corporate social responsibility funds towards filling the gaps in public education. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pilots in India are preparing for a head-on collision with the aviation safety regulator in the wake of an upcoming policy which threatens to ground aviators for feigning illness. Email exchanges between at least four pilots groups that HT accessed, indicate an industry-wide protest against the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) draft policy issued last week. The bodies include pilots unions from domestic airlines and the Indian chapter of an international pilots lobby. In addition to reporting the matter to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the UN-appointed aviation watchdog, pilots are moving court. This policy alone is enough for a downgrade by the ICAO, said a senior pilot, hinting at the downgrade in Indias air safety ratings by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2014. The issue stems from the Diwali weekend, when more than 100 Jet Airway flights were delayed or cancelled allegedly because many pilots called in sick. While the airline accused pilots of reporting sick during festivals and weekends, the pilots said it was a protest against an automated rostering software that failed to measure flight fatigue properly. When 30 to 35 pilots out of 1,500 call in sick, how is that a mass sick protest? asked one of the pilots groups, adding that operations might have been hit owing to poor rostering and scheduling of flights. Flight operations got back to normal after two days, following talks between the airlines pilots union and management, but less than a week later the DGCA put out its draft policy against sick pilots. It stated that a pilot could be grounded for good if found faking illness. Airlines could use this clause to target pilots. Even those under the weather could be forced to operate flights, read another observation. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The son of slain RTI activist Bhupendra Vira has alleged that the police did not act on the complaint filed by his father in April. Bhupendra, 61, was shot dead on October 15 in his house at Kalina. The activist had written to additional commissioner, West region, Chhering Dorje, informing him that he was being threatened at the behest of former corporator Razzak Khan and his sons and that he feared for his life. A day after Bhupendra was shot, Razzak and his son Amjad were arrested by the Vakola police. Two days later, the crime branch took over the case and Amjad is said to have confessed to the crime. His son Mayur said, Even after my father handed over the letter in April, no action was taken and that is why he died. The police did not even file a non-cognisable complaint. The one-page letter (a copy of which is with HT) dated April 23 states that Bhupendra had an apprehension of threat to his life from Razzak Khan and his sons. On Monday, Mayur handed over the same letter to the Mumbai crime branch. Reacting to the allegation, senior police inspector of Vakola police station, Mahadev Wavale, said, I cannot comment on this now. Dorje said, The complaint letter was sent to DCP zone 8 Virendra Mishra to look into the matter. Mishra did not respond to HTs calls and messages. The letter states that Khan had usurped his property in 2010 and when he protested, he and his son were attacked by the former corporator and his son. The activist wrote to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) against Khans illegal constructions. When no action was taken, he wrote to the Lokayukta which ordered the BMC to take action. The BMC then gave orders to raze the illegal constructions at Chandu studio compound in Kalina. On April 19, the residents of the illegal constructions on Khans illegally occupied land threatened Bhupendra, asking him to withdraw his complaints. Bhupendras letter has named the residents, saying they did this at Khans behest. The letter also mentioned the name of an assistant engineer from the building and factory department, alleging he too instigated the residents to put pressure on him. Left with scarce legal and legislative options to counter aftershocks of the Supreme Court order against Punjabs Termination of Agreements Act-2004, the core committee of the ruling Akali Dal will decide the political offensive on Tuesday. Following the Apex Courts ruling last week, both the Akali Dal and the Congress have been attempting to checkmate each other by projecting themselves as the true champions of Punjabs rights in inter-state water dispute with Haryana and Rajasthan. The principal opposition party Congress legislators have already handed over their resignations to the Vidhan Sabha speaker, and the ruling Akali Dal-BJP government is exploring options to start legal and political battle. Also read | Centre cant do much in SYL canal case, says Punjab CM The political strategy to be planned by the core committee, the think-tank and highest decision-taking panel, will be placed before the cabinet for approval. While the core committee will meet at 11.30 am here, the cabinet is scheduled to meet at 1pm on Tuesday ahead of the November 16 emergency session of the Vidhan Sabha. Sources in the Akali Dal say that the contours of the legislative strategy for the emergency session will be based on the political decisions of the core committee. There is clarity on legal issues. But the issue before the party is which legal option is better-suited to extract the maximum political mileage. We are taking legal, political and administrative opinions. Which decision the government may take will be debated by the core committee, a well-placed Akali Dal leader said. The indications emerging are that the party is rethinking if the government should at all introduce a bill in the Wednesdays session. On Monday, a four-member team of Delhi-based lawyers, expert in inter-state water disputes, including Mohan Katarki and Rupinder Suri, briefed chief minister Parkash Singh Badal here on the legal options. Sources say this team of lawyers had also briefed legal eagle Harish Salve, who had argued Punjabs case on water dispute in the SC and is expected to come back from abroad on November 19. There is confusion on the stance government should take in the light of the SC order. The team of lawyers that met CM is of the opinion that the SC advice on three of the four questions about the presidential reference is unclear. We are fine-tuning our next legal, legislative and political moves, said a source. With an eye on the upcoming assembly polls, political posturing seems to be one of the main options before the Akali Dal. With SC declaring unconstitutional the 2004 Act, and the bill passed in March to return land acquired for the construction of SYL canal to the rightful owners awaiting governors assent, sound legal choices before the party patriarch Parkash Singh Badal are limited. But political options before the master strategist Badal on the emotive SYL issue are plenty to rouse public passions and deflect voters attention from 10 years of anti-incumbency staring at the Akali Dal-BJP combine. Guv summons session Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore has summoned the special assembly session in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha hall at 10am on Wednesday, according to Shashi Lakhanpal Mishra, secretary, Punjab Vidhan Sabha. HTC SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Following the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court, the Chandigarh International Airport is set to acquire 128 acres of land for constructing a parallel runway that will be operational during zero-visibility fog. The length of the CAT-III-B-compliant runway will be 3.3 km and the next date of hearing in the court is December 1. Now, there is only one runway and it cannot be upgraded to CAT-IIIB facility. The old runway would remain CAT-II compliant, operational in moderate fog conditions (runway visibility of around 300 metres). The Chandigarh administration and the Punjab government have identified land for the purpose. In Chandigarh, 64-acre land will be acquired at Tatarpur, Chahar Taraf and Burail villages. The farmers will be paid Rs 1.15 crore per acre. In Punjab, 64 acres of land will be acquired in Khandala village of SAS Nagar and farmers will be paid Rs 1.28 crore per acre. The authorities will be spending Rs 400 crore for acquisition of land. A senior UT administration official said, The land has been earmarked and the file will be sent to the ministry of defence which who will give approval for the acquisition process in Chandigarh and SAS Nagar. The quality of a runway is determined by the runway visual range. It is the distance over which a pilot of an aircraft can see the runway surface during foggy weather conditions. The CAT-II lighting system is required for runway visual range (RVR) above 300 metres (moderate fog). The CAT-IIIB-lighting system is required when RVR is 46 metre or less, also called zero visibility. Tenders floated to re-carpet old runway The airport has already floated tender to re-surface the existing runway on October 28 and tendering process will be completed within three months while the work will be completed in a year. At present, the length of the runway is 2.74 km. 2 more international flights in March After the launch of two international flights to Sharjah and Dubai, the Air India is all set to start flight to Singapore and Bangkok in the last week of March next year. It will be three days in a week. Airport yet to get basic facilities Even after two international flights were started in September this year, the airport is still lacking in basic facilities. There is no W-Fi, money exchange, additional ATMs and duty free shops etc at the airport. Airport chief executive officer (CEO) Suniel Dutt said, We have floated the tenders but did not get adequate response. We will float them again or will allot work without floating the tenders as per rules. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Communist Party of India (CPI) executive members staged a protest at Kailash Chowk and raised slogans against the union government for scrapping the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency. They rued that business tycoons of the country had already made suitable arrangements to convert their black money into white and nobody waiting in queues for hours outside banks possess black money. Arun Mitra, senior executive of the party said, The union governments decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes is against poor, middle class, small traders, and shopkeepers. The protesters then carried out a march outside the Punjab and Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank and Central Bank. It has blocked the use of hard-earned money of common people in the name of curbing of black money and put them into unprecedented hardships. The poor people who have a little savings at their homes for emergency use that are seen waiting in queues and are being forced to deposit money in banks,said Kartar Singh Bowani, secretary of the union. BB Singal, a businessman from Sector 10 in Panchkula, was taken by surprise when his wife Ritu told him that she needed to deposit Rs 30,000 savings as most of it was in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes which the government pulled out of circulation last Tuesday. He was not aware that Ritu had been secretly saving from the household expenditure for some time. Ritu (49), a housewife, says she had saved the money from what she got for shopping, buying vegetables and as gifts. She has been investing in kitty schemes also. My husband kept asking till the last minute if I had more. He was surprised. On Friday, we both went to the bank and got deposited the money in my account. I am feeling relieved now, she said. My savings are not black money. I welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision. Even if we carry out whitewashing at home, we make adjustments for a couple of days. People also stand in queue outside places of worship for hours, she said. But Babli of Sector 15 does have a bank account as she always relied on her husband, a shopkeeper in Manimajra, for money. I had been saving from purchases of vegetables and daily items and gifts. I had saved close to Rs 15,000 in the past four years, she said. She was standing outside the Allahabad Bank branch on Sunday to exchange the money with Rs 100, Rs 500 denomination banknotes. But there was no separate queue for women despite the administrations directions. This is the third bank I have approached. They are telling us that they are out of cash. Where shall I go? she said. Another Sector-15 Priya Rani urgently needed cash for shopping to attend a wedding. The Corporation Bank exchanged only `2,000 as it went out of cash. Now, I have come to Allahabad Bank but I am facing the same issue here. Priya had also saved close to Rs 15,000 in savings at home over the years. I dont have an account or ATM. Banks are not attending properly for exchange of currency, she said. After the Prime Minister declared high currency notes as invalid, my wife came to me with a sad face disclosing her savings to me, said Dr Kalia, a Chandigarh-based private practitioner. To my surprise she had saved Rs 1.5 lakh. I didnt know how to react. I have promised her that I will get the money exchanged, he said. I had been saving the money for more than a year. I was taken aback when I heard the news. I had no option but to disclose my secret savings to my husband, his wife said. Rama Walia, a housewife from Sector 27, had chosen not to open any bank account despite repeated advice of her in-laws. I never wanted to disclose my savings to my husband or in-laws but Modis decision left me with no other option, she said. I always refused whenever my husband asked for money. But I felt very embarrassed when I handed over `10,000 to him, she said. Rama has now decided to open a bank account. After the death of 70-year-old Dalit woman Gurdev Kaur of Jhalur village in Sangrur at the PGIMER in Chandigarh on Friday night, the police have booked around 32 people under Section 302 (murder). However, labour and farmer unions are not satisfied with the step and they are demanding immediate arrest of all the accused and withdrawal of cases against their activists. They have decided not to get the postmortem of Gurdev Kaur conducted and cremate her body till their demands were met. Earlier, the accused were booked under Section 307 (attempt to murder), but now they have been booked for murder and raids are being conducted to arrest the accused, said Harwinder Singh, station house officer, Lehra police station. Also read | Sangrur clash: 70-yr-old Dalit woman dies in PGI, farmer unions protest outside DCs office Gurdev Kaur was injured after a clash between Dalits, members of the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee, and upper caste landlords, allegedly supported by local Akali leaders on October 5 at Jhalur village in Sangrur, over the possession of common land. On Saturday, members of different labour and farmer unions are holding an indefinite protest outside the deputy commissioners office. We will not call off the protest till the arrest of all the accused. After the incident, the police arrested our 17 activists, we demand their unconditional release and suspension of the police officials, who supported SAD goons, said Mukesh, president of the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee. He said, The organisations have decided not to conduct the deceaseds postmortem and cremation till their demands are met. Darshan Singh Kotfatta,65, Shiromani Akali Dal Darshan Singh Kotfatta (HT Photo) Constituency: Bathinda Rural Education: Post-graduate Assets declared in last polls: Rs 55 lakh Electoral record 2012: Defeated Makhan Singh of Congress by margin of 5,308 votes 2007: Lost to Makhan from Pakka Kalan; this seat replaced that one in delimitation Assembly record Questions asked: 46 Call attention moved: 0 Power punch Low-key politician banks on loyalty to party bosses What next Is SAD in-charge of Bhucho Mandi; but future uncertain How he performed A low-profile leader and also a relative lightweight, Kotfatta has his whole politics revolving around the SAD top brass. In an indication that he wouldnt contest from this assembly segment in 2017, he was made halqa in-charge of Bhucho Mandi segment in May 2015, and former MP Paramjit Kaur Gulshan was made in-charge of Bathinda-rural, signalling her candidature from here.Since then he has lost connect with the people of this segment. People rue that their elected representative is disconnected from them, thus defeating the very purpose of electing him. He didnt want to talk much about development in the segment, but only mentioned some improvement work on the Dehlwan water distributary. Voter speak The MLA has no connect with the people now. In terms of development, his performance has been a mixed bag. Lack of basic amenities troubles people in villages. Harpal Singh Brar, 33, lawyer A low-profile leader, he didnt indulge in political bias. The main town of Kotfatta witnessed development. The SAD shouldnt have shifted him to Bhucho Mandi as in-charge. Nirmal Singh, 45, farmer By the way Heads Vidhan Sabha library committee Jeetmohinder Singh Sidhu,52, Shiromani Akali Dal Jeet Mohinder Singh Sidhu (HT Photo) Constituency: Talwandi Sabo Education: Engineering graduate Assets declared in last polls: Rs 6.2 cr Electoral record 2012 bypoll: Won against Harminder Singh Jassi of Cong by 46,642 votes 2007: As Congress candidate, defeated Amarjit Singh Sidhu of SAD by 8,524 votes Assembly record Question asked: 0 Call attention moved: 0 Power punch In SAD, was in Cong, won as independent too; money, muscle What next Likely to again contest on SAD ticket from the segment How he performed Though he won the bypoll as SAD candidate by a huge margin after switching from Congress, he earned the tag of being a turncoat. He has developed a youth brigade to flex muscle. An alleged gangster considered close to him was inducted into the SAD in his presence outside his house ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The same youth brigade was allegedly involved in violence during his bypoll. He maintains regular contact with the people of the segment and his supporters. Being an Akali MLA for about half of the governments tenure, he succeeded in making an impact in terms of development by repair of canals, besides `60 crore spent on road widening and repair, while Rs 10 crore were spent on new roads, school upgrade, and water supply. Voter speak Though he is very social and has developed a personal votebank, his image has taken a hit due to his changing political parties. People question his loyalty. Avtar Singh Chopra, 46, trader His performance is good. People even accepted his joining SAD as his homecoming as he was with SAD earlier. But the menace of drugs needs to be checked. Amarjot Singh, 34, runs computer centre By the way Photography lover, travels abroad often Tomorrow: Maur, Mansa, Sardulgar, Budhlada Sarup Chand Singla, 55, Shiromani Akali Dal Sarup Chand Singla (HT Photo) Constituency: Bathinda Urban Education: Class 10 Assets declared in last polls: Rs 10.5 cr Electoral record 2012: Defeated Harminder Singh Jassi of Congress by 6,645 votes 2007: Lost to Harminder Singh Jassi of Congress by 14,645 votes Assembly record Questions asked: 0 Call attention moved: 0 Power punch A Hindu face for SAD; lost heft after partys 2014 poll dip here What next Wants to contest again, but the party may replace him How he performed Soon after winning the election, Singla lost the plot in the Hindu-dominated urban constituency. The Badal family faced embarrassment in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls after now-Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal trailed by over 29,000 votes from this part of the Bathinda LS segment, even though she won the election. A waste management plant drew flak from people due to its location; and has not become operational. The Bathinda airport is set to become operational, and there is an AIIMS centre coming here too, but these projects are centrally sponsored. Singla claims he completed 90% work on laying water supply and sewerage lines in Bathinda, but there is still no permanent solution to the waterlogging problem, particularly during monsoon. Voter speak Development of lakes and renovation of the fort have helped promote tourism. Commissioning of Bathinda airport expected by the end of this year will be icing on the cake. Satish Arora, 52, businessman A waste management plant in a residential area is a major blunder by Singla and his party. Residents of the area will boycott him if the process of shifting does not start before polls. Jit Singh Joshi, 62, professor By the way Has verified FB page; posts almost daily Ajaib Singh Bhatti,65,Congress Ajaib Singh Bhatti (HT Photo) Constituency: Bhucho Mandi (SC) Education: MA, BEd Assets declared in last polls: Rs 3.5 cr Electoral record 2012: Defeated Pritam Singh of the SAD by margin of 1,288 votes 2007: Defeated Gura Singh Tungwali of SAD by margin of 6,650 votes Assembly record Question asked: 68 Call attention moved: 2 Power punch Ex-PCS officer, built goodwill when he was posted here What next Likely to contest the next election too on Congress ticket How he performed After sitting in the opposition during this term and the previous one, Bhatti had nothing much to offer for his constituency on the development front. Most of the works in his constituency were mainly done from MPLADS funds of some party MPs. However, the state government laid sewer and water supply lines in the urban areas of the constituency, besides laying concrete link roads in villages. More than 15 Sewa Kendras were recently inaugurated by the state government. The tragedy with the constituency remains that its elected representative, Bhatti, was not at all made part of any discussions, which has all but halted basic, civic development of the constituency for the past decade. Voter speak With no power in hand, our MLA hardly did any development in his tenure. Most of the development works were carried out by using MPLAD funds. Gurpreet Singh, 22, farmer Civic amenities are in a complete mess. The condition of roads is the worst as the MLA completely failed to deliver on his promise of development. Sukhjinder Kaur, 34, employee By the way Fond of reading, especially political literature Tomorrow: Maur, Mansa, Sardulgar, Budhlada Khannas voice modulation! BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha MP Avinash Rai Khanna wasnt accessible to the media after the news of his appointment as a member of National Human Rights Commission broke last week. Khanna ji foreign gaye was the response given to a reporter of this newspaper who tried to reach Khanna on his mobile to check about his resignation from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - a mandatory requirement for the appointment. The ex-MP was apparently not too keen to answer the media queries. But the voice on the phone matched exactly that of Khannas. If that was Khanna himself, he definitely needs to take lessons in voice modulation. (Illustration by Daljeet Kaur Sandhu ) The ex-MP was apparently not too keen to answer the media queries. But the voice on the phone matched exactly that of Khannas. If that was Khanna himself, he definitely needs to take lessons in voice modulation. Love, hate and the Cong parivar For warring leaders of the Punjab Congress, help is closer to home. State Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh had his wife and Patiala MLA Preneet Kaur by his side when he resigned as the Amritsar MP over the SYL verdict on Thursday. The power couple was enough for the frame that day. A day before, it was his predecessor Partap Bajwas MLA wife Charanjit Bajwa returning fire to Amarinder loyalists after Captain and Bajwa fought a proxy war over tickets to turncoats. On Friday, however, Charanjit was all smiles, standing right behind Amarinder for a photo-op, when all 42 party MLAs handed over their resignation letters to the Punjab assembly secretary. Love, hate and reunion its all in a day in the Congress parivar. Capt pins big hopes on grandson Nirvan Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh (HT Photo) Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singhs grandson Nirvan Singh (27) is being increasingly seen at his political events these days. And there is buzz in Congress circles that Nirvan, son of the former chief ministers daughter Jai Inder Kaur, would take forward Amarinders legacy, as his son Raninder Singh is not taking much interest in politics. Nirvan, engaged to Mriganka, granddaughter of Karan Singh, a senior Congress leader from Jammu and Kashmir, is already looking after his grandfathers online campaign, say party insiders. AAP learning its lessons fast Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann (HT Photo) The Aam Aadmi Party is learning its lessons. When the party released its first and second lists of candidates, its then state convener Sucha Singh Chhotepur was absent from the press conference to show his protest against the chosen candidates. At the time of release of the third list, Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann reached the press conference after the names had been announced. He had to then reassure everyone that he had got late and was totally in favour of the list released. In order to avoid a repeat, the party announced its fourth list of candidates by sending out a press note instead of holding a press conference. Sukhbirs fresh plan:Produce petrol from stubble His plan to launch amphibious buses with an ability to run both on water and land is yet to become reality, but that did not deter Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal from making another announcement on Friday. At a function in Kairon village of Tarn Taran district, he said: Now we will produce petrol from stubble. As soon as he made the statement, many in the audience started talking in whispers about his earlier promise of starting dual mode buses that had drawn sarcastic remarks on social media. After his latest announcement also, a message went viral. The Arab world is worried after Sukhbirs statement, as they will have to bear big loss due to production of petrol in Punjab, it read. SYL verdict ups political temperature Haryana finance minister Capt Abhimanyu (HT Photo) After the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar urged the opposition parties not to give it a political colour. But his appeal did not seem to have much impact, as politics over the issue began quickly. The first to talk extensively on the subject was Khattars finance minister Capt Abhimanyu, followed by Congress media in-charge and MLA Randeep Surjewala. Both had a different take on leaders of their respective parties in Punjab and Haryana. If that was not enough, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), the principal opposition party in Haryana, announced to hold its executive committee meeting to chalk out its action plan on the canal issue. A similar meeting of Congress MLAs, MPs and other leaders has been convened by ex-CM Bhupinder Hooda. Politics, it seems, has just begun. Smart city: Dharamshala residents may have to wait longer Sudhir Sharma (HT Photo) The hopes of residents of Dharamshala for an early start of the Smart City project are seemingly fading away. Urban development minister and local legislator Sudhir Sharma, who was instrumental in getting Dharamshala included in the central governments flagship programme, also does not seem sure that the project would take off before the next assembly elections. If the project had started on time, he would have gained a lot politically. The minister is now banking on two other projects for installation of underground dustbins and concrete streets being undertaken in the town. The projects, according to him, are not a part of Smart City Mission but they are his personal initiative. (Contributed by Sukhdeep Kaur, Gurpreet Singh Nibber, Chitleen K Sethi, Surjit Singh, Rajesh Moudgil and Naresh K Thakur) The Rapid Action Force (RAF) on Sunday held a flag march in various parts of the district as a precautionary measure in view of the likely law and order problem over the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue. One company of the RAF began a march from the bus stand and covered several parts of the city, including the Fountain Chowk and the Leela Bhawan. It later moved to nearby towns of Samana and Patran situated along borders with Haryana. Also read| SYL protest: RAF deployed in Punjab, Haryana border sealed, vigil up on NH-1 Deputy superintendent of police Hansraj said, The exercise was organised to send a message that security agencies are ready to tackle any law and order problem. The situation so far is normal and all precautionary measures are in place. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) continued its morcha against the Supreme Courts verdict and the state governments inability to represent Punjabs case properly, for the third day at Kapuri. The partys state secretary Gulshan Chhabra asked the top leaderships of the BJP and teh Congress to clear their stand on the issue. He said that so far national leaders of both the parties are silent on the issue. It shows how both these parties are playing politics over the issue. Also read| Kejriwal not supporting Punjab on SYL issue: Capt Amarinder On being asked why Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is silent so far, he said AAPs national spokesperson Sanjay Singh has made the partys stand very clear that they will not allow any sharing of Punjabs river waters One of the foremost filmmakers of the country, Adoor Gopalakrishnans latest Malayalam release, Pinneyum (Once Again), is his first film he has shot digitally. Pinneyum, starring Malayalam actors Dileep and Kavya Madhavan, was screened in the Special Tribute section of the ongoing 22nd Kolkata International Film Festival. The septuagenarian, who pioneered the new wave movement in Kerala with his debut film, Swayamvaram (1972), admits that he was apprehensive about the digital medium. So, he researched a lot on the opportunities and limitations of the medium before shooting the film. I have been shooting movies all my life on film camera. But when I started working with the digital camera, I found it very convenient. Earlier, we had to wait till the film was processed, printed and projected. We couldnt watch the film till the entire process was over. But when a film is shot on a digital camera, you can see the rushes instantly. You can discard or improve a shot. That worked well with me, says Adoor, who has been instrumental in revolutionising Malayalam cinema. His recent film, Pinneyum, which released in August, is based on a real crime incident, which took place in Kerala in the 1980s. A still from Pinneyum, which stars Malayalam actors Dileep and Kavya Madhavan. Three years ago, Adoor was in Kolkata to attend the 19th Kolkata International Film Festival, where a retrospective of his films was held. The filmmaker had then praised the new look of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. This time, the Dadasaheb Phalke-awardee praised the new look of the city for coming up with so many flyovers. Coming to Kolkata after three years, the first thing I noticed was the flyovers. The flyovers have changed the entire look of the city, otherwise Kolkata had been looking the same for several years, he smiles. Adoor loves coming to Kolkata. In fact, every time he comes to the city he makes sure he meets Mrinal Sen, one of the master filmmakers of Bengali cinema. This time too, he met the Padatik, Akaler Sandhane and Kharij filmmaker at his residence. Mrinalda is keeping well at his age (Sen is 93-years). We had a long conversation. Kolkata has always nurtured great cinema made by the likes of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak. The audience here loves serious cinema and knows about my work. When we talk about Indian cinema, we have these three great masters before us. We are making the kind of cinema because of them, says Adoor, who is highly influenced by Rays works and has often been called his successor. Pinneyum was selected for the Masters section of the Toronto International Film Festival, 2016 and was also screened at the recently-concluded MAMI film festival. This is also the first film Adoor has made in eight years. His last film, Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime), released in 2008. Talking about Kolkata, the filmmaker says that the city has always nurtured great cinema made by the likes of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen (above) and Ritwik Ghatak. Adoor says that a number of people have been contacting him to make films but he cannot just start working on a film even though he has financial backup. My mind goes blank after making a film and I need time to find a proper subject to make another film. I respect my audience. I should not be wasting their time. Just because money is available it doesnt mean someone should make films. Many directors do that but I dont believe in this model. Its important for me to find a theme thats worth making a film on, said the Elippathayam (Rat Trap) and Naalu Pennungal (The Four Women) filmmaker. Adoor is the second Indian filmmaker after Ray to win Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. His film, Elippathayam, won him the British Film Institute Award for the most original and imaginative film in 1982. The International Film Critics Prize has gone to him six times for Mukhamukham, Anantaram, Nizhalkkuthu, Mathilukal, Vidheyan and Kathapurushan. Initially, when I started making films, I admit finance was a problem. But big corporate houses approach me to make films now. I have been in the industry for 50 years now, but have only managed to make 12 films. Some of my contemporaries have made more than 100 films. I was not making films most of the time, he smiles. ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON DMKs MK Stalin, leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly, on Monday criticised chief minister J Jayalalithaa for not expressing even words of comfort to people suffering cash crunch but focussing on their votes instead. In a statement issued in Chennai, Stalin referring to Jayalalithaas statement issued on Sunday, said at a time when common people in the state are not able to buy their daily essentials due to currency crunch there is nothing in the chief ministers statement alleviating the peoples problem or even providing some words of comfort. Jayalalithaa on Sunday said she had a rebirth because of prayers of the people and urged the AIADMK to work for the partys victory in upcoming by-elections. She said she was waiting to resume normal work after getting well soon. The 68-year-old Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with fever and dehydration on September 22 and is yet to be discharged. Jayalalithaa in a signed statement urged the AIADMK activists to work hard so that the party candidates won in the November 19 assembly by-elections in Aravakuruchi, Thanjavur and Tiruparankundram constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Nellithope in Puducherry. Political parties in Tamil Nadu have welcomed the central governments move on November 8 to withdraw legal tender status of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. However, they said that people should not be put to trouble in the process. Stalin had earlier welcomed the central governments move to demonetise 500 and 1,000 rupee notes if it really helped to uplift the countrys economy. Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modis election promise of depositing Rs 15 lakh in each Indians bank account by recovering the black money stashed overseas, Stalin had said that the promise is yet to be fulfilled. Similarly, PMK leader and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss welcoming the demonetisation move added that black money stashed outside the country should be brought back within a short period. He said demonetisation is only one move in attacking black money and it cannot eradicate black money from the system. AIADMKs spokesperson CR Saraswathi said the central government should take steps to ease the trouble faced by the common man to get old invalid notes exchanged. I dont think I have ever been paid for my looks, says a candid Sandhya Mridul, while speaking about how her purpose is to act and not simply look good. If its only about looking good, please call Deepika Padukone. Not that Deepika isnt a good actor. She is a fantastic one. But she is also the most beautiful woman I have seen. For me, glamour is really not the reason to choose something. If you want me to look beautiful and make me act then, of course, Im all for it, she says. Sandhya is known for her forthright nature and preference for unconventional roles. Be it her character as a homosexual mans wife in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007) or her role as Konkana Sen Sharmas politically incorrect roommate in Page 3 (2005), the actor has always picked varied roles. Sandhya says, I could never do commercial cinema because I could never find a role worth my while as an actor. But today, many actors, who wouldnt have been noticed earlier, are getting work. I have had a hard time, too. I found a lot of characters interesting, but they were not given any importance earlier. Watch: Promo of Prisoners of War: Bandi Yuddh Ke Playing the second fiddle Sandhya has also forayed into television with shows such as Banegi Apni Baat and Swaabhimaan. The actor returned to the medium this year with a show directed by Nikhil Advani. Im often told that I left television. I didnt leave television, the content did. Its sad that television has always played second fiddle [to Bollywood]. But we are to blame. The content that we are churning out deserves to be in that space, she says. .Watch: Sajna JiVaari Vaari from Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. Relationships In an interview earlier this year, the actor had asserted that it was nobodys business to question her about her personal life. She says, Relationships are very hard. But I would say if you feel that you have found the right person, stand up for them and work on the relationship. I do not understand people who are in relationships and still cheat. Sandhya adds that she doesnt believe a relationship has to last forever. Im not cynical; I dont think that it cant happen. Every relationship brings something with it, so lets respect that while it lasts, she says. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday vowed to move aggressively on a conservative agenda in filling Supreme Court vacancies, cracking down on immigration and cutting taxes, but also sought to reassure worried Americans they have nothing to fear from his presidency. Setting aside the strident tone of his campaign, the 70-year-old Trump assumed a gentler manner in his first television interview since his shock election, saying he was saddened by reports of harassment of Muslims and Hispanics, and telling the perpetrators: Stop It. The interview with CBSs 60 Minutes, which was taped on Friday and aired in full on Sunday, offered Trump an opportunity to reintroduce himself after an ugly, name-calling campaign and surprise victory that sparked protests in cities across the United States. I just dont think they know me, the billionaire real estate mogul said at one point, of the thousands of protesters who have massed in streets below his Trump Tower headquarters with signs that read Not our president. Told that many Americans are scared of his presidency, Trump said: Dont be afraid. We are going to bring our country back. Demonstrators protest against Trump on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower on Sunday (AFP) Conservative agenda On the issues, however, Trump made it clear he intends to aggressively push a right-wing agenda, pledging to name justices to the Supreme Court who are anti-abortion and pro-gun rights. The judges will be pro-life, Trump told CBS. In terms of the whole gun situation, he added, theyre going to be very pro-Second Amendment. He will have an immediate opportunity to fill a vacancy on the court left by the death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obamas attempt to fill the seat was blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate. On immigration, Trump reaffirmed his signature campaign pledge to build a wall on the border with Mexico, although he conceded parts of it may be just a fence. And he said as many as three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records would be deported or incarcerated. What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, he said. We have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, he said. Trump will have an immediate opportunity to fill a vacancy on the court left by the death of arch conservative justice Antonin Scalia. (AP) Conciliatory notes He left the door open, however, on the fate of the millions of other hard-working immigrants in the country illegally. After the border is secured and after everything gets normalised, were going to make a determination on the people that youre talking about who are terrific people, he said. Immigration, he said, was one of three top legislative priorities he has discussed with House Speaker Paul Ryan, the others being action to undo Obamas signature health care reform and a bill to cut taxes and simplify the tax code. Trump had previously indicated he would keep some aspects of Obamacare, including a ban on insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. There were other conciliatory notes as well. He signalled that he would not seek to overturn the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the United States. Its law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean its done, Trump said when asked if he supports marriage equality. And Im -- Im fine with that, he added. He also confirmed he would forego the $400,000 salary that comes with the office of US president. Im not going to take the salary. Im not taking it, he said. I think I have to by law take $1, so Ill take $1 a year, he added. A protester against President-elect Republican Donald Trump holds a sign as he jogs around Lake Merritt in Oakland, California on Sunday. (Reuters) Conspiracy-mongering Earlier Sunday, Trump made his first high level appointments, naming anti-establishment firebrand Steve Bannon his top strategist and top Republican Reince Priebus his White House chief of staff. The choices suggested Trump, a political novice, intends for his new administration to preserve the populist edge that won him the White House, tempered by political pragmatism. Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, is a seasoned political operative with close ties to Ryan, the House speaker. But Bannon, the campaign chairperson in the final months of the Trump campaign, is CEO of the right-wing, conspiracy-mongering Breitbart News website known for withering attacks on the Republican elite. It has also likened abortions to a Holocaust, railed against Muslim immigrants, and once advised female victims of online harassment to just log off and stop screwing up the internet for men, illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child. In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump made no promises to tone down his own rhetoric as president. I dont want to be just a little nice monotone character, he said. Newt Gingrich, a member of Trumps inner circle, said he would advise the president-elect to swing for the fences. This is a city which if you dont shove it as hard as you can while you have momentum, it will just surround you. I mean, the swamp doesnt want to be drained. And the swamp will just suck you in if you let it, he said on CBSs Face the Nation. Despondent Democrats are vowing resistance -- despite now being locked out of power not only in the House and Senate, but now in the White House as well. Our job now is to hold him accountable, said Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. President-elect Donald Trumps decision to empower his running mate Mike Pence to steer the presidential transition gives the soon-to-be vice president a powerful hand in shaping the incoming government and could foreshadow that he will play an outsized role in the White House. Pences ascension is in line with a recent trend toward influential vice presidents and appears similar to the last vice president who was handed the keys to a presidential transition: Dick Cheney. As the nation was embroiled in the recount after the 2000 election, George W Bush informally entrusted Cheney to begin building the government even before the outcome was settled in favour of the Republican ticket. Some of the work was done sitting around Cheneys kitchen table in McLean, Virginia, remembered Ari Fleischer, who became Bushs first press secretary. This is a big test for Pence, Fleischer told The Associated Press. If it goes well, it will portend a bigger job for him in the White House. Cheney clearly passed that test and became one of the most powerful vice presidents in recent memory, particularly during Bushs first term. Cheney not only ran Bushs vice presidential search team eventually picking himself -- he stocked the administration with veteran Republicans, many of whom he had known for years. The vice president was so influential he barely spoke in meetings because he knew he would see the president alone and could convey his thoughts privately, said Fleischer. Only the truly powerful can be that silent. And when he did talk, it was pretty impactful. It is far too soon to say if Pence will have a similar voice in Trumps White House, but naming him the chairman of the transition team broadcasts to others in Washington that he will be a key player. If youre given an important role in the transition, it sends a signal to other people that you matter, said Joel K. Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University who is widely considered one of the nations leading experts on the sometimes obscure history of the vice presidency. Other political actors want to deal with you due to your perceived access and influence to the president. It also gives the vice president a chance to put his own stamp on the administration. While Trump ran as a political outsider and was not shy in burning bridges to establishment Washington, Pence is a popular GOP figure who may opt to select long time allies for key roles. In the year of the outsider, Reince Priebus was the face of the Republican establishment. Yet the Republican National Committee chairman would come to earn the trust and confidence of President-elect Donald Trump, who on Sunday named Priebus as his chief of staff, along with flame-throwing media executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist. The position puts Priebus at the power centre of the new Trump administration. The 44-year-old Wisconsin political operative will help guard access to the president-elect, guide policy and political decisions, and if past practice holds true, will often be, along with Bannon, the last person Trump consults before making major decisions. Priebus has no governing experience in Washington. Yet his extraordinary ability to build and maintain relationships with his partys power brokers and grassroots sets him apart from other prospective chiefs of staff. The affable and slow-talking Priebus maintains a particularly close relationship with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is also from Wisconsin. At the same time, Priebus may have been almost as popular among the Republican National Committees 168 members, who represent many different factions of the GOP and come from every state in the nation. Read | Gentler Trump appears firm on agenda, says Americans have nothing to fear Trumps new chief of staff and the House speaker met in the late 1990s when Priebus was a party activist in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and Ryan was running for Congress. Priebus eventually became the party chairman of Kenosha County, the First District (the speakers district) and then Wisconsin party chairman. Hes been a friend and adviser to Ryan all these many years. Priebus was already the longest serving chairman in party history, having worked in that role since January 2011, but he easily could have been re-elected early next year had he wanted to seek another term. More than anything, he served as the chief fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, a job he did very well. He used the tens of millions of dollars he helped raise to create a nationwide voter outreach operation that fuelled Trumps stunning victory. Still, his status as a party insider caught the attention of Trump supporters such as tea party leader Jenny Beth Martin. She warned on Saturday that, No Washington insider, regardless of who it is, should serve as President Trumps chief of staff. Its time to drain the swamp not promote insiders beholden to the Washington establishment who helped create it, she said. Priebus ability to earn Trumps trust and confidence ultimately outweighed any political concerns. He was perhaps the only major establishment leader to stand with Trump over the campaigns final weeks as much of the political world predicted the Republican nominee would lose the election. Priebus became Trumps regular travelling companion and confidant. He was optimistic until the very end. I dont buy this conventional wisdom that somehow or other, things are bad. I think things are going well, he told The Associated Press a few days before the election. Priebus, a big Green Bay Packers fan, likes to talk sports, he plays the piano and is quick to poke fun at himself. His easy-going personality, self-deprecating humour and lack of knowledge of the legislative process, mark a particularly sharp contrast with President Barack Obamas first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. He married his high school sweetheart, Sally. They have two school-age children. Priebus gets along with pretty much everybody, said Lanhee Chen, a former top adviser to the GOPs 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Chen called the pick a terrific decision. I think it reflects an understanding that, first of all, you have to have someone who understands the politics of Washington, he said. Priebus has long favoured a big-tent political philosophy that encourages the GOP to adopt a more welcoming and inclusive tone. Back in December, he condemned Trumps plan to ban Muslim immigrants in December. I think its the party for everybody. Its for everyone, Priebus told the AP days before Trumps victory. That the message that were trying to get out across the country, which is it doesnt matter what the colour of your skin is, what your faith is, what gender you are, or what age you are. This is a party of freedom, opportunity and equality. Thats what our party is. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faced questioning on Monday by prosecutors at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for four years, over allegations he committed rape in 2010. Swedish Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren arrived at the embassy to pose questions to Assange through an Ecuadorian prosecutor over the allegations which Assange has denied, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. Assange, who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, took refuge in the embassy in August 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden over the rape allegation. The 45-year-old Australian has refused to go to Sweden for questioning, saying he fears further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks is ongoing. Key dates in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal battle against extradition to Sweden over rape accusations. (AFP Graphic) In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents in one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Isgren and a police investigator will be able to ask questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will later report the findings to Sweden, prosecutors have said. After the report, the Swedish prosecutor will take a view on the continuing of the investigation, they said. A Swedish appeals court decided in September to uphold Assanges arrest warrant, saying a strong public interest argument outweighed a case to set it aside based on the lengthy deadlock and a previous lack of impetus in pursuing the case. Assanges request to have the warrant overturned came after a UN panel in February said his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy equalled arbitrary detention, that he should be let go and be awarded compensation. Even if Sweden drops the investigation, however, Assange could be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain. He has denied wrongdoing and says he fears being extradited to the US because of his WikiLeaks work. It isnt known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the U.S. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified government documents. One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was launched, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. He has remained in control of WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign in the final weeks of her failed White House run. Read | Assange says WikiLeaks not trying to influence US election When facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? - the famous quote attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes has been quickly adapted by leading lights of the Theresa May government after Donald Trump won the US presidential election. From trenchant criticism some time ago by May as home secretary and the loquacious Boris Johnson as the London mayor - to the effect that Trump was unfit for the high office - Johnson on Monday insisted the real estate mogul was a dealmaker and would be good for Britain. Trump came in for severe criticism in Britain during the election campaign for claiming that parts of London were so radicalised that they were no-go areas for police. MPs had demanded he be banned from entering Britain. In the wake of Trumps victory, Johnson, now the foreign secretary, said: "I think there is a lot to be positive about and it is very important not to prejudge the president-elect or his administration. It's only a few days since the election has taken place. I think we all need to wait and see what they come up with. But I think we should regard it as a moment for opportunity. He added, "Donald Trump is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it could also be a good thing for Europe and that I think is what we need to focus on today. In advance quotes released by Downing Street before an event at the Guildhall on Monday evening, May is due to say that Trumps victory showed her government must deal once and for all with the "overlooked" communities that have been transformed irrevocably by immigration without the "permission" of British voters. In what is billed as the first significant assessment of Trumps election, May is due to say his victory shows the need for a new approach to managing the forces of globalisation that did not ignore the working classes. May spoke to Trump on phone and the two leaders renewed their commitment to the special relationship between the two countries. But there is much hand-wringing in the May government over UKIP leader Nigel Farages proximity to Trump. Farage, who campaigned for Trump, was the first international leader the president-elect met on Sunday, encouraging the UKIP leader to offer his services to the British government to help build bridges with the Trump team an offer that was promptly turned down. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON While the White House gets ready to welcome its new incumbent, President Donald J Trump, Twitterati resorted to sharing hilarious memes of sassy conversations between the outgoing duo of President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Since the successors met the predecessors at the White House on Thursday, viral memes of Obama and Biden planning pranks on Trump have stormed Twitters imagination. In a heartfelt speech after Trumps victory, a light moment between Obama and Biden stood out. I have lost elections before, Joe hasnt, joked Obama, to which Biden replied: Remember, you beat me badly. This moment of banter provided Twitterati the impetus to come up with memes of the duo scheming against Trump and his VP, Pence. Biden: You know he needs an official gov't phone right? Imma give him a Note 7. Obama: But Joe, don't those.... Biden: Exactly. pic.twitter.com/HFXzpSN9Kj Tatiana King Jones (@TatianaKing) November 13, 2016 "Yes Mr. Trump, I took Joe's pocket knife away and we'll get you some new tires for that limo right away, but I can't make him say sorry" pic.twitter.com/wULtfJqu85 Josh (@jbillinson) November 11, 2016 The list of suggested pranks grew through the day. Some memesmiths clearly did not want Obama and Biden to lay out the welcome carpet for their successors. Obama: Check pl- Biden: Actually, we'll take five more milkshakes and you can bill the White House on January 21st pic.twitter.com/KVcdBtQHAe Josh (@jbillinson) November 12, 2016 How Obama-Biden can deter President Trump from tweeting from the White House: BIDEN: we should change the wifi passwords before trump moves in so he can't tweet OBAMA: pic.twitter.com/IXcOpSmNWb an online pigeon (@imskytrash) November 13, 2016 And one to keep Trump off the White House Netflix account: Biden: How do I throw everyone off the White House Netflix account? I'll be damned if Trump is gonna mess up my suggested list pic.twitter.com/UvcbA6TxEp Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) November 11, 2016 And some ideas for pranks on Trump and his VP, Pence. Biden: Mike, I don't like you, you don't like me Pence: Let's keep this civil Biden: Whatever. I'm taking the "World's Best VP" mug with me pic.twitter.com/NL58NBSmvV Josh (@jbillinson) November 12, 2016 Obama: "Joe, why are you still holding my hand?" Biden: "I wanna freak Mike Pence out" Obama: "But why?" Biden: "Just roll with it" pic.twitter.com/o5KZZ0Ysgz thomas moore (@Thomas_A_Moore) November 12, 2016 Joe: I'm going to ask Donald if he wants something to eat Barack: That's nice, Joe Joe: And then I'm going to offer him knuckle sandwiches pic.twitter.com/xYJ0k2QTX6 Jill Biden (@JillBidenVeep) November 13, 2016 Joe: I told trump that there was important meeting in a room but it was a broom closet & now he's locked in there Obama: lmao good one joe pic.twitter.com/ACrOHYuviF daddy nicky (@preciousadidas) November 10, 2016 It is the end of an era, but also spells the end of one of the sweetest bromance the White House has seen. Biden: I'm gonna punch him. Obama: Smile and wave, Joe. pic.twitter.com/ImEz6X68jm Norm Kelly (@norm) November 11, 2016 Fondly reminiscing about the Obama/Biden bromance to ease my #ElectionNight anxiety. Gonna miss these two. pic.twitter.com/8vs3BxeWcA Azuka Oforka (@AzukaOforka) November 9, 2016 For social media, the current POTUS and his VP are #FriendshipGoals. I just don't understand why I have to give him my room. Obama: Joe, he's the new VP. Biden: He doesn't even know the secret knock pic.twitter.com/YPcRF8DB14 Carlos (@Carlos5Sanchez) November 14, 2016 Obama's and joe biden's friendship are goals pic.twitter.com/MDx3F0RZZJ WORLDSTARHIPHOP (@WORLDSTAR) November 12, 2016 But they swear to us that they will be, Brothers For Life. Happy 55th, Barack! A brother to me, a best friend forever. pic.twitter.com/uNsxouTKOO Vice President Biden (@VP) August 4, 2016 SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Skygazers took to high-rise buildings, observatories and beaches Monday to get a glimpse of the closest supermoon to Earth in almost seven decades, and snap dramatic pictures. The unusually big and bright moon appeared at its most impressive as night fell over Asia, but astronomy enthusiasts will be able to see Earths satellite loom large anywhere in the world shortly after sunset. The phenomenon happens when the moon is full at the same time as, or very near, perigee -- its closest point to Earth on an elliptical, monthly orbit. It was the closest to Earth since 1948 at a distance of 356,509 kilometres (221,524 miles), creating what Nasa described as an extra-supermoon. Super moon rises at India gate in New Delhi. (Raj K Raj/ HT Photo) A passenger air plane crosses the supermoon, in Gurgaon. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo) A view of Super moon appeared in a back of the illuminated Golden Temple on the occasion of the 547th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji in Amritsar. (Gurpreet Singh/HT Photo) A supermoon pictured in Abidjan. (Sia Kambou/AFP) The 'Super' full moon rises above the Table Bay harbour, and the central city in Cape Town. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP) Skygazers and photographers headed to the best viewing spots in Asia, where the phenomenon was visible first, hoping that cloudy skies and the perennial pollution that blights many of the regions cities would not spoil the fun. The eastern Sydney suburb of Bronte became an unexpected viewing spot as thousands of people armed with picnic mats and cameras packed its small beach near Bondi to catch a glimpse of the supermoon after a Facebook invite went viral. A man rides a horse past people watching the supermoon rise at Marina Beach in Chennai. (AFP Photo) Loud cheers went up among the crowd as the moon made brief appearances between heavy, grey clouds before disappearing. Its really nice, Aidan Millar-Powell told AFP of the festive, community atmosphere at the beach. People dont usually come together like this in Sydney for a natural phenomenon. The supermoon sets behind the Chrysler Building in New York City. (REUTERS) Evergreen trees silhouetted on the mountain top as a supermoon rises over over the Dark Sky Community of Summit Sky Ranch in Silverthorne, Colorado. (Jack Dempsey/AP) The marble sized-up replica of Michelangelo's David adorning the entrance of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, Italy, is silhouetted against a full moon in Italy. (Maurizio DeglInnocenti/AP) Tourists, office workers and couples crowded the Hong Kong waterfront as the supersized moon rose over the skyscrapers of the financial hub, while further north in the Chinese capital Beijing the moon climbed spectacularly over the citys skyline. Ive never seen a moon this big, said Lee Pak-kan, 44, who was watching at the Hong Kong waterfront. The moon is quite orange too... its quite special. A supermoon rises behind a statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Marina Beach in Chennai. (AFP Photo) In the Taiwanese capital Taipei, more than 100 people queued up to get a look at the spectacle through telescopes outside a major public hall, while others flocked to the citys landmark Taipei 101 skyscraper -- one of the worlds tallest buildings -- to witness the supermoon. Its quite moving, to see it up close. Its so big, so round, so bright, said Julia Lee, who was peering through a telescope outside the hall. More super than others The supermoon was visible across much of India although residents of New Delhi, the worlds most polluted capital, struggled to see it clearly through the toxic smog that has been shrouding the city in recent weeks. Meanwhile, professional astronomers were at the ready at observatories across the region to explain the phenomenon to curious members of the public. In Thailand, astrologers were variously predicting the supermoon would bring disaster or great fortune. Soraja Nuan-yoo, renowned for predicting the 2004 tsunami that killed many in Thailand and other countries round the Indian Ocean, warned that when the moon gets close to the Earth, natural disasters happen. The supermoon appears over the landmark Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai. (PTI Photo) The supermoon also means a stronger high tide, something that gets surfers giddy with excitement, not only at the prospect of riding bigger waves, but doing so at night. Forecasters had predicted higher than usual tides on Indonesias Bali, a favourite with surfers. A supermoon rises as the colourful lights flicker in the foreground at a Gurudwara in Chandigarh. (REUTERS) But the holiday island was overcast and rainy when the moon rose, with surfers deciding not to take to the waters. Astronomers say it can be hard to notice that the moon appears brighter than usual. Once it is high in the sky, it can be hard to tell it is larger but on the horizon, it could appear quite spectacular. The supermoon sets behind the CN tower in Toronto. (AP Photo) To get the best view, Pascal Descamps of the Paris Observatory recommended that people choose somewhere with a well-known landmark in the foreground. Supermoons are actually quite common -- there is one every 14 months on average. But some supermoons are more super than others, said Descamps. The moon rises beyond the Arch in St. Louis as seen from the Compton Hill Water Tower. (AP Photo) Most complaints of child sexual abuse in Malaysia do not lead to successful prosecutions, largely due to weaknesses in the nations criminal justice system, police, lawmakers and child welfare groups say. According to classified data, Malaysian police compiled and shared with Reuters, 12,987 cases of child sexual abuse were reported to police between January 2012 and July of this year. Charges were filed in 2,189 cases, resulting in just 140 convictions. The data doesnt show how many people were involved, or what happened in the cases where there were no convictions after charges were filed. No details were disclosed in the cases where there were convictions. Child rights advocates have long pushed the government to publicly disclose data on child sexual abuse to increase awareness so action can be taken to address what they call a growing problem. A veil was lifted in June when a British court handed Richard Huckle 22 life sentences for abusing up to 200 babies and children, mostly in Malaysia, and sharing images of his crimes on the dark web. The reason the Malaysian government doesnt publish child sexual abuse data is because it is protected under Malaysias Official Secrets Act. The government provides data on child abuse only at the request of a member of parliament. We dont want people to misinterpret it, said Ong Chin Lan, the head of the Sexual, Women and Children Investigation Division of the Malaysian national police. The government doesnt want to unduly alarm the public about possibly high numbers of child abuse cases, she explained. It is unclear how Malaysias number of reported cases compares with its neighbours, some of whom are also reluctant to disclose a high incidence of child sexual abuse. Thailands government declined to provide data to Reuters. A senior health ministry official, who did not want to be identified, said it could make Thailand look bad. Cambodia, long known as a destination for travelling paedophiles, also does not disclose official data. Criminal justice weakness Weak policing and child protection laws make it difficult to punish child abusers in Malaysia, leading to inadequate investigations and low convictions on the reported cases, according to officials and child welfare groups Reuters interviewed. They also say a significant number of child sexual abuse cases are never reported because of taboos around child sex abuse and mistrust of authorities. In 17 years of operation, PS the Children, Malaysias biggest NGO dealing with child abuse, has seen zero convictions on the cases it has handled, its founder Madeleine Yong told Reuters. There needs to be improvement in the criminal justice system if we want to encourage more people to report, otherwise we will re-victimize the child, she said. Ong at the sexual crimes unit said police take every case of child sexual abuse seriously and all cases are investigated in detail. Police blame weak laws and rules governing court evidence that give little weight to childrens testimony as the reason most cases never result in charges. Malaysia does not have a law specifically prohibiting child pornography and defines rape narrowly as penile penetration. Grooming - touching and befriending children as a prelude to sexual abuse - draws no legal penalties. By contrast, Indonesias parliament has passed legislation authorising chemical castration, minimum sentences and even execution for convicted paedophiles. Thailand introduced stricter laws against child pornography last year. A Child Sexual Crimes bill, expected to be introduced to parliament by the end of the year, would widen the definition of sexual crimes to include online abuse, and make such crimes easier to prosecute. It would also set up a special court to deal with child sex abuse cases more quickly. The dark web Foreign paedophiles could be targeting Malaysia as other countries around the region strengthen child protection laws and step up enforcement, some experts said. Snow White Smelser, programme officer at the child sex offences team in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) East Asia headquarters in Bangkok, said paedophiles compare notes and share information online about countries, where they can operate most freely. Elena Martellozzo, a London-based criminologist who specializes in child sex abuse on the internet, said Huckle could have chosen Malaysia because it was not on the radar, or perhaps its where he found it easier to get work permits, visas and some work opportunities. Typically, children are sexually abused by someone they know - a neighbour, a relative, a caregiver, or someone like Huckle, who according to court testimony groomed children in an impoverished ethnic Indian neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur. But increasingly, paedophile activity is moving into the online world, police say. Australian detectives who investigate paedophiles in the region believe Malaysia has become one of Southeast Asias biggest centres for the transmission of child pornography on the Internet. Team Argos, the Australian detective unit that found Huckle in the dark web in late 2014, made a startling discovery from the teams scouring of online paedophile networks: the unusual number of internet addresses in the Kuala Lumpur area transmitting child sexual abuse material from the dark web. The dark web is a vast virtual space within the Internet, which requires special encryption tools to access. The Brisbane, Australia-based detectives found 1,000 transmissions of child pornographic materials from the Malaysian capital over a 24-hour period last year, according to Argos data provided by the UNODC. It was the second-largest transmission location in Southeast Asia after Bangkoks 1,800 - Bangkoks population of 8.2 million is more than four times that of Kuala Lumpurs. The Malaysian capital is a high concern location for the distribution of child sexual abuse materials, said Smelser at the UNODC. Ong at the child sex crime unit said Malaysian police cant properly monitor the encrypted paedophile networks. We do not have expertise in handling the dark web. We get alerted from our counterparts overseas, she said. Iraqi soldiers recaptured the town of Nimrud on Sunday and the nearby ruins of the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city, which was overrun and bulldozed two years ago by Islamic State militants. Nimrud, once the capital of an empire stretching across the ancient Middle East, is one of several historic sites looted and ransacked by the militants when they seized large parts of northern Iraq two years ago. The militant group, whose ultra-hardliner doctrine deems the countrys pre-Islamic religious heritage idolatrous, released video footage last year showing its fighters bulldozing, drilling and blowing up murals and statues at Nimrud. Those statues included the famous winged bulls with human faces, known as lamassu, which stood at the entrances to the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, king of Assyria in the 9th century BC, and nearby temples on the site. Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division liberated Nimrud town completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings, the statement said. Army officers later told Iraqi television that Islamic State had also been driven from the old city, 1 km (less than 1 mile) east of the town, which formed the capital of an Assyrian empire reaching from Egypt to parts of modern-day Iran and Turkey. Nimrud lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris river, 30 km south of Mosul where Iraqi soldiers are battling Islamic State for the largest city under the militants control in Iraq and neighbouring Syria. Victory for humanity Iraqs deputy culture minister Qais Hussain Rasheed said that recapturing the remains of Iraqs rich heritage from the jihadists was a triumph for the whole world. Islamic State still controls other Assyrian landmarks including the ruins of Nineveh and Khorsabad, as well as the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra, famed for its pillared temple which blended Graeco-Roman and eastern architecture. Liberation of ancient Iraqi archeological sites from the control of forces of dark and evil is a victory not only to Iraqis but for all humanity, Rasheed, deputy minister for tourism and antiquities at the culture ministry, told Reuters. Iraqi workers mop the floor at the Assyrian Hall of the Iraq National Museum Baghdad. (AP FIle Photo) The scale of the damage inflicted on the sites is not completely clear, but Iraqi officials say some buildings have been totally destroyed. A report by Rasheeds ministry last year said one of the carved wall panels at Nimruds northern palace was stolen in July 2014. Eight months later, far greater damage was inflicted. The militants destroyed 10 winged bulls, located at the palace gates and at the temple of Ishtar godess of love, war, sex and power and Nabu god of literature and wisdom. A month later in April 2015 the gangs completely blew up the city and its ancient buildings the report said. Rasheed said antiquities authorities had given detailed coordinates to Iraqi forces on the ground and their US-led air support to avoid any accidental damage to the archaeological sites, and also provided information to commanders about the heritage and antiquities of Nineveh where they are operating. Once sites are retaken from the militants, a special antiquities security team will join security forces there to help them preserve the sites, he added. Nimrud was excavated in the 19th century by British archaeologist Austen Layard. Max Mallowan and his wife, crime writer Agatha Christie, worked at Nimrud in the 1950s. Her experiences in Iraq, and journeys from Britain to the Middle East, formed the background to several of her novels including Murder on the Orient Express and Murder in Mesopotamia. From Afghanistan to Algeria, jihadists plan to use Donald Trumps shock U.S. presidential victory as a propaganda tool to bring new fighters to their battlefields. Taliban commanders and Islamic State supporters say Trumps campaign trail rhetoric against Muslims - at one point calling for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States - will play perfectly in their recruitment efforts, especially for disaffected youth in the West. This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands, Abu Omar Khorasani, a top IS commander in Afghanistan, told Reuters. Trump has talked tough against militant groups on the campaign trail, promising to defeat radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War. The president-elect later toned down his call for a total ban on Muslim entry to say he would temporarily suspend immigration from countries that have a history of exporting terrorism. But he has offered few details on his plans to combat various radical groups, including IS, the Taliban and al Qaeda, which represent a wide spectrum of political views. He does not differentiate between extremist and moderate Islamist trends and, at the same time, he overlooks (the fact) that his extremism will generate extremism in return, Iraqs powerful Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement. Sadrs political reform movement, which commands thousands of followers, is a staunch opponent of the radical Sunni movements IS and al Qaeda, and unlike them has not waged or promoted attacks in the West. The United States has seen a handful of attacks inspired by Islamist militant groups, including the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who called a TV station swearing allegiance to IS and the killing of 14 people at a San Bernadino, California, social services agency last December. U.S. officials have warned the country will likely face a higher risk of similar attacks as IS urges supporters to launch attacks at home instead of joining its fight in the Middle East. Our leaders were closely following the U.S. election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so, said ISs Khorasani, who described President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with at least a little brain in comparison to Trump. Al Qaeda, which has proven resilient more than 15 years after launching the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has yet to comment on Trumps victory. The militant group will likely respond after Trumps first speeches as president, anticipating they will be able to exploit his comments to win support, said Hisham al Hashemi, who advises the Iraqi government on Sunni jihadist movements. Al Qaeda is known for its recruitment strategy that heavily quotes speeches of the White House and other Western officials, he told Reuters. Propaganda Machine Trumps office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements from the militants. Even if Trump tones down his anti-Muslim comments when he takes office in January, analysts say his statements during the campaign trail were enough to fuel the militants propaganda machine. Militants will still use those quotes, said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. The key thing militant groups, particularly Islamic State and al Qaeda, depend on for recruitment purposes is convincing Muslims in the Western world that the West hates them and wont ever accept them as part of their society. A senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan said the group, whose resurgence is undermining efforts to end Americas longest war, had kept track of all of Trumps speeches and anti-Muslim comments. If he does what he warned in his election campaign, I am sure it will provoke Muslim Ummah (community) across the world and jihadi organisations can exploit it, said the militant leader, who declined to be identified because of strict Taliban policy that only its official spokesman can make statements. An alliance of Janajati and Madhesi parties opposed to Nepals new Constitution warned on Monday that it would organise protests if Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda did not take steps to amend the statute within 15 days. A delegation of the Sanghiya Gathabandhan, which comprises 29 parties, delivered the ultimatum during a meeting with Prachanda. The alliance handed over a memorandum to Prachanda that warned of protests if the government delays in registering a proposal in Parliament to amend the Constitution. We request for registering the Constitution amendment bill within 15 days from today based on our approval as well, the Sanghiya Gathabandhan said in its memorandum. The Janajati and Madhesi parties said no progress had been made in addressing their demands since the Prachanda-led government assumed office three months ago. Nepal was roiled by protests against the new Constitution last year. The countrys economy was hit by a prolonged blockade of trade points along the border with India. The Sanghiya Gathabandhans delegation said the Constitution had failed to address the hopes and aspirations of different classes and communities, including indigenous nationalities. Though there were divergent views among the Madhesi parties about serving the ultimatum, they are standing firm on the demand that the government should address their grievances. The Madhesi parties in the Sanghiya Gathabandhan have organised protests over their demands, including the demarcation of the provincial borders, citizenship and proportional representation based on population. The Sanghiya Gathabandhan also demanded the implementation of the agreement it had signed with the Nepali Congress and the CPN-Unity Centre at the time of the formation of Prachandas government. Federal Socialist Forum Nepal chairman Upendra Yadav, who led the delegation that met the prime minister, told the media that Prachanda had expressed his determination to resolve the problems raised by the Sanghiya Gathabandhan. Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have been nearly flat for three years in a row a great help but not enough to stave off dangerous global warming, a report said Monday. Emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide stayed level in 2015 at 36.3 billion tonnes (GtCO2) and were projected to rise only slightly, by 0.2 percent in 2016, according to the annual Global Carbon Budget report compiled by teams of scientists from around the world. This third year of almost no growth in emissions is unprecedented at a time of strong economic growth, said research leader Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia. Driven largely by reduced coal use in China, this was a clear and unprecedented break with the preceding decades fast emissions growth, at a rate of some 2.3 percent per year from 2004 to 2013, before dipping to 0.7 percent in 2014. Read | US President-elect Trump looking at fast ways to quit Paris climate deal: Report This is a great help for tackling climate change but it is not enough, said Le Quere. For the worlds nations to make true on the global pact to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, emissions must do more than level off, the study found. A decrease of 0.9 percent per year was needed to 2030. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has continued to grow, the report warned, hitting a record level of 23 GtCO2 last year that looked set to reach 25 GtCO2 in 2016. Quota running out The analysis was published in the journal Earth System Science Data, to coincide with the UN climate conference in Morocco. Climate envoys are gathered in Marrakesh to put plans in place to execute the so-called Paris Agreement concluded in the French capital a year ago. It envisions a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas-producing coal, oil and gas use for energy. The new report said humanity has emitted 2,075 GtCO2 since 1870 -- adding 40 GtCO2 in 2016 alone. We have already used more than two thirds of the emissions quota to keep climate change well below two degrees, it warned. The remaining quota would be used up in less than 30 years at the current emissions level. A girl carries a sign that read climate justice for all as she takes part in a protest against climate change coinciding with the Climate Conference, known as COP22, taking place in Marrakech, Morocco. (AP) Under the so-called Paris Agreements predecessor the Kyoto Protocol, rich nations had to meet emissions reduction targets. Developing countries were excused as they needed coal and oil to fuel rapidly growing populations and economies. China, despite not having any Kyoto targets, has been fast moving away from coal -- driven in large part by major air pollution concerns. After growth of 5.3 percent per year from 2005-2014, China recorded a decline of 0.7 percent in 2015 and is set for a 0.5 percent drop in 2016. Read | India to push for consensus on climate justice at Marrakech meet This decline in the worlds most populous nation and biggest greenhouse gas polluter largely accounts for the global trend, the report said. The worlds number two emitter, the United States, decreased emissions by 2.6 percent in 2015, with a fall of 1.7 percent projected for 2017. The election of Donald Trump, who has threatened to cancel the Paris pact, has cast a long shadow over the Marrakesh talks, where many fear the US will abandon its targets to the detriment of the global goals. Make love, not CO2 Thousands of people marched on Marrakesh to demand climate justice from global envoys gathered for UN talks on staving off worst-case-scenario global warming. It is an international march for all the people who suffer the results of climate change, yet had no role in causing it, said Mohamed Leghtas of a Moroccan climate coalition of environment, human rights and labour groups. Climate change is a triple injustice: committed by the north against the south, by current generations against future ones, and by a minority which enriches itself from fossil fuel energy against the poor who are left to pick up the pieces, he told AFP. Read | Paris climate pact focus shifts to action Native Peruvians, Berber groups and African associations formed part of the procession which snaked through the city, brandishing placards reading: Make love, not CO2, and 1.5 C to stay alive. The latter refers to the goals of the climate rescue Paris Agreement concluded at the previous round of UN talks in the French capital in 2015, and set the goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius, or 1.5 C if possible. We are here to demand respect and to urge the world to commit to cutting greenhouse gases, blamed for warming the planet, added Antolin Huascar of Perus agricultural confederation. People participate in a protest against climate change, in a march coinciding with the Climate Conference, known as COP22, taking place in Marrakech, Morocco. (AP) The protest took place on the sidelines of the 22nd Conference of Parties of the UNs climate convention, COP22 for short, which runs until November 18. Diplomats must negotiate rules for putting the hard-fought Paris Agreements goals into action. On Tuesday, they will be joined by dozens of African heads of state, French President Francois Hollande and UN chief Ban Ki-moon. People must fight for their rights and not count on governments are under pressure from multinational corporations, Khadija Riadi, a Moroccan human rights defender told AFP at the march. There can be no climate justice without respect for human rights. Also Read | Historic Paris climate change agreement becomes international law Myanmars government said Monday that 34 people were killed after they attacked government troops in Rakhine state over the weekend, but residents of the villages belonging to the Muslim Rohingya minority said the victims they saw were unarmed civilians. The government has been conducting counter-insurgency operations since nine police were killed in attacks last month on guard posts along the border with Bangladesh generally blamed on Muslim insurgents. Tensions have been high in Rakhine since fighting in 2012 between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. The government said in a statement that 28 people described as violent attackers were killed Sunday in Maungdaw district. An earlier statement said six attackers died on Saturday, in addition to two government soldiers. The attackers werent identified, but the army has aligned with Rakhine Buddhists against the Rohingya. A Rohingya from Kyein Chaung village contacted by phone said he saw a police truck taking at least six bodies from the village on Sunday. Other villagers, also speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety, said the people whose bodies they saw were completely unarmed. Nay San Lwin, a blogger based in Europe who has closely monitored Rohingya developments since 2012, said some villagers possess weapons such as swords and knives, but it was unclear whether they were used against the soldiers. Since the violence last month, villagers have been accused of burning their own houses. Villagers are hiding in the forest. No one dares to live in their own house because of the arrests and killing, said a teacher from Kyein Chaung village, who insisted he not be named. Human rights groups accuse the army of abuses against the Rohingya minority, including killings, rapes and burning of homes. More than 100,000 Rohingya are still living in squalid camps for the internally displaced after being driven from their homes in 2012. Although Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, they are widely regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, and the government denies citizenship to most. A local police officer refused to answer any questions related to the situation, saying he was not allowed to say anything. The Rakhine state government also refused to comment. The central government statement said in one incident Sunday in Gwason village, Seven violent attackers wielding with machetes ran towards the troops in order to attack. The troops returned fire, killing six. It said soldiers and border guard police were later attacked by about 20 violent aggressors equipped with machetes and wooden clubs while the security forces were conducting the clearance operation in Dargyizartaung village. It said the troops fired on them and killed 19. The earlier statement said clashes began Saturday morning when government troops were ambushed by about 60 attackers armed with guns, knives and spears. It said the troops were outnumbered in a later battle against 500 armed men, but prevailed when two air force helicopters joined the fight. The government said attackers also set fire to local villages. Human rights groups, however, have accused government forces of burning down Rohingya villages. On Saturday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said satellite images showed 430 houses in three Rohingya villages had been burned, and called for an investigation by the government. Barack Obama will travel on Monday to Greece and Germany in a final official visit designed, in a strange bit of political contortion, at reassuring worried Europeans about a man he once warned was unfit for the presidency: Donald Trump. The irony is cruel: in the name of a peaceful transition, the American President, having thoroughly denounced the billionaire Republican during the recent campaign, must now do his best to reassure his European counterparts about the future of American democracy under a President Trump. I think the design of the trip was meant to just give everybody some reassurance that we made it through this campaign and were going to come out of it all right, said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. We just have a different scenario now. The bombastic populist, whose victory over Hillary Clinton surprised virtually everyone, has given Europeans ample cause for concern. He has questioned the relevance of some of Americas paramount alliances, starting with NATO; put the Paris climate-change accord in doubt by calling global warming a hoax, and sharply criticized the strenuously negotiated pact that Washington and five other countries signed with Iran to curb its nuclear program. Trumps attitude toward Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the New York mogul called him a leader, far more than our president has been a leader is deeply concerning in Europe, particularly in small countries like the Baltic nations living in Russias shadow. Beyond the many concerns over the future of American foreign policy, many European Union countries are bracing for a possible ripple effect of the outspoken Republicans victory. They are very worried, because the same populist, nationalist expressions that Trump exposed in America on immigration and trade could amplify the already very strong political currents within Europe, Conley said. She noted that several European countries have important elections coming up, not least of them the French presidential election next spring. In Greece on Tuesday for his first visit there, Obama is set to meet with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Security will be tight in central Athens, with thousands of police officers on the streets and traffic cut off for several hours. Civil servants, communists, far-left groups and anarchists all plan to hold demonstrations as Obama swings through the Greek capital. The roots of populism During a day heavy with symbolism, Obama on Wednesday will visit the Parthenon in Athens, then deliver a speech sure to have considerable resonance, given the recent US elections -- on the challenges of globalization. His advisers, pointing to the results of that election but also to the equally stunning British vote to leave the European Union, said the US president would offer his thoughts on the reasons so many people in the world feel like decisions are made beyond their control. Speaking at the United Nations in September, at a time when the US presidential campaign was in full stride but a Trump victory seemed anything but certain, Obama had called on his fellow leaders to come to grips with the rising frustrations fueling populist movements. He warned them against succumbing to a soulless capitalism that benefits only the few. Twenty-five years after the Cold War, the world is less violent and more prosperous, he said, and yet there is uncertainty and strife. This is the paradox that defines our world today, he said, stressing that a world in which one percent of the people control as much wealth as the other 99 percent can never be stable. For his sixth visit to Germany since coming to power in 2009, the Democratic president will again meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, long one of his closest foreign partners, according to Ben Rhodes, the US national security adviser. The day after his election, the chancellor pointedly reminded Trump of the criteria that have long bound the two countries in close cooperation: democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or political views. Obama will also meet in Germany with French President Francois Hollande -- who once said Trumps excesses made people want to retch -- British Prime Minister Theresa May, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The leaders plan to discuss the crises in Syria and Ukraine, as well as the fight against the Islamic State group. The American president will conclude his trip with a stop in Peru for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). Among the leaders he is expected to meet there is President Xi Jinping of China. Also read | US election: Trumps joy is a stinging personal blow for Obama President-elect Donald Trumps first major appointments announced on Sunday signalled an approach that will engage the establishment he railed against as nominee and pit it against outside, populist forces that helped him win the White House. Trump named Reince Priebus, the widely acceptable three-term chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Washington insider, as his chief of staff, indicating his willingness to engage with the party establishment that he disparaged on the stump. He also named Steven Bannon, a hard-charging media executive closely aligned with the partys extreme right elements that fuelled Trumps candidacy, as his chief strategist. He has been accused of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks, which he has denied. Comparisons of Reince Priebus, Donald Trump's White House chief of staff, and Steve Bannon, his top strategist. (AFP) I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country, Trump said in a statement. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again. Priebus and Bannon will work as equal partners to transform the federal government, the statement said, signalling the creation of competing centres of power in a Trump White House. They will directly report to Trump. Priebus, whose experience in Washington and close friendship with Speaker Paul Ryan will help Trump work with Congress to push his legislative agenda, got the vote of Trumps children, who wanted a non-controversial chief of staff. Read | Trumps radical 100-day plan: How he aims to make America great again Bannon has been a deeply divisive figure who headed Breitbart News, an extreme right publication that became a Trump campaign mouthpiece, and who, according to divorce papers filed by his former wife, has said he didnt like Jewish people. While looking at a school for their daughters in Los Angeles, the ex-wife said Bannon described the biggest problem he had with Archer (a school) is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesnt like Jews and that he doesnt like the way they raise their kids to be whiney brats and that he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews. Breitbart News, which he headed, ran headlines such as Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy, Hillary Clintons Muslim Brotherhood problem, and Data: Young Muslims in the west are a ticking time bomb, increasingly identifying with radial, terror. His appointment expectedly drew widespread criticism. It is a sad day when a man who presided over the premier website of the alt-right a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists is slated to be a senior staff member in the peoples house, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and battles anti-Semitism, said in a statement. The Council on American-Islamic Relationss Nihad Awad said in a statement, The appointment of Stephen Bannon as a top Trump administration strategist sends the disturbing message that anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and white nationalist ideology will be welcome in the White House. Even Republicans were concerned. The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office, John Weaver, a former adviser to Ohio Republican governor John Kasich, wrote on Twitter, adding, Be very vigilant America. And some Trump supporters as well. George W Bushs chief of staff John Sununu conceded in an interview to CNN that Bannon was a controversial pick. Read | Petition asks electors to make Clinton the US president instead of Trump Congress still has some unfinished business before closing shop for the year, even as the focus shifts to the agenda of President-elect Donald Trump and unified Republican control of Congress and the White House in 2017. Trumps election will reset the balance of power in Washington, but until noon on Jan. 20, President Barack Obama decides what can become law. Already, Obama priorities such as a controversial trade deal with Pacific nations and the long-stalled nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court are off the table. Tuesdays results were the final nails in the coffin. But other fights, such as a Republican revolt over a move by Obama to impose workplace protections for gay and transgender employers of defense contractors which has stalled the annual Pentagon policy measure may be defused until next year. And working with Obama to wrap up more than $1 trillion worth of remaining agency budget bills seems likely to slip. Here are the highlights of the agenda of the lame-duck Congress which returns on Monday: Spending Chronic dysfunction has enveloped the once vibrant process of passing 12 annual agency spending bills. This year a major obstacle has been a fight between Obama and congressional Republicans over GOP efforts to use gamesmanship to boost Pentagon spending while freezing domestic programs under the terms of last years budget pact. The government is currently functioning under a stopgap spending bill that expires Dec. 9. Something has to pass by then or else the government will shut down. Some top Republicans, like senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, would like to wrap up the bills and not clutter up next years agenda. But house conservatives and outside groups like heritage action, an advocacy arm of the conservative heritage foundation, say the measures should not advance in the lame-duck session. And action next year could give Republicans an opportunity to score early victories under a Trump presidency. Given Washingtons penchant for lowest-common-denominator solutions, the likeliest outcome is another short-term funding extension that would punt the bills into next year. Defense Congress has passed a defense policy bill every year for more than five decades and lawmakers in both parties want to keep the streak alive. But a key sticking point in deliberations over the must pass $602 billion defense policy bill is a provision Obama and Senate Democrats say would undercut protections against workplace discrimination based on sexual or gender orientation. Theyre demanding the provision, propelled by House conservatives, be removed from the bill, which authorizes military spending for the new fiscal year that started Oct. 1. Now that Trump has been elected, Republicans could beat a temporary retreat, knowing the issue could be revisited next year. Lawmakers also continue to grapple with how much additional money to spend on weapon systems that the Pentagon didnt request in its budget. The House has proposed $18 billion, arguing the investment is needed to halt a decline in the combat readiness of the U.S. armed forces. But the senates version of the bill didnt include the spending boost, leading to the impasse. Iran Sanctions The clock is ticking for Congress to renew a decades-old law that allows the United States to hit companies with economic sanctions for doing business with Iran. Congress first passed the Iran Sanctions Act in 1996 and has extended it several times since then. The law is to expire at the end of the year and there is strong bipartisan support for legislation that would extend it by another decade. Its on the House schedule this week. Secretary of state John Kerry signalled earlier this year that President Barack Obama would sign into law a bill that renews the sanctions. Medical Research and Development McConnell has said one of his top priorities will be bipartisan legislation to speed federal approval of drugs and medical devices and boost biomedical research. The legislation is intended to streamline how federal regulators assess the safety of new treatments and let them reach markets more quickly. Supporters say that with advances like genetic mapping and biologic medicines produced in living cells, its time to speed research and development. The house passed its version of the legislation last year. The senate is still negotiating its bill, which may target new dollars to the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. McConnell has said he is interested in more money for regenerative medicine, Obama is interested in precision medicine and vice president Joe Biden has sought new funding for cancer research since his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Some consumer organizations have opposed the bill, arguing the measure would erode government safeguards against dangerous and ineffective products. Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President-elect Donald Trump that cooperation was the only choice for relations between the worlds two largest economies, with Trump saying the two had established a clear sense of mutual respect. There has been intense speculation over the impact of Trumps win on issues facing the two countries, from global trade and climate change to the security balance in the Asia-Pacific. Trump lambasted China throughout the US election campaign, drumming up headlines with his pledges to slap 45 percent tariffs on imported Chinese goods and to label the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office. His election has injected uncertainty into relations at a time when Beijing hopes for stability as it faces daunting reform challenges at home, slowing growth and a leadership reshuffle of its own that will put a new party elite around Xi in late 2017. In their first interaction since the US election, Chinese state media said Xi told Trump in a telephone call on Monday that as the worlds largest developing and developed economies, there were many areas where China and the United States could cooperate. The facts prove that cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States, China Central Television (CCTV) cited Xi as saying. Xis remarks were a reiteration of phrasing typically used by Beijing to describe bilateral relations. The two sides must promote the two countries economic development and global economic growth and push for better development going forward in China-US relations, Xi said. During the call, the leaders established a clear sense of mutual respect for one another, and President-elect Trump stated that he believes the two leaders will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward, a statement from Trumps presidential transition office said. The two agreed to maintain close communications and meet soon, CCTV said. Xi had congratulated Trump in a message delivered shortly after his surprise election victory last week. The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid published by the ruling Communist Partys Peoples Daily newspaper, said if Trump slapped China with heavy tariffs it would paralyse bilateral trade. When the time comes, large orders for Boeing planes would switch to Europe, US auto sales in China would face setbacks, Apple phones would essentially be crowded out, and US soybeans and corn would be eradicated from China, the paper said in a commentary. Trump, coming from a business background, is very astute. We do not believe he will treat China-US trade so childishly. China has signalled it will promote plans for regional trade integration, vowing to seek support for a Beijing-backed Asia-Pacific free trade area at a summit in Peru later this month, after Trumps win dashed hopes for the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Trumps criticism of US allies, including Japan, for free-riding on US security guarantees, has deepened anxiety among Washingtons allies about its commitment to post-war security arrangements in the face of a rising China and volatile North Korea. Trump appears to be seeking quick ways to withdraw the United States from a global accord to combat climate change, which has been billed by China and US President Barack Obama as a key area for cooperation. In March, after Ted Cruz and John Kasich won big home-state primaries, it suddenly looked as if no Republican candidate would come to the national GOP convention in Cleveland with a majority of delegates. The contest would go to a second ballot or be brokered by party elders. No way, warned front-runner Donald Trump. If he came to Cleveland with the most votes, a majority or not, Trump expected to be crowned. Otherwise, I think youd have riots, the New Yorker quoted Trump as saying. Im representing a tremendous many, many millions of people. But in April, Cruz and Kasich withdrew, and prospects for a long, hot convention vanished. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders was fighting Hillary Clinton for every Democratic delegate. In May, angry Sanders supporters disrupted a Nevada state convention they said had been rigged against them. American political parties have been making noise, history, and presidential nominations at days-long gatherings of delegates, alternates, journalists, and hangers-on for over 180 years. But conventions are nothing sacred; they arose from the culture of the 1830s and no longer serve any practical purpose apart from boosting TV ratings. George Washingtons presidential campaigns, in 1789 and 1792, were zero sweat. The office had been created with him in mind, and the Electoral College twice bestowed it on him unanimously. Between 1796 and 1816, the men aspiring to fill Washingtons shoes were picked by caucuses of congressmen belonging to the first two partiesthe Federalists and the Republicans (Jeffersonians). This circumscribed method was convenient: Only in Congress did politicians from around the country meet regularly. The technique also suited Thomas Jefferson, who liked to pretend that he was doing congressional Republicans will, when in fact he was directing them. Critics condemned the caucus system as secretive and elitist. They write private letters to each other, but do nothing to give direction to the public mind, one Federalist complained of his partys congressmen. Can good come out of such a system? The increasing democratization of American life and the Second Great Awakening, a nationwide religious revival of the early 1800s, revolutionized the nomination process. Americans seeking salvation gathered at huge meetings in halls and in the open air; why not pick presidential candidates the same way? In September 1831, the first national political convention met in the Baltimore Athenaeum, at what is now the site of Maryland Institute College of Art. The conveners were the Anti-Masons, a party devoted to exposing alleged Masonic misdeeds. When Chief Justice John Marshall declined their nomination, the Anti-Masons tapped former Attorney General William Wirt, a lapsed Mason who now called the organization a wicked conspiracy. Wirt ended up carrying only Vermont, and the Anti-Masons petered out. But the convention concept was adopted by all parties, major and minor. Then, as now, conventions voted by state, sometimes calling the roll geographically north to south, more often alphabetically. If a first ballot produced no winner, balloting continued until some pol prevailed; for a century, a Democrat needed a supermajority of two-thirds to win. Conventions also approved platforms, or statements of party principle, and ruled on delegate eligibilityordinarily, housekeeping matters but, in some closely divided situations, bitterly contested. Conventions developed a lingo: a pol making a surprise late surge was a dark horse. The impulse to rally to a candidate apparently on the verge of winning was a stampede. Shrewd campaign managers learned to manipulate auditorium layouts and logistics. At the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago, a Lincoln man in charge of seating separated New Yorks delegation, solid for front-runner William Seward, and Pennsylvanias, pledged to Simon Cameron. The idea was to keep Lincolns rivals from communicating easily; after Cameron dropped out, Pennsylvania swung not to Seward but to Lincoln, who won on the third ballot. The 1940 GOP convention in Philadelphia was decided in the galleries, not on the floor. Samuel Pryor, in charge of arrangements, packed the bleachers with supporters of dark horse and former Democrat Wendell Willkie. Shouts of We want Willkie, raining on the delegates below, broke regular Republicans resolve. Willkie won on the sixth ballot. In bad-luck years, a party convenes so divided that no artfulness or guile can hold it together. The front-runner going into the April 1860 Democratic convention in Charleston was Stephen Douglas, who had been working both sides of the slavery issue. To please Southerners, Douglas urged that popular votes settle the status of slavery in territories; to woo the North, he scorned a pro-slavery vote in the Kansas Territory as rigged. Southerners disdained Douglass maneuvers. He led for 57 ballots but never reached two-thirds. Exhausted Democrats recessed for two months, then reassembled in Baltimore and declared Douglas their nominee. Angry Southerners, meeting in a parallel convention, nominated Vice President John Breckinridge. After Lincoln beat his Democratic rivals, Douglas stood by the Union. Breckinridge fought as a Confederate general. In 1912, the Republican Party came to its convention in Chicago divided between incumbent William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, eager to reclaim his old job. TR had mustered great momentum, beating Taft in nine of 12 primaries.But Taft had more delegates, picked at state conventions or by party bosses. Taft forces wrapped the rostrum in barbed wire camouflaged with bunting, lest Roosevelt supporters storm the stage. Taft won on the first ballot; Roosevelt bolted to form a new Progressive Party. Their split elected Woodrow Wilson. Technology ended such drama. As pundit Michael Barone explains, airliners and long-distance direct dialing let party bosses cement deals ahead of time. It is no accident that the last presidential candidate selected after more than one ballot was Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1952. Primaries and caucuses became universal after 1972, tying up the lions share of delegates no matter what party bigwigs might say. Conventions have become venues for hoopla, speeches, spin, and occasionally mayhem. As a maker of nominees, the convention is a ceremony, a spectacleand a splendid relic. This story was originally published in the September/October 2016 issue of American History magazine. Subscribe here. On December 7, 1907, 300 to 500 men, armed and mounted in columns of two, all wearing masks and white sashes, rode into Hopkinsville, seat of Christian County, Kentucky. Advance parties disarmed the small citys police force, occupied the Cumberland Telegraph and Home Telephone offices, and dynamited three warehouses packed with valuable fire-cured tobacco. While the warehouses burned, the interlopers destroyed the offices of the Hopkinsville Kentuckian, the local newspaper. After beating an Imperial Tobacco Co. buyer and wounding a Louisville & Nashville Railroad brakeman who was trying to save a burning freight car, the attackers formed up at Ninth and Main, the center of town, holstered their weapons, and rode off. A posse of 11 citizens pursued; two of those townsmen died in a running gun battle. The violent times that included the Hopkinsville attack would become known as the Black Patch Wars and would enter Christian County folklore. Hopkinsville, a tobacco shipping center served by the L&N and Illinois Southern railroads, played a prominent role in the region called the Black Patch for its main cropa strain of tobacco cured over burning hardwood that turned the leaf black, imparting a savory flavor that chewing tobacco and snuff users prized. The rolling hills of the Patchat its center three counties in west Tennessee and six counties in Kentuckyprovided well-drained fields for growing tobacco, and forests of hickory and oak provided fuel for the curing fire. Growers large and smallplantation owners, their sharecroppers, and smaller independent farmersharvested and smoked the leaf they grew and brought it in bales to a locally owned warehouse. Buyers representing chewing tobacco or snuff manufacturers inspected and bid for individual lots at auction. The dark-fire leaf would be packed in hogsheads and stored for months, even years. Competition for the best crop was strong. In the 1880s, North Carolina tobacco industry scion James Buchanan Duke began buying up and consolidating smaller manufacturers into his American Tobacco Company. By the early 1900s, Dukes giant company, in partnership with British Imperial Tobacco Company and Italian firm Regie, dominated the chewing tobacco market and squelched competition. Farmers had no choice but to bring their crop to an American Tobaccocontrolled warehouse and accept the price offered, even at a loss. The same pattern was playing out across American agriculture, as industrial consolidation created manufacturing behemoths called trusts that dictated prices for grain, meat, and other commodities. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, starting a decades-long federal fight against trusts like Dukes. To battle trusts, angry farmers in the Midwest and West organized the Grange, the Farmers Alliance, the Populist Party, and other economic self-defense organizations. In the South, the revolt took on a different character, particularly in the Black Patch, where dark-fire tobacco farmers exacted rough economic justice in a fiery campaign that began with lofty intent but descended into bloody fury before burning out. In 1903, growers in the Black Patch had to stand helplessly as the trust cut prices for their leaf to four and even two cents a pound. During the 1904 harvesting season, facing impoverishment, planters of the local elite called a meeting in Guthrie, Kentucky, on the Tennessee border. On September 23, thousands lined up in a festive atmosphere to join the newly formed Dark Tobacco District Planters Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee. The associations pitch was simple: Growers would deliver their dark-fire crop not to American Tobacco but to the association, which would hold the leaf until buyers offered at least eight cents a pound. The association dispatched recruiters throughout the region to visit farmers in churches, stores, and schoolhouses. Big plantation owners saw the association as the only way to preserve their way of life; independent white farmers were less likely to go along because they saw collective action as infringing on individual liberty. Caught in the middle were black sharecroppers, many of them former slaves. The association didnt invite blacks to join; it simply expected them to do as they were told. Economic reality undercut the effort. Wealthy planters could wait out American Tobacco, and even help tenants get by, but small operators derided as hillbillies needed cash immediately, and Dukes buyers were paying eight cents to defecting growers. The association tried shaming, then shunning turncoats. A merchant who spoke against the group lost customers. Dissenting preachers watched their churches empty. The associations public face was polite and peaceful, at least to whites, and by the movements peak in 1907, 70 percent of Black Patch farmers had pledged allegiance to the group. Leaf prices began to rise, but with his deep pockets and enormous buying power, Duke was picking off growers, even association stalwarts. The planters faced the same problem as unions: How to enforce solidarity? They tried the same tactics as organized labor: First persuasion, then force. In November 1905, after growers had harvested and readied crop for sale, the association adopted resolutions that Kentuckian publisher Charles Meacham later recounted: We, the Farmers,proclaim and enunciate the following truth(s): Of the infamous trusts doing business in violation of the law, the Tobacco Trust is the most greedy and oppressive in that it robs the laborer and share-cropper of a just price for his only money crop. The resolution denounced in the severest terms growers selling to American Tobacco. We, as an association, withdraw our support from any manwho, by word or deed, lend[s] assistance to our trust enemies. Now the nightriding would begin. The riders belonged to a secret paramilitary group that authorities never officially could link to the planters association. Members called themselves the Silent Brigade and organized into county lodges. They took oaths, learned secret handshakes, and memorized passwords, vowing harsh penalties against anyone trading with the trust. Only David Amoss, a physician from Cobb, Kentucky, was ever identified in court as a brigade leader. Emulating the Ku Klux Klan, members wore white sashes and masks that served less to hide identities than to enable witnesses to swear they had not recognized individuals they might have seen. As its first targets, in spring 1906, the brigade picked independent farmers trading with Duke. A grower balking at a warning would find a threatening letter signed The night riders nailed to a barn door. That spring, the vigilantes sabotaged noncompliant growers planting beds by hoeing under the tobacco seedlings or sowing the planting grounds with salt or grass seed. Amid threats and attacks, the association campaigned for solidarity. After a series of open meetings, a second gathering took place in Guthrie on September 24, 1906. This time, 20,000 people attended an event to celebrate the farmers defiance of the trust. The gathering ended in a miles-long parade of planters, Confederate veterans, and belles bearing bouquets of dark leaf. Last came a rear guard of 1,000 black sharecroppers. Despite the associations initial success in enrolling 70 percent of Patch growers, the only way for the association to beat the trust was to get 100 percent loyalty, and the only way to do that was through intimidation. Disavowing any connection to the nightriders, the association nonetheless expressed sympathy for their goals. The atmosphere became hotter, and lodges began conducting armed, military-style drills. On December 1, 1906, Princeton, Tennessee, 28 miles south of Hopkinsville, woke to the muffled steps of 200 horses, hooves wrapped in burlap. Callers trying to reach the local telephone switchboard heard a gruff male voice say, The nightriders are here. A blast rocked the town and two tobacco warehouses went up in flames, destroying 75 tons of nonassociation leaf. The next attack would aim higher. In his newspaper, Meacham, who also served as Hopkinsvilles mayor, had editorialized against the nightriders. Fearing they would come for his town next, he placed the local company of the Kentucky State Guard on alert. The militiamen had a long wait. The nightriders used feints and disinformation to confuse townspeople and troops, sending squads to infiltrate the town but not attacking. An uneasy standoff persisted until Friday, December 7, 1907, when that double column of masked men sporting white sashes bore down on Hopkinsville. Embedded squads went into action, disarming the militia and the police and politely taking female Home Telephone Company operators into custody. Raiders cut the telegraph lines and occupied the railroad depots, rounding up the few people on the streets. According to Meacham, the riders torched three tobacco warehouses. Flames lit the skies, and the vigilantes wrecked the Kentuckian office. Raiders shot and wounded a railroad worker. After 30 minutes of mayhem, the riders released their hostages with grave warnings and withdrew. Amoss, bleeding from a minor head wound, led the riders out of town, chased by a posse. On January 3, nightriders burned two warehouses in Russellville, Kentucky, owned by Luckett-Wake and the American Snuff Company. As spring 1907 approached, the brigade ruled the Patch, invulnerable to local law enforcement and unlikely to face interference from the federal troops of trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt, who empathized with farmers and hesitated to intervene in local matters. In the Patch, riders struck in small bands, burning barns, destroying plant beds, horsewhipping farmers, and vanishing. Nightrider attacks were not always about tobacco prices and maintaining an agrarian way of life. Much of the worst Patch violence was inflicted upon African-Americans, to terrorize them into line with association policy, drive them away so whites could work the land that they had sharecropped or owned, or simply to act on racist hatred. On March 9, 1908, nightriders mounted a Klan-style raid on Birmingham, Kentucky, a small town that freed slaves had built between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers; residents who did not flee were slain. As raids became bloodier, defiance flared. Independent growers took to guarding their fields at night and tried to ambush brigade riders. Assassination attempts sent Amoss underground; he led his forces from hiding. The brigade fought back. When a Dycusburg, Kentucky, tobacco buyer and businessman taunted the association, riders burned his barns, destroyed his distillery, and brutally whipped him. Lodge members thought to be wavering disappeared, their corpses later found in bogs or wellsor not at all. Pressure for action rose outside the Patch. The Louisville Courier-Journal denounced the nightriders as the shame of Kentucky and called for law and order. Newly installed Kentucky Governor Augustus Willson ordered several companies of the State Guard into the Patch to set roadblocks and conduct patrols that constrained the riders. But that also increased the outlaws popularity: Locals saw the militiamen, mostly mountaineers from the states east, as an occupying force. Arrests made no difference. The only people who went to jail were those who fought the riders. Some survivors fled to Ohio River towns such as Metropolis, Illinois, and Evansville, Indiana. From that safe distance, victims filed civil suits against wealthy landowners thought to lead the vigilantes. Because they were interstate legal actions, these suits became federal cases, with acquittal by friendly jurors no longer a given. Lodges had to raise funds to pay off judgments against their captains. The war in the Black Patch waned at the end of 1908, though acts of terror continued. Auctions resumed, and leaf prices began to rise. Planters Association membership fell from 70 percent of Black Patch growers to less than 50 percent. The riders faded away, put out of business by eight-cent tobacco and their own excesses. In 1911, Commonwealth Attorney Denny P. Smith of Cadiz, Kentucky, and a team of local prosecuting attorneys obtained indictments for conspiracy and destruction of property against Amoss and Guy Dunning, a planter accused of being Amosss second in command. The trial, in Hopkinsville, began on March 6. Amosss backers crowded the courtroom for the 10-day trial. So did the raiders victims. The prosecution had recruited witnesses by offering immunity. Former nightriders testified not only about the Hopkinsville raid but also about brigade rituals and procedures. Yes, Amoss was the general, Dunning his lieutenant. Fingers pointed at maps, exposing secret meeting places. Voices recited the nocturnal oaths. Amoss presented an unadorned defense. He was a simple country doctor, out delivering a child or binding a wound at those times accusers claimed he had been commanding nightriders. Not only the Courier-Journal but the Atlanta Constitution and the New York Times sent reporters to Hopkinsville. The courtroom was silent as the jury returned with a verdict after 40 minutes of deliberation: Not guilty on all counts. Two months later, in May 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the American Tobacco Company an illegal conspiracy under the Sherman Act. Duke had to break up his empirebut into parts he still controlled. The 20th century was hard on the Patch. Cigarettes made with lighter burley tobacco became popular, especially among men who served in World War I, sapping dark-fire chaw profits. Growers tried repeatedly to hold back leaf to boost prices, but tobacco companiesstill big, still powerfulusually had thousands of hogsheads warehoused to cover any shortfall. The New Deal brought federal subsidies for commodities, including tobacco, that lasted until the 1990s. The demise of subsidies drove out many small growers. Now Patch tobacco is grown on a large scale, with landowners contracting with manufacturers; however, workers process the leaf the old-fashioned way, curing it over a low-burning hardwood fire in sealed barns. Today, dark-fire tobaccos stronger flavor enhances smokeless products, including chewing and dipping tobacco, moist and dry snuff, and a Swedish product called snus. Cigarette smoking continues to decline, but smokeless tobacco product sales have risen. For decades, old-timers declined to discuss the nightriders, fearing retribution or remaining loyal to oaths taken under a harvest moon. Now, however, schoolchildren in Christian and other counties in the Patch learn about the nightriders who fought the hated trust. Some communities re-enact the Black Patch Wars in annual events. And at the end of the 2015 season, dark-leaf fire-cured tobacco, grown and processed using methods that would have been familiar to Patch residents of a century ago, brought about $2.70 a pound. This story was originally published in the September/October 2016 issue of American History magazine. Subscribe here. Hillary Clinton had courted the alien disclosure community for the past year, after she and John Podesta was reportedly willing to release all top secret files held by the US government on UFO and aliens. Express reports that the Paradigm research group, a campaign organisation set up by Steve Bassett, who is the only lobbyist on the UFO issue in the US. Bassett believes there is a "truth" embargo that was put in place by world governments to hide the fact that aliens visited the earth since 1947 roswell UFO incident in New mexico, reported the express. The report said that PRG had put out a statement on their website saying there are 70 days left to persuade Clinton, Podesta and President Barack Obama to talk to the media about the extra terrestrial issue. In January, Clinton had reportedly wanted to open up about the issue and what is happening at the area 51 military base in Nevada, where UFO believers guess that there is alien technology hidden away there. Nature World News reports that she wants to open the files as much as possible and she wants to know what the information shows. Clinton reportedly said in a radio interview that there are enough stories out there that she does'nt think everybody is just making up in their kitchens. Hillary Clinton had reportedly said she would get to the bottom of this once she became president, and answer all questions on what the US government knows or doesn't know about this subject. She had even told a reporter during her campaign in New Hampshire that she would get to the bottom of it. In addition, Bassett had reportedly said that under Donald Trump, the chances of the UFO files getting buried is highly likely and is "bleak." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Kate Middleton and Prince William are on the verge of divorce rumors and it has been intensified when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge did not attend their friend's wedding. Kate and William skipped Oliver Hick's wedding and people seem to be clueless for this. But a source claimed that the royal couple just want to avoid the media stir regarding their looming split which according to HNGN, will be announced in 2017. As mentioned by Celebrity Dirty Laundry, Kate and William were nowhere to be found when their closest friend from Eton tied the knot with Rose Kingscote the last weekend. Their other friends were [present in the event to congratulate the couple on their wedding day. Oliver Hicks is Prince William's best friend at the Eton and now, it seems like William and Oliver have becomes estranged. The reason, according to the report is that the royal couple's marriage is really in trouble and will be heading for a divorce soon. Before the announcement of the divorce, the couple want to stay away from the media and the press in as much as possible. Moreover, rumors are rife that William is playing by Kate's rules just to keep peace and to avoid publicizing the divorce drama. But it can be recalled that this is not the first time Kate Middleton has been a no-show from one of William's friends' weddings. There are times when she chose to stay at home rather than accompany William to maybe a total of five weddings. Furthermore, Kate Middleton attended many of Prince William's friends' weddings before their royal wedding but when William already asked for her hand, it looks like she never attended any of these weddings. What might have been the reason for the sudden change in Kate's attitude when it comes to dealing with William's friends? The Kensington Palace did not give any comment on this issue as it is not in the habit of presenting the personal lives of Prince William and Kate Middleton or any member of the royal family. Kate Middleton and Prince William's divorce rumor is creating media turmoil these times and it is better to wait for any confirmation from any of the people involved. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Prince Harry will propose to Meghan Markle after receiving Queen Elizabeth's wedding, reports tell. With this, it has been reported too that Kate Middleton is planning to visit the actress in Hollywood as a way to getting to know Markle better. As reported on HNGN, Queen Elizabeth already granted Prince Harry the grudging blessing to marry his actress girlfriend, Meghan. This already serves a go-signal for Harry to finally ask Markle's hand in marriage. So it looks like the royal family is now ready to welcome Meghan and because of this Kate is said to be making the first move to introduce her to the royal family. According to Celebrity Dirty Laundry, Kate Middleton is planning to visit Markle in Hollywood. But because of Kate's plan, another issue had escalated and that is Kate's abandoning Pippa Middleton for the actress which looks like she is choosing Meghan over her own sister. Kate is not even involved in the wedding preparations which could only give the people a hint that she is more interested with Harry's new girlfriend than her own sister's wedding. The report also added that Kate Middleton was so busy hanging out with Meghan Markle at Prince Harry's Nottingham Cottage home. The actress was even photographed walking down Kensington High Street with grocery bags. Rumors are rife that Meghan prepared a lovely dinner for Prince Harry and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Meanwhile, a report escalated before that the Hollywood actress is expected to attend a rugby game between South Africa and England. It has been said that Prince Harry prepared for this event as their first official public appearance together. Until now, the fans and the press are waiting for the couple's first public appearance together. It can be recalled that Harry issued a statement to protect his girlfriend from the harassment of the press. It seems like all is ready for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's looming engagement with as Kate Middleton prepares herself to welcome her soon-to-be sister-in-law. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. After Samsung's ground year battle with its Galaxy Note 7, the Korean tech giant is gearing for a comeback with the Galaxy Note 8 that promises improved features and specs. The mobile numbers of the upcoming phones Galaxy S8 series and Galaxy Note 8 have leaked online via Twitter. According to a reliable source, the Samsung Galaxy S8 could be the company's saving grace after what recently happened. Mobile numbers such as SM-G950 and SM-G955 will make up the Galaxy S8 series while the SM-N950 was reserved for the Galaxy Note 8. The challenging situation that the company faces in the mobile market is no longer a surprise. Instead of considering the troubles they had with the Galaxy Note 7, the company had plans to continue the Galaxy Note line-up and decided to follow this year's Galaxy Note 7 with the new Galaxy Note 8. Some speculations revealed that there would be a critical move that will alter the face of the said mobile phone line with the use of the Exynos chipset. Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will carry the chipset mentioned above. Exynos and Qualcomm are both recognized as remarkable variables today. However, that might also change since the South Korean company is planning to create a new powerful Exynos with the Shannon 359 modem. The upcoming Galaxy S8, S8 Plus, and Note 8 will be the most awaited mobile phone devices that sparked interest with customers and buyers. The speculations with regards to the release of Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 come from Evan Blass who is known as a mobile reporter who has a knack for reporting unannounced smartphone news. In Blass' tweet, the upcoming Galaxy S8 models will ship as SM-G950 and SM-G955 Rumored Specs of Samsung Galaxy S8 Reliable sources revealed that Samsung Galaxy S8 would come out in two sizes 5.1 and 5.5-inch 4K AMOLED display for the flat and curved models. But reports said that Samsung is planning to increase their phone size to whooping 5.7 and 6.2 inches. The upcoming Galaxy S8 is also speculated to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 or Samsung Exynos Processor with 4-6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage with a micro-SD slot for expansion. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. AMD has launched their first graphics card that is based on the Polaris architecture. And now fresh news says that AMD is planning to release the Vega 10 and 11 sometime in 2017. The upcoming AMD GPU will be competing with the NVIDIA Pascal GPU GTX 1070 and 1080. AMD's Vega 10 and 11 be arriving next year as replacement for the current Polaris 10 and 11 says Fudzilla. It has reported that the first graphic card based on this GPU could launch in first half of 2017. Users have known this since AMD's Capsaicin 2016 event that Vega would be arriving in 2017 and would succeed the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs. The Vega architecture had already a crucial design milestone suggesting that the development of the chip is underway and techies are hoping to see it in market as early as Q1 2017. The features of the Vega 10 GPU include an improved GCN design that will lead to better GPU efficiency as compared to Polaris and it will also be using HBM2 standard. The latest HBM2 standard that will deliver a huge amount of bandwidth a higher VRAM capacity and lower power consumption in comparison to HBM1 and GDDR5, reports WCCFTech. The AMD Vega 10 graphics card will be supporting up to 4096 stream processors, numerous SKU and several varying VRAM configurations. It can also be compared to the Radeon Pro Duo, 512GB per second x 2, when it comes to the bandwidth. The Vega 10's HBM2 could accommodate up to 32 GB of VRAM. The Vega 11, which is said to be replacing the current Polaris architecture that AMD is currently basing their GPUs on, will be a midrange graphics chipset with better specifications and performance that will be offered at a very reasonable price. AMD's goal with Vega 10 and 11 is to replace their Fiji based Fury series with high-performance offerings. It is also rumored that AMD will be showcasing new GPUs that will based on the much advanced Vega 11 platform next year. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. F itzrovia is one of the fastest changing parts of London. Tatty old warehouses, mews houses, and Sixties blocks once involved in the rag trade, full of grit and life, have been steadily converting to posh apartment blocks. For this once flea-bitten remnant of Georgian London is just five minutes from Oxford Circus. In one such mews in 2013, Simon and Geraldine Tate spotted an 18th-century four-storey brick double warehouse with loading bays and an old hoist. It was being used as offices, its roof void had been opened to the fine, stout beams of its pitched roof, and it was fairly sound. Since Simon and Geraldines children, Alexandra, 28, and Joshua, 27, had just flown the coop, the couple, in their mid-fifties, were looking for a flat in London. They grew up in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, and went to the same school. Soon after schooldays were over they started going out together. Simon, then a printer/publisher, moved to a flat in Putney with his older brother, and Geraldine, whod joined the Civil Service, visited. They married in 1985. We loved doing up old buildings from the start, says Geraldine. Simon would come back from work and start hanging wallpaper, with me holding the ladder. Atmospheric: the six-flat development in a Fitzrovia mews (Charles Hosea) / Anna Stathaki They moved out of London to raise their family, first to a 14th-century mill in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, which was in the Domesday Book a project if there ever was one. Next, they converted a row of Victorian cottages into a family home. But once alone again, the lure of London proved too strong. Simon now runs a small development company with his business partner Gareth Wilkinson, converting old buildings to residential. Gareth and I were simultaneously looking for a building to develop, says Simon, so we thought, why not combine the two projects? Chatting with agents, Simon got wind of the double warehouse, which wasnt yet for sale, contacted the owner, and bought it without it ever going to market. Not for a song those days are over but it had planning permission for six apartments which included digging out the basement. Simons brother Andrew, an architect, started on the drawings. Sharing an eye for design: Simon and Geraldine Tate in their ultra-modern kitchen / Charles Hosea They were going to do six flats duplexes in the basement, cleverly using borrowed light with a double-height lightwell at the front, and good, high ceilings, plus three flats to sell off-plan, and their own home at the top, enjoying the exposed rafters. To bring light into the flats at the back, they negotiated with neighbouring properties to buy a narrow strip of land. Getting 12 people to agree a price is like herding sheep, Simon grins. It took six months, but meant they could put windows and skylights in, making a huge difference in light, especially in the two basement duplexes. Westminster planners have a keen eye, and requested small tweaks to avoid overlooking, but there were no objections, and they got cracking with the build in January last year. It takes guts to do a job like this. Old buildings can and do throw up surprises, and excavating more than 13 feet down was almost a disaster. The substantial building was carefully acro-propped and all was going well, when one teatime a visiting utility company hit a water main. Water started spewing towards the excavation. Simon and Gareth knew that if it flooded the hole, it could wash out the props and collapse the entire building. Pumps arrived in the nick of time, Gareth stayed overnight, and a crisis was averted. The next day was business as usual. All the flats are a good size with good light. The basements get light from east and west, with skylights over the kitchen areas. One has a smart glazed dressing room off the master bedroom. Loading bay doors and side-sliding window sashes were rebuilt in double-glazed timber. Inside, all the flats have bespoke warehouse-style Crittall glazed doors to maximise light. The same smart ceramic tiles are in all the bathrooms, either black or off-white, and the lighting works well. Three flats sold off-plan in April this year, and the couple moved into their flat in June. Geraldine is the companys interior designer. In the couples home the soaring beams, painted off-white, look terrific, enhanced by a chandelier. The floors are limewashed oak, and the exposed wall on one side has original mellow tints and lime mortar. The ultra-modern kitchen appears to have just landed in the living space. The sink area is in a double cupboard you can close; the central island with its black granite top and three stylish lights doesnt overpower the room. Geraldine explains: We dont put anything in a flat that we wouldnt want ourselves. Their coffee table is a 17th-century French door with enormous iron clouts in its top that they hauled back from France. In the country we cook, but its an urban village here, she adds. We love exploring and have eaten out every night. We still havent used the cooker. Weve been here three months and it still feels like being on holiday. WHAT IT COST Double warehouse with planning permission for six flats: 5.4 million Total development cost: 2.5 million. The value of the scheme now is estimated at 10 million Two duplexes are for sale from award-winning TAG Urban Properties GET THE LOOK H ollywood stars could come flocking to London after Donald Trump's election, an estate agent claimed as it unveiled a guide to the capital especially for the would-be expats. During the election campaign, Cher, Barbara Streisand, Samuel L Jackson, Jon Stewart, Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer and Neve Campbell all pledged to leave the US if there was a Trump victory. Many other entertainers publicly opposed his candidacy and London agent Kay & Co says the capital would make a perfect escape from a Trump regime. With no language barrier, London and the wider UK is hotly tipped to be a location of choice for those leaving Trumps domain, says Martin Bikhit, director at Kay & Co. The fall in sterling since the Brexit vote in June makes London property especially attractive - despite prices rising by 13 per cent in sterling terms over the past year, they have fallen by 10 per cent for those lucky enough to be buying with dollars. There would be no real culture shock and, despite the UKs vote to leave the European Union, those Democrats leaving the US may find living under the remit of new Left-wing Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, more politically palatable. Comparing prime central areas to their counterparts in New York - where many stars make their homes - the company suggested Sarah Jessica Parker might hypothetically want to swap her adjoining townhouses in the West Village for a large Victorian house in the similarly chilled neighbourhood of Marylebone. Beyonce and Jay Z's penthouse on the top floor of a warehouse in Tribeca could be exchanged for a converted warehouse scheme in arty Fitzrovia, while Demi Moore - who is selling her triplex overlooking Central Park - could find a perfect spot in a Bayswater penthouse overlooking Hyde Park. Nick Davies, head of residential development at Stirling Ackroyd, said that for Americans dismayed about Trumps victory it could be worth considering a move to London: The recent fall in the value of the pound against the dollar means there are great deals available in the London market for buyers from across the Atlantic." In 2018, ROC is again being designed to include new topics, speakers and formats to ensure the event remain fresh, relevant and interesting. Annually, this conference delivers the most compelling and comprehensive revenue management event for t he hotel industry, and convenes more than 100 key stakeholders to address the most critical trends affecting revenue management in hotels today. With powerful educational and networking opportunities, this is the cant-miss conference of the year for learning and engagement. Brought to you by your non-profit industry association in Asia Pacific. For more information please contact Jackie Douglas Gregory T. Bohan, MS, Instructor in the Hosptality & Tourism Management Program at Florida Atlantic University's College of Business moderated a high-profile panel discussion at the HVS CHICOS (Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference & Operations Summit) conference held on November 10 and 11 at the Ritz Carlton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Conference was attended by several hundred active financiers, owners, developers and operators of hotels and resorts throughout the Caribbean. Mr. Bohan's panel consisted of the following: Federico Sanchez-Ortiz, President & Chief Executive Officer of Interlink Group (resort developer) Jose Suarez, President - International Hospitality Enterprises (resort owner/operator) Luis D. Muniz Martinez - Deputy Executive Director - Puerto Rico Tourism Company (Puerto Rico Government Official) Tony Larino, Managing Director - Rockwood Capital (resort investor) The panel focused on the challenges facing the hotel and resort market in Puerto Rico at present (Zika virus outbreak, economic woes of the Commonweath of Puerto Rico) and the outlook for the historically strong and vibrant hotel and resort market to maintain it's long-term robust performance levels. The HVS CHICOS conference is conducted and sponsored annually by HVS International and is attended by key executives from all facets of the hospitality and tourism industries in the Caribbean as well as lenders, developers and other active market participants from around the world. Stella Quintero Instructor, Hospitality & Tourism Management - Florida Atlantic University (561) 297-3666 Florida Atlantic University (FAU) View source It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore). Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net. Go back to home Treebo hotels, one of the largest players in the budget hospitality space in India, have recently crossed the 180 property mark with Hotelogix as their PMS partner - and are now present in over 40 cities across the country. Treebo is essentially a digital hotel chain - the first and largest budget hotel brand in the country. We use modern technology and a deeply embedded hospitality DNA to offer a great experience to our customers, at affordable prices, said Sidharth Gupta, the companys co-founder. Having commenced operations barely 18 months ago with four properties in the city of Bangalore, Treebo decided to choose Hotelogix to cater to their property management needs. With the right technology to support their vision, the hospitality company experienced exponential growth over the last several months as they scaled their business to rope in over 180 hotels from almost 40 cities. Since the flexible interface was capable of evolving with the business, Hotelogixs property management system was well equipped to mirror Treebos rapid rise and simplified the on-boarding process for new hotels and Sidharth was delighted with the progress made. Hotelogix has been our technology partner since the very beginning of our journey, and kept pace with our operations as we scaled quickly over the last several months. Starting from four hotels in one city, today we have over 170 hotels in almost 40 cities and Hotelogix was agile enough to handle our speedy growth, he said. Sidharth was also impressed with Hotelogixs broad compatibility, especially since the Treebo group dont fall under the cloud companys typical clientele. Despite the fact that we were an unusual client for them considering most of their customers are independent hotels I have to say that thanks to their support; technology adoption and integration at all the new properties we later added was simple! It now takes us 20-24 hours to on-board a new hotel. Beyond optimizing hotel resources and simplifying on-boarding of new properties, Treebo also recently employed Hotelogixs flexible architecture to develop Bumblebee, their own in-house app. The app improves the companys employability by providing the staff with an intuitive, simple interface that requires barely any training. We realized that a lot of the staff who work at the hotels are not very comfortable with a desktop. Many have grown up in an era where theyve not become accustomed to using desktops, and are a lot more comfortable with their mobile or tablet. Thats why we decided to build the front end of our app for tablets at the back-end, its still Hotelogix. The results have been great! People find it very easy to carry out front office operations like check-ins and check-outs, given that everything is just a few touches away! said Sidharth. After witnessing rampant growth over the past year, Treebo shows no signs of slowing down. The company intends to touch between 1500-2000 properties over 150 cities by the end of 2018 and Sidharth is enthusiastic about the future. The core objective of Treebo is to be a brand that genuinely offers guests a great experience, and is relevant to a large number of customers all over India. By the end of 2018, we expect to have a total inventory upwards of 50,000 rooms. So yes, we do plan to continue scaling and are quite excited about the future! Having established at loyal customer base in over 100 countries, Hotelogix have been looking to make an impact in the Indian market as well. Partnering with Treebo proved to be a mutually beneficial collaboration, allowing the software company to penetrate deeper into the local market while also supporting the budget hotel brand in optimizing their business operations. Treebo is more than an accommodation provider, they are a technology company that emphasize on the all-round development of their service something we strongly believe in as well. Hotelogix is delighted to be a part of Treebos journey its been truly gratifying to witness their swift ascent, said Prabhash, the companys founder. Click here to take a free trial of Hotelogixs cloud-based PMS. About Hotelogix Hotelogix is a unique, cloud-based, end-to-end, hospitality technology solution, built to seamlessly manage hotels, resorts, serviced apartments or multi-location hotel chains, by providing a single window to manage all hotel operations and bookings (online and offline). Hotelogix is currently used by properties in 100+ countries. Newly Built Hotel Conveniently Located near Abilene Regional Airport Leo Spriggs, President and CEO of Hospitality Management Corporation (HMC), is pleased to announce the addition of this 112-room Holiday Inn Abilene, TX, to their hotel group. The company continues its ongoing business expansion which is made up of full service, conference center, select service and limited service hotels. HMC is one of the countrys largest third-party privately held hotel management companies, ranked in the top 40 of all third party and owner operated hotel management corporations. This new build hotel is ideally located five minutes from Abilene Christian University, Hardin-Simmons University, Taylor County Expo Center, Abilene Civic Center and Abilene Regional Airport. The hotel offers an in-house cafe and lounge, Maxx Bar & Grill, an outdoor pool and fitness center. Plus, kids ages 19 and under stay for free when sharing their parents room and kids up to 12 years of age eat free at the on-site restaurant. The Holiday Inn Abilene North College Area also offers Wireless High-Speed Internet, a business center and complimentary shuttle/parking. We are proud to add yet another IHG Holiday Inn as part of our growing portfolio. Our goal is for the property to become a key destination hotel in the Abilene market while maintaining the quality and excellence of the longstanding Holiday Inn brand, shared Gerald Morris, Vice President of Operations for HMC. About Hospitality Management Corporation (HMC) Founded in 1971, HMC is a privately owned independent management company and one of the oldest independent hotel management firms in the U.S. lodging industry. For over four decades, HMC has been a leader in providing hotel management services for institutional and private owners and continues to strive for excellence in hospitality management and hotel development across the United States. Since its inception, the companys headquarters have been located in Dallas, TX. For more information on Hospitality Management Corporation, please contact Leo Spriggs, President and CEO, at (972) 934-2040 or lspriggs@hospitalitymgt.com. Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a franchise agreement with M&L Hospitality for a Hyatt Place hotel in London, to be managed by Cycas Hospitality. Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will mark the second Hyatt Place hotel and the fifth Hyatt-branded hotel in the United Kingdom. The Hyatt Place brand is rooted in extensive consumer insights indicating that guests seek stylish, comfortable, seamless experiences that accommodate their lifestyles and familiar routines. To embody this, the brand offers casual hospitality and purposeful service in a smartly designed, high-tech and contemporary environment. We are delighted to collaborate with M&L Hospitality to bring the second Hyatt Place hotel to the U.K., said Peter Norman, senior vice president, acquisitions and development Europe, Africa and Middle East (EAME) and Southwest Asia for Hyatt. The opening of this hotel will mark a significant milestone for Hyatt as the Hyatt Place brand continues to expand worldwide and offer more choices to our guests in key gateway cities. Expected to open in early 2017 following an extensive renovation of the existing building, Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will be located at the doorstep of Heathrow Airport, providing guests with a relaxing and uncomplicated place to pause before beginning the next leg of their journey. M&L Hospitalitys collaboration with Hyatt continues to expand with the opening of Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport in the U.K., said Neil Maxwell, chief executive officer, M&L Hospitality. After extensive upgrades to the hotel, including a full refurbishment of all guest rooms and public areas, we believe the Hyatt Place brand is the right fit for the hotel and Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will exceed guest expectations while visiting or passing through London. Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will offer: 350 spacious guestrooms , including a plush Hyatt Grand Bed, media and work center with a 42" flat-panel HDTV and comfortable Cozy Corner sofa-sleeper , including a plush Hyatt Grand Bed, media and work center with a 42" flat-panel HDTV and comfortable Cozy Corner sofa-sleeper Gallery Hosts unique to the Hyatt Place brand who are available 24/7 unique to the Hyatt Place brand who are available 24/7 24/7 Gallery Market offering grab n go items, such as snacks and sandwiches offering grab n go items, such as snacks and sandwiches Coffee to Cocktails Bar featuring specialty coffees and premium beers, as well as wines and cocktails featuring specialty coffees and premium beers, as well as wines and cocktails Meetings Spaces offering seven flexible, high-tech meeting/function space that can accommodate 2-100 delegates offering seven flexible, high-tech meeting/function space that can accommodate 2-100 delegates 24-hour StayFit Gym featuring fully stocked exercise equipment featuring fully stocked exercise equipment Odds & Ends program for forgotten items that guests can buy, borrow or enjoy for free program for forgotten items that guests can buy, borrow or enjoy for free Free Wi-Fi and public computers with remote printing throughout the hotel Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport will be managed by Cycas Hospitality. This is a trusted, global brand for Heathrow Airport and we know that guests will enjoy our plans for new, intuitive levels of service which will mark this hotel apart from its competitors on the strip, said John Wagner, director, Cycas Hospitality. New international research undertaken in 2016 from the LGBT2030 program by specialist consulting firm Out Now reveals continuing expansion in key LGBT markets across the world. The global value of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender travel market has continued to grow and is now worth over USD$211 billion in LGBT consumer spending per year, reveals research released at WTM London last week. New international research undertaken in 2016 from the LGBT2030 program by specialist consulting firm Out Now reveals continuing expansion in key LGBT markets across the world. Ian Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Out Now, presented the findings at the LGBT Masterclass education workshop at World Travel Market, London. The global LGBT market continues to be one of healthy growth and opportunities for a growing number of travel industry participants, Johnson says. However the LGBT consumer market continues to raise its expectations and there is much work to be done by the industry in the areas of communications improvements, strategy development, training and quality assurance for LGBT travellers. LGBT people expect the same level of welcome and respect as all people do when they travel. The new 2016 valuations of this market show that targeting LGBT customers is not only the right thing to do it is also smart business. Johnson also announced the launch of a new global training and certification program for travel agents wanting to increase their sales from LGBT tourism. This new program by Out Now partners with leading US-based tourism website TravelMarketReport.com and is able to train and certify more than 20,000 travel agents in North America and in markets across the world. The agreement between Out Now and Travel Market Report was concluded at World Travel Market London in 2015 so the two companies said they were delighted to launch this new Learn.LGBT training program http://Learn.LGBT for travel agents at WTM London this year. Anne Marie Moebes, Executive Vice President of Travel Market Report said: Travel Market Report is honored to partner with Out Now on the first ever LGBT training and certification program for travel agents. This important and valuable segment is of great interest to many of our readers who are seeking proper training so that they can serve and earn the trust of LGBT consumers when booking their vacation and travel plans. The latest data from Out Nows LGBT2030 global research program shows an annual average growth rate for each of the past three years of 2.0% per year. Two markets Italy and Argentina experienced negative growth in LGBT travel consumer spend during this period. COUNTRY (USD$bn) 2016 AV ANN. GROWTH RATE USA 60.8 2.5 Brazil 26.4 1.4 Japan 20.4 1.1 Mexico 10.7 2.3 Germany 13.3 1.1 Turkey 6.2 3.4 France 11.2 0.6 UK 11.3 2.5 Italy 9.0 -0.4 Spain 6.8 0.6 Colombia 4.9 4.7 Argentina 4.2 -0.2 Poland 4.4 2.7 Canada 6.9 2.2 Australia 6.5 2.3 Netherlands 2.9 0.4 Israel 1.3 2.8 India (part) 4.1 5.7 211.3 2.0 The LGBT2030 data is sourced from consumer responses from a research panel of over 130,000 participants. The data above reflects responses received in 2016 from respondents in each of the 18 listed countries being the most viable and accessible LGBT markets for the global travel industry. It shows total spend on travel by LGBT people living in each country listed. (India includes only those with internet access.) Partnership Enhances Hospitality Training and Certification Capabilities The National Restaurant Association (NRA) and the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) today announced a partnership for the largest foodservice trade association in the world to acquire the training business assets and products of the American Hotel & Lodging Association Educational Institute (AHLEI). Currently owned by AHLA, AHLEI is recognized as the training and certifying body for the hospitality industry. Given the nature of the hospitality industry and the intrinsic sharing that goes on between the restaurant and lodging sectors, NRA and AHLA saw a unique opportunity to combine resources to produce an even more robust training program that will benefit employees in their career development and improve overall consumer satisfaction. AHLA will retain the certification business, and the NRA will assume day-to-day responsibility for AHLEIs training program business. Under the intended agreement, NRA will purchase the AHLEI portfolio of 180 training products and assets, as well as the Lansing, Michigan building owned by AHLEI. We are grateful that AHLEI business has found a home with the National Restaurant Association. It's a natural and logical evolution that combines two outstanding teams committed to excellence in the restaurant, foodservice, and hospitality industries, said Dawn Sweeney, president & CEO, National Restaurant Association. By adding the AHLEI assets and business lines to our offerings, we will increase our reach and enhance our credibility as the acknowledged leader in industry training and certification while extending our expertise to the hotel and lodging industry. AHLAs core mission is to provide employees with the best career opportunities through training and development. Recognizing important partnerships that help us achieve our goals has been and continues to be critical to the industrys success, said Katherine Lugar, president & CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association. This new partnership gives us the opportunity to focus on what we do best, providing the training and resources necessary to offer pathways to upward mobility for our talent and the future generation of hospitality leaders by maintaining the certifications program. We are very excited about this collaboration and are confident that the NRA will continue to grow and enhance training offerings for our industry. AHLEI will be run as a separate business under the NRAs Training & Certification division. The acquisition is slated to be completed by the end of this year. While still retaining traces of the ska influences that initially propelled them into the charts in the 80s, Madness have long since evolved into exemplars of a peculiarly English tradition of songwriting, typified by iconic bands like The Kinks and The Beatles. Their twelfth album Cant Touch Us Now continues the tradition, with wryly-observed sketches borne of lifes hard experience. Recorded under the watchful eyes of long-time collaborator Clive Langer and Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios, the band turn in 16 tuneful tracks of trademark plinky-plonk piano and rasping saxophone. As Suggs strolls the streets of Camden, his gimlet-eye takes in the heroes and villains on every corner. Theres the priggish Mr Apples, furtively winging his way down the street up to no good but sanctimoniously critical of anyone else who might be. 'Can We Dance' boy band comes back to the Emerald Isle. British pop band, The Vamps, have just announced their tour plans for next year. The boys will play at 3Arena Dublin on Monday, May 8 and at the SSE Arena in Belfast on Wednesday, May 10. The Vamps are made up of vocalist Brad Simpson, guitarist James McVey, bassist Connor Ball, and drummer Tristan Evans. 3Arena hosted the lads last March where they performed a headline concert. In the past, The Vamps have supported artists like Demi Lovato and The Wanted. Advertisement Tickets for the UK & Ireland tour go on sale Saturday, November 19 at 10am. WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to upend U.S. trade policy is claiming its first casualty, as Republican leaders in Congress have closed the door on the Obama administration's hopes for last-minute ratification of an expansive Pacific Rim trade accord before the president leaves office. GOP lawmakers had publicly expressed skepticism about the future of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership ahead of a presidential election in which both major candidates opposed the deal. But staff level conversations between the White House and Congress had continued behind the scenes to prepare for a potential vote during the lame-duck congressional session that could begin next week. If there was any doubt that Donald Trump is planning to follow through on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, it was put to rest by a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, in which the president-elect affirmed that "probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million" of them would be expelled. That's just the ones he says have criminal records, and Trump declined to specify what would happen to the rest of the 11 million people here without authorization. We've talked about how that could destabilize some of the largest sources of undocumented immigrants, namely Mexico. But there's another, more direct impact: The loss to America's own gross domestic product, a broad measure of the economy that estimates the total output of goods and services. A working paper published Monday by economists with the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that the undocumented population contributes 3 percent to America's GDP, or $5 trillion over 10 years. Getting rid of a substantial chunk of them could shave as much as a point off the nation's economic growth few other policies would have as much impact. The effects would be concentrated in the areas with the highest numbers of those immigrants, including Texas, where previous studies have already shown that undocumented immigrants have a positive effect. But wait, you say: Didn't President Obama deport millions of immigrants himself? Yes he did 2.5 million of them, to be exact, between 2009 and 2015. It is perhaps no coincidence that GDP growth has been lackluster for much of that period. Now, it's important to note that undocumented immigrants , who account for about 5 percent of the U.S. labor force, contribute less than native-born citizens and legal immigrants, because they tend to have fewer skills and lower wages. However, the researchers found that if those unauthorized immigrants had the same productivity as legal immigrants who have greater bargaining power and more access to educational and career opportunities their contribution would rise from 3 percent to approximately 3.6 percent of GDP. The important thing to remember is that if we're hoping to return to robust growth in America and Trump has promised to get up to four or five percent annually it would be smarter to legalize undocumented workers than to kick them out. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As has been widely noted, 2016 has been a rotten year for fans of popular music. It started with David Bowie's death in January. Happy new year. The list of departed iconoclasts this year would be formidable, even if it only included Bowie, Prince, Merle Haggard and Leonard Cohen. Leon Russell, who died over the weekend at 74, was a different sort of cat. Russell enjoyed a period of stardom as a recording artist. But the weight of what he left behind was more apparitional, befitting a guy whose long bright white locks and chest-length beard gave him the appearance of a ghost. Russell's contribution to popular music isn't well reflected by iTunes, though he made several albums of enduring music that you can find there. He left traces of his work in so many other places, though, having written or co-written a quartet of modern standards in "Superstar," "A Song for You," "Delta Lady" and "This Masquerade." Those songs reflected a style that tied back to Russell's Oklahoma roots. The country music legend Ray Price once told me, "People ask how far I've gone in life," he says. "About 20 miles." His comment was a joke about being born in Perryville, traveling the world as a superstar, then retiring a few miles away to Mount Pleasant. The statement could also apply to Russell. He was born in Lawton, Okla., and got his start playing around Tulsa, leaving as a teen and traveling to Los Angeles in 1958. There he added piano anonymously to dozens of 45s by influential pop songs working with the great producer Phil Spector. He typically played piano, but also xylophone and guitar on recordings by Jan & Dean, the Ronettes, the Crystals and scores of other acts that recorded for Spector in the '60s. He also co-wrote a few hits: "Everybody Loves a Clown" and "She's Just My Style" for Gary Lewis and the Playboys, which broke into the Top 40 in 1965. Formidable on a resume, working in Spector's Wrecking Crew was a prelude to Russell's most influential work, as he took Tulsa to the world. Around 1969, Russell joined Delaney & Bonnie, among the greatest of American musical collectives: a rock 'n' roll band immersed in Southern musical traditions: soul, gospel, blues and country. At that point Russell became a hub for a particular sound that held particular sway across the Atlantic: George Harrison, Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton would try to bottle his lightning. Russell played a formidable role in crafting a raggedy cosmic gospel in the late '60s and early '70s, a gorgeously ramshackle sort of music that reflected his Oklahoma roots. That sound provided the skeleton for the tour that yielded Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" album, for which Russell was the band leader. Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes album and Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" didn't feature Russell, but still pulled from the same muddy waters. Russell was 28 when he finally released "Leon Russell," an album that put his wonderfully imperfect voice - a soulful braying - at the forefront, with contributions from fans and friends: Clapton, Harrison, Mick Jagger, Cocker, Steve Winwood, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr and others. Russell worked just as comfortably in progressive country music as roots rock. Willie Nelson included two of his songs on "Shotgun Willie" in 1973. Which is to say Russell was a one-man free-form radio station. People will find David Bowie albums, but as recordings further phase out, Russell remains the kind of artist best represented by the fine print credits on an old album, be it by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, the Monkees, the Flying Burrito Brothers or Glen Campbell. The list runs long like his beard. And a list only covers a part of it. Russell's body of work reflected a distinctive style and sensibility. We're made to believe styles of music are incompatible. His beautiful career suggests otherwise. This story appeared in the Houston Chronicle on May 6, 1919. The headlines and words are reprinted as they ran then. The Bishop of Galveston, Catholic clergy from the entire city and from many parts of the state and Louisiana, the mayor of Houston, leading doctors and many other citizens gathered at St. Joseph's Infirmary Tuesday to assist in the dedication of the new $350,000 wing to the hospital and to pay tribute to the labors of the sisters who have been associated in hospital work for 32 years in Houston. These labors have become glorious in the annals of the city. Recorded in the minute books the city council is a tribute to the work of the sisters in the ravaging smallpox epidemic of 1890 and 1891. The present generation remembers the heroism of two of the sisters, when the old infirmary at Caroline and Franklin burned, who lost their lives in their effort to see that every patient left the building. For 24 years the sisters have been expanding their buildings and increasing their service at their present location on Crawford Street, between Calhoun and Pierce, and the annex which was dedicated Tuesday was the crowning achievement of their work and gives to Houston one of the finest hospitals in the South. The history of the establishment and its power for good, were traced by the Very Rev. Father James M. Kirwin, vicar general of the diocese and director of St. Mary's School at LaPorte, who made the principal address. Bishop Byrne Dedicated Annex. The dedicatory services were conducted by Bishop Byrne in person. Every corridor in the massive structure was visited by the bishop and his procession which included many of the most representative members of the clergy in this section. Sister Theresa, mother general of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who has been closely associated with the life of the hospital, directed by that congregation, was also present. Acting as a deacon and sub-deacon to the bishop where the Very Rev. Dean E. A. Kelly of Beaumont and the Rev. Father J.C. Creamers of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Rev. Father Morgan J. Crowe, pastor of the Sacred Heart Church and chaplain of the infirmary, was the master of ceremonies. Among the out of town priests present for the ceremonies were: Rev. Father J.C. Fuller, C.M., of Dallas; Very Rev. Father H.A. Constantineau of San Antonio, Rev. Father George Willheim of Palestine, Rev. Father L.J. Reicher of Galveston, and many others. Description of Building. The addition of the hospital runs the length of a city block on Calhoun Avenue and is five stories in height. It contains 116 private rooms, which increases the capacity of the hospital to 300 patients, has four main operating rooms, two emergency operating rooms and three rooms for operations of specialists. Furnishings for most of the rooms were given by friends of the hospital and nearly every door bears a brass plate naming the donor. One of the rooms is given by the present bishop in honor of the memory of Bishop N.A. Gallagher who died last year. "You have set the dedication of this magnificent building and consecrated it to the service of the mercy on the ministry of pain upon the feats of St. John and to those who knew the strenuous labor and farseeing vision of Mother St. John it is an act of remembrance and a sign of recognition of the days of old," said Father Kirwin in beginning his address. "Today we gather round holy memories of pure and virginal and heroic women. We might turn our vision to the dawning of the sixteenth century and dwell upon the mysticism and illumination of the life of Jeanne de Matel, the saintly soul who founded the order of the Incarnate Word. Later the order walked in the land of desolation and exile while the French revolution spent itself in its own excesses. At Limoges the vows were once again pronounced and the Incarnate Word began anew its glorious work, the education of poor children, the care of the sick and the service of the poor. Eventually it found its way to Lyons and in 1852 with the formal consent of the holy see at the request of Monseigneur Odin the first bishop of Texas, it sent its spiritual children across the seas and began its labors in Texas. "In 1866 Monsignor Dubuis, the second bishop of Galveston, besought Mother Anguelique at Lyons to train subjects who would be able to care for the sick and the orphans of his vast diocese. Their labors began in Galveston and the three young French women bearing the names of Sister Mary Blandine, Sister Mary Joseph and Sister Mary Ange and through the humble cottage at Eighth and Market. From this small beginning in scarcely half a century they have developed materially so that great institutions like unto this bless Beaumont, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Texarkana, Alexandria and Temple, who render allegiance to the mother house of God was done. A branch founded from Galveston, with headquarters at San Antonio and pursuing the same blessed work, has flourished even more abundantly. Founded in Houston in 1887. "In 1887, at the request of the Rev. Thomas Hennessey, and with the approval of the late lamented bishop, they opened a small hospital in Houston. At the northwest corner of Caroline and Franklin streets a two-story wooden structure was entered into and here Mother St. Louis and Mother Theresa, now mother general of the congregation and whose presence here today adds interest and sympathy to these ceremonies, started St. Joseph's Infirmary. "If this were a little community isolated in history and locality it would still be worthy of study and sympathy because wherever pure hearts and loving souls and gentle minds unite them selves for any human and worthy purpose there is interest; there is power, there is charm. But this is not an isolated phenomenon. It's a worldwide fact. Not a few gatherings of concentrated women like vestal virgins here and there, but great armies organized into regimens and battalions and companies with a thousand uniforms and many leaders looking toward one invisible captain and working in the service of man as Christ himself worked. "Texas owes a debt of gratitude to France for the foundation of this community, but the daughters of Erin form the legions of today. They heard the Macedonian cry of Mother Benedict, the youthful and saintly daughter of Erin, and they came in numbers and they have labored earnestly with generous Celtic souls for this growth and development which we see today." Mayor Speaks for City. The bishop spoke briefly, declaring that the nature of the work called for the blessing of the church ritual on the building. Mayor Amerman asserted that Houston owed a vast debt to the sisters at St. Josephs and that the city appreciates the assistance, which both in the past and in the present have been given it by the hospital. Dr. S.C. Red spoke in behalf of the staff of physicians and surgeons of the hospital. The morning services were closed by the "Star Spangled Banner," and were followed by a luncheon given in the new building in honor of the bishop and the visiting clergy. The hospital will be thrown open to the public for a reception from 4 to 9 o'clock today. The sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who own and operate the hospital, number 26 in Houston. There are more than 40 young nurses, graduates of this school who assist in the work for the hospital. Equipment Inferior to None. No modern appliance in any hospital in the United States exceeds those adopted for the infirmary, it is said. Everything that human skill has been able to devise for the aid of the sick has been installed in this new building. There is a new building, a drug store, enormous store rooms, a laboratory, sterilizing plants for mattresses and instruments, lounging rooms for doctors, with big quarters, where they can make their changes for operations. Every room has connection with a bathroom. There is elevator service in the building. In the basement there are big kitchens for the special preparation of food for the sick, as well as dining rooms for the sisters and nurses. The building also contains its own refrigerating plant. The boiler room and power plant are contained in a separate structure erected to the rear of the hospital. One of the features of the hospital in the electric signaling system. At the head of every bed, within reach of the patient, is a system of push buttons for signaling the nurses on the floor. Electric lights flash the words to the nurse and the bell ringing system is eliminated. Sister Michael is in direct charge of the hospital. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Democrats swept Harris County last Tuesday in nothing short of a rout, claiming every countywide position on the ballot as Hillary Clinton toppled Donald Trump by more than 12 points - a larger margin of victory than George W. Bush enjoyed here in either of his presidential bids. That edge - and the domino effect it had on local races - exceeded many Democrats' most optimistic projections. It also fueled speculation that the nation's largest swing county soon could be reliably blue. Yet some on the left still worry that, absent Trump, the party's decentralized coalition could make that transformation a tall order near-term, despite favorable demographic shifts. "It's not something that's going to be sustained with the party infrastructure we have right now," local Democratic direct mail vendor Ryan Slattery said, recalling the party's trouncing in 2010, two years after President Barack Obama won the county. "You'll always have this ebb and flow." Former Mayor Annise Parker agreed the party "has underperformed in the past" but was more hopeful. Harris County 2012 vs. 2016 Results: Interactive Written By John D. Harden Copyright Houston Chronicle 2016 Caption: Use the map above to see where the GOP and Democrate have strengthened or weakened their grips on Harris County since 2012, based on presidential voting figures.Click the checkbox to between maps. "In this election cycle, both the Harris County Democratic Party in its official leadership and committed Democrats came together and we all played nicely," Parker said. "The way we swept Harris County down here and knowing the way midterm elections generally go, it might be a pretty good place to be a Democrat in two years and even four years." Demographic shifts Democrats' four-decade presidential losing streak in Harris County came to an end eight years ago against the backdrop of rapid political and demographic changes. The region shifted from plurality white to plurality Hispanic between 2005 and 2015, U.S. Census data show. Concurrently, the share of county residents who identified as Democrats rose steeply, to 48 percent from 35 percent, according to the Kinder Institute's Houston Area Survey. The percentage of Republicans fell to 30 percent from 37 percent. Democrats have harnessed that momentum in presidential election years but floundered in the interim, when Republicans capitalized on national political discontent and lower turnout. After earning nearly 48,000 more straight-ticket votes than Republicans did in 2008, Democrats lost the straight-ticket vote by nearly 50,000 votes in 2010 and 44,000 votes in 2014. They earned nearly 3,000 more straight-ticket votes in 2012 and 70,000 this year. Several progressive organizations emerged in that window and began to buoy the Democratic Party's efforts. The Texas Organizing Project and Battleground Texas joined groups like the River Oaks Area Democratic Women in getting out the vote, while, in Houston, the New Leaders Council trained progressive candidates and activists. "Several of my friends and I looked around and were like, 'What is going on? We're not building a back bench. We're not training our candidates well. We have people that are running that have no idea what they're doing or how to run,' " recalled Democratic consultant Lillie Schechter, who helped open the Houston chapter of the New Leaders Council. Democratic mega-donors also sought to fill a resource gap. "We really started working very seriously in 2010, and every election cycle we have built on the past election cycles," said trial lawyer Amber Mostyn. "This has been a slow, methodical march toward building the infrastructure, changing voting habits, getting people engaged." Together with their law firm, the Mostyn family contributed $514,000 this year to TOP's political action committee, campaign finance records show, and $391,000 to Battleground, in addition to hosting phone banks aimed at turning out low-propensity voters. Separately, Texans for America's Future, a super PAC the Mostyns founded, spent three-quarters of a million dollars urging Harris County women, Hispanics and African-Americans to the polls. Billionaire George Soros, meanwhile, spent more than $583,000 on behalf ofDemocratic District Attorney-elect Kim Ogg, through his own political action committee, and contributed $250,000 to TOP's PAC, plus other non-monetary services like polling. The Harris County Democratic Party, however, remained underfunded. Its executive committee raised just $381,000 this year, according to campaign finance reports, and spent slightly less. "We have a lot of really great affinity groups, and it's designed in a way where people aren't stepping on each other's toes," party chairman Lane Lewis said. Slattery, the direct mail vendor, put it another way. "There are two Harris County Democratic parties," he said. "I think there's the institution, and then I think there are the actual Democrats who constitute the party." Democratic strategist Grant Martin, who ran Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez's campaign, emphasized the importance of organizations such as TOP in increasing voter participation but said the absence of a strong centralized party can make campaigning here challenging. "The unpredictability and decentralization - it's very difficult. If you're going to run a campaign for a Democratic candidate, you don't know what you're going to be able to expect," said Martin, who also ran mayoral campaigns for Parker and Sylvester Turner. "Because most of the funding is controlled outside the party, it's not like there's even a transparent process to figure out who's going to get support or who's not going to get support. Or even what the consultants are going to do. Am I going to get six pieces of mail out of the party? Or am I only going to get one? Because then I need to send out five more." GOP brings in cash Local Republicans have their fractures, too, but the Harris County Republican Party has played a more central role of late, raising $1.4 million this year, or more than three times the haul of their Democratic counterpart. In the past six weeks, it spent $740,000 of that on polling, printing and advertising for its straight-ticket Republican message. "It's sort of a federation. We provide the infrastructure and the campaign for the county, but other people were also campaigning, and we worked to avoid too much redundancy," Harris County Republican Party chair Paul Simpson said. Those investments appear to have made a dent in local races, where Republicans' margin of defeat ranged from less than a point in the tax assessor-collector's race to 8 points in the district attorney's race, compared with Trump's 12-point loss. Republican state Rep. Sarah Davis also won re-election by 10 points, even as Clinton defeated Trump by 15 points in her west Houston district. Simpson projected confidence looking to 2018. "We won't have the headwinds we had this time at the top of the ticket," he said. "Republican voters will come home." Democrats acknowledged the role Clinton's coattails and disaffection for Trump played in their local victories. "It's a lucky break," Martin said. "Trump provided this excitement - this extra reason for people to go out - but I don't think that just Trump would have been enough, or just turnout would have been enough. Now, the big question will be: Can they sustain that?" Reasons for hope Local insiders pointed to Harris County's growing minority population and the motivation Trump's presidency could provide. "Demographics will continue to change in our favor, and our county will continue to become more diverse," said Joe Maddon, treasurer of the Texans for America's Future super PAC. "Unfortunately, President-elect Trump will likely be passing policies that will cause blowback and harm to the Republican brand and serve as a motivator to those same Democratic voters." Even so, some stressed the need for a stronger party backbone. "What happens when people start creeping into everybody else's lane?" Slattery asked. "You need an effective leader." Schechter, for her part, called the local party's meager fundraising "a huge problem." Lewis defended the Harris County Democratic Party's efforts to increase the number of Democratic mail voters. "I am proud of the gain that the Democratic Party made, particularly with our senior vote for the past three cycles in a row," the party chairman said. "Our efforts to engage mail ballot votes, which we had historically lost, improved each cycle, and this past year, we won." Former mayor Parker said the party did not keep voters sufficiently engaged after 2008 but expects that to change - and the party to strengthen - with more Democrats in countywide elected office. "The Harris County Democratic Party apparatus is fired up and frustrated," Parker said. "Since there's no place to put our energy at the national level, I think it's going to be expressed here." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The forklift incident still brings Paul Michael to tears. Years ago the small vehicle collided with a precarious rack of rugs he had assembled for the Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market. He stood to lose an entire display just two days before his company's biggest show of the year. "It was just like giant dominos falling," he said. "It was a mess of tangled steel, Persian rugs and merchandise." But his team of workers rallied and saved 60 percent of the display items. That helped him ring up record sales with the kind of frenzied resolve that has transformed the yearly market from a small church bazaar into a sprawling, four-day extravaganza for tens of thousands of Houstonians. "It kicks off the Christmas season," said Mary Alice Parmet, the market's chairman. "It's just so positive, so fun." This year's event, which ended Sunday, culminated months of preparation for hundreds of vendors like Michael selling everything from standard stocking stuffers and ties to embroidered cowboy boots and spicy olives. Now in its 36th year, the fundraiser has grown to cover 540,000 square feet at NRG Center. More than 100,000 shoppers spent nearly $20 million there last year, a quarter of which benefitted the Houston Ballet Foundation. This year, it took more than 50 18-wheelers to deck the hall with Christmas decorations and gifts, Parmet said. About 280 vendors draped their booths with lights and garland, ready to be mobbed. On Saturday, shoppers swarmed the entrance way and streamed into the hall when the doors opened at 10 a.m. It was a chance to don antlers, break the budget and down at least one mimosa before noon. By midmorning, even the novelty Styrofoam cups were going fast. Shoppers flocked to The Write Designs booth to snatch stacks of them stylized like greeting cards - holiday, humor, birthday, wedding. The small company first trekked to the market from the Dallas area 10 years ago with all the cups it could fit into a Penske box truck. This year, company manager Sara Goldstein scrambled to unload a packed tractor-trailer, expecting to sell more than 13,000 of them. "They make great gifts," she said. In a small black-and-white booth, Kris Wittenberg savored a sense of relief as shoppers scrambled for items that read "Be good to people," a simple slogan she decided to emblazon on a shirt after a rude encounter with a stranger in 2008. The idea formed the foundation of her Colorado-based company, which made its first appearance at the market this year. It had been a challenging few months for Wittenberg, who said she had approached a nervous breakdown in the lead up to her debut and fell asleep with a pizza box on her chest after a long day of setup earlier in the week. But the positivity of her products proved infectious as customers showered her with praise and made it all worth it, she said. "It changes people's behavior," she said. "I've heard some really amazing stories." At a more eclectic booth, Amy Labbe helped shoppers assemble jewelry with antique trinkets and oddities, nearly all of which she had fashioned herself. For the past eight years, she has traveled from Uniontown, Kan., to set up at the market, her biggest retail show. Wearing a hippie's headband over hot pink hair and several pounds of turquoise, she pointed to baubles made from her great-grandmother's cookie cutters, tiny pocket watches and doll heads excavated from German toy factory razed during World War II. "I've always been gypsy who travels around, selling my stuff," she said. By midday, tired shoppers dropped their bags on the bright red carpet and sat down to picnic. A group of women in matching headbands and shirts that read "Let's Take an Elfie" readied themselves for another round of browsing. "We scope it out first, then go back in," said Jessica Turner, who has braved the market each year since 2012. For Mary Smith, the market has been a tradition since she moved to Houston in 2001. She brought her daughter and granddaughter this year. "It's a wonderful time for us to be together," said Smith, who unearthed her Christmas shirt and jingle bell earrings for the occasion, Across the hall, Jason Giangrosso and Chelsea Barnett gazed at Paul Michael's towering display of holiday lights. The roommates from Katy had already put up their Christmas tree, but Giangrosso was tempted to buy a few more strands. "Why not?" he asked. Michael, now the market's largest vendor, marveled on how much it has changed since the 1980s, when he first made the trip from his small town in Arkansas to stock a tiny booth with handcrafted jewelry. Now, he hauls in truckloads of home decorations and furniture he and his team make from antique doors and windows and reclaimed wood. His sprawling setup, packed with shoppers, occupies more than an acre on the convention floor. "Houston and the Nutcracker Market have formed my career over the years," he said. "Everything we know and do we learned here." A Houston man is behind bars after he allegedly grabbed women's genitals, repeatedly. Christopher Mathews, 32, is facing four counts of public lewdness, according to Harris County court records. On October 24, he grabbed a woman's vagina in a Target, according to court documents. Five days later, he allegedly did it again, but this time in a Sam's Club. The same day, he grabbed a woman by the butt in a gas station. Finally, on November 3, he allegedly touched a woman's genitals in a grocery store. Bail was set at $5,000 for all charges. He's due in court on Tuesday. Mathews' attorney, John Dixon, declined to comment on the charges against his client. "I'm not at liberty to discuss the case," he told The Houston Chronicle on Sunday. A Texas mother who allegedly scammed a California man out of an exotic kitten is facing felony charges after police say she endangered her 14-year-old daughter by letting pet tigers and monkeys - as well as a cougar, fox and skunk - roam freely through the family's Houston home. The catty chaos kicked off in August, when Trisha Meyer, 34, promised to sell an exotic Savannah kitten to a California man for $3,000, according to documents filed in Harris County court. More than five days after the cat-loving Californian wired the first $1,500 to a bank account belonging to Meyer's daughter Serena, the would-be kitten owner was disappointed to discover that his meowing package had still not arrived. HOME SWEET HOME: Dangerous animals find a place in Texas The Golden State man sent along the other $1,500 - to the same bank account - but after initially telling him the kitten was sick, Meyer eventually stopped answering her phone, documents allege. About a month later, an officer with the HPD Major Offenders Animal Cruelty Squad showed up with a Texas Game Warden at Meyer's door. They were greeted by the sight of three tiger cubs and a skunk roaming through the living room, bedroom, kitchen and front door entrance - while Meyer's 14-year-old daughter petted the exotic beasts. UP CLOSE: Places Texans can go to be near nature In addition to the trio of cute cubs, Meyer had a large male tiger - and she admitted to officers that, at their ages, the animals could be dangerous. Meyer also has "several monkeys," including some that she admitted are "vicious" and one that attacks people. She told police she usually lets her animals - which also include a cougar, fox and skunk - wander freely through the home and only locks up the tigers when she leaves. UP FOR GRABS: Hunter's paradise for sale for $6.2 million "It should be noted that the defendant homeschools her children," according to the court documents. Now, the Houston mother is facing felony charges for theft and endangering a child. The landlord at the tiger-filled home told the Chronicle that he didn't find out about his tenant's exotic pets until police contacted him - and he booted her out. "She only stayed there for three weeks before I found out," said property owner Binh Truong. "I don't know how someone can put that much damage in three weeks." After she left her Houston home, Meyer ran off to Las Vegas with all her animals, according to a BARC spokeswoman. Once authorities located her in Las Vegas, she fled to Pahrump in Nye County where she was finally picked up - and her tigers confiscated - on November 7. As of Sunday, she was still awaiting extradition back to Texas. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On the surface, the Pichardo family is fighting for an extra 60 minutes. But for their youngest daughter Miranda, it's less about an hour and more about how she'll be taught and what her horizons will be. In the context of recent Chronicle reports about how the Texas Education Agency has sought to keep students out of special education across the state, Miranda's parents believe Tomball ISD is hampering her learning and, ultimately, her future by scheduling the majority of her day in her school's special education classroom. Miranda's beaming brown eyes and gleeful smile make it hard not to grin back at her. She loves the color blue, and Disney's "Frozen" is her favorite of all the princess movies. She also has Down syndrome. From 3 months to 3 years old, her parents, Jaime and Karina, enrolled her in early intervention services - a program of physical, occupational and speech therapy provided by a federal law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which mandates an individualized education program for all disabled children in "the least restrictive setting." By 18 months old, Miranda was attending a private preschool. Her parents then enrolled her in Tomball ISD's special education program, despite initially facing what they felt was resistance from the district. While the Pichardos wanted Miranda in special education part time, the district wanted her there full time. The district eventually agreed after the family filed a complaint to the TEA. That scuffle would be the first in a series of disputes between the Pichardos and Tomball ISD over the best method to educate Miranda. Their battle, according to dozens of disability rights attorneys and parents of children with intellectual disabilities, is emblematic of the difficulties faced by many families with children who have Down syndrome, who envision a culture of higher standards and greater public understanding of the condition. Staci Stanfield, a spokesperson for Tomball ISD, declined specific comment on Miranda's education plan, beyond saying the district "believes in educating students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment." "Each student has access to an appropriate learning environment and an opportunity for education with non-disabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate at his or her campus," she said. On one recent Sunday afternoon, the Pichardos' quaint, two-story home in The Woodlands was more frenzied than usual. A two-man television news crew interviewed Karina and the family's attorneys in the living room as they prepared for their most recent hearing to determine whether the district violated federal law in giving Miranda an extra hour in the special education classroom instead of the "regular" classroom. Miranda was sitting on the sofa next to another guest, Megan Bomgaars, part of the cast of the A&E documentary series, "Born This Way." Bomgaars was on her high school cheerleading squad before she went to college. She runs an accessory and apparel business. She also has Down syndrome. 'Outdated stereotypes' For the Pichardos, Bomgaars represents special education done right, where students with disabilities are actively made to feel a part of the school community. "Life is not self-contained; it's a lived experience. Sometimes it's going to be hard, sometimes it's not going to be comfortable, but you can't shield them from that. It's the experience of being in school, and (Miranda) needs to experience that," Karina said. When Miranda was in preschool in the 2014-2015 school year, the district proposed an academic schedule in which she would spend more time in the special education classroom than in regular classes for the following year when she was to begin kindergarten. The Pichardos filed a complaint, although a hearing officer eventually sided in favor of the school district. "The standard response from Tomball ISD to anything we ask, whether we're entitled to it or not, is 'No.' You have to push," said Jaime Pichardo, who works in industrial automation. "Otherwise they won't talk to you about it; they won't offer it. This has been the dynamic for the last three years almost." During kindergarten in 2015-2016, at Miranda's annual review in December 2015, the district proposed further reducing Miranda's time in the regular classroom by removing her from 30 minutes of both social studies and science per day in first grade - before she could even be reviewed based on her full kindergarten year. This loss of 60 minutes in regular class time was adopted despite reports of progress from Tomball ISD. The schedule would have allowed Miranda to be included with her peers in the regular classroom only for just over two hours each day. "It's just outdated stereotypes about how people with disabilities should be educated," said Dustin Rynders, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas. "(Tomball ISD) has a pattern of lowering expectations on someone who has Down syndrome and assuming they need to spend most of their day in life skills class, but that's just not supported by research." In May 2016, toward the end of kindergarten, the family had an independent evaluation performed for Miranda's speech. The evaluation emphasized speech therapy and recommended that Miranda be an active participant in her regular classes. The evaluation also found that Miranda's communication device - a clunky purple and white contraption that helps Miranda articulate basic words when she's struggling - was cumbersome and distracting. Miranda must carry the device, which is about a third of her height, around her neck throughout the school day. Despite Miranda's proficiency with an iPad, the district neither allows Miranda to use her iPad from home nor has it purchased one for her to use as federal law authorizes, her parents said. After the Pichardos' latest hearing concluded last week, another hearing officer will determine by Dec. 2 whether the district violated federal law in prescribing Miranda the extra hour in the special education classroom during the current school year. Among other things, the Pichardos argued that Tomball ISD should include Miranda in the regular first-grade classroom at Creekside Forest Elementary for all of her core academic subjects. They also want to replace the communication device with a less-stigmatizing iPad. Tomball ISD argues that Miranda must first master the clunkier device in order to use an iPad in class. "It's like she needs to learn to make fire before using a stove, that's how crazy it's been," Karina Pichardo said. A new generation Backed by what they believe is ample research and expert opinion showing that inclusion in regular classes is the best way to teach children with Down syndrome, the Pichardos believe the district should be moving aggressively in that direction. The lives of the 250,000 Americans with Down syndrome are very different from a generation ago. They live more than twice as long on average, while some like Bomgaars are in college. They get married and about a fifth of adults with Down syndrome have a job. They've also become actors, artists and even politicians. "It should be the starting point," Brian Skotko, co-director of the Down Syndrome Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said of the general education classroom, as early as possible. But for many parents across the Houston area, seeking more appropriate accommodations for their Down syndrome children is often highly challenging. Melanie Duncan, who came to Miranda's hearing with several other mothers from Houston-area school districts in a show solidarity, had to fight nearby Cypress-Fairbanks ISD for her third-grade son, Landon, to spend more time in a regular classroom. Unlike the Pichardos', a hearing officer ruled in her favor. In Katy ISD, one mother was given the accommodations she requested for her fifth-grade son while another Katy mother had to win a similar ruling. In Clear Creek ISD, one mother with two children who have intellectual disabilities said the district provides adequate resources for her kids, but she suspects children whose parents are less involved aren't so lucky. And despite all the progress, raising a child with Down syndrome can be, for many, a daunting task. About 74 percent of births are terminated after a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, according to Skotko. Similar to segregation The Pichardos brought in a special education expert at the University of Colorado, Christi Kasa, to speak at Miranda's hearing after a day's observation at Creekside Forest Elementary School. Kasa determined that with the appropriate accommodations in place, Miranda would thrive in the regular classroom and benefit from higher expectations. It also would enable her to pick up on social cues from typically developing classmates instead of mimicking the behavior of children in a less-structured special education environment. Still, to Jaime Pichardo, Miranda's school experience has always shared eerie similarities to segregation. There was a period of time when the district tried to force Miranda to enter school through a side door that opened to the special education classroom. This further upset the Pichardos, who had hoped to limit Miranda's difference instead of highlighting it before she walks in the door. Although the school eventually made an accommodation, Jaime said this is still an issue he must occasionally monitor. "It's huge," Jaime said. "It's like fighting the cook in the restaurant who you know is going to prepare your meal." If the new hearing officer rules in favor of Tomball ISD again, the family intends to keep fighting. "Seeing Megan is a light at the end of the tunnel," Jaime said of the family's recent guest from Colorado. "This is the result of inclusion; someone who is in college, who has a job, who has her own opinion. We want that independence for Miranda." After Sandra Bland died in a Waller County jail cell last year when she was unable to post the $500 needed for bail, some state lawmakers urged county leaders to review indigent defense practices and consider starting a public defender's office. But 16 months later, leaders of this rural county are not rushing to establish an office to provide legal counsel to those who can't afford it. Commissioners on Nov. 2 cleared the way for the county to apply again for a grant from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission for the county's programs, which they've been getting since 2003 and which last year amounted to $49,439, but they made no mention of starting a public defender office. The county relies on private attorneys to serve those without the financial means to get their own lawyer. "We're nowhere close to being large enough to justify that type of expense," said Waller County Judge Trey Duhon. He noted by phone Wednesday that an audit of the rural county's practices "came out very positive for the county." Area judges subsequently met to review the results and developed some changes, he said. A chance for reform Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, was found hanged in her jail cell in July, 2015, a death that was ruled a suicide. Her death came three days after she was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation, arrested and jailed following a heated exchange with a Department of Public Safety trooper. That officer was subsequently fired and is facing a perjury charge, which he denies. On Nov. 1, a federal judge formally dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Bland's family. Their attorneys had disclosed a $1.9 million settlement with the Texas Department of Public Safety, former DPS trooper Brian Encinia and Waller County. Two months after Bland's death, state Sen. Rodney Ellis and state Reps. Senfronia Thompson and Ron Reynolds wrote county commissioners asking them to review Waller County's indigent defense practices, as well as to "assess whether alternative approaches, such as a public defender office, would be feasible and cost-effective for Waller County." In a December letter, Waller County Commissioner Jeron Barnett also called for a review of the indigent defense program. The state commission's executive director traveled to Waller County in February to discuss opportunities, including the possibility for discretionary funding to get a public defender office off the ground. Ellis spoke then, too, urging commissioners to take the opportunity as a chance for reform following Bland's death. Several county commissioners previously had voiced skepticism about the idea of establishing a public defender office, citing the costs associated with it and the small size of the county - a sentiment that seems to have remained unchanged even as more information has been released. The commission conducted its review of the county's program and finalized the results in late August. Its findings included that magistrate judges were not handling requests for attorneys in the same way and that not all magistrates were providing defendants with "reasonable assistance" in completing the necessary paperwork at their hearings. 'Lone Ranger' support Earlier, the commission also had drawn up a feasibility report on whether a public defender office should be launched, explaining that doing so could "create an institutional resource valuable to the bench, the bar, county officials and the community." The county's written response to the report, dated Oct. 28, outlined the policy tweaks. It reiterated a belief that "Waller County is and has been largely in compliance with not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of the laws and regulations dealing with indigent defense." Barnett, who is up for re-election in November, said he may be a "lone ranger" on the commission pushing for a public defender office. "When it comes down to our indigent defense, I feel we need to take a stronger approach," Barnett said in a phone interview. "I just feel that there's more we can do." Decisions on the routine grant funding resolved by commissioners Wednesday will be made in December, said Edwin Colfax, grant program manager for the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. Requests for applications for the discretionary funding will be released in January. The first component of the application would be due in March and the final one is due in May. So far, the commission has heard no indication that Waller County plans to pursue such a grant. As Colfax said, the Austin-based commission aimed simply for commissioners to be aware and informed about the option. Said Colfax, "It's a local decision whether they want to proceed." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with House Speaker Paul Ryan could help secure early legislative victories. In selecting Priebus, Trump passed over Stephen Bannon, the right-wing media provocateur. But he named Bannon his senior counselor and chief West Wing strategist, signaling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Bannon and a continuing disdain for his party's establishment. The dual appointments - with Bannon given top billing in the official announcement - instantly created rival centers of power in the Trump White House. Bannon's selection demonstrated the power in Trump's rise of grass-roots activists who have long traded in the conspiracy theories and sometimes racist rhetoric of Breitbart News, the website that Bannon ran for much of the last decade. The site has accused President Barack Obama of "importing more hating Muslims"; compared Planned Parenthood's work to the Holocaust; called Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator, a "renegade Jew"; and advised female victims of online harassment to "just log off" and stop "screwing up the internet for men," illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child. The grass-roots activists may be angered by the selection of Priebus as chief of staff, viewing him as a deal-maker who will be too eager to push the new president toward compromise on issues like taxes, immigration, trade, health care and the environment. In a statement Sunday afternoon, the transition team emphasized that the two men would work "as equal partners to transform the federal government." That simultaneous announcement is consistent with Trump's management style in his businesses and in his campaign: creating rival power structures beneath him and encouraging them to battle it out. It is also a reflection of who has the ear of the president-elect: his children, especially Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. Both of them had argued that the chief of staff job should not be held by someone too controversial, according to several people familiar with the decision-making inside the transition effort. Kushner is likely to wield great influence over the new president regardless of whether he holds a formal title. Kushner, who has no experience in politics or government, often gets the final word in advising Trump. But while Trump apparently feels comfortable with Priebus, the people with knowledge of his weekend decision said that Bannon was still the adviser who was better able to talk forcefully to the president-elect during difficult moments. The transition team appeared eager to appease concerns among Trump's most fervent supporters that choosing Priebus meant that the president-elect had already caved to the Washington "swamp" he had promised to drain. The team also wanted to mollify Bannon, and to that end, the official statement mentioned Bannon first. "We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory," Bannon said in the statement. "We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda." Priebus said he looked forward to working with Bannon and Trump "to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism." Priebus is expected to have multiple deputies, including Katie Walsh, the chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, who is close to Priebus and helped ensure a tight working relationship between the party's operational infrastructure and Trump's campaign. A Lebanon woman working as a home healthcare nurse faces a second-degree involuntary manslaughter charge following the death of a baby in July. According to a probable cause statement submitted to the county prosecutor by an investigating Texas County Sheriffs Department deputy, Devin J. Wiekhorst, 40, of 17475 Tulsa Drive in Lebanon, allegedly administered an excessive dose of morphine to the child (less than 1 year of age), causing its death in July 26 at Plato. The report said Wiekhorst is LPN with Phoenix Home Health Care, and had been assigned to care for the child at a Highway 17 residence along with an RN with Hospice Compassus. The officer said the RN provided training to Wiekhorst and the childs grandmother with regard to dosage amounts, and what was reportedly a correct dose was administered while all three were present. But when the RN left the room to do paperwork, Wiekhorst allegedly told the grandmother the dose had been too small and she needed to make up the difference. Believing Wiekhorst knew what she was talking about, the grandmother agreed and more morphine was given to the child who died while Wiekhorst was at lunch. Wiekhorst reportedly called the RN for dosage clarification and was advised the total given to the child was equal to an adult dose. During interviews with authorities, Wiekhorst at first denied giving the second dose, but later admitted to it. Charges were filed Sept. 13, and Wiekhorst was arrested and booked into the Texas County Jail last Thursday (Nov. 10). She is held on $250,000 bond. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. 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Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. latest initiative from a major Swedish union is making waves all over the world after it was revealed the organisation has established a dedicated mansplaining hotline so women can report the infuriating workplace behaviour.Coined in 2008, the term refers to situations when men automatically assume a woman is less informed about a subject and ultimately explain things in a patronising or condescending way.Now, Unionen which represents more than 600,000 private sector workers is encouraging female members to report the behaviour in an attempt to raise awareness.The purpose of the campaign is not to point fingers or to blame all men, Unionen said in a Facebook post. The campaign is intended to make us all, men and women, aware of this phenomenon and hopefully to start a change together.News of the hotline which will be manned by feminist politicians, comedians and scientists has been met with mixed reactions as some welcome the move and others condemn it."How would women react if you used words like 'old biddy chat' or 'female whining'? Equality can't be won using negative invective, but should be built using mutual respect and partnership, Daniel Bergman of Sundsvall wrote on their Facebook page. But maybe I'm the only one who thinks so.Another user, Linda Landgren, defended the campaign."Good initiative, she said online. Judging by the comments, it seems quite a lot of men feel this is aimed at them, so it shows how much this kind of work is needed."Speaking to The Local, Unionen responded to the varied reactions and said it was pleased to have generated so much conversation around the subject.Everyone wins when we expose suppression techniques and talk about them," said spokesperson Gabriel Wernstedt."It's naturally unfortunate if some people are offended by our mansplaining hotline. At the same time these are questions that affect many people and that people want to discuss.We can also note that many people are positive about us raising the question of mansplaining. The attention has exceeded our expectations and shows that this is an important question. lth and safety regulator WorkSafe is urging employers to be vigilant after todays early-morning earthquake may have left many workplaces damaged or unstable.Safety of you and your work colleagues must be the number one priority if youre heading to work in the affected areas, said chief executive Gordon MacDonald.There have been reports of damage to buildings, so please exercise caution when entering buildings as the last thing any of us want is an injury because a few simple checks havent been undertaken.The 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck in the upper South Island just after midnight, triggering hundreds of aftershocks across the country.Wellington CBD along with many other workplaces remain closed this morning as checks are carried out and MacDonald said employers should seek expert opinion if they think their premises may have been damaged.Make a careful external visual inspection of your work premises. If you see cracks or have the slightest doubt about the integrity of the building, get an expert report before you go in, he said.If you decide its safe to enter be extra vigilant as the contents of the building may have shifted; material may have fallen; there could be hazards you would not normally expect like spilled liquids or damaged racking for stored goods.MacDonald also warned that certain employers would have to take added precautions, depending on the nature of their business.If you know there are chemicals or other dangerous material in your workplace, make sure youre protected with good safety gear and be very careful when you first go in, he said.Stop look assess and dont take any risks. There are professionals who can help you make your workplace safe JOHANNESBURG Today, McDonalds South Africa announced plans to switch to 100 percent cage-free eggs in its supply chain by 2025a move that will spare thousands of animals each year from life inside cramped cages. This policy follows dialogue with Humane Society International, one of the worlds largest animal protection organizations, which has been working with McDonalds on this and other animal welfare issues around the world. Tozie Zokufa, Africa program manager for Humane Society International, stated: We applaud McDonalds South Africa for its leadership in corporate social responsibility and animal welfare. McDonalds decision to switch to exclusively cage-free eggs improves the landscape for farm animals across South Africa, and makes it clear that the future of egg production is cage-free. We look forward to working with more companies on similar policies. Become a Farm Animal Defender. McDonalds SA Chief Executive Officer, Greg Solomon, stated: Today, we are pleased to announce, ahead of the 12 month timeframe we set for ourselves that we will fully transition to cage-free eggs in all our restaurants across South Africa by 2025. Starting in 2017, we will begin to phase in cage-free eggs at all of our restaurants. Our egg supplier has committed to providing us with quality, safe and consistent supply at more than 10% per annum until all the eggs we purchase are cage-free by 2025. The move is testament to McDonalds commitment towards sustainability and food innovations. In South Africa, most egg-laying hens are confined in wire battery cages, where each hen has about the space of a single sheet of paper to spend her whole life. Battery cages are among the cruelest of factory-farming practices. Undercover investigations have documented the suffering caused by the extreme overcrowding in these wire contraptions, where birds are confined to cages so small and tight, they cannot even spread their wings. The cage-free egg movement has quickly spread throughout the world and a growing number of food companies are adopting cage-free egg purchasing policies. HSI has worked with the food industry leaders around the world on their recent cage-free egg pledges, including Sodexo and Compass Group two of the worlds largest food service providers, and Arcos Dorados, the largest McDonalds operator in Latin America. Media contact: Leozette Roode, lroode@hsi.org; t +27(0)713601104 In addition to the impact of new supply on Singapore's performance, concerns over the Zika virus continued to hinder demand in the market's corporate segment. Several events, such as ITB Asia 2016 (19-21 October), were not enough to soften Singapores worst year-over-year decline in RevPAR for the month of October since 2009. STRs preliminary October 2016 data for Singapore indicates performance declines driven primarily by supply growth. Based on daily data from October, Singapore reported the following in year-over-year comparisons: an increase in supply (+4.0%) and a decrease in demand (-3.4%); a 7.2% decrease in occupancy to 79.8%; a 6.4% decrease in average daily rate (ADR) to SGD278.62; and a 13.1% decrease in revenue per available room (RevPAR) to SGD222.40. In addition to the impact of new supply on Singapore's performance, concerns over the Zika virus continued to hinder demand in the market's corporate segment. Several events, such as ITB Asia 2016 (19-21 October), were not enough to soften Singapores worst year-over-year decline in RevPAR for the month of October since 2009. STR will release actual October 2016 results later this month. The August edition of STRs Market Forecast is now available. STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest all industry news and trends. Subscribe 2022 Hospitality Trends GREELY, Ont. Conservative leadership candidate Chris Alexander says fellow contender Kellie Leitch is importing anti-immigrant American rhetoric for crass political purposes. Alexander, Canadas former immigration minister, said he doesnt believe Canada will see the same type of political polarization that has happened in the U.S. because the country doesnt have the same large issues with illegal immigrants or undocumented residents. Advertisement That is the single greatest cause of poisonous politics that we see south of our border or in Europe, he told reporters Sunday after an leadership debate organized by a local riding association in Greely, south of Ottawa. Canadas immigration system works, the former Ontario MP and career diplomat declared. It brings huge numbers of people based on their skillset and generously resettles refugees who need the help, Alexander said. I dont think it is right to import, for crass political purposes, the genuine anger that Americans are feeling and to say we have the same situation here. We do not. Advertisement Leitch has made screening every single newcomer and visitor to Canada for so-called anti-Canadian values the cornerstone of her leadership bid for the Conservative party. After Donald Trumps U.S. presidential victory on Wednesday, Leitch congratulated the Republican and noted how she wanted to accomplish the same feat in Canada by throwing out the elites. A day later at the first Conservative leadership debate, Leitch said she and Trump shared common ideas namely the screening of immigrants. On Sunday, Leitch was on the defensive for her support of Trump, telling CTVs Question Period program: I am not a racist. Advertisement Leitch was expected to participate in Sundays event with the other leadership contenders, but she left after the luncheon and missed the debate portion of the riding association's fundraiser due to an apparent break-in attempt at her home in Creemore, Ont. In a statement Sunday night, Leitch says she was notified by a volunteer in her riding association that someone was purporting to know her address and was offering it up online to anyone who she says was "interested in doing me harm.'' Leitch says her home alarm sounded early Saturday and as she left the house to wait for police she noticed the garage lights were on, but they had been turned off by the time officers arrived, and no intruder was found. She said the entry closest to the garage was found to have been the trigger for the alarm and the officers speculated that someone trying to gain entry could have set the alarm off. Advertisement In a free and democratic society, Alexander said Leitch has every right to put forward views that reflect some Canadians opinion but he finds them regrettable. They are views that come from an American presidential election from one of the candidates who said unbelievable things, unspeakable things, abhorrent things during that election, he said of Trump. The president-elect called, at one point, for a total and complete ban on Muslims entering the United States. I regret that it has become a central issue of this campaign for one candidate. It is not an issue for the rest of us. I dont want to see Canadian politics go in that direction. We have a different legacy here, a different reality here, said Alexander. We are proud of diversity. We are proud of strong immigration. Our immigration system is seen as a model to the world. Canadas settlement policies, and successful integration, retention and respect for newcomers is a unique system that Canadians should be vigilant in protecting, he added. Advertisement During the last election campaign, Alexander and Leitch stood shoulder-to-shoulder in announcing that a re-elected Tory government would introduce a barbaric practices tip line for the RCMP. The proposal was widely criticized. Alexander also came under fire for his perceived lack of empathy towards the Syrian migration crisis and the Tory governments unwillingness to drastically increase refugee numbers. He was defeated in the 2015 election. On Sunday, Alexander said he would never be part of a government and certainly never lead a government that placed newcomers and visitors to Canada under a cloud of suspicion just because they are not one of us. I dont think any of us [in government] would have tolerated one of our colleagues saying: These people need to be screened more, he said, referring to Leitch, who also served as a cabinet minister for labour. Advertisement When was the last time you saw a major security incident in Canada terrorism or otherwise caused by a visitor? he asked. It wasnt the case in Ottawa ...So why go there, why make these accusations? he said referring to the 2014 shootings on Parliament Hill. In that case, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial before storming the nearby Centre Block parliament building. That same month in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Que., Martin Couture Rouleau deliberately ran his vehicle into two uniformed officers, killing Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. Home-grown terrorists Both attackers were born in Quebec, and considered lone-wolf terrorists. Both were killed by police. The Canadian screening system that relies on interviews and background checks works well, Alexander said, pointing out that further screening will cost more money, add delays, and hurt the Canadian economy. I regret that it has become a central issue of this campaign for one candidate. It is not an issue for the rest of us. With files from The Canadian Press Also on HuffPost Donald Trump Win Sparks Protests Nationwide See Gallery It's the '#YearOfTheAss,' guys! Well, at least according to Ariel Winter... The brunette beauty is taking a well-deserved vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and from what we've been seeing on Instagram and Snapchat, the 18-year-old actress is living her best life and flaunting it all in an itty-bitty bikini. Caboooo it's lit A video posted by ARIEL WINTER (@arielwinter) on Nov 12, 2016 at 8:02pm PST Advertisement "Caboooo it's lit," the "Modern Family" star captioned an Instagram video that shows her standing over the ocean and doing a little shimmy. Having a little fun in the sun with a few pals, including actor Levi Meaden, Winter dedicated her social media vacay posts to pools, mirror selfies and of course, her derriere. Window pics with bae #yearoftheass #thASSright #punnyasfuck A photo posted by ARIEL WINTER (@arielwinter) on Nov 13, 2016 at 6:22pm PST "Window pics with bae #yearoftheass #thASSright #punnyasfuck," she wrote alongside the photo of her and friend, Jess Berg. Advertisement You see those hashtags, right? Ariel officially declares 2016 the "year of the ass." And we find this statement not even a little bit surprising coming from Winter, considering her butt has its own makeup artist, which is totally Hollywood and we love it. And if that butt shot wasn't enough, the "Dog Years" actress shared a separate video of her almost bare backside twerking on Snapchat. In the words of Ariel herself, "It's a butt. Everyone has a butt." Follow Huffington Post Canada Style on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter! Also on HuffPost Kelvin Murray via Getty Images Modern Office Shoot Kaizen. Its a Japanese business philosophy that calls for continual development and constant improvement. Its a mindset that companies like Cisco employ throughout their whole business, from the CEO down. And its a way of thinking that can revolutionize the way you do work. What is kaizen? Kai means change and Zen means good so the goal behind the business philosophy is to focus on a number of changes that eventually add up to overall improvements within the company structure. The philosophy says that change is continuous and incremental even small refinements compound and are transformative over time. Advertisement Kaizen doesnt offer a step-by-step guide to improve productivity; instead it calls for holistic implementation. It should dictate the way you think and take on challenges. For any positive change to take place, everyone has to believe in the process and long-term goals. History of kaizen Throughout the years, numerous companies have used the kaizen principles to improve productivity and efficiency. This includes some of the worlds largest automotive and aerospace companies. Kaizen first entered the scene after World War II, when Toyota implemented the philosophy in its production sector. But it wasnt until the 1950s that kaizen became a household name thanks to Masaaki Imai. He was a Japanese organizational theorist and management consultant who wrote the book "Kaizen: The Secret To Japans Competitive Success." After penning the novel, he opened the Kaizen Institute to help Western companies implement the philosophy. The organization still runs today. Advertisement How do we implement kaizen? Kaizen calls for all employees to make continuous, small improvements to their daily processes and productivity. One principle of kaizen is abolishing old and traditional ways of thinking, so use the philosophy to streamline and prioritize your to-do lists. Listing out the things you do and finding new, more efficient ways to do them can make room for innovation. In your day-to-day, use memory aids and folders marked urgent to streamline and improve your personal workflow. Cisco embraces this philosophy holistically. Digital transformation is disrupting business in every industry by breaking down barriers between people, businesses, and things. By removing these barriers, companies are able to create new products and services and find more efficient ways of doing business. And that is ultimately what kaizen is the practice and culture of continued improvement that sets the groundwork for better quality, productivity, safety, and a better, more efficient workplace for everyone. Canadians may be very worried about Donald Trump leading the U.S., but there is one silver lining for Canada that arose from the American election: a possible boost to our nascent marijuana industry. Take, for instance, Canopy Growth Corp., Canada's largest medical marijuana manufacturer. The company has seen shares rise by a third since the U.S. vote. Advertisement Its shares jumped 15 per cent on Monday alone, after the company announced its revenue had more than tripled in a year. As of that afternoon, Canopy Growth was valued at $1.3 billion, making it the first billion-dollar marijuana company in Canada. "Strong growth in registered patients drove our revenues higher during the second quarter," CEO Bruce Linton said in a statement. "We continue to believe that variety, quality and consistency of supply are key to driving market share in the legal cannabis market." Advertisement The companys quarterly earnings report showed revenue had jumped to $8.5 million in the second quarter of its fiscal year, up 245 per cent from the same period a year earlier. The company produced more than a metric tonne of pot in the quarter, all of which was distributed to more than 24,000 medical marijuana customers across the country. But Canopys stock price jump began last week, after voters in California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Maine approved ballot initiatives legalizing the drug for personal use. Shares of Canopy Growth and many other marijuana companies spiked on the news last week. With California's vote alone, the number of people in the U.S. who live in a place where marijuana is legal more than tripled. There's also a potential weed consumer market of 5 million people in the state. Investors are betting these new markets will benefit Canadians, too. I think youll see Canadian companies jump at the opportunity to expand their operations and brands into the United States, Brendan Kennedy, owner of B.C. marijuana producer Tilray, told The Canadian Press. Advertisement There are huge opportunities for Canadian companies, because Canada has the most robust and tightly regulated medical cannabis framework in the world, he said. Both governments and companies around the world are looking to Canada to provide leadership and expertise in this industry. At the very least, it would be easier for licensed Canadian pot growers to get funding from the U.S., said Khurram Malik, a cannabis market analyst at Jacob Capital Management. Most of the money raised up here is from the U.S., said Malik. This legitimizes the concept of cannabis around the world, which is only a positive for the market up here. The federal Liberal government campaigned on a promise to legalize marijuana across Canada for recreational use. It plans to introduce legislation on the issue in the spring of 2017. Advertisement With a file from The Canadian Press Also on HuffPost OTTAWA The Liberal government is preparing to sell off Canadas public infrastructure to billion-dollar investment funds and is not being honest with Canadians about it, New Democrats charged Monday. NDP finance critic Guy Caron sounded the alarm as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with representatives from central banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and insurers in Toronto to court investments for infrastructure projects. Advertisement NDP finance critic Guy Caron speaks on Parliament Hill on Jan. 26, 2015. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) Caron told reporters these private investors who control pools of capital worth as much as $21 trillion are not joining an infrastructure bank out of the goodness of their hearts. The Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec said it wants seven to nine per cent return on investments, Caron said. How do you get that type of return on waste water plants or roads or other types of infrastructure? ... Advertisement There is not a thousand ways to do it. It is through tolls and it is through user fees. Even if the infrastructure itself isnt sold off, the NDP critic said, the user fees generated from the public will go to private companies and line investors pockets. Trudeau didn't propose this during campaign: Caron Never during the campaign did the Liberals and Justin Trudeau tell Canadians about this plan, he said. What the Grits promised during the 2015 election were two $10 billion deficits aimed at expanding the economy through public investments in transit, social infrastructure and green projects. And now, instead of this," Caron said, "we have much larger deficits and an ongoing privatization plan for our infrastructure." The Liberals announced earlier this month they want to create an infrastructure bank with $35 billion of public money $15 billion of which are funds already committed to transit and housing projects. The federal government hopes to attract $165 billion in private capital, Caron said, giving private companies control over the infrastructure bank with an 80 per cent stake. Please tell me when this was discussed by Justin Trudeau during the campaign, Caron repeated. The Liberals are going much further than the Conservatives ever dared to go, he later said. Advertisement Propositions are "win-win," PM says After his meetings wrapped up, Trudeau told reporters what he was selling were win-win propositions that would support Canadians jobs and large-scale infrastructure projects. There is a tremendous amount of global capital that is looking for stable long-term investments, he said, and Canada, with its economic, fiscal, political, social stability, is an extremely attractive place to do business. Trudeau touted Canada as an island of stability, a country with the fastest growth and the lowest business cost of the G7 countries, and the safest banking system in the world. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the media following a summit meeting in Toronto with investors and members of the Canadian government on Monday. (Photo: Chris Young/Canadian Press) Advertisement But he tiptoed when asked if the private infrastructure investments would mean new tolls and user fees. There are many different models to look at and many potentials, he said, as he pointed to Vancouvers Canada Line [transit system]. That was a mix of private and public investment that has given Vancouverites a tremendous amount of ease of access from the airport to the downtown core and places in between. We know that partnerships with the private sector can be done right, and we look forward to working with these significant global investors, he added. Concerns about conflicts of interest Caron also used his press conference Monday to accuse the Grits of placing themselves in a perceived conflict of interest. Finance Minister Bill Morneaus advisory council on economic growth includes, as chair, Dominic Barton, of McKinsey & Company, whose bread and butter in the last five years was to promote the leverage of private capital with public funds for infrastructure. Michael Sabia of the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec and Mark Wiseman, the senior managing director of BlackRock the worlds largest asset investment firm with more than $5 trillion under management are also on the council. All three stand to gain from this scheme. Their groups will make hundreds of millions, maybe even billions out of the return of this scheme and they personally, obviously, stand to gain a lot as well, in terms of bonuses, Caron said. Advertisement The Trudeau Liberals were supposed to be for the middle class, they were supposed to be for the little guy. They are now showing their true colours those of the party of wealthy private investors. Also on HuffPost Islamic extremists are cheering Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election. The president-elects anti-Muslim rhetoric will help them recruit more people to their cause, high-ranking members of both ISIS and the Taliban told Reuters. "This guy is a complete maniac, Abu Omar Khorasani, a top ISIS commander in Afghanistan, told the outlet. Advertisement His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands. One al Qaeda-linked ideologue tweeted Trump's win has revealed the true depth of Americans' racism and Islamophobia, according to NOW, which translated his tweets. "He reveals what his predecessors used to conceal. So his victory further exposes America and its appendages, tweeted Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. ISIS sympathizers celebrated Trumps win online, saying it would mean only disaster for the U.S. and the world. Advertisement Hell rule with undisputed control and this will lead to open conflicts with many people, said one message in an ISIS forum discovered by Vocativ. Trump will put the final nail in the coffin of America, said a user on an ISIS channel. But the terrorist group wasn't exactly advocating that U.S. Muslims vote for Trump. In an article titled "The Murtadd Vote" released before the election, it warned that democracy was antithetical to Islam. At one point during the election campaign, Trump called for a total ban on Muslims entering the United States. He has also advocated torture. Trump will put the final nail in the coffin of America." Some jihadists hope Trump's term will be marked by new foreign military interventions, with one pro-al Qaeda Twitter account predicting the president-elect would make the U.S Enemy No. 1 again in the Middle East, referring to the legacy of President George W. Bush, according to The Washington Post. Advertisement But the Afghan Taliban wants Trump to take a more isolationist stance on overseas conflicts, calling Wednesday for him to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan. "Our message is that the Americans should draft a policy not to take away the independence and sovereignty of other nations," the group said in a statement obtained by Reuters. Also on HuffPost Ivana Trump says now that her ex-husband Donald Trump is president-elect of the U.S., he should appoint her as ambassador to the Czech Republic. I will suggest that I be ambassador for the Czech Republic, Ivana told The New York Post on Friday. Advertisement Ivana, 67, was born in the state when it was still called Czechoslovakia. She added that she speaks Czech and is well known in her home country. If she's appointed, Ivana wouldn't be the only person close to Trump to be given some position in his government. A quarter of Trump's transition team are members of his family, The Independent reported. Donald Trump talks with his former wife Ivana Trump during the U.S. Open in 1997. (Photo: Reuters) Trump's children had previously said that they would not be involved in his government. Donald Trump Jr. told Good Morning America in September that he and his siblings would form a "blind trust" to manage his father's business holdings if he was elected. The overlap between Trump's government and business ventures create what some experts are calling an unprecedented possibility for conflicts of interest. Advertisement Removing himself or his family from the perception of self or family interest may prove difficult, elections enforcement official Ken Gross told the Washington Post. Follow The Huffington Post Canada on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also on HuffPost A white Florida high school teacher is on leave after he evoked Donald Trump in an offensive comment to black students. John Sousa, who works at Wesley Chapel High School, was told to leave the school and stay home after a parent complained, according to WFLA. Advertisement That parent, Donnie Jones Jr., said his daughter told him she was walking down the hallway with two other friends when Sousa walked up and asked what they were doing. "Don't make me call Donald Trump to get you sent back to Africa, the teacher then said, according to Jones' daughter. Jones Jr. was furious when he heard the story. I'm beyond pissed right now. I damn near have tears in my eyes, he wrote on Facebook Wednesday. Politics are Politics but once you say something to my child then it's f**king on! In a follow-up post the next day, the father said he called Sousa, who admitted to the comment and apologized. Advertisement But the teacher said he didn't mean to be racist. He said hed been talking to a larger group in the hallway at the time, a detail Jones Jr.s daughter disputes. Pasco investigates Wesley Chapel High teacher for Trump-related racial comment https://t.co/kGG0EzIflrpic.twitter.com/LmE9eTyFeX Tampa Bay Times (@TB_Times) November 10, 2016 "My daughter said he pointed at the 3 black students and said 'Donald's going to send you back to Africa,'" Jones Jr. wrote on Facebook. The dad received a lot of support on Facebook. His initial post has been shared nearly 6,000 times. On Friday, the teacher met with the director of employee relations to talk about the incident, according to WESH 2 News. The school district is very troubled if one of our employees did say what he is accused of saying, school district spokesperson Linda Cobbe told the broadcaster. Advertisement We can't stand for that. We expect civility," she said. I believe he's sorry but he's only sorry because he's in trouble." Parent Donnie Jones Jr. As of Friday, no action had been taken against the teacher, Cobbe told WFLA. That's because there were discrepancies between what the teacher and students said had happened. But Jones is waiting to see what the school does, saying he doesn't think Sousa understands the gravity of his comment. I believe he's sorry but he's only sorry because he's in trouble." Donald Trump has never called for black Americans to be "sent back to Africa," but his win appears to have fuelled many incidents of racial harassment and intimidation in the United States. There has been a spike in reported hate crimes since last week's election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Also on HuffPost Newspapers React To President Trump See Gallery It seems as if Meghan Markle has had her eye on Prince Harry for a while! Hello! magazine recently unearthed an old interview they conducted with the "Suits" actress, who, when asked if she prefers Prince William or his younger brother, revealed she would choose the ginger-haired prince. In a quick round of questioning, which took place last October, the 35-year-old American was asked: "Prince William or Prince Harry?" Advertisement "I don't know," Markle replied, laughing. The reporter responded, "Harry?" to which Markle said, "Harry? Sure." Just months later, the actress would actually be dating the fifth-in-line to the throne, making headlines around the world when news broke of their relationship on Oct. 30. Advertisement "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 read, regarding the treatment of Markle. "Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markles safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her." In 2013, the Toronto-based actress gave an interview to Esquire U.K. magazine, in which she said that she had a fondness for British men. "I love how British guys dress for the cold," she said. "I'm from L.A. so I'm used to seeing people in sunglasses and flip-flops. There's something so romantic about a man in a scarf and a knitted hat." Advertisement She also said she had a thing for a British accent. "I love how much men call you 'darling' here," she said, according to the magazine. "I'm a sucker for a compliment." Last week, Markle was spotted doing a grocery run near Kensington Palace, where Prince Harry lives. She was then photographed approaching the palace, prompting the media to assume she was going to rendezvous with the prince. Unfortunately, the couple weren't spotted together. Also on HuffPost Meghan Markle See Gallery Canada Revenue Agency has confirmed it is investigating dozens of Canadians for possible tax evasion linked to the Panama Papers leak earlier this year. The agency said it combed through 11.5 million documents from that leak, and identified 2,600 with a Canadian link. From those, it opened investigations into 85 Canadians, and has launched 60 audits. Advertisement Search warrants were executed by the agency and in some instances criminal investigations for tax evasion are ongoing, a CRA spokesperson said in an email to HuffPost Canada. The vast majority of Canadians pay their fair share of taxes, but some wealthy Canadians buy their way out of paying what they owe. This has to change in order to ensure a tax system that is more responsive and fair for all Canadians, CRA said. The Panama Papers are a trove of 11.5 million financial records from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm which has been called one of the worlds largest creators of shell companies. Advertisement The documents were leaked earlier this year to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which then worked with news organizations, including some in Canada, to dig through the data. The Toronto Star, one of the news organizations involved in the ICIJ effort, previously reported that 350 Canadian names had been identified in the documents. Canada is not the only place where the Panama Papers have led to criminal investigations. Twenty-two people are facing tax evasion investigations in the U.K., where three arrests linked to the Panama Papers have already taken place. CRA would not provide further details on the Canadian investigations because it does not comment on a criminal investigation that it may or may not be undertaking. Advertisement The Royal Bank of Canada featured prominently in the Panama Papers, showing the bank had been a frequent user of Mossack Fonsecas services. The papers showed the bank had set up at least 370 offshore companies for Canadian clients since the 1970s. Offshore companies arent illegal in and of themselves, but they are frequently used to evade taxes. RBC responded by handing over 40 years worth of bank records to CRA. RBC "works within the legal and regulatory framework of every country in which we operate. ... Tax evasion is illegal, and we have established controls, policies and procedures in place to detect and prevent it occurring through RBC, the company told media at the time of the leak. Also on HuffPost Shocked parents in Toronto were faced with racist posters while dropping their children off at elementary school on Monday, one day after the U.S. president-elect made an alt-right leader his top advisor. The posters, which appeared on poles near Parkside Elementary School, began with: "Hey, White Person." They rail against political correctness, immigration, diversity and "being told you're 'racist' for celebrating your heritage," and included links to white supremacist and alt-right websites. Advertisement "I saw the first one on a post outside the public pool on the same street and stopped for a moment to tear it down," said Ian Daffern, the father of a four-year-old student at the school. "My son didn't want to stop, and asked me what I was doing. And I said 'I don't like bullies.'" Daffern soon came across a second poster, which he left up so he could report it to his son's kindergarten teacher. She said she would tell the principal, so staff could go around the grounds and remove all of them. "As I was walking back home, a small crowd five or six people stood around it. I would say [the response was] shock and anger," he said. Advertisement Other residents saw the posters and contacted Ward 31 Coun. Janet Davis, who called the posters "abhorrent." "The American election and Trump's hate speech has given legitimacy to these types of organizations. It's very frightening," she told the East York Mirror. "It's very troublesome that the Trump election has unleashed this kind of hate." Toronto police told the website that they're looking into it and contacting the hate crimes unit after receiving public complaints. "Do not underestimate the force of American culture. These ideas push in." Daffern shared a photo of the poster on Facebook with his own warning: "Hey Canadians. It's here okay? This poster was up on the grounds of my 4 year old son's school this morning in East York. Be vigilant. Do not underestimate the force of American culture. These ideas push in." "I guess I'm surprised that it takes seeing it there for me to be as shocked by it. But we had Your Ward News circulating regularly here," Daffern said, referring to a notorious neo-Nazi publication. Advertisement On Sunday, Donald Trump named Steve Bannon, an exec whose news site is known for having white nationalist views and who has himself been accused of anti-Semitism as his chief strategist and senior counsellor. This is not the first example of Trump-fuelled racism not only spilling over the border but also landing at elementary schools. The day before the U.S. election, parents in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata discovered a swastika and KKK spray-painted on a school. Swastika sprayed on Ottawa elementary school. Don't say Trump's racism won't affect us in Canada. https://t.co/oTcwsZUKfn ArielTroster (@ArielTroster) November 13, 2016 Daffern, who is a writer and producer, said that parents need to be vigilant. "We can keep our eyes open just for this subtle thing creeping into our communities. We can talk to each other when we see it," he said. "We can just demonstrate love to our kids by showing how in any neighbourhood we build bonds no matter what our background. It's funny how being mad about something can bring you together, but I guess that cuts both ways." He added: "It's a race thing, yeah. But it's more a power thing, isn't it? "F*ck these guys. We don't have to stand for this here." Also on HuffPost Conservatives are pushing the Liberal government to abandon plans for a national carbon tax and forcefully advocate for the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline now that Americans have elected Donald Trump. In the first question period since Trumps stunning victory last week, interim Tory Leader Rona Ambrose painted the U.S. president-elect as both a competitor and ally when it comes to Canadian energy. Advertisement She also said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needed to accept a new economic reality in North America. A carbon tax in this country, Ambrose said, will give the U.S. a significant advantage over Canadian businesses doing global work. Trudeau is setting Canadians up for failure, she charged. Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc responded on behalf of his boss, who was away from the House of Commons and courting investors in Toronto. LeBlanc said that putting a price on pollution will stimulate growth and create jobs. Advertisement The prime minister said Canada has no closer friend, partner and ally than the United States and we look forward to working with the new administration on global energy challenges and the environment, he said. Ambrose wants PM's public support for Keystone Ambrose then shifted to Keystone a pipeline Trudeau supports. She asked if the prime minister was moving as fast as possible to push the project ahead. LeBlanc said it is up to TransCanada, the company behind Keystone, to again apply for a U.S. presidential permit. In 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the pipeline, which would take Alberta crude to the American Gulf Coast. Tories applauded when LeBlanc noted the Canadian portion of the project was approved in 2010 under the last government. Ambrose accused Trudeau of ignoring unemployed energy workers and suggested an opportunity has presented itself with Trump preparing to take office in January. Republicans will also control both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Advertisement Will the prime minister move quickly to lend his public support to this pipeline or will he continue to leave these unemployed energy workers wondering about their jobs? she asked. Liberals aren't changing course LeBlanc said Liberals are creating a system that will get resources to market in a sustainable way and earn the confidence of Canadians. The United States has its own process, he said, and it will be up to TransCanada to work with the incoming administration. And we look forward to working with that administration as well, he said. Trudeau has made it clear that he does not see the election of Trump as cause to pivot away from his governments plans to fight climate change. He unveiled last month that Liberals will impose a national floor price on carbon emissions in 2018, rising to $50 per tonne by 2022. Trump has pledged to pull the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, effectively killing the agreement, and has called global warming a hoax. "President-elect Trump would love a carbon tax for Canada. Why wouldn't he?" Tory MP Pierre Poilievre President-elect Trump would love a carbon tax for Canada, Tory MP Pierre Poilievre said later in the House. Why wouldnt he? Higher energy costs in this country will mean more factories and jobs will move to his country. Poilievre accused Liberals of seeking to tax away good blue collar jobs. Jonathan Wilkinson, parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, reiterated that Liberals look forward to working with Trump. He said Liberals are committed to the Paris agreement and will work with the provinces and territories on a pan-Canadian strategy to fight climate change. The Liberal carbon tax will create good-paying, blue collar, American jobs, Poilievre said. U.S. competitors will have a yuge advantage. Trump win threatens Paris deal: NDP MP But NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson expressed concerns about what recent changes will mean for those gathering this week at the United Nations climate change conference in Marrakech, Morocco. The election of Donald Trump threatens to dismantle the entire Paris agreement, she said. Malcolmson wanted to know what Liberals will do to protect the Paris deal and when they will strengthen the greenhouse gas emission targets adopted from the previous Conservative government. Advertisement Wilkinson said Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is in Morroco, ready to work with international counterparts to implement the agreement reached in France last year. Canada is a strong supporter of that agreement, he said. Also On HuffPost: Donald Trump Win Sparks Protests Nationwide See Gallery The title of Miss Golden Globe 2017 goes to Sylvester Stallones three stunning daughters: Sophia, 20, Sistine, 18, and Scarlet, 14. The Globes made the announcement on Instagram on Friday, sharing a sweet photo of the 70-year-old actor with his girls. Advertisement Breaking! This year the 2017 Miss Golden Globe will be @sophiastallone, @sistinestallone, & @scarlet_stallone, the daughters of @officialslystallone! Photo by @inezandvinoodh. A photo posted by Golden Globes (@goldenglobes) on Nov 10, 2016 at 6:05pm PST The honour of Miss or Mr. Golden Globe is usually given to a child of a Hollywood icon and their job is to assist with the awards ceremony. Last year, Jamie Foxxs daughter Corinne was given the honour. Now 2017 will mark the first year a trio has been chosen to share the title. Over the weekend, Stallones eldest daughters, Sophia and Sistine, took to Instagram to share their excitement. FINALLY I can announce that my sisters and I are the official Miss Golden Globes 2017! Sophia captioned a photo with her siblings. Advertisement A photo posted by SOPHIA STALLONE (@sophiastallone) on Nov 10, 2016 at 10:16pm PST Posting a similar image, Sistine wrote, So EXCITED to announce that we are Miss Golden Globes 2017! Such an unbelievable experience, still cannot believe this is happening! Stallone is also proud of his girls. Describing her dads excitement, Sophia told People magazine he was running around the house, dancing. The dogs were chasing him. The Stallone girls are no strangers to the limelight as they often attend red carpet events with their famous dad. Last year, for instance, they accompanied Stallone to the Golden Globes, where he won best supporting actor for reprising his role as Rocky Balboa in Creed. Advertisement Stallone and his daughters at the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 10, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California. But while the girls are clearly shining stars, they admit they dont see themselves following in their dads footsteps anytime soon. I don't think any of us will be actresses, Sophia, who is a student at the University of Southern California, told Us Weekly. [Sistine] will be the model, and I could see myself being in the movies behind the scenes, because I love watching my dad work he's the best and he lives in my house, so why not learn from him? As for the youngest Stallone, 14-year-old Scarlet, she agreed saying: Im only in junior high, so I dont think I even know! Stallone had his three daughters with his wife, model Jennifer Flavin. The 70-year-old actor also had two sons, Sage and Seargeoh, with ex Sasha Czack. Advertisement The 2017 Golden Globes will air on Sunday, January 8. Flip through the slideshow below to see other celeb kids who were chosen as Miss or Mr. Golden Globe in the past. Leave it to The Beaverton. The satire website and television newcomer recently released a farcical video ribbing Alberta premier Rachel Notley. They take aim at those people who like to blame Notley for every one of Alberta's woes but the tone is almost a little too accurate. Advertisement "Since taking power in 2015 NDP premier Rachel Notley has, according to conservative uncles everywhere, been a disaster for Alberta," the video begins. It then goes on to blame Notley for setting the Fort McMurray wildfires "in order to decimate the oil industry" which, unbelievably, is something that people actually accused her of at the time. Several "Albertans" list off other reasons why they believe Notley should "resign in disgrace," including: Advertisement - Making it illegal for citizens to dig transcontinental pipelines, - Drinking all the milk in the house, - Breaking into people's trash cans and spreading garbage all over their lawns, - Convincing a dog to eat some of its own poop. Ridiculous? Absolutely. But not an inaccurate depiction of some people's tendency to #BlameNotley for pretty much everything. Also on HuffPost: Hillary Clinton may have lost last week's U.S. presidential election, but her fight for women's rights is continuing. Of those not giving up in the face of Donald Trump's win? Rebecca Correa Funk and Claire Schlemme, the founders of The Outrage, a feminist marketplace with a goal to "smash limits, stereotypes, and barriers." Advertisement The empowering duo plans to fund the fight for equality by donating 100 per cent of the profits from their Pantsuit Nation line to Planned Parenthood in the wake of Tuesday's shocking election results. We are devastated but we have work to do. Start here: 100% profit donated to Planned Parenthood in HRC's name www.the-outrage.com A photo posted by the-outrage (@theoutrageonline) on Nov 9, 2016 at 8:27am PST "We are devastated but we have work to do. Start here: 100% profit donated to Planned Parenthood in HRC's name," the brand wrote on Instagram. Before the company's incredible tribute to Clinton, they donated 15 per cent of the profits from every purchase in their "Femininitees" collection to the National Organization for Women. Advertisement 50% profits donated to Planned Parenthood in honor of HRC A photo posted by the-outrage (@theoutrageonline) on Nov 9, 2016 at 6:43pm PST "To have such a qualified, intelligent and inspiring woman come so close and lose like this is absolutely devastating," Funk told Marie Claire. "But it's also a signal that we have a lot of work to do. Hillary has championed women's rights for decades, and donating to Planned Parenthood is the best way we can think of to carry her work forward. So far, we've surpassed $15K in sales for our 'Pantsuit Nation' collection." And since the election, The Outrage has designed some new pieces, including a T-shirt inspired by Kate McKinnon's "Saturday Night Live" tribute to Hillary. "I'm not giving up and neither should you" #KateMcKinnon as #Hillary on SNL. #fightthegoodfight #lovewins #dontagonizeorganize A photo posted by the-outrage (@theoutrageonline) on Nov 13, 2016 at 10:54am PST So if you're looking for a way to keep fighting Clinton's good fight, might we suggest some shopping? Because picking up everything from this line is the ultimate win, win. Advertisement Follow Huffington Post Canada Style on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter! Also on HuffPost If nothing else, Before the Flood allows viewers a glimpse at Leo DiCaprio's apparently tortured thought process. The results aren't pretty, but they tell you a lot. In nearly two hours of preaching all manner of rehashed conspiracies, his documentary ultimately provides few facts. You won't hear any mention of Canada's world leadership as a top producer of wind, hydro and solar power. You also won't find any mention of First Nations prospering to the tune of $10 billion over the last 15 years through First Nations-owned companies in the oil sands region. Advertisement At the end of the day, the film is about a famous, globetrotting real-action figure, haunted by end-of-the-world nightmares. You certainly won't learn by watching the film that, since 1990, Canadian oil sands producers have reduced per-barrel GHG emissions by an average of 30 per cent, and that some achieved reductions as high as half. You'll miss the fact the oil sands contribute only 0.15 per cent of global GHG emissions, and that just 1.6 per cent of all of emissions come from Canada. And you'll not be told -- even during an oil sands flyover segment -- that mining is just one aspect of the Alberta industry, and a diminishing aspect at that, accounting for less than one per cent of the oil sands land area over the last fifty years of development. Information on the growing, and far less invasive in situ oil extraction techniques never makes it into the film. Nor does Alberta's climate leadership regarding plans for an emissions cap and a price on carbon. Leo doesn't mention that Canada is a global leader in energy regulation and environmental progress, either. But like the Hieronymus Bosch poster above Leo's crib throughout his childhood, placed there by his comic-book-loving father, Before the Flood is chock full of scary images of doom and destruction. The film concludes with the usual talking points about political will, shutting down "the tar sands" and putting up windmills and solar panels in developing regions where too many inhabitants can't even afford a light bulb. Advertisement At the end of the day, the film is about a famous, globetrotting real-action figure, haunted by end-of-the-world nightmares, seeking redemption from the United Nations, the Vatican, the Democrats and Martin Scorsese, executive producer. Before the Flood is DiCaprio's latest high-priced attempt at throwing a giant scare into anybody who ever felt a tinge of guilt about eating certain foods, drinking certain beverages, and using fossil fuels for telecommunications or transportation, heating or health care, improved literacy or just plain all-round modern living. His message: You should all feel very, very bad. Leonardo Super Yacht Lifestyle See Gallery Leo even includes a couple of references to folks just like him -- those members of the ultra-elite who fly around the planet in private jets and party on Arab-owned super-yachts while they turn a blind eye to human rights atrocities fuelled by foreign oil supplies. "We have to practice what we preach! Absolutely!" he claims about halfway through the film. One of the more interesting segments, it pits the uber-articulate Sunita Narain, spokeswoman for an Indian NGO against an arrogant, know-it-all DiCaprio. In short, she gives him a piece of her mind for thinking India should rely on expensive, intermittent renewable electricity when the US simply won't. "The fact is we have to put the issues of lifestyle and (U.S.) consumption at the centre of the discussion," Narain admonishes. "Let's put our money where our mouth is." To give credit where it's due, the practical, no-nonsense Narain would turn any ill-prepared, climate-defending real action hero into an inarticulate mess. Advertisement But for an Oscar-winner, Leo sounds remarkably defensive through the discussion. You get the sense that, somewhere in the back of his mind, our famous party animal is re-thinking that time he and Jonah Hill flew via chartered 747 from Australia to California just so they could celebrate New Years Eve twice. Everything is broken, it's all very terrifying and it's largely Alberta's fault. For regular readers in need of a laugh, there's a recap of Chinook-gate, in which Leo and Revenant director Alejandro Inarritu mistake a typical Alberta Chinook for catastrophic global warming. "We were hit with record temperatures that completely melted our set," the clueless actor deadpans. Even after it's been completely discredited, great slapstick comedy never gets old. But there's other information that shows Leo's bias toward catastrophe. Self-described "science nerd" Michael Mann, who takes up nearly five full minutes to complain about the politics of "front groups," never mentions once that his own controversial work was the subject of years of controversy among scientists. But bias can be expected from this bunch. A quick survey of the film's backers listed in the final credits features many of the usual suspects, from Rajendra Pachauri who, after an unsuccessful run at the UN, is facing sexual harassment charges against a 33-year-old assistant, to wealthy oil-sands hater Tom Steyer to anti-pipeline zealot Mark Ruffalo to our own political antagonist Naomi Klein. For Leo DiCaprio, the jet-setting superstar from dirty-oil-producing LA, everything is broken, it's all very terrifying and it's largely Alberta's fault. Advertisement So what did you expect? Real information? Then you'll want to give this film a miss. Cody Battershill is a Calgary realtor and founder / spokesperson for CanadaAction.ca, a volunteer organization that supports Canadian energy development and the environmental, social and economic benefits that come with it. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook AydAn Mutlu via Getty Images By Nicola Toffelmire & Annalise Mathers Global health transcends boundaries. But it also transcends domains and disciplines of practice. The field of global health is drawing an increasingly diverse group of Canadian young people who have a wide range of interdisciplinary experience, backgrounds, and interests. Youth are highly attuned to the critical need for forming authentic and inclusive partnerships around the world to promote resilient and responsive health systems. Canada is positioned to play a strategic role as a leader on the international development stage, and this means that integrating youth leaders into global discourses, particularly relating to health, is vital. Canadian youth not only have the knowledge, tools, and ambition to improve health inequities from the local to global level, but we believe that young people can be key contributors to health diplomacy. Advertisement The Determinants of Diplomacy: Above and Beyond Political Boundaries The multi-faceted nature of global health today is mirrored in the complexity of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which touch upon the social, security, cultural, political, economic, and environmental determinants of health. These factors are interdependent, comprehensive, and provide a basis for youth to address some of the most pressing issues facing the world at this time. As young Canadian professionals, we know how contentious access to health systems and services can be in different contexts. Because these factors ultimately form the foundation for engaging in diplomatic relations, youth must be well versed in each of them. It is also essential to build relationships with governments, civil society organizations, institutions, community members, academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and others -- regardless of age, religion, nationality, or gender. Priorities for Canadian Youth In Global Health The mobilization of knowledge into actionable and operational practice is a top priority among Canadian youth in global health. Canadian students and young professionals are aware of the need to improve coordination and collaboration among health systems actors, and want to facilitate this by putting our learnings into practice. Youth can offer innovative insight to improve the channeling of aid when striving for equitable and efficient health systems, particularly when facing the diverse scope of global health actors today. Advertisement Climate change is often at the periphery of global health discussions, yet it is undoubtedly one of the most pressing issues facing not only youth, but the global community at large. Climate change has severe impacts on health systems by exacerbating inequities. The urgency of this issue is reflected in the significant attention it is receiving in the SDG agenda and at Conference of Parties (COP) meetings. The universal nature of climate change offers the opportunity for collaborative partnerships between youth of all nations and global community stakeholders. Canada's recent ratification of the Paris Declaration provides a point of leverage for the involvement of Canadian youth in operationalizing this agenda. Another key opportunity for global health diplomacy among youth is to contribute to the increasing discourse on improving sexual and reproductive health services in Canada and worldwide. As young Canadian professionals, we know how contentious access to health systems and services can be in different contexts. With this in mind, the Canadian emphasis on Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) must be cognizant and inclusive of all sexual and reproductive health needs. Here, leveraging approaches that are led by youth, for youth, can aid in creating a platform to ensure the equitable access, availability, and quality of these services for all Canadians. Moving Forward The time for Canadian students and young professionals to engage in topical discussions such as these with leading global health practitioners from around the world is now. From November 14-18, Vancouver will host the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. Having this conference in Canada provides an exciting opportunity for youth to access, engage in, and raise priority issues related to global health. Prior to the Global Symposium, on November 12-13, Canadian Global Health Students and Young Professionals will partner with Emerging Voices for Global Health to host a weekend pre-conference. Advertisement This gathering is an opportunity for youth from around the globe to come together, share insights, and build relationships. Over the course of the weekend, students and young professionals will be challenged to think critically about current global health priorities and encouraged to develop innovative approaches to improve health systems. These priorities, among others, will be raised at a Symposium session with Karina Gould, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development. This is a pivotal moment for youth to have their voices heard. We are the next generation and we need to take ownership over global issues facing our health systems right now, to instill the roots of equity in generations to follow. Nicola Toffelmire is a Master of Public Health candidate at Simon Fraser University and holds an Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Waterloo. Nicola is Chair of the 2016 Global Health Students and Young Professionals Summit, a pre-conference to the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in partnership with Emerging Voices for Global Health. She was recently selected to be Canada's youth delegate at the 2017 World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. Annalise Mathers is a Master of Public Health student in the Global Health concentration at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Her Honours thesis project examined the future directions of global health within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She currently works as Research and Policy Assistant with the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa, the British Columbia Council for International Cooperation, and at Simon Fraser University. This blog is part of the series: "Resilient and Responsive Health Systems for a Changing World" by the Canadian Society for International Health and Health Systems Global, to share the central issues that will be explored at the 4th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Vancouver, 14-18 November 2016. Advertisement The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CCIC or its members. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook scarletsails via Getty Images New York, NY USA - July 16, 2016: Donald Trump speaks during introduction Governor Mike Pence as running for vice president at Hilton hotel Midtown Manhattan Back in March 2016, I discussed whether Americans could move to Canada if Donald Trump actually became president. This was several months before he actually secured the Republican nomination. Now that Donald Trump has actually won the election, many Americans are once again considering the possibility of moving to Canada. I previously reported that it was more difficult to permanently move to Canada than most Americans realized but some type of temporary status might be sufficient. In light of Donald Trump's recent election victory, it is worthwhile to discuss these temporary options again. Advertisement Among disillusioned Americans, it is widely believed that Donald Trump will not win a second term as president. In fact, some outspoken Americans have opined that he will not even finish his initial four-year term. If we assume that Donald Trump would not serve a second term, permanent resident status in Canada is clearly not required. There are several options available that would permit a U.S. citizen to temporarily reside in Canada for the next four years. The most viable temporary options for U.S. citizens are described below. Study in Canada A foreign national who is accepted into a full-time program at a designated post-secondary institution in Canada may obtain a study permit, which will allow them to remain in Canada until the completion of their studies. During their academic studies, international students may work either on-campus or off-campus, for up to 20 hours per week during the school year and 40 hours per week during holidays. Upon completion of their studies, the student may also seek a post-graduation work permit, which will allow them to continue working in Canada. Work in Canada as a NAFTA Professional As a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA"), U.S. citizens (and Mexican citizens also) have the ability to seek a NAFTA Professional work permit, if they fall under one of the professions listed in Appendix 1603.D.1 to Annex 1603 of the NAFTA. These work permits may be issued for up to three years at a time, with no cap on the number of renewals. Advertisement In most, but not all of the listed professions, a baccalaureate (or higher) degree is required. Although not specifically stated in Appendix 1603.D.1, the applicant's degree must be in the same field as the listed profession (or in a closely related field). That said, some professions permit alternate credentials, such as a two year post-secondary diploma plus three years of relevant work experience (i.e. computer systems analyst) or five years of relevant work experience (i.e. management consultant). Admittedly, Donald Trump has threatened to renegotiate the NAFTA, and to withdraw from the agreement if he cannot obtain the terms that he wants. However, according to CIBC, if the United States does withdraw from the NAFTA, Canada and the United States could revert back to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement ("CUSFTA"), which was in place before the NAFTA. The CUSFTA contained immigration provisions that were similar to the NAFTA. Assuming that this occurs, the professional work permit category should continue to be available. Work in Canada as an Intra-Company Transferee ("ICT") This is the most common work permit category used by employees of multinational organizations. The ICT work permit is available to executive, managerial, or specialized knowledge employees who have been employed with a foreign employer for at least one year during the preceding three years, and who are transferring to a related entity in Canada in a similar position. Americans fortunate enough to be working for a multinational organization may be eligible for an ICT work permit, if they can convince their employer to transfer them to their Canadian office. Employees of small and medium sized enterprises may also qualify for ICT work permits, as long as they meet the requirements of the category. So the owner of a small or medium sized company, which has sufficient staffing to establish his or her executive/managerial position, could be transferred to the company's related entity in Canada. In most cases, ICT work permits are issued for up to three years initially. Extensions may also be granted up to a maximum of seven years for executives and managers, or five years for specialized knowledge workers. This would be more than sufficient to avoid Donald Trump's entire four-year term. Advertisement Although the NAFTA ICT work permit could be eliminated if Donald Trump withdraws from the NAFTA, a similar work permit also existed under the CUSFTA. More importantly, there is a parallel ICT category available to all nationalities, which would continue to be available even if President Trump withdraws from the NAFTA. Work as a NAFTA Treaty Investor or Treaty Trader NAFTA Treaty Trader and Treaty Investor work permits are entrepreneurial work permits given to self-employed business owners (holding either U.S. or Mexican citizenship) who either: Carry on substantial trade in goods or services principally between the United States and Canada (Treaty Trader); or Establish or purchase a business in Canada in which they have invested a substantial amount of capital (Treaty Investor). This work permit category also includes supervisory, executive, or essential skills employees of the Treaty Trader or Treaty Investor. The Treaty Trader and Treaty Investor categories are based on the NAFTA. However, similar work permit categories also existed under the CUSFTA. Assuming that the United States and Canada reverted back to the CUSFTA, Treaty Trader and Treaty Investor work permits should continue to be available even if president-elect Trump withdraws from the NAFTA. Advertisement Treaty Investor and Treaty Trader work permits are issued for only one year initially. However, they may be extended for two years at a time, with no limit on the number of extensions that may be granted. This is more than sufficient to avoid Donald Trump's entire four-year term. Conclusion Clearly, there are still many temporary options available to Americans. Any one of these temporary options could allow a disillusioned U.S. citizen to wait out Donald Trump's presidential term from the comfort of Canada. Also on HuffPost: wildpixel via Getty Images Racial ethnic social issue and equality concept or cultural justice symbol as a black and white crumpled paper shaped as a human head on old rustic wood background with a puzzle piece as a metaphor for social race issues. A February 2015 edition of The Economist featured an article entitled "The Melting Pot works." It cites Benjamin Franklin who once complained that German immigrants swarmed into our settlements and will never adopt our language or customs. The Economist points out that "97 per cent of German-Americans speak only English at home. And although they are perhaps America's largest single ethnic group -- 46 million claim German ancestry -- their neighbours barely notice them, so thoroughly have they assimilated (you'd hope that's the case after more than two centuries of settlement in the country). At best, the above citation suggests that United States is a melting pot for the white population, an observation that overlooks a seismic contradiction. Advertisement Respected American thinker now residing in Canada, Richard Florida, has observed that "Americans like to think of their country as the world's great melting pot." He adds that it's an assumption that can no longer be taken for granted." That's an understatement. You don't have to look very far these days to challenge the melting pot idea. All that is needed is a glimpse at the racial divisions that have marked the 2016 United States presidential election and others prior. In fact, those who boast about the American melting pot are generally thinking about the successful assimilation of white Americans in a society with perpetual racial divisions than run deep across the country. In other words, it's a selective melting process while some get melted and many others. Too often, the melting is based on skin colour. In the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney won the support of some sixty per cent of whites, but just over one in four Hispanics and Asian-Americans and approximately six per cent of African-Americans. The 2016 Republican candidate Donald Trump did about the same. Unlike Romney however his campaign was explicit driving an "us" and "them" narrative with racial overtones. It made the melting pot paradigm sound more like fiction rather than sociological observation. Writer Amanda Taub has contended that behind the political turmoil of 2016 is a crisis of white identity. Throughout most of American history, there have been essentially two main divisions in American politics: over economic policy (essentially: more or less government intervention in the economy) and over social/cultural/identity issues. She defines whiteness as being part of the group whose appearance, traditions, religion and even food are the default norm. It's being a person who, by unspoken rules, was long entitled as part of "us" instead of "them." Advertisement The white ethnic majority is worried about the evolution of their country. This concern underlies the tensions that characterize relations between communities in the United States. Taub suggests that economic and social transformations have led many people to anchor themselves more fully in their whiteness -- even as whiteness itself has lost currency. Surely the objective of a melting pot would be to strengthen national identity as it diminishes attachments to ethnic, racial and religious identities. Ultimately that model reduces prejudices towards minorities as they melt into the mainstream. The anti-minority rhetoric of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign does not give the impression that the melt is working particularly well for Hispanics, African Americans and Muslim Americans amongst others. Canadian politics have also seen their share of divisions along immigrant and ethnic lines with federal Liberals faring considerably better over the course of the last century than the country's Conservatives. But minorities are not locked into one party. In what's long been a multi-party system, the New Democrats have successfully secured support amongst ethnic and racial minorities. In the last federal election campaign, the federal Conservatives made an unsuccessful attempt to build voter support by proposing veiled measures that would inevitably stigmatize the country's Muslim population. The U.S. elections demonstrated than such an approach works better in the so-called melting pot than it does in a multicultural society. Those Canadians with melting pot envy should think twice before asking domestic supporters of multiculturalism to look south of the border for the model in meeting the challenges of diversity. Advertisement Also on HuffPost: We're nearly a week in and Trump's America has already turned into a dystopian nightmare. When I predicted that as a potential outcome in my night-of analysis, the next morning I thought maybe I was being melodramatic. Nope, apparently not. 'A swastika and the words "Seig Heil 2016" were spray painted on a storefront in South Philadelphia.' #TrumpRiothttps://t.co/B1GxmaWHOh elliot morrow (@EllMorrow) November 11, 2016 Advertisement Spiraling hate crimes committed as a twisted celebration of Donald Trump's ascension to the world's most powerful political role -- a number USA Today reported over the weekend was already worse than what happened after 9-11 -- culminated in the installation of white nationalistanti-Semite Steve Bannon in the White House. The former CEO of Breitbart News, the alt-right's primary media outlet and now presumably Trump's personal Pravda, was named chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. Five days of spiraling hate crimes...culminated in the installation of white nationalist anti-Semite Steve Bannon in the White House As the Southern Poverty Law Center warned: "This is unacceptable. Bannon is the mastermind behind a resurgent white nationalism online through his Breitbart empire and now, it seems, he intends to bring that project into the most powerful office on the planet." Advertisement It wasn't just civil rights organizations sounding the alarm, either. These tweets came from John Weaver, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich's top adviser. The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America. John Weaver (@JWGOP) November 13, 2016 Just to be clear news media, the next president named a racist, anti-semite as the co-equal of the chief of staff. #NotNormal John Weaver (@JWGOP) November 13, 2016 So let's take a step back from all the pleas to give him and his supporters a chance because maybe they didn't mean it, maybe he just said it to be elected and maybe they voted because of economic anxiety. In short: those maybes don't matter. 'Heil Trump': Vandals attack Indiana church with swastika and anti-gay slur while praising Trump https://t.co/nLR2LKu1onpic.twitter.com/3oGj1cDRrK Raw Story (@RawStory) November 14, 2016 Advertisement Let's tackle the first one, that Trump doesn't mean it. You know who else the press thought was saying hateful rhetoric to get elected? Hitler. Yes, that Hitler. The New York Times reported in 1922 that: "Several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes." You can't scapegoat vulnerable communities for 16 months and then walk away. Besides, if we were to believe that Trump was using it as a bait-and-switch then he should have switched by now. Instead, he ignored the graffiti swastikas replacing the "T" in his last name spray-painted on windows during Kristallnacht, the day after his election. He ignored the news reports and social media posts of hate crimes targeting blacks and gays and Muslims and women. Neo-Nazis celebrate Trump's victory by painting swastikas & "Trump rules" graffiti in Philadelphia. #NotMyPresidenthttps://t.co/MGAqTU4YvB Rafal Hill (@rafalhill) November 10, 2016 I kept hearing that these hate crimes aren't his fault because he doesn't even believe it. Well, if you yell fire in a crowded theatre and chaos ensues, you're not absolved of responsibility just because you never believed there was a fire. Advertisement That just makes it worse. You can't scapegoat vulnerable communities for 16 months and then pretend it was our imagination. Nearly a week of this ensued before he addressed it, when pressed, on 60 Minutes, saying "stop it." But before we congratulate him on meeting the lowest of expectations, keep in mind he only did this after feigning ignorance about hundreds of hate crimes and then minimizing them. Donald Trump: I am very surprised to hear that-- I hate to hear that, I mean I hate to hear that-- Lesley Stahl: But you do hear it? Donald Trump: I don't hear it -- I saw, I saw one or two instances... Lesley Stahl: On social media? Donald Trump: But I think it's a very small amount. Again, I think it's-- Lesley Stahl: Do you want to say anything to those people? Donald Trump: I would say don't do it, that's terrible, 'cause I'm gonna bring this country together. Lesley Stahl: They're harassing Latinos, Muslims-- Donald Trump: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, "Stop it." If it -- if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it." Now about those Trump voters who we are being told to understand more about their motivations, well, the folks who keep saying this are mostly white. It's easy, because they're not the targets. The election is over, they say, just come together. Well here's the thing: racist-adjacent is still racist. Doesn't matter why you support Trump. I'm sure some people voted for Hitler because they liked his tax policy. I've no doubt that some Mussolini voters were motivated by locomotive punctuality. Advertisement Racist-adjacent is still racist. But if you support a bigot who campaigns on bigotry, it doesn't matter what your personal motivation was. The consequences for targeted communities is the same. This is not Romney, or McCain, or even Bush. The KKK is staging victory parades and its former Grand Wizard David Duke is gloating on Twitter. As John Oliver said on his first Last Week Tonight episode since the election: "This is not normal. It is fucked up." This is one of the most exciting nights of my life -> make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump! #MAGApic.twitter.com/HvJyiJYuVa David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) November 9, 2016 In the wake of the election, there have been many calls to better understand the white working class voter and placing blame on "political correctness" for what Van Jones dubbed on election night "a whitelash." Advertisement In other words, that the real problem was that we weren't paying enough attention to straight white people and shouldn't have been calling for diversity, equality and respect. But arguing that if you just didn't challenge straight white male supremacy then they wouldn't have elected a straight white male supremacist is no different than blaming a rape victim for what she wore, or a gay-bashing victim for kissing his boyfriend, or a Jew for wearing a Star of David necklace. For those who smugly think this is an American problem, well, it's already here. The lesson is not that we shouldn't have agitated for equality. The lesson is not that we shouldn't have challenged police brutality. The lesson is not that we shouldn't have defended our Muslim brothers and sisters. The lesson is not that we shouldn't have demanded that women, especially women of colour, have the right to fair wages and not be pussy-grabbed. We should have done all those things, and we should keep doing all those things. Swastika sprayed on Ottawa elementary school. Don't say Trump's racism won't affect us in Canada. https://t.co/oTcwsZUKfn ArielTroster (@ArielTroster) November 13, 2016 And for those who smugly think this is an American problem, well, it's already here. Canadians, including myself, have already been subjected to alt-right attacks online, hate crimes have been rising, 68 per cent of Canadians want minorities to "fit in" more and Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is selling herself as Canada's Donald Trump. Advertisement Stop normalizing what is going on here before the crisis grows even greater. Oh, and an Ipsos-Reid poll released one week ago found that 76 per cent of Canadians would consider voting for a "Canadian candidate with Trump-like policies." Economic anxiety is always the foundation of ethnic scapegoating -- remember that the Great Depression was what fuelled the Nazi rise to power -- so how about we stop normalizing hate before this crisis grows even greater and spreads even further? Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: VisionsofAmerica/Joe Sohm via Getty Images Welcome to Canada Sign Blog posts are not legal advice. I am an immigration lawyer. I analyze people, facts and law, determine courses of action based on applicants' eligibility and different immigration streams available -- and complete the applications. Many Americans are considering immigrating to Canada on a temporary or permanent basis. This is because Canada is a diverse, multicultural nation with a vibrant economy and lots of natural resources. Advertisement For those looking to make the move, here are some different immigration options for you: 1. Parents If a parent is a Canadian citizen by way of birth in Canada or otherwise, that person's child is a Canadian citizen as well, regardless of where the child was born. The applicant must apply for Proof of Canadian Citizenship, and he/she will need to provide his/her Canadian parent's birth certificate and include it as part of the application package. 2. Marriage/Common-Law Relationships For those that are married or living together for one year in a common-law relationship, and one of them is a Canadian citizen or a Permanent Resident of Canada, the Canadian can sponsor his/her spouse or partner to come to Canada as a Permanent Resident. This applies to same-sex marriages/common-law relationships as well. The applicant must prove the genuineness of their relationship. 3. Job Offer/Work Permit If someone can obtain a permanent, full-time job offer in Canada, it is a way to live and work in Canada, and in time, obtain Permanent Residence status in Canada. Depending on the applicants' profession or line of work, there may be a series of steps for the employer to take for the Work Permit to be processed. 4. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) If applicants meet certain requirements, NAFTA will allow them to obtain legal status in Canada to work. The applicant's profession must fall within the prescribed list of professions. Advertisement 5. Provincial Programs for Skilled Workers Many of the provinces provide a pathway to Permanent Residence through their provincial nominee programs. An applicant's eligibility is generally based on a ranking system that takes some or all the following into account: English proficiency, work experience, education and adaptability. These programs can apply to both skilled and non-skilled workers. 6. Business Immigration If someone has the requisite wealth and is prepared to purchase or establish a business/invest in Canada, this would be an option to consider. Some provinces have provincial nominee programs for investors/entrepreneurs that have minimum net-worth requirements. 7. Study Permit For those looking to start school or supplement their education, they can apply for a Study Permit. With a Study Permit, one is entitled to a Post Graduate Work Permit after completing a program of eight months of full-time studies. In many provinces, after six months of full-time, permanent employment, one may be entitled to apply for Permanent Residence through the provincial nominee program. 8. Visitor An American can enter Canada as a visitor for six months. They can remain in Canada after six months if they continue to apply for, and are issued extensions of their Visitor Record. A Visitor in Canada must have the means to support themselves and will not be authorized to work in Canada unless they obtain a Work Permit. 9. Federal Express Entry These are federally implemented programs that are based on Canada's employment needs and assess applicants based on their ability to become economically established, which is determined based on factors such as age, education, work experience and connection to Canada. Advertisement Inadmissibility Someone can be deemed inadmissible to Canada if they have a criminal conviction, medical issue or have previously misrepresented themselves to a Canadian immigration official. For those applicants that fall into this category, there still may be immigration options available, but the application process will be more complicated. For more information on the various immigration options available to Americans, feel free to contact our law office or stay tuned for the remainder of this series, where I will explore each of these options in more detail. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: GBlakeley via Getty Images Queen's Park is an urban park in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Opened in 1860 by Edward, Prince of Wales, it was named in honour of Queen Victoria. The park is the site of the Ontario Legislative Building, which houses the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the phrase 'Queen's Parka is regularly used as a metonym for the Government of Ontario. In 2011, the Ontario College of Teachers commissioned former Ontario Justice Patrick LeSage to conduct an independent review of our disciplinary processes and practices. Our intent then -- as it is now -- was to see where we could improve. Our Council adopted Justice LeSage's report and his 49 recommendations, which were focused on two key themes: efficiency and transparency. Advertisement The College moved quickly to implement change where it could and needed the province to amend its laws to address all the recommendations. After four long years of collaboration, the Protecting Students Act will soon become law. We're almost there. Almost, but not quite. Our support for the spirit of the proposed bill is aligned to our belief in -- and continuing commitment to -- transparency and accountability. The College licenses teachers to work in publicly funded Ontario schools. It accredits the programs and courses that enable people to become teachers and to remain vital and current in their practice. It establishes the ethical standards for the profession and the standards of practice for teaching. And, going on 20 years now, it has enforced Ontario law with respect to matters of professional misconduct, incompetence and fitness to practice involving College members. In short, the College regulates Ontario's teaching profession in the public interest. Although professional misconduct in Ontario is rare (fewer than 20 people out of 243,000 Ontario Certified Teachers have their certificates revoked in any given year), we treat every concern, every complaint, every investigation and every hearing with utmost seriousness. We act with the highest respect for student safety, for the fair, open, and timely treatment of our members, and in appreciation of the public's right to know. Advertisement We welcome the proposed act and the many elements which we asked for and which will advance transparency and efficiency. Eight areas, however, aren't aligned with our recommendations or overall objectives. For example, we believe that decisions that come out of publicly held disciplinary hearings should always be public. Justice LeSage recommended that those decisions must be published and available on our website with the name of the member. Further, he said that agreements arising from our complaint resolution process should also be posted publicly, a practice that is already expected of health regulators under the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991. We're perplexed that instead of being asked to be more transparent -- as is required of Ontario's health regulators -- we're being asked to conceal information. There are 834 discipline decisions available in our online library as well as on Quicklaw and CANLII. Once the law passes, 376 of those decisions would have to be removed after three years. Decisions with findings of professional misconduct in which terms, conditions or limitations have been imposed on a member's certificate would be no longer be available. The Supreme Court of Canada says that teachers are teachers all the time. By virtue of their authority and the public trust placed in them, we believe that they should not develop personal relationships with students at any age, and particularly students under 18 or with special needs. If someone is accused of sexual assault, they should not be exempted from the College's disciplinary process. They aren't in criminal courts. The Protecting Students Act would grant exemptions to teachers who marry their students. Advertisement As well, under the proposed act, a teacher whose certificate has been revoked for anything other than sexual abuse, sexual misconduct or child pornography may still be in the classroom while an appeal is being heard, potentially putting further students at risk. We believe that immediate revocation should apply in all cases. We've drawn these matters to the government's attention. At the same time, we see that the proposed legislation as a whole is good, progressive and responds to our recommendations. Ensuring student safety and transparency in matters of professional misconduct are ideals we can all support. Bloomberg via Getty Images Signage stands outside the Duke Energy Corp. Gallagher Station power plant in New Albany, Indiana, U.S., on Monday, July 27, 2015. Coal reclaimed its ranking as the top fuel for generating electricity at U.S. power plants in May, beating natural gas, which took the number one spot for the first time in April. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images Sometimes huge issues just slide along under the radar until, all of a sudden, they blow up. The shock can come from a brown envelope slid under a door, a "scoop" in the media or an opposition politician discovering a serious failure in government. I'm waiting for such an explosion to occur at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This organization has assets of $287 billion and provides pensions for the 19 million Canadians who pay into it. Advertisement The Investment Board is dangerously gambling and putting our future in danger by investing billions of dollars in risky fossil fuel companies. Moreover, the Board is knee deep in unethical investments in the coal industry. The collapse of a huge cooling pond dam at a coal mine in North Carolina during Hurricane Matthew last month didn't cause a stir in Canada, but it should have. The facility in question is owned by Duke Energy -- perhaps the most vilified energy company in the United States -- and the Pension Fund Investment Board is heavily invested in Duke. Earlier, a Duke pond leaked dirty effluent into a North Carolina river. The company paid a $102-million fine continues to face numerous law suits while it is involved in a $3-billion clean-up. The loss had an impact on the Canadian investments. "You should also know CCPIB has large investments in more than 30 polluting coal companies," says Friends of the Earth Canada (FOE Canada). FOE Canada commissioned staff of the magazine Corporate Knights, which calls itself the magazine of clean capitalism, to investigate Pension Plan investments. Advertisement At a time when countries around the world are phasing out coal operations, the Investment Fund is holding billions of dollars in coal operations. Canada is far behind in meeting its carbon reduction obligations, and burning coal is the single greatest threat to our climate. Fund owns a fracking operation There's more. In October the Investment Board bought 95 per cent of a company that acquired EnCana's fracking operation in Colorado for US$900 million. Since then it has bought an oil company in Saskatchewan for $975 million, and a pipeline in Alberta for $1.4 billion. At a time when pension investment boards and other investors in other countries are abandoning dirty fossil fuels, why is the Canadian Pension Board stuck somewhere in the past? The Investment Board says that companies involved in the fossil fuel sector yield good returns. In addition, Michel Leduc, Head of Public Affairs and Communications, says the Board can accomplish more as an "engaged investor," working with companies. The Investment Board's fossil fuel holdings are massive. Late in 2015, fossil fuel producers or pipeline companies made up about 22 per cent of the CPP's Canadian investments and about six per cent of its foreign investments, says a research paper written by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Advertisement The Investment Board keeps information about its carbon-producing holdings as secret as possible. Of the 120 global investors representing $10 trillion in assets who have committed to publicly disclose their portfolio carbon footprint via the Montreal Carbon Pledge, the Investment Board and nine other top Canadian pension funds are not listed. Energy stocks have bleak future Meanwhile, analysts say energy stocks are doomed. Because of its heavy fossil fuel holdings, critics worry that the Investment Board is putting its overall profitability at risk. Corporate Knight's Publisher Toby A.A. Heaps says the Board is doing a poor job of managing what is called "climate risk." With the lower price of fossil fuels and investors moving into renewable sources of energy, many fossil fuel companies are losing their value while others are going out of business. People fear that the Board could lose big if this trend continues and it does not sell some of its holdings. In fact, Corporate Knights says the Investment Board likely missed out on profits of $US6.5 billion by sticking with climate polluting industries instead of switching to other, safer investments. The estimate is based on research Corporate Knights carried out for an Irish group. It is no surprise the Investment Board takes a pro-fossil fuel, non-divestment position. Seven of the 12 members of the Board have had, or continue to have, deep personal financial ties and/or business connections to both or either of the fossil fuel and energy industries. Advertisement Board pretends to be independent The Investment Board's description of its relationships are misleading. It claims that "CPP Fund assets belong to the 19 million contributors and beneficiaries who participate in the CPP" but, in fact, beneficiaries are powerless when it comes to having any say in the operation of the Fund. The Board also rather arrogantly claims that "management reports to an independent, professional board of directors, not to government," and that "we were created to operate at arm's length from governments and to make independent investment decisions." However, it is ultimately responsible to the Finance Department. Because the Investment Fund is dangerously out of control, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, a pension expert, should arrange an independent investigation to determine to what extent Investment Board practices are putting billions of dollars at risk. In addition, environmental organizations should scream blue murder over the fact that an institution so central to the welfare of the people of this country is deeply involved so heavily in the coal and non-renewable energy sector. Advertisement It is inexcusable that these extremely dangerous and unethical activities have gone on for so long right under the federal government's nose. An unexpected and rapid decrease in the returns on fossil fuel holdings could put the pensions for thousands of Canadians in grave danger. You can read Nick's other posts from his blog A Different Point of View Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: For people who are still wondering "how did this happen," do not waste precious time trying to figure out the voters. Look no further than your TV and at your local newspaper. There was news to be reported, but the media was more interested in a soap opera. They were the real drivers of the "clown car" this year. First there were the desperate attempts by the media to normalize Trump's behaviour with constant false equivalences. When Trump did something insulting or controversial, the media felt an odd need to even this out by constantly going back to talk about Clinton's emails. It's not just that they reported the non-scandal as being bigger than it actually was, they reported it as being as big as everything else combined. Advertisement Imagine a scale where, on one side, was everything from Trump University to rape allegations to tax returns to ties with Russia to "Grab 'em by the p**y" to "Second Amendment People" to "Mexicans are sending rapists" to "He founded ISIS" to Trump Foundation money to "I like people who weren't captured" to A BIG WALL. Now, on the other side of that scale? Clinton's emails. It wasn't enough that the media showed that scale as being equal; it went and put its thumb on it, too. The media treated one person this year like a candidate for president. It treated the other like an entertainer. Midway through the election, the media decided to stop fact checking or reporting anything else. It hammered home a scandal that, only two days before the election, turned out to not be a scandal at all. This would all be fine if what was going on was actual reporting. Instead, it was a lot of talking. It was two people on TV going back and forth with their opinion on not right or wrong, true or false... but left versus right. While barely even mentioning the stack of lies Donald Trump was spewing all year long, the media devoted time talking about Clinton's smile. Yes, her smile. And then this same media seemed baffled whenever told that sexism might be at play. Advertisement Donald Trump, prone to go off on Twitter feuds in the middle of the night, was praised for "staying on message" simply when he didn't lose his marbles onstage. Clinton, acting like any other male politician before her, was deemed "cold". Over at CNN, Wolf Blitzer embarrassingly called Clinton "emotional" when she was being stoic. And then there was the endless talk about Clinton's pantsuits. Cable news actually treated a presidential candidate like a guest on What Not To Wear, never mentioning the fact that Trump constantly wears the same unflattering black suit. They gave billions of dollars in free press to one candidate all year long, treated every wild accusation he made as if it were fact, and then made endless accusations about a non-scandal seem to share equal footing with real controversies... only to then scratch their heads and wonder why voters had trust issues. Forget whether Clinton should or should not have won. That's history now. The voters spoke. There's no part of me that will say that the media itself is responsible for who won. But the media treated one person this year like a candidate for president. It treated the other like an entertainer. Meanwhile, its flippancy with one compared to their thirst for blood with the other is exactly why they now come out of the election with egg on their faces. Because the entertainer's supporters treated him like a serious candidate all along. The media should have as well. Advertisement The media's role is supposed to be to find the news itself, not to be led by the hand. Much of that was thanks to the awful behavior by The FBI and, specifically, by FBI director James Comey. Forget partisan politics for a moment, because even Republicans thought Comey poorly did his job. Legal experts shook their heads at the fact that FBI directors just don't talk about these things until there's actually something to report. But Comey opined just like the political hacks on cable news. And then he talked again. And then again. That rabid media jumped each time and -- rather than report the fact that there was really nothing to report -- kept speculating. And debating. Two talking heads went back and forth about "what if" rather than "what is." For the first time in U.S. history, the head of the FBI became one of them. The real story should have been that Russia and the FBI both had a hand in influencing the U.S. presidential election; the fact that an FBI director acted like a publicist rather than the top law enforcement agent. This is the same media who spent more time vetting Clinton's emails than it did actual stolen emails from Wikileaks. The media had more trust in Julian Assange than it had in itself. They gave him far more credit than they deserve from us. Then there's the constant talk about "white working class." The media kept repeating that "people are angry, and Trump is talking to them." It should have been telling them the truth, which is that America is doing far better than people feel. Rather than tell the facts, the media repeated the myth. And it stuck. Just like the myth of Trump supporters as this, "working class" average joe from the Rust Belt, rather than mostly white men earning seventy grand per year. The media never took the responsibility to report that maybe that anger was misdirected. Advertisement The media never took the responsibility to report that maybe that anger was misdirected. And it continues today. The media has totally stopped talking about the inflammatory language tossed out by Trump and his supporters. They've switched the narrative to "White Working Class" and how this election rejected "The Elites." Rather than point out that The president-elect is a billionaire Manhattanite who has spent his life exploiting the very system the "white working class" despises, they're calling the candidate who actually got the most votes "out of touch." There needs to be more talk about the very reality that millions of voters are incredibly misinformed. The Democrats may indeed be out of touch with the people. But the people are terribly out of touch with the facts. It's supposed to be the media's job to inform them. Ward Anderson is co-host of the SiriusXM talk radio program Ward & Al, heard weekdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST on the "Canada Talks" channel. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, he doesn't need to move to Canada because Trump won... because he already lives there. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: The Washington Post via Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 9: President-elect Donald Trump addresses supporters at an election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown November 8, 2016 in New York City, New York.(Photo by Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images) (Photo by Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images) Workopolis recently suggested that disgruntled Americans should follow through on their threats to move to Canada. Well, it seems that many are seriously considering taking the career site up on the offer. As the world watched the presidential election results, visits from the U.S. to Workopolis increased by 237 per cent over the course of three hours. Advertisement Looking at it hour by hour, visits from the U.S. were already up 179 per cent in the hour before 11 p.m., compared to the same time period the day before. As midnight approached, they were 205 per cent higher than the same time on Monday, and they continued to climb as the result of the election became clear. .@realDonaldTrump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win #Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. #ElectionNighthttps://t.co/YjxoHzrIXi -- Fox News Research (@FoxNewsResearch) November 9, 2016 In the hour after midnight, the amount of visits from the U.S. to Workopolis was 384 per cent higher than it had been during the same period the night before. If you think all Americans needed was some sleep, think again: this surge in U.S. visitors has carried over to this morning. At 6 a.m. today U.S. traffic was up 105 per cent compared to the same time period on Tuesday, and it has continued to increase throughout the morning, with: Advertisement The 7 a.m. hour 138 per cent higher than the day prior The 8 a.m. hour up 147per cent The 9 a.m hour up 148 per cent The 10 a.m. 122 per cent higher than the same hour yesterday Here is a visual snap shot of hourly visits from the U.S. to Workopolis, starting from 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. This probably is not all that surprising considering that as the results of the election came in, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada's website crashed. If you tried visiting the site around 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday, you would have seen the following error: "there is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed." According to a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, there were more than 200,000 users accessing the site at that time, with American IP addresses accounting for approximately 50 per cent of the traffic. We were told that, on average, the percentage of users from American IP addresses ranges from 8.8 per cent to 11.6 per cent. What does this all mean? It's probably unlikely that we'll see an influx of Americans moving north, but in the short-term, they're certainly exploring the option. The bad news for them is that they might find getting a work permit much more challenging than they expected. Advertisement See also: A Students For Liberty activist carries a protest sign at the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control 7th Annual Conference of the Parties in New Delhi, India. DELHI - It's only fitting that a conference dedicated to the eradication of smoking tobacco would be held in a city caked with smog pollution. Advertisement Last week in Noida, a southeastern suburb of New Delhi, delegates from over 180 countries filed out of tour buses for the World Health Organization's seventh Conferences of the Parties Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The dangerous levels of pollution in New Delhi certainly worried the health-conscious crowd in attendance and provided a great dose of irony as a backdrop for a global conference on regulating public health. Arriving at the COP7 event, it was impossible to miss the large military and police presence at the front gate, as well as the half dozen checkpoints keeping the health regulators away from the general public. Advertisement Many people wearing cloth masks entered, coughing and wheezing as they pick up their credentials, and hundreds of national representatives, journalists, NGOs, and members of the public rushed to the center of the conference center once inside to seek refuge in air conditioning. The day began with optimistic words from the head of the conference on the transparency of the process. "We are an organization dedicated to transparency, which you can now see on our Tweet wall outside," said WHO FCTC Convention Secretariat Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva at the conference's opening. The Tweet wall, unfortunately, only featured tweets from the FCTC's official account, and not delegates or members of media present at COP7. Though members of the public and media were granted entry on the first day, it was well known that they would soon be excluded from the proceedings of the conference. Advertisement Asked when the media would be notified if they were going to be removed or not at the first press briefing on Monday morning, the answer was blunt. "Before the smell of coffee is gone, you'll know," said WHO spokesman Samuel Compton. It didn't take long. As Daily Caller's Drew Johnson reports, reporters and the public were outright banned from the remaining plenary sessions near the end of Monday evening. This cut off access for the rest of the week to the nearly 100 journalists and members of the public who made their way to New Delhi to participate. A video has emerged of Johnson being forcibly removed from the floor of the conference on Tuesday morning by Indian security guards, even having his media credential ripped from his neck. The footage was captured by Canadian journalism outlet Rebel.media. Advertisement The reason for the FCTC's insistence on barring journalists and members of the public is given in a report by Reason Foundation's vice president of research, Julian Morris. "The primary justification the FCTC Secretariat gives for restricting participation and operating in secret is the avoidance of conflicts of interest," writes Morris in the report published on the WHO's opposition to harm reduction strategies. "But the real reason is that the FCTC doesn't want to allow anyone into the tent who disagrees with its assumption that the only option for smokers is to "quit or die." The five things you need to know on Monday, November 14, 2016 This morning's Waugh Zone is by Ned Simons. Paul is away. Today's edition is about 'freedom and winning' Advertisement 1) NO.10: NO THANKS NIGEL The idea of Nigel Farage helping the UK government to build links with Donald Trump is "categorically not going to happen," Downing Street said this morning. The dismissal comes amid reports some in the cabinet are unhappy at Theresa May's decision not to reach out to the Ukip leader given over the weekend he became the first British politician to meet Trump. Writing in The Daily Telegraph this morning, Farage said he was greeted like a "long lost friend" in Trump Tower. As well pressing Trump on as the all important issue of whether every single room in the White House has a bust of Churchill, the Ukip leader and the president-elect spoke about freedom and winning. Its not clear whether the pair spoke about Farages seven losing attempts to be elected to parliament. Probably not. However Farage has met Trump. The prime minister has not. And the Ukip leader is having a great time in the US. "We love having you here, Nigel Farage. Man of history, no doubt," A Fox News presenter told him yesterday - with the Ukip leader described as America's "pal from across the pond". 2) THE PRESIDENT'S MEN Conservative MP John Redwood last night said President Trump could be "good for the world". He told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour: "I think Mr Trump has some good ideas. Lets not write somebody off before hes even in office or even appointed his staff." Well Trump has begun to appoint his staff - and the headline is his decision to name Steve Bannon, the Breitbart News Network executive chairman known for having white nationalist views as chief strategist and senior counselor. Advertisement John Weaver, an adviser to Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, said of the appointment: "Just to be clear news media, the next president named a racist, anti-semite as the co-equal of the chief of staff." Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) spokesman said Trumps choice of Bannon signals that White Supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trumps White House." He added: It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion." Trump also announced Sunday that Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus would serve in the chief of staff role. 3) CHANGE IS IN THE AIR In a speech this evening, May will say Trump's victory shows "change is in the air". In her first lengthy response to last week's US election, the prime minister will say Brexit and the surprise rise of Trump show that the downside of globalisation needs to be tackled because too many low income people feel left out. She will use a key-note Mansion House address to warn that those at the bottom of the economic ladder see globalisation as a job destroying, income cutting cause for concern rather than a necessary boost for trade. We cant deny," May will say. "That there have been downsides to globalisation in recent years, and that in our zeal and enthusiasm to promote this agenda as the answer to all our ills we have on occasion overlooked the impact on those closer to home who see these forces in a different light." Jeremy Corbyn yesterday told the BBC's Andrew Marr that Trump needed to grow up stop being abusive to immigrants and Muslims. The Labour leader, who has a Mexican wife, Laura Alvarez, was asked how he would get on with Mr Trump if he became prime minister, he said: Im looking forward to the conversation between my wife and Donald Trump. She is a proud Mexican. Advertisement 4) DEMILITARISED ZONE In the same interview, Corbyn said Nato should demilitarise its borders with Russia. Corbyn has long been lukewarm on the UKs membership of Nato. During the 2015 leadership contest he said the alliance should have been disbanded in the 1990s. Also appearing on Marr, Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the French National Front, said the Western military alliance was no longer needed. "Nato is continuing to exist even though the danger for which it was created no longer exists," she said. Trump's election and the rise of Le Pen in France has triggered a debate about how the media should cover the far-right. And Andrew Marr has defended his decision to interview the French nationalist. In the end we are a news programme and I dont think the best way to honor the fallen is to fail to report on the next big challenge to Western security, he told viewers. Not everyone agreed with his argument. Labour MP Jamie Reed responded it showed a "typically detached BBC" which was a "publicly funded body that believes it's beyond reproach". He added: "Deliberately offensive." BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Kate McKinnon As Hillary Clinton Sings Leonard Cohens Hallelujah On SNL 5) TRUMP: I WILL DEPORT 2 MILLION Trump plans to deport or imprison somewhere between 2 million and 3 million undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office. In an interview with CBS News, Trump said he would launch what could be the largest mass deportation effort in modern history, vowing to immediately deport a number of people comparable to the record-setting figure that President Barack Obama carried out over two terms in office. Advertisement What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said in the interview. But were getting them out of our country, theyre here illegally. Did American voters just turn the world upside down? With international affairs pundits saying Donald Trump in the White House means the end of the West as we know it, some certainly believe they did - although many of these obituaries exaggerate US fealty to the rules-based system created after 1945. It's not just what he said on the stump about economic, diplomatic and military relations with the rest of the world his critics have in mind; it's his character. Trump has displayed personality flaws beyond the dreams of avarice, which, in a politics-as-normal world, would mean he'd be unfit to occupy any political office, let alone the Oval one. Advertisement Then there is his impetuosity and lack of experience that introduce a whole new element of uncertainty into world affairs. If this weren't bad enough, Trump appears ignorant of the details of key treaties and international law and his track record doesn't suggest he's good at taking advice. Some who opposed his election are seeking solace in the fact Trump often says things that are untrue - whether he knows they are or not - so there's a hope he didn't mean all the things he said he would do during the campaign. Others say he will appoint people who do know what they're doing, but with names like John Bolton being floated for Secretary of State that's very much open to question. Advertisement Still others are making the point that his policies are largely unformed, or at least unarticulated, and argue he will be constrained by Republicans in Congress who don't agree with him. For all the caveats, one thing is clear - the Trump wild card means the world is set for even more instability than we've seen in recent years. Did he really mean what he said on the campaign trail about building walls on the Mexican border or slapping huge tariffs on Chinese imports? Assuming he did - and on many of his positions he has a track record long predating this election - what are the implications for the rest of the world of his victory? First and foremost attempts to prevent catastrophic climate change are facing a huge setback. Trump has been explicit on this. He has played to the deniers and conspiracy theorists saying climate change is a Chinese hoax aimed at undermining the US economy and, whether he really believes this or not, he's committed to renouncing the Paris Climate Agreement. Advertisement With the Republicans retaining control of Congress and the certainty he will appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice, he will try to reverse the limited action President Obama has managed to take in the US itself. There is a chance individual American states and cities will continue to take progressive measures, but if the US abandons international agreements and goes back on action it has already taken, will the other major emitters like China and India stick to their commitments? Maybe the Chinese would, but I doubt India will. The first major decision Trump will have to make, though, is how to pursue the campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The incoming president has been very critical of what he sees as a lack of aggression by the US military and promised to intensify air strikes - which would inevitably lead to more civilian casualties. He also said he would commit more American ground troops to the fight. This would likely result in the conflict between the West and violent jihadism dragging on even longer, with all the implications that has for the stability of Muslim countries, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the prospect of ending jihadi terrorism around the world. Advertisement During the campaign, Russia was the foreign country that attracted the most attention with the now President-elect expressing his admiration for President Putin and his scepticism about NATO, as well as Clinton supporters, officials and the media accusing the Kremlin of attempting to influence of the election in Trump's favour. Under Obama, who came into office promising to reset the relationship with Moscow, relations have tanked and confrontation escalated, particularly over US opposition to Russia's actions in Ukraine and Syria. In contrast, Trump clearly doesn't see Russian actions intended to maintain their influence in countries from Ukraine to Syria as a threat to US national security. So, despite his bombastic rhetoric about making America great again, Trump's presidency could well see the strain in relations with Russia ease. We could even see the two nations cooperating in the campaign against ISIS in Syria We are yet to see how Trump and Putin will really get on, and it may not all be sweetness and light. Advertisement If Trump follows through on what he's said about modernising America's nuclear arsenal, this would antagonise Russia given the importance it attaches to its nuclear arsenal as the guarantee of its security and great power status. This would also matter because, despite the fact there is less overt concern about the prospect of nuclear war since the end of the Cold War, some strategic commentators and elder statesmen think there is a greater risk of a nuclear conflict now than in the past. It was this analysis that lay behind Obama's signature policy of trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war - a policy that saw annual global summits, but little concrete action, and is certain to be abandoned by Trump. For all this, it's relations with China, where Obama's famous pivot, or rebalance, to Asia has already seen a gradual deterioration, that the rest of the world should be most worried. Some American foreign policy experts say President Xi will have been raising a glass to the Trump victory because the last thing he wanted was a President Clinton who would have taken a hard line on human rights and ramped up Obama's containment strategy of China. Advertisement I don't see it this way. While a Clinton presidency would have probably seen a further deterioration in relations, Trump's approach to China poses a much greater risk to global stability. Unlike Russia, for Donald Trump, China is a direct threat to American national interests. If he sticks to what he's proposed during the campaign - an even greater military build-up around Chinese waters and retaliation for alleged unfair trade practices - we are headed for a major escalation in tension. And with the unpredictable and untested Trump as commander-in-chief and a Chinese leadership which has built its political legitimacy on the back of making China stand tall again in the world, the risk that an accidental clash in the South China Sea could blow up into a major conflagration is much greater. Trump also suggested long term allies like South Korea and Japan have been freeloading on the American security guarantee and should even acquire their own nuclear weapons. If Seoul and Tokyo conclude the US commitment to their defence is in doubt, they could well build up their own armed forces - which are hardly negligible now - and go nuclear - to face the threat they perceive from North Korea. Advertisement China in turn would see this as a threat and it would further increase the risk of conflict in East Asia. Even if Trump is the most isolationist president to be elected since the 1920s, he is, in his own way, a firm believer in American exceptionalism and there's no reason to doubt he means it when he says: America First. After all if President Obama, who has been castigated for weakening the US role in the world still believes "the question we face .... is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead" as he told West Point cadets in 2014, it would be naive to expect a departure from this way of looking at the world from his successor. What the world really needs now is a true acceptance in Washington of how the global balance of power is changing and the need to engage with other countries on a genuinely equal and respectful basis - this is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to restoring some sort of order to global affairs. But, Donald Trump, who may prove to be the most unprepared, uninformed president ever to enter office, shows no sign of having applied much thought to such questions and is inclined to shoot from the hip. Advertisement This week's trade mission to India is a barometer. The Prime Minister and the International Trade Secretary were not only there to promote trade with the world's largest democracy representing a consumer market of 1.252 billion. They know that they must set out what trading with the UK will look like after we leave the EU for all those other future trading partners who are watching carefully. The outcomes of these talks and the success of the commercial deals undertaken this week may provide a good indication of our future capacity to conclude trade agreements across the world. Theresa May is following a succession of ministers who have visited India in recent months to talk up our future relationship and try to smooth the way for a trade deal. She will have been hoping for a warm reception. In fact she has got a vindaloo one! - and not in the way she had hoped. India has made it clear that they are not happy with her government's approach to migration and her own track record in the Home Office where she abandoned the Post Study Work Visa programme. This has caused serious damage to the relationship. More than this - as one of the UK's strongest foreign direct investors, India has had seen the UK as a safe conduit for Indian countries to enter the European market. Unsurprising then that long before the referendum, Prime Minister Modi had expressed his concern about the problems a Leave vote would cause for Indian companies operating in Britain. Advertisement It is no longer possible for UK ministers to appeal to a shared history or common social and cultural institutions and think these can be a substitute for a clear economic offer in a trade deal that represents a win/win for both sides. It is 415 years since the East India Company's Charter was signed in 1601. And British ministers need to realise that it cuts no ice today. In a globalised world the dynamic of future trading relationships will inevitably pivot around the concept of deeper strategic alliances. The basis for securing preferential future trade terms with India begins in that recognition of essential equality. Indeed it begins in recognising that India is now an emerging global superpower whose primary interests are regional in South East Asia and who needs a deal with the UK less than we need one with her. The UK has been a leader in global trade punching above our weight for three centuries. Our success has been based not only upon military might; it has sprung from world leading universities and a strong science base, it has been nurtured by embedded legal institutions which guarantee swift and impartial redress in commercial contract disputes, and it has blossomed through a period of manufacturing innovation that gave the world the first industrial revolution. But our exports now are predominantly service based and this changes the dynamic of trade; particularly with countries such as India. India wants access to our educational institutions and it has much to gain from our professional services, but it has a political imperative to protect its agricultural base, and dares not choke off its emerging middle class by opening up its financial services and retail sectors in the way the UK would like. Advertisement India was keen to secure a trade and investment agreement with the EU, officially known as the Broad-based Investment and Trade Agreement (BTIA). Negotiations began in June 2007 but, ultimately, collapsed in 2013 following 12 rounds of formal talks. If the UK is to succeed where Europe failed the new Department for International Trade must study carefully why the terms on offer from the EU were insufficient to tempt India into an agreement. It must also swiftly develop a realistic sense of its own importance. The UK is India's 18th largest trading partner. The EU collectively was its 1st. India's largest single trading partner is China and a number of other Middle Eastern and Asian countries make the list ahead of the United Kingdom. Trade negotiations require compromise. The extent to which the government is willing to consider compromises with respect to any future trade deal with India and, simultaneously, during talks with the EU, will profoundly influence how willing the rest of the world will be to engage in their own talks with us and what role we will play in wider international affairs. India will want to see a substantive offer from the UK that is worth her lowering tariffs and other barriers to her markets. It is clear what India wants. What is not clear is that the UK is prepared to liberalise the movement of people in the way that India would like. India is, understandably, keen to develop its own market economy and domestic skillsets rather than to rely on knowledge, goods and services imported from overseas. Modi's government want to facilitate Indian citizens moving freely to provide services - particularly in the IT sector building on Mode IV of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services. This agenda has run counter to the UK's own agenda which has seemingly been about reducing migrant numbers and ensuring the preservation of Geographical Indications for key exports like Scotch Whisky. During the many years of negotiations, some progress was made with respect to areas such as rice, sugar, textiles, and pharmaceuticals and to some extent the wine sector but stumbled over access to India's highly regulated professional services, financial services and government procurement markets. The UK is a service-led economy with professional services and financial services being our biggest export. As former British Ambassador to Korea, Sir Thomas Harris, said at a recent summit in London: "For the life of me, I cannot see why the Indians would be prepared to offer concessions in services in bilateral talks which they were not prepared to offer in return for access to the EU as a whole." India is the third largest destination in value terms for Foreign Direct Investment from the UK. But the UK is also the third largest destination for FDI from India. The two-way flow of investment and capital is intrinsic to our capacity to augment and progress our trade relationships but we have to be willing to recognise how much of this has been predicated on our capacity to attract and retain talent from India as well as the significant contribution that British Indian entrepreneurs and investors have made to developing our own market and in creating businesses that drive that trade between our two nations. So many British SMEs are owned or managed by people who came to the UK to seek a better life for themselves and their families - many of these will grow to become the international corporations of our future and we recognise the need to ensure that our trade policy nurtures and grows those businesses ensuring that they have maximum support to export and invest here and overseas. We need to let these business owners know that we value their contribution and welcome their growth. Advertisement India will also be wary of British Prime Ministers who seek to celebrate the unique relationship between the UK and India whenever they visit, only to pour scorn on aid programmes and development support to India when they are back home. Of course India is one of the world's fastest developing economies. But because of her vast size and population, it is no secret that the benefits of this growth have not yet reached all corners of society. The UK should see overseas aid as an investment in the future potential of a market and shouldn't be used as a stick to bash trading partners and strategic allies with. The value of UK aid spending in India is that it ensures that we are able to work with our partners to develop their markets, business and enterprise, to boost labour standards and rights and, ultimately, to boost the incomes of the poorest which, in the long term, boosts demand for British goods and services. This is why Labour announced the Just Trading initiative, which will see like-minded politicians from across the globe coming together to develop a progressive trade agenda that seeks to promote such rights and standards, alongside protections for the environment and the rights of governments to legislate in the public interest. We have to look at how we are able to work with our partners towards shared objectives that benefit all our citizens and not a few High Net Worth Individuals or Multi-National Corporations. That is why Labour will promote Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises as the fundamental drivers of future economic growth and international trade. But we cannot support the growth and expansion of any businesses, small or large, until it is clear who our trading partners will be and under what restrictions such trade might take place. Businesses are currently paralysed with uncertainty and are being prevented from pursuing investment. Business leaders are repeatedly calling for the Government to set out what their priorities are for Britain's future trading agenda. If the UK cannot find the ground upon which to advance a trade agreement with India then the British people may well feel that they have been lied to by those who promised that we would secure a flurry of trade deals in quick succession with Commonwealth partners and key international allies. Advertisement As commentators from all sectors try to piece together the early stages of a narrative within which to understand the reality of Trump presidency, one of immediate difficulties is the lack of material upon which to base it. There are a litany of pledges, promises and demands that have been made in the time since he has gone from primary candidate to President of the United States. But there has been few if any detailed or costed pledges that might form the basis of a recognisable manifesto or policy platform. There are rhetoric heavy, simplistic promises that are in many cases incoherent or contrary to previous or concurrent pledges. In order to find out what President elect Trump's actual mandate is we find ourselves scouring through various speeches, debate performances and his '100 day plan'. My own research focuses on security and US foreign policy, and so I tend to stick to the material that can shine some light on how Trump sees his leadership of the country in terms of geo-politics. Beyond the grandstanding, we can piece together some tendencies. We learn for instance, that Trump is something of a proliferation optimist, meaning he believes that countries attaining nuclear weapons lessens the likelihood of them being involved in conflict. Yet Trump himself famously questioned a group of foreign policy advisers three times in one meeting why, if the US has nuclear weapons, it can't use them. Perhaps the most eye opening revelation from this incident was Joe Scarborough's claim that the President elect's frustration with the responses as to why the US doesn't use its nuclear arsenal is "one of the reasons he just doesn't have foreign policy experts around him." Advertisement That might explain the highly inconsistent or contradictory nature his foreign policy rhetoric. On Russia for instance, Trump has pledged to pursue closer relations with Vladimir Putin, and to work with him to fight ISIS (much to the deep unease human rights campaigners). But when a Russian jet buzzed the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic in May, Trump stated he'd have no problem shooting down planes if warnings weren't heeded as this was 'disrespecting' the country. Trump and VP Mike Pence's very public differences on Putin and Russia are well documented. This is itself reflective of the split amongst Republican voters- between those who want America proactive in meeting global security challenges, and the 54% of Trump voters who maintain America 'does too much' to fix the world's problems. This is to say nothing of the problems that might arise for him if the current investigation into Russia's links to his presidential campaign produce material of interest. And undoubtedly, the issue of singular importance for the rest of the world when it comes to a Trump foreign policy, is climate change. A UN environment report released just prior to the election stressed the need to cut carbon emissions by roughly a quarter of current outputs by 2030 to have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Even Barack Obama's much vaunted Clean Power Plan is suspected yield reductions well short of this target, with as little as a 9% reduction by 2025. Advertisement But one thing the President Elect has been fairly clear on, even these limited plans are about to go up in smoke. The few hundred words that makes up his plan for the first 100 days in office includes a pledge to end restrictions on fracking, coal and domestic oil production. He promises to speed up major energy infrastructure projects like Keystone XL. And he promises to end America's participation in UN climate change programs. That this comes as grim reading for policy makers attempting to make progress on global climate policy is quite an understatement. Already, many commentators are claiming that the recently signed Paris Climate Pact is now dead on arrival. Whatever ones thoughts about how effective that deal might have been, its death will likely have a profound impact amongst states on the perceived likelihood of any enforceable emissions reduction framework. Joe Raedle via Getty Images President Trump promises to bring back "a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding". Although he likes it "a lot," he does not "think it's tough enough." What the Spanish Inquisition called tormento del agua is, for Donald Trump, "minimal, minimal torture." As for Guantanamo, he is going to "load it up with bad dudes". He thinks it's just fine to extend the rules governing the Cuban legal black hole to American citizens - something at which President George W. Bush balked. In other words, he wants to undo all the work that we at my organization Reprieve - and many others - have struggled to carry forward in the years since 9/11, and turn back the clock. Advertisement Human rights victories were surprisingly difficult under eight years of Obama, who failed to make any great effort to close Guantanamo. He released detainees at a far slower rate than his predecessor. He fought us at every turn to hide the horrors - including the still-secret videotapes of former Guantanamo detainees in the force feeding torture chair. And he battled to prevent federal courts from meaningfully evaluating their claims of innocence. He permitted the CIA (which comes under his authority) to conduct a frenetic campaign to quash the Senate Torture report, even spying on elected senators. It was the first such investigation to refuse to speak to a single torture victim (including every person I have represented in the last 15 years of litigation over these ghastly secret prisons). And yet, far worse than this, while President Obama claimed that he would end torture and secret prisons, and dispense with the language of the "War on Terror", what he actually did was substitute in a policy of assassinating people around the globe. This has been an ever expanding robotic war where a 'Squirter' is the name given to a target who runs away (and presumably soils himself) when a Predator drone appears overhead, and a 'Bugsplat' is what we call the bloody detritus after the Hellfire missile explodes. Now, once a week, the great institution that is the White House hosts "Terror Tuesday", where the president sits down to a powerpoint presentation to decide who we will assassinate, with a thumbs down reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum. Rather than take steps to abolish an American death penalty that has become tainted by manifestly unfair trials, our Constitutional-law-professor-turned-President has installed a death penalty where we dispense with a trial altogether. Other countries have now followed suit. Advertisement Instead of kidnapping someone and rendering them half way around the world to a Guantanamo, America now assassinates them - based on the same flawed intelligence that has resulted, to date, in 739 (94.9%) of 779 Guantanamo prisoners being cleared of the allegation that they were the worst-of-the-worst terrorists in the world. Assassination was declared illegal in 1758. Yet now President Obama has sown some dreadful seeds, and we will witness a bitter harvest. Trump favours assassination, and the woeful intelligence of Guantanamo will dictate who appears on his fickle Kill List. The fact that we have reached this parlous position, largely without outrage, can be laid at the door of liberals, who have conspicuously failed to deliver the long brown envelope of home truths to our chosen, liberal president. It was easier to combat excess when President Bush was in the White House, because many across the political spectrum were willing to express their outrage. scarletsails via Getty Images Theresa May greeted the President-Elect of the United States with the statement that the UK and US shared the values of 'freedom, democracy and enterprise'. This minimal list contrasted with Angela Merkel's explicit reference to 'respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political views'. Our Prime Minister failing to back the rule of law is perhaps unsurprising given the Justice Secretary's hesitancy in defending the independence of British judges. Now we have our Foreign Secretary telling people to stop 'whingeing' and recognize the legitimacy of Donald Trump. This contrasts sharply with his previous doubts about whether Barack Obama really speaks for America (because of his 'part-Kenyan' ancestry). Advertisement These absences are an indication that the rule of law, human rights and race equality aren't really fundamental British values. Donald Trump just won an election in which he threw people of colour (and other minorities) under the bus because he thought it would help him get to the White House. Our government needs to follow Angela Merkel rather than keeping silent on the rights of British minorities in an effort to appease a Trump administration. Of course the UK needs a close relationship with the United States. But what will the UK government do if the Trump administration bans a few million British citizens from entering the US? Will they say, as their Conservative predecessors did in rejecting the 1965 Race Relations Act, that the democratic majority has the freedom to discriminate, and there's nothing we can do? Or will they instead follow their more recent Conservative predecessors who defended gay rights whether or not a majority of the population rejects those rights? The evidence continues to show that ethnic minorities in Britain, as in the United States, experience disadvantages in the labour market, criminal justice system, housing, health, and education. Yet as in the United States, there was at least a sense that the rule of law, human rights, antidisicrimination legislation and the promotion of equality were legally enforceable universal values. As the far-right that rejects these values celebrates Trump's victory, Nigel Farage preens for a plum job in a foreign US administration where he isn't a citizen and doesn't live. If Chuka Umunna or Sayeeda Warsi were to express such ambition they'd be called rootless cosmopolitan citizens of the world and their Britishness questioned. Let's be honest: the upheavals we're seeing across Europe and the United States, and the shameful response to the refugee crisis, aren't just connected by shared economic uncertainty among 'working class white people'. Advertisement Animating the revolt across Europe and now the United States is the idea is that race and religion is what really matters for identity. Fortunately, the majority of British citizens - however they voted in the referendum - reject Farage's racialized sense of a shared identity that apparently trumps even British sovereignty. Into this vortex we shall shortly see the British government launch its report on integration. We can anticipate this will emphasise British values and offer some 'hard hitting truths' for minority communities. In a spirit of sharing hard hitting truths, let me remind this government that minorities are watching and listening to see which values (and indeed which citizens) the British government will actually defend when push comes to shove. The question of Britain's (and indeed America's and Europe's) future is existential, both for the safety and rights of ethnic minorities, LGBT and disabled people, and for the values that we as a nation say we uphold. The British government appears a supplicant to the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, and India, neither pointing out the violation of rights among minorities in powerful countries, nor defending British minority citizens from discrimination domestically or globally. If they can't find the voice to defend human rights and equality they will simply confirm what many minorities have felt for some time: that the British values emperor has no clothes. roobcio via Getty Images A diagnosis of the autoimmune condition type 1 diabetes means relentless finger pricks, injections, and almost constant food calculations and health decisions. The condition is a day-to-day challenge for anyone because there is never a moment where you are not acting as the doctor of yourself. There is rarely a moment where you forget you have type 1 diabetes. I myself have had type 1 since the age of four, and it has been a weight and stress on me, to say the last. Quickly fluctuating blood sugar levels means I can experience rapid swings from high to low, which are both exhausting and dangerous. Still, the 24-7 nature of the condition alone has not always been my biggest challenge. I spent 20 years of my diabetes life in the USA where I had access to the latest diabetes technology, but the costs of my treatment were more than $500 per month. Advertisement I am so lucky. This is not a case of being exaggeratedly positive. If I were born somewhere else, somewhere where health systems are less resourced, somewhere in the midst of conflict or somewhere with higher proportions of people living in poverty, I would probably not be alive. If I was alive, I would be suffering intensely painful complications. If I were still living in the United States instead of the UK, I would be struggling to pay rent each month due to the exorbitant and ever-increasing price of insulin and other diabetes supplies. Life with diabetes is a burden, but this burden is vastly more intense for millions of other people around the world. Through T1International, I have spent years connecting with people from around the globe, I've heard their insights about what it is like to live with diabetes in the places where access to medicine and treatment is a struggle. Salomy in Ghana had to sell all of her belongings to afford insulin. Ahmed in Syria has to walk four hours each month in an attempt to find insulin. Why do I so often hear that today a diabetes diagnosis is no longer a death sentence? That statement may be true for wealthy, stable, and reachable communities, but it is simply not the case worldwide. On a day like World Diabetes Day we should all be thinking about the injustice of this global reality and doing something about it. Advertisement T1International launched a survey in March of 2016 to explore the costs that people pay out of pocket for things like insulin, test strips, and other diabetes costs. With over 200 responses from more than 40 countries, what we found quantifies the global struggles that people with diabetes are facing. We compared monthly out-of-pocket costs for type 1 diabetes with average monthly wages in each country. The data showed us that globally, people spend anything from 0% to 118% of their monthly income for costs associated with diabetes. Just to be clear, this means that some people must find a way to pay more than what they earn each month, just to stay alive. What our survey highlighted is that pricing and payment for things like insulin, test strips, and other diabetes life-savers is a mess. There is no rhyme or reason as to why some people pay extremely high prices, while others do not. Insulin pricing, like the pricing of most drugs, is not transparent. It is clear that many are suffering not only from the stress of not being able to afford their treatment, but from diabetes complications that could be easily avoided if insulin and supplies were more affordable. One survey respondent from the USA put it this way: ''I would compromise my care if I skimped on supplies as it is impossible to have good control without regular sugar checks...I've joked with family that it would be cheaper for me to die.'' At T1International we question how it can be acceptable that anyone living with diabetes should go into debt or die an early death because of the outrageous prices for insulin and supplies. For World Diabetes Day this year, we are encouraging anyone interested in the cause to stand up against this inequality by signing our Type 1 Diabetes Access Charter. We have resources on our web page to help you contact politicians in your region and encourage them to prioritize the rights of all people with type 1 diabetes. When I first met my husband in Mexico, the opening lines of two people from England went something like this... Why was he in Mexico? For the sunshine. Why was I in Mexico? For the sunshine. So we already had something in common. It was January and we were both in short sleeves under a beamingly blue sky. The natural topic to turn to was further tales of travelling. He impressed with talk of combi driving the perimeter of Australia, I reciprocated with roadtrip revelations along route San Francisco to Las Vegas. I spoke of Cuba, he talked of Tulum. This was twelve years ago. We have just visited Tulum together, with our three young children. He did not do Tulum justice! Okay, so much has changed in Tulum since his month or two of hammock sleeping under a palapa for twenty-pesos-a-night, and riding a bike several miles up the road to pick up groceries since there were no restaurants along the beach. The road parallel to the beach is now inundated with every kind of food you could desire, every kind except the cheap eats kind that is, you'd still have to old skool it and hop on your bike to Tulum town for that. There are also still hammocks to jump into for a night's kip but the price tag attached to that hipster hammock woven from the hair-of-mermaids might not be so conducive to sound sleeping. However, that Carribean sea that is there today was there twelve years ago and... He did not do Tulum justice! Advertisement When we drove up the highway to heaven, I had my face pressed up to the glass, trying to car-window-shop to determine where we would be dining during the days (and nights) to come. We were heading to Casa de las Olas, which would be our home in Tulum, and since it has the incredible address of the last property before entering the Sian Ka'an Biosphere I had the opportunity to give every place on the stretch the once over. However, once we reached Casa de las Olas, I forgot about every other place. Sam Shendow greeted us with a graceful radiance. She led us to our Oceanfront Master Suite of two king beds and a huge living space, with kitchen attached. Whilst stylish, it had the feel of a strong and rooted home. I later found out that having been built in the 1970s and now being 100% sustainable by using underground cenote water and solar energy, it was strong with history and good vibrations as it was rooted with love and renewable resources. Perhaps this was the source of Sam's radiance, the knowledge that she was stepping ever so lightly on this wondrous earth. Our indoor space opened up onto a huge balcony (with hammock) from where we could admire the azules of the sea and the fine white sand, framed by gorgeously green palm trees. There were just a couple more hours of sunlight left in that October evening, so we wriggled into our bathing suits and walked down the plant-framed path onto the beach. The emerald sea was bathwater warm and as transparent as perfection. My wet brown toes turned to gold as they popped up out of the sea to catch the soft sunlight. Just when I thought the scene could not be any more beautiful, a rainbow caught my eye. It stretched straight up to the magnificent skies... earth was linked to heaven. Advertisement The next morning, it was pure pleasure to have the sun rise up from the water to gently stream in through the huge east facing windows to wake us. The long table, set beside the main house of Casa de las Olas was a stage where strangers faced each other and had the opportunity to talk themselves into a friendship. The beach, for us, was where the friendship rooted itself into hearts. Sculpting sand with three-year-olds saw small hands sharing and big smiles beaming (most of the time). Six-year-olds boogie boarding become families tying knots and paddling out together to snorkel and marvel at modest but miraculous coral formations. The sight of a pelican created excitement and a uniting cry of "Pelicano!", whilst a turtle hatchling caused delight and a united sense of adoration and hope. Then tacos! What better way to celebrate friendship and the future than tacos in Tulum town. Having lived (and travelled) in Mexico for the past twelve years, I can testify that the tacos (and salsa) at Chiapaneca taqueria were divine. (And the ice-cream at the parlour next door was pretty great too!) I'm sure you have a friend or two who have been raving about Tulum ever since they returned. Believe me, they probably are not doing it justice. Go to Tulum to find out for yourself, and stay at Casa de las Olas so that you too can leave a lighter footprint on the fine white sand. Advertisement The girl who travels spent her teenage years plotting her escape; knowing that the simple life of 9-5 would leave her unfulfilled. Geography lessons excited her; she dreamt that one day she might climb that volcano, see the Great Barrier Reef for herself or step foot on the recently created lava islands that form the Galapagos. She used her mathematical skills to calculate how long it would take her to travel to the places she longed to see and she took GCSE's in French, Italian AND Spanish to help best prepare for her wanderlust-inspired endeavors. She was learning. Dreaming of warmer climates, and under pressure to demonstrate career aspirations in college and university, she explored her opportunities: Travel writer? Holiday rep? Cabin Crew? Entrepreneur? Maybe it was just a pipe dream, or perhaps she dipped her ink in all four. But that wasn't enough. From the extended girls' holiday in Malia, 21st birthday celebrations in Vegas and celebrating New Year in Kerala, to doing volunteer work in the Vishas of Buenos Aires, she always searched for more. More culture. More adventure. More excitement. Her experiences helped form her, and she moved further and further away from the child that she was, and closer and closer towards the woman that she is destined to become. She was on a journey. The pages of her passport were gradually filled. She is eternally proud of every stamp; from the illegitimate entry to Egypt, to the Russian visa that took months to obtain, each one represents a unique and special journey. She has learnt from her travels; on an intellectual level, on a cultural level and on a spiritual or emotional level. She may not entirely understand the reason behind the Indian head wobble or the Greek's obsession with Ouzo, but she gets it. People come and go, some she stays in touch with, others she doesn't. You're not the first man she's ever met, nor will you be the last. But if she has chosen you, know that you are special. Advertisement She loves you. The girl who travels always has itchy feet. From a weekend break in Pompeii, to a week in Jordan, or a month backpacking across China, she is always planning the next adventure. She has trouble finding the correct coins in her purse because there are so many different currencies in there and she sacrifices her evenings to Trip Advisor, Google Maps and her Lonely Planet guides. But don't begrudge her, because she is now planning adventures for the two of you. She wants to travel, but she wants you to be there with her, exploiting every moment together, as if it were your last. However, don't leave her hanging- after all, as you can see she is a planner, and she likes to know that before long, she will be going somewhere! Ask her. She's ecstatic, but not about the big white dress or the engagement party; within hours of getting engaged she's already planning the ultimate honeymoon. If there's one time in your life to plan a special holiday, this is it. She dreams of sari shopping in Sri Lanka, donning her flower garland in Hawaii or gorilla trekking in Uganda. The girl who travels isn't your typical fiance- unlike most bride-to-be's, she isn't excited by 'Don't tell the Bride' or 'Say yes to the Dress', she's excited by the prospect of sharing the rest of her life, and her adventures, with you. Marry her. The girl who travels is inquisitive, curious, and intelligent; after all travel is the best form of education. Evening conversations will never cease to interest you, her worldly perspective, passion and enthusiasm putting new light on even the most mundane every day topics. Her culinary skills are second-to-none, from pad thai, to falafel, to home made Cajun chicken burgers and chips, she brings the world's best cuisine to your plate every night. She series links every travel show there is, introducing you to the hilarious 'Travel Man' or Levison Wood's dramatic 'Waking the Himilayas'. But don't worry, she is also happy to hand the remote over to you, because from researching prospective trips, to writing her travel blog, she always has a long list of things to do. Settle down. What does 'settling down' mean to her? Not what it means to most people. Just because she has a ring on her finger, doesn't mean that she wants to live that 9-5 life that she spent her adolescent years planning to escape. She wants to get a mortgage and buy a house, but then rent it out so that you can both pursue job opportunities in Dubai, the USA or Australia. She wants to look after her body, but not by joining a gym. She wants to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, trek the Andes and go mountain biking through Yosemite. She doesn't want to buy new carpets, candlesticks or car stereos. Instead she saves for the next adventure, re-naming your joint savings account 'the travel fund'. Advertisement Never be bored. With the girl who travels, you will live a life full of adventures, but also know that you are in safe hands. From the time that she lost all of her money to a rogue taxi driver in Vietnam, to writing, marketing and eventually making money from the travel book she has published, you can be assured that your finances will always be looked after. Having slept in a wide range of accommodations, from caravans, to jungle huts to the back row of economy on a 'no-frills' flight, she knows the meaning of a good night's sleep, and will ensure that your home, wherever it may be, is warm and welcoming. Travel is not always easy and her experiences have taught her to deal with difficult situations and the meaning of perseverance, so she can put up with you when you are late home, you don't do the washing up or stink out the toilet! Throughout her travels she has been a nurse, a teacher and a mother. And one day, she will inspire your children in the way that has inspired you. Live happily never after. In theory, the public representatives and service providers should have the capacity and political responsibility to make choices and respond to all local and national needs and demands. However, the reality in most cases is that of uniformity of approach based on conventional norms and values. Consequently, the political representatives and 'professionals' at various levels, while 'celebrating' diversity, argue that variety create 'anomalies'. It is this cultural norm that defines ethnic minorities as an 'anomaly' as well as the premise of any specific provisions for this client group. For example, the race relations legislation confirmed and strengthened this in 1960s and created a structural mechanism of control and containment of ethnic minority aspirations through race relations bodies and advisers, using the dynamics of resources and age old strategy of 'divide and rule'. Advertisement The mid 1980s demonstrated the horrors of Section 11 community consultations that were being experienced by black/Asian people up and down the country. Not only did this process exposed the flawed and distorted premise of Section 11 funding* and its use to reinforce the problematic definition of black and Asian people but very importantly the irrelevance and insignificance of the race relations bodies and advisers and their equal opportunity policy counterparts in government/ local government establishments. The national outcry against the invidious collusion of the race related bodies and personnel to maintain the structural status quo, discredited their existence finally. However, the demise of the race relations industry saw the emergence of another industry to fill the gap - that is, the growth of ethnic minority-specific community organisations which claim to provide care and support to their respective communities through the institutionally defined and state funded initiatives. This suits well to the institutions and authorities as the marginalized community organizations not only take the pressure off them but work as buffer between the communities and the institutions. Moreover, in many cases the government hand-outs (grants) to the organisations help to glean the community feelings and attitudes in order to exercise state control as indicated by the government's discredited 'Prevent' strategy. Advertisement As far as one knows, there is no credible national research to evaluate the impact of these community organizations on the quality of life of the targeted ethnic minority communities, given that they mostly deal or give an illusion to deal with the effects rather than addressing the cause. Similarly, there is no evaluation of the effectiveness of same race officers or representatives in looking after and dealing with their respective communities. While many organizations invite complaints of inequality, discrimination, hate crimes or Islamophobia which primarily helps them to fulfil their funding criteria, they lack the ability and conviction to address 'why' such inadequacies - for example, the dynamics of racism - even after experiencing what happened during the last London mayor election or during the EU referendum campaign. No courage to question why racial harassment has been subsumed under 'hate crime'! With the exception of a few, hard to find Muslim community organizations that publicize tackling Islamophobia joining hands with non-Muslim active national pressure groups rigorously addressing racism, Islamophobia etc as confirmed by many recent marches and rallies in London. Furthermore, some of the ethnic minority community organizations are quite happy to go along with what once Hazel Blears wished to rename ethnic minority groups along US lines because such marginalization enhances the organisations chances of securing special identity and specific recognition. Ms Blears, then head of a government commission on how to better integrate minorities, said that she would ask whether they would rather be termed "British-Asian", or "Indian-British" rather than "Muslim" or "Asian". Apparently to please, many ethnic minority collusive community organizations, including some Muslim organizations, fail to assert that we can do without adding this or that to 'British' and need to send out a strong message that we might look different and have different needs but we are all British, and that we wish a united and not a divided Britain with many brands of British people. Advertisement Also, not enough challenge to those, whoever they may be, whose interests are not well served if integration is really achieved since it damages their chances to acquire marginal funding, recognition and socio-political positions, and who ride on the back of the 'minorities' for political and other gains, showing no concern for giving a message that once an immigrant, always an immigrant. Taking the example of Islamophobia that has significantly increased recently and is now a major national problem, there seems to be a competition between certain Muslim organizations (out of about 90 such organizations) for reporting these incidents to them, though without assuring any measurable outcome. This dependency model is justified by claiming that Muslim community feels more confidence in reporting these incidents to their own community leaders/outlets - a sort of separatist mind. On the other hand, an empowerment model would be to encourage reporting the incidents of Islamophobia to the police, local authorities, MPs, borough Councillors etc who have the responsibility to address these, and not only this but they could also address why people might lack confidence in reporting these incidents to them. It would be sound to expect that the intervening ethnic minority community groups, including the Muslim groups, would follow the example of the mainstream pressure groups to build on their cumulative, cooperative and collective response signifying the community's experience, their learning, their thinking and above all their solidarity. Therefore, they would not seek funding by any external bodies and by definition would be constituted to work for social justice, using individual, collective and communal resources to support their work. Following both Brexit and the US Election something has struck me: My social media intake is extremely partisan. I know I am not alone in this. The notion that we seek out journalistic sources which confirm our own views and coddle our biases is not novel, but conforming to it squanders the potential utility of social media as a democratic tool. Brexit and the US election have demonstrated the stark divisions within the UK and the US. The results almost perfectly compartmentalised each nation into the left and right wing; the urban and the rural; the liberal and the conservative. Most worryingly, they are scornful divisions without dialogue or empathy, and sometimes entirely lacking in comprehension. Advertisement It is possible that modern society itself has become more fractured. One could posit any number of reasons why this might be, but it is puzzling that in an age where social media offers the opportunity to bridge gaps and better understand each other, we are all becoming more and more entrenched. There has been a lot of political outrage on Facebook, Twitter etc. concerning these seismic political events, and there is doubtless great value in people voicing their concerns so freely, but it is extremely rare to see anything conciliatory. It is validation, not conversation, which is invariably sought. That outrage often appears to be rooted in an inability to understand where the other side is coming from. If we reach a point at which we pose solely rhetorical questions and purport to engage only for affirmation, discarding entirely other viewpoints, we reach a point of no return, and we damage irreparably our ability to work together in a functioning democratic system. Advertisement "How can she vote for a mysognist?" "How can he vote for a criminal?" In the immortal words of Kanye West, that's a pretty bad way to start a conversation. There is no obvious solution. Listening, reflecting and identifying would help, as would welcoming debate rather than shutting it down with incredulity or insult. But we also have the opportunity to use social media to broaden our horizons. If not to adopt other viewpoints, then at least to open our minds to them so that we can better understand each other. Below are a spread of top Twitter handles you might not already follow from a variety of political leanings. Please follow some or all of them, and add any further suggestions you have in comments below. You will disagree with a lot of what they say, but that's precisely the point. The Conservative Voice (US) @MichelleMalkin - Author, blogger, policital commentator @benshapiro - Political commentator, author, radio talk show host, and attorney The Libertarian Voice (US) @GovGaryJohnson - That Aleppo moment was unfortunate, but he gave a great account of his policies on the Freakonomics podcast Advertisement @MaryAnastasiaOG - Mary O'Grady, Wall Street Journal Columnist and relentless President Obama critic The Liberal Voice (US) @TrevorNoah - Host of The Daily Show and hilarious political commentator @DrJillStein - US Green Party Candidate for President, doctor, environmentalist The Conservative Voice (UK) @MrHarryCole - The Sun's Westminster Correspondent. An essential account from the heart of Westminster @DouglasCarswell - UKIP's only MP and staunch brexiteer The Liberal Voice (UK) @ChukaUmunna - Labour MP for Streatham and former Shadow Business Secretary. Ran for Labour leadership before dropping out for personal reasons Teaching meditation in schools is becoming a recognised technique to improve mental health amongst students. Educators across the world are realising the significant benefits for students, schools and communities. Research combined from different studies around the world has shown that meditation in schools can have positive effects on student's personal well-being, as well as their social and academic skills. Advertisement I spoke to Rodolphe Sinimale, a change-maker and social entrepreneur from Reunion Island to find out more about bringing meditation to schools. Reunion is a French island in the Indian Ocean just East of Madagascar. With a high unemployment rate, particularly among the young, mindfulness in education is an integral tool enabling the island's future generation to be equipped to deal with growing social tensions and difficulty finding work. Rodolphe spoke to me about two pioneering projects taking place in Reunion in state schools, one in a middle school, college Hubert De-Lisle and one in a primary school l'Ecole Primaire Antoine Lucas. The aim is to use meditation to help the students to cultivate loving-kindness, emotional intelligence, focus and compassion. For Rodolphe, and the community of teachers and leaders backing this project, it's important to be active in making a positive contribution to society and the world around us. When I asked him why he wanted to bring meditation to schools he spoke of one night in Madagascar where he was threatened by armed men, he said "when faced with your own mortality, we realise what's important, and that's taking care of each other. Since then I try to cultivate compassion and loving kindness every day, even if it's not easy, and meditation is really a great way to do that." Rodolphe says that the workshops and programme itself took about "two years to get off the ground as it takes a lot of planning, organisation and, mostly, energy to develop. You also need leaders with vision, wisdom and courage to make that much needed step." Pascal Chabernaud is the director of innovation at the French Ministry of Education (l'Education Nationale) and it's thanks to him that the mindfulness project was welcomed to schools in Reunion. Pascal is aware of the important role teacher's play in a student's development and his dream for education is that it should be open, shared, collaborative and positive. Advertisement The first time Rodolphe went into school to teach meditation he could feel his heart beating fast with nerves but he said that right away he saw the "light, simplicity, enthusiasm and creativity" of the students which deeply inspired him. Through the meditation classes, significant changes appeared very quickly in the children. For example their ability to say "I'm angry" and accept the emotion, instead of getting angry and finding it challenging to articulate how they are feeling. It was also noticed that there was an improvement to their ability to be present and collaborate with one another. Rodolphe comments "it was beautiful to watch them transforming." He does notice that there are certain challenges with working within institutions and the education system but says that "there is so much suffering in today's world, we must act and try to have a positive impact in any way that we can." At the middle school, college Hubert Delisle, meditation workshops are offered to students in years 7 and 9. According to head teacher, Lionel Mailfert, a revolution is underway. He says that he is driven by the desire to "offer students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, a practice that allows them to be happy, to live in harmony with others and to succeed in their learning." Since such a practice has been introduced, some students have even seen their marks go up. During the meditation, the students are invited to allow and accept thoughts to come and go without judging them. They are asked to bring awareness to their breathing and alongside the meditation itself they also get to study into the biology of the brain and how stress has an impact on the body. Advertisement Long-term objectives of bringing meditation to the school is to stop bullying, to create a safer space and a more peaceful school life, as well as developing students' self-confidence. Students and teachers have noticed the benefits for themselves. Lucas, in year 7 said "It helps us to relax, de-stress and reflect" and Ms Delebarre noted "the students are less stressed, it's much calmer and they find it easier to listen." The programmes underway in Reunion are gaining interest from other schools and teachers, as well as from community leaders. It's clear how much difference a handful of people can make to get a movement started. The movement in Reunion was part inspired by a quote from the Dalai Lama "If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation." Some might argue that this is an idealistic and simplistic viewpoint but the real and experienced benefits of students and teachers in Reunion Island definitely show that meditation can positively impact students and hopefully in turn, the world around us. Advertisement One of the mindfulness exercises: planting the loving kindness seed, and taking care of it everyday with compassionate thoughts Rodolphe and his dog Sushi photographed by Stephanie Lorente The Washington Post via Getty Images For all of the thousands of news stories on Donald Trump's presidential win, it's fair to say there's very little clarity on what his presidency is likely to mean for human rights. Either within the USA, or around the world. We're all working with scant evidence and a lot of speculation. However, here are a few preliminary thoughts. On the one hand, it's hard not to point out that things look bleak. Mr Trump's campaign has been marred by some appalling comments and some outright poisonous rhetoric. His remarks about Muslims in the USA, about Mexicans, about women - these have been disgraceful. Not only should the President-elect ensure that these calumnies are never repeated, but there should also be some level of acknowledgement that these were totally unacceptable. There's little chance the hurt caused by these remarks will be removed, but it's nevertheless vital that a future Trump presidency tries to establish itself as one that represents the entire US population. And indeed one that faces the wider world with a clear record of recognising and protecting the rights of every person within its borders. Advertisement Overseas Trump will largely be judged by how the United States responds to the world's major challenges. Syria is likely to dominate. Here things again look extremely unpromising. His campaign trail praise for Vladimir Putin's presidency - including admiration for Mr Putin's "great control over his country" - bodes ill for hopes that the USA might increase pressure on Russia to stop bombing civilian targets. Or indeed that Russia can be persuaded to use its influence with Damascus to end its own indiscriminate barrel bombings while allowing in aid as a first step to some kind of negotiated end to the carnage. Meanwhile, there are numerous prisoners of conscience languishing in Russian jails who might despair at the thought of Trump's praise for the Kremlin's "great control" being translated into a US-Russian policy which thinks little of their plight. As with so many of his remarks, Mr Trump may have been freewheeling when he affected an authoritarian love-in with his (soon to be) Russian counterpart. But the grave reality of power must be very different. It must mean that a President Trump will be prepared to speak up for persecuted journalists in St Petersburg or for the beleaguered civilian population huddled into cellars beneath the devastated streets of Aleppo. Advertisement This is the great challenge. Can Mr Trump, once ensconced in the Oval Office, reinvent himself as a serious politician, a statesman? One who understands the gravity of every decision, of every pronouncement? Where once he talked about "bombing the shit" out of ISIS, a future President Trump will need instead to rein in a US-led coalition operation that has already killed hundreds upon hundreds of civilians in Syria and Iraq. Where once he indulged in crude objectifying remarks about women, as president he will need instead to reaffirm the rights of women across the United States (and beyond) to be treated equally and with dignity, and to have proper control over their lives and their bodies. And where once he brazenly praised waterboarding, a far more restrained President Trump will need instead to accept the illegality and self-defeating nature of torturous interrogation techniques. Unquestionably, this is all a very tall order. And of course, there's was already plenty of work to be done to improve the USA's very tarnished human rights record, including with Guantanamo Bay, the lack of accountability over CIA torture, the USA's continued use of the death penalty and its shockingly gung-ho approach to selling weapons to a long list of countries with an appalling record of misusing them. I could go on. Essentially, though, the problem is two-fold. First, the USA's human rights record is already poor in manifold ways and urgently needs improvement. And second, Trump's turbo-charged rhetoric suggests an impatience with the rule of law and international standards. In the end we have to wait and see. On the campaign trail Donald Trump once said "everything is negotiable". This might mean he's persuadable when it comes to things like respecting Supreme Court rulings and international law. Conversely, it might signal some kind of US detachment from the global rules-based system. Either way we at Amnesty will be watching very closely, supporting grassroots activists and campaigners right across the United States, and marshalling all our resources to ensure that universal human rights are respected and defended. Advertisement The UK employment tribunal's ruling that Uber's UK drivers can't be classified as 'self-employed' has important implications for the techno-optimistic politics of innovation says Futurice business director Professor Risto Sarvas. The digital zeitgeist has it that governments should support and listen to new business innovators and start-ups. Technologists at the cutting edge of innovation see the future, unlike grey, outdated politicians many of whom probably can't tell a hashtag from a hash brown. Regulation is uninspiring and bureaucracy hampers innovation. Can we please allow digital disruption to just happen? Can we? Yes the world is changing fast. It's obvious that digital innovation operates on a more accelerated timetable than the time it takes to change laws and regulations. But is that a good enough reason to place technologists and innovators in the driving seat? What kind of a society will they create? What kind of politics will 'disruptive innovations' introduce? Advertisement The UK employment tribunal's recent verdict on Uber sheds some light on this issue. The judges decided that Uber's UK drivers can't be classified as 'self-employed'. In fact, they were scathing about Uber's attempts to claim otherwise stating:"the notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our minds faintly ridiculous". There are still a few appeal courts before a final decision is reached. Regardless of the eventual outcome, this early ruling is a step change for the politics of innovation. First, the decision highlight the business model of the gig economy where workers are treated as self-employed entrepreneurs, rather than employees, with brands such as Uber taking commission on their earnings. Just as a big corporation hires consultants, or a homeowner calls a plumber to fix the pipes, in the gig economy there is no employment contract because after all, it's only a gig. In the UK, Uber has around 40,000 drivers, so to date this approach will arguably have saved Uber employment costs (holiday pay and the living wage) 40,000 times over. Replicate this across the 66 countries in which Uber operates and you gain some insight into the business model behind a company valued at $66 billion. Advertisement This sky-high valuation partly explains why Uber takes centre stage in the politics of innovation: it's the poster boy for digital disruption. If digital innovation hype is to believed, Uber isn't just an elegant service or a great user experience, it's a perfect example of how outdated business models could and should be overturned by smart digital services. Is this a real concern? Is the hype around Uber and digital innovation impacting politics and policies? In July a report by the Business Innovation and Skills Committee suggested that government should not use regulation to protect established industries from disruption by the likes of Uber and Airbnb . In other words, let the digital disruptors disrupt and bring with them new growth, new taxes, and new jobs. Anachronistic politicians and regulators should step aside. This hand-off approach places a lot of trust in technologists and innovators: have they done anything to earn it? To put it in another way, how many politicians would actively support a business framework which allowed companies to circumvent employer responsibilities for profit? Industrial IoT (IIoT) is projected to be worth $151bn by 2020, so it's a pretty big deal. As a relatively young industry, the topics being hotly debated now in IIoT are set to shape its entire future. It was my pleasure to be part of the recent IoT Solutions World Congress (IoTSWC) and it's great to see how much the industry has grown in just a year, and also how conversations have developed. Here's insight into three topics that are shaping the IIoT industry at the moment: Data ethics There's a lot of grey areas when it comes to the ethics surrounding data collection and analysis. Though much of the data collected through IoT devices is anonymised metadata, it still begs the question: What do businesses do with it all and who does it actually belong to? In a panel discussion hosted at the event around the topic of data ethics, David Blaszkowski, Managing Director of the Financial Services Collaborative, noted: "We should think about data ethics as an industry-wide obligation, the IoT industry has the chance from the beginning to do the right thing." Advertisement The truth is, more transparency is needed about what data is collected from individuals, and what is then done with it to create smarter products and services. Derek O'Halloran of the World Economic Forum made an interesting suggestion: that each company could actually ethics panel to debate and guide them through their data-related decisions. As O'Halloran noted, ultimately, as with any industry, it's important to consider what's good for society and the individuals, not just for business. Testbeds The simple truth is, we can't know the effects of technological developments in the IIoT until they are tested for. If we put the industrial internet to the test, we're able to answer the concerns of business leaders and the public about what the future will really look like and provide real-world examples. This is why testbeds are increasingly playing a vital role in the industry. Interestingly, Richard Soley, executive director of the Industrial Internet Consortium, talked at length about the success of IIoT testbeds, and we saw some exciting real-world examples in the event's dedicated testbed area, such as: a smart airline baggage management solution developed by GE, Oracle, Infosys and M2MI to reduce baggage losses and damage at the airport, and Telefonica's work with Fiware to make real-time measurements of water quality in fountains. Security Frequently cited as a key challenge in the implementation of IIoT, there's a huge question mark over whether enough is being done in the area of cybersecurity. Given the recent DDoS attack that took down Twitter, Netflix and Spotify, caused in part by by IoT devices, the topic remains more hotly debated than ever. Advertisement Image Credit: Levy Bittencourt It was Singles' Day on 11th November - a reason for many Chinese people to celebrate their individual status. Here are ten very worthwhile lessons we can learn from my favourite heroines in literature: 1) Have pride in yourself "There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me." Advertisement Elizabeth Bennett - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen One of the most well-loved women in English literature, Elizabeth is quick-witted and honest, allowing her to rise above the often spiteful society she is surrounded by. Her determination to marry only for love collides with her equally fierce loyalty to her family. 2) Be discerning 'Excuse me, I don't like people just because they are handsome.' Hermione Granger - Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling Hogwarts' student Hermione is a clever and level-headed girl who soon proves to Harry Potter that she can always be relied on. She is very compassionate; valuing friends and ignoring bullies. 3) Don't settle for less than you deserve "Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry - at least yet." Bathsheba Everdene - Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Bathsheba is the enchanting female protagonist of this story, written nearly 150 years ago, and is truly independent both in spirit and financially. She shuns the idea of marriage if it isn't for love and is determined to decide her own destiny. Advertisement 4) Love yourself "I'm not against love at all, I love love! I just think that having a partner is not a prerequisite to living happily ever after.'" Chloe Usher in Happily by me! Chloe has had enough of being asked why she is 'still single' and told she will never know what love is until she has had children. In a light-heartedly subversive move, she challenges the notion of settling down and marries herself, demonstrating how you must first love yourself before looking for it elsewhere. 5) Follow your dreams "And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone." Johanna Morrigan - How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran Hilarious teenager Johanna from Wolverhampton is struggling with puberty, poverty and trying to develop an identity that fits. Although hyper-aware of her own failings, she fiercely guards her own individuality and successfully pursues her dreams of being a rock 'n' roll music journalist. 6) Listen to your instincts "Keep in mind that I'm crazy, won't you?" Lisbeth Salander - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson LIsbeth is a fearless and skilled hacker, with a disdain for conformity and an unorthodox appearance. Her brusque language and withdrawn personality often means she is misjudged by others but they are soon proved wrong as her intelligence and foresight finally bring her the freedom she craves. Advertisement 7) Find satisfaction in what you have "I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give." Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Narrator of this novel, Jane, is an honest and plain young girl who is subjected to oppression and hardship but repeatedly succeeds in asserting herself and maintaining principles of justice and dignity. She values intellectual and emotional fulfillment and strongly advocates social equality. 8) Embrace your originality "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable..." Matilda Wormwood - Matilda by Roald Dahl Matilda is a young girl with a genius intellect and a passion for reading. Her parents don't recognise her abilities and often ignore her. She discovers she has psychokinetic powers and uses them play practical jokes to her advantage. 9) Fight the good fight "No one will forget me. Not my look, not my name. Katniss. The girl who was on fire." Katniss Everdeen - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Katniss is a hunter and survivor who is forced to take part in a televised fight to the death. She soon becomes a symbol of rebellion against the oppressive Capitol. Advertisement 10) Hold on to your optimism "Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!" Anne Frank - The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank Jason Cotterrell, MD, Exterion Media No matter where you look, all the signs point towards Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising competing with the dominant players in the media landscape in 2017. According to the latest Advertising Association and Warc figures, ad spend in digital OOH has grown 30.5% in the last year alone, demonstrating mounting confidence from advertisers in how digital technology is transforming the effectiveness of the medium. Weve come a long way but now, more than ever, is the time for OOH to invest heavily in its future and lead from the front. The shifting perceptions of OOH as a more impactful and accountable medium are largely reflective of our investment in data and technology over recent years. Of course, the use of data in Out-of-Home advertising is by no means a new phenomenon. Even the most traditional formats, billboards and posters, have long called upon demographic information to ensure ads are strategically positioned in precise geographic locations and able to deliver localised messaging at crucial decision-making moments. That said, the increased connectivity of our world in recent years has brought with it increasing volumes of data to inform campaigns. Weve come a long way in terms of our capabilities, but, in order to compete in todays complex media ecosystem, the Out-of-Home industry must continue to innovate. Out-of-Home advertising needs to find ways to collate and utilise the wealth of information available in the same way as its pure play digital media peers. This demands a complete digital transformation of the sector, not just in terms of its screen displays but also in terms of its ability to leverage data, from collection and analysis through to implementation and evaluation. Hello London, the new Out-of-Home media brand launched by Exterion Media and Transport for London last month, sets a benchmark. Placing insight and audiences at the heart of its integrated offering, Hello London marks the beginning of what will be an exciting future for the Outdoor advertising industry. Advertisement Outdoor advertising is no longer just about static posters or outdated planning modes. We are moving to a place where automated systems are creating more efficiency, offering flexibility and agility that will allow advertisers to create more contextual and relevant campaigns for consumers. Whats more, at a time of increasing advertising fatigue amongst consumers, weve injected something new and fresh into the market that rivals the likes of TV and beats online video in terms of engagement and visibility. A recent study we conducted with Bournemouth University and Cog Research The Engagement Zone - using skin conductance response and eye tracking tests on over a hundred commuters, found that individuals actively seek out advertising as they pass through the London Underground. The majority found them a welcome distraction. Engagement levels with advertising on the Tube were also found to match that of TV advertising at 16% and far surpass that of online video which sits at 9%. Interestingly, 4 in 5 people who stated that they didnt like social media ads or TV ads said they did, in fact, like ads on London Underground. Given that the latest IAB figures report that 1 in 5 UK adults now use adblocking software, OOH is certainly offering a consumer-friendly communications solution for advertisers. Rather than being an intrusive and unwelcome irritation, Outdoor advertising is a medium that genuinely adds value to the environment, and consumers clearly recognise this. Now as far as the protests are concerned, it is impossible to orchestrate such large scale demonstrations in any central manner, and whoever has been involved in any protest movement knows quite well how hard it is to assemble individuals for any cause, even for a fraction of the size. Such demonstrations, if not spontaneous, require weeks and months of preparations and a wide coalition of organizations to coordinate and orchestrate it. The only exception to this is by totalitarian regimes that have an unlimited resource to hoist such a display of support at a moment's notice. Needless to say, some of the claims that rich sponsors have paid protesters to do so are utterly laughable. All you have to do is calculate the enormous price tag for that and the payroll system that would need to be implemented if it was to be done covertly. You could hire a company to bring extras on, as Trump has done at the beginning of his campaign, but not at this scale. These protests have drawn criticism by many on the right as being divisive and undemocratic, because they are protesting the fair and square election of a president. The claim is people should give Trump a chance to act before criticism is applied. The critiques fail to understand that the protests are in response to the cumulative rhetoric Trump has spewed over the last year, not as a response to what he is doing, as he has not done anything yet. Trump, as opposed to his rival has made divisiveness, and attack against all kinds of minorities, the cornerstone of his campaign, and it is his responsibility to make amends towards these frightened and freaked out populations, whose very safety and well-being is now shaken. So far, aside from a very vague "Let's heal the wounds" call, he has not done anything towards that end. It is an utterly insensitive position to say "give the man a chance". It can only be the position of someone who does not feel threatened by the attitudes and positions Trump has presented so far. It is like saying to protesters of Mussolini, "wait, don't be unfair, let him work first!". You cannot ignore the fact that the man has boldly made his position clear up to this moment. Why would anyone work from the assumption that he would make a 180 degree turn now that he is in power, and embrace all the people he has attacked earlier. The fact that Trump has put Mike Pence as his VP and chair of his transition team, a man who has the best creds in Congress in hate towards Gay people, is enough evidence he is not looking to change his lack of care towards the gay community. His consideration of Sarah Palin for the secretary of Interior affairs, a woman that has voiced her opinion that the EPA should be disbanded, is evidence enough that he is uninterested in protecting the environment. His consideration of the guy behind BreitBart Communications is enough of a hint that he is fine with people in the White Supremacy movement at the expense of minorities. The onus of distancing himself from the things he said and implied up to now, sits squarely on Trump's shoulders. People are protesting those intentions, and they have the right to do so, as well as the right not to see Trump as their president based solely on the intentions he has put out. It is not their responsibility to take a leap of faith and assume he would be a changed man from now on, especially since he has not made any attempt at all to assure them this was just campaign rhetoric, and not his blueprint. Someone that runs on hate and divisiveness clearly takes on this responsibility on himself when applying for a job that requires representation of all Americans, not just those who voted for him. In a city like New Orleans, where great food is the norm rather than the exception, Ralph Brennan's Red Fish Grill's staying power - it has thrived in the French Quarter for 20 years and earned a spot among the Best Seafood Restaurants in America by Travel + Leisure - is a tribute to its kitchen. Executive chef Austin Kirzner, a native New Olreanian, has deep roots in local cooking. Steaming pots of gumbo and jambalaya are among his earliest culinary memories. His local sources provide the freshest fin fish, shellfish and crustaceans, and thanks to his wife's brothers, who own Covey Rise Farms on Lake Pontchartrain's Northshore, he is able to source their fresh tomatoes, squash, greens, and citrus. What drew you to become a chef? I think I've always known I was going to be a chef - I started working in restaurants in high school and truly fell in love with the industry and the culture. When I went to culinary school and chased my dream of becoming a chef, I never really thought I would get this far. Any early memories of cooking? I remember helping my grandparents cook in their kitchens when I was young. I have three children now and they enjoy helping me cook. I can't help to get nervous that they will burn themselves--the kitchen can be a dangerous place - but I guess they will find out at a young age if they love cooking because it comes with the territory in our house! Advertisement Red Fish has been a French Quarter staple now for nearly twenty years. How do simultaneously keep favorites up to standard while at the same time keeping the menu fresh and interesting? I feel extremely lucky to be at the helm of a restaurant that has been thriving for 20 years. Red Fish Grill has always been known as a great place to get fresh local seafood, and maintaining that tradition is key to its continued success. The now iconic dishes like BBQ oysters and wood grilled redfish and double chocolate bread pudding continue to be menu must-haves, but we are always striving to try out new items and techniques to keep the menu fresh. It's easy to just hang our hats on our signature dishes, but I want to be relevant in a culinary landscape that is ever-growing and evolving. Can you share any tips on finding great food in the city? Any hidden gems? Perhaps a Lebanese butcher, a Cajun spice market, a crawfish joint. (Something the average visitor might not otherwise discover.) New Orleans is an iconic food city. If you are in the French Quarter you have to experience Breakfast at Brennan's, but I always encourage visitors to venture into different neighborhoods and explore the outskirts of the city. I like to sneak over to a place called Salvo's in Belle Chase -they have great seafood that is caught within 20 miles of the restaurant. Advertisement When I visited recently, I tried the snapper ceviche infused with coconut milk and topped with shredded coconut, a dish you had just created. Can you tell us how you conceive of and try out new dishes? At Red Fish Grill we are trying to utilize the entire fish - from head to fin. We use the bones for stock and we use anything that doesn't have the correct weight in dishes like ceviche. Beyond our signature dishes, we are committed to keeping our menu seasonal - for example you will only see crawfish on our menu if it's fresh and in season. When you're not working, what's your favorite go-to meal at home or out? When I'm at home I like to cook for friends - so I really like to do boils in the backyard! This usually involves freshly caught crawfish, shrimp or crabs - whatever is fresh that I can get my hands on. Are there any ingredients that you haven't had a chance to work with yet but would love to incorporate? Being from Louisiana you get a change to work with great exotic ingredients, but I would still like to continue to branch out and work with some different seafood from the coasts like skate or cold-water mollusks. Advertisement Photo credit: Katie G. Nelson Having power is to be empowered. Electricity--power, light, warmth--is a proxy for social justice. Segal Family Foundation partner We Care Solar is bringing justice to communities across Sub-Saharan Africa by collaborating with exemplary local organizations. We are honored to learn of one such story, written by We Share Solar Program Manager Wendy Cross and We Care Solar Co-Founder and Executive Director Dr. Laura Stachel. Imagine that you are studying for one of the most important exams of your life. Your score will determine if you go on to secondary school and whether you can receive financial assistance. Now picture trying to study for this exam night after night....in darkness. If you have a working flashlight with batteries or candles, consider yourself fortunate. If not, your day ends the moment the sun goes down. Photo credit: Brian Inganga This situation is pervasive around the world: globally, more than 1 billion people lack access to modern electricity. Advertisement We Share Solar aims to alleviate this problem by providing clean, sustainable solar light and power for rural schools and community spaces in East Africa. We Share Solar is the educational program of the non-profit organization We Care Solar. Our experiential learning program enables American youth to link technology with humanitarian service through building We Share Solar Suitcases--high-quality solar electric systems assembled as part of a project-based learning STEM curriculum. Student-built Solar Suitcases are donated to youth in energy-scarce regions of the world and installed in schools and community centers. Students are exposed to engineering with a purpose and develop a sense of themselves as global citizens. We work with passionate partners who identify sites for our life-changing technology. We Share Solar has enjoyed rich collaborations with Segal Family Foundation grantees, helping us deliver sustainable light and power to underserved youth. Photo credit: Brian Inganga We Share Solar and Kakenya Center for Excellence worked together this past August to install ten Solar Suitcases in three schools across the rural Kilgoris region of Kenya. We first met founder Kakenya Ntaiya when both of our organizations were honored through CNN Heroes. Kakenya marveled at the We Share Solar Suitcase program and described the need for reliable solar lighting at rural schools. Kakenya Center worked closely with We Share to facilitate the Solar Suitcase donations and placements not just at their own all-girls boarding school campus, but also at two neighboring public primary schools. The three schools that received Solar Suitcases now have reliable classroom lighting for early morning and evening study sessions--especially important for students preparing for high school entrance exams. At Kakenya School, Solar Suitcases now light up a girls' dormitory serving over 180 students, four classrooms, and a multipurpose dining hall. In addition, the Solar Suitcases provide charging for mobile phones and electronic devices such as tablets, laptops, or e-readers. Advertisement Photo credit: Brian Inganga Although Kakenya School and neighboring Enoosaen Primary School are both connected to the power grid, the power is unreliable and frequently out for days at a time. This reality was highlighted on the day after we installed two Solar Suitcases at Kakenya School. The students were taking their customary beginning-of-term exam when a big thunderstorm knocked out power. The teachers moved the girls from darkened classrooms into the solar-lit dining hall, allowing students to work under bright light from the eight LED lamps we had installed. At nearby Enoosaen and Mapashi schools, students wrote letters of appreciation for their new Solar Suitcases. Their letters tell of days when they would bring their desks outside for lessons because the classrooms were too dark, or use costly candles to aid in their early morning study. During our installation day, the 800-student school was abuzz with excitement, and students crowded around our program manager who read aloud from our new children's book about solar energy, "The Power of the Sun." Photo credit: Brian Inganga The need for reliable institutional lighting extends beyond schools in East Africa. In September, We Share Solar installed its first Solar Suitcase in a refugee camp through a partnership with Segal grantee Solidarity & Advocacy with Vulnerable Individuals in Crisis (SAVIC). This refugee-run organization promotes healthy, empowered communities by enhancing access to health care and education. The first Solar Suitcase in Kakuma Camp is helping the SAVIC team stay connected by charging mobile phones and Internet modems. The LED lights are improving nighttime security for refugee children. Soon, SAVIC hopes to use the Solar Suitcase to provide a safe place for evening study sessions. Photojournalist Brian Inganga remarked that although he has grown up in Kenya and worked in very low resourced areas, "my experience at the refugee camp made me realize the importance of freedom and light." These programs are just the beginning. The demand for solar electricity to improve education possibilities in rural Kenya is high. We Share Solar is already planning additional installations in 2017 in partnership with the teams at Kakenya Center and SAVIC. We are inspired by the impact of a Solar Suitcase in places where it is most needed and highly valued as a community resource. Our programs in East Africa are growing--72 Solar Suitcases are already benefiting over 11,000 people in recipient communities. We attribute this success to passionate partners who are invested in improving opportunities for youth in their own communities. Advertisement Former Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., gestures as he speaks during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Monday, July 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) There have always been two narratives about this election. One predicted what actually happened in the end, while the other missed the boat completely. Narrative 1. Bernie Sanders represents the unachievable in American politics. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of experience and realism. Donald Trump is a temporary phenomenon, feeding on passions and resentments, not meant to last the duration. Trump's supporters are more economically privileged than Clinton and Sanders voters, and are motivated by pure racism and misogyny. The election is about the cultural values of tolerance, openness, and identity, therefore we must support Hillary. Anyone who doesn't support Hillary must be suspect of harboring racist and misogynist feelings themselves. Advertisement Narrative 2. Bernie Sanders is offering necessary correctives, at the most minimal level, to the excesses of the neoliberal economy of the past forty years. Hillary Clinton represents the essence of said neoliberalism, embodying its worst practices, from trade to immigration. Donald Trump has tapped into real economic anxiety amongst those -- half of the country at least -- who have lost under neoliberal globalization. This election is about returning equal economic rights to all citizens. Only Bernie Sanders has the winning message for this explosive situation. Everyone who propagated Narrative 1 -- which is nearly 100 percent of the liberal media, the intellectual community as a whole, and elite professionals -- got it wrong every step of the way. The utter failure of predictive power means that the model was flawed. Those who believed in Narrative 2 -- which included a vanishingly small proportion of intellectuals -- got it right at every turn. Trump won, Hillary lost, and we are in for a very bad time, just as our model predicted. Zizek had it right, Michael Moore had it right, and I had been saying all along that this outcome was inevitable. I wrote back in May that Trump would win by pinning neoliberal failures squarely on Hillary's shoulders. Essentially, those who chose Hillary over Bernie during the primaries, when we had a clear choice, voted for Trump, since Bernie was always the stronger candidate against Trump or any Republican general election candidate. The polls consistently proved it. Advertisement The liberal elite, all during this campaign, showed its intolerant colors, mocking anyone who raised questions about Hillary's background and competence as inherently misogynist, sidelining questions of political economy in favor of preferred identity politics tropes, banning dissenters and skeptics of Narrative 1 from their websites and forums, questioning their very humanity. Even now -- in the wake of the Trump win -- they are refusing to accept their culpability in making the wrong choice by throwing up their hands and exclaiming: "I can't understand how this could have happened!" On a Pacifica radio show on October 27, where I discussed the reasons why Trumpism had come into being and why I expected it to last well beyond the election regardless of the outcome, half the callers repeated the neoliberal Narrative 1, saying, in essence, that Trump supporters were facing undesirable economic fates because of their own lack of responsibility toward their personal lives. Why don't they get educated, why don't they get jobs, why don't they move to where the jobs are? And why wasn't I talking about the Access Hollywood tape -- apparently the paramount issue in this campaign? Why didn't I talk about Trump's misogyny, which was instantly disqualifying and branded his supporters too as falling in the same vein? This was from Pacifica listeners, presumably the most liberal audience in America! But there was also the other half, believers of Narrative 2, who thought that the Democratic party had been suicidal by not choosing Bernie, and who understood the economic grievances of the "leftovers" who supported Trump on the Republican side and Bernie on the Democratic side. They were not falling for the moral righteousness of the liberal media. What can we say now about the fate of the entities involved in this crash of an election, when the contradictions have so manifestly come to the fore? Advertisement 1. Is Neoliberalism Dead? Hardly. This is the ideology that survived 9/11, the presidency of George Bush Jr., and the Great Recession, with barely a scratch. But it has received its most serious blow yet (the first, less severe one, was Brexit), as its entire range of practices, from neoliberal trade benefiting large corporations to a kind of exploitative identity politics that favors internalization of neoliberal psychology, has come under attack from Trumpism. We shall see how neoliberalism responds and regroups, how it works through the Democratic party to find a different channel of expression than the Clintonian one. 2. Is the Democratic Party Dead? Given a clear progressive choice in the primaries, the Democratic party establishment went for the failed neoliberal candidate of war, inequality, and injustice. At the moment, the entire party stands discredited. It is not easy to write off a behemoth as powerful as this, but it is more vulnerable than it has been since the 1960s. The philosophy of catering to upwardly mobile professionals, exploiting immigrants in the neoliberal setup while simultaneously expounding their virtues, and constructing a facade of moral righteousness while ignoring the existence of poor people of any color, stands discredited. After their catastrophic loss in 2008, the Republicans went through one more cycle of doubling down, with Mitt Romney in 2012, before a populist revolution swept the establishment away. How long will it take the Democratic party as we knew it to end? 3. Is the Republican Party Dead? Clearly, it is not what it was before Trumpism, it is no longer the party of Reagan and other supply-siders. On paper at least Trumpism is virulently opposed to the principles of neoliberalism, around which Republicans, with minor differences on taxation and welfare and other policies, cohere with Democrats as a governing philosophy. To what extent will Trump put his anti-trade, anti-immigration, and anti-interventionist policies into practice? Even if he draws back on his stated goals, the genie is out of the bottle. The Republican party, exploiting cultural fears (exactly as the Democrats have done on the other side) while executing economic policies that benefit the rich, can no longer exist in its old form. 4. Is the Liberal Media Dead? One of the positives of this campaign is that despite relentless 24/7 propaganda about Trump, exaggerating his personal foibles while painting anyone not supportive of Hillary as a closet misogynist, racist, or even sexual predator, the message failed to get through. In the end, no one paid any attention. Those inside the elite bubble were persuaded that they were headed for victory, hearing nothing contrary in their own ecosphere, when they were in fact doomed. The people have shown that they can tune out this noise. The media has fragmented so much that only those who are already persuaded come within the ambit of any new message, so in essence they have pounded their way into their own irrelevance. Advertisement Enough deaths, I guess. I want to say that this feels eerily, and gloomily, like the night of election 2000, when every idealistic hope that young people had constructed, in the wake of the Bill Bradley and Ralph Nader campaigns, vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. We regressed massively at that time, all talk of privacy and individualism, community and preventive health care, reparations and debt forgiveness, and international justice adjudication, disappearing forever. In 2008, Obama, with control of both houses of Congress, could have immediately resolved the immigration issue once and for all, or alleviated the misery of those burdened by housing and student debt, but he followed a strictly neoliberal governing philosophy, catering only to the banks and big corporations. (In a way, election 2016 is payback from the white working-class for everything Obama failed to pursue as a possibility in his two terms.) Now, in 2016, at a minimum, following the Sanders revolt, we should have been talking in the context of the next administration about a $20 minimum wage, free college, Medicare for all, and a liberal, humane, twenty-first century immigration policy to live up to our ideals. Instead, we are going to regress almost a century in our attitudes to corporations, migrants, working conditions, taxation, welfare, the environment, and healthcare. We should be talking at this point, a decade after the financial collapse, about a transcendent alternative to failed capitalist practices which are not in tune with current levels of science and technology, but instead we are backsliding at an apocalyptic pace toward primitive levels of discourse. At each stage of crisis, neoliberalism has gifted us with a serious regression to the past. Now we face the most serious regression of all. In the 1920s, facing another economic crisis, America -- unlike Europe -- chose the path of liberal universalism, a preliminary welfare state that admitted the existence of poverty and misery. This time, following Europe, we have chosen a proto-fascist, or at least extreme right-wing authoritarian, path. We can trace this deadly outcome directly to the inability of the governing elites to steadily refuse to do anything about extreme inequality; Clinton, during the primaries, mocked free college and single-payer healthcare, saying it would never happen. Even a rhetorical concession to a $15 minimum wage by the candidate of the elites was too much. Advertisement Yesterday I was sitting in a restaurant in Nepal--7,500 miles away from my home in the USA--and had my first post-election encounter that I knew would eventually happen. A white woman from the USA asked me if I was Latina. I looked at her directly and said very firmly, "no I am not." I wasn't upset at her faux pas of asking me if I was Latina. But, I was upset because it is clear to me that the racial injustice has already begun. There are millions of people affected by this election who are terrified for their lives and their future right now. To be clear, I know I have not suffered nearly as much as other people being targeted right now. But, I have suffered enough to get just an idea of how they must be feeling right now. So, let me share my story with you and why we will not be silent about this issue. The first 18 years of my life were spent in a predominately white town. In grammar school, I didn't look like most of the other children. I am mixed raced (my father immigrated from India and my mother is white) and from an early age, I knew that many of the other children at my school judged me for my skin color. I can still remember coming home from school crying and desperately wishing that I could change my skin color to be fair like my mother's. My self-portraits from school are a painful memory of this fact since they feature me having blonde hair and blue eyes -- not my brown skin and brown eyes. Many children teased me as well. Two accounts that stand out for me are the following: The first happened when I was in 6th grade and was told to go back to the Indian reservation, which didn't even make sense considering I am not Native American. Still, that statement stung me and I felt even more desperate to fit in. However, one of the worst experiences I had was when I was in 8th grade after 9/11. Someone I considered a friend came up to me and asked if my dad was a terrorist. He taunted me and left me feeling unnerved. I went home and cried for hours after this account. But, things got better for me. At 18, I left for college in Washington, DC. Upon my graduation in 2006 I packed my bags and started traveling and living abroad. It was during this time I could truly accept who I was as a person and no longer feared being different. I took pride in my brown skin and heritage. As I traveled to different countries I always felt so fortunate to be from the USA -- a country home to people from around the world each contributing different culture, customs and religions to our nation. So, post-election, how do I feel? Never in my life have I seen a woman rise and fight as valiantly and successfully for the presidency as Hillary Clinton did this year. Following Donald Trump's victory in the general election, he has quickly moved to staff his transition team with family members and other problematic staff members riddled with conflicts of interest. Now is not the time to abandon your public support for women and minorities on social media. Do not wait until January to ask questions, demand accountability. Hillary Clinton told us in her concession speech that democracy demands we accept the peaceful transfer of power enshrined in our Constitution. Advertisement "...we don't just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things; the rule of law, the principle that we are all equal in rights and dignity, freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values too and we must defend them." Since then, I have asked myself what a successful and lawful resistance to a new fascist regime would look like? What would it say about me if I did not resist? Often I pass General George Washington's headquarters on my way into Harvard Square. My ancestors fought in the Lexington Alarm, making Boston the seat of the American Revolution. Today the Boston area is an elite academic powerhouse of thinkers who hone their crafts inside some of the world's best universities. So why does Harvard Yard feel so silent and cold to me right now? This quote from an article by Roberta W. Francis seems particularly relevant: In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, "In the new code of laws, remember the ladies and do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands." John Adams replied, "I cannot but laugh. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems." It has been 227 years since the U.S. Constitution was ratified by white male slave owners, but America has never elected a woman president. As of 2016, the presidency remains a boys club of mostly elite white men. Only once has America elected a black man to the Oval Office. This is personal to me because my grandmother was born into a generation of women who did not necessarily have the right to vote. I was born during a time when no woman had ever sat on the US Supreme Court, where abortion and birth control were newly legal. When Hillary Clinton harkened us back to the laws that our nation was founded on, I felt it appropriate to contemplate the fairness of a system that forgets that the first black man (Thurgood Marshall) was not appointed to the Supreme Court until 1968. In fact, SCOTUS would remain a boys club until Conservative favorite Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to the bench in 1981. What I remember vividly from my Reagan era childhood is the excitement of Justice O'Connor's appointment to SCOTUS, and the disappointment that followed after the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified. I remember how controversial it was that my school had begun teaching a sex education curriculum that included women's bodies and birth control, and the shame that went with every mention of the female body in and outside the class. The LGBTQ community was encouraged to stay in the closet as the AIDS epidemic raged and privileged Republicans encouraged doctors oppose treatment on moral grounds. Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign supported a racist policy that sent thousands of convicted addicts to prison instead of treatment. These were deadly and oppressive times that I do look back on nostalgically, nor do I accept our Constitution's failures without reservation. But this also why I think that the people most shocked by the outcome of Election 2016 were the men who thought they had been good feminists and that the fight for women's equality was over. It now seems soberingly clear to me that all the pollsters had to do was look at the portraits of the last 54 election winners to know that the establishment would fight back virulently to the notion of anyone except an elite white man being in the Oval Office. Advertisement Whether it is possible to be a billionaire without being part of the establishment, I don't know. The problem is not only that Hillary Clinton was not elected in 2016, it is that America will be led by another unqualified wealthy white supremacist BECAUSE he promised to bring back the violent establishment which has for so long oppressed us. Trump did not win the popular vote, but if we allow his administration to take office in January 2017, America will do more than issue a statement that we are tired of considering the voices of women and minorities at the power tables. We will endorse a virulent white supremacist, a billionaire who would continue to misuse the law and our courts as a [taxpayer funded] playground to oppress the less fortunate; he will continue to use racism, violence, misogyny, rape, objectification and subjugation to shut us up. On Thursday, I watched with great sadness as America's first black president pledged his cooperation to help a democratically elected white supremacist transition smoothly into the Oval Office. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for First Lady Michelle Obama, an accomplished woman in her own right, to welcome Melania Trump, her plagiarist, into a White House that was, as FLOTUS put it, built by slaves. When we enter the anonymity of the voting booth, it may be easy for some to forget that we are connected to larger communities who think differently than we do. That anyone would allow America to send such a message to the world in 2016 demonstrates the profound disconnect between the values friends have shared on an individual level versus what they will allow their reputations to be used for in society. With the balance of powers now so deeply skewed towards the Conservative agenda, I recognize that it is a dangerous time to attempt to change the Constitution. I hope that we can fight oppression with peace, dignity, and kindness. But please, don't abandon me in this Handmaid's Tale nightmare. Donald Trump is all wrong about climate change. Not only does he risk becoming the only world leader who fails to understand that dangerous climate change is the central environmental challenge of our time. He also risks negating U.S. leadership on climate change at a time when the global community has reached consensus on the need to address this crisis. Trump is also wrong when he claims that all action to protect the climate is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. He is wrong to think that being part of an international climate agreement would give China an unfair advantage over the U.S. in manufacturing. And he is wrong to believe that withdrawing from the Paris Agreement will make America great again. China was responsible for over one-quarter of the worlds carbon emissions in 2014more than the U.S. and the European Union combined. It accounts for 33-40 percent of the carbon emissions gap between current trends and a 2 degree Celsius pathway. Yet China is moving to cut its CO emissions much faster than anyone expected, and is now on a path to achieving its Paris climate commitments, including peaking its CO emissions, well before its 2030 goal. China is on track to cutting its CO emissions by 0.5% this year as it burns less coal, building on a 0.7% reduction last year, and contributing to a global slowdown in CO emissions growth. Advertisement In fact, as I described in detail here, China is emerging as a global climate leader, taking the number one spot in global renewables investment for the past few years. In 2015 alone, China invested $102 billion in renewables, more than the U.S. and EU combined, and installed half of new wind power capacity globally and 1/3 of new solar capacity. Realizing the benefits of actively adapting to the new low carbon economy, China is committing to move ahead regardless of what the U.S. does. Contrary to Trumps assertions, China is not waiting until 2030 before taking climate action. In September and October of this year, for example, China cancelled dozens of coal plants already under construction with a combined capacity greater than the UKs entire coal fleet, in order to avoid building coal power capacity that would become stranded, unused assets given increasingly cheap renewables. It has set a national coal consumption target of 4.2 billion tons for 2020, about the same as its coal consumption in 2013, and its coal consumption has actually fallen for the past two years, with 2016 likely to continue the trend. Chinas 13 Five Year Plans (2016-2020) for power sector development and greenhouse gas emissions control, announced recently, call for increasing wind and solar power to 210 GW and 110 GW respectively, achieving sales of five million new electric vehicles, establishing a national carbon market to price carbon, and developing 100 pilot low-carbon cities (from the current 40) by 2020. China will also reduce its CO emissions per unit GDP by 18 percent below 2015 levels by 2020 and seek to meet new energy demand with low-carbon energy sources, as it has been doing for the past several years. Trumps concern that the Paris Agreement would give China an unfair advantage over the U.S. in manufacturing is groundless. Much of the light industry in China is already shifting to countries with lower labor costs, such as Vietnam. And China is moving away from heavy industry as fast as it can in order to make a long-term transition towards a low carbon, service-based economy. China is shutting down excess industrial capacity and working to reduce CO emissions in the iron and steel, chemical, and building materials industries, which will all be included in the national carbon trading system to be launched next year. The countrys overall 2020 target for industry is to decrease CO emissions per unit of industrial value added by 22 percent below 2015 levels. Advertisement Chinas transition to a low carbon economy is neither easy nor painless. As described in an excellent analysis in Vox entitled The Real War on Coal is Happening in China Right Now, the governments crackdown on excess steel and mining capacity is already expected to lay off some 1.8 million workers, a whopping 15 percent of the workforce. Officials in various coal plants have been fretting about strikes and protests over the job losses. But China recognizes that transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy will ensure its long-term economic development by creating jobs in new industries like renewables, EVs and efficiency, combat its relentless pollution, and protect China from the devastating impacts of climate change on its food security, human health, cities and infrastructure. And rather than denying the reality of climate change and continuing to expand fossil fuel use, as Trump and the Republicans seek to do, China has pledged to set aside $15.8 billion for job retraining and other support for workers, and to ensure that future job growth in other sectors will help absorb losses in the declining coal and steel sectors. Much of that job growth is already coming in the clean energy sector. China is the worlds undisputed leader in green jobs, driven by unprecedented growth in the solar and wind industries: 3.5 million people now work in the renewable energy sector in China, while 769,000 work in the renewables sector in the United States. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that Chinas energy, transportation and forestry sectors could provide at least 4.5 million green jobs in 2020. Chinas leadership in renewable energy technology, revenue, and jobs will only accelerate if the U.S. were to pull back on its climate commitments. In fact, at least one commentator has called Trumps climate denial a gift to Chinas green industry. Thats not the only gift that Trump would give to China if he abandons the Paris Agreement. Relinquishing Americas international leadership role on climate change would open the door for China to become the worlds de facto climate leader, diminishing U.S. influence and enhancing Chinas across multiple issues. As Zou Ji, deputy director of the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and a senior Chinese climate negotiator, told Reuters: If Trump abandons efforts to implement the Paris agreement, "China's influence and voice are likely to increase in global climate governance, which will then spill over into other areas of global governance and increase China's global standing, power and leadership. Trumps actions could also lead China and the European Union to respond with climate-focused trade measures, such as imposing a carbon price on imports of high-carbon products, i.e., a carbon tariff border adjustment, from the U.S. and others. Chinas chief climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told Reuters that causing the U.S. to leave the Paris Agreement or fail to live up to its commitments would be a mistake for Donald Trump: I believe a wise political leader should take policy stances that conform with global trends [towards balancing economic protection and environmental growth] If they resist this trend, I don't think they'll win the support of their people, and their country's economic and social progress will also be affected. The Paris Agreement will survive Donald Trump. But withdrawing the U.S. from this critically needed international agreementa difficult and lengthy process in any casewould turn America into an international climate pariah, weaken our economy, adversely affect the health and livelihoods of millions of Americans, and jeopardize the future of our planet. If Donald Trump truly wants to make America great again, he will embrace a low-carbon future based on 21 century low carbon clean technology and innovations. To do otherwise would be to turn his back on our children and future generations. We cannot afford to let that happen. Advertisement When veterans return to civilian life after their duty to our country ends, a surprising number will also see the end of something else: their marriage. As a study from Brigham Young University shows, combat veterans' first marriages are 62% more likely to end in separation or divorce compared to the first marriages of non-veterans. For the brave men and women of our armed forces, this means that the very relationships veterans may be counting on to provide love and support during a time of transition are the same relationships that are the most vulnerable and at risk. Why is this? And what solutions can help veterans and their spouses stay married? One key to identifying what works is to understand just what veterans are up against. For example, John was an Army Ranger during the Iraq War. In his three separate tours of duty, he was required to make split-second decisions that could mean life or death for his unit -- and for himself. On mission after mission, the stress he felt was unlike anything he had ever endured. And then the worst came when he watched in horror as one of his unit members stepped on a live mine left lying in wait for them... Advertisement After the war, John remained in active duty service until he was honorably discharged in 2011. His wife Pam and their children were so happy to have him home again, and John was pleased to quickly land a private sector job in the computer industry. On the outside, it looked like John and Pam were settling into normal civilian family life. But inside...John couldn't shake how numb and distant he felt. As the years went by, he had flashbacks and nightmares, and struggled constantly to find meaning and connection with his family. He drank as a way to cope, but getting drunk only made him lash out at Pam. When he came home one day to find that Pam had taken the kids and moved in with her mother, he wasn't surprised. John loved his family, but his isolation and depression felt insurmountable. As he read the note she left on the kitchen table telling him to expect divorce papers to be served the following week, John's only response was to pour himself another drink. Are you a combat veteran or military spouse in need of real solutions to protect your marriage and family? For John and Pam, and other veterans going through marital strife, here are five ways to help you through this time. Be Open to Counseling: Something that is important for all military couples to understand: the transition home can be a challenge for veterans, but it can also be difficult for spouses and partners. If you are feeling alone and isolated, be aware that your spouse may be experiencing their own sense of disconnectedness. When left unaddressed, these kinds of emotions can feed off each other and worsen. To protect your relationship, work on ways to open the lines of communication. You may benefit from attending couples and/or individual counseling or peer support groups for military families. Counseling is often a vital part of reunification because it can help you (and your spouse) process emotions and learn coping skills as you adjust to post-military life. Advertisement Recognize PTSD: As a lingering effect of combat, upwards of 10% of veterans of recent wars and combat missions develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious mental health disorder marked by symptoms such as nightmares and difficulty sleeping, angry outbursts, depression, loss of interest, hyper-vigilance, and feeling numb or emotionally distant. Experiencing any of these symptoms, however mild, is not something to brush off as insignificant, or view as a sign of weakness. Indeed, getting help to recover from trauma may be the single most important step you take to keep your personal and family relationships intact. If you need help with PTSD, please contact your local VA Center to be connected with medical and therapeutic professionals trained in PTSD recovery. Tip: Ask if the VA Center offers EMDR, an evidence-based treatment for helping individuals process and release trauma. Protect Your Kids: Children grow up so fast, and reuniting with your kids following a lengthy service commitment may feel like you are meeting each other for the first time. Your kids may not be as responsive or comfortable with you as soon as you would like, and reintegrating into everyday family life may feel strange. It can also be the case that your spouse, as the parent in charge while you were away, may be reluctant to let go of control over discipline and other parenting matters. Accept that rebuilding your relationship with your children will take time and understanding, as will the relationship you and your spouse have as co-parents. Family counseling or attending a military family support group can be helpful for all of you. When Living Apart Is The (Temporary) Answer: If there is substantial discord at home, you and your spouse may decide to live apart while you continue to work on your problems. As part of the temporary separation, it is important to contact a family law attorney who can help you prepare agreements that establish temporary child support and a parenting plan, temporary spousal support as needed, and related matters such as who pays the mortgage payments and costs related to home maintenance. Not having written agreements in place to address these issues can create added strain in the relationship -- which can then sink your attempts to heal and rebuild your relationship. If your spouse is reluctant to make agreements with you, you can ask the courts to issue temporary custody and support orders. Understand Your Legal Options: If you have separated, or even if one of you has filed for divorce, but now the two of you are working through your issues, you may want to explore the legal option of having a reconciliation agreement put in place. A reconciliation agreement is a specific type of post-nuptial agreement that spells out how assets and debts, including military pensions, would be divided in the event of a divorce. Having a post-nuptial agreement in place provides peace of mind during a sensitive time, and also adds gravitas to your decision to give your relationship a second chance. By Ben Newton, Principal Product Manager, Sumo Logic "Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping." Bo Derek The U.S. has many rituals that define the progress of the year, some quite traditional like Christmas and Thanksgiving, and some with an air of shared ridiculousness like Black Friday. It is now a deep-seated American tradition to revel in the shared gluttony and community of Thanksgiving and then exercise those calories off the next day in the way we Americans know best - shopping! It wasn't always that way. The term Black Friday comes from 1950's Philadelphia to describe the barely controlled chaos of thousands who poured into the city for the Army-Navy game the Saturday after Thanksgiving. In the 1980's, retailers successfully rebranded that rather unflattering name into a cultural phenomenon. Since the 80's, the world has changed, particularly in the world of retail, in which the shopper has changed as much as the shopping center, with technology playing a massive role in those changes. For example, in I the past couple of years, Big Data and Machine Learning have gone from being fringe technologies to must-haves. According to research by Accenture Analytics, two-thirds of retailers consider Big Data "extremely important" to their retail operations and more than three-quarters believe Big Data is changing the way they do business. So, what are the areas where we are seeing those technologies applied? Advertisement Shoppers want personalized experiences Two interrelated, long standing trends in retail are increased connection of shoppers with their favorite brands and their expectation of interacting with those retailers on their own terms. Despite the increased dominance of internet-based shopping, more than 85% of customers still want to interact with brands in person. Since no one leaves home without their phone, the phone becomes an extension of the brand experience in the store. With the cutting edge brands (Apple, Starbucks, Target, etc.) the line between the online and "offline" brand experience is fading . This is only possible because of the piles of data that all of us as consumers produce. For example, in my own personal experience, I never buy anything without researching it online first - very often in the store itself. I even found myself researching a second-hand guitar amplifier in a pawn shop before buying it. Picking up your phone to research purchases is just muscle memory for most people now. Black Friday is but one day of many As every retailer knows, a brand experience is built up over many interactions with a customer. While we might have uncovered Black Friday deals in the newspaper 20 years ago, few customers are interacting with a product or brand for the first time in the store on Black Friday. They might have lurked in the online store beforehand, added a product to their wish list, read reviews, etc. Leading retailers will use that information to enhance the Black Friday experience. Black Friday has also long been giving ground to "Cyber Monday" as more customers shop online. We may have even reached a real tipping point in the online vs. in-person experience, since more customers are planning to shop online over the Black Friday weekend than go in-person this year. Advertisement In response to these trends, some retailers have decided that Black Friday is outdated. On one end of the spectrum , Amazon.com, as the quintessential online retailer, has turned Black Friday into a multi-week experience, while at the other end of the spectrum has REI taking a firm stand to close on Black Friday to encourage people to spend time together. In both cases, these retailers understand their core customers and are adjusting the retail experience to best meet their customers where they are. For better or worse, the combination of the power of the Internet and the deeper insights of Big Data are making retail less of one dominated by a few big shopping days, to more of a continuous immersion into your personal consumer experience. Predicting Demand One of the biggest challenges, and perhaps least "sexy"problems of retail is managing inventory. Traditionally the retail "sale" was a way to manage over-stock of inventory while clearing the sales floor for the next season - making way for winter from fall, spring from winter, etc. It was definitely conventional wisdom when I was growing up to wait for the end of season to get the best deals, which, of course, meant that by the time winter rolled around again, I had forgotten about the cool sweater I purchased the year before. With today's finicky customer and even tighter margins, retailers can't afford to blithely follow these long-seated expectations. Today's brand has to practically engage in some sort of pseudo-fortune telling to predict what moderately affluent, 16 year-old girls living in suburban Atlanta will want to wear come November if it is raining more than usual. Consumers barely understand themselves - so how can a retailer? Ding, Ding - Big Data is the right answer. Using powerful machine learning software, retailers can divide their core customers into neat little segments and do a pretty good job of predicting demand. These new algorithms can take a whole range of inputs from weather to supplier stock. At the end of the day, the possibilities for using machine learning to get more efficiency out of the supply chains and deliver more value to customers is almost endless. It's safe to say that diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia relationship reached a new low point during the month of October. It was a month that saw the breakdown of talks between the U.S. and Russia over the Syrian conflict; the two countries also exchanged threats and accusations over a range of issues, which culminated with Moscow reneging on its agreement to reduce Russia's nuclear arsenal. Recently, Moscow has succeeded in challenging a wide range of American interests, with the most visible clashes occurring in Ukraine, Syria, and the nebulous web of cyberspace. "The most common U.S. policy responses to Russia -- from both Republican and Democratic administrations," says Matthew Rojansky, the Director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, "have depended either on the hope that Moscow can be fully defeated or that it can become a friend and fellow democracy." Considering that President Barack Obama has just a short time left in office, initiating a major foreign-policy shift under his administration is unlikely. As tensions between Moscow and Washington continue to intensify, so, too, does the U.S. presidential race that will determine Obama's successor. And yet, neither Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump has articulated a vision for relations with Russia that have matured beyond reductive caricatures of the past. Rojansky writes that both presidential candidates tend to eschew the situation's complexities, "with Clinton painting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a cartoonish villain and Trump viewing Moscow as an ally in-waiting." Although Hillary Clinton has stated she would be willing to work with Russia on a limited set of issues where interests align, she also seems willing to push back when Russia creates problems for U.S. and Western interests. Advertisement As I see it, a new U.S. policy toward Russia should begin with the acknowledgement that, barring an extraordinary turn of events, Putin will be calling the shots as the most powerful man in Russia for many year to come. (My prediction is that he will find a way to remain at the helm of the Kremlin far beyond the 2024 election..he is already expected to "win" reelection in 2018). So long as Putin wields power, we should assume that tensions with Russia will not cleave neatly along geographical borders or distinct policy issues. And above all, rather than engage in the kind of wishful thinking that Russia can be negotiated into submission or persuaded to change its ways, a new U.S. approach should at once deal with Russia in all its complexities and contradictions while retaining a forceful upper hand willing to squeeze, however tightly, if needed. Independent testing on an array of popular American food products found many samples contained residue levels of the weed killer called glyphosate, leading the nonprofit organization behind the testing to call for corporate and regulatory action to address consumer safety concerns. The herbicide residues were found in cookies, crackers, popular cold cereals and chips commonly consumed by children and adults, according to Food Democracy Now and the group's "Detox Project," which arranged for the testing at the San Francisco-based Anresco lab. Anresco uses liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), a method widely considered by the scientific community and regulators as the most reliable for analyzing glyphosate residues. The groups issued a report Monday that details the findings. The announcement of the private tests comes as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is struggling with its own efforts to analyze how much of the herbicide residues might be present in certain foods. Though the FDA routinely tests foods for other pesticide residues, it never tested for glyphosate until this year. The testing for glyphosate residues was recently suspended, however. Glyphosate is under particular scrutiny now because last year the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified it as a probable human carcinogen. Glyphosate is the world's most widely used herbicide and is the key ingredient in Monsanto Co.'s branded Roundup, as well as in hundreds of other products. The Environmental Protection Agency is now finalizing a risk assessment for glyphosate to determine if future use should be limited. Advertisement The tests conducted by Anresco were done on 29 foods commonly found on grocery store shelves. Glyphosate residues were found in General Mills' Cheerios at 1,125.3 parts per billion (ppb), in Kashi soft-baked oatmeal dark chocolate cookies at 275.57 ppb, and in Ritz Crackers at 270.24 ppb, according to the report. Different levels were found in Kellogg's Special K cereal, Triscuit Crackers and several other products. The report noted that for some of the findings, the amounts were "rough estimates at best and may not represent an accurate representation of the sample." The food companies did not respond to a request for comment. The EPA sets a "maximum residue limit" (MRL), also known as a tolerance, for pesticide residues on food commodities, like corn and soybeans. MRLs for glyphosate vary depending upon the commodity. Finished food products like those tested at Anresco might contain ingredients from many different commodities. The nonprofit behind the report said that concerns about glyphosate comes as research shows that Roundup can cause liver and kidney damage in rats at only 0.05 ppb, and additional studies have found that levels as low as 10 ppb can have toxic effects on the livers of fish. The groups criticized U.S. regulators for setting an acceptable daily intake (ADI) at for glyphosate at much higher levels than other countries consider safe. The United States has set the ADI for glyphosate at 1.75 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (mg/kg/bw/day) while the European Union has set it at 0.3, for instance. The EPA is supposed to set an ADI from all food and water sources that is at least 100 times lower than levels that have been demonstrated to cause no effect in animal testing. But critics assert that the EPA's analyses have been unduly influenced by the agrichemical industry. Advertisement The groups said that the federal government should conduct an investigation into the "harmful effects of glyphosate on human health and the environment," and the relationships between regulators and the agrichemical industry that has long touted the safety of glyphosate. Monsanto has said repeatedly that there are no legitimate safety concerns regarding glyphosate when it is used as intended, and that toxicological studies in animals have demonstrated that glyphosate does not cause cancer, birth defects, DNA damage, nervous system effects, immune system effects, endocrine disruption or reproductive problems. The company, which has been reaping roughly $5 billion a year from glyphosate-based products, says any glyphosate residues in food are too minimal to be harmful. Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA have echoed Monsanto's reassurances in the past, citing the chemical's proven safety as justification for not including glyphosate residue testing in annual programs that test thousands of food products each year for hundreds of different types of pesticides. But the lack of routine government monitoring has made it impossible for consumers or regulators to determine what levels of glyphosate are present in foods, and questions about the chemical's safety persist. A key reason glyphosate residues persist in so many food products has to do with its widespread use in food production. Glyphosate is sprayed directly on several crops genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide, such as corn, soybeans, sugar beets, and canola. Glyphosate is also sprayed directly on many types of conventional crops ahead of harvest, including wheat, oats and barley. In all, glyphosate is used in some fashion in the production of at least 70 food crops, according to the EPA, including a range of fruits, nuts and veggies. Even spinach growers use glyphosate. In the report issued Monday, the groups call for a permanent ban on the use of glyphosate as a pre-harvest drying agent because of the residue levels. Advertisement On the eve of the 2016 election, Broadway's brightest gathered at the Dramatists Guild Fund Gala at Gotham Hall in New York, NY for Great Writers Thank Their Lucky Stars: The Presidential Edition. The evening honored patrons of the arts and philanthropists John Breglio, Georgina Chapman & Keren Craig and Linda G. Levy while fundraising for the the Dramatists Guild Fund, the charitable arm of the Dramatists Guild of America, with an auction. After they performed, I caught up with the stars to ask them how they were feeling and what they would name a musical about the 2016 election. Advertisement Mandy Gonzalez - Hamilton, Wicked, In the Heights "I read something by Christopher Hayes. [Tonight is like] Christmas Eve and the night before a life-threatening surgery... I think it would be called, 'I'm With Her!'" Nell Benjamin - Legally Blonde, The Explorers Club "We kind of are writing one. My husband and I are writing about a renaissance fair called Huzzah!, and it's essentially about a very charismatic knight who has a very dark ages mentality that manages to, with his charisma, convince them that we really need to live in the past. And the woman who has been running the fair, trying to do the work, unheralded, not a star, who has to kind of take him on, even though she doesn't have that star power. She only has hard work, determination and smarts. Sounds strangely familiar?" Raul Esparza - Company, "Law & Order: SVU," "Hannibal" "I don't know about you but I've been a total news junkie. It's like a heroin fix. I don't know what I'm going to do after tomorrow. My friends come over and they're like, 'You have to turn off the TV. Turn it off. You have to stop.' And I start flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox. I don't want to be biased. I want to see what the coverage is!... 'Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more!'" Stephen Schwartz - Wicked, Godspell, "The Prince of Egypt" "I guess the song for tonight, just because we were - the Sondheim song, 'I'm Calm,' from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum." Advertisement Kate Baldwin - Big Fish, Finian's Rainbow "'I Want to Hide.' 'Wake Me When It's Over'... It would be, 'Gotta buy a pantsuit!' for Madam President." Aaron Tveit - "Braindead," "Graceland," Next to Normal "I like the one I just sang. 'Morning Glow' is nice. It's about hope, and we have so many more great things about this country and the way that we get to live than all the negativity that's been going on. No matter what happens, we're going to all push forward together. I try to stay in that space. The lyrics to that song were very poignant. I think it's going to be OK. I think everyone's going to be OK." The number of college graduates with disabilities is on the rise, as is the number of diversity-conscious companies looking to hire them. Yet, of the 1.4 million people with disabilities who have college degrees, only about 40% report to be working. Many are living below the poverty line. The poor job placement of students with disabilities is not only a social justice failure, it is a lost opportunity to address the talent needs of today's employers. It also begs the question: why aren't colleges and universities doing more to prepare all of our students for careers? The research Institute SRI International reported that the number of students with disabilities attending college is rising, citing that in 2010, 46% of young adults with disabilities were attending a college or university within four years of leaving high school, compared with 26% in 1990. Much of this is attributed to accommodations within the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), strengthened by the Obama administration, that better support individuals with disabilities throughout their academic trajectory. Advertisement Additionally, in 2014, the Obama administration enacted new rules for Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (RA), requiring employers receiving government contracts to set a 7% disabilities goal across all positions, not just those requiring low skills and limited education. The new ruling means that employers can no longer satisfy diversity criteria by hiring people with disabilities for the loading dock or mail room. They need college graduates. The educational gains made through accommodations combined with government-imposed hiring incentives would appear to be a public policy home-run for graduates with disabilities yet the employment numbers aren't moving despite the high supply/high demand scenario. For more than thirty years, the National Organization on Disability (NOD) has been striving to increase job opportunities and economic self-sufficiency for the 29 million working aged Americans with disabilities. Much of our work involves connecting employers seeking to expand their diversity initiatives with work-ready candidates. For employers hoping to hire graduates with disabilities, this has been particularly challenging. Traditional job fairs aren't producing the number of candidates with disabilities needed to fill positions; meanwhile, the likely source for such candidates - college recruiting offices - have, thus far, not risen to the challenge. In fact, the disconnect between those who support students with disabilities on campus and those who counsel and support career-seeking students of all abilities is a major obstacle. Advertisement A new partnership between NOD and Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities (COSD) has been working on addressing the problem, starting with exploring what's happening - or not happening within college recruitment offices. In our 2014 report "Bridging the Employment Gap for Students with Disabilities" we found that at many schools, the career services office -- which assists students in preparing for and gaining employment --lacked a connection to the office of disabled student services, which exists for a different purpose - to ensure proper accessibility and accommodations while students with disabilities are on campus. This disconnect leaves a gap, both for employers seeking to diversify their work force and for students with disabilities who are not gaining access to the same services and opportunities as their peers without disabilities. NOD and COSD are working with colleges and universities to close this gap by helping them implement recommendations such as the appointment of a liaison among offices dedicated to coordinating and sharing resources. Our annual conference, held this week in Boston, brings together employers, administrators and students for employment opportunities as well as strategy sessions on how to increase the students with disabilities' pipeline. While progress is being made in this area, we are also working on some of the less practical, more philosophical, barriers to employment such as confidentiality, stigma and bias. Historically, students with disabilities looking for jobs were encouraged to hide their disabilities from their potential employers, particularly those with "invisible" disabilities. In 2008, the ADA Amendment Act expanded protection for people with all kinds of disabilities, including dyslexia, anxiety disorders, ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. Stigma surrounding mental health disabilities continues to dissuade many students with these disabilities from disclosing them. The consequences of not reporting are many and include the fact that students with disabilities are not getting the career support they and their peers without disabilities need to gain employment such as internship opportunities, and resume and interviewing support. This also keeps colleges and universities from gathering the information that would allow them to measure students' progress over time and implement data bases that can be used by employers. Without this information, students with disabilities are invisible job candidates. Advertisement A Willful Blindness, and Not Beside the Point By Carol Smaldino The only way for me to write about torture and trauma at Guantanamo is to connect to other issues, even if the word "issues" seems awfully cold and measured in comparison to the passions, grief, even madness and brutality of the former. It is not new that we hear and see reports of torture carried out by the American military, and even by psychological staff involved. First let me say the "A Willful Blindness" refers to a part of the New York Times (11/12/16) piece entitled "Where Even Nightmares Are Classified: Psychiatric Care at Guantanamo", by Sheri Fink. The reference is as follows: "At Guantanamo, 'a willful blindness' to the consequences emerged. Those equipped to diagnose, document and treat the effects -- psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health teams -- were often unaware of what had happened. Sometimes by instruction and sometimes by choice, they typically did not ask what the prisoners had experienced in interrogations, current and former military doctors said." Advertisement I don't feel superior to the many who don't have this subject on their radar, if only because there is so much that I myself have missed along the way, including the racism rampant in white suburbs, and the flooding of black neighborhoods in LA with crack cocaine in the 1980's. I've always felt a keen distinction between the United States and most other nations, when it came to safeguards of the judicial situation, the being innocent before being proven guilty and the decency insured all people, even prisoners. The fact that we have seen piles of footage of prison guards in America pummeling and beating even harmless prisoners, to the point of manslaughter and even death, has felt hard to believe. And without meaning to be a moral relativist, I suppose that for me the intentional torture of human beings often accompanied by sadistic enjoyment and even glee, has seemed to me a dividing line between an element of Nazism where no humanity is left. It scares me to consider my faith in America may have been completely naive. My question has to do with why these egregious crimes seem to bother so few Americans. Why, in other words, has there not been enough of an outcry so as to insist on hearings that would put on trial all the people responsible--not only the military personnel on the front lines, but people from politicians to psychologists who sanctioned this and gave the orders. Advertisement I think part of the crisis many of us are having--I'm speaking more about liberals and progressives here--has to do with a sense of betrayal at the election of Donald Trump. How could so many Americans vote for him, knowing that he stood for a kind of hatred (even if defensive) against immigrants, especially Mexicans and Muslims? How could people ignore his apparent ignoring of warnings by the soberest of scientists and celebrities (Leonardo DiCaprio comes in here) about the damage to the climate forever if we don't face the facts of climate change? How could people have ignored the fact that he said he would bring back torture methods, now banned and do even worse? Are we in America that prone to dehumanizing other groups of people to the extent that we care little to nothing of what they tell us, or how they react? Are we that fickle and distracted to make one group, for some the lgbtq population, the in-crowd for the moment. (I am NOT against them to be sure). As a therapist one of the biggest challenges is to equalize the playing field as much as possible. This means, that without denying pathology or danger, there is the need to respect the perceptions of the patient--the realities that he/she is experiencing. Good treatment means the therapist is listening carefully to his/her own inner turmoil, hostility, fears, etc. Sometimes I feel that as a country we are allergic to looking at how far we can go, either in terms of actual aggression and at least being a silent participant if only by saying nothing, and by a willful neglect and even "a willful blindness". The Jews in Nazi German were considered beneath the rest of humanity, both socially and emotionally and even physically. So much that they needed to be exterminated and for many, how they were treated was hardly a matter of concern. Many Germans lost their moral compass in an atmosphere where the psychopath put the rest of the people in doubt, where dis-regulating the systems of ethics and caring that so called civilized countries tend to pride themselves on having, became the norm. There are many facts, reports, books articles already written on torture, and the traumatic effects it has had. Keep in mind, that many of those imprisoned were kept without charges, without evidence and as it turned out without advantages even to our military intelligence and security. Keep in mind also that the United States went into Iraq on false information and did great damage in an entire region. Advertisement This stuff may seem beside the point because people are worried about economics, which is no small thing. A bulk of voters (and I dare say non-voters) make time for church on Sundays or some form of worship where they both pray and make promises to observe values of charity and kindness. It would be terrible to think that a willful blindness to the suffering of many not in our immediate circle is what we are dealing with. This would mean that we are on strike about information that stretches our humanizing capacities. Chie Hitotsuyama spent much of her childhood surrounded by the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of her grandfather's traditional paper-strip factory in Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Much of the machinery was quite old and wooden, and the infusion of traditional practices helped to shape Ms. Hitotsuyama's view of her life and her art. She began her artistic career as an illustrator, working on two-dimensional surfaces and when she turned to making sculpture, her sense of line, depth and proportion carried over, permitting her to make sculptures of great intensity and depth of meaning. She chose to make life-sized sculptures of animals of the land and sea using an uncommon medium. Her sculptures are created using discarded newsprint rolled into strings, a technique that draws on her childhood, her family legacy and her sincere desire to understand her own place in the living world. Advertisement "Old thrown out newspapers attracted me as a medium, not only because they are easily obtained, but also, they are an accumulation of history and contain stories of human behavior. I see the correlation in how humans repeat their own histories as well as experience the cycles of life and death." "When I create, I carefully form contours and curves with each single string I make from discarded newspaper. These single strings, collected together, become the surface of an object, and eventually, they become a shape or a form, and an animal appears." She reflects on this connection between her art and her life... "Since the first sculptural piece I made, a rhinoceros, I have continued to sculpt forms of animals and while doing so I have become acutely aware of the life force in all beings. I admire the animals I study. I am in awe of their strength and survival in unforgiving nature." "I also became strongly aware of what life is all about and what it means to live. Each animal and human being, including myself, has its own life and will be gone someday. I felt that similarity, that we are all equal. I also admire animals." Advertisement Her subject matter spans the great diversity of life on earth, and at the same time, strikes common and universal themes... "The strength of animals trying earnestly to live in unforgiving nature impresses me, their strength is much like the way pieces of newspapers rolled one by one, together, increase in strength as I work with them." Ms. Hitotsuyama has a deep connection with her art, and views her work as instructive to herself... "I am in awe of the strength and ability of animals to survive. They have led me to my way of life and the theme of my life. By creating animal sculptures that convey their respective lives, I'm trying to find out how I should live." (The following two videos were made by Ayako Hoshino, US Producer for Ms. Hitotsuyama's PAPER TRAILS exhibitions) (the following video is an extended version of the above video) PAPER TRAILS - US Tour - Exhibitions of Ms. Hitotsuyama's Art ---0--- JAI & JAI GALLERY - Los Angeles - Sep. 3, 2016 - Oct. 15, 2016 Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles recently featured the first exhibition of her work in the US. Advertisement Ms. Jomjai Srisomburananont, Jai & Jai Gallery Director : "Chie Hitotsuyama - My Thoughts... "Before having met Chie and her team we were in communication for almost a year via email. I had seen photos of her works dozens of times and each time always in awe of the intricate details of her sculptures. As a gallery owner, it's in my nature to analyze and critique the pieces of works that come through. For example, the Mother and Child Manatee that was part of the 'Paper Trails' exhibition at Jai & Jai Gallery; these are massive paper sculptures that hung from the ceiling of the gallery space that made spectators feel tiny in comparison. "The gallery space, only being 350 square feet created the perfect environment for Chie's sea animal pieces to literally speak for itself in such a minimalistic way that transcends the boundaries of critiquing the work. Her works are literal and every texture and nuance is intentional. It was almost as if we were intruding on these pieces of works - as if we were invading their space and in a sense with Chie's works and her appreciation for animals and their habitats, it translated as such. The entirety of the 'Paper Trails' exhibition was curated with such precision and intent that the course and flow of exhibition itself felt as if you were swimming with the animals. "That evening after Chie's opening when everybody had left, I had the opportunity to stand alone in the space with her works. Each piece has a life of its own. What struck me most are the eyes of the sculptures. She is able give life and expressiveness to these animal sculptures that I have never seen before with any other works. She can create these muscle textures with the hand-rolled twines and intricately bends and folds them in such a way that makes them seem like the animal is caught in mid-action of swimming by. Each roll, turn, fold, color, design and braid is planned and intentional. Her control and structure is evident in all her works and is a true reflection of her work ethic and it stands out in every piece she creates. "It was a true privilege and honor to work with Chie. Her attention to detail and the discipline and rigor she must have to sculpt each piece is mind blowing. The gentle way she hand-rolls each twine and sculpts the piece as she feels her way through the animal piece is art in-itself. The final output of her hours upon hours of sculpting and molding is her gift to us. Stunning and breath-taking are understatements of her talent. One must stand in the room where her sculptures reside. It is then, that you can truly appreciate her passion and true love for what she does. Until that moment, when you can be in the same room with her pieces, will you only understand what I am talking about." ---0--- JEFFREY BRESLOW GALLERY - Chicago - Sep. 23, 2016 - Jan. 15, 2017 Ms. Paola Guzman, Director, Jeffrey Breslow Gallery : "Jeffrey Breslow Gallery premiered "Rock Paper Show," on September 23, 2016 - "Rock Paper Show" is a gallery exhibition featuring the paper sculptures of renowned Japanese paper artist Chie Hitotsuyama, and the abstract stone and steel sculptures of Chicago-based sculptor Jeffrey Breslow. Advertisement "Visitors find it hard to believe Hitotsuyamas sculptures are created using recycled newspaper, shaped into remarkable life-size animals with a soulful presence, stemming from their magical realism and large scale. Hitotsuyamas sculptures have become the talk of the moment here at the Jeffrey Breslow Gallery. The reaction people give her work is fascinating. Through Hitotsuyamas work, you can see her appreciation and devotion for the animal kingdom. There have been a handful of visitors in our Gallery, due to the incredible success Chie has had. Everyone is excited to see the pieces he or she saw on television, or newspapers right in front of their eyes." ---0--- MOAH:CEDAR Art Gallery - Lancaster - Oct. 2, 2016 - Jan. 7, 2017 The exhibition at the MOAH:CEDAR Art Gallery in Lancaster, California, runs through Jan. 7, 2017. Ms. Hitotsuyama will be artist in residence during her exhibition. Ms. Andi Campognone, Curator & Museum Manager, MOAH:CEDAR : "I became interested in Ms. Hitotsuyama's work because of her direct connection with reuse/recycle concepts. As MOAH is a municipal museum, it is part of our mission to support City directives as the City of Lancaster is actively working to reduce its carbon footprint and introduce education to the community through the arts - so you see how we would be thrilled to share Hitotsuyama's art and engagement to the Antelope Valley as part of the Green MOAH Initiative. "As far as how the exhibition resonates with the mission of MOAH:CEDAR that is best described by MOAH:CEDAR's liaison Robert Benitez as 'the three core elements of MOAH:CEDAR's Mission include engagement through captivating exhibitions, innovative artists and dynamic programming all which describe Chie Hitotsuyama: To Hear Your Footsteps'" ---0--- AVANT - Miami - Nov. 30, 2016 - Feb. 10, 2017 Dmitry Prut, founder and owner of Miami's internationally renowned Avant Gallery : Advertisement "The life-like vibrancy and expressions are quite remarkable considering Chie works with newspaper as her medium of choice. One of the things I take away from this is the recyclable, ecological factor and how it instills a certain ethereal feeling of evolution. She is extraordinary and that is one of the aims at Avant in terms of what we bring to the market." -----------0----------- -----------0----------- Sponsors of Ms. Hitotsuyama's US tour include: The LOS ANGELES TIMES (which donated 1,000 lbs of newspaper), KUBOTA, YAMATO TRANSPORTATION, and VANTEC HTS FORWARDING, Ltd., (photo credits: Ayako Hoshino) Some somber reflections a few days after the 2016 election - from a white, male, traditional Christian exhausted from rowing up the political stream, perhaps helpful to Trump supporters who don't understand all the angst: First of all, I could do without the spiritual bromides. Many of my dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ jingle the mantra, "Don't worry. God is in control. " That's theologically simplistic. A close reading of Genesis 1:27-31 suggests the Almighty has delegated his earthly reign to humans. We're God's stewards - and bad stewardship can be calamitous. Thus, I'm truly troubled when we pack the electoral college with voters who will choose a climate-change denier for president. He's already named a skeptic to head his EPA transition team. Bromides and platitudes easily transform into snug cloaks veiling fatalistic complacency. They bring little genuine comfort. Did we paste on our god-is-in-control smiles before the victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which crossed the Philippines in 2013 and killed 6,340 people? Of course not. We supplied aid. We do the same in response to Haiti's repeated catastrophes. Advertisement Secondly, Trump's victory is no mere abstraction for me. Mouth cancer and reconstructive surgery gave me a speech impediment last year, robbing me of my preaching career. It then metastasized. I'm bound for more chemotherapy and more unemployment. I find little solace in a president-elect who mocks the handicapped and promises to dismantle insurance reforms and Medicaid. I'm grateful for disability payments and friends who have rallied to my aid, but they cannot fund my medical costs. So yes, I admit it. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of a slow, agonizing death. I'm afraid of leaving my family bankrupt. True, God is ultimately in control, but I fear that God's designated stewards have forgotten about "the least of these" (Matthew 25:31-46). There's real human cost to that. Thirdly, I plead with the Democratic Party: Get your act together. You were once the blue-collar party, the family party, the party of the GI Bill. You're now the party of a self-designated cultural elite. You no longer feel America's pulse. For example, you continually dismiss pro-lifers such as I as "extremists." I feel alienated from you even though I hold the same views on marriage as each of your 2008 presidential candidates - views echoed through the millennia. That doesn't mean I "hate" those who disagree with me, nor does it mean I won't protect their rights. You're living in a bubble, oh Democrats. Pop that bubble and mingle with your former Rust Belt hombres. Advertisement And, please, no more candidates like Hillary Clinton. As Dick Polman observes, "Hard to believe, but true: For all the boiling rage that has propelled him to the presidency, Trump garnered 1.3 million fewer votes than Mitt Romney got while losing in 2012. Heck, Trump has 300,000 fewer votes than John McCain got when McCain was blown out in 2008. And yet, Trump won." Voters opted to stay home because Clinton weaved around the e-mails and failed to craft a core message. She generated little enthusiasm (I think of myself: I wrote reams of anti-Trump comments but nothing explicitly pro-Hillary - partly because I'm leery of clergy partisanship, but also because I was ... meh). Like it or not, she was politically tone deaf and acted like an evasive attorney in the face of accusations. She generated the impression, at least, of dodging the truth. Fourthly, our patriotic cliches lay like rubble on the floor. There's something deeply wrong with a political system in which the GOP nominates Donald Trump, whom most Republicans opposed, and an election handing him a "mandate" even though he received fewer votes than his opponent. Politicians in other democracies would at least seek a coalition government in such circumstances (which, incidentally, don't happen because they're not weighted with electoral colleges). Not Trump. He's following the precedent of George W. Bush, who took his 2000 election as a mandate even though he received fewer votes than Al Gore. Worst of all, I cannot help but think that the American soul ails with a deep sickness. People of integrity and capability were running for office (John Kasich, for example), yet the Republican Party - supposedly the "pro-family" party - nominated a philandering, thrice-married, abusive, misogynistic, Islamophobic, Mexican-hating, serial-lying, anti-science racist with little knowledge of civics and the US Constitution. And many architects of the Religious Right backed him. And self-identified white evangelicals voted for him 80-20. And America gave him an electoral college victory. What is this? What has America become? I'd like to point out that one of the reasons why Mariela Castro began her involvement in the LGBT rights movement in Cuba was because a number of her friends committed suicide. Their parents had basically told these kids that they'd rather have a dead son than a gay son and it was very personal to Mariela at that point and is one of the reasons why she undertook the campaign she's working on. We see these difficulties every day here in New York City. We do a lot of work with high school kids. We have 200 high school kids in a program that teaches them filmmaking skills and helps them tell their stories. In many cases it's kids that are dealing with difficulties in their own families, difficulties with acceptance in schools and community and when we put cameras in their hands and give them the power to tell their own stories it makes them stronger, makes them resilient, helps educate people, so we're dealing every single day in New York City and we're using filmmaking to empower people and make their lives better. A few weeks ago I wrote a piece on the upcoming 6th annual conference of Giving Women, which took place in Geneva on October 6th. Giving Women is a Geneva based network of women involved in philanthropy. Its aim is to build a community of informed philanthropists and to make a meaningful difference in the lives of girls and women in need globally. To this end over the last 6 years, Giving Women has organised a conference, which touches on important issues that affect the lives of girls and women living in underserved communities. This year with the influx of Syrian refugees in to Europe, GW chose to address the effect that migration has on the lives of girls and women around the world. Atalanti Moquette, the founder, commenced proceedings by stating that the purpose of the conference was to change the narrative, which has inspired, fear, hate and prejudice and to establish positive solutions for women and girl migrants. Michael Moller, the Director-General of the UN in Geneva, spoke next. He referred to the recent UN summit on refugees and migrants held in New York and how all nations had agreed to take a much stronger stance in dealing with the issues. Tellingly, he pointed out that the current situation is 'peanuts' compared to what will happen in the future unless more effective action is taken. In addition to conflict, violence, and poverty, climate change will be an important instigator for mass migration, in the future. Mr. Moller's view is that the crisis has been badly managed from the offset with a combination of anti-refugee sentiment arising from the media coverage as well as politicians dithering rather than taking a stand. He is further angered by his belief that many politicians throughout Europe have stoked the animosity towards refugees by precipitating elections before finding the right solutions. He also questions the vocal claim that this is the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War; reminding us that there were in fact larger numbers who migrated during the 70s and 80s. He powerfully pointed out that the so-called huge volume of refugees entering Europe actually constitute little more than 0.2% of the 500m strong population of the continent. The next speaker was Ignacio Packer of Terre des Hommes, a leading Swiss child relief agency committed to improving the lives of vulnerable children around the world. He stressed, amongst other things, that it is critical for the authorities of the countries that refugees are relocated to, to create the necessary places for them to settle. The opening plenary concluded with a panel discussion with speakers from UN organisations, NGOs and civil society. All the speakers reiterated the importance of giving vulnerable girls and women a voice. Melissa Fleming of the UNHCR echoed Michael Moller's comments pointing out that it is only now that refugees are coming in large numbers to the West that people realise that there are refugees in the world. When a member of the audience asked what we as a group can do, Brandee Butler of the C&A Foundation emphasised the importance of supporting grass roots organisations such as the ones represented at the conference After a brief break, the participants had the choice of attending one of two smaller panel discussions. One represented the work of various associations and NGOs, who are working for the integration of girls and women migrants in Switzerland. The other panel made up of development workers and journalists from the field described what life was like for refugees on the ground. On the integration panel, Veronique Thouvenot, of the Millenia Foundation spoke about the programme that is in place in Lausanne to help pregnant women who arrive in Switzerland, not speaking the language and without any family or friends to support them. As a result, midwives work to make sure that they receive information regarding their pregnancy in their native language. Another member, herself the daughter of immigrants to Sweden, talked about her work in Swiss schools, which resulted in the students creating a film documenting the stories of some refugees in Switzerland. One of the most moving presentations was given by Annie Sparrow, a medical doctor who works in Syria. She described the horrors lived by families and particularly children still in Syria, whose access to health facilities is shrinking by the minute. Her plea was not to forget these people destroyed by this pointless conflict. On a more positive note, Katy Migiro a journalist with the Thomson Reuters Foundation told of her trip to a camp in Kenya accompanying the education activist, and Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who received international attention following her miraculous survival in 2012 when she was barbarically shot when she was just 15. She described how excited the kids at the camp were, telling Malala how she had inspired them to pursue their ambitions. Dr Grabska from the Graduate Institute described her findings on the reasons and motivations for the decisions taken by young adolescent girl migrants from Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Sudan. The outcome of her research was that migration offered these young girls an escape route from often violent and abusive situations. She emphasised how important it is not to see migrants as victims but rather as agents of their own destinies. The closing plenary focused on what had been discussed throughout the afternoon and how things can move forward. The true scale of the crisis was laid bare by putting to bed misconceptions and scare-mongering myths largely invented by politicians and the media. There is no doubt that much needs to be done and changing people's attitudes towards the crisis is of utmost importance. It is a global issue and the situation will worsen in the coming years unless governments and the general public take the right course of action. Additionally, there were many discussions on the solutions available to improve the lives of those refugees currently in the numerous refugee camps around Europe; particularly for helping women to feel safer. The conditions that some are forced to live in at present must be improved. The unique quality of the Giving Women conference was in the diversity of both the audience and speakers. The animated discussions over a well-deserved glass of wine and food reflected the incredible opportunities for collaboration amongst the group. Working together, whatever the objectives are, always makes for stronger results and you certainly felt a general feeling of optimism coupled with the acceptance that much needs to be done. I found Rebecca Eastmond of JP Morgan, one of Giving Women's main sponsors, summed things up very well by emphasising the fact that if everyone plays a small part, however small that is, when you add it all up that things really can change. On a personal note, I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend such a worthwhile cause, which was a most beneficial experience. Seeing the work and progress that the organisation has achieved under Atalanti's leadership was uplifting, given the mainly negative coverage that the refugee crisis has brought. While I knew beforehand that more needs to be done, this and many other organisations are making concerted efforts to send out the message. Have the U.S. public and media adopted, with insufficient evidence, a demonization of Putin? It's easy to do. Russia is the core of the former USSR, our Cold War enemy, and Putin, in his earlier career, was an intelligence operative. True, so was George Bush (the father) as director of the CIA, and true, the communist empire underwent a vast change under Gorbachev. But the demonization of Putin happened and is happening. Almost everybody I talk with is just sure that Putin is uniquely evil. Asked for evidence apart from official leaks, they look startled and respond that, as Leonard Cohen put it, "everybody knows." Especially if one hopes to overpower a foreign leader it is wise to see the world from his or her point of view, rather than only from our side. Of course this requires disentangling the practice of empathy from acceptance of propaganda, but that also applies, alas, to one's own leaders.The widespread and almost automatic demonization of Putin has been debunked by several analysts, including, for example, a writer for the American Herald Tribune, a former reporter for the A.P., and a retired Princeton & NYU professor of Russian studies.The latest person to challenge this demonization is Marcus Papadopoulos, editor of Politics First, a British British "nonpartisan" magazine. He spoke recently in the House of Lords. "The deterioration in relations between the United States and Russia is, in my estimation, the most dangerous reality facing the world at this moment," he began, and then described nature of the relations as it must look from the other side. "When a country is sidelined, has its views and concerns discarded, has its national security threatened, and observes its allies in the world being undermined and/or militarily attacked, sooner or later that country is going to respond."In his view, "the concept of national security resonates in a profoundly different way with a Russian [than] it does with an American or a Briton. Over a period of approximately 300 years, Russia was invaded by foreign armies on five occasions - and all five invasions came through Russian's western borders. In 1605, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth invaded; in 1708, Sweden invaded; in 1812, France invaded; in 1918, Imperial Germany invaded; and in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded. In contrast, the U.S. has not suffered invasion since the war of 1812. In any case, the U.S. has never had 27 million killed, as he says the USSR did during the second world war, or more than four times the ghastly holocaust of European Jews.Papadopoulos referred not only to Soviet deaths in the war, but also to the collapse of the USSR in 1992. "A meltdown," he called it. "The fabric of Russian society was torn to shreds. Russia had gone, overnight, from being a superpower to a country barely able to stand on its own two feet. For the US, which is the leader of the western world and of NATO, the Russian decline provided a golden opportunity to achieve American global hegemony."Referring to the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, widely known as the Wolfowitz doctrine, the speaker quoted the key passage: "Our first objective," declared the Pentagon, "is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union... We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."Soon, NATO was advancing eastward, into the former client states and some provinces of the USSR, including Ukraine, despite an oral promise made to Gorbachev that the western alliance would not move one inch toward the Russian border. "American and British politicians rarely, if at all, consider how they would respond if a Russian-led military alliance was on their borders; for example, in Mexico, Canada or France."Of course NATO views itself as a defensive organization, said Papadopoulos. This writer recalls a conference of security intellectuals in Berlin reviewing the familiar nightmare of eastern bloc troops racing across the Fulda gap. However, times change. Papadopoulos reminded his audience in the House of Lords that "in 1994 and 1995, NATO attacked the Bosnian Serbs, Russia's allies; in 1999, NATO bombed Serbia, a historic Russian ally; in 2003, NATO spearheaded the invasion of Iraq, who Russia had close relations with; in 2011, NATO intervened in Libya, which was Russia's eyes and ears in North Africa; and from 2011 to the present, the US, UK and France - all NATO members, of course - are attempting to overthrow the Syrian Government, which is Russia's eyes and ears in the Middle East." One does not have to agree with Russia in order to go through the exercise of seeing events as if from its side. Papadopoulos continued: "In late 2001, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone agreement for reducing tension between the US and Russia. The American withdrawal led to the formation by Washington of the Missile Defense Agency, which this year activated a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe..." NATO claims these missiles are to shoot down Iranian missiles launched toward Europe. However, because of U.S. diplomacy, Iran does not have nuclear missiles. Moscow may assume these bases are actually aiming at retaliatory Russian weapons that would be fired by Moscow.How would the US react, Papadopoulos asks, to "a Russian missile defense system in, say, Mexico or Canada? We all know how the Americans responded to the deployment of Soviet ICBMs to Cuba."In 1962 Khrushchev sent not only intercontinental ballistic missiles to Cuba, but also tactical nukes to repel a possible naval invasion by its neighbor to the north. In response, Kennedy's reaction was to deliver a televised talk, impose a "quarantine," and through his brother propose a deal, part of which was secret. The next June, about eight months later, he delivered a commencement address called "A Strategy of Peace." In this talk he imagined the war against Hitler as the Soviets must have experienced it. If a similar invasion had happened to us, JFK said, the country would have been occupied up to Chicago and much of the industrial base destroyed. When I visited Moscow in 1986 as a "citizen diplomat," people there still talked about that speech.In his exercise of empathy, Papadopoulos concluded that "Russia has a right to be heard on the international stage, to not be encircled, to not have a missile defense shield on its borders and to not have its allies in the world [such as Syria] targeted." He asked, "Did the Americans believe that Russia would countenance their country being encircled and weakened? How on earth were the Russians supposed to respond? Empathy was, and remains, absent in many American and British politicians." The 12th leadership summit of the Iranian American Women Foundation (IAWF) was held in Washington D.C. today. Some 600 women joined together to network and mobilize to strengthen our bond as Iranian-Americans, to champion our contributions to this great country, and to acknowledge the remarkable work of the next generation of lawyers, environmentalists, bankers, artists, social workers, scientists, psychologists and journalists. Photo: Rising Star panelists Nadia Farjood and Donya Nasser. The changing media landscape featured Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post, Sanaz Meshkinpour of NPR News, Tara Golshan of VOX and Sarah Ravani of The San Francisco Chronicle on Twitter. Photo: Firoozeh Goudarznia of Eagle Bank steps into virtual reality at the IAWF conference. From legacy newspaper reporting to breaking news on Twitter, podcasting at NPR and virtual reality, we discussed the engagement tools that are making journalism more participatory and immersive. Our panel also examined the critical role that traditional media and fact-checking play as the next generation of real-time storytelling emerges. Advertisement Photo: Neda Nobari, Mariam Khosravani, Iran Davar Ardalan, Yeganeh Rezaian, Tara Bahrampour, Tara Golshan, Sanaz Meshkinpour. The Founder of IAWF, Mariam Khosravani emphasized the imperative to continue building bridges and inspired the attendees to connect and network regardless of differences in politics, religion or socio-economic status. Today's daylong event included mentoring sessions with top executives from a variety of industries and causes. Photo: Iran Davar Ardalan, Roshan Ardalan Alavi, Parisa Khosravi Sorry, Orson. This time we're invading Mars, not the other way around. National Geographic's ambitious six-part series Mars, which launches Monday at 9 p.m. ET, presents a full-throttle, all-in vision of how we Earthlings might actually, seriously, really open a colony on the Red Planet. And not in some amorphous distant future. In 2033, which falls within many of our lifetimes. Nat Geo is billing this as a docuseries, alternating screen time between two separate yet thematically intertwined productions. The first part is a documentary on the history and feasibility of Martian exploration. While there remain skeptics, you won't find many of them here. The scientists, engineers and students of Mars all agree that it's only a matter of time. Advertisement Director Everardo Gout and the Mars team have pegged that time as 2033, which may be arbitrary, but generally dovetails with the two most concrete plans for a visit. Entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX project will send people to Mars in the 2020s, Musk vows, while NASA has penciled in its first Martian mission for the 2030s. Author Steven Petranek, whose book How We Will Live On Mars provided much of the impetus for this series, says that eventually these two parallel development teams, private and public, will join forces and that their combined effort will make a Mars mission both inevitable and less dangerous. There is some debate in the larger space exploration community whether the 2020s or 2030s is a realistic target date. The technology theoretically exists now, they note, but refining and putting all the pieces together for a real-life mission may turn out to be a more extended process. Advertisement The other half of Mars, the series, is a fictional drama imagining that first mission and dramatizing many of the risks inherent both in the trip and in the colonization. We don't know, of course, exactly what we will find on Mars when we get there. It probably won't be the one-eyed green Gumby-like figures we've seen for decades in low-budget science fiction. We do know, the series points out, that those first colonizers will need to bring everything with them. That includes not just a good supply of underwear and an extra pair of eyeglasses, but more basic requirements like food, oxygen and water. Also some heating devices, since Mars is a lot further from the warmth of the sun than our current planet. To say all of that makes the first mission daunting would be understatement. On the positive side for TV viewers, all those dangers provide plenty of dramatic material for the fictional expedition. Gout, Petranek and others stress that while this story of that expedition may have been made up, the science behind it is accurately portrayed. If you see it on the screen, they say, it's something the real-life explorers will also see. Advertisement That means some problems will not be resolved with 100% satisfaction and survival. If an explorer needs an experienced cardio-thorassic surgeon for an emergency operation on Mars, that explorer may be out of luck. Still, Petranek is among those who think a Mars colony is imperative for human survival. He notes that Earth has suffered multiple extinction events in the past and argues that it's only a matter of time before the next errant meteorite ends life as we know it on this planet. Mars, he says, is our best backup plan. Many other real-life folks, though, like many of the characters on the fictional mission, want to go to Mars for another reason: because it's there. They see Mars as the modern-day equivalent of the New World to which Europeans sailed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Those explorers too were plunging into the unknown, betting everything they could arrive and survive, because there was little or no chance of getting help if they couldn't manage on their own. Advertisement It may take a special kind of person to seek that thrill, but there are apparently no shortage of those special people, since the real-life Martian missions have legions of eager volunteers. Apparently, people are so frustrated and outraged by Trump's victory, they've begun contemplating some fairly radical strategies by which to thwart or stop him. In their most wildly optimistic moments, they even imagine forcing Trump to resign the presidency and return to real estate or show business, or whatever the hell he was doing before he decided to enter politics. Of course, as crazy implausible as a resignation scenario is, it would also result in Vice President-elect Mike Pence being catapulted into the presidency, which clearly comes with its own set of concerns. After all, what do we know about Pence other than being an obscure senator from Virginia? No, wait, that wasn't Pence; that was Tim Kaine. Wasn't Pence the former governor of New Mexico? Nope, that was Gary Johnson. Pence was Indiana. In any event, whoever he is, Trump chose him as his running mate (and more menacingly, he agreed to join the "Trump for America" ticket), which doesn't bode well. Advertisement Some of the more outlandish ideas we've heard involve extreme applications of civil disobedience or disruption. Here are some examples. It has been suggested we inundate President Trump with lawsuits, force him to deal with hundreds if not thousands of them a month--lawsuits of every sort. Do this until he cries "Uncle." Let's not forget that it was the Republicans themselves who, with Barack Obama squarely in their crosshairs, insisted a sitting president could in fact be sued. We shall make them pay for that wish. Another idea is to adopt a version of Governor Chris Christie's revenge tactic of purposely gridlocking the George Washington bridge in order to punish a political rival. But we add a wrinkle. We apply that childish tactic to the jury system, and by so doing bring to a virtual standstill the entire U.S. judicial apparatus. We do this by resorting to "jury nullification." Juries have enormous power, and the plan is predicated upon marshaling that power. Instead of reaching verdicts in civil or criminal trials, we citizens make sure that all trials end in "hung juries," causing the entire system to tread water and stall out until it collapses under its own weight. Advertisement Another idea is to bring the formidable Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself to an inexorable, grinding halt. We do this by having all taxpayers intentionally and methodically withhold $20.00 from their tax returns. That's it: $20.00, no more, no less. While no one is going to be formally prosecuted by the feds for being a measly twenty bucks light, the IRS will nonetheless be unable to close out any of our tax files. That missing $20.00 will prevent them from doing this. And being unable to close out the tax accounts of tens of millions of taxpayers will plunge the system into chaos. These are only some of the "unconventional" tactics being suggested. Still, even if some these idiosyncratic civil disobedience tactics actually "succeeded" in mucking up the system, once the smoke cleared, we would wake up to find that the Republicans still control the White House, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, which is to say the Republicans still "own" the country. In which case, the only option open to Democrats, Libertarians and "anti-Trumpers" would be to focus entirely on the grassroots level--take back political power one city council, one school board, one state assembly, one gubernatorial office at a time. This is how the Koch brothers managed to shift the country so far to the Right--by building a foundation from the bottom up. A sobering thought: If civil disobedience and "boutique anarchy" turned out to be useful tactics, these same tactics could be used by anyone, and not just disgruntled Democrats. One cringes at what the Trumpanistas would have done with them had Hillary Clinton won. Many governments persecute people of religious faith. However, one nation stands out: North Korea. Getting accurate information on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is difficult, since today's communist state lives up to ancient Korea's nickname of the "Hermit Kingdom." Before World War II missionaries were active throughout the peninsula, then a Japanese colony, and more than a fifth of the population was Christian. Between 300,000 and 500,000 Christians are believed to remain in North Korea today. Refugees from the North report religious involvement ranging from 1.2 percent participating in to 5.1 percent witnessing secret religious activities. The DPRK ostentatiously treats anyone of faith, but especially Christians, as hostile. Believers place loyalty to God before that of the North Korean state. Churches allow people to act and organize outside of state entities. Christianity also has ties to a world seen as almost uniformly threatening by Pyongyang. Open Doors recently rated the DPRK number one for the 14th year in a row on the group's "World Watch List." Explained Open Doors: "Christianity is not only seen as 'opium of the people' as is normal for all communist states; it is also seen as deeply Western and despicable. Christians try to hide their faith as far as possible to avoid arrest and being sent to a labor camp. Thus, being Christian has to be a well-protected secret, even within families, and most parents refrain from introducing their children to the Christian faith in order to make sure that nothing slips their tongue when they are asked." Advertisement Last year the British group Aid to the Church in Need published a persecution report which figured that some 50,000 Christians may currently be in the DPRK's penal camps. The organization warned that the Kim Jong-un regime appeared to be tightening controls over potential dissent, including a vigorous crackdown on Christians. Aid reported that "Since 1953, at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing. If caught by the regime, unauthorized Christians face arrest torture or in some cases public execution." Even the United Nations, which has a decidedly mixed record on human rights, confronted the DPRK two years ago. A special Commission of Inquiry pointed to the "almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." Believers "are prohibited from practicing their religion" and punished severely if disobedient. The ruling regime "considers the spread of Christianity a particularly severe threat." A new report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide offers a detailed look at religious persecution in the North. Entitled "Total Denial: Violations of Freedom of Religion or Belief in North Korea," the study paints a tragic picture. Persecution has been official state policy since the DPRK's creation and believers "suffer significantly because of the anti-revolutionary and imperialist labels attached to them by the country's leadership." All people of faith are categorized as "hostile" (the other two broad classes or songbun groups are "core" and "wavering"). It is notably better to be Shaman than Christian, and slightly worse to be Catholic than Protestant. CSW identifies six different periods of North Korean policy toward religion. Advertisement Faith was restricted during in the Soviet occupation zone from 1945-1948 and more actively suppressed by the new North Korean state through 1953. Religious liberty was "obliterated" from 1954 to 1971. Then policy shifted to use religious organizations for advantage from 1972 to 1987. From 1988-1997 the regime operated religious facilities. Since then there has been "intense persecution of increasing unofficial religious activities." In a system in which the political leader is essentially deified, all faiths suffer. Indeed, the constitution actually describes religion as "foreign intervention." However, both Shamanism and Buddhism are seen as part of Korean culture and believed to pose less of a challenge to the communist system. As a result, there are numerous Buddhist and Cheondoist temples. However, those who practice Buddhism, noted CSW, still risk "imprisonment, forced labor, poor living and sanitary conditions, abuse, violence and torture." The regime is less repressive toward Shamanism since "the belief is deeply rooted in culture and society." In fact, party officials reportedly have seen fortune-tellers, apparently something seen as having fewer anti-state overtones. Christianity suffers most grievously. A former North Korean security agent told CSW that Christianity "is so persecuted because basically, it is related to the United States" and is believed to provide an opportunity for espionage. In addition, Christian theology holds political rules subject to God's judgment. Most Christians worship secretly. If discovered, they are "taken to political camps (kwanliso); crimes against them in these camps include extra-judicial killing, extermination, enslavement/forced labor, forcible transfer of population, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, persecution, enforced disappearance, rape and sexual violence and other inhuman acts." CSW reports documented cases of believers being "hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges, and trampled underfoot." Advertisement The North has only five official Christian churches, all located in Pyongyang: three Protestant, one Catholic, and one Russian Orthodox (opened after Kim Jong-il visited Moscow and apparently was taken with the architecture). Any "religious freedom is extremely limited and may be aimed primarily at visitors and foreigners," warns CSW. In fact, I visited one during my trip to North Korea a quarter century ago. The [South] Korean Christian Federation claims the existence of 500 house churches, though by their nature they are extremely difficult to count. The existence of formal religious organizations for Christian denominations suggests toleration of religion, but notes CSW, evidence unsurprisingly suggests "use of these formal facilities, organizations and institutions for political means." Indeed, the report cites the conclusions of others "that North Korea uses religious organizations as a survival strategy to seek goods and support from, and improve their image with, other religious organizations worldwide--especially those from South Korea." In fact, a delegation of South Korean Catholics visited the North last December at the invitation of the [North] Korean Catholic Association. Previous trips, noted a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of [South] Korea, were held in conjunction with aid programs. The DPRK long has sought outside support to cover the cost of its own failed policies. Still, according to CSW, there is good news: "Since the 2000s unofficial Christian religious activities have been increasing, partly because of the influence of defectors who entered China and were then returned to North Korea, bringing the Christian faith they had been exposed to in China." It is ironic that communist China, which continues to persecute religious believers, but not nearly to the degree of the DPRK, has become a source of evangelism for the North. North Korea may be the worst place on earth for a religious person, virulently hostile to believers. The regime's attempt to appear accommodating to international groups and organizations notwithstanding, believers face the worst punishments imaginable when acting on their deepest convictions. Advertisement Although the problem of persecution is obvious, not so the solution. CSW urges the DPRK government to reform--surely the only proper course, but one that seems extremely unlikely. The group also recommends referral of the North to the International Criminal Court, which, however, cannot reach into Pyongyang against its will. If Western pressure backed by economic sanctions and military threats have not stopped the North from developing nuclear weapons, they aren't likely to force political changes that the regime would view as directed at its ouster. Over the long-term, however, the growth of Christianity itself may prove to be the ultimate remedy, just as the People's Republic of China abandoned Maoist madness and now is struggling to accommodate the presence of more Christians than Communist Party members. The West should consider strategies to reduce the perceived threat of forcible regime change, encourage increased international engagement, and improve access to information in hope of fostering internal forces for change. 1.The elites know nothing. It is not only that every op ed columnist or talking head predicted the election incorrectly. More importantly, they had no idea of what was going on in the country. Krugman described the Obama Presidency as a smashing success that had eliminated poverty and saved the economy. Blow described the country as moving toward a multicultural, multiracial democracy, white people as an out-of-fashion retrograde minority. All the elites justified Obama and Clinton's theory of "baby steps," constantly repeating the President can't do much. Wait and see how much the President can do. 2.We need a new national newspaper. The New York Times has done many terrible things, such as legitimating the war in Iraq but they set a new low in their coverage of this election. Every headline for a year was some putdown of Trump. They just occupied as the mouthpiece for Hillary, whose idea of a campaign was to go on about how bad Trump is. Just consider this: The New York Times has many, many feminist, gay, Black spokespeople and so forth as columnists, not to mention conservatives, but not one person who speaks from a Sanders-like position (democratic socialism). 3.Feminism is no substitute for a Left. Feminism is needed and is a good thing, even the shallow male-baiting feminism of people like Lena Dunham and Elizabeth Warren is useful, though I find it repulsive myself. But feminism cannot substitute for a left. This country is run by the wealthy; class is what organizes social relations-- in education, housing, even law, not to mention global power. And please don't tell me the rich people are mostly white men. That's not even true. Advertisement 4.African-Americans need new leaders. Obama is a product of the government crackdown on the Black Community in the 1960s and 70s. Figures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton were murdered and a new generation of conservative, deferential "pragmatists" like Obama, Corey Booker and Charles Rangell were produced. This is the generation that supported Clinton, undoubtedly the least inspiring, least representative candidate they could find. Without the Black primary vote Sanders would have been the candidate and even if he lost, the Democrats would stand for something. Black Lives Matter, many of whose activists supported Sanders, is critical here, but violent confrontation will not help at this point. Civility Pulaw/Perlou/Pilaf While I love a one-pot wonder, this dish pays homage to your classic pilafs and pulaws. It's done in stages, with the rice and sauce cooked separately. They're layered then baked together. It's amazing how the vegetables perfume and permeate the rice. Like Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan, they're stronger together. So are we. I still believe that. The pilaf keeps well, and its flavors are even headier the next day. Nice, by the way, for Thanksgiving, a time when America comes together with gratitude (or something like it). 3 cups water or vegetable broth, divided use 1 cup rice of your choosing -- I used a blend of brown basmati and wild rice 2 tablespoon olive oil 1-1/2 teaspoons turmeric 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspice 1 onion, chopped 2 cups green beans, chopped 1 cup broccoli or cauliflower, chopped 3 tablespoons tomato paste 1 large tomato, chopped or 1 cup grape tomatoes juice of 2 limes 2 tablespoons raisins sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste Bring 2 cups water or broth to boil in a large pot. Pour in rice. Cover and reduce heat to low. Let rice cook for 25 minutes or until the grains become plump and tender and absorb all the liquid. Remove lid from pot and let the rice cool May be done a day ahead before proceeding. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add turmeric, cinnamon and allspice and stir for a minute or until spices darken and turn fragrant. Add chopped onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 4 minutes, until onion mellows and softens. Add green beans and broccoli or caulifower and continue cooking, stirring to give the vegetables a luster from the spiced oil. Add tomato paste, chopped tomatoes and water. Stir to combine. Squeeze in lime juice. Add raisins, season with sea salt and pepper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a large casserole. Lay down half the rice. Top with half of the tomato mixture, repeat with the rice and end by covering with the tomatoes and vegetables. Bake, tightly covered, for 30 minutes. Serves 4. The morning after Election Day, I found myself in a very small college town in rural Pennsylvania where people were celebrating the victory of their candidate. That forced me to accept the fact that, more or less, 50% of those who cast their vote have not only supported Trump as next president of the United States, but also changed the political balance in Congress, with all the consequences this entails. What this new landscape reveals has deep repercussions, as aggressive expressions of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and sexism have been normalized and made acceptable for large segments of Americans. This is the reality that many of us will have to deal with on a daily basis in the most common interactions, from going to school to shopping and even just existing as a visibly different person. I felt combative, more than confrontational. I had been invited to participate in a student workshop and give talks, finding myself reflecting on how the election would shape my role and duty as an educator, a researcher, a public intellectual, a writer, and as a practitioner. Of course, I do not have clear answers and my considerations are personal. I have no intention to tell anybody how and when to work through their own fears, grief, and anger, or how to navigate the future. For me, a core question is: how will I make use of and invest my privilege as a white male of European descent (although an immigrant), whose job is to teach and do research in food studies? What can I contribute as a professional? That day, I participated in a workshop where students were discussing possible -and easily feasible - innovations to shift the way their peers eat in the cafeteria towards more sustainable and healthier models. While we were evaluating different practical interventions, I also moved the conversation toward the gender, class, and race identity issues underlying food-related behaviors, as well as their social and economic consequences in terms of accessibility, affordability, labor relations, and the environment. Later that afternoon, I gave a talk on food, film, and memory, where I tried to show how an apparently innocuous and fun form of popular culture such as food films can actually reflect, support, and reinforce values and practices that are predicated on the framing of whole categories of people as inferior and exploitable. My work focuses on food, which may come across as apolitical but is actually profoundly entangled with power dynamics, social structures, and environmental issues that assume immediate, tangible meanings. As food did not emerge as a priority in the presidential debates and the discussions that surrounded them, it is not easy to gauge the direction of the new administration. However, the promise of greater deregulation, less EPA control, and the overall skeptical attitude towards climate change will move environmental issues connected to agriculture, fishing, and animal husbandry front and center. The new administration's favorable attitude towards the carbon-based energy industry could also slow down the efforts to increase the use of renewable resources in the food system and to shift towards more sustainable models. These issues will become crucial in the negotiations around the upcoming farm bill, where not only will Congress determine the future of US food production, but also the availability of funds to support the most vulnerable sections of the population through school food, SNAP, WIC and other programs. In this context, it is important to emphasize not only structural and economic features, but also the cultural and social aspects that can generate dynamics of oppression and injustice. I believe my first call is to help students and the community at large outside of universities and intellectual circles recognize the relevance of these matters. In food studies, we now have sufficient students, programs, institutions, and relative media visibility to have some impact. Above all, I am afraid I can't enjoy the luxury of separating theory and applied practice any longer. It becomes crucial to pair the insights and the analysis that are central to food studies with hands-on projects and initiatives for change and social innovation. I will be moving my research and activities towards collaborations with designers, agronomists, scientists, engineers, information experts, and media operators, so that my teaching, writing, and doing become expression of a more profound engagement with the new reality. A friend of mine in Brazil reminded me of the Italian politician and theorist Antonio Gramsci's thoughts on organic intellectuals, who share their knowledge and competence to usher change rather than concentrating uniquely on their professional world. It is urgent to devise creative strategies and form inclusive alliances around widely shared concerns in the food system, while questioning the priorities of the elites (which include myself) as well as the interests of the rich and the powerful. This election has brought home that what I make of the emerging political reality is also my responsibility. At least for me, the answer is rolling up my sleeves to get down to work. By Diana Brazzell, Footnote This article was produced in consultation with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and was originally published on Footnote, a website that brings academic research and ideas to a broader audience. Imagine you live in a small village in rural Kenya. Your daughter attends university in Nairobi and needs financial support to buy textbooks and pay her rent. How do you send her money if you, like many Kenyans, don't have a bank account or internet access? In the U.S., the answer would be simple. In fact, you would have an abundance of options: PayPal, Venmo, online banking, checks, money orders, or good old-fashioned cash. Many people around the world, however, don't have access to the financial services some of us take for granted. Two billion "unbanked" adults, mostly in developing countries, face barriers to tasks as simple as receiving wages or sending money to family members. Without access to banking services, their finances are unstable because they don't have a good way to save for the future or borrow in times of need. Advertisement Getting people access to formal financial services is called financial inclusion and it is a critical part of equitable economic development, says Jay Rosengard, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Research shows that by lowering transaction costs and helping spread risk and capital across the economy, financial inclusion improves the livelihood of individual families and spurs local and national economic growth. Financial inclusion can be particularly powerful for women and other marginalized groups who have traditionally been excluded from the formal economy and had less control over their own finances. When up to 90% of your population doesn't have a bank account, how do you bring them into the financial system quickly and easily? Rosengard believes Kenya has struck on a promising solution: mobile banking. His latest research paper shows that, thanks to mobile banking, the share of Kenyans with access to a financial account jumped from 42% in 2011 to 75% in 2014. Financial inclusion skyrocketed among the poorest citizens, from 21% of people with a financial account in 2011 to 63% in 2014, growth of more than 200% in just three short years. "The magic of mobile banking lies in its simplicity and low cost," said Rosengard. "All you need to get started is an old-school flip phone, available for less than $10 U.S. dollars, and a banking SIM card. Then you can send and receive money over text message, no smartphone or special app required. Customers mostly rely on the service for person-to-person (P2P) payments, but are increasingly using it to pay merchants, utility companies, and other businesses." Rosengard's research finds that mobile banking has transformed how Kenyans manage their money. On Safaricom's M-PESA, which is by far the most popular service in the country, 19 million users now send 15 billion Kenyan shillings in payments each day - the equivalent of $150 million U.S. dollars. This growth has allowed Kenya to zoom past other countries when it comes to financial inclusion. The share of people with access to a financial account in Kenya is more than double that of other sub-Saharan African countries and almost triple the typical rate in low-income countries worldwide. Advertisement This mobile banking revolution has also created greater financial stability for Kenyan families. A 2014 study found that people using M-PESA were able to handle major hits to their income - such as a bad harvest, a job loss, or a failing business - without having to curb their household's consumption. The primary way they weathered these storms was by getting help from family and friends through funds sent over M-PESA. In comparison, the study found that Kenyans who did not use M-PESA had to reduce their household spending by an average of 7% in response to financial challenges. For developing countries where traditional banking is limited, Rosengard sees mobile banking as a potential shortcut to financial inclusion. Nations that already have a robust banking sector and widespread access to financial services, like the United States and South Africa, can depend on existing banks to offer services online, with upstarts like PayPal and Venmo pushing the envelope. In developing countries, however, a tool like mobile banking can be transformational. Rosengard explained how, instead of growing the conventional banking sector's physical presence and slowly bringing the "unbanked" into the system, mobile banking allows countries to immediately bring financial services to the masses in a cheap, accessible way. Mobile banking isn't the first new technology that has helped countries leapfrog certain stages of development and progress more quickly. Cell phones had this impact in sub-Saharan Africa in the 2000s. As mobile phone ownership boomed, countries were able to skip over the landline telephone phase and rapidly bring modern communication to their citizens. The rate of cell phone ownership in Kenya (82%) is now almost as high as in the United States (89%). Could mobile banking foster a similar transformation, bringing financial services to the masses and spurring equitable economic development? Rosengard and other experts think so. Advertisement "For the Kenyan family able to send their daughter money for school, mobile banking could mean the difference between her dropping out to work or graduating, securing a better career, and, down the line, being able to send money back home in times of need," Rosengard said. "Now multiply that impact by the two billion other unbanked people across the world whose lives could be changed by a cheap flip phone and a simple banking program, offering a path to more equitable, inclusive economic growth." Sidenotes (a) According to the World Bank, only 43% of Kenyans accessed the internet within the past year and 55% have an account at a financial institution. For comparison, 87% of people in the U.S. use the internet and 94% have a bank account. (b) While financial inclusion is less of a problem in developed countries, it is still a major barrier for the poor. In the U.S., for example, 6% of adults do not have a bank account and 24% do not have a debit card. (c) The World Bank defines having access to a "financial account" as having an account at a bank or other type of financial institution, such as a credit union, microfinance institution, or cooperative, or using a mobile money service, such as mobile banking, within the past year. Endnotes Review of The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America's Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest. By Walter A. McDougall. Harvard University Press. 408 pp. $30. Nearly fifty years ago, the sociologist Robert Bellah coined the term "civil religion." A non-sectarian creed that makes use of sacred symbols, rituals, holidays, heroes, martyrs and myths, civil religion, Bellah indicated, helps secure and sustain national unity. But civil religion also had a dark side, especially when it encourages a messianic determination to impose the will and the ways of "the New Israel" on others. In The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, Walter McDougall, a professor of history and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the role of civil religion "on the motivation and justification" of foreign policy throughout American history. Civil religion, he acknowledges, can bind diverse groups together and stimulate sacrifices for the collective good in times of depression, disaster and war. McDougall maintains, however, that civil religion "turns toxic when twisted into a Jacobin creed peddled to people at home...and forced "down foreign throats at gunpoint." And, he concludes, "the deformation" of civil religion has ended by devouring America itself." Advertisement Drawing on the written and oral comments of U.S. presidents and political, religious, intellectual and corporate elites, McDougall demonstrates the pervasiveness of the discourse of civil religion. Although the New Deal was the first wholly secular reform movement in American history, he points out that, "as the high priest of the civil religion," Franklin D. Roosevelt had to persuade Americans "that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed" (Romans 8:18) And, as the leader of the fight against atheistic communism, President Dwight Eisenhower, who had not attended church while he was at West Point, began his inaugural by "asking the privilege of uttering a private prayer of my own"; signed into law a bill inserting "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance; keynoted the American Legion's Back to God Convention; and signed resolutions to make "In God We Trust" the national motto. Unfortunately, McDougall does not distinguish between the use of civil religion in the making and in the selling of American foreign policy. He understands that "no public policy, political system, ideology, or civil religion that is unsupported by an economic base is likely to last long." He indicates that President Eisenhower "never let civil religion interfere with his strategy, operations, and tactics." And yet, he asserts, rather simplistically, that during the Cold War civil religion "required" recalcitrant Republicans and Dixiecrats "to pretend (at least) to practice what it preached about racial equality and social uplift lest it make a mockery of its own propaganda throughout the decolonized world." Most important, McDougall's book provides abundant evidence that civil religion has been used to justify policies across the political spectrum. "Empire obtained by force is un-republican," Senator Charles Sumner wrote in the mid-nineteenth century, for example, and offensive to the principle "according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the governed." And, according to McDougall, FDR used the rhetoric of civil religion to promote isolationist policies in the mid-1930s and intervention at the end of the decade. Advertisement At the roots of The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, it seems clear, is the claim that the Spanish American War was the moment at which constraints against all overseas crusades eroded, "devolved Protestant fanaticism burst its chains," the Constitution became a dead letter, war powers no longer resided in Congress, and "Washington's World turned into Wilson's World." That world is anathema to McDougall, whose assault on the interventionist presidents of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is unrelenting and, at times, over the top. Wilson, McDougall writes, "imagined the way to serve God was by sacrificing U.S. national interest on the altar of humanity." Although he should have known that "most of his principles, not least national self-determination could not be applied to most of the human race" and that war "would oblige him to sacrifice his domestic agenda, violate civil liberties and invite Americans to indulge violent and bigoted instincts," Wilson "chose to flip the last civil religious 'thou shall nots' into commandments." Although Germany wasn't all that bad - Wilson "yielded nothing" to the Kaiser in terms of executive power - the American president hurled his nation into war "in order to prove, like a pagan priest-king, that his tribal gods were mightier than theirs." McDougall claims as well that FDR deferred to isolationists in the 1930s because their arguments "were many and mighty," whereas those in favor of rearmament and intervention "were few and flaccid." And that the president pretended World War II was "a civil religious crusade for human rights and fundamental freedoms," while setting up concentration camps for U.S. citizens of Japanese descent, ignoring evidence of genocide against Jews, persisting in racial segregation in the armed forces and abandoning "even the pretense of humanitarianism" by authorizing the carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities. The decision of President George W. Bush to initiate "two protracted conflicts whose carnage and ruin dwarfed that of 9/11 itself," McDougall writes, "almost lends credence to the theory that messianic republics must engage in periodic blood sacrifice as a sort of totem worship." Advertisement In this post I want us to once again stroll the decks of the Laconia, the ship on which my father was a passenger on its maiden voyage. The year was 1922/1923, and this was the first round-the-world trip by a passenger ship since Magellan. There were many ground-breaking aspects to this incredible voyage, which led the way to opening up the world to travel. It was a life-changing event for its lucky participants because, unlike today, the passengers didn't know what to expect. I love the old photographs my family has of life aboard this extraordinary ship. On December 6, 1922, a fancy dress ball on the R.M.S. Laconia was held. Everyone was decked out in amazing costumes, and my father - always the comedian--came dressed as a sailor in a wooden barrel. I was able to enlarge the photograph, and my father's smile tells you a lot about his personality. Also, on the back of an incredible breakfast menu from this elegant cruise, is my father's cartoon sketch of his costume. (To view these photos, go to Dr. Helen Davey Facebook page and "like" it.) Now we'll return to my father's handwritten letters from almost 100 years ago. Jan. 11/23. In the Yellow Sea. One hundred miles south of Shantung. Bound for Shanghai. The Laconia had set sail for China from Japan. My father writes, "Yesterday made dock at Tsingtau." Tsingtau is now called "Qingdau." In this very year of 1923, it was given back to China from Japan: the map was constantly changing. Advertisement My father continues, "While we were at lunch, we heard American songs being sung outside so we rushed through the meal and onto deck. There was your (this letter was written to my Uncle Paul Davey) old friend Giouque and his school boys. It was really quite thrilling to all on board and very unexpected in this part of the world." "I hollered 'Hey Chuck' and he turned around mighty quick; nobody had called him 'Chuck' for many years. Of course he didn't know me at first but I wasn't long identifying myself. I might not have known him except for the fact that I knew he was in Tsingtau. He is much heavier now but looks well." "Mrs. Giouque was down also; she seems to be very nice. They have a boy about four and lost a girl last year about a year and a half old. We had them all, including about twenty school boys come aboard. In the afternoon he went around the city with us and later he and Mrs. Giouque came to the Laconia to dinner with us and stayed to a dance in the evening. Mary and I both like them very much and rather hated to pull out of the harbour leaving two perfectly good Americans so darned far from Broadway. They've been out here six years - oh boy!" Inside this letter I found an old folded postcard photograph of the American Academy, Tsingtau, China. On it, my father has written, "This is Chuck's School!" It was a large and impressive building, with an American flag waving in front. Advertisement My father continues, "Tell Mart (another brother) that I ran across an old friend of his at the reception tendered us by the Chamber of Commerce (Tsingtau). H.H.Kung was in Oberlin at the time he was and now seems to be a man of considerable prominence and influence in China." "Mr. Lin, a graduate of Yale Forestry School asked me to please convey his profound respect to the honorable Doctor of Trees; he knew Dad by reputation." (This refers to my grandfather John Davey, the "Father of Tree Surgery.") "I was glad to learn that they are beginning to pay some attention to forestry or rather reforestation in China - it is to a great extent a treeless country. It would be a great object lesson to Americans if they could see the Chinese going through the country gathering up every available weed stem or anything that will make sufficient fire to cook a bit of rice; they have no fire for heat." As a naturalist and tree expert, my father was shocked to observe close up the effect on human beings of the ignorance about the importance of conservation of natural resources. You can hear his concern when he says, "You may get some idea as to the utter depletion of the soil and the great value of humus when I tell you that there were perhaps 50 or 100 men and boys, along the route of our droskies at Port Arthur, waiting to capture any droppings from the scrawny little ponies. In some instances they hardly permitted it to hit the ground and in some cases nearly fought for it - poor devils! " (Port Arthur, now "Lushunkou District" bounced between Russian and Japanese rule until it was ceded to China after WWII: thus the "droskies", Russian carriages, were common.) My father worries "In our country we still have such a wealth of humus (comparatively) and some timber still remains. I wonder what the situation will be in a few more generations." I shudder to think what my father and grandfather would think about the state of the planet now. Advertisement He continues, "Now that the Chinese are once more in control of Tsingtau, it will be interesting to note the progress made by the young Chinese now that they have been given an opportunity here. Perhaps they could match the competence of the Japanese." Jan. 16/23. In Formosa Straights - Bound from Keelung (Formosa) to Hong Kong. Again my father comments on the problem of deforestation around the world: "As we proceeded from Tsingtau to Shanghai we found that the Yellow Sea became more and more yellow and that the East China Sea, which is a continuation of the Yellow Sea, was almost chocolate color. The best part of the continent of Asia is being washed out to sea - America can well take a lesson from what is happening as a result of the destruction of the forests of China." Port cities around the world were not yet ready for large ships. My father writes, "Because of her size the Laconia could not get clear up to Shanghai. We anchored in the Yangstze off Wosung and went by tender about twelve miles. Shanghai is quite occidental in appearance as you approach and disembark along the Bund." My father and his first wife Mary were wined and dined by people all around the world. He says, "We have a friend in Sound Beach (Old Greenwich) who is a director of one of the big oil companies and he has advised the branch managers in most of our ports of call that we are aboard the Laconia. They go to great trouble to locate us and to entertain us. Club life seems to be about everything for occidentals out here. Few of them regard the East as their permanent home so they build beautiful clubs and spend most of their time there. We visited the English, French, and Shanghai clubs, all very fine." My father states that "Shanghai is under international control. The British govern one part of the city and the French another part. I was quite surprised to find big East Indians acting as policemen in the English section." Advertisement He continues, "We were taken by auto a considerable distance into the country and were especially impressed by the very large percentage of the land which is devoted to burial mounds. After hundreds of years of planting their dead on their choicest lands it has come to be a serious economic problem. The fields outside Shanghai are absolutely dotted with mounds. They simply set the casket on the ground and pile from five to ten feet of dirt on it. In many instances they leave the casket setting in the open and in other cases they build a little brick vault around it. In any case it is a very serious offense to disturb a grave. In building roads and railroads you can imagine what they are up against." I remember as a child hearing my father telling of the horrors of Shanghai: "We went down to the native section of Shanghai - I have never seen such filth and human wreckage - nor do I want to see it again. Among other things was a two-year-old dead baby lying in the gutter. It's very disturbing. There's a strong likelihood we won't go to Canton owing to local warfare up there." My curiosity piqued, I was able to research on the Internet some of the relevant history of Shanghai. It had been administered concurrently by the British, French, and Americans, all independent of Chinese law. Each of these colonial presences brought its own particular culture, architecture, and society. Even though Shanghai had its own walled Chinese city, many native residents chose to live in the foreign settlements. Therefore, this mixing of cultures shaped Shanghai's openness to Western influence. By 1930 (seven years after my father's visit) Shanghai had become an important industrial center and trading port, and was known as "the Paris of the East." In its heyday, Shanghai was the place to be, with the best art, architecture, and strongest business in Asia. "With dance halls, brothels, glitzy restaurants, international clubs, and even a foreign-run racetrack, Shanghai was a city that catered to every whim of the rich" (Wikipedia). However, dire poverty ran alongside opulence, and it was the cheap labor of the lower-class Chinese that kept the city running. Shanghai became known as a place of vice and indulgence. "Amid this glamour and degradation the Communist Party held its first meeting in 1921" (Wikipedia). It was held two years before my father's visit. Eventually the Japanese invaded and occupied Shanghai. After the ending of WWII, a three-year civil war broke out with fighting between the Nationalists and Communists for Control of China. The Communists declared victory in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China, with all foreigners leaving the country. "Closed off from the outside world with which it had become so comfortable, Shanghai fell into a deep sleep. Fashion, music, and romance gave way to uniformity and the stark reality of Communism (Wikipedia)." Only in the 1990's did Shanghai wake up once more under Deng Xiaoping's economic redevelopment of the city to become the showpiece of the booming economy of mainland China. Advertisement I was also able to check out what the local warfare in Canton was all about that prevented the Laconia from traveling there in 1923. Son Yat-Sen and his close ally Chiang Kai- Shek were involved. In one of those one-degree-of-separation stories that I love, my first cousin Vangie Davey (Smith) attended Wellesley College in the early 1930's. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek often visited Wellesley, her beloved alma mater, and my cousin was able to meet this famous woman whom she greatly admired and often mentioned. My father's reaction to the horrible scenes in Shanghai was not the end, nor the worst of the scenes my father would see as he traveled around the world. The Pan Am family can certainly attest to the shocking scenes we saw all over the globe, breaking down our sense of naivete and denial. While we experienced an incredible sense of glamour, much of what we saw represented a world full of indescribable trauma. It bonded us in an inexplicable way, just as did the loss of our crews and airplanes in various disasters over the years. The amazing aspect of working for Pan American World Airways, and one that we can only realize in hindsight, is that we were privileged to be living in a globalized world long before anyone called it that. With its amazing route structure laid down in the 1930's, "Pan Am's World" stretched around the globe into hitherto totally unknown places. We were the beneficiaries of that legacy, just as I was the beneficiary of my father's legacy. How I love following in my father's footsteps through his letters and sharing with you his impressions of the world so long ago! American students protest outside the UN climate talks during the COP22 international climate conference in Marrakesh in reaction to Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, on November 9, 2016.Stunned participants at UN climate talks in Marrakesh insisted that climate change denier Donald Trump cannot derail the global shift to clean energy, although some called his victory in US presidential elections a 'disaster'. / AFP / FADEL SENNA (Photo credit should read FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty Images) Late last week, Trump's transition team put up a website that lists its top priorities for their administration. For those of us concerned with maintaining a somewhat livable planet, looking at the energy section is like reading a vivid description of your worst nightmare. Mine all the coal. Drill all the oil. Defund the EPA. Cancel the Paris Agreement. Kill all environmental regulations. Advertisement Bringing back drill, baby, drill isn't enough for the Trump team: they're looking to bring back Sarah Palin herself as Secretary of Interior. Let's face it: the door to national climate action as we know it has been slammed shut. Trump is the only world leader who denies climate change. He has no interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He's shown little support for clean energy. There's zero chance he'd approve a carbon tax. But when you're trapped in a burning building and the door has been barred, you don't just sit on the floor and watch the flames: you put out what you can and start looking for the windows. Our planet is that burning building and it's time to double down on our role as firefighters. First, before Trump can set the world ablaze, we need to push the Obama administration to fireproof everything they can. That means employing whatever legal and regulatory measures possible to defend the progress that has been made. It also means saying no to the Dakota Access Pipeline and new fossil fuel projects, not because Trump won't try and approve them, but because it's the right thing to do, and because it will open up the possibility of fighting these projects in the courts and buy us some time. Advertisement Obama also needs to stop pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership. That toxic trade deal, that both Trump and Clinton opposed, has inside of it a provision that would allow corporations to sue nations and local governments for keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Since we're going to be relying on states and municipalities to block a lot of projects going forward (more on that later), we can't allow companies a backdoor to approving them with the support of President Trump. Second, once Trump takes office, we need to be ready to put out every fire he starts. Over the last eight years, the climate movement has grown immensely. Take 350.org: we didn't even exist when Obama first took office. Now we work with people in every state and have hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide (not to mention many more around the world). This movement has a diverse set of skill sets and strategies to bring to bear, from civil disobedience, to lawsuits, to mass marches. We'll protest every pipeline, march against every mine, and fight every fracking well. We were able to turn out hundreds of thousands of people when Obama was in office, imagine how many more will be willing to protest when Trump gets going. The American people still love the environment. They overwhelmingly support clean energy. Democrats and Republicans alike want action on climate change. People want clean air to breath and clean water to drink. This election had nothing to do with dismantling our environmental laws (climate change wasn't even mentioned in the debates) and Trump has zero mandate for a radical assault on the planet. He's going to face a massive backlash the minute he starts implementing his agenda. We'll also fight the fires that Trump lights up in other areas of our democracy. That means standing against his attack on civil liberties. Fighting for women's rights. Standing against his attacks on people of color, immigrants, and Muslims. Let's face it: under Trump, some people are closer than others to the flames. If you think it's a coincidence that the most racist President we've seen in the last 20 years is also the worst on the environment, you're fooling yourself. To paraphrase Van Jones, someone who thinks there are throwaway people is bound to think there are throwaway species, as well. Someone who cares only about himself isn't going to care about the planet. We're stronger when we fight together, which means the climate movement will need to challenge racism and white supremacy just as we challenge pollution and the fossil fuel industry. Third, we need to start looking for the windows. The climate crisis is already underway and we can't waste four years playing defense. We need to drive action at the state level, pushing California, New York, and others to build out clean energy, shift the markets, and tie up the fossil fuel industry. We need to look to the courts, not only to defend regulations, but to start holding fossil fuel companies and the federal government accountable. The Children's Trust case and the investigation into ExxonMobil become even more important. We need to challenge private institutions to take action, ramping up the divestment campaign, pushing carbon neutrality, and urging colleges, museums and foundations to become leaders in their own communities. We need to go after the banks, getting them to move billions out of fossil fuels and into clean energy. We need to push companies to green their supply chains and commit to 100% renewable energy. We need to think globally, looking for ways to support fights around the world with our funding, solidarity, and online campaigns. And we need to keep making our case to the public. Now is not the time to back down, shrug our shoulders, and say, "I guess people just don't agree with us." Hell no. There are millions upon millions of people who are part of this movement and millions more who are looking for change. There are still more workers in the solar industry than there are in coal, oil or gas. More so than ever, we need to make the case that the best way to revitalize our economy and create more good jobs is to invest in clean energy. Trump has promised to create jobs, lots of jobs, great jobs, beautiful jobs. At the White House on Thursday he said "infrastructure" was his number on priority. Well, there's his chance. Mass mobilization and bold action will be even more important in the years ahead. Our goal won't just be to "convince" Trump that he needs to care about the climate or, as some suggest, figure out ways to partner with him. Our goal will be to build such massive political opposition to his agenda that he simply can't move it forward without a vast majority of the country turning against him and the Republican party (and any weak-kneed Democrats who decide to go along with it). To ensure the success of women and girls is to ensure that they attain literacy and self-confidence in financial matters big and small. And it's happening! The International Day Of The Girl was celebrated in early October; Canadians are celebrating Financial Literacy this November. Each of these events is an opportunity for women and girls to learn how to confidently thrive in today's world. The increased support and confidence around financial literacy means women are better equipped to take on new challenges, and that includes becoming successful and financially independent women business owners. This is definitely reason for applause, but there's still much work to be done. In a political environment of unrest, many business women are questioning if the accepted norm will be continued misogynistic 'locker talk' that directly affects their balance sheets. They'd hoped that this would be an issue of the past. The Wider Opportunities for Women Study reported that over 41% of the female population struggles financially. They are either poor, at the brink of being poor, or living from pay check to pay check. Advertisement Yet despite the difficulties, progress is being made. During the past couple of decades, more and more women have attained financial independence by embracing roles as entrepreneurs, moving out of traditional workplaces they find stultifying to create their own dynamic workplaces. The trends are impressive: In the U.S. alone, women are now entering entrepreneurship at a rate of 2:1 in comparison to their male counterparts. Since 1997, the number of women-owned small businesses increased by 68% (outpacing the overall growth of 47% for all new businesses). This means that 29% of small business owners are women, up from 26% in 1997. Women-owned small businesses employed nearly 8 million workers, providing one in seven jobs in the private business sector. These businesses generated almost $1.5 trillion dollars in combined revenue. These growth rates and successes look to continue, so as young girls become women, they will also become our future leaders. After the society-changing migration of women into the workforce beginning after World War II (and all the benefits this movement reaped for women and society in general), it's yet a new era as women are leaving traditional workplaces and often moving back into their homes. But this time, women are moving up in the world of business, becoming entrepreneurs. Advertisement This trend has increased even more so during the past few years. A number of factors are at play, including the interconnectedness of our digital age and the emergence of the "New Economy" after the 2008 Great Recession. The time is ripe for a transformation. With more women starting small businesses and finding success, there is an opportunity to reshape the working environment. As the growth rates of women entrepreneurs continue to rise, they will play an even more powerful role as the change makers in our society. Entrepreneurs and small businesses fuel economic growth and job creation. They are also the innovators whose efficiencies far outpace government and politics. And what does the new landscape look like? Women are forging businesses that align with their personal values and are using their superpowers to build the world they want to live in. In 2011, Andrea Shillington left her global corporate life as a brand strategist working for Fortune 500s to launch Brands For the Heart. Through her company she supports impact-driven entrepreneurs to create a new wave of conscious Fortune 500s. She was driven to do this because of her heartbreak at watching incredible entrepreneurs with world changing ideas not be able to reach their full potential due to budget constraints. Andrea saw an opportunity to co-create with designers and entrepreneurs to develop a new business model that integrates the old 'brick and mortar agency' model with the 'crowdsourcing and info product' model. She now helps these entrepreneurs step into their power and position their businesses to become unbeatable in their marketplace at rates they can afford. Theresa Laurico began her career in radio, TV, and music production. Yet, on set one day, she had an existential crisis. In that moment, Theresa asked herself, "Is what I'm doing WORTH my heartbeat, my only life?" When the answer that came back was "no," she committed to making media that moved humanity forward. Within four months of winning a local radio stations entrepreneurial contest, she launched SociaLIGHT (LIGHT - Leaders Impacting Global Humanity Today). Sir Richard Branson opened her first conference with a keynote speech attended by 1000 entrepreneurs, startups, and leaders in the audience. Today, SociaLIGHT is the largest event company in Canada, with a focus on impact and contribution to the world. They are forging private-public partnerships to ignite civic action, and SocialLIGHT has recently partnered with Intuit/QuickBooks to launch Project 10K with a goal to provide financial literacy for 10,000 startups/entrepreneurs in 2017. Advertisement Each of these is a great example of a woman stepping up to lead business as a force for global change - on her terms! "Feminism isn't about making women strong. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength." -- G.D. Anderson We can look at the trends and certainly be optimistic. Yet there are obstacles that still stand in the way of female entrepreneurs that must be overcome: Women continue to have limited access to the funds they need to grow their businesses: - Of all venture capital funds, a mere 7% goes to a company owned by a woman or with a woman on the executive team. - Only 16% of total dollars from conventional small business loans and just 17% of SBA loans are going to a company run by a woman. In monetary terms, only $1 of every $23 in conventional small business loans goes to women-owned businesses. So not only are women struggling to get funded, but when approved for lending, the loan amount is significantly less than what their male counterparts receive. While it remains something of a "taboo" topic, women regularly deal with sexual harassment as they actively pursue funding to grow their business. Women are generally lacking the mentorship and encouragement they need to scale their business growth. For women entrepreneurs in particular, encouragement has been scientifically proven to positively impact their success. (More successful women entrepreneurs will lead to more mentors.) Women are more likely to face steep challenges involving handling their households and family life as they pursue their entrepreneurial goals. Here's how two women entrepreneurs are overcoming these obstacles: Lisa Berkovitz is helping put a dent in the lack of mentors for women entrepreneurs. She started her career as an M.B.A., launching large-scale projects for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 multinational companies as well as the World Economic Forum. She managed a $90M product portfolio and served many of the world's most influential business leaders, including Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates. She discovered that her passion was tapping into human potential, and she would stay late at the office researching this topic. But eventually she felt something missing and had a major revelation: Selling 'stuff' and climbing the corporate ladder left her feeling cold and flat. Many women can relate. Advertisement Lisa left her corporate career and undertook a deep inner journey, learning about herself and her passion and unlearning the "shoulds" that others projected onto her. Today Lisa views business as a vehicle for self-mastery and planetary change. If that weren't enough, Lisa is a master-level NLP practitioner and Reiki Master who puts 'soul' squarely at the helm of business by acting as a mentor to many entrepreneurs and leaders. Michelle Goldblum left her big corporate pharma job when she came to the conscious decision that she wanted ONE life instead of TWO. She was done with living two separate lives, one life of wellbeing and fun (home) and a second life of toxic misery (work). What shifted Michelle's outlook on what was possible was her discovery of a community of women living their best life. As she stepped out of her corporate job she stepped up by leveraging her marketing skills to help others create more meaning in their own lives and work. Ultimately Michelle co-founded I Am Creative and Soul Camp where she now lives ONE integrated life that is rewarding, connected, and serves others. Michelle has successfully overcome the difficulties of running a household while working as a successful business woman. The women above are great examples of feminine leaders who successfully redefined how "business" would work in their lives. Each of these women stepped up, led by example, and overcame obstacles--each on her own terms! More and more, women are gaining the financial literacy they need to not only survive in the world but to thrive as successful entrepreneurs. The power woman leader's hold as global change agents lies largely in their ability to break through limiting belief systems and to successfully make and manage money that they leverage for planetary change. But we're not fully there yet. Advertisement To reach the goal of equality for women in business, women must come together and deeply support each other, thereby opening a pathway for future female leaders to follow. This point is critical and not to be taken lightly. The days of the 'crab in the bucket' mentality must end. When we all have each others backs, we ALL WIN. So, let's stand together One More Woman at a time. Help us in supporting women to step up and fully own and earn their worth by sharing this article and watching this manifesto video. Join us in becoming a catalyst for young girls and women's financial success both today and tomorrow. Jennifer Love, Visionary CEO It's Time To Own & Earn Your Worth! While America reels from the stunning upset and Acclimates to saying "President Trump" uncertainty looms. The Truth is, good or bad, we don't know what a Trump led administration will do. With most candidates we can look at voting records and listen to rhetoric and look for patterns where words align with or depart from actions. Not so with Mr. Trump, we just don't empirically know much. While addiction touches every family in America, our issue is still cast aside and devalued. Zika was well funded and covered by the media, addiction receives an anemic response even while more than 100 Americans daily overdose and die. What can we expect from Mr. Trump? He is a paradox and an enigma. While he rose on the political scene by inciting racism and making inflammatory comments, he heralds from Queens, one of the most diverse communities on the planet. NYC is his stomping ground and while he lives high above subway riders, he hasn't moved to a Texas mansion either. He dwells among the very people he condemns. Recovery may be the most egalitarian system in America. The AA literature says "we are people who would not ordinarily mix" and while AA is only one path to recovery it is deeply embedded in Americana. If an ivy educated liberal suddenly found them-self in a rural American town and landed in an AA meeting run by Trump voters they would be welcomed, politics aside. That principal may be a starting point to heal America's raw open wound that needs to be stared down by a tough nurse to avoid infection. Advertisement We don't know very much about Trump's views on addiction and drug policy. He seems to have some understanding and has self disclosed losing a brother to alcoholism. He proudly says he doesn't drink. Is that insight or his typical boastful reporting? Before he was a candidate, Trump seemed to be an advocate for some pretty progressive drug policy, that shifted as a candidate where he because a staunch drug warrior. Apparently one of the goals of the infamous wall is to keep drugs on the southern side of the wall. He seems to know a wall won't really do much but certainly sells the idea that it well to his followers. Looking at a fractured America, addiction could be a unifier. Every family in America has this problem, even if it's not a direct connection, the steak reality is felt at some level. If not in their family, it's in their community somewhere. America has responded poorly and most seem to know that. The Trump campaign kept saying people were afraid to admit the supports Trump. Maybe the same is true of drug policy, where people are afraid to say they know incarceration is ineffective. Trump is a salesman, he might be the guy who could sell drug policy reform as a conservative issue. The drug war is not fiscally responsible, it is the ultimate big wasteful government. Current drug policy is a government over reach. Who is the government to tell an individual what they can put in their body? Th drug war is an all out assault on families. There is not a shred of Christian ethic when families are broken up because someone smoked marijuana. If Mr. Trump is sincere about reducing violence in the "inner city", call a truce on the drug war and admit, we all lost. One of the very strange things about drug policy is that there is a very weak and faint voice from recovering people. We live drug free, why not ask us to weigh in? President after President has wanted to shift from incarceration to treatment and yet the top drug policy official is almost always a law enforcement official. That makes as much sense as appointing an oncologist to head an agency to fight a wave of bank robbery. Advertisement "Since 1988, Bistango has been one of the best kept secrets on Manhattan's East Side." So reads Bistango's claim for its original location on East 29th Street, and it has the ring of truth as one of those neighborhood spots that hasn't had much media attention but plays to a solid clientele of regulars. Fourteen months ago Bistango branched out uptown to the Kimberly Hotel on East 50th Street, and Chef Humberto Corona is well on his way to building a similar base of satisfied guests just now finding out about his very good Italian food. Originally from Puebla, Mexico, and self-taught as a cook, he got his start in Italian cuisine ten years ago at Bar Stuzzichini in the Flatiron District, then was appointed Chef de Cuisine at the Spanish tapas bar Ten Bells. He's a chef with a deft touch that makes so many dishes so readily found elsewhere all his own. The dining room, headed by the wholly affable manager, Erin Fisher, is an oddly shaped spot past the lobby of the hotel, with a pleasant bar counter to the rear. The walls are a vibrant Carpaccio red, the splendid artwork exploding in a profusion of flowers. Sturdy, comfortable chairs are finely upholstered, but the tables are unfortunately bare of tablecloths, which doesn't help the noise level here. The service staff is fast on their feet and need to be, for the pacing of the food delivery from the kitchen can lag even when the room is not full. My party of four people began with some admirable creamy burrata with prosciutto and roasted sweet red peppers ($12); expertly grilled octopus was graced with very fine olive oil and peppery greens ($16). Don't fail to order one or two of the flatbreads for the table, which come steaming and crackly hot. We enjoyed the Margherita with quickly cooked marinara, fresh mozzarella, ricotta and leaves of basil ($14), and the Salsiccia, with hand-made sweet Italian sausage and hot cherry peppers ($15)--both flatbreads quite addictive. It would be hard to resist a platter of the meatballs, once tasted, or the succulent arancini rice balls (below). Pastas tried all had the right heft of homemade dough, and portions were very generous, so plan to share a plate of tender fettuccine with lobster, cherry tomato and a touch of sherry ($25). Cavatelli is one of my favorite pastas, best when slightly chewy, here served with Italian sausage, kale and a good dose of Calabrian chili to spark the flavors up ($21). A lusty green sauce enhanced the richness of short rib meat atop fat rigatoni ($22), and ravioli came plumply packed with prosciutto in a wonderful hazelnut-studded pesto and brown butter ($20). All around us it appeared people were enjoying a large plate of eggplant parmigiana ($20), highly recommended by our waiter, and one bite showed why: everything about this once humble dish was ennobled by perfect ingredients and impeccable cooking, so it did not fall or melt apart or show any separation of the hearty sauce. Veal alla Milanese followed the line of big proportions, topped with a radicchio, Parmigiano, endive and cherry tomato melange ($32), while a very good dry-aged ribeye came with roasted Yukon potatoes, broiled herbed tomato and olive oil ($38). Although a nice piece of meat, a pork chop with white beans ($32) was overcooked to toughness. The desserts need an upgrade: I wrote "OK" next to a White chocolate mousse cake with roasted strawberries and rhubarb ($12) and a mascarpone cheesecake with blackberry lime salad ($12). The trendy olive oil cake ($12) tasted like, well, cake suffused with olive oil, which also ruined a lemon and caramel sundae ($10). Bistango's wine list could easily be longer and better, but it serves well enough, and mark-ups are not all that high. This new uptown Bistango is garnering local attention and, I suspect, getting recommendations from hotel concierges nearby because it is friendly, reasonably priced and has the kind of Italian food just about everyone loves. But it also has a fine chef in Humberto Corona, whose dedication to putting his own mark on a meal is clearly evident. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday Brunch. Pre-theater Prix Fixe $35.99 Joseph A. Califano, Jr., who was President Lyndon Johnson's chief assistant for domestic affairs and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Carter Administration, last night sent this email to his daughter in response to emails about coping with the election that she had received from her children's schools and sent him. Dear Claudia, Please do not accept such emails without realizing that they express the "conventional wisdom" (a phrase Ken Galbraith crafted when I was young) of the elite folks at the big corporations, universities, private schools and national media, living in affluent suburbs and urban enclaves. Their school leaders easily imagine (that's the "in" feeling) that their kids would be shaken by this troublesome, traumatic exercise in democracy and so offer "counseling." These elites just can't accept the relentless pain of parents who must send their kids to (often lousy) public schools, who work two or three jobs to keep their families together, and who think their kids are locked in a caste system with no upward mobility. These parents are hurting because government in Washington has not been working and has let them down for decades. Advertisement As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others." To me it's appalling that schools like your children's don't say: "This is democracy. Learn from it. Learn that there are lessons here. Learn that most people don't live like you do. Work to make the world a better place for all, and when you grow up don't vote just for your own good (lower taxes, etc.)." I remember when Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt and the elite, including your most conservative grandmother, my mother, said, "Terrible. Awful. He's part of the criminal Prendergast political machine and a haberdasher." But he turned out to be a great president. I remember when John Kennedy was assassinated while I was working in the Pentagon. I went into my boss Army Secretary Cy Vance's office and said, "I'm going back to New York. Lyndon Johnson's a southerner from Texas; he'll be a second rate president," and Vance said, "Stay around." Thank God. I didn't vote for Trump; I didn't like him or his ideas, but we are one nation--like an airplane we have only one pilot. So your schools should have quoted Barack Obama's eloquent statement about our democratic system, instead of writing emails like the ones you sent me. Advertisement I love you and the children too much to let this pass. Just as you make up your own mind, teach your children to do the same. On election night, Canada's immigration page crashed due to massive server activity. My Facebook feed was flooded with threats from friends who were going to pick up and move out of the country. While the sentiment is understandable if the election did not go your way, it is also deeply troubling in its implications. Are you really going to cut and run when your country needs you more than ever? And, FYI, the shadow of the American president follows you wherever you may try to hide. As I struggled to sleep last night, my mind turned to my two daughters and the scores of teenagers I counsel. It is very hard not to feel an overwhelming sense of dread, especially when I think about our standing on the world stage. But as an eternal optimist, it is also the thought of my strong girls and idealistic students that gives me hope. It is hard to know what the next several years will bring, but the world will keep turning. It is incumbent on everyone who holds the values of equality, social justice, environmental stewardship and peace to get to work. We can all keep moving the needle in a positive direction and project a positive image of America, but it will be on a smaller scale. Advertisement I spent my college years under the George W. Bush presidency. While studying abroad in London, strangers would hear my accent on the tube and ask me what I thought about Bush. I acted as an ambassador of sorts, allaying the fears of the asker (and the people within earshot) as best I could. Later, when I traveled to Tanzania to volunteer, one of the first conversations I had with my homestay mother was about politics. "I don't like war," she explained. "Tanzania is a peaceful country. I don't like Bush because he makes war." It was hard to travel as an American during those years, but it was also immensely important to dispel the idea that the messaging the world was hearing from one man was representative of all Americans. I have a feeling that creating good will on a personal scale and in the private sector is going to be more important than ever in the coming years. And we will need to prepare to answer the hard questions from friends of other cultures who simply can't comprehend why things happen the way they do in America (even though you also may be at a loss). I am a firm believer in cross-cultural exchange, service and global citizenry. We will have to take it upon ourselves to promote a positive vision of the country and the peaceful world that we all desire. My call to action is simple: Reach out to a new culture. This could be the folks with an opposing political sign in your neighborhood or the villagers of a remote community in Fiji. We grow and connect by tearing down walls, not building them. International Education Week is an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance and benefits of global education and the value international cooperation brings to science. In the past month, the embassy has hosted the Transatlantic Forum (formerly Transatlantic Science Week) in Chicago and a dinner in honor Dr. Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education (IIE), who received the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit. At the dinner, Dr. Goodman and I discussed the importance of education both in addressing the migration crisis and in the fight against international terrorism. During both of these events, I reflected on the vital links between people and education and research institutions in Norway and the United States. And how high the ambitions are for further strengthening these links. The United States is Norway's most important partner on scientific research and higher education. Several of the world's best universities, as well as federally funded research centers, can be found here. Advertisement Obviously, this makes the United States a magnet for Norway's students, researchers and institutions. The United States is by far the most popular destination for Norwegian exchange students. Including both exchange and full degree-seeking students, more than 3,500 young Norwegians are currently pursuing their studies at American universities. That means that roughly one out of 10 Norwegian graduate students studies in the U.S. Norway is also experiencing an increasing number of American students attending our universities, where tuition is free and many courses are taught in English. The university studies in Svalbard, for example, offer world-class courses in polar and ocean sciences at the worlds northernmost academic learning center. Norwegian universities may be modest in size, and their names don't necessarily resonate globally. But they deliver results. Norway is ranked among the best five countries in the world according to a recent report called "Skills Matter." OECD, the Paris-based organization tested the practical information-processing skills of university graduates in all 34 OECD countries. Advertisement The report doesn't rate individual universities; instead, it measures the quality of a cross-section of national institutions of higher education, sorted by country. In other words, the general quality of Norwegian universities is high, with little difference between the top and the bottom. Offering world-class research facilities and centers for research-based innovation in a diverse number of areas, American universities have partnered with Norwegian ones and we welcome others to follow suit. But why is it so important to partner with international institutions or encourage exchange programs? The answer refers back to the conversation I had with Dr. Goodman on the role education must play in addressing some of the world's greatest challenges and in shaping the minds of future generations. Advertisement By working together and learning from each other, we prepare future leaders to make a difference by making the world a less dangerous place while further strengthening the already robust relations that exist between our two countries. The Virtual Ambassador program I conduct at the Embassy is another way to collaborate with American universities. Through Skype, I speak to students about Norway's priorities and our unique expertise in areas of peace and reconciliation, girls' education and the Arctic, to name a few. This in turn increases awareness about Norway and the opportunities for student exchange and studying at our universities. We can all agree that close links between the three pillars in the knowledge triangle - research, education and innovation - are keys for success. To me, both scientific research and higher education are areas where we are looking toward the future. The young students of today will be the tomorrow's leaders. And today's research will provide the solutions to tomorrow's challenges - such as climate change, migration issues and the consequences of an aging population. That is why we keep building these ever-stronger bonds. On any given night in the U.S., close to 39,500 military veterans are homeless. Nearly 1,000 of them are in Massachusetts. These are men and women who have put their lives on the line in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the jungles of Vietnam. They fought in the Korean War, Panama, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf. And yet, after all they endured in service to our country, they are sleeping in shelters, and living on the streets or in homeless encampments. The reasons for their homelessness are complex. There are the general stressors that contribute to homelessness such as a shortage of affordable housing and limited opportunities to earn a living wage, coupled with the fact that military training and occupations don't always translate well to the civilian workforce. Those issues are compounded by mental health problems that result from, or were exacerbated by, their service and the absence of social support networks. Child support arrears have also been identified as a leading cause of homelessness among veterans. Advertisement Recognizing the scale of the problem, in 2010 President Barack Obama launched an initiative aimed at ending veteran homelessness by 2015. As part of that, cities across the country, including a handful in Massachusetts, joined the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness. And while the initiative's ultimate goal has yet to be achieved, homelessness among veterans has fallen nationally by 47 percent in the last six years, while unsheltered homelessness has been reduced by 56 percent. Locally, Lynn became the first Massachusetts city to end veterans' homelessness earlier this year. Boston has succeeded in housing all but just a small number of veterans who are homeless as of the beginning of this year. Civil legal aid--free legal assistance or representation for low-income individuals facing non-criminal legal issues--has been an integral part of ensuring our veterans have safe, stable housing. The Department of Justice has noted that four of the most pressing unmet needs of homeless veterans involve legal assistance: preventing eviction/foreclosure, child support issues, outstanding warrants/fines, and restoration of a driver's license. Recognizing the need, the Department of Veterans Affairs has made grant funding available to legal aid organizations to assist veterans as part of President Obama's initiative. In addition to working to get veterans into permanent housing, civil legal aid is often an effective intervention for veterans who are at risk of becoming homeless--an estimated 1.4 million veterans nationwide. For example, several years ago, Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts, now known as Community Legal Aid (CLA) helped Iraq War veteran Michael Damon and his family avoid foreclosure on their Uxbridge home. The family fell into financial hardship when war-related injuries left Damon disabled and he was ineligible to receive workers' compensation. His injuries made him unable to care for his two children, which prevented his wife Lisa from working full-time. It wasn't long before they received a foreclosure notice. Damon's legal aid attorney filed suit on the family's behalf against Countrywide Home Loans and Deutsche Bank. Their case was ultimately settled after their attorney was able to assist the Damons in repurchasing their home with a more affordable mortgage. Advertisement In another instance, MetroWest Legal Services (MWLS) succeeded in helping a 17-year Air Force veteran keep a roof over her head after a layoff and a stretch of unemployment brought her close to financial ruin. An MWLS attorney helped the veteran file for bankruptcy and represented her at the hearing, which resulted in the discharge of a large credit card debt--and a more stable financial future. New York, NY USA - July 16, 2016: Donald Trump speaks during introduction Governor Mike Pence as running for vice president at Hilton hotel Midtown Manhattan Since Wednesday morning, when most of the world woke up to the shocking news that Donald Trump had secured the highest office in the nation, I've been reading and hearing cute little phrases like "It's time to lay aside our differences," "No matter if your candidate won or lost, we must respect the office and the president," "Trust the system our forefathers laid out; it's going to be fine," "It's time to unite behind our new president." First of all, let's talk about who thinks uniting behind our new president is the way to have peace in our country. It's we white people, and mostly white men. People of privilege are not in imminent danger, and it's easy for us to sit in safety and "trust our system," a system that has proven to target minorities again and again. But not since the Civil Rights movement has it been so blatant as this. Advertisement In the aftermath of the election, there have been countless stories of Trump supporters vandalizing, harassing, and harming minorities and women. Undoubtedly this would have happened regardless of who won the election, and perhaps the incidents would have been worse and even more frequent had Hillary won the electoral vote. But the true horror here isn't the heartless people committing these crimes against already-marginalized people. The true horror lies in the condoning, the encouragement even, that comes from the top. Mr. Trump's platform was built upon hate and fear; his campaign echoed his beliefs, and now we are reaping the consequences of a man of power encouraging violence against minorities. So I just have one thing to say in response to the flippant requests I'm hearing from people of privilege that Americans come together in support of our new president. No. Actually, it's NOT time to stand together behind Mr. Trump. Luckily, we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Just because a man has power does not mean we are required to unite in support of the cruelty and violence he has incited against millions of people. Here's who I will be standing behind: people of color, the hispanic community, Muslim Americans, immigrants (both documented and undocumented), refugees, and anyone LGBTQ etc, women, and anyone else who has been marginalized. I will band together with the minorities in this country, the people who are literally scared for their lives right now. I will be donning the safety pin and keeping my eyes and ears open for the chance to defend and protect those who are being targeted, to come to their rescue, to shield them from harm. Advertisement It's not time to stand behind Mr. Trump until he absolutely and unequivocally disavows the violence that has erupted since his win. Until he stops calling protests against him and his hatefulness "very unfair" and stands in front of America and tells his violent supporters that he in no way condones their behavior, that it is criminal and they will be caught and held accountable by the full extent of the law, I refuse to support him. Mr. Trump, you should know something. If you threaten to abuse your power, the way you have, you should expect the fallout that has happened since your presidency was announced. You have your supporters, but you will never win. Because until you recant almost everything you said during your hateful campaign, Mr. Trump, peaceful and loving American people will be uniting in support of those who are afraid. It's not unfair at all, and it's not a rigged system. It's democracy, and it's time to embrace it. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Donald Trump just earned a mandate, which seems to indicate a landslide victory, something Trump most certainly didn't accomplish. A landslide occurs when you overwhelm your opponent with votes, and even with his Electoral College success, which at most will be 306 to 232, this is hardly the case. Moreover, a mandate doesn't occur when the loser gets 638,000 more votes (at last count) than the "victor," and Hillary Clinton's superior popular vote keeps growing. Yet, Republicans persist with false comparisons, as in Trump predicting there'd be a Brexit show of support, except Brexit actually garnered more votes than the remain forces. Four percentage points, but, hey, when was the truth ever in their lexicon? Ultimately, totals don't matter. Whoever gets the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has a lot of power, and George W. Bush didn't become moderate even though his ascension was more controversial than Trump's. However, exaggerating their breadth of success, as Ryan claimed, is a public relations ploy to give more license to shaking things up by spreading myths the electorate wanted Trump to make radical changes. Advertisement That's why reality checks must be shouted from the mountaintop to put the brakes on potential reversals of social advances, be they health care, women's rights, immigration reform and environmental concerns. Politicians are not stupid and know if they go too far, having achieved the presidency with a minority tally and a reduced majority in the Senate and the House, voters are watching. Sadly, the Senate isn't in danger for the GOP until 2020, because only eight mostly conservative Republican seats are up in 2018, another tragedy of 2016, when so many GOP senators who might have been defeated won re-election with small numbers, like Ron Johnson and Pat Toomey. Still, Trump's vote-challenged victory provides fodder for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tim Kaine, all of whom remain in the Senate to refute the big lie (as many Trump pronouncements in the election were) of the electorate's overwhelming love affair with the president-elect. If anything, his amazing feat was how close the election was. Why a man who spewed insults at anyone who opposed him, hurled racist vitriol, had questionable business practices, misogynist tendencies, bragged about not paying taxes, has fraud charges against him did so well is the mystery of this year's contest. However, even with his election, due to Hillary Clinton's miscalculations, notwithstanding her so-called superior ground game, her much greater campaign war chest, more broadcast ads and a stellar line-up of campaign surrogates, Trump didn't get more votes than she did. Unfortunately, Clinton and her team, who'd warned supporters about waking up November 9 having not done what was needed, are no doubt kicking themselves for taking the rust belt states for granted. A one percent or so difference in Wisconsin and Michigan, plus Pennsylvania and Florida where she campaigned much more, would've provided votes she needed to pull it off. Had she not cockily avoided more time in the Midwest instead of wooing iffy North Carolina, we would probably be addressing President-elect Hillary. While that might have prevented Hillary's defeat, it wouldn't have taken care of what must be achieved, the abolition of the outmoded Electoral College. After 2000, many thought something would be done, reasoning since there hadn't been a problem in 112 years, previous action hadn't been taken. However, with the huge focus on a Supreme Court decision based on political leanings of the justices, who prevented counting all the votes, one hoped changes were coming. Advertisement It wasn't to be, because the Electoral College is protected by small states, whose numbers are needed to provide the 3/4 tally to amend our constitution. In spite of their tiny populations they selfishly hold onto undemocratic power, endorsed by many, left and right (I don't know why), simply because that's the way it's always been. Really? Well, at one time so was slavery, and women couldn't vote. It's a holdover supposedly protecting minority rights, except with the Senate small states still hold lots of power. Plus, if presidential elections are decided by the House, as in 1800 and 1824, each state votes as one, irrespective of their numbers. So, Montana, with one congressman votes with the same weight as California and its 53 representatives. Why continue these absurd contradictions to democracy? What other modern democracy votes for presidents as we do? We are told it's because urban centers don't have similar interests as huge geographic areas with scant population and that's true, but why should voters in large swatches of underpopulated land have more sway than those in cities? The president has great powers and influence on our lives, issuing executive orders, vetoing legislation and appointing Supreme Court justices. If a president does something people in rural areas don't like, why should their views be more significant than others? Why should urban centers be stuck with conservative law and court decisions when the president who appointed those justices received fewer votes than his opponent? Yes, someone isn't going to be happy, but, frankly, too bad. And please don't say majority votes might cause tyranny. The same tyranny can be foisted upon the majority with our current system. The easiest solution is for more states to ratify the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact, which circumvents the Electoral College by having states ignore their own vote if the national popular vote favors another candidate. In order to take effect, states with a combined 270 electoral votes must pass it. At the moment only eleven have, with 165 votes. Thus, others are needed with a combined 105 votes, and then the people's intentions will be heard. In this case it would have been Hillary, and that wouldn't have pleased Trump supporters, but in other years it might go the other way. Consider though, in the five times the Electoral College or House of Representatives elected presidents with fewer popular votes, its always been a Democrat who lost: Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, Grover Cleveland in 1888, Al Gore in 2000 and now Hillary. Advertisement This isn't democracy, and it's time we demanded change. A supporter of Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts as Australians watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election at the University of Sydney, Australia, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Reed If you watched election results roll in Tuesday evening, a sea of red swept across the United States. The so called upper Midwest "blue wall" pitifully crumbled and the rust belt bled red. Mr. Trump's stunning success offers fundamentally important lessons for Americans and insights about their fears regarding immigration, unemployment, race, and terrorism. Trump achieved the unexpected and in the wake of it, demonstrated that even allegations of rape, sexual harassment, and avoiding paying (and disclosing) taxes are not enough to defeat his brand. The 2016 Presidential election also exposes how deeply and painfully America is divided not just by race and class, but also by sex. Postmortems will continue to play out over the weeks and months to come. For now, let's think about what the 2016 election signifies for women, girls, double standards, and the political process. For example, despite the fact that 64 percent of voters don't believe Mr. Trump has the temperament to serve as president, his victory was nonetheless decisive, defeating Secretary Hillary Clinton, whose impressive record of service was unmatched. Moreover, Mr. Trump clinched his victory with the votes of White Women; 53 percent voted for him according to CNN exit poll data. Advertisement How will girls in the U.S. reflect on this election given the widespread support for Mr. Trump, a man they've heard glorify sexual assault, joke about dating his daughter and agree with Howard Stern when he called Ivanka Trump "a piece of ass," and threaten to prosecute and "lock up" Secretary Clinton if elected president? Some commentators already ponder whether Trump's victory will further silence victims of rape, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Others wonder whether the anger cultivated and captured in this election will dissipate or reshape American politics for the near future. Women should be concerned for themselves, their daughters, and the U.S., because Supreme Court vacancies -- possibly as many as three or four -- will be filled in the coming four years by Mr. Trump. These vacancies, including the seat left empty by Justice Scalia's recent death, will not only determine the balance of the Court, but shape jurisprudence on reproductive rights, gun control, education policy, the environment, voting rights and much more. And despite women's reproductive health care seeming secure, just two years ago a divided court ruled that for-profit corporations could deny certain contraceptive coverage to their female employees based on religious objections. At various times, Mr. Trump has promised to appoint anti-choice justices and even to punish women who seek abortions. Will he keep to that position? With an aging Court, more vacancies are very likely in the coming years. Yet, it's not just the Supreme Court that is at stake. Mr. Trump will appoint senior leaders to his cabinet and dozens if not hundreds of individuals could fill agency positions that actually have direct and profound impacts on women's lives, including at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to name but a few. Advertisement Disappointed Clinton voters believe that with the presence of women in high offices, equality advances on all fronts, including for girls and women. However, even with the election of a woman as president, that does not always translate into achieving sex equality and reducing discrimination, precisely because sexism is so deeply entrenched, but weakly addressed (if at all) in our society. As I pondered a Clinton victory, I couldn't help but wonder whether a woman president in the U.S. would be accorded the respect and dignity granted her male predecessors and now Mr. Trump? These questions are important in the aftermath of the 2016 election--and reflect not only our citizenry, but our Congress. According to the Pew Research Center, "Women now make up 20% of both the House and Senate -- a record high for the U.S. Congress." Nevertheless, "that figure pales in comparison with most of its high-income peer nations -- and lags even farther behind most lower-income nations around the world." In over two hundred years, only 46 women have ever served the U.S. Senate, including the twenty now occupying that role. To place women's political representation in context, the U.S. ranks "an unimpressive 33rd" among 49 "high income" nations. When compared more broadly, the U.S. ranks 83rd among 137 nations according to the World Economic Forum's "Global Gender Gap 2014 Report." Indeed, the U.S. lags behind its northern neighbor, Canada, as well as France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Spain, but also Rwanda, Bolivia, Ecuador, South Africa, and Cuba in the political representation of women. The Inter-Parliamentary Union's "World Classification of Women in National Parliaments" as recently as September 2016 listed the United States at 97 among 187 nations. By any grading matrix--that is a failing grade. These rankings--across various indices and surveys--add context and weight to what women's rights advocates have long exposed as a shameful reality in U.S. politics and should be cause for deeper concern, no matter the victor in the presidential race. That is, the 2016 election could be read as a mandate against "establishment" candidates. However, it could also be read as part of a longer history of impeding women in politics in the U.S. This all matters, because Americans should want a vibrant and robust democracy that flourishes under the umbrella of equality. Research suggests that to get there, it will require more than simply electing a woman as president, although that is a big step. In our article, published last year in the Fordham Law Review, my co-author and I wrote "nations that elect women presidents (in Chile's case, twice in ten years) may not successfully advance women's rights without their broader representation in legislative bodies and the political will and support of male colleagues." Advertisement While scholars and commentators might presume that female representation alone achieves gender equality or liberalizes women's rights, such conclusions are misleading and inaccurate. Women's political representation without a critical mass offers only scant access to power and minimal influence. This is not to say women shouldn't be in high offices -- they should and the time is overdue. To achieve a norm-shifting culture as well the enactment of regulations and legislation that promote women's equality, requires more women on deck and the collaboration of men who can see beyond their colleagues' skirts and pantsuits. It also will require Americans to shed implicit and explicit biases against women in leadership. I was wrong. I never thought the country would vote for a candidate who called Mexicans rapists, bragged about grabbing women's genitals, mocked the disabled, for years supported the birther fraud, had no policies he could explain in any coherent fashion, is narcissistic and probably clinically ill at some level, and is not at all prepared to be President. We are in big trouble. For proof, see second paragraph. The argument from Trump's supporters is that he is not the racist, sexist, inarticulate charlatan I think he is. The problem with that argument is that the evidence for these realities comes from Trump's own mouth and behavior. Earnest supporters of the Donald nevertheless assert the contrary, saying the problem with people like me is that I take Trump "literally but not seriously" while they take him "seriously but not literally." That's cute. Now all of Trump is reduced to a metaphor. Still, however, I am perplexed. Because . . . I cannot, for the life of me, conjure in my mind the metaphorical meaning of "grab[bing]" women "by the pussy." Advertisement The pundits are having a field day. All of them are doing apologetic cartwheels as they fess up to missing the possibility that His Hairness could actually win. As with all things "punditry," however, these should be taken with an large grain of salt. Clinton won the popular vote and lost all the states she was predicted to win -- Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan (perhaps; the final vote is not yet in), and Wisconsin -- by small margins. She even lost some states she was predicted to lose -- Arizona, Georgia, Texas -- by smaller margins than would normally have been the case had past been prologue. The pundit notion that Hillary was thus a uniquely flawed candidate is a bit over the top. So is the notion that Bernie . . . or Elizabeth Warren . . . or Joe Biden . . . Would have won. All would have been painted as out of touch and unacceptable in the 24/7 negative campaign that was Trump's. To be painfully honest, going negative is what Trump does best. Always has been. He learned it at the feet of Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's doppelganger in the 1950s who made lying with a straight face a habit until Donald Trump turned it into an art form. So Bernie would have been painted as a Communist, Warren as an unvarnished Harvard professor who never created a job in her life, and Biden as . . . well . . . Biden -- an over-the-top. loose-lipped, forever politician (remember, Biden was elected to the Senate when he was 29 and has literally been a politician for more or less his entire adult life). Advertisement And, oh, by the way, lunch-bucket Joe also lives in a mansion in Wilmington, so the Scranton working-class-roots thing would have been a bit too much as well. None of this would have been fair. Bernie is not a Communist; Warren is a courageous and informed policy wonk whose programs, especially those involving oversight of Wall Street, would actually work; and Biden is authentic. But none of that would have mattered to our President-elect, the Tweeter-in-Chief. Where to from here? Though -- in light of my track record this year -- I shouldn't, I will venture some predictions. The first is that all those white, working class voters in the rust belt are about to be very disappointed. Bernie had a program for them. It involved something on the order of an FDR-like New Deal where government spending created jobs in places from which they have fled, and big-ticket expenses like health care and education were paid for publicly. That's not what Trump will do because that is not what the institutional party he now controls will deliver for him. Advertisement They will cut taxes, eliminate Obamacare, repeal Dodd-Frank, and tell you the free market will take care of the rest. But they will be wrong. We have seen this movie once before. Health savings accounts cannot fund medical care for poor people who have no paychecks or for the shrinking and struggling middle class living paycheck-to-paycheck. Wall Street unregulated is Wall Street run amok, at the end of which one is delivered into a financial meltdown tantamount to a depression. And tax cuts from Washington do not create jobs in Flint. They didn't during the last Administration in which the GOP controlled the House, Senate and Presidency, and they won't in this one either. Now, auto-industry bail outs, like the one Obama created at the beginning of his Presidency when Chrysler, Ford and GM were on their heels and about to die, do create jobs in Flint. But Trump and his fellow-travelers were against that legislation and presumably still are. The second is that the trade deals that exist won't be repealed and the one on offer (TPP) may still pass. The fact of the matter is that free trade significantly increases our nation's wealth. The problem with free trade is that the wealth created is very unevenly distributed. Were, however, free trade to end, the economic pie would shrink, dramatically, and the GOP Trump now runs won't give him the votes to do that. Instead, the new administration will tinker at the edges, bringing more claims under the deals to try to stop currency manipulation or dumping. In other words, on free trade, the Trump administration will pretty much do what would have been done in . . . a Hillary Administration. Advertisement The third is that there are now a host of national security experts who are very afraid. This I know for a fact, from sources I cannot disclose. Trump is dangerously uninformed and misinformed on issues of national security and needs to be set straight fast. Putin is not an ally. The middle east will not move forward if American troops are used to try to create the peaceful order only the people living there can create. Water-boarding didn't stop acts of terrorism in the past, won't do so in the future, and is a crime. The good news is that Trump spent 90 minutes with Obama yesterday, a meeting that no doubt amounted in large part to a polite tutorial on the subject of national security. The other good news is that all the "Never Trump" DC policy mavens who swore they would not help him are now coming back because they think they have a patriotic duty to stop a potential train wreck. The bad news is that the President-elect is that wreck. The fourth is that the Supreme Court is lost to the right-wing if Trump gets to pick three Justices and actually appoints the people he says he will. All of them -- and I mean "all" -- will overturn Roe v. Wade (and the right to gay marriage, if they get a chance), and radically shrink the federal government's ability to pass regulatory legislation founded on the Constitution's commerce clause. A friend yesterday predicted that this latter reality means an end to the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. That remains to be seen. But it is worth noting that the kind of federal role right-wing jurists envision is basically the role the federal government had in the 19th century. That role is pre-gay rights, pre-abortion rights, pre-civil rights and pre-New Deal. Advertisement Or -- to put it bluntly -- a world you and I . . . Will not recognize. Trump's supporters will say that my parade of horribles either will not be that horrible or will not happen. They'll assert that Trump is a pragmatist, a businessman, a fellow used to getting things done. That, however, is not what I see at first pass. What I see is a guy totally enamored of himself with a penchant for holding grudges and skewering rivals by whatever means, foul or fair, will work. To that mind-set is married a character loyal only to those who never waver in their support. His core advisers consist of his kids, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the three GOP amigos (Rudy, Christie and Newt), and (maybe) Mike Pence. I am not convinced any of them can tell him "No" and make it stick, and of the pols in the room, all are destroyers, not builders. Rudy and Christie come at destruction from the vantage point of prosecutors with sharp elbows and pols who shut down bridges, Pence from the vantage point of a right-wing talk radio industry (where his political career began) that demeans much more than it informs, and Newt from his early days in the House where he used the politics of personal destruction to end the Democratic Party's control of that body. In these advisers, Trump has found soul-mates. For some, Hillary Clinton didn't lost the election last Tuesday. She lost it in 1787 when guys in wigs created an anomalous (and anti-democratic) institution called the Electoral College that in two of the last five Presidential elections has awarded the office to the popular vote loser. The country is seriously and significantly divided. Anti-Trump street protests having already erupted in dozens of cities. There are enormous questions concerning the President-elect's temperament, competence and good faith. His "victory" is hardly a mandate. A humble administration in these circumstances would govern non-aggressively, strive mightily for bi-partisanship, and delete the twitter account. Advertisement Unfortunately, these folks are not that humble. I was wrong about this election once before. New administration, new Cabinet members. President-elect Donald Trump has already begun picking out his crew, but so far, his two concrete choices did not donate a penny to Trump's election effort. That would be Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, Trump's new chief of staff (who did give a modest $1,000 to House Speaker Paul Ryan) and his new chief strategist, Brietbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon, who didn't make a trackable donation this cycle. OpenSecrets Blog will run through the top names Trump is reportedly mulling for each cabinet position and look at the money behind them -- who they've donated to, and, if they were in public office, who their biggest contributors were. Since we're following the money, let's start the series with our country's chief financial officer, the Secretary of the Treasury. This cabinet head, who will replace current Secretary Jack Lew, will deal with tax and economic policies, manage public debt and oversee the Internal Revenue Service. Another important aspect of the job is supervising sanctions against foreign countries. Advertisement Steven Mnuchin: While Trump blasted Clinton throughout the campaign for her ties to Wall Street, the president-elect is considering this former Goldman Sachs exec for Treasury. Mnuchin was the Trump campaign's finance chairman, charged with rounding up as much money as possible for the effort. He maxed out his contributions to Trump with $5,400, and gave $200,400 to the Republican National Committee. Mnuchin is now the chairman and chief executive of private investment firm Dune Capital Management, whose employees gave $133,000 to the Democratic National Committee, which of course backed that party's nominee, Hillary Clinton. Mnuchin and his wife, Heather, have donated almost $465,000 since 1995, some of it to unlikely recipients. Heather gave $2,700 to Clinton last May, and since 2000, the couple has given $13,400 to Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns. While the majority of their cash this year went to Republicans, the couple doled out funds to Democrats Jason Kander ($250), who lost the Missouri Senate race, Michael Wildes ($1,900), defeated in a New Jersey House race, and Kamala Harris ($2,000), the newly-elected California senator. Another interesting note: Bloomberg reported Mnuchin could save millions in taxes with help from a 1989 rule past secretaries, such as Henry Paulson, have used in order to satisfy conflict-of-interest rules. He could sell stock without paying taxes on them if he puts the money he gains into Treasury notes. As of a February filing, he owns $97 million of CIT Group. Thomas Barrack Jr.: The chairman of private equity firm Colony Capital and a speaker at the Republican convention also proved his loyalty by maxing out to Trump this cycle, as well as giving more than $52,000 to the RNC and the Republican Party of Arkansas. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which pushes to elect more Republicans in the House, also received $19,000. Trump's close friend and business associate has donated around $128,000 since 1992, mostly to Republicans, but with multiple gifts going to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Advertisement In June, Barrack started a pro-Trump super PAC, Rebuilding America Now, that spent nearly $20 million. Most of it was used to attack Clinton. The fishing communities dotted along Africa's often inhospitable coastline have overcome many challenges before. But they now face some of their most difficult challenges ever. Many depend on fishing for their survival, but their fish stocks are declining and climate change accelerates that decline. The warming, rising, more acidic seas affect habitats and reproduction. This is an important environmental question, of course, but the stakes go higher than that. Many coastal communities have few other options besides fishing. As a Mauritanian minister once said: "Take fisheries away from our people, and they will have little else to lose." Political and social stability is at risk. Advertisement One of the best ways to build climate resilience for these communities is to protect their primary livelihood, the fish. And as delegates gather in Marrakesh for COP22, they must consider this fact. Protection will not be easy. Many reports, including the 2014 Africa Progress Report - Grain, Fish, Money - have warned how illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing are destroying fish stocks all around the continent. In West Africa, illegal fishing alone accounts for a third of all fish caught. The governments of Mauritania, the Seychelles, and others understand this better than anybody, of course, which is why they have been helping to establish the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) since early 2015, an initiative to protect fish stocks through the twin principles of transparency and participation. The FiTI is a global multi-stakeholder initiative, in which countries seek to shed a light on access to fish resources - who has access, what are the (financial) conditions, and how much is extracted? Answering these important questions in a deliberative process will help countries to improve governance in this crucial sector for the benefit of their citizens. Advertisement The FiTI is gathering steam. In addition to Mauritania and the Seychelles, Guinea, Indonesia, and Senegal are the first pilot countries. A first successful funding meeting was held in Washington last month during the Annual Meetings of the IMF / World Bank Group [editor's note ie in October], and under the guidance of an International Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group, the global FiTI transparency standard will be finalized by early next year. But the FiTI is not the only programme protecting fish stocks around the world. Rather, it is yet another example of how global fisheries may have reached some kind of tipping point in which they are now at the bottom and have begun the long, slow climb to the top. In June, for example, a global treaty, the Port State Measures Agreement came into force with some 35 governments, including the European Union, signing up. Momentum is building to end the ridiculous $20 billion worth of annual subsidies that contribute to over-fishing. And some African countries are swapping satellite intelligence to tackle pirate fishing. Better management of fish stocks will be key to any solutions. The FiTI's two core principles of transparency and broad-based participation will generate the trust and broad-based discussion so critical for the effective management of such a strategic, national resource. So our global multi-stakeholder initiative supports and complements existing efforts and makes them more effective. Not only does transparency make corruption more difficult in awarding contracts to foreign fleets, for example, it also informs good policy, builds trust, and enables governments to make better decisions. In short, it improves the quality of governance. Advertisement Governments are key partners. They understand well that better fisheries management benefits a country in terms of food and nutrition, jobs, and government revenues to build climate resilience. Indonesia, a major fisheries nation, will host the global FiTI launch conference on 27 April 2017, for example. But industries also prosper, because better fisheries management provides larger and more sustainable sources of fish stocks. This is why our initiative has more and more support from industry too. These facts should play to the benefits of the world's -- particularly Africa's -- coastal communities too. Delegates to COP22 know how the behaviours in one corner of our planet can impact a continent somewhere else. Africa's fishing communities have done so little to contribute to climate change and yet they face the harshest consequences. The least we can do is to help them build resilience, including by protecting their fish stocks. The results of the 2016 presidential election were beyond surprising. Now that we've had some time to digest them, it's time to find answers on many levels. Perhaps it's best to begin with assessing the role of the media--both traditional and social. To this end, I recently sat down with my friend Jerry Kane, an associate professor at Boston College. The following are excerpts of our conversation. PS: How has social media influenced the election cycle? JK: I do think social media is an inherent part of what have seen play out in the pre-election and post-election politics, but social media is not the whole story. We've heard a lot about "filter bubbles" and the role of fake news in the election cycle, but the real issue is much deeper. It's a vicious cycle between social media, traditional media, and natural human tendencies. People have inherent tendencies called homophily and confirmation bias. In other words, given the virtually infinite number of choices provided by social media, people tend to seek out people who are like them and information that confirms their existing worldview. The problem is that social media platforms are intentionally designed to exploit these characteristics to increase users' time on the site. To put it simply, social media is intentionally designed to be psychologically addictive by showing people exactly what they want to see. In political discourse, research shows that it leads to polarizing and extreme positions. Advertisement Designing for these human tendencies keeps you engaged in the platform, allowing them to collect more data and show you more advertising. While these design features may be good for business, it doesn't seem to be good for democracy, which depends on exchanging ideas between people who are and think differently from one another. PS: So, what's the role of traditional media in this process? JK: Traditional media journalists and editors also have access to social media, and they are increasingly using it as a source for reporting. This relationship also creates a feedback loop. First, it influences the thinking of those who write and curate the news, in the same way as I described earlier. Journalists thinking is increasingly driven by what they see on social media, which has been optimized to reinforce their our worldview. Second, these publishers have access to data analytics, which allows them to assess the popularity of a given story or topic. Knowing which stories or topics are more popular, the site can offer more stories on those popular topics. Third, as the site begins to create more content on those topics, it will attract a new audience whose confirmation bias leads them to seek out that content, reinforcing the cycle. So, not only are social media sites designed to show you what you want to see, the news media is capitalizing on this feature to drive ratings and developed content that appeals to a particular group of people, which introduces bias into the process. Biased news may be a more insidious problem for democracy than fake news. PS: What's the effect of these trends? JK: I think we are seeing it play out in the pre- and post-election dynamics. You have two different political groups/ parties who literally have no idea what the other side is talking about or how they could vote for the other candidate. I did an experiment this election season and consumed news from all across the political spectrum. It was fairly shocking how different the perspectives were and fairly exhausting to try and process it all. It's just much easier to give into our confirmation bias. When I tried to engage in discussion with friends or family members on the "issues," discussions often broke down when our different news sources provided markedly different facts. Advertisement PS: Can anything be done to fix this cycle? JK: That's a hard question, because these outcomes are not an error in the system, it's how each of them are intentionally designed. Certainly people can't simply turn off the tendency toward homophily or confirmation bias, it's part of our genetics. The traditional news media can't just stop being concerned about ratings, it's how they make money. Social media platforms can't just stop refining its design to appeal better serve up the information we want, it's why we keep engaging with the platform. If you find yourself caught up in this cycle, the best short-term solution may be to break the cycle by stepping away from social media for a bit. Not only might it help bring about peace of mind, but it may also be the best way to motivate social media platforms to address this problem. Their business models are dependent on you trusting them with your time and attention. PS: Is there anything else that can be done? Tuesday's election was frightening in many respects. But from an ecological perspective, it is an unimaginable disaster. The United States had recently committed to the Paris agreement to begin addressing climate change, and President Obama recently signed the important agreement on the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) with President Xi of China. But if the incoming president of the U.S. keeps his promises, he will reverse these agreements, deepen our dependence on coal mining, increase oil drilling in the Arctic, and open the way for environmentally destructive methods such as fracking. One of the world's most effective environmental organizations, 350.org, is normally neutral on political candidates. However, the environmental devastation that would follow from a Trump presidency is so great that even 350.org joined the battle to defeat the Trump campaign. For people who care about the future of the planet and who pay even passing attention to science, the new presidency represents a devastating defeat. Decades from today, people may look back on this election as the moment when the global community lost its (already slim) chance to prevent run-away global warming. Advertisement That said, we need to take a deep breath. Now, more than ever, we have to roll up our sleeves and get going. There are at least three crucial things those of us who care about the future of our planet need to do, and we have only four years to get them done: We must redouble our efforts to communicate the planet's actual situation to voters in the United States. Climate change is a bigger threat to jobs, prosperity, and a secure future than any other threat humanity faces. We must show that there is still hope. There are many positive examples of people and groups [[add link to EcoLabs page of the EcoCiv website]] that are already demonstrating what the transition to a sustainable civilization looks like. We need to walk our talk to embody sustainable modes of living on this planet. A serious environmental movement has its origins at the grassroots; it begins with people whose actions inspire others. Finally, if we cannot influence our own government in the right directions, we need to increase our international focus. It's now crucial that we help strengthen serious ecological movements around the world. Last night shattered the dream that the United States would take leadership in the move toward an ecological civilization, at least for the next four years. By contrast, in Europe, in Asia, and around the planet, people and organizations are actually taking decisive steps -- as individuals, organizations, NGOs, and governments. Even if we cannot bring about change in our own country, we can support the efforts of the people who can make and are making a difference. As a scholar of religion and science, I know that it's not enough just to list the facts and figures. We must also be committed to investing our souls, spirits, and resources to assist in the transition to an ecological civilization. Please fight discouragement and despair, the desire to give up now. The work on behalf of our planet has only become more important. It calls for a greater investment of time and money than ever before. So let's now join our efforts together with renewed energy in the fight for the planet. We may or may not be able to avoid an environmental catastrophe, along with the collapse of economies and social structures that it would bring. Yet in the fight for a deep transformation of society, we can help humanity prepare for the collapse, teaching people (and ourselves!) how to find ecological ways to live on this earth over the long term. In these actions we will find renewed hope. And if we are successful, perhaps we will avoid the collapse after all. Just a few points to start off: There are no "Islamic countries" as in countries that are in perfect compliance with Islam's normative teachings. There are certainly Muslim majority countries however, so I will answer the question based on this. Muslim majority countries, more than 56 of them, are widely diverse. One cannot make a single general statement on the role of women that would apply everywhere. Bosnia is different from Yemen is different from Indonesia. What I can say however is this: The status of women in any country, including Muslim majority countries, is more the product of human development than religion. We love to blame religion for everything and it's not hard to understand why. When fathers marry off their child in Yemen, they may say Islam allows this. Yet, other factors predict child marriage far more than religion. In Yemen, 52% of girls are married before 18. However, in Algeria, the average age of marriage for women is higher than it is in the US (female general public). The difference between Yemen and Algeria is education and economic development, not Islam. Mum and son (6-7) drawing Our country made history on Tuesday, but not the way that we expected. Instead of our first woman President, our country elected someone with open contempt for our Constitution and our democracy, an anti-Founding Father. And the next morning my wife Robbie and I had to tell our 10-year-old son Jacob that Donald Trump would be our next President. His immediate reaction of fear, shock, and horror broke our hearts. Jacob told us how scared he was that he wouldn't be safe. He wanted to know what would come next. He asked what would happen about global warming. And he worried about friends, a gay couple we had recently stayed with while canvassing in Ohio for Hillary Clinton. Are they going to be OK? he asked. Yes, we told him, they would be. But they live in Ohio, and he pointed to the map on the front page of the New York Times. See, it's red. That means it went for Trump. How will they be OK? We looked at him. The truth is that his fears are valid. But our reassurance is also true: You are safe. Advertisement Our friends will be OK: they have each other, friends, family and community -- a good life. This election and Presidency is part of a process. We don't like it, but sometimes in democracies things happen that we don't like. And then we read him the comforting words that our Rabbi had sent us. Jacob is also right: global warming will be tougher to fix now, along with a multitude of other issues. And while we and our friends will be fine, so many others will not be. Jacob processes his thoughts and feelings by drawing them out. So, once he had overcome his initial shock, he began to draw a plan to deal with the Trump Presidency. His first drawing was an expression of pure aggression -- he showed it to us and asked us what we thought. Well, we said, it looks very... Trumpian. He stared at us and back at his drawing, and then said, that won't work. Tossing his original drawing aside, Jacob came back with a clean sheet of paper. And together, as a family, Jacob and his two Jewish mothers drew up a plan. The very fact that the three of us are a family, in every legal and emotional sense of that word, is already a refutation of so much of the hate and ignorance that has spewed out this campaign season. So here's the plan that Jacob drew up. First, we decided, we needed to get stronger. Then, we want to spend more time with the people we love. We will also do more direct service helping others, because service requires us to see hardship and those whom it affects, and is also an active reminder that we do have the power to make change through our individual actions, however small. The next step is to learn something new and hard, to surprise our minds and stay engaged. Advertisement And the last step? I'm sure you can guess. We go out and win back our country. The Trump voters wanted us to feel their rage and pain. Well, we do. There is no doubt that the Trump campaign was fueled by racism, antisemitism, misogyny and xenophobia. By the hate and fear of being economically displaced, of experiencing a supposedly natural order of female subordination being upended, of anticipating an American future that is racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. And now the rest of us are experiencing the bleak inversion of that parade of horribles: a menacing white majority and cratering economy, the further degradation of our environment, the evisceration of Obamacare and the Voting Rights Act, the rollback of reproductive and civil rights. So I don't know if the putative reconciliation that is being tentatively invoked by some is a possibility. While we all may share the same spectrum of negative emotions, the basis of our fears is radically opposed, as are our proposed solutions. We all understand that economic instability needs to be addressed, but the root question of why it exists is not so easily agreed upon - much less its redress. That real divide does not make the problem of inequality and instability any less urgent. Nor does one season of successful political and social bullying determine the course of American history. Dahlia Lithwick has written an incredible piece in Slate entitled 'Will Trump's Rule of Law Be Our Rule of Law?', asking whether Americans and our democratic institutions will bend to one man's will and version of the law? Date: 11th November 2016 The Honorable Donald Trump President-Elect of the United States of America Dear Mr. President-Elect, I have the pleasure of extending my congratulations on your election as the 45th President of the United States of America, and my best wishes for the success of your Presidency to bring, peace, happiness, and prosperity for the American people. I would like to take this opportunity to bring to your attention issues that are of vital importance for the future of the Iranian people and their relationship with the United States in particular, and the international community at large. Today, the Iranian people, the Middle East and the free world face an existential threat from radical Islam, which is a direct by-product of "Khomeinism" and its revolution in Iran in 1979. Ever since, the leaders of the Islamic Republic have methodically executed their plan of exporting Khomeini's ideology of political Islam. This regressive ideology has spread like a cancer across the globe: from the Middle East to Asia and Africa, and even to Europe and the Americas. Advertisement To further their aims, the leaders of the Islamic Republic and their henchmen have used terrorism, political assassinations, mass executions, crimes against humanity, cyber terrorism, proxy wars, hostage taking, money laundering, as well as arms and drug trafficking, which has resulted in regional and global destabilization and conflicts. Fifteen months ago, the Iran National Council for Free Elections declared our conditional support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the nuclear program, primarily to avert the risk of war and prevent the theocratic regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, at the time we warned that it is an illusion to think that the engagement policy could moderate the behavior of the Islamic Republic, and that unless the provisions of the agreement are enforced unequivocally, the agreement would indeed embolden the regime, to both increase its oppression at home and its hegemonic policies abroad. That is why we asked that safeguards be implemented, so as to ensure that the regime cannot use the billions of dollars that the lifting of sanctions would release, to finance oppression and terrorism, and to sow regional conflicts and proxy wars. Mr. President-Elect, the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people wish to be partners with the free world and participate in its values of humanism and democracy. This urge for freedom is best exemplified by the daily struggles of Iranian women who are treated as second-class citizens. They continue to demonstrate their desire for equality, despite the continuous brutal oppression that is waged upon them. Our struggle is not about religions, nor is it a war of civilizations. We are engaged in a struggle of values against those advanced by radical Islam. In any event, the solution is neither war, nor maintaining the status quo. The best policy for defeating political Islam is to support the democratic desire of the Iranian people: to engage, once and for all, in a true dialogue with the secular and democratic forces. Advertisement It is important to recognize and acknowledge that the only effective and legitimate form of political change in Iran, is a process implemented by and at the hands of the Iranian people. Moral and political support from the free world for the vast majority of Iranians can only be regarded as a positive contribution to a swift, non-violent transition to a secular and democratic government through free and fair elections in Iran. The Iran National Council for Free Elections hopes that your administration will bear in mind the aspiration of the Iranian people and engage the secular democratic forces, providing support for the struggle of my fellow compatriots for peace, freedom, and democracy. Yours sincerely, One of the most consequential statistics of the presidential election is that more than 80 percent of white, "evangelical" Christians supported Donald Trump. From Florida to the Rust Belt states of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the votes of those who self-identify as evangelical formed the core of President-elect Trump's support. Questions about this overwhelming endorsement reverberated during the campaign. How could self-described, "family-values" Christians support a thrice-married adulterer who bragged about his ability to engage in sexual harassment? When he talked about building a wall and referred to Mexicans as "rapists," where was the invocation of Leviticus 19:33-34, which commands the Israelites to welcome and even "love" the resident alien among them? The Apostle Paul was absolutely correct that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:2), but there was a striking shift in this election. Many polls indicated that a majority of "evangelicals" no longer attach much importance to personal morality as a prerequisite for effective and faithful public service. The events of this nasty campaign and the election of Mr. Trump warrant a reevaluation of how we use "evangelical." The Greek word, euangelion, means "good news," as in Mark 1:1. "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." Within the New Testament, an "evangelist" is someone who announces a profound way of being in the world, built on love of God and neighbor, protection of the poor, and humility. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus requires believers through their faith and action to share this specific message of sticking up for the most vulnerable (e.g., Matthew 25). Advertisement It is time to reclaim the "evangelical" designation for a much broader swath of believers, to demand that pollsters and pundits quit asking whether someone self-identifies as an "evangelical" when finding out political preferences. Perhaps a satisfactory alternative and more accurate designation would be "politically conservative Christian." Within the new landscape of a Trump presidency, "evangelical" could indicate someone who stands on the front lines against injustice. Might some Christians across the political spectrum bring "good news" to a divided country by repudiating racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobic harassment, sexism, and bullying in all of their insidious forms? When any person, from the President or a college student, exhibits bigotry, the only Christian response is unequivocal condemnation. Already the Klu Klux Klan has announced that they will march in North Carolina to celebrate President-elect Trump's victory. The example of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus himself necessitates direct protest against this type of event. To allow such behavior to fester and infect our common life is the antithesis of what it means to be "evangelical." Believers do not have to agree on every hot-button issue to find common ground. Progressives have often been snide and dismissive of politically conservative Christians, leading to divisions in communities and even families. Conversely, politically conservative Christians have acted like support for gay marriage and differing views on reproductive rights for women are indicative of immoral, perverse, and therefore un-Christian beliefs. Undoubtedly these tensions will persist, but one hope (I would even call it a necessity) is that at least some believers might bridge differences over hot-button issues and speak up together about the "good news" of Jesus's ministry of compassion and justice. Many younger believers are demonstrating their willingness to work across longstanding dividing lines. Advertisement Martin Luther King, Jr., in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," declared that inaction among his fellow Christians is contrary to the model of the first Christians: "If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century." Dr. King's warning and personal example are more timely than ever, as churches of all stripes struggle with dwindling numbers and a growing sense of irrelevance. The central reason for this slide into irrelevance is the frequent unwillingness to be passionate defenders of love of God and neighbor, which Jesus describes as the core of the faith (Matt 22:36-40). Jesus's call to radical discipleship necessitates direct action whenever bigotry and injustice occur. Such action is our best, most authentic hope for growing the church. There is plenty of evidence to suggest Trump is both ignorant of and disinterested in democratic norms, but what does that mean? Here's a quick mental exercise to help that answer that question. First, the setup: In 2013, President Obama nominated Republican James B. Comey to run the FBI. He could have chosen a member of his own party, but in the spirit of bipartisanship he didn't. Democrats helped to confirm Director Comey. The Senate voted 93-1, with only Republican Senator Rand Paul voting against. Leaving aside the question of how much damage Director Comey's unprecedented politicizing of the Bureau's investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server did to her chances of winning the Presidency, we know from reporting done by the New York Times and others that Comey's October 28th letter to Congress was likely in response to pressure he felt from "rogue" anti-Clinton agents in the FBI's New York field office. Apparently worried that a leak from these agents would reflect badly on his apolitical reputation, Comey notified Congress about the discovery of emails on a laptop used by Huma Abedin and the news dominated the final two weeks of the campaign, dampening enthusiasm for a Clinton presidency and energizing Trump's Republican supporters. Advertisement Here's the exercise: In a Trump administration, will these anti-Clinton FBI agents be investigated and punished for leaking information to a sympathetic reporter at the Wall Street Journal and the Trump campaign itself (via Trump surrogate and rumored future Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani)? Or might they even be rewarded and promoted for their unethical and criminal acts which helped Trump secure the White House (and Giuliani the top law enforcement job in the country)? If your answers are "no" to the first question and "yes" to the second, congratulations, that's dictatorship - where the nation's police force uses its investigatory power to undermine and discredit the leader's political enemies. Back to Obama's nomination of Comey, who had formerly served as a senior Justice Department official under President George W. Bush. Will Trump and the GOP follow Obama's bipartisan example by nominating and confirming a Democrat to run the FBI? Or will President Trump instead choose a useful ally, one who might be counted on to authorize or at the very least permit the power of the FBI to undermine Trump's enemies, including the next Democratic nominee? If your answers are "no" to the first question and "yes" to the second, congratulations, you have a sense of what's coming. By Dylan Scott WASHINGTON -- There are so many unknowns about how President-elect Donald Trump will change health policy. But one early tell will be who he taps to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. A lot of names are floating around right now, and initial speculation can seem ill-conceived in hindsight; we never had HHS Secretary Tom Daschle under President Obama, after all. Nevertheless, here are possible contenders for the most powerful position in health policy, according to early and often anonymously sourced reports. Advertisement Ben Carson Trump praised the famed surgeon throughout the 2016 campaign, and his name is one of the most frequently mentioned in early reports. Carson hasn't said whether he'd take the HHS role, and he'd have no government experience to lean on. His own health plan during his presidential campaign focused almost entirely on expanding access to health savings accounts. Carson has also, since Trump's victory, urged Republicans to make sure they have a replacement plan ready before they repeal the Affordable Care Act. Bobby Jindal Jindal, the former Louisiana governor, has been a front-runner for a Republican administration cabinet post for years, and the Wall Street Journal reported that he is among the contenders Trump is considering. Advertisement He has administrative experience as a governor and spent time in the US House. Jindal released his own health care plan to replace the ACA during his presidential campaign. It was designed to shift the conversation from one about coverage to one about costs, his former aides say. It also shared a lot in common with Trump's stated agenda: shoring up high-risk pools, expanded health savings accounts, block-granting Medicaid. Newt Gingrich The former House speaker would bring a wealth of knowledge to the position, but it remains to be seen whether he winds up at HHS, or the State Department, or in some more amorphous advisory role. Aside from ACA and Medicare reform, Gingrich has been an enthusiastic supporter of the National Institutes of Health since his days as speaker, and he called last year for doubling the NIH budget. He styles himself as something of a science nerd. Gingrich has also been outspoken about the opioid crisis and he advocates for medication-assisted treatment. Rich Bagger Bagger has advised Trump's transition team, and Politico calls him a "longer shot" to take over HHS. He worked under New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of Trump's most loyal allies, and as a top executive at the drug companies Celgene and Pfizer. Advertisement Trump's transition website says he wants to "reform the Food and Drug Administration, to put greater focus on the need of patients for new and innovative medical products," an area where Bagger would be useful. By Eric Boodman At parties and bars, he introduces himself as a "rat tickler." The title makes Shimpei Ishiyama sound like he belongs in some forgotten guild of yore, with the Victorian "pure-finders," who collected dog dung for a living, and the "flankers and flaggers," who kept partridges in the range of hunters' guns. But he is, in actual fact, a neuroscientist, and his rat-tickling is anything but antiquated. By trying to titillate these rodents -- and recording how their neurons respond -- Ishiyama and his adviser are unraveling a mystery that has puzzled thinkers ever since Aristotle posited that humans, given their thin skin and unique ability to laugh, were the only ticklish animals. Aristotle was wrong, it turns out. In a study published Thursday in Science, Ishiyama and his adviser, Michael Brecht, not only found that rats squeaked and jumped with pleasure when tickled on their backs and bellies, but also that these signs of joy changed according to the rodents' moods. And, for the first time, they pinpointed a cluster of neurons that makes this sensation so powerful that it causes an individual being tickled to lose control. Advertisement "It's truly innovative and groundbreaking," said Jeffrey Burgdorf, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who reviewed the paper. "It takes the study of emotion to a new level." Burgdorf has played a central role in our understanding of animal tickling. He was part of a team that first noticed, in the late 1990s, that rats make a symphony of noises when they are experiencing social pleasure. Others had already noted that they trill and yip and sing during sex and meals -- all above the range of human hearing -- but the lab where Burgdorf worked noticed that the rodents emitted similar sounds while playing. And so one day, the senior scientist in the lab said, "Let's go tickle some rats." They quickly found that those cries of pleasure doubled. But other researchers didn't share the rats' joy. Prominent scientists of emotion tried to impede the publication, accusing the team of "the sin of anthropomorphism," Burgdorf and his colleague Jaak Panksepp wrote in a review paper in 2003. Tickling -- and why it has such a powerful effect on us -- has remained largely mysterious. "Here's the problem in a nutshell, and it's a little philosophical," Burgdorf told STAT. "In order for us to function, we have to ignore about 90 percent of our sensory information. We have to process only the important stimuli. What the brain is doing is saying this tickling is important, and I'm going to be able to discriminate this kind of stimulation from other kinds of stimulation." Advertisement Ishiyama, a postdoc at Humboldt University in Berlin, wanted to figure out how that worked. Everyone knows how to titillate an ocelot -- you oscillate its tit a lot. But designing a rigorous experiment on how tickling is processed by rat brains isn't as obvious, and is hardly mainstream in neuroscience. What Ishiyama did was to drill tiny holes into the rodents' skulls and insert wires into their brains that could pick up or elicit electrical currents. A day later, he said, they were fully recovered from the operation -- and were ready for tickling. Using a terrarium typically reserved for lab shrews, Ishiyama made a "tickle box," covering its walls with black foam. Then, he lifted the rats out of their cages, bringing them to the box, and tickling them, on and off, for 15 minutes. All the while, their brain activity was being picked up by electrodes, zinging up through the holes in their skulls and along wires that fed into a computer, while a special microphone recorded their ultrasonic squeaks. He found that certain networks of neurons in a brain region called the somatosensory cortex began to fire when he tickled the rats. It didn't start immediately; they had to learn first that Ishiyama's tickling hand wasn't a threat. Once they did, though, they went wild, chasing his hand when he stopped tickling them, making joy jumps and pleasure squeaks when he did. "At the first day, they rarely chased my hand, they didn't recognize my hand as a playmate yet," he said. "But after a few days they learned, and they started playing with my hand." Advertisement What was surprising was that the same neurons in the somatosensory cortex fired while the rats were playing with his hand, as though the tickling was still going on. "If I transfer them to the tickle box, some rats already start vocalizing because they know I will tickle them," said Ishiyama. But when he put them in a stressful situation -- balancing them on a small platform with their nocturnal faces blinded by a bright light -- they no longer reacted to the tickling, either in their behavior or in their brain activity. To make sure that he had indeed found a place in the brain where tickling is processed, Ishiyama then stimulated that area with electrical currents. The rats began to jump like rabbits and sing like birds. "The authors have been very adventurous; they are not looking under the streetlamp," said Daniel O'Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who studies touch, and who was not involved in the study. Advertisement O'Connor noted that the perception of touch -- the shape and texture of an object, whether it's vibrating -- are different from the emotions triggered, and neuroscientists often thought that the emotional response wasn't processed in the somatosensory cortex along with the more basic feelings. To him, that finding was very surprising. A grizzly bear reminds motorists to obey road rules in Denali National Park in Alaska. Photo credit: Jonathan Irish To look out onto the wildness of the open Alaskan tundra, you will start to understand why Denali is the most visited and well-known of all of Alaska's national parks--it's a place that personifies wilderness. Where the wild things are, we go in Denali. Photo credit: Jonathan Irish Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley) National Park in interior Alaska is home to the highest peak in North America, and you would think that it is that distinction that earned it National Park protection. It was, however, the first national park that was protected as a wildlife habitat and sanctuary. In the early part of the 20th century, after spending a great deal of time in the area observing wildlife species, a naturalist named Charles Sheldon began approaching Congress about setting aside the land he loved so dear so that poachers and hunters wouldn't destroy the populations of birdlife, caribou, wolves, moose, grizzlies, and Dall sheep that inhabited the region. His efforts proved successful and in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established Mt. McKinley National Park--Alaska's first national park. Advertisement One hundred years later, thanks to Sheldon's efforts, we as visitors are able to head out into the wilderness of Alaska on what we can only compare to African Safari--American style. In the African bush, wildlife lovers are in search of "the big five"--lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo. In the Alaskan wild, also referred to as "the bush," visitors seek glimpses of the American Big Five: wolves, Dall sheep, caribou, grizzlies, and moose. Guided bus rides are spent searching for animals in their natural setting. Grizzly bears appear as golden thimbles on the expanse. Moose stick their prominent noses out of the brush. Elusive wolves and lynx can be spotted in the early morning and late afternoon in search of food. Alaska's state bird, the Ptarmigan, wander among the lowland trees. Golden eagles fly overhead. It's as if time has stood still here; animals conducting themselves as they have for millennia. The Denali landscape scenery is no less extraordinary than the animals living in its vastness. Taking a macro view, you will see the soft beauty of a Renaissance-era landscape painting. Focusing in on the components, you will begin to see all of the little details that make the painting view even more incredible--the braided rivers, the spruce trees, open tundra, boreal wetlands, and of course, the wildlife that calls it all home. Advertisement A shy moose peeks out of the brush. Photo credit: Jonathan Irish And then there is the mountain--Denali--the tallest peak in North America standing at 20,320-feet above sea level. The word "Denali" is native Athabascan for 'The High One' or "The Great One." It is so high that it creates its own weather system rendering it invisible two thirds of the time, meaning that many visitors may never see the fabled peak during their time in its midst. On the bright side, there is so much else to see and do at the park that you won't feel like you've missed a thing by the time you pack up to leave, whether you see the mountain or not. Denali, "The Great One," in black and white. Photo credit: Jonathan Irish Denali National Park is 6 million acres in size, and in that space there is only one driving road. Even the most basic math skills will tell you that those two factors make it a challenging place to safely explore. That lack of easy access can be greatly limiting. But that's part of the draw--once you figure out how to get out there, you will find yourself without anyone else around for miles--tens of miles; hundreds of miles, thousands upon thousand of miles. In that spirit, we wanted to concisely outline several popular ways to get into Denali National Park and Preserve, and some awesome stops to check out while there. Read on! Denali Park Road Denali Park Road is the only road in the national park. Private vehicles can travel 15 miles of it, and beyond that, its 92-miles must be explored aboard a concessioner-operated tour/shuttle bus that offers daily trips to the road's end. The narrated, scenic drive through the park is geared primarily to wildlife viewing, the most commonly seen species being grizzly bears, moose, caribou, and birds. While you may get lucky and see wildlife on or near the road, you will most likely see them from a bit of a distance so bring binoculars and/or a telephoto lens to get a closer look. Concessioner operated shuttle busses also facilitate multi-use access allowing riders to hop on and hop off at popular backcountry areas and campsites along the road so they can more easily get off the tourist trail and explore the park on foot. Advertisement To make arrangements for any and all types of bus tours in Denali, head to the Wilderness Access Center near the park entrance and plan in advance due to the popular nature of the experience. A concessioner-operated tour bus on Denali Park Road, the only road in the park, stretching 92 miles. Photo credit: Stefanie Payne Camping & Hiking Camping is without a doubt one of the most cost-effective ways to experience the park in a more intimate way. Established campgrounds are situated up to 30 miles along Denali Park Road and must be reserved in advance. As private vehicles are only allowed 15 miles of access, campers are granted a special road permit with their reservation to drive to and from the campground that they are staying at only once (there are guards along the way, so no funny business!) Whether tent camping or boondocking with your RV or travel trailer (Wally the Airstream was so happy at the Teklanika campground!) you will have the wilderness on your doorstep in every direction and can set off to explore wherever you want from there--a way into the wild! Wally the Airstream found a sweet spot in the Teklanika campground, located 30 miles in on Denali Park Road. Photo credit: Stefanie Payne Backcountry Camping Denali is a wide open and trail-less expanse that satisfies perfectly those who want to get off-grid and sleep in the wild while setting up their own accommodations along the way. You have to have some backcountry chops to take this on--dangerous wildlife roams free throughout the entire park, weather changes on a dime, and services and emergency help are few and far between and sometimes, days away. Backpackers in Denali have to be armed with their fair share of self-sufficiency and survival skills. Once you have that squared away, you are free of all of your common tethers in Denali's stunningly rugged wilderness. Advertisement Flightseeing Tours If you can drop a bit of coin, a flightseeing tour by plane or by helicopter is a great way to get a comprehensive glimpse of the vastness and intricate beauty that makes up the landscape of Denali National Park and Preserve. Cost per person typically starts around $200 an hour, and goes right on up depending on where you go and what type of trip you take. For companies operating in the area, we refer to the Denali National Park flightseeing page which offers up plenty of recommendations. To engage in a comprehensive look at the breadth of Denali's 6-million acre landscape, hop on a bush plane and enjoy a flightseeing tour! Photo credit: Stefanie Payne Lodges Gather ye hope from the "Faithless Electors!" Though there has long been a case for eliminating the disproportional power of Electoral College, their power could still pivot the 2016 election, indeed, exactly as the framers intended should the populace elect an unfit candidate. A new Change.org petition urges the 538 electors to invoke their right to break loyalty with their states and vote according to personal conscience. The petition gathered over 2,000,000 signatures at a rate of 30,000 per minute by the end of its first day and now approaches 4,000,000 signatures. Throughout American history, 157 electors have invoked this right, (71 because the candidate died; but 86 for personal conscience.) Although a long-shot, a break by as little as 10 electors voting according to their party pledge could yet salvage what seems an untenable situation. If as many as 42 faithless electors emerged for Mrs. Clinton, the process would be further shortened. It could be messy, as state laws have their own rules surrounding faithless electors. Some could face fines of $1,000. Nonetheless, the opportunity for faithless electors to vote their conscience offers a crucial crack through which shines hope for millions of Americans. Advertisement Although the Electoral College is largely seen as an antiquated constitutional construct, the framers designed it specifically to balance the will of the people with the critical need for an intellectually and morally fit president. The New York Times notes: "[I]n an era that predated mass media and even political parties, they were concerned that average Americans would lack enough information about the candidates to make intelligent choices. So informed 'electors' would stand in for them." Never has there been a greater imbalance. Never has the Electoral College been called upon to use their superpowers as they are now. Shamelessly manipulated by political propaganda and decaying media integrity (fringe, mass, and social), cognitive dissonance is at an all-time high, and Americans now face a cataclysmic future should the situation be solidified by the Electoral College. Americans wanted change. Left only with a choice between change that drives our Constitution off the proverbial cliff or a perceived status quo, they chose the cliff. The problem is that hitting the "rock bottom" of the cliff would effectively splat the healthiest values of an already ailing America. The framers intended the Electoral College to serve as a safety net to such a cliff. Advertisement Although at first depicted as a futile Hail Mary, the Change.org petition and letter asking the electors to vote their conscience now offers fragile hope for millions of Americans who, for four full days, have hit their knees in a prayer for deliverance from the catastrophic November 8th election of Donald Trump. Hail Mary passes have been known to work. As a constitutionally legal procedure, both parties would be obligated to honor the outcome, just as the 2000 Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision was honored. In an already ailing America, a close call would become a wake-up call of epic proportions perhaps sufficient to rattle the status quo. It's a long shot, but America may yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, a timeworn phrase which suddenly brightens the hopeful heart for American dignity. Please, add your name to the petition: Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19, and SHARE with all your might! Your comments and insights to this article are welcome. See also: Electoral College Can Stop Unfit Trump with Another Republican As a foodie through and through, I gravitate toward food people. I love finding that wonderful butcher, fishmonger or baker and immersing myself in their inspiring world. I am almost magically attracted to places where the staff are totally jazzed about the products; where their "work" feels more like play. I practically want to fix these people up with my cousin's best friend or my best friend's cousin, just so that we can talk about food at family gatherings. One of my favorite foodie field trips is to the Fatted Calf, next to the Oxbow Market in downtown Napa, California. The Fatted Calf is a small specialty butcher joyfully offering off the hook charcuterie created in small batches with seasonal ingredients. This lovely little shop's young and very attractive butchers are exuberant and fun as they describe their unique products. As an accomplished and energetic cook, I am definitely one to make my pork shoulder, but a glance around Fatted Calf made me reconsider. Their breathtaking pork shoulder al' Diavolo, stuffed with a tantalizing spice citrus marinade, didn't just call my name-it serenaded me. It was love at first sight. The Fatted Calf is known for their mortadella, salumi, and chorizo. The smoked meats and bacon can best be described as divine. Their French-inspired, old world techniques are crossed with high-voltage, modern, vital artisans. This "kick-ass place," as director of operations, Heather Bailie describes it, is owned by Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller who started the company in 2004 in the DogPatch neighborhood of San Francisco. What began as a stand at a farmers' market grew to two locations with 40 full time employees. My personal favorites are the very large delicious craft beer links which I purchase often-they are like an elevated, high quality gastropub hot dog and are crazy good, with a wonderful pop-it's like a celebration!-and especially savory paired with their homemade sauerkraut and a tangy mustard. Advertisement Talking to that hot butcher lady is always a treat. Alex the manager is one of my favorite foodie-proprietors, but today Heather Bailie helped me, and she's about as enthusiastic as you can get about their selection. Every detail is in order at this very cool shop, even down to their classic butcher uniform with a twist: black short sleeve shirt and long black apron with red stitching that says Fatted Calf-utilitarian chic to be sure. Bailie is so proud of all they do and even gave me a tour of the curing room where they are curing hundreds of all kinds of salumi. The discovery and exploitation of very large shale gas reserves in countries like the United States have transformed the energy market. South Africa may also possess potentially large resources of shale gas. This could have a significant positive impact on the country's energy balance should it be decided to exploit these resources. The exploitation of these key energy resources might also have a significant social, economic or environmental impact while also presenting considerable technical challenges. Given the recent challenges the country is facing in terms of energy supply, the possibility of exploiting shale gas deposits for power generation is of current significance. Shale gas also presents other downstream opportunities. Some include providing a key resource for the production of liquid fuels and chemicals, or enabling the development of a domestic market for gas as a cleaner energy resource. Advertisement Uncertainties South Africa's Karoo region, in the south west of the country, is thought to have significant reserves of shale gas. Recently there has been considerable interest from the government and various companies like Shell, Falcon and Bundu to develop a shale gas industry there. Considerable uncertainties exist regarding the extent of these reserves and the geology at depths where they are typically found. These and other uncertainties and constraints include the following. The quantum of shale gas in the Karoo is still unclear: estimates range between 20 and 400 trillion cubic feet. None of these reserves has yet been proven. There are also constraints relating to geographical regions. For example, no fracking may take place in the vicinity of the Square Kilometre Array station project. The project consists of the largest network of radio telescopes ever built. Ensuring that no hydraulic fracturing takes place at depths less than 1500m to protect groundwater resources will also reduce the geographical area of interest. Shale gas exploitation requires the use of relatively large quantities of water. Given that potable groundwater should preferably not be used for any such exploitation, greater clarity is needed on the availability of deep-level saline water. This is considered to be acceptable for use in hydraulic fracturing. Baseline studies need to be carried out to ascertain with greater certainty the environment at depths greater than 3 km underground. Such baseline studies should also ensure that there is a clear understanding of the status of the human and natural environments before any fracking commences. South Africa has a serious shortage of the high-level skills that would be required to implement such an industry. Strategies need to be set in place to develop skills to ensure sustainable development of the shale gas industry. International experience has highlighted the critical need to have all the necessary legislative and regulatory structures in place. But also, a sufficient number of regulators with the required skills before a shale gas industry is launched. The implementation of a shale gas industry in an area like the Karoo may have a significant socio-economic impact on the local population. Similar concerns have been expressed in studies especially from Canada and Australia. So it is important to ensure that there is a full understanding of the potential impact. Plans must be developed to manage them. Resolution of these uncertainties requires extensive and ongoing consultation with all relevant parties. As such government has an important role to play as an honest broker of key information. Advertisement Risk and challenges These uncertainties point to specific risks and challenges associated with the establishment of a shale gas industry in South Africa. This will require government to create an enabling environment to encourage investment in the industry while also ensuring that the state and local communities benefit. It is also critical that there is clarity regarding the pricing structures that may prevail. This is crucial when the industry begins to exploit the shale gas reserves, and obviously requires a clearer understanding of the potential quantum of the known reserves. Establishing a shale gas industry presents complex technical and economic challenges, and implementation will require a whole-of-government approach. A structure at government level to facilitate and coordinate all the activities relating to the industry is recommended. This could coordinate the awarding of licences by various government departments and would have oversight of the activities of the regulators. Awarding a production licence should proceed after satisfactory completion of terms associated with an exploration licence. This would require operators to demonstrate compliance of processes with legislation. It is evident that before a shale gas industry in South Africa is implemented, important baseline studies need to be done. This will determine both the exact status quo prior to the commencement of a shale gas industry and the technical, social and economic consequences of such a development. Advertisement Cyril O'Connor, Emeritus Professor Department of Chemical Engineering Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town Maritime security is a major challenge for the poorer coastal and island countries of the Indian Ocean Region. In particular those that have large zones of maritime jurisdiction. The Indian Ocean is the world's third largest ocean. It has an area of around 73.5 million square kilometres. Unlike the Pacific and the Atlantic, it is enclosed on three sides by landmasses. The Indian Ocean region comprises all the littoral and island states of that ocean. Some of these nations also share borders with the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. There are fortyeight independent countries in the region including hinterland and landlocked states of East Africa and South Asia. There are 18 in Africa, 11 in the Middle East, seven in South Asia, six in Southeast Asia, five island states, and Australia. The island states of Madagascar, Mauritius, Maldives and Seychelles, for example, have maritime zones of around 1 million square kilometres or more. Some west Indian Ocean states, notably Somalia and Yemen, also have large maritime zones that are fish rich. They are open to illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. But also other forms of maritime crime, including piracy, drug and arms smuggling. Advertisement Managing maritime security is a challenging endeavour. It requires cooperation between regional countries, and between those with a stake in regional security. Maritime security is no longer the sole prerogative of navies with more non-military agencies now involved. Maritime security is a priority for the Indian Ocean Rim Association, currently the main regional organisation for economic and security cooperation. It recently committed its members to working on increasing cooperation among navies and other maritime security forces in the region. The plan is to do this collaboratively with the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, a voluntary initiative to address shared maritime security challenges and threats. The threats include illegal trafficking in drugs, arms and people, piracy, terrorism, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, and the risks of natural disasters. But there are many challenges with developing effective management in the Indian Ocean region. The diversity of interests among regional countries is a problem. There is no agreement on what encompasses maritime security. African countries in the region are more concerned about local issues of governance, poverty, disease and internal security than the broader strategic issues that concern the wider region. The African Union has developed the 2050 Africa's Integrated Maritime strategy. It makes a clear link between maritime security and human security. It does this by drawing attention to threats in the maritime domain. Advertisement This strategy provides a framework for cooperation but much more still needs to be done. Obstacles to effective cooperation include, lack of capacity and political will, as well as maritime boundary and sovereignty disputes. Much more cooperation needed There is clearly a need for enhanced civil maritime security cooperation. This must include coastguards and equivalent national agencies of regional members. In April 2016, a consensus was recognised, looking at the importance of cooperation between navies, coastguards and other agencies. The aim was to develop cooperation to tackle traditional and non-traditional threats in the region. Many countries in the region have separate navies and coast guards. Exceptions include Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Myanmar, South Africa, Thailand and Timor-Leste that only have navies. Mauritius, Seychelles and Maldives only have coast guards. Indonesia has recently established a coast guard despite some reluctance by other agencies to concede responsibilities to the new force. Kenya has rejected its earlier plan for a coast guard. Instead the country chose to boost inter-agency coordination. The South African Navy performs the coast guard function and shows characteristics of a coast guard rather than a navy. Advertisement France and its Indian Ocean territories, like Reunion and Mayotte, are an interesting case. France uses its navy in coast guard roles along with some other European countries, including Portugal and Spain. A similar principle has been followed by former French and Portuguese colonies in the region, like Madagascar and Timor-Leste. Even former British colonies Kenya and Tanzania display a strong institutional impulse based on the colonial legacy to maintain distinctly military structures. Regional architecture Another hurdle is the lack of effective regional architecture for the task. The Indian Ocean Rim Association has broad oversight, but most initial effort is through the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium. However, there is some scepticism about the symposium's ability to make a broader contribution to maritime security. There is too much focus much on naval cooperation risks, diverting attention from real requirements. These include maritime governance, capacity-building, developing national legislation, development, and poverty alleviation. A regional forum of civil agencies involved in maritime security might help overcome this challenge. The involvement of extra-regional countries in regional arrangements is also a challenge. The major powers of the United States, China and Japan have legitimate interests in regional maritime security. But there are sensitivities as to how involved they should be. Given these challenges, sub-regional cooperation may be more achievable. For example, cooperation through organisations like the Indian Ocean Commission in the Southwest Indian Ocean, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the African Union. This may be the most effective way of taking regional maritime security management forward. Advertisement Sam Bateman, Professorial Fellow, Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, University of Wollongong French philosopher Rene Descartes believed that the pineal gland, a tiny button of neurons located in the depth of our brain, was the seat of the soul. Today, thanks to palaeontology, genetic and developmental studies, we know that it is actually the evolutionary relic of a long-vanished organ, the third eye. This is also known as the pineal eye and is a receptor located on the top of the head. Many existing reptiles such as monitor lizards, some iguanas and the tuatara still have a pineal eye. All reptiles that still have the pineal eye today are "cold blooded"; they have what's known as an ectotherm metabolism. Modern mammals - which of course have "warm blood" or an endotherm metabolism - don't have a pineal eye. Advertisement Our group of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand wondered whether being able to pinpoint when pre-mammalian species lost their pineal eye might unlock the secret of when "warm bloodedness" become a mammalian hallmark. That's what drove an ambitious study using fossil remains from South Africa's Karoo region. We were proved right: our research revealed that mammalian ancestors likely shifted from "cold" to "warm" blood 246 million years ago. This was 10 million years before the first dinosaur even appeared. Why have a third eye? As with a regular eye, the pineal eye is made up of a cornea, a lens and a retina. Our paired eyes and the reptilian pineal eye are also very similar in terms of embryological development and the genes expressed during this. The pineal eye differs from a regular eye, though, in that it's usually covered by a thick and large scale and can differentiate between light and dark only. Our regular eyes can also see variations between light and dark, day and night - so what's the point of having an organ as redundant as the pineal eye? Research shows that in reptiles the pineal eye acts as a calendar. It can see days getting longer and nights getting shorter, and the reverse, and so tells the brain how seasons are changing. As a consequence, it monitors most life cycles such as sleep and reproduction rhythms. Advertisement Arturo de Frias Marques (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons , CC BY Surgical experiments on lizards have also shown that removing the pineal eye affects their capacity to regulate their body temperature, a process called thermoregulation. This is fascinating since our pre-mammalian ancestors did have a pineal eye and lost it in the course of their evolution toward a more mammalian condition. This suggested that by following the reduction and disappearance of the pineal eye through millions of years, we might be able to point out the time when our ancestors became "warm blooded". A gateway to ancient metabolism The pineal eye's evolution is easy to study. It has an unmistakable bony correlate, the pineal foramen. This is a tube that pierces the skull roof for the pineal eye and nerve. Most of our ancestors, the pre-mammalian therapsids, had such a foramen on the top of their heads, as can be seen in their fossilised skulls, and thus had a pineal eye. It's reasonable to assume that this organ fulfilled a similar role in thermoregulation as it does in today's reptiles. Advertisement By checking for the pineal foramen in fossils, we reasoned, it would be possible to trace back the transition from a "reptile-like" to a "mammal-like" metabolism in the lineage that eventually led to mammals. So our team of palaeontologists and neurologists checked for the pineal foramen in more than 600 skulls. These were all found in the Karoo's incredibly rich fossil-bearing deposits and dated back to between 300 million and 200 million years ago. That's an important time period, since South Africa was situated close to the South Pole at that time thanks to continental drift. The climate, then, was much colder and drier, and the contrast between the country's seasons was greater than today. This implies that species with "cold blood" must have had a pineal eye to help them regulate their body temperature. To find a species that lived under such harsh conditions without a pineal foramen would strongly suggest that this species was "warm blooded" and that a pineal eye was no longer required to survive. An evolutionary step forward We found that the pineal foramen was present in most pre-mammalian therapsids before 260 million years ago. After this the feature was increasingly absent. This suggests the pineal eye became dispensable and wasn't needed for survival any more. Advertisement The increasing loss of the pineal foramen occurred in two lineages. One of these, the cynodonts, led to mammals. In their case, the pineal foramen disappeared entirely 246 million years ago. It's then, we believe, that the transition from "cold blood" to "warm blood" was achieved. More work needs to be done to test this evolutionary scenario, but if it proves true it would mean that mammals had likely already evolved one of the key adaptations that enabled them to survive for more than 200 million years through the reign and extinction of dinosaurs and two mass extinctions to the present day. Ayahuasca has been used for spiritual and therapeutic purposes by indigenous healers in Brazil's northwestern Acre state for centuries. Luna Parracho/Reuters Ayahuasca goes by many names: Daime, Vegetal, Hoasca, Kamarampi, Huni ... whatever you call it, this plant-based psychoactive decoction, which has been used by indigenous Amazonians for centuries to contact the spiritual world, has suddenly burst into global consciousness. As a recent New Yorker article put it, ayahuasca is "the drug of choice for the age of kale". The article, which positioned ayahuasca as a hipster trend in a tone of mockery mixed with mystification, nevertheless belies the growing interest of Western scientists and rich urbanites in its medicinal and therapeutic potential, which include antidepressant, anti-anxiety and anti-addiction elements. Advertisement Does the science support the hype? As part of a small cohort of Brazilian scientists undertaking the world's first clinical trials on ayahuasca and treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, I'm here to say: maybe, but it's too soon to tell. Every couple of weeks, Everson do Santos relives the worst day of his life. Check out my latest on ayahuasca@VICE https://t.co/TWtT59QYyw Marina Lopes (@ByMarinaLopes) October 28, 2016 Sacred plant, sacred medicine First, some background, which is key to understanding how ayahuasca is perceived as both a sacred plant and medicine. This idea is shared by indigenous groups, vegetalistas (healers that use plants to treat disease), and Brazilian religions such as the Santo Daime and the Uniao do Vegetal, which blend Catholic, indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian beliefs. Advertisement In the indigenous context, ayahuasca is used to contact the supernatural world, the realm of the jungle spirits, who are called on to bring peace, happiness, and good health - or harm and disease. During ayahuasca ceremonies, shamans invoke specific spirits either to heal their patients, or to harm their enemies. For them, ayahuasca is a powerful and dangerous plant used with great caution, and only by individuals who've undergone a prolonged initiation process that usually involves abstaining from sex and certain foods, along with periods of isolation in the jungle. Ayahuasca is also used therapeutically by the rural, poor and mestizo, or mixed-race, populations of Amazonian nations, including Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador, who have limited access to hospitals and physicians but extensive training in ayahuasca. Rafael Guimaraes dos Santos, Author provided The spiritual is medical The effects of ayahuasca start 30 to 40 minutes after oral intake, with a peak occurring one to two hours later. Most people describe a pleasant (although not always easy) experience, which may include changes in perception (mostly visual), deep introspection, revival of seemingly forgotten autobiographical memories, and mood boost. The trip lasts four to six hours. Advertisement A limited number of studies have suggested that those psychoactive effects could play a therapeutic role for humans. Ayahuasca is made by combining the leaves of Psychotria viridis or Diplopterys cabrerana (which contain the hallucinogen DMT), with the jungle vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which is rich in a group of alkaloids called beta-carbolines (harmine, tetrahydroharmine, and harmaline). Studies in animals, case reports and observational studies of long-term users suggest that ayahuasca and its alkaloids may have anti-anxiety, antidepressant, and anti-addictive properties. Observational studies have also indicated that long-term members of Brazilian ayahuasca religions have apparently recovered from depression, anxiety, and drug dependence (especially alcohol and cocaine). Recent preliminary, open-label studies, or non placebo-controlled trials, on patients diagnosed with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder have been promising. Advertisement These studies, led by Jaime Hallak from the University of Sao Paulo medical school in Ribeirao Preto, where I work, and by Draulio de Araujo, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, in Natal, showed that a single ayahuasca dose was associated with significant, fast-acting, and enduring antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects. These positive results started in the first hours after ayahuasca intake and remained significant 21 days later. Out of the jungle, into the cities In the early 20th century, during the exploration of natural rubber, a small number of religious organisations that centred their sacred rituals on ayahuasca as a sacrament began to emerge in the Brazilian state of Acre. These groups blended Catholic beliefs with Amazonian shamanism, European esoteric philosophies, and Afro-Brazilian tradition. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, these religions organisations began to expand from the North of Brazil to other Brazilian capitals. In the early 1990s, some - in particular the Uniao do Vegetal and Santo Daime - started to create groups in Europe and in the US. Today they are among the main forces collaborating to extend ayahuasca's use beyond the Amazon. In recent years, healers called vegetalistas or maestros ("those who know") have started to practice rituals in big cities, including Bogota, New York, and other urban centres. In these places, their patients are more likely to be wealthy white people seeking healing from anxiety, mood disorders, drug dependence and other mental health issues. Advertisement As more Westerners come to South American countries for healing ayahuasca trips and more healers travel to the US and Europe to perform their rituals, the idea that ayahuasca has powerful therapeutic potential has spread worldwide. Rafael Guimaraes dos Santos, Author provided Indeed, in the aforementioned New Yorker article, one American researcher is quoted as saying that "on any given night in Manhattan, there are a hundred ayahuasca 'circles' going on." This interest is also illustrated by a recent conference held in Acre and organised by the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research & Service, which put together more than 700 participants from around the word, including dozens of indigenous participants. In the past year or so, many other major international news outlets have covered ayahausca, including the New York Times, Vice and Nature. Their pieces tend to portray the plant as a potential "cure" for addiction and depression. Too early to tell Media hype and promising medical results aside, I must highlight critical limitations of the few studies that have inspired this enthusiasm for ayahuasca. Advertisement Therefore, it is not currently possible to conclude that the observed effects were really caused by ayahuasca, or that ayahuasca can "cure" depression. My Brazilian colleagues, supervisors and I are now trying to replicate these observations in the lab with improved methodology. A bigger study assessing the antidepressant potentials of ayahuasca with 80 patients, using a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, is currently underway. And we at the Ribeirao Preto Medical School are in the middle of a research project on the impacts of ayahuasca treatment on socially anxious individuals. Ayahuasca has captured the imagination of scientists and hipsters alike. By helping us find the sacred within us, its psychoactive power seems to hold therapeutic potential as an alternative way to address common disorders that modern medicine has thus far found difficult to treat. So is this sacred Amazonian medicine a potential treatment for everything from anxiety disorders to drug dependence, as both healers and patients avow? We'll have to wait and see what the science says. Advertisement Toby Melville/Reuters The election of Donald Trump has come as a powerful shock to leaders and citizens across Europe. Across the continent, many Europeans watched his rise first with dismay and then with growing alarm, but gave little prospect to him actually defeating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. But with Trump now set to enter the Oval Office in January to become America's 45th president, European leaders must start thinking about how they can work with him and his administration for at least the next four, and possibly the next eight, years. This will not be easy for leaders such as French President Francois Hollande, who said the president-elect "makes you want to retch", or Matteo Renzi, who made no secret of his support for Trump's rival. Advertisement Of course, how Europe responds depends on the policies Trump pursues once in office. Will he drop the bluster and bravado that marked his campaign, and moderate some of his campaign statements, such as calling the NATO alliance "obsolete", suggesting he might formally recognise Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and calling the British vote in June to exit the European Union "a good thing"? Or will his credo of "America First" and his rejection of "globalism" lead to the steady erosion of America's commitment to global order and stability? European leaders face a difficult, even agonising, decision. Trump is a man many openly scorn and revile. But a functional relationship with the United States - including a United States that is led by Trump - is a matter of necessity rather than choice for Europe. Standing up to Trump European leaders will make clear, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel did in her letter congratulating the president-elect, that future cooperation with the United States will be based on a shared commitment to liberal-democratic values. Advertisement These include, as Merkel's letter stated: Democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person regardless of their origin, skin colour, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views. These remain the foundational principles on which the Atlantic Alliance is based, and the erosion of these values would only serve to embolden authoritarian strongmen such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Axel Schmidt/Reuters European leaders should remind Trump, and the officials he appoints to senior positions, of US obligations to European security. There will be severe and possibly irreparable damage if the United States defaulted on its commitments. Every US president since Harry S Truman has interpreted the NATO Treaty's mutual defence clause as irrevocable, and establishing a clear legal and moral obligation on the United States to come to the aid of an ally under attack. With a newly aggressive and revanchist Russia, this commitment is more important today than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Advertisement Paying a fair share Trump will not be the first US president to complain that America's NATO allies in Europe are not carrying their fair share of the security burden. Every US president since Eisenhower, in fact, has called on European countries to do more to provide for their own defence. Kacper Pempel/Reuters Among NATO's European allies, only Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Poland currently meet the alliance's target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. While they should refuse to submit to any potential White House attempts at blackmail, it is reasonable to expect Europeans to contribute more for their own security. European leaders may be able to mute some of Trump's criticisms of allies free-riding on American largesse by committing to increase defence spending and deployments of equipment and personnel within the context of NATO operations and missions. Europe's leverage Once Trump enters office he will probably come to realise and appreciate how much he needs the cooperation of other countries to achieve his foreign policy goals and objectives. Advertisement Despite its own troubles - such as the ongoing euro calamity, the refugee crisis, and negotiating Britain's exit from the EU - Europe remains the indispensable partner for the United States on global economic and security issues. In some areas, such as counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing, and maintaining the arms embargo against China, European cooperation remains crucial. This creates leverage for Europe, and the possibility of influencing US attitudes in these domains. European leaders should anticipate transatlantic relations under Trump to be more transactional than they have been under previous administrations. As Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations has said, appeals based on "the old formula of solidarity, common interests, and shared values" are not just likely to be ineffective, but are likely to be seen by Trump as "negotiating weakness". Trump will seek the help of European partners when he perceives that doing so is in his interest, but unlike almost all of his predecessors since the end of World War II, he will not reflexively turn to the Atlantic Alliance to address the most important global challenges. Working around the commander-in-chief European leaders must keep in mind that while Trump will have tremendous influence over the future direction of US foreign policy, he will be just one person in a vast national security apparatus. Not everyone in his administration will share his views on NATO's strategic irrelevance, his eagerness to accommodate Russia, or his enthusiasm over Britain's exit from the EU. Advertisement They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2016 Top Republican officials condemned his statement that he might not automatically come to the aid of a NATO ally under attack, for example, and by very wide margins the American public continues to see NATO as being good for the United States. Apart from a suspicion of trade agreements and a pledge to put America "first", it does not appear that Trump holds many firm foreign policy convictions. Other members of his administration may be able to shape his thinking so that it aligns more closely with the long-standing, bipartisan foreign policy consensus in the United States, especially when it comes to NATO. Tough road ahead None of the above will be easy for European leaders, and there is no guarantee of success. Trump has given no indication that he understands or appreciates the value of the transatlantic alliance, of the benefits of a strong and united Europe, or the deep and long-standing partnerships the United States has established with individual European countries over many decades. European leaders must decide on which issues they can and must compromise with the Trump administration, such as raising military spending and contributing more to their own defence, and on which issues they must stand firm, such as their unequivocal commitment to liberal-democratic values and to the sanctity of the NATO alliance. Advertisement The future of the West may depend on it. On December 20, 1890, an editorial was published in South Dakota's Saturday Pioneer on the occasion of the death of Sitting Bull at the hands of Standing Rock reservation police: "The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are." That call for genocide was written by a newspaper editor named L. Frank Baum, who would later go on to write a book titled The Wonderful World of Oz. Advertisement Nine days after the editorial was published, Baum nearly got his wish. After Sitting Bull's death, his tribe fled, fearing for their lives. They were led by Sitting Bull's half-brother, Chief Spotted Elk, aka "Big Foot." The aging chief was dying from pneumonia in the brutal winter of 1890. His people were starving in the bitter cold. The buffalo, the tribe's primary food source, had been hunted to near extinction for sport by the whites. The food rations promised to them by the government as part of the 1877 "Sell or Starve" act had been denied. The Sioux diaspora was intercepted by the army on December 28 and led to Wounded Knee Creek. The following morning, as soldiers collected rifles from the few remaining armed Sioux warriors, one of the tribesmen, "Black Coyote," who was deaf, did not understand the instructions. He struggled with the soldiers. A shot was fired. The soldiers opened fire on the tribe with rifles and Hotchkiss gun light artillery. In 1890, the Hotchkiss gun was a weapon of mass destruction. The compact breach-loaded canon was capable of firing up to 50 grapeshot canisters per minute, shredding flesh and shattering bones with a spray of 1/2-inch lead balls shrieking through the air at 1,300 feet per second. In minutes, 300 Sioux men, women and children lay dead or dying on the frozen prairie. Before the bodies of the victims could be recovered for burial in a mass grave, a blizzard washed over the site. When the storm retreated, it revealed the grizzly remains of the massacre. Those tribespeople who had not died immediately from their wounds were frozen into icy contortions. Chief Spotted Elk's corpse was found on its back with frozen arms reaching up into the air. His head was elevated, as though he was attempting to rise from a fall at the moment he died. Advertisement 25 Army soldiers received the Medal of Honor for acts of valor for their roles in the massacre. The Sioux did not live and die on Standing Rock reservation by choice. Standing Rock was the bitter end of a long road of broken treaties with the U.S. government that had repeatedly kicked Native Americans out of places whites found valuable and onto places of increasing scarcity. In 1851, the Fort Laramie treaty granted the Sioux thousands of square miles that included South Dakota's Black Hills. After the Black Hills Expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer confirmed the existence of gold in them thar hills in 1874, whites swarmed onto Sioux land. Skirmishes ensued. Custer himself was eventually killed in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Congress, outraged over the Sioux's temerity to defend their land from foreign invaders, passed the "Sell or Starve" act of 1877, forcing the Sioux off their verdant land in the Black Hills and onto Standing Rock - a place guaranteed to be worthless to human beings of any color - at least until the year 2016. George Hearst set up his Homestake Mine, eventually extracting 40 million troy ounces of gold out of the Black Hills, with a current valuation of $53 billion. Gutzon Borglum would later carve the likenesses of four white American presidents into the sides of one of the Sioux hills. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the 1877 Act that resulted in the seizure of the Black Hills was a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The court awarded the Sioux Nation $106 million - 2/10ths of 1% of the value of the gold ore that was taken out of Hearst's mine alone. The Sioux Nation refused the award. They want their land back. In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline is being built on the very same land that the Supreme Court ruled was illegally taken from the Sioux in 1877. Advertisement Fear of murderous immigrant invaders drove many voters' decisions at the ballot box this election year. When looking at the potential dangers to life and property posed by immigrants through Native American eyes, it's much easier to appreciate white people's fears about outsiders. Is America in eclipse? After a strange Veterans Day weekend, it is decidedly unclear. As I feared for more than a year, a deeply troubled and profoundly perturbed America has fallen through the looking glass into Trumplandia. How different will America be under President Donald Trump? It may be quite a lot, all the way into the fascism that Trump so obviously flirted with throughout his campaign. Or it may be not so much, since Trump seems motivated more by an ethic of success than any coherent ideology. And then there is his erratic nature to consider. As I wrote repeatedly during the campaign, it was Trump's own all too frequently intemperate style that kept him from what could have been a truly substantial victory over a very vulnerable Hillary Clinton. That's why I rated the race as up in the air in my final pre-election column, just as I did all the times when Hillary seemed to have a very large lead. The opportunity for a Trump victory was always obvious; what was not at all obvious was whether he would ever settle down and seize it. He did in the end, barely, putting two weeks of stable campaign messaging together at the last even as the result ended up more than a little, well, up in the air. A big breakthrough in the Democrats' vulnerable underbelly of "free" trade policy leading to a windfall of industrial states and a clear edge in the Electoral College. Coupled with a loss to Hillary in the national popular vote. Trump had a clear popular vote lead before California's votes came in. With the world's fifth largest economy, beacon of the anti-climate change fight Trump has ludicrously claimed is a Chinese hoax, going against Trump by nearly 2 to 1, Trump is now more than 600,000 votes behind. The California Democratic edge for Clinton is over 2.7 million votes now and that margin will increase as millions of late ballots are processed. Advertisement President Barack Obama delivered his final Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery Friday, following a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Earlier he hosted a breakfast for veterans and their families in the State Dining Room of the White House. President-elect Donald Trump attended no Veterans Day events, though he did send out a Tweet. But, in the end, so what? (Other than indicating that Trump has a limited mandate and needs to get more in line with Californian views if he hopes for a majoritarian approach.) Trump did what he needed to do within the present rules to win an impressive, "shocking," victory. That his mandate is most uncertain if not at the vanishing point does not detract from the fact that he did what nearly the entire media and political class claimed over and over again was impossible. Advertisement All-but-certain statistical models, the inevitable demographics of "the Obama coalition," the "Blue Wall" in the Electoral College. Poof! All imploded in billowing clouds of dust and debris, like so many old casinos destroyed for the new. This Veterans Day weekend certainly made for an odd harbinger of the new-build Trump casino for America's future. The president-elect, who consistently evaded military service in his youth, during a war he strongly supported, gave remarkably short shrift to the veterans he claims to hold in such high regard. Trump, rather amazingly, attended no Veterans Day events and celebrated, as it were, with a mere Tweet of less than 20 words. I'd be very offended, but for the fact that Trump is undoubtedly scrambling, hunkered down out of public view because he is beset by a wave of protests around the nation, including at his own Manhattan digs, and is hurriedly trying to jump-start a transition process hamstrung by having been headed by a freshly disgraced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. I get it. He's still a largely do-it-yourself guy and he has never ever been even remotely near a situation like this. Nevertheless, though he did and said absolutely nothing of substance with regard to Veterans Day over the long Veterans Day weekend, unlike President Barack Obama, who again impressed with his dignity and thoughtfulness for the occasion, some things are already clear with regard to how Trump will deploy the precious and vulnerable resource known as the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. Advertisement Foremost of these is that the rapidly emerging new cold war with Russia is almost certainly cancelled. Trump may respect and admire Russia for the wrong reasons (i.e., "Putin is cool!") rather than the right reasons (Russia is a historically great nation with some core interests worthy of our deep respect), but the bottom line is the same. The reality is that Hillary Clinton, while a clearly steadier hand overall, has, with her husband, repeatedly stoked what became a very bad and deeply foolish feud with Russia since the early 1990s. That is when the Clintons began pursuing the expansion of NATO up to the borders of post-Soviet Russia, a nation nearly decapitated by historic invasions. As a result, the Russians prefer a sort of neutral zone on their borders. This became obvious to me while trying to help the sort of Russian democratic reformers who were ultimately crushed by their putative ally Vladimir Putin. No one of consequence in Russia could support the Clintons' fateful NATO expansion. I've written at length about this, and the problems with Hillary's central role in the doomed Russia "re-set" policy a number of times, including last July. Advertisement The theme music for 'Air Force One' has been a staple of Trump appearances and was the intro music for the president-elect when he made his very late night presidential victory speech. The action thriller, about a terrorism-fighting president whose plane is hijacked by ex-Russian special forces troopers, is one of Trump's very favorites, and deserves its own piece discussing it in that context. Ironically, the theme, by the late great Jerry Goldsmith, my favorite film composer, was also a favorite of President Bill Clinton. For a time in the '90s, it was ubiquitous in Democratic campaigns and conventions. The idea that Russian intelligence would intervene to delegitimize the Clintons here and around the world was anything but a surprise. In the Russian view, if ever acknowledged, of course, it would simply be payback for Clinton-inspired U.S. meddling in Russia and its neighbors, not the least of which was the spectacle of Hillary's former State Department spokesperson showing up in Kiev, capital of Ukraine, to personally egg on regime change protesters. That Ukraine's Russia-friendly, democratically-elected president was overthrown at the height of Putin's painstakingly planned Sochi Winter Olympics was, as I pointed out at the time, the height of dangerously foolish bear-baiting. In any event, another new development is that Hillary's long-planned greatly heightened intervention in the Syrian civil war, complete with a no-fly zone that would almost certainly lead to war, is clearly off the table. The Syrian rebels, who can't win, can end the humanitarian crisis of Aleppo by declaring it an "open city" as MacArthur did with Manila in World War II. Still, Trump needs to make sure Putin doesn't get too bold. The Baltic states are no threat to Russia, especially without big NATO forces there, so Putin needs to commit to keeping hands off. And long-range Russian bomber patrols near our bases in the Pacific are completely unacceptable. Each such flight should be intercepted early on and given very close-range U.S. fighter escort until they are ended altogether. What else in national security is clear now with the advent of Trump? We will know that when the president-elect makes his top national security picks. The candidates for those spots suggest very different directions when it comes to historic alliances, burden-sharing, proliferation, and overall orientation on the spectrum of interventionism/non-interventionism. Advertisement After all, pick one set of Trump quotes and he is a bombastic man of peace. Pick another set, and he is an hysteric man of war. The balance, like all but the very end of the campaign just past, seems up in the air. Yet a couple of other things are already clear. Trump's denial of climate change, which is surprising in that he is obviously a bright guy, an Ivy Leaguer from New York who once backed my candidate, Gary Hart, is not only bad for the future habitability of this planet, it is also bad from the standpoint of likely future conflicts. As the DoD noted when it released a very enlightening report on the global security threat of climate change: "Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict." One of the very first people to turn me on to the climate change issue, back in the '70s, was a close associate and friend of my original faculty advisor, dean of naval historians E.B. Potter. Admiral Noel Gayler, the first triple Navy Cross-winner, who went on to become CINCPAC and the director of the National Security Agency, saw nuclear weapons and climate change as the greatest across-the-board threats to world peace and the habitability of the planet. Any consideration of geography and resources makes the security challenge of climate change all too clear. Too bad the fighter ace admiral, a favorite of Nimitz and Halsey, is no longer around to set the president-elect straight on a few things. It is also clear that Trump has an opportunity which could gain him great credibility with a still largely suspicious America. He should convene a commission to assess the effectiveness and wisdom of our still largely secret "Long War" operations. Advertisement While many are aware that there is simply too much we do not know about the secret drone wars being carried out in our name, I don't think many are aware of how our arms sales have accelerated under the Obama administration. The Obama administration has approved nearly $280 billion in global arms sales, more than twice the total rung up by the Bush/Cheney administration. Yes, this is counter-intuitive. That's why you don't know about it. By far the most in arms deals, nearly half the total, have gone to Saudi Arabia. Which Hillary Clinton herself identified in leaked e-mails as a prime funder of Isis. So what exactly are we accomplishing by covertly flooding a tinderbox world with arms? Another of Jerry Goldsmith's great scores, 'Patton,' contains both stirring martial music and haunting material evoking the mists of history and the sense, as Oscar-winning screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola had it in the George C. Scott voice-over at the film's end, that "all glory is fleeting." Something for the president-elect to keep in mind. Advertisement And back on drone strikes, while some enemies do need killing, it seems increasingly likely that a program originally justified as a way to prevent imminent attacks on Americans has become so undiscriminating that it creates more problems than it solves. Trump claimed throughout the campaign, with some merit, that what we are doing isn't working. So let's move beyond the rhetoric and determine the reality. There is a chance that Trump will turn out to be better than I have long feared. He clearly represents something more than mere hatred, namely a grave discontent with a failing and frequently self-dealing establishment and concern that events are spinning away from the interests of most people. That was clear to me when I predicted in the summer 2015 that he would soon fall after fatefully dissing John McCain as not a true war hero. I thought that super-rich draft dodger vs. famous war hero would lead to disaster. But no. Trump got away with it. So I quickly realized, much to my chagrin, that Trump was on to something very powerful and had a real shot at the White House. Yet there is also a large chance that Trump is very bad news. Much of what he has said is appalling and disastrous. And, following Brexit, it may be a harbinger of the further decline of Western civilization. I'm sure that will be on the minds of participants at a mini-summit at the end of the week in Berlin. There President Barack Obama, on a week-plus international trip, will huddle with the heads of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Great Britain. They have much to discuss. Advertisement If you have money tucked away in a mutual fund or a retirement account, you have the power to invest in the world's transition to clean energy. It's rather important that you do. With the leadership of the federal government in question again, grassroots action is more critical than ever. All you have to do is take your money out of funds whose portfolios include companies that produce fossil fuels or burn a lot of them (coal-fired utilities, for example). There is a problem, however. Some funds that look clean on the surface have fossil fuels tucked within them. Now there's a way to flush them all out. By way of background, more than 50,000 people worldwide with assets of more than $5 billion have pledged to pull fossil fuels our of their portfolios and redirect the funds into the clean energy economy. Some are divesting for moral reasons and others because they know that keeping their money in fossil energy is very risky at a time that science says we should leave most coal, oil and natural gas in the ground. The 50,000 individuals have been joined by more than 600 institutions - faith groups, foundations, governments, colleges, pension funds, universities and others -- with assets of more than $3.4 trillion. Advertisement When the divested funds are reinvested in clean energy, they contribute to the global movement to exit the carbon era. Science tells us we should all be rushing to the exit doors. But divesting from carbon is only the first step in helping to decarbonize the economy. Shifting the United States and the rest of the world to clean energy requires capital. According to Moody's, one of the world's leading credit-rating agencies, the commitment by the United States and more than 190 other countries to reduce their carbon pollution will "reshape the global financial landscape in terms of investment flows into clean energy". That flow needs to become a flood. Moody's estimates that as much as $114 trillion in finance will be needed over the next 12 years for the clean energy transition. Where will all that capital come from? Governments, large investment funds, venture capitalists, risk investors and other public and private sources will contribute. But individual investors have to participate, too. That brings us back to the carbon that may be hiding in your mutual fund or 401(k). One of the pioneers in the divest/reinvest movement is the nonprofit foundation As You Sow, which works with shareholders to improve corporate accountability. It has developed a tool that finds the carbon in thousands of the most common mutual funds and retirement plans. It does the detective work instantly and cost-free with up-to-date data. Using 401(k) retirement plans as an example, As You Sow's explains "those funds can invest in a wide array of securities, and it's not always easy for investors to investigate what's inside the funds they own. You can spend hours poring over mutual fund prospectuses, and still not fully grasp everything your 401(k) is invested in. Your retirement money may be invested in economically and morally risky fossil fuel companies." Advertisement Four score and seven years ago today, just over ten years before I was born, Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) began. Nazi troops and sympathizers looted and burned 7,500 Jewish businesses and 267 synagogues. Nearly 100 Jews were killed and at least 25,000 were arrested. The world found out about this incident on the radio. It would be nearly nine years before Hitler was defeated and World War Two ended. How ironic that the 45th President of the United States whose last video contained blatant anti-Semitism was elected on the anniversary of this Nazi atrocity. Twenty-five years after Kristallnacht, the earliest memory I have of being shocked into despair occurred while watching TV. It was the news broadcast by Walter Cronkite who announced the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; two days later, just fourteen years old and in military school, I vividly recall watching Dallas policemen leading accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald from his jail cell through a parking lot; suddenly, a man lurched forward and shot him in the chest. It was broadcast live on TV. Witnessing a live murder defines trauma for any teenager and I can easily elicit this memory. For me, Kennedy's assassination and Oswald's subsequent murder was the beginning of a slow eradication of my trust in government. Few people believed the Warren Commission's Report that sought to assure a doubting nation that it was a deranged, lone gunman that caused JFK's death; Jack Ruby would later die in jail before more could be revealed about Oswald or other possible connections. Advertisement As Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One that afternoon in 1963, citizens around the world watched in disbelief, racked with grief and sorrow after the unthinkable had become a reality. The photo of Johnson -- one hand raised and the other on the bible, with the late President's widow by his side -- remain etched in the brain of many of my generation. Johnson would oversee the brutal war in Viet Nam that would eventually take 64,000 American lives and account for as many as 1,300,000 deaths of civilians and allied forces. In the years that followed, while Civil Rights legislation and the Voting Rights Act brought placatory change domestically, Johnson continued his predecessor's ruthless campaign of carpet bombing an enemy 8,000 miles away, dropping napalm and Agent Orange on a country few people could even locate on a world map. The war machine was in full force and Johnson was its commander-in-chief. After his first term, Johnson suffered a stinging primary defeat by anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary of 1968. Republican Richard Nixon had just announced his candidacy six weeks earlier. Johnson's loss left an opening for Vice President Hubert Humphrey and JFK's brother, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy; both stepped into the race only four days after McCarthy's surprise win. On that same day, although it would not be made public for more than a year, US ground troops massacred 500 infants and elderly Vietnamese in Mai Lai. Two weeks later, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march in Memphis, Tennessee telling striking sanitation workers "We've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end -- nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through". When police broke up the demonstration, one young boy was killed, 60 were injured and 150 marchers were arrested. Advertisement Three days later, on the last day of March 1968, Johnson announced his decision not to seek reelection and withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination. Each of these events, from the New Hampshire Primary to the march in Memphis, to LBJ's withdrawal from the race, comprised a constant stream of news that would change the political landscape ahead. For anti-war activists, there was some renewed optimism when Johnson left the race, but nothing would compare with what transpired just five days later. On April 4th, after meeting with local leaders in Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr. died an hour after being shot with a single bullet fired by a lone assassin. Robert Kennedy, upon hearing the news just before delivering a speech in Indianapolis, urged his audience "to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." Despite his appeal for calm, rioting broke out in Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Kansas City, and others communities across the country following King's assassination. A total of 46 people were killed across the country. I spent a night in jail in Columbus, Ohio after being arrested on the campus of Ohio State while working with a first aid group to help injured protesters. Injustice at home was the counterpoint to the war effort abroad. By mid-April, 550,000 US troops were on the ground in Viet Nam, and in the months that followed, protesters on college campuses occupied buildings demanding an end to the war. Meanwhile, in mid-May, 2,500 people occupied an encampment called Resurrection City on the Mall in Washington, D.C. as a protest for living wages and full employment. Then, less than two months after Martin Luther King was killed, on the night of June 4th and the California Primary, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed as he left the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco. Again, live footage seared our brains as millions watched Kennedy's lifeless gaze when he fell to the ground. Weeks later, on June 24th, police raided and demolished Resurrection City, arresting all 124 of its occupants. TV news carried the story with vivid video coverage. August of 1968 witnessed the Republicans nominating Richard Nixon over Californian Ronald Reagan; the Democrats would choose Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their candidate while 10,000 protestors and supporters of George McGovern outside the convention took to the streets. Chicago police arrested 175 marchers beating some of them unconscious; 100 filled hospital emergency rooms while those who remained chanted "the whole world is watching!" The entire protest was broadcast live on television. Advertisement Forty days later, segregationist and former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who had entered the Presidential race as an independent candidate, named retired Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis E. LeMay as his running mate. When asked about the use of nuclear weapons, LeMay casually responded, "I think most military men think it's just another weapon in the arsenal.....there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. I don't believe the world would end if we exploded a nuclear weapon." To say that such a statement horrified millions would not be overstating the reaction; in the same way, the President-elect's comments about nuclear weapons have shocked us all. Incredibly, on Election Day in 1968, George Wallace, an avowed white supremacist received 13.5% of the popular vote - nearly 10,000,000 people favored his candidacy; Hubert Humphrey received only 500,000 votes less than Nixon, just .7% short of victory. This, too, was a shocking defeat for Democrats 48 years ago and a sobering recognition of the divisions of the populace. The laws of physics tell us that at the extreme, everything changes into its opposite. An expanding balloon will eventually burst and contract; when our intestines fill, they will eventually empty. Only a short time ago, the Democratic Party seemed destined for unity while Republicans spoke of total disarray and chaos. How quickly things have reversed. Those same laws remind us once again that what has a beginning, has an end. Decades of economic disparity and indifference in this year's election have caused a shrinking minority and angry, disenfranchised constituency to bring a halt to the deadlock. For better or worse, a businessman outside the political system convinced enough of them that he alone could bring the change they wanted. Such is the nature of the political system of our democracy. Blame might move emotions and win elections, but it's not a verb I choose to employ as I seek to regain my footing after this election cycle. Neither third party candidates nor media attention can be blamed for this result. By its very nature, shock can sneak up on you but some people correctly predicted the outcome. As the numbness fades, it often leads to despair. This is a place baby boomers have been before - another "setback" the Democratic candidate spoke of in her eloquent concession speech. Advertisement When Richard Nixon ran for a second term in 1972 against George McGovern, I truly believed the South Dakota Senator had a reasonable chance. Nixon won in a landslide, carrying 49 of 50 states and 18,000,000 more votes than his opponent - the widest margin of any election in history. I was so disenchanted that I left the country disillusioned and angry. Nixon resigned in disgrace less than two years later; his vice president, Spiro Agnew, convicted on charges of bribery, tax evasion, and money laundering, resigned ten months before him. In this election, you may not have even noticed that three out of the four state referendums tightening guns laws passed. All of the sudden, in Nevada, California, and Washington, children and families can begin to feel just a little bit safer because of these victories. Hawaii elected the first and only Asian American woman senator, Mazie Hirono. Three other states put new women in office as well. Pramila Jayapal becomes the first Indian-American woman elected to Congress representing her district in Washington State. And those are just a few of the fortunate blessings of this election. The natural progression of emotions, when grief, fear and anger overwhelm, is a profound numbness that can stupefy the best among us. Disbelief precedes depression as a feeling of hopelessness permeates our chest. Shoulders heavy, the burden of reality can seem too much to bear as we sit exhausted and bereft. But then there is this thing called resilience, not succumbing to the negativity but rebounding with the same optimism, hope, and determination that was so evident only days before. Fear, anger, and grief are all natural emotions, and they all play tug-of-war with love. Make no mistake: our capacity to rebound is a measure of our very own love of life itself. There is work to be done, and there is more time to play as well. The unknown is that place in which all human beings actually reside. While being groundless and lost, we can at the same time leave behind our chattering mind and celebrate our next breath with a smile in the presence of compassion for ourselves and others. Advertisement One final principle of physics comes to mind that concerns what we can see and what we cannot. Basically, it states that what has a front has a back; it goes on to remind us that the bigger the front, the bigger the back. For all the horror and negativity that media thrives on that gets piped through the airwaves and internet, there is an equal amount of love and beauty to be shared -- things we know in our heart are the most important and newsworthy. Maybe - just maybe - the true gift of this election will strengthen the bonds of our friendships and love of family, the equanimity we recognize in others we admire, and the possibility that what we cannot see is as big as what has emerged in front of us. Moving beyond those first three natural emotions - fear, anger, and grief - you will find love abiding in the heart. I invite you to go there with me, breathe from that place, and let's get back to work. Don't let anyone distort the facts: protesting Donald Trump is completely safe. While conservative media may want you to believe that getting out on the street to make your voice heard is dangerous, it's not. These peaceful protests are designed to unite a divided country on issues like race, sexuality, and equal rights. We're less than a week into President Trump's America and there's been an appalling surge in hate crimes. Even with the President-elect delivering a flaccid: "stop it," this is a major cause for concern. Newly spray painted swastikas adorn many windows in America, the Muslim community is under threat of tremendous violence and the Ku Klux Klan is thrilled. These are all great reasons to protest. We're all living through this moment in time, and we're all absorbing this in a very particular way. The progressive politics of the last 8 years may have just come to a screeching halt. There are inherent victims (minorities) with a Trump Presidency and we need to stand with them. Advertisement K-State students get to 'Hang with Tang' on Tuesday Cat Zone Insurer is accused of overcharging over two million policyholders A week ago, Californias insurance commissioner asked one of the states major home insurers to reduce its homeowner insurance rates after judging them excessive. State Farm Insurance Company is being asked by California insurance commissioner Dave Jones to lower its rates by an average of 7%, which should result in $78.6 million in annual savings and over $100 million in refunds for policyholders.In a press release published November 7, Commissioner Jones said that State Farms rate increase of 6.9% for homeowner, rental, and condominium insurance rates in July 2015 was just too steep. Jones called for the insurer to lower its homeowner insurance rate by an average of 5.37%, its renter insurance rate by an average of 20.39%, and its condo insurance rate by an average of 13.81%.Jones said in his statement that protecting consumers from excessive rates is one of [his] highest priorities.State Farm had applied for the rate increases in December 2014, with an effective date of July 2015. Under a voter initiative called Californias Proposition 103, insurance rates that are deemed excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory cannot stay in effect.A rate is determined to be excessive or otherwise based on the aggregate earned premium the rates are expected to produce, Jones explained.The insurance commissioner has tackled other pressing insurance matters in recent months. Last June, Jones asked the Department of Justice to block Aetnas proposed $37 billion acquisition of Humana, reasoning that it would increase costs for consumers and decrease quality of care. He also permitted Shasta Linen Supply to void its contract with Berkshire Hathaway s insurance unit after it was found that the insurer avoided a state law that required a review of workers compensation insurance rates.Californias Department of Insurance also secured a $200 million settlement from French company Artemis SA and others following allegations that they conspired to conceal a French government-owned banks unlawful ownership of the insolvent Executive Life Insurance Co. Shell-shocked, emotionally distraught and displaced from their homes, the victims of Hurricane Matthew have clearly been through more than most of us dare to imagine. However, now their plight is being made all the worse by a series of scam artists bringing a bad name to the insurance industry.The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR) has issued a statement to residents asking them to be cautious of repair deals that sound too good to be true, while also asking contractors and insurance professionals to show their credentials when dealing with victims so they know they are not being scammed.According to a report at CSMonitor.com, Florida is the first state to officially issue a statement regarding fraudulent and predatory businesses that are looking to profit from the financial and emotional stress hurricane victims are suffering from. The list includes insurance scammers who are attempting to capitalize on what are, already, sky high home insurance rates because of the area in which they live.The report notes that while many legitimate vendors are approaching policyholders in Florida and South Carolina, there are also many who are unqualified and are looking to solicit policyholders as clients. As such, residents in the area are being urged to check documentation carefully before taking any steps. If in doubt, residents can search through the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation website to cross-check companies with its list.Another key message for insurance professionals is to explain to their clients the different agreements that are available. Typically agreements should state whether the policyholder or the insurer is responsible for paying for a contractors work, of course something that is vital that residents clearly understand given that they may not be able to pay a vendor out of their own pocket.The FLOIR is also advising policyholders to consider public adjustors. A Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled that major pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) cannot escape a suit brought by 41 insurers over purportedly defective drugs produced by a now-defunct Puerto Rican manufacturer.The insurers invoked a recent decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed union health funds to bring a claim against GSK under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.US District Judge Juan Sanchez found that the insurer plaintiffs were economically injured by purchasing the adulterated drugs. The judge recalled the Third Circuits ruling in a case over GSKs Avandia diabetes drug.Under In re: Avandia, an insurers overpayment for a drug due to the manufacturers deceptive market practices is a concrete economic injury, Judge Sanchez said. Plaintiffs have sufficiently pleaded an analogous injury here.GSKs Puerto Rico unit pled guilty to charges brought by the US Department of Justice in 2010. The company also had to pay $750 million to settle whistleblower claims after a former quality assurance manager filed a False Claims Act suit against it in 2004. Court documents said that the factory manufactured defective drugs and jumbled medications for years.The 41 insurers filed a suit in August 2013, claiming GSK induced them to pay billions of dollars for the defective and purportedly falsely marketed drugs from Puerto Rico. GSK did not react when presented with the problems, the plaintiffs additionally claimed, and the pharmaceutical company allegedly chose to cover the entire thing up.In response to GSKs dismissal of the case, insurers took a page from the Avandia example, wherein the appeals court ruled that the third-parties had established RICO standing by pleading economic injury. The court found then that GSKs alleged fraudulent conduct resulted in an overpriced drug.GSK argued that the matters with the current case and the Avandia case were wholly different. According to the company, plaintiffs in the latter case had argued that misrepresentations about the safety of the drug led both to increased prices and to higher quantities prescribed. The current case saw plaintiffs allege that the drugs were made worthless due to violations at the plant, but did not show how that fact affected the quality of the drugs.Although plaintiffs here do not allege the same excess price and quantity effect theories put forth by the In re: Avandia plaintiffs, they do put forth a theory, with supporting facts, that includes elements of both theories: GSKs nondisclosure rendered the at-issue drugs worthless, and physicians would have not prescribed the at-issue drugs at all had GSK not concealed the ... violations because plaintiffs would not have placed the drugs on their formularies, said Judge Sanchez in response to the argument. TDI data also reflects an increase in claims coursed through networks, as they currently represent almost half of workers compensation claims in the state, up from 20% in 2010. The regulator further observed that network claims costs have been on a steady decline, in contrast to the rise in out-of-network costs. Also, for the first time since the adoption of health care networks in the Texas workers compensation system, the average medical cost per claim at six months and 18 months was lower for injured employees treated within a network compared with those who sought treatment outside a network. D.C. Campbell, director of the TDI research and evaluation group, which produces the report, credits the improved network results to early action taken on claims. One of the strategies weve noticed is that networks provide higher levels of medical care earlier on, Campbell noted. Steve Nichols, workers compensation manager for the Insurance Council of Texas, believes that the networks use of cream of the crop doctors who provide higher quality care overall also played a role. By creating strong partnerships with our clients both employers and claims administrators we keep everyone focused on the goals of getting injured workers back to work as quickly as possible and managing costs responsibly, Doug Markham, WellComp president, explained. Networks did not only outperform non-networks in average medical costs, however. The TDI report also noted that networks provide relatively better costs for physical medicine modalities, diagnostic testing, enhanced access to care, overall health outcomes, and return to work rates. TDI also found that injured workers treated in a network used professional and pharmacy services more, but did not use hospital services as much. Related stories: Payers workers comp drug spend declines: survey Labor statistics reveal decline in workplace injuries Threat or opportunity for the insurance industry? Wherever you stand on the issue of insurtech, there is no denying that innovations are coming and that insurers and brokers alike need to be on top of the changes or risk being left behind.One such example is a new app from insurtech start-up SafeStuff a platform that has been designed to establish transparency between users and insurance companies by letting users take control of their possessions and evaluate their net worth with a few clicks and swipes. The idea is that they can handle their insurance claims through a much faster, simpler and secure process, since they will have proof of what they own in case it gets stolen or damaged, enabling them to also choose the most appropriate insurance for their assets. Its founder and CEO, Alfred Karlsten, was named as SKAPAs Innovator of the Year in his native Stockholm, and is confident the app can benefit insurers, brokers and consumers alike.[With the app] everything is accounted for every object, every price and every receipt. We have the proof, we ease the process, he explained to Insurance Business.Customers have the possibility to do their damage control through the use of our app. Thus we help them take matter into their own hands quite literally - since they will be able to see and manage everything that is happening with their belongings. Having more control but with less effort means maximizing customer satisfaction, which is key in our endeavour, and means that both us and the insurance companies have a common goal that we can immediately start working towards.Seventy five per cent of insurers think the most important effect of fintech is increased focus on the customer. We have estimated that an insurance agent could save up to 70% of the time with an insurance claim, seeing as the process is digital there is no need for paperwork or human interface.Noting that we are not a competitor, we are a facilitator to the insurance industry, Karlsten, who created the idea while brainstorming with a friend who fell victim to a burglary, has already made the app available in his home country with rapid expansion planned. He reveals that he is currently in contact with two insurance companies with the idea of integrating the apps service with that of the insurer.For Karlsten there is no doubt that insurtech represents an opportunity for the industry and believes its vital that companies stop viewing technology as a disruptor and start embracing a more positive tone.The most widely used term when it comes to the emergence of insurtech as a means of digitalization is disruption, he explained. This is a term that more often than not inclines perhaps towards pessimism, confusion, disarray. This adverse tone should be abolished, and here is why: we like to think of SafeStuff as a currently missing ligament in the body of insurance, tying bone to bone together the insurers and the customers. What it does is very far from disruption it connects.On this note, try to rid of the idea that insurtech waves of innovation will put insurers out of business, that they interfere negatively this innovation wave should be surfed and embraced fully instead of avoided. While some business leaders are wary of the looming Trump presidency, the finance boss of one of the biggest global insurers is upbeat on how the next US president and his administration can affect companies.In an interview with CNBC late last week, Zurich CFO George Quinn said that some of the campaign promises made by US President-elect Donald Trump could play to the advantage of insurers.Quinn said Trumps proposals could create a favourable climate for Zurichs two large businesses.Some of the commitments that the president has made around infrastructure spend and changed tax reform could be very beneficial, could prompt some growth, CNBC quoted Quinn as saying in an online report.And of course if the US economy grows given the size of the business we have there, this could be very beneficial for us, he added.But regardless of how Trumps policies will shake up the US and the world, Quinn said Zurich is prepared for the potential impact.Well cope with whatever changes emerge in the US, were an adaptable organization, he told CNBC. I guess its not clear yet so its very hard to be concrete about whats to come.Trump was elected last week as the 45th US president in a stunning upset win over Hillary Clinton.Unlike Quinn, Allianz CEO Oliver Bate earlier expressed pessimism over a Trump presidency as he warned of possible slowdown in international trade.I expect an expansionary fiscal policy but also a tendency towards a protectionist trade policy with far-reaching negative consequences for the global economy, Bate told the Financial Times last week. The Berkshire County Education Task Force meets Saturday morning to review the report. The task force is made up of educators, administrators and school officials. PreviousNext Education Task Force Plans Presentations of Phase 1 Report Eliot Levine, senior researcher manager for the Donahue Institute, presented the Phase 1 report on Saturday morning. DALTON, Mass. Enrollment is declining in Berkshire County schools and costs are rising. It's one of those things everyone knows now there's concrete data confirming those notions and pinning down some of the effects on Berkshire County education. The Berkshire County Task Force on Saturday morning reviewed a 77-page report commissioned from the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute on the state of county education. It's not pretty. Enrollment is down 22.3 percent over the last 15 years in 17 of the school districts being studied. The only exceptions are McCann Technical School and Berkshire Arts & Technology Public Charter School, both of which have some control over the students they accept. That decline is substantial compared to the statewide drop of 1.7 percent in K-12 enrollment during the same time period. The task force was established more than a year ago by school officials, business leaders, local government leaders and Massachusetts Teachers Association representatives to create recommendations on sustaining high quality education in the county's increasing difficult funding and population situation. The Phase 1 report looked at enrollment trends, cost and revenue trends, and educational program trends. The task force's goal is provide recommendations that improve the quality of education, with the idea that solving or alleviating funding problems would also free up money that can be spent on academics and that collaborations could provide more curricular opportunities. "This provides what we hope is a benchmark as we move into our challenging Phase 2," said task force Chairman John Hockridge, a member of the North Adams School Committee. Eliot Levine, presenting the report Saturday morning at Nessacus Middle School, said the institute pulled from available data and from interviews with school committee members and with administrators on changes in programming over the pa st five years and extrapolations into the next five. To dig in deeper, there were also interviews with five administrators who had been in the area for at least 15 years to be get a better focus on the longer time frame. However, Levine said there are no optimal district sizes and the few studies of regionalization have reported both substantial savings, saving projections and, in some cases, minimal savings or greater costs. BCETF Phase One Final Report by iBerkshires.com on Scribd Richard Morgenthal, center, with his wife, Leslie, and SVHC President Thomas Dee, tells how important he sees the center as an economic catalyst. The open house on Saturday drew a crowd from around the region. Leslie Morgenthal's nature prints fill the center. PreviousNext SVMC Pownal Campus Marks Successful First Year SVHC President Thomas Dee sees the Pownal campus as a prototype for future centers and as something that can be expanded. POWNAL, Vt. Southwestern Vermont Medical Center's Pownal campus opened up just a year ago to fill a need for medical care in the area and a model for the future of primary care. Since then, some 4,600 patients have come through doors, a third of them from Massachusetts to the south. "We knew that Pownal was an underserved area and having primary-care health center was critical," said Thomas Dee, president and CEO of Southwestern Vermont Health Care. "We're looking to have a number of these centers throughout out our coverage area. This is the first one that was built from the ground up." The center's development became more critical as North Adams (Mass.) Regional Hospital closed in 2014 during its planning and several primary care physicians left the area widening an already existing gap. "It's not solving it, but it's helping to address it," Dee said. His comments were made Saturday at a open house and celebration of the first-year anniversary of the care center. The parking lot was full and patients and residents toured the 5,000-square-foot facility. There was a spread featuring seasonal and local foods and center employees were on hand to greet people and explain elements of the building. The Pownal office has eight examination rooms, two consult rooms, an X-ray and the capability to do blood draws that can be couriered to Bennington for analysis. It currently has about 10 employees, including three physicians, and will be adding a nurse practitioner in March. A diabetes and a pharmacy consultant also have hours at the center and it has the capability for telemedicine consultations with specialists at SVMC affiliate Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. "I'd like to move toward having a model of an express care type service that could be added here that allows patients to come without an appointment to be seen by a clinician," Dee said. "This is a model, something that can be expanded on. We built it for expansion. ... "This is a medical home, an environment that's very home-like." It was constructed last year, near the Massachusetts border, as part of plan to develop community centers in the Southwestern Vermont Health Care. There is one Manchester and another in Wilmington; an express care facility has also been added to the SVMC campus in Bennington. Protesters march around Field Park on Saturday morning to oppose the election of Donald J. Trump. PreviousNext Williamstown Joins Nationwide Protests Against Trump WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Nearly one week ago, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States. On Saturday morning in Williamstown, a group of several hundred students and community members joined protesters all over the country in denouncing the results of the election. Demonstrators of all ages filled Field Park with signs reading "Not Our President," "Love Trumps Hate" and "Black Lives Matter." Cars driving by honked, eliciting cheers from those at the demonstration, which was organized by North Berkshires for Racial Justice in conjunction with students and staff from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and Williams College, Buxton School, and other community members. "I hope that people who weren't active before will use this as a jumping off point," Jane Berger of North Berkshire for Racial Justice said Monday. "It is important to stay angry and fight the temptation to return to business as usual. That sort of privilege is what brought us here in the first place." iBerkshires.com posted some pictures of the protest to Facebook, which immediately started filling up with comments criticizing the protesters. "Why don't you all put that energy to work doing something positive for the community. Go out and support our veterans or help with the homeless or donate your time serving meals to the less fortunate, grow up," one commenter said. "Anti democratic communists protesting. People like that used to be called enemies of our country and traitors and were punished as such," another said on Facebook. Indeed, Trump himself denounced the demonstrations, first on Twitter claiming the protesters were incited by and paid by the media, then expressing admiration for their passion for the country, before telling CBS' Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night that he thinks it's "horrible" and blaming "the press." Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Protests in Portand, Ore., saw some violence, but overall reports show the majority of demonstrations have been peaceful. Many are protesting not just the election of Trump and his campaign rhetoric, but the incidents of racial unrest in the aftermath of the election attributed to Trump supporters, accused of harassing Latinos and Muslims. Trump also told Stahl on "60 Minutes" he wanted to see that end, as well. Locally, Berger said North Berkshires for Racial Justice will be holding another meeting soon to discuss future endeavors, which will be posted on its Facebook page. The International Energy Agency (IEA) welcomed the Kingdom of Morocco as an Association Country on Monday, deepening the partnership between both parties for a more sustainable and secure energy future. The announcement was made by Mr Paul Simons, the IEAs Deputy Executive Director, and Mr Abderrahim El Hafidi, Secretary General of the Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and the Environment, in Marrakech, host city of the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP22) summit. Morocco becomes the latest member of the IEA family and the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to join the IEAs Association initiative aimed at opening its doors to emerging economies. Morocco is now the IEAs fifth Association country, joining China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore. Morocco has abundant renewable energy resources, mainly solar, wind and hydro-power, and is a regional leader in deploying clean energy technologies. The government is pursuing a policy of reducing its dependence on imported fossil fuels and increasing the share of renewable energy in power generation. It was also among the first countries of the Middle East and North Africa to cut fossil fuel subsidies and introduce energy efficiency measures. The Association programme provides a platform for the IEA to engage more extensively with partner countries including on energy security, energy data and statistics, and energy policy analysis. It also enables partner countries to participate in a variety of activities, including IEA committees, and training and capacity-building activities. Moroccos leadership and commitment to a sustainable energy future can be a model for other countries in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, particularly in the electricity sector, said Mr Simons. It is fitting that this very important climate summit is being held in Morocco, which has done so much to further the climate change agenda. The IEA looks forward to a closer cooperation with Morocco, which has been a close partner country for many years. The IEAs collaboration with Morocco began in 2007, focusing particularly on the areas of energy policy, statistics, and research and development (R&D). Two years later, the government adopted a national energy strategy, setting clear targets for wind, solar and hydropower. The IEAs 2014 energy policy review of Morocco was the first dedicated to a country in the Middle East and North Africa region. Earlier this year, the IEA published a report under its Partner Country Series setting out the findings of a pilot study testing the IEAs Clean Energy Technology Assessment Methodology (CETAM) in Morocco, one of only three countries chosen for the case study. The IEA and Morocco plan to develop new joint programmes under Association to support Morocco in its transition toward a low-carbon economy. Imperial Valley News Center HPV vaccine - who needs it and how it works Rochester, Minnesota - Most cervical cancers are associated with human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection. Widespread immunization with the HPV vaccine could reduce the impact of cervical cancer worldwide. Here's what you need to know about the HPV vaccine. What does the HPV vaccine do? Various strains of HPV spread through sexual contact and are associated with most cases of cervical cancer. Three HPV vaccines have Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in the U.S. Cervarix is for girls only, while Gardasil and Gardasil 9 can be used for both girls and boys. Gardasil 9 offers girls protection against more strains of HPV that can cause cervical cancer. All three vaccines can prevent most cases of cervical cancer if given before a girl or woman is exposed to the virus. In addition, all three vaccines can prevent vaginal and vulvar cancer in women, and Gardasil and Gardasil 9 can prevent genital warts and anal cancer in women and men. In theory, vaccinating boys against the types of HPV associated with cervical cancer might also help protect girls from the virus by possibly decreasing transmission. Certain types of HPV have also been linked to cancers in the mouth and throat, so the HPV vaccine likely offers some protection against these cancers, too. Who is the HPV vaccine for and when should it be given? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends routine HPV vaccine for girls and boys ages 11 or 12, although some organizations recommend starting the vaccine as early as age 9 or 10. It's ideal for girls and boys to receive the vaccine before they have sexual contact and are exposed to HPV because once someone is infected with the virus, the vaccine might not be as effective or might not work at all. Research has shown that receiving the vaccine at a young age isn't linked to an earlier start of sexual activity. Also, response to the vaccine is better at younger ages than it is at older ages. In October 2016, the CDC updated the HPV vaccine schedule to recommend that all adolescents and teens ages 9 through 14 receive two doses of HPV vaccine at least six months apart, rather than the previously recommended three-dose schedule. Teens and young adults who begin the vaccine series later, at ages 15 through 26, should continue to receive three doses of the vaccine. Who should not get the HPV vaccine? The HPV vaccine isn't recommended for pregnant women or people who are moderately or severely ill. Tell your doctor if you have any severe allergies, including an allergy to yeast or latex. Also, if you've had a life-threatening allergic reaction to any component of the vaccine or to a previous dose of the vaccine, you shouldn't get the vaccine. Does the HPV vaccine offer benefits if you're already sexually active? Yes. Even if you already have one strain of HPV, you could still benefit from the vaccine because it can protect you from other strains that you don't yet have. However, none of the vaccines can treat an existing HPV infection. The vaccines protect you only from specific strains of HPV you haven't been exposed to already. Does the HPV vaccine carry any health risks or side effects? Overall, the effects are usually mild. The most common side effects of HPV vaccines include soreness, swelling or redness at the injection site. Sometimes dizziness or fainting occurs after the injection. Remaining seated for 15 minutes after the injection can reduce the risk of fainting. In addition, headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue or weakness also may occur. The CDC and the FDA continue to monitor the vaccines for unusual or severe problems. Is the HPV vaccine required for school enrollment? The HPV vaccine is part of the routine childhood vaccines schedule. Whether or not a vaccine becomes a school enrollment requirement is decided on a state-by-state basis. Do women who've received the HPV vaccine still need to have Pap tests? Yes. The HPV vaccine isn't intended to replace Pap tests. Routine screening for cervical cancer through regular Pap tests beginning at age 21 remains an essential part of a woman's preventive health care. What can you do to protect yourself from cervical cancer if you're not in the recommended vaccine age group? HPV spreads through sexual contact oral, vaginal or anal. To protect yourself from HPV, use a condom every time you have sex. In addition, don't smoke. Smoking raises the risk of cervical cancer. To detect cervical cancer in the earliest stages, see your health care provider for regular Pap tests beginning at age 21. Seek prompt medical attention if you notice any signs or symptoms of cervical cancer vaginal bleeding after sex, between periods or after menopause, pelvic pain, or pain during sex. Imperial Valley News Center Electing to heal: Ideas for moving beyond the vote Rochester, Minnesota - Mayo Clinic resiliency expert Dr. Amit Sood says healing the wounds of the 2016 election is not only good for your well-being, its important for the countrys safety. If we are fighting each other, then we dont have the energy to fight somebody else who wants to hurt us, Dr. Sood explains. So one of the best ways to get strong is to heal. Dr. Sood, author of The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-free Living and The Mayo Clinic Handbook for Happiness, says real healing following such a long, negative campaign will need to include forgiveness. Start by forgiving who may have annoyed us, what may have annoyed us, and look at ways to move forward. Dr. Sood says we must accept that real differences will continue to exist, and, at the same time, choose to focus on similarities. What brings us together? Dr. Sood asks. I think what brings us together is our passion for creating a better world for our children and a passion for creating a better country. Finally, Dr. Sood says, try to remain compassionate. When you combine forgiveness, acceptance and compassion, then you can come together to rebuild a world, to build a country that you and I will be proud of and grateful for. Fall prevention Rochester, Minnesota - Falls are the leading cause of injuries for older Americans. Falls not only threaten seniors safety, but also their independence. Having a conversation with your grandmother is a worthwhile place to begin. She may fear falling, which can decrease her mobility within the home and participation in her community. And even though your grandmother doesnt have any significant health concerns, it still would be a good idea for her to visit her doctor. Its possible that her weakness and loss of balance could signal an underlying medical condition. A physical exam and a discussion with her doctor about her overall health could reveal specific fall risk factors or a need for health care services, such as physical therapy. A physical therapist can recommend exercises that would be helpful to her. Even gentle, low-impact activities can improve strength, balance, endurance, flexibility and coordination. A physical therapist also can determine if a walker or cane could provide safer mobility. Your grandmothers doctor also should review any medications shes taking to make sure those medications dont have side effects that might contribute to a risk of falling. Review calcium and vitamin D requirements for optimum bone health. Annual vision and hearing checks are important, as well. To help your grandmother prevent another fall, take a close look at the environment within her home to ensure that its safe. Taking basic steps to make a home safer can go a long way toward lowering the risk of falls. That includes eliminating tripping hazards by removing boxes, newspapers, electrical cords and phone cords from walkways. Take coffee tables, magazine racks, plant stands and coat racks out of high-traffic areas. Secure loose rugs with double-faced tape or a slip-resistant backing or simply remove the rugs. Repair any loose floorboards or carpeting. Store clothing, dishes, food and other frequently used items within easy reach. Lighting within the home also can make a big difference. Along with keeping her home well-lit during the day, your grandmother could put nightlights in her bedroom, bathroom and hallways, and place a lamp close to her bed. You may want to consider installing glow-in-the-dark or illuminated light switches, so they are easy to find in low light. Pathways to those switches should be clear of tripping hazards. Because you mention that weakness and balance are issues for your grandmother, make sure her home is well-suited for easy mobility. For example, there should be handrails on both sides of the stairways and nonslip treads on steps made of wood or other slick surfaces. The bathroom can be a particularly risky area, but making a few adjustments can help. A raised toilet seat or a toilet with armrests can make it easier to get up and down without losing balance. In the shower or tub, installing nonslip mats, grab bars, a sturdy plastic seat and a handheld shower nozzle to use while sitting down can make it less likely your grandmother will slip and fall while bathing. Many communities now have fall prevention programs specifically designed to help seniors reduce their risk of falling. Often offered as group classes, these programs usually focus on education, exercise, balance and fitness. It sounds like your grandmother could benefit from such a program. To find out if there is one in your area, ask your grandmothers doctor, or contact your local Area Agency on Aging for more information. Connie Bogard, P.T., Ph.D., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Unlike the first episode of The Walking Dead season 7, this latest installment - a feature-length outing titled 'Service' - places the focus back on Rick Grimes and the remaining survivors of Negan's deadly line up for the first time since that traumatic opener (we're hoping you've recovered by now but if not, we're here for you). In series time, less than a week has passed since the deaths of Glenn and Abraham - and now Negan has come a-knocking in an episode which sees The Saviours make their mark on the residents of the once-safe zone that was Alexandria. It's no surprise that this episode is Negan-heavy considering Jeffrey Dean Morgan is now credited as one of the main cast members; clearly relishing every second, here are the most memorable lines spoken by the AMC drama's most fearsome antagonist yet. Warning: the below contains swearing. The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 4 Preview 1. As he knocks on the gates of Alexandria "Little pig, little pig - let me in." 2. To Rick about Daryl "You don't look at him, you don't talk to him and I don't make you chop anything off of him." 3. After being handed Rick's videocamera "Well well well, wht do we have here? I've got my fingers crossed for a little freaky deaky." 4. Upon seeing a bearded Rick on the camera "Is that you, Rick? Underneath all that man bush? Shit, I would not have messed with that guy." 5. To Father Gabriel "Holy crap, you are creepy as shit sneaking up on me wearing that collar with that freaky ass smile." The most shocking Walking Dead moments Show all 10 1 /10 The most shocking Walking Dead moments The most shocking Walking Dead moments Sophie's a walker (season 2, episode 7) Much of season two's opening half is spent looking for Sophia, the missing daughter of Carol (Melissa McBride). Turns out she was locked up in Hershel's barn as a zombie all along. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Shane reanimates without being bitten (season 2, episode 12) When Carl (Chandler Riggs) guns down a deranged Shane (Jon Bernthal) to protect his father, the shock arrives when he manifests into a walker despite not being bitten; turns out everyone's infected with the virus and will turn whichever way they die. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Axel's bullet to the eye (season 3, episode 10) A character introduced in the show's prison arc, Axel is a reformed prisoner who strikes up a friendship with Carol - until he's gunned down mid-sentence. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl kills Lori after she gives birth (season 3, episode 4) Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) goes into labour at the very moment a zombie siege breaks out at the prison. Unfortunately, she doesn't make it through the procedure with her son Carl being the one to put a bullet to her head. The most shocking Walking Dead moments The Governor slays Hershel (season 4, episode 8) The Governor makes his dramatic return for a showdown at the prison after he captures Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Hershel (Scott Wilson). Rick reaches out, attempting to reason with him - but The Governor starts a war when he proceeds to decapitate poor old Hershel instead. The most shocking Walking Dead moments "Look at the flowers" (season 4, episode 14) In a standout episode from the show's fourth season, Carol is forced to take drastic measures when young teenager Lizzie murders her sister Mika in the belief that she'll live on as a zombie. Realising Lizzie's depraved mind would endanger those around her, Carol puts a gun to the young girl's head and, telling her to "look at the flowers," pulls the trigger, fighting back the tears. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl's bullet to the eye (season 6, episode 9) Season six returned from its mid-season break in typically dramatic fashion when an iconic moment from the graphic novels came to life: Carl takes a bullet to the eye. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Beth is killed (season 5, episode 8) Upon being kidnapped, Beth (Emily Kinney) is taken to Grady Memorial Hospital managed by Atlanta Law Enforcement. Forced to reside there against her will, the group - including Rick and Daryl (Norman Reedus) - eventually find her - only for her to be accidentally shot in the head by her captor. The worst thing? Her sister Maggie (Lauren Cohan) had just arrived outside. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Abraham Season seven opened in brutal form as we discovered it was Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) at the opposite end of Negan's baseball bat. "Suck my nuts," the soldier growls as the Saviours' leader brings Lucille raining down on his head until nothing remains but a pulpy mess. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Glenn Negan decides to punish the group once more after getting clocked round the face by Daryl. Without expectation, he thwacks Lucille round the head of poor Glenn. With his eyeball popping out of his head, he manages: "I'll find you, Maggie before Negan proceeds to finish the job ending the former pizza delivery boy's life. 6. About Maggie (believing her to be dead) "I was gonna ask her to come back with me. Oh, I know what you're thinking: "How could I ever shop a guy who just bashed her husband's head in." You'd be surprised." 7. To Carl after he holds two Saviours at gunpoint "Well, pardon me young man, excuse the shit out of my goddamn Fench but did you just threaten me?" 8. About Olivia after realising two guns went missing on her watch "I don't enjoy killing women. Men? I can waste them all the livelong." 9. After firing one of the missing guns "Feels good! Sounds good! I do believe Lucille's getting a little jealous." 10. After Rick thanks him as he leaves Alexandria with most of their belongings "In case you haven't caught on, I just slipped my dick down your throat and you thanked me for it." The Walking Dead airs in the UK every Monday at 9m on FOX Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Following yet another Negan filled episode of The Walking Dead, the fifth episode of season seven looks set to feature less of the villain and more of The Saviours. Go Getters will take place primarily on The Hilltop - somewhere that has yet to be explored this season - with Gregory now in danger. As shown in the clip, there will also be some scenes set in Alexandria, where Negan managed to visit last episode, as well as other locations, updating us on the likes of Carl and Enid. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Show all 10 1 /10 The most shocking Walking Dead moments The most shocking Walking Dead moments Sophie's a walker (season 2, episode 7) Much of season two's opening half is spent looking for Sophia, the missing daughter of Carol (Melissa McBride). Turns out she was locked up in Hershel's barn as a zombie all along. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Shane reanimates without being bitten (season 2, episode 12) When Carl (Chandler Riggs) guns down a deranged Shane (Jon Bernthal) to protect his father, the shock arrives when he manifests into a walker despite not being bitten; turns out everyone's infected with the virus and will turn whichever way they die. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Axel's bullet to the eye (season 3, episode 10) A character introduced in the show's prison arc, Axel is a reformed prisoner who strikes up a friendship with Carol - until he's gunned down mid-sentence. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl kills Lori after she gives birth (season 3, episode 4) Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) goes into labour at the very moment a zombie siege breaks out at the prison. Unfortunately, she doesn't make it through the procedure with her son Carl being the one to put a bullet to her head. The most shocking Walking Dead moments The Governor slays Hershel (season 4, episode 8) The Governor makes his dramatic return for a showdown at the prison after he captures Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Hershel (Scott Wilson). Rick reaches out, attempting to reason with him - but The Governor starts a war when he proceeds to decapitate poor old Hershel instead. The most shocking Walking Dead moments "Look at the flowers" (season 4, episode 14) In a standout episode from the show's fourth season, Carol is forced to take drastic measures when young teenager Lizzie murders her sister Mika in the belief that she'll live on as a zombie. Realising Lizzie's depraved mind would endanger those around her, Carol puts a gun to the young girl's head and, telling her to "look at the flowers," pulls the trigger, fighting back the tears. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Carl's bullet to the eye (season 6, episode 9) Season six returned from its mid-season break in typically dramatic fashion when an iconic moment from the graphic novels came to life: Carl takes a bullet to the eye. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Beth is killed (season 5, episode 8) Upon being kidnapped, Beth (Emily Kinney) is taken to Grady Memorial Hospital managed by Atlanta Law Enforcement. Forced to reside there against her will, the group - including Rick and Daryl (Norman Reedus) - eventually find her - only for her to be accidentally shot in the head by her captor. The worst thing? Her sister Maggie (Lauren Cohan) had just arrived outside. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Abraham Season seven opened in brutal form as we discovered it was Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) at the opposite end of Negan's baseball bat. "Suck my nuts," the soldier growls as the Saviours' leader brings Lucille raining down on his head until nothing remains but a pulpy mess. The most shocking Walking Dead moments Negan kills Glenn Negan decides to punish the group once more after getting clocked round the face by Daryl. Without expectation, he thwacks Lucille round the head of poor Glenn. With his eyeball popping out of his head, he manages: "I'll find you, Maggie before Negan proceeds to finish the job ending the former pizza delivery boy's life. Meanwhile, for those still reeling from the extended episode four, you can check out The Independents review as well as the 10 most disturbing quotes from Negan. We also discuss the five major talking points from the episode, including Rick reaching his breaking point, Negan believing Maggie is dead, and Rosita's one-woman rebellion. Episode five of The Walking Dead season seven will air next Sunday on AMC in the US and 9pm every Monday on FOX in the UK. Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The impact of microplastics on human health will be investigated amid growing concerns that plastic pollution in the ocean is being eaten by marine creatures and then passed up the food chain. Global plastic production has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 2004 and 2014, the amount of plastic produced rose by 38 per cent, according to a recent report by the United Nations. Recommended UN warns of growing threat of plastic pollution to human health Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, is to study the risks from eating seafood containing tiny particles of plastic. Experts are concerned that millions of tonnes of tiny debris from plastic bags, bottles and clothes in the worlds oceans could have potentially harmful effects on the body. Someone eating half a dozen oysters is likely to consume 50 tiny pieces of microplastic, according to a report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, released earlier this year. In its response to the report the Government acknowledged that there is little evidence on the impact to human health from eating the plastic. However, it added that research has shown high concentrations could cause physical harm to marine worms and microplastics could transfer along a simple food chain such as from a mussel to a crab. Mary Creagh, chair of the committee, said: Its welcome news that the Chief Medical Officer will investigate the impact of microplastics on human health. Our inquiry recommended more research in this area, as microplastics are found frequently in seafood like shellfish and oysters. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty Microplastics are plastic particles smaller than 5mm. They can be created unintentionally from the fragmentation of larger pieces of plastic waste, and also include the microbeads used in cosmetic and personal care products. The committees report estimated that between 15 and 51 trillion microplastic particles have accumulated in the oceans, with between 80,000 and 219,000 tonnes of microplastics entering the sea from Europe each year. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is currently working with countries in the Oslo and Paris Convention for the protection of the North East Atlantic (OSPAR) to ensure cosmetics companies continue to phase out the use of microplastics, while the European Commission is already developing to ban the use of microbeads within cosmetics products in EU countries. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Smoking cannabis may double the risk of a rare condition that temporarily weakens the heart, research has shown. Stress cardiomyopathy mimics signs of a heart attack, resulting in chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness and sometimes fainting. The symptoms, caused by a reduction in the heart's ability to pump blood, are usually temporary but experts warned they could indicate more serious trouble. Cannabis users experiencing an episode of stress cardiomyopathy were significantly more likely than non-users to go into cardiac arrest or need correction to abnormal heart rhythms. Dr Amitoj Singh, from St Luke's University in Pennsylvania, who co-led the US study, said: The effects of marijuana, especially on the cardiovascular system, are not well known yet. With its increasing availability and legalisation in some states, people need to know that marijuana may be harmful to the heart and blood vessels in some people. The researchers analysed data from 33,343 Americans who were hospitalised with stress cardiomyopathy between 2003 and 2011. Recommended UK government finally concedes cannabis has a medicinal effect After taking a range of risk factors into account, the study showed that cannabis users were almost twice as likely to develop stress cardiomyopathy than non-users. Active cannabis use was identified either from information provided by the patient or a urine test. Cannabis users were also more likely to have a history of depression, psychosis, anxiety disorder, alcoholism or multiple substance abuse. If you are using marijuana and develop symptoms such as chest pain and shortness of breath, you should be evaluated by a healthcare provider to make sure you aren't having stress cardiomyopathy or another heart problem, said Dr Singh. World's 10 deadliest street drugs Show all 10 1 /10 World's 10 deadliest street drugs World's 10 deadliest street drugs Whoonga Whoonga is a combination of antiretroviral drugs, used to treat HIV, and various cutting agents such as detergents and poisons. The drug is widely available in South Africa due to South Africas high rate of HIV sufferers, and is believed to be popular due to how cheap it is when compared to prescribed antiretrovirals. The drug is highly addictive and can cause major health issues such as internal bleeding, stomach ulcers and ultimately death Getty World's 10 deadliest street drugs Scopolamine Scopolamine is a derivative from the nightshade plant found in the Northern Indian region of South America (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela). It is generally found in a refined powder form, but can also be found as a tea. The drug is more often used by criminals due its high toxicity level (one gram is believed to be able to kill up to 20 people) making it a strong poison. However, it is also believed that the drug is blown into the faces of unexpecting victims, later causing them to lose all sense of self-control and becoming incapable of forming memories during the time they are under the influence of the drug. This tactic has reportedly been used by gangs in Colombia where there have been reports of people using scopolamine as way to convince victims to rob their own homes World's 10 deadliest street drugs Heroin Founded in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, heroin is one of the worlds oldest drugs. Originally it was prescribed as a strong painkiller used to treat chronic pain and physical trauma. However in 1971 it was made illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Since then it has become one of the most destructive substances in the world, tearing apart communities and destroying families. The side effects of heroin include inflammation of the gums, cold sweats, a weak immune system, muscular weakness and insomnia. It can also damage blood vessels which can later cause gangrene if left untreated World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crack cocaine Crack cocaine first came about in the 1980s when cocaine became a widespread commodity within the drug trafficking world. Originally cocaine would have attracted a high price tag due to its rarity and difficulty to produce, but once it became more widespread the price dropped significantly. This resulted in drug dealers forming their cocaine into rock like shapes by using baking soda as a way of distilling the powder down into rock form. People were doing this because it allowed for them to sell cocaine at a lower quantity and to a higher number of people. The side effects of crack cocaine include liver, kidney and lung damage, as well as permanent damage to blood vessels, which can often lead to heart attacks, strokes, and ultimately death World's 10 deadliest street drugs Crystal meth Not just famous because of a certain Walter H White, but also because it is one of the most destructive drugs in the world. First developed in 1887, it became widely used during the Second World War when both sides would give it to their troops to keep them awake. It is also believed that the Japanese gave it to their Kamikaze pilots before their suicide missions. After the war crystal meth was prescribed as a diet aid and remained legal until the 1970s. Since then it has fallen into the hands of Mexican gangs and has become a worldwide phenomenon, spreading throughout Europe and Asia. The effects of crystal meth are devastating. In the short-term users will become sleep depraved and anxious, and in the long-term it will cause their flesh to sink, as well as brain damage and damage of the blood vessels World's 10 deadliest street drugs AH-7921 AH-7921 is a synthetic opioid that was previously available to legally purchase online from vendors until it became a Class A in January 2015. The drug is believed to have 80% of the potency of morphine, and became known as the legal heroin. While there has only been one death related to AH-7921 in the UK, it is believed to be highly dangerous and capable of causing respiratory arrest and gangrene World's 10 deadliest street drugs Flakka Flakka is a stimulant with a similar chemical make-up to the amphetamine-like drug found in bath salts. While the drug was originally marketed as a legal high alternative to ecstasy, the effects are significantly different. The user will feel an elevated heart rate, enhanced emotions, and, if enough is digested, strong hallucinations. The drug can cause permanent psychological damage due to it affecting the mood regulating neurons that keep the minds serotonin and dopamine in check, as well as possibly causing heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Bath salts Bath salts are a synthetic crystalline drug that is prevalent in the US. While they may sound harmless, they certainly arent the sort of salts you drop into a warm bath when having a relaxing night in, they are most similar to mephedrone, and have recently been featured throughout social media due to the zombification of its. The name comes from the fact that the drug was originally sold online, and widely disguised as bath salts. The side effects include unusual psychiatric behaviour, psychosis, panic attacks and violent behaviour, as well as the possibility of a heart attack and an elevated body temperature World's 10 deadliest street drugs Purple Drank One of the more unusual drugs around at the moment, purple drank was popularised in 90s hip hop culture, with the likes of Jay Z and Big Moe all mentioning it in their songs. It is a concoction of soda water, sweets and cold medicine, and is drunk due to cold medicines high codeine content, which gives the user a woozy feeling. However it can also cause respiratory issues and heart failure World's 10 deadliest street drugs Krokodil Krokodil is Russias secret addiction. It is believed that over one million Russians are addicted to the drug. Users of krokodil are attracted to the drug due to its low price; it is sold at 20 a gram while heroin is sold for 60. However, krokodil is considered more dangerous than heroin because it is often homemade, with ingredients including painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid and industrial cleaning agents. This chemical make-up makes the drug highly dangerous and likely to cause gangrene, and eventually rotting of the flesh The research was presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions meeting in New Orleans. Press Association For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} On a street in Grundy, Virginia, a declining mining community that would vote 78 per cent in favour of Donald Trump, a man had an update on a trending news story. A report about two police officers being shot in Des Moines, Iowa, was false, said the man. It had been invented, apparently to try and benefit one or other political competing in the area. He had read about it being false on the internet. (Later, it was announced the police had found and charged a suspect with the shootings.) One of the defining features of the 2016 US presidential election was the parallel words from which opposing supporters obtained their information. The continuing fragmentation of the media and the growth of non-mainstream sources has meant that voters have never had so many options when it came to seeking out information. There is increasing concern about the proliferation of fake news websites (Buzzfeed) Yet, another distinctive feature was the number of stories that turned out to the utterly false. This was particularly true - though not exclusively so - for supporters of Mr Trump, who were frequently drawn to news site such Breitbart, InfoWars and Freedom Daily. Because of social media you have access to a larger variety of information in the past, Kathleen Stansberry an assistant professor of public relations and social media at Cleveland State University, told The Independent. Yet she said while there were many of articles published online that were well-researched and accurate, there were usually fewer gate-keepers than in traditional media with its fact-checking, accuracy and fairness. We need to take more responsibility as media consumers and media publishers, she said. Facebook has found itself in the crosshairs of criticism after it was accused that the social media giant had unfairly helped Mr Trump by the spread and dissemination of articles about Ms Clinton that were false. These included stories about an alleged secret son belonging to Bill Clinton that had been covered up for decades, claims that she was seriously ill and that Pope Francis had endorsed Mr Trump. Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly demised the criticism, saying that it did not impact the election, because the fake news his social media site spread to hundreds of millions of people were not biased in favour of just one candidate. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics, he wrote in a public post. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other. Earlier this year, an investigation by BuzzFeed found that that of the Facebook posts it examined from three major right-wing websites, 38 per cent were either false or a mixture of truth and falsehood. It said readers were often likely to share such false stories and were therefore profitable for Facebook to post. Mr Zuckerberg said more than 99 per cent of news shared on Facebook was verifiable, but acknowledged more could be done to flag fake stories which had been debunked. We dont want any hoaxes on Facebook. Our goal is to show people the content they will find most meaningful, and people want accurate news, he wrote. We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further. Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart who took a leave of absence to lead Mr Trumps campaign, is now set to take up a position within the new administration as political counsellor. His appointment has delighted many on the alt-right and white extremists. Richard Spencer, who heads the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank based in Arlington, Virginia, welcomed Mr Bannons move into the White House. He said on Twitter: Bannon is not a chief of staff, which requires a golden retriever personality. Hell be freed up to chart Trumps macro-trajectory. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} While many are busy speculating about what the next four years with Donald Trump as President will look like, Ivana Trump has actually given the world some predictions based on her real-life, first-hand experience of The Donald. The President-elect's first wife, who is a Czech-American businesswoman, socialite, former fashion model and even appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2010, has given an interview with the New York Post which includes a number of gems about the victorious Republican. From his living arrangements to his apparent sleeping patterns, Ms Trump has given her perspective on the billionaire property tycoon. She remarks on his attachment to his private jet Ms Trump predicts that he is likely to keep his own plane, which has been dubbed the Trump Force One by some, rather than adopting the presidential air force. According to a Discovery Channel documentary featuring the plane, Mr Trump's Boeing 757 cost $100 million. I think he probably will keep his own plane. Hes very happy in his own plane, she told the publication. 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 She comments on his attachment to Trump Tower Ms Trump thinks the President-elect will struggle to leave his New York penthouse on the 66th floor of Trump tower. Unsurprisingly, he appears to have grown rather attached to the marble pillars, crystal chandeliers, gigantic painted portraits depicting Greek myths, cherub statues, and indoor fountain. She did not think the White House was a patch on Trump Tower. To be perfectly honest, I think probably the Trump Tower and my townhouse in New York is much better than the White House, she said while laughing. I dont think he will ever give up [his apartment at] the Trump Tower. I know it is probably inconvenient for the residents, but he is going to work it out. But he is moving to White House [as his primary residence]. Donald is like a good French wine. He doesnt like to be moved and traveled. Obama says Trumps temperament 'will not serve him well' She jokes that Melania trump will be doing the packing Ms Trump said she did not envy Melania Trump because she might have to start to pack the clothes. She claims he only sleeps three hours a night Like Margaret Thatcher, she claims Mr Trump only sleeps three hours a night and relishes in working from morning until late at night. A representative for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to request for comment. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It may seem surreal now that a former reality TV star with a penchant for repetition, making obscene, disturbing comments about women and promising to use water-boarding as a method of so-called enhanced interrogation because he likes it a lot is the President-elect of the US, but that could become normal sooner than people think, John Oliver has warned. President Obama once roasted Mr Trump while he was sat stony-faced in an audience about his plans to run for President in 2011, a once comedic moment in time he has since lived to regret. Now, he says he is rooting for his success. Ms Clinton, facing the tide of aggression Mr Trump unleashed against her during this election, asked the US to give him a chance. While democracy means accepting the will of the people, Oliver says this optimistic sentiment takes it a bit too far. It can feed into the normalisation of Donald Trump, " he said in a 30-minute segment about Mr Trump's presidency. "And hes not normal. Hes abnormal. [] He sticks out like a sore thumb - and frankly, he even looks like a sore thumb. Giving him a chance in the sense of not speaking out immediately against policies hes proposed is dangerous because some of them are alarming. It is going to be too easy for things to start feeling normal - especially if you are someone who is not directly impacted by his actions. Keep reminding yourself: this is not normal. Write it on a Post-it note and stick it on your refrigerator, hire a skywriter once a month, tattoo it on your ass, because a Klan-backed misogynist internet troll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address, and that is not normal. It is f**ked up. It has been five days since his election victory and we are already catching glimpses of the America Mr Trump hopes to foster. Thats an America where same-sex marriage is still legal, but only because it's already settled into law, womens abortion rights are threatened and three million criminals are deported en masse. Trump: Wall between US and Mexico will be fencing Mr Trump, now assuming a firmly pro-life stance after once taking three different stances on abortion in five days, in his first televised interview suggested women could just travel to other states if they need a termination should the pro-life Supreme Court judge he plans to instate help overturn Roe Vs Wade. Steve Bannon, the far right Breitbart executive chairman who has been accused of racism and anti-Semitism, has been announced as Mr Trumps chief strategist, a very senior role. The wall between Mexico and the US is still very much in the pipeline, although Mr Trump now says part of it could actually be a fence. His enthusiastic use of social media to disseminate some of his most hardline messages appears set to continue. "Its a great form of communication. Now, do I say Ill give it up entirely and throw out, thats a tremendous form I pick up Im picking up now, I think I picked up yesterday 100,000 people. Im not saying I love it, but it does get the word out. When you give me a bad story or when you give me an inaccurate story or when somebody other than you and another network, or whatever, cause of course, CBS would never do a thing like that right? I have a method of fighting back." Mr Trump also demonstrated a reassuring new way of properly dealing with hate crimes in the same CBS interview: by looking directly at the camera and demanding perpetrators stop it. I say, Stop it. If it if it helps, I will say this, and I will say it right to the cameras: Stop it. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A picture supposedly says a thousand words but the image of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage surrounded by his Brexit allys in a glittering gold lift is likely to leave many viewers speechless. While 66 floors below them protesters shouted Youre fired Donald!, Pussy grabs back and Love Trumps hate, these six men raised a glass to their victory over the so-called Liberal elite. In a bizarre and unprecedented move in British politics, Nigel Farage appears to be spearheading the UKs special relationship with America. After all, the UKIP leader and MEP was the first British politician to meet the President-elect over the weekend. The newly formed friendship between the property-magnate-President-elect and Mr Farage has been widely reported on - they have met on more occasion than one and Mr Farage even joined him at a rally in Mississippi back in August. At this particular meeting, Mr Farage claimed members of the Republican's inner circle were concerned about unflattering remarks made by British Cabinet ministers however Mr Trump informed him he had a nice phone call with Theresa May. Of course, Mr Farage did not make the trip alone. Instead, he was accompanied by his former chief aid Raheem Kassam, Leave.EU communications director Andy Wigmore, leave.EU campaigner Gerry Gunster, and UKIP donor Arron Banks. Christening themselves The Brex Pistols, Mr Farages key allies appeared visibly elated in the image. Decorated by designer Angelo Donghi, the men in photo are reported to have been enthralled up the opulent surroundings of his penthouse which includes marble pillars, crystal chandeliers, gigantic painted portraits depicting Greek myths, cherub statues and even an indoor fountain. All in gold of course. But who exactly are the men in the photo in question and what brings them to Trump Tower? 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 Raheem Kassam A former chief advisor to Mr Farage, Kassam is now editor-in-chief of right-wing news site Breitbart News London. Like Mr Trump, Kassam has also been known to dish out the odd sexist comment. Not only did he call his then fellow leadership contender Suzanne Evans a wrinkly old ginger bird, in June he posted a now-deleted tweet suggesting First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon should have her mouth taped shut. And her legs, so she can't reproduce. He apologised for the remarks. Kassam contested Ukip's November 2016 leadership election before dropping out of the race at the end of October. His campaign slogan took inspiration from Mr Trump and was Make Ukip great again. He has previously labelled his movement as "Faragist" and joked that he was the Faragest of the Faragists. Arron Banks Banks is a prominent Ukip donor and is co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign. Prior to investing his money in Ukip, he was a Conservative Party donor but announced he was switching parties by donating 1million to Ukip in October 2014. After the tragic murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, Banks commissioned a controversial poll on whether her murder had affected public opinion on voting. Probed about whether the wording of the poll had been tasteless, Banks said: I don't think so. We were hoping to see what the effect of the event was. That is an interesting point of view, whether it would shift public opinion. He has cited Mr Trumps success as being the result of connecting with voters on an emotional level. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesnt work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. Its the Trump success. Since the Brexit vote, he has been adamant that Leave.EU will continue campaigning as a rightwing Momentum. Gerry Gunster Unlike Kassam and Banks, Gunster was something of an invisible, faceless force behind the Brexit campaign. Appointed by Banks, Gunster is a Washington political strategist who has worked on dozens of referendums in America. The advocacy firm he heads, Goddard Gunster, claims it has a 90 per cent success rate. Banks has previously dubbed Gunster "the best referendum fighter in America. Banks told Politico his advice was: You have to have messages or voices that people trust, and of course politicians are last on the list. If you want to talk about immigration, get a recently retired senior border person. Donald Trump and Nigel Farage meet at Trump Tower in New York City Andy Wigmore Another key cog in the Leave.EU machine, Wigmore was head of communications for the campaign. On top of that, he is also a businessman who works closely with Banks and is a diplomat with the Belize High Commission in London working in trade and industry. Bizarrely, he is a top shooter and represented Belize in shooting at the Rio Olympics. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Lindsay Lohan is asking Donald Trump to join her at refugee camps in Syria and Istanbul because she has had an eye opening experience in Turkey, her spokesperson has said. Lohan has been spending time in Turkey and sharing pictures with the hashtag the world is bigger than five, a catchphrase employed by President Erdogan to call for action to save those facing conflict and persecution in Syria, as part of his broader argument the United Security Council should include more than five states. The actress, who recently debuted a bizarre new accent she calls Lilohan, has shared pictures of herself at a refugee camp in Turkey with the hashtag, where she has met with Syrian refugee families and aid workers. When the new President-elect announced his interview with 60 Minutes on Twitter, Lohan responded with a plea to let her help him and the world is bigger than five hashtag. A spokesman for Lohan told The Independent: She just had an eye opening experience while she was there visiting and wants to show the whole world what is really happening over there. He declined to comment on whether Lohans use of the world is bigger than five is a sign of her support for President Erdogan, but added: [it] has nothing to do with Trump though. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} If Hillary Clinton had been victorious as the polls had predicted it would have been Bill Clinton sitting opposite Michelle Obama at the White House. But instead, it was Melania Trump. In less than a week, the First Lady and Ms Trump have gone from being on opposing teams in the ugliest presidential campaign in recent history to sitting on golden chairs cordially sipping tea together in the White House. While they might be constantly compared and contrasted, the current First Lady and the soon-to-be First Lady put on their most well-mannered smiles for the meeting. After all, whats a bit of casual "plagiarism" between newfound friends? Ms Obama, who was a vocal campaigner against Mr Trump during the campaign, took Ms Trump on a tour of her future home. 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 Appearing in a 60-minute interview on CBS, Ms Trump was probed about whether any awkwardness had arisen from the Republican National Convention furor which saw Ms Trump accused of plaigarising some of Ms Obamas Democratic convention speech eight years ago. No. I didnt feel it, she said. [Michelle] was a gracious host. We had a great time and we talk about raising children in the White House. She was very warm and very nice. Children are arguably one of the few things the First Ladies have in common. While Ms Trump has one son Barron who is ten years old. Ms Obama has two children - Malia who is 18 years old and Sasha who is 15. In the interview, Ms Trump also admitted she was sometimes forced to monitor her husbands Twitter usage - throughout the election campaign he became notorious for inflammatory tweets. Donald Trump: Is the President-elect already breaking campaign promises? You never say to him, Come on? the interviewer probed. To which she replied: I did. Her husband also chipped in, adding: She does. You know, of course, I did many times from the beginning of the campaign," Ms Trump added. "Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesnt...I think he - he hears me. But he will do what he wants to do on the end. Hes an adult. He knows the consequences. And I give him my opinion. And he could do whatever he likes with it. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The April 2020 supermoon will be the biggest and brightest of 2020 as its elliptical orbit brings it closer to the Earth in more than a year. On 7-8 April, the full moon will reach as close as 356,907km (221,772 miles), and will appear most impressive at moonrise on Tuesday and moonset on Wednesday. Clear skies in the UK, combined with unusually low air pollution due to the coronavirus lockdown, make it one of the best opportunities in years to view the rare celestial phenomenon. Heres how to take the perfect picture of it: Use a landmark to get perspective Everyone will be taking pictures of the supermoon by itself, but some of the best pictures show the moon next to a land mark or trees and houses, which is what helps to give the picture a sense of place, says Nasas senior photographer, Bill Ingalls. Think of how to be creative that means tying it into some land-based object. It can be a local landmark or anything to give your photo a sense of place. 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon Show all 9 1 /9 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The moon rises over the O2 Arena in south-east London PA 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon A commerical jet flies in front of the moon on its approach to Heathrow airport in west London on November 13, 2016. AFP/Getty Images 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon A super moon rises over the Statue of Freedom on the Capitol dome in Washington, DC November 13, 2016. AFP 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The "supermoon", the closest the moon comes to Earth since 1948, rises over the Power and Light building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, U.S., November 13, 2016 Reuters 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon A woman sits on the rooftop terrace of a house during the "supermoon" in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, November 13, 2016 Reuters 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The moon rises behind the eagle sculpture high atop LeVeque Tower in Columbus, Ohio, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016 AP 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The moon rises beyond the Arch in St. Louis as seen from the Compton Hill Water Tower on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016 AP 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The moon rises behind Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas, Sunday evening, Nov. 13, 2016. AP 9 best images of the 2016 supermoon The moon rises over the harbor of the costal town of Lambert's Bay, South Africa, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016 AP Pick the best spot Location isnt everything, but it can definitely help with getting a perfect picture of the supermoon if you have time to plan it. You can look up the best monuments or statues in your area to photograph the image of the moon against, like Mr Ingalls does in Washington D.C., where he lives. It means doing a lot of homework. I use Google Maps and other apps even a compass to plan where to get just the right angle at the right time, he told Nasa. Use an app to find the moon Unless you're an astronomer, the best way to know where the moon will rise or set is to use a app on your smartphone to locate it. There are several free or cheap options you can choose from, each using your phone's inbuilt accelerometer to know which way you're facing. The apps can also tell you what phase the moon is in, while some even give other celestial details, like the location of planets and star constellations. Decent options for iOS and Android devices include Star Chart, Sky Safari and Skyview. Get the right exposure If youre using a camera where you can control the shutter speed, dont go for a long exposure even though the picture will be taken in low light, National Geographic photographer Mark Thiessen told the magazine, as it will lose any chance of capturing lunar detail and make the moon itself appear too bright. April's supermoon will offer the biggest and brightest view of the full moon in over a year (Getty Images/iStockphoto) If youre taking a picture on your camera, control the light balance by first tapping the screen where the moon appears to get the camera to focus on the object before dragging your finger up and down to play with the exposure. Youll usually want to drag it down for underexposure to be sure you have all the highlight detail, National Geographic photographer Michael Christopher Brown said. Use a tripod for your camera or rest your phone on a solid surface David Reneke, an astronomer and writer for Australian science magazine told ABC.net that if youre using an SLR or DSLR then its important to play with aperture settings on your camera to photograph the supermoon, but that using a tripod is essential. Its worth using a tripod for taking pictures with a smartphone too, as any camera shake can compromise the quality of the pictures but if you dont have one to hand you can simply rest your phone on a window ledge. For older smartphones that use a digital zoom rather than an optical zoom, its generally best not to use the zoom as it could compromise the quality of the image. Instead, take the picture and then crop it. Newer phones like the Huawei P30 and P40 series feature incredible zoom capabilities that can take detailed pictures of far away objects. Other cameras come with special features to improve pictures of the night sky, such as the Google Pixel 4s Astro mode. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} LEGO has confirmed it stopped promotional deal with the Daily Mail in response to an online campaign to stop companies advertising with the tabloid newspaper. The Danish toy company had previously been running free giveaways in the right-wing newspaper before the Stop Funding Hate campaign called for them cut ties. Speaking to The Observer, LEGO affirmed its decision to leave the partnership followed being contacted by British parent Bob Jones who claimed the Mail's headlines "create distrust of foreigners" and "blame immigrants for everything". On Saturday, the Danish company tweeted Stop Funding Hate: "We have finished the agreement with the Daily Mail and are not planning any future promotional activity with the newspaper." Stop Funding Hate applauded LEGO's decision and have pledged to continue lobbying leading brands such as John Lewis, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer to stop adverting deals with the Mail. Both John Lewis and Waitrose have stated they do not "make editorial judgement on a particular newspaper". The Co-Op Group has said it is "reviewing" its advertising but has not yet made a decision. A spokesman for the campaign said: "Stop Funding Hate welcomes the decision from LEGO. We are asking brands to listen to their customers when they tell them they want to stop funding hate, and that is what they've done. "People are becoming more aware that the money they spend could end up supporting publications whose stories, language or portrayal of certain people, fuels division. This urgently needs to addressed. These headlines harm people." Lego stops advertising with Daily Mail LEGO spokesperson Roar Rude Trangbaek told The Independent: "We spend a lot of time listening to what children have to say. And when parents and grandparents take the time to let us know how they feel, we always listen just as carefully. "We are both humbled and honoured to see how much consumers all over the world express their care for our company and our brand. "And we will continuously do our very best to live up to the trust and faith that people all around the world show us every day. "The agreement with The Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future." Bob Jones, who's Facebook post to LEGO went viral and was shared by Stop Funding Hate, said of the paper: "While I disagree with their political stand, I can accept their right to have it. "But lately their headlines have gone beyond offering a rightwing opinion. " UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty A Daily Mail spokesman said: "Our agreement with Lego has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with Lego in the foreseeable future." The original agreement had been for a promotional campaign of free giveaways rather than an advert, he added. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A group of refugee children have arrived safely and quietly in Scotland, nearly three weeks after the Calais Jungle was demolished. The Home Office said a group of girls aged between 15 and 17 who left a reception centre in France landed at Edinburgh airport on Saturday, without incident. The children were brought to the UK by Home Office staff, with support from the local authority, under the Dubs amendment. Several groups of unaccompanied refugee children have been transferred to England since October. An early group were taken to an immigration centre in Croydon where they were photographed and subjected to intense scrutiny by members of the rightwing media, who claimed some of them did not appear young enough. Tory MP David Davies even called for dental checks to assess the refugees' ages. Screens had to be erected in the London borough to protect later groups from paparazzi photographers and vitriolic headlines. In contrast, the group of girls taken to Edinburgh are believed to have entered the UK without any trouble. The media was no notified until after they had arrived. 1,500 lone children were left unsupervised in Calais immediately after the camp they had been living in was demolished at the end of last month. The Home Office was accused of abandoning them, after they pulled out of the region and stopped processing the children's claims. However the unaccompanied minors have now all been transported to reception centres in other parts of France and the Home Office has resumed assessments. Home secretary Amber Rudd said priority is being given to Dubs amendment children who are under 12, who are likely to be granted refugee status in the UK, or who are at high risk of sexual exploitation. The Home Secretary told Parliament that several hundred more children and young people will be brought to the UK. The Home Office said those children who have come in under the criteria for the Dubs amendment, which requires the Government to give refuge to children stranded in Europe regardless of whether or not they have a family connection to the UK, will be placed, where possible, directly into the care of local authorities. The Home Office will also continue to transfer eligible children with family links in the UK, under the Dublin Regulation. A Home Office spokesman said: "We are continuing to work closely with the French Government and other partners to identify unaccompanied asylum seeking children who are eligible to come to Britain. As we have made clear, our focus is transferring these children as soon as possible and ensuring their safe arrival. "After a brief pause during the clearance of the Calais camp, we can confirm the latest group of eligible unaccompanied minors has arrived in the UK. "The Home Secretary informed Parliament last month that several hundred more children and young people will be brought to the UK in the coming weeks. "So far more than 300 unaccompanied minors have been transferred to the UK." The Home Office would not comment on how many children arrived at Edinburgh Airport. It intends to confirm the total number of Dublin and Dubs transfers at the end of the process, when all of the transfers have taken place, Press Association reported. Controversy has surrounded figures released in the past, with the charity Help Refugees claiming that Dublin agreement children those with family in the UK were counted under the new Dubs agreement which is regarding children without a family connection to the UK when they should not have been. Scotland may be more welcoming to refugee children than England, where one in four local councils have said they will not take any unaccompanied minors because the government has not given them additional funding to cover the cost of their care. Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Show all 9 1 /9 Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A Catholic priest chats to Muslim Imans as they wait for the arrival of the coach carrying the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain arrives at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Young men are escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A boy is escorted after stepping off a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after arriving from the Calais 'Jungle Camp' Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK UK Border Force staff escort the first group of unaccompanied minors from the Jungle migrant camp in Calais to be brought to Britain as they arrive at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London Reuters Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK A young boy arrives on a coach at the Home Offices Lunar House after leaving the Calais 'Jungle Camp.' Fourteen migrant children from the 'Jungle Camp' in Calais are due to arrive in the UK today to be reunited with relatives Getty Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK British former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, center, flanked by Bethany Gardiner-Smith, left, from the Citizens UK charity and Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark speaks to the media about the 14 migrant children who will be resettled in the UK, outside Croydon Minster church in Croydon, south London AP Calais Refugee Children arrive in UK Asif Khan whose brother Aimal Khan was one of fourteen migrant children who arrived in the UK, speaks to the media outside Lunar House in Croydon, south London. The 25-year-old chef has been living in the UK for 11 years, having fled Afghanistan himself. His brother Aimal Khan, 14, also from Afghanistan, had been stranded in the Jungle for six months PA Glasgow announced it would welcome 35 children from the Calais camp who have been identified as needing immediate help. The local government in Edinburgh said it had costed how the capital could resettle 24 young people over a year. Under a formula proposed by the Home Office, Edinburgh would receive up to 56 unaccompanied refugee children. Like in parts of England, there are issues with funding and the council would be expected to make up a large shortfall. However, council leader Andrew Burns told the Edinburgh Evening News: We will be taking our fair share of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, absolutely definitely. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Boris Johnson stunned his EU foreign minister counterparts this afternoon by calling on the bloc to tone down its opposition to Turkey reintroducing the death penalty, it has been reported. Diplomats present at the foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said that Mr Johnson had warned against pushing Turkey into a corner over the issue. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan backed the return of the death penalty this summer after he purged over 100,000 potential political opponents from the countrys civil service and arrested opposition political parties. With Turkey still on paper a candidate for EU ascension and the abolition of the death penalty a condition of joining the bloc, a number of European countries have called for a halt to Turkeys accession negotiations. One diplomat described Mr Johnsons intervention as unbelievable, according to The Financial Times newspaper. Mr Johnson told the room that some EU states had previously taken time to abolish the death penalty in the 1980s and 1990s and that this had no been an automatic bar on membership. Foreign diplomats and ministers in the room are said to have interpreted Mr Johnson's comments as a suggestion that the EU accession rules could be bent for Turkey. A British diplomatic source with knowledge of the meeting however told The Independent that the Foreign Secretary was in no way defending Erdogan but simply stating the facts. The Foreign Secretary opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, he added. Mr Johnson campaigned hard for Brexit during the European Union referendum campaign on the basis that Turkey was about to join the bloc and open up free movement with the UK. Since his appointment to the Cabinet the former Mayor of London has said however clarified that he in fact supports Turkey joining the EU. We should not push Turkey into a corner, we should not overreact in a way that is against our collective interests, Mr Johnson told reporters outside the meeting. 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 Countries including the UK and Finland are understood to favour the continuation of Turkish EU accession negotiations because they see them as a way of influencing Turkey, a regional power in the febrile Middle Eastern region. Turkey is currently intervening in the Syrian civil war, where it is fighting both the Isis militant group and the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Mr Erdogan has said he might put Turkey's EU accession talks to a referendum in order to speed up or end the process, which have been fully and officially underway since 1999. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Liam Fox is like a husband who wants to divorce his wife but keep all the assets because his plans for Brexit are so unrealistic, an Irish minister says. The International Trade minister has come under fire in a leaked memo revealing confidential discussions of a Cabinet subcommittee meeting in Dublin. The document, obtained by The Irish Times, also identified France and other Mediterranean countries as the EU nations most likely to accept a hard Brexit. Dr Fox, one of three so-called Brexit ministers, met the Irish Minister for Jobs, Mary Mitchell OConnor, for talks in London earlier this month. They are known to have discussed the unique impact on Ireland of Britain leaving the EU, cross-border issues and the European Commissions plans to strengthen the single market. Dr Fox has led the Cabinet faction pushing for a hard Brexit, which would see the UK leave both the single market and the customs union, in order to strike trade deals with non-EU countries. According to The Irish Times, Ms Mitchell OConnor told the subcommittee that Dr Fox left her with the impression of a divorcing husband who wants to keep the family home and all other assets after the split. He said he expected to maintain access to the single market, while introducing curbs on immigration despite EU leaders insisting such a deal will not be possible. And he is understood to have argued that, if access to the single market is refused, the EU would have to pay compensation to countries, such as South Korea, with which the EU has a free trade deal. Compensation would have to be paid because the market for South Korea would shrink if Britain was no longer a part of it. Ms Mitchell OConnors comments are said to have provoked laughter from other Irish ministers, while reflecting concern about British expectations for the EU negotiations. Charlie Flanagan, the Foreign Affairs Minister, told an earlier meeting of the same Brexit subcommittee that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had declined to set out how Britain would approach the talks. The memo also outlined the approach Ireland must take to building alliances to ensure that Britain maintains as close ties as possible to the EU. It said: It will be important to identify those member states that, like Ireland, are likely to favour a future status for the UK as close as possible to the current arrangements, and those member states which might not be unduly concerned if a hard Brexit were to happen. Those unduly concerned countries were said to include France and other Mediterranean nations. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Labour has branded Nigel Farage a poppy-less popinjay after the Ukip politician skipped Remembrance Sunday services in Britain so he could go to America and meet Donald Trump. Carwyn Jones, the Labour first minister of Wales, said Mr Farage was conspicuous by his absence from services despite his party appropriating Battle of Britain imagery and rhetoric during his campaigns against the EU. Mr Farage was hailed as the first British politician to meet the new US President-elect this weekend, and was pictured, poppy-less, with him on Remembrance weekend in a golden elevator at Mr Trumps headquarters. Ukip defended Mr Farages decision not to wear a poppy during the visit, arguing that it would have been inappropriate for the former leader to wear the commemorative flower in the circumstances. In an angry statement issued on Monday morning, Labours Mr Jones said: I will never insist that anyone must wear a poppy, or attend remembrance events. This is a free country, and people choose to remember in different ways. But hypocrisy is something else altogether. You dont get to appropriate the Battle of Britain in your campaign literature, only to prioritise transatlantic photo-opps a few months later. Mr Farage likes to play by a different set of rules, this much is true. But in what universe do we let go, without comment or censure, the pictures of this grinning poppy-less popinjay in a gold lift with Donald Trump? Nigel Farage jokes about Donald Trump groping Theresa May Lauded on Fox News as some latter day revolutionary, Mr Farage basked in the warm glow of right-wing acceptance. But make no mistake he made a choice between two things this weekend. A choice between standing shoulder to shoulder with fellow Brexit in solemn remembrance, or to go on a jolly to the States to pick up a bit of reflected glory. He chose the latter. No other part leaders would get away with this, we shouldnt let Mr Farage. A Ukip spokesperson however hit back at Mr Joness criticism, arguing that to have worn a poppy in the United States on the Sunday would have amounted to virtue signalling. Mr Jones is probably unaware that in the US, the 11th is the day of commemoration. For Mr Farage to have worn a poppy on Sunday 13th would have been an egregious example of virtue signalling. Something normal for the likes of Mr Jones, but an anathema to Mr Farage, he said. Mr Joness statement reads more like the look-at-me vapourings of the Lib Dems than the words of a serious man. Its sad to see how the Labour Party has fallen. Ukip donor Arron Banks (second left) sports a poppy, unlike Mr Farage (Twitter/Leave EU) A Ukip source said Mr Farage took Remembrance Day very seriously, regularly toured First World War battlefields and studied the conflicts history, and that it was understood to be a serious breach of protocol to wear a poppy in the circumstances. Despite the spokespersons criticism of wearing a poppy in the US, millionaire Ukip donor Arron Banks was however pictured alongside Mr Farage in the US wearing the symbol of remembrance. Mr Farage met Mr Trump on Saturday and then toured US TV studios the following day. He could be seen wearing an enamel badge featuring the British and American flags on both occasions but did not wear a poppy. Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying Nazi-style propaganda when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next Breaking point. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said hed be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a racial slur against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be, he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: You know the difference Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he un-resigned and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. Well see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a 25-a-head meet the leader style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four, he said. That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: People who do not have HIV, to be frank. Thats a good start. And people with a skill. He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukips candidates, who used the word ch**ky to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he honestly would not use the slur, Mr Farage replied: A lot would Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were like a foreign land The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being like a foreign land. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were unrecognisable because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britains Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency, he said. If in a crisis to make sure weve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should sit in the corner Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to sit on the corner if they wanted to breastfeed their children. I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isnt too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious, Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are worth less At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply worth far less than many of their male counterparts. A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio, he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldnt guarantee 350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend 350 million a week on the National Health Service claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didnt speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldnt guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was a mistake Getty In 2014 the then Ukip leader protested about being snubbed from the Cenotaph wreath-laying ceremony on Remembrance Sunday, suggesting that he cared very deepy about attending. We're not invited and I could say to you that personally I would like to be because this is a subject that I care very deeply about, he told LBC Radio at the time. Mr Farage gave a speech during one of Mr Trumps campaign rallies and has since welcomed his election, arguing that he would be a good president. Downing Street this morning dismissed Mr Farages close contact with Mr Trump, telling reporters that there was no third person in the special relationship. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Downing Street has slapped down Nigel Farage after his visit to see Donald Trump, by declaring there will be no third person in the Prime Ministers relationship with the President-elect. After Mr Farage became the first British politician to meet Mr Trump, a No 10 spokeswoman said the US leader told Theresa May he wanted their relationship to be akin to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatchers. Recommended Theresa May trade speech to reach out to Donald Trump after tough week The spokeswoman added: I don't remember there being any third person in that relationship. The remark also has echoes of Princess Dianas famous complaint that Camilla Parker-Bowles was a third person in her crowded marriage with the Prince of Wales. The put-down came after an ecstatic Mr Farage appeared in pictures with Mr Trump following their meeting in New York and then did television interviews telling Ms May it was time to mend some fences with the US leader. It also followed claims, not denied by Mr Farage, that he had spoken with ministers about serving as intermediary to try and improve relations with the new US leader. But Ms Mays official spokeswoman said the Government already has well-established channels of communication with Mr Trumps team. Nigel Farage the first UK politician to meet Trump since election She pointed out that in their phone conversation the President-elect had invited the Prime Minister to Washington and voiced hopes of a Reagan/Thatcher-style relationship, which had no third person. Princess Diana complained in 1995 that in her marriage with Prince Charles there were three of us and so it was a bit crowded. The No 10 spokeswoman also joked that there was no need for Mr Farage to inform Downing Street of what happened in the meeting because he had already undertaken so many interviews on its content. After spending more than an hour with the President-elect, the interim Ukip leader urged Ms May to stop running him down and instead use his closeness to Mr Trump to put the national interest first. Donald Trump: Is the President-elect already breaking campaign promises? The Ukip man said: The problem is that No 10 keep on putting out press statements saying that I'm irrelevant. I would have thought that in the national interest I might just be able to broker a coming together of these parties that dont know each other at all. Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying Nazi-style propaganda when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next Breaking point. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said hed be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a racial slur against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be, he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: You know the difference Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he un-resigned and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. Well see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a 25-a-head meet the leader style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four, he said. That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: People who do not have HIV, to be frank. Thats a good start. And people with a skill. He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukips candidates, who used the word ch**ky to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he honestly would not use the slur, Mr Farage replied: A lot would Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were like a foreign land The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being like a foreign land. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were unrecognisable because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britains Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency, he said. If in a crisis to make sure weve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should sit in the corner Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to sit on the corner if they wanted to breastfeed their children. I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isnt too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious, Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are worth less At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply worth far less than many of their male counterparts. A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio, he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldnt guarantee 350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend 350 million a week on the National Health Service claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didnt speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldnt guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was a mistake Getty Downing Street insisted the outgoing Ukip chief would have no role in the Governments dealings with the incoming US administration, but Tory peer and former trade envoy Lord Marland said Mr Farage could be used as a salesman. The view was in marked contrast to prominent Tory Crispin Blunt who insisted there is no need for Nigel, while former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith added: Nigel Farage is just trying to get attention. This is an ego trip not a diplomatic one. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Government has rejected calls by two parliamentary committees for it to stop the sale of British bombs to Saudi Arabias armed forces in Yemen. Saudi forces have been widely accused of committing war crimes during the campaign in the country, where reports on the ground suggest they have blown up international hospitals, funerals, schools, and weddings. Despite the reported incidents and the worsening humanitarian situation in the country since the bombardment began, the UK has signed off 3.3 billion in arms sales to the country since the start of the offensive. Recommended Labour MPs rebel against call for UN probe into Saudi Arabia The country has been overtaken by famine with 370,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition and 1.5 million are going hungry overall, according to Unicef figures released in October. Saudi led-coalition air strikes are reported to have hit food factories processing products including potatoes and sugar. Two committees of MPs, the International Development and Business Committee, which sit on a parliamentary super committee called the Committee on Arms Export Control (CAEC), released a joint report calling for the suspension of arms sales until a UN investigation had been conducted into the alleged atrocities. A third constituent committee of CAEC, the Foreign Affairs Committee, did not endorse the report, and said it would be better for the British courts to decide the legality of the sales with a legal challenge launched by Campaign Against the Arms Trade set to be heard in the coming months. The Government however rejected the call for the suspension of sales. We disagree with this recommendation. The Government is confident in its robust case-by-case assessment and is satisfied that extant licences for Saudi Arabia are compliant with the UKs export licensing criteria, the Government said in an official response. We continue to assess export licence applications for Saudi Arabia on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export licensingCriteria, taking account of all relevant factors at the time of the application. The key test for our continued arms exports is whether there is a clear risk that those exports might be used in a commission of a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). A licence will not be issued for any country, including Saudi Arabia, if to do so would be inconsistent with any provision of the mandatory Criteria, including where we assess there is a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of IHL. The response was issued jointly Dr Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, Sir Michael Fallon, and Priti Patel. A man looks at cows killed by a Saudi-led air strike at a dairy farm in Bajil in Yemen's western province of Houdieda (Reuters) The Government has repeatedly said that Saudi Arabia is best placed to investigate its own alleged war crimes. The autocracy has absolved itself of any wrongdoing. The committees had recommended that the UK suspend licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia, capable of being used in Yemen, pending the results of an independent, United Nations-led inquiry into reports of violations of IHL, and issue no further licences. In addition, the UK Government should investigate whether any licences so far issued have led to the transfer of weapons which have been used in breach of IHL. 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 Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade told The Independent: "The government is in denial about the devastating impact of the Saudi-led bombardment and its own complicity in it. This is a very weak response and makes clear that arms company profits are still being prioritised over the human rights and lives of Yemeni people. "The evidence from the UN and others has been overwhelming, yet the government has refused to act. Johnson, May and their colleagues could stop the arms sales right now, but instead they are offering uncritical military and political support while helping arms companies like BAE to sell even more weapons." Saudi Arabia is intervening in Yemen in the side of the internationally-recognised Government, which no longer controls the countrys capital. It is ostensibly attacking Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, though large numbers of civilians casualties have been reported. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Bernie Sanders has given his support to those protesting against Donald Trump and has questioned the Electoral College system. During an interview with USA Today, the US senator from Vermont said it was time for a serious discussion on a system that gives someone the presidency despite them not getting the most votes. In a direct address to those who were campaigning, Mr Sanders said he understood why there was disagreement with Mr Trump, and said that people did not want "to go back" to echoes of past discrimination and bigotry People are angry. People are upset. And they want to express their point of view that they are very frightened, in very, very strong disagreement with Mr Trump, who has made bigotry the cornerstone of his campaign, Mr Sanders told USA Today. I think that people are saying, Mr Trump, we have come too far in this country fighting discrimination and bigotry. Were not going back. And if youre going to continue that effort, youre going to have to take us on. We may want to take a look at the whole Electoral College, which is seating a man for president who didnt get the most votes. This is something we need a serious discussion on, he added. Protests against Trump surge in cities across US for second night Mr Sanders was also asked if he thought he would have been able to beat Mr Trump if he had received the Democratic Party nomination over Hilary Clinton. The answer is, I dont know. Nobody knows. I certainly wish I had had that opportunity. Some of the polls out there suggest that might have been the case, Mr Sanders said. 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 It remains unclear if Mr Sanders will be running for another term in the Senate in 2018 but when asked he said: Probably, but I havent made that decision. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President-elect Donald Trump was reportedly surprised at the breadth of the presidents responsibilities after his first meeting with Barack Obama, according to reports. The Republican ran a campaign as an outsider, pledging to drain the swamp of alleged corruption in Washington. Unlike all other US presidents to come before him, Mr Trump has no political or military experience. But in his first meeting with Mr Obama - a man he had previously called the worst president ever - Mr Trump was reportedly surprised by how much work the presidency involved. Trump: We're going to deport millions The President-elect was surprised by the scope of what he would have to do in his new job, according to inside sources cited by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper also reported that Mr Trump was unaware he would have to replace the entire presidential staff upon taking office. As a result, Mr Obama is expected to spend more time than usual guiding Mr Trump into the role. While Mr Obama has said he hoped Mr Trumps presidency would be a success, many Americans feel differently. Protests continued for the fifth consecutive day against the controversial President-elect. Demonstrations were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Organisers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish bearing slogans such as, "Hate won't make us great", and chanted, "We are here to stay." More than 1,000 people joined that march, which started mid-afternoon and extended into the evening. Several hundred protesters also circled Philadelphia's City Hall on Sunday and then marched down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." In Los Angeles, several hundred people gathered outside CNN's regional headquarters ahead of Mr Trump's first TV interview as President-elect on 60 Minutes. Hundreds more including many families with children, marched in San Francisco from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting "Love trumps hate!" On Saturday, an estimated 8,000 had marched through the city's downtown area. Elsewhere in California, about 800 people marched through Sacramento and hundreds others formed a human chain around the nearly 3.5-mile perimeter of Oakland's Lake Merritt. In Oregon, police said they arrested 71 people late on Saturday and early on Sunday during anti-Trump protests downtown. Additional reporting by Agencies. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Berlin is on course to at least semi-legalising marijuana after a cross-party movement agreed on a ground-breaking pilot scheme. The capitals Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party have agreed on a controlled distribution of cannabis to adults project. Cannabis possession is illegal in Germany, although people found with less than 15g are often not prosecuted. Various German newspapers cited Green politician Benedikt Lux, on the day of Donald Trumps US-election victory, as saying a scientifically accompanied pilot project for the controlled delivery of cannabis was planned. Berlins Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district has previously tried to legalise controlled cannabis dealing, but has been thwarted by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. The city is one of 16 federal states in Germany with the authority to introduce its own laws. In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-5.jpg EPA In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-9.jpg EPA In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-8.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-1.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-2.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-3.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-4.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-6.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-7.jpg AP In pictures: Uruguay's Senate creates world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana Uruguay-10.jpg Reuters The move follows decriminalisation of cannabis in Nevada, California and Massachusetts, passed in votes on 8 November, that allows over-21s to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and to cultivate up to six plants for personal use. Max Plenert of the German Hemp Association, as quoted by broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said: The legal code is decided at the federal level, and this is about a local attempt to try to do things differently. This is a pilot project with limits. Its an attempt to advance the discussion about how things could be different. 4/20 London - Should marijuana be legal? It wont have a massive effect on the market for drugs as a whole. But as with other pilot projects concerning drugs, its a chance to show politicians and the press that the topic isnt such a big deal. And that could kick-start larger changes. Cannabis contains cancer-causing chemicals, is associated with psychotic illness including schizophrenia, can disrupt sperm production and ovulation, and can harm unborn babies according to the NHS. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Representatives of Israels Knesset have given their approval to what is known as the muezzin bill banning religious leaders from using loudspeakers or public address systems to summon worshippers for prayers. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation debated the bill on Sunday before authorising it for a parliamentary vote. It is likely to be passed, since it has the backing of the countrys ruling coalition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his support in his weekly cabinet meeting, saying that citizens of all religions have complained about excessive noise from muezzins, mosque officials who traditionally call worshippers to prayers from the buildings minaret. Israel is committed to freedom for all religions, but is also responsible for protecting its citizens from noise, he said. While the bill is primarily targeted at curbing noise pollution, critics have noted the proposed law contains a clause which says that freedom of religion should not be harmful to quality of life nor used to convey religious or nationalist messages, and sometimes even words of incitement, which they say is targeted at Muslims. During the debate head of the Joint List Arab coalition party Ayman Odeh said the bill was designed to harm freedom of religion for Muslims. There are already noise laws that apply to mosques and it is clear that the whole purpose of the bill is to label mosques as problematic, he added. Israel: From independence to intifada Show all 7 1 /7 Israel: From independence to intifada Israel: From independence to intifada 26973.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26974.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26975.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26976.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26977.bin Israel: From independence to intifada 26985.bin Robert Capa/Magnum Israel: From independence to intifada 26986.bin Robert Capa/Magnum Similar measures have been proposed by Israeli politicians several times in recent years. A 2011 Knesset-commissioned report found that several European countries, as well as Cairo and some cities in Saudi Arabia, currently impose decibel-level limits on the muezzins call. Spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Palestinians completely reject the proposal. Around 20 per cent of Israels population is Arab, making the call to prayer a familiar sound across the country. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Legatum Institute, a policy research group, has released its annual "Global Prosperity Index," a major survey that ranks countries based on factors including national wealth, education levels, and safety. One key factor the survey considers is governance, which is broken down into three categories: effective governance, democracy and political participation, and the rule of law. Legatum measured these variables by considering things like voter turnout, legislative independence, and the number of women in parliament. While European countries dominate the list, there is also room for a handful of countries on the other side of the Atlantic. Take a look at the countries that made the top of the list. 17. Japan Japan is the only Asian country to make it into top 17 countries for governance. It functions under a constitutional monarchy where the Emperor serves mainly ceremonial duties. (Wikimedia (Wikimedia) 16. Belgium As well as being as the headquarters of the EU and NATO, Belgium is ranked as one of the best-governed countries on Earth. It functions under a federal political system, whereby regions have significant powers. 15. Austria The German-speaking country is a non-mover, having come 15th in Legatum's last index. It is due to elect a new president in December. 14. Ireland Ireland is a parliamentary democracy. The parliament is referred to as the Oireachtas and is headed by an elected leader known as the Taoiseach. 13. Australia Australia is one of the few non-European states to make the top 17. It has dropped three places since last year's rankings. 12. Iceland with a population of just over 320,000 people, the Nordic island nation is in Legatum's top 17 countries for governance for the second year running. 11. United Kingdom One of the oldest democracies in the world, the United Kingdom just misses out on the top 10. Members of Parliament meet at Westminster, London. 10. Germany The west European state is a major power-broker in the European Union and ranks highly for governance as an independent entity too. It also ranked highly for economic quality and natural environment. 9. Canada The country in the northern half of North America makes the list, while its neighbour the USA does not. Canada is currently led by liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 8. Luxembourg Famous among other things for being a tax haven, Luxembourg scores highly in the governance index. It comes first for personal freedom and health, making it one of the highest-scoring on the overall index. 7. Denmark Denmark comes high up the list, although behind several of its Scandinavian counterparts. Its national parliament is called the Folketing, which translates as 'the people's thing.' 6. Switzerland The federal European republic comes first on the list for education, but also ranks highly for governance. Its parliament has two chambers, and all 246 members of both houses' chambers are directly elected by the people. (Wikipedia / CC 3.0 (Wikipedia / CC 3.0) 5. Sweden Sweden has fallen one place since last year's index but still ranks as one of the best-governed countries on Earth. 4. Netherlands The small western European country comes high up the list. The Hague, where its parliament sits, is home to over 150 international organisations, including the International Criminal Court. 3. Norway The Scandinavian nation ranks higher in governance than in any other sub-index. Its parliament building, where Prime Minister Erna Solberg currently leads, 'the Stortinget,' translates as 'the great thing' or 'the great council.' 2. New Zealand The island nation in the Pacific Ocean is runner-up for the second year in a row. It also ranked highly for its open market, freedom, and strong sense of society. 1. Finland Perhaps unsurprisingly, a Nordic state tops the list. Finland tops the list, climbing four places from last year's index. The country's current prime minister is Juha Sipila. Parliament in Helsinki, Finland, where the government is to tighten sexual offence laws (Wikipedia / CC 3.0) Read more: This chart is easy to interpret: It says we're screwed How Uber became the world's most valuable startup These 4 things could trigger the next crisis in Europe Read the original article on Business Insider UK. 2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Looking across the English Channel from mainland Europe, it is clear David Camerons decision to impose a binary choice on the British people, in the form of a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU, has divided the UK. The overwhelming emotion to the result of the referendum in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe is sadness. The European Union is far from perfect, but for many of us it is the worlds greatest peace project. A peace bought about by in part by the sacrifice of many British citizens during the Second World War. Contrary to reports in some parts of the British media, I do not have the sense that European politicians will not now seek revenge on the UK for wanting to leave us. At the same time, given the current make-up of the British Government, we must recognise it is unlikely that the UK will obtain a better deal as a former member than existing EU members have. Brexit may mean Brexit, but what does this mean in practice for the millions of UK citizens living in continental Europe, or the millions of EU citizens living, studying or working in Britain? Among the powerful emotions provoked by the referendum anger, regret and denial was a sense of bereavement. Many British people consider themselves European and value their European citizenship, which struck a chord with me. Theresa May might use fast-track process to sidestep full scrutiny of Brexit plans, minister signals It is for this reason that I drafted an amendment to a draft report by the European Parliaments Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, on possible changes to the current institutional set-up of the European Union. The idea is simply to guarantee those who want it some of the same rights they had as full EU citizens, including the right of residence in the EU, and to be able to vote in European elections and be represented by an MEP. Since this idea hit the headlines, I have been taken aback by the level of support that I have received for the proposal. Thousands of people from Britain have in touch with me to ask what they can do to make this a reality. Currently, EU treaties specify that European citizenship derives directly from the national citizenship of its member states. However, it also specifies that citizenship of the Union is additional to and does not replace national citizenship. Creating an individual and voluntary citizenship to the Union would thus require treaty change, not in the least to specify its rights and duties, but it would not infringe upon national citizenship. 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 An associate membership could provide all the rights of full European citizenship, for example the right to freedom of movement, access to healthcare in the EU and the right to reside in EU member states. Following the reciprocal principle of no taxation without representation, these associate citizens would pay some form of annual membership fee directly into the EU budget. In return, EU associate citizens would be able to stand and vote in European elections via trans-national European lists, which we hope will replace the vacant seats of the 73 British MEPs who will be departing in 2019. I have no doubt it would have been better for the UK to stay with us in the European Union. But if Brexit means Brexit, then I see no reason why the EU should not, in principle, offer an individual EU associate citizenship to UK citizens who wish to maintain their European identity. Charles Goerens is an MEP for the Democratic Party of Luxembourg at the European Parliament Activity on housing projects also rose at a sharp and accelerated pace during October Growth in the Irish construction industry has hit a seven-month high, new figures indicate. Activity, new orders and employment all increased at faster rates in October, according to the Ulster Bank Construction Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI). Companies also increased their purchasing activity, and confidence over future output also improved from September. Simon Barry, a chief economist with Ulster Bank said: "Overall, the October results paint an encouraging picture of recent developments at Irish construction firms. "Solid readings across the headline, new orders and employment indicators highlight that momentum behind the sector's recovery continues to look strong." The PMI, a seasonally-adjusted snapshot designed to track changes, found t he commercial construction category was the best performer for the sixth successive month. Activity on housing projects also rose at a sharp and accelerated pace during October. The rate of new order growth was substantial, having quickened for the fifth consecutive month to the strongest since February. As a result, c onstruction firms were encouraged to increase their staffing levels. The rise in new business in October was also a key factor behind an expansion of purchasing activity by construction firms - among the sharpest since the survey began in mid-2000. Meanwhile, higher demand for inputs led suppliers to increase their charges, and also resulted in delivery delays. The rise in input costs faced by construction firms during October was sharp and the fastest since August 2015. Suppliers' delivery times lengthened at a much more marked pace than was recorded in September. Business sentiment ticked up in October and remained strongly positive, with about two thirds of respondents predicting an increase in activity over the next 12 months. Among the factors supporting optimism were predictions of improving market conditions and a good pipeline of work, the survey said. Mr Barry added: "I mportantly, construction firms are continuing to benefit from robust increases in new business levels, with the new orders index rising to its highest level since February following a fifth consecutive monthly acceleration in October. "Firms continue to report a strengthening in client demand amid a general improvement in economic conditions as an important contributor to the ongoing uplift in new business volumes. "In turn, the healthy expansion of new orders continues to underpin increased demand for construction workers. "The employment index rose sharply last month, with the pace of hiring accelerating to its fastest in eight months as almost one third of firms noted a rise in employment." Ireland's Foreign Minister has pledged to underline the country's commitment to the European Union during a visit to the Middle East. Charlie Flanagan is in Abu Dhabi for the second day of his three-day tour of the Gulf, leading an Enterprise Ireland trade mission. He said: "My visit is timely as it offers an opportunity to bring clear messages to important partners in the Gulf about Ireland's position in the wake of the UK vote to leave the European Union. "I made clear that Ireland will remain a strong and active member of the Union." The minister is expected to meet with the UAE's minister for foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and with the country's education minister, Hussain Ibrahim al Hammadi. He will also meet with Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. On Saturday, in Riyadh, he held a series of bilateral meetings to discuss a range of issues including the stalled Middle East peace process and the humanitarian impact of conflicts in Yemen and Syria. "These are issues of concern to the Irish people," added Mr Flanagan. "With the minister of state for education, I had an opportunity to discuss the possibility of increasing the number of Saudi students coming to study in Ireland's universities and institutes of technology around the country." He also took part in a number of commercial events to support Irish companies. "I welcome the opportunity to see first-rate Irish companies at work, and to support them in their efforts to secure new business and so support jobs at home," said the minister. Michael Noonan said Brexit presented an important challenge for the Irish economy Finance Minister Michael Noonan is expected to offer reassurances about the country's enduring appeal when he meets potential investors in the United States this week. The visit was planned following the outcome of the UK referendum on Brexit, which Mr Noonan said presented an important challenge for the Irish economy. As well as representatives from large US companies which have bases in Ireland, the minister will also meet US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and officials from the IMF and World Bank. Mr Noonan said: "Ireland has strong ties with the US and this is most evident in terms of inward investment from American companies. "I meet regularly with current and prospective investors from the US and this visit will allow me to emphasise Ireland's attractiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment following the UK's decision to exit the European Union. "Companies invest in Ireland for a broad range of reasons, not least to access the world's largest economic bloc, the European Union. "As a common law, English speaking and business friendly jurisdiction we will continue to be an attractive destination for US companies. "We will continue to look outwardly and engage with investors with a view to encouraging substantive investment in Ireland which creates high-quality employment for our people." Last month Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan expressed concern after Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster accused Dublin officials of poaching foreign investment and of talking down the Northern Ireland economy. The houseboat apparently drifted across the Atlantic from Canada (Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit/PA) A makeshift solar-powered houseboat has washed up on a beach after apparently drifting across the Atlantic Ocean from Canada. Authorities say the owner was intending to sail on the "floating caravan" but was talked out of it before it broke loose from its mooring in Newfoundland within the last few months. Locals in Co Mayo were startled by the unusual sighting on Cross Beach, which sparked an emergency rescue mission by lifeboat and coast guard crews. While no-one was found aboard the 20ft timber and polystyrene boat, a message scrawled inside gave a clue to its origins. "I, Rick Small, donate this structure to a homeless youth to give them a better life that Newfoundlanders choose not to do!" it said. "No rent, no mortgage, no hydro." Rick Small is an eco-adventurer from Ontario who travelled 7,000 kilometres (4,375 miles) across Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, on a solar-powered tricycle. The Irish Coast Guard have been in contact with their Canadian counterparts in Halifax. "They said the owner was hoping to cross the Atlantic in it, but they managed to discourage him," a spokesman said. "It was last seen in Portugal Cove in Newfoundland during the summer and it broke loose. "The Halifax authorities were amazed it made it to Ireland and was in one piece." Michael Hurst, of the Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit in Co Mayo, was one of the first at the scene when the vessel washed ashore. "I didn't know what to think, I was just concerned about safety and securing it," he said. "Then I thought: where in the name of God did this come from and who built it?" Mr Hurst described the houseboat as like a "floating caravan" made from timber off-cuts, polystyrene, spray foam and Perspex windows with solar panels. It is around 20ft long, 10ft high and about 12ft wide, he said. "I wouldn't like to go out on it," he added. "But if you were homeless, it would be like a castle." Mr Hurst went to the scene on Sunday evening after alerting Malin Head Coast Guard to the sighting. Crews used ropes to secure the vessel, which will now be handed over to Mayo County Council. Locals are already talking about restoring it for use as an attraction on the Wild Atlantic Way tourist route. There is no justification for claims by Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster that the Republic is trying to "poach investment" and undermine the North's economy in the wake of Brexit, the head of the IDA has insisted. In his first public comments on the issue since Ms Foster's remarks last month, Martin Shanahan told the Irish Independent that he had no idea what Ms Foster was talking about. "I don't believe there's any justification," the IDA boss said. "In truth, I don't know to what the First Minister is referring." Ms Foster told the DUP party conference last month that Irish Government representatives are sent out around the world to "talk down" the North's economy, and "to attempt to poach our investors". She claimed a hard border existed in the mind of the Irish Government. Foreign Affairs minister Charlie Flanagan expressed surprise at the comments, which he deemed unhelpful. Mr Shanahan also dismissed the claim. "Obviously the UK is a competitor, Northern Ireland is a competitor, but as a source of foreign direct investment (FDI) it is not something that the IDA is focused on," Mr Shanahan said. "We are focused on Europe, we are focused on Asia, we are focused on the US." The DUP, along with the UUP, boycotted the Government's all-island civic dialogue on Brexit earlier this month, which Mr Flanagan branded a "missed opportunity". The Government has been treading carefully in its efforts to lure jobs and investment from the UK following its June Brexit vote. France, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland are the main countries hoping to provide new homes for thousands of UK financial workers who might be moved if their employers shift operations out of London in advance of the UK leaving the European Union. Citigroup has denied a report that it is planning to move up to 900 jobs from London to Dublin as part of its Brexit contingency plans. Meanwhile, Mr Shanahan also said he didn't believe the Government's stance on Apple would hinder or undermine its relationship with the European Commission in the continuing Brexit negotiations. The Government last week launched an appeal against the EU ruling that Apple received an unfair tax deal worth 13bn, and must pay it back. "We have an issue with the European Commission decision and we're appealing it, but we're not the only country appealing a decision of the European Commission," Mr Shanahan said. Fianna Fail Spokesperson on Agriculture Charlie McConalogue says it is absurd that the Government has refused to initiate a review of Food Wise 2025 in the wake of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. The 10-year Food Wise 2025 strategy was published in 2015 and sets out the strategic plan for the development of the agri-food sector over the next decade. Deputy McConalogue said Fianna Fail believes that the Brexit vote demands an immediate review of the Food Wise 2025 strategy. As it stands the targets in the strategy were forecast on the assumption that the UK remains within the European Union. A UK exit from the EU represents one of the biggest risks to the Irish agri-food industry since the foundation of the State. Thousands of jobs are set to be impacted by the UKs decision to leave the EU and its important that our strategy for developing the industry takes account of this. I have been calling on the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to launch a comprehensive review of Food Wise 2025 to consider the new threats that have arisen following the Brexit vote. Expand Close Fianna Fail's Charlie McConalogue / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fianna Fail's Charlie McConalogue McConalogue said astonishingly the Minister has refused to carry out such a review. In a parliamentary reply to me Minister Creed stated that he sees no compelling reason at this point to review the strategy. This is an alarming response and indicates that the Government is out of touch when it comes to the threat posed by Brexit, he said. The UK is Irelands number one agri-food export destination. Over 50% of beef exports and 33% of dairy exports are currently destined for the UK. The outcome of the Brexit vote will cause serious disruption to Irish exporters. The ESRI have forecast that Brexit could lead to a 2% increase in unemployment and a 5% reduction in exports in the event of a hard Brexit taking place. Irish economic growth has been downgraded since the Brexit vote. The first wave of job losses has already occurred in the horticulture sector due to the collapse in the value of sterling. The threat from Brexit is stark and real, and it is already having an impact on the agri-food sector. It is vital that Minister Creed reconsiders his position by initiating a comprehensive view of Food Wise 2025 to take into account the threats associated with Brexit. Success Responding Minster Creed said that of the 330 detailed actions in the Food Wise strategy which were due to commence in 2015 or 2016, 28% have been achieved or substantial action has been undertaken; and he added that a further 67% have commenced and are progressing well. "I believe that this is a good start and I will press on to get as many actions as possible completed within the next year. "In the light of the UK vote to leave the EU I convened a special meeting of the High Level Implementation Committee to consider the immediate impact of the UK decision. I intend to include this issue as a standard item on the agenda of each future meeting of the HLIC. It is clear that ensuring action is taken on the Food Wise recommendations, particularly those related to market development, competitiveness and innovation, assumes even greater importance in the light of the UK decision. "However, I see no compelling reason at this point to review the strategy," the Minister said. The Irish food industry sells itself as the home of green, environmentally-friendly farming. Yet it is home to only 1,787 certified organic farmers around 2pc of the total number of farmers and well below the European average of 5-6pc. Tthe General Secretary of the Department of Agriculture recently said there are significant market opportunities for Irish organic produce and cited a recent Trade Mission to Asia where one high-end supermarket said the demand for organic produce is growing by 30pc a year. Yet, with just 1,787 organic farmers in Ireland, our ability to export extensive volumes of produce is limited. One infant formula producer which uses Irish milk powder cannot source enough volumes of organic milk powder in Ireland and sources it abroad. However, Grace Maher, of the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) said part of the problem with the low number of organic farmers lies with the Department of Agriculture. She said that there is currently no organic scheme for farmers to join, despite over 500 farmers joining the Organic Scheme last year. Last year there was a 60pc increase in payments under the Organic Farming Scheme which brought Ireland more on a par with the rest of Europe in terms of government support and we had an unprecedented numbers come into organic farming. In total, 504 farmers came into organic farming in 2015. However, she said that five-year Scheme has now closed and there is no funding for new farmers looking to join an organic scheme. Figures from the Department of Agriculture show that the number of organic producers in Ireland has rinse from 1,277 in 2013 to 1, 787 this year. The Department also said that the current budget for the Organic Farming Scheme has been fully committed, if additional funds in the Rural Development Programme become available, it will look at the re-opening of the Organic Scheme. Other supports which remain open include the Organic Capital Investment Scheme under TAMS II which provides grants for a very wide range of on-farm investments by organic farmers, offering a standard 40% rate of aid and 60% in the case of young organic farmers. According to Grace, of the 504 farmers who entered the scheme in 2015, there was a wide geographic spread, but the vast majority are involved in beef and sheep production. Keeping farmers in organic production is not an issue, she said, its getting them in thats the problem. Very few farmers leave organic farming, people may initially be attracted to the sector because of the OFS payment but once they are in the vast majority of them stay as they like the system of farming. Farmers, she said, are very slow to convert to organic as many feel they are farming very close to organically, but dont bother with the additional process and paperwork that is involved to get certified, and that directly affects the numbers of farmers converting to organic production. But, for most farmers, she says turning organic would involve very little change except for a reduction in fertiliser usage. If the Government indicated that there was support for new farmers coming into the sector that would happen as there are farmers waiting in the wings to come into organics. Organic Supports The Organic Farming Scheme currently running in Ireland is a five-year scheme, with a two-year conversion period. During the two-year conversion, farmers must farm organically but their produce cannot be sold with an organic label on it. To compensate for this possible as many farmers will initially reduce stocking rates and not receive an organic premium, farmers are eligible for supports of 220/ha for grassland farms and then 170/ha for the next three years. Organic Demand Figures from Kantar show that in 2016 organic food sales grew by 23pc in Ireland in the large supermarkets. The European organic market is valued at 24bn, according to Grace and from an Irish perspective if you have an organic logo on the Irish green image you have a massive market on our doorstep. Irish Organic Produce Ireland needs more organic tillage farmers, according to Grace as there is a big demand for organic cereals. Organically certified animals must be fed organic feed so if concentrates are fed they must be certified organic including protein crops, and at the moment we are heavily reliant on imports to meet this need Ireland though, she said, is very good at producing organic meat products, especially beef and lamb. Around 40pc of the organic Irish beef produced here is exported. Because direct sales of organic produce command higher prices, many organic producers sell directly and not through supermarkets. According to Grace, the majority, around 75pc of organic fruit and vegetables in supermarkets are imported, and there are obvious opportunities there for farmers who wish to produce Irish organic products to meet the market demand for them. The largest agricultural auction in Europe, Cheffins, saw the highest grossing sale of second-hand machinery last week with sales totalling 3.5m at its sale ground in Sutton, Cambridgeshire. This is a lift in sales of over 1m compared to November last year. The most expensive tractors were purchased by UK dealers who are reporting a shortage of used stock due to a decrease in trade-ins from farmers. Against a challenging agricultural climate, dealers are reporting that farmers are turning to second-hand stock rather than purchasing new machines and this was reflected in the sales results. The Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA), reported 2016 tractor registrations are down by 11pc, which illustrates the decrease in new tractor purchases. Expand Close Fendt 828 4wd Tractor. 46,000 (53,564) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Fendt 828 4wd Tractor. 46,000 (53,564) As farmers continue to extend their replacement policies, rather than purchasing new, the second-hand trade has continued to grow. Coupled with significant increases in manufacturers prices, quality second-hand stock is becoming increasingly attractive. UK dealers accounted for over 50pc of deals at the November sale. The highest ticket prices included; a John Deere 6210R which sold for 54,800; 50,500 for a John Deere 6125R and 46,000 for a Fendt 828 all of which sold to UK dealers. The weakening pound also continued to attract foreign purchasers and Novembers sale saw the return of a number of mainland European buyers who havent been present over the previous two years. Buyers included a large contingent from France, Spain, Belgium, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland and the Ukraine, as well as the usual strong trade from the Southern Ireland and Middle East and Northern Africa. Novembers sale also saw an increase in sales of tractors direct from farms. Farmers have been looking to replace machinery and to make the most of the strong trade and prices achieved at auction due to exposure to the export market. Expand Close John Deere 6125R 4wd Tractor. John Deere 340 Loader, Power Quad, Air Seat, Beltline Lights, Field Office, Front Weights & Service History. 1 owner from new. 650 hrs. 50,500 (58,782) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp John Deere 6125R 4wd Tractor. John Deere 340 Loader, Power Quad, Air Seat, Beltline Lights, Field Office, Front Weights & Service History. 1 owner from new. 650 hrs. 50,500 (58,782) Bill Pepper, Director, Cheffins, said with sales grossing over a third on Novembers sale last year, it is obvious that both the UK and export market for second-hand machinery is booming. "The cocktail of rising prices for new tractors, lack of new tractor registrations, a shortage of stock for dealers and a drop in trade-ins has really brought the UK dealers back to our market. "This, combined with the export trade making the most of a drop in the pound, has led to UK buyers vying against the foreign buyers and has in turn pushed up prices. "We have also had a number of farmers entering stock to be sold as they see auction as the best way to achieve the highest prices for stock. One farmer from Lancashire drove his John Deere all the way to Cambridgeshire for the sale, taking him eleven hours, however it was well worth the trip as it eclipsed its reserve price by 5,000 and was purchased by an East Anglian dealer. Work on the specification and terms and conditions for the TAMS tillage measure is at an advanced stage and it is hoped to have it ready shortly, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed. The introduction of a specific scheme of investments for Tillage farmers has been included in a formal amendment to the Rural Development Programme proposed by the Department. The acceleration of construction output has seen demand for workers rise, with a third of Irish building firms reporting an increase in employment. Stock image The pace of construction activity in Ireland has surged to its highest level in seven months, according to data released by Ulster Bank today. The acceleration of construction output has seen demand for workers rise, with a third of Irish building firms reporting an increase in employment. The rate of hiring hit an eight-month high last month. But the strong activity reported by the sector is also starting to push up costs. Robust demand has prompted suppliers to increase their charges, and also resulted in delivery delays, according to Ulster Bank. It added that the rise in input costs faced by construction firms in October was the fastest since August 2015. Despite the spectre of Brexit, Irish construction firms were more confident in October of the future than they were in September. The Ulster Bank Construction Purchasing Managers' Index - which tracks changes in construction activity - hit 62.3 in October, up from 58.7 in September. Expand Close Simon Barry of Ulster Bank / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Simon Barry of Ulster Bank Any figure above 50 on the index indicates expansion in the sector, while any figure below 50 indicates contraction. Simon Barry, the chief economist for the Republic of Ireland at Ulster Bank, said the October figures "paint an encouraging picture" of the construction sector. About two-thirds of firms surveyed expect to be even busier over the next 12 months. "Firms continue to report a strengthening in client demand amid a general improvement in economic conditions as an important contributor to the ongoing uplift in new business volumes," he said. "In turn, the healthy expansion of new orders continues to underpin increased demand for construction workers." DCC Energy has acquired French firm Gaz Europeen Holdings SAS in a move that will add to the company's presence in the country. The firm described the deal as "highly complementary" to Butagaz's, which it acquired last year, strong market position in the liquefied petroleum gas in France. Gaz Europeen is a specialist retailer of natural gas and focuses on the supplying management companies, apartment blocks, and public authorities. The Paris-headquartered firm generated revenue of 205m last year with an operating profit of 15.7m. The deal is DCC Energy's first major acquisition in natural gas as the business looks to strengthen its position in the French market. Stephen Moore says the US should be more competitive One of Donald Trump's key economic advisers has said the United States wants to "emulate Ireland" under the president-elect's corporate tax policies. Stephen Moore said the US had learned a lesson in business development and competitiveness from Ireland. Mr Moore warned last week that a "flood of companies" would leave Ireland when Mr Trump implemented his new tax policy. Government ministers have been quick to play down the danger of American companies fleeing Ireland, stressing that firms are attracted to the country for a number of reasons, not just the favourable corporate tax rate. Speaking yesterday, Mr Moore said: "We want to emulate Ireland. You have one of the lowest, if not the lowest, business tax rates of all. "We want to be competitive with Ireland. We've learned that low taxes are a good way to stimulate development, so we're very excited about this idea. "We do think that a lot of the companies that have left the United States will come back and they will come back from China and from Canada, Mexico and come back from Ireland." He said lowering the corporate tax rate to 15pc was necessary to bring jobs back to the US. He said: "We need to do this, we need to bring back the jobs to Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. "We need to bring back the jobs that have left. I think overall the lesson that we've learned is that a good way to stimulate more business investment is to cut our business tax rate and we learned it from Ireland." Mr Trump's aide also said the new administration was aiming to drastically change the economic landscape in the US. He said a lack of competitiveness had damaged the US economy. "We've lost a lot of manufacturing, we've lost a lot of plants, most of them have gone to places in Mexico and China. We just haven't been competitive in the United States, we've had very high taxes, we've had strangling regulations, we've got crazy climate change policies. "All of that is going to change in America. We're going to start producing things again in America and making things again," he said. US financial giant Citigroup has denied it is planning to move as many as 900 jobs to Dublin as part of its Brexit battle plan. A report over the weekend suggested the bank is scouting for office space in the capital, where it employs 2,500 people. But a spokeswoman for the bank denied the claim. The 'Sunday Times' claimed Citigroup is working on a "project of substance" for Ireland, that would see it shift hundreds of jobs to Dublin as Britain prepares to leave the EU. Citigroup held a board meeting in Dublin last week. It was attended by chief executive Mike Corbat and chairman Michael O'Neill. During their visit, they met Taoiseach Enda Kenny and other senior politicians. But a Citigroup spokeswoman said the company holds one board meeting outside the United States every year, and the meeting in Dublin had been arranged a year ago. She said that there is no "project of substance" being developed by the bank for Ireland, and that the company is not looking for any new office space. The best thing we can say about the US presidential election is that it's over. There were lies, damn lies, scandals, racism and misogyny. There was one candidate who played by a traditional rulebook, and another who understood how to exploit the needs of struggling print and broadcast media to create ubiquitous publicity. Obviously, the US media needs to take a long, hard look at itself. The traditional media seems to have lost the ability to hold the middle ground, and perhaps one of the reasons for this is the online filter bubble that the modern electorate inhabits. Could it be that the internet, which originally held the promise of access to all human knowledge, actually delivers dangerous levels of confirmation bias and an ill-informed electorate? Earlier this year, Pew Research estimated that 62pc of Americans get their news from social media, with Facebook having the strongest grip on the American psyche. But Facebook's newsfeed has little to do with news in the traditional sense. It offers no analysis. It's not designed to challenge or inform, but to keep users engaged on Facebook for as long as possible. It's a honey trap, which serves up a sweet cocktail of personalised content users are likely to engage with and share. Of course, Facebook isn't the only one engaging in this form of personalisation that creates more habitual user behaviour - good news for the platforms that use it. But it also leads to users being exposed to very few ideas that challenge their world view - bad news for tolerance and democracy. Market intelligence company Mintel issued a recent consumer trends report that found personalisation leads to curated worldviews and separate allegorical ecosystems. "Humans naturally tend to select what they like," the report states, "but now, many content publishers and social media sites employ algorithms to feed users only articles and posts which they know will be met with enjoyment and agreement." Search engines that give prominence to one candidate over another based on user data could also be swaying political outcomes. How much sway could they have? Researchers at the American Institute for Behavioural Research in California wanted to find out, so they built a search engine that deliberately skewed results. Around 300 voters were invited to choose their preferred candidate in a two-horse political race. They found that undecided voters' preferences could be affected by placing one candidate above the other. They even estimated that biased search engine results could shift the vote by up to 2.6 million votes. Not a huge amount, but if applied to states with higher electoral colleges, you could have a very different result. The researchers were quick to point out there is no evidence any search engine would deliberately manipulate results. But they did note that these algorithms that can sway voters' opinions are shrouded in secrecy, and the likes of relevance and personal data are used to rank results. What is clear is that whenever algorithms are used to serve up information related to politics based on personal information, some form of digital gerrymandering is possible. The filter bubble and resulting polarisation is an unintended consequence of the convenience which many technology companies are pursuing on behalf of their users. They want intuitive and addictive interfaces that present users with no cognitive load. But this desire is directly at odds with the principles needed to foster an informed and tolerant electorate. Facebook seems to be aware of its responsibility in this regard. In response to an article on Vox entitled 'Facebook is harming our democracy, and Mark Zuckerberg needs to do something about it', the social network issued the following statement: "We understand there's so much more we need to do, and that is why it's important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation. We're committed to continuing to work on this issue." To borrow a political slogan from our side of the pond, it's a case of "A lot done. More to do." The personal details of millions who signed up to a sex hook-up website in the past 20 years have been exposed in one of the largest ever data breaches. The email addresses and passwords of 412 million accounts have been leaked after the meet-up website Adult Friend Finder and sister sites were hacked. At least 5.2 million UK email addresses were stolen in the breach, which also included the date of last visit, browser information, some purchasing patterns. Adult Friend Finder describes itself as "one of the world's largest sex hook-up" websites, with more than 40 million active users. The hack, against its parent company Friend Finder Networks, also involved data from Cams.com, a live video sex site, and Penthouse.com, an internet porn site that was sold in February. The attack, discovered by hack monitoring site Leaked Source, occurred in October and is one of the biggest on record, following closely behind Yahoo, which recently reported the loss of half a billion users' details. It eclipses last year's Ashley Madison hack, in which the personal information and sexual preferences of 37 million people were exposed. It is not clear who is behind the breach of Friend Finder Networks, a California-based company. Weak and outdated website security allowed cyber criminals to access the Adult Friend Finder information, Leaked Source said. The passwords and usernames were stored in a way that is easily decoded, meaning 99 per cent of those stolen were legible to the hackers. "Passwords were stored by Friend Finder Networks either in plan visible format or SHA1 hashed. Neither method is considered secure by any stretch of the imagination," said Leaked Source. The stolen data included the details of 15 million accounts that had been deleted by the users but remained on the company's servers. Friend Finder Networks, which lost the login details, date of birth and sexual preferences of almost 4 million users in 2015, would not confirm the breach, but said it had found vulnerabilities in its site, according to ZD Net. "Over the past several weeks, Friend Finder has received a number of reports regarding potential security vulnerabilities," said Diana Ballou, the company's vice president. "Immediately upon learning this information, we took several steps to review the situation and bring in the right external partners to support our investigation. "While a number of these claims proved to be false extortion attempts, we did identify and fix a vulnerability." Experts warned that companies need to do more to make sure their customers' personal details are kept safe. "Companies still tend to underestimate the risks related to web applications, and consequently put their customers at huge risk," said Ilia Kolochenko, chief executive of High-Tech Bridge. "With this breach of 400 million accounts we should expect a domino effect of smaller data breaches with password reuse and spear-phishing." How to check if my details were stolen Leaked Source has decided not to release the full database of people affected by the breach due to the sensitive nature of the information. But anyone who has signed up to one of the affected sites in the past 20 years, could be at risk, given that 15 million users who had deleted their accounts were affected. Anyone who has used the following sites could have been affected: AdultFriendFinder.com - 3.4 million users affected Cams.com - 62.7 million users Penthouse.com - 7.12 million users Stripshow.com - 1.4 million users iCams.com - 1.14 million users Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Many of the California tech industry's leaders are unhappy with the outcome of the US presidential election. This being Silicon Valley, they've come up with an innovative response: secede from the union. It's one idea I hope they won't bring to fruition. California supported Hillary Clinton more than any other state, yet the election was called before its votes could even be tallied. The tech industry was particularly disappointed, given Donald Trump's stance on issues like trade and immigration. As Sam Altman, president of startup incubator Y Combinator, put it in a tweet: "This feels like the worst thing to happen in my life." Silicon Valley won't take this sitting down. Shervin Pishevar, co-founder of transportation startup Hyperloop One, has promised to fund a campaign for California to become its own nation. Supporters are working on an initiative to put a referendum for California secession on the 2018 ballot. On Wednesday, residents gathered in front of the capitol building in Sacramento to rally for independence. Whether or not secession works out, people like Mr Altman have plenty of backup plans. In an earlier interview with the 'New Yorker', Mr Altman explained his preparations for the apocalypse: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli defence force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to." Plan B is to fly to New Zealand with billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. OK, this is why half the country hates the wealthy elite. They can muck things up all they want, and simply leave when the going gets tough. And they love to experiment with other people's lives. Mr Thiel co-founded the Seasteading Institute, a movement to build independently governed floating cities. Larry Page has designs on a regulation-free Google Island, Elon Musk plans to colonise Mars, and Tim Draper wants to carve up California and turn Silicon Valley into a mini-state. Balaji Srinivasan, a partner at venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, suggests that the tech industry might not even need a physical exodus, but can build technology to opt out of undesirable policies: "It could be something as simple as allowing people in the middle class to make tax shelters." Maybe Silicon Valley will disrupt government with a civil disobedience app. A similar sequence played out just before the Civil War. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election without carrying a single southern state. Wealthy cotton producers in the south saw no reason to support a government they no longer trusted, and seceded to form the Confederacy. They ran into trouble when the Union blockaded major ports to prevent the Confederate states from trading. California's secession is unlikely to go any better. It became the world's sixth-largest economy thanks in large part to transfers from the rest of the country. The Bay Area tech industry received much of its early funding from the US Navy for things like radios and aeronautics research, which created demand for vacuum tubes and San Jose's mercury mines. The biggest buyers of early silicon circuits were the Department of Defence and Nasa. Secessionists point out that California receives only 94c in federal spending for every dollar it pays in income tax. Yet leaving could sever crucial ties to the rest of the country. Southern California gets most of its water from the Colorado River in Arizona, and the entire state's natural gas and oil supply arrives through pipelines coming from Texas. Many California-based companies are incorporated in Delaware, for the lower tax rates. In theory, state representatives could negotiate independent trade agreements, but this would cost a lot more than the 6pc of California tax dollars that go to other parts of the union (there's something to be said for economies of scale). Plus, the new Republic of California wouldn't survive a foreign invasion unless it built its own military or became the protectorate of another nation. Mr Pishevar suggests that an independent California could someday rejoin the US (presumably after they elect a more favourable president). That's not how a nation-state works. The US is not a drive-through service station, and people don't like it when a certain contingency gets to treat it as such. Technology companies stash their earnings in low-tax foreign jurisdictions to avoid the high US corporate tax rate. Meanwhile, they enjoy the benefits of government-funded research and property rights backed by the largest military in the world. Tech industry leaders have taken all the steps they can to leave without physically departing. Before making any more radical moves, they should recognise what a good deal they get. U.S. President Barack Obama stands with Vice President Joe Biden (R) have been having fun at Donald Trump's expense in imagined conversations on Twitter. REUTERS/Carlos Barria One of the best things to come out of the traumatising week that saw Donald Trump elected as president of the United States, was the resurgence of Barack Obama and Joe Biden memes. Since the current president and his Vice President met with their successors, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, on Thursday, fans took to social media to share their greatest memes of the presidential duo, as a final send-off. Memes have been created from some of the duo's most famous photo-ops as fans re-imagine conversations they could have before handing over they keys to the White House. Many of the memes involve Biden scheming or pranking Trump and Pence, while Obama, like a disappointed father, tries to talk him out of it. The conversations are, of course, completely false but they still provide some comic relief after what was a difficult week for many people. Here are some of the best: Biden: He's literally right there Barack. I can just choke him out or pull down his pants or something. Obama: Joe just smile and wave pic.twitter.com/yzPCqPey0g daddy nicky (@preciousadidas) November 12, 2016 Biden: What if we paint the Mexican flag in the office Obama: Joe, no Biden: I already ordered the paint Obama: Joe pic.twitter.com/mCCh6OPQRk dan // pinned if unf (@tragecies) November 11, 2016 "if you do not stop pouting i will give you something to pout about" pic.twitter.com/9iCdwSTRo1 rudy mustang (@roostermustache) November 14, 2016 biden: cmon you gotta print a fake birth certificate, put it in an envelope labeled "SECRET" and leave it in the oval office desk obama: joe pic.twitter.com/UTtv1JkE5o jomny sun (@jonnysun) November 11, 2016 Trump: Does he always just stand there like that? Obama: He's upset right now Trump: Is he...is he winking at me? Why is he winking at me? pic.twitter.com/Q1WTFEgoJB Josh (@jbillinson) November 13, 2016 Obama: Joe, where are the keys to the Situation Room? Biden: The what? Obama: Joe Biden: No idea what you're talking about pic.twitter.com/z5MXYAQpb4 Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) November 12, 2016 Biden: I'm gonna punch him. Obama: Smile and wave, Joe. pic.twitter.com/ImEz6X68jm Norm Kelly (@norm) November 11, 2016 Obama: "Joe, why are you still holding my hand?" Biden: "I wanna freak Mike Pence out" Obama: "But why?" Biden: "Just roll with it" pic.twitter.com/o5KZZ0Ysgz thomas moore (@Thomas_A_Moore) November 12, 2016 Biden: Ok here's the plan: have you seen Home Alone Obama: Joe, no Biden: Just one booby trap Obama: Joe pic.twitter.com/TkA6Dt3Xp6 LOL (@TeethOnTeeth) November 13, 2016 Biden: I told him that we call in attacks on countries by blocking them on Twitter. O: Joe... Biden: Trust me. pic.twitter.com/9ipIoFPDeg Crutnacker (@Crutnacker) November 14, 2016 Obama: Check pl- Biden: Actually, we'll take five more milkshakes and you can bill the White House on January 21st pic.twitter.com/KVcdBtQHAe Josh (@jbillinson) November 12, 2016 Biden: Hillary was saying they took the W's off the keyboards when Bush won! Obama: Joe put- Biden: I TOOK THE T'S, THEY CAN ONLY TYPE RUMP pic.twitter.com/D6Vh7Zu429 Josh (@jbillinson) November 13, 2016 BIDEN: I'mma punch him when he comes here. OBAMA: No, Joe. Don't do that. BIDEN: Punch him round the back. OBAMA: Joe. BIDEN: Kick, then. pic.twitter.com/TmbPfrBalT SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) November 9, 2016 Obama: Did you replace all the toiletries with travel size bottles? Biden: He's got tiny hands Barack, I want him to feel welcome here pic.twitter.com/e7NRIZ43Ww Josh (@jbillinson) November 11, 2016 Biden: Trump's sons were nice Obama: Considering you called them the Menendez brothers all day B: Uday and Qusay? pic.twitter.com/kLvOoHVpLi Crutnacker (@Crutnacker) November 14, 2016 Biden: You have some big shoes to fill Pence: I know, being VP is a huge responsibility. B: No, Mike. The memes. pic.twitter.com/BLZ7vhQLB8 Luke The Supertramp (@_craw4d4_) November 11, 2016 Joe: I'm going to ask Donald if he wants something to eat Barack: That's nice, Joe Joe: And then I'm going to offer him knuckle sandwiches pic.twitter.com/xYJ0k2QTX6 Jill Biden (@JillBidenVeep) November 13, 2016 Obama: Tell Joe why he can't booby trap the White H- Biden: Now hold on a second, just know that no matter what you say I'm doing it anyways pic.twitter.com/7BGPAnWeiY Josh (@jbillinson) November 13, 2016 "Yes Mr. Trump, I took Joe's pocket knife away and we'll get you some new tires for that limo right away, but I can't make him say sorry" pic.twitter.com/wULtfJqu85 Josh (@jbillinson) November 11, 2016 Trump: Hello? Caller: Oompa Loompa doompety doo! Trump: Dammit Joe, Barack said he was taking your phone away. Do not call this number again pic.twitter.com/qdL0PDSvEu Josh (@jbillinson) November 13, 2016 A Limerick pizza restaurant and takeaway turned into a dance floor at the weekend. Top Pizza Limerick was serving hungry customers after night clubs closed in the early hours of Sunday morning when Indian music began playing, resulting in customers and staff alike taking to the floor to dance to Indian music. Harry Munjal, who uploaded the video of the unexpected rave to Facebook, said he and his friends couldn't resist dancing to the music. "Staff members were cleaning the shop and they played Indian punjabi songs in background," Harry told Independent.ie. "We are from India, so we can't stop dancing if there are Indian songs on loud volume." Watch the video below and enjoy. Maggie O'Farrell is one of a luminous group of Irish writers up for the Eason Novel of the Year Award which will be announced on Wednesday The Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards has become the literary event of the year and Wednesday is this year's big night out for authors, publishers and readers alike. What started out small, as The Irish Book Awards with just three categories, has grown into a kind of Oscars for Irish books, where, unlike other prestigious book awards, the reading public gets to vote. Probably the most coveted prize is the Eason Book Club Novel of the Year. A list of previous winners reads like a roll-call of the very best of Irish writers. John Banville has won twice, in 2006 and 2012 with The Sea and Ancient Light respectively, while Anne Enright won with The Gathering in 2008 and again last year with The Green Road. This year sees Emma Donoghue on the shortlist again, having won the award in 2010 for Room, which later became the Oscar-winning film. Here is this year's shortlist: All We Shall Know, - Donal Ryan: Melody Shee, a schoolteacher in a loveless and childless marriage, discovers that she's pregnant, but not by her husband. The baby's father is Martin Toppy, a student of Melody's, and a Traveller, just 19 years old. This is a novel about prejudice and violence, about the inherent hypocrisy within smalltown piousness, and about the terrible consequences of perceived betrayal. The Irish Independent's Ruth Gilligan wrote that this is "undoubtedly Ryan's strongest work to date. His lightness of touch has been honed to such a degree that a rich, layered portrait of Melody and her world is conjured through the simplest of vignettes." Days Without End, - Sebastian Barry: Thomas McNulty, aged just 17, survives his voyage across the Atlantic during the Great Famine. He meets John Cole and together they form a kind of drag queen show. They later join the army, fighting mostly Indians in the quest to conquer the lands of California and the surrounding states. Both brutally violent and intensely poetic, this book has wooed the critics. The Guardian's Alex Clarke wrote: "Days Without End is a work of staggering openness; its startlingly beautiful sentences are so capacious that they are hard to leave behind, its narrative so propulsive that you must move on." Solar Bones, - Mike McCormack: Marcus Conway, deceased, finds himself back home in his kitchen, reflecting on how he got there, and on how he was taken away. Part fantasy, part family and social commentary, wholly admired by virtually everyone, it is McCormack's first novel since 2007. As John Boland wrote in his Irish Independent review ". . . there are two novels going on here . . . one of them quite traditional in its portrait of a good man trying to do his honourable best for his family and for the local people . . . and one of them pondering the futility of all such human interactions in a meaningless universe". The Lesser Bohemians, - Eimear McBride: Eimear McBride's first novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing won several awards, including the Bailey's prize. Her second novel may share the same destiny. A young Irish drama student in London embarks on a traumatic relationship with an older actor. This is a superior, if rather disturbing, love story. JP O'Malley, in his review of Bohemians for this newspaper, wrote: "McBride is a daring writer who is not afraid to mess with language, displaying its malleability, randomness and irregular rhythms in equal measure. Words and phrases often go back to front and scenes are pieced together almost like an impressionist painting through fragments, hazy images and a blur of uncertainty." The Wonder - Emma Donoghue: English nurse Lib Wright is sent to Ireland in the 1850s to investigate how Anna O'Donnell, an 11-year-old girl who has been fasting for four months, is still alive and seemingly healthy. Is this a miracle? Lib Wright, who has nursed in Crimea, is sceptical. And as Anna's health begins to deteriorate, Lib becomes desperate to save her life. Stephen King, reviewing for the The New York Times, wrote that The Wonder reminded him of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge "only turned inside out. Maugham's book is about the power of spirituality to heal. Donoghue has written, with crackling intensity, about its power to destroy". Video of the Day This Must Be The Place, - Maggie O'Farrell: Daniel Sullivan is an American living in Donegal with his ex-film-star wife and their two children. Claudette, his wife, is passionate about keeping unwanted visitors at bay - with a gun if necessary. Daniel has other children whom he never sees, from a previous marriage in California. He also has a father, whom he hates, in Brooklyn. The fractured pasts of both Daniel and Claudette threaten to destroy their present. In a Telegraph interview, O'Farrell said: "Years ago I was in a cafe and a very famous actress walked in. Everyone was staring, taking photos and the paparazzi turned up. Later I saw her in the toilet with her head against a mirror and her eyes closed. I just thought, 'If I was her I'd probably fake my own death' - the idea that became This Must be the Place." Jenn Murray pictured at The Irish premiere screening of the film Brooklyn at The Savoy Cinema Dublin, Pic Brian McEvoy No Repro fee for one use The Irish star of the new JK Rowling blockbuster has said a bad phone line meant it took her a week before she realised she had landed the coveted role. Jenn Murray, from Belfast, who studied drama at Trinity, said she could not believe her luck when she heard she had landed the part of Chastity in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. She joined an all-star cast of actors including Eddie Redmayne, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight for the Harry Potter prequel, which will premiere in London tomorrow. "I got a phone call from my agent and we were talking in the airport and it was really loud so I thought he said that I didn't get the part and I was gutted," said Jenn. Expand Close Jenn Murray pictured at The Irish premiere screening of the film Brooklyn at The Savoy Cinema Dublin, Pic Brian McEvoy No Repro fee for one use / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jenn Murray pictured at The Irish premiere screening of the film Brooklyn at The Savoy Cinema Dublin, Pic Brian McEvoy No Repro fee for one use "So a week went by and I had processed the fact that I didn't get the part and then he rang me to give me details of the recall and I was like, 'But I didn't get it' and he was like, 'Yes you did!' "I had totally misheard him, but it was a blessing in disguise because I had already programmed myself into not getting it, so it was a lovely surprise." Given the A-list actors she got to rub shoulders with, Jenn was a little awe-struck stepping out on set the first day. "I have to be honest, it was totally thrilling. I can't be blase because I've always wanted to be an actress," she said. Expand Close The release date is November 18th / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The release date is November 18th "It's phenomenal for me to get a role like this. Not that I don't believe in myself, but it really is such a privilege to be doing something you love and getting paid for it. The rising star described filming as "one big learning curve", as she got to watch seasoned stars in action. "People like Jon Voight, they are Hollywood royalty, so to get to sit beside him and have a coffee and talk about life, those are things that are magical," she said. "Colin Farrell is a total gentleman. He's open and warm and I was very inspired by him." Video of the Day While Jenn can't say too much about what lies ahead for her character, she's no doubt over the moon after JK Rowling (inset) let it slip recently that the movie is part one of a five-film franchise. Honoree Jackie Chan with Sylvester Stallone at the 2016 Governors Awards at the Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP) Jackie Chan said he had achieved "a dream" as he was awarded an honorary Oscar. The 62-year-old Hong Kong actor and martial artist was honoured at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles, where his Rush Hour co-star Chris Tucker and Tom Hanks paid tribute to him. British film editor Anne V Coates, documentary maker Frederick Wiseman and casting director Lynn Stalmaster were also recognised at the ceremony. "It's a dream," Chan said on stage. "After 56 years in the film industry, over 200 films, I broke so many bones, finally this is mine. "Thank you Hollywood. For all those years you taught me so many things and also you made me a little bit famous. "Friends, fans around the world, because of you I have a reason to continue making movies, jumping out windows, kicking and punching and breaking my bones." At the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, Chan revealed he first held an Oscar when he visited Sylvester Stallone's house 23 years ago. "I touched it, kissed it, smelt it," he said. "I believe my fingerprints are still on it. Then I told myself; 'I really want one'." He also thanked Hong Kong, which he described as his "hood", and said he was "proud to be Chinese". Paying tribute to Chan, two-time Oscar winner Hanks said: "It's especially gratifying to be able to acknowledge Jackie's enormous creativity, his enormous gift for physical performance and incredible dedication to his work with this Governors Award. "Great acting comes in many different forms but when you're an actor you always know it when you see it." Video of the Day Tucker, who starred in three Rush Hour movies with Chan, said: "Working with a living legend was amazing. Every day I couldn't wait to get on the set to see Jackie Chan. "Jackie, it was an honour working with you and I can't wait to work with you again." Chan starred in more than 30 martial arts films in his native Hong Kong before achieving worldwide fame in Rumble in the Bronx in 1996. He went on to star in a string of Hollywood films including the Rush Hour trilogy, Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights starring Owen Wilson, Around the World in 80 Days, 2010's The Karate Kid and Kung Fu Panda. Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicole Kidman, Warren Beatty and Richard Gere were among the star-studded audience at the ceremony. Coates, 90, was honoured for a career spanning more than 60 years which saw her win the 1963 Oscar for film editing for Lawrence of Arabia. She earned four more Academy Award nominations for her work on the films Becket, The Elephant Man, In the Line of Fire and Out of Sight starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. She also worked on Murder On The Orient Express, Richard Attenborough's Chaplin, Erin Brockovich and Fifty Shades Of Grey. Australian star Kidman said: "Anne V Coates is not a great female editor, she is a great, great editor. "She's not trailblazer for women, she's a trailblazer for all of us. Anne has left her mark on some of the greatest films of all time." Gere, whose 2002 film Unfaithful was edited by Coates, described her as "one of the great giants of our industry". "The greatest of the great, great, great film editors," he added. Accepting her award, Coates, from Reigate, Surrey, said: "Can you imagine a job where you're actually paid to look into the eyes of George Clooney, Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton, Peter Finch, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere, Daniel Craig, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Fifty Shades Of Grey himself Jamie Dornan? "Looking back I wouldn't change a thing. But of all those I still have to say my three greatest productions are my three wonderful and talented children. "Thank you once for this very special award. I have to say I never suspected I'd be holding one of these in my hand again." Of all the animals the team filmed, the fabled snow leopard was the most elusive The male snow leopard is drawn to the scent of the female in heat Sunday night's Planet Earth captured the first ever recorded sighting of snow leopards mating in the wild. In dramatic scenes from Sunday night's Planet Earth Two on BBC, viewers were treated to the first ever recording of snow leopards mating in the wild. The BBC programme focused on mountains this week, following last week's islands episode. One segment of the show looked at one of the most elusive cats on the planet, living in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth: snow leopards in the high altitude terrains of the Himalayas. Expand Close Only 3,500 snow leopards remain / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Only 3,500 snow leopards remain The show's narrator, Sir David Attenborough, described them as "one of the most majestic mountain creatures of all". He said, "the detail of their lives has long been a mystery" because it's extremely difficult to collect footage of the camera-shy cats. But the BBC team deployed camera traps along the Kashmir Mountain passes, trigged by heat-sensitivity, to catch brief glimpses of the majestic beasts. Eventually, they lucked out and captured more than they anticipated with the first ever recorded sighting of snow leopards mating in the wild. It was also the very first time that four of these incredibly rare cats, of which only 3,500 remain in the wild, had been filmed together. In the clip we saw a female snow leopard protect her young cub, who is still completely dependant on her for survival. The little family unit of mother and cub were put in a potentially fatal situation as they were approached by two male leopards, drawn to the female on heat. Attenborough informed viewers, "males kill cubs that are not their own". Expand Close The male snow leopard is drawn to the scent of the female in heat / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The male snow leopard is drawn to the scent of the female in heat "A fight is inevitable. Soon the mother and cub are trapped between the rivals," he added. In uncomfortable scenes, the mother was forced to offer herself to the males in order to distract them and protect her cub. She rolled over submissively and they gleefully attacked her, leaving her injured and unable to hunt. Expand Close Of all the animals the team filmed, the fabled snow leopard was the most elusive / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Of all the animals the team filmed, the fabled snow leopard was the most elusive Just as viewers recovered from the upsetting scenes, Attenborough cut even deeper by informing fans that the female and her cub were never seen together again. "Until... A month later. A remote camera was triggered high on a ridge," he teased. Video of the Day "The female - no longer limping but alone," was spotted on the camera. Then, Attenborough went on, "an hour after the female has left the camera was triggered again. "Its her cub - taking her first steps towards independence." Most sobering of all is the threat that snow leopards face from humans. According to a new study, which was published in the journal Biological Conservation, climate change could reduce them to unsustainable numbers in many populations. Rising temperatures, especially in the Himalayas, are expected to leave snow leopards with just one-third of their habitat by 2070. Arts Minister Heather Humphreys and French Veterans Minister Jean-Marc Todeschini (second from right) arrive at the dedication of a Ginchy Cross ceremony in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, yesterday. Photo: Gerry Mooney A letter written by Padraig Pearse ordering the surrender of the 1916 Rising rebels will not be purchased by the Government, as it would not be the best use of State resources, said Arts Minister Heather Humphreys. The minister defended the decision not to purchase the historic letter, as it had a guide price at an upcoming auction of up to 1.5m, which was "rather a lot," she said. Expand Close James Moore. Picture; Gery Mooney / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp James Moore. Picture; Gery Mooney The Pearse letter, written three days before his execution, was brought to the rebels' garrison in the Four Courts, which then surrendered. She said the National Museum already has other surrender letters written by Pearse to the rebels. "The cost mentioned was between 1m and 1.5m so there were other pressures that we felt we had to meet. "There were a number of such letters of a similar type. We felt that to spent 1m or 1.5m on one single letter would be rather a lot," she said. Expand Close Albert Sutton. Picture; Gerry Mooney / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Albert Sutton. Picture; Gerry Mooney Ms Humphreys was speaking at the unveiling of a monument at Glasnevin cemetery yesterday which was a gift from the people of France to Ireland in recognition of the sacrifice of Irishmen on French battlefields, chiefly during World War I. The new France-Ireland Memorial was officially dedicated by French Veterans Minister Jean-Marc Todeschini and Ms Humphreys. French and Irish soldiers took part in the ceremony. The memorial is more than seven metres tall and consists of a Celtic cross surrounded by tall leaning rocks. Three bronze battle helmets rest on nearby rocks. The cross is a replica of a wooden cross created by men of the 16th Irish Division 100 years ago during the Battle of the Somme at the churchyard at Ginchy in France. The mayors of Ginchy and the nearby town of Guillemont joined Dublin Lord Mayor Brendan Carr at the ceremony. Three Irishmen who fought in France in World War II, Albert Sutton, James Moore and Jack Allshire, were awarded with the Legion of Honour by Mr Todeschini at the ceremony. Albert Sutton (94), of Kilternan, Co Dublin, was among the first troops at the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp. James Moore (92), of Coolbawn, Co Tipperary, spoke of landing on a Normandy beach a few days after D-Day when the Allies were still being bombed. Barbara Allshire, the wife of Cork-born Jack Allshire, accepted a posthumous award on behalf of her husband, who died recently. Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was in Enniskillen, where he joined Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster at a wreath-laying ceremony to remember the Irish war dead. Mr Kenny laid a wreath of green laurels at the Co Fermanagh town's war memorial. Tanaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald laid a laurel wreath at a remembrance ceremony in Belfast. She said: "It is really important to come together, to remember together and to look at our shared histories." BEDDING salesman and internet sensation Mattress Mick has been ordered to pay 900 for unwittingly renting out a taxi to a driver with an expired public service vehicle licence. Prosecuted by the National Transport Authority (NTA) under his real name, Michael Flynn, the 65-year-old was summonsed to appear at Dublin District Court on Monday. Mr Flynn of Kincora Road, Dublin 3, pleaded guilty to not keeping a record of the driver's licence but was given a chance to avoid a criminal conviction. Judge John O'Neill was told that during a compliance check a taxi was stopped in Stillorgan in Dublin on March 8 last. It took off at speed but the driver's home was later placed under surveillance. When questioned the man admitted he had been the driver and his public service vehicle (PSV) licence had expired in January 2015. He had rented the taxi from Mr Flynn who was later interviewed by an NTA inspector. Judge O'Neill heard Mr Flynn was found to be incredibly co-operative and very professional. Mr Flynn, who represented himself, explained to the judge that he had not known the driver who had rented taxi from him did not have a PSV licence at the time. He also said he had paid for the man to get one reissued and the driver does not rent the taxi from him any more. Judge O'Neill noted his explanation and ordered him to donate 500 to the Simon Community and to pay 400 in prosecution costs. Adjourning the case, Judge O'Neill indicated that Mr Flynn will be spared a court conviction if the sums have been paid ahead of the next hearing in December. Mr Flynn has become a fixture on north-side Dublin billboards. However, he is better known as Mattress Mick to fans of his cult comedy advertising and videos which went viral boosting sales in his mattress shop in Dublin. He has also gone on to star in a documentary, called Mattress Men, which has received critical acclaim. A MAN who fatally stabbed his housemate in the heart when they rowed about food during a drinking binge was jailed for five years today. Deivydas Zigelis, a 39-year-old Lithuanian, was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter of Alexander Karpovs (26) by a jury in June this year. Mr Karpovs, who was originally from Latvia, died of a single stab wound to the heart at his home on Spa Street in Portarlington on February 15, 2014. Sentencing Zigelis to seven years at the Central Criminal Court, with the final two years suspended, Mr Justice Paul Butler said that when a human being is stabbed to death in such circumstances that the charge should be murder. However, the judge acknowledged that the manslaughter conviction had been the correct one as the crime was clearly not a premeditated killing. During the trial, jurors were shown photographs taken inside the house that the dead man and his killer shared. The images showed that the floors had been littered with debris, broken crockery, drink cans and empty cigarette boxes. Describing Zigelis as a functioning alcoholic, Mr Justice Butler said the killing took place in a hovel. The judge added that the defendant appears to be decent person who has vowed never to touch alcohol again and has shown genuine remorse. At a previous hearing, the Central Criminal Court heard how Zigelis told gardai I killed my friend. I am a bad man shortly after his arrest. During that hearing last month, Mr Justice Butler was told that Zigelis had admitted to the killing inside Portarlington garda station hours after the fatal attack. Garda Ann Deegan agreed with prosecuting counsel, Shane Costelloe SC, that Mr Karpovs, and Zigelis, along with another man, had been drinking heavily in the house prior to a row between the accused and the deceased. The killer sent his 26-year-old housemate out to buy cider and ribs that afternoon, but he arrived home without the ribs. The row ended when the accused punched the victim in the heart with a steak knife. Gda Deegan also agreed that the other man in the house at the time later told gardai that he only realised that Mr Karpovs had been stabbed when a puddle of blood began forming beneath the body and his face began to turn blue. It was at this point, the court was told, that the defendant phoned the emergency services. When gardai arrived at the scene, Mr Karpovs was already dead. A post-mortem later revealed that the victim had died as a result of blood loss. The court was also told that that third man was so drunk that he made comments to gardai at the scene that suggested he had been responsible for the death. But Zigelis later admitted to officers that he had been the wielder of the knife used in the attack. A victim impact statement from the dead mans mother, who lives in Latvia, was also read out in court. The woman said her son had been supporting her financially and that his death had taken away her only hope. She added that, as a result of the killing, she had been left feeling stressed out all the time and that she could not sleep. Conor Devally SC, counsel for the defence, told the court that his client had regretted his actions and was remorseful. Mr Devally added: Mr Zigelis does not want to colour what happened in any way. He acknowledges that this was a dreadful event and an unfulfilled life was lost. A man who stole almost 8,000 from his own bank account after it held funds that didn't belong to him will be sentenced next February. Conor McKee (26) withdrew cash in three different locations because he was worried he would be caught. He said he hadn't used his account in six months and then noticed that a large amount of cash had been lodged into it. He acknowledged in interview that he knew the money wasn't his and wondered where it had come from. I had no money and it appeared in my account, McKee told gardai. He said he didn't know anyone else had access to his account. He said he had spent the money on food, drink and trips away with his partner. McKee of Meile An Ri View, Balgaddy, Clondalkin, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to stealing a total 7, 939.35 from Bank of Ireland in three different locations on April 24, 2014. His 22 previous convictions include 21 for road traffic offences. Garda Niall Cleary told Garrett Baker BL, prosecuting, that the funds were lodged by means of a forged cheque made payable to McKee but he agreed that gardai were satisfied that the accused had nothing to do with the lodgement. Judge Melanie Greally accepted that it had not been a pre-meditated theft as the cash was something that fell into his lap. She said though that it was very dishonest and the bank was at a significant loss. She remanded McKee on continuing bail until February 23 next and ordered that the Probation Service assess his for suitability for community service. McKee was arrested after gardai viewed CCTV footage of him withdrawing the funds. Gda Cleary said McKee has not come to garda attention since and said the offence was probably out of character. Cathal O Braonain BL, defending told Judge Greally that his client had recently become a father and was having trouble securing full-time employment. He got part-time work as a labourer three weeks ago and had 500 in court to offer as compensation. There was significant circumstantial evidence that a man who sued the Sunday World for libel was a drug importer, a lawyer for the newspaper has told the Supreme Court. The submission by barrister Eoin McCullough SC was made as the seven-judge court reserved judgement on whether the Court of Appeal was correct when it overturned a 900,000 libel award against the newspaper. Sligo man Martin McDonagh sued the Sunday World for damages arising out of an article published in 1999 entitled Traveller Drug King. It was published while he was in custody being questioned over a major haul of ecstasy and cannabis in Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, but he was later released without charge. A High Court jury found he had been libeled in 2008 and awarded him 900,000. However, the Court of Appeal overturned the verdict last year, describing it as perverse as evidence in the trial pointed overwhelmingly to the conclusion McDonagh was a drug dealer associated with the drugs seizure. It ordered a retrial on a separate allegation that McDonagh was a loan shark. Appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court today, lawyers for McDonagh argued the jury verdict should not have been touched. Declan Doyle SC said although his client had admitted being in the company of people involved in drug dealing, that did not make him a drug dealer. But Mr McCullough countered that McDonagh had given no explanation for a trip to London days before the seizure where he met a man who was later convicted in connection with the drug haul. I agree that it is not direct visual evidence of the plaintiff importing the drugs, but the Court of Appeal took it into account as extremely strong circumstantial evidence, Mr McCullough said. The barrister said there was no explanation as to how McDonagh came to organise a trip to London where he ended up in the company of drug dealers. No effective challenge was made to garda evidence during the trial, he said. Mr McCullough said McDonagh had denied being a criminal or a tax cheat, but accepted he was when confronted with evidence. He claimed in evidence the Criminal Assets Bureau had never accused him of drug dealing until evidence was put in front of him, the barrister said. Mr McCullough said the Court of Appeal was correct when it determined the High Court verdict was one no reasonable jury could have come to and asked the Supreme Court to affirm the Court of Appeal ruling. He said that if the Court of Appeal was found to be wrong, then the case should be remitted to the High Court for a retrial on all issues. Earlier, counsel for McDonagh said the Court of Appeal should not have touched the jury verdict. The question that went to the jury was had the defendants proved the plaintiff was a drug dealer. The jury answered no, said Mr Doyle. The barrister also said the Court of Appeal erred in finding that evidence pointing to drug dealing was not challenged. While garda witnesses were not challenged directly, claims McDonagh made certain admissions during a garda interview were contested in the stand. It was simply wrong of the Court of Appeal to say it went unchallenged, said Mr Doyle. He added that it had been put to gardai that their credibility was an issue in the case. This was something the jury weighed when taking into account the evidence from both sides, he said. Mr Doyle said that even if evidence from garda interview notes were accepted, they didnt amount to evidence of drug dealing, merely evidence of being with drug dealers. He also disputed that McDonagh had organised the trip to London. After hearing the submissions, Chief Justice Susan Denham said the court would deliver its judgment at a later date. The teenager, who cannot be identified as he is a minor, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary, dangerous driving and criminal damage to a bridge on April 13, 2016. (Stock picture) A 17-year-old who crashed a stolen car into the river Liffey at Celbridge while being chased by gardai from a burglary scene has been given one years detention. The court heard the teenager was arrested after being taken from the water but later released on bail because there was no suitable place for him to stay. Within 48 hours he had assaulted a man in his eighties, knocking him to the ground, as he stole the man's car. The teenager, who cannot be identified as he is a minor, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary, dangerous driving and criminal damage to a bridge on April 13, 2016. He further pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a car, assault and driving without a licence or insurance on April 15, 2016. The teen has 11 previous convictions including public order offences, criminal damage, assault and possession of stolen property. Judge Pauline Codd noted that a probation report before the court outlined that although the accused had initially indicated he was willing to engage with the probation services he later said he had no interest in doing so and his only motivation was a possible reduction in the sentence. The accused boy told his defence counsel, Anne Marie Lawlor BL, that he was in a real bad humour when he met the probation officer who prepared the report. He said he had been on 23 hour lock up for the two days prior to the meeting and was not in the humour for answering questions. He said he was now drug free and was willing to go to a drug counsellor or give urines. Whatever it takes, he told the judge. He said when he was released he was going to stay clean, get back to family life and try to get a job. He told Judge Codd he would fully co-operate and was willing to address his anger issues. Ms Lawlor told the court the accused had ADHD and needed intervention and assistance going forward in his life. She said he was now completely drug free and willing to do whatever was necessary in order to progress his rehabilitation and re-engage with society in a positive way. She said he was remorseful for what had happened to the elderly man Judge Codd noted that under section 96 of the Children Act 2001 any penalty imposed on a child should take the least restrictive form that was appropriate in the circumstances and detention should be a last resort. She said in the first offence it was lucky that neither himself nor a member of the public was seriously injured. She said in the second offence he had preyed on an easy target in the elderly man but noted his guilty plea and expressions of remorse. She imposed a three year sentence of detention but suspended the final two years. A FEARED thug has become one of the Kinahan cartels key enforcers in Dublin. Jamie Griffin (21) has been causing terror since his release from jail in June. Described as a complete loose cannon, the young criminal is now running the gangs activities and extortion rackets in the south inner city. Everyone is terrified of him. Hes going around collecting debts on behalf of the cartel. The fear is that hes going to do serious damage to someone soon, a source said last night. Griffin has been taking over cartel activities after a leading criminal connected to the Kinahans was jailed recently. He is also suspected of a feud-related knife attack on murdered Gary Hutchs brother, Derek Del Boy Hutch, in Mountjoy Prison last year. It is believed Griffin and his older brother Leon (26) were offered 10,000 by the cartel to carry out a merciless attack on the convicted armed robber. Hutch suffered defensive slash wounds in the attack after three prison officers intervened and managed to restrain the Griffins. Hutch is serving multiple sentences for offences including manslaughter, possession of a firearm and robbery and is considered a prime target for the cartel in their deadly feud with his associates. Read More Speaking at the Prison Officers Association annual conference earlier this year, the organisations president, Stephen Delaney, said: The three officers, using only bare hands and courage, pulled Hutch from certain death. Both brothers were moved from Mountjoy after the attack, with Leon transferred to Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon and Jamie to Wheatfield Prison. The Griffin brothers are considered to be among Irelands most volatile inmates and have amassed more than 40 P19 disciplinary reports between them in the past 18 months. Sources said Jamie Griffin had been far worse behaved than his older brother and had come to the attention of the authorities for breaches of discipline, which included fighting and possession of contraband. The Griffin brothers were also involved in a savage assault on high-profile criminal Wayne Bradley in Mountjoy Prison in December 2014 that resulted in Bradley needing three weeks of hospital treatment. That beating led to fears of a gangland bloodbath. Jamie Griffin, of Iveagh Trust Building, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty in March last year to a violent attack in Ladbrokes in Killinarden, Tallaght, on December 13, 2012. Dublin Circuit Court heard he was part of a three-man gang who stabbed a customer and brutally assaulted another man there. Griffin, who was already serving a six-year sentence for another offence, has 13 previous convictions, including for violent disorder. The court heard gardai were called to the scene and both injured men were transferred to Tallaght Hospital. One man had multiple stab wounds and the other a broken hand. Ronan Kennedy, defending, told the court that Griffin expressed remorse and regret at what he had done and was seeking help for his aggression. Judge Nolan took into acc-ount the fact that Griffin was only 17 at the time of the offence, and handed down a three-year custodial sentence with the last year suspended on condition that he be of good behaviour. Sr Stan says something needs to be done on rising rent costs A leading campaigner has called for immediate action to stem the flow of families into homelessness ahead of the Christmas season. Sr Stan, who has worked with the homeless community for many years, said the Government must address climbing rents to stop the number of homeless families increasing. Housing Minister Simon Coveney has consistently said the Government's new policies on homelessness will need time to work, but Sr Stan said more urgent action was needed. "Really they have to think about something immediately to stop the flow and secondly they need an immediate response to people, to provide them with a decent place to stay, where they can live with dignity," she said. "It's about rent really and something needs to be done about that. Otherwise the numbers will just increase and increase. A year ago I was here saying this. "This is the job of the politicians, that's what we elect them for." Focus Ireland is predicting that by Christmas there will be 2,500 children living in hotel rooms and B&Bs. Read more: More children homeless than ever before, Focus Ireland charity reports Read more: Desperate mum faces third Christmas in emergency accommodation with son "It's not that they are in a B&B, they are in a room. They have one room and there might be three, four or five children. They have no place to play, no place to cook. They don't mix with others. It isn't like having a room in a hotel. It is awful," she told the Irish Independent. "I hear people say 'sure aren't they grand', but it's not like you or I taking a room in a hotel. It's totally different; go back to the worst days of the tenements where you had all of the families living in one building. "At least they had a dignity of a community. They knew each other, they grew up with each other. "This is totally different they are in rooms separated from other people. "It's quite different." Sr Stan was speaking at the launch of Focus Ireland's Christmas appeal as the charity revealed its family team services have supported 230 families and almost 450 children in Dublin to secure a home this year, with the help of the homeless executive. People can donate at www.focusireland.ie or 1850 204 205. Professionals are actively making some children 'fit a certain category of disability in order for them to get a resource' even though they 'dont theoretically meet the actual label' Children are being "unnecessarily labelled" with emotional and behavioural conditions in order to get additional educational resources. In an extraordinary admission, the head of the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) said a practice known as 'diagnosis for dollars' in the United States is now happening here. Expand Close Richard Bruton. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Richard Bruton. Photo: Tom Burke Professionals are actively making some children "fit a certain category of disability in order for them to get a resource" even though they "don't theoretically meet the actual label". NCSE chief executive Teresa Griffin said she had been told first-hand by professionals that they had purposely misdiagnosed children in primary schools. "We think that's really bad that a child would be labelled simply to get an educational resource," she said. Under the current system, students require a formal diagnosis of conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) before an extra teaching support is provided by the Department of Education. This has led to a series of problems, including claims it reinforces disadvantage because parents from wealthier backgrounds can afford to pay for private consultations. Many students in the public system are on long waiting lists and do not have the right to access special support until they receive a diagnosis. The Department of Education told the Irish Independent it was aware of Ms Griffin's concerns and had been working with the NCSE to create a new model to distribute special resources. "The department would be concerned at the possibility that any child would be labelled unnecessarily and accordingly accepted and acted upon the advice received from the NCSE. "The department has taken steps to address this concern and has developed the new model for allocating resource teaching supports which, when implemented, will remove the need for a diagnosis of a disability to ground the allocation of resources," a spokesperson said. A date has not yet been set for the introduction of the new system, but the spokesperson said Education Minister Richard Bruton anticipated it would be approved by Cabinet in time for September 2017. A guide for parents compiled by the NCSE states that many professionals "feel obliged" to label children as having a disability "simply to ensure that the school gets additional resource teaching hours". And speaking at an Oireachtas hearing recently, Ms Griffin said the labels being attached to children would stick with them for life. She said assessments should only be used to help teachers and parents understand a child's needs but not linked directly to resources. She said: "It's assessment to inform parents on how to better support their children, but not necessarily to have a child labelled as ADHD or have a child labelled as having emotional behaviour disturbance." Asked by Fianna Fail's education spokesman Thomas Byrne whether those carrying out the misdiagnoses could be guilty of professional misconduct, Ms Griffin replied: "We have actually raised it with some of the bodies and their view is that they are advocates as well." The Department of Education said: "Where parents have concerns as to the resulting diagnosis or label applied to their children, they should, in the first instance, raise them with the diagnosing professional. "If they are not satisfied with the response, they may raise the matter with the governing or regulatory body appropriate to the professional concerned." Under the new plan, schools will have a larger say in deciding a child's support need, with over 10,000 support teachers assigned based on a school's profile rather than individual children. Health Minister Simon Harris has backed a new move to clamp down on so-called "rogue crisis pregnancy advisers" who give distressed women false information. Mr Harris has confirmed that he is accepting a draft law being put forward by Labour leader Brendan Howlin which provides for the first time that crisis pregnancy counsellors be registered and regulated. The move follows revelations earlier this year that some counsellors who are avowedly against abortion give women false information to dissuade them. Some of the "information" given suggested that abortion increased breast cancer risks and could lead those who undergo it to become child abusers in later life. "I was absolutely appalled to see the false, misleading and offensive information being provided to some women during a crisis pregnancy," said Mr Harris. "Women deserve better and I had made it clear that I intended to act to improve this situation," the Health Minister added. Mr Harris said that Mr Howlin's Bill gave him the first chance to signal a change of policy in this area. He said some changes would have to be made to the draft law to ensure against unintended consequences, such as doctors being penalised for giving crisis pregnancy guidance. Mr Howlin welcomed the minister's decision and urged all other parties to support the measure, due for Dail debate next Thursday. "For too long, these agencies have been allowed to lie to women in the most grotesque fashion, and it's time we worked together on all sides of the House to put an end to this abuse," Mr Howlin said. In September, the 'Times' led an investigation which discovered that a Dublin-based crisis pregnancy centre was giving women incorrect advice regarding their pregnancies. THE cold-blooded murder of Anthony Campbell 10 years ago horrified the nation. The December 12 shooting saw Anthony gunned down as he worked on radiators in a house belonging to a niece of gang boss Martin Marlo Hyland in Finglas, North Dublin. Anthony (20) was working as an apprentice plumber at the time and had no involvement in crime. He did not know that Hyland was sleeping upstairs and had been using the home as a safe house. It is believed Anthony opened the door to his killers. His inquest revealed the young man had his hands held up in a defensive posture, covering his face, at the time of the murder. He died from a single gunshot wound to the head and was shot at close range. The bullet passed through his left arm into his head, killing him almost instantly. Meanwhile, Hyland was shot six times as he lay sleeping upstairs. The gangster was concerned about threats to his life at the time. Despite 14 arrests during the investigation nobody was ever convicted of the brutal double murder. Gardai believe Eamon The Don Dunne was behind the hit and ordered the murder of his former boss Hyland. Dunne himself died in a hail of bullets when a gunman opened fire on him in a Cabra pub in April 2010. Anthonys murder was a tragic example of an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and his boss had been due to carry out a quick repair job on the house owned by Hylands niece the night before the murder. However, they were too tired after a busy days work and moved the job to the following morning. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said he will raise the detention of a Dublin student with Egypt's president again - after the trial was delayed for a 16th time. It will be the latest in a series of contacts between Mr Kenny and president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi over the Ibrahim Halawa case. Mr Kenny has twice raised it in face-to-face meetings with el-Sisi and has also written to him over delays in Mr Halawa's trial which was held up again yesterday. The case has been adjourned until December 13, his 21st birthday. Mr Halawa was arrested in August 2013 at a protest in a mosque in Cairo. Mr Kenny said he was very disappointed at the 16th adjournment in the case. And he said el-Sisi had told him he could not interfere in Egypt's judicial process. "He (el-Sisi) has said he can only use his Presidential pardon powers once the case has been delivered on," said the Taoiseach. He said the Government is also supporting an appeal for the student's deportation to Ireland under Egyptian law 140. "I am concerned about this. It seems to be a case of a different issue every time there is a postponement of the case. "We would like to see the case heard so that there can be a conclusion to it. "It is my intention to contact President el-Sisi again as a matter of urgency, probably in the next week." Egypt has denied claims he has been tortured. The case was adjourned at the weekend because some of the 493 co-accused were unable to appear in court. The student's London-based barrister Katie O'Byrne said she wasn't surprised by the latest delay. She said: "It is not legitimate to hold a trial for 494 people in a mass trial and it is not legitimate to delay a case for three and a half years. "We're not aware there is any evidence at all against our client which underlines the point he cannot have a fair trial." She said it is still unclear what specific charges Mr Halawa faces because of the limited documents released by the Egyptian prosecutors. Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said he spoke to the Egyptians at the weekend to protest about the latest delay. Embassy staff attended the hearing to monitor the latest adjournment. Mr Halawa has spent 1,184 days in prison. Amnesty International has declared him a Prisoner of Conscience, based on its own eye-witness evidence "that he could not have carried out the acts he is accused of". The Paris Agreement commits countries to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero to stop dangerous climate change Minister for Climate Change Denis Naughten will this week highlight the success of Ireland's plastic bag levy during climate change talks in Morocco. It is expected that European environment and marine ministers will sign a 'Declaration of Intent' aimed at tackling plastic bag pollution. The plastic bag levy was introduced in Ireland in 2002 and was a first of its kind, resulting in a 90pc reduction in the use of plastic bags. Mr Naughten begins a four-day trip to Marrakesh today to participate in UN talks on the Paris Agreement. He will lead the Irish delegation for the political phase of COP22 the global Climate Change summit. Discussions will focus on how best to implement the agreement, including how to measure and report emissions so that countries can be held accountable. The agreement, signed by 196 countries across the world, aims to fight global warming by curbing the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. It was officially ratified by Ireland on November 4. "Ireland has shown a strong commitment to playing its part both domestically and on the global stage. "Since playing a role in reaching the Paris Agreement last year and enacting our first ever climate legislation, we have also been engaging with the European Union on our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, Minister Naughten said. I look forward to joining with the EU in moving forward to implementing the Paris Agreement and also intend to take the opportunity to meet with some of Ireland's key overseas partners to discuss the range of actions being taken around the world to reduce emissions and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Ireland's team here at COP22 includes representatives of our key sectors as we coordinate both our engagement on the international stage and our actions back home. A man in his thirties has been shot in the back during an attack in which masked man forced their way into a house. The man also suffered a head injury during the attack in the Bann Road area of Ballymoney, Antrim at about 7pm on Sunday. The victim was taken to the Causeway Hospital where his condition has been described as serious but stable. The suspects are believed to have fled in the direction of Bendooragh in a car. North Antrim DUP MLA Mervyn Storey described the attack as barbaric. He said: "This is not what our community wants. "Whatever the motive and whoever was involved, this type of action is to be condemned in the strongest possible way. I would encourage anyone with any information to contact the PSNI." Police said they are working to establish a motive. Detective Inspector Bob Blemmings has appealed to anyone with information to contact police in Coleraine on 101 quoting reference 1068 13/11/16. Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister said he was shocked and saddened by the shooting. He said: "This sort of incident would be shocking at any time but it is particularly horrifying on Remembrance Sunday when our thoughts turn to the sacrifices made for freedom. It deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. "I would appeal for anyone with information to come forward to the police. "It is imperative that those responsible for this attack are brought to justice." Three people are now doing his old job as Environment Minister, Labour firebrand Alan Kelly muses. In the departmental re-jig done last May, Heather Humphreys has taken on community affairs; Denis Naughten is responsible for climate change; and Simon Coveney retains housing and local government. The 41-year-old Tipperary TD is still less than a decade in elected politics. Yet he has been a Senator, MEP, TD, and junior and senior government minister. His two years as Environment Minister were extremely tough as he fought a losing battle on water charges and grappled with a housing crisis. Last May, as Labour deputy leader, he went on the 'Late Late Show' to announce his bid to lead his party which had suffered an electoral meltdown and was reduced from 37 to seven TDs. But none of his colleagues would second his bid to trigger a ballot of members and the veteran Brendan Howlin was appointed leader. It was a very tough time, but he wants to move on and make his mark, as spokesman on social welfare, health and housing. Six months ago he was in Cabinet alongside many of the ministers he is now attacking - but he says he is unabashed. "No, I don't just tear into them. I take a more considered approach. But where I see hypocrisy and incompetence, I speak my mind," he says. But on water charges, Mr Kelly insists he will be proven right very soon once a special commission reports to the Oireachtas. Given the "outrageous situation" of raw sewage running into our lakes, rivers and shorelines at 44 different locations, reasonable water charges were the only funding option for an ageing, deficient system, he says. Other demands will always trump long-term spending on water, so a new revenue source was required. "But Paul Murphy won a by-election which Sinn Fein felt they should have won. That made Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald change their mind on water charges. And that led Fianna Fail, the party most committed to charges, to follow suit," says Kelly. Fianna Fail committed to water charges three times. When they put in the EU water basin submission, they gave away a derogation. In October 2009, they agreed charges with the Green Party and conceded this to the Troika in November 2010. The EU "polluter pays" law means we must have charges and the special commission will have to recognise this. "We will have to bring back charges. It's just a question of what charges," he says. Labour is struggling in the opinion polls and having difficulty getting its message heard. But Mr Kelly insists, that in the medium to longer term, the AAA-PBP, which he calls the "alphabet party", and Sinn Fein will not retain people's confidence. "There is room for a straight-talking party which supports working people. I won't be popular for the sake of being popular. In fact, it infuriates me. People know you cannot have everything for nothing and there is no future in telling them they can," he adds. Mr Kelly argues that people need straight and realistic talk. The tax base must be widened with things like local property tax and water charges, and everything cannot be funded out of tax on work. He argues passionately about the need to prioritise work and ensure working people are paid to a standard where they can afford a modest family meal and pay for school books and other necessaries without fear or stress. These are arguments many will support - but the danger is that right now few are listening to the Labour Party. Quotes from Alan Kelly's political world On constituency rival Michael Lowry: "In fairness, the only thing we have in common is a love of Tipperary GAA. I have very little to do with him and I don't intend ever having much to do with him." On his predecessor as environment minister, and now EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan: "I inherited the environment post from Mr Phil Hogan, which left me with a lot of legacy issues - and not just water. "There were community grants, water and, of course, housing, which took up more time than anything else." On his dislike of AAA-PBP (which he calls "the alphabet party") and Sinn Fein: "The 'alphabet party' have no credibility. They are the most populist of all, along with Sinn Fein. "They are telling people they can have everything for nothing - but it all means working people are paying for everything out of taxes on their work." On Labour joining future coalitions: "I believe in government because it is the only way to implement your policies. I have an open mind, but I wouldn't like Sinn Fein and the left-wing lunatics. It could be with Fine Gael or with Fianna Fail. But it doesn't have to be them. God knows where politics is going to be in the next 20 years. But I intend to be around." On failing to get a seconder to put his leadership bid to a ballot of Labour members: "I wouldn't have felt great about that. Of course I was disappointed. I believe the membership would have supported me. Will I stand again? I definitely will." On the need to prioritise work over welfare: "I support welfare, especially for pensioners and disabled people. But welfare for able-bodied people should not be a lifestyle choice. There must be a premium on work and working people must get a decent rate of pay." Labour TD Alan Kelly has castigated the performance of Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O'Connor, saying her inability to answer basic questions was "the worst I have seen in my 10 years in politics". The Labour TD risks reigniting controversy about the embattled minister who has been subject to fierce criticism recently. But he insists gender is not the issue - it's about competence. The Tipperary TD also has strong criticisms of Housing Minister Simon Coveney, though he is more flattering about the performance of Health Minister Simon Harris. However, he warns that the Department of Health does not have an adequate budget and the funding shortfall will inevitably be revisited in the coming months. The former environment minister has said he was appalled by Ms Mitchell's O'Connor's handling of basic Dail questions posed by him. "It was the worst I have seen in a minister in my 10 years in politics. And I'm not going to allow anyone to push me into a female-male row here now. It's purely a question of competence," he said. Mr Kelly said the minister told the Dail that a special cabinet sub-committee was dealing with Brexit. But then she could not say how many times it had met. "Even from memory, you would know that - even if it was not written down in front of you," he said. Expand Close Alan Kelly Photo: Frank McGrath / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Alan Kelly Photo: Frank McGrath On Housing Minister Mr Coveney, who followed him in the revamped Environment Department, he was also strongly critical. "He keeps announcing things. Yes, I was accused of making a lot of announcements. But I didn't do a video with myself all over it. I laid the groundwork for much of what he is now doing. The problem is it takes four to five years to see results." But he was more flattering about Health Minister Simon Harris, who he is also "marking" along with Ministers Mitchell O'Connor and Harris. "I find Harris is somebody I can work with. He's got great energy. But energy is not enough when you don't have a real health budget. The funding is insufficient and we will have to come back to it again." Mr Kelly's comments came before another opinion poll showed Labour is struggling in popularity rankings. In the Behaviour & Attitudes poll for the 'Sunday Times', the party is on 3pc, and down two points on its October rating. Fianna Fail is rated the most popular party on 30pc while Fine Gael is up 2pc to 28pc. Read more: 'I don't care what people say behind my back,' insists Mitchell O'Connor There is further good news for Taoiseach Enda Kenny as the Independent Alliance, which has four members of the government team, is also up two points to 5pc, something which may help steady the minority coalition. The '5 Budget' with increased welfare payments may have also helped the Government's overall approval rating, which has increased by three points. Just over one third of those polled, or 34pc, now approve of this minority Coalition. The AAA-PBP is up 1pc to 3pc while Sinn Fein is unchanged on 17pc. Independents, which include rural TDs and leftist 'Independents4Change' groups, are on 11pc. Undated handout photo taken with permission from the Facebook page of Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit of a makeshift solar-powered houseboat that has washed up on an Irish beach after apparently drifting across the Atlantic Ocean from Canada. Photo: Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit/PA Wire A MAKESHIFT solar-powered houseboat has washed up on an Irish beach after apparently drifting across the Atlantic Ocean from Canada. Authorities say the owner was intending to sail on the "floating caravan" but was talked out of it before it broke loose from its mooring in Newfoundland within the last few months. Locals in Co Mayo on Ireland's west coast were startled by the unusual sighting on Cross Beach, which sparked an emergency rescue mission by lifeboat and coast guard crews. While no-one was found aboard the 20ft timber and polystyrene boat, a message scrawled inside gave a clue to its origins. "I, Rick Small, donate this structure to a homeless youth to give them a better life that Newfoundlanders choose not to do!" it said. "No rent, no mortgage, no hydro." Expand Close Undated handout photo taken with permission from the Facebook page of Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit of a message scrawled inside a makeshift solar-powered houseboat: Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit/PA Wire / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Undated handout photo taken with permission from the Facebook page of Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit of a message scrawled inside a makeshift solar-powered houseboat: Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit/PA Wire Rick Small is an eco-adventurer from Ontario who travelled 7,000 kilometres (4,375 miles) across Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, on a solar-powered tricycle. The Irish Coast Guard have been in contact with their Canadian counterparts in Halifax. "They said the owner was hoping to cross the Atlantic in it, but they managed to discourage him," a spokesman said. "It was last seen in Portugal Cove in Newfoundland during the summer and it broke loose. "The Halifax authorities were amazed it made it to Ireland and was in one piece." Michael Hurst, of the Ballyglass Coast Guard Unit in Co Mayo, was one of the first at the scene when the vessel washed ashore. "I didn't know what to think, I was just concerned about safety and securing it," he said. "Then I thought: where in the name of God did this come from and who built it?" Mr Hurst described the houseboat as like a "floating caravan" made from timber off-cuts, polystyrene, spray foam and Perspex windows with solar panels. It is around 20ft long, 10ft high and about 12ft wide, he said. "I wouldn't like to go out on it," he added. "But if you were homeless, it would be like a castle." Mr Hurst went to the scene on Sunday evening after alerting Malin Head Coast Guard to the sighting. Crews used ropes to secure the vessel, which will now be handed over to Mayo County Council. Locals are already talking about restoring it for use as an attraction on the Wild Atlantic Way tourist route. Trevor Devereux, an employee of O'Flaherty's trawling company with one of eight Bluefin tuna fish caught A trawling company which recently caught eight Bluefin tuna fish off the coast of Wexford says it made just 5,000, when it could have received up to 100,000 for each fish. Due to Irelands fishing quotas, fishermen are not permitted to catch and sell Bluefin fish, which are protected under Irish law. Employees of OFlahertys Brothers Limited, based in Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford accidently caught eight of the fish which have been frequenting Irish waters. In Japan, they can fetch up to 100,000 due to high demand, as the Bluefin is a popular form of sushi. The Sea Fisheries Protection Agency granted a waiver to allow OFlahertys to sell them for a total sum of 5,000. However, Seamus OFlaherty, one of the owners of the company, says Irelands economy could be benefitting a lot more from the influx of the extremely valuable fish. These fish are worth a fortune. While we got some money for them, we got nothing compared to what we could have done if we sold them to an established market in Japan, which were not allowed to do, Mr OFlaherty told Independent.ie. Its a tragedy because there is a very valuable fishery off the Irish coast and the only people who are allowed to partake in it are the Spanish and French. There are a number of fishing programmes devoted to catching these big tuna, and Irelands tourism industry and economy could be benefitting much better than we are, he added. Mr OFlaherty says recommendations had been made to former Minister for Marine Simon Coveney to introduce a proper quota for Bluefin tuna due to the high numbers of them swimming in Irish waters. However, the fisherman claims that it wont be introduced. The Spanish and French would have to give up some quota in order for this to happen, which basically means we have to ask the French and Spanish is it okay for us to fish off our own coast. You would wonder why we are celebrating the independence gained in 1916; we dont seem to be very independent. In Australia, their economy makes thousands from fishing Black Marlin and making documentaries about them. Ireland could be doing the exact same with the Bluefin. Every year, the European Community fishing quotas are determined at the December meeting of the Council of Ministers held in Brussels. According to the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency website, quotas are published in an annual Total Allowable Catch Regulation; this legislation fixes the fishing opportunities for certain fish stocks and groups of fish stocks, applicable in Union waters and, to Union vessels, in certain non-Union waters. Bluefin tuna arent included in the quotas. Requests have previously been made in the Dail for a three tonne quota to be introduced for the fish. Irish laws states: A master may not catch, land or retain on board a boat, Bluefin Tuna, other than in accordance with a fishing authorisation as defined in the Control Regulation. What time of year is acceptable to hang up Christmas decorations is a subject which divides Irish people every year. There are those who think the earlier the better... and those who who put up their tree two days before December 25. Independent.ie took to the streets of Dublin to see if people are feeling more like Santa or Scrooge this November. Watch the video above If Coppers is where people meet each other these days when they're not on Tinder, the romantic hearts of the 1980s used to frequent basement clubs in Leeson Street into the wee small hours. Suzie Monaghan and her husband Eddie Goggins are typical of a young couple of that time, as they met at Leggs in 1989 when they were 21. "My friends and I had only arrived and were standing on the steps, when Eddie came over and asked me to dance," Suzie recalls. "He was a dentistry student and the champagne on offer was crazily expensive, so he got us a jug of orange juice instead, which cost around 15." Eddie wasn't looking for a wife that night and had to gather his courage to approach Suzie, but once he spotted her, he immediately made his move. "Unusually, I didn't hesitate, because she was clearly the most stunning girl in the place and I knew she wouldn't be standing on her own for long," he says. "She was way out of my league, but there was a chance there and I took it." Suzie and Eddie chatted for the night, and when her friend Moira asked if she had invited him to another friend's party the following night, Suzie kicked her under the table because she hadn't decided if she wanted to bring him. "Unfortunately, Eddie saw me kicking her, and still reminds me of it to this day," she laughs. Happily, Cinders-Eddie went to the ball, and the young couple became an item. They were together for six years prior to getting married, three of which were spent dating long-distance as Eddie was working in the UK. After their wedding reception was over, they went to Leggs at the end of the night, back to where it all began. It is still open, and these days has a full and reasonably-priced bar! Suzie is from Leopardstown and is the youngest of Teresa and Tom Monaghan's four children. Her dad Tom owns Monaghans Cashmere in Royal Hibernian Way, and her beloved mum, whom she describes as "strong, soft and caring" has sadly had Alzheimer's for 11 years. She is cared for at home, and the family consider themselves fortunate that they can keep her with them. After boarding at Mount Sackville, Suzie did a secretarial course and worked at several jobs, including as a PA in banking and driving the FM104 promotional jeep. She was working in Minnie Peters when she met Eddie. He grew up in New York until he was 12, and then his family moved to Roscommon, which was a massive culture shock. His mum Ita is from Galway and she had moved to New York to work as a nurse, and met his late dad Michael, whose parents were Irish. Eddie is the second-youngest of their six children, although sadly his brother John passed away in an accident when he was only eight and Eddie was seven. His dad died four years ago and his "amazing" mum now lives in Naas. Eddie went to boarding school at St Nathy's in Roscommon, and to Trinity to study dentistry. He set up his practice 17 years ago, and it has just rebranded from Cabinteely Dental Care to Dublin 18 Dental Rooms. There are three other dentists and a visiting oral surgeon. Now both 48, Suzie and Eddie have two children, Hailey 19, and Eddie, 16. Hailey is in first year of marketing and French at DIT, and Eddie is in fifth year at Blackrock College. Becoming parents happened quicker than they had planned, as Suzie discovered she was pregnant when they were married six months and she was in the middle of a diploma in interior design. "I didn't know how to tell Eddie so I bought a card and literally just wrote, 'We're pregnant' on it and left it on his desk for when he came in," she laughs. Suzie worked in interior design for a few years, and was responsible for the redesign of Eddie's dental practice. She has been working with her dad at Monaghans Cashmere for the past four years. The store was founded by her parents in 1960, with the aim of selling the most luxurious cashmere and woollen garments, and is renowned for the lovely personal touch customers receive, and the high quality of the cashmere. Suzie has just designed her own women's sweater range, Suzie Monaghan Cashmere, which she describes as classic with a bit of a contemporary twist. The cashmere comes from the cashmere goat from inner Mongolia. The goats are treated extremely well and the cashmere is sourced by brushing their necks and bellies, where the softest hair grows. Her range has five gorgeous pieces in many colours, and she is looking to expand to baby, interior and male ranges next year. While life is busy, Suzie and Eddie walk their dogs, Coco and Roxy, together, which allows them to catch up. They also have a date night on Fridays after the busy week. They say they are both stubborn, but Suzie still thinks Eddie is gorgeous and loves that he is humble. "I know he adores me, and he is kind and generous." "I'm full of energy, but Suzie steers me," Eddie chimes in. "She's a people person, and genuinely has a really great heart and loads of passion. You could never have a dull day with Suzie in your life." www.monaghanscashmere.ie www.dublin18dentalrooms.ie 'Aww, Bless," is, to my mind, the most patronising, condescending thing a person can say. And yet the entire time I spend with Eddie Redmayne, it's right there on the tip of my tongue and it is a struggle to keep it from passing my lips. Rationally I know I am sitting with a 34-year-old man, an actor of such accomplishment that he swept up an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award for best actor for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The following year he was again nominated for all of the above for his role as transgender pioneer Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl. He's also won a Tony Award. I know all of this. But my brain keeps telling me that I'm with a very exuberant teenage boy - the type any mother would be proud to call her son. It's not that Redmayne is especially youthful looking and he certainly doesn't have that supernatural "glow" that only access to the very best healthcare and cosmetics can bring (there are actually some, gasp, lines on his face). Unlike his old classmate Prince William, he also has a fine head of hair. Yes, Redmayne is posh - very posh, he went to Eton followed by Cambridge and, as such, has found himself frequently lumped in with other posh actors (such as Tom Hiddleston, Damian Lewis and Dominic West) in the on-going UK debate around whether only the privileged can afford to go into the arts. Despite his "pedigree", in person the actor's poshness seems to be contained to his good manners. He's not stodgy though, he exudes energy and exuberance - it's these qualities coupled with the jumper he's wearing that give him the aura of a teenager. Small wonder then that he is the latest "Boy Wizard" to hit cinema screens, as Newt Scamander in JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. During our time together Redmayne frequently talks about his wife, PR executive Hannah Bagshawe, who he obviously adores. (The couple married in 2014 and their daughter Iris was born earlier this year.) It's this that's triggering my inner "Aww, Bless". Every time Redmayne says the words "my wife" I have to suppress the urge to pat him on the arm. As we speak, it becomes clear that Redmayne possesses a wonderful imagination. While telling me about the rather unique audition process for what is sure to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, it becomes apparent that the star can spin a good yarn himself. Redmayne has my rapt attention as he unfolds his tale of several meetings with director David Yates (Tarzan and the last four Harry Potter films). "I didn't know anything about it, it was all super-cryptic and David invited me to a club in Soho, he was sitting by a fire and he started telling me this story." I'm picturing him in a smoking jacket I say, "Practically," he replies before continuing, "and every few months, because JK Rowling hadn't finished the script yet, I'd go back for another instalment." While he may not have the cut-glass accent of many of his school and university contemporaries, Redmayne does have the self-deprecating air of a true Englishman. "I have this little case," he tells me. "It's my work case. I take it to set and the first time I met David, it's the most embarrassing thing, I'd come straight from work and I'd brought this little case and half way through he says 'and Newt has this case...' "There was an embarrassing time when I was starting out as an actor, that lots of us would get dressed up for auditions to basically look like the guy," he says with a laugh. "You'd put a weird Napoleon outfit on for the Napoleon part... so when David said about the case I felt really embarrassed and said, 'I promise I didn't know this; I didn't come with the case deliberately'." I'm similarly entranced when the actor tells me about how he proposed to his wife. "In the middle of nowhere, in the hills outside of Florence. About two minutes after I proposed, and you're having that moment of absolute excitement, and then round the corner come two tourists." (He puts on a typical Valley Girl accent) 'Oh my God, can I have a selfie?'" Most people would be quite within their rights to tell strangers to butt out at such a moment but I get the impression this was never an option with Redmayne and tellingly he adds: "There is a selfie out there somewhere of literally seconds after we got engaged." While Fantastic Beasts is set in New York in the 1920s, the plot has been shrouded in secrecy. Advance trailers show actor Colin Farrell in a role that has "baddie" written all over it. Given the imagery, it looks as if there is some sort of wizarding parallel being drawn between Colin Farrell's character and the rise of Fascist leaders in the interwar period in Europe. Redmayne won't be drawn further than saying. "I think everyone knows that JK Rowling is incredibly politically engaged and is, I think, a formidable artist and what great artists do is reflect what is going on in the world. There are many themes in the film, about segregation, about repression, that are absolutely woven into the piece and the danger of those things." Similarly, Redmayne can't say enough nice things about Farrell. "It was wonderful (working with him). I've always admired Colin and he has a great reputation of being an incredibly kind man and he was." Redmayne goes on to tell me about going to Comic Con (a massive convention for fans of movies, fantasy, science fiction and comics). "We went to Comic Con to present this film, it's totally insane and crazy. I had to go on in front of thousands of people and... I'm not built for that, I don't know how to do that, and I was really nervous. Before I went on, Colin gave me a pep talk. He's a very generous man." Despite Colin Farrell's intervention, the convention wasn't without hiccups. "I handed out 5,000 wands (Newt's wand) but then when I got back on stage, I was supposed to do a spell and realised I'd handed out my own wand as well. I had to run off stage and ask to borrow a wand. I did the spell and... this girl was waiting to take back her wand. I thought, 'wait a minute, everybody in that room has a Newt wand except me.'" The truth is, Eddie Redmayne doesn't really need a wand to weave magic. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens nationwide November 18 A road is cordoned off by the state highway 7a, near the Waiau Ferry Bridge after the 7.8 magnitude Hanmer Earthquake, near Hanmer Springs, in New Zealand, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. (David Alexander/SPNA via AP) WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: Amora Hotel guests gather in a carpark after an earthquake. Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images Three cows are stranded on an island of grass in a paddock that had been ripped apart following an earthquake near Kaikoura, New Zealand WAIAU, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: The Waiau Lodge Hotel, in Waiau, 120 kms north of Christchurch, shows damage in the aftermath of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. Photo by Matias Delacroix/Getty Images Aerial photo on November 14, 2016 shows earthquake damage to State Highway One near Ohau Point on New Zealand's South Island's east coast. Photo: MARK MITCHELL/AFP/Getty Images AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: The Sky Tower is illuminated Black and White as as a sign of solidarity after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images New Zealands South Island has been struck by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which has left two people dead. The initial quake has been followed by a series of smaller tremors, including one that measured magnitude 6.3. Some communities have been left without power, and aftershocks have caused landslides, dammed rivers and downed power cables. Where has been hit? The quake struck just outside the town of Kaikoura, a popular tourist resort some 110 miles north of Christchurch. Local authorities claim the main road into Kaikoura has been cut off by landslides, adding that telecommunications, water and power supplies have also been severed. People are currently being airlifted to safety from the town. Expand Close Aerial photo on November 14, 2016 shows earthquake damage to State Highway One near Ohau Point on New Zealand's South Island's east coast. Photo: MARK MITCHELL/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Aerial photo on November 14, 2016 shows earthquake damage to State Highway One near Ohau Point on New Zealand's South Island's east coast. Photo: MARK MITCHELL/AFP/Getty Images A tsunami warning for the South Islands northeast coast was issued but has since been called off. The quake was felt as far afield as Wellington on the North Island, where local authorities have been clearing up debris and checking buildings for structural damage. Though the earthquake was more powerful than the one that struck Christchurch nearly exactly five years ago, which killed 182 people and destroyed many buildings, it has wrought significantly less devastation. That said, the quake is thought to have caused significant damage to the South Islands infrastructure; many highways have cracked or been blocked by landslides. Expand Close WAIAU, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: The Waiau Lodge Hotel, in Waiau, 120 kms north of Christchurch, shows damage in the aftermath of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. Photo by Matias Delacroix/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp WAIAU, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: The Waiau Lodge Hotel, in Waiau, 120 kms north of Christchurch, shows damage in the aftermath of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. Photo by Matias Delacroix/Getty Images Is the area popular with tourists? Kaikoura attracts roughly one million tourists annually, most of whom come to admire the local marine life. Kaikoura is renowned for its resident sperm whales and other leviathan species that visit in winter, says New Zealand travel expert, Sarah Bennett. Swimming with dolphins and spotting albatrosses are also popular activities in the town, which is overlooked by the spectacular snow-capped peaks of the Kaikoura Ranges. Expand Close WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: Amora Hotel guests gather in a carpark after an earthquake. Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - NOVEMBER 14: Amora Hotel guests gather in a carpark after an earthquake. Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images In 2004, Kaikoura became the first town in the world to gain accreditation under the Green Globe scheme, which recognised its positive contributions to people and planet through ecotourism. Have airports and roads been affected? None of New Zealand's airports have been affected by the quake, but many roads and railways have been ripped up or blocked by landslides. It looks as though it's the infrastructure that's the biggest problem, said civil defence minister, Gerry Brownlee. Although I don't want to take away from the suffering... and terrible fright so many people have had. What to do if you are there? Expand Close Three cows are stranded on an island of grass in a paddock that had been ripped apart following an earthquake near Kaikoura, New Zealand / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Three cows are stranded on an island of grass in a paddock that had been ripped apart following an earthquake near Kaikoura, New Zealand New Zealand authorities are still warning of the risk of aftershocks in the area. And while the tsunami warning has been lifted, people staying near the coast are advised to exercise extreme care, especially given that bad weather is predicted. A statement on the Civil Defence website reads: Based on all available data, the tsunami threat has now passed. However, coasts may still experience unusual, strong currents and sea level fluctuations lasting for several more hours. People are advised to stay vigilant in and around coastal waters. Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs has advised any citizens with concerns to contact the Embassy of Ireland in Canberra at 0061 2 6214 0000, or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Dublin at 01 408-2000. It advises all citizens to follow the advice of local authorities. People travelling around the South Island by road are advised to follow local advice as there are many highway closures that will impact journeys. It is not currently possible to travel to Kaikoura, where a state of emergency currently exists. Can I cancel my trip? In short, no. And it's not necessary to do so, either. "Much of New Zealand remains unaffected," said a spokesperson for New Zealand Tourism. "All airports are open and operational in New Zealand. It appears the greatest impact is in rural North Canterbury, Kaikoura and Wellington, although information is still being confirmed." If your trip has been affected by the earthquakes, then your tour operator will be contractually obliged to provide suitable alternative arrangements or offer a refund. If you simply want to cancel your trip out of choice, it is unlikely you will be entitled to a refund. Contact your tour operator, accommodation or your insurer to discuss your options. Are quakes in New Zealand common? New Zealand sits on the so-called "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. The nation of 4.7 million people is still recovering from heavy quakes in 2010 and 2011, which killed 185 people and caused billions in damage to the city. For more info, see civildefence.govt.nz/. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] What type of parent would want their child to be diagnosed with a disability? What type of doctor would 'label' a child with an illness they don't have? The two questions should have the same answer: "No parent and no doctor." But the reality for many families is that they feel the need to cheat a broken system. So a desperate parent, who feels the only way to get the help their son or daughter needs, finds a compassionate medic who only wants to help. This is not just a case of lying on a form, it can impact in any number of unimaginable ways. "If you apply for a visa to America, you are asked if you have ever been diagnosed with having an emotional behaviour [disorder]," Teresa Griffin, CEO of the National Council for Special Education, noted while speaking with politicians in recent weeks. "I don't know what the implications of saying 'yes I have' are. I just know I wouldn't like to lie to the US authorities." There are certain types of insurance where such health issues can affect your premium, and then there is the stigma. But faced with a choice between getting some extra resources and none, it's easy to see why many parents get children to play up symptoms or encourage a medic to give a more serious diagnosis than is warranted. Jim Mulkerrins, principal officer in the Department of Education, told an Oireachtas committee that it "has never been the case that labelling should have been a requirement in order to generate additional resources". Changes are on the way that should see over 10,000 existing special education teachers allocated to schools in line with their level of need for additional support rather than individual cases. But it can't come quick enough because a label is for life. Premium Billy Keane Opinion Even a dash to the Croke Park toilet wasnt enough to get rid of space invader who gave me Covid I did the time, but there was no crime. Banged up I was, under house arrest after two red bars showed up on the Covid test. Im not too bad, thanks for asking. I have it down on a man who was nearly close enough to kiss me at the All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Galway. Premium John Downing Opinion New British prime minister Rishi Sunaks succession proves an important milestone in British political inclusivity There is an old saying in British politics that goes: The right looks for converts while the left seeks out traitors. It comes to mind when one reflects upon the election of Rishi Sunak as the UKs first non-white prime minister in a party traditionally seen as most opposed to mass immigration and the dilution of national identity via multiculturalism. The special educational need services, within schools, are a scarce and hard-to-access resource. As a practising clinical psychologist I frequently meet children in real difficulty, socially, emotionally, academically and/or behaviourally. I'm well aware that any one of these kinds of difficulties could impact negatively on a child's education unless they get targeted, additional help in school. I know they need extra resources and I am part of the system that determines if they are eligible to receive them. At the moment, the only route to getting such help is to have a clear and unambiguous diagnosis from a professional like me (usually a psychologist or psychiatrist depending on the issue). That diagnosis must fit very strict criteria in order to unlock the educational resources. I think everyone within the system sees that the current model we operate within is flawed. Even with the best will in the world, the needs of a child and a true understanding of the whole child can get easily lost once they have been diagnosed, and labelled, with a particular psychological or psychiatric "disability". Teachers, parents and professionals can end up thinking about a child, only with reference to their diagnosed difficulty. Once a child is diagnosed with something like ADHD or Severe Emotional and Behavioural Disorder (SEBD), it tends to define their school life. Everyone comes to know this about a child and that can be good (when it leads to understanding and patience), or bad (when it leads to prejudice or inaccurate assumptions). Reading the comments attributed to Teresa Griffin, the head of the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), that professionals are actively making some children "fit a certain category of disability in order for them to get a resource" even though they "don't theoretically meet the actual label", makes it sound like it is some conspiracy between parents and professionals to defraud the system. Mind you, if some professionals are actively and deliberately misdiagnosing children, in order to ensure those children get access to an additional educational resource, that is morally and ethically wrong. But I don't believe professionals have corrupted the system for resourcing children with special needs. It was flawed from its inception. By tying resources to specific diagnoses, rather than assessed educational need, those who determined the policy created the issue. Especially where a child's difficulty is behavioural and/or emotional, schools become desperate to get additional help to keep the child from being a disruption to, or more worryingly, a danger to others. Schools will often be the prime mover in insisting that parents go to the trouble and expense of getting a psychological or psychiatric assessment. Often the desire to have a child fit the criteria for extra help is as much to meet the wider needs of the teacher, class and school as it is to meet the needs of the specific child. I rarely do formal clinical or psychometric assessments of children in situations where I have not already been working therapeutically with them. I am, as any of my clients will attest, incredibly reluctant to diagnose children according to predefined categories. I hate that they may be boxed off, or reduced in others' understanding, to a label they have been assigned. I really do believe that the only true function of assessment is to give us insight into what kind of help will best suit a child. But I do assess and I do diagnose where I judge that such a diagnosis is accurate and where it might also enable the child to get extra help in school. I hope I have never misdiagnosed a child; I've certainly never deliberately done so, but I do know that when I am writing up the report I will ensure I use the language to describe that child that will allow them to access the resources. I do so because I am as much part of this flawed system as every other professional, every other teacher and principal, every Special Educational Needs Officer (SENO) and every parent desperate to see their child get the best help available. It makes much more sense to me that I, and others, would be assessing a child as part of a multidisciplinary approach, to best understand a child and thereby target the best and most child specific intervention for them. But this is not how the system is currently structured. My job is to work therapeutically with children and their families to guide and support them. But they don't exist just in my office, they also have to live with their families, hang out with their friends and go to school. If, as part of my support of them, I can help them get access to extra help that they need, then I'll do my utmost to do so. David Coleman is a clinical psychologist In 1999 Leonard Cohen travelled to India to see a spiritual teacher named Ramesh Balsekar. Cohen was a man in search, if not exactly of faith, then of meaning. Ramesh had been educated at the London School of Economics and had worked as general manager of the Bank of India in Bombay before retiring to devote his life to propagating the teachings of advaita - a philosophy that teaches the idea that "I am the doer" of my thoughts, and actions should be constantly interrogated with the question "Who is this 'I'?". Cohen spent almost a year in Bombay, going almost daily to sit at Ramesh's feet. A fascinating transcription exists of some of their conversations, in which Cohen talks of the difficulties in his life, his writing and the "chattering of the mind" that afflicted him, "sometimes in degrees of intensity that make one gasp or cry out for help". What Cohen seeks most of all, he says, is "peace". It is Cohen's misfortune that he goes to his grave heralded as "the godfather of gloom". But the question he was constantly asking, in his songs, poetry and fiction was "Who is this 'I'?" - and what is this "I" supposed to be doing here, in this mess of dashed hopes, broken hearts and certain mortality? Cohen came from a distinguished family of Montreal Jews. His grandfather, he told David Remnick of The New Yorker, in an interview four weeks ago, was a distinguished rabbi and "the most significant Jew in Canada" - a position Cohen would later assume himself. The legacy of Jewish teaching, lore - and melancholia - infused his work in ways that might not always have been obvious. Cohen explored different paths - LSD, Catholicism, even Scientology. But the path that occupied much of his life was Zen Buddhism. For 30 years he was associated with a Zen monaster y at Mount Baldy in California, and for almost six years in the Nineties lived there on and off as an ordained monk, under the tutelage of a Japanese Roshi (an honorific meaning distinguished teacher) named Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. Cohen was known as Jikan, the "Silent One". He would rise each morning at 2.30, shovel snow, scrub the floors and spend half the day meditating. When he ever talked about having experiences that suggested an illumination, Roshi would employ the traditional method of discouragement, beating him on the shoulder with a stick. People often described Cohen as a Buddhist, but he always denied it, saying he had "inherited an extremely good religion" - Judaism. Rather, his years with Sasaki Roshi had "provided a space for me to kind of dance with the Lord that I couldn't find in a lot of the other places I went to". Cohen told Remnick how his search was still on going. He continued to read deeply in the Zohar - the principal text of Jewish mysticism - the Hebrew Bible, Hindu philosophy and Buddhist texts. It is no coincidence Cohen's most famous song should be Hallelujah - a Hebrew word meaning "praise God", although Cohen maintained the song was a desire to affirm "my faith in life", not in an explicitly religious way "but with enthusiasm, with emotion". "The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say: 'Look, I don't understand a f**king thing at all! Hallelujah!' That's the only moment we live here fully as human beings." He once wrote that "a man or woman lays their work at the foot of their beloved - we do everything for love". For all his songs and poetry, nothing in his life became Cohen more than the letter he wrote to his former lover and muse Marianne Ihlen on learning she would soon be leaving, dying of cancer: "Well Marianne, it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. "Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road." Whatever the loss, whatever the "absolutely irreconcilable conflicts of the moment", whatever the darkness - as Leonard Cohen once sang, "There is a crack, a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." Whenever I work with a client within a counselling context, I am invariably on their side. It doesn't matter how badly they may have behaved; once the client and I meet in a therapeutic setting, I stand shoulder to shoulder with the client in a bid to support them as they untangle the difficult patterns of their life. This is why I wasn't surprised when Teresa Griffin, the head of the National Council for Special Education, said that some children are being wrongly made to "fit a certain category of disability in order for them to get a resource". These children are being "unnecessary labelled" with disorders by doctors so as to get the educational resources they need. Sadly, there is no option for the doctor to recommend, "The child has no recognisable condition right now but clearly needs extra support"; instead all resources are based solely upon the diagnosis. But doctors aren't only diagnosticians. They are advocates and if a child clearly has behavioural or developmental problems, but doesn't fit the criteria to be diagnosed with a condition, then it is understandable why their doctor might be willing to fudge the issue a little bit by providing the diagnosis. Especially when doctors know if they send the child away without giving a diagnosis, then this child will receive no extra support from the education system. I became acquainted with this system when my children's teachers fully accepted - as I did - that my children had dyslexia. At the time, I didn't see any point in getting the diagnosis; it was patently obvious that both children had dyslexia. I didn't see any point in spending 490 on two assessments that would tell me something that I already knew. But then I was told the school couldn't allocate any extra resources to my children until they were officially diagnosed. Evidently, we had to get a diagnosis if I wanted to ensure my children were adequately supported in school. I then had the choice to wait for the State to provide this assessment or pay for it myself. It might have taken years to get the assessment and, apparently, early intervention is key for these issues. So, feeling ripped off by the system, I arranged for an educational psychologist to give my kids a series of tests to give me the unsurprising news they were dyslexic. It cost me 980. As I am not an educational psychologist, I couldn't penetrate the results of these assessments and therefore, other than allocating school resources for my children, the assessments didn't add to our lives in any way. Any good teacher knows exactly which children need support and which are rolling along nicely without any extra support. If there was more autonomy within the system, then teachers could identify undiagnosed children who need extra resources. Perhaps we need to trust the educators instead of the medics to identify who needs the extra educational resources? Doctors need to be able to diagnose wisely without fear of becoming the very obstacle that prevents their patients from benefiting from key support and resources. If the system continues to rely upon doctors to be the inappropriate gatekeepers for the allocation of educational resources, then we will soon fall into a situation where we will be medicalising difference. This is becoming a controversial issue in the US where children who don't conform to certain narrow guidelines are often diagnosed with some condition or other. Many experts argue that bland conformity is threatening to override individuality, immaturity, dreaminess and many other normal personality traits and tendencies. It is well known that Albert Einstein was slow to learn how to speak. He was also described as a dreamy, slow and dull child who had a bizarre habit of softly repeating every sentence he uttered to himself before he spoke out loud. Einstein definitely wasn't standard issue and would undoubtedly have been cause for serious concern among teachers and doctors today. Diagnoses for brain conditions, such as ADHD, ASD, dyslexia, depression or anxiety, are a very inexact science and perhaps these diagnoses should be written in pencil? Conditions based in the brain cannot be diagnosed with a blood test or a brain scan and so medics are forced to rely on more complex -and fallible - methods of assessment. In addition, although there are some cognitive tests children can take, nevertheless they need to have attained a certain level of education and ability before they can even take the test. Falsely assuming every child's problem stems from a biological imbalance in the brain may give the child short-term educational benefits; however, it may also saddle them with an incorrect view of themselves that could take many long and difficult years to unravel. Aristotle tells us that "knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom", but how can a person know themselves if they have been wrongly identified as having a condition that is hard-wired into their brain? Stella O'Malley is a psychotherapist, writer and public speaker with over 10 years' experience as a mental health professional All good business stories start with creativity The Dingle peninsula is an inspirational place once described by National Geographic as the most beautiful place on earth. The backdrop of this breathtaking landscape spurred successful builder Jerry OSullivan to move from bricks and mortar to a craft of a different kind brewing fresh Irish award-winning lager to create a brand new Irish brand. Navigating the vertiginous Conor Pass before the descent down to Dingle is a feat in itself. The Dingle Brewing Company is now one of the first landmarks that visitors see when Creans Brewery appears in sight on arrival at the edge of Europe, the most westerly tip of Ireland the West Kerry Gaeltacht. The Ford Business Stories series profiles innovative, successful Irish business leaders, delving deeper into their stories and the sources of their inspiration and hearing how they travel through life. The series also showcases the Ford Mondeo Vignale and the drive for perfection. Kevin Dundon, celebrity chef and restaurateur and Ford ambassador travelled to Dingle to meet with Jerry OSullivan, hear his unique story and find out how he runs his business: We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference On Driving Forward So what prompted Jerry OSullivan to turn his back on bricks and mortar and dive in to the world of brewing? Ten years ago, he moved to the Dingle peninsula to retire, but shortly afterwards established the Dingle Brewing Company. A serial entrepreneur, he doesnt believe in procrastination tackle things, head on. Housed in a 19th century creamery building, the craft brewery launched and opened its tours on 20th July, 2011, the birthday of explorer Tom Crean, whom the single brew, crisp, hoppy lager is named after. The small company has quickly grown distribution around Ireland and internationally. On Brewing Business Success I dont see obstacles as obstacles I see a way around them or if I cant find a way around them, I just go through them. Jerry OSullivan received this piece of advice from his father and passes it on to others starting out in business: Stick to what you know and get better at it. On Inspiration and Creativity Stick to your core idea and set out goals. Its appropriate that Jerrys Dingle Brewing Company makes a lager that bears the name of another great man with vision explorer Tom Crean. From out the road in Annascaul, he followed his dreams on expeditions to the South Pole as an indespensible and highly respected member of both Scotts Antarctic expedition (Discovery and Terra Nova) and of Ernest Shackeltons (Endurance). The great hero and pioneer Tom Crean eventually returned to Kerry to open his own pub the South Pole Inn. Just like Tom did, Jerry returned to Dingle after his adventures in construction and taking inspiration from Crean, he sees no limits to how far he can go. The executive Ford model, the Mondeo Vignale combines the best of technology, beauty and experience. Visit Ford.ie or go to your nearest FordStore to take your first step in to a Vignale Lounge to begin a unique experience that offers dedicated services designed around you. Read more about the stories behind Ford Vignales design and hand-crafted premium materials. Ford Mondeo Vignale the height of executive luxury and high performance. The Mondeo Vignale is the executive Ford model. The cars aren't alone in the upmarket redesign. Dedicated Ford Stores with Vignale lounges and a hotline to a devoted customer care agent will combine to show 'Ford at its best'. Designed by furniture and fashion designers it offers more refinement, more luxury. Step into a Vignale Lounge to experience the height of executive luxury and high performance. Click here for more. Sponsored by: American director JJ Abrams is set to produce award-winning West End comedy The Play That Goes Wrong as it moves to Broadway. Now in its third year at the Duchess Theatre after winning the 2015 Olivier Award for best new comedy, the play will open at the Lyceum Theatre in Manhattan in April. The original West End cast, including Matthew Cavendish, Bryony Corrigan and Rob Falconer, will star in the show telling the story of drama group actors who attempt to stage a 1920s murder mystery until everything goes horribly wrong. Written by Mischief Theatre members, the show introduces the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, who battle against all odds to make it through to the final curtain call. Abrams - the writer, director and producer of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and executive producer of sci-fi thriller series Westworld - described his latest project as a "true honour". He said: "I have been a fan of theatre all my life. When I saw The Play That Goes Wrong on the West End, I hadn't laughed that hard, seen something as preposterously absurd or wonderfully hilarious, in ages. "To be part of the team bringing this inspired comedy to Broadway is a true honour." He will co-produce the show with Kevin McCollum, Kenny Wax, Stage Present and Catherine Schreiber. McCollum said: "I love that the Mischief crew started as a group of friends in drama school just trying to make each other laugh and through their inventiveness and ingenuity, have succeeded in making thousands laugh with three plays currently running simultaneously on the West End. "I'm thrilled to be part of the team that brings their 'mischief' and lunacy to Broadway. We all really need a good laugh." Video of the Day Mischief founder and writer Henry Lewis said: "We are delighted that due to an administrative error the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society will be coming to Broadway's Lyceum Theatre in place of the RSC's production of Black Beauty. "A fresh American audience with no knowledge of our previous work will be a real help to us. "We would also like to wish the RSC all the best with Black Beauty, which will now be taking place back in England at the Cornley Village Hall. "We'll leave the vaulting horse out for you." Now licensed to 29 countries, pre-sale tickets for the Broadway show are available until November 23. The New York Times has described it as "a gut-busting hit". Ken Loach said the Government should not cut the disability allowance by 30% Award-winning filmmaker Ken Loach has warned Chancellor Philip Hammond not to target the disabled in next week's mini Budget. The director of the critically acclaimed I, Daniel Blake urged the Government not to pick on some of the most vulnerable people in society in the Autumn Statement financial announcement. "The immediate thing is they are threatening to cut the disability allowance by 30%. That should not happen. "It's meagre anyway. People with disabilities need the barest minimum that they are given at the moment just to survive, just to get by, just to keep going and try and get back into work. "To cut that is cutting money from the most vulnerable and poorest people. And Philip Hammond should outlaw that immediately. Don't cut the disability benefit," he told BBC Radio Four's Westminster Hour. Tory former Cabinet Minister John Redwood also expressed concern about proposed cuts to the employment and support allowance. He said: "I'd like them to look again at the whole issue of disability treatment, not necessarily that particular cut, I can understand their case for that, it doesn't affect anyone who is currently on benefits which is very important. "The point about it all is I don't want them taking money away from people currently getting it - which is why I was able to vote for it reluctantly - but I think we can to do better by the disabled." Mr Redwood, considered a hardline Thatcherite when he was in Cabinet, said he was unhappy with the bedroom tax. "No, I wasn't comfortable with that. I thought there were better ways of ensuring proper allocation of housing without affecting people's rights that they've already got, but it was part of a package in a very difficult situation. Video of the Day "I think now the economy is in better shape, I'd like the Government to look at all these areas in the round. "Mrs (Theresa) May and Mr Hammond have come up with some much better language about how they wish to support people and help people and I hope they will come up with a range of interesting proposals that will be better." Kim Kardashian's children Saint and North dress up as Aladdin and Jasmine at Halloween Credit KimKardashianWest.com Kim Kardashian is seen walking North West to the GYM in New York Kim Kardashian's doctors have warned her that a third pregnancy could possibly lead to "life or death" complications. The 36-year-old reality star is mother to three-year-old North and son Saint, who turns one next month, with husband Kanye West. Due to suffering from placenta accreta, a condition where the placenta attaches itself to the uterus, when she gave birth to North, Kim and Kanye struggled to conceive Saint. While the couple has been open about their desire to have a large family, Kim was told on Sunday night's episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians that falling pregnant for a third time could have fatal consequences. Expand Close Kim Kardashian is seen walking North West to the GYM in New York / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Kim Kardashian is seen walking North West to the GYM in New York Kim's family doctor Dr Crane told her: "You never know if you might have the same type of problem that could be more serious this time." Youre always taking a little bit of a chance. There are situations where retained placenta could be life or death." Kim's mother Kris Jenner, who accompanied her to the appointment, added: "You could bleed to death." Kim then decided to seek a second opinion, booking an appointment with fertility specialist Dr. Wong, who suggested she should consider using a surrogate. Expand Close Kim Kardashian and Kanye West / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Speaking to the camera, Kim explained: "If the two doctors, that I trust, have told me it wouldnt be safe for me to get pregnant again, I have to listen to that. But because I dont know anyone that has been a surrogate or used one, I didnt really think about that as an option for me." After the subject of surrogacy was broached, Kim decided to meet with a mother who had used a surrogate while also carrying another of her children herself. Video of the Day Deep in conversation with the woman, called Natalie, Kim told her that her greatest fear is that using a surrogate would mean she would love that child differently than she loves North and Saint, because she carried them herself. Im more worried, because I gave birth to two. Theres a sense in me that because I went through all that pain for these two babies and that I know we did this together she said. "Theres no one that would feel your love (like this baby), they are literally near your heart and inside of you. Expand Close Kim Kardashian's children Saint and North dress up as Aladdin and Jasmine at Halloween Credit KimKardashianWest.com / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Kim Kardashian's children Saint and North dress up as Aladdin and Jasmine at Halloween Credit KimKardashianWest.com My bond with my kids is so strong. I think my biggest fear is that if I had a surrogate is, would I love them the same? Thats the main thing I keep thinking about." After Natalie reassured her she had never had those feelings, Kim told Kris at the end of the episode that she has accepted she won't be able to carry another child herself, and is now seriously exploring surrogacy. "The best thing, I could have a new baby and have no one know and live my life for a good year before we announce it," Kim concluded. "But I dont know if its for me. I really dont know." Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson said he believed Polynesian people will be "incredibly proud" of his new Disney animation Moana despite criticism of its portrayal of the god Maui. The wrestler-turned movie star voices the character of the mythical demigod, which some critics have claimed promotes a negative stereotype because he is depicted as obese. New Zealand MP Jenny Salesa, who is of Tongan heritage, reportedly claimed the character resembled a creature that was "half pig, half hippo", while Samoan professional rugby player Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu also criticised Disney's portrayal. At a press conference to promote Moana in Los Angeles, Johnson - whose mother is Samoan - acknowledged there had been concerns about the film from people in the Pacific Islands but he had "great confidence" in the movie. He said: "There was some hesitance from a lot of people in our culture about well, 'What's going to happen if our culture is going to be showcased for the very first time on this level and this capacity from Disney?' "I can tell you ... with great confidence, and this is my hope too as well, that our experience has been that we were in such great hands. "I feel like the Polynesian people are going to be incredibly proud of the movie." Hawaiian teenager Auli'i Cravalho, who voices heroine Moana, admitted she was "a bit wary" of a film being made about her culture but she was pleased with the end result. "Disney has done a wonderful job," she said. "I'm excited for my community to see it and excited for everyone else to see it. Hopefully they'll be inspired to research our culture." According to Polynesian mythology, Maui is a heroic figure who fished islands out of the sea. After a trailer for Moana was released in June, Fuimaono-Sapolu criticised the depiction of the demigod, saying the character looked like "after he fished up the Islands, he deep fried 'em and and ate 'em". Video of the Day Ms Salesa also reportedly wrote on Facebook: "When we look at photos of Polynesian men & women from the last 100-200 years, most of our people were not overweight and this negative stereotype of Maui is just not acceptable - No thanks to Disney." Meanwhile, Will Ilolahia, from the Pacific Island Media Association, told Waatea News that Disney's portrayal of Maui as obese was "typical American stereotyping". Moana is released in UK cinemas on December 2. People allegedly involved in the flogging of a transgender person arrive at a court in Sialkot, Pakistan (AP) Police in Pakistan have arrested 10 alleged members of a criminal gang accused of flogging a transgender woman and posting a video of the abuse on social media. The arrests were made in the eastern city of Sialkot after a video of the flogging was shared thousands of times on social media, said police official Iqbal Sindhu. The video shows the gang leader pinning the woman face down on a bed with his foot and beating her with what appears to be a leather belt. At one point, while another gang member continues the flogging, the leader places his foot on the victim's neck and twists her arms. Police chief Abid Khan said five of those arrested have been charged with torture and extortion, while the other five are under investigation. The alleged gang leader, who identified himself as Jajja, told Dunya News that he was friends with the victim. "I was punishing him because he didn't refrain from his bad habits, which I pointed out to him several times," he said in an interview conducted while he was in police custody. Transgender people in Pakistan are social outcasts who are often forced into begging, dancing and prostitution to earn money. Fearing attacks, most either change their names or use only one name. TransAction, a local transgender rights group, posted a video interview with another transgender woman who identified herself as Jolie and said she was present when the attack took place. She said the gang members barged into a house where several transgender women were living, beating and torturing one of them for several hours and shaving the heads of others. Mr Sindhu, the police official, confirmed Jolie was present at the scene. AP Ben Hooper gets ready at Bel-Air beach in Dakar, Senegal, to begin his epic swim across the Atlantic Ocean Picture: AFP/Getty A former British policeman will swim up to 12 hours a day for four months in a bid to make history by crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America. After more than three years of preparation, Ben Hooper set off yesterday from Dakar in Senegal. The 38-year-old, from Cheltenham, walked down a beach and into the sea, launching a swim for 3,200km to Brazil. "This is for my daughter," said Mr Hooper, who filled a water bottle with sand to keep for the eight-year-old who he said inspired the record-breaking swim. Flanked by two boats and a crew of less than a dozen, Mr Hooper aims to be the first person to swim every kilometre of the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent, stepping on land again in March. He trained for three years as he gathered a crew for the Big Blue, the main boat on which he will eat and sleep when he is not swimming for up to 12 hours each day through waters infested with sharks and jellyfish. "I nearly drowned when I was five in a swimming pool in Belgium," he said. "Ever since I've had this affinity with water. It was the calmest I've ever felt." Mr Hooper said he had a bout of depression three years ago and decided to turn his life around for his daughter. So he looked to water. "Nobody had swum a full ocean. More people have landed on the moon than have tried this, so at that point I thought maybe this is my calling," he said. "If I can inspire myself, others and raise money for charity, why not do it?" Nigel Taylor-Schofield, captain of the Big Blue, said: "This will be a major achievement overall. If anybody can accomplish this, it would be Ben." One of the envelopes from Jane Eyre author Charlotte Bronte to life-long friend Ellen Nussey (Henry Aldridge & Son/PA) One of two envelopes addressed by Charlotte Bronte to her life-long friend Ellen Nussey, which will go under the hammer (Henry Aldridge & Son/PA) Rare envelopes that would have contained letters detailing the relationship between author Charlotte Bronte and her life-long friend are expected to fetch about 1,000 when they go under the hammer. The handwritten envelopes were addressed to Ellen Nussey and sent to her in Leeds by the Jane Ayre author. Both envelopes are expected to fetch between 800 and 1,200 when they go under the hammer. Bronte and Ms Nussey became life-long friends after first meeting at school in Yorkshire when they were aged 14 and 13 respectively. It was during their time at Roe Head School that they began writing to each other - correspondence that lasted until Bronte died in 1855 aged 38 while pregnant with her first child. During that time Bronte rejected the marriage proposal from Ms Nussey's brother, Henry, and later her friend was one of two witnesses who observed Bronte's wedding to her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. They exchanged hundreds of letters and 350 that Bronte penned to Ms Nussey were used by Elizabeth Gaskell as the basis to write her 1857 biography The Life Of Charlotte Bronte. Charlotte Bronte and her sisters, Emily and Anne, wrote the literary masterpieces Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall respectively. Auctioneer Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, will be selling the two envelopes on November 19. The first is written by Bronte in brown ink with a Penny Red stamp and postmarked "Leeds Jan 30 1849" and "Barnsley Keighley and Haworth" with the remains of a black seal. The 4in x 2.4in (10cm x 6cm) envelope bears a black mourning band to the border. The second envelope is again written in brown ink with an accompanying Penny Red stamp. It is postmarked "Leeds MR 31 1846" on the front and "Bradford and Haworth" on the reverse. Bronte has affixed a small printed scrap "Attend to Time" on the reverse of the 4.3in x 2.4in (11cm x 6cm) envelope. Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: "These covers represent a small part of English literary history. Charlotte Bronte is one of the giants of English literature. "These covers are written to her childhood friend and closest confidante Ellen Nussey, who first met Charlotte Bronte in 1831. "Anything related to Charlotte is desirable but to have a pair of covers written by her to her closet friend offers an incredible opportunity to a collector or museum." Staff at a zoo struggling to X-ray some hefty giant tortoises have turned the tables on their patients - quite literally. The female Aldabra giant tortoises, which weigh the best part of 14 stone (90kg), were damaging the X-ray plates by either stamping on them or by pooing and weeing. It takes four people to lift the reptiles, so vets and keepers at Paignton Zoo in Devon came up with the idea of a simple wooden frame - like a table without a top. Vet nurse Celine Campana said: "We went to zoo technician Don Nielsen with a drawing and explained the problems we were having. We were sliding the digital X-ray plates under the tortoises, but they would stamp on them or poo and pee. "They're worth 900 each and they were getting quite scratched and damaged." Mr Nielsen devised the sturdy wooden frame, which includes a slot into which the vets can slide the X-ray plate, and the tortoises are lifted on to it. A member of the vet team then stands above the animal with the zoo's mobile X-ray machine and takes the X-ray from above. Ms Campana added: "The table means they are lifted off the ground for only a moment or two, they can't wander off as they are unable to reach the ground with their toes. "The X-ray is taken in a quarter of the time it used to take. It is especially good as previously we had to have another person in the room to restrain the tortoise, and although everyone is wearing lead aprons, it's still a radiation exposure risk." Pizza, the polar bear, is being kept on display in a shopping mall in China Photo: Animals Asia Animal rights groups have called for the permanent return home of "the saddest polar bear in the world" on display in a shopping mall in southern China after the mall aquarium announced the bear would temporarily be moved during an upgrade. The three-year-old female polar bear, named Pizza, has become a focus of global media attention since Hong Kong-based Animal Asia posted in July an online video of the bear lying on her side in a glass-walled enclosure in the city of Guangzhou. "Pizza the polar bear will temporarily leave Guangzhou and return to her birthplace," the Grandview Mall Aquarium said on its official account on WeChat, a popular mobile-based Chinese social media platform. The move was part of ongoing upgrades and "minor alterations" to the mall and the aquarium would remain open during Pizza's absence, the post on Sunday said. It did not say when Pizza, widely dubbed online "the saddest polar bear in the world", was expected to return from the move to a zoo in the northeastern city of Tianjin. Animal right groups have called for the move to be made permanent saying that conditions in the mall are unsuitable. Sending Pizza back after her return home would be "cruel and heartless", Peter Li, a campaigner at Humane Society International, said in a statement. "No amount of renovation could ever make a shopping mall a suitable place for this animal," he said. In October, Humane Society International along with three Chinese animal rights groups called for the mall to be closed, saying that footage of Pizza's pacing and head swaying behaviour were evidence of mental decline. The first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter plane was killed in a crash during an aerobatics training exercise, state-run media reported Monday. Yu Xu, 30, a member of the Chinese air force's "August 1st" aerobatic display team, ejected from her aircraft during a training exercise in the northern province of Hebei at the weekend, the China Daily newspaper said. She hit the wing of another jet and was killed, it said, although her male co-pilot ejected safely and survived. "As one of only four female pilots in the country capable of flying domestically made fighter jets, her death comes as a tremendous loss to the Chinese air force," the Global Times newspaper said. Yu, from Chongzhou in the southwestern province of Sichuan, joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in 2005, reports said. She graduated from training four years later, one of the first 16 Chinese women pilots qualified to fly fighter jets, the China Daily said, and in July 2012 was the first woman to fly the J-10. Fans dubbed her the "golden peafowl", it added. Death of Chinas first female J-10 fighter pilot Yu Xu sparks call for more training https://t.co/Rkjq8aC3Dh pic.twitter.com/xIvUWdaULF SCMP News (@SCMP_News) November 13, 2016 She rose to become a flight squadron leader and according to the Global Times dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Yu was one of two female members of the August 1st team - named for the date of the founding of the PLA - pictured at China's premier air show in Zhuhai two years ago. The pair strode to their fighter planes in lock-step with male pilots, all wearing identical green jumpsuits and sunglasses. At the time the China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Yan'an, deputy editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, as saying: "Female pilots have learned to fly cutting-edge fighter jets in the Chinese air force. "It means the air force has diversified its pilot pool and can recruit more female pilots." Yu appeared again at this year's show earlier this month, according to reports. The official news agency Xinhua quoted Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke saying all its personnel were "deeply regretful and mournful" at her "unfortunate death". The J-10 is a workhorse of the Chinese air force. An estimated 400 of the jets have been built, most for Chinese use, according to defense analysts IHS Janes. It said in December reports had emerged of three crashes in the previous three months. Two of the fighters conducted what the Pentagon called an "unsafe" intercept of a US spy plane over the East China Sea in June. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Barack Obama tried to soothe any fears about the security direction Donald Trump wants to take the US (AP) Barack Obama has said the US under Donald Trump will remain an "indispensable nation" for global security and praised the president-elect for vowing to maintain America's alliances. Mr Obama tried to soothe any fears about the security direction Mr Trump wants to take America, after the Republican appeared to question the validity of Nato and other overseas US commitments at various points in his campaign. During a meeting between the pair, Mr Obama said Mr Trump "expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships", including "strong and robust Nato" partnerships. "There is no weakening of resolve," Mr Obama said before departing on a three-nation trip that is supposed to be his grand valedictory tour. Instead, he will confront concerns about a Trump presidency in Europe and Latin America and try to reassure nations about a man who Mr Obama only a week ago derided as "woefully unprepared for the job" who "can't handle the nuclear codes". "There is enormous continuity ... that makes us that indispensable nation when it comes to maintaining order around the world," Mr Obama said at a news conference at the White House. Relationships and policies go beyond presidents, he said, adding that military officials, diplomats and intelligence officers would co-operate with their foreign counterparts as before. Even as he visits Germany, Greece and Peru, Mr Obama said his team will accelerate efforts to ensure a smooth transition to the Trump administration. He stressed that he would try to strengthen the American economy over his final two months, so that "when we turn over the keys, the car's in pretty good shape". Mr Obama also said he thinks Mr Trump will seek to "send some signals of unity" to people alienated by his campaign. He said he advised Mr Trump "to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign" and "that's something that he will want to do". But Mr Obama added that Mr Trump is trying to balance commitments he made to "supporters that helped to get him here". On the campaign trail, MrTrump described Mexicans as rapists and criminals, vowed to build a wall along the US's southern border and make Mexico pay for it, appeared to mock a reporter with a physical disability, and threatened to sue several women who accused him of assaulting them. He also disparaged the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq, and battled a former Miss America who is Latino about having gained weight. Mr Obama dodged a question on concerns about Mr Trump's decision to name Steve Bannon - a man celebrated by the white nationalist movement - as his chief strategist and senior adviser. He said both sides of the political divide should give Mr Trump some time to set up his team and Americans can judge him in a couple years. AP Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov says he will resign after accepting that the opposition has won a run-off presidential election. Exit polls showed opposition Socialists-backed candidate General Rumen Radev taking 58% of the vote in Sunday's ballot. Mr Borisov said: "We accept the will of the people and we congratulate those who have the support of the majority of the voters." Chelsea Manning said there was no historical precedent for such an extreme sentence for the leak of secret documents (US Army via AP) A transgender soldier who is more than six years into a 35-year sentence for leaking classified government and military documents to the WikiLeaks website is asking President Barack Obama to commute her sentence to time served. In a commutation application released by her attorneys, Chelsea Manning said there was no historical precedent for such an extreme sentence for the leak of secret documents. Ms Manning was arrested in 2010 and convicted in 2013 in military court of six Espionage Act violations and 14 other offences for leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents, plus some battlefield video to WikiLeaks. At that point she was known as Bradley Manning. She is in custody at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Ms Manning, who was an intelligence analyst in Iraq, acknowledged leaking the documents but said it was intended to raise public awareness about the impact of war on innocent civilians. She later filed a transgender prisoner rights lawsuit and has tried to commit suicide multiple times citing her treatment behind bars. "I am living through a cycle of anxiety, anger, hopelessness, loss and depression," she wrote in her application, dated November 8. "I cannot focus. I cannot sleep." Retired Air Force Colonel Morris D Davis, a 25-year-veteran who was chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay for two years, said much of the information Ms Manning leaked had little value and could be found through open sources on the internet. Col Davis, who now serves as an administrative law judge for the US Labour Department, wrote a letter attached to Ms Manning's application that called the 35-year sentence far too harsh for releasing documents whose impact six years later "could fairly be described as inconvenience and embarrassment". ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said his hope is that Mr Obama commutes the sentence and cements his legacy as a president who stood up for society's most vulnerable people. "She has lived under incredibly harsh conditions the last six years and spent more time in prison than anyone in US history for giving information to the public," Mr Strangio said. "I'm worried she won't survive much longer in these conditions. AP Steve Bannon leaves Trump Tower in New York - the controversial media figure has been appointed to a key White House job (AP) Donald Trump is known for his blunt speaking President Barack Obama has warned there are "certain elements" of Donald Trump's temperament that will not serve him well "unless he recognises them and corrects them". With just weeks left in office, Mr Obama said the president-elect understands that a candidate being reckless with his words can be less consequential than a president saying the same thing. Mr Obama noted that markets move and foreign governments take note of a president's rhetoric and stressed that national security "requires a level of precision" so that deadly mistakes are not made. He said blunt-spoken Mr Trump "recognises that this is different - and so do the American people". In a White House news conference ahead of his final overseas trip as president, Mr Obama made the argument that immigration is good for the American economy. He acknowledged that many Americans have grown sceptical about the "complex argument" in support of immigration, when they see factories closing at home and jobs going offshore. But he said "immigration is good for our economy" if it is "orderly and lawful". Mr Trump campaigned on a promise to limit immigration into the US and bring offshore jobs back home. But Mr Obama maintained that it is still his "strong belief" that achieving a strong global economy does not mean "shutting people out". And he believes Mr Trump will seek to "send some signals of unity" to people alienated by his ferocious campaign. He said he advised the president-elect "to reach out to minority groups or women or others that were concerned about the tenor of the campaign" and "that's something that he will want to do". But he added that Mr Trump is trying to balance commitments he made to "supporters that helped to get him here". On the campaign trail, Mr Trump described Mexicans as rapists and criminals. He vowed to build a wall along the US's southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He appeared to mock a reporter with a physical disability and threatened to sue several women who accused him of assaulting them. Mr Trump also disparaged the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq, and battled a former Miss America who is Latino about having gained weight. Mr Obama stressed the need to give Mr Trump the "rope and space" for a "reset" once he takes over the reins of power. Earlier it emerged that Mr Trump was considering a woman and an openly gay man to fill major positions in his new leadership team. It would be seen as history-making moves that would inject diversity into a Trump administration already facing questions about its ties to white nationalists. The incoming president is considering Richard Grenell as United States ambassador to the United Nations. If picked and ultimately confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post. Mr Grenell previously served as US spokesman at the UN under former President George W Bush's administration. At the same time, Mr Trump is weighing up whether to select the first woman to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee. On his short list of prospective chairs: Michigan GOP chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, the former sister-in-law of Trump rival and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. "I'll be interested in whatever Mr Trump wants," Ms McDaniel said, adding that she was planning to seek the Michigan GOP chairmanship again Internal deliberations about staffing come a day after Mr Trump made overtures to warring Republican circles by appointing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counsellor. AP The Duchess of Cambridge takes part in the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph in central London (REUTERS/Toby Melville) The Duchess of Cambridge was among many royals who paid tribute to Britain's war dead yesterday on Remembrance Sunday. Kate joined Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Theresa May for the annual service at the Cenotaph in central London - one of many taking place around the country in memory of those killed in past and present conflicts. More than 750 armed forces personnel were applauded by crowds of poppy wearers as they marched to form a hollow square around the memorial. As Big Ben struck 11am, the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery fired their World War I-era guns to mark the beginning and end of a two-minute silence in the heart of Whitehall. Dressed in black, the Queen laid a wreath of poppies at the memorial for "The Glorious Dead" while the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, Mrs May and leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn followed suit. Mr Corbyn joined in with 'God Save The Queen' after previously attracting criticism for not singing the anthem at the Battle of Britain 75th anniversary commemorations last year. The Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Cornwall watched on from the balcony of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Former prime ministers David Cameron, Tony Blair and John Major were also present. File court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook dated 13/04/2016 of Stefano Brizzi in the dock at the Old bailey, London. Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire A Breaking Bad fan who strangled a police officer during a bondage sex session and tried to dispose of the body in an acid bath has been convicted of murder Stefano Brizzi, 50, admitted he was inspired by his favourite TV series as he tried to get away with killing 59-year-old Pc Gordon Semple by dissolving his flesh. Following an Old Bailey trial, the former Morgan Stanley IT developer was found guilty of murder by a majority of 10 to two after the jury had deliberated for more than 30 hours. Brizzi, who gave no reaction as the jury delivered its verdict, will be sentenced on Friday, December 9. The court heard how the defendant met his victim on gay dating app Grindr and arranged a "hot dirty sleazy session" at his flat near London's Tate Modern gallery on April 1. According to Brizzi, Pc Semple died when a dog leash he had been wearing as part of a sex game slipped. But a pathologist concluded that while strangulation was a possible cause of death, it would have taken minutes rather than moments, as the defendant had claimed. In the days after the killing, crystal meth addict Brizzi was caught on CCTV buying buckets, a perforated metal sheet and cleaning products from a DIY store. He then set about dismembering the body and stripping the flesh. Meanwhile, Pc Semple's long-term partner Gary Meeks raised the alarm and reported him missing when he failed to return to their home in Dartford, in Kent. Neighbours complained about the stench coming from Brizzi's flat and eventually called police who came across the grisly sight of "globules" of flesh floating in the bath, bags containing bones and a part of Pc Semple's head, and pools of human fat in the oven. Brizzi, who was wearing pink underpants and sunglasses, was arrested as officers realised the enormity of what they had found. The court heard there was evidence in the kitchen that Brizzi had chopped up the Inverness-born officer with a variety of utensils and may have even used chopsticks to eat morsels of cooked meat. Following his arrest, Brizzi admitted killing and trying to dissolve the body of a policeman because "Satan told me to". During the killing, he said he had turned away a man on his doorstep who had arrived for a sex party organised on Grindr. Brizzi said: "I was right in the middle of strangling Gordon and I said to him 'Look, this is not the right time now, people are falling ill and it's a mess'." The Italian also told police that he had "chucked" some of Pc Semple's body into the Thames and thrown away his police badge and belongings. A human foot was later found by a member of Thames Mudlark Club near Bermondsey Wall. The court heard that Brizzi was addicted to crystal meth, which had cost him his job at financial giant Morgan Stanley. He had gone to Crystal Meth Anonymous meetings, but upset people by wearing a Breaking Bad T-shirt as the show "glorified" the drug. He told the group he believed in the Devil and liked satanic rituals and he bragged of his bondage sex encounters. In his home, police found a mask and dog leash with Pc Semple's DNA on it as well as a copy of the Satanic Bible. Giving evidence, Brizzi, who has HIV, told jurors of the difficulties of being a gay man brought up in a religious Italian family. The youngest of three siblings, his Tuscan father was a civil servant and his uncle was a Catholic priest. He told jurors that Pc Semple died in a "state of erotic bliss". his lawyer, Sallie Bennett-Jenkins QC, insisted he was no "monster" and could not have eaten Pc Semple's flesh as it was covered in chemicals. Throughout his evidence, Brizzi wept and cried out "I'm sorry" as he was confronted with what he had done. He had earlier admitted a charge of obstructing a coroner by disposing of the body. Pc Semple's brain and other internal organs have never been found. The man accused of the terror-related murder of Labour MP Jo Cox will stand trial at the Old Bailey later. Thomas Mair, 53, allegedly shot and stabbed the 41-year-old outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, on June 16. He is charged with Mrs Cox's murder, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon - a dagger. Mair, from Birstall, is also charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Bernard Carter-Kenny on the same date. At a hearing last month, not guilty pleas were entered on all the charges. The trial is being heard by senior judge Mr Justice Wilkie and is expected to go on for up to three weeks. A panel of jurors will be selected and sworn in before prosecutor Richard Whittam QC opens the case. Composite of undated handout photos issued by Avon and Somerset Police of (l-r) Admi Headley, 34, Paul Bromwich, 54 and Wayne Maycock, 33, who absconded from HMP Leyhil, south Gloucestershire, on Nov 13. Credit: Avon and Somerset Constabulary/PA Wire Police are hunting for three prisoners serving sentences for crimes including rape, grievous bodily harm and robbery who absconded from an open jail. Admi Headley, Wayne Maycock and Paul Bromwich are considered to be a risk to the public, Avon and Somerset Constabulary said, appealing for help tracing the men. The trio were last seen at HMP Leyhill, a Category D prison in South Gloucestershire, at 4.45pm on Sunday and have links to the Manchester area, said the force, which has alerted Greater Manchester Police. Headley, 34, is described as black, 5ft 10in tall, of slim build with brown eyes and short black hair. He has a tattoo on his left arm. Maycock, 33, is white, 6ft 3in tall, of medium build with green eyes and brown hair. He has a tattoo on his right shoulder and scars on his forehead and both arms. Bromwich, 54, who also uses the name Smith, is 6ft tall, of medium build with blue eyes. He wears glasses and has a scar on the left side of his face and tattoos on both arms. Their disappearance comes less than a week since two men escaped from HMP Pentonville in north London, although both have now been apprehended. Police urged anyone who sees Headley, Maycock or Bromwhich to phone 999 and tell the call handler they are phoning in relation to log 1050 of 13/11. Any information on where they may be can be passed on to police by calling 101 and quoting the same log. Via The Guardian, health editor Sarah Boseley writes: Nurse faces tribunal over Pauline Cafferkey temperature reading. Excerpt: A nurse who was lauded by the government as one of Britains heroes of the Ebola epidemic is facing a disciplinary tribunal, accused of concealing the high temperature of her colleague Pauline Cafferkey, who developed Ebola on her return from Sierra Leone. Senior sister Donna Wood was the face of the volunteers in Medics Behind the Mask, an online feature made by the Department for International Development. She and Cafferkey were among the first 70 volunteers to leave the UK and spend Christmas 2014 in the Ebola treatment units of Sierra Leone, and were publicly thanked by Justine Greening, the then international development minister. But Woods career could end over events at Heathrow airport when the volunteers flew home on 28 December 2014. All the returnees had to be screened to ensure they did not have a high temperature that might be the first sign of Ebola fever. Chaotic conditions and long delays were described in the screening unit, with too few staff to process the exhausted volunteer nurses and doctors, so they took each others temperatures. When Cafferkeys temperature was found to be high, Wood is alleged to have recorded it on the form as normal, saying they would then get out of here and sort it out. They were then allowed to leave the screening area. Cafferkey later told another volunteer she had a high temperature and returned to the screening area, but she had taken paracetamol and her temperature was found to be within the normal range, so she was cleared to fly to Scotland, where she was taken ill. Cafferkey was accused by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of misconduct, but was cleared on the grounds that she had already become too ill to understand the implications of her actions. Indre Novikovaite, Mark Smith and their son. Mr Smith died in a tram crash in Croydon, South London Credit: BTP/PA Wire The fiance of a father killed in the Croydon tram crash has paid tribute to the "amazing dad", saying "we would give up everything to hold and kiss him again". Mark Smith was described by his family as a devoted father to his 18-month old son and a "loving, caring, kind, loyal and popular young man". The 35-year-old was among six men and a woman who lost their lives in Wednesday's tragedy, described by Mr Smith's relatives as a "soul-destroying event". The glazier from Croydon, south London, who was on his way to work when he died, planned to marry partner Indre Novikovaite next year, according to reports. Ms Novikovaite said Mr Smith would be "in our hearts forever and ever". She said: "Mark was my lover, my best friend, my everything. He was, and still is, an amazing dad to our little boy. Expand Close Police officers at the site of the Croydon tram crash pay their respects / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police officers at the site of the Croydon tram crash pay their respects "We would give up everything to hold and kiss him again. "We love you to the moon and back, you are the best thing that happened in our lives." In a statement Mr Smith's family said: "A star that shines twice as bright only shines for half its life, that was our Mark, a son we were very proud of. "Our son Mark Smith was a loving, caring, kind, loyal and popular young man known to many. A devoted father and husband-to-be and loving brother to his sister. "He touched many lives through the passage of his too-short life. His loss has devastated us all." More than 50 people were left injured in the crash which occurred during the morning rush. Expand Close Tributes left near the scene of the tram crash in Croydon / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Tributes left near the scene of the tram crash in Croydon The driver of the tram was subsequently arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and questioned by police before being bailed until May. On Sunday the family of Robert Huxley from New Addington, south London, paid tribute to the "larger than life" 63-year-old who was also killed when the tram derailed and flipped on its side. "As you can appreciate for his loved ones it's been a difficult and uncertain time, the confirmation of his death only came late this afternoon," the statement read. "Bob was a larger than life character and very hardworking. A loving husband, devoted father and grandfather, brother, uncle and dear friend to many. He was also a lifelong Chelsea supporter and a season ticket holder. "This tragedy will have far reaching consequences and impact many people for a significant time. We are all heartbroken." The family and friends of Donald Collett, 62, from Croydon, said they were "struggling to deal with this tragic news". "Don was a well loved, funny and generous man, who could light up a room with his smile. He is tragically leaving behind a loving family, partner, adored friends and work colleagues," they said in a statement. Expand Close A damaged tram carriage is seen wrapped in tarpaulin as preparations are made to remove it from the scene of Wednesday's crash in Croydon / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A damaged tram carriage is seen wrapped in tarpaulin as preparations are made to remove it from the scene of Wednesday's crash in Croydon The family of Philip Logan, 52, from New Addington, said he would be "immensely missed by all that knew him". "Philip Logan known to all who knew him as Loag, a loving husband to Marilyn, brother to Susan, father to Lee, Tracy, Lisa and Adele, grandfather and great grandfather. He was a true family man and generous friend to all with a magnificently dry sense of humour." Mother-of-two Dorota Rynkiewicz, 35, from New Addington; Philip Seary, 57, a grandfather from Croydon and Dane Chinnery, 19, from New Addington, also died in the tragedy. On Remembrance Sunday the seven victims were reportedly included in the town's annual commemoration service during which their names were read out. The day before a group of up to 100 mourners marched to the scene and held a vigil where flowers and tributes had been left in memory of the victims. The wrecked tram had earlier been removed from the site by lorry and taken away to be checked by investigators. Expand Close Police officers at the site of the Croydon tram crash pay their respects / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police officers at the site of the Croydon tram crash pay their respects British Transport Police detectives and officials from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) are probing what led to the two-carriage tram leaving the tracks near Sandilands station at around 6.10am. Officials said the tram was travelling at a "significantly higher speed than is permitted" as it entered a tight bend before flipping on to its side and sliding for a distance. The driver, a 42-year-old man from Beckenham, south London, was arrested at the scene. It is understood that establishing if the driver was asleep or had blacked out are lines of inquiry. An interim report into what happened will be published by the RAIB next week, with a final report, including any safety recommendations, coming at the conclusion of the investigation. The Ecuadorian government has welcomed moves by the Swedish authorities to interview Julian Assange inside its embassy over a sex allegation. Representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and the Swedish police will be present while questions are put to the WikiLeaks founder by an Ecuadorian official today. Mr Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador and has been living inside the embassy for over four years. He believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. He denies the allegation against him and has been offering to be interviewed at the embassy. Guillaume Long, Ecuador's foreign minister, told the Press Association: "We are pleased that the Swedish authorities will finally interview Mr Assange in our embassy in London. "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012. "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years. "Ecuador has never sought to stand in the way of any legal process in Sweden. "What we have asked from Sweden, and the UK, are guarantees that Mr Assange will not be extradited to a third country, where he could be persecuted for his work as as a journalist. "The Ecuadorian government granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012 given the risk of such political persecution and we believe that this threat remains very real." The Swedish assistant prosecutor, chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, and a Swedish police investigator will be present at the interview and have said that providing Mr Assange gives his consent, a DNA sample will also be taken. The results of the interview will be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Ingrid Isgren will not give interviews during her stay in London, it was made clear. "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorian legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. "Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview," said a statement. "I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect," said director of prosecution Marianne Ny, who is responsible for the investigation. People console each other at a memorial outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris yesterday (AP Photo/Michel Euler) A sombre silence marked France's anniversary commemorations of co-ordinated attacks on Paris which killed 130 people a year ago yesterday. Under heavy security, President Francois Hollande unveiled a plaque outside the Stade de France "in memory of Manuel Dias", pulling away a French flag covering it on a wall at one of the entrances to the French national stadium where Mr Dias was killed on November 13 by a suicide bomber. He was the first victim of the attacks. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo joined the president at six other sites where crowds were set upon by Isil militants as they ate, drank or enjoyed music. The only voices heard during the ceremonies were the reading of the names of the victims and the son of Mr Dias. Three teams of extremists from neighbouring Belgium targeted six bars and eateries, turning scenes of Friday night revelry into carnage. At the Stade de France, Michael Dias said his father - an immigrant from Portugal - was "living proof that integration is possible, necessary" to end the madness of violence carried out by those who felt excluded. The final stop, the Bataclan concert hall - which reopened on Saturday with a concert by pop star Sting - was the site of the bloodiest and longest attack. Ninety people were killed by three attackers who also took a group of people hostage. The youngest and oldest victims of the night of horror were a 17-year-old and a 68-year-old - both killed at the Bataclan. Families of victims, security and rescue forces and some still trying to heal were among those present at the ceremonies. In addition to those killed, nine people remain hospitalised from the attacks and others are paralysed. The government says more than 600 people are still receiving psychological treatment after the attacks. The remembrances come after the Sting concert that reopened the refurbished Bataclan concert hall. Sting asked concert-goers in fluent French to observe a minute's silence as he opened the show. "We've got two important things to do tonight," the 65-year-old said. "First, to remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attacks a year ago - and to celebrate the life and the music of this historic venue. We shall not forget them." Elodie Suigo, who lost six friends in the attack, said that it was a hard night, even though she loved the music. "It was difficult going through that door. I don't think I was the only one," she said. "We cannot say it was a magical moment because of everything that changed in our lives. But Sting is a really great man." Donald Trump's victory is an "additional stone in the building of a new world", Marine Le Pen has said, as fears grow that the far-right politician could become France's next president. The Front National (FN) leader said Mr Trump "made possible what had previously been presumed impossible", raising her hopes that voters in France would rise up against "the elite" as they did in the United States. She said she would seize on the "global revolution" started by Brexit and Mr Trump to win the French presidency in May. Her comments on BBC TV's 'Andrew Marr Show' came hours after her niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, claimed that Mr Trump's representatives had invited her to work with the president-elect. Ms Marechal-Le Pen (26), who became France's youngest MP in 2012, wrote on Twitter: "I answer yes to the invitation of Stephen Bannon, CEO of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, to work together." Mr Bannon is a possible contender to become Mr Trump's chief of staff. Yesterday his team denied Mr Bannon had been in direct contact with Ms Marechal-Le Pen. Current polls suggest that Marine Le Pen will be beaten in the presidential election, although she is expected to come top in the first round of voting. However, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a former centre-right prime minister, warned that the pollsters, who were wrong about Mr Trump, could also be wrong about Ms Le Pen. "The main news for us French is that Marine Le Pen can win in France," he said. "That means extreme populism can win." Ms Le Pen, asked if Mr Trump's win made victory more likely for her in France, said: "Yes, I wish that in France also the people upend the table, the table around which the elite are dividing up what should go to the French people." Like Mr Trump, she has long been an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and said there "is no reason to be scared [of Russia]", urging European leaders to negotiate with Mr Putin. Insisting that her party was not racist, she said: "I don't think it's racist to say that we cannot take in all the poverty of the world, we cannot take care of hundreds of thousands of people arriving here, because our first obligation is to protect the French people." She also said that there was not a "hair's breadth" between her party and Ukip, whose interim leader, Nigel Farage, was the first British politician to meet the president-elect. A supporter of Julian Assange holds a poster after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls Supporters of Julian Assange hold posters after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls Supporters of Julian Assange chat after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls A supporter of Julian Assange attaches a poster to railings after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrives at Ecuador's embassy to interview Julian Assange in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls A supporter of Julian Assange holds a poster after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls A Swedish prosecuting official has arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to be present while Julian Assange is interviewed about a sex allegation. Ingrid Isgren faced a battery of photographers as she stepped out of a car and walked up the steps to the front door of the embassy in Knightsbridge. She made no comment and is expected to remain for the duration of the questioning, which is being carried out by an Ecuadorian government official. Mr Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador and has been living inside the embassy for more than four years. Expand Close Supporters of Julian Assange chat after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Supporters of Julian Assange chat after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls He believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. He denies the allegation against him and has been offering to be interviewed at the embassy. Chief prosecutor Ms Isgren will be present at the interview and has said that providing Mr Assange gives his consent, a DNA sample will also be taken. The results of the interview will be reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. Expand Close Supporters of Julian Assange hold posters after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Supporters of Julian Assange hold posters after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish police inspector Cecilia Redell was also due to be present. Expand Close A supporter of Julian Assange holds a poster after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A supporter of Julian Assange holds a poster after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls Ecuador ambassador Carlos Ortiz and one of Mr Assange's lawyers, Per Samuelson, were at the embassy for the interview. A small group of supporters stood opposite the embassy, holding up banners calling for the WikiLeaks founder to be freed. Expand Close Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrives at Ecuador's embassy to interview Julian Assange in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrives at Ecuador's embassy to interview Julian Assange in London, Britain, November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls A statement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. "This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorian legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview." Swedish Director of Prosecution Marianne Ny, who is responsible for the investigation, said: "I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect." A judge has ordered the release from federal prison of a man whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series Making A Murderer. Brendan Dassey's release was ordered by US Magistrate Judge William Duffin even as prosecutors appealed against the judge's earlier ruling overturning Mr Dassey's conviction. It is not clear how quickly Mr Dassey will be released. He faces a deadline of noon on Tuesday to provide information on where he will live. Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel promised to file an emergency motion in the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals to keep him behind bars. Judge Duffin ruled in August that investigators tricked Mr Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The state has appealed against that ruling and argued Mr Dassey should remain in prison while it is pending. Mr Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. In his August ruling, Judge Duffin said investigators made specific promises of leniency to Mr Dassey and that no "fair-minded jurists could disagree". Mr Schimel, in his appeal, said investigators did not promise leniency and they specifically told Mr Dassey no promises could be made. Lawyers are in the process of filing legal briefs in the appeal, which is expected to be argued some time next year. State prosecutors argued that until then, Mr Dassey should remain in prison because he is a serious threat to public safety. But Judge Duffin cited his "exceedingly benign" prison disciplinary record and the fact that he had no convictions before the Halbach case. Mr Dassey, now 27, was 16 when Ms Halbach was killed. The judge ordered him released as soon as the federal probation office approves where he is going to live and "completes whatever additional investigation it deems necessary". Mr Dassey's lawyer, Steve Drizin, said he did not know how long that would take but he hoped Mr Dassey would be free by Thanksgiving, 10 days away. "That's what I'm focused on right now, getting him home, getting him with his family and then helping him to reintegrate back into society while his appeal plays out," Mr Drizin said. Given that his family lives in north-east Wisconsin, there is little chance Mr Dassey will try to flee, the judge said. Under the judge's order, he would be forbidden from having contact with Avery or Ms Halbach's family. Mr Dassey would have to meet numerous other conditions, including reporting to a probation officer, not owning a gun or other weapon, being available for home visits and getting approval before moving. Any travel outside eastern Wisconsin would have to be approved by the court and Mr Dassey could not get a passport. Ms Halbach was killed after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He is pursuing his own appeal. Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired Making A Murderer last year. The series spawned widespread conjecture about the pair's innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated calls from the public to free both men. AP An ancient statue at the archaeological site of Nimrud, around 30 kilometres southeast of Mosul, Iraq's second city Picture: AFP/Getty Iraqi forces battling Isil captured Nimrud, the site of an ancient city on the banks of the Tigris, yesterday during the operation to retake Mosul from the jihadists. "Troops from the ninth armoured division liberated Nimrud town completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings," said a statement issued by Iraq's joint operations command. Nimrud was seized by Isil in its 2014 blitz across northern Iraq. The town, a cultural and archaeological jewel in an area often referred to as the cradle of civilisation, is of special significance to Iraqi Christians. Modern-day Nimrud lies 1km west of the ruins of the old city, which was built around 1250 BC and became the capital of the Assyrian empire. Nimrud, which is mentioned in the 'Book of Genesis', blossomed in the ninth-century BC during the reign of the King Ashurnasirpal and grew rich in jewels, monuments and palaces. Despite being repeatedly plundered by Western explorers from the mid-19th century, the city managed to hide some of its secrets. In 1988, archaeologists at the site unearthed a collection of 613 precious stones, which were hailed as the most significant archaeological discovery since Tutankhamen's tomb. After being damaged in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Nimrud was further battered by Isil militants in March 2015. Wielding drills, explosives and bulldozers, they set out to pulverise the city's heritage and erase all religious symbolism deemed idolatrous. Whatever may have survived Isil's 2015 attack is likely to have been further damaged in the latest fighting. For the coalition of forces battling to oust Isil from Mosul, the victory at Nimrud is tempered by a growing sense that the larger battle may not be over any time soon. After last week's advance into Mosul proper, Iraqi forces have encountered increasingly fierce resistance, battling wave after wave of lethal car bombs. "The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives," Iraqi special forces Major General Sami al-Aridi said. Bomb "There are so many civilian cars and any one of them could be a bomb," he said. Iraqi officers say they have cleared the eastern neighbourhoods of Qadisiya and Zahra and are planning to push further into the heart of Mosul, but progress is slow. As they move forward, troops build earthworks and road blocks to prevent car bombs from breaching front lines. Even as they gain territory, troops struggle to hold it under heavy counter-attacks, raising the spectre of fighting Isil from the front and the rear at once. While the Iraqi armed forces do not release official casualty figures, field hospitals have reported dozens killed and wounded in the operation. Isil still controls other Assyrian landmarks including the ruins of Nineveh and Khorsabad, as well as the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra, famed for its pillared temple which blended Graeco-Roman and eastern architecture. The scale of the damage at the sites is not clear. But Iraqi officials say some buildings have been totally destroyed. ( Daily Telegraph, London) Shiite fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) flash the sign of victory from the back of a truck as they drive towards the village of Umm Sijan, south of Mosul. Photo: AFP/Getty Images At least six civilians have been killed in a suicide attack south of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry said. Spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said six suicide bombers tried to infiltrate the holy Shiite city of Karbala on Monday, but security forces managed to kill five of them. Brig Gen Maan added that the sixth bomber broke into a house where he blew up himself, killing six people and injuring six others. Hundreds of thousands of faithful Shiites have been walking to Karbala to commemorate the end on Sunday of the 40-day mourning period of the seventh century death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammad's grandson. The city is some 55 miles (90km) south of the capital. No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on Sunni religious extremists who consider Shiites to be heretics. John Key and Gerry Brownlee fly over Kaikoura, New Zealand, to inspect the damage following a powerful earthquake (Pool Photo/AP) A rail line is covered by landslide near Conway in Kaikoura, New Zealand, after a powerful earthquake (SNPA/AP) New Zealand is planning to send in military helicopters and a navy ship to rescue about 1,000 tourists and hundreds of residents who remain stranded in the coastal town of Kaikoura after a powerful earthquake cut off access. The magnitude-7.8 quake struck the South Island just after midnight. It left two people dead and triggered a small tsunami. It also brought down rocks and mud that swept across highways and cracked apart roads. Home to about 2,000 residents, Kaikoura is a popular destination for travellers taking part in whale-watching expeditions or wanting a stopover with mountain views. But the quake knocked out water supplies and sewerage systems and left people with no easy way out. "From all directions, Kaikoura has essentially been isolated," Air Commodore Darryn Webb, the Acting Commander of New Zealand's Joint Forces, said. "There's a real imperative to support the town because it can't support itself." Mr Webb said the military planned to begin using four NH90 helicopters on Tuesday that could each transport about 18 people out of the town at a time. He said a ship was also leaving Auckland on Monday night that could potentially pick up hundreds of people if weather conditions allowed. "We're going to get as many people and belongings out as quickly as we can," he added. He said the weather forecast was not looking great and the operation could take several days. He said that if needed, a C-130 military transport plane could drop fuel, water, food and other supplies to the town. Elsewhere, strong aftershocks continued to shake New Zealand on Monday, rattling the nerves of exhausted residents. The country was largely spared the devastation it saw in 2011 when an earthquake struck the city of Christchurch and killed 185 people. Monday's quake caused damage in Wellington, the capital, and was also strongly felt in Christchurch. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes. Police said one person died in Kaikoura and another in Mt Lyford, a nearby ski resort. Several other people suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police spokeswoman Rachel Purdom said. Prime Minister John Key flew over the destruction in Kaikoura by helicopter as aftershocks kicked up dust from the landslides below. Cars could be seen lying on their sides and parts of the road were clearly impassable. "It's just utter devastation," Mr Key said. He later toured the area and met with locals. He estimated the clean-up effort would run into the billions of dollars and said clearing the debris and blocked roads could take months. Kaikoura resident Terry Thompson said he was out of town when the quake struck, but managed to reach his wife on her mobile phone before the phone died. "She said the glass exploded right out of the double ranch-slider," he said. "The neighbour's chimney was gone, there were breakages and things smashed everywhere." Mr Thompson said his wife helped a 93-year-old neighbour and a tourist into her car and drove to higher ground. "They stayed in the car all night but couldn't sleep," Mr Thompson said. "They're all very, very tired and concerned about the state of their property." Video taken from a helicopter near Kaikoura showed three cows stranded on an island of grass in a paddock that had been ripped apart in the quake. The patch of grass was surrounded by deep ravines of collapsed earth, trapping the animals where they stood. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Police, meanwhile, stepped up their patrols after receiving several reports of burglaries in homes and businesses that had been evacuated due to the quake. Authorities in Wellington told people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress. The city's rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. New Zealand, with a population of 4.7 million, sits on the "Ring of Fire", an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. AP Via VnExpress International: Ho Chi Minh City confirms 3 new Zika cases in 3 days. Excerpt: Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province confirmed its first Zika case on Monday while its neighbor Ho Chi Minh City said the number of patients of the mosquito-borne virus has risen to 38 from 35 in just three days. The male patient, 19, was admitted to a hospital in Ba Ria-Vung Tau on October 30 with a high fever and joint pains. He was later moved to another hospital in Ho Chi Minh City where he tested positive for the Zika virus. An investigation by the provincial health department found he visited his girlfriend in the city around two weeks before falling sick. Health workers fumigated his living area on Monday afternoon, and 350 families within a 250-meter radius of his house are being monitored. Nguyen Huu Hung, deputy director of HCMC's health department, said at a meeting on Monday that the city had confirmed three new cases since the latest report three days ago. Vietnams Zika infections are approaching 50. A latest official figure is not yet available, but there have been patients in the provinces of Binh Duong, Dak Lak, Khanh Hoa, Long An, Phu Yen and Tra Vinh. In Dak Lak, a 4-month-old baby has been confirmed as Vietnams first case of microcephaly caused by Zika. Making A Murderer's Brendan Dassey, whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series, should be released from prison while prosecutors appeal, a judge has ruled. US magistrate judge William Duffin ordered Dassey's release contingent upon him meeting multiple conditions. The judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The state has appealed that ruling. Dassey's attorney, Steve Drizin, said he had not spoken yet with Dassey, but he hoped to have him out of prison in time to spend Thanksgiving with his family. "That's what I'm focused on right now, getting him home, getting him with his family and then helping him to re-integrate back into society while his appeal plays out," Mr Drizin said. A spokesman for Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who had asked that Dassey not be released from prison pending the appeal, had no immediate response. Dassey's supervised release was not immediate. He had until noon on Tuesday to provide the federal probation and parole office with the address of where he planned to live. Mr Drizin would not say where Dassey plans to live. Dassey was 16 when Halbach died. He is now 27. Judge Duffin ruled in August that investigators made specific promises of leniency to Dassey and that no "fair-minded jurists could disagree". He cited one investigator's comment early in the interview that "you don't have to worry about things", plus repeated comments like "it's OK" and that they already knew what happened. Mr Schimel, in his appeal, said investigators did not promise leniency and they specifically told Dassey that no promises could be made. Video of the Day Ms Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He is pursuing his own appeal. Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired Making A Murderer last year. The series spawned widespread conjecture about the pair's innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated calls from the public to free both men. President-elect Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech during his election night rally. Photo: John Locher/AP Photo President-elect Donald Trump has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin, discussing a range of issues including the threats and challenges facing the United States and Russia. Mr Trump's advisers said the two leaders also touched on economic issues and the US-Russian relationship in the telephone call. His transition team said that Mr Trump told the Russian leader Putin he looks forward to "a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia". In a statement issued after the call, the Kremlin said Mr Putin expressed readiness to establish a "partner-like" dialogue with Mr Trump's incoming administration. Nigel Farage posted this image on Twitter of his meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower at the weekend Controversial Ukip leader Nigel Farage has hinted that British government ministers are sounding him out about dealing with Donald Trump, as he revealed the US president-elect's close advisers have "reservations" about Theresa May's cabinet. The interim Ukip leader, who became the first British politician to meet Mr Trump since his shock victory, insisted he would act as a bridge between Downing Street and Trump Tower if he was called on to do so. "I am not going to go into whatever private phone calls I may, or may not, have had with individual ministers," Mr Farage said when asked whether he had contact with cabinet figures regarding his close ties to the incoming Republican president. "It would appear that the apparatchiks in Downing Street keep saying very negative things about me. I'd have thought that's just a little bit short-sighted, frankly," he added in a In a pointed swipe at No 10 officials who have dismissed his links to Mr Trump. "I would have thought, in the national interest, they perhaps ought to bury their personal enmity towards me and we ought to have a constructive conversation." Mr Farage disclosed that members of the president-elect's inner circle were concerned about unflattering comments made by British cabinet ministers, though Mr Trump told him he had a "nice" phone call with Mrs May. "He said he had a nice conversation, although some of his team had reservations about what members of the cabinet have said during the election. Believe you me, his team are conscious of the comments," Mr Farage said. The pair met at Trump Tower in New York and spent more than an hour discussing the president-elect's victory, global politics and the status of Brexit, according to Ukip. Mr Farage used US media appearances to warn Mrs May that she needed to "mend fences" with Mr Trump after the "quite rude" things said about him by leading Tories. Rude "I think he has got to meet her. Mrs May's team have been quite rude about Trump, so there are some fences to be mended," he said when asked on Fox News why the president-elect should meet the PM after the things senior Tories had said about him. Downing Street moved to try to play down the significance of the Ukip leader's meeting with Mr Trump. A spokesman for Mrs May said No 10 "has been consistent that Mr Farage has no role" in the government's relationship with the incoming US administration. The interim Ukip leader has suggested that "insulting" comments about Mr Trump by senior Tories may have been the reason why Mrs May was only 10th on the president-elect's list of foreign leaders to call after his surprise US election win last Tuesday. Mr Farage's remarks came after it emerged Mrs May's joint chief of staff, Fiona Hill, posted last December: "Donald Trump is a chump." Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was scathing about Mr Trump's attitude to Muslims while he was mayor of London last December. "Donald Trump is clearly out of his mind if he thinks that's a sensible way to proceed, to ban people going to the United States in that way, or to any country. "He's betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States," said Mr Johnson. Mr Farage said he "stressed the importance of the Anglo-American relationship" at the meeting and asked Mr Trump to return a bust of Winston Churchill to the White House Oval Office, a party spokesman said. The statue was removed under Barack Obama's administration and Mr Trump was said to have "expressed excitement" over the idea. Mr Farage summed up the Trump team's mood on election night, saying: "I wouldn't say they were surprised to win, but I think they were relieved to win." As the head of President-Elect Donald Trumps transition team and with a promise from Trump of huge influence over policy, Mike Pence may be one of the most powerful Vice Presidents in history come January 2017. And if Donald Trump dies or resigns, Pence will be the one to take over. So what do we know about the former Indiana governor, and what policies will he push from his place on the winning ticket? Immigration Expand Close Vice-president-elect Pence. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Vice-president-elect Pence. Photo: Reuters Mike Pence shares most of Donald Trumps stances on immigration, favouring deportations for illegal immigrants and remaining solid on the issue of building a wall on the Mexican border. He has also opposed the acceptance of Syrian refugees, attempting as governor to prevent any being resettled in Indiana. In the Vice-Presidential debate against Senator Tim Kaine, he spoke against Sanctuary cities, where immigrants cannot be asked about their status by law enforcement. Pence disagrees with Trump on his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US: in 2015, before he was on the ticket, he called the proposal offensive and unconstitutional. This may be one part of Trumps platform that Pence will urge him to row back on. Abortion Mike Pence is staunchly pro-life and will doubtless use his position to advance that cause. As governor, he signed a number of regulations restricting abortion into law; it also required that any foetal tissue be buried or cremated. The law was struck down by a federal judge this year. Expand Close Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaks as he wife, Karen, and daughter, Charlotte, stand next to him during a public rally Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaks as he wife, Karen, and daughter, Charlotte, stand next to him during a public rally Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) Read More He has also supported the defunding of Planned Parenthood and has said that he hopes Roe V Wade, which guarantees a woman access to abortion, will be consigned to the ash heap of history. In the Vice-Presidential debate, however, he stated in no uncertain terms that he and Donald Trump would never support punishments for women who access abortion, even if they do manage to ban it. He wants an abortion ban, but favours placing with responsibility with doctors and not women. LGBTQ issues Much of the controversy surrounding Mike Pence comes his record on LGBTQ issues. His most prominent action this issue was to sign the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which opponents claim is targeted anti-LGBTQ discrimination, into law. He was also at the centre of the fight against same-sex marriage in Indiana. Expand Close (From L to R) Melania Trump, US President-elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence meet at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (From L to R) Melania Trump, US President-elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence meet at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images As a congressman, Pence opposed the federal funding for HIV and AIDS treatment unless the government also funded programmes discouraging same-sex relationships and, more recently, opposed the end of Dont Ask, Dont Tell. Read More During Governor Pences re-election campaign, he was seen to distance himself from these stances, with his deputy campaign manager Marc Lotter saying he was choosing not to focus on social issues. It is unclear at this point whether he will use his new position to advance anti-LGBTQ positions or focus on his other policy interests. Foreign policy Pence largely agrees with Trumps stances on foreign policy: increase military spending, renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal and use military force abroad. In the Vice-Presidential debate, he proposed the deployment of military shields to Eastern Europe and supported the military targeting of the Assad regime in Syria if the bombing of civilians does not cease. Mike Pence is pro-free trade, having previously expressed support for trade deals such as TPP which Trump has staunchly opposed. But Pence has kept generally quiet about these deals since coming onto the ticket, indicating that free trade will not be a red-line issue for him. The economy As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence favoured low taxes and low spending, and will likely do the same as Donald Trumps right hand. In congress, he proposed a bill that would cap federal spending, which did not pass. Pence believes that low spending and low taxes allow the economy to flourish and that jobs should come from the growth of business, not from the growth of government spending. In the aftermath of Donald Trump's electoral victory, the New York Times executive editor and publisher have promised readers to report world news more accurately. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr and executive editor Dean Baquet questioned, in a unprecedented move, whether the paper had underestimated Mr Trump's support among American voters. The left-wing media has been widely accused of failing to fully appreciate the scale of discontent at the politicial elite, of which Hillary Clinton was viewed by many as epitomising. The New York Times and the Washington Post in particular were very critical in their stance and coverage of Mr Trump. In October, the paper refused to retract an article in which two women accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, after the Republican presidential nominee threatened to sue the newspaper. In a letter, a lawyer for the Times all but dared the property developer to make good on his threat. We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern, wrote David McCraw, the papers assistant general counsel. If Mr Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would criticise him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight. The article featured interviews with 74-year-old Jessica Leeds, who said Mr Trump had groped her on a flight more than 30 years ago, and with Rachel Crooks, whom Mr Trump allegedly kissed on the mouth against her will as she introduced herself to him in 2005, when she was 22. Published on Saturday, the editorial said: "After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions. "Did Donald Trumps sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? "What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? "Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office?" The piece announced the paper's plan to rededicate itself to reporting American and world news "honestly, without fear or favour". The editorial stated: "When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years - cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity. "As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. "That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you." Mr Trump's victory has been meant with widespread protests across America. Thouands of marchers took to the streets of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on Saturday night as protests continued. At least 25 cities have seen major anti-Trump demonstrations in the five days since the controversial businessmans shock election victory. Mike Pence, the deeply conservative vice president-elect, has had his postbox filled with letters thanking him for "his donation" to Planned Parenthood - following a social media campaign to donate to the charity in his name. Mr Pence is currently governor of Indiana a state which has passed some of the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country. Over 60 per cent of Indiana women now live in a county without an abortion clinic, as 93 per cent of Indiana counties have no facility. By comparison, only five per cent of California women live in a county without a clinic. As a gesture of protest, anonymous donations have been made to Planned Parenthood in his name, with the automatically-generated notes thanking him for his support being sent to his office in Indianapolis. Planned Parenthood hasn't commented in detail on the post-election trend of donating in Mr Pence's honour, but said on social media they had been "blown away by the support" and acknowledged that many people are donating in both Mr Pence's and Hillary Clinton's names. His running mate Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency on a pro life stance, and said that he will appoint a judge to the Supreme Court who is against abortion. Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Womens Law Center, said Mr Pence was a driving force behind Mr Trumps anti-abortion stance. Hes absolutely the one pushing this, she told The Telegraph. He was a leader in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, and has enacted some incredibly restrictive legislation in Indiana. This has always been a priority for him and now he has more power. The judge appointed by the Trump administration could attempt to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed a womans right to have an abortion. Mr Trump said in his first television interview, on Sunday night, that, if the federal law is revoked, it will go back to the states to make their own rules. When it was pointed out that some states would then ban abortion entirely, he replied: well, theyll perhaps have to go to another state. Planned Parenthood responded that it would campaign vigorously against his proposal, tweeting: "Not on our watch." Ms Borchelt said that Mr Trump could indeed oversee the repeal of Roe v Wade if another Supreme Court judge retires, and he replaces the judge with a pro-life advocate. The result would be a series of states outlawing abortion entirely. But, she said, they would face fierce resistance. Seven out of ten Americans think that abortion should be legal, so if Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas tries to ban abortion entirely, there would be a huge outcry, she said. People would be shocked and appalled and terrified. And we are going to fight against that. It would be a throwback to a dangerous era. The US already has vast swathes of its country where abortion is made all but inaccessible. In 1992, the Court upheld the basic right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but that ruling also expanded the ability of the states to enact restrictions on women's access to abortion insisting that parents of minors give consent, allowing health insurance companies to refuse to pay, and imposing restrictions on clinics such as the width of corridors and size of rooms. Ms Borchelt said she fears that states will be emboldened by the president-elects position, and now try new ways to curtail access to abortion. Its going to be interesting to see what they think of next, she said. Missouri and Mississippi have only one clinic in the state. In Louisiana there are four; in Arkansas three. In Texas, the number of clinics has fallen from 41 to 19 in the last three years. Over half of women in the Midwest live in counties without an abortion clinic, and 49 per cent of women living in the South, according to the most recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for reproductive rights. Abortion clinics are so few and far between in the area between Florida and New Mexico, north into the Midwest, that the region is already described as an abortion desert, and women are increasingly travelling across state lines to avoid long waits for appointments and escape the legal barriers in their home states. The National Abortion Federation hotline referred 209 Texas patients to New Mexico last year, compared with 21 in 2013, said Vicki Saporta, the groups president and chief executive. The number of Texas patients at one Albuquerque clinic alone more than tripled, jumping from 19 to 67 last year, she said Three in ten American women will have had an abortion by the time she reaches age 45; almost 70 per cent of them are classed as economically disadvantaged and 61 per cent already have at least one child. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Donald Trump named Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff, elevating one of his loyal GOP advisers with a deep expertise of the Washington establishment. Mr Priebus, a close ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan, called the appointment "an honour" and predicted the billionaire "will be a great president for all Americans". Mr Trump also named Stephen Bannon, his campaign CEO and executive on leave from conservative website Breitbart, to be the president-elect's chief strategist and senior counsel. With vice president-elect Mike Pence as transition chief, the trio was expected to organise the incoming administration, according to a statement from the Trump camp. There was much to steady. Last night, the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores. During a four-hour spree, Trump savaged 'The New York Times' and gloated about the GOP stalwarts lining up to congratulate him, bragging that staunch critics and GOP rivals John Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent congratulations. Former presidents George W and George HW Bush also had sent their "best wishes on the win. Very nice!" 'The New York Times', Trump wrote to his 14 million followers, is "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate". He also attributed his election win to his performance in the presidential debates against Democrat Hillary Clinton. "The debates, especially the second and third, plus speeches and intensity of the large rallies, plus OUR GREAT SUPPORTERS, gave us the win!" As Mr Trump revenge-tweeted, threats flew between power brokers, and protests across the country continued. More tension emerged yesterday when Mr Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid should be careful in a "legal sense" about characterising Mr Trump as a sexual predator. When asked whether Mr Trump was threatening to sue Mr Reid, Ms Conway said no. But Adam Jentleson, Mr Reid's deputy chief of staff, said Mr Trump was "hiding behind his Twitter account and sending his staff on TV to threaten his critics". Meanwhile, another Trump aide - Rudy Giuliani - suggested that the president-elect should have a "blind trust" to run his global empire to avoid conflicts of interest. Also yesterday, Republicans backed off decades of investigating Mrs Clinton. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the GOP-led congressional Republicans would focus on policy and leave any probes of Mrs Clinton to law enforcement. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly said Donald Trump tried to give her gifts, including a free stay at one of his hotels, as part of what she called his pattern of trying to influence news coverage of his presidential campaign. In her memoir 'Settle for More', to be released tomorrow, Kelly says Trump may have got a pre-debate tip about her first question, in which she confronted him with his critical comments about women. Her book also details the insults and threats she received after Trump's tirades objecting to her reporting. Kelly, host of Fox News Channel's 'The Kelly Report', said Trump routinely attempted to gain favourable treatment from other journalists and commentators. "This is actually one of the untold stories of the 2016 campaign: I was not the only journalist to whom Trump offered gifts clearly meant to shape coverage," Kelly said. He also attempted to woo them with praise, she said, adding, "This is smart, because the media is full of people whose egos need stroking." When it became obvious that some reporters were "in the tank" for Trump, she alleges in one chapter, "certain TV hosts" would work with the candidate in advance on occasional Trump criticism so they would appear unbiased. Resisting Trump's attempts to buy her goodwill with an offer to comp her "girls' weekend" stay at his New York City hotel or fly her and her husband to visit his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was an easy ethical decision, Kelly wrote. Harder still was rejecting the ratings bonanza that the colourful GOP contender could deliver with his "unscripted, unguarded" approach that made for great TV but was the equivalent of "television crack cocaine". She and her producer agreed they had to provide balance and be judicious in their coverage, asserting this was not a "directive to cover Trump negatively or to ignore him". It was at the first GOP primary debate last August that Kelly questioned Trump about derogatory comments he'd made about women. The day before, Trump had called Fox News executive Bill Sammon to say he had heard that Kelly's first question would be a pointed one aimed at him. Steve Bannon, campaign CEO for President-elect Donald Trump, leaves Trump Tower, Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci) He has been described as the most dangerous political operative in America. Now he is one of the most powerful. Steve Bannon has been announced as Donald Trump's chief strategist. On Sunday night Mr Trumps team confirmed that Reince Priebus had been appointed chief of staff. But, in a telling twist, Mr Bannon, 62, was named first on the list, and described as Mr Priebuss equal - a word that may be causing alarm in the capital. The appointment marks the pinnacle of a remarkable career that has seen Mr Bannon stage a series of Gatsby-esque reinventions transforming himself from working class Navy man to Goldman Sachs financier, Hollywood producer and then king of Americas right-wing media. Mr Trump described Mr Bannon and Mr Priebus as highly qualified leaders. But while Mr Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, was seen as a reassuringly safe pair of hands, Mr Bannons appointment was greeted by some with horror. 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 Marchers approach a freeway onramp guarded by police during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard Police detain a demonstrator during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan People take part in a protest against Republican president-elect Donald Trump at the Washington Square park in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York, U.S., November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz People take part in a protest against Republican president-elect Donald Trump at the Washington Square park in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York, U.S., November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz People take part in a protest against Republican president-elect Donald Trump at the Washington Square park in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York, U.S., November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Protesters lock arms during a standoff with a police car along the pipeline route during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in St. Anthony, North Dakota, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith People take part in a protest against Republican president-elect Donald Trump at the Washington Square park in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York, U.S., November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Paul Watts, of Graffiti Removal Services, works for free on clean up after a protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola People take part in a protest against Republican president-elect Donald Trump at the Washington Square park in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York, U.S., November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Paul Watts, of Graffiti Removal Services, works for free on clean up after a protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola TEMPLATE OUT A pedestrian walks by a boarded up business after a protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola Pedestrians walk by a boarded up business after a protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola A motorist who was caught in the middle of a riot threatens a demonstrator with detergent during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan A motorist who was caught in the middle of a riot threatens a demonstrator with detergent during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan Demonstrators push over a fence during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard A demonstrator sits in the street during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard A demonstrator sprays graffiti during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard A demonstrator performs a burnout during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard ES A demonstrator sets a news rack on fire as another wields a baseball bat (R) during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan Demonstrators break a shop window during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan Police block a freeway entrance during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 11, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan Smoke rises during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/William Gagan Interstate 84 eastbound into the city is shut down as a result of protests against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States, in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Marchers approach a freeway onramp guarded by police during a protest against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Portland, Oregon, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Cole Howard The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office, tweeted John Weaver, a Republican political consultant who was John Kasichs chief strategist. Be very vigilant America. Dan Pfeiffer, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, noted: Nation exhales because white nationalist only gets second most influential job in White House. Yet Mr Trump will be delighted to have Mr Bannon by his side. If the president-elect really was looking for someone to shake things up in Washington, he has found it with Mr Bannon. If theres an explosion or a fire somewhere, said Matthew Boyle, political editor for Mr Bannons website, Breitbart, Steves probably nearby with some matches. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Demonstrators chant slogans in New York during a protest against the election of Donald Trump (AP) Protesters are stopped by Los Angeles Police officers during a protest and march against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 11, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters are surrounded by Los Angeles Police Department officers before they were detained in Grand park across Los Angeles City hall after a march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California, U.S. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters are detained by Los Angeles Police Department officers after a march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 12, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian California Highway Patrol officers are deployed at the entrances of the 110 freeway in an attempt to stop protesters getting on the freeway to block traffic during a march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 12, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters march in the streets of Downtown Los Angeles during march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters take part in a march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States on the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 12, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters march in the streets of Downtown Los Angeles during march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Several hundred protesters are arrested by Los Angeles Police Department officers after a march and rally in protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 12, 2016. Photo: REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian Protesters march in the street to demonstrate against the election of President-elect Donald Trump in Atlanta, Friday. (AP Photo/David Goldman) Michael Moore joins demonstrators in New York during a protest against the election of Donald Trump (AP) Police detain a demonstrator at a protest in Portland, Oregon, against the election of Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters People gather at Portland City Hall to protest of the election of president-elect, Donald Trump. Photo: Mark Graves/The Oregonian via AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Demonstrators chant slogans in New York during a protest against the election of Donald Trump (AP) Born into a poor family in Norfolk, Virginia, Mr Bannon grew up in sight of the naval yard and signed up on leaving college, spending four years at sea aboard a destroyer. Deployed to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in 1979, he found his faith in the commander in chief, Jimmy Carter, fading. So Mr Bannon left the Navy and studied for an MBA at Harvard Business School, landing a job at Goldman Sachs. Mr Bannon threw himself into investment banking loving the long hours and camaraderie, and likening it to being in the nerve centre of a warship. In 1990 Mr Bannon left Goldman Sachs to start up his own investment firm with a couple of former colleagues, and Bannon & Co was born. The boutique investment bank specialised in the media, realising, ahead of the curve, that film studios and archives could be valuable assets. His company ended up working on MGMs studio financing, and handling the acquisitions when Polygram Records moved into the film business. Along the way, Mr Bannon ended up with a stake in a fledgling television show: Seinfeld. By then he was rich, and moved into Hollywood productions himself becoming an executive producer of films including Anthony Hopkinss 1999 Oscar-nominated Titus. He started making his own films, specialising in political stories inspired by the September 11 attacks and his own disillusionment with President Carter when he was a sailor. I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats, Mr Bannon told Bloomberg. I wasnt political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter ------ things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had ------ up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster. He made a Reagan-celebrating documentary in 2004, In the Face of Evil, and grabbed the attention of the American right wing; he appeared regularly on Fox News, produced a documentary about Sarah Palin, and made films celebrating the Tea Party. Through this introduction to politics he then transformed, yet again this time taking over the Breitbart website, after its founder Andrew Breitbart died of a heart attack in March 2012, aged 43. The site, which attracts 21 million hits a month, is described by Bloomberg as a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained. Its headlines both delight and enrage America World Health Organisation report: Trannies 49xs higher HIV rate; Theres no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews and Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. It was Breitbart which first exposed the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal which was to surge back into the headlines with just days to go until the election, and seriously harm the Clinton campaign. The site had been tipped off about the then-Congressmans proclivity for sexting with female admirers, so paid trackers to follow his Twitter account 24 hours a day and eventually intercepted a crotch shot Weiner inadvertently made public. Mr Bannon appears to revel in the controversy. Dressing frequently in cargo shorts and flip flops, he is a fast-talking showman with a penchant for the word dude. Thrice-married, his second wife Mary Louise Piccard accused him of domestic abuse and anti Semitism. The biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend, said Ms Piccard in a statement to the court. He said that he doesn't like the way they raise their kids to be 'whiny brats' and that he didn't want the girls going to school with Jews. Mr Bannon has denied the accusations. The website took a strongly pro-Trump stance; Mr Bannon is zealous in his attacks on Mrs Clinton and the establishment. Paul Ryan, the speaker, has been a particular target of Mr Bannons ire, with Breitbart staff members alleging their boss told them to attack him at any opportunity. In August Mr Bannon was made manager of Mr Trumps campaign; a fact celebrated by David Duke, the former KKK leader who was running for senate in Louisiana. Mr Bannon was described as a street brawler, but his no-holds-barred style appealed to Mr Trump. Many former employees of Breitbart News are afraid of Steve Bannon, wrote Ben Shapiro, a former editor-at-large of Breitbart, who resigned in disgust at the sites fawning coverage of Mr Trump. He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: hes an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. Mr Shapiro, who wrote in August about his shock at the appointment, savaged his former boss and issued a dire warning. Trump may be his final destination. Or it may not, he wrote. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] File photos of Donald Trump and Theresa May, as Nigel Farage has insisted Mr Trump will have to deal with Mrs May, despite her top team being "rude" about him Credit: PA Wire Theresa May is facing a growing Cabinet backlash over her decision to dismiss Nigel Farage despite him being the only British politician to meet with Donald Trump since his victory. The Daily Telegraph understands a number of members of the Cabinet and other Government ministers believe the Prime Minister's allies have made a mistake by referring to Mr Farage as an irrelevance. One Cabinet source also accused Downing Street of having "made no plan" for a Trump victory, despite Government claims that officials have for months been holding talks with members of his inner-circle. Mrs May has made clear that none of her ministers will be allowed to speak to Mr Farage, the interim Ukip leader, despite his close links to Mr Trump. Mr Farage on Saturday spent nearly one hour with the President-elect at the Trump tower in New York. Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Farage says that he was greeted like a long-lost friend by Mr Trump, who he supported on the campaign trail in America. Expand Close Nigel Farage posted this image on Twitter of his meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower at the weekend / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Nigel Farage posted this image on Twitter of his meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower at the weekend Senior sources in the Government have now made clear that Downing Street will have to back down and allow ministers to have conversations with Mr Farage if it helps them to develop their relationship with the new President-elects inner circle. In further developments: *Mrs May will today say that Mr Trumps victory shows the Government must deal with the "overlooked" communities that have been transformed irrevocably by immigration without the "permission" of British voters. *Mr Trump vowed to immediately deport 3 million illegal immigrants with criminal records in one of his first acts as President, but admitted that his wall at the Mexican border may just have some fencing in parts. *Marine Le Pen, the leader of Frances far-Right Front National party, said that Mr Trump has started a global revolution that will lead to her election and the destruction of the European Union. Mrs May has previously described comments by Mr Trump as divisive. It has also emerged that before entering Downing Street Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, the Prime Minister's joint-chiefs of staff, mocked Mr Trump online. Ms Hill referred to him as a chump and Mr Timothy said that as a Tory he did not want any reaching out to Mr Trump. Mr Farage said that Mrs May should in the national interest allow him to provide introductions and to start the necessary process of mending fences. However, Downing Street on Sunday insisted again that Mr Farage will have no official or unofficial role in the months ahead. Senior Westminster sources even went so far as to accuse him of treachery for his decision to bad mouth the Prime Minister, saying there is a tradition of not doing party politics abroad. However, there are growing signs that senior figures in Mrs Mays administration do not agree with her hostility to Mr Farage, pointing out that he was the first foreign politician to meet with Mr Trump since the US election. We should not dismiss Nigel Farage, a senior Government source said. Another source said that it is now clear that some dialogue is essential with Mr Farage, even if it is informal. Conversations will have to happen, the source added. Writing in this newspaper of his meeting with Mr Trump, Mr Farage says: The only slight negative that I picked up was the sense that so many senior Conservative figures and indeed important staff figures who now work within Number 10 had been so unrelentingly negative about the Donald. Clearly, there are fences that need to be mended. He adds: If the President-elect trusts me then I would hope that some in the British government could do the same thing. I would be very happy to provide introductions and to start the necessary process of mending fences. And I would not want anything in return. I hope in our national interest that some sense prevails on this. In a separate interview, Mr Farage also said that Mr Trump told him that he has reservations about Mrs Mays Government because of the hostile comments made about him. Asked directly if he had contact with Cabinet figures regarding his close ties to the incoming Republican president, Mr Farage told Sky News: "I am not going to go into whatever private phone calls I may, or may not, have had with individual ministers." Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary, said: Nigel Farage is just trying to get attention. This is an ego trip - not a diplomatic one. While the PM focuses on sensible, measured diplomacy in Britain's national interest, all Farage cares about is talking rubbish abroad. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway arrives at Trump Tower in New York to meet with her boss (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz) President-elect Donald Trump backed away from his promise to build a wall on the US-Mexican border, saying some areas could instead be "fencing". But he insisted he would deport up to three million illegal immigrants who have criminal records. Trump, who made his pledge to force Mexico to pay for a border wall a centrepiece of his White House campaign, said "for certain areas" he would accept fencing instead of a brick-and-mortar wall, according to excerpts released yesterday of his interview with the CBS program '60 Minutes'. "But certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I'm very good at this, it's called construction, there could be some fencing," the New York real estate developer said. Mr Trump, who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's election and replaces Democratic President Barack Obama on January 20, also said once he takes office he would remove immigrants in the country illegally with criminal records. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country," he said. Read More During the campaign, Mr Trump said he would deport the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, most of whom are Hispanic. In calling for the construction of a border wall, Mr Trump said Mexico was sending criminals and rapists into the United States. Mr Trump and his senior advisers have signalled they could be flexible on some of his campaign promises. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who will play a key role in getting Mr Trump's agenda through the Republican-led Congress, backed away from Mr Trump's promise of a "deportation force" to round up and deport immigrants in the country illegally. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump's not planning on that," Mr Ryan told CNN's 'State of the Union' programme. 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 (L-R) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) shows Melania Trump, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, and Vice-President Mike Pence the Mall from the Speaker's Balcony on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) (L) shows Melania Trump (R) and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (C) the Mall from the Speaker's Balcony on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts (L-R) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) shows Melania Trump and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the Mall from the Speaker's Balcony on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Congressional pages react after U.S. President-elect Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) walked past them to meet at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) (L) shows Melania Trump and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the Mall from the Speaker's Balcony on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts U.S. President-elect Trump (2nd R), his wife Melania Trump (R), Vice President-elect Mike Pence (4th R) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (3rd R) walk together to meet in McConnell's office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst U.S. Vice President-elect Mike Pence (2nd L) smiles as he and President-elect Trump (2nd R) walk with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R) to McConnell's office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst President-elect Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trumpwalk to a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) US President-elect Donald Trump (C) walks with his wife Melania Trump, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images US President-elect Donald Trump (2nd R) walks with his wife Melania Trump, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images US President-elect Donald Trump walks onto a balcony at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images (From L to R) Melania Trump, US President-elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence meet at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images US President-elect Donald Trump (2nd R) walks with his wife Melania Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence (L) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / YURI GRIPASYURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images US President-elect Donald Trump (C) walks with his wife Melania Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / YURI GRIPASYURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images Melania Trump listens to her husband US President-elect Donald Trump speak to the press at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMMNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (L), walks with President-elect Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Earlier in the day president-elect Trump met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (2L), walks with President-elect Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence (L), at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (2L), walks with President-elect Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence (L), at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) US President-elect Donald Trump (C) walk with Vice President-elect Pence (L) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R) R-KY on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / YURI GRIPASYURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images US President-elect Donald Trump (C) walks with his wife Melania Trump and Vice President-Elect Pence (2nd L) before a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(L) R-KY on Capitol Hill in Washington,DC on November 10, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / YURI GRIPASYURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump shake hands following their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama listens to President-elect Donald Trump speak to members of the media during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss transition plans in the White House Oval Office in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque - TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Journalists gather on the driveway in front of the West Wing in anticipation of the arrival of President-Elect Donald Trump at the White House. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (L-R) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) shows Melania Trump, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, and Vice-President Mike Pence the Mall from the Speaker's Balcony on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts "I think we should put people's minds at ease. "That is not what our focus is. That is not what we're focused on. We're focused on securing the border." Kevin McCarthy, the No.2 House Republican, said on 'Fox News Sunday' the wall with Mexico could in parts be a "virtual" wall patrolled by drones. "You have to put a wall, it could be all virtual with the UAV airplanes as well, but I think that is doable and one of the first things that needs to be done," McCarthy said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. 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 A supporter of the far-right English Defence League group is restrained by police after shouting his views, and disrupting an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump winning the American election, outside the U.S. embassy in London, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) People protest on the University of Connecticut campus against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb) Protesters walk in the middle of traffic lanes after Donald Trump's election victory, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 in downtown, Portland, Ore. Portland police made no arrests during Tuesday night's post-election protest. (Stephanie Yao Long//The Oregonian via AP) Protesters walk in the middle of traffic lanes after Donald Trump's election victory, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 in downtown, Portland, Ore. Portland police made no arrests during Tuesday night's post-election protest. (Stephanie Yao Long//The Oregonian via AP) Berkeley High School students assemble on the UC Berkeley campus in protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Berkeley, California, U.S. November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage TEMPLATE OUT A young man wearing a Berkeley High Class of 2016 shirt wipes away ters during a protest in response to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Berkeley, California, U.S. November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage Berkeley High School students begin to march after assembling in front of Sproul Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Berkeley, California, U.S. November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage Alice Bynum (C) stands with other Berkeley High School staff members and holds a sign while attending a protest about the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Berkeley, California, U.S. November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage Two young women hold up a sign reading "nasty women unite" in protest to the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Berkeley, California, U.S. November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage Placards lay on the floor during an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. Picture rotated 180 degrees. REUTERS/Hannah McKay People hold placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay People hold placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay A supporter of the far-right English Defence League group is restrained by police during a protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay A supporter of the far-right English Defence League group expresses his views to media during a protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay People hold placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay People hold placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay A woman holds a placard at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Demonstrators protest against the election of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump in front of the White House in Washington November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque People hold placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay A man holds a placard at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES A woman holds a placard at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S. Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay A man holds placards at an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump outside of the U.S Embassy in London, Britain, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Hannah McKay University of California, Davis students protest on campus in Davis, California, U.S. following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Max Whittaker/File Photo A protester faces a police line in downtown Oakland, Calif., early Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. President-elect Donald TrumpAos victory set off multiple protests. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group via AP) Police officers walk past an overturned newspaper rack during protests in Oakland, Calif., late Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. President-elect Donald TrumpAos victory set off multiple protests. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group via AP) Madeline Lopes, left, and Cassidy Irwin, both of Oakland, march with other protesters in downtown Oakland, Calif., early Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. President-elect Donald TrumpAos victory set off multiple protests. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group via AP) An Oakland police officer checks out damage after a window was broken by protesters at a car dealership in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. President-elect Donald TrumpAos victory set off multiple protests. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group via AP) A trash fire burns during protests in Oakland, Calif., late Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. President-elect Donald TrumpAos victory set off multiple protests. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group via AP) A woman yells as she takes part in a protest against President-elect Donald Trump, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) University of California, Davis students protest on campus in Davis, California, U.S. following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Max Whittaker / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A supporter of the far-right English Defence League group is restrained by police after shouting his views, and disrupting an anti-racism protest against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump winning the American election, outside the U.S. embassy in London, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Mr Trump, who pledged to "drain the swamp" of corrupt insiders in the US capital, is considering a wide range of experienced Washington hands for his administration, as well as some officials with extensive lobbying experience. Read More Yesterday, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway indicated Mr Trump would be results-oriented as he chooses his top aides, prepares his transition to the White House and gets ready to work with Congress. "He'll be surrounded by people who want to get things done. Because he's a transactional guy. He's a businessman," Ms Conway said on NBC's 'Meet the Press'. "You can't just appoint novices, you have to have people who know what they're doing. But at the same time this is an administration that's going to run very differently than typical Washington." Mr Ryan said he agreed with Mr Trump's comments in a 'Wall Street Journal' interview published on Friday that he would keep elements of President Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare. Repealing and replacing the 2010 Affordable Care Act was another centrepiece of Mr Trump's campaign. But he told the 'Journal' that after talking to Mr Obama at the White House on Thursday he would consider retaining provisions letting parents keep adult children up to age 26 on their insurance policies and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. "We can fix what is broken in healthcare without breaking what is working in healthcare," Mr Ryan said. "Obamacare is failing. It must be replaced. We're going to do that." Donald Trump may continue to live in his $100m penthouse in New York rather than move into the White House full-time when he becomes president. He has told his team that he would like to spend his time in New York whenever he can, according to 'The New York Times'. During the campaign, he would often fly back late at night to his home in Trump Tower from wherever he was on the trail. The Secret Service has already issued a strong suggestion that he should move to the White House full-time. Read More Agents have described the prospect of protecting him in New York as a "security nightmare". Mr Trump lives with his wife Melania and 10-year-old son Barron in a gilded three-floor apartment designed in the style of Louis XIV, overlooking Central Park. He has lived in Trump Tower for three decades and has often talked about how much he loves it. He may spend weekdays in the White House and weekends in New York. Barron attends the prestigious Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in Manhattan. Barack Obama moved in to the White House on his inauguration despite his daughters being in school in Chicago. Oscar Pistorius has been moved at his request to a prison that is better able to accommodate disabled offenders Oscar Pistorius has been moved at his request to a prison that is better able to accommodate disabled offenders, the South African government has said. The Department of Correctional Services said that the former Paralympic champion was transferred from Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria to the nearby Atteridgeville Correctional Centre, which recently installed bath tubs during upgrades for disabled criminals. It says the Atteridgeville prison houses offenders serving up to six years in prison, and has rehabilitation and development programmes for inmates. Officials say double-amputee Pistorius's disability previously required that he be held in a Kgosi Mampuru remand centre lacking such programmes. Pistorius is serving a six-year prison term for murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. Prosecutors have appealed against the sentence, which they say is too lenient. AP The Admiral Kuznetsov carrier is now off the shore of Syria (AP) A Russian fighter jet based on an aircraft carrier currently near Syria's shores has crashed on a training mission - but the pilot has bailed out safely, the Defence Ministry said. The ministry said the crash of the MiG-29K fighter will not affect the operations of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier. "The Russian aircraft carrier group is continuing its operations in the Mediterranean in accordance with plan," it said in a statement. "Flights of carrier-borne aircraft are continuing." The jet's pilot was quickly rescued and suffered no injuries, the ministry added. It said that the jet crashed a few kilometres away from the carrier due to a technical problem while on its way to land, but did not elaborate. The carrier and escorting ships arrived in the eastern Mediterranean Sea last week. Pilots of the carrier-borne fighters have been conducting flights over Syria to survey the area. Nato has expressed concern about the Russian carrier group's deployment, saying the move could presage an increase in the number of Russian air raids in Syria - particularly around the besieged city of Aleppo. AP Suicide bombers have targeted two major cities in Iraq, striking security forces in the Sunni city of Fallujah and Shiite pilgrims in the holy city of Karbala in the country's south, killing at least six people in each attack. The bombings are an apparent attempt by the Islamic State group to strike back as government troops' advance on their stronghold in the northern city of Mosul. The Sunni militant group claimed responsibility for both bombings. In Fallujah, the attack was carried out by twin suicide car bombers in the city centre - the first such incidents since Iraqi forces in late June declared it "fully liberated" of Islamic State militants after a month-long operation aided by US-led air strikes. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said one of the Fallujah bombers killed two policemen and wounded 17 people, including nine civilians. "They hit a security checkpoint," he said, adding that traffic had been heavy in the area and around 10 vehicles including an ambulance had been damaged. The second bomber killed four people, including two policemen. IS claimed responsibility for the attack, posting videos online of the bombers before the attack, their faces masked and brandishing assault rifles. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to IS, in January 2014. Since IS was driven out, families have begun returning to the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Earlier in the day, a suicide bombing targeted the sacred Shiite city of Karbala, killing at least six civilians in an attack also claimed by IS. According to Brig Gen Maan, the ministry spokesman, six suicide bombers tried to sneak into Karbala from its western outskirts but security forces detected and killed five of them. The sixth attacker broke into a house in the city's Ayn al-Tamer neighbourhood, where he detonated his suicide vest, killing six people and wounding another six, Brig Gen Maan said. The attack came as hundreds of thousands of faithful Shiites have been walking to Karbala to commemorate the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammad's grandson and an iconic Shiite martyr. The city, where Imam Hussein and his brother are buried, is located 55 miles south of Baghdad. On Sunday, pilgrims are expected to converge on the city for the climax of a 40-day mourning period, known as al-Arbaeen. In an online statement, the Islamic State group said it targeted "polytheists... in filthy Karbala". It put the number of the suicide bombers at five, saying they clashed for hours with the security forces and set off their explosives consecutively when they ran out ammunition. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremist group. Like other Sunni extremist groups, IS considers the Shiites heretics and has frequently targeted Shiite civilians and places of worship. "We are walking all these long distances, we are not afraid of terrorists, we are not afraid of Daesh," said 56-year-old pilgrim Sattar Hussein, using the Arabic acronym for IS. "We are not afraid of anyone who defames Islam. And especially those who are targeting the al-Arbaeen." Wearing a black traditional Arab dress, Mr Hussein was among hundreds of pilgrims leaving Baghdad on foot to head to Karbala under tight security measures. Some of the marchers were carrying religious flags, including some with a portrait depicting Imam Hussein, as security forces set up check points to search them. In southern Iraq's Shiite heartland, Karbala is far from Mosul, where a massive Iraqi military operation - launched last month and backed by US-led coalition air strikes and paramilitary militias - is under way to free the city, Iraq's second-largest, from IS. A UN spokesman said on Monday that more than 54,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the Iraqi military operation to retake Mosul from IS militants. Farhan Haq said that number represented an increase of 6,600 people since four days ago. About three-quarters of the displaced people are being shelter in camps set up by the UN and its humanitarian partners and one-quarter are been housed in host communities, Mr Haq said. He added that the World Food Programme has provided food assistance to more than 100,000 people fleeing the conflict, including a distribution to 25,000 people on Sunday in Gogjali, the first neighbourhood retaken inside Mosul. On Sunday, a wave of attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 23 people and wounded 70 others. Many of the assaults targeted Shiite pilgrims walking toward Karbala. AP CONCORD Veterans Day is a time to recognize and honor those who took the vow to protect and serve this country. Across the United States, veterans are honored with food, coffee, performances and gifts. But it isnt just about recognition, its also about education. And Rocky River Elementary tied that recognition and education together when it invited veterans to come and share their experiences with students. More than 20 veterans attended the event which was held on Thursday, Nov. 10. Ranging in age from serving in the Korean War to more modern times, the veterans were each assigned a classroom and spoke about their decision to go into the military, showed artifacts collected during their time serving and answered student questions. The countrys future lies in the hands of the children, Commander Jim Kelly with Black-Phillips American Legion Post 433 in Midland, said. So for us to be here and to speak of history and give examples of real life experience, its positive. The event was organized by Liz Benstead who worked with the schools student council to make it a reality. As veterans arrived, student council members presented them with a paper flower and escorted them to the classrooms where they would be speaking. Its great for our schools and our kids to have this interaction and really a great thing for these guys and ladies to show up and give kids the opportunity to learn about some things they dont always know, Cabarrus County Schools Superintendent Dr. Chris Lowder said as he shook hands and thanked the veterans. Its good for the kids to have that interaction with the community. Several of the classes had discussed military branches in preparation for the visit from the veterans. One kindergarten teacher, Paige Morris, was particularly excited because her father, Michael Burris, spoke to her class. He doesnt get to talk a lot about his time in the Navy, she said. Its good for the students to get to experience a real person who has been in the service. It makes it real and is hands-on. Burris talked to the class about his time on his ship, why he chose the Navy and the survival skills he learned. He showed them his uniform, belt, hat and dog tags. He told the class he learned how to stay afloat by using his hat and pants and said his ship was like a city. He said there were places to buy junk food, dentists and areas for operations. The Navy, in my opinion, is the best, he said. I started to go into the army but I didnt like to sleep in the mud or on the ground. In the Navy I got warm food, a dry bed and clean clothes, as long as my ship stayed afloat. Another U.S. Navy veteran, Robert Kirk, gave some first-graders the chance to try on his uniform. Kirk, who served in the Navy from 1972 until 1992, said since he was speaking to a younger group he wanted to find a way to make it fun. Kirk went over the differences of military branches and then let student Holden Capps and Bailee Medlin try on his two uniforms before teaching them how to salute. A lot of men and women have joined the military to keep us safe, Kirk told the students. Being in the military is something to be proud of. There have been a lot of people who have been in the military and gotten killed and some of us are very fortunate to have come back home. Tim Tereska, director of Cabarrus Countys Veterans Services who served in the U.S. Air Force from 1987 to 2008, also participated in the event. He said hopefully it would give the students a renewed interest and respect for veterans. Its great talking to the kids because they ask questions you dont normally get from adults. And they are interested, they want to hear, Tim Tereska, director of Cabarrus Countys Veterans Society, said. A lot of them have family members that are veterans so they go back and thank them and maybe talk a little bit more with their family members about the veterans. Many of the veterans were sent home with tokens of appreciation from the students like drawings and other thank yous. Its interesting to learn about what they did and how they served in our country, fourth-grade student George Loveland, said. Veteran Mike Benfield played Taps on his trumpet over the schools intercom to bring the event to a close. Prevent Unauthorized Transactions in your demat / trading account Update your Mobile Number/ email Id with your stock broker / Depository Participant. Receive information of your transactions directly from Exchanges on your mobile / email at the end of day and alerts on your registered mobile for all debits and other important transactions in your demat account directly from NSDL/ CDSL on the same day." - Issued in the interest of investors. KYC is one time exercise while dealing in securities markets - once KYC is done through a SEBI registered intermediary (broker, DP, Mutual Fund etc.), you need not undergo the same process again when you approach another intermediary. No need to issue cheques by investors while subscribing to IPO. Just write the bank account number and sign in the application form to authorise your bank to make payment in case of allotment. No worries for refund as the money remains in investor's account." www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others. Its hard to understate how important the difference the enthusiasm gap made in this election. Bernie Sanders, seen here at a rally in Billings, Montana, in May 2016, showed how to stir passion in voters. Hillary Clinton? Not so much. Photo by Mark Trahant / Trahant Reports #NativeVote16 Indian Country was like America only more so By Mark TrahantTrahant Reports This election Indian Country was like America. Perhaps only more so. Most American Indian and Alaska Natives voted for Hillary Clinton. But that support was mild. There were not enough votes to make a difference in red states like Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. Just enough votes to stay the course in blue states like New Mexico, Washington or Oregon. And, most important, not nearly enough votes in the swing states. Hillary Clinton earned the most votes, 60, 839,922, to Donald J. Trumps 60,265,858. But that, of course, is not the way we elect the national leader and Trumps 290 electoral votes were more than enough to win. Whats more: The margins within those states were such that Native American voters could not have made the difference. There would have had to be a wider coalition of voters, something Barack Obama did so well, and Secretary Clinton did not. A few examples. If you look at a color-coded 2012 election map Indian Country pops out. There are bright blue pools of voters in deeply red states. Shannon County (now Oglala Lakota County) voted 93.4 percent for Obama. Thats Pine Ridge. Obama won 3/4s of the vote in Rolette County, North Dakota, which includes the Turtle Mountian Band of Chippewas. Or next door in Montana, voters from the Fort Peck Reservation came out and led the county with 56.5 percent voting for Obama. But blue faded in the red states this election. Trump picked up 200 more votes than Mitt Romney in 2012, but the real number is that nearly 600 fewer voters went for Hillary Clinton compared to Barack Obama. Same story in Oglala Lakota Country. Clinton won, and by a large margin, but with 500 fewer votes than Obama. In Rolette County nearly 1,300 fewer votes for Clinton. The red states did not change because of that, but its a good indication about how tepid the support for Clinton was, even in Indian Country. This story played out in blue states, too. More than 2,000 voters disappeared in McKinley County on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. And, in swing states, such as Arizona, that slight difference, a few hundred people who did not vote here and there, added up into real numbers. In Apache County, where the majority of the voters are Navajo, 17,147 picked Obama four years ago. This election only 12,196 voted for Clinton. Indian Country will make a difference in future elections. The demographic makeup of the country is changing fast and we are a part of that. Whats most stunning about this election is how little demographics mattered. I wrote in December : Sure, its even possible, that one of the Republican candidates will whip up magic and united a coalition of voters. But that would take words designed to reach consensus with the new majority of voters. And that would have been true: If enough of us had been motivated to vote. I think its clear that Clinton took Indian Country for granted. There was no attempt to learn and execute what worked from the Bernie Sanders campaign. In June, I suggested the Clinton campaign appoint and promote public Native surrogates because there ought to be a face from Indian Country. This could have helped build enthusiasm. And ignoring Standing Rock was a sure way to turn off Native voters. There was probably a lets get past the election conversation, although eventually Tim Kane did weigh in, but nothing changed the narrative that Clinton represented more corporate power, not less. Supporting Standing Rock would have been the right call morally. But I can see how the politics was more complicated because union voices (and donors) wanted the pipeline to proceed. Yet that might be the essence of Hillary Clinton and why she lost. Her campaign was a package of powerful interests trying to market itself as the voice of ordinary people. Indian Countrys answer was, yeah, whatever. Meh. Join the Conversation Upping the ante when it comes to travel, Australian Manny Marshall, 42, hitchhiked and couch-surfed the entire 8000-km distance from Edinburgh to Delhi - all thanks to free beer. In the eight-week journey, Marshall, who's a travel veteran with 15 years of travel experience, ended up handing out 120 cans of Innis & Gunn craft beer! His blog, rawsafari.com, has a detailed account of his entire journey. rawsafari.com This unique challenge was the brainchild of Innis & Gunn, a brewing company in Edinburgh, Scotland, that wanted to retrace the journey of Indian Pale Ales as they travelled the miles from Scotland (and were eventually delivered) to India during the 18th and 19th century. rawsafari.com The only catch: to complete the original route via road. rawsafari.com From convicts, to high court judges, and a mother with kids, Marshall managed to hitch a ride with many interesting people while traversing France, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Greece. He was later flown to India by Innis & Gunn to complete the remaining leg of the journey. rawsafari.com 'I've been hitchhiking for more than ten years and I kind of expect to meet amazing people all the time,' he said to Dailymail in an interview. rawsafari.com After completing the ride, Marshall would hand over free beers as a 'thank you' and this left some drivers "a bit bemused, but quite happy about it. I think they thought I was some sort of nut but I managed to explain I am Australian, and that seemed to resolve the matter for them," he explained. rawsafari.com For someone who's travelled the world for many years now, Marshall called this his 'biggest challenge' yet. (H/t: Dailymail) 1. On Saturday at the annual Governors Awards, Jackie Chan finally received his gold statuette, an honorary Oscar for his decades of work in film. BCCL "After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films, after so many bones, finally," the actor told the media after winning his trophy. 2. Twinkle Khanna appeared on Karan Johar's chat show Koffee with Karan for the first time ever and it turned out to be a laughter riot. Star World Twinkle and Akshay were at their wittiest best on the show. Recalling the marriage test that Akshay had to go through, Twinkle shared, "The primary reason you get married is to have children. You are introducing this genetic strain into your family line. I wanted to know what are the diseases running in his family, at what age did uncles in his family, at what age did uncles in his family lose their hair, what did Kanchan Chachi die of?" 3. Just before the release of its official trailer, Shah Rukh Khan's Raees lands up in minor trouble Twitter A DNA report has quoted an unknown source saying, When Shah Rukh realised his meetings with Latif were being given political overtones, he decided to keep a distance. When Mustak invited Shah Rukh again, the actor didnt respond. This incensed Mustak, who felt affronted by the stars snub and decided to dissociate from the project. While Hooda took to Twitter to express his opinions, Ajay Devgn told the media, "Even my film is suffering because of this but in front of nation's interest, I find this inconvenience trivial. I want to request people to not panic; there is time until December 30+ . People who're not in desperate need for money can wait a bit. Whenever a change takes place, common man faces the problem; people from my office are standing in queues and willing to face problems for better future." 5. Rishi Kapoor slams Arvind Kejriwal for his views against Modi's demonetisation policy Arvind Kejriwal has been trying all he can to criticise and express his displeasure on PM Modi's policy but this hasn't gone down well at all with actor Rishi Kapoor. Rishi Kapoor took to Twitter to write, "Is this guy for real? Does he always talk like this? Suna tha, aaj tajurba ho gaya" Arvind Kejriwal is leaving no stone unturned in expressing his displeasure at PM Modi's demonetisation policy. Even though he's remained silent on the decision, his social media activities reveal otherwise. Talking about PM Modi's speech, Kejriwal said, "There is still time, take back this decision before the law and order situation further deteriorates. PM Modi has mocked them and must apologise. I have received a lot of calls, there is a sense of panic among people after PM's speech in Goa." However, actor Rishi Kapoor is pissed at Kejriwal. After Kejriwal said that PM Modi should roll back the demonetisation policy, Rishi Kapoor could not take it. He slammed Kejriwal, and tweeted, Very little is known about dark matter, the big black mystery that makes up 27% of the universe. Any information discovered on dark matter is a giant leap. Now, German and Hungarian scientists have made headway and found some information on a dark matter particle that has been proposed called the axion. Representational image/Reuters There is only indirect proof towards dark matter because gravitational pull is not enough to explain the rapid movement of galaxies. Yes, galaxies do move and rotate through space because the universe is expanding. The scientists have been able to calculate the estimated mass of the axion at between 50 and 100 electron volts. And according to this theory, there should exist ten million of such particles for every cubic centimetre of the universe. Scientists also say axion occur in clumps so there should be nearly a trillion axions per cubic centimetre in our galaxy, Milky Way. This is a huge step not only for scientists and physicists but also for humans because dark matter constitutes of such a large part of the universe yet so little are known about it. Researcher Dr Andreas Ringwald, of the largest accelerator centre in Germany DESY said, "Dark matter is an invisible form of matter which until now has only revealed itself through its gravitational effects. What it consists of remains a complete mystery." Here are some facts we already know about dark matter: 1. "Dark doesnt only mean we cant see it Representational image/NASA blue shift - Flickr When scientists are talking about dark matter, they actually mean invisible matter that neither absorbs, neither emits nor reflects light. 2. Its abnormal Dark matter does not interact with electromagnetic forces, which is one of the way interacting forces in nature, like normal matter. Researchers have only been able to postulate the existence of dark matter from the interaction of gravity on visible matter. 3. Zwicky first discovered it in 1933 Representational image/Reuters Contrary to popular belief, Vera Rubin wasnt the first one to discover dark matter but it was, in fact, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky who proposed the idea and coined the term in 1933. He stated galaxies of the Coma cluster move way too quickly to remain connected by gravity. 4. Gives structure to the universe Representational image/Flickr Dark matter doesnt really interact with itself or others around it so its the first type of matter to settle down when the universe expands and the first to form structures through its own gravitational pull. Earlier this year it was also proved that the internal structure of a galaxys cluster is linked to its dark matter. 5. No direct evidence Scientists and physicist have been for decades been studying dark matter but all we know so far is through inference from gravitational pull. But despite the lack of direct experimental evidence, scientists have no doubt over the existence of dark matter. Space exploration is so vital to humankind - discovering more and more information on how the universe was formed, decoding its mysteries are only going to advance human kind. What could be termed as a historical event, 8 Indian Air Force fighter jets will touch down on Agra-Lucknow expressway on its grand opening on November 21, the eve of Mulayam Singh Yadav's 78th birthday. TOI UP expressways industrial development authority CEO Navneet Sehgal confirmed this to TOI. He said, "All arrangements have been made to conduct the grand inauguration. A squadron of eight fighter jets will land and take off from the newly constructed expressway." A dream project of UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, the 302-km expressway, which has been completed in a record time of 22 months and has cost Rs 13,200 crore, will get operational by December. On Saturday, several officials including Sehgal and Air Vice Marshal Rajesh Issar, senior officer administration of Central Air Command inspected the expressway stretch in Bangarmau of Unnao district, for the event. TOI Several attempts were made to contact IAF officials to get more details about the event, but none responded. Though IAF official source on anonymity said, "To conduct safe landings of eight fighter jets, necessary safety requirements such as bird clearance, safety services, rescue vehicles and temporary air traffic control need to be set up." According to UPEIDA source, "A dedicated 2 km stretch has been built for war-like emergencies on the expressway, though we have also ensured that eco-system on the stretch is not disturbed." Last year in the month of May, in a first for military aviation in the country, IAF successfully landed a French Dassault Mirage-2000 fighter jet on the Yamuna Expressway near Raya village, Mathura, as a part of elaborate trials to see how many other highways can be used for war-like emergencies. PTI At present, countries such as Germany, Poland, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Switzerland, Poland, Singapore, Czechoslovakia and Pakistan have dedicated stretches on their expressways and highways for aeroplanes to land and take off in the case of an emergency. Eleven year-old city girl Anvita Prashant Telang recently won the national level 'Doodle 4 Google' contest for her doodle titled 'Live in the present'. Anvita had submitted her doodle based on this year's theme 'If I could teach anyone anything, it would be'. The doodle would be featured on the home page of Google India on November 14 to celebrate Children's Day. A student of Vibgyor High School in Balewadi, Anvita loves to draw. TOI Her mother Aparna Telang said, "Although Anvita is a regular 11-year-old, sometimes her answers are so philosophical that they flummox me. Sometimes I tell her what is happening in my office and her replies have been very mature and different from what you would expect from someone as young as her." Anvita thinks that the world is going too fast and it needs to stop to enjoy the small and good things in nature and life. "That is what I have tried to show in my doodle. I try to live in the present and not worry too much about anything. That keeps me happy," she said. india.com An official statement from Google said, "Her creativity and vision towards developing 'a better world and healthy lifestyle' is well reflected through her colourful doodle where she has showcased how everyone should 'enjoy every moment' and appreciate the simple things around us and live stress-free." We often find pictures, pamphlets, posts etc seeking information about missing children. But now, a Qingdao-based food company in collaboration with Baobeihuijia.com, an online database to locate missing children, has come up with an innovative idea to locate these kids. Facebook Together, they have launched mineral water bottles with pictures of missing children. The bottles also include details of these kids and their parents contact details, CCTV News reported. And then theres this heart-wrenching slogan Baby, come home. There are around 500,000 bottles in circulation currently, featuring six missing children, and these bottles will be sold in supermarkets, airports and train stations in a bid to locate them. Facebook The initiative is akin to an attempt from 1979 when a bereaved father of six-year-old boy in New York City printed his sons photo and information on milk cartons and distributed to neighbors, hoping he could be found. However, after 20 years, the boy was declared legally dead, the CCTV News report said. Around 200,000 children are reported missing in China every year, according to China National Radios website. Facebook And when a child goes missing, they are often declared legally dead by authorities. Often trafficked, or used for human organ harvesting, these missing children seldom return home. However, this noble initiative is not devoid of challenges. For example, one of the children featured in the bottle was kidnapped in 2003. So, it is unlikely that people would recognize him now the child would be 18 years old, the CCTV News report also said. The report also cites proactive measures undertaken by Chinese authorities to locate missing children. For instance, in 2009, China set up the worlds first DNA database to find missing kids. By the end of 2015, over 4,000 missing children had been reunited with their families through this database. In a bid to help the common man, Canara Bank in Bengaluru rolled out its mobile ATM so that people could withdraw new currency notes without forming endless queues outside banks. On Sunday evening, the blue bus, which helped around 800 customers withdraw Rs. 8 lakh worth of cash, was seen at MG Road! Deccan Herald "I was taking a stroll in the evening on MG Road and found that most of the ATMs were running out of cash. So, I got our mobile ATM, which serves Bengaluru Rural customers, pressed into service," Mr. M M Chiniwar, Canara Bank General Manager (Circle Office), told Deccan Herald. The bus that arrived at 5.30 pm, eased people's anxieties, as they could finally skip standing outside a bank to withdraw cash. Picssr/RAMACHANDRAN PALANIRAMU Mr. Chiniwar also said that by Tuesday or Wednesday, sufficient cash will reach banks and ATMs which will help reduce the insane rush of people we are seeing every day. ...and we still have another 50 days for things to stabilise! There have been reports of 16 deaths across the country owing to the impact of the demonetisation. 15 of the reports came in the first four days alone and with the latest report today, the toll stands at 16 in 5 days. No amount of "legal tenders" can bring these people back. BCCL The heart-wrenching reports have been coming in from across the country. The first death was that of a new-born child who was refused admission to a Mumbai hospital as parents did not have "legal tender". Another 18-month-old died in Vizag as parents did not have the new currency to purchase medicines that could have saved him. In both cases, the children were at private hospitals and only government hospitals have been instructed to accept the old currency. In Mainpuri, doctors refused to continue the treatment of a one-year-old when his parents ran out of Rs 100 notes. He was taken home and he died soon after. It was an ambulance that refused to take a newborn to the hospital as the father only had the old Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 bank notes. Which "larger good" can compensate for these lives? AFP Apart from people not being treated or being turned away from hospitals, there have been many reports of people 'shocked' into death. A washerwoman from Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh deposited the only savings of Rs 2,000 in the bank and when it was declared "illegal tender" she died of the shock. A 55-year-old homemaker in Telangana thought that her life's savings of Rs 54 lakh had been rendered useless. She committed suicide. A 45-year-old father of the bride died of a massive heart attack when he realised that his daughter's in-laws would not accept the old currency notes in dowry. A businessman in Faizabad of Uttar Pradesh suffered a heart attack while hearing the Prime Minister's speech and died before doctors could help him. A 47-year-old farmer had a heart attack waiting to exchange old currency notes in Tarapur in Gujarat. AFP There are also reports of people dying of the stress of standing in long queues. A 45-year-old man fell from the second floor while filling his deposit slip for Rs 5 lakh and died. In Howrah, West Bengal, a man tense over demonetisation murdered his wife because she returned empty handed from the ATM. He felt she should have waited longer in the queue. A 72-year-old in Mumbai, a 96-year-old in Karnataka, a 69-year-old in Madhya Pradesh and a 75-year-old in Kerala, all died while waiting in the queue at the bank in the past five days! Not just this, a cashier at the State Bank of India at Bhopal died of a heart attack at work. He simply could not cope with the extra hours and long queues. The Prime Minister has expressed his sadness at the incidents and stated: "I feel the pain that the people of India are feeling." A Kargil war veteran who now works as a security guard in Kanpur has alleged that he was beaten up and humiliated by a Samajwadi Party leader's men upon the politician's orders - as well by the police - on Tuesday Facebook His 'crime'? He didn't salute the SP leader when he was asked to do so. Ganesh Kumar Shukla, a non-commissioned officer of the Army's Mahar regiment who served the nation for 22 years, has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to help him fight this injustice. He has said that he will immolate himself if he doesn't get justice. "Main ye apmaan sehen nahi kar paaunga. Meri ladne me madad kariye (I won't be able to bear this insult. Please help me in this fight)," he said. In his statement, Shukla says he told the SP politician - a certain CK Tripathi - that he would only salute the tri-colour or people mandated by the President of India. The SP leader had come to the Reliance Digital store where Shukla works as a security guard. eastcoastdaily.in The SP man's alleged response was to tell his men, "Ye bohot bolta hai, isko maaro (this guy speaks too much, beat him up). He then called the "Civil Lines" police - who not only beat Shukla without conducting an investigation but also placed their shoes on his face and then filed a FIR against him, Shukla said. Colonel Anil Kaul of the Mahar regiment - the regiment Shukla is from - spoke about the change he sees in the way Army officers are treated in India. "We've reached a stage, where frankly - and this is my personal opinion - over the last 70 years, the Armed Forces have been brought down from a high pedestal to... subservience..almost to a level of unskilled labour," Col. Kaul said. Col. Kaul, a war veteran who is a recipient of the Vir Chakra, recalled how police superintendents used to meet Army captains at home. He lamented that this had now changed. In fact, army men are bring equated "at a level below the police," and some want to make them feel as though they were from "a lower stratum of society," he said. Col. Kaul said disrespect was being "deliberately thrown around at the Armed Forces," despite everything that they did for the country. He attributed the "mismatch" in the kind of respect that policemen and soldiers get now, to envy for the Armed Forces "We're not asking for the moon. Just give us our izzat," he said. Nishad Husain Jafri, a key maker from Worli, spent the entire Sunday running from one bank to another. However, unlike the rest of the city that's locked in a mad scramble for cash, Jafri was trying to return a Rs 2,000 note he had inadvertently damaged.In urgent need of cash after his wife was diagnosed with lumps in the breast in his hometown Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Jafri stood in the queue for more than eight hours on Saturday to exchange scrapped currency notes for new notes worth Rs 4,000. mumbaimirror "The banks are not exchanging notes worth more than Rs 2,000 and my wife urgently needs Rs 5,000 for treatment. I spent close to eight hours exchanging old notes for new ones at the IDBI Bank and the Indian Overseas Bank's Worli branches. In my anxiety to deposit the money in her account as soon as possible, I ended up damaging the Rs 2,000 note," he said. That was only the beginning of his ordeal. "I went back to both the branches and was told that there are no guidelines on what to do with damaged Rs 2,000 notes," he said. A visit to post offices also generated a similar response. "I was told that at this stage, no bank or post office will take back damaged notes. They told me to approach the Reserve Bank of India," he said. egurupedia.com Jafri, who has a shop near Doordarshan Junction in Worli, said business has been "exceptionally bad" since Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were scrapped on Wednesday. "People are not even spending on essentials, do you think they'll get new keys made?" he asked. "I just had Rs 4,000 and a few hundreds. With one note no longer valid, I don't know how I will pay for my wife's treatment," he said. Like several common people who have questioned the implementation of the new currency system, Jafri said it's the poor who are the only ones suffering. "An official at one of the banks told me there is a massive struggle for cash, and replacements are out of question. I have been trapped in such an unfortunate situation and I don't know what to do," he said. BCCL Massive queues were witnessed on Sunday outside banks across the city, even as ATMs ran dry in a couple of hours. Longer queues were seen outside public sector banks where a sizeable number of account holders are retired persons and senior citizens. The Centre, in a late night move on Sunday, asked the banks to raise daily exchange limit to Rs 4,500 from existing Rs 4,000, raised the ATM cash withdrawal limit to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 per day; weekly withdrawal limit from Rs 20,000 to Rs 24,000, and removed the daily withdrawal cap of Rs 10,000 from bank counters. Venkatramam Krishnamoorthy, an Indian social worker in Dubai, just set a Guinness World Record in collecting stationery for charity. Krishnamoorthy amassed 10,975 kg worth of items in a span of just 24 hours by receiving them from corporates, schools, and individuals in a bid to help one lakh refugee children all around the world. ndtv The donations that he received include a massive number of 3 lakh pencils, 50,000 notebooks, and 2,000 school bags along with crayons, scissors, and sharpeners. Nearly 400 volunteers came together to make this mission a success at Dubai's Al Diyafah School. Now the Emirates Red Crescent organisation will deliver these to children camped in refugee holdings around the world, reports NDTV. Reuters Krishnamoorthy's record surpassed the previous one of 4,571 kg that was set in Saudi Arabia in 2015. 57-year-old Krishnamoorthy said, "Joyful giving is the motto of this mission. It's all about bringing smiles on the faces of needy children around the world." Krishnamoorthy, who's a chartered accountant, is a native of Tirunelvelli in Tamil Nadu. He has been a resident of Dubai since 1992 where his non-profit project of 'education4all' collects used books and toys and supplies them to school libraries in India and African countries. Ignoring the ban on ivory trade in India, Uttar Pradesh Khadi and Village Industries Board is inviting people to buy items made from elephant tusks at the ongoing Khadi Mahotsav here. (Also read: Elephants On The Path To Extinction As India Sees A Rise In Illegal Ivory Poaching) Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), to which India is a signatory, trading in ivory is banned in order to send a strong message against poaching of tuskers. KCET UP Khadi Board's Deputy CEO A K Shukla announced that a lot of rural artisans would sell their products during the festival, which will also include a variety of items made from elephant tusks. The fortnight-long event, that ends on November 24, will bring many such items to a common platform, from where people can buy them. During the 1980s and 90s, India was a thriving market for the poaching of tuskers, especially in the southern states of Kerela and Tamil Nadu. In these states, as many as 2,000 pachyderms were killed in the last two decades. In fact, last year also saw an overwhelming increase in the number of poaching cases with 30 tuskers having been killed to cater to the demand for ivory. newsIndia India is estimated to have about 30,000-35,000 elephants, although not all male elephants in Karnataka have tusks. However, the state is estimated to have the largest quantity of ivory in India, followed by Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Odisha. (Also read: World's Nations Agree To Put An End To Ivory Trade That Kills One Elephant Every 15 Minutes) India has 30 tonnes of ivory, as per a rough estimate. The opinion is divided on burning down the stockpile like in Kenya, which recently set on fire over a hundred tonnes of it, in the largest ever pile of ivory set alight anywhere in the world. The same was done as a demonstration against illegal ivory trade and poaching that claimed 30,000 elephants every year. In retrospect, experts are divided over the proposition of India following the African mode, suggesting that part of the stock should be used for scientific research work and DNA barcoding by institutions. However, wildlife conservationists say it is a good idea to destroy it as ivory has no use apart from ornamental purposes. India loves Israel; there is not even an iota of doubt about it. Arguably, there were several pretensions and preventions earlier, but now India and Israel are out in open to change their relationship status from its complicated to engaged, and perhaps for some, even married. times of Israel With the arrival of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at Mumbai airport for a six-day visit, both Tel Aviv and Delhi will send a strong message across the world about their bilateral relations. This, for the advocates of Indo-Israeli relations, is happening quite slowly, though. While they wish Godspeed to both the states, India, on its part, has evolved its Israeli policy, gradually calculating all the factors and their implications. Its been almost 25 years since India began its diplomatic relations with Israel after recognising it in 1950 two years after its creation. Now, when the two states seem closer than ever before and their leaders are meeting and reciprocating state visits, the way only takes them forward to strengthen the ties. AFP Israel has always looked up to India, in order to garner support at the international forums, where it seeks support to legitimise its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. India, however, has not been able to oblige Israel on all occasions, but voices its support for Israels fight against terrorism, allegedly originating from the neighbouring states. India, so far, has used the abstinence card whenever it comes to dealing with the issues related to Israel. Things seem to be changing now. Earlier, the Indian leaders would try to keep the relationship with Israel as hidden as possible. The extent of diplomatic relations, economic pacts, defence ties and military deals with Israel were done in concealed manner. Even the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in the late 1990s would not venture out to speak openly about Indo-Israel relations, although India had sought Israeli help (and received it) during Kargil War in 1999. AFP It also seems a futile exercise to review history and see who said what. The Indian leadership, particularly under the BJP-led (National Democratic alliance) government has been consistent with its admiration for Israel. The two states are imagining a sustainable partnership and in fact working hard to achieve it, if it's not there already. And with growing dependence, any succeeding government will find it difficult to reverse the process. What Lies Ahead? Indian and Israel see each other as important strategic partners; this is the result of Indias changed foreign policy orientation after the Cold War and its economic liberalisation. For India, a struggling economy in 1992, there were some other factors that made it possible to go forward with its relationship with Israel during the Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao. AFP Since 1992, Israeli leaders and state representatives have visited India almost two dozen times, while a similar number of visits have been made by their Indian counterparts. Although no Indian Prime Minister has visited Israel so far (there are assumption that PM Modi will be the first to do so), the visit made by President Pranab Mukherjee, in 2015, reflects a robust relationship between the two states. There is a general perception across the board that when it comes to India and Israel its only about war, intelligence and military aid. However, over the years, the two states have taken their cooperation to different levels. India and Israel cooperate with each other in research and development, technology, education, and of course tourism. Defence personnel and arms dealers are not the only ones who travel between the two countries, a high (and increasing) number of students, senior academics and researchers from both the countries visit various universities across India and Israel. And this is expected to go even further in the coming years. Times of Israel India, Israel and International Community India has always had an engaging foreign policy vis-a-vis, West Asia. India has maintained good relations with all the Gulf States and has successfully made them understand its need to keep Israel on board. The theory that India may lose its Arab buddies by hanging out with Israel has remained unsubstantiated for years. Indias foreign policy makers have had an independent policy when it comes to balancing relations with the Arab States and Israel and even Iran. There is no doubt that off-late India apparently has moved closer to Israel, however, it has not been done at the cost of its relations with the Arab States. AFP Question of Palestine When it comes to Indo-Israel relations, it is difficult to ignore the question of Palestine. Indias solidarity with the Palestinian people is not new. It began with Gandhi and continues with the youngsters on Indian streets showing solidarity with the Palestinian people. As far as Indias foreign policy is concerned, India has made it clear that India wants a separate Palestinian state. Generally, a shallow assessment of the situation blames Indias Muslims for being the factors hampering India's relations with Israel because of their support for the Palestinian people. However, this assumption falls flat, when the public opinion from various sections of the Indian society comes in supports of the Palestinian cause. The leaders in Israel as well as Palestine know Indias position and have never forced India to shun any of its friends. India, on its part, has shown that it can deal with the commitments and aspirations of its Israeli and Palestinian friends at the same time. Times of Israel Its all out in open Several books, policy papers and research articles focussing on various aspects of Indo-Israel relations have been written in recent years. They all show is that India and Israel are developing bilateral relations by leaps and bounds. Therefore, any effort to keep the things secreted, while blaming a particular community or a few countries for hampering the process is not a smart policy. India should openly assert its relations with Israel. It's not even been a week since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and we're already seeing cases of harassment, racial discrimination, molestation and what not. Leave aside the ill-treatment that was already thriving in many parts of the United States, but the constant harassment has unquestionably aggravated since Trump came into power. (Also read: Day One In Trump's America, Indians Harassed And Racially Attacked In Broad Daylight) Deep down we all knew what could happen to our friends and relatives in the United States if Trump won. So here it is. A 24-year-old Muslim teacher in Georgia received a note which said that her headscarf "isn't allowed anymore." Mairah Teli, who teaches language arts at Dacula High, says that she believes the note comes as a reaction to Trump's election. Why dont you tie it around your neck and hang yourself with it..., the note said, signed "America!" I feel children feel safe making comments that are racist or sexist because of him," she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The moment she received the note, she informed the administration and fellow teachers, and all have been extremely supportive of her ever since. She further clarifies that the institute is doing everything they can to find the person behind it. She suspects it comes from a student. "We are living in a time when there is a lot of disagreement, a lot of conflicts. It's important that we teach them how to disagree." Last week, we had several immigrants around different parts of the country sharing their experiences. Donald Trump's America. A close friend sent this to me. pic.twitter.com/PzNV1MOujM Saira Khan (@sairakh) November 10, 2016 @ShaunKing day one of Donald trump at wake forest university. pic.twitter.com/RlhVfGI9Wg madison (@maddieemz) November 10, 2016 Cars were painted with messages like go back, while the rest were attacked in broad daylight. Here's hoping love and peace prevail. It seems that the 'Love Trumps Hate' fans have revealed their dark side, fangs and all. Violent protests sparked off across America by peaceful, tolerant, loving liberals who were misled into believing Hillary Clinton was the de-facto winner this US election. "Rape Melania" is trending. Liberals are really outdoing their own disgusting behavior. #SundayMorning #Trump pic.twitter.com/PA1q6QV4sa WE DID IT (@BobbyDellBSC) November 13, 2016 American Twitter users saw "Rape Melania" in their trending-topics, often with images of a protester holding a sign with the phrase at a demonstration in Washington DC. I just saw that Rape Melania is trending This week, many tweets talked about killing Trump More reminders that Love Trumps Hate is a lie Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) November 13, 2016 The protest was being held outside Trump's new hotel in Washington, and has surprisingly generated no mainstream condemnation from Trump critics - at least not at par with the condemnation Trump's run for President generated. Surprisingly, Twitter, which is known to censor Trending topics on its own discretion and even ban users based on policies, allowed the trend to sustain. However, Twitter explained that the trend was to critique the phrase, not support it. However, a sampling of tweets seemed to speak otherwise. "So who's going to assassinate Trump at his inauguration?" one Twitter user asked. "I just pray that the first n***a who tries to assassinate Donald Trump don't miss" There were also calls to assassinate Vice President-elect Mike Pence. "If trump wins pls dont assassinate him without getting mike pence first because his a** is f***ing crazy," a user tweeted. Police have deployed less lethal munitions such as OC spray and vapor (pepper spray), rubber ball distraction devices, rubber baton rounds. Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) November 11, 2016 A Secret Service source told the Daily Mail that they had witnessed a spike in death threats since Trump's successful election. They were monitoring social media, and 'every threat was taken seriously'. The streets of Oakland, California, saw attacks on an office block with graffiti vandalism with 'f*** Trump' and 'kill Trump'. These were then set on fire. Protests in Portland, Oregon blew up into a riot as people threw bottles and other projectiles at police officers. 19 people arrested so far this evening due to criminal behavior during protest. Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) November 13, 2016 A protest in Indianapolis also grew violent after protesters clashed with police. In an ironic turn of events, Turkish President Erdogan has issued a travel warning to its citizens planning on travelling to the US because of the wave of anti-Trump protests taking place across the country. Reuters In a statement published on the foreign ministry's website said, "Turkish citizens should stay away from demonstrations in US cities, take necessary security measures at their homes and work, and inform security officials immediately in possible racist abuse or attacks. It also said that the anti-Trump protests "occasionally featured acts of crime and violence and based on demonstrators social media posts, its clear the demonstrations will likely continue for some time". Reuters This is ironic because in October America issued a travel warning to its people about travelling to Turkey citing blasts and coup as the main reasons to not visits. It also ordered family members of those working at the consulate in Istanbul to leave the country after threats to US citizens. At the time, Turkey's foreign minister came out and said America's warning against travelling to Turkey is wrong. Reuters He said, "Istanbul or Ankara is not more unsafe than any US state. On the day that the Americans announced this security measure, 12 people were killed in the city of Chicago alone". 30-year-old Yu Xu, who was the first woman to fly China's J-10 fighter, was killed during an aerobatics exercise. She was one of the first 16 Chinese women pilots qualified to fly fighter jets. The pilot on duty reported that Xu was a member of the Chinese air force's "August 1st" aerobatics display team and was ejected from her aircraft during a training session. twitter The event was held in the northern province of Hebei on the weekend, as reported by a local newspaper. After ejection, she hit the wing of another jet and was killed. Another male co-pilot who was with her during the training landed safely and survived. #LATEST: Yu Xu, #China's 1st female J-10 fighter pilot, died from hitting the wing of another jet after ejecting during training drill pic.twitter.com/UUkITnq6QC People's Daily,China (@PDChina) November 13, 2016 Thoughts with the family of Chinas 1st female pilot of J-10 fighter jet, Yu Xu fatally injured in a crash in Hebei province. Rest in peace! pic.twitter.com/DGWnrWtUrF Markhor (@iFighterPilot) November 13, 2016 @PDChina What a national loss for China. Please accept our sincere condolences. (@Wa7id_Sakit) November 13, 2016 "As one of only four female pilots in the country capable of flying domestically made fighter jets, her death comes as a tremendous loss to the Chinese air force," the Global Times newspaper said. Xu joined the People's Liberation Army in 2005 and has been a performer since. After her graduation from the academy, she was one of the 16 female pilots to be selected to fly fighter jets. In July, she became the first woman to fly a J-10. newsvala Her fans dubbed her the "golden peafowl". Xu was an archetype for many women in her country, where traditional values overpower personal achievements. She was a flight squadron leader and she aspired to become an astronaut one day. Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has stated that it would embark on a week warning strike over a failure by the Federal Government to implement the 2009 Agreement and 2013 MoU. The National President of the union, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, made this known on Monday during a press conference at the University of Abuja. Ogunyemi said following a nation-wide consultation with members, the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU resolved to embark on a one-week warning strike from Wednesday Nov.16. He said: Many aspects of the 2013 MoU and the 2009 Agreement with the Federal Government have either been unimplemented or despairingly handled. The agreements are: Payments of staff entitlements since December 2015, funding of universities for revitalisation, pension, TSA and university autonomy and renegotiation of 2009 Agreement. Failure by the Federal Government to implement this agreement has put ASUU leadership in severe difficulty, responding to inquiries from members of the union about the state of our agreement. Ogunyemi said there shall be no teaching, examination nor attendance at statutory meetings during the warning strike. The ASUU president called on all education-loving Nigerians to persuade the Nigerian government to address the demands of the union, stating that the allocation to education had dropped. With the release of the 2016 Annual Budget, our union wondered aloud why allocation to education dropped from 11 per cent in 2015 to eight per cent in 2016. With the introduction of TSA, the federal universities find it extremely difficult to discharge their core responsibilities of teaching, research and community services. We tried to correct the erroneous impression in government circles that the capital and research grants to universities were being handled by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), he said. A British man has begun his challenge to earn a world-record by swimming across the Atlantic Ocean. Ben Hooper, after several delays, has taken the plunge as he tries to make his way from the west coast of Africa to South America. The 38-year-old sets off on a five-month journey from Senegal to Brazil that will see him strive to swim a total of 1,900 miles for up to 10 hours a day. BBC reports that his official online tracker shows he has entered the sea just off Dakar in Senegal. The former policeman tugged on his goggles and said goodbye to loved ones and supporters on the beach of a hotel in Hann Bay, in the east of Dakar as he began his journey. To the whole world thank you very much for your support, he said, before striding into the waves at the start of the record-breaking attempt, expected to take nearly five months. He began the feat at the start of November but delayed his departure due to a problem with the support vessel. He postponed it again several times until actually setting off on Sunday. He has been preparing for over three years for the immense journey that will see him swim up to 10 hours a day across the Atlantic. It has been a long time coming, he said. The Briton will rack up 1,635 nautical miles, equal to nearly 1,900 land miles (3,000km) over the course of the journey, while taking in up to 12,000 calories a day. He will don a wetsuit specially designed to make him invisible to sharks. Hoopers journey will be observed by a Guinness World Records representative who will join a crew of 10 supporting the swimmer. His crossing will be filmed and can be tracked on his Swim the Big Blue website. Hooper has a 1m fundraising target. The Sokoto State Committee on the Implementation of State of Emergency in Education, has discovered 200 sets of furniture locked up at a school where students sit on bare floor for lessons. A statement issued by Imam Imam, spokesman to Governor Aminu Tambuwal, said the discovery was made during an assessment visit to Hafsat Ahmadu Bello Memorial Secondary School, Sokoto. It said: Only a few classes in the school have enough seats to accommodate them. For long, they have to put up with taking lectures while seated on bare floor. Most use prayer mats to protect their whole tops from the floors dust, while others come to classes with extra wrappers to spray on floor as they sit. While they have to put up with the most uncomfortable situation to take lectures daily, a few blocks away, 200 sets of classroom furniture were locked away, unattended to, and left to rot away. It said that, the suffering of the students came to an end last week when the committee went to assess facilities and make recommendations to remedy identified problems. The statement added that the team leader, Shadi Sabeh, immediately ordered that the furniture be arranged in the class rooms, and admonished the school management to always prioritize the need of the students. It said that school managers must, henceforth, key into the new vision of government for better schools, so as not to sabotage its efforts. Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States, and he and President Obama took the first step toward his inauguration with a meeting at the White House on Thursday. But amid questions about nuclear codes and the transfer of power, heres a lighter one: What happens to Obamas @POTUS Twitter account when hes no longer President? The White House had actually released a digital transition plan last month to lay out what will happen. When Trump is inaugurated, the @POTUS Twitter account will be handed over to him with its nearly 12 million followers, but without any tweets on its timeline. All of Obamas tweets will be preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration. Additionally, all his @POTUS tweets will be transferred to a new handle, @POTUS44. Obama was the first president to use Twitter. He also has his @BarackObama account, which is run by his political operation and will remain in his control. Presumably Trump will also still have the @realDonaldTrump twitter account he used so effectively during his campaign. But when Trump is sworn in as President on Jan. 20, there will be a peaceful transition of social media power. Culled: Time The Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Walid Jibrin, said on Sunday that changing the name of the party would be a disaster for the countrys political development. He declared that posterity would not forgive any member of the party plotting to destroy the PDP and dumping it to form another party. Jibrin dismissed the rumour that some members of the main opposition party were planning to form another party. The BoT chairman, who spoke at a press conference in Kaduna, said members were working assiduously to reposition the PDP to reclaim power from the APC, stating that posterity would not forgive any member, who wanted to kill the party to satisfy personal interest. He dissociated himself from any plan to dump the former ruling party. In a report last week, the Senator Ali Modu Sheriff faction of the PDP had alleged that the Senator Ahmed Makarfis group was planning to woo some agrieved senators and chieftains of the All Progressives Congress to team up with the group to form another party. The PUNCH also reported that the Sheriff faction equally alleged that Makarfis group was plotting to kill the PDP, dump it and form another party. But Jibrin claimed that every organ of the party was working to strengthen the party to enable it to play its role as an effective opposition party in the country. Jibrin added, I wish to say authoritatively that there is no plan to dump the PDP as it was never discussed or any discussion taken by any organ of the party. If we do that, posterity will not forgive us because the PDP is already a household name, dearly loved by every household in Nigeria. Posterity will judge any one with the ambition to kill the PDP; for his ambition is quite contrary to the hard work of our founding fathers and mothers, who worked so hard to produce the brand PDP. Changing its name and brand will be a disaster for Nigerias political development, especially when we cast our mind back to the hard work and foresight of our founding fathers and mothers, who came up with the brand name, PDP, which is fully accepted and cherished by Nigerians. On the November 26 governorship poll in Ondo State, the BoT chairman expressed optimism that Mr. Eyitayo Jegede, who he described as the PDP candidate, would win the election. Meanwhile, the National Caretaker Committee of the PDP has called for the reinstatement of the deposed Ojuromi of Uromi, Anslem Edenojie, by the Edo State Government. A former Minister of Works, who is also a former Chairman, BoT of the PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, hails from Uromi. The deposed traditional ruler was relieved of his position for allegedly assaulting a woman during the Edo State governorship election in September. The monarch refused to apologise to the woman within the stipulated time after the woman, who was allegedly assaulted, reported him to the government. Edonojie was suspended, forcing the embattled traditional ruler to approach the court, where he sued the former governor, Adams Oshiomhole, and demanded N1bn as damages. The state government fired the traditional ruler the following day. However, the PDP, under the leadership of Senator Ahmed Makarfi, faulted Oshiomhole for sacking the monarch, describing the action as an evidence of the former governors favouritism. Spokesperson for the party, Dayo Adeyeye, who stated this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday, said, The deposition is further evidence of favouritism and despotic reign of Adams Oshiomhole as the (former) governor of Edo State for the past eight years. It is also the evidence of the desire of the All Progressives Congress to destroy all constitutional and traditional institutions as well as the constitutional rights and freedom of the Nigerian people in its bid to establish a one party state. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria empowers all Nigerian citizens to support, associate with and be affiliated to any political party and candidate of their choice. Adeyeye said it was a known fact that several traditional rulers demonstrated open support, and in fact campaigned for the APC candidate, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, during the state governorship election. Obaseki, who won the election, was sworn in on Saturday as the governor of the state. Adeyeye added that the action of the former governor was an indication of his alleged willingness to destroy constitutional and traditional institutions that do not display obvious support for the tyrannical and anti-people programmes and policies of the APC. He urged well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on Obaseki to reverse the deposition by restoring the monarch to his stool. Source: Punch Legendary martial art movie actor Jackie Chan has been awarded an honorary Oscar at the 8th Annual Governors Awards in Los Angeles, USA on Saturday for his contributions to the film industry. Other honored people were film editor Anne Coates, documentary director Frederick Wiseman and casting director Lynn Stalmaster. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had announced in September that four industry veterans will receive Oscar statuettes. The Chinese actor bagged the award for his efforts after 56 years and 200 films. Chan has written, directed, produced and starred in dozens of films where he won over audiences with his humour and stunts. His most recent release was Skiptrace. Past credits include the Rush Hour series with Chris Tucker, The Karate Kid reboot and the voicing as the Shifu in the animated Kung-Fu Panda films. This was truly a great achievement and honor for the artists. The Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs described the recipients as true pioneers and legends in their crafts. The Sharia law enforcement agency in Jigawa State, Hisbah said it arrested 34 persons and confiscates 916 bottles of alcoholic drinks when it raided beer parlours in Kazaure Local Government Area of the state. This was made known in a statement by the state commandant of the agency, Malam Saidu Aliyu, while speaking with reporters in Dutse on Monday. According to Aliyu, the officials of Hisbah carried out a raid on Sunday at Gada and Kanti quarters in Kazaure town, adding that 673 empty bottles, four Jericans, two coolers and two jumbo-size pots used in brewing local beer, were also among the items recovered during the raid. He said that the agency would continue to fight against immoral acts, including consumption of alcohol and reminded the people that consumption of beer remained prohibited in all parts of the state. He therefore advised residents to desist from engaging in vices and other immoral acts capable of destroying the society. Recall that, Hisbah, on Nov. 4, destroyed 238 bottles of assorted beer in same local government areas of the state. HARRISBURG Political-power sharing at Pennsylvanias Capitol will enter unexplored territory when Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the largest legislative majorities of any political party in modern Pennsylvania history in this case Republicans begin a new two-year legislative session. The legislative elections took place amid a wave breaking across Pennsylvania for President-elect Donald Trump. Republicans picked up three seats in each chamber. Voters helped the GOP successfully defend seats in moderate suburban Philadelphia where Trump was deeply unpopular, and continued a longer-term trend of tilting western Pennsylvania to Republicans. That means in January the House GOP will seat the largest majority of either party in the chamber in 60 years, when the Constitution allowed seven more seats, or 210. In the Senate, the GOP will seat the biggest majority of either side in almost 80 years, since the 1949-50 session. The GOP majorities were already large, forcing Wolf to make significant concessions in past two years, primarily in his bid to increase taxes to wipe out a massive budget deficit and fix school-funding disparities that are among the nations widest. Along the way, he hit a wall in his drive to make Pennsylvanias tax structure more equitable, including a school-funding system that leans heavily on local property owners. And while the Legislature has approved hundreds of millions more for schools, it was short of what Wolf originally requested. Meanwhile, Wolf lost the battle over how to distribute the money. A tax increase will likely be back on Wolfs agenda, with budget makers expecting another large projected budget deficit. Wolf, presumably, will have his 2018 re-election bid on his mind. And adding intrigue to the coming legislative session is the expectation that one Republican senator Scott Wagner, a trashing hauling magnate from Wolfs own York County and possibly others will launch a gubernatorial bid to challenge Wolf. Wolf downplayed the impact of Republican victories in Tuesdays election, saying it didnt change much. Ive been working with an overwhelmingly Republican Senate for the last two years, Ive been working with an overwhelmingly Republican House for the last two years, weve gotten some pretty remarkable things done, Wolf told reporters Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said the victories solidify a dynamic that was already there. Despite a protracted budget stalemate that consumed Wolfs first year, Senate Republicans passed much of what they set out to pass, such as changes to the state system of selling wine and liquor and to benefits in the states public pension systems, Corman said. Obviously, the second year was a better year working with the governor, and if he takes that perspective then we can get a lot done, Corman said Friday. If he goes back to a large tax-and-spend agenda, hell have troubles. Disagreements between House and Senate GOP majorities were perhaps as big of a stumbling block as any dispute between Wolf and Republican lawmakers. Still, Corman made it clear that Republicans would continue to pursue their agenda, such as advancing alternatives to traditional public schools. Larger Republican majorities also make it at least slightly more likely that Wolf will have to make even bigger concessions if he wants to advance his priorities. With voters coming out primarily to cast a ballot in the presidential election, it was debatable how much they considered Wolfs performance when they delivered the legislative victories to Republicans. Still, Wolf did not excuse himself. The election showed that Americans are frustrated, angry, worried and anxious, and that everyone in public life needs to do better, he said. The state also must find a way to lighten the property tax burden and spur more job and economic growth, Wolf said. I am, I guess, the leader of the party in Pennsylvania, Wolf said, and so I have to take responsibility for not doing as well as we should have done. But again, Im trying to recognize here at the state level, with what we can do, what we need to do to address the concerns, the challenges, frustrations and anxieties of Pennsylvanians. The Presidency on Monday warned that Nigeria could face famine in January if drastic steps are not taken now. Nigeria, which is currently Africas largest producer of cereals and grains risks famine from early next year as a huge demand in the global market is targeting Nigerias surplus production. Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu made the grim forecast in a radio interview in Kano on Monday. Shehu told Pyramid radio that the huge demand for our grains in the global market is creating an excellent environment for the mindless export of Nigerian grains across our borders and unless this is curtailed, Nigerian markets will be bereft of food by January next year. He said the Ministry of Agriculture has advised the President on the need to draw the attention of all Nigerians to the issue which, if not addressed promptly, could lead to a shortage of grains in Nigeria by January. He said: Over the past year, Providence has blessed Nigeria with a bountiful harvest of grains, more than enough to feed the country and to export to other countries. At present, there is a high demand for grains from Nigeria, from African countries as distant as Libya and Algeria, and from places as far away as Brazil. However, the ministry of agriculture has raised concerns about a massive rate of exportation, which could lead to a shortage of grains in Nigeria by January, Malam Garba said. He explained that Nigeria currently enjoys a free market situation. President Muhammadu Buhari is not in any way opposed to or intent on tampering with that. On the other hand, exporters also have a moral obligation to make their produce available to Nigerians who live within our countrys borders, to ensure that our citizens have access to food, he added. The Presidents Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity informed the radio station that the ministry of agriculture estimated that no fewer than 500 trucks laden with grain leave Nigerian markets every week, headed for countries outside Nigerian borders. The major markets involved in this exportation are: the Dawanau market in Kano, Naigatari in Jigawa, Bama in Borno, and Ilela in Sokoto, as well as three other main markets in Kebbi State, he said. He further explained that President Buhari has on various occasions reiterated his plan for Nigeria to become a food-producing giant, self-sufficient to the point of depending very little on imported food. This noble plan could easily be defeated by the pull of the foreign market if food continues to leave our shores to feed people elsewhere. If care is not taken, Nigeria could face a famine by January, he stressed. Building our country into the edifice we envision it to be will require sacrifice and strategy from every single Nigerian. Let us remember that charity begins at home, said in the program. Asked a question on what the government is doing to avert the frightening situation, the Presidential Spokesman said that President Buhari has asked the Ministry of Agriculture to present a quick plan for the purchase of surplus grains to be stored in warehouses across the country to save for the rainy day but opined that there was a need for moral pressure on exporters by traditional and religious authorities to curtail the depletion of the home market. Source: TheNationOnline Nigerian newspaper headlines November 14, 2016. Vanguard Following predictions that over 18.2 million Africans, including an estimated 4.8 million Nigerians, may become diabetic by 2030, as World Health Organisation, WHO, called for prioritisation of actions to prevent people becoming overweight and obese, beginning before birth and in early childhood. Punch The Lagos State Government is in search of a permanent site for the annual Lagos International Trade Fair. Guardian The Governing Council of the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB) has ordered the institutions striking workers to resume work today (Monday) or risk being sacked. Premium Times The founder of The Synagogue Church Of All Nations, Temitope Joshua, on Sunday said his earlier prophecy on the U.S. presidential election was given different interpretation by people on a different level with him. The Sun This, perhaps, is not the best of times for most Nigerians who either want to renew or procure international passport as they are finding it extremely difficult because the booklets are no longer available in most states of the country. Thisday Following the selection of Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November 26 governorship election in Ondo State, former Lagos State governor and National Leader of the ruling APC, Chief Bola Tinubu, is faced with a dilemma over who to support. The Nation The Federal Government plan additional 1459MW from 20 power plants to the national grid next year to bring power generation above 6,000Mw. Men of the Nigerian police have been reported to have opened fire at a group of Shia Muslims holding a demonstration in Kano, in preparation for the upcoming Arbaeen mourning rituals, which mark 40 days after the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein, the third Shia Imam. Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) were said to have been attacked when they were conducting the annual Arbaeen Symbolic Trekking from Kano to Zaria in Kaduna state. Police blocked the road and fired teargas and live ammunition on the pilgrims. One has been reportedly killed, while some injured. IMN has been banned in several northern states whose government accuse of being an unlawful society. The Shia have also been targets of violence from Islamic extremists. They have been under attacks which have led to loss of their lives and properties like mosques and schools. They continue to demand the release of their detained leader El-Zakzaky who remains in custody without a charge. SEE ALSO: El-Rufai Orders Arrest Of Attackers of Shiites @targanl ST. JOHNS (November 14, 2016) Newfoundland International Motorsports Limited is pleased to announce that plans to hold a Targa Bambina competition during the Canada Day long weekend in 2017. This mini version of the internationally acclaimed competition, will be held from June 30th July 3 and will consist of three days of competition, offering 16 competitive stages on the Burin Peninsula. At the conclusion of the 15th annual Targa in September, it was obvious that there was strong demand for increased competitive motorsport activity within the province. With over one hundred competitors involved in the recent Targa, it became clear that another secondary event could be supported, this one by mostly local competitors. This smaller version of the Targa is designed as a compact, three day adventure, instead of the grueling week-long event that is held each September. Two categories will be featured in the Bambina event for competitors to choose from Grand Touring, the competitive division, and Fast Touring, the non-competitive division. The Bambina gives the opportunity for people with an interest in motorsports to try their hand at stage rallying, without having to commit to the time and effort that the full Targa would involve. Entry for this event is a fraction of the cost of the Targa, and the overall winner will gain free admission to Targas 16th annual event in September. Tom Hollett was an immense supporter of the tarmac rally and embodies what Targa Newfoundland is all about. He was larger than life and created what he dreamed of. Targa will assist the Oldest Colony Trust, a registered charity that Tom created, that creates and maintains public amenities such as historical buildings, recreational areas, and trail systems in the Burin area. Funds generated by the Bambina, through nightly car shows, the use of community accommodations , and other initiatives, will go directly to the Trust, to support this worthy cause. Managed and operated by Newfoundland International Motorsports Limited, Targa Newfoundland is one of three internationally recognized Targa motorsport events in the world. The Tom Hollett Memorial Bambina competition is scheduled for June 30 July 3, 2017. The event will utilize the roads on the Burin Peninsula and be based out of the community of Burin. Contacts: Media: Robyn Quinn 709-727-8536 robyn@targanl.com Competitors: Darren Sheppard 1-877-332-2413 registrar@targanewfoundland.com Websites: targanfld.com www.facebook.com/targanl www.twitter.com/targanl www.instagram.com/targa_nl From: Darren Sheppard/ General Manager Join us for the 16th annual Targa Newfoundland September 9th-16th, 2017 Newfoundland International Motorsports Limited 303 Thorburn Road, Suite 2-D, St. Johns, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. A1B 4R1 Tel: 709-722-2413 Tel: 877-332-2413 Fax: 709-753-7646 [targanfld.com]targanfld.com www.facebook.com/targanl www.twitter.com/targanl This years Fintech Finance 35 highlights the importance of collaboration with funders and dealmakers, which has become just as critical for up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Many of the Fintech Finance 35 those ranked by Institutional Investor as the leading financiers and facilitators of the ongoing entrepreneurial explosion in financial technology have "partner" in their titles. Their firms are structured as partnerships, but all on the list are partners in a practical, day-to-day sense. They are as much strategic advisers and collaborators as they are funders; "partnerships" are what they offer to companies they invest in and usher toward growth and maturity. Take, for example, General Atlantic, a venerable growth equity firm whose financial services sector team made more than $1 billion in investments over the past 12 months under the direction of Jonathan Korngold, No. 1 in this year's ranking. A transaction announced in May with Argus Media, valuing the market news and data enterprise at nearly 1 billion ($1.2 billion), was characterized as a strategic partnership, with General Atlantic contributing its "expertise in the information services and Internet and technology sectors." {BrightcoveVideo} General Atlantic also stressed partnership in leading a $325 million Series E funding late last year for marketplace lending platform Avant, with Korngold joining the company's board. Another Avant director is James Robinson III (No. 4), general partner of RRE Ventures, who says that "what we have to offer" comes first in conversations with prospective portfolio companies. Although there is, by definition, a collaborative element in any investment or advisory relationship, the sector that has come to be known as fintech has special needs. The culture of a start-up is very different from that of an established financial institution; even if the latter wishes to be more nimble and embrace new ideas and technologies, its procurement and compliance bureaucracy can get in the way. Hence the emergence of ecosystems designed to lower such barriers. Eighteen-year-old FTV Capital (Brad Bernstein and Richard Garman, No. 7) pioneered in this regard with its Global Partner Network, which includes major financial companies that invest in FTV funds and thereby gain insight into new developments. In recent years regional hubs have sprung up as meeting places for entrepreneurs, incumbents, and funders, among them the New York FinTech Innovation Lab (see Partnership Fund for New York City's Maria Gotsch, No. 12), London's Innovate Finance (Lawrence Wintermeyer, No. 28), FinTech Hong Kong (Janos Barberis, No. 32), and, in Singapore, a "smart financial center" spearheaded by the central bank (Sopnendu Mohanty, No. 34). "We are beginning to observe much more of a push toward collaboration a shift from complete independence to an interest in building tools with established players that happened really quickly in this sector," notes Vanessa Colella (No. 18) of Citi Ventures. General Atlantic's Korngold agrees that there is "increased collaboration between fintech companies and more traditional financial institutions," along with "a more grounded and realistic view of what each side can bring to the table, which is creating great partnership opportunities." The Fintech Finance 35 ranking was compiled by Institutional Investor editors and staff, with nominations and input from industry participants and experts. The evaluation criteria included individual achievements and leadership at the respective firms; influence in the community at large; and the size, reputation, and impact of the respective funds and institutions in the financial technology industry and particularly in the current wave of fintech financing. To view the individual profiles, click on the names below. On the profile pages, last year's ranks are shown; newcomers are designated PNR (previously not ranked). The Fintech Finance 35 will be honored at the iiFintech Awards taking place on December 1. The awards program was designed to bring together the honorees of the Tech 50, Fintech Finance 35, and Trading Technology 40 to explore how financial technology will continue to transform the industry. This ranking was compiled under the direction of Senior Contributing Editor Jeffrey Kutler. Individual profiles were written by Kutler, Asia Bureau Chief Allen T. Cheng, Senior Writers Frances Denmark and Julie Segal, and Staff Writer Jess Delaney, as well as by former Editor Michael Peltz, Content Editor Anne Szustek, Associate Editor Kaitlin Ugolik, and Assistant Editor Jen Werner. 24. Fabian Vandenreydt Head, Innotribe SWIFT Last year: 26 Ecosystems designed to bridge the culture gap between established financial institutions and technology start-ups and encourage investments in the latter are so commonplace today that more than 30 of them have come together in the Global FinTech Hubs Federation, which SWIFTs Fabian Vandenreydt and Innovate Finances Lawrence Wintermeyer (No. 28) launched in August. Back in 2009 before fintech became a sound bite, Vandenreydt notes there was only Innotribe, an initiative of the Belgium-based SWIFT bank messaging cooperative intended to promote innovation among its membership and by extension throughout the financial services world. A former Euroclear vice president and Capco consultant who joined SWIFT in 2004, Vandenreydt was present at the creation of Innotribe and has been its head since 2013, overseeing, among other activities, an annual competition for start-ups that stages preliminary events beyond the normal hubs, he says, in places like Mexico City and Cape Town, South Africa. This years Innotribe Start-up Challenge winners, crowned during SWIFTs Sibos convention in Geneva in September, were U.K. companies Coin Sciences and RISE Financial Technologies, and San Franciscobased SmartContract. All are working on blockchain, or distributed ledger, systems, which in Vandenreydts view will evolve in certain pockets of the market. It is not ready, though, for broad adoption across the industry. The 51-year-old wears other hats: He is global head of securities markets; head of the SWIFT Institute, which has commissioned academic research on such topics as blockchain, payment innovations, and open application programming interfaces in banking; and is executive co-sponsor of SWIFTs own R&D. The common thread is ecosystem enabling, Vandenreydt explains: I want to weave innovation in with the business. You have to be agile in the way you respond to market opportunities. Otherwise its a hobby. Pamela Peedin will step down as CIO of Dartmouth College in June 2017, the private university announced in a release late last week. Executive search firm David Barrett Partners is working to secure a new leader for the $4.5 billion endowment. The firm has recently executed searches for investment chiefs at the Harvard Management Company, Stanford Management Company, American Red Cross, and the University of California. Peedin joined Dartmouth in 2011. She arrived from Boston University, where as CIO Peedin set up the schools investment office and managed its then-$1 billion portfolio. During her tenure at Dartmouth, the Hanover, New Hampshire-based Ivy League fund returned an average 8.8 percent annualized over the five years ending June 30, 2016. Dartmouth, like most of its peers, posted a weak performance for 2016, losing 1.9 percent. Peedin will depart at the end of the next fiscal year to spend time with her husband and their two teenage sons before the boys head to college, according to the announcement. This was not an easy decision for me, she continued. I do work I love for an institution I love. Leanna Orr is Global Content Director of Investor Intelligence Network (IIN), Institutional Investors private community for asset owners. India-Nepal Joint Training Exercise Surya Kiran culminates Published: November 14, 2016 The tenth edition of India-Nepal Joint Military Training exercise was conducted at Army Battle School (NABS), Saljhandi in Nepal from 31 October to 13 November 2016. The bilateral Military Training exercise had played important role in boosting defence ties between India and Nepal. Key Facts In this exercise, Indian Army is being represented by elite Kumaon Regiment, while Nepal Army is being represented by Jabar Jung Battalion. It provided an ideal platform for troops of the two countries to share their experiences on Counter Terrorists Operations and Disaster Management. During training other activities conducted included basic familiarisation with each others weapons & equipment and concepts while operating in Counter Terrorism environment. Background The Surya Kiran series of military exercises between India and Nepal are being conducted annually. It is the largest bilateral military exercise in terms of troops participation in series of military training exercises undertaken by India with various countries. Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016 Topics: Defence India-Nepal Indian Military Exercises Military Exercises National Nepal surya kiran Latest E-Books This content is from: Portfolio Dont give up on small funds. Theyve still outperformed in 20 of the last 25 years. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has launched a new national campaign urging businesses and households to prepare for what may be a severe disaster season.The ICA will aim to raise awareness over the course of the summer disaster season across Australia with targeted campaigns in different states.Rob Whelan, ICA CEO, said that the whole country shows elements of increasing risk for a severe summer of disasters.Its shaping up to be a severe summer of natural disasters, and insurers and emergency services organisations across Australia are concerned many households and businesses are not prepared, Whelan said.An above-average cyclone season has been forecast by the weather bureau, while the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre predicts heightened risk across much of southern Australia, especially in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.The Bureau of Meteorology has also warned of the possibility of the formation of La Nina which could also bring increased rainfall to eastern and central Australia.The campaign will utilise print, online and radio and will see a cyclone-focused campaign targeting North Queensland, Darwin and the Pilbara, while a bushfire-focused campaign will be used in southern states.Last disaster season brought insured losses of more than $630 million and that was considered fairly benign, Whelan continued.Australians must not underestimate the damage a severe season could wreak. A new report has suggested that M&A activity within the broker market will keep up its recent pace with one expert noting that scale will be vital for future success.The 2016 Insurance Broking Benchmarking Report, released by Macquarie , found that, even after the substantial consolidation of recent years, the industry appetite for M&A is still strong.The report found that 51% of the 200 broking firms surveyed from across Australia say that they are willing buyers- up from 44% five years ago. Only one in five principles are willing to even consider selling.Eoghan Trehy, division director for Macquarie Business Banking, told Insurance Business that M&A activity is not finished.Scale is just vital, Trehy said.The stats coming back in this survey point to the fact that size is important. It allows you to get the benefits of efficiencies and invest in those areas of the business that require fine-tuning around technology, whether it be workflow or customer relationship management tools.For smaller brokerages and ARs, Trehy said that finding a speciality or niche market will be key to setting businesses aside in a competitive market.The report found a surprisingly buoyant market with over a third of firms recording profit margins of greater than 30% in the last financial year. While many have been quick to note that the current market represents the worst performance in a generation, Trehy noted that brokers have focused on efficiencies to drive growth.Investment in technology will also be very important moving forward, Trehy stressed, as the industry develops in new ways. Trehy noted that while the business will remain focused on people, giving clients a choice will be paramount.I dont think sufficient focus, broadly across the market, has occurred on technology, Trehy continued.I think there is going to be a big separation of those that perform really strongly and those that have chosen to not embrace the technology and innovation or continued to look for efficiencies.Looking to the future, the report found that broking firms are optimistic. Eighty seven per cent expect higher revenues in 2017 and Trehy noted that green shoots can be seen in certain lines of business as the market moves from rock bottom to a slight uptick.Over the next 12 months, many businesses say hardening premiums will be a key factor underpinning growth, Trehy said.While smaller firms are focused on premium funding revenue and improving back office efficiencies further, high profit firms who have already bedded down more productive work flows and tools will prioritise new client acquisition to drive higher profits.Successful insurance broking firms are seeing the opportunity in a challenging market, and are looking to adjust their business model, utilising new technology and tools to stay at the forefront of the market and deliver an exceptional experience to clients. Ethics and values Business success Client relationships Teamwork Innovation/entrepreneurship Industry contribution High achieving brokers working in the Australian market are being urged to enter for their chance to win the prestigious Valerie Baker Memorial Award.The award, which recognises excellence in professional practice in the general insurance intermediary sector, is considered to be one of the most important in the industry, attracting sponsorship this year from AIMS Group, Gold Seal and the Steadfast Group with support from Lloyds Australia and Lloyds of London.The award is open to all Australian brokers and underwriting agencies. The winner is selected on merit, and there are no limitations such as gender or cluster group membership.The selection criteria/success indicators are:A strong interest in exploring the foundations of the insurance industry and helping to fly the flag for Australian intermediaries in the London market will be highly regarded, the award organisers said.The judges for the 2017 award are a panel of senior industry professionals including Steadfasts Jim Rudkin; Chris Mackinnon , Lloyds general representative for Australia; Martin McAvenna, representing the AIMS Group; and Sheila Baker , managing director of Gold Seal, who is chair.The prize includes a first-hand opportunity to see how the London market operates with an expenses-paid trip to the UK capital, a specifically tailored educational experience, thorough insight into the workings of the London market and meetings of members thereof to offer a career enhancing networking opportunity.Last years award winner, Daniel Bullock of Safeguard Insurance Brokers in South Australia, recently returned from his London trip which was something he said he couldnt speak highly enough about.The contacts I have made both here in Australia and in London and their willingness to assist me was an experience in itself, he commented.The high regard in which they hold the Valerie Baker Memorial Award was apparent with everyone I met.This carried through to London where I was fortunate enough to meet a range of people from senior Lloyds brokers through to the British Insurance Brokers Association CEO and the deputy chairman of Lloyds.The people I have met and their roles in the industry is eye opening, he added.To be eligible, candidates are required to be resident in Australia and be currently employed by or the principal of a general insurance intermediary (insurance brokerage or underwriting agency).For guidance in the application process, potential candidates are invited to contact Sheila Baker from Gold Seal.Candidates can nominate themselves or a high achiever they know. Applications close on March 01, 2017.Visit here for more information. Rob Whelan, CEO of the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), has been re-elected to the Global Federation of Insurance Associations (GFIA) executive committee, it has been announced.The five-member committee includes some of the biggest names in global insurance and will be led by Governor Dirk Kempthorne, president and chief executive officer of the American Council of Life Insurers, who was named president.Whelan has been elected as membership executive.GFIA has a close working relationship with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), which plays a substantial role in shaping international and domestic regulatory environments, an ICA spokesperson told Insurance Business following Whelans re-election.GFIA also promotes the importance of insurance within the global economy to the G20. Mr Whelans presence on the GFIA executive committee ensures the interests of Australian insurers continue to be heard in these key international forums.Joining Whelan and Kempthorne are Recaredo Arias, director general of the Association of Mexican Insurance Companies, who was named vice-resident, Michaela Koller, director general of Insurance Europe, who was named secretary general, and Frank Swedlove, president of the Canadian Life & Health Insurance Association, who is past president.Bachir Baddou, general manager of the Moroccan Insurance Association, was elected as a regional representative on the executive committee, and Toyonari Sasaki, vice chairman of the Life Insurance Association of Japan, was elected as GFIAs treasurer.The Turkish Insurance Association was also announced as a new member of the global federation at its general assembly held in Asuncion, Paraguay, last week.It is with great pleasure that we welcome our colleagues in the Turkish Insurance Association into the federation, and we look forward to their contributions to our discussions, Whelan said.The GFIA was founded in 2012 by 32 life and health, property and casualty and reinsurance associations from around the world. It now includes 41 member associations, with interests in 60 countries.The companies represented account for more than US$4 trillion of total insurance premium, representing approximately 87% of total insurance premiums worldwide. Opponents of a vote to legalize marijuana in Maine have taken the first step toward a potential recount request. Voters in the state chose to legalize recreational marijuana via a referendum vote this week. The referendum won approval by a fraction of a percentage point after a count that took nearly two days. The No On 1 campaign says it has picked up petition papers from the secretary of states office. Campaign director Scott Gagnon says the coalition that opposes legalization has received numerous requests to continue the fight. Gagnon says the campaign is considering filing for a recount because of potential harm to Maine children and the states medical marijuana program. Supporters of legalization say home cultivation could be legal by Christmas. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Cannabis Maine Joshua DeLeon earned $200 a week driving for Uber, a side job he used to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. Then he got a $300 ticket from Atlantic City for operating without a proper license, and he quit. I was under the impression this was a legal business, said DeLeon, 29, of Egg Harbor Township. It should be a legal process. Some Uber drivers operate surreptitiously to avoid fines, others are being chased by local regulators in what Atlantic City Licensing Director Dale Finch called a cat-and-mouse game. Atlantic City has issued more than 300 tickets to ride-hailing drivers so far this year, Finch said. DeLeon found himself, like many others, stuck in a legal limbo. Because ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft are unregulated in New Jersey, some municipalities consider them illegal. While state legislators are still working on a bill to protect consumers and eliminate a patchwork of local laws, the lack of statewide regulations has created a complicated problem for the drivers, the towns and taxi companies. Taxi drivers say they pay registration and licensing fees and have different requirements for background checks that their new competitors dont. Stuck in between are people like 30-year-old Mays Landing resident Anthony Mazzone, a personal trainer at Tilton Fitness who drives for Uber on weekends. Mazzone told the Press of Atlantic City he has learned quick how to avoid getting a ticket, staying away from taxi lines at certain casinos and using his app to get in contact with riders to let them know exactly where they will meet. That is what makes the job uncomfortable. Its not picking people up that you dont know. Its not going to places where youre unfamiliar. Its the fact that you could be given a citation for driving a drunk person, he said. Other states and towns have wrestled with the legality of Uber and Lyft. Earlier this month, Pennsylvania passed a law legalizing ride-hailing companies, but not after some uncertainty over whether to allow the service. Both companies pulled out of Austin, Texas, after the city wanted to require fingerprinting for drivers. In October, the New Jersey Assembly passed a bill that would address some concerns, including requirements regarding driver eligibility, insurance coverage and records retention. The measure still needs to be approved in the Senate and Republican Gov. Chris Christie. Uber spokesman Craig Ewer said the company instituted measures to keep passengers safe, including photos of the driver, license plate numbers and car descriptions, and ratings for both drivers and passengers. Ewer said the company agrees that statewide regulation would give riders and drivers the certainty they need that ridesharing is here to stay. He said Uber runs extensive background checks on its drivers, looking at criminal history, motor vehicle records and sex offender databases. Ewer said Uber would leave the state, as it has left other areas, if fingerprinting were required because they are based on incomplete data and can potentially discriminate against minority communities. Finch, who supports fingerprinting, said Atlantic Citys major concern is background checks. Uber says that they do a complete background check, and all the limos and taxis say the background check they use is not sufficient, he said. Finch said Atlantic City will have to come up with an ordinance if the state doesnt take action. Taxis and limos bring in money for the city. According to Finch, taxi drivers each pay an annual fee of $60 in addition to a $150 annual fee for a taxi medallion, which can have up to four drivers registered to it. There are 250 taxi medallions registered in the city. Limousine drivers pay an annual fee of $100. Its the weekends where its very competitive between the limos and the taxis and now Uber, and the citys not booming like it was, so everyone is kind of fighting for the same dollar, Finch said. Mercantile inspectors monitor valet lines at casinos on weekends to catch unlicensed drivers, he said. DeLeon, an emergency room nurse, said he was stopped while picking up a client at Harrahs Resort. Out of nowhere, this one valet driver said, `Are you an Uber driver? Then some guy came over and he asked for my license, but he didnt introduce himself, DeLeon said. DeLeon later received two tickets in the mail. At his court date, there were seven ride-hailing drivers facing charges of operating an unlicensed limousine or taxi, he said. Uber sent a lawyer to represent the drivers, but one of the two tickets was still imposed. Information from: The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Personal Auto Officials say the Lansing Board of Water & Light in Michigan has paid a $25,000 ransom to unlock its internal communications systems after they were disabled in the spring by a cyberattack. General manager Dick Peffley told the Lansing State Journal it cost about $2.4 million to respond to the emergency, including paying for the ransom and technology upgrades to prevent future attacks. He says all but $500,000 of those costs are covered by insurance. He also said paying the ransom was distasteful and disgusting, but sadly necessary. Records acquired through the Freedom of Information Act by the Lansing State Journal from the utility had a multi-layered Cyber Edge insurance policy with AIG and the Illinois National Insurance Co. at the time of the attack. The April 25 cyberattack shut down the boards email and accounting systems after an employee unknowingly opened an email with an infected attachment. The virus affected email, phones, computers, printers and other technology, and it took about a week for the utility to recover. Officials said at the time of the attack that the utility service continued but a phone line to report outages was affected along with an online outage map. Peffley said redundancies and separation of its corporate computer network from the utility network allowed it to continue operations. There is no evidence that shows customer and employee personal information was compromised by the ransomware virus, said utility officials. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Cyber Michigan A jury has ruled the city of Chicago must pay nearly $2.5 million to a Chicago Transit Authority train operator who was injured after a police car chasing a bicyclist ran into a Brown Line train. CTA worker Jeffery Bryants attorneys tell the Chicago Tribune a Cook County jury ruled last week in favor of their client, who suffered a serious spinal injury after the August 2012 crash in the Albany Park neighborhood. The suit hinged on an interpretation of a Chicago Police Department policy requiring officers to weigh the need to pursue a suspect against the danger created by a motor vehicle chase. The city argued the rule only applies to cases in which a police car pursues another vehicle. Bryants attorneys argued the order should govern all police cars regardless of the suspects mode of transportation. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Duke Energy Corp. agreed to a $27 million settlement of claims that directors wrongfully concealed their plan to fire Chief Executive Officer William Johnson just minutes after the company closed on its $13.7 billion merger with Progress Energy Inc. Duke Energy agreed to settle multiple suits over Johnsons removal after a judge concluded Sept. 1 that its board members must face accusations they acted in bad faith by hiding plans to oust ex-Progress CEO Johnson from shareholders and regulators so they could install Duke Energy CEO James Rogers as the merged companys top executive. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Energy is the second-largest U.S. utility owner by market value. Duke Energy is pleased that the parties were able to reach a settlement agreement, Dave Scanzoni, a company spokesman, said Friday. The accord, which will be funded by certain insurers, isnt an admission by the company of any liability or wrongdoing, Dukes lawyers said in a Nov. 9 court filing in Chancery Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Chancery Judge Sam Glasscock III concluded on Sept. 1 that investors raised legitimate questions about whether Duke Energy directors acted improperly by not disclosing to shareholders their plan for a boardroom coup and violated North Carolina law by keeping it from regulators. Johnson became Duke Energys CEO for what may be one of the briefest tenures in corporate history, holding the position for a few minutes before the newly formed board held a meeting and voted to oust him and put Rogers at the helm, according to investors court filings. Under the merger agreement, Johnson was slated to become the merged power providers top executive, but Ex-Duke Energy directors outnumbered former Progress board members and plotted to immediately remove Johnson once the deal was finalized, shareholders alleged. They elected to make it appear that they were going to comply with the merger agreement, when in fact they had decided to fire Johnson immediately post-merger and replace him with Old Duke CEO Rogers, the judge said in his ruling rebuffing Duke Energys bid to have the suits thrown out. The judge must give final approval to the tentative settlement of the so-called derivative suits. Investors dont receive awards in such cases and the insurance payout from policies covering directors will go into the Duke Energys coffers. The case is In RE Duke Energy Corporation Derivative Litigation, CA 7705, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Carriers My sefer Yad Moshe has been unavailable in seforim stores. However it was recently reprinted and shipped to New York There are two distrubu... Netziv (Shemos 34:10) We need to explicate the manner of Divine Providence. There are two types which four. 1) there are two by means of ... Shemos Rabbah (52:03) The story is told of R. Simeon b. Halafta, that he once came home just before the Sabbath and found that he had no fo... Rashbam (Shemos 4:10): It is inconceivable that a prophet who spoke with G d face to face and received the Torah from Him should have a sp... Important!! email - yadmoshe@gmail.com EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants, a retail property, casualty insurance brokerage and employee benefits consultant, announced that Ascende an EPIC Company has promoted Mary Parker and Dina Flavin to managing principals in Houston. In addition, the companys Southwest Region also welcomed Javier Yturralde as its Global Solutions practice leader. Parker and Flavin join Steve Goulet and Suzanne McGarey as strategic leaders of Ascendes Health & Welfare practice. Collectively, they also serve as client engagement managers, providing senior leadership support and direction to the firms consulting clients. Parker joined Ascende in 2005 as a senior associate. Most recently, she led the Global Solutions practice, supporting clients globally mobile employees, including U.S. expatriates, rotators, third country nationals and local nationals. Prior to joining the firm, Parker served as a benefits analyst at Reliant Energy Inc. and the Westlake Group. Flavin began her career at Ascende in 2005 as a senior associate as well. Prior to joining the firm, she held 10 years of experience with actuarial and underwriting roles in the health insurance industry. Yturralde brings 20 years of international employee benefits experience. Prior to joining the firm, he served as regional director of Broker/Insurance Partnerships at International SOS where he was responsible for the development and expansion of key brokerage, consulting and insurer relationships in the U.S. He also previously served as regional director of MetLifes Multinational Solutions, formerly AIG. Source: EPIC Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment last week to legalize medical marijuana, broadening access to pot beyond the limited therapeutic uses approved by the legislature two years ago. Amendment 2 passed with 71 percent approval, well above the 60 percent needed to become law. Two years ago a similar measure received 58 percent. We were confident going into the election that it was going to pass but this is truly historic, said Ben Pollara, campaign manager for United for Care. Pollara said internal polling suggested that over 70 percent would vote for the amendment, but he was still surprised to see the actual results. 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 formally legalizes medical marijuana, and broadens access for diseases with symptoms other than seizures or spasms. Specifically the measure allows prescriptions for 10 illnesses: cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohns disease, Parkinsons and multiple sclerosis. It also allows doctors to prescribe pot for any other similar kind of ailment. Two years ago, when the measure fell short of approval, opponents expressed concerns that the state would be overrun with pot shops and that children wouldnt be adequately protected from potential bad effects of the drug. Many thought that having the issue on the ballot during a presidential election would help the measure this time. There is more embracing of marijuana, especially for medical purposes, nationally, said Pat Allen, a 51-year old teacher from Tallahassee who voted for it. Florida becomes the 26th state along with the District of Columbia to legalize the marijuana plant for medical use. Before the passage of Amendment 2, Florida was one of 16 states where only part of the marijuana plant is used. Proponents said loopholes were closed this time, including requiring parental written consent for underage patients. Better late than never, said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Most states outside the South already have legal medical marijuana, but the overwhelming victory today in Florida is likely to accelerate the momentum for reform throughout the region. The Department of Health will regulate how medical marijuana can be distributed along with mandating identification cards for caregivers and patients. Many rules and regulations from how the marijuana is grown to regulations on how it can be transported for in-home delivery already have been passed by the legislature under laws for limited use of marijuana. Those regulations also will apply to the constitutional amendment. The No on 2 campaign issued a statement saying that they hope the authors of the amendment are true to their word that the legislature will have wide discretion on regulation of medical marijuana. Pollara said there have been conversations with the legislature about the next steps before the 2017 session begins in March. There is still a lot of work to do. There are still a number of clear and present conflicts between the current statute and the amendment. However it is nothing that cant be worked out, Pollara said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Florida Legislation Cannabis The University of Georgia will spend more than $400,000 after federal inspectors found dozens of safety violations in the way it handles hazardous waste. Under a consent agreement and final order with the Environmental Protection Agency, the university will pay a $99,900 penalty and spend $333,000 over the next 18 months on programs that will help local public school districts and emergency response organizations in low-income areas upgrade hazardous waste practices, response capabilities and materials handling. The Athens Banner-Herald reports UGA President Jere Morehead signed the agreement Wednesday with Larry Lamberth, chief of the EPAs Region 4 Enforcement and Compliance Branch. In inspections dating back to October 2014, EPA found violations in a number of UGA buildings and a lab in the Riverbend Research Lab North. The EPA said UGA failed to monitor storage areas for leaking or deteriorating containers; stored wastes in unclosed containers; failed to properly label hazardous waste; and failed to give UGA workers required training in hazardous waste handling, among other violations. Although federal authorities found numerous violations in UGA hazardous waste handling, including improperly using tap water to dilute waste poured into a sink drain, the agency did not find any of the violations placed UGA students or workers in any danger, according to a university announcement of the settlement. According to that announcement, the university will coordinate with public school districts to upgrade lighting in elementary and secondary schools, working with them to remove and properly dispose of fluorescent lights and fixtures containing mercury or PCBs and replace them with light-emitting diode (LED) equipment. The agreement allows UGA to provide help in low-income communities across the state, but officials plan to prioritize initiatives in Athens-Clarke County, said university spokesman Greg Trevor. UGA has also addressed all violations alleged by the EPA, according to the universitys announcement. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Georgia Pollution Education Universities When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. What Is Passive Income? Passive income is earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. As with active income, passive income is usually taxable, but it is often treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Key Takeaways Passive income is earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other business in which a person is not actively involved. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has specific rules for what it calls material participation, which determine whether a taxpayer has actively participated in business, rental, or other income-producing activity. A taxpayer can claim a passive loss against income generated from passive activities. 1:18 Passive Income Understanding Passive Income There are three main categories of income: active income, passive income, and portfolio income. Passive incomes include earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other business in which a person is not actively involveda silent investor, for example. Proponents of earning passive income tend to be boosters of a work-from-home and be-your-own-boss professional lifestyle. Passive income has been a relatively loosely used term in recent years. Colloquially, its been used to define money being earned regularly with little or no effort on the part of the person receiving it. Passive income, when used as a technical term, is defined by the IRS as either net rental income or income from a business in which the taxpayer does not materially participate, and in some cases can include self-charged interest. Portfolio income is considered passive income by some analysts. However, the IRS does not always agree that income from dividends, interest, and so forth is passive, so its wise to check with a tax professional on that subject. Types of Passive Income Passive income includes self-charged interest, rental properties, and businesses in which the person receiving income does not materially participate. There are specific IRS rules that need to be followed for income to be considered passive. Self-charged interest When money is loaned to a partnership or an S corporation acting as a pass-through entity (essentially, a business designed to reduce the effects of double taxation) by that entitys owner, the interest income on that loan to the portfolio income can qualify as passive income. Certain self-charged interest income or deductions may be treated as passive activity gross income or passive activity deductions if the loan proceeds are used in a passive activity, the IRS states. Rental properties Rental properties are defined as passive income with a couple of exceptions. If youre a real estate professional, any rental income that youre making counts as active income. If youre self-renting, meaning that you own a space and are renting it out to a corporation or partnership where you conduct business, that does not constitute passive incomeunless that lease had been signed before 1988, in which case youve been exempted into having that income defined as passive. Income from leasing land does not qualify as passive income, either. However, a landowner can benefit from passive income loss rules if the property nets a loss during the tax year. If you hold land for investment, any earnings would be considered active. No material participation in a business If you put $500,000 into a candy store with the agreement that the owners would pay you a percentage of earnings, that would be considered passive income as long as you do not participate in the operation of the business in any meaningful way other than making the investment. If you helped in managing the company with the owners, then your income could be seen as active, because you provided material participation. The IRS has standards for material participation. The following are all considered examples of material participation: If youve dedicated more than 500 hours to a business or activity from which youre profiting If your participation in an activity has been substantially all of the participation for that tax year If youve participated up to 100 hours and that is at least as much as any other person involved in the activity Special Considerations When you record a loss on a passive activity, only passive activity profits can have their deductions offset as opposed to the income as a whole. It would be prudent to ensure that all your passive activities were classified that way, to make the most of the tax deduction. These deductions are allocated for the next tax year and are applied in a reasonable manner that takes into account the next years earnings or losses. To save time and effort, you can group two or more passive activities into one larger activity, provided that you form an appropriate economic unit, according to the IRS. When you do this, instead of having to provide material participation in multiple activities, you only have to provide it for the activity as a whole. In addition, if you include multiple activities in one group and have to dispose of one of those activities, youve only done away with part of a larger activity as opposed to all of a smaller one. The organizing principle behind this grouping is relatively simple: if the activities are located in the same geographic area; if the activities have similarities in the types of business; or if the activities are somehow interdependentfor instance, if they have the same customers, employees, or use a single set of books for accounting. For example, if you owned a pretzel store and a sneaker store located in malls in both Monterey, Calif., and Amarillo, Texas, you would have four options for how to group their passive income: Grouped into one activity (both businesses were in shopping malls) Grouped by geography (Monterey and Amarillo) Grouped by type of business (retail sales of pretzels and shoes) Or they could remain ungrouped What are examples of passive income? Passive income consists of money and losses generated from an enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. Examples include property rental (provided real estate isnt your line of work), equipment leasing, and limited partnership interest. Is investment income considered passive income? Passive income is frequently defined, somewhat loosely, as earnings derived from activities that dont require active participation. However, interest, dividends, and capital gainsinvestment earnings that generally dont require much active participation to obtainare not classified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as passive income. Instead, they fall under the category of portfolio income. VANCOUVER, British Columbia - November 14, 2016 (Investorideas.com Newswire) SilverCrest Metals Inc. (TSXV: $SIL.V) ("SilverCrest" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an update on the underground rehabilitation program at its Las Chispas Property ("Las Chispas") located in Sonora, Mexico . SilverCrest's initial focus was on the Las Chispas, William Tell and Babicanora veins. Exploration has been expanded to include a new, recently discovered target at the historic Varela Mine. This mine has two near-parallel veins that are approximately 300 metres west of the William Tell Vein. N. Eric Fier , CPG, P.Eng, President & CEO commented, "We continue to gain further access to historic workings and expand our high grade footprint at Las Chispas. The latest results from the ongoing underground rehabilitation are for the historic Varela Mine, which includes bonanza grades of up to 40.9 grams per tonne ("gpt") gold and 610.0 gpt silver or 3,677.5 gpt silver equivalent ("AgEq", based on 75(Ag): 1(Au) and 100% metallurgical recovery) over 0.3 metres. Our sample results on four levels are showing multiple grades of over 1,400 gpt AgEq. From visual inspection, the Varela Mine has two veins (the Main Vein and the Footwall Vein) and appears to have had less historical production than either the Las Chispas or William Tell veins. The grades mined at Varela may have been below an assumed historic cut-off grade of 1,000 gpt silver. SilverCrest plans on drill testing this target during the ongoing Phase II exploration program." Underground Rehabilitation Update The Company has accessed approximately 7 kilometres of underground workings to date, with an additional 4.5 kilometres to be opened and explored over the next several months. As SilverCrest opens and explores the underground workings, the Company continues to systemically collect samples at intervals of two to three metres along strike length of veins. The Company collected a total of 318 samples at the Varela veins from 450 metres of underground access as reported below (see attached Figure and Photo). Of the 318 samples tested, 129 were vein samples and used for assay composites. The remaining samples were of hangingwall and footwall material. Sampling locations and widths are restricted to historic workings, which may only represent part of the mineralized vein, stockwork or breccia. The Company plans to complete drilling at the Varela veins to determine the location, true thickness and extent of mineralization. The composited sample results (uncut, undiluted) for this release for four underground levels are; Level 1: average 0.53 metres wide grading 2.96 gpt gold and 47.0 gpt silver, or 330 gpt AgEq over a continuous 6.5 metre strike length. Level 2: average 0.69 metres wide grading 1.22 gpt gold and 114.1 gpt silver, or 205 gpt AgEq over a continuous 10 metre strike length. Level 3: average 0.88 metres wide grading 4.76 gpt gold and 147.6 gpt silver, or 504 gpt AgEq over a continuous 10 metre strike length. Level 4: average 1.1 metres wide grading 3.13 gpt gold and 223.6 gpt silver, or 458 gpt AgEq over a continuous 80 metre strike length excluding 7 metres of faulting. There appears to be an increase in vein width and grade from the near surface Level 1 (1,160 metre elevation) to the deeper Level 4 (1,130 metre elevation). The following table summarizes the 17 most significant un-composited assay results (uncut, undiluted) greater than 500 gpt AgEq from the four levels at the El Sheik historic workings of the Varela Main Vein only; Note: all numbers are rounded. *AgEq based on 75(Ag):1(Au) and 100% metallurgical recovery. ** The underground sample width of mineralization may not be indicative of the true width of mineralization. Sampling widths are constrained by access to open faces. Drilling may suggest wider mineralized zones. All assays were completed by ALS Chemex in Hermosillo, Mexico , and North Vancouver, BC. The Varela veins are a low to intermediate sulphidation epithermal system immediately adjacent and near parallel to the Las Chispas and William Tell veins. The Varela veins consist of mineralized veining, stockwork or breccia. Similar to the Las Chispas Vein, the Varela veins are exposed at surface with numerous historic underground workings. The Company intends to continue with the underground rehabilitation program on the property and reporting results for at least the remainder of 2016. The Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for this news release is N. Eric Fier , CPG, P.Eng, and President and CEO for SilverCrest, who has reviewed and approved its contents. For more information on Las Chispas and recent channel sampling results and drill results, please refer to our website at www.silvercrestmetals.com. ABOUT SILVERCREST METALS INC. SilverCrest is a Canadian precious metals exploration company headquartered in Vancouver, BC , that is focused on new discoveries, value-added acquisitions and targeting production in Mexico's historic precious metal districts. The Company is led by a proven management team in all aspects of the precious metal mining sector, including the pioneering of a responsible "phased approach" business model taking projects through discovery, finance, on time and on budget construction, and production with subsequent increased value to shareholders. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. These include, without limitation, statements with respect to: the strategic plans, timing and expectations for the Company's exploration, rehabilitation and drilling programs of the Las Chispas Property; and information with respect to high grade areas and size of veins projected from underground sampling results; and the accessibility of future mining at the Las Chispas Property. Such forwardlooking statements or information are based on a number of assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the conditions in general economic and financial markets; availability of skilled labour; timing and amount of expenditures related to rehabilitation and drilling programs; and effects of regulation by governmental agencies. The actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of risk factors including: the timing and content of work programs; results of exploration activities; the interpretation of drilling results and other geological data; receipt, maintenance and security of permits and mineral property titles; environmental and other regulatory risks; project cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses; and general market and industry conditions. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statements were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements included in this news release if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as otherwise required by applicable law. N. Eric Fier, CPG, P.Eng. CEO and President SilverCrest Metals Inc. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE SilverCrest Metals Inc. For Further Information: SilverCrest Metals Inc. Contact: Fred Cooper, Investor Relations Telephone: +1 (604) 694-1730 Fax: +1 (604) 694-1761 Toll Free: 1-866-691-1730 (Canada & USA) Email: info@silvercrestmetals.com Website: www.silvercrestmetals.com 570 Granville Street, Suite 501, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 3P1 Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investment involves risk and possible loss of investment. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Contact each company directly regarding content and press release questions. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. More disclaimer info: http://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp. Disclosure: Investorideas.com is compensated by SilverCrest Metals Inc for annual news publishing effective January 2016. Additional info regarding BC Residents and global Investors: Effective September 15 2008 - all BC investors should review all OTC and Pink sheet listed companies for adherence in new disclosure filings and filing appropriate documents with Sedar. Read for more info: http://www.bcsc.bc.ca/release.aspx?id=6894. Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. : - 32 ' ' Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan has pledged to underline the country's commitment to the European Union during a visit to the Middle East. Mr Flanagan is in Abu Dhabi for the second day of his three-day tour of the Gulf, leading an Enterprise Ireland trade mission. He said: "My visit is timely as it offers an opportunity to bring clear messages to important partners in the Gulf about Ireland's position in the wake of the UK vote to leave the European Union. "I made clear that Ireland will remain a strong and active member of the Union." The Minister is expected to meet with the UAE's minister for foreign affairs, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and with the country's education minister, Hussain Ibrahim al Hammadi. He will also meet with Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. On Saturday, in Riyadh, he held a series of bilateral meetings to discuss a range of issues including the stalled Middle East peace process and the humanitarian impact of conflicts in Yemen and Syria. "These are issues of concern to the Irish people," added Mr Flanagan. "With the minister of state for education, I had an opportunity to discuss the possibility of increasing the number of Saudi students coming to study in Ireland's universities and institutes of technology around the country." He also took part in a number of commercial events to support Irish companies. "I welcome the opportunity to see first-rate Irish companies at work, and to support them in their efforts to secure new business and so support jobs at home," said the Minister. Once you pass Dundalk, you begin to see the signs for shops and businesses offering straight euro for sterling conversion. Businesses are quite happy to give what is in effect a 10% discount on sales for the extra trade it brings. The car parks in shopping centres in Newry are full again, Im told, with two southern registration plates for every Northern plate. And all this is happening even before the UK even formally begins to exit the EU. The British prime minister Theresa May might be right in stating that Brexit means Brexit, but whatever else Brexit means, Brexit surely means tax. From time immemorial, customs duties have been the mechanism used by countries to protect and defend the commercial interests of their own business sectors. The UK leaving the EUs single market means the reintroduction of customs duties, and that means imports to Ireland from the UK will become more expensive irrespective of the current softness of sterling. While the UK government has signalled that the Brexit process will formally begin sometime around March 2017, the UK will remain a full member of the EU for some two years afterwards. I met with EU Tax Commissioner Pierre Moscovici in Strasbourg recently, mainly to discuss the new EU proposals for the cross-border taxation of companies, but inevitably the topic of Brexit was raised. The Commissioner was quite clear there was nothing to discuss, at least not at the moment. While Mr Moscovici and his team will have responsibility on Brexit customs issues, he would only say his team was making preparations. I dont think there is too much sympathy for the UK position within any of the EU institutions. Nor does it seem that there is any great sympathy for any special future arrangements for Ireland by reason of our geographic and trading ties with our larger, departing neighbour. Money always talks, and within an EU context, customs duties speak a bit louder than many other taxes. This is because customs duties serve a twofold purpose. The first is to protect commercial interests. The remaining members of the single market post-Brexit will want to ensure that their commercial interests are not damaged. But the second purpose of customs, sometimes overlooked, may well be just as important. In most cases, EU countries retain the taxes they collect, but customs is different. For every 100 in customs duty collected, 75 goes directly to Brussels to fund the European project. Only 25 goes to our exchequer as a sort of handlers fee for going to the trouble of collecting it. The more favourable any future customs deal between the UK and the EU, the less direct cash for Brussels. Were only at the start of feeling the Brexit impact. Thats why the Taoiseach is correct in resisting suggestions to create a Brexit Minister. The Brexit impact on Ireland will be felt across almost the entire range of cabinet responsibilities. For now, Brexit may even be suiting some of us as evidenced by Newry car parks filled with southern registered cars. That will change. Brian Keegan is director of taxation with Chartered Accountants Ireland. So Trump has done it. The president elect has visited Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The handover process has begun. Senior folks have kissed and made up, but make no mistake about it. A revolution will be kick-started in late January, one that will not bring much in the way of comfort to most people on this island. Initially, at least, the greatest shakeup will be in the area of economic policy. The new administration is unashamedly pro-business. The key players will be looking to hit some early home runs while the wind is at their back that is, during the famous first 100 days of the presidency. Naturally, we are worried. The incoming administration is committed to a transformative tax package, including a cut in the US corporation tax rate from 35% to 15%. Tax reform lies at the very top of its agenda. Mr Trumps economic adviser, Stephen Moore, rattled nerves over here, when he stated in a BBC interview that changes in the tax regime would result in a flood of investment and jobs from countries including Ireland, that have benefited greatly from current anomalies in the whole business taxation area. Mr Moore, however, hinted at the likelihood of compromise. He suggested the tax rate would drop to between 15% and 20%. In an interview on Newstalk, he was at pains to stress that Ireland was not a particular target. Eamonn Fingleton, a leading international expert, has pointed out that it is just not realistic to expect that America can pull back to its shores vast quantity of business operations. Multinationals need to have operations overseas in order to tap large markets such as the EU. The 21st manufacturing chain is highly sophisticated and strung out. Large amounts of money have been invested in state-of-the-art plants. The big question is whether bodies like the IDA will have a struggle to maintain foreign investment activity at reasonable, let alone the recent elevated levels. A few months of acute uncertainty lie ahead during which many plans are effectively put on hold. The Trump administration will be able to count on a Republican-dominated Congress, with a large majority in the House of Representatives. The House Ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction in relation to tax and welfare entitlements. Its chair is Texan congressman, Kevin Brady. In a post-election interview on CNBC, Mr Brady said he was thrilled that Trump is ready to move on the economy... we need to fix our broken tax code. Mr Brady singled out as key items, a redesign of the tax code and a reduced regulatory burden. Infrastructure spend can play a role but it is not quite the silver bullet, he said. It is 30 years since the Reagan administration passed the Tax Reform Act. Its supporters insist it helped pave the way for sustained growth. Since then, the tax code has become much more complicated, with 4,400 changes. Unlike Ronald Reagan, president Trump will not have to negotiate with a Democrat-led Congress, but he will not have a completely free hand. The current Speaker, Paul Ryan, favours fiscal orthodoxy and will look for cuts to vastly expensive programmes like Medicare. Obamacare lies on the chopping board. But the Trump team will be happy to run a larger deficit. Returning to Irelands prospects for foreign direct investment, while there are grounds for concern, there may be no reason to panic just yet. Padraic White. Padraic White served as IDA chief for 10 years. He remains an active business player. I do not believe we are at an end of an era. The big impact will be felt by US companies which relocated to Mexico, China, Vietnam. The rationale for Ireland is entirely different, he said. He points out that every US president elected since the mid-1970s has talked of bringing jobs back to the US. He insists that tax considerations are not at the top of the list for US multinationals, here. Many would beg to differ. Significantly, he believes that we should not rule out further corporation tax cuts in what will be a more competitive environment. Mr White is more concerned about the assault on our position being led by EU commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Pierre Moscovici and by the impact on our indigenous sector from Brexit. He believes many companies hit by the fall in sterling and the impending British exit will opt for diversification. He believes that Ireland remains attractive to investors as it will soon be the only English speaking country in the EU and he points out that former UK chancellor George Osborne has already cut the Brirish corporation tax rate from 32% in recent years without destroying our economy in the process. TCD professor of business Frank Barry believes that Ireland can weather whatever storm may be coming our way from across the ocean. While Irelands attractiveness in relative terms may be diminished, Prof Barry doubts that we are at a turning point where we need to tear up our long established US-driven foreign investment strategy. He agrees that some feared reforms such as the OECD crackdown on tax havens ended up boosting Government revenues from corporation tax. There is of course, little room for complacency. Public sector workers may need to rein in, somewhat. Finance Minister Michael Noonan has warned the fiscal space for any further easing in budgetary policy may have largely disappeared by the next budget. At the same time, the pressure to start delivering on the housing front is now imperative if our labour market competitiveness is to be restored. Human relationships still count and as a country, Ireland needs to build relationships with the new White House. It was significant that the president elect has recommitted to the cherished St Patricks Day encounter with the Taoiseach. Ireland retains an inside track of sorts. Our Governments should stick to certain principles, but a bit of good old fashioned pragmatism on occasions can go a long way. We may have reason to be glad about Mr Noonans much-derided decision to welcome Donald Trump to Ireland at the time of his visit to Doonbeg golf links, a couple of years ago. We should, however, be aware the president is answerable above all to his domestic constituency and Mr Trump owes big favors to those blue collar states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania which delivered his victory. Ireland has enjoyed a great run on the investment front, but there are no guarantees in this life. We will need to be nifty on our feet. Entitled 'Trades and Traditions of the Past' this year's calendar is a beautiful selection of photographs from the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo archive and captures imagery from trades and traditions of years gone by. The Simon Communities throughout Ireland provide care, accommodation and support for people experiencing and at risk of homelessness. Simon also work hard to tackle the root causes of homelessness, promote innovative responses to it and continually lobby government and the relevant state agencies in relation to the issue. Simon delivers support and service to over 5,000 individuals and families on an annual basis. This year's calendar is priced at 12 and is on sale now from the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo shop on Oliver Plunkett St, and online here. Commenting on this year's calendar initiative, Deputy Marketing Manager Karen O'Donoghue said both the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo were delighted to be involved with the charity. "Its a charity that does great work in the city and its wonderful to be able to fundraise on their behalf. The calendar is an opportunity to showcase the photographs that we have available in the archive and wed hope that it will bring a lovely sense of nostalgia into peoples homes next year when theyre looking back at the old black and white images." Don't forget you can also explore over 174 years of Irish Examiner news online in our fully digitised newspaper archive or browse and / or purchase more images from our archive in our photosales site According to AA Insurance, 4.42% of Cork customers were denied house insurance because of flooding risk, compared to a national average of 1.37%. Cork homeowners were also twice as likely to be denied house insurance because of past flood damage than other householders who had also experienced flooding. In the survey of almost 9,000 AA members and home insurance customers, 0.37% of those surveyed had been denied home cover by at least one provider because of past flood damage to their property. However, in Cork this figure stood at 0.62%. The director of AA consumer affairs, Conor Faughnan, said investments must be made in flood defences. The survey showed that one in five homeowners in Cork suffered minor damage to their homes because of weather events, with high winds the principal cause of damage, and 21.31% of Cork homes had been damaged slightly higher than the national average of 19.39%. Across the country, high winds are the main cause of damage to homes, followed by fallen trees or branches, wind-propelled debris, flood water, and heavy rain. Earlier this year it was revealed that flood defences around Morrisons Island in Cork City are to be fast-tracked. The area is affected by tidal flooding of the River Lee. The Office of Public Works is overseeing Corks 60m flood defence scheme the largest of its kind in the country. However, this festive season, the comment will be reflected on the calendar and not just in TDs pockets, after a Dail committee agreed to close parliament a week earlier than planned. The decision was made by the cross-party business committee last Thursday in response to the decision last month to sit for two days during the mid-term Halloween break. The Bonne Terre City Council, Desloge Board of Aldermen and the Central school board will hold meetings tonight. The Bonne Terre City Council will meet in regular session today at 6 p.m. at Bonne Terre City Hall, located at 118 North Allen Street in Bonne Terre. Listed under new business, Paul Williams is requesting permission for Chautauqua to be held on July 13-15 next year, the council will discuss water billing with Mariah Hinkle, the utility clerk, and they will discuss a request by Shawn Braswell for storage units at Route K and Carzon Road. They will also discuss bids for security cameras. The council will hear department reports. The meeting is open to the public. The Desloge Board of Aldermen will meet at 7 p.m. tonight at Desloge City Hall, located at 300 N. Lincoln St. According to the tentative agenda, the board will consider two ordinances. The first establishes a city policy on beekeeping. The second covers the control of debris and weeds. The board will also discuss plans for next month's Christmas dinner for city employees. The meeting is open to the public. The Central Board of Education will meet tonight at 5:30 p.m. in the Central High School auditorium located at 116 Rebel Dr. in Park Hills. A recognition ceremony for the accomplishments of middle and high school students will take up the bulk of the meeting. Also on the agenda will be approval of routine consent agenda items, including the payment of bills and approval of substitute teachers. In new business, board members will consider a comprehensive district school improvement plan as presented by Assistant Superintendent Troy Bollinger, who will also summarize bids received for purchase of a new bus. The meeting is open to the public. Cork County Council is proposing to increase the rents for tenants in houses previously controlled by the countys now-defunct nine town councils. The council executive hope to raise a further 750,000 through the targeted increases. However, Sinn Fein councillors, in advance of the meeting, said they will strongly oppose County Halls proposed move. Traditionally, town councils adopted a lower rent than the county rate, primarily as their housing units were older. We are totally opposed to any council rent increase during the present housing crisis, said councillor Des OGrady (SF). Some former town council tenants pay slightly lower rents than other council tenants because they generally live in housing that is older and of inferior standard, he claimed. He maintained the proposal was never debated by the full council or the councils Housing Special Purposes Committee (SPC) and came at a time when the local authority has amassed an extra 2m through increasing the Local Property Tax. Cllr OGrady also said the measure was premature, as the Government was proposing to bring in legislation for a single Differential Rent Scheme for social housing across the State and maintained the Cork County Council was well aware of the planned scheme. The council should have waited for the outcome of this legislation as these tenants may now face an unjustified rent increase compared to the government scheme. This could mean that they are forced to pay out extra money that cannot be reclaimed retrospectively, Mr OGrady said. He said his party will be opposing the proposed increase and will present proposals to show where the 750,000 shortfall may be found without inflicting further financial pain on people who have already suffered years of austerity. The council is set to discuss its 2017 budget which will increase from 295m to 306m. The document will most likely be approved as, apart from the rent increases, there are no other serious contentious issues. The council is to allocate 500,000 to making more of its houses energy-efficient. This year, it has upgraded 1,621 of its housing stock. Theres good news for the business sector, in that there are no plans to hike commercial rates. In recent years, council bosses froze rates due to businesses struggling to recover from the economic crisis. A special 500,000 grant has been proposed to aid the new Local Community Development Committees which has been set up by the local authority to manage LEADER funding. The council is also expected to ratify putting 1.1m into its Economic Development Fund, used to aid start-up businesses and tourism projects and have been very successful in recent years. The fund is financed from 1% of the annual rates intake. Meanwhile, 250,000 is due to be allocated to 11 civic amenity sites to help maintain the recycling service to the public. The concern is part of a fear across the European Union, with reports from top EU terrorism officials of an increase in returning fighters in recent months, one that is expected to accelerate with the offensives against Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. There is certainly a fear, said one Irish security source, its a fear right across Europe, for all police and security forces. The concerns follow the reported death last Friday week of well-known Irish radical Khalid Kelly, who was blown up by Iraqi forces as he was attempting to carry out a suicide bombing mission near Mosul. His is the first known death of an Irish citizen in the region recent years and he is thought to be the first Irish suicide bomber for IS, who referred to him as Abu Usama al-Irlandi. IS fan site claims (unconfirmed) this is the moment Khalid Kelly killed himself and several Iraqi militia. I last saw him in Dublin in 2011 pic.twitter.com/CqlY3emQwT Philip Boucher-Hayes (@boucherhayes) November 5, 2016 Security sources here said they were still trying to confirm whether or not Kelly, a 50-year-old convert to Islam, is actually dead. We are looking at that, but, given the nature of whats happening out there, it is very, very difficult, said one source. As well as conducting checks abroad, they are trying to confirm his death through associates and family here. Sources said that, given the profile of Kelly, they had been keeping track of his movements and confirmed he was in Ireland last March or April. There were reports that, last March, he attended the deportation hearing here of a Jordanian man described by gardai as ISs foremost recruiter in Ireland. Sources said they were examining the movements and communications of Kellys associates here, saying they were quite a small group. Kelly was a person of interest for a long time for both the Gardas Security and Intelligence Section and the Counter-Terrorism International section of the Special Detective Unit. He was investigated and arrested on a number of occasions in relation to both suspected terrorism offences and for incitement to hatred. Despite files being submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions, he was not charged, let alone convicted, of a terrorism offence. His death is thought to be the first known fatality of an Irish person in Syria or Iraq since four deaths in 2012 and 2013. Those deaths involved people in groups fighting the Assad dictatorship and were before the emergence of IS. There could be other deaths we dont know about, said the security source. There might be some people missing out there for one reason or another, they could be dead or alive. It is not clear if Kelly is the first Irishman to die with IS. The investigation comes at a time when European authorities and security experts have predicted the return of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq given the assaults on IS territory. The director of EUs police agency Europol said last month that flows of returning fighters had slightly increased in recent months. Rob Wainwright said they were not yet in high numbers but added that maybe Mosul and Raqqa will change that. More than 5,000 EU citizens have travelled there since 2011, including around 30 Irish people. The Irish figure includes those involved in humanitarian work in the region. AS ORANGE Is The New Black looks to be set in the White House from January, we can only hope that the next commander in chief does not become known as President Pussygrabber. Appropriately or rather, inappropriately his wife will be the first First Lady whose nude photo shoot (on a fur rug handcuffed to a briefcase in a private plane) to have appeared on the cover of a glossy magazine at the insistence of the president elect of the United States. In 2000, GQ ran the photos, because Donald Trump was very keen to display his then-girlfriend to the world. We were bombarded by requests to shoot Melania, GQ editor Dylan Jones told The Hollywood Reporter. Trump has referred to his wife as my supermodel, and has made it clear he considers her appearance her most important asset, which tallies with the reflected glory traits of narcissistic personality disorder; this was never clearer than when campaigning against his former rival Ted Cruz, whose wifes appearance he publicly insulted. Some of the future First Ladys nude modelling work was shot by photographer Antoine Verglas, who also shot nudes of Carla Bruni Sarkozy, and with whom he compares Ms Trump, in that both are European ex models, both married presidents, and speak several languages Melania Trump speaks Slovenian, Serbian, English, French, and German. Unlike Bruni, however, she is not an heiress, but grew up in a Soviet era tower block in the former Yugoslavia. She was discovered in 1987 by the photographer Stane Jerko, and moved to Milan. Melania Trump, and with Donald Donald Trump has never been to Melanias home town of Sevnica. In 2002, he visited Slovenia for three hours on his Boeing to meet her parents, where they dined at the luxury Grand Hotel Toplice on Lake Bled, the dining room cleared of other diners, Melania acting as translator. On their way out, Trump is reported to have asked, Is this place for sale? At their wedding in 2005, there were just three other Slovenians present as well as the bride her parents Amelija and Viktor, and sister Ines. Not a political being Melanija Knavs, born in 1970 and a quarter century younger than her husband, will be the second immigrant First Lady since 1789 the last one was English born Louisa Adams, whose father was American, and who was in the White House between 1825 and 1829. Melania Trump has said that as First Lady, she will tackle cyberbullying, perhaps inspired by Michelle Obamas campaign to get the nation healthier; Ms Trump has found Ms Obama so inspirational that she recently plagiarised entire chunks of a speech made by the current First Lady. Her pledge to address cyberbullying once her huband takes office resulted in her immediately being called a hypocrite by Lady Gaga, who furiously criticised Melania Trumps support for her notorious bully husband. Melania she long ago dropped the J did not play a significant part in her husbands election campaign as she is not an accomplished public speaker, and her strong Slovenian accent jars with Trumps virulent anti-immigration rhetoric. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that she is not a political being; she says she prefers to stay home with the couples 10-year-old son Barron. Other interests include Pilates and reading magazines. She is close in age to her husbands sons with Trumps first wife Ivana, another Eastern European former model. The third Mrs Trump first turned her future husband down when he approached her in 1998 at a party during New York Fashion Week, and asked for her number. He had arrived with another woman a Norwegian heiress called Celina Midelfart (whose surname shall pass uncommented upon, despite trump being UK slang for fart). Melania declined his early advances, but he persisted and they became engaged in 2004 when Trump proposed at the Costume Institute Gala. They married a year later, and she went to live in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where, according to the New Yorker, guests are required to wear surgical booties so as not to scratch the marble flooring. Melania Trump remains an enigmatically passive presence beside her husband, visual but not vocal; her role as an active future First Lady has largely been superseded by Trumps daughter Ivanka. Nor does she have a signature visual emblem, like her husbands strange hair and skin tone, Hillarys pantsuits, or Michelle Obamas famously toned arms. The only visual clue to perhaps a lurking sense of irony was the shirt she wore to the second presidential debate a pink pussy cat bow, just after her husbands notorious pussy grabbing comments. Was this intentional? Who knows. If so, she has a degree of chutzpah previously unnoted. When it comes to her marriage, Melania relies on a series of stock statements, such as We are both very independent. She has a skincare range that contain sturgeon eggs imagine rubbing caviar into your face and a jewellery line which she says she designs herself. She does not speak much about her country of origin, because she is from a communist background, a word which frightens a lot of Americans; although educated and apparently cultured, she barely speaks in public at all. Perhaps its because she cannot get a word in edgeways. We have four years to find out. It concerns plankton, the multitude of mostly tiny organisms living in the oceans which are the basis of all marine life and from which, eons ago, all life on Earth evolved. The plural noun plankton, comes from Greek meaning to drift. Most plankters are unable to swim against the current; they drift along with the flow. Tiny organisms, they live not only in the sea but also in rivers lakes and ponds. Even the great whales depend on them for sustenance. Most are single-celled creatures, invisible to our eyes. Others are the larvae of crabs shrimps and fish. Jellyfish and krill are the top dogs of the plankton community. Out mindset has an in-built binary bias. We have two arms, legs, eyes, ears, lungs and kidneys, so its not surprising that we organise things into pairs; male and female, true or false, good and evil, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. The living world, we used to think, consists of two great kingdoms, one of plants, the other of animals. Everything living, it seemed, could be fitted into one or the other. Mushrooms were treated as plants until we realised they belonged to a vast and vital kingdom of fungi. Nor can bacteria and protozoans, which make their disturbing presence felt when we fall ill, be accommodated in a dual classification scheme. Scientists argue as to how many distinct kingdoms should be recognised. Plankton image under a microscope. Plankton, we thought, could also be understood in binary terms; there were only plant items and animal ones, phytoplankton and zooplankton. Aditee Mitra, of Swansea University, believes that this approach is mistaken. The traditional split, she argues, is no longer tenable. Nor is this mere academic hair-splitting, angels on the head of a pin; there are important issues at stake here. As a result of the error, she thinks, even our climate change models could be giving questionable results. Mitra wants to introduce a new model for life in our oceans. There is a third class of creatures, mixotrophs, which dont fit neatly into either the plant or animal plankton categories. Mixotrophs can use the energy of the sun to photosynthesise, the way phytoplankton does but, like zooplankton, they also devour tiny animals. Like humans, mixothrophs are omnivorous. Arthur C Clarke considered John Wyndhams 1951 novel, The Day of the Triffids, one of the 13 best science-fiction horror novels. Wyndhams triffids were fictional flesh-eating plants, able to grow to a huge size and move about. Bioengineered in the old USSR, they had escaped into the wild and were spreading throughout the world, with dire consequences for humanity. They sprayed poison on every creature they encountered, rendering their victims blind. Soon, almost the entire human race was affected. Mixotrophs under micrscope. Like Wyndhams fictional triffids, Mitra says mixothrops engulf living prey, suck out their innards, poison them, harpoon them, make them explode, steal and reuse body parts. They can destroy entire ecosystems in a matter of hours. Devouring the sewage we dump into water-bodies, they produce toxins harmful to fish and molluscs. The brown foam of estuaries comes from mucus secreted by them. However, mixotrophs arent all bad. They provide food for young fish, especially during the summer months. The mathematical models we use to predict environmental change, such as the effects of intensive fishing on ecosystems, may be flawed because we fail to take account of the presence of mixotrophs, that we now realise comprise more than half of all microscopic plankton. Our climate-change models will be unsound until we do so. We ignore these little triffids at our peril. If Noam Chomsky was right when he said, after George W Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, that America was the greatest threat to world peace, then that threat may have just increased twenty-fold. Donald Trumps triumph creates a nightmarish scenario, one whose contours and repercussions we can only guess at. A loose cannon, a vain, unpredictable man, will soon occupy the Oval Office, pledging to put America first and make America great again. It was left to Margaret Beckett, who became Britains first female foreign secretary in 2006, to tell it like it is last week on Sky News after Trumps election: He is a vile, horrible man, a man who constantly tells lies. Thats the reality, and it is foolish to think that a stint in the White House will result in a character transplant not with a man as self-obsessed as the president-elect. The one thing that was indisputably proven by the Trump-Clinton contest for the White House was that racism and misogyny are on the rise, and that rise seems certain to be accentuated now. Thats on the domestic front, and the protests we have already witnessed in several American cities may be a portent of things to come. One of the factors fostered by the extremist rhetoric of the Trump campaign was white nationalism, which is essentially racist. Even 150 years after the end of the American Civil War which abolished slavery race is never far from the surface of American politics. Worrying as all of that is, the far greater worry is in the field of foreign policy, where the potential for international conflict is acute. Today, American power and influence are being challenged on a scale that hasnt been seen since the end of the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of the USSR. There were warnings during the bitter presidential campaign about the risks of giving Trump control of the nuclear button outgoing president Barack Obama declared him unfit to be president but all of that went unheeded. And so last Thursday the president welcomed the president-elect to the White House. Soon Trump will sit behind the desk in the Oval Office, and if political leaders elsewhere are concerned and uneasy, if not fearful, they have every reason to be. The foreign policy establishment in Washington DC and Trump will be at the centre of this has long been in thrall to the doctrine of manifest destiny. This is the deeply embedded belief in American exceptionalism, the conviction that the US is Gods own country. The history of manifest destiny can be traced back to the pilgrims who arrived from England in the 17th century in ships such as the Mayflower to settle in the New World. On one such ship, the Arbella, as it approached the East coast of America in 1630, John Winthrop preached a sermon in which he proclaimed that the new community he and his fellow puritans were about to establish would become a shining city on a hill, watched by the whole world. In his book, The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of Americas Foreign Policy, William Pfaff says that America from the start was assumed to be a fixed foundation, part of Gods fixed plan. Basing a foreign policy agenda on a conviction that God is on your side is inherently dangerous (Bush believed God wanted him to invade Iraq a decision that has had catastrophic consequences, making it the worst American folly since the needless war in Vietnam). According to the US imperial model that emerged in the 20th century, presidents were entitled to authorise aggressive international intervention even military pre-emption in order to eliminate obstacles to the Washington vision of the future. Pfaff writes: The American conception of Manifest Destiny, originally seen as transcontinental expansion, has been recast since the time of Woodrow Wilson as the creation of a world order that is nominally pluralistic but under ultimate American leadership which, it is taken for granted, would be welcome to nearly all. By the early 20th century, America had embraced a political ideology based on faith in universal human progress toward democracy, validating the superiority of American institutions, ideas, and practices. The imperialism that this has bred was frighteningly expressed by after sanctioning the invasion of Iraq: We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defence of our great nation. As Pfaff, who was, like Chomsky, a stern critic of the USs imperial ways, emphasised, successive American presidents have consider it their right and duty to use all means to promote the American project to bring democracy to a recalcitrant world. There is immense hypocrisy here, of course, because when democracy yields results (such as the election in a free vote of the Marxist Salvador Allende as president of Chile in 1970) which are deemed inimical to US interests, legitimately elected governments will be overthrown. (Allende was toppled by a CIA-backed coup in September 1973.) How a bombastic and unpredictable President Trump, a man with a suspect temperament and limited knowledge of international affairs, will accommodate himself is unclear. Even the broad outlines of a foreign policy could not be gleaned from anything that Trump said during the bitter contest waged between himself and Clinton. But some of his statements such as declaring Nato to be obsolete and saying that the US may not come to the defence of the Baltic states if they are threatened by Russia have caused deep concern and fears in European capitals. One of those fears is that Trump may be an isolationist president. Already, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has warned that going it alone is not an option for the US. From the point of view of the Irish government, there is a concern about the new administrations commitment to the maintenance of peace and stability in the North. The one thing that could be safely assumed about a Hillary Clinton-led administration is a continuity of commitment to the North. No such assumption can be made about a Trump administration. We are all aware how important the American involvement was in promoting and supporting the process that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998; John Hume had been particularly assiduous in building Irish-American links on Capitol Hill and in the White House. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, have already made initial moves to open lines of communication with the president elect, but he will face such a crowded in-tray on entering the Oval Office that there is no way of knowing where Anglo-Irish affairs in general, and Northern Ireland, in particular, will figure on the Trump agenda. Already, Theresa May and her team in Whitehall are concerned about the status of the special relationship that has been such an important part of the architecture of the world order since the end of the Second World War. From a Dublin standpoint, moral revulsion must not stand in the way of establishing links with the Trump administration. Like it or not, he is going to be the next US president in January. Thats the reality and all European governments are going to live with it. Michael Dias lauded the lessons his father Manuel, an immigrant from Portugal, taught him so youth can integrate instead of turning themselves into cannon fodder. Under heavy security, President Francois Hollande unveiled a plaque outside the Stade de France in memory of Manuel Dias, pulling away a French flag covering it on a wall at one of the entrances to the French national stadium, where Dias was killed on November 13, 2015, by a suicide bomber. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo joined the president at six sites that were targeted in the attack on the French capital. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. Three teams of extremists coming from neighbouring Belgium targeted six bars and eateries, turning scenes of Friday night fun into bloodbaths. A commemorative plaque unveiled by French President Francois Hollande and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo at the La Belle Equipe bar and restaurant in Paris. Picture: Philippe Wojazer/AP At the Stade de France, on the northern edge of Paris, Michael Dias said his father Manuel was living proof that integration is possible, necessary to end the madness of violence carried out by those who felt excluded. Learning to live again after extremists killed his father was a personal challenge, but it concerns us all, Dias said, crediting his father, who came to France at 18, with life lessons like the need for education. It is by knowledge, by intelligence that the children of tomorrow can stop humiliating themselves as cannon fodder in the service of criminal, mafia-style interests ... as is the case today. [They are] incapable of reflection, thinking about the world and expressing the unease and social exclusion they feel. The final stop, the Bataclan concert hall which reopened Saturday with a concert by British pop star Sting was the site of the bloodiest and longest attack. There, 90 people were killed by three attackers who also took a group hostage. The youngest and oldest victims of the night of horror were a 17-year-old and a 68-year-old both killed at the Bataclan. Families of victims, security and rescue forces, and some still trying to heal were among those present at the ceremonies. JesseHughes of the Eagles of Death Metal, the California band whose concert that night ended in a bloodbath, paid respects at the Bataclan ceremony, placing his hand on his heart as he departed. In addition to those killed, nine people remain hospitalised from the attacks and others are paralysed. The government says more than 600 people are still receiving psychological treatment after the attacks. A sign scrawled and posted near the Bataclan, Love for all, hate for no one, captured the sense of defiance shared by many but not all. Some residents of the lively neighborhood where most of the attacks occurred are still trying to heal. We always have this fear that weighs heavily in our hearts. We always try to be careful. And every time we pass by, we think of them, Sabrina Nedjadi said. People console each other at a ceremony at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris yesterday. Picture: Michel Euler/AP Soubida Arhoui said fear is now part of her life. I am afraid for my children, when they take the Metro. When my son goes to work, I am afraid. When I get into a Metro I am afraid. The remembrances come after the Sting concert on Saturday night that reopened the refurbished Bataclan concert hall. Sting, in a T-shirt with a guitar slung over his shoulder, asked concert-goers in fluent French to observe a minute of silence as he opened the show. Weve got two important things to do tonight, the 65 -year-old singer said. First, to remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attacks ... and to celebrate the life and the music of this historic venue. Bataclan claims it turned away band frontman - Catherine Whylie Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes was turned away from Stings concert at the Bataclan, according to the venues management who said he was not welcome. The US rock band were performing in the Paris theatre on November 13 last year when it was attacked by Islamic extremist suicide bombers who killed 89 people. In the months after the massacre Hughes provoked anger when he suggested Bataclan security staff were complicit in the attack and later apologised. On the eve of the first anniversary of the atrocity, former Police frontman Sting, 65, re-opened the 150-year-old venue and Hughes was not allowed in, the Bataclan boss said. However a representative for the band reportedly branded the venues version of events as false. Jules Frutos, manager of the theatre, said Hughes and his manager were turned away at the door. Jesse Hughes at a concert in February with a T-shirt that reads I really wanna be in Paris. Picture: Jean-Nicolas Guillo/Le Parisien via AP) Mr Frutos said: They tried to enter the venue and they are persona non grata. They are not welcome after what he said about the security. Referring to Hughes, Mr Frutos said: Even if he came back on what he said. I mean, this man is just sick. Thats all. Mr Frutos said he thinks the band used what happened at the Bataclan to get promotion, asking: Who did know about this band before? He said the bands attitude shows no respect for the victims. Mr Frutos said the frontman and his manager did not have tickets for Stings concert. The bands management said Hughes was in Paris with family, friends and fans to commemorate the tragic loss of life that happened right in front of his eyes during his show. Marc Pollack, of The MGMT Company, accused Mr Frutos of tainting a wonderful opportunity that couldve been used to spread peace and love. Jesse never even tried entering the club for Stings show tonight, he said. Earlier this year Hughes apologised for suggesting that security guards were complicit in the attack. He told the Fox News in March that six guards at the Bataclan never came to work on the night of the attack, and it seems rather obvious that they had a reason not to show up. Afterwards in a statement, he said: I humbly beg forgiveness from the people of France, the staff and security of the Bataclan, my fans, family, friends and anyone offended by the absurd accusations I made. My suggestions that anyone affiliated with the Bataclan played a role in the events are unfounded and baseless and I take full responsibility for them. This is not about Donald Trump. Isnt that good news? Nationally and internationally, I figure were trumped out. Never has more space in mainstream and social media been devoted to anything. Never have more tears been wept, more dire prognostications prognosticated, more analysis devoted to the inexplicable. Although, on the tears, maybe the demise of Princess Diana occasioned as many as has the US presidential election victory of The Donald. Floods, there were, back then. A tsunami of bawling and a glut of garage flowers. Things would never be the same again, they said, through their gulping sobs. Never. And you know what? Things were exactly and precisely the same after Princess Di died as they were before. Things have a marvellous capacity not to live up to dire prophecies of radical change. Entropy terrifies, and thats behind the Trump reaction. But it also motivates. People recreate order out of chaos and, if the wind is in the right direction and the force is with us, well all be grand, even if the orange guy with the hair is in the White House. That said, so many people were so upset about Hillary Clintons loss that when a friend broke down at the beginning of a phone call last week, following the statement that I cant take any more of this, I assumed his emotion was politically generated, although I was surprised, never having expected him to be that sentimentally attached to the idea of another Clinton presidency. As he gathered himself together, I went into overdrive trying to work out if the financial health of his business was likely to come under threat from the new US administration. Im still not over learning that the Fairy Doors company has been so challenged by the currency shift consequent on the Brexit decision that if they werent now exporting fairy doors to stick on trees to half the world, theyd be broke. Fairy Doors have been one of the export success stories of the recession. Id love to have been a fly on the wall when the Fairy Doors entrepreneurs were explaining to the bank why it would be good to give them money for something no market research had ever established the need for. However, in the case of my sad friend, it turned out, as his sobs reduced, that his problem is with his father, who is 87 and no longer the full shilling. His father is pretty close to the full shilling, but inevitably has lost some of his capacities as he has aged, and is considerably less mobile. Being less mobile means that he can no longer drive his car, and one of the problems about lifelong drivers in their old age is that they first of all hate the very idea of calling a taxi, then dont understand apps like Hailo, and finally experience the regulated charges as threateningly expensive. My friends father, accordingly, is housebound. This, in turn, means he spends his time watching television and gets fearful about gang warfare although, in the scheme of things, neither the Kinahans nor the Hutches present an immediate threat to him, personally. But the reality is that the people who consume most TV because theyre not able to go out and interact with the world, tend to be most fearful of the world. In the past, this man was a reader, particularly of sports pages. Although his son points out that the delivery to his home of the newspaper wouldnt be a problem, the older man isnt able for nipping down the stairs to the front door at an early hour to grab the paper. The HSE home care person doesnt come until 9am and hes wary of getting out of bed without a steadying hand. Although the elderly man is computer-literate, his son has found that logging on to his iPhone and iPad is now beyond him, and so the two gadgets sit, mutely unhelpful, beside his bed, fully charged and impotent. It was, in fact, the iPhone that caused my friends meltdown. Since his only sister lives in New Zealand, phone contact with her requires a certain amount of scheduling, and the son had arranged to be with his father to facilitate the call on this particular day. His widowed father sat in the chair the son had bought one of those enormous leather contraptions that, at the command of a button, decants the sitter onto the floor. His son, mindful of the need to help his fathers continued autonomy, suggested it was time to ring Marnie. Absolutely, said the father, and set about it with a will. He even remembered the multiple digits involved. The only problem was that accurately keying the digits for New Zealand into the remote control for the TV doesnt tend to be productive, as his son pointed out. Well, why did you let me make that mistake? the elderly man asked, and his son got good and mad. Words borrowed words, with the son pointing out that he got no thanks for all he did for his father, while the fathers pet was Marnie, the sister who had buzzed off to New Zealand (where, we assume, she was scrutinising her phone waiting for a call from home) and was doing nothing for her da. Her da told his son he didnt need anything done for him. Furthermore, he opined, the son had always been a moany, put-upon whinge and why didnt he take himself off because he was of no value sitting on his arse being critical. The major issue, the son says, is that his father is so ungrateful. The son is there every evening, takes care of everything, because its difficult for someone in New Zealand to rustle up, on demand, haute cuisine such as baked beans on toast. And is the father grateful? No. The only unusual aspect of my friends problem is that hes male, since I would unscientifically believe that roughly 90% of those taking care of aging parents are female, but his situation is replicated all over the country. Its an oddity of modern life that we educate young people in what will get them CAO points. We educate the workforce in skills ranging from presentation to managing change. Increasingly, we educate everybody on the need to do something about their pension to prevent them begging in the street in their seventies. Further, we vaccinate them against everything from whooping cough to shingles, in order to protect against possible biological threat. Air travellers are subjected, on each and every journey, to advice on what to do in the unlikely event of the plane going down. We have call centres with trained counsellors waiting to help anybody whose toddler or teenager is being a bother. The one thing we dont educate ourselves about is the inevitability of having to cope with the ageing process of ourselves and those around us. Its the ultimate delusional behaviour. We know its coming. We decide its not going to apply to us. So when it does, were surprised and incompetent in the fact of the certain challenge of age. The one thing we dont educate ourselves about is the inevitability of having to cope with the ageing process Monday Central Board of Education The Central Board of Education meets at 5:30 p.m. in the Central High School auditorium located at 116 Rebel Dr. in Park Hills. The meeting is open to the public. Bonne Terre Council The Bonne Terre City Council will meet in regular session at 6 p.m. at city hall located on 118 N. Allen St. The meeting is open to the public. Desloge Board of Aldermen The Desloge Board of Aldermen meet in regular session at 7 p.m. in city hall, located at 300 N. Lincoln. The meeting is open to the public. Tuesday Park Hills-Leadington Chamber of Commerce The Park Hills-Leadington Chamber of Commerce meets at noon at The Coffee Grill, located at 3413 Rosener Rd. in Park Hills, for its monthly Investor Luncheon. Park Hills City Council The Park Hills City Council meets at 6 p.m. for a regular session in the municipal court chambers at city hall, located at 9 Bennett St. The meeting is open to the public. Leadington Board of Aldermen The Leadington Board of Aldermen meets in regular session at 6 p.m. at city hall, located at 12 Weir St. The meeting is open to the public. Farmington R-7 Board The Farmington R-7 Board of Education meets in regular session at 5 p.m. at the district offices, located at 1022 Ste. Genevieve Ave. The meeting is open to the public. North County Board of Education The North County Board of Education meets in regular session at 6 p.m. in the administration offices located at 300 Berry Rd. The meeting is open to the public. Thursday West County Board of Education The West County Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. for a regular session in the Board of Education room located at 1124 Main St. in Leadwood. The meeting is open to the public. Bismarck Board of Education The Bismarck Board of Education meets in regular session at 6 p.m. in the elementary school library. The meeting is open to the public. Burma Weekend Clashes in Northern Arakan State Leave at Least 27 Dead Violence escalated in northern Arakan State over the weekend. Troops involved in the ongoing security operation in the area are seen on Oct 15. / Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy The government reported on Monday that at least 27 people died in weekend clashes between the security forces and militants in northern Arakan State, in the latest escalation of a month-long conflict in the area. On Saturday, security forces were ambushed by about 60 attackers holding guns, knives and spears in a village in Maungdaw Township, the government said in a statement. One soldier and six attackers were killed. An officer died following a later confrontation with around 500 armed men in which the army called in air force helicopters. During a clearance operation at Dargyizartaung village in the same township on Sunday, around 20 men armed with machetes and wooden clubs were fired on by security forces, killing 19, state media said. A number of members of the advisory commission on Arakan State led by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan were due to make a two-day visit to the restive region starting on November 15, but the visits timing was being reconsidered in the wake of the weekend violence, commission member Alhaj U Aye Lwin told The Irrawaddy on Monday. The members intended to meet with leaders from all communities as well as religious heads in the area, Alhaj U Aye Lwin said, following instructions from Kofi Annan to listen and learn from different voices in the troubled region. We want to observe the situation on the ground as eyewitnesses, he added. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch released satellite images on Saturday that appear to show 430 burnt buildings in three Muslim Rohingya villages in northern Maungdaw Township. The images were taken between 22 October and 10 November. Human Rights Watchcalled for unfettered access to the area that has been under military lockdown since October 9 for the UN, media and human rights monitors. Allegations of serious human rights abuses against the local population, including the rape of women and the burning of homes have been widely reported since the security operation began. New satellite images not only confirm the widespread destruction of Rohingya villages but show that it was even greater than we first thought, said Brad Adams, director at Human Rights Watch. Army-run media on Monday claimed that militants were deliberately burning buildings. Burma is obligated under international law to conduct thorough, prompt, and impartial investigations of alleged human rights violations, prosecute those responsible, and provide adequate redress for victims of violations, Human Rights Watch said. On Friday the UNs special representative on sexual violence in conflict called on Burma to investigate allegations of sexual assault by security forces. Zainab Hawa Bangura added that it was essential for the government to allow humanitarian access to the area. The UNs childrens organization said last week that the conflict was taking a terrible toll on children already suffering high levels of deprivation and malnutrition. It called for a full resumption of services in northern ArakanState as well as the lifting of restrictions on access for health and other professionals. Monday, November 14th, 2016 (8:01 am) - Score 5,239 Internet provider Plusnet has today announced that theyre finally adding a 4G based Mobile service to their portfolio of broadband, phone and TV products, which will be born out of the acquisition of LIFE Mobiles customer base on 29th November 2016. The move into mobile is hardly a surprise given that their parent, BT, recently merged with mobile network operator EE for 12.5bn. Similarly LIFE Mobile is also a part of the EE business and clearly some sort of deal has been worked out to support their transfer into Plusnets hands. The LIFE Mobile website currently has a related FAQ Page online, although it doesnt shed much light on the development except to confirm that existing customers will be offered an optional range of new 4G plans under the new Plusnet Mobile brand. Weve also found the T&Cs for Plusnet Mobile, but the products arent yet showing on their main public website. LIFE Mobile FAQ Page (Extract) Why are LIFE and Plusnet joining up? LIFE Mobile have joined forces with Plusnet to make sure that our customers continue to get great value tariffs along with award-winning customer service. Weve worked together to make fantastic 4G plans which will be available to you. Plus youll have access to more great value products and special offers well tell you more about these over the coming weeks. What does this mean for my contract? On 29th November, youll officially become a Plusnet Mobile customer and your contract will be transferred to Plusnet plc from EE Limited trading as LIFE Mobile. All this means is youll pay Plusnet Mobile instead of LIFE Mobile and all the services you get will be provided by Plusnet. Weve also worked with Plusnet to create simple, easy to understand terms and conditions. We both wanted to give you as much notice of these as possible, so these wont take effect until 1st January but a copy is available here. Will I need to do anything on 29th November? Theres nothing that you need to do. The switchover will be seamless! On 29th November, your mobile service will continue as normal and youll still be able to make and receive calls, send texts and browse the web. The only changes youll see are the network carrier name changing on your mobile from LIFE Mobile to Plusnet, and emails about your account coming from Plusnet Mobile instead of LIFE. Upon closer inspection weve been able to find a pre-registration page for the new service, which lists a pre-launch special offer tariff that promotes 4GB of data with unlimited minutes / texts for 10 per month (normally 15) on a 30 day contract. The full list of plans is as follows. Plusnet 4G Mobile Plans (30 Day Contract) 500MB + 250 Mins + 500 Texts = 5 per month 1GB + 1000 Mins + Unlimited Texts = 7.50 per month 2GB + 1500 Mins + Unlimited Texts = 10 per month 4GB + Unlimited Mins + Unlimited Texts = 15 per month The above 4GB special offer plan appears to sit roughly in the middle of BTMobiles own 2GB and 15GB plans (note: currently BTs 2GB plan is being offered with 4GB of data to existing broadband customers for 10 per month, or 15 to everybody else). Mind you its a shame that Plusnet havent included any plans with bigger data allowances, which may be more attractive to users of a home broadband ISP like Plusnet. Andy Baker, CEO of Plusnet, said: This is an incredibly exciting moment in our companys history. True to our Yorkshire roots, Plusnet has always prided itself on offering customers more for less, and extending our offering to include a mobile service is a natural next step as we move to become a full-service quad-play provider. With the launch of Plusnet Mobile, well be helping more people stay connected on-the-go with our fantastic data-packed deals and highly competitive rates. The BT owned ISP recently reported a record profit after tax of 43.5 million (up 35% on last year) and a 13% growth in customer numbers, which is despite having a semi-rocky year of network migration woes and some issue with waiting times for telephone support. Plusnet is now home to 1,000 staff in Sheffield and another 200 in Leeds. In separate news Plusnets trial of IPv6 has been stalled after the provider informed customers that they were in the process of decommissioning the old AG gateways (e.g. pcl-ag01, ptw-ag02), which is occurring as part of the process for relocating a lot of their old broadband infrastructure/handover to new data centres. Sadly, this means the IPv6 trial accounts we dished out back in 2013 are going to break. Youll still be able to use them for IPv4, but its unlikely IPv6 is going to work properly until we get the opportunity to revisit the v6 config on the relocated BNGs, said Plusnets Bob Pullen (here). The ISP has yet to make any firm commitment to IPv6, but theyll probably want to get the network migration work completed first. Title: Outstanding Time With Provider: Package Name: Have been on Gigaclear FTTP fibre for over two years. Two fibre lines for resilience. Four networked computers, two smart phones, two smart TVs, home automation, Sonus, Webcam, Skype, Vonage telephone line.Quality - OutstandingReliability - exceptionalSpeed - breathtaking and asymmetricCost - Outstanding value for the speed-900+MbsA company to be admired for delivering what it promises. It puts BT to shame. The exact release date for the upcoming "One Punch Man" season two has not yet been confirmed but the fans are definitely willing to wait. Prior to its upcoming release, there have been reports that the upcoming season will reveal that the one who killed Saitama's family is Amai Mask. Amai mask To Be Responsible For The Death Of Saitama's Family Prior To Becoming Hero? Saitama has had a difficult childhood, as many of its fans already know. However, he managed to get up from all the pain, and trained for years to become the hero that he wanted to be as a child. Saitama's training was extensive and thus developing eminent strength, making him able to defeat any opponent that he comes across. However, there is a lot of pain behind all the strength being presented in battles. There have been reports that Saitama's backstory will be tackled in the upcoming season two of "One Punch Man" and this includes his family's death. He lost his family as a child and recent theories and speculations have revealed that Amai Mask is the one responsible for this and it is yet to be discussed when the famous anime returns. Since they are currently on hiatus, there is no way to know for sure about its upcoming plotline unless any confirmation or official synopsis is yet to be revealed by the network. New Villains And Stronger Opponents Coming To Battle Saitama In Upcoming "One Punch Man" Season 2 Other allegations also cover the news that there will be a new opponent coming to battle Saitama in "One Punch Man" season two, the Hero Hunter Arc. He will reportedly be stronger than Lord Boros, whom Saitama recently defeated during the finale of the previous season. Another will also be a Garou known as the Human Monster and will be the main antagonist of Saitama as the series progresses. Saitama will be facing a lot of enemies in the upcoming season and will reportedly be a more action-packed season than the previous one. The network and the production team is yet to announce the official release of the "One Punch Man" season two in 2017. Angelina Jolie is having a little bit of a bumpy ride with keeping her "children happy" after moving out of their conjugal house with Brad Pitt. The former couple's children are reportedly "homesick" and wanted to be on Pitt's side as well. According to reports from HollywoodLife, the couple's children told the 41-year-old actress that they wanted to move back to Los Feliz as they miss home. Angelina Jolie Struggling To Keep Kids Happy "It's been weeks since the kids moved out of their home and they are getting homesick. The children are sad, miss the huge house they grew up in, and have been complaining to Angelina that they want to go home. The older children are not happy with the situation while the younger kids are having trouble understanding why they can't just go home." "The Los Feliz home has been where the kids have spent most of their time growing up," the source said. "Brad has built a huge skate ramp for the kids on the property and they all have their own rooms there too. They may have lots of houses but the Los Feliz house has always been home." Meanwhile, Jolie's separated father Jon Voight has said that he wants things to solve the issues between his daughter and Pitt, whom he believed to be close with and would listen to him. Thinking Twice On Brad Pitt And Angelina Jolie Going Separate Ways? "I appreciate everybody's concern and their prayers. Hopefully things will work out," the 77-year-old actor told E! News during the premiere of J.K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them on Thursday. The "Original Sin" actress filed for divorce from the iconic star on 19 September, citing conflicting differences. The former couple have six children who is now in deep stress and confusion - Maddox 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 8. Would Mr. & Mrs. Smith end their story and let their kids suffer? Swiss company Protonmail announced that weekly sing-ups had doubled after the Republican candidate Donald Trump get elected as the U.S. president on Tuesday since many Americans are fearing for their privacy after many situations involving the government and U.S. intelligence agencies with monitoring private information. This way, people might start to use end-to-end encrypted emails as never before. The Encrypted Email Company Warned That Trump Might Take Control Of The NSA According to Digital Trends, the company stated that its only mission was to provide the safest email services to the users, following the Swiss policy of neutrality and not taking any kind of position of the new president. However, it also explained that Trump could take control of the National Security Agency (NSA), claiming that this might represent a huge threat for peoples privacy since the president will also count with the GOPs control of Congress. This company has been known for being one of the largest end-to-end encrypted email providers in the world, which was targeted by DDoS cyber strike last year, which represented a very delicate situation for its users. The most particular detail about Protonmail is that its costs of service are covered by crowdfunding and donations from foundations, which makes the company more independent of private interests. Liberal and Conservatives Are Using Protomail According to The Verge, the high number of new sign-ups could have started because ad-supported companies like Facebook and Google have scaled back their data collection, considering the threat posed by Trump. The encrypted email provider has previously said that privacy is an important right that needs to be protected and offered to every single person, instead of being only a luxury for liberals or conservatives. In fact, the company has confessed that even when left-wing users are the majority of the new sign.-ups, Protonmail has always provided its service for people of any different political stance. Although it is not known if the incoming president would actually control the NSA, it is fact that were living during times where privacy has become a miracle. Google is betting on voice-powered devices as the only way we'll be computing in the near future. The Future Of Computing According to Business Insider, Google Venture investor M.G. Siegler says that the use of artificial intelligence-powered devices like Google Assistant and Amazon Echo shows where the tech industry is headed. Most users might still feel a bit strange talking to a computer, but this futuristic artificial intelligence (AI) technology is fast becoming the norm. According to Siegler, it might take a while for older generations to adapt, but for younger generations and kids with an Amazon Echo, talking to Alexa "it's like their favorite thing in the world." Siegler compared this emerging technology of voice-powered computing to the rise of using mobile devices. Computer technology originally started with a mainframe server. The miniaturization process allowed to later become a desktop computer, then a laptop and eventually a mobile phone. Siegler said that the way we now interact with computers is not really natural. When we communicate with one another we talk. Computer user interface should evolve from typing and taping on a screen to using voice-powered devices and talking to computers. This is an inevitable process and investing in this kind of voice-powered technology is a question of timing. With its new hardware products, Google's parent company Alphabet is already betting heavily on the verbal computing. In October, the company unveiled its Google Home device, first hardware device to incorporate the company's new digital Assistant. The Assistant is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and responds to user's voice, much like Amazon's Alexa. The Google Assistant is also available on company's Allo chat app and new Pixel phone. Personal Assistants Market According to Forbes, the market for personal assistants that provide conversational user experience is becoming highly competitive. While Amazon has launched its next generation Echo Tap and Echo Dot, Google is aiming to make a smarter Assistant. According to Google, developers will have the possibility to create for Google Assistant starting December, similar of developing Alexa Skills for Echo. Google will instantly open up multiple channels to developers by enabling them to target its Assistant platform Google. By using a variety of devices with embedded Assistant technology, developers will be able to reach millions of consumers. In case of Microsoft's personal assistant Cortana, the APIs are not broadly available. This means that for developers targeting Windows platform their reach is limited. Google has a multi-pronged approach when it comes to winning the niche personal assistant segment. The high-tech company is counting on all its assets in order to ensure that it creates superior technology to the competition. Google Cloud Machine Learning According to Google's product page, its Cloud Platform comes with a broad mix of services and machine learning tools. They range from speech recognition to image processing and text analysis. For Google machine learning is certainly its strength. Developers will be able to instantly perform entity, sentiment and syntactic analysis by sending plain text to Cloud machine learning. Those developers targeting global audience will benefit by Google's support for multiple languages, including some of the Asian languages such as Chinese. Some people who are distraught of the US election outcome are blaming Facebook for its role. The tech company has billions of users worldwide and millions in the US. Naturally, it's a good platform to reach out to a wide audience. Facebook is currently alleged to have influenced the election result. Thus, eventually making Donald J. Trump the winner. CEO Mark Zuckerberg comes to the company's defense. Zuckerberg's Defense Against Some People's Accusations Zuckerberg went to Facebook and defended the tech giant's position with regards to the US election. He insisted that more than 99 percent of all Facebook news content is authentic. Zuckerberg added that the remaining percentage is the fake news and hoaxes. This very small figure would unlikely change the outcome of the election in another direction. Apparently, people are specifically blaming fake news and hoaxes for propelling Trump into the US Presidency. Is The Claim Unfounded? There is not any study to back this claim of Facebook's played part in the election. Facebook is not exactly transparent of how much of its ad revenue actually comes from political advertising or news promotion, according to the TechCrunch. People don't exactly have the data for their claim. In fact, exit polls would not be able to show how much the social media platform affected the voter's decision. Zuckerberg's statement will not necessarily stop such allegations. Facebook Is Not Doing Much With Fake News And Hoaxes Facebook users can be involved with flagging fake news and hoaxes. The management rely on them to filter through the credible ones to those that are not. Facebook can only do so much. However, the company does have the means to improve the way they handle information shared on their News Feed. Google has previously done a better job in the fact-checking of new articles in their feed. This does not seem to be Facebook's priority. The issue of fake news and hoaxes will not be resolved anytime soon. Zuckerberg said that they must proceed very carefully with this area. The famous Japanese filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki has revealed that he has come to a decision to suddenly step out of his retirement since 2013 after being inspired to work on and complete a new Japanese animated movie that can be compared to his previous works. Hayao Miyazaki recently went on a special broadcast titled, Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao, translated as The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki. The said special, which ran for 10 minutes, was aired by NHK TV on Nov. 13. It is the first exclusive interview with Hayao Miyazaki in two years. The special focused on the making of his new CG animation short titled, Kemushi no Boro or Boro the Caterpillar. He also opened up in the interview about his struggles working with CG animation for the first time in his 50-year career. He then stated that he will continue making animated shorts for the Studio Ghibli Museum located in Tokyo. Working on Boro the Caterpillar, Miyazaki realized that he was not satisfied with it just being a short animation. In August 2016, he submitted the said animated short for project proposal as a new feature-length film. A story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers, Miyazaki described vaguely when he was asked about the story of the animated short film. Miyazaki has been amazingly working on the story of the 12-minute animated short for 20 years now. Though the project proposal for a full movie has not yet been approved, he went on ahead anyway to work on the story and the animation. He is planning to create a storyboard that will consist at least 100 cuts of footage. Miyazaki has been working in animation since 1963 and founded Studio Ghibli in 1985 with Toshio Suzuki, Isao Takahata, and Yasuyoshi Tokuma. He was responsible for countless successful classics such as Spirited Away and Howls Moving Castle. His new work, Boro the Caterpillar will most likely be aired late 2017 and will be exclusively screened at the Studio Ghibli Museum. 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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Huawei has been successful with its latest releases particularly the P9 but that hasn't stopped rumors about its next flagship phone - the P10 - from circulating. Specifications The GFXBench benchmark test on the Huawei P10 was revealed and if this is true, the new smartphone from the Chinese tech company will be even better then the popular P9. It has been confirmed that the P10 will have the Kirin 960. As for the operating system, the P10 will most probably have the latest Android OS, the 7.0 Nougat. It may come pre-installed with the company's EMUI skin. The P10 will have a 5.5-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The chipset, as indicated in the leaked benchmark test, is the Kirin 960 with an octa-core HiSilicon Hi3660 2.3GHz CPU and Mali G-71 GPU. It will have 6GB of RAM and 256GB internal memory. Other rumored specs include a 12MP rear camera and an 8MP camera at the front for video chats and selfies. There is no word yet whether the main camera will have a dual lens like the P10's predecessor. However, it is likely that the next flagship will utilize that feature. Release Date Tech Radar reports that a specific date of release hasn't been announced yet though some estimate the release to be sometime in mid-2017. Phone Arena suspects the release will be either March or April next year. Reports indicate that the flagship phone's predecessor - the P9 - has been impressive since it was released in April of this year. A total of 9 million P9s have been sold since they became available. One of the P9's deal breakers is the 12MP rear camera. The phone's main camera was made Leica which says so much about its quality. Aside from the high-quality camera, the P9 also had the Kirin 955 chipset, 3GB of RAM, 32GB internal storage, and a fingerprint scanner. Huawei recently unveiled its latest phablet - the Mate 9. The flagship device will come in two variants, the regular one and the Porsche Design Mate 9. Before that, the company also announced its new wearable device called the Huawei Fit. The next smartphone that the giant tech company will introduce will be released in 2017, the iPhone's 10th year anniversary. Surely, Apple will come up with something big. Apple is known for pushing the envelope and the rumored iPhone 8 will definitely be no different. However, some quarters are not sure if the next release will indeed be called the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 7s. Whatever its moniker may be, one thing is for sure, Apple will make up for the iPhone 7, which some consider underwhelming. Specifications Forbes indicated that the rumored smartphone will sport a 5.8-inch curved AMOLED display making it one of the biggest iPhones yet. The display is also rumored to have no home button or bezels. According to rumors, Apple is working closely with Sharp to develop the OLED screen for the iPhone 8. The iPhone 8 will also have a curved back according to rumors. Another says the casing will be made of glass though a metal frame may be necessary. Release Date Many are letting their gut instinct tell them when the next iPhone will be released. They are also looking at tradition. Apple traditionally releases a new device sometime in September. The only gadget from Apple that did not drop on the month of September was the iPhone SE. Since the 2012 release of the iPhone 5, every device came out during the said month proving that the company likes to stick to what it is used to, at least in that regard. As a matter of fact, most of these Apple devices were released on the same date or range of dates. The iPhone 7 came out on Sept. 7 while the iPhone 6 and 6s were released on Sept. 9. Tech Radar is guessing that the iPhone 8 will be launched on the first or second week of September and will hit the stores in not more than two weeks after. The rumored iPhone will probably go head-to-head with Samsung's rumored Galaxy 8. A filed patent revealed that Samsung is creating a smartphone that would look like an elongated slab that has an intriguing automatic hinge that looks similar to Microsoft's Surface Book. As noted by Phone Area, it was more detailed than anything they've seen from Samsung, concluding that Galaxy X might be nearing the end of its development stages. Release Date Despite all the news, rumors, regarding its release in spring this year along with its flagship device, the Galaxy S8 smartphone has been downplayed by a Korean publication that has reconfirmed that the launch for the Galaxy X is still in question after the company is having second thoughts on releasing the said smartphone. A tip from a supply chain speculated that Samsung Galaxy Note 7 mishaps, Samsung Electronics has taken a cautious approach to releasing statements regarding the hardware of the new products. The Design According to a report from Sammobile, a patent application reveals a number of renders and illustrates the smartphones hinge from a number of angles. Check out the latest photos below. The Camera As per TNI, the new family member X will be enchanted with an impressive camera and cutting edge display. As per a report from a Chinese blog named Wccftech, the Samsung companys next flagship will enrich AMOLED screen. It will encase resolution of 4K (2160 x 3840), plus a dual rear-facing camera module. The dual rear facing snapper is not a surprise in the package, as all new premium smartphones are enchanted with this feature. "The Young and Restless" head writer Sally Sussman revealed that Adam Newman might not return after all. Sussman plans to make major changes to the plotline involving Christian Newman's paternity and it may not be what fans have been expecting all along. She also made it clear that Justin Hartley will not be back on the CBS show, although there is no word yet if there is a chance for Michael Muhney's return. "The Young And The Restless" Spoilers Over the past weeks, "The Young and the Restless" has been focusing on one vital plotline - Christian Newman's parentage. This is one of the reasons why there has been much talk that Adam Newman is slated for a return since he is vital to this plot. However, the head writer for the daytime soap made it clear in an interview that "for all intents and purposes," Nick is Christian's father. Sussman also revealed that Adam would not be back on the show unless there is a compelling need for him to do so. She added that Nick can stay blinded to Christian's parentage since there are no plans for a recast at the moment. She also made it clear that Justin Hartley, the last actor to portray Adam Newman, will not be back on the soap. Given these circumstances, a paternity reveal may not happen anytime soon. Michael Muhney's Expected Return Although Sussman has been clear on where she stands about Adam Newman's character, there are some fans who are hopeful that Muhney will be back on "The Young and the Restless." There are rumors that CBS and Muhney reached an understanding after the actor was featured on "CBS Soaps in Depth." The last time that Muhney was mentioned in the house organ is back in 2014 when he was still part of Y&R. There were numerous controversies involving his departure since the actor was purportedly involved in a groping incident, although there has been no official statement from the network or from Muhney's camp. At the moment, there is no official announcement yet about any recasting plans for Adam Newman's character. At the same time, Sussman does not have any intention of pursuing the plotline involving an off- cam character. Thus, it is unlikely that Justin Hartley, Michael Muhney, or any other fan favorite will be back as Adam Newman in "The Young and the Restless." ITU-GS-MR-MainContent ITU Telecom World 2016 today launched proceedings, welcoming influential participants from public and private sectors and across the ICT industry, including SMEs, from around the world. Proceedings began with the Opening Ceremony, in the presence of H.R.H Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, Kingdom of Thailand, Chan-o-cha Prayut, Prime Minister, Kingdom of Thailand and Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union. Addressing an audience of event participants and special guests which included Heads of State and Ministers, Heads of UN Agencies, Regulators and industry leaders (in order of speaking), Chan-o-cha Prayut, Prime Minister, Kingdom of Thailand outlined key components of the event, including highlights of the Thailand Pavilion and the Event's core focus on collaboration, the digital economy and SMEs, noting the "Thai government and ITU have placed emphasis on the cooperation of entrepreneurs, SMEs and start-up groups." Acknowledging his appreciation for H.R.H Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn's most valuable and committed support for ICTs, in particular for social development, ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao noted Thailand's remarkable progress in ICT developments. Mr. Zhao extended his sincere condolences to the Royal family and the Thai people and voiced his hope that the event, with its focus on development through the digital economy, will in some small way be able to contribute to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej's work and legacy. H.R.H Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn officially opened the Event, noting how it offers "investment opportunities for SMEs and start-ups which help accelerate economic growth in many countries." Forum Opening Collaborating in the digital economy with a specific focus on the key role of SMEs in the digital ecosystem was the theme that kicked of the ITU Telecom World Forum Debate. The opening session provided unique and powerful perspectives from heads of state, government and international organizations worldwide. Taking to the floor first, Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union, spoke of the importance of ICTs as enablers, noting that "Within the ICT industry, it is the innovative small and medium enterprises tech SMEs that are key to industry disruption, to job creation, and to the technological innovations that are taking the industry forward." Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister, Luxembourg, spoke of the transformation currently underway in this digital era, and the tremendous potential impact which we cannot afford to miss. "None of us can afford to miss the train. In Luxembourg we consider impact of digital as a huge opportunity to create value and make the world a better place." Speaking of the opportunities and challenges the fast-changing and evolving ICT ecosystem holds for Vanuatu, Mr. Charlot Salwai Tabimasmas, Prime Minister and Minister responsible for ICT and Telecommunications added "We value learning from experiences of other countries, and note synergies and cost efficiencies that could be achieved in designing, implementing, or advocating certain initiatives on a regional or international level." Crown Prince Tupoutoa Ulukalala of the Kingdom of Tonga outlined the importance of inspiring collaboration, explaining how ITU Telecom World itself, "This annual flagship event has inspired Tonga as the first Pacific country to liberalize its telecoms sector in 2002. In a short time the benefits were realized." Prajin Juntong, Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Minister of Digital Economy and Society, Kingdom of Thailand, spoke of taking inspiration from His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej's many innovative ICT projects and legacy, ensuring that "ICT is not for those who can afford it but we must allow those who are most in need to benefit from it to not be left behind." Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) commended the unique strengths of the event, providing dialogue between international organizations and the private sector to "collectively identify opportunities and challenges." He also took the opportunity to inform delegates that UNCTAD was today joining the EQUALS initiative, which aims to tackle the gender digital divide. Commending ITU as a "platform to manage the emerging digital ecosystem," Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), United Arab Emirates, challenged delegates, as they began the week's debates, with topical questions such as "Can we ignore the value of collaboration?" or "Are we making sure we are applying enough innovation?" Following the Forum Opening, debates began in earnest with the Leadership Summit, which convened highest-level experts from public and private sectors to explore why working together is so important for growing the digital economy. During the 4 days of the event, Forum sessions will delve into an exciting set of topics such as artificial intelligence, how ICTs can meet the UN's Sustainable development goals (SDGs), intelligent transport systems and autonomous (driverless) vehicles, digital financial inclusion and fintech and financial incentives to invest in the global roll out of ICT infrastructure, collaborative innovation and the tech-SME ecosystem. Parallel to the Forum, the Exhibition will showcase digital solutions and investment opportunities from governments and industry from both emerging and developed markets, including tech-SMEs. During the week, participants will be able to learn more on the ITU Telecom World Awards, recognizing excellence and innovation in ICT solutions with social impact from SMEs and corporates alike. Winners will be announced during the closing ceremony on 17 November. ITU Telecom World 2016 will also provide perspectives from across ITU and its membership and partners, with a host of exciting co-hosted events from across the ITU community. It will also include a number of important agreements and contracts signed between Governments, Regulatory bodies and the private sector. President-elect Donald Trump gave laid-off IT workers something his rival, Hillary Clinton, did not during the campaign: Attention and a promise to reform the H-1B visa program. The IT workers that Trump wanted to appeal to don't work for startups, Google, Facebook or Microsoft. They run IT systems at insurance firms, banks, utilities and retailers. They live in Rust Belt cities and in New York City, but are too spread out for pollsters to measure. Trump recognized that IT workers are aggrieved and so did Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who worked with the president-elect on this issue. Sessions, after being appointed in early 2015 as the chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee, set out to become "the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers." Sessions emerged as one of the visa program's harshest critics. He is now set to play a major role in a Trump administration. Trump has appointed Sessions' chief counsel, Danielle Cutrona, to head his immigration policy transition team. Sessions is reportedly being considered to head the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service), Department of Justice (which can investigate discrimination complaints), or the Department of Defense. "Trump was the only candidate to invite me to share my horrific Disney story at his rallies, and Jeff Sessions was the only senator to invite me to testify at a Senate hearing," said Leo Perrero, a former IT worker at Disney who trained a visa-holding replacement. Disney laid off somewhere between 200 and 300 IT workers after hiring H-1B using contractors. With Republicans in control of the Congress as well, Perrero said, "I am very optimistic that action will finally be taken." After Southern California Edison (SCE) replaced a major part of its IT staff last year, Sessions took to the Senate floor and read Computerworld's news account of the displacement into the record. He invited leading H-1B critics to testify. A poster-sized photograph showing American flags in the cubicles of soon-to-be laid off workers at Northeast Utilities, since named Eversource, was displayed at another immigration committee hearing. The flags were raised in protest by the utility's IT employees. Brian Buchanan, a former senior IT staffer at SCE who also trained a visa-holding replacement, voted for Trump. He wants to see big changes to the visa program. But he is skeptical about the final outcome. "Everyone including Trump says they're gonna fix this," said Buchanan, "but yet it just keeps on going and getting worse. We need to take back these jobs and give them to unemployed Americans. There are millions of Americans that would benefit if we ended these programs, but the lobbyists, elite, special interests and politicians have a vested financial interest in keeping Americans wages low and replacing us whenever they can." What Buchanan wants to see is elimination of the H-1B program, because he believes it can't be fixed. "Every time government tries to fix broken programs, they make it far worse," he said. To prevent what happened at Edison, Buchanan said U.S. firms should be liable for any contractor that uses H-1B visa workers to replace American workers. He also wants higher wages for visa workers, and believes the Trump administration should rescind President Barack Obama's executive order giving the spouses of some H-1B workers the ability to work. He has been part of a lawsuit fighting the Obama move. The H-1B program "was only supposed to be used for an unfilled job that you couldn't find an American worker for," said Buchanan. Reform of the H-1B program will face considerable opposition in Congress. It is an issue that transcends party lines. When longtime H-1B critic Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) tried to amend the 2013 Senate comprehensive immigration bill with U.S. worker protections, his chief opponent was a fellow Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch, of Utah. But Trump, as president, will have executive powers to force changes in the program. And with Sessions set to play a prominent role in the administration, Silicon Valley faces a difficult fight. Whether the risk of IT worker displacement recedes, remains to the seen. Dawn Casey, an IT worker whose Twitter account states that she trained her foreign replacement, tweeted her joy on the night of Trump's victory. "I think his election is very important to the H-1B issue. Trump will put Americans first and he will bring back jobs," she wrote. An Ealing doctor who supplied abortion clinics with out-of-date blood is being given a second chance. Former Harley Street haematologist Firiad Shafik Hiwaizi, 59 of Gunnersbury Avenue in Acton, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in October last year, and given a six-month period of assessment 'with particular reference to [his] clinical and managerial skills'. But six months on, the General Medical Council heard on Wednesday last week, that Dr Hiwaizi had suffered a prolonged spell of ill-health and had been unable to undergo the objective assessment of his work. He had, at the previous hearing, admitted failing to ensure the blood stocks were adequately monitored, and it was revealed blood had been stored at the private Montpelier Hospital in Ealing, which is now shut, at the wrong temperature. He was also found guilty of making a false statement to an audit team which discovered the bad blood, a charge the doctor denied. But he has now been given a 12-month reprieve in which to prove his clinical abilities, against the wishes of the council barrister, Mr Richard Tyson who said: 'If this doctor is incompetent it is essential we know as soon as possible for the benefit of the public.' He will be under the constant supervision of a haematology consultant in an NHS hospital for the full year. What is a Jew? Israeli museum attempts an answer JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli... When anti-Semitism rears its head, we must be ready to fight it Anti-Semitism is a force that is persistent as well as pernicious. When it occurs, it must be fought both by being confronted in real time... Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. The conclusion of the US presidential election of 2016 jolted the whole nation when the result was announced on November 8, 2016. Republican (GOP) nominee Donald Trump becomes the 45th American president after winning 279 votes. Democrat representative Hillary Clinton lost with a final tally yielding only a total of 228. Despite the excellent analyses and forecasts, plus the fierce backing of Barack Obama and famous celebrities, it only took less than three days for the six remaining electoral states to pull a vicious uppercut that knocked her down to 51 points less. Now for the monumental question of the year: What happened? It would seem that despite her popular media exposure, the majority of the American public is still having a hard time trusting her 'genuine' personality. A recent report published by BBC mentioned how waves of leaked email scandals critically endangered her candidacy, given that 'facts and figures exposed and substantiated her dubious side.' Furthermore, everyone who once thought that Obama's proactive endorsement gave Clinton an advantage might now think again. On the contrary, that demonstration of solidarity seemed more like a sign of desperation. So why were the Democratic Party doing their very best to beat Donald Trump? Contrary to most poll analyses, it seems Trump has a number of understated advantages. He is a well-known populist whose 'genuine' (although outrageous) outbursts always get the attention of the American people. An article in Los Angeles Times also mentioned how Trump's natural affinity with key economic players contributes to his victory. Truth be told, America is still buried in debt, regardless of whether or not the Obama administration did some improvements. It would seem that choosing a controversially popular person who spent a lifetime doing business is a much preferable choice than a less popular candidate who stands tall in the shadow of her predecessors. The 2016 Presidential Election is now over and the aftermath of the events that took place is quite polarizing. Donald Trump is now the President-elect of the most powerful nation in the world and half of the country's population is not happy about it. After Donald Trump has announced his bid for presidency last year, many people became uncomfortable. It did not help either that throughout his campaign, he repeatedly mentioned controversial statements which only further fueled the fear of many people. With his recent election as the Head of State, people who are strongly opposed to him are seriously considering moving to another country. A report from Quartz even mentioned that the Canadian immigration website crashing shortly after Donald Trump won. So, here is the good news. There is actually a way to take up residence to another country if you are an entrepreneur, investor, or even a small business owner. In a report by USA Today, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and investors craves stability. With Mr. Trump being elected as the President, there is a current unpredictability that most business people are wary of. Furthermore, many entrepreneurs who are immigrants really feel uneasy. Here are some of the countries that will grant entrepreneurs residency in their countries: Canada - The Start-Up Visa program requires an entrepreneur to have at least $200,000 CAD to invest. Proof of competency and eligibility to run a company is also required. Ireland - The country is quite aggressive in getting foreign entrepreneurs. Check their Start-Up Entrepreneur Programme as it only requires at least 50,000 euros and 10 available jobs in Ireland. Australia - The applicant should be under 55 years of age and has a least $250,000 AUD to fund a business. The visa is also said to not provide a way to become a permanent resident, however, long term stay can be granted. Britain - For 50,000 British pounds to invest, a person can be granted the U.K. Tier 1 Entrepreneur Visa. It allows the visa holder to stay for up to three years and can be extended after two years. However, it might still be okay to stay in America. After all, Wall Street seemed to have closed positively after the elections according to a previous report from Jobs & Hire. The Anti-Trump protest marks its third consecutive night in Madison, Wisconsin following the result of the 2016 election. The demonstration in Madison is just one of the 50 mass gatherings that exploded across the United States in the wake of Donald Trump's victory against Hillary Clinton. According to an article published by Alter Net, the protesters have covered a total of at least 25 cities throughout their march. Such is the fierce determination of people who simply cannot forgive the racist and sexist remarks of Donald Trump during his campaign. This rally proves to be a record-breaker in terms of uninterrupted duration. In other states, the civil revolutions were dispersed as they have just become a bit 'uncivilized.' Due to extensive criminal and dangerous behavior, protest is now considered a riot. Crowd has been advised. Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) November 11, 2016 Meanwhile, anecdotal reports of hate crimes from Trump supporters ignite an all new terror among minority citizens. CNN reports that the majority of the targeted individuals are Muslims, but it seems African-Americans and Hispanics were also under fire. The most notorious criminal activities include assault, robbery and vandalism. District officials in Maple Grove say they are "horrified" by racist graffiti scrawled today in a bathroom. | https://t.co/cO5EVnUBjz pic.twitter.com/rj0rMoVeJm WCCO - CBS Minnesota (@WCCO) November 9, 2016 Crews in #Durham have arrived to take down the hateful message. @WNCN pic.twitter.com/Jb9dyveWX2 Lauren Haviland (@LaurenWNCN) November 10, 2016 The current situation in America is slowly brewing into mass panic. The people, particularly the ethnically diverse public, are concerned that America under Donald Trump in the coming years will resemble Germany under Adolf Hitler in the late 1930's. An article published by Jobs & Hire describes exactly the kind of scenario that ISIS terrorists want. With America torn from within, how much chance does Lady Liberty has in protecting herself from dire external threats? Drastic drop of Marks & Spencer half year profit led the company to close down 80 stores, 2100 job losses is at stake. Incidentally, fashion is never lax, this made Marks & Spencer Retail Company CEO Steve Roweto paln a to redefinition of their stores into modernize clothing shops as well as giving way to Simply Food outlets. Marks & Spencer Retail Company CEO, Steve Rowe is making a huge shakeup with UK's leading clothing chain, According to report, Marks & Spencer outlets overhaul will take five years to complete, it will be a complete turnabout for the company. In response to Marks & Spencer's massive profit decline, M & S CEO needs to close a number of Marks & Spencer outlet. It is identified that the company is looking into Food Industry, as well redefining their marketing strategy. CEO Rowe plans to reopen some stores into new Simply Food outlets. As stated by The Guardian, "The embattled retailer intends to put clothing and food on an equal footing with same amount of selling space devoted to both sides of the business." Simply Food outlets will receive the same footing as Marks & Spencer clothing outlets. 132 years, it is how long Marks & Spencer Retail Company had been in the clothing industry, it catered to the rich and famous around the world. Now that Fashion is fast changing, they are left hanging with outdated marketing strategies. According to Steve Rowe in Mirror, "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." The company will open new clothing lines like Autograph, Per Una, Blue Harbour, Alexa Chung's Archive collection, Baartman's & Siegel menswear, and Marie-Chantal childrens. It will cater to the younger and more upbeat Marks & Spencer Retail Company customers. Meanwhile, Online retail is also part of the company's remaking, they want to reach out further to the people.Hopefully, the drastic change that Marks & Spencer is taking will lead to the company's revival in business. Five years after the Royal Wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William, the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge are seen to have hands on the upcoming familial ceremony next year. Meanwhile, Pippa Middleton confirms the date of her wedding and the possible roles of the royal grandchildren. Despite their efforts to keep the wedding ceremony humble, reports confirmed that Pippa Middleton has already given them a word in the next royal-studded event. According to Pippa, she is more than excited as the month of May approaches in 2017. This is because her wedding day may fall on one of those days. Almost all things are set after many good hands offered to contribute to the success of the event. Even Kate Middleton was hands on with the preparation despite the controversies that the Queen disallowed her, along with her Royal family to attend the said public event. It seems that 'family' is paramount to Kate and so she keeps on helping her sister Pippa to have the best wedding possible. According to IBT, the maker of Kate's earrings during the Royal weddings is alleged to be making the engagement ring of Pippa Middleton. Kate Middleton, as the sister of the bride, will read something for the wedding, and her children Charlotte and George might also take a role as a page boy and a flower girl. While all seems to be in place, there are controversies that the Queen of Cambridge bans Prince William and Kate Middleton to attend the said ceremony. This was after knowing that the soon-to-be husband of Pippa was a model posing nude photos for advertisements. To further avoid any unnecessary comments and assumptions on the Royal family, the Queen just decided to advise the royal couple not to attend the wedding anymore. The controversy has finally come to an end after the Queen expressed embarrassment because people think that she was banning Kate to attend her own family's celebration, as reported by Gossip Cop. There are no words yet if Kate Middleton will attend with Prince William and children, but the venue is expected to be in the Middleton's residence in Englefield, Berkshire.More updates will be revealed soon about Pippa Middleton's highly anticipated wedding. After the results of the 2016 United States Presidential Elections were released, citizens of the greatest nation are vigorously protesting against Trump's victory in the elections. This caused Turkey's foreign Ministry to issue a warning about the country's safety. People continue to protest in different cities, expressing their concerns about the incoming Trump Presidency. This has triggered Turkey's Foreign Ministry to issue a travel warning for the United States. It seems that the protests that are running rampant pose a danger for tourists. Moreover, it is also possible for racists to actively assault those of different race, may it be verbally or physically. In a recent report here on Jobs & Hire, aside from protests about the Trump victory, hate crimes are also becoming more frequent. Even the Portland Police has already categorized the protests as a riot, advising citizens to be aware of the dangers present in the country. According to Bloomberg, Turkey often finds themselves on the receiving end of negativity for more than two years now. It is known that foreign tourists are targeted by terrorist attacks in major cities in Turkey. Out of concern for their own, Tukey has stated a warning directed to Turks currently residing in the United States. As per Times of Israel, Ankara shares a warning to those who live in the United States or who are planning to travel to the US to be vigilant due to risks linked to current events and social tensions. As posted on the foreign ministry website. Ankara also warns that there is an increase of verbal and physical abuse over the past few days, usually doled out by xenophobes and racists. As a result, Turks are warned, "Do not approach zones where demonstrations are growing, take security precautions and closely follow news via local media." The latest updates about "Grimm" Season 6 is that it will be answering all of the fans' questions regarding the TV series. Fans have petitioned for TV executives to not cancel the show, but their plea went unheeded. According to Fab Newz, "Grimm" Season 6 will premiere its last and final season on January 6, 2017, and the fans will be in for a treat as the show will end the series in a way that they want. The first of which is the confrontation that will happen between Nick Burkhardt (David Guintoli) and Captain Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz). Nick and Sean will finally face-off each other, giving the fans the climax that they were waiting for and providing them with a consolation for ending the show after six seasons. The latest updates of "Grimm" Season 6 also promises to answer a lot of the unanswered questions left in Season 5. The lack of suspense and the number of updates about what will happen in "Grimm" Season 6 have indicated that the show will indeed be canceled. Movie News Guide reports that it appears fans petition to NBC and to other TV Network and even to Netflix have all went unheeded. Several followers of the show have created a petition to Change.org for the show to continue, or to at least have a spinoff. Unfortunately, months have already passed since the cancellation announcement and there is still no update with regards to "Grimm" Season 7, or its spinoff. A fan in Germany started a petition in September for Netflix to host the show. The petition has already reached 11,209 and only needs 3,791 more to reach the target of 15,000. Netflix however, has yet to even respond to the petition, which shows the sad reality that there doesn't seem to be any interest from other networks to host the show. Several fans have written a petition to TNT, the network that hosted season 2, to host the show again. But like in the case of Netflix, TNT didn't respond to the petition. As much as there are a lot of fans who are clamoring for the show to continue, it looks like "Grimm" will be airing its final 13 episodes starting this January. A blog about life under, and resisting, a dictatorship Email Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday. Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. RALEIGH Despite millions spent by Democrats and allies this fall and with a divisive LGBT law in their political arsenal, the North Carolina General Assembly will begin in January with Republicans still firmly in charge in the dominant branch of state government. Whether the GOPs veto-proof majorities retained on Election Day remain intact for the entire two-year session may depend partly on the courts. Federal judges could order Senate and House districts be remapped early in 2017 and special elections later next year because they recently determined nearly 30 drawn by Republicans are illegal racial gerrymanders. Regardless of possible recounts and barring changes when provisional ballots are added, Republicans will hold essentially the same margins in the two chambers since 2013. It means Republicans can continue enacting right-leaning policies without a governor blocking them or Democratic colleagues upholding the veto. Even should Democrat Roy Cooper succeed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory the outgoing attorney general leads by 5,000 votes with ballots not yet counted hell be in a weak negotiating position. Democrats needed to gain four seats in the House or five in the Senate. But they got only one in the House and lost one in the Senate, according to unofficial results. Republicans may hold 74 of the 120 House seats and 35 of the 50 Senate seats. Beyond criticisms of Republican legislation on education, the environment and voting rights, Democrats focused attacks on House Bill 2. The law limited local and state protections for gay and lesbian rights and told transgender people to use the restrooms in schools and government buildings corresponding to the gender on their birth certificates. McCrorys signing of the law hurt him in some areas. But Rep. Darren Jackson, D-Wake, who helped direct House Democratic campaigning, was disappointed with the laws effect upon legislative races. He was surprised that a couple of GOP legislators who voted for House Bill 2 last March, only to call for its repeal in recent weeks, survived challenges. The change of heart seemed to work, Jackson said. I had expected the people would see through that. GOP leaders believe their message of lower taxes and unemployment, higher teacher salaries and fiscal responsibility worked. Theyve defended House Bill 2 and accused gay rights groups and corporate CEOs of asserting an extreme social agenda. I want to thank the people of the state of North Carolina because they paid attention to what we did, Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said on election night. They didnt pay attention to what other people were saying many of those other people from out-of-state, many people coming into North Carolina trying to change the narrative. Whether those elected serve their two-year terms is unclear. A three-judge panel last August declared unconstitutional nine Senate and 19 House districts drawn by Republicans in 2011. The judges declared GOP legislators failed to justify creating so many majority-black districts. The fall elections continued under current maps, but judges now will decide when the General Assembly must redraw. New boundaries could give Democrats an earlier chance to end the veto-proof majorities. Lawyers for the plaintiffs who sued successfully want the judges to order new maps by Jan. 25, two weeks after the General Assembly reconvenes, with elections using the maps later in the year. The interests of the public as a whole also are best served by implementing constitutional redistricting plans as soon as possible, the lawyers wrote in September. But lawyers for the state and Republican lawmakers responded a January deadline and 2017 elections are overreaching, unreasonable and unrealistic. They say the General Assembly needs until the end of July, the same completion month in 2011. They said 116 of the 170 districts would likely have to be redrawn. A U.S. Supreme Court decision next year on a similar racial gerrymandering lawsuit involving North Carolinas congressional districts could affirm, limit or overturn the ruling on the legislative maps. Gildan Activewear Inc. on Monday announced perhaps its boldest acquisition move yet, saying it has committed to spending $66 million to buy certain assets of bankrupt American Apparel LLC. American Apparel, based in Los Angeles, voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday its second time requiring protection from creditors since October 2015. It listed assets and liabilities between $100 million and $500 million and creditors between 25,001 and 50,000. Much of Americans brand cachet comes from the bulk of its products, geared toward millennials and made domestically. It is known primarily for its sexually oriented advertising and chief executive Dov Charney, who faced allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace. American entered bankruptcy with the intent of having Gildan be a preferred acquirer, although a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge may require an auction for the assets. If Gildan is outbid, it would receive a break-up fee. The deal, subject to the approval of a federal bankruptcy judge, could be concluded in the first quarter. Gildan would acquire the intellectual property rights of the American brand. It plans to separately buy inventory from American to ensure a seamless supply of goods in the printwear channel while the company integrates the brand within its printwear business. Gildan may consider keeping the companys 1.5 million square feet of production and distribution operations, according to a court filing. However, Gildan said it would not acquire any of Americans 110 stores. Gildan said the American Apparel brand would represent a strong complementary addition to the companys portfolio of brands. The acquisition will create revenue growth opportunities by leveraging Gildans extensive distribution network in North American and international printwear markets to further increase the brands penetration in the faster-growing fashion basics segments of these markets. Gildan, an apparel manufacturer based in Montreal, has pledged to create more than 700 jobs in North Carolina, including at least 290 in Mocksville and 16 in Eden, as part of expanding domestic yarn-spinning capacity for new and existing products for its Gildan Yarns division. It also added production in Salisbury. Gildan is a direct competitor of Hanesbrands Inc. of Winston-Salem. American exited bankruptcy protection in early 2016 as a smaller, leaner company, shrinking from 230 stores and 8,500 employees in six factories to 110 stores, three factories and 4,400 employees. However, major losses returned quickly, including a 33-percent decline in sales in the third quarter compared with a year ago. The company faced unfavorable market conditions that were more persistent and widespread than the debtors anticipated, said Mark Weinstein, who has been appointed as American Apparels chief restructuring officer. These market conditions were particularly detrimental to retailers. By comparison, Gildan reported third-quarter sales of $715 million, up 6 percent in the quarter. Printwear sales rose 4.9 percent to $461.9 million, while branded apparel sales increased 8.2 percent to $253. Gildan said it would evaluate potential wholesale opportunities for leveraging the American brand within its branded apparel business. Bowman Gray IV, a local independent stock broker, said the Gildan acquisition bid looks like a good deal since it not taking on any of AAs debt. Gildan has some work to do reestablishing the brand. Gildans recent spree includes a $55 million purchase of Peds Legwear Inc. of Hildebran that closed in August and a $110 million deal for Alstyle Apparel LLC that closed in May. Stifel analyst Jim Duffy said the potential acquisition offers Gildan the ability to accelerate its growth strategy through another recognizable brand. We see opportunity in the fashion basics portion of the printwear business, as well as potential for use of the trade name in branded apparel. Importantly, Gildan will not be taking on any retail assets, which we see as a positive, Duffy said. Duffy said the deal would not tie up Gildans ability to conduct another purchase in the short term. Although the election of Donald Trump as president has stoked some dissent, there are many who believe he truly can make America great again. Q: Im thinking of getting a fitness watch. What are the benefits and where can I go to learn about and compare the different ones available? GB Answer: All types of fitness trackers, including fitness watches, can be a fun way to measure your personal health, and can promote healthy changes in your daily routine. Many of the most popular companies with new fitness trackers right now encourage goal setting and friendly competition among users. Trackers are designed to accommodate a variety of different activities and lifestyles, but the benefits of this wearable technology will only come if you find one that has the right features for you. A great way to narrow your search is to know the difference between the types of wearable fitness trackers on the market. There are some designed for all day wear and others for training purposes. All day trackers measure things like calories burned and consumed, steps taken, duration of exercise/activity, and sleep time. The training trackers do everything that all day trackers do, and also measure things like heart rate and breathing patterns, the speed, pace, route of your exercise and altitude change. Another thing to consider is the display or face of your tracker. Often, the key to integrating a fitness tracker into your daily routine is a user-friendly interface. Many watches require you to sync your data to a smart phone or other device, and use a companion app that stores and analyzes all of your data. In terms of battery life, a more advanced tracker with a touchscreen and lots of sensors will need to be charged more often than a simple LED light display. Some trackers are not even rechargeable, instead running on coin cell batteries. Consumer Reports released a Fitness Tracker Buying Guide that can be used to navigate the different types of trackers and help you pick one out. Visit www.consumerreports.org/cro/fitness-trackers/buying-guide.htm to access the report. Q: My retiree employer group health insurance does not cover prescription drugs. How will I sign up for coverage? SR Answer: You will need to enroll in a Medicare Part D prescription drug plan. These drug plans are provided by private insurance companies that have contracted with and have plans approved by Medicare. You can enroll and make changes during Open Enrollment Period, which occurs annually from Oct. 15 thru Dec. 7. As a Medicare beneficiary you may benefit from the Extra Help program. The program assists qualified Medicare beneficiaries with their Medicare prescription drug plan costs by reducing or eliminating the premiums, deductibles, coverage gaps, copayments and coinsurance a beneficiary is asked to pay. It is administered through the Social Security Administration. Eligibility guidelines for Extra Help are based on income and assets and those guidelines are reviewed and adjusted annually. There is an application process for the Extra Help program. However, if you receive Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), or other assistance in paying your Medicare premiums you automatically qualify for Extra Help and do not need to submit an application. All others may submit applications for Extra Help online or by mail. For more information or to obtain an application, please contact the Social Security Administration at 1-800-772-1213 or online at www.socialsecurity.gov/extrahelp. The Seniors Health Insurance Information Programs (SHIIP) volunteer counselors are also available to answer questions and provide information about Medicare, Medicare supplements, Advantage and Part D plans. SHIIP is a division of the North Carolina Department of Insurance and can be reached at 1-855-408-1212. The nations Founding Fathers established three branches of government executive, judicial and legislative to not only represent three distinct systems of power, but also as checks and balances necessary for a democracy to thrive. North Carolinians appeared, on the surface, to confirm their desire for such balance with pivotal votes for two Democrats and a left-leaning judge amidst a dominant Republican performance in Tuesdays general election. Roy Cooper, the states attorney general, leads Gov. Pat McCrory by 4,979 votes out of 4.66 million cast with a Nov. 18 canvass of county ballots, including provisional, absentee and military. A recount request is expected from the McCrory re-election campaign. Josh Stein appears headed to succeed Cooper as attorney general with a 20,777 vote lead over Sen. Buck Newton. Neither Newton nor the state Republican Party has made public any intentions of requesting a recount. It remains to be seen whether Stein will continue Coopers stand on declining to defend Republican-sponsored state laws that he viewed as unconstitutional, such as House Bill 2 and the voter ID law. Perhaps most importantly, Mike Morgan, a Superior Court judge, has unseated Justice Bob Edmunds on the state Supreme Court by a 54.5 percent to 45.5 percent margin. Morgans win means there will be more left-leaning justices (four) than right-leaning (three). Two associate justices, Sam Ervin and Barbara Jackson, are up for re-election in 2018. Ervin is viewed as left-leaning, while Jackson is viewed as right-leaning, both based on their political backgrounds. Morgans victory is a geopolitical flip so pivotal that the Winston-Salem Journal reported Saturday that some Republican legislators are considering pushing to add two justices to the court as permitted in the state Constitution in a special session that McCrory could call after Thanksgiving essentially for Hurricane Matthew relief legislation. During that session, a potential lame duck McCrory could nominate two conservative judges to terms that would last at least through the November 2018 election a move some political observers claim represents a defiance of the will of the people. On a number of issues, to be sure, the state Supreme Court has not been evenly divided, and so there is not an expectation that Morgans election would change the outcome, said John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University. For instance, the court has in recent years issued unanimous or near-unanimous decisions on cases concerning the states MAP Act and legislators power to make appointments to commissions. On these types of cases, a change of one judge is unlikely to make a big difference. But on cases where the state Supreme Court has been evenly divided and generally along party lines, though, Morgans election could have a big impact, Dinan said. Divisive cases The most divisive case, perhaps, is redistricting, particularly as 2020 looms on the horizon and Morgan has been elected to an eight-year term. Bob Orr, a Republican and a Supreme Court justice from 1994 to 2004, said any potential attempt to expand the court is less sour grapes about Edmunds defeat and more about redistricting and the implications of current litigation and the call for independent redistricting with 2020 looming. The party in charge of the General Assembly in 2020 will have the task of carving the next round of redistricting maps based on North Carolinas population growth and in-state migration patterns. If we had independent redistricting, we would have significantly less litigation, Orr said. Expanding the court for the sake of redistricting is a bad look for the Supreme Court and the judiciary because it makes the court appear partisan and undermines the confidence the public has in the judiciary systems independence. Orr said the Supreme Court serves as the final arbiter of issues involving the state constitution, such as the school voucher case. When asked if having a left-tilting Supreme Court could deter Republican legislative leaders from introducing bills that critics may consider as unconstitutional, Orr said those leaders will take their chances in the state court system. Justices are expected to vote not according to a party line, but based on the facts of the case and the appeal, Orr said. Making that challenging, Orr said, is that neither a Democrat- nor Republican-controlled General Assembly have adequately funded the state court system, which leads the court is a delicate position when considering whether to strike down certain legislation. Dinan said Morgans victory could have significant consequences for the fate of measures passed by the state legislature, ranging from legislative redistricting plans to voter ID requirements to school-choice programs, especially on issues where the current court has been rather evenly divided. Will of the people? Some analysts and political observers question whether Morgans win fully represents a show of the will of the people, but more that his name was listed first on the ballot. In most court races, the Republican candidate was listed first, one of the election privileges the party of the governor received from a law passed in July by the legislature. Morgan emerged victorious in several rural eastern and western counties that otherwise voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates. Morgan ultimately carried 75 of the 100 counties, including all eight urban counties. Orr also cited that Edmunds candidacy was caught up in a Republican-sponsored bill passed by the General Assembly in 2015 that would have removed voters ability to choose Supreme Court justices. Instead, each justice would have faced a retention election, essentially a yes or no vote on their term in office without an opponent on the ballot. If they were to vote no, the justice would be replaced by a governor appointee until the next General Assembly election. Sabra Faires, a Raleigh attorney, challenged the law. A state Superior Court judge panel determined the law to be a violation of the state Constitution. With the Supreme Court splitting 3-3 on the question, with Edmunds abstaining, voter election of justices was maintained. Orr also mentioned that Edmunds was the subject of what he called an aggressive political advertising campaign paid for by outside funding that was grossly unfair to Edmunds related to the retention issue. Checks and balances When it comes to the check and balance of having a potential Democrat governor and a Republican-controlled General Assembly, the super-majority hold on both chambers is likely to limit Coopers veto leverage over legislation. However, Cooper being in the governors seat means the State Board of Elections and the 100 county boards of election will be controlled by Democrats, the latter by a 2-to-1 margin. That likely means the state and county boards will be more agreeable to Democrat requests for additional early voting precincts, additional early voting days and returning precincts to college campuses, such as at Winston-Salem State and Appalachian State universities. For example, in July, early voting sites in two of Winston-Salems prominent minority neighborhoods were in jeopardy after the Forsyth County elections board approved a plan that moved sites at Winston-Salem State Universitys Anderson Center and the Sprague Street Recreation Center to a site in the southwest portion of the county and a site further east. The board was split along party lines also on proposed early voting dates and hours, including a Democrat proposal for Sunday early voting that was rejected. However, eventually the Anderson and Sprague Street sites were approved for early voting. In October 2014, Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens ruled that the state boards decision to leave out the Appalachian State precinct site appeared to discourage student voting and looked like a constitutional violation. Although the board ultimately complied with Stephens order in the Watauga County case, state attorneys argue that early voting decisions arent subject to judicial review and continued the appeal. The state board was brought into the Watauga case when the countys three-member board couldnt agree on an early vote plan. Earlier this year, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to end the voter ID law and restore 17 days of in-person voting. However, it left details of the 17-day schedule in the hands of local election boards, where Republicans hold majorities. That means county election boards had to approve new proposals for early voting dates, hours and locations in a third of the states 100 counties. A total of 24 counties provided two plans one approved by a majority on each three-member board and the other backed by a single member. Those counties include Mecklenburg, Wake, New Hanover, Pitt and Union. The (Raleigh) News & Observer reported in August that Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state Republican Party, encouraged GOP appointees to county elections boards to make party line changes to early voting by limiting the number of hours and keeping polling sites closed on Sundays. Woodhouse sat front and center during a daylong assessment of the county boards plans by the state board that included the state board preserving at least some Sunday voting in several counties where it had been used in 2012, and where local GOP officials attempted to eliminate it. The future Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University, said a left-leaning state Supreme Court will likely give broader and more modern interpretations to statutes. In this regard, there may be some expectation they would be less business friendly, and more worker and consumer friendly. Zagros Madjd Sadjadi, an economics professor at Winston-Salem State, said Cooper will not have an easy time with a Republican legislature unhappy with the closeness of the governors race. They will look to override any of his vetoes. Mitch Kokai, a policy analyst with conservative think tank John Locke Foundation, said it seems entirely likely that any Republican-driven legislation thats able to survive a Cooper veto will be heading straight to court. Theres no way of knowing for certain that the newly constituted Supreme Court will side with Democrats, but the likelihood is much stronger now. This is especially true with the new sets of election maps that could be written early in 2017. Rob Schofield, a policy analyst with left-leaning N.C. Policy Watch, said with Cooper possibly in the Governors Mansion and a fairer and less ideological majority running the court, the Republican majority at the General Assembly just lost a lot of steam. Charles Calamese III wears a number of hats at Winston-Salem State University. Hes a sophomore, veteran and president of WSSUs Military Students and Veterans Organization, known as MSVO. Its the veteran part that Calamese, 24, said often surprises people because he doesnt introduce himself that way. One of his goals as president of the MSVO is to build a sense of community for student veterans. This year, he came up with two ideas to help support veterans. MSVO members distributed ribbons to students, faculty and staff. The organization also teamed up with the National Association of Black Veterans to hold a benefits fair. I thought it was something great that we could do to show our appreciation to veterans, to basically show that we support the troops and different things of that nature, Calamese said. At WSSU, the number of student veterans and active-duty military has increased over the past two years to about 200. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, student veterans are growing on college campuses. In 2009, there were about 500,000 receiving education benefits compared with more than a million using their GI benefits to pursue advanced educational opportunities in 2013. This number is expected to increase by 20 percent over the next few years. Options for future Calamese, the son of a U.S. Army officer, joined the Army after he graduated from high school while living in his hometown of Charlotte. He chose to be in the military following a conversation with his mother. She said, Son, I dont see you staying here in Charlotte. I see you going out and growing and becoming a young man away from me. He served from 2011 to 2014 as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. His service included a seven-month deployment in Afghanistan. When he returned to Charlotte in late 2014, he struggled somewhat with the transition, he said. In August 2015, he became a student at WSSU, where he is using the GI Bill benefits he earned to major in economics with a minor in psychology. Prior to the military, his first option for a career was to go to community college and get his barbers license because he has always wanted to own his own barbershop. I dont want to be a barber, he said. I want to own the barbershop. He said he is pursuing his degree at WSSU in economics because he still has that passion to open his own business. Calamese is grateful for the time he served in the Army, he said. I always tell people it created a way out of no way for me, just for the fact that at age 17 and 18, I thought I had all the answers and I didnt. The one time I listened to someone, it turned out very well for me. It allowed me to go to school and Im using my (military) benefits. Joel Lee, assistant vice chancellor for enrollment management and adviser for WSSUs Military Students and Veterans Organization, said that Calamese brings his passion and energy to other military and veteran students at WSSU. Hes always looking for ways to get students engaged and further the bonds between military students, Lee said. Military Students and Veterans Organization The focus of WSSUs Military Students and Veterans Organization is to provide a community for military and veteran students where they can easily find other like-minded students that can understand where theyre coming from, Lee said. Its a way to help them get into a community within a community. Lee said the organization has some veteran members in their 40s and 50s, but the majority of members are not older adult students. They include dependents of veterans, National Guardsmen, Reservists and ROTC cadets. He said that the organization offers socials, opportunities for students to learn about their military benefits, and informational meetings where people can talk about their day-to-day experiences and challenges, if any, and ask questions about things on campus. The MSVO always offers events each fall around Veterans Day. They usually do a service learning project or two together during the year, Lee said. Sometimes thats a good way to connect them with veteran or military folks in the community at large, to get them outside the campus walls and let them help other veterans or learn from other veterans and gain some experiences through service-learning. Lee said that there are other efforts in general at WSSU to help military students, including a counseling center on campus where students with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD, can get help and remain anonymous. Sonne Sonkesak, 22, is an ROTC cadet and senior at WSSU, who has been a member of the MSVO since January 2014. I enjoy helping to build the community in general, more specifically with the veterans because my father is a vet, said Sonkesak, a nursing major with a minor in psychology. Also, because Ill be a future lieutenant in the military, I just love the fact that the organization is about serving the community on campus and off campus. Calamese said WSSU has a system in place for veterans to succeed on campus. He said short-term, he would like to show veterans the value of the Military Students and Veterans Organization while long-term he would like to see the organization become a bridge between student-veterans and faculty and staff on campus. Theres kind of a gap between faculty, administration and the student veteran population, he said. and thats where we can come in, helping faculty to understand unique needs of veterans. ASHEVILLE Firefighters say higher humidity is helping them fight and contain more than a dozen wildfires across western North Carolina. The state Forest Service said in a news release most of the rain across central and eastern North Carolina on Sunday won't make it to the mountains. But the agency says more moist air over the area should give firefighters a chance to make significant progress. Officials closed a 10-mile section of U.S. 19/74 in the Nantahala Gorge because they worry the Tellico Fire will cause rocks and debris to fall. The Tellico Fire is the largest blaze in the state, covering 21 square miles in Macon and Swain counties. It is about 33 percent contained. Firefighters say the fire danger will rise as drier weather returns and more leaves fall. Early on the morning of Nov. 9, Republican President-elect Donald Trump addressed supporters in New York, declaring victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. As I wrote then, presidents-elect deserve at least an initial benefit of the doubt. Toward that end, I thought it would be useful to review the positive aspects of Donald Trumps presidential campaign. Before that, a caveat: I am not claiming that these positives outweigh the negatives of Trumps campaign. The degree to which Trumps gaslighting and rhetoric turn American politics nasty and American public policy stupid remains to be seen. But just as some good things can be salvaged from a destructive war, there are some positives that can be salvaged from Trumps campaign. In the spirit of comity, lets focus on them for a few minutes. In no particular order: The smashing of American political dynasties. Two years ago, most political pundits were expecting a Bush vs. Clinton general election race and feeling pretty depressed about it. The Bush and Clinton clans have dominated American politics for close to 30 years now. Some of that was merited George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were above-average presidents. Despite their best efforts, however, neither Bushs children nor Clintons spouse quite matched these accomplishments. The fact that the Bushes and Clintons were continually seen as front-runners in their party primaries was probably not healthy for American democracy in the long run. Donald Trump isnt exactly a hardscrabble bootstrapping tale of the American Dream, no matter how much untruthful hyperbole he tries to spread. But he is a relative newcomer to electoral politics, and managed to dispatch both a Bush and a Clinton this election cycle. That aint beanbag. 2020 will be the first time in a while that a Clinton or a Bush will not be discussed at the top of a major party ticket. Thats a good thing. Its OK for Republicans to acknowledge the Iraq war was an unmitigated disaster. The only Republican running for president in 2004, 2008 or 2012 who thought the Iraq war was a mistake was Ron Paul. This stunted GOP foreign policy discourse for more than a decade. Trump supported the Iraq war, but his support was lukewarm and he turned against it by 2004. Having the GOP front-runner loudly declare it as a disaster and paying no political price for it in a Republican primary is no small political thing. Trump has half a point when he suggests that there needs to be some new foreign policy thinking in GOP circles. This is his best example. Fiscal policy and infrastructure spending are live policy options. One of the few areas of policy consensus between Trump and Clinton was on infrastructure spending. With interest rates so low and Americas infrastructure so dilapidated, government spending on this priority make eminent sense. House Speaker Paul Ryan might not like it, but leading Democrats like Chuck Schumer will. This might be an area where Trump gets his way. One last subversive point here for conservatives: The hard truth is that the only two Republicans to win the presidency in the post-Cold War era were pretty much stone-cold Keynesians when it comes to fiscal policy. Republicans are focusing on the economically disadvantaged. I have expressed serious doubts about whether Trumps brand of economic populism will play as well as others think. I certainly dont think much of Trumps trade solutions to the perceived problem of economic stagnation. That said, in a country that is increasingly polarized, there is virtue in Trumps focus on citizens who have been hurt by globalization or automation or war. If nothing else, Trumps victory demonstrates the importance of those voters. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized, Mr. Trump is a walking rebuke to the general liberal indifference to economic stagnation, as if the status quo is the best this country can do. As someone who has argued that after 2008 the system worked, this is worth some rumination. Pointing out that political correctness has maybe run amok just a wee bit. My Post colleague Catherine Rampell covers this and covers it well; as a college professor, I just have to live it. I think some of these concerns have been vastly overblown, but I also cant deny that there are chilling effects when it becomes fashionable to label certain forms of speech as offensive and therefore completely out of bounds. This last point is the one that I am the most dubious about making. You dont need to be an emo college student to conclude that Trumps rhetoric has been racist and misogynistic at numerous intervals. But his victory does point out the ways that political correctness can also trigger political backlashes. A PC culture can ostracize people despite the professed aim of inclusion. Maybe some soul-searching on that front is in order. Seemingly far away in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux are defiantly opposing what they regard as an invasion of their homeland. Unfortunately, their story resonates with events in North Carolina 240 years ago this fall. In the summer of 1776, the frontier settlements far to the west of the provincial governments moveable seat of power saw vicious attacks by hostile Cherokees wanting to stop illegal Colonial settlements and to force the Virginians, as they called all whites, back across the Appalachian Mountains. Reports of Indian attacks alarmed the Council of Safety, the provincial governments executive body. Numerous incidences of barbarity committed against isolated families aroused the Council to authorize military action to secure the frontier, the border as it were, beyond which lay the ancient homeland of the Ani-Yun-Wiya, the Real People, as the Cherokee called themselves. The Cherokees traded extensively with British interests and trusted in the treaties they had with the King. Indeed, the Proclamation of 1763 had reserved the over-mountain region with its westward flowing waters to the native peoples specifically. But some Virginians then fighting against the British Crown refused to acknowledge such a boundary which cordoned off these attractive lands they coveted. The Council of Safety called for Brigadier-General Griffith Rutherford to take the most vigorous measures ... to put an end to this cruel unjust & wicked Indian war. Making plans to coordinate his attacks on the Cherokee towns with militia forces from Virginia and South Carolina, Rutherford wrote within the limits of his formal education to the Council: If the Frunters, of Each of them Provances will joyn me, I have no Doubt of a Finel Destruction of the Cherroce Nation. His intentions were clear. Departing Salisbury in mid-July even before word of the Declaration of Independence had made its way to North Carolina, the experienced and capable Rutherford marched through the Catawba River valley to Fort Davidson (todays Old Fort) to await the mustering of the militiamen he had called into action from across the Salisbury District. Among them were men under Major Joseph Winston arriving from the Yadkin River valley with supplies purchased from the merchants at Salem. Rutherford gathered 2,500 militiamen; they carried supplies for 40 days on 1,400 packhorses. On Sept. 1, they headed into a wilderness with no roads and few trails. They ascended into the Blue Ridge Mountains through Swannanoa Gap and passed over the French Broad River near todays Biltmore House. The predominately white, Protestant militiamen of European heritage were eager to attack the savages. So much so, that at one campsite, the expeditions chaplain spied movement in the woods. He fired his rifle with effect, mistaking an enslaved black man for a Cherokee. Rutherfords main body of militiamen marched down the Little Tennessee River searching out Cherokee towns. They soon found Echoe and Nikwasi (todays Franklin). They burned the cornfields and the storehouses. Rutherford invaded Cowee, a chief town of the Middle Cherokee, on September 11, camping there that night and then burning that principal town. Back at Nikwasi, the Reverend further violated the sanctity of the Cherokees by giving a Christian sermon from atop their sacred mound. Half the men marched with Rutherford toward the Nantahala Mountains into the Valley region. During the following week, Rutherfords militiamen burned several Cherokee towns along Hiwassee River. They killed and scalped some Cherokees, including women, and took others captive, later selling them into slavery. After a month, they had burned 36 Cherokee towns. Rutherfords intent was to chase Cherokees including women, children, elderly and babes into the forest where they would likely perish during the coming winter. Taking special pride in the accomplishments of Rutherfords Expedition, the Council of Safety wrote to Virginias Gov. Patrick Henry declaring, We flatter ourselves that the Southern States will suffer no further Damage this Season from the Savages, as it will employ their whole time to provide Sustenance & Shelter for their Squaws & Children. Rutherfords Expedition against the Cherokees along with attacks by Williamson from South Carolina, Samuel from Georgia, and Christian from Virginia, soon forced most Cherokees to capitulate. But a militant band of renegades under Dragging Canoe, calling themselves Chickamaugas, would not relent. They harassed white settlement efforts for another 16 years. America is a democracy in which disparate voices deserve a hearing, but, it only works if we all listen to one another. And sometimes history, speaking loudest and most resolutely, offers us the best lessons: Might does not make right. At one point in the Soundbreaking documentary series, producer Paul Epworth describes a freshly heartbroken Adele singing him her new song, Rolling in the Deep, pounding out the beat and her frustrations with her foot on a slab of wood. He shows how her foot-stomping was incorporated into the rhythm track of the recording, which became one of this centurys biggest hits. Its one of several insights packed into the eight-hour series that begins at 10 tonight on PBS. The series was the brainchild of George Martin, the Beatles producer who died March 8. The sprawling overview was wrestled into shape by Jeff Dupre, an American producer who made sure it was something other than a technology wonks paradise. You want it to not be a history lesson but an experience for the audience, Dupre said. Theyll hear a few new things, but also enjoy hearing it. The series is divided into several topics, including the role of a producer, the use of sampling and how the recording studio became an instrument. Each episode is packed with songs and personal stories. Tom Petty describes how Jeff Lynne stopped him upon first hearing the chord progression that became Free Fallin, and Questlove talks about being entranced by the sound of Rappers Delight. Giles Martin was a partner in the project, becoming more active with his fathers illness. His life was dedicated to making people happy through sound, he said. If you think about it, it was really as simple as that. He tried to push boundaries all the time within that. The innovation, not just with himself but with a lot of people, he thought was quite an interesting story to tell. After the Beatles left the road, they partnered with Martin using the studio as a palette. Soundbreaking discusses the making of Tomorrow Never Knows, where Martin was charged with bringing some of John Lennons offbeat ideas to life. For much of the 1900s, the goal of recording technology was to make a listener experience being in a room as music was made, said Giles Martin, who went into the family business. In the 1960s and beyond with the constant introduction of new technology, that changed. Before being assigned to a young Liverpool band no one had heard of, George Martin produced comedy records, where he was accustomed to incorporating sound effects into recordings. With his background, he would have never gotten the job as Beatles producer in todays world, which is kind of an interesting lesson that hasnt been learned since, Martin said. The surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, both participate in Soundbreaking. More than 150 artists and producers are interviewed. Besides George Martin and the Beatles, Soundbreaking talks about the 1960s work of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Because of Spector piling on the instruments, Youve Lost That Lovin Feelin doesnt sound like a breakup, it sounds like the end of the world, Dupre said. Fortunately, the series doesnt stay stuck in a bygone era. There are artists you wish youd heard from Prince and Bruce Springsteen come to mind but Soundbreaking keeps up with changing styles and the diversity of creators. In the first episode, Dr. Dre explains that its very easy to make a hip-hop record. Its not easy to make a good hip-hop record. GREENSBORO Three years ago this fall, Sherrill Roland was in a good place. He had just started his second and final year of graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. And he had his very own Art 120 class, where he taught basic principles of design to freshmen. On a Thursday, a day after his 29th birthday, Roland told his students not to come to class the following Tuesday. He and his buddies would be extending his birthday celebration by a few days. He would see them in a week. What Roland didnt know on that Thursday in 2013 was that he wouldnt be coming back to UNCG next week or next month or even next year. It would be three years before Roland came back to campus an innocent man with a sealed court record, a man changed by a year in jail for a crime he didnt commit. When he returned, he would wear a one-piece orange jumpsuit every day until graduation. His choice of clothing is performance art, something that will help him get his masters degree in art. The jumpsuit project is also something else: a symbol of the far-reaching effects of the criminal justice system on so many people the inmates, their families, their friends, their classmates regardless of who they are. Its to be a daily reminder that things happen that incarceration happens every day, Roland said of the project. It could be anybody. It could be me today, it could be you tomorrow. This happened while I was a student. He snaps his fingers. And in a blink of an eye, I was gone. An innocent man Roland grew up in Asheville, raised by his mother and a cadre of aunts and uncles. College wasnt an if in his house but a where. After graduating from Asheville High School in 2002 with a high B average, Roland chose UNCG. Roland thought he would study to be an architect, but college life didnt take at first. His grades were poor I still had that high school mentality, he said and UNCG sent him home after spring break. Back in Asheville, he got a job, enrolled in community college and got his grades up. Two years later, he was back at UNCG. College went much better this time. Roland shared a house a block from campus with three friends from Asheville. He was always good at drawing, so he focused on that in college. He made deans list, spent a semester in England and in 2009 got his bachelors degree in art with a concentration in design. Longtime friend Takele TK Woldu the two grew up together in Asheville and lived together in college said Roland is quiet and humble. Thats just Sherrill in general, said Woldu, who graduated from UNCG in 2008. Hes not a tell-you-what-Im-doing-all-the-time type guy. Hes an artist. Hell show you what hes working on at the end. After graduation, Roland moved back home and got a job at a warehouse and as a counselor at a juvenile home. At night, he worked on his drawings. His passion was still design. In the summers, he taught web design and game design at camps in Virginia, Baltimore, New York and Washington. In 2012, he came back to UNCG for graduate school. He had started working with found objects, mostly cardboard that he turned into roosters and shoes and portraits. The goal was to get his master of fine arts in studio art and then teach in college Shortly before he started his masters program, a detective in Washington called to say there was a warrant for his arrest. He would have to turn himself in. Roland missed his first day of graduate school to fly to D.C. The charge was a single felony. Roland wont say what it is except that it was nonviolent and based on somebodys lie. There was no bail set, and Roland returned to Greensboro. The trial date was set for Oct. 7, 2013, five days after his 29th birthday. Roland told almost no one about the court date not his UNCG students, not his professors, not his classmates. He told close friends only that the court date was no big deal, just some procedural stuff for a minor thing. Roland wasnt worried. His previous run-ins with the law had been over traffic tickets a decade ago. Plus he was innocent. How bad could this be? Prosecutors later dropped the felony charge to four misdemeanors. After a two-day trial, a D.C. judge found Roland guilty on all four charges and sentenced him to 13 months in jail. Without a chance to hug his mother, Roland found himself in handcuffs as bailiffs led him away from court. Suddenly, the UNCG grad student had a jail cell and a prison number. His friends were devastated. There are people who belong in jail, Woldu said. Hes not one of those people, but he ended up there. A hard place every day Roland, now 32, uses a few words to describe jail. Terrible. Dehumanizing. Scary. Roland spent 10 months and two weeks in the Central Detention Facility, better known as the D.C. Jail. The facility held about 1,500 inmates during Rolands stint there. Some, like him, were serving out sentences of about a year or less. Others were awaiting trial on serious felony charges murder, assault, rape, drug-dealing that could lead to long sentences, even life. The fall Roland got there, The Washington Post was documenting the deplorable conditions at the jail that contributed to 165 suicide attempts in two years. That same fall, the District of Columbia settled a long-running lawsuit that alleged the jail unnecessarily strip-searched prisoners and held inmates weeks and months past their release dates. Roland remembers not being allowed outside into the prison yard until April, six months after he got there. He recalls being hungry because the inmates who brought him his meals would sometimes take food off the trays. If the jail was locked down and no meals were brought, he and his roommate shared a cup of ramen, made with the lukewarm water from the sink in their cell. Boredom was a problem, so every inmate, Roland included, wanted to be part of a work crew. But that involved filling out an application and hoping your pencil didnt break and catching the attention of a jail guard who might or might not file that piece of paper with the right person. (Roland eventually got on with the in-house detail, responsible for cleaning and painting the cell block.) His time in jail cut him off from normal human contact. Roland got two 45-minute visits per week. Jail visits were done by video, with Roland in one building and his visitor in another. Otherwise, Roland kept in touch through letters. Roland missed the birth of his daughter while he was in jail. He also couldnt go to the funerals of his grandmothers. One died while he was locked up; the other passed soon after he was freed from jail but still confined to Washington. Its a hard place every day, Roland said. I used to tell myself congratulations at the end of the day in the sense that we made it through one day. But Roland noticed some good on the inside. When he moved to a new jail block early in his stay, his new cellmate gave him clean T-shirts and underwear. Roland remembers one inmate studied an algebra book so he could help his daughter with her homework. People looked out for Roland because, as he says, they somehow knew he didnt belong in prison. Though these inmates had jail numbers and prison records, they were still fathers, sons, husbands and men. Roland was freed in August 2014 after 101/2 months in jail. New evidence came to light shortly after that, and in early 2015 the judge who had convicted Roland less than two years earlier threw out the convictions. Last December, the court granted Rolands request to seal the records of his arrest, prosecution and conviction on the grounds that he is innocent. The ruling meant, in essence, that Roland had committed no crime, had never been arrested and had never spent time in jail. Though his record is clean, Roland cant forget that he spent nearly a year behind bars. Jail changed him. It strengthened his Christian faith, and hes less likely to let small things affect him. But hes more wary now, more likely to keep people at a distance, less likely to disclose much about himself. It also left him with a lot of questions: Why did this happen? And how do I go on? It was hard to forget how low he had felt during his stay in the D.C. Jail. It just felt like everything that I had worked for, everything I thought I controlled was instantly gone by somebody elses lie, Roland said. It crushed me. Dropping the mask After his release, Roland returned to Asheville. Adrift, he pondered his future. Going back to UNCG wasnt a certainty. How could he pick up his drawings and resume his studies as if nothing had happened? As Roland talked to friends and families about his experience behind bars, he realized something: Incarceration lets loose a ripple effect. Though he had been the one in jail, their lives had been disrupted, too. Rolands mom had been the one to call UNCG to tell them that her son was leaving school. One of his uncles had to pack up his apartment. His friends told of feeling cut off because their communication with him was so limited. Once I heard those stories, I knew there had to be more stories out there, Roland said. I wanted to create a platform that allowed other people to share. Roland approached several friends with the idea of returning to UNCG, putting on an orange jumpsuit and becoming a walking example of injustice and incarceration. They approved. Its a therapy, if you will. Its a healing process, said Woldu, who now works for the U.S. Forest Service in Asheville. For all artists, their life is reflected in their work. This is his life currently. This is his work. He consulted UNCG art professor Sheryl Oring, who said she thought Roland was meant to do this project. Another adviser, UNCG professor and honors college dean Omar Ali, set up a meeting with the campus police so officers would know about his performance art project. My mom was worried about my safety, Roland said. These days in this world, you dont have to wear an orange suit being an African American male to get attention in the wrong way. Roland went online and bought a pair of one-piece cotton-poly jumpsuits, size 3X, for $35 each. The jumpsuits dont have jail numbers or the letters DOC (for Department of Corrections) stenciled on the back thats intentional. But theyre bright orange and as close as he could find to the ones he wore in jail. Roland commutes to UNCG in regular clothes and changes into a jumpsuit once he gets to his art studio in the Gatewood Building. He wears whatever shoes and hats he likes; in jail, hats werent allowed, and shoes were ragged hand-me-downs. Everything else undershorts, socks, undershirt are jail-issue white. His jumpsuit has a pocket over his right breast a luxury, he said, because the jumpsuit he wore in jail had no pockets. Roland set up rules for his project. He can move and talk freely in his art studio (his cell) and around the art building (his cell block). Outside of the art building, he must walk to his destination and back without delay. Like it was in jail, he cant stop and talk, but people can talk to him if they walk with him. He communicates with people through letters because there are no cell phones or social media in jail. This month, he hopes to set up two video conferences a week, similar to the closed-circuit system used by the D.C. Jail. These rules are an inconvenience to Roland. But they are also disruptive to people trying to contact Roland. Thats the point. Since my world has changed, it changes your world and how you move when you try to connect with me, Roland said. Thats exactly how my friends and family or the friends and family of other incarcerated people have to change their lifestyles. ... Im asking you to do a little something different in order to give you the realistic version of how youd have to change if you met someone in that situation. Oring went with Roland on his first cross-campus walk in his orange jumpsuit. They ventured out from Gatewood to the library, where Roland posed for a picture that Oring put on Facebook. They strolled to the student center and then returned to the art building. All told, Roland walked the campus for about 30 minutes. He was nervous. A lot of people stared. Academia is sort of an elite environment, said Oring, an assistant professor of art and his mentor on the project. ... You just dont go around campus talking about this. Its not accepted. Its a different world. This project, Oring added, is allowing people to discuss something thats taboo. Roland kept at it. In time, people responded. He said UNCG students and employees are sharing with him their own stories of parents and siblings and relatives who have spent time behind bars. Some talk to Roland because theyre curious about the jumpsuit and want to hear his story. Last month, Roland built a mock-up of a prison visitation booth out of wood and Plexiglas and plopped it down on a table in the student center. Roland sat on one side and waited for people to join him. A couple of people did. Those conversations, Roland recalled, were beautiful. But Roland said its tricky to wear an orange jumpsuit around a college campus. He sees the side-eyes, the look-aways and the stares at his back as passersby try to spy a prison number that isnt there. Some people have even hurried away from him. His presence, he said, is intended to be a reminder of the injustice and incarceration that happen off campus. He hopes to change peoples perceptions and eliminate the stigma of incarceration. Im not trying to be too intrusive, Roland said. Im trying to cause the smallest interruption out of the normal lives of everyone else who isnt affected by it. Hes not sure when or how the Jumpsuit Project, as he calls it, will end. Its very much a work in progress. But the artist once content to hide his work until it was done has shed his mask and taken center stage in his ongoing performance. The more and more Ive talked to people about what went on, the more and more liberated I felt. This is me, Roland said. I didnt want to hide it. I spent a lot of time hiding the fact that this stuff was going on. In the sense of getting everything exonerated, thats like hiding it again. My hearts been broken too much to forget or suppress those kind of emotions. Contact John Newsom at (336) 373-7312 and follow @JohnNewsomNR on Twitter. Today Overcast. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 67F. Winds light and variable. Tonight A shower is possible early. Cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later at night. Low 48F. Winds light and variable. Tomorrow Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High around 70F. Winds light and variable. Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ... Reddit Email 0 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Sting, 65, played a concert at the Bataclan Theater where ISIL terrorists killed 90 innocent people a year ago, in one of the worst attacks in the West in recent years. Although the attackers appear to have told their victims the strike was in revenge for French intervention against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Syria, in fact it was probably the other way around. France only started flying missions against Raqqa, Syria, in late summer of 2015 because it got word that the organization was planning such an attack, and hoped to disrupt it. In part, Daesh was hoping for a white backlash against French Muslims, which might drive them into the arms of the radicals and sharpen contradictions. In part, such terrorism aims at hurting a powerful enemy. Terrorism is a weapon of the weak. Daesh doesnt actually have many positive assets, though it can cause destruction. It just has a few tens of thousands of fighters and is already in the process of losing most of its territory. Its leaders wanted to raise the cost for France of intervening against it in Syria, Mali and elsewhere. Hitting a country with a big tourism industry (7% of the French economy) with a terrorist attack on places like a Cambodian restaurant and a music venue is intended to inflict long-term economic harm. Moreover, they hoped to make an object lesson of France, in an attempt to intimidate other powers. The terrorists did succeed in harming the Paris economy, which attracted 1.8 million fewer tourists this year than last, a loss of about a billion dollars. Hotel room occupancy was down 12% in the capital. The French government will also probably end up paying, over their lifetimes, some 300 mn. in health benefits to those wounded in the attacks of 2015. It is easy to talk tough about carpet bombing the terrorists, but these were petty criminals from the slums of Paris and Brussels, and cant be hit from the air. Even bombing Raqqa is fairly useless unless it is in support of advancing ground troops. It is also easy to blame all Muslims for the actions of a tiny fringe and to talk about barring Muslims from traveling, though if you did that systematically youd cut 1.6 billion people out of the global travel industry and that would bankrupt some of these companies. Moreover, hating on Muslims is precisely what the terrorists wanted you to do, so why be their patsies? One step anyone who can afford it and who feels strongly about pushing back against al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorism can take is to plan the next vacation in Paris. Paris is perfectly safe, safer than most American cities. You are much more likely to fall down in your bathtub and hurt yourself than you are to encounter terrorism in Paris. And by having a nice vacation in the French capital, you can defeat the dastardly Daesh plan of harming that country. While youre at it, make a side trip to the beautiful Tunisia, and spend some money there, too. We can crowdfund an effective response to terrorist attacks on the economy aimed at harming tourism. That is part of what I mean by Gandhian anti-terrrorism tactics. Here is what I wrote in this regard last summer: Reject fear and reject hate. Find a local Muslim and shower that person with love and respect. Speak out against Islamophobia. Work to strengthen democracy and inclusiveness and basic human rights. Stand up for the raid on the Bastille of 1789, and the freeing of prisoners of conscience. Invest some billions, not measly tens of millions, in success stories like Tunisia, to promote democracy and economic growth. So if you were planning a vacation abroad anyway, make it Paris instead, or Tunis. Undo the terrorism by having fun and spending a little money. Turn the world cheerful and bright and chase away the shadows of fear. A great man said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Related video: Straits Times: Sting performs at Paris Bataclan music hall Reddit Email 3 Shares By Arash Aziz | ( Globalvoices.org | Among the foreign policy think tanks and pundits of New York and DC, few supported Trump or even countenanced the possibility of his election. Now that the dust has settled and the populist tycoon is soon to move into the White House, speculations abound as to what his foreign policy will be like. What makes Trump hard to predict is that the 70-year-old billionaire has a history of zigzagging. He doesnt seem to be a genuine ideological right-winger, but rather an opportunist who marketed a series of what could only loosely be described as policies because he knew theyd play well with his right-wing base. Prior to 1987, he was a registered Democrat, before flipping to the Republican party, then to Ross Perots right-wing Reform Party, then back to the Democrats, thenafter Obamas victoryback to Republicans once more. During the campaign, too, he took vague and contradictory positions and flip-flopped on major issues. Banking on Hillary Clintons reputation as a hawk and the US populations resentment at their countrys many foreign military adventures, Trump often appeared to take an isolationist stance, which sadly fooled even some left-wingers who claimed he was less of a threat to the world than his competitor. But on major issues, he often wanted more not less military intervention. Trump advocated a higher military budget and an escalation of the fight against ISIS. While initially demanding 20 to 30,000 US boots on the ground, he later retracted this position and said Saudi Arabia should supply these forces. At times he said the UN-backed war in Afghanistan was a mistake and at other times he supported it. At the time of the UN-backed intervention in Libya, he supported bringing down of the countrys ruler, Moammer Gaddafi, but has since changed his position more than once. It is safe to say that we cant pretend to know the direction of Trumps foreign policy. This seems to be evolving as the President-elect starts having to deal with a prospect of actually sitting behind the most powerful desk in the world. What predictions can we then make regarding the possible Iran policies of the Trump administration? Even though he promised to tear up the Iran Deal during the all three presidential debates, analysts have pointed out that he probably wont do that, especially as the deal has the support of other world powers such as EU and Russia, whose Tehran-allied president Putin Trump has wooed for a while. On the other hand, the Israeli commentator Zvi Barel has pointed out that if Trump actually moves on to fiddle with the nuclear deal, this would favor Iran, as it could portray the US as a violating party and enlist the help of others. What remains unsaid is that any such belligerence on Trump's part would also bolster the anti-reform and anti-deal hardliners in the Iranian establishment, some of whom have spoken favorably of Trump. Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei came close to endorsing the business mogul when he said that they call him a populist because he speaks the truth. What might make the Trump policy clearer is the make-up of his cabinet, in particular his national security team. This is where advocates of peace and democracy in Iran and the Middle East should find cause for worry. Two of the main contenders for the position of Secretary of State are the former House speaker Newt Gingrich and the former UN ambassador John Bolton. Not only have both of these men supported a military attack on Iran and regime change there, they are some of the closest American friends of a notorious Iranian political-militant organization known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) which is almost universally hated inside Iran after having collaborated with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. MEK was designated a terrorist organization by the US until it was de-listed in 2012. After the overthrow of its patron, Saddam Hussein, in 2003, the group became mostly irrelevant and no figure of repute in Iranian politics would go anywhere near it after the evidence of the major abuses it perpetrated was laid bare over the last few years. John Bolton also has a long history of support for MEK and is a frequent guest at its rallies. In March 2015, as the talks surrounding the Iran Nuclear Deal were reaching a sensitive stage, he called for a military attack on Iran and vigorous American support for MEK aimed at regime change in Tehran. Last summer, Gingrich spoke at MEKs rally in Paris alongside Turki bin Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence. Gingrich went as far as to solemnly bow down to MEKs leader, Maryam Rajavi, calling her by her favored title, President-elect. When running for the Republican party presidential nomination in 2012, Gingrich openly called for replacing the leadership of Iran, saying that this could be accomplished within a year. With Gingrich and Bolton likely to be appointed to two of the highest national security positions in the Trump administration, will Rajavis totalitarian cult gain influence? Other possible members of a Trump administration are also leading anti-Iran hawks. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, tipped for the position of attorney general, has been paid handsome sums to appear at MEK rallies. New Jersey governor Chris Christie, head of the Trump transition team, has called Iran a greater threat than ISIS. Mike Flynn, possibly the next secretary of defense, is on the record as saying, Ive been at war with Islam, or a component of Islam, for the last decade and complaining about Irans lies, their flat out lies, and then their spewing of constant hatred, no matter whenever they talk. Last but not least, one of the primary funders of Trumps campaign is casino-owner Sheldon G. Adelson, who endorsed him in May and gave $25 million to an anti-Clinton Super PAC last week. Adelson is known for having advocated a nuclear strike on Iran. This 25th richest man in the world is also a close ally of Israels right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a close associate of Gingrich, whose 2012 campaign he supported. Adelson is so close to Netanyahu that he pumps 50 million dollars a year into a free news daily, Israel Hayom, that attacks Netanyahus domestic enemies on both the left and the right. The two are so close that when there a bill that would have hurt Israel Hayom was tabled in the Knesset, Israel's national legislature, Netanyahu opposed it at the cost of the collapse of his own coalition government. The next coalition government was formed only when his partners promised not to bring media-related bills that could hurt Adelson. Trumps Iran policy would depend on many factors, including his relationships with Moscow, Riyadh and Tel Aviv, his position on US military involvement in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and the demands of the Republican-led Congress, the majority of which opposed the Iran Deal. But the links with MEK are a serious cause for worry, and the reason Iranians should be vigilant and make it clear that this cult doesn't speak for the people of Iran, nor they are genuine advocates of democracy in the country. Via Globalvoices.org Related video added by Juan Cole: Euronews: What will Trumps presidency mean for the Iran nuclear deal? Reddit Email 0 Shares Maan News Agency | BETHLEHEM (Maan) Israels Ministerial Committee for Legislation Sunday evening unanimously approved a law that would retroactively legalize outposts in the occupied West Bank, a decision Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said exposes (the Israeli) governments intention to annex the West Bank to Israel without affording its residents civil rights. The decision came despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus wish to delay the decision, and despite the Israeli attorney general warning to the committee that he would not be able to defend the the so-called Formalization Bill in the Supreme Court, as it contravenes international law and that there was no legal precedent for the expropriation of lands privately owned by Palestinians. While the some 196 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law, a further 232 settler outposts were also considered illegal by Israeli domestic law. However, Israeli authorities have often individually legalized outposts retroactively by declaring them official settlements. Netanyahu had implored that the vote be delayed until the Israeli Supreme Court reached a decision whether or not to postpone the evacuation of illegal Amona outpost after the attorney general reportedly warned that voting on the bill prior the court decision would would significantly harm the changes for postponement. The Israeli State Attorneys office had requested the postponement on the basis that it could not arrange alternative housing for the residents of Amona before the target evacuation date of Dec. 25 this year, with Palestinian landowners filing an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court last week rejecting the demands to postpone. The legislation that was passed Sunday evening, after facing a revision, would apply only to settlements established with the involvement of the state which includes Amona, but not to those that were establishment without state involvement. The Amona outpost was slated for demolition following a 2008 Israeli Supreme Court decision after eight Palestinians from neighboring villages with the support of Yesh Din successfully petitioned the court to remove the outpost on grounds that the construction was carried out on privately owned Palestinian land. After years of appeals from right-wing Israeli government officials, and attempts by Amona settlers to prove they had legally purchased the land, an Israeli police investigation in May 2014 found the entirety of the outpost to have been built on private Palestinian lands, and that the documents used by Amona residents to try claim their purchases were in fact forged. Meanwhile, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat warned on Monday that any dismantlement of the illegal Israeli outpost Amona in the occupied West Bank would be followed by the mass demolition of Palestinian homes lacking Israeli-issued building permits in East Jerusalem. Following news of the laws passage, Yesh Din on Twitter called the bill a legal stunt designed to sanction takeover of Palestinian land in the West Bank, saying it exposes (the Israeli) governments intention to annex the West Bank to Israel without affording its residents civil rights. The bill is discriminatory and authorizes confiscation of Palestinian landowners ability to use their land denying them the right to appeal. Human rights groups and international leaders have strongly condemned Israels settlement construction, claiming it is a strategic maneuver to prevent the establishment of a contiguous, independent Palestinian state by changing the facts on the ground. Meanwhile, some members of Israels parliament, the Knesset, have publicly announced their support for plans aimed to annex the entirety of Area C the area of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli security and civilian control. While members of the international community rested the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the discontinuation of illegal Israeli settlements and the establishment of a two-state solution, Israeli leaders have instead shifted further to the right. A number of Palestinian activists have criticized the two-state solution as unsustainable and unlikely to bring durable peace, proposing instead a binational state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. Via Maan News Agency Reddit Email 0 Shares TeleSur | U.S. president-elect Donald Trump didnt back down from his hardline stance on immigration Sunday in his first interview since winning the election, pledging to deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants immediately upon taking office. What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million it could be even 3 million we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate (them), Trump told CBSs 60 Minutes. The comments keep pace with Trumps racist and unfounded campaign rhetoric that accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists and criminals. On the campaign trail, he promised to deport all undocumented immigrants in the United States a whopping 11 million people who pay US$11.6 billion or more per year in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Trump also continued to tout his campaign promise of erecting a massive wall along the border with Mexico, saying that after the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, authorities would make a determination on other undocumented immigrants living in the country. When asked whether talk about a border fence aligned with his plans for the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump said that some sections of the border could be covered with a fence, while others would get the full wall he garnered harsh criticism for proposing during his campaign. He claimed a wall would be more appropriate for certain areas," saying Im very good at this, its called construction. The comments are directly at odds with what Republican speaker of the house Paul Ryan has said to tone down Trumps incendiary comments, revealing lasting rifts between the Republican establishment and the upstart reality TV star-turned-politician. Were not planning on erecting a deportation force, Ryan told CNNs State of the Union Sunday. Donald Trumps not planning on that. Ryan distanced himself from the Trump during the campaign, particularly when recordings broke revealing Trump had bragged about sexually assaulting women. But since the election Tuesday, Ryan has said he is very excited to work with Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. As part of his anti-immigration rhetoric, Trump has also expressed plans to end birthright citizenship, meaning the children of undocumented immigrants would also be considered undocumented, even if they live their entire lives in the United State. He is also expected to attack Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, aimed at protecting from deportation thousands of people who arrived to the country as children. Trump has slammed Obama for being soft on immigration, despite the fact that his presidency say record levels of deportation and some 2.5 million people kicked out of the country. While the details of Trumps proposed immigration policy remain foggy, Latinos and other immigrants are already fearful for good reason of the possibility of impending deportation. Via TeleSur Related video added by Juan Cole: Wochit News: Trump Says He Would Immediately Deport Two to Three Million Undocumented Immigrants The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) reached a peace agreement Saturday to end the guerrilla warfare that has been plaguing the country for more than five decades. Meeting in Havana, the two sides solidified a new deal [El Tiempo report, in Spanish] that alters the deal voters rejected [JURIST report] in last months referendum. The new deal includes provisions [Reuters report] for FARC fighters to face jail and community service, for the FARC to turn over financial information, and for investigations of crimes to be commenced within the narrower window of next two years. It is unclear whether the new agreement will also face a voter referendum for approval. The conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government had continued for more than half a century and claimed more than 220,000 lives [CNN report]. The Colombian government and the FARC finalized [JURIST report] a previous agreement [text, in Spanish] in August to end the lengthy conflict, which followed a cease-fire accord in June [JURIST report]. However, the previous agreement was stymied by a slim rejection by voters [JURIST report], by a vote of 50.2%. In January the UN Security Council made peace in Colombia a priority [JURIST report], and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos [official site] won the Nobel Peace Prize [NYT report] last month for his efforts to end the decades long conflict. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] on Monday urged [official statement] Germany Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier [official website] to push Turkey to cease post-coup abuses. Steinmeier will visit the country later this week, and HRW claims he will be in a prime position to discuss potential abuses concerning the alleged illegitimate efforts to bring coup perpetrators to justice, the arrest of dissenting journalists and allegations of torture in Turkish prisons. Further, HRW urged Germany to use its prominent position at the Council of Europe, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe [official websites] to bring those bodies to bear in addressing the situation in post-coup Turkey. HRWs call comes after Steinmeiers speech to the Bundestag [text, in German] last week, in which he condemned Julys attempted coup in Turkey while questioning whether the countrys response was consistent with the rule of law. The aftermath of the failed coup attempt continues as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile] vowed [JURIST report] that those involved in the coup would pay a heavy price. On Saturday, Turkey significantly halted the activities of 370 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including human rights and childrens groups to investigate the groups alleged terror connections [JURIST report]. On Thursday the president of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, Theodor Meron, demanded [JURIST report] the release of Turkish judge Aydin Sefa Akay in an address to the UN General Assembly. Early in November, the Turkish Government arrested [JURIST report] eight pro-Kurdish political party members, including the partys two leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag and an additional nine party members. In September, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that approximately 32,000 people have been arrested [JURIST report] and 70,000 have been questioned. In late October, Turkeys government dismissed 10,000 additional civil servants [JURIST report] and closed 15 more media outlets for their supposed connection with US-based religious leader Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating the attempted coup in July. Also in October, officials detained [JURIST report] and searched the homes of 13 reporters alleging that they published stories seeking to legitimize those participating in the coup. The Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) [official website] ruled Monday that a controversial West Bank settlement must be dismantled by December 25. The settlement, Amona [Times of Israel backgrounder], had been the subject of negotiations between the state and various other legal and legislative bodies [Jerusalem Post report]. In 2014, the HCJ ruled that Amona had been built without permission on private Palestinian land and gave the state two years to raze the settlement. On Monday, the HCJ rejected the states request for seven more months in which to complete evacuation of Amona, and enforced the deadline set in the its earlier decision. Recent conflicts between Israel and Palestine [HRW backgrounder] over settlements in the occupied West Bank have raised concerns over possible human rights violations. This past week, Israels Ministerial Committee for Legislation unanimously approved the Formalization Bill, which will legalize outposts in the West Bank. In part, the bill was intended to stop the evacuation of Amona outpost [JURIST report]. In March the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said [JURIST report] that the office is concerned about the apparent extra-judicial execution of a Palestinian man in the West Bank. In January Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged [JURIST report] businesses to cease operations in Israel settlements. In August 2015 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged both sides of the conflict [JURIST report] to reconcile and move towards peace after an attack occurred in the West Bank village of Duma, where Jewish extremists allegedly set fire to a Palestinian home while a family slept inside. Last April HRW alleged [HRW report] that Israeli settlement farmers in the occupied West Bank are using Palestinian child laborers in dangerous conditions in violation of international laws. While car (ride) sharing has been around since the 1950s, it only really came of age in the 1990s with a number of small-scale schemes dotted across Europe and North America. Since then its use has become widespread in the shared economy. This research snapshot reviews some of the latest car sharing schemes on offer, prospects for self-driving car sharing and the implications for car interior design. Car sharing schemes allow us to rent cars for a short period on an as-needed basis. The Daimler-owned car2go car sharing community has grown to exceed 2m, of whom 1.1m are in Europe. It is estimated that every 1.5 seconds, one of car2gos 14,000 vehicles worldwide takes a member where they need to go. Who is doing what? With the proliferation of the shared economy model, most automakers have a car sharing scheme on offer. For its part, Nissan is pioneering a shared car ownership service which will allow members (3 to 5 members per group) to part-own a Micra. A digital platform hosted by the automaker will match local groups (using social profiling and geo-location) with compatible driving needs. Members of the new scheme, known as Nissan Intelligent Get & Go Micra, will split the monthly parking and fuel costs in proportion to their actual use of the pool car. In order to join the scheme, they will be required to sign up for a 12-month contract. Annual membership fees include car insurance, servicing and access to an app regarding their cars availability and whereabouts. Talking of apps, Jaguar Land Rover has launched InMotion, a new technology business that builds apps and on-demand services for the blossoming car sharing market. Although JLR owns InMotion, the start-up company operates independently from the carmaker. Earlier this year, Magna International launched a pilot ride share programme using an SPLT app offering it to 1,700 employees who commute to four of its southeast Michigan locations. SPLT provides the app-based ride share platform which allows co-workers commuting along similar corridors to locate one another and share the ride to and from work using their own cars. PSA Group recently launched Free2Move that unites all of its mobility solutions, namely car sharing, fleet sharing, smart (connected) services, and financial solutions for car leasing. And just last week, we learned that a new car-sharing platform from Mercedes-Benz will go online in December 2016. Croove is the name of the new app-based service that pairs up private vehicle owners and hirers. The Croove scheme will be launched in Munich to begin with and is open to any brand of vehicle. Meanwhile, Toyota recently revealed plans to put a new car sharing service through its paces that allows users to lock and unlock doors, and start the engine with their smartphone. An opportunity or threat? While some view the rise of car sharing as a threat, leading to lower sales volume, a recently circulated research note from auto analysts at Deutsche Bank suggests the opposite. Analysts claim that the rise of car sharing could actually create new opportunities for automakers and that the view of a shrinking market could be incorrect. The banks team agree that the vehicle fleet will likely fall as vehicle utilisation rises, with population density serving as a key determinant of the size of the on-demand fleet. The net effect in the US could be to reduce the vehicle fleet by around 25m units. However, they point out that vehicles utilised more intensively will have a much shorter life-cycle just three years for an on-demand and shared vehicle, they estimate. The higher rate of turnover of a smaller fleet would, according to the analysts, see sales volumes rise. The researchers also maintain that under the car sharing scenario, the auto industry becomes less cyclical, as miles travelled, rather than the state of the economy and credit conditions, will drive sales volumes. Self-driving car sharing Taking car sharing to the next stage and merging it with the imminent prospect of self-driving cars appearing on a road near you, earlier this year GM and Lyft a car share start-up partnered to create an integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the US. GM has since invested in Lyft which operates a variety of lift and car sharing programmes using Mavern and Express Drive. Last summer, Lyft and GM further expanded their Express Drive short-term vehicle access programme to California and Colorado, to include the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV. In a surprise move, GM recently let it be known that it will partner with Lyft rival Uber to provide drivers with GM vehicles under its Maven car share umbrella. GM stated that Maven, General Motors personal mobility brand, and Uber will team up to provide people who want to drive and earn money on the Uber platform the option to lease qualified vehicles by the week or longer at discounted rates with no mileage limits. These moves are not the only example of automakers quickly forming alliances to avoid being bound by technology giants. Last year, Audi, BMW and Daimler teamed up to acquire Here, a mapping service, from Nokia, in a move that reduces their dependence on Google Maps. Self-driving car sharing is already under trial. Last September, Uber kicked off a self-driving ride-hail trial in Pittsburgh, US, where it owns a research centre. The self-driving Ubers in the test will have a safety driver in the front seat because they require human intervention in many conditions, including bad weather. Uber also remarked that even when these technology issues get fixed, we believe ride sharing will be a mixwith services provided by both drivers and Self-Driving Ubers. MITs Senseable City Lab and Uber launched a research initiative earlier this month to explore how car and ride sharing networks could reshape the future of urban mobility. The initiative will explore new mobility paradigms for the 21st century, building on both parties data and analytics strengths. The Senseable City Lab has been researching ride sharing since 2014. With self-driving cars taking to the road, sharing could potentially significantly increase. A shared self-driving car could offer one person a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, provide a ride to someone else in a family or in the neighbourhood. According to MITs research, this could theoretically lead to a city where everyone could travel on demand with just 20 percent of the cars in use today. Implications for car interior design How will the rising tide of car sharing impact interior design? Han Hendriks, vice president, advanced product development and sales at Yanfeng Automotive Interiors has some interesting thoughts on this matter. During the 2016 City Car Summit in Berlin, he highlighted the ever-developing automotive interior concepts due to the increasing demand of shared mobility and the new requirements of its users. To ensure maximum well-being for drivers, Hendricks stressed the benefits of a convenient interior, enriched by ambient lighting, a good smell, practical interior design that supports the specific needs of car-to-go requirements and antimicrobial surfaces. Hendricks also noted the difference between owned and shared cars, specifically the implications for interior designers, adding: Car sharing has a significant impact on the interior. Consumers buying their own vehicle spend quite a few hours to ensure that you order the exact car that you like. But with shared mobility, that one car will be used by hundreds of people who have not ordered that car. So the challenges for the interior designer will be very different. He observed how car sharing typically involves short rides in city environments. In 80 percent of cases, it involves one or two people. So very different from the vehicle that you order and buy for your family. Some practical implications for the interior of shared cars, says Hendricks, is that it must smell fresh. The interior surface needs to be clean so [we] think about anti-microbial surfaces. You also want it to be an easy experience. So you enter the vehicle, and all the adjustments involving the seat, steering wheel, temperature and ambient lighting, adjust to what you like to experience. So you dont want to spend five minutes adjusting everything but an easy experience. Other interior differences between own and shared cars relate to storage, notes Hendricks. One important aspect of storage in shared vehicles is that you have to have open access and visibility to where you put your items in a shared vehicle because you do not want to forget things. So a closed glove box will probably be something in the past. If you then start to tie a couple of the mega trends together, like shared cars and autonomous, think about hospitality in that temporary space with lots of opportunities for new business models and service providers to enhance that shared vehicle interior experience. See also: & NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Drinks Daily News The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Drinks Weekly News A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Drinks Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter Ahead of the UK referendum to leave the EU, the countrys food industry association supported staying in the bloc, citing the overwhelming endorsement of its members to remaining part of the union. Since the UK voted for Brexit, trade body the Food and Drink Federation has claimed confidence within the sector has become more fragile and, without doubt, there are serious concerns about how leaving the EU will impact the industry. Adam Sopher, co-founder and director of up-and-coming UK popcorn firm Joe & Sephs, shares some of that anxiety but, in an interview with Dean Best, seeks to outline why he thinks Brexit can present an opportunity for food companies. The UK food industry is, in many ways, one of the sectors set to be most affected by the countrys decision to leave the EU which remains very much on the cards despite tthe High Court ruling Parliament must vote on triggering Article 50, the mechanism by which the UK will quit the bloc. The food industry is also likely to be one of the sectors most pessimistic about its changes outside the EU. According to the UKs Food and Drink Federation, which represents food and soft drink manufacturers operating in the UK, the EU accounts for over 70% of the countrys exports of food and soft drinks. The EU is also a source of a significant chunk of the labour in the UK food manufacturing sector. The industry employs 117,000 non-UK EU workers, benefiting from the free movement of labour between EU member states. At the start of this month, the FDF convened a conference to discuss the impact Brexit could have on the industry. The mood at the event was subdued, if not a touch sombre, as delegates heard discussions about how Brexit could affect businesses in the areas of trade, labour, regulation and standards. Given the result of a survey of FDF members about Brexit last month, perhaps the atmosphere was little surprise. However, at the event, there were some pragmatic messages coming some in the UK food manufacturing sector, including from Joe & Sephs, the fledgling UK popcorn maker set up six years ago and enjoying rapid growth. Adam Sopher, one of the founders of Joe & Sephs and a director at the Essex-based business, sat on a panel at the event alongside Gavin Darby, the CEO of Premier Foods plc, one of the UKs largest food manufacturers and, while both acknowledged the challenges faced by the industry once the UK leaves the EU, they sought to emphasise the opportunities that could lay ahead for food companies. The export side is really exciting, Sopher tells just-food in a telephone interview two days after the event. My view on [Brexit] was anything from a business perspective that increases uncertainty is probably worth avoiding. Personally, I was very much in the stay camp because it seems like anything that could involve uncertainty is a bad thing. It wasnt a particularly political point. Now we are where we are. Im pretty positive about the next few years in sales. There is a lot of uncertainty. No one really knows where things are heading. If you have the right attitude is a business, look with a more positive outlook then you will start to see the opportunities that all of this creates and youll start to react in the right way, I think. Theres not much you can do about commodity prices and theres not much you can do about exchange rates but you can react to them and take advantage of the opportunities that come from that. The impact the referendum result has had on sterling and, as a consequence, on the price of some inputs imported by manufacturers has attracted mainstream headlines in recent weeks. Last months price spat between Unilever and Tesco, sparked by the slump in sterling, made national headlines, while companies like Nomad Foods and PepsiCo have subsequently attracted mainstream attention for their reported moves to try to push through price increases. Joe & Sephs is a business that generated sales of just over GBP5m (US$6.2m) in its last financial year, which ran until the end of October. Around 80% of its sales are made in the UK, with retail customers including Sainsburys, Waitrose and Ocado. Joe & Sephs is a business that sources most of its ingredients in the UK and was, before the referendum, already facing pressure on some raw material costs, including butter, a vital ingredient for popcorn. Nevertheless, despite its domestic ingredient supply, a company like Joe & Sephs is likely to face pressure on other commodities and on packaging prices from the fall in sterling. Speaking on the panel at the FDF event, Sopher said Joe & Sephs had yet to increase its prices but conceded the more likely trajectory is up. Talking to just-food, he says Joe & Sephs has yet to speak to its major retail customers in the UK, insisting the company had contracts to run on certain inputs. Because of all the various ingredients and packaging that goes into making the product, it would be a not very sensible thing to have the discussion regularly in an ongoing way. Once you contracted into butter prices, new packaging prices, new sugars, all these various things, you tend to agree to a contract for a year, anyway, at least. Then we will know, really, where we are in terms of prices. At that point, we can then start some of those conversations. Certainly, most people are aware. Everyone has read the news and everyone has seen whats going on out there. I think most retailers expect a conversation. Its just whether you will pass on any cost rises or absorb them. Sopher outlines three ways in which Joe & Sephs will try to mitigate any pressure on costs. Two are capital investment to improve efficiency and changes in packaging. Were looking at things like faster labeling machines. Were looking at things like box formings. Anything like that, that doesnt affect the quality of our product but speeds up our process or improves the quality of our product, is basically what were looking at, Sopher says. Weve just spent GBP20,000 on a new machine. Theres another one arriving in the back end of this month. Were keeping momentum on bringing in more and more stuff to try and improve and drive efficiency where we can. However, it is talking about the third plank of the companys strategy that most animates Sopher. Exports, he told the FDF panel and reiterates to just-food, will be central to how Joe & Sephs grows post-Brexit. There is a huge opportunity in export and were quite excited about that, Sopher says. Joe & Sephs already sells into 19 overseas markets and Sopher says the popcorn maker has seen some early benefits from the way the referendum result affected sterling and suggests the company is monitoring new markets where costs had been prohibitive. Weve agreed listings in Iceland where weve never been able to list before because the pound was too strong. Weve agreed with new listings in Denmark. And whilst in Europe, the fall in the pound has been 15% roughly against the euro, if you go as far as Japan its more like 30%. There are new markets in Asia that were previously challenging because of air freighting our products over but the 30% fall is massive and it means those markets are now open for us. Sopher sees benefits ahead in the countries that are already the main export markets for Joe & Sephs. He says there are five markets where Joe & Sephs is doing really well and where there is a lot more momentum to be had France, Germany, Scandinavia, the Middle East and Hong Kong. Looking at the euro-denominated markets, Sopher says, for example, the companys sharing bags of popcorn would have retailed at EUR3.99-4.49. Now we are managing to move the RRP down to EUR3.49, maximum EUR3.99. Thats really exciting, he says. Sopher believes UK food companies, particularly smaller businesses, should embrace the opportunity exports can provide for growth. He points to a stat he has seen that he says shows only 11% of UK companies export, remarking he cant get his around why that number is not larger. However, Sopher says the UK government can do more, in the longer term, to help those that do want to export and suggests a rebate on a companys corporation tax bill. He points to the cost of exhibiting at last months SIAL trade show in Paris, which he says was around GBP15,000. My suggestion around this export tax credit would mean eventually it could halve the cost of going to places like the Middle East and taking on trade show stands etc. I think it will be a really powerful way of very quickly getting a lot more people exporting. For the new financial year, the company is targeting top-line growth of around 50%, with an eye on expanding sales at home and abroad. The UK popcorn market has grown rapidly in recent years but it is becoming more competitive and this autumn saw the might of PepsiCo enter the sector with its Pop Works & Company brand, potentially putting pressure on the domestic growth of smaller companies like Joe & Sephs. Sopher, however, insists he is positive about the news. Popcorn is a category is here to stay. If you got someone the size of Pepsi having a go, thats really exciting and gives us a morale boost, in terms of the opportunities only getting bigger, Sopher says. When youve got a brand of that size in the marketplace, it grows the whole market. It means that supermarkets are dedicating more space to popcorn and looking for other brands to fill the gaps in their ranging. Pepsi have launched a more mainstream brand. Retailers are still going to be looking for good, better and best. We feel that best requirement. It will help us and we are quite stoked about it. Sopher, then, is one of the, so far, few pragmatic voices in the UK food industry to go public with their views on Brexit. It would be wrong to say he is naively going into it without having weighed up the possible challenges that lay ahead. At the FDF event, he called on the UK government for support on the potential paperwork that could mount up on staff visas in a post-Brexit scenario where there is no deal on the free movement of labour. The possibility of tariffs, he tells just-food, is another obvious concern. We dont want it to be any harder to export. We dont want to have any of that increase cost and workload. Anything that could damage the business would be bad. However, typically, he adds: What is quite exciting is the first time the UK can go and secure trade deals that are focused purely on British interests as opposed to balancing the needs of the whole of 27 countries. Who knows how good our negotiators can be to get a better deal than what we have now but there is an upside, as well, which is quite exciting. Associated British Foods finance director John Bason on Brexit, M&A and grocery results interview Nestles travel retail unit is a US$100m-plus business, which generates the lions share of its revenue from confectionery. Stewart Dryburgh, who heads the companys travel retail business, says the sector, while a small part of the Nestle empire, presents a strong growth avenue for the group. However, Dryburgh acknowledges it is also a competitive and fast-paced channel and those companies that want to cash in need to navigate some unique challenges. Katy Askew spoke to Dryburgh to find out more. Nestle generates more than US$100m in annualised revenues through its dedicated travel retail unit, which has gained market share since the worlds largest food maker set it up in 1999. The KitKat maker is aiming to capitalise on the expansion in international travel retail, which it expects to see as air travel continues to grow. There were roughly 3.45bn individual airport travellers last year. Roughly split 50-50 between domestic and international. And that is projected in the next ten years to basically double to over 7bn by 2025, Stewart Dryburgh, the general manager of Nestles international travel retail unit, stresses. However, this expanding consumer base makes the high-traffic sector a highly competitive one in which to operate. Most people want to play here that is for sure, Dryburgh says. You have got at the moment [almost] 3.5bn people travelling through airports every year. And if you take the top 50 airports the likes of Heathrow, Frankfurt, Singapore, Dubai, JFK internationally there are 1bn travellers going through those airports every year. So there is a huge audience there in what is a relatively limited number of locations that they are going through. Standing out in this competitive environment especially because consumers are not expressly travelling though terminals to shop but as part of their journey is one of the key challenges for companies operating in the sector. That is a perpetual challenge no matter what channel you are in. A brand has to work hard to understand consumers needs and remain relevant. I have worked in big domestic markets like the UK, in emerging markets like India and I have looked after some of Nestles biggest brands including KitKat. No matter where you sit it is a challenge. Our challenge in this particular industry is to engage in a way that is relevant to the moment that consumers are experiencing. And that is a journey. Of course, there are different types of journey, Dryburgh continues. This gives rise to two distinct need-states Nestle wants to meet through its travel retail range. It may be a business journey and if they are heading out they might want to take a gift to somebody who they are going to meet, or they might be heading back and want to take something to their loved ones. You might be going off for a long weekend and you want something more snacking oriented. There is a mix if you come very specifically into the confectionery world of gifting chocolate and consumption chocolate. The whole world of millennial consumer and the emerging middle-class consumer in Asia and LatAm continually creates opportunities for us. Then it is understanding how they can be relevant. Within the travel retail channel, chocolate and confectionery comfortably account for 80% of Nestles sales, Dryburgh notes. The main category focus is chocolate and confectionery for the simple reason that is one of the key categories within the [travel retail] industry, he observes. The pressure cooker atmosphere of the channel means that trends born out in travel retail frequently develop ahead of the winder market, Dryburgh suggests. I think as a whole this industry has done things that have been pushing the envelope. I think the challenge is always to stay ahead because often what you see being executed in this industry at certain premium price points then becomes translated into domestic markets. The continual challenge is to stay ahead of that curve. Dryburgh points to Nestles decision to expand its Cailler brand via the travel retail channel as part of a push to internationalise the 200-year-old brand of premium Swiss chocolate. We have been focusing in particular on Cailler as a first instance. It is one of the strategic priorities that has been called out by the organisation. Cailler is the original Swiss chocolate brand. It is the home of chocolate in Switzerland. It dates back to 1819 and Francois-Louis Cailler who set up the company making chocolate in the factory where we are [still] manufacturing at the foot of the Alps. This is an undiscovered diamond that Nestle has been sitting on. I would say, Lindt & Sprungli have done an outstanding job of driving the premium end of Swiss chocolate without a doubt, I take my hat off to what the team from Lindt have done. However, Nestle is sitting on the first and the original Swiss chocolate. It is a strong brand in Switzerland, but we have not done a good job of internationalising it. This year, Nestle kicked off activations first in Swiss airports, Geneva and Zurich. The company then piloted the brand in Dubai and Singapore, the two big hub airports heading east. Dryburgh says this roll out has gone extremely well. Marketing has included virtual reality point of sale activities to communicate the brands heritage and build a rapport with consumers. Rolling out the brand to travel retail is a premier example of how Nestles travel retail business works to add value to the industry, Dryburgh says. The way you add value is giving consumers a reason to buy because they are going to get something they cant get at home. That is one of the things that people look for when they are travelling, part of the experience. Ultimately, Nestle does plan to broaden Caillers base, but the company does not intend to roll the brand out in traditional retail channels. We are going to go high-end with this particular brand. I think the focus is very much on leveraging the travel retail channel as a spearhead in giving consumers the chance to engage with the brand in the first place and then encouraging them out. While confectionery sales dominate Nestles travel retail sales, Dryburgh says the trend-setting nature of the sector and evolving consumer demand mean in the longer term the company is likely to capitalise on opportunities to exploit other categories. You will be aware of Nestles journey in the direction of health science, delivering nutrition via food and health benefits via food, which is something that has historically always been part of what food brings you. Over the centuries people have understood the more holistic benefits that food can bring when consumed in the right way. That is also where our company is heading. For the future, [our travel retail business] tends to be far broader than confectionery and it will be far broader than that as consumer needs change with ageing populations. In the short term it is still going to focus on confectionery, he says. Nestle is also taking advantage of some niche opportunities in travel retail that are created by local conditions, Dryburgh continues. For example, the company has developed interesting business selling milk powders in the Middle East. The company spotted an opportunity to cater to blue collar workers who have come from the Indian sub-continent to places like Dubai as part of the citys construction boom. These individuals have a once a year trip home and the opportunity to sell them milk powder was a very interesting one What we discovered along with the airport authority was the opportunity to sell a relatively bulky, relatively heavy product like 2 kgs of milk powder in the airport duty-free store. The reason the consumer wanted to buy it there was because they didnt have to put it in their checked luggage and they could carry it on the plane. It is a very simple little story but it is a hugely successful business. And that is about understanding your local consumer and local needs. That is something that is relatively unique to the Middle East. While Nestle picks up local opportunities such as this, they are not the core thread of the business because it would create such complexity that it wouldnt be worth focusing on, Dryburgh adds. Nestles focus on international brands, such as KitKat or Cailler, does not mean the company does not tailor its offering to cater to local preferences. You have to deal with regional taste and you have to understand who is flying where. Often, in the bugger hub airports certain airlines fly through certain terminals You have to tailor your offering subject to the terminal and the airport. If you have a brand that is a global proposition like KitKat or Cailler well that proposition is quite universal it is just a function of how you communicate or engage with consumers around it. Those operating in the travel retail sector face some unique channel-specific challenges. According to Dryburgh, while branded manufacturers still have negotiations around pricing the environment you work within and also the margin structures are specific to the channel. This is different because of the nature of the industry. Effectively, the way the industry is set up now, the airport authorities as a general rule of thumb earn around 70% plus of their revenue comes in now from non-aeronautical sources, Dryburgh explains. The very clever game that the airport authorities play is for the main duty-free store they auction the space off. The retailers come and tender for a five or ten-year contract. But it is a very different world to a domestic supermarket world retailers either win the tender or they dont, you are either in or out. That means they have to put a very specific sum of money on the table as a guaranteed payment to the airport on an annualised basis. And therefore they demand extremely high margins from brand owners to be in the stores. The big four categories tobacco, alcohol, perfumes, cosmetics they are all offering 80-85% margin that is being earned by the retailer. But the retailer is having to earn that money because they are paying extremely high rental costs to the airport authorities. The airport authorities are the ones making the money, and they are ploughing it back into infrastructure because the whole sector has seen a dramatic growth curve. More people are flying so they have to invest in the infrastructure. Overall, Dryburgh says the underlying growth drivers for travel retail are extremely positive. However, the sector does face exposure to very big peaks and troughs that track ahead of the economic growth curve. For example, when 9-11 happened people tended to travel a little less and people werent shopping. The same when the SARS epidemic hit SE Asia back in 2003. That basically stopped people travelling in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Manilla. The industry collapsed. The Singapore industry collapsed. You can get some significantly negative downturns. You can also get some significantly positive upswings. When the globalisation trend was at its peak you had some more Russians travelling, more Brazilians travelling, more Chinese travelling. There were some extremely positive growth years for the industry. It tends to follow a more exaggerated curve than global GDP growth you get very strong years and negative years. It is more of a roller coaster in that sense. The Nestle executive concedes this aspect of travel retail makes the business more difficult to manage. If you have a crystal ball and you know what is coming you can do it very easily. But without one it is not so easy to call what is coming. It is one of the first discretionary spend items that goes. It is a challenging channel because of the peaks and troughs, but it is also part of the fun. Dallas, 11/14/2016 /SubmitPressRelease123/ Most people have a general idea of what bail is and how the cash bail system works. In some criminal cases, the judge may set a bail amount, which means the accused must put up a certain amount of money before he or she is released from jail. If the accused appears at the next court hearing as promised, the bail money is returned. Because many people dont have access to enough money to post bail on their own, they must use the services of a bail bondsman. A bail bondsman acts like a short-term loan lender in that they give the accused the money they need up front, but they keep a percentage once the accused has fulfilled their obligations to the court. Recently, the U.S. Justice Department has weighed in on a case pending in Georgia, in which a criminal defendant has argued that the cash bail system is unconstitutional because it unfairly punishes minorities and the financially disadvantaged. If you have been charged with any type of federal crime, its important to speak to a Texas criminal defense lawyer right away. Challenges to the Cash Bail System In the Georgia case in question, a 54-year-old man with a mental illness was arrested for a suspicion of public intoxication when police spotted him walking down the road. The court set his bail at $160. When he couldnt pay, he was forced to remain in jail for a week. A civil rights law firm stepped in and filed a lawsuit on the mans behalf, claiming the cash bail system in the city is unconstitutional. The case is now pending in a federal appeals court, and the U.S. Justice Department has lent its support to the mans position. According to an NBC News report, there are several similar lawsuits pending across the country. Research published in 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Law School says that cash bail systems often punish innocent people by keeping them incarcerated while they await a hearing. Researchers also say that bail can create a domino effect of legal problems for indigent defendants, as they may be more inclined to plead guilty to a crime they didnt commit, simply so they can obtain an earlier release and get back to work for their family obligations. A White House report says that the number of un-convicted jail inmates rose by 59 percent between 1996 and 2014. Discuss Your Case with a Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer If you have been charged with a criminal offense, and you believe the bail set in your case was unfair or discriminatory, its important to call a Texas criminal defense lawyer right away. At Broden & Mickelsen, we are Board Certified in Criminal Law and Criminal Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Get your free case evaluation from a Dallas criminal defense lawyer Mick Mickelsen today by calling 214-720-9552. Broden & Mickelsen, LLP 2600 State St Dallas, Texas 75204 Main Phone: (214) 720-9552 Office Direction Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer on Facebook SOURCE: Broden & Mickelsen source: http://www.brodenmickelsen.com/blog/texas-criminal-defense-lawyer-is-the-cash-bail-system-unfair/ Social Media Tags:Cash Bail System, Dallas criminal defense lawyer Mick Mickelsen, Texas criminal defense lawyer, Unfair Cash Bail System Newsroom powered by Online Press Release Distribution SubmitMyPressRelease.com Like Us on Facebook It's only fair to share... Pinterest Linkedin email Print After the back and forth with Brussels, a positive credit rating helped Portugal overcome its state of budgetary limbo, yet Lisbon was verbally downgraded by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble. Having received what seemed to be a green light from Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici in mid-October, Portugals left wing government drafted a budget for 2017, which was then approved with no surprises in the national parliament. Favourable votes were cast by the Socialist Party (PS), the Left Bloc (BE), the Communist Party (PCP) and the Green Party (PEV), while the Party for the Animals (PAN) abstained and the right wing, composed of the Social Democrats (PSD) and the Peoples Party (CDS), voted against the text. Despite the draft budgets parliamentary endorsement, intense negotiations between the parties are still ongoing, as the BE, PCP and PEV all consider the it to be insufficient. At stake are alterations to the regime of green receipts as forms of contracts, the income tax brackets and the extension of deductions of expenses for education, among other social and financial matters. The government is trying to curb the deficit it reached 4.4% of the GDP in 2015 by increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco, high-value real estate, vehicles and vacation rentals, as well as introducing a sugar tax on soft drinks. During budget talks, Left Bloc leader Catarina Martins tried to bring back the sensitive issue of debt restructuring. We noted, as everyone did, that the government accepted that we clearly need to negotiate a reduction of the public debt. It is an important development, she said last Friday (11 November) at the closing session of the debate on the general state budget for 2017. But Prime Minister Antonio Costa made no further comments on the remark. The country in numbers Portugals budget deficit ranked as the EUs third-biggest, behind those of Greece and Spain. According to the European Commission, the countrys deficit is estimated to account for 2.7% of GDP this year and is projected to fall to 2.3% of GDP in 2017. Portugals 2015 deficit peaked due to the 2.2 billion bailout for the Banif bank. In an official declaration, Commissioner Moscovici noted that even without the bank rescue, Portugal would not have complied with the 3% threshold for excessive deficits enforced by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) rules. In contrast, local and regional government and social security funds recorded a surplus. Portugal also saw investment growth of 3.9% in 2015, due to a strong first semester. Private consumption also grew amid a significant fall in household savings. Nevertheless, according to the Commissions forecast, private consumption is expected to lose momentum in 2016 and 2017, due to elevated indirect taxes and a slight increase in energy prices. Investment growth is expected to pick up again in 2017, supported by EU structural funds. However, these important funds were at risk of suspension due to the countrys noncompliance with official deficit targets. Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno travelled to Brussels on 7 November to discuss the issue with Commissioner Moscovici. Having said two weeks ago that the budget only seemed to be within the EU rules, Moscovici created a fair degree of suspense. In the end, he did reaffirm the budgets compliance with the rules of the SGP, which guarantees Portugal access to the EUs structural funds. Portugals GDP Portugals GDP is expected to expand by 1.5% in 2016 and 1.7% in 2017. Overall, the year of 1999 saw Portugal register its smallest deficit of 3% of GDP, while in 2010, the deficit reached an all-time high of 11.2%. According to the Commissions 2016 spring economic forecast, Portugals general government gross debt comprising currency, bills and short-term bonds, other short-term loans and other medium and long-term loans and bonds has broadly stabilised. It amounted to 129.2% of GDP at the end of 2013, slightly increased to 130.2% of GDP in 2014 and then gently dropped to 129.0% of GDP in 2015. According to Trading Economics, the GDP value of Portugal in 2015 (179.83 billion) represented a mere 0.32% of the world economy. Endorsement from DBRS The apparent success of the draft budget eased the crucial verdict from Canadian rating agency DBRS: a low rate (BBB) and a stable outlook. On 21 October Portugal breathed a sigh of relief after DBRS, the only leading rating agency to classify its sovereign debt above junk status, maintained a positive investment grade credit rating. The investment grade is a rating that indicates the credit-worthiness of corporate and government bonds. In other words, it is an assessment of the quality of a States public finances, thereby showcasing the estimated risk for potential investors. This outcome brought great relief to the struggling nation, preserving the much-needed safety net from the European Central Bank (ECB). A downgrade scenario would have hit international confidence in Lisbons economic programme, excluding Portugal from the ECBs bond-buying scheme. But despite escaping a junk rating from the Canadian agency, Portugal still faces serious challenges. According to the Financial Times, Adriana Alvarado, DBRSs lead analyst on Portugal, had said, We are still concerned about Portugals high levels of debt in a low-growth environment. But the government has shown a commitment to the EUs fiscal rules and is taking positive action on the banking sector. DBRS is poised to revisit its rating in April 2017, further driving Portugals determination to combat high levels of public sector debt, low potential growth, ongoing fiscal pressures and high corporate debts. Reverberations over Schaubles comments Long known for his hard-line views on austerity policies and offensive remarks oregarding other countries, Germanys Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble again sparked public debate after claiming that Portugal was on the right path until the socialists came to power in October 2015. A former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Domingos Lopes, accused Schauble of being insolent towards Portuguese sovereignty. Mr. Schauble has no interest in the will of the people expressed in free elections. What matters to him is his own political preference, which means that anything that does not fall into line with his plans is at serious risk of being subjected to financial interventions, he wrote for the daily Publico. Schauble descends from the imperial strain that does not accept a reality when it does not serve the interests of German high finance, Lopes added. Commenting on Schaubles remarks, the President of the Socialist Party, Carlos Cesar, told the news radio station TSF that the German finance minister is a pyromaniac who presents himself as a firefighter and, referring among others to German investors in Portugal, stressed that his compatriots do not have the same vision. The PM Costa chose not to comment directly on Schaubles provocative statements. He too told RTP news that he pays attention mainly to those Germans who are not prejudiced and who know Portugal and, hence, know what they are talking about. Shadowing the long-lasting Greek turbulence, Dimitrios Papadimoulis, a vice-president of the European Parliament and head of the Syriza party delegation, joined the condemnations of the German finance minister. It is deeply disappointing to witness a single finance minister trying to block positive developments in another member state, Papadimoulis said. Schaubles stance goes against some of the fundamental values of the European Union, such as solidarity and collective decision-making. Passers-by walk down the street past the American Apparel store in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Gildan Activewear Inc. says it has signed a deal to buy the American Apparel brand for $66 million. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, /Keith Srakocic We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form 420 Shares Share Bill* stops by the clinic about once a week to use the phone in our lobby. Karen* asked if she could have her mail sent here. Once we bought Daniel* a bag of groceries, and Frank* calls to speak to our nurse every few days because he says, Im lonely. There is a national push to re-envision our primary care clinics as patient-centered medical homes, with the intention that a patient can get all their medical needs coordinated in one location, thereby minimizing logistic barriers to care, and providing the benefits of continuity care provider relationships. This is a sentiment that has long been embodied by family medicine clinics, for good reason: Strong care relationships, centralization of services, and provision of convenient, effective medical care can lead to better health outcomes. But some of our patients need more than a medical home. They simply need a home. A place to get their mail. A place to make phone calls. A place to catch up with kind people. Familiar faces. Compassionate listeners. Human beings who care about them as fellow human beings. Personal connections. A friend. Should primary care clinics serve that role? Our patients intuition is correct: They will find kindness here. Our clinic is a small team of incredibly dedicated, compassionate, thoughtful, skillful caregivers, all committed to providing the best care for our patients so that they can attain and maintain the best of health. But for many of our patients (the majority of whom are on Medicaid), what they are seeking to heal is far more than their rash, diabetes, or headaches. For many of them, their emotional and psychosocial fabric is completely torn. Their relationships are fractured, their psychiatric conditions severe. Some of them suffer from substance addiction, or debilitating injuries. Some lack the resources to clean and feed themselves. Some have no supportive relationships: no family, no friends, or even worse family or friends who harm them. And many of our patients lack compassion for themselves. So they turn to our clinic. A place where every person treats them with respect, listens to their concerns, validates their fears, offers solutions. And thus the dilemma: despite our sincere compassion and commitment to their health, the emotional and personal needs of our patients are beyond the scope of care that we can or should provide as a medical clinic. In modern American culture, individuals are increasingly isolated and disconnected. It is difficult to pinpoint any one event, trend, or cause: Poverty? Erosion of the extended family? Expansion of technology and social media? Dissolution of urban neighborhoods? The American emphasis on individuality? The opioid epidemic? Untreated mental health disorders? All of these factors, and many others, contribute to our current situation, where people are left without a community to catch them in times of need. No sibling to drive them to their doctors appointment, no neighbor to check on their house, no church or school group to notice if anything seems amiss, no friend to call to simply say hello. A social worker could address certain concerns by connecting patients with social services; unfortunately, like so many other clinics, we do not have a social worker, because of the limited hospital-system budget. A counselor can provide critical psychological support to our patients, and we are fortunate to have such professionals in our clinic. But for many patients, these services cannot fix their profound social isolation, and it is not the role of the clinic or clinician to fill that need. We must be cautious about reaching beyond our professional roles, because despite our best intentions, we may not help them, and we could actually cause harm. After we bought groceries for Daniel that one time, he started asking for cash. Our staff continues to speak to Frank for hours at a time; sometimes he threatens to do something drastic if we say we have to get off the phone, and he recently asked us to help him acquire a new cat. When Bill uses the phone in the waiting room, sometimes he yells, and sometimes he smells, and sometimes he hits on the receptionists, who handle this well, but the other patients look uncomfortable. Furthermore, these patients often consume significant amounts of time and emotional energy from our clinical team, leading to feelings of burnout. Our clinic provides exceptional medical care to our patients, but we are not equipped to provide the comprehensive emotional care and social support relationships that our patients so desperately need. When we identify a patient with such needs, and feel the impulse to help, we must recognize the reality of our professional limitations. It is unfortunate that in our desire to help our patients in non-medical ways, sometimes we cause harm by enabling them, perpetuating relationships of dependency, or overextending resources to the detriment of our other patients or even ourselves. Of course, there are some obvious situations where we can draw cleaner boundaries. But it is not so easy to simply stop helping our patients when their needs are so overwhelming, while the community resources are so few. Societal-level problems require societal-level solutions. We must, as a society, research what cultural, political, and economic pressures have led to the social and emotional isolation that leaves so many people drifting and helpless, with no one to turn to for support but the kind people at their doctors office. It is only through such broad self-inquiry that we can, as a country, develop solutions that permeate through all of our communities, down to the individual level, to renew the supportive interpersonal relationships that these days seem fewer and farther between. Of course, such an optimistic vision for the future will take immense time and effort to realize. In the meantime, while our clinic cannot replace the relationships that make up a persons home, we will keep providing our patients kind, compassionate, and excellent care at our patient-centered medical home. * Identifying information changed for patient privacy. Belinda Fu is a family physician. Image credit: Shutterstock.com National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week kicks off with the help of a local company. This is the second year of the Laredo Bethany House's campaign "Feeding the Hungry and Sheltering the Homeless." Convergys employees have decided to raise money rather than clothes and shoes. Employees wanted this year's donations to be more personal, according to Convergys Director of Operations Robert Juarez: "We have roughly almost 1,400 employees, donated money, and we worked to give support to the Bethany House." The total amount collected was $7,777. Senator Judith Zaffirini has pre-filed the first 41 Senate Bills and the first Senate joint resolutions of the next legislative session this January. Of the 42 bills filed, six relate to higher education, two on public education and four on health and human services. Her bills include the following: SB 31, which would prohibit texting while driving. SB 32, which would establish a successor to the B-On-Time Loan Program to provide low interest loans to high-achieving, low-income college students. SB 33, which would reform the TEXAS Grant financial aid program to incentivize timely graduation and maximize limited funding. SB 34, which would expand the use of outcomes-based funding in higher education to promote timely graduation and degree completion. SB 35, which would create universal pre-k for all four-year olds and expand half-day pre-k to qualifying at-risk three-year olds. SB 36-41, which would continue reforms to Texas' guardianship system begun during the 2015 legislative session. SB 42, which would implement the Texas Judicial Council's recommendations to improve security at Texas' courthouses and courtrooms. SB 48, which would established two annual, ten-day tax-free periods during which eligible low-income students would be able to purchase or rent textbooks tax-free. SB 50, which would strengthen state laws against hazing. SB 56, which would strengthen state agencies' cybersecurity plans. SB 65, which would authorize state enforcement action against a cemetery that is discriminating on the basis of race. SB 66, which would exempt vehicles purchased by active-duty service members deployed overseas from sales tax. SB 68, which would require an elected official convicted of a felony crime to forfeit their pension. SB 69, which would prohibit leaving a pet in a hot car and authorize a person to free a pet or a vulnerable person (baby) trapped in a hot car. SB 70, which would clarify the requirement that employers provide earning statements to employees. SB 71, which would help the City of San Marcos better manage restoration and environmental protection of the San Marcos River. The Subtitle European Film Festival in Kilkenny from November 21 to 27 will host 16 Irish premieres of 32 European films from 17 different countries. The festival will also host over European 30 actors and over 50 casting directors, in what has become the biggest casting event in the world. The films will be screened in five different venues all of which are no more than a few minutes walk from each other. The nature of the festival together with the intimacy of the locations and the undeniable charm of Kilkenny city, makes for a magical week of European cinema. Highlights include the Irish premiere of Graduation with Palme dOr winner Cristian Mungiu in Kilkenny to present the film. Mijke de Jong, the Dutch director of LAYLA M will also be in Kilkenny, along with Aleksander Kott who will present both of his Russian films Test and Insight. Other notable films include the 2016 Un Certain Regard winner The Happiest Day IN The Life of Olli Maki (with lead actor Jarkko Lahti to present); and Parisienne (with a stunning debut performance from the French-Lebanese actress Manal Issa). The brilliant Czech comedy (and 2016 Oscar-submission) about a racist parrot, Lost In Munich will receive its Irish premiere and the French-Turkish hit MUSTANG will also play the festival. Other Irish premieres include When The Sun Shines from Denmark along with Dutch drama Out Of Love, Romanian award-winner Illegitimate, Serbian drama Next To Me and the astonishing debut picture from Polish director, Jan P. Matuszynski called The Last Family. All these films will have their leading actors in Kilkenny, notably Roland Mller who plays the lead in Danish Oscar-submission. Never Miss Another Deal Get the latest deals delivered straight to your inbox You will receive your first newsletter within 24 hours. Star scholar Isabel Balchada has launched herself into a career in accountancy after securing the highest marks in the country in Accounting Technicians Irelands Online Programme this year. The 36-year-old Kilkenny woman returned to study after a 15-year absence and has since gained employment as a direct result of the ATI course, which she completed through the Institutes Online Programme. I was unemployed prior to starting the course, although I had experience in office administration and book-keeping from being previously self-employed, she said. ATIs Diploma for Accounting Technicians is recognised as the fastest pathway to an accounting career, and its Online Programme offers students the chance to gain the qualification in a flexible, convenient way. The course starts from the basics so is accessible to everyone, whatever their background and it gives you a good understanding of accounting, taxation and company law to prepare you for a variety of positions, said Isabel. I did my second year online and Id really recommend that option to anyone. Its more self-driven but you are given so many resources and support that you feel you are not on your own. I loved being back studying after 15 years and I intend to continue studying in the field. ATIs Online Programme is delivered directly by the Institute. Students receive support from both ATI and its lecturers, including tutor support, recorded lectures and regular online assessments. Students view a recorded lecture in every subject each week and there are also virtual classes, face-to-face weekends, subject and student forums and subject assessments throughout the year. ATIs qualifications provide access to employment opportunities for a broad range of accounting and finance roles and will enable students to further progress to senior financial management posts. Accounting Technicians are qualified accounting professionals that work at all levels of finance throughout the private and public sector, industry and commerce and in accountancy practices. Our Online Programme has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2014, and the consistently high results that students such as Isabel have achieved speak for themselves, said Gillian Doherty, ATIs Chief Operations Officer. Ours is a pan-sectoral qualification which meets the needs of industry, practice and the public sector, and graduates enjoy exemptions from the full range of professional accountancy bodies including Chartered Accountants Ireland, ACCA, CPA, CIMA and IIPA as well as Higher Education third-level accounting programmes, said Ms Doherty. ATI is now enrolling for a January intake on the Online Programme, which starts on January 9, 2017. A Kilkenny-based writer has co-penned her first non-fiction book, Trapped in Iran. This gripping book tells the story of Irish citizen, Samieh Hezari, who spent five years trying to get her young daughter out of Iran and back to her birthplace of Ireland. Kaylene Petersen, who worked for over 20 years in editing and publishing in Sydney, London and Dublin, moved to Kilkenny in 2008 and worked with the Kilkenny People until 2010. The Australian native returned to college and graduated with a BSc (Hons) Counselling & Psychotherapy earlier this year. She has recently set up a private practice on Patrick Street, Kilkenny, with two other counsellors. Kaylene and Samieh first met in Dublin in 2005 at a charity ball. Together they wrote the book which was published earlier this year and has garnered positive reaction both at home and abroad. We ended up sitting next to each other and got talking. I had never met anyone from Iran and I found it fascinating to hear about her life, which was so different to mine. By the end of the night we had swapped numbers and had arranged to meet again for coffee. Samieh was warm and genuine, there was an instant bond there, said Kaylene. In 2009, Samieh, a mother-of-two, flew to her native Iran to introduce her younger daughter, Rojha (who was 14 months old at the time) to the child's father. The father then refused to allow Rojha to leave Iran, forcing Samieh to stay in Iran for five years until she managed to escape illegally with Rojha. During that period, Samieh would return to Ireland (without Rojha, whose father had taken her passport and alerted authorities she was not to leave unless he was with her making it impossible for her to leave) to see if the Government authorities could help her. I was always happy to see Samieh, but those visits were always tinged with sadness because I could see her pain that Rojha was not with her. As time passed the urgency to get Rojha out of Iran intensified as Rojhas father would be entitled to sole custody once she reached the age of seven. The childs father also placed a false allegation of adultery against Samieh - an offence that is punishable by stoning in Iran. I was very concerned about them both as time was running out. Then, in November 2014 I received a txt message from Samieh saying she and Rojha had made it across the border into Iraq and to pray for them and she would be in touch. A week later, I was standing at Dublin airport waiting for their flight to land. It was very surreal. I hadn't seen Rojha since she was a 14-month-old baby and now she was a six-year-old girl. In December 2014, Samieh decided to write her story to make people aware of what had happened. Together the friends managed to secure a publishing deal with Indiana University Press. Trapped in Iran was chosen as one of only three non-fiction titles to be presented on the author stages at Book Expo America in Chicago the biggest book expo in America - which was held in May this year. It was very exciting and a great project to be involved in. I always knew Sami's story was extraordinary and would have wide appeal, added Kaylene. Trapped in Iran is available in Dubray Books in the Market Cross Shopping Centre and other book stores. Story VANCOUVER, Wash. Five months after a 96-car train carrying Bakken crude derailed in the Columbia River Gorge triggering a major fire, causing the evacuation of a nearby school and contaminating the groundwater elected leaders gathered to discuss strategies to prevent a similar disaster from occurring in the Northwest. King County Executive Dow Constantine who is also chair of the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance brought elected leaders from Washington and Oregon together in Vancouver following a tour of the crash site in Mosier, Ore. Had the train derailed closer to its destination, the blast zone would have covered parts of Tacoma, one of the largest population centers in the region. "After years of seeing major oil-train disasters devastate communities in other parts of Canada and the U.S., the Pacific Northwest has now experienced it first-hand," said Executive Constantine. "Oil and coal companies reap the profits, while local communities are left with the cost and the risk. That's why we stand united as cities, counties, states and tribes to protect our people, our economy, and our environment." The alliance includes 165 elected leaders from five Northwest states plus British Columbia pushing federal regulators to consider the full risks and impacts that transporting coal and oil have on local communities. That includes the impact on public health, public safety, traffic, and treaty rights. They also support state and federal legislation to improve safety along rail and barge lines. The tide has turned against coal-export terminals in recent years. Six years ago, there were proposals to build six terminals across the Northwest. Today, only one of those proposals is being considered, in Longview, Wash. Earlier this year, the U.S. Corps of Engineers denied a permit request to build a large coal-export facility near Bellingham, Wash., upholding the treaty rights of Lummi Nation. There is still a proposal to build a major oil-export terminal in Vancouver, which would be the largest facility of its kind in North America. If the Tesoro Savage Terminal is approved and built, more than 360,000 barrels of flammable crude would arrive in Vancouver each day. "We are invigorated to action not only by the June 3rd derailment, but also by the daunting realization that the Columbia River Gorge could become a superhighway for fossil fuel transportation if these terminals are allowed," said Arlene Burns, Mayor of Mosier, Ore. "The continued transportation of crude oil by rail threatens our community of Hood River and every other community along the rail line within the blast zone," said Peter Cornelison, a City Councilmember in Hood River, Ore. "The unsafe condition of the rail lines and tank cars -- which are not designed to withstand high impact -- further increase the danger. We are literally playing Russian roulette with the safety of communities next to railroads." During today's meeting, alliance members will discuss how new safety regulations signed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will be implemented. They will also be briefed on the Mosier crash, plan for the next state legislative sessions and discuss the status of proposed coal- and oil-transport facilities. Relevant links Quotes After years of seeing major oil-train disasters devastate communities in other parts of Canada and the U.S., the Pacific Northwest has now experienced it first-hand. Oil and coal companies reap the profits, while local communities are left with the cost and the risk. That's why we stand united as cities, counties, states and tribes to protect our people, our economy, and our environment. Dow Constantine, King County Executive We are invigorated to action not only by the June 3rd derailment, but also by the daunting realization that the Columbia River Gorge could become a superhighway for fossil fuel transportation if these terminals are allowed. Arlene Burns, Mayor of Mosier, Ore. The continued transportation of crude oil by rail threatens our community of Hood River and every other community along the rail line within the blast zone. The unsafe condition of the rail lines and tank cars -- which are not designed to withstand high impact -- further increase the danger. We are literally playing Russian roulette with the safety of communities next to railroads. Peter Cornelison, Councilor of Hood River, Ore. For more information, contact: Chad Lewis, Executive Office, 206-263-1250 Kingstree, SC (29556) Today Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. High 77F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. HANOI, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0050 GMT. Nov 14 Nov 11 USD/VND mid-point 22,067 22,056 USD/VND interbank 22,320/22,340 22,325/22,328 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.45/35.82 35.85/36.12 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 14 (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 0416 GMT. Nov 14 Nov 11 USD/VND mid-point 22,067 22,056 USD/VND interbank 22,340/22,342 22,325/22,328 USD/VND unofficial 22,520/22,570 22,380/22,420 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.50/35.87 35.85/36.12 Interbank offered rates Overnight 1.2-2.1 0.9-1.6 1 week 1.2-2.1 0.9-1.7 1 month 1.9-2.5 1.6-2.1 3 months 3.5-4.7 3.5-4.6 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) Egypt issues 688 mln euro in T-bills, average yield 2.3 pct -c.bank CAIRO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Egypt's central bank said on Monday it had sold 688 million euros ($738 million) in euro-denominated 1-year treasury bills at an average yield of 2.3 percent. The minimum yield was 2.28 percent and the maximum yield was 2.3 percent. ($1 = 0.9318 euros) (Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication. kitco news (Adds minister comment, background) CAIRO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Egypt will hold its first international tender for gold mining concessions since 2009 in early December, Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla said at an economic conference on Monday. Geologists say that Egypt has mineral-rich territory that could be ripe for mining, but investors have said that commercial terms offered in previous tenders were unattractive and have kept the sector underdeveloped. Last year the government said it wanted mining to increase its contribution to GDP to more than 5 percent from the less than 1 percent currently. Egypt, which has had to contend with a severe dollar shortage since tourists and investors fled after the country's 2011 uprising, announced this year that it would hold a bidding round for new mining concessions but the tender has been delayed repeatedly. Molla said that Centamin's Sukari mine, Egypt's sole gold-exporting mine, had paid the government $40 million in profits and $80 million in concession fees since last July. The December bidding round would be the first since 2009, when a global gold-mining boom brought a handful of first-time investors to Egypt despite what some said were poor commercial terms. Most of these investors left after the 2011 uprising, driven away by growing political turmoil and falling global gold prices. (Reporting by Abdel Rahman Adel; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by David Goodman) Robert Sager,19, right, works with Coffee Oasis Center volunteer Megan Sheppard of Seabeck. Sager, who is homeless and sleeps in a tent in Brownsville, is a frequent patron of Coffee Oasis. The coffee shop, which also works with homeless youth, hopes to build a shelter for kids ages 13 to 17. (LARRY STEAGALL | KITSAP SUN) SHARE By Rachel Pritchett Plans are quickly taking shape for a shelter for homeless youth between the ages of 13 and 17. The shelter would be at Coffee Oasis, a coffee shop at 822 Burwell St. in Bremerton that has also provided social services to homeless and at-risk youth. The $1.2 million shelter, which could be in operation in as soon as a year, would include the small restaurant thats there now and also an events room. Two bedrooms would be upstairs, with room for three males and three females. Also upstairs would be a room to hold clothing that would be available for the teens. Oasis is starting small, expecting to serve about 78 homeless teens a year. Executive Director Dave Frederick said other successful youth shelters have built up the number of visitors slowly. Frederick said the shelter will be the missing link in services provided to the growing ranks of homeless in Kitsap County. Facilities for adult men, women and families are in place, but there is nothing for teens, many of whom are abused. At the shelter, they would get case management and follow-up care. They could stay a month. Were talking an underage shelter, for which there is nothing, Frederick said. Frederick and his nonprofit group hope to purchase the 5,500-square-foot building from the Bremer Trust for $250,000. An additional $414,000 will be needed to renovate the old building into a shelter. In recent days, Oasis has received $250,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds from Kitsap County and the city of Bremerton, to be used for renovations. Another $570,000 would be needed to run the shelter, in all making it a $1.2 million project. Frederick has been hitting the service-group circuit looking for money and has applied for several foundation grants. According to data collected from schools under the McKinney-Vento Act, 313 students ages 13 to 17 attending local schools identified themselves as homeless in 2009 and 2010. Frederick said the real number is higher. The proposed underage shelter has drawn the support of Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent and homelessness author Richard LeMieux. A plan by Catholic Community Services to build a teen shelter in empty storefront space in the Max Hale Center in Bremerton is now on hold. That proposal, which called for 25 beds, drew criticism from business owners and Frederick, who said it was too big and in the wrong place. Oasis has grown, opening a Port Orchard location last year that now attracts as many as 20 kids on Saturday nights. It is also contemplating another center in Poulsbo and has built up a stable of 30 adult mentors to help the kids. Its outreach effort has expanded, too. Staff search out vulnerable young people in known locations throughout the night. A proposed encampment for homeless families in East Bremerton has no bearing on Oasis plans, Frederick said. That camp would hold families; the Oasis plan would be for kids. A summit on homeless students in Kitsap County hosted by the Oasis, the Salvation Army and StandUp for Kids takes place Nov. 17 at Bremerton United Methodist Church. The free event from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. will feature homeless youth telling their stories and homelessness representatives from local schools and the state. To register, send an e-mail to homelessness worker Sally Santana at sally.santana@wavecable.com. To Help Those wishing to contribute to a shelter for underage youth can contact Coffee Oasis Executive Director Dave Frederick at thecoffeeoasis@gmail.com, at (360) 509-8642 or visit www.thecoffeeoasis.com. Nigerian national Chijioke Stephen Obioha Very soon, yet another individual is about to be executed in a state sanctioned hanging. According to Amnesty International, the Very soon, yet another individual is about to be executed in a state sanctioned hanging. According to Amnesty International, the date for the execution of Chijioke Stephen Obioha (a Nigerian national) has been set for this Friday, 18 November 2016. On 9 April 2007, Chijioke was found in possession of more than 2.6 kilograms of cannabis, exceeding the statutory amount of 500 grams that under Singapore law triggers the automatic presumption of trafficking. Also in his possession were keys to a room containing additional prohibited substances, leading the authorities to presume him guilty of possession and knowledge of the drugs. In August 2010, an appeal against Chijiokes conviction and sentence was rejected. In 2013, when amendments to Singapores mandatory death penalties laws kicked in, Chijioke initially refused to make use of his right to resentencing. In April 2015, his clemency appeal was rejected and his execution was set for May 2015. Just one day before the execution, he was allowed to apply for resentencing. Following legal advice that he would not qualify as a courier under the amended laws, Chijioke withdrew his application for resentencing. This led to the lifting of the stay of execution on 24 October 2016 and the setting of the execution date. Chijioke has endured more than 9 punishing years in prison. He has been detained not for the purposes of treatment nor rehabilitation but for the purposes of awaiting execution. He has faced unprecedented mental anguish. Changes to the law in 2012 gave him a glimmer of hope but this was again snatched away from him. To our knowledge, Chijiokes case is possibly the longest delay of an execution in Singapores history till today. In Pratt and Morgan v Attorney-General for Jamaica, the Privy Council held that the delay of 5 years and 6 months which had elapsed since an accuseds conviction amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and breached his constitutional right not to be deprived of life. A Door towards Hope Arguments showing any prolonged delay in the execution of an accused could be capable of being a violation of human rights, as inhuman and as degrading. A plethora of international human rights instruments prohibit torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This prohibition is also found in numerous domestic constitutions. Studies on death row inmates reveal that delays and uncertainties cause depression, loss of the sense of reality, personality distortions, physical and mental deterioration. Judges in several American and Indian decisions have decided that though the death penalty itself may not be cruel per se, lingering delays in solitude with the knowledge of impending extinction that amounts to cruelty. There was opportunity for Singapore to address the question of delay in death row in 1995. In Jabar v Public Prosecutor the accused had been languishing in jail for over 5 years awaiting execution. His lawyers placed reliance on Indian cases and the Jamaican case of Pratt and Morgan, however, the Court of Appeal found dubious reasons to distinguish those cases and the one before them. The Court in Jabars case concluded that the situation in Singapore was markedly different because the death penalty was mandatory here unlike India. In contrast to the position held during Jabars case, Singapores mandatory death penalty regime had seen changes in 2012 to give discretion to judges in certain circumstances especially drug trafficking cases. Also, the Court in Jabar overlooked the fact that the unambiguous finding by the Indian Supreme Court was that supervening events might render a lawfully and justifiably imposed death sentence unlawful. We argue that the fact that the sentence is mandatory does not detract from the mental anguish and torment he had to endure as a result of the delay. At this stage, we are not challenging the judicial death penalty sentence itself, but rather to its execution after such an inordinate delay. We place little emphasis on the duration of the delay itself as this may cause unnecessary controversy in semantics in what is deemed as unreasonable delay. It should also not matter also whether it was the accused himself who caused the delay as it would be acceptable for him to take every step conceivable to turn his ill fate around. As a way forward, we wish to emphasise on the actual effects or consequences of the delay in depriving his life and personal liberty. The Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign and several other local and international human rights groups are working tirelessly to campaign on behalf of Chijioke to halt the execution. The impending execution of Chijioke is clearly unlawful under international law and arguably under Singapore law. We are looking to work closely with our Nigerian counterparts and international community to make a difference. We call upon the Singapore Government to reconsider its decision and commute the death sentence imposed on Chijioke. Background Nigerian national Chijioke Stephen Obioha is set to be executed in Singapore on November 18, 2016, Amnesty International reported on Thursday. Mr. Obioha was sentenced to death on December 30, 2008 after being arrested on April 9, 2007 for the possession of cannabis. He was found with over 2.6 kilograms of cannabis, an offense which, under Singapore law, mandates the death penalty. Mr. Obioha appealed his sentence in August 2010, maintaining his innocence, but the court refused to commute his death penalty down to a prison sentence. According to Amnesty International, in Singapore, the burden of proof lies on the defendant rather than the prosecutor. The human rights organization explained that this is a violation of the right to a fair trial. | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! Ravi,Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun A log chalet that has charmed backcountry hikers for generations may have worn out its welcome. A flood of emails and letters sent to Olympic National Park tilt heavily in support of a plan to tear down the Enchanted Valley Chalet. "Stop wasting my tax dollars on a building that should never have been built in the first place," said one letter writer from Pennsylvania, echoing hundreds of comments that favor removing the one human-made structure in an otherwise wild landscape. Olympic National Park has received about 1,400 letters and emails since June, when the park announced it would seek a "final" solution for the 85-year-old chalet. Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said the chalet generated more comments than any other issue in recent memory more even than the controversial proposal to remove nonnative mountain goats. "It was a lot," she said. "This was quite a bit more than the ones we've done in the past, but it wasn't a surprise." Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the three-story, 10-room chalet is considered an icon of Olympic National Park. It sits more than 14 miles from the nearest road in a scenic valley of waterfalls and glacier-capped peaks. Built before the park was established in 1938, the chalet has served as a backcountry lodge, World War II aircraft lookout and park ranger station. The chalet is threatened by the shifting course of the Quinault River. Building preservationists moved the chalet in September 2014, but the river quickly narrowed the distance. Less than 30 feet remain. The park is considering three options for the chalet: Do nothing and let nature take its course. Take it apart before it tips into the river. Move the chalet another 450 feet to higher ground beyond the Quinault's floodplain. Comments on the options streamed in from 105 cities in 48 states and 12 countries, including Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. About 30 percent of the input came from Washington state. Park staff analyzed the range of opinions and divided them among 30 topics. More than 500 comments advocated restoring the valley's "natural conditions." About 460 want the chalet dismantled and its materials reused, while 420 want it torn down and burned at the site. About 125 comments backed the plan to move the chalet. "The Enchanted Valley Chalet could have a wonderful future, serving society in countless ways, all of which could enhance the appreciation of wilderness preservation," a Bremerton resident wrote in an email. For others, the chalet is the antithesis of wilderness. "I have hiked to the chalet before and found it obtrusive to the wilderness experience," a Portland, Oregon, resident wrote. Hundreds of comments were emailed at the behest of Wilderness Watch, a Montana-based group opposed to the chalet's preservation. Wilderness Watch is suing the park to stop it from rehabilitating or reconstructing five other wilderness shelters. "The area's wilderness condition would be improved by removing this man-made structure," was a phrase repeated verbatim in more than 300 emails sent to the park. Most of the writers were from outside the Northwest, and many expressed support for Wilderness Watch. With the public comment period now closed, park officials will further refine the options and consider environmental impacts. The lengthy, federally mandated assessment process the park must follow puts a final decision somewhere around spring 2018. The river appears to have let up on the chalet, at least for now. "A ranger sent a picture the other day, and it looked fine," Maynes said. "But all it takes is a tree to fall and a log jam is created and reshapes the flow of the river. You never know. It's a very fluid, dynamic situation." Union petition calls for St. Michael leadership's ouster A union leader said of the hospital's short staffing in the ER that the crisis was 'extraordinary.' The Herald reports: The Green Partys newest recruitment Chloe Swarbrick says she was approached by several political parties before she picked the Greens. The failed mayoral candidate wont say which other parties tried to win her over, though Labour leader Andrew Little has previously expressed an interest in meeting with her. I have always voted Greens, the 22-year-old said after confirming her candidacy this morning. I just affiliate with what they do and Im on board with their policies and their values. At a time when UK and US politics was becoming increasingly bitter, she wanted to be part of a positive change. The party already has five Auckland-based MPs and several more high-ranking candidates based in the city. However, it is understood that at least one of the partys MPs will leave Parliament at the next election. Once upon a time the Southern Poverty Law Centre was a great organisation. They fought the KKK and white supremacist groups. However they have lost their way as they have now starting labeling individuals who criticise a religion as members of hate groups showing an inability to distinguish between legitimate criticism and hate speech. Lee Smith writes at Tablet Mag: Late last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which became deservedly famous in the 1980s for combating violent white-power hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, published a list of 15 individuals it labels as particularly threatening anti-Muslim extremists. It is sad but telling that the SPLCs so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremistswho certainly do existbut is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC. The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitznone of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots. I spoke to Nawaz on the phone in London to ask for his reaction. A bunch of first-world, comfortable liberal Americans who are not Muslims have decided from their comfortable perch to label me, an activist who is working within his Muslim community to push back against extremism, an anti-Muslim extremist. Yes they have called a Muslim who preaches tolerance and non-extremism an anti-Muslim extremist. It seems the SPLC are the ones becoming the extremists. A pity as they have done much good in the past. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey will decide whether or not to reinstate the death penalty, not the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Nov. 12. "The issue on the reintroduction of death penalty is also on the government's agenda. I said 'I, as the president, will approve the decision after the parliament decides.' The West cannot make decision regarding this, but we can," Erdogan said speaking during the funeral ceremony of Muhammet Fatih Safiturk, the district governor of the southeastern province of Mardin's Derik, who was killed in an outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) attack on Nov. 11. "The forgiver of crimes committed against the person is not the state but heirs. This is not a crime committed against the state. The state can forgive crimes committed against it and that is another issue. However, the only forgiveness authority is heirs in crimes against the person. Therefore, what George or Hans say does not concern us. What concerns us is what the God says," the president added. Amid the ongoing discussions on the reintroduction of death penalty in the country, a progression report by the European Commission on Nov. 9 noted that the rejection of the death penalty was an essential element, expressing the Union's concern on the issue. "Regarding the renewed considerations to introduce a bill in parliament to reinstate the death penalty, the EU recalls that the unequivocal rejection of the death penalty is an essential element of the EU acquis and a central international obligation to which Turkey has committed," the report said. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said a "limited measure" could be drafted to restore the death penalty, which was formally abandoned in 2002, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterating that he would approve such a measure if parliament backed it. | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! Source: Hurriyet Daily News, November 13, 2016 Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Manama: Kuwaiti teenage students have been warned that they could face the death penalty or heavy prison terms for certain crimes following the decision to lower the juvenile age from 18 to 16 in January. "Starting next year, anyone aged 16 or more arrested for a crime will be tried by a regular court, and not the juvenile court, which means the death penalty for some crimes," Bader Al Ghadhoori, the head of juvenile protection at the Ministry of Interior, said. "Everybody, especially the students and their parents should be extremely careful about the significance of the change in the application of the law," he told students at a forum about the risks of misusing social media. Under the current juvenile law, criminal penalties are applied to people who are 18 years and above, while special penalties are applied to those under 18. Al Ghadhoori highlighted the importance of surfing websites and using social media, but warned against their negative aspects. "Online sites are double-edged for they can offer great opportunities as well as ominous risks. The problem is not so much with the sites as with the one surfing or using them," he said, quoted by Kuwaiti daily Al Qabas on Thursday. The official said that the most dangerous risks related to online sites were disturbances, strikes, demonstrations, mass absenteeism by students, sit-ins, underground organisations, terrorist and drug trafficking groups, alcohol, sex tourism, prostitution and organized crime. Some websites work on undermining relations with brotherly and friendly countries, incite attacks on leaders, presidents and iconic religious figures and symbols, provoke sectarian and tribal feuds, ridicule and deride others, and spread rumours, Al Ghadhoori said. "People should truly fear God and abide by the laws and regulations as several families and societies have been suffering from the negative impact of destructive websites," he said. Kuwait's parliament last year approved a new law for delinquent juveniles that lowered the age of minors from 18 to 16 years. The approval by 37 lawmakers and opposed by seven was in line with the drive by the authorities curb a sharp increase in the crime rate following calls by some MPs to take a tougher stance in order to protect teenagers. The lawmakers who called for a lower juvenile age had warned that terrorist groups were working on recruiting young people and argued that strict measures were needed to foil their plans. However, several activists said that the new juvenile age as approved by the parliament last year would be a violation of the teenagers' rights. They said that young people should not be treated like adults and that a better option could be to slightly toughen their sentences. | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! Source: Gulf News , November 10, 2016 U.S. admits 84,995 refugees in 2016 NOVEMBER 13, 2016 at 4:07 p.m. The United States is taking the lead in meeting the unprecedented challenge of the global refugee crisis. At the Leaders Summit on Refugees in September, President Obama brought together world leaders on the margins of the UN General Assembly to galvanize additional humanitarian support, improve educational and access to lawful work for refugees, and expand opportunities for refugee resettlement. The U.S. resettlement program serves refugees who are especially vulnerable; those who fled violence or persecution and cannot safely stay where they are or return home. It is the largest refugee resettlement program in the world. For each of the past several years the United States has offered 70,000 refugees new homes. In Fiscal Year 2016, President Obama set a new, more ambitious goal: resettling 85,000 refugees. Per the Presidents goal, the American communities welcomed 84,995 refugees in Fiscal Year 2016. The refugees admitted under the program come from 79 countries. Over 70 percent fled five countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Burma, Iraq, and Somalia, where protracted conflicts have driven millions from their homes. Over 72 percent of the resettled refugees are women and children. Many are single mothers, survivors of torture, people who need urgent medical treatment, religious minorities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex (LGBTI) persons, or others imperiled by violence and persecution. American communities have long been the bedrock of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The Department of State is proud to work with partners in about 180 cities across 48 states, and that list is expanding in Fiscal Year 2017 as more American communities open their doors to refugees. The safety and security of the American people is always the top priority. Refugees are screened more carefully than any other type of traveler. Screening includes the participation of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Departments of State and Defense as well as additional intelligence agencies. Looking forward, the United States will welcome 110,000 refugees in Fiscal Year 2017. This is a 57 percent increase over FY 2015 and is consistent with the belief that all nations must do more to help the record number of innocent civilians who are uprooted, cast adrift, and desperate to find peace, safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. Top 5 Countries of Origin: Democratic Republic of the Congo Syria Burma Iraq Somalia Top 5 U.S. States welcoming refugees: California Texas New York Michigan Ohio SOURCE: Department of State Published November 13, 2016 Muslim clerics in Mauritania on Sunday urged the authorities to execute a blogger who was sentenced to death in 2014 for apostasy after writing a blog post on Islam and racial discrimination. Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir's article touched a nerve in Mauritania, a West African country with deep social and racial divisions. He was tried for apostasy and received the death penalty despite having repented and saying his article was misunderstood. According to the U.S.-based Freedom Now rights group who provide Mkhaitir with legal counsel, the blog post appears to have been the 1st he published. Prior to his arrest he worked as an engineer for a mining company and was not an activist, Freedom Now said on its website. Mauritania has not applied a death penalty since 1987 but on Sunday, the influential Forum of Imams and Ulemas issued a fatwa, or Islamic decree, calling for Mkhaitir to be killed. It condemned "Mkhaitir and his heresy, recalling that the legal penalty in his case is death, with no exception made for his repentance," according to a statement. "We demand that the competent authorities apply the law: kill him and bury him in conformity with the law of God." Rights groups like Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have campaigned for Mkhaitir's pardon and release. | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! Source: Reuters, November 13, 2016 By Kim Tae-gyu The surprise election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the U.S. will likely weigh on the Korean economy, prompting worries that the country's annual growth rate will fall below 2 percent next year, analyst said Monday. If Trump comes up with protectionist measures such as nullifying free trade pacts and raising tariffs in line with his campaign pledges, it could deal a serious blow to Korea, which heavily depends on exports. Adding to concerns, the country's construction industry, which has almost single-handedly underpinned the economy over the past few years, is showing signs of slowing down amid worries of a real estate bubble. Korea failed to top 2 percent in annual growth just once in the new millennium when it chalked up 0.7 percent in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis and the resultant credit crunch. The growth rate was 3.3 percent in 2014 and 2.6 percent in 2015. For this year, the figure is predicted to be slightly higher than 2.5 percent. "The chances are that we will not be able to grow by 2 percent next year at a time when both exports and consumption remain sluggish," said Prof. Lee Phil-sang at Seoul National University. "Worse, Trump's election brings great uncertainties, which are the biggest enemy of the economy. We are required to draw up contingency plans to deal with the threats." The parliamentary budget office recently projected that private consumption will increase 2.2 percent next year while construction investment will rise 2.1 percent compared to 6.8 percent this year. Prof. Kim Sang-jo took issue with the lack of economic leadership in the nation caused by the scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her shadowy aide Choi Soon-sil, who was found to have illegally meddled in state affairs across the board. Because of the scandal, the government is struggling to go ahead with economic policies, and worse, the post of deputy prime minister in charge of the economy is practically vacant as the Assembly has not started hearings on a new appointee amid lingering political wrangling. "In the aftermath of Trump's election, our economy faces zero visibility but we don't have a control tower to lead the way forward. The leadership vacuum and uncertainty are feared to become a deadly mix," Kim said. "The possibility that our growth rate will plunge below 2 percent is getting bigger." IBK Securities research head Lee Jong-woo said that Korea Inc. could slump in 2017 but warned against an overly pessimistic stance. "The consensus is that our economy will face problems next year and I agree. But I don't think that our growth rate will fall by 0.7 or 0.8 percentage points in a single year," Lee said. "Even at its worst, I expect that the economy will expand by more than 2 percent next year." Meanwhile, Citigroup predicted of late that the Trump victory could cut its 2017 growth forecast for Korea to around 2.1 percent from the original 2.7 percent on the assumption that the political event could lower global gross domestic product growth by around 0.7 to 0.8 percentage points. By Kim Tae-gyu Samsung BioLogics, the biologic drug manufacturing unit of Samsung Group, is cruising smoothly on the Seoul bourse with the company's value jumping almost 30 percent in three trading days after its listing. The company's stock price closed at 175,500 won Monday, up 29 percent since its initial public offering (IPO), Nov. 11. As a result, its market capitalization also soared to 11.6 trillion won, making it the 23rd biggest firm in the domestic market. Since its listing, Samsung BioLogics is now more valuable than the world's No. 1 shipyard Hyundai Heavy Industries and sister company Samsung SDS, which placed 24th and 25th, respectively. The news that the enterprise's share would be included in benchmark indices provided by such representative players as the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) reflects its value. The former decided to embrace Samsung BioLogics this week while the latter is scheduled to follow suit early next month, which would prompt pensions and funds to purchase more of the biologic corporation's stock. Samsung Group, the country's primary conglomerate, picked biologics as one of its next-generation growth engines in 2010 and invested a lot to set up the affiliate. The Seoul-based firm already runs a factory with six 5,000-liter bioreactors in Incheon's Songdo. In addition, a state-of-the-art plant with an 180,000-liter capacity is under construction. By going public, Samsung BioLogics secured 2.25 trillion won in cash. It plans to use the revenue to finance the construction of its third plant, repay its debts and invest in its affiliate, Samsung Bioepis. The combined shares of Samsung Electronics and Samsung C&T in Samsung BioLogics are higher than 70 percent. Other positive news for BioLogics is its biosimilar arm Bioepis whose SB2, a generic version of Jansen's rheumatoid arthritis treatment Remicade, is doing well in Europe. After obtaining approval in Europe this May, U.S. pharmaceutical firm Biogen took charge of selling the medicine under the brand name Flixabi. Samsung Bioepis was established in 2012 as a joint venture between Samsung BioLogics and Biogen. The start-up is responsible for developing and manufacturing products as well as conducting global clinical trials and obtaining regulatory approval. By Shawn Kim and Sara Lee Globally, sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) is growing structurally as asset owners mandate evidence of SRI, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations in asset managers' investment strategies. Active fund managers can redefine their value position, create attractive investment approaches for millennials, and increase their value-additive processes. There is evidence that companies with sustainability policies outperform their peers. At Morgan Stanley, we believe that having a better understanding of the ESG risks and opportunities a company faces will help investors improve their investment returns. Stakeholders such as regulators, lawmakers, public pensions, institutional investors, listed companies, and consumers in Korea are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sustainability in their investment and consumption decisions. In our view, the growth environment for SRI in Korea is driven by four main factors, namely: 1) financial opportunity; 2) public pensions; 3) support from regulators and policymakers; and 4) increased public awareness and interest. Public funds, such as the National Pension Service, have increased their SRI funds balance and gradually integrated ESG factors into their investment decisions, as required by changes in laws governing public pensions. The Financial Services Commission plans to introduce a volunteer stewardship code for domestic institutional investors in 2017. Also, the Korea Stock Exchange is promoting ESG practices to listed companies, and lawmakers are discussing potential policy changes that incorporate corporate social responsibility and SRI amid consumers' increasing awareness of ESG issues. Increased awareness of the importance of ESG could support the Korean stock market, which currently trades at a 30 percent discount to regional peer markets in price-to-book value. Several metrics suggest reasons for this discount -- including a lower return on equity profile, higher earnings volatility, and lower relative cash returns. However, perceptions of weaker corporate governance could also partly account for the discount. According to the Asia Corporate Governance Association, Korea, in 2014, ranked eighth among 11 Asian countries in terms of corporate governance, despite having the fourth-largest economy in the region. As sustainable investment gains traction and the policy push for ESG issues continues, we believe listed companies will become more aware of the importance of ESG factors. Assuming governance improves and ESG matters gain prominence, capital management would likely attract greater attention in an effort to increase cash returns. We have already seen corporate Korea becoming more proactive in terms of capital management by raising dividend yields in recent years. But, such yields remain below the average in Asia ex-Japan. Still, as cash returns in Korea increase, we believe the valuation gap should narrow. Morgan Stanley Research has analyzed the potential effects of ESG factors on a company's share price from a risk and opportunity perspective. Our Korean equity research team has integrated Morgan Stanley's global ESG framework into long-term sustainability analysis by discussing company-specific issues for 83 listed companies in Korea, accounting for around 83 percent of the market capitalization of the MSCI Korea index. Because of the different business characteristics, we selected key environmental and social factors that have an effect on each company's earnings and valuations by integrating our global valuation framework. We also analyzed corporate governance in greater detail because of its significance for long-term sustainability. The following three points emerged as areas of interest: 1) board independence is highest in the financial industry, mainly at banks; 2) female board member representation, on average, is low, at 3 percent compared with the 2015 OECD average of around 20 percent (notably, however, in the Korean banking industry, female representation averages 14 percent); 3) the level of management remuneration, and its growth momentum, generally has no relationship with total shareholder return; rather, it correlates positively with market cap. Shawn Kim is a managing director at Morgan Stanley. He heads the Korea research department in Seoul, is the Korea strategist and a senior technology analyst. Sara Lee is an executive director who covers Korean conglomerates, insurance and brokerage companies at Morgan Stanley Research. By Yoon Ja-young Conglomerates with assets of over 5 trillion won will face stricter disclosure rules regarding transactions between their local and overseas subsidiaries beginning next year. This includes intra-affiliate deals related to capital, assets and securities as well as services among subsidiaries. Shin Young-sun, secretary general of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), revealed the plan while meeting with reporters, Monday. "In the case of Lotte, for instance, in which subsidiaries overseas govern local subsidiaries, the ownership structure was not clear," he said. "As it is difficult for the regulator to examine overseas subsidiaries, surveillance through regulatory filing is even more crucial." The feud for managerial control of Lotte Group among the owner family last year revealed the governance structure of the group, in which overseas subsidiaries govern subsidiaries operating in Korea. Lotte had been hiding that 16 overseas subsidiaries hold stakes in 11 local subsidiaries including Lotte Hotel. The regulator thus plans to strengthen filing obligations for conglomerates with assets over 5 trillion won regarding transactions between local and overseas subsidiaries. Currently, they are obliged to file only the total amount of such transactions, but they will disclose each such transaction from next year. "For instance, Samsung Electronics has many transactions with affiliates overseas such as the one in the United States. Currently, however, it has only to disclose the total amount of transactions with all subsidiaries overseas," Shin said. "With the revision, we will know all its transactions with each of the overseas subsidiaries." The FTC plans to prepare the revision by the end of this year. It also plans to obligate the companies to disclose the shareholders of overseas subsidiaries that have invested in local subsidiaries. A total of 52 conglomerates will be subject to the disclosure rule which applies to large business groups with over 5 trillion won in total assets. "The disclosures related with overseas subsidiaries will help the transparent provision of information for the market. It will strengthen the autonomous surveillance by the market," Shin said. He added that stronger surveillance by the market will also induce large business groups to voluntarily improve their governance structure. Regarding a taskforce within the FTC that is in charge of ICT firms, Shin said it will be maintained next year as well. The FTC began the ICT team last year to cope with unfair practices of global and local ICT firms. Lee Min-ho, second from right, speaks during the press conference for the SBS fantasy romance drama "The Legend of the Blue Sea" at Imperial Palace in Nonhyeon-dong, southern Seoul, Monday. Jun Ji-hyun, second from left, and director Jin Hyuk, third from left, attended the event. / Yonhap Lee Min-ho, Jun Ji-hyun star in much-hyped drama By Park Jin-hai When people hear the word mermaid, they immediately think of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," who dissolved into sea foam upon the waves with a broken heart, or Disney's red-haired character Ariel. Jin Hyuk, director of "The Legend of the Blue Sea," SBS's hotly anticipated fantasy romance drama starring two big-name stars Jun Ji-hyun and Lee Min-ho, says various documents in Korean history mention mermaids. "We have our own ancient mermaid stories. The drama has been created from the imagination of one of those surviving mermaids just walked into the modern day Seoul one day," said Jin during the press conference at Imperial Palace in southern Seoul, Monday. Anti-Trump demonstrators gather outside Trump tower, voicing opposition to Donald Trump's election as President on Nov. 9 in New York. / AP-Yonhap By Jane Han DALLAS While incidents of racial attack and hate crimes are pouring in across the country in the wake of Donald Trump's election, Koreans here are also becoming an immediate target of discrimination and abuse. People everywhere from California to New York have started sharing their experiences on various Internet and social media platforms. "I was taking an afternoon walk around my neighborhood the day after the election, and a young white man in his 20s rolls down his car window and shouts, Soy sauce!' at me," wrote one New Jersey resident on HeyKorean.com, a large portal site for Koreans living in the U.S. "I was totally bummed." "The language itself wasn't violent, but it's the first time I experienced this kind of racism straight in my face in the 13 years that I've lived in the U.S.," she said. Another user, who works as a waitress in Pennsylvania, said she was baffled by all the insulting racist jokes made by customers. "I had numerous guests jokingly say something like, Isn't it time to go back to your country now?'" she wrote. "At that moment, I laughed and played along with them, but at the end of the day, I realized how racist those comments were." These incidents are just a few of the hundreds of wide-ranging cases being reported throughout the country. According to The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit civil rights organization that monitors hate groups in the U.S., more than 200 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation have been experienced or witnessed nationwide just several days after the presidential election. "Anti-black and anti-immigrant incidents were far and away the most reported with anti-Muslim being the third most common," the SPLC said in a statement. And some abuse and attacks were more extreme than others. A female student wearing a hijab was reportedly robbed by men talking about Trump and Muslims, while people painted racist graffiti on walls of dozens of school campuses. One report made directly to the SPLC said, "My 12-year-old daughter is African American. A boy approached her and said, Now that Trump is president, I'm going to shoot you and all the black people I can find.'" Just as many of the incidents have occurred on campuses, a growing number of Korean parents say their children have come back home from school, offended and degraded. "My high school daughter said a black student called her out shouting, Go back to China!'" said Eugenia Kim, a mother in South Carolina, a region in America with a relatively small Asian population. "My daughter wasn't going to back down. She shot right back, No, you go back to Africa,'" she said. "I have a feeling this is just the beginning of more similar incidents to come. This is a time for us to be brave and speak up." Many civil rights activists say Trump's rhetoric throughout the campaign has given way for racially abusive language, which has long been a taboo in American society, to emerge from different corners of the country. "All the bigotry and divisiveness we've seen on the campaign trail have left this country bruised and feeling afraid of what's ahead tomorrow," said Lisa Kim, a member of the Korean American Coalition in New York, a non-partisan community advocacy organization. I don't know. Perhaps so. That has nada to do with whether you can or can't know if all of Trump's sexual bragging is just talk. You claimed, "So he is personally is JUST LIKE BILL CLINTON, with one exception. BILL CLINTON DID, what Trump only Talked about doing in a private dressing room in a vulgar conversation between 2 men." You can't know that. But whether you, I, or anybody can know isn't the point. We both damn well know Trump's lived the life of a sexual playboy and an unfaithful husband. Filling in the particulars presents a challenge, but Trump's grabbed his share of pussies perhaps consensually, perhaps not, made his share of passes, and definitely has refused to take no for an answer on more than one occasion. We can know that. By Jung Min-ho Prosecutors called in two former presidential secretaries, Monday, who left their posts last month over the influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye's confidant Choi Soon-sil. An Bong-geun and Lee Jae-man appeared at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in southern Seoul at 9:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., respectively. They declined to answer a barrage of questions from reporters before entering the prosecution's office. Prosecutors believe the two men, who worked as Park's aides for nearly 20 years, can help them get a clear picture of the scandal, which has provoked massive rallies against the President. Along with Jeong Ho-seong, who has already been arrested for revealing state secrets, the three are known as the closest aides to President Park since she began her political career as lawmaker in 1998. An is suspected of giving classified government information to Choi and a "Cheong Wa Dae free pass," which allowed her to enter the presidential office without any security checks. Lee, who was in charge of computer security at Cheong Wa Dae, is also suspected of playing a role in giving such information to Choi, or failing in his security duties if this was not the case. Evidence shows that Choi had access to state documents ranging from Park's speech drafts to extremely sensitive government activities, including three unofficial military contacts with North Korea in 2012, through her tablet PC. She allegedly received such information not just once or twice but regularly from Cheong Wa Dae, meddling in various state affairs, including who to appoint as ministers. Now, the prosecution is aiming to question the President. It has already announced that she will be questioned as early as this week, saying it is in talks with Cheong Wa Dae to set a date and location. Much evidence and testimony already suggest that Park was directly involved in the scandal, in which Choi allegedly forced conglomerates to "donate" 77.4 billion won ($66.1 million) to the Mir and K-Sports foundations, which then allegedly funneled the money to people close to Choi, including her daughter Chung Yoo-ra. The question is how much the President was involved and why. While Park is suspected of having private meetings with seven conglomerate heads in July last year and urging them to make contributions to the foundations, the prosecution confirmed that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won had a private meeting with her in February. Prosecutors are focusing on why Park met Chey and whether she sought more funds from SK for the foundations. Other testimony suggests the President's direct involvement. An Chong-bum, a former presidential secretary who has been arrested for abuse of power, reportedly told prosecutors that Park was "furious" over the slow process of establishing the foundations. The scandal has made Park the least popular president ever in Korea's modern history. Her approval rating has remained at a record-low 5 percent for two weeks despite her emotional apologies, according to local pollster Gallup Korea last week. Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, chairman of the ruling Saenuri Party, leaves after meeting a group of party members staging a hunger strike to demand his immediate resignation in front of his office in the National Assembly, Monday. Lee has vowed to keep his post until January, which critics say is aimed at saving President Park Geun-hye from immediate political trouble. / Yonhap By Kim Hyo-jin A group of Saenuri Party lawmakers who are demanding the immediate resignation of President Park Geun-hye followers from key party posts are poised to take action that may lead to an exodus from the party. Party Chairman Lee Jung-hyun and other pro-Park figures who are leading the party remained adamant, Monday, that they will not step down. They said there will be no leadership change until the party holds a convention to elect new leaders in January. Rival factions claim that the proposal is a trick to help Park who is also reeling from the leadership crisis. Lawmakers who are not affiliated with Park strongly rebuked the leadership, renewing their call for them to resign immediately so the party can begin negotiations with opposition parties over forming a bipartisan Cabinet. Opposition parties have rejected discussing how to cope with the paralysis gripping the country with the current Saenuri leaders. A division of the party is looming amid the escalating tension between the rival factions, according to party officials. Some anti-Park lawmakers including Rep. Na Kyung-won, ex-chairwoman of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, are leading a move to dissolve the party in a bid to redeem its tarnished image following the scandal involving the President. They held a meeting Monday and agreed to form an interim body, consisting of senior lawmakers and governors, to replace the current leadership. "Lee should withdraw his plan to hold an early chairmanship race," Hwang Young-cheul said during a press briefing. "It will just be an event for pro-Park lawmakers that cannot earn support from either other party members or citizens. Lee must step down immediately so others can find ways to mend the situation with the opposition." The remarks came a day after Lee announced the plan to hold an early convention to elect a new leadership on Jan. 21. It was viewed as his intention to participate in talks between rival parties for the launch of a bipartisan Cabinet proposed by the opposition bloc. Rep. Woo Sang-ho, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), criticized Lee for holding onto power. "I felt devastated, looking at his understanding of the situation," he said during a party meeting. "I clarify that I could never have Lee as a negotiation counterpart as he stepped forward to protect the President and concealed the Choi Soon-sil scandal." Meanwhile, Chairman Lee further widened a chasm with anti-Park lawmakers, ignoring the calls for his resignation. "What we need most is unity now. I hope they refrain from mentioning the need to disassemble the party," he said during a party meeting. "I will carry on with my job until the new leadership is established." Amid the brewing factional conflict, the party's approval rating dipped to its lowest in the party's history at 19.2 percent in a Realmeter poll conducted between Nov. 7 and 11. The second-largest opposition People's Party is chasing it tightly with support of 15.3 percent while the DPK is leading the poll by a large margin with 32 percent. In Daegu and North Gyeongsang Provinces, the traditional conservative home turf of President Park's loyal supporters, the Saenuri fell down to second place for the first time in polling history with 24.9 percent, trailing the main opposition party which garnered 25.5 percent. Cheong Wa Dae is surrounded by darkness, Monday. President Park Geun-hye will face questioning from the prosecution either today or Wednesday over a scandal involving her long-time friend Choi Soon-sil who is suspected of having meddled in state affairs. / Korea Times photo by Koh Young-kwon By Kang Seung-woo President Park Geun-hye is politically incapacitated by the scandal involving her confidant Choi Soon-sil and has no other option but to yield to the people's call for her to let go of power whether by resignation or impeachment. The scandal, in which Choi meddled in state affairs to benefit herself financially, is stripping Park of her authority as President, and the public's confidence in her. It has become impossible to reverse the administrative vacuum under her leadership. The historical massive rally Saturday that drew about 1 million people to the streets calling for Park's resignation is dragging the President into more talks of impeachment in political circles. "Park is not apparently ready to overcome the ongoing political challenges, given Cheong Wa Dae's response to the protest," said Yoon Tae-gon, a senior political analyst at Moa Agenda Strategy. The presidential office said Sunday that Park was taking the street rallies "seriously," but did not elaborate on how this would ease the public's anger. "The presidential office's lack of solutions to the political firestorm proves President Park will not be able to perform her duties normally during her remaining term in office," Yoon said. Hangil Research director Hong Hyeong-sik echoed Yoon's view. "The leadership crisis is gripping the nation as Cheong Wa Dae's poor handling of public sentiment is triggering a backlash," Hong said. Without changing its attitude, the Park government will face bigger administrative challenges soon, said Hong although he did not expect the current administration to easily work its way out of the difficulties. Although Park's presidency expires in February 2018, the scandal is already paralyzing her government. Since her first public apology for the political turmoil, Oct. 25, Park has failed to perform her duties as president. Her summit with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev last Thursday was the only official event scheduled during the controversy. By Jun Ji-hye Saenuri Party Chairman Lee Jung-hyun's proposal to hold a national convention Jan. 21 is raising speculation that President Park Geun-hye's loyalists have U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mind as Park's successor. Ban's ten-year tenure comes to an end at the end of the year. He is reportedly planning to return home around the middle of January, meaning that the U.N. chief would be able to run for the governing party chairmanship if the convention is held as Lee suggested. Lee made the proposal Sunday amid growing calls for his immediate resignation following a massive political scandal involving Park and her longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil. Lee also vowed to amend the party constitution to allow a presidential candidate to assume the chairmanship. On Monday, Lee also said he would resign from the post around Dec. 20. Lee, a noted pro-Park figure, was elected chairman in August for a two-year term. At the time, five other pro-Park members were also elected Supreme Council members, dominating the ruling party's leadership. But they have been facing mounting calls for their resignation due to their failure to monitor the presidential office over the scandal, in which Choi with no official government position greatly intervened in state affairs. From the Park loyalists' point of view, Ban is the best option for a new party leader as they could gather behind him and be given a new name of "pro-Ban faction," which would be a considerable departure from the old "pro-Park faction" that now has a negative image. If Ban became the new leader, Park loyalists could also avoid being kicked out of major posts of the party, which could take place if a figure from the rival faction were elected as new chairman. In addition, if Ban took control of the governing party, this would also be a good help in his presidential bid, meaning that Park loyalists could have the chance of surviving in the next administration too. Though he has never mentioned which party he would join, Ban has so far made some comments favorable of President Park, including one supporting the government's controversial agreement signed on Dec. 28 with Japan on Tokyo's sexual slavery of Korean women during World War II. "Lee's proposal to hold a national convention on Jan. 21 is seen as an intention of the pro-Park faction, which is responsible for the ongoing scandal, to win the leadership again," said Lee Jun-seok, a Saenuri Party member. "Park loyalists are probably trying to join forces again, given that other presidential hopefuls in the party are in the rival faction." For his part, Lee denied speculation that he had mapped out the schedule for the convention after taking Ban's return into consideration. "I did not have a certain person in mind. I just had a preparatory period and other events scheduled for next year including by-elections," Lee told reporters. Regarding whether or not Ban will join the ruling party, Lee added that it will be a matter of "his choice." It remains to be seen whether Lee's proposal could be realized as rival faction members are strongly opposing the idea, calling it "fake." Senior lawmakers including Na Kyung-won and Choung Byoung-gug formed their own committee to mull ways of resolving the ongoing scandal, demanding Lee's immediate resignation. They said Lee has already lost the trust of the public as well as party members, so it is improper for him to participate in talks with the opposition parties to form a new Cabinet under a new prime minister. Ruling and opposition parties agreed Monday to enact an independent counsel probe into an influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye's close confidante. The ruling Saenuri Party, the main opposition Democratic Party and the minor opposition People's Party also agreed to carry out a separate parliamentary probe into the scandal that has rocked the nation over the past several weeks. The parties plan to pass the two probes during the National Assembly's plenary session slated for Thursday, officials said. Under the cross-party agreement, an independent counsel will be recommended by the two opposition parties and appointed by the president. The special probe team, which will consist of more than 60 prosecutors and investigators, will have a mandate of up to four months. The probe team will look into the allegations that Park's close friend Choi Soon-sil abused her decadeslong ties to the president to meddle in important state affairs and even influence government appointments. DPK leader withdraws from talks with Park By Yi Whan-woo The ruling Saenuri Party and the two biggest opposition parties agreed, Monday, to appoint an independent counsel to investigate a corruption scandal involving President Geun-hye and her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil. Under the agreement, a candidate will be recommended by the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and minor opposition People's Party, who will be appointed by the President. A team under the counsel will consist of 20 prosecutors and 40 investigators, and have a mandate of up to four months. The probe will be conducted separately from the ongoing investigation by the prosecution. The parties also agreed to hold a separate National Assembly probe into the scandal. The Assembly probe will be conducted for two months, and can be extended once by a month. The parliamentary panel will be comprised of nine lawmakers from the ruling party and nine others from the opposition parties. The parties plan to pass bills on the investigations by the independent counsel and the National Assembly during a plenary session, Thursday, according to party officials. These measures came after over one million protesters gathered in central Seoul, Saturday, to demand Park's immediate resignation and a thorough investigation into the scandal. Organizers said they will continue to hold the rallies at weekends until their demands are met. Park-Choo meeting cancelled Earlier on Monday, Park and Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairwoman Rep. Choo Mi-ae agreed to hold one-on-one talks at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday, but Choo later withdrew the plan after meeting strong protests from DPK members and the smaller opposition parties. During a party meeting, DPK lawmakers cautioned that the meeting could put the opposition alliance against the President in danger when a unified voice is badly needed. "Choo accepted their proposal and delivered a message to Cheong Wa Dae," a DPK official said. The presidential office expressed regret over Choo's flip-flop, saying it will continue efforts to hold dialogue with the opposition parties to normalize state affairs. Before the decision, Choo said she "urgently" proposed the talks, given the severity of public sentiment against the President and growing calls that she should step down, face impeachment or give up much of her power to a prime minister to be picked by the National Assembly. Choo, who has been asking Park to resign, said she "will openly discuss all possible measures" with the embattled President. But leaders of the minor opposition People's Party and Justice Party harshly criticized Choo, saying her meeting with Park was politically motivated and would jeopardize the alliance among opposition parties in handling the fallout of the scandal. People's Party floor leader Park Jie-won had called on Choo to withdraw her decision, claiming it would help "Cheong Wa Dae's plan to buy time to distort the truth behind the scandal and allow Park to fulfill her presidency." As an alternative to the meeting, Park Jie-won demanded the President meet all the opposition leaders, not only Choo, and pick a prime minister who is politically neutral. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, a DPK member, also had said Choo's offer will "only benefit Cheong Wa Dae while creating a divide within the opposition," claiming President Park is the main suspect of the scandal. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government By Kim Hyo-jin Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon urged President Park Geun-hye to step down immediately, Monday, so the country can have a chance to elect a new leader early. In an interview with The Korea Times, Mayor Park, considered a potential candidate for the race to Cheong Wa Dae next year, said public confidence for the President has already completely eroded, making it impossible for her to conduct duties both domestic and abroad. The mayor was among 1 million-strong participants who gathered in central Seoul, Saturday, to demand the President's immediate resignation. This was the largest protest in South Korea since the democratic uprising in June 1987. As Seoul mayor, he provided active support for protesters, such as increasing transportation, makeshift toilets and safety guards. "It is obvious that people lost confidence in her and do not want her to carry on in the leader's role," the mayor said. "We can't neglect overflow of public anger and anxiety. The only solution is her immediate resignation to pave the way for an early presidential election." The Park Geun-hye administration has been paralyzed for nearly a month by an unprecedented scandal involving her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil. Park has been pressured to resign following shocking allegations that Choi, despite having no public posting, had meddled in state affairs while accessing classified information and exerting influence on the economic, diplomatic and defense policies adopted by Park. Despite Park's repeated apologies and an offer to accept a new prime minister appointed by the opposition-dominated National Assembly, public outrage at Park is showing no signs of abating. While the leadership of the main opposition party and the party's potential presidential candidate Moon Jae-in remained cautious of calling for the President's resignation out of concern about its aftermath, Mayor Park did not hesitate. He vowed to lead the move to oust the President along with another vocal critic of Park Geun-hye: Ahn Cheol-soo, former leader of the minor opposition People's Party. Both agreed Wednesday to arrange an emergency gathering of opposition and civic leaders to discuss how to push for the plan. "It's urgent to take action rather than remaining in despair," he said. "For me, politics is all about responding to the public voice _ listening to them carefully, empathizing with their pain and jointly making alternatives." He has participated in daily anti-President candlelit rallies since early this month. Citizens have assembled every day in central Seoul, calling for the President's resignation. The mayor said communicating with the public hardened his hawkish stance against the scandal-ridden President. Her resignation may deprive Mayor Park of a chance to run in the next presidential election. If the incumbent president resigns, a presidential election should be held in 60 days, according to the Constitution. However, the Election Law stipulates that a public official who hopes to run in the presidential race should quit his or her job 90 days before the election. "At this point, my political interest doesn't matter at all. I stepped forward, with a determination that I can give up everything I have," he said. Major presidential candidate Mayor Park has been one of the major potential presidential candidates from the opposition bloc along with ex-presidential runners Moon and Ahn. The Seoul mayoral position has been viewed as the fastest route to becoming a major presidential runner thanks to its high public profile and political influence. Former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak was elected president in 2007 after prompting notable administrative achievements like redeveloping the urban stream of Cheonggyecheon. His successor Oh Se-hoon of the conservative Saenuri Party became a key potential presidential runner following his drastic move to put a free school meal program up for referendum in 2011. Their predecessor Goh Kun served as acting president when ex-President Roh Moo-hyun was impeached by the National Assembly in 2004 and emerged as a major competitor to then-presidential hopefuls Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak. Mayor Park did not earn his fame just because of the mayoral post. The 60-year-old, a former human rights lawyer, is a symbolic figure of the civic movements of the 1990s and 2000s. Starting his activist career with the progressive civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy in 1994, he drew much attention by launching the Beautiful Foundation, a social enterprise committed to encouraging citizens to donate 1 percent of their income, and the Beautiful Store, a charity shop modeled on the U.K.'s Oxfam. Park's achievements made while serving the two mayoral terms since 2011 have been credited for being citizen-friendly. He implemented the "half tuition" policy for University of Seoul and a plan to provide 80,000 units of public rental housing by 2018. He has led the free school meal program and operated nighttime buses. "My administrative paradigm is putting people first," he said. "I channeled my focus into increasing investment in citizens rather than prompting construction to build more fancy buildings." He said he hopes to do politics that can "preserve dignity" of every single citizen. "Our society has been ravaged by inequality, unfairness, insecurity and lack of communication. The people's sovereignty has literally malfunctioned while they suffer a high suicide rate, low birthrate, increasing non-regular workers and skyrocketing household debts," he noted. "Rooting out corruption and irregularities will be the first step to fixing this abnormality." North Korea policies Mayor Park has called on the government to resume exchanges with North Korea. Calling it a "Northern New Deal," he claims the South should utilize the North's abundant personnel, resources and transport connections to the continent as a way of overcoming the sluggish economy as well as strengthening security. "Unconditional sanctions against Pyongyang cannot be a solution to North Korea's nuke issue," he said, pointing out its second to fifth nuclear tests were conducted under the conservative South Korean governments. "Seoul should take the diplomatic leverage by seeking a vision of peaceful coexistence." He is a vociferous critic of the Park Geun-hye administration's North Korea policies, including the closure of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, a flagship inter-Korean business project, and the decision to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery on Korean soil. "These kinds of abrupt policies could provoke the North, thereby potentially harming national security," he said. The mayor asserted THAAD deployment, in particular, should be reconsidered from square one. "The decision-making procedure excluded the people and lack of communication brought a national division," Park said. "Not to mention, the government made a diplomatic mistake, interpreting the decision as a matter of choosing one side between the U.S. and China. "Such errors cannot be just overlooked. The planned deployment should be reexamined at the National Assembly." By Tong Kim Donald J. Trump, the president-elect, is facing a daunting task appearing as impossible as it was for him to win the presidency of unifying a deeply, and emotionally, divided nation. It will be a bigger challenge to carry out his campaign pledges. Many of them are very controversial and may not be implemented due to insurmountable political or legal obstruction. We have seen many campaign pledges often wind up as promises unfulfilled in an electoral democracy. Postelection developments thus far, despite significant protests in major cities against his stunning victory, have headed in the positive direction, demonstrating the continuity of the democratic tradition of peaceful transfer of power that assures the people at home and the international community that the American system works no matter how ugly, vicious and denigrating the election campaign may have been. Both the winner and the loser appealed for national unity. Hillary Clinton, who lost the electoral votes, yet mustered a narrow plurality in the popular votes, encouraged her disappointed supporters to give Trump "an open mind and the chance to lead." Trump's first transition meeting with President Obama went well. His meetings with the leaders of both chambers of a continuing Republican Congress who hesitated to support Trump were also constructive, as much of presidential power is contingent upon support of the Congress. The President-elect has 70 days to prepare to hit the ground running, as they say, from day one of the Trump presidency in January. While the transition process has begun with Trump's meeting with Obama Thursday, several prospective names for White House staff and department secretaries pop up in the media. According to Chris Christie, in charge of the transition team, there will be multiple candidates for the positions recommended from hundreds of the qualified, but only the President-elect will make final decisions. How soon is not known. It is likely that the Trump presidency will probably have installed the key secretaries for national security including state, defense, homeland security, and treasury at the time of its inauguration. The new administration will have to fill in about 4,000 positions with political appointees. A majority of these positions can wait until later. President Trump can start with revoking or issuing new executive orders to carry out some of his campaign pledges. He can repeal Obama's executive action to protect illegal immigrants from deportation, or he can nominate a Supreme Court Justice, or even appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his vanquished opponent. The notion of sending Clinton to jail is no longer useful. It would only contribute to the extent of chasm in the American people. Why beat the dead horse? On the other hand, Trump's signature promise of abolishing "ObamaCare" requires more details than just "a much better program." Building a wall or deporting 12 million illegal immigrants would require huge funds from the Congress, and it is doubtful these can be done early on in his presidency. The Mexican president reiterated that he is not going to pay for the wall, and there is no way the U.S. can force Mexico to pay for the wall. Trump can order his team to renegotiate the TPP, the NAFTA, the KORUS-FTA, and even the Iran nuclear deal, as he promised on his campaign trail. However, a reassessment of U.S. foreign policy, including alliances with NATO, South Korea, and Japan, requires a prudent review by a group of good advisors whom Trump is yet to put together. The premise of "American interest first" does not necessarily mean falling back to isolationism or trade protectionism, although it had a strong appeal to the Trump supporters who felt left behind the bubbles of prosperity from globalism, while the United States was spending fortunes to defend its rich allies. There have been strong recommendations from both progressive and conservative thinkers that the new administration must maintain the fundamentals of security alliance against increasingly diversified security challenges in the world. "I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America's interests first, we will deal fairly . with all other nations," Trump said in his victory speech. "We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict." This is good news for the DPRK, which always complains about U.S. hostility and threat to invade it. Pyongyang is silent on Trump's election as of Nov. 11. On the campaign trail, the candidate Trump made many conflicting statements on Korea, including his consideration of letting South Korea go nuclear to defend against the nuclear North, wavering between a meeting with Kim Jong-un for negotiation and a Chinese solution to get rid of the North Korean nuclear weapon or to remove Kim. What is clear is that Trump wants South Korea to pay a fair share for its defense. In a phone call with the politically incapacitated South Korean president on Wednesday, Trump employed nice diplomatic language, without specification. He said, "We will be with you 100%.... We will be steadfast and strong with respect to working with you to protect against the instability in North Korea." An expanding North Korean nuclear arsenal, with a capability to strike the U.S. and its allies, is a top foreign policy priority. No expert in Washington disputes it. However, what the Trump administration will actually do is not clear. What is clear at this point is the likelihood of withdrawing Washington's current policy, which has failed in dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. I know that some of you are still scrambling to wrap your heads around how the media, corporate America and basically everyone that you get your information from could have been so terribly wrong but it happened. So before you go flipping through pages looking for another excuse as to how/why this happened or searching of ways that the guy who hasn't even started the job yet has gone back on proposed policies. Take a little time, relax and enjoy the short. Everything will be OK-S Kim Pyong-il, right, was removed from North Korea's political scene after his power struggle with Kim Jong-il over selecting a successor to founding leader Kim Il-sung, left, in the 1970s. / Yonhap By Hong Dam-young North Koreans want Kim Jong-un's uncle, Kim Pyong-il, to replace Kim Jong-un and end his "reign of terror," according to Hong Kong-based magazine Yazhou Zhoukan. The magazine said Kim Pyong-il former leader Kim Jong-il's half-brother and also Kim Jong-un's uncle was regarded by North Koreans at home and abroad as preferred candidate to take over the North Korean leadership, Yonhap news agency reported Monday. The report said many North Koreans frightened and dissatisfied with Kim Jong-un's brutal dictatorship wanted a new leader, and Kim Pyong-il was the most mentioned candidate. "The country's high-ranking officials are eyeing Kim Pyong-il as well, because they are threatened by the leader's executions of high-profile officers," the report said. According to the report, Kim Pyong-il, in semi-exile as North Korean ambassador to the Czech Republic, is perceived as a suitable leader because of his decency and open-mindedness. The report also said Kim Pyong-il's neither pro-China nor pro-U.S. diplomatic position would enable him to deal with both countries, which would try to take control of the North once its regime fell. Even at the "North Korean Defector World Conference" in Seoul on April 29, the agenda included establishing a North Korean government-in-exile with Kim Pyong-il as its first head. The North Korean regime removed Kim Pyong-il from its political scene by exiling him to Europe after his power struggle with Kim Jong-il over selecting a successor of founding leader Kim Il-sung in the 1970s. For decades, he has served as ambassador to Hungary, Finland, Poland, and most recently, the Czech Republic. He is still considered a threat to Kim Jong-un, who sent some party members to the Czech Republic to keep an eye on Kim Pyong-il in 2014. "I heard that Kim Pyong-il resembled Kim Il-sung a lot that's why Kim Jong-il was so jealous of him," a North Korean defector told The Korea Times in Seoul. "But many North Koreans are not aware of his existence because of the country's efforts to hold back information." Some said it was "unlikely" and "unrealistic" for North Koreans to hope Kim Pyong-il would take over from Kim Jong-un. A North Korean defector familiar with the Kim family's inner circle said, "Hoping Kim Pyong-il will become the next leader is completely groundless, considering his background." "He is the son of Kim Il-sung and his second wife' Kim Song-ae. "There is no way Kim Pyong-il can overcome the high barriers of the pure bloodline of Kim's family." Meanwhile, reports say Kim Jong-un has ordered about 64 public executions, mostly high-ranking officials. They include former defense chief Hyon Yong-chol reportedly blown to bits by an anti-aircraft gun after falling asleep at a meeting and army chief Ri Yong-ho, reportedly executed in 2012. Ban Jun-hwi, 11, makes a funny face during a photo shoot after class at Youngil Elementary School in Guro, southwestern Seoul, Tuesday. Ban is the top prize winner of the fifth Korea Multicultural Youth Awards. Grand prize winner versatile in language, music, go By Kim Bo-eun Ban plays the violin during orchestra practice at the Guro Culture Center in Seoul. / Korea Times photos by Shim Hyun-chul Eleven-year-old Ban Jun-hwi is observant, inquisitive and smart; but what makes the top prize winner of the fifth Korea Multicultural Youth Awards shine above all is his character. On Tuesday afternoon, Ban was early for his orchestra class at a local culture center in Guro, southwestern Seoul. Some students were there, practicing or talking to each other. But there were not enough chairs for all of the orchestra members. Soon, Ban came with a stack of chairs, struggling to get the heavy load into the entrance. "I jokingly refer to him as aeneulgeuni' (a precocious child), because he is such a mature and responsible child," Lee Sang-hyo, his violin teacher at Guro Culture Center, said. After the orchestra practice was over, students of each section gathered to practice separately. Ban is part of the violin section. Ban has been learning violin for six years, but modestly says he is not much good but likes playing with the orchestra because various instruments can complement each other harmoniously. Classmates also recognize his consideration for others, and he was elected class president from his second to fourth years. Background Ban is a child of an interracial family, of which the number is growing but still remains a minority. In the highly homogeneous country of Korea, interracial children are sometimes bullied for their skin color or facial features, and can have difficult school lives at school. In the case of Ban, born to a Korean father and Chinese mother, nothing visibly tells of his racial background. Ban says his classmates, who find out about his mother, want to know why she is Chinese and where he was born. "I simply tell them I was born at the Korea University Guro Hospital," Ban said with a smile. "Then they stop asking." Ban has lived in Guro all his life. His mother tongue is Korean, but at times he speaks with his mother in Chinese, which he continues to learn. When Ban was a second grader, he received the grand prize in a foreign language contest hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. High achiever Ban has a talent for math and science. He attends a math academy for the gifted affiliated with the Nambu District Office of Education in Seoul. Ban is also a member of a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) science program for multicultural children. Ban says his grandfather taught him math since he was six years old. "I want to become a mathematician, who can refute existing math theories and formulas," Ban said, ambitiously. In addition, Ban is a go player. In 2012 and 2014, he won nationwide go tournaments for interracial children organized by the Korea Baduk Association, as an individual player and on a team, respectively. In his free time, Ban is immersed in books. After school, he often goes to the library in his neighborhood and spends hours there. Although Ban is studious and mature, he is only 11 and is just like the rest of his classmates he wants more time to play. "I like to play games and hang out with my friends," he said, beaming. Gender Equality and Family Minister Kang Eun-hee smiles with grand prize winner Ban Jun-hwi, a fifth grader at Yeongil Elementary School in Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk By Kim Se-jeong Late autumn drizzle ushered the 10 winners of the fifth Korea Multicultural Youth Awards organized by The Korea Times, into the awarding ceremony at the Korea Press Center in Seoul, Monday, where they were lauded for their academic performance, language proficiency and exceptional behavior among other traits. They were from all over Korea Seoul, Incheon, Daejeon, Mokpo and Goheung, and South Jeolla Province. The award ceremony, which lasted about an hour, included messages of congratulation and encouragement, and applause from family members, foreign diplomats and other dignitaries. "Congratulations to all you winners. You can do anything as long as you keep your confidence up," Kang Eun-hee, minister of gender equality and family, said. Besides awarding the top prize winner, she congratulated each winner personally after the ceremony and accepted photo requests as if they were her own children. Ecuadorian Ambassador Oscar Herrera Gilbert poses with Kim Su-min, a representative of Masongjungang Elementary School's Student Council, after presenting him with the outstanding volunteer group award. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk Ten winners were called out to the stage and received a plaque and a bouquet of flowers. By Ranjit Kumar Dhawan The spread and popularity of the South Korean cultural products since the late 1990s has taken the world by surprise. South Korean music, dance, dramas, movies, food and fashion have become popular in many Asian countries and also across the world. As a result, people worldwide are becoming attracted to the South Korean cultural wave or Hallyu. However, north of the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula is another Korea, which is also spreading waves around the world. Unlike South Korea which is known for its cultural wave, North Korea has become famous for generating manmade seismic waves. In the last decade the Kim dynasty in North Korea has tested nuclear weapons five times which has sent waves across the globe. But there are several fundamental differences between the waves generated by two Koreas. Firstly, The South Korean wave enhances the "soft power" of the country. It has increased the brand value of South Korea and has created an interest in the economic transformation of the country, known as the "Miracle on the Han River." On the other hand, the North Korean wave contributes to an increase in the military capabilities and "hard power" of this reclusive state, which has led to negative perceptions about it all over the world. Secondly, the South Korean wave is playing an important role in economic development as the promotion of cultural products have become new engines of economic growth for this export dependent country. Contrastingly, the North Korean wave has led to its economic degradation, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people due to hunger and malnutrition. After each North Korean seismic wave the international community imposes economic sanctions on the country. Thirdly, due to the attraction of the South Korean wave tourists, students, researchers and businessmen from all over the world come to this country in large numbers. On the other side, the North Korean wave attracts mostly terrorists and dictators who want to get nuclear technology. Also, despite being full of natural beauty and historical monuments North Korea remains one of the least travelled to destinations in the world and is largely avoided by international tourists. The contrast between the two Koreas is also visible through light waves in the night sky. Pictures taken from satellites in space depict bright light waves coming from South Korean territory, whereas North Korea is shown as a dark patch. This also reflects the economic prosperity in the South, and economic poverty in the North. On the issue of freedom and democratic rights, South Koreans have been participating in free and fair elections since 1987. According to Samuel P. Huntington, South Korea became a successful case of the "third wave of democracy." This South Korean wave of democracy has led to one of the most vibrant civil societies in the world. Compared to the South Korean democratic wave, North Korea remains one of the most totalitarian states and ruthlessly suppress any dissent and opposition to the Kim dynasty which has been in power since 1948. The recent wave of defections and refugees from this impoverished state are a testament to political oppression and the economic hardships being faced by the North Korean people. Therefore, the two Koreas have been generating different kinds of waves. There is a need for the South Korean waves to become a tsunami that will overwhelm the North Korean waves. The author teaches at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, India. His e-mail address is rkdhawan13@hotmail.com By Michael Breen Last week, as my taxi was waiting at a red light, a motorcyclist pulled alongside and started shouting at no-one in particular. It was hard to catch his words, but judging from the posters stuck to his back and adorning his bike, it was probably religious and connected to the current scandal swirling around President Park Geun-hye. The posters were in Chinese characters except for the title that identified the motorcyclist in English as "World Captain." I guessed this gentleman had an important message for earthlings along the lines that blessings are in store provided we accept him as our leader. "There are a lot of people like that in Korea," the taxi driver said as the light changed and the captain sped off. "It seems like there's been one for a while in the Blue House," I said. "You're right," he said. Then he thought for a moment and added, "Oh, I am so embarrassed to be a Korean." This wasn't the first time I'd heard this sentiment in connection with Choi-gate. The scandal has generated fury among Koreans, but when foreigners enter the picture, anger turns to embarrassment. People feel that, once again, after all the hard work in gaining respect from the world, some idiot has come along and made us look bad. But Koreans who feel this way are being too hard on themselves. In fact, their thinking is all wrong. First, outsiders understand political scandals well enough to know that they are the work of individuals, not an entire people. Choi-gate would only reflect badly on Koreans if it was typical and all Koreans were known to be corrupt. Second and this is the more difficult argument to make in the present climate the scandal in my opinion is good for Koreans. The crisis itself does not damage the international reputation of Koreans. It does not diminish the admiration that people feel for Koreans. It does not taint the affection with which Koreans are viewed around the world. That is because a crisis itself does not cause this type of perception damage. It is how you handle the crisis that counts. And I am convinced that the Koreans will handle this crisis in a way that will make their country look even better than it already does to an admiring world. Here's why: apart from a few Marxists on western campuses, and a bunch of cynics, tyrants and extremists, all human beings want democracy. It is the best system we've come up with by far that allows people to be ruled effectively, have a say in who does the ruling, and be free to get rid of them next time around. The full experiment with universal suffrage is well into its second century. South Korea is a young democracy but it is already a standout model for other Asian countries. In just six presidential elections, opposition candidates have won twice. With each new administration, democracy, in terms of the expansion of rights and the improving of governance, has moved forward. But and here's the "but" with the last two presidents, that progress has stalled. Ex-President Lee Myung-bak may have done a good job shielding Korea from the global financial crisis and President Park Geun-hye may have good relationships with world leaders, but both of them unwound freedoms. Lee jailed people for drawing cartoons. Park blacklisted 9,473 artists, most of them for the sin of voting for an opposition candidate. These cases catch the flavor of the attitude these two most recent presidents demonstrated toward the ideas of democracy and freedom. They see them as gifts that can only be bestowed when North Korea is no longer a threat. That this is the excuse of the self-inflated power-holder is clear in that their abuses have nothing to do with security and all to do with stamping on critics who hurt their feelings. In that context, the scandal is very timely. It allows democracy to get going again. In fact, I would suggest that the timeliness is what makes the activities of Park Geun-hye and her friend Choi Soon-sil scandalous and not the activities themselves. I say this because, so far, we have seen nothing from this scandal that previous presidents, with the exception of Roh Moo-hyun, did not engage in favors for and abuses by family/friends, the shakedown of chaebol, breaking of internal Blue House regulations and so on. (The possible exception is the part that has yet to be proven and may not be illegal and that is the shaman influence). The hundreds of thousands on the streets calling for the President to step down are sending a very clear message that Koreans will no longer tolerate presidents who posture as being humble but look upon the people and the spirit of democracy with contempt and let their family and friends milk the system. Whether the President will step down, whether she will stay in office but hand over some or all of her powers to a prime minister remains to be seen. T.O.P's military enlistment is sooner than you think! Here are the latest updates. For those who may not know, military enlistment service in South Korea is a legislated mandate applied to all male citizens between the ages of 18 to 35. The service usually lasts two years and is mandatory for all male citizens including celebrities. On November 11th, it was revealed that T.O.P qualified to enlist as a conscripted policeman. This confirmation means that T.O.P will receive his enlistment notice within the first two weeks and start his training within three months. Before T.O.P begins his service as a conscripted policeman, he will receive military training in Nonsan Army Training Center. This is disappointing for BIGBANG fans as we know that soon to follow will be G-Dragon and Taeyang's enlistment announcement. But, fans can find solace in the fact that BIGBANG is set to release one last album before the year ends. Considering the next two years, what will you miss most about T.O.P? Let us know in the comments below! Suites renovation Comfort Suites in Albany has just completed a renovation that took about nine months and cost more than $1 million. Its completely updated and modernized with new carpet, new furnishings, said Leigha Thomas, director of sales. The renovation included improvements to guest rooms, the lobby, the breakfast room and meeting areas, where new AV equipment was installed for business customers. We do have a space that seats up to 150 people, Thomas said. Thomas added that she hopes the renovation results in new customers. But Comfort Suites in Albany had been doing well before. We were awarded the top 3 percent in the brand before the renovation. There are 556 hotels in our group. We were ranked 10th. During the renovation, we didnt lose that standing, which is unheard of, Thomas said. Those interested in seeing the upgrades can stop by the business, or view some of the changes online at www.choicehotels.com/oregon/albany/comfort-suites-hotels/or100. RAIN honored Oregon RAIN (Regional Accelerator & Innovation Network) has received the Oregon Economic Development Associations Outstanding Collaborative award. The award honors the organizations work to fuel the regions economy through an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Oregon RAIN leverages communities, universities and businesses to create an ecosystem of resources and mentoring for entrepreneurs. In return, these entrepreneurs are able to transform ideas into high-impact, innovative traded-sector companies that are committed to thriving and remaining in the region. RAIN was funded to advance the formation of companies located in Linn and Benton counties, as well as Lane and Lincoln. RAIN Corvallis is partnered with the Oregon State University Advantage Accelerator. For more information about RAIN, go to www.oregonrain.org. Changing roles Lionel Wilson of Keller Williams Mid-Willamette Realty recently changed roles in the company. Wilson, who had been CEO of the company, decided to step down from his position and return as a real estate broker. He rejoined the Wilson Team Experts. In the five years he was CEO, the company grew from 77 agents to 150 in the Willamette Valley, and became No. 1 in sales and volume in Benton and Linn counties combined. As owner of the Wilson Team Experts, Wilson became a top producer in the local area, specializing in luxury home sales. In the time he was leading KW Mid-Willamette, his wife, Kristen, worked with the Wilson Team Experts. Wilson Team Experts of Keller Williams Realty Mid-Willamette is at 1121 N.W. Ninth St. Corvallis. The Wilson Team Experts are an independently owned and operated real estate team. Credit union promotion Oregon State Credit Union has promoted assistant manager of business services Josh Whisenhunt to director of the department. Whisenhunt will remain at the credit unions branch at 1980 N.W. Ninth Street in Corvallis. This is Whisenhunts fourth promotion within the credit unions business services department since arriving in 2006. In his decade with the department, the credit union has grown the member business lending portfolio from $16.7 million to more than $110 million. Whisenhunt has certifications from the Credit Union National Associations Business Lending Credit Analysis program and the Credit Union Business Groups Cash Flow Analysis program. Prior to the credit union, Whisenhunt worked for four years in a lending role at US Bank. The Oregon State University graduate originally is from Stayton. LBCC presentation The Linn-Benton Community College Family Resource and Education Center was one of two Oregon programs chosen to present at the national Early Childhood Funders Collaborative meeting held in September in Portland. LBCC was chosen to showcase its work on early childhood and family education projects. Recommended by the Oregon Early Learning Department of the Oregon Department of Education, LBCC showcased its regional work to bring together the Parenting Education Hub, the Early Learning Hub and the Coordinated Care Organization in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties to improve outcomes for young children. The national meeting, hosted by the Oregon Community Foundation, included representatives from 21 foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. LBCC Family Resource and Education Center staff members who presented at the conference included Kristi May, Early Learning Hub manager; Jerri Wolfe, parenting education and Family Connections faculty chair; and Kris Wessel, project manager for a new initiative called the Pollywog Project. LEBANON The United States Marine Corps turned 241 years old Nov. 10, but the men and women who compose its ranks today, as always, are fresh-faced warriors, builders, and healers in their early 20s. Saturday evening, after a Marine Corps Ball ceremony filled with traditions that are shared with fellow marines worldwide, they let down their hair if thats possible with a high and tight marine haircut and danced the night away at the Boulder Falls Center. The visibly moved guest of honor was Larry Mullins, president and CEO of Samaritan Health Services who served in Vietnam as a corporal in the Marine Corps with the 26th Marine Regiment and the 1st Marine Division. He received the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with three stars, a Meritorious Unit Citation, Combat Action Ribbon, Vietnam Campaign Medal, the RVN Cross of Gallantry with palm and frame and the Navy Achievement Medal with V. He was escorted by Major Justin DiRico, of the USMC Reserve Engineers Service based in Springfield. The Marine Corps Reserves is celebrating its 100th birthday, 1916-2016. The Marine Corps Ball tradition dates back to 1921. An important part of that tradition is the cutting of a birthday cake. Major DiRico cut the first piece of cake using a sword and presented it to Mullins. He then cut other pieces for the youngest marine present, 19-year-old PFC Leroy Gay IV, an electrician who has served since Oct. 13, 2015, and the oldest marine present, 1st Sgt. Peter Craner, a 43-year-old infantry rifleman, who has served 24 years. The longevity of our great country and of our Marine Corps are tied together for good reason, Mullins said. We share the mutual values and traditions of supporting each other. Mullins said the lessons he learned as a young marine have served him well in life and especially in heading up Samaritan Health Services, which has more than 6,000 employees. The first lesson is that we learn is we are capable of much greater things than we ever thought we were, Mullins said. The second lesson is tenacity. It takes toughness to pass through the crucibles of training to prepare us for the challenges of combat. Mullins said his experiences in the Marine Corps, Taught me I could handle most things in going from the battlefield to the board room. He said other marines also inspired him to do better in life. Marines learn about preparedness, participation, discipline and courage, Mullins said. Courage is not just physical, its about doing the right thing and that includes the value of shared sacrifice. Mullins said he has witnessed marines who gave their last drop of water to another marine, even though they had no idea where or when they might be able to get more water for themselves. Mullins also talked about the families marines leave behind while serving their country. I have a lifelong appreciation and respect for not only those who serve, but those who love and faithfully support them, their family and friends, Mullins said. For example, Mullins talked about his future wife, Barbara, who wrote to him daily during his time in Vietnam. Those letters were our lifeline to home, Mullins said. He noted Barbara was such a faithful writer he would share her edited letters with marines who did not get much mail. It was so important to them to be connected with life away from the battlefield in the days long before cellular phones and text messaging. Those letters made our lives a little easier. They took all of us home for a minute, Mullins said. So, to all who wait, I thank you. Mullins said he admires the comments of Senator John McCain, a six-year prisoner of war in Vietnam, who when asked if he considered himself a hero, responded no, but said he was in the company of heroes. Tonight that is how I feel, Mullins said. I am in the company of heroes who serve our country. God bless you, our beloved Marine Corps and the United States of America. In appreciation, Major DiRico presented Mullins with an engraved plaque that held a Marine Ka-Bar knife which has served marines around the world since 1942. A silent but significant tradition of the ceremony was the setting of the missing man table, also known as the Fallen Comrade Table. A small table is set for one, to symbolize an isolated prisoner. The table cloth is white to symbolize purity of intentions. A single rose signifies the blood that many have shed for our freedom. A slice of lemon represents the fate of the missing, salt represents the tears of their families, an inverted glass represents the fact the missing service man or woman cannot partake and the Bible represents the spiritual strength needed to sustain those lost. A lighted candle represents the light of hope and an empty chair represents the fallen or missing. General Robert Neller, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, greeted the marines and guests by video. Marines, we are part of something bigger than any of us could imagine, Neller said. Whether you fought in the battles of World War I, in the Pacific during World War II, in Korea or Vietnam, in Desert Shield or Desert Storm, or in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan or you are just starting out on your Marine Corps journey we are all part of an elite family of warriors. For the rest of your life, the first term people will use to describe you will be Marine. He added, We are Marines for life. Its our responsibility, our duty to maintain and build upon the legacy of those who have gone before us. What we do today, guided by what weve learned from past generations, will determine the future of our Corps. The Marine Reserves unit present Saturday evening spent two weeks in July in the Deschutes and Willamette National forests, where they demolished a guard station and built more storage near headquarter in Bend. The projects were needed, but the forests had no funding to complete them. The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more PRESS RELEASE Europe Needs a Rooseveltian New Deal Nov. 12, 2016 (EIRNS)Despair and rage among average Americans about their established elites has brought Trump into the White House, in a surge of populism not entirely different from what happened in many countries in the Great Depression 80 years ago, Germanys Der Spiegel writes in an analysis of the U.S. election. The author, Thomas Fricke, says that the same trend is also on the agenda in Europe, where the "stability masochism" (sic) of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble reigns, but the fact is that the origins of the crisis have not been removed, but only the symptoms. Germany and Europe can learn from Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal approach: He supported the losers of that times financial collapse, and he mobilized the economy in three consecutive New Deals: The first Deal from 1933 on, employed 3 million Americans to work in reforestation, dam-building, and repair of roads and railroads. Money was given to farmers, to employ teachers, and for construction jobs, and power plants were built. In 1935, the second program followed, with new legislation, particularly social programs. The third New Deal from 1937 on, established the minimum wage and launched more job creation programs. Fricke notes that it is true that the biggest political shakeups this year occurred with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and with the Presidential vote in the United Statesthat is, in countries where the liberal free market dogma has caused the biggest devastation through the effects of globalization. However, the continental European countries where this dogma is less established, are not safe from the same political shocks. Roosevelt, Fricke writes, was not even that successful, but he put an end to "the insanity of a deranged globalization and of liberalized finances," which sufficed to stop the right-wing populists of his era. The same must be done in Europe, with a spectacular investment thrust, to stop populists as well. If that is not done, the next political shocks are certain to occur in France and Italy, and maybe also in Germany. Time is running out, Fricke warns. PRESS RELEASE South America Should Actively Participate in the Belt and Road Initiative Nov. 12, 2016 (EIRNS)These were the words of Jorge Heine, Chiles ambassador to China, in an interview with Xinhua news agency published yesterday. He made these remarks in anticipation of Chinese President Xi Jinpings trip to South America on Nov. 17-23, during which he will attend the Nov. 19-20 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, and make a state visit to that nation, as well as to Ecuador and Chile. In statements to TeleSUR, Chinas Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Chao said that Xi Jinping intends to use this tour to strengthen economic ties with the three countries, with an eye toward diversifying into such areas as electronics, infrastructure building, including building industrial parks, and strengthening "industrial production capacity," guided by the principles of "mutual trust, reciprocal training and mutual benefit." Ambassador Heine told Xinhua that "Chinese capital and technology will help Latin America improve its infrastructure, industry and connectivity, and said that Chile expects to attract Chinese investment and boost cooperation with China in digital technology. "The Belt and Road Initiative and Xis upcoming visit is of great significance, and will boost two-way cooperation in politics, economy and trade, as well as culture," Heine added. "Latin America must be a part" of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, he underscored, stressing that Chinese construction firms can play an important role in helping to build the infrastructure that South America so urgently needs. Chile was the first South American nation to establish diplomatic ties with China in 1970, and the first to sign a free trade agreement with China, Xinhua noted. Chile wants to "deepen" its Free Trade Agreement with China, Heine said, and pointed out that Chinas State Power Investment Corp. "has just landed" in Chile with $1 billion to invest and is looking into purchasing the Chilean lithium producer, Soquimich. PRESS RELEASE No Trump Infrastructure Building Unless U.S. Joins the Silk Road Nov. 13, 2016 (EIRNS)The incoming Trump team emphasizes its intention to invest heavily in building modern economic infrastructure to restart the U.S. economy. But the Babel of unworkable ways to generate the credit for such a productivity boom, from Trumps team and surrounding hedge fund operators and businessmen, shows that it will not be done except under one condition: That the United States joins the "Silk Road" development thrust of China, and its associated new credit institutions. A Hamiltonian national credit institution must be set up, and immediately link to the "Silk Road" development banks centered in China. This unavoidable path applies even to infrastructure building, such as high-speed rail corridors, in the United States. Bloomberg News, in an editorial today, "China Trumps Trump for Infrastructure," notes that China has invested $1.2 trillion on rail, power infrastructure, telecom networks, roads, airports this yearmore than Trump has proposed to invest over 5-10 years. The great majority of Chinas fixed capital investment, whose 10% growth contrasts with the United States near zero, is public fixed capital creation through infrastructure building. The editorial ironically notes that "Trumps plan for an Americas Infrastructure First policy mirrors Chinas build-it-and-they-will-come model, except on a much smaller scale." In a much more perceptive CNN column Nov. 11, "Why Trump Should Work With China," University of Singapore Dean Kishore Mahbubani wrote, The words fascism, bigot and xenophobe were the most searched-for words in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary on Sunday, the publisher revealed on Twitter. Those words were followed by racism, socialism, resurgence, xenophobia and misogyny. The searches, possibly related to Tuesdays election of Donald Trump as president, seemed to fit a trend over the last week. Trump has been accused of xenophobia, which Merriam-Webster defines as fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners, for his hard-line stance on immigration. Advertisement In a campaign speech in June 2015, Trump harshly criticized Mexican immigrants, saying, Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. In the past seven days, the most popular word searches on the Merriam-Webster website included many of the same words, as well as feminism, nationalism and deplorable. The popularity of deplorable is likely related to a comment made by Hillary Clinton in September, in which she said that half of Donald Trumps supporters could be placed in a basket of deplorables. (The word, an adjective, is seldom used as a noun.) In a blog post last week, Merriam-Webster attributed the rise in searches for misogyny to an increase in usage of the word in news articles and on social media. The blog post was accompanied by a picture of a box of Tic Tac mints. The picture was seemingly a reference to a conversation Trump had with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005, in which Trump mentioned using the breath mints before kissing women without waiting for their consent. The trend of word searches possibly related to the election seems to be continuing. As of Monday, the most searched-for words over the last 24 hours included fascism, xenophobe and bigot, as well as democracy, politics, and demagogue, which Merriam-Webster defines as a political leader who tries to get support by making false claims and promises and using arguments based on emotion rather than reason. books@latimes.com Meghan McCain, the daughter of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has become a permanent co-host of the Fox News daytime show Outnumbered. McCain, 32, has appeared frequently on the program as a Fox News contributor since 2015. On Monday, the channel announced she will appear daily with co-hosts Harris Faulkner and Sandra Smith. Outnumbered is a daytime discussion program featuring four women panelists joined by a male guest. The program has been the most-watched cable news program in its slot at noon Eastern Time since its launch in April 2014. Advertisement Before joining Fox News Channel last year, McCain served as the host of Pivot Networks TakePart Live and has contributed to such publications as the Daily Beast, Newsweek and Time. Although McCain describes herself as a Republican, she deviates from the party line on a number of issues including same-sex marriage and climate change. In 2011, she co-wrote a book called America, You Sexy Bitch. ALSO Silicon Valley is trying to figure out how to work with a Trump-led government DirecTVs Daniel York brought hardball tactics to Dodgers channel negotiations What a Trump administration means for Fox News and other cable news networks With its second bankruptcy filing in a little more than a year and an agreement to sell its brand to a Canadian firm, American Apparel Inc.s tumultuous corporate history is close to being sewn up. This is the end of American Apparel as we know it, said Lloyd Greif, chief executive of Los Angeles investment banking firm Greif & Co. For the record: An earlier version of this article spelled the name of American Apparels founder and former chief executive, Dov Charney, as Dov Chaney. Its not the end of the brand, he predicted. But its the end of American Apparel as a manufacturing and retail entity. Advertisement American Apparel, which touted its Made in the USA T-shirts and other clothing with edgy ads, filed for bankruptcy protection Monday and announced it had reached an agreement to sell the brands intellectual property rights and some other assets to Montreals Gildan Activewear Inc. for $66 million. Gildan has no interest in American Apparels 110 retail stores in 28 U.S. states and 83 others around the world. But court filings said Gildan has negotiated for the opportunity to maintain all or a portion of American Apparels Los Angeles manufacturing, distribution and warehouse operations. We feel like made in America is an inherent part of that brand, said Garry Bell, Gildans vice president of corporate communications and marketing. It is our intent to continue that focus. Other companies also will get to bid for American Apparels intellectual property rights and other assets as part of the bankruptcy process. American Apparel has about 5,900 employees worldwide but would not detail how many are in the Los Angeles area, where its headquarters is located and the company does all of its manufacturing. It has facilities in downtown Los Angeles, Garden Grove, La Mirada and South Gate. Greif doesnt think that Gildan or another buyer would continue manufacturing in Los Angeles, where the minimum wage is set to increase to $15 an hour by 2020. California is a very high-cost place to have people who cut and sew, he said. If you want to be American-made apparel, theres 50 states in the union you can make it. Why make it in the most expensive state? American Apparel rose to prominence under founder Dov Charney, who started the company in his dorm room at Tufts University. But the once high-flying firm struggled after the 2008-09 Wall Street market crash, was heavily in debt and went years without posting a net profit. Charney had been making slow progress in turning around the company when he was ousted in 2014 after an investigation into alleged inappropriate behavior with employees and misuse of company funds. Troubles continued after American Apparel emerged from bankruptcy last winter. And some recent turmoil, including another leadership change, led to rumors of a sale. Charney said Monday that there was a dramatic deterioration in the companys fortunes after he was forced out as chairman and chief executive. He is suing company officials and hedge fund Standard General for conspiring to push him out. This dropped like a ball of lead in the water, he said of American Apparels fortunes after he left. In a letter to employees Monday, the companys chairman, Bradley Scher, said the bankruptcy and deal with Gildan were necessary to keep the brand afloat. We are confident that this decision is the best strategic move forward, in order to preserve the legacy of the American Apparel brand, he wrote. Although American Apparel reached a sales agreement with Gildan, the bankruptcy filing allows for an auction in which other buyers could make competing offers, including for American Apparels retail business, Scher wrote. Ultimately, we will be able to get the best deal done by requiring various other bidders to compete to buy our iconic brand, Scher wrote. Charney said Monday he might consider bidding if he found a financial backer to partner with, but that he would first need to assess American Apparels financial condition. American Apparel filed for Chapter 11 protection at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Monday less than 10 months after a judge there approved a reorganization plan that took the company private. That plan, approved in January, wiped out much of the companys debt and put the company under the ownership of its creditors. Charney, whose ownership stake was wiped out in the earlier bankruptcy, tried to derail the restructuring plan and regain control of the company. His effort was unsuccessful, but the new privately held company continued to struggle. It laid off hundreds of employees in the spring. In September, Paula Schneider, the CEO brought in to turn around the company, announced she was leaving. She was replaced by general counsel Chelsea Grayson amid rumors American Apparel was looking for a buyer. In the Monday filing with the bankruptcy court, American Apparels chief restructuring officer, Mark Weinsten, said the companys turnaround plan failed. The company faced unfavorable market conditions that were more persistent and widespread than the debtors anticipated when they emerged from the first bankruptcy, he said. Since then, the companys sales have dropped 32.7% year over year. In 2015, it had net sales of $278 million at its worldwide retail stores and $52 million online, according to court filings. Greif said the timing of the bankruptcy showed the situation was desperate. When its a retailer and it files bankruptcy before the holidays, that means there was no hope, he said. It was a brand at one time with $600 million in [annual] revenues. Its half of that now, Greif said. It has fallen mightily and it continues to pick up speed on a downhill slope. American Apparel has secured $30 million in bankruptcy financing and needs court approval for $10 million to keep the company operating, according to court filings. Weinsten cited $3 million in payroll obligations coming due next week. In announcing its agreement with American Apparel, Gildan said the company is a highly recognized brand among consumers and that it would separately buy American Apparel inventory to ensure a seamless supply of goods as the brand is integrated into its offerings. jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com Follow @JimPuzzanghera on Twitter UPDATES: 3:45 p.m.: This article has been updated throughout with new details. Comments were added from Lloyd Greif of Greif & Co. and Garry Bell, Gildan Activewear Inc.s vice president of corporate communications. 12:30 p.m.: This article has been updated with details from court filings, comments from American Apparel founder Dov Charney and additional comments from Chairman Bradley Scher. 9:35 a.m.: This article has been updated with comments from American Apparel spokeswoman Arielle Patrick and from a letter by Chairman Bradley Scher. This article was originally published at 8 a.m. The chief executive of San Diego cybersecurity start-up PacketSled Inc. has resigned after election night posts on social media about assassinating President-elect Donald Trump. Matt Harrigan, who founded PacketSled in 2013, wrote the comments on his Facebook account as election night unfolded. The account has since been deleted, but his comments were copied and posted on the website Reddit. On Monday, Packetsled issued a statement saying Harrigan had been placed on leave. It announced Tuesday that it had accepted his resignation and is searching for a replacement. Advertisement PacketSled takes recent comments made by our CEO seriously, it said Monday. Once we were made aware of these comments, we immediately reported this information to the Secret Service and will cooperate fully with any inquiries. Harrigans posts on election night included one saying, Im going to kill the president. Elect, according to the Reddit copy of his Facebook comments.. After a friend responded You just need to get high, Harrigan wrote, Nope, getting a sniper rifle and perching myself where it counts. Find a bedroom in the White House that suits you. Ill find you. On Sunday, Harrigan turned to Twitter to apologize, saying his comments were meant as a joke. My humble apologies that a flawed joke has become public/out of context. My poor judgement does not represent the views of @packetsled customers, investors or the officers of @packetsled, Harrigan wrote in a series of tweets. I have no malicious intention towards the #POTUS, and apologize to all for my lack of judgement and offensive commentary. I wish you all well. Efforts to reach Harrigan and PacketSled were unsuccessful. The company makes forensics software that detects where a cyberattack is coming from, what files are being targeted and which devices are being affected, among other things. The company raised $5 million in a first round of venture capital funding in July, led by San Diegos Keshif Ventures, with Blu Ventures and JHS Ventures participating. mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com ALSO Silicon Valley is trying to figure out how to work with a Trump-led government After Trumps win, even some in Silicon Valley wonder: Has Facebook grown too influential? Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Heres why UPDATES: Nov. 15, 9:25 a.m.: This article was updated with Harrigans resignation. This article was originally published Nov. 14 at 2:15 p.m. Not everything is a surprise with Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a 31-year-old former Los Angeles Philharmonic Dudamel Fellow who returned Friday night to Walt Disney Concert Hall for his first subscription concert with the L.A. Phil. Rouvali, just appointed music director of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden, is Finnish yet further confirmation that his small country produces more major conductors per capita than anyplace else. He is of slight build and has a bushy mop of hair. Weve had a few of those over the years. Advertisement And he has a certain flamboyance. Ditto, even if the stereotypical Finn tends not to be demonstrative. But Rouvalis imaginative, often spectacular musicality is exceptional even in an era with a number of remarkable young conductors. His program here was commonplace and weighed down with warhorses: Dvoraks Cello Concerto with Johannes Moser as soloist and Sibelius First Symphony. A week earlier at Duke University in North Carolina, Moser joined the Pacifica Quartet for the world premiere of a new string quintet by the newly minted MacArthur Fellow Julia Wolfe. Moser, moreover, will also premiere a new piece by L.A. composer Ellen Reid in February as part of this years Laguna Beach Music Festival. Meanwhile, Rouvali makes his debut with the Cincinnati Symphony next week conducting Sibelius more challenging last two symphonies (Nos. 6 and 7) along with Esa-Pekka Salonens Violin Concerto (with Jennifer Koh as soloist). Next to Durham and Cincinnati, L.A. might have seemed uncharacteristically uninventive. It wasnt. We compensated with riveting, original music making, everything seeming not only vital but oddly relevant. The outlier work was Alexander Mosolovs Iron Foundry, a four-minute 1927 Soviet exclamation of a machine age promising to transform Russian society and its art. Relying on the thrill of noise and dissonance in this balletic tidbit, Mosolov anticipated by more than half a century industrial rock and heavy metal. The Constructivist score today might well resonate with many angry Americans nostalgia for an era of factories run by manpower. The L.A. Phil happened to give the premiere in 1931 of Iron Foundry at the Hollywood Bowl. I dont know whether or not Charlie Chaplin was at that concert (he might have been), but Rouvali made it seem that way in a spectacular performance that brought to mind Chaplins 1936 silent (with sound effects) comedy, Modern Times. Rouvalis conducting is all arms. He traces everything in the score, including the tiniest detail, with the extravagance of an animated computer graphic. He is, in his movements, downright Chaplinesque, if without the haplessness. Like Chaplin, Rouvali is always in complete control. Every gesture seems driven by an inner musicality. His Iron Foundry proved an astonishment. Dvoraks Cello Concerto, written not much more than a quarter-century earlier in New York, is New World music with an Old World sensibility. Moser, a sophisticated and sensitive cellist, here demonstrated a rare, raw passion. The zealous Rouvali became now and then overbearing, but he mostly doubled Mosers ardor. Something obviously was on this commanding German-Canadian cellists mind. For his encore, he said he was dedicating an intense, stirring performance of the Sarabande movement from Bachs First Solo Cello Suite to Hillary Clinton and to Leonard Cohen. The audience roared for Hillary, but there may have been a couple boos; it was hard to tell. Rouvalis Sibelius was full of more Modernist beans. Often conductors, besotted with Sibelius soulfulness, look to the First for the first hints of the composers brooding, haunting, unforgettable soundscapes. The symphony does, after all, open with a somber clarinet solo. But written at the cusp of the 20th century, this was also the work of a composer in his early 30s who had already found his voice and was setting out on an adventure. Rouvali combed through the pages of the First for new discoveries, something potent in the timpani or bird-like in the flute or overgenerous in the horns. When it was over, an orchestra skilled at giving a young conductor it likes everything asked of it, no matter how outrageous, was all warm smiles. Rouvali is in the right place. Gothenburg was where his mentor, Gustavo Dudamel, learned the ropes of running a professional orchestra, a little outside the limelight. Now, once more, the Elite Park Avenue Hotel, just down the street from the Goteborgs Konserthus, will be filling up with music business suits eager to sign for the latest sensation. mark.swed@latimes.com ALSO Noh theater: The worlds oldest stage tradition is popping up everywhere Akhnaten: How L.A. Opera delivers Philip Glass Egyptian Pharaoh tale Why music from 1594 still moves us in 2016: The deep meaning of Tears of St. Peter A sense of the other seeps through Viet Thanh Nguyens work, a place where war and memory play like discordant whispers, and defining ones identity, especially for an immigrant or a refugee, can be as disquieting and elusive as chasing light through a prism. A child of the Vietnam War who arrived in this country when he was 4, Nguyen is at once outsider and citizen, provocative terrain for a writer seeking to articulate and reconcile the opposing national narratives that have shaped his life. His first novel, The Sympathizer, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year, is set against American involvement in Vietnam, as told by a sly protagonist of multiple perspectives: a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. The book is gleaming and uproarious, a dark comedy of confession filled with charlatans, delusionists and shameless opportunists. It is the unabashed companion to Nguyens Nothing Ever Dies, a sobering nonfiction meditation on war, inhumanity and remembrance that is a finalist for the National Book Awards, which will be announced Wednesday. Advertisement Such recognition has marked a busy time for Nguyen, an L.A. Times critic-at-large, who the other day sat at his dining room table, laptop open, and typed a few thoughts, more in demand these days than before he won the Pulitzer. The sound of traffic and an occasional siren drifted through his meticulously neat Silver Lake home, which overlooks the strange, ragged allure of Sunset Boulevard. Tea was served. Donald Trump was mentioned. Or, as Nguyen noted, the man who aroused white nativist feelings directed against immigrants and minorities. Trump is the fusion of populist politics and the cult of personality; a reality TV star and one-percenter who, as Nguyen sees it, is part of a virtual economy based partly on celebrity that benefits the rich but creates no jobs. Reality TV people dont have any real talent except to perform this fake version of their lives. That fake version is what people want, said Nguyen, who, while he opposes Trumps ideals, credited the president-elect for setting forth a brash vision that upended American politics. Its not just Trump supporters who accept reality television and celebrity culture. Its society as a whole. Were all guilty of profiting from that virtual capitalism and enjoying that virtual celebrity. Viet Thanh Nguyen in 2015. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times ) Americans do believe very strongly in their own innocence. When some ... say were going overseas to establish democracy ... I think they really believe that. Viet Thanh Nguyen A trim man with a swoop of black hair rising like a small, shiny wave over his forehead, Nguyen and his family left Vietnam as refugees in 1975, the year the war ended. They settled in San Jose. His parents opened a grocery store where they were shot and wounded in a robbery years later. Nguyen learned English and the ways of his new home. As he grew older, however, he felt of himself as the other, outcast from a native land he never really knew and estranged from the country he embraced. There were stories of relatives left behind and films like Apocalypse Now, which conjured the war from an unnerving American perspective. For me, it was never about learning to be an American. What happened actually was that other people didnt see me as an American. That was the disturbing part, said Nguyen, who graduated from UC Berkeley and teaches American studies, English and ethnicity at USC. The immigrant has always been an ambivalent figure in the United States. The immigrant has always served as a source of rejuvenation for the country and a source of fear. This led him, as a writer, to untangle the complicated relationship between Vietnam and America, each with contentious versions of a conflict that killed more than 58,000 U.S. service personnel along with an estimated 1.3 million to more than 3 million North and South Vietnamese. Duality informs much of Nguyens work, which extrapolates the personal to the universal to explore nationalism, history, atrocity, truth and lies, ethical pliability and how, depending on allegiances, one persons monster is anothers liberator. Its not just Trump supporters who accept reality television and celebrity culture.... Were all guilty of ... enjoying that virtual celebrity. Viet Thanh Nguyen The narrator in The Sympathizer is a chameleon, an interloper navigating the cultures and dangerous politics of Americas intervention to stop South Vietnams communist revolution. He is a conniver with blood on his hands, satire in his veins and rationalization in his heart. He tells us: I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Nothing Ever Dies is an account of humanity at its darkest, a realm of war, memory, identity and pain that ventures from the jungles of Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia. Nguyen writes that all wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. Memory is haunted, not just by ghostly others but by the horrors we have done, seen, and condoned, or by the unspeakable things from which we have profited. That is the case when one views the broken lives, graves, refugees and ruins of Syria and Iraq. It leads to moral questions over outside powers imposing their designs on peoples and cultures that have been turned into the other to advance distant national interests. For Nguyen, Vietnam was a personal example of how American policy, which these days includes a massive arms industry, hundreds of overseas military bases, drone strikes and special operations forces, creates a psychology of perpetual war. The Sympathizer, like Graham Greenes The Quiet American, examines American intentions, often mixed of hubris, benevolence and ineptitude, that leads the country into conflict. Americans do believe very strongly in their own innocence. When some leaders say were going overseas to establish democracy and freedom, I think they really believe that, Nguyen said. They may also be doing it for corporate profits, but they really believe that Americans are there for democracy and freedom. And thats the dangerous part that belief in your own goodness. Countries, after all, are as complex as characters in a good novel. And a conversation in Nguyens living room can skip across the geographies, sins and fallibilities of a vexing world. The rise of populism in the West, notably Britains vote to exit the European Union, a resurgence of nationalist parties and the election of Trump suggest a backlash by working classes against capitalism. What were seeing is a crisis in capitalism thats always been defined by race, said Nguyen, noting that over the centuries, Europes wealth was largely built on what was colonized and extracted from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The contradiction were seeing now is those minorities and those colonized peoples have made their way to the countries that colonized them in the first place and have become more visible. And as that capitalism has faltered those white people have taken out their aggravations on these minorities and formerly colonized peoples. See the most-read stories this hour Twitter: @JeffreyLAT jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Also Heres why Bruce Springsteens blue-collar heroes have made Donald Trump their rock star J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy provides a window into the pain and anger of Trumps America Viet Thanh Nguyens Great American Novels: The Woman Warrior and China Men A writers solitude vs. AWP: Viet Thanh Nguyen on what we share with others After winning a number of trophies at this years Emmy Awards, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story will also be the show to beat at the upcoming 22nd Critics Choice Awards The Broadcast Television Journalists Assn. announced the nominees for the event this morning, and FXs The People v. O.J. Simpson topped the list. It was nominated for six awards, including TV movie or limited series. Costars Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance and Cuba Gooding Jr. were also nominated in the lead acting categories. Meanwhile, HBOs Game of Thrones, AMCs The Night Manager and Netflixs Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt each picked up five nominations. Advertisement Coming in with four nominations each were the HBO movie All the Way, Netflixs House of Cards, Historys Roots and HBOs Veep. Overall, HBO led the nominations with 22, while ABC and Netflix scored 14 each, and FX earned 12, half of which went to People v. O.J. The winners will be announced live at the Critics Choice Awards gala at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. The event will be broadcast live on A&E at 5 p.m. Pacific time Dec. 11. Silicon Valley and Deadpool star T.J. Miller will host. In this golden age of peak TV, viewers have an embarrassment of riches to choose from every day and night, Association President Joey Berlin said in a press release. The Critics Choice Awards are chosen to help people find the best of the best. We cant wait until December 11 to celebrate with all these incredibly deserving nominees. Full list of nominations below: COMEDY SERIES Atlanta (FX) black-ish (ABC) Fleabag (Amazon) Modern Family (ABC) Silicon Valley (HBO) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) Veep (HBO) ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES Ellie Kemper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep (HBO) Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live (NBC) Tracee Ellis Ross, black-ish (ABC) Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag (Amazon) Constance Wu, Fresh Off the Boat (ABC) Tracee Ellis Ross takes you inside black-ish. ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES Anthony Anderson, black-ish (ABC) Will Forte, The Last Man on Earth (FOX) Donald Glover, Atlanta (FX) Bill Hader, Documentary Now!, IFC Patrick Stewart, Blunt Talk (Starz) Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent (Amazon) SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES Julie Bowen, Modern Family (ABC) Anna Chlumsky, Veep (HBO) Allison Janney, Mom (CBS) Jane Krakowski, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) Judith Light, Transparent (Amazon) Allison Williams, Girls (HBO) SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES Louie Anderson, Baskets (FX) Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox) Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) Ty Burrell, Modern Family (ABC) Tony Hale, Veep (HBO) T.J. Miller, Silicon Valley (HBO) GUEST PERFORMER IN A COMEDY SERIES Alec Baldwin, Saturday Night Live (NBC) Christine Baranski, The Big Bang Theory (CBS) Larry David, Saturday Night Live (NBC) Lisa Kudrow, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) Liam Neeson, Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central) ANIMATED SERIES Archer (FX) Bobs Burgers (Fox) BoJack Horseman (Netflix) Son of Zorn (Fox) South Park (Comedy Central) The Simpsons (Fox) REALITY COMPETITION SERIES Americas Got Talent (NBC) MasterChef Junior (Fox) RuPauls Drag Race (Logo) Skin Wars (GSN) The Amazing Race (CBS) The Voice (NBC) STRUCTURED REALITY SERIES Chopped (Food Network) Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo) Penn & Teller: Fool Us (The CW) Project Runway (Lifetime) Shark Tank (ABC) Undercover Boss (CBS) UNSTRUCTURED REALITY SERIES Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (CNN) Chrisley Knows Best (USA) Deadliest Catch (Discovery) Ice Road Truckers (History) Intervention (A&E) Naked and Afraid (Discovery) TALK SHOW Full Frontal With Samantha Bee (TBS) Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO) The Daily Show With Trevor Noah (Comedy Central) The Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS) The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) REALITY SHOW HOST Ted Allen, Chopped (Food Network) Tom Bergeron, Dancing With the Stars (ABC) Anthony Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (CNN) Nick Cannon, Americas Got Talent (NBC) Carson Daly, The Voice (NBC) RuPaul, RuPauls Drag Race (Logo) SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones (HBO) Kit Harington, Game of Thrones (HBO) John Lithgow, The Crown (Netflix) Mandy Patinkin, Homeland (Showtime) Christian Slater, Mr. Robot (USA) Jon Voight, Ray Donovan (Showtime) SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES Christine Baranski, The Good Wife (CBS) Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones (HBO) Lena Headey, Game of Thrones (HBO) Thandie Newton, Westworld (HBO) Maura Tierney, The Affair (Showtime) Constance Zimmer, UnREAL (Lifetime) Maura Tierney talks about what it was like to work on an emergency room set again on The Affair. ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES Sam Heughan, Outlander (Starz) Rami Malek, Mr. Robot (USA) Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul (AMC) Matthew Rhys, The Americans (FX) Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan (Showtime) Kevin Spacey, House of Cards (Netflix) ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES Caitriona Balfe, Outlander (Starz) Viola Davis, How to Get Away With Murder (ABC) Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black (BBC America) Keri Russell, The Americans (FX) Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld (HBO) Robin Wright, House of Cards (Netflix) DRAMA SERIES Better Call Saul (AMC) Game of Thrones (HBO) Mr. Robot (USA) Stranger Things (Netflix) The Crown (Netflix) This Is Us (NBC) Westworld (HBO) GUEST PERFORMER IN A DRAMA SERIES Mahershala Ali, House of Cards (Netflix) Lisa Bonet, Ray Donovan (Showtime) Ellen Burstyn, House of Cards (Netflix) Michael J. Fox, The Good Wife (CBS) Jared Harris, The Crown (Netflix) Jeffrey Dean Morgan, The Walking Dead (AMC) MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION OR LIMITED SERIES All the Way (HBO) Confirmation (HBO) Killing Reagan (National Geographic) Roots (History) The Night Manager (AMC) The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) ACTOR IN A MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION OR LIMITED SERIES Bryan Cranston, All the Way (HBO) Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (PBS) Cuba Gooding Jr., The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) Tom Hiddleston, The Night Manager (AMC) Tim Matheson, Killing Reagan (National Geographic) Courtney B. Vance, The People v. O.J Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) Tom Hiddleston wasnt sure if hed win an Emmy for The Night Manager, but hes been honored with a Rear of the Year award for his sex scene in it. SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION OR LIMITED SERIES Sterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) Lane Garrison, Roots (History) Frank Langella, All the Way (HBO) Hugh Laurie, The Night Manager (AMC) John Travolta, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) Forest Whitaker, Roots (History) ACTRESS IN A MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION OR LIMITED SERIES Olivia Colman, The Night Manager (AMC) Felicity Huffman, American Crime (ABC) Cynthia Nixon, Killing Reagan (National Geographic) Sarah Paulson, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX) Lili Taylor, American Crime (ABC) Kerry Washington, Confirmation (HBO) SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION OR LIMITED SERIES Elizabeth Debicki, The Night Manager (AMC) Regina King, American Crime (ABC) Sarah Lancashire, The Dresser (Starz) Melissa Leo, All the Way (HBO) Anna Paquin, Roots (History) Emily Watson, The Dresser (Starz) With pulling up stakes looking pretty good to some people right now, National Geographic Channels big new techno-colonial docudrama Mars has gained unexpected timeliness. The six-part series, which premieres Monday, describes the campaign to settle humans on our nearest and most hospitable yet still pretty inhospitable planetary neighbor. This Mars is half aspirational documentary, half speculative fiction. With Ron Howard (Apollo 13) and Brian Grazer among the executive producers, it is not surprisingly a glossy, classy, Rolls-Royce of a production. Both the documentary footage and the staged footage set in 2033 smack of a generous budget; its easy on the eyes. But though the alternating elements get equal time, they arent equally interesting, and the series is engaging and frustrating by turns. Advertisement Although the fictional parts are arranged to be dramatic a pioneer story, full of obstacles the staged scenes on Mars and on Earth are oddly plodding and ponderous, pious and platitudinous. (We dream. Thats who we are. Down to our bones, our cells. We crossed the oceans, we conquered the skies, and when there were no more frontiers on Earth, we launched ourselves among the stars.) Im pretty sure therell be jokes, practical and otherwise, on the first flight to Mars, and that some of them will be rude; it lasts seven months, after all. The documentary passages are by far the more exciting, eccentric and fun. Among the contemporary, real-world commentators (in the two episodes available for review) are Americas astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson; Scott Kelly, who spent a year in the International Space Station to test the effects of long-term space flight on the body; and mogul Elon Musk, whose SpaceX corporation is determined to make Mars habitable. Musk who believes we need to become a spacefaring race because were going to throw away this planet like a used tissue or be fried by the sun in about a billion years is the apparent model for the series fictional visionary entrepreneur, leading an international coalition of space agencies and private industry. Like the settings, the young, international crew of the space ship Daedalus looks good actors youd be as likely to see on a Milan runway as on a Cape Canaveral gangway. There are no Scott Kellys among them stocky, bald, bespectacled. They do their best to make their parts dimensional, but they are not given much to work with. They are accompanied by a talking computer (Voice: British, female) that chimes in with warnings such as Your battery power is at 2%" and Recommend immediate manual replacement of faulty circuit. It seems to me that the humans make bad, if heroic, decisions here, and that their space gear provides a shocking lack of redundancy and fail-safe systems. It is true that things go wrong; but things are interesting when they go right too. Science, engineering I would have liked more of that. Where are the nerds? But whats largely missing here is any sense that the enterprise might be exhilarating, mind-blowing, a kick only important and dangerous. My favorite moment from what Ive seen of the series is documentary footage of Kelly and two colleagues riding a capsule back to Earth from the space station, holding papers papers! in their hands, as if they might need to look something up, or assemble a shelf. As soon as you realize youre not going to die, Kelly says of re-entry, its the most fun you ever had. Of a mission to Mars, he says, It will require more sacrifice, more radiation, more risk, more time away. Id still do it, though. Mars Where: National Geographic Channel When: 9 p.m. Monday Rating: None robert.lloyd@latimes.com Follow Robert Lloyd on Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd One of the prevailing stories of the bizarre, acrimonious 2016 presidential campaign is how so many media personalities have been participants in, rather than mere observers of, the drama. There is, of course, Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, whose feud with Donald Trump has helped turn her into an unlikely quasi-feminist hero, and Billy Bush, whose crass banter with Trump back in 2005 got him canned from his job at Today. Theres former CNN contributor and Democratic operative Donna Brazile, who leaked debate questions to Hillary Clintons campaign. And theres Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who went from allegedly assaulting a journalist on the campaign trail to punditry on CNN (he resigned from the news network on Friday). But theres also another media figure whose influential role in this election has been somewhat overlooked: Seth Meyers. Advertisement In May 2011, Meyers, then-head writer on Saturday Night Live and anchor of SNLs Weekend Update, hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner, a frivolous schmoozefest that would go on to take huge historical importance -- in more ways than one. The dinner, at which Meyers joked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, unfolded as SEAL Team Six was preparing the raid that would kill the terrorist mastermind the next day. But in a wrinkle that could ultimately have a more profound effect on American life, it also laid the groundwork for the bitterly divisive campaign between Trump and Clinton. At the time, Trumps political profile was on the rise thanks to his status as an outspoken birther, and hed been toying with the idea of a 2012 presidential run. He was a guest -- and the butt of many a joke -- at the annual celebration, attended by power players from the world of media, showbiz and politics. Several sources, including the New York Times, Frontline and the New Yorker, have cited the dinner as a turning point that inspired Trump, roasted before the Washington elite, to run for the White House. Though much has been made of President Obamas cutting remarks at the dinner -- he sarcastically suggested that the difficult decisions Trump had to make as host of The Celebrity Apprentice would prepare him for the presidency -- Meyers was even more scathing in his set. Donald Trump has been saying that hell run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke, Meyers said as Trump looked on, grim-faced, still and plainly unamused. Gary Busey said recently that Donald Trump would make a great president, Meyers continued. Of course, he said the same thing about an old rusty birdcage he found. Trump couldnt even muster a conciliatory half-chuckle. Five and half years later, Meyers remarks now seem uncomfortably prescient, reflecting the bewilderment of the 60 million or so Americans who voted for Clinton on Tuesday, many of whom considered the idea of a Trump presidency too ludicrous to contemplate. While that reality, first imagined in an episode of The Simpsons, is still sinking in, Meyers has already positioned himself as one of late nights most outspoken Trump adversaries. When the comedian took over the reins at Late Night two years ago, he was seen as a solid, if not particularly groundbreaking, choice for the job. A well-liked SNL veteran, he was comfortable telling timely jokes from behind a desk, but he was also the umpteenth white, male host in the deeply homogeneous world of late night. But over the course of the long campaign, Meyers established himself as an essential voice in an overcrowded field of topical comedy, largely through his signature segment, A Closer Look, a humorous analysis of subjects in the news that clearly draws from the Jon Stewart-era Daily Show. While others, like Daily Show alums Samantha Bee and John Oliver, have used their more permissive cable-TV berths as launching pads for left-leaning comedy, Meyers has managed to do so on network television, bucking the unspoken expectation that broadcast late-night hosts should be nonpartisan. (So has Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, though after The Colbert Report, his political perspective was never exactly a secret.) Meyers has been a vocal critic of Trumps, bluntly accusing the Republican of bigotry and misogyny and even banning Trump from Late Night after he exiled the Washington Post from his campaign events. (It was a mostly symbolic gesture, since Trump wasnt actually scheduled to appear on the show.) That hes done so at NBC, the network that propelled Trump to new heights of fame via The Apprentice, kept him on the air at the height of the birther flap and invited him to host SNL last year in a first for an active presidential candidate seems especially remarkable. His pointed critiques contrast starkly with the get-along approach favored by his 30 Rock neighbor and former SNL alum Jimmy Fallon, whose jovial mussing of Trumps hair has, to some more reactionary critics, made him late nights answer to Neville Chamberlain. Meyers has softened the smart alecky Really!? persona he deployed on Weekend Update in favor of a more earnest demeanor. On Wednesdays show, a visibly emotional Meyers presented himself as a late-night ally to groups who feel threatened by Trump. As a white man, I also know that any emotions are likely a fraction of those being felt by the LGBT community, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, any number of the immigrant communities so vital to our country, he said. So hopefully, the Trump administration and Trump supporters will be compassionate to them. Because they need your compassion. He also tearfully acknowledged the historical milestone that many had hoped to reach with a Clinton victory, particularly his mother: She was really excited yesterday. And I was really sad for her. And he extended an olive branch to Trump supporters, saying he hoped the president-elect would live up to their expectations. The theme of solidarity continued in a bit Thursday, with Late Night writer Amber Ruffin addressing white Clinton voters dismayed by their fellow Americans support for Trump. That feeling youre feeling right now? Black people have been feeling forever, said Ruffin, who is black. Join the fun. The segment played up the idea of the shared sense of alienation between white Clinton supporters and black people. (Ironically, a similar idea was at the center of an insightful Black Jeopardy sketch on SNL, only it featured a Trump supporter rather than Clinton fans.) If Meyers played a small, unintentional part in bringing about a Trump presidency, his inclusive style of comedy may be just the thing to help many Americans navigate through it. See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Follow me @MeredithBlake ALSO Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton on SNL: Im not giving up, and neither should you John Oliver on Donald Trump: He is not normal Hate was given hope: Aaron Sorkin consoles his daughter in poignant letter Michael Moore says he wants to head an Occupy-like movement against Donald Trump I did that thing where I went, Why did I commit to a Sunday night event? but Im so glad I came, said Chelsea Handler, referring to Sundays kick-off dinner for Glamours Women of the Year 2016 event, whic commences Monday with a one-day summit followed by the awards ceremony and post-dinner. Held at the Freds in Barneys New Yorks Beverly Hills store and hosted by Fergie and First Lady of Los Angeles Amy Elaine Wakeland, wife of Mayor Eric Garcetti, the event welcomed the WOTY honorees to Los Angeles for the first time. Ashley Graham, one of this years honorees, brought her mom as her date, as did Fergie. I remember watching Julia Roberts get this award eight years ago and thinking what a role model she was. Its incredible to think that there are young women who look up to me now, said Graham. Past honoree Shonda Rhimes, who has also presented the honor to Robin Roberts, said, My favorite thing about this is being surrounded by so many interesting women. Advertisement Among others in attendance were Chrissy Teigen, Chrissy Metz, Ahna OReilly, Gillian Jacobs, Jaime King, Kaley Cuoco, Keke Palmer, Devon Aoki, Eiza Gonzalez, Azie Tesfai and Arianne Phillips. Its surreal to be back in Hollywood, said OReilly, who has spent the last six months on Broadway in The Robber Bridegroom. Another person who made the trip from New York was Barneys chief executive officer Mark Lee, who will walk the store Monday with his teams. Well talk about whats selling and whats not. They want to be heard, he said of his Beverly Hills colleagues. Amplifying the message was a major reason editor in chief Cindi Leive moved the event to Los Angeles. It was time for a change of scenery, she said. Theres so much on the West Coast for women with film and technology. And this week there is so much happening. The energy is so high, the anger in some places is high, but there is certainly a lot to talk about. During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump did his best to portray himself as compassionate towards the LGBT community a man who didnt share his partys staunchly homophobic and transphobic views. He pointedly nodded to LGBT equality in his convention speech, boasted of his friendship with Caitlyn Jenner and voiced opposition to North Carolinas infamous anti-trans bathroom bill, before changing his stance on the legislation just days later. The Log Cabin Republicans, a national gay GOP group, even called Trump the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party. In an interview that aired Sunday on 60 Minutes, Trump appeared to offer an olive branch to the LGBT community. The president-elect backed off campaign promises that he would strongly consider appointing justices that would overturn the Supreme Courts 2015 decision on marriage equality if he became the 45th president of the United States. Its irrelevant because it was already settled, he said. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. Its settled, and Im fine with it. Yet the policy outline of Trumps first 100 days in office tells a different story about what LGBT people can expect from his presidency. Although marriage equality appears to be safe for the time being, the next four years portend a devastating attack on LGBT rights. Advertisement Even if [Trumps] justices have little desire to overturn same-sex marriage, they could do serious damage in other areas. Trump has pledged on his first day in office to cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum, and order issued by President Obama. In doing so, he will nullify crucial protections for LGBT workers. In 2014, Obama signed Executive Order 13672, which states that federal contractors cannot be fired on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. Just 19 states currently have such protections in place, and Obamas executive order was seen as a crucial step forward toward nationwide equality. In allowing legal discrimination against LGBT people, Trump plans to go even further. He has previously expressed his support for the First Amendment Defense Act, a piece of legislation thats strikingly similar to the anti-LGBT legislation passed in Indiana by his second-in-command, Gov. Mike Pence. The bill would allow businesses, landlords and even healthcare providers the right to deny services to LGBT individuals based on their religious beliefs by preventing anyone from taking action against them for doing so. Thus, it could soon be legal for a caterer to decline to host a same-sex wedding or an employer to fire you for being gay. The Obama administrations repeated support for trans students is also on the chopping block. In 2016, the federal government issued a set of guidance for administrators and school staff on how to support trans students. That letter, which is not legally binding, instructs campuses to allow students to use the restroom that most closely corresponds with their gender identity. In October, Pence claimed that rolling back these protections is a done deal. Donald Trump and I simply believe that all of these issues are best resolved at the state level, the Republican said on James Dobsons radio show. Washington has no business intruding on the operation of our local schools, Pence said. I can tell you, Its just one more example of the heavy hand and liberal agenda of this administration working its way into the purview of the states and the people when it comes to our kids, and the operation of our schools, those decisions should be made at the local level. Stripping away those rights could have a grave impact on trans students: A study from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and UCLAs Williams Institute found that 41% of transgender people attempt suicide at some point in their lives. They are most likely to do so in environments where they have few legal protections. The most crucial blow will be the Supreme Court, which has yet to see a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia after months of Republican obstruction. Trump told Fox News Chris Wallace in January that he would strongly consider appointing judges that will overturn the Supreme Courts 2015 ruling on marriage equality. A leaked shortlist of potential nominees shows that he could do just that. The roster includes anti-LGBT judges like 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge William H. Pryor Jr., who in 2003 filed an amicus brief in Lawrence vs. Texas supporting the states anti-sodomy laws, and Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, who once compared same-sex unions to marrying bacon. Even if those justices have little desire to overturn same-sex marriage, they could do serious damage in other areas. Trumps pick will have an enormous impact on a landmark case scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court. Gavin Grimm, a transgender high school student in Gloucester, Va., sued his local school district to overturn a policy blocking him from using the mens restroom on campus. If Trump has promised to appoint a nominee in the mold of Scalia, a justice who tirelessly fought against LGBT rights during his time on the bench, thats extremely bad news for trans students. Defenders of Trump say its difficult to know what he would actually do simply because as a businessman, he doesnt have a record to judge from. His running mate, however, does. During his tenure in House of Representatives, Pence voted twice to add an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage solely as the union between one man and one woman. While running for that Congressional seat in 2000, Pence advocated that life-saving HIV funding allotted under the Ryan White Care Act be instead diverted to programs which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior. Thats a nod to conversion therapy, the dangerous, harmful practice of trying to cure LGBT people of their same-sex attractions. It has been condemned by the American Psychological Assn. and outlawed in California. Tony Perkins, who was appointed to Trumps pro-life advisory council this year, is also a strong proponent of conversion therapy. When the Republican National Convention embraced conversion therapy in its 2016 platform, Perkins only concern was that its anti-LGBT advocacy didnt go far enough, as Right Wing Watch reported. In addition to Pence and Perkins, Trump surrounds himself with politicians and leaders with a consistent record of opposing LGBT rights. Trumps alleged Cabinet shortlist is filled with names like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, both of whom are staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage. Trumps rumored pick for secretary of Defense, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, repeatedly voted against adding sexual orientation or gender identity to hate crime legislation. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who could be the next Secretary of State, was one of 24 Republican senators who criticized the Obama administrations support of trans students. Then theres Trumps new chief strategist and senior counselor, Breitbart News Stephen Bannon, who once referred to members of Seven Sisters schools as a bunch of dykes. Just because Trump has flip-flopped on repealing marriage equality doesnt mean that hes seen the light on equality. LGBT issues will soon face roadblocks at every level of the federal government, whether its from Trumps inner circle or a majority-Republican Congress that has the ability to roll back the clock on progress by decades. Trumps 60 Minutes interview may seem like a small victory for LGBT rights, but the bigger fights are still to come. 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 Not my president: Protesters rally at MacArthur Park Nearly 100 protesters gathered at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard Saturday morning, chanting phrases like Donald Trump go away -- sexist, racist, anti-gay, and Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go. Joel Cordiero, 65, held a sign that said: Not my president. The words he said, we cant forget, said Cordiero, who lives in Beverly Hills. We need to let him know hes not going to get away with anything. Protesters waved rainbow flags and held signs that read: Hate aint great and global warming is real, among others. More protesters are arriving to the protest in MacArthur Park in LA.@latimes @latimesphotos pic.twitter.com/XrB5DTUM8a Francine Orr/LATimes (@francineorr) November 12, 2016 A group of women chanted: My body, my choice, to which a group of men responded: Your body, your choice. Kim White, 52, said she was angry about the way Trump talks about and treats women. I cant believe hes representing our country, said White, who lives in Highland Park. People are like: Give him a break, he didnt mean it, she said. Im sorry. Words matter. Jason Ramirez-Cabral, 24, was one of the first protesters to arrive at 8:15 a.m., straight from his job as a night worker on the docks in San Pedro. He brought face paint in his tote bag and said he was planning to paint a peace sign that would cover his whole face. I was sad the night it happened, said Ramirez-Cabral, who lives in Fontana. Now, Im angry. Some of his family members are in the country illegally, he said. I dont know what the future holds, " he said. A Bay Area teacher was put on leave for comparing President-elect Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. A woman speaking Assyrian on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train was accosted by another passenger who told her, Trump might deport you. Some Latino students in Northern California were given mock deportation letters by a classmate. And a high school student in San Mateo County was given a bloody nose after voicing support for Trump on Instagram. In the days since Trump was elected president of the United States, one thing has been certain in this divided country: Tensions are high. Advertisement The outpouring of anger has little recent historic parallel, said John J. Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican policy aide. Pitney said the closest comparison was with the election of 1800 in which Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in a bitterly waged campaign that included the candidates trading insults. For many people, this years election was less a choice between two candidates than about whether voters felt they would have a place in America, he said. A lot of people didnt just see this election as a matter of political choice but a matter of identity, Pitney said. On the one hand, many of the people who voted for Trump see themselves as forgotten and disrespected, and many of the people who are against Trump see themselves as groups under threat. Feelings are going to run very hot. Demonstrators across the country have blocked streets in protest of the president-elect. On Saturday, some 8,000 people marched from MacArthur Park to downtown Los Angeles, shouting Not my president! as they formed one of the nations largest demonstrations so far. Hundreds more peacefully rallied in Hollywood on Sunday. In other instances, demonstrating has turned ugly. Los Angeles police arrested hundreds of protesters who marched in downtown L.A. in recent days, saying they vandalized property, blocked roads, hurled bottles and refused to disperse. Taggers scrawled anti-Trump messages and profanity on downtown buildings, tunnels, sidewalks even on a television news van and a police cruiser. Anxiety has been so high that calls to anti-suicide and crisis hotlines have spiked since the votes were counted. Steve Mendelsohn, deputy executive director of The Trevor Project, a West Hollywood-based organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ people, said his organization has seen a dramatic increase in calls and messages this week. Over 95% of those who called mentioned Donald Trump, Mendelsohn said. The general theme was anxiety and fear. They worried about potential bullying, their healthcare and whether gay marriage would be reversed, he said. On Wednesday and Thursday, the organization received 688 calls and messages. On the same days last year, they got 307 such contacts, he said. Fernando Guerra, a political scientist and director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the surprise outcome of the election, which many polls had predicted would be won by Democrat Hillary Clinton, is a major factor in the intense reactions. So many groups were told this wasnt going to happen, both Trump and Clinton supporters, Guerra said. Both are shocked. Guerra said that while he thinks the protests are a great outlet for a lot of people feeling threatened and emotionally displaced, the large demonstrations will last only a few weeks (and possibly re-emerge around Trumps January inauguration) because it is difficult to organize and sustain ongoing protests. He also believes the uptick in racially charged incidents is temporary because American public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to racism especially if Trump and his supporters condemn racist acts. This is where leadership counts, Guerra said. The president-elect tweeted this week that he thought professional protesters who were incited by the media were behind the anti-Trump demonstrations. Hours later, he tweeted that he loved that small groups of protesters have passion for our great country. In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night, Trump said he was very surprised to hear of an increase in racial slurs and threats against minorities since his election. I am so saddened to hear that, he said. And I say, Stop it. I will say right to the cameras: Stop it. The Southern Poverty Law Center said Friday evening that it had counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation across the country with the most commonly reported locations being K-12 schools. California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris on Thursday sent a bulletin to state law enforcement agencies detailing hate crime laws. In recent weeks, she said, there had been an uptick in threats of hate crimes and extremist violence in California. Last week, a Muslim student at San Diego State was robbed by two men who made comments about Trump and Muslims before grabbing her purse and backpack and stealing her car, university police said. In Redding, a Shasta High School student handed out deportation letters to Latino classmates, and a video of the incident was posted on Twitter, said Shasta Union High School District Supt. Jim Cloney, who said he believed the episode was related to Trumps election. In the town of Woodside on the San Francisco Peninsula, a high school sophomore who wrote on Instagram that she hoped Trump would win the election was beat up by classmates who told her: You support Trump. You hate Mexicans, ABC News reported. Still, with the rhetoric so high, there are other instances in which people question whether reactions to Trump are overblown or even tied to the president-elect at all. On Thursday, a history teacher at Mountain View High School in the Bay Area was placed on paid administrative leave after comparing Trump to Hitler. Frank Navarro, who has taught at the school for 40 years, was asked to leave after the administration received an email from a parent concerned about statements he made in class, the Mercury News reported. Navarro is an expert on the Holocaust, a Mandel Fellow for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum who studied at the International Center for the Study of the Holocaust in Jerusalem. He told the Mercury News his lesson plan was based on historical fact and that Hitlers persecution of Jews and rise to power has remarkable parallels to Trumps statements about Latinos, Muslims and African Americans during his bid for the presidency. School administrators said Navarro could return to the classroom as early as Monday. The same day Navarro was suspended, a high school principal in the nearby city of Milpitas was placed on leave for saying an anti-Trump expletive during a student walkout. On Friday, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) tweeted pictures of three young men hoisting Confederate flags at the Veterans Day parade in the Northern California city of Petaluma. Huffman said in interviews that some of the men were wearing Trump T-shirts and that he thought the Trump campaign had legitimized some shadow groups and points of view. In a lengthy Facebook post Saturday night, he shared a response from one of the men displaying the flag, who said they were actually protesting against Huffman, who pushed the Department of Veterans Affairs this year to prohibit the flying of the Confederate flag on permanent flag poles at national cemeteries. Huffman did not return calls for comment. Steven Kemmerle, who has organized the Veterans Day parade in Petaluma for the last 12 years, told The Times on Sunday that the young men didnt say anything to anybody; they just stood there. Kemmerle, a 72-year-old Republican, said he didnt think the flags had anything to do with Trump. The United States Constitution allows you freedom of speech, he said. But it does not allow you to deface buildings, roll cars or attack people. haily.branson@latimes.com ruben.vives@latimes.com For more Southern California news, follow us on Twitter: @haileybranson and @latvives. ALSO Chinese official advocates stronger relationship with U.S. under Trump Trump Tower drawing job seekers, celebrities, media and thousands of protesters Silicon Valley searches for the Trump playbook The change of seasons has taken its time. But after a statewide spell of warm temperatures with record highs reported in Paso Robles, Fresno and San Francisco forecasters expect thermometers to dip for much of the state this week, bringing a below-average chill and powerful gusty winds. But there will be a last blast of heat before it gets cold, said National Weather Service meteorologist Robbie Munroe. Itll be pretty dry, said Munroe, who predicted temperatures across Southern Californias inland valleys to hover in the upper 80s to low 90s. Along the coast, he expected the temperatures to reach the low 80s. Advertisement On Monday, the San Diego area will see temperatures up to 20 degrees warmer than usual, according to the National Weather Service. By Wednesday and Thursday, the cooling will be well underway, with temperatures topping out in the low 70s, while coastal areas will see highs only in the upper 60s. From Santa Barbara Countys south coast up through the Grapevine, gusty winds could top 60 mph, with coastal mountains seeing gusts of up to 40 mph. It will be much cooler, Munroe said. From the Central Valley to the Sacramento area, the cooling period will begin earlier in the week, and light showers are possible in the Bay Area and Napa Valley through Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Along the Northern California coast, scattered hail is possible. matt.hamilton@latimes.com Twitter: @MattHjourno. The vast majority of California community college students take remedial math and English classes but that college-prep work is largely failing to help most of them complete their academic or vocational programs. Eight of 10 community college students first are placed in remedial classes to gain college-level skills before moving to courses that count for credit. But only 16% of those students earn a skills certificate or two-year degree within six years, and just 24% transfer to a four-year university, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California. In fact, remedial courses also called developmental education may drive students to drop out because they add time and cost to academic programs while not necessarily being relevant to them, the study found. Advertisement In its current form, developmental education may be one of the largest impediments to success in Californias community colleges, the study said. However, it noted that state educators have begun to launch reforms and legislators are boosting spending for them. California Community Colleges is the nations largest system of higher education, with 2.1 million students at 113 campuses. Olga Rodriguez, a co-author of the study, said one problem with the current system was that some students were mistakenly placed in remedial classes. Most campuses long have relied almost exclusively on standardized test scores for those placements, but research by Columbia University and others has found the exams poorly predict college success. As a result, many colleges are changing their placement process for instance, allowing a student with a high school GPA of at least 2.6, or a B-, to bypass remediation regardless of standardized test scores. Latino and African American students, who are over-represented in remedial classes, stand to reap the largest benefits. When Butte College expanded access to college-level English courses, 40% of students who would have been placed in remediation earned As and Bs. Black and Latino students who had fared the worst under the previous placement process more than doubled their completion of college English, according to the California Acceleration Project, a network led by state community college faculty. Another issue is that most campuses require as many as four remediation courses before students can enroll in college-level classes a long and costly road that drives many to drop out, researchers said. The study found that only 44% of students completed the math sequence and 60% completed the English sequence. The traditional multicourse sequences happening at all colleges across the system is leading to a lot of students dropping off their trajectory, Rodriguez said. But the Public Policy Institute study found that two-thirds of the campuses have redesigned their remediation education in recent years to help students make faster progress. Some have compressed elementary and intermediate algebra into a single course. Others have expanded flexibility allowing those not heading into math-based fields to learn statistics rather than algebra. Another experiment in California and elsewhere involves placing students in the remedial and college-level courses at the same time. Results from five states showed that those students more than doubled their course completion rates to 60% in half the time or better, the report noted. State legislators are backing the reforms with bucks, giving nearly $500 million to community colleges last year for remedial education. However, Rodriguez said, only 8.3% of all students have enrolled in the redesigned courses. She also cautioned that more research was needed to see what actually works among the flurry of reforms. teresa.watanabe@latimes.com Twitter: @TeresaWatanabe A 45-year-old lobster diver was found dead Monday near Manhattan Beach Pier after he had gone missing almost 24 hours earlier. Members from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department dive team found the lobster hunters body about 10:55 a.m. in an underwater pipe, according to authorities. Jeff Tolly disappeared about 11 a.m. Sunday about three miles north of Manhattan Beach Pier, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Authorities said Tolly likely entered the pipe in search of the crustacean. Advertisement Spencer Parker, an ocean lifeguard specialist with Los Angeles County Fire Department, told KTLA-TV that its common for divers to wander into the narrow pipe to look for lobsters. Tolly was last seen wearing his black diving suit with fins and a scuba tank. The Coast Guard launched a helicopter and two 87-foot patrol boats from Channel Islands and Corona Del Mar. veronica.rocha@latimes.com For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter. In the days since Donald Trumps election, thousands have marched in Los Angeles, waving signs and shouting their disapproval of the president-elect over the growl of helicopter blades and the wail of police sirens. On Sunday afternoon at Silver Lake Meadow, about 500 people gathered for a quieter form of protest. Mostly women, they sat in circles, spread blankets and shared picnic food as they talked about how to present a brave face to fearful children, how to defuse their own anger toward Trump supporters and how to turn their emotions into activism. Hillary Clintons loss felt personal for the events organizers, Kara Durrett and Ellen Etten, who work as personal assistants in Hollywood. Election night had them both in tears, and they were up until the early hours of the morning, texting each other stunned, disbelieving messages. Both said the election loss felt like a breakup. Advertisement Its like the country broke up with you, but you realized that you should have never been dating anyway, said Durrett, 29. Now were in the phase where were going to the gym all the time and trying new things, added Etten, who is 34. Samara Bay, center, listens in a circle with her son Wilder, 1.5 years old, as women, children and families gather at Silver Lake Meadow to talk about Donald Trump on Nov. 13, 2016. (Patrick T. Fallon / Los Angeles Times ) Neither one is an experienced political activist. Three days before, the women created a Facebook event and invited their friends to come discuss how to go forward after Clintons defeat. Lets gather to share words of inspiration, ideas for action, or simply grieve with one another as needed. In these challenging moments, we must come together and remember that we are not alone, and we are powerful, they wrote. They thought about 50 people would show up. But more than 1,000 said they planned to come. So Durrett and Etten set up a sign-in sheet, a mailing list and a new Facebook group called Stronger Together LA. They were, said a friend, flying by the seat of their pantsuits. They showed up at Silver Lake Meadow with a case of water, a borrowed table and silver balloons in the shape of the letters P, S and N, as in Pantsuit Nation. They didnt think to get a permit. They had no speakers or megaphones. Durrett stood on a chair and shouted a greeting to the crowd before people split into smaller groups. In one circle, people shared and dispelled some of the many rumors bouncing around social media for example, that the viral efforts to donate to Planned Parenthood on behalf of Vice President-elect Mike Pence would wind up giving him a big tax break. After some discussion, they all agreed that those who wanted to donate to Planned Parenthood would be better off not mentioning Pence. In another circle, someone argued that calling local politicians would be far more effective than signing online petitions. Another asked which politician to call. No one knew. Others discussed how California could fight potential Trump policies, and the need to donate to Foster Campbell, a Louisiana Democrat facing a runoff election for the U.S. Senate next month. In the crowd was evidence of plenty of female pride: Rosie the Riveter lunchboxes, T-shirts that proclaimed The Future Is Female. Exit polls have suggested that more than half of white women voters chose Trump. That demographic was the majority of those gathered on Sunday. Some found that particular voting postmortem hard to swallow. Devastating, disappointing. Total shock, said screenwriter Tara Miele. Miele chalked it up to subconscious sexism from women. Its a reaction against a type of woman that wants to sit at the table and not just stand behind her man, she said. Some women vowed to confront their own families. Alyson Lippert, 26, said she would no longer be shy about sharing her political opinions with her conservative Kansas family. She said she was heading home for Thanksgiving, and Im going to be the loudest person there. Im going to be screaming. Jackie Tavelman, 60, a high school teacher in West Los Angeles, said she spends her days this time of year writing college recommendation letters for students. Some are undocumented and now dont know whether theyll be deported before they can go. She came to the gathering for them. I wanted to take action in a constructive way and hopefully bring some information back to my students who need to know what will happen to them, Tavelman said. Etten said she and Durrett still are deciding what theyll do next. They plan to meet monthly and disseminate information about anti-Trump initiatives via their Facebook group. This is just a beginning, she said. frank.shyong@latimes.com Twitter: @frankshyong ALSO Many Trump protesters say this is the first time theyve protested anything Trump Tower drawing job seekers, celebrities, media and thousands of protesters Tempers on both sides flare in California after Trumps unexpected election victory LA 90: LAPD will not help deport immigrants under Trump, chief says LAPD Chief Charlie Beck says the department has distanced itself from federal immigration policies A North Hollywood man has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing two men in a public park, killing one and seriously wounding the other. Anthony James Medrano, 29, was booked on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after the Saturday morning assaults at the Victory Vineland Recreation Center Park, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Police were called about 6:30 a.m. to the park in the 11100 block of Victory Boulevard and found the two men with multiple stab wounds, authorities said. Advertisement Medrano allegedly confronted and assaulted Federico Hernandez, 67, who had been walking through the park and collecting cans and bottles, according to a police statement. The suspectt repeatedly stabbed Hernandez, police alleged, before knifing a 61-year-old man in another part of the park. Hernandez, a resident of North Hollywood, was pronounced dead at the scene. The other victim was rushed to the hospital, where he remained in serious condition, police said. His name was not released. Police did not say what motivated the attacks. Medrano has not been formally charged and was being held without bail in Los Angeles County jail, according to inmate records. An attorney for Medrano could not be reached for comment. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact LAPD Det. Dave Peteque at (818) 374-1934. matt.hamilton@latimes.com Twitter: @MattHjourno. A Stanislaus County sheriffs deputy who was slain by a gunman Sunday had always wanted to work in law enforcement and loved his community, family members recalled during a vigil hours after the lawmans death. Were both sons of a law enforcement officer and thats all we ever wanted to do as kids, said Dave Wallace, whose brother, Dennis Wallace, was shot twice in the head Sunday morning, according to KXTV. We truly loved each other, and I can tell you that Dennis truly loved this community, Wallace said. Advertisement The Stanislaus County sheriffs deputy was shot and killed in an execution carried out by a wanted man who was caught hours after he carjacked one motorist, robbed a liquor store and tried to snatch a purse from a woman in Tulare County, authorities said. Deputy Wallace, a 20-year department veteran, was shot twice in the head shortly after coming across a stolen van in Fox Grove Park, just outside the city of Hughson, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson told reporters at a news conference. We know for a fact that the gun used in this crime was in direct contact with his head when the trigger was pulled twice, Christianson said in a video posted by news station KCR3. This was an execution. The suspect, identified as David Machado Jr., 36, fled before carjacking a 2009 white Kia Rio in the nearby community of Keyes, Christianson said. The van was abandoned nearby. While on the run, Machado traveled at least 150 miles before committing an armed robbery at a convenience store in Lindsay, about 15 miles east of the city of Tulare in the Central Valley, Christianson said during another news conference announcing the suspects arrest. Then, shortly after noon, Machado tried to steal a purse from a woman, who fought back and called police, he said. Police officers who responded to her report chased Machado on foot and took him into custody, the sheriff said. He surrendered to those peace officers who were chasing him, Christianson said. He said Machado was identified through his tattoos and a photograph that had been released to other law enforcement agencies. Authorities have recovered a van Machado used to flee from Fox Grove Park as well as the Kia Rio he carjacked later, according to Christianson. Theres still much work to be done, Christianson said. We will be bringing Mr. Machado back here to Stanislaus County to stand trial and we will seek justice, and justice will be done in this case. Christianson said the events that led to the shooting began about 8:24 a.m. Sunday, when Wallace called in and was told by dispatch that a car he saw at the Fox Grove Fishing Access was stolen. Wallace asked for another unit but never responded to additional messages from dispatchers, Christianson said. A second deputy discovered Wallace when he arrived. The gunman had fled, Christianson said. The carjacking in Keyes occurred about 8:40 a.m., the sheriff said. Machado, he said, had an outstanding warrant in connection with another felony, but the sheriff did not elaborate. He is a known criminal, Christianson said. Wallace, he said, was well-known for working on anti-drug and early intervention programs. He was married with a family, the sheriff said. Right now its kind of in a fog, Wallaces brother said at Sundays vigil. But the fog will clear, the sun will shine and we cannot and will not let evil win. Some who mourned the deputy showed their support for the department by delivering flowers. Law enforcement agencies throughout the state also sent their condolences through social media. The killing of Deputy Dennis Wallace has had a tremendous negative effect on all of the organization, Christianson said. Weve lost someone who is special to us. The killing was the second in four years for the Stanislaus County Sheriffs Department. In 2012, Deputy Robert Paris, a 16-year department veteran, was killed along with a civilian when a gunman opened fire as authorities tried to serve an eviction notice at an apartment complex in Modesto. Last month, four law enforcement officers were slain in California in a two-week period. On Oct. 6, Los Angeles County Sheriffs Sgt. Steve Owen was shot as he responded to a burglary report in Lancaster. Authorities said Trenton Trevon Lovell, 27, shot Owen and then stood over the wounded lawman and pumped an additional four rounds into his body. Lovell, 27, has been charged with murdering Owen, attempted murder of a second sheriffs deputy and other charges. He was scheduled to be arraigned Monday. Days after Owens death, Palm Springs Police Officers Lesley Zerebny, 27, and Jose Gil Vega, 63, were shot and killed in what officials said was a planned attack. The Riverside County district attorney said John Hernandez Felix, 26, set a trap for officers and ambushed them as they stood outside his door. Authorities also said Felix used an assault rifle with an extended magazine and wore body armor during the shooting. As a convicted felon, Felix was prohibited from owning or possessing firearms. On Oct. 19, Modoc County Sheriffs Deputy Jack Hopkins was gunned down while responding to a disturbance call. Modoc officials said Hopkins was killed as he entered a property about eight miles south of Alturas when he was confronted and shot by Jack Lee Breiner. The deputy was killed instantly. As he fled, Breiner, 47, engaged another deputy in a gunbattle and was shot and wounded, authorities said. He has been charged with murder and other crimes in connection with the killing. On Sunday, Christianson lamented having to face reporters again to announce the slaying of one of his deputies and called for a show of unity for law enforcement nationwide. Unfortunately, we do this far too often here in California and nationwide, he said. You have to ask yourself the question: Where does it stop? Where does it end? ruben.vives@latimes.com Staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report. ALSO Firefighters battle a 25-acre blaze near Angeles National Forest Doctor who: This man faked his death and shed identities from L.A. to Kiev to escape justice, officials say Metro says dumping deputies in favor of local police will address safety concerns in some areas A firefighter was hospitalized after he burned his hand fighting a raging fire at a strip mall in Winnetka early Monday, authorities said. The blaze was reported just before 3 a.m. in the 20800 block of Sherman Way, where a 4,500-square-foot, single-story strip mall was engulfed in flames. An estimated 106 firefighters battled the flames, and the blaze was put out in under an hour, authorities said. The firefighter who burned his hand was listed in fair condition at a local hospital. The building was 61 years old and did not have fire sprinklers, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Advertisement A cause for the fire is under investigation. joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter Facing charges of healthcare fraud, Tigran Svadjian, a Newport Beach doctor, agreed to go undercover for federal prosecutors. But before he would wear a wire, he told them, he needed to visit his ailing mother in Russia. He never returned. The day he was to appear in court in 2002, prosecutors received paperwork from a Russian morgue stating that, just a few days before on a Moscow street, Svadjian died of pneumonia. Advertisement More than 10 years passed before prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss the charges against Svadjian. In 2013, they discarded the evidence collected against him. The criminal case against Svadjian was over. His estate was divided up among creditors. His wife and children moved on with efforts to rebuild their lives. Then, one day in July, a man traveling on a fake Lithuanian passport landed in Kiev. :: Svadjian began his career as a medical student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He was still a student when, at 25, he married Emilya Badzhaksizyan in 1983. A year later they had their first child, Andre, in New York. After Svandjians graduation, the young family moved to Southern California, where his father was also a doctor. The couple welcomed their first daughter, Alexandra, in 1986. Soon after, Svadjian, a native of Armenia, launched his own practice and expanded it into two offices in Orange County. Then, in 1998, Svadjian made a fateful decision. He purchased the Southwest Medical Group from a man ensnared in a federal medical fraud investigation, according to court records. The man also had suspected ties to Armenian and Russian organized crime. The man and dozens of other doctors were believed to have overbilled the government at least $13 million for medical tests and procedures at its offices in Burbank, Ventura and San Francisco, news clippings from the time show. Svadjian would later tell investigators that he was not involved, according to court records. But by 2002, the governments focus had turned on him anyway. According to a letter the state Department of Health and Human Services sent to Svadjian that year, a 14-month audit of his practices in Fresno and Los Angeles revealed he had overbilled California more than $1.9 million in treatments for state-insured patients. The letter claimed Svadjian provided only 13 of 200 medical records the state requested as part of an audit and that he could not account for 94% of the services he had allegedly performed. Some of the patients he had supposedly treated were dead, authorities said. Prosecutors eventually made Svadjian an offer, according to an FBI affidavit filed this summer: If he wore a wire and turned against his co-conspirators, his case would be kept confidential and the charges possibly reduced. Svadjian agreed and hopped on a flight to Russia. His lawyer told prosecutors that hed be back by the end of October. But on the last day of that month, Svadjians attorney in L.A. sent federal prosecutors in Sacramento a fax. Included was a Report of the Death of an American Citizen Abroad from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Svadjian had died 11 days prior on Barklaya Street, the document said. His remains were cremated and given to his mother, Margarita Petrosova. :: The Egyptian town of Hurghada had blossomed from a once-quiet fishing village stretching along the Red Sea to a beach resort that drew tourists with immaculate hotels and charming night life. See the most-read stories this hour It was there, in late 2002, that Vasily Petrosov found a home and began earning a living as a part-time scuba instructor. He fell in love with a woman from Sochi, Russia, a resort city on the coast of the Black Sea. In 2012, the couple had their first child, a son. Things were looking up for Petrosov and by the end of last year, he expected a second child. But this would be a difficult pregnancy, and would require a caesarean procedure. Petrosovs girlfriend flew back to her hometown, where the medical care would be better. There she would wait for him. Petrosov did not have a passport. The one he had was fake, and authorities seized it when he tried to renew it in Russia years before. Petrosov contacted a Lithuanian friend in Hurghada and purchased another fake passport. Petrosov became Viktoras Cajevkis. A Lithuanian. Armed with his passport and other documents, Cajevkis left Egypt for Russia with a stop in the Ukraine. But authorities in Kiev soon realized his passport was fraudulent and sent him back to Hurghada, where Egyptian police arrested him on July 31. Determined to find out who he really was, they searched his apartment, which yielded a Russian passport under the name of Petrosov. They also found a canceled American passport with another name. Tigran Svadjian. :: In the time Svadjian was gone, his father in California was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died. His daughter got married and had a son. His wife, Emilya, spent years in court fighting off creditors seeking to liquidate family assets to pay off millions of his debt. Some of Svadjians family members knew that he had not died, the affidavit says. His mother reportedly visited him in Egypt and he told investigators that he spoke to his father over the phone after vanishing, though they never saw each other again. But its unclear whether his wife and children knew his secret, according to a federal affidavit. When reached by a Times reporter, Emilya Svadjian said she was surprised to discover her ex-husband was not dead. How do you think I feel? I was given a death certificate, his ashes, she said during a brief phone interview. Its devastating and I cant talk about it. Greta Flate, whose husband represented Emilya Svadjian when she handled his last will and testament, was shocked to learn Tigran Svadjian was alive. What! What! That is wild! she said. We never asked any questions. :: On Monday, Aug. 1, Egyptian police notified the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that they may have an American citizen in custody. Late night on Thursday, Egyptian police escorted four representatives of the U.S. Embassy an FBI special agent, a diplomatic security special agent, an American Citizen Services officer and a Foreign Service National investigator to the Hurghada police station to interview their mystery man. They told the man he had the right to an attorney. He declined the offer and agreed to cooperate. They took his fingerprints and sent them to the FBIs high-tech Criminal Justice Investigative Services Division in West Virginia. But according to court records, Svadjian admitted who he was and gave his real date of birth, Social Security number, and showed them his U.S. naturalization certificate. Then, according to the FBI affidavit, he unraveled for them the tale of how he remained hidden for so long: While overseas in October 2002, Svadjian met a Russian police officer at a party who said that for a service fee the man could fake his death. Svadjian agreed and paid $200 for the privilege of being dead, courtesy of falsified paperwork from a morgue in Moscow. He then obtained the Russian passport under the name Vasily Petrosov, whose birthday was in February 1961. Svadjian told his interrogators that the pseudonym was an old family name and the birthday belonged to one of his cousins. He moved to Egypt, where his father had citizenship and authorities at the time didnt check documents. He applied for citizenship there, authorities said, though he never got it. Svadjian faced up to 10 years in prison on his original case, but the charges had a five-year statute of limitations. Its unclear whether the statute was suspended after he vanished. Additionally, federal authorities discarded the evidence against him, thinking he was dead, the affidavit said. U.S. attorney officials said evidence on old cases is typically sent into storage, but they could not speak to what happened with the evidence they had against Svadjian. Though Svadjian sits in a federal holding cell in downtown L.A, he faces only a single charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, which carries a maximum five-year sentence half what he faced before he vanished. Prosecutors said they expect to reach a plea agreement with Svadjian by mid-November and wont prosecute him on the old, and much more serious, Medi-Cal fraud charges. When he was caught, authorities say, Svadjian had $2,000 in cash and $10,000 in an Egyptian bank account. His girlfriend had $260,000 in her accounts but he was unable to access it, the FBI said. While Svadjian was abroad, the state Department of Health and Human Services sought a judges order to allow them to take his familys home in a gated Newport Beach neighborhood. The state gave up its fight in 2005 and a year later, Emilya Svadjian divided her ex-husbands $63,000 in assets among the family. Her claim on his life insurance was rejected. But the FBI said she managed to empty out a Swiss bank account Svadjian maintained with $3 million. To read the article in Spanish, click here Joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. MORE LOCAL NEWS Californians have a lot to lose if Obamacare is repealed Metro staff recommends switching to LAPD for transit patrols in L.A. Students plan anti-Trump walkouts at L.A. schools Crews set out early in the morning Monday to battle a brush fire on the edge of the Angeles National Forest in Tujunga Canyon that ended up scorching 44 acres, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. The fire was reported to have burned about a quarter of an acre by 5:30 a.m., officials said, and grew to about 10 acres within two hours as it raced uphill through drought-parched grass and brush in the 13000 block of Little Tujunga Canyon Road. A fire that broke out today in the Angeles National Forest near Tujunga burned about 50 acres of brush, but no structures were threatened. Advertisement City and county firefighters rushed to the area to battle the flames. No structures were reported threatened or damaged, said Supervisor Michael Pittman of L.A. County Fire. U.S. Forest Service and county helicopters dropped water on the flames. With about 200 firefighters combating the blaze, the fire was 50% contained by 1:30 p.m. and its forward progress had stopped, the U.S. Forest Service said. Firefighters were working overnight to mop up and monitor the smoldering remains from the blaze, according to the Forest Service. The cause of the fire was under investigation. Joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. ALSO UC and Cal State will consider the first tuition hikes in six years American Apparel files for bankruptcy again and sells its brand to Gildan If Obamacare is repealed, California has the most to lose putting the insured on edge UPDATES: 7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with officials downgrading the fires size to 44 acres. 1:30 p.m.: This article was updated to report new acreage and containment numbers. 9:35 a.m.: This article was updated to report new acreage and containment numbers. 8:25 a.m.: This article was updated with the fires new estimated size. This article was originally published at 6:30 a.m. An effort to help former inmates gain access to higher education is coming to Cal State Fullerton, the first initiative of its kind in Orange County. Project Rebound, a program based out of San Francisco State University, provides mentoring and financial assistance to students who pursue advanced degrees after time behind bars. In addition to Fullerton, it is expanding its operations to CSU campuses in Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, Pomona, San Bernardino and San Diego. Ninety-nine percent of folks who are incarcerated come back to the community, said Brady Heiner, director of Project Rebound at Fullerton. Its incumbent on us to welcome them and provide them with the tools they need to succeed. Advertisement An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people are released from the countys jails each year, said Meghan Medlin, board chairwoman for the Orange County Re-Entry Partnership. Even more return to the county from state prisons. We have a high number of people who have criminal backgrounds, and we need to get them resources to help them get back on their feet, she said. We have programs in our community colleges, but to have one at a university, at that level, is exciting. According to educators, formerly incarcerated individuals typically face significant barriers when seeking advanced degrees. Some of them are procedural, some are social and cultural, and some are economic, said Heiner, an assistant professor of philosophy at Cal State Fullerton. What Project Rebound seeks to do is to build a pathway from prison to college to facilitate and assist folks in making that transition. Romarilyn Ralston, program coordinator for Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton, spent 23 years inside the California Institution for Women. She understands the difficulties firsthand, and says programs like Project Rebound are critical to students success. Theres a lot of stress and anxiety that comes with adjusting to a college campus and sitting in a classroom with students who have a lot of social capital, private school education and supportive parents and who dont have the trauma that comes with an incarceration history, said Ralston, who earned a bachelors degree from Pitzer College in Claremont and a masters from Washington University in St. Louis. For Ralston, higher education was not only critical to helping her secure meaningful employment, but also in shaping a new view on life. I was able to see myself differently in the world, she said. I was no longer a felon. I was becoming a citizen with rights and responsibilities. According to a 2014 report by the Rand Corp., inmates who participate in education programs are 43% less likely to return to prison. Lowering the recidivism rate through education is also cost-effective: The study found that every $1 investment in prison education saves about $5 on reincarceration costs. Project Rebounds data reveal that only 3% of its students return to prison, compared with the statewide recidivism rate of 65%, one of the highest in the nation. Cal State Fullertons Project Rebound will offer assistance to ex-inmates in a variety of ways. Prospective students will receive help completing their applications and, if admitted, will receive customized mentoring and tutoring in their course of study, as well as personal support from the staff. In addition, Project Rebound will supplement federal and state grants, so that full-time students at the university will pay only $2,000 per year, excluding housing, Heiner said. His hope is to enroll 10 students at Cal State Fullerton in the program by the spring semester, and then ramp up to 15 in future terms. Ralston also hopes that the expansion of Project Rebound throughout California will spark change in the public opinion. Everyone should have access to quality education in America, and that includes the formerly incarcerated, she said. Its the right thing to do. If we want to combat mass incarceration and recidivism, and if we want to help families break the cycle of poverty and incarceration, then we need to invest in higher education for all. caitlin.kandil@latimes.com Kandil writes for Times Community News Family and friends who gathered at Cal State Long Beach on Sunday grew emotional as they remembered the life of Nohemi Gonzalez, the only American killed in the Paris terror attacks last November. A year had passed since the 23-year-olds death while studying abroad at the Strate School of Design in Paris. She was one of 130 people killed in the bombing and shooting rampage on Nov. 13, 2015. I have no words for the big loss that I have in my life, her mother, Beatriz Gonzalez, said. She was my baby, my little girl. Advertisement On Sunday, more than 50 people gathered at the Duncan Anderson Design Department gallery, where Nohemis work and photos of her were showcased. Nohemi, who was studying industrial design, had worked as a teaching assistant and a shop technician in the Department of Design. In May, she received her bachelors degree posthumously. Outside of the gallery, attendees wrote messages on a sign that read, Nohemi Gonzalez a year of remembrance. Nearby, inside a display case, was a photo of Nohemi beside a model Eiffel Tower. Gonzalez grew teary-eyed as she spoke about her daughter. I feel happy that many people remember her, and its really nice for the people in the community to know shes being remembered as a good student, an amazing person and a beautiful spirit, Gonzalez said. France marked the first anniversary of the Paris terror attacks with commemoration ceremonies of their own and plaques bearing the names of the 130 victims, including Nohemis. Niran Jayasiri, 30, had been studying abroad with Nohemi in Paris. The night of the attacks, he had been out with her and other friends at a bistro. The group had taken their drinks outside, and it was there that Jayasiri heard what he first thought were firecrackers. Then, he saw the gunman and he ran. It wasnt until later that he would learn Nohemi had died. Jayasiri described Nohemi as someone who would help everyone without hesitation. She took care of others and was a happy person, he said. When you have somebody like that in your group of friends and you suddenly dont see them anymore, you notice it really well, he said. Its not an easy thing to cope with. As he looked around at the friends who had gathered Sunday, Jayasiri felt mixed emotions. In a way, Im glad a lot of people showed up to pay respect to her. But, at least for me, when I see my friends, everything comes back. All the feelings that I had when the incident actually happened all come rushing back, he said. We were a group of people that were tightly knit. Not seeing her in the group is difficult. After family members shared their memories of Nohemi, whom they affectionately called Mimi, attendees went outside, where a Chinese pistachio tree had been planted in her memory. What we love about this tree is, first of all, its unique. Theres no other tree quite like it around the area, said Martin Herman, chair of the department. It also turns a brilliant red around this time, which is Nohemis favorite color, and we very much like the idea of there being a transformation around this very special date, to remind us of her and of her life, her colorful spirit. Eventually, the department will design a plaque and add a bench as well, Herman said. Gonzalez shoveled up the first scoop of dirt, dropping it into the hole around the tree. One by one, faculty, students and family stepped forward to fill the hole. We have this tree now to remember all the legacy, effort and goodness and everything that she gave us, Gonzalez said. One day, Gonzalez said, she might sprinkle some of her daughters ashes at the tree. If I put a little bit of Mimi right here, then its like shes still here in this beautiful place, Gonzalez said. brittny.mejia@latimes.com Twitter: @brittny_mejia ALSO Sting reopens Bataclan hall, site of terrorist attack, one year after violence Supermoon 2016: The brightest supermoon in almost 70 years rises tonight Cal State Fullertons Project Rebound aims to make life after prison successful President Obama said Monday that the historic accord to curb Irans ability to develop nuclear weapons the most important arms control agreement in decades is working, and he expressed hope that Donald Trump will keep it intact. My suspicion is that when the president-elect comes into office he will look at the facts, Obama said at a news conference. Abandoning the deal would remove obstructions that blocked Irans nuclear capabilities and could force the United States to sanction European allies that continued to honor the accord. When you are not responsible for it, you can call it a terrible deal, Obama said. When you are responsible you are more likely to look at the facts. Advertisement The question remains whether the deal, ratified by six world powers and implemented under a United Nations Security Council resolution, will survive under a Trump administration. As a candidate, Trump targeted the Iran deal with special scorn but wavered on his intentions. He vowed at times to tear it up and at other times indicated he would negotiate stiffer concessions from Iran. In speeches, he vastly inflated Irans financial gains from the agreement, suggesting Tehran benefited unfairly. And he complained that it only limited Irans nuclear weapons program, not its ballistic missiles or other issues of concern to U.S. policymakers. But the United States enforces separate sanctions related to Irans ballistic missiles, its support for foreign terrorist groups and human rights abuses. The Treasury Department twice added sanctions to Iranian companies and individuals this year after the nuclear deal went into effect. We have seen that this agreement has done what we said it was going to do, which is limit Iran from obtaining a nuclear [weapon], said Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman. It wasnt focused on changing Irans behavior at large. It was focused on preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Trumps advisors make clear that revisiting the agreement is a priority for Trump even if the plan ahead is still a work in progress. Ripping up is maybe a too strong a word. Hes gonna take that agreement, its been done before in international context, and then review it. Walid Phares, Trump foreign policy advisor Ripping up is maybe a too strong a word. Hes gonna take that agreement, its been done before in international context, and then review it, Walid Phares, a Trump foreign policy advisor, told BBC radio. He will take the agreement, review it, send it to Congress, demand from Iranians to restore a few issues or change a few issues. And there will be a discussion. It could be a tense discussion. Another advisor, R. James Woolsey Jr., who headed the CIA from 1993 to 1995 under President Clinton, was more hawkish. Speaking on CNN, he called the deal the worst single international agreement the United States has ever signed. Woolsey said the deal was neither implementable nor verifiable. It is truly rotten, he said. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is formally known, Iran has met its commitments to curtail access to nuclear fuel and technology and is submitting to verification systems set up to monitor its compliance, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. U.S. officials and most arms control experts say Washington would be isolated if it withdraws from the deal. It could put the United States in violation of the Security Council resolution that it endorsed, kill any chance of another diplomatic deal with Iran and hurt U.S. credibility with the five other major powers who negotiated it: England, France, China, Russia and Germany. Even Israel, which fiercely opposed concessions to the Islamic Republic during the negotiations, has accepted that the deal is working and that Iran no longer poses an imminent nuclear threat. Worse, according to arms control experts, it could give Iran a free hand to cast off its commitments and give the U.S. few options short of military force to respond. Iran would be free to resume its nuclear program, and it would be difficult to impose new sanctions, said Gary Samore, a former arms control advisor to Obama who now is research director at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Trump administration would end up with furious allies and the resumption of Irans nuclear program, agreed Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Washington-based Eurasia Group, a risk-assessment firm. This has gone from a deal that was working to one that is at risk. The Obama administration argues that the deal effectively closed off all the pathways that Iran could pursue to obtain a bomb: by enriching uranium, producing plutonium or buying technology from other countries. Under the terms of the pact, Iran removed the core of a heavy water reactor under construction at Arak that ultimately could have produced plutonium, then filled the reactor with cement. It dismantled or mothballed thousands of fast-spinning centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium to bomb grade, and it shipped nearly its entire stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for reprocessing. U.S. officials said those steps extended Irans so-called breakout time the period it would need to build a bomb from two to three months to more than a year. Thats enough time for the world to respond should Tehran decide to rush for a bomb, advocates say. In exchange, key financial and trade sanctions were lifted from Iran, giving it access to the international financial system and global markets for the first time in years, as well as more than $50 billion in assets frozen abroad since the countrys 1979 revolution. There are several ways a Trump administration could kill or undermine the deal. The most likely strategy is to make new demands, such as insisting on more intrusive inspections on Iranian facilities or bases, or for a longer period before Iran can again enrich uranium. Iran would likely refuse putting the onus on Washington to either abrogate the treaty or continue to abide by it in some form. Trump also could decline to renew sanctions relief. As the deal is crafted, the suspension of various U.S. sanctions has to be renewed by the president every 120 or 180 days. But other countries, which have largely lifted sanctions, are unlikely to reimpose theirs. The agreement was harshly criticized by many Republicans, who said Iran could not be trusted and doubted that its nuclear program was truly crippled. A GOP-led effort to block the accord in Congress failed last year amid Republican infighting and a Democratic filibuster. When Trump met with Obama for the first time at the White House on Thursday, the president spent a good amount of time explaining the complexity of the deal, administration officials say. We obviously believe in the importance of the Iran deal, which had significantly rolled back Irans nuclear program and averts yet another conflict in the Middle East, said Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security advisor. Administration officials will run through the tape with Trumps advisors, he added. And then the new team will make their own determinations. And we respect that every administration will make its own judgment. For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter. ALSO LAPD will not help deport immigrants under Trump, chief says Obama will spend his final presidential trip abroad trying to reassure the world about Trump For the fourth time in American history, the president-elect lost the popular vote. Credit the electoral college Immigrants, their advocates and others opposing a Donald Trump presidency continued to protest Sunday, speaking out against the president-elects support of deportation and other measures. Organizers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like, Hate wont make us great, and chanted, We are here to stay. More than 1,000 people joined the march that started midafternoon and extended into the evening. Advertisement It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country. Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Several hundred protesters marched around Philadelphias City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting, Donald Trump has got to go! and This is what democracy looks like. In Los Angeles, a few hundred people gathered outside CNNs L.A. headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting, Love trumps hate! On Saturday, an estimated 8,000 people marched through downtown Los Angeles. In Oregon, police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during anti-Trump protests downtown. The Portland Police Bureau said most protesters were cited for disorderly conduct and failing to obey an officer. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. ALSO Trump chooses Priebus as chief of staff; Bannon to serve as equal partner Trump says hell seek to deport up to 3 million people in the United States illegally Were called redneck, ignorant, racist. Thats not true: Trump supporters explain why they voted for him Breitbart News wants supporters to #DumpKelloggs after advertiser pulls out By David Ng Breitbart News senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak, left, and Chief Executive Larry Solov at the Breitbart offices in Los Angeles. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) The Breitbart News Network is seeing some of its advertisers head for the exit doors and is responding in typical Breitbart fashion: by going on the counteroffensive, labeling one of them as un-American and calling it a war on conservatism. Since Donald Trumps victory in the presidential election, Los Angeles-based Breitbart has experienced a backlash from some advertisers who say that the online site conflicts with their corporate values. Breitbart took a pro-Trump stance during the campaign, supporting the Republican candidates views on immigration and national security. The companys executive chairman, Steve Bannon, who is on a leave of absence, was Trumps campaign manager and has been named chief White House strategist. Although Bannon was quoted in Mother Jones as saying Breitbart is a platform for the alt-right the ultraconservative movement associated with white nationalism the news site has denied accusations that it engages in racist rhetoric. The company has stated that it isnt affiliated with the alt-right and that the brand of nationalism it espouses is political, not racial. Breitbart is fighting back at one of the advertisers breakfast cereal maker Kellogg Co. by launching a Twitter campaign, #DumpKelloggs, that encourages its readers to sign a petition and boycott the maker of such favorites as Froot Loops and Apple Jacks. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Supreme Court weighs rules for jailed immigrants in Trump era By David Savage The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Saul Loeb / AFP-Getty Images) Facing the likelihood of dramatically stepped-up deportations under a President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court justices sounded closely split Wednesday over whether the government can indefinitely jail immigrants with criminal convictions while they fight legal efforts to remove them from the country. Trump, who made illegal immigration one of the platforms of his presidential campaign, has promised to deport as many as 3 million immigrants once he takes office, and the Supreme Court case involving a Los Angeles immigrant could give his administration greater leverage. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump says he saved American jobs, but he hasnt shown how he can turn the victory into policy By Noah Bierman A Carrier Corp. plant in Indianapolis. (Darron Cummings / Associated Press) President-elect Donald Trumps newly announced agreement to save more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana gave him the kind of trophy he covets: a tangible victory that matches his campaign promise to serve as deal maker in chief. But its long-term value will depend on what Trump gave up to keep those factory jobs from going to Mexico and whether he is able to craft a successful fiscal policy that has a broader impact on the economy. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Lawmakers reach a compromise to help California soldiers ordered to repay enlistment bonuses By David S. Cloud House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise Tuesday that would permit the Pentagon to forgive debts owed by thousands of California National Guard soldiers who received improper bonuses during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The agreement was included in a defense bill due to be voted on by the House on Friday and the Senate next week. It seeks to strike a balance between the Pentagons concerns about fraud in the bonus system and lawmakers attempts to resolve a scandal that has hurt thousands of military veterans and sparked a public furor. The compromise calls on the Pentagon to forgive the enlistment bonuses and student loans benefits unless the soldier who received the money knew or reasonably should have known that he or she was ineligible for it. The provision stops short of requiring the Pentagon to forgive debts allegedly owed by all California Guard soldiers as long as they fulfilled the terms of their enlistment contracts and did not commit fraud a far more sweeping waiver that members of the California delegation had proposed. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Pentagon says human errors led to mistaken bombing of Syrian-backed forces By W.J. Hennigan Smoke rises near the Syrian village of Hisha, about 25 miles from Islamic States de facto capital of Raqqah, after an airstrike by the American-led coalition on Nov. 9, 2016. (Delil Souleiman /AFP/Getty Images) A U.S. military investigation has found that unintentional human errors led to a coalition airstrike that mistakenly killed dozens of Syrian-backed troops this fall, but it did not recommend disciplining anyone for the deadly attack. The Sept. 17 air raid on a garrison in the eastern Syrian town of Dair Alzour is one of the worst coalition errors to emerge since the Obama administration began an air war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014. The attack, which was in an area also frequented by Russian forces, led to sharp criticism from Moscow after it emerged that Russian attempts to use a communications hotline to stop the attack were not answered for nearly half an hour. Russias Defense Ministry has said the attack killed 62 Syrian troops, wounded 100 more and opened the way for an Islamic State offensive in the area. It also helped destroy an already fragile U.S.-Russian cease-fire. A four-page redacted summary of the investigation that was released Tuesday concluded that the botched bombing did not violate international laws of armed conflict. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.N. slaps new sanctions on North Korea for recent nuclear test By Tracy Wilkinson Participants stand behind a military band in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 13 during a celebration rally after the countrys successful test of a nuclear warhead. (Kim Won-Jin / AFP/Getty Images) The United Nations has slapped additional sanctions on North Korea in an effort to cut its exports of raw materials as punishment for conducting another nuclear test. The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously approved a U.S.-drafted resolution aimed at cutting North Koreas exports of coal, copper, silver and other raw materials, which are its biggest legitimate sources of foreign revenue. The latest sanctions were issued in response to Pyongyangs fifth and largest nuclear test, which was conducted in September in violation of U.N. resolutions. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power estimated the new sanctions will cost North Korea about $800 million a year in lost export income. North Korea is determined to refine its nuclear and ballistic missile technology to pose an even more potent threat ... to international peace and security, Power said. But this resolution imposes unprecedented costs on the [Kim Jong Un] regime for defying this councils demands, she said. Previous international sanctions have had little apparent effect on decisions in Pyongyang, and its difficult to know whether the latest round will make a difference. In March, a set of sanctions described as the most severe in two decades was imposed. But North Korea has gotten around some of the restrictions thanks to complicity from China, its neighbor and longtime benefactor. Wednesdays measures included a 60% cut on North Koreas export of coal, its biggest income source, and bans on the export of copper, nickel, silver and zinc. The sanctions also banned North Koreas export of statues, a business that caters mostly to Africa, and blacklisted 11 people and 10 entities. Under the resolution, North Korea is also threatened with suspension of some U.N. privileges if it fails to comply. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print CIA director warns Trump it would be the height of folly to scrap the Iran deal By Brian Bennett In an unusual public warning, the head of the CIA said Wednesday it would be the height of folly and disastrous for President-elect Donald Trump to scrap the Iran nuclear deal. CIA Director John Brennan said in a TV interview that ripping up the historic accord could allow Iran to resume its nuclear program and set off an arms race in the Middle East by encouraging other countries to acquire their own nuclear weapons. I think it would be disastrous for the incoming Trump administration to renege on the deal with Iran, Brennan said in an unusually blunt interview with BBC. It could lead to a weapons program inside Iran that could lead other states in the region to embark on their own programs, so I think it would be height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement, Brennan said. It is extremely rare for the CIA director to issue a public warning to an incoming administration, and it suggests deep concern inside the intelligence community about Trumps intentions. During the campaign, Trump variously promised to dismantle or to revise President Obamas signature foreign policy achievement, an international deal that cut off Irans ability to build or acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for easing of sanctions on its finances and oil industry. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), Trumps pick to replace Brennan as CIA director, also has been a vocal critic of the deal. I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism, Pompeo wrote Nov. 17 on Twitter. After meeting Trump at the White House after the election, Obama said they had discussed the Iran deal and that he hoped it would survive intact, noting that the United States would be acting alone if it sought to impose new sanctions. The five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany negotiated the deal in 2015, and the U.N. later voted to enforce it. Implementation began in January, and no evidence has emerged to indicate Iran is violating its side of the agreement. View Twitter post Obama administration officials want to brief Trump and his top advisors on classified details and assessments of the Iran deal, including monitoring systems put in place to verify Iranian compliance. So far, Trumps transition team has delayed receiving more than a handful of in-depth intelligence briefings. There are a lot of people out there who read the papers and listened to news broadcasts where the facts may be a bit you know off, Brennan told the BBC. I want to make sure the new team understands what the reality is. It ultimately will be up to them to decide how to carry out their responsibilities, Brennan said. Robert M. Gates, a former CIA chief and secretary of Defense, also called for preserving the nuclear deal. It would be a mistake to tear up the agreement at this point, Gates said in an interview on CBS This Morning. I think we would be the ones isolated, not the Iranians, because none of our partners who helped to negotiate that would walk away from it. But I think what the new president can do is push back against the Iranians. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rep. Nancy Pelosi elected by House Democrats for another term as minority leader By Lisa Mascaro House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) House Democrats elected Rep. Nancy Pelosi for another term as minority leader after she fended off a rival who said the November election showed the party needs change at the top. The San Francisco Democrat has beaten back challengers before, but this years campaign from Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan focused attention on President-elect Donald Trumps success in attracting white, working class voters in Rust Belt states that had traditionally been part of the Democratic base. Pelosi responded by expanding her leadership team to include more seats at the table for younger members and those from states Trump won. The only woman to serve as House speaker, Pelosi has faced calls for her ouster ever since Democrats lost the House majority in 2010. First elected to leadership in 2002, the mother of five -- and grandmother -- has also endured questions about how much longer she will stay at the helm. The 76-year-old typically swats back such inquiries by noting the comparable ages of male colleagues in leadership roles elsewhere in the Capitol. Pelosi remains a fundraising powerhouse and despite interest by other Democrats in taking a turn at leadership, few have been able to make the case to their peers that they could match her drive. But this year, Pelosi appeared to take her challenge seriously. She repeatedly worked to shore up support from liberals and minorities who make up the bulk of the Democratic caucus. She also pointed to the gains Democrats have made under her watch -- they picked up six seats in November -- and warned that losses could have been worse. Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, in nominating Pelosi during a closed-door meeting Wednesday, said, We need the very best to lead us.... No one is a better tactician than Nancy Pelosi. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump pledged to protect Medicare. His choice for health secretary has other ideas By Noah Bierman Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), President-elect Donald Trumps choice for Health and Human Services secretary. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)) President-elect Donald Trump reassured voters during his insurgent political campaign that he would protect Medicare, Social Security and other popular federal assistance programs. But in tapping Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary, he has elevated one of the most aggressive proponents of dramatically overhauling the government safety net for seniors and low-income Americans, a long-held conservative goal. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump says he will leave his business in total to fully focus on running the country By Jim Puzzanghera (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he would leave his business operations in total to fully focus on running the country. Trumps vast interests in real estate and other ventures have raised unprecedented concerns about the potential for conflict of interest, both at home and internationally. In one of a series of tweets, Trump said he would be leaving my great business in total. Legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task! he said. However, Trump made no mention that would be giving up ownership of the Trump Organization, which includes hotels, golf resorts and other properties and many licensing deals that span the globe. Neither did he specify whether his separation from his businesses would be permanent. To avoid conflicts or the perception that his presidency would benefit his financial empire, government ethics lawyers and watchdog groups have urged him to sell off his businesses and put the assets in a blind trust to be managed by an independent third party. Trump said last week that he has been turning over operations of his businesses to three of his children, who already have senior positions at the Trump Organization. But some critics have said turning over control to his children may not be enough to alleviate such concerns, since several of his adult children remain active in planning his transition. What he does not seem to realize, or does not want to admit, is that the conflicts arise from his ownership of the Trump Organization, said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in reacting to Trumps announcement Wednesday. He will continue to know what his business interests are and to benefit from them whether or not he is involved in the day-to-day management, so the conflicts remain unchanged. Federal conflict-of-interest rules for government employees and members of Congress dont apply to the president. Trump said in an interview with the New York Times last week that the president cant have a conflict of interest In theory, I can be president of the United States and run my business 100%. He said then that it would be very hard to sell off his businesses because they are mostly real estate, but also noted that he would like to try and formalize something in terms of an arrangement that would distance his businesses from his work as president. On Wednesday, he tweeted that While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses. Trump said he would detail the changes at a New York news conference with his children on Dec. 15. I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my ... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016 great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to .... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016 do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump names billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as Commerce secretary By Jim Puzzanghera President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence greet investor Wilbur Ross, left, in New Jersey on Sunday. ( (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)) President-elect Donald Trump has chosen billionaire financier Wilbur Ross, known as the king of bankruptcy for his investments in distressed properties, to serve as Commerce secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision. If confirmed, Ross would become the Trump administrations chief liaison with the business community and a leading advocate for U.S. trade abroad. Ross, 80, who was a senior policy advisor to Trumps campaign, is worth $2.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Like Trump, Ross has been critical of U.S. trade deals. He sharply criticized trade negotiators and called for the U.S. to withdraw from the yet-to-be-ratified Trans-Pacific Partnership and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump has pledged to do both upon taking office. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump taps Wall Street executive and Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary By Jim Puzzanghera Steven Mnuchin at Trump Tower in New York this month. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AFP/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Steven Mnuchin, a wealthy Wall Street executive and Hollywood movie producer who served as his campaign finance chairman, to be the next Treasury secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision. Mnuchins deep roots on Wall Street fit the mold of past Treasury secretaries but contrast with the populist stance that Trump took during his campaign. Mnuchins net worth is unclear, but he could be the second billionaire member of Trumps Cabinet, after Betsy DeVos, who is Trumps pick for Education secretary. The third is expected to be financier Wilbur Ross, who has been selected as Commerce secretary. Mnuchins selection which was first reported Tuesday by the New York Times drew ire from Democratic and liberal groups, which have accused him of profiting from the financial crisis after buying the failed IndyMac Bank in 2009. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Noam Chomsky, Junot Diaz and nearly 400 MIT faculty oppose Trump picks in open letter By Colleen Shalby President-elect Donald Trump. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Nearly 400 MIT faculty members, including professor emeritus Noam Chomsky, writer Junot Diaz and four Nobel Prize winners, signed an open letter criticizing President-elect Donald Trumps Cabinet picks. The President-elect has appointed individuals to positions of power who have endorsed racism, misogyny and religious bigotry, and denied the widespread scientific consensus on climate change. Regardless of our political views, these endorsements violate principles at the core of MITs mission. At this time, it is important to reaffirm the values we hold in common. The letter also denounces the controversial rhetoric often associated with Trumps campaign and impending presidency. For any member of our community who may feel fear or oppression, our doors are open and we are ready to help, it states. MIT boasts a student body represented by 120 foreign countries, all 50 U.S. states and three U.S. territories. While campaigning, Trump lauded his late uncle, John, who was a professor at MIT for nearly 50 years. Shortly after Trump announced his candidacy, he spoke about him to CNN. I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. Its in my blood. Im smart. Great marks. Like really smart, Trump said. A handful of faculty members who signed the statement overlapped in time with John Trump. At least one, physics professor Robert Jaffe, said that he did not know the uncle, but hopes that his nephews administration will maintain a dedication to science. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print With no Cabinet to build, Hillary Clinton appears with Katy Perry By Chris Megerian Pop star Katy Perry was one of Hillary Clintons biggest celebrity boosters on the campaign trail, and on Tuesday night the former Democratic presidential nominee introduced the singer at a charity gala in New York. Perry has served as UNICEFs goodwill ambassador. Hilary Clinton surprise appearance just now to intro @katyperry #SnowflakeBall #UnicefSnowflake pic.twitter.com/3wh2Zc2BwG David Ushery (@DavidUshery4NY) November 30, 2016 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jill Stein pays fee to green-light Wisconsin recount By Michael A. Memoli The recount is officially on. The Wisconsin Elections Commission said Tuesday that Green Party nominee Jill Stein has paid the nearly $3.5 million estimated cost to set into motion a statewide retabulation of the presidential vote. Stein had asked for the recount after claiming that evidence of foreign interference existed. She is also seeking recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania; together, the three states carry enough electoral votes to flip the election from President-elect Donald Trump to Democrat Hillary Clinton, but such an outcome is all but impossible. The Wisconsin recount, which starts Thursday, is likely to cost Stein slightly more, the commission said, blaming an earlier error in adding up cost estimates from the 72 county clerks who will oversee the ballot review. Stein will be charged whatever additional costs are incurred after the recount is concluded. Officials on Monday said that most counties will complete their recount in a week but that more populous counties will face a challenge in meeting the deadline to certify results. The state aims to finish by Dec. 12, as state law gives the recount petitioner five days after the new tally is finished for further legal challenges. Presidential electors in 50 states and the District of Columbia will meet Dec. 19 to formally cast the votes that will elect Trump as the next president. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Repeal and replace Obamacare? It wont happen on Trumps first day, GOP leader says By Lisa Mascaro House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) cast doubt on whether the Republican-led Congress would be ready to repeal Obamacare by inauguration day, as some in President-elect Donald Trumps transition team have suggested could happen in a special session. But McCarthy said Republicans would try to start as soon as possible on what he acknowledged would be a complicated two-step process to repeal and replace Obamacare that will consume much of 2017 and beyond. Their plan involves retroactively passing a fiscal 2017 budget in the early weeks of Trumps term. Such a maneuver would give Republicans the ability to unwind President Obamas signature domestic program with a simple majority vote, without facing a Democratic filibuster. Replacing the Affordable Care Act would come later, and likely extend into fiscal 2018. Once its repealed you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and everybody coming to the table to find the best policy, McCarthy told reporters. I just want to make sure we get it right. McCarthy on Tuesday welcomed reports that Trump intends to nominate House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) to lead the Health and Human Services Department as Congress focuses on getting rid of Obamacare. Democrats, though, suggested that Price, a medical doctor who has championed House Speaker Paul D. Ryans plans to overhaul Medicare, will face so much opposition in the Senate that he may not be confirmed. Try it, said Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the incoming Democratic minority leader. Privatization of Medicare goes way beyond where most Americans are. For years, Republicans have promised to end Obamacare, and with Trump in the White House they will have their best opportunity to do so. But McCarthy cautioned that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act will be more complicated than simply sending a bill to the White House for the presidents signature. Instead, Congress will need to insert special repeal instructions as part of the wonky budget reconciliation process. And that will take time, he said. McCarthy said that replacing Obamacare will be even tougher than repealing it. Even though Republicans have promised their own healthcare law, they have never been able to produce an agreed-upon alternative. To gather ideas, McCarthy said he would solicit advice from governors and state insurance commissioners. Hell be sending a letter to the states later this week. Since Congress did not pass a 2017 budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, they hope to retroactively approve one in the weeks ahead so they can include the first part of the special instructions needed to repeal the program. But he doubted that would be completed by the time Trump takes office. I dont think you can do it before [Jan.] 20th, he said. Theres only so many legislative days. The finish the job, lawmakers will use the reconciliation process for the fiscal 2018 budget, which is due by spring. McCarthy predicted Congress would still need to pass additional legislation, which cannot be completed through the reconciliation process, in order to ensure a smooth transition. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Obama will skip Fidel Castros funeral but is sending an informal delegation By Christi Parsons The Cuban flag hangs at half-staff in front of a picture of Fidel Castro on the facade of the Cuban national library in Havana. (Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP/Getty Images) President Obama is not going to the memorial service for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on Tuesday but instead is sending a pair of key representatives to pay their respects, an informal appearance that reflects the delicate diplomacy between the White House and the leadership in Havana. Obama is sending Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, along with deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, but the two men are not being dispatched as part of a formal delegation, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. DeLaurentis and Rhodes played key roles in reopening U.S. ties to the communist island nation in late 2014, ending five decades of a Cold War-era freeze in relations. The policy has been celebrated for opening the possibility of expanded trade with and travel to Cuba, while critics attacked Obama for engaging with President Raul Castro without extracting concessions on human rights. His brother Fidel held power through firing squads, false imprisonment and harsh treatment of dissidents. President-elect Donald Trump was one of those critics, saying after Fidel Castros death that if Cuba isnt willing to make a better deal for the Cuban people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal. After Castro died Friday, the White House released an oblique statement noting that his death filled Cubans with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Donald Trump to pick Elaine Chao, a well-connected establishment figure, as Transportation secretary By Noah Bierman President-elect Donald Trump plans to name Elaine Chao a former Labor secretary married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as his Transportation secretary, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). Chaos establishment ties conflict with Trumps promise to drain the swamp in Washington and promote outsiders to lead his government. But Chaos connections could be an asset in Trumps plan to promote a major infrastructure proposal that could face resistance from within his party. Trump has decried the state of the nations airports, bridges and roads and promised to make their revitalization a major part of his jobs program aimed at helping working-class Americans whose votes helped propel him to victory. Chao, who served as Labor secretary through the entire George W. Bush administration, could play a central role in negotiating an infrastructure spending bill while her husband leads the Senate. Trumps spokesman Jason Miller did not confirm the pick on a conference call with reporters but said that Trump had taken people whove been successful in all different walks of life including business, government, and military to fill a Cabinet that Miller called a true dream team. The Taiwan-born Chao also exemplifies the type of immigrant success story that became the subject of debate during Trumps campaign, which promised to crack down on illegal immigration and labeled many of those entering the country illegally from Mexico as criminals, drug dealers and rapists. Chao is one of four sisters who attended Harvard Business School. Her family donated $40 million to the institution in 2012. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.S. economy grew 3.2% in third quarter, the best in two years By Jim Puzzanghera The U.S. economy grew faster in the third quarter than initially estimated, expanding at its strongest pace in two years in a rebound from a weak first half of 2016. Total economic output, also known as gross domestic product, expanded at a 3.2% annual pace from July through September, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. The figure was up from an initial estimate of 2.9% and the best performance since the economy expanded at a 5% annual rate in the third quarter of 2014. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Q&A: What you need to know about the Wisconsin recount By Michael A. Memoli This is certainly not Bush vs. Gore, a Wisconsin elections official said Monday. Well, what is it? The state is initiating the first significant candidate-driven recount in a presidential election since the 2000 ordeal in Florida between then-Vice President Al Gore and eventual President George W. Bush. This time, though, Donald Trump is certain to remain president-elect after Wisconsins nearly 3 million ballots are re-tabulated. But the fight here and potentially in other states has given third-party candidates new rationale for seeking public attention for their causes, and it has given Trump fresh ammunition to trash his opponents as well as, bafflingly, the political process in which he just secured the presidency. Here is a look at the issues involved in the Badger State and elsewhere as the seemingly unending 2016 presidential election seeps into overtime. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print By tweet and petition, Donald Trump and the left cast doubt on credibility of election By Noah Bierman (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Rather than celebrating his victory, Donald Trump is amplifying far-right conspiracies to undermine the credibility of an election he won. At the same time, he is finding some common cause in the quixotic effort by the fringe left to prevent him from reaching the White House. The chances of changing the election result with selective ballot recounts, as some on the left hope, or finding widespread voter fraud as alleged by Trump are next to nil. Yet a combination of self-interest and a desire for misdirection have propelled factions of both parties to debate the results of an election already decisively settled. Trumps motives are often hard to pinpoint. But by pushing the myth that millions of ballots were cast illegally for his opponent, as he has done on Twitter in recent days, he may be building the case to claim a larger mandate for his victory despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is leading the popular vote by more than 2 million votes. The issue also distracts attention from mounting questions about the financial conflicts of interest he is likely to have in the White House, given that he plans to allow his children to run his international real estate and branding business while he serves as president. Finally, Trumps rhetoric may also sow the seeds of future efforts to propose more restrictive voting rules championed by some of his top advisors. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Democrats look to make some deals with Trump and divide the GOP in the bargain By Lisa Mascaro Republicans became known as the party of no during the Obama years because of their frequent efforts to block the presidents initiatives. As congressional Democrats prepare to deal with a Republican White House, they appear ready to take the opposite approach, effectively challenging President-elect Donald Trump by finding opportunities to say yes. The goal is to strategically engage with the White House on common objectives and at the same time try to drive a political wedge between Trump and those Republicans anxious about his costlier ideas, such as rebuilding infrastructure, aiding blue-collar workers and expanding paid family leave, a pet project of daughter Ivanka Trump. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump to name a harsh critic of Obamacare as his pick for Health secretary By Noam N. Levey (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump plans to select House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary, according to a person familiar with the decision. In picking Price, Trump is tapping an arch-conservative lawmaker and leading critic of the Affordable Care Act to lead his push to roll back President Obamas signature health law. Price, a six-term congressman from suburban Atlanta, has never held an executive position comparable to leading the federal Department of Health and Human Services, a behemoth that includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid. Three of the four previous Health and Human Services secretaries were former governors. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, would be the first physician to serve as the departments secretary since Dr. Louis Sullivan, who held the post from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. He would also be among the most politically conservative Health and Human Services secretaries in history. And as a member of House leadership, he would bring to the Trump administration a revolutionary governing agenda closely aligned with Republicans on Capitol Hill. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump says he won the electoral college in a landslide, but he ranked near the all-time bottom By Cathleen Decker In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016 President-elect Donald Trumps tweet that he would have won the popular vote this month but for millions of illegal voters was not based on fact. There is no proof backing up his statement, and voting researchers uniformly dismissed it as false. Also problematic was his second claim in the same tweet, that his victory was one of the rare landslides in American political history. A study of electoral vote results by John J. Pitney, an author and professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, shows that Trump resides on the lower end of the electoral vote scale. He won 56.97% of the electoral votes up for grabs by virtue of his state wins. That places him 46th out of the 58 elections since George Washingtons era, Pitney found. In 38 elections, the winner exceeded 60% of the vote, a lopsided verdict by voters. Clear landslides were won most recently by Ronald Reagan in both of his elections: In 1984, he won 97.58% of electoral votes, and in 1980 he won 90.89%. President Obama won nearly 68% of the vote in 2008 and just under 62% in 2012. Faring worse than Trump among modern presidents was George W. Bush, who eked past Al Gore in 2000 with 50.37% of the vote, after a protracted squabble over the Florida results that ended in a U.S. Supreme Court verdict favoring Bush. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump says Cuba has to act or hell end the diplomatic thaw, but its not that simple By Tracy Wilkinson In his latest comment on Cuba since the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he would end Washingtons diplomatic thaw with the island unless Cuba makes a better deal. If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal, Trump tweeted. President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro renewed diplomatic ties in 2014 after a half-century of Cold War hostility. Since then, through a series of executive orders, Obama has eased restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and U.S. firms doing business there. Castro, at the same time, has made it easier for Cubans to travel and to engage in limited private enterprise. However, Castro has not enacted significant political reforms, and the death Friday of his brother, former president and leader of the revolution Fidel, at age 90, is not likely to usher in quick change. It was not clear what Trump meant by a better deal. An email seeking clarification from his transition team was not answered. Previously, however, Trump has spoken of the release of political prisoners and more open space for free expression of opinions and dissent. These are the same elements the Obama administration has been demanding, while choosing not to delay economic progress while awaiting political change. From a legal standpoint, Trump could easily reverse Obamas executive orders with little more than a signature. Politically, however, renewed estrangement would be more complicated and would isolate the U.S. as the only country in the world that does not recognize the Communist-led government in Havana. Its not as simple as one Tweet might make it seem --@PressSec Josh Earnest, on whether @realdonaldtrump might undo @POTUS Cuba policy Christi Parsons (@cparsons) November 28, 2016 Trump and his top aides have sent conflicting signals over his likely Cuba policy. On Saturday, his staff put out a statement saying a Trump administration would do all it can to help Cubans achieve prosperity and liberty. But it did not mention reversing Obamas actions expanding ties. While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, Trump said, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve. Kellyanne Conway, a top advisor, told NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday that nothing is definite when it comes to Cuba. But Trumps soon-to-be White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said that Trump would be looking for some movement in the right direction to keep the Cuba opening on course. Conservative Republicans, like Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, oppose detente with Cuba as long as any Castro continues to rule. But a growing number of Cuban Americans, as well as most Democrats and a substantial segment of the business community, want better ties and opportunities for economic exchange. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print The era of super-low interest rates might be ending. Whats in it for you? By Jim Puzzanghera Since President-elect Donald Trumps surprising election victory this month, financial markets have sent a forceful message that the era of super-low interest rates is coming to a close. Mortgage rates have shot up. Bond yields have jumped to their highest levels in a year. And the dollar has surged against other major currencies to values unseen in more than a decade. Those developments have been fueled by expectations of stronger economic growth and higher inflation from Trumps promises to cut business taxes, reduce regulations and increase defense and infrastructure spending. His plans triggered a post-election stock market rally and, combined with recent solid economic data, increased expectations that the Federal Reserve would nudge up its benchmark short-term rate again next month with more hikes to follow next year. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump seems ready to fight the world on climate change but hes likely to meet resistance By Evan Halper Coal trucks leave a power plant operated by PacifiCorp outside Huntington, Utah. ( (George Frey / Getty Images)) Donald Trump is branded with all manner of unflattering labels, but one that hasnt seemed to much bother him is climate pariah. The president-elect is unabashed in his disdain for Americas global warming policy. He has placed a staunch climate-change doubter and antagonist of mainstream science in charge of reshaping or as Trump has suggested, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency. He has talked frequently about reneging on the historic Paris global climate treaty the U.S. took a lead in drafting. And he has said he wants every federal green-energy program eliminated. Environmentalists take little comfort in Trumps recent comments that he accepts there is some connectivity between human activity and climate change and that he has an open mind about it, as what hes said elsewhere and done so far suggests otherwise. And even those comments gave scientists cause for alarm. You can make a lot of cases for different views, Trump told the New York Times, casting doubt on the finding by more than 90% of climate scientists that emissions are accelerating global warming. Im not sure anybody is ever going to really know. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law whos the next presidents eyes and ears By Chris Megerian The election results were rolling in, and so were the phone calls for Donald Trump. But no matter who was on the other end of the line, the person handing the phone to the next president of the United States was the same. Jared was screening the calls, said Armstrong Williams, a political ally who described the scene in Trumps Manhattan skyscraper on election night. That would be Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, and his election-night role provides a glimpse of the enormous influence he wields as Trump prepares to take office in January. As the husband of Ivanka Trump, the president-elects elder daughter, Kushner holds an unassailable position inside Trumps unruly ecosystem of advisors. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump falsely claims that millions voted illegally, costing him the popular vote By Matt Pearce Donald and Melania Trump cast their ballots on Nov. 8. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Donald Trump falsely claimed Sunday that he won the popular vote, alleging in a tweet without evidence that millions of people had illegally voted for his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally, Trump wrote, hours after he tweeted his opposition to a recount in Midwestern states initiated by the Green Party. In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016 Election experts, who say election fraud is rare, immediately denounced Trumps claim. Theres been no evidence produced of millions or thousands or even hundreds of noncitizens voting for president in 2016, tweeted Rick Hasen, a professor of law and politics who writes for the Election Law Blog. The source of Trumps claim appears to be a widely shared Nov. 14 article on the conspiracy site Infowars, which is famous for claiming the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax. Politifact investigated the illegal votes claim and rated it false. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump is warned that supporters will feel betrayed if he picks Mitt Romney as secretary of State By Don Lee A senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump stepped up an extraordinary public effort Sunday to discredit Mitt Romney and thwart the chances that he would be picked as secretary of State. Kellyanne Conway warned on Sunday TV talk shows that Trumps supporters would feel betrayed if he picked the former governor of Massachusetts, a sharp critic of Trump during the campaign, for a senior Cabinet position. Conway, who was Trumps campaign manager and now is a top advisor to the incoming president, said she felt compelled to speak out on the matter because of the backlash from the grass roots. People feel betrayed to think that Gov. Romney, who went out of his way to question the character and the intellect and the integrity of Donald Trump, now our president-elect, would be given the most significant Cabinet post of all, Conway said on NBCs Meet the Press. They feel a bit betrayed that you can get a Romney back in there after everything he did, she added. We dont even know if he voted for Donald Trump. Conway dodged questions about whether Trump supported the concerns she has been raising publicly about Romney, which began with a tweet she posted on Thanksgiving morning: Receiving deluge of social media & private comms re: Romney. Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state. Conway made clear that she did not approve of Romney, who was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, and didnt see him as especially qualified to act as Americas top diplomat. In the last four years, has he even been around the globe doing something on behalf of the United States of which were unaware? she asked on CNNs State of the Union. Did he go and intervene in Syria where they are having a massive humanitarian crisis? Meaning when I say intervene, like offered help. Has he been helpful to Mr. [Benjamin] Netanyahu? she said of the Israeli prime minister. Im all for party unity, but Im not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of State position, Conway said, although she quickly added that she would respect what Trump decides. During the campaign, Romney called Trump a phony and a fraud and said his policies would lead to economic ruin. In response, Trump mocked Romney as a failed candidate who had choked in the 2012 race. But a little more than a week ago, Trump met with Romney for about 90 minutes at a golf course in New Jersey to discuss the State Department post. Afterward, Trump said the meeting went great and Romney described the discussion as very thorough and in-depth. Trump is also considering Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was a fierce Trump loyalist during the campaign, for the job. The former mayor of New York has touted his experience traveling, consulting and speaking overseas since leaving office in 2001. But his extensive business deals abroad have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest if he gets the post instead of Romney. In criticizing Romney, Conway exposed what appears to be deep divisions in the Trump camp as it tries to assemble a team. It is highly unusual for a senior representative of an incoming president to be lobbying publicly against a candidate under consideration. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and Trumps choice to be chief of staff, on Sunday sought to downplay reports of internecine struggles in the transition. However, he acknowledged that picking Romney would represent a team of rivals concept. Trump wants to put the best possible people together for all Americans, Priebus told Fox News Sunday. The fact that hes actually even flirting with the idea of choosing a rival should tell the American people where hes at which is the best place for everyone in this country, he said. Conway also said Trump, who spent the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., talked with President Obama by phone on Saturday for about 40 or 45 minutes. She wouldnt say what they talked about. I can tell you from President-elect Trumps side that he very much enjoys speaking with President Obama, talking about the serious issues that face this country and the world, Conway said on NBC. They get along nicely. They disagree on many things. Thats not going to change. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Hillary Clinton campaign will participate in ballot recount in Wisconsin By Don Lee Hillary Clintons presidential campaign will participate in a ballot recount led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin and perhaps two other battleground states that were crucial to Donald Trumps victory, a Clinton campaign lawyer said Saturday. In response, Trump called the recount request ridiculous and a scam designed to raise money for Steins political party. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Donald Trump names KT McFarland, Don McGahn to White House posts By Michael A. Memoli Don McGahn is named by President-elect Donald Trump as his White House counsel. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump added to his West Wing roster Friday, naming KT McFarland as deputy national security adviser and Donald McGahn as his White House counsel. McFarland served in three separate Republican administrations, most notably as a spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger under Ronald Reagan. In 2006, she sought to challenge Hillary Clinton for her U.S. Senate seat from New York but lost in the Republican primary. Most recently, she has been a regular contributor to Fox News on national security issues. She joins retired Gen. Michael Flynn, previously named as Trumps national security adviser. So proud & honored to have KT McFarland as part of our National Security team. She will help us #MAGA General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 25, 2016 McGahn, who was general counsel for Trumps campaign and a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, is a partner at the powerhouse Washington law firm Jones Day. President Obama revealed at a recent news conference that he had advised Trump to hire a strong White House counsel to guide him and his team, who could provide clear guideposts and rules to help avoid ethical and conflict of interest concerns. Trump campaign officials said Friday that the president-elect, who is spending the holiday weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, would make no additional high-level announcements until next week when he returns to New York. On Monday, he will meet with several more potential Cabinet and sub-Cabinet choices, including Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta and Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ben Carson hints he may join Trump Cabinet as Housing secretary By Christi Parsons Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks in Lakewood, Colo. on Oct. 29. (David Zalubowski / Associated Press) Ben Carson said Wednesday that an announcement is imminent about his role in improving the nations inner cities a broad hint that President-elect Donald Trump will name him secretary of Housing and Urban Development. After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution, particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone, Carson said on Facebook. An announcement is forthcoming about my role in helping to make America great again. Carson, himself once a candidate for president, would be the first African American named to Trumps Cabinet. He was a mild critic of Trump during the campaign, but after dropping out of the race, he backed Trump and now serves on the president-elects transition team. Though Carsons professional background is as a neurosurgeon, he has spoken often of his experiences growing up in inner-city Detroit, with a mother who sometimes relied on food stamps and other assistance. Carson has said they moved into a tenement at one point but has never said whether he lived in public housing. Days ago, a senior advisor said Carson thought he lacked the background needed to manage a federal agency, and that he didnt think it was the best way for him to serve. Carson didnt want to take a position that could cripple the presidency, advisor Armstrong Williams told the Hill newspaper. HUD is responsible for administering low-income housing assistance, fair housing laws, housing development and aid to neighborhoods in distress. Carson indicated a change of heart Wednesday. We have much work to do in strengthening every aspect of our nation and ensuring that both our physical infrastructure and our spiritual infrastructure is solid, he wrote. In an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Trump suggested he isnt applying the usual standard of qualifications to his Cabinet picks. Were trying very hard to get the best people not necessarily people that will be the most politically correct people, because that hasnt been working, Trump said. So we have, really, experts in the field. Some are known and some are not known, but theyre known within their field as being the best. Thats very important to me. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump picks Michigan school-choice advocate to be his Education secretary By Christi Parsons President-elect Donald Trump chose a Michigan charter school advocate and prominent Republican donor to serve as his secretary of Education, he said Wednesday, a decision that may hearten supporters of school choice but worry teacher unions and even some of Trumps core supporters. Trumps pick, Betsy DeVos, is a champion of charter schools and school vouchers that give families tax funds they can spend on private school if theyre not happy with their local public schools. DeVos, 58, served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, a credential that ties her to the party establishment reviled by many Trump supporters. She and her family are among the countrys largest donors to Republican and conservative Christian causes, including opposition to same-sex marriage. She has also backed the Common Core initiative to standardize educational requirements across the nation. Trump repeatedly called for its demise. In a tweet after her selection was announced, DeVos disavowed past support for Common Core, acknowledging that the topic was an issue among conservative activists. Many of you are asking about Common Core. To clarify, I am not a supporterperiod. Read my full stance, here: https://t.co/qB2nAXvX0B Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) November 23, 2016 In his statement announcing her as his choice, Trump called DeVos a brilliant and passionate education advocate. Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families, Trump said in the statement. 1:46 a.m.: This post was updated with DeVos statement about the Common Core. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump may have one more Cabinet-level pick coming before Thanksgiving By Christi Parsons (John Minchillo / Associated Press) President-elect Donald Trump may decide another Cabinet-level position Wednesday, aides said, after he announced South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as his ambassador to the United Nations. Aides did not say which job Trump was considering making an announcement about. As he and his family settle in for Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Trump is still spending significant time on one prominent position, secretary of State, a sign that a pick for it may not come before the holiday, one staffer on the presidential transition team said. In his search for a secretary of State, Trump has met with close advisor and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and with Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president. Aides said Trump chose Haley for the U.N. post because she improved South Carolinas economy and took part in overseas trade and recruitment trips. The two have a natural chemistry, one staffer said, and their views jibe on how the U.S. should be represented on the world stage. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump taps South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for U.N. ambassador By Tracy Wilkinson South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley speaks at the Federalist Societys National Lawyers Convention in Washington on Nov. 18. (Cliff Owen / Associated Press) President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a rising star in the GOP, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, an announcement that brings a measure of diversity to a transition that has been dominated by white, male figures. Haley, 44, and the daughter of Indian immigrants, is the first woman and first person of color to be picked for the new administration. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Dalai Lama: I have no worries about Trumps election By Associated Press (Ganbat Namjilsangarav / Associated Press) The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, said he has no worries about Donald Trumps election as U.S. president and expects the businessman will align his policies with global realities. Commenting at the conclusion of a four-day visit to Mongolia, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism said he looks forward to meeting Trump at some point after the Jan. 20 inauguration. The 81-year-old monk says he has always regarded the U.S. as the leading nation of the free world and wasnt concerned about remarks made by Trump during the election campaign. Some of those comments have been cited as offensive to Muslims, Latinos and other U.S. minority groups. China accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to split Tibet from China and had demanded Mongolia scrap his visit. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump asks Ben Carson to consider Housing secretary post By Chris Megerian Donald Trump asked Ben Carson to consider serving as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an advisor to the former Republican presidential candidate said Tuesday. They discussed the potential job at a meeting in the morning and Carson is seriously considering it, said the advisor, Armstrong Williams. Its a role that plays to Dr. Carsons passions, he said. Asked what qualifications the retired neurosurgeon has for overseeing housing policy, Williams said: Dr. Carson has experience with everything. Youd be shocked at the depth of his experience. Williams had previously suggested that Carson didnt feel he had the experience to serve in Trumps Cabinet, but he said Tuesday that those comments were taken out of context. Housing secretary was one of a few options discussed Tuesday, Williams said. Carson always felt that hed be willing to serve in the administration if Trump felt that no one else could fill the position, he added. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Texas judge blocks Obama administrations new overtime rule from taking effect By Michael A. Memoli Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez. (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) A Texas judge blocked President Obamas bid to expand overtime pay protections to millions of Americans on Tuesday, thwarting a key presidential priority just days before it was set to take effect. The Labor Department rule would have doubled the salary level at which hourly workers must be paid extra for overtime pay, from $23,660 to $47,476. Siding with business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Texas District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III halted it. The rule, finalized in May, represented the first such change in more than a decade and was hailed at the time as the most consequential action the Obama administration could take for middle-class workers without congressional involvement. Plaintiffs had argued the Labor Department acted beyond its authority under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The administration said more than 4 million salaried workers stood to benefit from the change when it took effect Dec. 1. The rule was already in jeopardy after the election of Donald Trump. Just as the Obama administration made the change through its rule-making prerogatives, a Republican administration could undo it. Neither the White House nor the Labor Department had an immediate comment. Republican lawmakers and their allies in the business community, which were behind the legal challenge, celebrated the decision. The decision brings us a step closer to curbing regulations that have resulted in $80 billion in compliance costs and more than 25 million hours of paperwork, said Linda Kelly, senior vice president for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. The fights are not yet over and our work is just beginning. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Heres why the electoral college (probably) wont stop Donald Trump from becoming president By Chris Megerian Some liberals who really, really, really dont want Donald Trump to be president are pinning their hopes on a long-shot effort to prevent him from officially winning the election. Understanding how their plan would work requires some background on the electoral college, which was established in the Constitution at a time when the founding fathers were wary of direct democracy. As widely known, presidents are not chosen based on the national popular vote if they were, Hillary Clinton would be the next commander in chief, given she is ahead by roughly 1.7 million votes. Each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes based on population. Those votes are awarded to candidates based on the states popular vote. Trump won the presidential race with 290 electoral votes. (That total will reach 306 if Michigan is called for him, as expected.) The process doesnt end on election day. Each electoral vote is represented by an elector, an actual person who has to cast an official ballot for the president on Dec. 19. The electors are chosen through different processes state by state, and usually are selected by state political parties. With unrest over the result, there are efforts to persuade electors to be faithless, meaning they wouldnt back Trump even if he won their states. A Change.org petition calling the president-elect a danger to the Republic has almost 4.6 million supporters. What are the chances of this actually happening? Very slim, says George C. Edwards III, a Texas A&M political science professor who has written a book about the electoral college. From time to time, there are faithless electors, he said. Theyre few and far between. There were some electors who refused to vote for winning candidates in the 1800s, such as six who declined to support James Madison, but never enough to sway the outcome of the race. In the last century there have only been a handful of cases. There were some attempts to persuade electors to back Al Gore over George W. Bush during the disputed 2000 election, but they were unsuccessful. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Can Trump put another Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court? By David Savage Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals moderates a panel discussion during the Federalist Societys National Lawyers Convention in Washington last week. ( (Cliff Owen / Associated Press)) President-elect Donald Trump will soon have the chance to make good on one of his most consequential campaign promises: fill the Supreme Court vacancy with a judge in the mold of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February. Any Trump nominee is almost guaranteed to be a conservative jurist who is antiabortion and supports a strict interpretation of the 2nd Amendments right to bear arms. But what kind of conservative he selects will determine whether his nominee will be quickly confirmed or instead trigger a fierce fight in the closely divided Senate, potentially overshadowing the early months of Trumps presidency. If Trump opts for a Scalia-like justice, as he repeatedly said he would during the campaign, conservatives lawyers say the betting favorite is Judge William H. Pryor Jr. from the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, a former Alabama attorney general who called the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law. The 54-year-old Pryor believes in Scalias approach of interpreting the Constitution by its original meaning one that has little room for gay rights, even womens rights. His nomination would electrify Trumps conservative base, but it would also set off a confirmation battle for which the outcome is not assured. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Michelle Rhee has some thoughts on Donald Trump By Joy Resmovits After meeting with president-elect Donald Trump Saturday, former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee weighed in on people who have told her to avoid him. She also indicated that shes not likely to be named as Trumps secretary of Education. In light of the speculation about the Secretary of Education role, I wanted to clarify my position and what's best for America's students. pic.twitter.com/DXRZxdAZNX Michelle Rhee (@MichelleRhee) November 22, 2016 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump veers off script on climate change, his potential conflicts of interest and even whether to prosecute Clinton By Evan Halper President-elect Donald Trump strayed far from the talking points of his campaign during his wide-ranging interview Tuesday with New York Times journalists. Trump suggested he does not necessarily need to sever ties to his businesses while president. He said he has an open mind to acting on climate change. And he even offered some praise for the Clinton Foundation. On the business ties, Trump was vague about when he will wind them down and how. He suggested he intends to transfer ownership to his kids, but then he also noted that the president is immune from federal conflict-of-interest laws. "In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There's never been a case like this,"he says of his tangles Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016 Trump on his businesses/conflict q's: "The law's totally on my side, the president can't have a conflict of interest." Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016 Trump, who once declared global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, backed off his skepticism of climate change. He said he believed there is a connection to human activity and warming but he is still undecided about how much of one. And he said he has an open mind to keeping in place the international climate agreement President Obama took a lead in negotiating, which Trump has been vowing for months to withdraw from. Tom Friedman asks if Trump will withdraw from climate change accords. Trump: Im looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it." Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016 Trump also addressed the public re-emergence of the white supremacist movement, and how his campaign has energized those groups. He said he disavows and condemns such groups, including the neo-Nazis who gathered in Washington over the weekend. But he defended his pick of chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, the Breitbart News executive who boasted that his outlet is the platform for the alt-right. Trump: Ive known Steve Bannon a long time. If i thought he was a racist, or alt-rightI wouldnt even think about hiring him." Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016 Trump is asked about concerns from minority groups about Breitbart Newss coverage under Steve Bannon. His reply: pic.twitter.com/FBqCGwQpBr Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016 When the conversation turned to Hillary Clinton, Trump said he will not press law enforcement agencies to prosecute her. And he even said people could argue the Clinton Foundation has done good work. Trump is pressed if he has definitively ruled out prosecuting Hillary Clinton. Its just not something that I feel very strongly about." Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) November 22, 2016 That last tweet was Trump making clear he doesn't favor prosecution. Added people could argue the Clinton Foundation has done "good work." Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016 Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Ben Carson made it clear that he was too inexperienced for a Cabinet job. Now Trump says hes considering Carson for one By Evan Halper I am seriously considering Dr. Ben Carson as the head of HUD. I've gotten to know him well--he's a greatly talented person who loves people! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 It was only a week ago that Ben Carson had put out word that he wasnt qualified to run a federal agency, and thus had no place in Donald Trumps Cabinet. Now Trump says Carson would be the perfect person to run a federal agency. Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he is seriously considering Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Carsons qualifications? Hes a greatly talented person who loves people! Perhaps Carson was playing hard to get last week, when one of his top advisors, Armstrong Williams, told multiple news outlets that Carson wasnt a good fit for any of the Cabinet posts. Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience; hes never run a federal agency, Williams told the Hill. Trumps tweet that Carson was at the top of his list for the HUD job was unusual for another reason. Such trial balloons are typically floated anonymously, to gauge public reaction. If its hostile, the president-elect can scrap the plan and deny it was ever something he seriously contemplated. After Trumps advisors put the media on notice Tuesday morning that they would offer no details of what Trump will discuss at his meeting with Carson, Trump went ahead and shared them with millions of people himself. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Donald Trump may have won the election, but hes still mad at the media By Evan Halper The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is, David Remnick writes. https://t.co/6vOriXjf4E The New Yorker (@NewYorker) November 22, 2016 So much for burying the hatchet. Even victory has not diminished Donald Trumps resentment of the news media. His relations with the news outlets have gotten no better now that he has transitioned from confrontational candidate to confrontational president-elect. Trumps angry rant about the New York Times on Tuesday morning in which he briefly canceled a meeting with the outlet followed what was by several reports a stormy session the day before with major news networks. Television executives and journalists traveled to Trump Tower for the closed-door meeting anticipating a discussion about media access to the White House and perhaps a recalibration of the increasingly hostile relationship. Trump had something else in mind. He delivered an angry scold about the way he has been covered, complaining of unfairness even in the selection of the photos of him used during broadcasts, which, he griped, emphasized his double chin. He called the coverage outrageous and dishonest, according to a report in the New Yorker. Its unclear what Trumps intentions were. But if his goal was to chasten the media, he did not succeed. Some at the meeting described being offended and accused Trump of failing to understand the press 1st Amendment protection from government suppression. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Aide says Trump does not want to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton By Del Quentin Wilber A top official of Donald Trumps presidential campaign on Tuesday reaffirmed signals sent by the president-elect that hes not interested in pursuing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, despite his repeated campaign promises to prosecute the Democratic nominee over her handling of classified materials and involvement in the Clinton Foundation. Kellyanne Conway, Trumps former campaign manager, also told MSNBC that congressional Republicans should follow Trumps lead, suggesting they drop their own probes into Clinton. I think when the president-elect, whos also the head of your party, tells you before hes even inaugurated that he doesnt wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content to the members, Conway said. Trump had promised his supporters that he would re-investigate whether Clinton broke laws while using a private email server as the nations secretary of State, even after the FBI concluded she had not. During a presidential debate, he even pledged to assign a special prosecutor to look into the matter. Despite his supporters strongly favored such an investigation -- they often erupted into chants of Lock her up! at his rallies -- Trump hinted after the election that he had changed his mind, telling 60 Minutes earlier this month that the Clintons were good people and he didnt want to hurt them. Conway said the former Democratic presidential candidate still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans dont find her to be honest or trustworthy, but she added, If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps thats a good thing to do. FBI Director James B. Comey has said that Clinton was extremely careless in how she and her aides handled classified information on her private server while she served as secretary of State. But agents, he said, turned up no evidence they had intended to violate espionage laws. The Justice Department agreed with Comey and closed the inquiry. Its highly unusual for a president to tell an attorney general whether or not to investigate a potential criminal matter, especially one involving his political rival. Trumps apparent desire to drop the matter raises questions about the FBIs inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which unlike the email probe has not been concluded. The attorney general would have some discretion whether to prosecute, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. Politically, however, its not feasible if the president really doesnt want it to happen. The FBI has not commented on the status of any investigations into the Clinton Foundation. FBI agents in New York were reportedly looking into the nonprofit and wanted permission to use more aggressive law enforcement tools to dig deeper into the organization. But they were blocked by prosecutors and top FBI officials who did not believe the investigators had developed evidence to justify such actions, according to law enforcement officials. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print One of Donald Trumps meetings might offer a clue for how he wants to replace Obamacare By Noam N. Levey Dr. James Jackson performs a physical on Matthew Shorter, 51, a Medicaid patient enrolled in the Healthy Indiana Plan, at the Heart City Health Center in Elkhart, Ind. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) Donald Trump has consistently vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare. But he has yet to explain what he intends to replace it with. His meeting schedule today might offer a clue of what he is pondering. On the agenda is a chat with Seema Verma, an architect of Indianas unusual healthcare program for the poor. Indiana is among a handful of red states that took federal aid through the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid eligibility to poor, childless adults. But unlike most traditional Medicaid expansions, Indiana set up a system that requires many low-income residents on the program to pay small monthly contributions for their health coverage. Conservatives, including the states governor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, have argued that this makes poor patients take greater responsibility for their health. And healthcare advocates in Indiana generally supported the program, in large part because it was seen as the only way to expand health protections in the deeply conservative state. But cost-sharing requirements for low-income patients remains controversial, and a number of states that have experimented with it in the past stopped after concluding it was too expensive and difficult to administer. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Britain says not so fast to Trump tweet about Nigel Farage as ambassador to U.S. By Laura King Donald Trump, right, welcomes pro-Brexit British politician Nigel Farage to speak at a campaign rally in Jackson, Miss., in August. (Gerald Herbert / Associated Press) Donald Trump and Nigel Farage were always something of a love match. But cold political realities may have intervened. The U.S. president-elect tweeted late Monday that Farage, leader of a far-right British political party, would make a great British ambassador to Washington. Apparently, the British response early Tuesday could be summarized as: Er, no. There is no vacancy, the Guardian newspaper quoted a spokesman at 10 Downing St., the prime ministers official residence in London, as saying. We already have an excellent ambassador to the U.S. Farage was a wholehearted proponent of Brexit, the June referendum in which the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, with still unknown long-term results. The British politician traveled to the United States during the campaign to offer his support for Trump, making rally appearances to sometimes bemused crowds to promote their purported common cause. In the course of his push for the presidency, Trump declared himself Mr. Brexit, and at one point dubbed his insurgent campaign Brextit-plus-plus an allusion to his support for a referendum across the Atlantic that was strongly colored by anti-immigrant sentiment. Farage was among the early visitors to Trump Tower following the GOP candidates unexpected victory. The two posed, grinning, in front of a bank of gold-plated elevators in the president-elects Manhattan residence. But hopes of a more formalized relationship appear to have been dashed. The Guardian quoted members of Parliament as saying Farages inflammatory views made him a poor candidate for a diplomatic post. The Reuters news agency said it would be highly unusual for an incoming foreign administration to so publicly air its pick for a diplomatic post. Trumps suggestion, it noted, provoked anger, support and even hilarity in Britain. The news agency quoted a Conservative lawmaker, Simon Burns, as joking that Britain should name its own choice for U.S. envoy to the United Kingdom: Hillary Clinton. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump the president vs. Trump the businessman: Can he juggle both? By Don Lee Donald and Melania Trump greet a guest at a grand-opening ceremony last month at Trumps new hotel in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) The Trump Organization spent months trying to drive off the culinary union from its Las Vegas hotel, losing one legal battle after another before a federal labor board. Soon Donald Trumps company, which has refused to bargain with the union after housekeepers and other employees voted to join last December, could gain some leverage. As president, Trump will be able to appoint two new members to the National Labor Relations Board, giving the agency a 3-2 Republican majority that could be more sympathetic to Trump. We hope that Mr. Trump doesnt use his power to interfere, considering he has a financial interest in the outcome, said Bethany Khan, spokeswoman for Culinary Workers Union Local 226. Khans concern is but one of many examples of potential conflicts of interest that could arise for Trump the president vs. Trump the businessman. His vast holdings include hotels, office buildings and golf courses, and he has licensing deals across the globe. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Donald Trump briefly cancels meeting with New York Times and complains about its nasty tone By Amy Fiscus I cancelled today's meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016 Donald Trump briefly canceled a meeting Tuesday with New York Times journalists, claiming that its terms were suddenly changed. The charge was made in the obfuscatory style that has come to mark Trumps tweets. He said only that the terms of the meeting were changed, not who changed them; the paper said Trump, not anyone on its side, had requested new terms after the meeting was set. NYT did not try to change ground rules. Trump did, asking for only a private meeting and no on-the-record segment, which NYT refused. https://t.co/EpmZFdDYAh Jonathan Mahler (@jonathanmahler) November 22, 2016 The meeting was supposed to have included both a private discussion, similar to one Trump had Monday with television news network executives, and a segment where reporters were free to quote Trump by name. The Times said Trump later asked for the meeting to be fully private, a request the newspaper refused. After the cancelation gained widespread attention, spokeswomen for both Trump and the newspaper said it was back on as scheduled. Trump has done a handful of interviews since being elected, none with the Times, and has not held a news conference, as is customary for most presidents within a few days of their election. He also said the papers coverage of him had a nasty tone, without citing specifics. Its front page Wednesday included stories questioning the constitutionality of his foreign business deals and one citing concerns that the military might have too much influence over foreign policy in a Trump administration. 7:25 a.m.: This story was updated with the scheduled meeting being reinstated. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Neo-Nazi alt-right crowd cheers the president-elect with Hail Trump By Jessica Roy A newly released video shows a room full of people doing the Hitler salute and yelling Hail Trump! after listening to a speech about white nationalism that invokes Nazi terminology. The video was taken over the weekend by a reporter for The Atlantic while working on a documentary about Richard Spencer. Spencer is the person speaking in the video. He runs the National Policy Institute, a self-described alt-right think tank that openly supports white nationalist and neo-Nazi policies. In the past, he has called for a peaceful ethnic cleansing of the United States. In the video, Spencer calls the media leftists and cucks, invoking popular alt-right insults for people they disagree with. He calls the media the Lugenpresse, which is what the original Nazi Party called the media in Germany the lying press. We dont exploit other groups, he says, the we referring explicitly to white people. We dont gain anything from their presence. The press has clearly decided to double-down and wage war against the legitimacy of Trump and the continued existence of white America, he continues. But they are really opening up the door for us.... America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us. America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us. Richard Spencer Members of the crowd give the Nazi salute throughout the speech. Last week, the Twitter accounts for Spencer and his think tank were suspended, along with a number of other alt-right accounts. Trumps campaign issued a statement in response to the video: President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind and he was elected because he will be a leader for every American. To think otherwise is a complete misrepresentation of the movement that united Americans from all backgrounds. White supremacists have credited Trumps win with sparking a new interest in their movement. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Donald Trumps first promises since winning the election leave out the border wall, NAFTA and his Muslim ban By Noah Bierman President-elect Donald Trump spent more than a year campaigning to build a border wall, repeal Obamacare and rescind President Obamas moves to protect from deportation some immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally. But in his first extensive public comments since winning the election this month, Trump mentioned none of those issues. Nor did he talk about withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement, banning Muslims from entering the country, or ending the Syrian refugee program. Trump instead made five more modest promises for his first day in office during a nearly three-minute video released Monday that presented him as a more moderate figure and appeared to be an effort to soften Trumps message while he establishes an inner circle of advisors and Cabinet picks of hard-liners. In the video, Trump promises to withdraw from the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, a potential disaster for our country, and instead pursue bilateral agreements with some of the Pacific countries involved. He promised to lift restrictions on energy production, including shale and coal, implement a rule that any new government regulation must be accompanied by removing two regulations on the books and to instruct his Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a new cybersecurity plan. His only discussion of immigration involved the legal immigration system a crackdown on visa fraud. Trump also said his previously announced ethics rules barring employees in his administration from lobbying for five years after they leave the government and from lobbying for foreign governments for life would take effect as soon as he is inaugurated. Trump vowed in the video to release more plans in the days to come. These are some of our Day 1 executive actions, spokesman Jason Miller said in an email. By no means is it everything hell work on day one or after that many additional good things to come. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print World gets glimpse of deportation plan Kris Kobach took to meeting with Trump By Colleen Shalby Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state whos been tapped to join Donald Trumps immigration policy transition team, probably didnt intend for the world to see details of his plan to bar terrorists and Syrian refugees when he brought it to a meeting Monday. But thats what happened when he posed for a photo with President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump International Golf Club in New Jersey. The document was in full unobstructed view, as Kobach apparently wasnt thinking about the power of a zoom lens. The clearest part reads: DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY KOBACH STRATEGIC PLAN FOR FIRST 365 DAYS Bar entry of Potential Terrorists Update and reintroduce the NSEERs screening and tracking system (National Entry-Exit Registration System) that was in place from 2002-2005. All aliens from high-risk areas are tracked. Add extreme vetting questions for high-risk aliens; question them regarding support for Sharia law, jihad, equality of men and women, the United States Constitution. Reduce intake of Syrian refugees to zero, using authority under the 1980 Refugee Act. Record Number of Criminal Aliens in the First Year Those details arent exactly new. Trump has made it clear that he intends to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants in the country illegally who fall under his definition of criminal. And Kobach, who is behind several controversial immigration laws and was the architect behind the NSEERs system, has said previously that he will help Trump reverse President Obamas immigration policies. The Obama administration has set a second-term priority to deport migrants with criminal convictions. Since taking office, Obama has expelled more people than any other president in American history. Less legible on Kobachs document, but still visible, are mentions of its definition of criminal alien (any alien arrested for any crime, and any gang member); the phrase 386 miles of existing actual wall; the Patriot Act; and Draft Amendment to National Voter .... Its possible this line refers to the National Voter Registration Act. Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley criticized Kobach. Thats the height of irony if hes wanting a job in Homeland Security and youre able to see in a photograph what should be confidential information, Hensley said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Rolling out Obamacare was chaotic, but a repeal could be much worse By Noam N. Levey In the summer of 2013, as state and federal officials readied new insurance marketplaces created through the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans started getting disquieting notices from their insurers. Health plans were being canceled because they didnt comply with the law, often called Obamacare. Some 4 million people were ultimately told they would lose their plans. The ensuing outrage sparked a political firestorm, seriously eroded public confidence in Obamacare and forced an embarrassed President Obama to change federal regulations so people could keep their coverage. Yet that tumultuous episode could be dwarfed by what President-elect Donald Trumps administration and its congressional allies unleash beginning next year. They plan to not only repeal the law but are contemplating changes that are significantly more far-reaching and could disrupt insurance coverage for many more Americans than did the original law. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print The U.S. labor forces guy problem: Why arent more men working? By Jim Puzzanghera Inmates at San Quentin State Prison in August. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) As the recovery from the Great Recession continues, job growth is solid and the labor force is growing at close to its fastest pace since 2000 because more unemployed workers are coming off the sidelines. Still, the percentage of working-age Americans in the labor force remains stuck near its lowest level since the late 1970s. Although retiring baby boomers are the main reason, theres another troubling factor that experts predict wont be solved by stronger economic growth. Too many men in their prime dont have a job and arent even looking for one. Experts trying to figure out the reasons are probing the roles of criminal background checks, painkillers and even video games. In all, about 7 million men ages 25 to 54 are neither employed nor available for work, putting them outside the labor force. Their growing numbers worry and puzzle economists. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Obama gives strong support to Pelosi as she faces leadership fight By Christi Parsons House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) President Obama all but endorsed Nancy Pelosi to continue to lead House Democrats on Sunday, defending her as she faces a challenge to her position from restive members of the Democratic caucus. Although he is reticent to meddle in party votes while he is on the way out the door, Obama said at a news conference that he cannot speak highly enough of the first female House speaker, who has been a key ally on some of his most important work as president. She combines strong progressive values with just extraordinary political skill, and she does stuff thats tough, not just stuff thats easy, Obama said when asked whether the California Democrat should be reelected to her position. Obama made his remarks during a news conference in Lima, Peru, where he was wrapping up a summit meeting with Asian and Pacific leaders. Some of Pelosis decisions have been unpopular, even with voters in her San Francisco district, he said, but she has done them anyway because its the right thing to do for the American people. Pelosi faces a challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, a seven-term member of the House. Perhaps the most notable example of her support for Obamas agenda was Pelosis steadfast support for the Affordable Care Act, which likely cost some Democrats their seats in Congress in the midterm election when Republicans took over the chamber. In offering advice to fellow Democrats, though, Like all new presidents, President-elect Donald Trump has a crowded agenda for his first 100 days. Unlike his predecessors, Trump faces or is pursuing a slew of civil lawsuits, perhaps as many as 75. Trump entities have sued Jose Andres and Geoffrey Zakarian related to leases in the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C. Both backed out of leases after Trumps controversial comments about Mexican immigrants. Most prominently, Trump faces the resumption of a fraud lawsuit related to Trump University. The news is awash with reports that Trumps lawyers have asked for a delay of proceedings until inauguration, saying the president-elect is now too busy to participate. But it is hard to see how Trump would have more time for this suit after he moves into the White House. Being president is not a part-time job. The new president appears doomed to be distracted by his private concerns. Fortunately, a solution is within our grasp. Congress can pass a law that would put these kinds of civil actions on hold while President Trump remains in office. The law would have to provide that any lawsuit against a sitting president or president-elect, filed before or after he or she assumed office, would not proceed until the president left office. Such a law wouldnt protect the president from impeachment or criminal prosecution, but it would ensure that Trump would not be distracted by civil litigation arising out of his personal life or business interests. Advertisement Donald Trump has a vast fortune. If Congress doesnt shield him from [lawsuits], his time and attention will be dissipated trying to preserve his riches. Granting such temporary immunity may seem unprecedented. Its not. Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, federal law already protects soldiers and sailors by providing for the temporary suspension of judicial and administrative proceedings and transactions that may adversely affect them during their military service. Tailoring a new law to protect the president would ensure that the commander in chief, no less than our men and women in the armed forces, may devote [his or her] entire energy to the defense [and civilian] needs of the Nation. Any statute of limitations, federal or state, could also be suspended, or tolled, for the presidential term, meaning that such limits would not prevent parties from pursuing their claims after President Trump left office. (The law might have to make some exceptions for divorce, or child custody decisions, for example.) A Presidents Civil Relief Act is necessary because of the Supreme Courts decision in Paula Jones vs. Clinton. In that case, Jones sued then-President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment dating to his time as Arkansas governor. When it got to the Supreme Court, the justices had to rule on whether the Constitution conferred temporary civil immunity on the president. The answer was no, and almost as an aside, the court predicted the Jones suit would be highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of the presidents time. The court was right on the first point. The Constitution does not place the president above the law or make him temporarily immune from civil actions. But the court was utterly wrong in its prediction. The Paula Jones suit opened up a huge can of worms, occupying a tremendous amount of the presidents time. Statements the president made in the case were eventually found to be false, the president was held in contempt of court and he was disbarred from practicing law. Donald Trump has a vast fortune. If Congress doesnt shield him from the lawsuits that already afflict him, and those on the horizon, his time and attention will be dissipated trying to preserve his riches. As citizens, we dont have to care about his personal finances. But we do have to worry that he will be distracted from the duties he now owes the public. Admittedly, forcing plaintiffs to wait four or eight years seems unfair. Justice delayed could be justice denied. But as is true for members of the armed forces, there is a powerful, overriding case that the needs of the nation must outweigh the needs of the few. We simply cannot afford to have a president bogged down in lawsuit after lawsuit. Congress can also make things fairer by taking a few additional steps. First, any law passed must not be Trump specific. Rather it should provide for immunity from civil suit for all future presidents. A President Sanders or a President Rubio should also serve without such distractions. Further, Congress should consider whether to shield the president from having to testify in court even if he or she is not a party to the particular lawsuit. A suit against a Trump corporation, though not against Trump himself, may still require his time and testimony. Such suits could be allowed to proceed, so long as they did not require any testimony on the presidents part. Third and most importantly, symmetry is in order. If suits against a president cannot proceed, civil suits by the president in his personal capacity should not go forward either. In particular, President Trump should not be able to actively pursue libel suits or suits against those who breach contracts or owe him debts. Nor should he be able to testify on behalf of his business interests in their lawsuits. If we are going to temporarily protect Trump from suits, he must also be subject to a freeze on any personal legal actions he might wish to pursue or assist. Anything less would be a travesty. Trump shouldnt be defending himself or his businesses in civil court until he leaves office. And he shouldnt be suing others. His time is now our time. Saikrishna Prakash is a professor of law at the University of Virginia and the author of Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Reporter Catherine Decker wrote that the Democrats struggled through the wreckage of one of their worst election nights in memory. I had to reread worst. (For reeling Democrats, now what? Nov. 10) Winning a few hundred thousands votes more than your opponent is not the worst and underscores the necessity to get rid of the Electoral College, this being the fifth time, and second in 16 years, that actual votes didnt determine our president. To my mind, worst recalls Ronald Reagans 1984 landslide against Walter Mondale, Richard Nixons 1972 victory over George McGovern and Lyndon Johnsons 1964 triumph over Barry Goldwater. Advertisement Hillary Clinton made a mistake taking for granted so-called guaranteed states, barely losing Wisconsin and Michigan and winning Minnesota by slightly more than one percentage point. Others she lost, Pennsylvania and Florida, were in the 1-1.5% range. Even with that, the American people still voted for her over Donald Trump. Michael Russnow, West Hollywood .. To the editor: Rather than attacking the president-elect, perhaps progressives need to engage him. The damage caused by his hate speech is already done. Today I want to thank Trump for his massive infrastructure plan. It is desperately needed and is something no Democrat can get through Congress. At the same time I urge him to take another look at the evidence for climate change. He should also look at how American workers would be better protected if the government went after employers who pay less than minimum wage to undocumented workers instead of going after hardworking people who would make great citizens if given the chance. Trump is not an orthodox Republican. His commitments are uncertain. Progressives need to forge some sort of alliance with him as he has the power to be a bulwark against the right-wing ideologues serving in Congress and as vice president. Diane Lefer, Los Angeles Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: The Affordable Care Acts repeal would benefit us all. As a giveaway to the health and pharmaceutical industries, every part of our monetized healthcare system has turned into an extortion racket and become unaffordable to too many of us. (Trump embraces the cool parts of Obamacare but not the part that makes it work, Nov. 11) As a longtime advocate for single-payer healthcare with mandated price controls, I see California, without the constraints of Obamacare, again leading the nation in reform and finally giving the people the gift of healthcare. In the recent past, the state Legislature passed single-payer initiatives that were vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. We have already entered a new era where hope is allied with the revolutionary spirit that is part of our American heritage. Advertisement Jerome P. Helman, MD, Venice Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook California Democrats ask Obama to pardon nearly 750,000 Dreamers, but White House says it wouldnt work The members of Congress who persuaded President Obama to grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought into the country illegally as children are now asking him to use a pardon to prevent those immigrants from being deported by President-elect Donald Trump. The White House, however, promptly batted down the idea. Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Obama on Thursday asking him to use his pardon authority to forgive the past and future civil immigration offenses of the nearly 750,000 people granted deportation deferrals under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. They believe that would keep those people from being deported, and even though it would leave them in legal limbo without work permits or visas, they could more easily apply for legal status from within the U.S. without immigration offenses on their records. They wouldnt have a piece of paper, they wouldnt have work authorization, but they wouldnt have to be living in fear every moment of their lives about deportation, Lofgren said after a news conference Thursday. Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, said the pardons would probably be applied to the civil offenses related to entering and remaining in the country without authorization. But whether a pardon would actually be applicable in the so-called Dreamers situation is unclear. Lawyers disagree over whether the immigrants could be pardoned for civil crimes they havent been formally accused of, and whether such a pardon would actually prevent them from being deported while they seek legal status. A White House official signaled late Thursday that the administration was not considering a pardon for those registered under DACA because it believes a pardon would not allow them legal status. We note that the clemency power could not give legal status to any undocumented individual. As we have repeatedly said for years, only Congress can create legal status for undocumented individuals, an administration official said. After immigration reform efforts stalled in Congress during Obamas first term, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressured Obama to act independently to protect from deportation certain immigrants brought into the country illegally when they were children. He then used an executive order to create the DACA program in 2012. The Dreamers, one in three of whom are estimated to live in California, gave the Department of Homeland Security their fingerprints, home addresses and other information to undergo background checks that allowed them to defer deportation under DACA. At the time, advocates and the administration emphasized that providing the information would protect the Dreamers and was worth the risk. But with Trump vowing to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally and many fearing he may let the DACA program expire, Dreamers are worried the information they provided will be used to deport them. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose husband is an immigration attorney, said at the news conference she has been getting a flood of messages from frightened Dreamers. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Obama asking him to keep their information from the Trump administration. We promised these recipients security, and now they are facing a nightmare, she said. Roybal-Allard said those who pushed Obama to create the program and persuaded people to come out of the shadows to register with the government have an obligation to protect them. These are kids. We feel a sense of responsibility. We went out into our districts and we talked to the Dreamers, and they asked us, Is it really OK for us to do this? Roybal-Allard said. And we said, No, dont worry, you need to come forward. Now we are in a situation where all that we said, in fact, could possibly be reversed. Although the presidents pardon power is normally used for individual cases, there is some precedent for the chief executive to pardon a large group of people. President Jimmy Carter pardoned half a million Vietnam War draft evaders in 1977, and at least seven other presidents have issued broad pardons. Congress and the Supreme Court cannot undo a presidential pardon, nor can a new president. Lofgren said if Obama doesnt pardon the Dreamers, she hopes he responds with his own idea to help them. These young people are not alone, they are not going to be abandoned by us, she said. UPDATES 4:59 p.m. This post was updated with additional details throughout. 2:15 p.m. This post was updated with the White Houses response to the proposal. This post was originally published at 11:30 a.m. President Obama on Monday heads for Europe and then South America to face world leaders wondering what to expect from the U.S. after he leaves office, and to deliver the only honest answer he has: He just doesnt know. Aides to the president have spent the last few days wrestling with what to say about President-elect Donald Trump on the global stage. A private one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office a few days ago between Trump and Obama did little to shed light. As a result, Obama is planning simply to note Trumps public commitment to work with him on a peaceful transfer of power, and to point to the historical precedent of U.S. presidents honoring longstanding alliances Advertisement Presidents in both parties have been committed to investing in those alliances, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. Thats certainly what has happened in the past. Obama had hoped to be more specific when he first planned this trip months ago. Harboring a deep concern about the uncertain future of Europe, thrust into its own incendiary mix of a rise of nationalism amid an influx of millions of refugees, he wanted to use his final official foreign trip to reassure European allies and pledge support for shared policies. At the time, he believed that Democrat Hillary Clinton would be elected to succeed him in the White House and that hed be endorsing her plans to remain on the same foreign policy track after a long and divisive presidential campaign. Trumps election changed all that. The Republican president-elect has offered few details of his plans for dealing with the rest of the world even as he cast himself as an opponent of existing trade agreements, the Iran nuclear deal and much of Obamas military strategy. He has said he prefers to keep adversaries guessing. Of particular concern to the leaders of NATO-allied countries, many of whom Obama will meet with this week, is Trumps profession of admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The allies are at odds with Russia over its intervention in Ukraine, aggression in the Baltics and military support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in the years-long civil war there. This trip was really meant to say, You know, we went through it, but were going to be fine, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now the president has the unenviable task of explaining. European leaders fear the Trump effect, she said, and are very worried because the same populist, nationalist expressions, whether thats on immigration, whether that is on free trade, has certainly been running very strong political currents within Europe. Obama doesnt want to explain or speculate about Trumps plans, one senior aide said. Nor does he want to speak disrespectfully of the president-elect in private meetings with world leaders who may be trying to figure out how to deal with or even manipulate the new head of state. At the same time, Obama wants to be frank about the concerns and aspirations of Americans who elected Trump. The high-wire act begins Monday as Obama leaves for Athens, where hell discuss the NATO alliance and Greeces economic recovery with the countrys leaders. Hell also visit the Parthenon, that ancient symbol of democracy and western civilization, and deliver a major speech on how the world has changed while he has been in office. On Thursday hell fly to Berlin to pay one final visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he considers his closest partner over the course of his presidency. On Friday he will take part in a broader meeting that also includes the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Spain. Some see the election of Trump as heightening the importance of Merkel, on whom the U.S. has relied heavily to help manage the crisis in Ukraine and Europes economic future. Obama will weigh in with a much larger group of world leaders after flying to Peru on Friday for a summit of the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization. Obama will publicly confront the likelihood that the U.S. will back out of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal he spent years pushing. Trump made clear on the campaign trail that he is against it. Obama also may have to acknowledge to all of them, particularly Chinese President Xi Jinping, that the Trump-led government may not live up to the obligations of the global climate deal he pushed and that Obama and Xi jump-started with their own agreement two years ago. And the South Korean and Japanese delegation will surely want to talk about Trumps suggestions during the campaign that it might be a good idea for their countries to obtain nuclear weapons. Trumps nuclear policy remains elusive. He denied Sunday that he had recommended Japan or South Korea arm themselves with nuclear weapons, though he said so in a forum in March during a discussion of how to counter North Koreas efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. I have absolutely no idea what Trumps view is, said James Acton, a nuclear specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And neither, I strongly suspect, does he. Trump has also said some allies dont pay enough to support U.S. military bases in their countries and suggested that perhaps the bases should close. We defend Japan. We defend Germany. We defend South Korea. We defend Saudi Arabia, Trump said during one presidential debate. They do not pay us what they should be paying us. Obama may not want to stoke fear, but he also shares those leaders concern about what is happening across the globe. Following his meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, aides to the president were reluctant to speculate about whether Trump will dial back from his campaign rhetoric. Ill let the president-elect and his team discuss what their plans are, Earnest said. But certainly our allies should understand the longstanding history in this country about the way that we not just maintain but actually advance our alliances around the world. Twitter: @cparsons, @mikememoli ALSO Obama is trying to stop Trump from undoing his biggest achievements A more presidential Trump tries to woo Washington in visits to the White House and the Capitol Beneficiaries of Obamas immigration relief worry about future under Trump Steve Bannon was one of Donald Trumps closest confidants and most determined field lieutenants throughout the presidential campaign; now he has become President-elect Trumps first major postelection political problem. The angry backlash against Trumps announcement that the Breitbart News executive would serve as his chief White House strategist gave dispirited Democrats and other critics of the president-elect a rallying point Monday. Mainstream Jewish and Muslim groups warned that Trump was elevating an enthusiastic promoter of white nationalism to a desk steps from the Oval Office. Republican lawmakers many of whom have their own reasons for disliking Bannon were not inclined to defend him. Advertisement Ive never met the guy, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said on CNN, adding that I trust Donalds judgment. I do not know Steve Bannon, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said as he repeatedly parried questions from reporters at a news conference Monday morning. That reluctance to actively defend Trumps choice came as no surprise. Bannon is, after all, a man who said in a 2004 interview with the Daily Beast that I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of todays establishment. He repeatedly has made clear that he does not exempt the Republican leadership from that desired fate. The fight over his appointment underscored the continued tension between the party leadership and Trump. The president-elect clearly values Bannons strategic advice and relied heavily on him to pilot his campaign in its closing months. But whether Trump can navigate the conflict within the party and what role Bannon plays in doing so could be central to whether the new administration can succeed. All that left Bannon where he has been throughout his career in a bunker exchanging fire with what he derisively calls the forces of political correctness. Only the stakes had suddenly become much higher. The rage that many civil rights activists and leaders of minority groups have toward Bannon has been swelling for years, long before Trump brought him into the inner sanctum of his operation. For many, Bannon personifies the so-called alt-right, which the Anti-Defamation League in a statement Sunday night denounced as a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists. Indeed, Bannons appointment to Trumps campaign this year had drawn praise from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and neo-Nazi organizations. Bannon, who has been fighting multiculturalism and the country club politics of the Republican Party establishment for years, has been aggressively seeking out rumbles since he was a kid in Richmond, Va., growing up in a house not far from where Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine lives. His father, Martin, still lives in the neighborhood. His younger brother, Mike, recently recounted to the local newspaper how he was constantly getting called to the neighborhood pool as a teenager to drag his brother out of a fight. Bannon signed up for the Navy directly out of college, became an officer, left in 1983 for Harvard Business School, then landed a job at Goldman Sachs. His subsequent years in investment banking made him rich, and Hollywood production credits added yet more intrigue to his biography. He picked up something else, as well: His experiences with the self-satisfied nature of Americas financial and cultural elites made him angry, he says. I went to Harvard Business School, worked at Goldman Sachs, he told a Times reporter in 2010. I know about elites, I know about the contempt that they hold. They hold the basic heartland of this country in contempt. Bannon became a close friend and patron of Andrew Breitbart, and took over operations of his news organization in 2012, when Breitbart died suddenly of heart failure at age 43. At Breitbart, Bannons antagonisms manifested themselves in coverage that routinely referred negatively to Muslims, inner-city minorities and women, among other groups. Often the facts were suspect, as when Breitbart wrote about an extremely flawed polls finding that more than half of American Muslims wanted sharia law, or suggested that Hillary Clintons aide, Huma Abedin, might be a Saudi operative. One Breitbart writer declared America has a Muslim problem and made clear he was not talking about extremist Muslims, but all Muslims. The headline of one Breitbart story screamed: Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. Another headline referred to William Kristol, the editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard and an opponent of Trumps, as a renegade Jew. Journalist Ben Shapiro, a former writer for Breitbart, described it as a platform for white ethno-nationalism and a cesspool for white supremacist meme makers. GOP strategist Kurt Bardella, who said he talked to Bannon almost daily for two years while working as Breitbarts media consultant, described him as the ideological driving force behind Breitbart and its content. He put himself front and center, said Bardella, who parted ways with Breitbart as the site became something he saw as toxic and perpetually malcontent. Bannons allies, however, call talk of racism outrageous. On Monday, as the denunciations of Bannon mounted, Breitbart employees quickly signed onto what had all the appearances of a traditional crisis-communications exercise, releasing statements painting Bannon as a sensitive and sympathetic employer even someone who prizes diversity. That portrait contrasts with the one that emerged in court filings. In 2007, during divorce proceedings, Bannons then-wife alleged that he repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks as the couple toured Los Angeles private schools for their daughters. She said Bannon had asked the director of the Westland School why there were so many Hanukkah books in the library. He was concerned that the Willows Community School used to be in a temple, she alleged in a court filing. In a deposition, referring to Bannons reaction to another prominent private school, she said that the biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesnt like Jews and that he doesnt like the way they raise their kids to be whiny brats, and that he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews. Bannon, who ultimately sent his children to Archer for middle school and high school, has denied ever making any such comments. This is what they will do to anybody who defeats the left, said Joel Pollak, a Breitbart journalist in California who is an Orthodox Jew. There are no Nazis here, no white nationalists here, Pollak said, of the Breitbart newsroom. If our articles appeal to people beyond our core audience, there is nothing I can do about that. We are what we have always been, he said, a voice for the conservative movement. Times staff writers Michael A. Memoli in Washington and Robin Abcarian in Los Angeles contributed to this report. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper Domestic violence allegations from 1996 surface against chief of Donald Trumps campaign Donald Trump shakes up campaign by hiring executive from conservative Breitbart News to top post Were called redneck, ignorant, racist. Thats not true: Trump supporters explain why they voted for him UPDATES: 5:35 p.m.: This article was updated with background on Bannons upbringing and Breitbart News, as well as comments by Breibart journalist Joel Pollak. This article was originally published at 10:50 a.m. Donald Trumps White House is starting to take shape. Whats less clear at this point is what sort of policies he will pursue as president, even as states like California spring into action with some fearing whats to come. Im Christina Bellantoni. Welcome to Essential Politics. The president-elect on Sunday signaled that the dual forces that helped get him elected Republican loyalists and far-right conservatives will share power in his administration. He named Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign CEO who helped amplify some of his most incendiary rhetoric, as his chief strategist. The men, who each helped him win, were labeled equal partners in a statement announcing their new roles. Advertisement But the bigger headline from the weekend was Trump saying on CBS 60 Minutes he would defer the wider deportations he promised on the campaign trail until after the border is secure. What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate, Trump said. After the border is secure, and after everything gets normalized, were going to make a determination on whether to deport others, he said. With Californians and others attempting to understand if people who were granted legal status under President Obamas executive orders will face deportation or be forced to go back into the shadows, Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Sunday the GOP isnt planning any sort of deportation force come January. Either way, the Golden States political leaders could be on a collision course with Trump if he pushes hard-line immigration policies enthusiastically backed by many of his supporters. The Times over the weekend examined Obamacares future in California, profiled the man who could be the next Treasury Secretary and covered the thousands of people taking to the streets to protest Trumps election. Our team also talked with members of Trump Nation, who say they are being depicted unfairly as racist and ignorant. In other transition news, the president-elects lawyers want to delay the Trump University legal proceedings. Get the latest about the Trump transition on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics. AND THEYRE OFF! Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has been out of Californias political limelight for the past three years, has launched a 2018 bid for governor. Villaraigosa joins a list of well-known fellow Democrats in the race, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer John Chiang, both of whom have been feverishly raising campaign funds. Villaraigosa told Phil Willon that his campaign will focus on helping Californians who have been left behind in the new economy, as well as improving the states public schools and crumbling infrastructure. George Skelton devotes his Monday column to the 2018 race, writing that this contest is unlikely to be a slugfest. As always, were tracking California politics on our Essential Politics news feed. KAMALA HARRIS PREPARES TO TAKE ON TRUMP Just two days after her landslide U.S. Senate victory, Kamala Harris vowed to do everything in her power to protect immigrants who entered the country illegally from Trumps immigration agenda, including his calls for mass deportations and the construction of a border wall. Harris made the comments at her first public event since election day, which she held with immigrants and immigrant rights activists at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Harris also said she plans to continue serving as California attorney general until she is officially sworn into the U.S. Senate on Jan. 3. WHATS NEXT FOR LORETTA SANCHEZ? Will Rep. Loretta Sanchez stay involved in California politics after her landslide loss against Harris for the U.S. Senate seat? And if she does, what routes are there for her to run again? Sanchez said shell take a few weeks to ponder the next move. Sarah Wire spoke with some strategists about what might be ahead politically for Sanchez as she packs up her 20-year career in Washington and looks toward the future. MEET THE THREE LATINOS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JUST ELECTED TO CONGRESS Southern California voters elected three Latinos to fill open seats in Congress, increasing the diversity of the states delegation in Washington and showing the growing clout of the states largest ethnic group, Javier Panzar reports. The three Democrats Nanette Barragan, Salud Carbajal and Lou Correa won seats representing parts of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Orange County, respectively. Though Democrats failed to win control of the House, Senate or the presidency, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus was strengthened by eight new lawmakers for a total of 31 members in the next Congress when its size will be the largest in history. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is the biggest bright spot in this election, said Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles). DEMOCRATS BIG BET ON A TRUMP BUMP IN CALIFORNIA DIDNT QUITE PAN OUT A few weeks ago, it seemed Democratic legislative candidates up and down the state were banking that tying their Republican rivals to Trump would pay big dividends. To do otherwise would be political malpractice, one consultant said. Now, with most election results in, it appears the strategy didnt pay off as well as Democratic leaders had hoped. Christine Mai-Duc reports that while it appears Democrats did pick up seats in the Assembly, only three of the seven districts where the anti-Trump strategy was used will likely go to Democrats, and at closer margins than pollsters had expected. The overall impact was kind of a dud, said Andrew Acosta, a consultant for Dawn Ortiz-Legg, a Democrat who compared her Republican opponent Jordan Cunningham to Trump in mailers and television ads. DEATH PENALTY BATTLE NOT OVER Public opinion of the death penalty might have hit a record low across the country but not low enough to abolish the practice in California. Voters defeated a ballot measure to repeal capital punishment and instead are on course to narrowly approve a dueling proposition to amend and expedite it. The results reflect a sharp divide on state-sanctioned executions, and the final outcome will conclude a closely watched ballot race to address what people on both sides of the debate have agreed is a broken system. But death penalty abolitionists say their fight is not over. Theyre waging their next challenges back in court. CALIFORNIA POLITICS PODCAST: THE AFTERMATH This weeks topic: What just happened? JOIN US THURSDAY The Los Angeles Times this week will look back at the election and look ahead to what the Trump administration might mean for California. Weve got a hot lineup of lawmakers, political consultants and your favorite members of our political team. The symposium will be held in downtown Los Angeles. Buy tickets here. TODAYS ESSENTIALS -- The ballot may have been long, but voters dont actually mind, John Myers writes in his weekly column. -- Rep. Jared Huffman was shocked by Confederate flags he saw flying in a local parade. -- Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) was named to Trumps transition team and Rep. Duncan Hunters name is being tossed around as a possible pick for secretary of Defense and a few other Californians may be on the consideration list for Cabinet positions. -- Democrat Madison Nguyen conceded to San Jose City Councilman Ash Kalra in one of the most expensive intraparty Assembly races this year. Outside interests spent more than $7.5 million trying to sway the contest, most of it coming from business groups and charter school advocates supporting Nguyen. -- When the newest class of legislators is sworn in next month, the California Legislative Womens Caucus says it expects to lose two seats each in the Assembly and Senate. If the trend in the closest races holds, women will hold 10 of 40 seats in the state Senate, and 17 of 80 positions in the Assembly, according to California Women Lead, a nonpartisan association that recruits and trains women to run for public office. One encouraging sign: The number of Latinas in the Assembly will double from five to 10. -- With the election over, 24 California state lawmakers have begun their annual migration on fact-finding and trade missions, this year to locations including Germany, China, the Czech Republic and Hawaii, officials confirmed Thursday. Given recent events, it has become even more urgent to assure our global trading partners that California is still open for business, said spokesman Kevin Liao. -- Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore was spotted in Trump Tower this weekend. LOGISTICS Miss Fridays newsletter? Here you go. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics? Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com. Loretta Sanchez first went to Washington 20 years ago after winning a race by less than 1,000 votes and against all odds. Now, after losing what was her second long-shot bid, this time for a U.S. Senate seat, she has just a few weeks left to pack up her office. Although we dont know what our future will be, I can tell you that this is not the last that people will see of me, the U.S. House representative from Orange County said in a statement conceding the race Wednesday. The lingering question is whether Sanchez, 56, will seek elective public office again after losing to state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris with just 37% of the vote and if she would be successful after a campaign in which she emphasized her more conservative bonafides and attacked a candidate embraced by the Democratic establishment. Advertisement Stay tuned, said Sanchez spokesperson Luis Vizcaino, who declined to offer more details beyond Sanchezs plans to spend the next few weeks with her husband of five years. In this 1996 photo, Loretta Sanchez smiles as she walks with campaign manager John Shallman, who had just told her the recent ballot count preserved her victory over her Republican opponent, then-incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan. (Alex Garcia / Los Angeles Times / File photo ) The senate race was the first Democrat vs. Democrat statewide contest since Californias top-two primary system went into place, and Harris won with more than 60% of the vote, taking all but Glenn and Imperial counties. Sanchez has bounced back from political loss before. She was a little-known financial analyst from Anaheim whose only political experience was a failed bid for Anaheim City Council when she unseated Orange County conservative Rep. Robert B-1 Bob Dornan in 1996. At the time, the news show Nightline called it the biggest upset in California congressional history. Just like in this years race, the state Democratic Party endorsed someone else in the primary. But Sanchez ultimately beat Dornan by just 984 votes, a result he challenged, claiming the election was tainted by illegal ballots cast by noncitizens. Though she never passed a landmark bill in Congress, Sanchez rose to become the second-ranking Democrat on both the House Homeland Security and Armed Services committees. The second of seven children born to Mexican immigrants, she became part of the first pair of sisters to serve in Congress at the same time after her younger sibling Linda Sanchezs 2003 election. She is known for occasional gaffes, such as using a war whoop to describe Native Americans or seeming to insinuate that President Obama endorsed Harris because they are both black. For years, she sent out lighthearted Christmas cards featuring her cat. But she also spent years advocating for women in the military and voted against the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act. Sanchez surprised the California political world when she announced plans to give up her House seat and run for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxers seat. By the time Sanchez entered the Senate race in the spring of 2015, the state party had coalesced around Harris, leaving her to cobble together a long-shot campaign. Sanchez hoped the chance to elect the first Latina to the Senate would spur Latino voters and give her a surprise win like the one that got to her Congress 20 years ago. If she had pulled it off, Sanchez would have joined now Sen.-elect Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada as the first Latinas in the U.S. Senate. But she never caught up in the polls, and her fundraising lagged behind Harris throughout a campaign that drew little interest from voters, notwithstanding Sanchezs dab at the end of their only debate, which briefly drew national attention. With the Senate race behind her, Sanchez has at least a few political routes forward. She could try for governor or another statewide office in 2018, wait to see if Dianne Feinstein retires and make another attempt at the Senate, or stay closer to home and run for a position in Orange County, such as on the Board of Supervisors. UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser said Sanchez could use the support from the 3 million Californians who voted for her to springboard into another statewide office as soon as 2018. Shes entered the political consciousness at the statewide level in a way that she didnt when she was just a member of Congress, Kousser said. You often see examples of people losing up. But Democratic strategist Roy Behr, a former campaign advisor to Boxer, isnt so sure. History is full of comeback stories; its just hard to see how this one would occur, he said. How do you go tell donors, Oh next time Ill do better; next time will be different. Another complicating factor is that Sanchez moved to the right in the campaigns final months as she strove to build a coalition of conservative and independent voters against Harris, who was an early favorite among Democrats and donors and received the California Democratic Partys endorsement last winter. But Kousser said there is still a path for Sanchez within the party. People recognize that when two Democrats faced off in November, it was just an extension of the primary, he said. I dont think she was seen as a traitor to her party in any way, Kousser said. If she wants to run for another position, Sanchez should keep her name in the public consciousness over the next two years, Kousser said, adding that being a vocal critic of Donald Trump would be a start in a state that got bluer when the country got redder. Not being in office might give her a chance to associate herself with something like a ballot proposition that she can use to launch another run for statewide office. Theres some precedent for this: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor in 2018, was the face of a gun control initiative that passed easily on Tuesday. Her big problem is she doesnt have a political brand, Kousser said. Her House colleagues arent sure what the future holds. She did herself well, I think, in the campaign, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said a few days before the election. She compared Sanchez to Boxer, who Pelosi said knew she would have had to leave Congress if she had lost her 1991 Senate campaign. Im sure that Loretta has great things in mind next. I dont know what they are, she said. sarah.wire@latimes.com Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics ALSO: Antonio Villaraigosa jumps into the 2018 California governors race Heres how Californias congressional delegation has changed and the races were still waiting on Updates on California politics The O.C. is home to a very special university. Ranked among the top tier of liberal arts institutions of higher learning in the U.S., Soka University of America stands above the fray because it is founded upon Buddhist principles of peace, human rights and the sanctity of life. On Oct. 8, Soka held its 12th annual Peace Gala at its Aliso Viejo campus, attracting some 500 guests and raising more than $900,000 for student scholarships. The gala was co-chaired by Joan May and Dita Shemke, who have been serving Soka for 10 years to produce the scholarship fundraising event. A wide cross-section of O.C. business, social and cultural support came together to ensure its financial success. Sponsors included Minora and Kinuko Kogure, Steven and Kumiko MacDonald, Jim and Sheila Peterson, Steve Chi Kong Lee, and Judy Chao Di Chow and Luis and Linda Nieves. Also front and center for Soka were Allan and Mary Lou Beck, Matilda Buck, Elisabeth Carter, Teiko Cooper, Joe and Junko Perez, Chris Chen, Richard and Misty Fisher, and George and Kazue Elliot. An evening of dining and dancing was emceed by Madison Ray, with auction duties in the hands of Dawn Marie Kotonis. The guest artist of the night was international recording artist Jose Feliciano, who created an uplifting and inspirational performance that was a classy conclusion to an exceptional evening in South County. Soka Universitys student body consists of 60% American and 40% international students. Qualified students enrolled coming from households with annual incomes under $60,000 receive free tuition. An evening to remember at the mission The fall social season in the O.C. would be incomplete without the annual Romance of the Mission gala supporting the preservation of Mission San Juan Capistrano. The social crowd converges in the old stone church for what is nothing less than a magical evening under the stars. Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded Nov. 1, 1776, by Padre Junipero Serra as the seventh mission erected in old California under the auspices of Spain and the Catholic Church. It is considered the most beautiful the jewel of the California missions. It has also become a center of faith for some and, for others, a center of history, culture and educational experience. Thousands of fourth graders visit the site annually, study its history and build replicas of the mission as part of their curriculum. The process has been a decades-long, multigenerational pursuit. Today the historical background is less based on romantic myth, with emphasis placed on the harsh reality of creating an outpost of European civilization in a very primitive and difficult environment. For many years Padre Serra was portrayed as the kindly and docile father, when in fact he was a driving taskmaster with challenges that had to be met with the resolve of a true pioneer. The native California population Serra enlisted as the builders of his missions often suffered under his authority. Many died in his service, both from abuse and disease contracted from European settlers. The legacy, both good and bad, is rich and meaningful. The historic mission building stands as a permanent testament to the founding of the state and its ties to European ancestors and the indigenous people of the land. It is a diverse equation that remains relevant in the modern day. Upward of 500 donors came together to remember the past and celebrate the future, raising more than $500,000 (gross) earmarked for further restoration projects. Once again the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, under the management of Bruce Brainerd, created and served a lavish feast for patrons. Brainerd also serves on the Mission Preservation Foundation Board. Joining the Ritz-Carlton in creating a major success were significant underwriters George and Eden OConnell, and E.J. Tracey. American Idol finalist Clark Beckham entertained the crowd by singing many popular hits, including the obligatory When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano. Pacific Symphony remains a cornerstone of O.C. culture Its hard to believe that 10 years has passed since the debut of the Henry and Renee Segerstrom Concert Hall. The respected Pacific Symphony, led by maestro Carl St.Clair, marked the 10th anniversary occasion at the concert hall during the opening the orchestras 2016-17 season. A glamorous black and white dinner celebration at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel preceded the opening night, as more than 200 VIP guests and symphony underwriters mingled over dinner at a very chic party chaired by the classy Jo Ellen Chatham. Following dinner, the crowd took their seats in the concert hall for what was the first concert of the Hal and Jeanette Segerstrom Family Foundation Classical Series, which featured piano virtuoso Olga Kern performing Rachmaninoffs Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The 38th season of Pacific Symphony opened with style, raising more than $135,000 from underwriters with funds earmarked to support artistic and educational programs. Following the concert, patrons converged on the Terrace Pavilion deck of the Westin for champagne and dessert. VIPs in the crowd included PBS SoCals Maria Hall-Brown, Pacific Symphony President John Forsyte, Associate Concertmaster Paul Manaster, Madeline and Len Zuckerman and Corona del Mars Catherine Emmi. Also in the crowd enjoying the beautiful reception were Ernie and Donna Schroeder, Tom Rogers, Sally Anderson, Lynn and Doug Freeman, Tom and Sheila Peterson, Ling and Charlie Zhang, and David and Suzanne Chonette. -- B.W. COOK is editor of the Bay Window, the official publication of the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Ip Man 3" is the latest in Donnie Yens series of films about the real-life martial arts master who is best known in the West for having been Bruce Lees teacher. Yen previously appeared in Ip Man (2008) and Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster (2010). On the release of the latter, Yen insisted that he was through with the character, but here he is again in a third entry. Thats fine by me. Yens first two Ip features sparked what might be called Ip Mania. Within five years, Ip Man became the subject of a TV series and three other movies: The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (2010); Ip Man: The Final Fight (2013); and, most famously, Wong Kar-wais artier The Grandmaster (2013), with Tony Leung Chiu-wai in the lead. Yen and director Wilson Yip stick to the formula that worked so well for them in the earlier films. This time around, we encounter Ip Man in Hong Kong, circa 1960. (The real Ip would have been pushing 70 by then, but no one ever praised the Ip Man series for fidelity to the facts.) Ips martial arts school is a success, but he seems to spend more time helping the downtrodden than looking after the school or his wife and kid. Theres a huge gang of thugs, bullying the honest citizens, at the bidding of evil Westerners: one is a local Brit police honcho on the take; the other is Frank, a land developer, played by hold your breath Mike Tyson. You dont hire Tyson for his nuanced thespian talents, so you can rest assured that his few scenes in the first hour are just a buildup to a big fight between Frank and Ip. That fight is a three-minute challenge that, amazingly, transpires in three minutes of screen time. Its central gag is the difference in size considerable between the two men (sort of a less extreme version of the famous Bruce Lee vs. Kareem matchup in Game of Death). Ip manages to escape with both ears intact. The biggest fight, the climax, emerges from a major subplot about a rival master (Jin Zhang) with moral conflicts. The two men go at it with long staffs, then short knives, and finally hands and feet. The fights are, of course, one of the main attractions of Chinese action movies. Here they have been choreographed by the venerable Yuen Woo-ping, whose credits include The Matrix, Kill Bill, Kung Fu Hustle, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Nobody does it better. Yip and Yen seem to want this to be more serious than a mere action film. The result is a tear-jerking subplot about Ips family, accompanied by overblown music. Be sure to carefully check the listings before buying tickets. Some venues are presenting it in Mandarin with English subtitles; others are showing it in a dubbed version. -- ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on FilmWeek on KPCC-FM (89.3). One snowy afternoon in April, a small group of Native Americans rode on horseback through the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and set up camp on a windy hillside overlooking the Cannonball River. They erected tepees, foraged for firewood and prayed for allies to help their people fight the black snake. The 1,172-mile, $3.8-billion Dakota Access pipeline, they believed, would threaten their sacred sites and contaminate the Missouri River, the water supply for the Standing Rock tribe and 17 million other Americans. As spring turned to summer, Native people began arriving from across the Great Plains and from hundreds of other tribal nations in North America. Supporters came from Guatemala, Norway, the Czech Republic, South Africa and the Philippines. There were climate activists, community organizers, pro bono lawyers, human rights delegations, musicians, medics, clergy, journalists, hippies and a few drifters with perhaps nowhere else to go. Advertisement By August, more than 6,000 people had created a small city in a flood plain of the Missouri to battle the pipeline, built by the Fortune 500 company Energy Transfer to pump 570,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The water protectors called their main camp Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, after the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation. There they erected tents and tepees, parked campers and horse trailers, and planted the flags of about 300 tribes, which flap in the wind on the long dirt track called Crazy Horse Avenue. The Seven Council Fires camp and the adjacent Sacred Stone and Red Warrior camps have become communities of Native American solidarity likely not seen in more than a century. Lakota and Dakota people say these tribes have not joined to face a common enemy since the 1876 defeat of Gen. George Custer in the Battle of the Greasy Grass, better known as Little Big Horn. I remember this elder, years ago, he had a dream where there would be a town where its all Natives and we would be singing and dancing and laughing and eating and visiting with each other, said Linda Black Elk, a professor at nearby Sitting Bull College. And thats exactly what camp is like. A Native American protesters shirt reads, My voice is my weapon. (Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images ) :: Phyllis Bald Eagle and her husband, Black Horse, have come to share the old ways their grandparents taught them: How to skin a deer. How to winterize a tepee in the cold plains nights, radiating heat from the center fire through stones, willows and rugs. Although theres a whiff of the American Indian Movements 1973 Wounded Knee, S.D., insurrection in the air, Standing Rock protesters say they espouse nonviolent resistance. Yet Black Horse, a Cheyenne River tribal member, Bald Eagle and hundreds of others are making their stand in the face of a militarized force of state and county police and the National Guard, who have used pepper spray, rubber bullets and occasionally Tasers to push back protesters. Since Aug. 10, police have arrested more than 460 water protectors, including 141 one day in October when activists moved their tents and tepees in front of the advancing pipeline, scrawling numbers on their arms, detaining them in large cages and charging them with criminal trespass and rioting. Darryl Grady was one of them, arrested at a demonstration Oct. 10 when he and other protesters erected a tepee in the pipelines path. Two days later, Grady warmed himself by his fire, sitting with his wife, Rochelle, and their two teenage children in the Seven Council Fires camp. He grew up in New Town on the Fort Berthold Reservation, in the heart of the Bakken oil formation and North Dakotas now-bust fracking industry. Rochelle grew up just to the west, in Williston. They saw the fracking boom bring fleeting wealth to their tribes, but also violent crime and a legacy of inequality. Ive seen the community just bombarded with all the drilling of fracking, the draining of the aquifers, the pollution, the massive influx of people it was overwhelming, she said. After the bust, when the couple saw the next oil battle looming, they came to Standing Rock. Understanding the lessons from past oil development is a common theme here. They always tell us to trust them; that they have all this smart, intelligent technology, said Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. But weve learned from other people, from other pipeline communities, that its not if a pipeline is going to spill or leak, its when. For Goldtooth and others, a larger agenda is playing out along the river. The goal is to build sustainable communities, said Goldtooth, sitting in the cab of his pickup truck late one windy afternoon, looking down from the hillside onto the sun-dappled tepees. Supporters of the fight here run the gamut of motivations and skill sets. A lawyer with young children at home came from Colorado to co-found the Red Owl Legal Collective, which has posted bond money for those arrested. A volunteer who worked at Tesla brought schematics for innovative solar and other renewable technology. A photographer from Georgia runs the press credentialing center on Facebook Hill above the main camp. A medic from Appalachia treats those doused with pepper spray. A group of advocacy journalists called Unicorn Riot posts regular feeds from the front lines on Twitter and Facebook, part of a social media storm that has brought far-flung attention. On any given day you could encounter two dozen Lutheran ministers chatting with Standing Rock tribal leaders, a Black Lives Matter delegation joining a protest march or a Japanese musician strumming a guitar at a campfire and a college student whose parents dont know hes at Standing Rock. Nantinki Young, known as Tink, stirs soup for protesters gathered along the banks of the Cannonball River. (William Yardley / Los Angeles Times ) Some come from sheer curiosity and a wish to be part of something, despite being ill-equipped for the raw elements. Ive been traveling for a few months, said Kendra Strebig, a young white woman from Ohio with dreadlocks to her waist. She arrived clad in Birkenstocks but got wool socks and a winter coat from the piles of donated clothes. Some organizers here are frustrated by the drain on resources, especially from young non-Native visitors; others point out that it is they, as much as anyone, who put their bodies on the line, willing to risk pepper spray, rubber bullets and jail to fight the pipeline. Now winter is fast approaching, and with it divisions in the camp about how best to consolidate the living space for the hardcore 300 or so determined to endure outdoor living in the northern Plains, where temperatures can drop to 30 below. In nearby Cannon Ball, residents at a recent community meeting worried whether the campers could survive in the cold, and lamented the reports of theft and petty crime in the camp. Others say these are the inevitable growing pains of a freshly rooted community. Work on the pipeline is nearly finished. Activists here are stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to deny Energy Transfer permission to complete a near-final step: drilling under the Missouri River. Whatever happens, they say, even the election of Donald Trump doesnt alter their unity of purpose. It is absolutely a historic event, said Black Elk, the Sitting Bull College professor. She regularly puts out the call on social media to recruit new allies to come to Standing Rock, even if it is only to say to your great-grandchildren, I was there. People from all over the world who have looked out of the corner of their eye and then looked away in shame theyre not looking away anymore, Black Elk said. Theyre coming to stand with us. Tolan is a special correspondent. MORE NATIONAL NEWS Trump names Priebus and Bannon as top White House aides and says deportations will begin immediately Oregon protester shot during a fourth night of election protests across the nation Climate change is real: Just ask the Pentagon Donations of food, tents and blankets have always been a staple of international aid, the feel-good solution that everyone could take part in to help stem the tide of international misery. But for years, the lesser-known story of those donations has been how often they fail to help. After the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, predominately Muslim communities in Indonesia received cans of pork. Goose-down ski jackets went to Sri Lanka, known for its tropical climate and monsoons. Donated tents and cooking utensils can often been seen in market stalls in Afghanistan. With the help of new technology, a different model is rapidly gaining currency around the world for providing victims of war and natural disaster with what they need most: money. Advertisement Several of the United Nations most high-profile aid programs, including the World Food Program, Childrens Fund and the High Commissioner for Refugees, have all launched programs to deliver aid in cash. Private charities including CARE, Oxfam and the International Rescue Committee have launched similar projects. The trend had its genesis in the mid-1980s when UNHCR was among the first agencies to use cash-based interventions, mainly for those voluntarily returning to their homes after displacement. Today, UNHCR is focused on expanding cash aid as a matter of priority in more than 60 countries to help with a variety of needs, including shelter, education and income support, according to Jenifer Fenton, a spokeswoman for the agency. Cash-based initiatives allow refugees and others of concern to prioritize their needs, giving them more control over their spending, in turn allowing them to live with greater dignity, Fenton said in a statement. She said UNHCR plans to have cash assistance in place for most of its humanitarian assistance operations by 2020. CARE has been gradually increasing its cash payments for both relief and development work, using such methods as vouchers, cash for work, conditional cash transfers and cash grants, said Lex Kassenberg, the groups emergency response director. Cash assistance has been essential in helping with the Syrian refugee crisis in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, Kassenberg said. But cash aid still represents just 6% of assistance across the humanitarian aid sector. And reluctance to use it persists. Critics worry that the money in most cases given without conditions will be misused and spent on non-life-sustaining goods, including weapons. Recipients may become dependent on handouts. There are also concerns that cash aid could heighten tensions between displaced people and host communities who might also be needy but ineligible for such grants. There is an accountability angle to cash assistance, where the implementing agencies can only account for the amount of money provided to the beneficiaries, but not for what the beneficiaries do with this money, said Kassenberg. This is probably one of the reasons why donors in the past have been reluctant to fully embrace this approach. Technology is helping aid workers avoid some of the pitfalls and engender trust in the system. In response to crushing humanitarian need, mounting risks for delivering aid and increasingly inaccessible populations of refugees, the International Rescue Committee is operating a trial program in Afghanistan distributing $1 million in cash through local banks and cellphone providers. The deliveries target tens of thousands of needy people in Helmand and Nangarhar provinces places at the core of the Taliban insurgency. The program already is demonstrating the potential usefulness of technology in delivering cash transfers in a country challenged by war and large distances. Gul Wali and his family are among those now receiving cash assistance under the program. Walis family fled the district of Kot in June after Islamic State militants attacked, killing and kidnapping people, looting and torching homes. Wali was forced to rent a one-room, windowless, mud-walled house for his family here in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. The rescue committee awarded Wali and his family, who fled with only the clothing they were wearing, a one-time payment of $120 in cash. The former farmer spent most of it on rent and buying some medication and other basic needs. Neither the government nor any other organization has helped us so far, said the 34-year-old father of five, who had owned his own home in Kot. Its good to get cash, because I can decide how to spend it. Even so, Wali said he was behind on his $20-a-month rent and there wasnt enough cash left over from the grant to buy food. The six-month test period for the Afghan project is scheduled to continue through mid-January, but officials said the agency was committed to delivering 25% of its humanitarian assistance in the form of cash relief by 2020, up from approximately 6% in 2015. David Haines, the IRCs country director in Kabul, said the organization monitors beneficiaries and finds that needy people usually spend wisely; cash aid, he said, can often help keep a bad situation from getting worse. We empower the beneficiaries, we give them the control, we give them the chance to spend that money in the way that most benefits their family, said Haines. That might be food, but it might also be life-saving drugs, or their kids might need something important, or it might be for transportation to some place elsewhere in Afghanistan. It enhances their dignity as human beings despite their status as displaced people. The IRC has been using mobile phones to deliver payments in Afghanistan, along with the network of hawala dealers who have long been involved in money transfers around the Muslim world. So far about 2,890 families, in both Helmand and Nangarhar provinces, have received cash allocations, said Muhammad Jelani, program coordinator for the International Rescue Committee in Kabul. Beneficiaries are eligible to receive a one-time payment of at least $105 to help with immediate relief, such as buying household supplies and paying rent, or $75 to $80 via multiple payments over a period of months. No fees or commissions are charged to the recipients. The rescue committee pays fees to the hawala dealers and cellphone providers. Hawala dealers are used to distribute actual cash in areas where the banks and communication networks are not able to function for example, where cellphone towers have been destroyed. The dealers transfer the money to the account of a local agent anywhere in Afghanistan. An IRC staffer then goes with the agent to distribute the cash to identified beneficiaries. In areas where cellphones are working, funds are transferred electronically and beneficiaries get a text message alert. The beneficiaries can then text the invisible money to designated shopkeepers or vendors, who then cash out the money for the beneficiaries to spend in their stores. This type of system was already being used in Afghanistan, where teachers and police are paid via mobile phone technology. But the method is proving to be particularly useful when youve got people on the move, said Radha Rajkotia, the IRCs senior director of economic recovery and development. Its much easier for them to pocket cash, a SIM card or a code, Rajkotia said. They can literally keep that in their pocket and keep themselves safe. In June an internally displaced Afghan child walks beside a mud-walled home at a refugee camp in Kabul. (Wakil Kohsar / AFP/Getty Images ) The situation is bad, said Hakim Khan, in foreground, a farmer and father whose family was forced to flee Afghanistans Achin province to Jalalabad. Im happy that IRC paid us $120, so I could pay for rent. (Sultan Faizy / For The Times ) Hakim Khan, who has two wives and 11 children, spent most of the $120 he received from the IRC on rent and medication. The IRC support was really good because the landlord was pushing us to vacate the house, said Khan, 35, who used to farm wheat and vegetables in the countrys Achin district before fleeing to Jalalabad. But its not just about having a place to live, Khan said. He cant afford the entry fees to send his children to school. Here in Jalalabad city, everything comes with a price, even drinking water, he said. I cant afford to buy gas, so my children go and collect trash to burn instead of gas for cooking. While there isnt yet hard data on whether the cash program is succeeding in Afghanistan, Rajkotia said there are several preliminary positive signs. For example, when women are the beneficiaries they tend to spend the money more evenly across the household on needs such as food and education, Rajkotia said. Increasingly, we are going to be forced to question any other interventions against the benchmark of just giving people cash, she said. Its certainly going to shape, and is already shaping, the nature of humanitarian response. Special correspondent Faizy reported from Jalalabad and staff writer Simmons reported from Los Angeles. ann.simmons@latimes.com For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter UPDATES: 7:28 p.m. Dec. 2: This story has been updated throughout with detail about international programs experimenting with cash assistance. This story was originally published at 2 p.m. Nov. 14. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was being questioned by prosecutors Monday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London about possible sexual misconduct committed in Sweden six years ago. Assange was being interviewed at the embassy where he sought refuge more than four years ago. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadorean prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police investigator. Prosecutors planned to ask Assange to consent to providing a DNA sample. Advertisement Swedish officials are seeking information related to allegations of serious misconduct made by two Swedish women he met in 2010. Some of the alleged misconduct is no longer being investigated by police because of the statute of limitations. He is, however, being questioned about a possible rape of one of the women who complained to authorities. He has not been indicted. Prosecutors say no immediate decision on the future of Assanges case will be made on Monday. They also said no public statements will be made after the questioning, which may last several days. Assanges Swedish defense lawyer, Per Samuelsson, told Swedish media he has high hopes the case will be closed once prosecutors have completed the interview. He complained that he has been barred from the hearing, despite arguing that Assanges Swedish lawyer must be permitted to take part. Im not on the list of persons that Ecuador has drawn up and allowed to be present, Samuelsson told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. An Ecuadorean lawyer has taken up this question as a formal issue in the introduction of the hearing. Civil rights activist Peter Tatchell said outside the embassy that he and others had gathered to show solidarity with Assange and WikiLeaks. He said Assange was being hounded because of WikiLeaks work in shedding light on the terrible things done by the U.S. government and others. Some supporters hoisted pro-Assange banners outside the embassy. Assange has denied sexual wrongdoing and says he fears being extradited to the U.S. because of his WikiLeaks work. It isnt known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the U.S. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents. One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was launched, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. By then Assange was in Britain, making it harder for Swedish prosecutors to question him. They sought an international arrest warrant for him that was issued in November 2010. Assange surrendered to police in London and was freed on bail, receiving support from a wide range of celebrities including filmmakers Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. He then moved into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, putting him out of reach of British authorities. He has remained in control of WikiLeaks, which released hacked emails relating to the Hillary Clinton campaign in the final weeks of her failed White House run. MORE WORLD NEWS Colombias government and FARC rebels sign modified peace agreement As Greeces government takes on Orthodox Church over mosque construction, minority Muslims stand to benefit From a bridge in South Africa, sidewalk bookseller believes in the power to change lives When Gregory Navas El Norte opened in U.S. theaters 25 years ago, immigration was less of a political hot-button issue than it is today. Back then, the mass exodus of refugees from Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala was driven as much by civil war as by economics. Californias Proposition 187 in 1994 and the pro-immigration marches of May 2006 still were years away. But in recent months, until the global economic swoon took center stage, immigration became one of the most pressing and polarizing issues on the national agenda. That gives a renewed potency to Navas $750,000 independent movie about a Guatemalan brother and sisters harrowing odyssey to the United States -- including a memorably grueling crawl through a rat-infested tunnel -- and their struggles in adapting to their new life in Los Angeles. Advertisement The movies quality and enduring influence is being acknowledged with this months release of a 25th anniversary edition of the film on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection. While Nava says hes tremendously pleased by the recognition and thankful to Criterion, he sees a bittersweet dimension to his movies stature. We made the film not to make a commercial hit but to make a film about the human tragedy of a very tragic situation that still continues to this day, says the writer-director, speaking from his Santa Fe, N.M., home. Im very, very gratified that the film is still considered to be so relevant, and it saddens me because the issues are still there. Criterions release includes a number of bonus features: an audio commentary featuring Nava; an intriguing documentary about the making of El Norte; and a gallery of location-scouting photographs from Chiapas, Mexico. It also includes Navas haunting black-and-white student film, The Journal of Diego Rodriguez Silva (1972), which explores the theme of forced exile that Nava would further develop in El Norte. The award-winning earlier film also provides evidence of the lyrical visual style that Nava would bring fully to bear on El Norte. Nava refers to this style as dream realism, which he characterizes as less folkloric and cute than magic realism and more deeply engaged with tough social problems. He counts Luis Bunuels 1950 masterpiece, Los Olvidados, about Mexico Citys slum children, and Luchino Viscontis La Terra Trema as major inspirations. Among the filmmakers crucial and risky decisions for El Norte was to shoot much of it in Spanish and indigenous Guatemalan languages as well as English. We shot in incredibly isolated and difficult locations because we wanted to get that world on the screen, Nava says. We had a very small crew of people in two Volkswagen vans. We were young, and so we were in a way kind of insane. El Norte came about, in part, through the confluence of two trends in the early 1980s. One was the increasing public attention paid to the effects of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union in places like Latin America and Africa. As novelist and Times columnist Hector Tobar points out in an essay in a program booklet accompanying the Criterion release, in the early 1980s Hollywood produced a handful of films examining these conflicts, such as Missing, Under Fire and Salvador. But their protagonists typically were non-Latinos. El Norte broke from this pattern by making the young siblings played by Mexican actors Zaide Silvia Gutierrez and David Villalpando the center of the action. Another factor in El Nortes success was the rise of a new wave of U.S. independent filmmakers. Nava was one of several young independent directors, such as Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles and David Lynch, who, Nava says, felt there was a need at that time to deal with different sorts of subject matter, different things the Hollywood film was not dealing with. As Thomas says in the Criterion documentary, El Norte was able to attract both the non-Latino I go to art movies crowd and the Latino This is a film about me crowd. Throughout his subsequent career, Nava, a San Diego native who has many relatives in Tijuana, has continued to explore aspects of the immigrant experience, in 1995s Mi Familia, 2006s Bordertown and other movies. And hes working on another film, Gates of Eden, that will update those themes to the present. You need a film to help you on a human level to deal with the changes that youre seeing. Thats true for Hispanics and for non-Hispanics. reed.johnson@latimes.com Yasser Mahmoud carried a white flag, along with a small supply of rice, bread and water, as he returned to this city under siege. The 35-year-old photographer had talked with friends whod fled to displaced persons camps, and he found their stories of long lines for food and supplies alarming. If you need to do anything, you have to wait in a line, he said of the camps, which have expanded and multiplied since troops entered the city last week. Advertisement So as Mosul empties more than 49,000 have fled the city of 1.2 million since the offensive began last month another stream of people skirt the gunfire, mortar blasts and suicide attacks as they trudge to neighboring villages for supplies and medicine, then wade back into the mayhem, carrying white flags and shopping bags as they head home. Staying is risky. Islamic State militants have executed 40 civilians in the city, hanging victims bodies on electrical poles, according to the United Nations. The army has advanced to several neighborhoods beyond Zahra in eastern Mosul, but only moved forward about half a mile this weekend, according to special forces commanders. A mass grave recently discovered by Iraqi troops south of the city contained more than 100 bodies, one of several Islamic State killing grounds, U.N. spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said at a briefing in Geneva last week. Shamdasani said militants are reportedly stockpiling large amounts of ammonia and sulfur in the city, placing them among civilians for possible use as chemical weapons. Attackers with explosive belts are being deployed in the alleyways of Old Mosul, she said, and women have been abducted and distributed to fighters or told they will be used to accompany militant convoys. Mosul taxi driver Abdul Monhan Faris, 26, was in his garage having breakfast Thursday when a mortar struck, killing him. Faraz Munther helped soldiers remove his friends body from Zahra. Our neighborhood is free, but we have mortars coming from Qadisiya and Tahrir, he said, referring to adjacent areas of eastern Mosul. 1 / 59 Menar Hassan, age 8, cries as doctors try to doctor her wounds after a suicide truck bombing. Her father died at the scene and had to be left in the rubble. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 59 Capt. Osama Fuad Rauf, 33, center, and Maj. Mohammed Hassan Abdullah, left, 35, treat a soldier who was wounded in the fight against Islamic State near Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 59 Wounded soldiers and civilians are carried into a field hospital. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 59 Capt. Osama Fuad Rauf works on a patient as others hold a cellphone for additional light at the Iraqi armys 9th Armored Division medical clinic. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 59 Wafa Abdel Raza, 39, holds her son Mahmoud Setar, 4, as the doctors give him oxygen and and fluids. The boys head was badly injured when a truck bomb exploded near their home. We were sleeping in the house," said Raza. The army was close to us and we made food for them. They were waiting behind the house and a suicide car came. Her son recovered as the night progressed. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 59 Maj. Gen. Raad Mohssan Dakhel stitches up a soldiers face after he was injured by a suicide bomb explosion. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 59 Murtada Abdul Amir, right, was struck in the shoulder by the same bullet that hit his friend Muaz Hameed Hussein, left. Capt. Osama Fuad Rauf checks Husseins status. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 59 Civilians are taken to Irbil hospital. The man at right was taken into custody on suspicion of being an Islamic State fighter. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 59 SWAT team member Hussein Ali, 21, sits beside his comrade Bassem Bilal, who was badly injured in a suicide car bombing. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 59 Maj. Gen. Raad Mohssan Dakhel treats a soldier hit by shrapnel from a car bomb. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 59 At the Iraqi Armys 9th Armored Division medical clinic, set up in a private home, doctors including Capt. Osama Fuad Rauf, center, gather around the body of a deceased soldier before he is taken to Irbil and on to Baghdad. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 59 A woman looks out of a dump truck as it arrives at a U.N. campcarrying more than 50 other women and children fleeing the fightingin Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 59 Waheed Ahmed Hussein hugs his mother Sada Muslat, 71, on the day he was was reunited with his parents after a two-year separationwhile they lived in an Islamic State-held area. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 59 A truckload of people fleeing fighting in the Mosul area arrives at a United Nations camp. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 59 People fleeing violence in Mosul and the surrounding areaarrive at the U.N.'s Camp Hassansham. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 59 Waheed Ahmed Hussein, right, greets his relative Adris Mohammed through a fense at Camp Hassansham. They hadnt seen each other in two years sinceIslamic State took control of Mosul and the surrounding area. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 59 In the town of Salhiya, members of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police detain and question men who were coming from the direction of Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 59 Members of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police detain suspects in the village of Salhiya, Iraq, who were coming from the direction of Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 59 Members of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police patrol the village of Salhiya. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 59 A man flying a white flag with his rear window shattered, is stopped on the road from Salhiya to Qayarrah. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 59 On the outskirts of the village of Al Hud, members of the Iraqi Army visit an area where locals say ISIS executed four or five Peshmerga in recent months. Soldiers said another grave site containing more bodies was in the area but was too dangerous to access due to mines. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 59 Some of the several hundred civilians who made their way through and out of Gogjali, Iraq, after the Iraqi army retook control of the district in Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 59 Iraqi troops patrol Gogjali. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 59 Iraqi special forces Lt. Col Ali Hussein Fadil and his men continue to clear the Gogjali district. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 59 Iraqi forces patrol the Gogjali district of Mosul a day after it was liberated from Islamic State. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 59 Iraqi special forces continue to clear homes in Gogjali on Nov. 2, 2016, after the area was liberated. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 59 A girl waves a white flag as she and her family leave Gogjali. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 59 Families flee Gogjali after the area was liberated. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 59 With no place to sleep, a family rests inside an empty store in Mosuls Gogjali district, where Iraqi forces defeated Islamic State the previous day. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 59 Islamic State posters that were hung in a mosque in the Gogjali district of Mosul, Iraq, are burned the day after the area was liberated from Islamic State control. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 59 Popular mobilization units are helping to clear villages southwest of Mosul, Iraq. On Sunday, they launched mortar rounds a little more than a mile from Islamic State fighters who continued to resist their advance on the city. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 59 TAL AL-ZAQAA, IRAQ--OCT. 31, 2016--Shiite militia chant before going into battle as they fight alongside Iraq Army forces as they fight ISIS. They launch mortars less than two kilometers from ISIS fighters who continue to resist their advance. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times) (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 59 Militias known as popular mobilization units fighting near Mosul are made up mostly of Shiite Muslims. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 59 Militiamennear the village ofZarqastand by as mortars are launched at Islamic State fighters near Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 59 An Iraqi special forces soldier rides in a Humvee with a Shiite religious banner flying behind while moving through recently captured territory on the eastern front inthe fight for Mosul on Oct. 28, 2016. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 59 An Iraqi government Humvee window cracked by Islamic State fire on the eastern front in fight for Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 59 Lt. Col. Ali Hussein Fadil, center,commands an Iraqi special forces unit in the fight to retake the city of Mosul, including 28-year-old Waleed Abdel Nabi, left. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 59 Waleed Abdel Nabi, afather of four, moves through the town of Bartella by Humvee. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 59 Waleed Abdel Nabi, right, and a fellow Iraqi special force fighter in the town of Bartella. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 59 Waleed Abdel Nabi, 28, clears what appear to be abandoned homes in the advance toward Mosul. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 59 An Islamic State tunnel entrance found in Bartella by Iraqi special forces. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 59 Iraqi forces patrol in a Humvee east of Mosul as they wait for the next phase of the battle to retakethe city from Islamic State. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 59 The remains of a burned car. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 59 Sienna Moqtar and her daughter decorate her brothers grave with rocks. He died last week in the final days of Islamic State in Qayyarah. The bodies of two infant nephews are buried at right. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 59 Ibrahim Atea Ahmed, left, and Daham Ahmed survived the Islamic State attack, but their town was left in bad shape. Oil fires continue to burn, set by militants as cover from air attacks. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 59 Iraqi soldiers head for the front line. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 59 In the village of Faziliya, recently liberated from Islamic State control, Abdul Gafur, 38, embraces his brother Mohammad Abdul Gafur, 40, after not seeing him for more than two years. Peshmerga forces recaptured the village and escorted Abdul to visit his brother. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 59 A woman rummages through garbage under smoke-filled skies in the town of Qayyarah. The residents of Qayyarah were liberated from Islamic State forces, but left with destruction and contamination from burning oil wells. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 59 Residents of Qayyarah wait for food and water to be handed out, but very little was distributed. The water in town is not fit to drink. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 59 Iraqi soldiers now control the town of Qayyarah, where bombing destroyed many shops. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 59 An Iraqi special forces member notes the entrance to a tunnel dug by Islamic State forces in the town of Bartella. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 52 / 59 Bisha Khalil, 60, left, welcomes home her son Zihad Farhan, not shown, to the village of Hurriya, where fighting between Islamic State and Iraqi forces caused many to flee about three months ago. The homecoming was dampened by the kidnapping of Khalils 18-year-old son, Ibrahim Farhan, by Islamic State militants a week earlier. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 53 / 59 Iraqis line up as they return to homesin the villages near Qayyarrah. Many fled their homes three months earlier when government forces battled Islamic State fighters. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 54 / 59 Children play in a wrecked car in the village of Hurriya, where fighting between Islamic State and Iraqi forces caused many families to leave. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 55 / 59 As many Iraqis return home, others are fleeing the fighting in villages surrounding Mosul. At a camp for the displaced, about 3,000 people arrived in a week, but many more are expected as the fight for Mosul continues. New arrivals line up for food supplies, provide by the World Food Program. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 56 / 59 An Iraqi boy, newly arrived at a camp for the displaced, carries food provided by the World Food Program. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 57 / 59 Soldiers drive through the town of Qayyarah, heavily damaged in the fighting in August and again this month as Islamic State was driven out of town. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 58 / 59 Batul Khalil, 60, is having breathing problems with all of the smoke and chemicals in the air in her town of Qayyarah. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 59 / 59 A man leads his cow to find feed in the village of Hurriya, where fighting between Islamic State and Iraqi forces over the last months has left many animals malnourished or dead. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Yasser Mahmoud was among those unwilling or unable to abandon their homes in the face of such perilous urban warfare. Two weeks ago, Islamic State fighters attacked his house to the west of Zahra in the early morning, breaking down the door, searching his photo studio, raiding the refrigerator and camping out. When they left, Mahmoud went into hiding in Zahra, leaving behind his wife and two children, ages 10 and 6. His wife doesnt have a cellphone or Internet access both banned by Islamic State so Mahmoud put aside any thought of fleeing. Instead, he waits. I still dont know anything about my family, he said. If I did, I might go. Ahmed Hassan and his friends also joined the risky caravan to a grocery store from eastern Mosul. Bearded but wearing Reebok track pants and Nike sweatshirts outlawed brands on the streets of Mosul under Islamic State they returned home with a single jar of tahini, all they could find on the bare market shelves. Despite food shortages in the city, Hassan, 30, was reluctant to flee with his three children, ages 3, 2 and 1. I prefer to die here in my home. Hosam Gadban Iraqi civilians who choose to stay in Mosul. I dont want to take my family to the camps, he said. They wont be able to stand it. But if the violence continues, he said, they may reconsider. Its been 11 days since our neighborhood was freed, and theyre still mortaring, said Hishan Mohammed, 24, a local barber. The mortar and sniper attacks have shaken the already-chaotic lives of those who live in Mosul. Shops and street markets were still shuttered in Zahra on Saturday. But many left their gated row houses with children in tow to visit neighbors and shop in nearby villages. Hosam Gadban, 35, left the city with his six children for two days last week, squatting in an abandoned home just east of the city in the village of Gogjali. But without electricity or running water, Gadban said it was horrible. He cant imagine all of them living in a tent and has no intention of leaving, even after their front window was struck by bullets, their house hit by mortar rounds Saturday. I prefer to die here in my home, he said. His 11-year-old daughter, Iman Gadban, wanted to leave. Im scared. I want to go to a safe place, she said. Faraj Saraj, 33, caught a ride out of eastern Mosul in a Humvee, in search of medicine with his 10-year-old daughter, Nasreen. She had been sick to her stomach, a frequent problem since Islamic State stopped treating the tap water, he said. Faraj Saraj and his daughter Nasreen, 10, plan to go back to their homes after getting medicine at an Iraqi army field clinic. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times ) The sheep trader found help at an Iraqi army field clinic at the edge of Mosul. Soldiers greeted Nasreen, handing her medicine that she clutched close to her pink plaid dress. Other families passed on their way out of the city. But Saraj said he was not ready to give up on Mosul. We are worried about going to the camps, he said. Its been overcrowded. It will be a while before they let us back in. If they did leave, he said, it would be difficult to get permission to return to Mosul once their neighborhood near Zahra is freed. And so, as gunfire crackled, he led his ill daughter back around a dirt barrier at the edge of the city on the treacherous trek home. Iraqi troops try to help civilians who want to stay and those bent on leaving, Lt. Col. Mohammed Tamimi said from his command post in an abandoned house in Zahra. They help transport those fleeing, but also ensure those staying have ample food and water, he said. We are not forcing people to stay, but if they want help, we are offering it, he said. Other commanders said the presence of civilians in embattled neighborhoods has complicated the fight to wrestle Mosul from Islamic State. While some residents pass along helpful information to the troops , others aid and shelter the militants, said Lt. Col. Ali Hussein Fadil. Some families will open their doors for fighters to move, he said. One woman was seen baking bread on the roof of a house this week as Islamic State snipers inside her home fired at the army. Because of the civilians, our advances slowed, said Capt. Mohammed Ibrahim, hovering near patients at the field clinic. A small crowd of families who had fled were herded into a nearby abandoned house to await transport to a camp for the displaced. Some said they feared being imprisoned at the camps, where the newly arrived are screened and kept behind barbed wire fences. Women and children who had just escaped the violence inside Mosul, by walking out, rest in a house before being transported to a displaced persons camp near Erbil, Iraq. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times ) Samir Sabri had never left Mosul before his grocery run last week. Two hours later, he and a friend returned carrying plastic bags of chicken, rice, tomatoes and cigarettes forbidden under Islamic State. Our families are there, so we are going back, said Sabri, 36, who works at a laundry. Fleeing their neighborhood near Zahra was not an option, said Hassan Mohammed, 36. Where would we go? he wondered They had already been displaced within the city. We left our houses and went to houses where the army told us to stay. But we are not going to the camps, Sabri said. He said they will wait for the army to free the city. Then they hope to return home. Some friends with white flags waved from across the dirt road. The pair joined them on their walk back to the city as gunfire rattled and mortar shells landed ahead of them, a column of dark smoke filling the sky. An Iraqi soldier stopped them. Where are you going? he said. One of the men pointed toward the smoke. OK, the soldier said. God be with you. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com Twitter: @mollyhf MORE WORLD NEWS Colombias government and FARC rebels sign modified peace agreement Iraqi forces accused of unlawful killings in fight to recapture Mosul from Islamic State Buying baby formula at $40 a can, and other stories of survival from Aleppo An Israeli Cabinet panel voted Sunday to endorse a piece of legislation that would silence mosque loudspeakers that broadcast the call to prayer, kicking up charges of discrimination from the countrys Arab minority. The vote by the Cabinet panel on Sunday means the legislation will be introduced in parliament as a bill backed by the entire coalition improving its chances for final passage. Dubbed the muezzin bill by the local press, the proposal bars any place of worship including churches and synagogues from using loudspeakers. Politicians and legal experts say its aim is to target mosques, especially in mixed Arab-Jewish cities where some Jewish Israelis complain about predawn calls to prayer from Muslim houses of worship. Arab Israelis make up about 20% of the countrys population; 83% of that minority is Muslim, according to Israels Central Bureau of Statistics. Advertisement Legislators in Israels right-wing government have unsuccessfully tried to advance the legislation in previous years. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lent it his support for the first time. Israel is a country that respects freedom of worship for all religions, Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday several hours before the law was approved. Israel is also obligated to protect those who are suffering from excessive noise of loudspeakers. This is what is done in Europe and this is what is done in some places in the Muslim world. Other countries have also seen legal challenges to the call to prayer. In India, the high volume level from mosque loudspeakers prompted a court petition to force imams to lower the sound; in Egypt, the government has tried to force Cairo mosques to transmit a standardized muezzin call provided by the central government, in response to complaints about the cacophony of calls from various mosques. Motti Yogev, a member of the nationalist religious Jewish Home party who co-sponsored the bill, told Israel Radio that Muslim prayer authorities should send text messages or use mobile apps as a substitute. He also argued that the use of loudspeakers disturbed Muslims as well Jews. But leaders of Israels Arab minority see the bill as an effort to infringe on their rights to freedom of worship and vowed the refuse to cooperate with the law if it is passed. This is a racist and outrageous law. The muezzin exists since before the establishment state. Its part of our faith and religion. Why are they suddenly today complaining about the noise? said Sheikh Kamel Rayan, the head of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who predicted that Islamic officials and clerics wouldnt comply with the law. We have no problem to talk about this through dialogue and negotiations, but not through a coercive law. Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List party, which represents Israels Arab minority, called the bill an example of religious persecution in an interview with the Israeli website Walla News. The government is promoting militancy, he said. In a legal opinion submitted to the government opposing the legislation, the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, argued that the law is also meant to stifle nationalist political messages from mosque loudspeakers. In addition to injuring freedom of religion, the proposal is liable to stir up bitterness among the Muslim populace, the opinion said. Separately, the same Cabinet panel also approved a controversial proposal that would allow the government to retroactively legalize unauthorized Israeli settlement outposts. The bill was backed by pro-settler parties in the coalition, who are seeking to find a way to shield unauthorized outposts from recent Israeli high court rulings ordering the government to raze Israeli buildings built illegally on land owned by Palestinians. The settlement bill was opposed by the Israeli attorney general, who warned that it would be difficult to defend against a court challenge. The move is also likely to rankle officials in the outgoing U.S. administration, who are concerned it will expand the footprint of Israeli settlements in a way that will make it impossible to create a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. An incubator for entrepreneurial ventures is part of a Chilean government drive to make it easier to do business. Already its finding success. Multinational companies are increasingly looking to sell their Venezuelan operations to local players as the government struggles with its economy and debt load. By Robert Shaw Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne says the government plans to issue next week the first in a series of decrees to accelerate infrastructure investments and stimulate economic growth A plaintiff in Northampton County Court blames the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem for an alcohol-fueled beating he inflicted on his ex-fiancee that left her with brain damage and sent him to prison for at least two years. An attorney for Nicholas Mullins says the casino had a duty to withhold free alcoholic drinks from him the night he beat Caitlin Shields, tried to suffocate her with a pillow and sent her to St. Luke's University Hospital. Shields wound up covered in bruises and wearing a neck brace, but the 31-year-old Lock Haven, Pa., man is the one who suffered the most from the consequences of that night, according to his attorney, Stuart M. Niemtzow. "His life is ruined because of this," Niemtzow told Judge Paula Roscioli. He said Shields moved on and married someone else but Mullins can't get a job and spent time in state prison. He's looking for compensation for lost wages and the time he spent in prison, the judge said. Mullins lost $800 gambling on Jan 22, 2012. He argued about the losses with Shields and they fought about 5 a.m. Jan. 23 in their Sands hotel room. "I'm going to (expletive) kill you!" Mullins shouted, according to police. Niemtzow said the fight was mutual. He said Mullins wound up in the hospital, too, with a broken nose. He suffered a knee to the groin that night. He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and accepted a two- to four-year state prison sentence, but maintains Shields shares the blame for the fight. "He ended up pleading guilty to avoid a charge of attempted murder and a 40-year exposure," Niemtzow said. Niemtzow said during a pre-trial hearing that 17 drinks were consumed that night, but it's unclear whether all of them were consumed by Mullins or both Mullins and Shields. He said Mullins will testify that a member of Sands' security staff was unsure whether to admit Shields to the casino due to a DUI conviction, but agreed to let her in. "That to me is pure recklessness," Niemtzow told the judge. "They basically said 'Go ahead and have fun.'" He said Mullins suffered from alcohol poisoning at the Pocono Downs casino four months prior to the incident. That information was part of a state database that Sands had access to and should have precluded him from being served alcohol that night, according to Niemtzow. Attorney Kevin J. Ruane represents Sands in the case. Jury selection occurred Monday afternoon. Opening arguments in the civil trial are expected Tuesday. Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. John Hodgman (John Hodgman) John Hodgman spent much of this past summer hiding in the woods. It's not an environment where the Brooklyn-based comedian and author feels at ease. As an "aging, weird, asthmatic only-child-turned-father," he says he can barely leave the city for two days without gasping for air. And yet he has formed a strange bond to his remote part-time homes of western Massachusetts and coastal Maine. They're the inspirations for his one-human show "Vacationland," which he'll perform at SteelStacks' Musikfest Cafe on Nov. 17. "Maine can be a place of real beauty, but always a somewhat cruel beauty," the Massachusetts native says. "The ocean is made of hate, and the beaches offer no refuge because they are are made of sharp rocks and knives, basically. It is the perfect place to go on vacation if you believe you don't deserve pleasure in the first place, which comports pretty well with me." Audiences might recognize Hodgman from his recurring appearances on the Jon Stewart-era "The Daily Show" as the program's resident expert and deranged millionaire, or his stint as the PC in the "Mac vs. PC" Apple commercials. These days, he acts in television and movies, tours his storytelling-focused comedy, and hosts the "Judge John Hodgman" podcast, where he rules on disputes between real people calling in from all over the world. He spoke with lehighvalleylive.com about the horrors of crows, what he'd be doing if his family died in a tragedy and his own march toward death. After his performance at SteelStacks, Hodgman will hang around to take local sandwich recommendations and give out weird-dad advice. Since you first started doing your "Vacationland" show last year, you've been through another vacation season. Any new insights this summer? I would say my experience in Maine in particular this past summer was probably the most haunted and Stephen King-y it has been. It began, unfortunately, with the unexpected death of a neighbor's pet that was hit by car, like on the day we arrived. And every day thereafter was haunted with this premonition that something equally bad or worse was going to happen, because that's what happens in Stephen King books. It was a summer I lived in almost constant fear. Our home was attacked by a crow. It would do this morning after morning, and we didn't know why. And I just learned on an incredible trivia podcast called "No Such Thing as a Fish" that crows are intelligent creatures that can recognize faces, and hold grudges. They're the only animals that will take a disliking to a human, remember that they hate that human, and teach that hate to their offspring. I really was led to wonder what my awful son had done to these crows, such that they were taking vengeance on him. They would chase him down the road on his bicycle. Eventually we made a thing called a scarecrow, and that worked really well until it came to life and murdered my son. That's the way the story would end if it was written by someone else. Did you find out what your son had done to irk the crows? No. Later, a spooky old woman in town started just talking about crows to me for no reason. And I explained what had happened. She said, "That crow probably saw its own reflection in the window." So they're very smart, but they're also very stupid, and they hate themselves. How do your experiences in western Massachusetts differ from Maine? I had grown up going there with my parents. When my mom passed away, my wife and I basically inherited the small cabin she had there. In that particular area, there are four colleges that fill the towns of Western Mass. with utopian older teenagers wearing various styles of dreadlocks and riding on their unicycles with their feelings and ideas. There's a lot of music culture -- every now and then you'd go to Whole Foods and run into Black Francis from the Pixies. It allows you to hold onto the illusion of being a young person, although I only age in one direction: towards death. Maine just strips away that delusion. Young people of Maine leave as soon as they are able, leaving behind only their sad and embittered parents. Suddenly it became impossible to deny what I had become: a real grown-up, who has a terrible beard and mustache. I could announce to the world that biologically I'm all done and no longer require physical affection. John Hodgman stars as Wendy's Car Salesman in the Broad Green Pictures release, LEARNING TO DRIVE. Credit: Broad Green Pictures When was the last time you vacationed in a more traditional beach environment? That would have been last February. I'm good friends -- I'd say best friends if I were not an emotionally stunted person from New England -- with a very talented person called Jonathan Coulton, who has a huge fanbase and hosts a Caribbean cruise for his fans. Because he refuses to hold it during a school vacation of any kind, I usually go by myself, on a big cruise ship with Jonathan Coulton and a bunch of lovely nerds. I live alone in an almost monastic life in a single cabin. When the boat pulls up to the beach, I wander by myself. I remember being on one of these private islands, and deciding to ride the giant zip line. For someone who has been married for 17 years and a father for 14 years, it truly felt like this is what I would be doing if I lost my whole family in a tragedy. That was the good time I had on the beach -- this horrible, chilling ideation that I'm rehearsing for what happens when the worst happens. So you can see that pleasure is not really for me. Warm sands and sunshine and clear, welcoming waters, my body and mind reject that immediately. That's why I'm such an aficionado of Maine. You're starting to make clear the through-line between a performance about vacationing and your 2013 show "Ragnarok," about the end of the world. Well, the truth is the world did not end as I predicted. My show "Ragnarok" and the book that went with it, which was the conclusion of my book series of fake trivia and alternate world history -- that world came to an end. But the actual world did not end. And consequently... I don't want to say I wanted everyone to die. But I think there was some dark part of me that hoped it would come to an end because I felt like I had done my life's work. I had written these three books that had been such a big part of my life, I had been on "The Daily Show," I had met all my heroes, I met the president of the United States. I had to figure out what I was going to do next. The solution for me, as I started developing material to tell on stage, was to stop telling fake facts and just be honest with what I am in the world. ("Vacationland") is a show about growing up, and just owning up to who and what you are in the world. For me that's getting up on stage, and telling true stories about my actual life as a weird dad in his middle 40s. When you performed "Ragnarok" here a few years ago, a local student newspaper headline referred to you just as "shoeless comedian." Yes, I performed that show without shoes. There's a certain amount of horror in my comedy. To be honest, even in "Ragnarok," there's a certain amount of sincerity in it as well. And taking my shoes off, on the one hand, caused the audience to feel discomfort, but also made myself and everyone else a little bit vulnerable. That's sort of what stand-up, and the kind of imitation storytelling/stand-up that I do, is all about: Let's be honest with each other, let's bear ourselves. In the show after "Ragnarok" I took off all my clothes and put on a dress and performed as Ayn Rand. In this one, I don't take off any of my clothes, which I hope will increase attendance, but I do I think bear myself a little more plainly than in any other show. Interview has been condensed and edited. IF YOU GO -Thursday, Nov. 17, at 8 p.m. at SteelStacks' MusikFest Cafe. -Tickets $35-39. -No one under the age of 12 will be admitted. Children between the ages of 13 and 18 must be accompanied by an adult. Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook. UPDATE: Cops: DeSales knife attack happened during dorm party A DeSales University student armed with a knife is charged with trying to kill two other students, according to a report. Brendan P. McMichael, 19, of Philadelphia, was arraigned Sunday morning before District Judge Jacob Hammond on two counts of attempted homicide and four counts of aggravated assault, according to court records. He was sent to Lehigh County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. The Morning Call newspaper, citing court documents, said McMichael was with another student in that student's room in Welsh Hall dormitory and holding a blue folding knife when the victim's roommate entered. The returning roommate asked why McMichael had the knife, the newspaper said. "That's because I'm prepared to f****** kill you both tonight," the newspaper quoted McMichael as saying. McMichael crossed the room and held the knife to the throat of the first student, wounding him, the newspaper said. When the roommate tried to disarm McMichael, the roommate suffered wounds to the hand and the abdomen, according to the report. The knife was recovered, the newspaper said. I love when there's attempted homicide in my old dorm building #desales Lizzie (@idclizzie) November 14, 2016 Upper Saucon Township police didn't immediately return requests seeking more information. The university didn't mention the crimes on its website, or Twitter and Facebook accounts. DeSales officials and university Police Chief Steven A. Marshall referred inquiries to the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office. McMichael's preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled 2 p.m. Nov. 21. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A DeSales University student told two roommates he wanted to kill them as a crowd gathered for a dorm party in an adjoining room, Upper Saucon Township police said. Brendan P. McMichael, 19, of Philadelphia, shortly before 12:46 a.m. Sunday allegedly approached two roommates while armed with a knife. Victims Ryan Musselman and John McLaughlin live with McMichael in the same suite at DeSales' Welsh Hall, 2755 Station Ave., authorities said. The hall is described by police as a residential dormitory with a series of rooms joined by a bathroom. Each room houses two students. McLaughlin was speaking with McMichael in one of the rooms while the party was going on in another room of the suite, according to police. Musselman told police he left the party and walked into the other room to see "what was going on" between McMichael and McLaughlin. Musselman told police he could see in the mirror's reflection a folding knife in McMichael's hand. McMichael was manipulating the knife in his hand and up his sleeve, Musselman told police. When Musselman asked McMichael why he had a knife, McMichael allegedly replied, ""That's because I'm prepared to f------ kill you both tonight." McMichael then lunged toward McLaughlin, holding the knife to his throat and wounding his neck, police said. A struggle ensued, which led to the knife wounding Musselman in the abdomen and hand, according to police. Musselman pulled McMichael off of McLaughlin, authorities said. Upper Saucon Township officers recovered the folding knife at the dorm. Bloodstains were found by officers on the microwave and bathroom door, police said. DeSales on Monday morning posted a statement on the university's Facebook page, confirming an assault and saying there is no threat to students, professors or staff. We are sad to report that early Sunday morning at approximately 1am the DeSales University Police department in... Posted by DeSales University on Monday, November 14, 2016 McMichael is charged with two counts of attempted homicide and four counts of aggravated assault. He was arraigned before District Judge Jacob Hammond, who set bail at $50,000. In lieu of bail, McMichael was sent to Lehigh County jail. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Subscribe today to get the latest headlines straight to your inbox with our free email updates A heartbroken mum has said education and health services "let down" her son, who went onto take his own life. Mina Rayat's 15-year-old son, Brandon Singh Rayat, was found hanged at home on August 9 this year. The tragedy happened 8 months after Brandon's behaviour began to change, and he told his mum he was being bullied. A full inquest into Brandon's death is not due to take place until January. But Mina, of Humberstone, Leicester, wanted to speak out now - at the start of National Anti-Bullying Week - about what happened to her son to try to make sure no other young person, or parent, goes through what her family has experienced. Mina said: "Brandon was a perfectly normal, happy teenager going about his life. "But in April last year, all of that changed and he became completely withdrawn and then he refused to go to school at Judgemeadow Community College, in Evington. "He told me that there was some name calling - terrible names that I don't want to repeat - and that some people were no longer speaking to him. "I spoke to the school about him being bullied and there was an eventual meeting set up with an attendance officer. "She said he wasn't well, and his health needed to be addressed first." At that point, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) got involved. In the following months, Brandon made several threats - and attempts - to take his own life, said Mina. His behaviour at home worsened too, and he became more anxious. Mina contacted her son's GP after Brandon told her he wanted to die, and she and her husband were struggling to cope. Brandon was seen by psychiatric services at Leicester Royal Infirmary with symptoms of an "acute stress reaction in the context of bullying". "At times he would be really aggressive, and then he would completely change back again," said Mina. "He cut himself with knives and tried to overdose on tablets. "I begged doctors to hospitalise him because it was all too much. I told them he wanted to kill himself." But she added: "Although Brandon received help, he was never detained." He found the strength to school last September, after the summer break. But, Mina said: "He got into a fight and the downward spiral happened again. "His anxiety got worse so that it became a complete phobia. "He wouldn't leave the house in case he bumped into anyone from school. "It was excruciating seeing him go through that. He was lonely and isolated and extremely frustrated. "He was on anti depressants, but the dose got higher, and each time it did, he seemed to get worse in himself. "He told the psychiatrist he had flashbacks of hanging himself. "Two months before Brandon killed himself he started to give away all of his possessions and money. He was planning to kill himself. "My heart breaks when I think of everything that happened." Mina said she believes the education and health authorities should have done more to help her son. "He was bullied at school and let down by those who should have had his welfare and best interests at heart," she said. "He should have been hospitalised. "When someone repeatedly tells you they want to kill themselves, isn't that supposed to happen? "I don't think the bullying or his mental health issues were taken seriously enough by those around him. "I feel like everyone let my beautiful boy down and I'm heartbroken. "I want other people to know that bullying needs to be taken seriously, as does young people's mental health. "I don't feel like that happened with Brandon. "He was a kind person. He liked helping other people and was intelligent and achieved high marks. Brandon also had excellent attendance prior to any bullying. "He deserved better treatment. I wouldn't want any other parent to go through what I've been through." What the school said James McKenna, principal of Judgemeadow Community College, said: "The whole school was extremely saddened by Brandon's death, and our thoughts remain with his family. "It wouldn't be appropriate to comment in detail in advance of the coroner's inquest, but we can say that Judgemeadow takes the welfare of its pupils very seriously and does not tolerate bullying in any form." What the health service said A spokesman for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, which runs mental health services, said: "We were deeply saddened by the tragic death of Brandon Rayat, and extend our sincere sympathies to the family once again. "We met with the family immediately after Brandon's death, and their comments are reflected in the robust serious incident investigation which we have carried out. "That report will be shared with the family in preparation for the inquest in January. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment further until that inquest has taken place."In the meanwhile, we remain committed to offering appropriate support to the family at this difficult time." If you need help If you are struggling with bullying, you can find advice from The Diana Award Anti-Bullying Campaign support centre online, and from Childline online or by calling 0800 1111. antibullyingpro.com/support-centre childline.org.uk Part of the Governments long-term plan for the economy and for addressing the fallout from the Brexit vote is to help Irish-based companies get better at exporting their goods and services. Research shows that every additional job in the export sector supports another new job in the locally traded sector. Enterprise Irelands Job Expansion Fund (JEF) supports this aim by offering up to 150,000 to help with the recruitment of staff at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Irish-based firms in manufacturing or traded services embarking on an export-orientated project are eligible. Prospective employers must be in business for at least two years and demonstrate the potential to increase turnover by a minimum 350,000 over two years after the award of the grant. They must be recruiting at least three people into full-time, non-sales positions to qualify for up to 15,000 per new employee. The new jobs must be retained for a minimum of three years from the date of last payment of the grant package. The deadline for applications is December 5 and is open to Enterprise Ireland clients and Small and Medium-sized companies with an export focus. Enterprise Ireland advises interested employers to consult with one of their advisers before submitting an application. Two foreign nationals convicted of their part in a disturbance in Portlaoises Top Square in which a garda was assaulted have been given jail time, after they refused to pay compensation and complete community service. The incident took place on January 17 this year, outside a nightclub in Top Square, Portlaoise, and involved a number of accused and plainclothes gardai. Arising from the incident, Mark Gonda, 44 The Haven, Roscrea, was charged with assault, and threatening or abusive behaviour. Attila Szabo,20 Ard Erin, Mountrath, was charged with threatening behaviour. Both men contested the charge and this case was put back to September. At the hearing, both men were convicted, and were told to pay compensation and do community service. However when the case returned to court last week, the court heard that both men were refusing to pay compensation and refusing to do the community service. Judge Catherine Staines imposed one month in prison on both men, with recognisance fixed in the event of an appeal. A third accused, Norbert Orsos (35), previously pleaded guilty to threatening or abusive behaviour, and assault. He received the probation act on both charges back in April. Laois TD Brian Stanley urged other TDs and Senators to vote against a big pay rise for themselves and instead start with decent increase for lower paid people employed by the State. Sinn Fein put forward a motion in the Dail proposing that TD's and Senators refuse the 5,400 wage increase. The Laois SF TD said national politicians could set an example. He said lower paid public servants should be first in line for increases. "We have a choice between giving leadership and good example and putting more money in our pockets. Those of us who have a good salary should not demand more. We should not jump the queue while low-paid public servants, many of whom depend on family income supplement, wait. "TD's take home after tax and deductions roughly 45,000-50,000 per year. Public servants...will get an increase of roughly 1,000, while we line up and take over 5,000. While people on the minimum wage will receive an increase of 10 cent per hour in January. That is an injustice." "Under a previous Fianna Fail Government, the minimum wage for someone working 39 hours per week was cut, but that has been restored. 10 cent per hour is an insult and should be increased.Only those on middle and low incomes should get an increase. The first in the queue should be clerical officers, manual workers in the public service and what are termed the lower grades. Concluding Deputy Stanley said: "We need to create a society based on solidarity, not greed. What better place to start than in here? We should take the lead. There is a clear choice here for Deputies. We either want to lead by example or operate by double standards. I appeal to people across the political divide to do the right thing. The money saved, which is a modest amount, could be used for homeless services. Let us not lecture gardai, young teachers, young nurses and low-paid public service workers. Let us try to create some equality and start with it here." Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail voted down the motion and it was therefore defeated, 89 votes to 38. Proof that austerity has not gone away emerged today in Laois where county councillors voted to increase the commercial rate on business to balance books for 2017. Politicians refused to increase the local property tax this year but today voted to force shops and other employers to pay more to county hall. Councillors voted by by 11 to six to the 3% increase. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael voted together - Sinn Fein, Labour and Independent councillors. Cllr Padraig Fleming, Fianna Fail, and Cllr Dave Goodwin, Fine Gael, abstained. In advance of the vote Laois County Council's Chief Executive John Mulholland issued the stark warning to councillors as they considered what to do. "Put simply unless Laois County Council can identify a new stream of funding or increase revenue from an existing income stream it will not be possible to present a balanced Revenue Budget for 2017. "There is a requirement to generate additional revenue of 370,000 in order to match expenditure across all activities. Given that there will be no increase in Local Property Tax nor the Equalisation Fund it is apparent that an increase in commercial rates must be fully considered," warned the chief executive. Commercial rates have been frozen for eight years in Laois and the manager presented figures which show that the county takes less in rates and water charges than any other council in Ireland. He also presented the backdrop to council finances. This year Laois will have total income of 56.7 million which compares with 73 million in 2008. Council staffing has been cut by a quarter or 114 since 2008. The manager said gross expenditure for next year is 59.2 million an increase of 4% on 2015. More men are surviving prostate cancer than ever before thanks to huge strides in the prevention, detection and treatment of the disease. Forty years ago the outlook for a prostate cancer patient was vastly different from today. In 1976, a little over one in three men diagnosed with prostate cancer (35%) survived the disease over five years. Today, five-year survival rates for prostate cancer in Ireland have risen to nine in ten (90.6%). However, more needs to be done to improve survival rates, particularly for men with metastatic prostate cancer, while also working on ways to improve the lives of men surviving the disease who often suffer a reduced quality of life. For the past nine years the Irish Cancer Society has partnered with the Movember Foundation Ireland in investing in Irish research projects which aim to tackle these issues. The Movember community across Ireland is encouraged to again raise vital life-saving funds that will mean we can continue to invest in prostate cancer research, as well as advocacy and services. According to Professor Ray McDermott, Consultant Medical Oncologist at Tallaght and St Vincents University Hospitals, Dublin and Clinical Director with prostate cancer research initiative iPROSPECT: The increase in survival rates for prostate cancer patients over recent decades is a testament to the work of research scientists in Ireland and across the globe. They have worked tirelessly in their battle against this disease and have saved countless lives. But survival rates only show one side of the journey a patient with this disease goes through. For survivors, their diagnosis and treatment often impacts their physical and mental wellbeing in ways men rarely speak openly about. Cancer research can address these impacts through studying survivors own experiences and finding ways to personalise their treatment and care. That is why investment in cancer research by the Irish Cancer Society and Movember funded through you, the public is so essential. Movember- get involved The Movember Foundation is the only global charity focused solely on mens health. Its time to take actionsooner rather than later. There are three ways you can raise money this Movember: Grow a moustache Let your lip go free for 30 days Move take a physical activity challenge during MOVEmber Host an event run your own fundraiser Head to Movember.com for more information and to sign up. Fianna Fail TD for Sligo-Leitrim Marc Mac Sharry has slammed the Housing Minister for concentrating solely on the cities in its latest rehash of the governments housing plan. Sites have been identified in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway for new home development but theres nothing on the cards for Leitrim and the North West. Deputy Mac Sharry commented, This is typical of this governments lack of vision and complete dismissal of the regions. This plan, which was first announced back in June, concentrates solely on the cities and leaves other urban areas, particularly in the North West, behind. I have consistently highlighted the need for investment in this region, but time and time again Ministers have turned a blind eye. How are we to attract Foreign Direct Investment into the area when we dont have the infrastructure to support it. Housing is one of the key factors that potential investors will look at and rents in the North West have risen by more than 6% in the past year. This rate of increase is unsustainable and will do nothing to entice new business to the region. There needs to be an overarching strategy for the North West region to address the two-tier recovery which has been perpetrated by Fine Gael over the past 5 years. Proper housing provision must be a key strand of this policy. Unfortunately the details of this latest plan make for grim reading for anyone living in the North West with only the cities making it on to the fast track planning list. This is simply not good enough and will create major problems down the road. This government needs to wake up to the seriousness of the situation here in the North West and put a strategy in place to increase investment and employment in the region. Speaking in the Dail today on the Social Welfare Bill, Sinn Fein TD for Sligo, Leitrim, West Cavan and South Donegal, Martin Kenny, said the JobPath system is reminiscent of the Ken Loach film I, Daniel Blake. Deputy Kenny said: There are people in my area who have finished up on Community Employment Schemes which suited them down to the ground. They then receive the dreaded letter from JobPath, a system run by Seetec, a British company contracted by the Department of Social Protection, and find that they are barred from going on any other scheme. I have three examples of people in my constituency who have come to me frustrated and angry about JobPath. One of them is a woman in her 60s, who has spent the last decade or more looking after elderly parents and is in poor health herself. Having been refused disability, she is now forced onto Jobseekers and is being harassed to attend training programmes on how to write CVs and how to conduct herself at interviews. For the two year duration of the JobPath programme, she is barred from taking a place on any other training scheme or Community Employment Scheme, which would be more appropriate. This woman lives 30 miles from the Seetec office and does not drive," explained Deputy Kenny. He cited another example of a man in his 50s. The man has a small farm of land and in receipt of Farm Assist. "He was hoping to get onto a Community Employment Scheme which would suit him and his lifestyle and provide a service to the local community. He is now barred from this possibility and is painfully aware of the futility of participating in a course for jobs which do not exist in this locality," said Deputy Kenny. The third example is a woman who as on a Tus scheme, helping out in the local Tidy Towns project, planting in housing estates and other such activity. She was very happy, making a constructive contribution to her community and looking forward to beginning a Community Employment Scheme. She received the letter from JobPath and now is tied to a commitment to attend the Seetec offices two mornings a week for two years. She has to provide evidence of jobs applied for and evidence of active job seeking." Deputy Kenny said these scenarios illustrate the ludicrous nature of this JobPath programme "which in a machine-like manner takes no account of the reality of the circumstances of its victims." Last night, I saw the film, I, Daniel Blake which depicted how a man in Britain was driven to die in despair having been harassed by such a system and I appeal to the Minister for Social Protection to take heed of the message contained in it. Is the point of JobPath to find work for people or is it to harass them into a situation where they no longer have the heart to try to claim social welfare?. Review Subscribers only In the exhibition 'Things,' the Louvre is seeking the soul of inanimate objects A daring and successful exhibition mixing movements and eras to look at the passions, desires and obsessions expressed in still lifes. A LIMERICK city-based doctor has called for the restoration of pay for general practice, which he said will enhance patient care and reduce the number of people on trolleys in hospitals. This follows comments made by HSE chief Tony OBrien, warning of the potential impact of restoring pay to workers. In response, Monaleen doctor Emmet Kerin, president of the National Association of GPs, argued that it would alleviate the crisis in secondary care and save money. Dr Kerin, who has a clinic on the Ennis Road, said: General Practice is at crisis point. The latest figures from the Irish Medical Council state that there are 63.1 GPs per 100,000 population, falling well below international standards of 80 GPs per 100,000. We also know that 915 GPs are set to emigrate or retire in the next five years. In the context of the current critical shortage of GPs in this country, this should be setting off alarm bells with the HSE and Department of Health. Patients will face increasing waiting times for a consultation with their GP with potentially catastrophic outcomes for their care. A spokesperson for the NAGP said that it believes that patients should be kept in their communities and out of hospital. If GPs, and other health and social care professionals, can deliver a high level of care at local level the number of people on trolleys can be reduced. Dr Kerin said that cuts in the recent years have had a direct impact on emergency department overcrowding and patient waiting times. He added: Disproportionate cuts in General Practice has, and will continue to, affect secondary care. This must be addressed. The HSE must begin to view the resourcing of GP-led primary care as an investment, improving patient care with the benefit of reducing costs in secondary care. Recently NAGP vice-president Yvonne Williams, Adare, condemned the chronic shortage of community doctors, following the release of statistics that showed the number of Limerick GPs being below international best practice. In a recent Medical Council of Ireland report, it states that there are 61 GPs per 100,000 people in Limerick. According to the NAGP, for a region to meet international standards, there must be 80 GPs per 100,000 people. REGENERATIONS most expensive project to date is expected to commence its initial stages in the coming weeks. The tendering process for the first stage of the major 40m Coonagh to Knockalisheen Road, which forms part of Coonagh-Lisnagry Northern Distributor Road, is likely to be complete by this Christmas. A spokesperson for Limerick City and County Council said that it is likely that contractors will be on site by early 2017. The purpose of the project is to provide significant improvement in connectivity between different areas along the northern fringe of the city. The scheme, a key element in the regeneration programme, is expected to be a major economic driver for the Moyross area. The project will provide a new link road to Moyross, a 3km urban style dual carriageway between Coonagh roundabout and Knockalisheen Road. The road, which is funded by the Department of Tourism, Transport and Sport will allow the locality to be promoted for economic development as improved access attracts investment to an area. As part of the project, the Knockalisheen Road will also be upgraded with new footpaths and cycle lanes resulting in improved access to communities, increased potential for development and reduced congestion in the city centre, the spokesperson said. It is understood that enabling works have been undertaken over the past number of weeks to prepare the site for construction. The first stage of the Coonagh-Knockalisheen project will involve the upgrading of the entrance to Coonagh Cross Shopping Centre to dual carriageway standard; the construction of a new roundabout to replace the existing roundabout at the rear of the complex; embankment construction between the rear of the complex and the Old Cratloe Road; and fencing off for the project. The tender process will be open for six weeks, after which there will be a shortlist of contractors followed by a preferred contractor, the spokesperson said. Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan said that there has been slow progress for this project since 2008. It was supposed to be a key part of the regeneration programme. The idea was to open up the northside of Limerick, to get from Coonagh to Knockalisheen in a couple of minutes. It would also open up Moyross which is the largest cul de sac in Ireland. Deputy Quinlivan said that, at best, the project will be completed by 2020, which he said is not good enough. He said that this new road will make the area much more profitable, much more valuable. It would be good for business, good for community. In response to Deputy Quinlivans parliamentary question on the project, Minister for Transport Shane Ross said on October 25: As regards the proposed Coonagh to Knockalisheen Road Scheme, before the main contract can commence, important advance works must be undertaken. These advance works include special ground works treatment along a section of the proposed road. Following receipt and examination of the relevant tender documentation, approval was given by my Department to Limerick County Council in July this year to proceed to tender in respect of the Advance Works Contract. While the timeframe for the tender process is a matter for Limerick County Council, I understand from the Council that the tender will issue shortly. LIMERICK native Tim OConnor who is involved in a number of initiatives which have raised the profile of Limerick on both a national and international level has been awarded the Limerick Person of the Month award. Over the past four years the Killeedy native has served in many leadership roles for his native Limerick. I love the ambition and energy and drive that is going on right now in Limerick, said Tim, who added that he is honoured and thrilled to be presented with the Limerick Person of the Month award. It is a very great honour always to be honoured by your own people - its fantastic altogether. Having spent 43 years away from Limerick Tim became heavily involved in a number of projects in recent years. Michael Noonan actually asked me to get involved about four years ago. He asked me to go down and meet Conn Murray because at that stage the early planning was beginning for Limerick National City of Culture 2014, Tim explained. He became vice-chairman of Limerick National City of Culture 2014. Tim is also vice chairman of Global Limerick Network (GLN) a new initiative whereby Limerick City and County, as the homeplace, engages with its diaspora all over the world. In the past Tim served as chairman of Limerick Marketing company. He is also a member of Limerick Economic Forum chaired by Denis Brosnan. You have a situation in Limerick whereby you have the private sector working very closely with the council and thats a great model, he said. He is also chairman of the Shannon Consortium which is a collaboration - or whats called a regional cluster - of the higher education institutions in the region - the University of Limerick, Limerick Institute of Technology and Mary Immaculate College. What has prompted him to get involved in so many groups? I am very proud to be from Limerick. In Dublin I say, If you are looking for a place where interesting things are happening, then go to Limerick'. Growing up, Tim was a border in St Munchins College. After a two-year stint as a teacher, he joined the Civil Service in Dublin in 1974, moving to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in 1979. Most of his DFA career was spent working on the Northern Ireland Peace Process. He was part of the Irish Government Negotiating Team for the Good Friday Agreement, was involved in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the new north/south structures arising from the Agreement and spent almost six years in Armagh as the inaugural joint secretary of the North/South Ministerial Council. His foreign postings included the Embassies of Ireland in Bonn and Washington DC and from 2005-2007 he served as the Consul General of Ireland in New York, USA. He served as secretary general to President Mary McAleese at Aras an Uachtarain from 2007 to 2010. Tim resides in Dublin but gets back to Limerick a couple of times every month. Tims partner is Yvonne Shields, the chief executive of Irish Lights - the Lighthouse Authority of Ireland. Tim has three children - Ciara, Barry and Aoife, and he has three grandchildren Luca, Sean and Orla. who reside in France. LIMERICK City and County Council has entered talks with the Department of Education on where a proposed new secondary school for Monaleen/Castletroy will be situated. It comes after Education Minister Richard Bruton revealed the Educate Together group will be running the new facility, which will cater for 600 students from 2018. Meanwhile, the Limerick-Clare Education and Training Board (ETB) will run the other 600-student facility proposed for Mungret college. This facility set to open next September to first years will be located on lands to the right of the current Mungret College building and the current Educate Together primary school. Concern has been raised at whether the facility will be ready to welcome approximately 75 first year students next year. But former Education minister Jan OSullivan who announced Limericks two new secondary schools 12 months ago believes students will be welcomed to the new Mungret school, even if they are in prefabs initially. The secondary school will open on time. Thats one thing the department does well. If they say they will have a school open at a set date, they will open it, she said. The Labour TD also revealed that, having contacted Limerick City and County Council with her party colleague, the Castletroy councillor Elena Secas, that talks are well advanced on the selection of land for the second school. The information I have on this is that there has been discussion between the council and the Department of Education. A few sites were suggested which would be considered suitable. Basically, the department and the council now are engaging on what might be the best site, she told the Limerick Leader. She also welcomed the selection of Educate Together and the LCETB as patrons, adding: I think the fact we have two different forms of patronage and they both involve more choice for parents represents a very good, positive outcome. The selection of Educate Together represents a first in Limerick, with the city playing host to the groups first local secondary school. Educate Together schools are unique in that children are accepted regardless of religious belief. Decisions are sought democratically with the views of teachers, students and parents all carrying an equal weight. Maria ODwyer, who co-chaired the campaign for an Educate Together School said: The Irish education system has been about putting square pegs in round holes, but we are trying something different. I think we have always said this is about choice. There has been a lot of misconception about what Educate Together actually is. People say it is for families with no faith. We say it is for families with no faith and all faiths. The chief executive of the LCETB George OCallaghan said the new Mungret school will be a non designated community college, and that an information night for prospective new parents would take place within the next fortnight. LCETB will work closely with the Department of Education and Skills in securing the temporary accommodation and ensuring that it will be in place for September 2017, he said. THE MAN behind restoring a significantly damaged 151-year-old crucifix in Limerick has said that he is confident that it will be returned to its home before the start of Christmas celebrations. Last Monday, a man entered the Redemptorist Church, on Mount St Alphonsus, South Circular Road, and did extensive damage to the historical crucifix that has been in the church since 1865. Within minutes of the incident, gardai were called to the scene. The following morning, Randel Hodkinson, of Hodkinson and Sons Ecclesiastical Decorators, removed the holy item to his Henry Street studio. Mr Hodkinson said that the Redemptorist Church is anxious to have it returned before Christmas. I will try and piece it together as much as possible, from the remains of the pieces that came off it. But I will probably have to build it up and cast new pieces for it as well. The main bars that strengthen it are still in place, so it will be a matter of working plaster around it to make up the legs again. Other than the recent incident, the crucifix has never been damaged before, and has been kept in great condition. Its practically kept in its original condition. Its a shame, really, that this happened to it. The crucifix was built by the famous Mayer of Munich in the 1860s, and is made of plaster of Paris, built in sections, supported by an interior metal frame, explained Mr Hodkinson, whose family business has been operating out of Limerick city for close to 150 years. Rector Fr Seamus Enright told the Leader that it was an unfortunate incident. The crucifix has been in the church since 1865 and is an important part of the spiritual and cultural patrimony of Mount St Alphonsus. "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. TALKS are expected to take place later this week in an effort to resolve an impasse which has delayed the opening of a new dialysis unit at University Hospital Limerick. The state-of-the-art 24-bay-unit is located on the first floor of the new extension block at UHL on the same floor as the hospitals new intensive care unit. The unit did not open as planned on Monday after concerns were expressed by members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. Mary Fogarty, industrial relations officer with the INMO, says members have concerns in relation to the future funding of the unit. We were told quite categorically that the unit would not open until they received their Letter of Determination from the HSE that is the letter from the Department of Health that would detail all the funding because it is much bigger unit, it requires much more staff but they havent received that, she said. Colette Cowan, chief executive of the UL Hospitals Group, says she hopes a resolution to the impasse can been found quickly. We would like the unit to open in a timely manner, these patients are like family. They come into the hospital three times a week for dialysis treatment. They deserved it, the unit they are in is very small and I think we should be able to negotiate and get it open as quick as possible, she said adding that the delay could have an impact on the opening of the hospitals new emergency department. I need it open in the coming days as we need to progress the new emergency department part of that is the old dialysis unit has to be knocked down, she said adding that builders had been due to begin the demolition work this week. In relation to the future funding of new unit, Ms Cowan says she is not is a position to give any guarantees. At the moment they need a guarantee from us we cant give that guarantee other then that we are going in move in there and use the (new) facility but we cant pre-empt the next five years, she said adding that the HSEs national service plan will determine the level of future-proofing for the new unit. While the matter has been referred to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), Mary Fogarty says INMO members have concerns other than the future-funding of the unit. These relate to the allocation of car parking spaces for staff who are rostered on a late shift as well as patent safety. For example the service will no longer be there overnight it will revert back to finishing at 11.30 at night if they have no beds (in the main hospital) where do the patients go? she said accusing management of engaging with the INMO in a haphazard manner. Our members are at the end of their tether, they want this unit to be open and they want it to be safe and they want to have all the staffing and issues in place, she said. Colette Cowan says the delay in opening the new unit has caused a lot of disharmony and upset but that she hopes matters can be resolved once talks get underway between the parties. A date for talks at WRC had not been confirmed. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. What we usually refer to as the New Dems, the New Democrat Coalition, is, even more than the Blue Dogs, the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. They're getting ready to elect their next leader and the mailer below is from a slick 3-pager sent to newly-elected New Dems members from Jared Polis-- except he accidentally sent it to a Berniecrat who immediately forwarded it to me, along with Jared's message. Bear in mind when you read it that my friend who it was sent to would sooner decimate the New Democratic Coalition that join it: I hope you are having a nice weekend after what has been a difficult week. Congrats on you victory, a small ray of sunlight on a cloudy day. We are so thrilled to have you join our NewDem Coalition! I am now announcing my intent to run for Chair of the New Democrat Coalition. Please take a moment to look at the attached prospectus outlining my qualifications and my vision for the future of the Coalition. Thank you for your consideration. Please do not hesitate to follow up with any questions or thoughts. I hope that I can count on your support. Oh, and by the way, Jared is the second richest Democrat in the House-- after fellow New Dem John Delaney . Last year his net worth was $92.6 million, up smartly from $88.6 from the year before. He's considered a dot.com wunderkind on Capitol Hill, having sold his online greeting card (BlueMountain.com) and floral delivery (ProFlowers.com) businesses. He's a big Uber investor. A member of Congress warned me today that Democrats will vote on leadership races Thursday "so that no one has any time to put together any challenges based on the election failure." He was't happy that the sleaze-bag former head of the New Dems, Queens Democratic boss Joe Crowley-- a Wall Street plant inside the caucus-- is running for the caucus chairman's job. "He expects to be the Leader after Pelosi and Hoyer are gone. The only alternative seems to be Wasserman Schultz. What would your activist friends that about that choice?" Wall Street Journal emphasized the Yesterday theemphasized the Democratic Party identity crisis as exemplified by the explosive battle over the chair of the DNC. So far Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, pharmaceutical lobbyist Howard Dean, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman and DNC vice chair Raymond Buckley, lobbyist and South Carolina Chairman Jaime Harrison and centrist former Governor Martin O'Malley are running. There are even rumors that the much-reviled and serially failed Steve Israel is campaigning for the job. Ellison seems like the perfect candidate except for one glaring blemish-- support from the worst Democrat of all: Chuck Schumer-- and the fact that many people are saying there is a need for a full-time chairman, not something I recall anyone saying when Wasserman Schultz was given the job. I gather the House leadership wants to get the votes out of the way quicker than usual-- before the members, just back in DC-- can start grumbling among themselves and plotting to change the spectacularly failed leadership itself. So Nancy, Hoyer, Clyburn stay and they move Crowley up to Caucus head and then let Barbara Lee and Linda Sanchez fight it out for Caucus vice chair. In this series of articles, Live Science turns the spotlight onto some of YouTube's most popular science channels. Their creators weave together graphics, footage, animation and sound design in videos that can be as whimsical as they are informative, employing a range of techniques and styles. Yet all of them all share a general curiosity and enthusiasm for the unexpected and fascinating science stories that exist in the world around us. YouTube's 'The Brain Scoop': Meet the 'Chief Curiosity Correspondent' for the Field Museum From mounts of massive T. rex skeletons, to dioramas of animals in recreated habitats, to exhibits describing our evolutionary ancestry and our modern microbial partnerships, natural history museums present glimpses of Earth's distant past and explanations of its current ecosystems and inhabitants. These museums open windows into remote parts of the world, offering close-up views of what we see every day and of many things that we overlook. Museum exhibits reveal the delicate balance of life and describe the connections between all creatures, living and extinct. However, for all the wonders displayed in museums, far more remains hidden from public view. Vast collections of fossils, objects and preserved specimens are housed in storage and studied by teams of scientists, whose work is also largely invisible to the public. But on YouTube's "The Brain Scoop," host and co-creator Emily Graslie the "Chief Curiosity Correspondent" at the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago uses video to take viewers behind the scenes at FMNH, bringing its secret treasures and scientific research and researchers to light. Graslie investigates something fishy with Caleb McMahan, Field Museum ichthyologist and Collection Manager of Fishes. (Image credit: The Brain Scoop) And that covers a lot of ground both inside the museum and in the field with its experts. Episodes include a sit-down with so-called "death rocks," a tour of the FMNH insect collection, an expedition to find one of the world's rarest plants, and a look at how scientists learn about Earth's environmental history from bird vomit. From art intern to volunteer curator Graslie first gravitated toward natural history collections while studying for a fine arts degree at the University of Montana. She interned at the university's Phillip L. Wright Zoological Museum during her senior year, conducting an independent study in scientific illustration. After graduating in 2011, she continued working at the museum as a volunteer. "I started learning more about processes and specimens cataloguing them, doing specimen prep in the lab," Graslie told Live Science. "The art internship started to blossom into a volunteer curatorial position." Graslie also began blogging on Tumblr about her work at the museum. Collaborations with YouTube creator Hank Green led to the launch of "The Brain Scoop" in January 2013. "The university wasn't involved I was making the videos on my own time, for my own enjoyment and for the pleasure of sharing this stuff with other people," Graslie said. "So there wasn't a lot of direction. We didn't know what we wanted to be, but we had the freedom to experiment. That was hugely important for the growth of the channel, it allowed us to do a lot of creative things." "The Brain Scoop" meets the Field Museum When Graslie visited Chicago a few months after "The Brain Scoop" debuted, she was offered the opportunity for a new collaboration bringing the show to the FMNH, beginning in July 2013. Graslie explores bat caves in Kenya with Bruce Patterson, the Field Museum's Curator of Mammals, in 2014. (Image credit: Greg Mercer/The Field Museum) "All of a sudden, we had access to the best resources which were the collections and the experts who worked in the collections," Graslie explained. "That was something we didn't have in Montana we had freedom and a lot of creativity and a lot of dead animals, but no context for how those specimens were being used. Coming to the Field Museum lent a lot of credibility to the show." Graslie works closely with FMNH scientists to identify science topics and define story arcs, and researchers quickly discovered that "The Brain Scoop" could bring their work to hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers. Some episodes are deep dives into one story, such as the identification of a bizarre fossil known as the "Tully Monster," while the series "Natural News" offers shorter weekly updates on the museum's ongoing scientific studies. For Graslie, making "The Brain Scoop" also means learning something new and surprising with every episode, she told Live Science. One video in particular, about how scientists describe species, provided her with an unexpected wake-up call about the term "species" itself, which she discovered to be far less clearly defined than she had thought. "Charles Darwin titled his book 'On the Origin of Species,' and within that book he didn't explicitly define what a species is! The more I started looking into this, the more I saw that there isn't one completely agreed-upon definition for a species," Graslie said. "Entomologists will look at different criteria to name a species of beetle or fly than paleontologists will look at when trying to describe a new species of dinosaur. There are around 26 different accepted species concepts in taxonomy it's one of the most contentious topics in the field of biology." Investigating how researchers define and organize species also inspired Graslie to explore the question using a more whimsical approach by asking a group of FMNH scientists to apply taxonomic interpretations to candy. "I got 12 different kinds of candy and four scientists who work on different kinds of organisms, and had them organize the candy based on what they believed to be a logical species concept or criteria," Graslie explained. "I didn't tell them ahead of time what we'd be doing, but they all went along with it and had a lot of fun." One scientist Margaret Thayer, a curator emeritus of insects even performed an impromptu dissection, whipping out a pocketknife and cutting into a candy sample, which she then tasted to confirm the composition of its "guts." "I don't usually do use this test for specimens," Thayer told Graslie. And with the breadth of the FMNH collection and researchers still to explore, Graslie doesn't expect to run out of inspiration or video subjects anytime soon. "As a content creator, if you're in a museum and you find yourself getting bored, I don't know what to tell you," she told Live Science. "The rabbit hole gets deeper, the longer you look into it." Got a favorite science channel on YouTube that you think we should feature? Tell us about it in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook! Original article on Live Science. Near the epicenter of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in New Zealand, a train track and state highway can be seen destroyed by landslide slips. The magnitude-7.8 earthquake that rattled New Zealand early Monday morning local time (Sunday morning EST), killing at least two people and stranding many others in the region, also had a strange side effect: eerie blue and green flashes of light in the sky during the shaking. Only in recent years have seismologists taken reports of these so-called earthquake lights seriously. It turns out that researchers still don't fully understand the phenomenon, but they do have a few clues about where and why it occurs. The strange light shows which may appear as sizzling flames emanating from the ground, flashes of lightning, ghostly globes or blue and green shimmers usually occur at rifts where huge chunks of Earth are pulling away from each other, according to a 2014 study published in the journal Seismological Research Letters. [Elves, Sprites & Blue Jets: Earth's Weirdest Lightning] Also in 2014, researchers showed that shifting grains surrounding a fault may generate an electrical charge, though exactly why this happens is poorly understood. Unexplained phenomenon Observers have documented shimmering earthquake lights more than 60 times over the past several centuries. In 2009, for instance, before a major earthquake struck L'Aquila, Italy, bystanders reported what looked like flames sizzling from the sidewalk, and in Canada's Yukon Territory in the 1970s, ghostly green orbs that were floating in the sky were initially thought to be UFOs but were later determined to be tied to a nearby quake. But until recently, many researchers discounted these reports as hearsay. "Earthquake lights are totally underreported," Friedemann Freund, a crystallographer (someone who studies the atomic structure of materials) at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and San Jose State University, previously told Live Science. "They are often things that happen within a fraction of a second." But with the widespread availability of smartphones, these strange events are now being documented more frequently. In 2014, Freund and his colleagues showed that 97 percent of earthquake lights documented since the 1600s occurred at faults that were within continental plates, rather than at subduction zones, where one plate is diving beneath another. They found that 85 percent of the incidents occurred where Earth buckles and creates a steep ravine or drop in the Earth. This fissure allows magmatic rocks that originate deep belowground to gradually migrate up toward the surface, where they discharge energy. Because of how the atoms in these rocks are organized, they may generate an electrical charge more easily, flow upward to the surface, ionize the air and generate the light show, the researchers speculated. In this scenario, earthquake lights may not even be tied to earthquakes. Changes in stress at a fault can occur either due to a catastrophic rupture or because of a slower release over days, and both forms could generate an electrical charge that ionizes the air, according to the research. "Crackpot physics" In a separate study detailed at the 2014 American Physical Society meeting in Denver, researchers filled Tupperware containers with mixtures of plastic discs, glass particles and powders, such as flour, and watched what happened as they stuck and slipped past one another. These mixtures were meant to mimic the way grains of Earth move in an earthquake zone. The researchers found that the mixtures reliably generated high voltages when tipped, even though they could not explain why. "Except for the fact that we cannot get these voltages to go away, I would call this 'crackpot physics,'" Troy Shinbrot, an applied physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, previously told Live Science. "And even as it is I wish I could hedge my bets, but the voltages are very repeatable, and we have so far failed to account for a spurious influence that might cause them." Original article on Live Science. An image of a patient with alopecia universalis, a condition that results in hair loss. On the left, the patient's head before treatment with the drug tofacitinib. On the right, the head after treatment. Two patients, who each lost all of their hair 10 years ago due to a medical condition, recently regrew some of their hair after taking an arthritis drug, according to a new report of the cases. The patients, one man and one woman, suffered from alopecia universalis, a condition in which people lose all of the hair on their entire body because their immune system attacks hair follicles. There is currently no effective treatment for the condition. The patients' doctors tried treating them with multiple other drugs, but nothing worked. However, after the patients took the arthritis drug, called tofacitinib, every day for two months, some hair regrew on their scalp, eyebrows and under the arms, according to the report. The patients were followed for nine months while they took the drug, and they did not experience any serious side effects, the researchers said. The researchers said in their study that they hope that these cases will prompt a study to determine whether tofacitinib is a safe and effective treatment for alopecia universalis. "Successful treatment can improve patients' lives dramatically, as it did for our patients," the researchers, from Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil, wrote in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. [4 Common Skin Woes, and How to Fix Them] Although the hair-loss condition is not life-threatening, it is important to develop effective treatments because the condition can have a negative effect on a patient's mental health. "Hair loss really affects your self-esteem," said Dr. Doris Day, a dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York, who was not involved with the study. "I have patients who are near suicidal because of hair loss," Day said. Day also recently used tofacitinib to treat a patient with alopecia universalis, and saw similar results, she said. But there is concern that long-term treatment with tofacitinib could cause harmful side effects, the researchers said. The drug is known to cause side effects that include an increased risk of serious infections as well as tears in the stomach and intestines, according to Pfizer, the company that makes tofacitinib, which is sold under the brand name Xeljanz. The findings add to those of a study published in September, which tested tofacitinib as a treatment for 66 people with hair loss due to alopecia areata, an immune-system condition in which the hair falls out in patches. (Alopecia universalis is the most advanced form of alopecia areata.) In that study, half of the people regrew some hair, and one-third saw more than 50 percent of the hair on their scalp grow back. However, that study lasted only three months. Currently, it's not clear exactly why people with alopecia universalis lose the ability to grow hair. But by studying how tofacitinib works to reverse hair loss, researchers may better understand the condition itself and be able to develop new treatments with fewer side effects, Day said. "The more we understand about the different pathways, about what makes hair grow and what makes hair not grow, we can come up with better, more refined treatments that are hopefully safer and more reliably effective," Day said. Original article on Live Science. "This is a weblog that is truly welcome in blogtopia a new blog doesn't seem to be frantically trying to score points for any party. That does NOT mean it's afraid to take a stand or be critical....You really can't predict exactly where The Debate Link will come down on all issues. It's not chanting anyone's mantra." -- The Moderate Voice "[A]n emerging genius in legal scholarship and commentary." -- Jim Chen "It's on my 1st cup of coffee rss feed." -- Hanno Kaiser "I heart this blog.... he referenced Wittgenstein, and it was entirely appropriate and non-pretentious." -- kath.A.rine "[F]unny, thoughtful, acclaimed ...." -- The Core The formation of the $2.2 trillion ASEAN Economic Community seemed to be no help at all. Vietnam saw a 7 percent decline in exports to other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, also known as ASEAN, in the first 10 months, Thanh Nien newspaper has reported, citing customs statistics. This trend was different from strong performances seen in other markets: shipments to the U.S. soared by 15 percent, the E.U. 4 percent, China 23.9 percent, and South Korea 29.1 percent. Exports from Vietnam to its neighboring countries in the Southeast Asian region, a market of 600 million people, are mostly crude oil, rice and steel, but even these key products are struggling. Vietnam, despite being recognized as one of the worlds largest rice exporters, has become less competitive in Southeast Asia because it has failed to improve the quality of the grain and to build a national brand name, said Pham Thai Binh, a rice exporter in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho. The country is traditionally more focused on quantity rather than quality, a strategy that has backfired, especially for rice exports, said Bui Huy Son, director of the Trade Promotion Department under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Vietnamese rice exporters are facing intense competition from Thailand and Myanmar, he added. Local steel makers have also taken a hit as Chinese products have flooded regional markets. In response to anti-dumping measures by the U.S. and the E.U., Chinese steel exporters are shifting to ASEAN countries. Steel exports from China to ASEAN have rivaled those from Vietnam, said Do Duy Thai, chief executive officer of a local steel company. Besides, while ASEAN nations have removed or cut tariffs, major non-tariff barriers remain, said Le Thu Huong, an executive of rubber company Casumina. She suggested that such technical trade barriers have contributed to the drop in Vietnams exports to ASEAN neighbors. The ASEAN Economic Community was formally opened at the end of last year after a decade of preparation. But it may take at least several more years before the ambitious project can fulfill the goal of creating a unified regional market with free flows of goods, capital and labor. Related news: > Vietnam widens ASEAN trade gap > ASEAN countries stifle free labor market Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Home & Garden, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: November 14 2016 Applications for the Home Energy Assistance Program will be accepted beginning Monday, November 14. Albany, NY - November 11, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced more than $325 million in funding is available to help elderly and low- and moderate-income New Yorkers heat their homes this winter. Applications for the Home Energy Assistance Program will be accepted beginning Monday, November 14. "No one should have to choose between putting food on the table and paying their heating bill," Governor Cuomo said. "This critical program helps seniors and hard-working New Yorkers cover the high cost of heat during the cold winter months. I encourage those who are eligible to apply for this support and to stay warm and stay safe." Eligible households can receive a one-time benefit of up to $626, depending on income, household size and heating source. A family of four can have a household income of up to $53,076 annually, or $4,423 a month, and still qualify for help. Last winter, more than 1.4 million households received assistance from the federally-funded program. A breakdown of the number of households that received assistance last winter, by region is below: Region Households Served 2015-16 Capital Region 65,538 Central New York 57,806 Finger Lakes 86,335 Long Island 63,759 Mid-Hudson 97,506 Mohawk Valley 45,481 New York City 765,002 North Country 36,283 Southern Tier 51,623 Western New York 134,635 Total 1,403,968 Local News, Crime, National & World News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: November 14 2016 NVVF has operated nationwide since 1992 and began soliciting in New York in approximately 2008. Schneiderman: This organization took advantage of the good will of millions, yet failed to fulfill nearly all of its promises to help those who have sacrificed for our nation. New York, NY - November 11, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that his office has reached settlements resolving investigations into the National Vietnam Veterans Foundation, which also operated as the American Veteran Support Foundation (the NVVF), its former President and Founder, John Thomas Burch, Jr. (Burch), and its Vice President, David Kaufman (Kaufman). NVVF has operated nationwide since 1992 and began soliciting in New York in approximately 2008. By 2014, NVVF was collecting nearly $9 million nationwide from its fundraising campaigns, soliciting small dollar donations from the public through direct mail and phone calls -- purportedly to help Vietnam Veterans. Nearly all of the money raised through its direct mail campaigns was instead used to pay its fundraisers. For example, in 2014, $7.7 million of the $8.6 million raised was used to pay NVVFs fundraisers. The fraction that actually made it to NVVF was further reduced by a pattern of abuse, mismanagement and misspending by NVVFs former President, Burch. There is nothing more shameless than exploiting military veterans in order to enrich oneself. The actions of this charity and its founder are appalling, said Attorney General Schneiderman. This organization took advantage of the good will of millions, yet failed to fulfill nearly all of its promises to help those who have sacrificed for our nation. This settlement sends a clear message that charities will not get away with fleecing donors in New York. VA employees are held to high standards and are afforded a special public trust to execute their duties properly for the benefit of veterans and the American people, said Michael J. Missal, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General. The VA OIG's investigation found that Mr. Burch engaged in conduct prejudicial to the Government, and misused his position and government equipment for his own personal enrichment. As a lawyer for VA with ethical, fiduciary, and professional obligations, his conduct is particularly disturbing and repugnant. As part of the settlement, Burch paid $100,000 to the Attorney General, most of which will be re-directed to charities actually helping veterans. Burch also repaid his severance pay received from NVVF and will cooperate with ongoing investigations into others associated with NVVF and its fundraisers. Burch will also be subject to a permanent nationwide bar on access to charitable assets or decision-making. Burch issued an apology to donors of NVVF and to Vietnam Veterans whom he exploited in order for fundraisers to collect money. Burch also admitted that NVVF had paid 90% of its donations to its fundraisers and admitted to deceptively marketing how solicited money would be spent. In the settlement, Burch admits to the Attorney Generals findings and to his misconduct, including the following: Burch used NVVF funds to pay for foreign and domestic travel, frequenting night clubs in the Baltimore area on a nearly weekly basis, ordering excessive and expensive food and drink at the countrys top restaurants and lavishing gifts on women; Burch financed this lifestyle with his own credit cards and then submitted receipts to NVVFs bookkeeper for reimbursement. Burchs expense reimbursements to NVVF describe fictitious meetings or NVVF business with individuals that were not present or did not exist. For example, in 2012 Burch spent approximately $800 in one night frequenting night clubs and hotels in the Baltimore area. Burch described the nature of these expenditures on the Foundations expense reimbursement form as work on homelessness and veteran issue; Burch, who was in charge of the NVVFs discretionary Emergency Assistance Program, awarded significant amounts of cash to a handful of women, all of whom were born after the Vietnam War ended. Six of those women received over $10,000 and one over $20,000; and In addition to Burchs salary at NVVF, Burch reimbursed himself for life and medical insurance, pharmaceutical and medical expenses, parking for his two private automobiles in downtown Washington, D.C., where he worked, telephone, fax, internet, and building security services at his home, memberships, conference fees, and subscriptions. For its part, NVVF will cease fundraising in New York as of June 2016 and will cancel its registration to solicit donations in New York and initiate steps to dissolve in its home state by the end of this month. Kaufman, NVVFs Vice President, will be subject to a permanent nationwide ban on handling charitable assets going forward and agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation into those associated with NVVF. Kaufman will remain as Vice President only to assist with NVVFs orderly dissolution and distribution of the NVVFs assets subject to the Attorney Generals approval. The Foundation and Kaufman admitted that NVVF had made false filings with the Charities Bureau, including failing to disclose the identity of the fundraisers that operated on its behalf in New York, all fees associated with its fundraising activities, and the Foundations top independent contractors. NVVF and Kaufman also admitted that much of NVVFs money was not spent in the way NVVF described in its solicitations to immediately provide Vietnam Veterans in need with fundamental benefits such as food, shelter, hygiene and money for phone calls. Instead, thousands of dollars were spent by NVVF on purported consultancies and studies to be performed by friends or relatives of NVVF directors which work product was never released to the public, and on travel for its board of directors, including a trip to Normandy, France, in 2014. Agreements can be found here and here. The full text of the Foundation, Kaufman and Burchs admissions are available here and here. The full text of Burchs apology is available here. This investigation into NVVF highlights the importance of AGs Charities Bureaus annual Pennies for Charities report, which reveals that charitable donations obtained by many professional fundraisers are largely spent on fundraising and administrative expenses, with only a small fraction left for charitable work. The latest Pennies for Charities report may be accessed here. The A.G.s Tips for Charitable Giving are available here. This case is being handled by Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Ann Fitzwater, with the support of Charities Bureau accountant Cintia Brown-Felder, and Legal Assistant Carolyn Fleishman. James Sheehan is the Charities Bureau Chief. Alvin Bragg is Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice. Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com Columnists Press Releases Police are still looking for the 47-year-old man after alleged assault of the 19-year-old woman. Police in Ho Chi Minh City are investigating a Chinese man following allegations by an employee that he raped her at her rented house last week. The 19-year-old woman from Binh Duong Province neighboring the city reported to police on Thursday that the Chinese businessman, 47, had visited her house in District 1 the previous night, and dragged her into the bedroom and raped her. She said she fought back but he grabbed her by the neck and threatened to kill her. She managed to escape the next morning and went straight to the police, local media reported. The woman said she works as personal assistant and interpreter for the Chinese man. Police have issued a warrant for the man, but have been unable to find him. Last July, police in the city detained a 56-year-old South Korean man after his Vietnamese assistant accused him of raping her at his home. No punishment has been reported. Around 1,000 sexual assaults are reported each year in Vietnam, where surveys found girls and women are usual victims of sexual harassment in public places and the workplace. The country developed the first code of conduct on workplace sexual harassment last year with support from the International Labor Organization. A government report in 2012 showed that most of the victims of sexual harassment in the country are female workers aged between 18 and 30. Many choose to keep silence out of shame and the fear of losing jobs. Related news: > Vietnam official keeps job after sexually harassing cleaning woman > U.S prosecutors call for public help in finding sexual abuse victims of Vietnamese famous entertainer > Vietnamese nail salon owner faces jail for alleged rape in U.S. Vietnam has reported nearly 50 Zika patients in Ho Chi Minh City and many southern provinces. Photo by Reuters/Alvin Baez A teenage boy from Ba Ria-Vung Tau has also fallen sick after visiting his girlfriend in the city. Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province confirmed its first Zika case on Monday while its neighbor Ho Chi Minh City said the number of patients of the mosquito-borne virus has risen to 38 from 35 in just three days. The male patient, 19, was admitted to a hospital in Ba Ria-Vung Tau on October 30 with a high fever and joint pains. He was later moved to another hospital in Ho Chi Minh City where he tested positive for the Zika virus. An investigation by the provincial health department found he visited his girlfriend in the city around two weeks before falling sick. Health workers fumigated his living area on Monday afternoon, and 350 families within a 250-meter radius of his house are being monitored. Nguyen Huu Hung, deputy director of HCMC's health department, said at a meeting on Monday that the city had confirmed three new cases since the latest report three days ago. Vietnams Zika infections are approaching 50. The latest official figure is not yet available, but there have been patients in the provinces of Binh Duong, Dak Lak, Khanh Hoa, Long An, Phu Yen and Tra Vinh. In Dak Lak, a 4-month-old baby has been confirmed as Vietnams first case of microcephaly caused by Zika. The health ministry said people should avoid mosquito bites and use condoms to avoid contracting the virus. Health officials said both men and women should avoid traveling to places where Zika cases have been confirmed if they are planning to have children. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that women wait at least eight weeks after possible exposure to the Zika virus before becoming pregnant. Men should wait six months. According to the World Health Organization, Zika outbreaks have been reported in around 70 countries and territories. More than 2,000 babies have been born with Zika-related microcephaly or other birth defects around the world, according to the latest WHO report. Brazil has reported over 1,800 cases of Zika-related microcephaly; the U.S. has reported 23. The birth defect appears in 1-10 percent of babies whose mothers contract the Zika virus during the first trimester. Thailand reported two cases of microcephaly linked to the virus in late September, which were the first in Southeast Asia. Related news: > 6 new Zika cases raise Ho Chi Minh Citys total to 35 > Ho Chi Minh City confirms 9 more Zika cases, raises Vietnams total to 39 > Vietnam confirms first microcephaly case likely linked to Zika The wooden house nestled among pine trees on top of a small hill in Da Lat belongs to a man from Ho Chi Minh City who opened it to treat travel lovers like him. The New York Times in January named the Central Highlands resort town among the 52 places to go in 2016, calling it "a cool alternative to the usual steamy Vietnamese destination". Both the Taliban and the Islamic State claim to have shot down a helicopter in the central Afghan province of Ghor today. The Afghan military instead claims the helicopter made an emergency landing due to technical issues. The Taliban, on its official website, Voice of Jihad, claimed it downed a hireling helicopter while bombing the area. The helicopter was shot by Dshk [a heavy machine gun] and downed before landing in the said area, leaving all puppets killed or hurt inside. It is worth mentioning that this is the second enemy helicopter being downed in Ghor province over the past one and half month, the Taliban statement continued. The Islamic State, on its Amaq News Agency, first claimed it shot down a US helicopter gunship, but later issued a correction that noted it took down a helicopter operated by Afghan forces. Afghan officials in Ghor claimed the helicopter landed at a local airport after catching fire. The helicopter made emergency landing due to technical issues and there were no casualties reported in the incident, Khaama Press reported. In the past, the Afghan military has attempted to cover up Taliban attacks on its helicopters. In March 2016, Afghan officials claimed a helicopter in Kunar province made a hard landing, while the Taliban claimed it destroyed it as it landed at a remote base. The Taliban later issued video footage of the helicopter exploding in a massive IED attack as it landed. [See LWJ report, Taliban destroys Afghan army helicopter in IED attack at military base.] The Taliban and the Islamic State have issued competing claims for attacks in Afghanistan in the past. The Taliban is known to operate in Ghor province. The Islamic State was blamed for rounding up and killing 30 civilians in Ghor province at the end of October, however officials later said that a local Taliban commander was responsible. No group claimed credit for the October massacre in Ghor. The Islamic State has not shied away from claiming credit for mass executions, which increases the probability that the slaughter in Ghor was indeed carried out by the Taliban. In the past, the Taliban has shot down several US helicopters using RPGs, or rocket-propelled grenades. The most newsworthy strike took place in Aug. 2011 in the Tangi Valley of Wardak province. Taliban RPGs struck a US Army Chinook that was involved in a raid to capture a senior Taliban commander. That attack resulted in the deaths of 38 US and Afghan troops, including 17 Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed al Qaedas founder and first emir, Osama bin Laden. Also, on Dec. 17, 2013, a US Blackhawk helicopter went down in Zabul province, killing six US soldiers. The Taliban claimed it shot down the Blackhawk. But the US military discounted the Talibans claim and said in a press release that initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash. Three weeks later, the US military told the families of the soldiers killed that enemy action caused the crash and loss of life. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Superstar DJ Afrojack to bring his beats to Saigon in December Afrojack performs on stage at the 2016 MTV Europe Music Awards in the Netherlands in November. Photo by Reuters/Yves Herman The Dutch DJ will perform at a nine-hour show in District 7 on December 18. The world famous DJ Afrojack will arrive in Ho Chi Minh City for an EDM festival next month. Nick van de Wall, professionally known as Afrojack, will perform at the festival at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center in District 7, which will run from 3 p.m. on December 18 until midnight. The 29-year-old Dutch DJ, record producer and remixer quickly won global fame after releasing his first recording In Your Face under the Afrojack name in 2007. He also achieved international success with the song Take Over Control, which charted in 10 different countries. He released his debut album Forget the World in 2014, and he was ranked 10th on the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs of 2016. Organizers of the Budweiser festival told Tuoi Tre newspaper that the festival is expected to cost VND12 billion ($537,500), a third of which will pay for the artists. Vietnamese artists including popular rapper Suboi will also hit the stage. DJ superstars Skrillex and Tiesto performed at the same festival last year. Related news: > Vietnamese singer wins Best Southeast Asian Act at MTV music awards > Modern Talking singer to take Hanoi stage Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here. Culture / Art Republik Art Republik sits down with the artist known as JERKFACE to find out more about his art and what inspires him. Nov 14, 2016 | By Tan Boon Hau Walk on the right street in New York, and one will likely be greeted (or jumped, possibly) by the citys idiosyncratic strain of street art and graffiti; works that run the gamut of emotions, from pure exuberant expressions of happiness and euphoria, to grim, deeper surrealist social commentary, from quick tags to elaborate Wildstyles a populist art form that constantly responds to the life around you, whilst literally being around you. A city alive, constantly in flux. One thing that remains constant though (with an unstoppably persistent output) is the work of one JERKFACE. An NYC native, the Queens-born 34-year-old, has been consistently putting out his own strange brand of surrealist, cubist, low-brow culture, nostalgia-inducing, happy cartoon subversions since his teens. Homer Simpson, Finn and Jake, Super Mario, Tom and Jerry, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, amongst more examples when one sees them appearing in the same frame (in signature geometric-goop style), you know youre in the presence of a JERKFACE piece. Much like the Saturday morning cartoons, the pieces are JERKFACEs paeans to the joy and happiness the shows have given him, and now hes making sure people feel the same way too. Pointed, opinionated and intent on marching to his own beat, Art Republik sits down with JERKFACE to see what keeps the man behind the work driven and ticking. First things first, how did the name come about and when did you decide to become JERKFACE? Around 2001 the artist Neck Face was getting up a lot around the Gramercy area of Manhattan. I gave my ex-girlfriend the nickname and in exchange she started calling me JERKFACE. Do you consider what youre making art, design, mash-ups, pop provocations, or I think my work can fall under quite a few names depending on who you ask and Id rather leave it up others to define it. Because of the attention to composition, flow, and colour placement of each piece, I believe it cannot be so simply defined as design, mash-ups or pop provocations. There is much more at work. What makes a good wall piece? The biggest part of deciding who or what to paint for a wall has to do with the size and shape of the wall and whatever particular character Im currently excited about. How do you approach a work and decide on which characters to mash-up? Its become very popular lately. Being someone who got in before the rush, I have to continue to surprise people with the combinations. There always has to be a connection for me with the characters. Thats the basis. If I dont have this connection, I wont enjoy the creative process. Once Ive decided on a subject, I rely a lot on intuition and revision to carry me through. Why cartoon characters? Cartoon characters play into everyones childhood. They are an aspect of innocence and joy that jog the memory of a simpler time. Adulthood for most of us, can be very heavy at times. Remembering my own youth through these compositions invokes joy and nostalgia, and it has the same effect on the people who appreciate my work. Do you feel your wall paintings are optimistic, or at least the ideology behind your work? Do you feel its important to be optimistic? Its pure and potent optimism. There is no negativity in my work. The way I see it, theres enough negativity in life. Id rather provide happiness and healing, then more negativity. You have mentioned your frenetic work rate, a trait you seem to have been naturally imbued with since young (a hyper ass kid) to now, dedicating, by your count, spending 90% of your day doing something art related. Given your manic output, do you find something therapeutic about your creative process? Yes it can be very therapeutic. Being human, there are all kinds of factors that play into how therapeutic it can be. It can depend on my current mood, how much sleep I got, deadlines, so many things. Regardless, I still work. How do you see yourself now, compared to when you first started out? Not much different. I enjoy what I do just as much now as I ever have. I always want my work to express how much fun Im having. I truly love to paint. Ive made a point not to let any of the benefits of success distract me from this love. Any influencers, inside and even outside of the art sphere? There are many artists I look up to, present and past. To look up to another artist, I have to take into account, their body of work, reputation and integrity. Seeing your walls, from (Keith) Haring-esque freestyle, spontaneous, pop-cubist, surreal, subverted and sometimes weird dreamscapes, is there like Haring himself whos activism and deep concerns about issues like life/death, sexuality, and war was prevalent in his work a guiding principle to your process? No. I have very strong opinions about most social and political aspects of life. However, as my main intention is to create a gateway to youth, I try to stay away from anything that will too directly depict any personal opinions I have about current issues. I always want my work to be open to interpretation. Youve regularly spoken about your eschewing of the scene and starting one of your own instead and marching to your own beat. Do you feel like an outsider? Im an outsider by choice. In the art world, everyone is competing to fill a few slots. Just below the surface, jealousy and insecurity run rampant. Besides, you cant stand a part, if youre standing in it. You are a born-and-bred NYC native (with a self-professed tenuous relationship to its bureaucratic administration) do you think growing up in NYC influenced the way you approached your practice in general? What do you feel about the energy of the place then and now? I think growing up in NYC influenced my approach to life in general. Growing up in NYC is very different than moving here. Your brain is wired from youth to be more skeptical, more aggressive, and cleverer, out of necessity. It was a darker city, it wasnt hard to find a New Yorker on a New York street, but hipsters bring good food. How do you feel about your work in a street, more open environment to varied and diverse audiences, as opposed to the confines of a gallery? Being in the street, its unpredictable. Who will come along, what will happen. Its an adventure. Interacting with the neighbourhood is my favourite part of any creative process. What are your thoughts on live painting, in front of a live audience? Are there any parallels to a rap freestyle, with regards to spontaneity, and a kind of test of a street artists true mettle? Live painting gets me off. I dont know why. Creating and observing are two of humanitys most mysterious and greatest traits. The combination is very satisfying. Youre currently preparing for your October solo show Saturday Morning with Over The Influence gallery in Hong Kong (at time of print). Whats in the works for you, that we can expect in the near future? And, is that a reference to the universal broadcast hours when the most kick-ass cartoons come out on TV? Saturday Morning is in reference to that time slot. I didnt focus particularly on the cartoons you would see on a Saturday morning, but more the ideal of a time allotted for such an experience. As for future works whats better than the known? The unknown See you in the future. This article was first published in Art Republik Its so hot in here, we can hardly breathe. And this is just the third day we have been here, said one of the shoe sellers. The renovation of Saigon's biggest wholesale market is scheduled to take a year, but many vendors believe it could take two years. Today, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 65.3 million people around the world have been forced out of their homes. Of these, 21.3 million are living as refugees. It is the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. Of the countries where people have fled their homes to avoid violence and persecution, the destruction in Syria has displaced millions of people. Today, 6.5 million Syrians are displaced within their own country, while more than 4.7 million have sought refuge across borders. The United States has taken the lead to help mitigate this unprecedented refugee crisis. Working through non-governmental and international organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme, the United States has provided nearly $6 billion worth of humanitarian assistance to those displaced both within Syria, and to Syrian refugees in the region since the start of the crisis. This assistance provides medical care, food, shelter, clean water and sanitation, as well as education for children and job training for adults. Syrias immediate neighbors now host the lions share of Syrian refugees, and the United States has sought to provide assistance to these nations since the beginning of the crisis. Since the start of the crisis, U.S. humanitarian support for Syrian refugees in Lebanon totals more than 1.2 billion dollars; support for Syrian refugees within Jordan totals 825 million dollars, and support for Syrian refugees in Turkey totals $447 million. In addition to our assistance funding, the U.S. is the worlds leading resettlement country, having welcomed nearly 85,000 of the worlds most vulnerable refugees within the United States this year alone, said Director of the U.S. State Departments Office of Refugee Admissions Larry Bartlett. And we will continue to do so. In September, President Barack Obama announced that this fiscal year, the United States will resettle 110,000 refugees from all over the world. In President Obamas words, This crisis is a test of our common humanity -- whether we give in to suspicion and fear and build walls, or whether we see ourselves in another. Interview with Gagan Gupta, Chairman of Kamal Steel Group Tanzanias real GDP growth is forecast to average about 6.3 percent between 2016 and 2020. This is a very brisk growth trend and it obviously reflects the relatively robust domestic demand in the consumption sector. How is this buoyant macroeconomic backdrop helping to benefit Kamal Steel? Tanzania is now on the world map. After the exploration of the hydrocarbon sector from all over the world, there is much attraction and interest in investing here, which will play a very big role towards the growth and development of the GDP in Tanzania. Kamal Steel will see a direct advantage from any investment that comes to the country because we produce the steel which is the basic core material for infrastructure, construction, or even the LNG. There are also benefits from policies with the World Bank, how to consume the local product, as well as how local industry can benefit from foreign investment. Kamal Steel will therefore directly benefit from that GDP growth and continue to participate in the rapid growth of Tanzania. Kamal Steel or Kamal Group registered its flagship company, Kamal Steels Limited, here in 2004 and today has become the largest Hi-Tensile Steel and Re-bars producer in East Africa. Can you provide a brief history and the context of your corporate journey in Tanzania? We went into business in 2004 and it was not a planned journey. I had come here to Dar es Salaam just on holiday as a tourist. It was my first trip to Africa. Then, as a businessman, I became interested in steel because we are involved with steel in India. I went to some individuals who were dealing with steel here in Tanzania and asked what they were doing and what the prices were like. I spotted a large gap between the raw material and the finished product. You spotted an opportunity? Yes. My first concern was the cost of the importing. The raw material is already here, but people are still importing. I did not know anyone in business in Tanzania because I was just a tourist. I did not have any relatives here. Immediately, though, I found the right person. Unfortunately, he passed away five years ago. His name was Mr. Salgar, and he was the CEO of the Safal Group with Chandaria, which is a Kenya based group. They are a very large group in Africa. I had the chance to meet him and told him that this business was very interesting to me. I asked him what I could do here and what challenges there were. He told me that there was very good business to be had here and that if I wanted to pursue this, Tanzania had good policies and would support me. He also warned that there are challenges of course and you have to fight. I said I was ready to fight these challenges. Then he offered me some land he had to sell. I asked him where it was and it was actually right next to his land. So on that first day, I agreed to buy the land for my factory and they are still my neighbors today. I then sent my team from India to install the factory, machines and orders. That was the starting point in 2004. We started production in March 2005. It was very quick. I made my decision without any feasibility study or consultancy. It was a good decision at the time. Now, Kamal is active in different sectors. We are producing gas and our oil refinery is ready to produce around 30,000 tons per year from the oil. We are producing 80,000 tons of steel. Our production line is ready to produce another 50,000 tons. Within the next six months, we will have produced almost 130,000 tons. However due to the power challenges, my project is delayed by another year, but we are now putting together another 300,000 ton steel mill. Before 2020, we want to produce more than a half million tons in this country. Demand is growing. New infrastructure being built all the time and they need domestic steel as an imort substitute. What is the total market demand here? The Tanzanian market has a demand more than a half million tons and year and the East African market combined is more than one million tons combined. We want to grow slowly. We want to meet the demand of the country slowly. We have different operations and different challenges in the various sectors we operate in, so we have to concentrate on them piecemeal. Kamal Steel presents an inspiring example of the benefits that can result from a South-South engagement of an Indian company coming to another undeveloped or not yet fully developed economy. The market is always beneficial for us because it is a newly growing market and India is already quite developed in the steel sector. The relationship between India and Tanzania has been very strong for a long time. We have always received support from both the Indian and Tanzanian governments. As an Indian investor, you gauged and identified the opportunities which were presented by a fruitful and growing market here, and then pursued these opportunities to the benefit of both yourself as an investor and the country that is reaping the benefits of this investment. Correct. Steel production is set to reflect the trajectory of the overall construction sector here. Obviously the bridges and high-rises have added to Tanzanias man-made landscape. In August 2014, Kamal Steel inaugurated the new 200 million dollar addition to its Chang'ombe Plant in Dar es Salaam providing you with an additional 80 million tons annual capacity. How will this new plant form a part of your overall strategy? Our Chang'ombe factory is fully developed. That is why we have developed our new steel mill facility about 32 kilometers away along the Bagamoyo Road in the 300 acre industrial park. We have already given land to investors from Dubai, China and India and we are keeping almost 60 acres of land for ourselves for future projects. The investors have their own prospects on planning so they can establish their own industry. We are promoting similar industry here to create more employment, which is of course a basic need here in Tanzania. The unemployment rate, especially among youth, is very high so we need to provide them with employment. Kamal employs more than 300 employees in steel. In addition to our other factories, we directly employ more than 400 people today. Kamal employs more than 300 employees in steel. In addition to our other factories, we directly employ more than 400 people today. Since you first came to Tanzania in 2004, Kamal Group has successfully branched into several other industries ranging from mining, industrial, medical gases, and other construction related industries. What are some other promising subsectors you see Kamal expanding into? In Tanzania, the major challenge is power. Without power no industry can run. The power must be constant and reliable. Most industries need 24 hour power to perform without issues arising, from cement factories to glass factories to steel factories. We cannot have a disturbance in the power. One breakdown can create big losses. That is a very important and challenging factor in Tanzania. In 2013, we developed our industrial park and that was quite a challenge for us. We talked with the government and told them we needed this power and they told me to see this challenge as an opportunity. I met with the people of TANESCO who also appreciated the opportunity this challenge posed, and we decided to build a 225-megawatt power project and establish an industrial park. We have done a lot of work already with documenting, gas supply agreements and negotiations, locations of the gas, as well as an extensive environmental impact assessment. We are now in the final stages. Because of the size of the power project in Tanzania as a whole, we decided to sell back some of the power to TANESCO, which we will then buy back. So my production facilities will have continuous, good quality power. This is all because an investor from Dubai bought the land for the Siemens Plant, another investor bought the land for a medicine factory, and we also have automobile investors from India showing keen interest to start industry over here. Because our background is in the industrial sector in India, it was easy for us to convince the investors because we already have a success story in Tanzania. I am promoting the industry here, but I cannot do it all. I am promoting Tanzania as an investment destination. I am the Chairman of the Indian Business Forum and we are also a part of the Industrial Association in India. We have held a lot of meetings and seminars in India, Singapore, China, and Dubai to attract more investors to come here and invest in Tanzania. It is one of the best destinations for investment and we are proof of that. So you have personally been banging the drum for Tanzania? It helps with the GDP growth. If these people come and construct buildings or houses or factories tomorrow, they will need steel. Therefore it is mutual growth for everyone, and we as Kamal Steel benefit directly from that trend. That is why we are promoting Tanzania. We are getting investors from the United States because they believe in us as businessmen. We are not bothered by inviting competition. Let the investment come. That is more important than worries about competition. The company has also launched its own private Export Processing Zone or EPZ. More generally, the government has placed a specific policy priority to focus on industrialization and boosting manufacturing productivity and so forth, obviously in a bid to attract investment into all of those sectors. The government also intends to expand and establish several more Special Economic Zones. Do you hope these will open the door to investors who will potentially make similar contributions to the private sectors in Tanzania? I am always thinking about how to promote the country and bring in more industry. We organize a lot of seminars and we particularly talk on the ground level. TIC people and investors want to visit your industry because if people see, then they can do much better. I have followed our Excellency, the Honorable President Doctor John Magufuli, since the elections last October. From the first day, his focus was on industrialization and bringing in more industry. If the President is talking about industrialization and understands the core points, that is very good news for the investor. He supports all industrializations and he understands that only industrialization can bring change and create employment. When the Indian Prime Minister was here, he talked about how to bring more industrial investment from India, because India is also an industrial country. Kamal Steel is lucky in that we are already here. It is a very good opportunity for us. In 2010, we developed the first industrial park . The whole country had no specified industrial area. I decided to develop the industrial park for heavy industries and we had to travel 32 kilometers from the city center. My dream has come true because my President wants the same thing that we have already implemented. Do you have Tanzanian citizenship? Not in law. I am an Indian passport holder. But my younger brother, Sameer, is a Tanzanian now. So our interest is here. We are here for the long term. Regionally, you have a dealer network which already encompasses many countries in the area, such as Zambia, Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Malawi, and so on. Do you intend to continue to deepen your footprint across the African continent at large? No. My work style is different. We are making a footprint in Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi and neighboring countries also, but I want to fulfil the demand of Tanzania first and foremost. My full focus is on Tanzania and identifying where there are weaknesses, in the power sectors, the steel sector. Expanding our business is a different issue. Tanzania is a very big market. You can put a footprint anywhere and open an office. I do not want that. I want to focus on one place and make it strong so I can be part of the growth of Tanzania. We are participating in terms of the revenue and taxes and we are doing good work in the country. How much satisfaction do you take personally in being a member of the Tanzanian business community and being able now to actively contribute towards its overall social economic development? There are challenges. Yet it is also true that if there is a challenge, then there is a profit to be made. We have to face the challenges. My father always told the story of industrialization in India in the 1960s and 70s which were a very difficult time. He taught me to not be worried about challenges, but to fight them. In my personal view of Tanzania, I never feel away from home, here. I never feel scared. People are very humble and very supportive. They are extremely respectful. I am from India and this is my first-choice destination. So I have a great respect for this country and this country has also given me a lot in terms of my growth and my respect. We are also doing whatever we can do on a social level and through social corporate responsibility. We have adopted two schools. For many years we have fed 1,600 children every day. We are giving lunch every day to these children so they will come to school and study. The parents are also happy. By 2020, we want to feed at least 10,000 children. We can adopt more schools because food and education are both related. For now we are focusing on steel and power. We have the refinery already established and other projects are in progress. We are working very hard in the agriculture sector. We are focusing on different sectors to find what can benefit the country, the weaknesses, and where we can make a bridge between India and Tanzania. India is also importing a lot of crops and everyday staple foods from Tanzania. We are talking with the government and different organizations in India to make a better bridge so that Tanzanian farmers can benefit from good regulations and fair prices in the future and really benefit from the market. They need this. The Indian Business Forum is inviting the big farmers and introducing them straight to the Indian buyers so they can export directly and get a good price, which will then allow them to grow more. As I am here in Tanzania, it is my duty to pass on that opportunity to the Tanzanian people. America elected its next president last Tuesday. That's a yuuuge deal.[i] Outside the US, meanwhile, other nations face their own political trials and tribulations. Some are "politics as usual," while others are downright scary-reminders that a lot is happening beyond our shores, both in developed nations and Emerging Markets (EM). For investors, it is vital to tune out the noise and focus on what-if anything-is actually changing. Despite the chaos, the rule of law is still alive and well in developed countries, and besides some tiresome theatrics, those governments are mostly gridlocked-an underappreciated bullish political driver. Emerging Nations are (as usual) iffier, but the issues seem isolated. Brexit Goes to Court The London High Court ruled in early November that Parliament must weigh in before Britain can trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty-the formal mechanism that kicks off the two-year period for EU exit negotiations. This wrinkle has prompted speculation Brexit may not happen, but that's premature. This (and related cases) now go to the UK's Supreme Court, and even if the London ruling holds, it seems unlikely Parliament goes against the people's will. After the UK voted to leave in June, some challenged the decision's legal standing. In late October, the High Court in Belfast ruled against two cases that argued the UK government couldn't invoke Article 50 unilaterally. One cited a prior agreement (the 1998 Good Friday Agreement) and argued devolution meant Westminster couldn't force Northern Ireland to leave the EU. Period. Another suggested the UK government can't trigger Article 50 without Parliamentary approval. The judge rejected both arguments. However, a British businesswoman's argument for Parliamentary approval was successful in London's High Court. The government said it would appeal to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case in December and plans to make its ruling early next year. Appeals of the Northern Irish cases will likely be folded into this hearing, which will be a doozy. Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has asked to be heard during the proceedings. She plans to argue triggering Article 50 would deprive the Scottish people of their rights-Scotland voted to remain-and thus, the Scottish Parliament's approval is necessary, too. The Welsh Government has also applied to participate in the hearings, focusing on "the use of prerogative power to take steps which will or may impact" the Welsh Assembly's powers and relationship with Westminster as well as Welsh society. Northern Ireland's First Minister, Arlene Foster, has kept mum on her plans, but Northern Irish surrogates are pushing for the Court to take up the Belfast case. While this could undermine Prime Minister Theresa May's plans for starting Brexit talks in March, it doesn't necessarily imperil Brexit.[ii] Though many MPs wanted to remain in the EU, they also are cognizant of their constituents-a majority 52% voted to leave, after all. Overturning the people's will would be political suicide at the next general election. Though we don't know how the UK Supreme Court will ultimately rule, this episode shows deadlines and timelines can always shift when it comes to politics. In the meantime, continued Brexit focus probably means gridlock-not unlike Prime Minister John Major's tenure in the 1990s, when he held a razor-thin majority and ultimately couldn't do a whole lot while his MPs squabbled over Europe. Italy Has Its Own Referendum In December, Italians will vote in a referendum on electoral reform, which may decide Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's future. Italy's legislative morass has consistently prevented labor market reforms and other key modernizing measures, so these proposed changes seek to streamline the process by cutting the number of Senate seats and giving the lower house more power. Renzi staked most of his political capital on this cause, at one point proclaiming he would resign if the referendum failed-a pledge he has already walked back. Some think that because polls show the referendum won't pass, this bodes ill for Italian politics. However, a quarter of those polled are still undecided, so the epitaph is premature. Plus, for better or worse, political instability is the status quo in Italy. If the referendum fails and Renzi goes the way of Enrico Letta, Mario Monti, Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi-Italy's four other PMs since 2011-this shouldn't wallop markets. Rather, it would usher in a new government, either technocratic or fragmented, that would be gridlocked because these changes didn't pass. That's true whether or not the anti-establishment Five Star Movement comes to power nationally, which polls imply might happen. Gridlock might prevent further reforms, but it would also forestall sweeping legislation that could bring unintended consequences. A Korean Rasputin? The happenings in South Korea are a bit more unusual than a couple court cases and a referendum, as President Park Geun-hye is embroiled in an extraordinary political scandal. Choi Soon-sil, a friend of Park's and daughter of a man whose relationship with Park resembles Rasputin and Tsarina Alexandra Romanov, is accused of using her association with the Blue House[iii] for personal power and financial gain. Choi also had access to, and was consulted on, government policy-despite having no experience or authority to do so. The wild story, which you can read more about here, has shocked Koreans, who are already extremely jaded toward their pols. This scandal probably won't lead to Park's impeachment. Korean presidents can be impeached only for violating the constitution or laws, not acts of questionable morality, incompetence or mistakes. Yet her ability to govern meaningfully is likely over. As shocking as this story is, it needn't derail positive drivers underlying one of Asia's most advanced economies. Chaebol (Korea's mega-conglomerates) inefficiencies aside, steady domestic consumption has boosted the economy, which is already pretty competitive. It was unlikely Park would reform the chaebol, so gridlock extends a status quo that markets today are fine with. Strongmen in Turkey and the Philippines More troublingly, in Turkey and the Philippines, authoritarian strongmen have been making waves. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a path to be the most dominant politician in the republic's history. Most recently, he jailed leaders of the Kurdish People's Democratic Party-who have resisted his power play-through a series of midnight raids. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has said it will soon adopt a new constitution that would create an executive presidency, bolstering his already considerable power. Meanwhile, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expanded his bloody war on drugs from Davao City (where he was mayor) to the nation, letting police use deadly force on alleged drug users without due process. By some estimates, more than 4,000 people have been killed since Duterte launched his campaign after winning the presidency in May. We aren't sugarcoating anything: There isn't anything good about these stories (though local markets have proven resilient). However, they provide a keen reminder that there are always problems and trouble around the world. Always has been and always will be. Markets know this, digest it and move forward. They're callous in that regard, but from an investment point of view, folks can't let those problems sway them from their strategy-especially since we don't envision a time when there won't be horrific, terrible things happening somewhere. There are other notable stories, too. Thailand is preparing to transition power to the crown prince after its longstanding king passed away. Lawyers in Hong Kong are protesting China's recent intervention in the special administrative region's legislature. While stories of discontent and transition can be troubling, the genuinely worrisome parts of the world also aren't in the majority. Say what you will about politics in the developed world,[iv] but the rule of law remains firm. Hillary Clinton conceded the election and urged support for the new president-elect, who met with President Obama last Thursday in what was reportedly a cordial meeting. The British government is appealing the court's decision rather than outright ignoring or dismissing the ruling. Renzi is leaving the decision to the people. Koreans are protesting against Park, but they haven't violently removed her from office. Compared to places like Venezuela, this shows why markets prefer places where the rule of law is strong. And while a strong rule of law shouldn't be assumed to be a given, it doesn't appear likely to deteriorate any time soon. Memo to the Next US Administration: Defense Spending Must Be For Actual Defense In a disturbing indication of how difficult it would be to bring military spending in line with actual threats overseas, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R TX) told President Obama last week that his war funding request of $11.6 billion for the rest of the year was far too low. That figure for the last two months of 2016 is larger than Spain's budget for the entire year! And this is just a "war-fighting" supplemental, not actual "defense" spending! More US troops are being sent to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and the supplemental request is a way to pay for them without falling afoul of the "sequestration" limits. The question is whether this increase in US military activity and spending overseas actually keeps us safer, or whether it simply keeps the deep state and the military-industrial complex alive and well-funded. Unfortunately many Americans confuse defense spending with military spending. The two terms are used almost interchangeably. But there is a huge difference. I have always said that I wouldn't cut anything from the defense budget. We need a robust defense of the United States and it would be foolish to believe that we have no enemies or potential enemies. The military budget is something very different from the defense budget. The military budget is the money spent each year not to defend the United States, but to enrich the military-industrial complex, benefit special interests, regime-change countries overseas, maintain a global US military empire, and provide defense to favored allies. The military budget for the United States is larger than the combined military spending budget of the next seven or so countries down the line. To get the military budget in line with our real defense needs would require a focus on our actual interests and a dramatic decrease in spending. The spending follows the policy, and the policy right now reflects the neocon and media propaganda that we must run the rest of the world or there will be total chaos. This is sometimes called "American exceptionalism," but it is far from a "pro-American" approach. Do we really need to continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars manipulating elections overseas? Destabilizing governments that do not do as Washington tells them? Rewarding those who follow Washington's orders with massive aid and weapons sales? Do we need to continue the endless war in Afghanistan even as we discover that Saudi Arabia had far more to do with 9/11 than the Taliban we have been fighting for a decade and a half? Do we really need 800 US military bases in more than 70 countries overseas? Do we need to continue to serve as the military protection force for our wealthy NATO partners even though they are more than capable of defending themselves? Do we need our CIA to continue to provoke revolutions like in Ukraine or armed insurgencies like in Syria? If the answer to these questions is "yes," then I am afraid we should prepare for economic collapse in very short order. Then, with our economy in ruins, we will face the wrath of those countries overseas which have been in the crosshairs of our interventionist foreign policy. If the answer is no, then we must work to convince our countrymen to reject the idea of Empire and embrace the United States as a constitutional republic that no longer goes abroad seeking monsters to slay. The choice is ours. Buy Ron Paul's latest book, Swords into Plowshares, here. Dr. Ron Paul Project Freedom Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the "one exception to the Gang of 535" on Capitol Hill. Dr. Ron Paul Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. The United States Government, through the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, and the non-partisan civic movement Participacion Ciudadana recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Community House of Justice program. This successful initiative began as a pilot project for the promotion and use of Mediation and Conciliation methods. These are regarded as important tools to increase access to justice, particularly for vulnerable populations. During the celebration, U.S. Ambassador James Brewster praised the hard work and commitment of Participacion Ciudadana, the Attorney General's Office, the municipality and civil society. The success of the program, the Ambassador noted, allows access to justice in communities with high crime rates. Community Justice Houses establish a space where the Judiciary, the Public Ministry, municipalities, and the business sector come together, through the coordination of civil society. The pilot initiative has successfully been replicated. There are now nine Community Justice Houses in the Dominican Republic, in Santiago, Moca, San Francisco, La Vega, Esperanza, Mao, and the National District. The Community Justice House Program has benefited more than 250,000 people through conflict resolution in family, labor and community related issues. These include such difficult issues as alimony, child custody, visitation rights, estate matters, boundary disputes, leases, and debts. The Houses also help prevent violence in the communities, because citizens have free access to services such as conciliation, mediation, legal counseling, psychological care, coordination with social organizations and civic education, and care for gender-based and domestic violence victims. Participacion Ciudadana National Coordinator, Josefina Arvelo, said the program has been highly effective, and she advocated for more replication of the Community Justice House model to different parts of the country. For over five decades, USAID has collaborated closely with the people and government of the Dominican Republic. They have worked together to increase sustainable development and strengthen the countrys health care, economy, governance, justice, civil society and education. To date, USAID has invested more than $1.7 billion in the Dominican Republic. This is very much a partnership that works well for both the United States and the Dominican Republic, as well as for the region. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln called on his countrymen in his famous Gettysburg Address to ensure that liberty "shall not perish from the earth." His words have inspired many over the years, including millions in our nation's armed services who fought to preserve not only Americas freedom, but that of other nations as well. Today, Veterans Day, America pauses to honor these men and women, and the values of duty and sacrifice they represent. Long after they leave uniform, they symbolize what it means to be a citizen of a free land. The holiday, observed every year on November 11, originated with the armistice that ended The First World War in 1918. The conflict, fought in Asia, Africa, scattered islands in the Pacific and the waters off South America, as well as on the battlefields of Europe, was seen as "the war to end all wars." But other wars followed, and in 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower expanded the holiday to honor all who have served in uniform both in war and peace. Our government continues this effort to this day, with program to help veterans leaving the military to find employment and ease their transition into civilian life. "Honoring our sacred trust with America's veterans means doing all we can to help them find work when they come home so they never feel as if the American Dream they fought to defend is out of reach for them and their families," President Barack Obama said. At its core, though, Veterans Day isn't about war. It commemorates no battlefield victory or defeat, it celebrates no advancement of political or territorial ambition. Rather, it's a day of remembrance, echoing similar holidays in Great Britain, Canada, South Africa and other nations that honor military veterans for their service and sacrifice. On Veterans Day, a service was held at Bassett Funeral Service to honor local veterans who served in the Korean DMZ Conflict and the Korean War and Conflict. The centerpiece of the service was the unveiling of a bench commemorating the 50th anniversary of the DMZ Conflict and adorned with the names of five area DMZ veterans and 120 Korean War veterans. The DMZ Conflict, sometimes referred to as the Second Korean War, was a series of armed clashes between North Korean forces and the forces of South Korea and the U.S. along the DMZ, or Demilitarized Zone. It lasted from 1966-1969. The bench is the brainchild of DMZ Conflict veteran David Minter, who reached out to Paul Kennedy of Bassett Funeral Service and Pat Ross of the Bassett Historical Center. Minter was among the speakers at the event. The bench is slated to be placed overlooking the Smith River behind the Historical Center. The Friday service included the National Anthem, led by Anne Copeland; a rendition of Amazing Grace played by bagpiper Bob Norris; a prayer by DMZ Conflict veteran John Harold Stone; the recitation of the names on the DMZ Bench from David Minter, Pat Ross and Fran Snead; and comments from Paul Kennedy, Henry County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jim Adams, Martinsville Mayor Danny Turner, and a representative from Congressman Morgan Griffiths office. When I was asked to be a part of this, I jumped on board, as my grandfather was a World War II veteran and was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, Kennedy said at the service. This was something that was important to me to be a part of, something that we could do for the community. Turner read a letter from a South Korean soldier thanking the U.S. soldiers for the sacrifices that aided their country. Adams said that while the DMZ Conflict is too often overshadowed by the Vietnam Conflict of the same era, we must remember the sacrifices of those who served. We owe a debt of gratitude to each and every veteran, not only those present with us today but all over our community, the men and women that serve each and every day, Adams said. Were so proud of them. Ross Walker discusses the events of the recent SNP annual party conference, where leader Nicola Sturgeon announced plans for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Beneath the apparent party unity surrounding independence, however, it is clear that strong class contradictions are developing within the SNP. The SNP is by far the largest party in Scotland. In fact, it is one of the most dominant parties in history, having elected 56 out of the 59 Scottish MPs to Westminster and holding government in Holyrood, with over 2% of the population carrying an SNP membership card. For this reason, the annual SNP conference is one of the most significant and telling political events of the year in Scotland, and gives us many an insight into what the future holds for the class struggle in Scotland. This years conference started with the announcement of the deputy leadership election result. Tommy Sheppard MP, the main candidate on the left of the party, despite winning the largest amount of nominations from the largest variety of branches, won just 25%. The other left-winger, councillor Chris McEleny, won 3%, whilst Alan Smyth - the very pro-Europe MEP - got 18.3 %. The established parliamentary group leader, Angus Robertson, won with 53% of the vote to become the Deputy Leader. In his speech he planted his traditional nationalist flag by saying, We are the Scottish National Party; the clue is in the name, we represent the whole of the country. The fact that the established parliamentary group leader, with more than 30 years of party experience, beat the left candidate on a low turnout (34%) is a sign of the fact that the membership are generally happy with the partys leadership; and although the partys inevitable class contradictions are beginning to emerge, it is not at the stage of provoking an all-out civil war. The deputy leadership result was very much overshadowed by Nicola Sturgeons dramatic announcement of a draft bill on independence to be published imminently. Brexit and IndyRef2 In Sturgeons speech, she used the issue of Brexit - and particularly Theresa Mays tack towards Hard Brexit - to back up her case for the need for another referendum. Here in Scotland 80,000 jobs could be lost, Sturgeon warned. Wages would be hit by up to 2,000 and growth in the economy would slow. The SNP leader challenged Theresa May by saying, It's high time you showed some respect for 62 per cent of people across Scotland who voted to Remain. Her announcement was met with a standing ovation from the conference and predictable hysteria from the largely pro-unionist capitalist press. The excitement shown by independence supporters inside and outside the conference was clear and predictable considering the recent memory of the 2014 referendum, which inspired so many previously inactive and apolitical workers and youth into political activity. Although it was a constitutional question on Scotlands independence, it wasnt ideological nationalism which fuelled the 2014 YES campaign, or indeed todays mood for independence, but rather an opposition to the austerity, warmongering, and xenophobia emanating from Westminster. This nature of the 2014 YES campaign provoked the British establishment into its Project Fear" mode, where it put all its might behind the NO campaign, which in turn played a role in the YES movements defeat. It was clear from events during the recent conference, however, that the SNP leadership and the capitalist class have learnt lessons and have different ideas for IndyRef2. Nationalists, capitalists, and the EU The capitalists were at this years SNP conference in their numbers. The Association of British Bookmakers, Carillion plc, McDonalds, and Royal Bank of Scotland: all these big businesses and bankers had stalls. CBI, Oil and Gas UK, Santander, the Scotch Whisky Association, Coca Cola, EDF, and Scottish Gas also had advertised fringe events, costing a minimum of 1,700 each. Charlotte Street Partners and Edinburgh airport, Ernst and Young, and Scottish Power and TSB bank all had pages advertised in the programme, costing over a thousand pounds per page. To add to this there was a private airport-style lounge at the conference as part of a signed commercial relationship with Heathrow Airport, estimated to have cost tens of thousands of pounds. One MP at a lobbyist event, hosted by Charlotte Street Partners and Edinburgh airport, spoke of businesses which were vehemently on the NO side in the referendum in 2014...doing some scenario planning on how attractive it might be to be part of an independent Scotland which is within the EU, if the rest of the UK was to leave. This same MP went on to say: To that extent, among those who were most vehemently on the NO side, there is something of a shift. These words are very clear. The capitalist class, although they generally would rather Scotland didnt become independent, is prepared to jump ship if things go that way, particularly if EU membership and access to the single market is part of the deal. EU membership is of course far from guaranteed for any independent Scotland. Resistance exists from the current right-wing Spanish government, who fear an example for separatists within Spain, as well as from various sections of the European capitalist class who pull the EU strings and see no profit in Scotlands membership. There are other factors at play here, however, including the instability of the EU as whole, which is in a social and economic crisis. It is rapidly losing credibility in many other countries across the continent. Scotland is one of the few places where the EU is very popular and EU leaders may be forced to concede to some sort of deal with Scotland. Internal contradictions The SNP faces a predicament though; it cannot succumb to big business and EU pressure without alienating its base of support amongst workers and youth. As left deputy candidate Tommy Shepherd said in his campaign, If we yield to a tax haven dream to win over a few bankers from the city of Edinburgh, then we will lose the argument and the people we really need to enthuse. It wasnt just the capitalists that had an influence on the conference. The TUC were also present. Several MPs spoke alongside TUC General Secretary Frances O Grady, who praised the SNPs broad-based support for unions. One proposal was to take advantage of Brexit to negotiate a left Brexit and renegotiate terms of employment law and bargaining rights. The SNP proposal was to negotiate so that these powers could be devolved to Scotland, and this was met by approval by Frances OGrady, who said it would be a beacon of hope to workers throughout the UK. The price of stalls and fringe events this year had increased significantly, with some organisations being quoted four times more than last year, making it difficult for anyone other than corporations to influence the conference. Many stalls and campaigns were priced out of the conference altogether. (Notably, there was a presence from the particularly sinister Friends of the Middle East stall, which was clearly a stall supporting the Israeli government, and which was set up in the main conference. This, despite having little support amongst the party membership and being clearly antagonistic to the much more popular SNP Friends of Palestine.) Ideaspace This pricing situation prompted several left-leaning campaign groups and not-for-profit organisations to set up Ideaspace, five minutes away from the main conference venue. The SNP leadership instructed its elected representatives to politely decline invitations to participate in Ideaspace, but two MPS and various MSPs defied their leaders wishes. Estimates of over one thousand (mainly SNP delegates) attended this alternative conference. Its first meeting was on land reform, with the mood clearly being very critical of the SNP government for not doing enough to tackle the issue of the large concentration of land ownership. This followed from last years SNP conference, where the membership successfully rebelled against the leaderships tame motion. Amongst various other left-wing speakers, SNP MP George Kerevan, spoke of the need to set up a National Investment Bank, obviously inspired by left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyns proposal for a similar such reform. It is clear that there are many people looking to the left of the current leadership within the SNP, and that bureaucratic measures from the leadership will only quell this mood so much. A whole layer within the party is open to socialist ideas, and this layer will only increase at the crisis of capitalism - within Scotland, Britain, and internationally - continues and intensifies. The long-term perspective, therefore, is for a split along class lines in the SNP: between a pro-capitalist wing and the leftward moving workers and youth that make up the bulk of the partys membership. Migration and xenophobia A strong theme of the conference was opposition to Tory xenophobia, especially that seen since Brexit - and in particular at the Tory conference. Angus Robertson called for a cast-iron guarantee on the status of EU nationals, stating: As much as Theresa May wants to run and hide from her record, how could anybody forget her influence[But] Scotland is their [migrants] home and they are welcome here John Swinney, the education secretary, also reassured EU students that their rights to funding would remain in place for 2017 and demanded that the Tory government protect their rights to stay here after their studies. Post-work visas were also called to be devolved to Scotland, with an MSP saying that the decision by the UK government to scrap the post-study work visa was a huge mistake. Another MP, Joanna Cherry spoke out against the Westminster governments treatment of refugees, and Sturgeon ended the conference by calling for an inclusive Scotland. The fact that many in Scotland are attracted by such stances shows a healthy response to Brexit induced xenophobia and a belief that Scotland can be a more tolerant place - a positive sign of class consciousness. There is another cynical side to this, however, as shown by the CBIs (Confederation of British Industry) intervention in the conference, who showed support for more powers to be given to the Scottish government on issues such as immigration, knowing that this would mean more pro-immigration policies. The predominant wing of the capitalist class are indeed in favour of immigration, as it ensures a large supply of cheap and easily exploitable labour. The SNP leadership are therefore taking out two birds with one stone on this issue: appealing to the more radicalised workers and youth who want a more tolerant and open society; and also appealing to big businesses that need cheap migrant labour and that are put off by the Hard Brexit being put forward by the Westminster government. Who do you represent? In an interview with left-wing website Commonspace, the new deputy leader, Angus Robertson, claimed that the party was interested in success, not ideology. This clumsy remark highlighted a naivety within the SNP leadership. Every movement has an ideology, whether consciously or not. To reject ideas is to succumb to the dominant current of ideas within society which - as Marx explained - is the ideology of its ruling class. When the SNP try to avoid ideological questions and debates, therefore, they are in fact trying to avoid the unavoidable question of which class - and whose interests - they really represent. The class contradictions could be seen in one of the most heated moments at the conference, when a motion on the charitable status of state schools passed by only 9 votes (464 to 455). Many delegates correctly saw this as a reactionary move, with one delegate calling for charitable statuses to be removed from all schools, including private schools. John Swinney, the education minister, who traditionally stands on the right of the party, also refused to rule out free schools, autonomous from the local authorities. To continue down this road will put the SNP leadership at loggerheads with Scottish public opinion, which is generally against academy schools, and also will likely provoke teaching unions, such as EIS, who are already actively opposed to such moves. Trade unionists from the TSSA and RMT, meanwhile, picketed the SNP conference over the issue of rail re-nationalisation, which SNP policy doesnt support, but which has lot of support amongst public opinion and amongst the SNP membership, with groups like the SNP Socialists being critical of the leadership regarding this question. The SNP leadership have shown before that they are susceptible to pressure from public opinion, from their membership, and from trade unions. This year they have conceded to campaigns by the EIS on pay and by the RMT on CalMac privatisation. Of course, in doing they will inevitably antagonise their big business sponsors. The future of the party can be summed up by its answer to the question: Who do you represent - the workers or the bosses? This question will not be answered in one sentence, but by a complex and drawn out process of divisions, debates (which will become less and less polite), and eventually splits along class lines. When and how this will happen we cannot predict, but the current mood of content is unsustainable. For a socialist Scotland! For a socialist world! The SNP have been able to thrive up until now off the discontent towards Westminster, and will likely continue to do so. When the majority of MPs in Scotland vote against welfare cuts, nuclear weapons, airstrikes on Syria, etc., and yet these policies still get implemented, people in Scotland see it as undemocratic. The Westminster government is destined to keep implementing austerity due to the capitalist crisis. Its foreign policy is also not likely to change, and many people in Scotland will continue to live in the danger zone of the Faslane nuclear submarines - yet the majority of Scottish MPs vote against it. Anger and resentment, therefore, will only increase and drive more and more people into political activity. Many will enter political activity with the illusion that independence can solve these issues. A capitalist Scotland, however, cannot provide solutions to any of these problems. Only an overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Scottish Workers Republic - as part of a Socialist Britain and an International Socialist Federation - can liberate workers in Scotland and internationally from austerity, poverty and wars. As time goes on, this fact will become more and more clear to members and followers of the SNP, who will become increasingly winnable to such revolutionary ideas. If you have attended the Old Deerfield Christmas Craft Sampler on Thanksgiving weekend for the past number of years, then change your calendar because it is being held one week earlier this Saturday and Sunday on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition. It also has a new name: The Old Deerfield Holiday Craft Sampler. "Christmas is still there. Just not in the title. We wanted the sampler to reflect the expanded holiday shopping opportunities and invite fairgoers to shop for all their Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa and other gift-giving winter celebrations," said Ella Colton, craft fairs coordinator. "From glass blown ornaments, hand crafted jewelry, specialty chocolates, to cozy slippers and scarves, our Holiday Sampler has the perfect gift for everyone on your list," she added. Colton noted this year's Holiday Sampler will feature over 50 new crafters. Some of the fresh faces to check out include Mary Angus of Readsboro Glassworks in Vermont, who will be showcasing her elegant glass blown items ranging from perfume bottles to candy cane themed ornaments. Two new jewelers not to miss are Sasha Walsh of Sasha Walsh Designs from Boston, who will share her fantastic avant-garde silver and gold jewelry, as well as Julia Britell Designs of Pittsfield, who will have a collection of original and elegant designs that have been silver smithed to perfection," Colton said. Also new, children's book author, Lauryn Wendus of Oliver Poons Children's Co., will share her story of the adventures of a cat named Oliver Poon, along with his other animal friends. Among the many popular returning artists will include Shibumi Silks of Wallingford, CT, who will demonstrate their hand dying techniques on silks and also will offer an opportunity for shoppers to purchase and create their own original silk creations at the fair. Potter Kyle Gallaway of Inspiration and Creation Studio in Somers, CT will be demonstrating how to use a potter's wheel and encourages children and adults alike to try it out. The Western Mass Wood Turners will be demonstrating a wide range of wood turning and carving techniques, along with returning painter Michael Wolski of Becket. To add to the festive atmosphere, the sounds of fiddle and bass duo, Annika Amstutz and Daniel Plane, jazz pianist Stephen Page, and Bella Voce Duo,with pianist Michael Rheault will entertain shoppers. Since becoming craft fairs coordinator, Colton has focused on encouraging more youngsters to celebrate the arts, children 12 and under can attend the fair for free both days and explore a miniature village. On Sunday, families can come and enjoy free crafting activities, watch and dance to Annie and the Natural Wonderband, as well as meet the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Pioneer Valley Ballet's Nutcracker. The Holiday Sampler is one of three fundraising Old Deerfield Craft Fairs to benefit the non-profit Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. As one of America's oldest history museums, Memorial Hall Museum, and its many programs reach out to more than 11,000 students in a single school year. Museum programs are supported, in part, by paid admissions to the craft fairs. Gwen Ifill In this Nov. 5, 2015 file photo, PBS "NewsHour" co-anchor Gwen Ifill attends The Women's Media Center 2015 Women's Media Awards in New York. (AP file photo) Gwen Ifill, a veteran news anchor who had served as a co-host of PBS's "NewsHour" and as moderator of "Washington Week," has died after a battle with cancer. She was 61. "I am very sad to tell you that our dear friend and beloved colleague Gwen Ifill passed away today in hospice care in Washington," WETA president and CEO Sharon Percy Rockefeller wrote to staff of the Washington D.C. area public television station on Monday. "I spent an hour with her this morning and she was resting comfortably, surrounded by loving family and friends. ... Earlier today, I conveyed to Gwen the devoted love and affection of all of us at WETA/NewsHour. Let us hold Gwen and her family even closer now in our hearts and prayers." The daughter of an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister, Ifill lived in several New England communities as her father's ministry required the family to move. She lived in Springfield during her teenage years and was a 1973 graduate of the former Classical High School. Ifill graduated from Simmons College in Boston in 1977, before beginning her career at the Boston Herald-American. She held reporting positions at The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC before becoming a moderator of PBS's "Washington Week in Review" in 1999. She moderated a Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in February. She moderated the vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008. Ifill was originally scheduled to anchor Election Night coverage, but the week before PBS announced she was on an unspecified medical leave. She was set to receive the 2016 John Chancellor Award from Columbia University, an event that had recently been postponed, according to Vox. Ifill received an honorary degree from Bay Path University in 2007. 1114 trump fight.jpg Police mugshots of Douglas Dahlberg, left, and Evan Brown, who are accused of fighting over Donald Trump inside a Mexican restaurant in Old Saybrook, Conn. (Old Saybrook Police photos) It's a state of the times that political arguments can trump even the desire for Mexican food. According to a post on the Old Saybrook Police Facebook page, Two Connecticut men are facing charges after a verbal disagreement over President-elect Donald Trump escalated into a fistfight Friday evening. That the fight occurred inside a Mexican restaurant caused the media's irony meter to jump off the charts, sending reports of this story far and wide. Police were called to Cuckoo's Nest, a Mexican restaurant on Boston Post Road, after receiving multiple 911 calls about a fight in progress. Some of the callers reported that both punches and dishes were being thrown. According to police, when officers arrived and separated the parties, they learned neither man knew the other. While inside the restaurant, the two apparently got into an argument about Trump and it quickly went from a verbal dispute to a physical one. One of the men was taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries suffered in the fight, while the other was taken into custody. Both men will be charged, police said. According to NBC Connecticut, Evan Brown, 34, of Lyme, Connecticut, was charged with breach of the peace and third-degree assault. His bail was set at $2,500. The other man, Douglas Dahlberg, 58, of Clinton, Connecticut, will be charged with breach of the peace. According to the station, Brown celebrated his birthday on Friday. CHICOPEE - The Boys & Girls Club will hold its annual community turkey dinner on Monday to thank the community and the city for its support. This is the 19th year the club has hosted the dinner and last year more than 325 people attended the dinner, said Jason Reed, marketing and development manager for the club. The dinner will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Monday. It is free and open to the public, but people are asked to bring a non-perishable food item that will be donated to Lorraine's Soup Kitchen & Pantry, Reed said. Charter Spectrum is the lead sponsor of the event. In addition, the Westover Job Corps students in the culinary department will be seasoning, roasting, and carving the birds. The Knights of Columbus Council 4044 will provide the mashed potatoes, vegetables, gravy, rolls, and cranberry sauce. Costco donate the cakes and beverages, he said. As part of their commitment to community involvement, Boys & Girls Club members who are part of the Torch Club and Keystone Club will assist in the serving, set up, and break down of the meal, he said. The election-night coverage of the 2016 vote began with images of the Clinton campaign team gathering in the Javits Center under the symbolic glass ceiling. Hillary Clinton supporters were enthusiastic, upbeat, and expectant. The polls gave them every reason to expect that America was electing her as the countrys first female president. Theres just this one little detail, however: the polls were wrong, and the party never happened. Not since 1948, with the non-election of Thomas Dewey, have the polls been so wrong. Just as in 1948, however, the problem does not rest in the field of statistics, but rather in the field of research methodology. RealClear Politics identified 16 battleground states and provided data for the latest polls in each of those states. They had combined those polls and posted an overall average for each state. We all understand that these polls include a margin of error that is mathematically linked to the sample size. All else being equal, larger samples have less error; smaller samples have more error. Although RealClear does not provide an overall margin of error for their average of polls, that margin can be easily calculated by taking into account the size of the various samples (and making one or two reasonable assumptions). Based on these numbers, the RealClear difference between Trump and Clinton was indeed within the margin of error for seven of the 16 battleground states, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, and Virginia. In one state, the polls underestimated Clintons performance. The RealClear summary hinted at a small Trump lead in Nevada, a state that Clinton would win. The other eight errors, however, were all cases in which Trumps performance was underestimated, including Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Some of these states had been correctly predicted to go to Trump (like Missouri and Ohio), but the differences were larger than anticipated. Some of these states eventually went to Clinton (like Minnesota), but the margins were much smaller than expected. Ultimately, however, the unexpected differences in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan (which, for the record, still has not been called) moved the celebration from the Javits Center to Trump Tower. Republican political consultant Mike Murphy suggested, Tonight, data died. He pointed to a very real failure of election forecasting, but his quote suggests a problem with statistics. In fact, however, the problem was in the failure to obtain representative random samples. The error in 1948 was because many voters did not have telephones. A random sample restricted to homes with telephones might totally misrepresent the political tendencies of homes without telephones. The homes without phones generally had fewer economic resources and different voting priorities. The failure to use random representative polls of all potential voters resulted in the faulty prediction. Although some will suggest that the polls were intentionally rigged, the fact that the error in Nevada was in the opposite direction suggests otherwise. Pollsters were trying to get an accurate read. In fact, the polling has been extremely accurate in recent elections. Based on the polling data in 2004, for example, I successfully predicted the winner in every single state. What has changed? In 2016 we use our telephones differently than we did historically. In the past, when my phone rang, I answered it. I answered when my hands were wet, as I washed the dishes, or were dirty with grease, as I attempted to change my oil. After years of robo-calls, however, I no longer answer my phone until and unless I decide whether or not I want to talk to the caller. I check the caller ID, and I practice personal control over how I use my phone. As a consequence, it is progressively more difficult for pollsters to complete a representative random sample of voter behavior. Our polls are more likely to predict how people who do not use caller ID will behave. It is possible that people who seek more control over their telephones might tend to be the same sort of people who seek more control over their government and other areas of their private lives. The 2016 poll numbers might have been rigged, but not through any intentional work by the media. Rather, they were unintentionally rigged by the realistic hurdles faced by behavioral scientists, as they seek to explain and understand human behavior. Even if we are able to fix the research methodology, it is important to remember that statistics always include a margin of error. The data only provide insights into the world. Like the weather forecast, they are not intended to provide any guarantees. Stephen Kings comment about statistical analysis is right on target: in his novel, 11/22/63, King writes: Theres always a window of uncertainty. It is progressively more difficult for pollsters to complete a representative random sample of voter behavior. Our polls are more likely to predict how people who do not use caller ID will behave. Caroline Cuzeau was scrolling through her Facebook feed when she saw a photo of a dog in need, she quickly contacted the original poster. Two weeks later, 'Charlie' made the trip from Elazig, Turkey to Longmeadow. "We've got to do something for him," Cuzeau said. "It was just one step after the next. We're going to save this puppy, that's it." Charlie is one of many Golden Retrievers abandoned in Turkey. They were once considered a status symbol by the wealthy in Turkey, but as they grow up, the dogs become seen as less valuable and left on the streets, according to Golden Retriever Rescue of the Rockies. The rescue also said there aren't many shelters for the dogs to go to and the conditions there aren't very good. According to CNN, nobody knows how many street dogs live in Turkey, with estimations ranging anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000 in Istanbul alone. This particular rescue is one of many flying these "Turkey dogs" from poor conditions internationally to the States for adoption. Sometimes, they're already adopted before they ever get on a plane. But for Cuzeau, the adoption was done by word of mouth and a lot of help from two women, Turkan Ceylan and Hale Naiboglu Karabicakli. They helped get Charlie from the shelter in Elazig to Istanbul, for his international flight and eventually to the United States. Dogs, however, can't fly internationally by themselves. So, Cuzeau asked people and local colleges to share a post, looking for anyone flying from Istanbul to the United States. To Charlie's luck, a flight captain happened to be flying to Boston and volunteered. Karabicakli said it's not that easy for other dogs. She currently has 26 other dogs in Istanbul she's looking for volunteers to help fly to the United States. She said she often works with rescues in Washington D.C., New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago. "They are ready to fly, it all depends when I can find flight volunteers," Karabicakli said. For Charlie, the entire thing, including flights, shuttles and a vet visit, Cuzeau said, was comparable to many adoption fees she's seen. For healthy dogs, Karabicakli estimates the cost to be between 700 to 800 dollars. But, she said, if the dog is very sick it can cost a lot more. Now Charlie is making himself right at home with Cuzeau's two daughters and other dog, Louis, who is also a rescue from Philadelphia. He's even already learned multiple commands in English. Cuzeau now encourages other people to look into pet adoption, domestic or international. "Adoption's always great, it doesn't really matter where," Cuzeau said. Although she originally just wanted to help a dog she saw on Facebook, Cuzeau said it turned into a lot more than that. She met many helpful people from around the world along the way, which really inspired her. "There are still good people," Cuzeau said. Editor's note: The story has been updated to include comments from Hale Naiboglu Karabicakli. noguera.jpg Noguera is being charged with murder for allegedly shooting a man in Easton and leaving him for dead in the woods. EASTON -- A 47-year-old Florida man was the one who allegedly shot and left someone to die in a wooded area of Easton last week, authorities say. Working in coordination with South Carolina police, members of the Massachusetts State Police tracked down Michael Arthur Noguera and arrested him in a trailer in Conway, S.C., on Saturday. Noguera, of Lehigh Acres, Fla., is being charged with murder-after-the-fact, armed robbery and larceny over $250. On Tuesday, a pair of boys on a bike ride found the body of Daniel Smith, 35, about 25 yards into a wooded area of Easton. Smith had been shot in the head and left to die. The boys' mother reported the grisly find to Easton Police. First responders rushed Smith to Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton. He was then flown by a medical helicopter to Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, where he succumbed to his injuries. Authorities said Noguera is being charged in South Carolina as a fugitive from justice and will appear in Horry County Court later today. Noguera will be offered the choice to face extradition, which he can try to fight to delay his return to Massachusetts. Wrangling over an issue veterans that often receives bipartisan support, the legislation died on a vote of 56-41, with only two Republicans voting for it. Gregg Zoroya , USA TODAY Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/27/veterans-legislation-bernie-sanders-senate/5859217/ Marchers in Barcelona on Sunday. CARLES RIBAS Thousands of people marched in Barcelona on Sunday in support of Catalan politicians being investigated by the Spanish justice system for their pro-independence actions. The local police placed the number of protesters at 80,000. Demonstrators waving esteladas unofficial flags symbolizing an independent Catalonia filled up Maria Cristina Avenue and cut off Plaza de Espana to cries of For democracy, Independence and Out with Spanish justice. This is a long-distance race, and we are in the final stretch Neus Lloveras, head of AMI The pro-independence crowd was there to show support for around a dozen elected officials and 250 town halls across Catalonia currently under investigation by the Spanish courts. Public officials are under scrutiny for actions ranging from organizing the non-binding independence referendum of November 9, 2014, to failing to fly the Spanish flag from town halls. Participating in the march were all the high-profile politicians under investigation, including former Catalan premier Artur Mas and his aides Joana Ortega, Irene Rigau and Francesc Homs, who allegedly helped organize the 2014 referendum deemed illegal by Madrid. Mas faces a possible 10-year ban from public office for his role in organizing the vote while Ortega and Rigau could face bans of nine years. Artur Mas, Irene Rigau and Joana Ortega are under investigation over the 2014 referendum. Albert Garcia Other familiar faces included Carme Forcadell, speaker of the Catalan assembly, who is charged with disobedience for allowing a house vote on the sovereignty issue, and two representatives from the far-left, pro-sovereignty CUP party who have been charged with sedition. Promoters of the march sought to portray the accused as champions of democracy whose only crime was to obey the will of the Catalan people rather than unfair Spanish laws, and whose fundamental rights are being violated by the Constitutional Court in Madrid. Standing against giant letters spelling out disobedience, a group of Catalan celebrities read out a list of regional laws that have recently been struck down or put on hold by the Spanish courts on issues ranging from the independence drive to the ban on bullfighting. Prominent pro-sovereignty leaders also warned Madrid that the protests will continue for as long as it takes. This is not just about marching on September 11 (National Day of Catalonia) or on historic occasions. This is about democracy and about our future as it began. The time has come for permanent mobilization, said Jordi Cuixart, president of Omnium Cultural, a pro-independence civic association. Neus Lloveras, president of the Association of Pro-Independence Municipalities (AMI), noted that Spanish authorities have opened 400 legal proceedings against local officials in Catalonia over failure to fly the Spanish flag and other related issues. This is a long-distance race, and we are in the final stretch. Its either a referendum or a referendum, she said, alluding to the pro-sovereignty camps desire for a new, binding referendum on independence. The current Catalan premier, Carles Puigdemont, attended a parallel demonstration in his home town of Amer (Girona) and said that in Catalonia, there is a democrat in every corner standing ready to defend the Catalan institutions and their elected officials. English version by Susana Urra. Around 50 people attacked the off-duty officers outside this bar in Alsasua, Navarre. At least eight people have been arrested in relation to the attack on two off-duty members of the Civil Guard and their girlfriends in the small community of Alsasua, in Spains northern Navarre region on October 15. The suspects detained are said to be members of the radical left-wing Basque nationalist OSPA movement, which backs the Alde Hemendik (get out of here) campaign targeting Spains Civil Guard and Navarres regional police force. Anti-terrorist sources told EL PAIS the five arrests took place early on Monday morning at various homes in Alsasua. The investigation is still open, the same sources said. The arrests come a month after a group attack in which 50 people all supporters of Basque independence beat up two off-duty civil guards and their girlfriends. All four needed hospital treatment, with one of the officers sustaining a fractured ankle. The government of Navarre, which is currently headed by the left-leaning Uxue Barkos, condemned the attack, saying it has no place in a democratic society. Spains High Court launched an investigation into the attack, saying it fell under Spanish terrorism legislation. So far, 12 people have been identified in relation to the assault. The incident, which came just before the fifth anniversary of the announcement of a definitive ceasefire by Basque terror group ETA, has illustrated the complexities of peaceful coexistence in municipalities with a strong presence of radical Basque nationalists, and of Navarres place within the wider Basque homeland that these activists claim independence for. Alsasua has long been viewed as a bastion of radical Basque nationalists known as the abertzale, and has a long history of attacks against people and property. The mid-October assault is the latest chapter in an ongoing story of violent incidents that appeared to have subsided following the ETA ceasefire. Radical nationalist circles claimed the attack had been invented to undermine their movement. Some protestors used the Basque phrase Alde hemendik (get out of here) at law enforcement officers in the area. English version by George Mills and Nick Lyne. Spanish police arrest an Irish national last September in Marbella. Garda (Policia de Irlanda) Spains National Police and Civil Guard have identified 440 organized crime groups operating in the country, part of a network of some 3,600 at work throughout the European Union. At least 10 of these are classified as high intensity: that is, they have been operating for more than three years; they have at least 20 members (the average is from 11 to 20 individuals); they have one main area of activity, but also work in other related areas; and they are multinational, sometimes contracting out services to other gangs. Typically, these criminals will have created legitimate front companies through which to launder their ill-gotten gains. Last week, Spanish police arrested a businessman on the island of Mallorca: he had a construction company and a business managing slot machines. He was married and his children went to private schools. For the last three years he had been smuggling some 150 kilograms of cocaine onto the Balearic island each year, subcontracting distribution to local Gypsy families. In total, seven people were arrested. Crime is a multi-million dollar business in Europe growing thanks to the internet Rob Wainwright, director of Europol These types of arrangements normally last around three years and tend to operate in big cities or tourist destinations, where their activities do not stand out, say police, adding that these gangs work in networks often set up in prison. The majority of criminal gangs operating in Spain are dealing in drugs, say police: Colombians, cocaine, Moroccans, hashish, and the Turks, heroin, says one officer. Fraud is another activity, along with money laundering, followed by people trafficking, prostitution, burglary and theft of luxury cars. Again, some nationalities specialize in certain activities: Colombians: drugs and jewelry; Russians and Georgians, burglary and luxury cars, along with money laundering; the Chinese, prostitution and people trafficking; Pakistanis and Syrians, falsification of documents; Bulgarians, weapons says the same source. Since 2014, when Spain set up CITCO, the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime, some 250 connections have been made linking organized crime and terrorism. Structures are changing: there are no more leaders, there are cells, flexible groups that assign people particular responsibilities and that are active in different markets so as to keep their options open, says a police source. Spains police say that the first criminal groups to operate in Spain were offshoots of the Italian mafia, which moved here in the 1970s as Spains economy began opening up. Typically, these gangs will have created legitimate front companies Since then, Italys four main mafias, the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Ndrangheta from Calabria, the Neapolitan Camorra, and the Sacra Corona Unita, from Puglia have all established a strong presence in Spain. Between 1999 and 2009, a third of all arrests of mafia members took place in Spain. Italian mafias also benefited from Spains construction boom: the Italian authorities calculate that it developed the equivalent of some 50 kilometers of Spanish coastline. Following in the footsteps of the Italians, as Spain became an important logistics and distribution point for drugs shipments into the rest of Europe and an easy place to launder money, Turkish criminal gangs moved here during the 1980s, supplying drugs and weapons. They were soon followed by the Colombian drug cartels, with Spain becoming the main entry point for cocaine into Europe. Since then, say police, the cartels have managed to find other countries in Europe through which to ship drugs. In recent years, Irish criminal gangs have also begun operating from Spains Costa del Sol, shipping weapons and drugs throughout Europe. Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, describes organized crime as a multi-million dollar business in Europe and that is growing thanks to the internet and mobile technologies, the proliferation of clandestine global routes and the opportunities that the global economic crisis offers. All this has contributed to the creation of a greater threat. Spain also faces a threat from the Colombian peace process, say some experts. There are between 8,000 and 12,000 former guerrillas who will have no work if the peace process goes ahead, says one expert. Others point to the growing presence in Spain of members of the Mexican cartels, which are increasing their shipments into this country. English version by Nick Lyne. There is a new man of God in town and he is providing leadership to a church that has long needed it. Pastor William Hill, 50, is now the full-time preacher for Landis Presbyterian Church on U.S. 221 North. While still in seminary school, he would travel to Marion to preach at Landis until February when they asked him to stay. They have a long history here, but as what usually happens, when you lose a pastor you lose people, he told The McDowell News. They have been without a pastor here for six years. I want to let people know that we exist, we have been here a long time and our greatest desire as a church is to minister to the community. Hill was called to the pulpit after spending years in retail management which he said is no life for anybody. This is my first time pastoring a church. It was a midlife change, but I always wanted to do ministry, he said. Hill is originally from New York, but moved to Virginia in 1998 with his wife to raise their three children. When they all left the nest, Hill decided to follow one of his lifelong dreams. He grew up in a Baptist church and his wife was Roman Catholic before they both converted. I have been southernized after 16 years in the south and its been good to me. We live right in town in Marion in a small little house. We dont need much, said Hill. I have a real heart for the job, the community and to minister to people however they need. There is a lot of hurt out there. Landis currently has about 20 members, but in the churchs history there have been close to 90 at one time. There are two services on Sunday, including a meal after the morning service. Our core mission as a church is what I call historic Christianity. Our central issue in worship every week is the unapologetic preaching of Gods word. We live in a society where everything is so informal that its a shock for some to come here because we are very formal. But, we are very friendly and very loving and reach out to people as much as we can, he said. Hill describes himself as a call it the way he sees it kind of guy and thats the kind of message he portrays in his sermons. If people are looking for a serious place of worship where they are going to hear Gods word preached and sing Gods praises, this is the place to be. If you are looking to be entertained, there are other places to go and I encourage that. He preaches from the English Standard Version of the Bible because he says its faithful to the original language. The Bible teaches that worship is the most important thing that we will do all week. We take worshipping God seriously. A worship that is rich and full of Gods present and glory will result in a life that is much richer. We are trying to grow the church on Sundays to get people here and get people excited about what we are doing here, said Hill. The church is located at 4975 U.S. 221 North in Marion. Sunday school begins at 10 a.m. and worship begins at 11 a.m. with a meal following. The afternoon service starts at 2:30 p.m. Visit their Web site at www.landispca.org, call 828-623-9192, or email wfhill@landispca.org to learn more. BOX: History of Landis Presbyterian On May 27, 1923, a Presbyterian Sunday school was organized at Hicks Chapel by the Rev. J.C. Story, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Marion. The Sunday School was moved December 18, 1927 to Toms Creek School House on the farm of W.E. Landis who gave the Sunday School free use of the school house. On the third Sunday in October 1933, the Landis Presbyterian Church was organized with 35 charter members and was enrolled in Concord Presbytery. Story was the first pastor in 1938. The present church building was completed in April 1947. Former Veracruz government Javier Duarte faces charges of money laundering and organized crime. Marco Ugarte (AP) More information Un testaferro del exgobernador mexicano Duarte compro un piso de lujo en Madrid The tentacles of a Mexican politician on the run reach as far as Spain. A businessman named Moises Mansur Cysneiros, considered a frontman for ex-governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa, purchased a luxury home in downtown Madrid in 2014. The 403-square-meter home was bought for 4 million through a holding company, an EL PAIS investigation has discovered. Mansur is a key figure in the system set up by Duarte, a governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz who went missing on October 15 after feeling cornered by growing suspicion that he misappropriated $26 million from Veracruzs state coffers. I dont even have his cellphone number. Honestly we have no idea where he is Daniel Duarte, brother to Javier The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) politician left behind a $837 million hole in the public accounts in a state that is notorious for its high rate of violence against women, journalists and activists. The Mexican government is offering a $700,000 reward for leads about Duartes whereabouts. The link between Mansur and the Mexican politician became even more evident when it emerged that the businessman had made Duarte his heir, and that he had given a credit card to Duartes wife, Karime Macias. The luxury home takes up the third floor of a stately, early 20th-century building situated on Alfonso XII street, across from Retiro Park. This is one of the most expensive areas of the capital, where the square meter goes for as much as 10,000. The building (concealed by a construction screen) where Mansur bought a luxury home. Uly Martin Last week, the last remaining unit in the building was selling for 5 million. Mansur purchased the property in March 2014 through the holding firm Worfolk Solutions SL. A Madrid law firm provided legal advice for an operation that required taking out a 2 million mortgage. He had no trouble securing the loan. He was a Triple A client, said sources familiar with the transaction. The businessman also paid 900,000 in refurbishment work and around 500,000 in fees associated with the sale. Mansur arrived in Spain in 2010, presenting himself as a wealthy Mexican businessman in search of a suitable home. Duarte, for his part, was familiar with Madrid from his student days, when he took a graduate course at the Ortega y Gasset Foundation. And his wife Karime Macias presented her dissertation before a committee at Madrids Complutense University in 2014. Mansurs Madrid purchase joins a list of around 20 exclusive properties in Houston and Miami with ties to the former governor through a complex web of companies and frontmen. International investigation On July 29, Mexican prosecutors sent the Spanish Justice Ministry a request for assistance, asking authorities here to investigate a complaint filed by a Mexican politician regarding Duartes alleged use of frontmen to acquire property in Spain. The complaint, to which EL PAIS has had access, was filed by Miguel Angel Yunes, a deputy for Mexicos National Action Party (PAN) who names 36 individuals he suspects could be acting as go-betweens for Duarte. He had no trouble securing the loan. He was a Triple A client Source familiar with sale The petition focuses most specifically on Duartes brother Daniel, his mother Cecilia de Ochoa Guasti, and his wife Karime Macias Tubilla. Mexican authorities asked Spain to provide financial information regarding any bank accounts or financial assets being held or controlled by these individuals in Spain. Daniel Duarte, the ex-governors brother, lives in the Basque city of Bilbao where he runs a bed-and-breakfast and three apartments through two registered companies. Ive been living in Spain for over 15 years. I bought the B&B three years ago and I have a mortgage like everyone else, he told EL PAIS. I put a lot of effort into my business. I man the desk, make the beds, clean the bathrooms and take the linen to the laundromat. Im not a millionaire, I dont even own a car. I work for a living. My brother has nothing to do with this property. Daniel Duarte left Mexico at age 22 and says he does not keep in touch with his brother. I went to the other end of the world so I could lead my own life. I dont want anything to do with all this, he says. I havent seen him since January, when I traveled to Mexico to visit my mother. I dont even have his cellphone number. Honestly, we have no idea where he is. English version by Susana Urra. Colombias government signed a revised peace deal with the countrys leftist FARC rebels on Saturday. A copy of the new agreement, which comes six weeks after a referendum that rejected a historic deal ending more than five decades of conflict, was released on Sunday evening. The government and the FARC, which have been holding talks in Havana for four years, said they had incorporated proposals from the opposition, religious leaders and other civil society groups. Colombian's celebrate the new peace deal. G. LEGARIA (AFP) More information El nuevo acuerdo de paz en Colombia incluye reclamos del no sin cambiar los asuntos mas controvertidos But the new deal will not modify a controversial part of the accord that gives the FARC 10 congressional seats through to 2026 or prevent rebel leaders from eventually being elected to political posts. President Juan Manuel Santos now hopes to unite his divided nation behind the new deal after the peace process was endangered by its rejection in the October plebiscite. Colombian voters were deeply split, with many worried the FARC would not be punished for crimes and others hopeful the deal would cement an end to violence. The referendum was rejected by some 54,000 votes. Campaigners against the original peace deal, signed on September 26, led by former president Alvaro Uribe, put forward some 400 proposals included in 57 main areas that have been negotiated over the last month with FARC representatives in Havana, Cuba. The revised accord will be sent to Congress rather than being put to another referendum Among the proposals the government and the FARC have accepted is that foreign magistrates will be removed from special peace tribunals, although foreign observers will remain. At the same time, the FARC must provide full disclosure about its involvement in drug trafficking. Furthermore, the work of the special tribunals will be limited to 10 years and any investigations must be opened within two years of the new deal being approved. Concerns over lenient sentences for FARC fighters confessing to crimes was one of the major reasons Colombians voted against the deal in October. Other modifications to the peace deal include requiring the rebels to present an inventory of acquired money and holdings, which will be used to compensate victims. There are also provisions of safeguards for land and property owners as part of agrarian reform in the countryside. Another controversial aspect of the original deal related to women and the LGBT community, which noted that their experiences during the conflict had been different, and thus calling for special reparations for women and LGBT victims. This was seized on by conservative opponents to the peace deal as an attempt to undermine so-called traditional family values and structures in Colombian society, privileging the LGBT community. The FARC must provide full disclosure about its involvement in drug trafficking In the new text, the question of LGBT rights has been diluted, although it still spells out that all Colombians have the same rights under the law, regardless of their sexual orientation, age, gender, or creed. The revised accord is expected to be sent to Congress rather than being put to another referendum. Formed in 1964, the FARC reached prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. At its peak, it was Latin Americas largest and best-equipped militant organization, with an estimated 20,000 fighters that managed to gain control over large areas of territory. Its five-decade struggle with the government claimed more than 220,000 lives and has seen up to eight million people displaced. English version by Nick Lyne. by Stephanie Dressler , Op-Ed Contributor, November 14, 2016 By now the narrative is clear: The outcome of Tuesdays election was a surprise to many individuals in the U.S. and around the world and to supporters of both political parties. In any instance when a predicted outcome is proven wrong there is a reflection period, which often sparks a curiosity. Presidential campaigns have used the Internet to support their efforts dating back to 1996, and the role of the Internet and social networks on election outcomes has significantly picked up over the past several election cycles. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg estimated that over 2 million people registered to vote after seeing a reminder on Facebook this year, and Pew estimates that in 2016 the majority of U.S. adults (62%) get their news from social media channels. As a population, we know the impact social media can have in shaping election outcomes, particularly since Obamas successful 2008 campaign. As social networks, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, become increasingly influential in shaping public opinion, these networks evolved to take on more control of how information is shared, sorted and prioritized. The Evolution of Facebooks Algorithm To understand how we got here, its worth looking back at the history of Facebooks algorithm. In 2009, Facebook debuted a new type of default sorting order, based on popularity, which was quantified by engagement on each post. Subsequent updates were made in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Each update refined further which information users would see in their newsfeed, as Facebook attempted to provide users with more personalized content that met their interests. This also allowed Facebook to target advertising to specific users based on geographic location, age, hobbies and interests, which is Facebooks key advertising value proposition. This targeting also applies to political beliefs. The issues created or reinforced by Facebooks algorithm are three-fold: Much of the news shared on Facebook is biased and coming from biased or fake news sites. Individuals with no political affiliation were rolling out Web sites and sharing biased news simply to turn a profit. For example, BuzzFeed reported over 100 pro-Trump sites being run by teenagers in Macedonia who say they dont care about Donald Trump and are simply responding to straightforward economic incentives. These individuals were publishing sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters to up their Web traffic. Many of these Facebook sites have hundreds of thousands of followers and Buzzfeed's research found that the most successful stories from these sites were nearly all false or misleading. This creates an echo chamberinside and outside of politics. Its unclear how Facebook assigns political affiliation to an individual. Individuals are increasingly using Facebook as their only source of news and information because they expect to consume a large and diverse variety of research, news and opinion all in one place. Since how the inner workings of the process are not fully understood, undecided voters may take certain actions, like commenting on or sharing a piece of partisan information, which could potentially skew the content that is directed to them on a moving forward basis. The biggest issue is that users dont have control of their own journey, based on their actions. Its not possible to protect how users newsfeeds evolve based on the actions they take. The biggest concern: the majority of Facebook users likely have little to no understanding of the social net's algorithm and may not realize the content they see is being uniquely targeted to them. Most users also are not able to discern the authority of the news and whether its biased. Fact vs. Fiction The amount of fake or fictional content floating around on social networks is also a growing concern, particularly coupled with Facebooks algorithm that gives more authority to posts that receive more engagement. Facebook has created a report fake news button that is meant to allow users to help Facebook screen and remove false news and information from the site. The problem is that many users dont fact check information before they share it; the current algorithm can allow false information to become viral in a short period. Significant and irreversible damage can be done in a matter of minutes What is the Solution? Social media users have no responsibility to verify information or vet the information they share. The question then lies in the responsibility of social networks to act as a responsible third party in terms of what content they promote and why. Before algorithms came into play, it would be harder to make this point, but as soon as social networks began organizing and and prioritizing information for users, they assumed some responsibility for virality of content. Googles algorithms incorporate many variables, but credibility of news sources plays a significant role in rankings. Moving forward, Facebook may consider ranking news sources for validity and indicate the rank on posts, or prioritizing credible news sources over less credible ones. Better measures must also be put in place to remove false information and a more effective system should be implemented to let users know if they shared something that was factually untrue. by Thom Forbes @tforbes, November 14, 2016 Connecting instantaneously to the rapidly evolving automotive market, Samsung is acquiring Harman International Industries for about $8 billion in a deal announced by both companies this morning. Samsung has scheduled a call and webcast about the acquisition for 8 a.m. ET. When the deal closes mid-2017 is the target date Stamford, Conn.-based Harman will operate as an independent subsidiary of Samsung under the leadership of Dinesh Paliwal, who is currently chairman, president and CEO. He has run it since company co-founder Sidney Harman retired in 2007. The vehicle of tomorrow will be transformed by smart technology and connectivity in the same way that simple feature phones have become sophisticated smart devices over the past decade, Young Sohn, the president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics, says in the release announcing the deal. advertisement advertisement Founded in 1953, Harman is the market leader in connected car solutions, with more than 30 million vehicles currently equipped with its connected car and audio systems, including embedded infotainment, telematics, connected safety and security, according to the statement. Paliwal has pushed aggressively into the automotive world and has secured billions in new business, including big contracts with General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Mike Ramsey and Jeff Bennett wrote for the Wall Street Journal in a piece last January. Samsung doesnt plan to make cars itself, according to people familiar with executives thinking, but the company sees automotive technology, and the broader shift toward connected, driverless vehicles, as a promising growth area to sell more of its semiconductors, display panels and mobile services, the WSJs Jonathan Cheng writes this morning. Samsungs third-generation heir, Lee Jae-yong, has sat on the board of directors of Exor SpA, the controlling shareholder of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, for the past four years, and Samsung last year assembled a task force to look into different ways to jump into the automobile world, Cheng continues. With the Harman acquisition, it will be fully immersed. Approximately 65% of Harmans $7.0 billion of reported sales during the 12 months ended September 30, 2016 are automotive-related, and its order backlog for this market at June 30, 2016 was approximately $24 billion, the release states. Bt the impetus for the deal is clearly not just what is already on the books. Samsung said that it would also have access to Harmans designers and engineers, which would allow for more collaboration on the so-called Internet of Things, in which devices and electronics can be connected to the Internet. It did not give details on what sorts of services they would aim to build together, Amie Tsang writes for the New York Times. IOT is still much of a buzzword, but Samsung said it plans to utilize Harmans 8,000 developers to deliver the next generation of cloud-based consumer and enterprise experiences, as well as end-to-end services for the automotive market through the convergence of design, data and devices, Jon Russell writes for TechCrunch. Harman has also diversified into software development and components for connected cars. Much of that has been done on the shoulders of major acquisitions such as a $780 million deal last year for Mountain View, Calif.-based software services company Symphony Teleca, the WSJs Ramsey and Bennett reported. The South Korean companys push into the automotive world will likely bring it into competition with other tech giants like Google and Apple, writes James Vincent for The Verge. Although much of the focus on Silicon Valleys car ambitions has been on self-driving capabilities, outfitting vehicles with more prosaic connected technology could be more immediately lucrative. Earlier this year it was reported that Apple had scaled back its car initiative, dropping plans to build its own electric vehicle in favor of developing software for existing automakers, Vincent continues. Sidney Harman an engineer by training and a fitness buff and patron of the arts by avocation, died in 2011 at age 92. He had been undersecretary of the Commerce Dept. in the Carter Administration and purchased Newsweek magazine from the Washington Post less than a year before his death from acute myeloid leukemia. Co-founder Bernard Kardon, an engineer who had been Harmans boss at David Bogen & Co., sold his half of the company to the latter in 1956. The had each put up $5,000 to launch the company. Kardon died in 1993. by Sara Guaglione , November 14, 2016 has shut down its weekly print edition after nearly 30 years in print. The paper, owned by President-elect Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, will live online only. No staff layoffs are planned. Joseph Meyer, the chairman and chief executive of Observer Media, the publications parent company, told TheNew York Times the decision was based on the papers shifted focus on a national audience and the decline in print advertising revenue. New York will be dropped from the title to reflect this shift and to match the name of the Web site, which rebranded to Observer.com in 2015. Observer.com received 5.6 million unique visitors in September, nearly twice its audience from the year before, according to comScore data. advertisement advertisement We reach more people in an hour online than we reach in a week through print and will continue to focus on bringing our content to readers wherever they are, via new digital, social and mobile platforms, Meyer wrote in a memo to readers. According to the company, 85% of the traffic from its site comes from outside New York. Several freelance writers at the New York Observer were let go on Friday, along with one of the papers editors. Meyer said the last issue of the Observer was printed on November 9. While some may speculate that Kushner wants to focus on helping Trump in the White House, Meyer, who is Kushner's brother-in-law, said the decision had been two years in the making and was not related to Trump's election last week. This week, Kushner, who is married to Trumps daughter Ivanka, was named part of the 16-person presidential transition team. He was a key adviser to the candidate during the campaign and at one point, there were reports that Trump and Kushner planned to launch a new conservative TV network. The weekly paper was founded in 1987 by former investment banker Arthur Carter. The New York Observer aimed to follow city culture, media, politics and real estate for an audience mostly concentrated in Manhattans wealthy Upper East Side. In the mid-1990s, the paper featured Candace Bushnells column, the inspiration behind popular HBO series Sex and the City." Kushner acquired the paper in 2006 when he was just 25 years old. Newspaper coverage of New York City is being cut back dramatically this year. The Wall Street Journalis folding its Greater New York section into the main section of the paper, cutting its coverage in half and laying off some of its metro staff. The New York Times cut back its Metro coverage and The New York Daily News announced new layoffs last week. by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 14, 2016 Google and Microsoft redefined the definition of search through messaging technology like chatbots and apps for mobile and desktop by making a case that it can reach across a brand's or retailer's Web site to find and return information on consumer queries. Messaging creates a new form of search advertising simply by returning information based on chatbot queries. At the Bing Ads Next event in Redmond, Washington last week, Microsoft demonstrated how companies like airline ticket site Skyscanner as well as Delta Airlines, in a demo, use a chatbot by pulling information from their Web site to answer questions. Microsoft also demonstrated a chatbot that serves up on bing.com in search results. A restaurant called Moksha is testing the technology in the Redmond, Washington area. advertisement advertisement As consumers warm up to the idea of talk to machines, for brands, agencies and developers integrating the data from chatbots becomes one of the biggest challenges. The disparate systems do not communicate with each other. Apple focuses on Siri, Google on Allo, and Microsoft on Cortana. This next step not too far into the future will play out in a way that is similar to the integration of advertising channels such as mobile, desktop and television. Nearly one-third of consumers 28.9% prefer to use a chatbot rather than the 29% who prefer to pick up the phone or the 27% who prefer to email when interacting with retailers, according to [24]7, a provider of chatbot and human agent assistance for retailers, released Monday. Break down the numbers in the study A Retailer's Guide to Chatbots, Live Chat and Messaging and Millennials lead when it comes to adopting chat technology chatbots and apps. Some 37% of survey respondents ages 18 to 34 rank chat as their favorite way to contact companies when making a purchase, with 30% choosing online chat and 7% selecting messaging apps. Overall, 39% of consumers are open to interacting with a chatbot in a retail scenario, but when the study broke that down by demographics, it found that only 9% of Millennials prefer to always interact with a chatbot compared with a human. Millennials, at 40%, prefer to use a messaging app. Surprisingly, the ability to chat online or through a mobile device has surpassed the use of using a phone and sending an email as the most popular way for consumers to interact with retailers, according to the [24]7 study. While customer service seems to be the most popular use for online chat applications such as messaging and chatbots, a study from Support.com found a home for the technology in tech support. The study found that Millennials are 75% more comfortable using chatbots, compared with Baby Boomers, when it comes to tech support. Millennials also are 138% more likely than Baby Boomers to believe that chatbots are better because they can respond faster than a live agent. About 60% know when they are interacting with a machine for tech support and they are not comfortable with it, with 71% of Baby Boomers and 65% of women saying that they agree. Not all respondents believe chatbots improve tech support. In fact 81% dont think chatbots improve tech support interactions or respond faster than a live agent, according to the Support.com study. The survey of 2,000 consumers reveals consumers' expectations for more personalized and automated technology support in the near future. The study focuses on technical support, but through the numbers marketers get a clear picture of consumers' views on chatbots. Brands that are planning to implement a chatbot to support consumers online will have many issues to consider. Humanizing technology through virtual assistants and chatbots will not work for all strategies, and will depend on the company's customer base. Privacy will be one of the biggest issues that brands will need to consider when implementing a chatbot. Some consumers are reluctant to share personal information this way, so companies will need to test the waters before they fully jump in. by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, November 14, 2016 Clearly, those of us who thought Donald Trump was going to rein in his prolific tweeting now that hes president can think again. Close on the heels of his stunning upset victory over his Democratic opponent, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Trump unleashed a familiar social media tirade against The New York Times for its latest critical coverage. After an article published in the NYT recounted some of Trumps many controversial statements specifically, that American allies like Japan and Saudi Arabia may need to develop nuclear weapons Trump took a swipe at the newspaper in typical fashion. He tweeted: Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the Trump phenomena. In many ways, the tweet is routine, with its we never sleep timing (6:16 a.m.) and its ad hominem sniping at a news organization, seeking to discredit it as a source of information with an attack on its business performance. However familiar the tweet seems at first glance, its a wake-up call for the whole mainstream news media. It shows the president-elect has no intention of changing his approach to newspapers and broadcast news programs he has long condemned as part of a corrupt establishment. As noted in a previous post, this isnt just evidence of Trumps thin skin, its part of a deliberate strategy to systematically counter negative views and unfavorable reports in the press by directly addressing his own followers. And although it might seem petty or trivial to some, its a key part of Trumps ability to frame and reframe coverage of himself, thus maintaining control of his narrative. Like his constant looming in the background during the town-hall style debate, by always getting the last word, Trump dominates the picture and stamps the issue with his own analysis, however skewed. Of course, tweeting these criticisms out to millions of followers will have predictable results, including a whole slew of angry content all over the NYTs social-media accounts and comments sections. In fact, with Wikileaks and an army of hackers also doing Trumps bidding, social media backlash is the least of their worries. Trumps appointment of Steve Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, which built its following in open opposition to the traditional news media, is a sign of things to come. Are the NYT and the rest of the news media ready for their new role? It brings them on stage as one of the principal dramatic foils, scapegoats, and above all, hate figures for Donald Trumps presidency. Its going to be a long four years. African-Americans have more rigidity of the aorta, the major artery supplying oxygen-rich blood to the body, than Caucasians and Hispanics, according to a study by UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiologists. The finding is important because African-Americans are the group at greatest risk of high blood pressure and organ damage caused by high blood pressure, and aortic rigidity is associated with high blood pressure. The study examined data from some 2,500 participants in the Dallas Heart Study, a multi-ethnic population-based cohort. The researchers used two methods to assess stiffness of the aorta, which is the largest artery in the body, running from the top of the left ventricle in the heart down to the abdomen. Both systems of measurement found greater stiffness in the aortas of African-Americans. "Our demonstration of ethnic differences in arterial stiffness is an important step in understanding the mechanisms that mediate ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin, Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and co-senior author of the study, which appears online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging. Hispanics in the study had an intermediate level of aortic stiffness, greater than Caucasians, but less than that of African-Americans. The study found that both African-Americans and Hispanics had smaller diameter aortas, after adjustments were made for weight. "This finding suggests that there may be a mismatch between aortic diameter and adiposity, which contributes to the increased rigidity," said Dr. Vongpatanasin, who holds the Norman and Audrey Kaplan Chair in Hypertension and the Fredric L. Coe Professorship in Nephrolithiasis in Mineral Metabolism. Other possible mechanisms underlying the increased levels of aortic stiffness in African-Americans and Hispanics include greater sodium intake among African-Americans and Hispanics, lower intake of potassium, and genetic differences in collagen content. Collagen is a protein fiber that is a key component of connective tissue such as bone and artery walls. According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 43 percent of African-American men and 45.7 percent of African-American women have hypertension, or high blood pressure, compared with 33.9 percent of Caucasian men and 31.3 percent of Caucasian women. "Hypertension is strongly associated with heart attack and stroke. Our study provides a potential explanation for excess risk of hypertension and resultant organ complication in African-Americans, who are at particularly high risk of cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Vongpatanasin. The Dallas Heart Study is an ongoing, multi-ethnic epidemiologic study, funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. More than 6,000 individuals in Dallas County have participated in the study, which has led to more than 200 published papers and key findings about heart disease, cholesterol, and liver disease. Other UT Southwestern researchers who contributed to this study are Dr. Christopher Maroules, Assistant Instructor; Colby Ayers, Faculty Associate; Dr. Roderick McColl, Associate Professor; Dr. Ronald Peshock, Professor of Radiology and Internal Medicine; and Dr. Akshay Goel, former UT Southwestern fellow. This works was supported by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, and from UT Southwestern's George M. O'Brien Kidney Research Core Center. Article: Ethnic Difference in Proximal Aortic Stiffness An Observation From the Dallas Heart Study, Akshay Goel, MD; Christopher D. Maroules, MD; Gary F. Mitchell, MD; Ronald Peshock, MD; Colby Ayers, MS; Roderick McColl, PhD; Wanpen Vongpatanasin, MD; Kevin S. King, MD, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging, doi:10.1016/j.jcmg.2016.07.012, published 9 November 2016. Cancer Research UK-funded scientists have discovered that a 'sponge on a string' pill test can identify which people with a condition called Barrett's oesophagus have a low risk of developing oesophageal cancer - sparing them uncomfortable endoscopies. Researchers from the University of Cambridge gave 468 people who had Barrett's oesophagus a 'sponge on a string' (cytosponge) test. Barrett's oesophagus is a condition that can lead to oesophageal cancer in a small number of people. They found that the cytosponge test together with additional laboratory tests identified that 35 per cent (162) of people with Barrett's in the study were at a low risk of developing oesophageal cancer. The results show that patients with Barrett's could be given a cytosponge test by their local GP and monitored, to detect which patients were at low risk of developing cancer, rather than having regular endoscopies at hospital. This could help save patients' time, as well as reducing the anxiety and discomfort of having endoscopy tests. Endoscopies are expensive and involve putting a camera down the throat to collect a sample of the cells lining the oesophagus for analysis under a microscope. The cytosponge is a small pill with a string attached that the patient swallows, which expands into a small sponge when it reaches the stomach. This is slowly pulled back up the throat using the string, collecting cells from the oesophagus for analysis. The researchers tested these cells for two specific genetic markers and changes in the cells that can be used to estimate an individual's risk of developing oesophageal cancer. These results, alongside other information including age and obesity, were used in a mathematical model to classify patients' risk levels. Barrett's oesophagus is caused by acid reflux. This can occur when acid travels back up the food pipe from the stomach causing symptoms such as heartburn. Cells in the oesophagus can then become damaged over time, leading to Barrett's oesophagus. People with the condition are also monitored for early signs of cancer, which can sometimes be triggered by cell damage. Lead researcher Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald, based at the MRC Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: "Most people who have Barrett's oesophagus will not go on to develop oesophageal cancer, but at the moment there is no way of identifying who will and who won't. Our study is the first step in using the cytosponge to answer this question. "We're assessing the cytosponge test in larger trials next year to understand more about how it can help diagnose oesophageal cancer sooner. Compared with endoscopies performed in hospital, the cytosponge causes minimal discomfort and is a quick, simple test that can be done by your GP." Jessica Kirby, Cancer Research UK's senior health information manager, said: "It would be good news for patients if the cytosponge test could be used to replace uncomfortable endoscopies for some people. "Twelve per cent of people with oesophageal cancer survive for at least 10 years, and part of the reason for the lower survival could be that the disease is often diagnosed at a late stage. Research like this helps us to understand more about the disease and could help doctors better predict who is at risk of oesophageal cancer." The study is published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. Its all very recent. The data is still raw and it will take some time to make sense of this election . Thus, here are just a few points hypotheses, doubts and questions. Certainties, which are few and far between, invite speculation and interpretation about the future. All of this said on Monday, moreover, with the stunner of the Sunday game known and the mistakes of the central defender repeated on TV ad infinitum. Trump and Obama meet in the Oval Office. Pablo Martinez Monsivais (AP) The letter from FBI director Comey, about Hillary Clintons emails, changed the dynamic of the campaign just 11 days before the election and exacerbated her vulnerabilities in a way that perhaps had not been seen before. There was no time. As well as closing up the gap, that letter exposed her despair. So much, that the main response was to pull Obama fully into the spotlight of the campaign. Even more than that, Obama shouldered the weight of the campaign, turning it into a personal issue, almost a referendum on his presidency. This was seen in the many party rallies in North Carolina, a state that he won in 2008 and lost in 2012 despite having staged the party convention in Charlotte, the most important city. Perhaps his own unsettled scores had come to the fore. It is unlikely that Trump is the only highly narcissistic politician. Perhaps Obamas own unsettled scores had come to the fore. It is unlikely that Trump is the only highly narcissistic politician If the idea of a referendum was a mistake a positive image and votes are rarely transferable from one politician to another, especially in presidential systems the closing rally in Philadelphia on November 7 was virtually a political suicide which is not the same as a virtual political suicide, given that it was very real. The stage was dominated by the Obamas, both more charismatic than Hillary Clinton, and by Bill Clinton, to whom, whats more, they handed over the microphone. Double error: Bill Clinton has long been a political liability. Al Gore has known this since the year 2000. By the time Hillary Clinton came on stage as the leading character, she had become supporting cast. And by that time, the audience was already saturated with so many presidents. Her candidacy ended up being presented as a third term, not of one but of two ex-presidents. The problem is that the third period has disappeared from US politics. Society rejects it, a piece of hard data that the pollsters criticized without much basis today have systematically shown. The last third term was that of Reagan and George H. W. Bush in 1988. The majority of the electorate does not remember this episode or had not yet been born. All of a sudden the image of the Democrats was old. Sixteen years old, to be precise, which is bad news in an election. The word change, which holds immense electoral power, was the exclusive property of Trump. The data are overwhelming; they need to be processed in order to get an accurate picture. Nonetheless, the pollsters didnt get it as wrong as some are making out. On the morning of the election, they surprised us with a map that showed 15 tossup states thats to say, that could have gone either way. And they were right. It was unprecedented: the historical trend was five or six tossups. The path to victory for Clinton was wider than that of Trump, but also with a level of uncertainty three times higher than usual. Bill Clinton has long been a political liability. Al Gore has known this since the year 2000 That suggests an election with a realignment, and it will have to be seen whether it lasts or has just been for 2016; namely, a realignment governed by volatility. We are starting to see an explanation, then, for the fact that Hillary Clinton has lost six million of Obamas votes and Trump one million of Romneys. The much talked about polarization didnt happen; the Sanders voter seems to have stayed home on November 8. Apathy and abstention, instead, best capture what happened. In such scenarios the first vote to be lost is the median voter, the moderate who chooses centrist candidates. Knowing the end of the story, the argument that Sanders could have beaten Trump makes sense. Those six million fewer votes need to be disaggregated on a district level. Because there also must be those from the unionized working class in the Midwest historically Democrat that would explain the result in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, the so-called blue wall. In three of those the difference in favor of Trump was just 1%. But these are just hypotheses. A Sanders nomination could also have activated the conservative electorate, causing the polarization that in the end did not occur. Its a counterfactual, but it serves to debunk the myth of the Clinton electoral machine. Those who went out to protest against Trumps election are probably angrier with their own party. Especially taking into account that in her concession speech Hillary Clinton made clear that she has no plans to go home. The polarization that did happen, however, was the rural-urban divide, more prominent election after election. Look no further than the electoral map broken down by district, with blue dots on the coasts and from Chicago down the Mississippi valley, and red in the remainder of the country. Trump didnt win in any city with more than a million inhabitants. Thus, it wasnt down to income nor employment, nor even inequality, given that wages keep on falling in cities as well as in the countryside. Its better to turn to social status and cultural norms. Its the country of the iPhone and Uber versus the country of the Smith & Wesson and the Ford F-150; the cosmopolitan country against nativism; the country of those who hold a passport 48% of the population versus those who do not have the slightest bit of interest in what goes on in the world. Its like reading sociology of the 1960s: a dual country that is consolidated by modernization and the gap keeps widening today. Hard times for democracy. The much talked about polarization didnt happen; the Sanders voter seems to have stayed home on November 8 The image of the never-ending identity conflicts emerge from the exit polls: racism as the main explanatory variable. Perhaps another reason why the referendum on Obama was a bad idea. A world of contradictions in which 40% of women voted for Trump and Latinos reproduced the historical one-third Republican and two-thirds Democratic. An even greater anomaly: Trump got two percentage points more of the Latino vote than Romney did in 2012. All of this a far cry from the 75% predicted in favor of Clinton, and that would have given her the win. This is the debunking of several myths. There will be a Trump administration, with its universe of uncertainties and the volatility of his personality. The world wonders whether he will impose tariffs on China, whether there will be reprisals and trade wars, and if this will cause investment to collapse. Additionally, Europe agonizes over the future of NATO. From the Baltic to the Balkans, post-communist Europe looks on with panic. Latin Americans (and Canadians) fear for the future of NAFTA, as well as for the other five existing commercial agreements. Anti-immigrant xenophobia could reduce remittances, the main source of foreign exchange in many countries of the region; the majority of them, in fact. The Trump effect must also be added to the exhaustion of the super-cycle of commodities. Within the United States it is plausible to think of a country like that of the 1960s, a divided society but one with a certain mirror image. Thats to say, in the 1960s the civil rights movement fought for its demands and radical students occupied university campuses in protest against the Vietnam war. Today the empowered are those opposed to immigration, with their racist and xenophobic reactions, while the American indignados, Sanders base, feel betrayed. It is the democratic idea itself that is in crisis, and not just in the United States The weather report is forecasting conflict, and conflict on the streets. The name of Giuliani in the Justice Department suggests a strong, rough state, a dose of McCarthyism mixed with J. Edgar Hoover namely, an erosion of Constitutional rights and guarantees. Add to the recipe two, maybe three, new justices on the Supreme Court. To put it in terms of American constitutionalism, Andrew Jackson and the concentration of power have resoundingly defeated James Madison and the dispersion of power. It is the democratic idea itself that is in crisis, and not just in the United States. This is not the first time it also took place during the European interwar period, where it collapsed under fascism and communism, and it suffered in the 1970s, with the conservative response to the radicalization of the previous decade. Democracy is still alive but its far from healthy. Its doing better than in the 1930s, but much worse than in the 1970s. The problem is that liberalism is in a deep coma, and without it there can be no democracy. Buckle up! This will be a turbulent flight back to hard politics. The liberal internationalism of the 1990s was promising, but short-lived and a long time ago now. In fact, it happened in the previous century. @hectorschamis Leprosy in Britain's red squirrels is being caused by the same species of bacteria responsible for human infections, a DNA study has found. One of the strains - affecting squirrels on Brownsea Island, off England's south coast - shares close similarities with that responsible for outbreaks of the disease in medieval Europe. Researchers tested 25 samples from red squirrels on the island and found that all were infected with the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, though not all showed signs of the disease. The bacteria shared close similarities with a strain discovered in the skeleton of a leprosy victim buried in Winchester 730 years ago. It is also similar to a strain that is endemic in armadillos in southern states of the US. Scientists say their findings suggest that leprosy has affected red squirrels on Brownsea Island for centuries but stress that the chances of people catching the disease are low. Red squirrels in other parts of England, Scotland and Ireland are also affected by leprosy. The study found that these animals were infected with another species of the bacteria called Mycobacterium lepromatosis. DNA analysis revealed that this strain is similar to those found in human cases of leprosy in Mexico and the Caribbean. The international team - led by the University of Edinburgh - collected samples of the bacteria during post mortems carried out on red squirrels from each of the locations. Not all of the squirrels that were infected with the bacteria showed symptoms of leprosy. Those that did had swelling and hair loss on the ears, muzzle and feet. Red squirrels have drastically declined in the UK with fewer than 140,000 remaining. The main threat is from habitat loss and the squirrelpox virus carried by grey squirrels. The species was re-introduced into Ireland by transfer of animals from England in the early 1800s. The team says their findings suggest that the squirrels transported were likely infected with leprosy at the time. Researchers say it is unclear whether leprosy poses a significant threat to the future of red squirrels. They have recently launched a major study on Brownsea Island to study the disease. Human cases of leprosy are virtually unheard of in the UK but the disease continues to affect people in developing countries. The scientists say their findings suggest that animals could be a reservoir for the bacteria in these areas, thwarting efforts to eradicate the disease. Vet experts from the University's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies worked with researchers at the Moredun Institute and experts in human leprosy from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. The study is published in the journal Science. Professor Anna Meredith, of the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, said: "The discovery of leprosy in red squirrels is worrying from a conservation perspective but shouldn't raise concerns for people in the UK. We need to understand how and why the disease is acquired and transmitted among red squirrels so that we can better manage the disease in this iconic species." Ongoing research on Brownsea Island is supported by its owners - National Trust and Dorset Wildlife Trust - which manage a large nature reserve on the island. Brownsea will remain open as usual during the four-year project. Angela Cott, National Trust General Manager for Brownsea Island, said: "Brownsea's wild red squirrel population has been living with leprosy for at least four decades. But by working with the University of Edinburgh and Dorset Wildlife Trust, we hope to understand how best to look after Brownsea's wild red squirrels. Brownsea Island remains a spectacular place for people to see wildlife." Patients who have been taking statins are likely to survive longer after a cardiac arrest than those who are not taking them, according to research from Taiwan researchers presented during the Resuscitation Science Symposium at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2016. A study analyzing the records of nearly 138,000 patients who suffered out-of-hospital-cardiac arrest in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database found that the prior use of statins was associated with higher rates of survival after cardiac arrest than was non-use. Statin users were significantly more likely than non-users to be still alive a year after the episode. Within the statin group, a subgroup of patients with Type 2 diabetes showed the most improvement in survival rate. The study also found that with the prior use of statins, patients were: About 19 percent more likely to survive to reach a hospital; About 47 percent more likely to survive long enough to be discharged from hospital; 50 percent more likely to survive for at least a year afterwards; and most likely to see a benefit from prior use of statins if they had Type 2 diabetes. "There is some risk associated with statins, but this study confirms the benefit," said Ping-Hsun Yu, M.D., study senior author and a researcher at the Taipei Hospital Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan. For patients who have already experienced a heart attack or ischemic stroke, cholesterol-lowering statins are often prescribed to prevent a second cardiovascular event. However, because these drugs can cause significant side effects (most commonly reported are muscle pain and weakness and increased blood sugar levels), the recommendation to use statins for the prevention of a first cardiac arrest or stroke is not clear. Yu and his colleagues sorted the records according to whether or not the patients had used statins within 90 days of a cardiac event and researchers accounted for gender, age, underlying conditions, years of hospitalization, post-resuscitation factors, and several other variables. More than 95 percent of the research population in the analysis were Asian, so researchers say these results might not apply to other ethnic groups or to multi-ethnic populations like that of the United States. The pre-existing database also did not distinguish among different dosages or types of statin. A prospect for further study, said Yu, "may be to divide the statins into different subgroups to see if different potencies or types result in different outcomes." Co-authors are Chien-Hua Huang, M.D.; Min-Shan Tsai, M.D. and Wen-Jone Chen, M.D., Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the abstract. The National Taiwan University Hospital provided funding for access to the National Health Insurance Research Database. AMSTERDAM Nov. 14, 2016 Amsterdam Europe Europe's Amsterdam, Netherlands November 18-22, 2016 Reinhard Lafrenz Amsterdam, the Netherlands The Netherlands Bernd Liepert Anne Bajart Aimee van Wynsberghe University of Twente Europe Europe Europe Europe Richard Kastelein /PRNewswire-iReach/ --will be the health-tech centre ofwhen European Robotics Week largest robot event will have its central event Robots at Your Service comes to the Marinebase inFromPhoto - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161113/438666Visitors will have the opportunity to discover how robots can impact the way we work, live, and learn in the future as well as participate in various free and paid workshops (kids and adults), debates, keynote speeches, panels and experience a variety of robots from vendors at the show. There will also be a hackathon on the weekend where participants will prototype robot and Internet of Things (IoT) applications powered by Big Data, AI, and Blockchain that can allow the elderly stay home and remain independent for longer rather than enter care homes."As a result, we need to involve the public, young and old, in the discussion", noted, Secretary General of euRobotics. "With a hackathon, multiple panel sessions and workshops, the future of elderly care will be shapen at Robots at your Service."Under this year's overarching title,, event organisers have worked hard to show a glimpse of a future where robotics will be ubiquitous in everyday life."In the next 10 years more than 20% of Europeans will be 65 or over, with a rapid increase of over-80s. Caring for these people physically, emotionally and mentally will be an enormous undertaking and requires us to think in new ways, using exponential technologies such as robotics, IoT, artificial intelligence and 3D printing." said Jurjen Sohne partner at Stichting Hackitarians, the organisers of the event. "My ambition is to apply technologies in ways that will increase human potential," he added.The opening on the 18November will feature a number of dignitaries from, and EU officials from the European Commission and Parliament, who will welcome and present the ERW to members of the Dutch public. Presenting keynotes, Juha Heikkila (Head of Unit, Robotics & AI at EC), Mady Delveux-Stehres (MEP),(CIO KUKA),(Programme Officer at EC) and(Assistant Professor of Ethics and Technology at the) will express their views for robotics developments and education in. The opening will feature a demonstration of holographic Artificial Intelligence!Twoare planned for the day focusing on Roboethics and Our Robotics Future. The "Roboethics" discussion will serve as a platform to outline some of the main developments in the ethical, legal, and societal aspects of robotics asking the question of how society is to deal with changing relationships with the robotics technology and what we can expect in the future. Dispelling myths about some of the fears people may hold, key experts fromwill deliver an in-depth analysis of the role of robots in society. The day after public talks on women in tech and robots and elderly are planned. For the a detailed schedule and speakers visit:www.robotsatyourservice.comFrom Friday 18till Sunday 20November thewill be available with the latest social, therapeutic and service robots and bots including social humanoid Pepper, therapeutic robot Paro, KUKA LBR, PAL Robotics Tiago, Kompai, 3D printed humanoids InMoov and PLEN2, and a humanoid exoskeleton (https://youtu.be/XFlPvajqZHo).The night of Friday the 18November also sees the opening of the Hack for Healthy Ageing, an elderly-centric,for designers, makers, coders, developers, data scientists, engineers, researchers, students, startups, caretakers, architects, entrepreneurs, or anyone else who believes their skill is valuable in tackling this societal challenge. During a 48-hour hackathon, multidisciplinary talents are going to prototype (ro)bot applications that allow the elderly to remain independent for longer.Inclusivity is a key part of the event and young and old, boys and girls, will be able to experiment and interact with new technologies such as 3D printing in multipleEuropean Robotics Week (ERW) offers one week of various robotics related activities acrossfor the general public. The 2016 event is about translating the public's excitement for robots into valuable educational practice. The central event provides a forum for dialogue on science-driven societal issues, which will help science-conscious citizens to make informed decisions.ERW highlights the growing importance of robotics in various industries and applications as well as focussing on the skills needed in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM).ERW was conceived with the desire of the European Robotics community to grow and bring robotics research and development closer to the public. More than 350,000 people acrosshave been part of ERW in its five years of existence.We are The Hackitarians. We want to make the world a better place. By Hacking It. That is What We Do. We Design, Build and Run Hackathons, Stichting Hackitarians, 31639583979, expathos@gmail.comNews distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.comSOURCE Stichting Hackitarians Advertisement "Osteoarthritis is a debilitating disease affecting nearly 30 million patients in the U.S. alone," said Dr. Yazici. The goals for his laboratory's research are "to develop a disease-modifying treatment which will regrow cartilage, while also safely treating the signs and symptoms of this significant patient population."In a 24-week, multicenter, single-dose-escalation, randomized controlled trial, the researchers measured the impact of a single, intra-articular injection of SM04690, a Wnt inhibitor, on pain and function in 61 patients with moderate to severe knee OA. The drug's efficacy was analyzed through Outcomes Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT)-Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) strict responder data."Our impetus for the trial was to analyze OMERACT-OARSI responses to further test the clinical relevance of the signs and symptoms data we had observed," said Dr. Yazici. "SM04690 has the potential for true disease modification, and relief of signs and symptoms for OA patients."The average age of the study subjects was 62.6 (5.7) years, 67 percent were female, and their average body-mass index was 30.4 (4.7). Escalation cohorts of 20 patients each, including 16 active and four placebo) were given a dose of SM04690 at 0.03 mg, 0.07 mg and 0.23 mg in a 2 mL injection. Subjects were given one injection into their affected knee on the first day, and participated in a follow-up period of 24 weeks.The researchers collected safety, pharmacokinetics, biomarker and preliminary effectiveness data, including Western Ontario McMasters Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC Likert v3.1) measures. They evaluated the percentage of OMERACT-OARSI strict responders in the modified Intention-to-Treat (mITT) population. These responders were patients reporting either WOMAC pain or function subscores improvement of 50 percent, coupled with a reduction in the given subscore of at least 20 points, scaled to [0-100].Compared to placebo, the researchers found statistically more OMERACT-OARSI strict responders in the 0.07 mg cohort at week 12, or 76 percent versus 36 percent, P=0.04. Numerically, there were more strict responders in the 0.03 mg cohort at week 24, or 73 percent versus 36 percent, P=0.07. More patients in the 0.07 mg cohort met both the pain and function criteria versus placebo at 12 and 24 weeks. Responses in the 0.23 mg cohort were 44 percent at week 12 and 25 percent at week 24.These results are evidence that SM04690 has a potentially therapeutic effect on knee OA pain and function compared with placebo, Dr. Yazici said."More patients treated with a single, intra-articular injection of SM04690 than placebo achieved a significant OMERACT-OARSI strict response, a composite score of clinical efficacy requiring both absolute and relative improvement," he said. "Through further analysis, we saw that the clinical response was driven by improvements in both pain and function measurements from baseline as 12 and at 24 weeks, and not solely by one or the other, suggesting clinically relevant, multidimensional improvement."The researchers also explored the potential efficacy of Wnt inhibitors on joint space narrowing and cartilage loss, two signs of worsening arthritis. "A therapy with the potential to not only decrease pain and improve function for patients with knee OA, but also to halt or reverse the processes that are driving disease progression, would be a welcome addition to the OA treatment armamentarium," said Dr. Yazici.The researchers examined their data to evaluate the change from baseline in joint space width (JSW) on X-rays, and then conducted an analysis of JSW change using repeated measures analysis of covariance, or ANCOVA, adjusting for baseline JSW in the modified intention-to-treat (mITT) population.In the mITT population at 24 weeks, subjects in the 0.07 mg cohort showed statistically significant increase in mean medial JSW of 0.49 mm (SD 0.75 mm, P=0.02) from baseline compared to placebo. No change in mean medial JSW was observed in the 0.03 mg cohort (mean 0.00 mm, SD 0.69 mm), a decrease in mean medial JSW of 0.15 mm (SD 1.07 mm) observed in the 0.23 mg cohort and a mean decrease of 0.33 mm (SD 0.87 mm) observed in the placebo cohort.These results, based on exploratory X-ray outcomes from the study, suggest that treatment with SM04690 may maintain or increase joint space width compared to placebo, said Dr. Yazici."SM04690 has a novel mechanism of action, and the findings so far suggest that it's safe and has the potential for true disease modification, as well as relief of signs and symptoms of OA after a single injection," he said. "Radiographs (X-rays) taken at baseline and at 24 weeks post-injection suggested that mean joint space width was maintained in one dose, and even increased in another dose."The next steps are to further assess Wnt inhibitors' safety and efficacy, said Dr. Yazici. The researchers are now conducting a Phase II trial on patients with moderate to severe knee OA."Most importantly, we hope that SM04690 will continue to show positive safety and efficacy so that the millions of patients with knee OA will have a new treatment option," he said.Source: Eurekalert Please complete this form and we'll send you a personalised information that is requested You may use this for your own reference or forward it to your friends. Please use the information prudently. If you are not a medical doctor please remember to consult your healthcare provider as this information is not a substitute for professional advice. Karin Tak to have a new kindergarten A new kindergarten, now under construction, is the fourth major community-development project to be implemented by the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund in Karin Tak, a village in Artsakhs Shushi Region. In recent years, the fund has built Karin Taks multifunctional community center and new potable-water network, and completely renovated the local school gym. The construction of the kindergarten is co-sponsored by the Devejian and Ekserciyan families as well as Krikor Simsiroglu of Argentina, the Greek-Armenian and the Cypriot-Armenian communities, and the government of Artsakh. Proceeds from the upcoming Phoneathon of the Hayastan All-Armenian Funds affiliate in Greece will likewise benefit the kindergarten-construction project. The future kindergarten is designed to accommodate up to 50 children. The facility will feature a complement of state-of-the-art amenities, including a boiler room, a central-heating system, and an outdoor playground with various play equipment, all of which will make for an enriching and comfortable learning environment. The structure is already up and the roof is finished. In the next phases of the project, crews will work on the exterior and interior decoration, the installation of the boiler room, and the landscaping of the grounds. When completed in the summer of 2017, the campus will open its doors to the communitys 40 kindergarteners. Karin Tak has a population of over 650, with a large percentage of young people. According to Mayor Mkhitar Arushanyan, the necessity of a kindergarten has long been felt in the community, given its steady demographic growth. Our villagers feel a very strong bond with their native land, Arushanyan says. Even during the war years in the 1990s, when the village was under constant bombardment, our residents refused to abandon their birthplace. Today, thanks to a string of marvelous development projects, Karin Taks quality of life is improved significantly, and our residents have great faith in their future. Located five kilometers from the city of Shushi, Karin Tak was founded in the 18th century. It is among villages that were utterly devastated during Artsakhs war of liberation. Every year on January 26, the residents of Karin Tak commemorate their communitys heroic battle and victory in 1992. Hayastan All-Armenian Fund On November 13, 2016, Hizbullah marked its annual Martyr Day by holding its first military parade in a Syrian town. The parade was held in Al-Qusayr, which Hizbullah took over in 2013 following a long and bloody battle with rebel forces, and which since then has become the main symbol of the organization's involvement in the Syria war alongside the Assad regime.[1] Reports on the parade and photos from it were posted on Hizbullah-affiliated websites and social media. According to the reports, several hundred fighters in uniform marched in the parade, and tanks, armored vehicles, machine guns and other weapons were displayed. The Lebanese website nn-lb.com reported that the parade involved fighters from newly-formed Hizbullah brigades that are part of the Armored Division, as well as infantrymen from the organization's intervention force who are fighting in Syria and form the spearhead of Hizbullah's army. Hashem Safi Al-Din, chairman of Hizbullah's executive committee, attended the parade and spoke at it on behalf of the organization's secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, who is also considered to be the organization's military commander-in-chief. Safi Al-Din addressed various military and political matters related to Syria.[2] It should be noted that Al-Qusayr is considered to be strategic for Hizbullah due to its location close to the northern Beqaa Valley, which is one of Hizbullah's strongholds in Lebanon. Reports indicate that, since it was taken from the rebels in 2013, Hizbullah has emptied the town of its residents and has turned it into a headquarters and a gathering place from which its fighters set out across Syria. Hizbullah also sees the Al-Qusayr area as an important buffer zone preventing Salafi-jihadi fighters from crossing into Lebanon. Mazen Ibrahim, Beirut bureau chief for Al-Jazeera, speculated that the parade was intended to convey a number of messages to various elements involved in the Syria crisis, both in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region and the world. Hizbullah, he wrote, meant to convey that it is no longer waging a gang war but was a large army fighting across international borders, a partner of the Syrian regime not only in fighting but in making decisions, and a major player that must be taken into account in any solution to the Syrian crisis.[3] It should also be noted that the Syrian opposition website Orient News reported, citing "exclusive sources," that the parade included M113 tanks belonging to the Lebanese army, and that these tanks may have ended up in Hizbullah's possession as part of a corrupt deal between Lebanese army commanders and Hizbullah. The sources added that, if these facts are true, they will cause Lebanon to lose its foreign military aid.[4] The following is a sampling of photos from the parade. Photos Posted November 13, 2016 On The Hizbullah-Affiliated Website Arabipress.org Photos Posted November 13, 2016 On The News Site Nn-lb.com Photos Published November 14, 2016 By Lebanese Newspaper Al-Diyar Endnotes: [1] Hizbullah websites that reported on the parade stressed the significance of holding it in Al-Qusayr, due to the town's status as a military and security symbol for the organization, and also due to the fact that the Al-Qusayr area was the gateway through which Hizbullah's forces first entered Syria at the beginning of their involvement in the war. See arabipress.org, November 13, 2016. Following the election of Michel 'Aoun as Lebanon's new president and the appointment of Sa'd Al-Hariri to form a new government, Saudi journalist Khalaf Al-Harbi wrote in his daily column in the Saudi government daily 'Okaz that Saudi Arabia must not support the Al-Hariri government or assist it politically or economically. This, because such support would enable Hizbullah to continue its military involvement in Syria as part of Assad's war of extermination against his own people, and would leave Lebanon hostage to Hizbullah and its patron, Iran. He added that Saudi Arabia should demand that Hizbullah withdraw from Syria as a condition for maintaining any kind of ties with the Lebanese state. He concluded by warning that Hizbullah's fighters, who do not hesitate to kill Syrian children, would not hesitate to kill Saudi children, and asked his readers: "Will you extend political and financial aid to those who kill your children?" The following is a translation of the article:[1] Khalaf Al-Harbi (image: 'Okaz, Saudi Arabia) "Lebanon is flesh of our flesh. Our love for it and for its people is beyond doubt. Our dearest wish is that the latest arrangements [reached there], thanks to which a president has been elected after a relatively long period of [presidential] vacuum, will lead to Lebanon resuming [its status] as a fortress of liberty, culture and beauty. However, we must always take into consideration that Lebanon is unable to free itself of the Iranian equation that Hizbullah has imposed upon it by the force of arms. Hence, however much we love our Lebanese brothers, we must always remember that an entire army of [Hizbullah] fighters crossed the borders of this small country in order to kill our brothers in Syria. This means that, in the current situation, any military or financial support for Lebanon will first of all mean perpetuating Iran's control over the decision-making in Beirut, and consenting to the killing of more innocent Syrians throughout Syria. "Many will say that [Saudi Arabia's] desertion of Lebanon in this dangerous situation might [only] push it towards the Iranian axis. No matter, let them run [to Iran] if they wish to. This is preferable to our being part of a ridiculous game in which Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states support a Sa'd Al-Hariri government, thereby freeing Hizbullah to burn Syria without worrying about the internal situation in Lebanon. We must understand that any political or economic support for the Lebanese government is like building a sand castle, because Hizbullah can, at any moment, expel Sa'd Al-Hariri and General [Michel 'Aoun] from Beirut, as it has done in the past. Then, when it's too late, we will realize that we have failed to learn from past mistakes and have fallen into the same trap for the thousandth time. "We are certainly not obliged to fix a skewed political situation that is not of our making, especially when we are in a difficult economic situation that does not allow us to lavish funds on a government that [Hizbullah secretary-general] Hassan Nasrallah can depose with a television speech lasting no more than five minutes. "Hizbullah's withdrawal from Syria must be the first condition we pose for holding political and economic ties with Lebanon. This, so that we do not inadvertently become party to the war of extermination with which our brothers, the Syrian people, are contending, and so our good intentions, or naivete, do not lead us to perpetuate the current situation, in which the will of the Lebanese state has fallen hostage to a militia subordinate to Iran. "[Go ahead and] love Lebanon, but remember that this is the country from which the Hizbullah fighters set forth to Syria in full sight of the government and with the indirect backing of [the Lebanese] army. Know that these fighters, whose salaries are paid by Iran, will not really distinguish between murdering a Syrian child and murdering your own children, should they have a chance to do so. [In fact], they have already done so in the past, by means of terror attacks and espionage operations in Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and eastern [Saudi Arabia], not to mention [their] support of the Houthis in Yemen. Will you extend political and financial aid to those who kill your children?" Endnotes: Akram Al-Kaabi, commander of the Shiite Iraqi Al-Nujaba Movement (a.k.a. Iraqi Hizbullah), recently said that the group's military activity would continue after the liberation of Mosul from ISIS. "Will we be drying up the springs of ISIS and Al-Qaeda merely by taking military control?" he asked rhetorically, during a November 5 interview on Al-Sumaria TV. "There will still be work against the sleeper cells in all Iraqi cities." Following are excerpts Interviewer: We know that the Popular Mobilization Units [PMU] are subordinate to the government. That's fine, but there are also factions within the PMU that admit to being financed directly by Iran. Akram Al-Kaabi: Right. Interviewer: This is a violation of the law, of accepted norms, of the rules of diplomacy, and so on. Akram Al-Kaabi: First of all, the factions supervise brigades within the PMU. They convey their knowledge and expertise to these brigades. [...] Interviewer: You and other factions are financed by Iran. You have ideological, administrative, and financial relations with Iran, right? Akram Al-Kaabi: We do not deny this. It's true. Interviewer: So why can't the National Mobilization Forces take money from Turkey? What's the difference? Is it because the Iranians are Shiites and the Turks aren't? Akram Al-Kaabi: First of all, are we from Iran or what? By the way, there are Christian brothers who are financed by the Vatican. Are they not Iraqi citizens anymore? There are Christian Iraqis whose source of authority is not in Iraq, but in the Vatican, and they go there all the time. Some of them are members of the PMU. This ideological aspect does not mean that you have a foreign connection at the expense of your loyalty to your country. Interviewer:So what's the difference? Akram Al-Kaabi: First of all, we are Shiites, and in Shia Islam, there are schools and sources of authority, and it's normal to follow a non-Iraqi source of authority. If you examine history, you'll see that out of the four Islamic doctrines, three were Iranian and only one was Arab. Do only Arabs qualify as Muslims? That is unreasonable. Islam is a universal religion, a religion for all the people. [...] In religious matters, we are instructed by the Iraqi source of authority [Ayatollah Sistani], in accordance with the guidance of the Ruler-Jurisprudent [Khamenei]. Our political and military activity is instructed by the Iraqi government - again, in accordance with the guidance of the Ruler-Jurisprudent. Interviewer: We ask Saudi Arabia not to intervene in our internal affairs, but we agree to Iranian intervention. You said that they provide you with weapons and money. What else is left? Akram Al-Kaabi: There are different kinds of intervention. If any neighboring country wants to intervene, in order to target Iraq and destroy its security - this kind of intervention is unacceptable. But if someone supports me because we have a shared goal - a goal that I consider to be sacred - this is a good thing. Interviewer: [Former Governor of Mosul] Atheel Al-Nujeifi believes that Turkey supports him for the sake of a lofty goal: the liberation of his land. Akram Al-Kaabi: He was supposed to protect Mosul from the start. Mosul wasn't meant to fall like that. He and the group of politicians in Mosul were not supposed to incite the people against the security forces and the Iraqi government, to the point that Mosul became easy prey for ISIS. ISIS, then called Al-Qaeda, had a presence in all the institutions of the local government. Officials heading security agencies and police officers were ISIS members. [...] Interviewer: Will you give up your armed activity when the Iraqi lands are liberated from ISIS? Akram Al-Kaabi: Our armed activity depends on whether there is or isn't a danger. We are not talking about whether ISIS is finished or concentrates on Iraq's border, but on whether the danger is over or not. [...] Interviewer: Will we be drying up the springs of ISIS and Al-Qaeda merely by taking military control? There will still be work against the sleeper cells in all Iraqi cities. [...] Skyharbor, an Indian/American progressive rock/metal band, consists of the current lineup of Eric Emery as the vocalist, Keshav Dhar and Devesh Dayal on guitars, Krishna Jhaveri on bass and Aditya Ashok as the drummer. The unconventional band, which has members from all around the world, use minimal harsh vocals and try to work on a more melodic and catchy sound. Facebook The band released their debut album Blinding White Noise: Illusion and Chaos in 2012. Daniel Tompkins performed on the vocals on Disc one and Sunneith Revankar of Bhayanak Maut performed vocals on Disc two. The double-disc album had several guest appearances - Marty Friedman performed guitar solos on 'Catharsis' and 'Celestial', Vishal J. Singh of Amogh Symphony did a classical guitar solo on 'Celestial', New Zealand based musician and renowned producer Zorran Mendonsa played additional guitars on 'Trayus'. Guiding Light, the second studio album by Skyharbor released in 2014. The band started off on an extensive 29-date Europe and UK tour, co-headlining with Australian post-rock band sleepmakeswaves and Polish group Tides From Nebula in 2015. The band has played at some of the most prestigious festivals around the world including Bacardi Nh7 Weekender in India, UK Tech Fest, Euroblast Festival in Germany, Dissonance Festival in Italy, headlined the Evolution Tour in UK, Polaris Tour in USA and Canada, and many more. Facebook Skyharbor is returning to the Bacardi Nh7 Weekender stage and will be performing live in Pune on 2nd-4th December. There seems to be some relief in sight for citizens across the country reeling under the currency ban as the Currency Note Press (CNP), Nashik, has started dispatching new notes of Rs 500 denomination to the Reserve Bank of India. "The CNP has already sent the first consignment of five million pieces of the new Rs 500 note and another five million pieces are to be dispatched by Wednesday," an official said on Saturday. The CNP, which is one of the nine units of the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL), is also printing notes of Rs 20, Rs 50 and Rs 100 in large numbers, the official said. Reuters The government scrapped the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes with effect from Tuesday midnight and introduced new notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000. Although the Rs 2,000 notes have come into circulation, the new Rs 500 note is yet to be passed on. Sources said that the RBI has already printed the Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes at its two printing units in Mysore in Karnataka and Salboni in West Bengal. The Rs 500 note is being printed at SPMCIL's two presses in Nashik and Dewas in Madhya Pradesh. According to sources, CNP has been given a target of 400 million pieces of the Rs 500 note by the end of the current financial year. The printing of the notes started two weeks ago. The SPMCIL, which prints currency notes, security documents and manufactures coins, has nine units across the country, including two each in Nashik and Hyderabad and one each in Mumbai, Kolkata, Noida, Dewas and Hoshangabad. Reuters Out Of Cash, Even Big Daddy RBI Disburses Coins Not just banks, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was scrambling for cash on Saturday. The central bank's Ahmedabad office gave out coins to people seeking to replace invalid notes. When it ran out of coins and smaller notes, officials chose to close their doors to citizens at 3.30pm. "I came to exchange invalid notes worth Rs 4,000. I got the entire sum in Rs 10 coins, in two polybags," said a surprised Hanif Mohammad Shaikh, a tailor from Shahpur. The RBI's regional office set up three counters for exchange of invalid notes. By 3.30pm, its gates were closed and citizens were told to leave, leading to a heated argument with guards. "My brother came yesterday to exchange notes, but there was too much rush. I stood in line all day but the cash ran out before my turn. What are poor people like us to do," said a daily wager, Anita Chauhan. Reuters Many bank branches were constricted by inadequate supply of currency notes. A number of small banks ran out of cash and temporarily stopped exchanging notes. Some banks that TOI contacted complained of lack of fresh supply of notes, even as the queues outside grew longer. "This is because RBI disbursed only Rs 50 crore to each bank's currency chest. This is distributed to their branches and other banks linked to the chest. This left branches with little cash to dispense," said an official of Maha Gujarat Bank Employees Association. (The story was originally published in The Times Of India) Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders Google Ad PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT Google Ad The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh Topfinding.com: Making your business profitable is our objective Topfinding.com website offers consumers the series of program on Armenian firms; it will help to make a targeted choice. 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The Azeri initiated military offensive which was supported by the Turkish military took the lives of innocent civilians, including the gruesome mutilation of an elderly Armenian couple as well as ISIS-like beheadings. "Whatever your prior reasons for standing in solidarity with the Turkish and Azeri regimes, we cannot imagine that any American would continue to do so in the face of recent events. To do so would condone such behavior," stated Assembly Co-Chairs Anthony Barsamian and Van Krikorian. "As the country reflects on the 2016 election and takes stock, now too is the time to revisit our policies vis-a-vis Turkey and Azerbaijan," they continued. "We, therefore, strongly urge Members of the Turkish and Azeri caucuses to withdraw their support and speak out against such heinous acts." During the campaign, president-elect Trump stated that the Turkish government "looks like they're on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to push the boundaries while knowingly helping himself instead of nations fighting ISIS and the thousands of innocent civilians dying as a result. The Turkish Caucus has now lost 19 Members in the U.S. House of Representatives, including former Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), who resigned earlier this year amid an ethics probe, as well as Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) who was defeated in the Maryland democratic primary by Armenian Caucus Member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Van Hollen went on to win his election to the U.S. Senate. Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization. 1. At the invitation of H.E. Mr. Gebran Bassil, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants of the Republic of Lebanon and following the Conference on Stability and Security of Rhodes (8-9 September 2016), the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus H.E. Mr. Ioannis Kasoulides and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic H.E. Mr. Nikos Kotzias met in Beirut on November 9th, 2016. 2. The European Ministers congratulated the people of Lebanon and Minister Bassil for the election of General Michel Aoun as President of the Republic of Lebanon. 3. The Ministers discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in multilateral fora and exchanged views on regional and international issues, especially on developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the wider region. They agreed that the region is full of opportunities to be seized in order to serve the interests of its peoples. They stressed that regional dialogue can serve the common goals of strengthening the relationship between Europe and the Middle East, and further promote solidarity and mutual understanding, emphasizing their stabilizing role in the region. 4. The Ministers agreed on the importance of preserving the plurality in the region as the co-existence of diverse social, religious and ethnic components living peacefully side by side and as the sole guarantor of sustainable democracy and long term prosperity that will be mutually beneficial to the Mediterranean and the European countries. In this regard, they praised to role model of Lebanon as a beacon of tolerance and humanism. 5. They also stressed the importance and the advantages of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation for the countries of the region. They agreed that the region is full of opportunities to be seized in order to serve the interests of its peoples. In this respect, they examined ways to take full advantage, where applicable, of the institutional EU-Lebanon relations, including the tools and means provided by the revised European Neighborhood policy. They stressed the importance of the EU-Lebanon Partnership Priorities for the period 2016-2020 within the framework of the ENP Review, and of the respective Compact Agreement, which will usher in a new page in EU-Lebanon relations. Moreover, they underlined the important role of the Union for the Mediterranean towards enhancing such cooperation. 6. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs discussed the growing global phenomenon of large movements of refugees and migrants at an unprecedented scale. They called for global approaches and global solutions based on shared responsibility and international cooperation. 7. The Parties praised Lebanons generosity but expressed continuing concern about the negative impact of the Syrian crisis on Lebanons stability, and the alarming consequences of the mass influx of Syrians displaced into Lebanon. 8. The Ministers agreed on the need for the E.U. to explore every possible way of solidarity to support Lebanon, both politically and economically in order to increase its resilience. They agreed that the only sustainable long term solution for the Syrians temporary displaced into Lebanon is their return to their country, including during transition, under a safe and secure environment. 9. Regarding migration in the broader region of Eastern Mediterranean, they stressed the need for a holistic approach in identifying solutions to this complex and multifaceted issue, putting emphasis on the critical importance of: a. effectively combating the illegal networks of migrant smuggling, where the role and responsibility of the countries of the region are determining b. the active solidarity and cooperation of Europe in order to address adequately this challenge of primarily humanitarian character and of unprecedented magnitude for the region. 10. They also underlined the crucial role of Greece with regard to the reception and accommodation of the refugees, which was appreciated worldwide all the more for the humane way that the refugees are being treated. 11. The Parties condemned all terrorist activities, expressed concern for the proliferation of terrorism, not only on a regional, but also on a global level and underlined the necessity of regional and international cooperation in confronting this threat. They expressed strong concerns regarding terrorism and the immediate threat it represents to Lebanons security in terms of the spread of terrorist organizations at its borders. They focused on increasing military and security cooperation and highlighted that safeguarding the security of Lebanon should be a core issue in EUs policy and the International Communitys approach concerning security in the region. To this end, they underlined the importance of exchange of information on a regular basis, among countries of the region. 12. They also stressed the need to address the root causes of the regions conflicts, in order to counter sectarianism, extremism and radicalism, which create a fertile ground for terrorist groups. They reiterated the urgent need for ending the turmoil of violence that has engulfed many regions in the Middle East. 13. They stressed also the need for a political solution in Syria, safeguarding the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country and establishing credible inclusive governance providing for the security and the protection of the rights of all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religious denomination. 14. The Parties stressed as well the continuing need for the international communitys support to the national reconciliation process in Iraq and to the countrys national unity and integrity, and called upon all parties in the region to fully respect its sovereignty. 15. Discussions covered regional prospects of the oil and gas sectors, as well as other energy related activities, in particular renewables (solar, wind, hydraulic etc.), as well as avenues for boosting cooperation and exchanges between their competent institutions and their private sector. 16. The Ministers acknowledged education as a top priority sector and agreed to explore opportunities for further cooperation in this, through the establishment of a network of presidents of universities. This network will focus on research and other forms of cooperation among departments that deal with matters related to history as well as on common innovative projects in universities pertaining to the field of research in green and renewable energy. 17. The Ministers agreed that enhanced cooperation, especially between Universities and Research Centers, should be sought, establishing a network focused on exchanging views and ideas and promoting contacts between youth and academia. 18. They underlined their willingness to join efforts for the protection of antiquities and for the preservation and development of historical and archaeological sites, with the view to safeguarding the historical memory of their peoples and the common cultural heritage of humanity, as well as their readiness to cooperate, inter alia, for the protection of underwater cultural heritage. 19. Finally, the Parties reiterated the importance of pursuing the practical follow up steps agreed upon during the Conference on Stability and Security of Rhodes, together with the other participants, keeping an open door policy for further participation. Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT Google Ad The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh Oxford Industries, Inc., an apparel company, designs, sources, markets, and distributes products of lifestyle and other brands worldwide. 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Republican lawmaker can foresee: Vigen Sargsyan will surprise Republican Hakob Hakobyan can foresee that the Minister of Defense Vigen Sargsyan from the NA rostrum will surprise those, who are against 1000 drams, I think that now he will say that those, who dont want, will not give. Mr Hakobyan agrees that charging 1000 drams from salaries isnt tax obligation. But who has seen that citizens donation be monthly, As we sustain losses frequently, which, of course, is very bad, there cannot be donation only once. Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) faction member Stepan Margaryan proposes to charge those 1000 drams from the salary in the form of tax. He considers this idea of the Defense Minister to be late, If money from the budget isnt enough, taxes are increased, lets do the same- increase the taxes. Stepan Margaryan doesnt like the idea of establishing a fund specially for raising these sums; the state already has institutions through which it charges money from the citizens, Here mistrust in the state mechanism arises. The Armenian National Congress (HAK) faction Head Levon Zurabyan says that annually USD 2.7 billion is plundered in Armenia, first and foremost lets return those sums into the state budget, According to Globo Financial organizations report, since 2004 through money laundering on average capital worth USD 1 billion has been illegally withdrawn from Armenia. In case of returning so much money it is possible not only to solve the issue of insurance of servicemen, but also increase pensions, They allow so that budget is wasted, they allow inefficient spending. For example, why do we keep 20 000-member police? The police, according to Levon Zurabyan, are necessary for keeping the regime. He doesnt know another case in the word that without tax obligation, only at the decision of the Defense Minister, money is charged from a citizen at the state level: There is Government. Government approved it. The whole Government headed by Karen Karapetyan is responsible for it. The working class is flayed. Levon Zurabyan cannot find other words to describe all these. The U.S. Defense Department on Monday identified the two soldiers killed last week by a suicide bomber at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan as from the 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas. Army Sgt. John W. Perry, 30, of Stockton, California, and Pfc. Tyler R. Iubelt, 20, of Tamaroa, Illinois, were killed Nov. 12 at the airfield north of the capital, Kabul. The soldiers were assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Sustainment Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, the statement said. Two American contractors also were killed in the blast and 16 other U.S. service members and a Polish service member were injured. The attacker was a former Taliban militant who had joined the peace process in 2008 and had since taken a job at the base, Bagram District Governor Haji Abdul Shokor Qudosi told ABC News on Sunday. About 14,000 Americans, including service members and contractors, are based at Bagram. The base was closed to Afghan workers immediately following the attack and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul also closed for business. The attack occurred while U.S. service members at the base were preparing for a five-kilometer race as part of Veterans Day events. A later statement from Fort Hood said that Perry joined the Army on Jan. 31, 2008, as a Test, Measurement and Diagnostic Equipment (TMDE) maintenance support specialist. He had been assigned to 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade since Aug. 21, 2014. Perry was on his second tour in Afghanistan. He deployed to Afghanistan when the U.S. involvement there was called Operation Enduring Freedom from August 2010 to July 2011. He deployed in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel in September 2016. Perry's awards and decorations included the Purple Heart Medal, Bronze Star, three Army Commendation Medals, one Army Achievement Medal, two Army Good Conduct Medals, National Defense Service Medal, and Afghanistan Campaign Medal with two campaign stars. He also had received the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Korean Defense Service Medal, Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon, Army Service Ribbon, three Overseas Service Ribbons, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Medal, Combat Action Badge and Driver's and Mechanic Badge. Iubelt had been in the Army less than a year, the statement said. He entered the Army on Nov. 23, 2015, as a motor transport operator and had been assigned to 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade since May 6, 2016. He deployed to Afghanistan in September. Iubelt's awards and decorations include the Purple Heart Medal, Bronze Star, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with campaign star, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon and Combat Action Badge. Perry and Iubelt were among about 500 1st Cavalry Division soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan in the late summer of this year in a regular rotation of troops to help train the Afghan military. The deploying soldiers were part of the Fort Hood division's headquarters and its sustainment brigade headquarters, Lt. Col. Sunset Belinsky, the 1st Cavalry Division's division's spokeswoman, said at the time. They deployed to Bagram Airfield to replace the 10th Mountain Division headquarters, which had served as the planning leader for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan since November of 2015. The deployment in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel was expected to last about 12 months, Belinsky said. Operation Freedom's Sentinel is the United States' continuing mission to train and advise the Afghan National Security Forces in their fight against the Taliban and other insurgent networks. Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson III, who took command of the 1st Cavalry Division last January, was leading the deployment, taking over duties as the U.S. deputy commanding general for support in Afghanistan. The deaths of Perry and Iubelt were the second and third in combat for the 1st Cavalry Division in recent weeks. On Oct. 20, Sgt. Douglas J. Riney, 26, of Fairview, Illinois, died in Kabul of wounds received from what was suspected to be an insider attack by an individual wearing an Afghan army uniform. American contractor Michael G. Sauro, 40, of McAlester, Oklahoma, also was killed in the incident. Riney and Sauro had been on a mission for the Afghan Defense Ministry when they drove up to the entry point at an Ammunition Supply Point on the outskirts of Kabul, Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO Resolute Support mission, said in a briefing to the Pentagon late last month. "They had not started the inspection" when a man wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire, Cleveland said. The gunman was shot dead by Afghan security. Cleveland said the U.S. could not confirm that the incident was an insider, or "green-on-blue," attack since the Afghans had yet to identify the gunman. Riney entered active-duty service in July 2012 as a petroleum supply specialist, the military said. He had been assigned to the Support Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas, since December 2012. Riney was on his second tour to Afghanistan. His awards and decorations included the Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal. Sauro was assigned to the Defense Ammunition Center, McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, in Oklahoma, the Defense Department said. He traveled to Afghanistan in September for his third deployment and was scheduled to return to the U.S. in March. A U.S. soldier and two other U.S. civilians employed by the Defense Ammunition Center were injured in the incident. The soldier was reported in stable condition at the time. Civilian Richard "Rick" Alford was in stable condition and civilian Rodney Henderson suffered minor injuries, the center said, adding that they will both return to the U.S., The Associated Press reported. The attack came as the U.S. was proceeding with President Barack Obama's plan to draw down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan from the current number of about 9,500 to 8,400 by the end of this year. The drawdown was taking place as the U.S. considers its troop and monetary support under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been at war for 15 years. Afghanistan policy was not a main topic of debate between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during the campaign. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Despite Flipping in Surf 4 Times in a Year, Marines Say New ACV Is the Future of Amphibious Warfare Some Marine veterans familiar with the vehicle and its operations have worried about the reliability of the ACV. Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter @JosephVMicallef Addressing a group of 200 Philippine and Chinese businessmen at the Great Hall of the People, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, on October 20, dramatically announced that, "America had lost" and that "China had won" and the "separation" of the Philippines from the United States. At the meeting, which was also attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Duterte announced that he had "realigned myself in your ideological flow," and threatened to seek closer ties with Russia and, "tell him [Vladimir Putin] that there are three of us against the world." He also announced that the two countries would engage in bilateral negotiations in their dispute over ownership of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The announcement highlighted a dramatic trip by Duterte to China, during which Beijing pulled out all the stops to welcome the Philippine president with the sort of pomp and ceremony typically reserved for a major power. Per Ramon Lopez, the Philippines's Trade Secretary, some $15 billion in trade and investment deals were signed as a result of the visit. The announcement marked a dramatic reversal in Manila's historic foreign policy alignment and represented a stunning setback in Washington's efforts to build a regional coalition backstopped by American military power to contain Chinese expansionism in the South and East China Seas. Duterte has been sharply critical of the Obama administration and the U.S. following criticisms of the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers by his government. The Philippine president has unleashed torrents of expletive laden criticisms of the American president prompting the White House to abruptly cancel a planned meeting between Obama and Duterte during the recent G20 conference. The next day, Trade Minister Ramon Lopez tried to walk back some of Duterte's comments, emphasizing that the Philippines would maintain their trade and economic ties with the United States and the West. On October 26, Duterte, while on a trip to Japan, announced that he wanted all U.S. troops out of the Philippines within two years and that he was prepared to "revise or abrogate agreements" to do so. The U.S. currently has five military bases in the Philippines under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (ECDA) between the two countries. In addition, the U.S. has a contingent of Special Forces conducting counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State affiliated Abu Sayyaf on the island of Mindanao. Once again, a Philippine government official, this time Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, was quick to walk back Duterte's incendiary comments, stating that Duterte did not mean to imply that U.S. troops would be expelled and that American and Philippine "national interests still continue to converge." Duterte later pushed back his deadline for a U.S. military withdrawal to 2022, and announced that joint American-Philippine military exercises would end after 2017. He also announced an end to joint naval patrols in the South China Sea. Significantly, however, Duterte has made no mention of ending the 65-year-long mutual defense treaty with the U.S. Since being elected president in June 2016, Duterte has quickly gained a reputation for flamboyant and controversial policies as well as an acerbic and militant style. His militant, anti-American stance, however, is hardly a surprise. Duterte grew up a strident leftwing activist and Philippine nationalist. He has long-standing ties to the Philippine Communist Party and was involved with a variety of groups that agitated for the closure of the Subic and Clark bases in the early 1990s. Duterte's reflexive anti-Americanism brought him to the attention of U.S. consular officials in 2002 and led him to be placed on a list of Philippine citizens ineligible for U.S. visas. Both China and the U.S. are key trade partners for the Philippines. China was the Philippines' second largest trading partner in 2015, with bilateral trade worth $17.7 billion. The total value of U.S. trade with the Philippines was around $16.5 billion, placing it behind both China and Japan; the latter was the Philippine's largest trade partner with bilateral trade worth $18.7 billion. The U.S. is, however, the Philippines' largest foreign investor. It's unclear at this point whether Duterte's new political realignment with China represents a bargaining stance with the U.S. or the beginning of a new, tectonic realignment in the international relations of Southeast Asia. What is clear, however, is that, so far, his new policies are deeply unpopular among the Philippine political and economic elite, although his personal popularity remains high. Beijing has made political and military control of the South and East China Seas a key goal of its regional foreign policy. Chinese militarization of the islands it has been building and expanding in the region has raised alarms among its neighbors, causing historic enemies like Vietnam and the United States and Japan and the Philippines to forge closer military ties and expand military cooperation. In June, the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China's seizure of the Philippines' Scarborough Shoal had violated Manila's sovereignty. Duterte's pivot to China may be an attempt to mitigate the consequences of that ruling, one that Beijing found deeply embarrassing and that it has declared it will ignore, on the Philippines' China trade. Following Duterte's visit, Beijing announced that Philippine fisherman could return to the Scarborough Shoals and that the Philippine Coast Guard would resume patrols there. The agreement, described as an "oral understanding," left untouched the more contentious issue of sovereignty. Beijing's strategy also underscores the effectiveness of China's hard and soft diplomacy, the willingness to act unilaterally in seizing and fortifying disputed islands and shoals in the region, and using its growing military strength to intimidate its neighbors, while at the same time also proffering its soft diplomacy of investment and access to China's huge internal markets. Duterte's visit to China was quickly followed by a similar visit by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. On November 1, Razak announced that the two countries had signed bilateral trade and investment deals worth $34.25 billion dollars. Malaysia also agreed to buy four littoral mission ships from the Chinese. Significantly, Razak also announced that Malaysia would engage in bilateral negotiations with China over disputed areas of the South China Sea. Razak's relations with the Obama administration have been strained ever since the U.S. Justice Department opened an investigation into the use of American banks to launder as much as a billion dollars that, Washington believes, was looted from a Malaysian State Development fund by his associates and family members. While the Obama Administration's criticisms of Duterte and Razak are partially responsible for their apparent overtures to China, it also underlines the relative failure of the Obama administration's much vaunted "pivot" to Asia. Although there has been an expansion in bilateral military cooperation with several countries in the region, the centerpiece of that policy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed free trade area in the Asia-Pacific region, appears to be stillborn given President-elect Donald Trump's opposition to it. China's interest in the South China Sea has been driven by a fundamental and far-reaching change in China's economy. Historically, China has been largely self-sufficient. When direct European trade with China began in earnest in the 16th century, European merchants found there was little that they could interest the Chinese in buying. Furs were a highly profitable commodity, but the trade in furs was relatively miniscule when compared with the boatloads of tea, silk and porcelain that China dispatched to Europe. For much of the 16th through the early 19th centuries, a river of silver flowed from Europe and the Americas to China where it was exchanged for Chinese goods. It wasn't until British merchants in India discovered that opium produced in the Indian highlands could be very profitably sold in vast quantities in China that the lopsided balance of trade with China began to reverse. In the process, they created the first international drug cartel; one that also benefited by being defended by the Royal Navy, then the world's most powerful. Today, however, the Chinese economy is heavily dependent on its external trade, both for markets for its manufactured goods and for essential raw materials. Far from being self-sufficient, Chinese industry today imports vast quantities of raw materials and foodstuffs. It is the world's largest user of such critical materials, among others, as iron, copper, lead and zinc. The vast majority of China's commodity imports travel by sea, as do virtually all its exports. Sea power, which historically has not figured prominently in Chinese history, is thus assuming a far more significant role in China's strategic thinking. As China's economy has grown and has, in turn, become ever more dependent on the export of its production and the import of the critical raw materials and foodstuffs needed to run it, China's perceived need to secure and control its maritime approaches has become stronger. Currently China's defensive doctrine identifies two key geostrategic boundaries: the "first-island-chain" and the "second-island-chain." The first-island-chain encompasses a vast area centered around the South and East China Sea. It begins off the coast of Indochina, curves around Borneo and the western coast of the Philippines, and extends north along the eastern coast of Taiwan, all the way to the southern coast of Japan. From a naval standpoint, Chinese strategists see this region as "China's backyard." Moreover, it is characterized by a series of "choke points" where hostile naval forces could interdict or blockade Chinese shipping and cripple China's economy. Some $6.5 trillion in goods pass though this region yearly. Beijing claims that its assertion of a strategic interest in the geographic zone comprised of the "first-island-chain" is no different than America's declaration of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Regardless of the rationale, China's aims, to be successful, would require every one of its neighbors along the South and East China Seas to significantly compromise their claims in the region. It would also force a de facto withdrawal by the U.S. Navy from the East Asian littoral. It's unlikely that the U.S.'s bilateral defense treaties with those countries would survive such a pullback. Even more problematic is Beijing's delineation of the "second-island-chain." This zone encompasses the Philippines and Japan and extends eastward to Palau, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Significantly in 2015, the PLA Air Force began flights by Chinese H-6K long-range bombers over the Western Pacific, extending to a point about 600 miles west of Guam. China's ambitions to dominate the sea-air space as far as the "second-island-chain" may be either wishful thinking or little more than posturing. On the other hand, China's ambitious naval construction program suggests that the strategy is more than empty rhetoric. For the U.S. to be effectively excluded from this second zone would represent a collapse of American naval power in the Western Pacific not seen since the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Chinese strategists have also, of late, been raising the prospect of a "third-island chain" one that extends as far west as the Hawaiian Islands, and would include the Aleutians as well as Micronesia, and extend all the way to New Zealand. Ironically, the strategic origin of the "island-chain" concept was American. In 1951, John Foster Dulles suggested the construction of three successive island chains as a containment strategy to surround the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Washington never adopted the strategy, but Beijing has incorporated it into its own strategic thinking, both as a critical element of China's own defense and as a strategy for containing American naval power in the Pacific. This is not an outcome that Washington will accept. Even the "first-island-chain" would represent nothing less than a complete reorientation of the strategic balance of power is East Asia. What is clear is that the tension in the South China Sea is unlikely to dissipate any time soon and that the consequences of China's ambition's in the area will reverberate politically, economically and diplomatically, well into the future. Duterte's dramatic announcement may be nothing more than empty rhetoric on the part of a controversial and flamboyant Philippine leader. Likewise, Razak's coziness with Beijing is more likely to be a tactical ploy than a strategic realignment. Claims that the "dominoes" in Southeast Asia have started to fall into China's lap are premature and not yet supported by the facts. Then again, with the benefit of hindsight, these developments could turn out to be the first steps in Beijing's ambition to restore China's historic hegemonic role in Southeast Asia. -- If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration. A proposed rule change that would have allowed sex-change surgeries for transgender veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs has been scrapped amid questions over how to pay for it. "VA has been and will continue to explore a regulatory change that would allow VA to perform gender alteration surgery and a change in the medical benefits package, when appropriated funding is available," according to a statement from the department to Military.com. "Therefore, this regulation will be withdrawn from the Fall 2016 Unified Agenda." The department currently covers hormone therapy, mental health care, preoperative evaluation and long-term care after a sex reassignment surgery for qualified veterans, officials said. The change would have added gender reassignment surgery to that list. The so-called Unified Agenda, a bi-annual publication of proposed regulation changes, is due Monday. But the sex-change surgery rule that was set to be included was kicked back by the Office of Management and Budget because the VA did not include a plan for how they would fund the change, a senior department official said. A 2011 executive order issued by President Barack Obama requires agencies to take costs into account when proposing rule changes. The sex-change operation rule's rejection by the OMB doesn't mean they don't support the change, the official said -- just that the office needs to see funding plans for it. VA officials notified members of Congress of their decision to exclude the change in a letter sent on Monday. The VA first proposed the rule change in June in the Federal Register. Its removal from agenda release could leave the change in jeopardy as Obama officials and Democrat political appointees with the VA prepare for a hand-off to President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican. Trump has not yet spelled-out his stance on transgender medical treatment within the military or VA. In the past his stance has been seen as contradictory. He has both said he would repeal an Obama administration directive for schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice and protect transgender people under the law. A ban on openly serving transgender troops was lifted in June when the Defense Department announced that it would pay for sex-change operations for qualifying transgender troops. Tricare does not cover sex-change operations for military family members or retirees. Leila Ireland, a transgender former soldier who served in the Army as a male and was medically retired last year, said the decision is frustrating but not surprising given the results of the election. "It's very frustrating to even see or hear that they are doing that because of all the work that many people before me have done," she said. "But it's important to remember that even though they are changing their minds right now, there's going to be a way and we're going to find that way. Everything happens for a reason and we're not going to be set back." Other military family advocates said they hope the military community will continue to fight for transgender benefits. "All of our nation's veterans, regardless of their gender identity, deserve access to the medical care they earned serving our nation. This is a deeply disappointing setback in making sure an often medically necessary procedure is part of that care," Ashley Broadway, president of the American Military Partners Association, which advocates for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender troops and families, said in a statement. "We implore fair-minded Americans to stand united in holding our new administration officials accountable by insisting this be fixed," she said. --Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @amybushatz. Depending on your PT test, the order of swimming may best be determined by where it is in the order of events of that test. Option of street power present for justice: Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri PAT Chairman Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri has said that Allah Almighty is the Greatest Chief and the struggle for justice will never retire. He said even if the COAS could not get us justice in the Model Town case, he would continue to fight the case of the martyrs till the last breath of his life. He said that we are appearing in the court of law to show that we are doing everything under the law to get justice but the option of street power is present to get Qisas if need be. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri said that the Interior Minister has given his verdict by describing the Cyril leak as controversial news, refusing to accept it as a breach of national security. He said that the investigative committee will give its decision with five members giving a clean chit while two members will add dissenting note. He said that the ruling family has accepted the ownership of the properties based in London and now it is their responsibility to give documentary evidence to prove the ownership. He said that the Information Minister has been removed temporarily, adding that he is of the considered opinion that the rulers will get a clean-chit in the Panama and Cyril leaks. Dr Qadri said that we are with the opposition parties including PPP, PTI and JI that want accountability of the rulers on corruption. In an interview from London yesterday, he said that burden of 14 martyrdoms and 100 injured people is on the Sharif brothers. He said that he cannot pardon the Qisas from legal and Islamic point of view but added in the same breath that he would continue to play his role to seek justice. He said that the first case to be presented in the Court of Allah Almighty on the Day of Judgment will be the one of the unjust killing of innocent people and the hell will be the abode of the killers. The PAT Chairman said that the Model Town judicial report lists the names and addresses of the perpetrators of the tragedy and it is for this reason that it is not being released. He said that our Qisas movement consists of three phases. In the first phase, protests were held in more than 200 cities whereas the second and third phases have yet to come. He said that the government has taken the form of a mafia whereas the institutions have surrendered their independence to it. Commenting on the Cyril leak, he said that at a time when justice is not being done in the case of breach of national security, how will a common man get justice in his day to day affairs? He said that the government has adopted an insulting attitude by describing the Cyril leak as controversial news, adding that it was a planned strategy to defame the institution of the Army. He said that the news item was purposefully leaked out to the newspaper and the credibility of the military was undermined. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri said that the rulers will never make the mistake of forming an independent commission consisting of neutral judges, stating further that they would not repeat the mistake they made in establishing the Justice Najfi Commission to investigate the Model Town massacre. He said that decision in the Panama leaks can be delivered in a span of a week because what is to be established is the money trail for properties purchased abroad. He said that law comes into action against the weak segments of society whereas the powerful get clean-chit. He said that Rs. 7500 million were recovered from the house of Secretary Finance Balochistan and Rs. 2 billion from former provincial minister of Sindh but nothing seems to have been done in these cases. He asked what result came out when 100 people were martyred in an attack on the Civil Hospital in Quetta and 50 people were killed in an attack on a shrine in Hub. He said that people beholden to the rulers are manning FIA, NAB, and FBR. He said that the whole nation will have to get together. He said that barbarism in the name of government and dictatorship in the name of democracy is established in Pakistan. He said that the powerful and moneyed people are able to win the whole election here, adding that our struggle is for getting rid of the oppressive and corrupt system, which will continue unabated. Toyota Tacoma A second-generation Toyota Tacoma. (Toyota) DETROIT - Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. that alleges the frames could rust through on some 1.5 million trucks from the 2005-2010 model years, Reuters reports. The settlement estimates the total cost to replace the trucks' frames at $3.375 billion. Toyota has admitted no liability or wrongdoing in the proposed settlement, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The proposed settlement covers Tacoma trucks from the 2005-2010 model years, Tundras from 2007 and 2008 and Sequoia SUVs from 2005-2008. As part of the settlement, Toyota will inspect affected trucks for 12 years from the day they were first sold or leased, and make any necessary repairs. UPDATE: Police identify 3-year-old fatally shot by child playing with gun in Ypsilanti Township YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - Loved ones huddled together as a woman cried out at the scene of the shooting death of a 3-year-old boy on Sunday, Nov. 13. Police believe another child was playing with a gun when it went off, fatally striking the toddler in the neck shortly before 1:25 p.m. in the Country Meadows Apartment complex, 212 Stevens Drive in Ypsilanti Township. Police have not yet identified the child. The incident remains under investigation, but Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office Lt. Jim Anuszkiewicz said several children and the child's mother were in the home when the gun went off. Anuszkiewicz said police are investigating who owned the gun and what happened. A man could be seen holding his head in his hands while sitting on the steps of a Huron Valley Ambulance rig, Sunday afternoon. He was later seen being driven away in a police vehicle, and, more than an hour later, a woman wrapped in a winter coat was hurried to a vehicle by loved ones and driven away. No one had been charged in the incident as of Sunday evening, and Anuszkiewicz said police simply hoped to speak with the man they drove away. Relatives at the scenes declined to speak Sunday. A number of neighbors and area residents looked on as police continued to work at the scene Sunday afternoon and evening. Jeff McGuire, 44, of Ypsilanti said he came to the complex Sunday in case he knew those at the scene, where he used to live. He said hoped to wish the family comfort, but also said the incident was a reminder of a need for better gun control laws. Parents need to be careful with their guns, he said. "A kid's life shouldn't have to end like this," he said. "The whole thing could've probably been prevented. It's just sad all the way around." Devney Hamilton, 26, who lives in the building where the boy was shot, said the area has a number of families and she's seen few incidents requiring police. Though she doesn't know the family involved in the incident well - she believes they moved in recently - she said children frequently play outside the apartment complex and she's seen parents help keep an eye on other children. "There's a grown-up to look out for the kids," she said of when neighborhood children play outside. Others, such as Torrey Dalton, 25, disagreed about the number of times police have been called to the area. Dalton, who lives in a neighboring unit, said in his three years at the location, he's seen a number of police responses, including at least one other for a shooting. "It's terrible," he said of the shooting Sunday. It was a tough scene for everyone, Anuszkiewicz said. "It's very unfortunate, not only for the family, but it's unfortunately(sic) for the first responding deputies as well as the paramedics and also the fire department, so we'll work to make sure they're OK." ANN ARBOR, MI - After more than 20 years of hoping they'd someday see Hillary Clinton become president, members of her fan club in Ann Arbor gathered Sunday for a post-election potluck some described as a funeral. "It's like a death," said Chris Lord, a longtime club member who brought a cake with the message, "Hillary, our champion, thank you." For some, the dream of a Clinton presidency is now over, as they can't see her running again. "We're sad, shocked, stunned -- in disbelief," said Jan Murray, another longtime club member who wore her red shirt from Clinton's first run for president, along with buttons reading "I'm with her" and "Love trumps hate." "It's like a loss of life, a loss of a dream," Murray said of Clinton losing to Donald Trump in Tuesday's election. Murray, 80, said she was hoping to see the United States elect its first female president in her lifetime, but now she's not so sure that will happen. "This is so sad," she said. "We can't believe it because she was definitely the most qualified, and I truly believed once she got in office she would do what she could for the average working person." Janine Easter, who helped start the Ann Arbor chapter of Clinton's national fan club in 1994, said Trump's win was totally unexpected. She originally was planning for Sunday's potluck to be a victory party. The potluck was attended by more than 30 people, most of them members of the club since Clinton was first lady in the 1990s. "We need each other because we're sad, but to see each other makes us feel better," Easter said as she hugged fellow Clinton supporters on Sunday. They took time to write notes of thanks and support that Easter plans to bundle and send to Clinton this week. Easter gave a speech in which she said the most qualified presidential candidate of all time was trumped by the least qualified. But she said the fact that Clinton actually won the popular vote was reason to celebrate. "She did not quite break the glass ceiling, but as a trailblazer she makes it possible for other qualified women to follow in her lead and break it once and for all -- maybe Kirsten Gillibrand, maybe Michelle Obama," she said. So where does the club go from here? "Giving up is not an option," Easter said, proposing that the club keep meeting for its annual potluck and support Clinton in whatever she does next. "We know Hillary will continue her work empowering women and encouraging girls here and abroad to reach their potential." Some club members still are holding out hope that the electors of the Electoral College will give the election to Clinton since she won the popular vote. "Every effort should be made in the states where electors can change their minds to get them to change their minds," said Ann Larimore, a longtime club member. "I think it's an anachronistic institution," she said of the Electoral College system, which is how Trump won. "The structure needs to be changed, and that's a long-term goal. We need to do that before the next presidential election." As an ardent environmentalist and longtime feminist who helped start the women's studies program at the University of Michigan, Larimore is worried about Trump enacting policies that will hurt women and the environment. "It's extremely worrisome," she said. "I'm really concerned. We all are," added Lord, who said she hopes, in all of this, Clinton at least gets to enjoy more time with her family now. "She might be able to be a grandma, enjoy her life, not have to give every minute. But I am sure she's going to be jumping into something, and we're going to jump in with her." Trump talked about his plans as president in a television interview with "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. He said there are a few things he wants to work on right away, including health care, immigration and lowering taxes. Lana Pollack, a longtime Clinton fan club member and former state senator, said she's concerned about what policies might be coming under a Trump administration, including when it comes to addressing climate change. "We're in a terrible, terrible place," said Pollack, who was president of the Michigan Environmental Council from 1996 to 2008 and was chosen by President Barack Obama in 2010 to chair the U.S. section of the International Joint Commission, which deals with boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada. "Every week or every month or every year that's lost on responding to climate change is just lost," said Pollack, who expects to lose her position in January. Pollack said she wants to get rid of the Electoral College, which twice in 16 years has given the presidency to a candidate that did not win the popular vote. Leah Gunn, a former Washtenaw County commissioner and longtime club member, said she had a conversation recently with former Ann Arbor Mayor Liz Brater, who also was a state representative and senator. "Liz agrees with you -- we need to work on getting rid of the Electoral College," Gunn told club members on Sunday. "That's a project we can all work on individually." Jean Kluge, another longtime club member, said she doesn't think Trump will be able to deliver on many of the things he talked about on the campaign trail, including building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and lessening women's reproductive rights. "I really hope he doesn't deliver what he has promised." Amy Seetoo, another longtime club member, said she has some concerns about what a Trump presidency might mean, but she's glad that his platform at least includes new investments in infrastructure. "It's time to do something about our infrastructure," she said. "I don't care whose administration -- we need to improve our infrastructure." you are here: business Tata Motors Q2 revenue in line, profit misses; directors back co Tata Motors said today its consolidated revenues for the second quarter rose 6.94 percent year-on-year to Rs 67,999.7 crore, EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) stood at Rs 6,282 crore while the company swung to a profit of Rs 848 crore, compared to a Rs 1,740 crore loss last year. Rattle the jingle bells and deck the halls with holly, because Christmas sure has come early for Donald Trump. Not only has he bagged the White House, the US economy is really starting to move now. The Financial Times reports that wage growth accelerated at its fastest pace since 2009 in the US. Private sector hiring is on a record streak. Im sure Trump wont mind letting the world know, now that hes in power. He can do what every politician does and change the narrative to suit him. The feel-good factor from this might just come in handy for his first 100 days, once the facts start getting out. He can drop the campaign rhetoric about an ailing America to get US consumers out of a fearful mindset, and spending even more. Trump is no stranger to shifting positions. There are already reports that his website is dropping previous election policies and promises. The crazier stuff will no doubt get the flick, so that he looks more Presidential. Theres one particular policy that wont change, however, and thats Trumps intention to dismantle the Dodd Frank Act. This is legislation brought in after 2008 to regulate the US financial sector. In fact, this is one policy hes already confirmed now that hes elected. Phil Anderson over at Cycles, Trends and Forecasts had this outcome flagged as far back as June. He sent out an email at the time saying the following: Donald Trump just got a massive boost to his chances of ascending to the US presidency thanks to the US banks. But you wont see this reported on the front pages of any newspaper or magazine. Heres why. Several weeks ago, Jeb Hensarling Chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee put together measures to specifically help US banks by dismantling the Dodd-Frank Act. Thats the Act brought in after 2008 to better regulate the banks and ensure another financial panic would never happen again. Trump has endorsed these measures and vowed to pull apart the former Act. Banks will now undertake a prodigious effort to ensure Trump looks more presidential than he is. US banks will now make every effort to get him elected. Then theyll look for their payback. And holy moly, the Wall Street Journal now suggests that Trump is considering appointing Hensarling as Treasury Secretary. Over at Cycles, Trends and Forecasts we often write about the property cycle that underpins the US and Australian economies. If you had to boil it down to two factors, its the property market and banks, of course. Now we have a real estate President in charge who wants to drop property taxes and lift regulations off the financial sector. This cycle is really rumbling now. Theres a boom brewing. Things get even more interesting at this point. China and the US have been discussing a new trade and investment framework that would allow Wall Street banks to open up their own investment banking businesses in mainland China. This is a big deal. You might have missed this one because it was reported in the Wall Street Journal the day before the recent election. Donald Trump has clearly stated he wants to renegotiate everything with China. This could be a part of that. At the moment these Wall Street banks can only operate in China if they pair up with another Chinese bank. You can imagine the hesitation in doing that (over loss of proprietary information, for starters). But if the Wall Street banks could operate on their own they could underwrite initial public offerings on the local Chinese exchanges and be up for a lot more business. This is a highly profitable activity. Now its too early to say if anything will come from all this in terms of the US banks penetrating into China. But just right now, view this development in terms of the real estate cycle I mentioned earlier. Phil Anderson has said for years that this current real estate cycle which has never failed to turn, since at least back to 1800 in the US and back to 1600 in the UK could really kick off in a big way if US banks got access to Mainland China. In turn, Chinese banks became part of the global system, which they are not presently. Events just keep coming in to keep this cycle turning. Cycles, Trends and Forecasts has said the same thing since it launched: the world is on track for the biggest boom of all time. Go here to find out how to take advantage of it. Regards, Callum I think anything past a double D is starting to get out of control it feels like all you are is boobs. Members of the Rotary Club of Morganton got to celebrate with member Randall Brackett on Wednesday, Oct. 19 as state Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-86) presented him with the states Order of the Long Leaf Pine, an award issued by the North Carolina governors office to recognize those who have had a significant, positive impact on the state through many years of career and volunteer achievements. Brackett, whose last position before retirement was as associate superintendent of Burke County Public Schools, chose to receive his award at the Rotary Club meeting, according to Rotary Club President Hugh Morgan. Were so proud of Randall Brackett receiving this very significant award from the governor, Morgan said. Were so appreciative of Rep. Hugh Blackwell being here to convey this to him on behalf of the governor. And were particularly touched that Randall wanted this to happen at a Rotary meeting. Brackett said he joined the Rotary Club of Morganton in 1985 at the urging of his father-in-law, Harold McLaughlin. He said he appreciates the opportunities to network with other professionals and serve the community that the Rotary club provides. Rotary District Gov. Gary Dills was in attendance as Brackett his received his award, as well as Bracketts wife, Lynda, and daughter, Leah. Brackett and his wife also have a son, Jason, who was not able to make it to the meeting. Blackwell, who nominated Brackett for the award, shared some of his experiences working with him. The two got to know each other when Blackwell served on the school board from 1987-95. Brackett worked for BCPS from 1985-2008. Blackwell said Brackett was invaluable in helping the board find money for projects, transferring funds to various accounts to spend on things needed. He said Brackett took great pains over the years to keep the school systems fund balance in good supply. His financial savvy helped pay for projects such as the Reduced Class Size program, in which BCPS set a goal of having one teacher for every 15 students on average in first-, second- and third- grade classrooms. We didnt get any more money from the state to do that, Blackwell said. That money was largely available, and we were able to move forward with that program, in great measure, because Randall did such a great job in managing the funds so we could hire the additional teachers to do the professional development and all the things that were a part of that program working successfully. Without Randall, that wouldnt have happened. That program was written up in US News and World Report and the Chicago Tribune for the model it offered in how you do a better job in providing education. Blackwell said complaints about open classrooms during his tenure spurred plans to build new schools. He said Brackett helped the school board come up with a $33.4 million bond issue for Burke County the first bond issue to go before voters in nearly 40 years. The bond issue passed, and every school in the county got some sort of improvement. Bracketts office worked with architects and contractors to make sure projects came in on time and under budget. Blackwell said Brackett set funds aside for Table Rock and Heritage Middle Schools be wired for computers as they were being built, which made them two of the leading schools in the state at the time to be equipped for technology. We are still benefitting from those buildings, from those computers, from those smaller class sizes, from those things he helped us to do, Blackwell said. Blackwell said Brackett also made sure funds were available to give teachers larger salary supplements so BCPS could compete for the best teachers alongside larger school districts, such as the one in Hickory. He said he consistently draws on the experience and knowledge he gained from working with Brackett. Hes been a tremendous asset because hes a smart guy and a hard worker, Blackwell said. When he worked for the schools, he was concerned with what was in their best interest. Brackett, a Burke County native, said he knew early on he wanted to pursue his interest in business and finance. He graduated from Western Carolina University with a degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting data processes in 1968. Upon returning from college, Brackett got a job as a social worker with the Burke County Department of Social Services and worked there for two years before becoming the first purchasing agent at the Western Carolina Center, now called the J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center. Brackett said he was not chosen for the Vietnam War draft, but served in the National Guard from 1969 to 1975. After 15 years with WCC, Brackett was recruited to BCPS by then school board member John Mull to work as the school systems finance officer. He was soon promoted by former BCPS superintendent Carlos Hicks to assistant superintendent. Former superintendent David Burleson promoted Brackett to associate superintendent years later. I was in charge of finance, support services, facilities, bus drivers, transportation and maintenance anything that was not educational, I was responsible for, Brackett said. Current BCPS superindentent Larry Putnam shared his thoughts on Bracketts career with BCPS and his being chosen for the award. Mr. Brackett is a well-deserved recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award, Putnam said. This prestigious award recognizes what many of us already know about Mr. Brackett. His contributions to Burke County Public Schools and to the county of Burke have made a positive impact on the lives of many. Even though Mr. Brackett is retired from the school system, he continuously serves as a local fireman and a Rotarian. It goes without saying that he practices the Rotarian motto of Service above Self. Brackett has a long history of protecting residents from fire. He said he started two volunteer fire departments, the first in the Carbon City area in 1969, before it became incorporated by the city of Morganton. He later became the first and only chief of the West End Volunteer Fire Department in the Dysartsville area near the McDowell County line in 1972-73. We didnt have fire protection in this community, so a bunch of people got together and organized a fire department, and I happened to be one of the charter members, Brackett said. Theres no sacrifice somebody can give to the community thats any more of a challenge than being a volunteer fireman. You get up in the middle of the night and risk your life for people you dont even know. I think its a calling. In addition to serving as fire chief and participating in Rotary Club activities, Brackett has kept busy during his retirement with many other projects. He has served in leadership positions with the Brentwood Water Corporation, the Morganton Day School, the Rutherford Electric Membership Corporation and the North Carolina and Burke County Cattlemens Associations. Upon receving the award, Brackett was quick to recognize his wife and daughter as the source of his success. Without them, I couldnt have done any of that, Brackett said. Theyve supported me in everything Ive undertaken to do and carried me in everything you could expect. He recognized mentors in his life in addition to Hicks and Burleson, such as Tom Walton and Bob Choate. I had the best of the best, Brackett said. I had the best opportunity to be successful and to be part of the community. Tammie Gercken can be reached at tgercken@morganton.com. A mistake in paperwork has put off the auction of some properties in Pine Mountains Lakes. Eastern Saving Bank was expected to sale on Nov. 1 to the highest bidder unit sites 50, 25, 10 and 48 of Pine Mountains Lakes Tree Top Village Country Homes. But because the notice of sale had the wrong county listed, the sale was moved to 10 a.m. on Nov. 30, according to the new filing. The sale will take place in the front lobby of the Burke County Courthouse. It is a cash sale . Outer Banks/Kinnakeet owns the property and the registered agent and managing partner is Ray Hollowell. The bank has taken action against the company to collect on a more than $12 million judgment the bank won against Hollowell and Outer Banks/Kinnakeet in the eastern part of the state. The properties are on Kinglet Road in Connelly Springs, according to the notice. The high bidder of the property will be required to pay 10 percent of the bid in cash at the sale. The remaining amount will be due after the last day of the upset bid period, the notice says. This is not the first time Eastern Saving Bank has tried to sell the property. In January, the bank took legal action against the company to foreclose on the properties and auction them at the courthouse. However, the sale was stopped when Outer Banks/Kinnakeet filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which put a stay on the auction, according to court officials. The bankruptcy petition was filed in the eastern district of North Carolina. The bankruptcy case was dismissed because Hollowell couldnt comply with the requirements of the Bankruptcy Code, Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure and Local Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, according to court documents. The bankruptcy documents say Hollowell also failed to pay the attorney who had filed the case on his behalf. Burke County officials have been after Hollowell for years to pay up on property taxes that corporations hes associated with owe the county. In August 2014, Burke County sent a letter to Attorney General Roy Coopers office asking his office to investigate Hollowell, who they said owed more than $200,000 in taxes, interest and lien fees at the time on property he owns in Pine Mountain. The AGs office responded, saying it didnt have jurisdiction in the case. So In May 2014, county commissioners passed a resolution not to allow the transfer of a deed unless the property taxes on it are paid. A statement also can be attached to the deed that says once the property has sold, the taxes owed will be paid from the proceeds of the sale, according to county officials. As of July, Outer Banks/Kinnakeet owed $22,176.85 in delinquent Burke County property taxes, according to county officials. Other corporations with which Hollowell is associated that owed delinquent or current Burke County property taxes, as of July, were: Burke Mountain Southeast - $192,836.40 Bon View - $32,625.50 Virginia Highland - $4,561.91 My Mountain - $1,816.99 BGMC - $1,336.18 New Highland - $1,148.85 Tall Pines - $752.06 In addition, more than 25 property owners in the Pine Mountain development, as well as Pine Mountain Property Owners Association Inc., signed onto the lawsuit against Hollowell, his associated businesses and at least eight other property owners in the development. The plaintiffs sued Hollowell and the other owners mentioned for breaches of fiduciary duty, unfair and deceptive trade practices, nonpayment of assessments, unjust enrichment and the removal of the board of directors and officers of the association, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Burke County in late July. In early October, Superior Court Judge Robert Bell ordered the case be stayed until all members of the Pine Mountain Property Association are joined in the case, according to members of the association. Bell also ordered that counsel, after consultation, nominate for court appointment three disinterested directors or people who will determine whether it is in the best interest of the corporation (property owners association) to pursue the lawsuit, according to members of the association. Sharon McBrayer is a staff writer and can be reached at smcbrayer@morganton.com or at 828-432-8946. After three years of sitting empty, the former Walmart building on Burkemont Avenue will once again be filled with merchandise and jobs. Rural King plans to move into the 89,000-square-foot building. The property was sold to Morganton ABG LLC in July, according to the Burke County Register of Deeds office. According to the North Carolina Department of Secretary of State corporations filing, the address for Morganton ABG is the same for Rural King in Mattoon, Illinois, where the company is based. The company plans to hold interviews Monday through Friday at the Morganton state employment office at 720 E . Union St . Interviews will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Friday. Appointments arent necessary for an interview but applicants have to be 18 years old and be able to pass a drug test, according to company information. The city of Morganton has issued permits for the project, including for renovations to the inside of the building. It is looking to fill full-time and part-time positions, including in management, sales, receiving, small engine mechanic, clothing processor and maintenance. According to its website, the company sells everything from livestock feed, farm equipment and agricultural parts to lawn mowers, workwear, fashion clothing, housewares and toys. The company has 93 stores in 11 states and it plans to open an average of 10 stores a year. It appears the Morganton store will be the first in North Carolina. The other states where Rural King has store locations are Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Florida. To find out more about jobs with the company, visit www.RKtalent.com. To find out more about the company, visit www.ruralking.com. Sharon McBrayer is a staff writer and can be reached at smcbrayer@morganton.com or at 828-432-8946. Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive. To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research. Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. Federal authorities along with representatives from provincial and city governments announced the inauguration of 18 new affordable housing projects in London, ON as well as the surrounding region.In a November 10 press release by Ontarios Ministry of Housing, the officials declared that the 281 housing unitsfunded in part by $9,306,546 in municipal contributions from London and Middlesex Countywill cater to the needs of at-risk populations such as financially struggling households and individuals with physical disabilities.Our government is supporting initiatives that give families and individuals the safe and affordable housing they need. We know that once people have a roof over their heads, they can concentrate on other things in their lives, like having time to spend with their loved ones or securing long-term employment. These new initiatives in London and the surrounding area will help strengthen our community, according to Deb Matthews, MPP London North Centre.We know that housing is instrumental in raising people out of poverty. There is no better way to address poverty than to start with the foundation of safe, secure housing. I am so pleased to see all levels of government working together to address the housing crisis, London mayor Matt Brown said.The announcement came in the wake of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynnes assurances late last month that her government has no plans of implementing a property transfer tax similar to that of the 15 per cent levy slapped by B.C. authorities on foreign buyers.B.C. has put in place a particular mechanism; we are not going to use that mechanism, Wynne told reporters.Observers have welcomed these statements, noting that overseas nationals are not major movers in Toronto real estate at the moment, amounting to approximately only around 5 to 10 per cent of home buyers in the provincial capital.Related Stories: In the wake of the U.S. presidential elections, legal professionals who are entertaining questions from Americans said that the sudden surge in immigration and real estate purchase inquiries does not necessarily point to actual cross-border movements in the near future.Data from real estate website Point2Homes revealed that the number of visits from potential home buyersmost of which were looking for residential properties in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Cape Bretonoriginating from the U.S. spiked by an astounding 282 per cent the day after the November 8 polls.This could be an immediate reaction to events, immigration lawyer Arghavan Gerami told the Ottawa Citizen. We have to assess this over the longer run to see how many of them actually follow through with immigration to Canada.Ottawa-based lawyer Bhramba Kullur agreed, saying that he has received at least 6 calls from anxious Americans between election night and November 10.They tell you, You know what happened in the U.S. and we dont feel that rights will be respected, Kullur recounted. Its a concern. They are inquiring.These observations mirrored recent statements housing industry observers, who noted that despite the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website crashing due to a spike in traffic from American queries in the few hours before poll results started coming, any effects of the U.S. elections on Canadian real estate will take some time to gain traction.Its too early to know what it means for Canadian housing markets. Nobody knows what it means for the Canadian economy writ large, let alone housing markets across the country, Canadian Real Estate Association chief economist Gregory Klump wrote in a statement.Apprehension over the prospect of a Trump presidency has simmered in the months leading up to the elections: In the period covering January to October 2016, jobs website Monster.com saw more than 30,000 queries for the search term Canada on Monsters U.S. portal. And in the first two months of the year alone, a website dedicated to promoting Cape Breton real estate parcels garnered nearly half a million visits.Related Stories: For all but a few days of the year -- mainly around the start of a semester -- college bookstores are focused much more on building school brands than on selling textbooks. They might as well be called college hoodie stores. American University, in a shift reflecting that retail reality, this fall joined a modest but growing number of schools that have removed textbooks from their campus stores. Any student at the private university in Washington who wants to buy a textbook may of course still do so, through an online site AU promotes that offers price discounts and rapid delivery of hard copies to the campus. But the store itself has not a single copy on hand of the many textbooks that are required reading at AU. The only books in stock, as of [Nov. 7] were a few mass-market volumes, including To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Most students dont seem to mind. They and their peers at colleges elsewhere long ago became savvy online shoppers, hunting for used copies, cheap rentals or even free excerpts of the texts they need -- all in the quest to save precious dollars for other school expenses. But Yazmin Padilla, 19, a sophomore from Arizona, confessed that she was a bit nostalgic for the now-vanished sight of stacks of textbooks. You knew they were expensive, but they were there, Padilla said. I liked looking at them. Padilla, an international studies major, figures she spent about $300 on books this semester. She found some through the AU website and others elsewhere. She usually compares prices through sites such as Slugbooks.com. She likes hard copies but doesnt mind e-books once in awhile, such as the text she uses for Spanish language class. Her goal is simple: Find the best deal -- as efficiently as possible. That is what AU wants too. Were trying to be as efficient as we can with every square foot we have, said Charles Smith, AUs director of auxiliary services. A staircase inside the bookstore that once led to a lower floor where the textbooks were kept has now been sealed off. The space is being remodeled to accommodate student events and a university dining club. Smith said he heard few complaints after the university announced the switch during the summer. Two students voiced concerns about not being able to see and handle textbooks they might buy, Smith said. But for the most part the changeover was uneventful. Better Cheaper Online, reads a sign posted outside the store. Weve taken the books out of the store, but not out of your hands. The sign says that students who buy online can get 10 percent off the price of new or used textbooks, and discounts of up to 80 percent on rentals. Its been good for the students, Smith said. Very good for the students. Lindsay Petelinkar, 19, a sophomore in international studies from Pennsylvania, said she is a bargain hunter and doesnt mind waiting a day or two for the university to deliver her texts. Its totally worth the wait for the cheaper book, she said. A decade ago, college bookstores were often considered major revenue generators for schools, Smith said. Now, he said, AU views its store mainly as a resource for students and as an opportunity to build the school brand for alumni, parents and other visitors who might crave an AU sweatshirt or a plush stuffed Eagle (the school mascot). Market research for the National Association of College Stores, a trade group, shows that students these days get their course materials through an average of about two sources, and that 40 percent of students rent at least one required text. Students spent an average of about $600 on required course materials for the 2015-2016 academic year. Most of the nations estimated 4,500 campus stores still stock and sell hard copies of textbooks. We dont have exact numbers on how many schools have gone virtual-only for textbooks, but the majority still carry textbooks and offer both in-store and on-line purchase options, said Jenny Febbo, an association spokeswoman. George Washington and Georgetown universities, also in the District of Columbia, said they still stock textbooks. GW spokeswoman Maralee Csellar said the school has a cost-match program to reward students who show proof that another bookseller has a lower price on the same book sold at GWs store. In that case, she said, a student will get the difference back in the form of a gift card. Georgetowns Barnes & Noble College outlet said it also advertises a variety of ways to stay competitive on price, through price matching, book rentals, used-book sales and buyback programs. But its important to remember that the college bookstore isnt just about selling books,said Patrick Maloney, president of Barnes & Noble College. The bookstore is a key part of a students success both inside and outside the classroom. Maloney said the store functions as a social hub on campus -- a place where new students can get their books and where alumni and fans visit ... when they come back to campus. If Donald Trump wants to be an effective president, he can look at his predecessor for the blueprint -- and do the opposite. President Obama leaves office with a record of destruction to his own party. The White House has changed hands, as has the Senate and House, since he took office. The number of Democratic Party governors is down (by more than 10), and state legislatures across the nation went from blue to red in eye-opening proportions. In fact, Republicans control more than twice as many state legislative chambers. Want more proof? Can someone tell us who the Democrats have next in line to run for president? The answer is there isnt a next in line. The Democratic Party is without someone to hang its hat on come 2020. Translation: The last eight years was more about Obama than his party and certainly the nation. So President-elect Donald Trump, heres a little advice. Dont do that. In our view, this nation is ready to return to the center-right. Go bold, be ambitious but dont do so at the expense of conservatism. We know the political landscape as it appears now, and we expect you to leave it in better shape than when you came into office. Do we have hopes for the upcoming four years in terms of policy? Yes. Republican leadership should: -- replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with something sustainable for the long term. Its not enough to repeal the ACA. Show you can govern -- Republicans have to prove they can govern -- and put something in place that is better for all Americans. -- reform entitlements. These are the biggest drivers of long-term debt. Neither candidate really made entitlement spending an issue in the campaign, but ignoring Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will make matters worse. National debt held by the public is forecast to exceed the size of the economy by 2033, according to FixTheDebt.org. - back up Trumps comments regarding the inner cities. Prove that Trump was right that Republicans can do more for the inner cities in a short amount of time than Democrats did in decades. This can guarantee a Republican majority for generations. -- proceed with immigration reform. Institute even tougher penalties for those caught employing illegal immigrants; penalize cities that have certain procedures to shelter illegal immigrants (those so-called sanctuary cities); require mandatory minimum sentence standards for those who have been deported and then come back into the United States illegally and are convicted of an aggravated felony; and take steps for increased border protection. - get serious about infrastructure. This is a good place to start creating jobs. Americas roads and bridges need rebuilding. This provides another opportunity for a Republican majority to show Democrats that rebuilding Americas infrastructure can be done on budget. - decide on a foreign policy path and turn it over to the generals. If Trump needs help with success in the Middle East, he can ask for direction from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, arguably the best secretary of defense in a generation. America is war-weary, but the men and women in uniform will accomplish the task at hand if politicians stay out of the way. And there are other issues. Tax reform and creation of an all-of-the-above energy policy that plays on our nations strengths are obvious. And we expect both to take place without much fanfare. As far as the appointment of a Supreme Court justice, Trump has a list that conservatives have apparently blessed, so we dont expect any problems there. In the end, Republicans have never been in a more advantageous governing position. This should be the defining moment for the party, conservatism and our nation. New members inducted into Institute of ... AMARILLO Dr. Charlie Rush is claiming success tomatoes from a Texas A&M AgriLife Research high tunnel project are being sold in an Amarillo grocery store. And now the real work begins. We delivered tomatoes to United Supermarket in Amarillo, and they were thrilled to get them, Rush said. The next day we delivered jalapenos and poblano peppers. We can produce a quality product and there is clearly a market for the produce. Now, we need to work on maximizing yields, cropping systems and pest management, provide an economic analysis and convince a few growers to give it a go. Rush, an AgriLife Research plant pathologist in Amarillo, said the project is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Ogallala Research Initiative and the Texas Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. The projects goal is to provide locally grown tomatoes and other high-quality vegetables to the public. This years crop, which suffered setbacks in its inaugural season, has produced about 1,500 pounds of tomatoes, of which almost 500 pounds were marketed through United, along with almost 500 pounds of jalapeno and poblano peppers, he said. Rush started construction of four high tunnels in April. Dr. Kevin Crosby, an AgriLife Research tomato breeder in College Station, and a breeder with a private company in California each identified the best varieties for the project and provided seed for the study. Those seeds were planted in a greenhouse first, then transplanted in early May. Drip tape was installed to water the 20 plants of each line in each of the four tunnels. The trial provided learning opportunities, Rush said. Rabbits ate early crops so fencing was installed. There were initial difficulties getting water and electricity to the high tunnels. Extreme heat in the high tunnels caused a number of the newly planted seedlings to die, and the entire study was replanted May 16. That was followed by a high incidence of tomato spotted wilt in the transplants, so the entire study was replanted again on June 30. Rush said a typical high tunnel has six rows in cultivation, but only two rows were planted this year in two different high tunnels. An exact replica of the high tunnel experimental design was planted in a field adjacent to the tunnels for comparison. The first tomatoes were harvested on Sept. 27 and the fruit was picked weekly, divided into marketable and unmarketable, and weighed, he said. Then it was sent to the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M University in College Station for quality analysis. Tomatoes purchased from local retail grocers were included in the quality analysis as comparative commercial controls, Rush said. The tomatoes from all four cultivars raised in the high tunnel plots were evaluated in a blind test for taste and appearance. Tomato yields have been higher in the high tunnel plots than in the field, he said. Of the four cultivars, the three from the Texas A&M program have significantly out-yielded the commercial entry from California, possibly because the Texas A&M entries were developed for Texas growing conditions and the California entry was not. In the taste and appearance test, the Texas A&M cultivars grouped together in the results and all were judged to taste significantly better than either the California entry or commercial control, which also grouped together statistically in the rankings, Rush said. He said the testing allowed participants to rank the five entries first on looks, then on taste, as well as do another taste comparison between tomatoes grown inside and outside. The taste test is really what it is all about, because it gets down to the consumer and what they like and what they dont like, Rush said. The California entry also was significantly different in quality parameters measured at the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center from the Texas A&M cultivars, but it was the same as the grocery store controls, Rush said. This could be because there is a high likelihood that tomatoes obtained as a control from the grocery store came from California. He said tomato plants growing inside the protected area produced about 25 percent more than plants growing in outside plots, and quality inside the tunnels was as good or better than those grown outside. That means you can get more tomatoes inside the high tunnels and get just as high quality of a product as trying to grow a tomato outside, Rush said. Often you hear that greenhouse-grown tomatoes are not very good. And certainly tomatoes that are shipped from hundreds if not thousands of miles away and end up in the grocery store are often not very tasty, especially when they have to be picked green and shipped so far. We demonstrated this year that it is possible to produce good yields of very high-quality, locally grown vegetables and market them to local retailers, he said. United Grocery Markets began collaborating with Rush in the middle of the project, stating they were looking for a steady and constant supply of high quality, locally grown produce. The first AgriLife Research-produced tomatoes from the high tunnels were delivered to their store Oct. 27, and peppers grown in the high tunnels followed a couple days later. In the coming months, we will complete analyzing and graphing of the data from this project, Rush said. We will compare how the tomato varieties differed in the incidence and abundance of major pests and beneficial insects. We will also quantify seasonal pest pressure, which will be useful in providing recommendations for planting time and pest scouting efforts in the High Plains, he said. Quality and yield data will be analyzed to compare the cultivars used in this study and high tunnel and field production. Another aspect Rush is monitoring is water savings. Tomatoes are fairly water intensive in their requirements, but you are able to get so many more tomatoes in such a small area compared to an acre of corn, so way more income with a lot less overall water. Rush estimated, based on limited production the first year, that a high tunnel with six rows, about 240 plants, could produce almost 2,300 pounds of tomatoes. These could be sold for $1 to $3 per pound, depending if they were sold to a retail grocery store or at a farmers market. To get that yield this year, we applied 38,000 gallons of water, he said. Although that sounds like a lot of water, is isnt much when compared to what is required to grow a corn crop. For instance, the average yield of corn is approximately 175 bushels per acre and it takes about 21 acre inches or about 570,000 gallons of water to grow it. At todays market price of around $3.50 per bushel, that means a farmer would gross a little over $600 for an acre of corn, and he would need 21 acre inches of water to do that. At just $1 a pound, growing tomatoes in just one high tunnel could gross $2,300 for only 1.4 acre inches of water. Rush said he thinks he can increase tomato yields and use less water than he did this year, but he also acknowledges that labor costs for production of high-value vegetable crops will be much higher. He has recruited Dr. Bridget Guerrero, an agricultural economist from West Texas A&M University, to conduct an economic analysis of high tunnel vegetable production. Her analysis is the type of information required by farmers to determine whether they are willing to try this new venture, Rush said. It wont be for everyone, but because of the declining water table in the Ogallala Aquifer, small farmers and those with limited irrigation capabilities may consider giving high-value vegetable production a try. We are convinced this research will reveal a number of new business opportunities for agriculture in the Texas Panhandle, he said. We are very excited about its potential for the future. We are saving water, producing a commodity that people like and that is locally grown, so it looks like it is a win-win for everybody. Military officials were investigating whether four Air Force security guards burned a cross in a home's back yard and participated in other supremacist activities. The four men, members of the 377th Security Forces Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, were relieved of duty and restricted to base, base spokesman Ralph Francis said. Their names will not be released until military officials complete their investigation, Francis said. He said the men had Confederate flags, Nazi swastikas and literature from the Ku Klux Klan _ things that he said are not "illegal to possess, but it depends on how it's being used." Their other alleged activities were not specified. Military regulations prohibit supremacist actions such as participating in public rallies to recruit members for groups that support illegal discrimination, Francis said. The cross burning occurred Saturday in the fenced yard of a home in southeastern Albuquerque. City police found it after neighbors complained about a loud party. The four were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and turned them over to base officials. Francis said a preliminary internal investigation showed that the cross-burning was not directed at anyone. If the men participated in the activities, he said, they could face penalties ranging from administrative action to court martial. ___ On the Net: Squadron: http://www.kirtland.af.mil/Organizations/SecurityForces This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hundreds of students from about a dozen Oakland high schools ditched the classroom for the streets Monday to show their discontent with the election of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States in the fourth day of school walkouts around the Bay Area. Students congregated at the Fruitvale BART station Monday just before noon and then marched with their peers in a demonstration against Trump, police militarization, mass incarceration and gentrification. They were also protesting to maintain sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants and to protect lands of native people. We hope to get our rights and just get our freedom. We want less racism, stop the violence, all of that, said Salvador Briseno, a 14-year-old Coliseum College Prep Academy student. Students have staged protests large and small across the Bay Area since Trumps election last week. The daytime demonstrations have usually preceded rallies that have lasted late into the night on the streets of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, some of which have turned destructive and violent. Oscar Calderon, 21, who works with a Latino youth group and helped organize the walkout, said Mondays demonstration was the result of students from about a dozen different schools coordinating together far more than the protests last week. Some students had left their classrooms at CCPA, Golden State Prep, Alternatives in Action High School, Aspire Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, Castlemont High School, Madison Park Academy and Oakland United High School right when school started, while others were planning to walk out later in the day. John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified School District, said that Monday would be the final day for students to have leniency for skipping class, though disciplinary actions for truancy have yet to be decided. Discussions about the election will continue in classrooms and through town hall meetings and assemblies, he said. The protest was entirely student-led and not sanctioned by the school, Sasaki added. Carla Franco, also a 14-year-old student at CCPA, said Trumps characterization of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals couldnt be further from the truth. Her parents came here seeking a better life, Franco said, and now she like families across the country are worried about their relatives and friends being deported. "I feel like most people tell us, Why does it matter? He became president already, she said. We just want him to know we don't support what he's said about us. We feel like it's better to unite as people and show them we don't support him. Kate Dillon, 30, a resource teacher at the school, said administrators did not sanction the walkout but also didnt stand in the way of students who wanted to leave. Students in sixth and seventh grades were told they were too young to participate, Dillon said. We don't want Donald Trump, said 18-year-old Keziah Tokes of Dewey Academy. We need someone to represent the black and brown community, especially in politics. The government and white supremacy doesn't represent us. Oakland students werent alone in their walkouts. Students from high schools around the Bay Area joined in on the protest by marching out of their classrooms throughout the day. About 200 to 300 Menlo-Atherton High School students in Menlo Park took to the streets about 1:30 p.m. to share their dissatisfaction over Trump. They made marched to Highway 101, but quickly retreated after officers said they would be arrested if they entered the freeway, said Nicole Acker, a spokeswoman for the Menlo Park Police Department. Our responsibility is to keep the protesters safe and make sure they are obeying the rules of the road, Acker said. Nearly 150 students from Redwood High School in Larkspur also walked out of classes at the same time. Emily OBrien Meyer, a 15-year-old student at Redwood High School, said the atmosphere was tense as anti-Hillary Clinton protesters threatened to beat kids up for not supporting Trump. It got a little heated, OBrien Meyer said. Im not sure [the protests] will achieve anything besides showing how we feel. Hes going to be president, no matter what. A group of men taunted a UC Santa Cruz student and one of them threw a rock at her, striking the student in the head as she walked through campus, police said Monday. The aggravated assault may have been a hate crime because of the actual or perceived gender and sexuality of the student, said university spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason, though he didnt elaborate on the incident. The assault happened about 11:30 p.m. Friday as the student was walking near the Quarry Amphitheater on her way home to her dormitory, school officials said. Three men, who appeared to be in their 20s, followed her and yelled at her in an offensive manner, the schools police chief, Nader Oweis, said in a community alert. As the student continued walking past the amphitheater toward Colleges Nine and Ten, one of the males struck her on the head using a rock, the alert said. She was able to flee the area and get help. Paramedics with the Santa Cruz Fire Department treated the woman for minor injuries from the rock strike. Meanwhile, on the UC Berkeley campus, two students said a man in his 50s yelled homophobic and racial slurs at them as students congregated on Sproul Plaza to watch the election results Tuesday night. The man then spat at the students, according to police, who are investigating the incident as a hate-motivated battery. Last week, California Attorney General and incoming U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris sent a bulletin to police agencies around the state outlining hate-crime laws in response to an uptick in threats of hate crimes and other violent extremism. Reports of hate crimes had fallen in the past decade, the bulletin said, but jumped more than 10 percent between 2014 and 2015, fueled by a rise in crimes fueled by religious bias. Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov UPDATED George Strait is back in the saddle. The country music superstar will be announcing some upcoming Las Vegas shows and celebrate a new album when he plays a private show near New Braunfels this week. The concert will be live streamed starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Strait.WranglerNetwork.com. Strait Out of The Box: Part 2 comes out Friday. The Walmart exclusive features 56 songs recorded from 1996 to 2016 on three discs, including two new singles. Going back through all the songs for this box set does bring back a lot of old memories, Strait said in a statement to the Express-News about selecting the songs. A lot of them we considered for radio singles and for whatever reason, we just picked something else. It was not that hard to pick them after I looked through them because there are just so many that are my favorites. Strait is set to perform in Dec. 2-3 and Feb. 17-18 at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas. Tickets are $75 to $200 and are available online from T-Mobile Arena. While Wednesdays show is absolutely closed to the public, one may get a little surprise if theyre floating the Guadalupe River anywhere near the Gruene water tower and wondering if theyre really hearing King George. Strait famously retired from large-school touring with his Ace in the Hole Band following the Cowboy Rides Away tour a few years back. His final San Antonio appearance was June 1, 2013, at the Alamodome, attracting a record 73,086 fans. Last year, he released the album Cold Beer Conversation. Tip Top Cafe has closed its second location at 13835 Nacogdoches at O'Connor roads, a little more than a year after opening it. Jim Scott, managing partner of the Tip Top Cafe ownership group, released a statement in response to an inquiry from the Express-News saying the restaurant has closed for renovations. Spain scored four goals against Macedonia in Granada. Three more points and some savings in the bank for the final goal difference, which could count if we finish tied on points with Italy, who beat Lichtenstein by the same scoreline. But it wasn't a game to get excited about for Spain. A frankly tame first half, constantly smashing into the Macedonia defence, without sending the right and left backs out to open up the pitch, and a somewhat better second 45, thanks to the tiredness that always comes upon teams who try and close the match down. The most startling thing though is that, with very little on offer, Macedonia created chances against us. The few times they crossed the half-way line they ended up with dangerous opportunities. De Gea didn't have a night off. Full screen De Gea forced into action against Macedonia. JUAN FLOR DIARIO AS Spain need to be spot on when their rivals shut up shop Spain struggle in games like this: a rival with five at the back, protected by another three or four. When face with that, constant passing, if its done without vigour and ambition serves little purpose. The centre-forward, in this case Morata, ends up driven to despair in a cave, worse still if nobody is going down the wings. We see a lot of games along these lines. To get something out of them Spain needs energy, sacrifice and above all precision, and for most of the players to be sharp and spot on in everything they do. In the first part not many Spaniards played well, hence the poor impression, and it could have been worse: Macedonia had two clear chances in the opening minutes of the match. Aduriz into the record books Spain improved in the second half, above all thanks to the drive of Silva and Vitolo, who got better and better. The second goal, which calmed our nerves, came thanks to them, but after that Spain oddly relaxed, only breaking out with the match nearly over, in a miraculous minute that saw them score two goals. The first saw Carvajal cross to Monreal. The other was converted by Aduriz, who became the oldest player to have scored for Spain. And with the way he's playing he's likely to add yet more months to the record with a little bit of luck. Thanks to him, a game with not much to say about it, goes into the history books. Courtesy photo / Waco and the Heart of Texas This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Its okay, Culture Trip, San Antonians know our city is beautiful. The travel website released a list of what it considers to be the most beautiful cities in the Lone Star State. The list includes small towns like Hunt, Wimberley and Canyon. RELATED: Most mispronounced Texas city names There was no love for San Antonio, on the list, however. Click through the slideshow to see what 10 Texas cities made Culture Trips list. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 NEWTOWN - The Board of Education will hear final comments from Newtowners and three ruling bodies this week in preparation for a vote next month on closing the middle school to address declining enrollment. The proposed closing of Newtown Middle School will get a hearing first at the school board meeting Tuesday night, and then will be a subject of a joint budget meeting Wednesday with the Legislative Council and the boards of education, finance and selectmen. That would clear the way for the seven-member school board to vote as soon as Dec. 6 on a recommendation that would: Keep students in kindergarten through fourth grade in the districts four elementary schools. Teach students in fifth through seventh grade at Reed Intermediate School. Move eighth-graders to Newtown High School. The middle school now houses seventh and eighth grades and Reed houses fifth and sixth. As far the board making a decision about the middle school, it is a difficult issue and we want to consider everyones comments, school board President Keith Alexander said Monday. On the other hand, we dont want to let this drag on forever. The recommendation to close the middle school is meant to address enrollment that has dropped by 1,000 students districtwide since the Great Recession and is expected to drop another 1,000 students within five years. The recommendation comes from a task force that has been at work since 2015, when community objection to a plan to close Hawley Elementary School was so strong that the school board dropped the idea. The boards decision to suspend action on that plan was in part to undertake deeper study about its options, but also to await the emotionally charged opening of the new Sandy Hook School in August. The $50 million Sandy Hook School, paid for by the state, replaced the building where a gunman massacred 20 first-graders and six educators in 2012. Although the debate about closing a school was especially emotional in Newtown, it is similar to challenges being faced in suburbs across the state, where declining enrollment is forcing school boards to make unpopular decisions. In greater Danbury, for example, New Milfords Pettibone Elementary School closed in 2015 over the objection of many parents. Ridgefield, Brookfield and the three small towns of Washington, Bridgewater and Roxbury that make up the Region 12 School District have also been working with demographers to find the best response to dwindling enrollment. In Newtown, there is not the same community division as there was in 2015, when teachers and residents joined forces to sign petitions and speak out at public meetings. There is certainly still a lot of public input, although maybe not as much as last time as far as people coming forward in opposition to it, Alexander said. Of course not everyone will agree, but I think that we have a substantial amount of information, and I am comfortable that the board will be able to come to a decision it can stand by. Superintendent Joseph Erardi agreed. I am certain that the school board will bring this to a close one way or another by December, he said. rryser@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342. MILFORD A recent Drug Take-Back Day event collected 313 pounds of unwanted prescription drugs, police said Monday. The Oct. 22 event was co-sponsored by the police department and the Milford Prevention Council, in conjunction with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Residents were able to bring expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs as part of a nationwide initiative to prevent drug abuse and theft, Officer Joseph Dempsey said. Volunteers from the Milford police Citizens Academy assisted with the event, said Dempsey, the department spokesman. The collection provides a safer alternative than flushing the drugs down the toilet or throwing them out with the trash, Dempsey said Monday. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs, he said. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. Visit the DEA website and click on National Prescription Take-Back Day for more information on future drug take back day events. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD Phyllis Sinrich travels the world looking through store windows for the faces of mannequins that strike her as lifelike. A beret, a dress or particular hairstyle can enhance the way the figures resonate with her or others who pass by the same window, Sinrich said. Mannequins have an unspoken power, the Stamford resident said. The unspoken power of a store mannequin is to attract us into the store and make a purchase. The human face is a very powerful thing to us as humans and each of these mannequins have a unique personality. Sinrich became fascinated with mannequins when she was on a trip to the Mediterranean island of Corsica when she spotted a particularly life-like one. Since has since photographed upwards of a thousand of them in places like Germany, Italy and Morocco. Sinrich was one of more than 40 local award-winning artists whose paintings, photographs and other works were on display at the Loft Artist Associations annual Open Studios exhibit at the South End gallery. About 500 people attended the event, which began Friday night and continued Saturday and Sunday, to tour the studios 14 galleries, mingle with the artists and browse the work, said Ellen Gordon, president of the association. Patty Fisher, a Cos Cob resident and art enthusiast, visited the show Saturday and said she was impressed by the level of skill and polish displayed in the work. I liked a lot of stuff and Im starting to get interested in art and wanted to see what local artists bring to the table, Fisher said. There is a lot of talent in the area its amazing. Barbara Mathis, a figurative painter and member of the association, displayed some of her most recent work from this summer. She had a series of oil on Masonite canvases depicting patrons of New York art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum. Mathis also had more canvases in a binder that she painted over the years, including some she had sold to private collectors. Her work has also been exhibited at the Katonah Museum of Art and by Pen & Brush. She was once the first woman to work in the news graphics department at ABC News New York. A painter since her adolescence, Mathis said her work often comes from the pleasure she takes in watching others and meeting them. Im a people watcher you could say, Mathis said of the paintings. With these canvases it occurred to me that the people looking at the paintings are more interesting than the art itself. Gordon is also a mixed-media artist whose offerings included nearly a full wall of mostly small and disparate ink and color studies of her longtime muse, a 68-year-old professional model she has worked with for many years. A lot of my artwork is larger and collage based, but this year I wanted to show smaller work, she said. These are looser and a little more abstract, whereas sometimes my work is more controlled. Gordon said the associations 45 members pay annual dues of about $500, which helps cover rent and other costs of the 7,000-square-foot Pacific Street space the group moved into in 2013. Additional revenue to cover costs comes from commissions from other exhibits, but not Open Studios, Gordon said. In one of the studio spaces, Sarah Bamford, 34, of Old Greenwich, said she was considering buying one of the Impressionist styled paintings by Stamford artist Barbara Giannetta. Bamford attended the show on Sunday with her father, Edward Bamford, and her dog, Sumi, who is named for a Japanese form of black ink. Bamford said she is fortunate to acquire the works of local artists and even befriend them. When you develop a relationship with the artist, you know them and see the different work theyve created, Bamford said. I consider it an investment and a worthy cause to support our local artists." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In mid-October, 23 high school robotics teams from around Michigan came to Dow High to compete in the 3rd annual Great Lakes Bay Bot Bash. Bot Bash is an annual FIRST Robotics Competition event hosted at Dow High School by four local teams Dow Highs The Charge, Saginaws Team Phoenix, Bullock Creeks Blitz Creek and Mount Pleasants Flat Mountain Mechanics. This competition gave teams the opportunity to play the 2016 game, FIRST Stronghold. FIRST Stronghold involves two alliances of three robots each, working to break down the defenses and castle of the opposing alliance and capture their flag by launching boulders at their tower. Bot Bash not only allows teams to have a chance to compete one more time with last seasons robot, but is also an excellent recruiting opportunity for robotics teams. For many freshman and rookie students, this is the first competition they will attend and it gives them an excellent idea of what is to come when teams receive their new game challenge in January. Being a first time driver, it really opened up a new perspective showing me how to operate under pressure said Lucas Foote, a junior at Dow High. Bot Bash 2016 was won by the alliance of The Charge, the RoboJackets (Auburn Hills) and the ATA Coregears (Dearborn). Coming in second place was the alliance of Like A Boss (Midland High), the Rogue Robots (Midland Homeschool) and Bot Central (Bay City). Other local teams winning awards include: Volatile Chaos Inhibitors (Meridian High) won the Hero Bot award, celebrating the team that showed exceptional graciousness during the competition; Rise of the Warrior Bots (Bay City Western High School) won the Fired Up Bot, celebrating a team that promotes enthusiasm through spectacular team spirit; Like a Boss won the Summit Bot award, celebrating a newer team that shows technical excellence and helps others succeed; and the Underdogs (St. Charles High School) won the Auto Bot award, celebrating a team with extraordinary autonomous programming. Bot Bash sponsors include The Dow Chemical Co. and Midland Public Schools. FIRST Robotics Competition high school teams will receive their new 2017 game challenge in January. Each team will then have six weeks to design, prototype, fabricate and program a new and unique 120 pound robot specifically designed to meet the new game challenge. Being involved in FIRST Robotics gives students the opportunity to learn not only about building robots, but also finance, management, business, communications, mentoring and leadership. For more information visit www.firstinspires.org Oct. 28 About 3 p.m., a vehicular collision occurred in the 4500 block of Holt St. Officers O'Sullivan and D. Guerra were dispatched to City of Bellaire Police Department lobby in reference to traffic accident that had previously occurred. The investigation indicated that the at fault driver had fled the scene and is still at large, the investigation is ongoing. Oct. 31 At 8:28 p.m., Officers O'Sullivan and D. Guerra were dispatched to the 5100 block of Huisache Street in reference to an accident. The driver at fault was arrested for driving while intoxicated with a child and child endangerment. At 9:29 a.m., Officers J. Trujillo and R. Guerra were dispatched to 6700 block of West Loop South in regards to a forgery in progress. Officers Trujillo and Guerra arrived about 9:32 a.m. and made contact with bank staff who advised them of the situation. Officers Trujillo and Guerra placed the suspect into custody for forgery and transported her to the City Bellaire booking for processing. Nov. 3 At 7:33 p.m., Officer Delgado conducted a traffic stop at 5300 Bellaire Boulevard for no motor vehicle registration. Delgado made contact with the driver, who provided his Texas Identification Card, but was unable to provide proof of financial responsibility. Through computer inquiry the driver was found to have a suspended driver's license. The driver was placed in custody for driving while license invalid enhanced. Nov. 4 At 12:18 p.m., Officer H. Lopez was dispatched to the Bellaire Motor Inn at 6639 Ferris St. in reference to a theft of a television. The reportee stated a customer who was staying at the motor inn stole a television prior to checking out of the motor inn. At 2:27 a.m., Officer Barrientos was patrolling the area of 4700 Holly Street when he observed a silver 1993 Toyota Camry traveling westbound. Barrientos observed the Camry strike a parked vehicle. During the investigation, the driver was arrested for driving while intoxicated. At 6:06 p.m., Officers O'Sullivan and D. Guerra conducted a traffic stop in the 6700 block of North Second Street for expired motor vehicle registration. Through computer query, the Texas temporary tags were found to be fictitious. The driver was placed under arrest for displaying fictitious plates. At 3:14 p.m., Officer Ortega was dispatched to a single vehicle accident in the 5200 block of IH 610 NB at the crash barrels. The reportee/witness followed the suspect vehicle which exited the northbound lanes and re-entered IH 610 southbound lanes. Bellard located the suspect vehicle and initiated a traffic stop. Bellard observed the driver to have red bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, to be unsteady on his feet and to have the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from his breath and or person. Upon further investigation, the suspect was placed into custody for driving while intoxicated. Nov. 5 At 11:47 a.m., Officer Vorhees was dispatched to a suspicious vehicle in the 4300 block of Oleander Street. The vehicle was described as a silver Hyundai four-door with paper tags and a defective brake light. Vorhees observed a silver Hyundai Sonata in the 4600 block of Oleander Street and conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle in the 7100 block of East Service Road. The driver was identified by his Texas driver's license and subsequently found to be operating a motor vehicle while his Texas Driver's License was currently under suspension. Driver was placed in custody and transported to the Bellaire Jail, where he was booked for the charge of driving while license suspended (Class B misdemeanor). State lawmakers began putting their campaign promises on paper Monday morning, as they filed hundreds of bills on the first filing day for the 2017 legislative session. The proposals face a long road ahead, and only a small minority of them will make it out of committee, survive votes in both Capitol chambers and be signed into law by the governor's pen next year. Heres an early look at some the proposals expected to draw attention when lawmakers reconvene in Austin in January. Abortion and womens health Republicans were quick to file several anti-abortion measures on Monday. House Bill 87 by state Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, would make it illegal for women to have an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy even if doctors find the fetus has a severe, irreversible abnormality. Currently, state law allows abortions after 20 weeks only when the mothers life is in danger or when a severe fetal abnormality has been detected. And state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, wants Texas health care providers to be required to bury or cremate remains of aborted or miscarried fetuses. He filed House Bill 201, which echoes a recent proposal from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, made at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott. Cook's bill would penalize health care providers $1,000 for not cremating or burying biological tissue from pregnancy. Medical leaders and reproductive rights activists have vehemently opposed the health commissions proposal, questioning why it doesnt allow exceptions for miscarriages or other pregnancy complications that make a fetus non-viable. Education and child welfare House Bill 112 by state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, would cap the amount of tuition public universities can charge students. Bills in the 2015 session to re-regulate tuition costs were unsuccessful. Universities oppose tuition regulation, in part because state funding now covers a smaller share of their budgets. State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, filed Senate Bill 35, which would create universal pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds. It would also expand half-day pre-K to certain eligible 3-year olds. State lawmakers in 2015 approved a smaller grant program to expand pre-K education after Abbott named early education as his top legislative priority, though some pre-K advocates argued that the grants didn't go far enough. State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D- Brownsville, filed a bill to prohibit corporal punishment in schools. And state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, filed Senate Bill 77, which makes sexual assault of a parent grounds for terminating the assaulter's parental rights. Nelson said she filed the bill after being horrified to learn of a female constituent who was raped by her husband but could not have his parental rights removed. No parent should be forced to co-parent with their rapist, and this bill will provide stronger protections for victims of domestic assault, Nelson said in a statement. Criminal justice State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, filed House Bill 64 to abolish the death penalty. Another Dutton proposal, House Bill 158, would require grand jury hearings for police officers to be recorded. In Texas, grand jury proceedings are secret. State Rep. James White, R-Woodville, filed House Bill 67 to abolish the driver responsibility program, which levies surcharges on drivers for traffic offenses. Lawmakers and criminal justice reformers have compared the unpopular program, which requires drivers convicted of certain traffic offenses, such as speeding and driving while intoxicated, to pay additional annual surcharges on top of any court fines and criminal penalties to maintain their drivers licenses, to an unfair tax on poor Texans. Still, previous attempts to abolish it have fallen short at the Capitol. Revenue from the program provides funding for trauma hospitals across the state. LGBT matters State Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, filed a bill that would remove an obsolete, anti-gay law from the books. House Bill 96 would repeal the offense of homosexual conduct from the Texas criminal code. A 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case, Lawrence v. Texas, already struck down the states sodomy law as unconstitutional, meaning the current criminal statute is purely symbolic. Moodys bill would also change the states health and safety code to remove language that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public. Voting issues House Bill 159, by Dutton, would allow online voter registration. State law currently requires Texans to provide a physical signature on voter registration forms. And a series of measures proposed by state Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, would impose term limits on elected officials in Texas. Senate Joint Resolutions 10, 12 and 13 would limit terms for state senators and representatives (12 years), elected judges, including those on the Texas Supreme Court (18 years), and local officials (a maximum of 12 years, at the discretion of the local governments). Huffines said the election of Republican Donald Trump, who has no prior political experience, proved that voters were fed up with career politicians. The measures would amend the Texas Constitution and need voter approval in a statewide election. Health care State Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, filed House Bill 120, which would allow parents to get exemptions from immunization requirements for their children for non-medical reasons, rather than reasons of conscience. Activists seeking to guard parents right to opt out of immunization requirements have mobilized as a political force in Texas, while public health experts widely support the elimination of non-medical exemptions to immunization requirements. Meanwhile, Republican opposition to the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, remained robust on the first day of bill filing. Incoming state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Austin, announced she would file a non-binding resolution urging Congress to repeal the federal health law under the incoming Trump administration. Transportation Huffines filed a bill that would put rules governing transportation network companies, including taxi companies and ride-hailing firms, in the hands of the state.Senate Bill 113 comes after Austin voters this year elected to keep regulations that led Uber and Lyft, two app-based transportation network companies, or TNCs, to leave the states capital. State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, filed Senate Bill 176, which lays out specific, statewide regulations for the companies. His proposal would require national background checks for drivers and require that users are able to request wheelchair-accessible rides. Food and agriculture State Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, filed House Bill 57, which would allow licensed farmers to sell raw or unpasteurized milk in their homes, at their place of business or at a farmers market. The proposal which builds on similar legislation from 2015 would not allow the sale of raw milk in supermarkets. Flynn also filed House Bill 95, a proposal to remove Texas from daylight saving time. State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, filed House Bill 164, which would create a statewide fund to subsidize the construction and renovation of grocery stores in food deserts in poor and moderate-income neighborhoods. The Texas Grocery Access Investment Fund would be funded through federal, state and private grants and loans as well as any funds appropriated by the Legislature. A photo trip to Tanzania will be the topic of a program at the Midland Camera Club meeting from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15 in room 304 of Midland Evangelical Free Church, 721 N. Jefferson. Club members images from club photo walks in Midland and Bay City and members black and white images will be shown during the clubs Nov. 22 meeting also from 7 to 9 p.m. at the same site. He urged the facility to build strong research groups, while developing a number of major sciences, including computing, renewable energy, environment and maritime technology, thus enabling technology transfer and dealing with issues related to the environment, green growth and climate change. Speaking at a ceremony on November 12th to mark the universitys 60th anniversary, he asked the university to further improve education and training quality to enhance the countrys human resources quality and meeting the requirement of the labour market. It is crucial to design policies to attract high profile lecturers, while expanding external relations and creating favourable conditions for scientists to conduct research, he said. Meanwhile, the university should also pay attention to build pure and strong Party organisation, increasing political awareness for students, lecturers and officials. He requested other ministries, sectors and localities to support the university to promote its role as the leading research university in fundamental science of Vietnam, and enter top 100 Asian universities in 2020 and reaching Asian standard for a number of areas in 2030. President Tran Dai Quang attends the ceremony (Photo: VNA) The University of Natural Sciences under the Hanoi National University, formerly known as Hanoi University, was established in 1956, becoming the first university offering fundamental science courses in the northern region, with 430 students initially. Prof. Nguy Nhu Kon Tum was the first headmaster of the university. On December 10th, 1993, the university was named the University of Natural Sciences and put under the management of Hanoi National University. It was the first facility in the country offering programmes for high-school, post-graduate, Master and PhD levels as well as special bachelor science courses for talents. The facility has made excellent achievements during its 60-year operation, significantly contributing to the countrys education development as well as the national construction and defence. As a top facility for fundamental science training, the university has announced more than 200 scientific researches each year at prestigious international science magazines, including the Nature Magazine. At the ceremony, President Tran Dai Quang presented Ho Chi Minh Order to the university. This is the second time the facility has been honoured with the noble order../. Conroe-based Galdisa USA Inc. is planning the construction of a $5.4 million peanut-processing facility at Conroe Park North industrial park. It is expected to initially bring 24 full-time positions and an annual payroll of over $750,000. The Conroe City Council approved a tax abatement agreement with the company Thursday. Montgomery County Commissioners Court approved the same agreement with the company. Galdisa USA is an affiliate of Galdisa Mexico and specializes in supplying and processing peanuts, pumpkin seeds, hibiscus flower, broad beans and chickpeas. Representatives with Galdisa could not be reached for comment. According to the agreement, the city will abate the property tax on the 10-acre plot for six years beginning in 2017. The first two years will be at 100 percent abatement before stepping down to 80, 60, 40 and 20 percent each subsequent year. The company is expected to have the new facility complete by December 2017. "This tax abatement agreement conforms with our existing policy as well as the (amended) policy," City Attorney Marc Winberry said. The council approved an amended tax abatement policy during the same meeting, putting forth more specific requirements for companies. While the city's policy mirrored the county's policy, Winberry said the city's policy has one significant difference. The city of Conroe provides incentives to attract hotels and/or convention facilities in the downtown area. The city's policy allows for the abatement of property tax for up to 10 years depending on the size of the business and the number of jobs it will bring to the community. The amended policy outlines that 1,560 hours per year qualifies as a full-time position. That number, he said, is three-quarters of the standard set out in the Affordable Care Act that qualifies employees as full-time, making them eligible for benefits through a company. In addition, Winberry said the city set a minimum salary at $30,000 annually per employee and that contract jobs or "lease employees" will not be counted in the number of qualifying jobs. Hale County commissioners arent quite ready to authorize $347,300 in repairs to a deteriorating bridge across the Runningwater Draw southeast of Plainview. Rather, they want to explore various options including possibly closing County Road Z were it crosses the waterway about a mile downstream from the citys wastewater treatment plant and about three-quarters mile south of US-70. At Thursdays work session, Precinct 1 Commissioner Harold King told commissioners that sinkholes have developed in the dirt roadbed on the bridge which consists of six metal culverts held in place by concrete embankments. Except when it rains, the Runningwater Draw is normally a dry creek bed through Plainview. However, the stream is a flowing waterway in that particular area thanks to the discharge of effluent from the city sewage treatment plant. Further downstream, the gray water either percolates back into the underground aquifer or is syphoned off to irrigate farmland adjacent to the draw. The constant flow from the wastewater treatment plant, King said, is eroding away dirt packed around the culverts and causing the metal to corrode. For now the county has erected barricades on either sides of the bridge and marked the sinkholes with traffic cones. The largest is about 4- or 5-feet in diameter, and you can see the water down below, King said Monday. You dont want to walk too close to the edge, and you sure dont want to drive through there, although there are several tracks where someone moved the barricades and drove across. King said the damage was first noticed about three weeks ago. As a result, he consulted with Brandt Engineering Group, Ltd., of Amarillo since they have experience with similar situations in the Panhandle. They estimated that repairs will cost $347,300. The roadway is a mile east of the entrance to the city landfill and a mile west of the Formby-Wheeler Prison Units. It runs along the west edge of the prisons farm property. Commissioners noted Monday that one family lives a short distance south of the bridge and closing the road at that point would force them to drive an extra 2 1/2 miles to reach US 70. Precinct 4 Commissioner Benny Cantwell thinks that bridge along with three similar ones in his precinct were likely constructed in the 1940s. Theyve just about reached the end of their lifespan, he said. While no action was taken Monday, commissioners voiced several options. One involves putting sleeves in the existing culverts. That would necessitate diverting the flowing stream around the damaged area and clearing away silt that has reduced the diameter of the culverts by at least half. Another would involve removing the existing culverts and replacing them while rebuilding the bridge. A third option would be to permanently close County Road Z were it crosses the draw. Before the county does that, commissioners would likely hold public hearing to elicit comments from the public. Since the bridge crosses a natural waterway, commissioners will ask County Attorney Jim Tirey to check with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency about possible regulatory issues. Commissioners also will check into possible grants to help fund the repairs and seek participation from the City of Plainview. King noted that a natural gas line is buried in roadway where it crosses the draw. Although commissioners took no formal action on bridge repairs, they voted unanimously to insure the countys 16 motorgraders through the Texas Association of Counties. The county has about $3.5 million invested in the maintainers, which have not been insured. Commissioners accepted a $2,500 deductible per occurrence, with a six-month premium of $6,332. A $5,000 deductible would have reduced the premium to $5,990. Cantwell noted that several years ago vandals broke out windows on a nearly new front-end loader, and repairs cost about $5,000. Fourteen Plainview residents were appointed to two-year terms on the Hale County Historical Commission, through Dec. 31, 2018. They include Melinda Brown, Bill Coleman, Rebekah Crowe, Elva Hipolito, Kim Horne, John McDonough, Barbara McDonough, Angus Ott, J.B. Roberts, Ramona Roberts, Alice Sawayer, Phyllis Wall, Rodney Watson and June Wells. In other action, commissioners: --Authorized District Clerk Carla Cannon to move ahead with planning an Employee Recognition Luncheon on Dec. 15. --Approved hiring Sonny Cabrera as corrections officer at the jail. --Authorized step increases for corrections officers Reggie Pierce, James Rockwell and Christopher DeLeon for receiving their state jail certification. --Accepted a report from Sheriff David Mull that the jail passed its state inspection Oct. 26 and is in compliance with minimum jail standards. --Approved a budget amendment transferring $160,000 from indigent care/health and welfare to environmental safety to begin the Tyre King cleanup. --Approved current accounts payable of $545,882.19, which includes about $240,000 for the purchase of a motorgrader for Precinct 3 and $153,000 for an excavator for the Tyre King project. The cost of the maintainer is being reduced by $147,000 with a trade-in. --Accepted the September activity report from Petersburg EMS showing three dispatches resulting in two transfers. --Accepted the resignation of KrisAnn Schultz from the Hale Center EMS board and appointed Alisha Henlzer as her replacement. --Accepted an offer of $750 for tax-foreclosed property at 409 W. 14th St., Hale Center. The property is appraised at $1,125. The City of Hale Center is trustee. --Advanced Benito Garcia, Ollie Liner Center manager, to pay grade 17.6 to bring his current salary in line with what Lynn Barton, the previous manager, was making when he retired in May. --Received notification from District Attorney Wally Hatch of the planned expenditure of $300 from the asset forfeiture fund for the purchase of a digital camera for use by a local DPS trooper. --Authorized County Extension Agent Cassidy Peek to travel to Nicaragua later this month to assist efforts to set up a 4-H program in that country. ExxonMobil will increase the capacity of its Beaumont polyethylene production by 65 percent after construction of an expansion at an existing plant on U.S. 90 west of Beaumont, the oil giant announced today. The expansion is part of a "multi-billion-dollar expansion under way along the Texas Gulf Coast, including two projects at its Beaumont refinery and at chemical and refining complexes in Baytown and Mont Belvieu. The Beaumont polyethylene expansion will produce things such as lighter weight food packaging that will help to packaged foods fresher while serving a growing worldwide middle class that will drive demand for goods and services that will consumer higher amounts of chemicals from manufacturers like ExxonMobil, said Cindy Shulman, ExxonMobil vice president for plastics and resins. "This is the most dynamic time in my 36 years with the company," Shulman told an midday audience at the Event Centre. "ExxonMobil has invested more in Texas than anywhere in the United States."She said in the next 20 years, world population will increase to nine billion from the existing seven billion and an emerging worldwide middle class will grow to five billion from its current two billion. "We will have to feed more as global living standards move up. So will demand for chemicals and the products we make," she said. Shulman predicted the chemical industry will grow by 50 percent in the next 20 years. The investment in the polyethylene plant also will produce an economic impact of $20 billion in the first 13 years after its 2019 completion, plant manager Jason Duncan said. However, ExxonMobil would not specify how much money would be invested in the plant's expansion other than its 2.2 billion pounds annually would grow by 65 percent to about 3.6 billion pounds. While the construction will employ 1,400 workers directly, the expansion will result in 40 new permanent employees to its existing 350-person workforce at the U.S. 90 site. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SOUTHEAST TEXAS TALES Throngs of Beaumonters swooned and screamed as they swarmed film star Jimmy Stewart and director Frank Capra as the pair exited a plane at the city's airport in March 1947. The two spent just over three hours in Beaumont promoting a five-day run of "It's a Wonderful Life" at the Jefferson Theatre. Beaumont and four other cities were selected for nationwide premieres with the star and director of the 1946 film. In celebration of Stewart's and Capra's visit and the 70th anniversary of the Christmas classic, the City of Beaumont and the Beaumont Heritage Society are partnering for a joint event this Friday at the Jefferson. The Heritage Society Happy Hour begins at 6 p.m. in front of the Jefferson with a red carpet entrance. Attendees are encouraged to come in 1940s period attire. The city will screen "It's a Wonderful Life" at 7:30 p.m. as part of its ongoing Classic Movie Night series. In 1947, when Stewart and Capra arrived, Beaumont Mayor Pro Tem James Parker gave the pair keys to the city as the Lamar College band performed "Buffalo Gal Won't You Come Out Tonight," a song from the movie. Polly Tanner, whose husband, Sam, was the general manager and vice president of the Jefferson Amusement Co., recalled her brief, but memorable exchange with Stewart in a July 1997 Enterprise article that marked the star's passing at age 89. Sam's position gave Polly the chance to meet many stars - Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Carol Channing. But it's the phone call with Stewart that Tanner, who died in 2004 at 85, held most dear. If you go Beaumont Heritage Society Happy Hour When: 6 p.m. Friday Where: Jefferson Theatre, 345 Fannin St. What: Giglio Distributing Co. will have Samuel Adams selections, Winter Lager and Boston Lager. Cost: Free for members; $10 for non-members More: beaumontheritage.org Classic Movie Night: "It's a Wonderful Life" When: 7:30 p.m. Friday Where: Where: Jefferson Theatre, 345 Fannin St. Cost: $5; Popcorn, beer, wine and soft drinks available for purchase inside. See More Collapse She told an Enterprise reporter that she was invited to a private party held in Stewart's and Capra's honor at the Hotel Beaumont but wasn't able to attend because she was home with her newborn daughter. When Stewart shook Sam's hand at the reception, he asked about his wife. Sam replied, "she's at home," prompting the movie star to do something very un-celebrity-like. He told Sam "he would just call and talk to her." Polly Tanner knew exactly who it was when Stewart called - his "distinctive country drawl" was unmistakable, she said. Stewart asked Tanner what she was doing that kept her from attending the event. "Tending to the baby," she responded. When Stewart asked for specifics, she admitted she had just washed "out a diaper in the commode." She said she could hear a roar of laughter at the other end of the telephone line. At the end of the conversation, the movie star told Tanner to give the baby a kiss and "keep a kiss for yourself." Southeast Texas Tales is a weekly Enterprise feature that revisits regional history. More: DiscoverBeaumont.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate At Congregation Emanu El on Sunday morning, hundreds of slices of wheat bread were laid out neatly on long folding tables. In straight, grid-like rows, they formed a sort of phalanx against hunger. In the open space behind the Houston synagogue's sanctuary, a line of volunteers slapped slices of Butterball turkey onto every other piece of bread, making sandwiches and slipping them into Ziploc bags. Others tossed peanut butter crackers and cereal bars into brown paper lunch bags. Within a couple of hours, the assembly line had churned out 2,000 lunches for Kids' Meals, a Meals on Wheels program for Houston's hungry preschool-aged children. Sunday was Mitzvah Day at Emanu El, a day for volunteer work to help the homeless and the hungry, the disadvantaged and the overlooked. Hundreds of volunteers worked on projects with two dozen local agencies, from the Houston Food Bank to Undies for Everyone, a nonprofit that helps supply underwear to Houston students in need. "Mitzvah" is a Hebrew term that has come to mean "charitable act" or "good deed," and congregations worldwide - Jewish and those of other faiths - make Mitzvah Day an annual opportunity to volunteer and do good works in their communities. At Congregation Emanu El, Mitzvah Day started nearly 25 years ago. Jason Plotkin was a kid in the congregation back then; this year, he was one of two Mitzvah Day coordinators. Even his 14-month-old son was taking part in Mitzvah Day, tagging along for a project at a senior care center. "The great thing about Mitzvah Day is it brings together the different generations," Plotkin said. "There are not many opportunities where, as a family, you can come together and do projects. We really pride ourselves on creating those opportunities." Cookies for firefighters Kids chased one another around tables and laughter echoed in the open space behind the synagogue's sanctuary. Down the hallway, classrooms in the congregation's Helfman Religious School were filled with students doing volunteer projects. Kindergartners made bubble-blowing kits for kids at homeless shelters, because bubble-blowing encourages calming deep breaths to reduce stress. First-graders put together bags full of snacks and toiletries for patients at the VA hospital, and second-graders made cookies for local firefighters. "I put waaay too many stickers," said second-grader Eli, holding up the gift bag he'd decorated for his cookies. In the spaces between stickers, he'd written a note: "Thank you for protecting us. Keep it up." Downstairs, a group of women organized piles of donated baby and children's clothing for the House of Tiny Treasures, part of SEARCH Homeless Services. Someone held up a toddlers' T-shirt: "Amy, can I put '24 months' in the same pile as 2T?" Volunteer Amy Kapiloff made a quick judgment and went back to sorting. "I've got grandchildren in every size, so I can kind of guess what they are," she said. Help for animals, too Nearby, a team of volunteers made chew toys and blankets for the animals at Houston's Citizens for Animal Protection shelter. Lea Rabalais tied knots in a piece of fleece to make a soft two-layer blanket. "They can go into cages for the animals that are coming in," she said. "Maybe the ones that are hurt and want something a little bit soft, or maybe they just need to cuddle a little." Her cousin brought her to Mitzvah Day and showed her around Sunday morning, Rabalais said. "She told me, 'They're doing work for dogs at that table.' I said, 'Put me there.' " The congregation's young professionals delivered hot meals to the homeless downtown through Direct HOPE. The Brotherhood men's group did carpentry work and repairs for the Emergency Aid Coalition. And a group of volunteers went to the Church of Bethel's Family to offer legal advice and job-searching tips. About a dozen men and women showed up to hear Barbara Marcus, who owns a staffing agency, talk about crafting a good resume; she and other professionals then offered one-on-one resume advice. Oren Hayon, the congregation's senior rabbi, said Mitzvah Day is about building a "culture of service" in the congregation, not just offering an annual day of charity work. "A day of service is always great, but we're trying to create a more systemic change." NORWALK The Norwalk Parking Authority is poised to roll back starting in January enforcement for on-street parking in SoNo from midnight to 9 p.m. Motorists had paid $1-an-hour to park and the on-street meters were enforced until 6 p.m. on Washington Street and until 9 p.m. on nearby North Main Street. On July 1, the hourly rate went up to $1.50 an hour and enforcement was extended to midnight unilaterally. In July, we made it from 6 p.m. to midnight and now we found that we think that was a mistake, said Dick Brescia, Parking Authority chairman. We were looking to create turnover all of that made sense but when the new rates came out on July 1 we were getting a lot of complaints. We were getting them from council members, we were getting them from the mayors office, we were getting them, obviously, from the restaurants. They were urging us to reevaluate what we had done. The hourly rate wont go back down to $1, but motorists using on-street parking in SoNo will get three free hours back. On Tuesday evening, the Parking Authority will hold a public hearing and afterward vote on returning the enforcement hours to 9 p.m. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m., at the Norwalk Parking Authority offices, 11 North Water St. Brescia predicted the change would be approved. If so, the 9 p.m. cutoff will take effect Jan. 1. More Information Changes to SoNo on-street parking enforcement Current: 8 a.m. to midnight Proposed: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Anticipated revenue loss: $88,000 See More Collapse Changes hit sour note The Parking Authority approved the higher hourly rate and extended hours in February as part of its rate structure for the fiscal year starting July 1. Brescia said the changes were made after research by consultant Desmond Associates and had two goals: eliminating inconsistencies, such as between Washington and North Main streets, and encouraging parking turnover. There are a lot of people employed in the SoNo area that were parking continuously and taking up the spaces that could be used by customers, Brescia said. Three months after the changes took effect, some SoNo merchants, restaurateurs and elected officials have come to a different conclusion about the merits of extending enforcement to midnight. Thea Tsiranides, co-owner of Salon Etre at 108 Washington St., and Matt Storch, owner and partner at Match SoNo at 98 Washington St., were among those who shared their thoughts with the Parking Authority after the changes took effect in July. Tsiranides said the enforcement hours should be rolled back to what they had been before July 1. It should go back to 6 p.m., Tsiranides said. People are coming down to eat dinner, they want to hang out. If they run into friends, if theres music downtown and they want to stay to the end of the night, they dont want to be rushed. Tsiranides said visitors ended up getting ticketed after enforcement was extended to midnight. She said $25 parking tickets are her customers biggest complaints. Storch said halting enforcement after 9 p.m. makes good sense for SoNo. He rejected the argument over parking space turnover. Midnight enforcement just doesnt make sense down there, Storch said. People coming down there early should be rewarded if they find an on-street parking spot and they should be able to stay, hang out and not worrying about getting a ticket. Larry Pellegrini, owner of Pellegrini Jewelers at 83-85 Washington St., has called for parity in parking rates for SoNo and the Wall Street area. He describes the current midnight enforcement and higher hourly rate in SoNo as ridiculous. When they raised the rates from dollar to a dollar and a half, I said, thats 50 percent higher. That should not be, said Pellegrini said. Businesses owners werent the only ones to engage the Parking Authority over the changes. The Common Councils Planning Committee was also drawn into the discussion. Committee Chairman John Kydes and Councilman Douglas E. Hempstead, who also sits on the committee, went before the Parking Authority in September and proposed rolling back the enforcement hours from midnight to 9 p.m. after hearing merchants concerns. Theyve organized down there. They had concerns about the new rates and on-street parking hours of operation change, Kydes said. From all the feedback we got we felt that moving the on-street parking (enforcement) back to earlier time was appropriate. Reevaluation Brescia said he asked Parking Authority Vice Chairman Mike Harden and staff person Kathryn R. Hebert to study parking data for the SoNo area since the July 1 implementation of the higher hourly rates and extended enforcement hours. Hebert said Parking Authority members listened to public input and discussed revenues since the July changeover. There were some complaints with the hours of operation, Hebert said. We didnt receive a lot of complaints about the fee increase. It was mostly about the hours of operation. The higher hourly rate and extended enforcement hours, as built into the authoritys 2016-17 budget, did boost revenues. Hebert said the Parking Authority concluded that rolling back enforcement to 9 p.m. would be a reasonable compromise given that most of the increased parking activity occurred between 6 and 9 p.m. Nevertheless, halting enforcement after 9 p.m. will come at a cost. The projected loss of revenue for the next six months it will be implemented the latter six months of the fiscal year is $88,000, Hebert said. But that will be covered through increased estimated revenues from the first part of the fiscal year. Theres some saving related to enforcement as well because of those three hours per night. rkoch@hearstmediact.com A woman was allegedly robbed at gunpoint and sexually assaulted in Port Arthur's north side early Saturday morning, according to a press release from the Port Arthur Police Department. Police said the male suspect was wearing a blue bandana over his face when he attacked the victim at 3600 Normandy. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Writing messages of love and support, hundreds of people posted their thoughts on sticky notes at San Francisco BART stations on Monday - the latest action aimed to sooth emotionally bruised Bay Area residents following Donald Trumps election last week. Organizers set up the community art installations each dubbed a Wall of Empathy as places for people to share their post-election feelings. The largest was at the 16th Street BART station in the Mission District. People are feeling a lot of grief and fear, said 25-year-old Muriel MacDonald who helped organize the event after seeing a similar wall in New York. We need to process that feeling and do the difficult work ahead of us. The 16th Street Wall of Empathy - there were smaller walls at the Montgomery and 24th Street BART stations - was the latest Bay Area response to Tuesdays election in which residents have turned out to voiced their opposition to the president-elect. During the campaign, Trump at times targeted minorities with harsh rhetoric, leaving a deeply divided nation. As his language has shifted to one of unity after what many saw as a surprising victory, those who opposed him are trying to process what a Trump presidency might mean. We are so devastated now, Teresa Mejia, 60, said after writing Join a community organization and Take care of yourself on the wall. Mejia works at the Womens Building in San Francisco and has been deeply disturbed when thinking about how a Trump presidency might affect the low-income families shes close with. Im very depressed, but Im doing what I can to process this, she said. Yesterday, I went to a non-denominational church to be with spirits and then went to Lake Merritt for a demonstration. San Francisco resident Andre Pautin, 21, spotted the wall as he came up the escalator at the 16th Street Station on Monday morning. Its good to see something like this, he said. I just think that there are a whole bunch of emotional people who are confused and scared. Thats leading to a lot of negativity. While catharsis is one part of the wall, MacDonald said its also a way to get people to interact in person, rather than relying on social media as their only outlet for frustrations. The in-person action gets people out of the Facebook suck, she said. Its not that different. Were posting on a wall, but were having face-to-face conversations. Ultimately, MacDonald hopes the anti-Trump voices will begin to organize and lend time and other support toward organizations that may be decimated under the new president. This is a start, she said, not the end. Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy Photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy Photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3 TUSCOLA COUNTY - Shock waves of animosity fueled by the presidential election this month are being felt throughout the country even in rural Tuscola County. Although there has been no riots in the county like other areas, an ethnic intimidation case is being investigated by Tuscola County Sheriff's Deputy Steve Roland. The investigation stems from an incident discovered Saturday morning at a home on Smith Road in Koylton Township, where a person of Mexican descent lives. When people living there awoke Saturday morning, they found many boxes taped together blocking their driveway like a wall and with graffiti written on the boxes. "The wording was about Donald Trump taking back America and Mexicans suck. They also found a doll made of balloons hanging nearby and vulgar graffiti spray painted on their driveway," explained Tuscola County Sheriff Elect Glen Skrent in a press release According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics of Tuscola County's roughly 53,777 population, about 3.4 percent is Hispanic or Latino. Koylton's population is 1,585. Koylton Township boarders Sanilac and Lapeer counties. The incident in southern Tuscola County is being taken seriously. "This is a crime," Skrent said. "This sort of thing will not be tolerated." If anyone has any information about this incident call Roland at 989-673-8161, Ext. 4056."" Since it was announced last week Trump secured the majority of Electoral College votes to become president, there have been numerous reports of violence throughout the country in connection to his statements about minorities and women. The last major investigation of a hate crime in Tuscola County was in the fall of 2014 when a sign saying "KKK (Ku Klux Klan) picnic" painted on it in orange letters was placed on an open piece of property along Shay Lake and Harden roads, in Dayton Township, which is next-door to Koylton. Along with the words on the sign where it was placed was also an issue that prompted an ethnic intimidation investigation at that time. The Shay Lake area was developed in the 1960s to early 1970s by African-Americans primarily from Detroit as a summer getaway area. The KKK picnic statement referenced the era when white supremacist group did lynchings. That case was never solved despite an intensive investigation. China's CNBM has completed the registration of ownership rights to the 10 largest solar power plants in Ukraine with a total capacity of 267 MW, Director General of China's CNBM New Energy Engineering Co., Ltd. Yongzhi Chen has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. Commenting on the recent news about the acquisition of Neptun Solar incorporated into Activ Solar, he said that this was the last deal to register ownership rights to 10 solar power plants received for debts, while ownership rights to the rest of nine plants were registered earlier. "In general, we have invested around $1 billion of investment and financing, including commodity loans. Over EUR 168 million were converted into capital of 10 solar power plants. The company received control over the said assets in exchange of paying unrecoverable and unsecured debt under transactions to supply equipment," Chen said. He said that the Chinese company has been operating on the Ukrainian energy market since 2011. In 2012-2013 a large debt appeared, and the problem was settled only in 2014 when the plants were transferred to ownership as payment of the debt. Chen said that CNBM received permits from all Chinese and Ukrainian regulators, including Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee, and information that the company owns Ukrainian companies is available in open registers. He said that CNBM is fulfilling all liabilities of the Ukrainian companies to Ukrainian banks, including Oschadbank. As for the tariff that is considered set too high by many lawmakers and market players, he said that this tariff guaranteed the acceptable payback period with the prices of equipment at the moment of building the plants. "In 2011-2012 the cash cost of equipment was three times more than now. It is incorrect to assess the cash cost that was five years ago, taking into account the current market price," Chen said. Commenting on information that other countries eventually reduced feed-in tariffs, he said that there investors knew about the reduction of tariffs in advance and they could plan their operations. "On the other hand, the tariffs were not reduced for the finished facilities," he added. Chen said that allegations of some politicians that CNBM is linked to Ukrainian oligarchs, in particular, fugitive ex-head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Andriy Kliuyev, is an attempt to deceive regulators and society and explain the discriminative steps against the company by this. Some 70-75% of Ukrainian goods were exported under indirect contracts in January through September 2016. These contracts help to remove profit from the country, Head of the Office of Large Taxpayers of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine Yevhen Bambizov has said. "If we take the entire imports for the nine months, it totals some UAH 360 billion and 46% of imports contracts are indirect. As for exports, some 70-75% of goods out of UAH 400 billion are exported under indirect contracts. This is three fourths," the official said. He said that closing loss from these transactions is worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias. "We see the largest activities when indirect contracts are signed. It is when a contract is signed with one company registered, for example, in Switzerland, goods are delivered to the company with the smallest markup and then the Swiss resident resells the goods with a larger markup. Main profit remains in Switzerland," Bambizov said. He recalled that some countries have the official offshore status under government resolutions. There are countries that are not offshore zones, but they have lower rates or more flexible taxation system: the leader in the number of registered ownership rights in the world is Switzerland (60%). He said that the problem could be solved thanks to amendments to legislation, in particular, by the introduction of restrictions on operations of Ukrainian companies with offshore companies or companies that are registered in jurisdictions with lower taxes. He said that the introduction of tax on cooperation with offshore companies is possible. The Office of Large Taxpayers has 2,200 taxpayers who replenish the general fund of Ukraine's national budget by 60%. Pre-K education has long been seen as a potential silver bullet to help at-risk children excel in school. But new research is prompting second thoughts about its effectiveness for low-income kids. In a recent policy briefing describing statewide pre-K programs in Tennessee, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of the Annie E. Casey Foundation report that by third grade, children who attended pre-K had worse attitudes toward school and poorer work habits than children who didnt. About 3,000 children were randomly assigned either to attend a pre-K classroom or to not participate, then data on both groups subsequent academic performance were taken from a state database. The short-term impacts of the program, reported in 2013, looked good. Researchers found that children who attended preschool performed better than those who didnt on end-of-year achievement tests and got higher ratings from their teachers when kindergarten began. Plus, teachers said that the pre-K children were better prepared for school, had better work skills, and were more positive about school (this is similar to results in other studies of pre-K programs). However, the 2015 data, which included results of student performance into the third grade, showed that the achievement-test advantage for children who attended the pre-K program had disappeared by the end of kindergarten (also similar to results in other studies). Worse, by the end of first grade, their teachers rated pre-K program children as weaker in their work skills and less prepared for and more negative about school. Strikingly: At the end of both second grade and third grade, children who hadnt participated in the program performed better on academic tests than children who had. No one knows why, but factors could include that the activities the children experienced were not age-appropriate to their developmental needs -- i.e. heavily dependent on structured direct instruction rather than on student-interest-based play (weve all heard the horror stories about kindergarteners made to fill out worksheets, so this is not far-fetched). Or that students who had initially been ahead of peers got bored in waiting for them to catch up as they progressed through grades 2 and 3. Maybe for the youngsters in question, two extra years of high-stakes education and testing cast school as a drag to be endured, rather than experienced happily. Obviously, more studies are needed to see what went "wrong" with the pre-K intervention, but this misses the forest for the trees. Basically, children who need very early academic interventions tend to not have highly educated parents possessing expendable income with which to single-mindedly cultivate their children for an Ivy League degree from the moment of conception. The word gap between what low-income and more-affluent 3-year-olds have heard stands at a mind-boggling 30 million words. And, however well-intentioned, full-time, high-quality pre-K is going to eventually fall short in the context of a life without home caregivers who know to talk to their babies, engage in questioning dialogue with their toddlers and read to early-grade kids every day. Ive taught first-graders and high school students and, within their groups, the struggling and the high achievers share similar qualities. The academically successful students are much like other high performers throughout history: They exhibit self-control, have great amounts of curiosity and can focus on interests outside their own selves for sustained periods of time. The students who struggle are much like most of the adults in todays society: They have their faces glued to electronic devices and their headphones keep them closed off from their surrounding environments. They are curious only about whatever distraction can bring them pleasure for a few fleeting moments, and their interests revolve around how they are perceived by others, especially on social media. These students learn such behaviors in the home and extra pre-K isnt going to make much of a difference. How can we expect children who, even as babies, are becoming inured to the dopamine-release of instant digital gratification, to develop the patience and curiosity necessary to succeed academically? And how can we ever hope to expect it of children who grow up in the chaotic, loud and stressful environments that typify poverty? Pre-K interventions feel good, but what at-risk children really need are anti-poverty programs, parenting classes for their moms and dads, and a society that understands that the digital world is as much a challenge as it is an opportunity. Ukraine's An-225-Mriya heavy transport aircraft is ready to fly again after repairs. The Antonov State Enterprise on November 10 said the aircraft caught on fire at Lepipzig airport (Germany) for 15 or 16 seconds. The engines were inspected and repairmen replaced a leaky valve. The aircraft and engines were not damaged. "It is permitted to further exploit the An-225 aircraft. It is ready for new flights," Antonov's Facebook page said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Texas State University Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Google Maps Show More Show Less 3 of 3 The body of a male Texas State student was found on the San Marcos campus early this morning, officials said. Matt Flores, university spokesman, said the body was found inside the Academic Services Building North in a stairwell around 7:20 a.m. Monday. It appears to be a suicide, he said. Students are being offered counseling services in light of the incident, he said. A jury was picked Monday for a trial for a former Bexar County jail guard accused of beating up an inmate, after prosecutors dropped their attempt for now to add allegations that the guard showed a pattern of repeated mistreatment of prisoners. Avery Lemarcus Lawrence, 32, is charged with two counts of official oppression and a charge of violation of civil rights all misdemeanors related to an incident in which he allegedly punched and kicked inmate John Garcia on July 13, 2014. Lawrences lawyers, Marylin Bradley and Robert Porter, are expected to argue that Lawrence used allowable force to subdue an unruly inmate. Assistant District Attorneys Eddie Flores and Chris DeMartino had filed court papers on Nov. 1 saying they intended to introduce 16 extraneous offenses conduct for which Lawrence was not charged. They included allegations that he lied in incident reports, left out important facts or did not follow proper procedures in matters where he had pushed, punched, kicked, stomped on inmates, or allowed them to be beaten by fellow prisoners. In at least two cases, inmates were left with serious cuts one requiring stitches and another that resulted in the inmate having repeated seizures, according to the prosecutors court filings. The paperwork also alleges Lawrence displayed the pattern of brutality while working a side job providing security for Whataburger. Lawrences lawyers argued to State District Judge Melisa Skinner that allowing the extraneous offenses to come in was prejudicial to their client and that the allegations would not need to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. The state does not anticipate doing that (introducing extraneous conduct), subject to what the defense does, Flores told the judge. Skinner said the allegations would not be part of the trial unless the defense opens the door. The documents show that before serving at the adult jail, Lawrence supervised juvenile wards. During a performance review in July 2012, his reviewer wrote that Lawrence appears a bit aggressive when dealing with residents andmust be mindful ofactions and in control (of) demeanor at all times. At times, Lawrence escalated the situations into physical confrontations or used unjustified excessive force, the court paperwork said. In September 2013, for instance, in his report on how three inmates beat inmate Juan Martinez, Lawrence intentionally omitted an important fact, that he opened a cell door, giving the other prisoners access to Martinez, the court records said. The incident left Lawrence facing a proposed 30-day suspension, but it was reduced to six days after he appealed, documents said. On July 12, 2014, a day before the incident in which he is facing trial, Lawrence allegedly punched inmate Eric Palacios in the back of the head, took him down and handcuffed him, but failed to document that incident in a report, the court papers said. On Jan. 15, 2015, the Bexar County Sheriffs Office fired Lawrence because he was found to have used unjustified excessive force against inmates Jonathan Perez and John Corey Garcia, the prosecutions court paperwork said. Also in June 2012, according to the court papers, Lawrence said in his application to the sheriffs office that he had an associates degree in criminal justice from Palo Alto College, though investigators found that his transcripts listed his major as computer information systems and do not list any criminal justice courses. Opening arguments are scheduled for Tuesday morning. The trial is expected to last about a week. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The family of a 32-year-old father who was hit and killed on Loop 410 in September filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the teen driver who hit him. The lawsuit alleges that the driver, Jewell Hendrickson, was texting as she drove north on Loop 410 when she crossed into the opposite lane of traffic and hit Robert Bobby Cornish. His family also sued his employer. Cornish was attending to his work trailer, which was allegedly malfunctioning, when he was pinned between his trailer and Hendricksons car. He was transferred to San Antonio Military Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. My heart broke on September 22nd and it will never be the same, Cornishs mother Carla Cornish said Monday. Hendrickson could not immediately be reached for comment Monday. The lawsuit also alleges that Cornishs employer, Sageleaf Custom Homes, had a history of safety violations involving its trailers and did not provide Cornish with a working truck or trailer, contributing to his death. When contacted Monday afternoon, Chris Condon, owner at Sageleaf Custom Homes, said he did not want to comment on the lawsuit. The lawsuit seeks $1 million from the defendants and aims to send a message that distracted driving and texting is unacceptable. The lawsuit is not about money, said Tom Crosley, the attorney representing the family pro bono. The purpose of the lawsuit is to try to make a difference and send a message on this important public safety issue. Police said at the time of the crash that it was unclear why Hendrickson, 18, lost control of her vehicle or if she would face criminal charges. The city of San Antonio bans driving while texting though there is no statewide law. A legislator, in his fourth attempt to change the law, is filing a bill today to make it illegal statewide. Crosley said texting while driving represents one of the biggest threats to motorists everywhere. Distracted driving is the new DWI, he said. Driving while texting represents an eightfold increase in wrecks. Cornish and his wife Sarah Blake Cornish have two young daughters, and she is four months pregnant with their third child, who will be named for his father. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Converse man who used his AR-15 rifle to detain four men he thought were going to burglarize his neighbors home last month now finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Coty Bob McDonnell, 31, made his initial appearance Monday on a charge of deadly conduct, a misdemeanor, but the case was reset for next month. Converse police arrested McDonnell on the night of Oct. 22 or early Oct. 23 after he detained the men, believing they were burglars, according to an account provided by his neighbor, Doug Stearns, and his lawyer, Daniel De La Garza. Charging him might have a chilling effect on Texans who want to protect their property, they argued. McDonnell himself declined comment, citing the pending case. Texas law gives some leeway to persons who believe they have been asked to protect the property of a third party, allowing the use of deadly force to prevent theft or criminal mischief, but the circumstances of McDonnells case differed considerably when described by police and his neighbor. Converse police say McDonnell went too far when he chased the four down the street and blocked their way out with his vehicle. The four were charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, but not burglary. They told officers they were on their way to a party, according to a police report. These kids just stopped in the roadway to change drivers, said Assistant Chief Rex Rheiner. He pursued them, and when he pursued them down the road is when he left the realm of protection of property. He pointed the weapon at them, Rheiner added. He was out there acting as a police officer, when he has no police powers. Stearns, 51, an Air Force retiree, said he had asked McDonnell to keep an eye on his house while he was out of town and gave him a key. Their subdivision has had a rash of burglaries and recently saw a Converse school vandalized, he said. McDonnell even mowed his lawn and took care of his cat, Stearns said. Stearns said McDonnell told him he had noticed a car coming down the street with its lights off and when it stopped near Stearns home, three men got out and approached or entered Stearns driveway. McDonnell grabbed his rifle and approached them and, They said, Oh (expletive), theres somebody here, Stearns said. McDonnell prevented the group from leaving in the car they arrived in, but had put away his weapon by the time police arrived, according to Stearns. He called the prosecution a waste of time and money. I think its ridiculous, Stearns said. We should be able to protect our homes and do so in a way that doesnt cause a loss of life. He did what he thought was best, Stearns added. I will continue to support and defend my friend. McDonnells attorney said his client should not have been arrested. We celebrate gun rights here in Texas and I dont know why they would do that to him, De La Garza said. It now makes me reluctant to protect my property. We want them to dismiss the case and give him back his gun. Rheiner said there was no evidence the men had committed burglary or were trying to. All but one were adults, the youngest was 17, he said. Besides deadly conduct, Converse police also initially charged McDonnell with unlawful restraint, but that charge does not appear on the current charging documents filed by the Bexar County District Attorneys Office. McDonnell has prior arrests resulting in charges of unlawful carrying of a weapon, in Burnet and Horseshoe Bay. He pleaded guilty in the Burnet case in 2008, and was convicted in Llano County on the Horseshoe Bay case, according to online court summaries. County Court No. 9 Judge Wayne Shelton reset the case for a pretrial conference on Dec. 15. Its just astounding to me that this was even continued, Stearns said. If someone is coming toward your house in the middle of the night, are you going to stop and ask them if theyre 18? You dont know what youre up against. gcontreras@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Susan Gray, a realtor, and Haley Skinner, a YMCA employee, both came to the Alamo Beer Company on Sunday separately, but on the same mission. Anything where you can drink beer and have it go to a good cause is good enough for me, said Skinner, an empty Alamo beer glass in her hand. Gray nodded vigorously across from her. They had come alone, but ended up finding each other and becoming friends. People will think Im like your mom. But Im the cool mom, joked Gray. For the second year in a row, University of Houstons Conrad N. Hilton College in San Antonio hosted a cook-off at Alamo Beer. Nine teams representing different food companies in San Antonio competed for the best one-pot recipe. More than $3,700 dollars were raised just from tickets sold before the event, all of which goes directly toward scholarships for the college students, many of whom are Latino, first generation, or military-connected. The college started in San Antonio at St. Philips College campus in 2014, said Nathan Jarvis, a professor at Hilton College and coordinator for the event. It was the first San Antonio college to offer a bachelor of science degree in hotel and restaurant management. In 2015, it moved to its own campus near the Alamodome and hosted its first cook-off. In addition to fundraising, the cook-off also helps spread awareness about the college, which officials said started with only 20 to 25 students in 2014. This is exactly what we do. Were a culinary and hospitality college so it made sense to do an event to show off the skills our students have and our amazing local restaurants, said Lisa Hernandez, assistant dean at the college and last years coordinator for the cook-off. The event was put on by student volunteers and many of the volunteer restaurants also help train those students. We were told this was fertile grounds for hospitality, but we were invited by the San Antonio industry, not the community. So now its our job to invite the community to partake in this field, Hernandez said. Albert Bafford, the owner and head chef of Take 5 Pasta was absolutely floored to discover that his three-month-old business run out of a food truck had won first place. It was for his Italian-Creole gumbo fusion dish, which took the traditional gumbo recipe and replaced chicken broth with a creamy, homemade marinara and rice for homemade pasta. As an Italian chef, he said he had the idea to do a Louisiana fusion after moving to Texas from California and hearing what Texans had to say about gumbo. As soon as everybody told me to stay away from gumbo, I said I have to do it! Thats just who I am, said Bafford, wearing a mardi gras bead necklace and a cap with two party streamers coming out of it. This was the first competition his truck has entered, and his first win. Were trying to get out in the community. So obviously this is a great step, it lets people know we actually cook, he said. Some people say Oh how good can this Italian food be, its in a food truck? But were the same as any restaurant, the only difference is were on wheels. sfosterfrau@express-news.net AUSTIN The parents of David Molak, a 16-year-old who killed himself after being harassed online, came to the Texas Capitol on Monday to promote a bill in his memory to try to give more protection to victims of bullying. There are so many children that are suffering silently Davids Law is to protect those kids, said Davids father, Matt Molak, speaking from behind a lectern with his sons photograph on it. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Vandals who placed a tree limb, a boulder and other lumber pieces in a pipeline caused a sewer to overflow on the North Side Sunday, officials said. San Antonio Water System crews responded to the overflow around 5 p.m., which occurred west of Blanco Road between Bitters Road and Deer Crest Drive, according to a SAWS news release. SAWS officials estimated that greater than 100,000 gallons of domestic wastewater was spilled. "Crews are onsite today continuing to clean up," said Anne Hayden, SAWS spokeswoman, adding the spill had been stopped but that the agency dose not have an exact number of gallons spilled. RELATED: Someone in San Antonio left their crutch in a sewer, according to SAWS The spill amount has exceeded the requirement for public notice, the release said. RELATED: Did you lose your bowling ball in a sewer? SAWS has it Panther Springs Creek could potentially be affected by the spill, the news release said. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 SAN ANTONIO A 27-year-old woman was killed Sunday morning in a head-on collision with a suspected drunken driver who was traveling the wrong way on U.S. Highway 281 near the Pearl, according to police. Lauren E. Patrick died at the scene of the crash, which occurred at about 5:23 a.m. Sunday in the 2800 block of U.S. Highway 281 near St. Marys Street, according to a preliminary police report. AN ANTONIO A man died Monday afternoon after a drive-by shooting that started when an individual and a suspect exchanged "stink eye," said San Antonio Police Department Chief William McManus. A group of four people exchanged "looks that neither side appreciated" at a West Side gas station shortly after 2 p.m., McManus said. A group of professionals not representing government officials intend to draw up a list of possible investment projects in Ukraine worth $150 billion. The projects could be implemented in Ukraine in coming 15-20 years, former head of the Presidential Administration and Head of the National Investment Council Borys Lozhkin has said. "There are no [large investment] projects in the country. Ministries and state-run companies even cannot give projects worth $10 billion, while we need $150 billion for next 15 or 20 years. These figures are realistic," he said at the third Orchestrators of Change Directors forum that took place in Kyiv on November 10. He said that one of the largest international funds with assets of over $500 billion under management has expressed its readiness to invest $1-3 billion in Ukraine. The fund asked to present projects worth $20 billion to select some. It was found out that the country does not have these projects. Lozhkin said that he ordered a group of 'non-government' people to prepare the list of projects in the sectors, including revised projects proposed by ministries. He said that the Ukrainian energy sector could spend $50-70 billion of investment in coming 20 years, and infrastructure and agriculture - $30-40 billion each. He said that these are projects worth over $100 million and better if they were $300-500 million, as efforts spent on the projects worth $5 billion or $100 million are the same. Lozhkin said that foreign direct investment (FDI) is the main hope for Ukraine's exploding growth. "$1 billion of FDI is around 1% of GDP growth. If they have them worth $6-8 billion, it would be 6-8% of GDP growth and a multiplier we can reach 10% of growth a year. Then the values would change quicker," he said. MHP Board Chairman Yuriy Kosiuk said that Ukraine today is not ready for large investments, as there is a large risk of losing it. The process should be gradual, he said. "One cannot help a fool," he said. Lozhkin said that one can give $500 million to such businessmen as Kosiuk and President of Galnaftogaz Concern Vitaliy Antonov who also participated in the discussion. However, Kosiuk said that they could suffer from country risks too. Milkiland, a dairy group with assets in Ukraine, Russia and Poland, saw EUR 24.81 million of net loss in January-September 2016 and this was 35% down year-over-year. According to a group's report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), revenue fell by 23%, to EUR 112.94 million triggered by devaluation of the hryvnia and Russian ruble. Gross profit fell by 27%, to EUR 16.7 million due to higher affective raw milk prices. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) decreased by 45%, to EUR 5.3 million. Operating loss totaled EUR 2.4 million (EUR 7.73 million a year ago). Milkiland concentrated efforts on offsetting the negative effect of Russian ban by expansion in the Groups existing markets and acceleration of local cheese production in Russia as well as by finding new export markets. Raw milk prices growth in Russia and Ukraine is still not fully compensated by increased prices for finished dairy, further price increase in line with the general market trends to be implemented by the group to restore profitability margins. Ukraines dairy products consumption in the nine month of 2016 in comparison with the same period of 2015 decreased 0.5% year-over-year in volume terms. Russian market is forecasted to show slightly weaker dynamics of 2-3% year-over-year decline in dairy products consumption in 2016. The group expanded its presence on new export markets in Q3 2016, such as Israel, Egypt, Morocco, delivering cheese, butter and SMP to those countries. Cheese & butter segment contributed approximately 34% to the groups total revenue. The segment revenue dropped by c.26% to EUR 37.9 million jeopardized by the restrictions imposed by the Russian authorities on dairy imports from a number of countries, including Ukraine and the EU. The lost export volumes were still not fully compensated by sales growth in the countries of the groups operation. However, Milkiland managed to deliver solid volume growth in Ukraine, as well as increased local cheese output and sales in Russia. Whole-milk dairy remained the largest segment in terms of revenue providing for 55%. Its revenues declined by 21% to EUR 62.1 million. In Ingredients and other products segment, revenue decreased by 20% to EUR 12.9 million mainly due to decline in SMP sales by 27% year-over-year. The polls were wrong. The media was wrong. And I was wrong. American voters or at least, half of them wanted something different than what many of us expected theyd want. A man with the endorsements of zero national newspapers and zero living presidents, who lost all three debates, and who 61 percent of exit-poll respondents said was unqualified to be president, has won the presidency. One reason we got things wrong is that we assumed most Americans had come around to realizing just how dangerous Donald Trump and his bad ideas were. After all, hadnt we convinced our audiences of this many times over? Like many other elites, Ive spent the better part of the past 17 months warning the public about Trumps bigotry, misogyny, magical thinking and authoritarian impulses. Unfortunately, also like many other elites, I have since learned that those I wanted most to heed these warnings did not. And in an increasingly siloed media environment, reaching let alone persuading those undisposed to listen to and agree with us appears increasingly impossible. As a writer, I have always believed in the power of words. This election, and the parallel media echo chambers that have encased it, have shaken that belief. We writers can preach to the choir, but our chances of converting anyone outside our house of worship have narrowed. Fortunately, I retain faith in another powerful tool: democracy. By which I mean democracy as defined by H.L. Mencken: the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Maybe the only way for Americans to really, truly understand how toxic, wrong-headed and futile Trumps policies are is to let him provide proof of concept. That is, to give us Trumpism, good and hard. Maybe the only way to prove that Trump cant bring back manufacturing jobs, or coal jobs, or other jobs displaced by technology and productivity gains, is to let him try to do so through his ill-advised tariffs. Yes, this may spark a trade war. Yes, it may lead to the losses of millions of jobs. But maybe thats what Americans require in order to believe such things would happen, since they clearly dont trust experts projections on such matters. Likewise, maybe the only way for Americans to recognize that immigrants inject our economy with vitality and innovation, and help keep Medicare solvent, is to let Trump wall them out, and then see what happens to our workforce and entitlements. Speaking of walls, maybe the only way for Americans to realize how much magical thinking infuses Trumps promises is to let him try and fail to convince Mexico to pay for his big, beautiful wall. And also to let him try and fail to keep sick Americans from dying on the streets and prevent health-care prices from spiraling out of control, while simultaneously shredding Obamacares coverage and cost provisions. Let him twist in the wind as he struggles to define the vague something terrific that will replace the Affordable Care Act. With Republicans dominating both houses of Congress, Trump should have little trouble transforming his many harebrained, math-challenged policy schemes into law, assuming hes ever able to commit them to paper. With time, his economically anxious followers will realize that even after the swamp is drained and the bums thrown out, tough-talking Trump is still unable to improve their economic standing. To borrow from Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hamilton: Winning was easy, old man. Governing is harder. To be sure, there are flaws in this plan. If his policies turn out to be a bust, he may blame the results on President Obama. Or other political enemies, or distrusted ethnic groups. Most disturbing, while the public is busy formulating its own first-person, expert-free verdict on his policy experiments, those experiments could do a lot of harm. So I guess that leaves me back where I started: wielding my almighty pen, hoping someone across the divide reads my scribblings, trying to read more carefully theirs, and urging Trump to do better, even if I know hes not really listening. Maybe Ill just be screaming into the void. But hopefully, on occasion, the void will scream back. crampell@washpost.com Thirty years ago, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed Nov. 15 National Philanthropy Day to recognize and celebrate giving, volunteering and community engagement. Texas Capital Bank is honored to be a finalist in San Antonios inaugural Corporate Philanthropy Awards on Thursday. We share this honor with our employees and our customers, who embrace the culture of giving with their personal time and charitable donations. The entrepreneurial spirit that created Texas Capital Bank drives us and our customers. We see this spirit of giving in nonprofit leaders identifying and meeting critical needs in our community. According to the Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year of 2014, 72 percent of charitable contributions come from individual donors. The remainder comes from foundations, bequests and corporations. Another measure of philanthropy is personal time. The 2015 value of volunteer time has been established by the coalition Independent Sector at $23.56 per hour, which has a huge impact on charitable organizations with limited staffs and small operating budgets. Texas Capital Bank employees enjoy volunteering with Habitat for Humanity by landscaping the yards of newly completed homes and celebrating with families as they receive the keys to their new homes. At Texas Capital Bank, giving back is a core part of our mission, which includes adopting Booker T. Washington Elementary on the East Side, where we donated much-needed technology equipment for teachers and uniforms for children. This partnership with our employees includes an annual back-to-school drive for backpacks filled with supplies. During the holidays, our employees hold a Christmas gift drive for the elementary students, who attend after-school programs at Bridge Builders, a neighborhood nonprofit, where they learn to use computers and receive help with their homework. We are proud to have 100 percent participation by our employees as a Pacesetter Company in United Ways workplace giving campaigns for two consecutive years, and especially proud of being named one of the Top Workplaces in San Antonio by the Express-News, also for two consecutive years. We salute business leaders for uniting with community leaders in making San Antonio a caring community. The spirit of giving is evident across San Antonio, with year-round community involvement by businesses contributing both financial resources and employees who volunteer and serve on nonprofit boards. The annual Big Give offers area nonprofits online visibility, providing an opportunity for generous community-minded citizens to make a difference with financial contributions. As the holidays approach, generosity abounds. But the long-term impact continues long after the donation or volunteer service. We are all making an impact by contributing our time, talent and treasure. Make philanthropy a year-round habit, because together, we are building a stronger community, and a strong community is our best investment. Shaun Kennedy is chairman of Texas Capital Bank and 2018 chairman-elect of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. U.S. consumers cant seem to catch a break. Last month, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the structure of the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created in 2010 in response to the nations economic crisis, was unconstitutional. The court found that the enabling legislation gave the agencys director more unilateral authority than any other officer in any other office in any of the three branches of the U.S. government, other than the president. The quick fix would be to alter the agencys structure and allow the president to fire the director at will. Under the present setup, the head of the organization is appointed by the president for a five-year term, must be confirmed by the Senate and can only be removed for cause. Those whose lives have been adversely affected by the agency, however, are lobbying hard to have it transformed into a commission whose bipartisan membership would be appointed by the Senate. A quick resolution is unlikely and the case appears headed before the U.S. Supreme Court. The agency has done well by American consumers, and it needs to be allowed to continue its work. For the last six years, it has has been a champion for the little guy, but it has stepped on some big toes. In September, the agency fined Wells Fargo Bank $100 million for secretly opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts for its bank customers. That same month, it fined TitleMax parent company MX Finance LLC $9 million for luring customers into more costly loans. The case that brought the agency before the D.C. appellate court was over a $109 million fine the agency imposed on PHH, a New Jersey-based mortgage lender for allegedly accepting kickbacks from mortgage lenders. In its short existence, the bureaus many accomplishments include creation of a website for consumers to lodge complaints, and making information about mortgages, students and auto loans more user-friendly. More important, it has actively worked on those consumer complaints and brought billions of dollars in relief to consumers who alleged problems with their credit card companies. It has helped bank customers fight fees they felt were charged in error and helped homeowners battle mortgage companies against wrongful foreclosures. The agencys scrutiny of questionable financial aid programs in the for-profit college industry is credited with the shuttering of many of those businesses in recent months. Prior to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, oversight of mortgage lending, credit cards and student loans was spread over several federal agencies, none of which were doing a very good job. Those with special interests who would best be served if it were dismantled should not be allowed to gut it. Consumers need a watchdog on their side. Bob Luckey / Bob Luckey GREENWICH A Bronx man is accused of trying to steal a rental car with a fraudulent ID and credit card. Miguel Morales, 41, of Washington Avenue, the Bronx, was charged with nine criminal counts in connection with an effort to rent a car from Enterprise-Rent-A Car on Edgewood Avenue Friday morning. National Nuclear Generating Company Energoatom is preparing for exports of electricity to Belarus, Energoatom President Yuriy Nedashkovsky said in Kyiv last week. "We are working on exports of electricity [to Belarus]. This is a framework agreement. It was approved by Belarus and Ukraine. I signed it. Of course, Ukrenergo, Energomarket and the whole range of participants are to sign it," he said. Nedashkovsky added that a mechanism for bringing the price of Ukrainian electricity to the competitive level should be introduced before starting exports of electricity. "There are many things to do for our electricity be competitive on the Belarusian market. For purchase of electricity from Energomarket without grant certificates decisions of the regulator and government are required," he said. Ferrexpo plc, whose main assets are Ukrainian iron ore producers Poltava and Yerystove mining and processing plants, reduced commercial iron ore pellet production 4.6% year-on-year in January-October 2016 to 9.258 million tonnes, the company has told Interfax-Ukraine. Iron ore concentrate production fell 1.9% to 11.721 million tonnes. Ferrexpo produced 930,000 tonnes of pellets and 1.144 million tonnes of concentrate in October alone. Pellet output grew 5.6% in 2015 to 11.67 million tonnes. The London-listed Ferrexpo plc owns 100% of Ferrexpo AG, which owns 97.43% of Poltava Mining and 100% of Yerystove Mining. It also owns 99.9% of Belanovo Mining, which is at the design stage. Ferrexpo's main consumers are steelmakers in Austria, Serbia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany and other European countries, as well as China, India, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Lambert: A round-up of Brexit options, hard and soft. Wouldnt the Brits have an easier time of it if they wrote their Constitution down? By Silvia Merler, an Italian citizen, who joined Bruegel as Affiliate Fellow at Bruegel in August 2013. Her main research interests include international macro and financial economics, central banking and EU institutions and policy making. Originally published at Bruegel. Whats at stake: last week, the UK High Court ruled that the triggering of Article 50 and therefore the Brexit process should involve the UK Parliament. The Government will appeal the decision but this has created a new wave of uncertainty about the timing of Brexit, and on what this involvement can mean in practice. We review the different opinions. Jo Murkens on the LSE blog has a very good explainer of the legal basis of the judgement, which he considers exemplary in its clarity and reasoning. The decisions focus is strictly constitutional, not political: the only question it examined was whether, as a matter of UK constitutional law, the Crown, acting through the government, is entitled to use prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 in order to cease to be a member of the European Union. This it turns out hinges on a balance between constitutional requirements and individual rights. Article 50 allows the UK to withdraw from the EU in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. Turning to these requirements, the government argued that the Crown through the government has a prerogative power to authorise the UKs withdrawal from the EU, and that this power can only be taken away by express terms in an Act of Parliament. The court acknowledges the governments position as correct, but only with respect to rights and obligations created as a matter of international law. As soon as individual rights protected by domestic law are affected, Parliament must be involved, especially because some individual rights would be lost upon withdrawal, as they cannot be replicated in UK law. Murkens argues that the decision amounts to a proper drubbing for the government particularly because it was not the claimants that landed the hammer blow, but the government itself, by acknowledging that the Art.50 notification would inevitably lead to the loss of some individual rights. The next stop, however, is the UK Supreme Court. David Allen Green writes in the FT that the High Court decision is as strong as it could be and creates a substantial problem for the prime ministers Brexit policy. The government should look hard at the reason for the courts judgment. Central to the judges thinking is the impact that leaving the EU will have on the rights of UK citizens: the court has said that extinguishing such rights cannot be done by mere executive action. But the problem is more than one of form. The difficult and interlocking legal issues created by the UK leaving the EU are such that the matter is not for a prime minister, or indeed a court, to decide. Allen Green argues that the government is not taking the opportunity offered by the judgment to start the exercise again, properly: an appeal has been announced and the court has been denounced. Those in favour of the UK remaining in the EU can draw only limited comfort from the decision, because there is no reason to believe parliament will directly defy the result of the referendum. The only thing that has been undermined by the High Courts decision is Mays superficial approach to achieving Brexit. Eventually, the government will have to adopt a broader, more collaborative and more open approach to the process, as there is no alternative to making a success of it. Camilla Macdonald discusses three options and argues that the ruling is not a victory for soft Brexit. The first option is for the government to succeed in overturning the result on appeal to the Supreme Court. MPs will then have the chance to debate at length, but they will have lost the leverage over the Government that the current ruling affords them. Second, the Government may lose the appeal and yet manage to face down the rebels in the Commons in time to meet Mays timetable of triggering Article 50 by March. This could be achieved by passing a non-amendable motion that presents MPs with a binary choice to approve or reject triggering article 50, assuming most MPs would not dare to risk the ire of the leave voting public. The third option which Macdonald considers the most likely is that the Government loses its appeal and is forced to introduce primary legislation, i.e. a Brexit bill, that will make it difficult, but not impossible, to meet the deadline. This is likely to force the Government to make concessions to MPs, but not necessarily in any form that will amount to a commitment to a soft Brexit. Soft Brexit is what the majority of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and part of Conservatives now want, but the biggest obstacle to this outcome is the lack of unity and of a negotiating strategy among this would-be coalition. In this situation, it is hard to see what red lines could be imposed on the government. Yet, Mcdonald thinks that involving Parliament in a process that will ultimately be defined by many complex and cross-cutting trade-offs might help to dispel the myths of simplistic hard and soft labelling. Nationalist parties would no longer plausibly be able to claim that they are excluded and the ruling could end up being an important victory for thought and reflection over rabble rousing on both sides. Jolyon Maugham writes on FT Alphaville that after the High Courts Brexit decision, we should forget about the activation of Article 50 in March. The Governments appeal is likely to be heard in the Supreme Court in early December and this opens new risks. Lingering, unaddressed, in the background to this litigation is a question about whether an Article 50 notification is reversible. The High Court in reality proceeded on the assumption that a notification, once given, could not be withdrawn. But the Supreme Court has a different legal obligation and it might feel legally compelled to address that assumption directly. Addressing it would require a politically explosive referral to the European Court of Justice, because the question of whether a notification is reversible is one of European law. Beside the likely delay of around three months, a finding by the Supreme Court that an Article 50 notification could be pulled would leave ajar the door to a prospectively damaging continuation of the Referendum campaign until the time exit is formalised. Assuming instead that the appeal fails, the government will have to draft a Bill and place it before parliament. And that Bill would have to pass both Houses of parliament. In the Commons there would be little or no enthusiasm for rejecting it, but it is likely that MPs would impose conditions on the triggering of Article 50, thus constraining the governments negotiating position. Parliament may wish to choose whether to accept the outcome of the negotiations and it may even require that the deal negotiated by the government be put back to the people in the form of a second referendum. In practical terms, it is difficult to contemplate that these steps drafting a Bill, debating it in the Commons, voting on amendments, placing it before the House of Lords and then addressing amendments introduced by the Upper Chamber in the Commons again can sensibly be taken after the result of the Supreme Court appeal is known but before March. So, unless the Supreme Court overturns the High Courts decision, Maugham thinks we should consider Mays March deadline ancient history. Stephen Booth at Open Europe makes four main points about what this decision means going forward. First, if Government loses the appeal, then legislation is likely to be necessary. The reasoning of the ruling illustrates that, if the claimants argument holds (which regards rights stemming from EU membership set down in parliamentary legislation), the courts were never likely to be satisfied by anything short of legislation to trigger Article 50. Second, parliamentary moves to block Article 50 trigger would be politically explosive. It is unlikely that a majority of MPs in the Commons would actually move to block Brexit by preventing the Government triggering Article 50, especially having voted to give the public the opportunity to vote to leave the EU in the referendum. Booth argues that the same is probably true for the House of Lords, which would create a full-blown constitutional crisis if it opposed Article 50 outright. Third, Parliaments leverage over process is far greater than over any negotiating mandate or outcome. So process is likely to be the focus of any parliamentary tussles over legislation to trigger Article 50, with MPs and Lords seeking to amend the Bill to give them greater and more formal powers to scrutinise. Fourth, Booth argues that a general election is not out of the question. This would certainly mean missing the end of March 2017 deadline but would also mean that any MPs seen to be blocking the referendum result would find it very hard to keep hold of their seats and this is why he thinks it is likely that an Article 50 Bill would be passed. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that for now, this turn of events exposes the hypocrisy of Mays government position of wanting to repatriate all EU political powers back to the United Kingdom, but wishing to deny the countrys sovereign lawmakers a say on the Article 50 process. Whatever happens, the court ruling has dealt a blow to the small right-wing clique of hardcore euro skeptics in the Conservative Party and Mays government and the potential direct involvement of Parliament is good political news for Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party as his only path to becoming prime minister is the one that opens up if May and the Conservatives completely botch the Brexit negotiations. He also argues that this should also harden further the EU negotiating position. These developments make it more likely that May will soon be forced to call an early election to seek a new mandate on Brexit. The Conservatives would probably win, but an accelerating economic downturn, the United Kingdoms first past-the-post-electoral system, and a potential rallying of Remain supporters, could spring a surprise. Tyler Cowen argues that the British parliamentary vote might matter. The more likely scenario in his view is simply that Parliament stalls, demanding that Theresa May give them the right Brexit. Of course there is no such thing, wrong Brexit is wrong Brexit, if only because EU-27 cannot agree on very much. But with enough stalling, eventually another national election will be held and of course Brexit would be a major issue, probably the major issue. That in essence would serve as a second referendum, and if anti-Brexit candidates did well enough, parliamentarians would have cover to go against the previous expression of the public will. Gold nanoparticle cancer therapy reduces toxic chemotherapy effects (Nanowerk News) Virginia Tech scientists have developed a new cancer drug that uses gold nanoparticles created by the biotech firm CytImmune Sciences to deliver paclitaxel a commonly used chemotherapy drug directly to a tumor. Because of the direct targeting, the new effort not only increases the effectiveness of paclitaxel, it also dramatically reduces devastating side effects such as hair loss, nausea, and nerve pain. CytImmune earlier this year asked David Kingston, a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the Virginia Tech College of Science, to create a paclitaxel derivative that binds to gold-based nanoparticles while in the blood stream, only releasing the drug once its inside a cancerous tumor. Paclitaxel chemotherapy is widely used to treat breast, ovarian, lung, and colon cancer. The new nanomedicine is composed of 27 nm gold nanoparticles, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), thiolated polyethylene glycol (PEG-thiol). Paclitaxel side effects occur because the drug is given intravenously and thus is distributed throughout the body, and not just to the tumor, said Kingston, who joined the Virginia Tech Department of Chemistry in 1971. In addition, the solvent used to allow infusion has its own toxicity. Paclitaxel could be a much more effective drug if it could be targeted directly to the tumor. This would allow each dose to be given without causing significant side effects, and would thus increase the potential for cures. In other words, for now, delivery of a paclitaxel equals a shotgun with pellets. The blast of killing a tumor results in great collateral damage. Kingston and his team say their delivery method is like a finely tuned rifle, using CytImmunes gold-based nanoparticles as the delivery bullet. The gold nanoparticles are decorated with both paclitaxel and tumor necrosis factor a cell-signaling protein commonly called TNF. Gold nanoparticles are known to cling around cancerous tumors. TNF thus binds to the tumor blood vessel cells, ultimately killing them and reducing the high pressure inside the tumor, which prevents paclitaxel from reaching the cancer cells to kill them. Now, the slowly released paclitaxel that is bound to the gold nanoparticles can reach its targeted cancer cells to kill them. In early lab tests in treating mouse melanoma, a 2.5 milligram dose of paclitaxel delivered on Kingstons gold nanoparticles vehicle was essentially as effective as a dose of 40 milligrams of paclitaxel by itself. The delivery method is expected to soon move toward clinical trial, said Kingston. Findings by Kingston and his team including Jielu Zhao, a 2016 doctoral graduate in chemistry, now a chemist at Proctor and Gamble, and Shugeng Cao, a former post-doctorate researcher also in chemistry, now an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo were recently published in the scientific journal Bioconjugate Chemistry ("Synthesis and Evaluation of Paclitaxel-Loaded Gold Nanoparticles for Tumor-Targeted Drug Delivery"). Zhao and Cao carried out the actual synthesis of the paclitaxel derivatives with the designed linkers to allow them to bond to the gold nanoparticles, with Kingston supervising. This approach has the potential to be a game-changer in nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems, said Kingston, since it combines the power of drug targeting by tumor necrosis factor, with the advantages of nanoparticle delivery, including the low toxicity of nanoparticle drugs to normal, healthy tissue. By combining the tumor blood vessel destroying activity of TNF with the cancer killing effect of paclitaxel onto CytImmunes tumor-targeted, stealth gold nanoparticles, Dr. Kingstons team and CytImmunes team may have potentially created a new cancer drug that is far more effective and less toxic to the human body, said Lawrence Tamarkin, chief executive officer at CytImmune. Work on the new drug was split between Virginia Techs main Blacksburg campus and CytImmunes Rockville, Maryland, headquarters. Kingston has teamed with CytImmune in the past on tumor-targeting nanomedicine. Human Brain Project specifies its research goals (Nanowerk News) The European Human Brain Project (HBP) presented its new strategic objectives at its annual meeting in Florence in mid-October and now published them in the journal Neuron ("The Human Brain Project: Creating a European infrastructure to decode the Human Brain"). The scientists are aiming to decode the human brain. Therefore, HBP is creating a European research infrastructure to examine the most complex processes and structures of the brain using detailed analyses and simulations. "With this paper, we show the ways, in which we will approach our objective of decoding the brain in the next few years," says Prof. Katrin Amunts, director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at Forschungszentrum Julich and since June Chair of the new Science and Infrastructure Board, which is providing the scientific leadership of the Human Brain Project. The scientists aim to comprehensively investigate the various spatial and temporal levels of brain organization in different experiments. This data will be used to develop models at all levels and test them in simulations, which will in turn help to refine experiments. "Integrating the findings at all these levels of the brain is the key to an understanding of human brain organisation," says Amunts. The research activities are divided into eleven subprojects: four of which are primarily dedicated to neuroscientific research, while six others provide hardware and software for experiments, analyses, and simulations. In addition, one subproject is devoted to ethics and society. Information and communication technology (ICT) is expected to benefit from knowledge about the brain and the nervous system. For example, supercomputers can make use of findings regarding brain function, and improved control systems of robots will be developed. "Through the new neuroinformatics platform, HBP is also showing itself as a pioneer of modern collaborative research," explains Julich scientist Prof. Thomas Lippert, head of the High Performance Analytics & Computing Platform of the HBP. "Our cloud technologies not only offer researchers access to analysis and simulation systems, they also provide them with platforms for cooperative software development as well as federated high-performance data systems throughout Europe," says Lippert, who is also director of the Julich Supercomputing Centre (JSC). Making data centers green (Nanowerk News) The value and scale of information grows unstoppably and data centers must size-up if they are to adequately meet their operational requirements. The widespread use of cloud computing and Big Data comes hand-in-hand with the need for data storage, computing and networking facilities capable of ensuring a reliable and secure infrastructure for information systems to operate on. Due to the high energy demands of data centers and their corresponding networks, resource consumption has become a challenging concern that may hinder further development of network and data center systems. At present, typical resource utilization is about 5% to 25% according to some statistics. Future data center design, management, and applications must tackle the need for sufficient energy efficiency if their growth is not to be associated to environmental damage. In view of the above scenario, an international cooperation ICT research project has been established and is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The objective of this research is to reduce currently high and inefficient energy consumption on data centers from the perspective of job scheduling and resource management. The international research team already at work includes scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, IMDEA Networks Institute in Spain, and Temple University as well as University of California, Riverside in the USA. Initial investigations made on the characteristics of power consumption by data center servers have yielded results to be applied to the energy-efficient technical design of data centers. The team has also developed routing schemes for data center networks that increase energy savings. Furthermore, a carbon-aware online control model for geographically distributed datacenters is being developed, where electricity costs, service level agreement (SLA) requirements, and an emission reduction budget are taken into consideration. This internationally coordinated research project will last 5 years. Its findings and developed techniques aim to achieve a double objective: make data centers greener, thanks to reduced energy consumption and lesser CO 2 emissions, whilst maintaining satisfactory service levels. The team of researchers hopes that, thanks to this work, we can all continue to enjoy the convenience of using data centers, without diminishing our enjoyment of a clean and cared for environment. More information: Contact point for technical enquiries: Antonio Fernandez Anta, Research Professor at IMDEA Networks Institute. Research projects at IMDEA Networks (http://www.networks.imdea.org/research/projects): Datacenter with High Efficiency - Optimizing Organization and Scheduling of Datacenter Resources (http://www.networks.imdea.org/research/projects/datacenter-high-efficiency-optimizing-organization-and-scheduling) Full bibliographic information [1]. Biyu Zhou, Fa Zhang, Lin Wang, Chenying Hou, Antonio Fernandez Anta, Athanasios Vasilakos, Youshi Wang, Jie Wu, Zhiyong Liu. HDEER: A Distributed Routing Scheme for Energy Efficient Networking. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), 34(5):1-1, 2016. [2]. Zhi Zhou, Fangming Liu, Ruolan Zou, Jiangchuan Liu, Hong Xu, Hai Jin, "Carbon-aware Online Control of Geo-Distributed Cloud Services", IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Volume 27, Issue 9, September 2016. [3]. Jordi Arjona Aroca, Antonio Fernandez Anta, Miguel A. Mosteiro, Christopher Thraves, Lin Wang: Power-efficient assignment of virtual machines to physical machines. Future Generation Comp. Syst. 54: 82-94 (2016). Anglophone political populism and the cultural rejection of climate change (Nanowerk News) Donald Trumps US election victory follows hard on the back of the UKs Brexit vote in June. The results an expression of collective public preference from the electorate have shaken political and cultural establishments on both sides of the Atlantic. And they have unsettled me also. However, Im interested in how the results of these different referenda in two of the worlds oldest democracies open a different window into understanding the cultural politics of climate change. At one level, a political analysis would conclude that both results are a setback for national climate policies and international climate change agreements. A UK withdrawing from the EU, and its embedded environmental legislation is a UK that would seem more climate-sceptical than many climate progressives would wish for. And in the US, Trump has made fairly clear his own personal beliefs about human-induced climate change. With a Republican senate and house, it is not impossible to think of the USs withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. But Im interested in a deeper cultural reading of what these two popular votes signify in the context of climate change. In their light it is perhaps ironic that it was largely US and UK science which, from the 1970s through the 1990s, really drove the scientific, public and political construction of the idea of anthropogenic global warming. Margaret Thatcher famously backed the reality of the enhanced greenhouse effect in 1990, as too did George Bush Sr in 1989. So why now, in 2016, have clear electoral majorities in these two nations voted for political movements and parties which are predominantly sceptical of climate change? It is more than just a result of nefarious fossil-fuel corporations or well-funded libertarian think-tanks. Climate commentators and analysts need to look beyond these narrow explanations of resistance. Climate change has become ideological The connecting factor, I suggest, is a popular antipathy towards the shadowy ideology of globalism, the unexamined belief that the world will inevitably be a better place through transnational coordination of governance, finance and science, through the free flow of goods and people, and through a commitment to multiculturalism. This is the ideology which British and American citizens in their millions have voted against; yet in the minds of many, this is the ideology that lies behind the science, discourse and policies of climate change. The rise of an anti-globalist populism in recent years, and its clear expression this year in these two electoral moments, should help us to read the phenomenon of climate change differently. We cannot understand it simply in terms of science and the environment or even in terms of economics and politics. How climate change is believed in or denied, how it is acted upon or resisted, can only be understood at the level of much deeper beliefs people hold about themselves and about how the world is and should be. We can see this played out through the different types of climate agreements that have been sought-for over three decades. The idea of human-induced global climate change first emerged in public in a very particular era: in the 1980s and early 1990s when globalism and the new international world order was ascendant. It therefore was as much a cultural idea as it was a scientific discovery, as both sociologist Andrew Ross and Indian scholars Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain observed astutely, in different ways, back in 1991. Since then we have seen the idea of climate change and how it should be dealt with continue to evolve, from the centralised targets and timetables of Kyoto in 1997; to the failure to extend this form of climate governance at Copenhagen in 2009; to the optimistic volunteerism of Paris in 2015; and now into a new era where we will see the gap between international political rhetoric and national climate policy continue to get wider and wider in the years ahead. A populist approach to climate change? With the rise in populism and nationalism some new and nifty policy entrepreneurialism is needed, and it will have to tackle the risks of climate change obliquely. This is the strategy a group of colleagues and I called for in the Hartwell Paper back in 2010 (pdf) as a response to the financial crisis. Made in the USA: electric cars. (Image: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY) Energy security will become a more powerful driver of policy which, if played the right way, can make some low-carbon energy sources appeal to populist political instincts; as too can the argument for cleaner and smarter cities driven by new generation transport technologies which reduce congestion and improve air quality. If Trump were serious about reinvigorating the US motor industry then this would be one way to go, and sell to the world. Sstudents and staff in Cashel Community School celebrated Positive Mental Health Week recently. The week was packed full of activities to promote wellness in the school community. Teachers planned the week. In pastoral care classes students received wellness bookmarks from Mental Health Ireland highlighting the five key actions they can do to feel good and function well: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give. Students completed a survey on what music makes them feel happy and these songs were played at lunchtime. A series of speakers visited the school -Transition year received a wellbeing talk from St. Patricks Mental Health Services, second year students got a presentation from Tipperary Youth Club Services highlighting the importance of connecting and trying new things. On Wednesday the school welcomed former Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy to the school where students were reminded of the importance of self- belief, exercise, fun and dealing with setbacks. Students received lollipops with the YOLO logo on Friday evening which generated lots of smiles. First year students were treated to Zumba classes reminding them to try new challenges and have fun, mindfulness classes were introduced in Religion classes allowing students to interrupt the busyness of everyday school life and concentrate on their breathing. The first year choir sang at lunchtime celebrating the theme Express Yourself. All sixth years were involved in a tea and connect class reminding them that it is ok to talk about our challenges in life and the HSE #Little Things Campaign was discussed during these classes also. The Guidance Department visited all first year classes reminding classes of their support networks in school. Humourfit Theatre visited on Friday with drama pieces on Alcohol Misuse and The Value of Life for senior cycle. The staffroom celebrated too where teachers donned odd shoes promoting the Walk In My Shoes Campaign from St. Patricks Mental Health Services and reminding students that it is good to talk about Positive Mental Health . The Green Ribbon Campaign supporting mental health one conversation at a time was also supported. A Kindness Tree was set up in school and classes were encouraged to perform act of kindness throughout the week there was a great response to this and the tree was in full blossom by the end of the week. Positive affirmations were displayed around the school and on the display screens which reminded everybody that small things can make a big difference. Four Clonmel gardai have been honoured for saving the life of a man who had fallen into the river in the town. They were among forty seven rescuers who received recognition at Irish Water Safety's National Annual Awards Ceremony at the Print Works Conference Centre, Dublin Castle last week. On 17th August last year, Gardai Mark Holden, Kieran Hayes, Claire Murphy and Kieran O'Regan received a call regarding a man who had fallen into the water at New Quay, Clonmel. The Gardai immediately went to the scene. Garda Mark Holden and Sgt. Kieran O'Regan entered the water. The four Gardai managed to bring the man to safety and waited with him until emergency services arrived to the scene. Thirty-two lives were saved from drowning through the brave actions of forty-seven rescuers last year. Presenting the awards, Simon Coveney, Minister for Housing, Planning & Local Government said he was delighted to be involved in this year's Irish Water Safety Awards Ceremony. "It is an issue that I care deeply about and it is an honour to pay tribute to the courageous and deserving award winners.' "Tragically an average of 133 people drown in Ireland every year," commented IWS Chairman Martin O'Sullivan, "and although that's 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." Eternal youth is it possible? Raising hopes (NaturalNews) Scientists at Nottingham University may have discovered the "Fountain of Youth" hidden deep within our own cells. As we grow older, our body's tissues and functions begin to diminish, making us more prone to neurodegenerative diseases. However, after a major breakthrough in their quest to unravel and halt the aging process, the British researchers discovered a key cellular protein that could slow down or even stop this process.The study, led by Dr. Lisa Chakrabarti and Ph.D. student Amelia Pollard of the university's School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, offers new hope, as it could result in the development of new treatments to slow down the effects of ageing and halt the progression of debilitating conditions such as dementia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The work, published in the academic journal, was centered around a family of proteins called carbonic anhydrase. These proteins are found in our mitochondria, the "batteries" of our cells that convert the oxygen we breathe into energy to power our bodies.When the scientists analyzed the brain and muscle cells from healthy young brains and adult brains of mice, they found that levels of carbonic anhydrase proteins were in greater quantity and more active in the samples of the adult mice. Furthermore, they found similar heightened levels in samples from young mice suffering from early degeneration.To investigate whether the heightened levels of carbonic anhydrase were a result of a degenerative condition or just the body's attempt to protect itself against the aging process, the scientists fed carbonic anhydrase to tiny nematode worms. They found that carbonic anhydrase significantly reduced the lifespan of the worms, proving its role in the aging process of cells and tissues. Their findings imply that if there is a way of removing the protein from the cells, then it could extend one's lifespan.Dr. Lisa Chakrabarti said: "What's really exciting about this development is that we have been able to surmise that the function of this protein is playing a role in the ageing process within the cell. ..."This gives us a very promising start in working out how we can best target this protein within the mitochondria to slow the effects of aging in the body while limiting other unwanted side effects on the body," she added.As noted by Dr. Chakrabarti, this breakthrough in their research could potentially offer hope in tackling both degenerative illnesses and the general effects of aging on the body. While everybody will get old at some point, these new findings could be the answer to actively living our lives deep into old age.According to researchers from The University of Nottingham, aging has been associated with muscle mass loss which begins at around the age of 50, and becomes more pronounced in our 60s, leading to a decrease in strength and to greater frailty.Furthermore, an aging brain can cause cognitive impairments which affect memory, reasoning and multitasking, and can lead to dementia or other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease.While the eternal youth treatment pill will not be available anytime soon, the Nottingham study could be the first step towards improving the quality and quantity of our lives as we age. Imagine if your brain could stay sharp and your muscles and bones strong, how much more you could you get out of life! Induced coma for a month As dangerous as a heart attack (NaturalNews) A British teenager who thought she just had tonsillitis nearly died before doctors discovered that she had a raging blood infection that was systematically poisoning all of her internal organs.Jess Lewin, 19, of Plymouth, was diagnosed with sepsis, also known as septicemia or "blood poisoning." Although triggered by an infection, sepsis is actually caused by the immune system itself , which overreacts to the infection by flooding the body with inflammation-promoting compounds. It is these immune compounds that damage the body's organs and cause them to fail. Sepsis can also cause tissue death, producing gangrene.In the most severe cases, sepsis proceeds to septic shock, which includes life-threatening plunges in blood pressure.Lewin's saga began in April, when she began to feel sick and took a few days off work. When she did not feel any better, she went to a doctor who prescribed her fluids and Tylenol."I felt so awful," Lewin said. "By the end of the week, I was starting to feel dehydrated, dizzy and I had a lot of sickness and diarrhoea. It was getting progressively worse. I posted a status on Facebook asking my friends what they thought, but everyone just told me it was the flu."Eventually, her mother insisted on taking her back to the doctor, who sent her straight to the hospital. There she was given a CT scan, and doctors immediately put her under anesthesia for two emergency surgeries: one to remove her left ovary, which had gone septic, and another to insert a breathing tube. Doctors warned her parents that she might not survive.Lewin was in an induced coma for four weeks. The sepsis had spread to her uterus and lungs.When Lewin finally awoke, she had no memory of her time at the hospital, but could not ask questions because of her tracheostomy. It took another seven weeks of physical therapy before she could return home. She still becomes breathless and tired easily, and her hair has dramatically thinned.The British National Health Service recently released new guidelines directing that sepsis be treated with the same urgency as heart attacks. All patients with a rash, high pulse or fever should be screened for sepsis, and any suspected cases should immediately be referred to a senior nurse or doctor.Publication of the guidelines was moved up following the 2014 death from sepsis of William Mead due to health system failures.With treatment, most people recover from mild sepsis . Because early treatment is so important, however, patients should not delay in seeking medical attention.Although sepsis can be hard to distinguish from the flu, it does have a few telltale signs. Visit a hospital if you have a body temperature above 101 F or below 96.8 F that is accompanied by a heart rate above 90 beats per minute and a breathing rate above 20 breaths per minute.If these symptoms are accompanied by abdominal pain, trouble breathing, abnormal heartbeat, dramatic drops in urine output or sudden changes in mental status, it may indicate that organ failure has already begun.The risk of sepsis is higher from infections of the blood, kidneys, abdomen or lungs (pneumonia). Severe sepsis is more common in the very young or very old, the very sick, people with external or internal wounds or injuries, those with invasive devices such as catheters, and those with compromised immune systems.Rates of sepsis in the United States are on the rise, perhaps due to the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant superbugs , an aging population, and increasing numbers of people on immune-suppressing drugs such as cancer treatment Armed units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People's Republics have opened fire on positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of fighting in Donbas 64 times in the past 24 hours, using artillery weapons and grenade launchers in their strikes, the press service of the headquarters of Kyiv's anti terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine said on Sunday. In particular, 43 instances of shelling were recorded near the city of Mariupol, where militant forces fired 152mm cannon artillery on the outskirts of Maryinka and Shyrokyne, and fired 122 cannon artillery on Talakivka. Ukrainian military positions in Shyrokyne, Vodiane, Talakivka, Krasnohorivka and Bohdanivka came under mortar fire, the headquarters said. In addition to that, small arms, grenade launchers and infantry fighting vehicle weapons were also used against Shyrokyne, Lebedynske, Vodiane, Pavlopil, Taramchuk and Talakivka. Militant snipers were also operating in Shyrokyne and Pavlopil. The militants committed 15 ceasefire violations in the Luhansk region, where small arms, grenade launchers and mortars were fired on Krymske, Novozvanivka, Valuiske, Malynove, Novo-Oleksandrivka and Troyitske, and 122mm cannon artillery weapons were also used against Novozvanivka and Troyitske, the press service said. Avdiyivka in the Donetsk region came under mortar fire, and 122mm artillery weapons were used against the village of Tonenke, the press service said. Draining the swamp will take time, and Trump will be subverted at every turn Obama is so radical he's capable of anything (NaturalNews) Talk show star and best-selling author, Dr. Michael Savage, is warning that President Obama, on his way out of office, may be planning to sabotage President-elect Donald J. Trump, leaving an ultra-disruptive "poison pill" that would throw the incoming administration, and the country, into chaos.In a recent issue of his free newsletter and also during a broadcast, Savage pointed out that the poison pill is likely already in place, in that most of Obama's political appointees especially in the Justice Department are far-Left radicals that are responsible for much of what ails the country.Even if Trump is able to keep 80 percent of his promises, Savage noted, there is no way to get the people Obama has placed in the federal bureaucracy out unless it's done by executive decree (which Trump, as head of the Executive Branch and all its agencies and bureaus, most definitely has the authority to do).One example Savage gave was Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division "one of the most fanatical leftists in the history of the world was put in there by Obama as a virtual poison pill."Savage noted that Perez is implementing policies that "make businesses almost inoperable," because "virtually everything is a civil rights violation to him."He asked: "How are we going to get rid of bureaucrats like that that are now running the federal government?"Again, Trump as president will have broad constitutional authority over his own Executive Branch. But the problem is, there are, that it will be hard to root them out. Remember IRS official, Lois Lerner, who was accused of purposely sabotaging conservative organizations that applied for tax-free status prior to the 2012 election by delaying their applications an action that prevented them from taking part in political action aimed at helping GOP nominee Mitt Romney and other Tea Party-affiliated candidates?It turns out, however, that the targeting was built-in to a corrupt IRS system one that was not found to be improper at all by Obama's corrupt Justice Department The point that Savage's example and these other examples prove, is that the federal bureaucracy is infested with careerists who have very different goals and political objectives than Trump will have. It's like he'll be walking through a pit of snakes every day he's in Washington, D.C., though that is precisely the "swamp" he is focused on "draining."But there's more. Obama is every bit as radical as those he has appointed, and there is every reason to believe he'll be unleashing some bombshells of his own before he leaves office now that he sees the end is near, and Trump, not Clinton, is next in line:-- As president, Obama has the power to pardon convicted felons (which he has already done). And he has promised more to come What if Obama would pardon? Again, he has the power to do it and his most ardent supporters, which include the radical Leftists who continue to protest Trump's election and threaten his life, would resoundingly approve, stupidly believing that "justice" will have been done (right before one of the most hardened of criminals knifes them in the back).-- It's no secret that the border between the United States and Mexico has been virtually wide open for months , with U.S. Border Patrol agents being told to stand down and redeploy miles away orders that can only come from the top.What would happen if Obama sent orders to the USBP to, as a way to "get even" with Trump over the latter's promise to "build a wall?"-- Speaking of illegal immigration, Obama has not only relaxed border security policies, but he's issued executive orders essentially granting many in the country illegal permanent residency, something federal courts have found unconstitutional But the laxity has energized hard-Left liberals in states like California, whose labor force depends heavily on illegal aliens. The reports that Trump's pledge to deport illegals puts him at odds with the state, with elected officials there vowing to fight his administration on any plans to actually enforce U.S. immigration laws.That in and of itself is problematic for a Trump administration, given that California produces the sixth-largest economy in the world, and is a vital source of revenue for the federal government.-- Finally, we have to remember that Obama said he's not leaving Washington after he is replaced by Trump. The excuse he gave is that he wants to allow his daughters to finish high school, but that's bogus. ObamaWe can expect that any time Trump seeks to roll back an Obama initiative, executive order or law (think Obamacare), the corrupt journo-terrorists in the George Soros-funded "mainstream" media will rush to Obama to get his opinion on it as if it is still relevant, and as if Trump, as president, is somehow not allowed to undo anything the Great Obama has created.Presidents are powerful these days more so than the founders ever wanted them to be so, as Savage notes, expect the unexpected "poison pill" from this most radical of presidents. Immediate benefits (NaturalNews) Voters overwhelmingly rejected the failing drug war at the voting polls, with eight out of nine states approving ballot measures loosening restrictions on the use of marijuana Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota became the 25th through 28th states (plus the District of Columbia) to approve marijuana for medical use. Perhaps of even greater significance, the number of states allowing recreational marijuana has now doubled, with Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and California the nation's most populous state joining Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington in embracing a legal, regulated recreational marijuana industry. A number of other states have also decriminalized cannabis, without legalizing it.Only Arizona rejected its recreational marijuana initiative. Medical marijuana remains legal in the state.Legalization advocates predict that the ballot victories will increase pressure on the federal government to end its prohibition of cannabis once and for all.The ballot victories were driven by high voter turnout among a population that increasingly recognizes marijuana as less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes . The new laws will regulate marijuana similarly to those products.Specifically, the states will all allow anyone 21 or older to possess an ounce of marijuana and six plants in their homes. The exceptions are Nevada, which only allows possession of plants for those living more than 25 miles from a marijuana retail store, and Maine, which allows possession of 2.5 ounces of marijuana, six flowering plants and 12 nonflowering plants.The most immediate impact of the new laws will likely be an end to the imprisonment and criminalization of people for simply using recreational marijuana without committing any other "crimes." California is already working to retroactively reduce the sentences of people convicted of some drug offenses prior to the law's passage.The states are also expected to set regulations for smoking marijuana in public spaces.All four states expect a significant economic boom to flow from the new industry."This is obviously a positive development, particularly with the size of California," said Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project. "The money that was going into the hands of criminals is going to be going into legitimate businesses."According to a recent study, legal marijuana contributed $2.39 billion to Colorado's economy in 2015, including $1 billion in sales, $120 million in tax revenue, the creation of 18,000 new jobs and the creation of additional business-to-business transactions and indirect jobs."All of it just generates and spins through the economy," said Jacob Rowberry of the Marijuana Policy Group, which commissioned the study.Full legalization on the horizon?In the longer term, legalization advocates hope that the increasing number of states rejecting prohibition will increase pressure on the federal government to do likewise."This is a big election, arguably bigger than the one we had two years ago where we added two states to the map," said Michael Collins, deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "In California, one of the biggest states in the nation, all of the big state-versus-federal conflicts are going to be dramatically increased by what goes on. The end game is in sight."In recent years, the Justice Department has mostly directed federal law enforcement not to bother with marijuana prohibition enforcement. But the continuing prohibition of marijuana continues to create difficulties for legal marijuana businesses and the governments that seek to tax and regulate them.With larger states such as California and Massachusetts entering the marijuana regulation business, some of those hurdles may start to get figured out."It's really going to create examples for people in other states to look at when they're considering their own marijuana policies," Fox said.Evidence of marijuana's medical benefits also continues to mount. A recent study found that states with medical marijuana have seen dramatic drops in prescriptions of drugs for anxiety, depression, pain, nausea, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders and spasticity, and a drop in opioid overdose deaths. Hypersonic flights may be able to make travels from cities on opposite sides of the world much easier. New York to London will, in fact, be just as fast as half an hour, and aerospace officials said we are a few decades away from the possibility. Experts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and Lockheed Martin told listeners at the recent Forum on American Aeronautics that hypersonic planes are "inevitable." According to Science Alert, this means the arrival of planes that are capable of traveling at more than five times the speed of sound are possible. This means planes will be capable of achieving speeds like 4,800 km/h (3,000 mph), making London to Sydney go as far as two hours. NASA's David McBride said hypersonic and supersonic passenger planes are technologies that are well within human grasp. Supersonic means being able to travel faster than the speed of sound, while hypersonic is five times as fast. The possibility of hypersonic travel will make planes less of a nuisance to forces on the ground. Aerospace engineers and military experts explained the technology will be easily achievable through a few decades of development. They explained the field of aerospace today is at a point where things are happening all at once. Strangely, hypersonic flight was already achieved in 1967. This was done by an aeronautical engineer William Knight with a rocket-powered North American X-15. It cruised at 7,274 km/h (4,250 mph or speeds of Mach 6.72) and even reached the edge of space. Sadly, the record is still unbeaten. So far, Airbus has already patented a hypersonic jet that can fly from London and New York at Mach 4.5 speeds, or 4.5 times the speed of sound. A joint US-Australian military project called the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation passed a crucial test in the Australian desert. The HiFiRE technology already achieved an altitude of 278 km at a speed of Mach 7.5. This means the craft can reach anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours. However, it would still take 4.5 hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles as it did 30 years ago, which means there has to be a problem somewhere. It lies with the sonic boom, as in the shockwave and the boom sound the aircraft makes by the time it hits the sound barrier. All supersonic aircraft have been banned from flying over land in the U.S. because of the booms they generate. NASA is already in the process of making a jet that wouldn't make the same boom sound, which would hopefully have its tests in 2020. Another problem is the lack of follow-ups every after a big breakthrough -- or the lack thereof. Scientists are encouraging enthusiasts to continue raising money for research efforts instead of casually giving up the process in order to ensure the continuity of the field. Researchers from Google's DeepMind announced some of their new artificial intelligence (AI) projects are learning "how" the world works -- akin how a child experiments with the way the world works. This opens an entirely new breakthrough in the realm of machine learning. Misha Denil and her colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they have trained an AI to learn the "physical properties" of objects by interacting with them virtually. This includes numerous aspects of the world, including questions such as "Can I sit on this?" or "Is it squishy?" In their paper, the AI systems were experimented in two environments. The first involved introducing five blocks arranged in a tower. Others were stuck together to make larger blocks, while others did not. The AI had to work out how many distinct blocks were there. It receives a reward for successes, and negative remarks for failures. The AI was able to experiment and interact with the tower to get the answer. This was not, in fact. the first time simulations like this were done. Facebook already used simulations of stacked blocks to teach their neural networks to predict if towers would fall or not. The approach is called deep reinforcement learning. According to New Scientist, DeepMind is known for such an approach. They already trained an AI to play games on Atari better by humans. This resulted in Google's purchase of the project. Deep reinforcement learning is an approach where AIs solve tasks without instructions. This is similar to how animals and babies solve problems. The method allows AI to find solutions for problems that are not readily available. This is useful in the field of research where the virtual world could only do so much. AIs have a set number of possible interactions and cannot deal with distractions of the real world. There being able to accomplish such a feat will be useful in fields such as robotics. For instance, Jiajun Wu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said this will be very useful for robots to travel difficult terrain. Scholars may be in a run for their money with new developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) search engines. Developments such as Semantic Scholar and Microsoft Academic may be on the way to make better papers than scholars. The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)'s Semantic Scholar has released a format at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego. According to Scientific American, the free AI-based scholarly search engine aims to outdo Google Scholar. Its recent move is to cover some 10 million research articles in computer science and neuroscience. Semantic Scholar will be joined by numerous AI-based academic research engines, such as Microsoft's Academic. The new software format is considered an "innovation," as the system will guide users through a dense "jungle of information." Semantic Scholar aims to sort and rank academic papers through a "sophisticated" understanding of content and context. Google Scholar has access to about 200 million documents but searches by keywords. Semantic Scholar can rank papers depending on the most meaningful citations, or even by "hotness" and trends. Its first launch heralded a 3-million strong paper library about computer science. Now, there are millions of new papers on neurology and medicine. New filters will allow searches based on body parts, models, and even methodologies. AI2 chief executive Oren Etzioni said the system wants to index all of PubMed and expand in the medical sciences. Meanwhile, Microsoft Academic is the successor to Microsoft Academic Search. It aims to use academic search algorithms and data for researches through natural language processing. This is understanding the meaning of full sentences in papers and questions. It's supported by search engine Bing, which now covers over 160-million publications. The engine provides more useful filters such as authors, journals and even fields of studies. It also has a "leaderboard" of most influential scientists in different disciplines. These are judged with a special algorithm that deems papers as "important" if they cited by other papers. Some scholars say this is a tremendous achievement for Microsoft as it's combining both the advantages of Google Scholar's scope and the more structured results of their subscription-based counterparts Scopus and the Web of Science. However, it doesn't end here. Other companies are also developing AI-driven software to delve deeply into content found online. For instance, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany is developing a new engine called DeepLife for health sciences. AI2 will even try to make a system that will answer new science questions and even propose new designs and hypotheses in a few 20 years. Uttar Pradesh Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIC) Deputy CEO A K Shukla invited everyone to the ongoing Khadi Mahotsav in Lucknow, which features the sale of artisanal items made from elephant ivory by locals. According to the Indian Express, Shukla's invitation was sent out last Sunday through a press release, which seemed oblivious to the ivory trade ban imposed in the country. India, along with 181 countries and the European Union, is a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which protects not only the ivory from elephants but over 35,000 species of animals and plants as well. Other members of the CITES include the United States of America, Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, China, Bahamas, and Ethiopia, India Times reports. In the 1980s and '90s, the poaching of tuskers became extremely rampant in the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where reportedly 2,000 pachyderms were extinguished for two decades. India has about 30,000-35,000 elephants (not all have tusks though), with Karnataka as the richest source of elephant ivory followed closely by Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Odisha, regions with substantial tusker population. In 2015, a sudden rise in poaching activity was again seen in these areas with around 30 elephant tuskers falling prey. Ivory has been traded for centuries all over the globe. Historically, elephant ivory was sought to make the whites of eyes of statues. Before plastic was invented, elephant tusks and their ivory were used as materials for false teeth, musical instruments, dominos, and other ornaments. India is in possession of somewhere around 30 tons of ivory. Currently, there is a heated debate among research experts and wildlife conservationists whether the said stockpile should be burned like what was done in Kenya as a powerful demonstration against poaching and illegal ivory trade, or whether a part of it should be saved for research purposes. Kenya holds the world record of burning the largest pile of ivory, setting on fire at least a hundred tons of it. Zimbabwe court has cleared Theo Bronkhorst, the professional hunter who assisted American hunter Walter Palmer and killer of the famous Cecil the Lion, of all criminal charges. Originally charged with failing to stop an illegal hunt, the court ruled that the charges against Bronkhorst "were too vague to enable to him to mount a proper defence." In an interview with the BBC, Bronkhorsts legal counsel, Pepertua Dube, said the offense did not have the force of the law and was neither criminal in nature. As a professional hunter, more locally known as PH, Bronkhorsts role was only to arrange trips, secure necessary permits and licenses, attending to the needs of the client, and ensuring that the hunt abides by all the laws required. On July 1, 2015, American dentist Walter Palmer paid a whopping $54,000 to bow-hunt Cecil the Lion, a major tourist attraction at Zimbabwes Hwange National Park. Palmers team, including Bronkhorst, shot Cecil with a bow in a nearby farm outside the park, where he occasionally wandered to explore, and then tracked him again for an additional 11 hours before finally putting an end to the animals life. Lightning has always fascinated and scared the hell out of humans for a long time. NASA will be launching a new satellite (GOES-R) on Nov. 19, 2016 that will for the first time supply uninterrupted and improved lightning observation over the North American hemisphere. It has been over a decade since researchers at University of Washington (UW) have been keeping an eye on global lightning from the ground. Lightning is not only related to public safety since a new study by UW has shown how data gathered from lightning strikes can help in precise storm forecasts. Robert Holzworth, co-author of the study, said that whenever lightning strikes the earth, it's easy to fathom where the convection motion is the strongest. He added that most lightning takes place in clouds with ice. Published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, the study shows a new technique to reconstruct lightning strikes into relevant information pertaining to weather. The US National Weather Service has already started using lightning as a device for better weather forecasts. However, this method has been restricted and scientists are of the view that it could be used in a broad range of forecasting systems in any corner of the globe. The researchers tested this technique in two instances: the massive thunderstorm of 2012 in the US and a tornado in 2013 that killed many individuals in the Midwest region. Ken Dixon, the first author of the study, said that the data gathered from lightning helped them to adjust the air moisture, eventually improving weather forecast for a strong storm, rain, and wind event. The study extracted information from the World Wide Lightning Location Network, which had a record of lightning strikes from 2004. They sell their data to government and commercial agencies besides working with scientists across the globe. GOES-R will contain a geostationary satellite that will continuously observe lightning pulses over North and South America. It'll have the potential to enhance our comprehension of lightning as a hazard and an accurate forecasting tool, said Holzworth. A group of scientists has discovered an exoplanet five times the mass of the Earth and is orbiting around a red dwarf star. Using data from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and HARPS-N instruments, researchers have found an exoplanet candidate orbiting around an M-class red dwarf star called GJ 536, which is located about 32.7 light years from Earth, Universe Today reports. According to the scientists, the newly detected exoplanet is a super-Earth, a class of exoplanet that has between more than one, but less than 15, times the mass of the Earth. "GJ 536 b is a small super Earth discovered in a very nearby star. It is part of the group of the smallest planets with measured mass," Alejandro Suarez Mascareno from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) who led the research team, told Universe Today. Mascareno said that, while the planet is not located in the habitable zone of its star, its relatively close orbit and the star's brightness could make it a promising target for transmission spectroscopy if the transit can be detected. "With a star so bright (V 9.7) it would be possible to obtain good quality spectra during the hypothetical transit to try to detect elements in the atmosphere of the planet. We are already designing a campaign for next year, but I guess we won't be the only ones," Mascareno added. Data about the planet came from the HARPS and HARPS-N instruments mounted on ESO's 3.6-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile and the 3.6-meter telescope at the La Palma Observatory in Spain. The data were combined with photometric data from the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS). The researchers detected the planet through radial velocity measurements from the star. Spectroscopic observations of the star were also taken over an 8.6 year period. Apart from detecting the planet, the researchers also found that it has a rotational period of about 44 days and a magnetic cycle that lasts less than three years. According to the scientists, the discovery is only the first of a long line of exoplanets being discovered around M-class red dwarf stars. The team will continue observing GJ 536 to find gas giants or Earth-like planets. The Earth is moving closer to global warming so fast it would be "game over" before we know it, scientists said. According to a new study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, the Earth's climate could become more sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions, further raising temperatures to more than 7 degrees Celsius within a lifetime. The United Nations' (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently estimated that the "business as usual" approach to using large amounts of fossil fuels would put the Earth at risk of an average temperature rise of 2.6 degrees Celsius to 4.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Study authors said that these current estimates may be vastly underestimated. The authors of the study - a team of climatologists and scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of Washington, the University of Albany and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany - said that the actual figures could rise by 2100 to 4.78 and 7.36 degrees Celsius, as the Earth's climate has "substantially higher sensitivity" to greenhouse gases during warm phases. In light of the new research, climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University said that a Donald Trump presidency - if he pulls the U.S. out of the Paris climate pact - could mean "game over" for the climate. "By 'game over for the climate,' I mean game over for stabilizing warming below dangerous (i.e. greater than 2C) levels," Mann told The Independent. "If Trump makes good on his promises, and the US pulls out of the Paris [climate] treaty, it is difficult to see a path forward to keeping warming below those levels." According to Dr. Tobias Friedrich, one of the authors of the study, the best way to prevent this from happening is to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible." "Currently, our planet is in a warm phase - an interglacial period - and the associated increased climate sensitivity needs to be taken into account for future projections of warming induced by human activities," Friedrich told The Independent. The leader of the Moldovan Party of Socialists (PSRM), Igor Dodon, has won the country's presidential election, according to the final election results after the Central Election Commission (CEC) processed 100% of voter ballots. Dodon won 835,210 votes, of 52.18% of the electorate, according to the data published on the CEC website. The united candidate of the right-wing pro-European parties, Maia Sandu, mustered 765,460 votes, or 47.82%. The second round of the election involved over 1,615,781 voters, or 53.54% of all registered voters. These data are preliminary, the CEC said. The official data will be announced in a few days, after the CEC has received the originals of all voting protocols and summed up the official results. The CEC has five days to do so, and then three days to submit the documentation to the Constitutional Court. The Court has ten days to decide on whether to approve the election results and confirm the presidential mandate. Dodon announced his election victory at midnight. Sandu has yet to react to the election results. She said she will hold a press conference at 3 p.m. Dodon has already received congratulations from Moldova's Prime Minister Pavel Filip and Parliamentary Speaker Andrian Candu, as well as Metropolitan Vladimir of Chisinau and All Moldova. The tiny blue penguins in New Zealand are certainly getting a lot of love from their community. Just recently, an underpass was created especially for them to protect them from vehicles and afford them a bit of privacy from gawking tourists. According to a report from The Guardian, the tunnel is meant to help these penguins pad between their nests and the sea, specifically to the Oamaru Harbour, Otago, on the east coast of the South Island. It follows the birds' usual route and the builders even transferred a couple of power and supply lines for the 80-foot long underpass. "The project was supported by the local Waitaki district council, as well as a number of private businesses who offered labor, materials, and advice," Tourism Waitaki Limited general manager Jason Gaskill said. Blue penguins are members of the world's smallest penguin species. A regular one is roughly one foot tall and weighs about one kilogram. They're usually spotted along the coast of southern Australia. The species lives to about a decade and waddles with a very distinct stoop. Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony marine biologist Philippa Agnew revealed in a report from Otago Daily Times that the underpass was conceptualized because of penguins' nature to be very habitual in using their established paths despite the fact that it has become very busy. "Well they're pretty set in their ways; they're pretty determined," Agnew explained in News Hub. "So when they come ashore to a specific area, they'll continue to do that." The construction started back in September, a report from Mother Nature Network said. By November, it was already operational with lights to help the small creatures navigate their new underground route. Cameras were even placed in the tunnel for monitoring and observing. Good news for the environment! Germany's coalition government has decided to take a big step in fighting climate change by cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent in just by the year 2050. According to a report from the Independent, the decision comes a week before the global climate summit, which will be held in Marrakesh, Morocco. The decision to cut back carbon emissions at a drastic will ease the pressure on Germany with regards to emission during the global climate summit. Especially the sector targets, included in the climate protection plan, will be subject to a comprehensive impact assessment, said government spokesperson Georg Streiter via The Guardian. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks will present the agreement once the ministers' has come to a vote on Monday. Previously, ministers and the coalition has had a grueling negotiation after coming to the agreement due to the fear that the cut on carbon dioxide emissions might affect businesses, and , in turn, create unemployment. "Other countries will only follow in the footsteps of our very ambitious climate policy if we manage to combine the fight against climate change with the protection of industrial jobs even in energy-intensive sectors," said Social Democrat leader and deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel. Karsten Smidt, a spokesperson for Greenpeace International, showed support to the decision. By committing to halving emissions in the energy sector, the governments climate action plans effectively hail the phase-out of the coal industry and the end of the era of the combustion engine," Smidt said. Read: Global Carbon Emissions From Fossil Fuels Remained Relatively Flat for 3 Consecutive Years Scotland Provides Electricity to All Its Houses Via Wind Power for a Month #PutAPriceOnIt: Is Expensive Carbon the Answer to Climate Change? Good News: Costa Rica Now Fossil Fuel-Free, Running on Renewable Energy for 2 Months Chicago is paving a way to lesser pollution in its city by enticing cyclists to ride their bikes more through a solar-powere floating bike path with picturesque river views. The new project, tagged as RiverRide, is the brainchild of entrepreneur James Chuck, The Guardian reports. The RiverRide idea involves building a bike path floating on the Chicago River to eliminate traffic and car hassle for bikers. RiverRide is a response to Chicago's goal of becoming a bike-friendly city. However, in order to achieve that, there should be separate, protected bike lanes from other vehicles to eliminate the risk of accidents -- and this is where Chuck's idea comes into play. If you look at photographs of Chicago a hundred years ago, you couldnt throw a penny in the river without it landing on the deck of a boat or a barge. Now were not using the river at all, said Chuck. Built using a technology used for pontoons, RiverSide will have floating segments attached at the end of the lane at the river's bank. It will also have solar-powered lighting as well as rectractable roof that will enanle cyclists to use the facilities even in bad weather. The beauty of the floating system is that its quick and easy to install and dissemble ... If you want to pick it up and reuse it somewhere else, thats perfectly possible, says Kristian Rame, spokesperson for Finnish firm Marinetek, a technology partner of Chuck's company Second Shore. Read: Perovskite Solar Cells to Pave Way for Ultra-Cheap, Easy-to-Use Power Tesla's Solar Roof Almost Ready for Distribution, How Much Will It Cost? Morocco to Build One of the World's Largest Solar Plants With EU Fund Myanmar is currently probing on whether to continue building the construction of China's controversial dam after it was halted in 2011 due to environmental and safety concerns. According to the Daily Times, the hydro-power project called Myitsone dam costs $3.6 billion and aims to symbolize China's economic dominance from junta-run Myanmar. The dam, located in the northern Kachin state, poses environmental threats to the environment, and the country's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has commissioned an environmental and social impact assessment on the project before taking any actions. The outlet notes that the decision will also consider the "desires and opinions of local people and societies and potential effects on foreign investment." Environmentalists and protesters have previously opposed the continuation of the Chinese dam in Myanmar because of its highly controversial location. The Myitsone dam's location is near an active seismic fault. This means that once finished, this would lead to possible flooding in nearby areas. The decision, according to AFP, will be a hard one as Beijing is still Myanmar's largest investor despite the country's democratic reforms. In other news from Myanmar, a strange large metal object recently crashed in a Myanmar village. According to The Guardian, the metal object looks like a drum that's 4.5 meters wide (15 feet). The residents said they heard a large explosion when the metal object crashed to Earth and then bounced 50 meters across the compound of Hpakank, a mining company. Every local thought it was the explosion of heavy artillery. I think it was an engine because I found a diode and many copper wires at the tail of the body, Ko Maung Myo said. Unidentified piece of an aircraft, believed to be an engine, falls near Hpakant jade mine | #Myanmar https://t.co/W2im1NOCdh pic.twitter.com/NFRCJiAYM5 The Myanmar Times (@TheMyanmarTimes) November 11, 2016 Read More: Good News: Costa Rica Now Fossil Fuel-Free, Running on Renewable Energy for 2 Months Manmade Water Reservoirs Contribute to Global Warming, Produce More Greenhouse Gases than Canada US President-elect Donald Trump has been open with his view on climate change being a hoax, and now, Trump has tapped one of the most popular climate skeptics, Myron Ebell, to lead the US EPA transition. A report from the Scientific American notes that close sources to the Trump campaign has claimed that Ebell, the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is leading Trump's EPA transition plans. Along with Ebell are other leaders chosen by Trump who will play leadership roles in energy and interior workings. These include Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna, who will be leading the Department of Energy, as well as David Bernhardt for the Interior Department. Washington Post notes that Ebell suits Trump's environmental ideals. He is known for his idea that the government is using the environmental movement as a means to expand the government. He has also argued for the opening of federal lands for oil and gas exploration as well as coal mining, and has been a firm disbeliever of the Paris Climate Agreement, even urging the US Senate to vote against it. There has been a little bit of warming ... but its been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether its caused by human beings or not, its nothing to worry about," said Ebell about climate change in a 2007 Vanity Fair interview. Ebell is yet to comment on his newly appointed position in leading the EPA. Read: Trump Presidency Could Signal Game Over For Earths Climate, Scientists Say Oops! US Vice President-Elect Mike Pence Says Smoking Doesn't Kill You Trump: America First, Animals Last? New US Government Poses Great Threat to Animal Welfare BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey is scheduled to retire from the force on Dec. 31, General Manager Grace Crunican wrote in an email sent to the transportation agency's Board of Directors last week. Since taking the reins following the controversial shooting death of Oscar Grant in 2011, Rainey has been tasked with improving the department's policing behavior and policies following a review audit, Cruncian wrote. The transportation agency expects that filling Rainey's vacant position could end up taking five months, according to Cruncian. The general manager added that a team comprised of BART's Board of Directors, BART Police Citizen Review Board and BART Police Associations will work together to find a replacement. Both Deputy Chiefs Ben Fairow and Jeff Jennings will assume the role as acting police chief once Rainey relieves himself of his duties, Cruncian wrote. During Rainey's tenure, he had to manage a friendly-fire shooting death investigation after one of his officers was gunned down by a colleague, he faced a federal lawsuit relating to the agency's practice of denying the use of trained SWAT officers for building and probation searches, and he had to answer questions about the fleet's use of surveillance cameras. NBC Bay Area attended the Oahu leg of the annual Hawai'i Food and Wine Festival and discovered a number of connections between the food worlds of Honolulu and San Francisco. The festival invited a number of Bay Area chefs, including Commonwealth's Jason Fox, the Slanted Door's Charles Phan and Liholiho Yacht Club's Ravi Kapur to cook alongside local and international talent at various dream team events. State Bird Provisions chef/owners Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza and their sous chef Gaby Maeda marveled at the breadth and quality of local produce that were presented to the chefs in advance as possible tools for their events. "I grew up about a mile from here in Honolulu and I've never gotten to work with it before!" Maeda said enthusiastically of ulu (breadfruit), which the three incorporated into a goat cheese fritter, a variation of a dish that was served when Krasinski and Brioza got married on the Big Island. A welcome event highlighted that Bay Area restaurateur Michael Mina opened a Waikiki branch of his Stripsteak this summer in the International Marketplace, a new luxury shopping center that also features an island branch of San Francisco's b. patisserie. Stripsteak's executive chef Benjamin Jenkins has been a longtime ace in Mina's portfolio of restaurants, beginning with the defunct Aqua, now the site for the flagship Michael Mina restaurant in San Francisco. Mina also plans to open a refined food hall called The Street, a Michael Mina Social House inside the International Marketplace next spring that will feature two San Francisco exports: Ramen Bar and International Smoke, the latter a barbecue concept created in collaboration with Ayesha Curry, wife of Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry. Chefs from the island have also turned to San Francisco as a key city for mainland culinary experience before returning to start their own restaurants. Such is the case with chef Chris Kajioka, who has worked with acclaimed Bay Area chefs like Ron Siegel, Mourad Lahlou and Thomas Keller (for Keller's Per Se in New York). His forthcoming restaurant Senia is due to open later this year and is one of Honolulu's most anticipated debuts. The Bay Area love and influence also shows up in small, unexpected places like Honolulu's Otto Cake, a punk rock dessert shop that serves slices of lilikoi and other inventive cheesecakes alongside adorable store T-shirts that are styled in an obvious homage to Amoeba Music. This isn't a one-sided affair, though; the Bay Area appears to be increasingly embracing Hawaiian food. The number of eateries that serve the island specialty of raw fish poke bowls, for example, has been exploding as one of the biggest local food trends in 2016. The love and respect is mutual and growing. Kyivs Pechersky district court in a closed court session has decided to search a house and a studio of Shuster Live Show presenter, journalist Savik Shuster, CEO of 3S.tv TV channel Pavlo Yelizarov said on his Facebook page. "As we have just learned from reliable sources, the judge of Pechersky court in a closed hearing without the presence of our lawyers, ruled a search warrant at place of residence of Savik Shuster and at the TV channel of Savik Shuster Studio," the statement says. "We consider this as renewal of pressure," Yelizarov said. In turn Shuster in the broadcast of his live show on Friday night, said: "I was told during the commercial break that Pechersky court has ruled to resume all pursuits against us and against me. The next week we expect searches and everything that we can not even imagine will happen here." As reported, in April this year, the Kyiv City Employment Center annulled the right to work for Shuster in Ukraine in the office of Director General of LLC Savik Shuster Studio - television production, which produced the socio-political Shuster Live show. The decision was made on the basis of allegedly false certificate of good conduct. The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and the Independent Media Trade Union issued a statement in which they called the authorities actions illegal and qualified them as a manifestation of the legal censorship. On July 12, the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the first instance court of the illegality of cancellation by the Kyiv City Employment Center of permit for work to the author and presenter of the Shuster LIVE talk show, Savik Shuster. Along with the dozens of post-election anti-Trump protests across the Bay Area some peaceful, some not so much a wall went up at BART stations in San Francisco Monday morning. But this was a Wall of Empathy, created out of post-it notes passersby were writing, reading and sharing to support minorities and offer post-election relief, albeit in an unusual place. The group behind the art project is using the hashtag #WallofEmpathy on social media to spread their message. Hate crimes and hateful rhetoric have no place in our city. We are stronger together, Muriel MacDonald, one of the eevent organizers, said in a statement. We will be inviting passersby to share their feelings on sticky notes and build a Wall of Empathy. The messages? "I love you," "If not now, when? If not me, who?" "Make America Great Again," "Trump values do not live in California," and in a typical Bay Area style attempt at humor: "I love Rosie O'Donnell." The group behind the San Francisco wall said they were inspired by a similar event in New York: Borrowing the idea from New Yorkers, we will be leaving Post-Election stickies and building a Wall. ... A Wall of Empathy. We are not going to support Trump America. Let's come together and share our grief to help build a better future. Stop by and leave a note or read and share them. In the Bay Area, those disappointed by the Trump elections have been coming up with creative ways to let their frustrations out over the weekend, there was a group hug event at Dolores Park, pant-suit events to show solidarity for Hillary and in Oakland, psychologists from an El Cerritto nonprofit set up a white empathy tent along Lake Merritt, where strangers came to talk about their feelings in a non-judgmental safe space. These protests have garnered ridicule from the Trump supporters and those on the right, who are calling out liberals for being too touchy feely and living in their own bubble. The Wall of Empathy project will be going on until 10 p.m. Monday at the 16th Street BART Station. Walls of empathy were also created at the 24th street BART station in the Mission District and the Montgomery Street station downtown. Art materials and post-it notes will be available or you can bring your own.[[401147225, C]] Oakland somatic therapist Allison White said she was so deeply sad about the election that she felt she needed to do something about it to heal her mind, and her body. She regularly walks around Oaklands three-mile Lake Merritt, considered a jewel of the city, and talked to a handful of like-minded liberal friends about putting together a peaceful, therapeutic event for the community to join and heal. On Wednesday, she posted a public Facebook invitation for anyone to show up at the lake to join hands on Sunday afternoon. We all need to be accepting of each other, White said of wanting to bring people together to heal, not to fight or protest or break windows of shops, which has been a recurring theme in some recent anti-Donald Trump protests in Oakland. Her friend, Svieta Lana, said that one of their friends figured out theyd need 3,600 people to show up to complete the circle around Lake Merritt, situated between the county court house and the iconic Grand Lake Theatre. Viewer Photos: Peaceful Protesters Hold 'Hands Around Lake Merritt' to Promote Peace and Love Though the exact number wasnt tallied, the events Facebook page showed that nearly 8,500 people said they attended the affair, which was billed as an event to stand up to "racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia." Lana thought there might have even been 10,000 people there, as many brought children and friends, too. Oakland police did not immediately know how many people attended, the event, but an aerial view on Sunday afternoon showed the entire ring of the lake was ringed with people, sometimes two or three people thick. Around 4 p.m., people grabbed hands and shot them high into the air. Before the main event, an "empathy tent" was set up for anyone who wanted to talk, and children flashed "Free Listening" signs for those desiring an open ear. A group of psychotherapists belonging to the group "Sidewalk Talk" were also on hand to listen to concerns in a neutral fashion. Many on the right bashed this idea on social media, laughing at "liberals" for their touchy-feely approach to life. But those who organized it felt the tents were important. "I feel that marginalized people are going to feel the impact of this election differently that privileged folks because they are terrified about their safety," Traci Ruble, psychotherpaist and CEO of Psyched in San Francisco said. Every time a bird flew up in the sky people clapped their hands and did the wave. One group brought a boombox and blasted "Love Train," a famous tune from The O'Jays. Others wore sticky notes with empathetic messages fastened with a safety pin, a new symbol of the movement Yesterday was amazing, Lana said. It was what I envisioned. A lot of people want it again. I say, Why not? A woman was found dead early Sunday morning in East Oakland, according to police. Around 1:05 a.m., officers responded to a report of a victim suffering from a gunshot wound in the 10000 block of MacArthur Boulevard, police said. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. No suspects were identified and no arrest was made. The identity of the victim was not released. Hours earlier, on Saturday evening, a drive-by shooting had injured one person near the city's Fruitvale neighborhood. Around 8:05 p.m., officers responded to a report of a shooting in the 2400 block of 35th Avenue, police said. Upon arrival, they learned four male victims had been shot at by at least four other people from inside a vehicle. One of the victims suffered a graze wound and was taken to a hospital, according to police. Officers were unable to locate the suspects and did not make an arrest. Anyone with information about any of the shootings is encouraged to call the police's Crime Stoppers line at (510) 777-8572. Callers have the option of remaining anonymous. President-elect Donald Trump is making an overture to warring Republican circles by appointing GOP chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff and Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor. The two men had made up the president-elect's chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus received that job, Bannon's post also is expected to wield significant clout. The media executive with ties to the alt-right and white nationalist movement was given top billing in the press release announcing their appointments. Priebus on Monday defended the media mogul, saying the two made an effective pair as they steered Trump past Democrat Hillary Clinton and toward the presidency. He sought to distance Bannon from the incendiary headlines on his website, saying they were written by unspecified others. "Together, we've been able to manage a lot of the decision making in regard to the campaign," Priebus told NBC's "Today." ''It's worked very, very well." Trump's hires were, at first glance, contradictory, though they fit a pattern of the celebrity businessman creating a veritable Rorschach test that allowed his supporters to see what they wanted. Priebus, who lashed the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intraparty objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite. Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart News site into the leading mouthpiece of the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Ryan has been one of his most frequent targets. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory," Trump said Sunday in a statement announcing his picks. "Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." Neither Priebus nor Bannon brings policy experience to the White House. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policymaking, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk. They're often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made. In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as "equal partners" effectively creating two power centers in the West Wing. The arrangement is risky and could leave ambiguity over who makes final decisions. Trump has long encouraged rivalries, both in business and in his presidential campaign. He cycled through three campaign managers during his White House run, creating a web of competing alliances among staffers. Priebus is a traditional choice, one meant as an olive branch to the Republicans who control both houses of Congress as Trump looks to pass his legislative agenda. The Bannon pick, however, is anything but uncontroversial. Under Bannon's tenure, Brietbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend "Western values." John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America." House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that Trump "must try to bring America together- not continue to fan the flames of division and bigotry." She said including Bannon in the new administration "is an alarming signal that President-elect Trump remains committed to the hateful and divisive vision that defined his campaign. There must be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist for the Trump Administration," Pelosi said. Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones. An ex-wife of Bannon said he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he "didn't want the girls going to school with Jews." A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements. The appointments came after a day in which Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and Ryan rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people in the country illegally. Though Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview which aired Sunday night that his border wall might look more like a fence in spots, one thing didn't change from his statements on this matter during the primary season: the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores. During a four-hour spree, Trump gloated about establishment Republicans congratulating him and savaged The New York Times for being "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate." "The @nytimes states today that DJT believes 'more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.' How dishonest are they. I never said this!" Trump tweeted late Sunday morning. But in a March interview with the Times, Trump was asked whether he would object to Japan acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, which it does not now have. He replied, "Would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that's the case." Trump also told "60 Minutes" he would eschew the $400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year. With Illinois stopgap budget agreement set to expire at the end of December, Gov. Bruce Rauner penned an op-ed Monday encouraging lawmakers to look past the contentious election cycle to passing a full, balanced state budget, Crains Chicago Business reports. This week the Illinois General Assembly will return to the state Capitol for its annual veto session, Rauner wrote. This is our opportunity to come together and pass a balanced budget, which is why I have invited the four legislative leaders to meet and immediately begin negotiations on an agreement containing a balanced budget and reforms. However, Rauners Monday meeting was reportedly only being attended by fellow Republicans. House Speaker Michael Madigan announced Sunday that he wouldn't attend due to a scheduling conflict, though he reportedly asked to schedule a meeting for Tuesday instead. After Madigans announcement, Senate President John Cullerton also pulled out, claiming the meeting wouldnt be productive without his partys leader. In his op-ed, Rauner also focused on pushing reforms tied to his beleaguered turnaround agenda, which were almost entirely cut out of Junes stopgap compromise. We must include reforms that the people of Illinois are calling for economic reform to spur job growth, education reform to ensure that every child has access to a quality education, political reform to return power back to the people, property tax reform to give homeowners and business owners much needed relief, and pension reform to get our states financial footing back on the right track, Rauner wrote. According to the governor, the state is on an unsustainable path that cant be fixed simply with tax hikes on Illinois families and job creators. Rauner also pushed for increased economic growth and lowered government spending, which he says can be addressed not by focusing primarily on cuts to human services, but by curbing the cost of our government bureaucracy. Republicans cannot do this by themselves, nor can Democrats, Rauner wrote. For the benefit of all the people of Illinois, we have to get this done together on a bipartisan basis. So as the legislature returns to Springfield, lets move past the campaign. We need a balanced budget. We need reforms. Now is the time to move forward together." A judge has ordered "Making a Murderer" subject Brendan Dassey released from prison, pending his appeal. "We are in the process of making arrangements for his release and hope that Brendan will be reunited with his family by Thanksgiving, if not sooner," Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth said in a statement. "We urge everyone to respect Brendans privacy during this time of transition." The granting of Dassey's release, first reported by NBC affiliate station TMJ4, came during a ruling Monday, which outlined several conditions, including that he can only travel in the court's Eastern District of Wisconsin, cannot obtain a passport, cannot possess a gun or any other weapons or possess any controlled substances. He also cannot contact his uncle Steven Avery, or the family of Teresa Halbach. "As we give thanks this holiday season for family and friends, our food will taste all the sweeter because we know that for the first time in ten years, Brendan will be celebrating in freedom with his family, too," the center wrote. Still, Attorney General Brad Schimel said he intends to file an emergency motion in the Seventh Circuit "seeking a stay of this release order." A federal magistrate judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Halbach in 2005. Dassey, who turned 27 Wednesday, was 16 at the time. The magistrate ordered that Dassey be freed unless prosecutors appealed or decided to retry him. In a brief filed with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Schimel urged the appeals court to reject Dassey's claim that his confession was coerced. "Substantial police coercion" is required for any confession to be ruled involuntary, Schmel said. And he said the Wisconsin Court of Appeals was right to affirm in 2013 that Dassey's confession was voluntary. Duffin held that investigators made specific promises of leniency to Dassey and that no "fair-minded jurists could disagree." He cited one investigator's comment early in the interview that "you don't have to worry about things," plus repeated comments like "it's OK" and that they already knew what happened. But the magistrate's ruling "ignores both the facts and the law," the attorney general said. Investigators didn't promise leniency, he said, and specifically told Dassey they couldn't make any promises. The teenager willingly spoke with investigators and was properly informed of his rights, Schimel said. The interview took a few hours in the middle of the day, while Dassey sat on a couch and drank a soda, the investigators spoke in normal tones, and did not threaten him or make false promises, he said. And Dassey confessed to most of the important details within an hour, in response to open-ended questions, he added. "The state courts' conclusion that Dassey's confession was voluntary is not only reasonable; it is entirely correct. Accordingly, Dassey is not entitled to relief," the attorney general said. Halbach was killed on Halloween 2005, after she visited the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc County. Investigators allege Avery lured her there by asking her to take photos of a minivan. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He's pursuing his own appeal. Their cases gained national attention after Netflix aired "Making a Murderer" last year. The series spawned widespread conjecture about the pair's innocence. Authorities who worked on the cases said the series was biased, but it generated a myriad of calls from the public to free both men. Just in time for the holiday travel season, Chicagos OHare International Airport unveiled a new screening process that allows travelers to make their way through security faster. The new system includes three innovation lanes that use 3-D technology to scan bags with automated belts and cameras. The lanes look the same, but airline officials say they are a whole lot better. Additional tasks typically performed by Transportation Security Administration workers such as returning bins and diverting bags that have been marked for additional screening will also be automated in the new innovation lanes, allowing travelers to continue to flow through the security lines without interruption. NBC 5 Two of the new innovation lanes opened last week in American Airlines Terminal 3, with an additional three opening Monday in United Airlines Terminal 1. Travelers using the new lanes will reportedly move through security on average of 30 percent faster. OHare Airport is the first to unveil the new system, with rollouts expected to follow in Dallas, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, and Miami. It's no coincidence the new system is in place just as Thanksgiving and holiday travels are about to begin. Airline officials are aiming to avoid scenes seen during the spring and summer vacation season after a shortage of screeners led to massive security lines with a wait time of up to two hours. The new technology also may make it possible to leave liquids and laptops in your carryon bags, but in the initial rollout TSA have not yet made changes to the current travel regulations. The Connecticut Supreme Court has sidestepped the issue of how social media accounts should be authenticated in criminal cases in a ruling upholding a murder conviction. The court issued a 6-0 decision Monday in the appeal of Derrick Bouknight, who argued prosecutors didn't prove a Facebook account they used as evidence was his. Justices, instead, said evidence against Bouknight was overwhelming. They also said he didn't prove the Facebook evidence had a substantial effect on the jury's verdict. Bouknight is serving a 70-year prison sentence for fatally shooting William Baines in New Haven in 2010 in a dispute over a $100 debt. Courts elsewhere have issued varying opinions on how much proof is required to show that a social media account belongs to a defendant. Emergency crews knocked down a fire that heavily damaged a home on Hanover Road in Meriden Sunday night. Firefighters were called to Hanover Road around 7 p.m. on reports of a fully involved house fire. Crews worked quickly to get the fire under control. According to the Meriden Fire Chief Kenneth Morgan, the home was vacant at the time of the fire and will be a total loss. The road was closed while crews worked to contain the blaze. I think the biggest challenge was the fire was well advanced when we got here and it was unsafe to go in. So that was a challenge. Were very limited to get water where we need to get it because were shooting from the outside, Morgan said. The road reopened around 9:45 p.m. No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. A motorcyclist was seriously injured in an accident in Branford Sunday afternoon. Police said the rider, identified as Christopher Scranton, 52, of West Haven, was traveling west on East Main Street around 4:30 p.m. when he was struck by a vehicle turning left onto Mill Plain Road. Scranton suffered life threatening injuries and was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital for treatment. The driver of the other vehicle, identified as Ellsworth Mcguigan, 79, of Branford, was not injured. The road was closed in the area but has since reopened. The South Central Connecticut Traffic Unit was called in to investigate. Anyone who witnessed the crash is asked to contact Branford police at 203-481-4241. The Kyiv office of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) has completed its investigation into the case involving former Health Minister of Ukraine Roman Vasylyshyn and the department director of Oleksandrovsky Clinical Hospital Yuriy Serniak. Both men were arrested taking bribes. "It has been determined that the former deputy minister and Serniak created a bribery system that allowed practicing doctors to conduct operations in the Oleksandrosky Clinical Hospital. A number of doctors at the medical facility were obliged to pay them money received from patients," the press department of Kyiv's PGO said. Prosecutors said the defendants and their lawyers have been notified about the completion of the probe in accordance with Article 290 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and are acquainting themselves with the results of the investigation, after which the case will go to court. As earlier reported, on July 8 agents from Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the PGO arrested Vasylyshyn and Serniak. According to information provided by PGO Head Yuriy Lutsenko, the deputy health minister, who previously was in charge of Oleksandrovsky Clinical Hospital, introduced Donetsk native Serniak as the facility's new director. The urological clinic at the hospital determined which doctors could perform operations. Patients paid the doctors, who, in turn, paid Serniak. Money, ranging from UAH 50,000 to UAH 100,000 was collected once a week and was turned over to Vasylyshyn. Dallas-based restaurant chain Chili's Grill & Bar has apologized and vowed to correct a wrongdoing after a local restaurant manager took away a free meal offered to veterans on Veterans Day. U.S. Army veteran Ernest Walker, 47, of Cedar Hill, Texas, said he was served the meal as part of a promotion offering U.S. military veterans free meals on Veterans Day. Walker finished his food and was preparing to leave the restaurant when the trouble began. Walker, accompanied by his service dog Barack, said he believes an elderly man wearing an American flag shirt and Trump sticker told the restaurant manager that Walker was wearing his cap indoors and was not a U.S. veteran and should not receive the free meal. In an encounter captured on video by Walker and posted to Facebook, the manager asked for Walker's military ID, which he provided. Walker also provided his discharge paperwork. Walker said the manager then took his to-go meal. "I looked around and I'm embarrassed at this point," Walker said. "People are looking. I'm a soldier. I'm a person and everybody's looking like I stole food." The manager also indicated the service dog was not a service dog, despite having a red service vest and certified service tags. On Sunday, Chili's issued the following statement on Walker's Facebook page and to NBCDFW. It reads: "We are aware of the situation that occurred at our Chili's Cedar Hill restaurant on November 11th. Our goal is to make every guest feel special and unfortunately we fell short on a day where we serve more than 180,000 free meals as a small token to honor our Veterans and active military for their service, hence these actions do not reflect the beliefs of our brand. We are taking this very seriously and the leaders in our company are actively involved with the goal of making it right. Since the incident occurred, we have extended an apology and we are reaching out to the guest." "They're doing what they should do, but they still haven't validated me as a soldier," said Walker. "I just need him to say, 'I see your ID, I see your DD214, and I respect you as a soldier, and as a man and as a customer.'" Walker said he served in the Army's 25th Infantry Division, serving from 1987 to 1991. He said he was in an Army uniform without his name or rank on it on Veterans Day because he did not want to be mistaken for an active-duty soldier. "I wear this one day a year," said Walker. "I'm not some kook that's reliving the past." Monday, Chili's issued an additional statement saying they had spoken with the veteran and had removed the manager from the restaurant. Walker's attorney Kim Cole said the manager has been suspended pending an investigation by the company. "Today, we personally apologized to Mr. Walker for the unfortunate experience in our restaurant on Veterans Day and thanked him for his service to our country. We also thanked him for taking the time to speak with us and he appreciated our apology. Our goal is to make every Guest that walks into our restaurants feel special and we fully own that one of our restaurants fell short on an important day where we strive to honor our veterans and active military for their service. We took swift action and immediately removed our manager from the restaurant. We are now in the process of working with Mr. Walker on a resolution that promotes trust and healing." Monday afternoon, the mayor of Cedar Hill, Rob Franke, said the situation was not reflective of his community and that people should be concerned for the veteran as well as the restaurant's manager. Franke's entire statement can be read below: Demonstrators upset over the election of Donald Trump have marched in cities around the country over the past week, and some are making plans to be in Washington for his inauguration Jan. 20. But whether marches will become a movement is an open question. At this early stage, the protesters who have taken to the streets to brand Trump a bigot and a sexist and chant "Not my president!" appear to be mostly venting their frustrations and do not seem to have coalesced behind overall leaders or a common set of demands. Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin, who as an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society helped organize an anti-Vietnam War demonstration that brought thousands to Washington in 1965, said the anti-Trump protests by themselves "are not the makings of a movement." "A movement requires that clusters of people take responsibility for creating vehicles that can carry through, focus energy, develop priorities, strategize, recruit, figure out how to govern themselves," Gitlin said. For that to happen, a critical mass of protesters has to "transform their mindset from protest into successful politics, which is much less exciting," he said. Gitlin said that means "dirtying our hands in winning local and state battles which are instrumental to changing the national balance." On Monday, hundreds of students decrying Trump's election walked out of schools in Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Silver Spring, Maryland, after a weekend in which thousands of people demonstrated around the country and scores were arrested. The Seattle Police Department tweeted Monday evening that two adult men were arrested after assaulting officers. The department added the two people are not Seattle public school students. Thousands of students across Seattle chanted as they marched in the streets and waved "Not My President" or "Love Wins" signs. Seattle Public Schools spokesman Luke Duecy reported more than 5,000 students from 20 middle and high schools walked out of classes Monday. Some said they oppose Trump's divisive rhetoric and wanted to show support for those he targeted, such as Muslims or immigrants. Others say they came to support their friends or simply to observe. High school senior Rose Taylor, who is bisexual, says she worries about what Trump's election will mean for the LGBT community and others. Protesters threw rocks at police in Indianapolis and hurled bottles and other objects in Portland, Oregon. Marchers have also converged on Trump Tower in New York, the president-elect's transition headquarters. Among other things, the demonstrators have condemned Trump's behavior toward women and his stand on immigration and civil liberties. Ralph Young, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia who teaches a course on dissent in America and has written two books on the topic, said it is too early to predict what the marches might become. Once Trump becomes president and starts making policy decisions, that could crystalize opposition and focus people's attention on certain issues, he said. If the anti-Trump demonstrations are going to become a movement, they also need leaders who can articulate their grievances, he said. Jamie Henn of the group 350, which organizes protests to fight climate change, said liberal activist groups are still scrambling to figure out how they will push back against a Trump presidency. "There is definitely stuff coming together and being planned that looks like the messy process of everyone and their mother throwing up something on their Facebook page," Henn said. Henn said liberals haven't seen the need for this level of mobilization since the run-up to the Iraq War. But activists remember glumly how little a dent their big marches against the invasion made then, and may use different tactics this time. Some groups are already trying to come together, though there are differences of opinion, said Greg McKelvey, a protest organizer in Portland, Oregon. McKelvey said demonstrators are trying to organize with counterparts in New York; Washington; Austin, Texas; Oakland, California; Boston; and a few other cities. Some activists want to prevent Trump somehow from becoming president, while others feel that's inevitable and instead want to insulate their communities from his policies, McKelvey said. He said his group, Portland's Resistance, aims to make sure city and state governments are working on issues such as limiting climate change, pushing for better health care and dealing with racial disparities in policing. Trump's election has made activists out of people who haven't been part of any organized demonstrations before. Olivia Antezana, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Maryland at College Park, had never been to a demonstration before creating and promoting a "Not My President" event on Facebook. By Monday afternoon, 18,000 people had indicated on Facebook that they would be going to the event in Washington on Inauguration Day. "I will say I certainly underestimated it," Antezana said. Still, Antezana said she is not sure what she will do after the demonstration she is planning is over. She doesn't plan to join a political campaign, she said, though she would like to keep up with activism. Right now, she said, she has another priority: school. FEMA has rejected Gov. Dannel Malloys request to set up an operation in northeastern Connecticut to investigate the crumbling foundations. In October, the governor wrote FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate asking the agency to establish a field office in northeastern Connecticut to conduct a preliminary damage assessment to determine the extent and impact of what he describes as approximately 34,000 homes in the area with foundations that could be at risk of crumbling and actually collapsing. A state investigation concluded what the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters reported over year ago, that a chemical reaction involving a naturally-occurring mineral called pyrrhotite causes the in deterioration. In a letter dated Nov. 8, Fugate responded that while the chemical reaction that caused the crumbling is natural, pouring foundations is a manmade event, therefore the issue is not a natural catastrophe. Fugate did offer to make a liaison available to assist the state in coordinating with other federal partners. NBC Connecticut has reached out to the governor's office for comment. See prior stories about the crumbling foundations issue. Authorities said a 26-year-old man was killed after being ejected from a motorcycle on a Loop 12 bridge Sunday night. Dallas police said the driver later identified as Darian Thomas was headed south in the 4300 block of South Walton Walker Boulevard at a high rate of speed at about 9:20 p.m. Police said Thomas lost control on a curve, crashed into a retaining wall and was ejected off the bridge onto Cockrell Hill Road. Thomas was pronounced dead at the scene. No further details have been released. More than a month ago, NBC 5 Investigates uncovered a ticket scandal involving Dallas County Schools bus drivers caught on camera running red lights. We've learned the videos may be just one part of a larger safety problem involving Dallas County Schools, the busing agency for the Dallas Independent School District and 10 others in North Texas. Monday morning, NBC 5 Investigates Reporter Scott Friedman and Producer Eva Parks discussed what has been uncovered over the last three years and what we'll reveal in a series of reports this week. The video interview can be seen above. At least one person has been killed on a Texas road every day for the last 16 years, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. That sobering statistic, which has resulted in more than 55,000 deaths since Nov. 7, 2000, has prompted TxDOT to launch its #EndTheStreakTX social media campaign. The campaign aims to encourage drivers to make better decisions behind the wheel. TxDOTs plan is a noble goal, for sure, but theyre really not asking for a lot with this, Fort Worth Police Department Sgt. Brent Halford said. Thats not just an optimistic goal, thats something [that should be] a very realistic goal. Theyre really setting the benchmark pretty low there. Halford spoke with NBC 5 as a representative of the FWPD, but also as a man who lost a good friend during that streak. Officer Dwayne Freeto was nine months into his career with the Fort Worth Police Department in December 2006 when he stopped to help a driver who had blown out a tire along Interstate 35W. Freetos patrol car was rear-ended by a drunk driver, which caused the car to burst into flames and trap the husband and father of two inside, killing him. Halford lamented the fact that Freetos daughters were forced to grow up without a father because someone made a bad, and preventable, decision. And he added that the figure of 55,000 people killed does not even begin to address the impact. If every one of those people had two children, and one brother, and one sister, and two parents look at how many people are affected, he said. Now youre talking hundreds of thousands of people that are dealing with this for the rest of their life. Accidents are bound to happen, according to Halford, but many fatal crashes involve people who have made poor decisions, like drinking and driving, failing to buckle their safety belts, driving distracted or speeding. A two-month-old baby was found safe Saturday after being kidnapped and taken to Mexico. The boy's father, Jose Garcia, spent three long days searching for his son. Max Garcias mother took the baby and fled to Mexico. The baby's father received a tip from Facebook from one of her ex-boyfriends that ultimately led to her and the baby. Now, the father is faced with a new challenge: when he's going to get his son back. Kidnapped baby found safe in Mexico. Now dad has new challenge- when he'll see his son again. #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/tjEUoz65Bl Ashley Matthews (@ashleyNBC7) November 13, 2016 Garcia said his son is safe at a facility in Mazatlan and his ex-girlfriend has been released from custody. Garcia, relieved but frustrated that he has no clue when he'll get his son back, says he's heard next to nothing from law enforcement. "I think I have that right to know how my son is going to be transported back and where he's at and what time because he is a two month old baby," Garcia said. The baby's mother, Erika Ramos Saucedo, is accused of kidnapping Max and taking him to Mexico. On Thursday, a county worker with Child Protective Services left max alone with Ramos; she then fled in her car. A Facebook tip led federal authorities to Mazatlan; a little more than one thousand miles from National City, where she has family. Jose Garcia is working with private investigator Bill Garcia, who found her car Saturday. "We did locate the car in the outskirts of Tijuana. In the furthest eastern most part of Tijuana," said Bill Garcia. Documents from Child Protective Services regarding Ramos show the agency was worried that Ramos would flee with her child based on past behavior. There is also a long list of domestic violence cases against Ramos. Garcia is worried on the fate of his son once he gets back to the United States. Garcia added, my son is still going to cross the border and go back to CPS' hands, you know the people who are responsible who in fact lost my son." Garcia told NBC 7 Ramos has five children and does not have custody of any of them. National City Police will be working on a criminal case against Ramos, and submitting that to the District Attorney's office. A warrant will be in the system for Ramos if or when she comes back to the United States. About 150 students from Garfield High School in Los Angeles were protesting the election of Donald J. Trump Monday by walking off campus and marching toward Mariachi Plaza for a planned rally. At about 9 a.m., the students, carrying signs and the flags of the United States and Mexico, were walking from the campus toward Mariachi Plaza east of downtown Los Angeles. By late morning, students from campuses including Roosevelt, Lincoln and Mendez high schools joined in the march, all walking toward the large-scale rally. Some students said they felt compelled to march to make their voices heard and demand that they and their immigrant families be protected. Los Angeles County has an undocumented immigrant population estimated as high as 800,000, about 12 percent of the county's 10 million residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The agency estimates that nearly 40 percent of adult undocumented immigrants live with children who were born in the United States. An estimated 13 percent of K-12 students in California have a parent who is an undocumented immigrant, according to PPIC. A hard-line stance on immigrant was a central theme of President-elect Trump's campaign, but the Manhattan billionaire businessman said during his first post-election interview that he will focus on deporting criminal immigrants and not everyone living in the United States illegally. Trump also said he might be amenable to a fence along some parts of the roughly 2,000-mile border instead of the wall he proposed during the campaign. As a candidate for president, he called for everyone living in the country illegally to return to their home countries and for Mexico to pay billions of dollars for the wall. Earlier Monday, Los Angeles police had warned of the impending demonstrations in a statement that stated: "It is very difficult to ensure the safety of children when they leave the safe confines of their school campuses." The statement encouraged parents "to discuss with their children the importance of abiding by the law and ensuring that any expression of opinion should be done in a lawful, safe and peaceful manner." The statement warned that protesters who are not peaceful and lawful are subject to arrest for such violations as obstruction of movement of vehicles and people, refusal to obey a lawful order by a law enforcement officer, vandalism and refusal to disperse after an unlawful assembly is declared. Thousands of students around Los Angeles County walked out of schools last week to demonstrate against the election outcome, prompting Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Michelle King to advise students they can participate in on-campus demonstrations as long as they are peaceful and during non-instructional times, but they are not permitted to leave school. Veterans who return home after serving can have a long and difficult road to recovery, but one nonprofit is helping veterans find emotional and physical therapy just off the coast of Southern California. Dive Warriors is a nonprofit organization founded by Brad Mirman. The organization teaches veterans how to scuba dive and takes them out to the ocean once a month. "If youre a disabled veteran in the Southern California area, we will teach you how to dive, we will get you certified, and you come on the boat and Dive Warriors pays for it all," Mirman said. Mirman is not a veteran, but he gave up his career as a screenwriter to grow Dive Warriors after what he saw in veterans who came to the organization. Dive Warriors: Helping Disabled Veterans Recover Through Scuba Diving "A lot of them when they come there's a darkness in their eyes, there's a broken spirit to them," Mirman said. "As they immerse in this group bonds form, and that light comes back in their eyes." Jared Lemon is one of the veterans who says that diving makes him feel free. The 35-year-old from Temecula lost his arm while deployed in the army, but once he is underwater, he can no longer feel the phantom pain. "It helps release them demons, all them negative thoughts and the things that stay with you after war," Lemon said. Being part of Dive Warriors has even brought some veterans back from the brink. Kelly McCumisky is confined to a wheelchair and suffers from PTSD. The first time she took a dive, she had planned never to come back up. "My whole experience was to commit suicide and that nobody would figure out that that's what I had done," McCumisky said. Dive Warriors took our vets to Catalina. What a great day. Please support our cause. https://t.co/ZmJ7M5Uqev pic.twitter.com/2fIvLIpd1A Dive Warriors (@divewarriors) March 15, 2016 Now, like Lemon, McCumisky feels free when she is underwater. "Thats the time I'm free, out of this chair and feel like everybody else," she said. These veterans also find comfort in each other and being around people who can understand them. "I needed a group that could understand me and I could understand and feel safe in," McCumisky said. "These guys do that for me." Kyle Schneider, a Navy veteran, said that being part of Dive Warriors "brings us into becoming an overall family." For more information about Dive Warriors, visit their website. [NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More Less than a week after amendment two passed in Florida, which legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, serious interest is growing for the cannabis industry. Robert Calkin, president of the Cannabis Career Institute, offers training courses for those interested in the emerging marijuana market to learn about the legal requirements and regulations to even basic weed growing techniques. Calkin says the cannabis industry is huge and now everybody is wondering how they can make money in the business. "They want to know how to create a tax paying entity thats going to allow them to make money," Calkin said. "They want to be like the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker- they want to be normalized. Dr. Nancy Powers, a South Florida holistic physician, was among the workshop attendees and says now that amendment two was passed she is looking forward to applying what shes learned. "I personally experienced skin cancer and medical marijuana saved my life and I intend on helping save the lives of so many Floridians dealing with this," Powers said. Among the workshops speakers was attorney Ivette Gonzalez Petkovich who says its important for those going into the business to maintain the integrity of the medical marijuana industry "If somebody is not qualified to receive this medication a doctor should not issue the recommendation because at the end of the day they'd be hurting the masses of people that really do need all of this." Petkovich said The Cannabis Institute is scheduled to return next month to South Florida. Khatia Dekanoidze, the head of Ukraine's National Police, said on Monday she is resigning. "As I promised, I created a foundation for the development of a new national police in the course of one year. I stayed loyal to you and your interests until the last minute of my work. But unfortunately, my powers and will were not sufficient for sharp changes. I've done my duty, and therefore I announce my resignation," Dekanoidze told reporters in Kyiv on Monday. Dekanoidze said she believes an open contest for the post of the new head of the National Police should be conducted as soon as possible. She also said she does not see Vadym Troyan, first deputy head of the National Police, as new head of Ukraine's National Police as he is not politically independent. "I believe the new head of the National Police should be elected via a contest," Dekanoidze said. Dekanoidze said she was faced with politicians' attempts to interfere in the work of the police several times over the year that she has worked in this position. However, she did not mention any specific situations and did not give any politicians' names. Dekanoidze only said this is unacceptable. Khatia Dekanoidze began working in the team of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and headed up the administration of the Georgian Security Council at the age of 24. She later became Georgia's education minister and she was also head of a police academy. In Ukraine, she initially worked as adviser to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. She was appointed head of Ukraine's National Police on November 4, 2015. Rumors about Dekanoidze's resignation began after Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze left the Interior Ministry in May 2016. Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov later thanked Dekanoidze for her work and said Vadim Troyan would fulfill the duties of the head of Ukraine's National Police. Vadym Troyan is first deputy head of Ukraine's National Police. The marching band at Coconut Creek High School produces a joyous cacophony of sound, music to the ears of anyone who hears it. The raucous noise in the schools auto shop is also a sweet mix of sounds for students in Bob Lowerys automobile technicians program. He trains students to take jobs in the auto industry, plentiful jobs with good pay, for kids who can hack it. "You can make a very good career for the rest of your life, and it is a high tech career now, it is no longer the grease monkey that we used to think it was, highly computerized, highly, highly technical," Lowery said. Coconut Creek High has been an icon in North Broward for more than 40 years, a traditional, comprehensive high school which now has a brand-new magnet program. Its called the Creek Technical Academy. "Every high schools graduating kids and you have to set yourself apart as a student when youre going to college and have something that other students dont have and our technical academy is gonna give kids that advantage," said principal Scott Fiske. "The intent is to go to college, were not trying to usurp college in any way." The CAT is designed to give students college credit plus an industry certification while theyre in high school, so they can work in their field of interest while theyre in college. "For example," Fiske said, "Someone who wants to go to law school, we can hand them a certificate as a court reporter coming out of high school, they can be in a courtroom around judges and lawyers while theyre in college studying." The CAT includes 30 academic areas, from computer engineering to nursing to culinary arts and much more. "Its brought a whole new excitement to the school," said magnet program coordinator Jill Ridinger. "The magnet program offers so many opportunities for the kids, first of all its a small environment, so its a lot more nurturing, we only take a hundred and fifty students per school year." Theres something for every type of student at the home of the Cougars, whether theyre destined for the Ivy League or a NASCAR pit crew. Earthquakes are rippling through Oklahoma more quickly than ever, and strong too: forty-six since the beginning of the month, as powerful as magnitude 5.0, NBC News reported. Scientists say that wastewater from fracking is very likely triggering the tremors at unprecedented rates, but the rise in the oil-tapping process has been a boon for the state's economy roughly one quarter of jobs are tied to the energy industry. Now stakeholders in the industry are in the midst of a reckoning over how to keep the ground from shaking, while many policymakers are careful to not implicate the energy industry directly. "The oil and gas industry basically owns the state," said Oklahoma state Rep. Cory Williams (D-Stillwater). "Policymakers don't want to do anything that appears to harm the jobs created by the oil and gas sector." What to Know The latest issue of the terror groups magazine says the parade would be an "excellent target" for terror Officials say there has been no credible, specific threat to the parade or to the city on Thanksgiving ISIS has taken credit for similar "lone-wolf" attacks in the past Manhattan's Thanksgiving day parade would be "an excellent target" for a terror attack similar to the one carried out in France over the summer that killed dozens of people, ISIS said in its English-language magazine. The latest edition of the magazine includes a virtual how-to on inflicting maximum casualties; it features a photo of the iconic parade with a caption espousing its merits as a target for terrorism. Local and federal law enforcement officials in New York say there has been no credible, specific threat to the parade or the city on Thanksgiving. John Miller, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said that the department has had measures in place to stop potential car-based attacks on the parade for several years. "This is not something that just occurred to us over the weekend (when the magazine was released)," he said. He added, "Bottom line, come to the Thanksgiving day parade, have a good time, bring the family." The terror group has taken credit for similar attacks in the past, including in Nice, France, in July, when Mohamed Salmene Lahouaiej-Bouhlel attacked people celebrating Bastille Day. Eighty-six people were killed and more than 400 others were hurt. French police shot and killed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel immediately after the attack. Miller said that after the attacks in Nice, police reached out to most of the truck rental businesses throughout the city to make sure employees there knew how to identify and report suspicous behavior. ISIS has called for "lone-wolf" attacks in the city before. A propaganda video released by ISIS in 2015 featured shots of Times Square, but authorities at the time said there was no new threat to the city. The head of the authority that runs the George Washington Bridge will ask for a review of testimony from the recently completed corruption trial in which a former authority executive was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Chairman John Degnan told The Record he will ask the agency's commissioners to form a committee to review the testimony. The Port Authority's next board meeting is scheduled for Thursday. Two defendants, including former Port Authority Executive Director Bill Baroni, were convicted on Nov. 4 of purposely causing traffic jams near the bridge in September 2013 as part of an alleged political revenge scheme against a mayor who didn't endorse Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Baroni was a top Christie appointee. Christie's former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, also was convicted. They have appealed their convictions. A third person, former Port Authority official David Wildstein, pleaded guilty last year and testified against Baroni and Kelly. He was a political blogger and high school classmate of Christie's who was hired for a position created for him at the agency. Several authority officials testified Wildstein acted as Christie's enforcer. Trial testimony described other potentially unethical behavior by authority officials that included the publication of a news release about the traffic jams that at least one official believed was false. Wildstein's testimony depicted the Port Authority as a source of political favors used by Christie's office to try and gain political endorsements from Democratic mayors. A White Plains police officer said Monday he "had no other option" but to fatally shoot a mentally ill black man because he believed the man was about to harm a police sergeant. During testimony in White Plains federal court, Anthony Carelli said it was his responsibility to protect the other officers from Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. He said Chamberlain was "egging" police on with taunts to shoot him. The deadly 2011 encounter at Chamberlain's apartment in suburban White Plains was a precursor to the national debate over use of force by police in communities of color and in response to calls involving emotionally disturbed people. Carelli and the city of White Plains were sued by Chamberlain's family for $21 million. The lawsuit went forward after a grand jury declined to indict the white officer. Lawyers for the officer and White Plains insist the shooting was justified, saying the officer used deadly force only as a last resort. Chamberlain's son, Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., calls his father a victim of "systematic racism" by law enforcement. Earlier Monday, according to The Journal News, a police sergeant testified that Carelli saved his life. Keith Martin said he thought he was "going to get stabbed" if Carelli hadn't shot Chamberlain during the standoff. At the time of the shooting, Chamberlain was living alone and suffering from bipolar disorder, arthritis and respiratory illness, conditions that prompted his family to give him a LifeAid medical alert device in case he needed help. On Nov. 19, 2011, Chamberlain accidentally set off the alert, prompting police to come to his door. In transcripts of recordings of the encounter captured by a LifeAid help center, he can be heard telling the officers he didn't want them there. "Go home to your wives and children," he said. As the officers persisted in trying to coax him into opening the door, Chamberlain sounded more agitated and disoriented, saying at one point that he was in touch with "the President and Vice President Biden." Police say he poked a knife through a crack in the door, repeated, "honor, honor, honor" and then warned, "First one through the door, I'm gonna kill." Backup officers, including Carelli, were called in to remove the door. Once inside, they sought to subdue Chamberlain with a stun gun and a bean bag weapon. Carelli on Monday told the jury the bean bags "didn't incapacitate him at all." He said that when Chamberlain charged toward Martin with a butcher knife in hand he opened fire. "At that point, I had no other option," Carelli testified. "... All I could do was save Sgt. Martin's life." __ This story corrects to show the spelling of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., instead of Camberlain in first reference What to Know Jorge Luis Hoayeck is expected to be arraigned Monday on drug smuggling charges after being brought to the city on Thursday Authorities said he and a co-conspirator hatched a plan to ship cocaine aboard a historic Spanish navy ship in 2014 When the ship returned to Spain, authorities there conducted a search and found 127 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a storeroom. One of the two Colombian men accused of using a historic ship nicknamed "the floating embassy of Spain" to sail cocaine from South America to New York City has been extradited to Manhattan to face charges, prosecutors said. Jorge Luis Hoayeck is expected to be arraigned Monday on drug smuggling charges after being brought to the city on Thursday, according to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City. His alleged accomplice, Jorge Alberto Siado-Alvarez, is also expected to be extradited from Colombia to the Empire State in the near future. Authorities said the two men allegedly ran a drug cartel and paid two crew members aboard the Juan Sebasian de Elcano -- a 371-foot steel-hulled, four-masted schooner built by Spain in 1927 for training purposes -- to ferry drugs to New York City in April and May 2014. Authorities say the two crew members were paid about $32,000 to hide the drugs on the boat during a voyage to Manhattan. When the boat docked on Manhattan's west side on May 14, 2014, the two crew members allegedly traveled to the Bronx to deliver the cocaine to dealers for the cartel. Authorities say that two days later DEA agents and NYPD officers along with and state police moved and made seven arrests as the drugs were being moved through Stamford, Connecticut. More drugs and weapons were found at the Bronx safehouse. Prosecutors allege that Hoayeck and Siado-Alvarez came up with the plan to use the Spanish ship to smuggle 8 kilos of cocaine. Investigators said both men are heard on a wiretap discussing the plan. When the ship returned to Spain, authorities there conducted a search and found 127 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a storeroom. In 2014 after visiting France, Italy and Morocco, it crossed the Atlantic to visit Colombia, the Dominican Republic and New York. If convicted, the men could face up to life in prison. Information on their attorneys wasn't immediately available. What to Know A swastika was spray-painted outside of a 78-year-old man's home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, over the weekend Photos of the swastika were posted on Twitter and police released images of a suspect in the case There have been similar incidents across the U.S. since Trump was elected, but cops don't know what motivated the spray-painter in Brooklyn Swastikas, "No Jews" and other anti-Semitic and racist messages have been spray-painted on streets, buildings and sidewalks across the tri-state in recent days, authorities said. Authorities in New York City, White Plains and Ramapo, New Jersey, said they are investigating several instances of racially and religiously targeted vandalism in the last several days. In Brooklyn, a suspect spray-painted a swastika in front of a 78-year-old man's home near Montgomery Street and Brooklyn Avenue in Crown Heights. Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone tweeted a photo of the swastika on Sunday morning. Swastika spray painted on Montgomery St in heart of Jewish Crown Heights, Lightstone wrote, adding that it wasnt the first to appear in the neighborhood. All the shots I took earlier of the swastika at Montgomery and Brooklyn in Crown Heights. pic.twitter.com/7Sf1zRAPAJ Mordechai Lightstone (@Mottel) November 13, 2016 On Sunday, the mayors office referenced Lightstones message and tweeted that acts of violence in our beautifully diverse city will not be tolerated. We are all better than this. Several hours after photos of the swastika were posted, a Twitter user uploaded a video of someone spray-painting over what appeared to be the same swastika. Swastikas were also discovered on four dorm rooms at the New School in Manhattan. No arrests were reported in those incidents. The NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating. And in White Plains, authorities are looking for the vandal or vandals who scrawled anti-Semitic and racist messages onto a bike path at the Bronx River Pathway. Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino is expected to release more information on the vandalism on Monday afternoon. Gov. Cuomo has ordered investigations into two episodes in the last week of alleged hate crimes. In an instance further upstate, a swastika and "Make America White Again" were scrawled onto a wall at a softball field in Wellsville, New York, last week. In the other, a swastika along with the word "Trump" was found in the common area of a dorm at SUNY Geneseo. There's also been at least one instance of anti-Semitic graffiti in New Jersey in recent days. Police in Ramapo said that vandals spray-painted "No Jews" in front of a pair of houses for sale on Carteret Drive early on Monday. Authorities responding to the properties found the messages in orange paint on the roadway by "for sale" signs. Later, officers found the same message on another real estate sign nearby. There have been similar incidents across the U.S. in the wake of the presidential election. Most of the cases appear to involve graffiti or violence directed at racial or ethnic minorities and in some reports the perpetrators indicated support for President-elect Donald Trump. Some of the cases were reported by police, but many more appeared on social media as anecdotes and not all have been verified. No evidence has been found linking the swastika in Brooklyn to supporters of Trump. Calls had been growing for Trump to speak out against the string of hateful incidents since his election. During a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, Trump looked at the camera and said that any supporters of his who are harassing people or destroying property should stop it. On CNNs State of the Union Sunday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that people painting hateful graffiti in the wake of the election are not Republicans and we don't want them in our party. The NYPD asks anyone with information about the swastika in Brooklyn to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS. What to Know Richard Rosario was arrested after two witnesses identified him as the man who shot a 17-year-old in the head in June 1996 No forensic or physical evidence tied Rosario to the crime, and he said he had been staying with friends in Florida at the time Rosario was released from prison in March, but authorities held off fully clearing him as they reinvestigated the case The New York City man imprisoned for 20 years for a killing he said he didn't come within 1,000 miles of committing got the case dismissed Monday, though he didn't get the vindication he wanted. Richard Rosario had already been freed in March, after prosecutors agreed his former lawyers hadn't done enough to find some 13 alibi witnesses, making his trial unfair. After reinvestigating the 1996 murder case, prosecutors said in June they were ready to drop it because they no longer felt they could prove it, stopping short of declaring Rosario innocent. Then Rosario made an unusual request: Keep the case open for more investigation, even though he'd still be under indictment meanwhile. "The public should know the truth," he said at the time. "It's clear that I'm innocent." Rosario, 41, had told police early on that 13 people could vouch that he was staying in Deltona, Florida, when Jorge "George" Collazo was killed after an exchange of words on a Bronx street. No forensic or physical evidence tied Rosario to the crime, but two witnesses identified him from a police photo book as the man who'd shot the 17-year-old Collazo in the head. Two of Rosario's alibi witnesses did testify, but his lawyers say others could have buttressed his defense significantly. His initial attorneys didn't talk to them, even though a judge had approved money to send a private investigator to Florida to find them. After a surprised Bronx State Supreme Court Justice Robert Torres agreed in June to leave the case open, Rosario sought a ruling saying that newfound evidence would likely have changed the verdict in his favor, not just that his ex-lawyers erred. Torres turned Rosario down last week. The denial forecloses him from seeking one particular form of wrongful-conviction compensation, though he could sue to seek other compensation. Regardless, Rosario is glad to be free of the case, said lawyer Chip Loewenson. "For 20 years, he had the murder conviction and then a murder indictment hanging over his head, and now it's done," said Loewenson, who worked on the case with attorneys from the Exoneration Initiative. Collazo's relatives have decried Rosario's bid to be cleared. "You were never proven innocent. Let's just get it straight," the victim's father and namesake told Rosario outside court in June. Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark vowed Monday to keep working on the case. Collazo's family "deserves certainty and justice," Clark said in a statement. The case, which has been featured in a "Dateline" digital series on NBCNews.com, is among more than 25 convictions from New York City's high-crime 1980s and '90s that prosecutors have disavowed in the last five years. Poroshenko: Ukraine is ready for effective cooperation with new administrations of Moldova, Bulgaria Kyiv is ready to work with the administrations of Moldovan and Bulgaria elected by the people of these countries, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said. "In any case, we are ready for effective cooperation with both Moldova and Bulgaria," Poroshenko told reporters in Stockholm, responding to a question about the victory of candidates supporting cooperation with Russia in the elections in Moldova and Bulgaria. He also said he is hoping that "the irresponsible discussions that took place during these campaigns will not be implemented after the elections." "It don't like it when we call different countries or their politicians pro-Russian. I am confident that politicians should be pro-European, pro-Moldovan, pro-Bulgarian. Those are the positions we expect from them," Poroshenko said. After a mob-style attack in Center City Philadelphia injured an off-duty officer, his wife and four others, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross took aim at the group of teens suspected in the case. "It's just stupid, there's no other way to describe it," said Ross Monday morning. A large crowd of teens were at a club along the 1600 block of Walnut Street -- just a couple blocks from Rittenhouse Square -- around 6:10 p.m. Saturday. A smaller group of teens in the crowd then began to attack random people in the area. "They said it was unprovoked," a witness, who did not want to be identified, told NBC10. "They didn't say anything and they just found themselves getting beat up. It was scary." A 55-year-old Philadelphia police detective, who was off-duty at the time and with his 53-year-old wife, spotted the teens attacking a 21-year-old man, police said. As the detective walked toward them, the teens fled the area. The detective began walking back to where his wife was when he spotted more teens attack two young men in their 20s, according to investigators. The detective announced he was a police officer and tried to arrest one of the teens who was kicking the two men. As the detective grabbed the teen he was punched from behind by several other attackers, police said. The detective's wife splashed water on the teens in order to stop them. One of the attackers then punched the woman in the face, police said. All of the teen attackers then fled the area. "He got seriously hurt doing so but he did his job, we're very proud of him," said Ross. The detective suffered an orbital fracture to his right eye. The man and his wife, who also suffered minor injuries, were both taken to Jefferson Hospital for treatment. Three other people suffered minor injuries during the attack. "We looked and we saw people who had obviously been beaten up," the witness told NBC10. "They were bleeding from their heads. We saw at least three people that were like that." Immediately following the attack on 1600 Walnut Street a 28-year-old man was attacked by several teens on 100 S. 16th Street. Responding police officers then arrested two 16-year-old boys. "You got people getting assaulted and that should not happen, it's ridiculous behavior," said Ross. More arrests could come as investigators poured over surveillance video, said Ross who noted that the teens are old enough to know right from wrong. "Some people want to indict the parents but I talk about personal responsibility, these are kids old enough to know better and not do something like that," said Ross. "They should be absolutely held accountable for what they did and there's no excuse for it," said Ross. Ross said he hopes the incident was an "anomaly" but that police would "respond accordingly" with Center City patrols. A Los Angeles substitute teacher is accused of telling sixth-graders their parents would be deported in the wake of Tuesday's presidential election. An audio recording of the exchange captured at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles by a student's cell phone is under review by the Los Angeles Unified School District. The conversation occurred a day after billionaire businessman Donald Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the race for president. A mother of one of the students told NBC4 Southern California that she expected some backlash after Trump made a hard-line stance on deportation part of his campaign from the time he announced his candidacy last year. "I would think the kids would do it, but I never thought a teacher would do it," said Jennifer Reynaga. The Reynaga family shared the audio with NBC4 and sister station Telemundo 52. On the recording, an individual can be heard telling Reynaga's 11-year-old daughter, "If you were born here, then your parents got to go. Then they will leave you behind, and you will be in foster care." Reynaga said her daughter asked the physical education substitute teacher how the president-elect knows where her family lives. "I have your phone numbers, your address, your mama's address, your daddy's address. It's all in the system, sweetie," the person says in the recording. LAUSD officials said they declined to comment on pending personnel matters. Reynaga and her husband said they met with school officials and were told the substitute teacher has been fired. Immigration was a key component of Trump's campaign, and his win Tuesday led Los Angeles immigration rights advocates to offer reassurances Thursday to the city's undocumented immigrant community. "You have scared children," said Steve Zimmer, board president of the Los Angeles Unified School District. "One of most important things you can do is make sure that children who have qualified for DACA know that they are safe and their status is secure." DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, went into effect in 2012. It allows certain people who came to the United States as children to request permits to stay in the United States that are renewable every two years, provided they meet guidelines. Trump has vowed to deport people convicted of serious crimes who are in the United States illegally. In a September speech, then candidate Trump promised a more hard-line approach to a crowd of Arizona supporters. "There will be no amnesty," Trump said. "Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country." Los Angeles County has an undocumented immigrant population estimated as high as 800,000, about 12 percent of the county's 10 million residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The agency estimates that nearly 40 percent of adult undocumented immigrants live with children who were born in the United States. An estimated 13 percent of K-12 students in California have a parent who is an undocumented immigrant, according to PPIC. A Mexican immigrant who had been living in northeast Philadelphia has relocated to a local church where he is now seeking sanctuary from deportation by federal authorities. Juntos, a south Philadelphia immigrant support group, says 40-year-old Javier Flores moved into Arch Street United Methodist Church on Sunday. "People are afraid. We've never seen this amount of hatred and vitriol towards our community," said Miguel Andrade, who works at Juntos. The father of three U.S.-born children is eligible for a "U-Visa," which the federal government provides to victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse. If Flores' visa application is denied, he will be deported after 90 days. Flores recently spent 16 months at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center in Pike County, according to Juntos. He was detained because he was previously deported but returned to the United States to reunite with his family. [[401056395, C]] Immigration attorneys across the country are figuring out how to navigate a "scary, uncertain environment" in the wake of Donald Trump's election, American Immigration Lawyers Association executive director Benjamin Johnson told NBC last week. He said he's advising the D.C. organization's more than 14,000 members to prepare their clients for the worst Trump has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Juntos is advocating for President Barack Obama to shut down his deportation program so it won't pass on to Trump. "If we can provide some sense of hope and relief in saying that this is an act that people can do and to stand up against a government that is actively trying to destroy their families, I hope that more people will do this," Andrade said at the Arch Street church. Another immigrant was successful in seeking reprieve from deportation in the Philadelphia area in January 2015. Angela Navarro lived at the West Kensington Ministry with her husband, an American citizen, and two U.S-born children in order to avoid deportation to Honduras more than 10 years after being picked up while entering the country without documents. On the year anniversary of the Paris terrorist attacks that left 130 dead, Cal State Long Beach Sunday will honor Nohemi Gonzalez, the only American killed in the attacks. Gonzalez, a 23-year-old El Monte resident studying abroad in Paris, was killed while eating with friends at a popular bistro in Paris called La Belle Equipe. She was one of 17 students studying at Strate College of Design in Paris. The terror attacks killed 130 people at Paris restaurants, a music hall and a stadium outside the city. Since the attacks, Gonzalez has been awarded a posthumous degree, and a $100,000 design scholarship has been created in her honor. The tree-planting ceremony honoring Gonzalez took place at 12:30 p.m. Sunday at the Department of Design on the Cal State Long Beach campus. "It's still hard to believe what happened," her mother Beatriz Gonzalez told NBC4. "I never say my daughter died. She just passed away." Wearing the last piece of jewelry her daughter had on that night, Beatriz said her daughter is gone but will never be forgotten, Her family said the university was her extended home. "Since she was a little girl, she wanted to live in school. Now she's going to be here forever," Beatriz said. When the leaves turn red, it will be a sign from Nohemi, Beatriz says, since that was her favorite color. "It's going to be a very long wait ... but I'm going to get to see her one more time." This article is sponsored by Sharp HealthCare. It does not reflect the work or opinions of NBC San Diegos editorial staff. To learn more about Sharp HealthCare, click here. Open enrollment can be confusing. From flexible spending accounts to out-of-network deductibles to navigating the quagmire of your employers election website, theres a lot to consider when selecting your healthcare benefits. One thing that shouldnt be difficult, however, is selecting the right primary care physician. After all, your primary care physician will be your go-to doctor for most medical needs. And yet even this part of the process can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, Sharp HealthCare makes selecting your primary care physician easy. With 10 locations in San Diego County (four acute care hospitals, three specialty hospitals and three affiliated medical groups) and more than 2,600 affiliated San Diego doctors, Sharp offers its patients the doctor that is right for them. So how should you pick the ideal Sharp primary care doctor? Follow these seven simple steps to avoid roadblocks and find the doctor whos best for you. 1. Choose Your Location With multiple locations around San Diego County, it's easy to find a Sharp doctor near you. 2. Reference Your Insurance Do you need your doctor to participate in a specific health insurance? Sharps physician-referral nurses and Sharp.com can help you find a doctor based on your needs. 3. Pick a Gender Its all about your comfort level. Would you prefer a male or female doctor? 4. Consider Language Many of Sharp's affiliated doctors speak other languages in addition to English. 5. Browse Education and Experience Sharp's affiliated doctors have a range of degrees and experience. A recent graduate from a top school may be right for you or perhaps a doctor with extensive experience is a better fit. 6. Select Your Favorite Hospital Is it important which hospital you may be admitted to if the need arises? If so, be sure the doctor you choose is affiliated. 7. Keep Philosophies in Mind From opinions on holistic medicine to communication preferences, your doctors healing style should align with yours. Your health care journey begins when you choose a doctor. Visit Sharp.com/doctor or call 1-800-82-SHARP (1-800-827-4277). A San Diego-based cyber-security company CEO has resigned after social media posts threatening President-elect Donald Trump were reported to the U.S. Secret Service, the company statement confirmed Monday. Twitter and Facebook accounts tied to Matthew Harrigan, the President & CEO of PacketSled, included comments threatening Trump Sunday afternoon, according to an NBC 7 source. Im going to kill the president. Elect, was one of the posts on Harrigans Twitter account. It was followed by the comment, Bring it secret service. getting a sniper rifle and perching myself where it counts, reads a post to Harrigans Facebook account. Find a bedroom in the whitehouse [sic] that suits you motherf---er. Ill find you. In an official statement, PacketSled attributed the comments to Harrigan and said they are taking the situation seriously. On Tuesday morning, it was announced that Harrigan resigned and the company's board of directors had accepted his resignation. Once we were made aware of these comments, we immediately reported this information to the secret service and will cooperate fully with any inquiries, the companys statement reads. These comments do not reflect the views or opinions of PacketSled, its employees, investors or partners. Our CEO has been placed on administrative leave. On Harrigans Twitter account, he posted three comments apologizing for the previous posts. It is illegal to knowingly and willfully threaten to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon the president-elect, vice-president elect or their families. Anyone convicted of doing so faces five years in prison and fines. NBC 7 has reached out to San Diego Police and the local FBI office to ask if Harrigan is facing any charges. Check back for updates on this developing story. Trial began Monday for a Tierrasanta woman implicated in a February 2016 crash that killed one girl and seriously injured another. Julianne Little, 30, faces gross vehicular manslaughter and hit and run with serious injury charges for the death of 10-year-old Raquel Rosete and the injury of Rosetes friend, 12-year-old Mekayla Lee. San Diego police said Little swerved off the road, up the curb and into the girls as they were walking along the sidewalk at about 6 p.m. on February 20 in the area of Santo Road near Shields Street. Lee testified in court that neither Rosete or her had heard the car approaching them. Littles defense attorney Anna Yum said her client fell asleep at the wheel and was not texting at the time of the crash. At a pretrial hearing, San Diego police Officer Jason Costanza testified he noticed an outgoing phone call and text from Little's phone at the time of the accident. "It said, 'I'm going to miss you, my friend,'" Costanza said. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys said Little sent that text at 22 seconds after 5:56 p.m. The defense told the jury Little sent the text while sitting at a red light at Aero Drive and Santo Road. After Little sent the text, Yum said, the traffic signal turned green. A 911 call from a passerby registered with the CHP at eight seconds after 6 p.m., according to the prosecutor. At 6:02 p.m., Little's phone connected to her house wifi, the prosecutor said. "There is not one single phone call for help," she told jurors. One jogger and another driver found the girls in the bushes off the bike lane. Rosete suffered a brain injury and passed away after the crash. Lee suffered a fractured ankle, concussion, and abrasions along her back. Under cross-examination, the jogger testified she called 911 from her at 5:58 p.m. and had been on the scene two or three minutes before she made the call. Little told investigators that she fell asleep at the wheel. She left the scene but later returned with her father. Her attorney said the defendant was not aware that she struck anyone when her car went off the road. She was initially arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs, but now investigators said there was no evidence of impairment. Little is facing charges of gross vehicular manslaughter and felony hit and run. Around 70 firefighters worked hard throughout the day Sunday to fully contain a brush fire along I-15 and Gopher Canyon Road. It's been a busy week for firefighters; this is just one of several vegetation fires across the county. Very warm and dry conditions have not been helping. Crews were attacking from the air and ground as the brush fire quickly grew to around 28 acres. "At the peak of the fire there were eight homes that were considered threatened. None of them were evacuated. We have resources at each home and engaged in structure protection," said Cal Fire spokesman Isaac Sanchez said. Traffic on I-15 near Gopher Canyon Road was at a standstill for more than an hour. CALTRANS closed lanes after a power pole with power lines stretched across the freeway was damaged. It's one of many vegetation fires within the last week. Sanchez added, this appears to be our new normal right now. San Diego County is extremely dry, it's ready to burn. Normally by now we've gotten a little bit of rain, that simply hasn't happened." A brush fire erupted on Thursday in Mission Valley. Several apartments were just feet away. Neighbors were taking in every moment until crews were able to get it under control. Also, on Thursday, there was a fire in a residential area of Julian. On Saturday, there was another brush fire along Interstate 163 and Genesee. Fire crews know that high fire season is nowhere near being done. Sunday's fire north of Escondido is a perfect example. "We're still sitting on the conditions that we were sitting on in the beginning of the summer. Excessively dry dead fuel and all it needs is a spark," said Sanchez. One firefighter was taken to the hospital with a shoulder injury. That firefighter has since been released will be okay. Crews are expected to be at the scene through Monday evening checking for hot spots and to make sure this fire is completely out. President-elect Donald Trump said during the campaign that he would scrap or renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal, but leaders there said they expected the U.S. to stick to its agreement, NBC News reported. "The results of the U.S. election have no effect on the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said one day after the election, according to the state news agency IRNA. Rouhani added that improved economic ties are "irreversible." Iranian leaders emphasized that the nuclear deal was not a bilateral agreement, but was also reached with China, Russia, France, Germany and the U.K. "Every U.S. president has to understand the realities of today's world," said Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, one of the architects of the deal. "The most important thing is that the future U.S. president sticks to agreements." Sanctions against the Russian Federation must be extended if Russian troops remain in Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "If the Minsk agreements are not followed, Russian soldiers remain on the territory of Ukraine and observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe do not have access to the occupied territories, if there is no cessation of fire and withdrawal of heavy weapons, if [Russians] continue to kill Ukrainians then sanctions must remain," Poroshenko said following talks with Swedish Premier Stefan Lofven on Monday in Stockholm. Ukraine's head of state also said Ukraine has recommended the European Union extend sanctions for 12 months, not six months, next year. "I think it will be effective if sanctions are extended not for six months, but for a full year. We have already conveyed this recommendation to our EU partners," Poroshenko said. He added that sanctions must be in place until Russia complies with the Minsk agreements. Responding to a question on extending sanctions following the U.S. presidential elections, Poroshenko said, "These sanctions are connected with the Minsk agreements." "Ukraine received substantive support from the U.S.: there were clear statements from both the Republican and Democratic parties to the effect that the only reason for lifting the sanctions is full observance of the Minsk agreements, the withdrawal of forces and restoration of control of the Ukrainian border," Poroshenko said. A federal contractor bilked the National Security Agency and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for about $70,000 by doctoring his time sheets and collecting money for hours he didnt work, according to court documents. Daniel Glauber was scheduled to enter a plea agreement on the charges in Washington, D.C., Monday. The OPM, which oversees the U.S. federal workforce, was unaware Glauber was working for the NSA during his employment with OPM, court filings from attorneys said. The NSA was unaware Glauber was working for OPM during his employment with NSA, the filing said. According to a filing from federal prosecutors, the scheme was executed in 2012. (Glauber), in most instances during this time period, generally would start his day by working approximately four to six hours at NSA and then approximately two to four hours at OPM," prosecutors said. "(Glauber) would submit fraudulent time sheets often claiming that he worked more hours at each agency. In their filings, prosecutors said Glauber submitted time sheets indicating he had worked at OPM on at least 17 days when he did not show at the OPM worksite. Glaubers attorney did not immediately return requests for comment. According to prosecutors filings, the Office of Personnel Management notified the NSA that Glauber was under investigation. A grand jury has indicted a driver accused of hitting and killing an infant in Virginia as his mother pushed his stroller in a crosswalk. John Miller IV, 45, was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter, one count of reckless driving and one count of failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk for the fatal collision on Aug. 31. Tristan Schulz and his mother, Mindy Schulz, were crossing Riverside Parkway in Lansdowne, Virginia, when they were struck. Five-month-old Tristan died at a hospital. His mother was released from the hospital the next day. A teenager, who was driving behind the Jeep SUV, told police he could see the driver was "holding a phone in his left hand, as if he was watching or reading something," court documents said. The witness also said the Jeep was tailgating the vehicle in front of him, and it appeared the driver was trying to get ahead of the mother with the stroller, speeding up fast, as if to go in front of her. As Mindy Schultz crossed with Tristan, the "walk" sign was illuminated, according to the witness. One mother who lives in the area told News4 she is happy Miller is facing serious charges. "I think that whatever charge they have given to him he deserves because, you know, it's no excuse to be, like, be on the phone and driving at the same time," said Claudia Villatorio. Flowers once stacked high at a memorial to Tristan at the intersection where he was struck have since been replaced with pumpkins and mums. Residents said the community has not forgotten the tragedy. "I think because it was a baby and because I mean it really did shake and shock the neighborhood," said Lansdowne resident Caroline Hedges. "Everyone is more vigilant about slowing down." On Tuesday, a judge set a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. Miller was processed and then left the courthouse with his lawyer. A man accused of shooting and killing a 3-year-old girl will be in court Monday. Davon "Dro" Wallace was charged with murder in the death of Knijah Amore Bibb, 3, of northwest Washington. Police said Bibb died after Wallace fired into a home in Prince Georges County, Maryland, in August, striking and killing the girl. Investigators said Wallaces intended target, a boy in his late teens, was not inside the home at the time of the shooting. They said the incident began over an argument about clothing inside the home in the 6900 block of Forest Terrance Drive. Wallace was on the run for more than a month before being arrested in September in southeast Washington. Brian Ray Campbell, 24, of Landover, Maryland, was arrested shortly after the shooting for allegedly giving a gun and a ride to Wallace during his flight. A Maryland man accused of running over his wife with his car has pleaded guilty, prosecutors say. Charles County State's Attorney Tony Covington announced in a statement Monday that Bryan Weyhenmayer, 33 pleaded guilty last week to first-degree murder in the 2014 death of his wife, 36-year-old Jennifer Weyhenmeyer. Officials said that Jennifer Weyhenmeyer called 911 and reported she was in a car with Bryan Weyhenmeyer and that he had threatened her. The call ended abruptly and police found her dead 10 minutes later in the parking lot of a Pizza Hunt in Waldorf. Officials said that she had been run over multiple times. Police arrested Weyhenmeyer after he barricaded himself in their home. Officials said they found his wife's blood and hair on their car. Jennifer Weyhenmeyer was a mother and stepmother who was pursuing a degree in social work, her obituary says. Weyhenmeyer faces 30 to 45 years in prison at sentencing in March, officials say. A man registered as a sex offender attacked two little girls in the women's restroom of a restaurant in Ashburn, Virginia, police say. Luis F. Ore, 20, was arrested Sunday after the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office said he sexually assaulted two girls in the women's restroom of Elevation Burger, in the One Loudoun shopping center. He worked at the restaurant, the company confirmed. The victims are under age 13, police said. Ore, of Sterling, followed the girls into the restroom, held them against their will and sexually assaulted them, police said. Ore was arrested at his workplace, police said Monday. Ore's listing in the Virginia Sex Offender Registry categorizes him as violent and says he was convicted in July 2012 of the abduction and sexual battery of a minor. After the attack Sunday, Ore was charged with two counts of abduction and two counts of sexual assault of a person under age 13. He is being held without bond at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center. The Elevation Burger franchise expressed its "heartfelt concern" for the victims, a statement from the company said. "Our customers and communities are our priority and, without equivocation, the arrested employee was immediately terminated. Elevation Burger is currently investigating the internal processes for which he was hired," the statement said. Chlamydia, the most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease in America, has its highest rates in Maryland within the University of Maryland College Parks zip code, according to a report by The Diamondback, the universitys independent student newspaper. The state ranked 20th in the nation in chlamydial infections, and reported rates of chlamydia among women were 2.3 times greater than those among men, according to a 2015 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported 6,153 cases of chlamydia in Prince Georges County, topped only by Baltimore City (6,728). Mapping by zip codes showed the University of Marylands area had a chlamydia rate of more than 800 cases per 100,000 population. Jenna Beckwith, sexual health programs coordinator for the University Health Center on College Parks campus, told The Diamondback there are several reasons for the increased rate in that area. She said the large population on campus, disproportionate effect of sexually transmitted infections on young adults under 25, increased risk-taking and feelings of invincibility and a lack of through education and conversations about the disease contribute to the high rate. "Many college students are surprised to learn that every single STI can be passed through oral sex," Beckwith told The Diamondback. "It's probably most common because of high rates of sexual activity, particularly with multiple partners or more than one, even if they're spaced out," Bradley Boekeloo, a professor in the school of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center, told the student newspaper. The University of Maryland Medical Center has more information about symptoms and testing. Because many people with chlamydia may not have symptoms, they said sexually active adults should be screened periodically for the infection. Singapore & Tokyo, 14 November 2016 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and NEC Asia Pacific announced today their participation in the Singapore FinTech Festival's conference and exhibition, held 16-17 November 2016 at the Singapore EXPO. The Festival, organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in partnership with the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), will bring together a series of distinct FinTech events for the global FinTech community. At the event, NEC will showcase business concepts which will drive the digital innovation of financial services, while introducing the latest development of its Blockchain technology. NEC will also demonstrate secure facial recognition technology for mobile authentication. It combines NEC's world's most accurate facial recognition algorithm * with encryption software that enables hardware-level anti-tamper capabilities in order to deliver enhanced user experience and security for mobile authentication in banking applications. For the first time in Southeast Asia, NEC will showcase its cashless payment service utilizing facial recognition, without using cards or cash. NEC conducted cashless payment trials ** in Japan from June to August 2016 as a part of its initiatives to apply its biometrics authentication technologies to a range of services. As a result, NEC hopes to enhance the reliability and convenience of the identification process. Daichi Iwata, Head of the FinTech Business Development Office, Business Innovation Unit, NEC Corporation said, "NEC is pleased to be a part of the inaugural Singapore Fintech Festival showcasing our range of innovative technologies and solution offerings to customers. At NEC, our FinTech services address important social issues such as financial inclusion and safe banking practices, thereby creating a safer and more secure society." Ken Hanazawa, Head of Research for Biometrics and Behavior Analysis, Central Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation, is participating in a panel to discuss authentication and advanced sensors on 16 November. About NEC Corporation NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com. The NEC Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, please visit http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/vision/message.html NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. NEC Corporation. About NEC Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. Singapore-based NEC Asia Pacific (NEC APAC) is the regional headquarters for NEC Corporation (HQ: Japan) in the Asia Pacific region (South and Southeast Asia and Oceania). As a leading information and communications technology provider, NEC APAC provides innovative solutions and infrastructure to promote safety, security and enhance the quality of life for individuals and the community. NEC APAC's expertise includes solutions for carrier networks, biometric identification, enterprise applications and infrastructure, unified communications, transportation solutions, multimedia displays and smart energy, as well as the provision of managed services and contact centre services. Our regional competency centres, together with our research laboratories, provide cutting-edge public safety, cybersecurity technologies and enterprise solutions to enable safer cities, with a vision to create a brighter future. For more information, please visit http://sg.nec.com. A Massachusetts town is hoping to delay the opening on recreational marijuana dispensaries by voting on the issue. Ashland's town manager says there will be a special meeting in two weeks, which is when the vote will take place. The temporary hold has been proposed by the Board of Selectmen, which is asking for a year to study the potential regulation and zoning issues that come with dispensaries. Town Manager Michael Herbert says the town's board wants to make the right decision without placing a permanent ban on dispensaries. "We want to make sure that dispensaries are located in places that are away from," schools and family-related activities, Herbert said. Ashland was nearly split on Question 4 this election season, and it was passed by about 350 votes. The question of whether or not they want it sold in their town is another issue, though. Police say two men who tried to rob a Springfield, Massachusetts, convenience store ran way empty handed after the clerk wrested their gun away. Lt. Richard LaBelle tells Masslive.com the suspects entered the Express Mini-Mart at about 11:45 p.m. Sunday. One was armed with a cut-down rifle. The clerk grabbed the gun and the suspects ran from the store. Police with dogs searched the area but could not locate the men. The clerk gave police a detailed description of the suspects. One was described as Hispanic, about 5-foot, 7-inches tall and 180 pounds, wearing a red jacket with blue stripes, jeans and sneakers. The second suspect was black, about the same height and weight, wearing a black jacket and black pants. A Florida man facing accessory charges in connection with a fatal shooting Massachusetts has refused to waive extradition from South Carolina. Michael Arthur Noguera, 47, of Lehigh Acres was ordered to be held without bail in South Carolina as the Bristol district attorney's office in Massachusetts obtains a warrant for him to return to the Bay State to face charges. The process could take several weeks, according to officials. Once in Massachusetts, Noguera will be arraigned on several charges, including accessory to murder after the fact, in connection with the shooting death of Daniel G. Smith, 35, who was found suffering from gunshot wounds in Easton. He died from his injuries on Friday. Investigators are still seeking the publics assistance in locating a red 2016 Mazda 3 sedan with Florida license plate tag number 372QQK, believed to be connected to the case. Mykola Chaus, a judge from Kyiv's Darnytsky District Court, on November 11 was placed on Interpol's international wanted list, officials at Ukraine's National Anti-corruption Bureau (NABU) said. "[Chaus] is suspected of committing a crime pursuant to Part 4 of Article 368 of Ukraine's Criminal Code (accepting, offering or promising a bribe)," NABU officials said. As earlier reported, on August 9 agents from NABU with agents from the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) discovered Chaus had received a bribe of $150,000. The money was found in two glass jars, which Chaus dug in the yard of his residence. Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada on September 6 supported the representation of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) to detain and arrest Chaus. Rada Speaker Andriy Parubiy immediately signed the bill. SAPO the same day said Chaus had fled to Russian-occupied Crimea. Kyiv's Solomyansky District Court on September 12 gave permission to arrest Chaus. In early October 12 NABU Head Artem Sytnyk said it was possible Chaus could return to Ukraine. He added that the necessary documents to place him on the Interpol wanted list were being prepared. NABU sent Interpol documents relating to the case on October 21. A jogger hit by a vehicle last week in a New Hampshire crash has died. Bedford police say 58-year-old Thomas Ducharme of Bedford died Saturday from his injuries. Another jogger injured in Tuesday morning's crash, Gregory Uliasz, 58, of Bedford, has been released from the hospital. Police say the driver of the sedan that hit Uliasz and Ducharme is a 16-year-old boy from Bedford whose name will not be released due to his age. Alcohol doesn't appear to be a factor in the crash, but police are looking into whether frost on the driver's windshield may have played a role. A smoky fire at a school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, prompted evacuations Monday morning. Lawrence Fire says it happened at the Bruce School on Butler Street. At first students were told to stay in their classrooms, but as the fire spread, they were all evacuated. No one was injured, but the damage to the school's second floor is extensive. It's unclear what caused the fire, which is still being investigated. Lawrence Fire says there's no indication at this point that it is suspicious. It's likely classes for these students will be held at a different school Tuesday. A Massachusetts man suffered an unknown medical condition and died while hiking in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department says 59-year-old James Norton died on Sunday while descending the 19 Mile Brook Trail in Bean's Purchase. Officials say the Acton, Massachusetts, man was part of a Boy Scout troop taking part in a weekend hiking trip. The group had hiked up to the Appalachian Mountain Club's Carter Notch Hut on Saturday afternoon, spent the night at the hut and was going back down the trail when Norton collapsed. Officials say members of the hiking group immediately started CPR and called 911. A National Guard helicopter crew was called in to rescue Norton. Despite the efforts of the hiking group and first responders, he did not survive. A Maine woman has been charged with intentionally driving her car into a tractor-trailer truck and causing a crash in Woolwich. The Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office says 36-year-old Sandra Francis, of Damariscotta, faces charges that include driving to endanger and reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon in the crash last week on U.S. Route 1. Sheriff Joel Merry says the tractor-trailer driven by 66-year-old Robert Martin, of Sunapee, New Hampshire, was traveling south when Francis's vehicle traveling north veered directly into its path. Merry says Martin made every attempt to avoid the collision and ended up wedged against a line of guardrails. He wasn't hurt. Francis was hospitalized with injuries not considered life-threatening. She's due in court Jan. 10. It wasn't immediately known if she has an attorney. Vermont State Police are releasing more information about what led to a murder-suicide in Shaftsbury and how it happened. The bodies of 38-year-old Trevor Gardner and 28-year-old Olanda Fitz were found Friday. Gardner, who was from Hoosick Falls, New York, was found in his truck, while Fitz, who was from Shaftsbury, was found in the yard. Police said Monday that Gardner drove to Fitz's home because he was angry that his girlfriend was involved with Fitz. Investigators believe Gardner shot Fitz before shooting himself. An autopsy confirmed that Fitz died of a gunshot wound to the chest. Gardner died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. A rifle was recovered in the truck with Gardner's body. No weapons were found on Fitz or near his body. Massachusetts police are investigating the deaths of two men in Ayer. The Middlesex District Attorney's Office said officers arrived at the home on Atherton Street at about 2:30 p.m. to do a well-being check. Authorities said the two men, ages 50 and 29, both from Ayer, were found dead. The district attorney's office said there is no suspicion of foul play as the men's deaths are not considered suspicious. A young woman exercising on a New Hampshire trail fought off an attacker police say is still on the loose. It happened around 5:30 p.m. Sunday on a popular trail right across the street from Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. "I was shocked," said Lebanon resident John Andrew, who walks his dog on the path every day. Police say a 23-year-old woman was out for a walk Sunday evening when a man attacked her from behind. "I hope she cleaned his clock," Andrews said. Police Chief Richard Mello says the woman put up a strong fight, forcing her attacker to take off running. "I'm glad she got away and she's safe and I am proud that she stood up for herself," said Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center employee Sarah Stark. The woman suffered only minor injuries and was able to contact hospital security right away. Police are still searching for the suspect who they say picked his victim at random. "Certainly, when something like this happens, the randomness of it is concerning," Chief Mello admits. By Monday morning, DHMC notified their employees many of whom run or walk this trail on their lunch break. The hospital-wide email advised walkers to be alert, carry a whistle, and to avoid walking alone. "It's a reminder of what can happen but luckily it doesnt happen often," said DHMC employee Elaine Vanderstok. Police are looking at hospital security footage and asking anyone who was on the trail Sunday evening to give them a call. Xbox One bundles can be had at a slew of big name retailers, from GameStop to Walmart, and what the deals lack in variety they make up for in being $50 cheaper than last year. Xbox One bundles are generally going for $250 this holiday shopping season, $50 off the regular price and $50 off the going price last holiday season. (Compare vs. 2015 Xbox Black Friday deals here.) But not all the deals are exactly alike, and if you shop around, youll find some are a bit better when you take into account gift cards and other goodies thrown into the packages. MORE: Kohls has one of the sweetest deals on the Xbox One S 500GB Minecraft console bundle, which costs $250 but also includes $75 in Kohls cash to spend later. The deal is available starting at 1pm Friday in stores and online. Target comes close to this by offering the Xbox One S 500GB Battlefield 1 bundle with a $40 gift card. Dell has quite the competitive offer too: An Xbox One S 500GB Battlefield 1 bundle, plus Gears of War 4 and an extra controller. Doorbuster deal available exclusively online, while supplies last, beginning at 9pm on Thanksgiving. GameStop wont save you any extra money than the other retailers on the Xbox One S 500GB Games of War 4 bundle, which it is selling for $250. But you can get what it describes as an exclusive blue console and controller (Microsoft has actually branched out beyond black and white systems with a variety of limited edition colors). Xbox One console in beautiful, sort of exclusive, blue One mystery is exactly what Microsoft itself will offer, though a leaked preview of its Black Friday ad shows the company knocking the standard $50 off a bundle, but also tossing in a $25 gift code. Microsoft starts Black Friday offers first thing online on Thanksgiving Day. These retailers are also offering Xbox One bundles at $250: *Walmart: Xbox One S White 500GB Battlefield bundle *Best Buy: Xbox One S 500GB Minecraft Favorites Console bundle or other Xbox bundles *Costco: Xbox One S 500GB Minecraft Bundle. The Xbox bundle includes the Minecraft Favorites pack. You might want one of these too: Dollar General is offering half off a 3-month Microsoft Xbox Live Gold membership card ($25). (Hat Tip: Black Friday watchers such as BFads and Best Black Friday have been tracking new ads closely and we've been watching them closely.) Trends in enterprise IT are an interesting thing. Can you think of any other industry where hype has its own lifecycle? Whether it is because of the large budgets at stake or that enterprise IT professionals are uniquely susceptible to them, it seems the enterprise IT market is always awash in hot new trends. And as fast as they arise, most fizzle out. At least from that perspective, the IT service management (ITSM) space has had a pretty good run. Its been over 20 years since the British government first introduced Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), creating the ITSM market. And almost since the beginning, people have been predicting its demise. ITSMs death, however, has been greatly exaggerated. The more than 1,600 people attending last weeks FUSION conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas can attest to the fact that ITSM is alive and kicking. Produced by itSMF USA and HDI, FUSION is the industrys premier service management conference. While the large, international audience at FUSION demonstrated ITSMs continued relevance, it was also apparent that the industry is rapidly evolving to keep pace with the larger enterprise IT market. Evolving ITSM beyond ITIL Most striking was the almost complete absence of the word ITIL from the conference. Out of well over 100 concurrent sessions, only three referenced the industry framework. While there was some focus on traditional ITSM process domains, there was just as great a focus on areas as diverse as DevOps, agile development, microservices, lean IT, business relationship management, cyber-resilience and service integration and management (SIAM). ITSM is morphing to adopt lean and agile approaches, said Kevin Fitzgibbons, a senior manager at Whirlpool. Its good to see how others are handling this and that there is a shift to centering our efforts on quality and serving the customer. More than just a broad collection of topics, however, there was a larger theme: ITSM as a source of innovation and agility for the enterprise. Roy Atkinson FUSION keynote speaker Kaihan Krippendorff Keynote speaker Kaihan Krippendorff challenged attendees to look at their work through the lens of the organizations competitive posture, while National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones took the general session audience on a journey of exploration in which there is never just a single right answer. The themes of innovation and business agility were threaded throughout the conference and had an impact on the IT professionals in attendance. We are constantly being challenged to prove our worth by showing business value, explained Victor Rosario of Lubrizol. We need to adopt innovative thinking and be advocates for the business. If we do that, we can have a big impact. The transformation of ITSM technology The evolution of ITSM extends beyond just new thinking. On the expo floor, numerous vendors showcased innovative technologies and approaches that are extending the bounds of the traditional ITSM technology domain: Leveraging its mobile-first approach and commitment to a no-code configuration environment, EasyVista is emerging as a digital workplace platform. is emerging as a digital workplace platform. First-time exhibitor Moogsoft demonstrated how artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms are helping organizations sort through the mass of data and alerts to help them get a holistic view of enterprise operations. demonstrated how artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms are helping organizations sort through the mass of data and alerts to help them get a holistic view of enterprise operations. Bringing the intersection of ITSM, agile, and DevOps into relief, Atlassian showed tools to automate scrum boards, kanban boards and agile development management toolsand how they integrate into ITSM workflows. showed tools to automate scrum boards, kanban boards and agile development management toolsand how they integrate into ITSM workflows. LANDESK demonstrated how it enables immediate, endpoint security remediation actions through the integration of service management, security management and asset management approaches. demonstrated how it enables immediate, endpoint security remediation actions through the integration of service management, security management and asset management approaches. Expanding beyond their core ITSM solutions, ServiceNow announced its business command center for CIOs, focused on helping IT run projects and portfolios from a financial perspective through their new IT Business Management Suite. The future on display The FUSION conference was a microcosm of the larger tectonic shift occurring in the enterprise IT industry. The traditional boundaries between organizational functionsand the boundaries between technology markets serving themare blurring. Silo mentalities and neatly aligned technology solutions have become relics of the past. In an IT industry that is changing quickly, ITSM professionals are creating a broader, more holistic approach to the management of IT organizationsblending the need for rigor, reliability and resiliency with the demand for agility and speed. Technology vendors are adapting as well, blurring the lines between traditional technology domains while refusing to be put in a one-dimensional boxdelivering highly integrated solutions to meet the complex needs of the evolving IT organization. Together it paints an intricate and complex picture of the future that is both exciting and challenging. With the speed at which the ITSM space is evolving, only one thing is for certain: It will look different again at next years FUSION. Disclosure: I am the volunteer past-president of itSMF USA, a non-profit industry association. As of the time of writing, Moogsoft and ServiceNow are Intellyx clients. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Since Alan Masarek joined Vonage as its CEO, the company has been on a mission to redefine how businesses communicate with workers and customers. The term unified communications has been somewhat of a fallacy, as collaboration tools are disjointed and require a high amount of manual integration. Sure, there has been some advancements with respect to bringing voice, video and content sharing together, but the tools are primarily limited to users communicating with other workers with basic collaboration tools. + Also on Network World: IBM creates artificial neurons from phase change memory for cognitive computing + Theres more to communicating than just picking up a phone and calling or sending a text message. Theres a world of contextual information, particularly with customer interactions, to understand who is a user is, what they are doing, their preferences and many other factors. How does one get that information? Usually the customer is put through the grinder by being asked a bunch of questions they probably already answered in an integrated voice response (IVR) system because the business had no other way to gather that type of information. In an effort to change this, Vonage bought communication platform as a service (CPaaS) provider Nexmo earlier this year. Nexmo makes communications modules, such as voice and chat available from the cloud. Now if a company wants to build a mobile application that has built-in click-to-call or messaging, it can make an API call to the cloud for this functionality. By holding the customer in the application, the business can gather great contextual information and streamline communications with the customer. Making cognitive communications a reality This week, Vonage announced that its Nexmo group is working with IBMs Project Intu to demonstrate integration between the companies that can make cognitive communications a reality. Intu is a systems-agnostic version of Watson that allows developers to embed artificial intelligence (AI) functions into devices, robots and applications. The AI combined with Nexmos voice APIs can bring a new dimension to communications and cognitive capabilities. For example, a user could use her favorite restaurant application, such Open Table, Yelp or Trip Advisor, and ask it something like: Make me a restaurant reservation for two people at 7 p.m. Watsons natural language capabilities could interpret what was being asked, look in the application database to see the users preferences for food type, price range and location and find a place. Also, Watson can call the restaurant, book the reservation, text the user with place and time, and then send Google Map directions on how to get there. Vonage and Nexmo together can bring context to communications, and when paired with Watson, they can elevate it to being cognitive by bringing in elements of conversation and language. The coming together of UC and AI is still in the very early days, but the potential for game-changing applications is here. Developers need to open their minds and consider whats possible when applications, devices and network can think and interpret information. Then the promise of UC will become a reality. Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference 'What or who is pushing Ukrainian citizens to mass protests?' On Wednesday, November 16, at 12.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference entitled "'What or Who is Pushing Ukrainian Citizens to Mass Protests?" The participants will include Director of the Institute of Global Strategies Vadym Karasiov, expert of the Gardarica Strategic Consulting Corporation Kostiantyn Matviyenko, Director of the Ukrainian Barometer sociological service Viktor Nebozhenko (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation. Premature publication of news is a common mistake on both our end and that of vendors. Today was Microsoft's turn to suffer an oops with the premature announcement that it is bringing its flagship development tool to the Mac. Microsoft will be hosting its Connect(); 2016 developer conference in New York City later this week, which will be the launch grounds for Visual Studio for Mac, but for whatever reason, the news was published early to an MSDN blog. Several sites, including TechCrunch and Neowin, got the news before the blog post was taken down, although a cached version is available from Google. In the announcement, Microsoft notes this version of Visual Studio offers the mobile-centric Xamarin Studio IDE as a "true mobile-first, cloud-first development tool for .NET and C#," along with bringing the Visual Studio development experience to the Mac for the first time. "At its heart, Visual Studio for Mac is a macOS counterpart of the Windows version of Visual Studio. If you enjoy the Visual Studio development experience, but need or want to use macOS, you should feel right at home. Its UX is inspired by Visual Studio, yet designed to look and feel like a native citizen of macOS. And like Visual Studio for Windows, its complemented by Visual Studio Code for times when you dont need a full IDE, but want a lightweight yet rich standalone source editor," wrote Mikayla Hutchinson, a senior program manager at Microsoft. Visual Studio for Mac also has a lot in common with its Windows brother, but not everything. Its IntelliSense and refactoring use the Roslyn Compiler Platform; its project system and build engine use MSBuild; and its source editor supports TextMate bundles. It uses the same debugger engines for Xamarin and .NET Core apps, and it uses the same designers for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. However, Hutchinson's post also says it doesnt support all of the Visual Studio project types, but she does not say which project types are not supported. For those that are, team members on macOS and Windows can seamlessly share their projects across platforms without conversion or migration. Connect() takes place Nov. 16-18. Scott Guthrie, head of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, will deliver the keynote address. After Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab, ripped into Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior in Windows 10, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case against Microsoft for abusing dominance. Microsoft claimed to have a long history of cooperation with Kaspersky and that it is committed to work in full compliance with Russian law. Yet, Russia has already decided to block Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, since the law requires Russian citizens personal data to be stored on servers within its country. In the past, Microsoft made LinkedIn censorship changes to cater to China, as opposed to being blocked like Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will localize Russian users data as the countrys law demands. The New York Times added that it was unclear why LinkedIn was targeted, rather than any other major social networking site, but that is a sign of growing tensions for American tech companies operating in Russia. Speaking of growing tensions, Kaspersky has had enough and roasted Microsoft toasty last week for anticompetitive bundling in Windows 10, namely the way the bundled Defender is Microsofts way of squeezing independent developers out of the Windows ecosystem if it has its own application for this or that purpose. When upgrading, Windows 10 does have a habit of uninstalling users apps and replacing them with Microsoft-flavored versions. Even after selecting Keep personal files and apps during the upgrade process, third-party software can get axedand that includes antivirus. Kaspersky wants Microsoft to knock off that behavior and stop foisting its Defender on the user, which isnt beneficial from the point of view of protection of a computer against cyber attacks. Kaspersky pointed out that upgrading to Windows 10 results in incompatible security software being deactivated and replaced with Defender. He lashed out at Microsoft, writing: But what did it expect when independent developers were given all of one week before the release of the new version of the OS to make their software compatible? Even if software did manage to be compatible according to the initial check before the upgrade, weird things tended to happen and Defender would still take over. This point was also hammered upon by the FAS, which claimed Microsoft cut down significantly the period for adapting compatibility of antivirus software developed by third parties for the Windows 10 operational system: from 2 months to 6 calendar days. Kaspersky was irked about Microsofts use of a big juicy Defender Turn on button. So, even if your security software is compatible, the pop-up window looks like a warning and urges users to enable Defender, which will uninstall any existing AV program. He bashed the effectiveness of Defender, saying independent test labs find it to be below average and lacking functionality built into other anti-malware solutions. Windows 10 allows only one antivirus solution to be installed on a PCtwo if you turn on Defender, he explained. If you have an AV solution but install a trial version of security software, when the trial period is up, Windows doesnt revert back to the first AV solution but quietly turns off both AVs and instead turns on Defender. Under a heading of the harmful consequences of greed is the question: Who most benefits from the monopolization of cybersecurity market? Kaspersky said, cybercriminals, of course! Kaspersky suggested all independent software developers band together and fight Microsoft. Users have the right to choose the best; freedom of choice enables the development of competition; and competition leads to technical progress. We intend to fight for such freedom, even if we have to do so alone, he said. After Kasperskys post made it sound like Microsoft is trying to push independent software vendors out of the market, FAS Deputy Head Anatoly Golomolzin said, Since Microsoft itself develops antivirus softwareWindows Defender that switches on automatically if third-party software fails to adapt to Windows 10 in due timesuch actions lead to unreasonable advantages for Microsoft on the software market. Our task is to ensure equal conditions for all participants on this market. China's 600 km/h maglev (magnetic levitation) train project, launched earlier this year, is in full swing. Jia Limin, head of China's high-speed rail innovation program, said a high-speed maglev test line with a length of no less than 5 kilometers under the project is expected to be completed by 2021. CRRC Corporation Limited, China's largest rail transportation equipment maker, said it would construct the test line. In addition, Shandong Province in east China plans to construct a high-speed maglev system that runs from Jinan, the province's capital city to Qingdao, which is the first operation line based on this project, Jia said. "That is the reason why we built the 5-km test line in Qingdao," he said. CRRC said in October that China was launching a bullet train project containing a 600 km/h high-speed maglev train and a 400 km/h international multimodal transport high-speed train. Ministry of Science and Technology has decided to transfer some key research projects over to enterprises, such as the CRRC, a conference on major special rail transportation projects announced in October. CRRC was the first enterprise to take on the trial projects, who received seven out of ten projects from the Ministry of Science and Technology. The company will also develop maglev trains that travel at 200 km/h under the project. By Reuters WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump chose Washington insider Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and firebrand conservative Stephen Bannon as chief strategist, showing a willingness to work with Congress and giving a nod to right-wing activists who helped sweep him into office. Less than a week after his upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential election, Trump's choice on Sunday of Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and friend of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, could help him repair his strained relations with members of the Republican Party establishment in Washington. But Trump gave the job of strategist and senior counselor to Bannon, a fierce critic of Ryan who spearheaded Breitbart News website's shift into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites. Bannon and Priebus would work "as equal partners to transform the federal government," Trump said in a statement. Democrats were outraged by the choice of Bannon, calling him a promoter of racism and misogyny who is backed by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. "It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of White Supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide," Adam, Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said in a statement. U.S. Representative Adam Schiff said Bannon's selection for a top White House job was unsurprising but alarming. "His alt-right, anti-Semitic & misogynistic views don't belong in WH," Schiff said in a Twitter post. In morning television interviews on Monday, Priebus defended Bannon as a wise and well-educated former naval officer and said he had not encountered the sort of extremist or racist views that critics are assailing. "He was a force for good on the campaign," Priebus said on Fox News, adding that they were in agreement on "almost everything" in terms of advising the president-elect. Hardline Trump backers counting on the wealthy real estate developer to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders may be disappointed he has named Priebus as chief of staff, a position that serves as gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president. Trump said both appointees were "highly qualified leaders" who had helped him win the White House race. President Barack Obama, who will be succeeded by Trump on Jan. 20, plans to hold a news conference on Monday at 3:15 p.m. (2015 GMT) before leaving on an international trip. The Democratic president, who has pledged a smooth transition of leadership despite sharp political differences with Trump, is likely to be asked by reporters about Trump's appointments. WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump chose Washington insider Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and firebrand conservative Stephen Bannon as chief strategist, showing a willingness to work with Congress and giving a nod to right-wing activists who helped sweep him into office. Less than a week after his upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential election, Trump's choice on Sunday of Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and friend of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, could help him repair his strained relations with members of the Republican Party establishment in Washington. But Trump gave the job of strategist and senior counselor to Bannon, a fierce critic of Ryan who spearheaded Breitbart News website's shift into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites. Bannon and Priebus would work "as equal partners to transform the federal government," Trump said in a statement. Democrats were outraged by the choice of Bannon, calling him a promoter of racism and misogyny who is backed by the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. "It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of White Supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide," Adam, Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said in a statement. U.S. Representative Adam Schiff said Bannon's selection for a top White House job was unsurprising but alarming. "His alt-right, anti-Semitic & misogynistic views don't belong in WH," Schiff said in a Twitter post. In morning television interviews on Monday, Priebus defended Bannon as a wise and well-educated former naval officer and said he had not encountered the sort of extremist or racist views that critics are assailing. "He was a force for good on the campaign," Priebus said on Fox News, adding that they were in agreement on "almost everything" in terms of advising the president-elect. Hardline Trump backers counting on the wealthy real estate developer to keep his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of business-as-usual Washington insiders may be disappointed he has named Priebus as chief of staff, a position that serves as gatekeeper and agenda-setter for the president. Trump said both appointees were "highly qualified leaders" who had helped him win the White House race. President Barack Obama, who will be succeeded by Trump on Jan. 20, plans to hold a news conference on Monday at 3:15 p.m. (2015 GMT) before leaving on an international trip. The Democratic president, who has pledged a smooth transition of leadership despite sharp political differences with Trump, is likely to be asked by reporters about Trump's appointments. kiran parashar m By Express News Service BENGALURU: At a time when hordes of people are rushing to banks for new currency notes after the Centre demonetised old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, there could be some people misusing your ID proofs. Such incidents were reported in Bengaluru where people who had been to banks were forced to return empty-handed as somebody had already used their identity proof to exchange cash. Anna Isaac went to the Axis Bank branch on 80 Feet Road in Indiranagar on Saturday hoping to exchange Rs 3,500. She was asked for her PAN card and mobile number. To her shock, as soon as she provided her phone number, the bank officials told her that somebody had already used her PAN card to exchange Rs 4,000 the previous day. I was horrified and checked if my details were being misused. However, I did not get any satisfactory response. How can somebody use my PAN card and phone number to exchange cash without my notice? she asked. On reaching home, she checked with her parents if they had used her phone number to exchange money. They had not. I am afraid that my other details are also being misused, she said. There were also reports of IDs being sold in photocopying shops. When contacted, an official from a leading bank said that though such incidents have come to their notice, it is hard to regulate them. Some come posing as relatives of old women or disabled people. We have no means of verifying their motives, he said. Two days ago, there were reports of Aadhaar numbers being misused to exchange notes. Regarding the PAN card incident, State Level Bankers Committee convener M Mohan Reddy said that it might be a one-off incident. We collect the necessary details of every person who deposits money in the banks, using our in-built system. It will verify all the details of a customer, he said. He added that the banks would look into the issue of PAN card misuse. BENGALURU: At a time when hordes of people are rushing to banks for new currency notes after the Centre demonetised old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, there could be some people misusing your ID proofs. Such incidents were reported in Bengaluru where people who had been to banks were forced to return empty-handed as somebody had already used their identity proof to exchange cash. Anna Isaac went to the Axis Bank branch on 80 Feet Road in Indiranagar on Saturday hoping to exchange Rs 3,500. She was asked for her PAN card and mobile number. To her shock, as soon as she provided her phone number, the bank officials told her that somebody had already used her PAN card to exchange Rs 4,000 the previous day. I was horrified and checked if my details were being misused. However, I did not get any satisfactory response. How can somebody use my PAN card and phone number to exchange cash without my notice? she asked. On reaching home, she checked with her parents if they had used her phone number to exchange money. They had not. I am afraid that my other details are also being misused, she said. There were also reports of IDs being sold in photocopying shops. When contacted, an official from a leading bank said that though such incidents have come to their notice, it is hard to regulate them. Some come posing as relatives of old women or disabled people. We have no means of verifying their motives, he said. Two days ago, there were reports of Aadhaar numbers being misused to exchange notes. Regarding the PAN card incident, State Level Bankers Committee convener M Mohan Reddy said that it might be a one-off incident. We collect the necessary details of every person who deposits money in the banks, using our in-built system. It will verify all the details of a customer, he said. He added that the banks would look into the issue of PAN card misuse. Sangeeta Bora By Express News Service BENGALURU: While banks witnessed mad rush on Sunday as well, people continued their search for ATMs. Fortunately, for many, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter came handy. People from various localities exchanged information pertaining to ATMs that were functional in different parts of the city through tweets under the hashtag #OpenATMblr. People stand in a serpentine queue in front of a bank at Srirampura on Sunday | s manjunath The hashtag was first started in Mumbai. It was one Sandhya Ramesh who suggested that Bengaluru can follow the footsteps of Mumbai to help the citizens here. This is when tweets under #OpenATMblr started pouring in. One such person who benefitted from the tweets was Venkat Krishna. I live in HSR Layout. When I was looking out for functional ATMs in 24th and 25th Main, I failed to spot any. I found all the ATMs closed although the banks were operating. Suddenly, I came across these tweets and someone said 27th Main had all the ATMs working. I rushed to the spot, stood in the queue for half an hour and got my cash. I am so thankful to the person who tweeted. It saved me. The tweets were especially helpful for those heading outside the city. Biswajit Bhuyan, who was taking a train to Guwahati, said, I have to spend three days and one night on the train and if I do not have cash, I will have to starve. The first time when I withdrew cash, I got a `2,000 note and nobody was able to give me change for that. But this time I got all `100s and I am so relaxed. BENGALURU: While banks witnessed mad rush on Sunday as well, people continued their search for ATMs. Fortunately, for many, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter came handy. People from various localities exchanged information pertaining to ATMs that were functional in different parts of the city through tweets under the hashtag #OpenATMblr. People stand in a serpentine queue in front of a bank at Srirampura on Sunday | s manjunathThe hashtag was first started in Mumbai. It was one Sandhya Ramesh who suggested that Bengaluru can follow the footsteps of Mumbai to help the citizens here. This is when tweets under #OpenATMblr started pouring in. One such person who benefitted from the tweets was Venkat Krishna. I live in HSR Layout. When I was looking out for functional ATMs in 24th and 25th Main, I failed to spot any. I found all the ATMs closed although the banks were operating. Suddenly, I came across these tweets and someone said 27th Main had all the ATMs working. I rushed to the spot, stood in the queue for half an hour and got my cash. I am so thankful to the person who tweeted. It saved me. The tweets were especially helpful for those heading outside the city. Biswajit Bhuyan, who was taking a train to Guwahati, said, I have to spend three days and one night on the train and if I do not have cash, I will have to starve. The first time when I withdrew cash, I got a `2,000 note and nobody was able to give me change for that. But this time I got all `100s and I am so relaxed. SV Krishna Chaitanya By Express News Service CHENNAI: Unlike in Delhi, emissions from the industrial clusters in Chennais hinterland are blown away by breeze. Therefore, Chennai stands smug in the belief that it will never be a Delhi. But then, pollutants from vehicle exhaust, domestic cooking, open waste burning, and road dust are formidable enough challenges for the city. Chennai ranks third in India in terms of the number of motor vehicles, next only to Delhi and Bengaluru. In just the last four years, an astonishing one million new vehicles were added to Chennais roads, taking the number up to 47 lakh. According to a five-year study conducted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the transport sector contributes a whopping 35-48 per cent to air pollution in Chennai. The study covered five other citiesDelhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Bengaluru and Puneand Chennai topped them all. Since vehicle exhaust is clearly a concern, environment activist Jawaharlal Shanmugam says Chennai should ban vehicles older than 15 years because they are heavy polluters. For example, sulphur dioxide emission from a Bharat IV compliant engine is just 50 ppm compared to 500 ppm from a Bharat II engine. However, pollution researcher Sarath K Guttikunda of UrbanEmissions.info says a transport-only anti-pollution approach is myopic. We have to recognise that pollution comes from many sources, and transport is only one of them. We ought to look at improving the efficiency of manufacturing industries as well, especially the brick kilns, he says. Chennais average monthly concentration of PM 10 pollutants falls in the range of 60-160 micrograms per cubic metre, which is higher than the national average of 60 micrograms per cubic metre and the WHO standard of 20 micrograms. And when it comes to PM 2.5 particulates, a study conducted by urbanemissions.info found that emissions in Chennai add up to 51,200 tonnes annually. Clearly the drift of developments indicate the need for action. National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) director R Jayaraman says, Chennais case is different from the trends observed in other mega cities where overall ambient air pollution is very high. But this must not breed complacency as available data point to a steady and rapid increase in pollution over time, high local impacts and high toxicity in Chennais air. No. of vehicles 2012: 37 lakh 2016: 47 lakh Chennais 7 sources of pollution Transport Road dust Electricity generation and utilisation Brick kilns and construction Industries Domestic sector Open waste burning CHENNAI: Unlike in Delhi, emissions from the industrial clusters in Chennais hinterland are blown away by breeze. Therefore, Chennai stands smug in the belief that it will never be a Delhi. But then, pollutants from vehicle exhaust, domestic cooking, open waste burning, and road dust are formidable enough challenges for the city. Chennai ranks third in India in terms of the number of motor vehicles, next only to Delhi and Bengaluru. In just the last four years, an astonishing one million new vehicles were added to Chennais roads, taking the number up to 47 lakh. According to a five-year study conducted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the transport sector contributes a whopping 35-48 per cent to air pollution in Chennai. The study covered five other citiesDelhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Bengaluru and Puneand Chennai topped them all. Since vehicle exhaust is clearly a concern, environment activist Jawaharlal Shanmugam says Chennai should ban vehicles older than 15 years because they are heavy polluters. For example, sulphur dioxide emission from a Bharat IV compliant engine is just 50 ppm compared to 500 ppm from a Bharat II engine. However, pollution researcher Sarath K Guttikunda of UrbanEmissions.info says a transport-only anti-pollution approach is myopic. We have to recognise that pollution comes from many sources, and transport is only one of them. We ought to look at improving the efficiency of manufacturing industries as well, especially the brick kilns, he says. Chennais average monthly concentration of PM 10 pollutants falls in the range of 60-160 micrograms per cubic metre, which is higher than the national average of 60 micrograms per cubic metre and the WHO standard of 20 micrograms. And when it comes to PM 2.5 particulates, a study conducted by urbanemissions.info found that emissions in Chennai add up to 51,200 tonnes annually. Clearly the drift of developments indicate the need for action. National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) director R Jayaraman says, Chennais case is different from the trends observed in other mega cities where overall ambient air pollution is very high. But this must not breed complacency as available data point to a steady and rapid increase in pollution over time, high local impacts and high toxicity in Chennais air. No. of vehicles 2012: 37 lakh 2016: 47 lakh Chennais 7 sources of pollution Transport Road dust Electricity generation and utilisation Brick kilns and construction Industries Domestic sector Open waste burning By Express News Service CHENNAI: THE Anna University Teachers' Association (AUTA) has decided to go on a hunger strike within the campus, without affecting classes, on Tuesday to press for the immediate implementation of Career Advancement Scheme (CAS), among other things. "We had a dialogue with the administration and have decided to go ahead with the strike since their response was unsatisfactory," said I.Arul Aram, President of AUTA, speaking to Express. The association, representing teachers of all four institutions that come under the university, is fighting primarily for implementation of CAS, a time-bound promotion scheme, that has not been implemented since 2010, a AUTA release said. Some members of the association have not received their first promotion even after 13 years of regular service, the release added. The charter of seven demands included filling up the Vice Chancellor post without further delay, a grievance cell, appointment of Heads/Directors based on seniority and on a rotational basis and an enabling environment for working. "The VC post has been vacant since May. We want a qualified individual to fill in the post as soon as possible," said Arul. According to him, teachers are required to achieve a certain Academic Performance Indicator (API) for which they would need to attend conferences and work on projects. "Sometimes the Heads don't allow us to go for these conferences nor do they provide us with facilities to work on our projects. How can we equip and qualify ourselves?" he asked. The association has also pushed for two elected representatives from the faculty in the Syndicate. CHENNAI: THE Anna University Teachers' Association (AUTA) has decided to go on a hunger strike within the campus, without affecting classes, on Tuesday to press for the immediate implementation of Career Advancement Scheme (CAS), among other things. "We had a dialogue with the administration and have decided to go ahead with the strike since their response was unsatisfactory," said I.Arul Aram, President of AUTA, speaking to Express. The association, representing teachers of all four institutions that come under the university, is fighting primarily for implementation of CAS, a time-bound promotion scheme, that has not been implemented since 2010, a AUTA release said. Some members of the association have not received their first promotion even after 13 years of regular service, the release added. The charter of seven demands included filling up the Vice Chancellor post without further delay, a grievance cell, appointment of Heads/Directors based on seniority and on a rotational basis and an enabling environment for working. "The VC post has been vacant since May. We want a qualified individual to fill in the post as soon as possible," said Arul. According to him, teachers are required to achieve a certain Academic Performance Indicator (API) for which they would need to attend conferences and work on projects. "Sometimes the Heads don't allow us to go for these conferences nor do they provide us with facilities to work on our projects. How can we equip and qualify ourselves?" he asked. The association has also pushed for two elected representatives from the faculty in the Syndicate. By Express News Service CHENNAI: HUNDREDS alighted at the Chennai Central on Monday morning when the Andaman Express from Vaishno Devi temple (Jammu and Kashmir) arrived after more than three days of journey. While almost all of them headed for the exits, a small boy was walking along the platform all by himself until he was spotted by an RPF personnel. Dressed in a very dirty shirt, which had the symbol of DAV BORL Public School (Bina, Madhya Pradesh), the boy was then escorted to the childline centre, which receives children stranded at the station. "It is very likely that the boy must have been missed by his family, who in all probability must have travelled in the general compartment," an RPF officer told Express. Like the boy whose name has not yet been ascertained, Chennai Central has seen more than 1300 children stranded in its premises during the last one year. The children, mostly in the age group between 10-15, are reported to have either run away from other places or missed at the station, which is housed under a heritage structure built in 1873. On an average, the station handles more than 60 trains every day and is accessed by thousands of passengers coming in from across the country. From July last year, when a railway childline centre was set up at the station, till October this year, a total of 1364 children have been rescued. According to statistics, maintained by Bro Siga Social Service Guild, which runs the helpline (1098) at Central, a majority of them (817) are said to have run away, while 547 children were missed. Speaking to Express, A Malini, Project Coordinator, said about half of the children were from other states, especially from Odisha. Apart from being traumatised finding themselves alone, they don't comprehend the local language, she said. For such cases assistance is being taken from of RPF personnel, conversant in other languages. According to her, while most of them run away due to poor domestic conditions, there are others who are tempted by strangers, friends or lovers, but abandoned at the station. "We provide counselling to such children, find more details about them. We then handover the rescued children either to their parents or to the Child Welfare Committee," Malini said. TOTAL CHILDREN RESCUED - 1364 FROM TN - 686 FROM OTHER STATES - 678 CHENNAI: HUNDREDS alighted at the Chennai Central on Monday morning when the Andaman Express from Vaishno Devi temple (Jammu and Kashmir) arrived after more than three days of journey. While almost all of them headed for the exits, a small boy was walking along the platform all by himself until he was spotted by an RPF personnel. Dressed in a very dirty shirt, which had the symbol of DAV BORL Public School (Bina, Madhya Pradesh), the boy was then escorted to the childline centre, which receives children stranded at the station. "It is very likely that the boy must have been missed by his family, who in all probability must have travelled in the general compartment," an RPF officer told Express. Like the boy whose name has not yet been ascertained, Chennai Central has seen more than 1300 children stranded in its premises during the last one year. The children, mostly in the age group between 10-15, are reported to have either run away from other places or missed at the station, which is housed under a heritage structure built in 1873. On an average, the station handles more than 60 trains every day and is accessed by thousands of passengers coming in from across the country. From July last year, when a railway childline centre was set up at the station, till October this year, a total of 1364 children have been rescued. According to statistics, maintained by Bro Siga Social Service Guild, which runs the helpline (1098) at Central, a majority of them (817) are said to have run away, while 547 children were missed. Speaking to Express, A Malini, Project Coordinator, said about half of the children were from other states, especially from Odisha. Apart from being traumatised finding themselves alone, they don't comprehend the local language, she said. For such cases assistance is being taken from of RPF personnel, conversant in other languages. According to her, while most of them run away due to poor domestic conditions, there are others who are tempted by strangers, friends or lovers, but abandoned at the station. "We provide counselling to such children, find more details about them. We then handover the rescued children either to their parents or to the Child Welfare Committee," Malini said. TOTAL CHILDREN RESCUED - 1364 FROM TN - 686 FROM OTHER STATES - 678 By Express News Service CHENNAI: IT was a shock to a 34-year-old realtor, when he recently learnt that the money he had been contributing to a children's home for the past two and a half years was being swindled by a duo. While one has been arrested, a search is on for the other. On a complaint by the realtor, Ayyappan, Dinesh (26) was arrested and fake receipts were seized. However, the prime suspect, Karthikeyan, is still at large. Police said, Ayyappan had been contributing `1,500 for the last two and a half years to Dinesh, who claimed to be the collection boy of a children's home, Annai Anbalayaa Trust which serves deprived children. Recently, I had asked the staff who calls me every month from the home to fix an appointment to collect the cash, if I could talk to the founder. I wanted to contribute more and to check the necessities of the home. But the woman did not get back to me for more than a week. I became suspicious and searched on the internet for the founder's phone number and spoke to Sivakumar. It was only then I realised that the money was not reaching the home in Athipathu village in Minjur, said Ayyappan. Two days later, I again received a call from the home asking when they could collect the money. Immediately, I alerted the local police and called the collection boy, Dinesh to come collect the money. Police caught him red handed, he added. Karthikeyan had prepared fake receipts using the logo, license number, registration number. Only the address and the contact number were different in the fake receipt. Our children's home has been functioning for the past fifteen years and is recognised by the government. Now-a-days people come forward to contribute money to homes, but donors should ensure that the money is transferred online so that it reaches the home directly, said founder of the home Sivakumar. A case has been registered by Abiramapuram police and further investigations are on. "We are investigating on how many people have been cheated the same way and how many more people have been involved in the case," said a senior police officer. CHENNAI: IT was a shock to a 34-year-old realtor, when he recently learnt that the money he had been contributing to a children's home for the past two and a half years was being swindled by a duo. While one has been arrested, a search is on for the other. On a complaint by the realtor, Ayyappan, Dinesh (26) was arrested and fake receipts were seized. However, the prime suspect, Karthikeyan, is still at large. Police said, Ayyappan had been contributing `1,500 for the last two and a half years to Dinesh, who claimed to be the collection boy of a children's home, Annai Anbalayaa Trust which serves deprived children. Recently, I had asked the staff who calls me every month from the home to fix an appointment to collect the cash, if I could talk to the founder. I wanted to contribute more and to check the necessities of the home. But the woman did not get back to me for more than a week. I became suspicious and searched on the internet for the founder's phone number and spoke to Sivakumar. It was only then I realised that the money was not reaching the home in Athipathu village in Minjur, said Ayyappan. Two days later, I again received a call from the home asking when they could collect the money. Immediately, I alerted the local police and called the collection boy, Dinesh to come collect the money. Police caught him red handed, he added. Karthikeyan had prepared fake receipts using the logo, license number, registration number. Only the address and the contact number were different in the fake receipt. Our children's home has been functioning for the past fifteen years and is recognised by the government. Now-a-days people come forward to contribute money to homes, but donors should ensure that the money is transferred online so that it reaches the home directly, said founder of the home Sivakumar. A case has been registered by Abiramapuram police and further investigations are on. "We are investigating on how many people have been cheated the same way and how many more people have been involved in the case," said a senior police officer. Jayendra Chaitanya By Express News Service HYDERABAD: After cracking down on bootleggers, eve-teasers and repeat offenders, the Hyderabad police is now eyeing cyber fraud offenders, be it those who indulge in property offences or other crimes like harassing women with abusive messages. In a first-of-its-kind attempt, the city police now plan to open history sheets on 12 habitual cyber offenders, including two persons from Hyderabad. The initiative comes because of the high recidivism among offenders. A history sheet is normally opened on a person if a particular offense is committed repeatedly, despite arrests and convictions. Cyber crimes Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) KCS Raghuvir told *Express* that several offenders, who had earlier been arrested by teams, had since obtained bail and continued to commit the online offenses in order to cheat the public. We identified 12 persons indulging in cyber offenses habitually. One among them is 21-year-old computer sciences engineering student Abdul Majid, a resident of Banjara Hills. Another is Madhu, a former employee of Food Corporation of India. The other persons are from New Delhi, who are involved in job frauds, loan frauds and matrimonial frauds, said Raghuvir. Majid was first arrested by the Cyberabad police for chatting with teenage girl students while pretending to be a girl on social media. He would then collect information about them and their private pictures before extorting money from them. He victimised over 100 minor girls, according to the city police. Later, he was arrested by the Hyderabad police on those charges, but he obtained bail. Recently, the cyber crime police received three fresh complaints from teenage girls. The girls were being extorted for money by a Facebook friend. When the police investigated, the accused turned out to be Majid. When we traced the IMEI number of the mobile phone with which phone conversations were being made, we found that the mobile was being used by Majids sister. On inquiry, it was found that Majid had again resorted to crime, said the ACP. The other prolific offender, Madhu, was arrested for cheating minors and teenage girls on the pretext of providing them jobs and thereafter forcing them to have sexual relations with him. Madhu extorted huge sums of money from the victims. Raghuvir said that Madhu had even moved the Supreme Court requesting that the orders of Preventive Detention invoked by the government of Telangana against him be removed, but his plea was rejected. Another key offender on the polices list is from Guntur. This individual was arrested on charges of cheating over 100 job aspirants on the pretext of providing them jobs. The other nine offenders are from New Delhi. They were repeatedly arrested for indulging in job fraud, loan fraud and matrimonial fraud. All these people will be under police scanner across the country. The police of all the states will be passed on the information about them. The patrolling parties will have to check daily for the availability of these offenders and alert their counterparts if they go missing, the officer explained. HYDERABAD: After cracking down on bootleggers, eve-teasers and repeat offenders, the Hyderabad police is now eyeing cyber fraud offenders, be it those who indulge in property offences or other crimes like harassing women with abusive messages. In a first-of-its-kind attempt, the city police now plan to open history sheets on 12 habitual cyber offenders, including two persons from Hyderabad. The initiative comes because of the high recidivism among offenders. A history sheet is normally opened on a person if a particular offense is committed repeatedly, despite arrests and convictions. Cyber crimes Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) KCS Raghuvir told *Express* that several offenders, who had earlier been arrested by teams, had since obtained bail and continued to commit the online offenses in order to cheat the public. We identified 12 persons indulging in cyber offenses habitually. One among them is 21-year-old computer sciences engineering student Abdul Majid, a resident of Banjara Hills. Another is Madhu, a former employee of Food Corporation of India. The other persons are from New Delhi, who are involved in job frauds, loan frauds and matrimonial frauds, said Raghuvir. Majid was first arrested by the Cyberabad police for chatting with teenage girl students while pretending to be a girl on social media. He would then collect information about them and their private pictures before extorting money from them. He victimised over 100 minor girls, according to the city police. Later, he was arrested by the Hyderabad police on those charges, but he obtained bail. Recently, the cyber crime police received three fresh complaints from teenage girls. The girls were being extorted for money by a Facebook friend. When the police investigated, the accused turned out to be Majid. When we traced the IMEI number of the mobile phone with which phone conversations were being made, we found that the mobile was being used by Majids sister. On inquiry, it was found that Majid had again resorted to crime, said the ACP. The other prolific offender, Madhu, was arrested for cheating minors and teenage girls on the pretext of providing them jobs and thereafter forcing them to have sexual relations with him. Madhu extorted huge sums of money from the victims. Raghuvir said that Madhu had even moved the Supreme Court requesting that the orders of Preventive Detention invoked by the government of Telangana against him be removed, but his plea was rejected. Another key offender on the polices list is from Guntur. This individual was arrested on charges of cheating over 100 job aspirants on the pretext of providing them jobs. The other nine offenders are from New Delhi. They were repeatedly arrested for indulging in job fraud, loan fraud and matrimonial fraud. All these people will be under police scanner across the country. The police of all the states will be passed on the information about them. The patrolling parties will have to check daily for the availability of these offenders and alert their counterparts if they go missing, the officer explained. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents join a rally Sunday afternoon outside the Legislative Council complex to show support for the NPC Standing Committee's interpretation of the Basic Law. Roy Liu /China Daily Hong Kong saw an outpouring of patriotism on Sunday in a mass demonstration calling for disqualifying the lawmakers-elect who have refused to pledge allegiance to the nation and the city's Basic Law. Organizers said more than 40,000 people turned up from an alliance of 1,000 organizations across the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Gathered outside the city's Legislative Council complex, they condemned in particular Sixtus Baggio Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching, two lawmakers-elect, for their separatist stand and bad manners and obscenities while taking the oath of office on Oct 12. Demonstrators also supported the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, in its latest interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law and clarification of the oath-taking procedures for all senior officials, lawmakers and judges of the SAR. Ng Chau-pei, one of the organizers of the gathering and also chairman of Hong Kong's largest labor group, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, said there were also about 10,000 people who couldn't fit in the limited space of the protest zone. On Nov 7, the NPC Standing Committee delivered its interpretation of Article 104 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, requiring senior officials, legislators and judges to pledge allegiance to the country and the SAR, and to take their oath in an accurate, sincere and solemn manner, under penalty of their disqualification. It was the fifth time that the Standing Committee made an interpretation of the Basic Law since Hong Kong's reunification with the motherland in 1997. Hong Kong's High Court has yet to hand down a decision in the judicial review mounted by the SAR government. The government seeks to have the oaths taken by the pair declared invalid and their seats vacated. Maggie Chan Man-ki, president of Small and Medium Law Firms Association of Hong Kong, praised the interpretation as an effort to prevent possible instability caused by the pro-independence activists. Rajitha S By Express News Service Ireland is a green, lustrous easy-to-access study abroad option for the Indian student. Rajitha S does the Dublin trip and tells us all about it One cannot fail to notice the stark difference the chatter of some excited students on Trinity Square, in Dublin, and then, kilometres away from this hustle bustle, in the University of Limerick campus is that one student meditating under the sun and soaking in the warmth that is generally missing in Ireland. From the city centre to the picturesque countryside, everything seems like it is taken out of a childs play book. Medieval architecture blends beautifully with modern state-of-the-art technology in the higher educational institutions in the country turning them into inspiring spaces for those willing to learn. Indian students who have just stepped there and those who have made the country their home, share their experiences on why Ireland is better than most other countries as a destination for prospective students from India. student activity centre Ireland, matey Telugu girl Shilpika Kotina who has lived in Nabrangpur, Odisha for almost 20 years was passionate about getting a study-abroad experience. I wasnt as keen about landing a job, as I was to explore and understand more about myself. So, after I completed my engineering, I decided to go abroad and study, recalls Shilpika. She landed at the National College of Ireland after many twists and turns. She took two years to convince her parents about her decision. I dont have a lot of time because my parents want me to get married soon. In the United States, all Masters courses are for two years. UK was another option, but they did not have a one-year work permit option that Ireland gives you, points the 26-year-old. Ireland being the only other English-speaking country in Europe, she decided on the country and then the process of choosing the course began. MSc Management that I am pursuing here has a well-designed course and the modules are technically sound. There was financial support available too when I joined in January 2015, shares Shilpika. Maynooth university On the job Staying true to her dream of exploring her strengths and weaknesses, Shilpika took every opportunity that came her way. Donning multiple hats, she cherishes her experiences as the international student ambassador, international peer mentor and also the founder of two new societies. I realised that you have to unlearn and relearn in order to survive. I can see the way I have transformed. I was reserved and hesitant to open up when I came here. But today, I confidently shared my life story with you, she points. Making the best use of her time in Ireland, Shilpika owes her transformation to the mentoring and the opportunities she got as a student in the university. After a three-month internship, she is now employed at the same company. It wasnt a paid internship but I now have a year of Irish work experience, a great value addition to my portfolio, she smiles. The career and opportunities service at the college helps students get ready for the industry right from the time they land in the campus. They may not be getting jobs in the first few months, but we conduct group and one-to-one sessions with the students that start with getting their resume ready. We go right up to facing the interviews, informs Helen Conway, advisor for international students at National Institute of Ireland. Helen helped me with my CV and also in updating my LinkedIn profile which is quite crucial. As a student, I am allowed to work part time which is 20 hours per week and I get paid 10 euros per hour, informs Shilpika. The number of opportunities for the students are also high as over a 1000 companies have their European headquarters in Dublin including Google, HP, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pfizer. Divya Rose Monson, from Delhi, is pursuing her Masters in Electrical Engineering at the University College, Dublin. She worked with the PM Group in Dublin, that provides services in project management, process design, facility design and construction management and also on a on a project with Eirgrid, a power transmission company located in Dublin. She feels that working on projects and taking up internships while on the course helps in the long run. This experience can prove beneficial when you apply for a job, at the same or a different company, after the completion of your course. It also familiarises you with the working culture here in Ireland and gives your confidence a boost. There are more chances for students to land a job at the same firm they did their internship with. The competition, however, is fierce, she says and adds that though the pay depends on the company, students earn up to 1500 to 2000 Euros every month. The charm of Irish hospitality Buzzing with activity, smiling students welcome you and serve freshly grown farm fruits and Irish coffee with cookies at the Inter-Faith Centre at Dublin City University (DCU). This is our anti-depressant, says Sravanthi Kurri, a first year student who landed at DCU in September this year and hails from Bengaluru. Sravanthi and her international mates share that this is one space on the large university campus that serves as a stress buster. You hear the music in the background. They are playing Indian music as a warm welcome, just like we had when we arrived, she recalls. This is one place Sravanthi vouches that there is no bar on colour, dressing style, nationality anything for that matter. There are so many things happening in this space at all times, I wonder if get a taste of everything in one year. Students from various countries come and pray here, they celebrate their festivals. On some days, some of them are just hanging are just hanging around and playing music, you forget everything, she shares, with gleaming eyes and quickly adds, Our mood lightens up the minute we set foot here. Sravanthi is pursuing her Masters in Data Analytics and is impressed with the learning system. It makes you think. Projects are given throughout the year and that makes learning effortless and a continuous process. Then we also learn from each other. You can sit in any class you are interested in. Then you can also join societies and groups, those are plenty, she says. Societies of various nationalities and groups for various activities are across universities. Shilpika from National College of Ireland tells us that students have the freedom to start new societies. I started the photography society in my college and it has been acknowledged as the best new society this year. So there is a lot of scope for individuals to explore and grow, she says. The room conundrum Accommodation is one of the only hassles that students travelling to study in Ireland face. The situation is challenging for those studying in Dublin, but for students in the countryside, like the cities of Cork, Limerick and Galway, students enjoy a host of benefits. While some of them are set up with Irish families which host them during their time in the country, students also opt for on campus accommodation. It is also easy to find homes which you can share with fellow students. I stay with three other South Indians. We shop for our groceries every week, quite affordable in this part of the city and cook everyday, says Prasanna who is from Madurai is currently pursuing BE Honours in Structural Engineering at Cork Institute of Technology. Navin Rajpal, 23-year-old student at the National University of Ireland, Galway is pursuing Masters in Management. Galway, another quaint and picturesque county is around 200 km away from the bustling Dublin city. Navin chose Galway for a reason. "I stay 25 minutes away from the university and share my home with a Chinese undergraduate. We have a common kitchen and cook our own food. It is not so difficult," he says. Divya also assures, Dont worry, you will never go hungry! We will need around 600 euros a month for food, rent and other expenses. (The writer was in Ireland at the invitation of Education in Ireland) Ireland is a green, lustrous easy-to-access study abroad option for the Indian student. Rajitha S does the Dublin trip and tells us all about it One cannot fail to notice the stark difference the chatter of some excited students on Trinity Square, in Dublin, and then, kilometres away from this hustle bustle, in the University of Limerick campus is that one student meditating under the sun and soaking in the warmth that is generally missing in Ireland. From the city centre to the picturesque countryside, everything seems like it is taken out of a childs play book. Medieval architecture blends beautifully with modern state-of-the-art technology in the higher educational institutions in the country turning them into inspiring spaces for those willing to learn. Indian students who have just stepped there and those who have made the country their home, share their experiences on why Ireland is better than most other countries as a destination for prospective students from India. student activity centreIreland, matey Telugu girl Shilpika Kotina who has lived in Nabrangpur, Odisha for almost 20 years was passionate about getting a study-abroad experience. I wasnt as keen about landing a job, as I was to explore and understand more about myself. So, after I completed my engineering, I decided to go abroad and study, recalls Shilpika. She landed at the National College of Ireland after many twists and turns. She took two years to convince her parents about her decision. I dont have a lot of time because my parents want me to get married soon. In the United States, all Masters courses are for two years. UK was another option, but they did not have a one-year work permit option that Ireland gives you, points the 26-year-old. Ireland being the only other English-speaking country in Europe, she decided on the country and then the process of choosing the course began. MSc Management that I am pursuing here has a well-designed course and the modules are technically sound. There was financial support available too when I joined in January 2015, shares Shilpika. Maynooth universityOn the job Staying true to her dream of exploring her strengths and weaknesses, Shilpika took every opportunity that came her way. Donning multiple hats, she cherishes her experiences as the international student ambassador, international peer mentor and also the founder of two new societies. I realised that you have to unlearn and relearn in order to survive. I can see the way I have transformed. I was reserved and hesitant to open up when I came here. But today, I confidently shared my life story with you, she points. Making the best use of her time in Ireland, Shilpika owes her transformation to the mentoring and the opportunities she got as a student in the university. After a three-month internship, she is now employed at the same company. It wasnt a paid internship but I now have a year of Irish work experience, a great value addition to my portfolio, she smiles. The career and opportunities service at the college helps students get ready for the industry right from the time they land in the campus. They may not be getting jobs in the first few months, but we conduct group and one-to-one sessions with the students that start with getting their resume ready. We go right up to facing the interviews, informs Helen Conway, advisor for international students at National Institute of Ireland. Helen helped me with my CV and also in updating my LinkedIn profile which is quite crucial. As a student, I am allowed to work part time which is 20 hours per week and I get paid 10 euros per hour, informs Shilpika. The number of opportunities for the students are also high as over a 1000 companies have their European headquarters in Dublin including Google, HP, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pfizer. Divya Rose Monson, from Delhi, is pursuing her Masters in Electrical Engineering at the University College, Dublin. She worked with the PM Group in Dublin, that provides services in project management, process design, facility design and construction management and also on a on a project with Eirgrid, a power transmission company located in Dublin. She feels that working on projects and taking up internships while on the course helps in the long run. This experience can prove beneficial when you apply for a job, at the same or a different company, after the completion of your course. It also familiarises you with the working culture here in Ireland and gives your confidence a boost. There are more chances for students to land a job at the same firm they did their internship with. The competition, however, is fierce, she says and adds that though the pay depends on the company, students earn up to 1500 to 2000 Euros every month. The charm of Irish hospitality Buzzing with activity, smiling students welcome you and serve freshly grown farm fruits and Irish coffee with cookies at the Inter-Faith Centre at Dublin City University (DCU). This is our anti-depressant, says Sravanthi Kurri, a first year student who landed at DCU in September this year and hails from Bengaluru. Sravanthi and her international mates share that this is one space on the large university campus that serves as a stress buster. You hear the music in the background. They are playing Indian music as a warm welcome, just like we had when we arrived, she recalls. This is one place Sravanthi vouches that there is no bar on colour, dressing style, nationality anything for that matter. There are so many things happening in this space at all times, I wonder if get a taste of everything in one year. Students from various countries come and pray here, they celebrate their festivals. On some days, some of them are just hanging are just hanging around and playing music, you forget everything, she shares, with gleaming eyes and quickly adds, Our mood lightens up the minute we set foot here. Sravanthi is pursuing her Masters in Data Analytics and is impressed with the learning system. It makes you think. Projects are given throughout the year and that makes learning effortless and a continuous process. Then we also learn from each other. You can sit in any class you are interested in. Then you can also join societies and groups, those are plenty, she says. Societies of various nationalities and groups for various activities are across universities. Shilpika from National College of Ireland tells us that students have the freedom to start new societies. I started the photography society in my college and it has been acknowledged as the best new society this year. So there is a lot of scope for individuals to explore and grow, she says. The room conundrum Accommodation is one of the only hassles that students travelling to study in Ireland face. The situation is challenging for those studying in Dublin, but for students in the countryside, like the cities of Cork, Limerick and Galway, students enjoy a host of benefits. While some of them are set up with Irish families which host them during their time in the country, students also opt for on campus accommodation. It is also easy to find homes which you can share with fellow students. I stay with three other South Indians. We shop for our groceries every week, quite affordable in this part of the city and cook everyday, says Prasanna who is from Madurai is currently pursuing BE Honours in Structural Engineering at Cork Institute of Technology. Navin Rajpal, 23-year-old student at the National University of Ireland, Galway is pursuing Masters in Management. Galway, another quaint and picturesque county is around 200 km away from the bustling Dublin city. Navin chose Galway for a reason. "I stay 25 minutes away from the university and share my home with a Chinese undergraduate. We have a common kitchen and cook our own food. It is not so difficult," he says. Divya also assures, Dont worry, you will never go hungry! We will need around 600 euros a month for food, rent and other expenses. (The writer was in Ireland at the invitation of Education in Ireland) By Express News Service BHUBANESWAR: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) will not be part of the delegation comprising West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee which is likely to meet President Pranab Mukherjee over the demonetisation issue. "BJD will not participate in the call given by Mamata Banerjee to meet President of India to oppose demonetisation," BJD spokersperson Pratap Deb told mediapersons here. Mamata had called upon all opposition political parties including the CPI(M) to unite against the Centre's decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. "The President has agreed to meet representatives of political parties on November 16 or 17 where we will brief him in detail on the grim situation," she had said in a tweet. Meanwhile, the BJD parliamentary party leader Bhatruhari Mahatab also maintained that the party has welcomed the move of the Centre. "But we will raise the difficulties faced by the common people and ask what steps the Centre will take to ensure they do not face difficulties," he said. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik has already announced his support for demonetisation move of the Centre. He has, however, asked the Centre to take steps to ensure that people in rural and unbanked areas are not put to difficulty. Mahatab said BJD will keep its view in the all party meeting convened by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday and parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar tomorrow. Besides the demonetisation issue, the BJD will raise several other issues including Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh and the Polavaram dam issue. The GST issue will also be raised in the Parliament by the BJD. The Odisha government has announced its support for GST with some riders. BHUBANESWAR: The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) will not be part of the delegation comprising West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee which is likely to meet President Pranab Mukherjee over the demonetisation issue. "BJD will not participate in the call given by Mamata Banerjee to meet President of India to oppose demonetisation," BJD spokersperson Pratap Deb told mediapersons here. Mamata had called upon all opposition political parties including the CPI(M) to unite against the Centre's decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes. "The President has agreed to meet representatives of political parties on November 16 or 17 where we will brief him in detail on the grim situation," she had said in a tweet. Meanwhile, the BJD parliamentary party leader Bhatruhari Mahatab also maintained that the party has welcomed the move of the Centre. "But we will raise the difficulties faced by the common people and ask what steps the Centre will take to ensure they do not face difficulties," he said. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik has already announced his support for demonetisation move of the Centre. He has, however, asked the Centre to take steps to ensure that people in rural and unbanked areas are not put to difficulty. Mahatab said BJD will keep its view in the all party meeting convened by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Monday and parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar tomorrow. Besides the demonetisation issue, the BJD will raise several other issues including Mahanadi river water dispute with Chhattisgarh and the Polavaram dam issue. The GST issue will also be raised in the Parliament by the BJD. The Odisha government has announced its support for GST with some riders. Namita bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: In a state where even ensuring an election ticket allegedly costs some candidates crores of rupees, one may well imagine the prevalence of black money in the biggest jamboree of democracy celebrated every five years. Will demonetisation check the rampant prevalence of ill-gotten money in elections due in a couple of months from now? Its at least a job well begun, feel a host of experts Express spoke to. But much will depend on how well various ways of money laundering are checked. Those who use black money to win elections will do anything to woo voters. Since unaccounted money is an important part of elections, those pitching in will start distributing it right away. As per provision, notes can be converted till December 30, 2016, so the voter can avail of this facility easily, Trilochan Sastry of the Association of Democratic Reforms said. According to sources in the Financial Intelligence Unit, in Uttar Pradesh alone, unaccounted money worth Rs 500 crore was used during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Besides, there was a sudden rise in bank transactions across the state between September 2013 and April 2014. Of approximately Rs 300 crore seized, about one-sixth of the amount was from the state. According to an ADR report, most parties show bulk of their funding from donations given by small unnamed benefactors with less than Rs 20,000 contribution each. The percentage of such unnamed contributors was over 90 per cent in case of the BSP. Both the SP and BSP have prepared a war chest of Rs 500 crore each for the polls, according to their own submission to the Election Commission. The BJP and the Congress clearly would be no less prepared. As per the ADR report, the BJP and BSP have the highest number of candidates with money power. Demonetisation will certainly affect poll expenses but the impact will depend on the financial strength of the candidates, said Sudhir Panwar, a farmer leader and social activist. A candidate cant spend more than Rs 70 lakh in a Lok Sabha election and Rs 28 lakh in Assembly polls. However, this limit is observed only in exceptional cases. Over 2,200 accounts of candidates and their associates were under observation during the 2014 elections. Arvind Mohan, a Lucknow-based economist, said, At present the currency circulation is to the tune of Rs 18 lakh crore of which around Rs 13.5 lakh crore roughly is in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Now demonetisation will take away the sheen and shine of elections. LUCKNOW: In a state where even ensuring an election ticket allegedly costs some candidates crores of rupees, one may well imagine the prevalence of black money in the biggest jamboree of democracy celebrated every five years. Will demonetisation check the rampant prevalence of ill-gotten money in elections due in a couple of months from now? Its at least a job well begun, feel a host of experts Express spoke to. But much will depend on how well various ways of money laundering are checked. Those who use black money to win elections will do anything to woo voters. Since unaccounted money is an important part of elections, those pitching in will start distributing it right away. As per provision, notes can be converted till December 30, 2016, so the voter can avail of this facility easily, Trilochan Sastry of the Association of Democratic Reforms said. According to sources in the Financial Intelligence Unit, in Uttar Pradesh alone, unaccounted money worth Rs 500 crore was used during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Besides, there was a sudden rise in bank transactions across the state between September 2013 and April 2014. Of approximately Rs 300 crore seized, about one-sixth of the amount was from the state. According to an ADR report, most parties show bulk of their funding from donations given by small unnamed benefactors with less than Rs 20,000 contribution each. The percentage of such unnamed contributors was over 90 per cent in case of the BSP. Both the SP and BSP have prepared a war chest of Rs 500 crore each for the polls, according to their own submission to the Election Commission. The BJP and the Congress clearly would be no less prepared. As per the ADR report, the BJP and BSP have the highest number of candidates with money power. Demonetisation will certainly affect poll expenses but the impact will depend on the financial strength of the candidates, said Sudhir Panwar, a farmer leader and social activist. A candidate cant spend more than Rs 70 lakh in a Lok Sabha election and Rs 28 lakh in Assembly polls. However, this limit is observed only in exceptional cases. Over 2,200 accounts of candidates and their associates were under observation during the 2014 elections. Arvind Mohan, a Lucknow-based economist, said, At present the currency circulation is to the tune of Rs 18 lakh crore of which around Rs 13.5 lakh crore roughly is in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Now demonetisation will take away the sheen and shine of elections. By PTI MUMBAI: morning on a six-day visit to India to further strengthen bilateral ties. Rivlin, who landed at the Mumbai airport with a large delegation of businessmen and academicians, will leave for Delhi today. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of co-operation and joint projects between the two nations. The Israeli leader will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh. He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in Mumbai and lay wreaths at memorials for Mahatma Gandhi and for Indian soldiers, who fell in the World War-I. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008. Rivlin will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common," Rivlin said before he boarded the flight to Mumbai. "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes presidents and senior representatives of Israeli academic institutions, who are expected to sign separate agreements with Indian institutions. MUMBAI: morning on a six-day visit to India to further strengthen bilateral ties. Rivlin, who landed at the Mumbai airport with a large delegation of businessmen and academicians, will leave for Delhi today. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of co-operation and joint projects between the two nations. The Israeli leader will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh. He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in Mumbai and lay wreaths at memorials for Mahatma Gandhi and for Indian soldiers, who fell in the World War-I. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks on November 26, 2008. Rivlin will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common," Rivlin said before he boarded the flight to Mumbai. "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes presidents and senior representatives of Israeli academic institutions, who are expected to sign separate agreements with Indian institutions. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, first President of the Jew nation-state to come to India since 1996, landed in Mumbai on Monday with defence and trade ties on his mind. During his six-day long visit in two decades, President Rivlin attended a ceremony at Taj Hotel that was attacked during the Mumbai terror attack on November 26, 2008 that claimed Jewish lives as well. Six Jews were killed when 10 gun wielding terrorists from Karachi landed on the shores of Indias commercial capital and also targeted Jewish locality in Chabad House. He also laid wreaths at Mahatma Gandhi memorials and Indian soldiers who scarified life during World War-I. In an interview to the PTI, Rivlin also extended support to Indias fight against terrorism. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, he added. India imports 50 percent of Israels total arms sale. He arrived in Delhi late Monday evening and is scheduled to meet President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Accompanied by a big delegation comprising of businessmen and academicians, President Rivlin has a busy itinerary that saw him traveling to Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh. He will be accompanied by arm manufacturers who will be holding parleys with Indian government officials. While embarking on his India trip, the Israeli President took to social networking site Twitter to tweet in Hind where he said: Rashtrapati Mukherjee ke nimantran par Udyog or shiksha jagat ke pratinidhimandal ke sath bharat ki rajakiya yatra pe ravana ho raha hun (Departing on a state visit to India at the invitation of President Mukherjee, with a delegation of industry, academic heads). The Israeli President will be visiting some of the institutions that has been built with the help of Tel Aviv an Israeli Treatment plant in Agra and an Indo-Israeli Agricultural Projects Center of Excellence in Karnal. He will also be visiting Taj Mahal. NEW DELHI: Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, first President of the Jew nation-state to come to India since 1996, landed in Mumbai on Monday with defence and trade ties on his mind. During his six-day long visit in two decades, President Rivlin attended a ceremony at Taj Hotel that was attacked during the Mumbai terror attack on November 26, 2008 that claimed Jewish lives as well. Six Jews were killed when 10 gun wielding terrorists from Karachi landed on the shores of Indias commercial capital and also targeted Jewish locality in Chabad House. He also laid wreaths at Mahatma Gandhi memorials and Indian soldiers who scarified life during World War-I. In an interview to the PTI, Rivlin also extended support to Indias fight against terrorism. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, he added. India imports 50 percent of Israels total arms sale. He arrived in Delhi late Monday evening and is scheduled to meet President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Accompanied by a big delegation comprising of businessmen and academicians, President Rivlin has a busy itinerary that saw him traveling to Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh. He will be accompanied by arm manufacturers who will be holding parleys with Indian government officials. While embarking on his India trip, the Israeli President took to social networking site Twitter to tweet in Hind where he said: Rashtrapati Mukherjee ke nimantran par Udyog or shiksha jagat ke pratinidhimandal ke sath bharat ki rajakiya yatra pe ravana ho raha hun (Departing on a state visit to India at the invitation of President Mukherjee, with a delegation of industry, academic heads). The Israeli President will be visiting some of the institutions that has been built with the help of Tel Aviv an Israeli Treatment plant in Agra and an Indo-Israeli Agricultural Projects Center of Excellence in Karnal. He will also be visiting Taj Mahal. By PTI NEW DELHI: Friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and is not a relationship we should be hiding, said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. In a wide ranging interview to PTI, the Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo-Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Rivlin said that his country was proud to stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on murmurs in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Rivlin said, Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe that India is proud of its friendship with Israel. Again, this is not just a friendship of leaders and governments. It is a friendship between people in all walks of life, in all fields of study, in all areas of trade. This is not a friendship we should be hiding. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out, at the very forefront of building a better world for Israelis, for Indians, and for all peoples, he said. India's support for independent Palestine In reply to a question on India's continued support for an independent Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital, Rivlin said, Friends may not always see eye to eye on everything, and as friends we can agree to disagree with respect and understanding. Israel understands and indeed shares India's desire to see a just and lasting solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians. But no solution that may ever be found has a chance of success lest we work now to build confidence between peoples, the President said, and asserted that Israel and Palestine need to work towards direct negotiations. Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow on key bilateral and regional issues. The free trade agreement between the countries On the long-pending free trade agreement (FTA), negotiations for which were launched nearly five years ago between India and Israel, Rivlin said it is a tool that can have huge impact and boost the partnership. As the two sides build and cultivate the growing partnership, there is a need to seek ways to help business sectors to work together in an inviting environment, Rivlin said. We need to supply them with the tools that will ease their way and will provide them incentives. An FTA is a tool that can have a huge impact and boost the partnership. Both Israel's Ambassador in India, and India's new Ambassador to Israel are playing an important role in this, which is a matter in progress and I hope we can see it signed in the near future, the President said. Visit to focus on agriculture, water and education He also asserted that his visit was a chance not only tor eaffirm Israel's commitment to continue building on all that has been achieved in the past 25 years of diplomatic relations, but to look at ways the two countries can work together to stretch even further the boundaries of innovation and imagination. Importantly, this visit will focus on three areas of this cooperation, namely agriculture, water and education. These three areas in particular highlight what our two great nations are engaged in sowing the seeds for the future, he added. During his meeting with Modi, Rivlin will reiterate his country's invitation to Prime Minister Modi. Asserting that Indo-Israel was a growing partnership and there is still much potential to develop it further, Rivlin said Israel in particular has tremendous appreciation for the 'Make in India' initiative of Prime Minister Modi. Israel is ready and committed motivated by our innovations and technological development to be India's partner in all areas.... Some of the key areas we will be focusing on during the visit will be; water treatment and conservation, solar power systems, technology in agriculture, and food production, the visiting President said. Academic cooperation Noting that his delegation included university heads and leading scholars, he said this was also a crucial area where he believed the cooperation could grow. A great number of Indian students already study in Israel, and the rate of exchange and collaboration can be increased even further, he said, adding both Israel and India cherish the academic growth as two great historic civilizations and two of the great innovating nations of the modern age. NEW DELHI: Friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and is not a relationship we should be hiding, said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin as he pledged full support to India in fighting terrorism. Rivlin arrived on Monday on an eight-day visit to India, the first by any Israeli President in nearly two decades. In a wide ranging interview to PTI, the Israeli President acknowledged differences with India on the Palestinian issue but spoke warmly about the growing Indo-Israeli ties as the two countries prepare to celebrate 25 years of establishment of full diplomatic ties between them next year. Pledging full support to India in fighting terrorism, Rivlin said that his country was proud to stand with India in its defence of the values of democracy. Terror is terror is terror, whoever carries it out and whoever are its victims. And we all have the duty to condemn in our words, and fight with our deeds against this terrible evil, asserted the President, whose country is one of the biggest suppliers of defence equipment to India and is cooperating with it in a major way in dealing with terrorism. Answering a question on murmurs in Israel that India keeps under wraps their relationship because of close ties with the Arab world and domestic political considerations, Rivlin said, Israel is proud of our friendship with India and I believe that India is proud of its friendship with Israel. Again, this is not just a friendship of leaders and governments. It is a friendship between people in all walks of life, in all fields of study, in all areas of trade. This is not a friendship we should be hiding. This is a friendship that we see at work day in, day out, at the very forefront of building a better world for Israelis, for Indians, and for all peoples, he said.India's support for independent Palestine In reply to a question on India's continued support for an independent Palestine with east Jerusalem as its capital, Rivlin said, Friends may not always see eye to eye on everything, and as friends we can agree to disagree with respect and understanding. Israel understands and indeed shares India's desire to see a just and lasting solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians. But no solution that may ever be found has a chance of success lest we work now to build confidence between peoples, the President said, and asserted that Israel and Palestine need to work towards direct negotiations. Rivlin, who is accompanied by a strong delegation of businessmen, will hold comprehensive talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow on key bilateral and regional issues. The free trade agreement between the countries On the long-pending free trade agreement (FTA), negotiations for which were launched nearly five years ago between India and Israel, Rivlin said it is a tool that can have huge impact and boost the partnership. As the two sides build and cultivate the growing partnership, there is a need to seek ways to help business sectors to work together in an inviting environment, Rivlin said. We need to supply them with the tools that will ease their way and will provide them incentives. An FTA is a tool that can have a huge impact and boost the partnership. Both Israel's Ambassador in India, and India's new Ambassador to Israel are playing an important role in this, which is a matter in progress and I hope we can see it signed in the near future, the President said. Visit to focus on agriculture, water and education He also asserted that his visit was a chance not only tor eaffirm Israel's commitment to continue building on all that has been achieved in the past 25 years of diplomatic relations, but to look at ways the two countries can work together to stretch even further the boundaries of innovation and imagination. Importantly, this visit will focus on three areas of this cooperation, namely agriculture, water and education. These three areas in particular highlight what our two great nations are engaged in sowing the seeds for the future, he added. During his meeting with Modi, Rivlin will reiterate his country's invitation to Prime Minister Modi. Asserting that Indo-Israel was a growing partnership and there is still much potential to develop it further, Rivlin said Israel in particular has tremendous appreciation for the 'Make in India' initiative of Prime Minister Modi. Israel is ready and committed motivated by our innovations and technological development to be India's partner in all areas.... Some of the key areas we will be focusing on during the visit will be; water treatment and conservation, solar power systems, technology in agriculture, and food production, the visiting President said. Academic cooperation Noting that his delegation included university heads and leading scholars, he said this was also a crucial area where he believed the cooperation could grow. A great number of Indian students already study in Israel, and the rate of exchange and collaboration can be increased even further, he said, adding both Israel and India cherish the academic growth as two great historic civilizations and two of the great innovating nations of the modern age. Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service MECHUKHA: Amidst the chorus by people in parts of the country for boycott of Chinese goods, a fiercely patriotic Indian population on Chinas border in Arunachal Pradesh is eager to have supplies from across for a decent living. In heavily-militarised Mechukha, which boasts of Indias latest advanced landing ground (ALG) at an altitude of 6,200 feet, the locals have to travel as long as for eight hours to get essentials from Aalo, the district headquarters of West Siang. As such, they are demanding access to the markets of Tibet. Aerially, Mechukha is 29km from the Tibetan border and 50km by road from Lola Pass. The road exists for 30km upto Lamang army and ITBP camps. Aalo is 186km from Mechukha, which is a sub-division of West Siang. The Buddhists, who account for more than 30% of the population in Mechukha, shared a historic relationship with Tibet even before it was annexed by China. Before 1947, we had easy access to Tibet. Our people used to go there to buy and sell goods. Their people also used to come to Mechukha for trade. Those days, the nearest Tibetan town, Gaja, was four-five days walk for our parents and elders. Our miseries compounded manifold after India had attained independence as it brought an end to the border trade, KL Mosing, town panchayat member and Mechukha Bazaar Committee secretary, told Express. From Mechukha, the nearest major Indian town is Aalo. Travelling there to buy essentials is not only taxing, it also entails an expenditure of Rs.1000 per person on transport. So, if we have access to the Tibetan markets, it will surely mitigate our sufferings, he pointed out. Not many people can afford to buy goods and other essential items in Mechukha as the traders sell them at exorbitant prices citing the cost of transport. The airstrip in Mechukha was built long back but the solitary road that connects the town with Aalo is as good as non-existent. Ironically, it was built only a decade ago. Kesang Goiba, president of village chieftains committee, too felt that border trade was the only way out. Weve given a number of representations to the authorities for resumption of border trade. Disconnect with our Tibetan brothers (Menpa, Monpa, Khampa, Yuba and Kempa tribes are on either side of the border) has made our lives harder. We need a road upto the border. There is tremendous demand in Tibet for our local liquor, sugar, bidi (not cigarettes), Goiba said. He said their forefathers used to barter sugar with Tibetan rock salt. Tibetans are often caught for straying across the border in search of Yarje Gomu, a prized insect which is believed to have medicinal properties. Soup made from it is drunk for strength and youthful maintenance of body, he said. The resumption of border trade would not only help us to buy goods at cheaper rates, it would also give us an opportunity to meet our relatives, said Koje Maling, a local BJP leader. As per the 2011 census, Mechukha has a population of 13,310 of which some 5,000 are Buddhists. The rest are people belonging to indigenous Donyi Polo faith and Christians. The sub-division has just one primary health centre, one higher secondary school, four upper primary schools, four private schools (upto class VIII) but no college. The nearest college is at Aalo. Surprisingly, there are just seven police personnel to maintain law and order. MECHUKHA: Amidst the chorus by people in parts of the country for boycott of Chinese goods, a fiercely patriotic Indian population on Chinas border in Arunachal Pradesh is eager to have supplies from across for a decent living. In heavily-militarised Mechukha, which boasts of Indias latest advanced landing ground (ALG) at an altitude of 6,200 feet, the locals have to travel as long as for eight hours to get essentials from Aalo, the district headquarters of West Siang. As such, they are demanding access to the markets of Tibet. Aerially, Mechukha is 29km from the Tibetan border and 50km by road from Lola Pass. The road exists for 30km upto Lamang army and ITBP camps. Aalo is 186km from Mechukha, which is a sub-division of West Siang. The Buddhists, who account for more than 30% of the population in Mechukha, shared a historic relationship with Tibet even before it was annexed by China. Before 1947, we had easy access to Tibet. Our people used to go there to buy and sell goods. Their people also used to come to Mechukha for trade. Those days, the nearest Tibetan town, Gaja, was four-five days walk for our parents and elders. Our miseries compounded manifold after India had attained independence as it brought an end to the border trade, KL Mosing, town panchayat member and Mechukha Bazaar Committee secretary, told Express. From Mechukha, the nearest major Indian town is Aalo. Travelling there to buy essentials is not only taxing, it also entails an expenditure of Rs.1000 per person on transport. So, if we have access to the Tibetan markets, it will surely mitigate our sufferings, he pointed out. Not many people can afford to buy goods and other essential items in Mechukha as the traders sell them at exorbitant prices citing the cost of transport. The airstrip in Mechukha was built long back but the solitary road that connects the town with Aalo is as good as non-existent. Ironically, it was built only a decade ago. Kesang Goiba, president of village chieftains committee, too felt that border trade was the only way out. Weve given a number of representations to the authorities for resumption of border trade. Disconnect with our Tibetan brothers (Menpa, Monpa, Khampa, Yuba and Kempa tribes are on either side of the border) has made our lives harder. We need a road upto the border. There is tremendous demand in Tibet for our local liquor, sugar, bidi (not cigarettes), Goiba said. He said their forefathers used to barter sugar with Tibetan rock salt. Tibetans are often caught for straying across the border in search of Yarje Gomu, a prized insect which is believed to have medicinal properties. Soup made from it is drunk for strength and youthful maintenance of body, he said. The resumption of border trade would not only help us to buy goods at cheaper rates, it would also give us an opportunity to meet our relatives, said Koje Maling, a local BJP leader. As per the 2011 census, Mechukha has a population of 13,310 of which some 5,000 are Buddhists. The rest are people belonging to indigenous Donyi Polo faith and Christians. The sub-division has just one primary health centre, one higher secondary school, four upper primary schools, four private schools (upto class VIII) but no college. The nearest college is at Aalo. Surprisingly, there are just seven police personnel to maintain law and order. By PTI RAIPUR: A Maoist militia commander was today gunned down in an exchange of fire with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said. The skirmish took place in the wee hours between District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the jungles of Dornapal Police Station limits, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (Anti-naxal operations), Jitendra Shukla, told PTI. Acting on a specific input about the presence of a group of armed ultras in the forest between Arlampalli and Medwahi villages, around 500 kms from here, a squad of DRG was dispatched to the location late last night, he said. When the DRG party reached the target area in the early hours, they came under heavy fire from Maoist which led to gun-battle between both the sides, the ASP said. However, ultras soon fled from the spot. During the search, body of a naxal clad in 'uniform', a country made rifle, some 12 bore live ammunition, wire and other items were recovered from the spot, he said. The killed Maoist has been identified as Vanjam Nanda, a very active Militia commander against whom at least 12 warrants issued by various courts in grave naxal offences were pending, the ASP said. Nanda had served as the head of Janatana Sarkar group Maoists in Arlampalli, Medwahi, Tonguda and Toyapara villages of the region, he said. RAIPUR: A Maoist militia commander was today gunned down in an exchange of fire with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said. The skirmish took place in the wee hours between District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the jungles of Dornapal Police Station limits, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (Anti-naxal operations), Jitendra Shukla, told PTI. Acting on a specific input about the presence of a group of armed ultras in the forest between Arlampalli and Medwahi villages, around 500 kms from here, a squad of DRG was dispatched to the location late last night, he said. When the DRG party reached the target area in the early hours, they came under heavy fire from Maoist which led to gun-battle between both the sides, the ASP said. However, ultras soon fled from the spot. During the search, body of a naxal clad in 'uniform', a country made rifle, some 12 bore live ammunition, wire and other items were recovered from the spot, he said. The killed Maoist has been identified as Vanjam Nanda, a very active Militia commander against whom at least 12 warrants issued by various courts in grave naxal offences were pending, the ASP said. Nanda had served as the head of Janatana Sarkar group Maoists in Arlampalli, Medwahi, Tonguda and Toyapara villages of the region, he said. By PTI LATEHAR: A Naxal-hit village in Jharkhand has celebrated Diwali in its "true sense" this year as electricity has reached here for the first time. Garu village, about 1,400 kms from New Delhi and 175 kms from the state capital Ranchi, comes under the jurisdiction of Latehar district which is among the most Naxal-infested areas of the state. "We were waiting for electricity for a long time. Government representatives had been assuring us of providing electricity for a long while but finally this year only, we experienced it," says Shiv Shankar Singh, Garu village head. "Farming has improved after electricity came here as we don't need to bother about buying diesel. Though the voltage is low, people are happy with the step," Sukhdev Oraon, a village council member, said. Garu village had long been ignored in development schemes as Naxals were not allowing any work to be undertaken by carrying out attacks. "As Naxals were opposed to any kind of development in the area, no private builder was ready to take the contract. It is only after the CRPF gave them assurance about the safety and security, they started building roads," Ramesh Kumar, Commandant of 112th battalion of CRPF said. This also allowed other development works in the area. "Our armed troops used to provide them cover so that Naxals could not attack or hamper the work. Now, the entire area is well connected with the road," Kumar said. "We try to create as mush trust among people for security forces as we can. We approach people and involve them in our planning. We distribute our numbers and remain in touch with them," he added. Ram Lal Prasad, MLA representative of Garu, says there has been a lot of change after CRPF came in the area. "This is the first time that Garu village has got electricity. People here celebrated Diwali for the first time in a true sense," Sanjay Prasad, a local resident, said. "You can imagine how people feel here as some elderly said their life is successful as they got to see how a bulb works," said Sudhir Yadav, a villager. LATEHAR: A Naxal-hit village in Jharkhand has celebrated Diwali in its "true sense" this year as electricity has reached here for the first time. Garu village, about 1,400 kms from New Delhi and 175 kms from the state capital Ranchi, comes under the jurisdiction of Latehar district which is among the most Naxal-infested areas of the state. "We were waiting for electricity for a long time. Government representatives had been assuring us of providing electricity for a long while but finally this year only, we experienced it," says Shiv Shankar Singh, Garu village head. "Farming has improved after electricity came here as we don't need to bother about buying diesel. Though the voltage is low, people are happy with the step," Sukhdev Oraon, a village council member, said. Garu village had long been ignored in development schemes as Naxals were not allowing any work to be undertaken by carrying out attacks. "As Naxals were opposed to any kind of development in the area, no private builder was ready to take the contract. It is only after the CRPF gave them assurance about the safety and security, they started building roads," Ramesh Kumar, Commandant of 112th battalion of CRPF said. This also allowed other development works in the area. "Our armed troops used to provide them cover so that Naxals could not attack or hamper the work. Now, the entire area is well connected with the road," Kumar said. "We try to create as mush trust among people for security forces as we can. We approach people and involve them in our planning. We distribute our numbers and remain in touch with them," he added. Ram Lal Prasad, MLA representative of Garu, says there has been a lot of change after CRPF came in the area. "This is the first time that Garu village has got electricity. People here celebrated Diwali for the first time in a true sense," Sanjay Prasad, a local resident, said. "You can imagine how people feel here as some elderly said their life is successful as they got to see how a bulb works," said Sudhir Yadav, a villager. By PTI JAMMU: Pakistani troops today resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts in four sectors along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which two persons including a jawan were injured. "There have been unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistani Army in Sunderbani and Naushera sectors of Rajouri district and Pallanwala sector of Jammu district," a defence spokesman said. Pakistani troops used 82mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons on Indian positions from 1440 hours in these sectors, he said. A 67-year-old resident, Mangat Ram, was injured in Pakistani shelling in Khour area in Pallanwala sector, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. Pakistani troops also resorted firing along LoC in Khadi area of Poonch district, according to reports. One jawan was injured in the firing in Poonch. The defence spokesman said the Indian troops gave "befitting reply" to Pakistani firing. The violations of the ceasefire came after a lull of a few days on the border. On November 12, an army jawan was killed in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district. On November 10, another jawan, Satnam Singh, was killed in snipper shots from across the LoC in Machail sector of North Kashmir. On November 8, two army jawans were killed in firing and shelling along LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district. 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. 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 others 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 2003 India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement has virtually become redundant with a whopping 286 incidents of firing and shelling along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops that resulted in death of 26 people, including 14 security personnel, since the surgical strike on terrorist launch pads in PoK. There have been 186 ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops along the over 190km International Border (IB) in Jammu frontier, while 104 violations of the agreement took place along the over 500km Line of Control (LoC). JAMMU: Pakistani troops today resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts in four sectors along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which two persons including a jawan were injured. "There have been unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistani Army in Sunderbani and Naushera sectors of Rajouri district and Pallanwala sector of Jammu district," a defence spokesman said. Pakistani troops used 82mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons on Indian positions from 1440 hours in these sectors, he said. A 67-year-old resident, Mangat Ram, was injured in Pakistani shelling in Khour area in Pallanwala sector, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. Pakistani troops also resorted firing along LoC in Khadi area of Poonch district, according to reports. One jawan was injured in the firing in Poonch. The defence spokesman said the Indian troops gave "befitting reply" to Pakistani firing. The violations of the ceasefire came after a lull of a few days on the border. On November 12, an army jawan was killed in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of north Kashmir's Kupwara district. On November 10, another jawan, Satnam Singh, was killed in snipper shots from across the LoC in Machail sector of North Kashmir. On November 8, two army jawans were killed in firing and shelling along LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district. 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. 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 others 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 2003 India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement has virtually become redundant with a whopping 286 incidents of firing and shelling along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops that resulted in death of 26 people, including 14 security personnel, since the surgical strike on terrorist launch pads in PoK. There have been 186 ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops along the over 190km International Border (IB) in Jammu frontier, while 104 violations of the agreement took place along the over 500km Line of Control (LoC). Captain Yu Xu, one of the first Chinese female fighter jet pilots, died in an accident on Saturday morning.[Photo/Xinhua] Yu Xu, 30, the first woman to become a pilot of J-10 fighter jets, dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut. That dream came to an abrupt end on Saturday when her plane crashed in North China's Hebei Province. According to media reports, after she ejected, Yu's parachute hit the wing of another plane as her jet plunged to the ground during an aerobatic training flight. Yu's co-pilot managed to eject in time and survived. The second plane landed safely. As one of only four female pilots in the country capable of flying domestically made fighter jets, her death comes as a tremendous loss to the Chinese air force. People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force spokesperson Shen Jinke said Saturday that all air force service personnel deeply regrets her loss and are mourning Yu's death, adding that the air force will continue training at the highest standards. Tens of thousands of Chinese netizens held a virtual vigil for Yu on Sina Weibo as the incident became the No.1 search item on the social media platform over the weekend. Her death sparked online speculation over the cause of the accident, which is still under investigation, and whether being a pilot is a "man's job." But a considerable number of female Net users said they are inspired by Yu's work and view her as a pioneer in breaking the glass ceiling of gender inequality. Dicing with death Despite speculation that the J-10 jet Yu was piloting was functionally unstable, analysts said it is too early to ascertain the cause of the crash. Wang Ya'nan, an aviation expert, described aerobatic performances as "dicing with death" and said pilots face considerable risks, even in training. "Usually pilots are trained to avoid risks but aerobatic pilots are trained to take more," Wang told the Global Times. No details of the accident have been officially released yet. Wang refuted online rumors that women are not cut out for the work, adding that there is no evidence to show that female pilots are physically unfit for aerobatic stunts. "China is a pioneer in training female aerobatic pilots. When the program started, there was no foreign experience to borrow from or statistics to rely on from other countries. From this perspective, Yu Xu and other female aerobatic pilots have taken greater risks, which deserve more of our respect," Wang noted. Yu's death has sparked old stereotypes saying women are physically weak or have slower response times and should never be made pilots. "I believe that any progress of humankind is based on difficult and even dangerous accumulations made by generations. Yu and many other female predecessors have explored an uncharted territory and what we need to do is to courageously march on, which is the best commemoration for her sacrifice," read one comment by female netizen Yuwenduling, which received hundreds of likes on Weibo. Stunt specialist Born in 1986 in Chongzhou, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Yu joined the PLA air force in September 2005. She was in the eighth generation of female pilots in China, and flew a fighter jet over Tiananmen Square during the National Day parade on October 1, 2009. As a member of the August 1 aerobatics team of the PLA air force, Yu made her last public appearance at Airshow China in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, earlier this month when she performed in an aerobatic flight show alongside the other 14 pilots in the team. After China debuted its new J-20 stealth fighter at the air show, Yu told reporters with excitement and eagerness that she wondered what it would feel like to pilot the new aircraft. There have been a number of other crashes in PLA air force training exercises, although most were not publicly reported, so an exact figure is not known. In December 2012, a J-7 fighter jet crashed in Shantou, Guangdong Province, due to mechanical failure, injuring four civilians as the pilot successfully ejected. The most deadly aero accident in PLA history took place in June 2006 when a KJ-200 plane crashed in East China's Anhui Province, killing all 40 passengers, including five test flight pilots and 34 military electrical engineers. Anand ST Das By Express News Service PATNA: Battling a flood of criticism against the controversial total prohibition law he implemented in Bihar seven months ago, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday hinted at amendments to the laws draconian penal provisions after listening to the views of 37 people in the first-ever dialogue on the issue. The government is moving in a logical way on this (laws implementation)... There is no law that cannot be amended, said Kumar after the lok samvad (public dialogue) programme at the secretariat. Sources said Kumars statement, which indicated a change of stance on the need for stringent penal provisions, came after many participants voiced their displeasure about such too harsh measures. Kumar is likely to convene an all-party meeting on the prohibition issue on November 22, said sources close to him. The brainstorming session followed the Bihar governments call for suggestions and feedback from the public on the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 between November 1 and 12. After receiving over 1,100 responses from across the state, the government invited 50 responders for the programme, but 37 attended. Significantly, most participants spoke about the collusion of police in letting illegal liquor sales continue clandestinely across the state. The CM is learnt to have taken a serious note of this point. Many participants spoke against draconian provisions in the law like the arrest of all adult members of a family if a liquor bottle is found in their house and imposition of fine on an entire village if liquor is found in any house there, said sources. The penal provisions of the law were described by many participants as too harsh and akin to those for rape and murder, they added. In-depth discussions were held on salient features and provisions of the states prohibition policy. Opinions with a wide variety were received and discussed. They have been recorded. The (excise) department would study those opinions, said home secretary Amir Subhani. The participants, he said, were from diverse social and vocational sections and included lawyers, media professionals, retired senior officials, Indian Medical Association officials and functionaries of Indian Cancer Awareness Society. Deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav said the government would consider all the diverse views received at the programme. It was a very good opportunity for the people to air their considered views on the prohibition law. All these views will be considered soon, he added. A discordant clink Despite Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Monday indicating a softening of stance on draconian measures in the controversial prohibition law, the states excise and prohibition minister Abdul Jalil Mastan said the present law needs to be strengthened further. Most participants in the public dialogue also expressed this opinion. There is a need to increase the minimum jail term to more than 10 years, said Mastan, an MLA from ruling ally Congress, in what appears to be an instance of inadequate coherence in Kumars cabinet. PATNA: Battling a flood of criticism against the controversial total prohibition law he implemented in Bihar seven months ago, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday hinted at amendments to the laws draconian penal provisions after listening to the views of 37 people in the first-ever dialogue on the issue. The government is moving in a logical way on this (laws implementation)... There is no law that cannot be amended, said Kumar after the lok samvad (public dialogue) programme at the secretariat. Sources said Kumars statement, which indicated a change of stance on the need for stringent penal provisions, came after many participants voiced their displeasure about such too harsh measures. Kumar is likely to convene an all-party meeting on the prohibition issue on November 22, said sources close to him. The brainstorming session followed the Bihar governments call for suggestions and feedback from the public on the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 between November 1 and 12. After receiving over 1,100 responses from across the state, the government invited 50 responders for the programme, but 37 attended. Significantly, most participants spoke about the collusion of police in letting illegal liquor sales continue clandestinely across the state. The CM is learnt to have taken a serious note of this point. Many participants spoke against draconian provisions in the law like the arrest of all adult members of a family if a liquor bottle is found in their house and imposition of fine on an entire village if liquor is found in any house there, said sources. The penal provisions of the law were described by many participants as too harsh and akin to those for rape and murder, they added. In-depth discussions were held on salient features and provisions of the states prohibition policy. Opinions with a wide variety were received and discussed. They have been recorded. The (excise) department would study those opinions, said home secretary Amir Subhani. The participants, he said, were from diverse social and vocational sections and included lawyers, media professionals, retired senior officials, Indian Medical Association officials and functionaries of Indian Cancer Awareness Society. Deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav said the government would consider all the diverse views received at the programme. It was a very good opportunity for the people to air their considered views on the prohibition law. All these views will be considered soon, he added. A discordant clink Despite Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Monday indicating a softening of stance on draconian measures in the controversial prohibition law, the states excise and prohibition minister Abdul Jalil Mastan said the present law needs to be strengthened further. Most participants in the public dialogue also expressed this opinion. There is a need to increase the minimum jail term to more than 10 years, said Mastan, an MLA from ruling ally Congress, in what appears to be an instance of inadequate coherence in Kumars cabinet. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: US-based rights group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) has urged Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to pass a resolution in the Special Assembly Session on Wednesday to challenge the Supreme Courts verdict on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague. Meanwhile, to prevent any law and order situation, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was on Sunday deployed on the Punjab-Haryana border even as it was sealed and patrolling increased on National Highway-1. In a communique to Badal, SFJ said that with the November 10 decision of the Supreme Court on the SYL Canal, the people of Punjab have exhausted all legal remedies available under the judicial system to secure their riparian rights over the water resources of their homeland. Now, the only recourse left for the people to secure their riparian rights is to challenge the courts decision before the International Court of Justice, it said. If the Punjab government fails to take up the SYL case before the ICJ, SFJ with the support of the people of Punjab will challenge the Supreme Courts decision before the International Court in Hague, said attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Four companies of the RAF have been deployed at Rajpura, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib and Mohali in Punjab. One company will keep a check at Kapuri, the source of the SYL Canal and Shambu barrier on the Punjab-Haryana border, the other at Fatehgarh Sahib will monitor the movement on NH-1 and the SYL Canal area in Ropar. Meanwhile, Haryana has suspended operations of its buses plying to Punjab on long routes for security reasons. The buses from the neighbouring State are plying only on short routes. Punjab CM Badal has urged his Haryana counterpart M L Khattar to resume the bus services. Khaps in Haryana, who had earlier threatened to delink Punjab from Delhi by blocking road and rail networks, have now decided that on Wednesday they will meet Khattar and request him to get them an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on the SYL issue. In a related development, Punjab Congress, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, on Sunday vowed to protect the last drop of the States water, declaring that not even a single drop would be allowed to leave the State till their last breath. Addressing a rally at Khuian Sarwar village, close to Abohar the tail-end of the SYL Canal Amarinder dared the Akalis to quit the Assembly and face the Congress in the Assembly elections, which he said should be held in December itself to prevent Badal from further vitiating the atmosphere in the State. On the CMs assertion that he was ready to face the bullet in order to protect the waters of Punjab, Amarinder said Badal had, even back in 1984, made such claims, but when the time came to fight for Punjab he went into hiding in his Uttar Pradesh farms, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Pointing out that 10 lakh acres of land, farmed by 2 lakh families and supported by another 2 lakh farm labourers, depended on agriculture in Punjab, he said implementation of the SYL verdict would ruin them all. Amarinder also lashed out at AAP boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for failing to clarify, even three days after the SYL Canal verdict, whether he stands with Punjab on the vital issue. CHANDIGARH: US-based rights group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) has urged Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to pass a resolution in the Special Assembly Session on Wednesday to challenge the Supreme Courts verdict on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague. Meanwhile, to prevent any law and order situation, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was on Sunday deployed on the Punjab-Haryana border even as it was sealed and patrolling increased on National Highway-1. In a communique to Badal, SFJ said that with the November 10 decision of the Supreme Court on the SYL Canal, the people of Punjab have exhausted all legal remedies available under the judicial system to secure their riparian rights over the water resources of their homeland. Now, the only recourse left for the people to secure their riparian rights is to challenge the courts decision before the International Court of Justice, it said. If the Punjab government fails to take up the SYL case before the ICJ, SFJ with the support of the people of Punjab will challenge the Supreme Courts decision before the International Court in Hague, said attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Four companies of the RAF have been deployed at Rajpura, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib and Mohali in Punjab. One company will keep a check at Kapuri, the source of the SYL Canal and Shambu barrier on the Punjab-Haryana border, the other at Fatehgarh Sahib will monitor the movement on NH-1 and the SYL Canal area in Ropar. Meanwhile, Haryana has suspended operations of its buses plying to Punjab on long routes for security reasons. The buses from the neighbouring State are plying only on short routes. Punjab CM Badal has urged his Haryana counterpart M L Khattar to resume the bus services. Khaps in Haryana, who had earlier threatened to delink Punjab from Delhi by blocking road and rail networks, have now decided that on Wednesday they will meet Khattar and request him to get them an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on the SYL issue. In a related development, Punjab Congress, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, on Sunday vowed to protect the last drop of the States water, declaring that not even a single drop would be allowed to leave the State till their last breath. Addressing a rally at Khuian Sarwar village, close to Abohar the tail-end of the SYL Canal Amarinder dared the Akalis to quit the Assembly and face the Congress in the Assembly elections, which he said should be held in December itself to prevent Badal from further vitiating the atmosphere in the State. On the CMs assertion that he was ready to face the bullet in order to protect the waters of Punjab, Amarinder said Badal had, even back in 1984, made such claims, but when the time came to fight for Punjab he went into hiding in his Uttar Pradesh farms, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Pointing out that 10 lakh acres of land, farmed by 2 lakh families and supported by another 2 lakh farm labourers, depended on agriculture in Punjab, he said implementation of the SYL verdict would ruin them all. Amarinder also lashed out at AAP boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for failing to clarify, even three days after the SYL Canal verdict, whether he stands with Punjab on the vital issue. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: US-based rights group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) has urged Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to pass a resolution in the Special Assembly Session on Wednesday to challenge the Supreme Courts verdict on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague. Meanwhile, to prevent any law and order situation, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was on Sunday deployed on the Punjab-Haryana border even as it was sealed and patrolling increased on National Highway-1. In a communique to Badal, SFJ said that with the November 10 decision of the Supreme Court on the SYL Canal, the people of Punjab have exhausted all legal remedies available under the judicial system to secure their riparian rights over the water resources of their homeland. Now, the only recourse left for the people to secure their riparian rights is to challenge the courts decision before the International Court of Justice, it said. If the Punjab government fails to take up the SYL case before the ICJ, SFJ with the support of the people of Punjab will challenge the Supreme Courts decision before the International Court in Hague, said attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Four companies of the RAF have been deployed at Rajpura, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib and Mohali in Punjab. One company will keep a check at Kapuri, the source of the SYL Canal and Shambu barrier on the Punjab-Haryana border, the other at Fatehgarh Sahib will monitor the movement on NH-1 and the SYL Canal area in Ropar. Meanwhile, Haryana has suspended operations of its buses plying to Punjab on long routes for security reasons. The buses from the neighbouring State are plying only on short routes. Punjab CM Badal has urged his Haryana counterpart M L Khattar to resume the bus services. Khaps in Haryana, who had earlier threatened to delink Punjab from Delhi by blocking road and rail networks, have now decided that on Wednesday they will meet Khattar and request him to get them an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on the SYL issue. In a related development, Punjab Congress, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, on Sunday vowed to protect the last drop of the States water, declaring that not even a single drop would be allowed to leave the State till their last breath. Addressing a rally at Khuian Sarwar village, close to Abohar the tail-end of the SYL Canal Amarinder dared the Akalis to quit the Assembly and face the Congress in the Assembly elections, which he said should be held in December itself to prevent Badal from further vitiating the atmosphere in the State. On the CMs assertion that he was ready to face the bullet in order to protect the waters of Punjab, Amarinder said Badal had, even back in 1984, made such claims, but when the time came to fight for Punjab he went into hiding in his Uttar Pradesh farms, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Pointing out that 10 lakh acres of land, farmed by 2 lakh families and supported by another 2 lakh farm labourers, depended on agriculture in Punjab, he said implementation of the SYL verdict would ruin them all. Amarinder also lashed out at AAP boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for failing to clarify, even three days after the SYL Canal verdict, whether he stands with Punjab on the vital issue. CHANDIGARH: US-based rights group Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) has urged Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to pass a resolution in the Special Assembly Session on Wednesday to challenge the Supreme Courts verdict on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Hague. Meanwhile, to prevent any law and order situation, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) was on Sunday deployed on the Punjab-Haryana border even as it was sealed and patrolling increased on National Highway-1. In a communique to Badal, SFJ said that with the November 10 decision of the Supreme Court on the SYL Canal, the people of Punjab have exhausted all legal remedies available under the judicial system to secure their riparian rights over the water resources of their homeland. Now, the only recourse left for the people to secure their riparian rights is to challenge the courts decision before the International Court of Justice, it said. If the Punjab government fails to take up the SYL case before the ICJ, SFJ with the support of the people of Punjab will challenge the Supreme Courts decision before the International Court in Hague, said attorney Gurpatwant Singh Pannu. Four companies of the RAF have been deployed at Rajpura, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib and Mohali in Punjab. One company will keep a check at Kapuri, the source of the SYL Canal and Shambu barrier on the Punjab-Haryana border, the other at Fatehgarh Sahib will monitor the movement on NH-1 and the SYL Canal area in Ropar. Meanwhile, Haryana has suspended operations of its buses plying to Punjab on long routes for security reasons. The buses from the neighbouring State are plying only on short routes. Punjab CM Badal has urged his Haryana counterpart M L Khattar to resume the bus services. Khaps in Haryana, who had earlier threatened to delink Punjab from Delhi by blocking road and rail networks, have now decided that on Wednesday they will meet Khattar and request him to get them an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on the SYL issue. In a related development, Punjab Congress, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, on Sunday vowed to protect the last drop of the States water, declaring that not even a single drop would be allowed to leave the State till their last breath. Addressing a rally at Khuian Sarwar village, close to Abohar the tail-end of the SYL Canal Amarinder dared the Akalis to quit the Assembly and face the Congress in the Assembly elections, which he said should be held in December itself to prevent Badal from further vitiating the atmosphere in the State. On the CMs assertion that he was ready to face the bullet in order to protect the waters of Punjab, Amarinder said Badal had, even back in 1984, made such claims, but when the time came to fight for Punjab he went into hiding in his Uttar Pradesh farms, leaving the people to fend for themselves. Pointing out that 10 lakh acres of land, farmed by 2 lakh families and supported by another 2 lakh farm labourers, depended on agriculture in Punjab, he said implementation of the SYL verdict would ruin them all. Amarinder also lashed out at AAP boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for failing to clarify, even three days after the SYL Canal verdict, whether he stands with Punjab on the vital issue. Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service GUWAHATI: Demonetisation sent ripples across the country within minutes of the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the evening of November 8 but it took three days for the ripples to reach this town on the border with China in Arunachal Pradesh. Except for staff of the lone SBI branch here and perhaps a few officials in the administration and some defence personnel, nobody had a whiff of what the Prime Minister announced for two days and business went on as usual. Perched at an altitude of 6,200 feet 29 km as the crow flies from the Tibetan border, Mechukha is a sub-division in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It has 160 villages with a population of 13,200. The nearest Indian town from Mechukha is the district headquarters of Aalo, which is 190 km downhill. The state capital Itanagar is 492 km away. There is an airstrip here, built years ago for the defence forces, which is used by the private helicopter service provider Skyone Airways to ferry passengers at times. The solitary road, built a decade ago, that connects Mechukha to Aalo is as good as non-existent. There is no ATM in the town. So the only place people could have gone to upon learning of the demonetization of big notes was the SBI branch here. Nobody knew about the countrywide closure of banks on November 9 and 10 and so there was no rush of customers to exchange their Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. It was only on November 11 that news filtered in and people made a beeline to the SBI branch. For most people the import of the news came from people they knew in Guwahati. But then only BSNL works here and the lines are down almost the whole day. On the day the Prime Minister made his announcement, Mechukha went to sleep innocent of the decision. The few people who knew of the demonetization had no trouble using their high-value currency notes the next morning. The situation has changed totally since then, and the economy of the border town has turned topsy turvy. On the telephone from Mechukha, Kesang Goiba, the president of the Mechukha village chieftains committee, told this correspondent that most of the shops and commercial establishments have remained shut for the past three days. "We learnt of it (demonetization) on November 11. Since then, we have been visiting the SBI branch but they are telling us there is no change. We are going through a very difficult time," he said. Goiba added, "There is no business at all. Most of the shops are closed. We are bartering rations and vegetables with neighbours. We don't know for how long we will have to go through this agony," he said. GUWAHATI: Demonetisation sent ripples across the country within minutes of the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the evening of November 8 but it took three days for the ripples to reach this town on the border with China in Arunachal Pradesh. Except for staff of the lone SBI branch here and perhaps a few officials in the administration and some defence personnel, nobody had a whiff of what the Prime Minister announced for two days and business went on as usual. Perched at an altitude of 6,200 feet 29 km as the crow flies from the Tibetan border, Mechukha is a sub-division in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It has 160 villages with a population of 13,200. The nearest Indian town from Mechukha is the district headquarters of Aalo, which is 190 km downhill. The state capital Itanagar is 492 km away. There is an airstrip here, built years ago for the defence forces, which is used by the private helicopter service provider Skyone Airways to ferry passengers at times. The solitary road, built a decade ago, that connects Mechukha to Aalo is as good as non-existent. There is no ATM in the town. So the only place people could have gone to upon learning of the demonetization of big notes was the SBI branch here. Nobody knew about the countrywide closure of banks on November 9 and 10 and so there was no rush of customers to exchange their Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. It was only on November 11 that news filtered in and people made a beeline to the SBI branch. For most people the import of the news came from people they knew in Guwahati. But then only BSNL works here and the lines are down almost the whole day. On the day the Prime Minister made his announcement, Mechukha went to sleep innocent of the decision. The few people who knew of the demonetization had no trouble using their high-value currency notes the next morning. The situation has changed totally since then, and the economy of the border town has turned topsy turvy. On the telephone from Mechukha, Kesang Goiba, the president of the Mechukha village chieftains committee, told this correspondent that most of the shops and commercial establishments have remained shut for the past three days. "We learnt of it (demonetization) on November 11. Since then, we have been visiting the SBI branch but they are telling us there is no change. We are going through a very difficult time," he said. Goiba added, "There is no business at all. Most of the shops are closed. We are bartering rations and vegetables with neighbours. We don't know for how long we will have to go through this agony," he said. Vikram Sharma By Express News Service RS PURA: Around 12 noon on Nov. 1, Pakistan rained 80 mm and 120 mm mortar shells on Chanana, a village of 220 families on the international border. Shrapnel flew in from all directions, damaging property, killing cattle and injuring some people. One such shell landed on the terrace of Girdharilal's house but did not explode. It has remained like that for the last 15 days. And now Girdharilal lives in dread: it can explode any moment, destory his house and kill his family. "We informed the tehsildar, the police and the Army. They promised that the bomb disposal team would come. But 15 days have passed by and there is no sign of anyone coming. There have been instances of shells exploding a month or two later, says Raghubeer Singh, sarpanch of the nearby Changia village as Girdharilal and his family nod in agreement. Girdharilal says his biggest worry are the children. "We have to keep a watch on the kids. The shell can explode if anyone touches it, he says. When no help came from the authorities, the family decided to do something about the shell on their terrace. Girdharilal and his wife put sandbags around the shell and built a small gate at one end of the staircase to stop children from going up to the terrace. "But we are scared," says Girdharilal. "If it goes off, it can do terrible damage. The house can collapse, says his wife. Girdharilal is not alone in his predicament. Other villagers subjected to Pakistan's frequent shelling share it. Not far from Gardharilal's house, a shells landed in the house of farmer Bhim Singh and burying itself in the earth. It did not explode and remains that way. "What can I do? For the last 15 days, all of us have been living with this live shell in our midst. It cannot get worse than this. We are used to shelling and firing by Pakistan but this is torture, says Bheem Singh. Take the case of another farmer, Rajesh Kumar. One shell pierced through the terrace and landed in a room where he stocks his harvest. "I have locked that room. The feeling of living with a live shell is terrible. The kind of damage shrapnel can do is mind-boggling. The splinters can pierce through iron gates and walls, he says. Though Pakistan shelled several villages on the Jammu frontier on November 1, the Arnia sector witnessed maximum shelling. Other border villages in places like Ramgarh, Poonch and Rajauri too were pounded and there were casualties, but no where did live shells create such a fear as in Arnia. Sarpanch Raghubeer Singh says he has acquaintances in the police and Army but none bothered to come to the rescue of the villagers. There are live shells lying in many farms in the area and farmers are afraid of going to their lands. As a result, production of basmati rice in RS Pura is getting badly affected. "There is nothing anyone can do," says Jindo Devi, whose house was damaged when a shell exploded right in front of it, with splinters piercing through the iron gates and doors and smashing window panes. "We cannot abandon our houses and our cattle, she says, showing the splinters. A police official in Arnia police station, requesting anonymity said a bomd disposal teams would defuse the shells soon though he did not specify how soon. RS PURA: Around 12 noon on Nov. 1, Pakistan rained 80 mm and 120 mm mortar shells on Chanana, a village of 220 families on the international border. Shrapnel flew in from all directions, damaging property, killing cattle and injuring some people. One such shell landed on the terrace of Girdharilal's house but did not explode. It has remained like that for the last 15 days. And now Girdharilal lives in dread: it can explode any moment, destory his house and kill his family. "We informed the tehsildar, the police and the Army. They promised that the bomb disposal team would come. But 15 days have passed by and there is no sign of anyone coming. There have been instances of shells exploding a month or two later, says Raghubeer Singh, sarpanch of the nearby Changia village as Girdharilal and his family nod in agreement. Girdharilal says his biggest worry are the children. "We have to keep a watch on the kids. The shell can explode if anyone touches it, he says. When no help came from the authorities, the family decided to do something about the shell on their terrace. Girdharilal and his wife put sandbags around the shell and built a small gate at one end of the staircase to stop children from going up to the terrace. "But we are scared," says Girdharilal. "If it goes off, it can do terrible damage. The house can collapse, says his wife. Girdharilal is not alone in his predicament. Other villagers subjected to Pakistan's frequent shelling share it. Not far from Gardharilal's house, a shells landed in the house of farmer Bhim Singh and burying itself in the earth. It did not explode and remains that way. "What can I do? For the last 15 days, all of us have been living with this live shell in our midst. It cannot get worse than this. We are used to shelling and firing by Pakistan but this is torture, says Bheem Singh. Take the case of another farmer, Rajesh Kumar. One shell pierced through the terrace and landed in a room where he stocks his harvest. "I have locked that room. The feeling of living with a live shell is terrible. The kind of damage shrapnel can do is mind-boggling. The splinters can pierce through iron gates and walls, he says. Though Pakistan shelled several villages on the Jammu frontier on November 1, the Arnia sector witnessed maximum shelling. Other border villages in places like Ramgarh, Poonch and Rajauri too were pounded and there were casualties, but no where did live shells create such a fear as in Arnia. Sarpanch Raghubeer Singh says he has acquaintances in the police and Army but none bothered to come to the rescue of the villagers. There are live shells lying in many farms in the area and farmers are afraid of going to their lands. As a result, production of basmati rice in RS Pura is getting badly affected. "There is nothing anyone can do," says Jindo Devi, whose house was damaged when a shell exploded right in front of it, with splinters piercing through the iron gates and doors and smashing window panes. "We cannot abandon our houses and our cattle, she says, showing the splinters. A police official in Arnia police station, requesting anonymity said a bomd disposal teams would defuse the shells soon though he did not specify how soon. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Amid mounting criticism from the public and the Opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met BJP parliamentarians and told them the country was with the government on the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes even as any rethink on the decision was ruled out. Everyone agrees that it is a historic decision. BJP leaders from across the country said that there is overwhelming support for the governments bold move to fight black money and corruption, said Union minister Venkaiah Naidu after the meeting. The minister ruled out any chance of the government rethinking the decision. Allegations levelled by the Opposition are baseless. We will answer them at an appropriate time. In Parliament we will get to know which people are on the side of black money hoarders, he said. Union minister Ananth Kumar said all NDA allies supported Modi on the demonetisation issue at a meeting of the coalition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the NDA meet that the credit for demonetisation will not go to him personally, but to all parties which stood with the govt, Naidu said. Parliaments winter session is set to begin on Wednesday and sources said the opening day would likely be taken over by Opposition leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, accusing the Centre of punishing poor people with the decision to scrap high-denomination notes. BJP president Amit Shah, while advising his party colleagues to counter the Opposition aggressively, said they must also be prepared to give informed accounts of the Armys surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And the party hit back at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her criticism of the demonetisation move, describing her as Queen of Saradha, referring to the multi-crore-rupee Saradha chit fund scam. NEW DELHI: Amid mounting criticism from the public and the Opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday met BJP parliamentarians and told them the country was with the government on the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes even as any rethink on the decision was ruled out. Everyone agrees that it is a historic decision. BJP leaders from across the country said that there is overwhelming support for the governments bold move to fight black money and corruption, said Union minister Venkaiah Naidu after the meeting. The minister ruled out any chance of the government rethinking the decision. Allegations levelled by the Opposition are baseless. We will answer them at an appropriate time. In Parliament we will get to know which people are on the side of black money hoarders, he said. Union minister Ananth Kumar said all NDA allies supported Modi on the demonetisation issue at a meeting of the coalition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the NDA meet that the credit for demonetisation will not go to him personally, but to all parties which stood with the govt, Naidu said. Parliaments winter session is set to begin on Wednesday and sources said the opening day would likely be taken over by Opposition leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, accusing the Centre of punishing poor people with the decision to scrap high-denomination notes. BJP president Amit Shah, while advising his party colleagues to counter the Opposition aggressively, said they must also be prepared to give informed accounts of the Armys surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And the party hit back at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her criticism of the demonetisation move, describing her as Queen of Saradha, referring to the multi-crore-rupee Saradha chit fund scam. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Pakistan on Monday summoned Indias envoy in Islamabad to protest against the killing of its seven soldiers in unprovoked firing by the Indian Army and threatened that the Indian attitude might lead to a strategic miscalculation, a euphemism for a nuclear attack. He (Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry) emphasized that this belligerent attitude of Indian occupation forces was a serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to strategic miscalculation, said a statement issued by the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chaudhry summoned High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale and deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations. Pakistans Inter Services Public Relations on Monday announced that seven of its soldiers were killed in Bhimber sector on Sunday night. Seven soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom) at the Line of Control in Bhimber sector in a ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night. Pakistani troops, while responding to Indian unprovoked firing, targeted Indian posts effectively, the agency said on Monday morning. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted Chaudhry as saying. He said Pakistan forces did not initiate fire, but would always respond in a befitting manner if fired upon, it said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned the Indian envoy. For his part, the Indian envoy protested against unprovoked firing by Pakistan and said it was to provide cover to infiltrators, resulting in the deaths of several Indian civilian and soldiers. Earlier in the day, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country was fully capable of defending its territory against any aggression. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the latest violation of the LoC by Indian forces and claimed the Indian forces had resorted to escalating the tension only to uselessly divert the worlds attention from the grave human rights situation in Kashmir. As tensions simmer, cross-border firings and casualties have become the order of the day between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. The frequent exchange fire along the de-facto border means the ceasefire agreement that came into existence in 2003 is unofficially off. Both countries have been summoning each others diplomats on a fairly regular basis. On November 9, the Army had reported that one of its soldiers was killed in Pakistan firing and that it responded by fire assault with heavy weapons. The Pakistan army has claimed that India has been resorting to artillery firing along the border. The ceasefire agreement was signed in 2003 between the two countries after the Parliament attack. The agreement meant cessation of firing along the LoC, international border and the Actual Ground Position Line but since India carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in September, the truce violations have spiked to 286. NEW DELHI: Pakistan on Monday summoned Indias envoy in Islamabad to protest against the killing of its seven soldiers in unprovoked firing by the Indian Army and threatened that the Indian attitude might lead to a strategic miscalculation, a euphemism for a nuclear attack. He (Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry) emphasized that this belligerent attitude of Indian occupation forces was a serious threat to the regional peace and security and may lead to strategic miscalculation, said a statement issued by the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chaudhry summoned High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale and deplored the increasing Indian ceasefire violations. Pakistans Inter Services Public Relations on Monday announced that seven of its soldiers were killed in Bhimber sector on Sunday night. Seven soldiers embraced shahadat (martyrdom) at the Line of Control in Bhimber sector in a ceasefire violation by Indian troops late last night. Pakistani troops, while responding to Indian unprovoked firing, targeted Indian posts effectively, the agency said on Monday morning. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of restraint, which should not be construed as a sign of weakness, the statement quoted Chaudhry as saying. He said Pakistan forces did not initiate fire, but would always respond in a befitting manner if fired upon, it said. It is for the second time in a week that Pakistan has summoned the Indian envoy. For his part, the Indian envoy protested against unprovoked firing by Pakistan and said it was to provide cover to infiltrators, resulting in the deaths of several Indian civilian and soldiers. Earlier in the day, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that his country was fully capable of defending its territory against any aggression. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the latest violation of the LoC by Indian forces and claimed the Indian forces had resorted to escalating the tension only to uselessly divert the worlds attention from the grave human rights situation in Kashmir. As tensions simmer, cross-border firings and casualties have become the order of the day between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. The frequent exchange fire along the de-facto border means the ceasefire agreement that came into existence in 2003 is unofficially off. Both countries have been summoning each others diplomats on a fairly regular basis. On November 9, the Army had reported that one of its soldiers was killed in Pakistan firing and that it responded by fire assault with heavy weapons. The Pakistan army has claimed that India has been resorting to artillery firing along the border. The ceasefire agreement was signed in 2003 between the two countries after the Parliament attack. The agreement meant cessation of firing along the LoC, international border and the Actual Ground Position Line but since India carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in September, the truce violations have spiked to 286. When Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was recently asked if his party, the BJD, was eyeing an alliance with the Congress, his answer was an emphatic no. We want to keep an equidistance from both the Congress and the BJP," he said. Referring to the poor representation of both the parties in the Assembly, he quipped that there is no sign of their gaining the strength in the state. In short, he was dismissive of his main political rivals. Having been the undisputed king of Odisha for nearly two decades, Naveen, despite his irritating reticence, sounds confident each passing day. Yet, he doesnt brag about it. Having survived the anti-incumbency factors time and again, the BJD supremo has reasons to feel self-assured. He sits pretty even as his popularity is going to be put to test once again in the forthcoming panchayat polls because the main opposition Congress seems to be imploding and the BJP is yet to brace up to the occasion.Besieged with chronic factionalism, the Congress is in a complete state of disarray in Odisha. Its fighting leaders are bringing the party down every day much to the delight of the ruling party. Bizarre as it may sound, the Opposition has failed once again to exploit the Mahanadi water-sharing issue which had put the Naveen government on the mat after the Raman Singhled government in Chhattisgarh called Odishas bluff. While the BJD has gone to people in a big way using the same Mahanadi issue, neither the Congress nor the BJP could cash in on an issue which is emotive for the people of the state. Funnily, Congress leaders, while protesting over the matter, tried to appropriate the issue to their individual advantage. In the process, the grand old party lost the plot and squandered the opportunity to nail Naveen. Instead of fighting for the cause, the Congress leaders ended up demanding state party chief Prasad Harichandans removal and made a mockery of themselves. Acute factionalism has been the story of the Congress in the state for far too long. As soon as the president is elected, the factions join forces to pull the new dispensation down. The All India Congress Committee, which has adopted a policy to displease none, has not bothered to put the house in order. As a result, the faction-riddled party has failed to put up a strong show on the Assembly floor and outside despite critical issues such as the Nagada malnourishment deaths, Gumudumaha police firing, Dana Majhis sad plight, Mahanadi controversy and most recently the Japanese encephalitis outbreak which could have been used to expose the BJDs governance paralysis. So preoccupied are Congress leaders in their infighting that the party failed to take even one important issue to its logical conclusion. It was for the same reason the multi-crore-rupees ponzi and mining scams which had the involvement of many BJD bigwigs are a thing of the past now. What has further come as a bolt for the Congress is the death of Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra, a three-time MLA and a strong organiser who enjoyed cult status among the youth. The only binding factor in the party, Mohapatras demise means the Congress will have its task cut out to rejuvenate itself. The BJP, the second-largest Opposition party, continues to cling on to the Modi magic factor and hopes that it would do the trick to bring the party to power. There has been no discernable expansion of the partys roots in the state in the last two years. Its state leadership has at best been indifferent and at loggerheads most of the time sending confusing signals to the cadre. As a result, the saffron partys visibility remains poor. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhans recent assertion that BJDs over-confidence would prove to be its undoing in the next polls a fate that befell the CPM in West Bengal could only be dubbed as a daydream because the Naveen government continues to be ahead in the perception battle in the state despite suffering several setbacks in the recent times. A strong political Opposition is a prerequisite for any states healthy democratic environment and development. Notwithstanding their small numbers in the Assembly, both the Congress and the BJP have a responsibility towards the people and must win their trust. Srimoy Kar Resident Editor, Odisha Email: srimoy@newindianexpress.com When Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was recently asked if his party, the BJD, was eyeing an alliance with the Congress, his answer was an emphatic no. We want to keep an equidistance from both the Congress and the BJP," he said. Referring to the poor representation of both the parties in the Assembly, he quipped that there is no sign of their gaining the strength in the state. In short, he was dismissive of his main political rivals. Having been the undisputed king of Odisha for nearly two decades, Naveen, despite his irritating reticence, sounds confident each passing day. Yet, he doesnt brag about it. Having survived the anti-incumbency factors time and again, the BJD supremo has reasons to feel self-assured. He sits pretty even as his popularity is going to be put to test once again in the forthcoming panchayat polls because the main opposition Congress seems to be imploding and the BJP is yet to brace up to the occasion.Besieged with chronic factionalism, the Congress is in a complete state of disarray in Odisha. Its fighting leaders are bringing the party down every day much to the delight of the ruling party. Bizarre as it may sound, the Opposition has failed once again to exploit the Mahanadi water-sharing issue which had put the Naveen government on the mat after the Raman Singhled government in Chhattisgarh called Odishas bluff. While the BJD has gone to people in a big way using the same Mahanadi issue, neither the Congress nor the BJP could cash in on an issue which is emotive for the people of the state. Funnily, Congress leaders, while protesting over the matter, tried to appropriate the issue to their individual advantage. In the process, the grand old party lost the plot and squandered the opportunity to nail Naveen. Instead of fighting for the cause, the Congress leaders ended up demanding state party chief Prasad Harichandans removal and made a mockery of themselves. Acute factionalism has been the story of the Congress in the state for far too long. As soon as the president is elected, the factions join forces to pull the new dispensation down. The All India Congress Committee, which has adopted a policy to displease none, has not bothered to put the house in order. As a result, the faction-riddled party has failed to put up a strong show on the Assembly floor and outside despite critical issues such as the Nagada malnourishment deaths, Gumudumaha police firing, Dana Majhis sad plight, Mahanadi controversy and most recently the Japanese encephalitis outbreak which could have been used to expose the BJDs governance paralysis. So preoccupied are Congress leaders in their infighting that the party failed to take even one important issue to its logical conclusion. It was for the same reason the multi-crore-rupees ponzi and mining scams which had the involvement of many BJD bigwigs are a thing of the past now. What has further come as a bolt for the Congress is the death of Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra, a three-time MLA and a strong organiser who enjoyed cult status among the youth. The only binding factor in the party, Mohapatras demise means the Congress will have its task cut out to rejuvenate itself. The BJP, the second-largest Opposition party, continues to cling on to the Modi magic factor and hopes that it would do the trick to bring the party to power. There has been no discernable expansion of the partys roots in the state in the last two years. Its state leadership has at best been indifferent and at loggerheads most of the time sending confusing signals to the cadre. As a result, the saffron partys visibility remains poor. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhans recent assertion that BJDs over-confidence would prove to be its undoing in the next polls a fate that befell the CPM in West Bengal could only be dubbed as a daydream because the Naveen government continues to be ahead in the perception battle in the state despite suffering several setbacks in the recent times. A strong political Opposition is a prerequisite for any states healthy democratic environment and development. Notwithstanding their small numbers in the Assembly, both the Congress and the BJP have a responsibility towards the people and must win their trust. Srimoy Kar Resident Editor, Odisha Email: srimoy@newindianexpress.com Swaran Singh By As the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, arrives in India for a week-long visit, media assessments vary on how long India can maintain this fine balance between rapidly widening and deepening strategic partnership with Israel and its traditional pro-Palestine policies. It is pertinent to note that till January 1992, India did not even recognise the Jewish State. The two nations established formal diplomatic ties during Prime Minister Narasimha Raos regime which witnessed major recalibration of Indias post-Cold War foreign policy. Since then, the evolution of Indias Israel policy can be viewed in four phases: (a) Indian national movement opposing partition of Palestine and negating Jewish state, (b) normalising of relations with Israel as part of Indias post-Soviet foreign policy of multi alignments, (c) seeking de-hyphenation from Arab-Israel conflict as also domestic Muslim constituencies, and (d) Modi now projecting Israel not just the third largest supplier but also as model for Indian armed forces. Critics highlight how even a simple de-hyphenation may negatively impact Indias image with the Arab world, especially the 56-nation Organisation of Islamic Countries that is often critical of Indias Kashmir policies. AMIT BANDRE Arab support remains critical for Indias aspirations to join various technology control regimes as also other global governance structures, including becoming a permanent veto wielding member of the UN Security Council. Domestically as well, any sharp pro-Israel drift is expected to negatively impact Modis Muslim constituencies, egged on by Modis political adversaries. But Modi is seen as a man-inhurry. And, since 2002, Japan and Israel were the only two states amongst which carefully cultivated then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, at a time when all others carried out a vehement decade-long anti-Modi campaign in the name of human rights. Today, there is no doubt that Prime Minister Modi has been the leading force in boosting Indias diplomatic ties with both Tokyo and Tel Aviv. In little over four months from taking over as prime minister, Modi set up his first meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Netanyahu extended a formal invitation to Modi to visit Israel, which is now expected to take place in January 2017 to mark 25 years of India-Israel diplomatic ties. The most dramatic change in Modis Israel policy was marked by Home Minister Rajnath Singhs November 2014 visit to Israel only. All high-level visits before that Home Minister L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh in 2000 and later External Affairs Minister S M Krishna in 2012 had always been combined to include Jordan and Palestine. India had been a strong votary of relations with Israel being dependent upon progress made in Israel-Palestine conflict. Naturally, this attempt at de-hyphenation saw an uproar both in the Indian parliament and outside, forcing a quick course correction thus finessing and slowing this apparent tilt. In October 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee visited Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Apart from being the first foreign head of state to spend a night in Ramallah city, he was also the first Indian head of state to visit Israel, and his address to a special session of the Knesset attracted much media scrutiny, particularly after Netanyahus remark that I speak to my dear friend Modi quite often. When we met once, he told me India wants Israel and that I see a paragon of fraternity between our two countries. This was followed by Sushma Swaraj visiting Jordan, Palestine and Israel in January this year, and several ministerial visits are likely to follow as a part of the preparations for Modis visit. Luckily for India, the Iran nuclear deal and rise of Islamic State has shifted the worlds attention away from the burgeoning relationship with Israel. India has been successful in balancing its engagement with Saudi Arabia and Iran, two important Islamic powers which do not see eye-to-eye. This gives India a window of opportunity to engage Israel without worrying too much about negative consequences. In April this year India had voted in favour of a UNESCO pro- Palestine resolution questioning Israels claim and criticising it for excavations inside the walled city, yet it chose to abstain from a similar resolution last month. Then, to balance this abstention and President Rivlins visit, Minister of State M J Akbar visited Palestine last week for the first ever Joint Commission meeting. The focus of President Rivlins visit is likely to be aimed at expanding India-Israel ties beyond buyer-seller relationship of two militaries, though they may also sign agreements on procuring spike anti-tank guided missiles, target equipment, bombs and other weapons systems like radars worth $3-4 billion dollars. In the past decade, Israel has sold military supplies worth $12 billion to India. But it is important to note that India-Israel relationship has moved beyond just transfers to joint research and development, and Israel is a pioneer in building partnerships under Modis Make in India drive. Meanwhile bilateral trade, which witnessed a steady increase from a mere $ 200 million 1992 to $5.61 billion in 2014 fell to $4.91 billion last year. The two have a target of pushing it to $10 billion, but this seems difficult, given that talks on a Free Trade Agreement which began in 2010 are yet to bear fruit. But ties have improved dramatically, and as President Rivlin said soon after his arrival in Delhi, the friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and it is not a relationship we should be hiding. As the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, arrives in India for a week-long visit, media assessments vary on how long India can maintain this fine balance between rapidly widening and deepening strategic partnership with Israel and its traditional pro-Palestine policies. It is pertinent to note that till January 1992, India did not even recognise the Jewish State. The two nations established formal diplomatic ties during Prime Minister Narasimha Raos regime which witnessed major recalibration of Indias post-Cold War foreign policy. Since then, the evolution of Indias Israel policy can be viewed in four phases: (a) Indian national movement opposing partition of Palestine and negating Jewish state, (b) normalising of relations with Israel as part of Indias post-Soviet foreign policy of multi alignments, (c) seeking de-hyphenation from Arab-Israel conflict as also domestic Muslim constituencies, and (d) Modi now projecting Israel not just the third largest supplier but also as model for Indian armed forces. Critics highlight how even a simple de-hyphenation may negatively impact Indias image with the Arab world, especially the 56-nation Organisation of Islamic Countries that is often critical of Indias Kashmir policies. AMIT BANDREArab support remains critical for Indias aspirations to join various technology control regimes as also other global governance structures, including becoming a permanent veto wielding member of the UN Security Council. Domestically as well, any sharp pro-Israel drift is expected to negatively impact Modis Muslim constituencies, egged on by Modis political adversaries. But Modi is seen as a man-inhurry. And, since 2002, Japan and Israel were the only two states amongst which carefully cultivated then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, at a time when all others carried out a vehement decade-long anti-Modi campaign in the name of human rights. Today, there is no doubt that Prime Minister Modi has been the leading force in boosting Indias diplomatic ties with both Tokyo and Tel Aviv. In little over four months from taking over as prime minister, Modi set up his first meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Netanyahu extended a formal invitation to Modi to visit Israel, which is now expected to take place in January 2017 to mark 25 years of India-Israel diplomatic ties. The most dramatic change in Modis Israel policy was marked by Home Minister Rajnath Singhs November 2014 visit to Israel only. All high-level visits before that Home Minister L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh in 2000 and later External Affairs Minister S M Krishna in 2012 had always been combined to include Jordan and Palestine. India had been a strong votary of relations with Israel being dependent upon progress made in Israel-Palestine conflict. Naturally, this attempt at de-hyphenation saw an uproar both in the Indian parliament and outside, forcing a quick course correction thus finessing and slowing this apparent tilt. In October 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee visited Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Apart from being the first foreign head of state to spend a night in Ramallah city, he was also the first Indian head of state to visit Israel, and his address to a special session of the Knesset attracted much media scrutiny, particularly after Netanyahus remark that I speak to my dear friend Modi quite often. When we met once, he told me India wants Israel and that I see a paragon of fraternity between our two countries. This was followed by Sushma Swaraj visiting Jordan, Palestine and Israel in January this year, and several ministerial visits are likely to follow as a part of the preparations for Modis visit. Luckily for India, the Iran nuclear deal and rise of Islamic State has shifted the worlds attention away from the burgeoning relationship with Israel. India has been successful in balancing its engagement with Saudi Arabia and Iran, two important Islamic powers which do not see eye-to-eye. This gives India a window of opportunity to engage Israel without worrying too much about negative consequences. In April this year India had voted in favour of a UNESCO pro- Palestine resolution questioning Israels claim and criticising it for excavations inside the walled city, yet it chose to abstain from a similar resolution last month. Then, to balance this abstention and President Rivlins visit, Minister of State M J Akbar visited Palestine last week for the first ever Joint Commission meeting. The focus of President Rivlins visit is likely to be aimed at expanding India-Israel ties beyond buyer-seller relationship of two militaries, though they may also sign agreements on procuring spike anti-tank guided missiles, target equipment, bombs and other weapons systems like radars worth $3-4 billion dollars. In the past decade, Israel has sold military supplies worth $12 billion to India. But it is important to note that India-Israel relationship has moved beyond just transfers to joint research and development, and Israel is a pioneer in building partnerships under Modis Make in India drive. Meanwhile bilateral trade, which witnessed a steady increase from a mere $ 200 million 1992 to $5.61 billion in 2014 fell to $4.91 billion last year. The two have a target of pushing it to $10 billion, but this seems difficult, given that talks on a Free Trade Agreement which began in 2010 are yet to bear fruit. But ties have improved dramatically, and as President Rivlin said soon after his arrival in Delhi, the friendship between India and Israel is at work day in, day out and it is not a relationship we should be hiding. LIMA, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming visit by President Xi Jinping to Peru in November will have a major impact across the region as it certifies Latin America is a priority for China, said a Peruvian expert. "It reflects the relevance China gives its ties to Latin America. Our region is a priority for China and Latin America sees this as a prime opportunity," said Miguel Rodriguez, an international analyst, in an interview with Xinhua. "The Chinese act with blistering speed, knowing that time counts in international relations. China knows how to win over the world." "China knows a region is a gold mine, and always has been. Latin America is growing as never before, which is why China is seeking to accentuate commercial ties. Linked to this is the Chinese goal to diversify its exports. Therefore, China sees it as equally important to invest in developed countries like the U.S. as in growing economies in Latin America." "China and Peru are enjoying one of their best moments. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski chose China as his first international trip as head of state, showing that China is a priority in the foreign policy of Peru's new government." "This level of reciprocity will be consolidated during the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima, where President Xi Jinping will come." In terms of Chile and Ecuador, which Xi will also visit, "China sees all Latin American countries as important. Chile and Ecuador are other geopolitical focus points in China's proposal to link the Pacific and the Atlantic. It will seek the best of relations with these countries." "Latin America is not just interested in developing commercial ties. The region is also interested in Chinese technology in order to spur development and industrialization." "President Kuczynski said that he did not go to China to ask for loans but to ask for investments and technology going forward. This focus is crucial to achieve reciprocity." Karamatullah K Ghori By Those of us, like this scribe, living in Canada have a love-hate mind-set about our giant neighbour, south of the 49th Parallel separating the two largest countries of North America. This isnt surprising, given that Canada has one-tenth the US population and is no patch on the American global military strength. The Canadians think, with disdain, of their southern neighbour being saddled with an imperfect and deeply-flawed political system, and nothing couldve vouched for it more than the stunning victory of an outsider and maverick Donald Trump in the November 8 presidential election. Trump has, indeed, trumped the well-entrenched American establishment with his unexpected trouncing of the establishment- savvy Hillary Clinton. In the process he hasnt only taken Washington by storm but also forced pundits and policy gurus in most world capitals to scurry to their drawing boards for an entirely fresh and unanticipated stab at how to deal with the White Houses new occupant who, through most of his rambunctious election campaign, swore to drain the swamp in Washington. Sending out of jobs Washingtons pampered establishment pundits wasnt the only outrageous statement spewing from Trumps lips. There was a plethora of other equally unorthodox pronouncements that forced friends and foes to take notice of the bull trying to crash into Washingtons chinashop. His infamous lines included a total and complete ban on the entry of Muslims in US, giving the boot to millions of illegal immigrants, and building a wall all along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Trump also pontificated about India and Pakistan. Conscious that new Americans of South Asian provenance were into the US presidential race perhaps more actively than any other new entrants, he courted both Indian and Pakistani interest groups and lobbies; some of his sound- bytes and quips could be construed to mean that he intended, if elected, to play an active role in the South Asian context as someone deeply concerned about a region that was, in his words, a very, very hot tinderbox. Election rhetoric being what it is, Trump often profusely complimented both Indians and Pakistanis for their dedication to their new homeland. Only a few weeks before the D-Day, rubbing shoulders with the vibrant Indian diaspora in New Jersey, Trump regaled his audience by promising, if elected, to make US and India the best of friends. He assured his cheering Indian fans of a phenomenal future together and won more applause by adding, There isnt going to be any relationship more important to us than relations with India. Trump carried on with the same strain when he was interviewed by the Hindustan Times. He evinced interest in defusing the red-hot tension between India and Pakistan with these words. Well, Id love to see Pakistan and India get along, because thats a very, very hot tinderbox. Throughout the acrimonious and intensely bitter campaign, Trump wasnt known for making clear-cut or categorical statements on which he could be pinned down. He was, in fact, notorious for weaving in and out of contentious issues, zigzagging more often than not. However, on India-Pakistan equation or lack of it Trump was, surprisingly, clear, categorical and, for a welcome change, statesman-like. In the same interview with HT, Trump mentioned the recent problem in Kashmir that had so much exacerbated tension between India and Pakistan. When asked by his interlocutor if hed like to have a role in lowering the dangerously high temperature in South Asia, he said if they wanted me to, Id love to be the mediator or arbitrator and went on to add, If we could get India and Pakistan getting along, Id be honoured to do that. On another occasion, however, he seemed falling in line with the Obama stance that US would step in between the two adversaries if both asked for it. So Indians have not to worry that Trump, if he still remembers his campaign rhetoric, would still be leaning on India to talk to Pakistan against its will. Campaign promises and commitments take little time, in any case, before melting into thin air. However, Pakistanis have much less room for optimism than their Indian counterparts of President Trump still being friendly, or well-disposed to them, notwithstanding his campaign antics during which he raised slogans of I Love Pakistan, raised in a gathering of his Pakistani-American fans. The burden of office, it goes without saying, changes the man, and the greater the burden the quicker that happens. US-Pakistan relations, in the years since Pakistan joined the endless American war on terror, have had a number of angularities, with Washington often articulating its concerns, publicly, about Pakistans flirtation with its own terrorism. American policy makers, if not the leaders in Washington, have left little to doubt that they suspect Pakistan of playing on both sides of the street. Trust between the two old allies, Pakistan and US has been in short supply for a long time. It nose-dived last May with an American drone killing a prominent Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil. Trump may have, inadvertently, added to Pakistans angst about his policy stance, and style, when, in the heat of the campaign, he boasted that he could get Dr Shakil Afridi a CIA mole sentenced to a 36-year prison term in Pakistan for blowing the cover of Osama bin Laden in just five-minutes by hectoring the Pakistanis to let him go. Indians can relax about the Trump presidency because of the innate chemistry of affinity between the worlds two largest democracies ruling the roost in Trumps Washington. Pakistanis, sadly, dont have that luxury. They should be worried and keeping their fingers crossed, if not exactly being on tenterhooks. Karamatullah K Ghori is a former Pakistani diplomat Email: K_K_ghori@yahoo.com Those of us, like this scribe, living in Canada have a love-hate mind-set about our giant neighbour, south of the 49th Parallel separating the two largest countries of North America. This isnt surprising, given that Canada has one-tenth the US population and is no patch on the American global military strength. The Canadians think, with disdain, of their southern neighbour being saddled with an imperfect and deeply-flawed political system, and nothing couldve vouched for it more than the stunning victory of an outsider and maverick Donald Trump in the November 8 presidential election. Trump has, indeed, trumped the well-entrenched American establishment with his unexpected trouncing of the establishment- savvy Hillary Clinton. In the process he hasnt only taken Washington by storm but also forced pundits and policy gurus in most world capitals to scurry to their drawing boards for an entirely fresh and unanticipated stab at how to deal with the White Houses new occupant who, through most of his rambunctious election campaign, swore to drain the swamp in Washington. Sending out of jobs Washingtons pampered establishment pundits wasnt the only outrageous statement spewing from Trumps lips. There was a plethora of other equally unorthodox pronouncements that forced friends and foes to take notice of the bull trying to crash into Washingtons chinashop. His infamous lines included a total and complete ban on the entry of Muslims in US, giving the boot to millions of illegal immigrants, and building a wall all along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Trump also pontificated about India and Pakistan. Conscious that new Americans of South Asian provenance were into the US presidential race perhaps more actively than any other new entrants, he courted both Indian and Pakistani interest groups and lobbies; some of his sound- bytes and quips could be construed to mean that he intended, if elected, to play an active role in the South Asian context as someone deeply concerned about a region that was, in his words, a very, very hot tinderbox. Election rhetoric being what it is, Trump often profusely complimented both Indians and Pakistanis for their dedication to their new homeland. Only a few weeks before the D-Day, rubbing shoulders with the vibrant Indian diaspora in New Jersey, Trump regaled his audience by promising, if elected, to make US and India the best of friends. He assured his cheering Indian fans of a phenomenal future together and won more applause by adding, There isnt going to be any relationship more important to us than relations with India. Trump carried on with the same strain when he was interviewed by the Hindustan Times. He evinced interest in defusing the red-hot tension between India and Pakistan with these words. Well, Id love to see Pakistan and India get along, because thats a very, very hot tinderbox. Throughout the acrimonious and intensely bitter campaign, Trump wasnt known for making clear-cut or categorical statements on which he could be pinned down. He was, in fact, notorious for weaving in and out of contentious issues, zigzagging more often than not. However, on India-Pakistan equation or lack of it Trump was, surprisingly, clear, categorical and, for a welcome change, statesman-like. In the same interview with HT, Trump mentioned the recent problem in Kashmir that had so much exacerbated tension between India and Pakistan. When asked by his interlocutor if hed like to have a role in lowering the dangerously high temperature in South Asia, he said if they wanted me to, Id love to be the mediator or arbitrator and went on to add, If we could get India and Pakistan getting along, Id be honoured to do that. On another occasion, however, he seemed falling in line with the Obama stance that US would step in between the two adversaries if both asked for it. So Indians have not to worry that Trump, if he still remembers his campaign rhetoric, would still be leaning on India to talk to Pakistan against its will. Campaign promises and commitments take little time, in any case, before melting into thin air. However, Pakistanis have much less room for optimism than their Indian counterparts of President Trump still being friendly, or well-disposed to them, notwithstanding his campaign antics during which he raised slogans of I Love Pakistan, raised in a gathering of his Pakistani-American fans. The burden of office, it goes without saying, changes the man, and the greater the burden the quicker that happens. US-Pakistan relations, in the years since Pakistan joined the endless American war on terror, have had a number of angularities, with Washington often articulating its concerns, publicly, about Pakistans flirtation with its own terrorism. American policy makers, if not the leaders in Washington, have left little to doubt that they suspect Pakistan of playing on both sides of the street. Trust between the two old allies, Pakistan and US has been in short supply for a long time. It nose-dived last May with an American drone killing a prominent Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil. Trump may have, inadvertently, added to Pakistans angst about his policy stance, and style, when, in the heat of the campaign, he boasted that he could get Dr Shakil Afridi a CIA mole sentenced to a 36-year prison term in Pakistan for blowing the cover of Osama bin Laden in just five-minutes by hectoring the Pakistanis to let him go. Indians can relax about the Trump presidency because of the innate chemistry of affinity between the worlds two largest democracies ruling the roost in Trumps Washington. Pakistanis, sadly, dont have that luxury. They should be worried and keeping their fingers crossed, if not exactly being on tenterhooks. Karamatullah K Ghori is a former Pakistani diplomat Email: K_K_ghori@yahoo.com By Express News Service GUNTUR: A medical professor accused of driving a second-year post-grad medical student at the Guntur General Hospital to suicide has been detained by the police in Bengaluru after weeks of being on the lam. Gynaecology student Dr B Sandhya Rani committed suicide by injecting a high dose of an anaesthetic drug into her veins. In a letter she wrote before her suicide, she squarely blamed Prof Lakshmi for her death. Prof Lakshmi has been at large since then until she was traced by a Special Police team to Bengaluru. Sources said she along with her husband, who too is a doctor, first went to Mumbai by flight from Hyderabad. From there they drove to Puducherry in a car provided by a realtor known to her family. When police began making enquiries about her in Puducherry, the couple moved to Bengaluru. In her diary, Dr Sandhya Rani said Prof. Lakshmi harassed her to the extent that she became totally demoralised and led a life full of tension. Unable to bear the "torture" any longer, she said in her diary, she decided to end her life. Sandhya Rani's husband, Ch Ravi, who practices in Miryalaguda, too attempted suicide after hearing of his wife's suicide. He is at present out of danger. GUNTUR: A medical professor accused of driving a second-year post-grad medical student at the Guntur General Hospital to suicide has been detained by the police in Bengaluru after weeks of being on the lam. Gynaecology student Dr B Sandhya Rani committed suicide by injecting a high dose of an anaesthetic drug into her veins. In a letter she wrote before her suicide, she squarely blamed Prof Lakshmi for her death. Prof Lakshmi has been at large since then until she was traced by a Special Police team to Bengaluru. Sources said she along with her husband, who too is a doctor, first went to Mumbai by flight from Hyderabad. From there they drove to Puducherry in a car provided by a realtor known to her family. When police began making enquiries about her in Puducherry, the couple moved to Bengaluru. In her diary, Dr Sandhya Rani said Prof. Lakshmi harassed her to the extent that she became totally demoralised and led a life full of tension. Unable to bear the "torture" any longer, she said in her diary, she decided to end her life. Sandhya Rani's husband, Ch Ravi, who practices in Miryalaguda, too attempted suicide after hearing of his wife's suicide. He is at present out of danger. Saumesh Thimbath By Express News Service KOCHI: Compared to other major cities in the country, Keralas cities are better placed in terms of ambient air quality. However, Kochi reports the highest pollution levels in the state, ranking 88th among cities in India. Its annual mean PM2.5 (38 g/m3) and PM 10 (70 g/m3) readings both fall above the standard permissible limit. The next most polluted cities are Kottayam and Kozhikode. The capital, Thiruvananthapuram, is much cleaner, with PM 2.5 levels at 29 g/m3 and PM 10 levels at 55 g/m3. The Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) says no city in Kerala has alarming levels of air pollution. The higher pollution in Kochi is attributed to the presence of industries on its peripheries, vehicular pollution and dust from construction sites. Environmentalists do not buy the explanations given by the KSPCB. They say it has not been doing continuous monitoring of air quality. Jolted out of its slumber by Delhis smog emergency, KSPCB announced on Thursday that it would install four ambient air quality monitoring systems by the end of the financial year. KOCHI: Compared to other major cities in the country, Keralas cities are better placed in terms of ambient air quality. However, Kochi reports the highest pollution levels in the state, ranking 88th among cities in India. Its annual mean PM2.5 (38 g/m3) and PM 10 (70 g/m3) readings both fall above the standard permissible limit. The next most polluted cities are Kottayam and Kozhikode. The capital, Thiruvananthapuram, is much cleaner, with PM 2.5 levels at 29 g/m3 and PM 10 levels at 55 g/m3. The Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) says no city in Kerala has alarming levels of air pollution. The higher pollution in Kochi is attributed to the presence of industries on its peripheries, vehicular pollution and dust from construction sites. Environmentalists do not buy the explanations given by the KSPCB. They say it has not been doing continuous monitoring of air quality. Jolted out of its slumber by Delhis smog emergency, KSPCB announced on Thursday that it would install four ambient air quality monitoring systems by the end of the financial year. Tiki Rajwi By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Taking a leaf out of the Union governments Give-it-up campaign that inspired more than one crore Indians to give up their LPG subsidy, the State government has come up with a scheme for ration cardholders to voluntarily opt out of the Public Distribution System (PDS). The Food and Civil Supplies Department will soon introduce an online facility where cardholders can voluntarily forego their food grain-quota. This additional grain will be used to meet the requirements of the rightful beneficiaries who would be left out of the priority category under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The online facility is now under development. It will be launched soon, said Food and Civil Supplies Minister P Thilothaman. The option, in reality, had already existed, but an online facility is expected to prompt more cardholders who do not depend on PDS food grains to officially forego their quota. According to the department, approximately 13,900 cardholders have already informed the government - through their application for new ration cards - of their readiness to forego the ration food grains. Civil Supplies officials said that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been entrusted with the job of designing the portal. Cardholders who opt out of the PDS will have to provide their Aadhaar number and mobile phone number to enable the authorities to cross-check their identity. The State government is faced with the tough task of meeting the requirement of 1.78 crore people in the former APL (State Subsidy) category with just 4 lakh metric tonnes of foodgrains a year. Under NFSA, Kerala is entitled to get 14.25 lakh MT a year. Earlier, Kerala had lifted 16 lakh MT. Of the 14.25 lakh MT, the former BPL, AAY categories who now form the priority category under NFSA will require 10.25 lakh MT, leaving the State with just 4 lakh MT to feed the rest. After skipping deadlines for three years, Kerala has turned NFSA compliant on November 1. THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Taking a leaf out of the Union governments Give-it-up campaign that inspired more than one crore Indians to give up their LPG subsidy, the State government has come up with a scheme for ration cardholders to voluntarily opt out of the Public Distribution System (PDS). The Food and Civil Supplies Department will soon introduce an online facility where cardholders can voluntarily forego their food grain-quota. This additional grain will be used to meet the requirements of the rightful beneficiaries who would be left out of the priority category under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The online facility is now under development. It will be launched soon, said Food and Civil Supplies Minister P Thilothaman. The option, in reality, had already existed, but an online facility is expected to prompt more cardholders who do not depend on PDS food grains to officially forego their quota. According to the department, approximately 13,900 cardholders have already informed the government - through their application for new ration cards - of their readiness to forego the ration food grains. Civil Supplies officials said that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been entrusted with the job of designing the portal. Cardholders who opt out of the PDS will have to provide their Aadhaar number and mobile phone number to enable the authorities to cross-check their identity. The State government is faced with the tough task of meeting the requirement of 1.78 crore people in the former APL (State Subsidy) category with just 4 lakh metric tonnes of foodgrains a year. Under NFSA, Kerala is entitled to get 14.25 lakh MT a year. Earlier, Kerala had lifted 16 lakh MT. Of the 14.25 lakh MT, the former BPL, AAY categories who now form the priority category under NFSA will require 10.25 lakh MT, leaving the State with just 4 lakh MT to feed the rest. After skipping deadlines for three years, Kerala has turned NFSA compliant on November 1. P T Mohanan Pillai By Express News Service SABARIMALA: Though the annual pilgrimage season of Lord Ayyappa temple is all set to begin on Tuesday, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) and the state government are yet to get their acts together. While the pilgrims have already started pouring in, basic amenities, including drinking water and free food, are lacking at Sannidhanam. The construction of reverse osmosis (RO) plants and installation of water kiosks on the trek route are yet to be completed. The ban on use of water bottles at Sannidhanam will affect the pilgrims badly. The failure of Forest Department in issuing clearance for the project to increase the water storage capacity of Kunnar dam has stalled the ambitious project. The Devaswom Board couldnt complete the construction of the Annadanam Complex at Malikappuram. Meanwhile, the denial of permission to the Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sangham and the Sabarimala Ayyappa Seva Samajam for distribution of free food will be a huge blow for thousands of pilgrims who depend on free food. The hapless pilgrims are left with no other option but to fall prey to the fleecing hoteliers. SABARIMALA: Though the annual pilgrimage season of Lord Ayyappa temple is all set to begin on Tuesday, the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) and the state government are yet to get their acts together. While the pilgrims have already started pouring in, basic amenities, including drinking water and free food, are lacking at Sannidhanam. The construction of reverse osmosis (RO) plants and installation of water kiosks on the trek route are yet to be completed. The ban on use of water bottles at Sannidhanam will affect the pilgrims badly. The failure of Forest Department in issuing clearance for the project to increase the water storage capacity of Kunnar dam has stalled the ambitious project. The Devaswom Board couldnt complete the construction of the Annadanam Complex at Malikappuram. Meanwhile, the denial of permission to the Akhila Bharatha Ayyappa Seva Sangham and the Sabarimala Ayyappa Seva Samajam for distribution of free food will be a huge blow for thousands of pilgrims who depend on free food. The hapless pilgrims are left with no other option but to fall prey to the fleecing hoteliers. Rajesh Abraham By Express News Service KOCHI: The cooperative banking sector in Kerala has plunged into a huge crisis following the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular on Monday banning exchange of notes against the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at the District Cooperative Banks (DCB). The Central Governments discrimination towards the cooperative banking sector would also end the states dream to float a Kerala Bank by merging the DCBs, according to some experts. We have a banking licence from RBI since 1984. If RBI suspects any wrong doing, they should inspect and take appropriate action. Blanket ban is discriminatory. Our board met the other day and decided to explore legal recourse if the situation continues, said Radhakrishnan M K, general manager of Ernakulam District Cooperative Bank, the largest DCB in the state with over Rs 9,000 crore deposits from about 2 lakh account holders. Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, in an FB post, said Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to look into Keralas demand to treat the primary cooperative societies and DCBs on par with other banks with regard to accepting and withdrawing notes in the demonetisation regime. In the circular RBI said DCBs are not allowed the exchange facility against the specified bank notes (Rs 500 and Rs 1,000), deposit of such notes should not be entertained by them. However, the apex bank has permitted withdrawal of cash up to Rs 24,000 per week. According to State Level Bankers Committee, Kerala, the total deposit base of the cooperative banking sector as on March 2016 stands at Rs 52813.23 crore. Its a big crisis in the Kerala cooperative banking sector. DCBs have the RBIs banking licence. How can RBI treat DCBs in a discriminatory fashion? asked Kurien Joy, president of the Kerala State Cooperative Bank. The state governments plan to merge the cooperative banks to form Kerala Bank is under serious threat as the proposed unified bank is mooted under the cooperative sector, said Radhakrishnan. When contacted, a Finance Ministry official, said an expert committee headed by M S Sreeram of IIM Bangalore, will submit its report on Kerala Bank by December-end or January. Well decide on how to go about the Kerala Bank after studying the Sreeram Committee report. Ravichandran P R of Thrissur DCB said RBI should give special status to the Kerala cooperative banking sector. Unlike the DCBs of north Indian or north eastern states, the Kerala DCBs are very healthy. RBI and the Central Government should have taken this into consideration before meting out discriminatory treatment, he said. KOCHI: The cooperative banking sector in Kerala has plunged into a huge crisis following the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular on Monday banning exchange of notes against the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes at the District Cooperative Banks (DCB). The Central Governments discrimination towards the cooperative banking sector would also end the states dream to float a Kerala Bank by merging the DCBs, according to some experts. We have a banking licence from RBI since 1984. If RBI suspects any wrong doing, they should inspect and take appropriate action. Blanket ban is discriminatory. Our board met the other day and decided to explore legal recourse if the situation continues, said Radhakrishnan M K, general manager of Ernakulam District Cooperative Bank, the largest DCB in the state with over Rs 9,000 crore deposits from about 2 lakh account holders. Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, in an FB post, said Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised to look into Keralas demand to treat the primary cooperative societies and DCBs on par with other banks with regard to accepting and withdrawing notes in the demonetisation regime. In the circular RBI said DCBs are not allowed the exchange facility against the specified bank notes (Rs 500 and Rs 1,000), deposit of such notes should not be entertained by them. However, the apex bank has permitted withdrawal of cash up to Rs 24,000 per week. According to State Level Bankers Committee, Kerala, the total deposit base of the cooperative banking sector as on March 2016 stands at Rs 52813.23 crore. Its a big crisis in the Kerala cooperative banking sector. DCBs have the RBIs banking licence. How can RBI treat DCBs in a discriminatory fashion? asked Kurien Joy, president of the Kerala State Cooperative Bank. The state governments plan to merge the cooperative banks to form Kerala Bank is under serious threat as the proposed unified bank is mooted under the cooperative sector, said Radhakrishnan. When contacted, a Finance Ministry official, said an expert committee headed by M S Sreeram of IIM Bangalore, will submit its report on Kerala Bank by December-end or January. Well decide on how to go about the Kerala Bank after studying the Sreeram Committee report. Ravichandran P R of Thrissur DCB said RBI should give special status to the Kerala cooperative banking sector. Unlike the DCBs of north Indian or north eastern states, the Kerala DCBs are very healthy. RBI and the Central Government should have taken this into consideration before meting out discriminatory treatment, he said. By Express News Service MALKANGIRI:The vaccination drive against Japanese Encephalitis (JE) to be launched in the first week of December will cover children aged 1-15 years in the entire district, even as the death toll climbed to 92, with two more succumbing to the disease on Sunday. Speaking at the district level task force meeting on JE vaccination here, Collector K. Sudarshan Chakravarthy said a meeting of the task force comprising ASHA, Anganwadi workers and teachers will be held on November 17 and 18. About 1200 teams will prepare a list of children in the age group of 1-15 years during the three-day survey to begin from November 20. NGOs have also been roped in for the enumeration. Chakravarthy said the administration will make all efforts to ensure that no child in the age group is left out. Once the survey work is over, the vaccination drive will start in the first week of December, the Collector said at the meeting which was attended by Additional DM Reghumani Gamang, DRDA Project Director, Block Development Officers and all district level officials. Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne viral infection, has claimed 31 lives of the 92 deaths reported so far in the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH). On Sunday, Lina Madkami (3) of Kataguda village under Kalimela block and Lagna Madkami (2) of Urmaguda village under Sikhpally panchayat of Korukonda block succumbed to the disease. Four more children, whose condition were stated to be serious, are undergoing treatment in the ICU. Of the total 92 deaths reported so far, the deaths of 31 children were due to the vector-borne disease. The other deaths were due to various reasons and they were found JE negative. But, what resulted in their death is a matter of concern for the Health department officials as the team of experts who are currently visiting the affected villages are yet to reach at any conclusion. MALKANGIRI:The vaccination drive against Japanese Encephalitis (JE) to be launched in the first week of December will cover children aged 1-15 years in the entire district, even as the death toll climbed to 92, with two more succumbing to the disease on Sunday. Speaking at the district level task force meeting on JE vaccination here, Collector K. Sudarshan Chakravarthy said a meeting of the task force comprising ASHA, Anganwadi workers and teachers will be held on November 17 and 18. About 1200 teams will prepare a list of children in the age group of 1-15 years during the three-day survey to begin from November 20. NGOs have also been roped in for the enumeration. Chakravarthy said the administration will make all efforts to ensure that no child in the age group is left out. Once the survey work is over, the vaccination drive will start in the first week of December, the Collector said at the meeting which was attended by Additional DM Reghumani Gamang, DRDA Project Director, Block Development Officers and all district level officials. Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne viral infection, has claimed 31 lives of the 92 deaths reported so far in the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH). On Sunday, Lina Madkami (3) of Kataguda village under Kalimela block and Lagna Madkami (2) of Urmaguda village under Sikhpally panchayat of Korukonda block succumbed to the disease. Four more children, whose condition were stated to be serious, are undergoing treatment in the ICU. Of the total 92 deaths reported so far, the deaths of 31 children were due to the vector-borne disease. The other deaths were due to various reasons and they were found JE negative. But, what resulted in their death is a matter of concern for the Health department officials as the team of experts who are currently visiting the affected villages are yet to reach at any conclusion. By Express News Service ANGUL: The tripartite talks notwithstanding, Kaniha coal mine was paralysed for the fifth consecutive day on Sunday resulting in financial loss to both the State Government and the Centre. On Saturday night, there was a talk between the local administration and agitating people of Jarada village in presence of the colliery officials where it was decided that the demand of the villagers will be taken up at a higher level before November 26. The villagers assured to discus among themselves and report to local administration about their decision whether to call off the strike or not. But, there was no communication from their side till Sunday evening. The mine is yet to resume operation. The villagers of Jarada affected by Kaniha coal mine have been agitating since Wednesday paralysing the coal production and despatch. They have demanded immediate shifting of their village, which according to local administration is not possible due to want of resettlement site. The administration imposed Section 144 in the mines area on Friday evening but women of the village defied it and courted arrest. Later, 152 arrested women were released on bail. The agitation at Kaniha coal mine, which produces about 40,000 tonnes per day, is a huge setback for its effort to achieve the production target during the current financial year. ANGUL: The tripartite talks notwithstanding, Kaniha coal mine was paralysed for the fifth consecutive day on Sunday resulting in financial loss to both the State Government and the Centre. On Saturday night, there was a talk between the local administration and agitating people of Jarada village in presence of the colliery officials where it was decided that the demand of the villagers will be taken up at a higher level before November 26. The villagers assured to discus among themselves and report to local administration about their decision whether to call off the strike or not. But, there was no communication from their side till Sunday evening. The mine is yet to resume operation. The villagers of Jarada affected by Kaniha coal mine have been agitating since Wednesday paralysing the coal production and despatch. They have demanded immediate shifting of their village, which according to local administration is not possible due to want of resettlement site. The administration imposed Section 144 in the mines area on Friday evening but women of the village defied it and courted arrest. Later, 152 arrested women were released on bail. The agitation at Kaniha coal mine, which produces about 40,000 tonnes per day, is a huge setback for its effort to achieve the production target during the current financial year. By Express News Service BHUBANESWAR: Panic prevailed on Siripur Square-Fire Station road in the City as three motorcycle-borne youths went on a spree of attacking people with a razor on Sunday evening. As many as eight people were injured in the attack that continued for several hours. Later, the injured persons were admitted in Capital Hospital by locals and PCR vans. The victims said they were first accosted by the youths, who were driving a black coloured Pulsar motorcycle, and asked them to stop. The moment the vehicles stopped, the miscreants demanded money and mobile phones. Even before the victims reacted, the youths slashed their neck with a razor and fled. Four victims, whose identity was ascertained till the report was filed, are Swagat Kumar Nayak, a BTech student from Puri; Sraban Kumar Das, a grocery store worker from Pipili; Sanjay Mahapatra of Sitaram Slum near Khandagiri and Tikayat Sahu, a driver belonging to Dhenkanal. I dropped a passenger at ITER and was returning towards Siripur square when three youths, who were following me, told me to stop my car. The moment I rolled down the window glass, one of the youths slashed my cheek with a sharp weapon, Sahu said. The miscreants attacked Nayak on the Baramunda fly-over, took his two-wheeler and discarded it at an isolated spot. Nayak sustained injuries on his neck. The miscreants motorcycle did not have registration number, one of the injured persons said. ACP Zone I, Asim Panda said the miscreants committed the act under intoxication. One of them, Amit Mohapatra, was arrested by police at Rupali square while two others have been identified. Lack of night patrolling by police and street lights has turned the area into a favourite spot for anti-socials, the locals alleged. BHUBANESWAR: Panic prevailed on Siripur Square-Fire Station road in the City as three motorcycle-borne youths went on a spree of attacking people with a razor on Sunday evening. As many as eight people were injured in the attack that continued for several hours. Later, the injured persons were admitted in Capital Hospital by locals and PCR vans. The victims said they were first accosted by the youths, who were driving a black coloured Pulsar motorcycle, and asked them to stop. The moment the vehicles stopped, the miscreants demanded money and mobile phones. Even before the victims reacted, the youths slashed their neck with a razor and fled. Four victims, whose identity was ascertained till the report was filed, are Swagat Kumar Nayak, a BTech student from Puri; Sraban Kumar Das, a grocery store worker from Pipili; Sanjay Mahapatra of Sitaram Slum near Khandagiri and Tikayat Sahu, a driver belonging to Dhenkanal. I dropped a passenger at ITER and was returning towards Siripur square when three youths, who were following me, told me to stop my car. The moment I rolled down the window glass, one of the youths slashed my cheek with a sharp weapon, Sahu said. The miscreants attacked Nayak on the Baramunda fly-over, took his two-wheeler and discarded it at an isolated spot. Nayak sustained injuries on his neck. The miscreants motorcycle did not have registration number, one of the injured persons said. ACP Zone I, Asim Panda said the miscreants committed the act under intoxication. One of them, Amit Mohapatra, was arrested by police at Rupali square while two others have been identified. Lack of night patrolling by police and street lights has turned the area into a favourite spot for anti-socials, the locals alleged. B Anbuselvan By Express News Service TIRUVANNAMALAI: Not many have seen the recently-launched Rs 2,000 currency note. And, this man managed to exploit the ignorance of the common man well, as he bought a bottle of liquor from a TASMAC outlet in exchange of a colour photocopy of Rs 2,000 currency note. The issue came to light on Saturday afternoon, when a salesman of TASMAC outlet, located in Maruthadu village near Vandavasi bus stand, went to Indian Bank branch at Vandavasi to deposit the daily collection. While verifying the cash, the employees at the bank found that one of the Rs 2,000 note was indeed a colour photo copy of the currency taken on white paper. When the policemen, who were deployed at the bank questioned the TASMAC employee, he had reportedly said that the fake note was given by a man in exchange for a bottle of liquor around 9.45pm on Friday. He said, he had to take the last bus to his village and demanded change. I paid Rs 1,800 to him, the employee said. The employee alleged that though he felt the note was thicker than the other currency notes, he accepted it as he had not seen C2,000 before, adding he had seen the currency only on television and social media. Meanwhile, Balachandar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vandavasi, said no case was registered yet in this regard as they had not received any complaint. However, Dhanapaul, district secretary of TASMAC Employees Association, Tiruvannamalai, told Express, the salesmen were given ample training in using fake currency detector to verify the currencies. If any fake currency is found, employees have to pay the money from their pocket. We cannot lodge any complaint, he said, adding he will ask his association members to be more cautious. TIRUVANNAMALAI: Not many have seen the recently-launched Rs 2,000 currency note. And, this man managed to exploit the ignorance of the common man well, as he bought a bottle of liquor from a TASMAC outlet in exchange of a colour photocopy of Rs 2,000 currency note. The issue came to light on Saturday afternoon, when a salesman of TASMAC outlet, located in Maruthadu village near Vandavasi bus stand, went to Indian Bank branch at Vandavasi to deposit the daily collection. While verifying the cash, the employees at the bank found that one of the Rs 2,000 note was indeed a colour photo copy of the currency taken on white paper. When the policemen, who were deployed at the bank questioned the TASMAC employee, he had reportedly said that the fake note was given by a man in exchange for a bottle of liquor around 9.45pm on Friday. He said, he had to take the last bus to his village and demanded change. I paid Rs 1,800 to him, the employee said. The employee alleged that though he felt the note was thicker than the other currency notes, he accepted it as he had not seen C2,000 before, adding he had seen the currency only on television and social media. Meanwhile, Balachandar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vandavasi, said no case was registered yet in this regard as they had not received any complaint. However, Dhanapaul, district secretary of TASMAC Employees Association, Tiruvannamalai, told Express, the salesmen were given ample training in using fake currency detector to verify the currencies. If any fake currency is found, employees have to pay the money from their pocket. We cannot lodge any complaint, he said, adding he will ask his association members to be more cautious. PIzza was the main draw at the shopping centre attraction as visitors took selfies and banged on the glass window of the tiny enclosure. Pizza the polar bear will be delivered to an ocean park in North China after an impassioned global campaign to release him from a shopping mall enclosure in Guangzhou. The Humane Society International (HSI), which led the effort to set free "the world's saddest polar bear" from the confines of an aquarium at the Grandview Shopping Mall in South China's Guangdong province, announced the news in a release on Sunday. The location of Pizza's new home hasn't been disclosed, but apparently the bear will be reunited with his parents. The mall, which has maintained that Pizza is well adjusted and well fed, posted its decision on Weibo. Following is the English translation: "Due to upgrading of exhibition halls, as a testament to urban renewal of Guangzhou, a result of the harmonious collaboration between commerce and tourism, and a witness to urban compassion and hearts of love, Pizza, the 'bear baby' loved by millions of tourists, will say goodbye for a short period of time. He will return to the embrace of his mom and dad. "This upgrading of the facility will not however affect the normal operation of the aquarium. To say goodbye to this polar bear prince and at the request of the visitors, we shall hold a great and special farewell party for him on November 13. We shall invite all the fans of Pizza, all the staff members of the Grandview Polar Ocean Park who see Pizza as a family member, and all other experts and people who have passion for the development of ocean parks in China to come to the party and to bear witness to the touching moment at the send-off party." Qin Xiaona, director of the Beijing Capital Animal Welfare Association (CAWA), said: "It's a good decision, the right decision for Pizza, but it's not the end. Temporary is not good enough. Now we hope that Grandview will learn from this episode and move Pizza permanently so that he never again has to endure the dreadful life in a shopping mall. Pizza has some company at the mall, such as penguins and arctic foxes and wolves. "We still want to see the aquarium closed once and for all, to see all the animals moved, and we call on the Commerce Ministry to close all shopping mall zoos and aquariums and to prevent these types of zoos from being opened," Qin said. HSI and CAWA are calling for Pizza's move to be permanent. Peter Li, HSI's China policy specialist, said: "Pizza the polar bear has endured a life of deprivation and suffering in his small, artificial, glass-fronted room at the shopping mall, so the news that he's getting out at last makes me very happy and relieved for him. At last he will feel the sun on his fur, sniff fresh air and see the sky above him. "We commend the mall for being gracious enough to listen to Chinese and global voices of concern, and hope they will do the right thing for this poor bear who has already been through enough." Last month, HSI and a Chinese partner group VShine released video footage showing the polar bear exhibiting distress signs such as head swaying and repetitive pacing. Desperate: Pizza, the three-year-old polar bear, was trapped in a tiny enclosure at the Grandview Aquarium, in a shopping centre in the southern city of Guangzhou, where he had only a tiny amount of space to run or play. By Associated Press WELLINGTON: A powerful earthquake that rocked New Zealand on Monday triggered landslides and a small tsunami, cracked apart roads and homes and left two people dead, but largely spared the country the devastation it saw five years ago when a deadly earthquake struck the same region. Strong aftershocks continued to shake the country on Monday, rattling the nerves of exhausted residents, many of whom had spent a sleepless night huddled outside after fleeing for higher ground to avoid the tsunami waves. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the South Island just after midnight in a mostly rural area that's dotted with small towns. Near the epicenter, it opened up snaking fissures in roads and sparked landslides. The quake caused damage in Wellington, the capital, more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the north. It was also strongly felt to the south in the city of Christchurch, which was devastated by an earthquake in 2011 that killed 185 people. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes. Police said one person died in the small coastal town of Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. Several other people had reportedly suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police spokeswoman Rachel Purdom said. Prime Minister John Key flew over the destruction in Kaikoura by helicopter on Monday afternoon, as aftershocks kicked up dust from the landslides below. Cars could be seen lying on their sides and parts of the road were clearly impassable. "It's just utter devastation. ... That's months of work," Key told acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee as they hovered above the damage. Key and Brownlee estimated the clean-up would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and clearing the debris and blocked roads could take months. Defense force personnel were planning to take food, water and other supplies to Kaikoura on Tuesday. The prime minister said waves of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) hit the coast but the tsunami threat had since been downgraded to coastal warnings. He said authorities had no reason to believe the death toll would rise above the two reported fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two. But of course there are isolated parts of the country which we don't have perfect eyes on, so we can't be 100 percent sure," he said. Key said officials had decided not to declare a national emergency because the nation's regions were able to adequately cope with the situation. The quake completely cut off road access to Kaikoura, said resident Terry Thompson, who added that electricity and most phones were also down in the town of 2,000, a popular destination for tourists taking part in whale-watching expeditions. Thompson was out of town but managed to reach his wife by cellphone during the night before her phone died. "She said the glass exploded right out of the double ranch-slider," he said. "The neighbor's chimney was gone, there were breakages and things smashed everywhere." His wife helped a 93-year-old neighbor and a tourist into her car and drove to higher ground, he said. "They stayed in the car all night but couldn't sleep," Thompson said. "They're all very, very tired and concerned about the state of their property." The main road to Kaikoura was blocked in places by landslides, and police were working to airlift out a few tourists stranded in their campervans to the north and south of the town, according to emergency services officials in the nearby Marlborough region. Kaikoura suffered "major infrastructure damage" in the quake, the Marlborough Emergency Management Group said in a statement. Sewage and water supplies were knocked out, though power was gradually being restored Monday afternoon. Police were in radio communication with the town and mobile phone service was expected to be restored shortly. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111, police reported. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Australians Paul and Sandra Wardrop and their children Alexander, 15, and William, 12, were on the 10th floor of the Park Hotel when the shaking began. "We felt that the building was going to collapse," Sandra Wardrop said. "You could hear the sounds of the building shaking and see cracks appearing in the walls, in the plasterwork in the bedroom." The family was among dozens of people who took shelter in the capital's parliamentary complex, which threw open its doors. It was William's 12th birthday, and while he didn't get to tour Wellington as planned, he did get to meet Key, who visited the displaced tourists. New Zealand, with a population of 4.7 million, sits on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. Monday's quake brought back memories of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 and destroyed much of the downtown area. That quake was one of New Zealand's worst disasters, causing an estimated $25 billion in damage. Monday's quake was stronger but its epicenter was deeper and much farther from major urban areas. Location, depth and other factors beyond magnitude all contribute to the destructive power of an earthquake. The location of Monday's quake largely helps explain why the damage was so minimal compared to the 2011 temblor, said Mark Quigley, associate professor of active tectonics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. The 2011 quake was located almost directly beneath Christchurch, meaning tens of thousands of people were exposed to the most violent shaking at the epicenter. Monday's quake was centered in a rural area that is home to just a few thousand people. The 2011 quake also had a tremendous amount of high frequency energy, including very strong vertical ground motions which felt "like you're being picked up by a giant and being shaken around," Quigley said. But for those in Christchurch on Monday, the shaking felt very different more of a rolling motion. "They were far enough away that a lot of that high frequency energy was dissipated," he said. Authorities in Wellington told people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress, and the quake would likely have caused a mess in some buildings. The city's suburban rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management reported that a tsunami wave struck at about 1:50 a.m. and warned residents living in low-lying areas anywhere along the country's east coast to move to higher ground. There was confusion about the tsunami threat throughout the morning. The ministry initially said there was no threat but later wrote on Twitter "situation has changed - tsunami is possible" before reporting that a tsunami had hit. The quake was centered 93 kilometers (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS initially estimated it had a magnitude of 7.4 before revising it to 7.8. It said the quake struck at a depth of 23 kilometers (14 miles), after initially putting the depth at 10 kilometers (six miles). Earthquakes tend to be more strongly felt on the surface when they are shallow. WELLINGTON: A powerful earthquake that rocked New Zealand on Monday triggered landslides and a small tsunami, cracked apart roads and homes and left two people dead, but largely spared the country the devastation it saw five years ago when a deadly earthquake struck the same region. Strong aftershocks continued to shake the country on Monday, rattling the nerves of exhausted residents, many of whom had spent a sleepless night huddled outside after fleeing for higher ground to avoid the tsunami waves. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the South Island just after midnight in a mostly rural area that's dotted with small towns. Near the epicenter, it opened up snaking fissures in roads and sparked landslides. The quake caused damage in Wellington, the capital, more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the north. It was also strongly felt to the south in the city of Christchurch, which was devastated by an earthquake in 2011 that killed 185 people. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes. Police said one person died in the small coastal town of Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. Several other people had reportedly suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police spokeswoman Rachel Purdom said. Prime Minister John Key flew over the destruction in Kaikoura by helicopter on Monday afternoon, as aftershocks kicked up dust from the landslides below. Cars could be seen lying on their sides and parts of the road were clearly impassable. "It's just utter devastation. ... That's months of work," Key told acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee as they hovered above the damage. Key and Brownlee estimated the clean-up would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and clearing the debris and blocked roads could take months. Defense force personnel were planning to take food, water and other supplies to Kaikoura on Tuesday. The prime minister said waves of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) hit the coast but the tsunami threat had since been downgraded to coastal warnings. He said authorities had no reason to believe the death toll would rise above the two reported fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two. But of course there are isolated parts of the country which we don't have perfect eyes on, so we can't be 100 percent sure," he said. Key said officials had decided not to declare a national emergency because the nation's regions were able to adequately cope with the situation. The quake completely cut off road access to Kaikoura, said resident Terry Thompson, who added that electricity and most phones were also down in the town of 2,000, a popular destination for tourists taking part in whale-watching expeditions. Thompson was out of town but managed to reach his wife by cellphone during the night before her phone died. "She said the glass exploded right out of the double ranch-slider," he said. "The neighbor's chimney was gone, there were breakages and things smashed everywhere." His wife helped a 93-year-old neighbor and a tourist into her car and drove to higher ground, he said. "They stayed in the car all night but couldn't sleep," Thompson said. "They're all very, very tired and concerned about the state of their property." The main road to Kaikoura was blocked in places by landslides, and police were working to airlift out a few tourists stranded in their campervans to the north and south of the town, according to emergency services officials in the nearby Marlborough region. Kaikoura suffered "major infrastructure damage" in the quake, the Marlborough Emergency Management Group said in a statement. Sewage and water supplies were knocked out, though power was gradually being restored Monday afternoon. Police were in radio communication with the town and mobile phone service was expected to be restored shortly. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111, police reported. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Australians Paul and Sandra Wardrop and their children Alexander, 15, and William, 12, were on the 10th floor of the Park Hotel when the shaking began. "We felt that the building was going to collapse," Sandra Wardrop said. "You could hear the sounds of the building shaking and see cracks appearing in the walls, in the plasterwork in the bedroom." The family was among dozens of people who took shelter in the capital's parliamentary complex, which threw open its doors. It was William's 12th birthday, and while he didn't get to tour Wellington as planned, he did get to meet Key, who visited the displaced tourists. New Zealand, with a population of 4.7 million, sits on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. Monday's quake brought back memories of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 and destroyed much of the downtown area. That quake was one of New Zealand's worst disasters, causing an estimated $25 billion in damage. Monday's quake was stronger but its epicenter was deeper and much farther from major urban areas. Location, depth and other factors beyond magnitude all contribute to the destructive power of an earthquake. The location of Monday's quake largely helps explain why the damage was so minimal compared to the 2011 temblor, said Mark Quigley, associate professor of active tectonics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. The 2011 quake was located almost directly beneath Christchurch, meaning tens of thousands of people were exposed to the most violent shaking at the epicenter. Monday's quake was centered in a rural area that is home to just a few thousand people. The 2011 quake also had a tremendous amount of high frequency energy, including very strong vertical ground motions which felt "like you're being picked up by a giant and being shaken around," Quigley said. But for those in Christchurch on Monday, the shaking felt very different more of a rolling motion. "They were far enough away that a lot of that high frequency energy was dissipated," he said. Authorities in Wellington told people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress, and the quake would likely have caused a mess in some buildings. The city's suburban rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management reported that a tsunami wave struck at about 1:50 a.m. and warned residents living in low-lying areas anywhere along the country's east coast to move to higher ground. There was confusion about the tsunami threat throughout the morning. The ministry initially said there was no threat but later wrote on Twitter "situation has changed - tsunami is possible" before reporting that a tsunami had hit. The quake was centered 93 kilometers (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS initially estimated it had a magnitude of 7.4 before revising it to 7.8. It said the quake struck at a depth of 23 kilometers (14 miles), after initially putting the depth at 10 kilometers (six miles). Earthquakes tend to be more strongly felt on the surface when they are shallow. By IANS RIYADH: A Saudi court has sentenced a company manager to one year in jail and 900 lashes for forcing an Asian worker to shave his beard in front of the employees, the media reported on Monday. The manager threatened to suspend the worker if he did not heed the order, Xinhua news agency reported, without giving details on the reason behind the order. The court said its verdict was based on the psychological harms that befell the victim. Expat workforce is in high demand in Saudi Arabia, especially for harsh jobs which have low attraction among local jobseekers. Saudi Arabia's population grew by 2.4 per cent to 31.52 million last year from 30.77 million in 2014, according to a report based on the Saudi Department of Statistics and Information published in February. The number of Saudis, who make up two-thirds of the population, increased to 21.1 million last year. The number of expats rose to 10.4 million, it added. RIYADH: A Saudi court has sentenced a company manager to one year in jail and 900 lashes for forcing an Asian worker to shave his beard in front of the employees, the media reported on Monday. The manager threatened to suspend the worker if he did not heed the order, Xinhua news agency reported, without giving details on the reason behind the order. The court said its verdict was based on the psychological harms that befell the victim. Expat workforce is in high demand in Saudi Arabia, especially for harsh jobs which have low attraction among local jobseekers. Saudi Arabia's population grew by 2.4 per cent to 31.52 million last year from 30.77 million in 2014, according to a report based on the Saudi Department of Statistics and Information published in February. The number of Saudis, who make up two-thirds of the population, increased to 21.1 million last year. The number of expats rose to 10.4 million, it added. By IANS BAGHDAD: At least six civilians and six militants were killed on Monday in a suicide attack in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. The attack was carried out by six militants in the town of Ain al-Tamr, ministry spokesman Colonel Saad Maan said in a statement. Iraqi security forces killed five militants, while the sixth reportedly went into a residential building and detonated the explosive device he was wearing, killing six people and injuring another six. Ain al-Tamr was the scene of a similar attack on a wedding party in August, which resulted in the deaths of 18 people. BAGHDAD: At least six civilians and six militants were killed on Monday in a suicide attack in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. The attack was carried out by six militants in the town of Ain al-Tamr, ministry spokesman Colonel Saad Maan said in a statement. Iraqi security forces killed five militants, while the sixth reportedly went into a residential building and detonated the explosive device he was wearing, killing six people and injuring another six. Ain al-Tamr was the scene of a similar attack on a wedding party in August, which resulted in the deaths of 18 people. By AFP ISTANBUL: Turkey on Monday closed a border crossing with Syria in the southeastern province of Kilis after violent clashes in the Syrian town of Azaz, a local official said. "The border gate remains open only for ambulances," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Turkish media reported that the closure of the Oncupinar border crossing, which faces Bab al-Salama inside Syria, was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. Turkish media reported that the border closure was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. The town of Azaz, not far from the border, is one of many Syrian villages and towns taken by Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters since an offensive supported by Turkey began on August 24. Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed to humanitarian aid and trade traffic "due to developments on the other side of the border", the private Dogan news agency reported. It was unclear when the border crossing would reopen. Turkey has embarked on an ambitious operation inside Syria dubbed "Euphrates Shield" to support Syrian opposition fighters in a bid to cleanse its border of Islamic State fighters and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish militia. The Ankara-backed fighters comprise various brigades rather than one organised force, according to experts. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the rebels had advanced "closer to Al-Bab" -- the next target in Turkey's Syria operation, adding that Turkey resumed aerial support to help rebel forces. ISTANBUL: Turkey on Monday closed a border crossing with Syria in the southeastern province of Kilis after violent clashes in the Syrian town of Azaz, a local official said. "The border gate remains open only for ambulances," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Turkish media reported that the closure of the Oncupinar border crossing, which faces Bab al-Salama inside Syria, was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. Turkish media reported that the border closure was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. The town of Azaz, not far from the border, is one of many Syrian villages and towns taken by Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters since an offensive supported by Turkey began on August 24. Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed to humanitarian aid and trade traffic "due to developments on the other side of the border", the private Dogan news agency reported. It was unclear when the border crossing would reopen. Turkey has embarked on an ambitious operation inside Syria dubbed "Euphrates Shield" to support Syrian opposition fighters in a bid to cleanse its border of Islamic State fighters and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish militia. The Ankara-backed fighters comprise various brigades rather than one organised force, according to experts. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the rebels had advanced "closer to Al-Bab" -- the next target in Turkey's Syria operation, adding that Turkey resumed aerial support to help rebel forces. By AFP LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces questioning by prosecutors Monday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in a twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. An Ecuadoran prosecutor will quiz the founder of the secret-spilling website at the red-brick building where he has been holed up for more than four years, with Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police inspector also attending, officials said. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the central London embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. A Swedish official source said the questioning was expected to begin at around 1000 GMT. The investigators intend to take a DNA sample, subject to his agreement. "It's planned to last a few days," Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson told AFP, adding that it was too early to say what might arise from the meeting or what would be made public. It will be the first time he has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. Petition for Trump 'pardon' In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on president-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" -- an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 16,500 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Meanwhile Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. The legal grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Republican Trump elected. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states and their electoral processes. WikiLeaks released medical records in September claiming Assange's mental health was at risk if he remained any longer in the embassy. LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces questioning by prosecutors Monday at the Ecuadoran embassy in London in a twist in the long-running legal battle over a rape allegation against him. An Ecuadoran prosecutor will quiz the founder of the secret-spilling website at the red-brick building where he has been holed up for more than four years, with Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police inspector also attending, officials said. The 45-year-old Australian sought refuge in the central London embassy in June 2012 after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him, over allegations of rape and sexual assault filed by two women who met Assange during a 2010 trip to Sweden. He denied the claims, saying they were politically motivated, and insisting his sexual encounters with the two women were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden for questioning, fearing he would be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Swedish prosecutors dropped the sexual assault probe last year after the five-year statute of limitations expired. But they still want to question him about the 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations. A Swedish official source said the questioning was expected to begin at around 1000 GMT. The investigators intend to take a DNA sample, subject to his agreement. "It's planned to last a few days," Assange's lawyer Per Samuelsson told AFP, adding that it was too early to say what might arise from the meeting or what would be made public. It will be the first time he has been interviewed over the matter since initial questioning by Swedish police at the time of the allegation. Assange, speaking through his lawyer, has said he welcomes the "chance to clear his name" and hopes the investigation will subsequently close. In May, a Swedish court reaffirmed the arrest order, rejecting the finding of a UN working group that his confinement in the Ecuadoran embassy amounted to arbitrary detention. Petition for Trump 'pardon' In the days since the US election, supporters have launched a petition calling on president-elect Donald Trump to pardon Assange by "absolving him of any crimes alleged against him" -- an apparent reference to the military leaks. The petition on the change.org website, which has gathered more than 16,500 signatures, hails Assange as a "hero" for exposing the "corruption of those who presume to rule us". Meanwhile Assange's lawyer said he had made "repeated requests" for an interview with police to address the rape claim, though Ecuadoran prosecutors say a hearing scheduled for October was postponed at the Australian's request. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name," Samuelsson told AFP. The legal grilling comes after WikiLeaks returned to the spotlight with the leak of tens of thousands of emails from the US Democratic Party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange defended the publication, denying links with Russia and claims that his website was trying to influence the US vote which saw Republican Trump elected. Tensions with his Ecuadoran hosts have been growing, with the leaks prompting the embassy to cut Assange's internet access, citing respect for "non-intervention" in the affairs of other states and their electoral processes. WikiLeaks released medical records in September claiming Assange's mental health was at risk if he remained any longer in the embassy. China expressed great concerns over the European Union's protectionist measures against Chinese steel products on Saturday, a sign of growing impatience with EU disputes on trade measures and China's market economy status at the WTO, experts said. The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Saturday said China has expressed great concern and worries over the protectionist tendency the EU has showed in the steel sector. "The EU has ignored Chinese companies' positive cooperation and pleas, and continues to use the unfair, unreasonable 'surrogate country' [price and cost reference mechanism] to impose higher tariffs [on Chinese products] and seriously harm Chinese companies' interests," the ministry said in a statement releasing on its official website on Saturday. MOFCOM urged the EU to strictly follow relevant World Trade Organization rules, avoid abusing remedy measures and protect the rights of Chinese companies. The statement came on the heels of a decision from the European Commission (EC), the governing body of the EU on Saturday, announcing temporary anti-dumping measures against seamless steel products from China for six months. This is the latest move the EU has taken against Chinese steel products, amid growing disputes between the world's two largest steel producers which stretch back to 2006, when the global market suffered from a supply glut, according to Wang Guoqing, research director at the Beijing Lange Steel Information Research Center. Wang noted that about a dozen disputes between China and the EU over steel have happened since 2006. "Steel industries in the EU feel that steel imports from China have hurt their businesses and they claim that China is dumping its steel capacity at a price much lower than the market prices. But it is wrong and unfair for them to blame China for their own problems," Wang told the Global Times on Sunday. She pointed out that the EU's claim is based on the "surrogate country" mechanism, under which the price and costs of Chinese steel products are compared to a third-party country. "That is unfair because Chinese companies can control cost and price much more effectively than foreign ones because of the scale and progress the industry have achieved, not because they receive subsidies from the government," Wang said. Stronger tone Experts noted that China has stepped up its opposition against the EU's moves to challenge China not only in the steel industry but on the larger issue of whether the latter is trying to deny China "market economy status" at the WTO and keep the "surrogate country" mechanism. On Friday, both MOFCOM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced strong opposition to a proposal from the EC to scrap a list of "non-market economies," but leave open the option to use the "surrogate country" mechanism in future anti-dumping cases if "market distortion" was found in a third country. The two ministries pointed out that the EU's proposal is trying to keep the "surrogate country" mechanism in place with a new regime but not eliminate it at the basics. They urged the EU to execute its obligations under the Article 15 of China's accession to the WTO and eliminate the mechanism. "I must stress that China will also maintain its right to take all necessary measures to firmly protect its legal interests," Shen Danyang, a spokesperson for MOFCOM told a briefing on Friday. Concrete actions Experts also said the EU's "unfair" protectionist measures against Chinese products have caused "great" loss for companies and both the government and companies should focus on taking actions to protect their interests. Not just words, but necessary concrete actions should be carried out if the EU and others continue to treat China unfairly, according to He Weiwen, an executive council member at the China Society for the WTO. "Addressing the issue through dialogues would be ideal, but if that doesn't work, we must take actions to firmly defend out rights and interests," He told the Global Times on Sunday. "They must understand that China has and will strictly comply with WTO rules, and they also must understand China will variously defend itself," He said. One action China could take is to start a complaint with the WTO for unfair treatment toward Chinese companies, according to He. "This might take some time, but it is the most reasonable one and there is a high possibility the WTO will rule for China if we provide sufficient evidence." Other actions include imposing "some kind of restrictions" on imports from the EU and "temporarily halting" some trade investment cooperation projects with the EU, experts also noted without further elaborating. Princess Marie of Denmark visited Oster Farimagsgades school in Copenhagen and met with inventor students who participate in the local final of Edison Inventor Competition Project held by Entrepreneurship Foundation (Fonden for Entreprenorskab) for 6th and 7th classes. That Project is a countrywide inventor contest for students of 6th and 7th classes and the theme of 2016 is "Better and safer traffic". ( VIDEO ) Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Princess Mary got married at Copenhagen Cathedral on May 14, 2004. Today is November 14, 2016 and 12 1/2 years have passed since then. The copper wedding anniversary (kobberbryllup) of the Crown Prince Couple is today. Danish Royal Palace published a series of photos on the occasion of that anniversary. For photos: Kongehuset Portsmouth boy bullied for long hair has plan to donate it It makes me feel so proud of him, his generous spirit. He cares about others more than he cares about himself sometimes." Chinese study estimates up to 10 million artifacts from China scattered worldwide Beijing has stepped up efforts to stop the sale of illegally obtained Chinese cultural relics by auction houses, collectors and museums. In the latest case, Yokohama International Auction, in Japan, was informed by China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage on Oct 21 that several Tang Dynasty (618-907) frescoes and manuscripts of Buddhist sutras about to go under the hammer were stolen from China in the past century. The auction house, founded by a Japanese citizen with Chinese ancestry, canceled the sale. The move was a step in the right directionno profit was madebut their return to the unidentified client shows stronger international rules are needed. A new Chinese regulation, released a day earlier, bans the auction of stolen, smuggled or looted relics. It is aimed especially at keeping such relics in China, but it also can be cited as a guideline when dealing with other countries and regions. Worldwide, many guidelines also have been issued to push collectors to pay more attention to the origin of cultural relics. "The legal circumstances are getting better," according to Huo Zhengxin, a professor of international law at China University of Political Science and Law. A study by UNESCO shows there are at least 1.64 million sets of Chinese cultural relics scattered across 200 museums in other countries and regions. The China Cultural Relics Academy, an academic organization, estimates the number would be 10 million if private collections were counted. Many such treasures were looted during wars and other unrest in China from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. Large-scale theft occurred in the 1990s because of the boom in international market demand. Reporter/Columnist Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth). Reporter Tim Mitchell is a reporter at The News-Gazette. His email is tmitchel@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@mitchell6). The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is being launched today (Monday 14th Nov) at the COP22 climate talks taking place in Morocco. An international, multi-disciplinary research initiative, it brings together leading experts to track and analyse the impacts of climate change on public health. The Lancet Countdown will report annually in The Lancet. With input from 48 leading experts from across the world, some 16 institutions are academic partners of the initiative, including University College London, Tsinghua University and the Centre for Climate & Security among others. The Lancet Countdown is engaged in a special collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to promote synergies, collaborate on data sources, and ensure strong engagement with Ministries of Health. With the aim of ensuring the case for action on health and climate change is more widely evidenced and understood, the Lancet Countdown will inform decision-making and drive an accelerated policy response to climate change. It will complement other initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its achievements for climate science. The health impacts of climate change are already being felt and effecting some of the most vulnerable on our planet. No one is immune or out of reach. Climate action, spearheaded by governments and supported by business, cities, investors and citizens - including health care professionals - goes hand-in-hand with delivering a better quality of life in its own right and as a key pillar of the Sustainable Development Goals." Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The interrelation of climate change and public health is becoming increasingly clear. The Lancet Countdown builds on the findings of the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which concluded that climate change posed both a "potentially catastrophic risk to human health", while conversely being "the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century" if the right steps are taken. Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet said: "One challenge of the ongoing global climate crisis is to convey the urgency of our collective predicament and the need for decisive action. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change is being launched today to amass the evidence needed to hold policy makers accountable for their promises and commitments. The research community can make an important contribution to heightening political awareness and accelerating progress to a healthier, low-carbon world. These are the goals of our Countdown on Health and Climate Change." A broader evidence base on interrelated health and climate change trends will notably help demonstrate clear co-benefits of action. An estimated 18000 people die every day due to air pollution exposure, making it the world's largest single environmental health risk. The World Bank in turn estimates it costs the global economy US$225 billion a year in related lost labour income. CO 2 and other green house gasses from road transport and fossil fuel energy generation responsible for the bulk of air pollution in the first place, are also a leading cause of climate change. Health and economic co-benefits from addressing climate change - be it mitigation or adaptation - only add to the impetus for action, given that changes to climate take longer to be felt. The Lancet Countdown is partnering with the Wellcome Trust, which is committed to stimulating research on health and climate change. The Paris Agreement is a step in the right direction, but we must build on this momentum. The Lancet Countdown is an important opportunity to ensure that evidence gets to those audiences that can bring about the changes in policy and practice that we need to protect the health of both humans and the planet." Dr Sarah Molton, lead for 'Our Planet, Our Health' at Wellcome. The Lancet Countdown comes at a crucial time for international cooperation and national action on climate change, following ratification of the Paris Agreement and the announcement of the 2030 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As part of this transition, healthcare professionals, governments and countries will have to shift from an understanding of climate change solely as a threat, to one which embraces the response to climate change as an opportunity for human health and wellbeing. The Lancet Countdown is aligned with the SGD process in working to ensure the health challenge posed by climate change is resolved by 2030. Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Head of the Health and Climate Change team at the World Health Organization, said: "The Paris Agreement was a landmark achievement - the challenge now is to meet the targets agreed by world leaders. The WHO is working directly with countries to provide evidence of the specific health risks that each of them faces, and the health opportunities of a resilient, low carbon future - as well as the support that they need to respond to this defining health issue of our time." "The WHO is working with The Lancet Countdown to track progress, and to mobilize support for more ambitious action. When it comes to climate change, when the world drags its feet, the health of our patients all around the globe suffer." The relationship between health and climate change, will be addressed by The Lancet Countdown through in-depth analysis across relevant themes in the context of global, regional, national, and city level trends. The scope of the research, analysis and basis for the creation of the initiative is outlined in detail in an accompanying paper published today in The Lancet. This provides more detail on the principle themes the Lancet Countdown will cover, namely: the health impacts of climate change; health resilience and adaptation; the health co-benefits of mitigation; finance and economics; and political and broader engagement. Academics and policy experts are invited to join the Lancet Countdown, as it undertakes a three month public consultation process on the scope and focus of the initiative, with events planned in London, Marrakech, Lima, Kampala, Beijing and San Francisco. Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit to Ecuador, the first visit to the Latin American country by a Chinese head of state, is of milestone significance and will lift bilateral relations to a new high, Chinese ambassador to Ecuador Wang Yulin said in an article published in the Peoples Daily on Friday before Xi kicked off his tour. The following is the translation of the article: Ecuador is a South American country of great importance. It covers 256,000 square kilometers and has a population of 16 million. With rich natural resources, great biodiversity and abundant agricultural products, the time-honored country is a major producer and exporter of bananas, cocoa, prawns and flowers. Though China and Ecuador are far away from each other, the friendship between the two people goes back a long time. Since the two nations established diplomatic ties in 1980, they have enhanced mutual political trust, deepened pragmatic cooperation in trade and finance, intensified cultural exchanges and maintained close coordination in international and regional affairs. I had a chance to visit Ecuador in 1997, during when I was touched by the friendship shown to China and the Chinese people from this South American country far away on the other side of the Pacific. As the 13th Chinese ambassador to Ecuador, I am honored to witness the fruitful results of this bilateral strategic partnership. As bilateral ties now march toward multidimensional and wide-ranging development, China and Ecuador have become sincere and trusting friends with mutually beneficial cooperation, and their ties are now better than ever. With increasing exchanges at all levels, both nations have also witnessed a deepening political trust. Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa completed a successful state visit to China in January, 2015, during which, the two heads of state announced the elevation of bilateral ties to a strategic partnership. At the same time, the two countries strengthened political, military, congressional and local exchanges on all fronts. The pragmatic cooperation between China and Ecuador in trade and finance has yielded great success. China is now the third biggest trade partner for Ecuador, while Ecuador is Chinas important energy cooperation partner in Latin America, a major destination for Chinese investment and financing as well as a market for contract work. Bilateral trade volume reached $3.8 billion in 2015 and products including bananas, prawns and flowers exported from Ecuador are favored by Chinese consumers. Over 90 Chinese enterprises have landed in Ecuador. A series of strategic projects, such as ECU 911,a nationwide system for emergency responses, and Coca Codo Sinclair, a hydropower station built by Chinese enterprises, have been put into use one after another. The hydropower station is the biggest in Ecuador. These projects, brought about through bilateral pragmatic cooperation, have yielded tangible benefits to both countries. Both countries have also increased their cultural exchanges and deepened person-to-person friendships. People in Ecuador admire the glorious Chinese history and profound Chinese civilization. Meanwhile, the beautiful natural views and exuberant local culture also draws more and more Chinese citizens to the wondrous South American nation. Bilateral exchanges in technology, culture and education are showing great momentum. Over 400 students from Ecuador are studying in China. This August, a visa-free agreement formally took effect in both countries, which will allow more convenient exchanges. After a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit the west coast of Ecuador on April 16, causing heavy casualties and property loss, the Chinese government reached out to the victims with compassion and sympathy. Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his condolences to his Ecuadoran counterpart Rafael Correa and the Chinese government and Red Cross Society of China offered monetary aid to Ecuador and the local Red Cross. In addition to these efforts, humanitarian relief materials were provided by the Chinese government. Chinese enterprises and Chinese citizens in Ecuador also lent a helpful hand in the disaster relief. Despite the long distance, many Chinese rescue teams went to the disaster-stricken areas to send their help. A friend in need is a friend indeed. In Ecuadors most difficult times, Chinas actions not only speak volumes for the bilateral strategic partnership and brotherly relationship, but also impress upon the world its responsibility. Xis upcoming state visit to Ecuador will be the first made by a Chinese head of state. With monumental meanings, it will surely bring bilateral ties to a new level. I believe that with concerted efforts on both sides, the China-Ecuador strategic partnership will make greater developments and will bring benefits to both countries and their people. In the past, insoles for patients with diabetes were hand-made by orthopedic shoemakers. In the future, these specialist shoemakers will be able to produce insoles more cost-effectively thanks to new software and the use of 3D printers. This approach means the mechanical properties of each insole can be assessed scientifically and more effectively. Is your shoe too tight? Normally you would just shift your weight to take the pressure off the area that is sore. In people with diabetes, however, the nerve endings in the foot often become atrophied, and those affected cannot feel the soreness. This can give rise to pressure points and eventually wounds that heal badly. A remedy, or at least some relief, is promised by insoles that are very soft in the area of the injury, and that are custom-made by orthopedic shoemakers in a variety of materials. Up until now, however, it has not really been possible to assess the success of insoles scientifically - each insole is a one-off item, after all. So it is in the interests of health insurances companies to have the process surrounding insoles digitalized to allow the collection of scientific data on them. Digitalizing the manufacture of insoles It will soon be possible to digitalize the manufacture of insoles. LAUF, a German acronym for "laser-assisted construction of customized footwear", refers to a project funded by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institutes for Mechanics of Materials IWM and for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology UMSICHT are collaborating with industry partners on the process of digitalization. "Digital foot mapping is already common practice. As part of this project, we have now also completely digitalized the insole production process," says IWM scientist Dr. Tobias Ziegler. "Using newly developed software, the orthopedic shoemaker can design an insole for an individual patient and can print out the result on a 3D printer." This has a number of immediate advantages: On the one hand, the mechanical properties of each insole become readily apparent, which is something health insurance companies want. On the other, insoles can be produced at greatly reduced cost. In two or so years, this software might be available to orthopedic technicians through IETEC, a member of the project. Covestro and Lehmann&Voss&Co laid the foundations for the 3D printing of insoles some years ago. These industry partners were the first to develop a soft material for 3D printing in the form of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Working together with UMSICHT experts, they are now developing other types of TPU that are expected to be even more suitable for use in orthopedic insoles. Accurate adjustment of insole rigidity IWM scientists have meanwhile been optimizing the three-dimensional structures that are required of TPU when it is used for insoles. How soft or rigid insoles are depends not just on the material itself, but also on how it is shaped. "First we think about structures - straight rods, crooked arms, or triangles, for instance - then we produce a computer model of them, key in the data for a particular material, and simulate how rigid the result is under pressure," Ziegler explains. "Where does an insole need to be soft, or more rigid? By altering the structure type, we can precisely determine the rigidity of the insole." The IWM team uses application-oriented load simulations to resolve which structures are needed where to achieve the desired properties. They test the material's load-bearing strength and its expected lifespan. "We simulate the entire production process, too, in order to identify where there is potential for optimization," Ziegler explains. He also uses this approach in relation to other materials and structures for 3D printing. Data relating to different insoles is next sent to Fraunhofer IWM's industrial partners rpm GmbH and Sintermask. Their 3D printers print them by means of selective laser sintering, an additive manufacturing technique. Another partner, Explius, is responsible for processing the 3D data. The job of the team at Fraunhofer UMSICHT is to optimize the printing process. Once an insole has been printed, it goes back to Fraunhofer IWM, where it is tested to the point of failure using tensile, abrasion, and bending tests. The first insole prototypes have already been produced in this way. Children hospitalized for medical or surgical procedures who have an existing mental health condition stay in the hospital longer than children without these conditions. Pediatric researchers who analyzed a national database recommend that health care policymakers and hospital administrators improve systems to more efficiently provide mental health care to hospitalized children. The research, published online Nov. 11 in Pediatrics, is the first study to show how comorbid mental health conditions, such as anxiety, ADHD and depression, can impact a child's care in the hospital. "Most hospitalized children and their families are eager to go home as soon as they can - extra days in the hospital are missed days at school for kids, missed days at work for parents and a disruption to family routines," said lead author Stephanie Doupnik, MD, a researcher in PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Unfortunately, we're seeing that mental health conditions add a layer of complexity to hospital care that causes kids with mental health conditions to stay in the hospital longer and use additional resources." Investigating 670,000 hospitalizations in the 2012 Kids' Inpatient Database, the study team found that existing mental health conditions were present in one in seven medical and surgical hospitalizations of children aged 3 to 20. For nine types of surgical procedures - including appendectomy, knee procedures and gall bladder removal - having one mental health condition increased 61 percent of children's hospital stays by one day. In this same population, having two or more mental health conditions added one day to every child's stay. For nine types of medical hospitalizations - such as chemotherapy, headache and diabetes - having one mental health condition added an extra day in the hospital for 28 percent of children. Furthermore, having two more mental health conditions added a day to 50 percent of these children's hospital stays. These increases totaled nearly 32,000 additional hospital days nationwide in 2012, costing an additional $90 million. The study indicated certain populations that may require more attention than others. Adolescents had more than twice as many additional hospital days associated with an existing mental health condition compared to 3- to 12-year-old children. Additionally, children hospitalized for medical reasons commonly had depression and anxiety disorders, which added days to their hospital stay, and children hospitalized for surgical procedures commonly experienced substance abuse and anxiety disorders, which lengthened their time in the hospital. According to the study's authors, potential explanations for the extended hospital stays include a lower ability to cope with pain and other symptoms of acute illness, lower adherence to treatment plans and a lack of care coordination outside of the hospital. "My patients often tell me how difficult it is to get mental health care outside of the hospital, and they are grateful when clinicians can provide mental health care services in the hospital or help them get treatment after they go home," said Dr. Doupnik. "In order to ensure mental health conditions aren't adding unnecessary days to children's hospital stays that also use additional hospital resources, we need systems of care that provide efficient and convenient access to mental health clinicians for children who need mental health treatments." "There is no question that we can do a better job addressing the mental health needs of these hospitalized children," said Jay Berry, MD, MPH, pediatrician and hospitalist with the Complex Care Service at Boston Children's Hospital, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the study. "I look forward to the action that will be taken because of Dr. Doupnik's findings." Congenital heart disease (CHD), a group of abnormalities in the heart that develop before birth - including holes in the heart, leaky or narrow valves, and incomplete or missing parts - affects nearly one percent of all babies born in the United States each year - upwards of 40,000 infants. Early in their lives these children often undergo multiple cardiovascular surgeries to repair their hearts, and have to be cared for by a cardiologist for the rest of their lives. In recent years treatments for these defects have saved the lives of thousands of children who once died in childhood. As more women with CHD survive into their childbearing years, new challenges have arisen: doctors must now assess their risk for pregnancy-related complications and care for those issues throughout the pregnancy. New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reveals that women with CHD who are deemed high risk by conventional measures are more likely to have safe, healthy pregnancies than current risk-assessments suggest. Their findings will be presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2016. "Our findings are extremely promising for women with CHD who are entering their childrearing years, as we now know there is a better chance of a healthy, low-risk pregnancy," said the study's lead author, Yuli Kim, MD, director of the Philadelphia Adult Congenital Heart Center, a joint program between Penn Medicine and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and an assistant professor of Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "With the tools currently used to evaluate risk, such as Pregnancy and Congenital Heart Disease (ZAHARA) and Cardiac Disease in Pregnancy (CARPREG) risk scores, clinicians have actually been over estimating the risk of complication for some of these women, which could be discouraging when making the decision to have children." The researchers examined 186 women over 18 with CHD who had given birth between 1998 and 2014, and applied risk scores from CARPREG and ZAHARA, and assigned modified WHO criteria to each patient. Cardiac events, such as arrhythmia, heart failure, stroke, heart attack, cardiac arrest, or cardiac death, were assessed for up to six months after birth. There were 31 cardiac events - representing 17 percent of all pregnancies - but none of the women died. With the CARPREG model, the estimated risk versus observed adverse events differed greatly from 75 to 25 percent, and with ZAHARA, estimated risk was 70 percent and observed events were 38 percent. The CARPREG study, a large prospective study across 13 centers in Canada, evaluated 599 pregnancies that ended in a live birth, to determine and validate a risk score. One point was given to each of the five identified risk factors - including prior episodes of heart failure, stroke before pregnancy, or arrhythmias - and a cardiac event rate was calculated according to the total number accumulated. The other tool currently used, ZAHARA, comes from multicenter registry in the Netherlands and Belgium, which examined 1302 pregnancies in 714 women, which also ended in live birth. Eight risk factors were identified to predict cardiac complications during pregnancy, and ZAHARA assigned points from zero to 13 to each factor with a higher total equating to a higher risk of cardiac complication. Conversely, the modified WHO criteria assigned a risk score to the patient from one to four, based on the mother's level of underlying CHD, history of repair and clinical status. "Risk assessment tools are very beneficial on a global scale, but the best way to evaluate patients and determine potential risk is to evaluate each patient on an individual level," Kim said. "The results from this study will certainly be helpful in reassuring woman with CHD that most patients in similar situations have successful pregnancy, especially if they are managed in a high-risk clinic." She noted that additional research is needed in order to better identify higher risk patients, but that this data will be helpful in the clinical management of CHD patients who are navigating their pregnancy, allowing these women to follow a more standard care plan with their cardiologist and OB/GYN. New Delhi: Stocks, bonds and currency markets in the country were closed on Monday on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti amid chaos over currency ban. Trading will resume on Tuesday. The Nifty fell 2.69 percent to end at 8,296.30, while the Sensex fell 2.54 percent to 26,818.82 on Friday. The rupee fell to 67.25/26 from its previous close of 66.6250/66.6350, while the benchmark 10-year bond yield rose 6 basis points to 6.72 percent. Guru Nanak Jayanti marks the birth of 1st Sikh guru and its founder, Guru Nanak Devji, back in 1469 and the festival is celebrated every year on a full moon day in the month of Kartik (November). The Sikh community in the country came together for the 547th birthday celebrations of the first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak Devji on November 14. New Delhi: Several banks in the country received 3 trillion rupees of 500-and 1,000-rupee notes over the last four days, the Finance Ministry said on Sunday, after the Narendra Modi-led NDA government announced it would withdraw such bills to crack down on corruption. The government also relaxed cash withdrawal limits including removing a per-day cap of 10,000 rupees, increasing the weekly limit to 24,000 rupees from 20,000 and allowed exchange of bills over the counter at banks to reach 4,500 rupees instead of 4,000. From automated teller machines, individuals will now be able to take out up to 2,500 rupees of cash per day instead of 2,000 rupees per day, the ministry said in a statement. These relaxations came as public anger increased due to a lack of access to accounts, as well as over the non-functioning of ATMs not yet reconfigured for the new series of smaller 2,000-rupee bills. Itanagar: Shocked by the murder of Dainik Bhaskar journalist Dharmendra Kumar Singh by unidentified assailants at Amra in Bihar on Saturday, the state press fraternity condemned the incident and urged the Nitish Kumar government to bring justice to the aggrieved family. Singh was gunned down by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants on Saturday morning, making it the second murder of a journalist in the state in the past six months. In a joint statement issued today, the Arunachal Press Club (APC), Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ) and Arunachal Electronic Media Association (AEMA) expressed deep shock at the killing of the journalist who took on powerful local mafia on many occasions through his work. The fraternity termed the incident as cowardice and an attempt to muzzle freedom of speech. It urged the Bihar government to come up with a mechanism to protect scribes in the state so that crusaders of freedom of speech should not be cowed down. "Murder of journalist reflects the law and order situation of a state, it is the duty of the government of Bihar to protect the press fraternity and ensure safety of all scribes in the state," the press bodies stated in a condemnation statement. It also said that perpetrators should be brought to justice and be awarded exemplary punishment, so that it sends message across the board. Expressing solidarity with media fraternity in Bihar as well as the aggrieved family, APC, APUWJ and AEMA stated that courageous and fierce writings of Singh will embolden and inspired working journalists across the India. There is nothing that makes me more proud than working for my country and to make sure it is freed of the corrupt and black money. My mother compares (me) to a soldier, he said with a smile, as people waiting in a long queue shouted at him to refill the ATM. We usually come during odd hours to refill the machines. But now with this excess pressure, we often end up making multiple trips in a single day and the customers often know when we are coming. The queue is already very long by the time we reach, and hence we are hounded, he said. They had been directed to carry an extra pair of clothes, toothbrush to office and its been five days they are working from office and many of them havent even taken a bath for five days. There are only 40,000 people working but there have been numerous instances when they have been abused and roughed up by customers. People need to be patient, he said. With patience thinning out and queues getting longer, people in the city have pinned their hopes of getting some currency on the Cash gaadi (Cash refilling van).Men running out of these vehicles to make way through anxious crowds and refill Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) could be a common sight for many more days as the country grapples with demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1000 notes.In India, most of the banks have outsourced the job of refilling and maintaining ATMs.Nitin Mohan, an engineering graduate from Thiruvananthapuram, was breathless when News18 caught him while he was offloading a cash vault from a van near Lajpat Nagar. He has been working almost 19 hours a day and often uses public baths and washrooms to avoid travelling back home.President of the Cash Logistics Association of India, Rituraj Sinha, told News18 that when this announcement of demonetisation was made on November 9th in a joint address to the workers who replenish ATMs. He said he told them that neither financial incentive nor bonus would be provided for the work but it should be treated as a national duty.At another area near Shahpur Jat, there was palpable anger in the growing crowd next to a closed ATM. The cash van was supposed to reach at 7 pm, we are standing here since 5 pm, said a disgruntled man standing to withdraw some cash.But the mood changed when the public saw a cash van approaching. Within 30 minutes, the machine was loaded and got back to work tending cash. Mehboob Alam, who refilled the machine, did not complain. Yes for the past couple of days, I have not had dinner or lunch properly, may be some tea or biscuits, but its the same case everywhere, he said.Most of the personnel involved in this operation that News18 spoke to earn a meagre Rs 6,000 to 8,000 a month, with some companies making an exception by paying their phone bills. ATMs which were loaded with Rs 4 lakhs before November 9 used to need refilling after a couple of days as they we were used sparingly. But now, they run out of cash within a few hours.ATM personnel were roughed and abused in Noidas Sector 18 and Delhis Akshardham.Jatinder Singh, a personnel working to refill the State Bank of India ATM near Akshardham said that people got information from the bank about the time they will arrive which added to the chaos.Singh added that they still dont mind this extra pressure as it was a service to the nation.Sinha said its time people understand how these 40,000 ATM personnel are killing themselves to help ease the situation.According to Sinha, many of the workers have families either starving or borrowing money from neighbours. New Delhi: A retired Judge of the Delhi High Court and a former Law Commission member has called the All India Judicial Services an impossible idea, saying the concept has problems deeper than the local language barrier as being projected from various state and district courts of India. This comes at a time when Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur, is preparing to meet chief justices of all the high courts to convince them to adopt the idea. Speaking to News18, Justice (retd) Usha Mehra said that most of the criticism against the common exam for the services was how the local language will impact penning down judgments, but the problem could be graver leading to vitiating the entire process of justice mechanism. After such an exam, a judge belonging to Haryana may be deputed to a district court in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. Problem starts with appreciation of the witness statement. A native will never know English, and will speak in his own language, how the judge will cope with such a situation (sic), Justice Mehra said. The chief justices' conferences in 1961, 1963 and 1965 proposed the creation of an AIJS, but the proposal had to be shelved after some states and HCs opposed it. But this idea was again proposed before Justice PN Bhagwati in 1984. Justice Bhagwati had also allowed this idea to move ahead, but again the states and High Courts opposed this move, and it had to be dropped off, Mehra said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the golden jubilee celebrations of Delhi High Court mooted and revived the shelved plan and now the CJI plans to convince the high court chief justices to allow the exam to see the light of the day. There have been oppositions also because many High Courts hold their exams on similar days, thereby depriving many from an opportunity to appear at multiple places, but the AIJS will seek to address this problem as well. But Justice Mehra believes this problem could even lead to an innocent be charged of a serious crime. The judges will start depending on the court masters for translations and if out of prejudice or any other issue, the translation is wrong; an accused can even be wrongly sentenced or charged. Is there any mechanism to address such a situation? The problem cannot be addressed with just an exam, Mehra said. She headed the Justice Mehra commission while submitting its report in 2013 on the Nirbhaya gang rape case. The governments idea of creating AIJS derives validity from the constitutional amendment which was carried out in 1977 to Article 312 which provided for the creation of such a body. But Mehra told News18 that treating AIJS on par with IAS officers as in the article was not possible. IAS officers can always learn the language or adjust through secretaries, but judiciary has a deeper role to play which involves the appreciation of statements of witnesses by the judges, and this often determines what sentences to deliver, she said. She also said that the time lapse government was trying to address by bringing in this system would eventually backfire. In Chennai, up to district judge level, it is compulsory to write a judgment in Tamil. Now one may argue that local languages itself should be scrapped from creating hindrances and English be uniformly applied, but judgments are not penned on its own, it involves appreciation of facts, circumstances and evidences, and all of them are mostly in the local language, terminologies or references. The time lapse we are trying to address with such an exam will prove futile, because here the pendency will further increase, with each case taking a lot of time to be decided, she said. Jerusalem: Terming India as a "close friend", Israel President Reuven Rivlin on Monday arrived in Mumbai on a six-day visit to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries that he said were places of "innovation and inspiration". Rivlin, who arrived with a large delegation of businessmen and academics, will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh, hold meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajand visit several sites of cooperation and joint projects between the two countries. He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and lay wreaths on the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi and at the memorial for Indian soldiers who fell in the WWI in combat in Israel and the Middle East. Six Jews had been killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks which left more than 166 dead. Rivlin, accompanied on the trip by his wife, will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common," Rivlin said just before leaving for New Delhi yesterday. "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes Presidents and senior representatives of 13 Israeli academic institutions who are expected to sign 15 separate agreements between Israeli and Indian educational institutions. "The issue of international cooperation in higher education and the expansion of academic ties between Israel and the world - in particular with India - is one of the central aims of the multi-year plan for higher education in Israel," said Yaffa Zilbershats, head the Council for Higher Education's budget committee. The expansion of academic ties would include student exchanges, joint research projects and the founding of inter-institutional fora to promote academic cooperation between Israeli and India universities and colleges, he noted. Rivlin, in the past, has complimented theIndianstudents in Israel, saying "they are among the best" of the lot. "India represents a great challenge for Israeli manufacturers and this delegation will afford the opportunity to strengthen cooperation and partnership with their Indian counterparts," said Shraga Brosh, President of Manufacturers Association of Israel, who is heading the business delegation. "I have no doubt that this will be a fruitful visit and forge long-lasting economic partnerships which will strengthen and help grow the bilateral trade between the countries", Brosh said. Speculation is rife that Rivlin's visit would pave the way for Modi's visit to Jerusalem, the first by an Indian Prime Minister and is likely to take place next year when the two countries celebrate 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Israel has consistently remained the second largest supplier of defence equipment to India for many years and its "timely" supply of Indian requirements during the Kargil War has earned it the tag of a 'reliable' partner. The Indo-Israel bilateral trade has also registered a remarkable growth reaching a figure of almost USD 5 billion starting from a humble USD 200 million in 1992. Ghazipur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday reiterated the benefits of the demonetisation, attacked Congress and the opposition and pleaded with people to temporarily bear with the pain of cash shortage. Here are the key takeways. On taking on strong interests - Those against me are strong people. But, I am not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth and integrity - Have you seen people throwing their notes in the Ganga? You sinners, your sins will not be washed even by the Ganga Attacking Congress and the Opposition - Congress also withdrew the 25 paisa coin without asking anyone. They did things at their stature, I did something of my stature -You [Congress] imposed emergency and turned the country into an open prison for 19 months - Some parties are facing major problem, a big worry on their minds right now is what to do On the Inconvenience Faced by people, farmers -It is a big task to introduce new notes. I have sought 50 days and all these processes will be completed by December 30. It will take some time and hardship - Pained by the inconvenience faced by common people - The pressure on farmers will be reduced significantly with this scheme - We have introduced a comprehensive crop insurance scheme for farmers On Rationale for Demonetisation - Enemy is flooding India with counterfeit notes. We need to put an end to this -Fake money from across the border is funding Naxalites and terrorists Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the 24th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC Economic Leaders' Summit in Lima, Peru from November 19 to 20. China has been an active participant and contributor, playing a significant role in promoting the construction of the family Asia-Pacific. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly elaborated his views on regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and pointed out the direction for APEC's development and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region. 1. To create favorable conditions for the eventual economic integration in the Asia Pacific As the top-level, broadest and most influential economic cooperation organization in the Asia Pacific, APEC should play a leading and coordinating role in promoting information sharing, transparency and openness among the various free trade arrangements so that they could learn from one another, promoting, reinforcing, and complementing one another to create favorable conditions for the eventual economic integration in the Asia Pacific. Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a joint written interview to media from Indonesia and Malaysia before his state visits to these two countries, and attendance to the APEC leaders' meeting in October 2013. 2. Common development, open development, innovation-driven development and interconnected growth "Boundless is the ocean where we sail with the wind." Like a vast ocean, the Asia Pacific offers enough sailing space for us to make progress together. Each and every APEC member has a stake in the future development of the Asia Pacific. First, an Asia-Pacific region that seeks common development. Second, an Asia-Pacific region that stays committed to open development. Third, an Asia-Pacific region that promotes innovation-driven development. Fourth, an Asia-Pacific region that pursues interconnected growth. On Oct. 7, 2013, President Xi Jinping attended the APEC CEO Summit in Bali, Indonesia, and delivered an important speech "Deepen Reform and Opening up to Build a Better Asia-Pacific", 3. We should strengthen the sense of community of common destiny The Asia-Pacific economies are interdependent on each other, with shared interests and common destiny. The success or failure of one may ultimately lead to success or failure of all. In this chain of dynamic interactions, one economy's development will have a knock-on effect on other economies. We should strengthen the sense of community of common destiny, contribute to other's development with that of one's own, tap fully into our respective strengths through coordination and interconnection, pass on positive energy and achieve sound interactions and coordinated development among all economies. On Oct. 7, 2013, President Xi Jinping attended the APEC CEO Summit in Bali, Indonesia, and delivered an important speech "Deepen Reform and Opening up to Build a Better Asia-Pacific", 4. To create and fulfill an Asia-Pacific dream The development prospect of our region hinges on the decisions and actions we take today. We are duty-bound to create and fulfill an Asia-Pacific dream for our people. This dream is about acting in the spirit of the Asia-Pacific community and out of a sense of shared destinies, following the trend of our times, i.e. peace, development and mutually beneficial cooperation, and jointly working for the prosperity and progress of our region. It is about staying ahead of global development and making greater contribution to the well-being of mankind. It is about having more economic vibrancy, free trade and investment facilitation, better roads, and closer people-to-people exchanges. And it is about ensuring greater security and prosperity for our people and giving our children a better environment to grow, work and live. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the remarks when addressing the APEC CEO Summit in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2014. 5. Only the reformers and innovators will emerge stronger and win Life never favors those who always follow the beaten path and content themselves with the status quo. Instead, life saves opportunities for people who are willing and able to reform and innovate. In this new round of global growth, only the reformers and innovators will emerge stronger and win. We need to be courageous and pioneering, vigorously pursue reform and innovation, actively explore a new path and model that meet our own development needs and look for new growth points and impetus. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the remarks when addressing the APEC CEO Summit in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2014. 6. To draw a blueprint for comprehensive connectivity We need to draw a blueprint for comprehensive connectivity. Connectivity and infrastructure building in the Asia-Pacific is not only a necessity to achieve regional economic integration, but more importantly, it bears on the long-term development of all economies. We should work together to bring about connectivity covering both sides of the Pacific, which includes: hardware connectivity that brings the economies closer and paves the way for an Asia-Pacific connected with each other and the world; software connectivity that enhances alignment and coordination of policies, laws and regulations and creates convenient and efficient supply chains; and human connectivity that promotes people-to-people exchanges and fosters trust and friendship. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the remarks when addressing the APEC CEO Summit in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2014. 7. To build an Asia-Pacific partnership of mutual trust, inclusiveness, cooperation and win-win progress We are all members of the APEC community. It meets the common interests of us all to foster an open economy in the Asia-Pacific featuring innovative development, interconnected growth and converging interests. To achieve this goal, all the economies in the region need to work together to build an Asia-Pacific partnership of mutual trust, inclusiveness, cooperation and win-win progress, and this will inject new energy into the economic development of both the Asia-Pacific and the world. On Nov. 11, 2014, President Xi Jinping delivered an opening remarks at the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing. 8. FTAAP will deliver gains to all economies on both sides of the Pacific We have decided to start and advance the process of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) and approved the Roadmap for APECs Contribution to the Realization of an FTAAP. This is a substantive move we have made towards the FTAAP. It marks the official launch of the FTAAP process and demonstrates the confidence of APEC members in promoting regional economic integration and their commitment. It will take regional economic integration to a new level, deliver gains to all economies on both sides of the Pacific and inject new impetus to the economic growth of the Asia-Pacific and common development of APEC members. On Nov. 11, 2014, President Xi Jinping delivered a Closing Remarks at the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting. 9. The Asia-Pacific remains the locomotive of the world economy The Asia-Pacific is a mirror of the world. Against the backdrop of sluggish recovery, weak demand and divergence in the world economy, Asia-Pacific economies are also confronted with such challenges as shaky foundation for growth, transition from old to new drivers and incomplete structural adjustment. That said, the Asia-Pacific remains the locomotive of the world economy. We should proceed from the reality, look into the future, and make full use of the important platform of APEC to advance win-win cooperation, thus enabling the Asia-Pacific to continue to be the engine of global growth. On Nov. 19, 2015, President Xi Jinping remarked at Session One of the 23rd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Manila, Philippines. 10. To have an ambitious program and aim to fulfill its grand vision We should improve the strategic framework for medium- to long-term cooperation in the Asia-Pacific with the eyes on the future. A great thinker in ancient China said, "Without a clear vision, nothing can be accomplished." Just like a person must have a dream, cooperation must have a direction. Asia-Pacific cooperation should be forward-looking to shape the future. It should have an ambitious program and aim to fulfill its grand vision. We should continue to carry out strategic, forward-looking and progressive cooperation, and identify the goals, measures and timetables of cooperation in priority areas. On Nov. 19, 2015, President Xi Jinping remarked at Session One of the 23rd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Manila, Philippines. Taking the lead, Mamata Banerjee even dialed her fiercest adversaries to build the anti-demonitisation coalition. But CPM clearly has not fallen for the bait. The Bihar chief minister and Sharad Pawar were the two politicians who were quick to back Prime Minister's call on demonitisation. Both have prime ministerial ambitions. And both, after the initial response, have maintained a studied silence. : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's clarion call seeking to forge a larger opposition unity against the midnight demonitisation has evoked tepid response thus far.Ahead of the winter session beginning Wednesday, Banerjee would be in the national capital for a march by opposition MPs to Rashtrapati Bhawan.Had CPM accepted, the party would have whittled its statues to that of the B-Team of the TMC. Instead, party general secretary raked up the "sharada-narada" scams in the TMC bastion to allege what CPM calls TMC-BJP understanding.The Left wants that the issue be first debated in Parliament before knocking on the doors of the Rashtrapati Bhawan.On the other hand, the Grand Old Party(GOP) has its own issues. The Congress and its Vice-President Rahul Gandhi have been unequivocal in their criticism of the implementation of the decision.But the fact of the matter is that GOP remains the principal opposition party in both houses of parliament. Why would it want to concede that space to the chief minister of a province?So quite cleverly Congress on Tuesday skirted all questions on a joint March to President Mukherjee."It's an issue which will be decided by the CPP, the Congress parliamentary party" said party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.Now we come to Nitish Kumar.No politician can question government's intent of fighting black money. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Both Pawar and Nitish are patiently waiting and watching from the sidelines. They have no elections lined up in the near future.But in UP, Mayawati and Mulayam have no such luxury. Elections are round the corner and the two regional parties have to take a stand. Both regional satraps waited for the full 36 hours to gauge the impact of the announcement. And then decided to pounce back.It especially suits Mayawati to make this election a poor vs rich contest. For both SP and BSP, Mamata's proposal has no meaning.Second, why would a Mulayam or a Mayawati concede the leadership position to Mamata at this point in time.That leaves us with Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. He, of course, would be meeting the West Bengal CM on the eve of the beginning of the session.Having already sought an appointment with the President, TMC, however, is trying to get token representation from all non-NDA parties.On Wednesday, floor leaders of these parties in Parliament will meet again to find a middle path. The PM will keep cracking down against rich with unaccounted cash to reward the poor, a top government source told CNN-News18. The massive midnight demonetisation drive that Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced last Thursday will soon be followed up with a heavy crackdown on benami transactions in a series of radical measures the government has lined up to rein in unaccounted money.Top sources in the government told CNN-News18 that the crackdown on benami property will be launched early next year while a massive scheme to empower rural poor facing distress was on the drawing board.The mega rural package the contours of which are not yet clear could be timed politically so that the electorate has a big reason to cheer before the 2019 general elections.Also on the anvil is a grand infrastructure push that the government expects will put the economy back on the fast track.There is no question of succumbing to any political pressure either from allies or from the Opposition, the source said when asked about potential political hurdles.The BJP, CNN-News18 learns, has decided to brazen it out and a decision has been taken to ignore short-term political opposition.Also Read: PM Modi Praises Nehru in Poll-bound UP, Rips Into Congress for Failing Him The shape of things to come on the political front was amply made clear at the BJP parliamentary party meet on Monday when Union Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Venkaiah Naidu said the mood of the nation was in favour of the decision taken by PM Modi to scrap Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes.Naidu said there were enough indications about the impending move to demonetise, like, the constitution of SIT on black money, avoidance of double tax treaty, prohibition of benami transaction bill, et all.Speaking at the meeting, PM Modi had said that the country is with the government. Seven Pakistani soldiers killed by Indian shelling - Pakistan military https://t.co/UFuPbrF2Ii Reuters India (@ReutersIndia) November 14, 2016 At least seven Pakistani soldiers were killed by Indian shelling across the frontier in Kashmir region on Sunday night, Pakistani's military said on Monday.The military media wing, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), said in a statement that the seven soldiers were killed in the Bhimber sector on the "Line of Control" in Kashmir."7 soldiers embraced shahadat at LOC in Bhimber sector in cross fire," extract from ISPR's statement read.Relations between the two nuclear armed neighbors have been strained for several months, while cross-frontier shelling has intensified in recent weeks.Meanwhile, Pakistan summons Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to the Foreign Office.More details awaited. : Starting from real estate business to weddings the Narendra Modi-led NDA government's demonetisation drive has cast its shadow on almost everything in the country.While opposition parties including SP, BSP, Congress and Trinamool Congress attack the government's sudden decision to abolish Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes as it will cause problems to common man, BJP chief Amit Shah terms it a move which will immensely help in tackling corruption.Let's have a look at the side effects of the demonetisation drive:- Demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes were found floating in the Ganga river in Mirzapur (UP). Torn notes of Rs 500, Rs 1000 found near garbage dump in Kolkata. In Guwahatis Rukmini Nagar, torn currency notes were found in drains.- Robbers snatched Rs 1,500 from a labourer in Greater Noida but returned the money after discovering the snatched currency were demonetised notes.- In Delhi, shopkeepers and auto-rickshaw drivers are turning to beggars to exchange demonitised notes.- In Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu) a man used colour photocopy of Rs 2,000 note to buy booze from TASMAC outlet. The outlet employee later said since he hasnt seen Rs 2,000 note before, he accepted it believing it was genuine.- Frustrated by the demonetisation move, kidnappers in Varanasi on Sunday released a 9th standard boy who was abducted on November 8. Parents of the victim thanked PM Modi.- Police have seized unaccounted cash worth Rs 4 crore in now-defunct Rs 1,000 denomination notes from a Maharashtra-based trader at a checkpost in Burhanpur district in Madhya Pradesh.- Vinayka Hospital and Research Centre, a private hospital in Ranchi treated patients for free between 10-13 November.- A sweeper in Pune found a stash of Rs 1,000 notes in garbage and handed it over to the police.- Demonetisation has come down hard on dowry seekers. According to a report a grooms family in Bihar sought Rs 20 lakh dowry from brides parents. Now, demonetisation drive has dissolved bridegroom's family demand.- Violence and stone pelting incidents in Kashmir Valley have come to a dwindling halt post demonitisation.- Demonetisation has become a party pooper in Delhi-NCR as cash-based alcohol sales in bars, pubs and ahatas have been going down since the announcement.- In Tarapur (Gujarat), a 47-year-old farmer died of heart attack while standing in a queue outside a bank to exchange demonetised notes.- A 65-year-old man collapsed after he was made to stand in a long queue to exchange now-defunct notes in Makronia (Madhya Pradesh).- In Govandi (Mumbai), a newborn died allegedly after his parents attempted to deposit now discarded cash in the hospital and the hospital refused to accept the same.- A 96-year-old man died in Udupi (Karnataka) while waiting in a queue at a bank in Ajekar, due to a spike in blood pressure.- An elderly woman, who had gone to a bank to exchange two Rs 1,000 notes, allegedly died of shock outside the bank in Kushinagar district (Uttar Pradesh).- A woman in Telangana committed suicide because she thought all her money had become valueless post demonitsation.- A woman in Meerut reportedly had to mortgage her jewellery as hospital refused to hand over her dead husbands body because of change.- A 69-year-old man died in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar town after suffering a heart attack while standing in a queue to exchange demonetised currency notes outside a bank. Worried over immediate impact of demonetisation, trade and industry bodies have come out with a host of suggestions, including payment of advance salaries in new currency notes and hiring of retired bank officials to deal with the prevailing cash crunch.In a representation submitted to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, PHD Chamber of Commerce suggested payment or part payment of salaries in advance in cash to government, and public and private sector employees with new Rs 500 notes."This suggestion would avoid overflowing queues and hardship being faced by most of the citizens and would also avoid loss of productivity due to employee absenteeism in organisations," the chamber said.Industry body ASSOCHAM suggested that banks should hire retired employees on a massive scale for a speedy currency swap and cash withdrawal in the wake of junking of big denomination currency notes."Just like general elections when staff across different departments is mobilised; different types of staff can be used for helping the over-stretched banks, grappling with the huge task of dealing with the demonetised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 and dispensing the new notes," it said in an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Traders body CAIT said that post demonetisation trade across the country has reduced to 25 per cent in comparison to normal days.It called upon Jaitley for "remedial" measures to intensify adoption of electronic payments beside ensuring smooth flow of currency both t the hands of traders and consumers.Sapan Gupta, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Co said demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes is no doubt a visionary move but its impact is directly proportionate to the manner in which the transition is executed."The government will need to ensure the necessary infrastructure is put in place at the earliest possible to really achieve its targets," he said. San Francisco: A veteran history teacher in the US has been suspended for comparing President-elect Donald Trump to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during a post-election lesson. Frank Navarro, 65, a history and special education teacher at Mountain View High School, Bay Area, California, was asked to leave during school hours after the administration received an email from a parent concerned about statements he made in the class. Navarro, who has taught at the school for 40 years and is an expert on the Holocaust, said school officials declined to read him the email and also declined his request to review the lesson plan with him. Mountain View/Los Altos High School District Superintendent Jeff Harding confirmed the incident which took place last Thursday but declined to describe the parent's complaints, The Mercury News reported. "This feels like we're trying to squash free speech," Navarro was quoted as saying. "Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It's not propaganda or bias if it's based on hard facts," he said. Though Navarro said school officials, who had put him on paid leave, originally told him to return on Wednesday, Harding said he could return earlier. "I had a short lesson paralleling Hitler with Trump when Hitler was running from 1930 to 1933," Navarro told the New York Daily News. "Hitler said he would make Germany great again, and Trump said he would make America great again," Navarro said. He also noted that both leaders vowed to deport foreigners. Tensions have run high throughout the Bay Area after Trump's victory, with many protesting in the streets and hundreds of students staging walkouts. The Oracle, Mountain View High's independent student newspaper, said some of Navarro's students alleged his lessons were one-sided and that Navarro said things about Trump that his supporters would find offensive. Other students defended Navarro. A change.org petition calling for his return had garnered more than 1,200 signatures. Navarro, who is Mexican-American and was raised in Oakland, said he is concerned for many of his students during this political climate. "I've had Mexican kids come and say, 'Hey, Mr. Navarro, I might be deported,'" he said. "Is it better to see bigotry and say nothing? That's what the principal was telling me (during our conversation). In my silence, I would be substantiating the bigotry." This cant be implemented in 50 days, he said, adding that the crisis was severe for rural women. We support the PM, but this (the demonetisation) needs to be implemented better. People shouldnt face problem in getting their own money, he said. After Shiv Sena, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has become the second constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance to criticise the demonetisation drive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.SAD leader and Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal told CNN-News18 that the present crackdown on black money was unworkable and the cash shortage was putting people through a lot of pain in the marriage season.Badal felt that the daily withdrawal limit of Rs 4,000 or 4,500 was not workable and need to be increased. He also suggested the Centre should think in terms of bringing in cooperative banks to resolve the crisis.Earlier, the Sena had slammed the demonetisation drive saying it was not in public interest. The ruling dispensation should have done surgical strikes on the black money deposited in all Swiss accounts instead of scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said. : The concluding day of 'Prerna Shibir', organised by the Rashtra Swayamsevak Sangh's womens wing Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, was dominated by praises of the Indian joint family and critique of "western feminist countries".Samiti members told News 18 that they believe a woman has many responsibilities both as a citizen and as a mother or wife. The idea of a blissful life is not confrontation with men in the family, but its all about co-existence. There is no question of opposing, man and woman work together for nation building. We dont believe in anything that will break the family, one of them said.The three-day event was organised here by the organisation to celebrate its 80th anniversary.Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan presided over the session, "Rashtra Mahila Vichar Sangoshthi", which focused on the "Role of family in nation building" (Rashtra ke vikas me parivar ki bhoomika).Rajasthan Finance Commission chairperson, Jyoti Kiran Shukla, was one of the main speakers. Dr Uma Vaidya, Pro-Vice Chancellor Kalidas Vishwa Vidyalaya, Nagpur and Meena Chandavark, former pro-vice chancellor Mahila Vishwa Vidyalaya, Vijaypur, also spoke at the event.Shukla questioned "accusations of male dominated society" and eulogized the Indian family system that contributes in the economic growth of the country. The feminist rate of growth is 2% while the Familist rate of growth is 7%. Household saving rate in India is 11% and US 5% (sic)," she said.She emphasized the importance of family system, saying, The feminist countries in Europe, UK and USA ignore the importance of a united family in ascertaining economic development of the country.""There is an Indian model of making choices, which has both tangible and intangible elements. In Bharat we talk about sacrifice, but this is not known to West, they dont know about sacrifice and sneh. Instead their idea of development is about Guns and Butter, she said.Shukla said the Wests model makes a nation choose between two options - guns (invest in defense/military) or butter (invest in production of goods) - or a combination of both while spending its finite resources. They don't even have the family element in their growth model, she said.Seetha Annadanam, general secretary of the Samiti, told News 18 that there is no male domination in Sangh. "It is an outfit for men and samiti for us, and we do the same work independently.We give training to women on how to demonstrate the inner power in society. There are other views on woman empowerment as well but that thinking is very limited, they only talk about adhikar, rights and equality but we also talk about kartavya. Women are doing well in profession because they are duty minded," she said. Pandit Nehru, your family members abuse me, your party abuses me but I am here to fulfil what was left incomplete from your time. I have come here on November 14 deliberately to expose those who did not work towards fulfilling what Pandit Nehru had wanted to do, he said, addressing public in Ghazipur in the Purvanchal area of poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi showered praises on Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary and slammed his political successors for not living up to his legacy.Modi recalled that in 1962, the MP from Ghazipur told Nehru about the dire state of poor in Purvanchal. Then Panditji formed a committee. After Pandit Nehru passed away, many PMs came and went but that committee report is still lost among files. Today, on Panditjis birthday I pledge to reopen those files, which his party and family PMs never did, said Modi, adding that would be his tribute to Indias first prime minister on his anniversary.The Congress party whose leadership has been firmly in the hands of the Nehru-Gandhi family ever since Jawaharlal Nehrus term as the prime minister has often accused Modi of trying to erase the legacy of Nehru from India politics and public life.The RSS, ideological mothership of the BJP, has never minced words in criticizing Nehru for leading India down a socialistic path with adopted values from Western countries at the cost of Indian traditional values.Modis praise for Nehru is being seen as a clever political move to separate Nehru from his political opponents, the Nehru-Gandhis. Baghdad: Suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State group killed 15 people today in an oasis town south of Baghdad and the city of Fallujah to its west, officials said. The attacks come as Iraqi forces battle IS in the northern city of Mosul, the last major population centre the jihadists hold in the country. IS has carried out a series of attacks in other areas since the operation to retake Mosul was launched on October 17 in an apparent bid to draw attention and possibly troops away from the city. Masum al-Tamimi, a member of the Karbala provincial council, said six suicide bombers armed with light weapons as well as explosives tried to infiltrate Ain al-Tamer early today. But they clashed with security forces before withdrawing to the Al-Jihad area and detonating explosives there, Tamimi said, putting the death toll at eight, a figure confirmed by a doctor. The attack also wounded at least six people, officials said. The interior ministry said security forces killed five of the bombers while the sixth detonated explosives inside a house. But IS issued a statement claiming the attack in which it said that there were only five bombers, identified with noms de guerre indicating two were from Mosul and three from Syria. The jihadist group said the bombers, who were armed with automatic weapons and grenades as well as explosive belts, battled security forces until running out of ammunition and then blew themselves up. Attacks in southern Iraq are rare, especially compared to the frequent bombings that hit Baghdad. But Ain al-Tamer, which is located 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, is on the edge of Anbar province, which has long been a haven for jihadists. A similar attack involving militants armed with explosives, rifles and grenades hit Ain al-Tamer in late August, killing 18 people and wounding at least 26. Later in the day, two more bombers detonated explosives-rigged vehicles near police checkpoints in Fallujah, killing seven people and wounding 25, a police captain and a hospital official said. IS also claimed responsibility for the bombings in Fallujah, a city that was retaken from IS at the end of June after two and a half years outside of government control. "These two explosions are the first two explosions in Fallujah since its liberation from (IS)," Raja Barakat, a member of the provincial council security committee in Anbar province, where Fallujah is located. The jihadist group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to IS two years ago. AIIB President Jin Liqun, file photo. The president of the young Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Mr. Liqun Jin, is an exciting personality with sure words and mastery of the details of his office and firm. The former top chief of the World Bank exudes firmness in his grasp of what the bank is and targets. It was a delight interviewing him at the AIIB headquarters in Beijing last week weekend. The bank was created last year mainly at the behest of China on Christmas Day and commenced operation on January 17 this year. Apart from the founding member states, new members have joined including Canada that came in September after China hosted the G20 Summit. Egypt and South Africa are the only two African countries currently in the AIIB. "The letter A in AIIB can stand for Asia, Africa or America" He hinted that irrespective of the phobia for the AIIB by the US at its inception, the possibility of the country joining the bank when the president-elect, Donald Trump, is in power cannot be ruled out. He said: I have heard a certain senior official of the President Barack Obama speak good of the AIIB and after Donald Trump won, I was told that many in his team have an opinion that Obama was not right not to join the AIIB, especially after Canada joined, which was a very loud endorsement of the bank. So we cant rule out the new government in US endorsing the AIIB or indicating interest to join as member. Canadas membership became the 22nd non-Asian state member among the present 57 members. However, the test of the banks popularity that started with a capital base of $100b, some 50% of that of the World Bank, is the line-up of close to 20 new countries intending to be part of the bank and most of them from outside Asia. At least, five of the new applicants are African countries. The Bank in October appointed Nigerian renowned economist, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala an adviser among nine others from all over the world. The president restated the banks willing to welcome new members as the old members with higher shareholding would drop more of their stakes to allow the new members have some shares, but after the next batch of members are admitted, Jin said there would hardly be any shares left for more countries to join. Very soon, the curtain would be drawn on the shortlist of the new members whose membership will take effect from January next year. But the bank chief wants more African countries to join as he assured that the objectives of the AIIB includes assisting in the development of the smaller economies of the world no matter where located. To underscore the openness and overrule the phobia for it by US, Jin joked that the letter A in AIIB can stand for Asia, Africa or America. They all start with and that means the bank is for all of them. Our major consideration in extending facilities to governments or state members is whether such projects the fund would be used for will in any benefit of Asia and assist in bettering Asian economy and also that of the borrowing country. But we have a duty and obligation to ensure that we dont give impossible conditions to enable them utilize the funding and incentives of the bank. Every member state borrowing right is based not on the GDP but on shareholding and China has highest shareholding with 30% of the total volume. Right now, China is like a non-borrowing state member because if it does, it might crowd out other members that somehow need the fund more. But for the qualified borrower, the major plank for consent is on need and importance and not on shareholding capacity only. That implies that if a state needs to borrow and the AIIB is convinced that the need is compelling and there is prospect for profit in the targeted project the funding will be used for, the request would be granted as long as there is the collateral especially that of the economic potential of the project. AIIB funding of project is predicated on factors like the sustainability, the environmental friendliness which implies how the project would not cause a serious imbalance in environmental protection. But in situations where the importance would impact and encourage development and fight poverty, the environmental impact factor might be played down provided it is not so weighty to create another big problem. The last factor is the social acceptability - implying that the people of the community the project is to be sited must be ok with it and it must target to improve on their livelihood. AIIB structure, projects and funding must be lean, clean and green. By these I mean that the membership must be manageable and not too bogus, and we believe that the more the better. The project funding must be clean and that means there must be no form of corruption in the process leading to the funding and in the execution. It has to be clean to the extent of encouraging a clean and non-polluted environment. As I said earlier, on this we also consider the benefits when the environmental impact is bearable. For instance, in the USA today, most of the states, or almost all the so-called Red States still rely on coal power station for electricity and it is not foreseeable in the next 30 years that fossil fuel would be done away with because of the carbon emission. What is steadily done is ensuring its effect is minimized. So in a place we find that coal power plant for instance is needed as the only way the people would be assured of power supply enough to encourage economic growth, we will find a way of minimizing the emission effect and go ahead with the project to strike a balance. US initial fear Jin admitted that: At the formation of the AIIB, the US, the base of the Bretton Wood Institutes that manage the world economy including the World Bank and the IMF, saw the new body as a threat to its dominance and importance in the world economic order. They raised issues on whether the banks functions would be consistent with fundamental human and environmental rights of the borrowers or state members. We did our best to convince them that we were no threat or rivals or either naive as not to know the basic rules of operations. And moreover, we believe there is enough space in the global economic theatre for several bodies to operate, and many regional development banks operate side by side the World Bank and there is no reason the AIIB would be the violator. We rather need to work with and benefit each other to create a better world. For instance, Asia alone needs as much as $1tr infrastructure funding every year and the World Bank hasnt such pool of money to pick the bills therefore the need for an alternative. Moreover, if the AIIB exists just like the World Bank, there is no time the new body would embark on a project of building a power plant, airports, roads or seaport to boost the economy of any country that the World Bank will still vote funds for the same project. So if the AIIB handles one project and the World Bank takes another that is a lot better for the world towards defeating poverty and hardship. On the management of the bank, the president stated that right now, the AIIB operates a lean workforce of about 90 workers and operates solely from the head office in Beijing as a strategy to save cost and may continue that way for a long time. He however hinted that with time as the need arises, the bank may operate little outlet offices just to handle needs as it would stick to the rule of cost effective management. To make its operations adapt to global best practice standards, he said the AIIB adopts universal procurement approach to get the best manpower and equipment and also recruits experts from everywhere in the world based on their competence irrespective of whether the country of origin of such expert is a member of the AIIB or not. That way, it is sure to harness the best hands to run its operations. New York: Anti-Donald Trump protests continued for the fifth day across the US opposing the Republican's shocking victory in last week's presidential election. In Manhattan, a group gathered on Sunday to demonstrate against the President-elect's immigration policies, CNN reported. "The main purpose is to tell Donald Trump he can't just deport 11 million undocumented people," a protestor said. "They're here to stay and we stand in solidarity with them." In Los Angeles, around 100 people peacefully protested in front of the CNN building. A small protest also took place Sunday afternoon in Springfield, Massachusetts. Sunday was the fifth day of protests since Trump won against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 Presidential Election. Protesters are upset about Trump's policies on the environment; lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) rights; immigration and other issues. Some are also questioning the legitimacy of Trump's victory by noting that although he took the Electoral College, Clinton won the popular vote. On Saturday, 8,000 people took to the streets in Los Angeles. The march was peaceful, unlike a Friday night protest by 1,000 people that resulted in the arrests of 187 adults and eight juveniles, Los Angeles police said. Violence also flared again Saturday night in Portland, Oregon. Seventy-one people were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer, CNN reported. In New York, thousands of people marched in Saturday and gathered outside Trump Tower, the President-elect's home in Manhattan, where they chanted and proclaimed that he was "not my President". Dhaka: Muslim-majority Bangladesh will drop Islam as the country's state religion "when the time comes", a media report on Monday quoted a senior ruling Awami Leage leader as saying. "Islam has been kept as the state religion for strategic reasons," the party's Presidium Member and former minister Abdur Razzaq told a roundtable here on Sunday. "I have said it abroad and now I am saying it again that Islam will be dropped (as state religion) from Bangladesh's Constitution when the time comes," the former food minister was quoted as saying by BDNews24.com. The ruling party leader made the statement while speaking about Bangladesh's secular tradition at the roundtable organised by SAARC Cultural Society at the national Press Club. Politicians and journalists from India also took part in the discussion titled 'Strong Unity of Masses of Bangladesh and India to Prevent Terrorism', held with the recent attacks on Hindus in Brahmanbarhia in the backdrop. Indian participants included Congress leader Preetam Ghosh, social worker Ajoy Kumar Dutta and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shiladitya Dev. Highlighting secularism Mr Razzaq said: "The force of secularism is in the people of Bangladesh. There is nothing called 'minority' in our country." Secularism was included in the Constitution as one of the four basic principles when it was written in 1972 as people from all religions joined the struggle for independence and snatched it from Pakistan. After the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, Bangladesh's course of direction was reversed, and Zia-ur- Rahman, capturing the power, replaced 'secularism' with 'Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah'. Another military dictator, HM Ershad, later included Islam as the state religion in the Constitution. After Mr Ershad's ouster, the demand to drop Islam as state religion from the Constitution was raised several times, but even Awami League, the party that led the struggle for independence, has not made the change. Through the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 2011, the four basic principles of the 1972 Constitution - nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism - were restored, but Islam remained the state religion. The Awami League leader's comment came at a time when there are protests on the street against the attacks on Hindus and tribal Santal minorities in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said as a Muslim majority country it is the moral responsibility of the Bangladeshi citizens to take care of minorities. "Bangladesh is a country of communal harmony which should be maintained at any cost for development and brighten the country's image," Ms Hasina said at a video conference. "As a Muslim majority country it is the moral responsibility of all of us to take care of the minorities," she said. The prime minister added: "You have to remain careful so that no such incidents, which are taking place sporadically in different parts of the country, take place anywhere in the country." London: Swedish officials on Monday questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for over four years, over sexual assault charges. The 45-year-old Australian national has been living in the embassy for more than four years after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador amid fears he will be extradited to the US and questioned over the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by his controversial website. Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long said, "This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Mr Assange in 2012." "There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years," he said. After years of stalemate, representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and Swedish police officers agreed to be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadorian official based on a previously approved set of questions. A DNA sample will also be taken from Assange if he gives his consent. The results of the interview will be transcribed and reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren was photographed entering the embassy but it was made clear that she would not be giving any press interviews during her stay in London. Astatement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: "As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorean legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview". Today's interview at the embassy follows a long-drawn legal and diplomatic wrangle between Ecuador and Sweden before prosecutors consented to interview Assange in London, and then until the two sides agreed arrangements. Assange denies Sweden's allegation of rape dating back over six years. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of Assange's responses during the questioning, but not put any fresh questions Over dozen of religiously devout Shia militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, three Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers and dozens of Iranian militiamen have died in recent clashes in Syria's northwestern Aleppo province, according to media reports from the region. Hadi Zahid, a commander of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Zaikr Hussein of the Special Units and Mohamm Ali Mohammed Hosseini, a commander of the Commandos Unit were killed in the recent Aleppo clashes, reported al-Arabiya satellite TV. The new casualties follow the killing of Iran's state television reporter, Mohsin Khozaia in Aleppo on Saturday, al-Arabiya said. Khozaia been criticized for inciting sectarianism in his journalism. Meanwhile, rebels in the neighbouring Syrian province of Idlib released a video showing an attack targeting a group of Iranian militias with a thermal rocket killing and injuring scores of them. More than 3,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces have been killed in Syria, according to Iranian Farsi language media outlets. As a prelude to tonights community forum on the school-to-prison pipeline at the Lynchburg Public Library, a representative of the Lynchburg chapter of the nonprofit Virginia Organizing spoke to a small gathering Sunday morning at downtown Lynchburgs Unitarian House. Virginia Organizing, which opened its first chapter in Lee County in 1995, helps residents organize around social justice issues to create small incremental changes that can make big impacts. Haley Wilson, the Lynchburg organizer for Virginia Organizing, said the city had a small chapter about 10 or 12 years ago that notched several victories, including having racist murals removed or painted over in City Hall and getting Lynchburg City Schools 365-day suspension policy, which removed students from school for a year, changed. Wilson said the new Lynchburg chapter recently helped motivate Amherst County supervisors to change the wording of a county ordinance that previously could have been used to keep felons and businesses from getting or keeping business licenses. We do concrete work that leads to systemic change, Wilson told an audience of about 20. While people may be used to being activists they may not be used to being organizers, which is where the nonprofit fits in, she said. The main difference is creating a strategy and creating concrete small steps to take to create systemic changes, Wilson said in explaining how the nonprofit works in its eight state chapters. Because of school discipline concerns and race issues, Wilson said Virginia Organizings Lynchburg chapter is focused on race and the school-to-prison pipeline. Wilson said the term school-to-prison pipeline refers to children being put in handcuffs, taken to jail and put into the criminal system for a non-criminal behavior, as well as to repeated suspensions that remove children from school leading them to fall behind, being less likely to graduate and more likely to end up with a criminal record in the future. Research by the chapter found that, after Richmond, Lynchburg is the worst city in the state for percentage differences of white kids and black kids who get suspended, Wilson said. So, if you are a white kid you have a 4.6 percent chance of getting a short-term suspension in Lynchburg. If you are a black kid you have a 20.5 percent chance of getting suspended here, Wilson said. And that doesnt mean, we are not saying, teachers are racist and therefore suspending black kids more. But were saying theres a systemic problem there; something is happening there thats not just one teacher giving more suspensions, one school or one age group. Theres something going on there. And we dont know what that is yet and we dont know how to fix it yet, but we are working to figure that out. The first step is to find those directly affected, which is the purpose of tonights 6 p.m. meeting in the Lynchburg Public Librarys main library community meeting room. Titled Stop the school-to-prison pipeline, the public forum will provide an opportunity for Virginia Organizing to discuss the different meanings of the term and then hear directly from residents about what they have experienced and how it is impacting their lives and the lives of those around them. The Fredericksburg and Portsmouth chapters of Virginia Organizing are also taking up the issue with Portsmouth focused on students being removed from schools in handcuffs and being taken to jail while Fredericksburg focused on the role of school resource officers, Wilson said. In Lynchburg, Wilson said, children more frequently fall victim to repeated suspensions. Wilson said although school officials are aware of todays gathering they have not been formally invited. The event is intended to be a safe place for families to come and discuss what they are going through and then, if they choose, become part of the effort to create change. Another great outcome could be that there are people seeing that this isnt just happening to their kid, that their kid just isnt bad, and that this is happening to a lot of people, which I think can be really empowering. I think theres a lot of shame involved here with if your kid gets suspended a lot, leading parents to question their parenting, she said. Wilson said any school representatives who choose to attend will be provided the same time to speak as others. In coming months additional public forums will have space specifically for school officials, said Wilson, adding she believes there are educators, officials and school board members who see this as an issue and also want to fix it. But first Virginia Organizing wants to hear from residents who can help the nonprofit determine what it can hold the division accountable for and determine specifically what incremental systemic changes we want to create, Wilson said. Sundays talk led to a brief discussion about issues surrounding cultural competency training, implicit bias and school resource officers. Steve Griffis, a Campbell County teacher, said he and other teachers go through cultural training and, in his experience, school resource officers are not the most experienced police officers on the force. He said the cultural training helps teachers understand why a student of one culture will not look a teacher in the eye while another will. Depending on the teachers culture, the behavior could be seen as a sign of defiance, disruptiveness or disrespect. Griffis said a teacher who has training knows every culture defines those words and the behaviors differently. Wilson cautioned people against putting value judgments on student behaviors and, when asked about the role of students home lives, she cautioned them against removing the blame from the school system. Wilson said the campaign is not to blame any individual teacher or teachers as a whole or anyone, but its to highlight the fact that I know for sure students of color are not 15 percent worse than white kids. I know theyre not, so theres something going wrong in this process that were making 15 percent [more] students of color get suspended or are highlighting those wrong behaviors 15 percent more of the time. While there is no quick fix for the problem, Wilson said, There are incremental systemic changes that we can make that will be on the books so that if someone crosses that line again we can hold them accountable or prosecute them. For his part, Griffis said hes going to continue to pursue change through his own students. I think there is a solution and I know it sounds trite but I think there is a solution to this and its just being taught to love and respect each other despite differences and I think we can teach that and we can start teaching it to kids and I think we do try to teach it to kids, Griffis said. I have hope the future will be better than us. BOONES MILL Franklin Countys moonshine heritage, once discussed privately in hushed tones, soon will be proudly on display in the small town that serves as the entrance to the county. Franklin County Distilleries, which has a small production facility in Boones Mill, is working toward opening a tasting room off U.S. 220 and backing up to Maggodee Creek. Christopher Reynolds, brand ambassador for Franklin County Distilleries, said the plan is to align the tasting rooms opening with an April race at Martinsville Speedway. The company wants to root itself in the Franklin County community its named for, and a tasting room is one way to do that, Reynolds said. The tasting room will bring people, and their money, into the community. Reynolds said he believes it has tourism value, and would be a good way to bring young folks from Roanoke into the town or get visitors to Smith Mountain Lake to explore other parts of the county. Though its based in Boones Mill, the distillery is looking to expand outside of the town as well. Reynolds said company officials are talking about establishing some kind of relationship with the Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount and are also developing a signature drink for the Hotel Roanoke. He said theyd be interested in opening a tasting room in Roanoke at some point too. Right now, the company uses just one still and makes only one product, the White Label Corn Whiskey. But Reynolds said demand is high, and theyll need to grow adding more stills and more products to meet it. The product is only available in Virginia, but Reynolds said that will change soon. Were already expanding way faster than we thought we would with this product, Reynolds said. I cant sign distribution deals for sure this week because I have to make sure we have enough liquor made. The company is in talks with officials from Boones Mill about renting space in a two-story industrial building undergoing renovations located on property owned by the town. Town Manager Matt Lawless said the renovations should be completed in April. Though a lease hasnt been signed yet, Lawless said the distillery is a top prospect for the building. He said the distillery and Titan Trains, a manufacturer of 1/8 scale trains that is also set to go into the building, both play on the towns history, making them ideal tenants. When we think about the kind of manufacturing that can work here, you want to have a niche product that holds value well and can be exported more widely. And so Franklin County Distilleries and Titan Trains both fit that bill, Lawless said. The company is blowing through the inventory, Lawless said, so it will need more space soon. The town could provide it to them by next spring. The timing might work out real well for us, Lawless said. Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to pay state visits to Ecuador, Peru and Chile. China and Latin American and the Caribbean states are all developing countries in about the same development stage and face the same task of striving for development. In recent years, the relations between China and Latin American and the Caribbean countries have gained great development. President Xi made a number of comments on the relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, expecting the two sides to build a community of shared destiny for common progress, and create a splendid future. 1. Open and inclusive process featuring win-win cooperation China and Latin America and the Caribbean share the same approach to development. We have found increasingly more common language whether in respective nation-building and governance or in international affairs. Facts have proven, and will continue to show, that the growth of China-Latin America relations is an open and inclusive process featuring win-win cooperation. It not only serves the common interests of the two sides, but also contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in the region and the world at large. (May 2013, a joint written interview to the media of Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Mexico ahead of President Xi Jinpings state visits to the three countries) 2. An important window of opportunity for the development of relations We believe that the further Latin America develops, the better it is for the world and China as well. At present, there is an important window of opportunity for the development of relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean. We should take a far-sighted view, keep abreast of the times, build on the traditional friendship, enhance all-dimensional exchanges, upgrade cooperation and work for fresh and greater progress in the Partnership of Comprehensive Cooperation featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development between China and Latin America and the Caribbean. (June 5th 2013, President Xi Jinpings speech at the Senate of Mexico) 3. Set a model for South-South cooperation China and Latin American and the Caribbean states are all developing countries in about the same development stage and face the same task of striving for development. We support each other in pursuing development paths that suit our respective national conditions and are committed to making the international order more just and equitable. These are the fundamental reasons which enable us to seek common ground while shelving differences and stand by each other's side in our joint pursuit of development. Since the beginning of the new century, China and Latin American and the Caribbean states, focusing on the theme of common development, have deepened mutual trust in the political field, expanded cooperation in economy and trade, learned from each other in cultural and people-to-people exchanges and coordinated closely in international affairs. This has made it possible for us to make big strides in our relations and set a model for South-South cooperation. (July 2014, President Xi Jinpings joint written interview with the major media organizations from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba) 4. The "Chinese Dream" and the "Latin American Dream" are closely linked The relations between China and Latin America have witnessed a comprehensive and rapid development in the 21st century, and brought real benefits to the people of China and Latin America. It is common expectation of the two peoples to comprehensively enhance cooperative relations featuring mutual benefit between China and Latin American countries. China is willing to work jointly with Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, and to make the two sides good friends who share the same ideal and good partners who make progress together. Unity, collaboration, development and revitalization are the dreams the Latin American people from generation to generation. The "Chinese Dream" and the "Latin American Dream" are closely linked. Both sides should take the courage to pursue the dream and jointly make the dream come true. (July 16th 2014, President Xi Jinpings speech at the Brazilian National Congress) 5. A Five-in-One new pattern of China-Latin America relations This afternoon belongs to China and Latin American and Caribbean relations. Chinese and Latin American leaders gathering together is a historical event of global influence. At present, the relations between China and Latin America and the Caribbean are best ever in history and standing at a new starting point. Here, I wish to propose that we jointly announce at this meeting the establishment of the China-Latin America comprehensive cooperative partnership of equality, mutual benefit and common development, and work together to build a Five-in-One new pattern of China-Latin America relations: sincerely trust each other in politics, cooperate with each other for a win-win outcome in economy and trade, learn from each other in people-to-people and cultural exchanges, closely cooperate with each other in international affairs, and promote each other in overall cooperation and bilateral relations. (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 6. The establishment of the China-CELAC Forum send out a strong signal The second CELAC summit held last January adopted the Special Declaration on the Establishment of the China-CELAC Forum, which has laid down an important groundwork for the establishment of the forum and advancement of our overall cooperation. Through this Summit, we will jointly announce the official establishment of the China-CELAC Forum and will hold the first ministerial conference of the Forum in Beijing at an early date. This will have profound implication for our future relationship and send out a strong signal of our commitment to strengthening unity and coordination and promoting South-South cooperation. (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 7. Common dreams and shared pursuit Currently, the Chinese people are striving to achieve the "Chinese Dream" of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, while the peoples of Latin American and Caribbean countries are also struggling for the "Latin American Dream" of realizing solidarity, cooperation, development and revitalization. The common dreams and shared pursuit closely connect China and Latin America. Let's seize the opportunity, forge ahead, and try hard to build a hand-in-hand community of common destiny, so as to create a splendid future for China-Latin America relations! (July 17th 2014, President Xi Jinpings keynote speech at China-Latin America and Caribbean Summit) 8. A creation in the history of China-CELAC relations Half a year ago, I had a milestone meeting with the leaders of the Latin American and Caribbean countries in Brasilia. The two sides decided to establish the China-CELAC comprehensive cooperative partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development and officially establish the China-CELAC Forum, which conforms to the trends of the times of peace, development, cooperation and win-win results, and should be called a creation in the history of China-CELAC relations. The China-CELAC Forum is a newborn, just like a young shoot sprouting out of the earth, whose sturdy growth into a towering tree needs meticulous cultivation of both sides. (January 8th 2015, President Xi Jinpings speech at the First Ministerial Meeting of China-CELAC Forum) 9. The overall cooperation between China and Latin America has set sail smoothly At present, the relations between China and Latin American and the Caribbean countries are standing at a new historical point. With the establishment of China-CELAC Forum, the overall cooperation between China and Latin America has set sail smoothly. The two sides have opened a wide perspective for all-dimensional cooperation via working hand-in-hand in promoting the comprehensive cooperation partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development, and jointly building China-Latin America community of shared destiny. (October 2016, President Xi Jinpings congratulatory letter to the 10th China-LAC Business Summit) 10. A new stage of parallel development between bilateral cooperation and overall cooperation At present, the relationship between China and Latin America has entered into a new stage of parallel development between bilateral cooperation and overall cooperation. China is willing to work together with Uruguay and other Latin American countries to jointly build a new framework of the 1+3+6 cooperation, so as to push China-Latin America relations for greater development and forge a community of shared destiny featuring joint progress together. (October 18th 2016, President Xi Jinping held talks with President Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay) Detect breast cancer at an early age The appeal was made on Saturday by Melissa Roberts, general manager of Pink Hibiscus Health Specialists which held screenings at its facility at 5 Adam Smith Square, Woodbrook. Forty five patients were diagnosed with breast cancer so far this year, seven were annual patients and one of these seven patients was twenty two years of age, Roberts told Newsday. There is a myth which many people believe that once you are diagnosed with breast cancer you will die. There is a 98 percent chance of survival once you detect the cancer early, Roberts assured, again stating that in order to detect the cancer at an early stage, women should not wait till they are age 40 to get a mammogram done. Many women defer the screenings due to the fear of pain but at this clinic the screening is not painful. Jyoti Deonarine, the mammographer stated, I usually tell the patients they are coming for breast photography. This clinic being the most advanced in technology in Trinidad and Tobago uses digital mammograms as opposed to the analog (film) mammograms. The digital mammogram is quite similar to an X-ray, not much compression is used resulting in a pain free experience. Pink Hibiscus Health Specialists together with Yoplait hosted comprehensive breast screenings at Pink Hibiscus Clinic, last Saturday, to bring awareness to the public about the fight against breast cancer. Both organisations held a campaign in October, which was Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year, during which information on breast cancer was disseminated and 20 women were chosen and scheduled to receive the breast screenings. No One Has Done This Before in Billboard's History Commentary: Xi's LatAm trip to usher in new era for bilateral ties (Xinhua) 13:04, November 14, 2016 BEIJING, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to Latin America (LatAm) is expected to improve the all-round cooperative partnership and usher in a new era of bilateral relations. Xi will pay state visits to Ecuador, Peru and Chile from Nov. 17 to Nov. 23, and attend the 24th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting from Nov. 19 to 20 in Lima, Peru. This will be Xi's third visit to Latin America since he took the presidency in March 2013, and the visit to Ecuador will be the first since diplomatic relations between the two countries began in 1980. The visit shows that China and LatAm are striving for win-win cooperation and common development under the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit and mutual learning. During Xi's visit, China will discuss free trade arrangements and cooperation in e-commerce, production capacity, industrial parks and infrastructure. At present, affected by a weaker global market and the falling prices of commodities, LatAm needs capital and technology to improve its manufacturing capabilities, reduce its dependence on the export of raw materials and boost economic transformation. As China has cost-effective equipment, and LatAm needs infrastructure and industrial upgrading, Xi's visit comes at a time when there are ample opportunities to expand the current relationship. In fact, China-LatAm ties have been improving. Back in July 2014, Xi and leaders from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) announced the establishment of the China-CELAC Forum. In January 2015, China and the CELAC inked a five-year cooperation plan at the first ministerial meeting of the cooperation forum in Beijing. The cooperation forum marked a new era of mutual benefit and common development and improved bilateral cooperation in various fields. In the political sphere, ties have been propelled forward by the exchanges of high-level visits. Peru, the first country in the LatAm region to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with China, will be Xi's second leg of the visit. Xi's visit to Peru comes hot on the heels of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's state visit to China in September, which was his first state visit since he assumed the presidency. Such frequent high-level visits are sure to consolidate traditional friendship and pave the way for future cooperation. Chile, the last leg of Xi's visit, has always led relations with China. It was the first South American nation to forge diplomatic ties with China, the first LatAm country that signed a bilateral accord with China on China's membership to the World Trade Organization and signed a free trade agreement with China. In the economic and trade sector, trade volume between China and LatAm has risen more than twenty-fold during the past decade to hit 236.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. Currently, China is the second largest trade partner and third largest investment source country of LatAm, while LatAm is China's seventh largest trade partner. As an emerging economy and the largest developing country in the world, China has always stood with developing countries and performed its due responsibilities commensurate with its status as a global economic power. China provided cash support of two million dollars and humanitarian aid worth 9.2 million dollars to Ecuador after a fatal earthquake killed 668 people, injured 4,859 and displaced around 80,000 in April. Furthermore, China provided financial and technical support to help LatAm countries bridge the infrastructure deficit. Thanks to China's financial support, the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, the largest hydroelectric plant ever constructed by a Chinese company, in northeast Ecuador, is expected to generate 1,500 megawatts of energy and meet 30 percent of Ecuador's demand. The plant, along with others built by Chinese companies, will help Ecuador transform from a power-hungry country into a clean energy exporter and greatly contribute to the country's economic development. Within the framework of the China-CELAC Forum, cooperation has also flourished in other areas like education, people-to-people exchanges and culture. China promised LatAm and Caribbean countries 6,000 government scholarships within five years from 2014. In addition, various cultural activities have been run in China and LatAm to boost mutual understanding and consolidate the basis for a lasting friendship. Moreover, 2016 is the "Year of Cultural Exchanges" between China and the region. It is believed that Xi's visit will consolidate the traditional friendship, promote common development and build a community of shared destiny between China and LatAm. (Newser) Popular "sex and swingers community" AdultFriendFinder has been the victim of a massive hacking attack involving a total of 412 million accounts, ZDNet reports. LeakedSource, a watchdog group, disclosed the data breach, calling it the "largest hack of 2016." LeakedSource says the hack occurred in October and affected a number of adult sites owned by the Friend Finder Network, including Penthouse.com, Cams.com, stripshow.com, and iCams.com. But most of the hacked accounts (339 million) were from AdultFriendFinder. The data includes names, email addresses, and passwordsa mix of encrypted and plain text versions. Security researchers were able to unscramble 99% of the leaked passwords. Friend Finder Network has not acknowledged the breach, but reporters at ZDNet were able to independently contact some victims, who confirmed that their details had been lifted from the site. Worryingly, the hack appears to contain information from some 15 million "deleted" accounts for which AdultFriendFinder still maintained login information. The culprit behind the attack is unknown, although the security researcher who first reported a vulnerability at the site blames Russian hackers. The number of hacked accounts is about 10 times that of those affected in an Ashley Madison hack last year, and there's no speculation at this point about how many accounts might be bogus. Friend Finder Network got hacked last year as well. (Read more hacking stories.) (Newser) Chelsea Manning isn't going to wait and see whether WikiLeaks tries to call in a favor when Donald Trump becomes president. She has asked President Obama to reduce her sentence for leaking classified files from 35 years to the more than six she has already spent behind bars, reports the New York Times, which notes that Manning has already spent more time in prison than any other convicted leaker in US history. In a statement sent with her petition, Manning says she knows what she did is wrong and that she's not asking for a pardon. She says at the time of the leaks, she was struggling with issues including gender dysphoria. The "sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members," Manning writes. The petition was accompanied by letters from supporters, including "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who tells the Times that "we all have to ask President Obama to do with his powers good things before he leaves, before a new president comes in." On Friday, WikiLeaks tweeted: "President Obama has a political moment to pardon Manning & Snowden. If not, he hands a Trump presidency the freedom to take his prize." (Lawyers say Manning recently made a second suicide attempt.) (Newser) The brightest moon in almost 69 years is lighting up the sky this week in a treat for star watchers around the globe. The phenomenon known as the supermoon will reach its most luminescent in North America before dawn on Monday. It will reach its zenith in Asia and the South Pacific on Monday night, the AP reports. Across the international dateline in New Zealand, it will reach its brightest after midnight (local time) on Tuesday. Viewers can expect to see a moon about 14% larger in diameter and about 30% brighter than when it's at its furthest from the Earth. It won't be as big and bright again for another 18 years. The moon will be at its brightest this week because it's coming closer to the Earth along its elliptical orbit than at any time since January 1948. The supermoon will also bring stronger than usual high tides, followed by plunging low tides the next morning. NASA says its closest approach will occur at 6:21am Monday, when the moon comes within 221,523 milesthat's from the center of the Earth to the center of the moon. Full moon will occur at 8:52am EST. (Read more supermoon stories.) (Newser) The sturdy stools and spongy cushions made at an upstate New York factory are formed with fungus. Ecovative Design is a business staking its growth on mycelium, the thread-like "roots" of mushrooms, the AP reports. The mycelium grows around small pieces of stalks and stems to create a material that can be molded into soft packaging for glassware or pressed into the boards used for the footstools they recently began selling. "It's like growing a tree in the shape of your furniture," says Ecovative co-founder Gavin McIntyre. "But rather than a tree, we're using mushrooms." Other researchers worldwide are trying to commercially grow fungi, bacteria, and proteins into clothing and building materials. While the field is still more about promise than actual products, companies are working on making bricks without kilns, leather without cows, and silk without spiders. Proponents see micro-organisms as factories of the future, displacing energy-intensive manufacturing with more sustainable models. Andrew Pelling of the University of Ottawa, who runs a biophysical manipulation lab, believes the technology has a lot of promise, but we shouldn't underestimate how complex the biology is. "We're living in a biological stone age now," he says. "I think there are still a lot of mysteries to figure out before we have real full control to dial in anything you want to grow or make or repair. And for me, that's the exciting part." (Read more fungus stories.) (Newser) New Zealand is planning to send in military helicopters and a navy ship to rescue about 1,000 tourists and hundreds of residents who remain stranded in the coastal town of Kaikoura after a powerful earthquake on Monday cut off train and vehicle access. The magnitude-7.8 quake struck the South Island just after midnight. It left two people dead and triggered a small tsunami. It also brought down rocks and mud that swept across highways and cracked apart roads. "From all directions, Kaikoura has essentially been isolated," Air Commodore Darryn Webb, the Acting Commander of New Zealand's Joint Forces, tells the AP. "There's a real imperative to support the town because it can't support itself." Elsewhere, strong aftershocks continued to shake New Zealand on Monday, rattling the nerves of exhausted residents, though the country was largely spared the devastation it saw in 2011 when an earthquake struck the city of Christchurch and killed 185 people. Monday's quake caused damage in Wellington, the capital, and was also strongly felt in Christchurch. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes. Police say one person died in Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. Several other people suffered minor injuries in Kaikoura, police say. Prime Minister John Key toured the area and described the scene in the worst-hit areas "utter devastation." (Read more New Zealand earthquake stories.) (Newser) Ivana Trump would approve of this article's headline. "Im quite known all around the world. ... Im known by the name Ivana. I really did not need the name Trump." So she tells the New York Post in an interview garnering attention thanks to this line: "I will suggest that I be ambassador for the Czech Republic." Yes, the 67-year-old Czech-speaker would like that role, though she's apparently not sad to have missed out on a much more high-profile one. When asked about being first lady herself, she replied, "I don't have envy for Melania [because she has] to start to pack the clothes and everything." Further, "To be perfectly honest, I think probably the Trump Tower and my town house in New York is much better than the White House." The Washington Post reports the current US ambassador to the Czech Republic, Andy Schapiro, has been in place since August 2014. Were Donald Trump to nominate his ex-wife, she'd need to get the OK from the Senate. PBS explores what it takes to be a US ambassador, and this list from Mental Floss reveals Ivana would (nearly) follow in the footsteps of Shirley Temple Black, who served as ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Ghana. (The Czech Republic would like you to call it something else entirely.) Pakistans top leaders gathered at the newly built Gwadar Port on Nov. 13 to see off Chinese cargo ships carrying goods to the Middle East and Africa. Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif hailed the historic moment as the "dawn of a new era," and said the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is destined to transform the entire country, opening up a world of possibilities for not just Pakistan but also the rest of Asia, local media reported. A convoy of 50 Chinese trucks carrying goods for sale abroad left Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Oct. 29. The convoy traveled along a road linking Xinjiang and Gwadar Port; it arrived at Gwadar Port on Nov. 12. According to Sun Weidong, Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, this is the first trade convoy that has gone through western Pakistan from the north to the south. Yuan Jianmin, party secretary of Sinotrans & CSC Holdings Xinjiang branch, told the Global Times that the convoy is the first trade convoy to go through the CPEC since CPEC was first proposed more than three years ago. CPEC, a 3,000-kilometer network of roads, railways and pipelines linking China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to southwestern Pakistan's Gwadar Port, is also a major project of China's Belt and Road Initiative. (Newser) As Jim Morrison put it, "we live, we die, and death not ends it." Truer words were perhaps never spoken about Tigran Svadjian, a California doctor who died on a Moscow street on Oct. 20, 2002but didn't. The Los Angeles Times looks at the story of the man they call "Doctor who," a case that began in 1998, when the 40-year-old native of Armenia expanded upon his own Orange County medical practice with the purchase of the Southwest Medical Group. The group was already in the government's crosshairs, having allegedly committed some $13 million in medical fraud. Svadjian insisted he was clean, but a 14-month audit completed in 2002 found he could only furnish 13 medical records of the 200 the state asked for. Facing allegations of bilking the state of $1.9 million and 10 years in prison, he agreed to wear a wire and help prosecutors get his co-conspirators. He just had to go to Russia first to visit his sick mother. On Oct. 31, prosecutors got a fax from the US Embassy in Moscow: Svadjian was dead of pneumonia. In 2013, the statute of limitations having expired, the evidence against him was trashed. Except he wasn't dead. Viktoras Cajevkis (a Lithuanian) was stopped in a Kiev, Ukraine, airport in July. His passport was fake, and it led officials to Hurghada, Egypt, where Cajevkis was found to be Vasily Petrosov (a Russian), a scuba instructor who lived with his pregnant girlfriend and their child. Petrosov was, yes, Tigran Svadjian. Read the full story to learn what Petrosov faces now, and how $200 was all it took to "die." (Read more Longform stories.) (Newser) A man whose homicide conviction was overturned in a case profiled in the Netflix series Making a Murderer was ordered released Monday from federal prison while prosecutors appeal. US Magistrate Judge William Duffin ordered Brendan Dassey's release contingent upon him meeting multiple conditions, reports the AP. The judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill, and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. The state has appealed that ruling. Dassey's attorney, Steve Drizin, said he had not spoken yet with Dassey, but he hoped to have him out of prison in time for Thanksgiving. "That's what I'm focused on right now, getting him home, getting him with his family and then helping him to re-integrate back into society while his appeal plays out," Drizin said. A rep for Wisconsin AG Brad Schimel, who had asked that Dassey not be released pending the appeal, had no immediate response. Dassey was 16 when Halbach died. He's now 27. Duffin ruled in August that investigators made promises of leniency to Dassey and that no "fair-minded jurists could disagree." He cited one investigator's comment that "you don't have to worry about things," plus repeated comments like "it's OK" and that they already knew what happened. Schimel said investigators didn't promise leniency and specifically told Dassey that no promises could be made. Dassey was sentenced to life in 2007. Court documents describe him as a slow learner who had poor grades and has difficulty understanding language and speaking. Avery was convicted in a separate trial and was also sentenced to life in prison. He's pursuing his own appeal. Their cases gained national attention after Making a Murderer spawned widespread conjecture about their innocence. (Read more Making a Murderer stories.) The prospect of relocating to New Zealand was surging too high on search engines as Americans were searching the potential country to move on the election of Donald Trump. "Move to New Zealand" was remarkable trend recounted by Google Trends in the last seven days before the US Presidential Election. On Yahoo Trends, developer James Macfie said there are other trending phrases that surfaced and are related to the election concluded in the United States. The leading phrase is "Places to move of Trump wins." It also suggests looking for Real Estates in New Zealand The funniest phrase in search engines that transpire is the "end of the world" when Trump won the Election. It did become a major concern among Americans of moving out of the country based on the current trends. The US election result did create a disappointing stand among half of those American who votes said on Business Insider. Next to New Zealand, the two other countries that Americans are considering are Canada and Ireland. Top 10 - Celebrities that Will Leave the U.S. if Trump Wins The move, however, is deemed possible to many as earning citizenship will not be as easy as most think. Though, there are other places that will be easier in finding a new country to live, but the process will be tedious and expensive. The Canadian Immigration Site was able to detect that most IP address that visited their website are from the United States. This was in the hours when polls show that Trump was winning two days ago, said in The Times. It was also written that if Americans who do not have family across the border nor have any skill for them to be admitted in immigrating submission, then they will be able to ask for a political asylum. Still, it will require much time before they get admitted to Canada. Last September 1, SpaceX faced a big controversy following the unexpected explosion of Falcon 9 before it was scheduled for launching. The explosion happened in Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, Florida. Two months after the explosion, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is delightful to push and inform the public that the company is planning to do a relaunch of Falcon 9 by Mid-December. His confidence is rooted from the positive turnout of the investigation about SpaceX's Falcon 9 explosion, Nature World News reports. The investigation revealed that the explosion was not done intentionally. During an interview with CNBC, Musk disclosed what investigators found out about the incident. The prevailing reason behind the explosion is a liquid oxygen which got ignited when SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was being fueled. Musk was surprised with the investigation results, given that SpaceX has their unique way of fuelling their rockets. "I think we've gotten to the bottom of the problem. It's never happened before in history. So that's why it took us awhile to sort it out," Musk remarked. Standard Media recalls that the incident damaged SpaceX Falcon 9's fleet and Israeli's $200 million worth of communication satellite. According to MobiPicker, this communication satellite was owned by Facebook. The social media giant was aiming to make Facebook available in most parts of Africa. This was marked as the second time that a mishap was heard under SpaceX's company within 14 months of its operation. Elon Musk has not disclosed yet, though, which aircraft will fly this time. However, it was already revealed that SpaceX will put their base on a new launch pad located in Kennedy Space Center, Florida. They have also announced the possibility that the aircraft might fly from their West Coast Site located in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Apple's iPhone 8 will feature bezel-free designs and will be available in 5-inch and 5.-8-inch displays, according to Barclays Research analysts Blayne Curtis, Christopher Hemmelgarn, Thomas O'Malley, and Jerry Zhang. The analysts reported that the iPhone 8 rumors might sport new form factor, ditching the traditional bezel design of earlier models. The analysts cited sources with Apple's supply chain following their trip to Asia this week. They were quoted by Mac Rumors saying that "iPhone 8 design didn't sound 100% locked down, but we believe the move is to a bezel-less design with screen sizes getting larger and curved edges in the original envelope. The iPhone 8 moves to 5" (from 4.7") and the Plus moves to 5.8" (from 5.5")." According to the analysts, only the 5.8-inch iPhone 8 model will use OLED display technology, which is more energy efficient than LCD technology. As reported before, Samsung and LG were tapped to supply OLEDs to Apple for one year, then to be joined by Foxconn-owned Sharp by 2018. This development corroborates the March 2016 report by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who said the iPhone 8 would have a curved OLED display and glass casing next year. Japanese website Nikkei described the iPhone 8 as a premium model that is positioned alongside Apple's 4.7-inch and 5-inch iPhones with LCD displays. Previous reports revealed that the iPhone 8 would have no Home button. However, this rumor has been downplayed by Barclays. They do not believe that the iPhone 8 will move to an in-screen resolution, but they expect it to "extend vertically and horizontally." For tech blogger and entrepreneur Robert Scoble, the iPhone 8 will have a clear glass case, which will be manufactured by Gorilla Glass, with polycarbonates infused for better durability. Apple's is rumored to incorporate augmented reality technology with the new smartphone. Actor Jon Voight and father of actress Angelina Jolie commented about the ongoing divorce between the latter's marriage with estranged husband actor Brad Pitt, saying he is hoping "things will work out," between the Pitt and Jolie. Voight, 77, attended the premiere showing of "Fantastic Beast And Where To Find Them." Voight also expressed his sentiments to the media, suggesting to fans that there may be hope for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to reconcile. A report from US Magazine also says that Pitt has established good relations with Voight since 2005 and has been in contact with him following the divorce filed by Angelina Jolie. Brad reportedly told Jon Voight he is drawn towards Angelina's passionate and extreme personality. Angelina Jolie's relationship with her father is seemed to have been strained in the past. Brad Pitt has been a subject of an investigation by Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) after a report that the actor has been allegedly abusive to 15-year-old Maddox, the eldest and first adopted child of Angelina Jolie, and who supposedly intervened in the altercation between Pitt and Jolie while onboard their private jet plane on a flight home from a vacation in Paris. The incident inside the private plane was said to be the primary reason for Angelina Jolie to file for divorce. There were also allegations about Pitt's anger management issues, alcoholism and substance abuse. Recently, it was reported that Pitt has been cleared by DCFS in its investigation. However, the custody battle over their six children is yet to be decided but an agreement signed by the two actors, allows Pitt therapeutic visitorial rights to their six kids who remain to be under the care and custody of their mother. The agreement was recommended by childcare professionals, saying it is for the children's best. Dinosaurs were not the first and the only animals to have walked the earth. In the latest fossils unearthed by scientists in Sao Sao Joao de Polesine in Brazil, they discovered that dinosaurs lived along with the lagerpetids, animals that are supposedly dinosaur's predecessors. The recent findings, which can also be read in Current Biology journal, may give clues to understanding "the differences that emerged as dinosaurs evolved and spread." Based on the fossils that also include partial sauropodomorp and partial lagerpetid (two fossils belonging to dinosaurs and two fossils belonging to lagerpetids), these two groups of animals share co-existence on the planet for approximately 30 million years, discarding previous theory that the existence of dinosaurs drove all other animals into extinction. "We previously thought that once dinosaurs appeared, they sort of out-competed an drove the other animals like lagerpetids to extinction," said Mr. Max Cardos Langer, one of the authors of the journal and one of University of Sao Paulo's paleontologist, adding that with these discovery, they believe that these two different species lived side by side. It is also a first time for scientists to find fossils for dinosaur and non-dinosaur dinosauromorph "together in the same excavation," indicating that both the dinosaurs and non-dinosaurs were "co-equals" since the early phase of "dinosaur evolution," according to the scientists. Scientists also theorized that the first sauropodomorphs were carnivorous which walked with their two legs, unlike their descendants, which were herbivorous and walked on four legs. This is based on the fossil's teeth, which are capable of eating small animals, including possibly, the Ixalerpeton. In contrast, the Ixalerpeton fed on small invertebrates and insects. The lagerpetid fossil, which belongs to Ixalerpeton polesinensis and dinosaur fossil, specifically those of Buriolestes schultzi, were extracted from a rock, which according to scientists dated as early as 237 million years ago. BEIJING, Nov. 14 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday discussed China-U.S. relations with Donald Trump in a telephone conversation. Xi congratulated Trump on his election as U.S. president and expressed his willingness to work with him. Since the two countries established formal ties 37 years ago, bilateral relations have been continuously progressing, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples and promoting world and regional peace, stability and prosperity, Xi said. Facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the two countries, he said. As China-U.S. cooperation faces important opportunities and has huge potential, the two countries need to strengthen coordination, advance their respective economic development and global economic growth and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples and promote the smooth development of China-U.S. relations, said the Chinese president. As the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country respectively and as the top two economies of the world, there are many things in which China and the United States can and should cooperate, Xi said. "I attach great importance to China-U.S. relations and am ready to work with the U.S. side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world," he told Trump. For his part, Trump thanked Xi for the congratulations and said that he agreed with Xi on his views about U.S.-China relations. China is a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects, said Trump. The United States and China can achieve win-win results featuring mutual benefits, he added. Trump voiced his readiness to work with Xi to strengthen U.S.-China cooperation and expressed his belief that U.S.-China relations will witness even greater development. Xi and Trump also agreed to maintain close contact, establish a good working relationship and meet at an early date to exchange views on bilateral ties and other issues of common concern. Read more: Beijing ready to push forward China-U.S. ties on new starting point: FM Female workers in the village of Sanbeizhang in northern China's Hebei province present hand-made tiger-head shoes to children. Tiger-head shoe-making is a kind of local folk art that requires more than 20 individual steps. The shoes are believed to carry tidings of good health and future prosperity for children. Equipped with the skills to make tiger-head shoes, more than 1,000 female workers in the village are employed with annual salaries of over 10,000 RMB. (Wang Xiao/Xinhua) New Delhi: India on Monday celebrated the festival of Gurupurab with much gaiety and fervour. The Sikh festival marks the birth anniversary of founder of the religion Guru Nanak Dev and is celebrated every year on the full moon day of Kartik month of Hindu calendar.A Guru Nanak Dev was born in year 1469 in Rai-Bhoi-di Talwandi, in the present Shekhupura District of Pakistan.A One of the most sacred Gurudwaras of Sikh Community in India, Golden temple in Amritsar was lit up for the festival on Monday. Delhi's Bangla Saheb along with other Sikh Temples were also decorated in bright lights.A However, Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee has requested all devotees not to burst crackers this year in view of the heavy pollution caused by it.A Morning prayers are being offered across the nation, here are the live updates:A #WATCH: Guru Nanak Jayanti celebrations at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar pic.twitter.com/s6PeLubWc7 a ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 Delhi: Gurudwara Bangla Sahib lit up on Guru Nanak Jayanti, the festival is celebrated every year on a full moon day in the month of Kartik pic.twitter.com/wkvQnFT3iU a ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday addressed the Parivartan Rally in Ghazipur. Earlier on Monday, he laid foundation of the railways project at the same venue. The Parivartan Rally is part of Bhartiya Janta Party's campaign for Uttar Pradesh assembly elections due in 2017. PM Modi has to lay foundation stone of Tadi Ghat-Mau-Ghazipur railway line and a major bridge on river Ganga apart from addressing the party's rally as a part of the Parivartan Yatra. Both the events are going to take place at RTI Ground in Ghazipur. Security arrangements have being made ahead of PM Modis visit to the place. This will be the only major event of Parivartan Yatra in eastern UP in which PM will participate. PM Modi will hold six rallies as part of BJPs Uttar Pradesh's assembly election campaign. After the PMs address in Ghazipur the Yatra rally will move towards Azamgarh and on November 15, this yatra will enter Gorakhpur Pranth unit. Here are the live updates: (Read highlights here) #Yes, those against me are strong people. But, I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth & integrity: PM Modi #My decision is like a 'Kadak Chai': PM Modi #Enemy is flooding our nation with these counterfeit notes. We need to put an end to this: PM Modi #Modi hits out at Congress, recalls 19month long Emergency #Sensitive to see common man's problem from demonetisation, trying to abate it as much as possible: PM Modi #PM Modi demands support during tough decisions #No draught of cash in India, but the problem is that it is in wrong hands: PM Modi #Scheme for crop insurance will hlp scores of farmers: PM Modi #Will work towards encouraging corruption free and prosperous vegetable trade from the region: PM Modi in Ghazipur #Will fulfill promises made my eight PMs from UP before me: PM Modi #'I will complete incomplete work of Pandit Nehru, even as his family blames me': PM Modi #Ghazipur's leader in 1952 raised the issue of region's poverty to Pandit Nehru, which led to set up of Patel committee: PM Modi #PM Modi pays tribute to India's first Priem Minsiter Jawaharlal Nehru on his birth anniversary #PM Modi speaks on black money during Ghazipur Parivartan Rally, hits out at black marketeers #I have always received blessings from the land of Ghazipur: PM Modi at parivartan rally #I salute this land(Ghazipur) which gave birth to Vir Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in 1965 war: PM #PM's Parivaratan Rally in Ghazipur: Modi to address public shortly Uttar Pradesh: PM Modi arrives in Varanasi, will visit Ghazipur to lay foundations of a railway line and a bridge over river Ganges pic.twitter.com/69VEBDBMww ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 14, 2016 #PM Modi arrives in Varanasi, will go to Ghazipur from here (11:05 am) #7 SP, 30 DSP, 12 Company PMF,6 Company Pac, 1000 Police Constable, 200 sub.Inspector, ATS commando teams deployed #Security tightened as protests on demonetisation expected in PM's rally #PM Leaves for Ghazipur, UP (9:30am) (Read in Hindi) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Pro-Russian candidate Igor Dodon is being touted as the front-runner in Moldovia's presidential runoff after he bagged 55.3 per cent votes of the 97 per cent ballots counted till Sunday. With 97 per cent of ballots counted till late yesterday, Socialist Party chief Dodon had 55.3 per cent of the votes, according to the electoral commission, with pro-European rival Maia Sandu on 44.7 per cent. "We have won, everyone knows it," Dodon told a late-night press conference. Official results were due to be announced at 0800 (local time) on Monday. The vote marks the first time in 16 years that Moldova -- wracked by corruption scandals in recent years -- is electing its leader by national vote instead of having parliament select the head of state. Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, the tiny nation of 3.5 million people is caught in a political tug-of-war between Russia and the West. Dodon had come out top in the first round of voting on October 30 with 48 per cent ahead of Sandu, a centre-right former education minister who worked for the World Bank, with 38 per cent. The two candidates have diametrically opposed visions for Moldova's future. Dodon -- who served as economy minister under a communist government between 2006 and 2009 is calling for deeper tiesand boosting trade with Moscow. Sandu meanwhile urged a path towards Europe, calling for the withdrawal of thousands of Russian troops from the Russian-speaking separatist region of Transdniester, which broke away in the early 1990s after a brief civil war. Moldova signed a historic EU association agreement in 2014, and half of its exports now go to the bloc. The move was bitterly opposed by Russia, which responded with an embargo targeting Moldova's crucial agriculture sector. "I and all my friends voted for Igor Dodon since hepromises to restore the strategic partnership with Russia,"said Vasilii Blindu, a 70-year-old pensioner in the northerntown of Balti. But Chisinau student Marcel Pruna, 22, said he backed Sandu because she will "carry out reforms in practice, not just in words". Both candidates criticized the vote as badly organised,highlighting the shortage of ballot papers for overseasvoters. More than 4,000 Moldovan and international observerswere on hand to monitor the vote. Turnout was 53.3 per cent, the electoral commission said. The vote comes as a Moscow-friendly general also claimedvictory in ex-communist Bulgaria's presidential election Sunday, prompting Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to announce his resignation as his nominee was dealt a crushing defeat. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chen Baozhu died at the age of 89. (Photo /Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall) On Nov. 12, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre passed away in eastern Chinas Jiangsu province, reducing the number of registered survivors of the atrocity to 109. Chen Baozhu died at the age of 89. Before her death, Chen left a testimony of her experience at the Japanese invaders hands during the massacre. According to Chen, Japanese troops abducted and raped many Chinese women, including Chens sister-in-law. In addition to Chen, another two survivors passed away earlier this month: Ren Jingping, a 94-year-old survivor who died on Nov. 10, and Li Zhong, who died at the age of 90 on Nov. 7. Li was unable to leave a testimony due to his poor health. The death of so many survivors has worried Chinese historians, who point out that the work of collecting testimonies will be harder and harder in the future. According to the University of Southern California's (USC) Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to conducting audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall currently holds around 4,000 testimonies. Of those testimonies, most are in written form, though a smaller number of audio-visual testimonies have also been archived. In order to preserve oral testimonies, the memorial hall launched a data collection project in October, aiming to gather oral records and visual files from 50 survivors who still retain clear memories of the massacre. The Nanjing Massacre, which took place on Dec. 13, 1937, led to the murder of over 300,000 Chinese citizens, including defenseless civilians and unarmed soldiers. There were also innumerable reports of rape, looting and arson. New Delhi: US law does not prohibit President-elect Donald Trump from managing his business empire from the White House, according to one of his top advisors, who counseled nevertheless that the billionaire's businesses be run by his adult children. Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and one of the leaders of Trump's presidential transition team, told CNN that American presidents are not covered under laws preventing high government officials from having private industry ventureswhile in office. "You realize that those laws don't apply to the president, right? The president doesn't have to have a blind trust," Giuliani told CNN. "For some reason, when the law was written, the president was exempt," said Giuliani, an attorney who also served yearsago with the US Justice Department. "I think he's in a very unusual situation," Giuliani said of Trump. In a separate interview on ABC's "This Week," Giuliani counseled that Trump should nevertheless remove himself fromthe running of his business empire. "For the good of the country, and the fact you don't want a question coming up every time there's a decision made, he should basically take himself out of it, and just be a passive participant in the sense that he has no decision-making, noinvolvement," he said. But Giuliani told CNN Trump's grown children should continue to actively manage the incoming president's businesses. Some have argued that Trump's three oldest children, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric should have no dealings with his business while their father is in office, citing potential conflicts of interest. Giuliani said such a restriction would be unreasonable. "He would basically put his children out of work if -- and they'd have to start a whole new business, and that wouldset up the whole, set up new problems," the former mayor said. "It's kind of unrealistic to say you're going to take the business away from the three people who are running it andgive it to some independent person," Giuliani said. "Remember, they can't work in the government because of the government rule against nepotism, so you'd be putting themout of work." Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr are already executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization. All three, along with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, are also members of the president-elect's transition team. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Tata group has signed an agreement with General Electric Ventures, Microsoft Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, HNA EcoTech, Pitango Venture Capital and RAMOT, the Business Engagement Center of Tel Aviv University (TAU), to establish a new technology incubator in Israel. With the first closing of $20 million, the incubator called i3 Equity Partners (i3) will focus on developing next-generation IoT (Internet of Things) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) technologies. Through this collaboration, the Tata group along with the other partners will support promising early-stage Israeli ventures, enabling them to reach an advanced phase of development, and ultimately strengthen their presence in global markets. The partners, on their part, expect to tap the acclaimed ingenuity and knowhow of the Israeli tech industry, for growing their enterprises in the field of IoT, which is expected to transform how industry operates and how individuals live, work and play. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday addressed the Parivartan rally at Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh as part of the Bhartiya Janta Partys UP assembly polls campaign. During his speech, PM Modi once again attacked opposition for protesting against demonetiosation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. He also recalled the period of Emergency in 1975 when much of the press freedom was curtailed by ruling Congress party. Here are the top quotes from PM Modis speech at Ghazipurs Parivartan Rally PM Modi on Ghazipur: (Read live updates here) #I salute this land(Ghazipur) which gave birth to Vir Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in 1965 war. #Ghazipur's leader in 1952 raised the issue of region's poverty to Pandit Nehru, which led to set up of Patel committee: PM Modi #Will fulfil promises made my eight PMs from UP before me: PM ModiPM Modi on Ghazipurs development #Will work towards encouraging corruption free and prosperous vegetable trade from the region PM Modi in Ghazipur #Scheme for crop insurance will help scores of farmers: PM ModiPM Modi on demonetisation #No draught of cash in India, but the problem is that it is in wrong hands: PM Modi #Sensitive to see common man's problem from demonetisation, trying to abate it as much as possible: PM Modi #PM Modi demands support during tough decisions PM Modi attacks Congress: #I will complete incomplete work of Pandit Nehru, even as his family blames me: PM Modi #Modi hits out at Congress, recalls 19month long Emergency PM Modi on link between terrorism and black money: #Enemy is flooding our nation with these counterfeit notes. We need to put an end to this: PM Modi #Yes, those against me are strong people. But, I will not be scared of them. I will not leave the path of truth & integrity: PM Modi For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Omi Vaidyas became an overnight sensation after playing nerdy Chatur Ramalingam in 2009 film 3 Idiots but did not do as many films in India and the actor cites lack of challenging roles as the reason for his absence from Bollywood. Post 3 idiots, Omi starred in just four films - Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji, Desi Boyz, Players and Jodi Breakers, which released in 2012. The actor 34-year-old actor says though he has enjoyed his stint with Hindi films especially in terms of money, he was not getting roles which excited him enough. I am grateful for being remembered for my role in 3 Idiots because most people work all their lives to get that kind of fame. I got into this profession because I wanted to do something different. 3 Idiots was very challenging as I did not know the language and I did not grow up in India, Omi told PTI over phone from Washington DC. The actor says travelling to exotic locales for his films shoots and getting to hang out with big Bollywood stars was a great experience but was not enough to convince him to continue doing big-budget movies in India. After 3 Idiots, I did take up other projects which were enjoyable, I was paid very well and was appreciated by people. But the challenge of life is about learning constantly. Some people are just happy with making good money but I want to continue growing and for that you have to do different things. I strive on doing something different. Omi is currently busy being a hands-on father to his son, who was born last year. Besides fatherhood, he is also starring in a new Indian-American show Brown Nation, which is an entertaining, slice of life series focused on life a struggling small IT business owner in New York. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: Notwithstanding Prime Minister Narendra Modis emotional appeal to people to cooperate with him to weed out illegal money, Shiv Sena on Monday described the demonetisation as demonic and unsystematic that has led to financial anarchy in the country. Lashing out further, the ruling ally said instead of striking Pakistan, Modi has wounded Indian citizens who do not have any black money and the few who actually possess illegal funds have safely parked it in foreign banks. 125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them, an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana said. The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous, it said. The Sena alleged that the path adopted by Modi to halt black money flow is demonic and unsystematic that has resulted in financial anarchy in the nation. Instead of striking Pakistan, PM Modi has struck and wounded Indian citizens and mocked their nationalism by saluting them for bearing the anarchy, it said. Black money is not held by ordinary citizens who are standing in queues but a handful of people who have parked their money in foreign banks before the demonetisation announcement. What action has been taken against them? it said. Today, roads are empty, shops have no business, vegetable markets have no buyers, labourers have no work and petrol pumps are slowly getting shut for lack of change, the junior alliance partner said. Modi, in an impassioned plea to the nation yesterday, asked for 50 days to weed out the ill-gotten wealth in India. Blending emotion with aggression, the PM mounted a counteroffensive against the opposition over demonetisation of high-value currency notes, promising more anti-graft measures in future even if Im burned alive. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Islamabad: The Pakistan government said on Monday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Pakistan this week to improve ties in various fields. The Foreign Office said Erdogan will visit the country on November 16-17 at the invitation of his Pakistan counterpart Mamnoon Hussain. "While the Turkish President has been to Pakistan on a number of occasions, this would be his first bilateral visit to Pakistan since assuming office," it said. Erdogan will be accompanied by a high-level entourage, including ministers and senior officials, as well as a large business delegation. Besides meeting with Hussain, Erdogan would be holding talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and is also scheduled to address a joint session of Parliament. The exchange of views between the two leaders would cover the entire range of bilateral matters, as well as regional and international issues. Erdogan will also travel to Lahore. The Foreign Office said that Pakistan and Turkey are bound by an exemplary relationship characterised by warmth, cordiality and mutual trust. "Frequent exchanges at the leadership and ministerial levels and growing cooperation in diverse fields are the hallmarks of the unique bonds between Pakistan and Turkey," it said. It said the leadership of both countries is committed to transforming this historic relationship into a strong strategic partnership, in line with the realities of the 21st century. It said bilateral relations between Pakistan and Turkey have witnessed tremendous growth and dynamism in recent years. Both sides are working to give powerful thrust to bilateral trade, investment and commercial cooperation as part of the efforts to build a robust economic partnership. Both countries closely collaborate with and mutually support each other at regional and international forums. The Foreign Office said that Turkey has steadfastly supported the people of "Jammu and Kashmir in their just struggle for the right to self-determination in accordancewith the relevant UN resolutions". Turkey plays a vital and active role as a member of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, it said adding Erdogan's visit would contribute substantially to further solidifying the relationship between the two countries. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Ghazipur (UP): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the corrupt were upset while the poor were enjoying a sound sleep after his decision to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. PM Modi also urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills, Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left yesterday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. Stating that he understood the inconvenience being faced by people due to demonetisation, Modi compared his action to a new whitewash which gives out pungent smell, but is necessary. My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for kadak (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich, he said at BJPs Parivartan Yatra rally here. Particularly stinging in his criticism of Congress which has accused him of causing harassment to the common people, the PM recalled that Congress governments had imposed Emergency, stifling rights of the people and the media, and had banned chavanni (25 paise coins). Under which law did they ban chavanni, it is another thing that they could not move beyond chavanni ... you took the step as per your stature and we did what matched ours, he said taking a swipe at the opposition party. ALSO READ | PM's Parivartan Rally in Ghazipur: Modi hits out at opposition for protest against demonetisation, promises progress to farmers Invoking Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister said he purposely chose his birth anniversary for the visit here to launch projects. You (Nehru) are no more, leaders from your party and your family are levelling false allegations, still on your birthday I am starting work to complete your unfulfilled desire for the development of people, Modi said. Nobody would have offered a tribute which an MP from Uttar Pradesh is giving, Modi, who represents Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, said, adding those who did not work towards fulfilling Pandit Nehrus dream should be exposed. ALSO READ | UP assembly polls 2017: Top quotes from PM Modis Parivartan Rally in Ghazipur Accusing opposition leaders of misleading people, he asked whether corruption and dishonesty should be allowed in the country. Dont mislead people...I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing emergency, he said, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad High Court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The Prime Minister said he knew he was up against the powerful but vowed to continue his fight for the poor, farmers and villagers. I know what all I will have to bear as those who have their coffers full are very strong people...they have the strength to buy governments. They have the power to topple and can spoil the future (of anyone) but should I be afraid of such people? Should I shun the path of honesty and run away...it is with your blessings that I have taken up such a big fight, he said. Defending the decision on demonetisation, Modi said the menace of fake currency could not have been checked if such a big offensive was not initiated. Fake notes were being printed across the border and pumped into the country...should this move of the enemy not be checked for waging a war against terrorism, naxalism and extremism...ever since the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes were scrapped, they are most worried as they are not able to make payments, Modi said. He alleged that rumours were being spread and housewives instigated that their hard earned money for daughters marriage was being taken away. Modi assured them that their Rs 2.5 lakh would not be touched. Moreover, they would get interest on it. Without naming BSP chief Mayawati, who has made strident criticism of the prime minister over ban on high denomination currency notes, Modi said that some political parties are very worried as they do not know what to do. They used to get huge garlands of notes under which their face got hidden, he said, ostensibly referring to the garland of currency notes presented to Mayawati during a BSP rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. Whenever we do something new it gives some pain but the intention should be good...whatever I am doing is for the betterment of poor, farmers, villagers, he stressed. Some people wear a smile on the face, they even say Modi ji you have done a good job. But they instigate their party workers to oppose my decision, he said, without taking any names. Scoffing at opposition for blaming him for the problems being faced by the poor, the Prime Minister said he was better aware of the hardships being faced by commoners. You (Congress) issue statements. I feel the pulse of the masses, he said. Referring to people dumping wads of old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in rivers, the Prime Minister said, You cannot wash your sins off just by putting currency notes in the river Ganges. Reaching out to the locals, Modi, who laid the foundation for several rail projects, began his address in Bhojpuri by saluting Ghazipur for giving birth to Param Vir Chakra awardee Abdul Hamid, who taught Pakistan a lesson in the 1965 war. Thanking the voters of Uttar Pradesh for providing the support and trusting the BJP in the last Lok Sabha elections, Modi said, The state played a key role in giving us absolute majority. Uttar Pradesh will go to polls early next year. Referring to intelligence inputs on terror agencies using counterfeit notes to fund their activities on Indian soil, Modi said the enemy is flooding the nation with these fake notes and we need to put an end to this. Like his Sundays speech in Goa, Modi said he is not scared of those against him and will never stray from the path of truth and integrity. New Delhi/Kolkata/Lucknow: As a belligerent Prime Minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging BJP leaders had prior information about the impending decision. The November 8 decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliaments winter session with representatives of seven partiesCongress, TMC, JD(U), RJD, CPI, CPI(M) and YSR (Congress)--discussing the matter. The SP, BSP and AAP, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides DMK, AIADMK and NCP. Mamata Banerjees TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the crisis situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawatis BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. #WATCH Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U),JMM, CPI, CPI(M) and other opposition parties hold meeting ahead of Parliament winter session pic.twitter.com/RF11sl2jzV ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 #InsideVisuals Congress, TMC, RJD, JD(U),JMM, CPI, CPI(M) and other opposition parties hold meeting ahead of Parliament winter session pic.twitter.com/icDe6hZ2kr ANI (@ANI_news) November 14, 2016 The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing economic anarchy and tax terrorism in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. ALSO READ | UP assembly polls 2017: Top quotes from PM Modis Parivartan Rally in Ghazipur Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances, partys chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Watch video | Poor are having a sound sleep, the corrupt are upset: PM Modi With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi on Monday defended the action as one which has brought sound sleep to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as insult to people. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Hyundai Motor India aspires to launch an entry level SUV in 2019s first half as it looks to strengthen its presence in the fast growing segment. The company, which today launched all new Tucson with an introductory price ranging between Rs 18.99 lakh and Rs 24.99 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), has already three SUV models in its portfolio, including Creta and Santa Fe. "We aim to launch an entry level SUV in the first half of 2019. It will be below Creta. So, we will have four SUVs in our product range," Hyundai Motor India Ltd MD & CEO YK Koo told reporters here. SUV sales have been growing all over the globe, including China and Europe, and is also going to be a very popular segment in India as well, he added. Hyundai is currently developing a sub 4-metre compact SUV in order to fill the gap that lies below Creta. It had showcased concept compact SUV Carlino at the Auto Expo this year in February. Also Read: Hyundai Motor India strengthens SUV portfolio, launches all-new Tucson When asked about vehicles with alternate fuels, Koo said the company has asked its global R&D centre to look into possible models for the country. "Hyundai has strong portfolio of electric and hybrid vehicles. We are planning to unveil a hybrid product during the 2018 Auto Expo," he added. Commenting on the Tuscon launch, he said with the introduction of the SUV the company is aiming to strengthen its presence in the premium segment. The company has set a target of selling 500-700 units of the model per month.Hyundai has launched the third generation Tucson with both petrol and diesel powertrains. Also Read: Hyundai Motors to roll out four SUVs in Indian markets over next two years The manual petrol variant is priced at Rs 18.99 lakh while the diesel versions are priced between Rs 21.59 lakh and Rs 23.48 lakh. The petrol automatic is priced at Rs 21.79 lakh while the one with diesel powertrain is priced at Rs 24.99 lakh. "The launch of third generation all new Tucson will create a benchmark by giving Hyundai experience to the aspirational Indian customers," Koo said. With over 45 lakh units sold globally, Tucson is one of the best-selling SUVs in the world, he added. Tucson comes with 2 litre petrol and diesel engine options and new various features including a puddle lamp, downhill brake control and front and rear parking sensors. The petrol version with manual transmission company comes with 155 PS of power and delivers a fuel efficiency of 13.03 km/ litre. The petrol automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 12.95 km/ litre. The diesel variant with manual transmission offers 185 PS of power and a claimed fuel efficiency of 18.42 km/litre. The diesel automatic delivers a fuel efficiency of 16.38 km/ litre. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Reserve Bank of India on Monday notified banks to waive off ATM customer charges amid growing usage of ATMs post demonetisation move by the government. RBI notification on Monday says that banks shall waive levy of ATM charges for all transactions (inclusive of both financial and non-financial transactions) by savings bank customers done at their own banks ATMs as well as at other banks ATMs, irrespective of the number of transactions during the month. The customer charge waiver is applicable on transactions done at ATMs from November 10, 2016 till December 30, 2016. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in a circular dated November 8, has advised all banks to make ATMs free of cost to their customers till 30 December. following demonetisation move by the government and RBI circular, all major banks have waived the charges for own-bank transactions. HDFC Bank Ltd, Axis Bank Ltd and ICICI Bank Ltd had waived off customer charges on own-bank transaction till 30 December. Banks charge you a transaction fee if you transacted more than five times at your own banks ATM. Earlier, transaction fee was levied on transaction beyond a certain limit. Hence, only three transactions will be free at other banks ATMs in six metro citiesMumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. For non-metro users, the number of free transactions at other bank ATM will remain at five. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Female Chinese fighter jet pilot Yu Xu of the Bayi Aerobatic Team of the Peoples Liberation Army's Air Force is pictured during the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2016, in Zhuhai city, South Chinas Guangdong province, Nov 1, 2016. [Photo/IC] The engine and the flight data recorder, or black box, of the two-seater fighter jet J-10 that crashed and left one of the country's first female fighter pilots Yu Xu dead, have been recovered at the accident site in Yutian county, North China's Hebei province, an official said. Rescuers found the engine and black box Saturday evening and handed them over to authorities, said the official in charge of the military department of Chenjiapu township in Yutian. The authorities are investigating the cause, the official added, and the search work for the jet's remains ended Sunday afternoon. Two pilots from the Bayi Aerobatic Team of People's Liberation Army's Air Force were conducting a routine flight training Saturday morning in Tianjin before they were forced to eject from the jet. Two J-10 jets from the aerobatic team were training when the planes hit each other, according to media reports. Witnesses said the impact left a 10-meter diameter and 3-meter deep pit on the farmland at Dayangpu village of Chenjiapu. The plane was flying from west to east before the crash. Another plane circled twice above the site and left. The male pilot parachuted to safety. But Yu Xu, the country's first female J-10 pilot, hit the wing of another J-10 and died. She was at the back seat during the training. A medical worker at the Yutian county hospital said the male pilot was sent to hospital around 11 am on Saturday, and was discharged soon as he had minor injuries. He has been identified as 35 years old Li. Female Chinese fighter jet pilot Yu Xu (right) of the Bayi Aerobatic Team of the Peoples Liberation Army's Air Force is pictured during the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2016, in Zhuhai city, South Chinas Guangdong province, Nov 2, 2016. [Photo/IC] Born in 1986, Yu was from Chongzhou city in Southwest China's Sichuan province. She joined the military in 2005 as a student at the PLA Air Force Aviation University, and first flew J-10 in July 2012. Fans gave her the nickname Golden Peafowl because the beautiful and versatile woman was also better at the peafowl dance. A photo showed that she performed the dance at a school party after joining in the university. Yu has joined the performance of the Bayi Aerobatic Team during the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, also known as Airshow China 2016, in Zhuhai city, South China's Guangdong province earlier this month. Yu did an interview with China National Radio in Zhuhai, which provided the last tape recordings of her. She said it was a happy thing to be a pilot and she has never regretted her decision. She also dreamed to become an astronaut. "I will receive hard training to realize my dream," she said. Yu's parents arrived in Tianjin Saturday evening after the army informed them of the news. They choked with tears and stayed up at Yu's dormitory room for the whole night. The parents ate nothing before their friend Du Wenbiao, a military officer, finally persuaded them to have something Sunday evening. Chongzhou city officials have also arrived in Tianjin Sunday afternoon to help the parents to deal with the aftermath. Millions of people read the news released by the Air Force at Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service in China, and paid their respect. Many have considered Yu as a model in pursuing their dreams. Read more: Air force pilot: "Basically, we have no difference from male pilots" New Delhi: Who knew it that the country would come to a standstill within a few hours just after the announcement of demonetisation by PM Modi on November 8. In an endeavour to clean the country of black money, corruption and tax evasion, PM Modi made a big announcement of banning 500 and 1000 Rupee notes in the country. The ensuing days saw long queues, cash woes not only to some but for the entire nation. Reports of sacks full of burnt notes, floating torn old notes in Ganga river also pointed towards the hoarded money. ALSO READ: (Demonetisation was part of PM Modis Swachh Bharat mission, says Venkaiah Naidu) Just like any other big announcement this change also met with criticism from Opposition and a large section of commoners. Sensing the troubles of people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that it will take another 50 days for normalization of currency usage in the country. Different reports starting pouring in from various parts of the country of deaths either waiting in long queues or from heart attack. ALSO READ (Marriage seasons hit hard by demonetisation move) #A hospital in Mumbai refused to admit an ill newborn because his parents did not have the legal tender. The child died, though the government has permitted the use of old currency in government-run hospitals for some time. #In Mainpuri of Uttar Pradesh, doctors stopped treating one year old Kush, suffering from high fever, after his parents ran out of 100 rupee notes. The kid was brought home and breathed his last at him house. #An 18 month old baby died in Vishakhapatnam as his parents didnt have money to save his life. The private hospital refused to accept old currency notes of Rs 500 or 1,000. #In Pali district of Rajasthan, ambulance wouldn't take Champalal Meghwal's new born to hospital as he only had Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. #In Telangana, a 55-year-old woman committed suicide after thinking that her cash savings of Rs 54 lakh were now worthless. #In Kushinagar district of UP, a washerwoman died of shock after she got to know that the money (500 and 1000 Rupee) she had saved is no longer valid. ALSO READ: (Demonetisation woes: Helicopters pressed into service to dispense cash at ATMs) #In West Bengals Howrah, a man tense over demonetisation murdered his wife because she returned empty handed from the ATM. #In Kaimur of Bihar, a 45 year old man died of a massive heart attack as he feared his daughter's would-be in-laws may no longer accept his old currency notes in dowry. #In Thalassery of Kerala, a 45 year man fell from the second floor while filling the deposit slip and died. #A 72-year-old man died of a massive heart attack while waiting to deposit old currency notes at a bank in Mumbai. #A 47 year old farmer waiting to deposit old currency notes at a bank in Mumbai, died of a massive heart attack. #A 75 year- old Karthikeyan in Kerala collapsed before a bank and died. Reports say, he had been waiting for an hour in the queue. #In Karnatakas Udupi, a 96-year- old man died waiting in a long queue at the bank, and the bank hadn't even opened yet. #A 69- year- old Vinay Kumar Pandey, a retired BSNL employee, died waiting in a bank queue in Madhya Pradesh. ALSO READ: (Midnight cabinet meet on demonetisation: ATM withdrawal limit increased to 2,500; Old notes to be valid in emergency services till Nov 24) # In Bhopal, a State Bank of India cashier died of heart attack due to elongated hours, resulting in poor health. #A man in Faizabad of UP reportedly died of shock after watching the currency ban announcement on TV. Not only these but many deaths have been reported post demonetisation/currency ban in the country. New Delhi: The demonetisation issue on Monday figured prominently at the all-party meeting convened by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan with all major opposition parties, including the Congress, wanting a debate on it in Parliament. The cross-LoC surgical strikes, policy towards Pakistan, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, besides OROP and the plight of farmers were also among issues that were raised at the meeting with parties demanding discussion on them. Major opposition parties, during the meeting which lasted over three hours, urged Mahajan to allow a debate on demonetisation on a priority so difficulties faced by the common man could be highlighted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also attended a dinner hosted by the Speaker after the all-party meeting. ALSO READ | Opposition unites to take on PM Narendra Modi in Parliament over demonetisation Leaders of various parties have demanded discussion on demonetisation and the steps taken by the government to exchange the currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. The situation in Jammu and Kashmir, holding of simultaneous elections to state assemblies and Lok Sabha, and state funding of polls also emerged as issues on which parties have demanded discussion, the Speaker said after the meeting. She said 22 to 23 bills are likely to be introduced in the winter session which will have 22 sittings. Mahajan also informed the representatives of various parties present that the Lok Sabha has taken a second step forward towards making the functioning of the House paperless. Watch video | Poor are having a sound sleep, the corrupt are upset: PM Modi She said while a copy each of big reports, including those of the CAG would be sent to party offices, the members would invidually be sent reports online. Minimum copies of general and rail budgets would be printed. She informed that an e-portal has already been introduced for the purpose where all reports and questions are uploaded. Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said his party would give notices for adjournment, short duration discussions and calling attention motion on various issues including demonetisation, surgical strikes and governments policy towards Pakistan. Among other issues on which Congress has sought discussion include OROP, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the alleged plight of farmers, besides proposed merger of Railway and Union budgets. The poor, salaried class, housewives, small traders and daily-wage earners are the worst sufferers of demonetisation move and their plight would be highlighted by the party, Kharge told reporters. Leaders of various political parties, including Congress, BJD, Trinamool Congress, SP, SAD, Shiv Sena, LJP, RLSP and BJP were present at the meeting. The Speaker sought their cooperation in smooth functioning of the House. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will inaugurate Agra-Lucknow Expressway on November 21, wherein fighters planes will take part to mark its grand opening ceremony. Agra-Lucknow Expressway, which stretch 302-km, is the most ambitious project of Akhilesh Yadav. It has been completed in a record time of 22 month and has cost of Rs 13,200 crore. It will be open for public in December this year. Fighter jets will touch Agra-Lucknow expressway on its inaugration on November 21. On the day, party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav will also celebrte his 78th birthday. According to reports, 11 Indian Air Force (IAF) jets will land and take-off from the expressway to test the quality of build. These jet fighters will release tri-coloured smoke. The government is looking to build highways across the country that can also serve as landing strips or runways for aircraft, both civil and military. Road and Transport minister Nitin Gadkari has spoken of the governments plan to come up with an airport, in which the highway can be used both by vehicles and airplanes. The airport is reportedly being built in Rajasthan. The Agra-Lucknow expressway will pass through Unnao, Kannauj, Etawah, Mainpuri and Firozabad. It will also will shrink the travel time between Agra and Lucknow to just four hours. . For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Bigg Boss 10 has displayed amazing twists and turns till now and Monday was no different. The housemates woke up to a beautiful morning as the Tunak Tunak song was played in the background.A VJ Bani is the captain of the current week. However, itas the day of nominations and thus many clashes, fights and arguments are witnessed in the episode. Some excerpts from Episode 29 are given below:A # VJ Bani felt that aGharwalea argue on stupid issues! # Monalisa Antara, Manveer Gurjar and Manu Punjabi talk about VJ Bani and Om Swami # Gharwale are asked to mutually discuss and nominate 4 boring contestants. # Nitibha Kaul used her Immunity Medallion and is safe from nomination. # VJ Bani is deprived of casting her vote and feels really bad about it. # Om Swami faced the wrath of both Manu Punjabi and Monalisa as both lost their cool over him. What made #ManuPunjabi lose his cool over #OmSwami? Tune in now to know the reason! #BB10 pic.twitter.com/BnDVxCaOFQ a Bigg Boss (@BiggBoss) November 14, 2016 # Bigg Boss asked Manveer Gurjar to nominate 4 contestants without anyoneas consent. # He suggested the names of Karan Mehra, Rahul Dev, Rohan Mehra and Gaurav Chopra for nominations. # However, other housemates didnat agree with his decision and Rahul Dev, Karan Mehra, Monalisa and Lokesh Sharma were nominated for eviction this week. # War of words occur between Lopamudra and VJ Bani. # Lokesh Sharma, Manu Punjabi and Manveer Gurjar discuss the Gharwale and their day plan. # Monalisa Antara tells captain VJ Bani that the bathroom is not clean, an argument breaks out on this topic. # Housemates argue over the house duties and VJ Bani tries to justify her role as a captain. (File photo of a thief caught in Shandong province. Photo/Lznews.cn) A man in Zhangzhou, Fujian province is facing prosecution after a thief he chased dropped dead on the street. The case has elicited widespread public debate over whether or not prosecution would discourage people from trying to prevent similar crimes in the future. The man, surnamed Huang, discovered a thief in his home around 12 a.m. one rainy night in March. Huang chased the thief onto the street and grappled with the thief until the thief slipped and fell down. The fall caused brain damage, which eventually led to the death, Xiamen Daily reported. Prosecutors argue that Huang should be punished for negligent homicide, as he should have realized that chasing after someone on a rainy night could lead to injuries. Local police have appealed to prosecutors to arrest Huang, while the Zhangpu County Peoples Procuratorate turned down the appeal for lack of evidence, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The case quickly triggered a public outcry as many expressed their opposition to a punishment for Huang. Many argued that any sort of sentence for Huang would set a precedent and keep well-meaning citizens from intervening to prevent similar future crimes. More than 70 percent of some 80,000 netizens expressed their belief on Sina Weibo that prosecution would be unreasonable. In response, local prosecutors told Xinhua that the case remains under investigation; no official charges have been made. (File photo of Xiao Jiguo) As U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to leave office in January, another man one who shares a physical appearance with Obama but not much else is also preparing for some major life changes. Xiao Jiguo was first told that he looked like Obama in 2008, after the latter was elected and the former chose to cut his long hair short. In a profile done by Henan news site Yuqinge.com, Xiao said he didnt even know who Obama was at the time, but when he eventually saw a picture, he had to admit the resemblance. Later, he found out that even their birthdays were almost the same just one day apart, though, at 30, Xiao is significantly younger than his American lookalike. (File photo of Xiao Jiguo) Xiao is an actor, but he was a mostly unknown name until 2012, when he performed on a televised talent competition. Since then, he has had several small roles in Chinese films. He also earns money making appearances as Obama at various corporate functions, fundraisers and other events around China. Recently, he starred in a comedy titled Obama goes on Blind dates, according to the BBC. Although Xiao makes a living by pretending to be the U.S. president, his impression of the eloquent Obama has one persistent flaw: Xiao speaks only Chinese. I can only speak a few words of English, he acknowledged in the Yuqinge.com profile, so when I do my impression, most of what Im saying is made-up English. Nobody can understand it. (File photo of Xiao Jiguo) Nevertheless, Xiao has enjoyed real success over the past few years. He told the BBC that he has earned at least 100,000 RMB ($14,700) every month since last year. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that when asked by NBC what he would say to President Obama if he ever had the opportunity to meet the man, Xiao answered: If one day I could have the chance to meet President Obama, I would say thanks so much to him. I think there is some bond between us. (File photo of Xiao Jiguo) (File photo of Xiao Jiguo) The sea water desalination plant on Yongxing island A series of changes have taken place in the city of Sansha since the city was officially established in July 2012. The changes are all intended to make local residents' lives easier, according to the first plenary session of the CPC Sansha Committee. A total of nine seawater desalination plants have been built in Sansha. The plant on Yongxing Island has the capacity to desalinate 1,000 tons of sea water per day. Water pipelines cover the entire island. These plants increase the capacity of sea water desalination on the Xisha islands and reefs to 500,000 tons per year. The island is also working hard to transport fresh water from Hainan Island; a total of 45,000 tons of fresh water have so far been brought to Yongxing Island. In addition, other facilities including supermarkets, restaurants and beauty salons have begun operation on the island. The construction of a school has finished, and 29 students have enrolled. "Life on Yongxing Island is very convenient now. There is sufficient electricity and water, as well as other supplies," said Feng Jiansheng, a worker at Sansha Information Center. He added that he plans to have his son attend the Yongxing school. Sansha, the smallest prefecture-level city by both population and land area in China, has jurisdiction over more than 2 million square kilometers, most of which is water. The city government is seated on Yongxing Island. STAMFORD The Stamford, Greenwich and Greater Norwalk chambers of commerce have teamed up to organize a tabletop expo Thursday for local businesses at the University of Connecticuts downtown campus. Running from 3 to 6 p.m., the event is intended to help businesses promote themselves in a casual way, gain exposure and attract new customers, the organizers said. About 100 businesses are set to participate, with another 100 people likely to attend, according to Stamford Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jack Condlin. It gives businesses and business people the opportunity to meet people face to face and display goods and services in a one-on-one setting, Condlin said. It provides an opportunity for chamber members that are participating to expand and cast a bigger net. You can reach a broader audience. The event exemplifies how the three chambers present some of their best members to the public, said Greenwich Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Marcia OKane. It provides the exhibitors the opportunity to advertise their businesses, to answer questions and to provide giveaways, OKane said. Tabletop promotion is a wonderful way for businesses to get in front of business people and residents in a unique way. And this is an excellent networking event for those who attend. And, another incentive for people to attend: Its free. The 2016 expo continues a tradition of joint confabs by chambers of commerce in southwestern Connecticut. Norwalk Community College hosted a March show that included the Stamford chamber as well as others from Bridgeport, Darien, Fairfield, Stratford, Trumbull and Westport. This expo not only provides an opportunity for participating member businesses and organizations to gain exposure and market their services and products, but it also provides an opportunity for the members of these three chambers to come together and network beyond their normal sphere, said Brian Griffin, vice president of the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce. (Its) always a great occasion to learn about local businesses and meet new people. A 5-foot table, which comes with linen and a table sign, costs $300 for each business participating in the expo. There is an additional $50 charge for electricity. To register for the expo, visit the following link: http://www.stamfordchamber.com/register.asp?id=1375 pschot@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott BETHEL - Dan OGrady, the newly elected judge for the Northern Fairfield County Probate Court, is offering to address civic and other groups on various probate matters at no charge. These Practical Probate seminars are designed to teach non-attorneys about various topics, including Connecticut estate taxes, conservatorships, guardianships, wills, living trusts and more. The presentations are intended to help educate the public and help them better understand their own situations when it comes to probate court. DANBURY - Sen. Chris Murphy honored three city veterans and an Air Force Academy candidate Monday at a pancake breakfast for veterans. Murphy gave citations to Daniel Hayes, the citys director of veterans affairs, Thomas Saadi, a City Councilman, Steve Fako, the commander of American Legion Post 60, and Joseph Tayor, an Air Force Academy candidate. The recognitions came during an 8 a.m. breakfast at American Legion Post 60. Hayes, who was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in Operation Desert Storm, was honored for his work helping city veterans with benefits and services. Saadi, a Major in the 411th Civil Affairs Battalion in the Army Reserve, was honored for his work helping veterans as the chief of staff and general counsel at the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs. Fako, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, was honored for his work with the American Legion post. Taylor, who Murphy nominated to the Air Force Academy, was honored for his academic and extracurricular accomplishments and your desire to serve our country in the armed forces. A number of people in Zhejiang province are questioning why they have to vacate their new apartments, in which most of them have lived for less than one year. In August, the residents were asked to leave their houses by the end of November, at the request of the city planning department of Shengzhou. Their houses, which were built in the past few years by residents relocated from nearby villages using government subsidies, will reportedly be transformed into a high-end commercial and residential building, according to the deputy chief of the city's planning department. Even though each resident will be compensated with several million RMB, most are still reluctant to move out. Some call it "a waste of individual and governmental properties." Using government compensation and personal savings to build and decorate new units, 1,820 residents moved into new apartments at the beginning of 2016. Zhou Fuduo, a retired professor of Urban & Regional Planning, said that someone should take responsibility for the planning failure. He added that wasting resources is entirely avoidable if policies remain constant. There are many reasons to become an entrepreneur, but no matter what yours are -- even if they dont include getting rich -- your business still needs to generate a profit. Related: 9 Factors That Helped Me Make My First $1M in Profits Without one, you cant keep the doors open, and you cant keep doing what you love. Unfortunately, the majority of new businesses ultimately end up failing within the first few years. In large part, this is due to an inability to generate a sufficient profit, and its not a problem to scoff at -- even businesses built on solid ideas can suffer from a lack of profitability. So, what prevents businesses from being profitable in the first place? Here are seven major problems. 1. Low prices Setting prices is one of the first and most important decisions youll have to make for your business. How you set your prices could easily dictate your future success. Most entrepreneurs immediately caution themselves not to set prices too high; if your product costs more than your competitors', you could turn away your entire target market. However, if you set prices too low, youll end up spending more in production than you can feasibly make back. Consider your margins carefully, and dont be afraid to charge for quality. If you spend more time making your product better, people will be willing to pay for it. 2. Too much overhead There are some things your business absolutely needs to survive. However, you may be overestimating your needs in some key areas. For example, do you really need that 3,000-square-foot office when you have only two employees you're running the business with? Do you really need to invest in that piece of machinery that adds only a marginal value to your finished product? Think carefully about your overhead; if you spend too much there, you could create a hole too deep to dig out of. Related: A Simple Guide to Understanding Your Profit and Loss Statement 3. Too many ongoing costs It doesnt take much for your business expenses to start spiraling out of control; and because expenses come in so many forms, its hard to pin down any one area where youre bleeding money. Think about how many people you have on staff, what you pay your vendors, how much it costs to produce a single product and even monthly variables like utility costs. For all these potential expenses, cheaper options likely exist, along with opportunities to make cuts. So, dont overlook them. 4. Unseen or hidden costs You may have a solid expense plan worked out, but there are some expenses you probably havent prepared for -- and they generally arent lumped into your regular expenses. For example, if your business runs into emergency repair needs, that event could instantly demand all the revenue youve made for the month. If you arent adequately preparing for taxes or insurance costs, meanwhile, those could end up burning you, too. All it takes is a few unplanned expenses to wreck your profitability model. 5. Fierce competition Its possible that your expenses and prices are just fine, but youre facing competition too tough to keep up with. For example, if your competitors have products similarly priced to yours but objectively better, you wont sell enough to say alive. So, find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition, and one-up them in at least one key area, whether that be price, quality or experience. 6. A lack of market awareness You may also be suffering from a lack of market awareness; if your product is at an ideal price for both you and your customers, you still might not generate a profit if no one knows it exists. Your greatest tools to overcome this obstacle are marketing and advertising; they cost a bit up-front, but are well worth the investment if you plan them properly. 7. Inconsistency Theres a chance that you have a perfect way to make your business profitable -- but youre executing too inconsistently for your business to reap the rewards. For example, your expenses may swing enormously from month to month, or your sales team might perform unpredictably based on individual variables. Iron out these inconsistencies as soon as you can track them down. It may be tough to pinpoint exactly where your strategy is deviating, but its an important step if you want your profit to remain reliable. These are some, but not all of the problems that could be stopping your business from generating a sustainable profit. You may be facing the problem from multiple angles, or you could be dealing with something else entirely, such as targeting the wrong market or failing to grow quickly enough. Related: Cash flow or profit making! What should startup entrepreneur worry about? If youre currently struggling to generate a profit for your business, or if you cant work the details out in your business plan, take these problems one step at a time until you isolate the cause of the problem. Theres always a solution -- or at least an improvement -- to be had. Related: 7 Problems Preventing Your Business From Being Profitable Inside the Mind of the Entrepreneur The Money Metric You Might Not Know -- But Should Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved 45-day schedule in Bulgaria for Ajith's next Tamil Nadu,Cinema/Showbiz,Southern Cinema, Mon, 14 Nov 2016 IANS Chennai, Nov 14 (IANS) The makers of Ajith Kumar's next yet-untitled Tamil project, which also stars Kajal Aggarwal and Akshara Haasan in the lead, have left for Bulgaria to work on an over a month-long schedule. "The team left for Bulgaria over the weekend. This is the final schedule of the film and it will last for about 45 days. They will be shooting some major action episodes apart from regular scenes," a source from the film's unit told IANS. Actor Vivek Oberoi, who plays the antagonist in the film, will join the sets in Bulgaria. "Key portions between Ajith and Vivek will be shot in this schedule and it involves two action stretches," the source added. Being directed by Siva, the film has music by Anirudh Ravichander and it is produced by Satyajothi Films. --IANS hp/rb/vm Chinese businesses have increased their efforts to explore the Latin American Internet market in recent years. Industry insiders believe that a potential increase in consumers brought by Latin Americas population dividend, the growing coverage of networks, the popularization of social media, as well as its lagging technological innovation offers Chinese enterprises golden opportunities. The GSMA, the international association of mobile service providers, estimated that the number of people across Latin America using their mobile devices to access the Internet is set to grow by 50 percent by the end of the decade. China proposed a new mode of production capacity cooperation dubbed "three times three" last May, calling on China and Latin America to construct three passages for logistics, electric power and information, launch sound interaction among the three entities of the private sector, society and the government, as well as expand three financing channels including funding, credit loans and insurance. Collaboration on information technology is rightly part of this mode. With advanced telecommunication equipment, search engine technologies and e-commerce management systems, Chinese enterprises have advantages in the booming Internet economy on the Latin American continent by engaging in the latters information industry and network construction. Global Web Index data showed that with 110 million smart phone users as well as a potential market value of 250 billion dollars, Brazil is now the worlds second fastest growing Internet market. In addition, Brazilians top the list for the amount of time spent using mobile Internet. Chinas Internet companies have stretched their coverage to this huge market. The Internet search provider Baidu, for instance, launched the Portuguese version of it search engine in Brazil in 2014, while internet tycoon Tencent has tested the waters there with messaging service WeChat. Qihoo 360, another industry leader, also invested a cloud-based online security company in this Latin American country and launched a series of antivirus products. Huawei, Chinese telecommunication giant, has already grown into a big partner of major local operators after it accessed to Brazilian market as early as 1996. The firm is now the biggest network equipment provider in Brazil with a 40-plus-percent market share. Besides the network construction, Chinese companies also extended their share in cross-border e-commerce industry. AliExpress, the global sales platform of Alibaba, is an example. According to data released by Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE), AliExpress has grown into the biggest global sales platform in Brazil, with its orders well ahead of second-placed B2W group, an old local brand. Amanda, a junior studying in Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, told the Peoples Daily that she bought cosmetics and accessories via AliExpress as the latter provides cost-effective products. El Pais, a mainstream newspaper in Argentina, even commented that about 80 percent of the online shopping packages delivered by local postal offices are from China. Back in 2014, by applying Chinese technology, experience and capital, Baidu founded Latin Americas first business community for online-to-offline (O2O) companies, the Brazil O2O Association by teaming up with over 80 local business leaders. This September, the internet search giant set up Brazils first internet investment fund called Easterly Ventures. The Sao Paulo-headquartered venture, as the first investment fund established by a Chinese internet company in Brazil, will provide and fund technology for local traffic and industry expertise for Brazilian startups. We hope to learn from Chinas successful experience as e-commerce is a new thing for many Latin American countries, said Marcos Pueyrredon, president of the Latin American Institute for Electronic Commerce. Russia warplane crashes into Mediterranean: Officials Russian Federation,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Tue, 15 Nov 2016 IANS Moscow, Nov 15 (IANS) A Russian warplane has crashed into the Mediterranean after takeoff from the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier off the coast of Syria, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday. The pilot of the MiG-29 jet is said to have ejected, The Guardian reported. Combat Aircraft magazine, which first reported the crash, said he was picked up by a Russian navy helicopter but there was no confirmation of his condition. It said wreckage of the aircraft was being also being recovered from the site. The planes was one of four MiG-29 fighter-bombers on the Kuznetsov and if it is confirmed lost, it would detract from what was intended to be a display of Russian naval might in the Mediterranean in support of the Russian war effort in Syria. There are also about a dozen Su-33 fighters on board that have recently been upgraded so they can carry out better-targeted strikes on targets on the ground. According to Thomas Newdick of Combat Aircraft, some of those Su-33 planes carried out airstrikes on Monday, marking the first time aircraft from the Kuznetsov had taken part in bombing in Syria, and the first time the Kuznetsov has been in combat since its launch more than 30 years ago. Military officials briefed the Moscow press on the day of the US presidential election that a large-scale air offensive was imminent using cruise missiles, carrier and land based aircraft, but that onslaught never materialised. Diplomats in Washington suggested the announcement may have been intended to unsettle Americans as they went out to vote. The loss of the plane would be a serious one for the Russia military. The newly built MiG-29KUBR version is one of Russia's most modern warplanes, and they are in short supply, as are pilots to fly them. Michael Kofman, of the Washington-based Center for Naval Analyses, said that by his estimate, the Kuznetsov now only has three MiG-29s left and only three pilots capable of flying them. "This is bad publicity for what was supposed to be a show of capability," Kofman said. "As many Russians feared, this could become an embarrassment." --IANS pgh/ - Revenue decrease result of strategic decision to slow pace of growth and focus on working capital management - TORONTO, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Boyuan Construction Group, Inc. (TSX: BOY, BOY.DB.A) ("Boyuan" or the "Company"), a growing construction company in China of commercial, residential and municipal infrastructure projects, today reported its financial results for the three-month period ended September 30, 2016. All figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Selected Quarterly Financial Highlights In thousands except share and % data Q1'17 Q1'16 Change Revenue $29,714 $60,869 (51.2%) Gross profit $2,488 $5,555 (55.2%) Gross profit margin 8.4% 9.1% EBITDA1 $3,130 $6,498 (51.8%) Net income $0.5 $2.2 (77.2%) Earnings per share - diluted $0.02 $0.08 September 30, 2016 June 30, 2016 Total Assets $240,262 $245,333 (2.1%) Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash $17.2 $16.0 7.5% "This quarter's financial results reflect our strategic decision over the past year to focus on strengthening our working capital position and liquidity through managing our accounts receivable and unbilled revenue, rather than initiating a large number of capital intensive new projects over the period," said Mr. Cai Liang Shou, Chairman of Boyuan Construction Group. "We believe that this prudent approach best enabled the Company to navigate the recent near-term challenges of the real estate market in China and position ourselves for an uptick in the market in the future." Q1'17 Financial Results Revenue of $29.7 million , down 51.2% from $60.7 million for Q1'16 , down 51.2% from for Q1'16 EBITDA of $3.1 million , down 51.8% from $6.5 million in Q1'16 , down 51.8% from in Q1'16 Net income of $0.5 million , or $0.02 per diluted share, down from $2.2 million , or $0.08 per diluted share, for Q1'16 Q1'17 Operational Highlights The Company initiated two new residential construction projects and one new commercial construction project, with combined contract values of $50.2 million . Highlights Subsequent to Quarter's End The Company initiated one new residential construction project and one new commercial construction project, with combined contract values of $39.2 million . . The Company successfully completed the retraction of $1.5 million of its 11.5% unsecured convertible debentures due October 31, 2018 . Review of Financial Results Revenue for the first quarter ended September, 2016 was $29.7 million, a decrease of $31.0 million or 51.2% from the corresponding period last year. Revenue is recognized on the percentage-of-completion method. This decrease in revenue is primarily attributable to the completion or substantial completion (greater than 95%) of three projects that recorded combined revenue of $25.4 million in Q1'16. Cost of construction for Q1'17 was $27.2 million, down 50.8% from $55.3 million for Q1'16. Cost of construction includes all direct material, labor, subcontract and other related costs, such as equipment repairs. The two major components of the cost of construction are direct material and labour costs. Direct material costs were $18.8 million and labor costs were $7.5 million in this quarter. In comparison, direct material costs and labor costs were $38.1 million and $15.1 million respectively in the same quarter last year. Gross profit for Q1'17 was $2.5 million, representing a margin of 8.4% on revenue. Gross profit for Q1'16 was $5.6 million, representing a margin of 9.1% on revenue. Gross profit margins were under slight pressure due to the current real estate market environment in China, with longer development cycles eroding some of the Company's normal margins. G&A expenses were $1.50 million in Q1'17 compared to $1.32 million in Q1'16. The small increase in Q1'17 is due to normal fluctuations in expenditures. Other income was $1.49 million in Q1'17, compared to $1.29 million in Q1'16. The major component of other income is the accretion income from the discount on non-current accounts receivable and unbilled revenue. Interest expense was $1.65 million in Q1'17, compared to $1.81 million in the same period last year. The interest saved from the redemption of the convertible debentures in October 2015 was the main cause of the decrease in interest expense. After-tax net income for Q1'17 was $0.5 million, or $0.02 per fully diluted share, compared to $2.2 million, or $0.08 per fully diluted share for Q1'16. The lower net income for this period was mainly a result of decreased revenue as a result of the decreased volume of new projects taken up in the last year. The Company had working capital of $33.6 million, including cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $17.2 million for the period ended September 30, 2016. This compares to $37.5 million and $16.0 million, respectively, at June 30, 2016. Outlook "While near-term challenges in the Chinese real estate market have muted Boyuan's historical pace of growth, a longer view provides several reasons for optimism. According to economists at HSBC, China's monetary conditions are the loosest since 2011, and loose monetary policy strongly correlates to robustness in the physical property market.2 Boyuan's reputation for excellence in our core markets has won us a robust list of projects from which we are carefully selecting to initiate new projects to grow the Company moving forward," added Mr. Shou. Boyuan's consolidated statements for the three-month period ended September 30, 2016 and related management's discussion and analysis (MD&A) will be filed with securities regulatory authorities within applicable timelines and will be available via SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Conference Call Notice The Company will hold a conference call to discuss its third quarter 2016 financial results on Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 9:30 A.M. (ET). Mr. Paul Law, Boyuan's Chief Financial Officer, will host the call. All interested parties can join the call by dialing 647-427-7450 or 1-888-231-8191. Please dial in 15 minutes prior to the call to secure a line. The conference call will be archived for replay until Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at midnight. To access the archived conference call, please dial 1-855-859-2056 or 416-849-0833 and enter the reservation number 14693561. About Boyuan Construction Group, Inc. Based in Jiaxing City, China, Boyuan Construction Group, Inc. is in the business of commercial building and residential construction, municipal infrastructure and engineering projects. In its last three fiscal years ending June 30, 2016, Boyuan completed 41 projects for a number of private and public sector clients. Boyuan's current project backlog includes residential, commercial, industrial and mixed-use developments. From its operating bases in Zhejiang Province and in Hainan Province, Boyuan focuses on construction projects in China's fast-growing regions of the Yangtze River Delta and the Hainan Province. For more information visit www.boyuangroup.com. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes forward-looking information, which is information relating to future events or the Company's future performance and which is inherently uncertain. All information other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "budget", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targeting", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe" and similar words or phrases (including negative variations) suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. Forward-looking information contained in this press release includes, but is not limited to, management's expectation to comply with the Alternative Information Guidelines. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. The Company believes the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information contained in this press release. Some of the risks and other factors which could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information contained in this press release include, but are not limited to: risk of a general cease trade order bing issued, risk of risk of macro-economy cycle, risk from competition, risk from insufficient marketing to secure new projects, risk in obtaining additional financing, risk involving permits and licences, reliance on key management member, risk from supply of raw materials, risk of financial leverage, risk of bad debts in accounts receivables, risk involved in real estate development, foreign exchange fluctuations, political and economic conditions in China and other risks included in the Company's AIF for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015 and in the Company's public disclosure documents filed with certain Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law. ----------------------- 1 EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization. EBITDA is not a defined performance measure under IFRS. 2 Kwok, Michelle, and Albert Tam. China Real Estate. HSBC Global Research, November 2, 2016. SOURCE Boyuan Construction Group, Inc. For further information: Contacts: Boyuan Construction Group, Inc. : Mr. Paul Law, CFO, +(852) 9329 5088, [email protected]; NATIONAL Equicom: Mr. Keith Richards, (416) 848-1599, [email protected] MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. Canada is committed to reducing climate-harming pollutants at home and around the world. Today, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, announced that Canada will contribute $14 million to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), like methane, through partnerships with Mexico and Chile. This collaborative work will create a cleaner environment for everyone, from Mexicans and Chileans to Canadians and their families, who share this global environment. This investment will help countries adopt clean technologies and employ Canadian expertise to reduce methane emissions. In Mexico's oil and gas sector, we will work towards reducing gas flaring from plant operations, which is the burning of natural gas that cannot be processed. Gas flaring is responsible for harmful emissions causing climate change and air pollution. In Chile, we will capture methane that escapes decomposing garbage at landfill sites and divert organic matter from the waste through composting. SLCPs do not last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but they are much more powerful and very harmful to the climate. Reducing SLCPs is essential to address climate change in the short term. These pollutants also cause respiratory problems and other negative health effects so, by reducing them, we are protecting the health of families and communities everywhere. Canada's action on climate change helps communities in Canada and around the world in tangible and meaningful ways, like improving air quality and providing more access to economic opportunities. Addressing climate change is making the world a better place. This investment is part of Canada's commitment of $2.65 billion over the next five years to help countries and communities around the world pollute less, be better equipped to resist the effects of climate change, and make a positive contribution to a global clean economy. Quotes "Climate change is the challenge of our time, and we need to work in collaboration with other countries to rise to this challenge. Canada is proud to team up with Mexico and Chile to take action on short-lived climate pollutants by investing in clean technologies. These pollutants are powerful greenhouse gases that also have negative effects on people's health. This investment will help grow a global clean economy and will benefit Mexicans, Chileans, and Canadians as it will make the air cleaner, protect our health, and slow warming on the planet we all share and for which we all care." Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change "For Mexico, mitigation of SLCP is fundamental for reaching climate-change goals as well as the SDGs. In that endeavor, the collaboration with Canada to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector will promote clean technology deployment and MRV systems to track progress in reducing these emissions. Furthermore, the reduction of SLCP will bring health and ecosystem co-benefits for our communities and environment, while protecting the planet's climate." Maria Amparo Martinez Arroyo, Director General of the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change of Mexico "The Paris Agreement is official and in force since November 4, much earlier than expected. It is certainly great news for the international climate-change agenda. It is the responsibility of the countries to now move forward towards its implementation, taking the necessary measures to fulfill their commitments. "We are very pleased to continue our cooperation on the environmental agenda with the Government of Canada. In this opportunity, we are working together for reducing short-lived pollutants through waste management projects. Tackling this kind of pollutant is one of the elements in our international commitment under the Paris Agreement. In addition, waste management is one of the priorities of our local environmental agenda. "We appreciate the interest and support of the Government of Canada for the development of waste-management projects in our country. As part of this joint effort, Chile also expects to share its experience with other countries that have high potential for mitigation in this area. This approach based on shared efforts is a useful and necessary mechanism for effective reduction of emissions globally." Pablo Badenier, Minister of the Environment, Chile Quick facts Methane emitted through oil and gas operations is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, over a 20-year period, and black carbon from these activities accelerates warming in the Arctic. Landfills are estimated to be the third largest source of global methane emissions attributable to human activity. Related products Prime Minister announces investment in global climate change action Canada pledges $35 million to combat short-lived climate pollutants Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page Environment and Natural Resources in Canada's Facebook page SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada For further information: Contacts : Caitlin Workman, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-938-9436; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll free), TORONTO, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) today congratulated the Government of Ontario for moving forward with the creation of a new financial services regulator. In its 2016 Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review, the government announced it would be introducing legislation to establish the initial parameters of the new Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA). "Canada's insurers are pleased that the government is reforming the way Ontario regulates insurance," said Kim Donaldson, Vice-President, Ontario, IBC. "Today's Economic Outlook outlines a process for establishing a world-class insurance regulator that can adapt to changing consumer needs and industry trends." Today's announcement follows the recommendations from the province's expert advisory panel to modernize the regulation of financial services in Ontario. The government has committed, once enabling legislation is in place, to develop a detailed implementation plan and to appoint FSRA's initial board of directors. IBC encourages the government to quickly introduce enabling legislation, and to work closely with the property and casualty insurance industry as it shapes the new regulator's mandate. An area of importance for automobile insurers will be the ability of the new regulator to modernize Ontario's rate regulation process; the current system stifles innovation and prevents the benefits of a competitive market from being fully realized. "We look forward to learning the details of this new legislation," added Donaldson. "IBC will continue to work with the government to better serve the consumers of this province." About Insurance Bureau of Canada Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties. P&C insurance touches the lives of nearly every Canadian and plays a critical role in keeping businesses safe and the Canadian economy strong. It employs more than 120,000 Canadians, pays $8.2 billion in taxes and has a total premium base of $49 billion. For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca. Follow IBC on Twitter @InsuranceBureau and @IBC_Ontario or like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ask-IBC. If you require more information, IBC spokespeople are available to discuss the details in this media release. SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada For further information: To schedule an interview, please contact: Andrew McGrath, Manager, Media Relations, Insurance Bureau of Canada, 416-362-2031 ext. 4312, [email protected] TORONTO, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - What: TB Conference 2016 TB Elimination: Back to Basics When: 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, November 15, 2016 (Opening Plenary) Where: Churchill Ballroom, Chelsea Hotel, 33 Gerrard St. W, Toronto Who: Dr. Greg Taylor, Public Health Agency of Canada George Habib, The Lung Association - Ontario Dr. Richard Long, University of Alberta Although the incidence of tuberculosis has steadily declined, this infectious lung disease continues to be a serious public health concern in Canada. There is a large pool of latent TB cases among the elderly, people living with HIV, and those who come from or travel to regions where tuberculosis is endemic. In Ontario, there are reports of multiple cases of TB with resistance to virtually all drugs, posing unique challenges to the public health management of the disease. At the 2016 TB Conference, in Toronto November 15-16, more than 200 experts from across Canada will hear about the latest innovations in TB diagnosis and care, including current strategies for diagnosing and managing latent infection in diverse communities. Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Gregory Taylor, will open the conference with an overview of Canada's ongoing efforts to eliminate TB. SOURCE The Ontario Lung Association For further information: Ali Zampano, The Lung Association - Ontario, [email protected], W: 416-864-9911 ext. 295 OTTAWA, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Five international aid experts will discuss how women's empowerment is critically linked with climate change adaptation and good development policies. Experts from Oxfam Quebec, CARE Canada, Farm Radio International, the University of Saskatchewan and World Animal Protection will make up the panel. Kelsey Johnson will moderate the panel graciously hosted by iPolitics. A panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A open to the public and media. Spokespersons will be available for interviews following the end of the panel. DATE: Tuesday, November 15, 2016 TIME: 5:30 p.m. 7:00 p.m.(approx.) LOCATION: iPolitics 17 York Street, #201 Room 201 SOURCE World Animal Protection For further information: General enquiries, Paul Hagerman, Director - Public Policy, Canadian Foodgrains Bank, (204) 509-2204, [email protected]; Media enquiries, Scott Cantin, Global Head of Disaster Communications, World Animal Protection, (647) 641-8165, [email protected] MARRAKECH, MOROCCO, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Canada is moving to take serious action on climate change, and Canadians will benefit from new opportunities in the emerging clean-growth economy. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, co-chaired the Climate and Clean Air Coalition's (CCAC's) High-Level Assembly and issued the following quotes and photo at the event: Quotes "We have seen great things happen this year in the effort to reduce short-lived climate pollutants. Canada and its North American partners agreed to drive down black carbonor sootemissions that come from burning fossil fuels and to reduce potent methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, by up to 45 percent by 2025a reduction equivalent to 3.8- to 4.2-million passenger vehicles not being driven in a given year. More recently, we joined the world in agreeing to phase down climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons, such as those used as refrigerants. Today, we took another important step in reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations and promoting cleaner fuels and vehicles internationally. "Taking action on these harmful pollutants will benefit Canadians and communities. Finding solutions to reduce short-lived climate pollutants will also foster innovation and create good jobs in a modern, clean, global economy." Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change "I am proud to announce investments with Chile and Mexico to help reduce short-lived climate pollutants. In Canada and around the world, we are adding up wins for the climate and cleaner air." Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Quick facts Scientists agree that short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) such as black carbon, methane, ozone, and some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are responsible for an important portion of the current rate of global warming. Sustained reductions of SLCPs are critical to meeting the Paris Agreement goal of holding global temperature increase to well below 2 C and of pursuing efforts towards 1.5 C. Canada , Bangladesh , Mexico , Ghana , the United States , Sweden , and the United Nations Environment Programme established the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, in February 2012 . Canada is currently serving as the Coalition co-chair with Chile , and it is the largest contributor to the Coalition's Trust Fund, with a contribution of Can$23 million to date. Associated links October 15, 2016 Canada and the World agree to phase down HFCs Canada's participation at COP22 Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page Environment and Natural Resources in Canada's Facebook page SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada Image with caption: "From left to right: Helena Molin Valdes (Head, CCAC Secretariat), Dr. Jonathan Pershing (U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change), Rita Cerutti (Canadian Co-chair of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition), the Honourable Catherine McKenna (Canadas Minister of Environment and Climate Change), and Mr. Pablo Badenier (Minister of Environment from Chile). (CNW Group/Environment and Climate Change Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20161114_C1686_PHOTO_EN_818064.jpg For further information: Caitlin Workman, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-938-9436; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll free) On Nov. 12, an exhibition of Chinas opera figures paintings was opened in Shanghai. The exhibition remembers the 400th anniversary of the death of Chinese author Tang Xianzu. Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), a celebrated playwright, whom fans call "China's William Shakespeare". Tang, who lived in the same era as William Shakespeare, was an outstanding writer during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644AD). His masterpieces are collectively called Four Dreams, since the protagonists respective dreamlands are key to the plots of each work. "The Peony Pavilion," one of the Four Dreams and also Tang's most famous work, is renowned worldwide. It is also recognized for its ideological emancipation and anti-feudalism, representing Romanticism in Chinese literature. The work is traditionally performed onstage in the style of Kun opera. Xie Chunyan, both an artist and chairman of Chinas Opera Figure Painting Institute, explained that Tang pursued a romantic, spiritual realm, and criticized feudal society. These are the sentiments in Tangs Four Dreams. The literary treasures that Tang left for future generations should be passed down and illustrated in various forms, including paintings, according to Xie. The exhibition will remain open until Nov. 27. After its close, the paintings will be displayed in the city of Shaoxing, Zhejiang province from Dec. 2 to 18. BAGSVRD, Denmark, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Today, Novo Nordisk announced a four-year extension of its Changing Diabetes in Children programme which provides access to diabetes care and free insulin to children with type 1 diabetes in developing countries. The expansion sees five new countries join the programme; Cambodia, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, Senegal and Sudan. By 2020, more than 20,000 children over the course of 11 years will have benefited from the programme. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/7962351-novo-nordisk-programme-children-diabetes Ten years ago, a child in Sub-Saharan Africa diagnosed with type 1 diabetes often had a life expectancy of less than a year[i]. In response, Novo Nordisk established the Changing Diabetes in Children programme to support sustainable quality care and improved diagnosis of the condition. Since the start of the programme in 2009, 13,700 children in nine countries in Africa and South-East Asia have received free human insulin and access to diabetes care. "The Changing Diabetes in Children programme has been iconic," says Professor Azad Khan, president of the Diabetic Association of Bangladesh. "It has changed the lives of children with type 1 diabetes in Bangladesh. Their survival depends on the supply of insulin as well as education on how to cope with diabetes, and the programme provides all of this." A large number of children enrolled in the program are experiencing good control and have a chance to lead healthier lives. To date, 108 clinics have been established and more than 7,000 healthcare professionals have been trained in diabetes care. In addition to providing access to insulin, the Changing Diabetes in Children programme aims to support the development of sustainable healthcare systems. Lars Rebien Srensen, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, expressed: "The provision of free medicine alone doesn't solve complex healthcare challenges. From the outset of this programme, we have therefore worked closely with local partners to deliver sustainable solutions alongside insulin to improve the lives of children with type 1 diabetes both now and in the future." About Changing Diabetes in Children The global partners in the programme are Novo Nordisk, Roche, the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) and the World Diabetes Foundation (WDF). In each of the nine already established countries (Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Bangladesh and India), the programme is implemented as a public-private partnership with a group of local partners. The national ministries of health in these countries play a key role to ensure that Changing Diabetes in Children is anchored within the existing healthcare system. Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company with more than 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. This heritage has given us experience and capabilities that also enable us to help people defeat other serious chronic conditions: haemophilia, growth disorders and obesity. Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk employs approximately 42,600 people in 75 countries and markets its products in more than 180 countries. For more information, visit novonordisk.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube References i. Beran, Yudkin, Diabetes care in sub-Saharan Africa, 2006 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673606697043 (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120911/559804 ) Video: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/7962351-novo-nordisk-programme-children-diabetes SOURCE Novo Nordisk For further information: Media: Charlotte Zarp-Andersson, +45-4442-7603, [email protected]; Ken Inchausti (US), +1-609-786-8316, [email protected]; Investors: Peter Hugreffe Ankersen, +45-3075-9085, [email protected]; Melanie Raouzeos, +45-3075-3479, [email protected]; Hanna Ogren, +45-3075-8519, [email protected]; Anders Mikkelsen, +45-3079-4461, [email protected]; Kasper Veje (US), +1-609-235-8567, [email protected] TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2016 /CNW/ - Today, the Ontario Science Centre celebrates the first annual International Science Center and Science Museum Day (ISCSMD) in true Canadian fashion by putting a spot light on the weather, more specifically on climate change. Recently, the Centre announced the results of its first science literacy survey. "Our findings indicated that we as a country can do better in science literacy and encourage lifelong science education," said Catherine Paisley, Vice President of Science Education and Science Experience. "Our survey also informed us that there is a 'climate of confusion' with 40 % of Canadians believing that the science behind climate change was unclear. We invite all Canadians into a dialogue about climate change and its impacts with our Wild Weather exhibition that explores the power and unpredictability of extreme weather allowing visitors to gain a better understanding of the science behind severe weather and its connection to climate change." Today, with the help of David Phillips, Senior Climatologist, Environment and Climate Change Canada the Ontario Science Centre shined a spotlight on climate change during his 45-minute presentation to Centre visitors. Climate change is a global issue and to help address it the Ontario Science Centre participated in a global citizen science project this past October. The public was invited to observe and record local cloud coverage using the NASA-developed GLOBE Observer app. "Clouds are highly variable and predicting their future evolution is a major challenge facing today's climate scientists. Human observations of clouds around the world yield valuable data to compare with satellite remote sensing data," added Paisley. Twenty-nine Science Centres around the world participated in this initiative resulting in a total of 921 observations logged during the focus period from October 1 to 22. "We're extremely pleased to report that the results of this global citizen science project were very favourable; with the help of our visitors, the Centre logged a total of 205 observations. This represents 22 % of the global total," added Paisley. About International Science Center and Science Museum Day (#ISCSMD) International Science Center and Science Museum Day is a collaborative effort between three organizations: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the Association of Science and Technology Museums (ASTC); and the International Council of Museums. ISCSMD was established to commemorate the World Science Day for Peace and Development and to celebrate science centres and science museums. It was also established to help generate awareness around the importance of STEAM education science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. About the Ontario Science Centre The Ontario Science Centre has welcomed more than 51 million visitors since it opened in 1969, implementing an interactive approach now adopted by science centres around the world. Today, the Science Centre is an international leader in free-choice science learning and a key contributor to Ontario's education and innovation ecosystem, offering lifelong learning through hands-on, engaging experiences. The Ontario Science Centre is an agency of the Government of Ontario funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. As a publicly assisted organization, the Science Centre relies on generous individuals, corporations and foundations who share a commitment to science and education for additional operating support. For more information about the Ontario Science Centre, please visit www.OntarioScienceCentre.ca. Social Media Links Hashtag: #ISCSMD Facebook: www.Facebook.com/OntarioScienceCentre Twitter: @OntScienceCtr | #ScienceNow Instagram: @OntarioScienceCentre YouTube: www.YouTube.com/user/OntarioScienceCentre SOURCE Ontario Science Centre For further information: Media contacts: Anna Relyea, Director, Strategic Communications, 416-696-3273 | c: 416-668-1967, [email protected]; Jefferson Darrell, Media Relations Officer, 416-696-3154, [email protected]; Andrea Mus, Media Relations Officer, 416-696-3191, [email protected] OTTAWA, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - The autumn 2016 issue of the Bank of Canada Review, a semi-annual publication featuring articles related to the Canadian economy and to central banking, will be released on Thursday, 17 November 2016. Time: 10:30 (Eastern Time) Description: This issue of the Review features the following articles: Reinventing the Role of Central Banks in Financial Stability Market Operations and Liquidity Provision at the Bank of Canada Recent Changes to the Bank of Canada's Emergency Lending Assistance Policy Commodity Price Supercycles: What Are They and What Lies Ahead? Structural Reforms and Economic Growth in Emerging-Market Economies Distribution: The Review will be available at 10:30 (ET) on the Bank's website. Note: For more information, please contact Media Relations at 613-782-8782 or [email protected]. SOURCE Bank of Canada For further information: Media Relations at 613-782-8782 or [email protected] Healthy economic outlooks for Hamilton and Ottawa-Gatineau OTTAWA, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Toronto will remain one of Canada's fastest-growing metro economies this year and next, according to The Conference Board of Canada's Metropolitan Outlook: Autumn 2016. Hamilton's economy is forecast to remain steady over 2016 and 2017, while Ottawa-Gatineau's economy is projected to show modest improvement. "Toronto and Hamilton's economies are both benefiting from solid advances in manufacturing and in finance, insurance and real estate," said Alan Arcand, Associate Director, Centre for Municipal Studies, The Conference Board of Canada. "Renewed hiring in the federal public service, an active non-residential construction sector, and a bright outlook for tourism are driving economic growth in Ottawa-Gatineau." Highlights Toronto's real GDP is expected to expand by 3.4 per cent in 2016 and 2.6 per cent in 2017, making it the second fastest growing metropolitan economy in Canada , behind only Vancouver . real GDP is expected to expand by 3.4 per cent in 2016 and 2.6 per cent in 2017, making it the second fastest growing metropolitan economy in , behind only . Steady economic growth continues in Hamilton , with real GDP forecast to climb by a steady 2.2 per cent in 2016 and 2 per cent in 2017. , with real GDP forecast to climb by a steady 2.2 per cent in 2016 and 2 per cent in 2017. OttawaGatineau's economy is expected to grow by 1.7 per cent this year and 2.2 per cent in 2017. Vancouver will have the fastest-growing metropolitan economy this year and next, with growth of 4 per cent and 2.8 per cent, respectively. Toronto Toronto's economy is forecast to expand by 3.4 per cent this year and by 2.6 per cent in 2017. This year's fastest industry growth is expected to be produced by transportation and warehousing, which continues to benefit from the rising shipping requirements of a strong manufacturing sector. Indeed, the lower Canadian dollar and moderate U.S. demand continue to support activity in export-oriented sectors, such as manufacturing and tourism. Manufacturing output is forecast to expand 4.1 per cent this year, with a further 2 per cent increase on tap for 2017. At the same time, persistent strength in the resale housing market continues to boost output growth in finance, insurance and real estate. Meanwhile, construction activity is set to moderate to still healthy rates over 2016 and 2017, following an exceptional year in 2015. Housing starts are set to dip this year and next, but this will be more than offset by a humming non-residential construction sector. The bright economic outlook will be mirrored in the labour market, with the anticipated creation of a total of 109,000 jobs over 201617. Hamilton Hamilton's economy is forecast to expand 2.2 per cent in 2016 and 2 per cent in 2017. A lower Canadian dollar and moderate U.S. demand will help to boost manufacturing output this year and next. In fact, this year's projected advance of 4.1 per cent will be the sector's strongest performance since 2010. The robust manufacturing activity has helped spark a turnaround in Hamilton's transportation and warehousing sector. This sector will receive another boost next year when a new grain terminal opens at the Port of Hamilton. The finance, insurance and real estate sector is also adding to growth, thanks to strong resale and new housing markets. Indeed, housing starts are on pace to increase by double-digits this year, and we expect a further small increase in 2017. Despite the strong residential market, construction output is on track to decline this year. However, the industry is expected to bounce back in 2017. The steady economic gains bode well for the local labour market. Although employment is set to post a meagre gain this year, we expect job growth to accelerate sharply in 2017. Ottawa-Gatineau Ottawa-Gatineau's economy has emerged from a period of tepid growth that ran from 2012 to 2014, caused largely by federal government fiscal-belt tightening. In fact, the area's economy is on track to expand by 1.7 per cent this year and by a further 2.2 per cent in 2017. Higher levels of government spending will drive gains in public administration, with output forecast to rise by 1.1 per cent in 2016 and by 1.4 per cent in 2017. Ottawa-Gatineau's services sector will also benefit next year from all of the activity surrounding the country's 150th birthday celebrations. In addition to enhanced versions of regular events like Canada Day, Winterlude and other recurring festivals there will also be many additional events taking place in the region over the next year. Activity surrounding several major construction projects, including Phase 1 of Ottawa's light-rail project, is another strong contributor to growth. Local workers will benefit from the stronger economy: employment is forecast to grow by 0.9 per cent in 2016 and by 1.7 per cent in 2017. This will help push the region's unemployment rate down from 6.6 per cent this year to 6.1 per cent next year, which would be its lowest level since 2009. Vancouver is expected to boast the fastest-growing metropolitan economy this year and next, among the 13 metro areas covered in this edition of the Metropolitan Outlook. At the other end of the spectrum, the economies of Calgary and Edmonton are expected to contract for a second year in a row in 2016, before rebounding modestly next year. Join Alan Arcand on November 22, 2016 for a webinar, Beyond Slogans: Comparing Canadian Cities to the World's Best, which describes how five Canadian citiesToronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Halifaxcompare economically and socially against some of the leading metropolitan areas in the world. Follow The Conference Board of Canada on Twitter. A copy of the report is provided for reporting purposes only. Please do not redistribute it or post it online in any form. For those interested in broadcast-quality interviews for your station, network, or online site, The Conference Board of Canada has a studio capable of double-ender interviews (line fees apply), or we can send you pre-taped clips upon request. If you would like to be removed from our distribution list, please e-mail [email protected]. SOURCE Conference Board of Canada For further information: Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]; or Juline Ranger, Director of Communications, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 431, E-mail: [email protected] In the NHK television special Owaranai Hito Miyazaki Hayao (The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki) on Sunday, acclaimed anime director Hayao Miyazaki reported that he wants to return to making an anime feature film, after retiring from directing feature films three years ago. He has been working on Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Caterpillar), a planned CG short for the Ghibli Museum. However, the special revealed that Miyazaki was not satisfied with the CG project as a short, and he presented a project proposal for a feature-length film this past August. He also noted that if a feature would take him five years to make, he would be 80 years old at the end. In the schedule listed in his proposal, Miyazaki suggested that the film could be done by 2019, before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki commented that Miyazaki will draw storyboards until he dies, and another staffer dryly noted that this would make the movie a huge hit. Despite not officially receiving a green-light for the feature film, Miyazaki decided to start animation work on the project anyway. He plans on creating storyboards for about 100 cuts of footage. In spite of his earlier retirement announcements, Miyazaki confirmed that he will continue animating shorts for the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. The 12-minute Kemushi no Boro short will not be completed for about another year and will be screened exclusively at Ghibli Museum. Miyazaki planned the story for almost 20 years and describes the short as a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers. Some of the prior Miyazaki work A container is loaded onto the COSCO Wellington cargo vessel in Gwadar, Pakistan, on Nov. 13, 2016. Gwadar port marked its first export of a large number of containers to overseas destinations, showing that the port has restored the designed handling capacity. (Xinhua/Liu Tian) GWADAR, Pakistan, Nov. 13 -- Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong said here Sunday that the concept of "one corridor with multiple passages" under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been realized as the first bilateral joint trade convoy reached Gwadar port from China's Kashgar. Addressing a ceremony celebrating the arrival of the co-organized trade convoy, Sun said this is the first time that a trade convoy successfully passed through the western part of Pakistan from the north to the south. "It proves the connectivity of local roads, and realization of the concept of 'one corridor with multiple passages'," said the ambassador. He added that the trade convoy is the best reflection of the spirits of mutual consultation, joint construction, mutual benefits and win-win cooperation, and the spirits will serve as the solid basis for the future construction of the CPEC. Sun also commented that the CPEC has entered into full implementation with remarkable progress as 16 early harvest projects are under construction and tens of thousands of new jobs have been created for local people. Meanwhile, with the loading of the last container onto the COSCO Wellington cargo vessel, Gwadar port also marked its first export of a large number of containers to overseas destinations, showing that the port has restored the designed handling capacity. For his part, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that the CPEC is destined to transform the entire country and open up a world of possibilities for not just Pakistan but also Central Asian states and the rest of Asia. He said that China-proposed Belt and Road initiative matches Pakistan's "Vision 2025" and the two projects will enhance connectivity among regional countries and provide opportunities for shared development. The Nigeria Customs Service (NSC) has warned members of the public against falling to the antics of fraudsters who post fake auction adver... The Nigeria Customs Service (NSC) has warned members of the public against falling to the antics of fraudsters who post fake auction advertisements purportedly by the service in the social media.Mr Godwin Andishu , Public Relations Officer, Tin Can Island Port 2 Customs Command, Ijora, gave the warning in an interview in Lagos on Monday.He said the warning became imperative because of the increasing complaints by Nigerians who had been duped by some unscrupulous elements through such advertisements.Andishu explained that it was not the practice of customs to place auction advertisements of abandoned vehicles in its custody in the social media, urging the public to disregard such posts in their own interest. We wish to tell the general public that those advertisements on social media purportedly by us calling for people to send money to purchase abandoned vehicles in our custody are misleading.We do not auction or sell vehicles online; those who are posing as customs officers are fraudsters who are out to defraud Nigerians of their hard-earned money.Nigerians should disregard such advertisements as the service only advertises items to be auctioned on its official website, detailing the procedures to follow by members of the public.The NSC does not operate any private account and no personnel of the service are authorized to collect money on its behalf into any account.The fraudsters are all over the place using the name of the customs to perpetrate their nefarious acts. People should act wisely by ignoring them, he said.Andishu said the service had not had any auction since August 2015 on the directive of the Comptroller-General, Col. Hammed Ali. He added that the forensic unit of the service had been consistently tasked to fish out these dishonest elements and make them face the wrath of the law.The spokesman said the unit had recently arrested 12 of such fraudsters and they were being investigated for appropriate actions.Andishu also warned job seekers against falling to the antics of those who asked them for money for recruitment into the service, saying the service had no recruitment agent.We are a responsible organisation; we do not ask for money for employment, he said. Governor Nyesom Wike is to be blamed for the failure to pay Rivers State civil servants, pensioners and contractors, the State Chapter of ... Governor Nyesom Wike is to be blamed for the failure to pay Rivers State civil servants, pensioners and contractors, the State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said. The party in a statement signed by the State Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, said it would be wrong to lay the blame at the doorstep of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led Federal Government.We as a political party truly sympathise with Rivers civil servants, pensioners and contractors over their current travails. However, we wish to disagree with insinuations in some quarters in the state that President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC-led Federal Government are responsible for this unfortunate situation. The truth is that Governor Wike and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are solely responsible for the woes of Rivers workers, retires and contractors, by refusing to pay them for the past eight months, Rivers APC said in the statement issued on Monday in the state capital, Port Harcourt.The statement noted that Rivers State presently collects the highest revenue from the Federation Account each month. Apart from this, Rivers generates the highest Internal Revenue after Lagos and Kano states. In addition, Wike has borrowed a whopping sum of N150 million since he assumed office on May 29, last year without anything tangible as an achievement to show for all these funds so far collected, Rivers APC said.The party lamented: Sadly, Wike has squandered all these funds on things that have little or nothing to do with the good of Rivers State and its people. Rather than to pay civil servants, pensioners andcontractors, he has chosen to waste scarce resources on hosting all manner of conferences, sponsoring PDP candidates running for election in other states; hosting failed PDP conventions; promotion ofbloodbath, insecurity and associated evils in Rivers State and bribing people everywhere. He prefers spending the money he should use to pay salaries and uplift the lives of Rivers state people and prefers to flex muscles with Abuja in his bid to be seen as the PDP leader in thecountry.Rivers APC advised the people of the state to stop suffering in silence but to continuously demand good governance from the ill-prepared Wike administration and to hold it fully responsible forthe monumental suffering which he has inflicted on the people of the state since he bulldozed his way into the Government House. The rerun election coming up on 10th December, 2016 is an appropriateopportunity for the Rivers State people to express their anger on this misfortune and ill-prepared administration of Chief Nyesom Wike by voting against PDP Candidates. Former spokesperson of ex- President Goodluck Jonathans campaign organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been released from detention at... Former spokesperson of ex- President Goodluck Jonathans campaign organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been released from detention at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC cell and Kuje prison after spending twenty-four days in these places.Fani-Kayode who was released Monday said he gave thanks to God and Nigerians who were with him during the travail.A statement in Abuja Monday by his Media Advisor, Jude Ndukwe read thus, After 24 days in detention at the EFCC and Kuje prison and after meeting all the conditions of bail that was granted to him by the Federal High Court in Abuja, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been released.He gives thanks to God for everything and he has asked me to convey his heartfelt appreciation and love to all those that prayed for and encouraged him and his family at this difficult time and indeed throughout this ordeal.He will now focus on getting the medical attention that he needs. He wishes to let all those that have offered him support and that have stood by him throughout this period know that his resolve to help build a better Nigeria and stand up for righteousness and truth remains strong.No matter what comes our way we trust the Lord and we believe that we shall prevail Members of the Shiite Islamic Movement of Nigeria on Monday morning clashed with the police in Kano city. Members of the Shiite Islamic Movement of Nigeria on Monday morning clashed with the police in Kano city.A witness said the clash started around Tamburawa, on the outskirts of Kano city, when the police tried to stop a Shiite protest.Over a dozen people including a police officer are feared killed from the violent clash.The police have since deployed heavily armed mobile police officers to the area while the major Kano- Zaria road is completely blocked.Details later President Muhammadu Buhari may have bowed to pressure, by agreeing to withdraw the list of 46 non-career ambassadorial nominees recently s... President Muhammadu Buhari may have bowed to pressure, by agreeing to withdraw the list of 46 non-career ambassadorial nominees recently submitted to the Upper Chamber for screening and confirmation.An insider, who preferred anonymity told newsmen that the president had agreed to withdraw the list because the Senate had made it clear to him that his list was not acceptable to the parliament, as the ears and eyes of the electorate and custodian of democracy.The source also said that the Senate rejected the ambassadorial list because its composition ran foul of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).The president has agreed to withdraw the list in order to work on it and make it acceptable because we have made it clear to him that there is nothing to be done for the Senate to accept that kind of skewed list.Recall that most of the 23 governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have kicked against the nomination.Meanwhile, efforts to get the Senior Special Assistant to the President (SSA) on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, to comment on whether or not President Buhari has accepted to withdraw the list of the non-career ambassadorial nominees failed. As a group of Kaduna based Nigerians, commenced a national prayer for Gods intervention in the President Muhammadu Buhari led governmen... As a group of Kaduna based Nigerians, commenced a national prayer for Gods intervention in the President Muhammadu Buhari led government, Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai of Kaduna State has said that, the All Progressives Congress (APC) cannot afford to fail Nigerians.Worried by the state of the nation, the group under the auspices of Abdullah Network Communication said the national prayer was aimed at seeking divine assistance for President Muhammadu Buhari led government in its quest to develop Nigeria.The spiritual exercise which was kick-started in Kaduna with Muslims and Christians praying for the country in two respective sessions is expected to be taken round the six get-political zones of the country, with the next one taking place in Ibadan, South-west Nigeria.Speaking at the event held at Arewa House, Kaduna, Governor El-Rufai who was represented by the Director-General Interfaith Bureau, Engr. Namadi Musa commended the group for its efforts, saying the President Muhammadu Buhari led government is a product of prayers by Nigerians.He however said that, what the government at the Federal and states level requires is continuous prayers to successfully achieve its goal of delivering positive change desired by Nigerians.El-Rufai said, the present government cannot afford to disappoint Nigerians, because prayers of Nigerians and their resolve to do away with bad governance of the previous administration brought the APC government on board. Therefore, it will be more painful if this government fails Nigerians.So, we are aware of the enormous tasks and responsibilities on our shoulders as a government. With your prayers and support, the President Muhammadu Buhari led government will not fail Nigerians, he said.Speaking after the prayer, the leader of group, Comrade Abdulhakeem Adegoke Alawuje said, the resolved to embark on the prayer was informed by the negative state of the nation.He said, his group had observed that, it has almost become a national chorus on the lips of Nigerians that the country needs prayer, but nobody seems to be ready to take the lead and embark on the prayer. That is why we decided to take the lead and pray for our dear country and its leadership.According to Alawuje, many of us in the group belief in the commitment, passion and resolve of President Muhammadu Buhari to move this country to a greater height, and we voted for him, but unfortunately, we have not seen the change we vote for.We are very much aware that, it is not as if our President is not doing anything to fix this country, but the results of his efforts are not visible. That is why we are praying against any form of sabotage that is denying Nigerians the dividends of President Muhammadu Buharis efforts to make life better for the people.We are also praying for the movement that brought President Muhammadu Buhari to power. Though unconfirmed, we are hearing that, there is feud between the President and the National Leader of APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We pray that God intervenes and make them settle their differences, because that alone can have negative impact on the APC and the nation at large.We are not stopping here, we are taking the prayer to every of the six geo-political zones of the country and after Kaduna which we just finished now, our next point of call is Ibadan, Oyo State capital, for South-west Zone, he explained. Members of the Chinese Presidents delegation went on an illegal spending spree in South Africa to buy ivory and rhino horn and smuggled t... Members of the Chinese Presidents delegation went on an illegal spending spree in South Africa to buy ivory and rhino horn and smuggled the products back to China, according to revelations to be broadcast by Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit.Filming undercover, the Al Jazeera team recorded a Chinese man, who lives in Pretoria and acted as a tour guide for a large delegation which arrived in December 2015 with President Xi Jinping for a Forum on Co-operation between South Africa and China. He claims members of the delegation, including the Presidents personal bodyguards, insisted he take them to a black-market dealer to buy rhino horn along with chopsticks, stamps and bracelets made from ivory. These are all banned items under the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species, of which China is a signatory.Summing up his disregard for the international ban, he tells Al Jazeera, There are many weirdos in South Africa who are obsessed with animal protection. Thats dangerous and troublesome.In a six-month long investigation, the Al Jazeera team also filmed a Chinese businessman, based in South Africa, describing his dealings in rhino horn and how he escapes prosecution. Everything in Africa is based on money, he says. He names a senior Minister in the South African Government who he claims is a close friend and whos been a guest at his home. He also claims a high level official contact at Beijing airport helps him traffic horn back to China.The businessman put the Al Jazeera team in contact with his own dealer in China. In a secretive meeting, the dealer produced a back rhino horn for sale, with an asking price of over US $60,000.The program also exposes the links between the Vietnamese Embassy in South Africa and a Vietnamese-owned game reserve, north west of Pretoria, which is suspected of trafficking rhino horn and tiger bones.Some of Vietnams top CEOs, most senior politicians and Government Ministers are buying rhino horn, says Julian Rademeyer, an author and analyst with the Global Initiative on Transnational Organized Crime. This is the ultimate status symbol, something to give as gifts and buy influence.Working with the Wildlife Justice Commission, based in The Netherlands, Al Jazeera shows exclusive footage shot secretly in a village near the Vietnamese capitol, Hanoi, which is a hub of wildlife trafficking. Despite WJC handing a massive dossier of evidence to the Vietnamese Government on over fifty dealers in the village selling horn, ivory, tiger skins and lion bones, no official action has been taken to close down the trade.About twenty-five thousand rhinos are left in Africa. Six thousand have been killed in the last decade. The largest concentration of rhino is in South Africa and the Kruger National Park has become the major killing field, with two or three animals shot every night by local poachers.But as the Al Jazeera Investigation shows, the poachers are just the bottom end of a criminal chain extending from the kill in Africa to the sale in Asia, with the trade driven by demand for rhino horn from China and Vietnam.The Al Jazeera program airs in the week that two major international events will highlight how close the rhino is to extinction. In The Hague, the Wildlife Justice Commission is holding a public hearing of its evidence before a Panel of Experts (14-15 November 2016) to expose some of the criminal networks running the trade in Vietnam. And Vietnam is hosting the third international conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade in Hanoi (17-18 November 2016), only twenty miles from the village where the horns of an estimated six hundred dead rhino have ended up for sale.The Poachers Pipeline: Dealers, diplomats and the illegal horn trade premieres on Al Jazeera on Sunday 13 November 2016 at 1200 GMT / 1400 CAT and repeats on Monday, 14 November 2016 at 2000 GMT / 2200 CAT. Activist lawyer, Femi Falana, on Sunday said the continued detention of former National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) wit... Activist lawyer, Femi Falana, on Sunday said the continued detention of former National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) without a court order could not be justified under the constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Right, stressing that Dasuki ought to enjoy bail granted him by several courts.Falana in a statement explained that the recent order by the Economic Community of West African State, ECOWAS Court was to allow the former NSA enjoy his liberty within the context of the bail granted him by the trial courts.The statement reads, With respect to the substantive relief, the ECOWAS Court held that the detention of Col. Dasuki without a court order could not be justified under the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.Consequently, the court ordered the release of the applicant and payment of N15m damages to him as reparation for the infringement of his human rights.In reporting the judgment of the ECOWAS Court the media conveyed the impression that the federal government has been ordered to release the plaintiff unconditionally from further detention.Contrary to such misleading impression the ECOWAS Court has not discharged and acquitted Col. Dasuki in respect of the criminal charges pending against him in the Nigerian courts.All that the court said was that the suspect be allowed to enjoy his human right to liberty within the context of the bail granted him by the trial courts. In particular, the federal government was berated for treating the orders of its own courts with contempt.Dasuki is currently standing trial for misappropriating over $2.1 billion meant for the procurement of arms for the Military fighting Boko Haram insurgents in the north east.The former NSA who was granted bail in December by Justice Adeniyi Ademola had dragged the Department of State Services, DSS, to ECOWAS Court over his continued detention.ECOWAS court on October 4, had ordered the Federal Government to pay N15m as compensation to Dasuki, over his unlawful arrest and detention. MOSCOW, Nov. 14 -- Contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump before the latter's inauguration are possible, but one should not put high hopes on a quick change in bilateral relations, the Kremlin was quoted as saying. "I do not know whether there are going to be any contacts between the president and Trump before the inauguration. I do not know, but certainly this cannot be ruled out," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets daily, which published the report on Sunday. He said that Moscow is seeking good relations with Washington and wants to resolve all disputed issues through dialogue, in hopes of mending the bilateral ties which are in "deplorable condition." Peskov said that both Putin and Trump have a common approach to the necessity of defending national interests, and stress the necessity of normalizing relations between the two countries primarily on the basis of protection of national interests. But he warned that one should "avoid unrealistic expectations." Meanwhile, he said, Moscow is going to continue to work with the current administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who will remain in power in the next two months, on the most burning issues. "Events in Syria, for example, are actively developing, so that no one can afford a break of two months," said the spokesman. Eight members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and one policeman have died during a clash between police and members of the sect in Ka... Eight members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria and one policeman have died during a clash between police and members of the sect in Kano on Monday.The Commissioner of Police in the state, Alhaji Rabiu Yusuf, disclosed this while briefing newsmen in Kano on Monday.Yusuf said that four policemen and many members of the Shiites were injured during the clash which occurred along Kano-Zaria road in the city.He said, During the clash, we were able to arrest many members of the IMN and we are going to conduct an investigation into the incident.Members of the movement snatched an AK 47 riffle from our men, but we were able to recover it.The commissioner called on the general public to go about their normal business as normalcy has been restored to the city.The spokesperson of the sect in Kano, Malam Ali Kakaki, said members of the group were on a protest demanding the release of their leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.He said, As our members walked toward the Amana City close to Tamburawa Area, some policemen began to shoot in all directions.The casualties on our side involved women and children.(NAN) A northern youth group, the Arewa Youth Leaders Forum has urged the Nigerian military to ignore false media reports by those they describ... A northern youth group, the Arewa Youth Leaders Forum has urged the Nigerian military to ignore false media reports by those they described as detractors and unpatriotic elements and focus on the assignment of ridding Nigeria of Boko Haram terrorists.The youths also cautioned the Nigerian media against allowing itself to be used as agents of distraction in the ongoing war against the insurgents.Addressing journalists in Kaduna on Sunday, National President of the group, Abubakar Abubakar urged Nigerians to disregard reports that attempts to portray the military in bad light, saying the sacrifices made by men of the armed forces in safeguarding the country deserves the appreciation of NigeriansHe described recent reports of the federal government hiring mercenaries to execute the ongoing war against Boko Haram terrorists as mischievous and baseless allegations.He said, "those that are out to destroy Nigeria are diversifying their strategies so their seeds of discord must not be allowed to germinate and neither should they be allowed to take root."Further to this, the plot to portray the rest of the country as those that do not appreciate the immeasurable efforts of these patriotic and selfless dedicated men and women in the armed forces, whilst others paid the supreme price with their lives others have denied themselves every material and emotional benefits just to ensure that we defeat all terrorists organisations and their affiliates in Nigeria."Abubakar wondered how the Nigerian military which decimated Boko Haram terrorists without any foreign support would now contemplate hiring mercenaries to fight the degraded components of these terrorist.He said, "could it be that these people are looking for ways to explain away the presence of foreign fighters that they have recruited to swell the ranks of Boko Haram after they were decimated by the military?"In the dark days of the previous administration, the so called mercenaries were doing a lot of talking in the news while terrorists run amok as far south as Lokoja, Kogi state. In the months that the military fought the extremists under President Muhammadu Buhari nothing much was heard of them until this time that authorities are suggesting that the war against terror is entering a new phase after much progress. The so called mercenaries are in our opinion were merely planted to detract from the success recorded by the military".He urged the Federal Government to investigate those making the claims that they have seen mercenaries fighting in the north east since they may actually be trying to cover their tracks after recruiting foreign nationals to fight on the side of the terrorists.He said, "It is nothing but manifestation of the concerted attempts to reverse the gains made by the armed forces. Such stories should therefore be discarded with a wave of the hand without our military services dignifying them with formal responses."He said Nigerians truly support the military and will continue to demonstrate that through regular briefings, marches and prayers for the troops. There are strong indications that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) may approve the reduction of 180 cut-off mark for a... There are strong indications that the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) may approve the reduction of 180 cut-off mark for admission to tertiary institutions.The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, who made the disclosure during the 2nd Technical Committee Meeting for 2016 Admissions to Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria, at the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, stated that the decision became imperative as a result of the inability of some of the institutions to implement the cut-off mark.According to the Registrar, it was in a meeting of the Board of higher institutions and other Stakeholders that a decision of 180 as the 2016 National cut-off mark was reached.He continued that, however, many Institutions, though part of the decision, have expressed concern on their inability to effect this cut-off mark as they are finding it difficult to fill a reasonable percentage of their quota if the rule is strictly applied as we insist.A large number of institutions, particularly the budding ones, have applied for a waiver to enable them admit candidates who in some instances scored below 180 marks. For some, this may sound unreasonable with the largely false impression that a large percentage of those who score above 180 and are qualified for admission cannot find any placement in our institutions.I think this cry needs attention, otherwise, some of these institutions whether public or privately-owned may soon begin to wobble or even close shops. This will be counter-productive and even defeat the Government Policy of expansion of access to higher education and manpower development.Oloyede therefore added that, as a Board, we have studied the trend of admissions and have come up with a finding that hardly do the institutions collectively fill their quota annually. Indeed, in some cases, up to 50% of approved quota is wasted particularly by upright institutions which do not circumspect the rule. Unfortunately, a large number of institutions flagrantly disregarded the cut-off and many other policies yet they found a way to eventually regularize the illegal admissions through corrupt process.He however noted that the new flexible cut-off will only be applicable to institutions that have exhausted the list of candidates that scored the 180 cut-off mark.As a Board, we have collated the requests from the various Senates and Academic Boards and have made your pleas known to appropriate authorities . Just this morning we received a green light on flexible cut-off mark only for institutions which have exhausted the list of candidates with 180 and above, subject , of course to a minimum acceptable to JAMB and meeting of other pre-requisite, he added.He however assured that the Board would cooperate with the various institutions in carrying out the mandates of their respective Senates and Academic Boards on admission matters, adding that, the Board would not impose candidates on them but, as a referee, would ensure that no applicant is unjustifiably denied the opportunity of access to Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria.In this respect, together, we should be seen in a conspicuous and proven manner that we have the interest of the Nation in mind in carrying out our statutory functions.He warned that no institution, whether Federal or State, will be allowed to continue with admission of students after the November 30 deadline. Justice Sule Hassan of the Federal High Court in Lagos Monday expressed displeasure with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EF... Justice Sule Hassan of the Federal High Court in Lagos Monday expressed displeasure with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for re-arresting former Minister of Aviation Chief Femi Fani-Kayode within the court premises.Fani-Kayode was arraigned along with former Minister of State for Finance, Senator Nenadi Usman on a 17-count charge of laundering about N4.6billion. They pleaded not guilty.They were charged along with former Chairman of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) and ex-Chairman of Kagarko Local Government Area of Kaduna State Mr. Yusuf Danjuma and a company said to belong to him, Jointrust Dimentions Nigeria Limited.Justice Hassan granted them bail, but the commissions agents re-arrested Fani-Kayode as he was stepping out of on October 21 when he came for trial.He was subsequently taken to the courts Abuja Division where he was arraigned before Justice John Tsoho on fresh N26million fraud charge.When the case resumed before Justice Hassan in Lagos yesterday, Fani-Kayode was absent. His lawyer, Mr S. I. Balogun, told Justice Hassan that Fani-Kayode was in detention at Kuje Prison having not met his bail conditions.He said: When he was arrested in Lagos, EFCC did not exhibit any arrest warrant. The team leader said he was acting on orders from above.After his arraignment in Abuja, EFCC lied to the judge that it was through intelligence that Fani-Kayode was arrested and that he would jump bail. They never disclosed that he was arrested in court.As at this morning, he has been transferred to Kuje Prison. His family and friends have been making efforts to perfect his bail. We condemn in strong terms the prosecutions style.Danjumas lawyer, Mr S. I. Ameh (SAN), said EFCCs action was an affront on the court.Most times they do these things because they get away with it. They should have produced him in court this morning to show that what they did was not deliberate, he said.EFCCs lawyer Oyedepo Rotimi said the case in Abuja had no connection with the one in Lagos.He said he was not aware that Fani-Kayode was rearrested within the court as he was attending to another case before another judge on the day of the incident.My attention was not drawn to his arrest in court even though I was before another judge, he said.He said Fani-Kayode was arrested with a view to serving him with the charge and presenting him before Justice Tsoho for the purpose of his arraignment.While Rotimi was speaking, the judge cut in and said: He (Fani-Kayode) was arrested in the court premises in flagrant disobedient of the order of this court and kept in detention for 21 days.The judge went on: In a civilised society, are you supposed to keep him in detention after he was granted bail?When Rotimi said he was not part of Fani-Kayodes re-arrest, Justice Hassan said: Instead of defending what you dont know, you should have simply said you were not privy to the facts of the case.It was at this point that Rotimi apologised, saying: In the unlikely event that your Lordship construes his arrest as disobedience to the order granting him bail, we apologise.In a short ruling while adjourning the case, the judge said he would not make any further comments in order prejudice any application Fani-Kayode may file against his re-arrest.Usmans lawyer Chief Ferdinand Orbih (SAN) said his client has a pending application praying the court to transfer the case to Abuja.In summary, were saying the forum is not convenient, he said.In the charge before Justice Hassan, Fani-Kayode and others were accused of indirectly retaining N300million, N400million and N800million, all proceeds of corruption. EFCC said they allegedly committed the offence between last January 8 and last March 25, 2015 ahead of last years general election.In another count, the prosecution alleged that Fani-Kayode directly retained N350million which he ought to have reasonably known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act to wit: stealing.The commission said Fani-Kayode directly used the sum of N170million, among other sums, which he reasonably ought to have known forms part of the proceeds of corruption and stealing.He was also accused of doing cash transaction of N24million with Olubode Oke, said to still be at large, without going through a financial institution.The offence, EFCC said, violates sections 1(a) and 16(d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012 and punishable under Section 16(2)(b).Justice Hassan adjourned until December 12 for trial. The APC in Ondo State has alleged that the AD Governorship Candidate in the forthcoming election, Cheif Olusola Oke, was mobilising suppor... The APC in Ondo State has alleged that the AD Governorship Candidate in the forthcoming election, Cheif Olusola Oke, was mobilising supporters from Lagos and Osun states for his campaign flag off.The AD governorship campaign flag off is scheduled for Akure on Monday, November 14.In a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Abayomi Adesanya, APC alleged that Oke had hired over 500 luxury and mini buses to bring in supporters from the neighbouring states to the rally to deceive the people.The Independent National Electoral Commission has fixed November 26 for the Ondo State Governorship Election.Adesanya said, Some of our members have been receiving calls from APC members in Osun and Lagos states informing them of the planned mass mobilisation for the ADs flag off campaign in Akure.We are reliably informed that Bola Ilori, the Director- General of Okes Campaign Organisation, who also doubles as an aide to the Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, has concluded plans with some APC leaders from Lagos and Osun states.The arrangement is to hire over 500 luxurious and BRT buses, among other mini buses, to ferry people from these two states to deceive the general public and the good people of Ondo State.Other desperate tricks being employed by Olusola Oke is generation of fake bulk SMS purportedly from EDO APC sent to people to deceitfully invite them to the flag off campaign.The reality on ground in Ondo State is that the APC Candidate, Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), is the most popular in the hearts of the good people of the state.The AD candidate is a third force that has no place of reckoning in the present Ondo State politics.The party, therefore, urges the people of the state to disregard whatever crowd seen at the AD flag off campaign as hired.Crucial issue about this election is about evolving a home grown governor for the state; one in tune with the cravings of the people, not one thrown up by political and business merchants outside Ondo State for the promotion of pecuniary interests of Lagos and Osogbo jobbers.The Chairman, Media and Publicity of Olusola Oke Campaign Organisation, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi, advised APC to mind its problems and face its campaign like the AD candidate had been doing.Is it not an irony that a party that specialises in the importation of people from Osun, Ogun, Oyo and Lagos states where the party currently rules is now accusing a party that it described as an orphan?AD will not engage in such underhand methods that the APC is noted for. Our people from the nooks and crannies of Ondo State are the ones on ground now for our flag off rally.Oke is the headache and sole manifesto of the APC in Ondo State and we are aware of their shenanigans and evil plots to stop him from contesting.When these numerous plots are failing one after the other, they can merely heckle us. The Presidency on Monday raised the alarm over imminent famine in Nigeria from January 2017. According to a statement made available ... The Presidency on Monday raised the alarm over imminent famine in Nigeria from January 2017.According to a statement made available to journalists, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, raised the alarm in an interview he granted a Kano-based radio station on Monday.Shehu said despite being Africas largest producer of cereals and grains, Nigeria risks famine from early next year following a huge demand in the global market that is targeting the countrys surplus production.The huge demand for our grains in the global market is creating an excellent environment for the mindless export of Nigerian grains across our borders and unless this is curtailed, Nigerian markets will be bereft of food by January next year, he said.The presidential spokesman said the Ministry of Agriculture has advised President Muhammadu Buhari on the need to draw the attention of all Nigerians to the issue which, if not addressed promptly, could lead to a shortage of grains by January.Over the past year, providence has blessed Nigeria with a bountiful harvest of grains, more than enough to feed the country and to export to other countries.At present, there is a high demand for grains from Nigeria, from African countries as distant as Libya and Algeria, and from places as far away as Brazil.However, the Ministry of Agriculture has raised concerns about a massive rate of exportation, which could lead to a shortage of grains in Nigeria by January, he said. .He explained that Nigeria currently enjoys a free market situation. The Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has explained why the $30bn loan request rejected ... The Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has explained why the $30bn loan request rejected by the Senate will be re-sent.Featuring on Channels Television yesterday, the Presidential spokesperson explained that the Buharis loan request was not rejected by the Senate but the upper legislative chambers only asked for more details.Reacting to a question on the loan request, Adesina said, Yes, it makes sense to represent. You will notice that what the Senate said was that, it needed more details about the bid for loan and it was not that it rejected the idea completely.Now, on the basis of that, if government did not represent, it wont show you as a serious government in the first place. This is not a flippant government and before it asked for that kind of loan, it did its homework properly, and if the Senate says it needs more details, then more details would be provided and the request would be represented.On the evaluation of current Ministers, Adesina noted that only the President has the prerogative to assess his cabinet.Let me refer you to the Good Book. It says, who are you to judge another mans servant? It is before his master that he either rises or falls. The President assembled that cabinet, he has timelines and deliverables for them. So he is the one who can judge and assess them. If he is going to re-jig that cabinet, it is going to be his decision, his prerogative, he added.Following Senates decision to reject Buharis loan request , the Minister of Information , Lai Mohammed had said the President would resubmit the loan request. BEIJING, Nov. 14 -- China takes a positive attitude toward cooperation with the United States in all areas, including infrastructure, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Monday. Geng made the comment when asked if China is willing to participate in U.S. infrastructure plans, as President-elect Donald Trump hopes to create more jobs through an infrastructure revamp in the country. China looks forward to working with the United States to expand cooperation on bilateral, regional and international levels, Geng said at a regular news briefing. "As for the specific areas of cooperation, China takes a positive attitude to all areas that will benefit the two countries and peoples, including infrastructure," Geng said. Media reports said the Obama administration has suspended its efforts to win congressional approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact before Trump takes office, saying that the TPP's fate is up to Trump and Republican lawmakers. "China is open in principle to all trade arrangements that are conducive to liberalizing and facilitating regional trade. But China maintains such arrangements should comply with World Trade Organization rules and should not be politicized," Geng said. Responding to concerns that Trump vowed to "cancel" the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was inked last December and came into force last week, Geng said the deal was a result of concerted efforts of all parties, including China and the United States. China is willing to strengthen cooperation with the United States and other countries on climate change and promote green, low-carbon and sustainable development around the globe, the spokesperson added. MOONACHIE - Police have arrested a Maywood man they say struck a pedestrian twice with his car in the parking lot of Costco in Teterboro. Fabian Barrios (Moonachie PD) The 32-year-old victim told police he was pushing a cart back to his car after shopping at the store on Nov. 6 when a driver began blowing his horn at him in an attempt to get him to move. The victim continued toward his car when the driver suddenly struck him with the car, hitting him in the back of the legs. "The victim began yelling at (the driver), who struck him a second time causing to fall down," said police Det. Sgt. Anthony Fugnitti. The driver fled the scene, but not before the victim took note of his plate number and called police, Fugnitti said. The victim, who was not identified, was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, police said. Fabian Barrios, 41, later turned himself into Moonachie police headquarters and was charged with aggravated assault with a motor vehicle and also issued a traffic ticket. Barrios was released after posting bail, Fugnitti said. Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. BURLINGTON CITY -- A city man told police he was standing in a backyard on East Federal Street Saturday night when a masked man appeared and shot him in the leg. Burlington City police said in a statement Monday that the victim, a 29-year-old Florence man, did not recognize the gunman or know why he fired at him. The incident took place in a yard in the 100 block of East Federal Street around 8:45 p.m., according to police. Emergency responders who were called to the shooting scene found the man suffering from a single gunshot wound to the leg. He was treated and later released from Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro. Police had not made any arrests as of Monday but the case is still under investigation. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call Detective Robert O'Brien at 609-386-0262, Ext. 215. Tipsters can also leave a confidential "etip" at burlingtonpolicenj.com or message the department's Facebook page. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. boozle_OnlineTax_miller_19.JPG Josh Needle sits with his laptop, looking at Fanwood's online property tax payment system. (Andrew Miller/For NJ Advance Media) Many municipalities allow residents to pay their property taxes online. But at least two New Jersey municipalities aren't disclosing the fees that are charged to certain online taxpayers. The lack of disclosure is a big problem. Josh Needle of Fanwood said he tried to make an online payment on Aug. 1, the date his property taxes were due. The system gave the option of paying by credit card or by e-check. He chose the e-check. Needle said a pop-up message warned there was a $1.05 convenience fee. A redacted copy of the confirmation email received by Josh Needle. No problem, he thought. He made the payment and received an email confirmation. "This e-mail will serve as confirmation that your payment was receieved," it said, and yes, the misspelling was in the email. But on Aug. 12, Needle received a letter from Fanwood tax collector Colleen Huehn. The letter said his payment was rejected, interest would accrue and that Needle should contact the office for the "correct amount which will include a return check fee." Needle said he was surprised the payment was rejected because he had more than enough in his checking account to cover the bill. He visited the tax collector's office to pay the bill and ask why the payment was returned. "[Tax collector Huehn] said she doesn't know why, she just gets an email stating it's been rejected along with a $20 charge, which the town then passes along to me," Needle said. Needle said he asked for the vendor's contact information so he could learn more, but Huehn said she didn't have that information. "I also asked how come I received a payment confirmation email?" Needle said. "She said they don't process it until a few days later." Needle said he paid the $20 so his account would be in good standing, but he wasn't done. THE TWO BIG PROBLEMS Needle saw two problems. First, he said, the vendor used by Fanwood doesn't validate account information in real time. Needle said he worked as a software developer and he would probably get fired for not having validations for a monetary transaction. And second, he said, the vendor sends out a confirmation email that's "essentially useless. They might as well send out an email that I've won the lottery. It's just as truthful," he said. Needle said his wife later spoke to Huehn, who said she spoke to the vendor. It said the payment was rejected because the account numbers were transposed. Fanwood's online tax payment system. This is the page you'd see just before going to the third-party vendor's site to pay. That made Needle more frustrated. Had the vendor validated account information at the time of payment, this could have been avoided, he said. If you make a purchase at Amazon, Needle said, and you enter in the wrong payment information, Amazon doesn't say "Aha! That'll be $20." Instead, Amazon asks you to reenter the payment information. "In this age of electronic transmissions, when no human is involved, why should the 'return check fee' cost $20?" he said. "I already paid $1.05 for the e-check. If it fails, there's no extra work on anyone's part." Needle said Fanwood's system should work the same way. "Why doesn't Amazon charge $20 if you enter in the wrong account info? Because you'd take your business somewhere else," Needle said. But unless you want to pay by mail or in person, taxpayers don't have a choice. Indeed, if there's a payment problem with Amazon, the retailer will email a customer so there's an opportunity to pay in a different way. Needle said he's worried for older residents in town. "I know it's not unheard of for older people who aren't as comfortable with computers and keyboards to make mistakes more often," Needle said. "Heck, I made one." Needle wondered how much extra money the vendor makes because of the unposted $20 fee, and whether it was a violation of law. He asked Bamboozled to investigate. NOT THE VENDOR BUT THE TOWN Fanwood's online payment technology is provided by two companies: software provider Edmunds & Assoc. of Northfield, which uses payment services from Link2Gov.com, a division of FIS, a Florida-based financial services technology provider. An Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request showed Fanwood paid $11,290 to Edmunds for the services, and several thousand dollars more for services such as tax bill stuffing and mailing. Neither company would tell us how many municipalities in the state they provide services for, or who was charging the $20 fee. This is the page online taxpayers in Nutley will see, with the $20 return check fee clearly spelled out. Online searches showed local governments use different software providers for online tax collection, and quite a few also use Edmunds. Nutley is one of them, but the township's online payment page clearly says a $20 fee will be assessed if an e-check is returned for any reason. That's when we realized it's Fanwood, not Edmunds, that charges the $20 fee. Fanwood tax collector Huehn confirmed it's Fanwood, and the fee is charged for all returned payments per borough ordinance, she said. It's a returned check fee charged by Fanwood's bank, which the municipality passes on to the taxpayer, she said. We also learned that two Fanwood online tax payments were rejected in 2015, and one was rejected in 2016. We asked why the fee isn't posted, but Huehn never answered the question. So we asked about the confirmation email received by Needle. "When the transaction is complete, the online payer will receive a 'payment confirmation' email/not a 'payment accepted' email and then will be directed to a screen that specifically notes in RED letters '****Payment Pending****,'" she said in an email. "These payments are then routed to a clearing house where verification of account information will begin." Even if the online screen says a payment is pending, the email sent to taxpayers is worded such that a reasonable person might think the payment was complete. As a reminder, the letter said, "This e-mail will serve as confirmation that your payment was receieved." (And again, the misspelling isn't ours.) When we said that Nutley discloses the fee, Huehn said she checked out other towns that use the same system, and not everyone provides disclosure. She named Clark as one that does not disclose. But just because other municipalities don't do it, well, that doesn't make it right. And we figured the lack of disclosure was probably against the law. Not exactly, said Tom Calcagni, a former head of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, now an attorney with Calcagni & Kanefsky in Newark. Calcagni said the state's Consumer Fraud Act imposes liability on "any person" who uses any unconscionable commercial practice, which includes "the concealment, suppression, or omission of any material fact." He said while courts routinely have found that hidden surcharges and fees violate the act, it doesn't cover municipalities, which are not considered a "person" under the statute. Josh Needle points out features of Fanwood's online property tax payment system. He called Fanwood's lack of disclosure "troubling." "Even if the town was acting in good faith with no intention of misleading online property tax payers, knowing of its own failure to disclose the fee could suggest concealment and intentional omission," Calcagni said. "At the very least, it would seem to suggest a failure to act in the best interest of residents." Hidden or undisclosed fees are not something the law tolerates from business owners, Calcagni said, adding that this situation raises the question of whether similar practices should be permitted by our local governments. We took this to Clark, which also doesn't disclose the fee. Tax collector Laura Caliguire said the township had no complaints about the fee, and that a resolution allowing the fee is passed each year. She also said she wasn't sure what Clark's website said or didn't say. We told her it didn't make the disclosure, and we asked her to let us know if the township makes any changes. We haven't heard anything yet. We went back to Fanwood to ask if it would consider posting a disclosure, but it didn't respond to multiple requests. Heck, dear readers, we've got 565 municipalities in the state. Bamboozled didn't check them all. Can you help out? Visit your town's online tax payment system and let us know what you learn. In the meantime, Needle wants to see Fanwood use a system with real-time verification. "My point about the fee is that even 'for any reason' it isn't really valid: the reason could be a blip in the electronic transmission -- how many times have you had to re-swipe your credit card? -- or in my case it was something that should never have been an issue in the first place with proper validation," Needle said. Have you been Bamboozled? Reach Karin Price Mueller at Bamboozled@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KPMueller. Find Bamboozled on Facebook. Mueller is also the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Stay informed and sign up for NJMoneyHelp.com's weekly e-newsletter. Gwen Ifill, the longtime PBS news anchor and moderator of "Washington Week" has died, according to multiple reports. She was 61. Politico reports Ifill, a New York native, died in hospice care after a battle with cancer. She was absent from PBS's most recent rounds of political coverage due to health issues. "Gwen was a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change," Sara Just, "PBS NewsHour" executive producer, said in a statement posted by Variety. "She was a mentor to so many across the industry and her professionalism was respected across the political spectrum. She was a journalist's journalist and set an example for all around her." The broadcast journalist best known as an anchor on PBS's "NewHour" had moderated the 2004 and 2008 vice-presidential debates. She previously held reporting positions at The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC. Ifill was to receive the 2016 John Chancellor Award from Columbia University on Wednesday, Politico reported. Ifill's first book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama" was released in 2009. Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier. Find NJ.com on Facebook. MONTCLAIR -- The campus of Montclair State University might be completely smoke and tobacco free by 2019. The college is considering the possibility of implementing a campus-wide tobacco ban that it said will be aided by a $19,415 grant aimed at creating a generation of Americans that do not use any tobacco products. Montclair State is one of the first 20 universities across the country to receive the American Cancer Society and CVS Health Foundation's "Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative," grant, a $3.6 million program aimed at helping colleges become tobacco-less. MSU is the only New Jersey school to receive the grant, and plans to use it to launch a new "Tobacco Free Red Hawks" program, the school said in an announcement. "The goal of Tobacco Free Red Hawks is to engage and educate the campus community and support those who are looking to make lifestyle changes," said MSU Coordinator of Health Promotion Marie Cascarano. "The University feels strongly about its role in creating a healthy living, learning and working environment for all students, faculty and staff, and this initiative is another way to act on that institutional commitment." The school, officials said, has taken steps toward eliminating all forms of tobacco, including vapor and e-cigarettes, from its campus. The goal of the grant is for schools to become completely tobacco-free within the next three years. Only about a third of college campuses are 100 percent tobacco free, the school said. CVS's Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative is part of a larger, five-year, $50 million education and advocacy initiative that the company says is aimed at creating the country's first tobacco-free generation. "We're at a critical moment in our nation's efforts to end the epidemic of tobacco use, but we know we can't do it alone," said Eileen Howard Boone, a senior vice president at CVS Health. "Through the power of partnership and by increasing the number of tobacco-free colleges and universities, we can contribute to the progress being made where a tobacco-free generation in the U.S. seems possible, not a faraway dream." Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEWARK -- The election of Donald Trump will not change how New Jersey's largest city treats its population of undocumented immigrants, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement issued Monday morning. "Newark already has a policy of protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation by U.S. immigration authorities. Despite the election of Donald Trump, we see no reason to change that policy," Baraka, a Democrat, said about the victory of the Republican Trump in last week's election. As an apparent assurance to families in the city who might be affected by a deportation push, Baraka said city officials "are not going to sacrifice thousands of people who live among us, who are part of our community, and who contribute to the economy and vitality of Newark. We are not going to tear families apart." Trump took firm stances on immigration throughout his campaign, but in a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday appeared to back off from claims that he would deport all of the undocumented immigrants in the country. Instead, Trump said he would focus on deporting or detaining undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Baraka issued the immigration statement Monday. (File photo) In the statement Monday, Baraka said the city plans to continue its current practice of arresting undocumented immigrants only if they engage in criminal activities. "In Newark, we comply with federal immigration agencies, but insist that detainer requests be handled constitutionally. I hope that no president would violate those principles, the very foundation of our nation, by taking punitive action against cities that are simply protecting the well-being of residents," Baraka said. The city last year launched a municipal identification program that issued ID cards that allow undocumented immigrants to access state, city, financial, and cultural services. As of this September, the city had issued nearly 10,000 of the IDs. Similar programs have issued thousands more IDs in cities throughout New Jersey and the rest of the country. Mayors in other cities with similar policies have reportedly taken similar stances. According to Philly.com, Mayor Jim Kenney said Philadelphia also plans to remain a so-called "Sanctuary City." Jessica Mazzola may be reached at . Follow her on Twitter . Find . cheering young woman backpacker at sunrise seaside mountain peak People who enjoy greater happiness and sense of purpose in life are less likely to develop dementia, research shows. (Thinkstock photo) Ask yourself this simple question. Why did you get out of bed this morning? The answer could say a lot about your chances of staying healthy, keeping your mind sharp and staving off dementia. Especially if there is no answer. People who describe themselves as lacking a clear purpose in life are more likely to suffer cognitive decline and develop Alzheimer's disease, recent research shows. For older Americans, that can be a particular concern. The most common ways we find purpose are through our children or our career. Once the kids are grown and gone, and you're now entering retirement, it's all too easy to lose your sense of purpose. And that can translate into physical and mental decline of surprising severity. How strong is the connection between loss of purpose and poor health? Statistically speaking, the year you retire is the most dangerous year of your life, says Dan Buettner, a National Geographic fellow who's studied longevity in communities across the globe. "You are three times more likely to die the year you retire compared to your last year of work," Buettner said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. "Ask yourself, why is that? It turns out when you're young, you have your kids, you have your job to keep you engaged, but then when that all goes away, we live in a culture that doesn't particularly celebrate older people." He contrasts the American experience with that in Japan, where the elderly are venerated. The Japanese also place a higher value on living a purpose-driven life -- so much so that they have a special word for it. The Japanese call it ikigai, a term loosely translated as "a reason to get out of bed." Buettner observed ikigai in action while interviewing centenarians on Okinawa, an island where the ratio of adults living to the age of 100 is among the highest in the world, and where chronic disease and Azlheimer's among the oldest of the old are exceptionally low. "Older people are expected to continue to give back, and they're honored, so they stay engaged," he says. "They have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, get out of the easy chair, use those decades of accumulated wisdom and apply it for good. And it turns out there's a virtuous circle there. They don't experience that spike in mortality." These observations aren't just anecdotal. Eric Kim, a research fellow at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says they're solidly backed by research. Studies show sense of purpose holds steady in Japan, but declines in the U.S. as we age. "For some reason, purpose really drops (among Americans) after the age of 65 or 70," he says. "We suspect it's because of retirement; I think that's the big factor. In a sister data set in Japan, that sense of purpose maintains, while in U.S. it's dropping." That decline comes at a cognitive cost. In a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago followed 951 older adults who were free of dementia. Over a period of seven years, about one in six ended up with dementia. But those who expressed the greatest happiness and sense of purpose in life at the beginning of the study were the least likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. They also had the lowest rates of mild cognitive impairment or other cognitive decline. Dr. Aron S. Buchman, one of the Rush researchers, told HealthDay News that maintaining a sense of purpose could be a key to fending off Alzheimer's, in combination with other proven preventative measures. "More social activity, more physical activity, higher cognitive activities, high purpose in life -- all these psychosocial factors seem to be linked with longer life, decreased mortality, decreased disability and provide important clues to a public health approach to try to increase independence in older people in later life," Buchman said. According to Kim, that finding has been replicated in several other studies. He says a sense of purpose can even protect people whose brains already are showing the signs of damage commonly associated with Alzheimer's. "Even when people have the same amount of biological markers in the brain, those who have higher sense of purpose can actually function better," he says. "They are somehow pushing themselves to continue functioning, even though they are biologically having the same amount of tangles in their brain." Purpose has become such a strong indicator of wellness that health insurance companies, government agencies and groups like AARP are taking notice. "These kinds of organizations have contacted me in the last year to brainstorm how we can perhaps in the future utilize some of this research," Kim says. That could lead to new public policy. But we don't have to wait for that. On a personal level, all of us can ask ourselves if we still feel driven by some sense of purpose. Kim acknowledges that Americans are less comfortable with that question. The concept of ikigai, after all, is not in our lexicon. "Sometimes, people here talk about what makes us happy, and that's culturally OK," he says. "But for some reason, when you bring up the question of purpose in life, people get a little more nervous." So he's learned to come at the question a slightly different way. "I used to ask, 'What's your purpose in life?'" he says. "People just don't know. So I transferred it over to the ikigai definition of, 'What gets you up in the morning?' That really gets people going on the topic." For Americans, he says, purpose often has three components: a sense of meaning, a sense of direction, and a set of goals to live for. If you feel any of that missing in your life, Kim and other experts offer these ideas for finding renewed purpose in your later years: Volunteer. Take up a cause. Get active in your church. Launch an encore career. Tony Dearing may be reached at tdearing@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyDearing. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is headquartered in Newark, announced that a printing glitch mistakenly mailed out 170,000 benefit letters that may have contained other members' information. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media) TRENTON -- Some benefit letters mailed to as many as 170,000 Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey customers over a recent three-day period included the names, policy numbers and the physician information of other policy holders -- a privacy breach created by a printing error, the insurance company announced Monday. Horizon pledged to monitor the accounts of affected policy holders for fraudulent activity, according to a statement from the insurance company's printing vendor that made the error, Command Marketing Innovations of Garfield. Command Marketing referred questions to Horizon. "While no social security numbers, financial information, addresses or dates of birth were included on the statements, (the letters) may include member name, member ID number, claim number, date of service, limited description of services, service codes or provider/facility name," according to the announcement. The letters known as the explanation of benefits or EOB, and the explanation of payment or EOP sent to medical providers were printed on Oct. 31, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. The error was caught on Nov. 2 and printing was halted immediately, the announcement said. "Horizon BCBSNJ will monitor impacted members' accounts for any potential fraudulent submission of medical claims. Corrected EOBs and EOPs will be reissued within the next week and notifications of the error will be mailed to impacted Horizon BCBSNJ members," the announcement said. Cheryl Vass of Clark said she and her daughter in Cranford both received the incorrect letters and contacted Horizon immediately to express concern about their private information. Vass said the Horizon employee she reached took her name and number and promised to "add it to the list." "I asked, 'Should I worry about anything?' Vass said. "The thing that worries me is I have got someone's name and health insurance number. I'm not going to do anything with it. But someone else has my name and card number. What are they going to do?" She said her daughter also called to report the error. "The person she got was more caring and apologized," she said. Horizon spokesman Kevin McArdle said it is unclear how many of the 170,000 letters that were printed over the three-day period contained information about other customers. "Horizon continues to work with the vendor to determine exactly how many members were impacted, but we do know that approximately 170,000 envelopes were mailed," he said. McArdle also said he did not know how many people had called to complain. He said he was not aware of reports of suspicious activity as a result of the privacy breach. In 2014, two laptops were stolen from Horizon's Newark headquarters which contained unencrypted information of 840,000 policy holders. The information included names, addresses, date of births and some social security numbers and limited medical information. Bamboozled columnist Karin Price Mueller contributed to this report. Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. gestational.jpg Marybeth Walz Pritzlaff and husband Ode Pritzlaff with daughter Carrington Grace. Walz's earlier use of a woman to carry her fertilized eggs has produced a lawsuit against her former employer, Verizon Business Solutions. (Family photo) Cancer took from Marybeth Walz a womb in which to carry a baby, but not the eggs to conceive one. Eventually, she became a mother courtesy of a "gestational surrogate," a woman who carried Walz's fertilized eggs to term, but not before losing twin sons in infancy. It was a rocky journey for the 45-year-old Red Bank woman, now the married mother of a 5-month-old daughter. While she is now enjoying a new life, Walz said she has one important piece of unfinished business from those darker days: Holding her former employer accountable for allegedly refusing to grant her a paid maternity leave. Walz has sued Verizon Network Solutions, of Basking Ridge, where, according to her lawsuit, she was a salesperson earning $170,000, for its handling of her unorthodox method of having a child. The case raises intriguing questions about how businesses handle atypical pregnancies, according to legal experts. Should someone whose eggs produce a child born of another woman be eligible for a paid maternity leave? And is the inability to become pregnant considered a pregnancy-related disability? Walz contends the company violated disability laws by denying her paid maternity leave when her twin boys - carried by her sister-in-law - were born prematurely in late 2013. Verizon has yet to file a response to her accusations because the case remains in federal court in Boston, awaiting a decision about whether it should be transferred to New Jersey. Until then, said Verizon spokesman Robert Varettoni, the company has no comment. Gestational surrogacy remains quite rare: just 2.5 percent of all the cycles of in-vitro fertilization involve implanting a fertilized egg in a woman who didn't provide the egg and doesn't intend to keep the baby. (Normally it's the reverse: A fertilized egg from another woman is implanted in an infertile woman who wants to give birth to the child.) And in-vitro fertilization itself accounts for just 1.5 percent of American births, producing about 63,000 babies a year. In the workplace, gestational surrogacy is governed by "a minefield of disjunctive state laws," wrote Utah attorney Jeffrey D. Enquist in the Journal of Law and Family Studies, that wrestle with the question of "how to determine when a mother is truly a mother." Walz said she resorted to gestational surrogacy because surgery she'd had at the age of 29 for cervical cancer rendered her incapable of carrying a baby. She was single at the time, but had eight eggs frozen in hopes of some day becoming a mother. Nearly a decade later, she embarked on that mission, courtesy of a sperm donor and her sister-in-law's willingness to serve as her gestational surrogate. Walz's lawsuit said Verizon officials were initially congratulatory in 2013 when she told them she was expecting twin boys. When they learned the pregnancy was carried by a surrogate, however, they said she wouldn't qualify for a paid leave, the lawsuit alleges. Walz said the ultimate irony was that if she had adopted a child, Verizon would most likely have given her not only a paid maternity leave, but also $10,000 toward her adoption expenses. At one point during her discussions with Verizon, she said, a human resources employee even suggested she adopt the twins - although there was no legal need to adopt children produced by her own eggs. "I said, 'That makes no sense,"' she recalled recently. When the twin boys were born three months' premature, Walz traveled to her sister-in-law's North Carolina home to oversee their care. (She was their only legal guardian.) One boy died within 24 hours, while the second baby died six months later. During that period, according to her lawsuit, she worked remotely from North Carolina, then went on disability for depression after the second twin baby died. She contends in the lawsuit that Verizon's response was to demote her to a less lucrative sales team, then ultimately to fire her. Her case has languished for more than a year in federal court: First the judge excused himself, causing a delay, then Verizon argued the case should be heard in New Jersey instead of Boston, where Walz's attorney practices. Her attorney, Charles Rodman, calls it "a cautionary tale about what can happen in a workplace when the culture at the workplace is not yet up to date." The case was filed in Boston, Rodman said, because that's where he is based. Walz said she selected him because he was involved in a 2011 case that also involved workplace handling of a gestational surrogacy pregnancy. "We are supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, but unfortunately, we're not," he said "This is not a case that we are advancing to get rich. It's a social justice effort. Things have got to change." While her dispute with Verizon was going on, Walz married an old boyfriend from high school. She and her husband, Ode Pritzlaff, tried gestational surrogacy again, with the pregnancy this time carried by a family friend in New Jersey. Carrington Grace Pritzlaff was born this past June. Note: An earlier version of this article stated the woman who carried Walz's daughter was hired. She was not; she offered to do it out of sympathy for her plight. Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook. JERSEY CITY -- A 20-year-old Jersey City man with a pending gun charge is now accused of murdering a 34-year-old father of four on Fulton Avenue earlier this month. Khalil M. Holmes, of Pearsall Avenue, is charged with murdering Michael A. Bowers, of Jersey City, on Nov. 3. Bowers who was found on the sidewalk outside 208 Fulton Ave with multiple gunshot wounds at about 9:45 p.m. He was treated at the scene and rushed to Jersey City Medical Center-RWJBarnabas Health, where he was pronounced dead, officials said. Holmes, who was arrested Friday, is also charged with conspiring with an unnamed juvenile to commit the homicide, as well as a weapons offense related to a handgun, according to his criminal complaint. When Holmes made his first court appearance on the charges today, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Leonardo Rinaldi argued his bail should remain at $1 million cash only, noting he has been indicted in an unrelated gun charge. Rinaldi also noted that Holmes was an adjudicated delinquent as a juvenile for unlawful possession of a handgun and he received a sentence of three years confinement in that matter. The prosecutor also noted that Holmes received 18 months probation for robbery. "Based upon the continuous violent offense arrests and adjudications, a $1 million cash only bail is appropriate," Rinaldi told Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable during the hearing in Central Judicial Processing court in Jersey City this afternoon. In seeking a reduced bail, defense attorney Inez Flores noted Holmes' age and told the judge that "all his roots are in the county." "Based on the seriousness of the of the charge, this is first degree, which is the most serious...$1 million cash is appropriate," Venable said. Holmes faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. He appeared in CJP via video link from Hudson County jail in Kearny. No friends or family members attended the hearing. Six Chinese tourists have been transported by helicoptor to Christchurch, New Zealand. The Chinese Consulate General has promised to transfer all Chinese tourists to Christchurch as soon as possible. No deaths of Chinese nationals resulted from the recent earthquake on the South Island, though one tourist sustained minor injuries. That tourist has been hospitalized, according to information provided by New Zealand authorities and the local Chinese Consulate General. Currently, there are about 40 Chinese tourists trapped in Kaikoura. The Chinese Consulate General has made contact with the tourists and arranged places for them to stay. Li Xin, deputy consul general, has arrived in Kaikoura along with other officials. Read more: Two deaths, tourist town cut off after severe New Zealand quake JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City man accused of being high on PCP when he allegedly struck and killed two boys with his car in North Bergen in March was back in court today for a status hearing. Eric Patterson, 23, was charged with two counts of death by auto and one count of assault by auto causing serious bodily injury following the deaths of Bryan Rodriguez, 17, and Noel Herrera, 16. He was charged with assault by auto regarding a then 17-year-old, Manuel Sanchez of Union City, who suffered blunt force trauma and fractures, an official said. At today's hearing, defense attorney Sara Selig-Walsh said she is pursuing an additional investigation and would require two months to complete it. Hudson County Superior Court Judge John Young set a tentative date of Jan. 23 for the next pretrial hearing in the matter. Meanwhile, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Leo Hernandez noted that he will most likely seek to enter as evidence statements made by Patterson at the hospital following the crash. He also said he has obtained the medical record of the surviving victim. Several days after the fatal collision, the charges in the two deaths were elevated to aggravated manslaughter when toxicology tests revealed Patterson was high on PCP at the time of the March 5 incident. Investigators say Patterson was heading north on Kennedy Boulevard at 74 miles per hour -- nearly three times the speed limit. As he went around cars stopped at a red light, he veered into the southbound lanes and struck the three victims, authorities said. Patterson was also cited for speeding, reckless driving and driving with a suspended license, an official said. He appeared at today's hearing with his hands cuffed and wearing the green garb of the Hudson County jail in Kearny. He said nothing. Rodriguez was a freshman at Union City High School and Herrera attended school in Cliffside Park but attended elementary and middle school in Union City. Family members of at least one of the victims were in court for today's hearing but opted not to comment. Patterson is currently being held on a $2 million bail. JERSEY CITY -- Hundreds gathered at the Newark Avenue Pedestrian Plaza Sunday afternoon calling for unity less than a week after the 2016 presidential election. "Love trumps hate," people at today's rally chanted to show their distaste for President-elect Donald Trump. "We deserve better." In one of the most diverse cities in the nation, Jersey City residents vowed to be an example of inclusion for people of all races, religions and backgrounds and emphasized that "racism is not welcome here." Michael Billy, co-chair of Jersey City Pride, said he's been angry, sad and confused the past week. He challenged everyone to continue to cultivate the diversity of the city and be an example for the rest of the nation. "If it works here, it's got to work everywhere else in the United States," he said. "We're the melting pot, we're the Golden Door, we're leading by example. We have a chance to lead in this change." A number of hate crimes have been reported across the country since the election. A group of students from the University of Pennsylvania reported receiving racist messages through a group messaging app. Racially charged messages have also been found, according to CNN. During the rally, students from Learning Community Charter School led the group in songs which included a performance of "This Land is Your Land." Jersey City Council President Rolando Lavarro shared a story with a group of young children sitting on the ground in front of him about how he was bullied when he was 12 years old. His family had moved to Missouri for about a year and said he was called racially derogatory names by his classmates on a daily basis. After one boy humiliated the now-council president in front of the entire school, Lavarro told the children he got into a physical fight. He said the way he was treated by his classmates was something that stuck with him his entire life. "We're all here to protect you," he told the children, as some parents wiped tears from their eyes. Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. JERSEY CITY -- As a kid growing up in the city's Salem-Lafayette housing complex, Lonnie Henderson had a dream of one day becoming a firefighter and serving his city. Henderson achieved that life-long goal Monday morning, joining 18 other members of the Jersey City Fire Department's 634th class. "This is everything," the 34-year-old said after an 11 a.m. swearing-in ceremony at City Hall. The graduating class in especially unique in two ways: all 19 men have served in the military and are fully certified emergency medical technicians. The group, comprised entirely of Jersey City residents, completed 10 weeks of training at the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy and an additional two weeks of training in Jersey City. Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop applauded the men for their service. While most people would run from danger, he thanked the class for its commitment for running into dangerous situations to keep Jersey City residents safe. "As we welcome this new class of firefighters, we recognize them for their commitment to service and for choosing a career that ensures the safety of their fellow neighbors," Fulop said. The city now has 568 firefighters, 99 of whom have been added to the department in the past three years with help from a $6.9 million federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant. John Palmer, a 24-year-old Army veteran, said his training in the military definitely prepared him for his career as a firefighter. "I'm expecting everything and anything," the Heights resident said. The 19 new members are: Kevin Davis, Patrick Ducey, Adalberto Arroyo, Matthew Spinella, Lonnie Henderson, Carlos Drouet, Mathew Bertolini, Nicholas Debiasse, Kenneth Rutmayer, Daniel Delaney Jr., Michael Leonard, Julio Milla, John Palmer, Christian Baierwalter, Matthew Nierstedt, Dylan Walsh, Jason Daniels, Nolanray Perlas, and Joseph Costante. The class is also the first to be fully EMT-certified, as the firefighters underwent EMT training as part of their fire academy courses. The EMT training was covered through a $62,500 federal SAFER grant that was awarded to the department. The Fulop administration plans to expand EMT training to all new firefighters. Henderson, who served in the Navy, said his four children are excited to see their father complete the fire academy. His 6-year-old son is already anticipating following in his dad's footsteps in becoming a firefighter. Henderson hopes to not only inspire his children, but his community as well. "Hopefully I can be somebody they're proud of," he said. Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. BEIJING, Nov. 14 --Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday discussed China-U.S. relations with Donald Trump in a telephone conversation. Xi congratulated Trump on his election as U.S. president and expressed his willingness to work with him. Since the two countries established formal ties 37 years ago, bilateral relations have been continuously progressing, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples and promoting world and regional peace, stability and prosperity, Xi said. Facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the two countries, he said. As China-U.S. cooperation faces important opportunities and has huge potential, the two countries need to strengthen coordination, advance their respective economic development and global economic growth and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples and promote the smooth development of China-U.S. relations, said the Chinese president. As the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country respectively and as the top two economies of the world, there are many things in which China and the United States can and should cooperate, Xi said. "I attach great importance to China-U.S. relations and am ready to work with the U.S. side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world," he told Trump. For his part, Trump thanked Xi for the congratulations and said that he agreed with Xi on his views about U.S.-China relations. China is a great and important country with eye-catching development prospects, said Trump. The United States and China can achieve win-win results featuring mutual benefits, he added. Trump voiced his readiness to work with Xi to strengthen U.S.-China cooperation and expressed his belief that U.S.-China relations will witness even greater development. Xi and Trump also agreed to maintain close contact, establish a good working relationship and meet at an early date to exchange views on bilateral ties and other issues of common concern. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 Trend: Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 15 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Nov. 14. The Azerbaijani army positions located in Qaymaqli village of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located in Barekamavan village of the Noyemberyan district of Armenia. The Azerbaijani army positions located in Munjuglu village of Azerbaijans Tovuz district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located on the nameless heights of the Berd district of Armenia. Moreover, the Azerbaijani army positions also underwent fire from the Armenian positions located near the Armenian-occupied Chilaburt village of the Tartar district, as well as on nameless heights of the Goranboy, Tartar and Fizuli districts. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received Vice-President of the Asian Development Bank Wencai Zhang November 14. The head of state praised the level of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the Asian Development Bank and recalled with pleasure his meeting with President of the organization Takehiko Nakao during the 48th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors in Baku in 2015. Hailing the success of the event that Azerbaijan hosted and participation of a large number of representatives from member states, President Ilham Aliyev underlined new dynamics in cooperation between Azerbaijan and the Asian Development Bank. Describing Azerbaijan as a reliable partner with financial capabilities, and the country which has always fulfilled its commitments, President Ilham Aliyev thanked Wencai Zhang for the important projects which ADB carried out in Azerbaijan, particularly for its supporting the Southern Gas Corridor project. President Ilham Aliyev hailed the importance of the Southern Gas Corridor project not only to Azerbaijan, but to the region in a broader geography, including Europe. Pointing to Azerbaijan-ADB cooperation in a number of other areas too, the head of state noted that most of the jointly implemented infrastructure projects have already been completed. President Ilham Aliyev expressed his confidence that cooperation between Azerbaijan and ADB will continue, saying Vice-President Wencai Zhang's visit to the country created a good opportunity for discussing cooperation prospects and reviewing work done in recent years. Wencai Zhang extended greetings of President of the Asian Development Bank Takehiko Nakao to President Ilham Aliyev. He expressed his gratitude to President Ilham Alivev for supporting the organization of the 48th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors in Baku in 2015. Wencai Zhang praised very good cooperation between ADB and Azerbaijan. He said ADB has allocated $2.8 billion to Azerbaijan since the country joined the organization in 1999. Wencai Zhang said that apart from its own projects in Azerbaijan, ADB also supports and attaches importance to Southern Gas Corridor and Shah Deniz projects. He noted that a special council was set up at ADB to deal with these projects. The sides also emphasized the importance of ADB-supported infrastructure projects in Azerbaijan, including North-South railroad corridor, water supply, road expansion and other projects. ADBs including such projects in its 2017-2019 funding program for Azerbaijan was hailed at the meeting. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Seba Aghayeva Trend: Consultations will be held between the foreign ministries of Azerbaijan and Moldova in the near future, Gheorghe Leuca, Moldovas ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Trend November 14. Lilian Darii, Moldovas deputy foreign minister, is expected to visit Baku to participate in the foreign ministerial consultations, Leuca added. During the consultations, Azerbaijans and Moldovas officials will discuss the current state and prospects of cooperation between the two countries in regional and international organizations to which the two countries are members, the ambassador said. He added that the dates of the visit and consultations are being agreed. From the Azerbaijani side, Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov will take part in the consultations, Leuca said. Earlier, Darii at a meeting with Qudsi Osmanov, newly appointed ambassador of Azerbaijan to Moldova, expressed interest in intensifying the bilateral political dialogue and expanding the economic and trade relations between Moldova and Azerbaijan. After a pig roast, it's time for Sankey Bowl talk in today's 11 a.m chat The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts. WASHINGTON (AP) The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Seba Aghayeva Trend: EU foreign ministers will discuss the preparation of a new agreement on partnership with Azerbaijan. The discussions will be held during a meeting at the Council of the European Union Nov. 14 in Brussels, Belgium. Earlier, Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev, Azerbaijans deputy foreign minister, told Trend that the mandate to start negotiations on the new agreement on strategic modernized partnership between the EU and Azerbaijan may be issued until end of 2016. Currently, bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan are regulated on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation that was signed in 1996 and entered into force in 1999. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. The EU is Azerbaijans major trade partner. Azerbaijan initiated to sign an agreement on strategic modernized partnership with the EU instead of the agreement about association. The document is a program, a plan of action aimed at the expansion of cooperation with the EU beyond energy. The new agreement will define new directions of partnership, such as education and other spheres. Can the Saints bounce back at Carolina on Thursday? Chime in for Tuesday's Dat Chat Podcast Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 Trend: Navy ships and boats have joined the large-scale exercises conducted by Azerbaijans Armed Forces, Defense Ministry said in a message Nov. 14. The exercises are carried out according to the plan approved by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev. Common readiness of personnel of the ships and boats participating in the exercises and operational situation in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea were inspected during the drills. Tasks of the first stage of the drills were completed successfully. The drills will end November 18. Details added (first version posted at 11:58) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend: The Baku Engineering University will begin to operate in 2017-2018 academic year, Mikayil Jabbarov, Azerbaijani minister of education, told reporters in Baku November 14. Jabbarov said the location of the university is still being discussed. "The university will be provided with resource and technical base, he said. The management will be appointed and the curriculum will be worked out at the university. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed the decree on the establishment of the Baku Engineering University November 8, 2016. The Baku Engineering University, which will operate under the Azerbaijani Ministry of Education, will prepare engineers on all levels of higher education, implement higher and additional education programs in this sphere and carry out basic and applied research. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 Trend: Rector of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) Elmar Gasimov met with the Ambassador of Indonesia to Azerbaijan Husnan Bey Fananie. Welcoming the honorable guest, Gasimov told him about development of business relations between two countries in the fields of economics, tourism, culture and education. He also informed the guest about history of the Higher School established by a Decree of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic Ilham Aliyev, BHOS achievements and conditions, created for education of the students and training of high-qualified professionals for oil and gas industry. Gasimov emphasized that BHOS constantly develops business relations with leading universities and companies around the world. Fananie expressed his gratitude for the cordial reception and dwelled on establishment of cooperation between BHOS and Indonesian universities in the framework of the broader cooperation between Azerbaijan and Indonesia. The ambassador invited BHOS professors, students and staff members to attend Indonesian Culture Festival to be held on November 19-20 in Baku. Spheres of the future cooperation between BHOS and Indonesian universities including student and teacher exchange programs and other issues of mutual interest were also discussed. At the end of the meeting, Gasimov presented BHOS Honorable Guest diploma to the Indonesian ambassador. Faulty equipment may be at least partly to blame for odor complaints coming from the Pratt Industries plant in Valparaiso, according to the preliminary findings of an investigation under way by state environmental officials. Company officials said two of four blowers in the plants aeration system failed Sept. 13, causing portions of the process to become septic, according to a water report completed by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. An air report is still awaiting internal approval before it will be released, according to Courtney Arango, IDEM communications director. Two blowers have been repaired, according to IDEM. The company also told the investigator a spare mixer was out for maintenance when the odor was detected. A higher capacity aerator is planned for January, and there is a possibility a geodesic dome will be installed in the spring to curb odors, according to the IDEM report. The state inspector noted that he did not detect any sewage odors at the times of his inspections on Oct. 17, 18 and 27. There are no violations observed in regards to wastewater issues at this time, according to the IDEM report. Michael ORegan, director of media affairs for Pratt, could not be reached Monday for comment. Morgan Township resident Craig Kenworthy has described the odor as a sulfur smell and told The Times he can smell it at his home two miles southeast of the plant. Porter County Councilman Jim Biggs, R-1st, said he has been hearing complaints since the start of the year about the odors. Pratt unveiled its new $250 million recycle paper factory at the site in March, which was billed as the worlds most modern, environmentally friendly paper mill. It was built next to the companys corrugated box factory. HOBART For three consecutive years, the Indiana Department of Education has rated River Forest Jr-Sr High School a D. This is the first year of a process to turn around the school academically. River Forest Superintendent Steve Disney, in his third year as superintendent, said the first step was bringing in a new principal to make changes and improve the school grade. Last year, Randall Horka was in charge of the junior and senior high school. This year, Horka is principal at the middle school, and Alexander J. Brandon is the new high school principal. Disney said he did an analysis of the district, looking at academics, facilities and finances. We identified several issues, he said. We obtained $400,000 in federal funding and a $100,000 Common School Fund loan. We used that money to gut our computer infrastructure in every building and upgrade it. We are now completely wireless. We completed that in the spring. Part of improving the instructional education is by updating the technology. The kids are digital natives. We decided to go with Chromebooks. We went from zero Chromebooks to 700 of them. We are halfway there to getting one-to-one computer access, Disney said. The school district held its first technology boot camp this summer with about 60 teachers attending a three-day intensive workshop. River Forest also successfully passed a general fund referendum in May 2015, boosting its operating budget. It asked voters to approve a measure to pay 42 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. That meant a homeowner with a house valued at $100,000 would pay about $150 more per year. The impact is approximately $82 more annually on a house valued at $75,000. Overall, the district expects to generate about $609,000 each year for seven years, based on River Forests tax collection rate of 87 percent. Disney said the district received its first payment in June and the operating budget is healthy, eliminating the need for cuts. School leaders also are beefing up the curriculum, increasing the amount of professional development and adding programs. Disney and Brandon said they have added more career and technical classes at the high school and established an Industrial Maintenance Program in cooperation with Vincennes University and ArcelorMittal. Not every kid is going to college and getting a four-year degree, Disney said. There was really no CTE (Career Technical Education) program here. The Gary Career Center wasnt successful, and we pulled out of that. Weve partnered with Merrillville to offer some classes. We have five students from Griffith who are in the CTE program. Some of our students are taking classes in Merrillville. A couple of years ago, River Forest and the Lake Station Community Schools partnered to create an Alternative School. This year, about 27 students are enrolled in that program to earn their credits and graduate. There are 12 from River Forest and 15 from Edison Jr-Sr High School in Lake Station. Disney said Brandon is bringing some fresh ideas to the district, including focusing on at-risk students and creating an intense credit recovery program. We are tracking kids through graduation, Disney said. When Disney began at the school, the graduation rate was 72 percent. He said it is creeping up and now is at 80 percent, and they are working hard to increase the graduation rate. Brandon said he intends to focus on two areas: school climate and culture, and effective instruction. He said hes working closely with the state outreach coordinator, Jennifer Kwiatkowski, to improve instruction. For the 2016-17 school year, River Forest has a student enrollment of 1,530 students, up 20 students from the previous year. Of that number, 460 students are enrolled at the high school. The school district has a free/reduced-cost lunch rate of 57.2 percent. Brandon said 47 percent of the students are Hispanic, about 44 percent are white and 5 percent are black. He said the district is doing more to reach out to its Hispanic population. River Forest High School algebra teacher Whitney Stanfill, who is in her second year of teaching and previously worked at the Alternative School, said she likes what shes seeing and already has completed several hours of professional development. The new principal is very involved, she said. River Forest freshman Joscelyn Tolar moved to Hobart from Ohio a few weeks ago. The teachers seem to really care about you here, she said. The Hoosier State passenger train is rebuilding ridership a year after the state, Amtrak and some communities served by the Indianapolis-to-Chicago train contracted a private company to operate it. In September, the four-day-per-week Hoosier State carried 2,428 riders, up 46 percent from 1,663 riders in September 2015, according to Amtrak. It was the fifth straight month for ridership gains. Ticket revenue also was up in September, totaling $82,324, a 64 percent increase over September 2015s $50,244. That marked a full year of monthly year-over-year revenue growth. Background The Hoosier State, which stops at Dyers Amtrak station, faced shutdown in April 2015 when it appeared efforts by the Indiana Department of Transportation to find a private operator would not bear fruit. The state pursued the private partnership after it and several communities served by the rail line funded the rail service for several years after the federal government stopped funding short Amtrak lines like the Hoosier State. In August of 2015, the Indiana Department of Transportation reached agreement with Iowa Pacific Holdings to take control of the rail line. Amtrak continues to provide train crews and ticketing service, and INDOT and Crawfordsville, Rensselaer, Tippecanoe County and West Lafayette continue to provide financial support. INDOT will receive 25 percent of Iowa Pacifics operating profits if the line becomes profitable. Whats next A year ago, the Hoosier State introduced business class service, which includes seating in a business class car, access to a domed lounge car, a hot meal and alcoholic beverages. Now, INDOT is seeking a contract consultant to provide an analysis of the track infrastructure and signaling to increase the speed and frequency of the Hoosier State train. The consultant also would provide grant writing services in pursuit of federal grants. Proposals to serve as consultant were due Oct. 25. PORTER TOWNSHIP Porter County police are investigating two home burglaries reported Sunday. A resident of a home in the 500 block of County Road 100 South reported to police just after 1 a.m. that someone had broken into their home while the family was away by shattering glass in a back door. The master bedroom was ransacked with drawers and jewelry boxes open and emptied. The resident told police 18 to 20 watches, a gold necklace, four rings and some costume jewelry, valued between $20,000 and $25,000, were missing. Just before 5 p.m. Sunday, a resident in the 200 block of County Road 600 South reported someone broke a window in his garage and took about $600 in tools including saws, drills and an impact wrench. The homeowner told police the burglary likely happened within the past week. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Azad Hasanli Trend: Azerbaijan will hold a conference to lure investments to the real estate sector, as well as to attract foreign companies to the privatization process in the country. The conference titled Real Estate Sector Investment will be held in Baku Nov. 23, Shamil Shirinov, head of strategic planning, innovation, monitoring and analysis department of the State Committee on Property Issues of Azerbaijan, said at a press conference in Baku. He went on to add that during the conference, investors will be able to review the latest reforms on improvement of investment and business environment in Azerbaijan, the reforms impact on the economy, as well as innovations in the sphere of privatization, legislation and measures taken by Azerbaijan to protect investments. CROWN POINT State and federal agents are looking for evidence of bribery, extortion and fraudulent denial of honest government services in connection with car towing ordered by the Lake County Sheriff's Department. The Times has obtained a copy of a federal search warrant served Thursday on the Lake County E-911 offices demanding telephone, radio and email data as well as paper documents, including a list of towing firms authorized by county government to tow cars and documents tracking their activity. State police and FBI agents raided the Lake County Sheriff's Department and descended on Sheriff John Buncich's Crown Point home Thursday before leaving with several boxes of documents from the entrance of the sheriff's office building. Federal agents also raided a Portage business site, whose owner said was connected to a Merrillville-based towing firm. Agents served a subpoena seeking documents from the Lake County Voter Registration and Elections Department, which tracks campaign contributions and spending for all candidates for county, township and municipal offices. They served a search warrant on the E-911 office, which coordinates communications among the public, the county sheriff and 15 municipal police, fire and emergency medical service providers. The E-911 warrant states the government is looking only for towing data. Lake County elected officials and their lawyers said they are cooperating with federal authorities. Federal authorities petitioned a federal magistrate Nov. 9 to authorize the E-911 search warrant. They sought authorization to seize evidence of crimes involving receipt of bribes by an agent of local government, mail or wire fraud of honest services, conspiracy to commit mail or wire fraud, and honest services mail/wire fraud and extortion by state authorities. The crimes listed could result in felony convictions and long prison sentences. The warrant identifies what is to be seized as: Data and information contained in the computers and all storage media used by the Lake County E-911 Dispatch Center relating only to Lake County towing from the time period of 2010 to present. The year 2010 was the last year in office for former Sheriff Roy Dominguez. Sheriff John Buncich has been serving as sheriff since 2011. County government was in the midst of a financial crisis, because the 2008 recession and state-mandated property tax cuts had cut county government revenues to the point it was prepared to lay off 10 county police officers. Buncich asked the County Council in 2012 to raise to $75 from $20 the fee the county charges each time a county police officer calls for a towing firm to remove a car on public streets. Buncich said he would use the revenue from those fees to support the endangered officers' salaries and benefits. Buncich said then he would become more aggressive in towing disabled cars as well as vehicles belonging to targets of his department's gang and drug task forces. The county collected $220,000 in towing fees last year and $164,000 this year to date from the thousands of cars towed. GARY A laundry business in the city's Glen Park section was robbed early Saturday by a man with a gun, police said. An employee at M&M Laundry, 1201 W. Ridge Road in Gary, told police a man came into the business just before 3 a.m. and approached an ATM. The man exited, then re-entered and asked an employee to buy an iPhone, Lt. Dawn Westerfield said. The 30-year-old employee asked the man to leave the business, and the man pointed a handgun at the employee's stomach, police said. The man reached into the employee's pants pocket, took a wallet containing cash and fled south on Pierce Street, police said. Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Sgt. Gregory Wolf at (219) 881-1210. To remain anonymous, call (866) CRIME-GP. GARY Police called to the citys Glen Park section Saturday for a shooting found a man dead in the street and later learned another man was wounded. Gary police were dispatched about 9:30 p.m. Saturday to the area of 49th Avenue and Massachusetts Street for a gunshot victim, Lt. Dawn Westerfield said. As an officer turned into the intersection, he spotted a man lying in the street. The man, who has not yet been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Police later were called to a local hospital, where a 23-year-old Gary man wounded in the shooting in Glen Park was being treated. The mans wounds could be life-threatening, police said. A staff member at the Lake County coroners office said Monday the office has not yet released any information about the deceased mans identity or the cause and manner of death. Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Jeff Minchuk, of the Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit, at (219) 755-3855. To remain anonymous, call (866) CRIME-GP. VALPARAISO A March 21 trial has been scheduled for a Portage woman accused of arranging a successful murder-for-hire scheme four years ago. Sheaurice Major, 46, who remains in custody, sat quietly Monday as Porter Superior Court Judge Roger Bradford told attorneys on both sides of the case that this trial date is absolute. The judges comments came four years after 72-year-old Carl Griffith Sr. was shot outside his Portage home. Police claim Major hired Gary resident Dontaye Singletary to shoot and kill Griffith on Nov. 1, 2012, because she did not like him. Griffith was an employee of a towing company owned by Majors estranged husband. Singletary was found guilty in February 2015 and later sentenced to the maximum 65 years behind bars. Major is charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Bradford rejected a request from Major in May to prohibit jurors in her case from hearing about Singletarys conviction. A status hearing is scheduled for March 6. CHICAGO - There has been little return on the money the Illinois International Port District has invested in Lake Calumet since the 1980s to develop the area, but the Lake Calumet Vision Committee isnt giving up hope. Ders Anderson of Openlands and Tom Shepherd of the Southeast Environmental Task Force both committee members led a recent tour of one of the peninsulas of the northern portion of the lake, pointing out ways to transform parts of the industrial site into public recreational areas. A recent financial statement from 2015 reviewing port authority loans showed about $1.2 million lost. Economically, Anderson concedes, the north end of the lake is probably the worst located piece of property the (Illinois) port authority has. Anderson, Shepherd and other committee members, however, believe transforming underutilized portions of the lake into public recreation spaces puts the property to greater use for surrounding neighborhoods, such as the adjacent historic Pullman area. Doing so could recoup the debt owed from the original loans, an idea also voiced in 2013 in an amendment to Illinois House Bill 1459. When you go over there, you wont even know that youre in a city, said Susan Sadowski Garza, Chicagos 10th Ward alderwoman. It is really an amazing natural site that can put this side of the city back on the map. In addition to Lake Calumet, the Illinois International Port District oversees adjacent operations on the Calumet River, also known as Iroquois Landing. The northern portion of the lake, although dredged and developed for ports, has remained mostly unused, Anderson said. The transformational project, which likely would be a multimillion dollar operation, would create jobs in developing recreational spaces, Anderson said. The Chicago Park District and Cook County Forest Preserve also have supported recreational uses, Shepherd said. Thats millions of dollars of investments that creates jobs on a piece of property that has zero jobs, Anderson said. Its vacant and its not really accomplishing anything. If its not going to be used for a port, we dont want to see a lesser use come in here thats not really going to be a great asset to the community. Anderson explained the committees proposed three-step plan, which first involves initially acquiring the property, whether through purchase or long-term lease. The second step would include cleaning the site and wildlife restoration. Much of the area is designated as a Brownfield site, a designation defined by the EPA as an area complicated by pollutants and contaminants. A 2014 report from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources discovered pollutants such as lead, arsenic, chromium, thallium and more in the area. The third step involves developing the property into public recreation areas. Ideas from the committee include a bike trail that connects neighborhoods to the west to Lake Calumet and the new Big Marsh Park, and new areas for fishing and boating. Mark Carroll of Chicago Composite Initiative sees Lake Calumet as an area for sailboat manufacturing, sailboat use, and rowboat practice and competition. This body of water has so much potential, Carroll said. You can do rowing or paddling in the same class as youd see in London or Rio. Anderson, Shepherd and others will continue meetings in upcoming months with the port authority to try and reach an agreement. Weve been trying now for 15 years and we feel this may be our last chance, Anderson said. They need dollars. In our mind we have the grand bargain. We dont want to have an antagonistic relationship with the board. We want a win-win-win. Should their plans be approved, the estimated time for development into public recreation could take five to 10 years, Anderson said. CROWN POINT Mayor David Uran and the City Council recently honored police Officer Michael Brazil for his work involving an incident that occurred at a resident's home in September. Uran said the residents sisters who live together were scammed by people who said they wanted to do lawn work at their home. A suspect then entered the home and stole some items after the residents were lured outside. Uran said one positive that came out of the incident that left the residents frightened and emotionally weakened was the actions of Brazil. In a statement read by Uran, the residents said Brazil was amazing, kind and "very patient with us." "He gave us advice on safety and assured us if we ever feel concerned, to please call," the residents said in their statement. The residents said Brazil made them feel like he was a lifelong friend who was looking out for them. They said in their statement that Brazil told them he was just doing his job. But they said he wasn't just doing his job. "He was helping another human being in the best way possible," they said. "He was completely professional, but even more importantly he was the best example of a caring person. A model officer." Brazil was grateful for the recognition, but said the award he received could be handed out to every police officer in the department for doing their jobs every day. "We don't chase bad guys all the time," he said. "But we do care for our citizens and serve them and do it in the best way every time possible." WESTVILLE Bret Stephens, foreign affairs columnist and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is offering his 10 rules for foreign policy to President-elect Donald Trump. A 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner, Stephens, the guest speaker Sunday afternoon at the Purdue University Northwest Sinai Forum, ruefully conceded they might not be readily accepted. Hes not exactly known for following the rules, said Stephens, to audience laughter. But maybe this will serve us well in thinking about how Americans look forward to a foreign policy that ... puts order in the disorder today. Stephens said his first rule is the Larry David rule. Curb your enthusiasm, Stephens said. For the last 25 years, Stephens said, U.S. foreign policy has been an exercise in trying to make our dreams come true. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. began to believe that countries were beginning to want to adopt the American liberal democratic way, and as a result, U.S. foreign policy has been an attempt to make amazing things happen. Foreign policy should not be about making dreams come true, Stephens said. Fundamentally it is about keeping our nightmares away. Another of Stephens rules is the Vegas rule that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas which has no application whatsoever to foreign policy, he said. The United States cannot take the stance lets ignore the Middle East and it will ignore us, Stephens said. The idea we can isolate ourselves from the rest of the world ... is a fantasy, he said. Stephens related that President Richard Nixon used to tell advisers that to keep world peace, Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev needed to think Nixon was a little bit crazy, which outlines his Nixon rule. I think we have no problems in this department, Stephens said, provoking audience laughter again. If adversaries think you are totally predictable ... they will walk all over you, Stephens said. If they suspect you might be nuts ... theyll be more careful. Nixon also stressed the importance of American credibility, he said. In 1973, at height of Watergate crisis, Israel was under attack and was desperate for help. Nixon responded by saying whatever Israels wanted double it and send it to them right away. This proved, said Stephens, that in the midst of U.S. troubles, the U.S. was an incredible partner and ally for small countries like Israel. When you demonstrate youre a credible ally, your adversaries may turn to you because they think your friendship is good, Stephens said. Remember the Nixon rule credibility counts. Stephens also described his William Bratton rule, named after the recently retired New York City police commissioner who espoused a broken windows philosophy toward crime prevention cracking down and preventing small crimes, such as vandalism prevents larger, more violent ones. This is also true of foreign policy. Its best to create a perception that there are rules to govern the free and civilized world, and the U.S. is willing to defend them, he said. Stephens ended his talk decrying the train of thought that the United States is a country on the decline. Have real faith in the resilience of this country, our ability to rebound from failure, Stephens said. This country is going to be the worlds leading power for the rest of your lives, and we need a foreign policy that is adequate to that task. HOBART Former City Councilman Matt Claussen brought class and honesty to the panel he served on for more than 20 years, city officials said. Claussen, who recently resigned from the council, was honored by the city for the contributions he made during his tenure on the panel. Mayor Brian Snedecor said Claussen put the city first when making decisions and he always has been fair. Claussen, a Hobart police officer, resigned from his council position after unsuccessfully challenging a state law forbidding municipal employees from holding elective offices in the same local government unit. Dan Waldrop was selected to fulfill the remainder of Claussens term on the council. Former Mayor Linda Buzinec said she has been friends with Claussen for decades. She said he has worked diligently for the city, and its unfortunate he has to leave the panel under the circumstances. Many indicated the council is losing valuable insight with Claussen no longer on the panel. Several Hobart officials believe the state law is unfair to the city. He should still be sitting here as far as Im concerned, Waldrop said. City Attorney Anthony DeBonis said Claussen showed a lot of class while he served on the council. Multiple councilmen said Claussen was the person they turned to for guidance because of his experience. Clerk-Treasurer Deborah Longer said her saddest day in office came when Claussen submitted his resignation letter. She said although he is no longer on the council, Claussen wont stop being a public servant. Claussen also indicated he will remain involved in Hobart. I aint going nowhere, he said. Claussen said he plans to retire from the Police Department in a year and a half, and that will open doors for what he could do in the future. As Claussen was being honored, he was given a plaque commemorating his service. The city also presented him with a shadow box containing his council picture and nameplate. PORTAGE Metropolitan Community Church Illiana will host a Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil at 7 p.m. Sunday at 5579 Clem Road. The vigil memorializes those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on Nov. 28, 1998, in Boston, Massachusetts, which kicked off the Remembering Our Dead web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. According to the Human Rights Campaign, there have been at least 18 transgender people murdered nationwide this year. Hesters murder like most anti-transgender murder cases has yet to be solved, according to a news release from Metropolitan Community Church Illiana. The Rev. Michael Cooper, pastor of MCC Illiana, said those who reconcile bodies and lives into the fullness of Gods creation continue to face the horrors of anti-transgender hatred and prejudice. The vigil will offer a safe space to honor transgender individuals who were murdered this year and several transgender and gender-queer persons will be speaking about their experiences of discrimination in Northwest Indiana, according to the release. The ways we find transgender people who have been murdered is very violent. As a transgender man, I find it difficult and scary sometimes to be myself and out about being transgender. Here in NWI, especially in the area I live in, I find myself hiding. It is time to step out to help end the violence, said Aleckz Bendt, of Portage. The current political backlash following significant human rights advances in the lesbian, gay, and bi communities has targeted many in the transgender community. I think its obvious that the current push by anti-LGBT groups to re-marginalize us by publicizing outright lies is resulting in more murders of transgender people said Marilu Fanning, a trans activist from Lake Station. MCC Illiana is a Christian church in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities of NWI. The event is free and open to the public. WASHINGTON To many voters who proudly wore pantsuits to the polls and expected to celebrate history with Hillary Clinton's election, the likelihood of a woman becoming America's commander in chief seems more remote than ever. Clinton's supporters are struggling to come to terms with the reality that the first female presidential nominee won't be the one to shatter what she calls the "highest and hardest glass ceiling." Clinton, looking shell-shocked herself, tried to reassure them that it would only be a matter of time. "Someday," Clinton said in her concession speech Wednesday, "someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think." But if not Clinton, then who will it be? "In many ways it's ironic because people were looking for a change election, and the real change we could have seen in our democracy was not realized," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Not only will the highest office in the land remain out of women's reach for now, Walsh said, but the number of female members of Congress will remain the same after this election, stalled at 104. There will be one more woman in the Senate, bringing the total to 21. In the House of Representatives, the number of women will go down by one, to 83. And there will be fewer female governors nationwide, down to five from six. Only one woman won a gubernatorial contest on Tuesday: incumbent Kate Brown in Oregon. The relatively small pool of female governors and senators leaves few women well-positioned to run for president, Walsh said. "I want to believe we are ready to vote for a woman president," Walsh said. "This seemed like it was the moment, and I'm not sure who's next in line." Presidential candidates could eventually emerge from among the rising stars who did triumph Tuesday. Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who lost her legs in Iraq, defeated Republican Sen. Mark Kirk in Illinois. Democrat Kamala Harris, the multiracial daughter of immigrants, won a Senate seat in California. Voters also elected the first Latina senator, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, in Nevada. Delaware elected its first woman in either chamber of Congress: Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is black. Voters in Washington state elected the first Indian-American woman to Congress, Democrat Pramila Jayapal. Democrat Nanette Barragan, a Latina from Southern California, won a seat in Congress. Republican Liz Cheney, in Wyoming, became the first woman elected to the House seat once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. In all, four more women of color will serve in the next Congress than served in the last. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who campaigned for Clinton, said that while Clinton's loss was disappointing for many women, it was also motivating. McCaskill still expects to see a woman become president in her lifetime. "I'm really optimistic on that front," said McCaskill, who is 63. "I really have seen such progress in terms of women being taken seriously in public service." While sexism may have played a role in some voters' rejection of Clinton, McCaskill said, her gender didn't doom her candidacy. "I mean, she won the popular vote," the senator said. "A woman running for president got more votes than the man did. I really do believe that America is ready for a woman president." Trump's approach to women's rights over the next few years could be very motivating for women, depending on how he handles public policy and his personality, McCaskill said. "I have been frankly shocked at how many people have reached me over the last 48 hours women, primarily asking what can we do, where should we go, who can we help?" For her part, McCaskill said, she will focus on recruiting more women to run for office in her home state and nationwide. The senator declined, however, to identify any potential presidential candidates from among her fellow female politicians. "It would be like choosing between my two sisters," she laughed. McCaskill said there were a number of qualified women serving alongside her in the Senate and in governorships. On the Democratic side, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand from New York has built a national profile advocating on behalf of sexual assault victims on campus and in the military. She's also worked to raise money for female candidates across the country. And at 49, she's relatively young. Liberal star Elizabeth Warren, who made her name in the battle to overhaul Wall Street, also is well positioned to run for president. She's a senator from a large state, Massachusetts, and has developed a strong reputation as a fighter for the working and middle classes. Some Democrats would love to see first lady Michelle Obama run for president someday, but she says she will not seek any public office. Republican Nikki Haley, the Indian-American governor of South Carolina, could be a presidential contender. Her leadership after the fatal shooting of black South Carolinians in Charleston last year drew widespread praise and raised her profile nationally. The star power of Joni Ernst, the up-and-coming conservative senator from Iowa, has been evident on the campaign trail this year as she rallied voters for Trump and other Republicans. A former lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard, Ernst's name frequently pops up as a possible presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024. Vicky Hartzler, a Republican congresswoman from Missouri, added the name of conservative businesswoman Carly Fiorina to the list. Fiorina lost her bid for the Republican nomination this cycle, but she impressed Hartzler. "I think there will be opportunities (for a woman to become president) in the future," Hartzler said, "but most importantly, they need to be chosen on their qualifications as well as their policy solutions that our country is facing." Clinton, Hartzler argued, wasn't unqualified because of her gender but because she's untrustworthy and her policies would have been disastrous for America. Walsh, on the other hand, believes Clinton's gender did play a role in her defeat. Polls found the majority of voters thought Trump wasn't qualified, that he didn't have the right temperament to be president, and yet people voted for him anyway, Walsh said. "I don't think everybody who voted for Donald Trump was thinking, 'I don't think a woman can do this job,' but I think there is this subliminal piece: 'Who do I think can be a leader? What does a leader look like? Who can be president?'" Walsh said. "There is no job that is more masculine than the presidency, going back to George Washington on his white steed," she said. "And ultimately, when a woman runs for this job, it's about disrupting the notion about who can lead at the highest level." Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Azerbaijan Railways CJSC (ADY) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) discussed the implementation of projects on the international transport corridors passing through Azerbaijan, as well as the long-term tasks. The discussions were held in the meeting of ADY Head Javid Gurbanov with ADB Vice President Wencai Zhang, responsible for operations in the ADB South Asia Department and the Central and West Asia Department, who is on a visit to Baku, the ADY said in a message Nov. 14. Gurbanov informed Zhang about the reforms and activities carried out for reconstruction of infrastructure of Azerbaijans railways. The sides also discussed medium-term prospects and priorities of cooperation, as well as further expansion of relations. The ADB will consider allocating a $200-million loan for implementation of the International North-South Transportation Corridor. The bank management will review the project Apr. 15, 2017. SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's vision of a swift, post-election budget compromise is off to a rocky start after a key Democratic leader cited a last-minute "schedule conflict" as the reason for missing a meeting the Republican governor requested. Republican leaders who met with Rauner on Monday blasted Democrats for their absence and said they need to be engaged to move forward. "It is completely inexcusable," said Republican Sen. Christine Radogno, the GOP's Senate leader. Rauner said last week he was "cautiously optimistic" when he asked House and Senate leaders to meet to begin work on ending a 16-month budget standoff but the absence of ruling Democrats shows how challenging it continues to be to find compromise. The political standoff has led to cuts to social service providers, some of whom have shut down altogether, and an uncertain future for higher education institutions that are receiving less funding than they have in the past. The governor called the meeting days after the results from Election Day, when Republicans diminished the Democrats' numbers in the Legislature with Rauner's financial backing. The day before the meeting was set to take place, Rauner got a response from Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. "A short time ago, I determined a schedule conflict will prevent a meeting with the governor and other legislative leaders," Madigan said in a statement Sunday evening. "We will continue to work to schedule a meeting and look forward to getting an agenda for the meeting from the governor." Madigan did not provide details of the conflict. "I can't imagine what conflict is more important than the challenges facing the people of this state," Radogno said. After Madigan's announcement, Senate President John Cullerton bowed out, saying the meeting wouldn't be productive without everyone there. He said he hoped the meeting could be reschedule for Tuesday. Last December, Madigan also said a scheduling conflict kept him from attending one of the governor's budget meetings. He didn't say what the conflict was then, either. Lawmakers return to Springfield on Tuesday for a brief, annual fall session after one of the most expensive and contentious election cycles in Illinois history. Rauner used about $30 million of his personal wealth to support GOP candidates in last week's elections, giving money to both political committees and individuals, forcing Democrats to raise unprecedented amounts of money to compete with his millions. Although Republicans made gains in the Legislature, Democrats still have considerable majorities in each chamber and have resisted Rauner's demands for union-weakening, business-friendly legislation as part of any budget deal. Rauner has argued his ideas are a meant to grow the state's economy, but Democrats have said his policies would harm middle-class families. NEW YORK - Protests against the outcome of the 2016 election continue in major cities across the U.S. as President-elect Donald Trump begins to select key members for his White House staff and prepare policy. In his first extensive interview since becoming President-elect, Trump appeared to back away from his hard-line campaign promise of a wall along the Mexican border and deportations. The Republican said he plans to deport or incarcerate 2.3 million people who have criminal records and are living in the U.S. illegally. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country, they're here illegally. After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people, they're terrific people but we are going make a determination at that But before we make that determination Lesley, it's very important, we are going to secure our border," Trump said. When pressed about a solid border wall, Trump said he still plans to build it but appeared to be open to fencing as well. "For certain areas I would, but certain areas a wall is more appropriate. I'm very good at this. This is called construction but a fence would be, yeah part wall, part fence," Trump said. Trump also renewed his promise to cuts taxes, appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court, and take out the Islamic State militant group. Before the "60 Minutes" interview aired, Trump's team made two major staffing announcements. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been tapped for White House Chief of Staff. Preibus has a strong knowledge of the Washington establishment and is a close friend of House Speaker Paul Ryan. As Chief of Staff, Preibus will have a significant role in policymaking and serve as a liaison to Cabinet agencies. Trump also announced that Stephen Bannon will serve as his chief strategist and senior counselor. Bannon is an executive with the conservative Breitbart News organization and served as Trump's campaign CEO. Immigrants and their supporters gathered in Manhattan on Sunday to protest Trump's policies. Hundreds of people marched from the Trump International Hotel in Columbus Circle to Trump Tower to denounce the president-elect's proposed immigration crackdown. The immigrant advocacy group, Make the Road NY, organized the "Here to Stay" march. "People have the right to stay here and just because they're immigrants doesn't mean they can't stay here. They have not done nothing wrong to him or to anybody. And we all have the right to stay here no matter what color or race, we're all equal," said one protester. "It's everything. It's sexism, it's racism for sure. It's you know, class. I think he represents everything that's sort of important in America," said another protester. Anti-Trump demonstrations have been taking over the streets of Manhattan since the election last Tuesday. At Rockefeller Center on Sunday, milling outside Christies sales rooms where private clients sipped mimosas as they took in one of Monets grainstacks people in the art world sounded guardedly optimistic about how the auctions will perform this week, after a period of uncertainty exacerbated by the contentious American presidential election, Britains Brexit vote in June and Chinas slowing economy. There has been a lot of insecurity and its hard to say exactly what will happen, said Jay Gorney, a collector, curator and former dealer, predicting that good things will do extremely well. The sales of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art that start Monday offer the first test of how the art market will react to a Trump presidency and whether it will continue a softening trend that, for the past year, has had potential sellers reluctant to consign their best works. If youve got something great, you dont sell it because youre uncertain what youre going to get for it, said J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman at the Blackstone Group and art collector, about the prevailing mood. Sellers are largely sitting on their hands. There is talk of Breitbart bureaus opening in Paris, Berlin and Cairo, spots where the populist right is on the rise. A bigger newsroom is coming in Washington, the better to cover a president-elect whose candidacy it embraced. Mainstream news outlets are soul-searching in the wake of being shocked by Donald J. Trumps election last week. But the team at Breitbart News, the right-wing opinion and news website that some critics have denounced as a hate site, is elated and eager to expand on a victory that it views as a profound validation of its cause. So much of the media mocked us, laughed at us, called us all sorts of names, Alexander Marlow, the sites editor in chief, said in an interview on Sunday. And then for us to be seen as integral to the election of a president, despite all of that hatred, is something that we certainly enjoy, and savor. Breitbart not only championed Mr. Trump; its chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, helped run his campaign. On Sunday, Mr. Trump named Mr. Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior counselor, further closing the distance between Breitbarts newsroom and the president-elect. WESTPORT, Conn. Newmans Own was having trouble getting the word out about its philanthropy. The brand has All Profits to Charity inscribed across every label on its popular salad dressings, tomato sauces and microwaveable popcorn a pledge that has amounted to more than $485 million donated since 1982. But some wondered if consumers were simply being distracted by the movie star Paul Newmans dazzling smile. They might see it the first time, but the second or third time they only see Pauls face, said Bruce Bruemmer, vice president of marketing for Newmans Own. The All Profits to Charity is lost. Well, the grin is not going anywhere. But Newmans Own is making more of a show of its record of magnanimity, rolling out a marketing initiative aimed at millennials who might not recognize the famous face of the brand and might have little to no knowledge of its altruistic story. It was mid-June, and relations between Donald J. Trump and the news media had taken another dreadful turn. He had already vowed to change the libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists, and his personal insults were becoming more vicious. (One news correspondent was a sleaze; another was third rate.) Most troubling was that he was keeping a blacklist of news organizations he was banning from his rallies, and it was growing. I called him at the time, to see what this would look like in a Trump administration. Would he deny White House credentials to select reporters and news organizations? No, he said. There, Im taking something away, where Im representing the nation. We can only hope he means it. Because if Mr. Trump keeps up the posture he displayed during the campaign all-out war footing the future will hold some very grim days, not just for news reporters but also for the American constitutional system that relies on a free and strong press. For all its imagination about the future, Silicon Valleys geography looks a lot like the past. Todays college-educated millennials might be crowding into city centers, but each day employees at companies like Google and Facebook endure hours in cars or on buses commuting to squat office complexes that have all the charm of a Walmart. Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Lincoln Heights a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action Many employees say they would prefer to live closer to work. But these companies reside in small cities that consider themselves suburbs, and the local politics are usually aligned against building dense urban apartments to house them. Take Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley city that has become emblematic of the states reputation for rampant not-in-my-backyard politics. Palo Alto has one of the states worst housing shortages. With about three jobs for every housing unit, it has among the most out-of-balance mixes anywhere in Silicon Valley. But instead of dealing with this issue by building the few thousand or so apartments it would take to make a dent in the problem, the city has mostly looked to restraining a pace of job growth that the mayor described as unhealthy. Farther up the peninsula near San Francisco, the small city of Brisbane told a developer that its proposal for a mixed-use development with offices and 4,000 housing units should have offices for about 15,000 workers, but no new housing. Play that out a thousand times over and the crux of the states housing crisis is clear: Everyone knows housing costs are unsustainable and unfair, and that they pose a threat to the states economy. Yet every city seems to be counting on its neighbors to step up and fix it. _________ The word gaffe has appeared in 95 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Sept. 20 in Another Slip for the Libertarian Nominee, Gary Johnson: Nobody Got Hurt by Katie Rogers: Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate, who has struggled in recent weeks to recover from a gaffe in which he was unable to identify Aleppo, in war-torn Syria, appeared to fumble once more on Sunday when he said no one had been injured in two violent events in New York City and Minnesota over the weekend. Well, first of all, just grateful that nobody got hurt, Mr. Johnson told CNNs Brian Stelter in an appearance on the networks Reliable Sources. In fact, 29 people were injured in an explosion in New Yorks Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday, and nine people were stabbed in St. Cloud, Minn., before the suspect was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. Article: Protesters Take Anti-Trump Message to His Doorstep, and Plan Next Steps Before Reading What have you heard or read about protests against President-elect Donald J. Trump that took place in the past few days? Look at the photographs from various demonstrations. How do you feel when you look at the images? How do you think a person who holds an opposing viewpoint to yours might feel while looking at the same images? Questions for Comprehension and Analysis 1. Where in the United States did demonstrators gather in recent days? 2. What did they protest? 3. What does the article identify as some of the issues people in the crowds spoke and carried signs about? Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Falih urged the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reach consensus on oil market stabilization during the meeting in Vienna on November 30, Sputnik reported. Falih stressed the importance of arriving at a fair and balanced decision and allow Libya and Nigeria to increase the oil output after establishing stability and security in these countries and freezing the output in Iran to an agreed level. "In this situation marked by a disruption in oil markets, it is imperative to reach a consensus among OPECs countries and to agree on an effective mechanism and accurate figures to activate the historic agreement of Algiers concluded at the end of September in the OPECs extraordinary meeting," Falih was quoted as saying by the Algeria's APS news agency. On September 28, the OPEC member states reached an agreement on the sidelines of an international energy forum in Algeria to set a production ceiling of 32.5-33 million barrels per day. The OPEC countries are set to finalize the agreement on oil output freeze at the OPEC summit in Vienna on November 30. The move has been driven by plunging oil prices and an oversupply in the global energy market. Good morning on this shining Monday. But lets focus for a bit on the moon instead of the sun. The biggest and brightest full moon in nearly 70 years has been moving across our sky. A supermoon, as its known, is when a full moon is at its perigee the closest point to Earth along its orbit. (This particular supermoon experience is extra rare: Its the closest full moon since 1948.) If you slept through the exact moment of the perigee (6:22 a.m.), dont fret: You can still catch the spectacle tonight, when the moon will look about 7 percent bigger and 15 percent brighter than usual. Not super enough for you? Then enhance the experience. Look for the moon when it floats above the horizon (around 5:14 p.m.), said David Kipping, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University. Because of an optical illusion, the moon will appear larger, and possibly more colorful. Like a little crew of old-time bandits, the first few raccoon faces poked out of the underbrush on a recent evening in Central Park, their masked, button eyes glowing with each flash of a smartphone camera. Undaunted, several of the animals scuttled onto the walkway toward the picture takers. They were followed by more raccoons and then still more. All told, 22 raccoons clustered on a path near the southeastern edge of the park, where it meets 59th Street in Manhattan. They strolled around while a gaggle of onlookers tried to pose for selfies with them. Some people fed the animals soft pretzels from a pushcart by hand, as the raccoons stood on their hind legs to wrest morsels from their admirers fingertips. Is this normal? Karen Newis, 56, a visitor from Greensboro, N.C., asked her sister Stefanie Price, who lives in Manhattan, as they passed the raccoons. One of the animals gingerly tiptoed toward a baby in a stroller, sniffing. No, its not normal, Ms. Price, 48, said. Theyre so cute, though. In fact, the throng of raccoons at the edge of the Pond in Central Park has become something of a tourist attraction, with unofficial visiting hours each evening. Roly-poly with their winter fur (and, perhaps, all those pretzels), in pairs or in dozens, the nocturnal animals gambol on the pathway as soon as it gets dark. They look for passers-by with snacks. The practice of feeding them, however Instagram-worthy, is frowned upon by New York Citys parks department and wildlife experts. Interpol, the international law enforcement agency, has had a history of allowing its international database of fugitives to be used by authoritarian governments to persecute dissidents and critics. It is therefore deeply troubling that a senior Chinese security official will become the organizations next president. Interpol announced last week that Meng Hongwei, Chinas vice minister of public security, was elected by members of the agencys general assembly to serve as president for a four-year term. He is the first Chinese official to lead the agency. Human rights lawyers and activists in China have been persecuted by the authorities for years. Some have been detained and harassed; dozens have been held in secret prisons without access to lawyers, according to Human Rights Watch. The appointment of Meng Hongwei is alarming given Chinas longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad, Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director of Amnesty International, said in a statement. It seems at odds with Interpols mandate to work in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Two months after tumultuous legislative elections, and two years after the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement paralyzed the city center, Hong Kong is in the throes of another great political crisis. Last Monday, the Chinese government intervened in the territorys political affairs in an unprecedented way. Brazenly exploiting a technicality, and to the extreme, it barred two young legislators-elect who advocate for greater freedoms for Hong Kong from taking their seats. The night before, demonstrators had briefly turned the cramped area around Beijings Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong into a battleground reminiscent of the worst of the 2014 protests, replete with police batons and tear gas. They had anticipated the bomb that was about to go off: By interfering in a case against two lawmakers brought by the Hong Kong government before a local court, Beijing demonstrated with one single gesture that it was ready to quash any electoral outcomes in Hong Kong that displeased it, to subordinate Hong Kongs legislature to its executive branch and to subdue its judiciary, which has a reputation for independent-mindedness. Hong Kong voters breached a floodgate in September with the election for the local legislature, known as LegCo, and now Beijing wants to close it at all costs. A group of young candidates with separatist leanings won half a dozen seats in LegCo, having campaigned on platforms that went well beyond what protesters in the Umbrella Movement ever demanded from rewriting the Basic Law, Hong Kongs mini-constitution since 1997, in order to cement Hong Kongs autonomy, to self-determination or even outright secession from China. Last week, the empire struck back. PARIS Last Wednesday, as the world sought to absorb the news of Donald J. Trumps electoral triumph, Frances far-right leader Marine Le Pen was up early, already commenting on Twitter. Even before the American president-elect gave his victory speech, she rushed to congratulate him and the free American people. This was hardly surprising, since Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, is hoping to become the next French president. On Wednesday evening, we watched her holding forth on mainstream television news, where she has not been a regular guest. Most journalists have as little sympathy for her as she has for them, and she had been staying out of the public eye over the past 10 months, working hard to build an electoral strategy. During the period between Frances regional elections last December, when her party scored 27 percent of the popular vote but failed to win control of any region, and the presidential election next spring, she has set herself a single goal: to build enough respectability to shatter the so-called republican front through which mainstream parties unite in the second round of a French election to prevent the National Front from winning. Ms. Le Pen, 48, has worked patiently to transform her party from a marginal extremist movement into an organization able to seize and exercise power. Now she needs to ramp up the frustration among French citizens, which has already propelled her to the top of opinion polls ahead of the first round of presidential voting on April 23, into a force powerful enough to break the barrier of conventional politics and push her through to victory in the second round, scheduled for May 7. She is emboldened by Mr. Trumps upset of Hillary Clinton, which she thinks has significantly enhanced her chances of achieving just that. What the president-elect has done, she said on French public television, has been to prove that what was presented as impossible can be made possible. Now she confidently says she believes that it can also happen here that France in 2017 will provide the third stage of a global political uprising begun by Brexit and reinforced by Mr. Trumps victory. This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive more briefings and a guide to the section daily in your inbox. For thousands of public servants Democrat, Republican and independent the election of Donald Trump creates a deep quandary: Should I stay or should I go? These are the men and women around the country who work for the Justice Department, the Education Department, the Defense Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, and so much else. Many of them, no doubt, voted for Trump. But many of them are in despair, worried not only about their country but about how their own jobs will change and about their own moral responsibilities. My answer to the vast majority of them is: We need you. We need your professionalism, your expertise, your respect for democratic norms and American values. Stay on. Stay on, please, for your country. Institutions are largely urban. The federal government is in Washington, D.C.. The financial center is in New York. New York is also the publishing capital and home to cable and broadcast news. Hollywood is in California. Our Ivy League schools are in a handful of Northeastern states. Our most influential cultural institutions museums, performance companies and spaces, music studios are in big cities. The same can be said for our most influential newspapers. Furthermore, there are two complementary and compounding internal migratory patterns that exacerbate the divide: At the same time that young people are moving out of rural areas and into urban ones, a 2009 United States Department of Agriculture report pointed out that members of the baby boom cohort, now 45-63 years old, are approaching a period in their lives when moves to rural and small-town destinations increase. This makes the places these people are leaving and the places theyre going both more homogeneous. Young people tend to be more liberal as well as more educated. Baby boomers are more conservative. In fact, a 2015 Gallup report found that older generations have twice as many conservatives as liberals. Add to this brain drain the diversity factor in cities. As the International Business Times pointed out in 2011: Non-Hispanic whites are now minority in 22 of the countrys 100-biggest urban areas, including those surrounding Washington, New York, San Diego, Las Vegas and Memphis. The reversal is being fueled by a growth in Hispanic and Asian populations they grew by 41 and 43 percent, respectively and the fact that white populations have grown by less than one percent. Furthermore, urban areas, rather than rural ones, are magnets for new immigrants from other countries and, as a 2014 Pew Research report found, this immigrant population is exploding, providing fertile ground for appeals to rural whites experiencing or worried about economic distress and looking for easy scapegoats for their anxieties: In 1990, the U.S. had 19.8 million immigrants. That number rose to a record 40.7 million immigrants in 2012, among them 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants. So, rural whites are suspicious of big institutions and big government, located in big cities with big populations of people who dont look like them. People in big cities, living cosmopolitan lives among diverse populations that resemble a tub of rainbow-colored ice cream, may be weary of institutions for other reasons, but they are less likely to blame diversity and inclusion for their problems, and are therefore less amenable to the destructive message of Donald Trump. The Fresh co-founders Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg have always infused their skin and body line with food-based ingredients, from antioxidant-rich acai and exfoliating brown sugar to free-radical-fighting fermented black tea. So it should come as no surprise that they harbor culinary ambitions. Weve always dreamed about creating a business directly connected to food, Roytberg says. And now they have, with the recent opening of the kitchen, bakery and cafe Bartlett House, which serves farm-to-table fare, with a focus on local ingredients and sustainable practices. Located on an acre of land along Route 66 in Ghent, N.Y., the four-story, 19th-century house is a national landmark building that once functioned as a hotel, but has stood vacant in more recent years. Glazman stumbled upon it with his partner, Damien Janowicz, during a drive to upstate New York last spring and just had a good feeling about it. With Roytberg, the trio decided to reopen the Bartlett House as a community-oriented culinary hub and keep its original name. Their vision included installing a modern kitchen and bakery on the ground floor with large windows where visitors can watch bakers knead dough and chefs chop vegetables for seasonal soups. The floor above is devoted to a cafe and dining space, while the third level will soon be transformed into a test kitchen and culinary gathering spot for workshops and events. The latest initiative was announced this month in the San Joaquin Valley. There, a coalition of education leaders crafted a program that would provide a free semester of community college to high school students who meet academic goals, followed by guaranteed admission to California State University, Fresno. Similar programs have been created in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland and Siskiyou County. The costs have been met with a mix of government grants and support from businesses, charities and the colleges themselves. Critics of the move toward free community college have argued that the programs would strain public budgets and that aid should rather be narrowly targeted toward needy students. Californias 113 community colleges have become an increasingly attractive option for families looking for alternatives to the states public universities, where academic competition has grown fierce and tuitions have tripled since 2000. The University of Californias undergraduate tuition and fees are now roughly $13,500 a year for in-state students and $40,000 for out-of-staters, well above the national averages for public universities. WASHINGTON Michelle Obama has burned off her date-night meals at Washingtons new generation of acclaimed restaurants by pedaling at SoulCycle. President Obama has shopped for Jonathan Franzen novels with his daughters at local independent bookstores. Obama administration staff members, their barhopping chronicled in the gossip pages, have hit the 14th Street hot spots hard. Decades ago, Washington was broke and run by a mayor best known for smoking crack with a friend on a surveillance tape. Neighborhoods had not fully recovered from the 1968 riots, and an aging Georgetown elite still set the tone. The administrations of two Bushes and a Clinton in between hardly had an effect on the city. But Mr. Obamas arrival in 2009 coincided with an urban renaissance. Economic development, federal and private investment, and an influx of highly educated young, gay and diverse professionals gentrified neighborhoods, leading to an explosion in restaurants, bars and cafes. And the Obama family African-American, youthful, attractive and urbane were archetypes of a modern city on the upswing. What the effect on Washington will be when Donald J. Trump moves into the White House is hard to predict. But many Washingtonians fear the worst. Among them is Vincent Gray, the citys mayor during much of the Obama administration. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.14 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Donald Trump could have a strategic, economic and geopolitical interest in the South Caucasus region, Cyril Widdershoven, Middle East geopolitical specialist and energy analyst, partner at Dutch risk consultancy VEROCY and SVP MEA-Risk, told Trend Nov.14. Based on the statements made by Trump, putting American interests first, this would mean that he will have a strategic, economic and geopolitical interest in the region, he said. Noting that the South Caucasus region is of the utmost importance for the US, the expert pointed out that major oil and gas companies are working in Azerbaijan. Regarding the US support for such energy projects as the Southern Gas Corridor, Widdershoven said that European energy supply is also of importance to the US, as they have been pushing for oil and gas exports. The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey. US-EU cooperation is and will be strong, so European views will be taken into account, he said, adding that a possible strategic support of the Eastern European countries, Baltic and Balkan, would mean that Russia's plans could still be under threat. The love between Putin and Trump could be soon over. Support from Russia is not always taken positively inside of the US, said the expert, adding that Russia's stranglehold on EU is not an easy thing to swallow for an American president, also not for Trump. Chelsea Manning, who confessed to disclosing archives of secret diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 and has been incarcerated longer than any other convicted leaker in American history, has formally petitioned President Obama to reduce the remainder of her 35-year sentence to the more than six years she has already served. In a statement accompanying her petition, a copy of which her lawyer provided to The New York Times, Ms. Manning again said she took full and complete responsibility for her actions, which she called wrong. She also described her difficult life, including the turmoil she faced at the time of her leaks as she came to grips with gender dysphoria while deployed to Iraq, her treatment in prison, and her multiple suicide attempts. I am not asking for a pardon of my conviction, she wrote. I understand that the various collateral consequences of the court-martial conviction will stay on my record forever. The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members. Ms. Mannings petition was accompanied by letters of support from Daniel Ellsberg, who is famous for leaking a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers; Morris Davis, a former military commissions chief prosecutor; and Glenn Greenwald, a legal commentator and journalist who has been an outspoken supporter. Hate crimes surge, led by attacks on Muslims. The F.B.I. reported Monday that attacks against American Muslims rose last year, driving an increase of about 7 percent in hate crimes against all victims. The data, the most comprehensive look at threat crimes nationwide, expanded on previous findings by researchers and outside monitors, who have noted an alarming rise in some types of hate crimes tied to the intense vitriol of the presidential campaign and the aftermath of terror attacks at home and abroad since 2015. A wave of racially charged assaults, graffiti attacks and other episodes has swept the country since Election Day, prompting Mr. Trump to call for a halt to it during a 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday night. In its report Monday, the F.B.I. cataloged a total of 5,818 hate crimes in 2015 a rise of nearly 340 over the year before including assaults, bombings, threats and property destruction against minorities, women, gays and others. Attacks against Muslim Americans saw the biggest surge: 257 reports of assaults, attacks on mosques and other types hate crimes against Muslims last year, a jump of about 67 percent over the year before. It was the highest total since 2001, when the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks saw more than 480 attacks. Attacks against transgender people also sharply increased, the data showed. Law enforcement officials acknowledge that the statistics give an incomplete picture because many local agencies still have a spotty record of reporting hate crimes, 26 years after Congress directed the Justice Department to begin collecting the data. We need to do a better job of tracking and reporting hate crime to fully understand what is happening in our communities and how to stop it, James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director, said Monday. WASHINGTON On the morning of Jan. 21, 2017, his first full day in office, President Donald J. Trump will take a minute to settle behind the 19th-century Resolute desk, first used in the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy. Then he will get very busy if he follows through on his campaign promises for what he will do on his first day in office. On Day 1, Mr. Trump has promised, he will redirect immigration enforcement, alter trade relations with China and other nations, relax restrictions on energy production, impose new rules on lobbyists, halt efforts to combat global warming, lift curbs on guns, push for congressional term limits and demand a new strategy for defeating the Islamic State. He may face some legal and procedural hurdles, but most of his Day 1 pledges involve issuing presidential directives, executive orders or memorandums that do not need legislative approval. Although Mr. Trump and his top advisers have appeared to moderate some of his broader campaign pledges they have suggested he might keep parts of the Affordable Care Act, delay building a wall along the border with Mexico and not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clintons emails Mr. Trump has said nothing to indicate that he will not make good on his explicit Day 1 promises, many of which he delivered in his Contract With the American Voter during a speech in late October in Gettysburg, Pa. WASHINGTON As a presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump vowed to refill the cells of the Guantanamo Bay prison and said American terrorism suspects should be sent there for military prosecution. He called for targeting mosques for surveillance, escalating airstrikes aimed at terrorists and taking out their civilian family members, and bringing back waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse not only because torture works, but because even if it doesnt work, they deserve it anyway. It is hard to know how much of this stark vision for throwing off constraints on the exercise of national security power was merely tough campaign talk. But if the Trump administration follows through on such ideas, it will find some assistance in a surprising source: President Obamas have-it-both-ways approach to curbing what he saw as overreaching in the war on terrorism. Over and over, Mr. Obama has imposed limits on his use of such powers but has not closed the door on them a flexible approach premised on the idea that he and his successors could be trusted to use them prudently. Mr. Trump can now sweep away those limits and open the throttle on policies that Mr. Obama endorsed as lawful and legitimate for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention and military tribunals for terrorism suspects. And even in areas where Mr. Obama tried to terminate policies from the George W. Bush era like torture and the detention of Americans and other people arrested on domestic soil as enemy combatants his administration fought in court to prevent any ruling that the defunct practices had been illegal. The absence of a definitive repudiation could make it easier for Trump administration lawyers to revive the policies by invoking the same sweeping theories of executive power that were the basis for them in the Bush years. WASHINGTON They have spent almost two years battling the establishment wing of their own party, emerging from the Republican fringes to stymie routine legislation and ignite the spark that immolated their partys most powerful elected leader, Speaker John A. Boehner. But in a twist that could alter the dynamics of the next Congress, these anti-establishment Republicans, known as the House Freedom Caucus, could find their influence crippled by the ascension of an anti-establishment figure to the White House. The delirious aftermath of Donald J. Trumps surprise election victory has, at least for now, erased the party divisions that the Freedom Caucus has leveraged within a historically unpopular Congress. After having braced themselves for a Democratic-controlled White House and Senate, Republicans are now rushing to dust off their wish lists. It has been roses and sunshine. Its unbelievable, said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. It is just amazing what a difference the Trump victory has made. In Africa, many countries are looking at solar and wind as a quick way to bolster generation capacity by leapfrogging older and dirtier sources of energy. Renewable energy could also bring diversification to nations dangerously dependent on a single source of electricity, like Malawi and Zambia, which have experienced crippling blackouts because of a severe drought that lowered water levels at hydroelectric dams. As sub-Saharan Africas most advanced economy, South Africa has about half of the continents power-generating capacity. It has operated a nuclear power station, the only one on the continent, since 1984, though coal-fired power plants generate about 80 percent of its electricity. Because of poor planning, the blackouts began in 2008. In 2011, desperate for more juice, the country started a program to attract private solar and wind producers that bid against one another on a number of projects. By this June, the renewable program had attracted 102 projects worth $14.4 billion. Forty-four facilities, built on average in less than two years, are producing 2.2 gigawatts. By contrast, the construction of two huge government coal plants is facing years of delay and severe cost overruns. The program has been very successful, clear of any corruption and very well run, said Wikus van Niekerk, the director of the Center for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies at Stellenbosch University. Its been seen by many people in the rest of the world as one of the most successful procurement programs for renewable energy. Its something that the South African government and public should be proud about. Abengoa, a Spanish company, was the first to win contracts to build two concentrated solar plants near Upington. Unlike traditional solar plants, a concentrated solar plant harnesses the suns energy to produce steam, which can be stored for a few hours and then used to run turbines after the sun sets. He spent five hours in line at his bank branch here, only to reach a teller who had run out of the new notes. And on Sunday, when he usually has appointments all afternoon for haircuts and color treatments at Beau Monde salon in the neighborhood of Colaba, only one client showed up, the rest lacking the cash to pay. His family was surviving on 1,500 rupees in small-denomination notes that he fished out of his daughters piggy bank, he said. I am willing to handle all of this if this will really reduce corruption, Mr. Sheikh said as he held a blow-dryer to his sole clients hair in the otherwise empty salon. A Mumbai taxi driver, Girja Prasad Goswami, 48, said his daily earnings had been cut in half, to 300 rupees, since Mr. Modis ban went into effect. He was not sure how he would send money to his wife and three daughters in his home village in Uttar Pradesh if business did not pick up. Yet he said, If its going to help the nation, I am willing to continue. In banning the two largest currency notes on Tuesday, Mr. Modi aimed to reduce the use of unaccounted-for cash in India, where experts have estimated that one-third of transactions are made this way. With the sudden ban, Mr. Modi rendered vast caches of unaccounted-for cash useless. Mr. Modi, in his Sunday speech, asked the public for 50 days of forbearance for a transition to new bills of 500 and 2,000 rupees. Complicating that transition is the fact that many of the countrys approximately 200,000 A.T.M.s are not working. Those that are working are quickly running out of 100-rupee notes, and none of the machines are capable of dispensing the new 2,000-rupee notes, which are a different size from the previous notes. The finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said recalibrating the A.T.M.s to dispense the new notes would take as long as three more weeks. The machines were not recalibrated before last weeks edict; by keeping the move a secret, officials prevented big holders of unaccounted-for money from outwitting the ban. JERUSALEM An Israeli ministerial committee on Sunday approved a contentious bill that would allow for the retroactive legalization of Jewish settlement outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The measure breaks a longstanding taboo, and in the view of many experts, it defies international law. The bill requires approval by Parliament before becoming law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed its advancement now, presumably to avoid international censure. The attorney general has cautioned that he will be hard pressed to defend the legislation in Israels Supreme Court. Israels pro-settlement camp has promoted the legislation, known as the Regulation Law, with increasing urgency as a Dec. 25 deadline approaches for the court-ordered destruction of Amona, an illegal outpost of 40 families on a West Bank hilltop claimed by dozens of Palestinian landowners and their heirs. Treading a fine line between world opinion, his conservative Likud Party and his governing coalition, Mr. Netanyahu tried to delay the vote. He said it would harm the chances of a government request pending before the Supreme Court to postpone the demolition of Amona by half a year. But some of those groups, in a separate offensive aided by Turkey, have pushed the Islamic State back from the Turkish border and appear to be on the verge of retaking the city of Al Bab from the extremist group, which Mr. Trump has vowed to defeat. A Pentagon program supports other rebel groups working with Kurdish militias to fight the Islamic State. We dont consider his statements to represent the new U.S. administration stance, said Bassam Hajj Moustafa, the political spokesman for the Nour al-Din al-Zenki rebel faction, which lost its American support after being deemed too close to Qaeda-affiliated groups. Mr. Moustafa called Mr. Trumps statements a show tainted by earlier racist, problematic comments, adding, Were not taking them seriously, and they will be deleted later. Frederic C. Hof, a former Obama administration official who has been a vociferous advocate for more robust intervention against Mr. Assad, said it was too early to predict Mr. Trumps Syria policy especially since he had more to learn about the conflict. No doubt Mr. Trump will learn during the course of his intelligence briefings, Mr. Hof wrote in an essay published by the Atlantic Council, a Washington policy institute, that Mr. Assads collective punishment policy and mass homicide of opponents drives recruitment for the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Ending United States support for rebels would only push them closer to Qaeda-linked groups, Mr. Hof and other analysts say. Mr. Trumps statements about Syria so far, Mr. Hof noted, came in a domestic political campaign in which he emphasized the threat of the Islamic State and played on fears of Muslims among his base, with no room for the nuances and contradictions of the Middle East. For instance, Mr. Trump has vowed to be tougher on Iran which, along with Russia, provides decisive support to Mr. Assad. Mr. Trumps victory was closely watched across Syria. Like people the world over, Syrians reacted instantly with a mix of surprise, enthusiasm, despair and confusion. Many strikes are carried out by pilots trained by the United States, who fly American-made jets that are refueled in the air by American planes. And Yemenis often find the remains of American-made munitions, as they did in the ruins after a strike that killed more than 100 mourners at a funeral last month. Graffiti on walls across Sana reads: America is killing the Yemeni people. President-elect Donald J. Trump has not said whether he will continue United States support for the war, but has been very critical of Saudi Arabia, saying it does not survive without us. At a rally in January, he said Iran was going into Yemen and was going to have everything in the region, but he did not clarify how he would respond. The sweeping destruction of civilian infrastructure has led analysts and aid workers to conclude that hitting Yemens economy is part of the coalitions strategy. The economic dimension of this war has become a tactic, said Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. It is all consistent the port, the bridges, the factories. They are getting destroyed, and it is to put pressure on the politics. In a written response to questions, a coalition spokesman, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Asseri, said the air campaign had halted the rebels advance, destroyed 90 percent of their rockets and aircraft and pressured them to join talks aimed at ending the war. He denied that the coalition sought to inflict suffering on civilians and said only facilities connected to the war effort had been hit. He blamed the rebel group, the Houthis, for the humanitarian crisis. This is primarily the responsibility of the rebels, who have displaced Yemens legitimate government and who are impeding the flow of humanitarian supplies, General Asseri said. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are also among the top donors of aid to Yemen. So even as they undermine its self-sufficiency, they help sustain the population. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Maksim Tsurkov Trend: Burkina Faso is interested in development of mutual relations with Azerbaijan, in particular, in energy sphere, said President of Burkina Fasos parliament Salifou Diallo. Diallo made the remarks during his meeting with Azerbaijani delegation led by the countrys Energy Minister Natig Aliyev in Burkina Fasos capital, Ouagadougou. Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR said in a message Nov. 14 that SOCAR Vice-President for Investments and Marketing Elshad Nassirov and management of the Azerkimya production association and SOCAR Trading company also took part in the meeting. It was noted that the diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso were established in 2004 and currently, are being conducted within such organizations as the United Nations (UN), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as well as the African Union (AU), where Azerbaijan has an observer status, said the message. Currently, there are wide prospects to develop cooperation. During the meeting, Natig Aliyev spoke about Azerbaijans energy strategy, regional and international projects, which are being implemented at the initiative and with the participation of the country. Azerbaijan plays an important role on the global energy market as one of the main exporters of oil and gas, said Aliyev. Salifou Diallo, for his part, noted that Burkina Faso is a major importer of energy and is interested in expanding ties with Azerbaijan, including in the energy sector. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov The vast majority of funds invested in equities reflect the direct or indirect savings of employees for retirement and the funds of foundations, endowments and families looking for long-term appreciation and future growth in dividends. Institutional investors, asset managers and the companies in which they invest should all recognize a fiduciary duty to manage and invest to achieve sustainable long-term growth in value. There is a raging debate today over the duty of the corporate board of directors. I believe it is to encourage long-term investment for the benefit of the economy, not just the shareholders. You have prepared a road map for the World Economic Forums International Business Council called The New Paradigm, in which you talk about the pitfalls of short-termism on societal prosperity. Was there a particular legal case or situation that galvanized your involvement? Short-termism and inadequate public and private investment are major factors in creating the inequality that is plaguing the United States and much of the world today. Knowing of my efforts to fight short-term thinking and strategies and fight attacks by activist hedge funds, the International Business Council invited me to talk about these issues at its August 2015 meeting. Following that, I was asked to help create a paradigm for corporate governance that could be considered at this years meeting. I did, and the road map was approved by the council last August. What are the key points for boardrooms, chief executives, investors and governments? A key point is having long-term strategies that are developed by a company with the participation, understanding and approval of the board of directors and are communicated to investors and the public. Other important points are engagement between companies and investors, transparency with respect to companies strategies and financial statements; mutual company and investor support for environmental, social and governance issues; and corporate social responsibility. Also, another key point is commitment to long-term investment by companies and commitment to encouraging and protecting those investments by investors. The paper points to the importance of long-term sustainability of corporations and suggests that focus has been lost. Why did that happen, and how important is it that it be restored? It is of the utmost importance. Interest in it waned because of short-term thinking and efforts by activist hedge funds to force short-term actions on companies, both those that are targeted as well as others. Companies began to adopt short-term strategies defensively in an attempt to avoid being targeted by such efforts. That needs to be changed. At your firm, what are you doing to address the issues of gender equality, pay gaps and minority hiring? Are there lessons you have learned that can be applied more broadly? My firm has lock-step compensation for all attorneys, male or female, so that all, from the same year of joining the firm, have the exact same compensation. We think that it is a major factor in the success of our firm. So, too, is our liberal bonus program for all employees. In addition, we have very active minority recruitment and hiring efforts. We offer summer internships for minority law school students and some high school students to encourage those who are interested in becoming attorneys. SUNDERLAND, England Among the consequences Britain unleashed in voting to abandon the European Union was making Tom Hursts job vastly more challenging. Mr. Hurst is the chief investment officer of Make It Sunderland, a local economic development agency. He lobbies investors on the benefits of setting up factories here in this industrial city in the northeast of England. Before the referendum, that job largely involved telling the story of Nissan: How, three decades ago, the Japanese automaker established a plant here in a community hard hit by factory closings. Now that plant now employs 7,500 and makes 500,000 vehicles a year. How other companies from around the world flocked here to cash in on supplying Nissan, making things like auto parts, car seats and dashboard instruments. But since the referendum on June 23, Mr. Hurst increasingly has to explain the implications of Britains looming exit from the European Union, known as Brexit. He must justify how this low-slung city on the North Sea can remain an important locale for global business, even as its links to Europe are suddenly uncertain. He must reassure investors who are inclined to explore other shores. The presidential campaign that just ended was notable for a lack of debate about housing in particular the uneven state of the United States mortgage market nine years since the start of the financial crisis. Neither President-elect Donald J. Trump nor Hillary Clinton spent much time discussing housing policy, even though the financial crisis in the United States began with the collapse of home prices nationally. And neither candidate laid out a plan for dealing with the two biggest engines in the mortgage market Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which remain under a controversial federal government conservatorship. Laurie Goodman, a longtime housing industry guru on Wall Street and now with a Washington research organization, said she did not think federal legislators would make it a priority to address the fates of Fannie and Freddie two government-sponsored entities that were rescued by the Treasury eight years ago with a $187 billion taxpayer bailout. I am very pessimistic on G.S.E. reform, said Ms. Goodman, co-director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, referring to the government-sponsored enterprises, as Fannie and Freddie are known. I dont see the impetus for change. The language Mr. Shkreli used in his filing indicates that he may not want to offer a pure advice of counsel defense, especially because Mr. Greebels involvement could put that claim out of reach. Instead, he may try to point to the advice of Katten Muchin lawyers as a basis for a jury to find that he did not intend to violate the law because he acted in good faith. To prove fraud, the government has to show that a defendant intended to mislead the victim to obtain money or property. Good faith is always a defense to such a charge because the misstatement must be made in order to steal, not just that it was done accidentally or through an honest mistake that resulted in a loss. So if a lawyer tells a client that conduct is proper, then it may show a defendant did not want to violate the law. Courts are not always willing to allow a defendant to point to the presence of lawyers as a basis to prove the absence of fraudulent intent. In the Securities and Exchange Commissions fraud lawsuit against Fabrice Tourre, a former Goldman Sachs trader who was eventually found liable for fraud related to a toxic mortgage-backed securities deal he helped put together right before the financial crisis, the court would not let him introduce evidence of the participation of lawyers in the process because he did not claim to have relied on their advice. A lay jury could easily believe that the fact that a lawyer is present at a meeting means that he or she must have implicitly or explicitly blessed the legality of all aspects of a transaction, the judge wrote. But in a recent civil securities fraud case in the Federal District Court in Chicago against the former chief executive of biopharmaceutical company Immunosyn who was accused of not disclosing information about a clinical hold on one of its drugs, the judge was willing to allow the defendant to offer evidence about what corporate lawyers told him to show he acted in good faith. The court rejected the S.E.C.s argument that allowing the evidence was a back door means to offer a watered-down version of the advice of counsel defense. Instead, it could be used because honest white heart/empty head good faith is inconsistent with a subjectively reckless state of mind, the court wrote. The challenge for courts is to determine how far to let defendants go in trying to prove that the requisite state of mind did not exist. Judges do not want to encourage the view that having lawyers in the room acts as a shield to allow executives to do anything they want just by offering the claim that my lawyer said it was O.K. even if that was not exactly what the legal advice was. Pointing to the lawyer can also raise a host of complications, such as whether the attorney-client privilege prevents disclosure of the legal advice. In Mr. Shkrelis case, Katten Muchin represented the company but not him personally, so some materials may be off limits, absent a waiver of the privilege by Retrophin, which is one of the victims of the fraud and may not want to see him avoid a conviction. The trial judge will have to sort this all out to determine what should be made available before deciding whether Mr. Shkreli can mount a good faith defense based on the legal advice. Lawyers are retained by companies to ensure compliance with the law, not as a means to take greater risks in the hope that the government cannot prove an intentional violation. That approach would turn good faith based on the advice of counsel into a free pass from fraud. The boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners is taking an ambitious step for growth by buying a fellow bank known for its expertise in the oil patch. The firm said on Monday that it was acquiring Tudor Pickering Holt & Company to greatly expand its expertise in energy transactions, at a time when independent advisory firms are battling to differentiate themselves. The importance of the energy sector is just huge, said Peter A. Weinberg, a co-founder of Perella Weinberg and the head of its advisory business. Its a significant part of the M.&A. market, and its an important asset in the asset management business. The acquisition of Tudor Pickering Holt, word of which emerged earlier this year, comes as Perella Weinberg is seeking to build momentum. The firm was one of the principal architects of AT&Ts proposed $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner. More broadly, money flowing out of the hedge fund industry as a whole comes at a time when performance has been disappointing. The Hedge Fund Research Composite Index, the broadest gauge of hedge fund performance, has lagged the Standard & Poors 500-stock index this year, gaining 3.56 percent through the end of October compared with the indexs 4 percent gain over the same period, accounting for reinvested dividends. Frankly, we expect to see assets move from human managers to machine managers, Tony James, chief operating officer of Blackstone, told investors earlier this year. The Blackstone Alternative Asset Management arm, which manages $70 billion in hedge fund investments, is a big investor in quant-related hedge fund firms and has put billions of dollars toward these firms in recent years. The division now has $10 billion invested in quant-dedicated hedge fund firms, according to one person with direct knowledge of the firm; it has not publicly released the number. Some industry observers warn that hedge funds building out new quant arms may simply be trying to capture investor money that is flowing into the strategy. But veterans in the quant world see the trend as an indication that the industry is finally catching up to other industries in which technology has disrupted businesses. The portfolio investment industry has been relatively late to adopting technology, said Philippe Jordan, the president of Capital Fund Management, a 25-year-old quant hedge fund firm that manages $6.9 billion. Finance is deeply conservative in nature, he added. Capital Fund Management has 160 employees, including 40 scientists, most of whom hold Ph.D.s in physics; 75 employees are focused on information technology, 20 of which are in data management. Like other types of hedge funds, the firm has a research department. The only difference is that at Capital Fund Management, the analysts who conduct research approach the work more like academics, and ideas are peer-reviewed. With more investor money going toward firms that build models to trade on, there is some concern that these models will begin to look similar, potentially resulting in overcrowding. That could be a problem if there is a sudden event that drives everyone to start selling at the same time, something that happened during the quant crunch in the summer of 2007. Over one week in August, AQR Capital Management, D. E. Shaw and Renaissance Technologies were all hit with huge losses as the housing market began to show signs of collapse. With similar models and huge positions, the losses each firm suffered were amplified. Mr. Shen at BlackRock thinks there are fewer risks this time around. The diversity of data allows people to do a lot of different things, he said. Hong Kong has the benefit of being connected to China, which has, mostly in isolation, been home to some of the most notable developments in the fintech world. Chinese fintech companies like Alipay and Tencent have been processing more financial transactions than the largest Chinese banks. The four most highly valued fintech unicorns (companies valued at $1 billion or more) are based in mainland China, according to most recent surveys. Early this year the chief executive of Hong Kongs central bank, Norman Chan, announced a multipronged effort to become a Fintech Innovation Hub. The city-states government is offering to put money into companies that locate in Hong Kong, and its regulators have a new supervisory sandbox where new companies can try their products without needing to fulfill all the normal regulatory requirements. Hong Kong brought in several foreign companies this month to attend its first government-sponsored conference. Hong Kong has lots of competition from Singapore, which recently started its own aggressive effort to become a capital of fintech. Singapore has begun offering some of the same inducements as Hong Kong, including its first fintech week. Last year, more fintech companies in Singapore raised money from venture capitalists than did in Hong Kong, but the Singapore companies raised less money in sum than those in Hong Kong, according to data from Accenture. Nowhere, though, has the competition been fiercer than in Europe, because of the British vote to leave the European Union. Before the so-called Brexit vote, London had clearly established itself as the hub of fintech activity for the Continent. But if Brexit comes to pass, financial institutions in London are likely to find it harder to do business freely with European companies and financial institutions. Equally important for start-ups, young developers from outside Britain may not be able to remain in London. TOKYO Japanese economic growth accelerated strongly in the third quarter. Japan has the worlds third-largest economy, but it has been struggling to lift a lackluster growth rate and escape the trap of deflation sagging consumer prices associated with weak output and declining living standards. So what went right last quarter? And will it last? What Happened? Japanese gross domestic product increased by 2.2 percent in annualized terms in the three months through September, the Cabinet Office said in a preliminary estimate. That counts as rip-roaring growth in normally sluggish Japan. The country has averaged less than 1 percent over the last two decades. The growth rate more than doubled compared with the second quarter and was more than twice as high as the average forecast by economists. Where Did the Growth Come From? Foreigners. Exports accounted for by far the largest share of the increased output, according to the Cabinet Office data. They surged 8.1 percent in annualized terms, while other important parts of the economy barely budged. Domestic consumer spending, the biggest component of G.D.P., rose just 0.2 percent. Business investment ticked up by a meager 0.1 percent. By contrast, a rosier economic picture overseas helped exporters: The American economy grew robustly in the quarter, while a slowdown in China appears to have eased. A weaker yen probably helped, too. The Japanese currency had been gaining strength this year bad news for companies selling in dollars or euros but it has eased off again since August. Is the Government Growth Push Working? Government spending took a back seat last quarter. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has introduced a number of stimulus programs during his nearly four years in office, but the latest one announced in September and worth 28 trillion yen, or about $260 billion, over several years, according to government calculations will not kick in until next year, and public investment actually declined last quarter. More broadly, Japanese officials have started to re-examine a stimulus strategy that has relied heavily on the central bank. The banks ultraloose monetary policy has kept borrowing costs down, but so far that has not translated into much new spending by consumers or businesses. The presidential race was not far from the minds of executives from Americas biggest brands and advertising agencies last month in Orlando, Fla., at the annual conference held by the Association of National Advertisers. The industry leaders had traveled from cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and any political conversation seemed to be premised on the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win. There was some talk about how to best market to Donald J. Trumps supporters after Nov. 8 and debate about what a potential Trump media organization might look like. Many were aghast that the race was close at all, criticizing aspects of Mrs. Clintons branding and messaging for holding her back in what they thought should have a no-brainer for voters. So when Mr. Trump won the election last week, an industry that prides itself on always knowing what motivates and excites the American public was in a state of shock. Marketers now find themselves asking serious questions about how they study consumers, use data and quantify the value of facts questions about the fundamental nature of their business. Advertisers, like many others, may have found ourselves in bubbles of our own making, said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategist for the Publicis Groupe. HONG KONG Samsung Electronics is spending $8 billion to get inside your car. Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant which already makes popular but recently problem-plagued smartphones said on Monday that it had agreed to buy Harman International Industries, an American automotive technology company, in an ambitious push into a whole different kind of mobile. Harman is best known for making car audio systems under brand names popular with audiophiles such as Harman/Kardon and JBL. But Harmans appeal to Samsung comes from what it calls its connected car business an operation that supplies a cars navigation services, its onboard entertainment systems and its connectivity to the rest of the world. The vehicle of tomorrow will be transformed by smart technology and connectivity in the same way that simple feature phones have become sophisticated smart devices over the past decade, Young Sohn, the president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics, said in a news release. The deal marks the latest ambitious foray by an established name in the technology world into a new generation of smart objects sometimes collectively called the internet of things. Under this vision, everything from home security systems to refrigerators will be connected to the internet, gathering data and controllable at the touch of a smartphone icon. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 14 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: A ceremony of signing bilateral documents was held in Ashgabat following the high-level Turkmen-Palestinian negotiations, the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news service reported Nov. 14. Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas signed a joint declaration. Meanwhile, an agreement on economic cooperation and memorandums of understanding on cooperation in higher education and tourism were also signed between the two countries governments. Moreover, memorandums of understanding were signed between Turkmenistans Ministry of Economy and Development and Palestinian Investment Promotion Agency and between the two countries chambers of commerce and industry. Mr. Papi said, Technically speaking, Dominique is a seasoned troubleshooter, and while he is developing a mechanism he is thinking about a new one still better. Dominique knows how to use his hands, and he makes things with a high level of quality. Renaud et Papis first big invention, for I.W.C., was the Grand Complication modular minute repeater modular because it could be added to existing watches. Business started rolling in. For Jaeger LeCoultre, they developed the Reversos micro-repetition minute; for A. Lange & Sohne, the Fusee Tourbillon. Soon they were making complications for Franck Muller, Harry Winston, Parmigiani Fleurier, Richard Mille, Chanel, Hublot, Girard-Perregaux and Ulysses Nardin, as well as creating for their former employer, Audemars Piguet, the smallest minute repeater caliber and the first Grande Sonnerie Carillon. In 1992, the men sold half of the business to Audemars Piguet but continued to run it. But after a few years, Mr. Renaud decided that he had had enough. I needed to take a break, he said. I wanted to see my two daughters grow up. So in 2000, he sold the rest of his interest in the business, now known as APRP, and moved to the south of France, outside Montpellier. He built a house, sold it and built another but, he said, I was always thinking of watches. After 13 years away from watchmaking, Mr. Renaud was ready to return. Dominique Renaud SA is based in Renens, employs four workers and was established as a lab for new ideas, Mr. Torrigiani said. Every second day, Dominque comes in with a new idea. Image The watchmakers rendering of the new DR01 Twelve First. It is in my blood, Mr. Renaud noted. I come from a long family of watchmakers in the Vallee de Joux. His grandfather was a watchmaker, and I am a child of Vacheron Constantin, he said. My parents met there. On a shelf in his office is a movement that his mother, born a LeCoultre, worked on in 1959. The official collaborations between brands and unconventional artists arent the only kind of experimentation going on. Unauthorized, street-smart tweaks of luxury timepieces also are popping up. Bamford Watch Department, a customizing company based in London whose work is sold at tastemaker stores like Dover Street Market and Colette, has been adding new faces and matte-black bands to new Rolex watches; it also has collaborated with street-savvy artists like Jose Parla of Brooklyn and Wes Lang, the Los Angeles artist whose Deepsea Rolex with an image of the grim reaper retails for 19,000. And late last year, a stainless-steel Rolex Submariner with the logo of the skateboard and clothing company Supreme sold for $50,000 at Stadium Goods, a consignment store in Manhattan that specializes in collectible sneakers, according to John McPheters, the stores co-founder. For watch collectors, the long-term investment value of such timepieces isnt as reliable as that of a more traditional design. The question is how impactful is tattoo and graffiti culture going to be several generations from now, said Ariel Adams, founder of the watch website aBlogtoWatch. All these artists, they may have some popularity within niche groups, but in the future theyll only have popularity within niche groups, and thats going to prevent the watches from being truly collectible. Ruediger Albers, president of the American Wempe Corporation, a luxury watch retailer, had a similar observation. It gets a lot of attention that doesnt mean that it translates into a whole lot of sales, but there is a market out there, he said. I cant say that we have customers coming in saying, I have seen this artist and therefore Im interested in the brand. It hasnt translated to that, but at the same time, it opens up the brand. Most of the watch houses say that in the end, sales volume isnt the main priority. I want the young generation to dream about my brand, Mr. Biver of LVMH said. If they can buy it or not is not my concern now. Its my concern later: later they will do their own buying with their own money. They will remember their dream and later they will say, I have dreamt so much about this watch, now I want to buy one. Thats my strategy. Zuby Malik is an unlikely candidate to violate international law. A 78-year-old mother of four with a crown of silver hair, she is a retired obstetrician-gynecologist with a penchant for order. But Ms. Malik is fighting for her life. After receiving a Stage 4 non-small-cell lung cancer diagnosis a year ago, she exhausted many of the treatments available to her and grappled with torturous side effects that left her itching and gasping for breath. During the summer, she decided to go to Cuba and bring back a cancer vaccine that is not approved in the United States. That she comes from a family steeped in medical training made the decision all the more difficult. At first, I was a little nervous, said Ms. Malik, sitting in her Northern California living room flanked by an oxygen tank and a table of medicines. But American treatments were not helping me, and I decided I should go to Cuba. What other choice did I have? Soon after she began the medication, she said, her breathing became easier and her energy returned. In her refrigerator was a box of blue- and orange-capped vials of the vaccine. By the end of this week, all blood banks in the continental United States must begin testing donated blood for contamination with the Zika virus. Many banks are doing so already, and the early results indicate that the country has dodged a bullet for now. Screenings in a dozen states suggest that Zika infection remains exceedingly rare. Among the approximately 800,000 blood donations tested in the past six months or so, about 40 were initially positive for the virus. It is good news that we are avoiding the transmission of Zika, said Dr. Susan Rossmann, the chief medical officer at Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center in Houston. Still, she noted, it may not be surprising there are so few possibly positive cases, because blood banks have been dissuading people from donating if they recently traveled to an area in which the virus is circulating. Jackie Chan was among four Hollywood players to receive honorary Oscars at the Governors Awards during a ceremony in Los Angeles this weekend. The annual awards, which were announced in September, honor industry figures for lifetime achievement in movies. I still cant believe Im standing here; its a dream, Mr. Chan, 62, said when he accepted the award on Saturday. Finally, this is mine, he added, shaking the statuette. The winners of the Governors Awards, which were founded in 2009, are chosen by a vote by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In some years, they also honor people for their humanitarian works in addition to their work in movies. In recent years, board members have started to lobby aggressively for certain candidates to be recognized, and the awards visibility has grown. Were still where we were a year and a half ago, said Mr. Heim, who founded the Connecticut Coalition Against Crumbling Basements. The only thing thats changed is the problem is getting worse. To date, nearly 400 property owners across nearly two dozen towns have submitted complaints to the consumer protection agency, asserting that their foundations are deteriorating. James Mahoney and his wife, who live in Ellington, noticed the telltale cracking in their foundation in March. Further testing confirmed that their concrete was failing. The cost to fix their home: $230,000. I went through all the phases of feeling glum, and decided to get angry and put my expertise to use, Mr. Mahoney said. Mr. Mahoney, a director at an engineering research center, has an expertise in transportation construction materials, including concrete. During his free time, Mr. Mahoney gathered data from building permits and census information to estimate the number of houses potentially affected by the bad concrete, and the economic impact to Connecticut. Mr. Mahoneys analysis led him to believe that as many as 10,000 homes may be involved at a cost of $1 billion. Over the past 30 years, the Becker quarry, in Willington, has provided concrete for thousands of houses. The stone aggregate used in the concrete mixture has higher levels of pyrrhotite, an iron sulfide mineral that can react with oxygen and water to cause swelling and cracking. The recent report gave a highly technical analysis, conducted by scientists at the University of Connecticut, of that chemical reaction. It described the resulting formation of secondary minerals that might ultimately lead to the premature deterioration of the concrete foundation. SHANGHAI Perhaps no country has taken more hits from Donald J. Trump than China. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump made it sound as if making America great again meant defeating China. But much of the Chinese public supported him. And President Xi Jinping was among the first world leaders to congratulate him. Mr. Xi, in his message to the president-elect, expressed hopes of building on the common interests between the worlds two largest economies. Beijing is looking forward to change in Washington. For the Chinese, the Obama era has been the most difficult period in United States-China relations since President Richard M. Nixon renewed ties in 1971. The Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, made its pivot to Asia about containing Beijing, aiming to strengthen and enlarge the American alliance system in the Asia-Pacific region while increasing Americas military footprint there. The pivot was backed by an economic plan, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a now-moribund trade pact created in part to isolate Beijing. Since the end of the Cold War, from President Bill Clinton to President Obama, the United States has been trying to remake the world in its own image building an American empire in the name of globalization. Through ever larger and more complex alliances and global institutions that the United States designed, Washington has sought the global standardization of rules in trade, finance and international relations. It has used political, economic and military might to push other countries to adopt electoral democracy and market capitalism. Mexico City To get about on a bicycle in Mexico City is an experience ranging from complicated to downright scary. The cracked and broken paving makes it torture to ride anywhere, specially if youre constantly dodging hostile cars and trucks. Its frequently said that Mexico City is not Amsterdam. Drivers in Amsterdam share the streets with bicycles and pedestrians as a matter of course; here, it seems we do so because were forced to. Nevertheless, we inhabitants of Mexico City have the same right as any Dutch citizen to enjoy a complete network of bike lanes to get around the city. The deficient infrastructure for nonmotor traffic is becoming dangerous for cyclists. In July, we saw via social media a confrontation between a man driving an Audi in a bike lane, Rafael Marquez Gasperin, and a cyclist named Ari Santillan. After running into the cyclist, Mr. Gasperin, now known as Lord Audi, insulted Mr. Santillan, and proceeded to attack a bank security guard who tried to intervene to enforce traffic regulations. (In theory, a recent reform of these rules has put automobile drivers on the lowest level of the street-user totem pole, giving priority instead to pedestrians, bicycle riders and public transportation.) The attacker made fun of the guard: This is Mexico. Get it, guey? (using a slang word that can be translated as man, or dude). The phrase sums up how the citys residents regard public services. For some, everything public is really private and can be used as they please; for others, it is community property to be enjoyed collectively. These opposing views are part of a wider cultural battle over public space. Whom does the street belong to? In urban settings, streets and sidewalks along with parks and plazas make up the public environment. Public property is the sum of all the assets that belong to everyone in society. The government must guarantee equal access to whatever is public; no one should be excluded. Even though traffic regulations now give preferential treatment to pedestrians and cyclists, there is a disturbing paradox: Despite being the lowest in the official hierarchy of street users, the drivers of motor vehicles are the No. 1 beneficiaries of government spending. This year will be very likely the hottest on record, with global temperatures breaking the previous record, set in 2015, scientists with the World Meteorological Organization announced on Monday. The announcement is no surprise to climate scientists experts at NASA had already projected that 2016 would be a third year of record heat and the record will not be definitive until early next year. Imagine if scientists discovered that an asteroid was hurtling toward Los Angeles. The possibility has existed on the pages of Hollywood scripts. But in what may be a case of life imitating art, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies engaged last month in a planetary protection exercise to consider the potentially devastating consequences of a 330-foot asteroid hitting the Earth. The simulation projected a worst-case blast wave by an asteroid strike in 2020 that could level structures across 30 miles, require a mass evacuation of the Los Angeles area and cause tens of thousands of casualties. In 1998, the movie Armageddon dramatized an even greater fictional threat. In that blockbuster, a ragtag crew was sent on a mission to drill into an asteroid and set off a nuclear bomb to avert a global catastrophe. As the character Harry Stamper, portrayed by Bruce Willis, summed up to his crewmates: The United States government just asked us to save the world. Dont expect the need for such Hollywood heroics in real life, however. An asteroid that could cause such damage has no significant chance of striking Earth within the next century, Paul Chodas, manager of NASAs Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in an email. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 14 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Palestines embassy will be opened in Ashgabat during the visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Turkmenistan on Nov. 13-15, the Turkmen government said in a message Nov. 14. Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, during his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Turkmen side will create all necessary conditions for the proper functioning of the diplomatic mission of the brotherly country, according to the message. The two countries will celebrate the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations in April 2017. The Turkmen president proposed to hold the Turkmen-Palestinian business forum in 2017, according to the message. Plenty of shows go badly on Broadway. But rarely does one do so intentionally. Now comes The Play That Goes Wrong, a British farce born in a pub, that has been running in the West End of London since 2014. The slapstick comedy, in which a company of hapless actors makes a disastrous attempt to stage a 1920s murder mystery, is coming to Broadway next year, beginning previews March 9 and opening on April 2 at the Lyceum Theater, the producers said Monday. The producing team includes J.J. Abrams, the Hollywood director and writer (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), making his first foray into theater production. Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, saw the play in London last year and called it an unexpected, gut-busting hit and one of those breakneck exercises in idiocy that make you laugh till you cry, despite yourself. Nate Yeah, not on its own. Steins support did cover the Trump-Clinton margin in Michigan and Wisconsin, but I dont think its reasonable to say Clinton would have gotten 100 percent of that vote. It wouldnt have been enough anyway: Clinton still would have lost Pennsylvania. Theres a chance that Gary Johnson/Stein combined could have done it, but I dont know about that. I think the Johnson vote could easily be more of a Trump vote. Toni Youve tried to warn about the reliability of exit polls. But of course, readers and journalists are devouring the information and drawing conclusions, which is understandable. But explain why its important to hold off for a while on some verdicts. Nate Well, the exit polls simply arent designed to measure the composition of the electorate and the attitudes of specific subgroups. There are a lot of reasons for that, which you can read more about in this piece. But in general, the exit polls portray the electorate as too young, too educated and too diverse. And that means that all of the estimates for each subgroup are distorted as well, since the exit polls have to add up to the right result. In other words, the exit polls usually have a two wrongs make a right approach to measuring the electorate, and that just doesnt work for the sort of demographic and turnout analysis that people want to use them for. That requires a precision that they just cant provide. Toni Whats a specific instance in which you think the exit polls are sending the public and journalists in the wrong direction? What about the Hispanic vote, for example? Nate I think the exit polls are probably off on education, age and the white vote. The exits say that the electorate was half college-educated (too high) and just 15 percent over age 65, and you just cant reconcile those numbers with what we know about the country. The exit polls are probably on to something about the Hispanic vote. I think its hard to defend that Clinton did as well among Hispanic voters as President Obama, when you look at the results in heavily Hispanic areas. She ran only somewhat ahead of Obama in Miami and Orlando-Kissimmee, despite a big surge in Hispanic turnout. She ran behind Obama in a lot of heavily Hispanic South Texas, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, and the most Hispanic suburban county around Denver. A study done in part by Leemore Dafny, a health economist now with the Harvard Business School, also illuminates the competition-premium connection. She and co-authors found that premiums in the first year of the marketplaces were 5.4 percent higher just because one national insurer opted out. Another study, published in Health Affairs, found that premiums fall by 3.5 percent with the addition of another insurer. Marketplaces will only succeed if enough insurers participate, and many are running away from what they perceive as a high-risk, low-reward market opportunity, she said. All of this insurer withdrawals and sharply escalating premiums was avoidable and is fixable. We know how to draw insurers into markets, keep them there, and limit premium growth. We can do so by subsidizing plans more and by limiting their risk of loss. Weve done both before. In the early 2000s, Medicare+Choice then the name of what is now the Medicare Advantage program, which offers private plan alternatives to traditional Medicare was struggling. The proportion of Medicare beneficiaries with access to a Medicare+Choice plan declined from 72 percent in 1999 to 61 percent in 2002. The number of plans offered dropped 50 percent, and enrollment dropped 21 percent. Insurance industry representatives said that the problem was that government subsidy payments to plans were not keeping up with costs. After payments to plans drastically increased as part of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President George W. Bush insurers flooded the market. This was controversial. Members of Congress from both parties expressed concern that plans were overpaid, wasting taxpayer resources. By 2007, every Medicare beneficiary had access to at least one plan. The market stabilized, so much so that even as payments to plans were cut by the Affordable Care Act, plan enrollment continued to grow. Today, about one in three Medicare beneficiaries is enrolled in a private plan a record high. Increasing the subsidization of Obamacare plans might have the same effect reducing costs to consumers and drawing more of them, and insurers, into the market. The Medicare Modernization Act also established Medicares prescription drug program, Part D, which offers another lesson. Its also run entirely through private plans. Theyre cushioned against large losses by a risk corridor program. This helps plans stay in the market if they miscalculated the mix of patients theyd attract, and it allows them to keep premiums lower than they might need to if they had to hedge against the full brunt of potential losses. The business of political consulting was born, many say, in 1933 when the newspaper writers Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter were hired to defeat Upton Sinclair in his antipoverty bid for governor of California. (When Sinclair lost, he blamed the defeat on a staff of political chemists.) The industry has since evolved into a sophisticated army of data analysts, message crafters and others whose firms turn billions of dollars given to candidates and their surrogates into services. Television advertisements. Email lists. Get-out-the-vote strategies. But everything about this election seemed to throw into question the value of those tactics and even of the consultants themselves. In the end, Mrs. Clintons battalion of advisers was defeated by a wild, seemingly unchoreographed candidate who, according to the most recent data, spent more money on shirts, hats, signs and similar items than on field consulting, voter lists and data. Over the weekend, 150 or so participants moved between a high-ceilinged conference room at the Westin hotel and other activities, including the reception at the governors mansion and a dinner at an adobe fort in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. (Organizers nixed a tour of a marijuana grow house after too many people expressed interest.) Brendan Dassey, one of two Wisconsin men who were found guilty in 2007 in the sexual assault and killing of a photographer and who were featured in the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, should be freed from prison while the state appeals a ruling overturning his conviction, a federal judge ruled on Monday. The order to free Mr. Dassey, 27, came less than a year after the popular 10-part series by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos suggested that the police had unfairly questioned Mr. Dassey, then 16, without a lawyer or parent present. It suggested that he was mentally unfit, that he had been coerced into a confession he later recanted and that his court-appointed lawyer had been content to cut a deal. Prosecutors said, however, that Mr. Dassey had participated with his uncle Steven Avery in the murder of the photographer, Teresa Halbach, 25. Mr. Dassey, who was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and first-degree sexual assault, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. ATLANTA With local television programming interrupted and a camera trained on the defendants emotionless face, an Atlanta-area father was convicted of murder on Monday for causing the death of his young son by deliberately leaving him in a hot car more than two years ago. A jury in southeast Georgia, where the case was tried because of intense pretrial publicity here, returned guilty verdicts against the man, Justin Ross Harris, 35, on eight counts, including malice murder and cruelty to children. Mr. Harris, who sometimes glanced downward as the verdict was read in Brunswick, could be sentenced to life in prison for the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. The verdict, announced on the jurys fourth day of deliberations, ended the suspense of a trial that began on Oct. 3, and it capped nearly 29 months of sordid allegations and scrambled loyalties. The cause of Coopers death was undisputed Mr. Harris left him in a Hyundai Tucson while he worked as a software engineer at Home Depot on June 18, 2014 but it fell to jurors to decide whether he had been malicious or merely absent-minded. The manner of Coopers death is a heartbreakingly familiar one: At least 39 children in the United States have died of vehicular heatstroke this year, according to statistics compiled by a San Jose State University researcher. But the case against Mr. Harris was striking because of the severity of the charges and the states argument that he was eager to end his responsibilities to his family. WASHINGTON Congress returns this week to finish the last of its business before a new year and era begin in Washington. Ebullient Republicans are eager to put some remaining legislation behind them and to try to fund the government through the rest of the year. Here are some areas to watch. 21st-Century Cures This legislation, which would finance increases in medical research and changes in regulations, is a priority for both the White House and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. President Obama would like a bipartisan postelection accomplishment, and many in his party would like to give it to him, especially since the bill addresses the cancer moonshot associated with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose son died of a brain tumor. The presidents interested in the precision medicine part of that, the vice president is interested in the cancer moonshot part of it, Im interested in the regenerative medicine part of it, Mr. McConnell said last week. Id like to see us finish that important new measure this year. The Military Congress could pass a final version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, an expansive military policy bill. There are a few contentious issues at play. The House version of the bill has a religious exemption provision for people seeking federal contracts that many Senate Democrats viewed as government-sponsored discrimination. The bill contains a provision that would permit religiously affiliated federal contractors to refuse to interview a job candidate whose faith differs from theirs. The Senate version had a provision that would for the first time require young women to register for the draft, something the House rejected. These differences must be reconciled. So what is Mr. Trump talking about when he talks about globalism? His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, provided a definition in an email before the election last week: An economic and political ideology which puts allegiance to international institutions ahead of the nation-state; seeks the unrestricted movement of goods, labor and people across borders; and rejects the principle that the citizens of a country are entitled to preference for jobs and other economic considerations as a virtue of their citizenship. Where Did This Idea Come From? Far-right groups in the United States began to refer to globalism at the end of the Cold War, when it replaced communism as an idea that was an ever-present danger to the nation, Mr. Pitcavage said. They have also referred to it as the New World Order, and soon they saw its tentacles everywhere. The shape of that conspiracy had distinctly anti-Semitic overtones, in part because many of communisms foes had historically seen communism as inextricably linked to Judaism, Mr. Pitcavage said. Members of the far right became fixated on prominent Jews like the businessman and philanthropist George Soros. Those conspiratorial beliefs were bolstered when former President George Bush celebrated the end of the Cold War in a 1991 speech by saying it was the dawn of a new world order. His use of the phrase was taken as proof by many that a globalist conspiracy really was afoot. It was very easy for them, especially because he was the one who said it, to take that ball and run with it, Mr. Pitcavage said. From that point on, the phrase became the short hand for that kind of globalism conspiracy theory. How Does It Fit Into American Politics? The terms multiple meanings have made it a powerful political tool, and Mr. Trumps and his allies frequent references to globalism have drawn in a wide and varied audience. Anti-globalism is a very efficient net to unite disparate parts of the right from the mainstream to the extreme, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The appointment of Stephen K. Bannon as chief White House strategist for President-elect Donald J. Trump has been condemned by civil rights groups, Democrats and some Republicans, because of Mr. Bannons record as chairman of Breitbart News, the hard-right news and opinion site. Here, in his own words, are a selection of Mr. Bannons public statements about the country, the Republican Party and his own political philosophy. Anger Is a Good Thing Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action, he said in a 2010 interview. Referring to Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin in a 2011 radio interview on Political Vindication Radio, he said: These women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative. Thats why there are some unintended consequences of the womens liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldnt be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane, and thats why they hate these women. Mr. Bannon made a movie in 2012 about the Occupy Wall Street protests. He told an interviewer: After making the Occupy movie, when you finish watching the film, you want to take a hot shower. You want to go home and shower because youve just spent an hour and 15 minutes with the greasiest, dirtiest people you will ever see. The place that Mr. Bannon will occupy in the new administration, as senior counselor and chief strategist, also elevates to one of the most powerful roles in government someone whose mission in politics has been to tear down institutions, not run them. His appointment was intended to be a reassuring signal to the vocal and restive members of Mr. Trumps populist, anti-Washington base who are suspicious of power and anyone who holds it. Mr. Trump is their champion, but Mr. Bannon is their check against the Washington establishment and any efforts it makes to soften the new presidents resolve. Mr. Bannon does not come out of the usual political or ideological backgrounds that have shaped the Republican Party in recent decades. He is not a religious conservative who is focused on social issues. He is not a traditional economic conservative. What especially motivates Mr. Bannon, his friends and colleagues say, is a sense that the countrys cultural and political elite are contemptuous of ordinary Americans. That endeared him to Mr. Trump, who never felt he received the respect he deserved for building such a large political movement. That arrogance of the elites, as Mr. Bannon has said, explains why most of the media and political class missed the rise of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bannons disgust with the politics of the mainstream Republican Party burns just as hot as, if not hotter than, his animus toward liberals. He sees Republicans as the party of Davos donors and has scorned them for denigrating Trump supporters as the vulgarians, the hobbits and the peasants with the pitchforks. He is close to Sarah Palin, and at one point he urged her to take up the kind of Republican versus Republican battle he relishes: a primary campaign against Senator John McCain, her 2008 running mate. (She declined.) He was behind some of the Trump campaigns most inflammatory moves, like inviting several women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual advances to sit in Mr. Trumps family box during a debate. He had never worked on a national campaign until signing on with Mr. Trump, and has had eclectic taste in careers. He served as a Navy officer and went into banking for Goldman Sachs. He also helped run Biosphere 2, the domed ecosystem in Arizona where people lived without contact with the outside world. Like many leaders of the emerging hard-right movement, he became engaged in politics with the rise of the Tea Party early in President Obamas first term. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 14 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The 16th meeting of the Turkmenistan-EU committee was held in Brussels, Belgium, within the agreement on cooperation and trade, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message Nov. 14. The sides discussed a wide range of issues. In particular, such aspects as macroeconomic situation in Turkmenistan, constitutional and social reforms in Turkmenistan, implementation of technical projects and programs of the EU in Turkmenistan, energy projects and opportunities to diversify gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Europe were considered during the meeting. The European External Action Service, office of the special representative for Central Asia and others were also presented. The sides agreed to hold the 17th meeting of the joint Turkmenistan-EU committee in 2017 in Ashgabat, according to the message. The list is a good reflection of Mr. Trumps dual priorities, said William M. Jay, a lawyer with the firm of Goodwin Procter and a former law clerk to Justice Scalia. It was consistent with the message he was trying to send: that he was not going to be naming establishment choices but that the establishment might well be happy with the people he chose from Alabama and Iowa and places like that, he said. The top priority for conservatives, Mr. Malcolm said, is to avoid another disappointment like Justice David H. Souter, who was appointed by President George Bush in 1990 but whose voting record turned out to be decidedly liberal. Mr. Malcolm said his own first choice for the current vacancy was Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. If you are concerned about not wanting another David Souter, Mr. Malcolm said, he has a real titanium spine in terms of doing the right thing. Judge Pryor has called Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a right to abortion, the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history, a comment he stood by at his confirmation hearing. He once ended a speech with a prayer: Please, God, no more Souters. Mr. Jay also singled out Judge Pryor, who went to law school at Tulane. While Bill Pryor did not go to Yale, he said, there is a broad consensus that Bill Pryor is a smart, intellectual and fair judge who most conservatives would happily see on a Supreme Court shortlist. Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt and a former clerk to Justice Scalia, had praise for Judge Ryan, the military judge, who is a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and a graduate of Notre Dame Law School. She is just a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense kind of person, he said. She would be not a wishy-washy kind of conservative. People who dont want any more Souters wouldnt have to worry about her. Both Mr. Jay and Professor Fitzpatrick said Justice Scalia would have been pleased to be succeeded by one of his former law clerks, Justice Joan Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court. She went to law school at Northwestern, served in the Justice Department and taught law at the University of Michigan. DUNDALK, Md. Raad and Hutham Lalqaraghuli are no longer sure which America theyre a part of. Is it the hateful country they confronted a few weeks before the presidential election, when someone left a note at their door that said, Terrorist Leave no one wants you here? Or is it the generous country of welcoming strangers who heard about their ordeal and showered them with gifts and cards with positive messages? The victory of President-elect Donald J. Trump has intensified their whiplash. After a year in the Maryland suburbs, having arrived with their four children as refugees from Iraq, they find themselves comparing the threats they fled with those that might still emerge. They did not sleep on election night after watching television coverage of the results. They are very afraid and worried, Mr. Lalqaraghuli said on Wednesday. We dont know what this will mean. This may not affect people on the top of our country, but it can only mean bad news for us merchants and lower, working-class people in Mexico, said Claudia Rivera, a street vendor who owns a food cart in Mexico City. Outside of concerns about the election, violence has been soaring to levels not seen since the start of the drug war a decade ago. And corruption and a loss of faith in the political leadership had already plunged the nation into a state of gloom. Now, the loss for many is external, too. A lot of people see the U.S. as a beacon of freedom, as something to aspire to, said Mr. Pardinas, who works on legislation and economic competitiveness. But what happens when you lose a role model, the role model of a nation? Now all of us who admired the U.S. are having second thoughts. For most Mexicans, the American election has been a grim exercise in self-perception. Mr. Trump, a candidate who called Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, vowing to deport millions and build a wall to keep others out, has stoked long-held insecurities in Mexico over sovereignty and respect from its northern neighbor. And his victory was seen by some as validating the perception that Americans, or at least half of them, see Mexico through a knot of stereotypes. Never mind that Mexicos rich culture and cuisine, its art and film, are having a global moment, Mexicans say. Or that a wall between the two countries these days might actually keep more Mexicans in the United States than out, given the recent research showing more Mexicans are returning home than leaving to seek opportunity in America. BEIJING It took all of five minutes for Wang Lei, a gruff veteran of the Peoples Liberation Army, to start humming and stomping his feet. The curtain had just risen on The Long March, a new opera celebrating the early days of the Chinese Communist Party, and a rifle-toting chorus of performers dressed as soldiers was rushing onstage at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. We come from different places, they sang as they took their places. Some wear straw sandals. Some wear gowns. Some are barefoot. Some are hungry. We differ in status, but we have the same aspiration: to join the Red Army. To change the world! Mr. Wang, 73, seated next to me in the upper balcony, closed his eyes in bliss. These are the songs of our homeland, he told me at intermission. They might be lost now, but they reflect the true feelings of the Chinese people. BEIJING A polar bear named Pizza, whose fate as an air-conditioned exhibit for shoppers in a mall in southern China prompted millions of animal lovers to call for the release of what they called the worlds saddest polar bear, is moving but only temporarily, his owners say. The exhibition space at the Grandview Polar Sea World at the Grandview Mall in the steamy city of Guangzhou is being optimized and upgraded, causing the move, according to a notice on a social media account of the aquarium, where Pizza and hundreds of other arctic animals are housed indoors. Pizza, the bear baby that a million customers have enjoyed, will say a temporary farewell to everyone for a while, to return to where he was born and to his daddy and mommy, the notice read. Chinese animal welfare groups welcomed the news, but said it did not go far enough. Pizza should be permanently rehoused, they said. MUMBAI, India In one of the most audacious experiments in Indias modern history, Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned the two largest bills of 500 rupees, or about $7.50, and 1,000 rupees which account for about 86 percent of the currency in a country where 78 percent of financial transactions are done in cash. Under the plan, people are allowed to exchange the old bills for new ones of 500 and 2,000 rupees, but only at banks or post offices, where their exchanges will be monitored and anyone with a large amount of cash will have to explain its source. The changes, meant to combat corruption and tax avoidance, have thrown the country into chaos. Here are answers to a few basic questions about the changes. Why did the government remove the bills from circulation? The idea was to expose and penalize people holding huge amounts of cash they could not account for, primarily money on which taxes have not been paid. Most of the so-called black money is held in 500- and 1,000-rupee notes. Someone who goes to a bank or post office with more than 250,000 rupees in cash, or about $3,700, has to explain the source of the money to the tax authorities. People who can explain how they earned the money and show that taxes were paid can keep it. But those without a good explanation will have to answer to the tax authorities. Mr. Rafizi, a member of the Peoples Justice Party, has been a leading critic of Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is accused of receiving $1 billion from 1 Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, a government investment fund that Mr. Najib established and oversaw. Mr. Najib has said that he never received any money from the fund or took anything for personal gain. The United States Justice Department says that more than $3 billion is missing from the fund and that at least $731 million of it was deposited into the personal bank account of the prime minister, identified as Malaysian Official 1. The Justice Department filed suit in federal court in California in July to recover more than $1 billion in assets that it said were acquired by Mr. Najibs stepson and close associates in the United States with money stolen from the fund, including high-end real estate and expensive artwork. The prime minister has held on to power by firing critics within his own party, blocking investigations and suppressing dissent. No one in Malaysia has been prosecuted over the missing money. The government conducted an audit of the investment fund, which it then classified as secret under the Official Secrets Act. Mr. Rafizis conviction was based on comments he made at a news conference in March in which he discussed a page of the audit that dealt with the funds failure to make payments. Image Rafizi Ramli, a member of the Peoples Justice Party. Credit... Associated Press Around the time of his sentencing, Mr. Rafizi posted on Twitter: I am not shocked, sad, angry, afraid or anything. No such feelings. Just another day. Been like this. What doesnt kill u makes u stronger. He did not respond to requests for comment, but associates said they expected him to appeal. BEIJING Donald J. Trump has called China a currency manipulator, threatened to impose stiff tariffs on Chinese imports and accused the country of inventing the idea of climate change to hurt American businesses. But in his first telephone conversation with President Xi Jinping of China, Mr. Trump, now the president-elect, appeared to set aside those critiques expressed on the campaign trail, vowing that the two nations would have one of the strongest relationships, according to a statement released by Mr. Trumps transition office, Reuters reported. Mr. Xi, in turn, told Mr. Trump that facts have shown that cooperation is the only correct choice for the United States and China, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. In the phone call, which took place on Monday Beijing time, the two men agreed to maintain close communications and to meet at an early date. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday that she had a reasonable basis to believe that American soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan, including torture. The international prosecutor has been considering whether to begin a full-fledged investigation into potential war crimes in Afghanistan for years. In Mondays announcement, the prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, signaled that a full investigation was likely. Still, the prosecutor did not announce a final decision on an investigation, which would have to be approved by judges, and it is unlikely that the United States will cooperate. The United States is not a party to the court, which was established to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But Afghanistan is a member of the court, so allegations of crimes committed in its territory, no matter the nationality of the perpetrators, are widely considered to be fair game. LONDON Six years after the Swedish authorities opened an investigation into a rape accusation made against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, he was questioned about the matter on Monday. The questions were prepared by prosecutors in Sweden, where an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange was issued in 2010, but were posed by a prosecutor from Ecuador under an agreement the two countries made in August. Ecuador granted Mr. Assange political asylum in 2012, and the interview occurred at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Mr. Assange has lived in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape accusation. WikiLeaks has published damaging and confidential information from the United States and many other governments. Before last weeks presidential election, WikiLeaks distributed hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, while Mr. Assange has excoriated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. No formal charges have been filed against Mr. Assange, a 45-year-old native of Australia. He denies the rape accusation, originally made in 2010, but has refused to go to Sweden to face questioning because he says he fears he would then be extradited to the United States. Swedish officials say those fears are ungrounded. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 14 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: A meeting was held in Ashgabat between Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Turkmen state news agency Dovlet Habarlary. Berdimuhamedov expressed confidence that the meeting will initiate a new phase of Turkmenistan-Palestine cooperation, which has been steadily developing since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1992. Turkmenistan, which implements its foreign policy based on the principles of positive neutrality, is interested in the development of equitable and friendly relations with all world countries, including the Middle East countries and Palestine in particular, said the Turkmen president. Issues concerning cooperation in the economic, cultural and humanitarian spheres, particularly in education and tourism, are on the agenda of the negotiations. The two heads of state exchanged views on the prospects of the Turkmenistan-Palestine cooperation, confirming the commitment of the parties to intensifying the political dialogue, Dovlet Habarlary reported. PARIS Before last week, Greece expected that it might benefit from what was supposed to be a triumphal valedictory lap by President Obama as he lands in Athens on Tuesday to kick off his final world tour. Mr. Obama has been supportive of Greeces efforts to get its finances in order, and of Europes bid to keep Greece stable. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hoped that Mr. Obama, who travels to Berlin on Thursday, might even persuade the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to offer Greece some debt relief by the end of the year. But that possibility has all but evaporated with the victory of Donald J. Trump. Instead, Mr. Obama will arrive in Athens with his legacy threatened and his leverage sorely reduced. His visit has turned into yet another reminder of the ways in which Mr. Trumps ascendancy is changing the calculations of leaders across Europe. Mr. Tsipras is among the most vulnerable of them. The expectation was that Obama would relay a message about how impressed he was with Greeces progress, said Jens Bastian, an economics consultant based in Athens and a former member of the European Commissions task force on Greece. But given that Trump will assume the presidency, all bets are off. WARSAW The bodies of Polands former president and his wife were exhumed Monday evening as part of an investigation into an April 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed the couple after years of speculation, backed by little evidence, that the crash was not an accident. Over the next two months, prosecutors appointed by Polands right-wing governing party plan to examine the remains of 83 of the 96 people who died in the crash, starting with the former president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife, Maria. The couples bodies were interred in a crypt in a cathedral in Krakow, near the tombs of Polands kings and heroes like the military commander Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former presidents twin brother and the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party, was on hand for the ceremony, at the Wawel Cathedral. The party has long insisted that investigations by Polands former government and the Russian authorities failed to unearth the true cause of the crash. Reopening the investigation was one of the first acts of the new government after assuming power a year ago. MOSCOW A Russian fighter jet crashed off the Syrian coast on Monday while trying to land on an aging aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, Russian military officials said. The Russian Defense Ministry blamed a technical failure for the crash of the jet, a MIG-29, according to a ministry statement carried by the Interfax news agency. The pilot, who was the only one in the jet, ejected safely and was picked up by a rescue team, the statement said. The ministrys statement did not specify whether the airplane had crashed on the carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, or into water. In a separate statement, the ministry said that rebels in Aleppo had used chemical weapons in an attack on the Syrian Army, poisoning around 30 of its servicemen. Eleanors efforts to fight racism, white supremacy and Jim Crow in the United States were more successful. Insisting that the country could not effectively champion democracy in the world when it practiced racial discrimination at home, she declared that because black Americans were our largest minority, our attitude toward them will have to be faced first of all. Her efforts to fight lynching and end segregation in the military for men and women were backed up by her support for the N.A.A.C.P., her friendships with black activists and artists including Mary McLeod Bethune, Pauli Murray and Harry Belafonte, and her championing of Marian Andersons concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Eleanors prodigious activity served as her antidote to loneliness, anxiety and the periods of depression she called Griselda moods. Cook weaves in a detailed account of her astonishing schedule; she spoke on the radio, gave lectures and talks and consulted speech specialists to help her lower and steady her voice. She traveled often, to meet people from migrant workers in California to wounded soldiers in Bora Bora. She kept up with art and music, and read The Grapes of Wrath and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Six days a week, from 1935 to 1962, she wrote a syndicated newspaper column called My Day, often composing it after midnight, in bed, in cars, on planes, or dictating to her secretary from the bathtub. By 1939, these columns, which covered her travels, her home life, her views on human rights and her bracing, comforting words on courage in frightening times, reached more than four million readers. In December 1944, Cook suggests, Eleanor was the first American journalist to discuss Auschwitz. But in these tumultuous decades, which gave Eleanor the opportunity to play a major role on the national stage, her private life receded, submerged in the torrent of history. In 1940, Hickok wrote to her about the growing conflict between the real woman and the public image: I . . . fought for years an anguished and losing fight against the development of the person into the personage, she lamented. I still think the personage is an accident, Eleanor replied, and I only like the part of life in which I am a person! Yet there are only a few places in the biography when she is introspective. In a 1943 letter to her old friend Esther Lape, she described the consequences of perpetually playing a role: I find it hard to know sometimes whether I am being honest with myself. So much of life is play acting, it becomes too natural! On her life with Franklin, she concluded in the same letter, there is no fundamental love to draw on, just respect and affection. . . . On my part there is often a great weariness and a sense of futility in life but a lifelong discipline in a sense of obligation and a healthy interest in people keeps me going. I guess that is plenty to go on for ones aging years! Cook shows Eleanor Roosevelts final years as triumphant. After her husbands death in 1945, Truman appointed her to the United States delegation for the first United Nations assembly in London, where she helped write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet the last part of the biography emphasizes the personage rather than the person. No longer part of a loving community of women, Eleanor found her most intimate emotional relationships with younger men the writer Joseph Lash, and her personal physician, David Gurewitsch leading to complex triangular bonds with their wives that deserve deeper and fuller analysis. Who are we? This seems like a good time to ask. How did things get here? How did the country reach this place? You can hear the disbelief in the voice of anyone asking some version of these questions. But disbelief tends to be emotionally counterproductive. You cant do much with it. I, at least, actually can believe that half the country was scared enough to vote for a candidate who more or less promised to keep the other half scared of him. Theyre worried about who we are, too, and insisting on one answer. But really, who are we? Were this: the oppressed and their oppressors, the afraid and the feared, hope and dread, change and deadlock, all fooled forever by delusions of our even being a single we. That delusion is elemental to our nationhood. We the people of the United States so begins the Constitutions preamble. The Declaration of Independence asserts that We hold these truths to be self-evident. We is a big-tent pronoun. It welcomes. It represents. It mobilizes. It includes. But inclusion gets tricky fast. For ages it was more like, We the people eh, some of them. A lot of those people have been merely notional. The Constitution granted partial humanity to slaves, making them three-fifths a person only to advantage Southern lawmakers representational head count. It called women people but entrusted their personhood to men. So that trickiness is elemental, too. We is conditional, contingent, up for debate. For ages, we wasnt more than one gender or race or sexual orientation. We was white, straight and male. The great moral force of the 20th century and, so far, the 21st, was the fight to bring greater self-evidence to even more truths: suffrage, civil rights, marriage equality, religious pluralism, laws acknowledging the existence of the disabled. The euphoria of putting a black man in the White House became who we were as much as the clamoring to put him out. Yes, we could. But expanding the meaning of we is hard; a black president doesnt ease that, and neither would a female one. And right now, white people tired of the ongoing battle for all manners of equality, of civility, appear to have switched sides. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 14 By Demir Azizov Trend: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $120-million loan to improve access to safe, reliable, sustainable and affordable water supply services for over 260,000 inhabitants in the Kibray and Zangiota districts of Uzbekistans Tashkent province, the ADB said in a message. The ADB loan will be allocated for eight years at the rate of 2 percent per year, including a five-year grace period. It is expected that a loan agreement will be signed until the end of the first quarter of 2017. Much of the water supply infrastructure in Tashkent has deteriorated and needs extensive rehabilitation, resulting in unreliable services, leakage losses, and high water pollution risk, said Hao Zhang, ADBs principal urban development specialist with the Central and West Asia Department. The project will significantly reduce time and money spent by households and businesses to access water and brings about improved living standards, especially in rural settlements. The project will revitalize the Kadirya regional water supply system by upgrading existing water supply networks, providing potable water treatment services, rehabilitating water distribution network and improving the financial, operational and system management of the Tashkent Provincial Suvokova for Kibray and Zangiota district branches. Located adjacent to the Uzbek capital, Kibray and Zangiota contribute substantially to the provinces economic growth and strengthen its urbanrural linkages. Both districts have considerable expansion potential in the agro-industrial and textile industries. Zangiota is also identified as a possible location for a future special industrial zone. The ADB office in Tashkent told Trend that the projects total cost is $143 million. Along with the ADB loans, the Uzbek government and local beneficiaries will also allocate $23 million for the projects implementation. The project will be implemented until 2023. Since Uzbekistan joined ADB in 1995, the country has received $5.1 billion in loans and $64.9 million in technical assistance grants. ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth and regional integration. Established in 1966, ADB in December 2016 will mark 50 years of development partnership in the region. It is owned by 67 members 48 from the region. In 2015, ADB assistance totaled $27.2 billion, including co-financing of $10.7 billion. Executive Actions 1 Clean Power Plan Regulations to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. 2 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Protects undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. 3 Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents Intended to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, but an appeals court ruling blocking the plan remains in place after a 4-to-4 tie in the Supreme Court. 4 Waters of the United States Rule intended to protect waterways and wetlands. Legislation 5 Affordable Care Act In an interview Friday, Mr. Trump indicated he might keep parts of President Obamas signature legislative achievement. 6 Dodd-Frank Overhauled regulation of the financial industry in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. 7 Defense sequester Automatic, across-the-board spending restrictions. 8 Alternative minimum tax Aimed at making it harder for the affluent to take advantage of various tax breaks. 9 Estate tax Currently applies to only about 5,300 of the richest families. 10 Gun-free zones At military bases and at schools. International Obligations 11 Paris Climate Change Agreement Commits more than 190 countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. 12 North American Free Trade Agreement Trade deal signed by United States, Canada and Mexico more than 20 years ago. 13 Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade deal among the United States and several Asian countries. 14 Payments to United Nations climate fund Federal Agencies 15 Education Department It is massive, and it can largely be eliminated. 16 Environmental Protection Agency We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. Other 17 Undocumented immigrants with criminal records 18 Federal funding of so-called sanctuary cities Places where local authorities have stopped cooperating with federal immigration agents. 19 Common Core Learning standards for math and English. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Iranian Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi and his Chinese counterpart Li Xiaopeng have called for expansion of cooperation in transportation sphere. The visiting Iranian minister, Abbas Akhoundi, has said that the two countries enjoy proper cooperation in transportation sphere including roads and railways, expressing hope for deepening of the existing ties, IRNA news agency reported. He further called on China to participate in projects for developing Irans ports, railway system and airports through tenders. The minister also touched upon a plan for connecting the two countries through railway and urged for launching scheduled passenger and freight trains between Iran and China. Akhoundi arrived in Beijing this morning and he is expected to meet several senior Chinese officials during the ongoing visit. ALEPPO, Syria At least 11 children were among 23 people killed Sunday in northern Syria as pro-government forces kept up their campaign against opposition areas in the countrys north, while rebels shelled a government-held district in Aleppo city. At least eight more people were killed in a suspected airstrike on a crossing point connecting Kurdish-held areas with rebel areas in northern Aleppo province, the Kurdish security force said. The violence Sunday comes a day after government troops repelled a rebel offensive on western parts of Aleppo city launched in late October. State news agency SANA said the shelling of a western Aleppo district killed four people, including two women and a child. Aleppo has been deeply divided since 2012. The faltering rebel offensive was designed to break the siege on the opposition-held eastern Aleppo. The government siege has left an estimated 275,000 people trapped with no aid allowed in since July, amid a punishing bombing campaign. The rebel offensive started after Russia, a major Syrian government ally, said it would halt airstrikes to allow rebels and supporters to leave eastern Aleppo. The rebels refused to take up the offer and the United Nations failed to negotiate allowing aid into the besieged area, amid wide anticipation of an imminent pro-government offensive. Residents of eastern Aleppo said Sunday that for days they have received text messages urging them to leave in the next 24 hours. It was not possible to immediately verify the authenticity of the messages or who sent them. Government aircraft had previously dropped fliers on the eastern districts also urging residents to leave and make use of the Russian-declared passageways to evacuate the besieged district. Three residents said they received the messages Friday and Sunday throughout the day, denouncing the opposition and threatening residents with an attack. As of Sunday evening, Syrian Civil Defenses Ibrahim al-Haj said government artillery shelling in the al-Salheen neighborhood of besieged eastern Aleppo killed a mother, her four children and her husband traveling in a car. Other shelling killed a child, a woman and three men in two different neighborhoods of the besieged territory, al-Haj said. While airstrikes on eastern Aleppo city have subsided, aerial bombings of rebel-held western parts of Aleppo province continued. The Syrian Civil Defense, which operates in opposition-held areas, said one of its centers was bombed in rural Aleppo and put out of service in airstrikes on the town of Atareb. The strikes also killed three people, including two children. Meanwhile, a suspected airstrike is believed to have struck at a border crossing in Kurdish-held Afrin canton, which links the area to rebel-held parts of Aleppo province, the Kurdish security force, known as the Asayish, said Sunday. The Asayish statement, carried by the Kurdish news agency Hawar, said the bombing occurred early Sunday on a crossing used by as many as 5,000 people moving from western rural Aleppo to its north and east, mostly opposition areas. The Observatory put the death toll from the explosion there at 12. It didnt say whether it was an airstrike or an explosion. In the complex terrain of northern Syria, it was not immediately clear who was behind the bombing. Rival groups jostle for territory in northern Aleppo, including Turkish-backed rebels and rival Kurdish forces, as well as government troops, all seeking to capture areas held by Islamic State militants. In rebel-held northern Idlib province, the opposition Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Aleppo Today media group said airstrikes killed an entire family of a mother and her four children. Near the capital Damascus, in the western Ghouta region, opposition activists said airstrikes in Khan al-Shih hit a mosque around dawn Sunday, killing at least two people, including the mosques cleric. The local Khan al-Shih media center and the Syrian Civil Defense in Rural Damascus reported the airstrikes. The Observatory also reported the strike on the mosque, and the subsequent two deaths. It was not immediately possible to verify if the airstrikes were from Russian or government aircraft. The Khan al-Shih media center showed footage of extensive damage to the mosque. The town of Khan al-Shih has been the scene of intensive fighting and airstrikes for weeks amid a tightening government siege. There have been reports of local dignitaries negotiating with the government to end the bombing campaign in exchange for evacuating the rebels. The state news agency reported Syrian troops have advanced and tightened their siege on the town, which lies about 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Damascus and along the highway that links the capital to the southern region of Quneitra. Other rebel-held suburbs of Damascus were recaptured by the government after a tightening siege and heavy bombings. AP-WF-11-13-16 2227GMT EDITORS NOTE: This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region. BANGKOK (AP) A look at recent developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves: TRUMP ADVISER: U.S. WILL CONTINUE TO KEEP CHINA IN CHECK President-elect Donald Trump still hasnt made his foreign policy objectives clear, but his senior adviser on national security says the U.S. wont abandon its Asian allies to Chinas overreach. James Woolsey, in an opinion piece published in the South China Morning Post on Thursday, said the new administration would need to reverse defense budget cuts and make sure the U.S. was still the leading military force in the world. The U.S. sees itself as the holder of the balance of power in Asia and is likely to remain quite determined to protect its allies against Chinese overreach, said Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton. China should realize that our reflexes in Asia are not driven by territorial ambitions. Over U.S. objections, Beijing has moved to cement its claim to most of the South China Sea, including by building artificial islands and military airstrips atop coral reefs. With Trumps election, many analysts said Trumps isolationist foreign policy will give China more maneuvering room to pursue its territorial claims in the East and South China seas. During the election campaign, Trump in April said that Chinas building of man-made islands in the disputed waters was a sign of Beijings disrespect for America. NEW PHILIPPINE ENVOY TO CHINA SAYS DEAL POSSIBLE The new Philippine ambassador to China says its possible to achieve a settlement with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea. Jose Santiago Chito Santa Romana says his country could learn from Vietnam and the former Soviet Union, which managed to reach a detente with China through good political relations and quiet diplomacy despite quarrels over territory. Vietnam, however, continues to be entangled in the dispute over the Paracel Islands while making progress with China over other border issues. The basic lesson is, if you use hardball tactics with China, expect the same. So when you say, What is ours is ours, they will say the same thing. And if you dont yield, and if you combine it with just megaphone diplomacy and forcing your way, expect that therell be a stalemate, Santa Romana said at a forum in Manila organized by the state-run China Daily. He said the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte is separating the disputes from economic relations with Beijing. Dutertes groundbreaking visit to Beijing resulted in China allowing Filipino fishermen back in the waters around the disputed Scarborough Shoal, which China seized from the Philippines in 2012, a year before Manila launched and won an international arbitration case against Chinas claims. However, Chinas coast guard has remained at the shoal and Filipinos are not allowed to fish inside the lagoon. Santa Romana said that Scarborough was just an informal, friendly understanding, and there is a need to slowly formalize it and establish rules of engagement between the coast guards of the countries. The Chinese, of course, still maintains their effective control because they have a sovereignty claim, he said. But now the Philippine coast guard is trying to have a roving presence so that, eventually, we could say we have not given up our sovereignty claim when we resolve it diplomatically. CHINA SAYS SOUTH CHINA SEA HAS STABILIZED China says tensions in the South China Sea have eased because of friendly cooperation with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said managing differences through negotiations is is back on the right track, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Lu noted that China has border treaties with 12 out of its 14 land neighbors, and that as long as they are sincere and patient, most differences can be handled through consultation and negotiation. BAGHDAD (AP) Suicide bombers targeted two major cities in Iraq on Monday, striking security forces in the Sunni city of Fallujah and Shiite pilgrims in the holy city of Karbala in the countrys south, killing at least six people in each attack. The bombings are an apparent attempt by the Islamic State group to strike back as government troops advance on their stronghold in the northern city of Mosul. The Sunni militant group claimed responsibility for both bombings. In Fallujah, the attack was carried out by twin suicide car bombers in the city center the first such incidents since Iraqi forces in late June declared it fully liberated of Islamic State militants after a monthlong operation aided by U.S.-led airstrikes. Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen Saad Maan said one of the Fallujah bombers killed two policemen and wounded 17 people, including nine civilians. They hit a security checkpoint, he said, adding that traffic had been heavy in the area and around 10 vehicles including an ambulance had been damaged. The second bomber killed four people, including two policemen. IS claimed responsibility for the attack, posting videos online of the bombers before the attack, their faces masked and brandishing assault rifles. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to IS, in January 2014. Since IS was driven out, families have begun returning to the city, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad. Earlier in the day, a suicide bombing targeted the sacred Shiite city of Karbala, killing at least six civilians in an attack also claimed by IS. According to Maan, the ministry spokesman, six suicide bombers tried to sneak into Karbala from its western outskirts but security forces detected and killed five of them. The sixth attacker broke into a house in the citys Ayn al-Tamer neighborhood, where he detonated his suicide vest, killing six people and wounding another six, Maan said. The attack came as hundreds of thousands of faithful Shiites have been walking to Karbala to commemorate the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Muhammads grandson and an iconic Shiite martyr. The city, where Imam Hussein and his brother are buried, is located some 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad. On Sunday, pilgrims are expected to converge on the city for the climax of a 40-day mourning period, known as al-Arbaeen. In an online statement, the Islamic State group said it targeted polytheists in filthy Karbala. It put the number of the suicide bombers at five, saying they clashed for hours with the security forces and set off their explosives consecutively when they ran out ammunition. The militants often exaggerate their claims. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the statement, but it was posted on a militant website commonly used by the extremist group. Like other Sunni extremist groups, IS considers the Shiites heretics and has frequently targeted Shiite civilians and places of worship. We are walking all these long distances, we are not afraid of terrorists, we are not afraid of Daesh, said 56-year-old pilgrim Sattar Hussein, using the Arabic acronym for IS. We are not afraid of anyone who defames Islam. And especially those who are targeting the al-Arbaeen. Wearing a black traditional Arab dress, Hussein was among hundreds of pilgrims leaving Baghdad on foot to head to Karbala under tight security measures. Some of the marchers were carrying religious flags, including some with a portrait depicting Imam Hussein, as security forces set up check points to search them. In southern Iraqs Shiite heartland, Karbala is far from Mosul, where a massive Iraqi military operation launched last month and backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and paramilitary militias is underway to free the city, Iraqs second-largest, from IS. A U.N. spokesman said Monday that more than 54,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the Iraqi military operation to retake Mosul from IS militants. Farhan Haq said that number represented an increase of 6,600 people since four days ago. About three quarters of the displaced people are being shelter in camps set up by the U.N. and its humanitarian partners and one quarter are been housed in host communities, Haq said. He added that the World Food Program has provided food assistance to more than 100,000 people fleeing the conflict, including a distribution to 25,000 people on Sunday in Gogjali, the first neighborhood retaken inside Mosul. On Sunday, a wave of attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 23 people and wounded 70 others. Many of the assaults targeted Shiite pilgrims walking toward Karbala. Associated Press writers Michael Astor at the United Nations and contributed to this report. Tehran, Iran, November 14 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: Iran is in talks with two German companies to open lines of credit with a total value of 12 billion euros, according to National Petrochemical Companys Chief Investment Officer Hossein Alimorad. In the meantime, he said, the Central Bank of Iran and the Ministry of Economy are in talks with China, South Korea, and two or three European countries to open LCs, SHANA news agency reported November 14. He further said Iran is in talks with a Japanese company to open an LC worth 640 million euros. Shortly after the implementation day of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in January, Irans first international LC was opened by a Japanese company. Worth 320 million euros, the LC went to the Persian Gulf Holding. Facing tapering oil revenues after the fall of prices in the global market, Iran is making attempts to attract foreign investment to its developmental plans, in the energy sector in particular. HUGHSON A man suspected of shooting a sheriffs deputy twice in the head in Central California was arrested hours after the killing on Sunday when he tried to steal a womans purse, authorities said. Stanislaus County Sheriffs Deputy Dennis Wallace was shot at point-blank range as he checked on a report of a suspicious van parked near a fishing access spot outside the city of Hughson, about 10 miles southeast of Modesto, county Sheriff Adam Christianson said. We believe that Deputy Wallace was killed outside of the car, and we know for a fact that the gun used in this crime was in direct contact with his head when the trigger was pulled twice, Christianson told a news conference. This was an execution. Wallace was alone when he came across the van Sunday morning. A dispatcher told him the vehicle was stolen, so he asked for backup. Another deputy found Wallace a short time later. He was taken to a hospital, where he died, the department said. The suspect, identified as David Machado, 36, fled in the van and carjacked a white Kia sedan in the nearby city of Keyes, police said. While on the run, Machado committed an armed robbery in the town of Lindsay, about 150 miles south of where the shooting occurred, Christianson said. Then, shortly after noon, he tried to steal a womans purse at a convenience store. The woman fought Machado and called police. He ran from the scene, but he was caught by officers a short time later. The Lindsay police officers didnt recognize Machado as the suspect in Wallaces killing until after he was taken into custody, when they identified him through tattoos and a photograph issued by Stanislaus County. Christianson said Machado was wanted for a felony warrant at the time of the traffic stop. He did not elaborate on the alleged crime. He said authorities have recovered the van and the Kia sedan as evidence in the investigation. Wallace, 53, is survived by his wife, Mercedes, and children. He was a 20-year department veteran who lived and worked in Hughson, where he was involved in youth soccer, refereed football games and taught schoolchildren how to avoid drugs and violence in the D.A.R.E. program. He wasnt just assigned to Hughson; hes a fixture in Hughson. He was so well-loved, county Supervisor Vito Chiesa told the Modesto Bee. Wallace is the fifth law enforcement officer in California to die in the line of duty in the last five weeks. The slaying comes after a deputy in Modoc County was killed while responding to a call about a disturbance, two Palm Springs police officers were shot to death during a domestic disturbance call, and a Los Angeles County sheriffs sergeant was shot and killed in the high-desert town of Lancaster while answering a burglary call. MARRAKECH, Morocco Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years, a new study showed Monday, raising hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change. However, the authors of the study cautioned its unclear whether the slowdown in CO2 emissions, mainly caused by declining coal use in China, is a permanent trend or a temporary blip. It is far too early to proclaim we have reached a peak, said co-author Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 percent this year. That would mean emissions have leveled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. This could be the turning point we have hoped for, said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen. China, which accounts for almost 30 percent of global carbon emissions, pledged to peak its emissions around 2030 as part of the global climate pact adopted in Paris last year. Many analysts say Chinas peak is likely to come much earlier and may already have occurred. BRUSSELS Perplexed foreign ministers from the European Union nations met Sunday to try to assess the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, underlining the uncertainty for Americas closest allies over issues as wide-ranging as Iran, Russia and climate change. The emergency dinner gathering was a measure of how suddenly the U.S.-Europe relationship has been cast into disarray by the election of a man most European leaders openly campaigned against. The EU is deeply dependent on U.S. cooperation for a host of European priorities, many of which Trump called into question on the campaign trail. Even the most fundamental issue appears to be in flux: American guarantees for Europes security that have underpinned Western relations since World War II. Diplomats from some of Europes most powerful countries say they have little basis to judge how Trump will govern or what his priorities will be upon taking over the White House. Unlike most conventional campaigns, which maintain basic outreach to the embassies of U.S. partners ahead of the election, Trumps advisers spurned EU diplomats efforts to meet, leaving foreign leaders grasping for information. The European Union nations will be partners with the United States based on our own values, principles, interests, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said after the dinner. But she said that she was preparing the 28-nation bloc to stand more on its own on defense and security matters. She said she had pushed for the need to strengthen European unity around some key issues that will be even more crucial in the months to come. Before the election, EU foreign and defense ministers had already been scheduled to meet Monday and Tuesday, but the Sunday evening dinner was added after the unexpected result. Not all EU foreign ministers attended; those of Britain and France questioned whether a U.S. election was truly a crisis. Hungarys anti-immigration government has welcomed the Trump victory. Trump has called into question the need for NATO, the Western military alliance that has recently beefed up its presence in Eastern European member countries that are nervous about Russia. European and NATO leaders have pointed out that the single time NATO nations came to the defense of a member nation under attack was on behalf of the United States following Sept. 11, 2001. They say that if the White House goes in a different direction, American interests would also suffer. Rather than deepening our differences, we need to nurture what unites us, wrote NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Britains Sunday Observer newspaper. Going it alone is not an option, either for Europe or for the United States. Californias warm weather, sunny beaches and world-class schools have lured people to the Golden State for decades, but rising home prices are turning that equation around. Data analysis firm CoreLogic says that for every two homebuyers who moved to California from 2000 through 2015, five others sold their homes, packed up and moved out. Arizona and Texas were the top destinations for people moving out of California, CoreLogic reported. Only New Jersey had a higher ratio of fleeing homeowners during that period. California had the largest number of out-migrants in 2015, CoreLogic Senior Economist Kristine Yao said in a blog post published Thursday. The trend of out-migration was also noted in a separte trio of reports released earlier this year by Beacon Economics. Beacon noted that 625,000 more U.S. residents left California between 2007 and 2014 than moved into the state. The vast majority ended up in Texas, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Washington. The search for more affordable housing is sending low- and middle-income workers out of the state, while higher-wage workers continue to move in, which argues against the theory that high taxes are driving people away. California has an employment boom with a housing problem, said Beacon founding partner Christopher Thornberg. The state continues to offer great employment opportunities for all kinds of workers, but housing affordability and supply represent a significant problem. Home prices and rents have been rising steadily for more than four years. CoreLogic figures show Orange Countys median home price was up 42 percent in the four years ending in September. Prices were up 55 percent in Los Angeles County, 57 percent in Riverside County and 75 percent in San Bernardino County. Although home sellers leaving California last year paid, on average, 36 percent less for their new homes out of state, they tended to end up in better neighborhoods, CoreLogic reported. Their purchase prices ranked in the 77th percentile for their new metro areas, while their sale prices ranked in the 62 percentile back home. Of the homeowners moving out of state, more of them sold in high appreciation, high cost areas and bought in lower appreciation, more affordable areas, Yao wrote. California home prices have risen in part because of a lack of inventory. From 2005 to 2015, permits were filed for only 21.5 housing units per every 100 new residents in the state. That put the Golden State second to last behind Alaska, where only 16.2 housing permits were filed for every 100 new residents. On the flip side, Michigan saw 166 permits filed for every 100 new residents. Register staff writer Jeff Collins contributed to this report. WINNIPEG, Manitoba Adam Lowry enjoyed watching Patrik Laine and Mark Scheifele team up to lift the Winnipeg Jets to another victory Sunday. The Jets scoring duo each found the back of the net in a 3-2 shootout victory over the Kings, with Scheifele netting the decisive goal against Peter Budaj. Dwight King scored against Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck in the shootout. Patriks goal really displays the puck skills he has, and then Scheifs (goal) with his quick release there, said Lowry, who had a goal and an assist in regulation. Those are two huge goals and theyre always fun to watch. Laine, the rookie who was leading the NHL in goals with 11 heading into the game, faked a shot on Budaj and then beat him through the pads. Scheifele, who was leading the NHL in points with 20, slowed down in front of the goalie and then sent a wrist shot by him on his blocker side. The Jets are 3-0-1 in their last four games and 8-7-2 overall. The Kings have lost three straight to drop to 7-8-1. Both teams are coming off tough travel (and) back-to-back games, said Kings coach Darryl Sutter, whose club was playing its fourth game of a five-game trip. If you look at the end of it, we didnt give up a 5-on-5 goal. You usually win those games. Kings forward Kyle Clifford was called for a boarding major in the first period for a hit that sent Jets forward Kyle Connor into the boards head-first. Lowry and Marko Dano took advantage with power-play goals. Connor left for the dressing room, but returned for the second period. Sutter sarcastically said Clifford deserved the penalty-box time. I totally agreed with it, it was a great call, Sutter said. I thought theyd give like a 10-minute power play. In todays two-referee system, youre just hoping for one really good one all of the time. Tanner Pearson scored in the first period for the Kings, and defenseman Tom Gilbert tied it midway through the third. Kings forward Jordan Nolan took out a defender in the corner and skated alone around the back of the net before sending a pass to Gilbert out front. The Kings took a power play into overtime after Scheifele was called for tripping with 1:28 left. The Kings also finished overtime with the man advantage when Laine was called for tripping with 37 seconds left. Hellebuyck and Budaj each made 27 saves. The Kings were without injured captain Anze Kopitar and goalie Jeff Zatkoff. The Kings, who were 0 for 5 on the power play, end their five-game trip in Colorado on Tuesday night. VACHON TO ENTER HOCKEY HALL Former Kings goalie Rogie Vachon, 71, will be enshrined Monday in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Vachon won 171 games in seven seasons with the Kings, part of a 16-year career that featured 355 victories in 795 games with the Kings, Montreal Canadiens, Detroit Red Wings and Boston Bruins. He won three Stanley Cup championships with the Canadiens. Last mid-October, I flew into Montreal, the fourth-largest city of French speakers in the world, knowing very little of what to expect, except that it would be cold 40-degrees-during-the-day cold. The first thing I noticed taking public transportation to a hotel downtown wasnt any buildings resembling those in Paris, but that the street names were unexpectedly challenging to navigate. Most streets started with Rue, French for street, followed by words that are not intuitive or immediately pronounceable to a native English speaker. Asking locals not the least stuck up, as Parisians are by reputation didnt help much, as the street names were just as confusing spoken quickly in French as they were on paper. The French street names added to that feeling of a foreign country, though, and the fun of exploring on foot. Bundled up in fleece and goose-down jackets, my friends and I made it out of the heated hotel lobby only for a block before running back for umbrellas. Soon, the paved streets turned into cobblestone as we entered Old Montreal, the most antiquated part of the city with buildings dating to the 17th century and the area did feel like a European town. We walked into a quaint cafe with a selection of fine meat and cheese panini sandwiches, deeply fragrant coffee and delicate pastries. The portions were small but rich in flavor, and house-made. Then we made our way to perhaps the biggest tourist attraction in Montreal, the Notre-Dame Basilica that resembles the one in Paris. We took as many pictures of the outside of the gray, Gothic revival-style church as we did of its grand interior. The sanctuary is a polychrome of blues, gold, reds, purples and silver, with hundreds of intricate wood carvings and stained-glass windows. After spending an hour admiring the churchs beauty, we wandered through Rue Saint-Paul to Hotel de Ville, the Old Montreal City Hall. We reached it just in time the drizzle turned into heavy rain. Much of the building was closed for the weekend, but we could still marvel at the abundance of marble and bronze. Within half an hour, it began to snow lightly, but in no time at all, the sun was shining and we reached the historic Old Port of Montreal, which stretches along the St. Lawrence River and was used by French fur traders in the early 1600s. No longer Montreals center for commerce, the Old Port has been redeveloped with riverfront attractions, including the Montreal Clock Tower, the Montreal Science Museum and an urban beach. Across a strip of river, a row of trees had turned a yellow- and orange-red unlike any colors found in Southern California. We spent some time breathing in the natural beauty. The Metro train dropped us off near our hotel, where we stopped to warm up and rest up a bit for the night. Montreal nightlife threw us off a bit too. We didnt know where to go, so we decided to try bar-hopping on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, a trendy commercial corridor rich in cultural heritage reflected in the distinct buildings. As we waited in a line outside one establishment, we wondered if we had come on high school seniors or college night, as the crowd looked younger than usual, and we were carded at the door. Inside felt like a cross between a casual winter formal night and a university students party. We didnt stay long. The next place we hopped to looked like it had a similar crowd, so we called it a night. It wasnt until we Googled Montreal drinking age that we found out it was set at age 18 in 1872. In the rest of Canada, its age 19. That is great for locals; an unpleasant surprise, should I say, for some American visitors. There was plenty left to explore during the day. Chinatown in Montreal was a short walk from our hotel. It was easy to spot, with a Chinese archway and guardian lions at the foot. The small neighborhood had affordable dim sum items just like in the states. A short bus ride brought us to the Mile End neighborhood, part of which began as a bourgeois suburb until it became Montreals principal Jewish area through the 1950s. It was the hometown hangout of Mordecai Richler and William Shatner, among others. Nowadays, it draws parallels with Brooklyn for its architecture red brick buildings and bagels. From a block away, we could see a line out the door of the original Fairmount Bagel on Avenue Fairmount West. The bagels were definitely comparable to those in Brooklyn or better, they would say. Samples of the famous sesame-seed bagel only made us crave more. We strolled through the storefront-lined streets, including Arcade Fire, which has been ranked as one of the most hip neighborhoods in the world. I could see why its home to artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians. Even the fire station at Boulevard Saint-Laurent and Avenue Laurier was nonconformist. Its housed in a castle-like structure with bright green domes and roofs. Back downtown, we strolled along Rue Sainte-Catherine, the main commercial artery, with big-box stores and eateries. It runs parallel to the largest sections of Montreals Underground City, a series of interconnected shopping centers, restaurants and office towers sheltered from the cold. On recommendations, we stopped to eat at one of the Dunns Famous Restaurant locations, known for smoked meats as well as poutine topped with pastrami. The divey atmosphere and comfort food hit the spot. My friends decided to head back to the hotel by the late afternoon. But there was still much I wanted to see, so I headed to Mont Royal because locals told me it wasnt too long a hike and I could make it by dusk. The mountain was more like a large hill, with walking paths and hiking trails that took me through trees changing colors, a display of flowers, serene beds of water and finally to a lookout with a spectacular, panoramic view of the entire city. It wasnt until the temperature dropped even more and the sunlight faded from the skyscrapers, their lights illuminating the night, that I really starting making sense of Montreal. Its like having Paris, Brooklyn, a charming waterfront and a conquerable mountain all within walking distance. Its a place where you can get some of the best qualities of Europe and America, not too far from home. Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@scng.com or on Twitter: @JessicaGKwong PARIS No bells tolled. No fists were raised. No sirens blared. Instead, a penetrating silence enveloped Paris on Sunday morning as thousands of people across the city massed under a leaden sky for the anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Frances postwar history, a year to the day after they shook the nation. In somber ceremonies at the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall and cafes where Islamic State militants unleashed synchronized assaults, massacring 130 and leaving hundreds wounded, President Francois Hollande stood amid heavy security before survivors, victims families, medics and throngs of the grieving to unveil marble plaques memorializing those whose lives ended abruptly last Nov. 13. Hollande, too, remained silent, arriving at each site without making a speech and quietly lifting the blue, white and red French flag, the Tricolore, from the grim tableaus to reveal the names of the dead, which were then read off by an announcer one by one. This is a coming together for remembering but also to forgive, said Mark Colclough, a psychotherapist based in Copenhagen who was near the cafe La Bonne Biere when the terrorists stormed its terrace and machine-gunned five people before continuing their rampage across the city. The ceremonies unfolded a day after the Bataclan concert hall reopened to the public for the first time since the bloody killings, when three terrorists entered with assault rifles and killed 89 concertgoers at close range. The death toll reached 90 after one of the wounded died. Headlining the halls reopening was the British musician Sting, who said the concert and the concertgoers had two jobs: to remember those who lost their lives in the attack a year ago and to celebrate the life, music, which this historic concert hall represents. He ended by saying: We will never forget them. For others, however, no measure of reconciliation seemed possible. Patrick Jardin, whose daughter, Nathalie, was killed at the Bataclan while attending the concert by Eagles of Death Metal, said the anger would never leave him. We cannot respond to Kalashnikovs with candles, Jardin said in an interview with Frances Bleu Nord radio. I was told that with time, the pain would fade. But it gets worse every day. WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump appeared to soften some of his hardest-line campaign positions on immigration on Sunday, but he also restated his pledge to roll back abortion rights and used Twitter to lash out at his critics, leaving open the possibility that he would continue using social media in the Oval Office and radically change the way presidents speak to Americans. In his first prime-time television interview since his upset victory Tuesday, Trump repeated his promise to name a Supreme Court justice who opposed abortion rights and would help overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized them, returning the issue to the states. Asked where that would leave women seeking abortions, Trump said on the CBS program 60 Minutes, Well, theyll perhaps have to go theyll have to go to another state. On immigration, he said the wall that he has been promising to build on the nations southern border might end up being a fence in places. But he said his priority was to deport 2 million to 3 million immigrants he characterized as dangerous or as having criminal records, a change from his original position that he would deport all of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. President Barack Obama has deported more than 2 million unauthorized immigrants during his time in office. Trump said that unauthorized immigrants who are not criminals are terrific people, and that he would decide how to handle them after the border is secure. The House speaker, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, echoed the president-elect, saying on Sunday that there would be no deportation force, something Trump had promised to create early in his campaign. Thats not what were focused on, Ryan said on CNNs State of the Union. Trump also said he considered the Supreme Court decision last year that validated same-sex marriages as settled, and that he was fine with that. He endorsed popular aspects of President Barack Obamas health insurance law, including a provision that requires coverage of people with pre-existing medical conditions and one that allows young people to remain on their parents plans until the age of 26. But even as he appeared to inch toward the political center, Trump used a series of postings on Twitter to argue that The New York Times coverage of him has been BAD and very poor and highly inaccurate. He falsely stated that The Times had issued an apology to readers, an apparent reference to a letter to readers from The Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its executive editor, Dean Baquet. The letter noted the unpredictable nature of the election and said The Times aimed to rededicate itself to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. In the letter, The Times posed a series of what it called inevitable questions, including, Did Donald Trumps sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? Trump also claimed that the newspaper had been losing thousands of subscribers over its campaign coverage. In a Twitter message in reply to Trump, The New York Times Co. said it had seen a surge in new subscriptions since the election four times the pre-election rate. His posts on Twitter were a striking public display from a man who, after winning the election, had worked to project an air of seriousness and self-discipline, first in a victory speech early Wednesday and then in an Oval Office meeting the next day with Obama, whom he called a good man for whom he had great respect. But by Thursday evening, Trump was using Twitter to complain about demonstrations against his victory, saying they were being mounted by professional protesters, incited by the media, and branding them as very unfair! The social media sniping unparalleled in the history of presidential communication suggested Trump plans to bring his confrontational style of speaking to Americans to the White House, working to undercut news outlets that do not comport with his views, silence his critics and elevate his own standing. On Sunday, he selected Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a site known for its nationalist, racially charged and conspiracy-laden coverage, to be his chief strategist and senior counselor. It was only one indication of the extraordinary nature of the president-elects tactics and those of his inner circle. In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump suggested he would not hold to the long-standing post-Watergate tradition of presidents refraining from interfering in FBI criminal matters, hinting that he would quiz the director, James B. Comey, about his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server before deciding whether to dismiss him. Im not sure, Trump said when asked if he would seek Comeys resignation. I would have to see he may have had very good reasons for doing what he did. In an interview on Friday with The Wall Street Journal, Trump did not rule out prosecuting Clinton. On Sunday, his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, warned that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the minority leader, could face legal action for having said that Trumps election had emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America. Asked on 60 Minutes about acts of violence that have been committed in his name, Trump said: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, Stop it. Trump has said he is proud of how he has used social media to create his own version of events and communicate it to his followers. He suggested in the 60 Minutes interview that he is reluctant to surrender that platform when he takes the oath of office in January. Im not saying I love it, but it does get the word out, Trump said of Twitter during the interview, adding that his millions of followers on various social media sites had given him such power that it helped him win the election. When you give me a bad story, or when you give me an inaccurate story, Trump added, I have a method of fighting back. He said, however, that he would be very restrained in his Twitter posts should he continue to make them as president. Trump is a highly public scorekeeper of his own accolades and accomplishments, and his elevation to the highest office in the land has not changed his instinct to crow about the smallest details. During the interview, Trump boasted that since his election, he had built up his social media following by tens of thousands of people. Im picking up now I think I picked up yesterday 100,000 people, Trump said. The interview, which also featured Trumps wife, Melania, and adult children, showed a side of the president-elect that he did not display during the campaign a man awed and somewhat intimidated by the significance of the office to which he had just laid claim. Ive done a lot of big things, Ive never done anything like this, Trump said. It is it is so big, it is so its so enormous, its so amazing. Trump said he had been inaccurately portrayed as a little bit of a wild man during the campaign, and he promised that he would be able to tamp down some of his more heated speech as president. But he suggested that he would still use such tactics to galvanize his supporters, just as he did during his bid for the White House. Sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated, he said. I dont want to be just a little nice monotone character. SANTA ANA Chants and shouts echoed through downtown Santa Ana on Sunday night as about 350 people stood united against President-elect Donald Trump. No shots were fired, no punches thrown Sunday as the protest started and ended peacefully, under the watch of the Santa Ana Police Department, whose presence extended to cars and mounted police escorting protesters. Sundays protest started at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana, then marched through the streets near the Civic Center and down Fourth Street as hundreds chanted and waved signs expressing disapproval of Trump. Loreta Sierra, 20, of Santa Ana was one of the protests organizers. Sierra said that change is easier to enact when you can join hands with others who feel the same as you do and that the dehumanizing rhetoric of the election has made standing together all the more important. I personally think that when its just one person, some people might feel I have even felt Where do we go from here? Im just one person, I cant do anything, Sierra said. But when you see lots of people being determined and having the same goals in mind, its a lot easier to feel empowered. Though the crowd was adamantly against Trump, with signs reading You cant combover bigotry, Dump Trump now and No rapists in the White House, protest leader Josh Brennecke, 25, of Tustin said the aim isnt to oust Trump, but to send a message that bigotry wont be tolerated. Theres a lot of protests saying to impeach Trump. Hes president; thats a fact. What were saying is that if he goes after LGBTQ, if he goes after black or Muslim lives, trans or female lives, were going to make a stand, Bennecke said. We do not tolerate that. Its not about impeaching him. The system is flawed, and what were doing is voicing our opinions and saying, No, we dont want this. Were not saying impeach Trump, were saying we dont agree with his supporters and ideas he has supported. Brennecke led the protest for hours as people stepped forward to speak. Members of various races and the LGBTQ community made their voices heard, warning Trump and his supporters that love trumps hate. As the protest wound to a close, there was chatter among those participating about how smoothly it went. Protester Chris Johnson, 29 of Santa Ana said peaceful protests like Sundays are good for keeping people engaged. Theres a system of complacency in our nation. We like to get riled up every four years and vote for one major political choice, and then fade back into obscurity and all the issues fade away. Its important that we keep coming out, Johnson said. From what I see, the world is broken right now, and things like this help bring it together. Contact the writer: jwinslow@scng.com SANTA ANA After the Nov. 8 election, in which a candidate who moved into a new ward so that he could run for Santa Ana City Council in that ward and then won the seat, Councilman Sal Tinajero said he plans to propose that the city move from at-large to by-district voting. Tinajero said that during todays council meeting, he will direct City Manager David Cavazos to bring back a report looking into elections in which only residents within a ward can vote for candidates for that ward. Under Santa Anas at-large voting system, residents across the city vote for candidates in all six wards, though candidates must live in a ward to be able to run for a seat in that ward. Tinajero said several residents approached him after the election, feeling disenfranchised that Jose Solorio who moved from Ward 1 to Ward 3, which had no incumbent in the race earned the seat on the council. They said, Sal, it is unfortunate and unfair that all youre asking of council members is to live in that ward, Tinajero said. They told him, Though he is credible, he is not from our neighborhood and doesnt understand what our neighborhood needs are. Solorio, who lived in Ward 1 with his family for years, said shortly after announcing his candidacy in July that he has lived in Santa Ana for 20 years and that I actually lived in Ward 3 earlier, so this is like officially moving back to Ward 3. Solorio had the strongest name recognition in the Ward 3 race among six other candidates because he previously served on the City Council and is a former Assemblyman. He has been fined $3,500 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for using campaign funds to pay some rent for the apartment he leased in Ward 3. He filed to reimburse his campaign for five days after another Ward 3 candidate filed a complaint with the watchdog agency. Tinajero said by-district or by-ward elections in Santa Anas case would ensure candidates are selected by neighbors who have known them for some time. Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @JessicaGKwong Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: A recent report by Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture has suggested that Iran exported inexpensive commodities and imported expensive goods over the first seven months of the current Iranian year (started March 20), an indication of the countrys low capability in producing value-added products. The report says that crude and oil products form a large part of the exported commodities. The governments earlier issued statistics said the volume of exports of non-oil products in the mentioned period increased by 4.3 percent year-on-year. However, the report by Tehran Chamber of Commerce has revealed that the volume of non-oil exports has dropped by 1.3 percent. The reason behind the difference in statistics provided by the government and Tehran Chamber of Commerce is the governments decision to consider oil based commodities, such as gas condensates as non-oil products. Iran exported $63 billion worth of products in 2015. According to Tehran Chamber of Commerce, oil and oil products formed 43 percent of the countrys exports in 2015. In the meantime, Iran exported $5.4 billion worth of food products, $2.5 billion worth of iron and steel products, $114 million worth of medicines and $872 million worth of textiles and garment. Ejiao, or donkey skin gelatin, is considered one of the three treasures of traditional Chinese medicine. It is used to treat a wide range of ailments from simple colds to insomnia and impotence, and demand in the Chinese market is soaring like never before. Millions of donkeys are slaughtered all around the world and their hides transported to China to be melted into the miracle gelatin that many believe will keep them looking youthful and even prolong their life. Donge county, in northern China, is the epicenter of ejiao production. Here, over 100 factories melt thousands of donkey hides into gelatin, every week, and after running out of domestic stock, they are now relying on imports from developing countries to sustain the huge demand. Chinas donkey population has dwindled from 11 million during the 1990s to just 6 million today, due to both industrialization and massive slaughtering for ejiao. With local stock of donkeys going dry at an alarming rate, some factories have opened their own farms to breed and kill up to 10,000 donkeys a year, but with some of them processing over 1 million donkey hides in the same period, its hardly a sustainable plan. Which is why many factories have turned their attention to the foreign market. Various countries in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East are supplying millions of donkey skins for the Chinese ejiao market. With the price for donkeys having skyrocketed from around $65 a decade ago to $315 today, some livestock breeders are switching to donkeys exclusively, because the trade is so profitable. But some governments have already banned China from buying their donkeys because they realized that it would eventually decimate the animal population. In September, Nigeria announced a ban on the export of donkeys in September, after the trade increased three times in one year, mainly to Asian markets. If the export continues the animals will be decimated, Atte Issa, a Nigerian government official told the BBC. Photo: Deadkid dk/Wikimedia Commons Burkina Faso also stopped donkey exports after 45,000 of its donkeys were slaughtered in six months from a total population of 1.4 million. Mike Baker, chief executive of the Devon-based Donkey Sanctuary, in England, claims that despite the ban, 65,000 donkeys are still slaughtered illegally in the African country. Other countries, like Kenya and South Africa are scaling up their donkey breeding facilities to meet Chinese demand, and Asian factories are already negotiating to breed and kill donkeys in Australia. And theres also a growing black market providing a steady supply of donkey hides to Chinese ejiao factories. But what is it about donkey gelatin that has some Chinese spending over $250 a month for it? The history of this famous traditional Chinese medicine goes back roughly 2,000 years. It used to be offered exclusively to Imperial Chinas royal families, to improve their health, and was later famously used by Chairman Mao and the Communist elite. Today, the countrys millionaires and even members of the burgeoning middle-class are hungry for this mythical cure that once only available to the pinnacle of Chinese society. The Daily Mail attributes the insane popularity of ejiao to a potent mix of snobbery, superstition and state propaganda. Photo: Aliexpress Even though there is absolutely no medical evidence to support the health-boosting effectiveness of ejiao, millions of Chinese are convinced it is a miracle cure. When a man takes ejiao, he will be strong and virile and have a long life. When a woman takes ejiao, she will keep her youth and become as beautiful as a princess, one ejiao seller told Daily Mail reporters. Others think ejiao boosts stamina. If you sell ejiao to farmers in the countryside, they can work all day without getting tired, a donkey gelatin factory official said. We give two boxes a month to each of our workers and it makes them work faster all day long. Photo: Alibaba Zhang Tengzhi, the head of a ejiao factory in Donge, claims the gelatin also prevents illnesses. If you take one of these every day, you will never get a cold, he said about ejiao-infused cereal bars that his company produces. We give it to our workers every day and they are always full of energy and never get ill. This unfounded belief in the wondrous properties of ejiao is having disastrous effects on the donkey population worldwide. There are so few donkeys left in China that breeders in the eastern province of Shandong are using implanted identification chips to protect their animals. But thats not an option in poorer countries, especially in Africa, where small farmers often report their animals stolen only to find them skinned, miles away in the middle of the wilderness. It is a massive business. The slaughter of donkeys is having the same effect on their population in rural African communities as the poaching of rhino horn on rhinos, said Nadia Saunderson, outreach officer for the Highveld Horse Care Unit near Johannesburg. Ironically, even ejiao producers are concerned about the dwindling donkey population. The boss of an ejiao factory in Donge, who boasts of having sold $175 million worth of donkey gelatin last year told the Daily Mail that our only concern is that one day soon there wont be any more donkeys left to kill. It might sound like an exaggeration, but if the trend continues, it might turn into a dire reality sooner than we can imagine. Just to put into perspective how in-demand ejiao is these days in China, due to the sort supply, some factories have begun producing it using the skins from mules, horses, pigs and oxen. In some extreme cases, some counterfeiters have even boiled leather shoes to obtain products similar to genuine donkey gelatin. Sources: Daily Mail, BBC, CNN A former math teacher from Camden Town, England, claims betting shops wont take his bets anymore after he devised a system that guarantees he wins every time without any risk of loss. Richard Saul, who calls himself the wizard of odds, claims that he has bet tens of thousands of pounds on horse races over the last three years, but in the last few weeks, all but one bookmakers in Camden Town have stopped taking his bets. They should take the bet, but they dont because I keep winning. I dont think your average punter would be able to work out how to do it. In Camden Town, only Jennings will take my bet now and they will only let me do it once, thats all, Saul complains. [Elsewhere] the staff go on the phone, then after two minutes they come back and say, we cant take this bet. Ive gone on accounts online, but they wont take it there either. The math expert believes that his recent ban by bookmakers has to do with his guaranteed-win system. He came up with it when betting shops started introducing higher payouts for each-way horse racing bets. Usually, an each-way bet means that the fourth-placed horse pays a quarter of the horses odds of winning, but some high street bookies expanded the offer to include a fifth-place horse, in order to attract punters. Thats when Saul figured out that by betting on every horse with different stakes, he could guarantee himself a win. Photo: Slooby/Wikimedia Commons It takes me about 20 minutes to set up the bet, and you have to concentrate because the odds are changing. You cannot lose but if the favourite wins you wont win very much. The most I won was 600 from a 4,000 stake, he told the Camden New Journal. Paddy Power, one of the biggest bookmakers in the UK, has admitted to banning Richard Saul from their betting shops. Mathematically we know we might lose money with this special, but that should be spread out among all of our punters who are taking a punt and happen to back a horse that finishes in the money, not just to professional punters who box off every possibility, the company said in a statement. Fair play to him for putting in the time and effort to play the system but hes too good for us. Were running scared. It is understood that betting shops around Camden Town are aware of Saul and his system, and due to his impressively long win streak, theyve decided to ban him. The New Journal reports that this policy of completely banning or limiting stake sizes for punters who win too much is well known among regular gamblers, and considered controversial in the betting industry. Thats because bookmakers have no problem accepting bets from people who do not win too often. Jack O'Dwyer Ferocious, unfair media attacks on Donald Trump coupled with wrongful estimates of Hillary Clintons appeal to voters undermined her quest to be the first woman president. Many women thought there was no need to vote! Obama won 55% of womens votes in 2012 while Clinton won 54% in 2016 even though the stakes in 2016 were incredibly high--electing the first woman president. Lulling women into a false sense of security was The New York Times, which as late as Tuesday, Nov. 8, before the voting began, said there was an 84% chance that Clinton would win. Other pollsters said the same. This was after FBI director James Comey suddenly revived charges that Clinton had compromised national security by sloppy handling of government emails. The doubts raised by Comey were groundless, baseless, proven to be [and] stopped our momentum, said Clinton. NYT demonized Trump from start to finish, wrote New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin Nov. 12, perhaps inspiring a backlash. NYT then made an extraordinary appeal to readers to stand by the paper, said Goodwin. Sulzberger Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.s letter, said Goodwin, was part apology and part defense of its campaign coverage accompanied by a rededication to the fundamental mission of Times journalismto report America and the world honestly. The half-baked apology, noting other media were also duped, was as follows: After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Trumps sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? NYT suddenly hides behind other news outlets. Oh, we were all duped. Its not NYTs fault. Virtually every so-called news article (in NYT) reflected a clear bias against Trump in favor of Clinton, wrote Goodwin. Stories, photos, headlines placement in the paperall the tools were used to pick a president and the facts be damned. NYT Should Go Into Editorial Receivership The family-dominated NYT, now in the fifth generation of Sulzbergers, is beginning to recall the Hapsburgs, whose inbreeding resulted in physical and mental abnormalities. The front page NYT Oct. 19 story notes that one of new deputy editor A.G. Sulzbergers problems is that a downsizing of the newsroom looms early next year, stirring anxiety among reporters. NYT last year unloaded 100 or so reporters. Goodwins advice is that the paper enlarge its thinking about diversity to include journalists who disagree with the Times embedded liberal slant. That would be putting a Band-Aid on a gaping, life-threatening wound. NYT needs a new corporate board that will include not only middle and right-wing journalists but leaders of the Family Research Council and similar groups, union leaders, religious leaders, minority group leaders, and leaders of gay and lesbian groups. No one from the Sulzberger family nor executive editor Dean Baquet should be on the board. Sulzberger and Baquet spoke at Hunter College June 15, 2015. Press questions were not allowed and only three from the audience. Baquet NYTs warped coverage of election issues, including the false claims that Clinton was far ahead in the polls, shows that it has lost its mojo. An entire new blood supply is needed, not just a transfusion. An illustration is its Nov. 11 story with the six-column headline: Trump Win Seen as a Devastating Loss for Gay and Transgender People. Quoted in the story that takes up the top half of the page are Jay Brown, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights organization with $38 million in 2014 revenues and net assets of $9M (EIN: 52-1243457); Mara Keisling, executive director, National Center for Transgender Equality, and Rea Carey, executive director, National LGBTQ Task Force. The 2016 GOP platform is called the most anti-LGBT platform in recent memory. Michael Pence, Trumps running mate, who has been named head of the transition team, is one of the most ant-LGBT politicians out there, says Brown. As governor of Indiana, Pence opposed gay marriage and signed a law making it legal for businesses to refuse service to gay and transgender people. No Coverage of Family Values Supporters While gay rights groups are quoted saying things such as, All across America right now there are millions of people who are terrified, a remark by Keisling, there is no story in NYT quoting groups and people who support traditional marriage and who were triumphant at Trumps election. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based group with $13M in revenues (EIN: 52-1792772), said Trumps election shows that the majority of Americans do not recognize same-sex marriage. If the liberal press had bothered to listen to what voters believeinstead of telling them what to believe, this election would not have been nearly as shocking, he said. Because theres one overwhelming message everyone should have heard on Tuesday. Its this: the media, the courts, and the Left dont speak for the American people. Perkins Perkins, who served on the RNC Platform Committee, said nearly six in ten Trump voters were swayed by the pro-life, pro-religious liberty planks in the platform. Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research found that a year and a half after the Supreme Court decision legalizing marriage between people of the same sex, 53% agreed that marriage should be between one man and one woman, he said. Disagreeing were 37% while 10% had no opinion. The Perkins in the firm is Chris Perkins who is unrelated to Tony Perkins. NYT Mystified by Hasidic Support of Trump On the bottom half of the NYT page giving vent to expressions of disappointment by LGBT supporters is a story about the Hasidic community in Borough Park giving Trump 69% of the vote while New York City and New York State went overwhelming for Clinton. New Yorks 29 electoral votes went to Clinton who received 4.1 million votes or 58.8%. The obvious answer, skipped by NYT, is that family values are a supreme component of the beliefs of Hasidic and other orthodox sects in Borough Park including the Bobover, Belz, Satmar, Ger and Viznitz. Public Broadcasting Service, in a film called A Life Apart, said Hasidism stresses what have become known as family values, for example raising large families, with lasting marriages. Other sites, quoting Hasidim, say members of the gay community are urged to suppress such tendencies. Supporters of family values got no ink in NYTs election coverage. Zelden Defeated Throne-Holst on L.I. Another election we watched was Suffolk Rep. Lee Zeldin battling challenger Anna Throne-Holst, former supervisor of Southampton. Zeldin, the only Jewish GOP member of the House of Representatives, defeated Throne-Holst by a large margin59% to 41% in garnering 174,682 votes to her 121,682. We were rooting for Zeldin, posting this comment on the Suffolk Times website: As a resident of Westhampton Beach, I was disappointed that Throne-Holst caved to the East End Eruv Assn. by passing a measure in the last few seconds of the Aug. 25, 2015 board meeting without any public comment or prior notice. That was despicable and grounds enough for her defeat, in my book. That ended a five-year battle with the EEEA against erection of an eruv Jewish religious boundary. SH lost the sign issue but is now abandoning its argument that eruvim violate the Constitutional ban against church/state entanglement. The SH board voted not to appeal the June 30 decision by State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Franeti who ruled that since the lechi markers proposed for SH utility poles are virtually invisible, they are not signs and are thus not violations of SHs sign laws. Ironically, the judge's decision made the eruv more visible than ever, a triumph of illogic over logic. Also, eruvim are highly visible on Synagogue websites. Scott Widmeyer Three years ago my firm, Widmeyer Communications, was acquired by Finn Partners , and questions whether the match would work out have finally subsided. For those with ringside seats, primarily employees and clients, they see how weve combined and integrated to form a bigger, better company. To the outside world, one clear proof of our successful union is that weve retained key clients while adding significant new accounts. Another, no less important, is that weve retained key staff who made Widmeyer a successful, happy company. In the larger picture, Finn Partners continues to flourish and is one of the countrys top independent firms, with revenue over $80 million. It has doubled in size since acquiring Widmeyer. After 30-plus years in PR, including 25 as agency owner, I know most deals dont work out this well and that some end up doing more harm than good. It should surprise no one that the questions I get now are from other buyers and sellers asking, What advice can you offer ...what do know now that you wish youd known earlier? Lets be clear: there is no magic formula for a successful union, in life or in business. That said, heres what was done right in combining our companies and some of what I learned. I cant overemphasize the importance of good advice and good advisors. Before I gave thought to any kind of deal, I met Art Stevens at a conference in 2009. Art, erstwhile president of Lobsenz-Stevens and the U.S. arm of Publicis, heads The Stevens Group, a PR M&A firm. Art engaged me in a dialogue about my companys future. I didnt need Art to tell me that continuity planning was a requirement of good leadership, but it didnt hurt to have him remind me, then approaching 60, to be thinking about my firms long term future. The financial implications alone were significant we were an $11 million firm but there was more at stake than dollars. I wanted the best future for my staff. I still do. Art Stevens Art and I had a dialogue that continued over more than two years, during which time he helped me define what I wanted for the firms future and what kind of company might make a good suitor. I also discreetly sought advice from many friends gained over my career. What came out of my conversations was the realization that combining with the right company was something I should consider. However, I wasnt going to pressure myself to make a deal, and Art knew we didnt want Widmeyer shopped around. Another lesson I learned was not to start taking meetings if I wasnt serious about selling. Its not the buyers role to convince a seller to sell. From the time of my first discussions with Art until my sale closed was nearly four years, which brings up an important element of making a good match: time. Theres rarely a reason to rush a deal. We dont try and move too quickly in these situations, Peter Finn, CEO of Finn Partners, said recently. These are big decisions requiring major commitments. Lets date a while before marriage. Realize that getting to a deal will take six months or more. Use the time for due diligence and to ensure you are making a happy union which brings us to the next major consideration: culture and chemistry. Widmeyer worked hard to build a diverse, inclusive culture and in 2012 won the PR Council and PR Week Diversity Distinction in PR Award. It meant a lot to us, and if my firm were to be acquired, I needed a suitor with similar values and vision. Art attended that award ceremony, where I also ran into Peter Finn; Finn Partners was also vying for an award. Shortly afterward, unknown to me at the time, Art contacted Peter and without divulging names, probed him on Finn Partners interest in acquiring a D.C. firm. There were synergies Art knew would appeal to Finn, and Art also foresaw a cultural fit. It was clear from our first meeting that Widmeyer and Finn could be a good match. The chemistry clicked for Peter and me, as did our vision for our firms future. We saw the value that each others business brought to a combined company. Our first date was a good one, and thus began a period of shuttle diplomacy for Art in bringing us to terms. Again, I cant overstate the importance of patience and good advice. Just because we decided to move ahead doesnt mean it was smooth sailing the whole way. One rule Ive learned in acquisitions is to keep the principals from direct negotiation, Art said afterward. Having emissaries handle talks avoids erosion of the mutual respect that initially brought parties together. Ive seen deals implode when principals decided to work out terms themselves, he said. It took about six months from when Peter and I first sat down until we closed our deal. Afterward, we had the normal hiccups, mostly over billing systems and technology. Both our firms made changes or adapted in some way. Our employees saw that Peter and I were transparent in dealing with problems, respectful of each others opinions and readily open to change. That attitude filters down. Whats the one most surprising revelation? Probably that when one becomes successful, as many firm owners do, its easy to forget theres also a great future for yourself and your company when teamed with the right enterprise. Theres much to be gained from giving up complete control. *** Scott Widmeyer founded Widmeyer Communications where he served as chairman and CEO, prior to becoming founding managing partner at Finn Partners in 2013. As I said in an earlier article, when building a daily driver for an avid off-roader, who also happens to be a high school student in Southern California, one has to consider Californias more stringent vehicle regulations. For instance, all tire treads have to be covered by the vehicles fenders to reduce the likelihood of road debris being thrown up by the tires. A set of Rugged Ridge extended fender flares takes care of these requirements for the SoCal Cherokee. You should check the regulations for the state in which you reside, as these same requirements may pertain to you. Even though, in my opinion, XJ-model Cherokees are one of the best bangs for your bucks Jeeps that are available today; in other words, you get more for your dollar if you buy one of these fine SUVs. You have to be careful, though, because new parts for them are being dropped from catalogs because of their age, not because of their popularity. Rugged Ridge, Omix-ADA, and a few others are still maintaining a good selection of aftermarket parts for them. My younger son, Chad, and I are slowly building a 1990 Cherokee Laredo for his son, Cash, to be a daily driver (to and from school and work) and an off-road weekend warrior for camping trips to the trails of SoCal and Arizona. Weve already lifted the Cherokee and gave it a set of Rubicon wheels and Yokohama Geolandar A/T tires, replaced its injectors, protected it with steel bumpers, and now were making it safe for the highways of SoCal with wider fender flares. The fender flares feature a stylish design while also protecting the vehicles paint from flying rocks and mud. The fender flares are constructed from durable, UV-treated ABS with a slight texture. The Rugged Ridge all-terrain fender flares are paintablealthough we left them as isand provide a great look, while being able to handle whatever the trail may throw at them. They are designed to fit factory mounting points with durable, rustproof stainless fasteners. Before beginning the install verify that all parts are in the package and read the instructions through a few times. Remove any OEM flares or trim from the Cherokees four fenders. Id also like to thank Kevin Lake and Mike Barnes for all their experience and knowledge in their assistance with this installation. Source List: Rugged Ridge www.ruggedridge.com Summit Racing http://www.summitracing.com/ Children across Offaly are being called on to let their imaginations run wild and create a modern masterpiece for Sightsavers Junior Painter Awards as the deadline for this years competition fast approaches. Mini-Matisses and pint-sized Picassos need to have their entries in by Friday, November 25. Embracing creativity and education are the core of objectives of the competition which is open to primary school students across Ireland. This years theme Framing the Future is sure to inspire some imaginative entries and judge, Laureate na nOg and illustrator, PJ Lynch, has some great advice for budding artists looking to paint a colourful creation Be expressive, no idea is too crazy because who knows whatll happen in the future, dont be afraid to use plenty of colour, and most importantly, make sure you dont miss the closing date! Entrants have the chance to win cash prizes for their schools, sponsored by the Irish Times, and memberships and toolboxes full of arts and crafts materials from ReCreate Ireland. Fifteen regional winners will be selected and will have the opportunity to see their work displayed at a special Awards Day in spring 2017 where three overall national winners will be announced. Every child that enters will receive a Certificate of Participation in recognition of their artistic efforts. The closing date for entry is Friday, November 25. Parents and children can get involved by speaking to their school teacher or by visiting Sightsavers website to request entry forms: www.sightsavers.ie/juniorpainter Offalys Faith Sadier has won a place in the prestigious final of The Most Beautiful Girl in Ireland. The 23 year old from Kilcormac has a chance to represent Ireland at the Most Beautiful Girl in the World in Dubai January 2017 and also a chance to be a GOSH Copenhagen Ireland ambassador. Suzzie O'Deniyi, Director of the Most Beautiful Girl in Ireland, stated, The Most Beautiful Girl in Ireland is a nationwide beauty competition open to all girls between 18 and 30. Our aim is to find that one girl who is beautiful inside and out, who will represent MBGI nationally and internationally with the aim of promoting body confidence and inspiring young girls across Ireland and internationally. MBGI embraces all kind of girls from different walks of life. We want a girl, that hold their own style, are passionate about what she believe in, girls who are charming, have poise, and personality, she added. The makeup sponsor is GOSH Copenhagen Ireland. GOSH Copenhagen is a young and innovative cosmetics, GOSH has supplied all makeup used on all our finalists. The lucky winner will also receive one year free of all GOSH cosmetics and will also become a GOSH Ambassador. The winner of Most Beautiful Girl in Ireland will jet of to Dubai in January and will represent her country at the International Final and compete with more than 40 contestants from around the world. The international Final is a once in a lifetime opportunity and will be a truly amazing experience. Faith Sadier will compete for the Most Beautiful Girl in Ireland crown on November 25 the Limerick Strand Hotel. Young women from across the country will fight it out for the title. Fianna Fail TD Barry Cowen says the confirmation that 380,000 will be provided for renewal of towns in Offaly is a positive development, but says further funding will be needed in the months ahead. Deputy Cowen made the comments after it was confirmed that Clara, Edenderry, Kinnity and Shannonbridge will benefit from the funding allocation. This is a welcome development. Fianna Fail has been highlighting that we need a robust scheme to help revitalise towns and villages right across Ireland. We have made this a priority in recent months and we are starting to see funding come on steam for town and village renewal works, said Deputy Cowen. Deputy Cowen stated it must be acknowledged that the funding provided to date is a relatively small sum of money, and will only go so far in helping revitalise Offalys towns and villages. He said this cannot be a once off investment and the Government needed to bring forward a credible programme of funding for the months ahead to ensure renewal works stay on track. In particular the Government needs to provide funding for housing construction in areas where people are finding it difficult to find suitable accommodation. The funding provided for town and village renewal to date simply does not address the housing crisis. This needs to change and it is something which Fianna Fail will be focusing on in the months ahead, remarked the Offaly TD. I want to acknowledge the hard work of Offaly County Council and local councillors in securing this investment. I understand contact will be made with the relevant steering groups in the coming days to determine the priorities for future investment. This is a welcome development, but much more investment will be required in the future. Let no one think that the investment provided to date will solve all of the problems in our towns and villages, concluded Deputy Cowen. On November 9, knitting enthusiasts rejoiced. Following the phenomenal success of last years Knit for Wishes Kit, Make-A-Wish Ireland continues their popular tradition and the gift with a conscience is back on Irish shelves this Christmas. All proceeds help to grant more wishes and make lasting family memories for children with life-threatening illnesses. Available in Kilkenny Shop, Magee of Donegal and online at MakeAWish.ie, the kit comprises of the highest Donegal quality yarn, needles and a pattern developed by Anne Behan of Aine Knitwear the perfect set for both those who are learning to knit for the first time or long-time knitting devotees. The Knit for Wishes Kit contains everything needed to create a luxurious adult scarf or two equally stunning childrens scarves. Each pack contains 200gms of the best quality Soft Donegal Merino Wool, Basix Birch single pointed needles 30cm-5mm, and an inspired pattern design by renowned Irish Designer Anne Behan of Aine Knitwear. Irene Timmins, Head of Fundraising for Make-A-Wish said, This Christmas people have an opportunity to purchase a wonderful gift that directly supports Make-A-Wish Ireland, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the charity. Commenting on the campaign, Marian OGorman CEO of Kilkenny Group said, Kilkenny Shop is thrilled to partner with Make-A-Wish on their Knit for Wishes campaign. We are stocking their fantastic scarf knitting kits in selected stores throughout the country. These kits are a fantastic gift idea for Christmas, and you would also be supporting a very worthy charity, so I encourage you all to knit together this Christmas for Make-A-Wish. With the increased interest in wellness activities among adults, knitting offers a relaxing therapy as well as encapsulating the perfect gift for those whose wish is learn the importance of charitable giving and a new craft. From eight to 88, the Knit for Wishes Kit aims to be Irelands most charitable gift this season. The Knit for Wishes Kit can be purchased at Kilkenny Shop, selected knitting shops nationwide and through the Make-A Wish shop on their website, www.makeawish.ie for 24.95 plus postage. An Offaly woman who was molested by her brother as a child finally reported the abuse when the Jimmy Saville cases came to light. Thomas Moran (52) of Daingean, Co Offaly was convicted by a jury last March of 13 counts of indecently assaulting his sister Roisin Moran between January 1981 and June 1984. Ms Moran was aged just eight when the abuse started. Following that trial at the Central Criminal Court, Moran pleaded guilty to seven charges of indecently assaulting another sister, Dolores McIntyre, between April 1980 and September 1983, when she was aged between 12 and 15 years old. Both women waived their right to anonymity in court. Sentencing Moran to three years imprisonment with the final 12 months suspended Justice Robert Eager paid tribute to the 'determination and bravery' of the sisters for reporting the sexual abuse. The sisters faced 'tremendous upheaval' in their family after coming forward with the abuse, along with guilt at the knowledge that they had each suffered in silence, Justice Eager said today. Neither sister was aware of the abuse the other had suffered until Ms Moran had a nervous breakdown in 2000 and and told family members what Moran had done to her. She eventually reported her brother to gardai in 2012 after the Jimmy Saville sex abuse case came to light. The court heard that as a child she had been a big fan of his and had written to him. The court heard the children were from a family of eight siblings living in Offaly. The abuse started shortly after the death of their father, when Moran assumed the role of the 'man of the house', Mr Justice Eager said. He was aged between 16 and 19 when he abused his little sisters. Mr Justice Eager noted Moran was a child himself during some of the offending and that he was 'utterly ill-equipped' to take on the role of filling his father's shoes when he died. He accepted Moran was extremely unlikely to re-offend. The judge said if Moran had not been a juvenile during much of the offending, he would have imposed a lengthier sentence. Moran cried and hugged family members before being returned to custody. The court heard Moran never came to adverse garda attention over the next 30 years. He is married and worked in construction until he was made redundant in 2010. A number of testimonials were handed up in court, including one from another sister. Roisin Moran told Moran's trial that her brother first assaulted her when he asked her to bring some sandwiches to him when he was working on the bog. He then ran his hands up her leg and put his finger into her vagina. Similar abuse then took place on the bog between two and three times a week. On another occasion in a sow shed, he put her hands inside his trousers and forced her to masturbate him as she cried and asked him to stop. Moran told her to stop crying and that it was their 'little secret'. He gave her 50p to keep quiet. The abuse ended shortly after Ms Moran attended a sex education class in school and realised what he was doing to her was wrong. She told him she would shout if he came near her again. This court would like to pay tribute to her for her determination and bravery in giving evidence against her brother, Mr Justice Eager said. It took great courage to give evidence against him in the face of his denial. After Ms Moran revealed the abuse she suffered, her sister Dolores McIntyre came forward with similar allegations. She said she was 'overcome with guilt' to discover that Ms Moran, who is four years younger, had also been abused. If I had only stopped my brother from abusing me, I could have stopped him, she previously told the court. The court heard the abuse of Ms McIntyre occurred when Moran took her out fishing. He would put his fingers into her vagina and force her to give him oral sex. Within days of finishing school, Ms McIntyre moved to London to get away from Moran. The court acknowledges the pain they felt in their years of silence unable to come forward and the distressing situation they faced in disclosing the abuse committed against them by a family member, Mr Justice Eager said. Tehran, Iran, November 14 By Mehdi Sepahvand Trend: Irans Ghadir Investment Holding has attracted 1.5 billion euros foreign investment in oil, gas, petrochemicals, minerals, and power plants. These are the investments that have been finalized, but there are more over which negotiations are being held, the companys CEO Qolamreza Soleimani said, Mehr news agency reported. Talks are being held over another 1 billion euros investment which will hopefully be added to the existing finalized amount, he said. Soleimani further explained that the LC for South Aluminum project worth $1.2 billion has been opened. "We hope to reach the desired outcome through a 27-month schedule," he added. Elsewhere in his remarks, Soleimani said his company is in talks to enter the London exchange market. On a bright, cloudless day, in the court yard of a school on the outskirts of Bamako, in Mali, groups of women turn dye and white cloth into brightly coloured hopes for the future. This project has brought me a lot, because, thanks to God, I can do my own work, said Zenaib Walet Amadou. We must have success, be it here or outside Mali. For Amadou standing in the hot, bright sunshine of Malian summers day, dying cloth is not merely about making money to support her family, it was about regaining her dignity. In 2014, she and her five children fled her town of Bourem in the Gao region of northern Mali when fighting broke out between rival Tuareg coalition forces. She eventually found her way to Bamako, but work was hard to come by and she soon found that she was reduced to begging and hand outs in order to support her family. Then came an opportunity to learn dye making and other small business skills, through the NGO Association Femmes Battues, and she jumped at it. The project has helped to retrain her and 106 other internally displaced women from escaping the violence of the conflict taking place in northern Mali. The income-generating project is funded by the Human Rights and Protection Division (HRPD) of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The divisions director, Guillaume Ngefa, said that supporting such a project fits perfectly with the divisions work in the country. Our experience in working with victims is that documenting serious violations of human rights is not enough, he said. You investigate, you report and then you release the report, but what could be the next step? Since 2012, Mali has been embroiled in conflicts in the North, involving anti-government military coalitions and jihadist forces. This fighting has led to numerous attacks on civilian, military and government personnel and has caused huge instability, including the displacement of thousands from their homes. MINUSMA HRPD has documented these human rights violations, reporting on a systemic and endemic culture of impunity. The team has documented abuses by all parties to the conflict including summary and extrajudicial executions, arbitrary and illegal arrests and detention, torture, sexual, and gender based violence, and the looting and destruction of property. But, Ngefa said it wasnt enough to just report on what was happening to people. These people were victims of serious human rights violations and at the same time exposed to some situations that are not good for their dignity, he said. So we decided to fund an NGO to work with women in particular to create activities that can generate income for them. This project has provided more than 100 women displaced from fighting in the North of the country with new opportunities and professions. In addition to learning how to dye cloth, some women have also learned how to make dried fruit snacks and juices to sell in markets. We have seen an improvement in their living conditions, said Fataumata Kane Diallo, the project trainer with Associations Femmes Battues. Adama Maiga also escaped from Gao in the North, with just her children and the clothes on her back. Since finding work with the project, she said that she can provide for her family once again. It is important to work because we can earn money, at least what we need by the sweat of our brow, she said. We can eat and support our children. They can go to school, so it is a lot. For Ngefa, by supporting projects like this, victims of violence learn that human rights can also provide tangible solutions. We gave hope to the victims so that they know they are not forgotten, he said. 14 November 2016 Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... Iran is interested in the purchase of a wide range of Russian weapons and Moscow is ready to develop military and technical cooperation with Tehran, Sputnik quoted Zamir Kabulov, the Russian Foreign Ministrys director of the Second Asian Department, as saying. In October, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei said that Tehran was looking for ways to broaden the scope of defense cooperation with Moscow, even in areas that require coordination with the UN Security Council (UNSC) and need a resolution. It is true that the Iranians have a wide range of military-purpose products they would like to buy in Russia. Naturally, some of these products tanks and fighter jets are covered by the UNSC sanctions, because there is a moratorium, Kabulov said commenting on Sanaeis statement. It means that if we sign an agreement on the delivery of such products, we have to request for the UNSC permission in the next five, or rather, the next four years and receive such permission, he added. Moscow is ready to work with Iran in the area of military and technical cooperation, according to Kabulov. There are other goods from the sphere of military and technical cooperation that are not subject [to the UNSC sanctions]. There are no problems, but here we should act via the UNSC mechanism, unfortunately," the diplomat said. Cleveland Vaughn was a people person, but when it came to Nebraska waterfowl, the former federal special agent was all birds. Snow geese. Sandhill cranes. Piping plover. Teal. Ducks. And one beloved magpie. Somebody has to stand up for those birds, Vaughn, a former special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, once said. Im the person that has to do that. I love the birds. So Special Agent Vaughn would travel around Nebraska, chasing shotgun blasts on hunting season opening days, counting the catch and otherwise making sure Nebraska hunters followed the rules. Its a job he held for half of a 28-year career with the U.S. Department of the Interior, which began with this distinction: Vaughn said he was the federal agencys first African-American law enforcement officer. When Vaughn left that job to become U.S. marshal for Nebraska, he was the first African-American in that role, too. This made him a trailblazer, but thats not what family members and friends most recall about Vaughn, who died Nov. 4 of stomach cancer. He loved people. He loved his church. He loved to help, said Shirley, his wife of nearly 49 years. He was a great dad, a great husband and a really great role model, said Derek, his son, a Douglas County Court judge. He was a mentor, said Mark Foxall, Douglas County Corrections director. He was a public servant whose public service didnt stop, said Don Kleine, Douglas County attorney. Vaughn, 72, was also this: interesting. He was born on a farm in Earle, Arkansas, skipped a grade in country school and graduated from high school at age 16. He went to college at what is now known as the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and graduated with a degree in agriculture education. But his heart wasnt in teaching it was in the outdoors. It was the one place where he didnt feel the reach of his Jim Crow South. I went to a segregated high school, a segregated college, segregated everything, Vaughn wrote in 1989, in an essay published in this newspaper. As a kid, I noticed how we could hunt and fish and nobody ever said anything. In the back of my mind, I thought, Boy, I would like to be a game warden. But there was no opportunity at that time. But opportunity did come for Vaughn in 1967, when he was accepted into a federal law enforcement training program. I was the first black, he wrote. At the time, I didnt realize what that meant, that it was a tremendous breakthrough. To me, it was a job. Period. His assignments: Minneapolis for training. Then Des Moines. Then Sioux City, Iowa. Then Wichita, Kansas. Then, in 1978, Omaha. I love for my telephone to ring, he wrote in that 1989 essay. I love for people to call with a complaint about somebody hunting out of season, or killing too many birds. ... Some of the best tips we get come from disgruntled wives and girlfriends. Maybe they are getting a divorce or theyve just broken up, and the women will call and say so-and-so shot three elk last year in Colorado and theyre in such-and-such freezer. Vaughn said the racial imbalance of law enforcement and hunting made his job harder. The thing that bothers me sometimes is that I cant assimilate. In other words, I cant walk into a bar in some little town and just eavesdrop, he wrote. If there are any hunters in there, Im going to get recognized and a whole bunch of guys will come over and want to talk hunting and fishing. So he found another approach: He studied the regulations and changes. He prepared. He then endured the long hours in the cold and wet. And fearlessly called people out. In addition to fowl hunters, he was involved in busts including 98 alligators in Sarpy County, the mounted head of an endangered black rhino that popped up in Omaha and a trio of Indiana men who killed 79 ducks 49 too many in Harlan County. The magpie, however, was an unpopular call. Joe the magpie was a beloved pet of a couple in Red Cloud, Nebraska. A feature story on the talking magpie, who had lived with the couple for 16 years, prompted complaints to Vaughns office. Magpies are protected under a 1916 law. So Joe was forced to go live in a zoo in Grand Island. This resulted in a huge outcry. A public petition and entreaties from two U.S. senators returned Joe to Red Cloud. At the time, Vaughn said he had never had so many phone calls about an issue. Recalling the incident, his wife said this: There was a little bit of truth and a lot of fiction in that story. We laughed about that. Given the nature of her husbands job staking out armed men in the Nebraska wilderness did she worry? Initially, she said, but I had to come to grips with that. I prayed God would protect him. Besides, Shirley Vaughn said, her husband was happy doing it. I couldnt stand in the way of something he loved so much, she said, adding that Cleveland didnt have many problems in Nebraska or Iowa. A lot of those farmers are very nice people, she said. Derek Vaughn said his father stood his ground but always made a point to listen. He said it was important to let people have their say. Cleveland Vaughn was active in his church, Zion Baptist, serving as a trustee. He taught people, old and young, how to fish. He was so warm and personable that when Foxall, the corrections director, met him for the first time, he felt like The Marshal had known him his whole life. Vaughn was appointed to the U.S. marshal position by President Bill Clinton in 1993. He stepped down in 1995. Vaughn was diagnosed with stomach cancer about four months ago and died at Josie Harper Hospice House in Omaha. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Zion Baptist Church, 2215 Grant St. He and Shirley would have celebrated a 49th wedding anniversary next month. She said he still had so much to do that hed told her hed have to live to 100 to do it all. He was preceded in death by two sisters. In addition to his wife and son, Vaughn is survived by daughters Monica Watson and Janae Vaughn of Omaha; and brothers Roy Vaughn of Memphis, Tennessee, Ellis Vaughn of Kansas City, Missouri, and Wesley Vaughn of Earle, Arkansas. David Burdge didnt see a stand-up comedy show that spoke to him, so he created his own. Since kicking off this summer, Burdge has hosted a stand-up night the third Saturday of every month at The Backline, a comedy theater near 16th and Harney Streets. Im kind of in a niche, being a gay comedian, Burdge said. We kind of have our own way of doing things. Ive got both perspectives of what the comedy scene is like as well as the gay bar scene, so I thought I could intertwine the two. Burdge works tech support during the day, but hes been doing stand-up for about two years. Burdge joked that his office job is mind-numbing, and he didnt want his days spent in his windowless workplace to be all he did. I thought I was the funny person in my group of friends, he said. He started by doing improv at The Backline, and he eventually built up confidence to stand alone onstage and perform stand-up. Its been a great couple of years, he said. Burdge grew up on Staten Island, New York, but his parents decided to move closer to family in Iowa. They ended up in Coin in southwest Iowa. His high school graduating class consisted of 12 people. Eventually he moved to Omaha, where he feels more comfortable. Its been great to be OK with who I am, he said. Burdge started his show as all-LGBT comedy, but he wanted to open it up to more comedians. Its a regular, if a little edgy, comedy show its not all focused on being gay. I dont want it to be my crutch, he said. Burdge usually kicks things off with a crowd participation game. Last time, he quizzed the audience with Boy Band or Condom Brand? His monthly show has been gaining steam, and hes excited to keep up its momentum. It makes me feel so great that there are so many people I do comedy with that are so understanding of me and my comedy, he said. Its pretty exciting. * * * * * Comedy show When: 10 p.m. Saturday Where: The Backline, 1618 Harney St. Tickets: $5 at the door Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 Trend: Foreign ministers of the EU member countries urge Iran to exert influence on the Syrian authorities in order to halt the shelling of civilians, said the EU Council on Foreign Relations in a statement. "The Council calls on Iran to use its influence on the Syrian regime to stop violence against civilian population and humanitarian personnel, as well as the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, RIA Novosti reported citing the foreign ministers. The Council also urged Iran to help ensure free humanitarian access throughout the country and to constructively engage in the political negotiation process. The EU foreign ministers added that Iran should fully contribute to the creation of a foundation necessary for reactivation of the political process in Syria under the auspices of the UN. Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives. Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The IS, YPG and PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria. Q. I have way more student loan debt than I can handle, and its all I can think about. Are there options for canceling my debt? A. Not knowing how to deal with your debt is painful and understandable. But theres hope. You might already know that loan forgiveness is available to public-sector workers and to those who choose an income-driven repayment plan. You may not know that you can get your loans canceled if your school closed while you were enrolled, it committed fraud, or youre totally and permanently disabled. We focus here on federal student loan forgiveness programs because private student loans generally have less flexible repayment options. Your best bet is to contact your lender directly if youre having trouble making your payments. Also, except in the case of Public Service Loan Forgiveness and in some specific circumstances, you may be taxed on the amount forgiven. Explore the options below and check out studentaid.ed.gov for more details. Closed school discharge If your college closes while youre enrolled or within 120 days after you leave a program without getting a degree you can receive a closed school loan discharge, meaning the loans you took out to attend that school will be canceled. Recent closings of for-profit colleges including Corinthian Colleges, ITT Technical Institute and Marinello Schools of Beauty have put this option into the spotlight, said Debbie Cochrane, vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success. The U.S. Department of Education recently announced automatic loan discharges for borrowers who were enrolled in a school that closed on or after Nov. 1, 2013, and who didnt re-enroll elsewhere within three years. If your school closed before that period you can apply for a discharge through your loan servicer. But youre not eligible if you transferred your credits to a comparable program, Cochrane said, so make sure you meet the specific requirements before applying. Borrower defense to repayment A growing area of loan cancellation is called borrower defense to repayment, a provision of federal law that allows students to seek debt relief because their school committed fraud or misrepresented itself. On Oct. 28 the Education Department released final regulations to streamline the process for submitting a borrower defense to repayment claim. Additionally, the department now has the ability to discharge groups of borrowers loans without an application when theres evidence of a schools sweeping misrepresentation. If you think your school might have defrauded you, submit a claim to fsaoperations@ed.gov along with the required accompanying documentation, available at studentaid.ed.gov. Online applications also are available for certain former students, said Jennifer Wang, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the Institute for College Access & Success. You can work with a lawyer or a nonprofit legal assistance organization to submit your claim. Total and permanent disability discharge You also can have your remaining debt canceled if you have a total and permanent physical or mental disability and youre unable to be gainfully employed. You must show documentation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration or a doctor. Its something that not that many people apply for, even if they qualify, said Jay S. Fleischman, a student loan lawyer. After the government discharges your loans it will monitor your finances and disability for three years. If you take out new student loans, earn more than a certain amount of money or no longer meet the Social Security Administrations disability guidelines you must resume your loan payments. Income-driven repayment plans Income-driven repayment is available to all federal student loan borrowers. It will slash your federal loan payments to a percentage of your earnings, and if you have no income, youll pay no money and still keep your loans in good standing. Youll also get your remaining balance forgiven after 20 or 25 years of payments, but it will be taxed as income. Apply for the program on studentloans.gov. Job-based forgiveness programs Public-sector workers can get federal loan forgiveness after 10 years of eligible employment. The main program, known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, is available to full-time nonprofit and government workers with federal direct loans. The amount forgiven wont be taxed. Maybe it was because he would have to go along with being called intellectually disabled in scientific terms dumb in slang terms. Maybe it was because it wasnt on his agenda Monday. Whatever the case, convicted killer Nikko Jenkins wanted no part of his attorneys attempts to disqualify him for the death penalty based on his last IQ test a test that saw him score a 69 at age 17. Such a score meets the standard for what Nebraska law calls mental retardation. And the U.S. Supreme Court has forbidden executions of people who suffer from mental retardation. No matter, Jenkins said. I would like to waive this IQ testimony, he said, interrupting his attorney during his capital-punishment proceedings. Im not portraying that Im under the threshold to procure the death penalty. Jenkins attorney, Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley, pressed on anyway. Im not going to sit here and watch him put a noose around his own neck, Riley said. The overriding aspect we have here is that, whether Mr. Jenkins agrees with it or not, he falls under the statute that precludes capital punishment (for the learning disabled). This (death penalty hearing) should end here and now. It will last most of the week. After four hours of testimony, District Judge Peter Bataillon rejected the low IQ argument. For one, it was an abbreviated test, given to a group of incoming prisoners and not a more thorough, individual IQ test. For another, the prison psychologist who ad ministered the test said Jenkins completed it in an extremely rapid manner. Another factor the judge cited: Jenkins had scored an 84 on an IQ test when he was 8. And there were indications, though no substantiation, that he had scored a 92 on an IQ test when he was 15. Ultimately, the judge said he trusted state psychologist Jennifer Cimpl-Bohns review of Jenkins intellectual abilities, noting that she has spent more than 40 hours with him over the past few years. She described Jenkins as smart with a decent vocabulary even if he is completely narcissistic. She attributed his inability to adapt to prison life to a personality disorder, not an intellectual deficit. Folks with narcissism have an inflated view of themselves, she said. He believes hes smarter than everyone else. That trait was on full display as the death penalty hearing began Monday. Bataillon along with Judge Terri Harder of western Nebraska and Mark Johnson of northeast Nebraska will decide whether Jenkins should receive the death penalty for a spree in which he killed four Omahans in 10 days in 2013: Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz on Aug. 11; Curtis Bradford on Aug. 19; and Andrea Kruger on Aug. 21. The two judges from outside Omaha were introduced to whats become known as the Nikko show. Four times, Jenkins demanded to be heard and began speaking without waiting. Such outbursts have become so commonplace that its easy to forget how rarely other defendants speak in court, outside of testifying. Judge Bataillon politely told Jenkins to wait his turn. The 30-year-old convict obliged sort of. At one point, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine told the judge that Cimpl-Bohn, the psychologist, was present. Jenkins perked up. Where she at? he said. Prosecutors have alleged multiple counts of three different aggravating circumstances that could lead to the death penalty: that Jenkins killed multiple people; that he did so to conceal his identity and that he had a substantial history of violent behavior. At one point, Kleine thumbed through court documents as he recited Jenkins lengthy record, including his convictions for carjacking two women at age 15. Kleine: And he was sentenced to... Jenkins: 14 to 15 years. Earlier, Jenkins called on Kleine to object to the testimony of a doctor who didnt even administer the IQ test. He called her testimony hearsay. Im just confused right now, an agitated Jenkins grumbled to the judge. My understanding is, we werent going to revisit competency. Exhibit A, Riley said. A perfect example of him not understanding the words that he says. Jenkins has repeatedly stated that his primary desire is to get out of solitary confinement regardless of whether that means he goes to death row. During a hearing two weeks ago, he asserted that he would get more privileges on death row. Kirk Newring, a former prison psychologist now in private practice, equated Jenkins attitude to suicide by cop, where a suspect with a death wish forces a police officer to shoot him. This is suicide by state, Newring said. A person is taking active steps to promote their own death. But the instrument is now the state, not himself. Other court observers have doubted that Jenkins has a death wish. As one law enforcement official noted, Jenkins has never expressed any belief that he might be executed. Rather, he has made predictions that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear his case and overturn his conviction. Any appeals seemed years away Monday as the first witness testified to some of Jenkins violent behavior. In December 2009, Tecumseh prison officials came up with an idea to allow Jenkins to attend a grandmothers funeral in Omaha in the hopes that it would motivate him to behave better in prison. Luke Morris, a corrections captain, said he and two other prison workers drove Jenkins to the funeral in central Omaha. After arriving, Jenkins greeted a few relatives, then asked to use the bathroom. Morris and another prison official escorted Jenkins, who was in leg chains and handcuffs, to the restroom. Once inside, they unlocked one of his handcuffs. After using the bathroom, Jenkins turned around. He requested that we let him go, Morris said, or else his boys would come in and it would be a bloodbath. Morris and a case worker declined. As Jenkins argued, Morris tried to recuff his hand. Jenkins resisted and punched Morris in the mouth. A struggle ensued, and prison workers regained control of Jenkins. It was only then that Jenkins started claiming that an Egyptian god, Apophis, instructed him to attack the prison officials, prosecutor Nissa Jones noted. Likewise, Jenkins often has blamed his crimes on voices from Apophis. Long before the ill-fated funeral furlough was the ill-fated IQ test. Prison officials administer it, along with other tests, to get a read on inmates intelligence and behavior. Jenkins finished the abbreviated test in about one-third of the time it normally takes, Cimpl-Bohn said. Among the words he got right: Talk. Hideous. Pardon. Among the words he got wrong: Ignorant. Pariah. Doom. Correction: The date of Curtis Bradford's death was reported incorrectly in a previous version of this story. Goodwill Omaha is undergoing sweeping changes, including the exits of more top executives, a top-to-bottom evaluation of its pay structure and a commitment to put more thrift store profits into its mission of serving the disabled and others with barriers to employment. Additional steps the embattled charity now plans also include getting a third-party assessment of its operations and governance, undergoing a review of its ethics through another outside organization, and ending the controversial practice of paying some disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Goodwills board disclosed the changes as part of its initial plan to move forward in the wake of a World-Herald investigation that laid open the charitys corporate-style executive pay, scant thrift store profits devoted to jobs programs and an internal culture that put maximizing profits ahead of the clients the tax-exempt charity is set up to serve. Through the Omaha World-Herald articles, we have learned some lessons, and discussions on the topics highlighted in the articles have been taking place over the last few weeks, read a statement from the board of trustees and Pauli Bishop, the charitys interim CEO. We are committed to making changes and moving forward. The charity also confirmed it has made additional personnel changes beyond the resignation of CEO Frank McGree, who stepped down two weeks ago in the immediate wake of The World-Herald investigation. While not disclosing specifics, Goodwill said Friday two jobs were eliminated while another longtime employee announced his retirement. Sources said the new retiree is the charitys No. 2 executive, longtime Executive Vice President Andy Bradley. The sources also said those losing jobs included Vice President Todd Milbrandt, who The World-Herald revealed had oversight of a Goodwill program in which Chinese-made hair rollers were repackaged in bags labeled Made in America. Milbrandts name was removed from the charitys website Friday. The changes will likely be viewed favorably by many of those upset by The World-Heralds revelations, though it still might take time for the charity to fully win back public trust and confidence. Goodwill officials acknowledged last week that material donations to its thrift stores have taken a big hit down 26 percent so far this month compared with a year ago. A trustee for the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Memorial Foundation, a major Goodwill financial donor that had announced a suspension of future giving, said he was glad to hear of Goodwills plans for change. But they need to restore trust not by what they say but what they do, said Andy Davis, the trustee. Goodwill needs to demonstrate by their actions that fewer dollars are spent on executive pay and more is being spent on its important job-training programs. They have a lot of work to do. In spite of Goodwills slogan that shopping at or donating to its thrift stores helps needy job seekers, The World-Heralds investigation found that at the charitys Omaha affiliate, such efforts have been more likely to contribute to lofty executive salaries. McGree received a corporate-style pay package exceeding $400,000 annually more than double the average for CEOs at other Omaha social service nonprofits. A $519,000 retention bonus in 2014 brought his pay that year close to $1 million. In all, 14 executives and managers at the charity last year were paid $100,000 or more, including McGrees daughter. For its size, no large Goodwill affiliate in the country had more employees paid in six figures, the newspaper found. The paper also revealed that out of $4 million in profits generated by Goodwills thrift stores last year, only $557,000 found its way into its job programs. The rest of the thrift profits were gobbled up by the agencys overhead expenses, including much of its executive pay. The charitys executive pay also stood in sharp contrast to that of its rank-and-file workers, relatively low-paid social workers and store managers and retail employees making just over minimum wage. The charity has additionally employed more than 100 disabled workers at less than minimum wage legal under a controversial Depression-era federal law. Former employees told the paper that Goodwills mission in recent years has taken a back seat to executive pay, with job trainers who worked with disabled students frustrated by the charitys reluctance to hire graduates to work in the profit-driven thrift stores. In the wake of the series, numerous major Goodwill financial donors and many who regularly donate to the charitys thrift stores vowed to pull future support. McGree resigned within days, and the charitys board vowed other changes. The latest moves followed a meeting last week of the nonprofits board. The charity now will be shedding two more big salaries with the retirement of Bradley ($237,000 in total compensation last year) and the elimination of Milbrandts job ($172,000). In fact, with their departures, along with McGrees retirement and the exit of the former chief operating officer earlier this year, four of Goodwills five highest-paid employees will have left this year. Their combined total compensation in 2015: almost $1.1 million. Going forward, Goodwill plans to obtain an outside assessment of its executive pay practices. It also set a goal of conducting a top-to-bottom compensation audit for the entire organization. Central to the charitys other plans is a refocusing on its mission. Goodwills statement said retail thrift store profits will be maximized to enhance mission programming throughout our community. Payment of subminimum wages for severely disabled employees will end by next year, the charity said. Goodwill said the move had already been in the works, and the number of employees making less than minimum wage had recently dropped from 110 to 32. The charity said it is moving deliberately on the change to make sure the added income does not cause some disabled adults to lose important federal or state benefits. Bishop, the Goodwill chief financial officer who has stepped in as interim CEO, said the charity has not yet determined who will conduct the third-party review of the charity. Goodwill has reached out to the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands in hopes of identifying a candidate for that role. The charitys internal culture will be another focus. The charity said it will form an employee council to gather input from throughout the organization. Additionally, it plans an internal survey of its culture and ethics through the Business Ethics Alliance, a nonprofit in Omaha that promotes and offers programs on ethical business practices. After refusing for more than two months to discuss its executive pay with The World-Herald, Goodwill now is pledging to improve its transparency both internally and externally. Goodwill said it will retool the metrics that measure its community impact and report those results on a quarterly basis. It will also begin posting its federal tax filing where its required to disclose its finances and executive compensation on its website. And it said it will improve internal communications, including encouraging interaction between rank-and-file employees and leadership. Erin Swanson Russell, a Goodwill representative, said the board is still formulating its plans for finding a permanent successor to McGree. Anne Hindery, CEO of the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands, confirmed that Bishop had reached out to her organization. Hindery said she shared with Goodwill its annual survey of comparable pay at nonprofits, its best practices guidelines for boards, and offered additional training for its board members. Hindery is also working to help identify someone to do the third-party review. Hindery said the plans Goodwill has announced are a good first step. But she said the charity now needs to turn those plans into real organizational change. This is an opportunity as painful as it may be to say What do we need to fix? Hindery said. I think they are receptive to learning about the right things, and I think thats great. What they ultimately do at the end of the day, time will tell. Kim Daeges, whose 23-year-old son, Garrett, is disabled, said her hair was on fire when she read last month how Goodwills executive pay was taking away from funding for the needy. She applauded the staff shake-up and the plans for change. Its great news, she said. Im hoping they will now put that million dollars into funding for the people theyre supposed to help. A Boys Town staffer tapped his emergency medical training over the weekend to help rescue a man who had jumped into Lake Michigan. David Martin and his fiancee, Eilis Smith, had been at a concert on the east end of Chicagos Navy Pier on Saturday night and were looking out at the lake. About 11:35 p.m., a man who appeared to be having hallucinations approached them. Martin, 23, and Smith, 24, both of whom are youth care specialists at Boys Town, tried to calm him. It was pretty easy to see that the 19-year-old had taken some type of hallucinogenic drug, Martin said. He appeared agitated. Martin later learned the man thought he was in the middle of a shooting incident. We tried to talk to him and asked him if he needed help, tried to calm him down, Martin said. He was not in a state where he was able to take care of himself. The couple attempted to guide the man away from the edge of the pier and back into the piers Grand Ballroom so they could find him medical help. But the man curled up in a fetal position and began grabbing at Smiths leg. He just started saying things like, Theyre coming, theyre coming, theyre coming! Martin said. He was terrified. The man then got up and jumped five or six feet out into the lake, Martin said. The man appeared to be treading water, and the couple began calling for him to come back to the dock. The couples shouts attracted the attention of Ron Romero, who had just finished working as a sound man for a band in the Grand Ballroom. Martin saw a box nearby that contained a life-preserver ring. He handed the life preserver to Romero. Martin stripped down to his T-shirt and underwear before diving into the lake to help the man, who by then was floating facedown in the water. Romero tossed Martin the life preserver from the pier. While Martin was in the water, Smith held tight to the life preservers rope with one hand and called 911 with the other. Martin said his fiancee stayed calm. He said he felt confident throughout. I had emergency medical training in high school and from the Boys Scouts, Martin said. I knew how to handle him in the water. I put him on my chest face up, and we were pulled toward shore. A crowd that had gathered helped lift the man and then Martin to safety. Fortunately, it wasnt too cold Saturday night about 50 degrees when Martin jumped in. Still, Martin was shivering, and he was checked at the scene for hypothermia. He was fine, but his Fitbit fitness tracker was ruined. Back on land, Martin could see the man was breathing. As the man lay on the pavement, Martin moved him onto his side, with his head resting on one arm. Its the recovery position, Martin said. Its used to be able to help him vomit and clear his airway. The 19-year-old was taken to a Chicago hospital. If we hadnt been there, that man might have gone into the lake and no one would have been around to see it, Martin said. Were glad we could be there when we were needed. Martin, a Wisconsin native, and Smith, who is from Virginia, both are 2015 graduates of Creighton University. They have lived in Omaha for five years and began working at Boys Town following graduation. Jeff Peterson, Boys Towns senior director of campus operations, said in an email that Boys Town is "so proud of these two. They are great Boys Town employees who are vigilant and caring at work, so were not surprised that they showed that same compassion to others outside of Boys Town. They are bringing Father Flanagans mission to the other parts of the country. Thank goodness for their heroism. The 19-year-old man contacted Martin on Sunday night to thank him. Hes doing well now, and hes back to a lucid mental state, Martin said in a telephone interview from Wisconsin, where he is visiting his parents. (Doctors) are still monitoring because he had water in his lungs. Martin said that at Boys Town, the message I am trying to spread is that we are given gifts and blessings. There are responsibilities that come with those gifts to share the blessings of our lives. WASHINGTON (AP) President-elect Donald Trump made his first two key personnel appointments Sunday. One was an overture to Republican circles by naming GOP chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff, the other was a shot across the bow of the Washington establishment by tabbing Breitbart news executive Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor. The two men had made up the president-elects chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus received that job, Bannons post also is expected to wield significant clout. The media executive with ties to the alt-right and white nationalist movement was given top billing in the press release announcing their appointments. Trumps hires were, at first glance, contradictory, though they fit a pattern of the celebrity businessman creating a veritable Rorschach test that allowed his supporters to see what they wanted. Priebus, who lashed the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intraparty objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite. I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism, Priebus said in the statement announcing his appointment. Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart news site into the leading mouthpiece of the partys anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessmans political rise. Ryan has been one of his most frequent targets. Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory, Trump said. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again. Neither Priebus nor Bannon bring policy experience to their new White House roles. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policy making, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the presidents desk. Theyre often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made. Trumps adult children, who serve as influential advisers to the president-elect, are said to have been concerned about having a controversial figure in the chief of staff role and backed Priebus for the job. In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as equal partners effectively creating two power centers in the West Wing. The arrangement is risky and could leave ambiguity over who makes final decisions. Trump has long encouraged rivalries, both in business and in his presidential campaign. He cycled through three campaign managers during his White House run, creating a web of competing alliances among staffers. Priebus is a traditional choice, one meant as an olive branch to the Republicans who control both houses of Congress as Trump looks to pass his legislative agenda. Ryan tweeted, Im very proud and excited for my friend (at)Reince. Congrats! Ryan made no mention of Bannon in that tweet, but earlier told CNN that he didnt know Bannon but I trust Donalds judgment. The Bannon pick, however, is anything but safe. Under Bannons tenure, Brietbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend Western values. It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide, Adam Jentleson, spokesman for top Senate Democrat, Harry Reid, said in a statement late Sunday. He was referring to the Ku Klux Klan. Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the countrys working people a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones. An ex-wife of Bannon said he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he didnt want the girls going to school with Jews. A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements. The appointments came after a day in which Trumps tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern U.S. border and Ryan rejecting any deportation force targeting people in the country illegally. Though Trump told CBS 60 Minutes in an interview airing Sunday night that his border wall might look more like a fence in spots, one thing didnt change from his primary: the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores. During a four-hour spree, Trump gloated about establishment Republicans congratulating him and savaged The New York Times for being dishonest and highly inaccurate. The (at)nytimes states today that DJT believes more countries should acquire nuclear weapons. How dishonest are they. I never said this! Trump tweeted late Sunday morning. But in a March interview with the Times, Trump was asked whether he would object to Japan acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, which it does not now have. He replied, Would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if thats the case. Trump also told 60 Minutes he would eschew the $400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year. An informational open house has been scheduled for Tuesday on proposed improvements to Nebraska Highway 41 in southeast Nebraska. The open house will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Adams Fire and Rescue Training Room, 730 Main St., in Adams, the Nebraska Department of Roads said. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin next fall, roads officials said, with completion by fall 2019. The proposed project would resurface 11 miles of Highway 41, build offset right turn lanes at the junction of Highways 41 and 77, resurface a quarter-mile of Nebraska Spur 34C, and remove and replace six bridges on Highway 41, roads officials said. Part of the proposed project would require detouring northbound and southbound South 148th Road. The replacement of the bridge over Indian Creek would affect the Homestead Corridor Trail, which crosses Highway 41, roads officials said. A temporary trail would be built to detour the Homestead Corridor Trail. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: The Iranian defense minister, Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan and his visiting Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan have signed an agreement on the expansion of cooperation in defense sphere. The agreement envisages exchanging military experience, particularly in training of personnel, as well as an all-out cooperation in fight against terrorism and insecurity in the region, TASNIM news agency reported. The agreement was signed Nov. 14 morning during the ongoing visit of the Minister of National Defense of China Chang Wanquan to Tehran. Speaking to Chang Wanquan, the Iranian minister said that upgrading ties with China in defense and military areas is a priority of Irans defense diplomacy. Saying that the military and defense cooperation between Iran and China guarantees the peace and stability in the world as well as the region, he noted that all the regional states should be held accountable for protecting peace and stability in the Asia and Oceania region. He further blamed the expansion of terrorism in the Middle East on foreigners, saying the region has turned into a hotspot of insecurity and crises due to the foreigners meddling in the region as well as their disrespectful behavior towards the national sovereignty of the regional states. The Chinese ministers three-day visit takes place at the official invitation of Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan. Chang Wanquan is slated to meet several high-ranking Iranian officials to discuss bilateral issues as well as regional and international developments. In a "60 Minutes" interview scheduled to air Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to immediately deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants after his inauguration next January. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl, according to a preview of the interview released by CBS. "But we're getting them out of our country. They're here illegally." Stahl had pressed Trump about his campaign pledge to deport "millions and millions of undocumented immigrants." Trump told her that after securing the border, his administration would make a "determination" on the remaining undocumented immigrants in the country. "After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we're going to make a determination on the people that they're talking about who are terrific people. They're terrific people, but we are gonna make a determination at that," Trump said. "But before we make that determination ... it's very important, we are going to secure our border." His comments echoed those he had made at the start of his campaign: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump had said last June when he announced his candidacy. "They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Trump's campaign promises also included fully repealing the Affordable Care Act, forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall and banning Muslims from entering the U.S. Since winning the election, Trump and his key advisers have been backing away from some of those promises, and Republican leaders who made the Sunday political-show circuit seemed to approach the issue of mass deportations more cautiously. "I think it's difficult to do," Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" earlier Sunday morning. "First thing you have to do is secure the border and then we'll have discussions." McCarthy also hedged on the border wall, saying Republicans were focused on "securing the southern border" but with the aid of technology rather than necessarily a full-length brick-and-mortar wall. House speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that securing the border was their top priority. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force," Ryan said. "Donald Trump is not planning on that." Regarding his border wall plans, Trump told Stahl on "60 Minutes" that he would accept fencing along some of the border, as Republicans in Congress have proposed. "For certain areas, I would. But for certain areas a wall is more appropriate," Trump said. "I'm very good at this. It's called construction." On Thursday, former House speaker Newt Gingrich admitted that Trump would likely not focus on getting Mexico to pay for the wall, as the candidate had promised during his campaign but that it had been "a great campaign device." CBS had released on Saturday two preview clips of same "60 Minutes" segment, Trump's first televised interview since winning the election last week. Seated with his wife, Melania, and his four adult children, Trump spoke to Stahl about his seemingly shifting position on Obamacare, saying he would try to preserve key parts of the health care act, and also praised Hillary Clinton as "very strong and very smart." Trump told Stahl that Clinton's phone call conceding the election was "lovely" and acknowledged that making the phone call was likely "tougher for her than it would have been for me," according to previews of the interview released by CBS. "She couldn't have been nicer. She just said, 'Congratulations, Donald, well done,'" Trump told Stahl. "And I said, 'I want to thank you very much. You were a great competitor.' She is very strong and very smart." Trump's tone in the interview was in sharp contrast to his bitter attacks on the campaign trail, in which he nicknamed Clinton "Crooked Hillary" and encouraged chants of "Lock her up!" at his rallies. Among other insults, Trump also referred to his competitor as "the devil," "a bigot" and at the tail end of the final presidential debate "such a nasty woman." Trump also told Stahl that former president Bill Clinton called him the following day and "couldn't have been more gracious." "He said it was an amazing run one of the most amazing he's ever seen," Trump said. "He was very, very, really, very nice." During the campaign, Trump had tried to use Bill Clinton's infidelities as a way to attack and embarrass Hillary Clinton. For the second presidential debate, Trump had sought to intimidate his competitor by inviting women who had accused the former president of sexual abuse to sit in the Trump family box. Debate officials quashed the idea. In the interview with Stahl, Trump did not rule out calling both of the Clintons for advice during his term. "I mean, this is a very talented family," he said. "Certainly, I would certainly think about that." Trump also reiterated on "60 Minutes" that he may keep portions of the Affordable Care Act, something he had mentioned he might do after meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House on Thursday. When Stahl asked whether people with pre-existing conditions would still be covered after Trump repealed and replaced Obamacare, Trump said they would "because it happens to be one of the strongest assets." "Also, with the children living with their parents for an extended period, we're going to... very much try and keep that," Trump added, referring to portions of the health care act that cover children under their parents' insurance through age 26. "It adds cost, but it's very much something we're going to try and keep." When Stahl questioned whether there would be a gap between the repeal of Obamacare and the implementation of a new plan that could leave millions of people uninsured, Trump interrupted her. "Nope. We're going to do it simultaneously. It'll be just fine. It's what I do. I do a good job. You know, I mean, I know how to do this stuff," Trump said. "We're going to repeal and replace it. And we're not going to have, like, a two-day period and we're not going to have a two-year period where there's nothing. It will be repealed and replaced. I mean, you'll know. And it will be great health care for much less money." Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican, wrote in U.S. Sen. John McCain for president. I wanted to be very proud of my vote, said Stothert, who kicked off her re-election campaign Monday. She noted that McCain was vetted when he was the Republican nominee for president in 2008. She said she shares his philosophical ideals, he is a leader in the Senate and he is a true gentleman. Stothert said she didnt consider the McCain write-in to be wasting her vote. Wasting a vote would be (picking) someone I dont feel confidence in, she said. Stothert said shell support Donald Trump as president-elect. And she said shes a Republican. I believe in their philosophy and ideals, not based on the candidate of the moment. Stothert has said she didnt favor Trump in the Republican primary. She originally said she planned to vote for the Republican nominee. But she withdrew that statement after a tape surfaced of him using crude language to describe grabbing women and kissing them without their permission. Other Nebraska Republicans said they would still vote for Trump after the tape was released. U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of Trumps top critics from his own party. He has said he wrote in Mike Pence, the vice presidential nominee, for president. In May, delegates at the State Republican Convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution saying the party opposed any effort by current officeholders to encourage a third-party candidate. They argued that it would only help Democrats win the White House in November. Republican consultant Sam Fischer who is now Stotherts campaign manager introduced the resolution. Fischer said Stothert intended to support the Republican nominee at the time the resolution was passed but changed her mind later. I completely respect that, Fischer said. I am proud to work for her campaign. Stotherts opponent in the 2017 mayoral election, State Sen. Heath Mello, said he voted for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton. Mello noted that Clinton won in Douglas County and criticized Stotherts announcement as political expediency. After pledging to support Donald Trump as her partys nominee, the mayor refused to speak out while he attacked Gold Star families, veterans, people with disabilities, and other groups, he said in a statement Monday night. Lawmakers return this week to Capitol Hill amid a starkly different political reality from when they left town more than a month ago. Donald Trumps surprise presidential win means Republicans will soon control all levers of power at the national level, and GOP lawmakers are itching to press forward in areas where President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats previously blocked them. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said she wants to jump on the priorities she hears from Nebraskans as she travels the state: repealing the Affordable Care Act, overhauling the tax code and eliminating regulations. It will be nice to get bills to the presidents desk and have him sign them, Fischer said. Her aides already are poring over environmental regulations they have targeted such as Waters of the United States and the Clean Power Plan. Those initiatives are aimed at protecting the countrys air and water, but people in farm country worry that the water regulations will mean that drainage ditches get treated like rivers and industry warns about the business costs that would come from complying with strict air pollution standards. Fischer said shell also be looking for the new administrations plans on national security. Trump recently outlined his own agenda for the first 100 days of his presidency, and his plan includes the items Fischer cited. In addition, Trump has proposals to expand restrictions on lobbying by former lawmakers and government officials restrictions Fischer said she supports. I dont like a revolving door, Fischer said. Trump also has called for a major infrastructure package. Fischer, who has made infrastructure one of her signature issues, said that shell take a look at the new presidents proposals but that shes not ready to sign off on a bunch of spending just for the sake of it. Instead, she said she hopes Trump will consider her own proposal that would create a national infrastructure bank funded by $30 billion of capital captured through a tax repatriation holiday. Thats where companies holding money overseas to avoid taxes are allowed to move it to the United States at a lower tax rate than normal. Republicans kept their Senate majority, but not by much. Theyll most likely have a 52-48 edge, far short of the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. Some of the GOP proposals can be accomplished through the rather arcane procedural process known as budget reconciliation, which is not subject to the filibuster. Fischer said she expects that Republicans will use that method for repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Senate Republicans also will be under significant pressure from their core supporters to change the filibuster rules if Democrats block their initiatives in areas such as immigration. Fischer said legislation is better when both parties have a hand in crafting it. The filibuster, she said, serves as a valuable tool in forcing Republicans and Democrats to work together. Still, she wasnt prepared to rule out an end to the filibuster rules. Well see, she said. Rs 500 crore wedding celebrations begin in Bengaluru Bengaluru oi-Anusha The Bengaluru Palace had turned a fortress as preparations for Janardhana Reddy's daughter Brahmini Reddy's wedding were underway over the last few days. The family arrived in Bengaluru on Saturday and the lavish wedding ceremonies started on Sunday evening. [Also Read: A Rs 500 crore wedding? Demonetise that!] Heavy security continues to be deployed at the venue. Sunday was musical night for families of the Bride and Groom and their guests. Massive stage with heavy lighting in colorful themes was set up. Hundreds of dancers performed to film music with special performances by Janardhana Reddy's son and the couple themselves. The 4 day affair is expected to see politicians, businessmen and celebrities alike. Taking lavish to a different level, Janardhana Reddy's team of designers have turned the Bengaluru Palace and its surrounding into the ancient kingdom of Vijayanagar with a temple, market street, an entire village set and 2 makeshift houses for the families of the Bride and the Groom. Being touted as a nauseating display of wealth at a time when the country is reeling under the crisis of demonetisation, unofficial estimates peg the wedding at Rs 500 crore. The marriage ceremony is slated to take place on November 16 inside the grand set of a temple from Hampi. Reddy's family members estimate the number of guests at 50,000 with performances by Bollywood actors including Shah Rukh Khan. Close confidante of Janardhana Reddy and MP from Karnataka, Sriramulu is looking after the arrangements at Palace Grounds. Speaking to the media, Janardhana Reddy said, " I will furnish information on my income and marriage expenditure with the concerned departments within a month. Journalists can also obtain information through RTI for an interesting report". Considering the blatant display of wealth many prominent faces are expected to give the wedding a miss. Karnataka's Health Minister Ramesh Kumar was the first to declare that he won't attend the wedding. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 18:54 [IST] Demonetisation: Angry customer damages ATM kiosk in Chennai Chennai oi-Anusha Angered over ATM not dispensing cash, a customer reportedly broke the glass of an ATM in Chennai on Sunday. The local police have registered a case in this regard and have begun investigations. [Also Read: Demonetisation- What is a Micro ATM ] HDFC ATM in Ponneri locality of Chennai had been dysfunctional for 4 days since the announcement of demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes came. The 'Out of Service' board was finally removed late Sunday night following which people started queuing up outside the ATM. One of the customers who had lined up outside the ATM is said to have pelted stones at the kiosk's glass when the machine didn't dispense any money. The local police have registered a case on unknown person for indulging in vandalism. It was also reported that the ATM has no security guards deployed at the time of the event. CCTVs installed at the ATM kiosk is being verified to ascertain the identity of the person who damaged the ATM kiosk. OneIndia News Why was Jayalalithaa's statement from hospital released twice? Chennai oi-Anusha For the first time since her hospitalisation Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa issued a statement addressing people and party workers on Sunday. Within minutes of the statement being issued, speculations were raised about it. [Also Read: I have taken a rebirth says Jayalalithaa ] The AIADMK took to its Twitter account to release what they called J Jayalalithaa's statement from the hospital. Typed in Tamil, the letter neither had the Chief Minister's signature nor was typed in the party letterhead. Hours after questions were raised over the same, the party put out a fresh statement but this time on a letter head and the Chief Minister's signature. "The first statement must have been put out in a hurry but I assure you that Amma has signed on it. As you already are aware, Prathap Reddy had said that she was well", said party spokesperson C R Saraswati to OneIndia. J Jayalalithaa's signature in the second statement copy released by the AIADMK has given rise to speculation as well since it varies greatly from her signature on official documents including the affidavait that was submitted to the election commission during the previous assembly polls of Tamil Nadu as recently as April this year. "Amma has signed in Tamil. It is her signature. Doctors from London have said she is recovering. They can't be politiking over this. Most people within the party weren't aware of such a statement coming out. I was also surprised but people and party workers alike are happy to hear from Amma. The letter came directly from Apollo", said the spokesperson. The DMK, however, has questioned the timing of the statement and has accused the AIADMK only caring about votes. "AIADMK thinks it is enough to care about people's vote than their welfare. Or is this being released as a last resort to win the elections?", asked DMK Treasurer M K Stalin. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 12:07 [IST] Caught months later, man had robbed bank and got a new look Banks warn staff over unauthorised exchange of notes India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, Nov 14: Banks have issued alerts to their employees, warning them of serious action over unauthorised transactions following demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes in India. According to a senior public sector bank officer, complaints were received that some bankers were indulging in unfair means like not maintaining records of customers who come to deposit or exchange the phased-out currency notes. Allegations were also made that some bank employees were entertaining people known to them and issuing them lower denomination currency notes many times over the limit without bothering to keep records. This is in violation of the government instructions that banks can exchange cash up to Rs 4,000 per person once till November 24. The central government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes effective November 8 midnight leading to a sharp demand for smaller currency notes. Banks and ATMs saw huge queues of people trying to exchange or withdraw money across the country, with most coming back empty-handed. Read More: Demonetisation: India is going to face serious recession, predicts economist Prabhat Patnaik The government has placed restrictions on the amount that an individual can exchange or withdraw from the banks. Employees of the public sector banks on Monday received instructions from higher ups that they need to enter the data of their customers in the banking software. "Further, it was made very clear that the exchange of cash has to be recorded in CCTV and this footage has to be shared with RBI. It was also informed that any non-compliance would be dealt by RBI and (the) bank very seriously," read the note sent to the bank branches. Some of the head offices of banks warned against this "dangerous" trend stating that serious action would be taken against the staff if they indulged in such activities. "All the branches are instructed to sensitise their staff and desist from such practices. They should understand that they are diluting the government of India guidelines which attracts serious punishment," said the note sent by bank head offices to their branches. Many other banks have also asked their branch offices to keep a strict vigil and maintain proper records of all the customers who exchange or deposit the now-spiked currency. IANS Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out Childline Se Dosthi: Campaign to reach out to politicians, Aam Aadmi, to help underprivileged kids India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Bengaluru, Nov 14: On the occasion of Children's Day, celebrated every year on November 14, Childline Bengaluru has kick-started its campaign--Childline Se Dosthi (CSD)--on Monday. The week-long campaign, which will end on November 20, is an attempt to reach out to the masses to create awareness about various problems faced by underprivileged children. Childline is a country-wide NGO which helps children in times of emergency, through its toll free number 1098. "In India, millions of children are homeless and out of school. They have no access to shelter, food and education. They are subjected to brutality and torture. We also have millions of children who are working in homes, dhabas and industries, in spite of a ban on child labour. The campaign is to engage civil society to reach out to underprivileged children and help them," said Nagasimha G Rao, nodal coordinator of Childline, Bengaluru. "The aim is to capture the attention of those who are unaware about Childline and its ongoing efforts to support as well as help people play their part in protecting children," he added. As a part of the campaign, the members of Childline and several kids will visit schools, police stations, legislative assembly and other public places. "The children will tie friendship bands--especially designed for the campaign with a Childline logo on it--on the wrists of teachers, police, politicians and common man to build friendship with them. Then we will explain to them that they can help children in distress by getting in touch with us through our toll free number 1098," said Rao. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 10:53 [IST] BRO Recruitment 2022: Check details for 328 vacancies, last date and salary details here Children's Day Google doodle is by Pune schoolgirl India oi-IANS By Ians English Pune, Nov 14 An 11-year-old schoolgirl from Pune has designed Monday's Google doodle, celebrating Children's Day that also marks the birth anniversary of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The student, Anvita Prashant Telang, studies in Vibgyor High School in Balewadi at Pune and her design was chosen nationally for being an imaginative, thoughtful and inspiring doodle, titled 'Enjoying Every Moment'. "I am very happy... Since the time the doodle went up, I have been getting congratulatory messages from friends and others... They all want a party," Anvita said. The Class 6 student submitted her esign on this year's theme, "If I could teach anyone anything, it would be..." for the Doodle4Google national contest earlier this year. Her creativity and vision towards developing "a better world and healthy lifestyle" are reflected in her colourful doodle showcasing how everyone should 'Enjoy Every Moment' by appreciating simple things around us and live life stress-free. Referring to the contest, Google India head of marketing Sapna Chadha said they were overwhelmed by the great participation from talented and creative young artists year-on-year since 2009. "With Doodle4Google competition, we aim to celebrate and promote creativity, passion and imagination in our younger users," Chadha said. Now, Anvita has another surprise in store on Monday evening -- some great gifts from her equally proud parents who learnt on Friday evening that she was the winner this year. Anvita, who loves to draw, emphasised how to value the little and simple things of life as great sources of happiness, and feels people must lead happy and contended lives. Reflecting her thoughts, the doodle shows a bunch of small boys and girls having fun, hanging from tree brances, playing with water, balloons, kites, flying and even daydreaming, in a natural green environment with flowers, butterflies, flying fish, birds and other aquatic life. Besides Anvita, the other group finalists were B. Shrisha of Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan, Vishakhapatnam (Class I-III), and Akashdeep of Kendriya Vidyalala, Ranchi (Class VII-X). The jury which selected her, included cartoonist Ajit Ninan, Art Director Savio Mascarenhas, creative artist Rob and Doodle team leader Ryan Germick, besides 100,000 public votes. IANS CPI (M) dubs Modi's emotional speech a "drama" India oi-Vikas By Vikas New Delhi, Nov 14 Senior CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat on Monday taunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for getting emotional during his speech in Belgavi over the demonetisation issue and dubbed it as a "drama". "Should we see the Prime Minister's tears or of a widow who is not getting her wage at the end of hard day's work (due to demonetisation). Should we see Pirme Minjister's teras or of those lakhs of plantation workers who are not getting their salaries? What is all this natakbaaji (Drama) by the Prime Minister," Karat told news agency ANI. Prime Minister Modi, during his speech yesterday, became emotional while saying that he had sacrificed everything for the nation. "Everything we do is for the betterment of the nation. I will leave no stone un-turned to transform the country...I have made sacrifices for, left even my family, for the nation," he said. Meanwhile, long queues were seen outside banks and ATMs across the nation for the fifith consecutive day today. People faced a great deal of inconvenience as several ATMs kept going went dry due to cash crunch. In a major attempt to tackle hoarding of black money, corruption and terror financing, Prime Minister Modi, on November 8, announced that all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes would cease to be valid in all forms of transactions. Oneindia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 11:54 [IST] Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 14 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: A top Iranian commander has called on China to stage joint military drills with the Islamic Republic. Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri has expressed his countrys readiness for carrying out joint military exercises with China, Mehr news agency reported. At a meeting with the Minister of National Defense of China Chang Wanquan, the Iranian commander touched upon the two countries plans to upgrade Iran-China ties to a strategic partnership of cooperation, saying Tehran and Beijing currently enjoy proper ties in defense sphere. Earlier on the same day Iran and China inked an agreement to deepen ties in defense and military spheres. The Chinese minister is in Tehran on a three-day visit at the official invitation of his Iranian counterpart Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan. Chang Wanquan is slated to meet several high-ranking Iranian officials to discuss bilateral issues as well as regional and international developments. Five years of demonetisation: Notes in circulation on rise; so are digital payments PM Modi should admit that demonetistion a failure: Owaisi on cash seizure in UP Demonetisation: Government ups ATM withdrawal, old-notes exchange limit India oi-PTI New Delhi, Nov 14: With public anger rising across the country over limited cash availability, the government tonight eased key restrictions including raising daily withdrawal limit from bank counters and ATM as well as hiking the amount of old and now defunct currency notes that can be exchanged. To augment cash supplies, newly printed hard-to-fake Rs. 500 notes were also released in market. However, banks in various parts of the country will remian closed today on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti. After a review by Finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs. 2000 and new Rs. 500 notes was increased from Rs. 4000 to Rs. 4500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs. 2,500 from Rs. 2,000 a day. The weekly limit of Rs. 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs. 24,000. The maximum limit of Rs. 10,000 per day on such withdrawals has been removed, the ministry said in a statement. "Banks have been advised to increase the issuance and use of mobile wallets and debit/credit cards as also to provide them to those customers and establishments not having access to these non-cash means of payment," it said. Also, the last date for submission of the annual life certificate for the government pensioners which is to be submitted in November every year has been extended up to January 15, 2017. Finance Ministry this evening reviewed the position regarding availability and distribution of notes of all denominations in different parts of the country. Instructions have been issued to the banks and post offices to ensure proper distribution of all notes, including those of smaller denominations, up to the last mile through mobile banking vans and Banking Correspondents (BCs) to ease pressure. While the old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 currency notes were demonetised from the midnight of November 8, a brand new Rs. 2000 note was introduced on November 10. "In the first four days (from November 10th to 13th, upto 5 pm ), about Rs. 3 lakh crore of old Rs. 500 and 1000 bank notes have been deposited in the banking system and about Rs. 50,000 crores has been dispensed to customers by either withdrawal from their accounts or withdrawal from ATM's or by exchange at the counter," the statement said. Within three four days, the banking system has handled about 21 crore transactions. Further based on the review of the reports received from the States, banks and other sources, the ministry decided that continuous coordination is to be done with RBI, banks and post offices to make all denomination notes available at all locations. "Instructions have been given to the banks and post offices to ensure proper distribution of all denomination notes. Banks have also been especially advised to ensure the availability and distribution of small denomination notes," it said. Also, Chief Secretaries of the states have been asked to identify the rural pockets where availability of cash has been a problem and provide all support to ensure the last mile distribution of small denomination of notes is done through mobile banking vans and Banking Correspondents (BCs), the statement said. "It has been reported that certain business houses viz. hospitals, caterers , tent houses etc. are not accepting Cheques/Demand Drafts and online payment transfer from customers. It is advised that in such cases customer can make a complaint to the concerned District Magistrates/District Administration for action against such establishments," the statement said. All banks have been advised to arrange mobile banking vans to the extent possible at major hospitals to carry out emergency banking transaction for patients. Banks have also been asked to make arrangements for separate queues for senior citizens and physically handicapped. Separate queues will also be arranged for exchange of cash to cash and transactions against bank accounts. "State governments have been requested to facilitate opening of new bank accounts as a part of financial inclusion programme," the statement added. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 10:07 [IST] Demonetisation move has led to financial anarchy: Sena India oi-PTI Mumbai, Nov 14: Notwithstanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emotional appeal to people to cooperate with him to weed out illegal money, Shiv Sena today described the demonetisation as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. Lashing out further, the ruling ally said instead of striking Pakistan, Modi has wounded Indian citizens who do not have any black money and the few who actually possess illegal funds have safely parked it in foreign banks. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said. The Sena alleged that the path adopted by Modi to halt black money flow is "demonic" and "unsystematic" that has resulted in "financial anarchy" in the nation. "Instead of striking Pakistan, PM Modi has struck and wounded Indian citizens and mocked their nationalism by saluting them for bearing the anarchy," it said. "Black money is not held by ordinary citizens who are standing in queues but a handful of people who have parked their money in foreign banks before the demonetisation announcement. What action has been taken against them?" it said. Today, roads are empty, shops have no business, vegetable markets have no buyers, labourers have no work and petrol pumps are slowly getting shut for lack of change, the junior alliance partner said. Modi, in an impassioned plea to the nation yesterday, asked for 50 days to weed out the ill-gotten wealth in India. Blending emotion with aggression, the PM mounted a counteroffensive against the opposition over demonetisation of high-value currency notes, promising more anti-graft measures in future "even if I'm burned alive". PTI Demonetisation - Opposition stands united against Modi India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer The opposition stood united today against the Government's decision to demonetise the Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. The Congress, TMC, AAP, SP, Left and BSP termed the decision of the government as a failed step. After a meeting held today, the opposition leaders would once again meet at 2 PM tomorrow to chalk out a strategy ahead of the Parliament session. [Also Read: Demonetisation: Angry customer damages ATM kiosk in Chennai] Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Admi Party leader, Arvind Kejriwal said that the government had no game plan which resulted in people struggling. No irony can be bigger than the Prime Minister taking the blessing of NCP leader, Sharad Pawar to fight the menace of black money, Kejriwal also said. [Also Read: What is Currency Demonetization?] BSP leader Mayawati said that Modi is losing the support of people. His rally at Ghazipur had a poor turn out because of his decision, she also said. On one hand he speaks of fighting corruption and on the other his volunteers brought people in trains for the rally without paying for the tickets, she also said. OneIndia News Digital Rupee in India: What is blockchain technology and how does it work? Demonetised notes worth Rs 1.87 cr seized in Nagpur, 4 detained India oi-PTI Nagpur, Nov 14: Four persons have been detained after cash worth Rs 1.87 crore in the denominations of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes was seized from an apartment here during a raid, police said today. The Ambazari police conducted the raid at the apartment in Hill Top area here last night based on a tip off. The money stashed in a travel bag was seized and taken to Ambazari police station along with the four persons, including a Chartered Accountant. The policemen then used a counting machine to ascertain the exact value of the cash seized. As per preliminary report, 172 bundles of Rs 1,000 notes (total Rs 1.72 crore) and 31 bundles of Rs 500 notes (Rs 15.5 lakh), which have been demonetised, were seized. The Income Tax Department was alerted about the seizure to initiate appropriate action, police said. The city police information centre confirmed the seizure and said the cash and custody of four persons was handed over to the Income Tax authorities. PTI Make in India: Not Spain, Gujarat facility to build C-295 for Indian Air Force now Demonetised notes worth Rs 4.5 cr seized in Gujarat India oi-IANS By Ians English Ahmedabad, Nov 14 The demonetised 500- and 1,000-rupee currency notes worth Rs 4.45 crore have been seized from three separate places in Gujarat, the state police said on Monday. Acting on a tip-off on Monday, the police intercepted a mini truck in Rajkot district and seized 10 bags full of demonetised high-value currency notes with a face value of Rs 2.5 crore from four persons. The truck belonged to a local pump manufacturing company, which was allegedly taking the cash to its owner's residence at Menderna. The cash was handed over to the Income Tax Department for further investigation, the police said. A team from Jetpur police station in the same district nabbed two persons from a car with cash worth Rs 50 lakh in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. Such notes worth around Rs 1.45 crore were also seized by the police from two different places in Narmada and Vadodara districts on Sunday. Two persons were also arrested. IANS Five years of demonetisation: Notes in circulation on rise; so are digital payments PM Modi should admit that demonetistion a failure: Owaisi on cash seizure in UP Demonetisation - These trades are getting a cold response India oi-Jagriti New Delhi, Nov 14: In a major attempt to tackle hoarding of black money, corruption and terror financing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on November 8, announced that all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes would cease to be valid in all forms of transactions. The surprise step announced by PM Modi forced people to rush to banks and ATMs for Rs 100 notes. The ban on higher banknotes has kept people away from shopping and watching movies in theatre. It has badly affected the the big fat Indian wedding season .The wedding festivity has turned into nightmare for both traders and families. The sudden move announced by government left people in lurch. Public have to wait in long queues in front of banks across the country to exchange their now invalid currency notes for new currency notes. What is Currency Demonetization? The demonetisation has also affected the famous donkey fair held annually on the banks of river Kshipra in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. According to reports, demonetisation has also hit business of malls, multiplexes and pubs during the weekend as the sales dipped by 20%-50%. It has also forced many Bollywood filmmakers to postponed their movie release dates. OneIndia News (With inputs from PTI) Don't worry, don't panic, Arjun Ram Meghwal tells people in NE India oi-IANS By Ians English Shillong, Nov 14 Union Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal on Monday appealed to all citizens not to panic and have patience until normalisation of all modes of banking operations in the next few days. "The government has taken many steps to address the issue. There is nothing to hurry about as sufficient time is there to deposit old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in banks," he told journalists at the North Eastern Council headquarters in the Meghalaya capital town. "We have asked all the public sector, rural and cooperative banks and even banking correspondents to take suitable actions. People need not worry and need not panic...the government is very much monitoring the situation." Demonetisation is a very good move and people are largely happy, Meghwal added. The minister further said that the Reserve Bank of India has already commenced issuance of new Rs 500 currency notes, while the government has instructed the banks to increase the daily withdrawal limit to Rs 2,500. "Although people had to stand in long queues in the last couple of days, things are gradually easing out," he said. To a query, Meghwal reiterated the central government's stand that demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will help in curbing black money, terrorism and corruption. IANS What if Owaisi had? Muslim users on Twitter blast Kejriwal for asking for Hindu God images on currency notes Why not Ambedkar's pic: Cong leader over Kejriwal's Lakshmi-Ganesh on currency notes remark Fears of 'fake' new notes: Some quick ways to identify authenticity India oi-IANS By Ians English Mumbai, Nov 14: With several complaints and rumours about "fake new notes" of Rs 2,000 denomination, there is some wariness among the people as the notes come into wider circulation. Notes of Rs 500 denomination would be circulated soon by banks. However, the new notes not only have several security features difficult to counterfeit, there are many ways the users can verify if the notes are genuine. The touch and feel of the notes can be used for this. The seven "bleed lines" on the side of the Rs 2,000 notes, and five lines on Rs 500 notes are in raised printing or intaglio. The security thread in both the notes changes colour from green to blue at different angles. Also, the numeral 500 and 2,000 on the right side also change colour when seen at different angles. These can be easily identified by any user and are very hard to counterfeit, according to experts. The new notes have changed colours. While the Rs 2,000 note's paper is in magenta, the Rs 500 note is in stone gray. Read More: Cash Crisis: PM Narendra Modi holds meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation The Rs 2,000 note is part of the Mahatma Gandhi (New) series, with a motif of Mars orbiter Mangalyaan on the reverse. Size is 66mm x 166 mm. Other features of the new Rs 2,000 note are as follows: Front side features . See through register where the numeral 2,000 can be seen when note is held up against light . Latent image of 2,000 can be seen when the note is tilted . Colour shift security thread with 'RBI' and '2,000' . Watermarks of Mahatma Gandhi and electrotype 2,000 numeral . Number panel with numerals growing from small to big on top left and bottom right sides Reverse side features . Swachh Bharat logo . Mangalayan motif and year of printing, 2016 The new Rs 500 note at 63mm x 150mm is smaller in size than previous one. Front side features . See through register in denomination numeral . Latent image of the denomination numeral . Orientation of Mahatma Gandhi's portrait changed . Portrait and electrotype watermarks . Number panel with numerals growing from small to big on top left and bottom right sides . Features for visually impaired like circle with Rs 500 in raised print on the right Reverse side features . Swachh Bharat logo . Red Fort image with the Indian flag . Circle with Rs 500 in Devnagari on the right IANS Shallow water, rocky bottom may have led to so many deaths in Morbi tragedy Gujarat government opens 52 generic medicine stores India oi-PTI Ahmedabad, Nov 14 Gujarat Government today inaugurated 52 generic medicine stores across the state wherein medicines would be sold at a much cheaper rate than the market price. One such store, named as 'Deendayal Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Store', was inaugurated today inside Civil Hospital premises here by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, an official release said. Medicines sold in these stores will be 30 to 80 per cent cheaper than those being sold in the market, it said. Around 1,500 to 2,000 life saving medicines will be sold from each of these stores. Rupani said such stores would give a huge relief to poor and middle class citizens. The Chief Minister announced that his government would open 500 more stores in the next phase of expansion. Rupani also launched a mobile application - 'G-Dava', which can be used by citizens to get details about various medicines sold in generic stores as well as in private pharmacies, said the release. PTI In ISIS territory, a Maharashtra based couple spotted India oi-Vicky Bengaluru, Nov 14: The presence of a Maharashtra based couple in ISIS territory at Mosul has stunned investigators. The revelation made by an ISIS recruit from Tamil Nadu to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has left officials scrambling for missing person records. Also read: Why Indian ISIS recruits spend more time praying than fighting? The NIA has been questioning 31-year-old Subahani Haja Moideen for several days now. Moideen had returned from Iraq as he was unable to bear the bloodshed. However, upon his return to Tamil Nadu, he once again got in touch with handlers of the ISIS online and is alleged to have planned on setting up a module for the outfit in South India. I saw a Maharashtra based couple Moideen does not name the couple. He in fact says he met them very briefly at Mosul when he was there. While he says that he met the couple in ISIS territory, he, however, does not confirm if they were part of the outfit. "They were in the same territory as I was," he said. "I, however, do not know their names," he also added. Officials in Maharashtra are now checking on details of missing persons to identify this couple. So far there has been no headway made in this regard, an official informed. Several persons from Maharashtra had left the state in recent months to join the ISIS. In fact one of the four Maharashtra based youth, Areeb Majeed had joined the ISIS only to return after being told to clean toilets in Iraq. OneIndia News Tehran, Iran, November 14 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: The Islamic law allows Iran to cut down on the number of instances of capital punishment for crime, Minister of Justice Mostafa Pourmohammadi told Trend . The Holy Quran says "Do not exceed norms in killing," he said, adding that "Punishment should be preemptive and proportionate to crime. You have to kill one who kills, and you have to obliterate the corrupt. But in its own right and to the minimum." The minister further said that the record has shown that some capital punishments in Iran have not been effective. "We will investigate to see where it is effective and what the outcome is," he said. "However, you cannot let go of one who has killed somebody if the next of kin of the murdered person does not forgive the murderer." The Islamic law regards life as personal right, meaning if someone kills somebody, they have deprived them of their right and that the next of kin of the murdered person have a right to plea for the killing of the murderer, which is called Qisas in the Islamic jurisprudence. The EU and Iran sat together in Brussels on November 9 for the first time since the conclusion of the nuclear deal to exchange ideas on human rights, one major sticking point in bilateral ties. The human rights debate has increasingly emerged as an important component for stronger ties between the two sides. In a recent document on the future of relations with Iran in the post-sanctions period, the EU has particularly expressed opposition to Irans use of the death penalty as punishment for drug traffickers. The death punishment was also a major theme of a March report by UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran Ahmad Shaheed who called on Tehran to, consider a moratorium on the use of death penalty, among other things. In October, Mohammad Javad Larijani, Irans Human Rights Council chief, said the judicial system "may" reconsider capital punishment for drug smugglers, limiting it to drug lords only. The human rights debate has increasingly emerged as an important component for stronger ties between Iran and the EU. Also, last week Hassan Norouzi, a spokesman with the Iranian Parliaments Legal and Judicial Committee, announced that a motion signed by 76 legislators would be brought to the parliament in an effort to rethink capital punishment for drug smugglers. The motion, if passed, will rule out the capital punishment for first-time drug smugglers, many of whom are juveniles. ISIS defies Quran again- Women promoted from sex slaves to suicide bombers India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Nov 14: The ISIS wants more women recruits. The latest clarion call given by the ISIS is to hunt for women in large numbers. However this time around their role would not be restricted to being sex robots or doing daily chores in ISIS camps. Investigations and chatter that has been picked up from ISIS handlers suggest that the women are being used to carry out suicide strikes. The ISIS was reluctant at first to let women fight on the battle field as it is against the Quran. However there seems to be a change in strategy this time. Let women fight: The ISIS realises that the scrutiny is higher on the men. In the case of women the scrutiny is always lower and they are able to get past security checks easily. The ISIS has been facing heavy losses off late. With the ISIS losing ground in Iraq and Syria, it has decided to move to the heartland and carry out attacks in major cities across the world. For this, the ISIS has decided to use women to strike. It has been making calls to its recruiters to find as many women as possible. Currently there are several women in the ISIS, but their jobs have been restricted to being either sex slaves or to carry out daily chores. While the women in the existing camps too are being trained to carry out strikes, the ISIS is also looking for more recruits. Be it India or the rest of the world, the message is the same and that is to recruit as many women as possible. The existing male recruits too are being told to convince their wives, sisters or any woman they know to join the outfit. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 11:23 [IST] Is Chhattisgarh govt doing enough about Maoist menace? The Magadh zone: Why naxals are desperate to revive it? Security forces gun down Maoist commander India oi-PTI Raipur, Nov 14: A Maoist commander was today gunned down in a gun battle with security forces in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said. The skirmish took place in the wee hours between District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the jungles of Dornapal Police Station limits, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (Anti-naxal operations), Jitendra Shukla, told PTI. Acting on a specific input about the presence of a group of armed ultras in the forest between Arlampalli and Medwahi villages, around 500 kms from here, a squad of DRG was dispatched to the location late last night, he said. When the DRG party reached the target area in the early hours, they came under heavy fire from Maoist which led to gun-battle between both the sides, the ASP said. However, ultras soon fled from the spot. During the search, body of a naxal clad in 'uniform', a country made rifle, some 12 bore live ammunition, wire and other items were recovered from the spot, he said. The killed Maoist has been identified as Vanjam Nanda, a very active Militia commander against whom at least 12 warrants issued by various courts in grave naxal offences were pending, the ASP said. Nanda had served as the head of Janatana Sarkar group Maoists in Arlampalli, Medwahi, Tonguda and Toyapara villages of the region, he said. PTI How the flame of Azadi was kept ablaze by the tribal community: PM Modi explains Modi invokes Nehru's legacy to target Congress India oi-Vikas By Vikas Ghazipur, Nov 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday invoked Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's legacy to attack the Congress party, which has been relentlessly criticising the Centre over the demonetisation issue. Speaking at the launch of a railway project in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, the Prime Minister said he would fulfill what Pandit Nehru wanted to do. "Pandit Nehru, your family and party abuse me, but I am here on November 14, your birthday, to complete work left undone from your time," he said. "In 1962, Ghazipur MP told Pandit Nehru about dire state of poor in Purvanchal, then Pandit ji formed a committee. After Pandit Nehru passed away, many PMs came and went but that committee report is still lost in files," he added. Modi vowed to re-open those files, adding that it was something the Congress and successive Prime Minister's did not do. "No one can pay such a tribute to Pandit Ji," he said. Modi said his government was voted to power to free the nation of the black money menace. "I will never let anyone loot the money that belongs to the poor of India...Yes, those against me are strong people. But, I will not be scared of them," he further said. Modi further recalled the emergency imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and said the Congress turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months just to stay in power. In a major attempt to tackle hoarding of black money, corruption and terror financing, Prime Minister Modi, on November 8, announced that all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes would cease to be valid in all forms of transactions. The opposition has been attacking the government over the inconvinience faced by the people to exchange the banned currency notes from the banks. Oneindia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 15:51 [IST] With Islamic radicalisation running so deep, why an NIA branch in every state matters NIA finds address where Jihadi literature is published India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Nov 14: The National Investigation Agency during the course of its probe into a terror strike in Jammu and Kashmir has found a booklet that was published at the Da-ul-Andalus or the the DuA. The DuA is incidentally the publishing arm of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity wing of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The DuA located at 4 Lake Road, Chauburji at Lahore is into publishing propaganda material for the Lashkar-e-Tayiba recruits. The unit is located near the Masjid al-Qudisa of which Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief Hafiz Saeed is the chief patron. This is where the Jihadi literature is printed: A booklet that was found on one of the Handwara attackers was traced to to the above mentioned printing press in Lahore. The booklet titled Hash-up-Muslim had verses and other inspirational material for the jihadis. Fahadullah, one of the jihadis who attempted a strike on a army camp at Handwara had with him this booklet. The attempt to attack the Rashtriya Rifles camp at Langate in Handwara, Jammu and Kashmir was foiled. Investigations found that Fahadullah was taking orders from his handler, Saqi. He had with him the booklet which he was reading for inspiration. Apart from this, he had also scribbled codes on the booklet, investigations also found. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 10:53 [IST] Five years of demonetisation: Notes in circulation on rise; so are digital payments PM Modi should admit that demonetistion a failure: Owaisi on cash seizure in UP Demonetisation Horror: Sad, but true, people are dying, fighting, while waiting in bank, ATM queues India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer New Delhi, Nov 14: Surely it can't get any worse than this, as everyday people are dying due to exhaustion and heart attack during their never-ending wait in long queues in front of banks and ATMs across the country. On Sunday, two elderly men died, one each in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, due to suspected heart attack as they were waiting outside banks, say reports. On Saturday, reports say three people--one from Mumbai and two from Kerala died while they were waiting in long queues outside banks. If reports are to be believed, in the last five days around 14 people have died as they waited in front of banks and ATMs to exchange and withdraw money in the wake of the demonetisation of high value currency notes announced by the Narendra Modi-led government on November 8. Demonetisation: India is going to face serious recession, predicts economist Prabhat Patnaik The images on our television screens bring home the horror and struggle people are undergoing as they tried their best to get hold of some cash to conduct their day today activities. Chaotic scenes outside banks and ATMs have become normal feature. Scuffles among customers in banks and ATMs have also been reported from across the country. In the midst of the ongoing cash crisis, Modi met his senior ministers past midnight today to discuss plans to avoid further trouble for the people. The government also relaxed cash withdrawal limits including removing a per-day cap of Rs. 10,000, increasing the weekly limit to Rs. 24,000 from Rs. 20,000 and allowed exchange of bills over the counter at banks to reach Rs. 4,500 instead of Rs. 4,000. From automated teller machines, individuals will now be able to take out up to Rs. 2,500 of cash per day instead of Rs. 2,000 per day, the finance ministry said in a statement. Experts say the ongoing cash crisis is not going to end soon, especially after the PM on Sunday asked the nation to bear the brunt till December end. OneIndia News IT industry veteran appeals to PM for a 'corruption-free' Karnataka Thailand: PM Prayuth can stay in office, court says UK PM Liz Truss resigns after 45 days in office, successor to be elected next week Iraq gets a new government after a year of deadlock PM Modi addresses rally in Ghazipur: Here are his top quotes India oi-Jagriti Ghazipur, Nov 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday addressed his first public rally in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh where he flagged off Shabd Bhedi Express between Ghazipur and Kolkata. During his rally in Ghazipur he spoke about the demonetization. Here are the top quotes delivered during the rally in Ghazipur The inconvenience faced by the common man due to demonetisation will not go in vain. The poor are sleeping in peace while the corrupt are taking sleeping pills. Poor's hard earned money safe, but will not spare the corrupt: Modi The banning of big currency notes was a major step against counterfeit currency which was feeding terrorism and Maoism. My justice is a little 'karak', like my chai: Modi "I am trained to make 'kadak' (strong) tea since my childhood and I know poor people like this type of tea, while the rich feel its bitterness," he said in reference to his beginning as a tea seller. "I am the ninth Prime Minister from UP, and I have intentionally chosen this day for my address, because on Nehru's birthday, those who misled the country should know, that the recommendations that were made in 1962, have remained unfulfilled even in 2016," Modi said addressing a rally here. I will not spare those with unaccounted Rs 2.5 crore cash, and those who have stashed money under the bed." OneIndia News How the flame of Azadi was kept ablaze by the tribal community: PM Modi explains Cash Crisis: PM Narendra Modi holds meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation India oi-PTI New Delhi, Nov 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with senior ministers past midnight today to review demonetisation and its impact. The meeting at Prime Minister's residence was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, I&B Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Power, Coal and Mines Minister Piyush Goyal and top officials of the Finance ministry. The meeting came amid continuing chaos and growing public anger across the country over limited cash availability following the surprise demonetisation of two higher value currency notes by Modi. There was little respite for cash-starved people queueing up outside banks and ATMs yesterday, with branches witnessing unprecedented rush since early morning and leading to arguments and scuffles. Earlier in the evening, after a review by Finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1000 rupee notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs 2000 and new Rs 500 notes was increased from Rs 4000 to Rs 4500 per day. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. The weekly limit of Rs 20,000 for withdrawal from bank counters has been increased to Rs 24,000. The maximum limit of Rs 10,000 per day on such withdrawals has been removed, the ministry said in a statement. PTI How the flame of Azadi was kept ablaze by the tribal community: PM Modi explains President, PM greet the nation on Guru Nanak Jayanti India oi-PTI New Delhi, Nov 14: President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today extended their greetings to the nation on the occasion of birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji. Asserting that Guru's universal vision and humanism have been inspiration for all, President asked people to strengthen the bonds of togetherness. "Universal vision & humanism of Guru Nanak Devji have been an inspiration to people everywhere. Let us all unite to bring happiness in the lives of the suffering & strive for the betterment of humanity," he said. Mukherjee asked all to endeavour to follow the Guru's profound teachings and work to strengthen the bonds of togetherness. In a series of tweets, the President conveyed wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the Guru's birth anniversary. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also greeted everyone, on the auspicious occasion of Gurupurab. "Gurupurab wishes to everyone. The inspiring teachings of the venerable Guru Nanak guide us in creating a prosperous and harmonious society", the Prime Minister said. PTI At least 9 students killed after boat capsizes in Cambodia river As the countdown clock struck zero, rocket of Aakash BYJUS took off from Bandra Bandstand School exams conducted smoothly after months of Kashmir unrest India oi-IANS By Ians English Srinagar, Nov 14 Tens of thousands of students sat for their Class 12 annual exams on Monday after four months of unrest during which schools remained shut across the Kashmir Valley. Officials said nearly 95 per cent of 45,000 students appeared on the first day of the examinations across 484 centres in the valley. "The Class 12 examinations were conducted smoothly," Zahoor Ahmad Chatt, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (BOSE), told IANS here. "The percentage of students taking this exam is normal given the averages over the last many years. There are no reports of any untoward incident from anywhere during the conduct of the exams." Authorities made elaborate arrangements of security at all these exam centres where police and paramilitary security forces were deployed in strength. Parents ferried children to the exam centres using different modes of private transport as a separatist-sponsored shutdown continued. Examination of Class 10 are to begin on Tuesday for which some 55,000 students have been enrolled. Chatt said 98 per cent of Class 10 students have already taken their admit cards. Since all educational institutions, including schools, have remained closed since July 9, the authorities decided to allow a 50 per cent cut in the syllabus for those students willing to take the exams. IANS Senior judge stays away as SC collegium finalises names of judges India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Nov 14: Justice J Chelameswar stayed away from the recent collegium meeting held to finalise the names of judges to be elevated to the Supreme Court of India. Justice Chelameswar who is one of the five judges in the Supreme Court collegium stayed away from the meeting. The names of 7 High Court Chief Justices which were finalised by the collegium were later circulated to Justice Chelameswar. It is learnt that Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur tried to convince Justice Chelameswar to attend the meet, but that exercise went in vain. Justice Chelameswar objects The collegium is understood to have favoured the elevation of the following Chief Justices of the High Courts. Justice Manjula Chellur (Bombay), Justice Deepak Gupta (Chattisgarh), Justice N N Paul Vasanthkumar (J&K), Justice Subhash Reddy (Gujarat), Justice Navin Sinha (Rajasthan), Justice Ahmed Mir (Himachal Pradesh), K M Joseph (Uttarakhand). These names were circulated to Justice Chelameswar. He is understood to have objected to one of the names. He even conveyed the same in writing to the collegium. The collegium will have to take a final call before sending the names to the union government for clearance. It may be recalled that in the National Judicial Appointments Commission matter, Justice Chelameswar was the lone dissenting member on the Bench. The Supreme Court had strict down the NJAC act while upholding the process of appointing judges to the higher judiciary through the collegium system. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 9:42 [IST] The EU foreign minsters are ready to work now with the new US administration under Donald Trump from from the very first days of its functioning, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini said, Sputnik reported. An informal meeting of the European Union's Foreign Ministers took place in Brussels on Sunday evening. The ministers discussed a wide range of issues, with a particular emphasis on the change of US foreign policy under Trump. "We have decided together to engage with the incoming administration, even from these very first weeks of transition, we will continue to work day and night with the current administration, but also preparing the ground for the change of administration in January, and obviously, will be glad not only to visit Washington soon, but also invite the future Secretary of State," Mogherini told reporters following the meeting. She said that the main issues in the EU-US agenda would be climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, Iran nuclear deal, trade and "all the crises we have around us." "We had a very fruitful, good meeting with the [EU] foreign ministers and I can say there is unity among all the 28 [EU member states] on first of all to continue working on strength of the Trans-Atlantic relation the European Union and the United States are partners, and will continue to be partners to what concerns us," the diplomat said. Trump's inauguration will be held on January 20, 2017. SC allows 3 Jain Temples in Mumbai to open Why is it so challenging for Hindus and Muslims to separately pray at Gyanvapi Mosque? Prayers for peace and candles in UK Parliament to celebrate Diwali Thousands throng gurdwaras to mark Gurpurab India oi-IANS By Ians English Chandigarh, Nov 14 Thousands of devotees thronged gurdwaras across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh on Monday to offer prayers on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' - the birth anniversary of the first Sikh guru, Nanak Dev. The holiest of Sikh shrines 'Harmandar Sahib', popularly known as the Golden Temple, in Amritsar and other gurdwaras elsewhere saw religious fervour on the occasion of 'Gurpurab'. Thousands of people, from various faiths, reached the Golden Temple complex early on Monday morning to offer prayers marking the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism. The shrine complex was decorated with lighting. Hymns were rendered at the holy shrine and hundreds of other gurdwaras across the region to mark the occasion. Tight security arrangements were made around all leading Sikh shrines in Punjab. At other gurdwaras in cities, towns and villages, hundreds of people were seen coming to offer prayers. 'Langars' (community kitchen), were arranged at most gurdwaras. Over 2,000 devotees, mostly Sikhs, went to neighbouring Pakistan to celebrate 'Gurpurab' at Nankana Sahib, 100 km from Lahore, at the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev, who was born there in 1469. Though around 3,000 visas were issued by the Pakistan embassy to devotees to visit the shrine, about 1,000 people opted out following recent tension between the countries and currency crunch due to demonetisation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to micro-blogging site Twitter to wish people on the occasion of Gurpurab. Gurupurab wishes to everyone. The inspiring teachings of the venerable Guru Nanak guide us in creating a prosperous & harmonious society. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) 14 November 2016 Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal also greeted people on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' and urged them to follow the Guru's teachings and maintain peace and harmony. (With IANS inputs) With just Rs 1,000 as monthly pension, plight of retired HMT employees needs to be heard Trade unions push for survival of HMT Machine Tools India oi-PTI Hyderabad, Nov 14 The National Confederation of HMT Unions (NCHU) today urged the management of HMT to convene a meeting to chalk out a plan to save HMT Machine Tools from the threat of closure. A meeting of NCHU was held here under the Chairmanship of TRS MP B Vinod Kumar and trade union representatives from various HMT Machine Tools facilities were present on the occasion, a release from HMT Employees Union Telangana said. The NCHU unanimously resolved that an approach paper should be prepared at the trade union level for the survival of HMT Machine Tools, incorporating major factors like necessity of professional management, short and long term vision to suggest plans taking into consideration the ground realities. This approach paper would be presented to the Centre for its favourable consideration, it said. "The NCHU unanimously resolved to request Vinod Kumar, MP, to guide and lead trade unions in an endeavour to save HMT Machine Tools Ltd in his capacity as Chief Patron of NCHU," the release added. PTI Delhi-NCR likely to choke in the coming days Two held in Punjab with fake Rs 2,000 notes India oi-IANS By Ians English Chandigarh, Nov 14 Within days of issuance of Rs 2,000 denomination notes, two men were arrested in Tarn Taran district of Punjab, bordering Pakistan, on charge of printing colour copies of the new currency notes. Harjinder Singh and Sandeep, along with two others, were printing the new Rs 2,000 notes in Bhikhiwind village, 40 km from Amritsar, to circulate these in the market and make a fast buck, the Punjab Police said. The government had on November 10 issued the new notes of Rs 2,000 denomination in the wake of November 8 demonetisation of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "Since most people have not seen the Rs 2,000 notes till now, the accused wanted to take advantage of the situation," a police officer said. The arrested men had scanned the new notes to obtain their colour prints, police official Gurdeep Singh said. The police seized fake currency notes, printer, scanner and computer of the accused. "A case of counterfeiting currency has been registered against them. Further investigations and raids are in progress and more arrests are likely soon," the police officer said. IANS UK PM Liz Truss resigns after 45 days in office, successor to be elected next week Will Modi call BJP ally Shiv Sena corrupt: Nirupam India oi-PTI Mumbai, Nov 14: Targeting Narendra Modi for branding Opposition parties, who criticised the demonetisation, as "corrupt", Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam today sought to know if the Prime Minister will apply the same yardstick for BJP's ally Shiv Sena. Notwithstanding Modi's emotional appeal to people to co-operate with him to weed out black money, Sena in an editorial in mouthpiece "Saamna" today described the demonetisation as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray also said while the government's intention behind demonetising the currency may be right, but it has hit the "wrong target". "Will Prime Minister Modi call his party's long time ally as corrupt and hoarder of black money. BJP should clarify," Nirupam told PTI. The Mumbai Congress chief charged that the demonetisation move was a "poorly-managed" move. Cash Crisis: PM Narendra Modi holds meeting with senior ministers on demonetisation "When the government says 86 per cent of the currency is in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, how can that much amount of money be scrapped in four hours time without making available adequate lower denomination currency," he asked. Nirupam claimed that the banking system has collapsed and ATMs were not functioning. The Centre never anticipated what effect, the decision will have on the common man, he said. PTI Indian-origin Sikh woman who wears turban is new councillor of Canadian city Brampton Woman strips in protest against demonetisation India oi-Vikas By Vikas New Delhi, Nov 14: Exasperated by long queues outside ATMs and banks, a woman stripped in the National Capital to mark her dissent against the scrapping of high value currency notes by the government, said reports. The woman removed her shirt in protest against the long queues outside ATMs in Delhi's Mayur Vihar area on Sunday, reported India.com. Although she covered herself up after the police intervention, she was taken to Ghazipur police station for brief interrogation. Meanwhile, long queues were seen outside banks and ATMs across the nation for the fifth consecutive day today. People faced a great deal of inconvenience as several ATMs went dry due to cash crunch. In a major attempt to tackle hoarding of black money, corruption and terror financing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on November 8, announced that all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee notes would cease to be valid in all forms of transactions. Oneindia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, November 14, 2016, 17:45 [IST] There is no 'one-size-fits-all' to curb poverty Thief calls cops for help after being caught by mob Cyclone Sitrang heading towards Bangladesh; Heavy rains likely to pound West Bengal, Odisha and NE Bangladesh announces bounty for nabbing attackers on minorities International oi-IANS By Ians English Dhaka, Nov 14 Bangladesh on Monday announced a cash reward of 100,000 taka ($1,265) to anyone giving information leading to the arrest of those who attacked Hindu minority people and their properties in Brahmanbaria district last month. Police in Brahmanbaria made the announcement through loud speakers in the violence-ridden Hindu main areas of the district. A violent mob vandalised dozens of Hindu temples and homes over an alleged blasphemy on October 30, Xinhua news agency reported. Bangladeshi authorities said the mob attack in the district was prompted by allegations that a youth of the Hindu colony through a Facebook post did something disrespectful about one of Islam's most sacred places. The post from the account of Rasraj Das showed a photo of Hindu God Shiva placed on the photo of Kaaba, the most sacred and holiest place in Islam, which is located in the Muslim holiest city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia. The Hindu youth later denied posting it. IANS Donald Trump congratulated by Republicans who 'rejected' him International oi-IANS By Ians English Washington, Nov 14: US President-elect Donald Trump has received congratulatory phone calls from leading Republicans who had previously withheld support or denounced the business mogul's run for the country's highest office. Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said on Sunday the president-elect has spoken with his three former rivals for the GOP nomination -- Ohio Governor John Kasich, Carly Fiorina and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, ABC News reported. Trump said he also spoke to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee for president, as well as former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. Also read: Donald Trump names White House chief of staff, chief strategist Jeb Bush had been one of Trump's most fervent critics but Conway said that in the phone call, Bush "was incredibly gracious, congratulating Trump and his victory and wishing him well as president". Trump has spent his weekend in Trump Tower in New York City preparing to make some of his most critical staffing decisions as president-elect. IANS Indo-Israel friendship: President Reuven Rivlin India visit to boost bilateral partnership International oi-PTI Jerusalem, Nov 14: Terming India as a "close friend", Israel President Reuven Rivlin has left for New Delhi on a six-day visit to further strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries that he said were places of "innovation and inspiration". Rivlin, who is arriving with a large delegation of businessmen and academics, will join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh, hold meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of cooperation and joint projects between the two countries. He will also pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and lay wreaths on the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi and at the memorial for Indian soldiers who fell in the WWI in combat in Israel and the Middle East. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house during the Mumbai terror attacks which left more than 166 dead. Rivlin, who will be accompanied on the trip by his wife, will also hold meetings with senior Indian officials and with leaders of the Jewish community. "I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common," Rivlin said just before leaving for New Delhi yesterday. "Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer," he said. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin includes Presidents and senior representatives of 13 Israeli academic institutions who are expected to sign 15 separate agreements between Israeli and Indian educational institutions. "The issue of international cooperation in higher education and the expansion of academic ties between Israel and the world - in particular with India - is one of the central aims of the multi-year plan for higher education in Israel," said Yaffa Zilbershats, head the Council for Higher Education's budget committee. The expansion of academic ties would include student exchanges, joint research projects and the founding of inter-institutional fora to promote academic cooperation between Israeli and India universities and colleges, he noted. Rivlin, in the past, has complimented the Indian students in Israel, saying "they are among the best" of the lot. "India represents a great challenge for Israeli manufacturers and this delegation will afford the opportunity to strengthen cooperation and partnership with their Indian counterparts," said Shraga Brosh, President of Manufacturers Association of Israel, who is heading the business delegation. PTI According to reports a builder and diamond merchant from Surat , has surrendered cash of Rs. 6000 crore. He is one of the richest builders and diamond merchant of India. He has also been in news various times for his charity works and expensive gifts to all his employees every year. Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva's supporters are celebrating his narrow election victory in Brazil but there is tension in the air over.. euronews (in English) 31 Oct 2022 Putin and Merkel discussed in a phone call on Monday the implementation of the Minsk peace accords, Sputnik reported. "During the exchange of opinions on the Ukrainian crisis, the leaders underlined the importance of further joint efforts aimed at the implementation of the Minsk agreements, including in light of the Normandy Four summit in Berlin on October 19," the press service said in a statement. "In this regard, Putin and Merkel expressed concern over continuing violations of the 'silence regime' in Donbass," the statement said. by Graham Pierrepoint ARRIVAL IMDb Dir: Denis Villenueve Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma 5 STARS (out of 5) The most enjoyable movies, for me at least, are the ones that stay with you the ones that reverberate on you for days afterwards, the ones which make you feel like the journey was worth it. Some movies are built to be funny, some are built to simply pass the time others try to send a message, while others even further like to play with the audience. Whatever any of us went in expecting from Arrival this November, we certainly didnt get it. Arrival combines the latter two types of movie I mentioned and does so better than any film Ive watched so far this year. Amy Adams is language expert Dr Louise Banks a brilliant linguist and, as we are shown, someone with an incredible emotional weight around her neck and she finds herself drafted in to help the US military with a curious occurrence. Out of nowhere, twelve colossal black discs have descended to just above the Earths surface, scattered around the globe, and each disc (or shell, as they are termed) are to be investigated by the governing powers whose backyards have been disturbed. Dr Banks joins with scientist Dr Ian Donnelly (Renner) and Colonel Weber (Whitaker) to venture into a shell which has appeared in Montana, US in an effort to try and find out exactly why the objects have materialised, and why the life forms controlling the crafts have arrived. From here, as the aliens language is studied and decoded, an international game of chess over what to do with the shells breaks out with China and Russia looking likely to take offensive action. In time, Banks discovers more about the shells than she had bargained for, propelling towards a deeply affecting climax. Anyone who reads my reviews for One News Page regularly will know that I dont hand out five star reviews willy-nilly. The only other movie this year to have received the accolade was the incredible Kubo and The Two Strings (which I would still recommend animation fans purchase or on DVD or Blu Ray in the new year) a film which haunted me for a long time after viewing, one which hit so many levels so precisely and so beautifully that anything less than a full score seemed harsh. With Arrival, I too feel I cannot give anything below a five star rating for this is less the film I was expecting about an alien invasion and the weird reasons they may have come to Earth, but far, far more in the direction of a deeply haunting and subtly affecting movie which will leave an imprint upon me for a long time to come. This movie is impeccably directed. Denis Villenueve has proven himself to be a master craftsman, having already chaired the hugely well-received Sicario and Prisoners, both of which have become cult hits in their own right and the most striking elements of Arrival on first notice are his directorial choices. The situations and characters feel natural, unfiltered. Theres no hammy lines (no matter how the trailer may put things across), no blatant Hollywood-style filibusters the use of news reports throughout the movie is extremely well-done, and Adams is the perfect lead for this film. Shes haunted, shes brilliant, shes desperate for answers. Arrival is based on Ted Chiangs novella The Story of Your Life, and the same storytelling choices in his work are ably translated over to the big screen. Were given snippets of Banks life with her daughter before she tragically died, and how it affected her marriage through flashbacks and intercut scenes. The novella does the same. Banks story and the investigation into the shells sew into one another as the movie continues. Some flashbacks can seem clunky, but here, theyre absolutely necessary. This is a movie thats mainly centered around the topic of language, and perhaps puts forward the thought that we should consider talking or communicating with each other before picking up weapons or considering offensive action. This message could have been handled with sledgehammer subtlety elsewhere, but the slow, creeping pacing of Arrival builds palpable, genuinely terrifying tension from start to finish. There is building terror in the crew first ascending the goliath shell in Montana. There is terror in the slow, satisfying reveal of the aliens. There is tension in the final act, where decisions need to be made on whether to flee, or to fight. The sound editing and soundtrack is incredible, otherworldly, horrifying. Packaged with sweeping camera direction, cautious pacing and otherworldly beings that are never too revealed nor too shrouded (anyone expecting Cloverfield levels of alien hiding can rest easy), Arrival is surprisingly disturbing both in the creatures and the situation, and the way in which some human beings react. The ending is subtly horrifying in a manner which I really dont think has been paralleled for a long time. Arrival - Official Trailer (Paramount Pictures) This is an absolutely beautiful movie that is best enjoyed on the big screen while it lasts, and boasts a very capable cast but for me, the lasting, haunting moments lie elsewhere in the script - and Im holding back on spoiling the revelations that spill from the final act but I will address them carefully to preserve their effect. The final few scenes of this movie absolutely destroy everything you thought you knew about it for the prior hour and forty-five minutes. There is a huge twist that subtly and slowly creeps into view that hammers in a nail of realisation right when you least expect it. It takes you back to earlier moments in the story, to allow you to realise that all the pieces to the puzzle were already there, right in front of you. It takes an already disquieting and looming story and renders it nothing short of devastating it strides firmly into fantasy territory, naturally, but it does so in such a tragic and haunting way that you cant quite believe what youve seen. Allow me to put it another way. While watching this movie, impressed by its visuals and tension, I grew concerned with some of its more contrived moments to the point where it began to niggle. These moments felt more and more out of place and Im certainly not telling you which moments I mean, in order to preserve the twists but then the final revelations came. All of the contrivances and moments I internally sneered at were made hugely, desperately relevant. I was forced to reconsider what I had watched, far too late to do anything about it. Im normally au fait with spotting twists but here, I was given a wake-up call. There are some elements that arent explicitly explained, but anyone paying close attention to all the important details will be able to piece together the puzzle soon enough trust me, this is not a Cloverfield scenario but it must be advised that Arrival is not your typical alien invasion movie. I, like many people, went in looking forward to why aliens were there at all I wanted to see these mysterious beings and to know all as do the characters. However, while the questions are answered subtly I was completely unprepared for the tension, the direction choices, the soundtrack, the visuals, the acting and, best of all, the incredible twists. On paper, Arrival is undoubtedly a five-star movie, a strong contender for my favourite film of 2016 (lets see how the next few weeks go) and while it will surely stay with me for some time yet, its not a movie I can easily watch again tomorrow. In time, Ill watch it again if only to share it with as many people as I possibly can. If youre interested in seeing this movie, go in blind and youll be very pleasantly surprised. Ankara, Turkey, Nov. 14 By Atilla Caner Trend: The European Union left Turkey alone in its fight against terrorism, Turkeys Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Nov. 14, following the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers. Fighting terrorism is one of Ankaras priorities, and Turkey will continue to do so against all terrorist groups, according to Kurtulmus. The deputy prime minister has earlier said that Turkeys priorities include complete termination of militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) terrorist groups, as well as fight against the Fethullah Gulen movement. The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for more than 30 years and has claimed more than 40,000 lives. The UN and the European Union list the PKK as a terrorist organization. Rurik Jutting Appears In Court Charged With Two Counts Of Murder (Photo : Getty Images) After British banker Rurik Jutting was convicted by a Hong Kong court for the brutal murder of two women, a professor raised the question of the role of a persons genetic makeup in committing such heinous crimes. Jutting was sentenced for the death of Summarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih, poor Indonesian women whom he first made into sex slaves until he sliced their throats. Advertisement Jutting, a British expat, picked up the two women in Wan Chai, a place in Hong Kong known for its seedy establishments. He was an executive at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch and a bright man. However, because of Juttings abuse of drug and alcohol, he indulged in a three-day spree that ended with the death of the two migrants, Shanghaiist reported. Tim Owen, Juttings lawyer, told the court of the former bankers own gruesome childhood experiences to explain his gory action. The court dismissed Owens defense and sentenced the British banker Rurik Jutting to a life sentence for the death of the two women. He is now serving the sentence at Stanley Prison, a maximum security prison in Hong Kong. Paul Stapleton, associate professor at Hong Kongs Education University, in an article in South China Morning Post, agreed that Juttings lifetime prison term is appropriate for the crime he committed. But he noted that for heinous crimes, the psychopath may have genetic propensity to commit wrongdoing. Although Stapleton admitted that using genetic propensity as an excuse to shirk away from criminal liability is doubted by many, he pointed to recent research findings that provide evidence of some inborn biological markers linked with criminality. One marker is a ring finger likely longer than the index finger due to differences in testosterone exposure levels in the womb. The ring-index finger ratio had been linked to male aggressiveness, sensation seeking and impulsiveness. Another marker is the abnormal volume of the heads prefrontal cortex the part of the brain when rational decision-making is made which is linked to memories and emotions. For many psychopaths, those two markers impair a persons ability to regulate emotions and reach rational decisions, Stapleton cited Adrian Raine, a neurocriminologist who wrote the book The Anatomy of Violence. Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. Bulgaria covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), and is the sixteenth-largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities are Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas. Rumble 26 Oct 2022 Former Trump White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, has been ruled by judge to testify before a grand jury investigating the.. HuffPost UK STUDIO 25 May 2020 We're just having a bit of an earthquake here Ryan. Quite a decent shake here. New Zealands prime minister Jacinda Ardern.. Rumble 05 Aug 2022 Former White House chiefs of staff Mark Meadows and Reince Priebus and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sound off on the.. Rumble 01 Nov 2022 Welcome to the War Room. Steve Bannon and special guests bring you the most important news from around the world. Watch LIVE on.. Our website uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more Yggdrasil Gaming Continues its 2016 Rise with Strong Third Quarter Published November 14, 2016 by Mike P Yggdrasil Gaming marched ahead during the third quarter and continued its excellent 2016. Get a breakdown of all the key figures and innovations here. Yggdrasil Gaming has revealed a long list of highlights in its financial reporting for quarter three (Q3), which ended on 30 September 2016. In recent months, the software developer has been extremely active in releasing new video slots such as Double Dragons and Legend of the White Snake Lady, while existing game Joker Millions paid out the companys highest-ever jackpot at 2.9 million. 299% Revenue Increase The headline statistic is that Yggdrasil generated revenue of SEK21 million [2.12 million] during Q3 2016, which represents an impressive 299% increase on Q3 2015. Another key finding from the revenue is that mobile gaming accounted for 54% of the quarterly takings, and this demonstrates how mobile is now the preferred option for many players. Continuing with the topic of players, Yggdrasil had more positive news to share. Compared to Q3 2015, the developer managed to increase its player base by a staggering 427% to reach 438 million. And what aided that growth was Yggdrasils ability to strike new licensing agreements with leading gaming operators. Yggdrasils Expansion Efforts Moving forward, it appears Yggdrasil will have more opportunities for growth, having targeted Romania as part of its expansion efforts. After obtaining two remote gaming licences, Yggdrasil will now be permitted by the Romanian regulator to offers its igaming software in the country. Yggdrasil also used its financial reveal as an opportunity to share new innovations. First up is BRAG, which is a tool that lets players share their wins via social media. And the next is White Label Studios, a project where Yggdrasil will combine with operators to create new slot game content, starting in summer 2017. For the future, Yggdrasil Gaming CEO Fredrik Elmqvist revealed that the company would aim for long-term growth, but that expansion efforts would be rapid. In Q4 2016, the company expects for the positive results to keep coming. By Dave Lindorff Trump plans to undo most of Obama's legacy, but there are things Obama could do that couldn't be undone (Image by ThisCantBeHappening!) Details DMCA There is a lot of talk going on among the pundits about how President Obama is leaving no enduring legacy -- that his progressive actions as president, few and small that they may have been, were written in the sand of executive orders, which can and likely will be erased within days of Donald Trump's inauguration. In fact though, while there is truth to that observation, there is a legacy of President Obama that will last. It's just that it's a terrible one: His failure to prosecute and put an end to the many crimes and constitutional violations of the prior George W. Bush/Dick Cheney administration, like torture, the horrific and unconstitutional war-crime prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the Tuesday morning White House drone murder-planning sessions (which he actually institutionalized); the continuation of a program of mass incarceration (mostly of males of color); the expansion of the NSA's domestic and international surveillance program, aimed at monitoring all electronic communications domestically and eventually globally; his signing instead of vetoing of a renewal of the wretched USA PATRIOT Act and related constitutional atrocities; and of course the decision to authorize a trillion-dollar upgrade of the US nuclear force, including the development of "useable" tactical nukes, coupled with the emplacement of nuclear missiles along Russia's western border. I could go on, but in the interest of brevity I'll let the reader finish this list of horrors. It's too late now to undo most of this legacy of horrors, but there are still some things that our ill-deserving Nobel Peace Prize Laureate president could yet do as a lame-duck and largely powerless president before Trump's move into the White House to at least do penance for his failures, and to perhaps salvage some measure of integrity as a legacy. Here's my list: 1. At this point, with Trump waiting in the wings ready to reverse them, any new executive orders would be a waste of time, without even any symbolic value. But there is one power conferred specifically in the Constitution which Obama owns until the minute Trump finishes taking the presidential oath, and that is the power to commute sentences and to pardon. To date, Obama has been one of the most stingy presidents in history in his application of this awesome power. He should start wielding it like a saber, cutting the chains of all those languishing in jails around the country who are non-violent offenders, primarily for possession of drugs, all those sentenced to lengthy terms or to life in prison for minor crimes because of harsh mandatory sentencing guidelines and especially "three-strikes" laws, all those sentenced to life in prison for crimes they committed as minors or even young kids, all those sentenced to death in a system that we all, including this president, know were tried, conficted and sentenced by a wholly unfair and corrupted judicial system that excludes from capital juries anyone who opposes the death penalty, all those young people in juvenile detention who were sentenced without a lawyer, and all those jailed because of unpaid debts. Obama could go further: He could pardon all those in prison who have served, say, five years of their sentence and who are over 60, or perhaps 50 years old. Statistics show that older people do not commit much violent crimes. If rehabilitation is to mean anything, then keeping such older prisoners in jail any longer is simply a self-destructive, incredibly costly act of national vengeance, not intelligent and humane justice. 2. While he's pardoning people, the president, who set a new low in government openness by prosecuting the most whistleblowers of any president in history, should acknowledge his error and pardon all of those brave people who have tried to warn about government abuse and corruption, starting with Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, both of whom currently face espionage charges if they were to leave their respective places of asylum, Russia and the London Ecuador Embassy, and Chelsea Manning, serving hard time at Leavenworth for the "crime" of courageously exposing the US military's war crimes in Iraq. Those whom he prosecuted who have served their sentences should be retroactively pardoned so their records are cleared. 3 The president should use his power as president and commander in chief to close down the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base's obscene extrajudicial military prison. Congress acted to prevent such a thing by insisting the president would have to review each case individually, but there is no definition of what such a review must be comprised of. He should simply take the time to look at each case, and then render his decision -- pardon or commuted sentence, which latter option could be a sentence to Leavenworth or some other such escape-proof facility, where each still-incarcerated inmate would then be afforded a timely civil trial with full Constitutional rights. 4. Obama should immediately, again acting as commander-in-chief, order the US Army Corps of Engineers to shut down further work on the Dakota Access Pipeline and to deny any permit for crossing the Missouri River anywhere near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation or Sioux sacred lands (much of which was stolen by various treaty violations over the years). He should dispatch federalized US troops to the scene with orders to prevent further police actions by the local Sheriff or other police authorities in North Dakota against Sioux "water protectors" and their backers. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Jack Ma: New US President Has to Work with China to Avoid Disaster New U.S. President Donald Trump could inadvertently start a trade war with China with his policies. (Photo : Getty Images) The 45th U.S. President Donald Trump was warned by Alibaba's Jack Ma to work with China and not against it. The founder and CEO of Alibaba said that contrary to Donald Trump's victory speech, the new president should work for a "healthy and positive relationship." Ma added, "But if they don't work with each other it's going to be [a] disaster." Advertisement "I don't fear [a Trump presidency], I think a healthy and positive China-U.S. relationship is so critical," he said. Trump said that he will state that China is a currency manipulator and will impose punitive tariffs on China's exports to the U.S. However, Ma is optimistic that that Trump will not carry through with the threats he made against China. The tycoon said that that the U.S. President will realize that his campaign rhetoric is not all applicable in real life. "Every time they talk about it. But I think when they become president, when he has that burden . . . the world is not as simple as he thought," he said. Ma also stated, "He's a smart person, he will adjust. He will never neglect the relationship between China and America." Donald Trump, the Hollywood star, and the newly elected president, became known for his anti-China sentiments. Ma thinks that Trump should realize that there are a lot of cultural differences between China and the U.S. Some analysts from China believe that many still favor Trump over Clinton. "Trump is not going to be as harsh on human rights as Hillary Clinton would have been," said Zhang Ming, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. Many were shocked this summer when Bolivia rejected Bill Gates' and Heifer International's donation of thousands of live chickens to address "hunger." Anyone who's "living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens," wrote Gates. "Chickens are small and stay close to home" and can help feed children in poor families he said. Bolivia does not want gift chickens (Image by Martha Rosenberg) Details DMCA Ce'sar Cocarico, Bolivia's minister of land and rural development however, was offended by the offer which betrayed ignorance about the country and its agriculture and was viewed as patronizing. Every year, Heifer International, an Arkansas-based live animal charity, mails its saccharine Christmas catalogue to drum up donations. The photos of animals and children are cute--last year they even put animals in Christmas sweaters--but there is little proof live animal gifts work says charity examiner GiveWell. "Are there systems in place to teach people to care for their new animals?" asks the Verge. "Who determines who gets a chicken and who doesn't, and will that distribution foster ill will? How would introducing livestock to a community or region impact existing economies? And, most importantly, do the recipients even want the gift?" The Verge is right. How are people who are already poor going to feed and shelter animals? How will they provide veterinary care when they probably have scant medical care themselves? (Heifer International's aquaculture operations to pull poor ghetto kids out of poverty in Chicago ending in all the fish dying twice.) How will poor people prevent the devastation of animal-to-human diseases such as avian and swine influenzas? How will they keep animals from being stolen? Are live animals a gift...or a "feel good" charity that actually creates more problems for the poor? Visitors to villages that have received Heifer International gifts have reported whole flocks of birds dying from diseases and children sleeping with the animal to safeguard them. Parents in the U.S. have complained about the "lessons" taught at Heifer International's "Global Village" program in Perryville, AK where school kids get to witness animals being killed. One mother wrote the local TV station to say her son continued to be haunted by the screams of a rabbit as its neck was broken. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). (Image by Paul Noth/New Yorker) Details DMCA It happened. Yes, I was surprised. Ssince I spend a lot of time in western Pennsylvania--I knew there was more support for Trump than the media let on, but he just seemed too incompetent, incoherent, and disorganized a candidate to defeat the Clinton machine. I enjoyed torturing my friend who has been very close to Hillary for decades with scary stories about Trump surging. But in our early election day texting, I confessed that I thought it would be called for Hillary by 11PM at the latest. I was as wrong as everyone else. I did not vote for either Hillary or Trump, and was resigned to taking my chances with either horrible outcome, but I was implicitly anticipating the dangers of a Clinton administration. I also thought, however, that there might be one positive effect of Hillary's presidency. Contrary to what might be considered the usual leftist line that electing the explicitly ultra-reactionary Trump would foment the revolution, or at least radical discontent, I thought that, in the American context, Hillary being president would help the left the most. If Trump wins, I argued, and his policies fail miserably and obviously, Democrats and liberals would spend the next four years saying: "See, you should have voted for Hillary," and channeling oppositional energy into a familiar anti-Trump, anti-Republican, "Let's make sure we elect a Democrat in 2020" politics--as we saw after Bush's election in 2000. The Democrats would once again present themselves as the system's way out. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Redwood Valley community meeting discusses DAPL (Image by David Smith-Ferri) Details DMCA As efforts to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline grow, communities across the country are hearing from activists on their return from North Dakota and sending off fresh teams to lend support. The author believes that part of the support for the Standing Rock protests is a dawning consciousness that Native people have something important to teach us about living well on this planet. On Sunday, November 6, in Redwood Valley, a tiny agricultural community in northern California known for its premium wine grapes and marijuana and its back-to-the-land ethics, cars spilled out of the parking lot at the local Grange and lined rural East Side Road in both directions for most of the afternoon. In an event sponsored by the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, several hundred people gathered to listen to activists report back from Standing Rock where they had stood in solidarity with Native American Tribes opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline. In a kind of relay race that is being enacted across the country, the event was also a fundraiser for another team of local activists who will leave shortly for Standing Rock. I was there with my wife, Sherrie, who is Mihilakawna Pomo and Bodega Miwok, and comes from an activist California Indian family. In the 1970s, her father, Bill Smith, led a dogged ten-year struggle to stop construction of Warm Springs Dam, which ultimately flooded his tribe's homeland in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley, a project that was sold to the public as flood control but which was actually designed to provide drinking water for development of Marin and Sonoma Counties, development which came, as promised, in a rush, and continues. We were happy and surprised to see all the cars outside the Grange, but even still we weren't prepared for the standing-room-only gathering inside. Roughly two hundred people listened as local activists talked about their experience at Standing Rock, about the banks who are funding construction of the pipeline, and about the spirit of the people gathered in North Dakota to oppose it. Many more people came throughout the afternoon to eat a hot meal, listen to music, watch Native American dancing, and give their support. It was the largest gathering of people for a progressive cause that I've witnessed in the nearly twenty years I've lived in progressive though sparsely populated Mendocino County. These events are vital, not only because they educate and raise funds, but also because they connect us to actions and issues that are bigger than ourselves and to the people most directly involved in them. A week earlier, as most of the people gathered at the Grange knew, police and deputies from six states had turned violent when arresting 141 water protectors who had, only a day before, staged a camp on private land in the direct path of the planned Dakota Access Pipeline. If we've learned anything this year it is that it's ok to occupy federal land, but private property, perhaps especially if it is owned by a corporation spending a lot of money in your community, is another thing. Police shot activists, some of them children, with bean bags and rubber bullets, blasted them with pepper spray fired in thick jets from canisters the size of a fire extinguisher though meant to start not quench fires, assaulted them with LRAD sound cannons (long range acoustic devices), and wrestled them to hard ground, kneeling on their backs and binding their wrists with plastic zip ties. Somehow, through all of this, almost all of the protestors remained peaceful, calling out to each other "Stand in your prayer," and holding their ground. And where they didn't remain peaceful, setting fires that burned a couple of cars, they were rebuked by the movement's leadership. In a statement made after the arrests, Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II makes it clear that no form of violence by anyone is acceptable. "Militarized law enforcement agencies moved in on water protectors with tanks and riot gear today. We continue to pray for peace. We call on the state of North Dakota Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). From Red v Blue to Purple, Yes? (Image by Marcello Rollando) Details DMCA Immigration is not new to Middle America. However, the concern of losing one's culture amidst more minorities who don't speak American, can be frightening to some whose life experience has been diversity deprived -- but our 2016 election faultline is more than the politics of Immigration and race, gender & sexual equality. Our clash of time vs. culture; expectations vs. experience; to the rear march vs. full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes offers: do-over of lost dreams or digesting melting pot reality. Elections are our opportunity for in-depth National, State, Local, Family and individual soul searching -- because chasing the past by ignoring the future, has severe term limitations: Can Conservatives define the change they seek? To what values do Conservatives want America to return? Which America are we to be or not to be? Globalists saving the earth from ourselves or: it's not my problem Isolationists? Are Sequestration, Secession and War the only solutions we have, to heal our Great Divide? Donald Trump has been dishonest with Americans hungry for anything that looked, sounded and promised anything -- different. So, while the popular vote elected Hillary Clinton, the unpopular vote willingly prostrated before the altar of hacked memories over future innovation; preferring deregulation allowing coal ash, Fracking and Factory Farms to steal our healthy environment. The unpopular vote chose Paul Ryan's cutting Medicare and the fantasy that anyone can revive an industry abandoned by coal companies, bequeathing coal families the pacifier of clean coal fiction. Early 11/9/16, corporate media talkers, talking the predictable predictions stumbled out of programmed fantasy-land into a glimmer of the light at the end of their tunnel vision -- to see through the glass ceiling darkly -- what happened between Hillary's contested victory over Bernie in the 2015 Iowa Caucus and James Comey's email flip flops: knowing when to hold them for pollsters and when to fold them in voting booths, the industrial cavalry had arrived. However, FDR Baby Boomers to Bernie Millennials hadn't been joined by the post November 22, 1963 African-American voters nor 2016 offended women and Hispanic voters -- enough to purge the mob-rule of the Alt-Right, or sway Americans determined to force-feed the college educated the consequences of potential long-term disaster, to make a narrow point. So, Blue Fire & Mexican Wall focused, we discounted the uncounted diminishing white majority -- forgetting, there is passion in fear as well as herstory. Lessons: The Democratic Party, to assume is to make an ass out of you and me; Trump's, keep it simple stupid. Most Republicans, including Trump voters aren't bullies and racists, but too many voted to preserve the life in a rear-view mirror that's lost its silver-lining. Forgetting time waits for no one to keep up, is no defense against memories colored by rusty overlays, overlapping visits to grandma's house with longing to rerun black and white TV serials. Bad News: some American families believe their financial security and personal stability have been lost by a myopic media able to focus us on only one, if it bleeds it leads, storyline a week. Good News: Media, government and Wall Street respect what we tell them we respect, for they need our consumerism and votes more than we need their gossip, filibustering political ads and TV commercials. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). It's essential that progressives learn from Hillary Clinton's devastating defeat. There are two competing theories about what happened: Hillary's campaign blew it or she was cheated. 1) The Clinton Campaign screwed up. The strongest argument is: 2016 was a change election and Clinton's campaign didn't take that seriously. During the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders tried to warn the Democratic Party about the economic frustration of working families but somehow the Clinton campaign didn't get this message. In his pre-election survey of likely voters, (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/11/07/patrick-caddell-real-election-surprise-uprising-american-people.html#) Democratic pollster Pat Caddell found that two-thirds of respondents agreed, "The real struggle for America is not between Democrats and Republicans but between mainstream American and the ruling political elites." 81 percent of respondents said, "The U.S. has a two-track economy where most Americans struggle every day, where good jobs are hard to find, where huge corporations get all the rewards. We need fundamental changes to fix the inequity in our economic system." [Emphasis added] Hillary understood the "two-track economy" problem but her message was not clear. At the time, "Stronger Together" seemed okay as a slogan but it indicated that Clinton gave as much attention to bigotry as she did economic fairness. While bigotry is a huge problem, in this election economic fairness was by far the dominant issue. Thus, Trump's slogan, "Make America great again," was more effective. Late in the election cycle, when it became clear to the Clinton campaign that they might lose Michigan, they began running TV ads there. However, the Clinton ads attacked Trump; none featured Hillary's economic message. The New York Times exit poll indicated that of those voters whose most important candidate quality was "can bring needed change," 83 percent chose Trump. (Clinton prevailed on all the other qualities: "cares about people like me," "has the right experience," and "has good judgment.") Change voters voted for Trump even though they had an unfavorable opinion of him. Hillary wasn't the right Democratic candidate for a change election. Pat Caddell's survey found 87 percent of respondents believed, "The country is run by an alliance of incumbent politicians, media pundits, lobbyists and other powerful money interests for their own gain at the expense of the American people." Clinton was viewed as an insider and Trump as an outsider, theoretically an agent of change. Bernie Sanders would have been a better Democratic candidate because he was seen as an outsider and someone who understood, "the system is rigged." In July, Michael Moore wrote "5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win" (http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/) and he was right on target. First he predicted that Trump would focus on, and ultimately carry, four previously blue states: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. States filled with angry voters who feel, "abandoned by Democrats." Second, he predicted the election would be "the last stand of the angry white man." (Trump won white men by a wide margin and Clinton did not get the female voter surge that she expected.) Third, Moore predicted a problem because of Hillary's unpopularity which resulted in a lack of Democratic voter enthusiasm. Fourth, Moore thought that Sanders' voters would ultimately vote for Hillary but unethusiastically, leading to a depressed turnout. Finally, Moore predicted "the Jesse Ventura effect" where some voters would vote to blow up the system. (On November 8th they voted for Trump because they believed he was a change agent even though they didn't like him.) 2).Hillary was cheated: She won the popular vote and barely lost the electoral vote. The Clinton campaign blames her loss on the October 28th intervention by FBI Director James Comey who, in effect, reopened the issue of the Clinton email server. Certainly this was an unprecedented act; one that some Washington observers felt violated the Hatch Act. But to blame Hillary's loss on this ignores the fact that, even before Comey's intervention, Hillary had a 53 percent unfavorability rating. Clinton didn't hold the "Obama coalition." (She received 5 million fewer votes than Obama did in 2012.) Hillary underperformed among young people, African-Americans, Asians, and Latinos. She also slightly underperformed Obama's numbers among Democrats and Independents. (Trump held 90 percent of Republicans while Clinton held 89 percent of Democrats.) Hillary was suppose to overperform Obama among female voters but that didn't happen -- she only attracted 1 point more women (and lost 5 percent of males). According to the Cook Report, Clinton didn't do as strongly among suburban Republicans and college-educated white women as her campaign had expected. Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by a total of 107,000 votes. Some Hillary supporters feel these votes were stolen. However, an excellent analysis by German Lopez (http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/11/13597452/voter-suppression-clinton-trump-2016) concludes that voter suppression does not explain Clinton's loss in Michigan and Pennsylvania: "In Pennsylvania, Clinton got 2 percent fewer votes than Obama did in 2012, while Trump got 11 percent more than Mitt Romney. In Michigan, Clinton got 11 percent fewer votes than Obama did in 2012, while Trump got 8 percent more than Mitt Romney. Clinton simply got fewer people to turn out for her than the last Democrat who ran, while Trump appeared to get more than the previous Republican." Bottom line: This is such a devastating defeat that it's comforting to imagine that Hillary Clinton was cheated by Donald Trump. But that's not what happened: Hillary lost because she ran a losing campaign. In 1992, the in-house motto of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign was, "It's the economy stupid." Hillary was there but, for whatever reason, she didn't use this motto in 2016: she didn't make economic fairness her cornerstone issue and it cost her. United States Connected Car Ecosystem Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=730806&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-connected-car-ecosystem-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=730806&type=E Qyresearchreports include new market research reportUnited States Connected Car Ecosystem Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The United States Connected Car Ecosystem Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Connected Car Ecosystem industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Connected Car Ecosystem market analysis is provided for the United States markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.To Download Sample Report With TOC:Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and Bill of Materials cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on United States major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Connected Car Ecosystem industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.With 142 tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview1.1 Definition and Specifications of Connected Car Ecosystem1.1.1 Definition of Connected Car Ecosystem1.1.2 Specifications of Connected Car Ecosystem1.2 Classification of Connected Car Ecosystem1.2.1 Interface Board1.2.2 Sensor1.2.3 Surveillance Camera1.3 Applications of Connected Car Ecosystem1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Connected Car Ecosystem1.5 Industry Overview of Connected Car Ecosystem1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem1.7 Industry News Analysis of Connected Car EcosystemTo Browse a Full Report with TOC:2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.1 Bill of Materials (BOM) of Connected Car Ecosystem2.2 BOM Price Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.4 Depreciation Cost Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem2.7 United States Price, Cost and Gross of Connected Car Ecosystem 2011-20163 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of United States Key Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of United States Key Connected Car Ecosystem Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of United States Connected Car Ecosystem Key Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of United States Connected Car Ecosystem Key Manufacturers in 20154 Production Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions, Type, and Applications4.1 United States Production of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions 2011-20164.2 United States Production of Connected Car Ecosystem by Type 2011-20164.3 United States Sales of Connected Car Ecosystem by Applications 2011-20164.4 Price Analysis of United States Connected Car Ecosystem Key Manufacturers in 20154.5 United States Capacity, Production, Import, Export, Sales, Price, Cost and Revenue of Connected Car Ecosystem 2011-2016To Download Sample Report With TOC:5 Consumption Volume and Consumption Value Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions5.1 United States Consumption Volume of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions 2011-20165.2 United States Consumption Value of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions 2011-20165.3 United States Consumption Price Analysis of Connected Car Ecosystem by Regions 2011-2016About Us :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.Contact US:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Elevator And Escalator Market In Canada Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 1.66%, In Terms Of New Installed Units Over The Period 2014-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=419341 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=419341 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Elevators and Escalators Market in Canada 2015-2019" to its huge collection of research reports.Elevators and escalators are deployed in buildings for the smooth and easy movement of people and goods within a building's premises. They are installed in commercial, residential, and mixed-used buildings. They are also installed in public places to improve vehicle parking management.Technavio's analysts forecast the elevator and escalator market in Canada to grow at a CAGR of 1.66%, in terms of new installed units over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this reportIn this report, Technavio includes the present scenario and growth prospects of the elevator and escalator market in Canada for 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, we consider the number of new elevator and escalator units installed in the country. The report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the key vendors in the market, and a brief description on the other prominent vendors. In addition, the report discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the elevator and escalator market in Canada. It also outlines the challenges faced by the vendors and the market at large, and highlights the key trends in the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavio's report, Elevator and Escalator Market in Canada 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry expertsKey customer segmentsCommercial customersNon-commercial customersKey vendorsKONE CanadaOtis CanadaRAM ManfacturingSavariaSchindler USA and CanadaThyssenKrupp Elevator AmericasOther prominent vendorsCEE ElevatorDelta ElevatorElevator OneJoyride LiftsSkyline ElevatorMarket driverGrowth of high-rise building constructionFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeMarket concentration in bigger citiesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendAdoption of green elevators and escalatorsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat 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?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Elevator And Escalator Market In Mexico Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 0.51%, In Terms Of New Installed Units, Over The Period 2014-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=419335 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=419335 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Elevator and Escalator Market in Mexico 2015-2019" to its huge collection of research reports.Elevators and escalators are positioned in buildings for efficient movement of people and goods within a building's premises. They are installed in commercial, residential, and mixed-used buildings. They are also installed in public places to improve vehicle parking management.Technavio's analysts forecast the elevator and escalator market in Mexico to grow at a CAGR of 0.51%, in terms of new installed units, over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this reportIn this report, Technavio includes the present scenario and growth prospects of the elevator and escalator market in Mexico for 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, we consider the number of new elevator and escalator units installed in the country during the forecast period. The report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the key vendors in the market, and a brief description on the other prominent vendors. In addition, the report discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the elevator and escalator market in Mexico. It also outlines the challenges faced by the vendors and the market at large, and highlights the key trends in the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavio's report, Elevator and Escalator Market in Mexico 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts.Key customer segmentsCommercial CustomersNon-commercial CustomersKey vendorsElevadores Otis MexicoKONE MexicoMitsubishi MexicoSchindler MexicoThyssenKrupp Elevadores MexicoOther prominent vendorsAbell ElevatorsIronHawk ElevatorsSematic GroupMarket driverIncrease in construction of high-rise buildingsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeCapacity expansion and safety in elevators and escalatorsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendEmergence of energy-efficient elevators and escalatorsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat 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?To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Craft Beer Market In The Us Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 18.3% And 16.72% In Terms Of Revenue And Volume, Respectively, Over The Period 2014-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=419326 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=419326 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Craft Beer Market in the US 2015-2019" to its huge collection of research reports.Craft beers are flavored beers brewed in microbreweries or small, independent, and traditional breweries. Small breweries are those that produce less than 6 million barrels of beer annually, while independent breweries are those where not more than 25% of the brewery is owned and managed by an alcoholic beverage company. Traditional breweries are those breweries where 50% of the volumes of beer produced are malt beers that use high-quality ingredients. Craft beers have distinctive tastes as compared to regular beers made of various flavors and ingredients. These beers are manufactured and served fresh in bottles, cans, and kegs.Technavio's analysts forecast the craft beer market in the US to grow at a CAGR of 18.3% and 16.72% in terms of revenue and volume, respectively, over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this reportThis report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the craft beer market in the US for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, this report includes revenue generated from the sales of the following craft beer:IPA (India pale ale)SeasonalPale aleAmber aleAmber lagerWheatBocksFruit beerOthers (other pale lagers, brewpub exclusive)To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @It also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top four vendors in the craft beer market in the US. The market share of vendors is calculated on the basis of the sales of craft beer from supermarkets, drugstores, mass market retailers, convenience stores, clubs, and other retail chains. In addition, the report discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the market. It also outlines the challenges faced by the vendors and the market at large, and the key trends that are emerging in the market.Key vendorsD.G. YuenglingNew Belgium BrewingSierra Nevada BrewingThe Boston BeerThe GambrinusOther prominent vendorsAnheuser-BuschBells BreweryBrooklyn BreweryCraft Brew AllianceDeschutes BreweryDogfish Head Craft BreweryDuvel MoortgatHarpoon BreweryLagunitas BrewingMatt BrewingMillerCoorsMinhas Craft BreweryOskar Blues BrewingStone BrewingMarket DriverChanging consumer tastes and preferencesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket ChallengeLack of awareness about craft beerFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket TrendGrowing canned craft beer productionFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Questions Answered in this ReportWhat 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?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Focus on Online Channel (2014-19) | Now Available at Researchmoz.us http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=211594 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=211594 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Focus on Online Channel (2014-19)" to its huge collection of research reports.The Report titled Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Focus on Online Channel (2014-2019) provides an insight into takeaway Food Delivery market with a special focus on online takeaway food. The report also includes the market value, segmentation and also country-wise market analysis. It also discusses key growth drivers, challenges and upcoming trends of the market. Further, companies like Just Eat, GrubHub, Delivery Hero, and Takeaway.com are profiled in the report.Country Coverage- The UK- Spain- France- Italy- Netherlands- Denmark- Norway- Switzerland- The US- Canada- BrazilTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Company Coverage- GruhHub Holdings Inc.- Just Eat Plc.- Delivery Hero and Hungryhouse- Takeaway.com- Foodpanda & HelloFoodExecutive SummaryTakeaway food delivery offers a convenient alternative, providing diners with a wide variety of options. Consumers have many choices for takeaway food, including online takeaway food aggregator portals, restaurant chains offering online ordering services, as well as local restaurants offering telephone-based and walk-in takeaway food services. Growth in takeaway food delivery market is outpacing global GDP growth with online ordering growing much faster, proliferated by the adoption of E-commerce and increased smartphones/tablet penetration.Consumers are shifting from traditional telephone based takeaway ordering to online platform as it offers wide variety of choices, ratings and reviews, including payment by credit or debit card, and a more efficient consumer experience. Companies that offer online food ordering services include Just Eat, GrubHub, Delivery Hero, Takeaway.com etc. Takeaway restaurants (TRs) sign contracts with these companies to join their platform and have their menus made accessible to consumers. These online companies primarily derive their revenue from commissions charged to TRs on order value placed through its platform.The US is the largest market for takeaway food delivery market followed by the UK, Italy, Spain, Canada, France, Brazil and others. The online food ordering industry saw a major consolidation with Delivery Hero acquiring Lieferheld of Germany and hungryhouse of the UK in 2012. In 2013, GrubHub merged with Seamless took making it the largest online takeaway food company. Drivers contributing to the growth include rising usage of internet, urbanization and demand from developing countries.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Donald Trump's election as new U.S. president is met by protests. (Photo : Getty Images) Media outlets in China didn't put much attention to covering the 45th U.S. President Donald Trump's victory speech and more airtime was given to Premier Li Keqiang's meeting with Vladimir Putin. Instructions came from the government to media outfits to stop "excessive" exposure on the victory of Donald Trump. The government is also limiting too much attention to western ideas, according to observers. Advertisement However, the limited media focus on Donald Trump news didn't stop Chinese to voice their opinion on the matter. Mixed reactions surfaced from various parts of the world as seen online. One Sina Weibo user named Zhonghua Junlong posted, "It shows that the U.S. government and democracy have weakened. And at the same times, it provided our country with a prosperous opportunity--it will make China more powerful." Another netizen named Fangsi de qingchun said, "I think Trump is the tragedy of the American people. How did he win? It must be a scam. Now I think cats and dogs can be president!" A few days before the election, various survey results showed that Clinton was not favored in China. Another survey from the South China Morning Post showed that Trump was not liked. Experts on U.S. politics in China also have mixed reactions. "Trump's election shows the problem of American democracy," said Yu Tiejun, a professor of international studies at Peking University in Beijing. According to Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, "There is a lot of Chinese schadenfreude about the lowly nature of the debate in the U.S. election campaign. It's a total gift to Chinese propaganda." Connected Home Appliance Market In The Us Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 98.36% Over The Period 2014-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=419320 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=419320 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Connected Home Appliance Market in the US 2015-2019" to its huge collection of research reports.Smart home appliance or connected home appliance allows home dwellers to monitor and control the activities necessary to carry out at home on a regular basis from a remote location. This helps convenient lifestyle for consumer and enhances the quality of life. Adoption of smart home appliance helps reduce energy bills through energy conservation. Connected home appliance providers have to focus on the untapped potential consumer segment to boost the market revenue. This market is expected to witness rapid growth in the coming years due to the growing awareness of the connected devices among users.Technavio's analysts forecast the connected home appliance market in the US to grow at a CAGR of 98.36% over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this reportThe report covers the current scenario and the growth prospects of the connected home appliance market in the US for the period of 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers the following:To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Revenue generated from home appliance services provided by telecom operators, internet service providers, managed service providers, and equipment providersService revenue from three categories: kitchen and laundry equipment, air conditioners, and smart TVs. In kitchen and laundry equipment includes refrigerators, dishwashers, cooktops and induction stoves, and washing machineIt doesn't include revenue generated from the sales of the above-mentioned devicesTechnavio's report, Connected Home Appliance Market in the US 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the landscape of the connected home appliance market in the US and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsArris GroupComcastiControl NetworksSamsungOther prominent vendorsAT&TBoschDacorElectroluxFrigidaireGEHaierIngersoll-RandSprintThermadorWhirlpool CorporationKey market driverGrowing smartphone penetrationFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey market challengeLack of standardization and interoperability of devicesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey market trendCloud-enabled technologiesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat 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?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Third times a charm for Huawei as exclusive diamond sponsor for WAPIC in Lagos in November Flagship energy event to unite some 2000 power pros http://www.wapicforum.com The well-known global information and telecommunication giant, Huawei, will return as the exclusive diamond sponsor for the third time in a row for the upcoming WAPIC (West African Power Industry Convention) taking place in Lagos from 23-24 November.We are absolutely thrilled that Huawei has given WAPIC the seal of approval for the third time in a row says Claire OConnell, event director of WAPIC. She adds: we take our task of gathering the best in the industry to discuss the challenges and successes very seriously and as market leader, Huawei, should be part of that conversation. We once again look forward to their contribution to this years conference and exhibition.As a global leading ICT solution provider, Huawei serves 170 countries and one-third of the global population. With more than 20 years of experience implementing successful ICT solutions and a deep understanding of power industry operations, Huawei is able to provide an innovative and industry-specific ICT solution for a better Smart Grid.WAPIC, a flagship, regional conference and exhibition, will return to Lagos with an exciting interactive programme that reflects the dynamic energy landscape of the region and will once again attract some 2000 power professionals, high-level experts and industry stalwarts during the 13th edition of the event.The MD of Huawei Nigeria, Mr Li Beifang, is a speaker in the WAPIC opening session, while the Huawei Forum, which forms part of the strategic conference, will focus on Leading new ICT, building a better connected intelligent grid. Speakers and topics in the Huawei Forum will include: Global energy interconnection development and ICT- Liu Jianming, Deputy Director of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering (CSEE), China Smart Metering_Ikeja Electric PLC Experience- Discussion with senior representatives from IKEJA Electric Leading new ICT, building 100% connected power IoT- Jerry Ji, President Energy Industry Enterprise, Business Group, China Making the best value for your money in AMI- Guofeng, Senior IoT Solution Consultant, Huawei EBG Leading New ICT, Building 100% Connected Power IoT- David Randolph Hoelscher, Marketing Director, Department of Huawei IoT Solutions Insight into the Nigeria Power Sector- Engr. Abayomi AdebisiInnovation HubSMEs, start-ups and young innovators will be given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase their new solutions, game changing technology and inventions for the power industry at the Innovation Hub taking place during WAPIC. Part of the programme of the Innovation Hub is a look at specific, identified problem sets in the power sector where innovation and new technologies can make a huge difference.Industry awardsThe third edition of the hugely successful West African Power Industry Awards will also take place at this years WAPIC during a gala dinner evening when industry pioneers and projects will be recognised and celebrated in seven different categories.WAPIC dates and location:Pre-conference Masterclass: 22 November 2016Documentary screening, Nowhere to Run: 22 November 2016Conference and exhibition: 23-24 November 2016West African Power Industry Awards: Wednesday, 23 November 2016Event location: Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos, NigeriaWAPIC is organised by Spintelligent, leading Cape Town-based trade exhibition and conference organiser, and the African office of Clarion Events Ltd, based in the UK. Other flagship events in Spintelligents power portfolio on the continent are African Utility Week, the East African Power Industry Convention (EAPIC), iPAD Rwanda Energy Infrastructure Forum and iPAD Cameroon Energy & Infrastructure Forum.Senior communications manager: Annemarie RoodbolTelephone: +27 21 700 3558Mobile: +27 82 562 7844Email: annemarie.roodbol@spintelligent.comWebsite:Postal address: PO Box 321, Steenberg, 7947, South Africa Donna Louis, Author Of Miracles Of Direction, Named As Finalist In 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Book Awards Christian book author Donna Louis http://www.miraclebook.net Donna Louis, author of Miracles Of Direction, has been named as a finalist in the 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Book Awards Contest. Her honors came as a result of her appearance on The Authors Show. Donna was chosen from a field of hundreds of authors through a public voting process.I am humbled and honored to be one of the finalists in this years 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Awards," Donna stated. "This is one step away from what you would call 'The Writer's Oscar.' It is an amazing feeling and a tremendous rush to know that your words mean something to people and so they acknowledge that. I want to thank everyone who has already voted for me as well as those who will be voting for me. Books don't sell unless the words mean something and touch a persons heart. That is my greatest joy in writing.Donna Louis' book, 'Miracles of Direction, Miracles of Conquest, Miracles of Provision and Miracles of Purpose' 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.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.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."Members of the public who want to vote for Donna in the 2016 '50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading' Book Awards can access her entry and vote at The Authors Show site. Donna Louis is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below, or by email at louistolouis@aol.com. More information is available at her website. Miracles Of Direction is available at online retail book outlets. 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 Growth of Global Multi-Sensory Packaging Market is driven by the Demand for Innovative Packaging Technologies from Various End-user Industries http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=15389 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Multi-sensory packaging is a type of packaging for commodities that are sensitive to temperature, sight, smell and touch. Multi-sensory packaging also provides more visual enhancement to the products with innovative labeling that changes color with touch or temperature variations, which attracts the consumers towards the product. Furthermore, manufacturers are adopting new ideas and technologies for differentiating their products in the market. Hence, manufacturers are opting multi-sensory packaging which plays a major role in marketing and attracting consumers towards their product.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with PDF Brochure:Global Multi-sensory Packaging Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe growth of global multi-sensory packaging market is driven by the demand for innovative packaging technologies from various end-user industries to make their products more appealing to consumers. Multi-sensory packaging is mostly adopted by the food & beverage industry, where multi-sensory packaging is used as a marketing tool by the manufacturers to make their product more appealing to consumers. Furthermore, the demand for FMCG (Fast-moving Consumer Goods) and the changing eating habits of the consumers towards packed snacks and confectioneries are further boosting the demand for the multi-sensory packaging market among the manufacturers globally. On the plus side, macroeconomic factors such as rise in disposable income of middle-class population leading to increased spending on FMCG products can be attributed to the growth of multi-sensory packaging market globally. Trends prominent in the multi-sensory packaging is the innovations, for instance, DS Smith, a leading European company in packaging has developed talking paper for packaging which reciprocates once it's touched and a recorded information can be heard. However, complexities associated with different types of multi-sensory packaging might hamper the growth of the global multi-sensory packaging market.Global Multi-sensory Packaging Market: SegmentationThe global multi-sensory packaging market is segmented on the basis of multi-sensory packaging types, applications and regionOn the basis of multi-sensory packaging types, the global multi-sensory packaging market is segmented into:VisualTouchSmellSoundOn the basis of applications, the global Multi-sensory Packaging market is segmented into:Packed SnacksBeveragesAlcoholic BeveragesConfectioneriesCosmeticsPharmaceuticalsMulti-sensory Packaging Market: Regional OutlookBased on the geographies, global multi-sensory packaging market is segmented into five key regions -- North America, Latin America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East & Africa. Among the regions mentioned above, North America accounts for significant share for multi-sensory packaging market, owing to the demand for packaging technologies that garner consumer attentions among the manufacturers across the country. Furthermore, North America packaging industrys position in the global packaging market is bolstering growth for multi-sensory packaging in the region. Europe market for multi-sensory packaging is followed by the North America market, which is followed by Asia-pacific and Middle-East & Africa market for multi-sensory packaging. Latin America market for multi-sensory packaging is anticipated to register a sluggish growth over the forecast period. Overall, the global multi-sensory packaging market is projected to register a healthy growth rate by the end of forecast period.Global Multi-sensory Packaging Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players identified in the global multi-sensory packaging market include DS Smith, First Flavor, Inc., ScentSational Technologies, KARL KNAUER KG, DOHLER, 3C! Packaging, Inc. and Alpha MOS Smell, Taste & Chemical Profiling 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: Asia Pacific Automotive Telematics Market Revenue during 2014 - 2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-ap-47 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-ap-47 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights (FMI) with sharp focus on emerging regions delivers key insights about the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market in its recent report titled, Asia Pacific Automotive Telematics Market Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2014 - 2020. According to this report, the global telematics market is expected to expand at a single-digit CAGR during forecast period 20142020. On the other hand, APAC will demonstrate the fastest growth in the global automotive telematics market at a double-digit CAGR during the forecast period. During this period, the contribution of the telematics market in the Asia Pacific region to the overall market is projected to increase from 26% to 30%, reflecting an increase of 400 BPS.This growth is attributed to high penetration of technologies and steadily increasing GDP. Moreover, Asia Pacific benefits from the presence of established vendors in the commercial vehicle telematics market, which includes PeopleNet, FleetMatics, Trimble, Telogis and Omnitracs. Furthermore, over 42% of the worlds Internet users in Asia (2013), combined with hundreds of millions of 4G users, will fuel growth of the APAC automotive telematics market during the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@FMI lead consultant, Nikhil Kaitwade, sheds light on why Asia Pacific will emerge the fastest growing market in the near future. Telematics in the automotive industry has become increasingly relevant with a palpable emphasis on safety and security globally. New business models combined with increased technology adoption and remote vehicle diagnostics is fuelling growth of the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market, he said.The three key technologies that will drive the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market are:Embedded Technology Currently, this segment dominates the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market. Greater ease of assembly, ease of troubleshooting, reliability of components and fall in cost of electronic parts are factors driving demand for automotive embedded systems in this region. Increasing use of cloud-based telematics will also influence the APAC automotive telematics embedded technology market segment. FMI projects that this segment will display a double-digit CAGR during the forecast period.Tethered Technology The tethered technology segment in the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market will demonstrate the lowest growth at a single-digit CAGR during forecast period 20142020.Smartphone Technology Price advantages and growing smartphone penetration will fuel growth of the smartphone technology segment in the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market. FMI anticipates that evolving smartphone technology will witness the highest CAGR in double digits during the forecast period.Currently, North America dominates the global automotive telematics market, followed by Europe. High penetration of the aforesaid technologies in Asia Pacific combined with saturation of European and North American markets will continue to fuel growth of the APAC automotive telematics market.Send An Enquiry@Elaborating on this trend, Kaitwade further stated, In order to differentiate their product offerings, automotive OEMs are integrating telematics technologies into vehicles they manufacture.In addition, the expanding safety and security end-user segment and increasing prominence of social media in Asia Pacific will drive the automotive telematics market in the region. The safety and security end-user segment is anticipated to dominate the Asia Pacific automotive telematics market between 2014 and 2020 due to increasing consumer focus on safety and security aspects. Growing prominence of social media in the Asia Pacific region will also contribute to the growth of infotainment segment during the forecast period.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: Electronics Adhesives Market to Attain US$ 4.5 Bn Value in 2017 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-378 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-378 www.futuremarketinsights.com Rising popularity of consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and cameras is boosting the use of effective electronic adhesives. Soaring demand for electronics that can remain intact even after experiencing mechanical jerks has extended the consumption of vigorous adhesive materials such as epoxies and acrylics. At a y-o-y growth of 12.1% over 2016, the global market for electronic adhesives is anticipated to surge significantly and reach US$ 4,549.8 Mn market value by the end of 2017.Profound research by technological institutes has aided the production of cost-effective and efficient adhesive materials for electronic devices. Incidentally, manufacturers can supply such enhanced electronics adhesives and meet the consumer expectations regarding devices intactness.Escalating adoption of electronic devices and components in automotive vehicles as well as consumer appliances is significantly appending the consumption rate in the global electronics adhesive market. The global electronics adhesives market is also expected to grow rapidly, owing to factors such as rising use of compact component and assemblies in production of electronics, evolving drivability of such electronic devices, and the global upsurge in per capita expenditure on consumer electronics. However, instable adhesive films prices, stringent VOC emission standards, and high costs of setting up infrastructure for adhesive production are observed as major restraints curbing the growth of the global electronics adhesive market.Request Free Report Sample@On the basis of materials, acrylic adhesives are predicted to register the highest growth in the global market. Compare to other adhesive materials such as silicones and epoxies, the acrylics are being extensively used in conformal coatings and UV curing applications. Additionally, the rising demand for UV curing applications owing to their flexibility and lowered curing time is also expected to boost the consumption of acrylic adhesives. In 2017, the acrylics segment will procure US$ 1,904.5 Mn in terms of market size.On the basis of adhesive products, thermally conductive and electrically conductive product types will continue to dominate the global market. Electrically conductive products are expected to witness higher consumption and will replace the lead soldering processes in electronic connections. In terms of volume, electrically conductive adhesives is expected to account for more than 460 thousand tonnes in 2016, and will witness nearly 14% annual growth in 2017.Based on the applications, the global electronics adhesives market will exhibit higher consumption of adhesives in the surface mounting applications. The market value share of surface mounting applications in 2017 is expected to be almost 30%. Furthermore, conformal coating and encapsulation application are also estimated to garner considerable revenues, while wire tacking applications segment will demonstrate a moderate progress.Send An Enquiry@Asia Pacific is anticipated to retain its dominance on the global market by attaining US$ 2,798 Mn market value in 2017. Developing economies, increasing expenditure on IT infrastructure, and mounting demand for miniaturised electronic devices will continue to stimulate the growth of the electronics adhesive market in APAC countries. Moreover, Europe and North America will sustain their market presence by recording value shares of estimated 19% and 14% respectively.Companies such as Dymax Corporation, H.B. Fuller Company and 3M Company are recognised as some of the leading manufacturers of epoxy, acrylic and polyurethane adhesives, while Henkel AG & Co. and Dow Corning Corporation, among others, are known to be the key manufacturers of silicone adhesives in the global electronics adhesives market.Long-term Outlook: In terms of market value, the global market for electronics adhesives is projected to reach US$ 6,397 Mn over the forecast period 2016-2020. Asia Pacific will dominate with consumption of over 1,230 thousand tonnes of volume by 2020-end.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: Demand for Friction Modifiers Additives Market to Reach 174 Thousand Tonnes in 2016 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1656 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1656 www.futuremarketinsights.com Global demand for friction modifiers additives will reach about 174 thousand tonnes in 2016, up from 167 thousand tonnes in 2015. This will represent a market value of US$ 1,027 Mn, an increase of US$ 62 Mn from 2015. While wide-ranging applications, most prominently as lubricants in automotive sector, will continue to fuel demand, availability of affordable alternatives, such as dispersant additives, corrosion inhibitors and detergent additives will continue to pose challenges.By product type, inorganic friction modifier additives will continue to outsell organic, reaching about 597 thousand tonnes in 2016. Among the inorganic friction modifier additives, MoDTC will continue to account for the highest demand, reaching 275 thousand tonnes in 2016. Among the three types of organic friction modifier additives-polymers, fatty acids, and esters & amides-polymers are witnessing high demand from the automotive sector in North America and Western Europe. This trend is expected to gain further momentum in 2016, propelling the growth of the overall market.Automotive lubricants will continue to be the largest application segment for friction modifier additives in 2016, witnessing a growth rate of about 6% over 2015, representing a market value worth US$272 Mn.Request Free Report Sample@Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) will maintain its numero uno position in 2016, with total demand expected to reach around 48 thousand tonnes. Demand will be supported by the regions expansive automotive sector, especially in the populous countries of China and India. These two countries will remain key to the growth of the global friction modifiers additives market in 2016 and beyond, as consumers in these countries put a lot of emphasis on the fuel efficiency of a vehicle while making buying decisions. In addition to the regions behemoth automotive industry, strong demand from the plethora of end-use industries in the region will continue to support demand. North America will continue to remain the second largest market for friction modifiers additives, representing a 22.5% share of global revenues.Key players operating in the global friction modifiers additives market are Chemtura Corporation, Multisol, Archoil, International Lubricants, Inc., Afton Chemical Corporation, and Wynns.Send An Enquiry@Long-term Outlook: The long-term outlook on the friction modifiers additives market remains positive with global volume witnessing a CAGR of 5.1% through 2026, whereas global revenues expanding at 6.9% through 2026.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: Sleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market Poised for Steady Growth in the Future http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-777 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-777 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-777 www.futuremarketinsights.com Sleep apnea is a serious disorder that occurs when a persons breathing is interrupted during sleep. People with untreated sleep apnea stop breathing repeatedly during their sleep, this may happen from 5 to more than 50 times an hour. This means brain and rest of the body may not get enough oxygen. Sleep apnea can result in a growing number of health problems like high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, diabetes, depression, worsening of ADHD, and headaches.Approximately 42million American adults have sleep disordered breathing, one in five adults has mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA2), and 75% of severe sleep disorder breathing cases remain diagnostic.Sleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, sleep diagnostic global market is driven by the aging population, technological advancement in healthcare sector around the globe, increasing rate of obesity in population and rising incidence of sleep apnea.Sleep apnea diagnostic global market drives by the increase in the obesity in population, increasing awareness regarding hypertension, strokes, and cardiovascular diseases and its association with sleep apnea, technological advancement in diagnostic devices. However, limited reimbursement, coupled with lack compliance are the major barrier for this market.Request Free Report Sample@Sleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market: SegmentationSleep apnea diagnostic system global market is segmented into following types:Polysomnography (PSG) DeviceClinical PSG DeviceAmbulatory PSG DeviceRespiratory PolygraphScreening devicesNasal Flow SensorsPeripheral Capillary Oxygen Saturation (SPO2)Actigraphy SystemsSleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, increasing rate of obesity among the population, and rising incidence of sleep apnea. The sleep apnea diagnostic systems global market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR in the forecasted period (2015-2025).Request For TOC@Sleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global sleep apnea diagnostic systems market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America, and Western Europe dominated global sleep apnea diagnostic market in terms of market revenue. Asia-Pacific & Japan is projected to grow at a substantial growth and will contribute to the global sleep apnea diagnostic system market value exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2015?2025.Sleep Apnea Diagnostic System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in sleep apnea diagnostic market are ResMed, Koninklijke Philips N.V, CareFusion Corporation, and others.Send An Enquiry@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: Global Wireless POS Terminals Market to grow at a CAGR of 13.7% over Forecast period 2015-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=363320 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=363320 http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, Nov 14: A POS refers to a system or a combination of systems that are used to facilitate easy and faster checkout for customers at various outlets. A standard POS system consists of a computer, monitor, cash drawer, receipt printer, barcode scanner, POS software, weight scale, and sometimes credit and debit card readers. A POS terminal is used for conducting sales and is used by retailers to manage information related to their inventory, customers, and cash flows. It is mainly used for retail sales management. A POS terminal not only improves the shopping experience for customers by reducing the processing time for payments but also helps them obtain and centralize information about sales of the respective products.The global wireless POS terminals market to grow at a CAGR of 13.7% over the period 2014-2019. A POS terminal is used to process card payments at several sectors such as retail (supermarket, hypermarket, specialty stores, gas stations, drugstores, and mass merchandise stores) and hospitality (restaurants, hotels, takeaways, and pubs). A POS terminal performs the following functions:- Reads the information off a customers credit/debit card- Checks the funds status in a customers bank account- Transfers funds from a customers account to a sellers account- Records the transaction- Prints the receipt of transaction- There are two types of POS terminal: fixed line POS and wireless POS.Get a Sample Research PDF with TOC:This report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global wireless POS terminals market for the period 2014-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers the total shipments of wireless POS terminals. However, the report does not consider the following to estimate the market size: mPOS or any communication device that is being used as a POS terminal, sales of components used for the production of wireless POS terminals, and aftermarket sales of wireless POS terminals.Technavio's report, Global Wireless POS Terminals 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 wireless POS terminals 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- Ingenico- Pax Technology- SZZT- VeriFoneOther prominent vendors- ATOS Worldline- CyberNet- Equinox- First Data- Keycorp- NCR- Spire PaymentsEnquiry 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: Global Forklift Truck Market Will hit at a 6.9% During Forecast Period to Reach US$ 55.9 Bn by the End of 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3552 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/forklift-trucks-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/ Key driving factors identified in the global forklift truck market include expansion of warehouse space globally, growing e-commerce business across the globe, strong demand for forklift truck replacement in developed markets, and bulk investments in purchase of low-cost forklift trucks in emerging markets.Request to view Sample Report @Persistence Market Research (PMR), delivers key insights on the forklift truck market in its latest report titled Global Market Study on Forklift Trucks: Asia-Pacific to Witness Highest Growth by 2021 According to the report, the global forklift trucks market was valued at US$ 35.3 Bn in 2014 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 6.9% during the forecast period to reach US$ 55.9 Bn by the end of 2021.Assessing the various factors driving the market growth, PMR analyst opined, The global material handling equipment market is growing significantly at an annual growth rate of 3%7%. Electric type forklift truck is one of the prominent segments in this market. These trucks are gaining traction due to the implementation of various advanced technologies and their growing application across various industries worldwide. The China market is projected to exhibit the fastest growth over the forecast period due to various factors, such as favorable economic environment and a need for technological advancements in in-house logistics in the country.From a regional perspective, Asia-Pacific was the largest market for forklift trucks in 2014, accounting for approximately 41.4% volume share of the overall market. Europe is projected to account for the second largest volume share of the global forklift truck market and expand at a CAGR of 4.6% over the forecast period, due to the positive outlook of the economy in Western Europe and expected rise in trade of goods, in turn leading to a significant growth in demand for forklift trucks in the region in the near future.Request to view Table of content @Key market participants covered in the report include Kion Group AG, Jungheinrich AG, Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc., Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO), Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Co., Ltd., Crown Equipment Corporation, Anhui HeLi Co., Ltd., CLARK Material Handling Co., Ltd., and UniCarriers Americas Corporation.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who 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.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com The musket is one of the earliest known firearms made by Chinese imperial armorers during the 18th century. (Photo : Twitter) The first China-made firearm with imperial markings ever to be offered at an auction was sold for 1.895 million pounds ($2.5 million), the auction house Sotheby's London announced in a statement on Wednesday. The antique musket, which was manufactured in imperial workshops, was created for the Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty, which was regarded as the greatest collector and patron of the arts in Chinese history, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Advertisement Estimated at 1 million to 1.5 million pounds ($1.33 million t0 $1.99 million), the musket sparked a 10-minute bidding war before finally being sold to a private collector. "This gun ranks as one of the most significant Chinese treasures ever to come to auction. Today's result will be remembered alongside landmark sales of other extraordinary objects that epitomize the pinnacle of imperial craftsmanship during the Qing dynasty," Robert Bradlow, senior director of Chinese Works of Art at Sotheby's London, told Xinhua. "Over the last 10 years we've seen the market for historical Chinese works of art go from strength to strength, with collectors drawn from across the globe and exceptional prices achieved whether the sale is staged in London, Hong Kong or New York," he added. The firearm bears the marks of the Qianlong Emperor on top of its barrel and, incised on the breech of the barrel, are four Chinese characters that denote the gun as "Supreme Grade, Number One." The grading makes it unique amongst the known extant guns from imperial workshops and one of the most important firearms in the Emperor Qianlong's armory. Sotheby's London said the introduction of Western firearm technology in China ignited the production of muskets in imperial workshops, which had unquestionable advantages over the traditional bow and arrow for hunting. Using only the most exquisite materials, imperial firearms were created in extremely limited quantities for Emperor Qianlong. And while experts find it unlikely for the Emperor to have held a gun in battle, he is said to have regularly hunted with a musket. Sotheby's said the "Number One" firearm is closely related to six famous imperial Qianlong muskets in the collection of the Beijing Palace Museum, which were said to have been graded in the same manner as the gun but with a lower grade or number. One of the most powerful leaders of ancient China, Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) reigned for 59 years (1736-1795) as the longest-lived and de-facto longest-reigning emperor in Chinese history. KSA Tire Market Value set to reach US$ 2,123 Mn in 2016 : PMR Report http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11437 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/automotive-interior-materials-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/ The KSA tire market is expected to witness robust growth. Demand for tires in KSA will be positively influenced by growing sales of four-wheeler vehicles.Driven by favorable government policies and lack of luxury or value-added taxations (VATs), the KSA tire market is anticipated to reach US$ 2,123 Mn in revenues by 2016. Growing demand for four-wheeler vehicles and robust sales of luxury and top-end cars will continue to influence the growth of the KSA tire market.Request to view Sample Report @Sales will continue to remain strong through the OEM channel, owing to consumer preference for buying tires directly from manufacturers. While overall revenues are expected to increase steadily, stringent regulation regarding used tires coupled with Implementation of stringent import standards by Saudi Arabia Standard Organization (SASO) can pose challenges to the growth of the market.By vehicle-type, the four-wheeler segment will continue to account for a leading share of the market. Demand will be substantial for cars and other passenger four-wheelers, owing to high temperatures recorded in Saudi Arabia throughout the year. As a result, the passenger cars will continue to be the most-prominent four-wheeler sub-segment, accounting to more than US$ 1,435 Mn revenues in 2016.Rising R&D initiatives by manufacturers will fuel the product-wise growth of the KSA tire market, which is expected to supplement the sales of pneumatic and non-pneumatic tires. Increasing penetration of internet and online transactions in Saudi Arabia is will continue to influence the growth of the market.Compared to the rest of the provinces, the Western and Central Provinces of the Kingdom are forecasted to represent a speedy growth in the demand for four wheeler vehicle tires. In the future, the provincial cities of Riyadh and Mecca are expected to be the concentrated hubs of Saudi Arabias total tire retail outlets.Request to view Table of content @Prominent global tire companies such as The Bridgestone Group, Continental AG, Pirelli & C Spa, and Michelin Group, will continue to strengthen their dominance in the KSA tire market. Companies such as Apollo Tyres Ltd., Yokohama Rubber Company Ltd., and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company are also expected to create stiff competition for the existing key players in the tire market in KSA.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who 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.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com Global Automotive Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems Market is Expected To Grow at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3630 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/tire-pressure-monitoring-systems-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/ Stringent government regulations to equip TPMS in passenger vehicles, growing adoption of automotive safety systems and rising focus on improving fuel economy and reducing property damage as a result of accidents associated with low tire pressure are key factors expected to fuel demand for automotive TPMS over the forecast period (2016-2024).Request to view Sample Report @Direct TPMS is estimated to account for leading market revenue share of 99% by 2016 end. Global sales of direct TPMS is estimated to increase at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2024. This high growth is due to expected implementation of legislations related to the TPMS in countries such as China, India, Japan, and Russia.By vehicle type, passenger car segment is the largest segment in the global automotive TPMS market. This segment is estimated to account for 79% value share of the market by 2016 end. Growing demand for luxury cars is expected to continue to push demand for automotive TPMS in passenger car segment. Mandatory use of TPMS in passenger vehicles in the U.S., South Korea, and the European Union is further fueling the growth of the passenger cars segment in the global automotive TPMS market.Aftermarket segment is projected to continue to account for a major market share in 2016. Direct TPMS requires replacement after a certain period of time and increasing vehicle parc is expected to drive sales through the aftermarket, especially in the U.S. and the European Union where the TPMS use mandatory for passenger vehicles.North America is estimated to remain the largest market for automotive TPMS, accounting for 47.3% revenue share of the market by 2016 end. Demand is expected to be robust in Europe, where adoption of TPMS mandating legislation would drive the growth of the market.Request to view Table of content @Sensata Technologies Inc., Continental AG, and Pacific Industrial Co., Ltd. are projected to continue to be the top three players in the global automotive TPMS market. Mergers & acquisitions remains a key business strategy for leading players in the global automotive TPMS market. Major players in the global TPMS market are also focusing on expanding their aftermarket businesses, as the aftermarket sales is a major revenue generation source for TPMS manufacturers.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who 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.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com Global High Pressure Processing (HPP) Market Set to Grow Exponentially During the Forecast 2016 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3252 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3252 Half a decade ago, consumers seems to be gushing for good quality food products that has a high shelf life. Companies were actively looking for methods and equipment that can help foods to retain their natural flavor even after long shelf life of preservation. High pressure processing equipment is one such cutting-edge innovation. High pressure processing is a non-thermal preservation and pasteurization process that increases the shelf life of food, while retaining the original quality of food products. Unlike most conventional food processing system, this method accomplishes high hydrostatic pressure of 100 to 1000 MPa to process food products. It is due to its minimal negative effect that high pressure processing market (HPP) is finding great prominence globally. This billion dollar industry is anticipated to witness strong growth worldwide during the forecast period, 20152025.High Pressure Processing Market: Drivers & RestraintsRising concern for food safety along with increasing demand for process food that contains active ingredients is expected to fuel the overall high pressure processing market. High liquid containing foods are on upper edge. HPP extends the shelf life of foods by two to three folds when compared to non-pasteurized foods. However, budget restraints and significant heavy cost is expected to be a major challenge for this industry. To tackle these challenges some of the leading manufacturers are performing innovation to cut down the cost at a significant rate. Also, HPP is mostly preferred for foods containing high acids. It cannot be or used rarely for stabilizing foods containing low-acids.View Sample Report @High Pressure Processing Market: SegmentationHigh pressure processing market is broadly classified on the basis of equipment types, production size and end-use applications. Equipment such as batch processing and semi-continuous processing are available depending upon the size of production including low scaled to medium and high scale production capacities. Large scale production is normally seen in developed economies, while small and mid-scale are gaining prominence in developing economies.On the basis of applications, HPP market is broadly segmented into juices and beverages, vegetable products, meat products and seafood products. Juices and beverages along with meat products covers the majority of HPP applications. HPP equipment in vegetable products, though has a relatively low presence, is gaining wide prominence among food processing industries and is anticipated to witness above average growth rate during the forecast period, 2016 - 2026.High Pressure Processing Market: Region-wise OutlookHigh pressure processing equipment are in high demand in developed economies such as North America, Japan and Europe, however, market is gaining prominence in Asia Pacific and Latin America. The market is mainly consolidated in United States (U.S.), Europe and Japan. HPP in North America is widely used for processing of juices and beverages followed by seafood products and meat products and vegetable products. The trend is however different in Asia Pacific where consumption HPP is widely used for meat products and seafood products rather than juice products. HPP market is expected to witness significant growth in North America and Europe.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:High Pressure Processing Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in high pressure processing market are Avure Technologies, Hiperbaric, Hormel Foods Corporation, Hain Celestial Group and American Pasteurization Company.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 using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market in-telligence 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 flexi-ble without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Aircraft Tyres Market: Recent Industry Trends and Projected Industry Size by 2015 to 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4260 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4260 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Aircraft tyres are one of the most highly engineered products having significant complexity which require large number of raw materials pertaining to steel, cord fabric, artificial and natural rubber and other chemicals. Aircraft tyres have cords which serve as the reinforcing materials in the tyre that provide dimensional stability, supporting the aircraft weight, as well as keeping the tyres in shape different road conditions. Aircraft tyres play a vital role in the performance of the aircraft. Various reinforcement constructions are needed for different types of aircrafts based on their applications and load bearing requirements. They have different requirements of tyre fabrics and tyre cords as compared to other modes of transport such as light and heavy commercial vehicles, two wheelers, agricultural vehicles as they work on different road conditions, where each tyre has a different load bearing requirement.Request for Sample Report:The global demand for aircraft tyres has been significant due to growth from the aircraft industry, particularly commercial aircrafts, which have witnessed huge surge in demand for advanced and new aircraft, which are largely influenced by certain factors such as network expansion by new airlines as well as entry of new airlines. Other prominent factors such as replacing obsolete aircrafts, rise air passenger traffic, growing demand for fuel efficient aircrafts and healthy economic growth shown by emerging markets has also contributed towards the growth of the aircraft tyres market. Large scale corporations such as Goodyear, Bridgestone Corporation, and Dunlop are significantly involved in the manufacturing of aircraft tyres that are eco-friendly, more intelligent, economical, safer and less noisy. They are consumed in significant quantities for various civil and military applications, where military operation hold huge demand on aircraft tyres where loads can be highly substantial with speed going more than 225 miles per hour.Large scale companies such as Dunlop have been involved in the industry as a key player which manufactures tyres used in military aircrafts from the well known Vulcan and Spitfire to the modern F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Heavy military aircraft such as C-130, the Tornado and the Hawk, and the latest A400M. The company serves various segments of the military aviation industry such as marine corps, naval forces and air forces across the world with tyres designed to give maximum operation characteristics in the fluctuating environmental conditions as well. In addition, Dunlop was awarded three year deal supply of aircraft tyres in July 2014 to Chinas privately owned airlines for the purpose of expending its footprint in regional airlines. Under the contract, Dunlop would be providing tyres for China Express Airlines Bombardier CRJ900 NextGen aircraft. In terms of agreements and joint ventures, The Triangle Group in 2012 collaborated with the Harbin Institute of Technology to design and manufacture arcraft tyres. Regionally, developed regions such as North America accounted for the largest market share in the aircraft tyres market, followed by Europe. Emerging regions such as Asia Pacific is likely to exhibit the fastest growth in the market owing to certain factors such as increasing disposable incomes of the individuals leading to rising air travel expenditures, entry of low cost airlines and infrastructure developments in economies such as India, Singapore and China.Request for Table of content:Bridgestone Corporation, Dunlop Aircraft Tyres, Goodyear, Michelin, and The Triangle Group are some of the key players present in the aircraft tyre industry.About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact Us:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Antifungal Drugs Market Headed for Growth and Global Expansion by 2016 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11671 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11671 Antifungal drugs medication is done for treating fungal infections with minimal side effects on the body. Basically this fungal infections are organism that feed by breaking down the living tissue these fungi are commonly known as dermatophytes. Dermatophytes can cause infection of the skin, hair and nail as they have a unique ability to utilize the keratin. There are some common fungal infections such as ringworm, athletes foot, fungal n ail infection and vaginal thrush these can be treated by antifungal drugs. Antifungal drugs works by either killing the fungal cell by causing the contents of the cell to break and leak out and the cell to die and also by preventing the cell from growing. There are different types of antifungal medicines such as topical antifungals which are mostly applied on the skin, nails or hair, secondly there are oral antifungals which are consumed or swallowed in capsule, liquid form or pill and last is intravenous antifungal which are directly injected in the blood stream so as to prevent the fungal infection. The antifungal drugs are segmented as over-the-counter drug products particularly for dermal infections. Advancement in technology and drug delivery is expected to boost the global antifungal market.View Sample Report @According to Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approximately 46,000 new cases of Invasive candidiasis occur every year in U.S. which is a common bloodstream infection in U.S. The incidence rate of fungal infections such as Candida species causing infection vary substantially by geographic location and patient population and it is therefore causing challenge to healthcare professionals. The antifungal drugs market is mainly driven by the incidence and prevalence rate of the antifungal infections. Moreover due to benefits such as cost effective products, growing population of immunocompromised individuals and minimal side-effects physician are prescribing these products. Healthcare professionals are conducting patient education program for creating the awareness among the general population. However antifungal drugs market has some restraints such as presence of alternative therapies may hinder the growth of the antifungal drugs market.With the fungal disease leading to increase in the incidence of fungal infections Antifungal drugs market is increasing very rapidly. Moreover significant rising awareness among general population and rise in disposable income will boost the Antifungal drugs market during the forecast period.Geographically the Antifungal drugs market is segmented into five key regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and MEA region.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:In the United States, Candidemia is the common form of invasive candidiasis and a common bloodstream infections. North America followed by Europe is dominating the Antifungal drugs market as high incidence of fungal infections and development of novel antifungal biopharmaceuticals. In Asia Pacific region the antifungal drugs market is expected to deliver significant growth due to the rise in per capita income in this region which is expected to further fuel market demand. This growth is also due to the increasing awareness towards personal safety and health care. China is expected to register significant market growth in antifungal drugs owing to the growing access of public with healthcare professional and growing economy. Also the antifungal drugs market is expected to become highly competitive due to entry of potential entrants in the market by the end of forecast period.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market in-telligence 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 flexi-ble without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Powder Coating Equipment Market: Headed for Growth and Global Expansion by 2021 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/8110 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/8110 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Powder coating is a covering applied on the material in order to protect the surface from rust or for decoration purpose. Powder coating is a type of coating where free flowing dry powder is applied on the surface of metal using different techniques. Powder coating is usually done to provide strong finishing which is not possible by conventional painting. Powder used for coating is made up of thermoplastic or thermoset polymer and is applied electrostatically on the surface. Powder coating is mainly used for household appliances, aluminum extrusion, automobiles and drum hardware. Electrostatic coating is one of the most widely deployed powder coating technology owing to its efficiency, simpler operation and cost effectiveness.Request for Sample Report:Owing to the benefits offered by powder coatings techniques, demand for powder coated materials have increased greatly around the globe. Being cost effective technology, powder coating is adopted by most of the interior designers to make infrastructure presentable and protected from hostile climatic conditions. Some other factors driving the market for powder coating equipment include resistance over chipping, scratching, wearing and fading of finishing work like other conventional paints. Furthermore, powder coating also helps in reducing the emission of volatile organic compounds on the surface. However, there are certain factors restraining the growth of powder coating equipment market. For instance, powder coating is not feasible for large areas. Also, it becomes difficult to apply powder coating over the complex geometric areas. Thus, this limits the applications of powder coating, posing a restraint to the market growth. Furthermore, usage of air compressors in certain techniques of powder coatings makes the operation more complex and tedious, thereby posing a drawback for market growth.The market for powder coating equipment is segmented on the basis of types of components, end-use applications and geography. Segmentation on the basis of types of components include ovens and booths, powder coat guns and coating powders. Powder coating gun is mainly used to spray powder on the surface and add electric current on powder to make it stick to the surface. On the basis of types of gun, powder coating market can be segmented into hotcoat powder coating gun, dual-voltage powder coating gun, electrostatic gun or corona gun, tribo gun, and others. Ovens and booths are primarily used to cure the powder coated material. Market for powder coating equipment on the basis of types of ovens and booths is segmented into convection cure ovens, infrared cure ovens and others. Powder coating finds its applications in numerous areas such as domestic usage, industrial application, coating rectification, building infrastructures, automobiles and others. Market segmentation for powder coating equipment on the basis of geography include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America.Request for Table of content:Some of the key players in the field of powder coating equipment include Gema Switzerland GmbH, Mitsuba Systems Pvt. Ltd., Red Line Industries Ltd., J.Wagner GmbH, Eastwood Company and Nordson Corporation among others.About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact Us:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: At a CAGR of 29.22%, Global Hybrid Cloud Market is Expected to grow over Forecast period 2015-2019 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=363272 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=363272 http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Albany, NY, Nov 14: Hybrid cloud is a combination of on-premises, public, and private cloud computing, where applications can switch between private and public cloud depending on the workload. Enterprises are increasingly using the hybrid cloud model, as critical applications can be hosted more securely on private clouds compared to public cloud. Hybrid cloud computing helps enterprises achieve maximum usability while minimizing the shortcomings, without the need for constant internet connectivity.The global hybrid cloud market to grow at a CAGR of 29.22% over the period 2014-2019. This report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global hybrid cloud market for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, it considers the revenue generated from the following.- Software licenses and subscriptions cost- Software implementation and maintenance costGet a Sample Research PDF with TOC:The report covers segmentation of the market by delivery model:- IaaS- PaaS- SaaSThe report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the four leading vendors in the market. In addition, it discusses the major drivers that influence 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.Technavio's report, Global Hybrid Cloud Market 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts.Key regions- Americas- APAC- EMEAKey vendors- Amazon Web Services- Microsoft- Rackspace- VMwareOther prominent vendors- Atlantic.Net- BLACKIRON Data- Cisco Systems- DataDirect NetworksEnquiry 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: Hydrogen Purifiers Market Advanced technologies & growth opportunities in global Industry by 2024. http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=16772 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/hydrogen-purifiers-market.html A hydrogen purifier is a device that is used to purify hydrogen, especially if the hydrogen product is obtained from hydrocarbon sources. Hydrogen is used in various industrial processes, especially in the refining industry. Hydrogen is also a major component of off-gases generated in various refinery processes. Traditionally, off-gases were used as an energy source by burning. However, due to reduced margins and stricter regulations, technologies for the recovery of hydrogen are getting widespread attention. Hydrogen manufacturers are highly sensitive to the cost of hydrogen purification systems because hydrogen basically is a cost to them. A steady growth of this market is expected, due to increased usage of heavy oils in refining and higher demand for high-purity hydrogen as well as lower profit margins and stricter environmental regulations.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with PDF Brochure:The most common types of hydrogen purifiers are palladium membrane hydrogen purifiers, dense thin-metal membrane hydrogen purifiers, pressure swing adsorption, and catalytic recombination or deoxygenation purifiers. The pressure swing adsorption technique is the most well-developed and established process for hydrogen purification. This technology is based on physical binding of molecules of a gas to a solid adsorbent material such as activated carbon, silica gel, carbon molecular sieves, and zeolites. It makes use of the fact that hydrogen has very low polarity and highly weak attractive force with the adsorbent material. Dense thin-metal membrane hydrogen purifiers are relatively less expensive and simple to use.However, the level of hydrogen purity obtained is not acceptable for several high-tech applications. Catalytic recombination or deoxygenation purifiers are used to remove oxygen impurities by the use of a dryer after oxygen reacts with hydrogen to form water vapor. For niche applications such as those in the semiconductor industry, palladium membrane hydrogen purifiers have no alternative. Pd is the only technology that provides absolute purification, which means only H2 can diffuse across the Pd membrane. Most of H2 supplied in developing countries such as China and India is of variable consistency. This leads to impurity spikes in the feed that other technologies which work by adsorbing some proportion of impurities from the H2 stream struggle to contain. The cost of replacement of contaminated epiwafers caused by these impurities as well as the downtime required for the tool clean-up is prohibitive to manufactures. Hence, palladium membrane hydrogen purifiers is a viable technology used for high-end applications.Browse Report with Full TOC at :The use of hydrogen purification technologies is poised to experience robust growth in the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, Canada, and India in refining and electronics industries. The hydrogen purifiers industry in Asia Pacific is expected to witness dynamic growth. Due to slowdown in the refining industry in Western Europe, growth of the hydrogen purifiers market in this region would be stagnant. The spurt in oil production in the Middle East, especially in Iran and Saudi Arabia, is likely to lead to increased number of refining activities, and consequently, greater use of hydrogen purifiers. The rise in demand for traditional and new applications for ultra-high-purity hydrogen is driving the market for hydrogen purifiers, particularly in the electronic devices hubs such as the U.S, Japan, China, and South Korea.Key players in the hydrogen purifiers market are Honeywell UOP, Yangtze Energy Technologies Inc., Advanced Extraction Technologies Inc., Xebec, Petronas, SAES Pure Gas Inc., Schmack Carbotech GmbH, Air Products, Chart Industries, and Ally Hi-Tech.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.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.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207 Hand Dryers Market to Surge at a CAGR of 11.9% between 2015 and 2023 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2994 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/hand-dryer-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Hand dryers play an important role in washroom hygiene. It is an electrical device, generally installed in public washrooms for the purpose of drying hands. Hand dryers either operate automatically by using sensors or manually by using a push button. The major end users of hand dryers include food processing and food service, hotels, office buildings, and healthcare among others.Food processing and food service which includes restaurants and fast food joints is the largest end user segment of the hand dryers market. In addition, rise in installation of hand dryers in school, colleges, railway stations, and malls among others is expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period. In the next few years, hand dryers are most likely to be installed in homes which are further expected to influence the market positively. Moreover, global hand dryers market is expanding rapidly during the forecast period attributed to increasing demand for high end appliances which help in saving nature and power as well.Get More Information:Economic slowdown has put corporate and individuals under pressure for cutting down operation expenses. This has led to installation of hand dryers in washrooms which proves to be economical in comparison to paper towels. Although initial investment for installation of hand dryer is high, it can substantially reduce the cost of operations compared to paper towels. In addition, washrooms in hotels, airports, and offices are equipped with appliances that not only look stylish but also use minimum power and offer maximum advantage.Moreover, demand for faster and hygienic hand drying is leading to increasing incorporation of hand dryers in public washrooms. Demand for ecofriendly appliances is increasing due to global warming and rise in awareness about ecology and sustenance. Paper towels are produced by cutting down trees, which is having a detrimental effect on the environment. Hand dryers help in saving power as well as paper, reducing solid waste generated by used paper towels. All these factors are positively contributing to the market growth throughout the forecast period.However, high noise level of hand dryers is a major concern especially in areas such as offices, educational institutes, or hotel rooms among others. This factor is negatively impacting the installation of hand dryers, which in turn is restraining the market growth. Moreover, requirement of high initial investment upfront is further hampering the market growth during the forecast period. Major opportunities for key players in the market lies in technological advancements focusing on overcoming challenges of high noise level and preventing growth of microbial contaminates in washrooms.Browse The Report:The competitive profiling of the key industry participants in the global hand dryers market across four broad geographic regions is included in the study. The key players have also been profiled on the basis of company overview, financial overview, business strategies, and the recent developments in the field of hand drying. Also, the market attractive analysis of the major end user areas has been provided in the report, in order to offer a deep insight of global hand dryers market.A comprehensive analysis of the market dynamics that is inclusive of market drivers, restraints and opportunities is included in the purview of the report. Market dynamics are the distinctive factors which impact the market growth, thereby helping to understand the ongoing trends of the global hand dryer market. Therefore, the report provides the forecast of the global market for the period from 2015 to 2023, along with offering an inclusive study of the hand dryers market.Some of the major players in the hand dryers market are: American Dryer, Inc. (U.S.), Bradley Corporation (U.S.), Dyson Ltd. (U.K.), Electrostar Gmbh (Germany), Excel Dryer, Inc. (U.S.), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), and World Dryer Corporation (U.S.) among others.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 Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: SGS Receives Outstanding Customer Feedback for Baseefa Certification www.sgs.com/ee SGS has received outstanding feedback on its hazardous area equipment certification services in a recent customer survey, with 95% of customers declaring themselves pleased with the service they have received. Two clear terms dominated the feedback helpful and knowledgeable. Most respondents felt that these two traits best summed up the service they received from SGS.When certification must be carried out on equipment in hazardous areas, it can be an arduous task, something that is not relished by most manufacturers. Constantly changing standards, tightening budgets and increased pressure to deliver products more quickly to market, mean that manufacturers are facing immense challenges when trying to stay safe and compliant. SGS knows that retaining helpful and knowledgeable staff will have a direct impact upon the successful outcome of a project, which, in turn, will help to enhance the overall experience of certification and help protect staff, facilities and the environment.SGS brings unrivalled knowledge, allied to exceptional technical support and customer focus, to help deliver efficient, trusted certification. SGS Baseefa has issued several hundred ATEX certificates, and over three hundred IECEx certificates, so far this year. That is more IECEx certificates than any other body. SGS is justly proud of the number of safe products they have helped bring to the market.Working with SGS to achieve Baseefa certification gives manufacturers access to a wealth of knowledge and experience. Their engineers understand the standards and test requirements needed to certify correctly and in the most efficient timeframe. In addition to training and certification in ATEX and IECEx, SGS can also assist with compliance in other regions, including China, Korea, Russia and Customs Union, and Brazil.With 95% of their customers reporting a positive experience, it is clear that working with SGS is one of the best ways to keep you compliant, producing safe products for the hazardous area market, and with all certifications in place to help you stay operational.For more information, please contact:SGS Baseefa LtdEmail: cts.media@sgs.comWebsite:About SGSSGS is the worlds leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 85,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,800 offices and laboratories around the world.1, Mons CalpeChitcombe RoadBroad OakRyeEast SussexTN31 6EU The new U.S. President receives mixed reactions on his victory. (Photo : Getty Images) Chinese technology giant Alibaba fell a 5 percent fall in stock prices as news of Donald Trump's victory spread across the globe. Alibaba's stocks were high in October by 13 percent but experienced a dip for two consecutive days after the new U.S. president was declared. However, the fall of Alibaba's stocks did not affect sales as of yet. American consumers compose 10 percent of Alibaba's subscribers. Advertisement Joe Tsai, vice chairman of Alibaba, said, "China is going to be and already is the source of consumer demand and the source of capital for America." He added, "So if you're the American president, you have to pay a lot of attention to that because your job is to create a lot of jobs in American society. And if you don't have Chinese consumers being engaged and buying American products, and Chinese investors can't invest in the United States, and create more American jobs, then you'd be in trouble." Jack Ma, founder, and CEO of the Chinese company, also said that President Donald Trump must work for a healthy relationship with China or else there will be a "disaster." Various media personalities also voiced out their opinion on the Donald Trump news. "One can only hope that someone had the presence of mind to put a blindfold and ear plugs on the statue of Abraham Lincoln, sitting on a national mall," wrote David Smith, a correspondent for U.K. newspaper "The Guardian." In Italy, another newspaper wrote, "American democracy is sick. . . .The mutual delegitimization [of the candidates] is total. It's hard to find in the recent past a similar level of animosity, contempt, insult." Waterproofing Membrane Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Growth, Outlook, Opportunities and Forecasts to 2016: Acute Market Reports http://www.acutemarketreports.com/report/united-states-waterproofing-membrane-market-report-2016 http://www.acutemarketreports.com/report/united-states-waterproofing-membrane-market-report-2016 http://www.acutemarketreports.com/category/chemicals-market http://www.acutemarketreports.com This report studies sales (consumption) of Waterproofing Membrane in United States market, focuses on the top players, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player, coveringBrowse the complete report at:Soprema GroupSikaFosrocGAFIcopal GroupTehnoNICOLPolyglassImperbit MembraneGeneral MembraneCarlisleModern WaterproofingChovABauderARDEX GroupHenkel PolybitRenolitTegola CanadeseIndexHansukSchluter-SystemsProtecto WrapGraceColasVetroasfaltoTamkoMultiplan YaltmOriental YuhongCKSHongyuan WaterproofTangshan DeshengSplit by product types, with sales, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IIType IIISplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Waterproofing Membrane in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Application 3Browse full report with TOC:1 Waterproofing Membrane Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Waterproofing Membrane1.2 Classification of Waterproofing Membrane1.2.1 Type I1.2.2 Type II1.2.3 Type III1.3 Application of Waterproofing Membrane1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 31.4 United States Market Size Sales (Value) and Revenue (Volume) of Waterproofing Membrane (2011-2021)1.4.1 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)1.4.2 United States Waterproofing Membrane Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)2 United States Waterproofing Membrane Competition by Manufacturers2.1 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 United States Waterproofing Membrane Revenue and Share by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)2.3 United States Waterproofing Membrane Average Price by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)2.4 Waterproofing Membrane Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.4.1 Waterproofing Membrane Market Concentration Rate2.4.2 Waterproofing Membrane Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.4.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionView all reports of this category:3 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (2011-2016)3.1 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)3.2 United States Waterproofing Membrane Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)3.3 United States Waterproofing Membrane Price by Type (2011-2016)3.4 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales Growth Rate by Type (2011-2016)4 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales (Volume) by Application (2011-2016)4.1 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales and Market Share by Application (2011-2016)4.2 United States Waterproofing Membrane Sales Growth Rate by Application (2011-2016)4.3 Market Drivers and OpportunitiesContact:Chris PaulOffice No 01, 1st Floor,Aditi Mall, Baner, Pune,MH, 411045 IndiaPhone (India): +91 7755981103Toll Free (US/Canada): +1-855-455-8662Email: sales@acutemarketreports.comWebsite:About Acute Market Reports:Acute Market Reports is the most sufficient collection of market intelligence services online. It is your only source that can fulfill all your market research requirements. We provide online reports from over 100 best publishers and upgrade our collection regularly to offer you direct online access to the worlds most comprehensive and recent database with expert perceptions on worldwide industries, products, establishments and trends.Our team consists of highly motivated market research professionals and they are accountable for creating the groundbreaking technology that we utilize in our search engine operations to easily recognize the most current market research reports online.Office No 101, 1st Floor , Aditi Mall, Baner, Pune, MH, 411045 India Asia pacific with strong demand from China and India flooring market size to reach 180 billion, forecast 7 years https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/122 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/122 https://gminsights.wordpress.com http://www.fractovia.org https://www.gminsights.com Flooring market size is estimated to be valued at USD 418.86 billion by 2022, as per a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. Innovative solutions in construction coupled with escalating demand for insulation is likely to boost global demand.Soft coverings market size was the largest revenue generator, and the segment was valued USD 90.75 billion in 2014. It is anticipated to grow at 6.2% CAGR from 2015 to 2022 due to its dust-binding characteristics, noise-reducing effect and offers comfort. Non-resilient flooring market was over 30% of the share in 2014.Request For Sample of This Research Report@Increasing need in the construction industry has positively impacted consumption. There exist various innovative solutions that are durable and require low maintenance as compared to other conventional materials such as stone, ceramic and wood. As a result, consumers are adopting more cost effective and eco-friendly solutions.Rise in urbanization along with evolving consumer lifestyles is expected to be a significant opportunity for industry participants. Development of hassle-free installation techniques and availability of innovative construction solutions coupled with growing demand for environmentally sustainable products are among major flooring market trends.Presently, designers are seeking out eco-friendly materials for their clients; this has led to the development of several environmentally viable choices. Lack of awareness among consumers coupled with environmental concerns is likely to hamper demand over the next six years.Inquire Here Before Buying Industry Report@Key insights from the report include:The flooring market was 193.51 billion square feet in 2014; it will grow at 6.0% CAGR to reach 314.47 billion square feet by 2022.Industrial flooring market size was valued at over USD 12 billion in 2014 and is expected to surpass USD 20 billion by 2022. Residential sector is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% from 2015 to 2022 owing to home renovation and improvement projects.Asia Pacific flooring market share was more than 40% of the global demand in 2014. Surging real-estate industry and developing infrastructure facilities are driving the demand growth in this region.Recovery in the housing sector is expected to favorably impact the mature North America and Europe flooring market. There is a high degree of competition from Chinese players, and European manufacturers expect strong potential in high-end segments. Increasing labor and energy costs coupled with reduced export subsidies may pose a challenge to industry participants.Key flooring manufacturers include Mohawk Industries, Shaw Industries, Beaulieu of America and Interface. Other manufacturers include Congoleum, Interface Inc, Armstrong World Industries, Mannington Mills Inc, Pergo, and Polyfor Ltd.The industry is highly competitive on account of considerable initiatives undertaken by suppliers to provide enhanced solutions and drive product differentiation. Major industry participants focus on developing eco-friendly, cost effective, durable and low maintenance solutions for an array of applications.Read our insightful industry blogs:Contact Us:Jack DavisCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105Ocean View, Delaware Research Focused On the Alere Inc. (ALR) - Product Pipeline Analysis, 2016 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/865304 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/865304 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Alere Inc. (ALR) - Product Pipeline Analysis, 2016 Update provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Alere Inc. (Alere) is one of the leading providers of point-of-care diagnostics solutions and services with focus on cardiology, womens health, infectious diseases, diabetes, oncology, and toxicology. It offers testing and monitoring products including point-of-care and laboratory tests within the infectious disease, cardiometabolic disease, toxicology and patient self-testing domains. It also offers diabetic testing supplies, including blood glucose monitors, test strips, lancets, lancing devices, and control solutions, and other related medical supplies in the US. Alere offers its products and services to hospitals, reference laboratories, point-of-care settings, self-insured employees, wholesale and retail drug stores, and mass merchandisers. The company operates through subsidiaries and a network of distributors in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa. Alere is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, the US.This report is a source for data, analysis, and actionable intelligence on the companys portfolio of pipeline products. The report provides key information about the company, its major products and brands.The report enhances decision making capabilities and help to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage.View Rpeort At :Scope:The report reviews detailed company profile with information on business description, key company facts, major products and services, key competitors, key employees, locations and subsidiaries and recent developmentsThe report analyzes all pipeline products in development for the company Alere Inc.The report provides pipeline analysis on all pipeline products of the company (by equipment type, by indication, by development stage, and by trial status)The report covers detailed information on each pipeline product with information on pipeline territory, stage of development, device class, regulatory path, indication(s), application(s) and estimated launch dateThe report provides detailed description of products in development, technical specification and functionsThe report also covers ongoing clinical trials (wherever applicable) with information on trial name, trial objective, sponsor, trial design , trial status and phase, estimated start and end date.Reasons to Buy:Develop business strategies by understanding the trends and developments driving the medical devices pipeline and technology landscapeDesign and develop your product development, marketing and sales strategies by understanding the competitor portfolioTo formulate effective Research & Development strategiesDevelop market-entry and market expansion strategiesExploit in-licensing and out-licensing opportunities by identifying products, most likely to ensure a robust returnPlan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying key players of the most promising pipelineIdentify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantageDevelop competition strategies by identifying the status and likely launch of the competitors pipeline products through review of the clinical trials, stage and of development, etcIdentify, understand and capitalize the next high-value products that your competitor would add in its portfolioDownload Sample copy of this Report at :Table of ContentsTable of Contents 2List of Tables 5List of Figures 8Alere Inc. Company Overview 9Alere Inc. Company Snapshot 9Alere Inc. Pipeline Products and Clinical Trials Overview 10Alere Inc. Pipeline Analysis Overview 13Business Description 13Key Facts 14Alere Inc. - Major Products and Services 15Alere Inc. Pipeline Products by Development Stage 17Alere Inc. Pipeline Products Overview 20AD Index 20AD Index Product Overview 20Afinion hsCRP Assay 21Afinion hsCRP Assay Product Overview 21Afinion Lipid/Cholesterol Test Panel 22Afinion Lipid/Cholesterol Test Panel Product Overview 22Afinion PT Test - Capillary Blood 23Afinion PT Test - Capillary Blood Product Overview 23AIMS - Borrelia VisE-1/pepC10 Test 24AIMS - Borrelia VisE-1/pepC10 Test Product Overview 24AIMS System - Cardiolipin IgG Test 25AIMS System - Cardiolipin IgG Test Product Overview 25AIMS System - HIV-1 Test 26AIMS System - HIV-1 Test Product Overview 26AIMS System - Syphilis Test 27AIMS System - Syphilis Test Product Overview 27AIMS System - ToRCH IgG Test 28AIMS System - ToRCH IgG Test Product Overview 28Alere i RSV 29Alere i RSV Product Overview 29Alere i RSV - CLIA Waived 30Alere i RSV - CLIA Waived Product Overview 30Alere i System - B.Pertussis Assay 31Alere i System - B.Pertussis Assay Product Overview 31Alere i System - C. Difficile 32Alere i System - C. Difficile Product Overview 32Alere i System - CT/GC 33Alere i System - CT/GC Product Overview 33Alere i System - GBS Assay 34Alere i System - GBS Assay Product Overview 34Alere i System - HBV Assay 35Alere i System - HBV Assay Product Overview 35Alere i System - M.P/C.P Assay 36Alere i System - M.P/C.P Assay Product Overview 36Alere i System - MRSA Assay 37Alere i System - MRSA Assay Product Overview 37Alere i System - Norovirus Assay 38Alere i System - Norovirus Assay Product Overview 38Alere q Analyzer - Ebola Assay 39Alere q Analyzer - Ebola Assay Product Overview 39Alere q Analyzer - HCV Assay 40Alere q Analyzer - HCV Assay Product Overview 40Alere q Analyzer - Tuberculosis Assay 41Alere q Analyzer - Tuberculosis Assay Product Overview 41Alere Reader 42Alere Reader Product Overview 42Alere Reader - Healthcare Associated Infection Assay 43Alere Reader - Healthcare Associated Infection Assay Product Overview 43Alere Reader - Respiratory Infection Assay 44Alere Reader - Respiratory Infection Assay Product Overview 44MarketResearchReports.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 Asia-Pacific Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market Trends, Estimates And Forecasts Outlook to 2022 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/860376 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Asia-Pacific Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market Outlook to 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"GlobalDatas new report, "Asia-Pacific Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market Outlook to 2022", provides key market data on the Asia-Pacific Micro-Electromechanical Sensors market. The report provides value, in millions of US dollars, volume (in units) and average price data (in US dollars), within market.The report also provides 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.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 and distribution share data and analysis.Download Sample copy of this Report at :Scope- Market size for Micro-Electromechanical Sensors market.- Annualized market revenues (USD million), volume (units) and average selling price ($) data for each of the market categories. Data is provided from 2008 to 2015 and forecast to 2022.- 2015 distribution shares data for Micro-Electromechanical Sensors market.Reasons to buy- Develop business strategies by identifying the key market segments poised for strong growth in the future.- Develop market-entry and market expansion strategies.- Design competition strategies by identifying who-stands-where in the market.- Develop investment strategies by identifying the key market segments expected to register strong growth in the near future.- What are the key distribution channels and whats the most preferred mode of product distribution - Identify, understand and capitalize.Read our latest Press Release atTable of Contents1 Table of Contents1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 41.2 List of Figures 52 Introduction 62.1 What Is This Report About? 62.3 Definitions of Markets Covered in the Report 63 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific 73.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Revenue ($m), 2008-2022 73.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 93.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 103.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Volume (Units), 2008-2022 113.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 133.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Asia-Pacific, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 144 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia 154.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 154.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 164.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 174.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 184.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Average Price ($), 2008-2022 194.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Australia, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 205 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China 215.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 215.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 225.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 235.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 245.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Average Price ($), 2008-2022 255.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, China, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 266 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India 276.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 276.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 286.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 296.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 306.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Average Price ($), 2008-2022 316.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, India, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 327 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan 337.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 337.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 347.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 357.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 367.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Average Price ($), 2008-2022 377.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, Japan, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 388 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea 398.1 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 398.2 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 408.3 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 418.4 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 428.5 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Average Price ($), 2008-2022 438.6 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market, South Korea, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 449 Micro-Electromechanical Sensors Market Pipeline Products 45MarketResearchReports.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 Belize Electricity Limited - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis And Forecast Report 2016 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/862874 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/862874 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ MarketResearchReports.Biz announces addition of new report" Belize Electricity Limited - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis, 2016 Update "to its database.The report contains a detailed description of the power generation companys business operations, history, corporate strategy, and business structure. This report contains a detailed SWOT analysis, information on key employees (executives), and major products and services.View Report At :Scope- Major Power Plants (assets) - summarized and detailed information about the power plants (assets).- Operational Metrics (capacity, generation, revenue, sales, number of consumers).- Business description - A detailed description of the companys operations and business divisions.- Corporate strategy - GlobalDatas summarization of the companys business strategy.- SWOT analysis - A detailed analysis of the companys strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.- Company history - Progression of key events associated with the company.- Major products and services - A list of major products, services and brands- Key employees - A list of the key executives and personnel heading key departments/functions.- Executive biographies - A brief summary of the executives employment history.- Financial deals - Coverage of key financial deals from 2006 onwards, depending upon information availability- Important locations and subsidiaries - A list of key locations and subsidiaries of the company, including contact details.Download Sample copy of this Report at :Reasons to buy- Gain key insights into the company for academic or business research purposes. Key elements such as SWOT analysis, corporate strategy and major products and services are incorporated in the profile to assist in various business decisions (M&A and JV).- Identify potential customers and suppliers with this reports analysis of the companys business structure, operations, major products and services and business strategy.- Understand and respond to competitors business structure and strategies with GlobalDatas detailed SWOT analysis. In this, the companys core strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are analyzed, providing an up to date objective view of the company.Read our latest Press Release atTable of ContentsTable of Contents 2List of Tables 3Company Snapshot 4Key Information 4Company Overview 4SWOT Snapshot 4Operational Metrics 5Belize Electricity Limited, Operational Metrics, By Capacity 5Belize Electricity Limited, Operational Metrics, By Generation 5Belize Electricity Limited, Operational Metrics, By Customers 5Belize Electricity Limited, Operational Metrics, By Segmental Information 5Belize Electricity Limited, Operational Metrics, By Sales 6Belize Electricity Limited, Thermal Power Plants 7Belize Electricity Limited, Thermal Power Plants, Belize 7Business Description 7Business Overview 7Major Products and Services 7History 8SWOT Analysis 9Overview 9Belize Electricity Limited Strengths 9Diverse Sources of Supply 9Operational Performance 9Support from Government 9Belize Electricity Limited Weaknesses 10Technical Faults 10Belize Electricity Limited Opportunities 10Strategic Initiatives 10Expansion Initiatives 10Positive Outlook for Electricity Demand: Belize 10Belize Electricity Limited Threats 10Seasonal Variations and Climatic Conditions 10Transmission and Distribution Losses 11Operational Issues 11Key Employees 12Key Employee Biographies 13Company Statement 14Locations And Subsidiaries 16Head Office 16Other Locations & Subsidiaries 16Appendix 17Report Scope 17GlobalData Coverage 17Benchmarking 17GlobalDatas Methodology 17Secondary Research 17Primary Research 17Contact Us 18Disclaimer 18MarketResearchReports.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 New Study: Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis, 2016 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/862872 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/862872 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand - Power Plants and SWOT Analysis, 2016 Update " is the latest addition to MarketResearchReports.Biz industry research reports collection.The report contains a detailed description of the power generation companys business operations, history, corporate strategy, and business structure. This report contains a detailed SWOT analysis, information on key employees (executives), and major products and services.View Report At :Scope- Major Power Plants (assets) - summarized and detailed information about the power plants (assets).- Operational Metrics (capacity, generation, revenue, sales, number of consumers).- Business description - A detailed description of the companys operations and business divisions.- Corporate strategy - GlobalDatas summarization of the companys business strategy.- SWOT analysis - A detailed analysis of the companys strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.- Company history - Progression of key events associated with the company.- Major products and services - A list of major products, services and brands- Key employees - A list of the key executives and personnel heading key departments/functions.- Executive biographies - A brief summary of the executives employment history.- Financial deals - Coverage of key financial deals from 2006 onwards, depending upon information availability- Important locations and subsidiaries - A list of key locations and subsidiaries of the company, including contact details.Reasons to buy- Gain key insights into the company for academic or business research purposes. Key elements such as SWOT analysis, corporate strategy and major products and services are incorporated in the profile to assist in various business decisions (M&A and JV).- Identify potential customers and suppliers with this reports analysis of the companys business structure, operations, major products and services and business strategy.- Understand and respond to competitors business structure and strategies with GlobalDatas detailed SWOT analysis. In this, the companys core strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are analyzed, providing an up to date objective view of the company.Download Sample copy of this Report at :Table of ContentsTable of Contents 2List of Tables 7Company Snapshot 9Key Information 9Company Overview 9SWOT Snapshot 9Operational Metrics 10Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Operational Metrics, By Capacity 10Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Operational Metrics, By Generation 10Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Operational Metrics, By Transmission 10Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Operational Metrics, By Segmental Information 11Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Operational Metrics, By Sales 12Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Wind Farms 13Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Wind Farms, Australia 13Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Solar PV Parks 16Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Solar PV Parks, Thailand 16Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Solar Thermal Plants 21Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Solar Thermal Plants, Thailand 21Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Hydro Power Plants 22Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Hydro Power Plants, Myanmar 22Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Thermal Power Plants 25Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Thermal Power Plants, Thailand 25Business Description 33Business Overview 33Major Products and Services 34History 35SWOT Analysis 39Overview 39Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand Strengths 39Working Capital Surplus 39Integrated Operations 39Focused R&D Activities 40Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand Weaknesses 40Operational Performance 40Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand Opportunities 40Alternative Energy Development Plan: Thailand 40Increase in Demand for Electricity: Thailand 40Positive Outlook for Thermal Power: Thailand 40Energy Policy and Planning: Lao PDR 41Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand Threats 41Natural Gas Concerns: Thailand 41Environmental Laws and Regulations 41Operational Issues 41Network Safety Issues 41Key Employees 42Company Statement 43MarketResearchReports.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 Unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) market size is driven by APAC countries such as China, India, Indonesia & Thailand by forecast 7 years https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/133 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/133 https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/unsaturated-polyester-resin-upr-market-size https://gminsights.wordpress.com http://www.fractovia.org https://www.gminsights.com Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) Market size may generate USD 12.8 billion revenue by 2022; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.Positive indicators for increasing composites usage across transportation and infrastructure industry owing to light weight & durability in comparison to metallic counterparts should favor UPR market size. Unsaturated polyester resin, orthophthalic, is used in the manufacture of general purpose composites which require moderate structural properties.UPR composites also posses excellent aesthetic value and can be easily pigmented to suit the need of a particular industry, without compromising on the structural properties of the finished product. Moreover, several manufacturers are developing alternative methods to manufacture products from biomass which may stimulate bio UPR market size.Request for Sample of This Research Report@APAC is a large scale manufacturing hub for chemicals, automotive and electronics. In terms of revenue, APAC dominant by India and China UPR market size, may surpass USD 6 billion revenue by 2022. On-going construction activities along with automobile production growth in China, Thailand India should drive composites demand for structural modification over the next few years.Orthopthalic unsaturated polyester resin market size may attain over 7.2% growth in revenue terms. These resins are extensively used in the fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) industry. FRPs are being increasingly used in a wide range of applications such as pools, tanks, plates, vessels, car bodies and other general pieces.Building & construction industry should witness over 6% CAGR. Strong indicators for construction spending particularly in BRICS nations should drive UPR market size. Growing fiberglass market in China coupled with rising FRP demand in construction applications should drive product demand.Unsaturated polyester resin is used as body filler for rapid reconstruction and repair of damaged vehicles part. Growing lightweight materials demand in automotive industry in order to reduce emissions and increase fuel efficiency should drive product demand. In addition, it is used for doors, roofs, bumpers and interiors to repair damages caused during accidents.Inquire here Before Buying The Report@Major industries are implementing technological innovation to develop low cost system and are focusing on expanding their existing product portfolio. Raw materials used for manufacturing resins are isophthalic acid, phthalic anhydride, maleic anhydride and glycols. Tight raw material supply situation may affect end product cost and put constraint UPR market price trend.Key insights from the report include:Isophthalic polyester market size should achieve over 6% growth and exceed 2 million tons by 2022.Tanks & pipes industry in EU may generate over USD 470 million by 2022. Increasing FRP tanks & pipes demand may drive UPR market size growth. Rising concern over corrosion associated with tanks & pipes made of metals along with gaining importance of tank farm management in onshore and offshore oil & gas applications have increased the scope for FRP tanks and pipes.DCPD unsaturated polyester resin market share in Europe generated over 160 kilo tons in 2014. European Commission has framed regulations for restricting styrene monomer usage which should drive (dicyclopentadiene) DCPD demand.Electrical industry in Central & South America consumed over 30 kilo tons in 2015. Growing composites demand in printed circuit boards (PCBs) due to their superior properties such as unparalleled rigidity and durability should have a positive influence in UPR market size growth.Artificial stone based unsaturated polyester resin market size should show significant gains at over 6.2% CAGR. It is also known as polyester stones which are used as internal decorative material in walls, columns, wall painting and architectural reliefs.Marine application in North America generated over 65 kilo tons in 2014. Growing UPR demand in marine applications on account of exhibiting properties such as inherent strength, weather-resistant finish and hydrolytic stability should drive industry growth.Global UPR market share is fragmented. BASF, Dow, Ashland, CCP Composites and Changzhou are among notable industry players. Other prominent participants include DSM, DuPont, Reichhold and Lanxess.Browse key industry insights spread across 95 pages with 68 market data tables &15 figures & charts from the report, Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) Market Size By End-Use (Building & Construction, Artificial Stones, Pipes & Tanks, Transport, Electrical, Marine), By Product (Isopthalic, Orthopthalic, DCPD), Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2015 2022 in detail along with the table of contents:Global Market Insights has segmented the unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) market on the basis of product, end-use and region:Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) Product Analysis (Volume: Kilo Tons; Revenue: USD Million, 2012 2022)OrthopthalicIsophthalicDCPDOthersUnsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) End-Use Analysis (Volume: Kilo Tons; Revenue: USD Million, 2012 2022)Building & ConstructionTanks & PipesElectricalMarineTransportArtificial StonesOthersUnsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) Regional Analysis (Volume: Kilo Tons; Revenue: USD Million, 2012 2022)North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificCSAMEARead our insightful industry blogs:Contact Us:Jack DavisCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1 888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105Ocean View, Delaware Shim Stock Material Market Revenue Predicted To Go Up by 2026 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11623 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11623 Shim is a thin, tapered or wedged piece of material, used to fill small spaces between objects. Shim Stock base material varies with their application. Shim can be made up of materials such as plastic, metal, wood, stone or even paper. Shims Stock materials are widely used to adjust for better fit, support, or provide a leveled surface and for such purpose it is required on ad-hoc basis. Shim Stock material also finds applications as spacers to fill gaps between parts subject to wear and tear. Shim Stock materials are used by various industries such as aeronautical, manufacturing, defense, etc. However, the aeronautical and defense industry mainly finds wide applications for Shim Stock materials.Request for Sample Copy@The global Shim Stock market is primarily driven by aeronautical industry due to its end use application. Increasing demand for commercial aircrafts is fueling the demand for shim stock materials. Shim stock materials also finds application in other industries such as defense and manufacturing. The continuous operations in production facilities requires effective maintenance activities in plants which in turn is fueling the demand of shim stock materials. Increasing global spending on defense equipments also driving the demand for Shim stock materials. However, factors like dependency on end use industries can be a restraint for the global shim stock material market. Therefore, demand variability in end use industries like aeronautical, manufacturing and defense have high impact on the global shim stock market. Other restraints like unorganized market for shim stock material and high profit share of suppliers resulting in price imbalance are few other factors confining the growth of global shim stock material market.Global Shim Stock Material market can be segmented on the basis end-use industry, material, application and type. On the basis of end-use industry, global Shim Stock Material market can be segmented into Aeronautical industry, Manufacturing, Defense and other industries widely using shim stock materials. On the basis of materials, global shim stock material market can be segmented as plastic, wood, metals, paper and others. Global Shim stock market can also be segmented on the basis of application including alignment, filling of void spaces, support, installation of new machinery etc. Shim stock material are available in market in various forms. Lastly, on the basis of end product type the global shim stock market can be segmented into coil, sheet, rod, bar and tube.High defense budget and increasing demand for commercial aircrafts in regions like North America followed by Asia pacific countries like china, Japan, Eastern Europe countries particularly Russia and western Europe countries like U.K are the top markets for shim stock materials. However, Global Shim Stock Market is also fueled by demand in manufacturing industry, manufacturing hub like Asia pacific regions like china followed by North America. Global Shim Stock Material market can be divided into seven major regions including North America (U.S., Canada), Asia Pacific (ASEAN, Australia, China, India, & New Zealand), Japan, Western Europe (Italy, France, U.K, Spain, Germany), Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia), Asia- Latin America (Mexico. Brazil) and Middle East and Africa (GCC, S. Africa, N. Africa).Global Shim Stock Material market is highly competitive due to the presence of number of manufacturers involved in the manufacturing and supply of shim stock materials. Most of the manufacturers provide a wide variety of shim stock materials. Various key players involved are Lyon Industries Inc., United States Brass & Copper Inc., Artus corp., Eagle Alloys Corp., Coronet Parts Mfg. Co. Inc., Accushim Inc., Aloma Shim and Manufacturing. Metallo Gasket Company, SPIROL International Corporation, Shanghai Metal Corporation. and others.Request for Table of Content@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 using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application, and Industry.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Clinical Alarm Management Market Revenue and Value Chain 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1713 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1713 www.futuremarketinsights.com Clinical alarm systems are devices that alert caregivers of immediate adverse patient conditions and help in enhancing potential patient-safety. Alarms must be accurate, unique and provide alerts, which could be readily identified and understood by caregivers and the products must belong to standardized & approved product categories. These systems are either built-in or attached to other medical equipment & monitoring systems. Alarm fatigue is the psychological effect produced by too many alarms occurring in a clinical environment, causing clinicians to miss true clinically significant alarms. When alarms work well, the environment of patient care is enhanced. When alarms do not work well, they pull caregivers away from their line of respective duties and other patients, or even ignore alarm sounds altogether. Cases of ignored alarms have resulted in patient deaths earlier in extreme cases. Most often, the major usability problem is an alarm flood - too many alarms ringing together, in case of any device failure. Other defects hampering clinical alarm uptake in sophisticated healthcare systems include poorly designed alarms, improperly set alarm points, ineffective alarm announcements, and unclear alarm messages among others.Clinical Alarm Management Market: Drivers and RestraintsIncreasing awareness of care providers towards enhancing patient safety is a prominent factor pushing the revenue growth of the clinical alarm management market. Others revenue drivers include rising medtech investments by governments of all major countries and promoting access to basic healthcare across all sections of the society. Integrated alarm system designs are often not standardized across different medical equipment systems and devices. This could be considered as a restraint for clinical alarm management market. Improper alarm escalation leading to false negative cases - such as a patient needs immediate clinical attention but a clinician is not alerted - substantially compromises on patient-safety. Other factors negatively affecting market growth are lack of product standardization across regions and lack of proper skills to rationalize the alarm adjustment process.Request for sample report:Clinical Alarm Management Market: SegmentationClinical alarm management market is segmented based on product type, end user and geography.Based on product type, clinical alarm management market is segmented as follows:Physiological monitorsTelemetry monitorsVentilatorsInfusion PumpsAnesthesia MachinesCompression PumpsFeeding PumpsNurse Call SystemBed AlarmsBased on end user, the clinical alarm management market is segmented as follows:HospitalsClinicsAmbulatory surgical centersLong term and palliative care centersHome careOthersClinical Alarm Management Market: OverviewIn the present market scenario, clinical alarm manufacturers prioritize sensitivity over specificity. This often leads to a large number of false positive cases, which is often misleading. Particularly, when alarm frequency is high, caregivers could become desensitized, develop alarm fatigue, and create a false negative outcome, compromising patient safety. With rise in the number of urban healthcare centers across regions, there clinical alarm management market is witnessing a sustained growth in demand for standard and tested products. To avoid product level dysfunctionalities, the AAMI (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation) Foundation had added clinical alarms to its portfolio of multidisciplinary initiatives to advance patient safety and created an Alarm Best Practices Workgroup in 2012. The committee reviews and recommends best practices on clinical alarm management at regular intervals. Developed pharmaceutical markets are expected to create sustainable traction in generating demand for standardized clinical alarm systems over the forecast period, while developing markets are expected to follow suit.Request for TOC:Clinical Alarm Management Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global clinical alarm management market is classified into seven regions namely, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America is expected to dominate the clinical alarm management market in terms of both revenue and demand generation owing to greater awareness on medtech advancement followed by Western Europe. However, over the foreseeable long term, markets in Latin America and Asia-Pacific could prove lucrative in terms of market opportunities owing to persistence of factors such as greater penetration of access to organized healthcare and rising disposable income level contribution to private healthcare spending.Clinical Alarm Management Market: Key PlayersSome of the major companies contributing to global clinical alarm management market include Medtronic, Extension Healthcare, GE Healthcare, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Baxter, Mindray Medical International Limited among others.About us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact 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: Tinea Pedis Treatment Market Segments and Key Trends 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2084 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2084 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/tinea-pedis-treatment-market www.futuremarketinsights.com Tinea Pedis also called as Athlets Foot is a superficial fungal infection of feet caused by group of fungi known as dermatophytes. Fungi are eukaryotic organism that live as saprophyte or parasite existing in two different forms as yeast and molds. Moist, occlusive environment is the ideal environment for the growth of such organism affecting keratin of the top layer of the epidermis. Conditions such as diabetes and HIV interfere with bodys immune system and increase the risk of getting infected with tinea pedis. The disease in more prevalent in tropic and subtropical countries of the world. FDA reports Trichophyton rubrum as the main causative agent of Tinea pedis followed by Trichophyton mentagrophytes and Epidermophyton floccosum. However in some of the cases the diseases is also caused by Microsporum canis, Trichophyton tonsurans and by other dermatophyte species. Tinea pedis is estimated to affect 40% of the total population who visit hospital for a medical reason. The diseases is accompanied by dermatophyte infection of other parts of the body including groin, hands or nails. Clinical diagnosis of tinea pedis includes visible fissuring, maceration, and scaling in the interdigital or subdigital area of the feet. This may also involve examination of sole area of the foot characterized by diffused scaling or presence of vesicopustules on the plantar area around the instep of the foot. Tinea pedis is contagious and spreads through direct contact. Topical therapy is effective for the treatment of tinea pedis. Generally, the diseases can be treated using topical antifungals. However, patients with moccasin, vesicular tinea pedis, or persistent tinea pedis may require oral antifungal treatment.Tinea pedis treatment market is expected to grow at a healthy pace attributed to growing number of patients with concomitant diabetes, atopy, and immunosuppression. With rapidly ageing population coupled with increasing numbers of immunocompromised patients, tinea is emerging as an important and a significantly prevalent infection over the coming years.Tinea Pedis Treatment Market: Drivers and RestraintsSkin conditions represents one of the most common health related problem affecting millions of people worldwide. The diseases is found to be more prevalent in warm and moist environments predominantly affecting the feet and toes. Shoes, showers, and pool areas are frequent culprits that foster and spread tinea pedis infections. Additionally, growing incidence of diabetes across the world is also fueling the market expected to fuel the growth of tinea pedis treatment market over the forecast period. It has been reported that 50% of the diabetic patients are at risk of developing tinea pedis at some point in their lifetime than non-diabetic patients. Tinea pedis treatment market is dominated by generics hence, big market players in the absence of any patent protection, face stiff competition from generics, leading to declining sales. Majority of products for topical treatment of tinea pedis have moderate efficacy with extended treatment time. Therefore, manufacturers of the drugs are focusing upon development of drugs that would take minimum amount of time in the treatment of tinea pedis.Request for sample report:Tinea Pedis Treatment Market: SegmentationThe global tinea pedis treatment market has been classified on the basis of type, traetment, end user and geography.Based on type, the global tinea pedis treatment market is divided into following:Interdigital Tinea PedisPlantar Tinea PedisVesicular Tinea PedisBased on the treatment, the global tinea pedis treatment market is divided into following:Topical DrugsGelCreamsSprayLotionsPowderOral DrugsBased on the distribution channel, the global tinea pedis treatment market is divided into following:Hospital PharmaciesRetail PharmaciesE-commerceTinea Pedis Treatment Market: OverviewTinea pedis is a growing concern in many underdeveloped and developed countries. Lack of awareness and less patient involvement in the diseases treatment is expected to hamper the market growth over the forecast period. The condition is widespread with a high rate of recurrence leading to serious complications if not treated on time. Aging population and increasing prevalence of diabetic patients has resulted in large patient pool suffering from this diseases. However, the market for tinea pedis also represents highly commercial opportunity for novel drugs under development that could lead to greater sales thereby creating a huge opportunity for drug manufacturers. Also, presence of large number of generics in the market is expected to offer huge market growth opportunity for tinea pedis treatment market in the near future.Request for TOC:Tinea Pedis Treatment Market: Regional OverviewRegion wise, the global tinea pedis treatment market is classified into regions namely, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East and Africa.North America leads the global tinea pedis treatment market followed by Europe. Growing prevalence of diabetes in the region and growing number coupled with growing investment in R & D and increased FDA approvals are expected towards the revenue traction in North America. Worldwide market for tinea pedis treatment is still evolving due to dominance of generics and major drug development firms and various companies need to work in close coordination with each other in order to develop effective treatment therapies for tinea pedis diseases management.Smart Contact Lens: Key PlayersSome of the key players in global wide filed imaging systems market are Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical Co. Inc., Merck & Co. Inc., Novartis AG., Sanofi F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Beckman Coulter Inc., Kaken Pharmaceutical Co., Nitric BioTherapeutics, and Topica Pharmaceuticals.Browse full report:About us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact 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: Boy Dies in Abandoned Well in China After 100-hour Rescue Efforts to save the boy began on Sunday after his father posted his disappearance on Chinese social media. (Photo : Getty Images) A Chinese boy was found dead after being trapped for over 100 hours in an abandoned well in north China's Hebei Province on Thursday despite intensive rescue efforts. Wu Sujie, a local government official involved in the rescue attempt, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that the boy was found with no vital signs. Advertisement The six-year-old boy, surnamed Zhao, fell down a 80-meter-deep dry well in Lixian County, Baoding City, on Sunday last week while harvesting vegetables, rescue workers said. His father posted for help on the social networking app WeChat, leading to a rescue operation that involved more than 500 personnel and an estimated 100 excavators. Measuring 30 centimeters in diameter, the well was too narrow for any adult to climb into and forced rescuers to dig out a 120-meter-diameter, funnel-shaped hole in the well in order to reach the boy, according to Xinhua. Life-detecting devices, infrared cameras, and mechanical rescue arms were used in the search, Wu said. Rescue efforts have also been hampered by the soft sandy soil, which is prone to collapse, prompting workers to support the shaft during the excavation. The accident generated widespread attention both in the mainland and abroad, which many netizens offering to help in the rescue by donating food and money. Locals also rushed to the scene to prepare food for the rescue team. Ma Xiaochun, an engineering professor at China University of Geoscience, told Beijing News that when such accidents happen, rescue workers typically contact the victim first while providing oxygen, lights, and food. "In this case, it was difficult to do so because they were unable to detect the boy, not to mention his physical condition," Ma said. The incident also sparked discussion online about China's dry wells, which are increasingly being abandoned due to diminishing water levels and increased demand caused by rapid urbanization. The local government will be conducting an investigation into all dry wells in Lixian, Wu said. Responsible Care Prize 2016 awarded to the RUDOLF GROUP www.rudolf.de Dusseldorf The "Responsible-Care" Prize for particularly responsible management in the pharmaceutical/chemical industry was awarded for the 25th time in Dusseldorf on 23rd September 2016. This initiative has taken up the cause of improving the safeguarding of people and the environment independent of existing regulations. Amongst all nominated companies the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI = Verband der Chemischen Industrie) declared 6 companies the winners in their anniversary event. They were chosen on federal level and stood out from their competitors in the respective fields. On the occasion of this year's anniversary, a seventh winner may place an additionally offered award for small and medium-sized businesses on their shelves.This year, the sought-after prize in the important category "environmental protection" was awarded to Rudolf GmbH, which is based in Geretsried, Bavaria. The managing director, Dr. Wolfgang Schumann, and Dr. Gunther Duschek, Vice President R & D, received the prize on behalf of the whole team. "Highly efficient and environmentally friendly water-repellent agents" - this is the name of the award-winning project. Since 2003 the water repellents behind this project have been in fierce competition with common environmentally hazardous water repellents. Apart from other aspects, the jury appreciated above all the pioneering role that RUDOLF has adopted in the chemical industry. No other manufacturer has developed products at such an early stage which for the outdoor industry are a real environmentally friendly alternative to fluorinated polymers. The majority of water-repellent agents used so far still contain perfluorooctanoic acid, which, due to its high stability, is very risky for the environment. RUDOLF has launched a high-performance, ecologically sustainable water-repellent finish without these problematic ingredients. "We have taken nature as a model, which is why the water-repellent finish we have developed is called BIONIC FINISH, says Dr. Duschek, and proudly adds: "In the outdoor sector today's effects are easily as strong as with fluorocarbon compounds."RUDOLF GmbH, which, today, is based in Geretsried, Bavaria, was founded by Reinhold Rudolf in Northern Bohemia in 1922. It is specialised in innovative and high-quality chemical products, predominantly textile auxiliaries, products for textile care as well as construction chemicals.One thousand employees in 45 countries around the world guarantee logistical as well as technical service.The combination of backwards integration, development know-how, exact knowledge of market requirements and thorough technical application expertise make RUDOLF GmbH an experienced and competent partner for the customers of the textile finishing industry, co-producers and many other industries. Quality Management and certification according to DIN ISO 9001:14001 go without saying. RUDOLF offers products that comply with the Oeko-Tex-Standard and GOTS, is committed to ZDHC with its own MRS-list and is a bluesign system partner. In addition, as a member of the chemical industry, it lives the philosophy of the voluntary Responsible Care initiative, which stands for responsible action in the fields of environment, safety and health.RUDOLF GmbHAltvaterstrae 58 - 64, 82538 Geretsried, GERMANYTel. 08171 53-0Fax 08171 53-191info@rudolf.de Data Loss Prevention Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends, Forecast 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/data-loss-prevention-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=14237 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Data loss prevention (DLP) is a software designed to prevent and detect data breaches by monitoring and blocking critical data at rest, in motion or in use. DLP prevents unintended and accidental loss or transfer of organizations critical data. It also protects data from decisive data theft and cyber-attacks ensuring data security.The DLP market provides network and cloud based solutions for e-mail, mobile devices, USB drivers and laptops among others For instance, Skyhigh Networks provides DLP cloud based solutions to protect employees uploaded data such as personal health information (PHI), customer information and personally identifiable information (PII). It supports management of internal policies, prevents disclosure of sensitive data and achieves compliance and regulation policies such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH).Browse The Market Research Report of Data Loss Prevention Market :The rising number of breaches in various industry verticals such as oil and gas industries, retail industries and business financial services and insurance (BFSI) has expanded the adoption of DLP. For instance in march 2015, data breaches in Primera Blue Cross, a health insurer company based in Washington and Anthem, a health insurer company was hacked and suffered data breach in February 2015The data loss prevention market has been experiencing sustainable growth in recent years due to increasing security breaches, high demand for protection of intellectual property against theft and rising adoption of cloud computing such shift in storage of data from on-premises to public and private cloud platform. The other additional factor contributing to the growth of data loss prevention market is emerging commercialization. For instance, rising adoption of social media leading to advanced information sharing. However, lack of awareness is hindering the DLP market growth. The acceptance of cloud based business models and persistent cyber-attacks is expected to provide opportunities for growth of data loss prevention market during the forecast period.The data loss prevention market is segmented on the basis of deployment type, end-user adoption, solution tools, application, service and geography. On the basis of deployment type, the data loss prevention market is segmented into on-premise DLP and cloud DLP. In terms of end-user adoption, the data loss prevention market is segmented into encryption, web and e-mail protection, policy, standards and procedures, cloud storage, centralized management and incident response and workflow management. In terms of solution tools, the data loss prevention market is segmented as storage or data center DLP, network DLP and endpoint DLP. Based on the application, the data loss prevention market is segmented into manufacturing, telecommunication and IT, healthcare, aerospace and defense, retail and logistics, government and public utilities and banking, financial services and insurance. Further on the basis of services provided, the data loss prevention market is segmented into managed security services, risk & threat assessment services, consulting services, education & training and system integration & installation services. Moreover, on the basis of geography the data loss prevention market is segmented into North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. North America is expected to lead the market due to increased adoption of cloud and big data technologies. Moreover, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa are expected to sustainable growth in data loss prevention market during the forecast period due to high demand for data loss prevention software and increasing security attacks.Get Free Sample Report Copy :Some of the Key Players in data loss prevention market are GTB Technologies, Inc., Code Green Networks, Symantec Corporation, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., Trustwave Holdings, Inc., CA Technologies, Trend Micro Incorporated, Blue Coat systems, Inc., Cisco Systems and Websense, Inc.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Pay TV Market in the US 2015-2019, Industry Overview, Product Life Cycle and Vendor Segmentation Report http://www.researchmoz.us/pay-tv-market-in-the-us-2015-2019-report.html http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=363335 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=363335 www.researchmoz.us/ Pay TV Market in the US 2015-2019 Size and Share Published in 2015-09-16 Available for US$ 2500 at Researchmoz.usDescriptionTo Access the Full Report, Please Visit :Pay TV refers to subscription-based television services. Pay TV operators provide data, videos, and voice services. Moreover, they provide games, movies, and contents matching the requirements of various demographics. Earlier, subscription-based services were provided using both analog and digital cables. However, in the mid-2000s, digital cable TV gained traction, which led to a reduction in the market share of analog services.Technavio's analysts forecast the pay TV market in the US to grow at a CAGR of 1.87% over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this reportThis report covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the pay TV market in the US for 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the subscriptions of the following services:Cable TVSatellite TVIPTVThe market is highly fragmented with the presence of a large number of small and large vendors. The report only lists the key vendors in the market; it does not present the market share of all the vendors. In addition, the report discusses the major drivers influencing the growth of the pay TV market in the US, outlines the challenges faced by vendors and the market at large, and the key trends emerging in the market.Technavio's report, Pay TV Market in the US 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the landscape of the pay TV market in the US and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report includes a discussion on the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAT&TComcastCox CommunicationsDISH NetworkSkyVerizon CommunicationsGet a Sample Copy of the Report:Other prominent vendorsAmrica MvilBell CanadaCablevisionCharter CommunicationsKPNLiberty GlobalSK TelecomSureWest CommunicationsTelefnicaMarket driverGrowth of satellite TV and IPTV segmentsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeIntense competitionFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendEvolution of pick-and-pay servicesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat 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?Inquiry on this report:Table of ContentPART 01: Executive summaryHighlightsPART 02: Scope of the reportMarket overviewEnd-user segmentsBase yearVendor segmentationMarket size calculation and segmentationTop-vendor offeringsPART 03: Market research methodologyResearch methodologyEconomic indicatorsPART 04: IntroductionKey market highlightsIntroduction to TV subscriptionPART 05: Market landscapeMarket overviewProduct life cycleMarket size and forecastUnit shipment forecastARPU (average revenue per user)Five forces analysisResearchMoz 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.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ bit.ly/1TBmnVG JOHN DEERE GEARATION BOARD SELECTED AS THE TOP EDUCATIONAL TOY OF 2016 IN THE 9TH ANNUAL GODDARD SCHOOL PRESCHOOLER-APPROVED TOY TEST www.goddardschool.com/toytest www.goddardschool.com KING OF PRUSSIA, PA November 14, 2016 Goddard Systems, Inc. (GSI), the national franchisor of The Goddard School preschool system, is excited to announce that the public has selected the John Deere Gearation Board as the top toy in its 9th annual Goddard School Preschooler-Approval Toy Test. In an effort to encourage learning through play outside of the classroom, GSI will purchase and donate 100 units of the John Deere Gearation Board to Toys for Tots, a program run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve that distributes holiday gifts to less fortunate children in the community.Established in 2008, The Goddard Schools annual Toy Test determines the best educational toys of the year with the help of the most discerning toy critics preschoolers! Each year, The Goddard School Toy Test Committee evaluates dozens of submissions from popular toy manufacturing companies across the globe. The educational toys that support child-initiated play and collaboration, among other criteria, proceed to the next round where preschoolers from 50 Goddard School locations across the nation are given the opportunity to play with the toys. Preschoolers and teachers worked together to choose the favorite 10 toys, which were then put to a public vote to determine the winner.The Goddard School Preschooler-Approved Top 10 Toys finalists included the following (in suggested age range order):* Click Clack Ball by The Manhattan Toy Company (Suggested Age Range: 0+ years)* Sort and Discover Activity Cube by VTech (Suggested Age Range: 9-36 months)* Mirari Pop! Pop! Piano by Play Monster (Suggested Age Range: 12+ months)* Musical Gator by Alex Brands (Suggested Age Range: 18+ months)* Newborn Nursery Newborn Baby by Madame Alexander (Suggested Age Range: 2+ years)* Lauri Tall Stackers by Play Monster (Suggested Age Range: 2+ years)* Gearation Board by John Deere (Suggested Age Range: 3+ years)* Puppy Up by Play Monster (Suggested Age Range: 3+ years)* Yeti in My Spaghetti by Play Monster (Suggested Age Range: 4+ years)* Hexenkuche (Witches Kitchen) by Beleduc USA, Inc. (Suggested Age Range: 4+ years)Play-based learning is a critical part of the growth of preschoolers as they develop into confident learners, says GSIs Vice President of Education, Dr. Craig Bach. Through The Goddard School preschools Toy Test program, children provide wonderful feedback on a range of educational toys like John Deere Gearation Board while experiencing genuine play-based learning.For more information on The Goddard School and the Preschooler-Approved Toy Test, please visitAbout The Goddard SchoolLearning for fun. Learning for life. For nearly 30 years, The Goddard School has used the most current, academically endorsed methods to ensure that children from six weeks to six years old have fun while learning the skills they need for long-term success in school and in life. Talented teachers collaborate with parents to nurture children into respectful, confident and joyful learners. The Goddard Schools AdvancED- and Middle States-accredited F.L.EX. Learning Program (Fun Learning Experience) reaches more than 50,000 students in more than 450 Goddard Schools in 36 states. The Goddard Schools comprehensive play-based curriculum, developed with early childhood education experts, provides the best childhood preparation for social and academic success. To learn more about The Goddard School, please visitKonnect Agency888 S. Figueroa StreetLos Angeles, CA 90017Amanda Molinaamolina@konnectagency.com Marriott International relies on 3D and VR made by easyRAUM easyRAUM 3D Event Solution Virtual Reality Panorama Marriott confirmed easyRAUM as preferred partner for 3D solutions in the MICE sector. The Duesseldorf-based software company is thus legal partner of Marriott in Europe. The innovative company offers comprehensive 3D solutions. easyRAUM scores with its sustainable product mix: the user-friendly 3D CAD software easyRAUMpro, high-class 3D visualization services and the possibility to integrate the venue into the own website in an attractive and interactive way. By bundling 3D services and the 3D CAD software easyRAUM creates an outstanding added value for users. At present, the first European hotels have already started to work with easyRAUM, among them are the Zurich Marriott Hotel, the Berlin Marriott Hotel, the Amsterdam Marriott Hotel and the London Heathrow Marriott Hotel. The special focus of the cooperation between easyRAUM and Marriott lies on the mutual interest to intensively promote the issue of Virtual Reality. The largest hotel group Marriott sets new benchmarks in the hotel industry by working together with easyRAUM, a software provider that can already generate VR panoramas with its event planning software easyRAUMpro. We are very happy about this evidence of confidence and are pleased that our joint journey has taken this direction after 8 years. Being nominated as preferred partner by Marriott can be compared to a knightly accolade, that we are very proud of! We look forward to facing these new challenges, explains Sabine Reise, CEO of easyRAUM GmbH.Providing a premium software solution for an easy creation and editing of 2D floor plans and 3D visualization, easyRAUM is a one-stop-solution when it comes to the use of 3D in event planning. Developed especially for venues, convention centres and hotels the company reinvents the presentation of the rooms and animates high-end rendered 3D-models for website-integration. Equipped with photos and venue details a transparent source of information becomes available for MICE customers on the Internet. easyRAUM thus ensuring sustainability of its product portfolio. Everything fits together: visualization of the location in 3D, including customized 3D furniture and plan layout. the easyRAUMpro software for flexible processing and the attractive possibility to integrate the whole 3d model in the website.In recent years, the Dusseldorf software company has developed into a well-known premium brand in the event area. With over 1000 customers from all parts of the industry, are now relying large hotels, convention centers, leading agencies, event service and outfitter on the 3D premium software and services by easyRAUM GmbH.easyRAUM GmbHLuegallee 440545 DuesseldorfTel: 0049 21178171750Mail: info@easyraum.de Rising Complex Data-Driven Scenario Creates Growth Opportunities for North American Managed Security Service Providers http://www.frost.com Do-it-yourself approach to cyber security proves inadequate for highly dynamic business assets, finds Frost & Sullivans Network Security TeamSANTA CLARA, CA November 14, 2016 The complexity of network security is increasing due to the growing sophistication of distributed denial of service (DDoS) and the subsequent proliferation of security point solutions. The abundance of security solutions, along with stricter compliance requirements and policies, has stoked the demand for expert security professionals, who are in short supply. In response to this human resource crunch and the need to ensure compliance with data privacy regulations, business and public entities of all sizes are turning to managed security service providers (MSSPs).Enterprises are re-evaluating and strengthening their relationships with MSSPs as they recognize the need for advanced analysis engines to process potential incident data from several sources, said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Vice President of Research Michael Suby. Additionally, the complicated and potentially conflicting laws and regulations, privacy concerns and possible e-discovery requests are compelling organizations to outsource at least parts of their security functions to MSSPs.2016 North American Managed Security Services is part of the Cyber Security teams Growth Partnership Subscription that includes insights on related topics such as: addressing the threats IoT present; controlling user and machine access to critical internal systems, Web sites, and cloud services; devising approaches to combat constantly evolving malware families, and reducing the time window between compromise and remediation.Click here for complimentary access to more information on this analysis and to register for a Growth Strategy Dialogue, a free interactive briefing with Frost & Sullivans thought leaders.The risk management value of MSSPs is very difficult for enterprises opting for a do-it-yourself approach to duplicate. Only the largest of enterprises can gather the range and volume of threat intelligence as MSSPs, effectively process multiple streaming data feeds, and have the security expertise to determine and act on an optimal risk mitigation approach. By building scalable operations, serving customers across multiple verticals, being fluent in security technologies, and staffing with security expertise, MSSPs are well positioned to support organizations of all sizes.The two types of MSSPs that are best poised to succeed in this market are network service providers that offer DDoS identification and mitigation services, and MSSPs with a broad library of threat intelligence and an ability to translate that to actionable intelligence.Customers want solutions that solve problems, rather than mere alerts to a potential problem, noted Suby. Therefore, MSSPs that offer consulting, professional and technical services could well outpace the overall market.About Frost & SullivanFrost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion2016 North American Managed Security ServicesK12F-74Contact:Mariana FernandezCorporate Communications North AmericaP: +54.(11) 4778.3540E: mariana.fernandez@frost.comAbout Frost & SullivanFrost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion3211 Scott BlvdSanta Clara, CA 95054United States of America Home61 Creates Website for Il Villaggio in Miami Beach, Florida www.home61.com Home61 Creates Website for Il Villaggio in Miami Beach, FloridaReal-estate made simple by Home61Miami, Florida (October 2016) Home61, the leader in modern real estate, has launched a new website with complete listings for Il Villaggio Condominiums in world-famous Miami Beach at ilvillaggiocondosforsale.com. The site was designed to make finding condos to rent or own at Il Villaggio hassle-free and easy-to-use. This website allows property-seekers to browse up-to-date listings for 1, 2, 3, and 4 bedroom condos for sale or rent at Miami Beachs Il Villaggio.Located at 1455 Ocean Drive on iconic Miami Beach, Il Villaggio embodies the energy and vibrancy of beautiful Miami, Florida. Ocean Drive, described as the American Riviera, is home to Miamis most exquisite and expertly curated shops and boutiques, and the citys trendiest eateries. Il Villaggio condominiums feature an expertly designed 4-story glass and marble lobby and floor-to-ceiling terraces to capture the beauty and beat of the surrounding city. Il Villaggio condos to rent or own feature private beach lounges and cabanas, and a fabulous ocean eatery. Each condo is equipped with modern appliances and Kohler bathroom fixtures. Il Villaggio condos available to rent or own offer the best in Miami-living with amenities to match.Home61 is a tech company dedicated to streamlining the Miami real-estate experience. Olivier Grinda, founder and CEO of Home61, prides the companys reputation We are certain those looking to buy or rent in Miami will find their search for a home made easy with Home61.The Il Villaggio website offers current listings of available properties and price changes, as well as information on floor plans, amenities, and the surrounding area. Customers looking to rent or buy at Il Villaggio Condominiums will have access to the most accurate, up-to-date information possible from ilvillaggiocondosforsale.com.See ilvillaggiocondosforsale.com orfor more details.Home61 is an online real estate company that helps you find a great place to live in Miami Greater Area.Were making residential (house, apartment, condos) rentals and sales easier by enabling you to:Search tens of thousands of real time Residential for rent and sale with just a click.Our advance filtering options lets you find the perfect house for you.Get a dedicated Personal Assistant to help and assist you from the get-go.Get a dedicated Home61 Agent as soon as you decide to visit a home.Keep track of your Home search in one, single place with My Homes.Set up you availability for Home visits in My Calendar or tell your Personal Assistant so that she can manage that for you.3401 North Miami Ave, Suite 210, Miami FL, 33127 The next-gen torrent client Bitport.io pushes torrenting to the cloud. https://bitport.io/press http://www.bitport.io Bitport.io combines cutting-edge torrent technology, secure private cloud storage, and video streaming into one online service. Bitport is your all-in-one torrent machine.Torrent files are downloaded by Bitport.io servers, not by PC users. A Bitport user only needs to paste a torrent file, and Bitport does the rest of the work. This creates a safe torrent platform with the capability to continue downloading even after the user's device is switched off.Torrent files downloaded by Bitport to the user's personal cloud can be securely downloaded via a fast encrypted connection. Bitport offers video file streaming in a web browser on desktop PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets or on a TV with Apple TV or Chromecast. Thanks to this technology, Bitport provides the easiest way to torrent on an iPhone or iPad.The trend is clear; everything moves to the cloud and adapts for smartphones. The main goal of Bitport is to use cloud technology to make torrenting easier and safer, said Filip Svoboda, CMO of Bitport.io. We have big plans for Bitport, and new features are already on their way.Bitport.io takes the security of its users very seriously. All connections are encrypted by SSL, making transfers unreadable to anyone else. Downloaded files are also checked by a built-in antivirus protection, and payments can be made anonymously with Bitcoin.Besides Bitcoin, users can pay for Bitport.io services by PayPal, credit card, or any one of 50 other payment methods. The trial plan of Bitport is free, and premium plans start at $5/month for an annual subscription. Premium plans offer more cloud storage, worldwide download server access, HD streaming, and the ability to load subtitles and other handy features.For screenshots, logos, and more information, visitAbout Bitport.ioBitport.io is the Czech cloud torrenting service startup behind cutting-edge torrenting technology.Contact:Filip Svoboda, CMOmedia@bitport.io+420 721 692 888Bitport is the next generation torrent client providing fast and secure torrenting. Torrent files are downloaded to every users personal cloud from where files can be downloaded or streamed. All communication between Bitport and users is encrypted by SSL encryption.Bitport runs in a web browser on any desktop and mobile device, including PC, macOS, iOS and Android.COOL SHEEP TECHNOLOGIES s.r.o.K Cervenemu vrchu 845/2bVokovice160 00, Praha 6Czech Republic The rebel author, Joss Sheldon, is set to release his third novel... The Little Voice by Joss Sheldon www.joss-sheldon.com The rebel author, Joss Sheldon, is set to release his third novel on the 23rd of November.'The Little Voice' is a work of psychological realism; a 'Crime & Punishment' for the twenty-first century. It recounts the travails of its main protagonist, Yew Shodkin, whose life has been torn apart by two conflicting forces; the pressure to be true to himself, and the pressure to be the person his society demands.The Huffington Post has called Sheldon's new work, "The most thought-provoking novel of 2016.""The book is both rational and emotional. It inspires hope and fear, optimism and depression. Then it analyses those emotions. It explains the pressures we all experience from time to time."The Little Voice looks well-positioned to boost Sheldon's reputation even further, after the British novelist shot to the attention of the literary world with his second novel, 'Occupied'. AXS said that book was "Darker than George Orwell's 1984", whilst Buzzfeed called it "A must read".To request a review copy of 'The Little Voice', or to arrange an interview with Joss Sheldon himself, please email press@joss-sheldon.comABOUT JOSS SHELDONJoss Sheldon is a scruffy nomad, unshaven layabout, and good for nothing hobo. Born in 1982, he was brought up in one of the anonymous suburbs which wrap themselves around London's beating heart. And then he escaped!With a degree from the London School of Economics to his name, Sheldon had spells selling falafel at music festivals, being a ski-bum, and failing to turn the English Midlands into a haven of rugby league.Then, in 2013, he went to McLeod Ganj in India; a village which plays home to thousands of angry monkeys, hundreds of Tibetan refugees, and the Dalai Lama himself. It was there that Sheldon wrote his first novel, 'Involution & Evolution'.With several positive reviews to his name, Sheldon had caught the writing bug. So he travelled around Palestine and Kurdistan before writing his second novel, 'Occupied'; a dystopian 'masterpiece' unlike any other story you've ever read!Now Joss has returned with his third, and most radical novel yet. 'The Little Voice' takes a swipe at the external forces which come to shape our personalities. It's psychological. And it will make you think about the world in a whole new way. As the Huffington Post put it, The Little Voice is probably "The most thought-provoking novel of 2016"...PRESS CONTACTEmail:press@joss-sheldon.comWebsite:Office:Calle San Jose Alta 4, Bajo BGranadaSpain 18010 Booming Populism - On the Practice and Language of Political Polarization www.germaninnovation.org Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on November 8, 2016. In the course of the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election, both the EU and the U.S. have witnessed a rise of political populism. Only nine days after the stunning election results, distinguished experts will discuss the booming political populist movement on both sides of the Atlantic at the German Center for Research and Innovation New York on November 17, 2016.By claiming to speak in the name of ordinary people, politicians emphasize the direct democratic nature of their actions while at the same time often explicitly excluding certain groups of people from their societal models. By bringing together social scientists, journalists and communication experts, the panel discussion will enable a multilayered analysis of the current political implications of populism in its various forms and the role of different media in the distribution of information and shaping of public opinion.On November 17, 2016, at the German Center for Research and Innovation New York, five policy experts will discuss the elections and booming populism. Michael Werz is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where he is member of the National Security Team. Tara McGuinness is a Senior Advisor to the Director of the White Houses Office of Management and Budget and Executive Director of the Community Solutions Team. Jan-Werner Muller is Professor of Politics at Princeton University and a fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna. Todd Gitlin teaches journalism and sociology and is the chair of the PhD program in Communications at Columbia University. Martin Nonhoff teaches political theory at the University of Bremen and is one of the field chairs at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). At the moment, he is a visiting scholar at Cornell University.For more information, visitThe German Center for Research and Innovation provides information and support for the realization of cooperative and collaborative projects between North America and Germany. With the goal of enhancing communication on the critical challenges of the 21st century, GCRI hosts a wide range of events from lectures and exhibitions to workshops and science dinners. Opened in February 2010, GCRI was created as a cornerstone of the German governments initiative to internationalize science and research and is one of six centers worldwide.Edwin LinderkampCommunications OfficerGerman Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI)871 United Nations PlazaNew York, NY 10017USA $6B Gas Field in the Persian Gulf to Be Developed by China, Iran, France A helicopter lands in an oil rig operated by a Qatar company in the Persian Gulf. (Photo : Getty Images) An offshore gas field in the Persian Gulf, containing vast gas reserves, is set to be developed after Iran's Petropars and France's Total SA have agreed to a preliminary deal worth $6 billion, with the participation of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). Advertisement An article published by npr.org said it was the first investment made by a Western energy company since the easing of international sanctions on Iran early this year. According to the article, the consortium will develop the area known as South Pars field, which was believed to contain about 14,000 billion cubic meters of gas, or an amount equivalent to about 8 percent of the known global reserves. A report by The Wall Street Journal, however, said that the deal is in its draft stage yet and the final agreement will be released in six months. "The agreement with the French oil giant could be a harbinger for the return of more Western companies to Iran's vast energy industry and represents a step forward for the Islamic Republic's goals of ramping up production of oil and gas over the next several years," the report said. The report added that Total SA is familiar with Iran's enormous gas and oil reserves and since 2004, the French energy company has already been targeting the South Pars field, an area of the Persian Gulf that Iran shares with Qatar. Total and China's CNPC have already signed deals with Iran to begin the development in the area but they were forced to withdraw in 2009 due to international sanctions. Under the deal, Total will have 50.1 percent control in the consortium, while CNPC will get 30 percent and Iran's Petropars will have 19.9 percent. Iran needs foreign expertise to develop and export its gas reserves, which is believed to be one of the largest in the world. American companies are still forbidden to invest in the country under U.S. law. The advent of digital pathology is expected to revolutionize the healthcare industry in China and help overcome challenges in medical education, clinical practices and research. Favorable government healthcare reforms, such as initiatives on nationwide telepathology consultation and quality control programs, as well as the growing need for integration of healthcare delivery will usher in a wave of digital pathology adoption in the country. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of American Apparel American Apparel announced Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection for the second time in 13 months. The company has 117 U.S. stores, including three in Oregon. (The Associated Press/2014) WASHINGTON -- American Apparel is seeking bankruptcy protection for the second time in just over a year, unable to find its footing in a shifting retail landscape and after a contentious fight for control with company founder Dov Charney. Canada's Gildan Activewear is buying the American Apparel brand, notorious for sexually provocative ad campaigns, for $66 million. American Apparel, which listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100 million to $500 million, said its cash would run out by year's end, according to Chain Store Age, a newsmagazine that covers the retail industry. It hopes to stay in business by securing a deal to keep its stores open, but some industry experts say such a scenario is unlikely. "In our view despite its many challenges, there is still some value in the American Apparel brand," said Neil Saunders, CEO of retail research and consulting firm Conlumino, told Chain Store Age. "However, that value is simply not sufficient to support the existing store network and its associated costs, hence Gildan's decision not to buy out any of the store based leases or assets. ... The deal with Gildan, which is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court, will inevitably result in the closure of American Apparel's 117 U.S. stores." The company has three Oregon locations, two in Portland and one in Eugene. The Los Angeles retailer first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2015, about a year after it fired Charney for violating its sexual harassment policy. Charney's lengthy legal campaign to retake control of the company was rejected by a bankruptcy court judge in January. Charney denies the sexual harassment charges and has claimed the company was taken from him in a "coup." The company brought in CEO Paula Schneider to usher the company out of bankruptcy, but she left earlier this year as the turnaround stalled. For more than a decade, American Apparel has been defined by, and criticized for, its racy ads, often depicting barely dressed young women in sexually suggestive poses. Though the ad campaign helped put American Apparel on the map, it has struggled like other retailers since the recession. A host of mall staples -- Aeropostale, Pacific Sunwear, Wet Seal and Deilia's --have also filed for bankruptcy protection in the past few years. Even as department stores like Macy's, Kohl's and Penney's prepare for a holiday season that may be the best in years, they have been unable to produce consistently positive results because consumer behavior has shifted so drastically, both in where and what is bought. Many more people shop on online, and more dollars are going toward technology, travel, or nights out. American Apparel, which manufactures all of its clothes in the U.S., has lost money every year since 2010. -- The Associated Press Sting Sting performs at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, California, on Oct. 26, 2016. The musician will tour in 2017. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images) (Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Sting's return to pop will bring the former Police musician to the Moda Center on Feb. 2, 2017. The musician will headline the venue's Theater of the Clouds, which converts the arena into a smaller, more intimate space. Along with a three-piece band, he'll be hitting the road for "57th and 9th," an album billed as his first pop album since 2003's "Sacred Love." The new set was released on Friday, Nov. 11, and has positive reviews so far: Rolling Stone gave it three-and-a-half stars and praised its "newfound urgency." The tour will land early in Portland--we'll be the second stop, following a performance at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom. Musicians Joe Sumner and the Last Bandoleros will open the show. In recent years, Sting's filled his time with projects such as a Police reunion, a 151-date run that reportedly grossed $362 million; a musical dubbed "The Last Ship"; and the classical album "Songs from the Labyrinth," a collaboration with the lute player Edin Karamazov. Tickets will be available early to Sting.com fan club members and Citi cardmembers. For the general public, the on-sale starts Monday, Nov. 21 at 10 a.m., via LiveNation.com, Ticketmaster outlets and by phone at 1-800-745-3000. -- David Greenwald dgreenwald@oregonian.com 503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald Instagram: Oregonianmusic Virgil Wells of Boring sells trees and turns them into bowls, back scratchers on other items Law professors at the University of Oregon have taken opposite sides after a colleague wore blackface to a Halloween party. The law professor has said she'd hoped to spark conversations about race after dressing up as an African American author. While some professors say she should resign for her insensitivity, others say this is a teaching moment. (Beth Nakamura/Staff) Ofer Raban On Halloween night, a University of Oregon law professor hosted a private party at her home attended by some faculty and students. She donned a costume representing an African American doctor, including a hospital gown and the coloring of her face. The professor in question had a long record of advocacy for the rights of minorities. She was even nominated for the university's Martin Luther King Jr. Award. In fact, she wore the costume to honor an African American hero of hers (Dr. Damon Tweedy, author of "Black Man in a White Coat.") There seems to be no doubt that there was no malicious intent in donning the costume. The reaction of the law school dean and some of its faculty was swift: The dean placed the professor on administrative leave and a majority of faculty members signed a letter calling on her to resign. Read more on the debate at the University of Oregon. "We are angry," proclaimed the letter, twice. "You need to resign. It doesn't matter what your intentions were. It doesn't matter if (your conduct) was protected by the First Amendment." The idea that intentions don't matter when evaluating a person's culpability -- which appeared both in the faculty letter and in an email written by an associate dean and circulated to the students -- is not just wrong but also contradicted by what law professors preach daily in their classrooms. Measuring individual culpability by reference to one's intent is a foundational principle of our criminal law, our tort law, our contract law, or our constitutional doctrine. In fact, that principle -- absent from primitive legal systems -- is considered one of the greatest civilizing forces of our law. For law professors to claim that intentions don't matter is, frankly, preposterous. (Even more ludicrous was the remark of another university professor, who wrote to the university president that the absence of a racist intent "makes it worse" in his view, because it showed ignorance and callous disregard for minorities.) The event in question was attended by some students and faculty, but it did not take place in a classroom or even on campus. The costume was donned at an after-hours private party at the professor's own home. This, combined with the fact that the costume was donned without any malice -- to the contrary, in an attempt to celebrate an American hero -- should have obviated any demand for giving up one's livelihood, let alone a suspension. Moreover, let's remember that we are dealing with a public university professor at a time that many of us fear might prove challenging to academic freedom. I do not speak only for myself at the law school when I say that the dean's response, and the faculty's letter, were a disgrace. This was a failure of leadership and pedagogy, and opposition to it within the law school was expressed from day one. Share your opinion Submit your essay of 700 words or less to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification. This regrettable Halloween event was a teachable moment, but it ended up teaching many wrong lessons. Surely, this was a moment to teach about racial sensitivity and awareness of history, and of what it means to live as a racial minority in this country. But it was also a moment to teach other valuable lessons for law students: Do not rush to judgment. Deliberate carefully, away from emotions running high. Consider all the relevant factors. And show compassion for human fallibility. At a time of an emboldened pernicious racism, the refusal to recognize the distinction between malicious racism and a stupid but well-intentioned mistake is not only a moral and legal travesty, it is also fodder for the real enemies of racial equality. Ofer Raban is a professor of law at the University of Oregon. -05e1b70b87c48fc3.jpg Donald Trump speaks during an August campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press) TRUMP AND CLIMATE CHANGE: If the Republican Party and their president-elect persist in denying overwhelming scientific evidence and still insist that climate change is a hoax, the planet is in for some very dark days indeed. The world's plan for controlling greenhouse gases is likely to collapse if we turn a blind eye to the approaching catastrophe and undo all the mechanisms recently put in place to begin to find a solution. The world is holding its breath to see what the new Congress and president will do. If they take the path they have proclaimed up to now, they will forever receive the opprobrium they deserve for condemning our children and grandchildren to the forces of nature that will beset and torment civilization well into the rest of this century and beyond. James L. Boone, Northwest Portland * 'LIVE WITH IT': The American majority spoke. Donald J. Trump is our new leader and commander in chief. Those celebrities threatening to leave America? Don't let the door hit you in the you-know-where; you won't be missed. Everyone else? Live with it. This, I have to say, has been the most ridiculous and disgusting campaign to date. Eight nightmare years of Barack Obama are over. Let's move on and pray that the new administration can repair the damage done and bring back jobs and the prosperity we once knew. I have been unemployed for two years; others longer than that. I would really love to have a job again, and I have faith the Lord and the new administration will bring that about. I really cannot believe the rants coming out of Hollywood and from liberals everywhere. They are afraid of having to give up their lawless and immoral ways. Well, boo hoo! The majority spoke. Now live with it. Oh, yeah -- all you people talking assassination on social media, you're not impressing anyone and I really hope you get caught and pay the full price. How about we all work together with Mr. Trump and make this country great again instead of taking it deeper into the sewer? Ken Bellamy, Hillsboro * LETTER TO HILLARY CLINTON: We, as a nation, can now thank you for making sure Donald Trump would be our president by the electoral college system. And why, might you ask? Well, you have had political aspirations your entire adult life and, aided and abetted by your life experiences, you decided to become the first woman president, come hell or high water, knowing all along there were insurmountable negatives about your career as the secretary of state. The Democratic National Committee did little, if nothing, to slow down your resolve, thus not allowing more electable candidates to proceed to potential victory. I can only hope you do not sleep well for the next several years, knowing how you have managed to turn our nation on its side if not upside down. Shame on you, Hillary. Carolyn Blume, Southeast Portland * LETTER TO TWO GROUPS: Dear Democratic National Committee: Congratulations! You nominated the one person on Earth who could still unite the Republican Party. Our new president-elect really couldn't have done it without you. (But don't expect a thank you note.) Dear Trump Voters: My condolences on your victory. I know it tastes sweet; I've been there. But you're in for four bitter years of disillusionment. Lincoln Hills, Hillsboro By Eugene Robinson WASHINGTON -- The people chose Hillary Clinton. But it's the electoral vote that counts, not the popular vote, so Donald Trump will be president. And no, I'm not over it. No one should be over it. No one should pretend that Trump will be a normal president. No one should forget the bigotry and racism of his campaign, the naked appeals to white grievance, the stigmatizing of Mexicans and Muslims. No one should forget the jaw-dropping ignorance he showed about government policy both foreign and domestic. No one should forget the vile misogyny. No one should forget the mendacity, the vulgarity, the ugliness, the insanity. None of this must ever be normalized in our politics. The big protests that have followed Trump's election should be no surprise. You can't spend all those months trashing our nation's values and then expect everyone to join you in a group hug. Trump made the bed in which he now must lie. How did the unthinkable happen? Is Trump, like Brexit, part of some world-sweeping populist wave? Are the Rust Belt hinterlands in open rebellion? Was Clinton just a spectacularly flawed candidate? Did FBI Director James Comey boost Trump over the top? Did too many anti-Trump voters stay home out of complacency? There is evidence to support all of those theories. But the urgent question isn't why, it's what now. If a normal Republican had been elected, I could say the polite and socially acceptable thing, something like, "I didn't support So-and-So but he will be my president, too, and I wish him success." But I cannot wish Trump success in rounding up and deporting millions of people or banning Muslims from entering the country or reinstituting torture as an instrument of U.S. policy. In these and other divisive or cruel or unwise initiatives, I wish him failure. I do hope he succeeds in avoiding some kind of amateurish foreign policy blunder that puts American lives or vital national interests at risk. And let me be clear that I am not questioning his legitimacy as president. When the results are certified and the Electoral College casts its votes, Trump will be the nation's duly chosen leader, ridiculous though that may be. But he has not earned our trust or hope. Rather, he has earned the demonstrations that erupted in cities across the country. He has earned relentless scrutiny by journalists, whom he shamelessly made into scapegoats during the campaign, and he has earned the constant vigilance of the public he now must serve. There have been more than 200 reports since the election of harassment and hate crimes, mostly directed at minorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. During an interview broadcast Sunday on "60 Minutes," Trump addressed his supporters: "I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it." That would have been a better start had he not also sought to minimize the incidents, saying there had been a "very small amount" of them; and had he not also claimed the media were somehow applying a double standard in reporting on the protests. The most troubling post-election development thus far was Trump's appointment of campaign chief executive Steve Bannon -- a prominent figure in the racist, xenophobic "alt-right" movement -- as chief strategist and senior adviser. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the move "signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump's White House." On "60 Minutes," Trump hinted that he might moonwalk away from some of his most radical promises on immigration, the issue that made him stand out from the crowd of Republican contenders. He still says he will build a wall on the Mexican border, but there "could be some fencing" instead of an actual wall in places. And he said that "we're going to make a determination" about the fate of millions of undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes -- sounding as if he knows his pledge to carry out mass deportation cannot be fulfilled. He also backed away from the idea of having a special prosecutor reinvestigate Clinton over her emails. "They're good people, I don't want to hurt them," he said of Bill and Hillary Clinton. If Trump is beginning to confront reality on some fronts, that's a first step -- in a thousand-mile journey toward credibility and respect. But appointing Bannon is a big step backward. We must watch Trump, and judge him, every single inch of the way. Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinsonwashpost.com. (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group Groundbreaking: Toy Story Land is coming to Shanghai Disneyland in 2018. (Photo : Disney Parks Blog) Woody, Buzz Lightyear and other characters from Toy Story will soon come to life in Shanghai Disneyland. The recent groundbreaking ceremony for the Toy Story Land was attended by Bob Iger, chairman and chief executive officer of Walt Disney Company; Bob Chapek, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts; and Fan Xiping, chairman of Shanghai Shendi Group. Advertisement It has only been five months since the opening of Shanghai Disneyland, but an expansion is already on its way. Thanks to the amusement park lovers in China. According to an LA Times report, four million people visited the theme park on its first four months of operation. According to Disney Parks Blog, the plan for expansion was started as early as before the opening of the theme park last June, and because of the popularity and well reception of Toy Story in China, it became the subject for expansion. The Shanghai Disney Resort has a Toy Story-themed hotel already, and this is actually the only resort hotel in the world dedicated to the characters and stories from Toy Story. Chairman Chapek said that the new Toy Story Land will be both authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese. It will feature the backyard of Andy, the boy who owns the toys Woody and Buzz in the movie, and will create a feeling as if the visitors have been shrunk to the size of a toy. The Toy Story Land, opening in 2018, will be the seventh themed land in Shanghai Disneyland and will be certainly a great place to meet and play with old and new--all favorite--toys. Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai and British Chancellor Philip Hammond speak at a press conference following the 8th U.K.-China Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) at Lancaster House on Nov. 10. (Photo : Getty Images) The glow of the "golden era" or special relationship between China and Britain was said to be fading but the relationship between the two countries continues with new collaboration in joint ventures and financial partnerships. Advertisement The Financial Times reported that the signs of that era are slowly wearing off with the exit of George Osborne, Britain's former chancellor, who promoted Britain as China's foremost friend in the West and also promised to open U.K.'s nuclear sector to China. According to the report, Osborne and Treasury minister Jim O'Neill have spent years enticing China and their departure from service had taken away from the British government two of its most eager and knowledgeable people on China affairs. The report however, said that only the rhetoric of the "era" was present but the enthusiasm for the new epoch is missing. This was despite a press conference held in London last week where the new chancellor, Philip Hammond met with Ma Kai, China's vice-premier, and a list of joint ventures, including new collaborations between the financial centers of London and Shanghai, were rolled off. The report added that the mood also changed after Theresa May, the new prime minister, ordered a review of China's involvement in the Hinkley Point nuclear project. China was also upset by the new security measures introduced on Chinese investments. Lord Mandelson, the former Labour business secretary, said that the relationship between the two countries "hit a bump in the road but had stabilized" over the Hinkley project, although Chinese investment was eventually allowed to proceed on the project. "It may no longer be the same love affair as under [David] Cameron and Osborne but relations are workmanlike and we have a lot to offer each other," Mandelson was quoted as saying. In addition, the replacement of Lou Jiwei, the Chinese finance minister seen as "worldly and innovative" by U.K. ministers and regarded as a reformer in Beijing, has contributed to this mood. But although the mood has changed, the bilateral ties, particularly in financial services, are in placed as indicated by the latest U.K.-China economic dialogue at Lancaster House in London, where Hammond pledged to provide market access and close collaboration with China. This includes a new negotiation to link the Shanghai and London stock exchanges and further enhance capital markets. On the other hand, China agreed to work towards allowing foreigners to own life insurance firms in mainland China. It also promised to boost regulatory cooperation and increase market access for fintech companies from both countries. Several Chinese companies will also open offices in Britain, which include China Life, the country's largest life insurer, and the Shanghai Clearing House. Ma said that China desires "a fair and just system for companies gaining access to each other's markets" and claimed the China-U.K. relations were at "a historical starting point." On the issue of steel dumping, Hammond said that there was "still a problem" despite China "significantly reducing its overall steel output." Lord O'Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist who resigned as a Treasury minister in September, said that he supports government efforts to enhance economic ties with China. "I think it's very important to maintain the 'golden relationship,'" the former minister said. "In a post-Brexit world it is even more important." 'Grey's Anatomy' cast pose backstage the People's Choice Awards 2016 at Microsoft Theater on January 6, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Frazer Harrison) "Grey's Anatomy" Season 13 episode 8 had fans understand the surgeon's struggle as each walked through their haunting pasts. The last episode put Richard, Owen, Stephanie, and Meredith in a difficult operation. In their attempt to find a way to save the patient's life, power struggles ensued in the operating room and each of them was forced to picture out the man differently. Advertisement The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed when a nurse interrupted and told them about a woman who looks for her husband and said that the latter has two kids. At that time. Stephanie was suddenly taken back to her childhood and at last found a voice where she got the courage to speak up about the approach they should be taking and finally convinced her colleagues on how to save the patient. Stephanie explained that he actually has autoimmune disease which explains his unstoppable bleeding and so they were able to save him. The next episode seems to be a lot more intense though. The so-called winter finale of "Grey's Anatomy" is suddenly considered as one of the most-awaited series installment in ABC in 2016. Rumors has it that this finale will unleash the future of Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chamber). Accordingly, truths will be unleashed and justice is bound to be served either to Alex Karev or Andrew DeLuca. Previously, Alex beat hard Andrew when he found out that Jo was in the latter's bed. And the verdict for what happened will be revealed in the next episode. He could either go to jail or get kicked out from the hospital. According to reports, episode 9 will also have Karev make a big decision. Many hint that Alex will leave the show although this is not what others hoped for Justin's character, as the latter is one of the few original cast members of the show who made it until "Grey's Anatomy" Season 13. Meanwhile, Richard still demands that Bailey explain why Eliza Minnick is in Grey Sloan. The latter is the newest cast member in the show, who is portrayed by Marina Dominczyk, and fans are already getting excited over the chemistry between Arizona and her. While others leave, there are those who are rumored to come back. Reports suggest that Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) might come bac. Although Deadline reported that Oh is confirmed to come back in small screens, unfortunately, the actress said that she will be part of "American Crime" and not "Grey's Anatomy." Nevertheless, the actress is not closing the idea of coming back to the show, although she pointed out that it would not be anytime soon. "Grey's Anatomy" airs every Thursdays at 8 pm. It's become the annual Thanksgiving controversy: Should all stores (save for the ones hawking turkey and stuffing) be closed on Thanksgiving and Black Friday so that employees can enjoy the holiday with their families? Several employers think so, resulting in a growing list of stores closed on Thanksgiving and the Friday after, which has become a dreaded nightmare for anyone who works retail. The 100 Season 4 will have no Lexa; Luna coming back in the next apocalypse? What awaits Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) in "The 100" Season 4? (Photo : Facebook/The 100) "The 100" fans cannot expect to have Lexa in the next episode of the series, but Luna will be up to face yet another apocalypse. "The 100" Season 3 finale brought many fans to tears as Lexa's character bid goodbye to the series. It can be remembered that Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) was killed by Tutus (Neil Sandiland) whose real target was Clarke. Advertisement The death of Lexa brought mixed reactions and many clamor for her to be revived in the upcoming season. The issue of her death even caused a stir in the LGBT community, saying that her character was killed because the world is yet unprepared to see a successful and happy lesbian relationship. However, Variety reported that Executive Producer Jason Rothenberg was very quick in putting off the issue, saying that they cannot have Lexa back in Season 4 via San Diego Comic Con. Rothenberg shared a spoiler that Clarke will be distracted by the secret she knows that her grief over Lexa's demise will be barely felt, although it is said that she will not have any love interest for the mean time to appease many fans who have yet to move on over Lexa's death. Furthermore, another character, Luna, will make its way to "The 100" Season 4 due to another apocalypse - a nuclear meltdown - impending to happen. Luna (Nadia Hiker) is the leader of the pacifist clan who opted not to share ties with the mainland inhabitants, although with the danger coming, she will be compelled to break off her indifference. Hiker shared with Blastr that Luna will try to prove that she is far stronger and better than Lexa. According to the actress, things are getting bloody and this is something that fans have to watch for. The next season run of "The 100" will be a question of who will be saved and who will be left to die. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate This year, there's a long list of retailers closing on Thanksgiving to allow employees to spend the holiday with their families. Others are staying open from Thanksgiving Day through Black Friday. It's become a controversial topic of conversation around the holiday season, whether stores should be operating on this holiday. On social media, the overwhelming response is that shop owners should prioritize the personal lives of their employees over their revenue. RELATED: Thanksgiving traditions people can't live without "Thanksgiving isn't for shopping. It's for time to spend with your family. If businesses are so hard up to keep their shops open during this day then they need to reevaluate their marketing strategies and their bottom line," one Houston Chronicle commenter recently wrote in response to an article about retailers that are staying closed. (Story continues below.) >>Click to see the retailers that will be open and closed this Thanksgiving in the gallery above. That hasn't swayed too many shoppers, as can be attested by the throngs of crowds that convene on Houston-area malls and outlets. At least one major retailer has already announced that it will remain open an hour earlier Thanksgiving Day. Macy's will open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, and most locations will remain open until 2 a.m. The stores will reopen at 5 a.m. for Black Friday. In a statement issued to the Associated Press, a spokesperson for the retailer explained that it won't require employees to work through the holiday. "We are working diligently to staff Thanksgiving with associates who volunteer," Macy's told the Associated Press. "Doing so means that our employees are able to make their own decisions about how they contribute to our most important and busiest weekend of the year." With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the Midland County Emergency Food Pantry Network is collaborating with churches and organizations in the area to make sure that 400 families in need receive food, personal care items and gift cards in Thanksgiving baskets. A youth group at Trinity Lutheran Church took the program a step further and put together pies to include in the baskets. I really like helping people who dont have as much as I do, said Samantha Zudwick, as she took a break from packaging pies last Sunday night. Giving someone a pie for dessert is really nice. If I was in their situation, I would want something done like this for me. But choosing the right kind of pie presents a challenge. Do you go with pumpkin, apple or pecan? And what recipe will serve as a guide? Thankfully, a recipe was ready at hand. Years ago we made a Trinity cookbook that congregation members contributed, Youth Director Alex Crabtree said. They [the recipes] had to be tested first, I think, before they were put in, but Im assuming its a pretty ancient recipe from a member of the past. And its been trustworthy weve used it since. Over the years, Trinity Lutheran has helped collect supplies to go into the Thanksgiving baskets including providing turkeys but in the past couple of years, the church wanted to do something different. It was our idea, along with contributing turkeys for the effort, to do something special for the families to receive so we made apple pies as a way of adding a special touch, said Pastor Gerald Ferguson in response to an email. Pastor Gerald walked into my office two weeks ago and asked if it was something I would be interested in getting started and running with the high school youth, Crabtree explained. Once a month we do some kind of service project with our youth group time and it was perfect timing when he came to me with that idea because I was working on this months service project. Our youth are really passionate about serving the community. Nearly 20 students and parents gathered in the churchs kitchen and gathering hall last weekend to put the pies together and freeze them. One group remained in the kitchen, coring and peeling apples by the bushel, placing dough in disposable foil containers and scooping large helpings of apples and streusel topping into the tins. The second group, stationed in the spacious gathering hall adjacent to the kitchen, set to work wrapping the pies in wax paper, marking Ziploc bags with baking instructions and placing the pies four to a tray to be frozen. All the while jokes were made, coring competitions were conducted and smiles could be found on every face. Its nice to see different families get to have a dessert thats homemade, said Ashley Siegmund, who helped label bags. And to put the love and hard work into it to get it to them so they have something special that not everyone will have. Especially for the holiday season, its nice to have some pie. Especially Thanksgiving, Hannah Pennington chimed in. The youth group has completed several projects in the past, some local, and some national. They have raked leaves, collected cans of food and cereal, built access ramps for the disabled and participated in annual mission trips around the country to fix homes. Were so used to going out to different communities and doing work for them, but we do get chances to work for Midland but I feel like that is more special because that is where I come from, Sam Luzar reflected while taking a break from peeling fruit. With two groups making and packaging pies, along with a couple helpers carrying trays between the kitchen, gathering room and freezers, the number of pies reached nearly 40 within the first hour. Were going to make as many as we humanly can. There are up to 400 Thanksgiving baskets that get given away. I dont think were going to be able to make 400, but were going to try to make as many as we can. While the youth group was unable to meet the lofty 400 goal, they managed to package 100 pies. Next week, sixth through eighth grade students will help load up a trailer with the pies, turkeys and donations from the congregation to be taken to Aldersgate United Methodist Church for distribution. Not every family receiving the baskets will get a pie, but the love and support of the community will be evident in every package. For more information about the Thanksgiving basket program and other special donation opportunities throughout the year, visit midlandcountyefpn.org/special-donations/ This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Delta College has selected a location in the 300 block of East Genesee Avenue (at Franklin, Tuscola and Baum) to construct a new building in downtown Saginaw to serve the educational needs of students from the city and surrounding Saginaw County. Key reasons the team selected this site, from the nine sites considered, include: Ideal site availability with great feasibility for construction Economical to acquire and develop Close proximity to urban amenities, including Hoyt Public Library and the future SVRC Marketplace Convenient access to the STARS public bus terminal, with six routes passing the new site Abundant public parking resources nearby Convenient transportation linkages, including I-675 access and other major urban circulation routes Prominent frontage and visibility on Genesee Avenue Ready access to utilities and infrastructure Potential to contribute to the downtown character Delta Colleges Saginaw Center will include 11 classrooms, basic science and computer labs, technology and special use training rooms. It is a priority to improve the educational environment of Deltas Saginaw location to more appropriately match that of its other higher education facilities. In 2016, 41.2 percent of Delta Colleges enrollment is from Saginaw County and its the largest population center of Deltas three county service area of Saginaw, Bay and Midland counties. Although enrollment is down slightly at Delta College, improved facilities and program offerings at the Saginaw Center is expected to help increase enrollment. As proposed, the building will be 24,000 assignable square feet in size (35,000 gross square feet) with a future maximum enrollment of 1,250 people. It is anticipated to take a number of years to increase enrollment to that level. By investing in a building, rather than continue to lease space, Delta is planning for the next two or three decades of service delivery, said Dr. Jean Goodnow, Delta College president. We will offer close-to-home educational classes for many students making their first strides into the post-secondary educational realm. This educational magnet will support student aspirations, whose success affects not only themselves, but their entire families. And, Deltas ability to deliver the highest caliber college education and work force training will be greatly enhanced, she added. The estimated cost of the construction is $12.739 million. The state of Michigan will provide 50 percent of the total cost, or about $6.4 million. The remainder has been saved by Delta College to meet the 50 percent match requirement. Since the site property chosen is city owned, the agreement will need to be approved by the Saginaw City Council at its Monday, Nov. 21, meeting. Then, there are many more steps to complete before the building will open. Delta College has engaged WTA Architects of Saginaw to provide architectural and engineering services for the Saginaw Center. Additional dates include: January 2017 Hire construction manager to work with the project team March 2018 Start on the construction phase (weather dependent) March 2018 to May 2019 Construction continues on the project May 2019 Building occupancy When combined with other data, Delta has identified many people to serve with a new Saginaw Center. Research of the demographics show a large number of potential students within a close radius of the chosen location: 4,700 high school students 4,450 people aged 18 to 24 years old 8,750 people aged 25 to 44 9,450 people 45 to 64 years old And others who may have a degree, but need some retraining Delta College is committed to serving all of its taxpaying communities and is pleased to be addressing a need in the region where a majority of students live, Board Chair Michael Rowley said. While located in the downtown area, it will be within easy access for everyone in Saginaw County and beyond. The centrally-located site can attract students from the city, but would also attract from all 19 Saginaw County school districts. The Saginaw Center will serve as an entry point for health care and skilled trades, housed on the main campus. It will also supply higher education to local residents through dual enrollment, as well as certificate and degree programs. Rocky Hill Community Church in Exeter outgrows cafe, continues to experience growth. Who needs Jesus? bellowed Rod Williams, a former riverboat captain who had a disdain for organized religion. One day, the Holy Spirit answered that question for Williams as he stared at his own reflection. His soul caught fire for the Lord, and now he ministers to others in unique ways. Williams owns a gun store and hosts a radio program where he talks about firearms. But he always finds a way to work Jesus into the conversation, says David Miller, pastor of Rocky Hill Community Church. Rods life was transformed, and now hes transforming lives. Designed for the unchurched, dechurched and antichurched, Rocky Hill was planted in January 2010 when folks began meeting in a local coffee shop in Exeter, California. Although more than a dozen church plants in the area have failed in the past 15 years, this nondenominational church survived, in part, because Miller embraced networking. In small towns, its all about building relationships, says Miller, who became friends with the mayor, the police chief and members of the Lions Club. When the community validates you, others see this is an OK place to go. After outgrowing the cafe, in April 2011 Rocky Hill merged congregations with the First Historic Baptist Church, which was on the verge of closing due to poor attendance. Moving into the old church building, which was constructed in 1916, felt risky. They had been meeting in a hip, downtown coffee shop with a neutral identityso they feared being perceived as churchy in the new digs and scaring people off. But that didnt happen. Services are held on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings with an average weekend attendance of 300. Theres talk of adding a vintage service that will incorporate rich, old, celebratory hymns. Other goals include building a youth center, creating programs to strengthen marriages and developing programs for junior high, high school, young adults and seniors. Perhaps one day well have 20 to 25 acres of land to make this all come to fruition, says Miller, who envisions a church of 3,000. We are committed to growing. Pacific partnership staff and partner nation representatives met in Singapore, Nov. 8-10, for a planning conference to finalize details for the upcoming mission, slated for the spring of 2017. In its 12th year, Pacific Partnership is the largest annual multilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster relief preparedness mission conducted in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. This year's mission will be led by Deputy Commander, Riverine Group (CRG) 1, embarked on the Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Fall River (T-EPF-4), and will include more than 200 military and civilian personnel from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Chile, Singapore and South Korea. "This planning conference affords us the opportunity to build relationships with our partner nations that are critical to our success with the upcoming mission," said Capt. Stan Chien, deputy commodore of CRG-1 and Pacific Partnership mission commander. "Pacific Partnership allows us to establish, in some cases, and further develop, in other cases, multilateral cooperation with allied and partner nations. We look forward to continuing to work with them during the coming months." Created in response to the devastation wrought by the 2004 tsunami that swept through parts of Southeast Asia, Pacific Partnership began as a military-led humanitarian response to one of the world's most catastrophic natural disasters. The mission has evolved over the years from primarily a direct care mission to an operation focused on enhancing partnerships through host nation subject matter expert and civil-military exchanges. Pacific Partnership also capitalizes on multilateral cooperation and partnerships between government and non-government organizations to increase capabilities in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) and preparedness for natural and man-made disasters. "It has been an extremely positive experience collaborating and planning with our partner nations," said Army Capt. John Burns, country lead for the mission in Malaysia. "By once again participating in Pacific Partnership we are demonstrating our commitment and continued presence in this region." Pacific Partnership 2017 will include mission stops in four partner nations throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. The partner nations will be announced before the mission begins in March. Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences' 8th Annual Governors Awards - Show (Photo : Getty Images) Even actor Tom Hanks acknowledged that the genre of Jackie Chans movies has been historically underrepresented at the Oscars when he introduced the 62-year-old Hong Kong actor on Saturday. In his acceptance speech, Jackie Chan admitted that he dreamt of getting an Oscar award one day when he touched the statuette of Sylvester Stallone at the house of the Hollywood actor. Standing here is a dream After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films, breaking so many bones, finally this is mine, LATimes quoted Jackie Chan. Advertisement Hanks noted that Chan had produced, directed and acted in serious movies, but he admitted many of the actors movies were overlooked for awards simply because these were martial arts films. Hanks pointed out that great acting comes in different forms, however, fellow actors know one when they watch one. How is this possible out of one man? His talents must truly be Chan-tastic, Hanks said, USA Today reported. Chan, together with film editor Anne V. Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman received an honorary Oscar at the Governors Award on Saturday night at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood & Highland Center. Among the 200 films that Chan has been part of over five decades are the Rush Hour movies and Rumble in the Bronx. After breaking so many bones in these comedy-action flicks, Jackie Chan said, I still cannot believe I am standing here. Its a dream. He acknowledged the role of his millions of movie fans in his career, saying, Because of you, I have a reason to continue jumping into windows, kicking and punching and breaking my bones. Hollywood bigwigs were spotted at the event such as director Judd Apatow, 20th Century Fox Chairman and CEO Stacey Snider, senior stars Helen Mirren, Bruce Dern and Warren Beatty and young stars such as Felicity Jones, Emma Stone and Greta Gerwing. The cold, gray drizzle of November finally found Central Illinois on Election Day. No one complained, however, because the warm, dry harvest season had ended weeks before. Fifty or more years ago, that was never the case on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth. In fact, if we were half-done with harvest on Election Day, we were very lucky. Done by Election Day? No one we knew was ever that lucky. Back then, in the 1960s, Election Day was like a Sunday. My mother, a poll judge, would put on a church dress to earn, maybe, $10 over the 13- or 14-hour day. (The polling place, in fact, was a church.) And like Sunday, work stopped long enough for you to do your sacred duty. Moreover, in Illinois then, when the polls were open the taverns were closed. That was a minor distraction to a local deputy who was the Democratic precinct boss as well as the owner of a well-known local watering hole. Officially, it was always closed on Election Day; unofficially, its back door was always open to anyone who voted right. Not surprisingly, most everyone, either out of blind loyalty or blind thirst, did vote right and the precinct never went Republican while that deputy (later sheriff) wore a badge, a gun, and a knowing smile. It took little convincing; most southern Illinois farm folks had been Democrats since the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. It was Roosevelt, after all, whose hopeful words carried them through the Depression; Roosevelt who brought electricity to their dark corner of nowhere; and, praise heaven, Roosevelt who delivered a monthly pension check so a lifetime of hard work left no one broken and broke. That loyalty, like America itself, began to crack in 1968, the worst election year ever. The Tet offensive came that February, then Martin Luther Kings murder in April, and Bobbys in June. (My mother woke my siblings and me that awful morning with the shocked cry, They shot another Kennedy! They shot another Kennedy!) Summer ended in clouds of teargas and pools of blood at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The ugly emptiness of the 2016 election might have been a bad dream but, by comparison, 1968 was a bloody nightmare. My father, a thoughtful, informed voter for almost 70 years, backed Richard Nixon in 1968 because Nixon had promised to raise milk price supports, a key ingredient in our farms main enterprise. You have to vote for a man who understands farming, offered my father. Nixon kept his word; he increased milk price supports before announcing his reelection bid in 1972. Shortly thereafter, Watergate investigators discovered he had done so only after pocketing at least $1 million in unreported campaign cash from the dairy lobby. My father never commented on Nixons criminal deeds or the dairy lobbys dirty schemes. I suspect, however, that their corruption deeply offended him because he was a rules person. Rules, like fences, mattered. To him, breaking the rules to win wasnt winning. It was, in fact, losing because it meant you had first lost your dignity, then your honor. Republicans didnt have the corner on the corruption market in the southern Illinois of my youth. Two years before Watergate, a well-known Illinois Democrat, Secretary of State Paul Powell, died after a brief illness. Within weeks, his executor discovered several shoe boxes filled with $800,000 in cash in Powells Springfield hotel room, as well as 49 cases of whiskey, 14 transistor radios, and two cases of canned corn. That was quite a haul for a southern Illinois boy who never made more than $30,000 a year as an elected official. Powell, like Nixon and the vote right sheriff, werent arent the only scoundrels to hold public office. In fact, its quite likely we elected more than a few crooks, cheaters, and knuckleheads this Election Day. We usually do. These folks, however, come and go. BLOOMINGTON An Arkansas-based restaurant chain that has seen explosive growth in recent years plans to offer its southern-inspired chicken in the Twin Cities next year. A new Slim Chickens restaurant is expected to open in March at 1515 N. Veterans Parkway in Bloomington. The site is between La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries and FedEx, just south of General Electric Road. We're a fast-casual concept. We're not fast food. We bring the food to the table after you order it," said Brian Simowitz, Slim Chickens vice president of franchise operations. For us, it's all about the food quality and service and the environment. We're a southern hospitality-type brand," he added. "We play blues music so we have very good atmosphere in the restaurant. The restaurant's featured items, fresh chicken tenders and chicken wings, are hand-breaded and cooked to order. It also offers 13 homemade dipping sauces, salads, sandwiches, wraps, fried mushrooms, fried pickles and fried okra. The price point average is from $3.99 to $7.99, said Simowitz. Ground has been broken and construction is expected to begin soon on the 2,800-square-foot restaurant with a total capacity of 138 people. It also will have a patio dining area, said Simowitz. Slim Chickens Area Director David Harris will oversee the Bloomington restaurant, along with one in East Peoria and another that opened Oct. 19 in Champaign. "We're doing the ground work right now. We're hoping we can get the parking lot and concrete done before it starts to freeze," said Harris. "From that point on we'll do the process of putting up the building over the next few months, and probably shoot for March to open." The restaurant's hours will be from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. The Bloomington restaurant expects to employ 75 to 80 people, Harris said. Bloomington-Normal will be among 40 to 50 new Slim Chickens restaurants that are expected to open in 2017. Greg Smart and Tim Gordon founded the Slim Chickens brand with a restaurant they opened in 2003 in Fayetteville, Ark. Gordon's mother came up with the name, Slim Chickens. In the last two years the chain has grown from 11 to 45 restaurants, both franchised and company-owned, in 10 states. We have quite a few restaurants in towns where there are universities, so Bloomington-Normal was attractive because it has great universities," said Simowitz. "Our brand appeals to a wide range of consumers families, college kids, business people. Who doesn't like chicken tenders? But we do really do well when we're near universities. Bloomington-Normal Americana, The Homely Creek and American Evolution; through Nov. 27, Jan Brandt Gallery, 1106 W. Bell St., Bloomington; photography by Ted Diamond, paintings by Ann E. Coulter, colored pencil portraits by Ivonne Bess; viewing by appointment at janbrandtgallery@gmail.com. Chicken Foot Gourd Bowls; through Dec. 9; Heartland Community College Joe McCauley Gallery, Instructional Commons Building Room 2507, 1500 W. Raab Road, Normal; ceramics by Danell Dvorak and drawings/paintings of them by John Cassidy; free; 309-268-8620. ISU University Galleries; noon-4 p.m. Mon., 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Tue., 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Fri., noon-4 p.m. Sat.-Sun., Uptown Station, 11 Uptown Circle, Normal; rotating exhibits in three galleries; free; 309-438-8321. Strange Oscillations and Vibrations of Sympathy; through Dec. 18, ISU University Galleries, see above; works by contemporary female artists that acknowledge women writers. Related events: screenings of Dawn Roe's "The Sunshine Bores/The Daylights," through Dec. 18, Milner Library. IWU Merwin and Wakeley Galleries; school hours, noon-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat.-Sun., 7-9 p.m. Tue.; 302 E. Graham St., Bloomington; rotating exhibits; free; 309-556-3391. Biosphere; through Dec. 9, IWU Merwin Gallery, see above; prints by Taryn McMahon. Hatta-Hatta; through Dec. 9, IWU Wakeley Gallery, see above; paintings and mixed-media works by Gretchen Beck. McLean County Arts Center; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Tue., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Fri., noon-4 p.m. Sat.; 601 N. East St., Bloomington; rotating exhibits, sales, rentals, art classes and lectures; free; 309-829-0011. Holiday Treasures Exhibition and Sale; through Dec. 31, McLean County Arts Center, see above; affordable works and seasonal items by more than 60 local and national artists. McLean County Museum of History; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. (until 9 p.m. Tue.), 200 N. Main St., Bloomington; permanent and rotating exhibits; adults $5, seniors $4, students, children under 12 and members free; 309-827-0428. Challenges, Choices and Change: Making a Home; McLean County Museum of History, see above; new permanent exhibit exploring experiences of people from around the world who made McLean County their home. Abraham Lincoln in McLean County; McLean County Museum of History, see above; new permanent exhibit on Lincoln's life in Bloomington. Prairie Aviation Museum; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thu.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun., 2929 E. Empire St., Bloomington; permanent and rotating exhibits and displays with aerial history themes; adults $5, ages 6-11 $3, 5 and under free; 309-663-7632. Central Illinois U of I Krannert Art Museum; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat. (until 9 p.m. Thu. during fall and spring semesters), 2-5 p.m. Sun., 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign; paintings, porcelain, historical artifacts, traveling art exhibits; $3 donation suggested; 217-333-1861. Zina Saro-Wiwa: Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?; through March 25, U of I Krannert Art Museum, see above; video installations, photographs, more. Making and Breaking Medieval Manuscripts; through Feb. 11, U of I Krannert Art Museum, see above; hand-drawn/embellished scrolls, books and maps. School of Art + Design Faculty Exhibition; through Dec. 22, U of I Krannert Art Museum, see above; various media. Borderline Collective: Northern Triangle; through Dec. 22, U of I Krannert Art Museum, see above; installation featuring art works and historical documents. Amity Township Museum; 1-3 p.m. first Sun. of month or by appointment, 510 Main St., Cornell; displays and artifacts relating to history of Cornell and Amity Township; free; 815-358-2973. Eureka College Burgess Hall Art Gallery; 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays and by appointment on weekends, third floor of Burgess Hall, Eureka College, Eureka; rotating exhibits; free; 309-467-6866. Simpkins Military History Museum; 1-5 p.m. Tue., Thu., Sat., or by appointment; 605 E. Cole St., Heyworth; permanent and rotating military history exhibits; free (donations accepted); 309-473-3989. The Vietnam War 50th Anniversary; through Nov. 30, Simpkins Military History Museum, see above. Dickson Mounds Museum; 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, 10956 N. Dickson Mounds Road, Lewistown; displays, special exhibits; free; 309-547-3721. Lincoln Heritage Museum; 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat., Lincoln Center at Lincoln College, 300 Keokuk St., Lincoln; Lincoln-era items, audio-visual displays, tours, exhibits, more; adults $7, children/tours $4; 217-735-7399. Contemporary Art Center of Peoria; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., Riverfront Arts Center, 305 S.W. Water, Peoria; rotating exhibits in two galleries; free; 309-674-6822. Staying the Course; through Dec. 16, Contemporary Art Center of Peoria, see above; works by Jenni Bateman, Nicola Blease-Perry, Ande Lister and Patricia Whalen-Keck. Artist talk, 3 p.m. Nov. 13. A Small Wonder Gift Shop; through Dec. 16, Contemporary Art Center of Peoria, see above; holiday art gift show and sale. Forest Park Nature Center Nature Art Show & Sale; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., Nov. 19-Dec. 31, Forest Park Nature Center, 5809 Forest Park Drive, Peoria Heights; nature and wildlife art by local artists; 309-686-3360. Peoria Art Guild; Foster Arts Center, Harrison and Washington streets, Peoria; rotating exhibits, gift shop; free; 309-637-2787. Peoria Riverfront Museum; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Wed. and Sat., 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thu.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sun., downtown riverfront Peoria; permanent and rotating exhibits, planetarium shows, Giant Screen Theater and events; $8-$11; 309-686-7000. Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition; through March 12, Peoria Riverfront Museum, see above; touring exhibit recovered artifacts from Titanic wreck site and room re-creations. Museum of the Gilding Arts; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sun., April-Oct., and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sun., Nov.-March, 217 N. Mill St., Pontiac; displays, history and hands-on exhibits dedicated to the art of gilding and gold beating; free (donations welcome); 815-842-1848. Pontiac Community Art Center; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat.-Sun., 103 W. Madison St., Pontiac; rotating exhibits; 815-844-5831. 5 by 5; through Nov. 30, Pontiac Community Art Center, see above; art relating to the No. 5 to commemorate center's 5th anniversary. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sun., 212 N. Sixth St., Springfield; Lincoln-themed exhibits, historical displays, special events, more; adults $12, seniors and students $9, ages 5-15 $5, under 5 free; 217-558-8844. Rare and Rarely Seen; through Jan. 29, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, see above; rarely exhibited items from museum's permanent collection. Q: My application for VA health care benefits was denied several years ago because my income was above the VA means test. I served in Vietnam in 1968 and am concerned that my civilian physician may not be aware of the health consequences of being exposed to Agent Orange. A: The VA recently has changed its eligibility rules for VA health care for certain veterans whose applications previously may have been denied due to the means test. Those veterans who served boots on the ground in Vietnam and brown-water and certain blue-water Navy Veterans may now be eligible for VA health care. Those veterans may now apply, or reapply if previously denied. The means test should no longer be a prohibition for such veterans to obtain VA health care. The Application for VA Health Care form 10-10 EZ can be obtained online at va.gov or if you need assistance in obtaining or completing the form, contact the McLean County Veterans Assistance Office at 309-888-5140. Q: I am receiving a service-connected disability benefit from the VA. I heard recently that Social Security benefit recipients are going to receive a 0.3 percent increase in their benefit payments. Is the VA also granting an increase in service-connected disability benefits? A: The VA has announced that, effective Dec. 30, 2016, recipients of VA service-connected disability benefits will receive the same 0.3 percent increase. Increases in veterans' benefits are not automatically tied to increases in Social Security benefits. However, Congress passed legislation in July linking the two benefits for 2017. Q: I really appreciate that I can receive my seasonal flu shot at no charge through my VA clinic. However, the round trip to Peoria, just to get a flu shot, seems excessive. Do I have any other options to receive my flu shot? A: Veterans who have a VA medical card can now receive their seasonal flu shots at any Walgreens pharmacy. The veteran must present his/her VA medical card to the Walgreens pharmacy representative at the time of service in order to receive the shot at no charge. News: This week the VA announced a nationwide study the Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS) that will assess the current health and well-being of Vietnam veterans, blue-water Navy veterans and veterans who served elsewhere during the Vietnam era (1961-1975). Approximately 43,000 veterans will be invited to participate in this study. Veterans who receive the invitations should participate. Verso Announces Strategic Business Unit Organization, Corporate Office Consolidation and Overhead Expense Reduction Project Nov. 14, 2016 (Press Release) - Verso Corporation (VRS) today announced three strategic initiatives designed to drive increased efficiency in the allocation of its resources, reduce the company's cost of doing business, and improve Verso's operating and financial performance. As part of its comprehensive strategy to position the company for success in a challenging industry, Verso plans to organize its business into two strategic business units graphic paper and specialty paper; consolidate its corporate offices in Memphis, Tennessee, and Miamisburg, Ohio, into a single headquarters to be located in Miamisburg; and improve the delivery of its support services with the objective of reducing overhead expenses by at least 10 percent on an annual basis. Planning for each of these initiatives is underway, with implementation set to begin in January 2017. "We expect that the strategic initiatives announced today will enable Verso to be more agile in adapting to an evolving marketplace, more responsive to our customers, more efficient and cost-effective in our operations, and ultimately more financially successful," said Robert M. Amen, Verso's Chairman of the Board. Strategic Business Unit Organization The strategic organization of Verso's business into graphic paper and specialty paper business units is intended to provide greater focus, responsiveness and accountability. Each business unit will develop and implement strategies for responding to the specific market conditions and unique customer requirements of its business segment. Each business unit will operate in a semi-autonomous manner and will be responsible for its own revenues, costs and profitability. Both business units will receive overall strategic direction from Verso's Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer and will be supported by a centralized administrative staff. Verso's graphic paper business unit will be led by Michael A. Weinhold, and its specialty paper business unit will be led by Jason J. Handel. Both Weinhold and Handel are seasoned executives at Verso with extensive backgrounds and experience in the businesses they will oversee. Currently, Weinhold serves as Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development, while Handel serves as Group Vice President of Technical Sales and Product Development. In the new organization, Weinhold and Handel each will have the title of President of the business unit that he leads and will report directly to Verso's Chief Executive Officer. "The strategic business unit organization will further strengthen Verso's relationships with our graphic paper and specialty paper customers by allowing us to focus more closely on their distinctive business needs," said Weinhold. Handel added, "Our ultimate goal is to help our customers be more successful by meeting, and exceeding, their expectations. If we can achieve these results while consistently maximizing Verso's manufacturing efficiency and cost-effectiveness, we will make great strides toward enhancing Verso's profitability and success for a long time to come." Corporate Office Consolidation The planned consolidation of the Memphis and Miamisburg corporate offices reflects a common-sense approach to organizing and locating Verso's support functions. Verso has about 60 employees in Memphis and more than 200 employees in Miamisburg, resulting in considerable redundancy and inefficiency. Consolidating these employees in a single location not only will reduce costs and improve efficiency, but it also will strengthen the performance of Verso's corporate staff by fostering increased familiarity, better communication, closer camaraderie and other benefits that naturally occur when people work together. "We understand that the planned consolidation of Verso's corporate offices will cause disruption in the lives of the Memphis office employees who make the move to Miamisburg and will create additional challenges for those who do not," said Kenneth D. Sawyer, Verso's Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Communications. "Verso is committed to treating all our Memphis office employees with fairness, dignity and respect and to quickly communicating openly and honestly with each person about how this decision will affect him or her. Verso's departmental heads and Human Resources team will begin meeting with our employees in the very near future." Overhead Expense Reduction Project Verso has established a goal to reduce its overhead expenses by at least 10 percent compared to 2016. This objective is predicated on the belief that there are ways to reduce the cost of delivering the services that support Verso's business while preserving or even improving the quality of such services. Verso intends to approach the overhead expense reduction project openly, objectively and with the singular, overarching goal of obtaining the best possible results for the company as a whole. Since Verso completed its reorganization in July, management has been reviewing, benchmarking and analyzing the existing framework for the delivery of support services and has begun identifying ways that overhead expenses could be reduced. Verso will leverage both internal and external resources to develop a comprehensive approach to making its support services more efficient and cost-effective. Verso expects to implement the changes necessary to achieve the overhead expense savings in 2017 and to realize such savings over the course of 2017 and 2018. "Given the significant headwinds facing our industry, Verso simply cannot afford to stand still when it comes to driving cost out of our business," said Allen J. Campbell, Verso's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "We must constantly renew our focus on and commitment to efficiency and cost-effectiveness, whether at the mills, in the field or at corporate. This overhead expense reduction project is both a challenge and a necessity if we are to ensure Verso's long-term profitability and viability. Verso is the leading North American producer of printing and specialty papers and pulp. For more information, please visit versoco.com SOURCE: Verso Corporation Alibaba's Singles' Day smashes world records once again, but overall growth is slower this year. (Photo : Getty Images) Alibaba saw a tamer Singles' Day festival this year as customers sought for bigger discounts and growth slowed down. The Jack Ma-led company posted a record 120.7 billion yuan in sales but overall growth was significantly slower at 32 percent, with the decline blamed on cautious shoppers. Advertisement Last year's growth saw a 60 percent increase, according to Reuters. China's Singles' Day, which started out as a festival for young and unattached Chinese people, is now the world's biggest shopping event, even outstripping the combined sales of Cyber Monday and Black Friday in the U.S. With sealed deals worth millions, it is also seen as the "barometer for the e-commerce industry and consumer economy in China as a whole," wrote Reuters. Alibaba is responsible for transforming this event into what it is today when it launched its own version of the holiday in 2009. Since then, Singles' Day has transformed to become a gauge of China's very own retail industry. This year's festival, however, was under more pressure as it tried to repeat its previous feats in the face of decreasing number of Internet users in China, among other hurdles. "The very dynamics that helped Alibaba engineer the Hallmark-like holiday out of thin air have turned against it," wrote the New York Times. "Growth in new Internet users is slowing in China, as is growth in the number of Chinese people and companies opening stores on Alibaba's sales platforms. More important, growth in the value of the goods sold on the company's platforms is decelerating." Alibaba's accounting practices were also being questioned by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, clouding the company's official sales figures with doubts. Alibaba's metrics can also be "confusing" as the company adopts a statistic called gross merchandise value, which "measures the monetary worth of transactions that flow through its services," wrote the NYT. "Gross merchandise value is also not defined under accounting standards, and critics have grown increasingly skeptical of the numbers. For example, it does not include returns, which for Singles' Day can be as high as 30 percent of sales," the NYT reported. The night after the election, November 9, made a huge impact on the Suicide Prevention Hotlines, as they received tons of calls like never before. John Draper, the director of this organization, said that the calls skyrocketed between 1 and 2 in the morning that it reached up to 660 calls during those hours alone. In an article published by CNN, calls were already high that night, but it even went higher after the election was over and results started to come out. Draper said that he had not seen anything like this before in his 25 years of working in the Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention department, especially when it is linked to an election. It has been a while since he has seen calls go up like this. He remembered the calls went high like this was during the 9/11 attack in New York. But even then, he said that it is still nothing compared to this post-election event. Back in 2012 when Robin Williams committed suicide due to depression, calls also went up, and that was the last time the national hotline experienced such surge in their phone calls. The hotline was established since 2005, and it has helped a lot of people since then who are undergoing such terrible times in their lives. The New Indian Express also reported this shocking turnout on events when the national hotline for suicide prevention received a lot of calls in crazy amount. Dr. Bindu Shanmugham, a psychiatrist at the Veteran Administration Healthcare System in California, explained that most people who called directly express their fears and frustrations on the recent election. Apparently, there are a lot of those who were left disappointed after Donald Trump won the office. Do you think there is something that citizens should be worried about now that Trump is the U.S. president? What are your thoughts on this? After a declared Donald Trump victory in the 2016 U.S. Elections, many students are apparently struggling to cope with post-election outcomes. Reports of anxiety, stress and absences are supposedly increasing among students. So, what have schools across America been doing to help the kids? Protests, walkouts, bullying, intimidation and harassment are just some of the scenarios students are experiencing post-election. People have expressed being scared of a Donald Trump victory because there are certain individuals who could use this as a justification for mistreating others due to what transpired in the election. Kavitha Cardoza, an education correspondent, believes that teachers are the "oasis of calm for the children" in these stressful times and regardless of anyone's political leanings, according to PBS. She cited that teachers have already been dealing with the stressful emotions during the campaign season as some kids absorb their parents' election anxiety. Educator Mariana Richards confirmed in the same news report that they have sent letters to parents detailing links for support. In other words, their school is making it a point to work with the students' families to help them cope with post-election outcomes. She also notes that some families really just want to move forward and put these all behind them. At Boston, public schools are going to facilitate counseling for its students as well as the teachers in the coming days. Superintended Tommy Chang announced the service via an open letter posted on the Boston Public School official site. @BostonSchools Students, we you. You are intelligent & beautiful. We are here for you today & always. Please share your feelings today. Tommy Chang (@SuptChang) November 9, 2016 Superintendent Bert L'Homme of Durham Public Schools posted a message on behalf of his school community on its Facebook page about guidance counseling as well. Many of its students are from multicultural families, ABC 11 reports. Group meetings have been arranged among concerned students in several Tennessee schools, especially among multicultural students and staff. Colleges like Stanford, Columbia and USC have also extended open forums and meetings with affected individuals. This initiative has the consent of the school heads, according to the New York Times. American schools are being proactive in their response to post-election outcomes among students. Learn more about what other schools are doing, which involve therapy with dogs, arts and crafts activities and other ingenious ways of coping with stress in the video below. "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 7 is expected to shift focus on the comeback of a familiar character, Will, Elizabeth's brother. The next episode is suggested to see Will struggle in making a decision about his family and career. Elizabeth, on the other hand, will have to deal with the son of Venezuela's late president who apparently plans to take over the country. "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 7 is said to follow Elizabeth as she heads to Venezuela to save its people from the imminent reign of the president's son. Unfortunately, an earthquake hit the country that killed the president along with the rest of his immediate successors. The president's son was then quick to grab the opportunity to rule. "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 7 is also suggested to see how Elizabeth can free an international aid team held captives by the reigning Venezuelan president. This is not the only concern that Venezuela has to face as people affected by the earthquake also need help. Because of this, Will would want to go with Elizabeth to assist in the relief efforts. However, Will has a wife who also needs him to stay and a marriage to fix, Cartermatt reported. He is expected to be torn between settling down and take the job at Walter Reed Medical Center or following his calling and head to Venezuela to help. It remains to be seen whether Elizabeth could help his brother make the best decision to save his marriage on "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 7. Meanwhile, "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 6 saw Dmitri's return as reported by Parent Herald. Dmitri's comeback was only a side story , however. The main focus in the previous episode was on the Saudi Arabian terrorist bombing which was initially covered up by the Saudi Government. Elizabeth was enraged that the Saudi president did not prefer to surrender his cousin who was the person behind the bombing in Illinois on "Madam Secretary" Season 3 Episode 6. The terrorist attack killed a lot of civilians, including the daughter of a woman who asked Elizabeth for an update on what the government is doing to give the victims justice. Elizabeth brought the woman to a summit where the woman confronted the Saudi Arabia president and fortunately, the terrorist was arrested after. "Madam Secretary" Season 3 is airing every Sunday night on CBS. In the meantime, let us know what you think of the previous episode of "Madam Secretary" Season 3 in our comments section. You can also check the promo of the next episode below. The number of sumo babies is becoming alarming and its increase is reportedly blamed to parents' lack of education about infant weaning. Despite recommendations of healthcare experts to maintain milk as an infant's primary nutrition until the baby is one year old, many parents are weaning children as early as below the recommended six months. Government of United Kingdom is seeking to correct misinformation among parents, particularly mothers, when it comes to pregnancy nutrition and infant weaning. According to Daily Mail, the surge of sumo babies, or babies weighing over 9 lbs upon birth, can be attributed to "fat mothers" and this is even aggravated as parents replace milk with pureed junk food. Professor David Haslam of National Obesity Forum said that the rate of "mothers who are fat having fat babies" is now on an "epidemic" scale. Instead of addressing the issues regarding overweight babies, the institution has decided to focus on the mothers in the community, especially those who are misinformed early on. Introduction of solids at an early age is said to be one of the top causes of obesity among infant before they reach their first birthday. Moreover, another plausible cause is that some mothers go back to work immediately and wean off breastfeeding. According to World Health Organization, babies should be exclusively breastfed until six months--this means an infant is not allowed to be fed with solid foods, vitamins and not even water. As the baby reaches the sixth month, infants are recommended to be given fresh, indigenous foods and not processed foods. Machine-produced jarred baby foods, no matter how a manufacturer says that it doesn't contain chemicals nor preservatives, are strictly not recommended as they are considered baby junk foods. Aside from obesity, health risks of early infant weaning include type 1 diabetes, iron-deficiency anemia, Celiac disease, among others. Furthermore, Kelly Mom notes that delaying solids--for at least 6-8 months--give more benefits for both the mother and baby. If an infant is delayed from solids until the recommended age, the protection against illnesses is increased, especially if an infant is breastfed. During the recommended age, an infant's digestive system is already matured. At what age did you let your baby start weaning? Let us know by commenting below! A 14-year-old boy from Suffolk County found a baby girl right outside their house's doorstep on November 8 around 9 pm. The baby was inside a Nike shoebox. In an article published by The New York Post, Franklin Santos Ulloa, 14, was watching TV when he heard someone crying by their back door. He didn't mind it at first, but after ten minutes, he noticed that the crying seems not to cease. Their neighbor thought it was just a cat making a noise. The boy then opened their back door and found a healthy looking baby girl inside a shoebox. It seems like she was well taken care of before her mother finally decided just to give her up. The baby was wrapped in a blanket with a sweater and a pink hat that is knitted. There was even a bottle of milk right next to her. The baby was just crying the whole time as if she knows she is being abandoned. Ulloa then called his neighbor to tell them what he found. His friend, 37-year-old Victor Romero, answered Ulloa and took a look at the baby downstairs. He called his wife, and they decided to call 911 to report what they saw. Romero thought of still finding the person who left the baby by flashing lights in the area, but he found no one there. The baby was rushed to the hospital nearby, and the doctors declared that she is indeed a healthy one. They weren't given to the people who found her but was rather placed under the custody of Suffolk County Child Protective Services and said that they will still be looking for the child's biological parents. KSAT San Antonio also got a hold of this story confirming the age of the infant, who is only six months old. There must be a good reason why her parents just abandoned her like that. These are not the first time that a baby was found in a shoebox somewhere. Watch the video below for a story just like this. Last week Patently Apple posted a report titled "Chinese Cyber Security Law goes into Effect in June 2017 that may Require Apple to surrender iOS Source Code." The report noted that "China has green-lit a sweeping and controversial law that may grant Beijing unprecedented access to foreign companies' technology and hamstring their operations in the world's second-largest economy." So unilaterally China appears to be threatening U.S. tech companies by such new legislation. With President Elect Trump wanting to push back against China's monetary manipulation and unfair trade practices, a Chinese state publication sent a message out to President-Elect Trump that they have the cards to hurt the U.S. in any trade war. The fear mongering rhetoric has already kicked into high gear this morning in China as a State-backed newspaper decided to do a little saber rattling of their own towards President Elect-Trump. CNBC reports that the publication has clearly stated that "Apple iPhones and other U.S. goods could suffer sales hits in China if president-elect Donald Trump goes through with his 'naive' plan of slapping a large import tariff on Chinese products." So it appears that China will use Apple as a bargaining chip in any negotiations with Trump. During his election campaign this year, Trump spoke of a 45 percent import tariff on all Chinese goods while failing to outline how it would work. Should any such policy come into effect, China will take a "tit-for-tat approach", according to an opinion piece in the Global Times, a newspaper backed by the Communist party. "A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. U.S. auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and U.S. soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S.," the Global Times article read. But the Chinese newspaper was not convinced Trump would go through with his suggestion, calling it "merely campaign rhetoric" and questioning its legal validity. U.S. law dictates that presidents can only impose tariffs of no more than 15 percent for a maximum of 150 days on all imports, The report further noted that "If Trump imposes a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports, China-U.S. trade will be paralyzed," the Global Times said. Lastly the CNBC report stated that "The opinion piece said Trump was a 'shrewd businessman' and would not be naive, but, if he was serious with the policy, it would affect a number of U.S. industries." About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. The MacBook Pro reviews are coming in fast and furious and most generally like the new MacBook Pro, some not, and the new Touch Bar gets mixed reviews. Beyond the reviews, Phil Schiller or Phil the Philosopher is back on his stump preaching the Gospel of Apple about how touch displays are a temptation of the devil. It reminds me of the line in the movie Poltergeist, just don't look into the light! I've always liked Phil Schiller and was glad that Steve Jobs kept him on board as he cleaned house back in 1997. But at times I'd prefer if Phil just focused on what Apple does best without having to preach to me that what I may like is wrong. Apple sometimes reminds me of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats saying that if I'm not for open borders and allowing all illegals to flood into the country and stay, then I must be a racist xenophobe or at best a deplorable. It's what turned off many independents. She should have stayed on message of why to vote for her rather then telling me that I represented the dark side if I happened to disagree with her point of view. Sometimes Apple gets a little too preachy. Many Apple pros are still seething that the new MacBook Pro limits ports and forces them to use dongles. And Apple just decided they no longer wanted to support an SD Slot. Apple's apostles tell us that an SD slot is a tool of the devil and if we wanted it, then we'd surely turn into pillars of salt. So repent and go there no more. A Few Quick Review Flashes on the Touch Bar In Mossberg's review he notes that "I have reservations, and you should too. Many pro users are already vocally complaining about issues particular to them. But, even for mainstream Mac users, there are questions about price, ports, the Touch Bar feature, the keyboard and surprisingly, for a Mac battery life. Mossberg really slams Apple on battery life. On the Touch Bar, Mossberg notes that "I don't think the Touch Bar is a gimmick, but I don't think it changes much, at least yet, for everyday Mac users. The Touch Bar has potential, but it's not magic." Mossberg finally says that "if you're a Mac devotee ready to move past the Air not back to a lower-powered MacBook this is what Apple is offering. Take it or leave it." It's certainly a mixed review that you could fully check out here. The Wall Street Journal's review by Joanna Stern starts off in your face: "We've been conditioned: Every new Apple Product is the best Apple Product ever until, of course, the next best Apple Product ever. The exception? The new MacBook Pro laptops. Even if you have enough spare cash to buy a Tesla for your kitten, it isn't abundantly clear that you should choose one of the new $1,500-and-up models over their predecessors. The new models even defy our expectations on power and pricing. Not only are they missing the newest Intel chipset, they don't even fit in the standard Apple-nomics model where hot new products slot in at last year's pricing. On the Touch Bar Stern noted that "I can accomplish many shortcuts faster with the keyboard or trackpad. (Example: Cmd-B bolds words quicker than I can lift a finger to hit the Touch Bar's little "B.") Plus, you always have to look up since the controls keep changing and your sense of touch doesn't help at all." The Bottom Line for Stern is one not to offend. Stern notes "So how do you decide? Do you invest in the presentthe "old" MacBook Pro with performance, good-enough portability, a keyboard to cherish and lots of ports? Or do you invest in the futurea beautiful, highly portable machine with new tricks? Or maybe you do what I'm doing: Stare down at your three-year-old laptop and wonder if you can tough it out another year or two while this sorts itself out." Click here For more on the WSJ review. Engadget's review by Dana Wollman was brutally honest. Dana notes that "I'm one of many Mac owners out there who has been waiting for Apple to upgrade the MacBook Pro line. Now that it finally has, I find the new laptop isn't quite what I wanted. For me, this is both a step forward and a step backward. I'm sure Apple disagrees, and not just because its job is to sell lots of computers. Apple seems to earnestly believe it knows how people should be getting work done -- so much so that it has the chutzpah to ask loyal customers to unlearn old habits. Get used to using dongles to attach your existing accessories. Say goodbye to your memory card slot, creatives. Resign yourself to adjusting the brightness or volume with taps and swipes, instead of a simple button press. Accept the risk that your existing Thunderbolt 3 peripherals might not work. On the Touch Bar, Wollman notes that "What's annoying about this whole setup is that either way, some of the most important system controls are now buried in Touch Bar menus. Want to lower the volume? You can either hit the volume icon and hit the slider, or hit the arrow key and tap the volume up or down key. That's less efficient than just pressing a dedicated volume button in the function row. It's inconvenient enough that I eventually started using my mouse to do things like pause Spotify or raise the volume on a track. Apple made me change my way of doing things, and not necessarily for the better. That pisses me off." Although Wollman complains, she knows that die-hard Apple will flock to it and it gives it a decent 8 out of 10 score. On the Touch Bar, the review by The Verge was mixed. "I've been using the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar for more than a week now, and I have mixed feelings about what it brings to the MacBook experience. In some cases, the Touch Bar's usefulness is obvious and immediate. But in many others, it's overly complicated or just plain unnecessary. It's an addition that very much can improve every MacBook but it's going to take some time to get there, if it ever does." Phil the Philosopher Back in 2012 Samsung's Phablet had been out for about a year and Apple's VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller wanted to downplay what many consumers were running to, the Phablet. So Schiller put on his preacher's robe and went into Phil the Philosopher mode. Patently Apple's report at the time noted that "In Describing the new iPhone, Phil Schiller stated that "It is really easy to make a new product that's bigger. Everyone does that. The challenge is to make it better and smaller." Schiller went on to make an obvious point that Samsung forgot: "What is the design center for a Phone? It's this: it's your hand. A phone should feel great in your hand and more importantly it should be easy to use with a magical device we all carry called the horizontally opposed thumb. It does most of the hard work for us. So when you carry your phone it should feel beautiful in your hand." As one who liked the phablet idea right out of the gate, I found it funny to listen to Phil having to defend Apple's position. More more importantly, Phil basically tried to convey the message that we just didn't get it, and if we happened to like a phablet, then surely we had lost our way. According to Phil, my thumb had to be satisfied and that could only happen on a tiny iPhone display. Keep in mind that this isn't me conveniently looking back with 20/20 hindsight. I reported on this back in 2013 after Apple had missed delivering a phablet for a second year in a row in a report titled "Apple Passing on a larger iPhone Display still a Head Scratcher." Well, Apple is back at it again and Phil the Philosopher is there to just lay down the law and to set us all straight. When it came to dropping ports and the SD slot that Pro users loved, Phil was there to slap them on that back and make it very clear that Apple cares "about what they love and what they are worried about. And it's our job to help people through these changes." Yes, true, at a cost and inconvenience of having multiple dongs on our desks like our cover graphic illustrates. That's helping us through the changes? Ka-ching for Apple. It's not what Apple fans or pros wanted from a new MacBook Pro, but hey, Phil will help us through these changes because we're all just morons who just don't get it. We just don't see the light of genius in changing every port so that they look alike and are more importantly, nice and neat in a row! You know, it's just so condescending and yet I'm sure it's done with a smile. Thanks Phil. Of course the biggest in our face position that Apple won't budge on is giving us a MacBook or iMac with a touch display. That argument should be dead by now but the tech community of writers never let it go. It's obvious that these writers and Apple fans would still like to see that come to be. But Apple continues to say that god handed them down the law on stone tablets like Moses. Phil, it's doable because Windows 10 proved it's doable so it just comes down to ideology and not because it's absurd as you claim it to be. You know, it reminds me of people who have to eat each thing on their plate in a particular order never mixing a damn thing. Their brain isn't wired to enjoy peas and potatoes together in one scoop. It just isn't the order of things in their universe. In a new report today Phil told Backchannel that "We think of the whole platform. If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn't be enough then the desktop wouldn't work that way." And touch on the desktop, he says, would be a disaster. Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd." How many times have I been at my kitchen table in the evening and just leaned over to touch the Safari or iTunes icon on my iMac like I do on my iPad to launch an app, just to laugh at what I was doing because my iMac was of course just too stupid to do that. What was I thinking, that we could have it both ways like on Windows devices? Yet at the end of the day, most Apple fans will appreciate Apple's MacBook Pro with its new Touch Bar. On the other hand, many reviewers and fans couldn't care less about the Touch Bar, and some like me would still prefer a hybrid notebook-tablet like the invention that Apple's engineers came up with; their intelligent engineers that had their idea stolen from them by Microsoft's Surface Book. But when I get a Surface Book someday in the future, I'll always think of those Apple engineers and say thanks guys, too bad Apple didn't listen to you because it was a great idea. Roundup of More In-Depth MacBook Pro Reviews Philosophy aside, if you're trying to decide on whether to pass or buy that shiny new MacBook Pro for Christmas and need a nudge either way, below are a few more interesting and more in-depth reviews that might help you decide: Ars Technica: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac's future USA Today: MacBook Pro review: Touch Bar comes at high cost AppleInsider: Review: Apple's late-2016 15" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar Gizmodo: The MacBook Pro's Touch Bar Is a Gimmick That's Not Worth the Money (Yet) Mashable: Apple's MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is worth the wait Macworld: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: The best bits of iOS in a really great Mac --- They love the new Touch Bar as noted below in their overview video. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. Russian Energy Firm Chiefs To Visit Iran For Talks On Possible Oil Contracts 11/14/16 Source: RFE/RL Iran's deputy minister of petroleum for international affairs and commerce says a delegation of Russian oil and gas companies will visit the country this week for talks about possible oil contracts. Amir-Hossein Zamanina said on November 13 that the Russian delegation will consist of directors of Russia's Gazprom, Tatneft, LUKoil, and Zarubezhneft. The Iranian official noted that several memoranda of understanding already have been signed by the Iranian government and the Russian firms. Those include documents signed by Zarubezhneft and Tatneft on studying studying sustainable Westfield and Abanfield as well as the Dehloran oilfield. The lifting of international sanctions against Iran in January has opened up Iran's energy sector to potential investment by international firms. But oil sector contracts have been at the center of a struggle within Iran between President Hassan Rohani and powerful hard-line clerics. Zamanina did specify when the visit by the Russian energy company executives would begin nor how long it would last. Based on reporting by SHANA, IRNA, TASS, Reuters, and Wall Street Journal 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 A female aerobatic pilot of the Chinese air force has been confirmed dead as the result of a plane crash on Saturday. The PLA's Air Force confirmed via its official Weibo account that the accident took place during routine training. Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke expressed regret over the death of the pilot, captain Yu Xu of the Bayi Aerobatic Performance Team, vowing that the FLA's Air Force will continue in its duties and be stringent in training. Advertisement Media reports said pilot Yu Xu was killed in a failed parachute jump when her plane crashed somewhere in Yutian County near north China's city of Tangshan. She is the first of four female pilots in China capable of flying the country's third-generation J-10 jet fighter. She piloted a training plane in the military parade marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic in 2009. Her last public appearance was in the just-concluded Zhuhai Air Show. It's reported Saturday's accident involved two planes of the Bayi Aerobatic Performance Team of PLA's Air Force. Yu's copilot was injured and is being treated in hospital. An investigation is underway. Credit: CRIEnglish.com Iran, China sign agreement to boost defense-military cooperation 11/14/16 Source: Press TV (photos by Islamic Republic News Agency) Iran and China have signed an agreement to boost defense-military cooperation and fight terrorism. The agreement was inked by Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan and his Chinese counterpart General Chang Wanquan in Tehran on Monday at the end of an earlier meeting between the two sides. Iranian and Chinese Defense Ministers signing the agreement: Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan (R) and General Chang Wanquan "The development of [Iran's] long-term defense-military relations and cooperation with China is among the top priorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran's defense diplomacy," Dehqan said in the meeting. Dehghan added that the two countries' defense-military cooperation would guarantee regional and international peace and security. He emphasized that all countries in Asia and the Oceania shoulder the responsibility to maintain peace and stability. "Today, foreign meddling and lack of respect for the national sovereignty of countries have turned the Middle East region into a hotbed of crisis and insecurity in the world and led to [the emergence of] terrorism and its spread throughout the world," Dehqan said. He added that the US and some regional countries are supporting terrorism and the scourge is overflowing into Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus as well as other regions. "Today, the threat of Daesh and terrorism has turned into an important regional and international challenge," the Iranian defense minister said. He called for a genuine and efficient campaign against terrorism by all countries which are exposed to the threat of the malicious phenomenon. "The Islamic Republic of Iran, with the great experience that it has acquired over the recent years in the anti-terror campaign, expresses its readiness to make a collective move in order to fight this threat and believes that China can play a very important role in this regard," Dehqan said. For his part, the Chinese defense minister said Iran has an important position in the region in political, economic, security, military and cultural fields. He added that the two countries have common interests in many regional and global issues which have prepared the ground for the expansion of defense-military cooperation. Heading a high-ranking delegation, Chang arrived in Tehran on Sunday for an official three-day visit at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart. He plans to hold talks with senior Iranian officials about Tehran-Beijing cooperation and the latest regional and international developments. Dehqan had traveled to China in May 2014 to negotiate mutual visits and personnel training cooperation between the two countries. Back in April 2015, the Iranian and Chinese defense ministers, who were in the Russian capital to attend the fourth Moscow International Security Conference, held a meeting and discussed Tehran-Beijing relations as well as the issue of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists and the extent of their activities in East Asia. 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. Since we last reviewed 8x8 X Series, the company has prettied up the product name to 8x8 eXperience Communications as a Service (XCaaS), but it remains the same solid business voice-over-IP (VoIP) contender. As with previous releases, 8x8 has continued to enhance its offering with iterative improvements. New features this time mainly focus on making communication tasks easier and better integrated with services like Microsoft Teams. 8x8 XCaaS Pricing and Plans Pricing for the base 8x8 XCaaS Express service starts at $15 per user per month, the same as the X1 tier from our previous review. This level includes unlimited voice calling, video, and messaging, plus support for multi-site and multi-level auto-attendant. This feature list makes 8x8 Express a good value for an entry-level service tier. The next level up is the X2 tier, the starting price for which has been lowered by a dollar to $24 per user per month. This tier adds unlimited voice calling to 14 countries, video and audio conferencing plus chat, and a respectable list of small business and enterprise integrations. The X4 service costs $44 per user per month ups international calling to 48 countries provides access to the new Frontdesk call-reception feature (more on that below), advanced call handling, call quality reporting, analytics, and call-center features including barge, monitor, and whisper. In general, 8x8 is one of the more affordable offerings in our current roundup, with pricing comparable to Dialpad. Client User Experience As in our earlier reviews, one of 8x8's greatest strengths is the overall usability of the product's interface, which has been consistently high for users and admins alike. At the same time, the interface is still missing some productivity features found in other products like Dialpad and our Editors' Choice winners RingCentral MVP and Intermedia Unite. You can get similar features if you're a Microsoft Teams user, but they don't exist in the product itself. The 8x8 XCaaS desktop client is called 8x8 Work for Desktop, and installers are available for both Windows and macOS. New for this release, users can also get the same user experience from a web browser via the 8x8 Work for Web product, which is available for all service tiers at no additional charge. All functionality found in the desktop client, including video meetings, is available using the browser-based version. Like other products in this roundup, 8x8's focus on meetings is readily apparent. The product supports meetings of up to 500 participants as a part of its base X2 package, which will cost you extra with Dialpad. Other features such as in-meeting polls, post-meeting summaries, breakout rooms, and virtual backgrounds bring 8x8 on par with all the popular video conferencing products. Also new is additional mobile support for screen sharing and even mobile browsers for users who haven't installed the 8x8 mobile client. Updates to the product's basic voice features include seamless call flipping between devices, sharing of voicemails, a call quality indicator for desktop and mobile, and support for messaging on Android Auto. Also on the mobile device front, it's now possible to initiate video meetings from mobile devices. You can configure this feature so that it's available over a phone's mobile data plan or restrict it to Wi-Fi only. We were able to initiate a meeting from the phone and connect both from the desktop client and the web browser interface. We also tried out the call-flip feature, which works a little differently than some of the other products we tested. With 8x8, you initiate the flip from the device you wish to move to by dialing *88 and hitting Send. Account Administration All basic administration tasks happen through an admin web portal, which boasts a UI that does a great job of easing administration tasks. The layout and functionality haven't changed much at all since our last review. Tasks are still grouped under the headings of Setup, Phone System, and Work Groups. Some functions have been moved around, such as designating system administrators. This now happens under the Roles & Permissions section. A Virtual Assistant is available for all administrative functions to help guide you through unfamiliar processes. However, while we remain impressed with 8x8's user experience overall, some longstandingif minorannoyances persist. For example, you'll still need to use the bulk edit to change an individual's assigned site. Frontdesk Reception Handling One of the more significant additions to this year's release is the new Frontdesk feature, which offers extra functionality to companies who want to designate an extension as their phone receptionist. It's designed to make it easier to designate a user to receive and greet all incoming calls and route them to the appropriate extensions. One downside is that you'll need at least an X4 license to take advantage of this new feature. We went through the process of configuring a Receptionist role and found it to be straightforward. You must either create a new user or designate an existing user as a Receptionist in the Users section of the Administration page. Once that's done, the new Receptionist will have additional Frontdesk features available in the desktop client application to make finding employees from the company directory and transferring calls a little easier. Integrations and Analytics Like other players in our current roundup, 8x8 offers a variety of integrations with third-party software that your organization might already be using. For example, in addition to basic password authentication, it also integrates with corporate identity management systems and provides a SCIM 2.0 compliant interface for exchanging credentials. Default SCIM support is available for Microsoft Azure Active Directory and Okta. Access to analytics must be enabled on a user-by-user basis. Once that's done, analytics will show up as an option from the single sign-on (SSO) page. The web-based interface provides access to a wide range of statistics about calls and some information about call quality. You can't modify any of the reports, but you can filter by date and view the information by device or user. 8x8 also provides APIs that developers can use to access SMS, video, and analytics. For example, using the SMS API it's possible to create a mobile verification text message for use by any application. The platform also supports the open-source Jitsi project for building secure video conferencing applications. And then there's Sameroom, an integration for connecting with team messaging applications like Slack and Telegram. A Solid Choice for SMBs We continue to see 8x8 XCaaS as a reliable option for small businesses, with a strong and growing menu of features. The new Frontdesk component is a welcome addition for companies that want to emulate a traditional receptionist's desk. What's more, 8x8's entry-level pricing will be attractive to new customers, and even its higher pricing tiers are competitive. It's still missing some of the advanced features of our Editors' Choice category leaders. Still, its easy-to-navigate UI should make it attractive to businesses that don't want or need to dedicate much time to configuring their phone systems. 8x8 eXperience Communications as a Service 4.0 (Opens in a new window) Check Price (Opens in a new window) Pros Lots of features in the base offering, including video conferencing Improved mobile video from earlier versions Easy setup for mobile and desktop clients New Frontdesk feature for receptionists View More Cons Missing productivity features found in other products Some user settings only configurable using bulk edit Analytics reports aren't configurable The Bottom Line 8x8 X Series remains a solid option for businesses that want a rich menu of features but don't want to break the bank. What's more, It offers an easy-to-use UI that users and admins will both appreciate. With the advent of Windows 10, Microsoft has slowly ramped up the competitiveness of Windows built-in software such as browsers (Microsoft Edge), app and game gateways (the Windows Store and Play Anywhere), and security products (Windows Defender). This is leading at least some company leaders to worry that Microsoft is trying to push out third-party software when Microsoft-made solutions are readily available. The latest Microsoft competitor to take a stand is Eugene Kaspersky, founder of security company Kaspersky Labs. Recently, Kaspersky announced in a blog post that his company was filing complaints of anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft in various countries (including the EU and Russia). Its not clear if Kaspersky Labs is complaining to officials in the United States. At issue for Kaspersky is Microsofts treatment of third-party antivirus solutions that compete with Windows Defendera free security product included with Windows 10. Microsoft has offered free security software for years. Theres the Windows Security Essentials download for Windows 7, and versions of Defender for Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10. Kasperskys beef isnt really with the existence of Defender. Rather, its with how Defender is favored to the detriment of competing, paid products. The story behind the story: While Kaspersky focuses on security products in his blog post. The context of his argument is that Microsoft is seizing niche markets in order to push out independent developers. Theres little doubt Microsoft is promoting its own software inside Windows 10, and aggressively so. We recently reported on Microsofts advertisements for Edge on the taskbar even when another browser is designated as the default program. There have also been annoyances with major updates, such as Windows 10 resetting user preferences to Microsoft defaults. Defenders deadline Topping Kasperskys list of complaints is how Microsoft treated third-party vendors when Windows 10 first rolled out. Kaspersky says developers were only given one week to comply with Windows 10s new requirements, a timeline that proved impossible to hit. As a result of not being ready in time, Windows 10 would deem noncompliant security programs incompatible and deactivate them. The operating system would then activate Defender in place of the preferred third-party software the user had installed. To remedy this problem, Kaspersky suggests that Microsoft should provide new versions of Windows to developers in good time so they can bring their programs into compliance. Thats an odd request to make in the age of the Windows Insider Program, which makes early builds of Windows 10 readily available to the public. That said, even with the Insider program it can be difficult to figure out which late-stage Insider build will be the official version rolling out to users during a major update. Kaspersky also wants Windows 10 to explicitly inform the user of the presence of incompatible software before upgrading, and then recommend to install a compatible version of said software after the upgrade. The first part of that demand is not unheard of. In 2012, Microsofts Windows 8 upgrade utility informed users of incompatible programs before continuing with the upgrade. Warnings and favoritism Windows 10s warning for Windows Defender. Kaspersky also took issue with Microsofts warning window for Windows Defender. When another AV product is installed, Windows 10 can display the warning you see here that says Defender is turned off. If you press that Turn On button seen above, it automatically turns on Defender and disables the third-party AV program. Kaspersky wasnt clear about when this warning window appears. When I installed Kaspersky Anti-Virus on Monday the warning window did not appear until I explicitly opened it. Kaspersky argues that Windows 10s treatment of third-party AV programs can also have some unintended consequences for the user. Lets say, for example, that a user accidentally installs a trial period antivirus program (its easy to do this with bundleware) while also running, say, AVG Antivirus. The new trial software disables AVG, but when the trial period ends for the new software both third-party programs are deactivated, and Defender is turned on. In that situation, Kaspersky believes Windows 10 should default back to AVG instead of Defender since AVG was the more recently used security program. Kaspersky also wants Windows 10 to explicitly ask the user before enabling Windows Defender. Thats probably a no-go since Microsoft aims to balance user convenience and security with ease of use in Windows 10. Automatically enabling Windows Defender in the absence of another security program does all of that. A Windows 10 Action Center security warning. Yet Microsoft could make its Action Center notifications more explicit. When I uninstalled Kaspersky AV on Monday, Windows 10 notified me that my PC was not protected. The OS then advised me to click on the notification seen here to activate Windows Defender. Seconds later Windows Defender was activated with no action taken on my part. Kaspersky isnt the only one taking issue with Microsofts current tactics. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has accused Microsoft on several occasions of killing the PC as an open platformarguments that weve disagreed with yet havent entirely discounted. Riverside County Sheriffs deputies utilized a helicopter Sunday afternoon, Nov. 13, to arrest a man suspected of stealing a car. Deputies located a car that had been reported stolen around 2:45 p.m. in the 21600 block of Zelma Drive in the Good Hope community of Riverside County, said Sheriffs Department spokesman Deputy Armando Munoz. The suspected thief was nowhere to be found. Deputies searched the area, and with the help of a helicopter crew, found the suspect nearby. He was subsequently arrested, Munoz said. Riverside has new long-term contracts with nearly all city workers following the approval of a deal with its largest union. The City Council on Tuesday signed off on a contract with the Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents most workers who arent in public safety or the city utility. Under the four-year deal, the service unions roughly 900 members join the police and firefighters unions in using a new method to calculate raises that goes by the health of city finances. Also, by 2020 most city employees will be paying nearly all of their share of pension contributions, which in the past were fully paid by the city. Union members were very happy. This is a very good contract, SEIU Local 721 Inland region director Esmie Grubbs said. Because it includes new provisions to retain and promote workers, workers will be less inclined to take skills learned in Riverside to other cities, she said. Starting in 2018, annual raises will never be less than 2 percent or more than 6 percent. The amount will vary by year and will be based on whether main city revenue sources, including sales and property taxes, see an increase. City Manager John Russo said basing employee raises on how city revenues perform makes more sense than using a guess of what the citys revenues are going to be and (that) may be wrong. A key provision in the new contracts with most unions is that workers will move toward paying their share typically 7 or 8 percent of pension costs, Russo said. Private-sector workers use their earnings to pay into Social Security and then collect when they retire, but until a few years ago Riverside was paying the full cost of its employees pensions. Its not as if theyre getting a free ride anymore. Theyre contributing, Russo said. In 2011, Riverside began lowering pension costs by requiring most new hires to pay their share, and the city continued to pay all pension costs for longer-serving workers. Then some longer-tenured employees began paying a portion of their pensions, usually getting raises to help offset the cost. The service union contract will cost the city about $2.9 million through fiscal 2018, according to a city report. Grubbs said the union still is negotiating with the city on behalf of workers in the refuse department. Those workers have a separate bargaining unit. Contact the writer: 951-368-9461arobinson@scng.comTwitter: @arobinson_pe One woman was displaced after a two-story home caught fire Sunday, Nov. 13, in the El Cerrito area south of Corona, according to Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department news release. The fire was reported just before 3 p.m. and arriving firefighters encountered heavy smoke and fire visible from the 2,000-square-foot structure with power lines down, the release stated. The fire was contained in about 35 minutes. The fire loss was estimated at $300,000 and the cause is under investigation, according to fire spokeswoman Jody Hagemann. The Corona Fire Department assisted. The fire was in the 19000 block of Consul Avenue, east of the 15 freeway and north of Ontario Avenue. No injuries were reported. The American Red Cross was contacted to assist the homes resident. South Park Season 20, episode 8 promo, synopsis, title: President-elects unfinished business in Members Only [Spoilers] (Photo : SouthPark.cc.com) The President-elect heads to South Park for some unfinished business in the upcoming episode. Meanwhile, Troll Hunter is after Gerald and he will do anything to protect himself. The promo for "South Park" Season 20, episode to showcase President-elect coming to town. Warning: This article contains spoilers from "South Park" Season 20 episodes. Read to know more. Advertisement "South Park" Season 20, episode 8 official spoilers According to the synopsis released, on "Members Only," we will see the President-elect in South Park. In the above photo, he meets P.C. Principal at South Park Elementary. Apparently, he has to attend some unfinished business. Elsewhere, Eric Cartman and Heidi are ready to go to Mars and they head to SpaceX to be a part of the first rocket that will go to the Red Planet. "The President-elect has some unfinished business with his hometown on an all-new episode of South Park titled "Members Only" on Wednesday, November 16 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central. Gerald tries anything to escape the Troll Hunter's revenge. Meanwhile, Cartman and Heidi make their way to SpaceX to try to get on the first rocket leaving for Mars," reads the official synopsis. Meanwhile, the official press release also revealed that Barneys New York has teamed up with Matt Stone and Trey Parker. "Barneys New York, the luxury specialty retailer, has collaborated with Matt Stone and Trey Parker among other celebrated artists for their 2016 holiday: Love Peace Joy Project. The visual homage to "South Park's 20th season will be unveiled on Friday, November 18 in the southern window on Madison Avenue." "South Park" Season 20, episode 8 promo video Note: The promo will be uploaded as soon as the network makes it available. Update: The promo begins with Mr. Mackey informing P.C. Principal that someone wants to speak with him. P.C. Principal shouts at him and wants to be left alone. But, it is the President-elect. He is shocked to see him in his office. Watch what happens next, here. Share your views about the new episode in the section below. Stay tuned for more spoilers, news and update. "South Park" Season 20 episodes air Wednesdays on Comedy Central. Credit: YouTube/South Park Studios A crash Monday morning, Nov. 14, involving a big-rig blocked the Redlands Boulevard off-ramp from Highway 60 West in Moreno Valley. By about 7:30 a.m., the vehicles were moved from the roadway and the off-ramp was opened back up, according to a California Highway Patrol incident log. A big-rig and a black pickup were involved in the crash. Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department firefighters were dispatched to the scene. The log did not clearly say if anyone was injured in the crash. With analysts estimating that oceangoing shippers could lose up to $10 billion worldwide this year, the industry that made globalization possible is sinking into crisis. To survive, shippers are merging, signing swiftly assembled alliances and slashing costs. The pain isnt felt on foreign shores alone. Los Angeles and Long Beach, home to the nations busiest port complex, are fighting for an increasingly smaller piece of a shrinking shipping market. Those two ports support thousands of jobs in the Inland area, whose residents drive trucks, operate heavy equipment, work in warehouse and fulfillment centers and make deliveries of products from Long Beach and Los Angeles. So far, the pain has been minimal in the Inland region, but some economists worry there could be ripple effects from troubles at the ports. At the same time, the ports face hundreds of millions of dollars a year in infrastructure projects to stay competitive. The industry is consolidating for survival, said Michelle Grubbs, vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a trade group. They are losing so much money. They have to reduce their costs. UNCERTAIN SEAS Recent shifts on the currently unsettled trade seascape are significant: Profits are plunging at the largest shipping company, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, which announced this week a 43 percent decline in third-quarter profits. It comes as Japans biggest shipper, NYK Line, anticipates a near $2 billion loss for the first half of the year. Just last month, Japans three biggest sea carriers confronting declining freight rates, sluggish demand and fleets with too many ships merged to create the worlds sixth-largest box carrier. Chinas largest carriers, China Ocean Shipping Co. and China Shipping Group, are in the midst of merging, too. Federal regulators last month approved Ocean Alliance, a partnership between some of the worlds largest shipping companies Chinas Cosco Group, Hong Kongs Orient Overseas Container Line, Frances CMA CGM and Taipei-based Evergreen Marine. A similar alliance is already in place and another one made up of some the worlds biggest sea carriers is awaiting approval. Most of the globes goods shipped by sea will travel via one of the three such alliances, which allow shippers to share ships, trade routes and charter space. Struggling seaborne cargo movers are seeking ways to streamline. One approach is building bigger ships that can carry more goods and reduce the number of trips. However, such cost-cutting isnt always fool-proof: Too much capacity can drive down prices. Its a tumultuous new world for shippers. Its a very big global change, Grubbs said. I think you are going to see shifts everywhere. PORTS IN A QUANDARY The crisis poses a quandary for ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach. The giant cargo hubs operate like landlords, wooing shippers to sign leases to unload goods at their massive terminals. The ports shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to stay current and competitive, building cranes, improving wharves and otherwise maintaining an aging infrastructure. In turn, the ports ask their tenants to bring in a minimum amount of cargo each year or pay a fee on top of the lease. The rents also pay off bonds used to pay operating expenses and to build projects such as the Gerald Desmond Bridge. But a marketplace in disarray could challenge this economic model. Nearly 40 percent of the nations trade with Asia runs through the twin ports and its 13 different container terminals. But many of those terminals are subsidiaries of shipping lines, the very ones that are struggling to stay afloat. Alliances and mergers can pose a problem for the twin hubs. The majority of their leases with terminal operators predate many of these deals. What we dont know today, said Noel Hacegaba, chief operating officer of the Port of Long Beach, is how will the volume by these new alliances be distributed across the terminals. For example, Hanjin Shipping Co. has a majority stake in Long Beachs Total Terminal International. The seventh-largest carrier in the world collapsed this summer, sending import-dependent Southern California into a tailspin. The rest is owned by Mediterranean Shipping Co., the worlds second-largest box carrier. Who purchases Hanjins stake could further complicate the port scenario. MSC owns a stake in another terminal at Long Beach and is aligned with two more terminals in Los Angeles. Its uncertain whether MSC, as it absorbs Hanjins streamlined assets, will be able to maintain the minimum shipping numbers required by their leases at each terminal. FOLLOWING SUIT? Jock OConnell, an international trade adviser at Beacon economics, said as alliances reconfigure, the terminals may take a similar route to shippers, consolidating their resources and cutting costs. Of the ports long-term leases with terminal operators, more than half are up in the next 11 years. There are signs, analysts say, there may be more terminals than are truly needed, especially as bigger ships result in fewer trips. Los Angeles strong growth this year could mean that newly allied shippers have chosen their docks, OConnell said. But those fortunes could change as the new order shakes out, he added. Paul Bingham, who manages trade and logistics analysis for Economic Development Research Group in Boston, pointed to a potentially grimmer view. Earlier this year, the Port of Oakland saw tenants of their second-largest terminal drop out of a 50-year lease. Outer Harbor Terminal LLC, a venture between Ports America and MSC-affiliated Terminal Investment Ltd., said they were bowing out to refocus on other properties in Southern California and Washington. At the time the operator inked that lease in 2009, it promised to invest more than $600 million in the Oakland port by 2020. Outer Harbor said it pulled out in part because unlike Southern California Oakland wasnt considered crucial to trade routes. But, he noted, the general lesson is an important one. Things are not as stable in the port environment. Things you could count on in the past are no longer the case, he said. That uncertainty prompted bond-ratings company Fitch to issue a report last month that raised questions about the risks U.S. ports face in the wake of shipping-industry consolidation. It is something we are watching and we are definitely asking the ports about, said Emma Smith, director of global infrastructure and projects for the agency. What does it mean for where the boxes are going? We still dont know. There will be certain ports, echoed Grubbs, that will be winners and losers in this. Contact the writer: ruranga@scng.com or @racheluranga Bulgarian Socialist Ally Rumen Radev, a Russia-friendly newcomer to politics, won Sunday's presidential election by a wide margin, exit polls showed, prompting Centre-right Prime Minister Boiko Borisov to pledge to resign. Radev, 53, entered Bulgarian politics on a wave of discontent with the ruling center-right's progress in combating corruption, disappointment with the European Union and concerns among voters over alienating an increasingly assertive Russia. The French far-right party led by Jean Marie Le Pin is also on the ascendancy and they are tipped to perform wonders in their countrys upcoming elections. Now, this comes at the heels of Donald Trump and there's another episode in the offing in Moldova. Tenets of democracy In every society, leaders do emerge at specific periods to render specific service to their country and leave a legacy which could either be seen as positive or negative, depending on who is doing the assessment and through what lens. What is therefore important is the overriding approval by the people whose lives have been positively affected by decisions of these leaders, when they were given the opportunity to serve. The path to attaining this leadership position is also very important; this is because, there are instances where people seeking the highest office of the land, often make promises which they are either not ready to fulfill, or simply do not have the capacity to deliver. For such people, empty talk and baseless aspersions then become their sole delight on campaign platforms, while relegating to the background, the real issues bordering of the peoples welfare. Trumping Trump The rest of the world woke up in shock and awe as USA decided to create a NEW WORLD ORDER by granting Donald J. Trump a stunning victory that many like me find it very difficult to comprehend. Have we any choice? Majority rule simply prevailed for a Trumping Trump Pence leadership regardless of the backlash, scathing attacks, and devastating revelations. Losing an election to a candidate who proved beyond measure to be immeasurably divisive and unpopular as Donald Trump baffles my thinking (I JUST CAN'T THINK FAR) whereas serving as an indictment on the opinion poll, pollster predictions, media hype, influential celebrity endorsement and agonized objective analysts and floating voters for years to come. Suffice it to say, we await the permeating factors that guaranteed this shock wave and once the shock fever passes, we would surely be privy to glimpses of some rational explanation for such reality. Scholarly definitions of politics, elections, poll projection, expert analysis, mass opinion heavily defeated by the seemingly unexpected outcome. The 8year convention Trumps victory has further deepened the believe that incumbent parties rarely hold on to power after eight years (the case of my Ghana) in office. Political allusions point to the very fact that George H.W Bush, following Reagan, was an exception, but politics has become progressively more polarized since those years and symbolically pendulums have a habit of swinging in that regard. Another factor which cannot be left in oblivion is the issue of a disgruntled youth (white majority) who feel immigrants and foreigners alike have taken their places for the rare socio-economic opportunities on the social stratum of the USA. On December 7,2016, Ghanaians will be going to the polls to elect someone to steer the affairs of state for the next 4years.as we speak, the nation is awashed with campaign messages by the various presidential candidates. Coincidentally, developments in America, election-wise, have often reflected on what happens here in Ghana, since the inception of our fourth Republican democratic dispensation. Since the era of President William Jefferson 'Bill' Clinton in 1992 when Ghana ushered in the 4th Republican democratic dispensation, no political party in either county has won a 3rd consecutive term of office. Again, within the same time frame, anytime there is a Democratic President in the White House, there has been an NDC President in the Castle; and anytime there is a Republican President in the White House, there has been an NPP President in the Castle [the Jubilee House]. And for baseless propaganda point-scoring, top NDC government officials and their legion of praise-singing assigns, erroneously, went about equating whatever was transpiring in the US electioneering campaign to what is going on here in ghana.at a point in time, the 59year-old John Mahama was being called Obama, for reasons which virtually do not exit. Propaganda gone-wrong The likes of Edward Omane-Boamah, Felix Ofosu-Kwakye and Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa were always on radio/tv programs claiming that John Mahama is preaching peace and hope, while their biggest incorruptible nightmare Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is preaching hopelessness because he talks about how our countrys economy has been totally destroyed and state coffers looted by government officials. These afore-mentioned NDC adults with metal teeth have made it their avowed enterprise to always malign Nana Addo, at the expense of selling the so-called miracles performed by their party leader John Mahama. This has gone on for so long that, inadvertently, John Mahama have had the cause to complain about his so-called miraculous works not being trumpeted enough to the hearing of ordinary Ghanaians. The time and energies of these NDC propagandist have rather been wasted on venomous vilification of Nana Addos person, while banking their completely dwindled electoral fortunes in the upcoming December 7,2016 general elections. For instance, on the Wednesday 9th November,2016 edition of OK-FM morning programme, the NDC national organizer/director of operations for NDC campaign-2016, Kofi Adams is on OK-FM desperately linking John Mahama to Donald Trump by claiming that both "emerged from nowhere to lead their political parties and went on to win one-touch victory". In the same interview, Kofi Adams touted the so-called performance of John Mahama and said though Obama did a good job and was very popular, his party has still lost the elections because voters vote for personalities and not political parties. The General Secretary of the ruling NDC party, Asiedu-Nketia said on Tuesday,8th November edition of OK-FM morning programme, that, the Democratic party in America represents the NDC while the Republican party represents NPP, and that, what happens in the American elections, winner-wise, is what will happen here in Ghana, come 7th December, 2016. According credible intelligence some of us have chanced upon, the NDC has actually rdered, from China, massive volumes of paraphernalia [t-shirts, hand-bags, caps, wrist bands, bandanas, aprons etc.] embossed with images of John Mahama and Hillary Clinton, to be distributed to at their campaign rallies with the message that the democrats are their ideological allies so once they have been triumphant in America, the same scenario was going to play out in our upcoming 7th December,2016 general elections. But god being so good, Donald Trump pulled a huge surprise, and this planned propaganda party has suffered a dramatic still-birth. Trump attributes Donald Trump is business-minded, abhors corruption in political officialdom, vowed to protect America's borders, cut taxes, slam the door on potential terrorists and keep out illegal aliens. On the other-hand, NDC eulogizes corruption in political officialdom, opens our borders to allow aliens to flock into Ghana to influence who becomes our president, raises taxes to astronomic levels and opens our doors to al-Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo. Effectively, NDC loves to associate itself with the democrats in America but completely jettison the commensurate integrity and incorruptibility. Following the electoral success of Donald Trump, these loud-mouth NDC propagandists that were all over the place drawing similarities with results of American elections with what was going to happen on 7th December,2016, here in Ghana, they have gone completely silent on their insipid propaganda, quietly licking their wounds and fearing for same fate to befall them. Now, some of us observing from afar, erroneously saw these campaign messages by the man, as 'warmongering' and anti-immigrants but what we didn't understand is the fact that, indeed, Donald Trump was only providing a voice for a genuine pent-up 'anger' in the American system which everyone was scared to talk about, for fear of being demonized. Incidentally, the same scenario is clearly playing out here in Ghana, as 7th December, 2016 fast approaches. Source: Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has promised to assemble a Special Forces unit in the Ghana Police Service and station them on various highways to combat highway robberies in the major trading centers across the country. Delivering a speech during a campaign at Yeji in the Brong Ahafo region, Nana Addo indicated that armed robbers have made it a point to attack traders on highways and collect their valuables. When you vote me into power, I will set up special units to deal with armed robbery on the highway. We are going to stop all those corrupt exercises he stated. Rate of highway robberies on traders in Atebubu and Techiman have increased dramatically this year. It is due to these incidents that the NPP flag bearer, Nana Akufo-Addo said he will deal severely with the menace if he is given the nod as President of Ghana. 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. Featured Video President John Mahama has described supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as the silent majority who usually amplify their voice by voting massively for the party during elections. President Mahama who said this at Kpone, as part of his campaign tour of the Greater Accra Region argued that the opposition New Patriotic Party does not stand a chance in this election even with the partys vociferous supporters. NDC, we are the silent majority because we dont speak much. If you look at the NPP, they talk a lot. When you meet one or two of them, they can talk more than the crowd here. But the NDC, the silent majority always surprises them during elections. They wonder where the party gets its vote but our supporters are there. Mahama further used the opportunity to list to the people the projects executed by his government in the region. We made the most massive investment in the road sector in the history of Ghana. Not only that, if look at education weve done the same thing, he said adding that If you look at the education sector, it is the same thing. In Greater Accra, we are building ten new community senior high schools to enable our children to attend school. Yesterday, I went to inaugurate one at Frafraha, Kwabenya and I am aware that the one at Kpone will be completed soon. So when the time is due I will come again and I come and inaugurate that one too, he added. Source: Citifmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The John Mahama 2016 Campaign notes with sadness the developments of today, Sunday November 13, 2016 during a well-patronised health walk organised by the Greater Accra Regional Branch of our great party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The sad developments, which were occasioned by an unprovoked attack followed by sporadic gunshots by identified hooligans from the Nima residence of Nana Akufo Addo, and thankfully without any reactions whatsoever from our party supporters, have now been twisted by the opposition party and their media partners, CitiFM and JoyFM. Records available including photographs posted to the website of StarrFM, www.starrfmonline.com, confirm that it is the identified thugs from Nana Addos residence that were wielding various types of weapons and firing them. The rush to issue statements, and together with their media partners circulate a false claim that supporters of the NDC wanted to attack the residence of the NPP flagbearer is clearly a failed attempt to hoodwink the public and the international community after photographs of their gun-wielding thugs appeared on both social and new media platforms. No NDC supporter and participant in Sundays health walk wanted to enter let alone attack the Nima residence. It is also instructive to state that the police had cordoned off the property. We dare JoyFM and CitiFM to provide the evidence they gathered that our supporters did anything close to what they reported. The NDC and its candidate will continue to conduct a peaceful, calm and issue-based campaign. We challenge Nana Addo to disarm the thousands of young people called Invincible Forces he has recruited and trained and whose principal mission is to always cause mayhem and violence. The available photographs from his residence should be a cause for worry to all peace-loving Ghanaians and others interested in the political stability of our country. This mornings health walk, which started from the La Trade Fair Centre and went through various principals streets of Accra and also through Nima and Maamobi, confirmed the growing brand appeal, peoples recognition and appreciation of the achievements, and the overwhelming conformation that President John Dramani Mahama, is the Peoples Choice and will win the 2016 Presidential Election convincingly. We encourage all political parties to take a step back and always look at the future of this country when taking decisions. Concocting stories and using bias media to spread them across the globe does the country no good. Signed Joyce Bawah Mogtari Spokesperson Source: Peacefmonlinecom/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. Featured Video The Chief of Old Tafo Zongo, Alhaji Yussif Chibsah, has touted the approach by the NPP towards the development of Zongo as unique and unprecedented. Alhaji Chibsah says the NPP and Nana Akufo Addo present a new strategy that will his help bridge the development gap in the Zongo communities across the country. Touching on the proposed Zongo Development Fund as well as the Constituency Development Fund, the Chief urged Ghanaians to consider the pragmatic policies and programmes of the NPP and make informed decision. He described the policies as highly innovative and a paradigm shift from the usual piecemeal approach to development. The Chief pointed out that considering these and other laudable policies contained in the manifesto of the NPP, it will be unfair not to give them an opportunity to govern this country. According to him, a vote for the NDC will be a disaster for Ghana and its people. Alhaji Chibsah, made the statement when the wife of the NPP running mate, Mrs. Samira Bawumia, together with the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the party, Mr.Bernard Antwi Boasiako, paid a courtesy call on him at his palace in Tafo. VIDEO Below... On her part, Mrs. Samira Bawumia debunked the assertion that the NPP is anti-northern/Muslim, stressing that the NPP is the only party with a deliberate convention and plans for Muslims and northerners. She observed that it is highly absurd for the NDC and their cronies to engage in wicked propaganda that Nana Akufo Addo will chase Muslims and northerners away from the country. "For the first time in the history of this country, we had both the Qur'an and the Bible at the Presidency thanks to the NPP. Thankfully we shall be seeing another of that in 2017 so why would the NDC continue to throw dust into the eyes of the good people of Ghana," she questioned. Mrs. Samira Bawumia also assured the Zongo Chief that the NPP would remain true to its promise to revamp the Zongo and northern communities. Source: Chris Joe Quaicoe/ email: [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. Featured Video For years , Denmark based Ghanaian artiste ,Bobo Pee has been spreading the good new of Ghanaian music to the outside world through his songs and after considerable success with his debut album,the artiste has released his second album titled Alma. According to him ,the album which was officially released on the various media portals last week Monday ,October 31 ,is aimed at giving the world a taste of Africa music. Songs on the 12-tracks album are Funky,Sika do ,Beng fa,Agege,Killer B3 wu,Casanova,Banana, My Baby among others. T project his African roots and its cultured heritage ,Bobo Pee,born Kingsley Edekor employs mostly highife rhythm on most of the songs. However ,he shows his versatility on other pieces such as Casanova and Banana by exploring other beats in highlife and Afro Pop . Though Bobo Pee has lived his life mostly in Copenhagen ,Denmark ,he believes he can use his platform to project Ghanaian music and make it attractive to the outside world. The likes of King Ayioba and Wiyaala are flying high in European countries because what they are used to. We cant pretend we are better than the Beyonces and the Kanye Wests.Lets sell out music because it makes us distinct from others, were the words of Bobo Pee when he spoke with Showbiz last Wednesday . Currently of BP Records,Bobo Pee,a songwriter was born and raised in Cape Coast, Ghana, but he has plied his made as a musician in Copenhagen where he performs at major venues with the aim of selling African musicfor the past decade. He continue to explore new,interesting directions and possibilities for the Ghanaian music tradition and that he said inspired him featuring highlife artists such as Kofi Kinaata on his new album . Other artists featured on the Alma album are Still Vybez,Riddm Boss and Tasha. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A US judge has ordered the immediate prison release of Brendan Dassey, who was one of the subjects of Netflixs smash doco series Making A Murderer. Dassey, 27, was 16-years-old when he was accused of helping his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, murder, and dispose of the body of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach, who disappeared in Manitowoc Country, Wisconsin in November 2005. Dassey, who has learning difficulties, confessed to the crimes, and he and Avery were both sentenced to life in prison. Judge William Duffin has now ordered his release on the grounds that Dasseys confession was involuntary. The court concluded that, when viewed collectively, various assertions and assurances the investigators repeatedly made to Dassey amounted to false promises that he would not be punished, he said. These false promises, when considered in conjunction with the fact that Dassey was only 16-years-old, had significant intellectual deficits, had no prior experience with law enforcement aside from this investigation, was alone with the investigators without the benefit of an attorney or other allied adult, as well as other factors, rendered Dasseys confession involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Dassey is set to be released on strict conditions. He is not allowed to obtain a passport, possess a firearm, destructive device, or other dangerous weapon, now shall he use or possess any controlled substances unless prescribed. Hell have to submit to any drug test deemed appropriate by his probation officer. Hes also not allowed to leave the state of Wisconsin without approval from the court. However, his lawyer Kathleen Zellner, who specialises in overturning wrongful convictions, tweeted that Wisconsin Attorney-General Brad Schimel is filing an emergency motion to prevent his release. Wisconsin AG is filing an emergency motion to prevent Dasseys release. #MakingAMurderer Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) November 14, 2016 More to come. UPDATE: Zellner does not appear to be worried that Schimel will prevent Dasseys release. Our bet is that Brendan Dassey will be at his familys Thanksgiving table no matter what Wisc. AG files. #MakingAMurderer #Justicerules Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) November 14, 2016 Photo: Making A Murderer. President-elect Donald Trumps first interview after winning the US presidential election is interesting. Well, we mean, of course it bloody is, but the 60 Minutes segment answered the question many hopeful punters on both sides of the political divide have asked since his win: will the checks and balances of the presidency actually tame Donald Trump and his wilder policy positions? The answer is maybe, but look, probably not. And when things do go his way, you can expect massive changes in policy. Flanked by his fam at his penthouse in Manhattans Trump Tower, the man wholl become the 45th President of the United States of America walked back a number of the more ostentatious proposals he made during his unprecedented campaign, but doubled down on more. Lesley Stahl asked Trump why his transition team was packed full of his cronies with lobbying and finance backgrounds, despite his repeated claims he wanted to drain Washington D.C.s political swamp of special interest groups. I will Make Our Government Honest Again believe me. But first, Im going to have to #DrainTheSwamp in DC. https://t.co/m1lMAQPnIb Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2016 Trump reply was essentially a hand-waving so what. He said thats the only people you have down there thats the problem with the system, the system. Right now, were going to clean it up. His claim that were going to phase that out. You have to phase it out is questionable, considering the immense power and influence hell be handing em. When asked about locking up former opponent Hillary Clinton over that godforsaken email scandal, Trump again changed his stance. Seemingly muting the chants of lock her up that emanated from his rallies, Trump insisted hes going to think about it, but I want to focus on all of these other things that weve been talking about. Reminder: heres what some of his rallies sounded like. Trump supporters chant Lock her up! at a rally in Florida #USElection2016 https://t.co/n06N56Vjat Sky News (@SkyNews) November 7, 2016 His personal view of Crooked Hillary and the Clinton clan seems to have shifted, too. He told Stahl I dont want to hurt them. I dont want to hurt them. Theyre, theyre good people. I dont want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together. Much has been written about how boggling Americas Electoral College system is after all, Clinton is on track to actually walk away with over 2 million more popular votes than Trump and Trump has railed against the rigged system in the past. Now the Electoral College has enabled his big fat W, Trumps seems a little more genial towards what many claim is a clunky anachronism. Well, you know, Im not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system. While he didnt rebuke the Ku Klux Klan for endorsing his presidency, Trump did call for anyone committing acts of racially-motivated violence after his victory to stop it. I would say dont do it, thats terrible, cause Im gonna bring this country together. Stop it Donald Trump says to any of his supporters who may be involved in threatening behavior https://t.co/PGBVkXyvcE pic.twitter.com/MjFz4ntzk7 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 14, 2016 Bit late there Donny, but okay. Another aspect that were going to chalk up as a victory for basic human equality: he said he wont challenge the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. Thats all well and good, but when your VP is conversion therapy advocate Mike Pence, anything is possible. Those softened stances come after it was revealed his proposed wall on the US-Mexican border will likely be a fence in many places, and that his views of Barack Obama are undergoing a complete turnaround after, you know, meeting the bloke hes been disparaging for years. However, there were a couple of affirmations of policy sprinkled in there, too. Regarding ISIS yup, while we were wrapped in in existential terror regarding Trump, those assholes didnt exactly put down their arms he maintained that he may still know more than US generals about defeating the radical group. He also kept mum about how exactly he plans to do it, but you can bet itll involve ol mate Vladimir Putin. Perhaps his strongest re-affirmation of policy came when he discussed the rights of women to receive abortions. Trump said hes pro-life and vowed to call up a Supreme Court judge wholl work to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which currently enshrines the right for women to receive an abortion in federal law. Although Trump said that move has a long, long way to go, he intimated that regulations regarding abortion may revert to the states, and that women may eventually have to travel to undergo the procedure. Trump on 60 Minutes on over-turning Roe v Wade: it would go back to states, some women would have to travel other states to have an abortion pic.twitter.com/BR05pWmuhU Mashable News (@MashableNews) November 14, 2016 After all that, we have a glimpse of the president Trump could be opinionated, sure, but in dire need of direction from his confidantes and party to function in any meaningful way. Still, when the wishes of his political minders align with the will of Trump, shits going to change, big league. And, in some ways, we guess that was the entire point of Trumps campaign. Source: 60 Minutes / CBS. Photo: 60 Minutes / Facebook. Texas Mother Kicks Out Son (Photo : Alex William/YouTube) The Nov. 8 presidential election in the U.S. has divided not only the nation but also families as some members voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump and others for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Examples include Caitlyn Jenner and her two younger daughters Kendall and Kylie, Katy Perry and her parents, and even the outgoing President Barack Obama and some of his relatives. Advertisement However, one viral video showed a Texas mother kick out of her house her young son who voted for Trump in a mock election in school. The bawling black boy is seen pleading with his mother not to kick him out of the house, but the mother is not moved by his tears. The video shows the mother has packed his things in a suitcase which was ready by the doorway and the kid given a sign which stated, My mom kicked me out because I voted for Donald Trump. After giving him the sign, the boy is seem outside the house and lugging his suitcase and the sign while still crying. The two-minute, 15-second video has become viral when it was posted on Friday on Facebook, getting more than 10 million views in less than 24 hours, 12News reported. On YouTube where the video was shared by Alex Williams, the video has close to 200,000 hits. But while the Fort Bend County woman was heavily criticized for what she did to her young son which traumatized the boy, a detective that ABC spoke to said the video does not show any criminal wrongdoing. Although the content of the video is disturbing, no charges had been filed by the woman likely black who feels strongly against Trump because of his stand against minorities. The countrys Sheriff Office investigated the incident and discovered it was just a joke. Detective Joe Luera said he met the family off-site and the boy appears to be in good health. The mother has apologized for the video. Ah, yes: its that magical time of the year where hordes of us flock to open spaces in order to gawk at a rare celestial wonder. Get hyped for the supermoon, friends. Muuuuuuum, the moons doing that thing again pic.twitter.com/jKp5nVO3ml courtney (@courtwhip) September 28, 2015 Catching it might be tricky in Sydney, where clouds are predicted to cock-block the whole event, but legitimate experts in astro-photography have given punters nationwide tips to avoid their giving snapshots a similarly out-of-focus fate. NASAs senior photographer Bill Ingalls has advised everyone with their heads tilted towards the heavens not to make the mistake of photographing the moon by itself with no reference to anything. Sure, itll be super, but when all youve got to compare it to is the vast emptiness of space, the impact might just be lost. When looking for landmarks to compare the sky to, Ingalls says he uses Google Maps and other apps even a compass to plan where to get just the right angle at the right time. Were not suggesting you crack out your Year 10 trigonometry skills just for the Gram, but were not not saying it, either. If hiking to a landmark is a bit much (and look, well be scoping it out in our trackie dacks), Ingall also says there are lots of great photos of people appearing to be holding the moon in their hand and that kind of thing. You can get really creative with it. Of course, if all youre packing is your phone camera, Ingalls recommends getting really creative to get the most out of it. Needless to say, you dont need to nick your partners DSLR while theyre distracted he reckons its rad if you do something more panoramic, including some foreground thats interesting, or think about being in an urban area where its a little bit brighter. Oh, and make sure your lens isnt smudged. Natch. Ingalls also encourages all you would-be snappers to tinker with your exposure settings, lest you wind up with a stack of shots that are dim or blindingly bloody bright. Alternatively, you could just stay inside and wonder at the work of professional photogs and your more adventurous friends. Thats what Instagram is for anyway, right? For the record, its recommended you get your shots while the moon is juuust peaking over the horizon. Heres when thatll happen: Brisbane: 5:51pm AEST Perth: 6:33pm AEST Darwin: 6:37pm AEST Sydney: 7:07pm AEDT Adelaide: 7:32pm AEDT Hobart: 7:38pm AEDT Melbourne: 7:40pm AEDT Alternatively, some other cloud experts have had their say: Get high and go watch the super moon tonight. #SuperMoon Tommy Chong (@tommychong) November 14, 2016 Enjoy the show, fam. Source: NASA / ABC. Malcolm Turnbulls rote media persona is almost enough to make you question why he undergoes interviews at all, and weve come to learn exactly what kind of pseudo-answers were going to get. A reliance on practiced soundbites is apparent in his speech deflections to Labor are rife in many of the contexts he ever finds himself speaking in but you may have also noticed a similar set of catchphrases surrounding Australias border security, and more recently, our future relations with an America under Donald Trump. Surprisingly, watching those deflections coalesce on tonights 7.30 was the most striking element of the program. Speaking to the inimitable Leigh Sales, Turnbull discussed the out-of-thin-air deal to send asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island to the United States. When pressed on the very real risk of Trump reneging on the deal due to his proposed plan to ban Muslim immigration to the US, Turnbulls repeated deflection suggested theres no goddamn Plan B. I am confident that the arrangements that weve set in place will continue, Turnbull said, in a holistically worrying fashion. As we covered earlier today, the government doesnt really know how Trump is liable to impact the deal. That being said, Turnbulls comments suggest a difference in opinion to that of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who told Hack that discussions with a third nation are still in the works. For our sake scratch that, for the sake of everyone currently in Australian offshore detention we hope Trump doesnt flip over this one. And right now, that seems like something huge to hope for. Source and photo: 7.30 / Twitter. First, the good news: Peter Dutton has just confirmed that the Government plans to resettle refugees currently on Manus Island and Nauru in the US even if their wildly-controversial (and plainly cruel) bill to ban anyone who sought asylum by boat post-2013 from ever coming to Australia does not pass the Senate. Which, by the by, further proves that the ban is unnecessary. While Dutton did not provide a proper timeframe on the deal, this at least sounds like good news for the people weve tortured for the past three years. Small blessings, lets enjoy them. But in todays interview with Hack, Dutton also largely dodged the depressing questions as to what will happen to the refugees when President-Elect Donald Trump comes into office next January. Will Trump send them back as part of the two-to-three million he plans to deport anyway? Will he simply renege on the deal if the groups arent transferred in time? When asked by Tom Tilly how the plan will work under Trump, Dutton remained elusive: We can only deal with one President at a time, he said. This is the result of months of work, well continue to work with the Obama administration and continue to run with the Trump administration. When pressed further on a situation where this deal wont be successful, Dutton did mentioned the usual unnamed, elusive third countries hes still in talks with. The ones that have, until now, included Cambodia, the countries these people risked their lives escaping, or nada. He also mentioned in a later Sky News piece that he kind of just hopes Trump will honour the agreement. Because it is important to Australia, you see. .@PeterDutton_MP The @realDonaldTrump administration will respect the fact that this is a very important issue to the Oz Govt @SkyNewsAust Laura Jayes (@ljayes) November 14, 2016 To be fair, Duttons kind of non-answer is an entirely reasonable response; nobody counted on Trump winning, and itd be hard to imagine the Liberal Party creating a plan on the basis that itll eventually be defeated. It honestly sounds like Dutton just hopes the refugees are settled well before Barack Obama leaves January 20th and the end times begin. Then, this deal and our turnback policy (aka refoulement) will at long last make people seeking asylum by boat some other countrys problem. The interview contained a few more highlight, notably a reference to the untouched New Zealand offer to take refugees. Dutton weirdly maintained that New Zealand was a backdoor to reaching Australia, an argument that relies on the people seeking asylum wanting it solely from our country and not, yknow, anywhere that wont torture them. .@TomTilley points out the governments hypocrisy rejecting NZ deal re marketing opportunity but doing US deal and saying the same thing Shane Bazzi (@shanebazzi) November 14, 2016 He also, weirdly, maintained that Australia taking American refugees, likely originating from Costa Rica, does not constitute a people swap, even though swapping people is literally what is going to happen. Credit: Triple J Hack. Photo: Getty / Stefan Postles / Stringer. Donald Trump has used his first post-election interview which will air this morning Australian time to double down on his election promises re: illegal immigration, promising that hell immediately deport millions of people and work towards constructing a wall on the border with Mexico. Despite the fact much attention has been given to Trump backtracking on many of his election promises such as the vague softening of his rhetoric on Obamacare, for example it doesnt really seem like thats the case when it comes to his extreme border policies. He said in the 60 Minutes interview thathe will move to immediately deport or incarcerate between 2 to 3 million criminal undocumented immigrants: What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million it could be even 3 million we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But were getting them out of our country. Theyre here illegally. He went on to say that the people who dont meet the description of criminal, a determination will be made later: After the border is secure and after everything gets normalised, were going to make a determination on the people that theyre talking about, who are terrific people theyre terrific people, but we are going to make a determination at that. Its worth querying whether the United States even has the law enforcement infrastructure to make that happen, but there can be no doubt that the intention is there. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said there are no plans to establish a deportation force but Ryan has been drastically wrong on Trump before, and theres no reason to assume hes right this time. That being said, the Obama administration has deported at least 2.5 million people since they came to power in 2009 around 23% more than the Bush years. Trumps clearly proposing a faster timeline, but something of that scale is not without precedent. He was asked whether he would accept a fence instead of a border wall. For certain areas I would, he replies. But he insists most of it will be a wall. US president-elect Trump says border wall cld be a fence in spots, vows to catch 2~3m ppl that are in the country illegally &are criminal pic.twitter.com/6MJS4CCNA3 Yannis Koutsomitis (@YanniKouts) November 13, 2016 Well keep you posted on the details of this interview as more of it becomes available this morning. Source: 60 M/inutes. Photo: 60 Minutes. Dave Chappelle is receiving high praise for his SNL opening monologue, with some people labelling it one of the best of all time. As the current climate of the US is overwhelmed with saccharine sentiment in the wake of a Donald Trump victory, it makes sense why the comedians approach went down so well. Chappelles content certainly revolved around the devastation of the elections outcome, but watching it is like seeing the situation with fresh eyes because hes such a funny dude. Americas done it. Weve actually elected an Internet troll as our president. While reflecting on the bleak state of the world, Chappelle interrogated racial stereotypes, police brutality, and how the hell Obama and Trump are going to achieve a seamless transition in their presidencies and, of course, dropped a golden Harambe gag. He also spoke, more sincerely, about the Trump riots, the historically disenfranchised status of minority cultures in America, and how he still feels hopeful for his country. In classic Chappelle fashion, the monologue is full of profanities, which is fair enough to be honest. Check it out below (especially the last two minutes theyre an absolute corker): Source: Hypebeast. Image: NBC. This week has been a mixed bag for property developers with political interests. One of em was confirmed as the next leader of the US, but its now been revealed Salim Mehajer was arrested in Ibiza. In footage obtained by A Current Affair, the former deputy mayor of Sydneys Auburn can be seen speaking to Spanish coppers, before they deemed it necessary to bundle him into a police vehicle. The program reports the situation was spurred by an unfortunate incident on Friday involving a taxi, chips and ice-cream. Thats usually a recipe for delicious disaster, and ACA claims the driver took umbrage to Mehajer and two friends spilling their food in his vehicle. Its thought an argument burst out between the cars occupants. The driver alleged Mehajer kicked at him from his seat in the back, at which point the driver called the police, pulled over and instructed the three men to leave the vehicle. Cops arrived soon after. Thats when the video kicks in. Its not yet known what charges if any have been laid against Mehajer, and hes yet to comment on the incident through his social media channels. However, a breezy Instagram post from a day ago does verify the blokes presence on the party island. Life goes on in Ibiza town. Whilst every bar and club are closed during this season, the ocean remains. There is no better sound to hear than the ocean, the wind, and the rain all at once, late at night. A photo posted by Official ???????????? (@salim.mehajer) on Nov 12, 2016 at 4:25pm PST Well let you know how this one winds up. Source: 9 News. Photo: A Current Affair / Facebook. *inhales extremely slowly* *exhales extremely slowly* Alllllllrighty then. Where to begin, I wonder? Ill start at the very beginning, I suppose: a horrifying place to start. An Aussie bodybuilder has decided to eat the placenta he kept from his daughters birth, as a way to make bulk natty gains. (Natty = natural, IYWW.) Uh huh. The father, Arron Curtis, posted a video to Youtube of him discussing, preparing, and eating the afterbirth. He says, With the birth of my first child, I thought I would consume the organ that provided her with life during the pregnancy, in the hope of making some gains. The video opens with this bizarrely-thought-out statement: Hmmm what better way, you say? Well, most people go straight for loving and caring for their new child, as opposed to cannibalistically eating the babys life source. But hey, maybe thats just us. A friend quizzes him on how it tastes, after hes cooked the afterbirth on a grill. He tells them it tastes a bit like liver (a pretty common analogy), and starts to become concerned about whether hes cooked it enough. After he hits a salty bit, his partner Erica steps in and tells him shes putting her foot down, and he has to stop. A big well done to Erica, whose help we wouldve appreciated approximately an hour before hed begun filming. WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE, BECAUSE YEAH, PLACENTAS ARE SUPER BLOODY, BE WARNED. Pinky-swear youre gonna be okay? Alright, click play: Look, lets be clear here. Eating the placenta is incredibly nutrient-rich and health-boosting for new mothers, especially if theyre breastfeeding or if theyre struggling with postpartum depression. Its super common in certain cultures, and its actually pretty amazing. Its natural, and hey; your body, your choice! Whats ever-so-slightly less natural is dudes eating it for bulk gains so they get more likes on Instagram photos tagged #gymlife #shredz #swole, ay bruh. But hey welcome to 2016. Source: Youtube. It kinda looks like Mother Nature gave large swathes of Australia a bit of a wind up this evening over the whole supermoon thing. Basically, many of our dates with the celestial wonder were ruined by some first class cock-blocking from a shit-tonne of cloud cover. In a very old man yells at cloud kind of reaction, would-be astronomers took out their frustrations with everyones favourite medium: Twitter. Looks like the #Supermoon cant be seen in parts of Australia today because of cloud cover and rain. Damn Clouds! pic.twitter.com/0X5CNMmNmp Geek Of Oz (@GeekOfOz) November 14, 2016 That dissatisfaction among Aussie punters manifested in memes, because of course it bloody did: My view of the #supermoon tonight from work, such beauty. pic.twitter.com/SGx7EfJcTG Alex Zourkas (@ThemAgain1) November 14, 2016 Eventually, a few decent shots did break through. And, by decent, we mean goddamn b-e-a-utiful: A photo posted by City of Sydney (@cityofsydney) on Nov 14, 2016 at 2:05am PST ??#supermoon goodness on the #goldcoast tonight @gcbulletin #history #bucketlist #cloudy #southport A photo posted by Kristy Muir (@lovefromkris) on Nov 14, 2016 at 12:53am PST Ive seen bigger #supermoon #Perth A photo posted by Marc (@metrotrekker) on Nov 14, 2016 at 2:59am PST Brisvegas Supermoon #lights #supermoon #brisbane #sky #nightlights #moon A photo posted by Alexandra (@woodydownunder) on Nov 14, 2016 at 3:04am PST PEDESTRIAN.TVs own Ben McLeay caught this jaw-dropper in Brisbane: If that aint enough for you, youll be chuffed to learn some other parts of the world were also treated to a magnificent show: Outstanding photo of the #supermoon & a plane over London (?? by @photogator96) pic.twitter.com/JgNbcZHKdV Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) November 14, 2016 Man stands on a balcony in Madrid as the moon rises in background. #supermoon (GERARD JULIEN/AFP) pic.twitter.com/d9aMUSXD3W Doja | ???? (@dojadaoud) November 14, 2016 Fair go, ya big grey chunk of goodness. Source: Twitter. Photo: Dallas Kilponen / Instagram. On The Project recently, co-host Steve Price and columnist Jamila Rizvi got into a reasonably heated debate about the United States election and Donald Trump becoming President. While Prices opinion on Trump (the feeling of disenfranchisement among American voters, particularly those living in middle America) was a valid point of discussion, he unfortunately interrupted Rizvi to make the point (during a question directed to her), which caused co-host Carrie Bickmore to tell him off and to watch his tone. Rizvi expressed an also-valid opinion in response to Prices interruption, telling him that the concept of Real America is bullshit because all Americans are real Americans. Price told her that, This is the reason why Donald Trump won, because people like you lecture and hector people. Watch below: A petition has now erupted on the Internet, claiming that the Channel 10 show should apologise to Price live on air. At time of writing, it has been signed by 18,000 people, who believe that Price is a victim of leftist bullying. Steve was abruptly cut off and insulted by Jamila on national television, despite his best efforts to lower the outrageous tone being fuelled by the guest. In every single facebook post detailing the exchange, the people of Australia have expressed their outrage of the leftist bullying that occurred, coming out in support of the conservative commentator. Nobody, no matter what side of politics they fall on, should have to experience the abuse and degradation of what Steve had to go through on that program. The petition claims that on every single Facebook post the people of Australia were outraged about the way Price was treated, but in actual fact there was considerable debate about who was in the wrong. Many were also outraged about the treatment of Rizvi. It isnt a secret that Price has received much backlash in the past for cutting people off, or considering his own views and voice more important than other peoples. Recently, he received much backlash for consistently speaking over journalist Van Badham on Q&A, who he called hysterical when she attempted to ignore his interruptions and finish her sentence about sexist behaviour on The Footy Show. When called upon to apologise, Price said he refused to be verballed by an aggressive woman. However, hes also clashed heavily with co-host Carrie Bickmore in the past. Earlier this year, the host was left furious when she questioned Price about a tweet that implied mothers should feed their child more discreetly after he saw a woman publicly breastfeeding in the Qantas terminal of a domestic airport. A mother of two herself, Bickmore told an increasingly-frustrated Price that his tweet came off badly: Just for your information, we feed where we want to, not where you want us to. Prices response was unapologetic then, too: I can comment on what I like, when I like, and people can just go and jam it as far as Im concerned. Above all else; it should be acknowledged that Prices whole purpose on the show is to cause debate and speak on behalf of a more conservative audience. Hes supposed to ruffle feathers; hes supposed to create arguments; hes paid big bucks to fill the shock jock shoes. He isnt there to be apologetic hes there to be divisive. However, a petition calling for an apology because he was told to let someone finish their sentence and to watch his tone, when he himself has based his modern career on yelling over others seems a teensy bit rich. If Rizvi & Bickmores actions can legitimately considered leftist bullying, what should Prices previous misdemeanours be deemed? At the end of the day, we could all agree that more politeness from both sides of the political spectrum would be a fantastic addition to the current state of the world tbh, but hey chance would be a fine thing. If youd like to check out the petition, you can do that HERE. Source: Change.org. Photo: The Project. Potternerds, get ready: the first reviews of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them are here. The first instalment of the J.K. Rowlings prequels opens this Thursday, and fans finally have a chance to see if her top notch story-telling skills translate from book to film with her first screenplay. So what did the critics think? Rowlings world-building skills remain top class. THE GUARDIAN: Its a very Rowling universe, dense with fun, but always taking its own jeopardy very seriously and effortlessly making you do the same. The Beasts movies may actually make clearer Rowlings under-discussed debt to Roald Dahl. They also show that her universe with its exotic fauna is in the best way, a cousin to that of George Lucas. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Much of the films big wizarding-politics material will be appreciated mostly by those who thirst for ever more backstory in Rowlings universe. It will doubtless be useful as the franchise progresses, though the main villain, Gellert Grindelwald, makes the kind of teasing appearance at the end that promises a long Voldemort-like story arc. (Avoid IMDb if you want that cameo to surprise you.) Whether or not the ensemble chemistry ever clicks to the extent it did for Harry, Hermione and Ron, Rowling clearly has an endless supply of lore left to share with those invested in her world. Eddie Redmayne is superbly cast as Newt Scamander: THE GUARDIAN: Its a lovely performance from Eddie Redmayne who is a pretty fantastic beast himself. Theres a moment when he has to whisper an errant animal into submission and his contortions would put Andy Serkis to shame His Newt is a connoisseur, scientist and scatterbrained magic-beast taxonomist who is not far from the scarf-swathed Dr Who, a specless Potter or beardless Darwin. Redmaynes distinctively breathy voice even has something of the young Attenborough. VARIETY: Oddly, Rowlings script gives us practically no information about Scamanders backstory at this point, whereas Goldstein gets multiple flashbacks over the course of the film. Thats probably because Rowling, whose world-building skills are rivaled only by George Lucas, appears to be primarily concerned with plot at this point, and Goldsteins memories serve the story, while this two-plus-hour-plus pilot evidently doesnt leaves much room for the sort of character detail wed all like to get about Scamander (whom Redmayne plays with stooped shoulders and a slightly bow-legged walk, easily winning sympathy for someone whose every judgment seems to endanger the fate of his kind). TIME OUT: Redmayne radiates a wet-eyed warm glow as stumbling, bashful Newt an English wizard in New York. Hes perfect for Rowlings world, where a kind heart is the most potent magical power of all Redmaynes lovely performance sets up the emotional core of the franchise. So yes, the magic is still there. YAHOO!: Eddie Redmayne makes an ideal Newt Scamander, who is endearingly sheepish around humans but gifted with the nifflers, bowtruckles, erumpents and so forth to whom the pics title refers. THE TELEGRAPH: Unexpectedly, its moments like this that stay with you more sharply than the set-pieces. The film is immaculately cast, and the chemistry between its four heroes holds your eye with its firework fizz. Its a reflection on the current state of American politics. COLLIDER: These kinds of themesacceptance, social divisions, and bigotryare as crucial to Rowlings wizarding world as wands, spells, and apparating. Thats what makes her stories special. She didnt just come up with a fun tale where people with magical powers live among us. The social commentary has always been a part of her writing, and its in the foundation for Fantastic Beasts. TIME OUT: Has JK Rowling been taking divination lessons at Hogwarts? With spooky clairvoyance, the first movie in her new five-film wizarding franchise opens with two factions in America at each others throats. No, not Republicans and Democrats. Its 1926, and wizards and muggles (only in America they call them no majs) are on the brink of civil war. Oh, and in the non-magical world, a bully-boy heir to a fortune is wooing voters. Top of the class, JK! VARIETY: Fantastic Beasts does double-duty as yet another imagination-tickling fantasy adventure and a deeply troubled commentary on tolerance, fear, and bigotry in the world today. Though Rowling takes the opportunity to introduce a few tolerance-oriented messages, one cant help but question the limits of the allegory: In the real world, bigots dont have a real reason to hate members of other races and religions, whereas wizards however much we love them pose a very real threat to normal people (grisly Obscurus attacks result in at least two deaths, and the destruction of large swaths of New York). Its the same logical flaw that operates in both the Avengers and X-Men franchises, and Rowling doesnt have much to add yet. Its dark as hell. VARIETY: Just when you thought the world of Harry Potter couldnt get any darker, along comes a bleak-as-soot spin-off that makes the earlier series look like kids stuff. IGN: Newt and company get into increasingly large amounts of trouble with the American magical authority known as the MACUSA while trying to round up the beasts, and all the while a much darker, more dreary plot unfolds. THE GUARDIAN: This is Steampunk 2.0, taking its inspirations from Terry Gilliams Brazil or Howard Hawkss His Girl Friday but the New York she creates also has the dark, traumatised look of Gotham City. But its not Harry Potter. EW: So why does Fantastic Beasts feel so oddly lifeless? Why doesnt it cast more of a spell? First, there are the performances, which aside from Redmaynes are surprisingly flat. And second, the thinness of the source material gives the whole film a slightly padded feeling. Rowling, who also wrote the script, nimbly lays out her world, but that world isnt nearly as rich as the world of Hogwarts. And the villains (chief among them Colin Farrells Percival Graves) are stock cinematic baddies. Fantastic Beasts is two-plus hours of meandering eye candy that feels numbingly inconsequential. Maybe this is all necessary table-setting that will lead to bigger payoffs in chapters 2 through 5. I hope so. Because for a movie stuffed with so many weird and wondrous creatures, there isnt nearly enough magic. With the depressing news that Johnny Depp will be playing Gellert Grindelwald now confirmed, itll be interesting to see how the next four films which are obviously going to focus more on his ascent to the role of Wizard Hitler play out. But in other, more exciting news the sequel will take place in Paris! Bonjour, Professor Dumbledore. This isnt correct, Im afraid! The sequel doesnt begin days after first movie ends (although we do go to Paris.) https://t.co/lkvIozKweU J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 13, 2016 Fantastic Beasts opens in cinemas November 18. Photo: Warner Bros. Lee Kwang Soo is a South Korean actor and TV personality who stars in the web drama 'Sound of Your Heart.' (Photo : YouTube/KBS World TV) Lee Kwang Soo's web drama "Sound of Your Heart" may have recently aired its first episode but it already the interest of many South Korean drama lovers. With barely a week after it was released, the series reached an impressive feat on Naver TV Cast. "Sound of Your Heart," a web drama based on Jo Seok's hit web comic, recently posted high viewership levels on Naver TV Cast. Released on Nov 7, Monday, the webtoon nearly broke through the 10 million view count mark six days after it premiered. Advertisement Lee's web drama posted online views of more than 9.68 million as of Nov. 13, Sunday, according to Korea Herald. With a 20-episode run, the web series is expected to reach 100 million views on Naver TV Cast. Based on the webcomic's author's life, the drama tells various stories about the cartoonist Jo and his family including his girlfriend now wife Ae Bong. The "Running Man" cast member portrays Jo, while "Mischievous Kiss" actress Jung So Min plays Ae Bong. Apart from Lee and Jung, veteran South Korean actor Kim Byung Ok also joined the web drama as Jo's father. Other cast members include "Healer" actress Kim Mi Kyung and "Misaeng" star Kim Dae Myung as Jo's mother and older brother, respectively. The drama will also feature a cameo from Lee's close friend, "Descendants of the Sun" actor Song Joong Ki. Meanwhile, viewers can expect to see several funny and dramatic moments in the web drama "Sound of Your Heart." Lee even agreed to unveil certain parts of his body in an upcoming nude scene. In the drama's press conference held Nov. 3, Thursday, the actor recounted his preparations for a scene that required him to expose certain parts of his lower body. Aside from physical preparations, Lee also had to mentally prepare himself for the nude scene, Korean news outlet My Daily quoted the star as saying. "Sound of your Heart" episodes will be released online every Monday and Thursday. Watch the web drama's trailer below. Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna arrive at her birthday celebration and 'Chymoji' Emoji Collection launch at California's Hard Rock Cafe on May 10, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images/Greg Doherty) Kris Jenner is seemingly living a dream. The matriarch of Kardashian-Jenner clan took to Instagram on Nov. 12, Saturday, to share an adorable photo of her smiling son Rob Kardashian holding his newborn with fiancee Blac Chyna. "This face says it all and melts my heart... @robkardashian ... that smile ain't nothin but a DREAM congratulations Rob and Chyna!! @blacchyna #love #family #dreamcometrue @dream," the 61-year-old wrote on Instagram. Advertisement The youngest member of the famous family has born on Nov. 10, Thursday. She arrived at 9:18 a.m., weighing 7 lbs., 5 oz. Jenner was present at the time of the delivery. "I got to watch [the] delivery," Kris gushed to E! News. "It was so beautiful and I'm so excited and happy to have another grandchild!" Chyna gave birth to the child at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she arrived earlier this month for a caesarean section. The couple is back at the model's home with the baby as they checked out of the hospital on Nov. 12, Saturday. Kardashian and Chyna are said to be in a great place in their relationship since the birth of Dream. They opted for the unusual moniker for the little one as it has always been the "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" star's "dream" to have a child of his own. "Dream was Rob's favorite name because it was always his dream to have a baby," a source told US Weekly. "She is gorgeous and looks a lot like Rob." Even though she is just a few days old, Dream is already a social media star. The baby has a verified Instagram account. Her account was created by her proud parents just a day after her birth. The account already has more than 160,000 followers and a blue "verified" check mark next to her name with an upload of a breastfeeding pic. Chyna also took to Snapchat to share a series of videos of herself pumping breast milk. Rob and Chyna are seen on E!'s reality show. Watch its teaser below: GOOGLE-ELECTION This screenshot of Google provided by The Washington Post shows false election results being shared at the top of Google search results for the election. (Screenshot from Google) If you head to Google to learn the final results of the presidential election, the search engine helpfully walks through the final electoral vote tallies and number of seats won by each party in the House and Senate. Under that, Google lists some related news articles. At the top this morning, with an accompanying photo: a story arguing that Donald Trump won both the popular and electoral votes. That's not true. The Daily Show's Dan Amira noticed that numbers were being spread on social media that linked back to the "70 News" site. This guy's tweet has thousands of likes and retweets. His source for these numbers is the site https://t.co/HvheqglyZW pic.twitter.com/ZUelzRhPUo Dan Amira (@DanAmira) November 14, 2016 The 70 News article cites its source as a tweet, which cites as its source USASupreme.com, another random website which doesn't actually include the numbers themselves. It does, however, argue that Hillary Clinton is "probably not going to win the actual number of votes cast. She may win the number of votes counted, but not the votes cast." That distinction is ... not really clear, except that the author, "Alex," seems to believe that absentee ballots are only counted if the tally could make the difference in the election. That's not true, either. In light gray text above the link to 70 News, Google relays the actual current tally of counted votes: Clinton has a lead of about 700,000. That lead has grown since Election Day and will almost certainly continue to grow, since millions of the votes being counted are from California, and the plurality of those votes are from very-Clinton-friendly Los Angeles County. The source behind the "USA Supreme" website isn't clear. It looks an awful lot like Prntly, a made-up news website we looked at earlier this year. Founded by a former convict named Alex Portelli, Prntly is part of the broad diaspora of websites that takes news about American politics, frames it in a pro-Trump way (often at the expense of accuracy) and then peppers the page with ads. In an email, Portelli denied involvement in USA Supreme, suggesting that it was the work of a group of young people in Macedonia first reported by BuzzFeed. These sites leverage the inability of Facebook and other social media sites to weed out nonsense in order to get clicks and make money from advertising -- a remarkably lucrative endeavor, particularly in a country where the U.S. dollar stretches a lot further. Why Google includes 70 News as a news source isn't clear. Among the main categories of news stories the site lists in its header is "Hillary's Health," which links to a number of rumors about the health of the Democratic nominee. Under "Politics" is a story that, among other things, links the Council on American-Islamic Relations to Al Qaeda. Another story suggests that protestors against Trump in California were being paid to do so. 70 News has added a header to its post about the election results. "Anyone asking where I got the figures, it was from twitter posts. Knowing the Democrat media have been dragging their liberal feet giving Michigan to Trump - finally they did, with Arizona finally declared two days ago - Trump now has the 309. Except for the twitter posts, the popular vote number still need to be updated in Wikipedia or MSM media - which may take another few days because the liberals are still reeling and recovering from Trump-shock victory. If I'm wrong, I won't hesitate to change the numbers. It's the job of the establishment media to tell the people the final numbers when it's out there already." None of that is true, either. The "establishment media" has regularly updated election results, showing Clinton with a wide popular vote lead. The reason that Michigan hasn't been called is that Trump's lead is 12,000 votes, and the results haven't been finalized. New Hampshire also hasn't been called for Clinton; her lead there is under 3,000 votes. "Alex" is wrong; he's hesitating to change the numbers. If you're interested in tracking the final vote tallies in the presidential race, you can simply search Google and keep an eye out for the small print under the electoral college totals. If you also see an article from a random site you've never heard of? Maybe take its numbers with a grain of salt. drugs acri.jpg West Shore doctor Joseph T. Acri is facing 3 to 23 months in Cumberland County Prison after he was sentenced on four counts of illegally prescribing a controlled substance. (File photo. ) A Cumberland County doctor was sentenced to up to 23 months of confinement after authorities say he illegally prescribed narcotic pain relievers to people he did not medically examine. Joseph T. Acri, 59, of Camp Hill, was sentenced by Cumberland County Judge Albert Masland Tuesday to 3 to 23 months of confinement, followed by 24 months of probation, on four counts of illegally prescribing a controlled substance. Acri, who pleaded guilty to the charges in September, is authorized for work release and is eligible for the county's re-entry program, court records indicate. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office filed charges in January following a grand jury investigation. According to investigators, Acri had written bogus Oxycodone prescriptions to four people on prescription pads taken from the Carlisle Regional Medical Center, where he did not work at the time. Also, prosecutors say Acri wrote prescriptions from a Camp Hill pizza shop to people he didn't even examine. Investigators said the doctor wrote the prescriptions between February 2011 and March 2014. He is to report to Cumberland County Prison on Nov. 28. A York man is accused of sexually assaulting a teen with Down Syndrome who was in his care. Albert Fraschetti, 59, of York, was charged Nov. 7 with indecent assault on a person with a mental disability, which is a first degree misdemeanor. He is charged with assaulting the teen in July in Lower Chanceford Township. He was a caregiver in the teen's home for about two or three months before the incident, court records state. State police in York said Fraschetti was seen on surveillance video footage in the home kissing the youth and rubbing his bare chest, after which the youth did the same to him. Fraschetti told police the youth would play with the piercings he had on his nipples and penis. He said he would tell the youth to stop, but that he would overpower him. The victim told authorities he had seen the man's private parts. Police said the teen's parents checked surveillance camera footage in the home because they had "an inkling that something was possibly going on." They had the cameras installed after past problems with caregivers, and wanted to monitor their son while at work via their cell phone, said court records. A preliminary hearing for Fraschetti is scheduled for Nov. 28. The Lancaster County Coroner was called to the scene of a crash in Providence Township. The crash with a reported entrapment happened at Pennsy Road and Primrose Lane in Providence Township just after 4:15 p.m., according to Lancaster County dispatches. State police declined to provide further information, saying that details will be released at a later point. LancasterOnline.com reported that a portion of Pennsy Road is expected to remain closed for an extended period of time. John Kelemen John Kelemen of Canonsburg, Pa., prays at a makeshift memorial to two Canonsburg police officers who were shot early Thursday, Nov 10, 2016, in Canonsburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) (Gene J. Puskar) CANONSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The first of two days of funeral home visitation are set to begin for a western Pennsylvania police officer slain in the line of duty. The visitation for Canonsburg Officer Scott Bashioum is from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday at the Beinhauer Funeral Home in Peters Township. His funeral is Wednesday at noon at the Church of the Covenant in Washington, Pennsylvania. Bashioum was killed and fellow Canonsburg Officer James Saieva Jr. was injured when Michael Cwiklinski shot both with a rifle from a second-floor window as the officers approached a duplex for a report that Cwiklinski was fighting with his pregnant mate. Saieva is recovering in a Pittsburgh hospital. The 47-year-old gunman shot himself after first killing 28-year-old Dalia Sabae. UPDATE: The incident cleared around 9:40 a.m. All lanes of I-81 south between Pine Grove and Lebanon are closed due to a disabled vehicle, PennDOT says. The incident happened at 8:44 a.m. between Exit 100 (Route 443- Pine Grove) and Exit 90 (Route 72-Lebanon). For more traffic information, follow live traffic updates, accident reports and road closures below from PennDOT, Total Traffic Network and other Twitter sources. Get a look at conditions on local roads -- via PennDOT traffic cameras -- anytime here on PennLive. For Pennsylvania Turnpike updates and possible travel delays visit the Turnpike website here. Tweet us at @pennlive with any incidents you see on your commute or send a submission to submissions@pennlive.com. Lebanon police are investigating a church window damaged by gunshots Sunday. Police were called to the 700 block of Arnold Street near Chapel Street around 2 a.m. Sunday, but found no evidence of gun shots. But police and residents heard four gun shots being fired. Around 8:45 a.m. Sunday, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in the 700 block of Lehman Street reported a broken window at the church, which is believed to have resulted from the earlier gun shots heard. Police continue the investigation, and anyone with information is asked to call Lebanon police at 717-272-6611 or Crime Stoppers at 717-270-9800. Powerball Jackpot In this Jan. 13, 2016 file photo, a clerk hands over a Powerball ticket for cash at Tower City Lottery Stop in Cleveland. (Tony Dejak, Associated Press file photo) A winning Powerball ticket worth $1 million was sold at a gas station in Ephrata in Lancaster County on on Saturday, according to the Pennsylvania Lottery. The ticket, which matched all five white balls, 08-17-20-27-52, but not the red Powerball 24, was sold at the Sunoco in the 500 block of West Main Street. The store receives a $5,000 bonus for selling a winning ticket. Also, a ticket that ended up being worth $100,000 was sold at a Wawa on West Gordon Street in Lehigh County. The winners weren't identified -- they must first claim their prizes and have their tickets validated. They have a year from the data of the drawing to claim their prizes. Pennsylvania Judicial Center The Pennsylvania Judicial Center (File photo) The mother of a 9-year-old boy who ran head-first into a concrete wall during gym class can keep suing the School District of Philadelphia over her son's injuries, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Monday. This was no minor mishap. Judge Michael H. Wojcik noted in the state court's opinion that the May 2012 accident caused Jarrett Brewington to miss the final weeks of the 2011-12 academic year at the Walter G. Smith Elementary School. The boy suffered a concussion and for three months was barred from talking or watching TV, the judge noted. He observed that nearly three years after the mishap the child still reported having memory problems. The ruling by Wojcik's court revives a lawsuit a Philadelphia County judge had killed. Jarrett Brewington's mother, Syeta, appealed to Commonwealth Court after county Judge Karen Shreeves-Johns dismissed her negligence suit on grounds that the school district was protected by governmental immunity. There could be legal room to find negligence on the part of the school district, however, Wojcik concluded. Jarrett wasn't just fooling around when he was hurt, the state judge noted. The boy was participating in a relay race in the school's gym. The boundaries the kids had to touch were the gym's unpadded concrete walls. Wojcik cited the boy's testimony that "I was running too fast and I couldn't stop and I tripped and fell...And hit my head on the wall." The boy said he blacked out and on awaking noticed that "blood ran all the way down my face." Syeta Brewington contends in her lawsuit that school officials are liable for her son's injuries because they didn't shield the gym walls with safety mats. In opting to send the Brewington case back to county court for further action.Wojcik cited several other student injury lawsuits that were allowed to be pressed against school districts Those examples included cases of a high school wrestler who accidentally smashed his hand through a glass door in a school hallway during a running drill; a student gymnast who missed a mat and hit the gym's hardwood floor; and a high school pole vaulter who landed with one foot on and the other off the safety mat. The Brewington suit and those examples constitute cases where plaintiffs might be able to pierce a government's immunity shield with arguments that the property where the injury occurred was defective or improperly maintained, Wojcik found. President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump walk from a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the U.S. Capitol November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo : Getty Images/Mark Wilson) President-elect Donald J. Trump on Nov. 13, Sunday picked Reince Priebus as his would-be White House chief of staff. By choosing Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman and a trustworthy campaign adviser, Trump has overlooked the claim of Stephen K. Bannon, a champion of right-wing media. Advertisement In another significant move, Trump chose Bannon his senior counselor and principal West Wing strategist, hinting that he was ready to adopt the fringe ideology by Bannon for long. It also signaled that he would continue with his disregard for the Republican establishment. A statement issued by Trump's transition team stated, "Bannon and Priebus will continue the effective leadership team they formed during the campaign, working as equal partners to transform the federal government, making it much more efficient, effective and productive." The announcement came in the wake of prevalent reports that Priebus and Bannon were in contention to be chief of staff With Priebus as his White House chief of staff, Trump will be depending on a Washington insider who's camaraderie with the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, may well help him to secure early legislative successes, the New York Times reported. The dual announcements by the president-elect have given rise to rival power centers when Trump takes office in the White House on Jan. 20, 2017. U.S. Rep. Peter King described the dual appointments by the president-elect as "basically two sides of the same coin." "It's showing what Donald Trump's style is going to be," New York Post quoted King as saying. According to King, Bannon's appointment as strategist clearly demonstrates that the president-elect is committed to conservative principles. On the other hand, by choosing Priebus as the chief of staff, Trump is showing he has a person who is not only conservative, but also has the insider experience that may help to get things done. However, the selection of Priebus may anger the grass-roots activists who see him as a deal maker. They feel that Priebus may be very eager to push the new president to compromise on issues such as taxes, healthcare, immigration, trade and the environment. In fact, GOP political consultant and a Trump insider, Roger Stone has already warned in a tweet prior to the announcements that selecting Priebus as chief of staff "would cause a rebellion in Trump's base." Watch president-elect Donald Trump's projected cabinet members: Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch says her enthusiasm for Donald Trump does not make her a racist. Leitch arrives at the national Conservative summer caucus retreat, in Halifax in a Sept. 13, 2016, file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan Letters to the Editor: How could anyone vote for Prop 3? George RR Martin refuses to discuss 'The Winds of Winter' release date. (Photo : Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) "Game of Thrones" author George R.R Martin may have predicted the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections. The recent elections, in which Republican candidate Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hilary Clinton in the presidential race, were oftentimes compared to the hit HBO series. In response to the elections, Martin posted a blog post titled "President Pussygrabber," where he expressed his disappointment over the outcome of the elections. Advertisement "Trump was the least qualified candidate ever nominated by a major party for the presidency. Come January, he will become the worst president in American history, and a dangerously unstable player on the world stage," Martin wrote on his official blog. He added that Trump will not be hindered by anyone, even by the Democrats in the House and the Senate, and that the problems of the country will persist and grow more in the next four years. He closed his sentiments with, "Winter is coming. I told you so." Meanwhile, Martin is not the only renowned author to have responded negatively to Trump's candidacy and eventual win. "We stand together. We stick up for the vulnerable. We challenge bigots. We don't let hate speech become normalised. We hold the line," J.K. Rowling, author of the "Harry Potter" series wrote on Twitter following Trump's win on Nov. 8. Rowling openly spoke against Trump's remarks against women and people of color during the entirety of his campaign. She even went on to label Trump "worse than Voldemort" when he vowed to bar Muslim immigration to the US. The 51-year-old author said she cried watching Clinton's concession speech on During the New York premiere of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" this weekend, Rowling was said to be in a "kind of bleak mood," The Independent reported. She, however, refused to talk about the President-elect, saying she prefers on the movie which many have worked so hard on. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" star Eddie Redmayne, on the other hand, said what the world needs now is a moment of reflection. "Time needs to be taken to work out what really happens now," Redmayne said. Egypt MPs said the election of Donald Trump as America's new president means hard times ahead for the Muslim Brotherhood and good news for the country's president Sisi In a quick reaction to the results of America's presidential election, Egypt MPs said the triumph of republican candidate Donald Trump could be a very positive development for Egypt. Most of the MPs who spoke with parliamentary reporters Wednesday also agreed that the election of Trump should be considered good news for Egypt's president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisithe first Arab ruler to congratulate him on his triumph. Besides, they added, Trump's victory means a big setback for the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements who had high hopes that Democratic party candidate Hilary Clinton would win. Margaret Azer, a Coptic MP, said in a statement that the election of Trump will surely mean a positive new beginning for the world and the Middle East. "Trump's victory represents a radical departure from the Obama-Clinton clan who supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islam movements," said Azer, adding that "in fact Hilary Clinton was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the Democratic party in the US presidential election." "The election of Trump should also help put an end to the terrorist group ISIS and to chaos in Syria," said Azer. Azer said that she hopes Trump will move quickly to restore old strategic relations between Egypt and the United States. "This strategic relationship is necessary for America to win the fight against terrorism in the Middle East," said Azer. Parliament's Human Rights Committee also issued a statement Wednesday, stating that the election of Trump should not come as a surprise. "This election has clearly shown that the American people have voted against the disastrous policies of (current US president) Barack Obama and his former secretary of state Hillary Clinton," said the committee's chairman Alaa Abed. Abed accused Obama and Clinton of spending billions of dollars on support for Islamist movements in the Middle East. "They were under false convictions that these movements are moderate and democratic, and in this way they gave them cover to spread their terrorism and poisonous ideology in the Middle East," said Abed. Abed said the stunning victory of Trump has also exposed the American media's flawed and biased coverage of the election and how it managed to mislead the American people and the world. "Please review the hundreds of flawed anti-Trump reports and opinion polls which the American media published for months, to discover the disgusting reality of this malicious media," said Abed. Abed also agrees that the newly elected Trump should move quickly to restore strategic relations between Egypt and the US. "If he is really serious about fighting radical Islam, he should win big allies like Egypt," said Abed. In one of his foreign policy speeches last summer, Trump said he would call for an international conference on terrorism and that King Abdallah of Jordan and President El-Sisi of Egypt would top the list of invitees. El-Sisi was the only Arab president who met with Trump during his visit to New York to attend UN General Assembly meetings last September. On 19 September and after his meeting with El-Sisi, Trump's political advisor Walid Fares told reporters that Trump assured El-Sisi that he looks forward to restoring strategic relations with Egypt. Phares also told Egyptian MPs who were visiting America at the time that Trump considers the Muslim Brotherhood a radical movement."There is no problem at all with Trump's administration, in that the Muslim Brotherhood would be designated a terrorist organization," said Phares. Phares also said that Trump greatly appreciates the Egyptian people's willingness to stand against the Muslim Brotherhood, saving their country from the chaos which hit countries like Syria and Libya. Abed agrees that Trump's victory represents a big setback to the Muslim Brotherhood. "They were eager to see Clinton become the new president to use it as a tool for exerting pressure on Egypt, but their hopes were seriously dashed," said Abed. Mostafa Bakri, an independent MP and high-profile journalist, said on his twitter account that the loss of Clinton and the victory of Trump means very bad times for the Muslim Brotherhood and its television mouthpiece "Al-Jazeera." Other MPs, however, said "Egypt should be cautious in its expectations about Donald Trump." "I know that some in Egypt are happy and feel optimistic about Trump's victory, but all should be cautious and wait until we see how this new US president will translate his promises into action on the ground," said Tarek El-Khouly, deputy chairman of parliament's foreign relations committee. El-Khouly, who attended the general assembly meetings in New York last September, said he agrees that President Sisi's meeting with Trump was very positive. "I agree that there was a kind of love chemistry between the two, and the fact that Trump was keen to meet with El-Sisi should be considered a positive development," said El-Khouly, adding "but I insist that we should not pin exaggerated hopes on Trump because his policies might antagonize the Muslim world in general rather than put an end to political Islam." Ali Ezz, deputy chairman of Egypt's Information Technology and Telecommunication Committee told reporters that Trump's victory was a big surprise to him. "I was deceived by the American media, but now we see that there was a broad-based rejection of Obama and Clinton in America," said Ezz, adding that "If Trump is serious about fighting terrorism in the Middle East, he should cooperate with strong leaders like El-Sisi and president of Russia Vladimir Putin to stem the tide of political Islam." Solaf Darwish, a female MP, also agrees that the election of Trump means very bad times ahead for the Muslim Brotherhood. Darwish, who was also in New York last September, said "El-Sisi and Trump's meeting was very positive." "While Trump told El-Sisi that he wants Egypt to be a big ally of America again, Hilary Clinton showed that she was an extension of the Obama mentality when she tried during the meeting to exert pressure on President El-Sisi by raising issues on human rights and democracy," said Darwish. Search Keywords: Short link: The first trip will start on 5 December The Chairman of EgyptAir Safwat Mosalam announced that weekly trips between Madrid and the southern city of Luxor are set to begin through Cairo International Airport during the current winter season. "This comes within the framework of restoring the tourism industry in Egypt, as it is one of the most important sources of national income", Mosalam said in a statement. The first Madrid-Luxor trip flies from Madrid on 5 December, according to Mosalam. European travel bans have taken a toll on Egyptian tourism, a key source of hard currency, after a Russian passenger jet crashed over Sinai in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board. The Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the crash, saying it had smuggled a bomb on board. Since the crash, Egypt has been implementing new, tighter security measures at all of its airports. In October, Egypt's flagship airline announced the resumption of Luxor-London trips, following a one-year suspension of flights between the two destinations. Earlier this month, the first German flight arrived at Sharm El-Sheikh airport, putting an end to the European country's one-year travel ban to the Red Sea resort city. German airlines were among several foreign carriers that imposed travel bans on flights to Sharm El-Sheikh after the Russian passenger jet crash. In recent weeks, a number of foreign airlines have resumed flights to Sharm El-Sheikh airport, including Turkish Airlines and Polish Airlines. Moscow and Cairo are currently negotiating the resumption of Russian flights to Egypt. Search Keywords: Short link: SIX PEOPLE were hurt, including an off-duty police officer and his wife, in what people called a "flash mob" attack in Center City on Saturday night. According to police, a small group of juveniles broke off from a large crowd and began attacking people in the area of 16th and Walnut Streets about 6 p.m. The group first went after a 21-year-old man, police said, which led the off-duty detective to try and intervene. The perpetrators ran away, police said. Then the detective, whom police did not identify but said was 55 years old, saw two women - ages 20 and 21 - getting kicked by some juveniles. When he attempted to arrest one of them, he was "punched from behind by several unknown persons," police said. The detective's wife, 50, tried to splash water on the attackers to get them to stop, but she was then punched in the face, police said. Immediately after that assault, a 28-year-old man was assaulted around the corner, on the 100 block of South 16th Street, police said. The detective, his wife and the two women were treated at Jefferson Hospital. The detective had an orbital fracture of his right eye; the others suffered minor injuries, police said. Authorities said two youths, both 16, were arrested. Investigators were looking for surveillance footage to help gather evidence to identify more potential suspects. Two weeks ago, four teens were arrested in a similar "flash mob" incident near Temple University's main campus in North Philadelphia. That attack, which included as many as 150 juveniles, left at least one student hospitalized amid wide-ranging violence that police said included rocks being thrown at cars and a police horse being punched. cpalmer@phillynews.com 215-854-2817 @cs_palmer Egyptian poet Abdel-Rahman Youssef has been sentenced in absentia by a Cairo court on Monday to three years in prison on charges of spreading false news and inciting against government institutions during his program on theTurkey-based Al-Wattan channel. Youssef, a one-time TV anchor on the Egyptian CBC channel, is known for his support for the 2011 revolution which ousted Hosni Mubarak. He is the son of Qatari-based Islamist cleric Youssef El-Qaradawi, a staunch supporter of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, who has been convicted in Egypt of inciting against the government. Youssef, however, has frequently criticised both his father and the Brotherhood. He left Egypt after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Several political, media figures and journalists have been arrested and sentenced over the past several years on charges of spreading false news. Search Keywords: Short link: What happened after we got scammed by taxi in Hong Kong? It is a year after we got scammed and overcharged by a taxi in Hong Kong. It happened last year when we (my mother and I) took a taxi in Harbour City to go back to our hotel near Lan Kwai Foong. The taxi told us there will be additional charges after 9 pm. He covered his license with a newspaper and stopped his car and went down to open his boot so we couldnt capture his license plate. You can read the whole ordeal at How we get cheated by taxi in Hong Kong. Yes, even for a seasonal traveller like me got scammed but since I was with my mother, safety first. The story didnt end there. Some of our Hong Kong friends advised us to report online at http://www.info.gov.hk/tcu/taxi/. Many of my friends said Hong Kong is a lawful city and taxi drivers wouldnt harm the passengers. It is quite true until this happened recently, Hong Kong policeman dragged by taxi while trying to arrest cabbie for overcharging. So we did the right thing for not confronting the taxi driver at that moment? Who knows what can he do? After the incident, we emailed to http://www.info.gov.hk/tcu/taxi/ and we thought thats it. However, they responded and the case was referred to Hong Kong police. They made a police report on our behalf and our case now is up to the Hong Kong police. The story didnt end there. A couple of weeks after our case was referred to police, we received a call from Hong Kong. A police officer from Hong Kong actually called me up. He apologised to us as he told us they didnt have enough evidence to find the taxi scammer. Thus, he said the Hong Kong police will do their best to arrest overcharging cabbies. You can tell they really did their job like the article we shared earlier. We had a lengthy chat with the police officer as he told us how he enjoyed fishing in Sabah and he loved to travel to Malaysia. Even though the Hong Kong police didnt manage to catch the culprit but we were glad how our case was handled. It was really very professional for the Hong Kong police to call us to explain the whole situation. Their complaint system really works and we were impressed. Where in the world, a police will actually call you for just a taxi scamming case? Probably only in Hong Kong. Our taxi scamming case is quite isolated as we met many really good taxi drivers after that. Just remember there is no additional charges during night time or midnight. For the complete Taxi Fares structure, you can refer to http://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/public_transport/taxi/taxi_fare_of_hong_kong/ We hope you can learn something from our taxi scamming ordeal in Hong Kong. Like we mentioned earlier, not all taxi drivers are bad but we were just unlucky. We learnt our lesson and we will be more alert while taking taxis anywhere in the world. We still love Hong Kong. Wilson Ng A Father and traveler who enjoys to eat, shop, travel and taking pictures with Samsung S22 Ultra and Sony ZV-1. Im a full time blogger, youtuber and father for two. I used to travel around 17 International trips per year but now staying at home. Remember to follow us at www.instagram.com/placesandfoods and www.youtube.com/placesandfoods. For advertisements or features, contact me at [email protected] See author's posts Two Boise, ID, police officers and a K9 were wounded in a gunfight with a wanted suspect Friday night. The suspect was killed. One officer, who has not been identified, was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized. The Boise Police Department said late Sunday he is showing slight improvements daily in his condition, he faces a long and hard path forward. Police Chief Bill Bones told the Idaho Statesman that the officer, a 17-year veteran, faces months of recovery. A second officer, Cpl. Chris Davis of the departments Special Operations Unit, was shot once during the Friday incident. Davis was released Saturday from Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. Bones said Davis is expected to make a quick and full recovery. K9 Jardo was also wounded in the attack. He was shot through the chest and lost a lung, Bones said. He was treated and released Saturday from WestVet Veterinary Clinic. Suspect Marco Luis Romero was killed in the gunfight. The suspect in the shootout, Marco Luis Romero, died at the scene. Davis and Police received a citizen tip Friday afternoon, saying a person believed to be Romero was spotted in a car that had been reported carjacked. A second report came in minutes later. Officers later found the suspect walking down the street. He took off running through the neighborhood. Officers secured the area, and the Special Operations Unit came to search the area. Shots rang out after police encountered the suspect, who had been hiding. Neighbors reported hearing at least 10 shots. Romero was released from prison and placed on supervised parole Oct. 3 after serving time for convictions in 2010 and 2012 Ada County cases for possession of a controlled substance and a 2012 case for leaving the scene of an accident resulting in an injury, also in Ada County. Police had been searching for Romero since Tuesday, after Meridian police said they believed he shot a man and woman. The two victims, who are both 29, were known to Romero. The woman was shot once in the chest and may be paralyzed. The man was shot twice and is expected to be OK. A vigil is planned for the hospitalized officer at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Idaho Peace Officers Memorial, at the Idaho State Police headquarters, 700 S. Stratford Drive in Meridian. By late Monday morning, a GoFundMe account set up by the local Fraternal Order of Police had collected nearly $35,000 to assist the officer. Donations to the Fraternal Order of Police, Treasure Valley Lodge #11 Benevolent Fund, can be made at branches of Mountain West Bank. They can also be mailed to the group at P.O. Box 642, Meridian, ID 83680. A police officer who was ambushed and shot multiple times in his patrol car in downtown Anchorage early Saturday was in stable condition Sunday night. The officer, whose name has not been released, underwent two surgeries for "multiple gunshot wounds" on Saturday, said Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Jennifer Castro. On Sunday, he was recovering in a local hospital, she said. The suspect in Saturday's incident was killed in gunfire from police. Police are still trying to notify his next-of-kin, and no name had been released as of Sunday night, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. The incident is the second time in a month an Alaska police officer has been taken by surprise by gunshots as they were arriving at a call. It has unsettled police ranks already on edge, said Sgt. Gerard Asselin, the president of the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association. The government has been using a variety of medicines to completely eliminate the wide-spread disease from the country, with much success The Administrative Prosecution Authority has called on Prime Minister Sherif Ismail on Monday to act to distribute more than 50,000 packets of hepatitis C medication before the drugs expire. Investigations by the authority revealed the failure of the state-owned Egyptian Pharmaceutical Trading Company to distribute stocks of the treatment, Klatzev, worth EGP 68 million, according to the prosecution. The expiry date of the packets are March, May, and June of 2017. The investigation revealed that the state-owned company had purchased large quantities of Klatzev from a US producer worth EGP 118 million, but has not made all of it available to the public. Ali Rizk, the head of the Administrative Prosecution, told reporters that the cabinet should distribute all of the cure before its expiry date to prevent squandering of public funds. Egypt has one of the highest prevalence rates of the virus in the world, according to the World Health Organisation. Some 15 million Egyptians - out of a population of 91 million - suffer from the infection, or around 22 percent of the population, according to 2015 statistics. The Health Ministry has recently said it achieved 96 percent cure rate of hepatitis C through intense efforts in the past two years using a variety of medicines. The ministry vowed to completely eliminate the disease by 2021. The WHO has praised Egypt`s recent efforts to control the virus, including the subsidisation of new treatments. "Egypt has a become an example to follow all over the world, not only for giving hope to combat the disease but also for concerted efforts in a national action plan that includes protection through raising the societal awareness of the ways of infection of the virus and means of treatment, providing medicine for patients, follow-up and continued evaluation of the action plan," the organisation's director general, Margaret Chan, said in a statement last month. Search Keywords: Short link: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print *The following is an opinion column by R Muse* Its an eight-year-old story by now, but it bears repeating. Many ignorant and profoundly naive Americans actually thought racism was expunged from the population because a majority of the people elected an African American man to be their President in 2008. By now everyone except the conservatives on the Supreme Court realize that President Obamas election brought the raging racial animus toward all people of color out in the open and gave white supremacist hate groups a newfound raisin detre; and a priceless recruitment tool to grow their ranks quickly. After nearly eight years, those white supremacists found they had a racist champion running for the presidency and after 56-million other dirty white supremacists helped groups like the Ku Klux Klan put the man of their dreams in the White House there is an inspired, emboldened and grateful group of racists celebrating and thanking the people that contributed to Americas march toward repeating the atrocities of 1930s Germany. And no, this column knows better than to make a comparison between the fascist American racists just voted for and the fascist responsible for World War II. It is never too late to begin conditioning oneself for the impending abolition of the 1st Amendments freedom of speech or the press. It was not too surprising that the Ku Klux Klan is planning to celebrate the election of a racist as president by organizing a victory parade. A well-publicized parade is a newsworthy public form of gratitude to the American people who collectively took an important first step towards transforming the United States into an Aryan Christian paradise. What was slightly surprising was who first person an avowed racist and former Grand Wizard of the KKK thanked after losing his bid for the United States Senate. Whatever disappointment he experienced at being rejected by voters, because David Duke is a dirty racist and white supremacist, was overshadowed by the ultimate thrill of learning that a fellow racist, white supremacist, and fascist had won the election for the White House. However, as reported by Snopes, the first person David Duke expressed heartfelt gratitude to was not his fellow racists in the Klan or the so-called alt-right Nazis for their hard work and valuable assistance during the long Trump campaign, or the official KKK newspaper for a ringing endorsement for the racist Republicans chose to best represent the Party and the American peoples character. No, the first person David Duke thanked was a foreigner (Australian) and a sexual predator like the fascist candidate and the man Harry Reid called a sexual predator that racist Duke supported and Assange helped install in the White House. David Duke thanked Julian Assange for his hard work for the Trump campaign, but he stopped short of extending any gratitude to Russian Vladimir Putin. Everyone under the Sun, including Snopes, has reported that the Russian administration officials were in constant contact with the highest ranking members of the Trump campaign according to the Kremlins deputy foreign minister. It is possible that David Duke is awaiting permission from the Trump campaign to officially thank Vladimir Putin, or he may have thanked Putin privately. The FBI likely knows about how the Trump campaign communicated with the Russians, but it is probably still too close to the election for James Comey to cast aspersions on Republican Trump. David Duke reacted so jubilantly to the electoral victory of Donald Trump that he couldnt wait until the day after the election and followed his racist heros lead in taking to the Twitter to express his gratitude to a foreigner interfering in American elections. Duke praised the Wikileaks founder Assange and claimed that his Christian god should bless the foreign sexual predator and then informed Americans that, Julian Assange is a hero -> America owes this man one thing -> FREEDOM!!! Duke claims the document-dumping web site helped Trump clinch the U.S. presidency, and along with the Breitbart cabal is calling for Assanges full pardon the instant the fascist he helped elect is sworn in office as president. Maybe in due time David Duke and the racist Breitbart clan will call on Trump to grant Putin a position in the State Department or some other Cabinet level position for Russias part in hacking into the DNC server and handing the stolen goods over to another foreigner working to prevent Hillary Clinton from winning the election. Of course one has to couch any idea of implicating Russia because the FBI director says it is too close to the election to cast aspersion on the Republican standard bearers political ambitions, and too close to inauguration day to incur the wrath of the anti-free speech con man threatening retribution against free speech he doesnt like. There are myriad outrages in this story including an avowed white supremacist celebrating the election of a racist to the presidency, and then thanking a foreigner and sexual predator for helping that racist sexual predator win the election. And then there is the minor detail of the foreigner receiving the gratitude because he received stolen American property allegedly lifted by another foreign government lusting to see the racist elected as its voice in the White House. However outrageous all of that is, and damn it is unbelievably outrageous, there is the certainty that nothing will come of it because the nations top domestic law enforcement agency thinks investigating or reporting on a Republican too close to an election is forbidden. Many have commented that America is going to undergo a nasty transformation, and the only thing wrong with that statement is the tense. America is already knee-deep in change when a racist is headed to the Oval Office and he has two foreign entities to thank for the prize. In the meantime, Trump surrogate and filthy white supremacist David Duke did the Donald a big solid by thanking foreigner Julian Assange for his campaign assistance that will likely earn him a presidential pardon; particularly since the racists in the Breitbart camp have the ear of the racist heading to the White House. *The criticism in this column is the sole opinion of the author.* Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Vice President-elect Mike Pence has gone to court to make sure that the American people never get to see the emails that he wrote as governor of Indiana. According to the Indianapolis Star, Mike Pence is going to court to argue that all of his emails should not be made public: Now that the presidential campaign and most of the furor over Hillary Clintons email scandal are behind us, the Pence administration is going to court to argue for its own brand of email secrecy. The administration is fighting to conceal the contents of an email sent to Gov. Mike Pence by a political ally. That email is being sought by a prominent Democratic labor lawyer who says he wants to expose waste in the Republican administration. The Mike Pence who is going to court to argue that his emails should remain a secret is the same guy who just spent months on the presidential campaign trail campaigning against Hillary Clinton because she used a private email server. Clinton also did something that Pence is fighting not to do. She released her emails to the public. Hypocrisy will be the norm in the Trump/Pence administration, but the bigger question is what is Mike Pence hiding? Why doesnt Pence want the American people to see his emails? Both Trump and Pence favor increasing spying on American citizens, and less transparency for themselves. The incoming administration is destined to be the least transparent in US history. They are also going to going to not respect the privacy of the American people. Mike Pence claimed that Hillary Clintons emails were criminal, but he wont let you see whats in his emails. Instead of draining the swamp, voters have filled it with more dangerous predators. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print According to Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth, Trump protesters are anti-Semites: These are Communists. These are anarchists. Theyre anti-Semitic. Yes, apparently only anarchists want the person who wins the popular vote to be the winner of the election. What a crazy, anti-democratic idea! .@PeteHegseth on forces behind protests: "These are Communists. These are anarchists. They're anti-Semitic." pic.twitter.com/DknJNzdb7A Fox News (@FoxNews) November 13, 2016 In light of Donald Trump appointing a prominent anti-Semite to his White House staff, Hegseths accusation that Trump protesters are anti-Semitic sounds more than a little hollow. Perhaps he realizes how well projection worked for Trump (and has worked for Fox News in the past) and figured now was a good time to accuse protesters of being guilty of what amounts to supporting Trump. What is remarkable is that this is coming from the same network that sent out this tweet in defense of that anti-Semite, Steve Bannon: BANNON BACKLASH: Priebus defends Trump's call to keep fiery Breitbart boss in inner circle https://t.co/H0oJsUVYyN pic.twitter.com/CHcx3EsKb2 Fox News (@FoxNews) November 14, 2016 Look, nobody ever said todays conservatism made any kind of sense. Reality has become such a chaotic mish-mash of conflicting ideas over the past eight years that we would honestly be surprised if anything Hegseth said made sense. Rebellions may be built on hope, but theres hope and then theres plain wishful thinking. The Republican Party and Fox News both are lost to the world of reality and fact. The swim in uncharted seas, a realm where wishful thinking has power and facts do not, where an America that never was is more compelling than the America of history. Just look at reactions to Hegseths claim, nonsense such as Not going to happen he won fair and square and no amount of protesting is going to change that. of course, Trump did not win fair and square thanks to voter suppression, and in fact, he didnt win at all, as Hillary Clinton carried the popular vote. You cant stop the stupid folks, but you can fight it. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print We are facing the very real possibility of seeing right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham becoming White House press secretary. This is the Laura Ingraham who says the Republican Party belongs To Trump now. In many ways, with her obvious devotion to authoritarianism, she is a perfect choice. Trump obviously feels the GOP belongs to him now too. And she has the salute of the new American Reich down pat, as you can see. And likes Joseph Goebbels, she hates to see anything negative said about the leader of her particular hate movement. According to The Hill, Trump appreciated Ingrahams loyalty through the campaign. A former white-collar defense attorney and Supreme Court law clerk, Ingraham helped Trump with debate preparation. She also campaigned on his behalf and offered occasional strategic advice. With the possible exceptions of Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Breitbart, no media figure or outlet did more to promote Trumps candidacy than Ingraham. She used her profile as a Fox News contributor, her nationally syndicated radio show and her website LifeZette.com to advocate on his behalf. Trump also tapped into Ingrahams years of dirt-digging on the Clintons to sharpen his attacks on the Democratic nominee. Ingraham would not comment for this article. A source familiar told The Hill that shes in contact with people in Trumps inner circle and has expressed interest in the role. The president-elect and his inner circle hold Ingraham in the highest esteem. They view her as tough, admire her rhetorical skills, and believe shed powerfully convey Trumps anti-establishment message. Megyn Kelly certainly blew her chance. Kellys problem, of course, is that she does not like 100 percent of the time, and made the mistake of not submitting, like a woman should, to the Trump whatever it is his followers see (and are somehow not repelled by). The problems with Laura Ingraham are many. Any views which do not agree with her own racist views are toxic and revile the American experience. We can only assume by this she means the KKK experience. A long-time critic of immigration reform, called Puerto Ricans immigrants rather than citizens. More recently, she complained it was convenient that CNN feed dropped during Trump visit to black church when in fact Trump kicked the media out of the church. Should she get the job, a gig as White House propaganda chiefer, press secretary, is sure to be a fun-filled, fact-free excursion into the GOPs imaginary reality for the most dishonest president in American history. Be of good cheer. It could be worse. It could be Sarah Palins word salad afflicting us instead. At least we will understand what Ingraham is saying, even if it is still total bull excrement. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print *The following is an opinion column by R Muse* There was little doubt that white males, particularly white Christian males, were going to vote heavily for a misogynistic loudmouth authoritarian like Donald Trump to be their fascist leader. As Dr. George Lakoff explained in the brilliant book The Political Mind and other works, conservatives, particularly weak-minded faith-dependent conservatives, require a strong daddy figure to tell them what and more importantly how to think, tell them what they really want and need to do, and tell them that only he can make their miserable wretched lives worth living. In turn, the brain-addled frightened conservative duly serves the man-god without due regard to their own self-interests; because those interests are defined by the daddy figure they handed control of their pathetic lives over to. One expects more from women; particularly from American women. However, the recent election proves that no matter the high regard one might have for American women, at least half of women voters who ticked the box next to Trumps name are just as frightened, just as weak-minded, and just as man-dependent for life direction as their male counterparts; and now they have a misogynist daddy authority who will decide what they need, what they want and decide if and when they get anything. To make matters worse, they gave clearly bizarre reasons for willingly voting for the man who will hand religious Republicans a legislative rubber stamp to put women precisely where the religious right and Donald Trump want them; under religious white mens thumbs where the bible says they belong. Now, everyone and their pet canary understands why women ensconced in the religious right voted for a misogynistic daddy figure; they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. For the uninformed, that particular affliction describes prisoners who get so accustomed to being tormented and tortured that they embrace their captors mindset and offer their assistance to punish other prisoners. As noted here, evangelical women who are stuck in torment and forced to submit to a mans demands without even a whimper believe that all women should share their torment and pathetic fate. And, absent the power and authority to force other women to be in servitude to men, any men, the Syndrome sufferers simply help elect religious Republican men who force biblical subjective compliance by government fiat. However, reports are that half of all women who cast a vote chose Donald Trump as their champion and interestingly when NPR looked into why, and what kind of woman would vote for a misogynist, they gave a reason that many voters, male and female, gave for opting to put a fascist in the White House. In particular, the NPR interviewers picked out two women to interview because they didnt fit the ignorant Trump voter profile, but they gave the ignorant voter reason for choosing Trump; the country is going in the wrong direction. Now, two of the women cited in the radio broadcast were successful in business and were not in thrall to evangelical fundamentalism, so their comment could not be driven by the bible. But both claimed they opted for Trump over Hillary Clinton; not out of animus for the candidate who actually won the most votes, but because Trump had the right genitalia, is a business man, and was the only candidate willing and capable of turning the country around and heading it in the right direction. Seriously, and these women were not outliers. It leads one to wonder how they could possibly be successful in life, much less business while being so inherently stupid. Lets face it, any American who thinks the country is going in the wrong direction is not only stupid, they are either insane or they want the nation to fail and its people to suffer; especially other women. So, for the women who voted for Trump, it is apparent that American women controlling their own reproductive health and making their own medical decisions are the country going in the wrong direction. Democrats pushing to enact legislation so women earn the same wage as a man doing the same job is also the country going in the wrong direction. Those women also certainly believe that equal protections for women in the workplace are also the country going in the wrong direction. Unfortunately for America, and the women who dont require a man to think for them, Trumps ladies will get their wish and the country is now on pace to go in the opposite direction because those women helped install the religious rights and conservative patriarchs rubber stamp in the Oval Office; he will make sure women are put right in the place evangelicals want them. If the women are really lucky and the Trump supporters, male and female, get their wish, Republicans will really take the country in the right direction and eliminate womens right to vote; that should really please Trumps women complaining about the nations direction. Now, one can even understand Trumps women wanting to roll back womens rights for everyone else thinking that Republicans or the daddy will never abridge their rights; even highly educated people can be naive. But women, any woman, cannot seriously want the nation abandoning the economic policies that not only saved the nation from a Great Recession, they created economic growth and jobs the business women NPR interviewed benefited from. But they still said it was the wrong direction and they want change immediately. What that means to smart women is that solid economic growth is the country going in the wrong direction. It also means that a rapidly declining deficit, historically lower taxes, and a historical record of job creation is the country going in the wrong direction. Median income rose over 5 percent for Americans for the first time in two decades, but that too is a sign the country is going in the wrong direction to women supporting Trump. 22 million more Americans have healthcare insurance than a few years ago, but to women Trump supporters that means the country going in the wrong direction. Wages are climbing across the nation, particularly in left-leaning states, but that too is something that has to be reversed because it means the country going in the wrong direction. More Americans are able to enjoy their Constitutional equal rights than ever before, but even that is a sign the countrys going in the wrong direction according to Trump supporters. More Americans are reaping the benefits of cheaper energy due to efforts to combat climate change with clean and renewable energy, but that is the country going in the wrong direction. And President Obama has been called the deportation president for deporting a record number of undocumented immigrants, but that is the wrong direction too? This bizarre idea that the country is going in the wrong direction was an oft-repeated claim by nearly every human being this author used to know and that includes women who are successful in business and the workplace and are not religious or racist. One has a fairly good idea where they heard the country is going in the wrong direction and it didnt come from Hillary Clinton or any Democrat or anyone with healthcare insurance for the first time, or anyone now employed or making higher wages; it came from religious Republicans and the authoritarian daddy figure they voted for to take the country in the opposite direction it has been going. Half the women voters who chose Trump as their daddy figure may not be deep in the throes of Stockholm Syndrome yet, but by embracing his bovine excrement lies as fact means they are a step away from helping identify the women they know did not support daddy so the religious right misogyny police can target them for special torment evangelicals and Donald Trump believe they deserve. Iran urges nuclear co-operation with Hungary Iran has called for civilian nuclear co-operation with Hungary, semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday. The two countries can co-operate in various sectors of the civilian nuclear energy applications , Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a meeting with the visiting Hungarian Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover in the capital Tehran.Rouhani also urged Hungarian investors and companies to partake in Iran's industrial and agricultural projects.Kover arrived in Tehran on Wednesday night to hold talks with senior Iranian officials, at the invitation of Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.Kover expressed his country's determination to strengthen co-operation with Iran, saying Hungary is fully ready to expand its co-operation with Tehran, particularly in economic fields, and this will no doubt benefit the two countries. Similar views on terrorism He stressed that Hungary is ready to co-operate with Iran in the nuclear energy field.Iran began the construction of a USD 10 billion nuclear power plant, with Russian help, in the southern port city of Bushehr, official IRNA news agency reported in September.The construction is expected to be completed in ten years. The two countries agreed on building two nuclear power plants, and according to IRNA, the construction of the second one will be launched in 2018.The new power plant is part of a plan to develop Iran's first commercial nuclear reactor Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the report said.Tehran and Budapest share similar views on terrorism and the necessity for fighting against the terrorist groups, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said after meeting with his Hungarian counterpart Laszlo Kover, FNA said in a separate report."A part of our negotiations focused on the regional situation and the terrorism crisis which has exacerbated in recent years," Larijani told reporters in a joint press conference with Kover in Tehran on Saturday."The two countries enjoy highly similar views about the ugly phenomenon of terrorism," he added.Larijani said that during his meeting with Kover, the two sides also discussed bilateral issues and underscored the necessity for bolstering the two countries' relations in economic, investment, energy, environmental, academic and cultural fields. Charleston, SC (29403) Today Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. High 78F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Watchdog and Public Service reporter Thad Moore is a reporter on The Post and Couriers Watchdog and Public Service team and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. To share tips securely, reach Moore via ProtonMail at thadmoore@protonmail.com or on Signal at 843-214-6576. Parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al told MPs that any new law should go in line with the constitution rather than serve foreign agendas; parliament postpones debate until cabinet presents its own draft Egypt's parliament provisionally approved on Monday a draft law aimed at regulating the performance of NGOs. The 89-article law was drafted by the chairman of parliament's social solidarity committee Abdel-Hadi El-Qasabi and 203 other MPs. El-Qasabi said that MPs has decided not to wait until a cabinet-drafted law on NGOs is submitted to parliament. "We decided to take the initiative in drafting a law on NGOs and opening a debate on it," said El-Qasabi, adding that the draft law includes two chapters on foreign NGOs. Parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al told MPs in a plenary session on Monday that "NGOs can be a blessing or a curse." "They can be a blessing if their business is confined to raising the awareness of citizens, spreading the culture of democracy and contributing to development in society," said Abdel-Al. "They can be a curse if they move to spread chaos, disrupt national security and serve personal interests." Abdel-Al said that parliament should take its time in debating the articles of the new law to guarantee that they are in line with the constitution and international conventions in a way that does not allow NGOs to operate at the expense of national security. "We will not accept any kind of pressure from inside or outside [the country]," said Abdel-Al, adding that "Egypt's parliament was democratically elected and it stands firm against any pressure." Abdel-Al said that Israel, which the West likes to describe as the oasis of democracy in the Middle East, has issued a new NGO law that has imposed tough restrictions on foreign funding. "The prime minister of this country has said that he will not allow any source of foreign funding that might harm his country's national security," said Abdel-Al. El-Qasabi said NGOs and civil society organisations sent parliament a letter where they denied that NGOs are used as a cover for obtaining corrupt money that can be used as a weapon against ordinary Egyptian citizens and disrupting the country's national security. "We do not accept [the suggestion] that corrupt people with foreign agendas and with personal interests speak on our behalf," El-Qasabi cited the letter from NGOs as saying. One of the most controversial articles in the draft law stipulates that foreign NGOs looking to operate in Egypt must get prior approval from a regulatory body entitled the National NGO Apparatus. Any NGO found guilty of receiving foreign funding without prior approval will be dissolved. "NGOs should work towards the public interest and their money should not be used in any political activities such as funding parliamentary candidates or political parties, inciting hatred and disseminating sectarian tension or disrupting national security," said El-Qasabi. Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Magdi El-Agati told speaker Abdel-Al that Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali has contacted him by phone to ask that the debate on the draft NGO law be postponed. El-Agati said the government-drafted NGO law was approved by the cabinet at the end of October and referred to parliament on 2 November. "Although MPs have the right of legislation, I urge you to wait until the government draft is also discussed," said El-Agati. In response, speaker Abdel-Al said that "parliament has the right to discuss the two NGO drafts and the government has the right to comment on parliament's draft and ask for amendments." Search Keywords: Short link: All of us have local and national issues that we worry about: gender-related and race-related issues, education and social welfare issues, pump prices and what to do about Confederate monuments. Thats usually how we vote whats worrying us at the moment. But older adults, of all people, may be capable of standing back from whats in our face to take a longer perspective on politics. Read moreAging for Amateurs: Elections make us get clear on priorities Sports Reporter Derrek Asberry is sports reporter with the Post and Courier. He joined the newsroom in March 2016, after three years at the Aiken Standard where he covered the Savannah River Site. He enjoys New York Yankee baseball and poker. Paul Bowers is an education reporter and father of three living in North Charleston. He previously worked at the Charleston City Paper, where he was twice named South Carolina Journalist of the Year in the weekly category. Maya T. Prabhu covers the Statehouse from Columbia. She previously covered city government and other topics in South Carolina and Maryland. Maya has a bachelors in English from Spelman College and a masters in journalism from the University of Maryland. 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. US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Monday in Muscat, Omani state media said, for talks expected to focus on efforts to end Yemen's 19-month conflict. ONA news agency said Kerry will be in the Gulf sultanate for two days, in one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration ends on January 20. He is scheduled to hold talks on Monday with Oman's Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi and to meet ruler Sultan Qaboos. Kerry has been pushing for a settlement of Yemen's deadly conflict, which escalated with the military intervention of a Saudi-led coalition to support the government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels in March 2015. Oman, one of the few Arab states which have good relations with Iran, has used its links to mediate peace talks between the insurgents and Yemen's UN-recognised government of president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. It is also the only Arab nation in the Gulf not part of the Saudi-led coalition, although it maintains good relations with regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia. More than 7,000 people have been killed and nearly 37,000 wounded in Yemen since March 2015, and the UN says millions are in need of food aid. Another 21 million people urgently need health services, according to the UN health agency. After Oman, Kerry will travel to Abu Dhabi for talks on regional conflicts, including Syria. Search Keywords: Short link: 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 Dodge County EDA discusses Main Street building WEST CONCORD Members of the West Concord EDA discussed the future of the 207 W. Main St. building at its Nov. 7 meeting. The EDA chose to table any discussion on moving forward with the sale of the building. The potential buyers of the space will wait until the issue is discussed at next month's EDA meeting, according to members of the body. Houston County ADVERTISEMENT Clinic grand opening set for Saturday CALEDONIA Gundersen Lutheran will host a grand opening for the new orthopedic clinic Saturday at 8 a.m. It is at 405 S. Highway 44/76. Fillmore County Service focuses on 'Beauty of the Earth' LENORA The historic Lenora United Methodist Church will hold a Thanksgiving worship service Sunday at 4 p.m. It will focus on themes in the hymn "For the Beauty of the Earth." Attendees are invited to bring nonperishable food items for the food shelf. Refreshments will be served at the Lenora Fellowship House after the service. The church is on Fillmore County Road 24 in Lenora. ADVERTISEMENT Mower County Three blood drives planned AUSTIN There are three upcoming blood drives in Mower County. The first is 1 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Southland High School in Adams. The second is 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at Riverland Community College in Austin. The third is 1 to 7 p.m. Nov. 29 at Mower County Senior Citizens Center in Austin. To make an appointment to give blood, download the Red Cross App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 800-REDCROSS. Wabasha County Black and Orange Gala will be Saturday LAKE CITYThe Lake City Education Foundation will hold the Black and Orange Gala on Saturday at St. Mary of the Lake. ADVERTISEMENT There will be hors d'oeuvres, drinks and dessert. Tickets cost $50 and are available at lakecityeducationfoundation.org or by calling 225-993-6706. Goodhue County Levee Road construction underway RED WING Concrete work on Levee Road from the Jackson Street Roundabout to Broad Street is ongoing this week. To facilitate the concrete repair work in the roundabout, the Levee Road/Jackson Street Roundabout will be closed until Friday, depending on weather and site conditions. Levee Road will be open from Broad Street up to the roundabout (including access to boat houses and the parking lot east of the roundabout) during the concrete repair work. Access to Bay Point Park also will be open using Levee Road and Withers Harbor Road west of the roundabout. Winona County Cabin Coffee celebrates anniversary ST. CHARLES Cabin Coffee in St. Charles is celebrating its nine-year anniversary Thursday. Coffee will be 90 cents, fresh-roasted beans will be 20 percent off and all drinks are 20 percent off between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. There also will be door prizes and free samples all day. Cabin Coffee is on U.S. Highway 14 in St. Charles. Prosecutor in police shooting to enter alcohol program MINNEAPOLIS The prosecutor whose office won a recent conviction in the high-profile case of a Minneapolis police officer who killed an unarmed woman says he will be entering a treatment program for alcohol issues. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman issued a statement Friday saying he was evaluated for alcohol issues and agrees he needs treatment. Hell be entering a program Monday. Freeman announced last week that he was taking a medical leave, but didnt say why. His Friday statement says he has also worked to stabilize his "unacceptably high blood pressure." He says hes determined to reclaim his health and hopes to be back to work in mid-June. ADVERTISEMENT Last month, a jury convicted Mohamed Noor of murder in the 2017 fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia who called 911 to report a possible crime. Minnesota seeks to add Purdue Pharma owners to opioid suit ST. PAUL Minnesotas attorney general is asking a state court for permission to add the owners of drugmaker Purdue Pharma to a lawsuit that seeks to hold the company responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma makes OxyContin and has been the subject of legal action in nearly every state. Attorney General Keith Ellison wants to add eight members of the Sackler family to Minnesotas lawsuit. He says the Sacklers, who own and operate Purdue, were involved in deceptive marketing tactics and strategies to sell more opioids, despite knowing the risks. If a judge approves, Minnesota would become at least the 11th state to take legal action against one or more members of the Sackler family. A family spokeswoman issued a statement denying the allegations, calling the lawsuit a misguided attempt to place blame where it doesnt belong. Man holed up in hotel surrenders to police ADVERTISEMENT BROOKLYN PARK Authorities say a standoff at a Brooklyn Park hotel ended after more than six hours when a man suspected of assaulting his girlfriend surrendered to police. SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the La Quinta Inn early Friday after a woman reported she was being assaulted by her boyfriend and threatened with a gun. Police say the standoff began at 3:30 a.m. and ended when the man was arrested at about 9:50 a.m. Authorities say the woman was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Police say the 31-year-old suspect was not carry9ing a gun but it was unclear if there were any weapons in the room. The suspect, who has not been formally charged, has previous convictions for drug possession, motor vehicle theft, aggravated robbery, making terroristic threats, drunken driving and burglary. Jail inmate accused of running prostitution ring MORA An inmate at the Kanabec County Jail is charged with running a prostitution ring from his cell. Thirty-eight-year-old Daniel Ellington is charged in Washington County District Court with two counts of sex trafficking and two counts of promotion of prostitution. Prosecutors say Ellington communicated with a prostitute by text and "promoted and profited" from her activities in Woodbury last month. ADVERTISEMENT East Metro Sex Trafficking Task Force director Imran Ali says Ellington was 100 miles away and incarcerated, yet was promoting prostitution and profiting from it. The task force began investigating after a Woodbury detective found an online ad entitled "Blonde Bombshell." The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports Kanabec County Sheriff Brian Smith says Ellington used a jail-issued iPod to text and paid a certain price for each message. Associated Press ST. PAUL Change is coming to health coverage in Minnesota, but until Donald Trump takes office and reveals how he and the Republican-controlled Congress plan to overhaul or replace the Affordable Care Act, it's unclear what that change will look like. A repeal or replacement of the health law could pose problems for the more than 1 million Minnesota residents on public programs and could dismantle the state and federal health insurance exchanges. Meanwhile, the Republicans who now control both chambers of the Minnesota Legislature are plotting their own health care changes as all Minnesota officials remain mostly in the dark. "We have really no idea what form it will take," Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton said Friday. Minnesota's health care system stands out across the nation for reasons good and bad. Not only did the state set up its own health insurance exchange and expand the low-income health care program Medicaid, but Minnesota offers another subsidized program called MinnesotaCare for those who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, which is called Medical Assistance in Minnesota. But premium rates for individuals who buy insurance on their own are set to jump as much as 67 percent next year, the fourth-largest increase in the nation. Emboldened by taking control of the Legislature after campaigning on those high costs, Minnesota Republicans won't necessarily wait for the federal government to act before they start making changes. House Speaker Kurt Daudt has called it a mandate. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. Matt Dean, a Dellwood Republican and leader on health care issues, faulted MinnesotaCare for exacerbating the high costs that have driven up rates House Republicans tried to axe that program in 2015. Dean said Minnesota should replace the Affordable Care Act with its old approach, a high-risk pool to cover ill and expensive consumers who previously couldn't get health insurance. He said the old model could serve as a guide for Trump as he and Congress consider how to fix the Affordable Care Act. But in the meantime, Dean said Minnesota should dump MNsure and move to the federal exchange. "I think we need to kill it and bury it and move on," he said, echoing other leaders in both the state House and Senate. "The sooner the better." Allison O'Toole, MNsure's chief executive, is assuring consumers that no matter what happens, the health plans they select for 2017 are guaranteed through the end of that year. She said the exchange is focused on signing up enrollees for coverage through open enrollment 22,000 Minnesota residents who aren't covered by employers or public programs had purchased coverage through MNsure as of Friday, smashing previous records. "We have the lowest uninsured rate in state history. I hope that any policy change they pursue doesn't change that. That's good for all of us," O'Toole said. Outnumbered by a GOP-controlled Senate and House, Dayton said he is ready to fight against drastic changes. He said his priorities will hinge on what happens at the federal level, but cautioned lawmakers against scrapping MNsure, saying the sticker shock has nothing to do with exchange but the health care overhaul as a whole. "It's a great political slogan. I think it had a major impact on some of the legislative races," Dayton said of Republicans tying Minnesota Democrats and MNsure to the rate increases. "But it's another thing to deal with the reality of what you put in its place." "They better look before they push us over the cliff," he added. A proposed special session to find a temporary MNsure fix was put on hold until after Election Day, a move that appropriately attempted to separate political rhetoric from actually making a change that helps Minnesota families cope with rising costs. Now, with a new Republican dominance heading to the MInnesota Legislature, talk of a special session is again emerging. However, without a specific short-term fix identified or a date set, we have our doubts that legislators will head to St. Paul en masse before January. Even if a deal is reached as the holiday season approaches, it would merely add a new level of uncertainty for individuals and families who need to purchase insurance through MNsure or the open market. New lawmakers could bring new ideas and shift support in January, which means a November fix could be undone or transformed in mere months. With the sign up period running through January, the estimated 5 percent of Minnesotans who aren't covered by employers' plans or other insurance will be in a unique position. A temporary fix could be found before the signup deadline is reached, even without a special session. MNsure Allison O'Toole, however, warns not to put off decisions. She recently told the Post Bulletin Editorial Board that any adjustments will likely to benefit all MNsure users, whether they sign up today or at the last minute, but those who wait could risk a coverage gap since current plans end on Dec. 31. ADVERTISEMENT It's also important to note that tax credits and other potential adjustments will likely only be available to people who sign up through the MNSure marketplace, meaning those who pay the increased premiums elsewhere may not get any legislative relief, if an agreement is reached. Under current guidelines, automatic tax credits are available to individuals earning less than $47,520 and families of four with household incomes up to $97,200. As a result, it's tempting for those with incomes above that line to look elsewhere, since there is no financial benefit to purchasing through MNsure, Legislative adjustments could change that, which means it may be beneficial to keep the MNsure option open, especially if costs are competitive. Overwhelming uncertainty remains, so it's good to see a willingness to discuss adjustments. Yet, it's also troubling to see a rise in talk about dismantling the entire program at the federal level, which could leave an estimated 18 million people uninsured and allow insurers to again tell people with existing ailments that they are not eligible for coverage. Middle ground must be found. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to be effectively found before January, so Gov. Mark Dayton and legislative leaders would be better served by starting preliminary talks, sorting through options and working on a plan in the coming weeks. It will set up an opportunity for a quick temporary fix in the first weeks of the 2017 legislative session and allow at least a dash of relief for those struggling under the current system. MNsure open enrollment underway ADVERTISEMENT MNsure open enrollment is scheduled through Jan. 31. In order to secure coverage for Jan. 1, enrollment should be completed by Dec. 15. Certified navigators and brokers than can offer free, in-person enrollment help. A searchable directory of those who are available can be found on the MNsure.org homepage. The MNsure Contact Center is open extended hours through open enrollment. Minnesotans can call the MNsure Contact Center at (855) 366-7873 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. For Minnesotans preferring social media, tweet to @MNsure or leave a message on the MNsure Facebook page. Questions sent to MNsure's social media accounts are answered during regular business hours Across the country, Democrats disappointed at losing the presidential election are rioting, burning American flags, throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, hurling bricks through windows, setting fires in urban streets, and attacking random passers-by. We wrote about the riots and posted photos here. Much more could be added in the three days that have gone by since that post. The photos could be multiplied endlessly. This rioter had a particularly ugly message, one that you might think would offend feminists: Im just kidding about the feminists. Everyone knows feminism has nothing to do with women. It is all about extreme leftism. Lest you think Rape Melania is a uniquely evil manifestation of liberalism by one individual, check out the trending hashtags on Twitter. Many thousands of Democrats joined in the #Rape Melania movement. But that isnt the worst, not by a long shot. Across America, vicious assaults have been carried out against Donald Trump voters. This one, in Chicago, was probably the worst. The Trump voter was beaten and kicked to within an inch of his life. When he crawled to his car to seek safety, one of the Democrats who had been assaulting him took the wheel and drove off, at speeds up to 65 miles an hour, while the Republican victim of the assault hung on for dear life. At last word, he is expected to live. With this outrageous conduct by Democrats taking place, one might think that leaders of the Democratic Party would be scurrying to disavow their supporters violence. But that isnt happening. Are you aware of a single prominent Democrat who has repudiated the Democratic Party riots going on across the country? I am not. Or who has tried to distance his party from vicious, felonious assaults like the one in the video above? I am not aware of any Democrat who has condemned the life-threatening beating of a random Trump voter in Chicago. As best I can tell, leading Democrats think this sort of Brownshirt behavior is just fine. U.S. Senator Cory Booker, often mentioned as a Democrat Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominee, hailed the vicious rioters, saying: God bless the protesters. That is todays Democratic Party: the vicious, the violent, the anti-democratic, the bullies. The fascists. Judge Davis has presided over the convictions of nine Minnesota men (Somali Minnesotans) who conspired to support ISIS and will now sentence then individually at hearings to be conducted today through Wednesday. He has scheduled three hearings a day in an ascending order of difficulty: three defendants who cooperated with the prosecution today, three who pleaded guilty with no cooperation tomorrow and three who contested the charges at trial on Wednesday. Ill be attending the hearings and reporting here. The Star Tribunes Stephen Montemayor previewed the sentencings in All eyes on Minnesota federal judge before sentencing in nations biggest ISIL recruitment case. Montemayor includes this quotable quote from Judge Davis: This community people are starting to think these are misdemeanors. To whom is Judge Davis referring? Montemayor does not say, but newly elected state representative Ilhan Omar must be one. Here the case of the Minnesota men crosses over with the curious case of Ilhan Omar. We havent gotten to the bottom of Omars case, but Im afraid were getting there. Omar has written Judge Davis in advance of the sentencings. She knows virtually nothing about the case. She treats it as an opportunity to exploit for the purpose of the identity politics that is propelling her to international fame. Thanks to FOX 9 for posting the text of Omars letter to Judge Davis. Here it is: Honorable Judge Davis, As you undoubtedly deliberate with great caution the sentencing of nine recently convicted Somali-American men, I bring to your attention the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison. Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion. Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr. The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion. We must alter our attitude and approach; if we truly want to affect change, we should refocus our efforts on inclusion and rehabilitation. A long-term prison sentence for one who chose violence to combat direct marginalization is a statement that our justice system misunderstands the guilty. A restorative approach to justice assesses the lure of criminality and addresses it. The desire to commit violence is not inherent to people it is the consequences of systematic alienation; people seek violent solutions when the process established for enacting change is inaccessible to them. Fueled by disaffection turned to malice, if the guilty were willing to kill and be killed fighting perceived injustice, imagine the consequence of them hearing, I believe you can be rehabilitated. I want you to become part of my community, and together we will thrive. We use this form of distributive justice for patients with chemical dependencies; treatment and societal reintegration. The most effective penance is making these men ambassadors of reform. The restorative approach provides a long-term solution though the self-declared Islamic State may soon suffer defeat, their radical approach to change-making will continue as it has throughout history by criminalizing the undergirding construct rather than its predisposed victims. Therein, this ruling can set a precedent and has the potential to be a landmark case in addressing extremism. Thank you for your careful attention, Ilhan Omar State Representative-Elect MN 60B Omars letter is incomprehensible in part (criminalizing the undergirding conduct rather than its predisposed victims, for example), and application of the restorative justice approach remains mysterious, but we get the gist. Free the Minnesota men! Anoint them ambassadors of reform. Reform what? If the best deterrent to fanaticism is compassion, everything is beautiful. Omars letter is breathtaking in its presumption and arrogance, though we have grown accustomed to the approved euphemistic style. The desire to commit violence in the case of these nine men derived entirely from their devotion to Islam, as did their systematic alienation from the United States. The curious case of Ilhan Omar she and it are one hard case. NOTE: Montemayor severely clips this quotable quote from the sentencing memorandum filed by the prosecution in the case of Guled Omar: Respect for the law is a particularly important factor in this case. No trial in the aggregate memory of the U.S. Attorneys Office has been conducted in more of an atmosphere of intimidation, harassment, and incipient violence than the trial of this case. The families of cooperating defendants were harassed in the courtroom, in full view of the testifying witness; there was a fistfight in the corridor outside the courtroom; multiple individuals had to be ejected from the courtroom for not following the Courts rules of behavior. A stern sentence is needed to promote respect for the law, to demonstrate clearly that this is a nation of laws. * * * * * As the Court witnessed in the Courtroom and surrounding press coverage, despite the gravity of the charges, the defendants had significant community support. There is a story here for anyone with eyes to see, but you wont find it in the newspaper of record in the Twin Cities. CORRECTION: In the original version of this post, I wrote that Montemayor had interviewed Judge Davis. After inquiry to Judge Daviss office this morning, I have been apprised that Judge Davis was not interviewed by Montemayor. Judge Davis has decliend all media requests for interviews about the case and sentencing issues (including three of mine). Judge Daviss office tells me that the quotes of Judge Davis in Montemauyors article are all drawn from previous hearings. I regret the error. Montemayors article in fact refers to an interview with the judge. I assume it refers to the press gathering Judge Davis called to announced his appointment of a German social scientist to prepare presentence reports on the six defendant who pleaded guilty, a development I reported on in the Weekly Standard article Judging the Minnesota men.' The European Union on Monday placed 17 Syrian ministers and the central bank governor on a sanctions blacklist targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad over attacks on civilians. They face travel bans and asset freezes for "being responsible for the violent repression against the civilian population in Syria, benefiting from or supporting the regime, and/or being associated with such persons," an EU statement said. Search Keywords: Short link: The Beginning of Silence By Ibrahim Zakama, Kairos Productions, 2012, 48 pages. One Thousand Years of Thirst By Denja Abdullahi, Kraftgriots, 2011, 112 pages. James Joyce, the giant Irish modernist novelist of the twentieth century paid his own tribute to the creative genius of youth, when he published his first notable work and entitled it, A Portrait of An Artist As A Youngman. When sometime ago the city of Abuja witnessed the birth of a book, The Beginning of Silence, by the twelve year old author and poet, Ibrahim Zakama, even Joyce must rejoice that some cheeky yet to be teen boy dared to shred the implicit age-limits he drew on the sands for artists. His very choice of title sets you thinking that we may well have a prodigy among us, because for those who know, the solitude which silence bestows is the beginning of wisdom for the truly creative mind. This gem of a title enunciates our very aware child-poets artistic principle. So, all you noisy throng of adults, take heed! The ambition of the poet is expressed in the first poem, when he seems to wonder in Beautiful Sun: The sun brighter than light/You still are looking at the sun. The same sun teases his dream in the concluding lines: Believe and one day you will/be as bright as the sun. A declamatory cadence tinged with innocence seeps through the fourth poem, Song in My Heart, to reveal all that our poet thinks this rite of chanting is all about I always sing and dance/To the song in my heart/I tell the truth and I sing/About the song in my heart. The search for the truth is the provenance of the philosopher, while the poets fount of inspiration remains the heart. So, we have here a poet of the mind and heart, poised to reflect and create for his audience. The Beginning of Silence, however, offers more abundant lines of the intimations of a poet of. The question arises, what does a boy, sorry, a poet at twelve know about love, to devote close to a third of the forty-six poems in his book, to cogitating and musing about it? They range in intensity and tenderness from Whats Her Name?, Your Beauty, to What Is Love?, When Love Says No, and My Love Is Blind, where he raps and confesses: I would love her so true/But she makes me feel blue The thinking poems are no less meditative and motivational, in such verses as The Journey, If Only, Peacemaker, Racing Is Unlimited, Bring Me A Clear Hand, A Man With A Dream, The Rules, My Teachers, The Lazy Mans Song. Related to these are the poems on nature Dove From Above, Wildcat ,Rain, By Sunlight. Of course, much to be expected from a child, there are the whimsical pieces, like If I Shoot Now, You Dont Know My Name, and Usual Parade, which satirise our current political scene. However, the very last poem in the book I Never Said I Wasnt Afraid is the poem that truly speaks to our troubled times, where he despairs, Im scared of the animals that lurk in the dark/Am I soon to become their midnight snack? Not unexpectedly for a child growing up in this wild, wild age of rap music where everything seems to rhyme without reason, most of Ibrahims poems mimic this trend. But, Babys Cry, stands out as a stylistically successful and empathetic poem, and it does not try to rhyme: A babys cry/Sometimes it feels/Like it came out/Of nowhere, though A considerable number of the poems are dedicated to family members his sibling brother who also writes, a late aunt, an uncle, his mother, and most especially the poets father, whos a versifier himself. The fathers influence cannot be discounted, but listening to Ibrahim recite his work as I did before a mostly adult audience at the Abuja Writers Forum Monthly Session, tells you he crafted each line in The Beginning of Silence. Formerly a pupil at Educare Private/Chosen High School in Jos and Funtaj International School in Abuja, and currently enrolled at Belle Vue Boys School in Bradford, UK, versatile Ibrahim also sketched the thirty-seven illustrations in this book, including the cover. And he responded to every query with surprising aplomb. Like the question from me concerning his choice of title, to which he said: Its my first ever book. I have to be quiet when I set out to write and create A Thousand Years Of Thirst is Denja Abdullahis third collection of poetry, coming after Mairogo: A Buffoons Poetic Journey Around Northern Nigeria, and, Abuja Munyi (This is Abuja). The dominant motif that ties the three books together is that of the wandering minstrel on a journey of discovery of life in his natural, social and cultural environment. The poets intent in this new collection is explicitly stated in the last two lines of his sonnet-like fourteen-line Dedication on page 5: To the spirit of the pathfinder/Giving new insight to a static world. A Thousand Years Of Thirst details in poem after poem, the authors search towards opening new grounds, both in literary and ideological terms, for making his world a better place. A Thousand Years of Thirst is structured into four sections reflecting the thematic routes and detours of the persona eternally on a journey. The four sections are: The Poets World, with twenty one poems; The Wandering Minstrel with eighteen poems; Rediscovery with six, and, African Love Songs, the largest, with twenty-seven poems. The first section starts with an invocation of the poets Muse in Oasis, the first poem in the book. The reader is given a glimpse into the preparations of the poet at the point of setting out. The declamatory lines from this particular poem sum up the thematic concerns of the book: Whisper the promise of scented fluid into my camels ears/And make it race to the prized beauty./ Said to be waiting in honour at the oasis. The poet as a restless rider, journeying away from the diverse straits of encampment, seeks the tenderness and companionship of a beloved one. In the second section titled, The Wandering Minstrel, there is a definite shift from the earlier concerns of the poet with the twin subjects of love and the poets world. This section reveals a new consciousness of the poet as a social and political being. The poets anger at the social inequities he sees all around him is expressed in an uncompromising stance in The Wandering Minstrel, as he declares, My song will turn to fiery embers/scalding palaces of tyrant rulers (page 43). The contrasting roles of the warrior and the poet are brought to the fore in their confrontation in Between the Warrior and the Poet. In the dramatic exchanges between the two, the author, do we say predictably, takes sides with the poet. An attestation to this point perhaps is rendered by the author in his poem written in memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa, titled, Africa Kills Her Son. This happens to be the same title of an ironically prophetic short story Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote before the hangman came calling, over a decade and half ago. The poem also recalls the sad fate that befell the other irritants and noisemakers, like Lumumba, Biko, Giwa Murtala, Samora, and Sankara, who lost their lives in their search for justice for all. In the third and the shortest section, titled Rediscovery, the midpoint through the minstrels journeys, the author/poet/ traveler/exile, in order to proceed further, takes us back to his cultural root for a re-grounding in the lore of his native land of Agbaja, in Lokoja, in the middle belt region of Nigeria. This section celebrates this reunion with the birthplace of his ancestors and kindred. Rediscovery clearly reveals that this poet is not estranged from his people as the lines here evoke a sense of oneness with the ways of his people: Agbaja:Gbonojo Ma Gbolue/Agbaja which welcomes the stranger/With warm bosom of hospitality/But tells those of the soil/To rest on the hard edge of reality. The fourth and final section, titled African Love Songs, which also has the largest number of poems, takes us full circle to the theme of the search for the tenderness of a beloved one in the very first poem, Oasis. There is abundant evidence here to suggest that, we need not look farther than the delights and the inspiration offered by the romantic encounters of the wandering minstrel for the location of the oasis. These encounters with beloved ones are spread all over the continent! The love songs celebrate the dark maiden from Calabar to Darker to Zimbabwe The other poems in this section more or less complement and accentuate this flourish of Senghorian cadence. And the reader recognises immediately that we have arrived at the oasis of love and tenderness, just as the wandering poet has reached the soothing point of a fulfilled mission. Chiedu Ezeanah is Contributing Editor, Arts & Culture, at PREMIUM TIMES. Some senior officials of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria are voicing strong opposition to the planned sale of Keystone Bank Ltd., PREMIUM TIMES can report. The disquiet comes as the state-owned asset management company is set to announce new owners for the bank, which is the last of the three nationalised financial institutions yet to be sold, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. The disturbed officials say Ahmed Kuru, the chairman of AMCON, has concluded plans to hand over Keystone to a coalition of powerful Northern interests, disregarding extant takeover provisions of AMCON in the process. Barring any last minute changes, a firm linked to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Umar Modibbo, MD/CEO of Sigma Pensions Limited, may emerge the new owner of Keystone Bank with its nearly 160 branches, PREMIUM TIMES understands. The two influential Nigerians are allegedly being represented by the firm which our sources said did not participate in the bidding process, in a clear contradiction of basic public asset sale requirements. Following a commercial placed for the bidding process by AMCON, 13 companies submitted their expression of interests. These did not include the firm which AMCON is now set to sell the bank to. The deal could also see Nigerian taxpayers lose billions of naira if allowed to stand. This is because AMCON is reportedly in talks to sell the bank for about N25.1 billion, representing only a fraction of the approximately N200 billion that AMCON paid to purchase the banks bad debts in 2011. This is despite the fact that some of the companies that participated in the bidding process offered more than the amount and had core banking expertise, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. The Keystone Bank, previously known as Bank PHB, was among the three banks nationalised by the CBN in 2011, after failing failed a stress test conducted by the apex bank. The two others, Mainstreet and Enterprise Banks, had been handed over to other stronger banks in the industry by AMCON more than a year ago. The delay in announcing new owners for Keystone, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, is not unconnected with the internal squabbles among the management of AMCON. The members, who spoke strictly on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Kuru sidestepped laid down requirements for asset sale to ensure Keystone is ceded to his cronies. It is very clear that all caution was thrown to the wind as a result of a grand plan to disqualify very strong and reputable intended buyers in order to allow the cronies and business associates of the Managing Director take over the bank, a senior AMCON official said. Mr. Kuru was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in August 2015, and the board members said the sale of Keystone could dent the administrations much-avowed anti-corruption war. The opinions being widely held across the country that the president has a sectional agenda will also be put to test by the outcome of the sale, a source said. The concerned officials wondered why AMCON would sell a bank of Keystones magnitude to a firm that has no requisite expertise in banking and financial management. It is an open secret within the banking sector in Nigeria that the sale was arranged for this powerful northern group whose promoters do not have the required banking experience, thereby raising questions about the supposed independence of the international advisers of AMCON in the sale of Keystone, one official said. Mr. Modibbo could not be reached for comments. The AMCON chairman, Mr. Kuru, was as at the time of publishing yet to respond to an email enquiry sent to him. Mr. Atikus spokesperson, Paul Ibe, said he had no prior knowledge of his principals involvement in the controversial transaction, but still suggested that the opposition to his principals role by some AMCON officials might have been politically-motivated. I am not aware if his Excellency is interested or is involved in Keystone Bank. But even if he is, does that disqualify him? Is it because hes a former Vice President and an APC chieftain? Hasnt he run businesses successfully? Created jobs? Delivered dividends to shareholders? Paid taxes? Who are those internally? Who are the people? Is it politicians who are mischief makers hiding under the cover of internal people? Mr. Ibe said. When told that the sources are actually top officials of AMCON, Mr. Ibe said he would rather take the questions by email. An email forwarded to him was yet to be responded to as at the time of this report. An official of Zenith Bank has told a Federal high Court in Abuja that $40 million was transferred from the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) into the account of a company owned by a cousin of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Azibaola Roberts, and his wife. Olabode Farinola, a compliance officer with the bank, is a principal witness of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in the ongoing trial of Mr. Roberts and his wife, Stella. He told the court presided over by Justice Nnamdi Dimgba that the money was transferred to OnePlus Holdings LTD from the office of the NSA according to bank description. Under cross-examination by counsel to Mr. Roberts, Chris Uche Mr. Farinola also admitted that the NSA never complained to Zenith Bank that the $40 million was wrongly transferred. Im not aware of the purpose of the inflow or how it was disbursed but we didnt receive any letter from the NSA that the money was wrongly transferred, Mr. Farinola said. Mr. Roberts and his wife are facing a seven-count charge brought against them by the EFCC. They were accused of diverting $40 million meant for the supply of tactical communication kits for Nigerias Special Forces. The funds were allegedly transferred from the account of the Office of the NSA domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria. During a previous cross examination, Ibrahim Mahe, another principal witness had told the court that only the former NSA, Sambo Dasuki, could explain why OnePlus Holdings Limited got a $40 million pipeline security contract. Mr. Mahe, who recently retired as Permanent Secretary, Special Services Operations (SSO) in the NSAs office, told the court that he paid Oneplus $40 million out of the $600 million special security fund sourced from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He however failed to tell the court the names of the companies that benefited from the remaining $560 million of the special security fund. Mr. Farinola, while being led in evidence by Sylvanus Tahir, the prosecution counsel, informed the court that $39, 999, 985 was received by the accused persons on September 10, 2014. The counsel, Mr. Tahir, informed the court that more witnesses would be presented at the next hearing as some of them are not currently in the country. The case was adjourned by Justice Dimgba to November 18 for continuation of trial and cross examination. The Police have confirmed the death of eight Shiites members and a police sergeant in Mondays violent clash between the law enforcement agents and members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Kano. The clash occurred during a procession of the Shiites in the city. The state Police Commissioner, Rabiu Yusuf, said the Shiites, who were allegedly in possession of dangerous weapons, were the aggressors in the clash. He said they snatched an Ak47 gun from an officer and used it to kill the sergeant. Mr. Yusuf said the incident started at about 8:00 a.m. when police officers were invited to a scene of mayhem at Kwanar Dawaki Zaria allegedly caused by the Shiites who, he said, blocked the road and were attacking motorists and vandalizing properties. The commissioner said the law enforcement agents tried to stop the carnage with tear gas but were repelled by the Shiites with arrows and other dangerous weapons. Mr. Yusuf said the officers had to resort to minimal power, resulting in eight confirmed dead by the doctors. He said scores of injured Shiites members were receiving treatment at various hospitals. The Commissioner said four of his officers were also injured, while ten Shiites were arrested. The casualty figure could not be confirmed independently. However, a witness who preferred anonymity said he saw a pile of bodies of Shiite members being removed from the scene of the clash in a police van. Another witness had told PREMIUM TIMES that the crisis started when the police tried to forcefully stop the Shiite procession. Mr. Yusuf said he had directed the officer in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department of the command to begin investigations into the immediate and remote causes of the clash. He urged residents of the state to report any suspicious movement to the nearest police station, warning that the authorities would not tolerate any attempt at causing civil disaffection and breach of peace by anybody. While the police claimed the Shiites were the aggressors, the groups spokesperson has refuted the claim. Ibrahim Musa said his groups members were having their annual Arbaeen Symbolic Trek from Kano to Zaria, in Kaduna State, when they were attacked by police officers. He denied that his groups members had any weapons. Throughout the nearly four decades of the existence of the IMN, it has never stockpiled, carried or used weapons. It never had any cause to, even in the face of provocation, the IMN spokesperson said. Mondays killings occur about a year after over 300 Shiites were killed by soldiers who also accused them of blocking a major road in Kaduna State during a procession. The leader of the Shiites, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky has been in detention since the December attack condemned by local and international rights groups. The trial of former minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, for alleged money laundering at a Federal High Court in Lagos, on Monday suffered a setback, following his continued remand at the Kuje prisons in Abuja. Mr. Fani-Kayode, former director of media and publicity of the campaign committee of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, is charged alongside a former minister of finance, Nenadi Usman, and Danjuma Yusuf. They were charged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on a 17-count bordering on money laundering. The accused were alleged to have committed the offences between January and March 2015. In counts one to seven, they were alleged to have unlawfully retained over N3.8 billion , while in counts eight to 14, the accused were alleged to have unlawfully used over N970 million. Meanwhile, in counts 15 to17, Mr. Fani-Kayode and one Olubode Oke, now at large, were alleged to have made cash payments of about N30 million in excess of the amount allowed by law, without going through a financial institution. Besides, Mr. Fani-Kayode was alleged to have made payments to one Paste Poster Co (PPC) of No 125 Lewis St., Lagos, in excess of amounts allowed by law. The EFCC said the offences contravened the provisions of Sections 15 (3) (4), 16 (2) (b), and 16 (5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012. But all the accused persons pleaded not guilty to the charges. At the resumed hearing on Monday, Mr. Fani-Kayodes counsel, Wale Balogun, informed the court that his client was not in court because the operatives of EFCC arrested him at the last sitting on October 21. He said EFCC had since then incarcerated him in Kuje prison. My lord, I recall that on October 21, I informed this court that the EFCC were planning an arrest of the second accused. And I remember that my lord advised that in view of his pending trial before the court, he should be invited here whenever the need arises. My lord, on the said day, after the court had risen, the second accused was arrested within the courts premises. I requested for an arrest warrant from the leader who informed me that there was none to that effect but told me that the order was `from above. The second accused was taken to the EFCC Lagos and kept till 5 p.m. when another order came from `above to move him to Abuja immediately. My lord, the second accused was kept in custody of the prosecution for 21 days without any word, he told the court. He was finally arraigned on November 10 before your learned brother Justice John Tsoho in Abuja, on a five-count charge bordering on N26 million. He was subsequently remanded at the Kuje prisons and in view of this, we are helpless, as his bail conditions have not been perfected in spite of frantic efforts by family and friends. Responding, the prosecutor, Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court that he was aware of the arraignment of the second accused but added that his arraignment before the Abuja division of the court had nothing to do with the instant case. He argued that the subsequent arrest of the accused was with a view to serving him with the charge and not to disrespect the court. Mr. Oyedepo urged the court to grant an adjournment so as to allow the accused appear and stand trial. Justice Muslim Hassan then ruled that I will refrain from making any comment in relation to the arrest of the second accused in the courts premises in spite of being granted bail. This case is adjourned at the instance of the prosecution to December 12, while the earlier date of November 15 is hereby vacated, he ruled. (NAN) A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has left the Kuje Prisons, four days after he was granted bail by a high court, his spokesperson said Monday. Jude Ndukwe said Mr. Fani-Kayode was released from prisons Monday afternoon, and he expressed his gratitude to Nigerians for their moral support. Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been released, Mr. Ndukwe said. He has asked me to convey his heartfelt appreciation and love to all those that prayed for and encouraged him and his family at this difficult time. Last month, Mr. Fani-Kayode was arrested outside the court premises where he was answering a different case brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. After spending about three weeks in detention, the agency slammed a five-count charge of diverting N26 million in public funds against him on November 10. He was granted a N50 million bail on the same day. Mr. Fani Kayode served as the spokesman for the failed re-election campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. He had so far spent 91 days in custody for offenses bordering on financial crimes, including the 67 days he spent between May and July. His trial in Lagos stalled on Monday afternoon after he couldnt show up because he was in detention in Abuja. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it has run out of patience with telecommunication operators over unsolicited messages to subscribers. The commission on Monday issued a final one-week ultimatum for the 13 telecom network operators to put a stop to the messages or face sanctions. NCC had on April 20 issued a Do not disturb (DND) directives to the 13 operators. The commission said it was worried by the non-compliance by the operators, resulting in a deluge of complaints by subscribers nationwide. Already, an eight-member committee was recently constituted by the NCC to look into the matter and come up with ways to bring an end to it. After several meetings, including those held with the network providers, it became necessary to issue the latest ultimatum to redress the menace of incessant unsolicited text messages and phone calls for telemarketing via the various networks, NCC Director, Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo, said. Mr. Ojobo listed the affected network operators to include Airtel Network Limited, MTN Nigeria, Globacom Nigeria, Smile Communication, Visafone Communications, Ntel, Etisalat, Multi links, Starcomms, Danjay Telecoms, Gamjitel Limited and Gicell wireless. He said the NCC had written to all the 13 networks providers on whose networks it received a series of complaints from subscribers regarding the efficacy of the Do Not Disturb (DND) service. Mr. Ojobo said the Commission had engaged mobile network operators on the subject and directed that the phrase MTN generated SMS referred to part(d) of the duration issued on April 20, to MTN and other network providers shall be taken to mean messages and calls with respect to only information on emergencies. He cited the example of national security, fire, notifications on network maintenance programmes down times and notification regarding subscribers bundle usage and service renewals. Other text messages and voice calls informing subscribers of new products and service offerings were not regarded as network generated and therefore regarded as unsolicited marketing messages. The director said the NCC asked the affected network providers to ensure information on the Do Not Disturb service should be disseminated after every revenue generating activity via the end of call notification (EOCN) for the period not less than 45 days within the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily from the receipt of the latest letter on the subject. He said the operators were equally urged to disseminate the information through all channels of communications open to them, including websites, social media platforms, bill boards, flash messages, text messages, interactive voice response platform, radio jingles, newspapers advertisements and television commercials. Failure to comply with the directives, in furtherance of the Direction of April 20, 2016, within seven days from November 14, 2016 shall result in the imposition of appropriate sanctions, the commission warned. Nigerians have endured the nightmare of unsolicited text messages from telecom operators, and several subscribers have petitioned the NCC for redress. Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has called on the Nigerian government to obey last months order by the Court of the Economic Community of West African States declaring that Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser, be granted bail. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Falana said the government, having loudly proclaimed its commitment to the rule of law cannot afford to ignore the order of the ECOWAS Court. Indeed, as a leading member state of the ECOWAS, the Nigerian Government must continue to demonstrate leadership by example, said Mr. Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. More so, that it was federal government which persuaded the former military dictators in Niger Republic to release ex-President Mammoud Tandja from custody in line with the order of the ECOWAS Court. Therefore, President Buhari should direct the SSS to comply with the order of the ECOWAS Court by releasing Col. Dasuki (rtd) on bail without any further delay. The ECOWAS Court had, in October, declared as unlawful and arbitrary the arrest and detention of Mr. Dasuki. The court also held that the further arrest of the former NSA chief by the government on November 4, after he was granted bail by a court, amounts to a mockery of democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Dasuki, a retired colonel, is facing multiple trials for alleged diversion of $2.1 billion meant for arms purchase by the immediate past administration. He is also accused of illegal possession of firearms. He approached the ECOWAS court after he was rearrested by operatives of the State Security Service shortly after meeting his bail conditions in November last year. Mr. Dasuki has remained in the custody of the SSS since his arrest. Mr. Falana said the inability of the Nigerian government to ban human rights violations was responsible for the decision of the US to reportedly ban the Buhari administration from purchasing war planes to prosecute the war on terror. A similar ban under the Jonathan administration prolonged the war on terror, he said. While the ban may be questioned in view of the global fight against terrorism the federal government should release all political detainees from custody and stop the police and other security agencies from infringing on the human rights of the Nigerian people. Tunisian authorities have discovered four arms caches in the south of the country near the border with war-ravaged Libya and seized large quantities of weapons, security sources said Monday. Two were found Saturday near the city of Ben Guerdane, a third on Sunday and another on Monday also in the same region, they said. The interior ministry said the biggest find was made Sunday, in a garage on the outskirts of Ben Guerdane where 50 guns, including 27 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and dozens of missiles were confiscated. Authorities also seized 30 crates of ammunition as well as 12 kilograms (26.4 pounds) of explosives and more than 1,000 tasers, it said. Three suspects, including the owner of the garage, were detained for questioning, the ministry said, adding that a fourth person was arrested after Monday's find. A defence ministry official told Shems FM radio that the arms caches were discovered thanks to information found on the cell phone of a militant who was shot dead by security forces last week. The North African country has experienced a rise in religious extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Its security forces have been battling a Islamist militants movement responsible for killing dozens of soldiers and police officers as well as civilians including 59 foreign tourists. The Islamic State group, active in Libya, has claimed responsibility for several of those attacks. In March, dozens of Islamist militants attacked security installations in Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya, leaving 13 members of the security forces, seven civilians and at least 55 militants dead, according to official figures. Search Keywords: Short link: A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Monday granted bail to retired Air Vice Marshal Tony Omenyi, who was accused of illegally transferring over N130 million to a private company account. Mr. Omenyi was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on a three-count charge bothering on illegal transfer of money on three different occasions. He was accused of carrying out the crime while serving as the Managing Director of Aeronautical Engineering and Technical Services Ltd. (AETSL). The EFCC had alleged that the defendant illegally transferred N24. 8 million to Huzee/Sky Expert Nig. Ltd.s account domiciled with the First City Monument Bank, on January 8, 2014. The commission also alleged that the retired air force chief illegally transferred N61.5 million to the same account from August 12, 2014 to August 23, 2014, and another sum of N50 million to the same account on November 18, 2014. Huzee/Sky Expert Nig. Ltd. is described in the EFCC charge sheet as a contractor of the AETSL. The EFCC said that Mr. Omenyi was fully aware that the said funds formed part of the proceeds of unlawful activity. It said that the offences, contravened Section 15(2) of the Money Laundering and Prohibition Act, 2011, and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act. At the resumed sitting to consider the bail application, filed by the defendants counsel, Wahab Olatoye, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba granted the accused bail in the sum of N60 million. The Judge also ordered two sureties who must have a N30 million bail bond each and a landed property each in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) or Lagos. Mr. Dimgba said that the sureties should also be professional businessmen or a civil servant not below the level of an Assistant Director in the federal civil service. According to the judge, where the landed property is located in a satellite town of the FCT, it must be a fully developed that is worth the bail bond granted to the sureties. Mr. Dimgba added that the defendant must also deposit his international passport with the courts registrar and must not travel out of the country without the prior knowledge of the court. The judge ordered the defendant be remanded in Kuje Prison pending the time he fulfils the bail conditions. He adjourned the matter to December 15, January 23, 2017 and January 24, 2017 for trial. (NAN) The founder of The Synagogue Church Of All Nations, Temitope Joshua, on Sunday said his earlier prophecy on the U.S. presidential election was given different interpretation by people on a different level with him. In his Sunday sermon, Mr. Joshua (popularly known as TB Joshua) said people would need the spirit of a prophet to be able to recognize one. We have seen the outcome of the election in America, Mr. Joshua said in a message later posted on the churchs official website and Facebook page. He also hinted that his reference to Hilary Clinton as eventual winner was reflected in her winning more popular votes than Donald Trump. Having read, you will notice that it is all about the popular vote, the vote of the majority of Americans. In this case, we need the Spirit of a Prophet to recognize a Prophet. Our levels are different. We are not on the same level. We might have great cathedrals, huge bells, and all kinds of activities that are good by human standards but human point of view is limited. 1 Corinthians 1:25. The foolishness of God is wiser than that of men and the weakness of God is stronger than that of men. There is no shortcut to spiritual maturity unless earthly understanding gives way to spiritual enlightenment. Last Sunday, with two days to the US Presidential election, Mr. Joshua had predicted a narrow victory for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Ten days ago, I saw the new President of America with a narrow win, he had said in his prophecy which was later posted on the churchs official Facebook account. The new President will be facing several challenges over many issues, including: passing bills, attempts to possibly pass a vote of no confidence on the new President. The boat of the new President will be rocked. By the way, in order not to keep you in suspense, what I frankly saw is a woman. But on Wednesday, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate and Mrs. Clintons main opponent, clinched the ticket to the White House by winning 306 electoral colleges to Mrs. Clintons 232. Mrs. Clinton, however, garnered more votes with 60,981,118 to Mr. Trumps 60,350,241 votes. In the aftermath of Mrs. Clintons defeat, Nigerians trooped to social media to mock Mr. Joshua over the failure of his prophecy. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Joshua deleted the prophecy from the churchs official Facebook account. In its place, he posted a seven-line message urging his members to join him in prayer. On Sunday, Mr. Joshua said people tried to interpret the prophecy on the basis of their own minds and ideas. The prophecy seems (sic) to cause uproar, to many who gave it different meaning and interpretation, he said. Finally, campaigns and elections in any democratic country in the world are never about one person, it is about the country we care and love. Whichever way it happens, we must accept the outcome and then look to the future (God), the Author and Finisher. Democracy is all about accommodation. All democrats must value the process of democracy more than the product. God bless the United States of America. The police in Cross River said one of its personnel, Kingsley Iyeke, killed another policeman, Edet Archibong, during a gun duel between the police and suspected cultists in Calabar. Jimoh Ozi-Obeh, the Commissioner of Police in the state, made this known on Monday in Calabar while briefing journalists on the activities of the command in the past one month. The commissioner said that after the incident, the police swung into action by tracing the cultists to their hideout where some of them were arrested. He explained that during interrogating, one of the suspected cultists mentioned Mr. Iyeke, a police corporal, as their member and that he was the one that shot the police inspector during the clash. It would be recalled that we lost one of our inspectors last month during an exchange of fire with some cultists here in Calabar. Majority of the suspects have been arrested. Our front line interrogation shows that one of our personnel, Corporal Kingsley Iyeke, was one of the cultists. After interrogating one of the arrested cultists, he confessed that Iyeke was their member and that he was the one that shot the inspector. During our trial, we found out that truly he was their member. We have dismissed him and he will face the full wrath of the law, he said. Mr. Iyeke, 35, from Rivers, was attached to the Marine Police base in Calabar. Responding to questions from journalists, Mr. Iyeke denied being a member of any cult group, saying that he was only being set up by the suspected cultists. A teenager kidnapped in Ibadan, Oyo State, has been rescued in Calabar, Cross River State. Jimoh Ozi-Obeh, the Commissioner of Police in Cross River State, made this known on Monday in Calabar while briefing journalists on the activities of the police command in the past one month. Mr. Ozi-Obeh said the 16-year-old kidnap victim was abducted in Ibadan on November 7 and brought to Calabar the following day. He said that the minor, a student of St. Barnabas Academy at Daramola Street in Ibadan, was abducted on his way to school. He explained that the command had got across to the Ibadan Police Command with a view to safely hand over the boy to them and be re-united with his family. Mr. Ozi-Obeh said that the police nabbed 10 suspected criminals in connection with various crimes in the state. (NAN) The Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, in Niger says the ratio of doctors to patients in the state was one to 9,000, as against one to 600 recommended by the World Health Organaisation, WHO. Mustapha Yahaya, NMA Chairman in the state, made the disclosure on Monday in Minna, when members of the association paid a courtesy call on the House of Assembly Committee on Health. We have always drawn the attention of the government to the fact that doctors are inadequate in Niger. We have always made reference to WHO, which recommends one doctor to 600 people. Here, it is one doctor to 9,000 people he explained. According to him, there are currently 450 doctors in the state, with many of them already leaving due to poor remuneration. He urged the state government to fully implement the National Health Bill passed into law in 2014, saying that it would guarantee universal health access to all. Mr. Yahaya further advocated 15 per cent budgetary allocation to the health sector, in line with WHOs recommendation, so as to improve the poor health indices in the state. In his response, the committee chairman, John Bahago, promised to facilitate the establishment of a medical school in one of the tertiary institutions in Niger, to bridge the manpower gap. We need more indigenous trained manpower and one way to achieve that is to establish a faculty of medicine in any of the higher institutions in the state. But before then, we will do everything possible to ensure that the doctors in the state are well motivated to stay and work here, he said. Mr. Bahago tasked the association to weed out quacks from the profession, and promised full support toward an improved working environment. (NAN) The Sokoto State government has said it will punish principals of schools found culpable of denying students the use of furniture provided by the government. The spokesperson of Governor Aminu Tambuwal, Imam Imam, disclosed this to PREMIUM TIMES on Monday. He was reacting to a story that the committee set up by the government to implement its State of Emergency in Education had discovered 200 sets of furniture locked up at a school where students sat on bare floor for lessons. Mr. Imam had earlier issued a statement that the discovery was made at Hafsat Ahmadu Bello Memorial Secondary School, Sokoto. He said the committee met students receiving lectures while sitting on bare floor. Only a few classes in the school have enough seats to accommodate them. For long, they have to put up with taking lectures while seated on bare floor. Most use prayer mats to protect their whole tops from the floors dust, while others come to classes with extra wrappers to spray on floor as they sit. While they have to put up with the most uncomfortable situation to take lectures daily, a few blocks away, 200 sets of classroom furniture were locked away, unattended to, and left to rot away. When contacted on whether the state government would take any disciplinary action on the schools authority, Mr. Imam said the government would await the outcome of the committees findings. The committee is going round all the schools and I dont think the government will treat individual cases, he said. Mr. Imam also said definitely, punitive measures will be taken against any school found wanting. In his earlier statement on Sunday, Mr. Imam had said that the committees leader, Shadi Sabeh, had immediately ordered that the furniture be arranged in the classrooms, and admonished the school management to always prioritise the needs of students. The Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi-led faction of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has urged Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo to reinstate the deposed paramount ruler of Uromi, Anselm Edenojie. The faction made the call in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Dayo Adeyeye, in Abuja on Sunday. Mr. Adeyeye condemned the deposition alleging that the monarch was ostensibly deposed for supporting PDPs candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, at the recently concluded gubernatorial election in the state. He added that the deposition was, further evidence of favouritism and despotic reign of Oshiomole as a former governor of the state for the past eight years. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria empowers all Nigerian citizens to support, associate with and be affiliated to any political party and candidate of their choice. It is a well known fact that several traditional rulers demonstrated open support, and in fact campaigned for the APC candidate, Mr. Godwin Obaseki. The faction urged all Nigerians to prevail on Mr. Obaseki to reverse what it termed obnoxious deposition he inherited from his predecessor. It stated that restoring the monarch to his original position before he was wrongfully deposed, needed to be done. Mr. Edenojie, the Ojuromi of Uromi, in Esan North-East Local Government Area of the state, was recently deposed by the immediate former governor of the state, Mr. Oshiomole. The monarch, before his deposition, had been given a seven-day suspension by the state government for allegedly assaulting one Ms. Betty Okoebor during the September 28 governorship election. The action, according to the state government, was sequel to his failure to respond to a query issued to him and for travelling outside the country without express permission. He was later suspended for one year over alleged misconduct, among other offences. The deposition, according to the state government, was pursuant to Section 28 (l and II) of the Traditional Rulers and Chiefs Law, 1979. (NAN) The students of Akwa Ibom Polytechnic on Monday protested against the 100 per cent increment of fees by the schools authority. The Students Union Government (SUG), President, Kingsley Eyo, told journalists at Ikot Osurua in Ikot Ekpene on Monday that the students were not consulted before the increment. He added that the students were not comfortable with the Rector, Israel Afias style of administration, demanding his removal by the state government. Mr. Eyo said students wondered why the schools management would choose to bring new fees regime in this period of economic recession. The Pre-ND students that were paying N37, 000 are now to pay N69, 200 and ND-1 that were paying 45, 000 are now to pay N76, 200. ND-2 students are now to pay N65, 500 as against N38, 000; HND-1 will have to pay N85, 700 as against N47, 500. HND-2 students are now to pay N82, 700 as against N40, 700 that they were paying before, Eyo said. The students also complained that management had not been publishing their semester results regularly. He alleged that the first semester results of ND had always been delayed to final semester of ND-2. The student union government president also accused the registrar of being insensitive to the students plight. He said when the union approached the registrar for dialogue; he retorted that education was not for the poor. Mr. Eyo threatened that the students would go on violent riot if the school authority refused to reduce the school fees. . He said the management had also hijacked the running of Mami Market from the SUG. Mami Market used to be controlled by the students, the management hijacked it. The levies from the market were usually paid to the student union government. We had a meeting with them that since they are collecting the money from the Mami traders, they should give us some percentage. We needed the money to repair the bus and some other things. Even the park, there are some buses that are operating within the school campus, they hijacked the running of the park from us, he said. The Rector of the polytechnic, Israel Afia, said in a text message that he was in a meeting and would not speak to the press today. He said, Not today please. I am in a meeting somewhere. Lets talk later. (NAN) The Oyo State Police Public Relations Officer said in Ibadan on Monday that the command was working hard to rescue kidnapped Biodun Ogunbeku from his abductors. Mr. Ogunbeku, a reverend of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Akobo-Ojurin, Diocese of Agodi, Ibadan, was kidnapped on Thursday by five gunmen. He was kidnapped at his farm at Kufi area, along Olounda-Aba Road in Ibadan at about 7 p.m. Mr. Ajisebutu, who declined to state whether ransom was demanded by the abductors, however, said the police were on top of the situation. The spokesperson said that the command was doing what it could to locate the hideout of the suspects. He said that investigations were ongoing and that the Commissioner of Police would brief journalists as soon as investigations were completed. Amos Ajiboye, the Diocesan Bishop of the Methodist Church Nigeria, Diocese of Agodi, Ibadan, had said that the kidnappers were yet to contact the Church or the family of the victim. (NAN) Two men, Ezekiel Yusuf (29) and Musa Abubakar (25) have been arrested by Ogun State Police Command for alleged gang-rape of a pawpaw seller. The Commands Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, who made this known to on Monday said the suspects committed the crime along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. He said the 23 years old victim was hawking sliced pawpaw along the expressway, when the suspects under pretext of wanting to buy the product lured her into the house of one of them. He said it was the cry of the victim during the act that attracted neighbours who reported the matter to the police. Mr. Oyeyemi said the Divisional Police Officer of Ojodu Abiodun Police Station, Bamidele Job, quickly dispatched detectives to the scene and two suspects were promptly arrested. The case is being further investigated by the police, he said. A UAE court Monday jailed two Emiratis up to 10 years for their links to a "terrorist" organisation seen as a branch of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, media said. The first defendant was handed a 10-year jail term after he was convicted of playing a "leading role" in a "banned secret group," the official WAM news agency reported. The local Gulf News daily said in its online edition that he was found guilty of joining the outlawed Al-Islah group, which authorities accuse of activities aimed at overthrowing the government and seizing power. He will remain under surveillance for three years after serving his prison term, both sources said. The same Abu Dhabi-based Federal Supreme Court sentenced another Emirati to seven years in prison after it convicted him of joining the same organisation, running one of its offices in the Gulf country, and promoting its ideology, the sources said. The United Arab Emirates in 2013 sentenced 69 activists to up to 15 years each in jail following a mass trial that saw them convicted for their links to Al-Islah. Also on Monday, the same court sentenced a citizen from Comoros Islands to three years in jail after he was found guilty of promoting the Islamic State group, the Gulf News said. The man drew slogans and symbols on public law promoting the Islamist militants group as well as "slanderous and degrading phrases about state officials", it added. The United Arab Emirates is a member of the US-led coalition that has been bombing IS Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria since September 2014. Authorities in the Gulf state have enacted anti-terror legislation, including the death penalty and harsher jail terms for crimes linked to religious hatred and extremist groups. Search Keywords: Short link: The Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun, on Monday signed into law a bill stipulating tough penalties for violent crimes, including 25 years jail term for convicted kidnappers. Also captured in the new law are armed robbery, kidnapping, cultism and other related offences. Mr. Amosun assented to the bill at a simple ceremony in his office attended by the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Suraj Adekunbi, and other principal officers of the House. Also present at the ceremony were the state Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Illiyasu, State Director, State Security Service, Kabiru Sali; Commissioner of Justice and Attorney General of the state, Olumide Ayeni; and other members of the state executive council. Mr. Amosun said his administration would not allow criminals to find comfort in the state. Kidnapping is alien to us in this part of the country and we have come to put an end to it as it now attracts 25 years jail term, the governor said. Speaking with journalists after the ceremony, Mr. Adekunbi said with the signing of the bill into law, it was no longer business as usual for criminals in the state. On his part, the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Illiyasu said it was a signal to criminals to move away from in the state, warning that anyone caught for violent crime would face the full wrath of the law. Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar has always offered Atlantic City diners a unique, creative, fun and eclectic culinary experience since opening inside The Quarter at the Tropicana Atlantic City 12 years ago. But if you havent been there lately, you havent experienced Cuba Libre at its finest. Why? Its all about Cuba Libre Concept Chef-Partner Guillermo Pernots travels to Cuba. Pernot, who was born in Argentina, always loved Cuban food, and was connected to it through his wife, who is Cuban-born. There was always an interest in it, Pernot says. But what we really knew about Cuban cuisine was really what we found and experienced in Miami. I always imagined what the flavors and what ingredients were like if Fidel Castro never took power. And that was the basis of my food at Cuba Libre. But when I started going to Cuba about four years ago, everything changed. That first trip to celebrate New Years and the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution opened Pernots eyes to ingredients, recipes and techniques that exceeded his imagination. I went with my sister-in-law, and that was the first time she went back since she was a child. It was very emotional, and we started to discover fantastic food we never thought we would find, along with different ingredients and combinations of those ingredients that we never imagined or saw in Miami. So when we came back, it wasnt just about bringing home recipes, but the knowledge that we acquired about how Cuban chefs work every day. Its not just black beans and rice. Its so much more. Cuba Libre always pushed the boundaries of Cuban cuisine, and it still does. But now Pernot believes the restaurant, which also has locations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Orlando, is more authentic than ever. For starters, some of Cuba Libres most traditional dishes remain, but Pernot altered some of those dishes to make them even better and more authentic. They include the Papas Rellenas ($16.50), potato croquettes filled with beef picadillo with sweet and spicy guajillo pepper sauce topped with crispy onion and manchego crema; Ropa Vieja ($23.25), shredded beef brisket stewed with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, red wine, white rice, Cuban black beans and maduros; and Vaca Frita ($24.75), tender braised, then crisped shredded flank steak with roasted onions and a citrus garlic sauce served with white rice, black beans and maduros. As much as I am getting bored with the Papas Rellenas, people love them, Pernot says. In the next year, we are going to be re-doing the whole menu again where we will retain some classics but add even more new stuff, so I am not sure they will make the cut. I put my twist on the Ropa Vieja by putting diced plantains inside the dish, which you wont find in Cuba. I think the plantains add a small hint of acidity thats needed when you are eating all that fatty richness. Those bits and pieces help break it down. And the Vaca Frita is also a classic. I wanted to make it different so I added the lemon sauce and the whole roasted garlic. You will also find Pernots love for ceviche ($12 to $17.50), including bay scallop ceviche ($12.50) with tomato, Bermuda onions, cilantro, jalapeno salsa, fresh lime juice and extra virgin olive oil, as well as his famous empanadas ($11 for two, $15 for three, $20 for four), which originated in Spain but can be found throughout Cuba. Particularly good is the Del Campo with pulled pork, roasted poblano and charred tomatoes. Pernots visits to Cuba also broke some preconceived notions he had about Cuban cuisine. People say Cubans dont eat spicy food, and thats not true, Pernot says. They love spicy food all the way to the east, and they also use a lot of coconut there. In the west, you will see different spices like fennel and a lot of basil, which you just dont equate with Cuban cooking. I really discovered how diverse Cuban cuisine really is. They have Haitian, Chinese, French, Russian and American influences. A great example of Pernot bringing something new home with him is the North Atlantic salmon ($27.50) glazed with honey and served with a red curry, mango and coconut milk sauce. Curry is very popular in Cuba because of the Haitian influence, Pernot says. I never thought about curry in Cuban food until I went there. The same goes for the use of culantro not cilantro, but a completely different plant that is often called spicy cilantro as Pernot uses it generously in dishes such as the Lechon Asado ($23.50), our favorite dish that features Southeast Family Farms Berkshire pulled pork thats marinated for four days before being slow roasted for eight hours then served with classic sour orange mojo over Amarillo chile smashed yucca with black bean broth and Vigoran slaw. That dish takes five days to get to your plate, Pernot says. And culantro is indigenous to the West Indies. If you dont have that herb, you cant make Cuban food. Perhaps the best way to experience Cuba Libre is to order some drinks rum and pork are kings in Cuba, Pernot says including authentic mojitos and caipirinhas and some tapas ($16.5 for two, $24 for three, $31 for four). Theres a lot of family-style eating in Cuba, Pernot says. They love to throw everything at you. On that tapas menu is another idea Pernot brought home: the Malanga Fritter, a traditional Cuban street food of crispy taro, garlic and West Indian culantro with Tamarindo ketchup. Others with his twist include the spinach and manchego Bunuelos, cheese and spinach puffs with goat cheese ranch sauce and organic olive oil; and citrus-marinated, grilled baby octopus with Haitian eggplant salad, crispy corn chips and truffle. Capriccio's key to success is listening to feedback Capriccio is proof that getting older doesnt have to be a bad thing. In fact, the iconic At The Bunuelos is usually done with fried dough, but I made it my own this way, Pernot says. And you can find octopus in all shapes and sizes in Cuba everywhere. It wasnt until I came back that I felt assured of myself in adding it on the menu here. You dont find much truffle in Cuba, but I added it just because. To me, thats what being a chef is all about. Otherwise, you can just pick up a cookbook and follow every recipe. Another dish found everywhere in Cuba and on the Cuba Libre menu is paella, another Spanish dish. Cuba Libres seafood paella ($31) with shrimp, Maine lobster tail, littleneck clams, mussels, squid, baby octopus and saffron long grain rice is about as good as it gets without getting on a plane. Rice is a natural grain, so its everywhere there, and they make it with everything from snails and rabbit to blood sausage to chicken and pork. There are thousands of variations. Even the desserts are homemade at Cuba Libre with traditional dishes such as Tres Leches ($8) and Cuban Flan ($7.50), along with Pernots favorite chocolate torte ($8.50), a fallen chocolate souffle tart layered with dulce de leche topped with dulce de leche ice cream, chocolate orange sauce and blueberry compote and the best banana bread ($7) you may ever have that is butter toasted and served with vanilla or chocolate ice cream and butterscotch sauce. There are at least 15 to 20 different types of Cuban bananas, Pernot says. You wont find perfect yellow ones like we have here. There they are short, stubby, sweet, sour, creamy, all different varieties. Everyone has a banana plant there. Pernot and Cuba Libre have a lot of plans to evolve even more. Aside from two additional restaurants in the planning stages, the Atlantic City location will be the first Cuba Libre to feature a wood-burning grill in the front of the restaurant in March. Wood-burning grills are very typical in Cuban cuisine, so it makes sense, Pernot says. We will do charcoal and wood and make fish, whole pigs, rotisserie, Peking chicken, steaks, vegetables and maybe even flatbreads for lunch. We have so many ideas, and the grill is just one of them, and I think that will really set Atlantic City apart from the others. But as we continue, I want to make Cuba Libre even more traditional. Its fantastic food, and we want to be as authentic as we can so people can really understand how great Cuban cuisine is. 15 Tastes of Cuba If you have never been to Cuba Libre Restaurant & Rum Bar, the best way to initially experience the diverse cuisine is to check out its 15 Taste of Cuba Chefs Tasting Menu, which is not only an amazing culinary experience but an amazing bargain. Cuba Libre Concept Chef-Partner Guillermo Pernot picked 15 of his favorite dishes, and guests get to try all of them for $39.95 per person 4 to 10 p.m. Sundays to Wednesdays, and 4 to 11 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. Heres what you will receive for the ultimate Cuban feast: Appetizers Tropical Chips and Dips: black bean hummus, Haitian eggplant salad and Cuba Libre salsa with plantain and malanga chips Shrimp Ceviche: Cuban-style shrimp cocktail with Latino coctel sauce and avocado salsa Mama Amelias Empanada de la Casa: Homemade empanada made from Pernots mothers recipe with hand-chopped chicken, corn, Jack cheese and Aji sour cream dipping sauce Malanga Fritters: A traditional Cuban street food of crispy taro, garlic and West Indian culantro with Tamarind ketchup Entrees Churrasco a la Cubana: All-natural, black Angus grilled skirt steak with parsley, lemon and onion sauce Mahi-Mahi: Fresh mahi filet seared on the griddle with olive oil, Forbidden black rice and squid-lobster-flavored asposado with mojito salsa verde and chipotle allioli Lechon Asado: Slow-roasted, marinated Southeast Family Farms Berkshire pulled pork with classic sour orange mojo over Amarillo chile smashed yucca with black bean broth and Vigoran slaw Side Dishes White Rice with Cuban Black Beans Maduros: Fried, ripened sweet plantains Desserts Tres Leches: The classic dessert featuring vanilla sponge cake soaked in three milks with mocha mousse Cuban Flan: Another traditional ending with vanilla custard, candied mango and papaya salad served with vanilla cookie WHO IS HE: Ian Edwards is a comedian, actor and writer who grew up in Jamaica and moved to New York when he was a teenager. He began writing on The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show in 1998 and two years later wrote for MTVs Lyricist Lounge. In 2005 Edwards became a regular cast member on MTVs Punkd. His debut comedy album 100% Half-Assed was released in 2014. A year later Edwards starred in the film Tangerine. WHAT TO EXPECT: Comic Ian Edwards has had a successful, well-rounded career that includes films, television shows, podcasts and a comedy album, but as a stand-up his star is definitely still on the rise. Edwards is the type of comedian who as an audience member you may think hes setting you up for one joke, but then hits you with a punch line in a different direction which makes it twice as funny. Hes not afraid to tackle the most sensitive of subjects and take a unique perspective. His show at Harrahs Resort is definitely worth checking out. STAFFORD TOWNSHIP Stockton University will expand its instructional site on Bay Road in Manahawkin to include more nursing and health care programs starting in fall 2017. The university will take over the neighboring 7,915-square-foot site used by Rothman Institute Orthopaedics, which is moving to the new AtlantiCare Health Park on Route 72. The move will allow Stockton to expand its accelerated nursing program from 13 students to 24. That program allows students who already have a bachelors degree and meet prerequisites to complete a nursing-degree program in four semesters. Stockton Dean of Health Sciences Theresa Bartolotta said the program will help address the shortage of nurses and the demand for nursing programs. She said Stockton accepted 45 students into its nursing program this year, more than the usual 36, because there were so many qualified applicants. And we still couldnt accept all that were qualified, she said. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates demand for registered nurses will grow by 16 percent through 2024. This is much faster than the national average for all occupations, which is 7 percent. The accelerated program may particularly appeal to students who majored in biology or a health-related field, but now want to get into nursing. We get students who dont decide they want to go into nursing until their junior or senior year, Bartolotta said. She said the Rothman site is ideal because it is already set up as a medical facility and wont need a lot of renovations. The estimated cost for renovations is about $200,000, according to information provided by the college. Bill would require U.S. flag to be displayed at public meetings TRENTON The state Senate last week unanimously passed a bill that would require the U.S. f The nursing program will be full time. Students will be admitted in the fall and finish at the end of the following fall term. All classes and labs will be held in Manahawkin as of fall 2017. Clinical rotations will be offered in Ocean, Monmouth and Atlantic counties. The Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences, the universitys largest undergraduate major with more than 1,100 students, will also expand into the new facilities in Manahawkin. The site will make it more convenient for students who live in central New Jersey to attend Stocktons health care programs. Students wont have to go to Galloway at all, Bartolotta said. Stockton opened a 3,200-square-foot site in Manhawkin in 2012 with plans to grow if there was enough demand. Bacterial infection linked to contaminated syringes finds way to South Jersey At least 10 people in Atlantic County and three in Ocean County have contracted a complicate The new site will allow Stockton to expand its speech and hearing services and eventually to offer an interprofessional clinic where students will serve patients. Stockton already partners with AtlantiCare and Rothman. Michael West, CEO of Rothman Institute, said in a statement that the expansion will benefit residents in Ocean County and that Rothman looks forward to continuing its partnership with Stockton. University President Harvey Kesselman said in a statement that there is a need in the region for health care services and professionals. Stocktons mission is to provide access to a distinctive higher education and develop programs that ultimately improve the quality of life for New Jerseys residents, he said. Stocktons Nursing Program was ranked 43rd out of 450 schools considered in the Mid-Atlantic region by NursingSchoolsAlmanac.com. The nursing program is approved by the New Jersey Board of Nursing and accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. NEW YORK Trump. Trump. Clinton. The Obamas dancing like dorks. Such is the stuff of a recent pre-election morning meeting at The Daily Show headquarters. Trevor Noah enters, water bottle and orange in hand, and wedges himself in among the writers, his back never pressing against the sofa. Can we talk about Brexit? he asks. I find Brexit fascinating, because in the U.S., people see it as done and dusted. They talk of Brexit, how British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resembles a Muppet. But then the discussion swiftly returns to the steady drip of Trump, Trump, Trump. You may hire a guy for his global perspective, but comedy comes back to the familiar fast. Last year, after a 16-year reign, Jon Stewart was replaced by a young comedian who is nothing like him: foreign, biracial, cool, GQ-photogenic and utterly unknown to Americans, having appeared on the show only three times before being tapped as the successor. Noah was given six weeks to create his own version of the program, all during a presidential campaign that became so absurd and unprecedented as to seem the work of deranged comedy writers. (When Trump won, Noah told his audience that it feels like the end of the world.) At the time, the move seemed unfair, not only to the shows devout audience but also to Stewarts replacement. Nor was Noahs start aided by the discovery of old tweets critical of Jews and heavier women. Noah remained undaunted. I had no fears, because I was extremely ignorant. It was bliss, the 32-year-old says later, sitting in a makeup room. Only an idiot would take the job after Jon Stewart, and I was that idiot. (This from a man confident enough to conduct an interview while a barber trims a nanometer off his close-cropped hair.) He took the job, continued doing stand-up on nights off and, oh, wrote an affecting memoir, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood, which is also a love letter to his mother. The book will be published Tuesday. The crime was that his birth in 1984 violated South Africas 1927 Immorality Act, which prohibited illicit carnal intercourse between a European male and a native female. As the child of a black mother and a white father in a society that kept the two races strictly separated, Noah has long lived outside rigid racial lines. I never met any kids who were biracial, he says. His defiant mother was jailed so many times for breaking apartheids severe racial laws and frequenting whites-only areas that I think she even lost count, Noah says. Before apartheid ended when he was almost 6, young Trevor was kept mostly indoors, often staying in Soweto with his maternal grandmother, who told him, Im afraid they will steal you. He thought she meant the people in the township where he lived with his mother. (He never lived with his father, a Swiss national residing in South Africa whom his mother, a secretary, met when she was living illegally in a Johannesburg apartment building that prohibited blacks.) I thought she was being paranoid. And it was only while writing the book, he says, that I realized that she was afraid, rightfully so, that the police would take me. He couldnt be seen in public with his parents. In my head, I grew up running with my parents, Noah says. His mother told him otherwise: You were chasing your father down the street and I was chasing you because he couldnt be seen with you because of the police. Because of his lighter skin, Noah was viewed as coloured by society and at school, a racial classification shared by no other member of his black family. My grandmother was very lenient to me because of my skin color, he says. But often I saw myself as inferior, because I grew up in a black world. I was the only kid who was getting sunburned, the only kid whose skin would show bruises the way it did. I was stared at whether it was a wedding or a funeral or a family gathering with extended members. So, if anything, I didnt see myself as whole or complete or part of a thing. In his memoir, the comedian portrays his mother, Patricia Noah, as fiercely Christian attending as many as three churches on Sunday (black, white and mixed) and funny, proud and fearless. He writes that she once threw her eldest son from a moving car to save his life and took a bullet to the head from Noahs abusive stepfather and lived to joke about it. On the bright side, she told Noah from her hospital bed, now youre officially the best-looking person in the family. Although they remain close, shell never come over, says Noah, who returns home six times a year. I dont even know if she watches the show. He pauses. I dont think she does. (His father, whom he visited on Sundays growing up, eventually returned to Switzerland.) Noah decided to become a stand-up comedian before he had ever seen one in his country, or before he knew that he could make a living doing such a thing. Famous is an understatement. Hes mega-famous in South Africa, says Ugandan comedian Joseph Opio. Hes basically the South African comedy industry personified. Most of the writers and producers as well as the work culture from Stewarts tenure on The Daily Show were retained, but Noah asked Opio and comedian David Kibuuka, who was born in Uganda but later moved to South Africa, to join the writing staff. Says Opio, We share an outsiders voice. In the packed meeting of almost 30 staffers, Noah, Opio and Kibuuka, along with show correspondent Roy Wood Jr., are the only black participants. The shows Hells Kitchen offices resemble an indoor dog park. The place is fueled by staggering quantities of caffeine and junk food. The latter still astonishes Noah and his African colleagues, who grew up viewing cake as a rarity, not a given. Noahs grandmothers house was not a two-bedroom house. A two-room house, he says, with no running water, and an outdoor communal faucet and a toilet shared by multiple families. Noah learned quickly that to work with a successful program and a large (108-member) production team, you really have to go for evolution rather than revolution, he says. Because anything you do initially is seen as incorrect. Critics fault him for appearing too detached on-screen, where Stewart delivered arias of indignation. But Trevor hasnt earned the right to be that angry about whats happening in America, Opio says. And where weve come from, weve seen worse things. Says Noah, I understand that some people think of me as cold and somewhat dismissive, but the truth is Im genuine. He lived in the United States previously, from 2010 to 2012, with Los Angeles as his base, and became the first African comedian not South African, from the entire continent to appear on The Tonight Show. (He thinks he is still the only one to have done so.) I was extremely lonely, he says. Hollywood is like a person that doesnt have time to be with you, but it always wants you to be available. He went to Britain, toured constantly, then returned to New York. Jon called and said he wanted to hang out, he recalls. So Noah would visit the Daily Show office, sit there and listen to what people were saying. He was given a small desk in a shared office, so that he might contribute some writing. He never thought it would ultimately end in his joining the staff, let alone hosting. Making the show his own requires patience, though he didnt understand this when he first arrived. When I started, I had lofty ideas of what I was going to do, he says, and I thought I would do it within 100 days, and I would change everything. Fast and all at once wasnt going to work. I learned, Noah says. The show was my Guantanamo. Nor is the writing staffs task easy. Its very difficult writing for me, he says. You are writing for a biracial South African, who is from a world you cannot lock down. You cannot understand my experience. It is the black experience, but its a different black experience. So, to help his audience understand, he did what only he could do, and wrote the story of his childhood. Whats in a name? Well, a lot, actually. So much so, 60 percent of voters in North Wildwood recently rejected a push to change the citys name back to Anglesea. Understanding Angleseas origins, which comes from the Anglesey Islands in Wales, is part of digging into toponymy the study of place names a topic Lee Ireland, author of Place Names of the Jersey Shore: Why Did They Name it That? knows all about. You could really say it was lifelong in the making because some of the oldest entries in there date back to when my late father would take us fishing and crabbing in the bay waters behind Ocean City and Margate, said the Egg Harbor Township resident. The book covers 300 names around Atlantic and Cape May counties, almost half of which Ireland said are references to people, while others took their names from geographic features or Native American roots. In his research, he said, a few stuck out that were surprising, such as the Mullica River, which he always thought derived from a Native American word. Come to find out, it was named after a Swede, Eric Mullica, who was the European to discover it, he said. Other origins of town names, and their settlers, can be equally surprising: Absecon (Atlantic County) Absecon is a Algonquin Indian word that means Little, on the other side of water, according to Irelands sources. Atlantic City (Atlantic County) Named, unsurprisingly, after the Atlantic Ocean. However, Irelands book notes that other old names included Absecum Beach, Further Island, Faraway Island, Leeds Plantation and Absecum Island. Bargaintown (Atlantic County) June Sheridan of the Greate Egg Harbor Township Historical Society jokes that the name didnt come from great bargains. Theres a lot of legend and lore but mainly the one is James Somers had slaves and lived on what is now the Linwood side of Egg Harbor Township, Sheridan said. He supposedly made a deal with his slaves after they finished working in the fields for him, if they built a walkway or a dam across the Patcong Creek, he would supposedly set them free. Beesleys Point (Cape May County) William Goldin, fleeing Ireland after the defeat of King James II, became the first settler. According to Press archives, Goldins Point sticks until 171 when it becomes Willets Point and then Stites Point in 1750. Not until 1803, when Thomas Beesley becomes owner, does the name endure. Brigantine (Atlantic County) Originally known as the shoals to New England whalers who built temporary shacks on he beach, Brigantine took its name after a shipwreck in 1710, according to Irelands book. Buena, Buena Vista Township (Atlantic County) Buena Vista, Spanish for good view, takes its name after the Battle of Buena Vista in Mexico during the Mexican-American War. Its origins didnt surprise Ireland at all when he came across it during his research. We had a dog in the fight, American soldiers involved. We were taking injuries, theres a lot of bravado going on, he said of the war. The same thing is true for Rio Grande, there was a lot of battles taking place along that river. Cape May (Cape May County) When Dutch explorer Cornelius Jacobsen Mey arrived to the peninsula by boat in 1622, he liked it so much he gave it his name. Egg Harbor (Atlantic County) Egg Harbor City, Egg Harbor Township, Little Egg Harbor Township, Great Egg Harbor Bay, Egg Habor Bay theres a lot of Egg Harbors in South Jersey to say the least. But the name doesnt come from the smell of the bay at low tide. Ireland found that Dutch explorers, again, get the credit after they dubbed the area Eyren Haven, Harbor of Eggs, for the sea bird and turtle nests filled with eggs. The Dutch explorer in question who enjoyed the view? Cornelius Jacobsen Mey again gets credit for that name, Sheridan said. Ocean City (Cape May County) Ocean City was originally called Pecks Beach after whaler John Peck. It was later renamed in 1879 by three brothers Samuel Wesley, James and Erza Lake along with Methodist minister William Burrell, according to Irelands book. The men hoped Ocean City could become a temperance resort. Sea Isle City (Cape May County) Called Ludlam Bay, the town has a connection to Vineland through shared founder Charles Landis. The town was originally laid out to include canals as a little Venice of sorts but didnt seem to pan out. According to Press archives, Landis wasnt just a prolific land developer; he was a murderer too. After shooting a newspaper editor in the back of the head, Landis was later acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity around 1875. Ship Bottom (Ocean County) Bill Shannon, volunteer at the Ocean County Historical Society, said that Vivian Zinkins book Place names of Ocean County from 1609 to 1849 points to an actual ship bottom after a wreck washed up along the shore. Supposedly, a rich Tuckerton Quaker found a survivor inside the bottom of the boat. Who the survivor was varies in different accounts. Somers Point (Atlantic County) Named after the Somers family, who were early settlers of the area. We were called Somerset Plantation, then Summers Point, then eventually Somers Point after the Somers family, said Sally Hastings, president of the Somers Point Historical Society. One of the most notable citizens, Richard Somers, whose great-grandfather built Somers Mansion on Shore Road, fought and died in the Barbary War after an explosion on his ship the Intrepid. Vineland (Cumberland County) According to Press archives, founder Charles Landis recruited Italian grape-growers to the area because it was ideal for vineyards, taking on the moniker Vineland. However, Landis wanted the area to remain alcohol-free, which led dentist Thomas Bramwell Welch to invent an unfermented grape juice in 1869. The juice company eventually moved, but the name stuck. Wildwood (Cape May County) According to Irelands book, Wildwood likely got its name from its wild vegetation. But before there was a Wildwood, there was a Holly Beach, which also took is name from its robust plant life. Holly Beach was formed in 1885. Holly Beach went from Ceder Avenue down to Cresse (Avenue), said North Wildwood City historian Scott Jett. Holly Beach was formed through several investors, including Aaron Andrew, who came to the area to improve the health of his wife, Sarah, and created the Holly Beach Improvement Co. Andrew became friendly with other investors Joseph Taylor and John Burk, who was friendly with Charles Landis. Small world? But the men werent the only Vinelanders scouting out the five-mile island. Brothers Philip, Latimer and Thompson Baker turned their eyes to Wildwood after finding development success in Vineland, developing their own Wildwood Redevelopment Company. In 1895, the area between 26th and Cedar was incorporated as the borough of Wildwood. Then in 1912, Wildwood and Holly Beach combined, they consolidated, to form Wildwood, Jett said. Further south, Turtle Gut Inlet, which ran from the Atlantic Ocean to Sunset Lake in Wildwood Crest, was once the site of a naval battle against the British forces during the Revolutionary War. Though the patriots were victorious, the spot was later filled with sand, connecting Five Mile Beach with Two Mile Beach in the 1920s. Vadells shooter killed, officer testifies {child_byline}VINCENT JACKSON Staff Writer {/child_byline} MAYS LANDING An Atlantic County Prosecutors Office investigator on Monday said the suspect who shot Atlantic City Police Officer Joshlee Vadell, 29, in the head was the same man killed when Vadells partner returned fire. And the gun allegedly used to shoot Vadell was reported stolen out of another state, Lt. Thomas Finan testified at a probable-cause hearing in Superior Court for one of two alleged accomplices, Millville resident Martel D. Chisolm. The testimony revealed some additional details from the Sept. 3 shooting near the Caesars Atlantic City parking garage that injured Vadell. Prosecutors are pursuing attempted-murder charges against Chisolm and Demetris Cross, who will have a probable-cause hearing in December. Finan testified Jerome Damon, 25, of Camden, had the gun when prosecutors allege he, Cross and Chisolm robbed three victims at about 2:30 a.m. as Vadell drove past. One of the victims yelled, Hey, they are robbing us, Finan said. Police have said Vadell was shot when he and his partner got out of their car to investigate the robbery. Witnesses said they heard a pop, and Damon, the person shooting at Vadell, was running, Finan said. Vadells partner, who has not been identified, returned fire and killed Damon, police said. Assistant Prosecutor Seth Levy argued Chisolms participation in the robbery also put him on the hook for attempted murder. Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury heard enough Monday to decide the attempted murder case against Chisolm should move forward.{span class=print_trim}(tncms-asset)104affe0-a90b-11e6-a4dd-00163ec2aa77(/tncms-asset) {/span} Chisolms lawyer, Robin Kay Lord, said after hearing testimony from Finan that she didnt hear any facts suggesting Chisolm was involved in an attempted murder and very little evidence as far as her client and a robbery. Under cross examination from Lord, Finan said Chisolm never displayed a gun. Chisolms fingerprints were not found on anything, and the gun cannot be seen during the robbery on video footage, Finan said. The gun that was recovered was reported stolen from another state and was found in the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino parking lot, Finan said. Information from the victims along with upward of a dozen video surveillance recordings police looked at led to the identification of Chisolm, Finan said. Chisolm was arrested 12 to 14 hours after the incident, Finan said. Chisolm and co-defendant Cross, 28, of Bridgeton, are being held on $750,000 bail each at the Atlantic County jail. The men also face robbery and weapons charges. Cross is scheduled for a probable-cause hearing Dec. 12, but that may change based on the availability of the attorneys. Vadell was discharged Nov. 8 from the Drucker Brain Injury Unit at MossRehab in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. The two suspects were arrested by State Police on Sept. 3. In addition to attempted murder, Chisolm and Cross are each charged with three counts of robbery, two counts of conspiracy to commit robbery, two counts of possession of a weapon (firearm) for an unlawful purpose and two counts of conspiracy to commit possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose. A GoFundMe account called This Blue Life Matters has been set up for Vadell and his family. The goal is currently $200,000. More than 1,259 people had donated $123,056 as of Monday. {child_tagline} {/child_tagline} PLEASANTVILLE The Police Department has been denied a federal grant that would have allowed it to fund a gunshot-audio detection system. But police Chief Sean Riggin said they arent giving up and will apply for the grant again next year. Riggin said the grant would help cover the $560,000 cost of the ShotSpotter system for three years. ShotSpotter uses sensors to triangulate sounds and determine whether they are gunshots or some other noise and then alerts officers to the location of the gunshots. The overwhelming majority of Atlantic County shootings are happening in Atlantic City and Pleasantville, and Atlantic City is tracking these shootings and we are not, said Riggin, who prepared the grant. Pleasantville police hold second Coffee with a Cop event PLEASANTVILLE Residents and police officers got together Friday afternoon to share a cup o The Police Department applied for the Technology Information for Public Safety grant through the US Department of Justice in April shortly after a bullet entered a home on Franklin Boulevard and struck Olga Ceron, 48, in the foot while she held her 8-month-old grandson, David. The Atlantic City Police Department deployed ShotSpotter in May 2013 with funding from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. Riggin said the lack of ShotSpotter creates an intelligence gap in Pleasantville when it comes to detecting crime. So far this year, the city has seen 95 shooting incidents and two shooting homicides, said Capt. Matthew Hartman. Pleasantville saw five shooting homicides last year. Joshlee Vadell fundraisers include tattoos, food and raffles Multiple fundraising drives will be held this weekend for wounded Atlantic City police Offic Riggin said 60 TIPS grant applications were submitted nationwide and just six grants of $500,000 were awarded this year. The citys application did not include a mechanism for sharing intelligence from ShotSpotter, Riggin said, adding the next application will. The department just signed an agreement with the State Police Regional Operations Intelligence Center to assign a full-time detective to the facility to assist with investigations in the city. These crimes are so related and people are migrating from Atlantic City into Pleasantville to perpetuate violence and theres no help for us for ShotSpotter, Mayor Jesse Tweedle said. We are not going to give up on that ShotSpotter. We are going to get that. We need it, and I think about it every time I hear of a shooting. The Dutch counterterrorism coordinator is warning that if the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate collapses it could trigger an increase in militant fighters returning home and compound the threat of an attack in the Netherlands. The warning came Monday in the latest Terrorist Threat Assessment for the Netherlands, which left the threat level in the country unchanged at level four on a five-step scale. Level four means that there is a real chance of an attack, but there are "no specific indications that an attack is being prepared." The Netherlands hasn't been hit by a major attack by Islamic extremists such as those in Belgium and France, but the government warns that both IS and al-Qaida have a presence in the nation of 17 million. Search Keywords: Short link: PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account. OCEAN CITY On New Years Eve, Mark Soifer will spend his last hours as Ocean Citys publicist doing what he usually does: organizing, directing and probably cracking jokes. In another 10 years, they wont remember me, he said, laughing. But it would be hard to forget the man who for decades found success boosting the city with wildly original promotions that reflected his personality and humor. Hermit crab beauty pageants. A quiet festival that includes a yawn-along to the tune of Beautiful Dreamer. Marks legacy is his uniqueness and his kind touch to so many people. Hes touched thousands of people, and hes brought such great ideas to Ocean City, said Michele Gillian, executive director of the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce. Soifer, 84, who retires at the end of the year, came to Ocean City in the 1960s to help the late Jim Penland, who was organizing a Boardwalk Art Show. In 1971, Soifer began working full time for the city. That was the same year now-retired City Clerk Linda MacIntyre started. Early on, Soifer decided to go all-in on hermit crabs, starting with the Miss Crustacean hermit crab beauty pageant. We thought, Is this really going to bring people in? But it did. And it made the city what it is because of all of his innovative ideas, MacIntyre said. Who would have thought that a hermit crab would have brought so many people in? Soifer said not everyone was a fan of the crustacean. One time, right after I started Martin Mollusk, I was walking up the steps (at City Hall) and some guy yelled, How can you have a hermit crab represent Ocean City? Soifer said. He wasnt deterred. Soon, Martin Z. Mollusk became synonymous with the city. In an Ocean City sweatshirt and a hat from NASCRAB the official sponsor of Ocean Citys annual hermit crab races Soifer set up for the kickoff to this years Quiet Festival last week. The event, another of Soifers wacky ideas, was held in a park named for Soifer directly across from City Hall. The site previously housed the City Hall Annex building, where Soifer worked for more than 30 years. This is my favorite place, Soifer said of the park. This is like an oasis in the downtown. Over the years, Soifer has started events like Weird Week which includes his favorite contest, Little Mr. and Miss Chaos, inspired by his own grandchildren the Doo Dah Parade, Martin Z. Mollusk Day, the King and Queen of Plop and, most recently, Mr. Mature America. The downtown was a particular beneficiary of Soifers wild ideas. He has just such a great mind, said Walt Hohman, owner of Wards Pastry, which has been on Asbury Avenue for about 90 years. From his Trash Buster character to the Doo Dah Parade, Hohman said, Soifer always had fresh ideas. Its great for business. It brings people to the town and gets people talking about it. Hes just a marketing guru as far as keeping the name out there. Thats what makes Americas Greatest Family Resort, Hohman said. Some people might say there is no one else quite like Mark Soifer although his twin brother, Jesse, might disagree. Hermine washed out beach tag sales for many shore towns A Labor Day weekend storm that mostly skirted the Jersey Shore may have put a damper on what Hes probably one of the most creative people Ive ever worked with, said Ron MacCloskey, of Edison, who often portrays various characters during Soifers events, including Dr. Frankenstein. In recent years, the two brought a Frankenstein exhibit to the city library during the month of October. For a long time, Soifer was a one-man show, supported by City Hall staff. Last year, Ocean City hired Doug Bergen to serve as public information officer. Ocean City Theatre Company Director Michael Hartman has also joined to assist with special events. Each week, Soifer writes a column about what is happening in Ocean City, giving tidbits of history and adding humor. He has also written eight books of poetry. He said he will continue to write after he retires. I know Im never going to be a famous poet, but I get a lot of pleasure writing poetry, Soifer said. Ocean City historian Fred Miller said he looked to Soifer for guidance when he began doing public relations for the Beach Patrol. Since then, Miller has written nine books with his wife, Susan, who died last year. Soifer was featured in several of them, including Local Legends of Ocean City. Soifer was honored as Citizen of the Year in 1993 and Citizen of the Decade in 2013, despite never having lived in Ocean City. Soifer and his wife, Toby, live in Vineland. He has commuted to work for 45 years. Thats about 300 miles a week, he said. He said he never moved to Ocean City because of his four children who were very devoted to Vineland and due to the high cost of living on the island. How much are homes selling for near you? Transactions are from county property records. Settlement dates are listed; deed filings may This year is the 25th anniversary of Ocean Citys First Night celebration, which Soifer helped usher in. Inspired by Bostons alcohol-free, family-friendly First Night, this years celebration will be Soifers last official event working for the city. I just want to be here and see it be a success, he said. The event has grown tremendously since it began and now sees about 10,000 attendees a year. Its just one of many of Soifers ideas to grow the city into a year-round destination. Well, I helped, he said. UPDATE: Kaitlyn George was found safe as of Wednesday morning, university police said. Shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday, university police got confirmation that the Houston Police Department located George, alone and OK, at a fast food restaurant in Houston. On Nov. 11, George was seen on security video entering a Greyhound bus station in Baltimore, and got on a bus that was headed toward Norfolk, Virginia. Originally posted Nov. 14: Police are still searching for a 21-year-old student from southern Ocean County who went missing from the University of Maryland Thursday, university police said Sunday night. Kaitlyn George, who is from Toms River, was reported missing to the University of Maryland Police Department around 6:36 p.m. Thursday, according to a statement from police. University police said in the statement that George was supposed to meet a friend at Eppley Recreation Center, the gymnasium on the campus, around 5 p.m. to go hiking. When George didn't show up, the friend went to the police station to report her missing, police said. George was last seen by her roommates leaving her dorm building, Allegany Hall, after 4 p.m. with a black and white camping backpack and pink canvas bag. University of Maryland police released a timeline of what the investigation has revealed so far. Security video footage shows George leaving Allegany Hall around 4:42 p.m. Thursday. Around 4:34 p.m., a white taxi cab was seen entering the campus via the South Gate. Police believe George entered a white taxi cab at 4:44 p.m. in front of another dorm building, Annapolis Hall, by herself and on her own accord, the statement from police said. Police said after investigators interviewed the taxi driver, they believe George was dropped off in front of a marina in the Federal Hill section of Baltimore, about 30 miles from the College Park campus. UMPD met with Baltimore City Police Department and reviewed security footage of the marina area, which showed George getting into an SUV, on her own accord and by herself, the statement said. Police said a witness confirmed seeing George Friday morning around 8:40 a.m. on a Charm City Circulator bus. UPDATE: Photo of missing UMD student, Kaitlyn George leaving Allegany Hall on 11/10/16, at approx. 4:42 p.m. https://t.co/xTDlVYlRMf pic.twitter.com/Pmc6cMX011 UMD Police Dept. (@UMPD) November 11, 2016 George is described as 5-foot-3-inches, about 121 pounds, with hazel eyes and blonde hair. She was last seen wearing black leggings, a green, long sleeved jacket, and bright colored mid-calf socks. We have no reason to suspect foul play in this case, University of Maryland Police said in a statement. Our team of investigators will continue to work on this case until we have located Kaitlyn and have verified that she is okay. Anyone who has information about Georges whereabouts should call the University of Maryland Police Department at 301-405-3555. Social Security increase doesnt reflect senior costs I would like to thank the Social Security Administration for the gigantic 0.03 percent cost-of-living increase, which is much better than last years increase of 0 percent. The reason given for these miniscule increases is that the cost of living has not gone up. Well, heres a tip, bucko. The cost of living for senior citizens is not the same as it is for younger people. In my case, out-of-pocket medical for my wife and I exceeded $13,000. This is a hard burden for people on a fixed income. In addition, we have to pay others for services that we can no longer do ourselves. So I recommend senior citizens invest in cat food. That stock should be soaring, since more and more of us will be eating it as a main course. Donald L. French Bridgeton Popular vote alone would ignore many Americans The argument that the popular vote instead of the electoral system should determine an election winner would only make sense if each state had the same number of residents. As it is now, presidential candidates would campaign only in California, New York and other high-population states. Smaller populated states would never see a candidate, such as states in the middle of the country. California and New York are traditionally Democratic blue states and we would be a single political party country without any debates or different points of views to consider. The current electoral system is the only fair way to get the entire countrys populace involved and to consider the wants and needs of each demographic area. If it aint broke, dont fix it. Robert E. Dwyer Mays Landing Special auto policy hits law-abiding drivers hard In 2009, a law allowing a special, personal-injury-protection-only auto policy was added to N.J. motor vehicle laws with no regard for law-abiding citizens. This law allows certain drivers to legally register and operate a vehicle without any liability coverage whatsoever. If you are hit by such people, your vehicle damage is your problem. If you try to file a claim with your own carrier, you must pay a deductible as outlined in your policy, you are subject to surcharge fees for at least three years, and if you do this you cannot change insurance companies in the near future as you have become a high-risk driver. After 50 years of accident-free driving, this happened to me. Repair estimates are from $2,700 to 3,000 with a $1,000 deductible plus three years of approximately $400-plus in surcharges. The choice is pay for the damage myself or pay at least $2,200.00. This is another fine example of the liberal state Legislatures total disregard for law-abiding voters of New Jersey. We voters have no one to blame but ourselves. We keep re-electing these scoundrels. Its time for change. Bud Hughes North Wildwood From Afghanistan to Algeria, militants plan to use Donald Trump's shock U.S. presidential victory as a propaganda tool to bring new fighters to their battlefields. Taliban commanders and Islamic State group supporters say Trump's campaign trail rhetoric against Muslims - at one point calling for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States - will play perfectly in their recruitment efforts, especially for disaffected youth in the West. "This guy is a complete maniac. His utter hate towards Muslims will make our job much easier because we can recruit thousands," Abu Omar Khorasani, a top IS group commander in Afghanistan, told Reuters. Trump has talked tough against militant groups on the campaign trail, promising to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War." The president-elect later toned down his call for a total ban on Muslim entry to say he would temporarily suspend immigration from countries that have "a history of exporting terrorism." But he has offered few details on his plans to combat various radical groups, including IS group, the Taliban and al Qaeda, which represent a wide spectrum of political views. "He does not differentiate between militant and moderate Islamist trends and, at the same time, he overlooks (the fact) that his extremism will generate extremism in return," Iraq's powerful Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said in a statement. Sadr's political reform movement, which commands thousands of followers, is a staunch opponent of the radical Sunni movements IS group and al Qaeda, and unlike them has not waged or promoted attacks in the West. The United States has seen a handful of attacks inspired by Islamist militant groups, including the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who called a TV station swearing allegiance to IS group and the killing of 14 people at a San Bernadino, California, social services agency last December. U.S. officials have warned the country will likely face a higher risk of similar attacks as IS group urges supporters to launch attacks at home instead of joining its fight in the Middle East. "Our leaders were closely following the U.S. election but it was unexpected that the Americans will dig their own graves and they did so," said IS's Khorasani, who described President Barack Obama as a moderate infidel with at least a little brain in comparison to Trump. Al Qaeda, which has proven resilient more than 15 years after launching the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, has yet to comment on Trump's victory. The militant group will likely respond after Trump's first speeches as president, anticipating they will be able to exploit his comments to win support, said Hisham al Hashemi, who advises the Iraqi government on Sunni militant movements. "Al Qaeda is known for its recruitment strategy that heavily quotes speeches of the White House and other Western officials," he told Reuters. Trump's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statements from the militants. Even if Trump tones down his anti-Muslim comments when he takes office in January, analysts say his statements during the campaign trail were enough to fuel the militants' propaganda machine. "Militants will still use those quotes," said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. "The key thing militant groups, particularly Islamic State group and al Qaeda, depend on for recruitment purposes is convincing Muslims in the Western world that the West hates them and won't ever accept them as part of their society." A senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan said the group, whose resurgence is undermining efforts to end America's longest war, had kept track of all of Trump's speeches and anti-Muslim comments. "If he does what he warned in his election campaign, I am sure it will provoke Muslim Ummah (community) across the world and militant organizations can exploit it," said the militant leader, who declined to be identified because of strict Taliban policy that only its official spokesman can make statements. Shortly after Trump's victory, several militant sympathizers took to social media to declare this as an opportunity for their cause. "The dog Trump's victory in the U.S. elections is a gold mine for Muslims not a setback if they know how to use it," tweeted @alhlm200, who regularly posts statements in support of Islamic State. And in Algeria, @salil_chohada, an Islamic State supporter whose name on the Twitter account is Mohamed Aljazairie, said: "Congratulations to the Muslim nation over the infidel Trump's victory. His stupid statements alone serve us." Search Keywords: Short link: 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. President Barack Obama spoke by phone on Monday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto about the economy, organized crime and migration, the White House said in a statement. The presidents agreed to "take steps to solidify the relationship and institutionalize mechanisms of cooperation," the White House said. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt will hold its first international tender for gold mining concessions since 2009 in early December, Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla said at an economic conference on Monday. Geologists say that Egypt has mineral-rich territory that could be ripe for mining, but investors have said that commercial terms offered in previous tenders were unattractive and have kept the sector underdeveloped. Last year the government said it wanted mining to increase its contribution to GDP to more than 5 percent from the less than 1 percent currently. Egypt, which has had to contend with a severe dollar shortage since tourists and investors fled after the country's 2011 uprising, announced this year that it would hold a bidding round for new mining concessions but the tender has been delayed repeatedly. Molla said that Centamin's Sukari mine, Egypt's sole gold-exporting mine, had paid the government $40 million in profits and $80 million in concession fees since last July. The December bidding round would be the first since 2009, when a global gold-mining boom brought a handful of first-time investors to Egypt despite what some said were poor commercial terms. Most of these investors left after the 2011 uprising, driven away by growing political turmoil and falling global gold prices. Search Keywords: Short link: LONDON, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Society of Authors and the Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2016 Educational Writers' Award, the UK's only award for educational writing which stimulates and enhances the learning experience. The three outstanding books on this year's shortlist bring alive the rich language of Shakespeare, the endless possibilities of art, and the beautiful intricacies of maths for readers aged between 11-18 years. OXFORD ILLUSTRATED SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY Authors: David & Ben Crystal Illustrator: Kate Bellamy (Publisher: Oxford University Press) This illustrated dictionary, compiled by the renowned English language expert David Crystal and his Shakespearean actor and producer son Ben, aims to unlock the mysteries of Shakespeare's world, words and language. Over 4,000 words are clearly explained, with examples from the twelve most-studied and performed plays, and the book also includes thematic sections which illuminate a wide range of topics from Armour and Colours to Occupations and Ships. Our judges said: Far more than a dictionary, this visually appealing treasure chest is fun as well as informative, and gives a real insight into Shakespeare's language and the rich world of his plays. With its wonderful variety of layout, colour and pace, you could spend hours with this book, dipping into the richness of Elizabethan life. There is an amazing range of information, from the finer points of swearing to the influence of cosmology and the details of armour. Whether you are encountering Shakespeare for the first time, or studying his work at A-level, it will help to make sense of the "unconsidered trifles" whilst also illuminating a world both familiar and strange. THE SCHOOL OF ART Author: Teal Triggs Illustrator: Daniel Frost (Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions) Learn how to make great art with this illustrated collection of forty informative lessons, which introduces the key principles underpinning all good design, from composition and colour to line, shape and perspective. Each lesson is led by one of the School of Art's five expert professors who together demonstrate key concepts never previously brought together in a children's art compendium, and the book also includes a wealth of suggestions for art activities. Our judges said: At a time when creative subjects are coming under increasing pressure in the secondary curriculum, this very well-executed book has enormous depth and breadth, and offers the opportunity for forty weeks of serious study and application for independently-minded students who would like to immerse themselves in the School of Art's friendly but challenging curriculum. Engagingly written, it is beautifully clear and light-hearted - but never childish, and has the potential both to build artists, and help the rest of us understand the techniques of the artworks we encounter. THIS IS NOT A MATHS BOOK: A SMART ART ACTIVITY BOOK Author: Anna Weltman Illustrators: Edward Cheverton & Ivan Hissey (Publisher: Ivy Kids) Discover how maths can be artistic, and art can be mathematical with this graphic activity book, full of drawing challenges that have a mathematical basis. From simple geometric patterns to fractal art, anamorphic art, and Celtic knots, discover the beauty in maths, and the maths in beauty. Whether you're a maths whizz or just a daring doodler, this book is a graphic guide to smart art. Our judges said: This is of course, a maths book; just not maths as you thought you knew it. With sheer visual pleasure on every page, it makes you itch to take up a pencil and get started on the designs. It's such an original idea: a book that marries art and maths and helps make sense of quite complex concepts without making you think you're doing anything in the slightest bit difficult. And it makes you so much more aware of the beauty of maths, and its close relationship to art. It taught us more about both subjects than we've learned in aeons! Now in its ninth year, the Educational Writers' Award was established in 2008 by the Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Society of Authors (SoA) "to celebrate educational writing that inspires creativity and encourages students to read widely and build up their understanding of a subject beyond the requirements of exam specifications". The 2016 Award focused on books for 11-18 year olds, published in 2014 and 2015. This year's judges are secondary school English teacher and author Jonathan Lomas; award-winning author and international expert on adolescence Nicola Morgan; and school librarian Nicky Ransley. The winner of the 2016 Educational Writers' Award will be announced at the All Party Writers Group (APWG) Winter Reception at the House of Commons on Tuesday 6th December. The winning author will receive a cheque for 2,000. #EWA16 EDITOR'S NOTES The Society of Authors (SoA) The Society of Authors is a trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, and has been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for more than a century. The SoA administers many other prizes and grants, including the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Betty Trask Award. It distributed more than 400,000 in prizes and grants in 2015. societyofauthors.org Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a not-for-profit organisation for the benefit of all types of writers. Owned by its members, the ALCS collects money due for secondary uses of writers' work. It is designed to support authors and their creativity, ensure they receive fair payment, and see their rights are respected. It promotes and teaches the principles of copyright and campaigns for a fair deal. Today we represent around 90,000 members, and since 1977 have paid over 400 million to writers. alcs.co.uk 2016 Educational Writers' Award #EWA16 SOURCE Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia Plantation Capital Berhad is proud to be the first company in Malaysia (and indeed the Asian market) to receive regulatory approval for its agarwood plantation investment programme. Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20161114/8521607402-a After initial approval in August 2016, Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) - the Companies Commission of Malaysia - has officially confirmed the final approval for the company to market its agarwood plantation investment programme both in Malaysia and on the international market, thereby establishing Asia Plantation Capital as the preeminent plantation management company in the region. SSM is a statutory body in Malaysia that regulates companies and businesses, and is the country's leading authority for the improvement of corporate governance, and compliance with businesses registration and corporate legislation. As an enforcement body, SSM lays down stringent guidelines, all of which have been met by Asia Plantation Capital for its plantation project in Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia. Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20161114/8521607402-b "We are very proud and honoured to be the first company in Asia to have been given official regulatory approval for our vertically integrated agarwood plantation investments," said Steve Watts, CEO, Asia Plantation Capital Berhad, "as we firmly believe that the industry as a whole needs comprehensive regulation. The Asia Plantation Capital Group has always led the way in promoting a regulated agarwood industry in Asia. It's taken a lot of hard work from our respective teams to ensure that our business model, at all stages of the process, is transparent, ethical, and meets the standards set by the SSM and our independent consultant. While this is a significant milestone for us as a company," Watts concluded, "we believe that all companies operating in the plantation investment sector in Asia should be regulated in this manner, not only for good corporate governance, but also for the protection of investors. As far as we're concerned, it's absolutely essential that the two go hand in hand." The agarwood plantation industry is growing at an exponential rate in Asia, and Asia Plantation Capital, with its ground-breaking and award-winning 'soil to oil' vertically integrated business model, is now the largest company in the region. The company has its own plantations, along with those it manages for private and institutional clients, as well as its own factories now producing a myriad of end products utilising the Oud that is produced from its agarwood trees. Asia Plantation Capital's proprietary inoculation and distillation systems have set new industry standards, and firmly established the company at the forefront of the sector. Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20161114/8521607402-c There have been breakthroughs recently in the anti-ageing consumer sector, and this is expected to greatly increase the demand for Oud in the pharmaceutical and skincare industries. Asia Plantation Capital is also at the cutting edge of a burgeoning body of scientific research into the effectiveness of Oud in the treatment of various forms of cancer. Credit goes to its Scientific Advisory Board, which is comprised of leading academics and industry experts. The current global market for pure Oud, Oud oils and wood chips is estimated to be US$12 billion per year, and this value is augmented by the US$40 billion per annum fragrance industry. The demand for sustainable supplies of pure Oud is surging, and, as it takes between seven and 15 years for plantations to yield commercial supplies, it comes as no surprise to see a dramatic increase in the number of companies offering investment and plantation management services. Experience and expertise, however, count for a great deal in the plantation sector, and Asia Plantation Capital has already proven itself to be an industry leader due to its ability to innovate and its recognition of the need for proprietary technologies. After extensive research, Asia Plantation Capital has established that only pure, natural Oud contains the compounds that have now been scientifically proven to be effective in the treatment of cancer and anti-ageing. This in turn has led to an increase in demand for the 'real thing', and an attendant increase in the need and demand for sustainable plantations. The international cosmetics and skincare industry alone is worth an estimated US$460 billion per annum (according to 2014 figures), with the global skincare industry alone estimated by statista.com to be in the region of US$121 billion for 2016. This has encouraged Asia Plantation Capital to form collaborations with highly-regarded Swiss skincare laboratories to create a new range of Oud-based active ingredients for the ever-expanding industry. Asia Plantation Capital and its group of associated companies are not to the only ones to have perceived the potential in a growing market, and this has driven the imperative to ensure that tight regulations are in place and adhered to, conforming to the relevant values of transparency and sustainability. It couldn't be more timely, therefore, for Asia Plantation Capital's agarwood investment programmes to receive the seal of approval from the Companies Commission of Malaysia, the country's principal corporate regulator. "We are very pleased that Asia Plantation Capital has met the very stringent regulatory standards imposed by the Companies Commission of Malaysia," said CT Choo, Asia Plantation Capital's legal counsel in Malaysia. "The regulator has been very positive in responding to Asia Plantation Capital's application, which is regarded as a fine example of the type of cutting-edge agroforestry sector development programme that Malaysia wants to encourage. We believe that all companies operating in this sector should be regulated, not only to protect investors, but also to ensure that only sustainable supplies of Oud enter the supply chain. The harvesting of wild agarwood trees was banned by CITES* in 2000, and the Aquilaria tree, from which agarwood is derived, is still an endangered species in the wild, with many companies and individuals still exploiting this illegal and unethical side of the industry. Asia Plantation Capital has set the right tone not only in seeking regulatory approval, but in proving that it has the systems and corporate infrastructure in place with which to meet all the requirements for obtaining it." Notes for Editors For further information, please contact:- Zaahira Muhammad Senior PR & Marketing Executive Email: zaahira@asiaplantationcapital.com Office: +6012-203-5344 Samantha Tham PR & Marketing Executive Email: samantha.tham@asiaplantationcapital.com Mobile: +65-9144-0933 * The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. About Asia Plantation Capital Berhad Asia Plantation Capital Berhad is part of the Asia Plantation Capital Group, which is one of the world's fastest growing plantation management companies, leading the way in sapling cultivation, forestry growth, pioneering inoculation methods, harvesting techniques, distillation methods and product processing, while bringing important economic benefits to local communities. About Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) is the Companies Commission of Malaysia, formed in April 2002 after a merger between the Registrar of Companies (ROC) and the Registrar of Businesses (ROB). It serves as an agency to incorporate companies and register businesses, and provides both company and business information to the Malaysian public. SSM comprehensively enforces business registration and corporate legislation compliance, and is responsible for monitoring all activities and developments in Malaysia's corporate and business sectors. Related Links https://www.asiaplantationcapital.com/ SOURCE Asia Plantation Capital Irregular migration has been a major concern for European policy-makers this year, which has seen migrant deaths in the Mediterranean hit a record 3,600 so far. Al-Ahram Arabic website spoke to Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, about ongoing cooperation between European and African states to combat irregular migration and human trafficking. Al-Ahram: What is the agenda of your visit to Egypt and what are the main topics you will discuss with Egyptian officials? Dimitris Avramopoulos: I believe Egypt and the European Union are natural partners and should develop dialogue and cooperation, particularly on the matters of both migration and security. My visit to Egypt aims at exploring the possibility to make steps in this direction and at exchanging preliminary views on the issues which are of common concern. Egypt plays a crucial role towards stability in the region, and strengthening Arab and EU ties. In times of populism I am very much concerned about the increasing xenophobia but also Islamophobia. Islam has contributed to the world's culture and this is recognised. AA: How do you regard the European policy towards accepting migrants, especially with the flow of Syrian migrants to different European nations? The countries of the European Union have been providing international protection to thousands of persons in need fleeing the Syrian and other conflicts. Meanwhile thousands of migrants were saved and rescued at sea while trying to reach Europe. Our efforts are focused at reducing the use of the irregular channels and dismantling the criminal smuggling organisations which promote and exploit them. Those that are in need of protection should use legal and safe channels to arrive to Europe. This is why the EU is continuing to invest in resettlement efforts. However, those not in need of international protection and who have no right to stay in Europe should be returned, in full respect of fundamental rights and in cooperation with the transit and origin countries. It is important to enhance and use the existing extensive legal migration channels on the basis of which migrants can come to Europe in an orderly and safe manner. This is why the EU is strengthening its cooperation with the third countries which are ready to engage on this common challenge. AA: Did you find the outcomes of the Valetta Summit suitable to the aggravation of the issue, and how far have these outcomes been implemented? DA: In November 2015, the Valletta Summit brought European and African heads of state and governments together for the first time to strengthen cooperation and address migration-related challenges and opportunities, guided by the principles of solidarity, partnership and shared responsibility. Valletta represented a step change in the way we engage with our partners. This was translated into a clear action plan. The European Union has been delivering on its commitments since then, in line with that action plan. We have set up a special Trust Fund for Urgent Actions in Africa, which we immediately put in use. To date more than 993 million Euros have been approved by the operational committees of the Trust Fund. These projects finance actions in all areas of migration management and in address root causes of migration. Many of them also address the needs of asylum seekers and refugees. We have also taken steps to increase legal channels for mobility and migration, notably for categories such as students, researchers, and highly skilled persons. We are now expecting that the partner countries deliver with the same determination on their commitment, notably in the areas of irregular migration and return. In June the EU launched a Partnership Framework with third countries under the Agenda for Migration which, in line with the Valletta principles, tries to foster progress in all these areas in the cooperation with some priority countries. AA: What would be an effective framework through which the countries of origin and the countries of destination could face the major issue of human trafficking and smuggling? The compacts that we are developing with the five priority countries selected so far under our new Partnership Framework are tailor-made, depending on the context and needs of each partner country. Addressing migrant smuggling is a key element in that, alongside addressing the root causes of irregular migration, continuing to offer support to further socio-economic development in the country of origin, improving return and reintegration processes as well as better border management. AA: How do you regard the current cooperation between Egypt (a transit country) and the EU to face the challenge of irregular immigration? And how can this cooperation be enhanced? DA: Egypt is a strategic partner for the EU and we need to enhance our cooperation. At this moment Egypt represents a major country of origin, of transit and of destination for migrants and refugees. Many of these migrants and refugees reach the EU from Egypt through irregular channels. I believe it is of our common interest to discuss and identify the most appropriate way to prevent the use of the irregular channels and improve the management of the overall flows, by addressing in a balanced and comprehensive manner all the issues at stake, in the interest of the EU, of Egypt and of the migrants and refugees involved. AA: It goes without saying that dealing with migrants in Europe is not only challenging economically but security wise as well, so how do you preserve the balance between dealing with such issue while preserving the security of European citizens? DA: Migration and security challenges are both questions that I am responsible for as a European Commissioner. However, we should not mix or amalgamate refugees and terrorists. At the same time, our tolerance and openness should never come at the expense of the security of our society and our citizens. This is an important balance that we must keep. Managing our external borders better lies at the centre of this balance. We want to ensure and facilitate legitimate and bona fide travel to the European Union, while reducing irregular migration and also fighting security risks at our external borders. AA: How do you regard Egyptian policies related to dealing with the resettlement of migrants and refugees? DA: Egypt plays a very important regional role when it comes to managing the migratory crisis that affects us all. We know that continuing violence and instability in Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and South Sudan as well as Syria result in increasing arrivals in Egypt. I am aware that this is a challenge, and the EU is willing to support Egypt, also to improve its resettlement efforts. AA: How does the EU respond to the need for more aid for Egypt from the international community to deal with the millions of refugees, since Egypt is facing serious economic challenges? DA: The EU is already supporting several third countries which have shown readiness to provide effective protection and hospitality to asylum seekers and refugees in accordance with international standards, in a spirit of responsibility sharing. Several regional development and protection programmes were also developed in this endeavour, including in Northern African countries. The specific assistance that the EU offers to any third partner country takes into account the overall framework of those mutual relations, and Egypt is no exception to that. Search Keywords: Short link: PILSEN, Czech Republic, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A major player from the Czech Republic, Doosan Skoda Power, a steam turbine manufacturer backed by its Korean parent company, has been strengthening its presence in the Southeast Asia market in recent years. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161110/437913 ) It has been almost a year when Doosan Skoda Power was awarded a contract to supply a turbine set with an output of 198 MW for the Grati combined cycle power station on the Indonesian island of Java. Martin Baxa, Head of Sales - Asia at Doosan Skoda Power for New Build projects, is looking for new contracts in the Southeast Asia region. He manages the entire business development, ranging from identifying the opportunities through to contract performance. What is Doosan Skoda Power's position in Southeast Asia? The Doosan Group holds a firm position in the Southeast Asia market, supported by some successful installations such as a 700MW turbine for Cirebon, Indonesia, and a 700MW turbine in Gheco-One, Thailand. Being a part of the Group and a steam turbine supplier, Doosan Skoda Power thus has opportunities to pursue its business in that region thanks to the Group's good reputation. We are completely confident in our product. We are one of the few suppliers having their own proprietary technology. In addition, we have concentrated all that we need in a single place from the perspective of both turbine manufacture and development. This helps us to respond flexibly to the developments in every project and to the needs on new markets. Which markets in that region are you planning to enter in the foreseeable future? Most of the Southeast Asia markets tend to grow and hold a potential for the future. From our perspective, Indonesia is the priority; we have signed a contract for delivering a turbine set to the Grati CCGT power plant in that country. Where do you see more opportunities, in the private or in the public sector? It is a combination of both. Indonesia and Thailand have their major local manufacturers and private investors. On the other hand, the Philippines are a country where the energy market is fragmented among a fairly large number of private energy producers. What is Doosan Skoda Power's advantage over the relevant competitors on this market? There is no question that it is the combination of the Doosan and Skoda brands. The market correctly regards us as an Asian firm thanks to our connection with the Doosan Group, which is relatively well-known on the market as the supplier of large complete plants. We seek to leverage this reputation by way of supplementing Doosan's focus on complete plants and also as a supplier of self-standing turbines based on our proprietary technology. In parallel with this, when it comes to steam turbines, vast number of customers are similarly aware of the Skoda brand. Those of them who know the brand view it favourably. This creates a very positive combination for the future. You can find the whole interview with Martin Baxa, Doosan Skoda Power here . Contact: Margit Petrickova, Doosan Skoda Power, +420-378-185 000, doosanskodapower@doosan.com SOURCE Doosan Skoda Power DUBLIN, Nov 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of Jain PharmaBiotech's new report "Cytogenetics - Technologies, Markets and Companies" to their offering. This report deals with cytogenetics in a broader sense rather than the classical use mainly to describe the chromosome structure and identify abnormalities related to disease. In the age of molecular biology, it is also referred to as molecular cytogenetics. The scope of cytogenetics includes several technologies besides fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), comparative genomic hybridization (CGH), and multicolor FISH. Molecular cytogenetics includes application of nanobiotechnology, microarrays, real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), in vivo imaging, and single molecule detection. Bioinformatics is described briefly as it plays an important role in analyzing data from many of these technologies. FISH remains the single most important technology in cytogenetics. Several innovations are described of which the most important are single copy FISH, in vivo FISH (imaging of nucleic acids in living cells) and nanotechnology-based FISH. The unique character of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) allows these probes to hybridize to target nucleic acid molecules more rapidly and with higher affinity and specificity compared with DNA probes. PNA-FISH is more suited for rapid diagnosis of infections. RNA-FISH and locked nucleic acids (LNAs), are also described. The chapter on markets provides a global perspective of the cytogenetics business in the major markets: US, Western Europe (including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK), and Japan. The total figures for the market are also broken out according to the technologies and major disease areas in which they are applied. Markets figure are given for the year 2015 and estimates are made for the years 2020 and 2025. The report includes summary profiles of 69 companies relevant to cytogenetics along with their 80 collaborations. Companies developing innovative technologies as well as those supplying equipment/services/reagents are identified.The report text is supplemented with 27 Tables and 9 figures. Selected 200 references are included in the bibliography. Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary 1. Introduction 2. Technologies used for cytogenetics 3. Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization 4. Genomic Technologies relevant to Cytogenetics 5. Molecular Imaging & Single Molecular Detection 6. Role of Nanobiotechnology in Cytogenetics 7. Biomarkers and Cytogenetics 8. Applications of Cytogenetics 9. Cancer Cytogenetics 10. Cytogenetics Markets 11. Companies 12. References For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/zfzmjn/cytogenetics 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 Company Honored for the Fifth Time with 20th Place Ranking RACINE, Wisconsin, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SC Johnson, maker of trusted consumer brands like Glade, Duck, Pledge and Mr. Muscle, today announced that it was named as one of the 25 World's Best Multinational Workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute, the world's largest annual study of workplace excellence. SC Johnson earned the 20th spot in the ranking. It is the company's fifth year on this list. "The single most important part of SC Johnson's success is the talented and committed people of this company. It is an important part of who we are to strive to create a great place to work in which people can be inspired and thrive," said Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. "To work hard to create a workplace of respect, integrity and inclusion. And to provide people with the resources and tools necessary to further careers. We are thrilled to be named a Best Multinational Workplace." Since 2011, Great Place to Work has identified the top organizations that create great workplaces in multiple countries in which they operate through the publication of the World's Best Multinational Workplaces list. To be considered eligible, companies must appear on a minimum of five national best workplaces lists, have a minimum of 5,000 employees worldwide, and 40 percent of their workforce must be based outside of the country in which they are headquartered. The results of those national lists, in addition to extra points awarded for the number of countries an organization surveyed employees in, and the percentage of the company's global workforce represented by those surveys, are combined to create a top 25 ranking. "These organizations are well known because their brands appear around the globe. But behind these successful brands are high-trust workplaces where the vast majority of employees feel valued, well treated and that their work makes a difference," said Kim Peters, Executive Vice President of Great Place to Work. "Congratulations to these globally great organizations!" Great Place to Work Around the World This recognition is the latest in a series of achievements that SC Johnson has received from the Great Place to Work Institute. The company has received awards in the following countries/regions: Argentina Brazil Central America / Costa Rica / Germany Italy Latin America Multinational Mexico Nigeria Poland United Kingdom Rio Venezuela SC Johnson was also included in Working Mother magazine's list of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" for the 28th time, and received a perfect score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. About Great Place to Work Great Place to Work is the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures. Through proprietary assessment tools, advisory services, and certification programs, including Best Workplaces lists and workplace reviews, Great Place to Work provides the benchmarks, framework, and expertise needed to create, sustain, and recognize outstanding workplace cultures. In the United States, Great Place to Work produces the annual Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For" and a series of Great Place to Work Best Workplaces lists, including lists for Millennials, Women, Diversity, Small and Medium Companies and over a half dozen different industries. About SC Johnson SC Johnson is a family company dedicated to innovative, high-quality products, excellence in the workplace and a long-term commitment to the environment and the communities in which it operates. Based in the USA, the company is one of the world's leading manufacturers of household cleaning products and products for home storage, air care, pest control and shoe care, as well as professional products. It markets such well-known brands as GLADE, KIWI, OFF!, PLEDGE, RAID, SCRUBBING BUBBLES, SHOUT, WINDEX and ZIPLOC in the U.S. and beyond, with brands marketed outside the U.S. including AUTAN, TANA, BAMA, BAYGON, BRISE, KABIKILLER, KLEAR, MR MUSCLE and RIDSECT. The 130-year-old company, which generates $10 billion in sales, employs approximately 13,000 people globally and sells products in virtually every country around the world. www.scjohnson.com Related Links http://www.scjohnson.com SOURCE SC Johnson DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cancer patients in the United Arab Emirates have gained access to advanced radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments with the clinical introduction of the country's first TrueBeam medical linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE:VAR). A male patient with neck Hodgkin's lymphoma received the first treatment on a TrueBeam at Mediclinic City Hospital's new comprehensive cancer center in Dubai. "This landmark treatment means that patients in the UAE now have access to one of the most precise and efficient technologies for treating cancer," said Dr. Salim Chaib Rassou, the cancer center's lead radiation oncologist. "We will be able to achieve high levels of precision, excellent image quality and fast throughput using the new TrueBeam technology." "This is an important clinical advancement in the treatment of many different types of cancer in the UAE and brings new hope to cancer sufferers across the country," he added. "Mediclinic City Hospital is very proud to be able to offer the first TrueBeam radiotherapy treatment in the UAE at our newly-opened comprehensive cancer center," said hospital director Christian Schuhmacher. "The center has been set up in collaboration with experts at Mediclinic's Swiss sister company Hirslanden, with TrueBeam data matched to that at Hirslanden. This means that it is possible for a patient to be treated both in Dubai, or if necessary at Hirslanden in Switzerland, without the need for dose recalculations." Varian's TrueBeam system features a multitude of technical innovations that dynamically synchronize imaging, patient positioning, motion management, and treatment delivery. It was designed to treat tumors in a fast and precise manner, including cancers such as lung and breast that move during treatment as the patient breathes in and out. "The Varian team in Dubai is very excited to see the first TrueBeam system installed in the UAE providing patients with advanced clinical treatments," said Mutaz Mikashfi, Varian's service area manager, Middle East and North Africa. "This new system in Dubai expands our collaboration with the Mediclinic group beyond our established long-term support for Mediclinic Hirslanden in Switzerland. We are looking forward to working closely with Mediclinic City Hospital in Dubai to provide patients with the most modern radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments." About Varian Medical Systems Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, focuses energy on saving lives by equipping the world with advanced technology for fighting cancer and for X-ray imaging. The company is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiation. The company provides comprehensive solutions for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is also a premier supplier of X-ray imaging components, including tubes, digital detectors, cables and connectors as well as image processing software and workstations for use in medical and industrial settings, as well as for security and non-destructive testing. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 7,700 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and China and sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com or follow us on Twitter. Press Contact Neil Madle Varian Medical Systems +44 7786 526068 neil.madle@varian.com Related Links http://www.varian.com SOURCE Varian Medical Systems Tech Solutions Market Leader to Help United Kingdom Clients Save on SQL Server Management Costs While Enabling Unparalleled Consolidation and HA LONDON and FORT COLLINS, Colorado, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DH2i Company, the leading provider of Microsoft Windows Server application portability and management solutions, today announced that Trustmarque (Part of Capita PLC) has joined DH2i's DxAdvantage Partner Program. Trustmarque is a market-leading end-to-end technology solutions provider to UK private and public sector organizations. This partnership allows Trustmarque to deliver solutions that dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of deploying business-critical Windows Server applications. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120924/LA79538LOGO DH2i DxEnterprise offers the best in SQL Server container management software and the easiest path to simplified, instance-level HAenabling Trustmarque's clients to: Save 50% or more in SQL Server licensing costs Reduce the number of OSes to license and manage by 8-15x Achieve four-nines (99.99) in workload availability Focus resources on innovative, value-added IT projects "DH2i's DxEnterprise is a great solution for any organization looking to simplify their approach to SQL Server HA, DR and management and gain cost-savings through consolidation of their SQL Server estate," said James Butler, Chief Technology Officer at Trustmarque. "Without the complexity of traditional clustering solutions, and building on common enterprise technology solutions for storage HA and replication, DxEnterprise solves traditionally complex problems quickly and relatively cost-effectively. Customers can expect to see rapid results in delivering consolidation and improved availability, without significant investment in staff skills and training, and with a much simpler architecture than needed for other approaches." With datacenter complexity spiraling, IT and lines of business need a way to maximize investments, boost performance and reduce costs. DxEnterprise container virtualization and management software enables workload portability, next-level consolidation, instance-level high availability and disaster recoveryall while maintaining closest-to-zero downtime. "Competing in today's digital economy requires businesses of all sizes to be agile, lean and scalable at a global level, which is why so many of our partners are seeing the advantage of container management with DxEnterprise," said Connor Cox, Director of Business Development, DH2i. "Our goal was to create an inclusive channel ecosystem that enables our partners to provide superior customer outcomes while opening new revenue streams." DH2i's DxAdvantage Partner Program offers partners a unique opportunity to close the gap in a market that demands solutions to rising datacenter cost and complexity. The Program enables shorter sales cycles, enhanced trusted advisor status and the creation of new opportunities for DH2i partners. Value-added resellers and consultants leverage DH2i's capabilities for mobility, orchestration, HA/DR and multi-subnet support as they help their customers achieve superior outcomes. "As Trustmarque continues to invest in Microsoft datacenter management solutions, partnering with DH2i lets us modernize and monetize faster, create new opportunities and deliver truly innovative software and solutions to our clients," concluded Butler. Tweet this: .@Trustmarque partners with @DH2i to help customers achieve dramatic savings on Windows #datacenter costs http://dh2i.com/press/ #Containers #SQLServer About Trustmarque Trustmarque (part of Capita PLC) is a leading end-to-end technology provider for both public and private sector organizations in the UK. Empowering customers to succeed by delivering simplified IT services, Trustmarque has been at the heart of the rapidly evolving IT market for over 27 years, serving more than 2,000 customers, including UK government and healthcare organizations, as well as high profile clients in the private sector. Trustmarque is a leading partner of major technology vendors, including Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, McAfee and Sophos. Trustmarque is a 'Sunday Times 100 'Best Small Companies to Work For' in the UK and has achieved the Investors in People standard. To learn more, please visit: www.trustmarque.com. About DH2i DH2i Company is a leading provider of Microsoft Windows Server application portability and management solutions. Its flagship solution, DxEnterprise, containerizes and decouples Windows Server applications, such as SQL Server, from the host OS and underlying IT infrastructure. In doing so, customers can simplify and dramatically improve the management of their datacenter environment, ensure SLA compliance, and lower costs by 30%-60%. To learn more, please visit: www.dh2i.com, call: 800-380-5405 or email: info@dh2i.com. DH2i Company 2016. DH2i, DxEnterprise, DxConsole, DxHADR, DxTransfer, DxCollect and InstanceMobility are trademarks of DH2i Company. All other brand or product names contained in this press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. PR Contacts: Alex Cranshaw Spark Communications, for Trustmarque alex@sparkcomms.co.uk +44 (0)20 7436 0420 Nicole Gorman DH2i nicole.gorman@dh2i.com M: 508-397-0131 Related Links http://www.dh2i.com SOURCE DH2i A variety of HPC platforms supporting Intel Xeon processor E7-8800 v3/v4 and Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3/v4 optimized for High Performance Data Analytics, Visualization and Intensive Computing SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and subsidiary of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, is showcasing a wide range of HPC server platforms optimized for enterprise, storage and data center applications at SC16 this week in Salt Lake City's Salt Palace Convention Center. TYAN's comprehensive HPC platforms span a wide range of hardware specifications. The Intel Xeon E7-based, 4U quad-socket FT76-B7922 offers a memory capacity of 6TB and supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for the most demanding HPC users; the Intel Xeon E5-based, 4U dual-socket FT77C-B7079 supports up to 8x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for highly parallelized application deployment, the 2U dual-socket TA80-B7071 supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for large-scale production deployment in various high performance computing segments; and the 1U dual-socket GA80-B7081 supports up to 3x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for ISVs, universities, and small businesses looking for parallelized application development or proof of concept solution deployment. "In order to address a diversity of HPC applications in the market and accelerate HPC market growth, TYAN offers multiple configurations of different products incorporating Intel Xeon CPU and coprocessor technologies, and brings maximum performance per watt to power HPC jobs," said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's TYAN Business Unit. Exhibits also include cloud computing and storage server platforms that are widely deployed in hyper-scale data centers for distributed file system and big data applications. The GT86A-B7083, GT24B-B7076, and GT62B-B7076 are three 1U server platforms that support dual-socket Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3/v4 processors for major computing tasks, and the GT24B-B5542 is a 1U server implementation that features a single-socket Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 processor for cost-effective and volume-based deployment. TYAN's storage server platforms, featuring cost-effective storage expansion and improved data storage capability, include the TN70B-B7086 supporting up to 12x 3.5"/2.5" hot-swap drive bays with up to 4 NVMe drive support; the GT56-B7086 supporting up to 10x 2.5" hot-swap drive bays; and the JBOD TN70J-E3250 supporting up to 12x 3.5"/ 2.5" hot-swap drive bays as storage expansion. TYAN HPC Platforms Exhibit at SC16 4U/4-Coprocessor FT76-B7922 - Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v3/v4-based platform with support for up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor modules, 96x DDR4 DIMM slots, and up to 8x SFF hot-swap SAS 12Gb/s. 4U/8-Coprocessor FT77C-B7079 - Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3/v4-based platform with support for up to 8x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor modules and 24x DDR4 DIMM slots. 2U/4-Coprocessor TA80-B7071 - Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3/v4-based platform with support for up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor modules and 16x DDR4 DIMM slots. 1U/3-Coprocessor GA80-B7081 - Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3/v4-based platform with support up to 3x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor modules and 16x DDR4 DIMM slots. Related Links http://www.tyan.com SOURCE MiTAC Computing - TYAN Available from 24 November 2016, the second edition of this valuable resource first launched last year features over 1,600 listings of suppliers and retailers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The 2017 directory, published in English and in full colour, contains information on over 1,000 suppliers and more than 600 jewellery retailers, representing some 2,200 stores in the region. The Suppliers section presents companies dealing in jewellery, gemstones, diamonds, pearls and synthetics. Also included are gemmological laboratories, trade organisations and training establishments. Companies are sorted by Product and Service, by Alphabetical Order and by Country. Details include telephone number, address, person-in-charge, website and product specialisation, allowing directory users to readily identify and contact potential business partners. Meanwhile, the Retailers section lists jewellery shops, chain stores and distributors. The directory provides valuable information on these companies, including the type of jewellery they sell and the source of their products. "As Southeast Asia continues to grow in importance as a manufacturing hub and a consumer market, we have endeavoured to produce an even more comprehensive inventory of the region's jewellery and gemstone industry to facilitate business transactions. The 2017 directory includes more than 800 suppliers from Thailand and over 150 jewellery retailers each in Singapore and Malaysia, representing a total of almost 900 shops. It also lists nearly 100 retail establishments in the Philippines, covering some 600 stores," said Irene Foo, Group Publisher, Jewellery Publishing Group of UBM Asia. The Jewellery & Gemstone Directory 2017 -- Southeast Asia Edition is available at a special pre-order rate of USD 40 per copy until 23 November 2016. Regular rate is USD 60. To pre-order, please visit http://www.jewellerynewsasia.com/publication/19/JGD-SEA The directory will also be available at international jewellery trade fairs, including the Hong Kong International Jewelry Manufacturers' Show; the Hong Kong Gem, Diamond & Pearl Show; the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show; the June and September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair; and the Bangkok Gems & Jewelry Fair. For more information, please email olivia.quiniquini@ubm.com Media Contact: +852 2516 1683 Marketing@jewellerynewsasia.com Notes for Editors: 1. About Jewellery Publishing Group (www.jewellerynewsasia.com) JNA (Jewellery News Asia), first published in 1983, is the flagship publication of UBM Asia's Jewellery Group. This industry pioneer is recognised as Asia's most authoritative information resource for the gemstone and jewellery sector, providing reliable and accurate coverage through its print and online platforms. Established in 1994, CJNA (Jewellery News Asia -- Chinese Edition) is a monthly business magazine designed to serve the jewellery industry's key decision makers and top buyers in Greater China. In 2006, SILVERSTYLES, the ultimate business resource on the latest silver jewellery trends, was introduced. The Jewellery Publishing Group also produces the Jewellery & Gemstone Directory -- Hong Kong Edition, Jewellery & Gemstone Directory -- Southeast Asia Edition, Equipment & Supplies Directory, Silver Jewellery Suppliers Directory, Show Daily, Pearl Report, Gems World, and Trade Fair & Conference Guide. 2. 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, Malaysia and Thailand. Established with its headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia and in the US, UBM Asia has a strong global network of 32 offices and 1,300 staff in 24 major cities. We operate in 19 market sectors with 230 events, 28 trade publications, 18 online products for over 2,000,000 quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world. UBM Asia was awarded 'Asia's Most Reliable Trade Show Organizer Award' in Hong Kong's Most Valuable Companies Awards (HKMVCA) 2016. SOURCE Jewellery Publishing Group of UBM Asia WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With U.S. consumers falling victim to the "technical support scam" in greater numbers than ever before, the AARP Fraud Watch Network today launched an initiative to raise awareness of the scam and educate consumers about how they can protect themselves. AARP Fraud Watch Network A survey released last month by Microsoft found that over the past year two-thirds of consumers have experienced the tech support scam, in which fraudsters pose as technicians from one of the major computer companies. AARP's effort to educate consumers includes online content, advertising and media appearances featuring renowned security expert and Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. "If you or someone you know receives a call or an email from someone identifying themselves as a technician with Microsoft, Google, Apple or some other well-known technology company, it is likely to be a scam. Just hang up the phone," said Abagnale. "The large computer firms never make proactive calls or send email to provide unrequested technical support." Executing the scam via telephone, email or even pop-up ads, the scammers inform a targeted person that a virus or some other security problem has been detected on the victim's computer, and offer to make a repair. Instead, their goal is to gain control of the computer, access personal files and passwords, and obtain credit card information to charge the consumer for the supposed repair or a warranty program -- which proves to be worthless. The Microsoft survey indicates that 20% of the people surveyed around the world continued with a potentially fraudulent interaction after the first contact. This means that the victim downloaded harmful software, gave the scammers access to their computer, visited a scam website, or provided a credit card or other forms of payment. Interestingly, of the victims who continued interacting with the scammers, half were millennials (ages 18-34). Thirty-four percent were between ages 36-54, and 17% were age 55 or older. Abagnale advises consumers never to give control of their computer to a third party, nor to provide a credit card number to pay for unsolicited repair services or warranty programs. For more tips about how keep yourself safe from technical support scammers, visit the new Fraud Watch Network web page at: www.aarp.org/TechScams. The site includes detailed descriptions of how fraudsters execute their scams, video and other content, and a list of recommended "Dos and Don'ts" when dealing with a suspected fraudster. An educational booklet, published by Microsoft and the FWN, can also be downloaded from the site. Abagnale, who was named AARP Fraud Watch Ambassador in 2015, has been associated with the FBI for more than four decades, and has advised and consulted with hundreds of financial institutions, corporations and government agencies around the world. Abagnale's story was told in his best-selling book, Catch Me if You Can, and in the 2002 movie of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. The AARP Fraud Watch Network was launched in 2013 as a free resource for people of all ages. The website provides information about fraud and scams, prevention tips from experts, an interactive Scam-Tracking Map, fun educational quizzes, and video presentations featuring Abagnale. Users may sign up for "Watchdog Alert" emails that deliver breaking scam information, or call a free helpline at 877-908-3360 to speak with trained volunteers. About AARP AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of nearly 38 million that helps people turn their goals and dreams into 'Real Possibilities' by changing the way America defines aging. With staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, AARP works to strengthen communities and promote the issues that matter most to families such as healthcare security, financial security and personal fulfillment. AARP also advocates for individuals in the marketplace by selecting products and services of high quality and value to carry the AARP name. As a trusted source for news and information, AARP produces the world's largest circulation magazine, AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to political campaigns or candidates. To learn more, visit www.aarp.org or follow @aarp and our CEO @JoAnn_Jenkins on Twitter. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438807 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438823LOGO SOURCE AARP Related Links http://www.aarp.org Turkey on Monday closed a border crossing with Syria in the southeastern province of Kilis after violent clashes in the Syrian town of Azaz, a local official said. "The border gate remains open only for ambulances," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Turkish media reported that the closure of the Oncupinar border crossing, which faces Bab al-Salama inside Syria, was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. Turkish media reported that the border closure was a "temporary" security measure after clashes on Syrian soil. The town of Azaz, not far from the border, is one of many Syrian villages and towns taken by Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters since an offensive supported by Turkey began on August 24. Kilis governor Ismail Catakli said the border was closed to humanitarian aid and trade traffic "due to developments on the other side of the border", the private Dogan news agency reported. It was unclear when the border crossing would reopen. Turkey has embarked on an ambitious operation inside Syria dubbed "Euphrates Shield" to support Syrian opposition fighters in a bid to cleanse its border of Islamic State fighters and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish militia. The Ankara-backed fighters comprise various brigades rather than one organised force, according to experts. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the rebels had advanced "closer to Al-Bab" -- the next target in Turkey's Syria operation, adding that Turkey resumed aerial support to help rebel forces. Search Keywords: Short link: Dr. Juan Ramon de la Fuente has a degree from the School of Medicine at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), he did is residency in Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, and is a Doctor Honoris Causa for 18 universities in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Europe and South America. He has been in public positions such as Secretary of Health, President of the Mexican Academy of Science, and the National Academy of Medicine, as well as dean of UNAM. Due to his scientific contributions, de la Fuente has received several national and international awards and recognitions. He currently presides over the Board of the Aspen Institute in Mexico, and he manages the Seminar of Studies on Global Presence at UNAM. "As a Non-for-profit Institution, we have the social responsibility to improve the community's quality of life, supporting education and research, and we also created Excellence in Medicine, which is already an award with a great tradition at ABC Medical Center; today it is one of the most special awards that we grant, not only because we are celebrating 130 years of our institution, but because we are celebrating one of the most distinguished doctors in Mexico and in the world: Dr. Juan Ramon de la Fuente," said Mr. Anthony McCarthy, President Board of ABC Medical Center. Present during the ceremony were Dr. Jose Narro, Secretary of Health of the Federal Government in Mexico; Dr. Pablo Kuri, Assistant Secretary of Prevention and Promotion of Health; Dr. Jose Meljem, Assistant Secretary of Integration and Development of the Health Sector; and Dr. Enrique Graue, Dean of UNAM; as well as politicians, doctors and scientists, businesspeople and media. "I have known Juan Ramon as a boss, doctor, researcher, university professor and friend, and I can tell you that he is a man who has always sought excellence, he never does things halfway, he is ethical in his actions and in his deeds," said Dr. Jose Narro, Secretary of Health of the Federal Government in Mexico. For more information, go to: http://www.abchospital.com/en/ ***** Press Contact Nora Sansores www.abchospital.com Head of Communication - ABC Medical Center Facebook: /CentroMedicoABC [email protected] Twitter: @ABCcentromedico T: 5230-8014 T: 5230 8000 / 1103 - 1600 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161112/438558 SOURCE ABC Medical Center DUBLIN, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Allergan plc (NYSE:AGN) today announced that Adriane M. Brown will join its board of directors effective February 2017. Ms. Brown is currently President and Chief Operating Officer of Intellectual Ventures LLC, a private global invention company focused on providing access to valuable patents and invention related services. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150612/222796LOGO "Adriane Brown is an accomplished executive with extensive experience leading global businesses in multiple industries. With nearly 30 years of management experience, she has operational know how and a proven track record of developing and growing technologies and products across a network of global R&D centers and manufacturing plants," said Brent Saunders, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Allergan plc. "Adriane's public board experience, understanding of the value of innovation and experience developing and protecting intellectual property complements the experiences of our current board." Ms. Brown has served on the board of directors of Harman International Industries, Inc. since June 2013 where she is a member of the Compensation Committee and the Technology and Innovation Committee. "I am pleased to join the board of Allergan as they deliver results around the world that serve their customers and patients," said Brown. "Their commitment to innovative and meaningful work with the goal of helping people live longer and healthier is commendable." Prior to joining intellectual Ventures in 2010, Ms. Brown was Senior Vice President, Energy Strategy at Honeywell International. During the course of her eleven year career at Honeywell, Ms. Brown served in a number of leadership positions including, President and Chief Executive Officer, Honeywell Transportation Systems; Vice President and General Manager, Engine Systems & Accessories; and Vice President and General Manager, Aircraft Landing Systems. Prior to joining Honeywell, Ms. Brown had a nearly 20 year career at Corning, Inc. Ms. Brown's last position at Corning was Vice President and General Manager, Environmental Products Division. This followed roles of increasing responsibility starting with her first position as a shift supervisor. Ms. Brown received her Bachelor of Science in environmental health from Old Dominion University and a Masters of Science in management (Sloan Fellow) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also received a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Old Dominion University. About Allergan plc Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a bold, global pharmaceutical company and a leader in a new industry model Growth Pharma. Allergan is focused on developing, manufacturing and commercializing branded pharmaceuticals, devices and biologic products for patients around the world. Allergan markets a portfolio of leading brands and best-in-class products for the central nervous system, eye care, medical aesthetics and dermatology, gastroenterology, women's health, urology and anti-infective therapeutic categories. Allergan is an industry leader in Open Science, the Company's R&D model, which defines our approach to identifying and developing game-changing ideas and innovation for better patient care. This approach has led to Allergan building one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry with 70+ mid-to-late stage pipeline programs in development. Our Company's success is powered by our more than 16,000 global colleagues' commitment to being Bold for Life. Together, we build bridges, power ideas, act fast and drive results for our customers and patients around the world by always doing what is right. With commercial operations in approximately 100 countries, Allergan is committed to working with physicians, healthcare providers and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives every day. For more information, visit Allergan's website at www.Allergan.com. Forward-Looking Statement Statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical facts are forward-looking statements that reflect Allergan's current perspective of existing trends and information as of the date of this release. Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from Allergan's current expectations depending upon a number of factors affecting Allergan's business. These factors include, among others, the difficulty of predicting the timing or outcome of FDA approvals or actions, if any; the impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance of and continued demand for Allergan's products; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in Allergan's periodic public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Allergan's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 (certain of such periodic public filings having been filed under the "Actavis plc" name). Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. CONTACTS: Allergan: Investors: Lisa DeFrancesco (862) 261-7152 Media: Mark Marmur (862) 261-7558 SOURCE Allergan plc Related Links http://www.allergan.com HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Amap Software Co., Ltd., a Chinese web mapping, navigation and location-based services provider since 2001, announced at the company's 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou on October 15 that it has made its HD map and data services free of charge for automakers during their development and testing of self-driving cars. Amap's free HD map service offers an alternative solution for both automakers and map service providers to the traditional buyer-seller relationship of offline map data, by providing a real-time kinematic (RTK) data service platform that guarantees service continuity and clear pricing, while reducing the cost of app development and improving update speed. "The new era of map data will see it move away from a specialist, heterogeneous product and into an ecological resource built and shared for the development of industries with an infrastructure similar to that of utilities," said Wei Dong, president of the automobile business unit of Amap and vice president of Alibaba's UC Mobile Business Group. Wei stressed that as Amap provides free HD map and data services to partner automakers, the traditional map data seller will become obsolete, replaced by a dynamic big data service provider, which will help build the smart travel model of the future. As one of the first companies in China to collect HD map data and carry out technological research and development, Amap has always been a leader in the specialized equipment, accuracy and mileage of collecting HD map data, while accurately reflecting changes in map data to make a difference. Rong, general manager of the automobile business unit of Amap's VIP business center, explained that the company has realized a multi-stage data acquisition system consisting of specialized professional, public and data collection vehicles. And through smart cloud dispatch, Amap is able to monitor, collect and feed back real-time road traffic updates in the most efficient way with the vehicles best suited for the situations. "With this system, Amap can efficiently balance quality, speed, cost and coverage and guarantee that the data is both highly accurate and comprehensive, as it becomes a dynamic map that's live in real-time," said Rong. "Based on our advantages, Amap will further strengthen its position as a market leader in HD map tech with the support of our big data and cloud computing capacity." Amap also announced in December it will launch version 2.0 of its Amap Auto, the first internet in-vehicle navigation system in China. Version 2.0 will be equipped with Amap's AI engine, a new generation service engine based on big data capability and the machine's learning ability that will provide the optimized travel services customized to individual user's needs and different driving conditions. It will also offer an augmented user experience compared with the previous version with support from the AI engine, multi-formats, multi-lingual cloud control and more. "Amap's mobile app is now the No.1 ranking smartphone map app in the industry with the highest number of daily active users," says Yongfu Yu, president of Amap and Alibaba's Mobile Business Group." As the focus shifts from 'smartphone + PC' to 'smartphone + automobile, Amap will lend its full support to the development of automotive industry." "Regarding amap auto version 2.0, Amap has already reached cooperative agreements with a number of automakers in China with more ongoing discussions," adds Wei Dong. "Moving forward, we will continue to share our big data and cloud computing technology and work together with the industry as a whole to welcome an all-new ecological approach to 'automobile + internet'." SOURCE Amap Software Co., Ltd PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AMERI Holdings, Inc. ("Ameri100" or the "Company") (OTCQB: AMRH), today reported its financial results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016. Total revenues for the third quarter of 2016 were $10.1 million, an increase of 125 percent compared to revenues of $4.5 million in the third quarter of 2015. Total revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 were $23.8 million, an increase of 87 percent compared to revenues of $12.7 million for the first nine months of 2015. Net loss for the third quarter of 2016 was $1.7 million, or $0.13 of net loss per diluted share, compared to net loss of $0.16 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2015. Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $4.08 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, compared to net income of $1.0 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, in the same period in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the 2016 third quarter was $735,501, compared to $(57,479) for the third quarter of 2015. Adjusted EBITDA for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $89,483, compared to $1.5 million in the same period in 2015. A reconciliation of adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA is provided later in this press release. EBITDA for the third quarter of 2016 was $(782,311), compared to $(306,390) in the prior year third quarter. EBITDA for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $(2.5) million, compared to $966,580 in the same period in 2015. Ameri100 President and CEO Giri Devanur said, "We are pleased with our results this quarter, and the performance of all our businesses. With the acquisition of DC&M Partners, LLC, Ameri100 Virtuoso Inc. (formerly Virtuoso Consulting Services) and BigTech Software Private Ltd., the depth of our SAP skills is greatly enhanced. DC&M and Virtuoso are leaders in high end SAP consulting with marquee customers across the United States. BigTech is an India-based offshore services delivery company which is adding significant value to our customer offerings. We are also excited that we have a healthy acquisition pipeline which will help us to add accretive acquisitions in the coming year." Mr. Devanur continued, "We have started the post-merger integration process across all these acquired companies. We are confident that in the next two to three quarters they will be fully integrated and enhance our delivery capability to our customers. With these acquisitions, we now have over 70 active global customers with enough room to grow organically. Additionally, with these acquisitions we also have access to more than 200 customers who have been served by these acquired companies, and thus creating a pipeline for future revenue growth." Ameri100's Chief Financial Officer Edward O'Donnell stated, "We are also pleased with our revenue growth and our move into positive adjusted EBITDA on a quarterly and year-to-date basis. We are excited about our new banking relationship with Sterling National Bank. We believe Sterling is a valuable partner that can work with us as we grow our business in the future." 2016 Financial Guidance The Company reaffirms its previously announced fiscal year 2016 financial guidance of revenues between $35 million and $40 million. Through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, the Company expects to achieve a revenue run-rate of $100 million by the end of 2017. Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures by Ameri100 Corporation This Ameri100 news release presents the non-GAAP financial measures "EBITDA" and "adjusted EBITDA." The most directly comparable measure for these non-GAAP financial measures are net income and income/loss from operations. The Company has included below unaudited adjusted financial information, which presents the Company's results of operations after excluding acquired intangible asset amortization, acquisition related contingent consideration adjustments, investment impairment loss, transaction and integration costs and non-recurring related income tax adjustments. Further excluded in the measure of adjusted EBITDA are interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation. A discussion of the reasons why management believes that the presentation of non-GAAP financial measures provides useful information to investors regarding Ameri100's financial condition and results of operations is included as Exhibit 99.2 to Ameri100's report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 14, 2016. About AMERI Holdings, Inc. AMERI Holdings, Inc. is a SAP-based strategy consulting firm that brings synergies of classic consulting and product-based consulting services to its customer base. Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey with offices in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, Kansas and Toronto, as well as offshore centres in Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai India, the Company is a global leader in consulting and technology solutions. Ameri100 is a Lean Enterprise Architecture Partner (LEAP), enabling clients to outperform the competition and stay ahead of the innovation curve. The Company leverages a global partner ecosystem that has deep knowledge and skills to build and implement great ideas that drive progress for clients and enhance their businesses through innovative solutions. For further information, visit www.ameri100.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes forward-looking statements that relate to the business and expected future events or future performance of Ameri100 and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause its actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Words such as, but not limited to, "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "targets," "likely," "will," "would," "could," and similar expressions or phrases identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about Ameri100's financial and growth projections as well as statements concerning our plans, predictions, estimates, strategies, intentions, beliefs and other information concerning our business and the markets in which we operate. The future performance of Ameri100 may be adversely affected by the following risks and uncertainties: the level of market demand for our services, the highly-competitive market for the types of services that we offer, market conditions that could cause our customers to reduce their spending for our services, our ability to create, acquire and build new businesses and to grow our existing businesses, our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, currency fluctuations and market conditions around the world, and other risks not specifically mentioned herein but those that are common to industry. For a more detailed discussion of these factors and risks, investors should review Ameri100's reports on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which can be accessed through the SEC's website. Forward-looking statements in this press release are based on management's beliefs and opinions at the time the statements are made. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and Ameri100 undertakes no duty to update this information to reflect future events, information or circumstances. Press Contact Carlos Fernandez 100 Canal Pointe Blvd, Suite 108 Princeton, NJ 08540 Phone: (732) 243-9250 Email: [email protected] Investor Relations Contact Ted O'Donnell 100 Canal Pointe Blvd, Suite 108 Princeton, NJ 08540 Phone: (732) 243-9250 Email: [email protected] (Financial tables follow) AMERI HOLDINGS, INC. UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS September 30, 2016 December 31, 2015 Assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 2,913,834 $ 1,878,034 Accounts receivable 7,724,860 4,872,082 Investments - 82,908 Other current assets 629,640 343,809 Total current assets 11,268,334 7,176,833 Other assets Property and equipment, net 115,355 73,066 Intangible assets, net 9,359,571 3,114,513 Acquired goodwill 17,379,031 3,470,522 Total other assets 26,853,957 6,658,101 Total assets $ 38,122,291 $ 13,834,934 Liabilities and stockholders' equity Current liabilities Accounts payable $ 4,906,959 $ 2,597,385 Other accrued expenses 1,345,561 1,093,814 Consideration payable 3,225,093 3,649,267 Short-term notes 4,137,143 1,235,935 Total current liabilities 13,614,756 8,576,401 Long-term liabilities Convertible notes 5,000,000 5,000,000 Long-term notes 1,566,671 - Long-term consideration payable 13,188,260 - Total long-term liabilities 19,754,931 5,000,000 Total liabilities 33,369,687 13,576,401 Stockholders' equity Preferred stock, $0.01 par value; 1,000,000 authorized, none issued and outstanding - - Common stock, $0.01 par value; 100,000,000 shares authorized, 13,885,972 and 11,639,066 issued and outstanding as of September 30, 2016 and December 31, 2015, respectively 138,861 118,743 Additional paid-in capital 10,042,992 1,192,692 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) (287,722) - Accumulated deficit (5,141,527) (1,052,902) Total stockholders' equity 4,752,604 258,533 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 38,122,291 $ 13,834,934 AMERI HOLDINGS, INC. UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS) Three Months Ended September 30, 2016 Three Months Ended September 30, 2015 Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 Nine Months Ended September 30, 2015 Net revenue $ 10,058,558 $ 4,463,125 $ 23,758,460 $ 12,678,813 Cost of services 8,361,960 3,023,208 19,288,805 9,137,563 Gross profit 1,696,598 1,439,917 4,469,655 3,541,250 Operating expenses Selling and marketing 137,024 - 401,487 - General and administration 1,326,327 1,497,396 4,924,644 2,020,835 Nonrecurring expenditures 1,015,558 248,911 1,630,778 553,835 Depreciation and amortization 509,376 9,375 722,390 25,690 Operating expenses 2,988,285 1,755,682 7,679,299 2,600,360 Operating income (loss) (1,291,687) (315,765) (3,209,644) 940,890 Interest expense (290,423) (62,113) (674,683) (87,655) Interest income/other income 2,205 54 44 82 Other expense/loss (197,723) - (197,723) - Income before income taxes (1,777,628) (377,824) (4,082,006) 853,317 Tax benefit / (provision) - 128,460 - 84,971 Foreign exchange translation 59,079 89,818 (6,619) 89,818 Net income (loss) $ (1,718,549) $ (159,546) $ (4,088,625) $ 1,028,106 Net and comprehensive income (loss) for the period $ (1,718,549) $ (159,546) $ (4,088,625) $ 1,028,106 Basic income (loss) per share $ (0.13) $ (0.02) $ (0.32) $ 0.10 Diluted income (loss) per share $ (0.13) $ (0.02) $ (0.32) $ 0.10 Basic weighted average number of shares 13,653,586 9,992,828 12,794,149 9,992,828 Diluted weighted average number of shares 13,653,586 9,992,828 12,794,149 9,992,828 AMERI HOLDINGS, INC. RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME 9 months ended September 30, 2016 3 months ended September 30, 2016 Net Income (Loss) $(4,088,625) $(1,718,549) Tax benefit/(provision) Foreign currency translation adjustment (6,619) 59,079 Other Expense/loss (197,723) (197,723) Other Income - 2,414 Interest income 44 (209) Interest expense (674,683) (290,423) Income from operations (3,209,644) (1,291,687) Depreciation and amortization 722,390 509,376 EBITDA (2,487,254) (782,311) Nonrecurring expenditures 1,630,778 1,015,558 Stock based expense 945,959 502,254 Adjusted EBITDA $89,483 $735,501 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151120/289748LOGO SOURCE AMERI Holdings, Inc. Related Links http://www.ameri100.com TROY, Mich., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair is excited to announce the upcoming availability of Altair PBS Cloud, its latest appliance solution to further cloud computing for organizations. Altair PBS Cloud is the solution to build and run high-performance computing (HPC) appliances for both public clouds, private clouds, and bare-metal infrastructure. Altair will release Altair PBS Cloud in the first quarter of 2017 following conclusion of a private preview. Altair PBS Cloud allows IT administrators and managers to model, create, deploy, manage and monitor HPC appliances. They are able to build complex architectures graphically and deploy HPC stacks everywhere securely within minutes. Altair PBS Cloud provides tremendous cost savings to an organization as it allows optimized consumption of resources and automates cloud bursting to handle peak workloads through IT-controlled policies. "Altair provides solutions that democratize technology for organizations of all sizes to continuously push the boundaries of innovation," said Sam Mahalingam, CTO, Altair. "With Altair PBS Cloud, creating and maintaining HPC appliances in the cloud is made easy and possible whether or not you have IT resources." Altair PBS Cloud provides extensive benefits to customers beyond just controlling costs. It also increases the efficiency of an organization by expanding its computational power, giving it, for example, the ability to perform design of experiments (DOE). Engineers and scientists will enjoy shorter wait times to complete their work and can run a greater amount of simulations, consequently creating more robust products faster. To participate in the private preview visit www.pbsworks.com/pbscloud to request access. Attendees of Supercomputing can see a demo of Altair PBS Cloud at the Altair booth #1811. About ALTAIR Founded in 1985, Altair is focused on the development and application of simulation technology to synthesize and optimize designs, processes and decisions for improved business performance. Privately held with more than 2,600 employees, Altair is headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA with more than 45 offices throughout 20 countries, and serves more than 5,000 corporate clients across broad industry segments. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com. Media Contacts Altair: Corporate / Americas Biba A. Bedi +1.757.224.0548 x 406 [email protected] Altair Europe, the Middle East and Africa Evelyn Gebhardt +49 6421 9684351 [email protected] SOURCE Altair Related Links http://www.altair.com CONCORD, Mass., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Friends of Minute Man National Park today released the final archaeology report on the Parker's Revenge battle the April 19, 1775, encounter in which Lexington's Captain John Parker engaged the British Regulars on their march back from Concord to Boston. "In this centennial year of the National Park Service, it is wonderful to be able to reveal "new" history tied to the opening of the American Revolution,"said Nancy Nelson, superintendent of Minute Man National Historical Park. The 320-page report summarizes historical research on the battle, details the full range of technologies deployed in the archaeological research and describes battle tactics likely utilized by both colonial and British forces. The project findings are noteworthy, especially because only one brief witness account the battle has ever been identified by historians. Technologies utilized in the research informed formal excavations and 1775 battlefield reconstructions. These methods included: 3D laser scanning, GPS feature mapping, and geophysical surveys including metallic surveys,ground penetrating radar, magnetic gradient and conductivity/magnetic susceptibility. Taken together, the technologies enabled researchers to locate a farmhouse that figured prominently in the battle terrain, to recreate the actual 1775 battlefield landscape and battlefield features and even to model exactly what combatants could and could not see at various positions along the battle road. Artifacts discovered included 29 British and colonial musket balls from the battle.Thelocation and spatial patterning of the musket balls recovered enabled archaeologists to interpret the exact positions where individuals were standing during the battle and then outline battle tactics most likely deployed. "Using an integrated approach to interpreting this battlefield enabled us to literally peel back time and expose the artifacts that tell the story of Parker's Revenge," said Project archaeologist Dr. Meg Watters. The report indicates that Captain Parker positioned his men at the edge of a woodlot on an elevated slope above the battle road. This particular site had two distinct advantages: it provided a clear view to see the advancing British forces and the landscape featured a number of large boulders and trees that provided cover. A viewshed is an area that is visible from one specific location in a landscape. Archaeologists ran a computer simulated viewshed analysis taken from the perspective of a 5'5"-tall marching British soldier and also from the point of view of a mounted British officer (9 feet above ground). The analysis indicated that the undulating terrain surface, combined with other obstacles, meant the British force could not easily see the position of the Lexington militia until it wasin close proximity. The report further details the likeliest battle scenario. After crossing the Nelson Bridge and catching sight of the Lexington militia, a British vanguard unit fanned out to the left and was given orders to deploy into flanking formation using a designated point or feature in the landscape as an end target. Closely spaced, these soldiers made an excellent target for the Lexington militia. Before the British unit could complete its deployment, the Lexington militia fired from a position of not more than 40 yards away. Once they completed their deployment,the British Regulars returned fire on the retreating colonial milita. Cognizant of the British tactic to follow firing with a bayonet charge, the Lexington militia withdrew in a line along the middle contour of a slope to the northeast then disappeared over the top behind the protection of a ledge outcrop to continue the fight further down the road. "With the archaeology portion of the project now complete, we will turn our attention to the next two phases of the Parker's Revenge initiative rehabilitation of the battlefield and thecreation of educational resources for park visitors," said Bob Morris, president of the Friends of Minute Man National Park. "We need to raise additional funds to complete those two key phases of the project." The Parker's Revenge project is a collaborative venture between the Friends of Minute Man National Historical Park, Minute Man National Historical Park, the National Park Service Northeast Regional Archaeology Program, the Town of Lexington's Community Preservation Fund, the Lexington Minute Men and other living history experts, Save Our Heritage, the Civil War Trust's Campaign 1776 project, the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati and numerous local supporters. About the Friends of Minute Man The non-profit Friends of Minute Man National Park supports the national park by funding educational programs and raising funds for restoration and preservation. For more information about the Parker's Revenge project and the Friends of Minute Man National Park or to view a copy of the archaeology report, visit http://www.friendsofminuteman.org Contacts: Nancy Nelson, Minute Man National Historical Park [email protected] (978) 318-7811 Bob Morris, Friends of Minute Man National Park [email protected] (978) 318-7822 SOURCE Friends of Minute Man National Park Related Links http://www.friendsofminuteman.org CHEYENNE, Wyo., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael S. Wexler, Chairman and CEO, Argus Worldwide Corp. (formerly Vid3G Inc) reported today that the Company's voting common shares will commence trading today on a post reverse split basis of 1:3500. The Company, which is listed on the OTC Markets (Pink Current) will trade for the next 20 business days under the symbol VIDGD. Thereafter, the Company's new ticker symbol will be ARGW. Mr. Wexler explains that, "It is the Company's intention to build out over the next 3-5 year period, substantial alternative market positions in the digital, health and pharma sectors of the global economy. Over the next 30 days, the Company plans to complete the acquisition of Poland based Cyber Junky Sp z o.o., an innovative digital platform for sourcing and trading internet domain names. In addition, it is intended that the Company will complete on or before year end, a Reorganization Agreement with an integrated Health and Pharma group based in North America and Europe that will leave Argus Worldwide with a controlling position in the target company." Argus Worldwide Corp. is a US corporation with its registered head office in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Company has affiliated offices in Ottawa, Canada, Warsaw, Poland and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION : Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "will" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Corporation's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Corporation. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Corporation is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained here. SOURCE Argus Worldwide Corp. VANCOUVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Bear Creek Mining Corporation (TSX Venture: BCM) ("Bear Creek" or the "Company") announces it has selected GMI SA Ingenieros Consultores ("GMI"), a company owned by the prominent Peruvian engineering and construction firm Grana y Montero Group ("G&M"), to undertake Phase I Detailed Engineering work at the Corani silver-lead-zinc project in Peru. GMI will work with Bear Creek to fine-tune the Corani engineering design, which will form the basis of the Company's application for a Construction Permit. The Corani Phase I Detailed Engineering is a key component of the use of proceeds of the Company's July 2016 Short Form Prospectus financing (see Bear Creek news release dated July 26, 2016). Andrew Swarthout, President and CEO of Bear Creek, states, "We are very pleased to have the opportunity to partner with G&M, one of the largest and most respected Peruvian engineering and construction firms. G&M along with its subsidiaries has both the breadth and depth of experience to deliver exceptional service in not only engineering design but also in permitting, construction of mining operations, bulk earth moving and contract mining, as demonstrated by their track record of very successful construction and operation outcomes at the Cerro Verde, Las Bambas, La Arena, Shauhuindo and Constancia mining projects in Peru. We look forward to working with G&M's highly qualified team as we complete this important milestone in the development of the Corani project; one of the largest undeveloped silver mines in the world." The Phase I Detailed Engineering work will commence in mid-November and is expected to require 6 months to complete at a cost of approximately US $3.2 million (including taxes). It will establish final processing flow sheets, equipment lists, mine sequencing optimization and updated CapEx and OpEx cost estimates for the Corani project based on a projected 2018 construction start up time frame, and will be used to support the Company's application for a Construction Permit. Concurrently, the Company will engage a project finance consultant with whom it will work to develop a financing structure for the Corani project. The Company expects the Phase I Detailed Engineering to be completed by the end of Q2 2017 and the Construction Permit and project financing to be in place by mid- to late-2017 such that a construction decision could be made before the end of 2017 (which decision will be contingent upon successful project financing, securement of all necessary permits, and market conditions). Bear Creek and G&M have indicated a mutual interest in considering various partnership structures for construction and operation of the Corani mine, which will be further contemplated upon completion of the Phase I Detailed Engineering. Bear Creek also reports that the Company has submitted an application to the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines ("MEM") for accelerated recovery of the 18% value added tax (IGV) that applies to the Company's planned future investments in the Corani project. Pending approval of the application, a contract with the MEM will be executed after which the Company will be able to recover, on an expedited basis, the IGV taxes associated with its Corani capital investments as described in the approved ESIA and the 2015 Corani Feasibility Study (available at www.sedar.com). Accelerated recovery of IGV taxes is expected to reduce the Initial CapEx requirements for the Corani project, including those costs associated with the Phase I Detailed Engineering. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Andrew Swarthout President and CEO Regulatory Footnotes Bear Creek's exploration programs are overseen by, and disclosure of a technical or scientific nature has been reviewed and approved by, Andrew Swarthout, AIPG Certified Professional Geologist, President and CEO of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101. Mr. Swarthout has read, verified and approves such information disclosed in this release. This news release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements related to the timing of commencement and completion of the Phase I Detailed Engineering, timing of a possible Corani Project construction decision and commencement of construction, the engagement of a project finance consultant, the potential for future contractual arrangements with G&M, the possibility for successfully negotiating a contract for accelerated recovery of Peruvian IGV taxes, and the anticipated effect of an IGV contract on Initial CapEx requirements for Corani. Certain of these forward-looking statements are contingent upon various assumptions, including that the Phase 1 Detailed Engineering results will provide sufficient information for the Construction Permit application, and that the Company is eligible for accelerated IGV tax recovery, and upon future events transpiring, including that the Company is able to obtain all necessary permits and secure project financing for the Corani project. This forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this news release and reflects current estimates, predictions, expectations or beliefs regarding future events and is based on the Company's or its consultants' beliefs at the time the statements were made, as well as various assumptions made by and information currently available to them. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions on which they are based do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the expectations expressed in them. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions and estimates used to make such forward-looking statements do not occur and the additional risks described in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form. When relying on our forward-looking statements, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the Company or on behalf of the Company, except as required by 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 release. SOURCE Bear Creek Mining Corporation Related Links http://www.bearcreekmining.com ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In an effort to accelerate growth in the cybersecurity and health technology industries in Montgomery County, BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) has partnered with The MITRE Corporation of McLean, Virginiaa not-for-profit corporation that operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), including the National Cybersecurity FFRDC. BHI will serve as the primary manager for the Rockville Innovation Center (RIC), which is home of BHI's health tech startup accelerator, Relevant Health. MITRE will provide the resident RIC start-up companies technical mentorship and insight into the most pressing cybersecurity challenges facing business and government today. This collaboration is an extension of a strategic initiative recently launched by MITRE to act as an innovation bridge between the private and public sectors. The RIC will support start-ups and attract early-stage technology companies within these key technology sectors to graduate companies into commercial spaces in Montgomery County in a few short years. "Adding cybersecurity thought leadership expands the supportive capabilities of the RIC and our broader regional partnerships," said Richard Bendis, BHI President and CEO. "While the RIC currently serves as a great resource for health tech and biotech startups, we plan to support the convergence that is happening across disciplines that is driving new technology development in the Internet of Things, personalized medicine and other connected health devices. Cybersecurity is a major consideration to be addressed." Start-up companies will be aided by a variety of resources including BHI "Entrepreneurs-in-Residence," MITRE technologists, key-opinion-leader sessions, tactical workshops on technology development, and entrepreneurship support from various corporate, strategic and investment partners. "Collaborating with an organization like BHI that excels in every aspect of managing an innovation center provides a unique opportunity for MITRE," said Dr. Mark Maybury, MITRE's Chief Security Officer, Vice President and Director of the National Cybersecurity FFRDC, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "This arrangement enables each party to focus on what it does best, while taking both the RIC and Montgomery County's business community to new heights." MITRE will mentor RIC's startups in the areas of technology strategy and solution approach, as well as government and industry engagement. "This agreement between BHI and MITRE marks the beginning of a cyber health tech explosion in Montgomery County," said Montgomery County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer for Economic and Workforce Development Lily Qi. "It is only a matter of time before we become the envy of other communities and markets. We are excited to see what this partnership will bring." This announcement comes on the heels of the Maryland Economic Development Corporation (MEDCO) selecting and announcing BHI as the new manager of the Germantown Innovation Center (GIC) located within the Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology at Montgomery College (PIC MC). Additionally, BHI has had a long-standing series of relationships with Montgomery County, and was created by the county in an effort to propel the commercialization efforts of local biotechnology and health startups. About BioHealth Innovation, Inc. BioHealth Innovation, Inc., is a regional innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant bio-health innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland. BHI is known for providing commercial assistance to scientists and founders, educating and infusing Maryland's life science community with new and young entrepreneurs and fueling startups within Central Maryland's bio-ecosystem by connecting young companies to funding and business resources. Learn more at www.biohealthinnovation.org. About The MITRE Corporation The MITRE Corporation is a not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government. Learn more at: www.mitre.org. SOURCE BioHealth Innovation, Inc. Related Links http://www.biohealthinnovation.org (Beijing) A newly signed deal to produce Audi AG cars in Shanghai has infuriated FAW Group Corp., the current exclusive manufacturer of the German luxury cars in China, according to a source close to FAW. SAIC Motor Corp., China's largest automaker by sales, and Audi parent Volkswagen AG signed an agreement last week to make and sell the luxury cars from their Shanghai joint venture that makes Volkswagen-brand cars, SAIC said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Monday. Before the deal, all domestically manufactured Audis were built by a separate joint venture, FAW Volkswagen Automobile Co. Ltd., based in the northeast China's Jilin province. On learning of the new rival deal, executives at FAW were "furious," said a source at the company, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive situation. Audi has become China's leading luxury car maker since entering the market in the late 1980s, outselling peers like BMW and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz. The Audi brand is also favored by government officials. "FAW's contribution to Audi's success in China's luxury-car market as the No.1 luxury-car seller for such a long time cannot be overlooked," said the source, describing the outrage felt by FAW executives on learning of the new deal. Despite its market-leading position, however, the German luxury-car maker is losing its advantage as Mercedes and BMW play catch-up and new entrants such as General Motors Co.'s Cadillac roar into the market. In the first three quarters of this year, Audi's sales in China increased by 6.2%, while Mercedes and BMW reported growth of 30% and 10.6% respectively. China contributed about a third of Audi's global revenue last year. But the German brand also posted its first decline in China that year due to an economic slowdown and a series of corruption scandals at FAW. China is the world's largest car market, fueled by demand from millions of newly minted middle class Chinese. A growing wealthy class has also turbocharged the nation's high-end car segment, with the top 10 luxury-car makers selling more than 1.8 million cars in China last year, according to industry site Gasgoo.com. The fierce competition and a decline in sales have prompted Audi to look for new partners in the country to bolster its leading position in the luxury-car market, said a person close to Audi. "Germans are proactive," said the source. "They would rather make mistakes than do nothing." Contact reporter Chen Na (nachen@caixin.com); editor Doug Young (dougyoung@caixin.com) DENVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Birner Dental Management Services, Inc. (OTCQX: BDMS), business services provider of PERFECT TEETH dental practices, announced results for the quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016. For the quarter ended September 30, 2016, revenue decreased $698,000, or 4.4%, to $15.2 million. The Company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and stock-based compensation expense ("Adjusted EBITDA") decreased $483,000, or 59.0%, to $335,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. Net loss for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 increased $290,000 to $(517,000) compared to $(227,000) for the quarter ended September 30, 2015. Net loss per share increased to $(0.28) for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 compared to $(0.12) for the quarter ended September 30, 2015. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, revenue decreased $1.3 million, or 2.7%, to $47.5 million. The Company's Adjusted EBITDA decreased $978,000, or 31.2%, to $2.2 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2016. Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 increased $517,000 to $(847,000) compared to $(330,000) for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. Net loss per share increased to $(0.46) for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 compared to $(0.18) for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. A substantial portion of the decline in revenue for the quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016, was concentrated in one region within the Company. The Company believes it is taking the necessary actions to correct the decline in revenue with new management for this region. Additionally, the Company believes that dentist transition partially contributed to the decrease in revenue. The number of dentists affiliated with the Company has declined from 110 at September 30, 2015 to 98 at September 30, 2016. The Company replaced its dentist recruiter in September 2016 in an effort to reverse the decline in the number of its affiliated dentists. The Company also believes that revenue in the second and third quarters of 2016 has been adversely affected by employee distractions caused by matters related to an activist shareholder group that began making a series of public disclosures critical of the Company, its board and management in May 2016. Additionally, the Company incurred additional expenses during the third quarter in connection with matters related to the activist shareholder group as well as its board of directors' ongoing evaluation of the Company's strategic options. Significantly contributing to the decrease in Adjusted EBITDA during the quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016 was negative Adjusted EBITDA from the Company's two most recently opened de novo offices. The Company's de novo offices typically take a period of time after opening before they generate positive Adjusted EBITDA. The two de novo offices had negative Adjusted EBITDA of $114,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 and $435,000 for the nine months ended September 30, 2016. As previously announced, the Company does not intend to open any additional de novo offices for the balance of the year. During the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company paid approximately $409,000 in dividends to its shareholders, had capital expenditures of $685,000 and decreased total bank debt outstanding by approximately $269,000. Birner Dental Management Services, Inc. acquires, develops, and manages geographically dense dental practice networks in select markets in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Company currently manages 69 dental offices, of which 36 were acquired and 33 were de novo developments. As of September 30, 2016, the Company had 98 dentists. The Company operates its dental offices under the PERFECT TEETH name. The Company previously announced it would conduct a conference call to review results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 on Monday, November 14, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. MT. In addition to current operating results, the teleconference may include discussion of management's expectations of future financial and operating results. To participate in this conference call, dial in to 1-800-768-6544 and refer to Confirmation Code 5753356 approximately five minutes prior to the scheduled time. If you are unable to join the conference call on November 14, 2016, the rebroadcast number is 1-888-203-1112 with the pass code of 5753356. This rebroadcast will be available through November 28, 2016. Non-GAAP Disclosures This press release includes a non-GAAP financial measure with respect to Adjusted EBITDA. Please see below for more information regarding Adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net loss. Forward-Looking Statements Certain of the matters discussed herein may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. These include statements regarding the Company's prospects and performance in future periods, including the amount of bank debt, performance of de novo offices, the payment or nonpayment of dividends and dentist turnover. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These and other risks and uncertainties are set forth in the reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015. The Company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For Further Information Contact: Birner Dental Management Services, Inc. Dennis Genty Chief Financial Officer (303) 691-0680 BIRNER DENTAL MANAGEMENT SERVICES, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (UNAUDITED) Quarters Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, September 30, 2015 2016 2015 2016 REVENUE: Dental practice revenue $ 14,681,849 $ 13,988,133 $ 45,241,736 $ 44,009,444 Capitation revenue 1,170,907 1,166,155 3,553,173 3,461,218 15,852,756 15,154,288 48,794,909 47,470,662 DIRECT EXPENSES: Clinical salaries and benefits 9,491,411 9,242,477 29,155,036 28,564,107 Dental supplies 762,736 729,299 2,261,936 2,187,229 Laboratory fees 851,678 869,014 2,516,851 2,648,658 Occupancy 1,514,141 1,591,841 4,426,666 4,712,445 Advertising and marketing 326,756 176,150 707,661 490,227 Depreciation and amortization 1,061,157 988,031 3,255,507 3,026,164 General and administrative 1,350,066 1,394,284 3,926,094 4,139,482 15,357,945 14,991,096 46,249,751 45,768,312 Contribution from dental offices 494,811 163,192 2,545,158 1,702,350 CORPORATE EXPENSES: General and administrative 779,585 (1) 848,358 (1) 2,836,925 (2) 2,696,123 (2) Depreciation and amortization 62,616 47,114 174,524 165,994 OPERATING LOSS (347,390) (732,280) (466,291) (1,159,767) Interest expense, net 24,143 70,367 74,700 185,240 LOSS BEFORE INCOME TAXES (371,533) (802,647) (540,991) (1,345,007) Income tax benefit (144,897) (286,131) (210,986) (497,653) NET LOSS $ (226,636) $ (516,516) $ (330,005) $ (847,354) Net loss per share of Common Stock -Basic $ (0.12) $ (0.28) $ (0.18) $ (0.46) Net loss per share of Common Stock - Diluted $ (0.12) $ (0.28) $ (0.18) $ (0.46) Cash dividends per share of Common Stock $ 0.22 $ - $ 0.66 $ - Weighted average number of shares of Common Stock and dilutive securities: Basic 1,860,482 1,860,261 1,859,956 1,860,334 Diluted 1,860,482 1,860,261 1,859,956 1,860,334 (1) Corporate expense - general and administrative includes $42,075 and $32,309 of stock-based compensation expense pursuant to ASC Topic 718 for the quarters ended September 30, 2015 and 2016, respectively. (2) Corporate expense - general and administrative includes $169,338 and $123,118 of stock-based compensation expense pursuant to ASC Topic 718 for the nine months ended September 30, 2015 and 2016, respectively. BIRNER DENTAL MANAGEMENT SERVICES, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (UNAUDITED) December 31, September 30, ASSETS 2015 2016 CURRENT ASSETS: Cash $ 258,801 $ 220,676 Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts of approximately $390,000 and $390,000, respectively 3,043,655 3,350,154 Note receivable 34,195 34,195 Deferred tax asset 275,907 284,629 Income tax receivable 73,878 - Prepaid expenses and other assets 575,770 779,071 Total current assets 4,262,206 4,668,725 PROPERTY AND EQUIPMENT, net 9,808,014 7,934,008 OTHER NONCURRENT ASSETS: Intangible assets, net 7,565,648 6,932,225 Deferred charges and other assets 155,741 155,741 Note receivable 55,002 35,781 Total assets $ 21,846,611 $ 19,726,480 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY CURRENT LIABILITIES: Accounts payable $ 2,920,998 $ 2,871,376 Accrued expenses 1,547,915 927,384 Accrued payroll and related expenses 2,330,398 2,239,065 Income taxes payable - 10,328 Current maturities of long-term debt 1,500,000 2,000,000 Total current liabilities 8,299,311 8,048,153 LONG-TERM LIABILITIES: Deferred tax liability, net 2,242,800 1,703,757 Long-term debt 8,707,578 7,938,934 Other long-term obligations 949,554 1,121,364 Total liabilities 20,199,243 18,812,208 SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY: Preferred Stock, no par value, 10,000,000 shares authorized; none outstanding - - Common Stock, no par value, 20,000,000 shares authorized; 1,861,106 and 1,860,261 shares issued and outstanding, respectively 1,446,182 1,560,440 Retained earnings (accumulated deficit) 201,186 (646,168) Total shareholders' equity 1,647,368 914,272 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 21,846,611 $ 19,726,480 Reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted EBITDA is not a U.S. generally accepted accounting principle ("GAAP") measure of performance or liquidity. However, the Company believes that it may be useful to an investor in evaluating the Company's ability to meet future debt service, capital expenditures and working capital requirements, and the Company uses Adjusted EBITDA for this purpose. Investors should not consider Adjusted EBITDA in isolation or as a substitute for operating income, cash flows from operating activities or any other measure for determining the Company's operating performance or liquidity that is calculated in accordance with GAAP. In addition, because Adjusted EBITDA is not calculated in accordance with GAAP, it may not necessarily be comparable to similarly titled measures employed by other companies. A reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net loss can be made by adding depreciation and amortization expense - Offices, depreciation and amortization expense Corporate, stock-based compensation expense, interest expense, net and income tax benefit to net loss as in the table below. Quarters Nine Months Ended September 30, Ended September 30, 2015 2016 2015 2016 RECONCILIATION OF ADJUSTED EBITDA: Net loss ($226,636) ($516,516) ($330,005) ($847,354) Add back: Depreciation and amortization - Offices 1,061,157 988,031 3,255,507 3,026,164 Depreciation and amortization - Corporate 62,616 47,114 174,524 165,994 Stock-based compensation expense 42,075 32,309 169,338 123,118 Interest expense, net 24,143 70,367 74,700 185,240 Income tax benefit (144,897) (286,131) (210,986) (497,653) Adjusted EBITDA $818,458 $335,174 $3,133,078 $2,155,509 SOURCE Birner Dental Management Services, Inc. Related Links http://www.bdms-perfectteeth.com CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Boston Biomedical, an industry leader in the development of novel compounds designed to target cancer stemness pathways, announced that its lead investigational compound, napabucasin, has received Orphan Drug Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. This is the second Orphan Drug Designation for napabucasin, an orally administered agent designed to inhibit cancer stemness pathways by targeting STAT3; the first designation was for gastric cancer including gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancer. "Receiving another Orphan Drug Designation for napabucasin is an important regulatory milestone achieved by Boston Biomedical and an exciting step towards the clinical advancement of this first-in-class therapy," said Chiang J. Li, M.D. FACP, President, CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Boston Biomedical, and the Head of Global Oncology for Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Group. "Pancreatic cancer has a five year survival rate of 7% and few viable treatment options. This designation represents our determination to address an unmet need and potentially bring a new treatment to those with this difficult-to-treat cancer." The FDA's Orphan Drug Designation program provides special status and development incentives for drugs and biologics which are intended for the safe and effective treatment, diagnosis or prevention of rare diseases/disorders that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S.i In 2016, it is estimated that over 53,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.ii Phase Ib data for napabucasin in metastatic pancreatic cancer (NCT02231723) were previously presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2016 annual meeting. These data showed that napabucasin may be combined with gemcitabine and nab-PTX and showed signs of anti-tumor activity in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Of the 37 patients enrolled in the study, fifty-seven percent of patients (17 of 30 evaluable patients) had prolonged disease control (24 weeks).iii Common adverse events (AEs) identified in this clinical trial were grade 1 diarrhea, nausea, fatigue and neuropathy, which were reversible and manageable with symptom medications.iii About Cancer Stem Cells Cancer stem cells (CSCs) possess the property of stemness the ability to self-renew and differentiate into heterogeneous cancer cells. This allows the CSCs to act like seeds, causing a patient's cancer to relapse or spread within their body.iv,v Evidence suggests that these cells possess resistance to conventional chemotherapy and radiation, so while such treatments can successfully shrink tumors, a population of CSCs may still survive.v,vi Boston Biomedical is leading the biopharmaceutical industry in the development of novel compounds designed to target cancer stemness pathways, with the goal of addressing ongoing challenge in cancer treatment. About Napabucasin Napabucasin is an orally-administered investigational agent designed to inhibit cancer stemness pathways by targeting STAT3.vii Napabucasin is currently being investigated in three Phase III studies in advanced gastric and GEJ (NCT02178956), colorectal (NCT02753127) and lung cancer (NCT02826161). It is also being investigated in earlier phases in multiple solid and hematologic malignancies, including tumors of the liver, pancreas and brain. More information on napabucasin and ongoing clinical trials can be found at www.BostonBiomedical.com. About Boston Biomedical Boston Biomedical, Inc. (Founder, President, CEO and CMO: Chiang J. Li, M.D. FACP) was founded in November 2006 and is wholly owned by Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd. Boston Biomedical's mission is to develop the next generation of cancer therapeutics by creating drugs designed to target cancer stemness pathways. Boston Biomedical's innovation in drug discovery has received a number of recognitions and awards in the United States, including the Frost & Sullivan 2010 North American Drug Discovery Technology Innovation of the Year Award, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer stem cell initiative grant award in 2010, and the 2011 Biotech Pioneer Award at the Alexandria Oncology Summit. The company also received the "Company To Watch" award in the 10th Annual Team Massachusetts Economic Impact Awards in 2013. Boston Biomedical is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Additional information about the company and its product pipeline can be found at www.BostonBiomedical.com. Disclaimer Regarding Forward-Looking Statements The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on management's assumptions and beliefs in light of information presently available, and involve both known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Any forward looking statements set forth in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. We do not undertake to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof. Information concerning pharmaceuticals (including compounds under development) contained within this material is not intended as advertising or medical advice. For general inquiries: Boston Biomedical 617-674-6800 For media inquiries: Sara Baker CHAMBERLAIN PR 212-849-9474 [email protected] i FDA. "Developing Products for Rare Diseases & Conditions." Accessed on November 11, 2016. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/forindustry/developingproductsforrarediseasesconditions/ucm2005525.htm ii National Cancer Institute: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. "SEER Stat Fact Sheets: Pancreas Cancer." Accessed on November 4, 2016. Available at: http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/pancreas.html iii Boston Biomedical. "A Phase Ib extension study of cancer stemness inhibitor BB608 (Napabucasin) in combination with Gemcitabine and nab-Paclitaxel (nab-PTX) in patients (pts) with metastatic pancreatic cancer." Accessed on November 11, 2016. Available at: http://www.bostonbiomedical.com/wp-content/uploads/Abst4128-BBI608-118-ASCO2016.pdf. iv Gupta PB, Chaffer CL, Weinberg RA. Cancer stem cells: mirage or reality? Nat Med. 2009;15(9):1010-1012. v Ajani JA, Song S, Hochster HS, Steinberg IB. Cancer stem cells: the promise and the potential. Semin Oncol. 2015;42(suppl 1):S3-S17. vi Jordan CT, Guzman ML, Noble M. Cancer stem cells. N Engl J Med. 2006;355(12):1253-1261. vii Li Y, Rogoff HA et al. PNAS. 112(6):1839-44, 2015. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150514/216131LOGO SOURCE Boston Biomedical, Inc. Related Links http://www.BostonBiomedical.com JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Brightway Insurance continues to grow as its second location in the Grand Canyon State is opening today. Veteran Insurance Agent, Shauna Summ, is the proud Owner of Brightway, The Shauna Summ Agency in Phoenix, Ariz. Brightway is the seventh largest privately held Personal Lines independent insurance agency in the country. Also today, Mo Hassan is opening the doors to Brightway, The Hassan Agency in Kennesaw, Ga. Inspired by the successes his uncle, Hasan Mehedi, has experienced as a Brightway Agency Owner in Florida, Hassan decided that opening a Brightway Agency would be a great fit for him and the people in his community. Mehedi's agency in West Palm Beach, Fla., is a top 25 Brightway agency in terms of annualized premium. "We're thrilled to have Mo Hassan and Shauna Summ as our newest Brightway Agency Owners," said Brightway President, Talman Howard. "Shauna has a solid reputation for providing expert counsel to her customers, and Mo is a real go-getter who has a passion for running his own business and being an integral part of his community. A team of experts stand behind Shauna and Mo to provide support through customer service, carrier relationships, marketing, accounting and technology so they can focus on taking the time to get to know each of their customers and finding them the right insurance solutions." Brightway, The Shauna Summ Agency is located at 21620 N 19th Ave., Suite A10 in Phoenix, Ariz. (near the West Deer Valley Road intersection). For more information, visit BrightwayShaunaSumm.com. Brightway, The Hassan Agency is located at 2615 George Busbee Parkway Suite 10-D in Kennesaw, Ga. (across the street from the Town Center at Cobb). For more information, visit BrightwayMoHassan.com. In addition to Brightway's two newest agencies, Brightway, The Landers Agency celebrated with a ribbon-cutting event on Nov. 2. Agency Owner, Kandie Landers, opened the agency at 650 South Cherry Street, Suite 102 (at the corner of Cherry Street and Exposition Avenue) in Glendale, Colo., July 11. For more information, visit BrightwayLanders.com. Brightway agencies offer customized Home, Condo, Renters, Auto, Flood, RV, Motorcycle, Boat, ATV, Umbrella, Business and Life insurance policies from twice as many insurance carriers as do other independent agencies. With more than twice as many insurance carriers to choose from, Brightway agencies outsell other independent insurance agencies two to one. About Brightway Insurance Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance retailer selling through a network of franchised independent agencies throughout the country. With more than $429 million in annualized premium written, the company is the nation's seventh largest privately held Personal Lines independent insurance agency. Brightway began franchising operations in 2008 and has since grown to 770 people in 12 states serving customers in all 50 states. In 2015, Forbes recognized the company as America's No. 1 Franchise to Buy. Additionally, the company was named a top franchise three years in a row by Entrepreneur magazine and one of the fastest-growing private companies in America nine consecutive years by Inc. 5000. Learn more about Brightway at Brightway.com, and find us on Facebook and LinkedIn. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151027/280961LOGO SOURCE Brightway Insurance Related Links http://brightway.com KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Burns & McDonnell, The Empire Electric District Company (Empire) and the Southeast Kansas Building and Construction Trades Council have received a Zero Injury Safety Award from the National Maintenance Agreements Policy Committee, Inc., for the Riverton Unit 12 Combined Cycle Conversion Project completed earlier in 2016. Burns & McDonnell served as the engineer-procure-construct (EPC) contractor for the $168 million project, located near Riverton, Kansas. The award also recognized the contributions of major subcontractors, AZCO, Inc., Sachs Electric Company, and Kissick Construction among many others. Over 618,000 work hours were logged on the Empire Riverton Unit 12 Combined Cycle Conversion Project with zero OSHA recordable or lost-time accidents. "Empire deserves congratulations for this award along with all the subcontractors and the craft professionals for making sure that all work was planned and safety was a top priority," says Randy Griffin, President of the Construction Design-Build Division for Burns & McDonnell. "Safety is always the highest priority for Burns & McDonnell so we know that the first requirement is to get everyone pulling in the same direction every day on the job." The major elements of the safety program included Burns & McDonnell's standard Activity Hazard Analysis (AHA), Pre-Task Analysis (PTA), and Task Safety Observations (TSO). The AHA is focused on larger segments of the work, and is planned in detail before operations begin. The PTA is completed by each crew daily, and addresses the changing nature of the site. TSO's are required to be filled out by all staff and supervisors daily, and include a review of at least one operation plus an independent review of that crew's PTA. The Empire Riverton Unit 12 Combined Cycle Conversion Project was launched after Empire decided to retire two older coal-fired units and replace the lost capacity by converting the existing Unit 12 simple cycle natural gas-fired unit to a one-on-one combined cycle unit. The new combined cycle unit boosts power output by 67 percent, from 143 to 255 megawatts (MW) while using very little additional fuel. In addition to the Zero Injury Safety Award, the Riverton project received an Award of Merit from Engineering News-Record magazine as one of the top power projects in the central U.S. About Burns & McDonnell Burns & McDonnell is a company made up of more than 5,400 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the United States, Canada and throughout the world. Burns & McDonnell is ranked as the No. 1 Power engineering design firm by Engineering News-Record magazine and is ranked No. 14 overall among the Top 500 engineering design firms. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune's 2016 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information: click here Contact: Roger Dick, Burns & McDonnell 816-822-3339 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/360057LOGO SOURCE Burns & McDonnell Related Links http://www.burnsmcd.com PHOENIX, Ariz., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- JUMORE Chairman Lu Hongxiang was invited to attend the 2016 Global Innovation Summit held in Phoenix City, U.S.A. In the summit, He introduced the strategic concept and business model of JUMORE to the Chinese and foreign entrepreneurs onsite. Global entrepreneurs were very impressed by the contribution of JUMORE's business model, and expressed their strong willingness to cooperate with JUMORE and join the ecosystem created by JUMORE globally. JUMORE is the world's first cross-border e-commerce platform for commodities, goods, and services by creating a unique and brand new business model E4B (Ecosystem for Business). On JUMORE platform, all clients can make transactions with the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain of full-line commodities, and receive comprehensive service and support from first-class service institutions in the world. Via JUMORE E-Commerce Platform, American companies can connect with the enormous purchase orders from medium and large-scale companies from China, and make deals with their Chinese and even global business partners safely and effectively. Meanwhile, JUMORE Platform also offers reliable and high-quality products from China and the world, as well as abundant investment projects, which will both provide great opportunities for cooperation to companies. It is worth noting that JUMORE highly focuses on the values of clients and cares about their security. JUMORE is creating the safest e-commerce platform in the world with its own business ecosystem. All companies on the platform are recommended by governments or chambers of commerce, and are certified through authoritative third-party certification institutions. Such approach significantly differs JUMORE from other e-commerce platforms. Meanwhile, through cooperation with first-class financial institutions in the world, JUMORE has introduced security mechanisms to ensure the payment security; through that with first-class third-party logistics and insurance institutions, JUMORE is providing safety guarantee to the transaction and logistics processes of commodities, to make sure the security of commodities. SOURCE JUMORE WASHINGTON, Nov. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, tonight decried the appointment of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and White nationalist "alt-right" extremist Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump. Bannon, formerly head of alt-right mouthpiece "Breitbart News," promoted conspiracy theories that "paint a dark and paranoid picture" of American Muslims. Breitbart News traffics in misogynistic and racist stories targeting women, people of color and immigrants. A White Nationalist Is the New White House Chief Strategist http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-chief-strategist_us_5828e1d4e4b0c4b63b0d33d7 Trump Campaign CEO Was a Big Promoter of Anti-Muslim Extremists http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-muslims-fear-loathing According to CAIR's Islamophobia Monitor website, Bannon also hosted a daily radio show in which many of his guests "instigated fear and loathing of Muslims in America" and promoted "racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim content." "The appointment of Stephen Bannon as a top Trump administration strategist sends the disturbing message that anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and White nationalist ideology will be welcome in the White House," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. "We urge President-elect Trump to reconsider this ill-advised appointment if he truly seeks to unite Americans." Awad added that Bannon's appointment adds fuel to the growing fire of racial and ethnic hatred and division in America. CAIR recently updated its site with information about the extremist anti-Muslim views of a number of potential Trump administration appointees, including Bannon. CAIR Islamophobia Monitor: Islamophobia and the Potential Trump Team http://www.islamophobia.org/15-reports/181-islamophobia-and-the-trump-transition-team.html The Washington-based Muslim civil rights group is monitoring a troubling spike in anti-Muslim and racist incidents since last Tuesday's election. CAIR: Trump's Election Leaves American Muslims Reeling and Scared (AP) https://www.abqjournal.com/888211/trumps-election-leaves-american-muslims-reeling-and-scared.html Over 200 Reports of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Post-Election http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/200-reports-hateful-harassment-intimidation-post-election-splc/story?id=43491050 CAIR: An Incomplete List of Racist Incidents Since Donald Trump Was Elected President http://tinyurl.com/jjnzqhy Muslim community members who believe their rights have been violated are being asked to contact local police and CAIR's Civil Rights Department at 202-742-6420 or by filing a report at: http://www.cair.com/civil-rights/report-an-incident/view/form.html CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. La mision de CAIR es mejorar la comprension del Islam, fomentar el dialogo, proteger las libertades civiles, capacitar a los musulmanes estadounidenses, y construir coaliciones que promuevan la justicia y la comprension mutua. Become a Fan of CAIR on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational Subscribe to CAIR's Email List http://tinyurl.com/cairsubscribe Subscribe to CAIR's Twitter Feed http://twitter.com/cairnational Subscribe to CAIR's YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/cairtv CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected] SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Related Links http://www.cair.com The three events are as follows: 1. $3 Trillion Worth of New Gold Investors One-quarter of the world's population that has never before invested in gold is about to begin doing so, and they're armed with $3 trillion in funds. A new law going into effect at the end of 2016 is going to enable Muslims across the world to trade in gold for the first time. The World Gold Council is working with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions to create an acceptable standard for Muslims to trade in gold. You may have heard some pretty controversial things about Sharia Law, but what you probably haven't heard is that this law also governs the world of Islamic finance. Under Shariah Law, gold is one of six items which are forbidden from being held on to with the intention of trading at a later date for a higher foreseeable value. What this means is that Muslims can own gold to use as jewelry, for example, but up until now Shariah Law has dictated that Muslims refrain from trading the yellow metal as a commodity. The ban is expected to be reversed on December 31st, at which point an additional 1.6 billion people, 32 central banks, and 112 billionaires, including the Saudi royal family and sheikhs famous for their oil wealth, will be eligible to invest in gold. Standard & Poor estimates that $3 trillion could flood into the gold market at that time. $3 trillion is enough to buy every ounce of gold in Fort Knox 17 times over. 2. A New Dominant Gold Market As the current top importer, producer, and consumer of gold, China intends to take over the London and New York markets and become the dominant market controlling the price of gold. China has made it clear that with this authority, they have every intention of setting the price of gold on supply and demand of actual bullion. Again they want not only to control the price of gold, but base it on actual physical gold. It's hard to exaggerate how truly game-changing this is. Remember, for the last 40 years, the Libor and Comex Exchanges have priced gold on futures contracts, not physical bullion. In fact, only 1 in 252 paper gold contracts is backed by actual real bullion. So for nearly half a century, this has artificially suppressed the price of gold. And now, the Chinese are about to change all of that. Traders who buy futures on the new Shanghai Gold Exchange are required to deposit the contract's equivalent value in physical gold. So every single trade on the Shanghai fix will be backed by physical metal, not 252 to 1, but 1 to 1. Simply put: this is going to send the price of gold through the roof. 3. The third wave about to hit investors like a ton of bricks is this: the international supply of gold has hit its peak. Like any finite resource, at a certain point, mining and extraction become sharply costly, and production will begin to decline. This decline comes after the commodity's peak, and like oil miners have officially hit peak gold. We (miners?) have hit "peak gold", that is the supply of gold has already begun to taper off. Last year, Goldman Sachs warned that there's "only 20 years of known mineable gold reserves." Blackrock, the world's largest hedge fund, agrees that we've reached "peak gold." Right now, the production of gold is rapidly shrinking, just as demand is soaring. This upcoming gold upswing will dwarf anything that's happened before. In short: the yellow metal is about to become far more lucrative. With all this important information out there, it's imperative that you speak to any of Capital Gold Group's gold traders to help you make an informed decision on not only protecting your money, but also taking advantage of this huge opportunity. Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/636030656.mp4 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160707/386986LOGO SOURCE Capital Gold Group Related Links http://www.capitalgoldgroup.com CHICAGO, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cars.com announced today the appointment of Brooke Skinner Ricketts as the company's chief marketing officer (CMO), effective immediately. Skinner Ricketts most recently served as vice president of brand and design at Avant. Previously she was head of brand strategy at Twitter, where she delivered revenue-driving creative ideas for Fortune 200 clients. "Cars.com is here to help people win, and by welcoming Brooke, we're delivering on that promise," said Alex Vetter, president and chief executive officer of Cars.com. "As we prepare to become an independent, publicly traded company in early 2017, Brooke's strong track record of optimizing marketing effectiveness and implementing forward-thinking brand strategies will move Cars.com toward becoming the trusted platform of choice for automotive consumers and advertisers alike." "I'm thrilled to be joining the team at Cars.com and becoming part of one of Chicago's homegrown digital pioneers," Skinner Ricketts said. "It's such an exciting time for Cars.com and I know that the company and the brand are both in a great position to grow and thrive in the next stage of our evolution." Prior to her time at Avant and Twitter, Skinner Ricketts was senior vice president of brand strategy at DigitasLBi from 2011 until 2014. Her responsibilities included building a strategy practice and opening a new office in San Francisco. From 2004 until 2011, Skinner Ricketts led efforts to refresh brand relevance across a large global portfolio at FCB and DraftFCB. While there, she quickly climbed the ladder from strategic planner to senior vice president of global strategic planning. Skinner Ricketts launched her career at Doe Anderson and PriceWeber in Louisville, Kentucky. Skinner Ricketts received her bachelor of arts degree from Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 2014, she was recognized by Crain's Chicago Business as a member of its 40 Under 40 class and, this year, she was named to Crain's Tech 50 list. Skinner Ricketts became a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow in 2014 and is on the boards of Housing Opportunities for Women, Chicago Cubs Charities and She100. ABOUT CARS.COM Cars.com is a leading online destination that helps car shoppers and owners navigate every turn of car ownership. A pioneer in automotive classifieds, the company has evolved into one of the largest digital automotive platforms, connecting consumers with local dealers across the country anytime, anywhere. Through trusted expert content, on-the-lot mobile app features, millions of new and used vehicle listings, a comprehensive set of research tools and the largest database of consumer reviews in the industry, Cars.com helps shoppers buy, sell and service their vehicles. Cars.com properties include DealerRater, Auto.com, PickupTrucks.com and NewCars.com. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Chicago. It is owned by TEGNA, Inc. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161017/429255LOGO SOURCE Cars.com CORONA DEL MAR, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cedars-Sinai is expanding its radiation oncology services in the Los Angeles area with the addition of a treatment center that offers state-of-the-art cancer therapies in a comfortable and convenient location less than a mile from the hospital campus. The center will be a collaboration with Integrated Oncology Network, LLC ("ION") and gives Beverly Hills residents local access to the center's vast resources and leading-edge treatments. The treatment center adds to a growing roster of Cedars-Sinai radiation oncology services. Cedars-Sinai already offers radiation oncology at its main hospital campus and at its affiliate, The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute in Santa Monica. The 8,500-square-foot facility, at 8929 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, will be fully integrated into the Cedars-Sinai medical record system. Lab tests, X-rays and reports will flow seamlessly between the center and the hospital. "Patients will receive the same level of care that's delivered at all of our locations," said Howard M. Sandler, MD, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai's Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. Cedars-Sinai physicians and employees will staff the treatment center. Mitchell Kamrava, MD, a radiation oncologist joining Cedars-Sinai from UCLA Health, will lead the team and report to Sandler. The center offers Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator technology, a radiotherapy system that delivers fast cancer treatments with pinpoint accuracy and precision while protecting nearby healthy tissue and organs. "State-of-the-art radiation machines and contemporary and comfortable surroundings will help Cedars-Sinai patients and their families feel at home," Sandler said. "We look forward to providing this important treatment option for those who need it." "ION has been focused on expanding our physician networks across the United States and affiliating with larger healthcare systems to provide quality and cost-efficient patient care. We are honored to be affiliated with Cedars Sinai, which is one of the largest, most prestigious nonprofit academic medical centers in the U.S.," said Jeffrey Goffman, ION's CEO. About ION Integrated Oncology Network Holdings, LLC and its subsidiaries ("ION" or the "Company") is a radiation oncology management and cancer center development company that partners with hospitals and physicians that seek strategic, financial and management expertise. ION provides strategic solutions, development for cancer centers, financing and management services with expertise in radiation oncology operations including accounting compliance, IT, M&A, physics and dosimetry, and billing & collection. ION's senior management team has over 150 years of combined health care expertise, including working as a trusted resource with several of the most prestigious oncology groups and hospital systems in the country. ION is a partner in 21 radiation cancer centers across the United States. For more information on ION, please visit our web site at www.ion-llc.com. SOURCE Integrated Oncology Network Related Links http://www.ion-llc.com CHICAGO, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, Ltd. (ORBA), one of Chicago's largest public accounting firms, has been awarded a 2016 Top Workplaces honor by the Chicago Tribune. The Top Workplaces lists are based solely on the results of an employee feedback survey administered by WorkplaceDynamics, LLC, a leading research firm that specializes in organizational health and workplace improvement. Several aspects of workplace culture were measured, including alignment, execution and connection, just to name a few. This is the seventh year in a row that ORBA has received a Top Workplaces distinction by the Chicago Tribune. "ORBA has seen tremendous growth in the past year. At the heart of this growth is the strength and the value that our employees bring to the company," says Mark Thomson, Managing Director at ORBA. "This award is a testament not only to their hard work, but to the cohesive and productive work environment to which they contribute, and I am proud to share in this honor with them." WorkplaceDynamics specializes in employee feedback surveys and workplace improvement. This year alone, more than two million employees in over 6,000 organizations will participate in the Top Workplaces campaign. "The Top Workplaces award is not a popularity contest. And oftentimes, people assume it's all about fancy perks and benefits," says Doug Claffey, CEO of WorkplaceDynamics, "But to be a Top Workplace, organizations must meet our strict standards for organizational health. And who better to ask about work life than the people who live the culture every daythe employees." Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, Ltd. (ORBA) is a full-service accounting, tax and business consulting firm located in downtown Chicago serving privately-held companies, individuals and not-for-profit organizations. ORBA's Certified Public Accountants have experience with accounting and assurance, business advisory services, financial and estate planning, fraud investigation, tax, litigation, and mergers and acquisitions. With some of the highest levels of direct client involvement in the industry, ORBA is where clients go to build long-standing, meaningful and successful relationships with resourceful, proactive business and tax advisors. For more information, visit www.orba.com. Subscribe to our blog www.orbablog.com or connect with us on LinkedIn. Contact: Carlo Calma 312.670.7444 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150629/226751LOGO SOURCE Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, Ltd. Related Links http://www.orba.com (Beijing) China will have 14 million more preschool-aged children by 2021, the result of the country's scrapping the one-child policy in October 2015, and the country needs to build 100,000 new kindergartens to avoid a severe shortage of classroom seats, a study found. The number of preschool-aged children will rise 27% to 66 million in 2021, an increase expected after the Communist Party said last year that all couples may now have two children, according to a recent research published in the Journal of Studies in Early Childhood Education. The country needs to build 95,800 new "kindergartens" over the next five years to accommodate the rising number of preschool-aged children, the study said. It is a 43% increase from the current 223,700 preschools in the country, according to the research lead by Li Ling, a professor of education at Southwest University in Chongqing. In the Chinese education system, kindergartens are for 3-to-6-year-olds, unlike many Western nations like the U.S., where kindergarten is for 5- and 6-year-olds and is part of local public-school systems. The government needs to step up spending on public kindergartens and increase subsidies for private schools, it recommends. About 16 million children, or nearly a quarter of all students in the preschool-age bracket, mostly in rural China, are unable to attend school, according to a study by Peking University's China Institute for Educational Finance Research released earlier this month. Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com); editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com) This car seat, described as a "high-speed" car seat by Goodbaby, embeds a GBES (GB Energy Suspension) honeycomb aluminum device, which can rapidly absorb the massive impact forces resulting from a car collision or accident; providing better protection for the children riding in the vehicle. It has passed the impact test at a speed of 80 km/h, currently the highest speed of car seat impact test in the world, while all performance indexes comply with the highest standards of ECE R44, US FMVSS 213 or GB 27887. Other car seats available in the market are only able to pass the impact test at a speed of 50 km/h -- the mandatory minimum standard as dictated by the car seat industry. Even ADAC, the most authoritative star rating organization in Europe, only tests up to 70km/h. This high-speed car seat by Goodbaby not only passes the test at speeds significantly higher than those required by the mandatory impact test standards, but also delivers substantially better performance than its peers. It previously underwent a collision test in a real vehicle travelling at a speed of 94.7 km/h, delivering head injury criteria of 377, better than the standard of 1,000 stipulated by the US FMVSS 213 (stipulation not required by ECE R44). It also received a chest synthesis acceleration of 29.5 g, far below the 55 g required by ECE R44 and GB 27887, and the 60 g required by the FMVSS 213. Above all, these two test results show that this car seat significantly improves the safety of a child in a moving vehicle by more than 40%, when compared to any other car seat. As one of the world's largest durable juvenile product providers, and one of the most well-known brand operators, Goodbaby has created, researched and developed many innovate products that make baby and child care safer and easier. In 2014, Goodbaby acquired the Germany-based company CYBEX, an award-winning producer of infant car seats and high back boosters, and the US-based Evenflo, one of the earliest entrants into the juvenile industry with a track record as a market leader since 1920. These acquisitions transformed Goodbaby into a leader in terms of brand, scale, technology and market across the global car seat industry. In 2015, the company's car seat products occupied a market share of 23% in the USA, 31% in Europe and over 35% in China, respectively. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161113/438657 SOURCE Goodbaby NEW YORK, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ChineseInvestors.com (OTCQB: CIIX) ("CIIX" or the "Company"), the premier financial information website for Chinese-speaking investors in both the U.S. and China, announces today that it will launch the world's first Chinese-language mobile cannabis navigation application. This cannabis 'Yelp' style social media mobile app will contain a database of marijuana dispensaries and cannabis strains, a platform to review and discuss various cannabis products, and maps showing the locations of medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries. In addition, the mobile app will offer cannabis business summary reports of Los Angeles and other large cities, so that users can easily get the best recommendations for local legal marijuana products. The Company intends to launch this application on January 1st, 2017, and the platform will expand to include cannabis merchant advertising and tourism recommendations in the next few years. By a margin of 56% to 44%, California voters passed Proposition 64 on November 8th, making it the fifth state to legalize recreational cannabis. With the addition of California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada, the percentage of Americans living in states where cannabis use is legal for adults rose from 5 percent to 20 percent. The approval of Proposition 64 implies that the legal cannabis industry in California will expand rapidly and cannabis trade revenues are expected to double in the coming year. The demand and popularity for legal cannabis products among Chinese communities have the potential to grow, as California has millions of Chinese in its population. Currently, there are about 1,250 cannabis retailers in the regions of Los Angeles and San Diego and the number is expected to grow after the legalization of recreational cannabis use. Warren Wang, founder and CEO of CIIX, commented: "Many Chinese investors still have a bias against the cultivation and sales of cannabis, yet its effectiveness in the fields of medicine, food, cosmetics and other industries cannot be ignored. And for those Chinese who do accept medical or recreational use of cannabis, they will need help in locating appropriate resources to assist them in learning how to utilize cannabis in an effective way. The cannabis 'Yelp' style social media mobile app developed by our company is specifically designed to help curious Chinese people do this. Furthermore, this application will help Chinese investors discover valuable business opportunities in cannabis cultivation, advertising and tourism." Mr. Wang further remarked: "With the gradual opening up of cannabis industry in the U.S., marijuana manufacturing and retail as well as research and development, will expand at a rapid pace. The legal cannabis industry in the U.S. is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2026, expanding to more than eight times its current size. We strongly believe that the current cannabis industry among Chinese communities can be considered as an emerging market. And we feel that our new cannabis navigation mobile application will bring more curious Chinese investors to this emerging market and more funding to the whole cannabis industry. CIIX will become the hub or most recognizable source for information and analysis among the Chinese cannabis consumer and investor." About ChineseInvestors.com (OTCQB: CIIX): ChineseInvestors.com, Inc. ('CIIX'), founded in 1999 endeavors to be an innovative company; providing (a) real-time market commentary, analysis, and educational related services in Chinese language character sets (traditional and simplified), (b) support services to our various partners, (c) consultative services to smaller private companies considering becoming a public company, (d) advertising and public relation related support services, and (e) other services we may identify having the potential to create value or partnership opportunity with our existing services. Subscribe and watch our video commentaries: https://www.youtube.com/user/Chinesefncom Follow us on Twitter for real time Company updates: https://twitter.com/ChineseFNEnglsh Facebook Like us to receive live feeds: https://www.facebook.com/Chinesefncom Add us on WeChat at: Chinesefn or download iPhone iOS App: Chinesefn. Chineseinvestors.com Inc. 14 Wall Street 20th Floor New York, NY 10005 Office Tel: +1-(800)-958-8561 SOURCE ChineseInvestors.com, Inc NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CI&T, the digital technology agency empowering Agile Growth for the world's biggest companies today announced it has been selected as a winner for the 2016 Acquia Engage Awards in the Financial Services category for its work with Commonwealth Financial Network. The Acquia Engage Awards recognize the amazing sites and digital experiences that organizations are building with the Acquia Platform. "Receiving the Acquia Engage Award for Financial Services is an immense accolade for CI&T and reinforces our commitment to providing the most advanced technology solutions to each of our partners," said Bruno Guicardi, president of CI&T. "This recognition from Acquia and the expert Drupal communities solidifies CI&T's position as a leader in digital technology solutions." CI&T partnered with Acquia to leverage its Acquia Cloud Site Factory tool and build a totally revamped digital platform for Commonwealth, providing a new UX and mobile friendly web experience to more than 800 financial advisors. CI&T's extensive knowledge of Drupal and Acquia Cloud Site Factory was key to defining and implementing a robust architecture, therefore leveraging the foundation needed for rapid development and value activation. In addition to its win with Commonwealth, CI&T was honored as a finalist in the Commerce, Health Sciences and Healthcare categories. "Acquia's partners and customers are working tirelessly to raise the bar and drive the future of digital. Together we're helping organizations develop elegant solutions that inspire and engage audiences and drive significant value for their businesses," said Joe Wykes, senior vice president of global channels & eCommerce at Acquia. "This year's winners are working closely with Acquia to not only execute on today's opportunities, but to also lay the groundwork for success in the world of tomorrow. The breadth of submissions was inspiring, and continues to affirm that Acquia partners and customers are setting the new precedent for exceptional digital experiences." More than 150 submissions were received from Acquia customers and partners, from which 13 were selected as winners. Nominations that demonstrated an advanced level of visual design, functionality, integration and overall experience advanced to the finalist round, where an outside panel of experts from the Drupal and web content management communities selected the winning projects. The full list of winners for the 2016 Acquia Engage Awards are posted to Acquia's website. About CI&T CI&T is the digital technology agency empowering Agile Growth for the world's biggest companies by leveraging advanced technologies including Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Machine Learning/AI, Social, Mobility. For over 20 years, CI&T has been a trusted partner in helping global businesses such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart and Motorola build, manage, and transform the enterprise through the right combination of next generation technologies. With over 2,000 Digital Business Experts and Engineers in the USA, Brazil, UK, Australia, Japan, and China, CI&T is big enough to handle the needs of Fortune 100 clients while remaining agile, lean and able to move bold ideas to market fast. For more information, visit www.ciandt.com. About Acquia Acquia is the leading provider of cloud-based, digital experience management solutions. Forward-thinking organizations rely on Acquia to transform the way they can engage with customers -- in a personal and contextual way, across every device and channel. Acquia provides the agility organizations need to embrace new digital business models and speed innovation and time to market. With Acquia, thousands of customers globally including the BBC, Cisco, Stanford University, and the Australian Government are delivering digital experiences with transformational business impact. For more information visit www.acquia.com or call +1 617 588 9600. Media Contact: Zella Panossian Illume PR 1-310-452-4446 [email protected] SOURCE CI&T Related Links http://www.ciandt.com New release supports global collaboration, open science and takes the guesswork out of journal submissions PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters today announced the availability of EndNote X8, the next iteration of the leading software for researchers, librarians and students to find, manage and create bibliographies, citations and references to research smarter. Research collaboration has taken on a whole new meaning in the digital age. From 1998 through 2011, papers with 50 or more authors doubled in quantity from roughly 500 per year to more than 1,000. With research on the rise, the latest version of EndNote addresses this trend and enables researchers to work smarter to produce novel research no matter where their location. EndNote X8 now includes support to share an entire EndNote research library, including references, PDFs and annotations with up to 100 people. Collaborators can add to, annotate and cite from the shared library in real-time, with unlimited cloud storage at no additional cost. A built-in activity feed allows users to identify new members and to track the latest changes made to the library by their collaborators. "Our goal is addressing the needs of the market and in particular the end users," said George Kowal, head of researcher solutions at Clarivate Analytics. "X8 does exactly this in support of enabling their research to move forward more effectively with enhanced collaboration." With competition to get published at an all time high, delays due to mismanaged references are nonexistent when the right references are only a click away. EndNote keeps its users in step with the constantly evolving world of scholarly research and publishing by providing the ability to search, organize and share reference materials, as well as automatically format bibliographies, cutting down on the time spent collecting research and writing manuscripts, patent applications and grant proposals. In addition, with EndNote's manuscript matcher, users can reduce the risk of publication rejection by identifying journals where their research is most likely to be accepted based on an analysis of tens of millions of citation connections in Web of Science, a collection of meticulously indexed data from thousands of journals, across hundreds of global publishers. "As the industry's premier reference management resource, EndNote plays an integral role in today's demanding research landscape and the shifting trends in multi-disciplinary and global research collaboration," said Jessica Turner, global head of government and academia at Clarivate Analytics. "With 4 million users from over 100,000 companies and academic institutions worldwide, we recognize the important part EndNote plays in the research process and remain fully committed to providing our customers with the best reference management solution for the future." EndNote X8 is available for Mac and Windows and syncs seamlessly with EndNote online and the EndNote iPad application. For more information on EndNote, or to request a free 30-day trial, visit: endnote.com/downloads/30-day-trial. Learn more about Growing Together: Research Collaboration and Technology, on State of Innovation, and read the report that examines factors that have influenced the rise of collaboration, along with resources that can track and illuminate research partnerships across the globe. Clarivate Analytics Clarivate Analytics accelerates the pace of innovation by providing trusted insights and analytics to customers around the world, enabling them to discover, protect and commercialize new ideas, faster. Formerly the Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, we've been assisting our customers for over 60 years. Now as an independent company with over 4,000 employees, operating in more than 100 countries around the world, we remain expert, objective and agile. For more information, please visit us at Clarivate.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160929/413983LOGO SOURCE Clarivate Analytics Related Links http://clarivate.com RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Clean Design, an award-winning branding + advertising agency, today announced it has been named agency of record for Affordable Care as the national dental support organization looks to expand and improve its dentist recruitment marketing. Affordable Care supports a network of more than 230 affiliated Affordable Dentures and Affordable Dentures & Implants practices in 39 states. Clean Design will provide branding, overall marketing strategy and creative services to support dentist recruitment efforts within Affordable Care. An integral part of the Affordable Care offering is its practice ownership program, a 360-degree business support system that offers resources to help dentists open and maintain their own successful practices. The company provides support for nonclinical duties, including recruiting and human resources, advertising and marketing, real estate and equipment upgrades, and IT services. "Affordable Care has revolutionized the tooth replacement industry with a unique, same-day business model ideally suited to both patients and dentists across the country," said Clean Design CEO Natalie Perkins. "Our team looks forward to partnering with their recruitment team to help further solidify their market leadership position." "As we continue to grow our affiliated practice network, we need an agency that can help craft and shape our vision," said Matt McCallum, Affordable Care senior director of recruiting. "With an impressive team and a reputation for innovative, spot-on strategy, Clean Design was the right fit to help guide us as we work to better understand the benefits our practice owners enjoy, so we can align dentist recruitment with our accelerated growth plans." Founded in 1975, Affordable Dentures & Implants affiliates have treated more than 6 million patients for dentures, dental implants, and other tooth replacement options. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Affordable Care is owned by private equity firm Berkshire Partners LLC. About Clean Design Clean Design is an award-winning brand + design agency with a diverse client portfolio featuring Red Hat, Lenovo, Yadkin Bank, Builders Mutual, UNC Kenan-Flagler, and Durham Distillery. Ranked the #1 design firm in the Triangle for the past seven years, the agency offers integrated marketing solutions including branding, advertising, digital marketing, graphic design, public relations, media planning, and content. A woman-owned business, Clean Design has been awarded HUB certification by the State of North Carolina. cleandesign.com CONTACT: Alyson Stanely, 1-919-719-4510, [email protected] SOURCE Clean Design Related Links http://cleandesign.com LAKEWAY, Texas, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Considering the success that Fai Chan has enjoyed as a clinical aromatherapist and writer/publisher since the 2014 launch of Deli Aroma, her holistic healings protocols company, it's hard to believe that just a few years ago, she was stuck in a mindset where she didn't know what she wanted to or could ever achieve. Her life's purpose as an aromatherapist began taking shape when she found a doctor who helped heal her debilitating acne scars, which had fueled years of pain and insecurity. "I was so determined to heal completely because I needed to go forward and pursue my dream," she says. "I felt like I finally woke up. I learned aromatherapy because I wanted to earn money for myself and not only rely on my husband. I developed a passion for it because I learned how effective it was in healing emotional issues. I gradually found that I had the talent to formulate the right products and essential oils to help people." Fai says she rarely planned ahead in her earlier life, but she was ready to embrace a vibrant future once she found this path. Moving back to Austin, where she currently lives, she took all the necessary courses to get her certification and became a clinical member (and later a board member) of the world renowned Aromatherapy Association AIA (Alliance of International Aromatherapists). Based on a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) framework, with the synergistic effects of combining a therapeutic approach with chemistry, Fai's remedies have proven very effective. "I take joy in knowing my clients personally, and am devoted to giving them personalized care," she says. "I ask a lot of upfront questions and put a lot of time and effort into doing follow-ups as well. As a therapist, it's always a joy to help people become free of constraints, free of restraints and free of limitations. People are not slaves to their ailments, physical or mental." Even though she has lived in America for over a decade, her proficiency with her native Chinese language has led her to concurrently pursue her writing career by sharing her expertise and educating people in China via a multitude of exciting platforms. She has thus far published two non-fiction books in Chinese, and is currently working on her first novel, which will also incorporate aromatherapy, sharing its value via an entertaining fictional story to maximize the number of potential readers. Feeling she wanted to do something for the Chinese community in Greater China, Fai set up a successful aromatherapy information webpage in Weibo (the largest Chinese social media outlet). In addition, she is the publisher of Aroma Search, a digital Chinese aromatherapy journal. She writes a regular blog on her website (www.deliaroma.com), and helps other aromatherapists translate their work into Chinese for that market. She is also set to co-author an international book concerning aromatherapy's connection to emotional issues with aromatherapists from Great Britain and Israel. She is currently working as a co-author in Jack Canfield's forthcoming book "The Road To Success," which will feature her biographical chapter called "A Time For Everything A Time To Heal and a Time To Succeed." Later this year, she will be the subject of a "Hollywood Live" interview with Canfield, co-creator of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book phenomenon. Fai's work in aromatherapy has indirectly led her to become a force in the high fashion world, as a VIP with high fashion company Gucci. Expanding her sphere of influence, Fai recently became a Council Member of the Global Entrepreneurship Initiative to help raise public awareness on aromatherapy and alternative healing ideas. In June 2016, she spoke at the United Nations Headquarters on her experience in partnering with a top fashion brand and how this adds value to her professional success. "When I was young, growing up in China," she says, "I didn't think positively about anything. Coming to America opened my eyes to a more positive mindset and more aggressive approach to going after your goals. My perspective changed significantly and I knew I had the chance to get ahead and pursue my dreams." Learn more at https://deliaroma.com/about/ Media Contact: Matt Collins [email protected] 800-980-1626 SOURCE Deli Aroma Related Links https://deliaroma.com Additionally, Choice Hotels is taking strategic measures to help hotel developers determine the best places to build new prototype Comfort brand properties as well as open up the optimal markets for these projects. This is based on extensive research and analysis of consumer insights and business data. The strategic approach and strong performance fueling the brand have not gone unnoticed by the development community. Over the last two years Choice Hotels has executed more than double the number of new construction Comfort brand franchise agreements executed in the two year period prior. "The appeal of the Comfort brand transcends style trends and market types. In a world where other brands are pursuing complex, edgy and loud designs, we want Comfort to be accessible to everyone developers and travelers," said David Pepper, chief development officer for Choice Hotels. "The ongoing multi-year Comfort brand transformation continues to see solid gains across key performance metrics and that momentum is heightening developer interest and new construction agreements. As a result, we are continuing to drive consistency and quality across the brand, ensuring guest satisfaction as well as brand loyalty." Owned by the SLB Hotel Group, the Comfort Inn Maingate is located in Kissimmee, Florida, mere minutes from the famed theme parks and attractions of Orlando. Just five years old, the property has already received an upgrade to its five floors and 197 guest rooms, which feature a contemporary yet classic design. The Comfort Inn Cleveland is located in a prime location in downtown Cleveland's theater district located minutes from the Cleveland Clinic and such top local attractions as the Playhouse Square, the Jack Cleveland Casino, and the Quicken Loans Arena & FirstEnergy Stadium. These latest renovations and guest enhancements are a result of Choice's ongoing, multi-faceted initiative to improve properties and refresh the Comfort system through significant investments as well as franchisee incentives that have led to higher than ever guest satisfaction scores, heightened developer interest and strong performance. In fact, the brand has now experienced 24 consecutive months of RevPAR index gains. Further, collectively Choice Hotels and Comfort brand franchisees have already committed more than one quarter-billion dollars toward the brand's transformation. And the work continues. The Comfort brand has been undergoing an exciting and transformative time as it continues to redefine itself across the board with improved guest programs that follow the new brand promise to keep guest wellness top of mind. The new tagline Rested. Set. Go assures that whether traveling for business or leisure, guests are promised a restful stay to feel refreshed and ready to take on the day. Enhancements have been made to the guest bath experience, including a new line of bath and hair products called RAIO developed exclusively for the brand as well as more healthy free breakfast options such as wholesome cereals and Greek yogurt. To further support the brand promise of supporting guest wellness, as of January 2017, all Comfort properties will be 100-percent smoke-free, making Comfort the largest hotel brand in the country to provide a smoke-free environment, reinforcing the brand's commitment to wellness and helping travelers. "Comfort has taken a series of bold steps to enhance the guest experience while anticipating the needs of today's business and leisure travelers," said Anne Smith, vice president of brand strategy for Choice Hotels. "From a service perspective, we are empowering franchisees to foster a great sense of pride in brand and teamwork at their hotels. And, guests are already enjoying updates such as enhancements to breakfast, lemon-infused ice water stations in all lobbies, and our upgraded bath experience as well as our smoke-free promise. We are working hard to exceed the expectations of the upper midscale guest." Comfort Inn: Rested. Set. Go. When you travel, what do you need to be ready for the day ahead? At Comfort Inn hotels we think we've got a pretty good idea. Like friendly staff, comfortable rooms, and amenities you can count on, for a start. Can't decide if you want a soft or firm pillow? Don't worryyour bed has both. Our premium bedding will leave you rested and refreshed in the morning, just in time to enjoy our signature free hot breakfast. Now, if you can't decide which waffle to try first, we suggest flipping a coinbecause both the original and flavored are delicious. Comfort Suites : Rested. Set. Go. Bigger really is better. And at Comfort Suites hotels, you'll find more of the space you need to spread out, relax or work25% more space than a traditional room, to be exact. Stretch out on the sofa, be productive at the desk or kick back in our premium bedding. We've got all the essentials you need to stay on your game while you're away and be your best. Because behind every great day is a great night. About Choice Hotels Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) is one of the world's largest lodging companies. With more than 6,400 hotels franchised in more than 40 countries and territories, Choice Hotels International represents more than 500,000 rooms around the globe. As of September 30, 2016, 745 hotels were in our development pipeline. Our company's Ascend Hotel Collection, Cambria hotels & suites, Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Sleep Inn, Quality, Clarion, MainStay Suites, Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn, and Vacation Rentals by Choice Hotels brands provide a spectrum of lodging choices to meet guests' needs. With more than 28 million members and counting, our Choice Privileges rewards program enhances every trip a guest takes, with benefits ranging from instant, every day rewards to exceptional experiences, starting right when they join. All hotels and vacation rentals are independently owned and operated. Visit us at www.choicehotels.com for more information. 2016 Choice Hotels International, Inc. All rights reserved. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438712 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438713 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438714 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131015/NE98133LOGO-l SOURCE Choice Hotels International, Inc. Related Links http://www.choicehotels.com LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) will request that City Controller Ron Galperin conduct a comprehensive audit to determine the cause of the dangerously low staffing levels that existed last week during the post-election protests and provide recommendations to ensure the safety of residents and officers. The LAPPL will also demand an apology from Mayor Garcetti for his recent remarks encouraging protesters to break the law. His public statement that, "we have to make sure we don't break too many laws doing it" promotes an environment that places the public and officers at risk. During last week's protests there were several occasions where LAPD officers were overwhelmed by the sheer number of protestors. In one instance, three LAPD motor officers attempted to hold back hundreds of protestors who had flooded Highway 101 and surrounded the officers. In another instance, an LAPD officer was physically beaten, and his gun stolen, by a protestor. What: Press conference to release formal request to City Controller Ron Galperin to audit LAPD staffing during protests. Who: Craig Lally, President, LAPPL When: TODAY, Monday, November 14, 2016 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM League representatives will be available for phone interviews prior to the press conference to meet radio news deadlines. To schedule a radio interview between 7:00 AM and 9:00 AM, please contact Tom Saggau at (408) 209-6813. Where: Los Angeles Police Protective League 1308 West Eighth Street, 1st Floor Los Angeles, CA 90017 (Parking behind LAPPL office with access from Witmer Street) About the LAPPL: Formed in 1923, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) represents the more than 9,900 dedicated and professional sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPPL serves to advance the interests of LAPD officers through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education. The LAPPL can be found on the Web at www.LAPD.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160728/394042LOGO SOURCE Los Angeles Police Protective League Related Links http://www.lapd.com "Peter Janney's unsparing analysis moves us closer to a reckoning." Oliver Stone Now it its third edition, Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy (published by Skyhorse Publishing), Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace provides compelling details and evidence about the murders of both JFK and his mistress Mary Pinchot Meyer, who the author believes was murdered by the CIA in order to cover up what she had discovered about the assassination of JFK. According to Janney, Mary Meyer was well known to have been JFK's lover, as well as one of his most trusted allies, as he turned away from the Cold War towards world peace in 1963. Following his assassinationand just three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report, which Meyer believed was a cover-upshe was gunned down on October 12, 1964 on the Chesapeake & Ohio towpath outside of Georgetown. Meyer was the ex-wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer. Mary's Mosaic publisher Skyhorse has published more books about the JFK assassination than any other company. Peter Janney grew up in Washington, D.C. during the Cold War era of the 1950s and 60s. His father, Wistar Janney, was a senior career CIA official. The Janney family was intimately involved with many of Washington's social and political elite that included Mary and Cord Meyer, as well as other high-ranking CIA officials such as Richard Helms, James Angleton, William Colby, and others. A 1970 graduate of Princeton, Janney earned a doctorate in psychology at Boston University. He has been a practicing psychologist and consultant for over 35 years. Mary's Mosaic is his first book. SKYHORSE PUBLISHING Skyhorse Publishing, one of the fastest-growing independent book publishers in the United States, was launched in September 2006 by Tony Lyons, former president and publisher of the Lyons Press. It has had more than forty titles on the New York Times bestseller list over the course of its ten-year history. With a backlist of more than six thousand titles, Skyhorse publishes a maverick list that includes fiction, nonfiction, history, politics, rural living, cooking, humor, and children's books. Lyons is dedicated to publishing books that make people's lives better, whether that means teaching them a hobby, bringing them a unique and important story, or encouraging them to fight against injustices, conspiracies, or abuses of power. CONTACT: [email protected]; [email protected] (212) 643-6816 x 286 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161110/437900 SOURCE Skyhorse Publishing Related Links http://skyhorsepublishing.com A thematic continuation of her previously released EP, Time , which chronicles the slow demise of a love relationship, Ella Mai says the new project is all about "newfound love, new emotions and new experiences." She offers, "It's about finding someone new and knowing how to appreciate what he's giving you in comparison to what you were dealing with." The stellar five-song collection kicks off with "Down," where Ella Mai elegantly flips the script on the 1994 Brandy classic. "Who Knew" has the 22-year-old pondering, "how did we fall so deep so fast" while "Lay Up" proposes an island getaway with her new man. The single, "10,000 Hours," she says, is about putting in the time it takes to master love. "In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says you need to do something for 10,000 hours in order to have it down pat," Ella Mai reasons. "My song applies that same theory to love." CHANGE will be available this Friday on all digital platforms. Check out the video for "10,000 Hours" HERE. Track Listing "Down" "Who Knew" "10,000 Hours" "Lay Up" "Found" Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438675 SOURCE Interscope Records SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DNA Link, Inc. and Amplicon Express announced that they established an agreement today for a strategic partnership for the delivery of the best quality genomics solutions. This strategic partnership will further strengthen the cooperative relationship between two companies, which have developed over the past several years. DNA Link and Amplicon Express have agreed to cooperate in areas including nucleic acid extraction, library preparation, and PacBio sequencing. Under the terms Amplicon Express will extract HMW DNA samples of NGS-quality from crude materials such as bacteria, plants, animals and humans. These samples will be then forwarded to DNA Link to be made into a long-inserted library ideal for PacBio sequencing for genome or transcriptome analysis by the fleet of PacBio sequencers including Sequel and RSII units at DNA Link. Jongeun Lee, CEO and the founder of DNA Link said, "Amplicon Express is an expert in nucleic acid extraction and library preparation with a long proven track of success, and DNA Link is one of the best sequencing facility that has the most experience with PacBio sequencers. This partnership will bring a tremendous synergy, and the researchers will enjoy the best quality of sequence data using the third-generation sequencers." Robert Bogden, President and founder of Amplicon Express remarked, "DNA Link is one of the few PacBio service providers that can fully realize the added value of having very long starting DNA fragments. PacBio data from DNA Link maximizes the long reads from our HMW DNA preps in 20Kb or 30Kb libraries." About DNA Link, Inc. DNA Link, Inc. is a genomics company who is a certified service provider for Pacific Bioscience, Illumina, Ion Torrent and Affymetrix. As one of the first companies that adopted Pacific Bioscience RS II system, DNA Link has become one of the world's leading expert in NGS and Bioinformatics, capable of providing an integrated genome analysis service using various platforms. Incorporated in 2000, DNA Link has accumulated profound experiences in various types of projects for sequencing and analysis of diverse organisms such as bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, and human. Headquartered in Seoul, Republic of Korea, it has a branch office and lab in San Diego, US. About Amplicon Express Amplicon Express Inc since 1996 has made 2,500+ custom BAC libraries, picked 55+ million BAC clones, and made thousands of quality HMW gDNA preps from practically every organism imaginable. The Amplicon Express distribution network includes: Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Mainland China, India, and offices in the EU. Amplicon is privately held, based in Washington State. DNA Link,Inc. Contact Person: Erin Kim Office: +82-2-3153-1966 Email: [email protected] Amplicon Express Inc. Contact Person: Jon Wittendorp Office: +31-26-7519538 Email: [email protected] SOURCE DNA Link, Inc. DUBLIN, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DocuSign announced today the opening of its Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence in Dublin as part of its ongoing commitment to Europe and protecting its customers' data and privacy. The Centre will be committed to conducting research into the latest cyberattacks and trends, while developing tools for the advanced detection of such threats. The project is supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation through IDA Ireland. A critical focus for the Centre within the next three years will be undertaking research and development into security orchestration and automation, which will directly inform advancements and innovation for DocuSign's security tools. As a result, the company's customers and employees will benefit from DocuSign's ability to respond even faster to rapidly evolving threats. Welcoming the new investment by DocuSign, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O'Connor TD said, "This new Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence will be a valued addition to Ireland's existing strengths in the ICT sector. We are very keen to attract a wider range of specialist IT companies, especially in Cybersecurity, as we are all very conscious of the crucial importance of being able to deal with Cybersecurity threats. It is great news that a company of the stature of DocuSign has decided to open this new facility here. We have the IT skills available to enable the company to grow and to embed their operations in Ireland. Their arrival is a great vote of confidence in what Ireland has to offer and I wish the team the very best for their future in Ireland." "Our customers are committed to undertaking digital transformations which are underpinned by a high level of security and trust," commented Eoin Hinchy, director of Information Security at DocuSign. "This trust can only be built on a weight of cybersecurity intelligence and a culture of constant innovation that ensures their data is safeguarded. With the proliferation of cyberattacks continuing to grow every day, it is essential to stay ahead of these challenges and mitigate any risk. This is exactly what the research and development and the customised security tools from the Centre of Excellence will help us do." Tapping further into the Irish talent pool as well as an array of security experts including analysts, developers and researchers from large institutions within both the public and private sectors, DocuSign's Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence will be pivotal to keeping DocuSign at the cutting edge of innovation in the cybersecurity field. Beyond further strengthening DocuSign's security offering, the initiative will also strengthen protection for the broader community as a result of bringing together the top minds in cybersecurity to develop tools and share intelligence. Welcoming today's announcement Martin Shanahan CEO IDA Ireland said, "DocuSign's Cyber Security Centre of Excellence marks another important contribution to Ireland and to the continuous improvement of cyber security practices around the world. Ireland is becoming a leading location for companies, like DocuSign, dedicated to fighting cybercrime and other "next generation" threats. I wish Eoin and his team the continued support of IDA Ireland as it grows over the coming years." The Centre of Excellence will play a significant role in maintaining and building upon the trust that more than 250,000 companies and more than 100 million users across 188 countries who put their trust in the DocuSign Global Trust Network to complete nearly one million transactions per day. For more information on DocuSign, visit https://www.docusign.co.uk/ Contact: Michael Creane/Mitch Lowes/Sara Chandran [email protected] About DocuSign, Inc. DocuSign is changing how business gets done by empowering anyone to send, sign and manage agreements anytime, anywhere, on any device with trust and confidence. DocuSign and Go to keep life and business moving forward. For more information, visit www.docusign.com, call +1-877-720-2040, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Copyright 2003-2016. DocuSign, Inc. is the owner of DOCUSIGN and all of its other marks (www.docusign.com/IP). All other marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151102/283113LOGO SOURCE DocuSign, Inc. Related Links http://www.docusign.com Dole Packaged Food's 2017 float, "Spirit of Hawaii," celebrates its rich history and beginnings in the Hawaiian Islands dating back to 1899 when James Dole first traveled to the islands. The float includes a 10-foot tall sculpture of King Kamehameha, the largest waterfall in Rose Parade history consisting of more than 2,000 gallons of recycled water, an erupting volcano, and colorful animals including parrots, sea turtles and geckos decorated in tropical flowers. The floats lagoon will feature six dancers and at street level an additional 12 dancers will move to Pacific-Island dances. "Hawaii is an important part of Dole's heritage," said Dave Spare, Vice President of Marketing, Dole Packaged Foods. "We want to share our rich history with Rose Parade viewers across the globe through this float and bring a bit of paradise to the community during the holiday season through not only this beautiful float design, but also our charitable efforts with Feeding America and FOOD Share." Throughout its participation in the Rose Parade, Dole has showcased various countries and cultures where DOLE fruit is grown. Dole Packaged Foods is committed to providing convenient, healthy, non-GMO fruits and snacks to help people live long and healthy lives, as well as using sustainable, environmentally friendly, healthy and safe ways to grow its products to conserve Earth's most previous natural resources for generations to come. The 2017 float features fresh, non-GMO fruits and vegetables grown by DOLE, including bananas, pineapples and mangoes. Along with the 'Spirit of Hawaii,' Dole is participating in the 'Spirit of Giving,' and will be collecting non-perishable food items as part of its participation at the annual Live on Green event in Pasadena Dec. 30 Jan. 1, as well as at Fiesta Floats and its headquarters in Westlake Village, Calif. to benefit Ventura County's regional food bank, FOOD Share, part of Feeding America, and its partners throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Dole has selected FOOD Share President and CEO Bonnie Atmore to ride on Dole's Rose Parade float in honor of her commitment to feeding, nourishing, and educating the hungry. "We are honored to be recognized by Dole and to be included in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade," said FOOD Share President and CEO Bonnie Atmore. "FOOD Share and Dole share similar values of ensuring access to nutritious foods for the community and I couldn't be happier to emphasize our commitment to helping people live long and healthy lives." To kick off the final road to the 2017 Rose Parade, Dole Packaged Foods is launching a sweepstakes, in which one lucky winner and a guest will get to travel to the Big Island of Hawaii. Launching today, and running through midnight on December 31, 2016, fans can enter for a chance to win the grand prize vacation, including hotel and airfare, as well as other weekly prizes. For more information about the sweepstakes, and to enter, visit Facebook.com/DoleSunshine or DoleSunshine.com/paradise. About Dole Packaged Foods Dole Packaged Foods LLC is a world leader in growing, sourcing, distributing and marketing fruit and healthy snacks. Dole sells a full-line of packaged ambient fruit, frozen fruit, dried fruit, and juices. The company focuses on four pillars of sustainability in all its operations: water management, carbon footprint, soil conservation and packaging. For more information please visit www.dolesunshine.com or www.doleintlcsr.com. About FOOD Share More than 35 years ago, eight citizens performed a good deed by distributing food to those who were in need underneath a Ventura bridge. The early philanthropic movement quickly formed into what is now Ventura County's regional food bank, FOOD Share, which has grown from serving a few hundred hungry people per month to 74,500 people. Today, staff and volunteers distribute more than 12 million pounds of food, or 10 million meals annually from its distribution site; more than 180 partner agencies, which include neighborhood and church food distributions and soup kitchens; as well as hunger assistance programs. FOOD Share's programs provide healthy nutrition and education to children, families and seniors. The regional food bank's Feed the Line, Shorten the Line efforts draw together community stakeholders and other non-profit and community service organizations to empower the food insecure through "stability to thrive" programs such as the FOOD Share and Friends Mobile Pantry which provides county-wide access to resources and programs that facilitate self-sustainability. FOOD Share is working to provide compelling data and create greater public awareness around the number of food insecure residents in Ventura County and the impact the prevalence of hunger has on the entire community. The regional food bank is always seeking like-minded stakeholders, donors, influencers, and supporters who are interested in learning more about food insecurity and investing in the tools and strategies FOOD Share is developing to solve the shared issue of food insecurity across the entire county. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, FOOD Share is a member of the Feeding America network, the nation's largest hunger-relief organization. In 2016, FOOD Share is rallying the community behind a viral initiative encouraging the public, local businesses, major corporations and community leaders and stakeholders to help combat hunger through an outreach campaign called Share16. The Share16 Challenge asks the community to share ways in which they support FOOD Share by documenting their experiences and efforts on social media with the #Share16 hashtag. For more information about FOOD Share, visit www.foodshare.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141016/152677LOGO Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438377 SOURCE Dole Packaged Foods Related Links http://www.dole.com WACO, Texas, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dwyer Group, Inc., one of the world's largest parent companies of trade service brands, has completed the add-on acquisition of Window Genie, a nationally ranked home service franchise. The deal marks the eighth acquisition for Dwyer Group in the last 27 months and grows the organization to $1.4 billion in system-wide sales. Dwyer Group will now have 14 franchise brands with more than 2,600 franchisees across service brands and a record 600+ employees throughout North America, U.K. and Germany. "We are very excited to welcome Window Genie to our family of quality service organizations," said Mike Bidwell, president and CEO of Dwyer Group. "This addition delivers both a compelling business opportunity for future franchise prospects as well as a complementary trade that fits our overall portfolio of service brands. Most importantly, we are able to offer a comprehensive residential and commercial service line-up to our customers." Window Genie offers residential and light commercial window cleaning, window tinting, pressure washing and more. What began as a small window cleaning company in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1994 founded by current CEO, Rik Nonelle, has since grown exponentially with more than 100 franchise units operating in 29 states. Nonelle will assume the role of brand president for Window Genie within the Dwyer Group organization and has ambitious goals to grow the network. "Joining the Dwyer Group will allow our franchisees to take part in the organization's collective buying power, provide us with deeper support resources and enable us to rapidly expand our footprint," said Nonelle. "We are looking forward to continued success and serving many more customers." For more information about Dwyer Group's service brands visit www.dwyergroup.com. About Dwyer Group: Dwyer Group, based in Waco, Texas, is a holding company of 14 franchise businesses, each selling and supporting a different franchise under the following service marks: Aire Serv, Glass Doctor, The Grounds Guys, Five Star Painting, Molly Maid, Mr. Appliance, Mr. Electric, Mr. Handyman, Mr. Rooter (Drain Doctor in the UK), ProTect Painters, Rainbow International, Locatec, and Window Genie. Collectively, these independent franchise concepts offer customers worldwide a broad base of residential and commercial services. In addition, Dwyer Group operates glass shops in New England under the Portland Glass and Cumberland County Glass brand names. Dwyer Group is a portfolio company of The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm. The firm's international portfolio includes more than 75 companies. More information on Dwyer Group, or its franchise concepts, is available at www.dwyergroup.com. Dwyer Group is also on Twitter at @DwyerGroup. SOURCE Dwyer Group, Inc. Related Links http://www.dwyergroup.com BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ellie Harrison has been appointed head of Human Resources for John Hancock, the U.S. Division of Manulife. In this role, she will work with John Hancock's business leaders to develop, retain and attract a customer centric workforce to drive the company's strategy. Harrison will be based in Boston and serve on John Hancock's senior leadership team as well as Manulife's Global Human Resources Leadership Team and its Global Leadership Team. "We are pleased to have a leader like Ellie join our company," said Craig Bromley, president, John Hancock. "With experience across a variety of industries including financial services, healthcare and technology, she brings a keen focus in aligning talent to business strategy and designing organizational structures to achieve business objectives." Harrison has extensive experience leading Human Resources teams and developing Human Resources strategies for financial services organizations. While at Citigroup she was the head of Human Resources for multiple lines of business for the Global Consumer Bank including Wealth Management and Global Commercial Banking. Additionally during her 12 years with Fidelity Investments, she was the head of Human Resources for the Fixed Income Division and later for the retail brokerage division of Personal and Workplace Investing. She was also the chief human resources officer for Blue Cross & Blue Shield Rhode Island, and managed the Human Resources function at Chubb Life America. Most recently Harrison was the chief human resources officer at Immunogen, a biotechnology company, where she led the Human Resources transformation to build out the core Human Resources functions including talent acquisition, internal communications, talent/succession planning, compensation and benefits. Harrison is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and serves on the boards of the United Way of Merrimack County and the Red Cross of New Hampshire. About John Hancock Financial and Manulife John Hancock Financial is a division of Manulife, a leading Canada-based financial services group with principal operations in Asia, Canada and the United States. Operating as Manulife in Canada and Asia, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States, the group of companies offers clients a diverse range of financial protection products and wealth management services through its extensive network of employees, agents and distribution partners. Assets under management and administration by Manulife and its subsidiaries were $966 billion (US $736 billion) as at September 30, 2016. Manulife Financial Corporation trades as 'MFC' on the TSX, NYSE and PSE, and under '945' on the SEHK. Manulife can be found on the Internet at manulife.com. The John Hancock unit, through its insurance companies, comprises one of the largest life insurers in the United States. John Hancock offers and administers a broad range of financial products, including life insurance, annuities, investments, 401(k) plans, long-term care insurance, college savings, and other forms of business insurance. Additional information about John Hancock may be found at johnhancock.com. SOURCE John Hancock Financial Related Links http://ww.johnhancock.com SAN FRANCISCO and SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants, a unique and innovative national retail insurance brokerage and employee benefits consulting firm, announced today that Rick Haycock has joined the firm as a property & casualty insurance broker/producer. Haycock will be responsible for new business development and the design and management of insurance and risk management programs for clients in the Sacramento area and across the western region. Haycock will serve a wide range of businesses and industries, including contractors, real estate developers, commercial and residential income property owners as well as property managers. Haycock will be based in EPIC's Sacramento, California office and report to Tom McCready, regional director, Property & Casualty operations. Haycock joins EPIC from Mackie Insurance Brokerage in El Dorado Hills, California, where he spent over seven years as a commercial insurance broker and risk management consultant. He was previously vice president and commercial account manager for The First American Corporation, a highly-regarded Fortune 500 company and the nation's largest provider of business information. "Rick is a disciplined, highly collaborative professional, with a strong focus on client service excellence and the delivery of value," said EPIC's Tom McCready. "He is well respected in our business, and his beliefs and ability are strongly aligned with EPIC's core values surrounding client advocacy, community, and putting people first. We are excited to have Rick join our growing operations here in Sacramento and across the West." Haycock, a Sacramento native, attended Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies. Rick Haycock can be reached at: EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants [email protected] (916)-576-1562 About EPIC: EPIC is a unique and innovative retail property and casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm. EPIC has created a values-based, client-focused culture that attracts and retains top talent, fosters employee satisfaction and loyalty and sustains a high level of customer service excellence. EPIC team members have consistently recognized their company as a "Best Place to Work" in multiple regions and as a "Best Place to Work in the Insurance Industry" nationally. EPIC now has more than 850 team members operating from offices across the U.S., providing Property Casualty, Employee Benefits, Specialty Programs and Private Client solutions to more than 13,000 clients. With more than $250 million in revenues, EPIC ranks among the top 20 retail insurance brokers in the United States. Backed by the Carlyle Group, the company continues to expand organically and through strategic acquisitions across the country. For additional information, please visit www.epicbrokers.com. *PHOTO for media: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/16-1114s2p-Haycock-300dpi.jpg This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com SOURCE EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants Related Links http://www.epicbrokers.com NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The EY Vantage program, which sends top-performing EY professionals abroad to support high-impact entrepreneurs across Latin America at no fee, has concluded for 2016. Twenty-eight advisors completed more than 6,700 program hours, equivalent to more than $2.5 million in services, working with entrepreneurs in emerging economies and helping them identify and navigate key business challenges. The initiative, now in its 12th year, has helped entrepreneurs to grow, create more jobs and make significant contributions to their respective industries, reinforcing EY's commitment to building a better working world and improving global economies. Since 2005, 147 advisors from EY Americas member firms have supported 145 entrepreneurs with more than 45,000 hours of service at a value of more than $15 million. "Since its inception, EY Vantage has made a positive impact for the entrepreneurs we have supported, as well as for the up-and-coming EY leaders who have taken part in the program," said Deborah K. Holmes, EY Americas Director of Corporate Responsibility. "Our hope is that EY Vantage can serve as a catalyst for sustainable growth in countries with emerging economies where cultivating entrepreneurship can have a lasting effect on society. At the same time, we are engaging our top professionals through this transformative international experience which aims to develop leadership skills and a global mindset." The program works in collaboration with Endeavor Global, a non-profit organization that aims to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring and accelerating high-impact entrepreneurs across the globe. During the course of their six-week placements, each EY professional worked with an entrepreneur on a project tailored to address the needs of the organization while growing professional and leadership skills for the advisor. Projects included market expansions, internal auditing, work flow and operations and the development of business plans. Advisors were also able to gain firsthand knowledge of the emerging markets and industries in which they volunteered. "I feel lucky to be an EY Vantage Advisor and to work for a purpose-led organization that offers skills-based, international volunteerism programs. Traveling to a foreign country alone to work with a high-impact entrepreneur challenged me both personally and professionally. The experience was difficult at times, and ultimately incredibly rewarding. I returned with greater confidence in my skills and leadership abilities, and have already noticed my enhanced global mindset coming into play with colleagues and clients who I encounter regularly working for a large global organization," said Rose Martin, an Advisory Manager of Ernst & Young LLP based in New York. She advised don't worry, a company that provides healthy snacks while minimizing calorie intake, by conducting a gap assessment and developing a plan to improve its business operating model. The EY Vantage program in the Americas expanded at the start of 2016 to include new cities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. Globally, the program has supported entrepreneurs in more than 30 countries. To learn more about the EY Vantage program, please click here. About Endeavor Hailed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as "the best anti-poverty program of all," Endeavor is leading the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. To date, Endeavor has screened more than 30,000 entrepreneurs and selected 844 individuals leading 538 high-impact companies. With support from Endeavor's worldwide mentor network, these high-impact entrepreneurs: Have created over 600,000 jobs Generated over US$8 billion in revenues in 2015 in revenues in 2015 Inspire future generations to innovate and take risks Headquartered in New York City, Endeavor currently operates in 25 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia and Japan. Endeavor also has three US affiliates based in the cities of Detroit (MI), Louisville (KY) and Miami (FL). As the high-impact movement expands globally, Endeavor will continue to prove that anyone with a big idea can succeed, from Silicon Valley to Latin America, the Middle East, and beyond. About EY EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities. EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com. This news release has been issued by Ernst & Young LLP, a member firm of EY serving clients in the US. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130701/NY40565LOGO-b SOURCE EY Related Links http://www.ey.com PARSIPPANY, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. will continue its leadership role as one of four national sponsors for the more than 100 Arthritis Foundation Jingle Bell Run events taking place in cities across the country. Through this sponsorship, Ferring Pharmaceuticals will support the Arthritis Foundation's search for a cure to the number one cause of disability in the United States, while also providing life-changing tools, resources, and science and advocacy initiatives to help arthritis sufferers in their daily lives. More than 50 million Americans are diagnosed with arthritis, 27 million of whom suffer from osteoarthritis. "Our mission is to help patients live better lives. Through our national sponsorship of Jingle Bell Run, we can support not only patients with osteoarthritis, but all who struggle with arthritis and their families," says Joseph Rizzo, Marketing Manager, Orthopaedics. Beyond sponsorship of the annual fundraising event, Ferring has a longstanding partnership with the Arthritis Foundation to take action and address vital issues in the prevention, control and cure of arthritis. Ferring employees from around the country are also joining the initiative by taking part in local events to help raise funds to conquer arthritis. Last year's winner of the 5K in Virginia Beach, Virginia was a Ferring employee. "The work we do day in and day out in the support of healthcare professionals and their patients highlights the importance of investing in the future of arthritis treatment," said David Powley, Senior Director, Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. "We're proud to participate in this event both on the corporate level and through the many employees who make it a priority to demonstrate their personal support." Find your local event by visiting www.arthritis.org/jbr. To learn more about the fight to conquer arthritis, visit www.arthritis.org. About Ferring Pharmaceuticals Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a subsidiary of Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a privately owned, international pharmaceutical company. Ferring Pharmaceuticals specializes in the research, development and commercialization of compounds in general and pediatric endocrinology, gastroenterology, infertility, obstetrics/gynecology, orthopaedics, and urology. For more information, call 1-888-FERRING (1-888-337-7464) or visit www.FerringUSA.com. About the Arthritis Foundation The Arthritis Foundation is the Champion of Yes. Leading the fight for the arthritis community, the Foundation helps conquer everyday battles through life-changing information and resources, access to optimal care, advancements in science and community connections. The Arthritis Foundation's goal is to chart a winning course, guiding families in developing personalized plans for living a full life and making each day another stride towards a cure. The Foundation also publishes Arthritis Today, the award-winning magazine that reaches 4 million readers. Media Contact Yvonne Lachmann 410-627-9749 [email protected] 2016 Ferring B.V. 11/14 [EU/2403/2016/US] SOURCE Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. Related Links http://www.FerringUSA.com LIVONIA, Mich., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 137,000 public votes were cast nationwide in October in celebration of the country's favorite credit unions, and the local charities they support, as part of the second annual Love My Credit Union Campaign. The Love My Credit Union Campaign is a video contest hosted by CU Solutions Group and the Credit Union National Association. Four charities will each be awarded a $5,000 prize on behalf of the following October winners who had the top votes in each asset-size category: The October winners and public voting for each month's winners through December 16 can be viewed and tracked at the campaign website: www.VoteLoveMyCU.org Monthly credit union winners are chosen by popular vote and are awarded with charitable donations made on their behalf to their charity of choice*. Additionally, members of the voting public are eligible to win cash prizes and charitable donations made in their name to their charity of choice. "Credit unions are more than just financial institutions we have a long history of charitable community involvement," said CU Solutions Group CEO Dave Adams. "I'm excited to spread that message, and I'm even more excited to see how well the credit union community has responded." One of the Alabama Credit Union Foundation's charitable efforts is with the Secret Meals for Hungry Children program, which provides food packs to children identified as going without food on weekends. The program feeds more than 2,300 children across seven Alabama counties. "Childhood hunger is an epidemic that can be stopped with the help of local feeding programs," said Kelley Jane Porter, marketing manager for Alabama Credit Union and its charitable foundation. "Through the donation that the Alabama Credit Union Foundation has received from the Love My Credit Union Campaign, 35 children will receive a food pack each weekend from the Secret Meals For Hungry Children program." "ELGA Credit Union is thrilled to have won the Love My Credit Union Campaign monthly prize for our community, Genesee County," said ELGA Chief Executive Officer Karen Church. "We help our community raise the money for families with children who literally cannot afford clean diapers. And we're grateful to our community for diligently voting for this important cause." As part of the 2016 Love My Credit Union Campaign, credit unions and credit union industry service organizations began submitting brief videos highlighting their favorite charities earlier this summer. As of October 31, 83 videos had been submitted to the campaign with more being uploaded each day to the public's voting website: www.VoteLoveMyCU.org About the Love My Credit Union Campaign: The Love My Credit Union Campaign is a joint venture between CU Solutions Group and its member rewards program, Love My Credit Union Rewards, in conjunction with the Credit Union National Association. In 2016, the campaign will award up to $122,500 to credit unions for the charities they have selected. For consumers voting, go to VoteLoveMyCU.org and use #LoveMyCreditUnion on social media. About CU Solutions Group: CU Solutions Group is a credit union service organization that serves the credit union industry by offering solutions in technology, marketing and performance solutions. The company's dedication to the credit union mission is reflected through service excellence to nearly 4,000 credit union clients across the country. CU Solutions Group is the home of the well-known credit union industry program Love My Credit Union Rewards. Learn more at CUSolutionsGroup.com. *Charity must be a 501(c)(3) SOURCE CU Solutions Group Related Links http://CUSolutionsGroup.com CHESTERFIELD, United Kingdom, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallinckrodt plc (NYSE: MNK), a leading global specialty biopharmaceutical company, today confirmed enrollment of the first patients in the company's Phase 4 clinical study assessing the efficacy of H.P. Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection) in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) patients with persistently active disease. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial builds on data from a pilot study of H.P. Acthar Gel in patients with active SLE, recently published online in the journal Lupus Science & Medicine in a manuscript titled "Efficacy and tolerability of repository corticotropin injection in patients with persistently active SLE: results of a phase 4, randomized, controlled pilot study." H.P. Acthar Gel is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use during an exacerbation or as a maintenance therapy in select patients with SLE.1 "The data generated in our pilot clinical study support the use of Acthar to treat lupus patients for which it is already indicated - who have clinically significant disease activity despite receiving standard of care therapies," said Steven Romano, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President at Mallinckrodt. "We are pleased to enroll the first patient in this follow-on trial, which will generate additional data to better understand how clinicians may utilize Acthar in the management of these more difficult to manage patients with SLE." About the Trial The Phase 4 trial is titled, "A multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to assess the efficacy and safety of H.P. Acthar Gel in subjects with persistently active SLE despite moderate dose corticosteroids." The primary endpoint of the study is to measure reduction in disease activity as reflected by the SLE Responder Index (SRI) at week 16. The SRI is a composite endpoint that includes three different measures of disease activity to reflect response of SLE to therapy. The target patient enrollment is 160. As is typical with sizeable clinical trials in segments of a disease population, the study is expected to take several years. Find more information about the trial here on the ClinicalTrials.gov website. About Systemic Lupus Erythematosus SLE is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system produces antibodies to cells within the body leading to widespread inflammation and tissue damage.2 It is the most common form of lupus, a condition that impacts an estimated 1.5 million Americans.3 Ninety percent of those diagnosed with lupus are women, often between the ages of 15-44.3 Lupus is characterized by periods of illness "flares" and remissions and the disease can affect the joints, skin, brain, lungs, kidneys, and blood vessels. Symptoms may include fatigue, pain or swelling in joints, skin rashes, and fevers.2 About H.P. Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection) H.P. Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection), is an injectable drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of 19 indications. Of these, today the majority of Acthar use is in these indications: Orphan monotherapy for treatment of infantile spasms (IS) in infants and children under 2 years of age. Inducing a diuresis or a remission of proteinuria in nephrotic syndrome without uremia of the idiopathic type or that due to lupus erythematosus. Treatment of acute exacerbations of multiple sclerosis in adults. Use during an exacerbation or as maintenance therapy in selected cases of SLE. Use during an exacerbation or as maintenance therapy in selected cases of systemic dermatomyositis (polymyositis). Use as adjunct therapy for short-term administration in select cases of rheumatoid arthritis. Treatment of symptomatic sarcoidosis. For more information about Acthar, please visit www.acthar.com. Full Prescribing Information may be accessed here. Important Safety Information Acthar should never be administered intravenously. Administration of live or live attenuated vaccines is contraindicated in patients receiving immunosuppressive doses of Acthar. Acthar is contraindicated where congenital infections are suspected in infants. Acthar is contraindicated in patients with scleroderma, osteoporosis, systemic fungal infections, ocular herpes simplex, recent surgery, history of or the presence of a peptic ulcer, congestive heart failure, uncontrolled hypertension, primary adrenocortical insufficiency, adrenocortical hyperfunction or sensitivity to proteins of porcine origins. The adverse effects of Acthar are related primarily to its steroidogenic effects. Acthar may increase susceptibility to new infection or reactivation of latent infections. Suppression of the hypothalamicpituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis may occur following prolonged therapy with the potential for adrenal insufficiency after withdrawal of the medication. Cushing's Syndrome may occur during therapy but generally resolves after therapy is stopped. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms. Monitor patients for elevation of blood pressure, salt and water retention, and hypokalemia. Acthar often acts by masking symptoms of other diseases/disorders. Monitor patients carefully during and following discontinuation. Acthar can cause gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding and gastric ulcer with an increased risk for perforation with certain GI disorders. Monitor for signs of bleeding. Acthar may be associated with central nervous system effects ranging from euphoria, insomnia, irritability, mood swings, personality changes, depression, and psychosis. Existing conditions may be aggravated. Patients with comorbid disease may have that disease worsened. Caution should be used in patients with diabetes and myasthenia gravis. Prolonged use of Acthar may produce cataracts, glaucoma and secondary ocular infections. Acthar is immunogenic and prolonged use may increase the risk of hypersensitivity reactions. There is an enhanced effect in patients with hypothyroidism and those with cirrhosis of liver. Long-term use may have negative effects on growth and physical development in children. Monitor pediatric patients. Decrease in bone density may occur. Monitor during long-term therapy. Pregnancy Class C: Acthar has been shown to have an embryocidal effect and should be used during pregnancy only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus. Common adverse reactions include fluid retention, alteration in glucose tolerance, elevation in blood pressure, behavioral and mood changes, increased appetite and weight gain. Specific adverse reactions reported in IS clinical trials in infants and children under 2 years of age included: infection, hypertension, irritability, Cushingoid symptoms, constipation, diarrhea, vomiting, pyrexia, weight gain, increased appetite, decreased appetite, nasal congestion, acne, rash, and cardiac hypertrophy. Convulsions were also reported, but these may actually be occurring because some IS patients progress to other forms of seizures and IS sometimes masks other seizures, which become visible once the clinical spasms from IS resolve. Please see full Prescribing Information here for additional Important Safety Information. ABOUT MALLINCKRODT Mallinckrodt is a global business that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes specialty pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products and therapies, as well as nuclear imaging products. Areas of focus include autoimmune and rare diseases in specialty areas like neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, pulmonology and ophthalmology; immunotherapy and neonatal respiratory critical care therapies; analgesics and hemostasis products; and central nervous system drugs. The company's core strengths include the acquisition and management of highly regulated raw materials and specialized chemistry, formulation and manufacturing capabilities. The company's Specialty Brands segment includes branded medicines; its Specialty Generics segment includes specialty generic drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients and external manufacturing; and the Nuclear Imaging segment includes nuclear imaging agents. To learn more about Mallinckrodt, visit www.mallinckrodt.com. Mallinckrodt uses its website as a channel of distribution of important company information, such as press releases, investor presentations and other financial information. It also uses its website to expedite public access to time-critical information regarding the company in advance of or in lieu of distributing a press release or a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the same information. Therefore, investors should look to the Investor Relations page of the website for important and time-critical information. Visitors to the website can also register to receive automatic e-mail and other notifications alerting them when new information is made available on the Investor Relations page of the website. CONTACTS Media Rhonda Sciarra Senior Communications Manager 908-238-6765 [email protected] Meredith Fischer Chief Public Affairs Officer 314-654-3318 [email protected] Investor Relations Coleman N. Lannum, CFA Senior Vice President, Investor Strategy and IRO 314-654-6649 [email protected] Daniel J. Speciale, CPA Director, Investor Relations 314-654-3638 [email protected] 1 H.P. Acthar Gel (repository corticotropin injection) [prescribing information]. Mallinckrodt ARD, Inc. 2 Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus), The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/basics/lupus.htm. Accessed October 19, 2016. 3 Lupus Foundation of America Press Kit, About Us. Available at: http://www.lupus.org/about/statistics-on-lupus. Accessed October 19, 2016. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150105/167103LOGO SOURCE Mallinckrodt plc Related Links http://www.mallinckrodt.com (Beijing) Police in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region have detained 57 suspects on suspicion of operating illegal mines and other illicit development projects in protected nature reserves. The arrests come after a recent investigation by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) found illicit development projects at 41 of the 89 nature reserves in the northern region, the ministry said. Over 660 businesses, including dozens of mine operators, were damaging protected parks, the investigation found. Some of the affected sites were managed by the central government, while others were overlooked by local governments. Mining activities at two national parks, including the popular Daqingshan Safari Park, in the regional capital, Hohhot, and another regional wildlife habitat in the city of Ordos, continued until the first half of 2016, according to the MEP. Local agencies in charge of park management had violated conservation rules by issuing mining licenses or failing to punish offenders, the MEP said. Regional authorities had issued 25 mining licenses to those operating inside the Gancao Nature Reserve in Ordos after a dozen central government agencies jointly issued a curb on development projects in natural reserves in May 2015, the investigation found. Local agencies overseeing land usage has given the green light to an open-pit mine located inside the Menggehan Mountain Nature Reserve, violating environmental protection rules, the ministry said. Management at the Xilingol Grassland National Nature Reserve failed to move three businesses out of the site after the national rules came into effect, investigators found. The regional government had ordered 360 businesses to close down and had warned 280 officials and reserve managers to crack down on illicit projects after the MEP investigation. The ministry did not say how illegal mining and other projects had affected the protected reserves. But water samples taken from 90 waterways in the region showed water quality was deteriorating, the ministry said. Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com); editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com) The demonstration flight departed Seattle-Tacoma International Airport earlier this morning for Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The flight was fueled with a 20 percent blend of sustainable aviation biofuel, which is chemically indistinguishable from regular jet A fuel. The flight, the first commercial passenger flight of its kind, continues to advance viable alternatives to conventional fossil fuels for aviation. "This latest milestone in Alaska's efforts to promote sustainable biofuels is especially exciting since it is uniquely sourced from the forest residuals in the Pacific Northwest," said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines' senior vice president of communications and external relations. "NARA's accomplishments and the investment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture provide another key in helping Alaska Airlines and the aviation industry reduce its carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels." While the 1,080 gallons of biofuel used on the flight has a minimal impact to Alaska Airlines' overall greenhouse gas emissions, if the airline were able to replace 20 percent of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2. This is equivalent to taking approximately 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year. NARA is a five-year project that launched in 2011 and is comprised of 32 member organizations from industry, academia and government laboratories. Today's flight represents its efforts to develop alternative jet fuel derived from post-harvest forestry material that is often burned after timber harvest. The forest residual feedstock used to power Alaska Airlines Flight 4 was sourced from tribal lands and private forestry operations in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to producing 1,080 gallons of biofuel used for the flight, other key tasks of the project included evaluating the economic, environmental, and societal benefits and impacts associated with harvesting unused forest residuals for biofuel production. The NARA initiative was made possible by a $39.6 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to support research on biofuels and biochemicals, foster regional supply chain coalitions, empower rural economic development and educate the public on the benefits of bioenergy. "Today is a tribute to all of our NARA partners, and especially to NIFA who supported our mission to facilitate the revolutionary development of biojet and bioproduct industries in the Pacific Northwest using forest residuals that would otherwise become waste products," said Ralph Cavalieri, NARA executive director. "We are proud of every one of the partners and stakeholders from forest managers to Gevo and Alaska Airlines - who have laid the foundations for a renewable fuel economy that will keep skies clear and healthy with the potential to bolster economically challenged timber-based rural communities in our region." Gevo, Inc., a NARA partner, successfully adapted its patented technologies to convert cellulosic sugars derived from wood waste into renewable isobutanol, which was then further converted into Gevo's Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) fuel. Believed to be the world's first alternative jet fuel produced from wood, the fuel meets international ASTM standards, allowing it to be used safely for today's commercial flight. "This first of its kind flight demonstrates Gevo's commitment and ability to convert a wide range of sugar feedstocks into drop-in renewable fuels. We are pleased that we had the opportunity to prove, through the NARA project, that cellulosic sugars from wood can be used to successfully make commercial jet fuel. We congratulate all of our fellow NARA partners and thank the USDA-NIFA, for its unwavering support in the pursuit of renewable jet fuel. I also thank Alaska Airlines, who continues to be a great partner," said Pat Gruber, Gevo's Chief Executive Officer. Several elected officials joined the 163 passengers on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 jet bound for the nation's capital, including Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-1), Congressman Dave Reichert (WA-8), and Congressman Denny Heck (WA-10). "I am proud to see the world's first biojet fuel made from forest residuals being flown on an Alaska Airlines airplane," said U.S. Senator Patty Murray. "The Pacific Northwest continues to be on the cutting edge of new technology that will make airplanes better, safer, and more efficient, and I'm thrilled that so many stakeholders came together and that Washington State University has led this important effort." "Today's flight comes after years of investments to help the aviation biofuels industry take off," said U.S. Senator Cantwell. "By creating these sustainable biofuels, we will revitalize our rural agricultural communities, foster economic growth, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and cut our dependence on foreign oil while growing our competitiveness in global markets." "Today's flight demonstrates that Washington state's innovation economy is once again at the forefront of collaborative, transformative research by using material that would otherwise be discarded to create a new biofuel," said U.S. Congresswoman Suzan DelBene. "Here in the Pacific Northwest, we know that the natural environment that surrounds us is what makes living here so special. We have a tremendous opportunity in our region to build a new green economy and find innovative solutions to address climate change for our health and future generations, as this project highlights." Alaska Airlines flew two other flights in June using a blend of biofuel produced from non-edible, sustainable corn. On the blog: Alaska Airlines flies first commercial flight with biofuel made from forest residuals. Photos from today's news conference are available for download at blog.alaskaair.com. High definition b-roll is available at https://vimeo.com/191521434/b3b2623501. Learn more about NARA Renewables at https://nararenewables.org/ and follow the flight using the hashtags #JetFuel and #CleanEnergy. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438952 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438953 SOURCE Alaska Airlines Related Links http://www.alaskaair.com DUNCAN, S.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas-born heritage brand, Fuddruckers, is unveiling their seventh South Carolina home for the "World's Greatest Hamburgers" today in Duncan with regional franchisee, The Butcher The Baker Management Company, Inc. Ideally situated at 1515 East Main Street/Highway 290 just off Interstate 85, the approximately 4,600-square-foot fast casual restaurant will be open daily from 10 am until 10 pm and feature Wi-Fi and an outdoor patio. Fuddruckers partners since 1985, when they debuted their first location in Spartanburg, SC, The Butcher The Baker Management Company, Inc. principals, Allen and Lee Ann Johnston, also operate Fuddruckers in Matthews, North Carolina and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The Duncan restaurant's dynamic decor references Fuddruckers' classic, Americana origins and creates the perfect backdrop for a family gathering, business lunch or date night. Diners will enjoy a menu that not only features the World's Greatest Hamburgers, but includes Fudds Exotics Elk and Buffalo burgers, beer and wine, plus lunch specials throughout the week. Catering, the Fudd truck and delivery will also be available. According to Peter Tropoli, Chief Operating Officer of Luby's, Inc., "We're thrilled to continue our longstanding relationship with the Johnstons, who are, not only dedicated to the culinary standards of this brand but, also incredibly committed to the communities where they do business." Since 1980, Fuddruckers has been obsessed with making the world happier, one great hamburger at a time. Grilled-to-order burgers feature always fresh and never frozen, 100% USDA premium-cut beef with no fillers or additives. Delicious, sesame-topped buns are baked from scratch on-site throughout the day to achieve the perfect combination of crisp crust and melt-in-your-mouth texture. And while burgers are the signature, the engaging menu offers variety for many tastes with an array of sandwiches, platters and salads. No matter what they choose, customers can customize their meal with a trip to the legendary Build Your Own produce bar, which features fantastic fixings like sun-ripened tomatoes, lettuce, sliced onions, dill pickles, pico de gallo and classic cheese sauce. About Luby's, Inc. Luby's, Inc. (NYSE: LUB) operates restaurants under the brands Luby's Cafeteria, Fuddruckers and Cheeseburger in Paradise and provides food service management through its Luby's Culinary Services division. The company-operated restaurants include 91 Luby's Cafeterias, 74 Fuddruckers restaurants, eight Cheeseburger in Paradise full service restaurants and bars and one Bob Luby's Seafood Grill. Its Luby's Cafeterias are located primarily in Texas. In addition to the company-operated Fuddruckers locations, Luby's is the franchisor for 112 Fuddruckers franchise locations across the United States (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Mexico, Panama, Italy, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Luby's Culinary Services provides food service management to 23 sites consisting of healthcare, higher education and corporate dining locations. SOURCE Fuddruckers Related Links http://www.fuddruckers.com/ ST. LOUIS, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Centene Corporation (NYSE: CNC) announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Health Net Federal Services, LLC (HNFS) was notified by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the protests challenging the Department of Defense's (DoD) award of contracts for the East and West T2017 regions are being denied. The GAO's decision sustains Health Net Federal Services' West Region award. We expect the start of health care delivery for this new contract to begin in the second half of 2017. "Since 1988, Health Net Federal Services has been proud to partner with the Department of Defense, supplementing the care they provide to active duty and retired military personnel and their families," said Billy Maynard, President and CEO of Health Net Federal Services. He added, "We are honored and humbled to be awarded the TRICARE West Region Contract to serve this extraordinary population of beneficiaries, as well as supplement and extend the healthcare mission of the Defense Health Agency." About Centene Corporation Centene Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, is a diversified, multi-national healthcare enterprise that provides a portfolio of services to government sponsored healthcare programs, focusing on under-insured and uninsured individuals. Many receive benefits provided under Medicaid, including the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as Aged, Blind or Disabled (ABD), Foster Care and Long Term Care (LTC), in addition to other state-sponsored programs, Medicare (including the Medicare prescription drug benefit commonly known as "Part D"), as well as programs with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Centene operates local health plans and offers a range of health insurance solutions. It also contracts with other healthcare and commercial organizations to provide specialty services including behavioral health management, care management software, correctional healthcare services, dental benefits management, in-home health services, life and health management, managed vision, pharmacy benefits management, specialty pharmacy and telehealth services. Centene uses its investor relations website to publish important information about the Company, including information that may be deemed material to investors. Financial and other information about Centene is routinely posted and is accessible on Centene's investor relations website, http://www.centene.com/investors. About Health Net Federal Services Health Net Federal Services has a long history of providing cost-effective, quality managed health care programs for government agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. As the managed care support contractor for the TRICARE North Region, HNFS provides health care services to approximately 2.9 million uniformed services beneficiaries, active and retired, and their families. In addition, HNFS provides quality behavioral health services for active duty service members, veterans and their families. Visit www.hnfs.com for more information. SOURCE Centene Corporation Related Links http://www.centene.com ATLANTA, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of Georgia Natural Gas' commitment to community outreach, the company will present Zoo Atlanta with $500,000 in support of Zoo Atlanta's Grand New View capital campaign. The donation will support Zoo Atlanta's revitalization of the historic Cyclorama building, making it a one-of-a-kind event destination overlooking a new African Savanna where the zoo's African elephants and giraffes will roam. Other transformations will include a grand entry plaza from Cherokee Avenue, following the demolition of the Zoo's present administration building. The project is estimated for completion in 2019. "Georgia Natural Gas believes in giving back to the communities where we live, work, and operate," says Michael Braswell, president of Georgia Natural Gas. "The Zoo connection really runs deep for our company and employees, since we have volunteered there for over a decade. We are excited to be able to make this contribution to Zoo Atlanta, which will help further their ability to serve Georgians." "Thanks to good corporate citizens like Georgia Natural Gas, we not only met, but exceeded, our financial goals for completing the Grand New View: Elephants, Events and Expansion campaign. We're deeply grateful to Mike Braswell, Drew Evans and everyone at GNG for this donation," said Raymond B. King, president and CEO of Zoo Atlanta. "As president and CEO of Southern Company Gas and board chairman of Zoo Atlanta, I am extremely grateful for the generous gift Georgia Natural Gas has chosen to donate to the Zoo," said Drew Evans. "Zoo Atlanta is the community's zoo, and this gift will allow the Zoo to serve the Atlanta community in a greater capacity for years to come." Georgia Natural Gas is a premier natural gas marketer, serving approximately half a million customers. Georgia Natural Gas is actively engaged in the community with a community service focus on children and education; seniors; energy assistance; and environment and sustainability initiatives. For more information regarding Georgia Natural Gas, please visit https://gng.com/about-us. About Georgia Natural Gas Georgia Natural Gas is a leading provider of natural gas to homes and businesses in Georgia. Georgia Natural Gas is part of SouthStar Energy Services, a preeminent retail natural gas marketing company operating in nine states. Based in Atlanta, SouthStar manages a portfolio of brands across its retail footprint including Georgia Natural Gas in the state of Georgia, Nicor Advanced Energy and Nicor Solutions in Illinois, and in other states, Ohio Natural Gas, Florida Natural Gas, Maryland Energy and Grand Rapids Energy (Michigan). SouthStar also does business in Tennessee and the Carolinas and in other parts of the southeast as SouthStar Energy Services. For more information visit: www.GNG.com . About Zoo Atlanta Viewed as one of the finest zoological institutions in the U.S. and a proud accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), Zoo Atlanta has a mission to inspire value and preservation of wildlife through a unique mix of education and outdoor family experiences. From well-known native wildlife to critically endangered species on the brink of extinction, the Zoo offers memorable close encounters with more than 1,000 animals from around the world. The Zoo's newest destination, Scaly Slimy Spectacular: The Amphibian and Reptile Experience, featuring more than 70 species in a 111,000 square-foot complex, opened in 2015 and is the world's first LEED Gold-certified reptile and amphibian exhibit. Zoo highlights include giant pandas, including a set of twins born to Lun Lun in September 2016; North America's largest zoological population of great apes; and a global center of excellence for the care and study of reptiles and amphibians. Up-close-and-personal animal experiences include behind-the-scenes Wild Encounters with African elephants, Aldabra giant tortoises, lemurs and warthogs. Zoo Atlanta is open daily with the exceptions of Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Keeper talks, interactive wildlife shows, education programs and special events run year-round. For more information, visit zooatlanta.org. About SouthStar Energy Services SouthStar Energy Services (SouthStar) is a preeminent retail natural gas marketing company operating in nine states. Based in Atlanta, SouthStar manages a portfolio of brands across its retail footprint including Georgia Natural Gas in the state of Georgia, Nicor Advanced Energy and Nicor Solutions in Illinois, and in other states, Ohio Natural Gas, Florida Natural Gas, Maryland Energy and Grand Rapids Energy (Michigan). SouthStar also does business in Tennessee and the Carolinas and in other parts of the southeast as SouthStar Energy Services. For more information visit: www.southstarenergy.com . About Southern Company Gas Southern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.5 million natural gas utility customers through its regulated distribution companies in seven states and more than 1 million retail customers through its companies that market natural gas and related home services. Other nonutility businesses include investments in interstate gas pipelines, asset management for natural gas wholesale customers and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit Southern Company Gas at southerncompanygas.com SOURCE Georgia Natural Gas Related Links http://www.gasguy.com LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BGASC, a leading precious metals dealer, has shipped ten 1/10th oz 2016 American Gold Eagle Coins to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to ease her exit from the United States now that Donald J. Trump has been elected President. The NY Times reported in July that Justice Ginsburg stated when asked about a Trump Presidency, "Now it's time for us to move to New Zealand." Apparently, Ms. Ginsburg, who famously told an Egyptian television audience that she would not recommend the U.S. Constitution as a model for a new Egyptian Constitution, would rather head to the Antipodes Islands than serve on the U.S. Supreme Court with Donald Trump as President. When the justice will leave is not known. But the coins have been shipped to her so she can prepare her departure. Martin Thomas at BGASC stated, "We chose to donate the 1/10th oz gold coins as they are easy to transport and a good size should the judge need to transact with them. In addition, gold is up over 180% over the New Zealand dollar over the last 12 years and the judge might appreciate the hedge against the currency. This generous gift will serve as thanks for Ms. Ginsburg's service on the bench and to wish her well in her new life down under." Recently, Townhall.com published a list of twenty-three celebrities who stated they would leave the United States if Donald Trump became President. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg was among the twenty-three potential expatriates. The gift was shipped fully insured through the United States Post Office this week. SOURCE BGASC Related Links http://www.bgasc.com Lyle Schwartz is named President of Investment, North America, with responsibility for overseeing investment in the company's largest region, where more than $30B (RECMA) is invested on behalf of clients annually. On Schwartz's promotion, Lesser said, "This is the first time someone with a research and analytics background has been named trading chief for a major media investment group. This decision underscores our belief that data and insights are fundamental to the success of the entire business." Schwartz has more than 30 years of experience at WPP inclusive of his early positions at Y&R prior to its acquisition by WPP. Schwartz helped build the research department at GroupM, which is already fully integrated into the trading organization to support insights-driven 'one voice trading,' another point of distinction in GroupM's approach to media investment. Schwartz has made significant contributions to a number of company and industry-wide milestones, including the development of C3 ratings for time-shifted TV, defining viewability in digital and pushing the industry for platform-agnostic video measurement. All North American investment team members across TV, digital, radio, print and local now report up to Schwartz. In conjunction with Schwartz's promotion, Rino Scanzoni, GroupM's long-standing Chief Investment Officer in North America, is transitioning to Executive Chairman and CEO of both Midas Exchange, a WPP company focused on corporate trade, and Modi Media, GroupM's advanced television division in the U.S. Scanzoni will continue to build and expand new trading products as well as contribute to market strategy for the group. "Rino Scanzoni is widely recognized as one of the most determined, innovative and influential media investment chiefs, not only in the U.S., but worldwide," said Irwin Gotlieb, Chairman of GroupM Global. "Rino's unwavering focus on negotiating the best media opportunities and the best value for our clients, combined with his uncanny ability to find solutions that also benefit our media partners has strengthened the media ecosystem in the U.S. and has driven our clients' and GroupM's success. We're so very pleased that he will continue working with our group in a new capacity focused on Midas Exchange, Modi Media and strategic marketplace opportunities." Platform Services Phil Cowdell is appointed President, Platform Services, North America, a new organization that will encompass programmatic media, search marketing, social media, digital operations and digital analytics. This unified team will enable marketers who work with GroupM's agencies to find, create and activate their most important audiences and gain a competitive advantage. For the past two years, Cowdell served as the North American CEO of MediaCom where he has been instrumental in helping the agency win more than $1.5 billion in new business from companies including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bayer, Sony Playstation and Mars. With 29 years of industry experience, Cowdell joined WPP's Mindshare in 2001 and has since held numerous leadership positions across GroupM and WPP in EMEA and North America. (MediaCom North America continues to be led by Sasha Savic, CEO of MediaCom, U.S. and Kevin Johnson, CEO of MediaCom Canada.) On Cowdell's appointment, Lesser said: "Aligning our teams and resources under an experienced leader like Phil will expand the support GroupM provides to our agencies and their clients. With his track record leading successful agency teams, he knows very well the need for powerful, nimble and adaptable tools to help drive our clients' success, and his inspiring leadership will help the Platform Services team do just that." About GroupM GroupM is the leading global media investment management company serving as the parent to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus, and Essence, as well as the programmatic digital media platform, Xaxis, each global operations in their own right with leading market positions. GroupM's primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP's media agencies by operating as leader and collaborator in trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, and proprietary tool development. GroupM's focus is to deliver unrivaled marketplace advantage to its clients, stakeholders and people, and is increasingly working closely for the benefit of clients with WPP's data investment management group, Kantar. Together GroupM and Kantar account for over 50% of WPP's group revenues of more than $20 billion. Discover more about GroupM at www.groupm.com. Follow @GroupMWorldwide on Twitter Follow GroupM on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/groupm Media Contacts: [email protected] +1 212.297.8092 (U.S.) [email protected] +1 917.421.3019 (U.S.) Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161113/438644 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161113/438643 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151103/283547LOGO SOURCE GroupM Related Links http://www.groupm.com SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shareholder rights law firm Johnson & Weaver, LLP has launched an investigation into whether the board members of Harman International Industries, Incorporated (NYSE: HAR) breached their fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed sale of the Company to Samsung Electronics. Harman designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers and enterprises worldwide. On November 14, 2016, Harman announced it had signed a definitive merger agreement with Samsung. Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Harman common stock for $112.00 per share in cash. The investigation concerns whether the Harman board failed to satisfy their duties to the Company shareholders, including whether the board adequately pursued alternatives to the acquisition and whether the board obtained the best price possible for Harman shares of common stock. Nationally recognized Johnson & Weaver is investigating whether the proposed deal price represents adequate consideration, especially given the expected growth in vehicle smart technology. If you are a shareholder of Harman and believe the proposed buyout price is too low and you're interested in learning more about the investigation or your legal rights and remedies, please contact lead analyst Jim Baker ([email protected]) at 619-814-4471. About Johnson & Weaver, LLP: Johnson & Weaver, LLP is a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm with offices in California, New York and Georgia. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.johnsonandweaver.com. Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Contact: Johnson & Weaver, LLP Jim Baker, 619-814-4471 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160211/332409LOGO SOURCE Johnson & Weaver, LLP Related Links http://johnsonandweaver.com IRVINE, Calif. and SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- HCP (NYSE:HCP) ("HCP" or the "Company") announced today that its Board of Directors intends to elect Tom Herzog, HCP's current Chief Financial Officer, as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board. The Board also intends to elect Justin Hutchens, HCP's current Chief Investment Officer, as President. Both elections are anticipated to be made effective January 1, 2017. Mr. Herzog has served as CFO since June 2016 after rejoining the Company, having previously served as CFO from 2009 to 2011. He will report to Mike McKee, who has served as interim President and CEO since July 2016 and will remain Executive Chairman. Mr. Hutchens will report to Mr. Herzog. "The Board is very excited to announce HCP's new generation of leadership, which was one of the key strategic goals we outlined earlier this year," said Mr. McKee. "Tom and Justin are both outstanding executives, and their skills and experience have been invaluable during the past year as we have made significant progress on our long-term strategic plan. In addition, elevating two highly qualified senior members of our current executive team will ensure stability as well as continuity of leadership and strategy as we continue our transition to HCP 3.0, and our vision for a stronger and more profitable company. We are all committed and excited to continue to work together to drive improved performance and build shareholder value." "I am honored by the opportunity to lead HCP through its next phase of growth and development, and I greatly appreciate the confidence of our Board of Directors," said Mr. Herzog. "Our entire executive team and Board are fully aligned with our strategic vision, and I look forward to continuing to work with Justin and the rest of our outstanding leadership team to build value for our shareholders. Since I returned to HCP in June, we have achieved a number of our near-term strategic goals, and this gives me great confidence in our ability to continue to execute the long-term plan. From top to bottom, HCP is an extremely talented and hard-working organization, and I look forward to collaborating with our entire team to ensure this next chapter in our corporate history is as successful as possible." Mr. Hutchens said, "I look forward to this new role at HCP at this key point in our transition, and I am thrilled to continue working alongside Tom, whom I respect immensely as an executive and colleague. I have no doubt he will provide strong and stable leadership that will inspire continued confidence in HCP's success among our employees, shareholders, operating partners and other stakeholders. We have all worked incredibly hard this year to ensure the successful transformation of the business, and we have a clear strategy in place to continue this performance." CFO Search HCP has retained Korn Ferry, a leading global executive recruiting firm, which has already initiated a search for a new CFO to replace Mr. Herzog in 2017. Tom Herzog Biography Mr. Herzog is HCP's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. From January 2013 until joining HCP in June 2016, he was Senior Vice President - Chief Financial Officer of UDR, Inc., a leading multifamily REIT. Mr. Herzog served as Chief Financial Officer of Amstar, a Denver-based real estate investment company, from August 2011 to January 2013. He previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of HCP from April 2009 to May 2011. Mr. Herzog was Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer at Apartment Investment and Management Company, a leading multifamily REIT, from 2004 to 2005 and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 2005 to 2009. From 2000 to 2004, he served in the roles of Chief Accounting Officer & Global Controller and Finance Technical Advisor for GE Real Estate. Prior to joining GE Real Estate, Mr. Herzog began his career in public accounting with Deloitte & Touche LLP, serving in the audit department for ten years, including a two-year national office assignment in the real estate group. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Tier REIT, an office property REIT. Justin Hutchens Biography Mr. Hutchens has been with HCP since September 2015, most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. Prior to joining HCP, Mr. Hutchens was President and Chief Executive Officer of National Health Investors, Inc., a healthcare REIT, since March 2011 and President and Chief Operating Officer ("COO") from February 2009 to March 2011. He served on NHI's Board of Directors from 2010 to 2015. Mr. Hutchens has national operating experience as the Senior Vice President and COO of Summerville Senior Living from 2003 to 2007 and upon its merger with Emeritus Corporation, the Executive Vice President and COO of Emeritus Senior Living Corporation from 2007 to 2009. From 1997 to 2003, he held multi-site management roles overseeing marketing and operations in the senior housing and post-acute industries. Mr. Hutchens currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care. ABOUT HCP HCP, Inc. is a fully integrated real estate investment trust (REIT) that invests primarily in real estate serving the healthcare industry in the United States. HCP owns a large-scale portfolio diversified across multiple sectors, led by senior housing, life science and medical office. Recognized as a global leader in sustainability, HCP has been a publicly-traded company since 1985 and was the first healthcare REIT selected to the S&P 500 index. For more information regarding HCP, visit www.hcpi.com. http://www.hcpi.com/ FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS The statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including those relating to our CEO and President transition and expected process for hiring our CFO and our business opportunities and outlook. These statements are made as of the date hereof, and are not guarantees of future events. They are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events to differ materially from those set forth therein or implied thereby. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those identified in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no, and hereby disclaim any, obligation to update any of the foregoing or any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or new or future developments, except as otherwise required by law. CONTACT Andrew Johns Vice President Finance and Investor Relations (949) 407-0400 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150831/262611LOGO SOURCE HCP, Inc. Related Links http://www.hcpi.com WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Heffernan Foundation, the charitable giving program for Heffernan Insurance Brokers, announced today its 2016 Garee Lee Smith scholarship recipients. The scholarship provides employees or family members of employees with $5,000 to assist with the cost of education. This is the 11th year of the program, with Heffernan Foundation selecting eight students to each receive the scholarship. It honors the late Garee Lee Smith, a longtime Heffernan employee who embodied the culture and spirit of Heffernan and loved to help fellow employees and her community whenever possible. Applicants are chosen for their grades, commitment to their community, and future personal and academic goals. "It is an honor to be part of this event each year," said Michelle Lonaker, Director of the Heffernan Foundation. "Hearing the goals these young adults have of working in their communities and seeing their ambition shine through gives me faith in our young generation. Garee would be proud of all our recipients over the years." A dinner was held on August 4, 2016 to honor the students, their achievements, and Smith's legacy. The 2016 Garee Lee Smith scholarship recipients are Anna Harryman, Ashley Johnson, Brian Haggard, Christia Forest, Cynthia Ruiz, Dakota Stoll, Vanessa Bondoc and Victoria Ketchum. A video highlighting the Heffernan Foundation's mission can be found at https://youtu.be/L9XoDDrkC0w. About Heffernan Foundation Heffernan Foundation's mission is to serve nonprofits that provide direct support and services to local communities in the areas of shelter, food, education and the preservation of the environment. Heffernan Foundation is the charitable giving program of Heffernan Insurance Brokers, headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif., and with offices in San Francisco, Petaluma, Menlo Park, Los Angeles and Orange County, CA; Portland, OR; and St. Louis, MO. Employee-owned, the company has been among the Top Greater Bay Area Philanthropists since 2003, donating more than 13 percent of profits to charity in 2015. For more information, visit www.heffernanfoundation.com or call 925.295.2575. License #0564249 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150511/215225LOGO SOURCE Heffernan Foundation Related Links http://www.heffernanfoundation.com Since the program's 2004 launch, FMA Live! has traveled nearly 110,000 miles to more than 1,200 schools and performed for 460,000 students in 48 contiguous U.S. states, as well as in Mexico and Canada. The one-of-a-kind show incorporates hip-hop music, dancers, student volunteers, and on-stage, interactive science experiments to demonstrate how physics is part of everyday life. "The astronauts of 2025 are sitting in our middle schools today," said Donald James, NASA's associate administrator for Education "There is no better time to get students excited about STEM topics. Alongside Honeywell, we have created a program that provides students with an early look into the career possibilities that exist in these fields." Each performance focuses on Newton's law of universal gravitation and three laws of motion. FMA Live! is named after Newton's second law of motion [Force equals Mass times Acceleration] and uses music videos and interactive scientific demonstrations to teach and inspire students to pursue STEM careers. "In each school we visit during the tour, we bring to life the importance of subjects like science and math and encourage students to explore careers that will ultimately change the world we live in," said Mike Bennett, president, Honeywell Hometown Solutions. "The popularity of FMA Live! is a testament to its ability to both entertain and inspire students." The FMA Live! Forces in Motion experience also features an online "Teachers' Lounge" that includes National Science Standards-based teaching resources including downloadable streaming videos, music from the show, and a comprehensive educational guide with lesson plans. This digital tool maintains post-show momentum and can be incorporated into classroom learning objectives throughout the school year. To learn more visit FMALive.com. About FMA Live! Using live actors, hip-hop songs, music videos, interactive scientific demonstrations and video interviews with scientists and engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the show teaches Newton's Three Laws of Motion and Universal Law of Gravity. Honeywell and NASA created FMA Live! in 2004 to inspire middle school students to explore STEM concepts and careers. The program addresses Forces and Motion learning objectives outlined by the Next Generation Science Education Standards for students in grades 5-8. Through Honeywell Hometown Solutions, the Company has a number of award-winning programs focused on inspiring students at all grade levels to embrace STEM education. The Company chose physics for FMA Live! Forces in Motion because studies have shown that the middle school years offer the best window of opportunity to get students interested in STEM careers. Supporting Resources About Honeywell Hometown Solutions FMA Live! Forces in Motion is part of Honeywell Hometown Solutions, the Company's corporate citizenship initiative, which focuses on five areas of vital importance: Science & Math Education, Family Safety & Security, Housing & Shelter, Habitat & Conservation, and Humanitarian Relief. Together with leading public and non-profit institutions, Honeywell has developed powerful programs to address these needs in the communities it serves. For more information, please visit http://citizenship.honeywell.com/. About Honeywell Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader, serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes, and industry; turbochargers; and performance materials. For more news and information about Honeywell, please visit www.honeywellnow.com. Honeywell and the Honeywell logo are the exclusive properties of Honeywell, are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be registered or pending registration in other countries. All other Honeywell product names, technology names, trademarks, service marks, and logos may be registered or pending registration in the U.S. or in other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright 2016 Honeywell. Media Contact: Cecilia Tejeda (973) 455-3450 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438443 SOURCE Honeywell Related Links http://www.honeywell.com (Beijing) The banking subsidiary of China's second-largest life insurer has delayed routine staff bonuses amid ongoing pressure to streamline operations and strengthen its internal control system after a corruption scandal. Ping An Bank told employees that they will not receive bonuses for the third quarter, which are usually handed out by the end of the year. Instead, any bonuses that the bank does decide to distribute won't be distributed until next year, several workers from the bank told Caixin. The expected third-quarter payments were suspended because the bank was developing a strategy to improve operational efficiency, the bank's human resources department said in an internal announcement. The bank was also considering revamping its industry-focused banking services structure, which would lead to staff layoffs, sources from the bank said earlier. Those who remain may face pay cuts of 10%, while cuts for senior executives could be as deep as 30%. The proposed reorganization comes in the wake of a management reshuffle that saw both the bank's president and chairman replaced in October. The new management team faces problems that includes a rising number of bad loans, a situation that critics say was caused in part by a corporate culture that encouraged irresponsible lending. The team also needs to strengthen the bank's internal controls, which received attention after Liu Shuyun, a former executive, was detained by police in August on graft charges. The bank's head office in Shenzhen has asked all branches to examine their internal controls for loopholes and submit reports by the end of January, according to bank sources. Employees were also being encouraged to report transgressions via email or through special mailboxes set up in branch offices, the employees said. The head office plans to review the results of these requirements in April, meaning that employee bonuses could be delayed until the review is complete, the sources said. Contact reporter Wang Yuqian (yuqianwang@caixin.com); editor Kerry Nelson (kerry@caixin.com) DUBAI, UAE, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Igenomix has recently been rewarded accreditation by College of American Pathologists (CAP) in Dubai (UAE), given its state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge products in the space of advanced reproductive genetics. The U.S. federal government recognizes the CAP Laboratory Accreditation Program, begun in the early 1960s, as being equal to or more stringent than the government's own inspection program. The process is designed to ensure the highest standard of care for all laboratory patients. "The CAP Laboratory Accreditation Program's goal is to improve patient safety by advancing the quality of pathology and laboratory services through education, standard setting, and ensuring laboratories meet or exceed regulatory requirements. Igenomix is now the first Private Genetic Laboratory to be accredited by CAP in Middle East, which demonstrates the quality of the genetic testing services Igenomix delivers," said Dr. Rupali Chopra, Lab Director, Igenomix Dubai. Francisco Rodriguez, General Manager Igenomix, Middle East & India, upon learning of the laboratory's accreditation, said, "Igenomix becoming accredited by CAP is a great achievement and milestone, but most important is that doctors and patients can now be completely sure about Igenomix commitment and conviction of providing the best quality genetic services." Igenomix is one of the world's leading providers of advanced services in reproductive genetics. Currently operating from eight laboratories worldwide, has aggressive expansion plans to set foot in many new geographies including Canada and Turkey which will be operational soon. The global team of experts led by Prof. Dr. Carlos Simon, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Valencia University and Stanford School of Medicine, Chief Scientific Officer and also a key shareholder of Igenomix, has come up with some path-breaking genetics services to support the specialists in the field of reproductive medicine over last few years. Specialist services offered by IGENOMIX include PGS (PreImplantation Genetic Screening) with the added advantage of MitoScore, NACE (Non invasive Analysis of Chromosomal Examination); CGT (Carrier Genetic Test); PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) and ERA (Endometrial Receptivity Analysis). About Igenomix: Igenomix is a biotechnology company that provides advanced services in reproductive genetics. Our broad experience and advanced research ability make us one of the global leaders in this field, and we make sure we offer effective solutions adapted to different infertility problems. For further information about the company visit: http://www.igenomix.com Media Contact: Divya Bhasin [email protected] SOURCE Igenomix FORT WORTH, Texas, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwest Bank and Robert Lansford (collectively, the "Southwest Bank Participants") today announced that they have received a statement of support from Jon Brumley, veteran of the oil and gas industry and creator of several royalty trusts including the San Juan Basin Royalty Trust (the "Trust" or "SJT"). Mr. Brumley provided the following statement: "As a unitholder familiar with the San Juan Basin Royalty Trust, I support Southwest Bank as trustee for the Trust. I believe Southwest Bank is doing a good job on the royalty trusts they currently administer." The Southwest Bank Participants appreciate the support of Mr. Brumley and continue to encourage unitholders of the Trust to vote for the removal of Compass Bank as trustee of the Trust and the appointment of Southwest Bank as successor trustee at the November 21, 2016 special meeting of the Trust's unitholders. Unitholders are urged to sign, date and return the WHITE proxy card today, or they may vote online or by telephone by following the instructions on the voting materials they have received. The Southwest Bank Participants also encourage unitholders to contact their proxy solicitor, Okapi Partners, at (212) 297-0720 or toll-free at (877) 279-2311 or by email at [email protected] with any questions, or if they need assistance with their vote. About Southwest Bank Proudly serving North Texas for 50 years, Southwest Bank is the largest locally owned, independent bank in Tarrant County. In addition to full-service banking centers in Fort Worth, Dallas, Arlington, Burleson, Grapevine, Mansfield and Saginaw, Southwest Bank maintains mortgage offices in Fort Worth, Dallas and Austin and a royalty trust management office in Dallas. Southwest Bank values its customers and believes in building loyal, lasting relationships through personalized service, honesty and integrity. For more information, visit www.SouthwestBank.com. Member FDIC. SOURCE Southwest Bank Participants Related Links http://www.SouthwestBank.com REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ItsOn, the mobile IT leader in delivering innovative digital experiences for consumers, announced today that it has been selected as a finalist in this year's Fierce Innovation Awards: Telecom Edition, a carrier-reviewed awards program from the publisher of FierceWireless, FierceTelecom and FierceCable. ItsOn was recognized as a finalist in the category of service orchestration and delivery for its cloud-based platform that enables digital transformation among mobile operators. "We are delighted to be recognized as a finalist in the Fierce Innovation Awards," said Robert Oberhofer, Ph.D., vice president of technical sales and marketing at ItsOn. "We are continually striving to be a leader and innovator in helping operators achieve their business goals as they look to meet the market demands of a new digital experience through our cloud platform." Applications were reviewed by an exclusive panel of executives from major telecommunications companies including Verizon, TeliaSonera, Comcast, Sprint and T-Mobile. All applications were evaluated based on effectiveness, ease of use/ROI, innovation and end-user impact. The ItsOn platform was recognized for its cloud-client solution that gives carriers a nimble, scalable architecture that integrates all key components to enable a modern digital service experience. Through ItsOn's cloud-based software, mobile operators can engage customers through on-device software with real-time, contextual notifications, usage information and self-service, which creates a personalized experience for consumers. It allows operators to create and deploy new services and monetization models through a more modern approach versus traditional OSS/BSS architectures. ItsOn already counts Saudi Telecom Company, Telefonica Mexico, MTN, Sprint and Virgin Mobile as customers. ItsOn was also a finalist in the 2015 Fierce Innovation Awards: Telecom Edition in the OSS/BSS and Cloud Service categories. Winners of the 2016 awards will be announced via live webcast on Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. ET. About FierceMarkets FierceMarkets, a division of Questex, LLC, is a leader in B2B e-media, providing information and marketing services in the telecommunications, life sciences, healthcare, IT, energy, government, finance, and retail industries through its portfolio of email newsletters, websites, webinars and live events. Every business day, FierceMarkets' wide array of digital publications reaches more than 2 million executives in more than 100 countries. Current publications include: Telecom: FierceWireless; FierceCable; FierceDeveloper; FierceOnlineVideo; FierceTelecom; FierceWirelessTech; FierceWireless:Europe /TelecomsEMEA, FierceInstaller; an Telecom Asia; Healthcare: FierceEMR; FierceHealthcare; FierceHealthFinance; FierceHealthIT; FierceHealthPayer; FierceHealthPayerAntiFraud; FierceMobileHealthcare; FiercePracticeManagement and Hospital Impact; Life Sciences: FierceBiotech; FierceBiotechIT; FierceBiotech Research; FierceCRO; FierceDiagnostics, FierceDrugDelivery; FierceMedicalDevices; FiercePharma; FiercePharmaAsia; FiercePharmaMarketing; FiercePharmaManufacturing; FierceVaccines and FierceAnimalHealth Enterprise IT: FierceBigData; FierceCIO; FierceContentManagement; FierceDevOps; FierceEnterpriseCommunications; FierceITSecurity and FierceMobileIT; Finance: FierceCFO; and FierceFinanceIT; Government: FierceGovernment; FierceGovernmentIT; FierceHomelandSecurity; FierceMobileGovernment; FierceCities and FierceGovHealthIT Marketing & Retail: FierceCMO; FierceTechExec. About ItsOn ItsOn is a proven leader in the telecommunications industry, having fundamentally changed how mobile services are delivered and consumed. The company launched its services platform for mobile operators in the U.S. and globally last year, and counts MTN, Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Sprint, Telefonica Mexico and Virgin Mobile USA as customers. ItsOn investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Tenaya Capital, Vodafone Ventures, Verizon Investments, Cisco and Delta Capital Partners. The company is privately held and headquartered in Redwood City, CA. For more information, please visit www.itsoninc.com or follow @ItsOnInc on Twitter. SOURCE ItsOn Related Links http://itsoninc.com WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Like a lot of college graduates setting their sights on law school, John-Mark Mitchell decided to take a year off after graduating from Campbell University to prepare for that intense commitment. When he began working with Century 21, he thought he would make a little extra cash selling a few houses. But after selling a house for over $900,000 a much larger than average sum in the early 90s (and today!) for North Carolina he quickly discovered that a career in real estate might just be a good alternative to law school, and could be his true passion and life path. He became a top producer and began contemplating just how far he could go in the real estate industry. Off to a whirlwind start, he began running ads that boldly proclaimed: "John Mark Mitchell, A Name Synonymous with Real Estate." Living up to and transcending his goal to become a true celebrity in the field, he was quickly recruited by Prudential, the largest real estate firm in the region, where he quickly became #1 agent for 12 years. In 2014, Mitchell mirrored the feat, listing and negotiating a $980,000 property as the first official deal by his new independent luxury brokerage, now called Mitchell Prime Properties. Supported by his powerhouse team, he is recognized as the #1 Luxury Broker in the Triad Area, which consists of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point. The company has the fewest days on the market and the highest average sold price of any real estate brokerage in the area. The most recent 2015 statistics tell the incredible story. As an individual agent, at $720,000, Mitchell has the highest average sales price in the Triad. His company average for all combined sales is $530,000 almost unheard of figures in this area. By comparison, their closest competitors average around $240,000 and the average home sale is $161,000. Fostering a unique environment where agents work together rather than compete against each other as they can at traditional offices, the boutique agency currently has 11 brokers and Mitchell is looking to cap his first office at 16 brokers. Mitchell Prime Properties has plans to open additional offices in nearby cities in the next few years, with a few brokers at each location. In addition to quickly dominating the luxury market in the Triad area of North Carolina, Mitchell has sold homes across the state including Statesville, Raleigh and Charlotte, where he has sold homes for up to $5.5 million and has helped celebrities find ideal properties. This has helped his client base grow exponentially, and has also led him to another point of distinction in relation to other Triad area brokers his feature in the January 2016 issue of Fortune Magazine. Mitchell's unparalleled level of industry expertise has afforded him numerous opportunities to give seminars and training on "The Art of Selling Well." In late 2015, he also hit the Amazon Best-Seller list by co-authoring (with bestselling author Jack Canfield, originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) the book, The Soul of Success, Vol. 2: The World's Leading Entrepreneurs and Professionals Reveal Their Core Strategies for Getting to the Heart of Health, Wealth and Success. A firm believer in giving back, Mitchell co-founded a local charity for the homeless in the Winston-Salem area, known as B.R.A.C.E., which stands for Builders and Realtors Active in Community Efforts. He received the Governor's Award for this high impact initiative. "At Mitchell Prime Properties," Mitchell continues, "we feel honored to represent our customers and clients, helping them make smart and exciting real estate decisions that add to their lifestyle in a positive way. It could be a small one bedroom condominium or a multi-million dollar gated estateAt the end of the day, our customer's happiness is what we work to achieve." Learn more at http://www.johnmarkmitchell.com Media Contact: Matt Collins [email protected] 800-980-1626 SOURCE Mitchell Prime Properties Related Links http://www.johnmarkmitchell.com The Worldchefs Education Award was established in 2008 for the purpose of recognizing the work and efforts of an individual who has contributed to the aims and mission of Worldchefs and their role of developing educational programmes for Worldchefs members and chefs community across the globe. The award is presented every two years during the congress event by the President in the presence of both delegates and sponsors and is a recognition of the recipient's commitment to fostering and promoting the role of education, which is a primary focus for Worldchefs. "Teaching and mentoring the next generation of industry leaders is something I truly love, but I also learn so much from my students in the process," said Chris Koetke, vice president of Kendall College's School of Culinary Arts. "I believe that when education is a two way street, that is when it's at its finest point. I am grateful and thrilled to receive this recognition from my peers." The Worldchefs Congress & Expo, an event that began in 1930, attracts up to 2,000 delegates from all over the world. This premiere program, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, is an opportunity for participants to showcase cuisine, culture and traditions to an international culinary community. This year's event featured culinary competitions, trade exhibitions and an education component. Koetke was one of the event's feature speakers. His presentations focused on the importance of educators setting sustainability standards for the food industry. He also served as a moderator of a panel of international experts who discussed the future trends and challenges the industry faces. "No one who is more deserving of being recognized by the Wordchefs Congress for their contribution to culinary education," said Kendall College Interim President Kim Shambrook. "Chris is much more than a teacher. He is a leader who inspires his students and colleagues." Koetke joined the Kendall College faculty in 1998, and in 2005, he became Dean of the School of Culinary Arts. Five years later (2010), Koetke was elevated to the role of Vice President. "Kendall College has a world-class staff with a student body that is among the brightest in the world. Providing them with skillsets that they use to make a difference is something that I enjoy immensely," Koetke added. Kendall College was recently ranked as the top educational institution for preparing students for careers in hospitality management and culinary arts (TNS Global 2013 Survey). For more information about Kendall College and its degree programs, visit www.kendall.edu. About Worldchefs The World Association of Chefs Societies Worldchefs is a non-political professional organization, dedicated to maintaining and improving the culinary standards of global cuisines. We accomplish these goals through Education, Training and continuing professional development of our international membership. As an authority and opinion leader on food, Worldchefs represents a global voice on all issues related to the culinary profession. About Kendall College: Kendall College, founded in 1934 and located in Chicago, offers undergraduate degrees in culinary arts, hospitality management, business and early childhood education to a diverse and passionate community of more than 2,100 students each year. The curriculum combines strong academics with practical experience and international educational opportunities to give students in business, hospitality and culinary arts programs the skills and expertise to be leaders in their professions. Kendall College was ranked the No. 1 program in Chicago for preparing students for careers in hospitality management and culinary arts in a survey of hiring managers at Chicago's leading hotels and Michelin Guide restaurants (TNS Global - 2013 Survey) and was rated a top 50 Global Hospitality Management School by CEOWorld. Kendall College is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission. For more information, visit www.Kendall.edu. Kendall is part of the Laureate International Universities networka global network of more than 80 campus-based and online universities in 28 countries. For more information, visit www.laureate.net. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438974 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/438973LOGO SOURCE Kendall College NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "Unleash Your Personal Next - Self Transformation for Sustainable Success" is an exclusive C-suite summit taking place on Nov. 15 at the headquarters of Time Inc. at 225 Liberty St. in New York City. The invitation-only event focuses on learning from the personal transformation journeys of key business executives in the digital era. The event is co-hosted by Mphasis, a leading IT and digital solutions provider, [email protected], the online business analysis journal of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and FORTUNE Knowledge Group, a custom business intelligence division of Time Inc., publisher of FORTUNE. Digital transformation is a buzzword in every organization today. But the word "digital" is all too often used to mean technology. It is the human, personal aspect of transformation that lies at the heart of organizational change. Without a personal transformation occurring in CEOs, an organization will find it almost impossible to adapt to the digital environment. To seek insights into the ways that CEOs are changing their leadership styles, traits and competencies to seize competitive advantage in the digital era, FORTUNE Knowledge Group conducted a survey of 200 CEOs and 200 C-level executives globally. The insights of the survey would be unveiled at this summit. Key themes to be addressed are the following: Digital Transformation: The CEOs' Perspective Fireside Chat: Personal Adaptation Disruptive Transformation Fireside Chat: Transparency to Transformation Fireside Chat: Cultural Conversion Fortune Decodes Executive Transformation Speakers include: Mark Casady , Chairman & CEO, LPL Financial , Chairman & CEO, LPL Financial David Clark , President, The Weather Channel , President, The Weather Channel Alejandro Cremades , Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Onevest , Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Onevest Joe Ripp , Executive Chairman, Time Inc. , Executive Chairman, Time Inc. Sree Sreenivasan , Chief Digital Officer, NYC , Chief Digital Officer, NYC Faith Taylor , Global Corporate Social Responsibility Officer, Wyndham Worldwide , Global Corporate Social Responsibility Officer, Adam Tishman , Co-Founder, Helix Sleep , Co-Founder, Helix Sleep Jose Tolosa , COO, Viacom International Media Networks , COO, Viacom International Media Networks Tyler Wry , Assistant Professor of Management, The Wharton School , Assistant Professor of Management, The Wharton School Diane Brady , Journalist, formerly of WSJ and Bloomberg News , Journalist, formerly of WSJ and Bloomberg News Jennifer Reingold , Editor-at-Large Fortune Magazine , Editor-at-Large Fortune Magazine Rama Ramaswami, Executive Editor Fortune Knowledge Group Robert Reiss , Founder & CEO The CEO Show , Founder & CEO The CEO Show Ganesh Ayyar, CEO, Mphasis For more information about the event, please download the brochure here. The event website can be found here: http://knowledge.whartonevents.com/mphasis-nyc/. About [email protected]: [email protected] is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The site, which is free, captures relevant knowledge generated at Wharton and beyond by offering articles and videos based on research, conferences, speakers, books and interviews with faculty and other experts on current business topics. [email protected] offers content in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese and has a separate site for high school educators and students. About The FORTUNE Knowledge Group The FORTUNE Knowledge Group (FKG) is a custom business intelligence division of Time Inc., publisher of FORTUNE. FKG develops proprietary research and analysis on a range of issues, such as management, regulatory compliance, innovation and strategy. About Mphasis: Mphasis enables chosen customers to meet the demands of an evolving market place. Recently named by American Banker and BAI as one of the top companies in FinTech and as the "Most Distinguished Digital Company in 2015" by The Economic Times, Mphasis fuels this by combining superior human capital with cutting-edge solutions in hyper-specialized areas. Contact Mphasis through www.mphasis.com SOURCE Mphasis Related Links http://www.mphasis.com WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An article in the latest Harvard International Review by WomenStrong Executive Director Dr. Susan M. Blaustein explains the genesis of WomenStrong International, a consortium of non-profit organizations in five nations supporting women-driven solutions to extreme urban poverty. The article provides an historic context for the importance of women and girls in global development, and explains why they are such central players in realizing the 2030 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. An outgrowth of the Millennium Cities Initiative at Columbia University's Earth Institute, WomenStrong was built on a decade of work during which, Blaustein notes, "we observed that women and girls on the ground had led our most effective programs in the Millennium Cities. "Whether through the vehicles of savings groups, community cleanup crews, or Girls' Clubs, the girls and women clearly valued the chance to succeed, to lead, to form common bonds, and to broaden their range of future opportunities," she writes. "To continue this work, and as a further proof-of-concept, we resolved to create an organization explicitly for the purpose of enabling women-driven development, to see how far severely under-resourced neighborhoods might get with women devising the agenda and leading the way." Now in its second year, the unusual consortium model of WomenStrong has successfully brought together determined non-profits working with impoverished girls and women in cities across five countries. Two of these Kisumu, Kenya, and Kumasi, Ghana have built upon the work accomplished under the Millennium Cities Initiative. Together with WomenStrong's three new venues in Madurai, India, Borgne, Haiti, and Washington, DC, the projects share and adapt useful tools, resources, program ideas, and lessons learned from hard-won experience. The members brainstorm solutions to the many common challenges they face, finding inspiration and successful tactics in work being done thousands of miles away. The article "One Path Toward Effective Global Development: Learning from Those with the Most at Stake" can be found at http://hir.harvard.edu/one-path-toward-effective-global-development-learning-stake/ The Harvard International Review is a quarterly journal and website of international relations published by the Harvard International Relations Council at Harvard University. The journal offers commentary on global developments in politics, economics, business, science, technology, and culture, as well as interviews with prominent global leaders and reviews of books and documentaries. The publications aims to feature "underappreciated topics in the international affairs discourse and underappreciated perspectives on more widely discussed topics." ABOUT WOMENSTRONG INTERNATIONAL WomenStrong International is a consortium of non-profit organizations in five nations supporting women-driven solutions to extreme urban poverty. WomenStrong emerged from a decade of work at Columbia University's Millennium Cities Initiative, where we found that the most successful programs were local and led by women. Through our Consortium members in Ghana, Kenya, Haiti, India, and Washington, D.C., we help thousands of women and girls meet their 6 Essential Needs for health, shelter, safety, education, economic empowerment and a functioning urban environment. These women, in turn, improve the lives of their children, families, communities and nations. WSI believes the path out of poverty and toward a more just and prosperous world can be found by making women strong. For more information, visit www.womenstrong.org. SOURCE WomenStrong International Related Links http://www.womenstrong.org DARMSTADT, Germany, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, today announced the results of the ADDRESS II Phase IIb, multicenter study on atacicept in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Patients on standard-of-care therapy (n=306) were randomized to weekly subcutaneous injections of atacicept (75 or 150 mg) or placebo for 24 weeks. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients achieving a clinical response as defined by a composite SLE Responder Index (SRI)-4 at week 24. Secondary endpoints included SRI-6 response rate and time to severe flare, assessed by SLEDAI flare index (SFI) or BILAG. Although the primary endpoint was not met in the overall study population, there was a trend favoring atacicept with statistical significance achieved in a pre-specified sensitivity analysis of the primary endpoint using treatment Day 1 as baseline (rather than screening visit); atacicept 75 mg (55.9%, adjusted odds ratio/OR 1.88, p=0.029) and 150 mg (55.8%, adjusted OR 1.96, p=0.020) compared with placebo (41.0%). BILAG A flare was significantly reduced compared to placebo with atacicept 75 mg (p=0.019), and severe SFI flare reduced with 150 mg (p=0.002). Additionally, analyses of a predefined subpopulation of patients with high disease activity (HDA; SLEDAI-2K10, n=158) demonstrated statistically significant treatment effects of atacicept when compared to placebo. SRI-6 response at week 24 was significantly greater with atacicept 150 mg (54.9%, adjusted OR 3.30, p=0.005) compared with placebo (28.8%). Both atacicept doses led to significant reductions in the incidence of severe flare versus placebo, BILAG A flare (150 mg, hazard ratio/HR 0.32, p=0.038; 75 mg, HR 0.08, p=0.002) and SFI flare (150 mg, HR 0.19, p=0.004; 75 mg, HR 0.33, p=0.029). "This is an impressive result, and particularly remarkable for having been achieved in a small study and in 24 weeks," said Dr. Joan Merrill, Coordinating Investigator for the ADDRESS II study. "If confirmed in future studies, this could hold exciting possibilities for our patients." Luciano Rossetti, Head of Global Research & Development for the biopharma business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany added, "Building on the results of the APRIL SLE study, the results of ADDRESS II show that atacicept has the potential to become an important option for patients with lupus. We are particularly encouraged by the results in patients with high disease activity which was approximately 50% of the patients in the ADDRESS II study. We are looking forward to discussions with the regulatory authorities." Atacicept was also associated with increased serum complement C3 and C4, and decreased IgG, IgM, IgA, and anti-dsDNA antibodies over time. Treatment-emergent adverse event incidence was slightly higher with atacicept (150 mg, 80.8%; 75 mg, 81.4%) than placebo (71.0%), however, the risks of serious adverse events or serious/severe infections were not increased with atacicept versus placebo, and there were no deaths. The safety findings were comparable for the high disease activity subpopulation, in that the risks of serious adverse events or serious/severe infections were not increased with atacicept versus placebo. These results will be presented in a late-breaking poster session, "Efficacy and Safety of Atacicept in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Results of a 24-week Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Phase IIb Study," at the 2016 American College of Rheumatology/Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ACR/ARHP) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, U.S. For more information about the data presented, please review the ACR/ARHP website. Also, visit Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany's booth at this year's Annual Meeting to learn more about the company's commitment to advancing innovation in lupus and other immunological diseases. About Atacicept Atacicept is a potential treatment for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Atacicept, a recombinant fusion protein, contains the soluble TACI receptor that binds to the cytokines BLyS and APRIL. These cytokines are members of the tumor necrosis factor family that promote B-cell survival and autoantibody production associated with certain autoimmune diseases such as SLE. Atacicept has been shown in animal models to affect several stages of B-cell development and may inhibit the survival of cells responsible for making antibodies. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany acquired exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights for atacicept, including in North America, from Zymogenetics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb) in 2008. Atacicept is currently under clinical investigation and not approved for any use in the United States, Canada and Europe. About Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) SLE (often referred to as "lupus") is a chronic autoimmune disease, where the immune system attacks the body's own tissues and organs. SLE can result in swollen, painful joints, skin rash, extreme fatigue and kidney damage. Estimates vary widely, but SLE may affect as many as 300,000 patients in the U.S. alone. Women and individuals with African American, Asian, and Hispanic heritage are affected disproportionately by SLE. All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, press releases are distributed by e-mail at the same time they become available on the EMD Group Website. In case you are a resident of the USA or Canada please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register again for your online subscription of this service as our newly introduced geo-targeting requires new links in the email. You may later change your selection or discontinue this service. About EMD Serono, Inc. EMD Serono is the biopharma business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the U.S. and Canada - a leading science and technology company - focused exclusively on specialty care. For more than 40 years, the business has integrated cutting-edge science, innovative products and industry-leading patient support and access programs. EMD Serono has deep expertise in neurology, fertility and endocrinology, as well as a robust pipeline of potential therapies in oncology, immuno-oncology and immunology as R&D focus areas. Today, the business has more than 1,100 employees around the country with commercial, clinical and research operations based in the company's home state of Massachusetts. About Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life - from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2015, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, generated sales of 12.85 billion in 66 countries. Founded in 1668, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, holds the global rights to the Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160629/384917LOGO ) SOURCE Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany DULUTH, Georgia, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Innovation Holdings, Inc. ("MIHI" or the "Company") (OTC: MIHI), today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, "BKare Diagnostics, Inc." (BKare) has entered into a Marketing & Services Agreement with Vantari Genetics. Under the agreement BKare will provide certain marketing and other services to the Company's network of clients and Vantari will provide genetic based testing and conduct the molecular laboratory and toxicology testing services. Vantari is a nationally known molecular diagnostic services and toxicology company, and has experience with the development and delivery of molecular laboratory and toxicology testing. It offers full array of genetic testing across the health spectrum, from pharmacogenetics to non-invasive prenatal testing and testing for inherited cancers. For more information on Vantari Diagnostics please go to: http://www.vantarigenetics.com The Company focuses on providing telemedicine services to patients in rural underserved areas. Its wholly owned subsidiary, BKare's focus is to amass agreements with varied and various medical services and sources, and to market these through its proprietary network, and to share in the revenues generated thereby. Bkare Diagnostics is a full-scale provider of high quality laboratory and pharmaceutical services providing personalized services for small and mid size medical practices and Virtual Health Medical Providers. With partner laboratories and product and service providers located throughout the United States they are able to serve patients nationwide. All BKare Referral Laboratories are certified to provide services to Medicare, Medicaid, HMO and all private and commercial insurance companies. Their personalized services include customs testing protocols, tailored to meet client's needs and includes services as an Online Private Portals to order Tests, supplies, online results 24 hours with board certified pathologists. For more information on BKare Diagnostics please go to: http://www.bkarediagnostics.com Arturo "Jake" Sanchez, CEO and Director, stated: "This is the first of many more outsourcing agreements to come agreements with outside providers of medical services, medical devices, laboratory testing, prescription and other providers. We are also benefiting our network of physician providers by increasing their access to readily available additional sources to treat their patients and to increase the practice's revenues. Under this agreement, we are helping the medical providers the opportunity to provide the best care for their patients by incorporating the latest advances in genetic testing into your practice." About Medical Innovation Holdings, Inc. MIHI, a Colorado-based publicly traded company, owns and operates strategically aligned health care service companies focused on the delivery of clinical virtual medicine (health) as a way of bringing quality medical care to all areas of need including rural and underdeveloped areas across the country. Through our wholly owned subsidiary, 3Point Care, we provide personalized high-tech high-touch telemedicine encounters pairing our virtual health specialty doctors with traditional primary doctors utilizing nextgen virtual health technologies in order to connect a patient with a multi-disciplinary specialty clinical healthcare practice. Through our other companies and relationships, we offer Affordable Care Organization (ACO) support, wellness and prevention, lab analysis and lab services, and remote diagnostic monitoring. We serve a number of constituents and stakeholders interested in reducing the cost of care, enhancing the quality of care, promoting access to care, and maintaining the continuum of care. For more information on MIHI, please visit the Company's website at http://www.medicalinnovationholdings.com To be added to the Company investor email list, please email [email protected] with MIHI in the subject line. To leave a message please call +1-866-883-3793 for Investor Relations FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements relate to future events, including our ability to raise capital, or to our future financial performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond our control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects our current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our public filings with the SEC are available from commercial document retrieval services and at the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. News Release Investor Contacts: 1-866-883-3793 [email protected] SOURCE Medical Innovation Holdings Inc CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gerard Adams, the founder of social impact startup accelerator, FOWNDERS, and the founder of "Voice of Generation Y" publication Elite Daily, will be speaking at Harvard Law School in a live, interactive talk with the audience and dialogue with fellow serial entrepreneur and attorney, Jordan French. Adams' talk is part of Harvard University Law School Entrepreneurship Incubate Program, an initiative that bridges Harvard's legal scholarship with entrepreneurship. The talk will be held at Harvard University Law School at 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438332 Gerard Adams was recently named to Magic Johnson's coveted 32 Under 32 List and gave his TEDx talk at New Jersey Institute of Technology in September 2016. In 2015, Adams sold the company he cofounded, Elite Daily, to the Daily Mail for $50 million. In 2016, Adams founded FOWNDERS, the social impact startup accelerator based in Newark, New Jersey to empower other minority entrepreneurs. Incubate is a division of the Harvard Law School Entrepreneurship Project. Incubate is a community of entrepreneurs at the Law School, helping build startups within the law school. The organization facilitates interactions with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the community for networking and learning opportunities to encourage entrepreneurship. Incubate's inaugural Entrepreneur Workshop Series includes workshops on market research, business planning, business development and startup funding with a pitch competition as its capstone event. Regarding his talk at Harvard, Adams said, "I look forward to engaging with Harvard's community around entrepreneurship, 'taking the leap' and bootstrapping a startup." Adams grew up in the greater Newark, New Jersey area--historically an impoverished city--and overcame immense odds and failure to succeed. "I'm an example that success can come from anywhere," added Adams. ABOUT GERARD ADAMS Gerard Adams, widely known as the "Millennial Mentor", is a leading thought leader, serial entrepreneur, angel investor and philanthropist. Adams is the co-founder of Elite Daily, the top news platform for Generation Y and the CEO and founder of FOWNDERS, a social entrepreneurship start-up accelerator. He is the winner of Magic Johnson's 32 Under 32 Award and was listed by Business Insider among the top-100 Most Influential People in Silicon Alley. Featured in Success Magazine, Huffington Post, Inc. Magazine, Men's Health and Forbes, Gerard Adams overcame early adversity to become a self-made millionaire by the age of 24. He has built, backed or invested in twelve businesses across multiple industries that have all delivered over seven-figures including the sale of Elite Daily to Daily Mail for $50 million. While he continues his role as an investor and influencer, his mission in life is to mentor and inspire young entrepreneurs to develop what it takes to be successful and to turn dreams into reality. Adams leverages his expertise in millennial branding across industries from digital media to technology to fashion. He is a go-to investor for New York City and New Jersey real estate and developments. Passionate about giving back to his community, Gerard helped develop affordable housing for communities in Newark, NJ. ABOUT JORDAN FRENCH Jordan is a five-time serial entrepreneur with business ranging from real estate data services to robotics. Jordan is a biomedical engineer, intellectual-property attorney and marketing guru. In 2004 and 2005, Jordan worked on heat-dissipation and air-filtration systems as a payload engineer for the NASA-funded Mars Gravity Biosatellite, which included a consortium of engineers and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Washington and University of Queensland. He has held positions as an attorney-adviser at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and as the CEO and COO of a marketing firm, he grew to 30 employees and ranked on the Inc. 500 and Fast 50. Jordan French is the President of O'Dwyer-ranked Notability Partners, which works with top celebrities in music, film and technology. Known as Gerard's "#2" at FOWNDERS, Jordan is on the leadership team of the Newark-based social-impact accelerator that mentors and inspires young entrepreneurs to develop what it takes to be successful and to turn dreams into reality. In 2016, Jordan French introduced 3D food printing to the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory at its conference in Braga, Portugal. He is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Tech.co, TechCrunch and Business.com. ABOUT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL Established in 1817, Harvard Law School nurtures a spirit of innovation, critique, and revision that will guide the work of our third century. Current challenges demand nimble and yet well-designed responses. Through the efforts of our 38,000 alumni, superb faculty, extraordinary students, and remarkable staff, we continually strive to advance justice, the rule of law, and human welfare. Harvard Law School supports collaborative leaders skilled at analyzing problems, defining solutions, and deploying the power of persuasion so that the powerful will be persuaded and the powerless will be empowered. Media Contact: Jordan French [email protected] Related Links FOWNDERS Official Website This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE Fownders, Inc. ATLANTA, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Moe's Southwest Grill, a leader in the fast-casual Mexican restaurant space and recently announced by the Harris Poll as the Fast Casual Mexican Restaurant of the Year, today announced it is looking for new partnerships with experienced multi-unit franchise owners as the brand continues its expansion into Wisconsin. "With multiple locations in neighboring states, Wisconsin represents an important part of Moe's growth strategy and we're excited about the brand's expansion into the region," said Peter Ortiz, Moe's Vice President of Franchise Sales. "The Moe's brand has become a top choice for some of the most successful multi-unit franchise owners in the country, so we're excited to watch the brand grow here due in large part to the talent of our franchisees." As the company looks to open locations throughout the state, they are actively seeking qualified franchisees to develop in the areas in and around Au Claire, Green Bay, Lacrosse, Madison, Milwaukee and Wausau. Moe's currently operates two locations in the state in the Green Bay and Pewaukee areas and recently signed a three-store deal with franchisee Sunny Shah in Milwaukee. Moe's had a successful year of franchise growth in 2015 with $641 million in system-wide sales, the opening of 68 new restaurants some in significant markets, including San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Southern California and nearly 186 new franchise deals. This growth is fueled by both existing franchisees as well as new partnerships with experienced multi-unit franchise owners with notable portfolios. Moe's currently operates more than 650 franchised locations in the U.S., across 39 states. The company has attracted a record number of franchise inquiries in recent years due to its quality leadership, healthy sales-to-investment ratio, and exceptional company performance. About Moe's Southwest Grill Welcome to Moe's! Founded in 2000 in Atlanta, GA, Moe's Southwest Grill is a fast-casual restaurant franchise featuring fresh, handmade, customizable southwestern food in a welcoming environment that rocks. Moe's is committed to serving only the highest quality ingredients 100% of the time at all of our locations in the U.S and abroad. While Moe's is best known for its burritos packed with a choice of more than 20 fresh, flavorful ingredients, the menu also features kid's, vegetarian and low-calorie options, all served with free chips and salsa. Check out Moe's online at www.moes.com. About FOCUS Brands Inc. Atlanta-based FOCUS Brands Inc., through its affiliate brands, is the franchisor and operator of more than 5,000 ice cream shoppes, bakeries, restaurants and cafes in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 60 foreign countries under the brand names Carvel, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Auntie Anne's and McAlister's Deli, as well as Seattle's Best Coffee on certain military bases and in certain international markets. Please visit www.focusbrands.com to learn more. Media Contact: Lauren Tweet, Allison+Partners, (214) 975-8784, [email protected] SOURCE Moe's Southwest Grill Related Links http://www.moes.com SANTA MONICA, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A rising number of car shoppers have negative equity on their trade-ins when they're purchasing their next vehicle, reports Edmunds.com, the leading car information and shopping network. According to Edmunds data, an estimated 32 percent of all trade-ins toward the purchase of a new car through the first three quarters of 2016 were underwater. This is the highest rate on record, and it's up from 30 percent of all trade-ins toward new car purchases from January to September last year. These "upside down" shoppers had an average of $4,832 of negative equity at the time of trade-in, also a record. "It's curious to see just how many of today's car shoppers are undeterred by how much they owe on their trade-ins," says Edmunds.com Sr. Analyst Ivan Drury. "With today's strong economic conditions at their back, these shoppers are willing to absorb a significant financial hit to get into a newer vehicle. In fact, shoppers with this mindset may want to consider jumping on the leasing bandwagon. They can get into a new car with great technology every few years without having to worry about how much they still owe on their trade-in." To give an idea of how much these short-term shoppers can potentially save by switching to leasing, Edmunds found that the difference between the average monthly payment on a new car purchase ($505) was $77 more than the average monthly lease payment ($428) in the third quarter. In general, new car leasing is at its highest level ever. Leasing made up an estimated 33 percent of new car transactions in 2016, through October. The phenomenon of upside down trade-ins is not limited to new car purchases. According to Edmunds' Q3 Used Vehicle Market Report, a record 25 percent of all trade-ins toward a used car purchase in the third quarter had negative equity. These shoppers had an average of $3,635 of negative equity at the time of trade-in, also a Q3 record in the used car market. Edmunds generally recommends that all car shoppers wait until they have equity in a vehicle before they trade it in for another car. But, in cases where shoppers feel that their only choice is to trade in a car when they're underwater, Edmunds lays out a few strategies to minimize or even avoid -- the financial blow in its consumer advice piece "Upside Down and Under Water on a Car Loan." About Edmunds.com Car shopping destination Edmunds.com serves millions of visitors each month. With Edmunds.com Price Promise, shoppers can buy smarter with instant, upfront prices for cars and trucks currently for sale at 10,000 dealer franchises across the U.S. Shoppers can browse not only dealer inventory, but also vehicle reviews, shopping tips, photos, videos and feature stories on both Edmunds' wired site and on its acclaimed mobile apps. Regarded as one of the best places to work in Southern California, Edmunds.com was also named one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Automotive" by Fast Company. Edmunds welcomes all car-shopping questions on its free Live Help Line at 1-855-782-4711 and [email protected], via text at ED411 and on Twitter and Facebook. The company is based in Santa Monica, Calif. and has a satellite office in downtown Detroit, Mich., but you can find Edmunds from anywhere on YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and Flipboard. Contact: Aaron Lewis Edmunds.com Corporate Communications www.Edmunds.com Media Hotline: 310-309-4900 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130612/MM31390LOGO SOURCE Edmunds.com Related Links http://www.edmunds.com WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Restaurant Association (NRA) and the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) today announced a partnership for the largest foodservice trade association in the world to acquire the training business assets and products of the American Hotel & Lodging Association Educational Institute (AHLEI). Currently owned by AHLA, AHLEI is recognized as the training and certifying body for the hospitality industry. American Hotel & Lodging Association Given the nature of the hospitality industry and the intrinsic sharing that goes on between the restaurant and lodging sectors, NRA and AHLA saw a unique opportunity to combine resources to produce an even more robust training program that will benefit employees in their career development and improve overall consumer satisfaction. AHLA will retain the certification business, and the NRA will assume day-to-day responsibility for AHLEI's training program business. Under the intended agreement, NRA will purchase the AHLEI portfolio of 180 training products and assets, as well as the Lansing, Michigan building owned by AHLEI. "We are grateful that AHLEI business has found a home with the National Restaurant Association. It's a natural and logical evolution that combines two outstanding teams committed to excellence in the restaurant, foodservice, and hospitality industries," said Dawn Sweeney, president & CEO of the National Restaurant Association. "By adding the AHLEI assets and business lines to our offerings, we will increase our reach and enhance our credibility as the acknowledged leader in industry training and certification while extending our expertise to the hotel and lodging industry." "AHLA's core mission is to provide employees with the best career opportunities through training and development. Recognizing important partnerships that help us achieve our goals has been and continues to be critical to the industry's success," said Katherine Lugar, president & CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association. "This new partnership gives us the opportunity to focus on what we do best, providing the training and resources necessary to offer pathways to upward mobility for our talent and the future generation of hospitality leaders by maintaining the certifications program. We are very excited about this collaboration and are confident that the NRA will continue to grow and enhance training offerings for our industry." AHLEI will be run as a separate business under the NRA's Training & Certification division. The acquisition is slated to be completed by the end of this year. About the National Restaurant Association Founded in 1919, the National Restaurant Association is the leading business association for the restaurant industry, which comprises more than 1 million restaurant and foodservice outlets and a workforce of 14.4 million employees. The NRA represents the industry in Washington, D.C., and advocates on its behalf. The association operates the industry's largest trade show (NRA Show May 20-23, 2017, in Chicago); leading food safety training and certification program (ServSafe); unique career-building high school program (the NRAEF's ProStart); as well as the Kids LiveWell program promoting healthful kids' menu options. For more information, visit Restaurant.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. About the American Hotel & Lodging Association Serving the hospitality industry for more than a century, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) is the sole national association representing all segments of the 1.9 million-employee U.S. lodging industry, including hotel owners, REITs, chains, franchisees, management companies, independent properties, bed and breakfasts, state hotel associations, and industry suppliers. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., AHLA provides focused advocacy, communications support, and educational resources for an industry of more than 53,000 properties generating $176 billion in annual sales from 5 million guestrooms. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131202/MM26024LOGO-b Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161114/439079LOGO SOURCE National Restaurant Association STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- One in five Americans 62 million people live and work in rural areas. State Offices of Rural Health, other state and rural healthcare providers, industry partners, and agencies across the country will observe National Rural Health Day on Thursday, November 17, 2016. The overriding theme of National Rural Health Day, "The Power of Rural," strives to give a voice to the efforts of those who are working to serve the unique healthcare needs that exist in America's rural communities. As part of National Rural Health Day, the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (NOSORH) will present a series of free webinars on timely rural health topics, including a special session for rural hospital leaders, physicians and other rural health stakeholders on rural health policy led by Maggie Elehwany, vice president of Government Affairs and Policy for the National Rural Health Association, and Andrew Coats, NOSORH's Legislative Liaison. All of the 30-minute "Websights" are live and feature industry experts with other topics that include farmer health and data-driven solutions to manage population health. In addition, State Offices of Rural Health and their partners will celebrate National Rural Health Day in their own way around the nation. A few examples include: a statewide photo contest in North Dakota; a healthcare careers interview contest in Montana that allows students to recognize healthcare workers and explore healthcare careers; and a community celebration in Colorado with hospital staff, state legislators and other community members invited. Finally, on November 17, 2016, NOSORH will launch a major year-long initiative called "Pledge to Partner," which can be found at PowerofRural.org. The initiative will call on rural health organizations, companies that serve rural health providers, and all those for whom rural health matters, to commit to four specific calls to action: Innovate, Collaborate, Educate and Communicate. At a time when rural health funding and policies must be in place to ensure the needs of rural communities are met, the Pledge to Partner aims to mobilize rural health stakeholders to focus on solutions. NOSORH is asking all those celebrating National Rural Health Day to take to social media and make #PowerofRural a trending topic. www.nosorh.org/nrhd If you would like more information about National Rural Health Day, contact: Ashley Muninger at: [email protected] or (888)391-7258 ext 104. To learn more about the State Offices of Rural Health, use this video link. SOURCE National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health Related Links http://www.nosorh.org NASDAQ: NVCN TSX: NVC VANCOUVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Neovasc Inc. ("Neovasc" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: NVCN) (TSX: NVC) today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 (all figures in US dollars unless otherwise indicated). "While the Company has faced litigation headwinds, we remain committed to advancing our core technologies in order to provide new treatments for patients suffering from advanced heart disease," commented Neovasc CEO, Alexei Marko. "Reducer continues to demonstrate its clinical relevance with a seventh consecutive quarter of sales growth and Tiara's clinical results and physician feedback continue to be very encouraging as we advance the product towards commercialization in order to provide a new treatment for mitral valve disease." CardiAQ Litigation Update Subsequent to the quarter's end, the findings of the Federal District Court regarding several post-trial motions stemming from a trial jury's verdict in May 2016 were announced. CardiAQ filed suit against Neovasc in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 2014. The order ruled in favor of CardiAQ on the issue of inventorship of Neovasc's '964 Patent. At the same time, the judge denied CardiAQ's motion for an injunction that would have shut down the development of Tiara, thus allowing Neovasc to continue development and commercialization of Tiara, while also denying Neovasc's motions for a new trial. The judge upheld the jury's verdict and US$70 million award against Neovasc, and awarded US$21 million in enhanced damages to that award. Interest costs and fees may be due on any award granted by the court. The Company intends to continue to vigorously defend itself in the litigation with CardiAQ and as such the outcome of these matters, including whether the Company will be required to pay some or all of the US$91 million awards, is not currently determinable. Upon entry of a judgment by the trial court, Neovasc will immediately seek to stay the payment of the US$91 million damages awards, until after an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is complete. The Company will appeal the validity of the awards, as well as the ruling on inventorship. The appellate process may take up to a year to complete. Litigation is inherently uncertain. Therefore, until these matters have been resolved to their ultimate conclusion by the appropriate courts, the Company cannot give any assurances as to the outcome. If the Company is unsuccessful in its defense of these claims, including any appeal of the verdict in the litigation with CardiAQ, or is unable to settle the claims in a manner satisfactory to the Company, it may be faced with significant monetary damages that could exceed its resources, the loss of intellectual property rights and damage to its competitive position. These circumstances indicate the existence of material uncertainty and cast substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern. Additional information regarding the ongoing litigation can be found in Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015, which is available on the Company's website at www.neovasc.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Results for the three months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 Revenues Revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $3,034,000 compared to revenues of $2,473,687 for the same period in 2015, an increase of 23%. The Company is focusing its business away from its traditional revenue streams towards development and commercialization of its own products, the Neovasc Reducer and the Tiara. The Company started its sales of the Reducer in the first quarter of 2015 as it initiated its focused commercialization of the product in Europe. Sales of the Reducer for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $262,546, compared to $159,394 for the same period in 2015, representing an increase of 65%. The Reducer has seen steady quarter over quarter revenue growth since its launch in the first quarter of 2015. The success of the commercialization of the Reducer will be dependent on the amount of internal resources allocated to the product, obtaining appropriate reimbursement codes in various territories and correctly managing the referrals process. Revenues from consulting services for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $1,227,938, compared to $1,566,729 for the same period in 2015, representing a decrease of 22%. The Company anticipates that its consulting services revenue will decline in the long term as its consulting customers continue to transition to becoming contract manufacturing customers or cease being customers as they move manufacturing in house. To highlight this trend, the Company reports that a contract with a customer representing approximately 5% of year to date revenue is in the process of being wound up and will terminate at the end of 2016. Contract manufacturing revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $1,543,516, compared to $737,336 for the same period in 2015, representing an increase of 109%. The increase in revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 is primarily due to the clearing of temporary delay in shipping to a single customer during the period. Cost of Goods Sold The cost of goods sold for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was $2,201,440, compared to $1,573,068 for the same period in 2015. The overall gross margin for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was 27%, compared to 36% gross margin for the same period in 2015. The decrease in the margin can be attributed to an increase in the cost of sales for contract manufacturing, and a change in product mix toward lower margin contract manufacturing product. The Company has also seen its consulting services revenue margins decline as its ability to charge higher fees for these services has decreased as the transcatheter aortic valve market has matured. In addition, the Company is experiencing higher cost of goods sold as it has implemented a rigorous commercial stage quality system required to meet the expectations of its more advanced customers. These increases are not productive improvements and result in an overall downward trend in margins. Expenses Total expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $8,418,400, compared to $9,575,631 for the same period in 2015, representing a decrease of $1,157,231 or 9%. The decrease in total expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 reflects a $1,086,141 decrease in general and administrative expenses, a $166,061 decrease in product development and clinical trial expenses, and a $94,971 increase in sales and marketing expenses as the Company expands its commercialization activities of the Reducer in Europe. Selling expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $208,884, compared to $113,913 for the same period in 2015, representing an increase of $94,971, or 83%. The increase in selling expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 reflects an increase in costs incurred for commercialization activities related to the Reducer. The Company expects to continue to increase its selling expenses in 2016 as it continues its commercialization of the Reducer in select countries in Europe. General and administrative expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $3,466,825, compared to $4,552,966 for the same period in 2015, representing a decrease of $1,086,141 or 24%. The decrease in general and administrative expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 can be substantially explained by a $923,541 decrease in litigation expenses and a decrease in other expenses of $162,600. Product development and clinical trial expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $4,742,691, compared to $4,908,752 for the same period in 2015, representing a decrease of $166,061, or 3%. The decrease in product development and clinical trial expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was due to a $465,210 decrease in other research and development expenses and a $253,761 decrease in share-based payments, offset by a $498,480 increase in cash-based employee expenses as the Company hired additional staff to advance product development and a $54,430 increase in depreciation. Other Loss The other loss for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was $21,461,950, compared to other income of $1,041,842 for the same period in 2015. As at September 30, 2016 the Company recognized a damages provision of $21 million for enhanced damages on certain trade secret claims made by CardiAQ (see "Contractual Obligations and Contingencies" in the Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations). In addition, during the three months ended September 30, 2016 the Company had an increase in foreign exchange and unrealized losses of $1,377,935 and a decrease in interest income of $125,857 compared to the same period in 2015. Losses The operating losses and comprehensive losses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $29,135,086 and $28,836,990, respectively, or $0.44 basic and diluted loss per share, as compared with losses of $7,633,170 and $12,851,490, or $0.11 basic and diluted loss per share for the same period in 2015. The $21,501,916 increase in the operating loss incurred for the three months ended September 30, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 consists of a $21,000,000 damages provision related to the judge award against the Company in its litigation with CardiAQ, in a $1,377,935 increase in foreign exchange and unrealized losses, a $125,857 decrease in interest income, a $94,971 increase in selling expenses, a $87,296 increase in tax expenses, partially offset by a $1,086,141 decrease in general and administrative expenses and a $166,061 decrease in product development and clinical trial expenses. Litigation expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2016 represent a loss of $0.03 basic and diluted loss per share compared to a loss of $0.04 basic and diluted loss per share for the same period in 2015. To date, the Company has incurred significant costs in defending itself in lawsuits filed by CardiAQ. Total litigation expenses since the initial claims were filed in June 2014 are approximately $19.6 million and the Company expects that it may require an additional $5 million to cover additional litigation expenses up to and including appellate court, if applicable (see "Contractual Obligations and Contingencies" in the Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations). Discussion of Liquidity and Capital Resources Neovasc finances its operations and capital expenditures with cash generated from operations, lines of credit and equity financings. As at September 30, 2016 the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $25,480,683 compared to cash and cash equivalents of $55,026,171 as at December 31, 2015. Cash used in operating activities for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was $11,117,649, compared to $6,916,065 for the same period in 2015. Cash expenditures on litigation (litigation expenses less change in accounts payable related to litigation) were $4,309,062 and within accounts payable there was $975,644 of litigation expenses incurred but not paid for in connection with the litigation with CardiAQ that will be paid in the following quarter. Cash expenditures on research and development and clinical trials (expenses less share based payments and depreciation) were $4,321,501 as the Company furthered the development of the Tiara and the Reducer and cash expenditures on general and administrative expenses were $3,250,436. Inventory decreased by $510,269 during the period due to increased sales and corresponding shipments occurring close the end of the period The Company's working capital, excluding the $91 million damages provision in connection with the litigation with CardiAQ, is $27,470,257 as at September 30, 2016 compared to $54,274,867 as at December 31, 2015. Unless the Company is successful in an appeal of the verdict, or otherwise is successful in reducing the amount of the $91 million awards, the Company will require significant additional financing in order to pay the damages and to continue to operate its business. There can be no assurance that such financing will be available on favorable terms, or at all. These circumstances indicate the existence of material uncertainty and cast substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern. Outstanding Share Data As at November 14, 2016, the Company had 66,866,345 common shares issued and outstanding. Further, the following securities are convertible into common shares of the Company: 7,976,482 stock options with a weighted average price of C$3.95. The fully diluted share capital of the Company at November 14, 2016 is 74,842,827. All financial information is prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board, and is expressed in U.S. dollars. Neovasc's unaudited condensed interim consolidated financial statements and notes thereto for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 as well as Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations will be posted on the Company's website at www.neovasc.com and will be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov. In addition to the summary contained herein, readers are encouraged to review the unaudited condensed interim consolidated financial statements and notes thereto for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 as well as the related Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. Conference Call and Webcast Information Neovasc will be hosting a conference call today at 4:30 pm ET to discuss these results. To participate in the conference, dial 888 390 0546 or 416 764 8688. A recording of the call will be available for 72 hours by calling 888 390 0541 or 416 764 8677 and using passcode 981053#. A link to the live and archived audio webcast of the conference call will also be available on the Presentations and Events page of the Investors section of Neovasc's website at www.neovasc.com. NEOVASC INC. Condensed Interim Consolidated Statements of Financial Position (Expressed in U.S. dollars) (Unaudited) September 30, December 31, 2016 2015 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 25,480,683 $ 55,026,171 Accounts receivable 2,979,007 1,736,941 Inventory 1,058,741 598,136 Prepaid expenses and other assets 401,969 146,590 Total current assets 29,920,400 57,507,838 Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 3,918,622 3,720,556 Total non-current assets 3,918,622 3,720,556 Total assets $ 33,839,022 $ 61,228,394 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Liabilities Current liabilities Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 2,450,143 $ 3,232,971 Damages provision 91,000,000 - Total current liabilities and total liabilities 93,450,143 3,232,971 Equity Share capital 161,658,013 161,505,037 Contributed surplus 22,302,536 20,569,110 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (4,574,273) (8,790,011) Deficit (238,997,397) (115,288,713) Total equity (59,611,121) 57,995,423 Total liabilities and equity $ 33,839,022 $ 61,228,394 NEOVASC INC. Condensed Interim Consolidated Statements of Loss and Comprehensive Loss For the three and nine months ended September 30, (Expressed in U.S. dollars) (Unaudited) Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30, 2016 2015 2016 2015 REVENUE Reducer $ 262,546 $ 159,394 $ 722,433 $ 334,399 Product sales - 10,228 - 353,736 Contract manufacturing 1,543,516 737,336 2,391,136 2,273,114 Consulting services 1,227,938 1,566,729 3,638,105 4,744,645 3,034,000 2,473,687 6,751,674 7,705,894 COST OF GOODS SOLD 2,201,440 1,573,068 5,038,792 4,995,994 GROSS PROFIT 832,560 900,619 1,712,882 2,709,900 EXPENSES Selling expenses 208,884 113,913 554,905 363,213 General and administrative expenses 3,466,825 4,552,966 16,721,354 10,414,394 Product development and clinical trials expenses 4,742,691 4,908,752 14,530,513 12,620,440 8,418,400 9,575,631 31,806,772 23,398,047 OPERATING LOSS (7,585,840) (8,675,012) (30,093,890) (20,688,147) OTHER (EXPENSE)/INCOME Interest income 25,723 151,580 161,522 470,011 Interest expense - - - (2,538) Damages provision (21,000,000) - (91,000,000) - Gain/(loss) on foreign exchange 88,584 890,262 (2,014,669) 873,792 Unrealized loss on damages provision (576,257) - (576,257) - (21,461,950) 1,041,842 (93,429,404) 1,341,265 LOSS BEFORE TAX (29,047,790) (7,633,170) (123,523,294) (19,346,882) Tax expense (87,296) - (185,390) - LOSS FOR THE PERIOD $ (29,135,086) $ (7,633,170) $ (123,708,684) $ (19,346,882) OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME/ (EXPENSE) FOR THE PERIOD Exchange difference on translation (278,161) (5,218,320) 3,639,481 (6,476,684) Unrealized loss on damages provision 576,257 - 576,257 - LOSS AND COMPREHENSIVE LOSS FOR THE PERIOD $ (28,836,990) $ (12,851,490) $ (119,492,946) $ (25,823,566) LOSS PER SHARE Basic and diluted loss per share $ (0.44) $ (0.11) $ (1.85) $ (0.30) NEOVASC INC. Condensed Interim Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows For the three and nine months ended September 30, (Expressed in U.S. dollars) (Unaudited) Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30, 2016 2015 2016 2015 OPERATING ACTIVITIES Loss for the period $ (29,135,086) $ (7,633,170) $ (123,708,684) $ (19,346,882) Adjustments for: Depreciation 215,108 133,157 562,088 337,484 Share-based payments 580,221 877,434 1,811,210 3,197,828 Damages provision 21,000,000 - 91,000,000 - Accounts receivable write down 697 - 5,556 - Interest income (25,723) (151,580) (161,522) (502,498) Interest expense - - - 2,538 (7,364,783) (6,774,159) (30,491,352) (16,311,530) Net change in non-cash working capital items: Accounts receivable (980,522) (427,432) (1,154,457) (234,323) Inventory 510,269 (241,663) (409,886) (262,433) Prepaid expenses and other assets 20,642 161,823 (234,565) (22,441) Accounts payable and accrued liabilities (3,326,228) 101,286 (940,349) 776,126 (3,775,839) (405,986) (2,739,257) 256,929 Interest paid and received: Interest received 22,974 264,080 159,294 485,978 Interest paid - - - (2,538) 22,974 264,080 159,294 483,440 Net cash applied to operating activities (11,117,648) (6,916,065) (33,071,315) (15,571,161) INVESTING ACTIVITES Redemption of guaranteed investment certificates - 6,186,656 - 9,322,492 Purchase of property, plant and equipment (15,174) (467,512) (546,709) (1,734,646) Net cash (applied to)/received from investing activities (15,174) 5,719,144 (546,709) 7,587,846 FINANCING ACTIVITIES Repayment of long-term debt - - - (164,364) Proceeds from share issue pursuant to an underwritten public offering, net of share issue costs - - - 69,879,210 Proceeds from exercise of options - 8,583 75,192 915,124 Net cash received from financing activities - 8,583 75,192 70,629,970 NET CHANGE IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS (11,132,822) (1,188,338) (33,542,832) 62,646,655 CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS Beginning of the period 36,277,793 68,669,545 55,026,171 5,193,561 Exchange difference on cash and cash equivalents 335,712 (4,692,523) 3,997,344 (5,051,532) End of the period $ 25,480,683 $ 62,788,684 $ 25,480,683 $ 62,788,684 Represented by: Cash 14,390,173 12,939,671 14,390,173 12,939,671 Cashable high interest savings accounts 11,090,510 25,957,813 11,090,510 25,957,813 Cashable guaranteed investment certificates - 23,891,200 - 23,891,200 $ 25,480,683 $ 62,788,684 $ 25,480,683 $ 62,788,684 About Neovasc Neovasc is a specialty medical device company that develops, manufactures and markets products for the rapidly growing cardiovascular marketplace. Its products in development include the Tiara, for the transcatheter treatment of mitral valve disease and the Neovasc Reducer for the treatment of refractory angina. The Company also sells a line of advanced biological tissue products that are used as key components in third-party medical products including transcatheter heart valves. For more information, visit: www.neovasc.com. This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws relating to the Company's plans and expectations concerning its business, financial results, trends, litigation and other matters, including the Company's plans, intentions and expectations relating to the CardiAQ litigation and other litigation, its ability to continue as a going concern, its expectations regarding the commercial launch of Reducer, its intention to focus business away from its traditional revenue streams towards development and commercialization of its own products, its expectation that its consulting services revenue will decline in the long term, its expectations with respect to margins and selling expenses, the need for additional financing and other matters. The words "expect", "anticipate", "may", "will", "intend", "believe", "continue", "focusing", "advancing", "trend", and similar words or expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the Company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the Company believes are appropriate in the circumstances. Many factors and assumptions could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, the conduct or possible outcomes of any actual or threatened legal proceedings, the Company's ability to stay the payment of the awards in the CardiAQ litigation and its ability to successfully appeal the validity of the awards as well as the ruling on inventorship, which are inherently uncertain and which create material uncertainty that casts substantial doubt on the Company's ability to continue as a going concern; the potential impact on the Company's business of an adverse decision in the appeal on the question of inventorship even if the Company prevails on its appeal of the award; potential changes in circumstances relating to the Company's financing requirements, whether as a result of the CardiAQ litigation, unforeseen circumstances or otherwise; the Company's ability to raise additional funding; the potential benefits of the Neovasc Reducer and Tiara as compared with other products; successful enrollment of patients in studies and trials for the Neovasc Reducer and Tiara; results of the trials and studies for the Neovasc Reducer and Tiara that meet the Company's expectations; the Company's receipt of any required local and institutional regulatory approvals and the timing and costs of obtaining such approvals; European enrollment in our clinical trials, studies and compassionate use cases and the success of applications in Europe; the Company's ability to protect its intellectual property; changes in business strategy or development plans; existing governmental regulations and changes in, or the failure to comply with, governmental regulations and general economic and business conditions, both nationally and in the regions in which the Company operates. These risk factors and others relating to the Company are discussed in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Information Form, which is included in its Annual Report on Form 40-F and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (copies of which filings may be obtained at www.sedar.com or www.sec.gov). These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company has no intention and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. SOURCE Neovasc Inc. Related Links www.neovasc.com ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a major earthquake on New Zealand's South Island, travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth has established the New Zealand Earthquake and Travel Insurance Information Center to explain coverage for travelers affected by the earthquake. It is too late to purchase a new policy with coverage for the earthquake, but affected travelers who had a policy in place before the earthquake occurred may be eligible for a number of benefits. "Travelers currently in New Zealand should contact their travel insurance provider's 24-Hour Emergency Assistance as soon as possible for help," said Squaremouth spokesperson Rachael Taft. "Travelers with an upcoming trip to New Zealand may be able to cancel if the earthquake damaged their local accommodations or significantly delays their scheduled flights." Travelers Currently in New Zealand Contact your travel insurance provider's 24-Hour Emergency Assistance to understand your coverage. This may include coverage for: Medical treatment and evacuation to an appropriate medical facility if you are injured Non-Medical Evacuation to help you get home or to a place of safety (some policies) Returning home early if you meet your policy's requirements for Trip Interruption typically your accommodations must be rendered uninhabitable by the earthquake to trigger this coverage Travelers Planning to Visit New Zealand You may be covered to cancel your trip if the earthquake affects your trip in a way that triggers cancellation coverage on your policy, such as: Your flight or other ticketed transportation is canceled or delayed for a certain amount of time, typically at least 12-48 hours, because of the earthquake Your accommodations are damaged by the earthquake and deemed uninhabitable There is a mandatory evacuation at your destination because of the earthquake some restrictions may apply Alternatively, travelers with the Cancel For Any Reason upgrade on their policy can cancel even if they do not meet their policy's standard cancellation requirements, as long as they cancel at least 2-3 days before their departure date. However, Cancel For Any Reason only reimburses up to 50-75% of the trip cost. Additional coverage may be available for travelers depending on their policy. Visit Squaremouth's New Zealand Earthquake and Travel Insurance Information Center for more information about travel insurance coverage for the earthquake on New Zealand's South Island, including fact sheets, frequently asked questions, and travel insurance provider position statements. In-Depth: Earthquakes and Travel Insurance Fact Sheet: Squaremouth Explains Coverage For Affected Travelers ABOUT SQUAREMOUTH Squaremouth compares travel insurance policies from every major travel insurance provider in the United States. Using Squaremouth's comparison engine and third-party customer reviews, travelers can research and compare insurance products side-by-side. More information can be found at www.squaremouth.com. Available Topic Expert: Rachael Taft [email protected] (727) 264-5174 SOURCE Squaremouth Related Links http://www.squaremouth.com EAST HANOVER, N.J., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to the PKC412 (midostaurin) new drug application (NDA) for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in newly-diagnosed adults with an FMS-like tyrosine kinase-3 (FLT3) mutation, as well as for the treatment of advanced systemic mastocytosis (SM). The premarket approval application (PMA) for the PKC412 (midostaurin) FLT3 companion diagnostic, developed in collaboration with Invivoscribe Technologies, Inc. (IVS)* has also been accepted for review by the FDA. Outside the US, the marketing authorization application for PKC412 (midostaurin) in these indications has already been accepted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). "FLT3-mutated AML and advanced SM are devastating and rare diseases, with significant unmet needs due to limited existing treatment options," said Bruno Strigini, CEO, Novartis Oncology. "This regulatory designation signifies the importance of midostaurin as a potential therapy for these patients who haven't had the benefit of targeted medicines." The NDA submission for PKC412 (midostaurin) includes data from the largest clinical trials conducted to date in each indication. In the Phase III RATIFY trial (CALGB 10603), which investigated PKC412 (midostaurin) plus standard chemotherapy versus placebo plus standard chemotherapy in adult patients less than 60 years of age with FLT3-mutated AML, those in the PKC412 (midostaurin) arm experienced a statistically significant improvement in overall survival (OS) with a 23% reduction in risk of death compared to the placebo arm (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.77, P = 0.0074)1. Based on these data, PKC412 (midostaurin) was also granted Breakthrough Therapy designation by the FDA earlier this year for newly-diagnosed FLT3-mutated AML. In the RATIFY trial, no statistically significant differences were observed in the overall rate of grade 3 or higher hematologic and non-hematologic adverse events (AEs) in the PKC412 (midostaurin) treatment group versus the placebo group5. The most frequent all grade AEs were febrile neutropenia, nausea, exfoliative dermatitis, vomiting, headache, petechiae (small red skin spots) and pyrexia5. A total of 36 deaths occurring within 30 days of the last dose of study drug were reported, with no difference in treatment-related deaths observed between groups5. Data from the Phase II single-arm study (CPKC412D2201) evaluating the efficacy of PKC412 (midostaurin) in patients with advanced SM were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 2016. The study showed that treatment with PKC412 (midostaurin) resulted in an overall response rate of 60% (defined as complete or partial resolution of organ damage) with a median duration of response of 24.1 months (95% CI, 10.8-not estimated [NE]) and a median OS of 28.7 months (95% CI, 18.1-NE)2. The most frequent AEs were low-grade nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. New or worsening grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia occurred mostly in patients with pre-existing cytopenias2. A Priority Review designation is granted by the FDA to therapies that may provide significant improvements in the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of serious conditions3. According to the FDA, the goal is to take action on a Priority Review application within six months, compared to 10 months under the standard review process3. Novartis has been granted a growing number of Priority Review designations by the FDA, underscoring the company's ongoing commitment to developing innovative therapies for rare diseases or underserved cancer patients. Since PKC412 (midostaurin) remains investigational at this time, both within the US and globally, Novartis opened a Global Individual Patient Program (compassionate use program) and in the US, an Expanded Treatment Protocol, to enable access to eligible patients with newly-diagnosed AML and advanced SM. Physicians who wish to request PKC412 (midostaurin) for eligible patients should contact a Novartis medical representative in their respective countries. In the US, physicians can call 1-888-NOW-NOVA (1-888-669-6682) for more information. About AML and the FLT3 mutation AML is a rare and aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow6. It is the most common acute leukemia in adults7. Of the approximately 350,000 people with leukemias worldwide8, about 25% have AML7. AML has a low survival rate, with around 25% of patients surviving at 5 years9. AML is associated with the accumulation of blood cells that are unable to mature properly, causing a buildup of immature "blast" cells that do not allow room for normal blood cell development6. Mutations in specific genes are found in many cases of AML, and molecular testing is recommended for newly-diagnosed patients to help determine prognosis and best possible treatment4. FLT3 is a receptor tyrosine kinase, a type of cell-surface receptor, which plays a role in the proliferation, or increase, in the number of certain blood cells. The FLT3 gene mutation is one of the most common in AML, occurring in about one-third of patients, and commonly results in faster disease progression, a higher relapse rate and shorter survival10-12. About the FLT3 companion diagnostic In order to help identify patients who may have a FLT3 mutation and potentially benefit from treatment with PKC412 (midostaurin), Novartis is collaborating with IVS for the development and FDA approval of the FLT3 companion diagnostic. The same test is being CE marked in Europe. Regulatory submissions for the companion diagnostic are being led by IVS. About advanced SM Systemic mastocytosis (SM) comprises a group of rare diseases, affecting between 1 in 20,000 to 40,000 people worldwide13. The disease is characterized by uncontrolled growth and accumulation of mast cells or mediators of allergic responses in one or more organs14. In advanced SM, mast cells accumulate in such high quantities that they begin to cause organ damage15. Patients also suffer from debilitating systemic symptoms such as pruritus (severe itching of the skin), among other symptoms, caused by mast cells releasing inflammatory mediators such as histamine into the blood15. Median OS is currently between 3.5 years to less than six months depending on subtype14. The uncontrolled proliferation of mast cells is caused in many people by a KIT gene mutation the most common mutation, encoding the D816V substitution, occurs in approximately 90% of patients16. The KIT gene mutation results in activation of the KIT enzyme, which triggers the abnormal proliferation and survival of mast cells15. About PKC412 (midostaurin) PKC412 (midostaurin) is an investigational, oral, multi-targeted kinase inhibitor in development for the treatment of patients with AML with a FLT3 mutation and for patients with advanced SM. The safety and efficacy profile has not been fully established, and it is not approved for any indication in any market at this time. There is no guarantee that PKC412 (midostaurin) will become commercially available. Disclaimer The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "Priority Review," "will," "expected," "may," "potential," "Breakthrough Therapy designation," "goal," "growing," "commitment," "investigational," "potentially," "currently," "in development," "at this time," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals for PKC412, or regarding potential future revenues from PKC412. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that PKC412 will be submitted or approved for sale in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that PKC412 will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding PKC412 could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including unexpected clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing pressures; unexpected safety, quality or manufacturing issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Novartis Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation researches, develops, manufactures and markets innovative medicines aimed at improving patients' lives. We offer a broad range of medicines for cancer, cardiovascular disease, endocrine disease, inflammatory disease, infectious disease, neurological disease, organ transplantation, psychiatric disease, respiratory disease and skin conditions. The company's mission is to improve people's lives by pioneering novel healthcare solutions. Located in East Hanover, New Jersey, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation is an affiliate of Novartis AG, which provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2015, the Group achieved net sales of USD 49.4 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 8.9 billion (USD 8.7 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 118,000 full-time-equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com. Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis and @NovartisCancer at http://twitter.com/novartiscancer. * FLT3 detection is conducted by the Laboratory of Personalized Molecular Medicine pursuant to patents licensed by Invivoscribe technologies, Inc. from Takara Bio of Otsu, Japan. References Stone RM, et al. The Multi-Kinase Inhibitor Midostaurin (M) Prolongs Survival Compared with Placebo (P) in Combination with Daunorubicin (D)/Cytarabine (C) Induction (ind), High-Dose C Consolidation (consol), and As Maintenance (maint) Therapy in Newly Diagnosed Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Patients (pts) Age 18-60 with FLT3 Mutations (muts): An International Prospective Randomized (rand) P-Controlled Double-Blind Trial (CALGB 10603/RATIFY [Alliance]). Presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology. Gotlib J, Kluin-Nelemans HC, George TI, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Midostaurin in Advanced Systemic Mastocytosis. N Engl J Med. 2016;374(26):2530-2541. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Priority Review. http://www.fda.gov/forpatients/approvals/fast/ucm405405.htm. Accessed November 1, 2016 . NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) Version 1.2016 Acute Myeloid Leukemia. http://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/aml.pdf. Accessed November1, 2016. Novartis data on file. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute NCI. Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment (PDQ) http://www.cancer.gov/types/leukemia/patient/adult-aml-treatment-pdq. Accessed November 1, 2016 . Deschler B, Lubbert M. Acute myeloid leukemia: epidemiology and etiology. Cancer. 2006;107(9):2009-2107. Union for International Cancer Control. 2014. Acute Myelogenous Leukemia and Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia. http://www.who.int/selection_medicines/committees/expert/20/applications/AML_APL.pdf?ua=1ble. Accessed November 1, 2016 . NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI). SEER Stat Fact Sheets: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/amyl.html Accessed November 1, 2016 . Yanada M, Matsuo K, Suzuki T, et al. Prognostic significance of FLT3 internal tandem duplication and tyrosine kinase domain mutations for acute myeloid leukemia: a meta-analysis. Leukemia. 2005;19(8):13451349. Patel JP, Gonen M, Figueroa ME, et al. Prognostic relevance of integrated genetic profiling in acute myeloid leukemia. N Engl J Med. 2012; 22;366(12):1079-89. Levis M. FLT3 mutations in acute myeloid leukemia: what is the best approach in 2013? Hematology Am Soc Hematol Educ Program. 2013;2013:220-6. Orpha.net. Systemic Mastocytosis. http://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC_Exp.php?Expert=2467. Accessed November 1, 2016 . Lim KH, Tefferi A, Lasho T, et al. Systemic mastocytosis in 342 consecutive adults: survival studies and prognostic factors. Blood. 2009;113:5727-5736. Verstovsek S. Advanced systemic mastocytosis: the impact of KIT mutations in diagnosis, treatment, and progression. Eur J Haematology. 2013;90(2):89-98. Garcia-Montero AC, Jara-Acevedo M, Teodosi C, et al. KIT mutation in mast cells and other bone marrow hematopoietic cell lineages in systemic mast cell disorders: a prospective study of the Spanish Network on Mastocytosis (REMA) in a series of 113 patients. Blood. 2006;108(7):2366-2372. Novartis Media Relations Julie Masow Novartis Oncology Media Relations +1 862 778 7220 (direct) +1 862 579 8456 (mobile) [email protected] Fiona Phillips Novartis Oncology + 1 862 778-7705 (direct) + 1 862 217-9396 (mobile) [email protected] SOURCE Novartis Related Links https://www.novartis.com CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Each year, about 135,000 children are adopted in the United States. Whether from adoption agencies, foster care, family members, or private arrangements, each adoption offers a life-changing adventure for all involved. As November celebrates National Adoption Awareness Month across the United States, Sodoma Law P.C., a leading family law firm headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is working to draw attention to the importance of the legal process on the pathway to a successful adoption. "Adopting a child successfully, no matter the circumstances, takes careful planning, including education on the process from a legal perspective," said Nicole Sodoma, Founder and Managing Principal of Sodoma Law. "It is vitally important to have someone on your side who can sort through the legal complexities and protect your family's best interests. Look for an attorney whose area of practice focuses on and has solid experience in adoption." There are a myriad of adoption types: domestic or international; stepparent adoptions (remarrying and adopting one's spouse's children) or family member adoptions; open, semi-private or closed adoption; and more. Each path to adoption comes with its own unique facts and circumstances. Private, open domestic adoptions can be emotionally fulfilling for both the biological and prospective parents, but there are very specific adoption laws to follow and even red flags to consider during this process. For example, while prospective parents pursuing a private adoption may wish to pay for the biological mother's bills during pregnancy, it is preferable to handle such payments by working directly with the service provider (landlord, utility company, etc.). Paying the biological mother directly may give the appearance of paying to obtain the biological parents' consent to the adoption. Also, it is very important for parents pursuing a private adoption to be aware of the state's legislation surrounding adoption. In many states, once the prospective parents welcome the baby into their home, they must file for adoption within thirty days. Adopting from another state will require additional paperwork to satisfy the requirements of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (a pact between states) so that it is not seen as kidnapping to take the child across state lines. Notes Sodoma: "The decisions made and the steps taken during the adoption process will forever impact the life of the child, the biological parents, and the prospective family. But in the end, the work you put into the process will be worth the joy of parenthood!" About Sodoma Law, P.C. Sodoma Law, P.C. is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the historic Walter Brem House, with three additional locations in Charlotte and in Monroe, Union County. The firm's areas of practice include Family Law, Assisted Reproductive Technology, Adoption, Employment Law, Estate Planning, and Business Law. Like Sodoma Law on Facebook, follow them on Twitter (@SodomaLaw), and follow Managing Principal Nicole Sodoma (@NSodoma). Contact: Ariane Doud, Warner Communications 978-283-2674 or [email protected] SOURCE Sodoma Law, P.C. Related Links http://www.sodomalaw.com TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The leading universal AR/VR software company, WakingApp, released new, innovative add-ins that allow AUTODESK REVIT & FUSION 360 users to transform their 3D designs into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences without AR/VR programming skills or experience. WakingApp's Revit add-in and Fusion 360 add-in support seamless content generation, a game-changer for millions of CAD users worldwide - enabling file sharing and file fixing for their designs prior to the prototype and printing stage. With just a few mouse clicks, users can turn CAD into AR or VR, and share it with clients and colleagues instantly. These add-ins are expected to have a profound impact on AR/VR design efficiency, as well as to disrupt current business models that have long separated CAD users from AR/VR design. Content generated using the add-ins will be password-protected by default, so that only the user and authorized viewers will be able to view it. The password is initiated directly to the user Autodesk account's registered email address within minutes after the process has begun. WakingApp staff will be on hand at the Nov 14 MEETUP for Fusion 360 users and from November 15-17 in AU CONFERENCE LAS VEGAS to demonstrate the new plug-ins in person. "The greatest challenge for the entry of AR/VR services to everyday business use is the cost of content in time and money," said Udi Shani, CEO of WakingAPP. "With these new add-ins, WakingApp continues to break down key barriers in AR/VR content creation. We are excited to engage the entire 19 million strong CAD community and help lead them into the world of AR/VR with ease." "Autodesk is excited to see WakingApp delivering our customers Augmented & Virtual Reality in just one click," said Jim Quanci, Senior Director Software partner Development. "When WakingApp's ENTiTi software is combined with Autodesk apps, millions of CAD users and their customers can experience their designs in augmented and virtual reality in near real time." With the ENTiTi Creator (WakingApp's cloud-based platform), CAD users can add interactivity to their designs, such as colors, animating objects and more. This software allows CAD users to edit existing projects created by the Revit or Fusion 360 add-in. Once users save and publish content in ENTiTi, their AR/VR experience can be immediately shared and viewed by clients and colleagues. It's easy to use and requires no prior AR or VR experience. WakingApp, an Autodesk partner, was established in 2013 with the vision of enabling designers to create and view AR and VR experiences easily without writing a single line of code. The ENTiTi platform is designed for non-programmers, allowing the creation of dynamic behaviors through a patent-pending technology with a smooth, easy-to-use interface. The platform is cloud-based and the content is interchangeable. Whenever content is generated or updated, it is immediately available for viewing on multiple platforms including mobile devices, GearVR, and desktop devices such as the Oculus Rift & HTC Vive. Thanks to WakingApp's ENTiTi platform, any business can now create virtual reality and augmented reality content in hours and immediately publish it to all major platforms so this medium will finally be able to meet the demand for content in the near future. For more information about the ENTiTi platform visit the WakingApp website and make sure to get the latest add-in for Revit here and Fusion 360 here, or contact: Sharon Segal Tel: +972-3-5367513 Cell: +972-50-2066637 [email protected] http://www.wakingapp.com Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151104/283733LOGO SOURCE WakingApp Related Links http://www.wakingapp.com BEND, Ore., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Oregrown Industries, Oregon's premier farm to table cannabis company, has donated a portion of Veterans Day sales at its Bend dispensary to veterans' organizations and called for more research and greater access to medical cannabis for veterans. "Research from Israel suggests that cannabinoids in marijuana have the potential to provide real benefits to people suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, and this is borne out by the experiences tens of thousands of veterans and others who have found relief through cannabis," said Oregrown co-founder Aviv Hadar. "We want to support research here in the United States to validate these experiences, and move toward the day when cannabis is readily available to everyone who might benefit from its use." Oregrown donated three percent of Friday's sales to the American Legion, the country's largest veterans organization. The Legion passed a resolution in August calling on the federal government to reschedule cannabis and allow research into its potential for treating post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of veterans are living with traumatic brain injuries and the destructive effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome. The company donated another three percent of sales to the Oregon Veterans Support Fund, a group that assist vets and their families. Oregrown also offered discounted merchandise to Veterans who visited the store on Friday, and served hot pizza to all customers Friday evening. "We are proud to honor those who have put country ahead of self, putting their lives on the line to protect and defend the nation and the ideals that we aspire to," Hadar said. Oregrown is Oregon's premier farm-to-table cannabis company, garnering back-to-back awards for Central Oregon's Best Dispensary at its flagship store at 1199 NW Wall Street in Bend, OR. Offering an upscale retail experience with an amazing staff and high-end products including solventless extractions and one-of-a-kind cultivars, Oregrown continues to innovate, develop and release world-class offerings, delivery methods and applications to patients and recreational customers. Download photo: A busy day at Oregrown's flagship dispensary in downtown Bend, Oregon Contact: Karynn Fish, Oregrown Industries (971) 264-9067 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160525/372454LOGO SOURCE Oregrown Industries Related Links http://www.oregrown.com NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today OUTFRONT Media (NYSE: OUT), one of the largest out-of-home media companies in North America, announced its official partnership with Operation Toy Soldier, a nationwide toy drive, that will begin November 16 and run through December 16. Operation Toy Soldier is a toy collection initiative started by Veterans Funeral Care to provide gifts to the children of deployed and non-deployed soldiers. OUTFRONT Media will help amplify the toy collection program by donating billboard advertising space and by encouraging the participation of company employees. Over three years, Operation Toy Soldier has contributed a combined 50,000 toys to families in need. "We are extremely excited to partake in Operation Toy Soldier and honored to support military families in this small way," said Jodi Senese, Chief Marketing Officer of OUTFRONT Media. "The OUTFRONT family is gearing up for collections in all of our offices, our in-house creative team has developed ads for promoting the initiative, and we've mapped out billboard space in each market. We hope to help make this year's toy drive the most successful yet." Aiming to provide for military children of all ages, Operation Toy Soldier is anchored by a hyper-local approach. For example, toys donated in the Atlanta area will go to a soldier's family in Atlanta, and all of the collections in a region are made by the local military bases. "Operation Toy Soldier has truly taken off over the past few years, and having a corporate sponsor like OUTFRONT Media this year will help us provide for more military families than ever before," said Jim Rudolph, President and CEO of Veterans Funeral Care. "As we continue to grow the program nationally, we keep true to our approach of providing toys locally, which gives it a great communal feeling you are helping your neighbors and the families of soldiers who are defending our country." Operation Toy Soldier started as a local program by the Tim Stewart Funeral Home in Georgia and was officially implemented as a nationwide initiative by Veterans Funeral Care in 2013. Founders Frankie Stewart and Kim Garrett discovered that there was an intense stress in deployed soldiers' families, especially during the holiday season, and they wanted to help. OUTFRONT Media has historically volunteered its advertising resources to like-minded organizations through philanthropic programs such as Red Nose Day and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America's recent "Vote to Count" public service campaign, as well as in-house initiatives driven by OUTFRONT Studios, like its anti-texting while driving series. About OUTFRONT Media Inc. OUTFRONT Media is one of the largest out-of-home media companies in North America with a leading presence in top markets throughout the United States and Canada. We have a diverse portfolio of billboard, transit and digital displays reaching mass audiences, as well as a distinct offering of prime assets impacting select markets. As part of our recently launched ON Smart Media platform, we are developing hardware and software solutions for enhanced demographic and location targeting, and engaging ways to connect with consumers on-the-go. Contacts: OUTFRONT Investors: OUTFRONT Press: Gregory Lundberg Carly Zipp (212) 297-6400 (212) 297-6479 [email protected] [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150108/167799LOGO SOURCE OUTFRONT Media Inc. Related Links http://www.outfrontmedia.com MARRAKECH, Morocco, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- COP22 -- Over 70% of private investors surveyed see both risk and investment opportunity from the impact of climate change, according to a new study released today by the Global Adaptation & Resilience Investment Working Group (GARI). According to GARI, 78% of 101 surveyed investors and other stakeholders thought evaluating the physical risk from climate change was "very important," while 70% would consider making investments that supported adaptation to climate change or climate change resilience now. These investor reactions were reported in "Bridging the Adaptation Gap," a discussion paper released by GARI at the COP22 Global Climate Summit held in Marrakech on Monday, 14 November 2016. "Bridging the Adaptation Gap" describes the discussions of over 150 private investors and other stakeholders who met five times in 2016 to focus on (1) Approaches to Measurement of Physical Climate Risk and (2) Examples of Investment in Climate Adaptation and Resilience. The report identifies six different approaches to measuring physical climate risk and reveals that respondents consider transparency and practicality the most important factors in approaches to assess physical climate risk. The paper also catalogs existing infrastructure, corporate, and fixed asset investments that support adaptation and resilience to climate change. Over 60% of respondent investors are considering investments today in resilient infrastructure and in companies whose products address the impact of climate change on water, agriculture, healthcare, energy, and financial services. "GARI demonstrates that private investors see both the risk to their portfolios from the physical impact of climate change and the opportunity to invest in addressing that risk today," said lead author Jay Koh, founder and chair of GARI and Managing Director of The Lightsmith Group, an alternative investment firm. "Post-Paris, investors are calling for better ways to measure physical climate risk and for support in making resilient investments." Contributing author Emilie Mazzacurati, CEO of Four Twenty Seven, a climate risk and resilience market research firm, added, "In the context of worsening signals from climate science, and the uncertainty on our ability to meet Paris targets, investing in climate resilience is all the more critical. This report demonstrates that private investors are ready to step up to bridge the adaptation finance gap." "Climate risk is often overlooked. Approaches to measurement of physical climate risk will be key to integrating the notion of climate risk across a range of investment products, and from an understanding of these risks, opportunities for new, more resilient investment will emerge," says contributing author Stacy Swann, CEO of Climate Finance Advisors, a consulting firm advising investors and policy makers. "GARI is an initiative that brought together the constellation of financial actors who are the thinkers and the early adopters in this new investment space." About GARI Founded in 2015, the Global Adaptation & Resilience Investment Working Group (GARI) (www.garigroup.com) is a private sector, private investor-led working group focused on the intersection of investment and climate adaptation and resilience investment. GARI was announced in conjunction with the UN Secretary General's A2R Climate Resilience Initiative at the Paris COP21 global climate talks in 2015 and has convened over 150 private investors and other stakeholders. GARI will launch its next discussion series in spring 2017. About The Lightsmith Group The Lightsmith Group (www.lightsmithgp.com) is a global alternative investment firm headquartered in New York that focuses on generating superior returns aligned with environment, social and governance standards. About Four Twenty Seven Four Twenty Seven (www.427mt.com) is an award-winning market research and advisory firm that brings climate intelligence to economic and financial decision-makers. Founded in 2012 and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Four Twenty Seven helps Fortune 500 companies, investors and government institutions understand how to quantify and monetize climate change impacts on operations as well as social factors that affect their value chain. About Climate Finance Advisors Climate Finance Advisors (www.climatefinanceadvisors.com) is an advisory and consulting firm in the Washington DC area that works with public policy makers at the national and international level, as well as investors, bankers, fund managers, and project developers on issues related to climate finance, green banks and funds, and climate risk. Climate Finance Advisors has expertise in blended finance and development finance, and in structuring sustainable, resilient and climate smart investments. SOURCE Global Adaptation & Resilience Investment Working Group (GARI); Four Twenty Seven; Climate Finance Advisors VANCOUVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Pacific Insight Electronics Corp. ("Pacific Insight" or the "Company") (TSX: PIH), a world-class electronics and full service solutions provider to the transportation industry, today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended September 30, 2016. All figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. Financial Highlights For the 3 months ended In thousands of dollars (except EPS) September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 $ $ Revenues 30,680 30,436 Net income for the period 1,087 1,988 Earnings per fully diluted share 0.15 0.33 For the period ended September 30, 2016, revenues were $30.7 million compared to $30.4 million in the same period last year, an increase of $0.3 million, or 1.0%. The increase in revenues was driven by new LED lighting product launches, offset by slower growth on certain automotive customer program orders. Net income for the three months ended September 30, 2016 was $1.1 million or 15 per diluted share compared with $2.0 million or 33 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. The decrease was due to reduced gross margins and increased operational costs involved with the undertaking and launch of a new customer program in the start-up stage. If revenues and non-recurring costs associated with this new program were removed from the operating results for the quarter, net income would have increased by $1.3 million to $2.4 million, and earnings per diluted share would have increased by $0.17 to $0.32. As previously disclosed, during fiscal 2016, the Company began developing ambient lighting products for an electric vehicle OEM, which are sold through Tier 2 relationships. The launch activities associated with investment in this new business were projected to generate less favourable results through to the end of fiscal 2017 quarter one. Second quarter margins on this new program are expected to become consistent with the Company's other automotive programs. This news release should be read in conjunction with Pacific Insight's condensed interim consolidated financial statements for the three months ended September 30, 2016 and the related Management's Discussion and Analysis, which can be found on sedar.com. About Pacific Insight Pacific Insight Electronics Corp (TSX: PIH) is a global solutions provider offering design, development, manufacturing and delivery of electronic products and full service solutions to the automotive, commercial vehicle and speciality markets. We provide OEMs as well as Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers with a range of cost competitive products including LED lighting systems, electronic control modules and wire harnesses. Please visit the Company's website at pacificinsight.com. The information in this news release was prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards. To view the full September 30, 2016 Audited Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis please visit sedar.com. Email enquiries may be sent directly to [email protected] or via telephone: 1-800-995-1155. Pacific Insight is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and its trading symbol is PIH. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements made in this news release, including, but not limited to, statements relating to expected future events, revenues, non-recurring costs and anticipated future margins associated with the new OEM program for ambient lighting for an electric vehicle, financial and operating results, guidance, objectives, plans, and other statements that are not historical facts, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of the Company. Generally, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "likely", "estimate", "believe", "expect", "plan", "forecast" and similar expressions or the negative thereof are intended to identify forward looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements require management to make assumptions and predictions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, thus there is risk that the forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results and events to differ materially from that expressed in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, our comments are subject to the disclaimer and qualified by the assumptions and risk factors referred to in Pacific Insight's Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for the period ended September 30, 2016, which can be found on www.sedar.com. The Company does not intend or undertake to publically update any forward-looking statements that are included in this news release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. SOURCE Pacific Insight Electronics Corp. BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gradifi, the industry's first provider of the Employer SLP Plan (Student Loan Paydown Plan), joins with Penguin Random House to announce the world's largest trade book publisher will enhance its renowned benefits package with financial assistance to help employees pay down student loan debt. Gradifi will provide the platform for administering this new benefit at Penguin Random House. Penguin Random House becomes the first book publishing company to offer student loan repayment assistance, joining the ranks of other progressive companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), First Republic Bank and Natixis Global Asset Management, in leading the charge to tackle our nation's student loan debt crisis. Less than 5% of United States companies offer student-debt repayment assistance, a burden that impacts 70% of recent college graduates. Penguin Random House is one of the few companies nationwide to offer the student loan repayment assistance benefit to employees at every level of the organization. Gradifi's SLP Plan, announced in 2015, gives businesses the opportunity to pay down employees' student loan debt by contributing directly through structured and secured channels towards their employees' student loan principal on a monthly basis. These contributions can take years off student loan balances potentially shaving three or more years off of a 10-year loan. Gradifi estimates that it will process $100 million in Paydown Rewards in 2017. Penguin Random House, which earned a top spot on Forbes' list of "America's Best Employers of 2016" earlier this year, will add the Gradifi-managed SLP Plan to its existing variety of unique programs and benefits, including a comprehensive, affordable healthcare plan, eligibility for either an annual bonus or cash award/profit share payment, and generous paid time off, including a four-week sabbatical for every ten years of employment. Beginning in January 2017, any regular full-time employee who has been with the company one year is eligible for the student loan repayment benefit of up to $1,200 annually during their employment, for up to seven and a half years, totaling $9,000. Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House, said, "We have always believed in doing our part to tackle broader societal challenges by starting within our own communities. With this new benefit for our employees, we have another opportunity to live up to our mission and help our employees invest in their futures while also making Penguin Random House a happy, productive, and rewarding place to work." "The burden of having student debt has an indisputable impact on the financial stability of an employee, not to mention the paralyzing effect loans have on the overall economy." said Tim DeMello, Gradifi founder and CEO. "Penguin Random House's decision to offer Gradifi's SLP Plan as a benefit to their employees emphasizes their commitment to helping alleviate that burden for its employees, as well as recognizing that student loan benefits can help attract and retain millennial talent." About Gradifi Gradifi is a Boston-based student loan pay down provider with the first innovative solution to the nation's $1.3 trillion student loan debt problem. The company was founded in 2014 and is led by a management team that brings decades of combined experience in consumer financial services and entrepreneurial ventures. By partnering with companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers to develop employer SLP Plans (Student Loan Paydown), rewards programs and brand loyalty programs, Gradifi is shifting the focus on student loan debt - from burden to empowerment. To learn more about Gradifi, visit www.gradifi.com or twitter.com/gradifi. About Penguin Random House Penguin Random House, the world's largest trade book publisher, is dedicated to its mission of nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere. The company, which employs more than 10,000 people globally, was formed on July 1, 2013, by Bertelsmann and Pearson, who own 53 percent and 47 percent, respectively. With nearly 250 independent imprints and brands on five continents, Penguin Random House comprises adult and children's fiction and nonfiction print and digital English- and Spanish-language trade book publishing businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide. With over 15,000 new titles, and close to 800 million print, audio and eBooks sold annually, Penguin Random House's publishing lists include more than 60 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world's most widely read authors. CONTACT: Elizabeth Yekhtikian, [email protected], 617-686-9541 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160531/373753LOGO SOURCE Gradifi Related Links http://www.gradifi.com HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Karen Murphy today announced the department will again provide free tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis, or Tdap, vaccines to residents in the Chambersburg/Shippensburg areas of Cumberland and Franklin counties because of a localized rise in cases of pertussis (whooping cough). To date, 47 cases of pertussis have been confirmed in the area. The Tdap clinics will be held from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Tuesday, November 15, and Wednesday, November 16, at Chambersburg Area Senior High School, 511 S. 6th St., Chambersburg. The department vaccinated 236 people at a Tdap clinic held Friday, November 11, at the same location. Tdap vaccines are also available from health care providers. "Tdap vaccines should be given to women during each pregnancy, as well as to individuals over the age of 10 who have never received the vaccine," said Secretary Murphy. "Being up to date on your Tdap vaccine not only protects you, it also helps to ensure you don't spread the illness to infants who are too young to get vaccinated. If you or your loved ones have symptoms of whooping cough, contact your health care provider right away." The pertussis vaccine is recommended for children to enter school. Because immunity from the vaccine fades over time, most adolescents and adults are susceptible to the disease. In addition to the typical childhood series of pertussis immunizations at 2, 4, 6, 15-18 months and a booster at 4-6 years, the department recommends the adolescent-adult pertussis vaccine, tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis, or Tdap, booster for: Individuals 10-64 years of age who are not fully immunized; Pregnant women during each pregnancy, preferably between 27 and 36 weeks gestation. Women who have never received Tdap and who do not receive it during pregnancy should receive it immediately postpartum; People who have contact with pregnant women or infants too young to have received a full series of vaccinations; and All family members and caregivers of infants who are not old enough to get vaccinated against pertussis. Pertussis is an infection of the respiratory system and is characterized by severe coughing spells that end in a "whooping" sound when the person breathes in. The first symptoms of whooping cough are similar to those of a common cold including runny nose, sneezing, mild cough, and low-grade fever. After about one to two weeks, the dry, irritating cough evolves into coughing spells that can last for more than one minute and can lead to vomiting. For more information, visit www.vaccinesforlife.com or call 1-877-PA-HEALTH. MEDIA CONTACT: April Hutcheson, 717-787-1783 SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Health Related Links http://www.state.pa.us EAST HARTFORD, Conn., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pratt & Whitney's PurePower Geared Turbofan Engine has entered into service with VivaAerobus on the operator's A320neo. The aircraft made its first passenger flight on Oct. 18 from Monterrey to Guadalajara, Mexico. This milestone comes days after the last leg of the aircraft's ferry flight became the longest A320neo flight to date. The flight from Keflavik, Iceland to Monterrey, Mexico, was nine hours and 32 minutes, the longest flight to date on an A320neo. Pratt & Whitney is a division of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX). "The VivaAerobus introduction of its A320neo into passenger service was the next step in the transformation of our young airline. On day one of passenger service, the aircraft conducted eight flights carrying about 1,160 passengers between various cities in Mexico," said Juan Carlos Zuazua, CEO of VivaAerobus. "The PurePower Engine's lower fuel burn, 18 percent better on the ferry flight, will help us meet our customers' expectations of dependable service at a lower cost. We are proud of our relationship with Pratt & Whitney and proud to be flying one of the most advanced technologies in the field of civil aviation." Eight carriers are flying 26 Geared Turbofan Engine powered aircraft across the globe. GTF Engines have earned more than 30,000 revenue hours and powered more than 13,000 flights. "Pratt & Whitney is honored to support VivaAerobus on its first A320neo passenger flights using the revolutionary technology in our Geared Turbofan Engine," said Rick Deurloo, senior vice president, Commercial Engine Sales, Marketing and Customer Support at Pratt & Whitney. "The PurePower Engine is transforming aviation through its reduced fuel burn, which will help VivaAerobus control its operating expenses." The PurePower Geared Turbofan Engine backlog continues to grow. Pratt & Whitney's PurePower Engine has more than 8,400 engine orders, including options, from more than 80 customers in 30 countries. Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. United Technologies Corp., based in Farmington, Connecticut, provides high-technology systems and services to the building and aerospace industries. To learn more about UTC, visit its website at www.utc.com, or follow the company on Twitter: @UTC. This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning future business opportunities. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to changes in levels of demand in the aerospace industry, in levels of air travel, and in the number of aircraft to be built; challenges in the design, development, production support, performance and realization of the anticipated benefits of advanced technologies; as well as other risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those detailed from time to time in United Technologies Corp.'s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. For more information about Pratt & Whitney, visit www.pw.utc.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/prattandwhitney Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prattandwhitney YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/prattandwhitney1925 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pratt-&-whitney Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dependableengines/ Sara Banda Alice Straight Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney +1 (860) 565-4031 office +1 (860) 565-2344 office +1 (860) 202-8644 mobile +1 (860) 830-6187 mobile [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE Pratt & Whitney Related Links http://www.pratt-whitney.com saludmovil, designed by Hispanics for Hispanics, aspires to improve the health of the Latino population by providing trustworthy health news accessible via smartphone, tablet, and desktop. On the saludmovil app, videos can be downloaded and saved to a library on a mobile device to view at the user's convenience or when the internet is not accessible. It provides quick access to content and tools for on-the-go users who want to remain informed. "saludmovil was born from the need of pertinent health information targeting the Hispanic demographic in America," said Dr. Mosquera, founder of saludmovil, "which the health system and health news providers have neglected for far too long. This is partly due to the inability, or lack of effort, to offer online medical content and news in Spanish, targeting Hispanics. Our mission is to present them with easily accessible medical and wellness information using their handheld devices or personal computer. Hispanics want to be heard, and now they have the online medical support they so desperately need." saludmovil features exclusive information on medical conditions, as well as unique advice on all areas of health and medicine, such as family medicine and natural remedies. There is also a focus on topics such as food and nutrition, healthy cooking, beauty, fitness, sexual health, and even news regarding healthcare for pets. saludmovil has partnered with Harvard University's prestigious Harvard Medical School and will provide the most trustworthy and up-to-date health news by publishing complementary content from the school's world-renowned Harvard Health Publications. About saludmovil saludmovil's team of medical experts, and award-winning journalists, understand your healthcare needs. It is a new concept in mobile health, designed specifically to meet the needs of the community, from English-speaking youth to Spanish-speaking seniors. saludmovil is driven to improve the health and wellness of America's Hispanic communities, where access to quality, affordable health care is a challenge. Founder Joseph Mosquera, MD, is one of the nation's pioneers in integrative medicine with over 30 years of experience caring for the Latino community. Our passion and purpose lies in helping to improve the health of Hispanics from all corners of the United States. We're here, in Spanish and English, to support you and answer the real questions you may have about your health and your family's health. Our team understands that navigating the healthcare system can be overwhelming and confusing. At saludmovil, we look to empower our community. https://saludmovil.com/ Facebook: saludmovil Twitter: @misaludmovil Instagram: @misaludmovil Pinterest: saludmovil Video - http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/welcome-to-saludmovil.mp4 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161110/438563LOGO SOURCE saludmovil (TM) Related Links https://saludmovil.com BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shepley Bulfinch, a national architecture firm known for design excellence and innovation with offices in Boston, Houston and Phoenix, announced today that it has launched Lens, a consulting studio focused on helping healthcare organizations develop new business strategies by reinventing three critical elements of the experience: the way people interact, the services delivered, and the systems that support care delivery. Lens will be led by Principal Strategist Lauren Janney, EDAC, who has spent the past decade dedicated to improving clinical and organizational performance through an engaging and innovative process. Shifting consumer expectations, increased competition, rapid technological advancements, and value based reimbursement models are driving healthcare providers to focus on the patient and staff experience as a means to increase performance, improve care outcomes and drive down costs. Lens combines stakeholder facilitation, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and design thinking into a five step process called Lens Lab to establish buy-in and achieve more impactful results. Lens partners with hospitals and healthcare leaders across the country to rethink and reinvent the patient and staff experience. "Over the years, we have helped our clients implement organizational change by engaging staff to help them think strategically and creatively about workflow, care team roles, service lines, and the impact on the patient experience," said Carole Wedge, FAIA, LEED AP, president of Shepley Bulfinch. "The vision for a consulting studio evolved from our passion for what happens inside the buildings we design. It grew organically as we began to help healthcare clients remove process bottlenecks and address patient and staff pain points before beginning to plan, program or design a building. Shepley Bulfinch founded Lens, a team of dedicated strategists, to meet the increasing demand to for organizational change." For more than a decade, Lauren Janney's career has focused on design and business administration within the healthcare industry, helping organizations increase performance by improving the patient experience. As Principal Strategist of Lens, Lauren combines her background in design with healthcare administration to improve care outcomes in an ever-changing healthcare landscape. Lauren has worked with leading healthcare organizations, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Yale New Haven Health System and Partners HealthCare, to improve organizational cultures and performance. She and the Lens team utilize data analytics and creative problem-solving to drive new business strategies that connect with patients in more engaging ways and provide a framework for fostering innovation among staff. She holds a degree in Industrial Design with a concentration in healthcare and is the first design practitioner to complete the advanced lean training certificate program at the Virginia Mason Institute. In 2017, Lauren will receive a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in healthcare from George Washington University. Lauren sits on the marketing committee for the New England Society for Healthcare Strategy (NESHS) and is a core team member at the Lean Construction Institute's New England chapter. "With a whole new set of unknowns in our future, there are a few changes we can still count on, including a continued push for cost transparency, value based payments, and increased competition. Healthcare providers need to continue to focus on improving customer service, relentlessly removing wasteful processes, coordinating care and making the patient experience a top priority," said Ms. Janney. "Connecting with care teams during the Lens Lab process or talking with frontline staff is my favorite part of our work because the opportunity to drive change increases when we put people at the center. I'm proud of our commitment to reinventing experiences that improve our clients' businesses and the health of our communities." About Lens Lens is a consulting studio of Shepley Bulfinch that works with healthcare providers to increase performance, improve care outcomes and drive down costs through organizational change. Sparked by a passion to address the growing challenges within the healthcare industry and the opportunity to achieve better results by prioritizing the experience, Lens serves as a strategic partner to providers who want to effect change. Lens combines business strategy and creativity to engage staff to think about the way people interact, the services delivered, and the systems that support care delivery. To learn more about how Lens has driven change in healthcare and how we can help your organization please visit www.LensStrategy.com. About Shepley Bulfinch Shepley Bulfinch is a national architectural design firm known for design excellence and innovation. With offices in Boston, Houston, and Phoenix, the firm provides architecture, planning, and interior design solutions for leading institutions in academics and healthcare, as well as urban development and civic organizations. Practicing design that is an elegant synthesis of aesthetic, physical, and cultural influences, Shepley Bulfinch strives to advance design by sparking a dialogue with clients who are leading change in the built environment. For more information, please visit www.shepleybulfinch.com or follow us on Twitter at @ShepleyBulfinch. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438985LOGO SOURCE Shepley Bulfinch Related Links http://www.shepleybulfinch.com PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shreve & Co., the 164-year-old California jeweler that expanded its premier luxury jewelry portfolio into downtown Portland five years ago, has announced that it will close its Pioneer Square location at 640 SW Broadway and leave the Portland market after a brief, total jewelry and watch liquidation sale beginning on Thursday, November 17. "We have had a great experience here," said Lane Schiffman, co-owner of Shreve & Co., "making the decision to close a difficult one, but practical as our sales have not grown to our expectations. By closing the Portland store, we'll gain more flexibility to focus our resources in our home market." The employees at the Shreve & Co. Portland location have been offered jobs in California. Millions of dollars of exquisite diamonds, couture designer jewelry and fine Swiss timepieces will be offered in the sale. Everything must be sold, and all sales are final. "We've decided to make our last holiday season in Portland a memorable one," continued Schiffman," and have planned an absolutely spectacular sales event as our farewell. The sale provides the unique opportunity to purchase gifts of the very finest jewelry, diamonds and watches at Shreve at unheard of low prices." For more information about the Shreve & Co. Portland Store Closing Sale please call 971.295.5555. About Shreve & Co. The discovery of gold in the California hills brought George Coates Shreve and Samuel S. Shreve to San Francisco where they established Shreve Jewelers in 1852. The firm's prominence as San Francisco's finest jeweler quickly earned it a national reputation as one of the premier luxury jewelers in the United States, which it maintains today. In addition to its flagship store at 150 Post Street in San Francisco, the firm has stores at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, and at 640 SW Broadway in Portland, Oregon. Since 1992, Shreve & Co. has been part of Schiffman's, a fourth-generation, family-owned and operated independent luxury jeweler based in Greensboro, North Carolina. shreve.com Contact: Susan W. Morgan at 804.405.5685 or [email protected] SOURCE Shreve & Co. Related Links http://shreve.com LABEGE, France and JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Strategic partnership with national player in the telecom industry to cover the largest economy in Africa The 26th country to deploy Sigfox's network, supporting its global ambition to reach 60 countries by 2018. Today, Sigfox, the world's leading provider of a global communication solution powering the Internet of Things (IoT), and its partner DFA announced the roll-out of the Sigfox network in South Africa - the largest economy and most industrialised nation on the African continent. SqwidNet (a wholly owned subsidiary of DFA), will deploy and operate Sigfox's network nationwide and distribute the IoT connectivity services and solutions to its partner channels. The deal is a strategic move to expand to a market that is still largely untapped, but presents tremendous opportunity, both for business and society. The South African IoT market, which is estimated to reach in excess of $2 billion by 2020, is set to revolutionise all sectors stimulating industry growth and economic development. DFA, finances, builds, installs, manages, and offers world class wholesale open access fibre infrastructure and managed connectivity services to the mobile operator, service provider and large enterprise segments in South Africa. As the exclusive partner of Sigfox, SqwidNet will address the need of a cost efficient nationwide IoT network in South Africa. The Sigfox network now spans across 26 countries and boasts a footprint in some of the largest economies in every continent. With 6 countries already covered nationwide, 20 others being rolled out and new countries being added to the list at a rapid pace, Sigfox is by far the world's largest IoT network. The company plans to have coverage in 60 countries by 2018. The roll-out of the Sigfox network in South Africa will initially be in the key metros starting with Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, with full national coverage to be completed by 2018. SqwidNet will target applications across all vertical markets, with a particular focus on asset tracking, predicative maintenance, logistics and, security. Leveraging DFA's established open access wholesale operating model, SqwidNet too will operate on an open access basis working closely with channel partners to take solutions to the market. Global scalability, cost and energy consumption have been the three greatest barriers to IoT mass adoption. Sigfox entered the global IoT market to break down these barriers. Rather than using existing technologies, Sigfox has taken a unique approach. The company is rolling out the first global IoT network to listen to billions of objects broadcasting data, without the need to establish and maintain network connections. This game-changing shift, that drastically reduces energy consumption and costs, will fuel the IoT mass market deployment. Xavier Drilhon, Sigfox Deputy CEO, said: "We're very excited about this partnership with SqwidNet. This move marks yet another key milestone towards Sigfox's vision of a global IoT network and in its expansion into the MEA region. All the pieces are now falling into place to make IoT a short term reality in South Africa. South Africa is a strategic country for Sigfox as it hosts a vibrant ecosystem of innovative IoT solutions which exports across the African continent and worldwide. Thierry Siminger, President of MEA at Sigfox, said, "We are confident that this move will deliver tremendous benefits across the entire region, especially within asset tracking and security verticals. Not only does DFA have the largest open-access footprint in the country, but we share the same vision. We are convinced that technology can revolutionize the way we live if four conditions are met: Open access, network coverage, cost efficiency & low power consumption" Reshaad Sha, DFA's Chief Strategy Officer and Acting CEO of SqwidNet, said, "Our move into IoT is underpinned by our strategic intent of enabling a digital world in which innovation and meaningful connections thrive. By working closely with our existing and new partners we believe that the connectivity proposition that we will be taking to market will be leveraged for the strength and technological prowess that Sigfox enables. About Sigfox Sigfox is the world's leading provider of global communication solutions powering the Internet of Things (IoT). Its solutions introduce a game-changing approach for device-to-cloud communications by making it possible for devices to send and receive data over the Internet without the need to manage complex connections or SIM cards, as the Sigfox network and devices simply listen in and capture specifically formatted radio messages from around the globe, needing something as simple as a silicon chip that you find in a remote control. The unique Sigfox solutions enable devices to consume so little energy that soon batteries will become redundant and energy harvesting solutions will power data transmission. The vision of the company is to "Make Things Come Alive". By giving a voice to the physical world we live in, and connecting it to the Cloud, Sigfox allows objects to play a role in our social and economic development. Currently present in 25 countries, and on track to reach over 60 by 2018, the Sigfox network today covers a population of 397 million people. Millions of connected objects are already registered on the network across all five continents, enabling companies to accelerate their digital transformation, develop new services and create value. Founded in 2010 by entrepreneurs Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet, the company is headquartered in Labege near Toulouse, France's "IoT Valley". Sigfox also has offices worldwide in Paris, Madrid, Munich, Boston, San Francisco, Dubai and Singapore. For more information, visit http://www.sigfox.com and follow us on Twitter at @SIGFOX. About DFA and SqwidNet DFA finances, builds, installs, manages, and maintains a world-class fibre network to transmit metro and long-haul telecommunications traffic in South Africa. DFA started rolling out its network in South African cities during October 2007. DFA has rolled out in excess of 10,000KM of route fibre which it manages and operates with an uptime of 99.99% at a passive level. DFA leases secure transmission and backbone fibre infrastructure to telecommunications operators, Internet service providers, media conglomerates, tertiary education institutions, municipalities, government organizations, and other businesses, large and small, on equal terms. Sqwidnet, a wholly owned subsidiary of DFA will roll out a nationwide open access IoT network based on the Sigfox technology to provide a connectivity platform that will enable industries across South Africa to participate in the digitization shift that is upon us. Press Contacts Laurence Collet, Sigfox [email protected] / [email protected] +33 7 86 27 36 43 Simon Chan, Edelman for Sigfox [email protected] +44 (0)7875 198 091 Carrie Daly, Hill+Knowlton Strategies for SqwidNet and DFA [email protected] +27 82 813 0237 SOURCE Sigfox ELMHURST, Ill., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Christian online retailer SonGear (SonGear.com) has launched a platform that allows customers to support the cause of their choice while shopping. SonGear Effect provides shoppers with the ability to choose from nine different Christian causes as they shop. The customer's cause of choice will then be given a charitable donation of 2.5 percent of the purchase price directly from SonGear, without increasing purchase price. This is on top of 10 percent of profits, which SonGear donates annually toward Christian charities around the world. "SonGear Effect is the first Christian program of its kind," said Founder/CEO Bob Van Zandt. "We have a passion to be more than just another retailer. We want customers to see SonGear as a partner in supporting local churches and the causes people are passionate about." Causes supported include human trafficking, hunger, education, disaster relief, crisis pregnancy and several others. In addition, customers can register their church to be a recipient of the charitable giving. The Christian retail market represents more than $5 billion in annual sales in the US. SonGear is a socially-marketed online store featuring custom Christian jewelry, apparel, and gifts. SonGear Effect is a means by which the company can give even more and provide consumers with options around that giving. "Being a truly 'Christian' business requires we do more than just sell products," Van Zandt said. "It means we actively live out our faith via supporting those who are making a difference around the world." For more information on SonGear, visit SonGear.com/effect. Media Contact: Don Hampton, Marketing Communications Director (630) 568-6378 / [email protected] SOURCE SonGear.com Related Links http://www.songear.com WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- We commend Breathe DC for filing a lawsuit in the DC Superior Court to hold Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company accountable for their deceptive marketing of Natural American Spirit cigarettes. We know that people incorrectly and dangerously believe that smoking American Spirit cigarettes reduce the harm associated with smoking because they mistakenly perceive 'additive-free' or 'organic' cigarettes to be a safer choice. But, inhaling burnt tobacco is equally and seriously harmful, whether it's organic or not. This lawsuit come on the heels of a warning letter issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company in August 2015 determining that their use of "Natural" and "Additive Free" on their product labeling constitutes a reduced harm claim. These claims are prohibited under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 without FDA approval which has never been given. There has been no public action by the FDA on its warning letter since it was issued. FDA urgently needs to enforce their order to ensure that Santa Fe Tobacco can no longer mislead consumers about the safety of their product. Research conducted by Truth Initiative's Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies found that descriptors and other aspects of American Spirit cigarette packs lead 50-60 percent of U.S. adults to incorrectly believe that American Spirit cigarettes are less harmful than a comparison cigarette pack. Study participants compared the harm of a Marlboro Red cigarette pack versus American Spirit packs with the descriptors "Made with Organic Tobacco," "100% Additive-Free," or "100% U.S. Grown Tobacco." Participants also compared the same American Spirit packs without the descriptors to the Marlboro Red pack, and compared American Spirit packs to each other, with and without the descriptors. Even without the descriptors, 35-59 percent of participants perceived American Spirit packs as less harmful than Marlboro Red, suggesting that other American Spirit pack design factors such as color, brand name, and logo could affect perceptions of harm. The findings were the same regardless of whether participants were non-smokers, current smokers, or former smokers. About Truth Initiative Truth Initiative is a national public health organization that is inspiring tobacco-free lives and building a culture where all youth and young adults reject tobacco. The truth about tobacco and the tobacco industry are at the heart of our proven-effective and nationally recognized truth public education campaign, our rigorous and scientific research and policy studies, and our innovative community and youth engagement programs supporting populations at high risk of using tobacco. The Washington, D.C.-based organization, formerly known as Legacy, was established and funded through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. To learn more about our work speaking, seeking and spreading the truth about tobacco, visit truthinitiative.org. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20101101/DC86294LOGO SOURCE Truth Initiative Related Links http://www.truthinitiative.org TIPPERARY, Ireland, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The i-plaqtest for Lp-PLA 2 is a simple blood test which measures Lipoprotein-Associated Phospholipase A 2 as an aid to assessing risk of both coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke associated with atherosclerosis i-plaq test represents entry into a large and growing new market segment for Technopath Clinical Diagnostics Technopath Clinical Diagnostics ("Technopath") today announced the launch of its first CE marked diagnostic reagent kit, the i-plaq test. TCD is an innovation driven privately owned in vitro diagnostic company and the global leader in test-consolidated third party quality control materials with real time peer review software solutions. The i-plaq test for Lp-PLA 2 enables clinicians to quickly detect Lp-PLA 2 , a vascular-specific inflammatory marker critical in the formation of rupture-prone plaque from a standard blood test. Higher levels of Lp-PLA 2 may indicate that the atherosclerotic plaque is more likely to rupture, leading to a dangerous blood clot that could result in cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. TCD expects that i-plaq's superior test performance and ease of use will significantly improve the CVD risk assessment for patients. "We are very excited to announce the commercialization of the i-plaqtest kit, a test that is both easy to use and reliable while generating high quality patient results at clinically significant ranges," said Malcolm Bell, CEO of Technopath Clinical Diagnostics. "This launch represents a significant development opportunity for our company as we target additional products for this large and growing new market segment." The i-plaq test for Lp-PLA 2 has been comprehensively tested at a number of international sites with a large number of samples in accordance with regulatory guidelines to confirm analytical and clinical performance. Lp-PLA 2 has been tested in large clinical trials and results have been published in more than 1,000 publications like the meta- analyses of 79,036 participants in 32 prospective studies published in the Lancet(1). This publication demonstrated that Lp-PLA 2 was a predictor of coronary heart disease (CHD), with a risk ratio similar in magnitude to that of systolic blood pressure and non-HDL cholesterol. In the LIPID(2) sub-study it was shown that the reduction of Lp-PLA 2 activity was a highly significant predictor of reduction in subsequent coronary events. For more information visit: http://www.iplaqtest.com About Cardiovascular Disease CVD events are the leading cause of deaths in Europe and the US. CVD caused nearly 800,000 deaths in 2015 in the US and about 795,000 people had a stroke, the leading preventable cause of disability. Around 50% of CVD events occur in patients with unremarkable lipid levels. Further the number of people developing metabolic syndrome has gone up to almost 50% of patients >50 years of age. Ideally, all coronary artery disease (CAD) risk factors should be well controlled, and increasing evidence shows an enhanced benefit when each individual risk factor is aggressively modified. According to the American Heart Association CVD is not only the top killer in the US but worldwide with 31 percent of all deaths from CVD, and stroke accounted for nearly twelve percent of all deaths. There is a need to maintain good cardiovascular health through lifestyle changes and recognition and treatment of risk factors. About Technopath Clinical Diagnostics Technopath Clinical Diagnostics is an innovation driven high growth privately held Irish life sciences company founded in 2004. We are a global leader in the development and manufacture of quality controls and software which enhance the quality of patient testing and the efficiency of clinical laboratories. Technopath Clinical Diagnostics operates in the In Vitro Diagnostics ("IVD") market - one of the fastest growing life science market segments. We launched our first products in 2008 and these are now sold globally in over 100 countries. In 2012, we signed a global supply agreement with Abbott and in 2013 achieved our first US product approval from the FDA. For more information please go to http://www.technopathclinicaldiagnostics.com References Lp-PLA (2) Studies Collaboration, Thompson A, Gao P, Orfei L, Watson S, Di Angelantonio E, Kaptoge S, et al. Lipoprotein associated phospholipase A(2) and risk of coronary disease, stroke, and mortality: collaborative analysis of 32 prospective studies. Lancet 2010; 375 : 1536-44. White HD, Simes J, Stewart RAH, et al. Changes in lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 activity predict coronary events and partly account for the treatment effect of pravastatin results from the long-term intervention with pravastatin in ischemic disease study. J Am Heart Assoc. 2013,2:e000360. doi:10.1161/JAHA.113.000360. SOURCE Technopath Clinical Diagnostics CHARLESTON, S.C., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Brandon Agency the most creatively awarded agency in the Carolinas over the last decade announced today the acquisition of Artizen Studio, a digital and creative design firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. This acquisition marks The Brandon Agency's fourth in just three years. "Growth has been a major focus for the agency growth for our clients, our employees and our brand," said Scott Brandon, CEO of The Brandon Agency. "Bringing on Artizen adds greater digital and creative firepower to our staff, as well as great clients to our roster. And, it provides an expanded presence in a city where we have been looking to grow our footprint." The acquisition positions the agency with a larger presence in a direct-flight city and adds a strong client base, including additional keynote clients such as Dean Foods, Snyder's-Lance, Nucor Corporation and S&D Coffee & Tea. Artizen was established in the mid-1990s to provide companies with the external creative services needed to address marketing and communications needs. The creative firm specialized in design across a broad range of media including digital, print, web, video and photography in addition to in-demand services such as app development. The addition of Artizen's staff to The Brandon Agency provides further strength in app development, video editing, animation and photography, while deepening its bench on web development. All staff will maintain their current clients and work, providing a seamless transition in day-to-day business. Owner and Creative Director of Artizen Studios Cary Murphy has moved into a new role at The Brandon Agency as the Regional President and Group Creative Director. "Working with my clients and helping them succeed is what drives me every day," said Murphy. "And we haven't always had the ability to be a true, full service partner. The Brandon Agency is a perfect pairing for Artizen in that they're able to add strength to our already strong creative team and provide new depth and expertise in areas like PR, digital and traditional media buying, research, SEO, social media, turnkey e-commerce development and sales support. They offer all the resources that businesses need to win, and I'm excited to have them in Charlotte." Among the new services available to Artizen's client base, The Brandon Agency offers expertise through an extensive in-house consumer panel. The panel was developed by the agency and is comprised of over 3,500 people to provide the capability to uncover consumer truths across multiple demographic and psychographic segments. These unique insights help the agency develop revolutionary business building ideas that help clients grow. The Brandon Agency has been the driving force behind many well-known brands including Fish Hippie, CresCom Bank, Santee Cooper, HTC, Williams Knife Co., Brittain Resorts & Hotels and Beaufort, S.C., developing and delivering tangible results that positively impact business. For more information about The Brandon Agency, visit www.TheBrandonAgency.com, like us on Facebook or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. About The Brandon Agency The Brandon Agency is a trusted and proven group of ideators who think differently. As a digitally minded, fully integrated national firm, The Brandon Agency consists of smart, results-obsessed experts who consult, advise and deliver revolutionary business-building ideas. With offices in Charleston, South Carolina; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Cleveland, Ohio; Breckenridge, Colorado; and Sofia, Bulgaria, The Brandon Agency has much more to offer than a traditional ad agency. Equal parts business consultant, technologist, analyst and marketer, the agency expertly guides businesses toward growth and success. With a worldwide team of more than 100 and total billings topping $75 million in 2015, The Brandon Agency has powered successful programs and campaigns for hundreds of national brands in a variety of industries, including banking and finance, e-commerce, food service, health care, real estate, technology, and tourism. SOURCE The Brandon Agency Related Links http://www.thebrandonagency.com DENVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The RE/MAX Collection is hosting its fourth annual Luxury Forum today at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Ariz. More than 250 luxury home specialists and agents have gathered to discuss the luxury real estate market and learn how to leverage luxury in their business plans. "The RE/MAX Collection Luxury Forum is a great opportunity for our brokers and agents to network and share ideas on how to become a leading luxury agent in their market," said Anne Miller, Director of The RE/MAX Collection. "The annual event is designed for agents of all experience levels who want to learn best practices and take their businesses to the next level." Vern Yip, Founder & Interior Designer of Vern Yip Designs is a featured speaker and will share insights on popular design trends of affluent buyers and sellers. Starla West, President and Founder of Starla West International, will share key strategies and tools to enhance visibility and status in local markets. And, Peter Mueller, Founder & CEO of The Profit Centre, will discuss a new app that will help agents set new goals, surpass benchmarks and see what they are worth per hour. He will also highlight some of the benefits of specializing in luxury homes. "Remember, time is money. Agents who focus on luxury homes are more productive and can significantly increase their worth per hour. Specializing in luxury can help you be more efficient with your time, which is important when building your business," Mueller said. In addition to the annual Luxury Forum, The RE/MAX Collection, part of the most productive real estate network*, continually provides agents with the some of the best resources to succeed. Those tools include: Access to theremaxcollection.com, a standalone website that features luxury home listings that are at two times the local sales price in cities throughout the U.S. Premier advertising where properties are featured in The Wall Street Journal, Unique Homes, The DuPont Registry and The RE/MAX Collection Magazine. Personalized and customizable marketing pieces in print, video and online. Access to educational materials through RE/MAX University. According to the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing (ILHM), the median price of the 24,532 luxury homes on the market in the U.S. is around $1.5 million. Markets with the highest median price include: New York ($5.3 million), Los Angeles ($3.5 million) and San Francisco ($3.2 million). The continued success of The RE/MAX Collection has encouraged more agents to sell luxury homes and become Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialists (CLHMS). Since 2014, the number of RE/MAX agents who have received the esteemed CLHMS designation has increased over 47 percent, and the number of RE/MAX agents with luxury in their profile has grown eight percent.** *As measured by residential transaction sides **Based on reported numbers in Q3 2016 About the RE/MAX Network: RE/MAX was founded in 1973 by Dave and Gail Liniger, with an innovative, entrepreneurial culture affording its agents and franchisees the flexibility to operate their businesses with great independence. Over 110,000 agents provide RE/MAX a global reach of over 100 countries and territories. Nobody sells more real estate than RE/MAX when measured by residential transaction sides. RE/MAX, LLC, one of the world's leading franchisors of real estate brokerage services, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RMCO, LLC, which is controlled and managed by RE/MAX Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RMAX). With a passion for the communities in which its agents live and work, RE/MAX is proud to have raised more than $150 million for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and other charities. For more information about RE/MAX, to search home listings or find an agent in your community, please visit www.remax.com. For the latest news about RE/MAX, please visit www.remax.com/newsroom. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130930/LA87949LOGO SOURCE RE/MAX, LLC Related Links http://www.remax.com BALTIMORE, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new living benefit is now available with most Transamerica variable annuities to enable Baby Boomers and Generation X to better plan their retirement income. The new optional living benefit allows lifetime income payments after age 59, and offers investors the opportunity for up to a 6% annual income payment rate for life if they begin drawing income anytime between ages 65 and 79. For investors who are concerned about planning for longer lives and rising costs as they age, the living benefit offers the opportunity for an annual payment rate of up to 7% for life if they defer drawing income until age 80 or later. These annual income payment rates are based on a single life withdrawal after five complete rider years. "We know that Baby Boomers and Generation X are looking to fill the income gap between Social Security payments and their retirement income needs. That's why Transamerica is offering new options to help people plan their retirement income," said Joe Boan, senior vice president with Transamerica. "This living benefit offers investors the financial security of lifetime income payments. "People's longer life spans have increased the need for careful retirement income planning," Boan continued. "That's why we made sure this living benefit allows investment flexibility because more years in retirement mean that some people would like to stay invested in stocks longer to allow for potential growth. Transamerica's new living benefit allows people to invest up to 60% of the portfolio in stock funds, as long as 20% of the portfolio is invested in a stable account and 20% is invested in select options including bond funds. Stocks typically fluctuate more than bonds or cash, and we know that market fluctuations can have an impact on your retirement savings, especially if a market downturn happens right before you plan to retire. With this new Transamerica living benefit, your future income can be protected against market declines, even if the value of your investments fluctuates," Boan added. With the Transamerica Income EdgeSM living benefit, if investors wait five years after investing to begin taking lifetime income, they will automatically receive a 1% increase on their withdrawal percentage. If investors purchase this living benefit prior to age 65, they will automatically receive an additional 1% increase on their withdrawal percentage if they don't begin taking income until age 65 to 79, or an additional 2% increase on their withdrawal percentage if they don't begin taking income until age 80 or later. The Transamerica Income EdgeSM living benefit is available with a Transamerica variable annuity for an additional cost and must be elected at the time the contract is issued. Because people may need to adapt to life's changes, every five years customers will have the ability to cancel the living benefit if it no longer fits their plans. The living benefit can be elected by customers of any age up to 85. The living benefit withdrawals are available only after the first rider anniversary following the investor's 59th birthday. To learn more about Transamerica Income EdgeSM, visit www.transamerica.com/individual/products/annuities/annuities-benefits/living-benefits/transamerica-income-edge. About Transamerica With a history that dates back more than 100 years, the Transamerica companies are recognized as leading providers of life insurance, savings, retirement and investment solutions, serving millions of customers throughout the United States. Transamerica works to Transform Tomorrow for those who entrust its dedicated professionals with their financial needs, helping them take the necessary steps to achieve their long-term goals and aspirations. Transamerica's 10,000 employees serve nearly every customer segment, providing a broad range of quality life insurance and savings products, individual and group pension plans, as well as asset management services. In 2015, Transamerica fulfilled its promises to customers, paying more than $6.9 billion in insurance and annuity benefits, including return of annuity premiums paid by the customer. Transamerica's corporate headquarters is located in Baltimore, Maryland, with other major operations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Transamerica is part of the Aegon group of companies. Aegon is one of the world's largest providers of life insurance, pension solutions and asset management products, operating in more than 20 markets worldwide. For the full year of 2015, Aegon managed $768 billion in revenue generating investments. For more information, visit www.transamerica.com. About Transamerica Variable Annuities Variable annuities are long-term, tax-deferred vehicles designed for retirement purposes and are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal. Variable annuities are issued by Transamerica Life Insurance Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Company in Harrison, New York (Transamerica). Annuities are underwritten and distributed by Transamerica Capital, Inc. Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Company is licensed in New York. All guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. For more information, visit www.transamerica.com/individual/products/annuities. All policies, living benefits, and forms may vary by state, and may not be available in all states. Rider form numbers are ICC16 RGMB510616(IS), ICC16 RGMB510616(IJ), NIC16 RGMB510616(IS), and NIC16 RGMB510616(IJ). For more information on a variable annuity please go to www.transamerica.com for prospectuses. You should consider the objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of an investment carefully before investing. Read them carefully before you invest. Media inquiries: Gregory Tucker 443-475-3017 [email protected] Julie Quinlan 213-742-5134 [email protected] IEVA-PR (11/16) Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150723/240884LOGO SOURCE Transamerica Related Links http://www.transamerica.com WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Janssen Biotech, Inc. announced today findings from two claims database studies examining treatment patterns in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The first study compared treatment patterns in patients newly beginning therapy with REMICADE (infliximab) and patients newly beginning therapy with an infliximab biosimilar (CT-P13). A second study examined treatment patterns in stable patients who maintained treatment with REMICADE, compared to stable patients who switched from REMICADE to CT-P13. In both studies, higher rates of treatment discontinuation were observed in patients treated with CT-P13 compared to patients treated with REMICADE. Both claims studies analyzed patient data from the Turkish National Ministry of Health database, which contains medical billing information for approximately 80 percent of the Turkish population. The studies were presented at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. "These interesting findings indicate a need for further investigation to better understand factors that may lead to higher treatment discontinuation in patients taking the biosimilar CT-P13 compared to patients taking REMICADE," said Dr. Yusuf Yazici, study author and rheumatologist at the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases. "A Descriptive Analysis of Real-World Treatment Patterns of Innovator Infliximab (REMICADE) and Biosimilar Infliximab in a Treatment Naive Turkish Rheumatologic Disease Population" [Presentation 1233] The first study, entitled "A Descriptive Analysis of Real-World Treatment Patterns of Innovator Infliximab (REMICADE) and Biosimilar Infliximab in a Treatment Naive Turkish Rheumatologic Disease Population," analyzed medical billing records from 1,044 Turkish patients with rheumatoid arthritis who were newly beginning treatment with REMICADE or CT-P13, to evaluate medication persistency, switching patterns and discontinuation rates. Among the 1,044 patients who initiated treatment between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015, the majority (80 percent) were prescribed REMICADE versus 20 percent who were prescribed CT-P13. Six months after beginning therapy, treatment discontinuation was noted in 44 percent of patients treated with CT-P13 compared to 27 percent of patients treated with REMICADE. The data also revealed that switching patterns differed in patients who started on REMICADE compared to CT-P13. Patients who began therapy with CT-P13 were most often switched to REMICADE, while patients who began treatment with REMICADE were most often switched to an alternate biologic therapy. "A Descriptive Analysis of Real-World Treatment Patterns in a Turkish Rheumatology Population that Continued Innovator Infliximab (REMICADE) Therapy or Switched to Biosimilar Infliximab" [Presentation 2240] The second study, entitled "A Descriptive Analysis of Real-World Treatment Patterns in a Turkish Rheumatology Population that Continued Innovator Infliximab (REMICADE) Therapy or Switched to Biosimilar Infliximab," evaluated 3,018 Turkish rheumatology patients who were maintained on long-standing REMICADE therapy. The study sought to determine the extent to which patients treated between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015 were switched to an infliximab biosimilar (CT-P13) in Turkey. The study also compared medication persistency and discontinuation rates for at least six months in patients who continued on REMICADE and those who were switched to CT-P13. The study found that 148 patients were switched from maintenance on REMICADE to CT-P13. In the patients who were switched, 70 percent discontinued treatment with CT-P13 within six months. In comparison, only 24 percent of patients who maintained treatment with REMICADE discontinued therapy over a similar observation period. Time to CT-P13 discontinuation occurred at an average of 108 days after the switch. Of those patients who discontinued CT-P13, 85 percent switched back to REMICADE. "This real world evidence study raises important questions regarding the impact to patients and their healthcare professionals when patients who are stable on REMICADE are switched to a biosimilar," said Andrew Greenspan, M.D., vice president of medical affairs at Janssen Biotech, Inc. "Both of these studies were not randomized and, therefore, it is not known what role selection bias or the switching process itself may have played in discontinuation rates. Nonetheless, fewer patients receiving appropriate treatment for a serious chronic condition is concerning and warrants further study. Patient well-being is our top priority, and we believe the decision to switch from REMICADE to a biosimilar should be made by the treating physician in consultation with the patient." About Biosimilars A biosimilar is a follow-on form of a biologic that is not identical to its innovator biologic. It is important to note that the infliximab biosimilar, CT-P13, is not approved for interchangeability. To be deemed interchangeable by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, a biosimilar must demonstrate it can be expected to produce the same clinical result as the innovator product in any given patient, and prove that the risk of alternating or switching between the products (in terms of safety or diminished efficacy) is no greater than the risk of using the innovator product without alternating or switching. About REMICADE REMICADE was approved in August 1998 and was the first anti-TNF-alpha treatment approved in the United States and the first TNF inhibitor to be approved in three different therapeutic areas: gastroenterology, rheumatology and dermatology. REMICADE has demonstrated broad clinical utility with indications in Crohn's disease (CD), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis (UC), pediatric Crohn's disease, psoriasis, and pediatric UC. It remains the only product approved for both pediatric CD and UC. The safety and efficacy of REMICADE have been well established in clinical trials over the past 22 years and through commercial experience with more than 2.6 million patients treated worldwide. In the U.S., REMICADE is a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker indicated for: Crohn's Disease: reducing signs and symptoms and inducing and maintaining clinical remission in adult patients with moderately to severely active disease who have had an inadequate response to conventional therapy. reducing the number of draining enterocutaneous and rectovaginal fistulas and maintaining fistula closure in adult patients with fistulizing disease. Pediatric Crohn's Disease: reducing signs and symptoms and inducing and maintaining clinical remission in pediatric patients with moderately to severely active disease who have had an inadequate response to conventional therapy. Ulcerative Colitis: reducing signs and symptoms, inducing and maintaining clinical remission and mucosal healing, and eliminating corticosteroid use in adult patients with moderately to severely active disease who have had an inadequate response to conventional therapy. Pediatric Ulcerative Colitis: reducing signs and symptoms and inducing and maintaining clinical remission in pediatric patients with moderately to severely active disease who have had an inadequate response to conventional therapy. Rheumatoid Arthritis in combination with methotrexate: reducing signs and symptoms, inhibiting the progression of structural damage, and improving physical function in patients with moderately to severely active disease. Ankylosing Spondylitis: reducing signs and symptoms in patients with active disease. Psoriatic Arthritis: reducing signs and symptoms of active arthritis, inhibiting the progression of structural damage, and improving physical function. Plaque Psoriasis: treatment of adult patients with chronic severe (i.e., extensive and/or disabling) plaque psoriasis who are candidates for systemic therapy and when other systemic therapies are medically less appropriate. REMICADE is unique among available anti-TNF-alpha biologic therapies, and is one of the only anti-TNF-alpha biologic administered directly by caregivers in the clinic or office setting. REMICADE is a two-hour infusion administered every 6 or 8 weeks (indication-dependent), following a standard induction regimen that requires treatment at weeks 0, 2 and 6. As a result, REMICADE patients may require as few as six treatments each year as maintenance therapy. Janssen Biotech, Inc. discovered and developed REMICADE and markets the product in the United States. The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies market REMICADE in Canada, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific. In Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan, Janssen Biotech, Inc. licenses distribution rights to REMICADE to Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. In Europe, Russia and Turkey, Janssen Biotech, Inc. licenses distribution rights to REMICADE to Schering-Plough (Ireland) Company, a subsidiary of Merck & Co, Inc. Important Safety Information Only a doctor can recommend a course of treatment after checking a patient's health condition. REMICADE (infliximab) can cause serious side effects such as lowering your ability to fight infections. There are reports of serious infections caused by viruses, fungi or bacteria that have spread throughout the body, including tuberculosis (TB) and histoplasmosis. Some of these infections have been fatal. Your doctor should monitor you closely for signs and symptoms of TB during treatment with REMICADE. Unusual cancers have been reported in children and teenage patients taking TNF-blocker medicines. A rare form of fatal lymphoma has occurred mostly in teenage or young adult males with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis who were taking REMICADE and azathioprine or 6-mercaptopurine. For children and adults taking TNF blockers, including REMICADE, the chances of getting lymphoma or other cancers may increase. Patients should discuss any concerns about their health and medical care with their doctor. Patients should let their doctors know if they have or ever had any of the following: Tuberculosis (TB) or have been near someone who has TB. Your doctor will check you for TB with a skin test. If you have latent (inactive) TB, you will begin TB treatment before you start REMICADE . . Lived in a region where certain fungal infections like histoplasmosis or coccidioidomycosis are common. Infections that keep coming back, have diabetes or an immune system problem. Any type of cancer or a risk factor for developing cancer, for example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or had phototherapy for psoriasis. Heart failure or any heart condition. Many people with heart failure should not take REMICADE . . Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection or think you may be a carrier of HBV. Nervous system disorders (like multiple sclerosis or Guillain-Barre syndrome). Also tell your doctor about any medications you are taking, including vaccines or KINERET (anakinra), ORENCIA (abatacept) and ACTEMRA (tocilizumab) and if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant or are nursing. Adults and children should not receive a live vaccine while taking REMICADE. The following serious (sometimes fatal) side effects have been reported in people taking REMICADE. Patients should tell their doctors right away if you have any of the signs listed below: Infections (like TB, blood infections, pneumonia) fever, tiredness, cough, flu, or warm, red or painful skin or any open sores. REMICADE can make you more likely to get an infection or make any infection that you have worse. can make you more likely to get an infection or make any infection that you have worse. Lymphoma, or any other cancers in adults and children. Heart failure new or worsening symptoms, such as shortness of breath, swelling of your ankles or feet, or sudden weight gain. Reactivation of HBV feeling unwell, poor appetite, tiredness, fever, skin rash and/or joint pain. Liver injury jaundice (yellow skin and eyes), dark brown urine, right-sided abdominal pain, fever, or severe tiredness. Blood disorders fever that doesn't go away, bruising, bleeding, or severe paleness. Nervous system disorders numbness, weakness, tingling, changes in your vision, or seizures. Allergic reactions during or after the infusion hives, difficulty breathing, chest pain, high or low blood pressure, swelling of face and hands, and fever or chills. Lupus-like syndrome chest discomfort or pain that does not go away, shortness of breath, joint pain, rash on the cheeks or arms that gets worse in the sun. The more common side effects with REMICADE are respiratory infections (that may include sinus infections and sore throat), headache, rash, coughing and stomach pain. are respiratory infections (that may include sinus infections and sore throat), headache, rash, coughing and stomach pain. Psoriasis new or worsening psoriasis such as red scaly patches or raised bumps on the skin that are filled with pus. Please read important information about REMICADE, including full U.S. prescribing information and Medication Guide, at www.remicade.com. About the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies At the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, we are working to create a world without disease. Transforming lives by finding new and better ways to prevent, intercept, treat and cure disease inspires us. We bring together the best minds and pursue the most promising science. We are Janssen. We collaborate with the world for the health of everyone in it. Learn more at www.janssen.com. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JanssenGlobal. Media Contact: Caroline Pavis Office: 215-325-2599 Mobile: 610-357-3121 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438454LOGO SOURCE Janssen Biotech, Inc. Related Links http://www.janssen.com SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the spirit of scholarly exchange, Chung-Ang University announced a formal partnership with several University of Utah entities focused on the development of digital telehealth innovations through shared knowledge and best practices. U entities participating in the exchange include: University of Utah Hospital; University of Utah Health Care Telehealth; the U Brain Institute; and the Research Center for Digital Wellbeing. Telehealth enhances both clinical and non-clinical healthcare services through social, mobile analytic and cloud technologies to diagnose and treat disease. The partnership is an addition to an already existing agreement signed in 2015 between the David Eccles School of Business, the Sorenson Center for Discovery & Innovation and Chung-Ang University (CAU), which served as a catalyst for the creation of the Research Center for Digital Wellbeing that has a branch at the University of Utah extension on the CAU campus in Songdo, South Korea. The organizations have a longstanding relationship of collaboration in digital gaming, including game development and innovative gaming business model strategies. They hope to use these gaming strategies to develop solutions to complex medical problems. University of Utah and CAU will now focus on the promotion and exchange of knowledge, faculty and research, in order to improve and create new digital health innovations both in the U.S. and Korea. The partnership will benefit both organizations by offering potentially funded research in telehealth advancement from academic medical centers in both the U.S. and Korea, research around TeleAcute Care programs and modules in Korea, and technology-connected healthcare models in Korea. Chris Wasden, Ed.D., executive director and professor of innovation at the David Eccles School of Business Sorenson Center for Discovery & Innovation at the University of Utah, is an international leader in digital health innovation and a driving force behind the partnership. "We will be sharing our different approaches to digital health in Korea, the U.S. and other countries to try and learn from best practices, what works and what doesn't," said Wasden. CAU CEO Dr. Seong Deok Kim, Executive Director Dr. Wonyong Kim, and Associate Professor Dr. Doug Han visited Salt Lake City the week of Nov. 7 and met with University of Utah leadership. Dr. Han completed training at the University of Utah and was instrumental in bringing the partnership to fruition. "The U and CAU are the perfect match when it comes to promoting and expanding digital health care," Han said. "CAU Hospital is an ideal environment to apply and expand digital healthcare because it is very close to IT and game companies in Korea. The digital expertise of CAU combined with the innovative approach methods at the University of Utah will be very synergic in digital healthcare." The partnership was formalized during a signing ceremony at the University of Utah on Nov. 3. About the David Eccles School of Business The Eccles School is synonymous with 'doing.' The Eccles experience provides a world-class business education with a unique, entrepreneurial focus on real-world scenarios where students put what they learn into practice long before graduation. Founded in 1917 and educating more than 6,000 students annually, the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business offers eight undergraduate majors, four MBAs, five other graduate programs, a Ph.D. in seven areas and executive education curricula. The School is also home to eight institutes, centers and initiatives that deliver academic research and support an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation. For more information, visit Eccles.Utah.edu or call 801-581-7676. Contacts: Sheena McFarland, David Eccles School of Business, 801-510-5567, [email protected] Spencer Parkinson, Method Communications, 801-461-9767, [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/406176LOGO SOURCE David Eccles School of Business Related Links http://eccles.utah.edu ALBANY, New York, November 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Uterine Fibroids Market shows a strong presence of players. The top three players in the market are Boston Scientific Corporation, Smith & Nephew, and Hologic, Inc., who hold a share of nearly 50% in the overall market. The players are focused mergers and acquisitions to broaden their product portfolio and integration of knowledge base. To remain dominant players are anticipated to lay emphasis on product differentiation. The report published by Transparency Market Research states that the U.S. uterine fibroid treatment market was valued at US$211.6 mn in 2015 and is expected to be worth US$273.6 mn by the end of 2024. During the forecast years of 2016 and 2024, the overall market is anticipated to progress at a CAGR of 2.9%. Download PDF Brochure of Research Report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=16775 Hysterectomy Segment to Lead Global Market Out of all the procedures, the hysterectomy segment is showing a promise of good growth rate in the near future. This segment is projected to account for a share of 79.6% by the end of 2016. The benefits of hysterectomy such as alleviation of pelvic pain, excessive menstrual bleeding, and physical morbidity are driving this segment. Furthermore, hospitals will emerge as the leading end users of uterine fibroid treatment options in the coming years. By the end of 2016, the hospitals segment is projected to account for a share of 67.1% in the U.S. uterine fibroids treatment market. Technological Advancements in Minimally Invasive Surgeries Augurs Well for Market The introduction of minimally invasive surgeries to treat the excruciatingly painful uterine fibroids is expected boost the market's growth in the coming years. "Advantages of such procedures such as minimal recovery time, reduced chances of infections, and shorter hospital stays are also encouraging patients and hospitals to choose these treatments," states the lead author of this research report. The market is also benefitting from the regulatory approvals being granted to newer types of treatment and surgeries. Thus, the introduction of newer technologies that offer efficient results is creating a positive influence on the U.S. uterine fibroids market. The remarkable changes in technology have also played their supportive part in the growth of the market over the past few years. For instance, Halt Medical, Inc. introduced Acessa Guidance System in 2016. This technology enhances the radiofrequency ablation and electromagnetic tracking technology to treat uterine myomas laparoscopically. The supportive reimbursement policies are also expected to augment the demand for uterine fibroids treatment in the near future. Favorable policies are helping the patients to cover their expenses in hospitals as well the ones incurred in ambulatory surgical centers. Statistics state that there are 20% to 40% chances of development of uterine fibroids in women around the age of 35. Thus, the high prevalence of uterine fibroids amongst women in the reproductive age bracket has become the very basis of the growth of this market. Furthermore, African American women are more likely to develop fibroids, which is also a key population base contributing to the steady rise in the revenue of the U.S. uterine fibroids market. Get Discounts on Report Purchase: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=16775 Possibility of Complications due to Procedures Tugs at Market in Opposite Direction The uterine fibroids treatment market is likely to be hampered by the announcement made by the FDA that power morcellators can lead to complications such as spreading metastatic leiomyosarcoma cancer tissue. Availability of wide range of alternative treatments is also anticipated to hinder the market's growth in the near future. The market is also being restrained by the possibility of urinary tract injury while performing minimally invasive procedures. The review is based on Transparency Market Research's report, titled "Uterine Fibroids Treatment Market - U.S. Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2016 - 2024." The orthopedic braces & supports, casting and splints market has been segmented as follows: Procedure Type Endometrial Ablation MRI Guided Procedures Hysterectomy Myomectomy Uterine Artery Embolization Radiofrequency Ablation Others Procedure Sub Type MRI Guided Procedures MRI-guided Percutaneous Laser Ablation MRI Guided Transcutaneous Focused Ultrasound Hysterectomy Abdominal Hysterectomy Vaginal Hysterectomy Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Robotic Hysterectomy Hysteroscopic Morcellation Myomectomy Open Myomectomy Laparoscopic Myomectomy Robotic Myomectomy U.S. Uterine Fibroid Treatment Market, by End User Hospitals Ambulatory Surgical Centers U.S. Uterine Fibroid Treatment Market, by Geography U.S. Browse Related Research Report: Radiofrequency Ablation Devices for Pain Management Market (Product - RF Generators, Reusable Products, and Disposable Products; End-user - Specialty Clinics, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, and Hospitals) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/radiofrequency-ablation-devices.html PACS and RIS Market - (Product - RIS and PACS; Component - Hardware, Software, and Services; Deployment: Web-based, Cloud-based, and On-premise; End-user - Hospitals, Diagnostic Centers, Research & Academic Institutes, and Ambulatory Surgical Centers) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pacs-ris-market.html About Us: Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S. based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMR's global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations. Contact Us: Transparency Market Research 90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/ SOURCE Transparency Market Research MEMPHIS, Tenn., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Verso Corporation (NYSE: VRS) today announced three strategic initiatives designed to drive increased efficiency in the allocation of its resources, reduce the company's cost of doing business, and improve Verso's operating and financial performance. As part of its comprehensive strategy to position the company for success in a challenging industry, Verso plans to organize its business into two strategic business units graphic paper and specialty paper; consolidate its corporate offices in Memphis, Tennessee, and Miamisburg, Ohio, into a single headquarters to be located in Miamisburg; and improve the delivery of its support services with the objective of reducing overhead expenses by at least 10 percent on an annual basis. Planning for each of these initiatives is underway, with implementation set to begin in January 2017. "We expect that the strategic initiatives announced today will enable Verso to be more agile in adapting to an evolving marketplace, more responsive to our customers, more efficient and cost-effective in our operations, and ultimately more financially successful," said Robert M. Amen, Verso's Chairman of the Board. Strategic Business Unit Organization The strategic organization of Verso's business into graphic paper and specialty paper business units is intended to provide greater focus, responsiveness and accountability. Each business unit will develop and implement strategies for responding to the specific market conditions and unique customer requirements of its business segment. Each business unit will operate in a semiautonomous manner and will be responsible for its own revenues, costs and profitability. Both business units will receive overall strategic direction from Verso's Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer and will be supported by a centralized administrative staff. Verso's graphic paper business unit will be led by Michael A. Weinhold, and its specialty paper business unit will be led by Jason J. Handel. Both Weinhold and Handel are seasoned executives at Verso with extensive backgrounds and experience in the businesses they will oversee. Currently, Weinhold serves as Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development, while Handel serves as Group Vice President of Technical Sales and Product Development. In the new organization, Weinhold and Handel each will have the title of President of the business unit that he leads and will report directly to Verso's Chief Executive Officer. "The strategic business unit organization will further strengthen Verso's relationships with our graphic paper and specialty paper customers by allowing us to focus more closely on their distinctive business needs," said Weinhold. "Our ultimate goal is to help our customers be more successful by meeting, and exceeding, their expectations," Handel added. "If we can achieve these results while consistently maximizing Verso's manufacturing efficiency and costeffectiveness, we will make great strides toward enhancing Verso's profitability and success for a long time to come." Corporate Office Consolidation The planned consolidation of the Memphis and Miamisburg corporate offices reflects a common-sense approach to organizing and locating Verso's support functions. Verso has about 60 employees in Memphis and more than 200 employees in Miamisburg, resulting in considerable redundancy and inefficiency. Consolidating these employees in a single location not only will reduce costs and improve efficiency, but it also will strengthen the performance of Verso's corporate staff by fostering increased familiarity, better communication, closer camaraderie and other benefits that naturally occur when people work together. "We understand that the planned consolidation of Verso's corporate offices will cause disruption in the lives of the Memphis office employees who make the move to Miamisburg and will create additional challenges for those who do not," said Kenneth D. Sawyer, Verso's Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Communications. "Verso is committed to treating all our Memphis office employees with fairness, dignity and respect and to quickly communicating openly and honestly with each person about how this decision will affect him or her. Verso's departmental heads and Human Resources team will begin meeting with our employees in the very near future." Overhead Expense Reduction Project Verso has established a goal to reduce its overhead expenses by at least 10 percent compared to 2016. This objective is predicated on the belief that there are ways to reduce the cost of delivering the services that support Verso's business while preserving or even improving the quality of such services. Verso intends to approach the overhead expense reduction project openly, objectively and with the singular, overarching goal of obtaining the best possible results for the company as a whole. Since Verso completed its reorganization in July, management has been reviewing, benchmarking and analyzing the existing framework for the delivery of support services and has begun identifying ways that overhead expenses could be reduced. Verso will leverage both internal and external resources to develop a comprehensive approach to making its support services more efficient and cost-effective. Verso expects to implement the changes necessary to achieve the overhead expense savings in 2017 and to realize such savings over the course of 2017 and 2018. "Given the significant headwinds facing our industry, Verso simply cannot afford to stand still when it comes to driving cost out of our business," said Allen J. Campbell, Verso's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "We must constantly renew our focus on and commitment to efficiency and cost-effectiveness, whether at the mills, in the field or at corporate. This overhead expense reduction project is both a challenge and a necessity if we are to ensure Verso's long-term profitability and viability." About Verso Verso Corporation is the turn-to company for those looking to successfully navigate the complexities of paper sourcing and performance. The leading North American producer of printing and specialty papers and pulp, Verso provides insightful solutions that help drive improved customer efficiency, productivity, brand awareness and business results. Verso's long-standing reputation for quality and reliability is directly tied to our vision to be a company with passion that is respected and trusted by all. Verso's passion is rooted in ethical business practices that demand safe workplaces for our employees and sustainable wood sourcing for our products. This passion, combined with our flexible manufacturing capabilities and an unmatched commitment to product performance, delivery and service, make Verso a preferred choice among commercial printers, paper merchants and brokers, converters, publishers and other end users. For more information, visit us online at versoco.com. Forward-Looking Statements In this press release, all statements that are not purely historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "plan," "estimate," "intend" and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on currently available business, economic, financial and other information and reflect management's current beliefs, expectations and views with respect to future developments and their potential effects on Verso. Actual results could vary materially depending on risks and uncertainties that may affect Verso and its business. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Verso's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Verso assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement made in this press release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances or actual outcomes. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151104/283769LOGO SOURCE Verso Corporation Related Links http://versoco.com BETHESDA, Md., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Stephen Carpenter-Israel, President of Buyer's Edge, an exclusive Buyer Brokerage company, is honored to be named as one of Washington's 101 Best Real Estate Agents by Washingtonian Magazine in their July 2016 issue. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438487 Steve Carpenter-Israel "I'm honored to be included in this list alongside so many of my favorite people in the real estate business in the Washington, DC metro area," said Carpenter-Israel. "I thank Washingtonian Magazine for their thoughtful, serious and inclusive approach on how they developed this comprehensive list." With thousands of real estate agents in the Washington DC area, arriving at a list of 101 names was "no simple feat", according to Marisa M. Kashino of Washingtonian Magazine. While a list of top-producing agents is based on sales volume, the list of Best Agents takes many factors into account and is more complicated. Developing the list included surveying 50,000 Washingtonian subscribers and more than 1000 agents about whom they've enjoyed working with based on criteria such as integrity, market knowledge, communications skills, and closing preparation. The magazine also contacted mortgage brokers, additional agents, and home inspectors. Carpenter-Israel has been in the real estate business for over 25 years as an exclusive buyer brokerage real estate company. Born and raised in Washington, DC he has spent his career helping homebuyers evaluate properties correctly and make good decisions about the home they choose to live in. "At Buyer's Edge," he said. "We have an amazing group of dedicated Realtors with one single focus helping and protecting the best interests of home buying consumers. My personal success, in large part, is due to the experienced, dedicated and professional team of exclusive buyers' agents here at Buyer's Edge." For further information, contact Buyer's Edge at 4849 Rugby Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. Phone: 301.657.1475 or 800.207.6810 (toll free), Fax: 301.657.4494, e-mail: [email protected] or visit www.buyersagent.com About Buyer's Edge Buyers Edge is an Exclusive Buyer Broker providing full representation to homebuyers in Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia since 1992. Contact: Wendy Carpenter-Israel Phone: 301.657.1475 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Buyer's Edge Related Links http://www.buyersagent.com IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Zymo Research Corp. announced today that its nucleic acid purification products are available for purchase on Amazon.com. Best-selling products, such as Direct-zol, ZymoPURE, Quick-DNA, Quick-RNA, and Zymoclean, to name a few, will be available to Amazon Business customers. The Zymo Research product page can be accessed using the following link: www.amazon.com/zymo. Zymo Research will be selling their most popular nucleic acid purification products through Amazon Business. Dr. Graham Threadgill, Vice President of Global Marketing at Zymo Research explains, "Zymo Research is all about efficiency for our customers. Our products are designed to be fast, effective and simple to use. We wanted to extend this philosophy by making our products easier to order. Amazon's Industrial & Scientific department is the perfect place, adding another dimension of simplicity for Zymo Research customers." Zymo's customers can take advantage of Free Two-Day Shipping on eligible orders of $49.00 through Amazon Business. The Industrial & Scientific department on Amazon.com makes it easy for researchers or purchasing agents to order their reagents and supplies from one place versus having to log on to multiple sites. In addition, Zymo customers can benefit by signing up for an Amazon Business account, which includes unique offers for Zymo products that are only redeemable on Amazon.com. Zymo's products are drop-shipped from their California facility using Amazon's fulfillment services. About Zymo Research Corp. Zymo Research Corp. is a privately held company based in Irvine, California, USA. Since its inception in 1994 it has been serving the academic and biopharmaceutical scientific communities by providing DNA and RNA purification products. Their goal is to help scientists reduce time in the lab by eliminating steps and making the entire DNA/RNA extraction process simpler and faster. In addition to the nucleic acid purification products, Zymo Research also offers genetic, epigenetic and transcriptome analysis services. Zymo Research provides high quality products that are simple to use yet robust in their performance. For more information, please visit: www.zymoresearch.com. Follow Zymo Research Corporation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Zymo Research Corp., the stylized logo, tagline "The Beauty of Science is to Make Things Simple", Direct-zol, Quick-DNA, Quick-RNA, Zymoclean, and ZymoPURE are trademarks of Zymo Research Corp. and are registered with the USPTO. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161111/438540 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364743LOGO SOURCE Zymo Research Corp. Related Links http://www.zymoresearch.com SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Zymo Research Corp. will launch three new additions to its ZymoPURE line of plasmid prep products during the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Booth #129. Innovative ZymoPURE technology produces high yields of pure plasmid DNA that is extremely low in endotoxins. The kits are easy to use and provide rapid purification. The three new kits complement the existing ZymoPURE midi, maxi and gigaprep kits. The ZymoPURE(TM) Plasmid Miniprep Kit yields plasmid DNA with 50,000 times fewer endotoxins than the most cited plasmid miniprep kits. Zymo Research's ZymoPURE Plasmid Miniprep Kit yields up to 80 g of ultra-pure and highly concentrated plasmid DNA. Eluted plasmid DNA is ready for use immediately thereby avoiding subsequent precipitation steps. Syringe filters are included for rapid lysate cleaning and the spin-column design allows the binding step to be performed using a vacuum or centrifuge. Researchers can request a sample kit via the company's website to try the product before they buy it. Also on display at Booth #129 will be the ZymoPURE-EndoZero Kit. This kit uses a modified alkaline lysis method and a unique binding chemistry that yields highly concentrated plasmid DNA, up to 3 g/l. The kit includes EndoZero spin-columns that reduce endotoxin levels to an ultra-low level of 0.025 EU/g of plasmid DNA, at a speed that is seven times faster than competing kits. The third product to be launched is the ZymoPURE-Express Plasmid Midiprep Kit. The kit isolates high-quality endotoxin-free plasmid DNA directly from culture in only 15 minutes. By removing the pelleting and resuspension steps that are used in other kits, highly concentrated DNA (up to 1.5 g/l) can be eluted directly from the microcentrifuge column in a shorter amount of time. About Zymo Research Corp. Zymo Research Corp. is a privately held company based in Irvine, California, USA. Since its inception in 1994 it has been serving the academic and biopharmaceutical scientific communities by providing DNA and RNA purification products. Their goal is to help scientists reduce time in the lab by eliminating steps and making the entire DNA/RNA extraction process simpler and faster. In addition to the nucleic acid purification products, Zymo Research also offers genetic, epigenetic and transcriptome analysis services. Zymo Research provides high quality products that are simple to use yet robust in their performance. For more information, please visit: www.zymoresearch.com. Follow Zymo Research Corporation on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Zymo Research Corp., the stylized logo, tagline "The Beauty of Science is to Make Things Simple", ZymoPURE, ZymoPURE-EndoZero, EndoZero, and ZymoPURE-Express are trademarks of Zymo Research Corp. and are registered with the USPTO. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161112/438564 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364743LOGO SOURCE Zymo Research Corp. Related Links http://www.zymoresearch.com Beijing, Nov 10 : As Prime Minister Narendra Modi left for Japan on a three-day trip on Thursday, China said it expected both countries to respect its "legitimate" concerns. "We have no problem over the developing normal relations between our neighbours. We hope that they can respect the legitimate concerns of neighbours," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said. China is wary of India and Japan issuing a joint statement on the South China Sea asking Beijing to adhere to the UN-court ruling which rejected Beijing's rights over the disputed waters. In an oped on Wednesday, the Chinese media warned India of suffering great losses in bilateral trade if it joined Japan in asking Beijing to respect the ruling by an international tribunal. "India should beware of the possibility that by becoming embroiled in the disputes, it might end up being a pawn of the US and suffer great losses, especially in terms of business and trade, from China," an oped article in state-run Global Times said. Lu refused to comment over the arms deal between India and Japan. In September, China reacted angrily to a report about Japan reducing the price of US-2 amphibious aircraft, calling it "shameless". India and Japan may sign a civil nuclear deal and are likely to discuss other important issues. Ranchi, Nov 11 : A man was arrested for trying to deposit Rs 25 lakh cash belonging to a Maoist guerilla in a bank, police said on Friday. Nand Kishore, a petrol pump owner from Bero situated on the outskirts of Ranchi, was arrested late Thursday. He was carrying the money to deposit it in a bank. Police intercepted Kishore while he was on his way to the bank. During interrogation, he admitted that the money belonged to banned Maoist organisation People's Liberation Front of India's (PLFI) supremo Dinesh Gope. Kishore was to deposit the money in his account in the name of petrol and diesel sale. After Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were demonetised on November 8, Maoist guerrillas have been using their contacts to deposit the money. "We are keeping watch on such transactions. Our networks have been activated to keep close watch on such transactions," Jharkhand police spokesperson M.S. Bhatia told IANS. Kolkata, Nov 13 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday called for an end to demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, saying it had caused a "financial catastrophe". "This is not an ego battle. I humbly appeal again to the government at the Centre. Save the common people from more suffering and the country from financial catastrophe by withdrawing this hasty decision," the Chief Minister tweeted. "(First please) put a proper action plan in place. (Give) Breathing space for people," she said. Banerjee thanked President Pranab Mukherjee for agreeing to meet her and other political leaders to talk about people's suffering due to the demonetisation. "Today I spoke with several political leaders regarding a joint movement and to meet Rashtrapatiji together. "Let us all fight this together to give relief to common citizens, the poor and stop this financial anarchy." The Trinamool Congress leader has opposed the Centre's decision to spike Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Banerjee and other political representatives who oppose the step are scheduled to meet the President later this week to talk about the "grim situation" across the nation since the demonetisation of November 8. Los Angeles, Nov 14 : US musician and rock and roll legend Leon Russell, who worked with artistes including George Harrison, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, has died. He was 74. The musician died on Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee. His website quoted his wife, Jan Bridges, as saying that he passed away in his sleep. He had suffered a heart attack in July, reports variety.com. Raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Russell had a career of more than 50 years playing southern boogie-inflected piano, writing songs, and producing. Among the hit songs he wrote were "Delta lady", and "A song for you" recorded by Ray Charles, the Temptations, the Carpenters, Amy Winehouse, and Whitney Houston. He played piano on the Rolling Stones' "Get a line on you", which he adapted from their "Shine a light" song and had a number one country hit with Willie Nelson performing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak hotel". Other notable songs written or performed by him include "This masquerade" and "Superstar" made famous by the Carpenters. Russell performed at the Concert for Bangladesh with George Harrison and Friends and toured with acts including musical duo Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, Edgar Winter, the New Grass Revival, Willie Nelson, and Elton John. His piano playing can notably be heard on Badfinger's "Day after day". He was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2011. Musicians quickly took to social media to express their condolences on Sunday. Elton John called Russell a "mentor" and "inspiration". Chandigarh, Nov 14 : Thousands of devotees thronged gurdwaras across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh on Monday to offer prayers on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' - the birth anniversary of the first Sikh guru, Nanak Dev. The holiest of Sikh shrines 'Harmandar Sahib', popularly known as the Golden Temple, in Amritsar and other gurdwaras elsewhere saw religious fervour to the fore on 'Gurpurab'. Thousands of people, from various faiths, reached the Golden Temple complex early Monday morning to offer prayers marking the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism. The shrine complex was decorated with lighting. Hymns were rendered at the holy shrine and hundreds of other gurdwaras across the region to mark the occasion. Tight security arrangements were made around all leading Sikh shrines in Punjab. At other gurdwaras in cities, towns and villages, hundreds of people were seen coming to offer prayers. 'Langars' (community kitchen), were arranged at most gurdwaras. Over 2,000 devotees, mostly Sikhs, went to neighbouring Pakistan to celebrate 'Gurpurab' at Nankana Sahib, 100 km from Lahore, at the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev, who was born there in 1469. Though around 3,000 visas were issued by the Pakistan embassy to devotees to visit the shrine, about 1,000 people opted out following recent tension between the countries and currency crunch due to demonetisation. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal greeted people on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' and urged them to follow the Guru's teachings and maintain peace and harmony. New Delhi, Nov 14 : President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President M. Hamid Ansari on Monday paid floral tributes to the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 127th birth anniversary. The President and the Vice President arrived at the Shanti Vana - the memorial of Nehru on the banks of river Yamuna. Nehru was born to Motilal Nehru and Swaroop Rani on November 14, 1889, in Allahabad. He remained in office until his death on May 27, 1964. As Nehru's birthday is celebrated as Children's Day, school children also gathered at the memorial to pay tributes. New Delhi, Nov 14 : Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday paid floral tributes to India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on his 127th anniversary. They arrived at Shanti Vana - Nehru's memorial on the banks of the river Yamuna, to pay homage. "Paying tribute to Pt Nehru. Today more than ever we remember those who truly gave their lives to this nation and its citizens," Rahul Gandhi, NNehru's great grandson, tweeted. Nehru was born to Motilal Nehru and Swaroop Rani on November 14, 1889, in Allahabad. His birthday is celebrated as Children's Day across the country. Nehru, who became Prime Minister on August 15, 1947 when the country gained independnece, remained in office until his death on May 27, 1964. New Delhi, Nov 14 : In a bid to ensure that people in rural areas are able to get access to cash, the government has enhanced the currency limits of banking correspondents, allowed them multiple visits to banks and disburse more money through branch post offices. Briefing the media on Monday after a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the previous evening, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said recaliberation of ATMs to disburse higher denomination notes had also started and will be enhanced in the next few days. This apart, the daily withdrawal limit from ATMs has now been hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 and exchange of old notes from bank counters to Rs 4,500 from Rs 4,000. There are over 200,000 ATMs in the country. Das said there were 120,000 banking correspondents -- people authorised to accept small deposits on behalf of banks -- and more than 130,000 branch post offices in the country. "So, 250,000 of these, mostly in rural areas, will be able to disburse larger number of cash," he said. He also said the upper limit for weekly withdrawals from bank accounts has been raised to Rs 24,000 from Rs 20,000. For this, a person need not make multiple visits to the bank and withdraw the amount in a single attempt, he added. The meeting also decided to constitute a task force under Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to keep a real-time watch and monitor the distribution of cash through various channels and take necessary action in a timely manner. He said the composition of the task force will be decided soon by the RBI. This apart, the RBI, Das said, has already assured the Prime Minister that there was enough cash in the financial system and that distribution was the main challenge, which was being addressed. Other steps initiated include separate queues for senior citizens, the physically challenged and for those who want to exchange demonetised notes, and extension, till November 24, the use of old notes at petrol stations, pharmacies and utilities. Also, the government relaxed withdrawal limit for current accounts to Rs50,000 per week to ensure sundry payments especially to labourers are not blocked. Das said that RBI had advised National Payment Corporation of India to waive off charges on online transactions. Similar advice has been given to the banks also. The last date for submission of the annual life certificate for the government pensioners has been extended up to January 15, 2017 from November this year. Moreover, the government on Monday decided to extend the suspension of the fee collection at all the toll plazas till November 18 to ensure smooth traffic flow on national highways Union Minister Nitin Gadkari tweeted: "Toll suspension is extended till 18th November midnight across all National Highways." Earlier, the government had twice announced the suspension of toll collection at all toll plazas on national highways till the midnight first of November 11 and then November 14. Beijing, Nov 14 : China on Monday gave a cautious welcome to the civil nuclear deal between India and Japan, hoping it would strengthen the effectiveness of global nuclear non-proliferation regime. "With regard to nuclear agreement signed between India and Japan on nuclear energy, we believe that on the promise absorbing international nuclear non-proliferation, all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. "At the same time, the relevant cooperation should be conducive to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime," Geng added. During the recent Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan, the two countries sealed a historical nuclear deal under which Tokyo would provide civil nuclear technology. The cooperation would end if India goes for nuclear tests. On India and Japan issuing a joint statement on the South China Sea, Geng said both countries should respect the efforts made by other countries to maintain peace and stability in the contested waters. "Under the concerted efforts of the countries in the region including China, the situation in the South China Sea is developing in a positive direction," Geng said at a press conference. Last week, New Delhi and Japan issued a joint statement on the disputed South China Sea, urging relevant parties to resolve the dispute by peaceful means. "Regarding the South China Sea, the two Prime Ministers stressed the importance of resolving the disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law including the UNCLOS," the joint statement said. In July, an international court rejected China's claims over the South China Sea in a case brought by the Philippines. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan have overlapping claims over the world's most important waterway through which trade worth $5 trillion passes every year. Beijing has rejected the ruling as illegal. Up to 1 million Koreans of all ages and from all walks of life took to the streets of Seoul on Saturday evening demanding President Park Geun-hye's resignation over a widening crony scandal. Even notoriously low police estimates came in at 260,000 protesters, who packed the main thoroughfare in downtown Seoul starting at 3 p.m. so tightly that an organized march by the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was unable to proceed. According to Seoul city officials, some 8.64 million people got off of the subway stop near Gwanghwamun on Saturday, some half a million more than the average number in November last year. "If you consider the number of people who came aboard chartered buses from all over the country for the rally, the attendance figure announced by organizers was not overly exaggerated," a police officer admitted. Protesters march on Cheong Wa Dae during a mass rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday while police buses surround the presidential house. Organizers said it was the biggest rally in Korea's modern history and even bigger than the crowds that gathered during pro-democracy protests in June of 1987 that led to military dictator Chun Doo-hwan agreeing to hold elections for a new president. Major freeways were congested from Saturday morning with long lines of buses carrying protesters from all over the nation. So many people bought tickets that seats on inter-city buses were sold out and the only few spaces available on the KTX high-speed trains were first-class seats. Opposition lawmakers and civic activists also took part, including some from the ruling Saenuri Party who claimed they were only there to gauge sentiment. But ordinary citizens formed the bulk of the protesters and their numbers swelled as the evening continued. Protesters marched as far as roadblocks 900 m from Cheong Wa Dae, chanting slogans calling on Park to resign. This was the first time a major protest came so close to the presidential office. Police originally banned the march on Cheong Wa Dae, but a last-minute court order overturned the decision so protesters voice could be heard by the president. "Park violated her constitutional duties by letting her crony Choi Soon-sil meddle in state affairs," one protester said. A family hold candles at a mass rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday. /Yonhap Protests were remarkably peaceful for a country where they often involve pitched battles with police, and marchers dispersed in an orderly fashion chanting "Park Geun-hye resign!" after organizers announced the end of the rally at around 10:30 p.m. Some protesters were hospitalized with dehydration, but nobody was seriously wounded, according to police. No protesters tried to knock over police barricades or wielded metal pipes. Police protected themselves with shields but did not try to incite the protesters. Not a single water cannon was used to disperse the crowds. One protester collapsed in front of Gwanghwamun Gate at around 6:30 p.m. with dehydration and no cars could get through the thick crowd, but protesters quickly passed on the message to clear the way for an ambulance, which was arrived quickly and took the patient to a hospital. Protesters also dropped their water bottles at designated points and volunteers cleaned up the streets before heading home, leaving the scene following the rally almost empty of trash or debris. From left, youngsters join a mass rally in front of the City Hall in Seoul on Saturday. /Newsis; A man talks to a police officer at a mass rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday; Korean residents rally in Paris on Saturday. /Newsis Protesters also gathered in other major cities around the nation including Busan (35,000 people), Gwangju (27,000 people), Daegu (10,000 people) and Incheon (around 40,000 people). Korean expats in Washington D.C., New York, Paris and Tokyo also held smaller rallies. Brussels, Nov 14 : Brussels will pursue its own policy regarding Russia even if the new American administration abandons Barack Obamas course for US-Russian relations, the EU foreign policy chief announced after dining with EU Foreign Ministers. "I see the need for the Europeans to strengthen their defence and security agenda and cooperation, regardless of the changes in the administration in the United States," Federica Mogherini said, referring to US President-elect Donald Trump, RT online reported. On Monday, EU Foreign Ministers will officially meet and discuss plans to boost European defence cooperation, including the proposal for a European military headquarters. In her comments late on Sunday night, Mogherini stressed that relations between Moscow and Brussels are not "black and white." She said the EU is leading a "constructive but also selective engagement" with Russia. "There is a strong principled position especially on Ukraine and on the other conflicts that we have to our east; and our attention to our eastern partners is going to stay and stay strong," the EU's chief diplomat stressed. Commenting on the overall trend of EU Foreign Ministers' attitude towards President-elect Trump, Mogherini said the diplomats have managed to reach "unity" in their position. Before the EU Ministers entertained Mogherini at dinner, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned of the dangers of American isolationism, and the impact it could have on European security, especially when dealing with Moscow. "We have implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the Cold War. And the United States has significantly strengthened its commitment to European security, deploying a new armoured brigade to eastern Europe and delivering equipment and supplies to support future reinforcements, if needed. This is deterrence, not aggression. We do not seek to provoke a conflict, but to prevent a conflict," Stoltenberg said in an article in Britain's Observer newspaper on Sunday. EU countries have expressed concern over the future of European security after Trump won the US presidential election. During his campaign, the Republican repeatedly criticised NATO, calling the organisation "obsolete". He also suggested that America might not defend fellow NATO countries that did not help reimburse the Washington for the cost of its troops and bases in Europe. In addition to the future of NATO, the European capitals are also worried about the possibility of US-Russian rapprochement after Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed hopes that they could work in that direction. New Delhi : Barely three per cent wells registered a rise in water level exceeding four metres in the year ending January 2016, according to a Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) report. Only 35 per cent of wells showed any rise in water level, which declined in over 64 per cent of wells. Average water levels in January 2016 were lower than the average water level between 2006 and 2015. Behind the trend of falling water levels is India's 251 cubic kilometer (cu km) annual groundwater extraction rate -- equivalent to 26 times the water stored in the Bhakra Dam -- making the country the world's biggest consumer of groundwater, according to a 2012 Unesco report. With annual extraction rates of 112 cu km, China and the US tie at a distant second. Over nine-tenths of groundwater is extracted for irrigation, according to the Ground Water Year Book for 2014-15 released by the CGWB, underscoring India's dependence on groundwater for irrigation -- it provides water for 60 per cent of the irrigated area. Over the last four decades -- when India commissioned roughly half of its 50 biggest dams -- around 84 per cent of the total addition to the net irrigated area has come from groundwater. A well-recharging project implemented by the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF), a Jodhpur-based not-for-profit, enabled farmer Mahaveer Singh of Thumbo ka Golia village to switch from growing only castor oil to chillies, vegetables and, of late, Thai apple ber; his income grew by 40 per cent and could increase by 250 per cent if the berries yield the return Singh expects. "Now my well yields the same water flow even in the summer months," Singh told IndiaSpend over the phone. "Now the water is sweet, earlier it was salty," he added, referring to the improved quality of water. In contrast, the average farmer in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana faces the prospect of having no groundwater left for irrigation by 2025. The problem -- and the advantage -- with groundwater is its decentralised access. A licence is all you need to sink a well on owned land and extract water. Consequently, India has an estimated 30 million groundwater structures. In Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, groundwater extraction exceeds the rate at which it is being replenished through rainfall, back flows from irrigation and seepage from canals, other water bodies and conservation structures. A licence does not prevent groundwater exploitation, and instead breeds corruption within the system, said Rajendra Singh, a water conservationist from Alwar, in Rajasthan. "We cannot police 30 million groundwater structures through a licence-quota-permit raj," said the July 2016 government report, instead suggesting that groundwater be recognised as a "common pool resource", which means that it be considered a community resource and not a resource belonging to the owner of the land. The report also suggested that the government promote "community-driven decentralised water management". Local stakeholders are best positioned to police the use of water, and they are more likely to do so honestly because their lives depend on its availability. "Community-driven decentralised water management was the norm in India until about 100 years ago, prior to the development of the modern canal-based flood irrigation system and extraction technology," said Singh, the water conservationist. Between 700 and 1900 AD, west India saw the creation of 3,000 wells, so complex that they came to be known as underground water buildings, or popularly stepwells. Around Hampi, in Karnataka, in Delhi, and in Haryana also these date back to this period. Without more community-driven initiatives to protect wells, this heritage of India might become "a past glory", said Jos Raphael, Director of Mazhapolima, a well-recharging initiative of the District RainWater Harvesting Mission in Thrissur, Kerala. Through his non-governmental organisation Tarun Bharat Sangh, Singh, the water conservationist, has actively promoted community-driven decentralised management of natural resources, including wells around the river Arvari in Rajasthan. "We have created Neer Nari Panchayats to monitor well withdrawals. They don't allow the water table to fall beyond a certain level, so that even the poorest people who rely on shallow wells are not disadvantaged," he explained. Mazhapolima, a community-driven project to recharge wells in Thrissur, has made life easier for thousands, including the family of Madhavan Ramadas, 42, a banana and coconut farmer. A good 75 per cent of Thrissur's population depends on about 4.5 lakh open wells for their water needs. Up until 2008, summers were a nightmare for the Ramadas family. "Water shortages were the norm as our well used to run dry by April," Ramadas told IndiaSpend over the phone. "Seventy percent of wells in Thrissur would dry up during summer." In 2008, Ramadas signed up for Mazhapolima, which involved setting up a system to harvest and channel rainwater to recharge his family's open well. As a result, in 2009, the family had sufficient water to last through April. A year later, the well water lasted until May, and by 2010, summer water shortages were a thing of the past. Mazhapolima has increased the groundwater potential in a coastal area covering 7.6 sq km by 43.35 million litres, as well as improved the quality of water, he added. Singh, the farmer in arid Rajasthan, has also benefited from water harvesting and well-recharging. With the aid of non-governmental organisations and funds raised from the community, the JBF constructed a sand dam -- a structure which slows down the flow of water, thus increasing the amount that percolates underground -- on the dry bed of a stormwater drain, flowing 1.5 km away from Singh's fields. The dam increased the water level of 103 wells, within a 4 km radius, according to Kanupriya Harish, executive director of the JBF. The JBF plans to scale the sand dam water harvesting technology -- an African invention -- to six more districts in Rajasthan, with support from HSBC Bank, Excellent Development, a British not-for-profit, and local communities. "In Thumbo ka Golia, the community contributed 18 per cent of the Rs 17 lakh project cost," said Harish. "Seeing the success, more communities are asking for help, and (are) ready to pay their share." (In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform. Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org) Dhaka, Nov 14 : The Dhaka cafe which was attacked by Islamic State militants in July this year, was returned to its owner on Sunday following a court order, the city police said. At least 22 people, mostly foreign nationals, were killed in the July 1 attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in up-market Gulshan area here. The police handed over the plot and cafe to Samira Ahmed, whose husband Sadat Mehedi started the Spanish cafe in 2014, Bdnews quoted Dhaka Deputy Commissioner of Police Masudur Rahman as saying. The cafe in Dhaka's diplomatic district became a popular eatery with foreigners because of its food, lakeside view and grass lawn in the adjacent area. A pizza corner and an ice-cream parlour were added later. The militants killed 20 hostages, including 18 foreigners and two policemen, before the Bangladeshi Army stormed the cafe and killed five militants to free remaining 14 hostages. The control of the cafe was taken over by the police to preserve the evidence of the militants' carnage. Following the attack, Housing and Public Works Minister Mosharraf Hossain said the owner of the cafe would have to face action for opening it illegally. A notice, claiming a breach of the lease contract, was also sent to the owner which did not reach her. The owner later moved court for taking control of the plot and the court issued the order in her favour. New Delhi, Nov 14 : Israeli President Reuven Rivlin arrived here on Monday on a week-long state visit -- the first by an Israeli President in nearly 20 years. Rivlin is here on the invitation of President Pranab Mukherjee. The Israeli President was welcomed by Union Minister Harsh Vardhan and the Israeli Ambassador Daniel Carmon. The last Israeli President to visit India was Ezer Weizman. He came in January 1997. President Mukherjee visited Israel in October 2015, symbolizing the growing partnership between the two nations. Rivlin will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Rivlin, accompanied by a large business delegation, will also visit Agra, Karnal in Haryana, Chandigarh and Mumbai. In Agra, besides visiting the Taj Mahal, he will take a look at an adjacent Israeli water treatment plant called "Aqwise". In Karnal, Rivlin will visit the Centre of Excellence in Agriculture set up with Israeli assistance. In Chandigarh, he along with President Mukherjee will jointly inaugurate Agro Tech 2016 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Rivlin will visit Mumbai on the last day of his India tour on his way back to Israel. He will attend a commemorative function in memory of the victims of the 26/11 terror attack. He will also meet members of the Jewish community in Mumbai. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Israel in January this year and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in November last year. New Delhi, Nov 14 : Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday greeted the people on the occasion of Gurupurab, which marks the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Gandhi said Guru Nanak was a poet, a nationalist, a social reformer, a philosopher and a preacher who advocated brotherhood of mankind. "He believed in one god and thus urged us not to support discrimination based on religion, colour, caste and gender. In the basic teachings of Sikhism, he always upheld values of sacrifice, offering, association with virtuous and prayer," Gandhi said in a statement. Islamabad, Nov 14 : Pakistan on Monday said that seven of its soldiers were killed in firing by Indian troops along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, and termed it a "threat to peace". "Seven soldiers embraced 'shahadat' at the LoC in Bhimber sector in cross-fire LoC violation by Indian troops late last (Sunday) night," said a statement by Inter-Services Public Relations, the Pakistani army's media wing. The LoC divides the Indian and Pakistan parts of Kashmir. It said Pakistani troops responded to India's "unprovoked firing" and "targeted Indian posts effectively". Sartaj Aziz, Foreign Affairs Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, condemned the "unprovoked" firing and expressed "grave" concern over the "recently increased frequency and duration of indiscriminate firing from the Indian side". Accusing the Indian troops of deliberately targeting villages and civilian, the Adviser voiced "apprehension that the Indian actions, which constitute a threat to the maintenance of peace and security, may lead to strategic miscalculation". Pakistani authorities last week lodged protests with India and with the UN military observers group over the "targeting of civilian population" by Indian troops. Pakistan says the civilian death toll in Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. Vijayawada, Nov 14 : A professor of Guntur Medical College accused of abetting the suicide of a post-graduate medical student was arrested in Bengaluru on Monday, police said in Guntur. The professor, A.V.V. Lakshmi, is likely to be brought to Guntur later on Monday or Tuesday. She was absconding following the suicide of B. Sandhya Rani in October. Sandhya Rani (27), belonging to Nalgonda district of Telangana and a post-graduate student of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, committed suicide by injecting in herself an overdose of anaesthesia. She died on October 24 while undergoing treatment at Guntur Government Hospital. During investigation, police found Sandhya's diary in which she wrote that she is ending her life as she is unable to bear the harassment by Lakshmi. Sandhya's classmates at the medical college had staged a protest demanding the immediate arrest and suspension of the Professor. An inquiry committee of the college had found Lakshmi guilty of harassing the student. However, Andhra Pradesh Police faced allegations from the victim's family that it is not doing enough to bring Lakshmi to book. Denying the allegation, the police had formed special teams to track down the absconding Professor. Lakshmi through her relatives had also moved a court in Guntur for anticipatory bail but the court refused her plea. Following, Sandhya Rani's death her husband Ravi had also attempted suicide in Miryalaguda town of Telangana. Ravi, also a physician, tried to hang himself at his residence but was saved by his brother. The couple had married a year ago. Sandhya was allegedly denied leave and burdened with additional work by the Professor. Riyadh, Nov 14 : Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation member states will hold an emergency meeting in Mecca on Thursday to discuss a missile attack by Houthi militias and allies of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh against holy sites in the Kingdom, it was reported on Monday. The meeting follows an earlier session held on November 5 by the OIC's executive committee, during which participants called on member states and the international community to take serious and effective steps to prevent the recurrence of such attacks in the future and called for holding accountable all those who smuggle weapons, provide training and continue to support the Yemeni insurgents, pan-Arab daily Asharq-al-Awsat reported. Last month, Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a ballistic missile some 65 km from Mecca, noting that the missile had been fired from Yemen by Houthi rebels. The OIC executive committee reaffirmed member states' support to Riyadh in its fight against terrorism and against all those attempting to target religious holy sites. It also stressed its solidarity with Saudi Arabia in its measures aimed at preserving its security and stability. It described the attack against Mecca as an act of offence against the feelings of Muslims around the world and a breach of international resolutions. Thursday's ministerial meeting comes upon a recommendation by the executive committee to hold an emergency meeting of Foreign Ministers of member states in Mecca to discuss the attack and its repercussions. Sofia, Nov 14 : The Bulgarian Prime Minister on Monday announced the resignation of his cabinet after his party's candidate failed to win the second round of the country's presidential election. Socialist Party-supported independent candidate Rumen Radev beat centre-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party candidate Tsetska Tsacheva on Sunday, EFE news reported. A government statement said Prime Minister Boyko Borisov had told members of parliament that his government would continue in their positions until a new cabinet was formed. Borisov, who has been Prime Minister since 2009 except for a one-and-a-half year interval, thus lived up to a promise he made during the campaign in which he said he would resign if GERB's Tsetska Tsacheva did not win the election. Tsacheva, chair of the National Assembly, lost the second round with 36.17 per cent of the vote to Radev, who secured 59.35 per cent, according to Bulgaria's Central Election Commission with 99.3 per cent of the votes counted. Borisov warned on Sunday that his government would tender a bloc resignation as exit polls pointed to a win for Radev, a former air force commander with no political experience. "The results showed that the governing coalition now has no majority and could not even pass the budget," the Prime Minister said on Sunday. The current coalition formed by GERB, the centre-right Reformist Bloc and the nationalistic Patriotic Front has seen constant friction among the three parties since coming to power at the end of 2014. Outgoing President Rosen Plevneliev must now ask the parliament's majority party, GERB, to form a government, but Borisov said he will refuse the task, suggesting the Bulgarian Socialist Party, who holds the second most seats, attempts to do so. BSP leader Kornelia Ninova has however said she is not willing to do this either. Jammu, Nov 14 : One terrorist was killed while attempting infiltration amid Pakistan Army's shelling and firing on Monday at one of three Indian positions on the Line of Control in Rajouri and Jammu districts, a senior defence officer said. "The Pakistan Army used 82mm mortars and automatic fire to target Indian positions in Naushera and Sunderbani sectors on the LoC in Rajouri district around 2.40 p.m. today (Monday)," defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Manish Mehta told IANS. The terrorist was killed in Naushera sector during the infiltration bid, he said. The Pakistan troopers also violated the ceasefire in Pallanwalla sector of Jammu district. "Our troops effectively retaliated to Pakistan shelling and firing at all three places. Firing is still on at these places," he said. Prosecutors have told Cheong Wa Dae that they want to question President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday or Wednesday about a deepening crony scandal that has engulfed her office. Cheong Wa Dae is expected to give an answer on Tuesday. "We need to interview the president face-to-face to bring the truth to light," a prosecutor said on Sunday. "We haven't made any decision on how and where to question her and are awaiting a response from Cheong Wa Dae." Questioning could take place at a neutral location that is neither Cheong Wa Dae nor the prosecutors office. Park stands accused of giving Choi Soon-sil, a friend of 40 years with no official post, unprecedented access to government business and enlisting her entire office to smooth Choi's path to fabulous wealth. But the Constitution does not allow a sitting president to be charged with any offence other than sedition or treason, so she will officially be questioned as a witness. Kolkata, Nov 14 : Barred from screening his feature-length documentary "One Day From A Hangman's Life" at the Kolkata International Film Festival a decade ago by the erstwhile Left Front regime, National Award winning filmmaker Joshy Joseph says it's a "sweet revenge" for his latest endeavour to be showcased at the 2016 edition of the fest under the Trinamool Congress rule. In 2005, "One Day from A Hangman's Life" was stopped from screening during the third day at the Kolkata fest by then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, recalled Joseph. "It is unplanned, but nevertheless sweet revenge. It is a sweet revenge feeling coming back to Nandan (the film festival venue). I was ousted from Nandan by the then regime," Joseph told the media here. The film was about a day in the life of Nata Mullick, the hangman who executed rape-and-murder convict Dhananjoy Chatterjee. "There was a sequence in the film about Bhattacharjee's wife campaigning with Mullick. Bhattacharjee felt uncomfortable with my film," recounted Joseph, deputy director general in-charge of Films Division. However, his latest film "Tree of Tongues in Tripura", on two tribal musicians of the northeastern state, named Saudagar and Thanga Darlong, is being screened at the ongoing 22nd KIFF and is also an entry in the international competition in innovations in moving image. The feature length documentary is conceptualised from a film-making workshop at the Tripura University in Agartala. London, Nov 14 : London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday called for an end to politics of division following Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential race. Khan was commenting as city mayors from across the Europe gathered in the British capital for a landmark conference on social integration, Xinhua news agency reported. A spokesman at London's City Hall said: "With Trump on his way to the White House, Khan has called for uniting communities to be put top of the political agenda at a time when more and more people are feeling left behind, disconnected and ignored." "The US election, following on from the EU referendum, has shown how fractious relations between communities across the western world have become with hundreds of millions feeling estranged from the political debate," said the spokesman. At the Social Integration Conference here, Khan said the politics of division must not spread to diverse cities like London. He urged city leaders "to build bridges instead of walls" to help communities live better together. Failure to do so risked losing the argument to the divisive political forces gaining pace in many countries across Europe and the world, he warned. The conference is a major gathering of city mayors from across Europe, called to share ideas and solutions to create more cohesive communities. Delegates include policy experts, city leaders and the mayors of Amsterdam, Athens, Brussels, Copenhagen, Ghent, Lisbon, Oslo, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Vienna, Liverpool and Bristol and the deputy mayors of Bordeaux, New York and Paris. Opening the conference Khan said: "We have seen major political upheaval around the world in recent months, with the EU referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US." "This has shown how politics is becoming more and more polarised with whole communities in cities across the world feeling increasingly disconnected and estranged from national politics. "That's why now, more than ever, we need to build a strong sense of social solidarity within our cities -- a renewed sense that we are united as neighbours and citizens," said Khan. New Delhi, Nov 14 : A 37-year-old shop owner here was shot in the leg as he chased a robber who fled with his bag containing cash, a police official said on Monday. The incident occurred around 11 a.m. when Satyapal, who runs a grocery shop, was leaving for home from a gym in Dwarka South Sector-7 area, the police official said. When he put the bag on the rear seat of his car, the robber took it out and started running. Satyapal gave him a chase over some distance, the official said. Satyapal claimed he was carrying Rs 30,000 in cash and an ATM card in the bag. "The robber first fired in the air and then fired a shot at Satyapal's leg and fled from the spot. The entire episode was captured on the CCTV of a nearby shop," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Surender Kumar told IANS. The injured shop owner was admitted to a nearby private hospital where his condition is said to be out of danger. "We are investigating the case and examining the CCTV footage," the DCP said. Prima facie it appears to be a case of personal animosity, the police said. A case has been registered. Washington, Nov 14 : US President-elect Donald Trump's advisers have dismissed the tens of thousands of protesters on the streets against his election as "professional" disruptors and called on Democratic leaders to tell them to go home, media reported on Monday. According to Team Trump, President Barack Obama, Democratic leader Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats need to intervene to stop the unrest unfolding from Los Angeles to Manhattan, the New York Post reported. "The President of the US, Secretary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, perhaps, others can come forward and ask for calm and a peaceful transition and ask their supporters, which are masquerading as protesters now - many of them professional and paid by the way, I'm sure - ask them to give this man a chance so that this country can flourish," said Donald Trump campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday. The appeal comes as more than 3,000 chanting, sign-waving protesters trudged from Union Square to Trump Tower along Manhattan's storied Fifth Avenue with cries of "We reject! The President elect!", joining angry anti-Donald Trump marchers across the country. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said protesters have targeted him and were "banging on my car". "I'm not sure these are even Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama supporters. I think these people are, you know, kind of like professional protesters," Giuliani said. Conway specifically singled out Senator Henry Reid for inciting unrest by saying on Friday the responsibility of healing the country belongs with Trump - "a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fuelled his campaign with bigotry and hate." "A lot of these protesters are not there peacefully, are not there because they just want to express themselves and make a point or make the difference. They are there for nefarious conditions, they're booing us, spitting on us. They're causing all kinds of havoc." Obama, Clinton and Sanders have all expressed a desire to work with Trump on a peaceful transition of power but have not condemned the protesters. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Minnesota representative Keith Ellison - an early favourite for Democratic National Committee chairman - said it's the priority of Democrats to exercise their First Amendment rights. "God bless the protesters," Booker said on NBC's "Meet the Press". Booker cautioned protesters against "turning to hateful speech, violating principles and ideals that are sacred in this country," Booker said. "We need to raise our voices, but we do not need to indulge in hate." Ellison called on the protests to "remain peaceful" but urged them to stand strong in the face of "misogyny" and racial divisions. "These folks are telling Donald Trump that if he tries to move out on his plan to have a deportation squad, to harm Americans, and if he tries to do that, we're going to be there to stand and say no," Ellison added. New Delhi, Nov 14 : The Congress on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having pushed the country into a "financial chaos" through demonetisation and called him an autocrat. "The powerful autocratic Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi has pushed the country into a financial chaos by overnight reducing their hard earned money to worthless pieces of paper," Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said here. "Modiji has assumed that a clear majority in Parliament has given him a pass to act on his whims and fancies. But in a democracy the decisions have to be taken as per peoples' wishes," he added. He said the black money that the government was targetting was not with the people who are wasting hours standing in long queues at banks and ATMs, but with "a handful of suited-booted friends of yours" who are not standing in queues. "What is the reason that none of your corporate friends, your officers, your cabinet ministers your chief ministers or BJP leaders is seen standing in the queues outside banks? Is it not indicative of where the black money is actually lying?" Surjewala said. He dared the Prime Minister to make public all the transactions done in the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) national and regional units bank accounts between March and September this year. "These bank details will show how much money was changed before the decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes was announced. Isse doodh ka doodh aur pani ka pani ho jayega (It will make the picture clear)," he said. Surjewala said that before demonetisation, the Modi government had already hiked the remittances limit by 130 per cent in a financial year. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), any citizen of India is allowed to freely remit up to $2,50,000 in a financial year. In 2013 this limit was $75,000. Kabul, Nov 14 : The Afghan Wolesi Jirga or the lower house of parliament on Monday disqualified another Minister on the ground of failure in spending development budget, bringing the number of dismissed Ministers to six since the no trust move was launched two days ago. During Monday's session, the lawmakers dismissed Farida Momand, Minister for Higher Education, with majority, while Minister for Urban Development Sayed Mansur Naderi and Minister for Justice Abdul Basir Anwar survived the axe, Xinhua news agency reported. The move took place despite opposition by Arg or Presidential Palace as, according to the media reports, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has urged the Wolesi Jirga to postpone the Ministers' disqualification process, a call spurned by the lawmakers. In a similar exercise on Sunday, the lawmakers dismissed Minister for Transport Muhamadullah Batash and Education Minister Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, but Minister for Finance Eklil Ahmad Hakimi narrowly escaped the vote of no confidence. Earlier on Monday, the Lower House dismissed Foreign Affairs Minister Salahuddin Rabbani, Public Works Minister Mahmoud Baligh and Minister for Social Services Nasreen Owryakhel, citing poor performance and failure to spend allocated budgetary funds on time. The Afghan government has 25 ministries and more Ministers will be summoned by the Lower House of parliament in the coming days to account for failure in spending development budget and a few more of them might be dismissed on the same ground. Summoning and sacking Ministers by Wolesi Jirga is taking place at a time when militants loyal to the hardliner Taliban and Islamic State outfits have increased activities in the insurgency-riddled country. Ghani, in a letter delivered to Wolesi Jirga on Sunday, asked the lawmakers to further evaluate the performances of disqualified Ministers in line with the constitution. However, the move initiated by legislators to disqualify Ministers has drawn mixed reactions among the Afghan people, according to media reports. "Members of parliament should work based on the national interest and they should consider the fragility of political situation in the country," an analyst Keramudin Rezazada told the media. "Disqualifying ministers should not continue," another analyst Sayed Ali Rezas Mohamadi said. London, Nov 14 : WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was on Monday to be questioned at the Embassy of Ecuador in London over an alleged sexual assault committed in Sweden in 2010. A representative for the Swedish prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren, and Swedish police inspector Cecilia Redell were at the embassy to attend the proceedings, with Ecuadorian prosecutor Wilson Toainga tasked with taking statements from the Australian activist. Isgren did not speak upon her arrival at the embassy, despite being greeted by a large group of journalists gathered outside, EFE news reported. Assange, who denies the accusations, has spent more than four years holed up inside the embassy, seeking political asylum there over fears he could be extradited to the US. In August, three of the four charges levelled at Assange by Stockholm expired due to statutes of limitations, two of sexual assault and one of unlawful coercion. A more serious accusation of rape will not expire until 2020. Assange refuses to go to Sweden over fears he will eventually be sent to the US, where he could face military justice over thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables. Questioning at the embassy had initially been scheduled for October 17, but was postponed at the request of Assange, who sought assurance of "his rights to the protection and defence of his person". Panaji, Nov 14 : Opposition political parties in Goa, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, on Monday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a "sham" speech with Congress Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik, accusing Modi of shedding crocodile tears. "Modi's tears appear to be crocodile tears... his action is like third degree treatment meted out to innocent citizens," Naik told the media at the Congress state headquarters here. In the course of his speech in Goa on Sunday, Modi appeared to be on the verge of breaking down while referring to sacrifices he had made for the country. The video of Modi's discomfort during his speech went viral on social media. "The demonetisation action was clandestinely disclosed by Modi to the Bharatiya Janata Party President, his key party people and industrialists close to the power centre, in advance, so that they could make necessary arrangements to legalise their funds," Naik said as he demanded a probe by the Supreme Court into the demonetising decision-making process. Naik also said Modi had let the people of India down by virtually giving overt threats from foreign soil in Japan, about tightening up the fiscal processes. "The threats given by Modi on a foreign soil indicates that he is going to take more stringent steps in future. This is dangerous and it appears that Modi is marching towards imposing fascism in the country," Naik said. The AAP also said the Prime Minister's speech had more theatrics than substance and that Modi had also mocked the people lining up at banks and ATMs. "The speech of the Prime Minister in Goa yesterday (Sunday) was mere theatrics and devoid of any serious intent to embark on a correction of the financial chaos unleashed by his unplanned demonetisation scheme," AAP spokesperson Valmiki Naik said. "Every citizen of India has been autocratically forced into a state of financial emergency, helpless to even meet his or her daily needs to run a house... AAP is shocked that Modi, instead of taking corrective action, is mocking the people lining up at banks and ATMs," he said. Pune (Maharashtra), Nov 14 : An 11-year-old schoolgirl from Pune has designed Monday's Google doodle, celebrating Children's Day that also marks the birth anniversary of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The student, Anvita Prashant Telang, studies in Vibgyor High School in Balewadi at Pune and her design was chosen nationally for being an imaginative, thoughtful and inspiring doodle, titled 'Enjoying Every Moment'. "I am very happy... Since the time the doodle went up, I have been getting congratulatory messages from friends and others... They all want a party," Anvita said. The Class 6 student submitted her esign on this year's theme, "If I could teach anyone anything, it would be..." for the Doodle4Google national contest earlier this year. Her creativity and vision towards developing "a better world and healthy lifestyle" are reflected in her colourful doodle showcasing how everyone should 'Enjoy Every Moment' by appreciating simple things around us and live life stress-free. Referring to the contest, Google India head of marketing Sapna Chadha said they were overwhelmed by the great participation from talented and creative young artists year-on-year since 2009. "With Doodle4Google competition, we aim to celebrate and promote creativity, passion and imagination in our younger users," Chadha said. Now, Anvita has another surprise in store on Monday evening -- some great gifts from her equally proud parents who learnt on Friday evening that she was the winner this year. Anvita, who loves to draw, emphasised how to value the little and simple things of life as great sources of happiness, and feels people must lead happy and contended lives. Reflecting her thoughts, the doodle shows a bunch of small boys and girls having fun, hanging from tree brances, playing with water, balloons, kites, flying and even daydreaming, in a natural green environment with flowers, butterflies, flying fish, birds and other aquatic life. Besides Anvita, the other group finalists were B. Shrisha of Sri Prakash Vidyaniketan, Vishakhapatnam (Class I-III), and Akashdeep of Kendriya Vidyalala, Ranchi (Class VII-X). The jury which selected her, included cartoonist Ajit Ninan, Art Director Savio Mascarenhas, creative artist Rob and Doodle team leader Ryan Germick, besides 100,000 public votes. New Delhi, Nov 14 : Common people across India continued to suffer on Monday with millions scrambling for cash to meet basic needs even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended the ban on high value notes, saying the move had given sleepless nights to those with ill-gotten wealth. Addressing a public rally in Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said that as a result of demonetising 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, the poor were sleeping well and those who had unaccountd money were buying sleeping pills. But on the streets of Delhi and elsewhere in the country, common people continued to bear the trauma of cashlessness for a sixth day after the surprise decision was announced on November 8 night. Many fear that the cash crisis, despite Modi on Sunday asking people to be patient for 50 days, may continue longer than that. Going by the rate at which fresh currency is being disbursed to banks, at least four months are needed to replace demonetised notes, some experts said. The hardships of the common people deepened on Monday as most banks in northern India were shut on account of Guru Nanak Dev Jayanti. Partly as a result, many ATMs could not be refurbished with fresh cash. And the machines which had money ran dry quickly as people waited in long queues. Rajesh Kumar, a private company's employee in Noida near Delhi, said he withdrew Rs 2,500 - the maximum allowed - from an ATM "almost miraculously" after two days of managing his life with little cash. "While I was coming down from the Sector 16 metro station, I saw a cash loading van approaching an ATM. I ran and was the first person to wait," Rajesh Kumar told IANS. "Others gathered in no time and it became a long queue. Someone from the van announced that only Rs. 1 lakh was being loaded in the ATM which meant only the first 40 in the queue would be able to draw Rs 2,500 each. Others left disappointed." But most others were not as lucky as him. Anand Tokas, a south Delhi resident and a father of three, said he somehow managed to survive the last few days on Rs 2,000 in smaller denominations his kids had saved from their pocket money. "Now I have nothing. If I don't withdraw cash today, I will have nothing to buy even basic essentials," said Tokas, a gym owner. The demonetisation also hit businesses hard across the nation. According to the Confederation of All India Traders, post-demonatisation trade in markets across the country had plunged to "25 per cent in comparison to normal days". Anil Chopra, 42, who runs a departmental store in Greater Noida, said his losses were more than the estimate. He said sales at his store had fallen 50 per cent because people didn't have cash and "not everyone is able to pay through credit and debit cards". The situation was no better in other major cities including Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Hyderabad as well as innumerable smaller towns where the ATM ratio is very poor. "I neither have a debit nor credit card. No kirana (grocery) shop is accepting the old notes," complained Pochamma, a housewife. She had come to exchange notes at the State Bank of India branch in Hyderabad's Toli Chowki but returned disappointed. The cash crisis also bedeviled people in several north-eastern states, especially in rural and remote areas. "We are yet to get sufficient new Rs 2,000 denomination currency as well as old Rs 100 and smaller denomination notes, causing serious problems," a top official of United Bank of India told IANS. Hyundai will release its Ioniq electric vehicle in the U.S. next month. It will also release its plug-in hybrid version sometime next year. "Beginning with the launch of Ioniq, we plan to release some 28 eco-friendly vehicles, including 10 plug-in hybrids, eight EVs and two hydrogen-powered vehicles, in the U.S. by 2020," a Hyundai spokesman said on Sunday. Beijing, Nov 14 : Animal rights groups have called for 'the world's saddest polar bear', Pizza, to be returned to his natural habitat permanently after managers of the Chinese mall -- where he has been kept in a cage -- announced that he would be temporarily sent to an ocean park where he was born. The Grandview Shopping Mall in Guangzhou city said that while the building is under renovation, Pizza will be sent to the park in Tianjin. "It's a good decision, the right decision for Pizza, but it's not the end. Temporary is not good enough," Mdm Qin, director of Capital Animal Welfare Association, said in a statement. Pizza, a three-year-old male, became the focus of attention around the world in July when a video was released of him caged in a small area inside a shopping mall, without natural light or fresh air, and showing signs of poor mental health. "We implore the mall to make this a permanent move for Pizza... no amount of renovation could ever make a shopping mall a suitable place for this animal, and to send him back now would be cruel and heartless," Peter Li, a specialist at Humane Society International, said. New Delhi, Nov 14 : The 36th India International Trade Fair, inaugurated here on Monday, has become an easy way out for people to use up their demonetised currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 as domestic and even foreign traders are easily and openly accepting payment in the phased-out notes. "We are accepting all notes. Rs 500, Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000 -- all notes. People can buy anything for the full amount of the old currency. However, we cannot give change," a woman trader at Turkey's pavilion told IANS. The annual IITF is being organised by the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and will continue till November 27 at the sprawling Pragati Maidan here. Another trader at the Myanmar pavilion, selling precious stones and gems and jewellery, said: "You can pay us anyhow, we are accepting online payments and cash as well. Cash... you can pay in old currency also." Asked how will they get it exchanged as the notes have been demonetised, the trader nonchalantly said that he has access to Indian accounts into which he can deposit the cash. The government had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8 night. The public at large is easily using up their stock of demonetised notes at the trade fair. A customer told IANS: "I brought new currency with me and old currency also. And I have purchased stuff using both. Many Indian and foreign counters are accepting old notes." An Indian dealer trading in tea leaves said that they are open to accepting old Rs 500 notes and would even give the remaining change if the purchase is of lesser amount. Asked if the government is allowing to trade in old notes at the trade fair, the sales girl told IANS: "I do not know. But we have instructions from our company to accept demonetised notes too." Demand for point of sale (POS) machines have also gone up as the traders at the fair are accepting card payments. At the State Bank of India counter, an employee said that on the first day of the trade fair itself, orders for about 60 machines have been placed. A trader who was filling the form for a POS machine told IANS: "The cosmetic pavilion is openly accepting old currency notes. They will get it exchanged later from the market. I am not accepting, so I have to take card payments." This year's fair is seeing 7,000 participants including representation from 24 nations, Indian states and union territories, public and private enterprises with around 800 rural artisans and craftspersons. (Meghna Mittal can be reached at meghna.m@ians.in) Marrakech, Nov 14 : The World Metrological Organisation (WMO) on Monday said the global temperature is 1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level and will set a new high for the third year running. It also said 2016 is the hottest year on record, 2015 the second hottest and 2014 in the third place. "Another year. Another record," said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas while releasing the report at the Marrakech climate change negotiations at COP22. He said the extra heat from powerful El Nino phenomenon has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue. The WMO on November 8 informed the parties and non-parties at the enviromental meet that while 2015 was the warmest year so far, 2016 is on track of being even warmer. On Monday, it confirmed its prediction. The WMO said these alarming trends have resulted in ten-fold increase in "extreme events" globally, that is, catastrophic events such as cyclones, heatwaves, floods and droughts have become frequent in 10-year cycle rather than 100-year cycle. The WMO report came as a major challenge ahead of the major goal of the landmark Paris Climate Change Agreement (COP21), that aims at keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial level and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees. "On the day the WMO confirmed that 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record, it is shocking the world has been largely silent on one of the biggest-ever global climate emergencies. This year, over 400 million people were affected by the strongest ever 'El Nino' weather event, causing droughts around the world," ActionAid climate change policy expert Teresa Anderson said in response to the report. Anderson said the impacts of El Nino confirm the need for the world to take urgent action on climate change, which affects women and children the worst. ActionAid said inspite of the huge drought, the world has remained largely silent on the crisis. It said countries and humanitarian agencies face a funding gap of $3.1 billion to meet the needs of those still affected. "The governments that promised climate compassion in Paris have apparently turned their back on an actual global climate crisis," Anderson added. The El Nino weather phenomenon helped push temperatures even higher in early 2016 but the global warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities remains the strongest factor. According to the 2015 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, approximately 44 per cent of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by human activity from 2004 to 2015 remained in the atmosphere, with the remaining 56 per cent removed by oceans and the terrestrial biosphere (Kushagra Dixit is at COP22 in Marrakech. He can be reached at kushagra.d@ians.in) New Delhi, Nov 14 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday rejected the opposition's demand to roll back the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, saying the country has welcomed the move, informed sources said. Modi's stand came at a meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Party's executive, sources said. The Prime Minister told the participants that the "country has welcomed" the move but the "opposition is trying to sabotage" it, the sources added. Sources also said that Modi told party colleagues that the government need not buckle under the opposition pressure. Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu clearly said that mood of the nation is in favour of the decision. "No question of rethinking," he told reporters after a meeting of leaders of the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which followed the BJP Parliamentary Party executive meeting. Naidu said that all the NDA constituents termed the demonetisation decision as historic and in larger interest of the nation. "NDA leaders said the people are happy and government should go ahead with the decision," he said. Naidu also said that the Prime Minister told the NDA leaders that the credit for demonetisation will not go to him personally, but to all parties which stood firmly with the government. Naidu also termed as baselss the opposition's allegations that the BJP had prior information regarding the demonetisation move. "All these are baseless. We will answer them at appropriate time. In the parliament, we will get to know who stood by people and who are on the side of black money hoarders," he said. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said that all the NDA partners and the leaders supported Prime Minister Modi in one voice. They also praised visionary decision which is also "pro-poor". "They also, in one voice, requested the Prime Minister to take the crusade against black money to its logical end," he said. NDA ally Shiv Sena, which earlier opposed the move, supported the government during the meeting. Sena leader Anand Rao Adsul attended the meet. Terming the demonetisation as "a betrayal" of the people, the Shiv Sena had compared the government's secret mission of November 8 to an "economic civil war", and said Modi had already dropped one bomb by the demonetisation. The BJP Parliamentary Party meeting was attended among others by party President Amit Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar while NDA meet was attended by all allies. The meetings were convened to chalk out the government's strategy for the winter session of Parliament, starting on Wednesday. The Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress have demanded rollback of the demonetisation decision. Marrakech, Nov 14 : The G20 countries continue pumping billions in overseas coal development and Japan's plans to build dozens of so-called high-efficiency coal power plants, both of which undermine the landmark Paris Agreement and clean energy deployment, two new reports said on Monday. Over the past nine years, the G20 countries -- led by China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and the US -- have kicked in $76 billion to further coal development in countries such as Vietnam, South Africa, Australia and Indonesia, US-based environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said in its report. The report, "Carbon Trap: How International Coal Finance Undermines the Paris Agreement and Clean Energy Deployment", was released on Monday by the NRDC and the Oil Change International on the sidelines of 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) here. In Paris last December, nearly 200 countries agreed to slash their dependence on fossil fuels in a concerted effort to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial level in order to avoid a climate crisis. The Kiko Network also released a report here challenging Japan's plans to build dozens of so-called high efficiency coal power plants. Essentially this means that, says the NRDC report, on one hand, some of the world's leading polluters have pledged to lower climate-changing carbon pollution within their borders under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, while on the other, these countries are facilitating a massive boom in that carbon pollution by financing coal development elsewhere, and the planet ultimately suffers. "Our climate knows that countries can't have it both ways. They can't publicly boast about slashing climate pollution at home while also continuing to finance enormous coal development abroad," said report co-author Han Chen, international climate advocate at the NRDC. "These nations need to clean up their act. They should stop pouring billions into dirty energy and instead put more financial muscle behind clean, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. That will create jobs and protect the planet from climate catastrophe." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to the rise in global temperatures. Unfortunately, key governments continue to invest in projects that further the world's dependence on coal, making climate change worse. An official statement quoting Belantara Foundation CEO Agus Sari said: "In Indonesia, companies are already divesting from coal investments due to the risk of stranded assets. We know that in Indonesia, coal will not solve our energy access issues, because what we need is greater investments in renewable energies suited to our geography." "Japan and China are both leaders in renewable energy technology, yet instead of growing their share of the clean energy market, they are choosing to choke the planet by backing dozens of new coal-fired power plants around the world," said Alex Doukas, senior campaigner with the Oil Change International. Japan has the most financing in the pipeline for future coal projects. Kimiko Hirata, International Director of the Kiko Network, said: "Even after the historic Paris Agreement and the OECD agreement were reached, Japan is still investing significant amounts of money in coal and encouraging new projects -- ignoring the fact that there's no space in the global carbon budget to build new coal." She said Japan cannot be proud of competing with China over spreading dirty energy all over the world. "As a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Japan should stop financing coal immediately and stop causing health problems and climate disaster," Hirata said. The third report released here on Monday by the Climate Analytics outlines what the Paris Agreement means for coal power globally. It says the world needs to reduce coal use, starting with the developed countries. The study speaks to the world's energy plans going forward, how developed countries need to stop using coal by 2030 and China by 2040, if the world needs to keep well below 2 degrees. It also links with the concepts of stranded assets, and the co-benefits of reducing coal use, for example, air quality gains. (Vishal Gulati is in Marrakech in Morocco to cover COP22. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in) Mumbai, Nov 14 : Indian automobile giant Tata Motors on Monday reported a net profit (post profit/loss in respect of joint ventures and associate companies) at Rs 848 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. The company had reported a consolidated loss after tax (post profit/loss in respect of joint ventures and associate companies) of Rs 1,740 crore for the corresponding quarter last year. The company informed the BSE in a regulatory filing that its consolidated revenue stood at Rs 67,000 crore during the quarter under review, up 6.94 per cent compared to Rs 62,647 crore during the like period of the previous fiscal. "Consolidated profit before tax (before exceptional item) for the quarter was Rs 983 crores, against Rs 1,191 crores for the corresponding quarter last year," the company said in a statement. "Broadly due to higher volumes and favourable operating exchange in Jaguar Land Rover business more than offset by the realised hedging losses of Rs 3,510 crore, and adverse commodity derivatives impact of Rs 187 crore." The corresponding quarter of last year included an exceptional item of Rs 2,493 crore on account of the vehicles damaged at Tianjin Port explosion in Jaguar Land Rover business. Segment-wise, Jaguar Land Rover's net profit stood at A244 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2016, compared to a loss after tax of A92 million in the corresponding period last year. The JLR's total retail sales, including the China JV (joint venture), in the second quarter were 142,459 units, up 29.3 per cent. Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicles registered net revenue of approximately Rs 1,440 crore and recorded a net profit of Rs 48 crore during the quarter under review. Tata Motors Finance, the company's financing subsidiary, registered a net revenue from operations of Rs 673 crore and reported a loss after tax of Rs 7 crore during the quarter. On a standalone basis, the company reported a decline of 118.33 per cent in its net profit including joint operations for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. "Loss before and after tax for the quarter ended September 30, 2016, for the standalone business (including joint operations) was Rs 609 crore and Rs 631 crore, respectively, against loss before and after tax of Rs 272 crore and Rs 289 crore, respectively, for the corresponding quarter last year," the statement said. The automobile major's standalone revenue, including joint operations, during the quarter under review decreased by 3.28 per cent to Rs 11,406 crore from Rs 11,794 crore earned during the corresponding period of last year. Tata Motors' sales of commercial and passenger vehicles including exports for the second quarter of the financial year stood at 134,397 units representing a growth of 6.1 per cent as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. Raipur, Nov 14 : The Border Security Force (BSF) on Monday said it seized over Rs 5 lakh "unaccounted" demonetised Rs 500 and 1,000 notes from a person travelling in bus in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district. A BSF patrol team apprehended the person in the afternoon following the input about shifting of such money to Maharashtra for changing to new denominations. "We have seized unaccounted cash of more than Rs 5 lakh in demonetised Rs 500 and 1,000 notes. It is suspected that the money was of terror (Maoist) funding and was being carried for change to new denominations," a BSF official said. The BSF team apprehended the person as he failed to justify the presence of the currency notes recovered from his possession, said the official, adding the operation was carried with the local police. Police authorities in Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra were later informed of the seizure, the official said. New Delhi, Nov 14 : The winter session of Parliament beginning on Wednesday is likely to see a united opposition confront the Narendra Modi government over the problems faced by people following the move to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, with issues concerning farmers and one rank one pension (OROP) also likely to be taken up. The government is likely to push its legislative agenda, that includes passage of pending legislations for rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the surrogacy regulation bill. Opposition parties including Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and Samajwadi Party have been vociferous in attacking the government over its move to demonetise currency and the trouble being faced by people on account of the move across the country. Demonetisation has led to fall in business due to difficulty in getting currency notes. Trinamool Congress and AAP have demanded rollback of demonetisation, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised address to the nation on November 8. Opposition parties are likely to target the Prime Minister for the decision that is being talked about across households and widely commented upon in the social media. The Congress and Trinamool Congress have given notices for suspension of business in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the opening day of the winter session to discuss demonetisation. The session is slated to conclude on December 16. Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar said the party will raise the issue of demonetisation and repeated ceasefire violations on the India-Pakistan border that has led to loss of lives. "We will raise government's failures on all fronts, including black money and issues concerning farmers. There have been about 300 ceasefire violations in Jammu and Kashmir in the last one-and-a-half months which has resulted in soldiers being martyred and civilian deaths," Kumar told IANS. Janata Dal-United leader K.C. Tyagi said that demonetisation will be a top issue for the party. "Apart from demonetisation, we will take up issues concerning farmers, the present situation in Kashmir, one rank one pension and government's flip-flops on Pakistan," Tyagi told IANS. He said the party will strive for cooperation among opposition parties. Revolutionary Socialist Party leader N.K. Premachandran said that demonetisation was a major issue for Left parties. He said there was apprehension that information about demonetisation was "leaked very secretly." "Also there were no precautionary measures and people are being put to great difficulty," he said. "Other issues we will be raising include alleged politicisation of Army's surgical strikes and communalisation of the entire system. On Goods and Services Tax concerns of states are not being taken into account," he said. The government is keen on passage of pending GST bills and its roll out from April 1 next year. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan held a meeting of leaders of parties in the house on Monday to ensure smooth functioning of the house. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar has convened an all-party meeting on Tuesday. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told IANS that the government is prepared to discuss all issues raised by the opposition with permission of the chair. He hoped the session, which will have 22 sittings, will be fruitful. According to PRS legislative, which tracks work of Parliament, the legislative agenda for the session includes 10 blls for consideration and passing. Nine new bills are slated to be introduced and later taken up for passage. The pending bills for roll out of GST include Central Goods and Services Tax Bill to facilitate levy of tax on intra-state supply of goods or services, Integrated Goods and Services Tax Bill to facilitate levy of tax on inter-state supply of goods or services and The Goods and Services Tax (Compensation for Loss of Revenue) Bill to facilitate payment of compensation to states for loss of revenue arising on account of implementation of GST. The bills listed for consideration and passage include Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and The Whistle Blowers Protection (Amendment) Bill, 2015. The bills to be introduced for passage include Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 and Divorce (Amendment) Bill, 2016. Marrakech, Nov 14 : Civil society groups from across the globe on Monday demanded from the world leaders at the 22nd Climate Change Conference (COP22) a halt to all fossil fuel extraction and making an urgent transition to clean energy. A coalition of over 375 organisations delivered a letter to global leaders with an urgent demand for climate action: No new fossil fuel development. "Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is a matter of equity and essential to contain harmful climate impacts. When celebrating the Paris Agreement at COP22, government leaders must commit to take more action and ramp up finance for poorer countries," said Sven Harmeling, Climate Change Advocacy Coordinator of CARE International. According to experts, the going back on the agreement's pollution-cutting pledges leaves the planet on track for three degree Celsius temperature rise, which could inflict catastrophic damage on vulnerable communities and ecosystems. But leaders said this demand could not happen immediately. "Their (activists) concerns are appreciated but when we are making policies of country or world, you can't think like an activist, have to have a holistic approach. Can't stop all the machines or railways. We are thinking of a broader solution," Indian Environment Minister Anil Dave said here. Environment organisations are demanding that the COP22 must reinforce Paris Agreement goal and the need for enhanced action as a matter of survival for vulnerable countries. A report released here said that a recent Oil Change International study found that just the reserves in currently operating gas and oilfields alone, even without coal, would take the planet dangerously beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. "Muslim countries and communities must take climate action at the local and global level to implement their faith teaching by transitioning from fossil fuel based to clean energy based development," said Nana Firman, Co-coordinator of the Global Muslim Climate Network (GMCN). "It is crucial to build strong coordination and collaboration between Muslim nations, and to accelerate the increase of renewable into their national energy-mix in order to ensure justice in achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit," he said. Oil Change International shows that operating coal, oil and gas projects contain enough carbon pollution to push the planet beyond the red lines of warming laid down in Paris and has made an urgent call for renewable energy. "In light of the current political climate hovering over the climate talks, I think it is now more urgent than ever to move forward with our common 100 per cent renewable energy agenda," said Climate Action Network's Executive Director Wael Hmaidan. Activists said that governments must now put their Paris pledges into action -- and action means no more room for new fossil fuel projects. At COP22, India has projected its ambitious solar power and renewable energy plans and commitment to become 100 per cent electric vehicle nation by 2030. The renewable project at Tamil Nadu on completion will become world's second largest and one of the world's largest onshore wind farm. India's commitment is being lauded as it embarks on its plan to deploy 100 GW of solar power by 2022. However, India is still powered by coal with more than 60 per cent of its power coming from coal based power plants. India claims of being on a transition path and things would fall in place even before 2020-22, as it has set to achieve 175 GW of power by clean energy, 100 GW of which has to be solar. (Kushagra Dixit is at COP22 in Marrakech. He can be reached at kushagra.d@ians.in) Aleppo, Nov 14 : Over dozen of religiously devout Shia militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, three Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers and dozens of Iranian militiamen have died in recent clashes in Syrias northwestern Aleppo province, according to media reports from the region. Hadi Zahid, a commander of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Zaikr Hussein of the Special Units and Mohamm Ali Mohammed Hosseini, a commander of the Commandos Unit were killed in the recent Aleppo clashes, reported al-Arabiya satellite TV. The new casualties follow the killing of Iran's state television reporter, Mohsin Khozaia in Aleppo on Saturday, al-Arabiya said. Khozaia been criticized for inciting sectarianism in his journalism. Meanwhile, rebels in the neighbouring Syrian province of Idlib released a video showing an attack targeting a group of Iranian militias with a thermal rocket killing and injuring scores of them. More than 3,000 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces have been killed in Syria, according to Iranian Farsi language media outlets. On Sunday, prosecutors questioned de facto Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong, SK chairman Chey Tae-won, LG chief Koo Bon-moo, CJ boss Sohn Kyung-shik, and Hanjin chairman Cho Yang-ho. Lotte chairman Shin Dong-bin escaped questioning because he was away in Japan. Prosecutors over the weekend grilled some of the country's richest tycoons on suspicion that they bribed President Park Geun-hye in return for favors in a widening influence-peddling scandal involving Park's close friend Choi Soon-sil. Evidence suggests that Park met all of the tycoons one-to-one on July 24-25 last year, when she leaned on them to donate vast sums to Choi Soon-sil's dubious Mir and K-Sports foundations and was given "wish lists" of favors in return. Hanjin chairman Cho Yang-ho was questioned over rumors that he lost his chairmanship of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics Organizing Committee because he had rubbed Choi up the wrong way. The conglomerates claim they merely made philanthropic donations to the two dodgy nonprofits under pressure from Park and her office and deny bribery. But mounting testimony suggests that the wish lists were bounced to-and-fro between the conglomerates and the presidential office, though conglomerates were apparently warned by the Federation of Korean Industries to shred the evidence. The FKI was tasked with collecting the donations. The timing of the closed-door questioning on Saturday raised some eyebrows because it coincided with a million-strong march on Cheong Wa Dae, with critics saying the tycoons were given an easy ride and kept out of the glare of media attention. Prosecutors reportedly allowed them to use an emergency elevator in the underground parking lot of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office so that they could not be seen publicly. But prosecutors said they had to get their questioning in over the weekend before they confront the president on Tuesday or Wednesday. "No schedule had been drawn up for the grilling of the business leaders until Friday, but they cleared their diaries so we could question them over the weekend," a prosecutor said. They are only being treated as witnesses for now. Ahmedabad, Nov 14 : The demonetised 500- and 1,000-rupee currency notes worth Rs 4.45 crore have been seized from three separate places in the state, the state police said on Monday. Acting on a tip-off on Monday, the police intercepted a mini truck in Rajkot district and seized 10 bags full of demonetised high-value currency notes with a face value of Rs 2.5 crore from four persons. The truck belonged to a local pump manufacturing company, which was allegedly taking the cash to its owner's residence at Menderna. The cash was handed over to the Income Tax Department for further investigation, the police said. A team from Jetpur police station in the same district nabbed two persons from a car with cash worth Rs 50 lakh in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. Such notes worth around Rs 1.45 crore were also seized by the police from two different places in Narmada and Vadodara districts on Sunday. Two persons were also arrested. Patna, Nov 14 : On the first day of his 'Lok Samvad' programme, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday made it clear that total prohibition with the stringent new Bihar Excise & Prohibition Act, 2016, will continue in the state, an official said. Principal Excise Secretary Amir Subhani told media here that Nitish Kumar interacted with 37 persons on Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016 during the programme. "Interaction was positive with several people coming up with suggestions," he said. Subhani said hundreds of people have also sent their feedback on prohibition by e-mails, SMSes and letters to the state government. According to officials present at the programme, Nitish Kumar said the government will not compromise on the stringent provisions meant to punish violators of total prohibition as "consuming liquor and its manufacturing are not fundamental rights". Officials said Nitish Kumar told people that he strongly believes in having discussion and debate on any issue with them. He reiterated that over 16,000 people, mostly those engaged in manufacturing illicit liquor, have been arrested and sent to jail for violating the prohibition that came into effect in April 2016. NItish Kumar also said that he is against innocent being harassed, arrested and punished under the stringent prohibition law. Excise Minister Abdul Jalil Mastan said there will be no relief to violators of prohibition. "Some people have demanded more stringent provisions and increase of imprisonment term against violators of prohibition," he said after interacting with the people. However, some people have suggested that Nitish Kumar-led government should amend the act. "They have suggested to change the provisions like all adult members of the family would be arrested if liquor is found stored in any household and collective fine will be imposed on the village." The Patna High Court, on September 30, quashed the April 5 notification of the state government banning consumption and sale of alcohol in the state, saying it was ultra vires to the constitution. Later, the state government moved the apex court which put the HC order on nold on October 7. The matter is likely to be heard on December 12. China has overtaken the U.S. as the top destination for Koreans studying overseas. According to the Education Ministry, 66,672 Koreans were attending schools in China as of April 1, accounting for 29.8 percent of Koreans studying abroad. Some 63,710 Korean students, or 28.5 percent, were at U.S. schools. In 2009, the number of Korean students heading to China passed the 60,000 mark for the first time. This year's total marked an increase of 3,749 over 2015. By contrast, the number of Koreans studying in the U.S. has been on the decline since reaching a peak of 75,065 in 2010. The figure for this year was down by 4,395 on-year. Of those studying in China, 35 percent were attending a university or graduate school. The rest were there for some other purpose, such as learning Chinese -- in stark contrast to their counterparts in the U.S., some 82 percent of whom went there to earn a degree. Australia was the third-most popular destination among Koreans studying overseas, chosen by 7.3 percent, followed by Japan (6.8 percent), the U.K. (5.3 percent), and Canada (4.9 percent). Aero & Marine Tax Professionals Obtains Saves Owner $25,000.00 We know the workings of the State Board of Equalization and the laws inside and out. With this knowledge, we can be efficient at every step, and thats why our case record is perfect. Aero & Marine Tax Professionals, a professional tax firm specializing in sales and use tax exemptions for aircraft and vessels in California, assisted Thomas Joy, a rental business owner, in supporting a claim for a use tax exemption on the purchase of a Diamond DA40. He saved $25,000.00 in aircraft tax. Thomas had this to say: We purchased the aircraft to help expend our rental business outside of California to places we felt had a higher potential for asset depreciation. Working with Aero and Marine went very well. They made it clear what I needed to do before I took delivery, and during the 6-month wait period. There was never any lack of clarity. The whole process ended much sooner than I thought. I thought it would take several months before I got a judgement from the State Board of Equalization, but it seems it only took a couple of weeks. I would recommend Aero and Marine to others. Tom Alston, president of Aero & Marine Tax Professionals, stated: We pride ourselves on efficiency. That is the difference between when we go in on a case, versus someone who doesnt know this field but may be a tax or accounts specialist. We know the workings of the State Board of Equalization and the laws inside and out. With this knowledge, we can be efficient at every step, and thats why our case record is perfect. Mr. Tom Alston will be sharing some of his insights and tips during an upcoming webinar. Registration is FREE: http://bit.ly/2fShHlz Aero and Marine Tax Professionals shows purchasers how to avoid sales tax, specifically how to avoid aircraft tax and vessel tax in California and to make certain the full value of their aircraft, vehicle or vessel goes into their pocket--not the government's. They have successfully filed hundreds of tax returns with the California State Board of Equalization. Mr. Alston has also published many articles on sales and use tax. His blog can be seen at http://www.aeromarinetaxpros.com/aero/articles AERO & MARINE TAX PROFESSIONALS shows purchasers how to avoid California aircraft or vessel sales and use tax, and to make certain the full value of their next aircraft, vehicle, or vessel goes into their pocketnot the governments. They have successfully filed hundreds of tax returns with the California State Board of Equalization. Mr. Alston has also published many articles on sales and use tax. Thomas A. Alston President and CEO AERO & MARINE TAX PROFESSIONALS 8758 Freesia Drive Elk Grove, CA 95624 916-691-9192 ext 108 916-691-9185 Fax http://www.aeromarinetaxpros.com https://www.facebook.com/AeroMarineTaxPros https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasaalston https://www.youtube.com/user/CAAircraftSalesTax AllGoVision, a leading provider of Video Analytics software for Surveillance applications, announced today that it has received fresh funding to support its aggressive growth plans. The lead investors are Ashwin Amarapur and K Srinivasan. The funding will be used to increase its market presence across the world as well as to bolster the R&D in advanced video analytics. AllGoVision also announced that Mr. Raghavan Subramanian, a veteran in video signal processing and embedded technology, has joined as the CTO of the company. AllGoVision, which was earlier part of AllGo Embedded Systems Pvt. Ltd. is now an independent company AllGoVision Technologies Pvt. Ltd. AllGoVision is headed by Ashwin Amarapur who started this group in AllGo Embedded Systems and steered it to be a leading provider of Video Analytics. Mr. K Srinivasan, who founded and led to a successful exit of AllGo Embedded Systems, is part of the AllGoVision board. AllGoVision makes Advanced Video Analytics Solutions with applications in Intelligent Traffic Surveillance, Crowd Management, Perimeter Protection, Suspicious Incidences Detection, Retail Intelligence, Facial Recognition and Multi Camera Tracking. AllGoVisions primary focus is to provide solutions with high reliability and accuracy. We will be investing in incorporating advancements in Machine Learning to provide accurate and comprehensive video analytics solution. AllGoVision is Open Platform so that it can be integrated with any Surveillance System. It already provides 10+ VMS integrations including all leading players such as Milestone, Genetec, etc. We will be focusing on 10% Human Intelligence and 90% Machine Intelligence in Video Surveillance , said Ashwin Amarapur, CEO, AllGoVision Technologies Pvt. Ltd. About AllGoVision: AllGoVision Technologies provides leading and fast growing Open Platform Video Analytics solutions. AllGoVision software product is sold in 30+ countries through 100+ channel partners. It is the No. 1 Video Analytics brand in India. AllGoVision has won the Most Innovative and High Potential product award from Nasscom and has been profiled in reports by Research and Markets. AllGoVision Video Analytics Software is equipped with a total of 50 plus basic and advanced Video Analytics features and provides real time video intelligence for security and business intelligence. AllGoVision Technologies is headquartered in Bangalore, with presence in United States, UK, Korea and Dubai. Please visit http://www.allgovision.com for more details. Contact: contact(at)allgovision(dot)com Dr. DeWitt Wilkerson Inducted as AAOSH President Dentistrys role in patients overall health continues to grow. The oral cavity is a window into total health and patients often see their dentist more regularly than their physician. As Witt says, lets not just save a smile, lets save a life DeWitt Wilkerson, DMD was inducted as President of the American Academy of Oral Systemic Health at the annual AAOSH meeting on September 17, 2016 in Orlando, Fla. Dr. Wilkerson is the Director of Dental Medicine and Senior Faculty member at The Dawson Academy. Joan Forrest, President and CEO of The Dawson Academy said, Witt Wilkerson brings his experiences in organized dentistry, particularly in his past role as President of the American Equilibration Society, to AAOSH. His leadership is sure to propel AAOSH to the next level as this young organization continues to grow. When asked about his new role within AAOSH Dr. Wilkerson said, Im excited, through my leadership opportunity in AAOSH, to be able to encourage dental teams and patients to jump aboard an important national movement. He also shared, The field of dentistry will soon be experiencing a dramatic shift in emphasis, especially related to two topics: the importance of airway evaluation and management in the dental office and the critical role of systemic inflammation as it relates to periodontal disease, airway disorders, healing, etc. Forrest adds, Dentistrys role in patients overall health continues to grow. The oral cavity is a window into total health and patients often see their dentist more regularly than their physician. As Witt says, lets not just save a smile, lets save a life.' " The mission of the American Academy of Oral Systemic Health is to create a network of dedicated health care leaders working to change professional and public behaviors and address the importance of oral health as it relates to whole body health. Dr. Wilkerson shares some of his own knowledge and experience on the topics of disordered breathing, sleep apnea, systemic inflammation, nutrition and more at upcoming Dawson Academy courses. You can find out more information about those courses at https://thedawsonacademy.com/electives. About The Dawson Academy The Dawson Academy is an international provider of science-based dental continuing education, teaching dentists to comprehensively diagnose and treat dental problems with excellence and integrity. The Academy has taught dental courses to the dental industry for over 35 years and is dedicated to teaching the principles and skills necessary for the successful practice of complete, quality, and predictable dentistry. The Dawson Academys goal is to make good dentists even better." "Transactions like this allow us to scale quickly, as Renters Warehouse now manages almost 1000 properties in Las Vegas, says Kevin Ortner, CEO of Renters Warehouse. Renters Warehouse is proud to announce the acquisition of Rockbridge Groups Las Vegas operations, bringing 811 new properties under the Renters Warehouse umbrella. This acquisition gives Renters Warehouse a huge presence in the Las Vegas market, a hotspot for property investors where nearly half of residents are renters. "Transactions like this allow us to scale quickly, as Renters Warehouse now manages almost 1000 properties in Las Vegas, says Kevin Ortner, CEO of Renters Warehouse. It gives us a larger footprint in Las Vegas, which has been a big market for investors for more than a decade. On a broader scale, it also helps us expand our west coast operations significantly." Renters Warehouse is one of the largest, best reviewed and most awarded residential property management companies in the U.S., managing more than 17,000 homes for over 12,000 investors across the country, and about $3 billion worth of residential real estate. Renters Warehouse is also now investing behind its new Portfolio Services Division that uniquely serves larger, mid- to institutional-level real estate investors with both centralized services and local market expertise and staff. "The acquisition of Rockbridge and seamlessly integrating 811 units into our system at once proves once again the power of our centralized service offering, says Ortner. Acquiring Rockbridge demonstrates our ability to execute on our rapid expansion and growth plans. Our Acquisitions and Portfolio Services division, led by Anthony Cazazian, will be busy in 2017 continuing to grow the Renters Warehouse footprint." Mike Ankoviak, Market Leader for Renters Warehouse in Las Vegas, says the Rockbridge acquisition is a sign of things to come, while the level of individualized service and value that Renters Warehouse brings to the local level will never change . Investors from around the country and globe have a presence in the single-family home market in Las Vegas, so this takeover positions us for tremendous future growth, he says. We are pleased to have property owners with the Rockbridge Group join the Renters Warehouse family and look forward to providing them with our five-star management services. Las Vegas was among the hardest hit areas of the country during the 2008 recession. In response, investors flocked to the city, scooping up homes, and pushing prices up at one of the fastest rates nationally. A recent Associated Press story points out that nearly half of Las Vegas now rents, compared with less than 40 percent a decade ago. Renters Warehouse is the ideal choice for large and mom and pop property investors alike, bringing professional, scalable and efficient single-property management solutions with both centralized services and local market expertise and staff. Visit http://www.renterswarehouse.com to find out more about our signature Free Home Rental Price Analysis, Free 18-month Tenant Warranty, and low, flat rate 24/7 Property Management at just $89 per month in Las Vegas. -30- About Renters Warehouse Renters Warehouse is one of the fastest growing and highest reviewed residential property management companies in America, and the largest in Minnesota. Backed by growth equity investor and majority stakeholder Northern Pacific Group, and under the leadership of President and CEO Kevin Ortner, Renters Warehouse now manages more than $3 billion in residential real estate, servicing 12,000+ investors across 17,000+ residential homes in 32 markets and 18 states. NPG Managing Partner Scott Honour, who in 1999 was a founder of YapStone, a leading online rental property payment service provider, serves as Chairman. Renters Warehouse expertly serves everyday single-property homeowners as well as real estate investors. In 2015, the company officially trademarked the term Rent Estate to redefine the entire SFR (Single Family Rental) industry as more traditional real estate gives way to this new lucrative asset. Through their dedicated Portfolio Services Division led by Chief Investment Officer Anthony Cazazian, the company also brings professional, scalable and efficient single property management solutions to investment portfolios with both centralized services and local market expertise and staff. Not only has Renters Warehouse received the prestigious honor of being included on the Inc. 500 | 5000 list of fastest-growing privately held companies in America seven consecutive years in a row, it was also named one of the Best Places to Work in Minnesota (where they are headquartered) by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The company was also honored as a best place to work in Arizona (a centralized corporate services center) by the Phoenix Business Journal in 2013 and 2014, and achieved a spot on the prestigious 2016 Top Companies to Work for in AZ list. Nationwide, Renters Warehouse has been honored as one of America's "Best Places to Work" in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016 by Outside Magazine. Recognized as pioneers in real estate, business management and innovation, Renters Warehouse has been awarded 22 Business Stevie Awards both internationally and stateside. In 2016, Morningstar Credit Ratings, LLC, a nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO) offering a wide array of services including operational risk assessments, assigned its MOR RV2 residential-vendor ranking to Renters Warehouse as a residential property manager, indicating that the company demonstrates proficiency in managing key areas of operational risk. This unique Career College Fair, organized by Sacramento Ultrasound Institute, in collaboration with 5 private post-secondary schools & SETA, will bring together multiple career colleges on SUI's campus. The fair will share more than 15 career programs with the local community, high school guidance counselors and VA representatives from San Juan Unified School District and Sacramento Unified School District. In addition, the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency (SETA), a joint powers agency of the City and County of Sacramento, will provide funding opportunities for qualified students. The aim is to reach out to as many students as possible to provide them with resources that can move them to real jobs in 2 years and positively change the lives of many. The Career College Fair of Private Post Secondary Schools also aims to create strategic alliance with high-school guidance counselors to equip them with ample opportunities, and to help them help their students find the right path. PARTICIPATING COLLEGES Sacramento Ultrasound Institute, Asher College, UNITEK, Blake Austin College and California College of Ayurveda are the participating colleges that will do live Q&A with the local community, as well as the local counselors. Recent research by Wonderlic (available upon request) shows that high school guidance counselors have expressed a need to find out more about careers opportunities available via private post-secondary school education. This initiative is designed to close that gap to increase student success and continued education for more students. THE 3 BIG WHYS OF THE CAREER COLLEGE FAIR To share 15+ college programs that can result in real jobs in 2 years. To create strategic partnerships with high schools for increased awareness on career opportunities To increase student enrollment and create strong workforce. Its about creating partnerships that can create long-lasting change in many lives through the resources that will be shared at this unique fair, says SUI Development Director Anush Gagua. Below is the list of various career programs, to be presented at the 2016 Career College Fair by Private Post Secondary Schools in and near Sacramento: MRI Degree, Diagnostic Medical Sonography, Echocardiography, Dental Assistant Program, IT, Office Administration, Medical Coding and Billing, Ayurvedic Health Counselor, Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist, Ayurvedic Doctor, Nursing Program, Clinical Medical Assisting with Phlebotomy, Cosmetology, Esthetics Nail Art, Pro Make-up Artistry and Advanced Therapeutic Massage. The participating schools came together after the 2016 CAPPS conference, where Republican Congresswoman Loretta Sanches in her address to California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools said: "You move people into real jobs. You are needed more than ever." ABOUT ORGANIZER SACRAMENTO ULTRASOUND INSTITUTE Sacramento Ultrasound Institute (SUI) is known as the ultimate school in Sacramento for building a career in the growing field of Diagnostic Medical Health in only 18 -24 months. SUI is accredited by ABHES, the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools and is a member of CAPPS. The Diagnostic Medical Sonography Program at SUI has been preparing general sonographers for the past 15 years now. The school also prepares MRI technicians and Echo-cardiographers. In fact, SUI is the only private postsecondary school in Sacramento that offers a Degree in MRI and Cardiovascular/echo Sonography. The school also provides Federal Financial Aid and secures clinical sites for its students. SUI students upon completion are eligible and ready to take their ARDMS & ARRT exams. The school takes pride in moving students to high-paying jobs. According to the 2015 data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the annual wage mean for the Diagnostic medical sonographers in California is $95,000, and the median salary for MRI Technologists in California is $81,220. Find out more at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Pt6EXPaoQ Seremedi, Inc., the digital health leader and resident company of JLABS @ TMC, is proud today to announce its CareScriptions patient care platform has been selected as one of the 2016 finalists for the MEDICA World App Competition. Seremedi is one of only two companies selected from the U.S for this competition which is part of MEDICA World, the worlds leading healthcare conference for the medical industry. The competition is focused on identifying the best Medical Mobile Solution intended for use by care teams as they implement new mobile patient care models that provides efficient, effective care across the continuum. Seremedi will present its solution November 16 in Germany. CareScriptions is a perfect fit for this category and we are delighted to represent the U.S. with this prestigious honor, said Kim Bond Evans, CEO of Seremedi. Patients who have major procedures experience poor outcomes after discharge when their care team has little to no access to data informing them of success of recovery. Poor care coordination that is disconnected causes patients to slip through the cracks, and many get worse, not better, sometimes resulting in death. Historically, patients are discharged and disconnected from the care team, making it difficult for healthcare professionals to intervene when patients experience difficulties. Now, with CareScriptions, all essential elements for effective patient care coordination are integrated for best outcomes. CareScriptions is preferred by healthcare organizations for its unique approach to patient care which delights both care team and patient - integrating the essential care capabilities enabling care teams to instantly receive critical patient status information when they want it, how they want it. Communicating with patients is triggered in real-time using a patients media of choice -providing them with a convenient, easy to use application that assists recovery. CareScriptions minimizes adverse events, reduces readmission rates, improves efficiency, enhances patient recovery and improves the clinician-patient relationship. About the MEDICA World App Competition (#5MAC16) The MEDICA World App competition finalists will be provided the opportunity to present their solutions at the MEDICA Trade Fair, being held in Dusseldorf Germany November 14 17. The presentations will take place on November 16 live on stage at the MEDICA Connected Healthcare Forum in Hall 15. More information on the competition can be found at the MEDICA website. This is the world's largest competition of this kind, explains Mark Wachter, organizer of the MEDICA World App Competition. The organizers are looking for business-oriented solutions that help groups of doctors, hospitals or medical teams with simplifying and streamlining daily caring for patients. For more, follow Mark at @_mistermobile About Seremedi Seremedi is a Houston-based digital health leader and resident company of JLABS @ TMC. Its CareScriptions integrated mobile patient care platform helps medical professionals improve the perioperative care experience by connecting patients and care teams to deliver critical patient data in real-time, increasing visibility into patient preparation and recovery, and enabling the best recovery outcomes while minimizing avoidable risks and costs. More informed, invested and connected patient-physician teams working together result in better outcomes for the patient, and a decrease in major surgery related complications, readmissions and costs. CareScriptions delivers collaborative connected care supporting the doctor-patient commitment to work together through patient recovery. Seremedi is a leading technology partner in Perioperative Care and proud to present this discussion on Enhanced Recovery and the Perioperative Surgical Home. For more, see http://www.seremedi.com or follow @CareScriptions. Mujeres De La Tierra (Women of the Earth) hosted their annual Dia De Los Muertos Benefit on November 5, 2016 and honored Maria Mehranian, Managing Partner and Chief Financial Officer of Cordoba Corporation with the Healer of La Madre Tierra Award. The mission of the non-profit is to inspire, motivate and engage women and their children to take ownership of neighborhood issues and lead the local community. The Healer of La Madre Tierra Award is an award presented by Mujeres de la Tierra to individuals for longstanding efforts to protect natural resources while addressing issues related to education and jobs. For eight years, Maria Mehranian served on the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LAWQCB) where, as Chair of the Board, she led changes in the culture of the agency to reflect equity and fairness for inland residents and cities in the conduct of the Boards business, and encouraged greater access. These efforts will have a lasting impact in the preservation of the environment and local economy. "It is incredibly important to me that we clean our regions waterways, and that we better manage our limited supply. Water is a precious resource and should be managed in an integrated regional manner. "-Maria Mehranian Maria is Managing Partner and Chief Financial Officer of Cordoba Corporation, a nationally recognized engineering, program and construction management firm specializing in transportation, education, water and energy infrastructure. For over 30 years, she has provided the leadership and vision to help grow Cordoba Corporation into one of the top firms of its kind, providing services to large public infrastructure projects throughout the western United States. Maria served on the Los Angeles Water Quality Control Board from 2008 until 2016, having been appointed by Governor Brown for two consecutive terms and chairing the Board in both 2012 and 2013. She has participated on a number of water policy panels and served as guest lecturer at universities on water quality and supply issues. Property owners will soon begin receiving official looking offers and think they cant negotiate them, said NC Eminent Domain Attorney Stan Abrams. More than 250 Wake County property owners affected by the upcoming N.C. 540 Extension can get guidance at a no-cost educational seminar hosted by the NC Eminent Domain Law Firm on Thursday, November 17th at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Raleigh. The featured speaker, Stan Abrams, is a former NCDOT attorney. He will share what he and firm colleague, Jason Campbell, also a former NCDOT attorney, saw while working for the NCDOT. Campbell, incidentally, was one of the early attorneys during the initial N.C. 540 cases a decade ago. The seminar is free and open to the public. Seminar attendees will hear what these attorneys learned at the NCDOT that could potentially help property owners try to maximize their compensation, and how they try to ensure owners are treated fairly during the negotiation process. The negotiation process is where Ive seen the NCDOT sometimes try to downplay the potential harm land takings may cause the property owners, Campbell said. Former NCDOT Attorneys Share Negotiation Strategies Property owners will soon begin receiving official looking offers and think they cant negotiate them, Abrams said. Just like any other buyer, they can and probably should negotiate. But they shouldnt settle for a bad deal just because they werent offered more initially. Based on my experience, the NCDOT will sometimes stop negotiating even when it is obvious the property owners may be owed more. Some property owners dont realize they can fight for more even after the NCDOT stops negotiating. Campbell emphasized that the NCDOTs negotiators do so hundreds of times a year compared to the property owners probability of a first and only eminent domain negotiation. He said, The NCDOTs negotiators are trained and backed by experienced state attorneys. What Ive seen happen is the property owner, not knowing eminent domain law, may base their claim for more compensation on things the NCDOT does not legally have to pay for. Worse, they may take the NCDOTs word on what they do have to pay for. It is similar to an inexperienced person negotiating for their first car. Who do you think is more likely to get the better deal? N.C. 540 Extension Right-of-Way Seminar Topics The NCDOT is taking steps to acquire properties right now, Abrams said. We want property and business owners to know enough about the eminent domain negotiation process and their rights to be able to ask the essential questions that could help them avoid common pitfalls, like not fully understanding what the NCDOT is really taking and other issues that could potentially impact the amount of just compensation. According to the law firm one strategy is through the condemnation deposit. A condemnation deposit is a check made out to the property owner that, by law, the NCDOT must deposit with the courts on the property owners behalf. Many property owners simply accept this deposit check. Yet, a 2015 study by the North Carolina legislature showed that property owners who did not accept the NCDOTs condemnation deposit ended up getting 85% more for their property, on average.* Seminar topics generally include: Wake County Property Owners in the Way of Triangle Expressway Extension Homes and businesses from N.C. 55 in Holly Springs to U.S. 401 at Wake Tech will be in jeopardy for condemnation by the state for the expressway extension. NCDOT documents the law firm has obtained show more than $250 million has been earmarked for these properties. Land Taking Seminar Date, Time, Location Date: Thursday, November 17th Time: 7 p.m. Place: Holiday Inn Express & Suites 3741 Thistledown Drive Raleigh, NC 27606 For more information about the meeting, please call the NC Eminent Domain Law Firm at 1-877-393-4990. *Source: NC Legislature (2015), House Bill 127: DOT Condemnation Changes Fiscal Analysis Memorandum (Section 2). Fiscal Research Division. About the NC Eminent Domain Law Firm : A division of the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin, the NC Eminent Domain Law Firm is dedicated solely to representing property owners throughout North Carolina, who may be impacted by eminent domain law. The NC Eminent Domain Law Firm is led by attorneys Stan Abrams and Jason Campbell, both of whom previously worked as Assistant Attorneys General for the North Carolina Department of Justice in the Transportation Section, where they litigated condemnation cases for the NCDOT. They have over 25 years of combined experience working exclusively on eminent domain cases. The Law Offices of James Scott Farrin has the legal resources of 37 attorneys and is based in Durham, North Carolina, with offices throughout the state to serve its clients. Contact Information: Stan Abrams 1-877-393-4990 280 South Mangum Street Suite 400 Durham, NC 27701 We are extremely excited to have Jeff as a permanent part of the FPC corporate team. Jeff will be instrumental in providing that support and taking us to the next level. Jeff brings over 20 years of sales, recruiting and franchise development experience in various industries to the organization. Jeff will work closely with existing and new franchisees and their consultants to drive innovation, revenue growth and profitability. Jeff started with FPC ten years ago by opening his own recruiting office called FPC of New York City. He was recognized as one of the top ten producing owners every year from 2010-2015. Jeff is highly regarded by his peers for his ability to implement cutting edge techniques while staying true to traditional recruiting methods and relationship development. In 2012, in addition to managing his recruiting operation, Jeff was made EVP and Chief Development Officer for FPC. This gave him the opportunity to travel around the country to meet with franchisees and train recruiters. Prior to joining FPC Jeff held senior level sales and business development roles with Tribune Corporation, Careerbuilder.com and Update Legal Staffing. On why he chose to focus all of his efforts on developing the franchise operations: When I first joined the company in 2007 we made a conscious decision that I would spend a significant amount of time learning the business exactly the way each of our franchisees do from the ground up. I am extremely excited to now be able to focus all of my time on growing the FPC system by leveraging all of the experience Ive gained over the past ten years. Its a great time get into the recruiting business because of the demand from companies around the country for top-notch, highly skilled talent. Our model offers people looking for a career change an opportunity to use their skills and experience to build their own business and control their future. said Jeff Herzog. We are extremely excited to have Jeff as a permanent part of the FPC corporate team. His sales & recruiting background, training experience, personality and professionalism will help new offices get off to a fast start and existing offices to reach new heights. Its an exciting time to be in the recruiting business and it is critical that we provide the right level of support and innovation to our system of offices. Jeff will be instrumental in providing that support and taking us to the next level. said Ron Herzog, CEO of FFC, the franchisor of FPC. About FPC FPC is a leading national executive search firm comprised of more than 65 franchise offices. FPC offers job seekers access to its nationwide network of professional executive recruiters and job opportunities in many industries and disciplines as well as providing job search information and assistance. The company has been providing win-win recruiting solutions since 1959. Advocates for both clients and candidates, FPC recruiters are committed to bringing together the right individual with the right opportunity. For further information about FPC, call Samirat Rivers, Director Marketing & Technology at 800-886-7839 or email to srivers@fpcnational.com or visit us at http://www.fpcnational.com or http://www.fpcfranchise.com. The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea has crossed the 30,000 mark. The Unification Ministry on Sunday said the total now stands at 30,005 after seven arrived here via a third country that afternoon. The first defector arrived in South Korea in June 1962, and their number exceeded 10,000 in February 2006 and 20,000 mark in November 2010, an exponential curve. Defections declined after a peak of 2,914 in 2009 because surveillance was tightened, but this year 1,155 defectors arrived from January to October, up about 18 percent on-year. The numbers ballooned during the famine of the 1990s, when more than a million North Koreans starved to death. At the time they fled hunger, but now more and more cite disaffection with the regime. More and more members of the elite make their way to the South. Some 66.8 percent said they were upper or middle class when in the North in 2014-2016, up from 23.5 percent in 1999-2001. "Their children's education and future are main reasons for officials to flee the North," a ministry official said. "North Korean officials stationed overseas are most worried about orders from Pyongyang to return with their children who are studying in foreign countries," a source said. "Foreign-educated children will most likely to fail to adapt to a life in Pyongyang." Thrive Assisted Living & Memory Care in Naples, FL Estero, FL-based Fortress Ventures announced this week it is developing Thrive at Naples, a new innovative Senior Living Community in Naples, Florida. Atlanta-based Thrive Senior Living will operate the new community. Thrive at Naples will provide a unique and innovative approach to senior living. Focusing on resident engagement through connectivity in a resort-quality environment, Thrive at Naples will use a blend of technology, highly trained care teams and southern hospitality to create senior living experience like youve never seen before. Thrive at Naples will feature all of the amenities expected of todays senior living communities and also feature unexpected twists and one-of-a-kind offerings. The Wellness Center will feature advanced pneumatic fitness equipment designed for seniors, which have large touch- screen controls, and easy access for those with limited mobility. In addition, the Wellness Center will have a barre for balance and isometric strength training. Residents will be able to enjoy a relaxing lap in the pool, or work up a sweat in a water aerobics class. The 197-unit community will encourage residents to explore new endeavors as well as enjoy favorite pastimes. Social events will include evening matinees in the large movie theatre or afternoon happy hour out on the 2nd floor patio. Painting classes will be taught in the art studio and studies and educational events will be held in the Gathering place. The fully equipped salon will include massage room for added pampering and relaxation. Licensed as an assisted living community, Thrive at Naples will cater to seniors ranging from those who are completely independent, to those who need more care. Residents will have the freedom of independence, with caring, competent staff able to assist when needed. The dedicated Memory Care neighborhood will serve residents with varying levels of dementia, while encouraging a high quality of life to residents and their families. Thrive at Naples will present Technology with Purpose, technology designed to engage, protect, and empower residents, staff, and family members. Residents will access their suites using an advanced keyless entry system, eliminating the hassle and difficulty some seniors have with traditional keys. Additional security measures will help to ensure resident safety including security cameras, and exterior controlled access. Digital Signage throughout the community will encourage participation in events and social offerings. Thrive at Naples is located near the intersection of Pine Ridge Road and Livingston Road, the center of the rapidly growing Northeast side of Naples. The location offers easy access for family members and guests and many local offerings for community sponsored outings. Thrive at Naples is a Joint Venture between Fortress Ventures, Compass Real Estate and AIG Global Real Estate. Fortress Ventures is a real estate development company specializing in senior living communities throughout the United States. Compass Real Estate is an Atlanta- based private equity company that actively invests in all commercial property types and markets throughout the US. AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp., founded in 1987, comprises a group of international companies within AIG that invests in and actively manages real estate for clients and AIG member companies throughout the world. For more information, visit http://www.thriveatnaples.com or call (239) 294-1101. Penguin Computing, provider of high performance computing, enterprise data center and cloud solutions, today announced several important achievements of its Penguin Computing On-Demand (POD) HPC cloud service, including a recent 50 percent increase in capacity and plans to double PODs total capacity in Q1 2017. The upgrade will include new Intel Xeon processors and Intel Omni-Path architecture. Rapid demand for and growth in our POD business reflects the significant benefits customers are experiencing, particularly since we announced availability of the OCP-compliant Tundra platform on POD late last year, said Tom Coull, President and CEO, Penguin Computing. With the Tundra platform, our customers have greater capacity due to faster scaling combined with increased performance and streamlined costs. Tundra on POD also highlights the growth and maturing market role of open computing, with thousands of high-speed, cost-efficient cores available to meet customers needs for faster, easier deployment of capacity at a low cost. Additional POD momentum is manifested in Penguin Computings expansion to a new datacenter to meet the needs of PODs business growth, with additional geographic options under consideration. The company also added to its POD storage options, providing FrostByte with support for Lustre on POD. FrostByte is Penguin Computings recently announced scalable storage solution for high-performance enterprise applications, data intensive analytics and HPC clusters, providing higher speed parallel storage to POD customers. The popularity of Penguin Computings Scyld Cloud Workstation with POD customers is also driving POD business growth. Scyld Cloud Workstation provides secure, easy remote access to Linux and Windows workstation-class desktops through standard, modern web browsers, and eliminates the need for client-side installations and changes to firewall policies. It offers significant time savings by removing the requirement to download large data files, and moving pre- and post-processing to the cloud for highly efficient workflow. The company recently announced Scyld Cloud Workstation 3.0, which provides true multi-user remote desktop collaboration for cloud-based Linux and Windows desktops. Penguin Computing also announced Scyld Cloud Desktop, a non-GPU accelerated version of Scyld Cloud Workstation. The company will provide these desktops at no additional cost as a replacement for its free login nodes, giving all POD users access to a Linux desktop connected to the cluster fabric. Its expected to be available prior to SC16 in mid-November. Visit Penguin Computing at SC16 booth #817 during exhibit hours. About Penguin Computing Penguin Computing is one of the largest private suppliers of enterprise and high performance computing solutions in North America and has built and operates the leading specialized public HPC cloud service Penguin Computing On-Demand (POD). Penguin Computing pioneers the design, engineering, integration and delivering of solutions that are based on open architectures and comprise non-proprietary components from a variety of vendors. Penguin Computing is also one of a limited number of authorized Open Compute Project (OCP) solution providers leveraging this Facebook-led initiative to bring the most efficient open data center solutions to a broader market, and has announced the Tundra product line which applies the benefits of OCP to high performance computing. Penguin Computing has systems installed with more than 2,500 customers in 40 countries across eight major vertical markets. Visit http://www.penguincomputing.com to learn more about the company and follow @PenguinHPC on Twitter. Penguin Computing, Scyld ClusterWare, Scyld Insight, Scyld HCATM, Relion, Altus, Penguin Computing on Demand, POD, Tundra, Arctica and FrostByte are trademarks or registered trademarks of Penguin Computing, Inc. Contact: Phillip Bergman Viewstream 845-728-3984 pbergman(at)viewstream.com The National Bankruptcy Conference (NBC) announced today the election of Jane L. Vris as Chair and Prof. Randal C. Picker as Vice Chair of the Conference. Richard Levin, the outgoing Chair, said The leadership, energy and passion of these two esteemed bankruptcy experts will enable the Conference to continue its 80-year tradition of being a valuable resource to Congress on bankruptcy issues. We are pleased to introduce the following new Conference officers: Jane Lee Vris, General Counsel, Managing Director at Millstein & Co., L.P. in New York, NY Ms. Vris serves as General Counsel and Managing at Millstein & Co., LP. She brings nearly thirty-five years of experience as a restructuring lawyer to the firm, first as a Partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and more recently at Vinson & Elkins. At Millstein, she has participated in engagements for a number of clients, including the fiscal agent for Puerto Rico, counsel to an ad hoc group of senior secured creditors in the consolidated cases of Energy Futures Holdings and its subsidiaries, the UAW both in and out of court, companies in private exchange offers, and the largest creditor in CORE Medias chapter 11 case. Before joining Millstein, Ms. Vris advised boards, special committees, creditors, potential purchasers of assets from distressed companies, and equity investors in companies emerging from Chapter 11. Ms. Vriss prior clients have included Deutsche Bundesbank, the central bank of Germany; Huntsman as the stalking horse bidder in Tronox; Cereberus as the equity owner of Chrysler in its historic chapter 11 case; She has testified before Congress on bankruptcy matters, including resolution bills for systemically important financial institutions; previously chaired the Steering Committee of the NYC Bankruptcy Assistance Project; is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy where she currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors; was a contributing editor to Colliers, the leading treatise on US bankruptcy law, for nearly twenty years; has written on numerous bankruptcy issues; and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences and programs. She has been recognized in numerous publications as a leading bankruptcy professional, including Chambers and the International Whos Who of Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers. Ms. Vris has a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where she was managing editor of the NYU Law Review, and a B.A, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the first female officer elected to serve as Chair of the NBC in its over 80-year history. Prof. Randal C. Picker, Professor of Law at The University of Chicago in Chicago, IL Randal Picker is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law and the Ludwig & Hilde Wolf Teaching Scholar at The University of Chicago Law School. He is also Senior Fellow at The Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He graduated from the College of the University in 1980, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He then spent two years in the Department of Economics, where he was a Friedman Fellow, completing his doctoral course work and exams. He received a masters degree in 1982. Thereafter, he attended the Law School and graduated in 1985, cum laude. He is a member of the Order of the Coif. While at the Law School, Prof. Picker was an associate editor of the Law Review. After graduation, Prof. Picker clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then spent three years with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, where he worked in the areas of debt restructuring and corporate reorganizations in bankruptcy. He served as a commissioner to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and served as a member of the drafting committee to revise Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. He is the author of a casebook, Security Interests in Personal Property, on the subject. Prof. Picker does research in a wide variety of areas including antitrust, copyright, bankruptcy and tech policy and teaches in related areas. His online course, Internet Giants: The Law and Economics of Media Platforms, is available on the Coursera platform and has been seen by thousands of students around the world. He has been extensively involved in administrative matters at The University of Chicago and currently serves as Spokesperson of the Council. The NBC is a non-profit, non-partisan, self-supporting organization of approximately sixty lawyers, law professors and bankruptcy judges whose primary purpose is to advise Congress on the operation of bankruptcy and related laws and any proposed changes to those laws. The NBC was formed in the 1930s at the request of Congress to assist in the drafting of major Depression-era bankruptcy law amendments, ultimately resulting in the Chandler Act of 1938. The NBC has been a resource to Congress on every significant piece of bankruptcy legislation since that time. Please visit http://www.nationalbankruptcyconference.org for additional information on our work. OmniVere today announces it is becoming a member of Wolters Kluwers ELM Solutions Technology Alliance Program (TAP). TAP supports third-party delivery of applications and legal enterprise software integrations that will complement and enhance ELM Solutions suite of products, and leverage a holistic ecosystem approach including ELM Solutions Passport Platform and its supporting API. ELM Solutions increases legal department performance and enables more strategic management of matters, legal spend and legal risk. OmniVere was chosen as a TAP member for its strong technical expertise. OmniVere will collaborate with ELM Solutions to identify, build, and support integrations to provide communication between the various legal technology solutions found within corporate legal departments. Todays announcement with industry leader ELM Solutions represents a powerful opportunity for OmniVere to help clients significantly leverage their technology investments, said Tony Caputo, OmniVere CEO. By building these integrations for the ELM Solutions suite of products we enable legal professionals to harness information from various third party point-solutions to improve efficiency and profitability." Working with OmniVere allows our customers to assess and incorporate other adjacent technologies and workflows such as legal holds, contract management, or e-discovery into their platform. This is the cornerstone of our legal ecosystem approach said Barry Ader, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. OmniVere plays an important role in our growing TAP portfolio. Through comprehensive technology solutions, in-depth data and analytics, and professional services, Wolters Kluwers ELM Solutions enables legal and claims organizations to address the intricate complexities they face and ultimately make better business decisions. For more information about Wolters Kluwers ELM Solutions go to http://www.wkelmsolutions.com About OmniVere: OmniVere, LLC is a global services firm responding to the most difficult data risk management challenges. With decades of experience in all stages of the corporate data lifecycle, from pre-matter consulting through legal hold, trial and ultimate disposition of data, OmniVere is uniquely positioned to minimize corporate risk while delivering unparalleled efficiency before, during, and after legal, regulatory and compliance proceedings. The firm provides services to companies in the energy, financial services, healthcare, insurance, technology and government sectors and to their legal counsel. For more information about OmniVere go to http://www.omnivere.com or follow @OmniVere on Twitter. AWARE for All - Boston is a free clinical research education and health screening event On Thursday, December 1, the Greater Boston community will come together at AWARE for All - Boston to learn about the local clinical research environment. The AWARE for All program is a free educational event produced by the Boston-based non-profit Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP). The event provides valuable information and education about the clinical research process, new medical treatments under development and how to determine whether to participate in a clinical trial. The event also serves as a forum for open dialogue between patients, members of the public, health and research professionals. And patients and the public will have access to a number of free health screenings. This upcoming event is the ninth AWARE for All event held in the Boston area since 2003. Each event typically attracts 300 600 attendees. This years AWARE for All - Boston event will focus on oncology clinical trials and will begin with an overview in both English and Cantonese. Health screenings will include Blood Pressure, BMI, cholesterol, and memory and there will be flu vaccines available. Free dinner, prizes, and giveaways will also be provided. Funding for this event is provided by CISCRPs National AWARE sponsors EMD Serono, Inc., a subsidiary of Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany, and the Lupus Research Alliance, as well as Founding Sponsor Sanofi, and local sponsors Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center, the Massachusetts General Hospital Lazarex Cancer Center, the Office of Regulatory Affairs and Research Compliance at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Tufts CTSI. This year, CISCRP is thrilled to recognize Sanofi as AWARE for All Bostons Founding Sponsor. Sanofi has dedicated a great amount of resources and support for the development of the program. Joanne Lager, Head of Oncology Development at Sanofi, comments We are honored to be the Founding Sponsor of this clinical research education event. Sanofi is a global healthcare leader focused on patients' needs, so being part of this program is important for us to directly engage with and support the education of patients and the involvement of the community in research. Ken Getz, CISCRPs Founder and board chair said We are pleased to be back in Boston, our hometown, for the upcoming AWARE for All event. And were grateful for the support that we have received from all of our community and research sponsors. The Greater Boston area has one of the most active medical research communities in the world. Our educational event is internationally recognized and were very excited to be bringing health care providers, clinical research professionals and patients together once again. The event will be held from 5-8 pm at the Wolff Auditorium at Tufts Medical Center and is open to the public. Advanced registration is strongly encouraged and available at https://awareboston2016.eventbrite.com or by calling 1-877-MED-HERO (1-877-633-4376). ABOUT CISCRP: The Center for Information and Study (CISCRP) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to engaging the public and patients as partners in the clinical research process. CISCRP provides free education and outreach to the general public and patient communities. Visit http://www.CISCRP.org for more information or to support CISCRPs educational initiatives. Editors Note: Community and research partners include: ACRP New England, American Cancer Society, Boston University School of Medicine, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Clarion Healthcare, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, EMD Serono, Fenway Institute of Fenway Health, Harvard Catalyst, Harvard School of Public Health, Hummingbird IRB, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Massachusetts General Hospital, MassResearch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Quintiles, ResearchMatch, TargetCancer Foundation, Tufts Medical Center, Walgreens, and many other prominent community and research partners. On Sunday, November 6th, 2016, prior to the Rogers and Hammersteins South Pacific performance, the Annapolis Opera Company (AOC) honored Ms. Lucy Flade Libby who served as an army nurse in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Ms. Libby has also been a member of the Annapolis community for over 40 years. 1 North Wealth Management, a financial planning and investment advisory firm, located in Annapolis, was the sponsor for this special tribute to Ms. Libby. During Ms. Libbys military service during WWII she served as a nurse in Saipan, responsible for numerous wards and the hospital did not lose a single patient under her watch. Ms. Libby landed in Saipan during the bombing, treated soldiers during the island campaigns, including Iwo iJima and remained there until the wars end. According to Karen Swekel, General Manager of the AOC, Margo Cook, an investment advisor representative of 1North, was instrumental in introducing Ms. Libby to AOC President, Thomas DeKornfeld. Ms. Cook presented Ms. Libby with a proclamation, signed by Mayor Patelides, City of Annapolis, declaring November 6th, 2016 Lucy Flade Libby Day. At 1 North, we make it a priority to be involved in our community and contribute to charitable programs and events, especially when it comes to honoring our service men and women, veterans, and their families, noted Margo Cook, of 1 North Wealth Services. It was a true privilege to be a sponsor of this event. About 1 North Wealth Services 1 North Wealth Services is an investment advisory firm offering fee only financial planning and investment advice. The firm has worked with individuals, families and business owners seeking to achieve their financial goals and visions in the Annapolis area and along the East Coast for over 30 years. For more information about the firm, please visit http://www.1northwealthservices.com. TX360 was designed to help enterprise leaders and security professionals keep up with todays ever-changing threat environment and we continue to innovate based on our customers needs and feedback. Swan Island Networks, a leading provider of cloud-based situational intelligence software and services, today announced the availability of the newly upgraded TX360 platform. The product innovations in this TX360 upgrade enhance the ability of enterprise security and business continuity professionals to deliver their threat intelligence services quickly and flexibly. TX360 is the core situational awareness technology of the New York area Metropolitan Resilience Network and newly announced Global Resilience Network monitoring 107 global cities," per Bill Raisch, Executive Director of NYUs International Center for Emergency Preparedness (INTERCEP). Through our active collaboration with the TX360 team, we have built a robust and agile platform used by participants from hundreds of companies and other organizations. TX360 is an all-hazards threat monitoring and situational awareness service that enables highly secure and targeted delivery of critical information to security professionals and corporate leaders. A full suite of cloud-based intelligence management tools helps security and risk management teams identify and respond to emerging risks and threats, to protect their enterprises, assets, and people. The newly released Smart Alerting Queue allows for analysts to further improve the signal to noise ratio of collected intelligence. Automated filters and parameters can extract from the entire web of information, and an analyst can refine, select, and direct key content to specific recipients inside the organization. TX360 enables physical security teams to manage their Virtual Security Operations Centers (SOCs), offering highly secure, 24/7 monitoring of threats and intelligence via the cloud. Customizable TX360 Dashboards provide visual monitoring of real-time alerts and sharing of information throughout an organization, whether at a highly detailed level within security teams, or as snapshots for sharing with executives, global teams, and partners. Severe weather, 911 alerts, natural disasters, travel warnings, supply chain disruptions, electricity outages, cyber attacks, social media chatter, and more are all accessible via the high assurance TX360 service. Intelligence Channels and Dashboards provide the powerful tools that analysts and other security personnel need to extract and deliver targeted intelligence to the right people at the right time. The TX360 Channel gallery is comprised of existing public and private information sources, external news feeds, internal alerts and notifications, GPS feeds, social network monitoring, and more. In addition, security and risk organizations can build and curate their own internal galleries of custom Channels, relevant intelligence sources ideal for use and reuse in various Dashboards and Smart Alerts. TX360 was designed to help enterprise leaders and security professionals keep up with todays ever-changing threat environmentand we continue to innovate based on our customers needs and feedback; said Pete ODell, CEO/Founder of Swan Island Networks. Rapid innovation of our cloud-based platform with new capabilities helps customers cope with emerging threats and new intelligence sources. The TX360 platform is highly scalable and robust, optimized to leverage the Microsoft Azure cloud, supporting large enterprises and global operations with 99.9998% uptime. While similar enterprise systems are cumbersome, expensive to deploy, and require lengthy onboarding, configuration, and training TX360 is available on a subscription basis at a fraction of the cost. Customers can be up and running quickly at rates that scale to a companys needs, size, and budget. TX360 is available as an enterprise subscription service, and can be delivered as an OEM/white label offering or for integration into partner or customer solutions. It is currently used around the world and is ready to support a variety of security, risk, and resilience initiatives across multiple industries, giving security personnel, analysts, and risk managers quick access to the information sources and alerting services they need to share intelligence and react quickly to threats. About Swan Island Networks: Swan Island Networks provides cloud-based, rapidly deployable, situational awareness solutions and services for security and response teams in large enterprises and the public sector. Swan Islands TX360 platform is ideal for security and operational resilience and smart city initiatives, and integrates easily with incident management platforms, mass notification systems, and cyber security solutions. TX360 is the core technology for the Global Resilience Network, a consortium of leading international corporations and their senior professionals that have formed a trusted network to collaborate on and address operational risks. To learn more, visit swanislandnetworks.com or call 503-796-7926. Media Contact: Jacqueline Molli Swan Island Networks 503-796-7926 With Roav, weve made the smart driving experience, previously exclusive to high-end automotive brands, expandable and attainable for existing cars across America. Anker, a mobile charging technology firm, launched today the centerpiece of its Roav Smart Driving System: Roav Dashtop, a voice-controlled computer built for drivers that sits on the cars dashboard and assists the driver by projecting important information on its HUD (head-up display). Roav Dashtop is available now for pre-order on GoRoav.com. Roav is not another HUD, but a complete Smart Driving System that begins with the Roav Dashtop computer, said Steven Yang, CEO of Anker. "With Roav, weve made the smart driving experience, previously exclusive to high-end automotive brands, expandable and attainable for existing cars across America. Roav Dashtop is a standalone computer complete with 32GB of internal memory, a dual-core processor, and a HUD that projects information like speed, gas level and directions on its clear glass display. At the heart of Roavs innovation is its built-in 4G/Wi-Fi connectivity card, which allows Roav to connect to the internet independently. Roav Dashtop is constantly updated through 4G/LTE networks. This ensures that Roav will always have the latest traffic reports and use them to generate the most convenient route for the user, explained Yang. Conventional HUDs require a paired Bluetooth device to connect to the internet. This indirect connectivity limits functionalities and generates lag, which can result in incorrect directions or inconvenient delays for the driver. Roav Dashtop is also equipped with a revolutionary voice-control driving assistant powered by Nuance . This technology allows Roav to filter ambient sounds to receive and process the drivers voice commands, providing the most accurate response. This voice-control technology not only makes the driving experience more convenient, but also safer. With a simple command, drivers can simply ask for the fastest way home or the best restaurant nearby, and let Roav do the rest. All without lifting their hands from the wheel, said Yang. Roav Dashtop can read aloud any text messages received while driving. It limits text replies to autoreply messages which can only be configured before starting a ride. Customers can choose between two versions of Roav Dashtop, 4G or Wi-Fi, with a pre-order price of $299 and $399, respectively. Although Roav is compatible with any 4G sim card, those who purchase the 4G version will receive three free months of unlimited 4G data with Verizon LTE and the option to continue their subscription afterwards for an additional $9.99/month. Customers who prefer only Wi-Fi can use their phones as hotspots for Roav while driving, or update Roav Dashtop at home and use it in offline mode. Roav Dashtop features include: Navigation Live-traffic re-routing Live-traffic alerts Speed limit alerts Music streaming Calls Messages and notifications Trip statistics Mobile companion app Find my car Yang also announced the launch of the Roav Store for apps in early 2017. This will open the door for developers to expand the possibilities of smart driving and cater to certain commercial needs through customized applications. Roav Dashtop is the core of the Roav Smart Driving System, it is just phase one of the project. Phase two, launching in Summer of 2017, will introduce a series of dashcams with high-end models featuring ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistance System), a safety system that alerts the driver of possible dangers. These cameras with ADAS will feed Roav Dashtop and tell the driver if there are pedestrians too close to the car, if the car is invading the adjacent lane, or even alert the driver of potential collisions before they happen, said Yang. This type of technology can prevent accidents and save lives. Thats why we believe it should be available and attainable for all existing cars across America. Smart driving systems have been present in cars from brands like Lincoln, Audi, and BMW since 2013. These systems provide navigation and traffic information, use HUD to project the cars driving information and directions on the windshield, as well as use smart sensors around the car to alert the driver of potential collisions. The company plans to offer a second product version through offline retailers and top national department, electronic, and telecommunication stores in 2017. You can pre-order Roav Dashtop today at GoRoav.com. About Anker The brainchild of a group of friends working at Google, Anker was founded in 2011 in Mountain View, California, and has since grown into an industry leader in USB chargingoffering a range of high quality chargers and accessories to help consumers get the most out of their mobile devices. In November 2016, the company introduced a new brand, Roavthe Smart Driving Systemwhich is a collection of interconnected devices that allows drivers to modernize any vehicle with the latest in automotive technology. Film Music Agent VersusMedia's networking service has been praised by filmmakers who are active in major festival markets and beyond. For 15 years, VersusMedia has made a significant impact on the independent film industry by connecting talented filmmakers with musicians seeking new marketing channels for their music. Now, a new dedicated website for VersusMedia's Film Music Agent service is being launched at http://www.filmmusicagent.com. This site will make networking between independent filmmakers and musicians easier than ever before. The Film Music Agent website will initially be available in seven languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, and Khmer), reflecting the global nature of the independent market. Additional languages are likely to follow suit in the coming months, with the membership-based service delivering a unique solution that meets the needs of both filmmakers and musicians. Ryan Vinson, the founder of VersusMedia and the brain-child behind the Film Music Agent concept, is excited about the updated website because it provides the aesthetics, functionality, and easy navigation expected from a modern website with the unique networking platform that VersusMedia has been praised for throughout the independent film industry. Promising musicians often struggle to get enough exposure for their music, and independent filmmakers face issues in finding talented artists that don't charge exorbitant fees. This website will help to eliminate these issues for both parties. The new site sticks to the same general principle as the old one, but we needed an upgrade to make it even easier for filmmakers and musicians to directly communicate. I wanted to create an improved website that meets the requirements of both mobile and traditional web browsers. Filmmakers can post about projects that they need music for, and musicians can directly respond to these listings. The idea is that both parties can work out a suitable agreement between themselves and move forward. This means less time wasted by filmmakers trawling the web for talented musicians, and more time spent creating and innovating. The new website is part of a broader strategy by VersusMedia that provides support for artists behind-the-scenes, while also helping to promote their material to a wider audience. The Film Music Agent website achieves the former aim, while VersusMedia's cord cutting channels, which were launched earlier this year, help to achieve the latter aim. The on-demand channels are available on Roku, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Xiaomi Mi Box, and they feature a plethora of music videos and movies produced by independent artists. VersusMedia's networking service has been praised by filmmakers who are active in major festival markets and beyond in countries including India, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, England, and Mexico. The launch of the new site will cater to a global market, with the company listing projects including high-budget independent feature films and smaller student movies. About VersusMedia VersusMedia has been helping independent filmmakers work with musicians since 2001. To check out the new website, visit http://www.filmmusicagent.com. If you'd like to find out more about the cord cutting channels, go to http://www.versusmedia.tv T. Denny Sanford is the visionary behind a nationwide network of Institutes founded by National University -- and including the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at JFK University. The John F. Kennedy University Sanford Institute of Philanthropy and the Tesoro Foundation are pleased to announce philanthropist and entrepreneur T. Denny Sanford will be a keynote speaker at a Nov. 15 Symposium Building Outrageously Successful Nonprofit Organizations that is co-hosted by the University and sponsored by the Tesoro Foundation. Mr. Sanford is considered to be one of the worlds most generous philanthropists, and he has donated more than 1 billion dollars to causes he supports nationwide ranging from education to nonprofits. Mr. Sanford is the namesake of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at JFK University, launched earlier this year as part of a national network of Institutes that are based on Mr. Sanfords vision and approach toward helping nonprofits improve fundraising and donor relations through seminars and educational programs. Each Institute offers curricula developed by the founding Institute, the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University, and presentations by recognized community nonprofit leaders, members of academia, and philanthropic leaders. The day-long Symposium, which is being offered at no cost, is being held at the Concord Hilton and is designed to support nonprofit executives, board members and management staff. It includes presentations by Rudolph A. Johnson III, President and CEO of Neighborhood House Association in San Diego and recipient of the KPBS Black History Month Local Hero Award, as well as nationally-recognized expert and author Heather Carpenter, Ph.D. To register: http://www.jfku.edu/Events/2016-John-F-Kennedy-University-Institute-of-Philanthropy.html We are pleased to have such a distinguished group of speakers and nonprofit leaders join us for this very special Symposium that highlights the great work being done by our regions nonprofits, and we are very thankful for Tesoros support said Debra Bean, President of JFK University. We are particularly honored to welcome Mr. Sanford, a world-renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist and the namesake of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy network, to share his insight and inspiration with our San Francisco area community. Strengthening fundraising and donor relations are top concerns among local nonprofits, according to results from a recent survey in the East Bay by the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at JFK University, and the Symposium will explore these themes and others related to the nonprofit community. The annual event is the largest to date, according to Patty Deutsche, Director of Northern California Government and Public Affairs for Tesoro: Tesoro gives more than $1 million each year to local non-profits but we cant help them all. Knowing that these organizations are the backbone to a healthy society, funding this Symposium is one more way Tesoro can assist in building and strengthening our community. Two years ago, Mr. Sanford teamed up with San Diego-based National University, a private nonprofit university in California that, like JFK University, is part of the National University System, to develop educational programs that emphasize a Cause Selling approach that strengthens donor relationships. The Cause Selling approach, as envisioned by Mr. Sanford, applies business and sales principles that position nonprofits with making the right ask for causes that are important to them. This approach has been detailed in a one-of-its kind textbook, Cause Selling: The Sanford Way. The JFK University Sanford Institute of Philanthropy supports nonprofits in our region by helping them develop essential fundraising and leadership skills that will result in a greater community impact while achieving organizational growth and sustainability, said Solomon Belette, Director of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at JFK University. We are honored to provide access to high-quality training, functioning as a hub for information and technical resources, and strengthening collaborative efforts to build a strong and robust nonprofit community. Since the launch of the founding Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at National University in 2014, affiliate Sanford Institutes of Philanthropy have been created at Augustana University serving the South Dakota region and Bellevue University serving the Nebraska and the western Iowa region. Each Institute, including the one at JFK University, offers educational programs based on the tenets of the Cause Selling approach and being responsive to the unique needs and challenges facing nonprofits in each distinct community. At JFK University, that has included, in addition to sponsoring the Symposium, offering seminars, networking sessions, and webinars. About John F. Kennedy University For over 50 years, John F. Kennedy University, a non-profit affiliate of the National University System, has offered undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs that prepare individuals for career success while also engaging the student in personal growth through a commitment to service. Today, the Universitys three Colleges provide innovative higher education opportunities to 1, 200 professionals who, despite a full range of life responsibilities, are determined to advance their education and improve their future. The Continuing Education division provides professional development education to more than 2,500 individuals per year. A pioneer of education that integrates theory and practice, John F. Kennedy University and its students touch the lives of more than 30,000 people in Bay Area communities every year through their support of outreach centers and public programs. For more information, visit http://www.jfku.edu. About Tesoro Foundation. The Tesoro Foundation is a separate, 501(c)(3), philanthropic affiliate of Tesoro Companies, Inc. Tesoro and the Tesoro Foundation are committed to collaborating with our stakeholders to create cleaner, safer, well-educated communities where we operate. We create Shared Value for us and our communities by ensuring our charitable investments serve the communities needs, harness our employees passions and interests, and align with our business goals. We strategically focus our community investments in three core areas where we can make a positive, measurable impact: STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math), public safety, and environmental conservation and sustainability. For more information, visit http://tsocorp.com/social-responsibility/tesoro-community-investments/. Korea and Japan will this week wrap up an almost completed agreement on sharing military intelligence, Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said Friday. It just took less than three weeks to reach a preliminary agreement since the government announced in late October that Seoul and Tokyo decided to resume intelligence-sharing talks. The defense ministers of both sides are apparently ready to sign the preliminary deal as early as Monday, and the complete agreement could be signed before the year is out. Asked whether the government is rushing the deal, the Defense Ministry said the matter is "extremely necessary" for national security. One intelligence source said, "There have been several instances when intelligence gathered by Japanese Aegis vessels and P-3C surveillance aircraft were not handed directly to us but sent via the U.S., which wasted a lot of time. The U.S. brought the problem up in foreign affairs and defense talks in Washington last month, which is why we're speeding up the deal." But critics warn that there is no public mood for closer military cooperation with the former occupying power and the timing is bad amid the current paralysis of government as a massive influence-peddling scandal engulfs President Park Geun-hye. A similar deal was scrapped in 2012 amid mounting criticism that the government was trying to smuggle it past the public. Queens Divorce and Family Law Attorney Bruce Feinstein, Esq. For decades, it has been common practice in family law to have the child live primarily with one parent to enforce stability... the idea of one primary residence and one caregiver has started to shift. A new law passed in Missouri aims to make divorce custody rulings about time spent with children equal between mothers and fathers. This reform is part of a larger trend seen across the country. Similar laws are in effect in Utah, Minnesota, and Arizona. These laws require court administrators to set guidelines for judges that allow for the most equal amount of time spent between the child and each parent. According to a September 1, 2016 article by US News, it is Missouri's policy recommendation that encourages courts to maximize time children have with each of their parents. Bruce Feinstein, Esq., a family law and divorce attorney in New York, has been keeping a close eye on this trend and what it means for children of parents who divorce in New York. Recent studies have shown children prefer equal access to both of their parents. For decades, it has been common practice in family law to have the child live primarily with one parent to enforce stability, explains Mr. Feinstein. But the idea of one primary residence and one caregiver has started to shift towards families where both parents play key roles in their childs living situation. On the other side of this issue are opponents who say this approach to child custody is detrimental, if not dangerous, to children and families. Opposition groups include those against domestic violence, who have resisted shared parenting because it can give more control to abusive ex-spouses. Others say this will impact child support, drawing out litigation that is already emotional and difficult. But the domestic violence power issue has been mainly quelled, as most states with these laws allow judges to use discretion in cases where there is spousal abuse or addiction. These kinds of laws keep judges from making their custody decisions on the basis of gender, and allow discretion to decide how much parenting time to distribute between spouses, says Mr. Feinstein. One issue on the horizon with these greater shifts in child custody is the growing pain associated with shared parenting over a sole caregiver. In these situations, parents must be very organized and maintain a strong schedule so that children always know where they will be. Children need structure, so families with shared custody need to make sure their children always know who is picking them up from practice, where they are sleeping that night, and when they can expect to go to their other parents home, explains Mr. Feinstein. Problems arise when there is miscommunication, and since this is already a difficult time for children, parents must remember that the wellbeing of their children is front and center. The Law Offices of Bruce Feinstein has nearly two decades of experience in divorce and family law, helping clients and families resolve their issues and move forward with their lives. If you are thinking of getting married or divorced and want more information visit feinsteindivorcelaw.com or call (718) 475-6039 to reach the New York office. We are honored to be presenting advancements in cyber security for cloud and software defined networks (SDN) with Marist College, said Tony Sager, SVP Engineering and CTO Commercial Markets BlackRidge Technology BlackRidge Technology and Marist College are pleased to announce they are presenting at the IEEE SmartCloud 2016 Conference on Novermber 19, 2016 at Columbia University in NYC. The IEEE SmartCloud 2016 presents recent academic achievements and new developments in cloud computing including novel techniques to provide enhanced security in both enterprise computing and cloud environments. We are honored to be presenting advancements in cyber security for cloud and software defined networks (SDN) with Marist College, said Tony Sager, SVP Engineering and CTO Commercial Markets BlackRidge Technology. In this IEEE paper, we describe an approach which enables zero trust networks by providing first-packet based authentication, and demonstrate the use of this approach in defending an SDN controller from cyberattacks. The paper written by Sager and Mark Pinelli of BlackRidge Technology and Dr. Casimer DeCusatis, Professor Computer Science & Mathmatics Department and Piradon Liengtiraphan of Marist College, addresses an architectural redesign of the data center network, based on the principles of an explicit zero trust network, to combat the growing cybersecurity threat. Our partnership with BlackRidge Technology has lead to significant advancements in the field of cyber defense, said Dr. DeCusatis. We are pleased to be presenting with BlackRidge Technology an IEEE paper on zero trust network security architecture that incorporates a dynamic, automated security policy which extends across conventional security boundaries but still provides fine granularity segmentation and isolation of critical resources. BlackRidge provides identity-based cyber defense that stops cyber-attacks and protects against insider threats at the earliest possible time, on the first packet before network sessions are established. This provides the equivalent of secure caller ID for the network that allows only identified and authorized users or devices access to enterprise and cloud systems. The IEEE SmartCloud conference which will be held November 18-20, 2016 at the Shapiro Center at Columbia University in NYC, is open to the public. For more information on the conference http://csis.pace.edu/CSCloud/sc2016/index.html About BlackRidge Technology BlackRidge Technology provides identity-based cyber defense and network security that stops cyber-attacks and protects against insider threats. Our First Packet Authentication technology was developed for the military to cloak and protect servers and segment networks. BlackRidge Transport Access Control authenticates user and device identity and applies policy on the first packet of network sessions. This new level of real-time protection blocks or redirects unauthorized and unidentified traffic to stop known and unknown cyber-attacks, protects against insider and third party threats, and provides identity attribution. BlackRidge Technology was founded in 2010 to commercialize its military grade and patented identity-based network security technology. For more information, visit http://www.blackridge.us. About Marist College Marist College, recognized for excellence by U.S. News & World Report, Time, and "The Princeton Review," and by "Barron's Best Buys in College Education," is noted for its leadership in the use of technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. Founded in 1929, Marist's 210-acre campus overlooks the Hudson River in the heart of the historic Hudson Valley, midway between New York City and Albany, the state capital. What started as a school for the training of future Marist Brothers has developed into one of the leading colleges of the arts and sciences in the nation. Marist is ecumenical in character and reflects the ideals of the founder of the Marist Brothers, St. Marcellin Champagnat: commitment to excellence in education, a pursuit of higher human values, and dedication to the principle of service. Marist is dedicated to helping students develop the intellect, character, and skills required for enlightened, ethical, and productive lives in the global community of the 21st century. About IEEE SmartCloud 2016 IEEE SmartCloud 2016 aims to collect recent academic achievements in novel techniques, developments, empirical studies, and new developments in cloud computing. Innovative technical applications in clouds are highly encouraged. The objective of IEEE SmartCloud 2016 is to provide a forum for scientists, engineers, and researchers to discuss and exchange their new ideas, novel results, work in progress and experience on all aspects of smart computing and cloud computing. Learn more at http://csis.pace.edu/CSCloud/sc2016/index.html Choosing counsel is one of the most important decisions a person can make in their legal case. People should have the benefit of seeing an attorneys public court records before making that decision. A new startup, Justice Toolbox, Inc., today released its online search engine to help everyday people find lawyers (http://www.justicetoolbox.com). The search engine uses data mined from official state court records to compute and display how many cases a lawyer has won and lost and the lawyers approximate win rate. All of this is done on a per case type basis, so that, for example, consumers can see how often lawyers win in traffic cases separately from divorce cases. No other products on the market allow consumers to check how often lawyers actually win cases. The search engine uses data from close to 5 million state court records, includes over 70,000 lawyers, and allows searching for 180 case types. It is free to use. The core technology was developed in secrecy over the last year and involves a custom-designed artificial intelligence (AI) program that analyzes each court record, formally called a docket, that is the official record of events in a case. Dockets are commonly used by lawyers, though they are incomprehensible to everyday people due to legal jargon. Justice Toolboxs AI reads and understand these dockets as a lawyer would, in order to determine the case outcome, case type, and the attorneys involved. Choosing counsel is one of the most important decisions a person can make in their legal case, said Bryant Lee, Founder and CEO of Justice Toolbox, Inc. People should have the benefit of seeing an attorneys public court records before making that decision. The startup is the brain child of Lee, an attorney and Harvard Law School graduate, who previously worked at one of Washington, D.C.s largest law firms, Covington & Burling LLP. He was inspired to create Justice Toolbox because attorneys at his firm would routinely send company-wide emails asking for suggestions on attorneys to use for everyday issues. He realized that even lawyers had no idea how to find other lawyers and that a technological solution was needed. As a lawyer, Lee would regularly read court dockets and believed that he could develop an AI program to do the same thing. Justice Toolbox is based in Bethesda, Maryland and is initially launching with data from Maryland and District of Columbia courts. It plans to expand to more cities and states across the country by next year. FDA Recalls - Before You Start, and After You Finish 2-Day In-Person Seminar by Ex-FDA Official Led by former senior FDA official Casper Uldriks, ComplianceOnlines on-demand seminar on FDA recalls returns to California in 2017. The two-day training program will address recall regulations, recall classification, and FDAs recall database. This seminar will help you understand FDA's recall policy, how to establish a roadmap for conducting recalls and manage possible FDA enforcement actions. Attendees will take away practical knowledge on how to work with FDA staff during a recall, and how you can prepare for inspectional follow up. This in-person training will assist recall managers, quality assurance managers, regulatory affairs directors, and risk and product liability managers, manufacturers sales and marketing managers, own label distributors and others within an organization. The 2016 ComplianceOnline food recall seminar participation from various healthcare and pharma organizations, such as Philips Healthcare, Mevion Medical Systems, Inc., Abbott Vascular, Edwards Lifesciences, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, GSK Vaccines and others, have made the event an industry platform to reckon with. Seminar instructor Casper Uldriks brings over 32 years of experience from the FDA. He specialized in the FDAs medical device program as a field investigator, served as a senior manager in the Office of Compliance and an Associate Center Director for CDRH. He developed enforcement actions and participated in the implementation of new statutory requirements. Based on his exceptionally broad experience and knowledge, he can synthesize FDAs domestic and international operational programs, institutional policy and thicket of legal variables into a coherent picture. For more information or to register for the seminar, please click here. Dates: Thursday, February 9, 2017 (8.30 AM- 4.30 PM) and Friday, February 10, 2017 (8.30 AM- 4.30 PM) Location: San Jose, CA Registration Cost: $1,899.00 per registration Early bird discounts: For discounts on early registrations, please click here. Register by phone: Please call our customer service specialists at +1-888-717-2436 or email to customercare(at)complianceonline.com For more information on ComplianceOnline or to browse through our trainings, please visit our website. About ComplianceOnline ComplianceOnline is a leading provider of regulatory compliance trainings for companies and professionals in regulated industries. ComplianceOnline has successfully trained over 35,000 professionals from 9,000 companies to comply with the requirements of regulatory agencies. ComplianceOnline is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and can be reached at http://www.complianceonline.com. ComplianceOnline is a MetricStream portal. MetricStream (http://www.metricstream.com) is a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management Solutions for global corporations. For more information please contact: A Reuben Bernard Associate Director - ComplianceOnline 2600 E Bayshore Rd Palo Alto CA USA 94303 Phone - +1-650-238-9656 | +1-888-717-2436 Fax - 650-963-2556 Mail: reuben(at)complianceonline.com Website: http://www.complianceonline.com At Vinitaly Hong Kong, in addition to the traditional B2B booths represented by Italian Wineries, we were able to finally connect the dots and connect to the world by showcasing both wine2wine and the Vinitaly International Academy The 7th edition of Vinitaly Hong Kong put wine education as the main focus of the promotional activities during the Hong Kong Wine and Spirits Fair. Ian DAgata, Scientific Director of Vinitaly International Academy, in fact, conducted a number of Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) Executive Wine Seminars as well as other educational tastings, while wine2wine Asia provided educational and networking opportunities for exhibitors. VIA students living in Asia came to Hong Kong prepared to sustain their final oral exam administered by Ian DAgata. Two VIA students, Jinglin Zhang (Beijing) and Wai Xin Chan (Singapore) were named Italian Wine Experts, while Shirley Tan (Shanghai) achieved level two Italian Wine Ambassador. Ian DAgata was pleasantly surprised by the results and remarked, the level of proficiency that I witnessed during the oral exam of both Wai Xin Chan and Jinglin Zhang were nearly the best or best that I have seen since the academy opened. He added, perhaps the most wonderful aspect of VIA, is the community that is being created through the shared experience of Italian wine education. All over the world, VIA students are connecting and making lasting friendships. Wai Xin Chan from Singapore, left a career in Information Technology and dove into the wine world, where he has established himself as a successful wine communicator. Among his qualifications, Wai Xin is a Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) and a French Wine Scholar (FWS). Wai Xin attended the Academy in Verona, last March 2015, and was the first to be awarded the title of Italian Wine Ambassador in South East Asia. He also reports on the local wine scene in a number of Singapore magazine and on-line publications Jinglin Zhang, left North Eastern China for studies in France. She holds a bachelors degree in International Business and went on to obtain a master degree in Marketing. She holds a WSET level 4 diploma, currently works at Berry Bros & Rudd in London and recently launched a new blog, When Bach Meets Barolo. She has a passion for wines from smaller producers, and hopes to start an export business with e-commerce distribution back home in China. Shirley Tan got her start in the wine business as a sales manager with Veuve Clicquot China. After six years with the LVMH group, she went on to launch a successful Wine import and distribution company, East Meets West Fine Wines (EMW) in 2003. After 10 years of rapid expansion, she relinquished her stakes in the company to found the China Knot Consulting firm. China Knot has worked with various wine organizations and businesses, including Istituto Grandi Marchi, Decanter, Gaja, Pio Cesare and more. The third and final day of Vinitaly Hong Kong opened with the last session of wine2wine Asia, the educational business forum dedicated to exhibitors and visiting wine industry professionals. Debra Meiburg MW moderated ABC to wine trade in China with Jonathan Mather, Hong Kong based ASC Fine Wines Import, Giulia Chen Federexport, Alan Hung Executive Director PACCO and Chengdu Shangri La organizer, Shirley Tan China Knot Ltd., Fabio Piccoli Wine Meridian. JC Viens, founder of Grande Passione and a VIA Italian Wine Ambassador, ran the third day of back-to-back wine tastings with hardly a seat empty. True to the name of his company, he brought grande passione to each session, with an approach to wine that offers technical pro insight while at the same time, involving the audience with story telling, colourful anecdotes, and folklore. Stevie Kim, Managing Director of Vinitaly International, is pleased to see the positive reception of the various initiatives that Vinitaly International was able to bring to Hong Kong this year. She explains, At Vinitaly Hong Kong, in addition to the traditional B2B booths represented by Italian Wineries, we were able to finally connect the dots and connect to the world by showcasing both wine2wine and the Vinitaly International Academy. Spreading the gospel about Italian Wine in this part of the world is often challenging, especially compared with the wines from French or the New World, and hence can be aided by adding a touch of La Dolce Vita." Made-in-Italy was also the protagonist of the Vinitaly Lounge where attendees were able to taste some typical Italian food thanks to the collaboration with TUTTOFOOD Milano World Food Exhibition with whom Vinitaly International will be carrying out a number of initiatives in 2017. We hope that the Vinitaly Lounge with Italian Food and Lifestyle setting, coupled with Vinitaly Wine Bar represented by awardees from 5StarWines, engaged the attendees enough to trigger further interest in the Italian Wine community and hopefully have them also come visit Italy, adds Stevie Kim, concluding, with a tongue in cheek, when more attendees come to visit Italian Wineries, to discover its territory, it is one step further toward making America great again. wine2wine Asia sessions were recorded live and can still be viewed on our Facebook page: @vinitalyinternational About: Veronafiere is the leading organizer of trade shows in Italy including Vinitaly (http://www.vinitaly.com), the largest wine and spirits fair in the world. During its 49th edition, Vinitaly counted some 4,000 exhibitors on a 100,000 square meter area and 150,000 visitors including 2,600 journalists from 46 different countries. The next edition of the fair will take place on 10 - 13 April 2016. The premier event to Vinitaly, OperaWine (http://www.vinitalyinternational.com) Finest Italian Wines: 100 Great Producers, will unite international wine professionals on April 9th in the heart of Verona, offering them the unique opportunity to discover and taste the wines of the 100 Best Italian Producers, as selected by Wine Spectator. Since 1998, Vinitaly International has traveled to several countries such as Russia, China, USA and Hong Kong thanks to its strategic arm abroad, Vinitaly International. In February 2014, Vinitaly International launched an educational project, the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA), with the aim of divulging and broadcasting the excellence and diversity of Italian wine around the globe. VIA has now also organized its very first Certification Course with the aim of creating new Ambassadors of Italian Wine in the World. CMake can now not only transfer data to Android devices, but it can install Android Makefiles to enable integration with existing build systems. Kitware released CMake 3.7 to the software community. Development for the release focused on support for Android. With this support, CMake can generate Android toolchain files to allow developers to easily cross-compile Android applications with their desktop computers. What sets CMake apart from other families of tools that build, test and package software is that CMake is cross platform, said Bill Hoffman, the creator of CMake and the Vice President and Chief Technical Officer at Kitware. For the 3.7 release, we made CMake more compatible with Android. CMake can now not only transfer data to Android devices, but it can install Android Makefiles to enable integration with existing build systems. Over 20 members of the community contributed to the 3.7 release. In addition to support for Android, the release brought an experimental server mode, cmake-server(7), to CMake. This mode makes it simpler for users to combine CMake with integrated development environments such as Qt Creator and Visual Studio. Future work on CMake will further extend the server mode. Other updates made to CMake for version 3.7 include the following. The Ninja generator gained conditional support for Fortran. The generator implements this support when it uses a Ninja tool that contains the features necessary to utilize Fortran. The source file signature for the try_compile() command changed to honor configuration-specific flags in test projects. The if() command received new Boolean comparison operators. CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE picked up the ability to set variables to initialize cache entries the first time a language becomes enabled in a build tree. CTest acquired support for test fixtures. Among its capabilities, the CTest component of CMake configures, automatically updates and performs memory checks on software. For detailed release notes on CMake 3.7, please refer to the Kitware blog. To download the software, please visit the CMake download page. Projects inside and outside of Kitware leverage CMake, such as the Visualization Toolkit and ParaView. Kitware will demo these open-source solutions for data analysis and visualization at its booth (3437) at The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC16). Kitware team members will also discuss updates to CMake during the conference exhibition, which will take place from November 14 to November 17, 2016, in Salt Lake City, Utah. To set up a time to meet with Kitware, please contact kitware(at)kitware(dot)com. About Kitware Kitware is an advanced technology, research and open-source solutions provider for research facilities, government institutions and corporations worldwide. Founded in 1998, Kitware specializes in research and development in the areas of HPC and visualization, medical imaging, computer vision, data and analytics and quality software process. Among its services, Kitware offers consulting and support for high-quality software solutions. Kitware is headquartered in Clifton Park, NY, with offices in Carrboro, NC; Santa Fe, NM; and Lyon, France. More information can be found on http://www.kitware.com. Physical Alerting Security Poor cell phone and radio reception throughout numerous research laboratories containing hazardous material is a challenging security environment. If this technology can work here, it can work anywhere. Madelyn Miller Carnegie Mellon University Today Desktop Alert Inc. the 2016 Government Security News 1st Place Winner for Americas Homeland Security Airport, Seaport and Border Security mass notification requirements announced that the company has acquired Metis Secure Solutions. Mircom is confident that the integration between Metis and Desktop Alert will position the platform for greater expansion in its market segment and increase customer reach in a shorter period of time, simultaneously facilitating enhancements to both platforms. As part of the acquisition, Desktop Alert Inc. has assumed existing customer relationships and Metis projects and will continue supporting the Metis solutions and product portfolio, said Mark Falbo, President Mircom Group of Companies. Metis Secure delivers software and hardware products that help you protect your people, facilities, and assets when an emergency strikes. Metis Secure Command Center software enables control, integration, and automation of emergency communications, life safety, and security systems at your facility or campus. It provides operational control to these systems from on or off site, via internet browser or mobile device. When integrated with your site's existing communications devices--such as IP phones, digital signs, computer screens, and PA speakers--the Command Center acts as the hub for your Emergency Communications Information Management (E-CIM) system. MS-5100 and MS-6100 indoor and outdoor Emergency Help Stations provide a fast and effective communication link to strategic site locations. They enable you to broadcast multi-modal emergency alertsincluding voice directives, flashing lights, sirens, and text on the built-in LCD screen. They also provide built-in, inbound help call functionality--via two-way, hands-free, live voicebetween people in need and security personnel or police. Each Help Station is battery-backed and acts as an independent wireless network node, forming a redundant communications and power network that helps ensure that the system still works even if phone, power, and internet fail in a crisis. For those who need a discreet way to signal for help, Metis Secure offers a line of software and hardware-based panic buttons, plus a mobile panic app. Metis Secure software and hardware easily integrate with both network and analog security and life safety systemsincluding access control, IP video, handheld radios and mobile phones, hazardous materials and other sensors. "With poor cell phone and radio reception throughout and numerous research laboratories containing hazardous materials, Mellon Institute is a challenging security environment. If this technology can work here, it can work anywhere," Madelyn Miller Director of Environmental Health and Safety Carnegie Mellon University We are pleased with the addition of Metis Secures Solutions to our portfolio of mass notification products and services. Metis Secures technology insures less than 10 second alerting to all emergency command centers. When lives are at stake, seconds count. Common area alerting for personal safety requires instant two way LIVE voice capability. It is a must. Beacon alert technology with limited LED text message screens and text-to-speech speakers without bi-directional real-time voice is limited in an active emergency. Reading an alert is one thing, communicating by voice during an active emergency is a must. Our family of alerting systems now provides this fabulous common area alerting end-point solution, said Howard Ryan, Founder Desktop Alert Inc. About Desktop Alert https://www.desktopalert.net Desktop Alert is a leading provider of enterprise mass notification and emergency communications to the United States Department of Defense, federal government and First-Responders around the world. Its innovative and patented software has been internationally recognized as a Best Mass Notification and Best First Responder Interoperable Communications system. Desktop Alert provides a suite of scalable, flexible, and adaptable communication, collaboration, and situational awareness tools in environments ranging from austere - no terrestrial infrastructure support - to fully modern with extensive IP and legacy system integrations. Desktop Alert optimizes the communications flow with timely, accurate information to ensure effective decision making, coordination, proactive community engagement, and public awareness. A full array of the Desktop Alert products and services are available at http://www.AlertUsNow.Net Modern government agencies have come to realize that they need to shift their processes and embrace digital transformation to fit the needs and lifestyles of their constituents. Past News Releases RSS AvePoint Provides SharePoint... AvePoint Announces New Integrations... AvePoint Showcases Solutions to... From the halls of Smart City World Congress 2016, AvePoint, the Microsoft Cloud expert, today announces the general availability of AvePoint Citizen Services. Built on the latest Microsoft Cloud technologies including Azure Machine Learning, Cortana Intelligence Suite, Dynamics 365, Power BI, and Windows 10 AvePoint Citizen Services is a Software as a Services (SaaS) platform created to help cities transform the services and information provided to citizens across multiple access channels. With Citizen Services, government agencies or citizen-support non-government organizations (NGOs) now have the ability to automate case management and incident reporting. Field officers, operational centers, and the citizens they support can input and manage requests from any device, anywhere, at any time. Citizen Services offers a centralized portal to submit and respond to requests, streamlined case routing, and monitoring of service level agreements and establishment of long-term planning. Benefits to each individual include: Citizens: Residents can self-register, submit requests, view the status of open cases, read announcements, follow social media feeds, and search a knowledge base repository for information used to resolve issues quickly all through a centralized portal without the need for agent assistance. To further simplify submissions, photo attachments and location services can be included via integrated mobile devices to help validate requests and drive service improvement. Response Management Team: Response teams are provided a direct channel with a streamlined user experience for appropriate routing and handling of inbound requests from a single interface. They can also ensure all incoming calls are logged and tracked with automated phone activity logging, as well as built-in scripts or questionnaires. The Citizen Services interface helps the team resource requests and track progress by viewing key metrics including request status, type, and location. Field Response Team: Field teams can view assigned tasks based on location, request type, or urgency, and then respond to these requests by utilizing integrated location services and mapping via mobile devices. Individuals can then log response activity into mobile devices to close out and annotate cases with photos, video, and audio in real time. Agency Management Team: Management can review key metrics and data trends over time including incoming request types, request locations, and average response times to enhance planning, resourcing, and improve citizen satisfaction ratings. Government agencies become proactive by integrating with modern technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and predictive analytics to spot issues before citizens even encounter them. Modern government agencies have come to realize that they need to shift their processes and embrace digital transformation to fit the needs and lifestyles of their constituents, said Dux Raymond Sy, Chief Technology Officer, AvePoint Public Sector. AvePoint Citizen Services provides agencies with the tools to respond to citizen concerns effectively, but also anticipate the needs of citizens before they ever notice an issue reducing any unplanned downtime for vital government services. Visit AvePoint at Smart City World Congress 2016 for New SharePoint and Office 365 Solutions As an exhibitor at Smart City World Congress 2016, AvePoint subject matter experts will be available at the Microsoft CityNext booth to discuss how agencies can accelerate digital transformation and showcase the latest solutions for the Microsoft Cloud. In addition to AvePoint Citizen Services, attendees can also receive live demonstrations of AvePoints solutions for migrating, managing, and protecting their Office 365 and SharePoint data in cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments. For more information on AvePoint Citizen Services, please visit AvePoint at the Microsoft CityNext booth or visit our website. For more information on Smart City World Congress, please visit the event website. About AvePoint AvePoint is the Microsoft Cloud expert. Over 15,000 companies and 5 million cloud users worldwide trust AvePoint to accelerate the migration, management, and protection of their Office 365 and SharePoint data. AvePoints integrated cloud, hybrid, and on-premises software solutions are enhanced by 24/7 support and award-winning services. Organizations across six continents and all industries rely on AvePoint to ease transition to the Microsoft Cloud, increase IT administrator productivity, and satisfy governance and compliance objectives. A three-time Microsoft Partner of the Year, AvePoint has been named to the Inc. 500|5000 six times and the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 five times. AvePoint is a Microsoft Global ISV Partner, a Microsoft Gold Partner in Application Development, Cloud Platform, Cloud Productivity, and Collaboration and Content, and a US Government GSA provider via strategic partnerships. Founded in 2001, AvePoint is privately held and headquartered in Jersey City, NJ. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners. Fisher Investments announced the release of a new mobile App for iOS available for free download on iTunes. The App provides a one-stop source for critical and unique financial informationdesigned to help users stay current, think ahead, and become better investors. There are four main features of the Fisher Investments App: Daily News Roundup: A collection of third-party news stories the firm believes investors should either pay attention to, or ignore, along with Fisher Investments point of view. Daily Commentary: Each day, Fisher Investments editorial staff discusses important market events and key economic issues. Social Media: An aggregator of all Fisher Investments social media posts in one convenient place, with valuable investing insights and retirement tips. Videos: Access videos from the firms YouTube channel, including roundtable discussions with the Investment Policy Committee and other educational content. The content is produced by Fisher Investments in-house research and editorial teams. Group Vice President of Corporate Communications David Eckerly commented, Investor education is one of our core values, and were pleased to provide additional ways for investors to access timely and relevant information. Our research and editorial staff scour many sources every day to uncover analysis and insights that help investors discern the noise from the news and make better investing decisions. Get the Fisher Investments App for iPhone by visiting the Apple App Store. Fisher Investments plans on releasing a version of the App for Android devices in the near future. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fisher-investments/id1169932255 About Fisher Investments Fisher Investments is an independent, fee-only investment adviser founded in 1979. As of 9/30/2016, Fisher Investments and its subsidiaries manage over $71 billion in assetsover $35 billion for North American private investors, over $32 billion for institutional investors and over $3 billion for European private investors. Fisher Investments maintains four principal business units: Fisher Investments Institutional Group, Fisher Investments Private Client Group, Fisher Investments 401(k) Solutions Group and Fisher Investments International Group, which serve a global client base of diverse investors. The clients of Fisher investments and its affiliates include over 150 large institutions and over 35,000 high net worth individuals. Founder Ken Fisher has written the Forbes Portfolio Strategy column for over 32 years and has authored several New York Times bestsellers on finance and investing. For more information, please visit http://www.fisherinvestments.com. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iTunes, and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Fifty-three students and 19 faculty members representing more than 30 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will visit nearly a dozen Silicon Valley/Bay Area corporations this week as UNCF hosts the fourth annual HBCU I.C.E. (Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship) Summit. The goal of the four-day summit is to empower African American studentsmost of whom are computer science, engineering and information technology majorsto chart their career paths within the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. In addition, the summit will convene 19 HBCU computer science faculty members to attend professional development workshops and develop innovative approaches to computer science curriculum and pedagogy. I believe my experience in founding a tech startup is by far the most transformative experience in my life, said Jackson State University (JSU) junior Eyerusalem Woldu, 21, who, two years ago, started her own company making iPad cases. She sold 1,200 of them to JSU to provide to the incoming freshman class, and used the funds to invest in other startup ventures. Im looking forward to meeting students and professionals at the HBCU Innovation Summit with the same interests and passion as me, and I hope to land an internship in Silicon Valley. The summit also provides a forum to address the gaps in tech diversity that exist in Silicon Valley, where job growth will continue to boom in the coming years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that employment in STEM fields will increase by more than 9 million jobs between 2012 and 2022. However, African Americans represent only six percent of the STEM workforce and, according to data from The New York Times, the percentage of minorities working at Silicon Valley giants is even lower. Self-reported data from 11 of the major tech giants, according to CNET.com, reveals that less than 30 percent of their workforce is comprised of women. Of the participating HBCU Innovation Summit students, nearly 40 percent are women. More than 200 HBCU students applied for 53 spots, and were competitively selected based on their GPAs, personal statements, internships, computer science skills and demonstrated leadership. More than 100 HBCU faculty applied for nearly 20 spots, and they were chosen based on their background in computer science education, leadership, and willingness to serve as change agents on their respective campuses to align computer science curriculum with industry workforce needs and demands. We believe that HBCUs, the students they serve, and faculty they employ, have the ability to drive innovation and meet the high standards of the highly competitive job market. However, without increased public and private support, the divide will continue, said UNCFs National STEM Director, Dr. Chad Womack, a graduate of UNCF-member institution Morehouse College and Morehouse School of Medicine. Many of the nations HBCUs are producing top-tier talent in the innovation economy, and UNCF wants to establish a consistent presence in Silicon Valley so that employers first look to HBCU students as qualified employees for recruiting. The summit begins Nov. 16, when students will travel across Silicon Valley and the Bay Area on an HBCU Tech Trek to visit Adobe, eBay, Google, NetApp, PureStorage, Salesforce, Symantec, Visa, and Veritas, which are all event sponsors. Read more about these companies and their engagement in this years HBCU Innovation Summit. On Nov. 18, students will participate in a competition to pitch their startup businesses to leaders in the tech industry at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, which works primarily with underrepresented groups to pursue creative strategies that leverage information technology for positive social impact. Last year, Kapor Center CEO Mitch Kapor and his wife announced a $40 million investment over three years to address the leaky tech pipeline for African Americans, Latinos and women. At the 2015 HBCU Innovation Summit, Kapor and UNCF CEO Dr. Michael Lomax hosted a fireside chat with students to discuss diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley. On the final day of the summit, students will participate in tech empowerment workshops and a technical career fair. Students will hear from Dakari Franklin and Paul Hammond, 2016 HBCU Innovation Summit scholars, who co-created Black Valley, a community comprised of more than 500 Black interns working at Silicon Valley technology companies who share professional and academic resources. The objectives of the HBCU Innovation Summit have proved successful, as nearly a third of 2014 and 2015 participants are now interning or working full time at technology companies. Click here to view the list of 2016 HBCU ICE Innovation Summit fellows by last name Click here to view the list of 2016 HBCU ICE Innovation Summit fellows by institution name Click here to view the list of 2016 HBCU ICE Innovation Summit faculty by institution name Summit sponsors include Adobe; Airbnb; Chevron; eBay; Fund II Foundation; Google; Kaiser Permanente; Kapor Center for Social Impact; Lowes Companies, Inc.; NetApp; Pacific Gas & Electric; Pure Storage; Salesforce; SpaceX; Symantec; Visa; and Veritas. Follow the HBCU ICE Innovation Summit on Twitter by following @UNCF and #HBCUInnovation. View 2015 HBCU ICE Innovation Summit highlights here. ### About UNCF UNCF (United Negro College Fund) is the nation's largest and most effective minority education organization. To serve youth, the community and the nation, UNCF supports students' education and development through scholarships and other programs, strengthens its 37 member colleges and universities, and advocates for the importance of minority education and college readiness. UNCF institutions and other historically black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding nearly 20 percent of African American baccalaureate degrees. UNCF awards more than $100 million in scholarships annually and administers more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship and fellowship, mentoring, summer enrichment, and curriculum and faculty development programs. Today, UNCF supports more than 60,000 students at over 1,100 colleges and universities. Its logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and its widely recognized trademark, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in." Learn more at http://www.uncf.org, or for continuous news and updates, follow UNCF on Twitter, @UNCF. President Park Geun-hye's grip on the job is looking increasingly tenuous as prosecutors prepare to question her after 1 million people marched on Cheong Wa Dae on Saturday to demand her resignations. Park's close friend Choi Soon-sil, the focus of an influence peddling scandal that leads straight to Park's inner sanctum, is expected to be indicted this week, which is likely to scuttle any remaining deniability in the bizarre affair. Meanwhile the opposition parties have switched from signaling willingness to let Park limp to the end her term with many of her powers devolved, to joining calls for her resignation. Park apparently wants to address the public for a third time this week, a course of action in which she has notoriously little practice, after two earlier apologies failed to rein in the ire. The Chosun Ilbo asked pundits what her remaining options are. Participants hold up candles at a mass rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday. Orderly Resignation If Park is removed from office now and a new presidential election held within 60 days, it would lead to chaos as ill-prepared candidates jump into the race. This is why both ruling and opposition parties are calling for an orderly resignation. Park would step down in due course by creating the least amount of uproar, and an acting leader would steer the nation until the reins can be handed over to a new president. Saenuri Party lawmakers hold an emergency meeting in the National Assembly on Sunday. This is stipulated in Article 71 of the Constitution. An ordinary prime minister has limited powers to appoint and sack Cabinet members. But a prime minister assuming the role of an acting leader would wield the same power as a president, including full control over the military. Opposition party lawmakers say Park is no longer in a position to handle domestic affairs, but Cheong Wa Dae officials point out that ceding full control of national and foreign affairs to the prime minister could violate the Constitution. The appointment of an acting leader would solve those dilemmas. Immediate Resignation vs. Impeachment Park's other choices are to resign immediately, be impeached or try and hold the line. If Park steps down immediately, the incumbent prime minister rather than an acting leader would take over, according to the Constitution. Elections would follow within 60 days and also cover mayors and provincial governors. That would mean UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose term ends on Dec. 31 and who is the favored candidate of the conservative camp, would probably be unable to run as the 60-day period gives him no time to campaign. Minjoo Party lawmakers (left) and People's Party lawmakers join a mass rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday. Impeachment is possible if the president has violated the law or Constitution. It needs a majority of lawmakers (151) to propose it and more than two thirds (200) to agree. A decision must be reached within 180 days after an impeachment proposal is ratified by the National Assembly. Once the Constitutional Court authorizes the impeachment, an election is held within 60 days, but the entire process takes about eight months which would mean June of next year if the process starts now. Opposition lawmakers have 171 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly, so they will needs to persuade 29 ruling-party lawmakers to support them. Six out of nine Constitutional Court justices must come on board as well. The last option is for Park to try and remain in office as protests mount and any willingness to cooperate among civil servants and politicians gradually erodes. This would probably mean extended chaos and paralysis of all government business. 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All winners were honored during the Top Workplaces 2016 event, held at Solider Fields exclusive United Club on Thursday, November 10. Upshot was named to the Top Workplaces in Chicago list for the sixth time. The agency has been inspiring people to engage with, buy and share world-class brands for more than 20 years. They believe culture and creativity go hand in hand and have found just the right mix of inspiration, challenging work, camaraderie and fun to make Upshot a great workplace. We work in a very competitive industry, where culture makes a difference in attracting and retaining great talent. says Upshot President and CEO Brian Kristofek. Being recognized as a Top Workplace in Chicago is living proof that were fostering a culture thats on pace with other organizations in the city. Upshot joined fellow honorees and more than 700 C-level Chicago executives at the high-profile Top Workplaces 2016 awards ceremony, now in its seventh year. Companies were selected by employee surveys conducted by Workplace Dynamics that measured such key qualities as company leadership, communication, career opportunities, working environment, managerial skills, pay and benefits. The top finishers were announced during the celebratory annual awards ceremony. Each year, the Chicago Tribune is proud to recognize the companies that are making a real difference in the lives of their employees, said Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Bruce Dold, who served as the host of the Top Workplaces 2016 event. This years lineup of progressive-minded businesses reflects those qualities that truly make Chicago the City That Works. The Chicago Tribune Top Workplaces 2016 event was presented by The Job Network and sponsored by Wintrust Financial, Cars.com, U.S. Cellular, Rivers Casino, Jack Daniels Single Barrel Collection, 90+ Cellars and Half Acre Beer Company. The event was produced by Tribune Events Group, the Chicago Tribune Media Groups in-house events marketing team. ### About Upshot Upshot is a privately owned Chicago-based marketing agency with about 170 people. They create seamless marketing along the digitally enabled path to purchase. The agency specializes in shopper marketing, brand initiatives and total brand engagement that flow through digital, social, mobile and in-store environments. Upshotters apply their seamless marketing skills to world-class brands like Starbucks, Google, Corona, Procter & Gamble and Scotts Miracle-Gro, to name a few. About Chicago Tribune Media Group Chicago Tribune Media Group is a diversified media and marketing solutions company that reaches 4.9 million people each month across all platforms. CTMGs robust portfolio of media solutions includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune, and a collection of niche and digital offerings including RedEye, Hoy, Chicago magazine, Naperville Magazine, The Mash, Blue Sky Innovation, chicagotribune.com, chicagonow.com and metromix.com. As the regions leading voice, CTMG also extends into the suburbs of Chicago through popular titles including TribLocal, The Beacon-News, The Courier-News, Lake County News-Sun, Naperville Sun, Post-Tribune in Northwest Indiana, Daily Southtown, and 32 Pioneer Press weekly newspapers. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East A Massachusetts bookstore turns publisher; a Wyoming store bans wi-fi; a New Hampshire store celebrates its first quarter century; and more. Papercuts J.P. Launches Cutlass Press: Following the success of the publication of its anthology, What Happened Here: Year One at Papercuts J.P., in February, the Jamaica Plain, Mass., bookstore is launching a full-fledged publishing program of three to five titles annually. Cutlass will kick off later this month with the publication of Rick Berlins The Paragraphs, a memoir of a life in music. Wind City Books Bans Smart Phones, Tablets, and Computers: Vicki Burger, owner of the Casper, Wyo., bookstore is asking customers to say no to technology when theyre in the store. She posted a sign that reads: Take a break. Live like its 1993. Emails can wait. Water Street Books Celebrates First 25 Years: The Exeter, N.H., bookstore held an open house on Saturday November 12 but is also giving away a drawstring backpack filled with books every day this week to mark the big occasion. Parnassus Books Turns Five: The Nashville bookstore founded by writer Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes is celebrating its big day with a two-part event. Doug the Pug visited the store on November 12 and there were special activities. On Wednesday (November 16) all hardcovers will be discounted, plus there will be champagne and cake. Nolas Maple Street Book Shop Could Close at Years End: Last year when Gladin Scott announced that he was closing the bookstore, community response was so supportive that he kept the store open. With business declining below last years level, Scott said that he will likely close the 52-year-old store at the end of December. Nashvilles BookmanBookwoman Bookstore to Close: After more than two decades, the iconic bookstore in Hillsboro Village is closing its doors at the end of the year and has begun a going out-of-business sale. All used books are half price. The biggest risk for Medicaid beneficiaries comes from pledges by Trump and other Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which provided federal funding to states to expand Medicaid eligibility starting in 2014. Thirty-one states and Washington, D.C., did so, adding 15.7 million people to the program, according to the government. About 73 million are now enrolled in Medicaid about half are children. Reducing the number of people in Medicaid while ensuring that only the most needy such as children and pregnant women remain eligible will be a goal for Trump and the new Congress, said Brian Blase, senior research fellow at the conservative Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. If we do not have fewer people in Medicaid in four years, then we have not reformed health policy in a good direction, he said. But there are obstacles to the Republicans plans. Medicaid, one of President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society domestic programs that was created in 1965, is the nations main health insurance program for low-income people. Overhauling it is politically difficult because of the potential harm to recipients as well as the financial consequences to states, hospitals, doctors and other health providers, who might not get paid for their services if patients dont have coverage. Total Medicaid spending was $532 billion in fiscal 2015, with about 62 percent funded by the federal government. One major change endorsed by both Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would transform Medicaid from an entitlement program into a block grant program. Heres the difference. In an entitlement program, coverage is guaranteed for everyone whos eligible. The federal governments commitment to help states cover costs is open-ended. The states obligation is to cover certain groups of people and to provide specific benefits. Children and pregnant women who meet specific income criteria must be covered, for example. That formula would change if federal funds flow to states through block grants. States would have more flexibility to run their Medicaid programs as they wish including cutting benefits and eligibility. And proponents say it would allow the federal government to spend less on Medicaid and make states responsible for covering costs beyond their federal allotments. Turning Medicaid into a block grant program has been discussed for more than 25 years, but the idea has always met resistance from some states, health providers, health care advocates and Democrats. Even with a Republican majority in Congress and Trump in the White House, the plan would still face an uphill legislative battle. The federal government rarely shifts power to the states and not all states want to be at increased financial risk for the program. Medicaid block grants face a very uncertain future, said Joel Cantor, director of the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Another option to redefine Medicaid funding, similar to a block grant, is known as a per capita cap. States would be given a set amount of money per enrollee, which would increase each year but critics fear likely not keep up with rising health expenses. That method would help states better deal with growing enrollment because funding would rise, too. Even without help from Congress, Trumps administration could change Medicaid using the executive branchs power to approve states requests for waivers from federal rules. That could allow Trump to approve changes proposed by Republican governors that the Obama administration has rejected, including work requirements for Medicaid enrollees and monthly premiums and other cost-sharing. Trump could also end some waivers that expanded Medicaid and sent billions in new federal funding to some states that transformed care. Any congressional changes to Medicaid next year would likely include negotiations about the Childrens Health Insurance Program, another federal-state program that provides coverage to youngsters whose families are slightly over the Medicaid eligibility. The program expires if not reauthorized by Sept. 30, 2017. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 8 million children get coverage through CHIP, which has had Republican and Democratic support. After Trump is in office, he may find its harder than he realized to repeal Obamacare and tinker with Medicaid because cutting off coverage for millions of people could bring plenty of political fallout, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. Republican Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky took a similar tack last year, she observed, running against Obamacare and vowing in his campaign to eliminate the expansion. He has since proposed major changes to Medicaid, but he has not yet moved to kill the expansion. Still, Alker said Trumps win puts the block grant idea front and center in January. And an agreement to do it could give states flexibility to make cuts in federally required benefits, such as health screenings for infants and children. I would be very concerned about what could happen, Alker said. MOLINE -- The knitted prostheses created by Tova Cravens have traveled as far as Denmark. Mrs. Cravens, of Orion, began knitting prostheses for local mastectomy patients in 2011. Since then, she has helped similar efforts start in Denmark and Florida. She said an October 2011 story in The Dispatch/Argus about knitted prostheses by Judy Brumbaugh, of East Moline, prompted her to contact the woman and join her cause. After meeting just a couple of times, the two women agreed they could not knit fast enough to meet the demand for the light alternatives to the commercially available prostheses. "We call ourselves the 'Bosom Buddies of the QC, and we made some posters asking other women to join us and placed the posters around the Quad-City area, Mrs. Cravens said. On Nov. 11, 2011, they were joined by a woman they met in the cafeteria at the former Trinity hospital (now Unity Point Health -- Moline Campus) on 7th Street Moline. During the past five years, the group has grown to 20-some knitters who have created more than 3,000 prostheses. In 2013, Mrs. Cravens visited her native country of Denmark and was interviewed for a magazine article about the prostheses. The article was published Nov. 6, 2013; in December, she was asked to help start similar groups there. "Since then, more than 500 prostheses have been donated by many volunteer knitters there, she said. "And last April, via an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune in Florida, more than 328 women learned of the project, which worldwide is known as Knitted Knockers. In addition to requests for prostheses, Mrs. Cravens said the group also has received inquiries from knitters wanting to help. "We now have 60 knitters listed from several cities along the Florida Suncoast, she said. "Unfortunately, for various reasons, many of the original knitters have left our group or are not very active anymore in the Quad-Cities, she said. We are still a small, dedicated group which meets from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m. every Wednesday in the cafeteria at 7th Street, Moline, to knit and fit any recipients who show up. In a 2011 interview, Mrs. Brumbaugh was emphatic the focus be on encouraging knitters to help knit the "knockers." She began the work earlier in 2011 when her sister-in-law in Normal received a gift of knitted knockers from a friend. Mrs. Brumbaugh said she had been knitting chemocaps for people who lost hair because of chemotherapy treatments. After the call from her sister-in-law, Mrs. Brumbaugh said she put aside her cap work and focused on the knitted knockers. She said it is a little more difficult to make the knitted prostheses because a knitter doesn't know the exact sizes. "The knitted ones are softer and more comfortable than many prostheses made for mastectomy patients, she said. What we hope people will do is begin doing what we are doing -- knitting, she said. I want the word out that the knitted knockers are available at no cost to people who have had mastectomies. Mrs. Brumbaugh said the knitted knockers are available at some area medical offices and hospital mammogram departments. Mrs. Cravens said there is a need for knitters to help make the prostheses and "provide a better, more comfortable daily life at absolutely no cost" to their recipients. The knitters provide their own materials, time and expertise. Their reward, Mrs. Cravens said, is in knowing they are doing something for someone who can never repay them. "The best reward is when we get to see the joy and happiness on the face of a recipient, she said. CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) A pro-Russia candidate has declared victory in Moldova's presidential election, opening up a commanding lead in the former Soviet republic with nearly all the votes tallied. Igor Dodon, who has promised to restore closer ties with Moscow and made comments in Russian immediately after the polls closed Sunday , had just over 54 percent of the votes, with more than 98 percent of the ballots tallied. His rival Maia Sandu, an ex-World Bank official who ran on an anti-corruption platform, had nearly 46 percent. "Everyone understands that I have won," he said later in Romanian just after midnight. He thanked Sandu for waging a "tough but good fight" and said he would be a president for all Moldovans. Dodon tapped into popular anger over corruption under the pro-European government that came to power in 2009, particularly over the approximately $1 billion that went missing from Moldovan banks before the 2014 parliamentary elections. As results came in, Dodon urged Moldovans to be calm. "We don't need destabilization and we don't need confrontation, which somebody is trying to do," he said, speaking in Russian after polls closed. "We're all living in one country, in Moldova. The next president should find this balance." Dodon has pledged to restore trade and political relations with Moscow which cooled after Moldova signed a trade association agreement with the European Union. Russia punished Moldova by placing an embargo on imports of Moldovan fruit, wine and vegetables. He was able to appeal to many older Moldovans who are nostalgic for the former Soviet Union. Sandu, a former education minister who heads the Action and Solidarity Party, said the former Soviet Republic would have a more prosperous future in the EU. She needed a high turnout to stand a chance of winning. The final turnout was 53.3 percent, more than 4 percentage points higher than in the first-round of the election, but a discouraging result for Sandu. Sandu called for the resignation of authorities organizing the vote and said the elections had been badly organized. "Hundreds of people were not able to vote. Hundreds of citizens that traveled a long journey, that waited in the cold and rain and were not able to vote," she said after polls closed. "Moldovan authorities didn't respect the constitutional right of Moldovan citizens of Moldova to be able to vote." She said she would speak further on Monday. In an unusual development, 9,000 people voted in the separatist pro-Russian region of Trans-Dniester, where residents usually do not vote in Moldovan elections. Moldovans lined up for hours to vote in Paris, Milan, Dublin and the London borough of Stratford, where about 700 Moldovans were unable to cast ballots. Election authorities said ballots had run out in Stratford, Bucharest, Moscow and Bologna, Italy. One electoral official in the Moldovan capital Chisinau, Sergiu Gurduza, apologized that some people had not been able to vote. Dodon, who nearly won the election outright in the first round two weeks ago, has also pledged to seek good relations with Moldova's neighbors, Romania and Ukraine. But he has been criticized in Ukraine for saying Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, is Russian territory. Many Moldovans believe they need the Russian market for their agricultural exports. About half of the 800,000 Moldovans working abroad live in Russia and send remittances home. Moldova also depends on Russian gas, although not as much as before. There are plans to extend a pipeline to transport Romanian gas to Chisinau. CN has been recognized as a Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) Committed company by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) in recognition of its enhanced partnerships with Aboriginal communities. CN operates within or adjacent to nearly 200 reserves of more than 110 First Nations and Metis territories. Recipients of the PAR designation are assessed in four key areas: employment, business development, capacity building and community relations. Established in 2001, CCABs Progressive Aboriginal Relations certification signals to Aboriginal communities that designated companies are good business partners, great places to work, and committed to the prosperity of Aboriginal Communities, said CCAB President and CEO JP Gladu. The changing relationship between Canadas corporate leaders and Aboriginal businesses continues to strengthen as we welcome CN as our newest PAR Committed member. CN, as a business operating across Canada, is truly moving toward addressing the new economic reconciliation that is supporting an Aboriginal business renaissance in Canada today. We applaud CN and look forward to sharing their commitment with all Canadians. We are very pleased to have earned the PAR Committed designation, and remain dedicated to developing respectful and mutually beneficial relationships with all Aboriginal people, said CN Vice President Law Olivier Chouc. We look forward to continuing our work with the Aboriginal business community as we expand our relationships. That includes identifying and fostering business opportunities with Aboriginal chambers of commerce, entrepreneurs and businesses across Canada. CCAB describes itself as committed to the full participation of Aboriginal peoples in Canadas economy, offering knowledge, resources and programs to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal owned companies that foster economic opportunities for Aboriginal peoples and businesses across Canada. Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK Tracy Kidder has focused his keen skills of observation and talent for storytelling on numerous topics during his career, from the early days of the computer industry to medical care for the poor in Haiti to elementary education in America. What a great privilege its been, he said during a recent stop at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar for a luncheon/author event hosted by the Rancho Santa Fe Literary Society. Its been fun to explore the world and get paid for it. Kidders newest book, A Truck Full of Money, published by Random House, tells the story of Paul English, a genius computer programmer who suffers from bi-polar disease, who is also a co-founder of the Kayak travel website, which has been used by millions of people around the world since its inception in 2004. While all of Kidders books focus on a theme or subject, his talent lies in finding people who bring those stories to life. They include Dr. Paul Farmer, an infectious disease specialist who built a system of medical clinics in Haiti, as detailed in Kidders book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, and a Boston schoolteacher and her students, as chronicled in Among Schoolchildren. I dont write about subjects. I write about people, Kidder said. Kidders efforts have garnered a slew of honors, from the Pulitzer Prize to the National Book Award. And his latest book is just as personal as its predecessors he follows Paul English from his school days, when he wrote a program that allowed him to surreptitiously obtain his teachers user name and password, to the period after he sold Kayak for $1.8 billion to the mega-travel site Priceline, and then worked to recover from the success of suddenly finding himself a multi-millionaire. In order to get inside the skin of his subject, Kidder practically lived with Paul English for the better part of a year, and stayed close touch with him for a couple of years after that. The portrait of English that emerges in Kidders book is a driven, gifted, generous man who battles the demons of his own mental illness while achieving great success in the turbulent and competitive world of software programming and digital technology. While English has shown a knack for making money he once sold a company for $33.5 million before it had created a product he also is known for spreading it around, both through generosity to his co-workers and his philanthropy, supporting such causes as fighting homelessness and improving education in Haiti. In fact, English has said his true passion is for assembling teams through his businesses. In the book, Kidder wrote, Travel was just something Paul liked to do. What he really cared about was building new engineering teams. In a jaunty moment once, he said, For me businesses exist as an excuse to get a team together, and product is what a team does. You have to pay salaries, so, unfortunately, you have to make a profit. Creating teams and managing them were his version of the business romance. He loved his own large biological family, he would say, but at times he felt as though at Kayak he was building another family, better in the sense that he could choose its members and fire those who didnt work out. As for Kayak itself, English installed large monitors in the companys engineering office that displayed only a single number, which would climb into the millions each day, and represented the number of travel searches conducted by Kayak visitors. Paul had meant the number on display as a message to his team, his way of saying to them, Good job. Lets do more. And it was also one of his ways of trying to put them in vicarious touch with customers. If you knew that the number at the center of the screen signified searches, it was bound to dawn on you that watching the digits grow was the same as watching millions of people typing at computers and swiping fingers over the screens of smartphones and electronic notepads as they brought up the Kayak website on their browsers and began to look for information about flights, hotels, rental cars. And you were also watching a machine at work, responding to all those people a complex machine made out of software and silicon that was spread across a large part of the world, connecting millions to the world, Kidder wrote. Kidder, who is always looking for new stories to tell, and people to tell them, has himself taken a somewhat circuitous route finding his true calling. As a political science major at Harvard, he dreamt of becoming a diplomat and changing the world. But then he discovered a passion for writing, and after a tour in Vietnam as an intelligence officer, he wound up as a staff writer at the Atlantic Magazine. While working there, he wrote his first book, The Soul of the New Machine, about a team of researchers who designed a super mini-computer in the early days of the technology industry. He now has 10 books to his credit. He divides his time between Massachusetts and Maine. For more information, visit www.tracykidder.com. The highly polarized 2016 presidential election has finally ended, with president-elect Donald Trump winning in the electoral college, but with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton maintaining a slight edge in the popular vote. Most polls, including our own Presidential Election Panel Survey, had Clinton leading the popular vote, but by larger margins than actually materialized. Poll aggregators like RealClearPolitics are intended to smooth out the variation among polls of different samples, approaches and limitations, making them more accurate than any single poll. They too missed the mark. The most obvious way the polls misjudged the election is that people who turned out to vote looked very different from voters in other recent elections. Most polls rely on data gathered from people identified by a variety of factors as likely voters. If the actual voters this year look substantially different than in previous years not entirely unreasonable given how unusual this election has been then these models will do poorly. If there are high levels of undercoverage where not all people are accurately represented in survey samples, or if there are particular kinds of systematic nonresponse to poll questions, this effectively misrepresents the electorate as well. The RAND survey is not like most polls. Rather than relying on a likely voter model, we used a probabilistic poll approach that allows respondents to report their own probability (or percent chance) of voting and of voting for a particular candidate. The rationale behind this approach was to capture data from a greater number of people who are not closely aligned with either candidate which this year represented an unprecedented number of the electorate. Our prediction of the popular vote a Clinton advantage of 8.7 points suggests that peoples' self-reported probability of voting is either highly volatile (our final survey was primarily based on data immediately following the final debate, several weeks before the vote and largely before FBI Director James Comey's letter regarding the bureau's investigation into Hillary Clinton), and/or they were simply not strong predictors of turnout this year. It may also be, as the polling industry is increasingly aware, that sampling errors can be corrected for observable demographic factors, but that unobserved beliefs and attitudes may systematically be missed by pollsters if these people are less likely to participate in surveys with no clear way to adjust for them. An argument has also been made that Trump supporters were reluctant to report their support for Trump to pollsters, but we believed that this represented less of an issue for our survey an online survey where respondents do not interact with interviewers than in live telephone polls. Early in the election season we observed relatively higher support for Trump than many other polls, supporting this notion, but this also must not be ruled out. While our survey, like the other polls, overpredicted the popular vote, that doesn't mean the data it accumulated is flawed. We did not design the survey with horse-race polling for the electoral college as the primary goal, focusing instead on the decision-making process and how that translated into behaviors. This has yielded a wealth of data that could provide deep insights into what happened and how it took the pollsters by surprise. The 2016 Presidential Election Panel Survey contains critical information about how people reported they would vote prior to the election, and we will poll them again to learn how they actually behaved. This could show, for example, that people who previously thought they were less likely to vote were persuaded in the final days of the election to do so. If these late-deciders were disproportionately inclined to vote for Trump, this could help explain the discrepancy between pollster predictions and the ultimate outcome. It has also been noted that our data showed that the non-Hispanic white voters who supported Clinton in her Democratic primary run against Obama in 2008 were not supporting her to the same extent this time around largely due to racial attitudes that favored Trump support. Our survey also collected specific information about why people did not vote that may be able to help explain the discrepancy. People who originally reported high intentions to vote who ultimately did not would also affect poll results. Our survey contained a historically large proportion of respondents who intended to vote for third-party candidates. These voters may have ultimately decided to place their votes for Trump or Clinton instead. Preliminary results have suggested that Trump was able to mobilize white men and women to vote in significantly greater levels than anticipated. Those with less than a college education are persistently overrepresented among nonresponders in polls. Prior to the election, it appeared that Trump would garner his greatest support from this group but preliminary results from after the election suggest that this may not have been the case. We will be using the final survey wave of the RAND study to examine these issues, among others, in the weeks ahead. Michael Pollard is a sociologist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. This commentary originally appeared on U.S. News & World Report on November 10, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. For Release Monday November 14, 2016 If the Kurdish region of northern Iraq were to become an independent nation the move would create important political and economic problems for the neighboring nations of Turkey and Iran, as well as for the Iraqi central government, according to a new RAND Corporation report. Though researchers do not advocate for an independent Kurdistan, they examine the potential implications for the region if the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq were at some point to declare its secession from Iraq. Specifically, the authors analyze the interests of three key regional neighborsthe Iraqi central government, Turkey, and Iranand explore policies each actor may pursue in response to Kurdish independence. They find that if Kurdistan does secede, its three key neighbors all would prefer that it is done gradually rather than suddenly, and they would not want to see a rise of Kurdish nationalism in their own countries. If a gradual estrangement between the Kurds and Iraq led to a negotiated separation, the Iraqi national government could attempt to extract as many benefits from Kurdish independence as possible, while mitigating the negative impact of losing the Kurdistan region, said Alireza Nader, the study's lead author and a senior international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. Overall, Kurdish independence gained through a mutually acceptable agreement between Iraq and the Kurds has the most possible benefits for both parties. The Kurds make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, straddling the borders of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran and Armenia, but they have never obtained a permanent nation state. Researchers explore the consequences of an independent Kurdistan under three different scenarios. The first is possible unilateral declaration of Kurdish independence, which is broadly opposed by other governments in the region. The second is a last man standing scenario in which the Iraqi state collapses and the existing Kurdistan Regional Government becomes an independent state. The final scenario would be a gradual estrangement between the Kurdish-led regional government in northern Iraq and Iraq's national leaders in Baghdad. Despite the unwavering insistence by the Iraq national government that the Kurdistan region will remain a part of Iraq, the central government's ability to prevent the Kurds from gaining independence may be limited, according to the report. Iraq's national leaders face significant challenges that inhibit them from acting decisively to maintain control of the Kurdish region, and it seems unlikely that it will be able to overcome those hurdles in the near future, which limits its courses of action to oppose Kurdish sovereignty. The report asserts that Turkey has abandoned its long opposition to Kurdish independence as a result of domestic political changes, growing energy needs, expanding bilateral trade with the Kurdistan Regional Government, and increasing political uncertainty in Iraq and Syria. From Turkey's vantage point, slow and steady progress toward Kurdish independence has significant political and economic advantages, whereas sudden moves toward sovereigntyand especially any apparent promotion of greater autonomy for Kurds in Turkey and Syriawould pose political and economic risks. The issue of an independent Kurdistan is sensitive for the Islamic Republic of Iran because of fears that it would embolden its own large population of repressed Kurds. However, Iran may tolerate an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq if it judges that it would not threaten Iranian stability. Iran's economic ties to the Kurdistan Regional Government could temper its reaction to the Kurds' declaration of independence, Nader said. That Iran has increased its economic ties to Kurdistan, despite Iraq's strong objections, indicates that financial benefits may ultimately outweigh Iranian concerns over Kurdish nationalism. The report, Regional Implications of an Independent Kurdistan, can be found at www.rand.org. Other authors of the report include Larry Hanauer, Brenna Allen and Ali G. Scotten. Funding for this study was provided, in part, by donors and by the independent research and development provisions of RAND's contracts for the operation of its U.S. Department of Defense federally funded research and development centers. The research was conducted within the RAND National Security Research Division. The division conducts research and analysis on defense and national security topics for the U.S. and allied defense, foreign policy, homeland security, and intelligence communities and foundations and other nongovernmental organizations that support defense and national security analysis. Russian banker Gitelson ordered to pay $77.6 mln on Inkasbank claim MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) - The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region has ordered recovery of 5.06 billion rubles ($77.6 million) from former chairman of Inkasbank Alexander Gitelson on the lawsuit filed by the bank, according to court records. The court also granted an application lodged by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) to collect 6.01 billion rubles ($92 million) from another ex-board chairperson, Tatyana Lebedeva, and 284.1 million rubles ($4.4 mln) from her deputy Lyudmila Samorukova. The court held that actions committed by Gitelson, Lebedeva and Samorukova between February 1, 2007 and February 19, 2009 had caused a 7.49-billion-ruble damage ($115 million) to Inkasbank and led to its bankruptcy. In July 2014, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Commercial Court, upon request of the Deposit Insurance Agency, the bankrupt banks insolvency administrator, charged Gitelson and two other former top managers of Inkasbank with subsidiary liability. In December 2014, the court of appeals upheld the ruling. The ex-bank managers appealed the rulings in a court of cassation. In May 2015, the Commercial Court of North-West District reversed the lower courts rulings and ordered reconsideration of the case. Inkasbank was declared bankrupt in May 2009. The banks administrator conducted an inquiry into the circumstances of the banks insolvency. As a result, the Russian Federal Security Service received a motion to open a criminal case (premeditated bankruptcy) against the banks former management. Gitelson was arrested in Austria in April 2013 and extradited to Russia in December. In March 2015, Gitelson was convicted and sentenced to three years for embezzling over 2 billion rubles ($30.7 million) in public funds from Inkasbank. A court in St. Petersburg also fined the banker 500,000 rubles ($7,700). In April 2011, Moscows Meshchansky District Court sentenced Gitelson in absentia to five years in prison and a 1 million ruble ($15,300) fine for embezzling 495 million rubles ($7.6million) from his acquaintance, MP Adnan Muzykayev. Russian regional top officials suspected of $15.3 mln extortion MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) Several top officials of the Kuznetsk Basin (Kuzbass), located in the south of western Siberia, are suspected of stock extortion amounted to 1 billion rubles ($15.3 million), acting spokeswoman for Investigative Committee Svetlana Petrenko told journalists on Monday. According to Petrenko, a criminal case has been launched against the head of the Investigative Committees regional Directorate Sergey Kalinkin, vice-governors of the region Aleksey Ivanov and Alexander Danilchenko and several other officials. Investigators claim that the suspects extorted from the major shareholder of Kuzbass coal mine company Razrez Inskoy, Anton Tsygankov, 51 percent of his shares estimated at approximately 1 billion rubles. Presently, searches are being conducted at the suspects apartment and offices, Petrenko said. Russian lawmaker proposes ban on foreign education for children of top officials MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) Communist Party lawmaker Valery Rashkin submitted a bill to the State Duma banning children of top Russian officials to study abroad, according to the database of the parliaments lower house. The imposed restrictions would apply to persons who hold state posts of Russia, public posts of Russias territorial entities, federal civil service positions of the territorial entities and municipal services, the bill author explained. The prohibition would not reach children of officials performing their duties abroad for well over a year. The bill envisages that restrictions would extend to foreign organizations operating outside Russia. However, education in foreign branches of Russian educational institutions is allowed. The draft law is aimed to stop the practice of sending children to get education abroad by officials, top managers of government companies and state corporations, an explanatory note to the bill reads. Russian lawmakers suggest softening penalty for perpetrators of domestic violence Context Russian Supreme Court proposes to decriminalize minor offences MOSCOW, November 14 (RAPSI) Russias State Duma lawmakers introduced a bill on Monday aimed at softening penalty for perpetrators of domestic violence, according to the website of the United Russia party. The bill stipulates that offenders should face administrative penalty instead of a criminal probe. The State Duma voted in July for softening penalty for a number of offences, including battery, threat of homicide or injury, malicious evasion from payment of alimony, use of forged documents. Perpetrators of domestic violence still faced a criminal probe. Olga Batalina, one of the authors of the bill, told journalists that the initiative is aimed at removing this collision and adjusting the legislation. President Vladimir Putin in his annual address to members of the parliament on December 3 asked lawmakers to endorse the Supreme Courts proposal to decriminalize minor offences. Putin said that the law must be harsh to those who committed serious crimes as well as be humane to those who made a false step. About 40% of all violent crimes are committed within the family, according to official Russian government statistics. This amounts to 36,000 women being assaulted by their partners every day and 26,000 children being beaten by their parents every year. Amid an endless stream of policy elite speculation over the greater meaning of a President-elect Trump, there are very real foreign policy challenges the next administration will need to tackle on day one -- a long list of problems that the Obama administration failed to address time and time again. I would argue there is no more pressing long-term challenge facing America internationally than the behavior of the Peoples Republic of China. Beijing has made it clear that the regional order in Asia is not to its liking, and that it aims to change it. China pushes against Japan in the East China Sea, asserts that Taiwan is no more than a renegade province that needs to "come home," and engages in endless so-called salami-slicing -- island building in the South China Sea. Such change runs directly counter to the vital national interests of allies Washington has sworn to protect, and it undercuts the freedom of sea and air lanes that bring job-creating trade to and from Americas shores. Indeed, if China were to reduce the Asia-Pacific to nothing more than a sphere of Beijing's influence, it is a near certainty that other nations -- think Russia and Iran, for starters -- would copy Chinas tactics -- tactics like creating borders around seas, pushing critical U.S. allies around, and bullying adversaries to change the global system as Beijing sees fit. A pivot that petered out Team Obama, in a slick piece of attempted grand strategy genius, declared what they called a pivot to the broader Asia-Pacific. While certainly well intentioned, the strategy suffered at its onset from the sheer weight of what was being proposed -- if you pivot to one part of the world, other parts, by the very nature of what you are trying to do, will receive less attention. After a massive outcry from U.S. partners, mostly in Europe, the pivot was respun into the so-called rebalance, with the Obama administration attempting to make Asia its number one foreign policy priority. The policy started out strong, but it was undermined by a series of global disruptions such as Russian aggression in Ukraine, the rise of ISIS, Syrias tragic civil war, and domestic political crisis. By failing to back words with action in other parts of the world -- breaking a now famous redline pledge in Syria to strike Bashar Assad if he used chemical weapons against his own people -- the administration sowed doubts throughout Asian capitals that the rebalance is anything more than talk, and a suspicion that it is backed by no real change in strategy or expended political capital. A Trump administration has been handed a golden opportunity to make major positive changes in American foreign policy -- something he declared in a speech to the Center for the National Interest, where I work. One such change should be to see to its logical conclusion a much more focused and calibrated pivot to Asia -- no matter what the foreign policy crisis of the day is. I would argue for a four-part plan that has the following components: 1. Trump must embrace an Asia First foreign policy Trump would be wise to make Asia is his number one foreign policy priority, and in fact to declare in the strongest possible language what I would call an Asia First agenda. The argument for such an approach is clear. Consider the two alternative top-tier foreign policy action items: Russia: While Russia might be flexing its muscles in Ukraine and in Syria, Moscow faces long-term and well documented demographic and economic challenges it will not easily overcome. And with big cuts coming to its military budget starting next year, we might be witnessing the peak of Russian military and diplomatic might. While Russia might be flexing its muscles in Ukraine and in Syria, Moscow faces long-term and well documented demographic and economic challenges it will not easily overcome. And with big cuts coming to its military budget starting next year, we might be witnessing the peak of Russian military and diplomatic might. ISIS: While it is a long-term challenge for the Middle East and the entire globe, ISIS is slowly but surely losing territory and the means to attack the United States in a debilitating fashion. While Washington will continue to worry about attacks on its soil -- either by radicalized Americans or foreigners somehow sneaking into the country to do America harm -- the imminent danger from an expansive radicalized Islamic caliphate has thankfully passed. An Asia First approach takes into account the simple fact that China, with an economy worth over $11 trillion and a military that already is attempting to challenge America for regional dominance, will present a growing challenge for decades. Compared against what can be argued is a declining Russia and ISIS, the challenge Beijing presents in the Asia-Pacific is most worthy of our greatest efforts during a Trump administration. 2. Now is the time to reassure allies It might not be sexy, and analysts frequently point out that gestures of reassurance seem almost meaningless. However, diplomats I speak to in the Asia-Pacific repeatedly question our resolve to not only honor decades-old treaty commitments, but even to back our own interests in the region. They see us as transfixed with the Middle East, or as a weary partner that wont honor its commitments in a crisis. So how does one fix what is ultimately a perception problem? While there is no easy solution, President Trump must see to the basics. For instance, he should make sure he attends any regional conference he is slated for -- a sign of commitment President Obama let slide when he backed out of the East Asia Summit at the height of the U.S. debt crisis. Asian diplomats speaking to me on background have voiced their anger over that slight -- they consider it a critical mistake. They are also quick to point out how Chinese officials continually remind them of Americas absence, which is seen as a lack of commitment and a sign of our imminent decline. Woody Allen said that 80 percent of life is just showing up; well, so is successful foreign policy. From such a basic foundation, bigger commitments can be made to rebuild trust. For example, if President Trump is serious about killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), he will need to create new ways to reach stronger economic ties that many Asian capitals were keen to build, mainly to ensure that these countries are not overly dependent on China. New bilateral trade deals should be cemented quickly with nations such as Vietnam and Taiwan (in a second round of new members for TPP, Taipei has expressed many times its hope to join), new and old partners that were counting on such agreements. 3. Don't mince words, and don't spin them either Yes, yes, we all know multiple administrations welcome Chinas peaceful rise and that we want Beijing to be a responsible stakeholder. This useless talk needs to stop. Beijing has already risen and does not want to be a stakeholder in any international system led by the United States. China wants to dominate the Asia-Pacific and slowly but surely kick America out of the region. We look weak and timid when we cling to tired cliches that have no meaning and are not based in reality. We need to enunciate clearly that while we hope to partner with Beijing where our interests meet, we see Beijing as a competitor -- Hillary Clinton was bold enough to make such a statement -- and will vigorously defend our allies and partners as well as our economic and diplomatic interests. We need to speak in the language of a great power that has even greater interests. Politically correct diplomacy-speak that is dated at best and sounds weak to Beijing is even worse. 4. A military strategy with teeth While many complained that Obamas rebalance to Asia had an overtly military character, I would argue it was not enough so. Beijing has spent the last decade perfecting a strategy to negate U.S. military advances. Referred to as anti-access/area-denial, and known in shorthand as A2/AD, Chinas plan is to develop advanced, super-stealthy submarines, advanced mines, various types of missile platforms, and more to ensure America would pay a heavy price if it ever decided to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan or in the East and South China seas. Chinas thinking is obvious: Make Donald Trump or a future American president face the prospect of losing an aircraft carrier just as the price of admission to a war that could cost many U.S. lives -- a scenario we have not faced since the Cold War. And while the Pentagon has championed operational concepts such as Air-Sea Battle to negate Chinas rising A2/AD capabilities, the communications strategies to explain such efforts have been problematic at best, with Air-Sea Battle now being swapped for a new plan dubbed JAM-GC, about which, two years on, we are still waiting to receive the finer details. Here is where a change in administration can make a difference, with the U.S. Navy playing a key role. America must clearly define its military strategy for dealing with the rise of Chinas growing capabilities. And there is good news on this front, with what is increasingly being seen as the likely nomination of Rep. Randy Forbes as the new secretary of the Navy, someone who I have had the pleasure of spending a good amount of time with over the years. Forbes would be a major asset in crafting a strong U.S. military strategy toward China. He understands the challenge the Chinese military presents for Pentagon planners. He has championed a stronger Navy, after years of atrophy under President Obama, and called for a much more robust effort to ensure Americas military can not only withstand any possible challenge from China, but to make sure Beijing understands the meaning of deterrence in Asia. While a new military strategy will take some time to develop, there could be no better sign than tabbing Forbes, with senior China expert Michael Pillsbury and analyst Peter Navarro likely offering input in the overall policy direction, to indicate that the Trump administration is moving in the right path. The time is now Clearly the Trump administration will be pushed in many directions on foreign policy issues. The goal for this new team should be to prioritize a few key objectives and stick to a set vision for what they wish to achieve -- and never to allow a crisis-management mentality to set in. If Trump were to focus his efforts on a robust and tightly defined pivot to the Asia-Pacific, setting important benchmarks and goals while working to restrain Chinas attempts to reshape the region, he would set up his administration for a least one big success story. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate , We're sorry, this article is not currently available A lot goes on around campus, and sometimes it's hard to keep up with. From the Seven Simons' first album in 25 years to UGA HEROs 70 mile walk, The Red & Black complied five of the top stories not to miss this week. From closing time of the polls to hours after Donald Trump was announced as President-Elect, the University of Georgia community and Athenians had much to say about election day from beginning to end. NEW YORK (AP) Donald Trump's stunning victory against Hillary Clinton in the presidential election Tuesday was a final twist in a made-for TV thrill ride and a stern lesson to journalists to avoid leaping to conclusions. Relying on polls and group think, television networks began covering election night with a barely concealed assumption that Clinton would win, only to see the actual results suggest something quite different. Tens of millions of Americans followed the drama on all manner of screens as the drama stretched into the early morning. The Associated Press declared that Trump had won the presidency at 2:30 a.m. EST. Within 10 minutes, CNN reported that Clinton had called Trump to concede. Except for the AP, the politicians beat media organizations: CNN called the race for Trump as the Republican took the stage at his Manhattan headquarters, and CBS, ABC and NBC did the same as he spoke. 'Donald Trump is the first person to be elected president without previously holding office since Dwight Eisenhower,' said CBS' Scott Pelley. 'And he did it without the advantage of having won World War II. Less than an hour earlier, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had announced that the Democrat would not be addressing her supporters that night. That triggered a bitter argument on CNN that spoke to the challenge in healing the nation after a rough campaign. Former Trump campaign chairman Corey Lewandowski, now a CNN analyst, was angered by Clinton's decision not to come out and said Trump would be criticized for making the same decision. 'Corey, you're a horrible person right now,' said analyst and Clinton supporter Van Jones. The election results offered a stern rebuke to pollsters few of whom predicted a Trump victory newspaper editorial boards and the Hollywood establishment, which lined up almost unanimously behind Clinton. The post-election period will include soul-searching for those institutions as well as politicians. 'I am sitting here surprised by the fact that we were surprised by this, in a campaign full of surprises,' said ABC News' Cecilia Vega. The much-followed Upshot blog on The New York Times website had a meter predicting the chances of each candidate winning. It began Tuesday with an 85 percent certainty that Clinton would win, and flipped as the evening went on to a near certainty of a Trump win. Television networks, concentrating on the electoral college and paths to victory for each of the candidates, also spent virtually no time discussing the possibility that Clinton could win the popular vote and lose the election. Analysts spoke of Trump's unexpected strength in rural areas, with CNN's David Axelrod calling it a 'primal scream on behalf of voters who are disenfranchised with the status quo.' MSNBC's Brian Williams called it a failure of prognosticators to take into account how many lawn signs Trump inspired as opposed to Clinton. 'This is a revolt of the unprotected class against the protected elite class,' said Fox News Channel's Monica Crowley. A chorus of I-told-you-so's is also likely in coming days. NBC News' Kasie Hunt noted as she traveled with Clinton during the last week of the campaign that it went from small staged events to other small staged events. She said it did not feel like she was covering a winning campaign. 'And I took some criticism for that from some sources,' she said. CNN's Jones grew emotional when talking about how many Americans are going to struggle waking up on Wednesday and telling their children what happened. 'This was a whitelash against a changing country,' Jones said, and many newer Americans will feel threatened by it. It was a far different mood while the polls were still open. Vice Media and Slate collaborated on a system that combined exit polling with early voting profiles to project candidate vote totals in seven battleground states and posted the material throughout the day on Tuesday. Clinton was leading Tuesday afternoon in all seven of the states, according to the VoteCastr model. Television networks vowed to stick with tradition and not reveal that information. But it was hard to miss some foreshadowing. Trump called in to Fox News Channel shortly after 2 p.m. EST, where he talked about a rigged electoral system and passed up the chance to exhort supporters to vote. Fox interviewer Martha MacCallum asked him four questions about what he might do if he lost. Shortly thereafter, Republican National Committee aide Sean Spicer on Fox offered a very specific prediction that Trump's electoral vote total would exceed those of President Barack Obama's two opponents without predicting victory. Republican pollster Ed Rollins told Fox's Shepard Smith at 3 p.m. EST that it would take a miracle for Trump to win. CNN correspondent Brianna Keilar, covering the Clinton campaign, told Wolf Blitzer shortly after 5 p.m. EST that the Clinton camp was confident heading into the evening. 'I hear they're confident,' Blitzer said. 'Are they very, very confident or are they nervous?' Responded Keilar: 'I'm not picking up any nerves.' Five hours later, Keilar noted the stunned faces on people at Clinton headquarters on Manhattan's West Side. They came expecting a party maybe even an early night and left contemplating the prospect of a President Trump. Even before the polls closed, there were warnings not to jump to conclusions too early. 'Please keep in mind, exit polls can shift faster than a feather in a tornado,' tweeted former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, in his familiar folksy style. ___ AP Television Writer Lynn Elber in Los Angeles contributed to this report. LOD, Israel (AP) 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. 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-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. 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.' 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.' Stacey Smart's family said the Lewiston woman has been missing since October. SHARE Sherri Papini By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight Two North State women have been reported missing in the past two weeks. Law enforcement have not said if the two cases are linked, but the families continue to hold out hope for answers. Stacey Smart, from Trinity County, was reported missing Nov. 2, but her family thinks she disappeared sometime in October. Smart's daughter, Nicole Santos, said her mother stopped returning phone calls in mid-October and was out of reach when a family member passed away, which is unlike her mother. "It's just really odd," said Santos. Smart, 51, has a difficult time walking, due to an injury and she does not drive. Friends give Smart rides to run errands, and it seems out of character for her to not tell anyone where she is going. Santos knows her mother was in the area on Oct. 15, because Smart attended a housewarming party in Pine Cove Marina in Lewiston, and she was seen with friends. Recently, friends and others in the community searched for Smart along Trinity Dam Boulevard, near where she lived. The search on Saturday did not turn up any answers as to where Smart could have gone, said Santos. While the Nor-Cal Alliance for the Missing did not organize the search in Lewiston, they did post information about Smart's disappearance on social media. Santos said her mother moved to Lewiston with a travel trailer over the summer from Weaverville to live with her boyfriend. The Trinity County Sheriff's Office were not available for comment Sunday. Santos said her family plans to hire an investigator in the coming days to help in the search for her mother. Smart is described as 51-year-old, white female, 5-foot, 8-inches, with blonde hair, blue eyes and at 180 lbs. Smart was reported missing the same day Sherri Papini, 34, went missing in Redding during a jog in her Mountain Gate neighborhood. Papini's cellphone, headphones and a few strands of hair were found at the intersection of Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive. Papini is described as a 34-year-old, white female, 5-foot, 4-inches tall, with blonde hair, blue eyes and at 100 lbs. Last week, the California Department of Justice classified Papini as a "voluntary missing adult" on its online database, meaning she was someone who left of her own free will. Her family and local law enforcement has asked that the status be changed. The DOJ has since updated the status with a "suspicious circumstances" label and not the "missing at risk" label the Shasta County Sherrif's Office has used since she was first reported missing on Nov. 2. Keith Papini, Sherri's husband, has hired a private investigator to help search for his wife. A $50,000 reward for information that leads to Papini's whereabouts is being offered. Secret Witness of Shasta County, Inc. is offering $10,000 of the reward specifically the portion that would lead to an arrest or conviction and Papini supporters raised an extra $40,000 for any information that leads to her whereabouts. Anyone with information about Papini can contact the Shasta County Sheriff's office at 530-245-6135. Anyone with information about Smart can contact the Trinity County Sheriff's office at 530-623-2611. Police officers guard a gas station in the 10000 block of South Michigan Avenue, where a minivan with a shot-out window is parked early Nov. 13, 2016, in Chicago. A man was shot about one block away, in the first block of East 100th Place, and made it to the gas station, where he was transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) Five people were killed and at least 32 others were wounded in shootings in Chicago from Friday afternoon to early Monday, a weekend when city, state, county and federal police agencies conducted "targeted enforcement missions" to combat violence on the South and West sides. The toll was down from the more than 50 people shot each of the last two weekends. But the number was still twice as bad as the same weekend last year when just 18 people were shot, one of them fatally. Police respond to the 2500 block of West 47th Street in Brighton Park after a man was shot dead early Monday morning. Nov. 14, 2016. (WGN-TV) (Chicago Tribune) With more than 675 homicides recorded so far this year, Chicago could easily surpass 700 homicides before the end of the year for the first time since 1998, according to data kept by the Tribune. Violence usually declines during cold weather, but 2016 has been an exception. At least 50 people were killed in January, the deadliest start to a year since at least 2000. The last weekend in October was the deadliest weekend in Chicago in years. Homicides are up in the city by 54 percent compared with the same period in 2015, and shootings are up 46 percent, according to Tribune data. Advertisement Police investigate a fatal shooting at a gas station in the 4800 block of West Madison Street early Nov. 13, 2016, in Chicago. A man in his 20s was shot and transported to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune) On Friday, the Chicago Police Department announced that teams from the department as well as from the Cook County sheriff's department, Illinois State Police and the FBI were being deployed to three districts: the Gresham District on the South Side, and the Ogden and Austin districts on the West Side. "We just want to send a clear message to the people perpetrating this gun violence in our communities that we just simply won't tolerate it," police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Friday night. The Police Department was expected to hold a news conference later Monday to announce results of the crackdown. The vanity project, of absolutely no use to most Indians, will suck money that could be used for health and education, says Aakar Patel. (This column is being repromoted as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched the bullet train project from Ahmedabad on Thursday. The column was first published on November 14, 2016.) There are over 200 trains going from Ahmedabad to Mumbai. The first one leaves just after midnight and the last one leaves just before. So there are trains going through the day to cover the 524 km distance. There is an airport in Ahmedabad from where there are about 10 daily flights to Mumbai. Ahmedabad and Mumbai are part of the Golden Quadrilateral highway network with six lane expressways on which travel by road is as fast as travel by train. It is possibly the best connected route in India. I am writing this because Prime Minister Narendra Modi finalised a deal for a bullet train with Japanese leader Shinzo Abe. The train will run from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and design work will begin in a few days. The project will cost around Rs 1 lakh crore. The cost is officially said to be Rs 97,636 crore, but reports said a Rs 10,000 crore additional cost may be incurred. To put the figure in perspective, we should know that it is three times the size of India's health budget. India is a country where 38% of all children are malnourished and stunted at the age of 2. This means they will have less physical and intellectual capacity than healthy children and they will never be able to lead a fulfilling life. The bullet train will cost more than we spend annually on the education budget of India. Again, we have some of the lowest literacy rates in the world. And we have a very poor quality of literacy, about which I have written before. The other aspect is that even within the transport industry, our investment does not seem to be made with any sort of attention to the poor and those most in need. In 2005, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh shut down the state transport bus system. The reason was that the buses did not make a profit, but how are the poor expected to travel? Of course this profitability is not expected of the bullet train and other projects because, like the giant statues of Vallabhbhai Patel and Chhatrapati Shivaji coming up in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, these are projects that will add to national pride. One justification for the bullet train is that it will also service two other Gujarati cities on the route, Vadodara, which is 110 km from Ahmedabad and Surat, which is another 120 km down the road. Vadodara also has many flights to Mumbai. I used to regularly visit my parents in Surat because there was a single flight from Bangalore, but now I cannot because there is no flight. On November 6, 2014, a SpiceJet Boeing had an accident at Surat airport. A report said the jet 'hit a buffalo that had strayed on to the runway because of a hole in the airport';s boundary wall. The engine of the Boeing 737 aircraft was severely damaged by the hit and the plane stopped. The buffalo was killed.' The report added that the 'civil aviation ministry has ordered two inquiries, by the director general of civil aviation and the Airports Authority of India. A perimeter security review of airports across the country has been ordered' and 'Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju held a 2-hour meeting this morning and ordered, sources say, that all airports should be secured by a concrete boundary, not fencing or brick walls.' The government seems to be keen on spending money for the transport of the rich, on the assumption that this will grow the economy and ultimately benefit the nation. If so it will help to have a functional and safe airport in Surat that connects it to the rest of the world, rather than a bullet train taking one only to and from Mumbai. This buffalo episode highlights India's inability to secure and sanitise spaces. That additional cost of Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) referred to earlier is for an elevated corridor, meaning the bullet train will run high above the chaos of India. It will be a vanity project, sucking money that could be used for health and education. And of absolutely no use to the vast majority of Indians. It will be of no particular use even to those living in and between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, already the best connected part of India. Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own. You can read Aakar's earlier columns here. IMAGE: Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe aboard the Shinkansen bullet train. Photograph: Ministry of External Affairs With banks struggling to cope with rush to get alternative currency, the government has extended use of old defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees and purchases from co-operative stores till November 24. IMAGE: View of an ATM at South block in New Delhi on Sunday. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI photo While withdrawing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from the night of November 8-9, the government had allowed use of the old currency at government hospitals, railway ticketing, public transport, airline ticketing at airports, milk booths, crematoria/burial grounds and petrol pumps for 72 hours. This list was later expanded to include payments for metro rail tickets, highway and road toll, purchase of medicines on doctor prescription from the government and private pharmacies, LPG gas cylinders, railway catering, electricity and water bills and ASI monument entry tickets. As banks struggled to give alternate currency, the deadline was extended by another 72 hours. That deadline was to end at midnight tonight, but has now been extended till November 24, official sources said. Old currency can also be used for purchases at consumer co-operative stores like Kendriya Bhandar with valid ID proof as also for paying court fee. But payments towards utility bills will be restricted to only individuals or households for arrears and/or current bills. No advance payments will be allowed. Queues get longer at ATMs IMAGE: People queue up outside an ATM in Patna. Photograph: PTI Photo With banks closed in many parts of the country, cash-strapped people started making beeline outside ATMs from early morning but with limited success as most of cash vending machines are running dry. Scuffle and heated exchanges were reported from ATMs and banks from many parts of the country. Many sections of the society including small traders, restaurant owners, transporters etc started feeling the heat as the dependence on cash is very high. Banks are unable to service as heavy rush making it difficult to handle the situation. After government issued advisory banks have started making special arrangement for elderly and physically challenged. In a bid to provide convenience to people, the Centre yesterday eased key restrictions including raising daily withdrawal limit from bank accounts and ATMs as well as increased the amount of old and now defunct currency notes that can be exchanged. To augment cash supplies, newly printed hard-to-fake Rs 500 notes were also released in market. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday night announced the surprise demonetisation of higher denomination notes. After a review by Finance ministry, the limit of old and now defunct Rs 500 and 1,000 notes that can be exchanged for freshly minted Rs 2,000 and a new Rs 500 notes was increased from Rs 4,000 to Rs 4,500 on Sunday. Cash withdrawal limit at ATMs was hiked to Rs 2,500 from Rs 2,000 a day. 'A government can't just take away public money, and the RBI can't extinguish its liability.' 'The RBI has to honour the value any time a person with legal and taxed money lays claim on the value,' Anup Roy points out. Many, including some in the government, are saying that the withdrawal of high value currency notes will lead to a windfall to the Centre through dividends earned from the Reserve Bank of India, but people familiar with the RBI balance sheet say that is unlikely the case. What the withdrawal of the currency notes would ensure is complete elimination of fake high value currency notes and getting some grip on the black money situation. For that, the government, Reserve Bank and banks will have to incur necessary cost, without expecting any other monetary gain. Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, who once suggested that the RBI must use its foreign exchange reserves to recapitalise banks, and in turn was criticised by then central bank governor Raghuram Rajan, said recently that the demonetisation is 'not a wealth reduction in the economy, but a wealth transfer.' 'Instead of seeing it (the demonetisation) as a reduction of wealth, it must be seen as transfer of unaccounted wealth. It should be seen as a transfer of this unaccounted wealth from the private sector to the government and the public sector, which will boost the economy,' Subramanian said in Delhi. Subsequently, State Bank of India group Chief Economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh wrote in his research report that the demonetisation can be used as a fiscal tool. Ghosh estimated that the unaccounted cash not coming back into the system could be 'significantly higher than Rs 2,500 billion, or Rs 2.5 lakh crore.' The unaccounted cash not coming back into the system could be much higher than Rs 2.5 lakh crore. This number could even be a 'gross underestimation' as Ghosh calculated that Rs 9 lakh crore could be the possible unaccounted cash in the system. Currency issued is a liability for the RBI. It is a promise that the RBI owes a particular value to the holder of the legal tender. If this money is not returned to the banks (and therefore the RBI), the central bank's direct liability gets reduced by that much of amount. Therefore, the assets will have to be reduced too. In short, the RBI will have to shrink the balance sheet, reasoned SBI. The shrunk part can then be transferred to the government as dividend, goes the logic. Alternatively, since the RBI would not know how much of old notes have to be exchanged, the central bank will likely print extra money and a cash-payout against the currencies can be done to the government. Or, 'as the RBI will issue notes only against the old notes, there has to be a decline of equivalent amount from the RBI asset side/cash pay-outs,' Ghosh's research report pointed out. 'Whichever way we look into it, we would expect the RBI to transfer this windfall to the government over a period leading to significant fiscal headroom... such amount may be at least Rs 2.5 lakh crore, but with a significant upward bias.' The Reserve Bank of India has been instructed by a committee headed by Y H Malegam that the entire reserves of the RBI should be transferred to the government as dividend for three years starting fiscal 2014. Therefore, the entire non-accounted money, which could be theoretically ploughed back as a reserve can come to the government as dividend. But that is not going to happen. Here's why: The above logic is flawed, say other economists and central bank balance sheet experts. First, the held back money cannot be wiped out from RBI balance sheet, but will reside as a 'nominal' reserve. Second, the RBI gives dividend to the government through real reserves earned through real investment activities, like earning interest on US treasuries, or foreign exchange transactions. The dividend is never paid out of 'nominal' reserves, said a central bank watcher who declined to be named. The money not returned to the banks are legal, but undeclared. They are still a liability to the RBI and the central bank had already created assets against the value in the past. "The RBI cannot just go and declare that I hereby, am foregoing my liability," said a senior economist who did not wish to be named. "It would be akin to forfeiting public money and a central bank cannot do so," said the economist, adding, to forfeit the money, the government has to issue an executive order that the undeclared wealth is now that of the government, which will have its own ramifications. 'That doesn't happen unless there is an emergency or a war-like situation." Instead, the RBI's liability shifts from the 'Notes Issued' head to 'Other Liabilities and Provisions' in the RBI balance sheet. Economists explain that a government cannot just take away public money, and the RBI cannot extinguish its liability, because the central bank has to honour the value any time a person with legal and taxed money lay claim on the value. And the RBI can only give procedural excuse, but cannot deny honoring the value. Therefore, even if the government makes the paper valueless, the promise of the RBI governor cannot be eroded. The promise will have to be fulfilled, albeit, through another set of papers or other legal tenders. Photograph: PTI Photo 'By beheading an Indian soldier, the Pakistan army has demonstrated its proclivity for barbaric medievalism.' 'The strategies adopted and the punishment inflicted by India must be made progressively more stringent with every new act of terrorism till the cost becomes prohibitive for Pakistan, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd). In retaliation for India's surgical strikes that had been launched after the terrorist attack at Uri, the Pakistan army has been firing indiscriminately on the Line of Control and the international boundary sector south of Jammu. Pakistani firing has resulted in the death of soldiers, Border Security Force personnel and eight to ten civilians, including women and children. A large number of civilians have also been injured, triggering a stream of refugees. According to the BSF, 14 outposts of the Pakistan Rangers have been destroyed in retaliatory firing. On the night of October 28, a soldier of the Sikh Regiment was martyred while patrolling near the LoC in the Machhil sector of north Kashmir. In all probability, he was hit by a bullet during an encounter and slipped downslope away from his comrades. When they discovered his body, they found that it had been horribly mutilated. The Indian Army's Northern Command said in a statement that in retaliation for the brutal mutilation of the body of an Indian soldier, four Pakistani posts in the Keran sector had been razed to the ground in a massive fire assault and that heavy casualties had been inflicted on the Pakistan army. This is not the first time that the Pakistan army and the terrorist organisations that it nurtures have demonstrated their proclivity for committing wanton acts of brutality in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions. Earlier, incidents of beheading had occurred on the LoC in 2008 and 2013. During the Kargil conflict of 1999, the Pakistan army had mutilated the bodies of Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia and members of his patrol and had sought to blame it on the so-called Kashmiri freedom fighters. Subsequently, in an act that was unprecedented in the annals of military history, the Pakistan army had refused to accept the dead bodies of its own regular soldiers belonging to the Northern Light Infantry. Despite the logistical difficulties of organising mass funerals in a high altitude sector, all of the dead NLI soldiers were buried by the Indian Army with the honour due to a soldier who dies fighting for his country. Records of the burial ceremonies were sought to be handed over to the Pakistan director general of military operations during the discussions at the Attari-Wagah border. He declined to accept them formally across the table, but took them privately. Perhaps the Pakistan army had disowned its soldiers to keep up the pretence that it was not directly involved in the intrusions that it had engineered into the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir. However, its bluff was called as the Indian Army had incontrovertible documentary evidence of the involvement of soldiers of the NLI. The evidence in the form of identity cards, personal letters, battalion and company attendance and leave registers and registers that had records of rations and supplies, was released to the media by the Indian director general of military intelligence. It was also shown to the military attaches posted at the high commissions and the embassies in New Delhi. Soon the Pakistan army became infamous the world over as a rogue army. Its recent activities reveal that it has no desire to give up that dubious distinction. The attacks sponsored by the Pakistan army at Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Udhampur, Pampore and Uri, among others, have provided conclusive evidence that it is not an organisation that learns from its own follies. The post-Uri surgical strikes launched by India have exacerbated the perpetually ongoing civil-military divide in Pakistan. Imran Khan, whose ambition far exceeds the number of seats his party holds in the Pakistani national assembly, had threatened to launch yet another anti-Nawaz Sharif agitation at Islamabad -- ostensibly with the army's backing --from November 2, which has now been called off. And the prime minister is finding it difficult to appoint a new army chief to succeed General Raheel Sharif who retires this month but yearns for an extension. Operation Zarb-e-Azb against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in North Waziristan has dragged on for over two years without much success. Soft targets in Quetta and Peshawar have been repeatedly hit by major terrorist attacks. Fissiparous tendencies, ethnic tensions and a weak economy continue to undermine Pakistan's socio-economic development. A senior United States policy analyst has described the situation as a 'slow motion implosion.' General Kayani, Raheel Sharif's predecessor, had correctly identified the demons within as Pakistan's primary national security challenge. Kayani had underplayed the bogey of an existentialist threat from India. He had continued to support General Pervez Musharraf's strategy of holding peace negotiations with India and keeping the eastern front quiet while fighting the TTP on the western front. However, Raheel Sharif, known as a 'thinking' general and the originator of the master plan to fight the TTP, has once again upped the ante against India -- with disastrous results for Pakistan. It appears incomprehensible that an army that is besieged by almost insurmountable internal security challenges would act so irrationally -- knowing fully well that the end state would be to further destabilise the country. So, have the generals who rule Pakistan from the back seat from GHQ, Rawalpindi, lost the plot? Or are they capable of recognising that their strategy of pursuing unending hostility towards India in order to perpetuate their own power in Pakistan's polity has let down their country? Reluctant recognition of the army's role in having impeded the nation's growth can be sensed among Pakistan's senior military veterans at Track-2 conferences. They are conscious of the fact that 70 years of hostility with India has yielded no dividends. However, the early contours of the possibility of a change of heart at the strategic level are difficult to discern among Pakistan's serving generals. Hence, the only conclusion that can possibly be drawn is that Pakistan's Deep State -- the army and the Inter Services Intelligence -- is unlikely to give up its strategy of bleeding India through a thousand cuts. It will continue its attempts to destabilise India and Afghanistan through non-State terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Haqanni network, all of whom the Deep State calls strategic assets. The aim of India's counter-proxy war strategy should be to raise Pakistan's cost for waging a proxy war. Since the attack at Uri, India has achieved limited success in isolating Pakistan internationally as a State-sponsor of terrorism. These efforts must continue, along with pro-active military and economic measures. Carefully calibrated military measures should include artillery fire assaults, surgical strikes by the special forces, raids by border action teams and, if need be, air-to-ground strikes with precision-guided munitions fired from stand-off ranges. Pro-active military measures should be supplemented by covert operations. The strategies adopted and the punishment inflicted must be made progressively more stringent with every new act of terrorism sponsored by the Deep State till the cost becomes prohibitive for Pakistan. The era of accepting a 'thousand cuts' must be given a burial once and for all. Pro-active strategies can be implemented at the tactical level without compromising with strategic restraint. Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd) is Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended the demonetisation move, the united opposition hit back at the government over common man's ordeal. IMAGE: People queue up outside at ATM to withdraw money in New Delhi on Monday. Photograph: Subhav Shukla/PTI Photo With millions grappling with demonetisation blues, a combative Narendra Modi on Monday defended the action as one which has brought "sound sleep" to the poor and unnerved the corrupt even as his rivals made a common cause against him, terming his remarks as "insult" to people. As a belligerent prime minister sought to rally public support for the contentious measure, hailed and reviled by his supporters and opponents, the demonetisation exercise saw many of his political rivals come together on the issue, with some even alleging that Bharatiya Janata Party leaders had prior information about the impending decision. Pummelling the Congress and other parties which are criticising demonetisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the corrupt were upset while the poor were "enjoying a sound sleep" after his decision and urged people to bear some inconvenience to root out graft. "After demonetisation, the poor are enjoying a sound sleep while rich are running from pillar to post to buy sleeping pills," Modi said as he tried to rally public support in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, picking up from where he left on Sunday in his speeches laced with emotion and aggression in Goa and Belagavi. "Don't mislead people...I want to ask Congressmen who claim people are facing problems how you turned the entire country into a jail for 19 months by imposing Emergency," he said addressing a rally in Ghazipur, adding it was done only to save the seat of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi after the Allahabad high court verdict against her, and not out of any concern for the poor. He said there was no dearth of money for development, but the fact was that money was stashed away somewhere else and not where it should have been. The November 8 decision of the Modi government, however, brought a fractured opposition together on the issue barely a couple of days ahead of Parliament's winter session with representatives of seven parties-- the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Janata Dal-United, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the YSR Congress--discussing the matter. The Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Aam Aadmi Party, which have strongly criticised the government on the demonetisation issue gave the meeting a miss, besides the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Nationalist Congress Party. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has even decided to meet President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16, the day Parliament session starts, to highlight the "crisis" situation. It was, however, not clear if other parties will join TMC in the delegation to President. The leaders of these parties are likely to meet again tomorrow when representatives from Mayawati's BSP and some others are expected to be present, according to CPI national secretary D Raja. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the BJP's Parivartan Rally in Ghazipur. Photograph: PTI Photo The Congress accused the Modi government of unleashing "economic anarchy" and "tax terrorism" in the country and called for unity among opposition parties. "Whatever may be the differences, political parties should not shy away from voicing the concern of the people so as to address the grievances," party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said soon after the meeting of the opposition parties. Daring Modi to make public the bank details of the party at the central and state levels, Surjewala alleged that a BJP functionary O P Jha had deposited Rs 1 crore in party account in West Bengal in currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 on November 8, shortly before the Prime Minister announced their demonetisation. Mamata Banerjee, who has been in touch with various parties on the issue, including arch rival CPI-M, slammed Modi for his remarks that poor are enjoying a sound sleep after demonetisation, saying it was an "insult" to the common people. "The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste," the TMC supremo said in a tweet after Modi's statement in Ghazipur. "My humble suggestion is not to hit the common people like this," she said. "This will be a killer for the common people. Already a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore of GDP has been lost by the economy in only six days," she said in a statement. BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Modi's "garland of notes" remark, unleashed a no- holds-barred attack on the prime minister, saying he cannot tolerate that a "dalit ki beti" is presented such a garland. "He (Modi) has accepted garland of notes many times. But if a 'dalit ki beti' is offered such a garland, it it does not become palatable for the Prime Minister, it reflects his cheap mentality," she said at a hurriedly convened press conference in Lucknow hours after Modi made the remark at a BJP rally in Ghazipur. "In order to divert people's attention from his failures, Modi levels baseless allegations against his poltical opponents which is condemnable...allegations on policy matters are different but personal ones should not be made...he cannot tolerate that a dalit ki beti is presented garland of notes," she said, adding one cannot digest what Mayawati wears. Mayawati said an undeclared "Bharat Bandh" was prevailing in the country where all economic activity has come to a grinding halt due to demonetisation. "Our party welcomes from the heart any strong action for it (against black money) but the present government in the garb of checking black money and corruption has forced the people to face immense hardships," she said. IMAGE: Members of Socialist Unity Centre of India-Communist, burn an effigy of PM Modi during a protest against the demonetization of the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes in Kolkata. Photograph: Ashok Bhaumik/PTI Photo Mayawati was offered a garland of currency notes at a party rally in Lucknow when she was the chief minister. CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury also sought to pick holes in the demonetisation drive, claiming that prime minister's stated objectives including those of tackling corruption will not be achieved with the steps taken. He also claimed that the BJP-led government had gains in UP election in mind while making the move and reiterated his party's charge that BJP leaders had prior information about the decision, referring to the West Bengal BJP depositing crores "a few hours ahead of Modi's November 8 announcement." "You discontinued Rs 1000 and Rs 500 currency notes. But, replaced it with that of Rs 2000. Nobody is able to use that note," Yechury said as he flashed a Rs 2000 note he withdrew from an ATM in Parliament premises to tell reporters that he has not been able to spend it over the past five days. "Also terrorists don't use cash, such funding is done through electronic transfers. The government should rather implement the law which was brought after 2008 terror attack in Mumbai," he suggested. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, one of the most strident critics of Modi, demanded that the measure be rolled back. "The situation is just the opposite of what the Prime Minister said. The poor are not sleeping. They are spending nights outside banks. Only Modiji's friends are having good sleep. He has made the poor drink poison in the name of strong tea 'kadak chai'," Kejriwal said. Earlier in the day, while addressing a rally in Ghazipur Modi said, "My decision is a little harsh. When I was young, poor people used to ask for 'kadak' (strong) tea but it spoils the mood of rich." Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, set to face a difficult state assembly election, said the farmers were badly hit by the Modi government's action and asked the prime minister to make special arrangements for them in the middle of the cropping season. IMAGE: Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Sitaram Yechury shows a Rs 2000 note while addressing a press conference in New Delhi. Photograph: Subhav Shukla/PTI Photo "They said the measure (demonetisation) will cause pain, but whose who are giving the pain themselves did not know how much pain it will cause. First they said it will last for a week or ten days, now they are saying 50 days," Akhilesh said. As Modi battled opposition criticism, BJP ally Shiv Sena too did not pull any punches and termed the demonetisation drive as "demonic and unsystematic" that has led to "financial anarchy" in the country. "125 crore Indians are standing in queues in scorching heat without food and water. Do you expect them to back you in future? Are you repaying people the blessings they gave you by forcing them to come on streets? This is blatant cheating with them," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said. "The spectacle of weeding out black money is monstrous," it said. Despite a show of unanimity on the issue of demonetisation, divisions persisted among opposition parties on whether they will join TMC delegation when it meets the President. "By and large there was a decision that we will work together. In such cases, it is not like will be led by a, b or c or whether we should meet the President at the start of the session, in the middle or the end," Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said after the meeting. Yechury, whose party and TMC are at daggers drawn in West Bengal, said,"The matter has to be first raised in Parliament and then we will take it forward." When asked if the opposition was united on the issue, he said,"It (unity) has to be on the floor of the House. Floor coordination cannot happen anywhere else." TMC's Derek O'brien, however, said his party will meet the President on the appointed day and at appointed hour in view of the "crisis" situation. "November 16th it is, 1:30 pm it is. I hope others will see the urgency and come back to us," he said. Expecting fireworks in both Houses during the Winter Session of Parliament starting from Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Party Executive will go into a huddle on Monday to chalk out strategy to counter the opposition which is divided over how to take on the Narendra Modi government on various issue. Top brass, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, will attend the meet. On the agenda will be issues like demonetisation, the Kashmir unrest and One-Rank One-Pension. The National Democratic Alliance allies are also meeting on Monday. The prime minister will be attending that meeting as well. In a clear indication of the party's line in Parliament over demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Shah attacked opposition parties, saying they were against an exercise which has rattled those dealing in black money, fake currency, narcotics and such activities. The Congress has sought suspension of business on day one of Winter Session to discuss the demonetisation issue. Leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday said Congress MPs would raise the demonetisation issue under rules 56 and 193 during the Winter Session. Deputy leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma has already given a notice for the suspension of business under rule 267 of the Rajya Sabha for a discussion on the same issue. Opposition parties are a divided house Archis Mohan reports for Business Stadard The opposition, particularly the Congress and Trinamool Congress, is set to raise the issue of demonetisation and how it has inconvenienced common people. But it ranks lack unanimity as several of the parties do not want to be seen opposing the move lest they are painted as defending black money and corruption. On Sunday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said attempted to build consensus. She spoke with several political leaders, including with arch rival Communist Party of India-Marxist, to fight the government's "financial anarchy" together. Banerjee also called up President Pranab Mukherjee to seek time to brief him, along with other political leaders, about the hardships that common people are facing. A meeting, she said, is slated for Wednesday or Thursday. But opposition ranks lack unanimity on the issue. Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar has praised the PM's decision. Odisha Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik, Janata Dal-United chief and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and even Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav have largely welcomed the move. These are parties with significant numbers in the Rajya Sabha, where the government is in minority. The CPI-M, while critical of the move, doesnt want to be seen standing with Banerjee. CPI-M's Lok Sabha member Md Salim has said that the Trinamool is drowned in corruption and shields culprits. Parties are wary that the issue might become in public view of "an honest Modi versus the rest who are defending the corrupt." The opposition parties are likely to question the poor planning, rather than the intent. The government has indicated it would be willing to discuss all issues, including demonetisation. The forthcoming winter session, from November 16 to December 16, will have the government introduce the Central Goods and Services Tax, Integrated GST and GST (Compensation for Loss of Revenue) Bills, 2016. It hopes for the passage of these bills to meet enable it to meet the GST rollout date of 1 April, 2017. President Reuven Rivlin calls India "an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common" at the start of the 6-day visit. The President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, arrived in Mumbai on Monday morning, kicking off an eight-day visit to India to strengthen bilateral ties. I am departing now on an important visit to India, an important ally and close friend of Israel, a state with whom we have much in common, Rivlin said before boarding the flight to Mumbai. Israel and India are both countries of innovation and of inspiration, he added. Countries that have ancient traditions, but have built strong and thriving hi-tech economies, and now celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations. This visit is a sign of the strong relations and friendship between our peoples, and I hope will plant the seeds for that friendship to grow closer and closer. According to the Press Trust of India, Rivlin, who landed at the Mumbai airport with a large delegation of businessmen and academicians, was to pay his respects at the sites of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Six Jews were killed at the Mumbai Chabad house on 26/11. "He will also hold meetings with... leaders of the Jewish community," PTI reported. Rivlin headed to Delhi soon after. In the capital, he is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and visit several sites of co-operation and joint projects between the two nations. He will also join President Pranab Mukherjee in opening an agro-tech conference in Chandigarh. The academic delegation accompanying Rivlin, which includes senior representatives of Israeli academic institutions, are expected to sign agreements with Indian institutions. The Israeli President will also pay his respects at the memorials for Mahatma Gandhi and Indian soldiers, who fell in the World War-I. Image: Israel's President Reuven Rivlin. Photograph Courtesy: PresidentRuvi/Twitter The fresh initiative for settlement of the Ayodhya dispute, led by a former high court judge, has been signed by more than 10,000 Hindu and Muslims. A fresh proposal for settlement of the Ayodhya dispute has been submitted to the Faizabad divisional commissioner, suggesting that a both a Ram temple and a mosque be built at the site. The petition, it is claimed, has been signed by 10,502 members from both Hindu and Muslim communities with a former High Court judge, Palok Basu, leading the initiative. Divisional Commissioner Surya Prakash Mishra, who is the receiver of the disputed site, said, "I received a memorandum regarding the dispute of Ayodhya and a bunch of photocopies containing some signatures. I have yet to decide what to do." Basu, hopeful that the Supreme Court would take note of it, said, "We have moved this negotiation process in the Supreme Court through the authorized person (Faizabad Divisional Commissioner). We hope that the apex court will honour the public sentiments of peace and harmony." Basu said their local effort to resolve the issue started in March 18, 2010. In its September 30, 2010 ruling, the Allahabad High Court had awarded two parts of the site, where the Babri Masjid once stood, to Nirmohi Akhara and 'friend' of Ram Lalla and one part to Muslims, which went to Sunni Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh. In the past, the main litigant in the Babri Masjid case, Hashim Ansari, and Akhara Parishad president Mahant Gyan Das had discussed an out-of-court settlement, which broadly talked about the 70-acres of disputed premises accommodating both mosque and temple with a partition wall, which will be 100 feet high. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad had rejected the proposal, calling it an insult to the high court. Ansari died in July this year. Image: A Hindu activist walks past a temple wall, where devotees have written the name of Lord Ram, in Ayodhya in 2003. Photograph: Roy Madhur/Reuters Since the demonetisation of high currency notes terror funding has come down to zero and there hasnt been stone-pelting on security forces, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday. He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the daring move, which, he said, will also help clamp down on the narcotic drugs. Earlier, there were rates: Rs 500 for stone pelting (on security forces in Kashmir) and Rs 1,000 for doing something else. PM has brought terror funding to zero, Parrikar said. In the last few days after PMs daring move there hasnt been stone pelting on security forces. I congratulate PM for it, he said, speaking at an event organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar. Talking to reporters later, Parrikar said those who sponsor terror will be affected by the demonetisation. Earlier, at the event, Parrikar said, Bhatkhalkar did not tell me beforehand that he will felicitate me. A citation was presented to Parrikar, which lauded his role in surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. It also thanked him for providing relief to people affected by land development rules in the vicinity of Central Ordnance Depots. When I became defence minister, I did not think there will be things like this (dealing with COD-land issue). I thought defence meant bang-bang on the border, he said. Altogether, 17.38 lakh acres of land in the country is under defence possession. Defence is the largest land owner in India, Parrikar said. There was delay in resolving COD issue as there were concerns over security on one hand and peoples concerns on the other, he said. Whether its border security or economic security, PM Modi has taken daring decisions, he said, adding whatever is being done, our jawans on border are doing it, PM and I are just supporting it. Problem of new notes circulation will be resolved to a large extent in the next four-five days, Parrikar said. In the next Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, nobody will be left with power to bribe voters, Parrikar said, without naming the ally Shiv Sena which has been critical of demonetisation. The defence minister said an issue should not be made out of his simplicity and his shunning various official perks. I came to Mumbai thrice (on personal visits) and police didnt know, Parrikar said. BJP MP Gopal Shetty said he will expose defence officers who indulged in irregularities while dealing with the COD issue. Providing relief to people in suburban Kandivli and Malad in Mumbai, Parrikar had earlier this year said the local military authority will have to respond within 30 days to applications for no-objection certificate for redevelopment and construction near the defence establishment, failing which the state government and the municipal corporation can take a call. The move was welcomed by residents of buildings within the 500-metre radius of the Central Ordnance Depot, a defence establishment spanning across 17 acres of Kandivli and Malad. Seeking to corner the government in Parliament on the demonetisation issue, major opposition parties, including arch rivals the Trinamool Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist, on Monday held deliberations to finalise a common strategy alleging that the decision was a "scripted scam" which was leaked to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party much in advance. The meeting, held in the chamber of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, saw rivals TMC and Left coming together with leaders of the YSR Congress, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the Janata Dal-United to discuss ways to put the government on the mat in Parliament. The leaders decided to meet again on Tuesday to finalise a common strategy as today's meeting remained inconclusive in absence of leaders from the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Nationalist Congress Party. The winter session of Parliament starts from November 16. After the meeting, Azad said there was consensus among parties against black money but equally everyone felt that the government had leaked the demonetisation information to the ruling BJP and a "scripted scam". "There was consensus against black money in the meeting but everyone was against the way demonetisation was implemented. It came suddenly and the information was leaked to the ruling party while other parties learnt of it only two hours before it was to roll out. This is a scam and we will raise it in Parliament," Azad said. Asked if opposition parties will join the TMC delegation to the President on November 16, Azad said, "The question is not who is going with them or who is leading. The question is when to go, which date to go, whether to go mid-session or later." To a question about whether there was consensus on anything in the meeting, Azad said there was consensus on questioning the Government over the way the decision was leaked to the ruling party. "There is a difference between us and the government so far as logic of demonetisation goes. The government says it has done what it has done whether people live or die. We are saying we are against black money but also against the way demonetization was implemented. "The government leaked it to the ruling party. Rest of the parties were told only two hours in advance. People are also being inconvenienced all over. We will meet again tomorrow to discuss these issues since all parties were not present today. We don't have to evolve a one day strategy. It has to be a strategy for the whole session," said Azad. As the opposition appeared undecided on the ways to raise the matter in Parliament, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the meeting on Monday sought that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes be permitted for white transactions till December 31, to help people. Asked if CPI-M will join TMC during a visit to the President, Yechury said, "Most parties agreed that the issue must first be raised in Parliament. Everyone has given notices. We will ask the government to allow old currency notes to be legal tender for all public utilities and essential item purchases till December 31." JD-U leader Sharad Yadav said leaders of the opposition parties would hold talks again tomorrow and that all were united. "Our attempt is to put up a united opposition. We will let you know about our course of action," he said. CPI leader D Raja said the government's decision on demonetisation has triggered "unprecedented hardship and sufferings" for the common people and the opposition will put up a united front against it. "The government cannot doubt the common people as dishonest. The decision is affecting a large section of public and it needs to be raised in Parliament. There is consensus on this. Tomorrow several other parties will be meeting and will further hold discussion on the issue," he said. Congress leader Anand Sharma, attacking Modi, said he has subjected farmers, labourers, housewives and the poor people to a situation which is "unprecedented". Referring to Modi's emotion-laced speech in Goa yesterday, Sharma said, "The Prime Minister has mastered the art of theatrics. He continues to insult those who are standing in queues. "He is insensitive. We feel the manner in which the demonetisation has been done is a scam as BJP leaders were informed about it far in advance," he said. IMAGE: Opposition leaders hold meet in Parliament. Photograph: ANI_News/Twitter Pakistan has approached United States President-elect Donald Trump through one of his close aides, Sajid Tarar, seeking to develop an understanding with the new regime. After Trumps surprising victory in the US presidential election, policymakers in Pakistan are discussing options on how to deal with the newly-elected leader, given his radical stance on international and regional issues, reports the Express Tribune. To many Pakistanis, Trumps anti-Muslim rhetoric -- he once proposed banning Muslims entering the US -- and business ties to India are signs that his administration could favour arch-foe New Delhi. A senior official with the knowledge of the proactive approach to reach out to the Republican leader said that Pakistans Ambassador in Washington Jalil Abbas Jilani wrote a letter to Trump on behalf of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to congratulate him on his victory, as well as his governments desire to work with his administration. But, apart from these diplomatic actions, Islamabad is also relying on unconventional approaches, such as reaching out to the Trump administration through his advisers. One of his advisers that have been approached by Pakistan is Sajid Tarar, a Pakistani-American, who came to the limelight after he founded a movement in the US seeking support of Muslims for Trump in the presidential race. Tarar was one of the 36 advisers appointed by the Republican for the election campaign and is expected to be given a key role in the Trump Administration. Tarar has confirmed that he was approached by Pakistan as part of its efforts to reach out to Trump and his administration. He cautioned Pakistan that the country needs to put its own house in order because the Trump administration will not tolerate double talk on the issue of terrorism anymore. When asked what would be his advice to the new administration, Tarar said being a proud Pakistani and a proud Muslim American he would request the new US president to review financial assistance being given to Pakistan. For decades, American money did not reach common Pakistanis and unfortunately only benefited the rich elite, Tarar said, adding that it should change now. On foreign policy issues, Tarar said the new US President would revisit the policies being pursued by his predecessors. Tarar said the new US President would definitely have his own strategy on Afghanistan and issues prevailing in South Asia. Pakistani troops on Monday resorted to shelling and firing on Indian posts in four sectors along the Line of Control in Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which two persons including a jawan were injured. There have been unprovoked ceasefire violations by the Pakistani Army in Sunderbani and Naushera sectors of Rajouri district and Pallanwala sector of Jammu district, a defence spokesman said. Pakistani troops used 82mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons on Indian positions from 1440 hours in these sectors, he said. A 67-year-old resident, Mangat Ram, was injured in Pakistani shelling in Khour area in Pallanwala sector, Jammu Deputy Commissioner Simrandeep Singh said. Pakistani troops also resorted firing along the LoC in Khadi area of Poonch district, according to reports. One jawan was injured in the firing in Poonch. The defence spokesman said the Indian troops gave befitting reply to Pakistani firing. The ceasefire violations came after a lull of a few days on the border. On November 12, an army jawan was killed in Pakistani firing in Keran sector of north Kashmirs Kupwara district. On November 10, another jawan, Satnam Singh, was killed in sniper shots from across the LoC in Machail sector of North Kashmir. On November 8, two army jawans were killed in firing and shelling along LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district. On November 6, two army jawans were killed and five others -- two soldiers, a Border Security Force 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. 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 others injured along the International Border and the LoC in five sectors of Jammu-Kashmir, forcing Indian troops to give befitting reply by destroying 14 Pakistani posts and killing two of their troopers. The 2003 India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement has virtually become redundant with a whopping 286 incidents of firing and shelling along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops that resulted in death of 26 people, including 14 security personnel, since the surgical strike on terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. There have been 186 ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops along the over 190 km International Border in Jammu frontier, while 104 violations of the agreement took place along the over 500 km Line of Control. Phalodi in Rajasthan saw temperatures touching a national record of 51Cin May this year, the world meteorological body on Monday said and asserted that it is very likely that 2016 will be the hottest year on record. The World Meteorological Organisation assessment which was released on Monday in Marrakech, Morocco said that 2016s global temperatures are approximately 1.2 C above pre-industrial levels. WMO said that there is a great need to strengthen the disaster early warning and climate service capabilities of especially developing countries. The report assumes significance as more than 100 countries have ratified the Paris Agreement reached last year which aims at limiting the global temperature increase to well below two degree Celsius and pursuing efforts towards 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. There were a number of major heatwaves during 2016. The year started with an extreme heatwave in southern Africa, exacerbated by the ongoing drought. Many stations set all-time records, including 42.7C at Pretoria and 38.9C at Johannesburg on January 7. Thailand saw a national record of 44.6C on April 28. Phalodi saw a new record for India of 51.0C on May 19, WMO said. The report was released at the Conference of Parties, which is taking place from November 7-18 where nations will continue their work on strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change. The report said that record or near-record temperatures occurred in parts of the Middle East and north Africa on a number of occasions in summer with Mitribah (Kuwait) recorded 54.0C on July 21 which, subject to ratification through standard WMO procedures, will be the highest temperature on record for Asia. It is very likely that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures in 2015. Preliminary data shows that 2016s global temperatures are approximately 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, WMO said. While referring to UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2015 there were 19.2 million new displacements associated with weather, water, climate and geophysical hazards in 113 countries, more than twice as many as for conflict and violence. Of these, weather-related hazards triggered 14.7 million displacements and South and East Asia dominated in terms of the highest absolute figures, but no region of the world was unaffected. Equivalent data for 2016 are not yet available, it said. WMO said that the final statement will be released in early 2017 and this is the first time, the assessment has included inputs from UN partners on the humanitarian impact. Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016. The extra heat from the powerful El Nino event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue. In parts of Arctic Russia, temperatures were 6C to 7C above the long-term average. Many other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada were at least 3C above average. We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree, and so this is different, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. He said that because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen and once in a generation heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. He said sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones. Noting that the Paris Agreement came into force in record time and with record global commitment, he said that the WMO will support the translation of the Paris Agreement into action. WMO is working to improve monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions to help countries reduce them. Better climate predictions over timescales of weeks to decades will help key sectors like agriculture, water management, health and energy plan for and adapt to the future. More impact-based weather forecasts and early warning systems will save lives both now and in the years ahead. There is a great need to strengthen the disaster early warning and climate service capabilities of especially developing countries. This is a powerful way to adapt to climate change, said Taalas. Photographs: Reuters, Getty Images Protests against Donald Trump, since his historic victory in the presidential polls, have been continuing in several cities of the United States. Thousands of protesters poured onto the streets against the president-elect's support of deportation and other measures. The protesters marched onto roads, carrying signs and chanting "Love trumps hate!"! and "We reject the president-elect." Here's a look at some of the protests which has unravelled in America post the elections. A protester holds a sign during a march and rally against the election of Republican Donald Trump as President of the United States in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters Demonstrators come in large numbers to march along the Las Vegas Strip in protest against Trump's victory. Photograph: David Becker/Reuters People from all ages, faiths and nationalities participated in protests march against the election of Trump as the US president. Here is a boy holds a sign during a protest in Manhattan, New York. Photograph: Bria Webb/Reuters Hannah Stephenson, 2, eats a granola bar before joining protesters with her mother and 8-year-old brother on a march against President-elect Donald Trump in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images A demonstrator displays her placard during a protest march against the election of Trump as President of the United States in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: David Becker/Reuters Demonstrators hold a protest march along the Las Vegas Strip. The Republican candidate lost the popular vote by more than a million votes, but won the electoral college. Photograph: David Becker/Reuters The protesters are not ready to accept Donald Trump as their president and displaying 'Not My President' placards at protests. Photograph: Beck Diefenbach/Reuters The protesters marched onto roads, carrying signs and showing 'Embrace Love, Dump Trump' signboards. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Pakistan on Monday said at least seven of its soldiers were killed in unprovoked firing by Indian troops across the Line of Control following which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asserted that the country is fully capable of defending its territory against any aggression. Seven Pakistani soldiers were killed at the LoC in the Bhimber sector in an alleged ceasefire violation by Indian troops late on Sunday night, according to a statement by the army. Pakistani troops responded to unprovoked Indian firing and targeted Indian posts effectively, it said. Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives in the latest violation of Line of Control by the Indian forces and said it is extremely unfortunate that Indian forces have continuously violated ceasefire agreement at the LoC in the recent days, Press Information Department Pakistan said. We are fully capable of defending our soil against any aggression, it quoted Sharif as saying. The prime minister also claimed that the Indian forces have resorted to escalating tension on the LoC only to uselessly divert the worlds attention from the grave human rights situation in Kashmir. So far, mostly civilian have been killed in the firing on Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan Foreign Office last week said that the civilian death toll from alleged Indian shelling has risen to at least 25 in the past few weeks. The Foreign Office has also summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale. Representative image. A senior Swedish prosecutor on Monday quizzed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012, six years after he was accused of rape by a woman in Stockholm. The 45-year-old Australian national has been living in the embassy for more than four years after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador amid fears he will be extradited to the United States and questioned over the release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by his controversial website. Ingrid Isgren, Swedens deputy chief prosecutor, arrived at the small central London embassy at 9.30 am, accompanied by another woman, where she was met by dozens of photographers and film crews. She paused briefly for photographs but made no comment to waiting reporters. But a statement on behalf of the Swedish prosecutors said: As the investigation is ongoing, it is subject to confidentiality. This confidentiality also applies according to Ecuadorean legislation for the investigative measures conducted at the embassy. Therefore, the prosecutors cannot provide information concerning details of the investigation after the interview. Three days have been set aside for the interview, which follows years of legal and diplomatic wrangling between Sweden and Ecuador. The interview is a significant step forward in a case that has been locked in deadlock since Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over the allegation, which he denies. Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long said, This is something that Ecuador has been inviting the Swedish prosecutors to do ever since we granted asylum to Assange in 2012. There was no need for the Swedish authorities to delay for over 1,000 days before agreeing to carry out this interview, given that the Swedish authorities regularly question people in Britain and received permission to do so on more than 40 occasions in recent years, he said. After years of stalemate, representatives from the Swedish prosecutors office and Swedish police officers agreed to be present while Assange is questioned by an Ecuadorian official based on a previously approved set of questions. A DNA sample will also be taken from Assange if he gives his consent. The results of the interview will be transcribed and reported from Ecuador to the Swedish prosecutors in a written statement. After this report, the prosecutors will take a view on the continuation of the investigation. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of Assanges responses during the questioning, but not put any fresh questions. A small group of supporters were outside the embassy in the morning and unfurled banners in support of Assange. Image: A supporter of Julian Assange holds a poster after prosecutor Ingrid Isgren from Sweden arrived at Ecuador's embassy to interview him in London. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters United States President-elect Donald Trump dropped enough hints on Sunday that he meant business when in an interview to CBS News he reiterated his commitment to building a wall on the Mexican border and deporting illegal immigrants. Speaking to CBS News' Lesley Stahl at the Trump Tower in the interview that was aired on Sunday evening, Trump said: "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers -- we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million -- we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we are getting them out of our country, they are here illegally." "After the border is secured and after everything gets normalised, we are going to make a determination on the people that you are talking about who are terrific people, they are terrific people but we are gonna make a determination at that -- But before we make that determination -- Lesley, it is very important, we want to secure our border." The Wall The President-elect said though he still plans to build a wall, he would accept a fence for some areas. "For certain areas I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," Trump said. "I am very good at this, it is called construction." Trump had campaigned on a vow to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He also had insisted he will deport all 11 million people in the country illegally, with exceptions. Social Media Trump plans on keeping his infamous Twitter account going, though he says he will be "very restrained, if I use it all." He went on to credit the popular social media site with his recent victory. He said: "It is a great form of communication. Now, do I say I will give it up entirely and throw out, that is a tremendous form -- I pick up -- I am picking up now, I think I picked up 100,000 people yesterday. I am not saying I love it, but it does get the word out." "I am going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I am going to do very restrained. I find it tremendous. It is a modern form of communication. There should be nothing you should be ashamed of. I do believe this, I really believe that, the fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera, I think it helped me win all of these races where they are spending much more money than I spent. You know, I spent my money. A lot of my money. And I won. I think that social media has more power than the money they spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that." No salary and no vacation! The President-elect said he would take $1 as his salary a year and not the $400,000 that comes with the US president's job and will refrain from going on any vacation. "No, I'm not gonna take the salary. I'm not taking it," confirming a promise he made in a campaign video in September. "I think I have to by law take $1, so I will take $1 a year. But I don't even know what it is," Trump said. Trump also said he would not take any vacation. "We have so much work. There's so much work to be done. And I want to get it done for the people," he said. "I want to get it done. We're lowering taxes, we're taking care of health care. I mean, there's just so much to be done. So I don't think we'll be very big on vacations, no," Trump said, ruling out a vacation for himself. Racial hatred, violence post Trump win Trump directly addressed Americans harassing people of different religions, races and sexualities following his victory. "I hate to hear that, I am so saddened to hear that and I say, stop it. If it helps, I will say it right to the cameras: 'Stop it'." He also asked left-wing demonstrators not to fear his presidency. I would tell them, 'don't be afraid', absolutely," he said, adding, "We are going to bring our country back but certainly, don't be afraid. We just had an election and you have to give it a little time." The president-elect said some sections of the society are scared about him because they do not know him. He asked them not to be afraid. "That's only because they don't know me," he said. "What do you think they are demonstrating against?" he was asked. "I think in some cases, you have professional protesters," he said, referring to mentions about it in Wikileaks. "I mean, people are protesting. If Hillary had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, 'Oh, that's a terrible thing'. And it would have been a much different attitude. There is a different attitude. You know, there is a double standard here," Trump said. 'Obama is terrific, has great sense of humour' Terming outgoing US President Barack Obama as "terrific" who has a "great sense of humour", President-elect Donald Trump said they did not talk about the bitterness of the recently-concluded election campaign during their meeting but discussed some tough subjects. "I found him to be terrific. I found him to be very smart and very nice. Great sense of humour, as much as you can have a sense of humour talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects. We were talking about some victories, also. Some things that he feels very good about. This was just going to be a quick little chat (their interaction at the White House) and it lasted close to an hour and a half. It could have gone on for four hours. I mean, it was in fact, it was almost hard breaking it up because we had so many things to say. He told me the good things and the bad things." "I wanted to get his full view. I got a good part of his view. And I like having that because I'm going to be inheriting that in a short period of time," he said. 'I think I'm a sober person' Trump called himself a sober person and said this is how he looked inside the Oval Office. "I think I'm a sober person. I think the press tries to make you into something a little bit different. In my case, a little bit of a wild man. I'm not. I'm actually not. I'm a very sober person. But it was respect for the office. It was respect for the president. I never met him before, but we had a very good chemistry going. It might not be that I agree with him, but I really found the conversation unbelievably interesting," Trump said when asked about his meeting with Obama. The President-elect added that he never had an awkward moment during the meeting. "We never discussed what was said about each other. I said terrible things about him. He said terrible things about me. We never ever discussed what we said about each other," he said. Photograph: Getty Images 'When integrity is compromised for whatever gratification is when prisoners breach the system and get away.' ADGP, Jails, Sushovan Banerjee, who was shunted out after eight prisoners killed a head constable and escaped, speaks out. Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore reports from Bhopal. IMAGE: On the night of October 30-31, eight prisoners allegedly escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail, above, after killing head constable Ramashankar Yadav; Photograph: Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com History, it seems, has an uncanny habit of repeating itself. And with added ferocity, if one can say so in hindsight. Had government officials and the authorities in charge of jail security in Madhya Pradesh taken cognizance of three letters (yes, you read that right), written over five days -- October 3, 4 and 7 -- by then additional director general of police, jails, Sushovan Banerjee, the jailbreak by eight prisoners, allegedly members of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India, on the night of October 30-31 could have been averted. And the precious life of head constable Ramashankar Yadav, who was allegedly killed by these eight men inside the Bhopal Central Jail, could have been saved. Banerjee, who was transferred by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government the day after the jailbreak, in his three letters to concerned government officials and others, clearly mentioned the danger of keeping 29 SIMI activists inside the same prison. Without delving into speculation about how a jailbreak could occur inside a prison that is considered one of the most secure in India, Banerjee says, "When integrity is compromised for whatever gratification is when such people (the prisoners) are able to breach the system and get away." "In this case I have a very strong suspicion that integrity was compromised which led to such a horrifying incident (the jailbreak and murder of head constable Ramashankar Yadav). There must be some reason why it happened on the day it happened and not in the last three years," he adds. Three years ago, on October 1, 2013, six SIMI activists escaped from another high-security prison in Madhya Pradesh, the Tantya Bheel Jail in Khandwa district. Soon after, the then inspector general of police, jails, G K Agarwal, wrote a similar letter to then MP chief secretary Anthony Desa, about the lapses that helped the SIMI prisoners escape from the Khandwa jail. Despite such alerts being sounded by senior jail officials, the Shivraj Singh Chohan government in Madhya Pradesh was caught napping on October 30-31. "I gave specific alerts," says Banerjee about the recent jailbreak, highlighting the fact that he had mentioned the presence of 29 SIMI activists in one jail in his letter to Bhopal Jail Superintendent Akhilesh Tomar. Tomar could not be contacted when this correspondent visited the Bhopal Central Jail on the afternoon of November 3. A guard posted outside his home, located 100 metres away from the jail, said, he was not home. "Pehle agar dekh lete toh yeh nahi hota (If they had taken cognisance of such security lapses, then this jailbreak could have been averted)," a senior officer at the state police headquarters in Bhopal, said, speaking on the condition he would not be named in this report. "You should have triggered a change after the Khandwa jail break that happened in (October) 2013, but I really don't expect much to change because then elections will come and most (jail) infrastructure funds will be diverted to win votes and not for creating jail infrastructure because that will not get votes," the police officer added. "This unfortunate incident could have been avoided had everybody done their jobs in the manner they were expected to do," the officer pointed out. "It is the job of senior officers to create a system and ensure that the system is followed. The executive who are responsible for a particular job just needed to follow the practices that have been already laid down, that have been communicated and also take specific measures during times of crisis when specific alerts were issued," the officer said, highlighting the gaps that allowed guards meant for jail duty to be diverted elsewhere. As for Banerjee, he says, he has been made a scapegoat. "Who, why and such other questions will emerge only after an internal inquiry is completed, but I can tell you that at my level everything that was needed to be done was done." "I was responsible for 123 jails and 40,000 inmates and I can't be in every place at the same time, supervising what each and every person is doing," he says. "Why was the DG, Jails, not pulled up?" he asks. Why do peace deals fall at the final hurdle? Publisher IRIN Author James Bean Publication Date 26 October 2016 Cite as IRIN, Why do peace deals fall at the final hurdle?, 26 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/582989e14.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. In the lead-up to the Colombian peace referendum on 2 October, Colombian president and Nobel laureate Manuel Santos said, "I don't have a Plan B because Plan B is going back to war." Colombian voters rejected the 297-page peace deal put to them barely 40 days after it was signed. Why? Conflicts don't really end after a peace accord has been reached - they just change venues. A peace accord should transform a violent engagement into a political engagement, which very often means the parties commit to contending with one another in the scrappy arena of national politics. This transition is the Achilles heel of peace negotiations, sometimes ignored, often avoided. The lesson from Colombia, after more than 30 years of start-stop negotiations between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is that peace processes too often face harsh political realities after a deal is signed. Another process on another continent could have shown the pitfalls to avoid. Throughout my 10 years working with rebels - however not with the FARC nor the Colombian peace process - I have learned how armed groups' political calculus is all too often the same. Alienation, disaffection, suspicion, in-fighting, arrogance, and sheer bloody-mindedness usually overwhelm their intellectual appetite for political engagement. It is hard to overstate how repulsed rebel leaders are by anyone suggesting that their planned pathways to victory are affected by real-world constraints. Mediators, experts, and advisors in peace negotiations have to persistently confront non-state armed groups with realism - anything less is a disservice to the peace process. In the endgame of a peace deal, rebels suddenly find themselves drawn into a political world of tight timeframes and brinksmanship and aren't prepared for it. Moreover, unlike their government counterparts, they simply don't have the chops to operate in specific settings like caucuses, parliament, or on the campaign trail - these skills need preparation and time to cultivate. These political skills cannot and should not be held over until after the final peace deal is signed - which is what happened in Colombia and the Philippines. Philippines The upset in Colombia has parallels to the outcome of peace talks between the Filipino government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). After 15 years of formal and informal negotiations, the two sides finally inked a framework agreement in 2012 and a comprehensive peace agreement in March 2014. But between 2012 and 2015 the MILF put off establishing a political party, or rolling out a party structure, or preparing candidates for the senate, or raising campaign finance. And yet they explicitly agreed to a form of autonomy falling well short of statehood, meaning they would have to take part in the national political arena. The plan was for the deal to culminate in legislation that would glide through the national legislature, paving the way for a new autonomous region in Mindanao and a transitional regional government led by the MILF. Just as in Colombia, the parties refused to countenance a plan B. In the Philippines, the passage of the bill was quickly derailed. In January 2015, a botched counter-terrorism operation led to 44 police troopers, 17 MILF combatants, and three civilians being killed. The incident energised a hostile parliament that ultimately denied then-president Benigno Aquino the political capital he needed to push the bill through. Now the Philippines' new president, Rodrigo Duterte, like his Colombian counterpart, will have to pick up the pieces. The final hurdle The Colombia-FARC and Philippines-MILF deals are, in terms of words on the page, some of the longest peace accords in modern history. Also, neither process could be described as having taken shape in any great haste. It is therefore somewhat curious, if not altogether surprising, that local politicians eviscerate the process at the 11th hour. Rebels need to be politically active during negotiations, but typically the state makes political participation conditional on the final peace accord. It should have been apparent in 2012 when the Philippines government and the MILF signed a framework agreement - just as Colombia and the FARC did in same year - that the rebels would eventually be engaging in national politics and would therefore need more political clout. Neither the FARC nor the MILF could afford to simply rely on the good offices of the president to shepherd the peace process along, let alone the broader political transition that would follow. In both cases the rebels should have known that they needed a functional, strong political platform through which to legitimately reach out to their constituents. The result in Colombia was clear-cut: a minority of Colombians - half of the 38 percent who turned out (only 19 percent of registered voters) - scuttled what seemed to be a viable resolution to South America's longest-running war. The result tells us two things; that the government alone couldn't persuade its constituents, and that the final peace accord in its current form isn't politically viable. If the rebels had the capacity to campaign for the "Si" vote, and were willing and able to do so, would the result have been different? I strongly believe that it is entirely possible that the "Si" vote could have carried the day, in which case President Santos' Nobel Peace Prize might make a bit more sense. Lessons To learn from the Colombia-FARC and Philippines-MILF peace processes, it is important to firstly understand that one side (usually both) is unequipped to politically engage their adversary, having only ever faced them on the battlefield. Secondly, exposure to the 'outside world', and showing rebels why blanket amnesty, perceptions of justice by everyone, inclusivity, and respect human for human rights are so important, are absolutely necessary. Diplomats and 'experts' have an equally important duty to make the parties see that their objectives do not exist in a political vacuum, but are a moving part of a much more complex system (whether they like it or not). Whatever the parties agree to in terms of substance, they have to be willing and able to sell it to their constituents before the ink has dried on the peace deal. We should be much clearer about the costs of denying rebels earlier political access and recognition. Armed groups like the FARC and the MILF should be encouraged to form political entities and pull their own political weight during negotiations, instead of turning political participation into a concession. Rebels are denied access because the state doesn't want to "recognise" them. Recognition is, after all, valuable political currency. By doing this, however, we also deny everyone the possibility of resolving the conflict. In Colombia's case, the parties risk slipping into brinksmanship. In the referendum aftermath President Santos initially appeared to reaffirm the permanent end to hostilities through the standing ceasefire. However, he then changed tack by declaring the ceasefire would end on 31 October. To which the FARC leader Rodrigo Londono replied by Twitter, "And after that, the war continues?" A bilateral ceasefire has now been extended until 31 December, but to what end? Congo's South Sudan rebel problem Publisher IRIN Author Claude Sengenya Publication Date 17 October 2016 Cite as IRIN, Congo's South Sudan rebel problem, 17 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298ab94.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The last thing eastern Congo needs is more armed groups, so the arrival of hundreds of South Sudanese rebels in the violence-prone region is cause for concern. The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by the acronym MONUSCO, says it registered 755 SPLA-IO fighters who crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo in July, following clashes in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. The men, loyal to former vice president Riek Machar, were on the losing side of fighting with the soldiers of President Salva Kiir. They escaped with Machar into Garamba, a national park that stretches across a huge swathe of northeastern Congo, where they were rescued by MONUSCO. Unwelcome guests The violence in Juba effectively killed a painfully negotiated peace agreement between Kiir and Machar. The South Sudanese fighters have now joined a list of foreign rebel groups that eastern Congo is unwilling to host but struggling to remove. They include the Rwandan FDLR, the Burundian FNL, and two Ugandan exports, the ADF and the LRA. These groups, along with equally violent homegrown militia, have terrorised the local population for decades. MONUSCO has responded to the growing public concern by pointing out their SPLA-IO rescue mission was on humanitarian grounds, and at the request of the Congolese government. The peacekeeping mission said it handed over 117 South Sudanese to the Congolese authorities, and cantoned the rest at three of its bases in eastern DRC, where they were given food and medical assistance. Security is tight at the bases, and MONUSCO is doing its best to downplay any security threat. Just how destabalising the rebel presence has become was underlined by a call by an SPLA-IO spokesman for the return of the men to areas across the border he says are controlled by the rebel group. Bad memories Although MONUSCO says every SPLA-IO fighter was disarmed before leaving Garamba, that assurance has done little to ease public anxiety in eastern Congo, a region where weapons are easily obtainable. There is a growing clamour from civil society groups for the resettlement of Machar's men outside of the DRC - especially following the former vice president's announcement from exile in Khartoum last month that he would continue his armed struggle. "Like the South Sudanese fighters, the FDLR also entered Congo with their weapons, under the cover of humanitarian operations," said Jean-Paul Lumbu Lumbu, a leading North-Kivu lawyer. "After having benefited from the legendary hospitality of the Congolese people, these FDLR rebels are now pillaging, raping, and killing poor civilians." Professor Nisse Mughendi, a lecturer in international relations at the Catholic University of Graben, in Butembo, told IRIN the cantonment of SPLA-IO combatants represents a threat to the entire Great Lakes region. "Remember that Congo's neighbours have always used the presence of their rebels in Congo as the pretext for military intervention," he said. "Therefore, the presence of South Sudanese fighters on Congolese soil only messes up relations between Congo and their country of origin, South Sudan, and its allies." In a memorandum to the government, a group of roughly 30 leading local politicians, lawyers, doctors, business people, and religious leaders called for their resettlement in any other African country. "The coalition fears that the excuse of the right of pursuit presented by Rwanda against the FDLR rebels to justify repeated incursions into the DRC, and eventually of Uganda against the ADF rebels, could one day be used by the South Sudanese government against the rebels [now cantoned in Congo]," the memorandum said. Blunders Mughendi believes the Congolese authorities blundered in accepting a new group of foreign rebels on its soil. "You need to first resolve the problems of other foreign armed groups before creating more," he said. Under public pressure, the government has given a frustrated MONUSCO an ultimatum to resettle the South Sudanese, but hasn't named a firm deadline. It's unclear if any of the rebels have sought asylum, which would complicate the government's room for manoeuvre. The threat of their "expulsion" has nevertheless been welcomed by Juba. "It's self-evident that they ought to leave DRC. But the solution ought not to come exclusively from MONUSCO," said UN peacekeepers' spokesman Felix Bass. "It most also involve the DRC, South Sudan, the countries of the wider region, and international organisations like the African Union and the United Nations," he noted. Mughendi is glad the government is responding "to the pressure from the people of North-Kivu" and setting demands. But, he added, it may be too late for any effective action to be taken in the short term. "The SPLA-IO fighters are already on Congolese soil, and their repatriation is now going to depend on the interests of international actors," said Mughendi. "They'll need to find a state willing to accept them." If the men have not yet renounced their loyalty to Machar, that could well take some searching. Afghans in Germany face rejection and deportation Publisher IRIN Author Kaveh Rostamkhani Publication Date 25 October 2016 Cite as IRIN, Afghans in Germany face rejection and deportation, 25 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298b874.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Since arriving in Germany last August and two months later being transferred by authorities to the small town of Altenberg in the east of the country, Rohullah Qaderi, a 24-year-old former TV producer and reporter from northern Afghanistan, has done his best to integrate. It wasn't easy in an area where many local residents were unprepared and unwilling to accept newcomers, but he joined an initiative aimed at helping newly arrived asylum seekers adjust to their new lives and managed to acquire an impressive command of German. He made a positive impression on locals involved in the initiative who described him as bright and highly motivated up until this August at least. That was when his asylum application was rejected, just two weeks after his refugee status determination interview. "I never expected [the decision] to be negative. I had been so motivated and had stopped thinking about the threats [back home]. Once I read the answer, they all came up in my mind. I can barely sleep and can't concentrate," Qaderi told IRIN. "Absurd" calculations of risk Qaderi was among 94,000 Afghans who arrived in Germany in 2015 during what has become known in Germany as the "long summer of migration". By the end of the year, Germany had received 890,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Afghans made up the second largest non-European nationality after Syrians but, unlike the Syrians, their chances of securing refugee status and being able to remain in Germany were far from certain. In 2015, 27 percent of Afghans were rejected for asylum, according to Eurostat. During the first three quarters of 2016, that figure climbed to 46 percent. The rise in the number of rejections of Afghan asylum cases in Germany has coincided with a similar rise in rejection rates in many other EU countries. Meanwhile, the conflict in Afghanistan has worsened significantly over the past 18 months, with 11,000 civilians killed or injured in 2015 and another 8,397 between January and September this year, according to the UN. In its rejection letter to Qaderi, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) noted that the probability of becoming a victim of Afghanistan's internal armed conflict was estimated at 0.074 percent, based on a "risk ratio calculation" that draws on population figures and casualties from Afghanistan's conflict in 2014 -- not high enough to justify receiving asylum in Germany. Bernd Mesovic, deputy CEO at Pro Asyl, a Frankfurt-based NGO that supports the rights of refugees, suggested that the risk ratio calculation was "absurd" and did not draw on reliable, up-to-date data from regions under the de facto control of the Taliban to paint a realistic picture of the current security threats in Afghanistan. He said the increasing numbers of Afghans rejected for asylum in Europe was aimed at creating the impression with the public that "a majority of Afghans are not in need of protection". "Safe and orderly return" Qaderi is appealing the decision. He complains that the interviewer did not give him enough opportunity to present his individual case. He told IRIN that in January 2015, he was approached by presumed fundamentalists who wanted him to use his access as a reporter to facilitate an attack on the local governor of a town in northern Afghanistan. When he refused, he was beaten and both he and his family were threatened with death. Ten days later he narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt and decided it was time to leave. After reaching Turkey via Iran, he took the eastern Balkan route through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In both Bulgaria and the Czech Republic he was arrested and held in custody for more than a month. "Homeland is like a mother," he said of Afghanistan. "No one would voluntarily leave their mother behind." Being rejected for asylum does not automatically mean deportation. Afghanistan, like many countries, has refused to accept its nationals returned from Europe unless they agreed to leave voluntarily, meaning that people like Qaderi have been allowed to remain in Germany with a tolerated status known as 'Duldung', which limits their right to work or access social services. But in September, the print edition of Der Spiegel magazine reported that Germany was about to finalise a bilateral agreement with Afghanistan that would allow it to return Afghans, in some cases forcibly. Discover More Afghan forces regain control of Kunduz, allowing residents to return And earlier this month, the European Union and the government of Afghanistan signed the "Joint Way Forward on Migration Issues" - an agreement on the "safe and orderly return" of Afghan nationals "irregularly" residing in the EU after being rejected for asylum. It was signed just ahead of a conference in Brussels at which donors pledged financial development aid for Afghanistan. Speaking at the donors' conference, German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier remarked: "I hope that the just-signed readmission agreement with Afghanistan comes into practice effectively." However, the EU's foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini denied any connection between the readmission treaty and the promise of $15.2 billion in development aid (more than a third of it from EU countries) to Afghanistan over the next four years. Qaderi is not convinced. "Is it an agreement or a trade-off?" he asked. "The Afghan government is corrupt," he added. "If development aid had been used to build any structures benefiting the Afghan people so far, they would not risk their lives to reach safety in Europe." In a statement Mesovic of Pro Asyl described the deal as a tool to deter more Afghan people from migrating to the EU and pointed out that even some Afghan officials were reluctant to sign it, including the minister for refugees and repatriations, Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi. "Though in the end they seem to have accepted all of the EU's terms." Qaderi said that forcibly returning people who have risked their lives reaching Europe could result in some of them joining the ranks of fundamentalists out of desperation. His appeal is scheduled to be heard on 16 December at the Administrative Court in Dresden. With the help of a lawyer, he hopes to have a fair hearing with enough time to thoroughly explain his case. But if his rejection is upheld, he says: "I won't return voluntarily. If they forcibly deport me, I may cease to exist." "If I survive, I will certainly escape [Afghanistan] again, as I don't want to be butchered by Islamists." UN chief condemns terrorist attack against Sufi shrine in Pakistan Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 13 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief condemns terrorist attack against Sufi shrine in Pakistan, 13 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298d03412.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 13 November 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the terrorist attack on a Sufi shrine in southwestern Pakistan yesterday that reportedly killed dozens of worshippers. aThe Secretary-General condemns the terrorist attack [-] He extends his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government and people of Pakistan, and wishes a speedy recovery to the injured,A Mr. Ban's spokesman said in a statement issued overnight. Preliminary media reports said that a powerful bomb blasted the shrine in the Khuzdar district of the Baluchistan province, killing at least 52 people and wounding at least 100 others. aThe Secretary-General hopes the Pakistani authorities will be able to swiftly bring the perpetrators of this depraved attack to justice,A the spokesman said. aThe Secretary-General supports the Government of Pakistan in its fight against terrorism in full respect of international and human rights norms,A he added. In DR Congo, UN Security Council delegation calls for consensual, inclusive electoral calendar Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 13 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, In DR Congo, UN Security Council delegation calls for consensual, inclusive electoral calendar, 13 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298d4b412.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 13 November 2016 - Visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), members of the United Nations Security Council called on Congolese political and social actors to take greater responsibility to adopt a consensual and inclusive electoral calendar and asked that the ban on public demonstrations be lifted. The delegation, co-led by French Ambassador Francois Delattre and Angolan Ambassador Ismael Abrao Gaspar, arrived in Kinshasa, the country's capital, Friday night. The delegation has so far met with various political figures, including President Joseph Kabila and opposition leaders, as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations. President Kabila's term ends on 19 December this year. A presidential vote, originally scheduled for 27 November, continues to be a deeply divisive issue in the DRC. Last month, the Constitutional Court granted a petition of the National Electoral Commission (CENI) to postpone the elections to 2018. Meanwhile, on 18 October, participants in the national dialogue on elections signed an agreement to hold the elections in April 2018. However, the dialogue is being boycotted by several of the main opposition groups, which have formed a coalition called "Rassemblement." The group has been staging popular protests on the 19th every month to pressure President Kabila to step down. In Kinshasa, Mr. Delattre, said that the delegation highlighted the need for a broad inclusive framework in order to reach a broad consensus on a specific electoral timetable, accompanied by confidence-building measures. In this context I would like to stress that we emphasized how freedom of opinion and assembly must be guaranteed, and fair access to the media ensured in order to have a free and constructive political debate, he said. On Saturday, the UN-backed Radio Okapi signal was blurred momentarily, but Radio France International's signal is still cut. He said UN Security Council members called on the Congolese authorities to re-establish Radio France International's signal and to lift the ban on demonstrations. Earlier this month, Mr. Delattre told the press that the Council's visit to DRC will be a very important exercise of preventive diplomacy. We want to seize this opportunity to talk to all Congolese stakeholders to ensure that they fully realize the responsibility that they have in preserving peace in their country and show the necessary spirit of compromise and openness in order to prepare for the elections as soon as possible and, this is a key word, in full respect of the constitution, he said. The Council delegation will visit Beni on Sunday before traveling to Luanda in Angola. UN-brokered Cyprus talks to reconvene on 20 November; 'significant progress' achieved Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN-brokered Cyprus talks to reconvene on 20 November; 'significant progress' achieved, 12 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298d93412.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 12 November 2016 - Following five days of the United Nations-brokered reunification talks that generated significant progress, the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities have decided to take a recess and reconvene on 20 November. During these past five days, the chapter on territory and all other issues were discussed interdependently. Significant progress has been achieved, the UN spokesperson for Cyprus said in a statement released to the press yesterday. The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mustafa Aknc, and the Greek Cypriot leader, Nicos Anastasiades, have been engaged in sustained negotiations in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, since 7 November under the auspices of the UN. Upon request of Mr. Anastasiades, it has been decided by the two leaders to take a recess and reconvene in Geneva on Sunday, 20 November, to continue their deliberations, the spokesperson said. The two leaders, once again, wish to express their gratitude to the Government of Switzerland for its generosity and hospitality in hosting this event and for the invaluable support provided to them and their teams throughout the week, the spokesperson added. According to the UN Department of Political Affairs, while efforts to reunify Cyprus continue, the UN exerts a stabilizing presence by deploying a peacekeeping mission on the island since 1964. The UN also works through the good offices of the Secretary-General to assist the two sides in the search for a comprehensive and mutually acceptable settlement to the Cyprus problem. In addition to other methods, the UN chief uses his 'good offices' diplomatic steps taken publicly and in private, drawing upon his independence, impartiality and integrity to prevent international disputes from arising, escalating or spreading. Displacement continues amid recurrent clashes in north-central Somalia UN Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Displacement continues amid recurrent clashes in north-central Somalia UN, 11 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298dd340e.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 11 November 2016 - Nearly 90,000 people in the city of Gaalkacyo, Somalia, remain displaced due to increased tensions and the recurrent clashes between forces allied to Galmudug on the one hand and Puntland administrations on the other hand according to an update from the UN relief wing. In the same update, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) points out that some 40,000 displaced people have faced secondary displacement. The clashes in Gaalkacyo, which is in the north-central part of the country, have continued despite a ceasefire agreement signed on the first of November, in Abu Dhabi by Galmudug and Puntland administrations. Gaalkacyo has population of about 270,000 people according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Following the agreement, another round of peace talks on the Gaalkacyo conflict was recently held in Bosasso, during which the warring parties were urged to implement the ceasefire agreement. Almost a year ago, the political leadership at the Federal level and the regional bodies such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) launched efforts towards a cessation of hostilities. They promise to bring peace. Recurrent clashes While the Gaalkacyo conflict continues to disrupt the livelihoods of people who were already displaced and vulnerable, OCHA reports that most of the displaced people have been fleeing to distant villages and struggle to continue their livelihoods. Health officials estimated that 45 people have been killed and 162 injured since 7 October. Civilians make up 25 per cent of the casualties. These continued clashes also cause disruption to the schooling of over 20,000 learners for the fifth consecutive week. Humanitarian partners in Somalia are scaling up response to displaced people after violence broke out in Gaalkacyo on 7 October 2016. Photo: OCHA/Guled Isse While the death toll has increased over the last weeks, health partners of the UN continue to report cases of cholera. In OCHA's update, humanitarian agencies report that many locals and displaced people have no access to proper sanitation facilities and most people are practicing open defecation. On 7 November, health partners reported 69 suspected cholera cases over the past four weeks from various villages including Bandiiredley, Docol, Galinsoor, Wargalo and Xaar-xaarka near south Gaalkacyo. The cases have been treated in health facilities. To date, no cholera related deaths have been reported. Humanitarian response OCHA reports that humanitarian partners have assisted 60,000 people in and around Gaalkacyo with food and non-food items. Food security and livelihood partners will assist 36,000 people with food rations for two months. An additional 27,000 people will benefit from non-food items. WASH partners continue to respond, and have scaled up efforts to assist some 60,000 people with hygiene kits, aqua tabs and hygiene promotion activities and campaigns to minimize the impact of water borne diseases like cholera. Elections Elections currently are taking place in Somalia. Under the country's Provisional Federal Constitution, the mandates of the Federal Parliament and of the President of the Federal Republic will end this year. While universal elections are not yet possible, an electoral process has been developed to facilitate enhanced political participation. Voting for the members of the Upper House took place on 10 October, and voting for members of the House of the People took between 23 October and 10 November 2016, with a president to be elected on 30 November by members of both chambers of Parliament. The United Nations has been engaged with Somalia since 1991 to support its government and people to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation, and the international community has pledged to support the eastern African country in its efforts, including through the so-called 'New Deal' Somalia Compact, which sets out agreed goals for peacebuilding and statebuilding. Risk of 'outright ethnic war' and genocide in South Sudan, UN envoy warns Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Risk of 'outright ethnic war' and genocide in South Sudan, UN envoy warns, 11 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298e0040c.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 11 November 2016 - Visiting conflict-plagued South Sudan, the United Nations envoy on genocide prevention today warned that the African country is at risk of plunging into "an outright ethnic war" and of genocide being committed. "I am dismayed to report that what I have seen and heard here has confirmed my concerns that there is a strong risk of violence escalating along ethnic lines, with the potential for genocide," Adama Dieng, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, told reporters in Juba, the nation's capital. "Throughout the week, conversations with all actors have confirmed that what began as a political conflict has transformed into what could become an outright ethnic war," he added. What began as a political conflict has transformed into what could become an outright ethnic war South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011. But war broke out in 2013 between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of former Vice-President Riek Machar. The political rivals signed a peace agreement in August 2015 to formally end their differences. But in early July this year, close to the fifth anniversary of the country's independence, the youngest nation was plunged into fresh violence due to clashes between the two rival forces. Mr. Dieng explained that the purpose of his visit to South Sudan was to better understand the landscape of ethnically-fuelled violence, including hate speech and incitement to violence, and to provide assistance where requested. "The role of my Office is to strengthen the role of the United Nations in protecting populations from atrocity crimes and their incitement - by which I mean genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as ethnic cleansing - by collecting and assessing relevant information, advocating for preventive action, and raising awareness about the causes and dynamics of these atrocities," he said. Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng. UN Photo/Manuel Elias "I work within the United Nations and with Member States, regional and sub-regional organizations, and civil society to develop more effective and possible courses of action," he added, noting that he has spoken to UN colleagues, senior government officials, civil society groups, religious leaders, and community members. He said that during the course of this week, he has seen that there is extreme polarization between some tribal groups, which has increased in certain places since the outbreak of violence in July. Inflammatory rhetoric, stereotyping and name calling have been accompanied by targeted killings and rape of members of particular ethnic groups, and by violent attacks against individuals or communities on the basis of their perceived political affiliation, and the media, including social media, are being used to spread hatred and encourage ethnic polarization, and letters threatening specific groups have surfaced in the last month, he said. "I am particularly concerned by the involvement of the youth of this country in this dangerous spread of hatred and hostility, as they are particularly susceptible to divisions within society," he said. The perpetrators and victims are not homogeneous, which makes an assessment of the risk of atrocity crimes in South Sudan very complex, he noted. "But the patterns are there," he warned. "With the stalling of the implementation of the Peace Agreement, the current humanitarian crisis, a stagnating economy and the proliferation of arms, all of the ingredients exist for a dangerous escalation of violence," he said. He said he was last in South Sudan in 2014, and serious commitments made at that time to end violence have been unfulfilled. "I must emphasize that genocide is a process. It does not happen overnight. And because it is a process and one that takes time to prepare, it can be prevented," he said, urging action to address some of the factors that could provide fertile ground for genocide. Genocide is a process. It does not happen overnight. And because it is a process and one that takes time to prepare, it can be prevented What surfaced over and over in his discussions this week was the presence of long-standing anger, combined with misconceptions and preconceived notions. "These need to be addressed if there is to be a chance of peace," he said, expressing hope that his assessment will provide impetus for preventive action. Turning to the situation in Yei River state, which he briefly visit, he said that until recently, Yei has been spared the widespread violence of other areas but he heard reports of violence that included targeted killings, assault, maiming, mutilation, rape, and the barbarous use of machetes to hack families to death. "The gravity of the situation in Yei merits immediate intervention - a full scale fact-finding investigation and enhanced humanitarian support," he said. "The state has the primary responsibility to protect its populations. That means all South Sudanese, irrespective of their ethnic, national or political affiliation," he said. Other States, regional organisations and the international community can assist its protection efforts, however. For his part, he said he will inform the international community of his assessment, call for action and speak with members of the African Union and the Security Council, as well as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Mosul offensive against ISIL pushing Iraq's civilians into war-ravaged Syria UN rights wing Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 November 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Mosul offensive against ISIL pushing Iraq's civilians into war-ravaged Syria UN rights wing, 11 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298e1f40c.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. 11 November 2016 - Amid the intensification of the military offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) in Iraq's Mosul city and the resulting displacement of civilians, the United Nations human rights wing said today that it has received reports that Iraqi civilians are also fleeing into Syria, which itself is reeling under a five-year long conflict that has displaced millions of Syrians and left hundreds of thousands trapped in besieged cities. "We have received reports that Iraqi civilians from rural areas around Mosul city have been arriving in Syrian governorates of Raqqa, Deir ez-Zour and al-Hassakeh," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told journalists at the UN Office at Geneva earlier today. "They reportedly left, after the Iraqi Security Forces and allied armed groups captured the areas, fearing they would be seen as affiliated to ISIL," she added. OHCHR further said it also received reports that several hundred Iraqi civilians are in a "dire humanitarian situation" in Rajm al-Sleibi in the Syrian governorate of al-Hassakeh (on the border with Iraq), which is under the control of People's Protection Units (or YPG), an armed group in northern-eastern Syria. These people include those who have fled the current Mosul fighting and those who had earlier crossed into Syria from Iraq. Reports have also been received that in the ISIL-controlled Syrian governorate of Raqqa, newly arrived families have been housed at the entrance to Raqqa city, in the neighbourhood of al-Mashlab, which is under the strong control of ISIL. "We are concerned that [such] ISIL tactics [] endanger the civilian population [] - namely taking civilians hostage and planting improvised explosive devices in civilian houses and residential neighbourhoods," said Ms. Shamdasani noting possible ground operations by Kurdish and other forces as well as airstrikes by the US-led Coalition. No respite for civilians in Syria On-going hostilities in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, have resulted in more than 900 people including children arriving in the Al Hol camp in Syria's north-eastern Hasakeh Governorate on the border with Iraq. Photo: UNICEF/Delil Souliman Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Syria continues to deteriorate and according to reports, civilians - including women and children - continue to become casualties in air and ground-based strikes as well as lose their lives in want of medical treatment, said the UN human rights arm. On 9 November, 23 civilians, including six women and at least four children, were killed and at least 30 others were injured in an airstrike and accompanying ground-based strikes on al-Hisha, an ISIL-controlled village in northern ar-Raqqa. Furthermore, a mortar hit a civilian vehicle, killing two passengers who were trying to transport injured civilians. Also on 9 November, a young woman and an elderly man - both suffering from kidney disease -reportedly died due to lack of medical treatment, reported the OHCHR spokesperson. "We remind the parties that they must allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need," said Ms. Shamdasani, stressing: "The imposition of restrictions or conditions by the parties preventing the sick and wounded from being evacuated from the area is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law." Displacement in Mosul nearly doubled last week - UN refugee agency Focusing the Mosul offensive, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also said today that nearly 48,000 Iraqis have been displaced since the beginning of the offensive last month but this number has seen a recent spike. "Numbers have approximately doubled in the last week and are expected to continue to rise as the fighting continues. Several significant population movements from Mosul were recorded in the last week, especially around Gogjali and the city's eastern neighbourhoods," William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesperson told the same media briefing. In response to this influx, the UN refugee agency along with humanitarian partners are providing life-saving protection to ensure that the new arrivals have adequate shelter, and basic household items such as mattresses, stoves, kitchen sets, hygiene sets and jerrycans. The UNHCR spokesperson further said that the agency is also increasing its protection monitoring and psychosocial and legal assistance to the internally displaced persons through mobile teams to ensure timely interventions when concerns are identified. "People with specific needs or vulnerabilities are being identified quickly to ensure they receive specialized support," he underlined. UNHCR already has six camps open, with a capacity to host 54,408 people and it is planning to have a total of 11 camps, should land be made available, with a capacity to accommodate 120,000 people. The agency is also identifying further land for emergency sites. This is part of a broader response with the government of Iraq and other humanitarian partners who are also reinforcing camp capacity and preparing for other shelter options to support a total of 700,000 internally displaced Iraqis if needed. Winter will be challenging However, as the weather has started to turn and as temperatures have begun to drop sharply at night, the agency and its partners have begun distributing essential winter items to 1.2 million recently-displaced Iraqis including families who have fled the Mosul offensive. In the midst of this situation, UNHCR stressed that residents of Mosul seeking sanctuary must not be prevented from fleeing and that they should have access to safe areas including the emergency camps. "Likewise, civilians must not be forced to return to unsafe areas," said Mr. Spindler. He further drew attention to the fact that the agency's Mosul Emergency Response Appeal, amounting to $196.2 million, is only 57 per cent funded. "Underfunding will severely limit the agency's capacity to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable families during winter - particularly for heating," underlined the UNHCR official. Nigeria: Fire and demolitions that left 30,000 homeless must be urgently investigated Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 11 November 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Nigeria: Fire and demolitions that left 30,000 homeless must be urgently investigated, 11 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298ec34.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Lagos State authorities must take immediate steps to provide alternative accommodation for as many as 30,000 people who were made homeless, in direct contravention of a court order, when their homes were deliberately set alight in the Otodo Gbame community in Lekki, Lagos, Amnesty International said today. Although it is unclear who started the first fire on the morning of Wednesday 9 November, eyewitnesses have told the organization that police present did not attempt to stop the fire. Instead, they say they were chased away by police officers when they attempted to put it out. After the fire stopped in the afternoon, the police and a demolition team returned overnight with a bulldozer. Eyewitnesses say that the police then started the fire again, forcibly evicting thousands from their homes. At no point were firefighters seen. "Thousands of residents of Otodo Gbame watched in horror as their homes and possessions were destroyed literally overnight, and their futures plunged into uncertainty. What makes this especially shocking is that on Monday this community was granted an injunction preventing the Lagos State Government from proceeding with the planned demolition of the informal settlements along the State's waterfronts - the authorities involved in this destruction are in flagrant violation of the law," said Amnesty International Nigeria's Researcher Morayo Adebayo. "We are therefore urging the Lagos State authorities to immediately establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the shocking incident at Otodo Gbame, and provide adequate housing and compensation to all those who have lost their homes." Amnesty International spoke to eight residents who described what they saw over in recent days. Eyewitnesses reported that the chain of events began on Monday 7 November with a "scuffle" between youths in Otodo Gbame and youths in a neighbouring community. The "scuffle" escalated on Wednesday morning and resulted in a fire. A statement by police said they had intervened at that point to "restore calm". A 22-year-old woman said that on Wednesday morning, she saw youths setting fire to the homes, and that the police had prevented them from intervening or collecting their belongings: "We [tried] to pack our things but the police [stopped] us, when we tried to pack; they [threatened to] shoot us [..] we all left empty-handed." By the afternoon of 9 November, approximately a third of the community was already destroyed by the fire. A witness told Amnesty International that the fire stopped around 1.30pm, although there was still smoke in the community. Later that night, at around 11.30pm, the police returned with a bulldozer and began demolishing the remaining houses. Eyewitnesses told Amnesty International that they also set houses on fire as part of this forced eviction, which continued into late in the afternoon on 10 November. One witness told Amnesty International that after the bulldozer demolished their houses, the police set the rubble on fire. Other eyewitnesses also said that the police were setting fire to houses that were still standing. A 39-year-old Otodo Gbame resident described to Amnesty International the chaos that ensued when the destruction unexpectedly resumed overnight on Wednesday: "Police were firing guns [into the air], everybody was running helter-skelter so they had to run for dear life [] They did not allow anybody to rescue his property, everything was burnt. I was only able to rescue [a] few [items]. Most of the property that was burnt is my wife's property, clothes and children's clothes. I have [a] TV and other things; they were burnt down." The same man also reported that he saw people falling into the water in the panic, including young children who were apparently unable to swim. Other residents also told Amnesty International that several people drowned, although the organization could not verify this. A 28-year-old man said: "In the middle of the night, I was sleeping when somebody came to wake me up, [saying] that there was a bulldozer in the community. I had to come out and walk to a place where I can be safe and [watch] it. The bulldozer was working [clearing houses]. They [the demolition team] began to set fire to the houses they had cleared already." Amnesty International confirmed with the Public Relations Officer of Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA) that the agency was part of the demolition team sent to Otodo Gbame. A police statement made on 10 November also confirmed that the "State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development would move in to demolish the remaining shanties and clear the rubble caused by the inferno." Residents told Amnesty International that this morning (11 November), policemen returned to demolish the few remaining structures. With police back at the site, there are growing fears that the neighbouring community called 'Chisco Ikate' will also be destroyed. A resident from this community told Amnesty International a demolition team arrived this morning with a bulldozer. In October the Lagos State authorities announced plans to demolish all irregular structures in waterfront communities across the state, which could leave hundreds of thousands of people homeless and destitute. They alleged the settlements are a 'security threat', linking them to a rise in kidnappings in the area. However, the authorities failed to provide any details on the process and how people would be rehoused. On 31 October the Lagos State House Assembly passed a resolution calling on Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to halt the demolition plans, and on 7 November Lagos State High Court granted an interim injunction preventing the Lagos State Government from proceeding with the demolition of the informal settlements along the State's waterfronts, including Otodo Gbame. Amnesty International is calling for an immediate end to destruction of any houses in the Otodo Gbame and neighbouring waterfront areas, and a moratorium on mass evictions within Lagos State until there are regulations in place to ensure that such evictions comply with safeguards that are required under international law for any eviction to proceed. These standards prohibit evicting people at night and the deliberate destruction of property including through arson. The deliberate burning of people's houses and structures during the demolition exercise by the police may constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment for which suspected perpetrators must be brought to justice as a matter of urgency. "The wave of mass forced evictions across Lagos' waterfront communities is shattering lives. We are calling for the State authorities to respect their obligations under international law by stopping these demolitions, and providing alternative housing for all those already made homeless," said Morayo Adebayo. Background More than two million people have been forcibly evicted from their homes in different parts of Nigeria since 2000. These evictions are carried out without adequate prior consultation, adequate notice and compensation or alternative accommodation. Most were already marginalized and many had lived for years without access to clean water, sanitation, adequate health care or education. Nigeria is a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and other international and regional human rights treaties, which require it to realize the right to adequate housing, and to prevent and refrain from carrying out forced evictions. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Myanmar: Media workers detained over corruption article must be released Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 11 November 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Myanmar: Media workers detained over corruption article must be released, 11 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58298f084.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Two media workers who were arrested and detained today on suspicion of "online defamation" over an article that made reference to allegations of government corruption must be released immediately, Amnesty International said. "Arresting and detaining these two men raises serious concerns about the National League for Democracy-led government's commitment to freedom of expression," said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International's Regional Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. "While the new government has made some attempts to amend long-standing repressive laws that target activists and media workers, this case shows that those attempts do not go far enough. "Using repressive laws to stifle peaceful criticism of government officials could cause other media workers in Myanmar to self censor. State officials are not above scrutiny, and journalists have an important role in holding them accountable. "These media workers must be released immediately." Than Htut Aung and Wai Phyo are the chief executive officer and chief editor respectively at Eleven Media Group. They were transferred to Insein prison on Friday afternoon after police questioned them about the article, which was posted on Than Htut Aung's Facebook page last week before being published by various Asian news outlets. The two men are being investigated under Myanmar's Telecommunications Law and could face up to two years in prison. They are next scheduled to appear in court on 25 November. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Warnings Over Afghanistan's Unofficial Madrassas Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 4 November 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Warnings Over Afghanistan's Unofficial Madrassas, 4 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829902e4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Large numbers of unregistered madrassas, or religious schools, operating in Afghanistan may be serving as a source of extremist recruitment, according to speakers at a series of IWPR debates. Public events held in August and September heard that the government urgently needed to crack down on institutions with no specific curriculum and no official oversight. In Nangarhar, officials said that fully two thirds of the province's 1,500 madrasas were not registered with the government and operated without permits. "My department is trying its best to register these madrasas and monitor their lessons," said Mawlawi Abdul Zahir Haqani, head of the provincial department of haj and religious affairs. He added that he did not believe that radicalisation was a problem in such schools. However, another religious scholar, Mawlawi Atiqurrahman, said the madrasas and mosques in areas outside government control did serve as a recruiting tool for extremists. "In the areas that are under insurgent influence, people are incited against the government and encouraged to support terrorism." In Kunar, religious scholar Mawlawi Najibullah Haqyar said that unregistered madrasas had led to a state of anarchy. "They are fronts for war against this government. Anyone who accepts citizenship of this country and should implement and respect all its rules." Others argued that such schools were being exploited by outside forces to fuel ongoing conflict in their country. Mohammad Omar Sati, head of the peace secretariat in Kandahar province, argued that graduates of madrasas in Pakistan had been among the insurgent fighters in Afghanistan. "Pakistan also wants to bring the unofficial madrasas in Afghanistan under its control and use them against the Afghan government," he said. Parwan provincial council member Hasiba Hift, said, "Interfering countries like Pakistan use such madrasas to change young people's mindsets by provoking them against the government. " She added, "Students are fed anti-government propaganda in unofficial madrasas and brainwashed in order to prepare them to carry out acts of terror." In Logar province, debate participants said that the government had an important role to play in monitoring such institutions. Mohammad Qasim Khoshiwal, deputy head of the Logar's provincial council, said that it was only natural that an Islamic country such as Afghanistan had a large number of religious schools. But order had to be imposed from above, he continued. "Peace will be possible when all the religious madrassas are registered and an effective system is used to monitor them," Khoshiwal said. In Kapisa province, debate participant Shukrullah Mohammadi suggested that Kabul establish a central body to oversee the schools. "The government should set up a control centre in order to coordinate and unify the messages of of religious leaders in the mosques," he said, noting that this had been one of the recommendations made at IWPR's Kabul Peace Conference held earlier this year. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Gender Violence Rampant in Lawless Afghan Province Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Asila Gahreek Publication Date 7 November 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Gender Violence Rampant in Lawless Afghan Province, 7 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829906a4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Local officials in the northwestern province of Faryab have acknowledged that ongoing lawlessness is allowing perpetrators of domestic violence to act with impunity. Law enforcement officers say that they are simply unable to venture into areas controlled by insurgents to make any arrests. Suspects were increasingly exploiting this disorder to escape to more remote parts of the province to evade justice. In addition, in many areas outside government control Taleban courts are used to adjudicate issues of family law. This has dire consequences for the women involved. Sarbuland Khan, head of the domestic violence unit of Faryab police, confirmed that the security forces had limited powers. "The Faryab police has little power or capability to arrest criminals in areas where armed insurgents are present," he said. "After committing crimes, many suspects in Faryab now hide in areas under the control of the insurgents to avoid being captured." IWPR interviewed dozens of women in the province about their experiences of domestic abuse. In one particularly shocking case, a 20-year-old woman had her nose cut off by her husband who subsequently escaped into Taleban-held territory to avoid arrest. Reza Gul, from the village of Shar Shar in Ghormach district, told IWPR, "I was 13 when my father betrothed me to 25-year-old Mohammad Khan in exchange for 1,000 dollars. A year later I was married to him." She said that her marriage had been violent right from the start. "I was brutally beaten by my husband because [he felt] I wasn't worth those 1,000 dollars that he paid my father." Now with a one-year-old baby, she recalled how her husband had twice broken her hand and leg. In early 2015, the violence reached an intolerable elvel. "At the start of January 2015 my husband got angry with me without any reason and started beating me so hard that I fainted," she continued, adding that at that point she had returned to her father's house to seek help. Her father approached a panel of Taleban judges to ask them to arbitrate. They ruled that Reza Gul should return to live with her husband but ordered that he should behave more kindly to her. However, when she returned to her marital home on January 16, Mohammad Khan once again attacked her, slicing off her nose with a sharp knife before escaping. He has yet to be apprehended. Reza Gul's family took her to a local clinic where doctors told her that there was nowhere in Afghanistan where her wounds could be treated. After her case won media attention, Faryab governor Syed Anwar Sadaat sent her for treatment in a Turkish hospital. Sadaat told IWPR that the local authorities were unable to combat violence against women due to the lack of security in the area. "Everything in Faryab province is related to war and insecurity," he said. "As long as there is fighting in Faryab, we will not be able to do anything." Zarlasht Bariz, head of women's legal affairs at the Faryab office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) agreed that the lack of government control meant that gender violence was now rampant. "Taleban rule in Ghormach district has allowed men to be violent and cruel against women," she said, adding that tribal and ad hoc courts simply did not prevent such abuses. Sharifa Azimi, head of women's affairs in Faryab province, said that there was simply nothing she could do to help women like Reza Gul. "As the provincial head of women's affairs, I find it unacceptable that a man can illegally buy a 13-year-old girl from her father for 1,000 dollars, torture that helpless girl and mutilate her in public," she continued. "I feel humiliated and ashamed that I bear such a big responsibility towards the women of Faryab but I can't properly perform my duty." BEATEN AND ABUSED In another recent case, a drug addict attempted to kill his wife by stabbing her repeatedly in the stomach. He said that she had dishonored him by continuing to work as a teacher despite his objections. Zubaida, a 26-year-old resident of Maimana's fourth district, told IWPR how her husband had tried to prevent her working. "I was married to Kaikawos, my cousin, six years ago; however, my husband went to Iran to find a job and left me alone with my mother and our two infant children in Maimana for four years." During that time, she began teaching in the village of Khwaja Paitakht. Since his return two years ago, Kaikawos had repeatedly beaten and abused his wife. Zubaida said that he had burned her work clothes and even tried to strangle her. "I am a teacher, but my husband is not happy about me working and so turned my life into a living hell for the last two years." In another attempt to stop her working, Zubeida's husband sent her to live with his parents in Sherin Taghab district, 50 kilometres away from Maimana. Undeterred, she continued to make the lengthy round trip from home to school and back again. "When my husband realised that taking me to Sherin Taghab couldn't stop me from continuing my job, he shared my phone number with a local Taleban commander in Sherin Taghab and complained about me." Threatened by the Taleban with death unless she gave up teaching, Zubaida had to return to Maimana. Worse was to come. In May this year Kaikawos took a knife and stabbed her eight times in stomach, before stabbing himself. He has been charged with attempted murder. Having survived this latest ordeal, Zubaida decided to file for divorce. IWPR managed to track down Kaikawos to the hospital in Maimana where he was receiving treatment for his self-inflicted wounds. Asked why he had attempted to murder his spouse, Kaikawos replied, "Zubaida is my wife and I don't like her working alongside male teachers at school. She's my wife, not their wife. It is true that I am addicted to heroin, but I am not that much of a weakling that my wife has to support me." Nooria Fikri, who works for the Maimana gender rights NGO Zanan Barai Zanan, said that it was weak government had left women and girls at the mercy of violent men. This appalling situation, Fikri continued, "creates the opportunity for every criminal to take advantage." Indeed, amid the lack of security in the province, local militia leaders are also able to act with impunity. Gul Andam, a 60-year-old mother-of-eight from Dara Zang village in Garziwan district, told IWPR how she was hospitalised for two months in December 2015 after an attack by a local gang. Gul Andam said that a militia commander had ordered her to be beaten in relation to a family dispute over land. "[His men] hit me and beat me with the handles of their guns. Somehow I survived, but I was badly wounded in my stomach, shoulder and legs." Asked why she had not reported the violence to the local authorities, Gull Andam answered, "The local government in Faryab is more likely to listen to a stone than to the problems of a woman." She said that she still lived in fear that the local strongman would order her to be killed. "There are many powerful and armed gangs in Garziwan district," she continued. "They don't just rule in villages and some remote areas, but anywhere they want. They can easily kill their targets even inside a hospital, in the streets or on a main road in [the provincial capital] Maimana." Reza Gul, who has returned to Faryab after her treatment in Turkey, also believes she faces a bleak future. Now living in a safe house, she said, "I don't have any plans to ever married again. I don't want to experience [the same pain] and for another man to see the wounds which were given to me by my first husband, Mohammad Khan." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Child Marriage Rife in Northern Afghanistan Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Qayum Babak Publication Date 7 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 558 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Child Marriage Rife in Northern Afghanistan, 7 November 2016, ARR 558, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/582990bf4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. An investigation by IWPR has revealed that child marriage remains rampant in the north of Afghanistan, with the local authorities warning that they are powerless to combat the practice. Dozens of fathers and tribal elders interviewed in Balkh, Faryab, and Jowzjan provinces all said that most girls in their communities were married off between the ages of nine and 14. The legal age for marriage in Afghanistan is 16, although it can be as low as 15 with parental consent. Local officials and rights workers said that they had been unable to combat traditional practices that often led to young girls being married off to much older men for large sums of money. The Afghanistan Human Rights Independent Commission (AIHRC) also confirmed that the practice was rampant. Shah Mardanqal, a 70-year-old resident of Kata Qala village in the Pashton Kot district of Faryab province, said with satisfaction that he had married his 14-year old daughter to Sarwar Baik, 60, in return for 3,000 US dollars, a cow and 10 sheep. "A girl should be married while she is still young," he told IWPR. "Here, all parents earn money from their daughters' marriages, I did too." Asked why he had forced his underage daughter to marry a 60-year-old man, he said, "A father who keeps his young daughter at home and doesn't get her married commits a sin." Najmuddin, a 65-year-old resident of the village of Jin Mala in the Shibirghan district of Jowzjan province, also said he had no regrets about marrying off his three daughters when they were aged between 11 and 17 years old. He added that he had received a total of 19,000 dollars in bride prices. "I sold my daughters after the Islamic scholar in our village told me that the marriage of underage girls was not a sin in Islam," Najmuddin continued. He claimed that he would not have been forced to sell his daughters if government help would have been available to help lift his family out of poverty. Najmuddin's eldest daughter Runa was married at the age of 11 to a 40-year-old man called Adil, from the village of Pancharigh in Aqchah district. "When I got married, I knew nothing. I didn't even know what a husband was and what marriage involved," she said. "I was very scared when I entered my husband's house." Mohammad Bhai, another of Najmuddin's three sons-in-law, said that he had paid 6,500 dollars for his younger daughter Firooza. "Because Firooza was betrothed to marry me, I travelled to Iran and spent many years working to earn this much money," he said. Both parties' consent to marriage is required in Islam for a wedding to be lawful. The ceremony must be carried out by a religious scholar in the presence of two witnesses. Mawlawi Hanif, the scholar who conducted all three of Najmuddin's daughters' marriages, said that he had carried out dozens of such ceremonies involving underage girls in Shibirghan city. He argued that Islam did not prohibit the marriage of girls. "Whoever disputes this, I am ready to discuss it and challenge him," he said. BRUTAL CONSEQUENCES Balkh director of women's affairs Suhaila Hadid said she could not give exact figures for the number of child marriages in the region, but added, "I want to say that every day when I come to my office I face a new case of forced or underage marriage." Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sameh, head of the AIHRC regional office in Balkh, also said that child marriage was an ongoing crisis. He said that figures from 2015 showed that 56 cases of forced marriages of underage girls had been registered in the northern provinces. He stressed, however, that this was just the tip of the iceberg. "The cases of forced marriages of underage girls in remote areas and villages are much higher than we thought or expected," he continued. Sameh said that the cases that they registered related mostly to much older men who had paid large sums to marry young girls. Such marriages, she continued, were due to poverty, illiteracy, and outdated traditions. As a result, girls were deprived of their education and often felt they had no other option but to run away from home. Sometimes girls and older women went on to commit suicide. Complications from repeated and early pregnancies were also a serious issue. The Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, enacted by presidential decree in 2009, prohibited a range of abuses including marriages that are coercive, involve minors or amount to a transaction between the two families. However, this law was rejected by parliament in May 2013, and has been shelved ever since. Hasina Rastaqi, head of children's rights support at the AIHRC, said that although they tried to educate the public on such issues it was nonetheless the government's duty to take action against the practice. "Preventing such forced and underage marriages is the government's responsibility," she continued, adding, "We have held workshops to try and increase awareness among some villagers." Manizha Mukhlas, who works for the Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA) NGO, argued that the authorities needed to make an example of anyone involved in such cases. "All the people involved in forced and underage marriages should be investigated by the government including the girl's father, the religious scholar and the two witnesses." She continued, "Investigating those people who are involved in forced and underage marriages will frighten people and serve as a lesson for others, and that's how to prevent such marriages." In a tiny minority of cases, women feel able to pay the penalty of ending their marriages in a country where it is seen as deeply shameful for a woman to apply for divorce. Sharifa, 20, is a resident of Bazar Markaz in the Shor Tapa district of Balkh province. She was given as a third wife to carpet seller Tajuddin by her father, Tangi Berdi, who told IWPR, "I sold my daughter for 10,000 dollars because all fathers in Balkh take money from their son-in-laws in exchange for giving their daughters to them." "As soon I set foot in my husband's house, he started torturing and harassing me," Sharifa told IWPR, adding that the situation had been so unbearable that she was prepared to risk the social consequences of leaving her marriage. "I went to the court and got divorced from my husband," she said. Asked why he had mistreated Sharifa, Tajuddin replied, "I have two more wives as well as Sharifa. Whenever I got angry with one of my wives, I beat all three, so as to treat all of them equally." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Warnings of Displacement Crisis in Afghan Province Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Gul Ahmad Ehsan Publication Date 8 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 558 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Warnings of Displacement Crisis in Afghan Province, 8 November 2016, ARR 558, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/582991034.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Lost in thought, Abdul Khaliq stood leaning against a wall by the side of a road in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province. He said that his family of 15 had been forced to flee their home in Nawah district by a recent Taleban offensive sweeping the southern province. "We were just able to escape ourselves and had to leave everything behind," he said. "Now we live in a friend's house here in Lashkar Gah, and they have very little money. We got one government grant of 200 US dollars, which lasted just two weeks." Khaliq said that he knew that he and his family were among the lucky ones. Many other displaced people in Helmand had been left homeless and starving, dependent on public charity. "I ask the government to ensure our security - that's all I want," he said. The renewed fighting in Helmand has led to a fresh wave of displacement among the local population, with aid agencies struggling to deal with what some describe as a "humanitarian crisis". The province, a centre of opium production, has long been one of the areas heaviest-hit by violence. The most recent Taleban onslaught has seen fighting reach the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, with hundreds of commandoes airlifted in to battle insurgents. Naqibullah Ziarmal, the head of the local department of refugees and returnees, said that 8,000 families from the Nawah, Garm Ser, Nad Ali, and Marjah districts - and even from parts of Lashkar Gah itself - had been displaced by the fighting. His office continued to work to locate and register others in the same situation, he continued. Most had been left in very bad conditions, Ziarmal explained, adding that he was in talks with aid agencies in the hope of providing the families with basic rations and other necessities. "We have supplied cash, food and other materials to 3,500 families so far," Ziarmal said. Some displaced families have managed to rent houses in Lashkar Gar, while others have found refuge with family or friends. A large number have also settled in a camp set up to house displaced people, although resources are so stretched that many have been forced to leave the province. Mohammad Azim Nawabi, the head of the refugee department in Kandahar, said that 1,200 families had recently arrived from Helmand. "We have begun a survey to help them because the displaced families face many problems," he said. Bilal Sadiqi, head of the local office of the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said, "We are concerned about the current situation in Helmand and we are facing a humanitarian crisis." The situation has been further complicated by an influx of refugees returning from Pakistan, after Islamabad announced new efforts to induce Afghans to return home. Pakistan hosts some three million Afghan refugees, of whom nearly half are undocumented. Some have been living there for decades. Pakistan has now set March 15, 2017 as the deadline for registered Afghan refugees to leave the country, despite UN warnings that this policy may have severe consequences. UNHCR and the International Office for Migration (IOM) recently reported that 7,500 people were coming back to Afghanistan from Pakistan each day. SITUATION "UNBEARABLE" Provincial council members in Helmand warn that the situation is intolerable, with Lashkar Gah now effectively under siege and resources stretched to breaking point. Bashir Ahmad Shakir, the head of the security committee, said, "It is unbearable. Thousands of families have been displaced due to the fighting, and they live miserable lives. I'm calling on the government as well as business leaders to help these refugees so that we don't lose our own people." Basirul Haq Adil, a local activist in Helmand, agreed that the situation was becoming critical. "Neither the government nor international donors have taken care of these people. Displaced people in Helmand don't have access to even first aid or basic facilities. I know families who are facing death from hunger. The problems of the people of Helmand cannot be solved by only words or speeches - the government needs to announce what steps it is going to take." Many displaced people said that the situation in their districts had more or less stabilised until the recent Taleban offensive. "The war forced us to leave our homes," said Niamatullah, who came to Lashkar Gah from the district of Garm Ser. "When I moved here, I left my flourishing and productive farm. The government has not helped me in Lashkar Gah either. There are no jobs, and I don't know what kind of future my children face." Mati Khan, a former resident of Nad Ali district, said that he sold his car and home appliances for half their real value as he had been so desperate to leave. Fighting in his area had meant that he and his family were scared to leave the house during the day and unable to sleep at night. "We ask the government to care about our future," he said. "What will our children's lives be like? The condition gets worse every day. There are some families who begin worrying where they can find their dinner as soon as they eat breakfast. They are barely alive, and facing serious problems." As for Khaliq, the head of a household of 15 from Nawah, he said he just wanted to take his family back to their village. "We are begging the government and the foreigners for peace," he said. "We need neither their money nor food. Our district had been deemed secure, but is now being consumed by conflict. I had a good life there. If we get the chance to return to Nawah, we will just restart our ordinary lives in our village." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Kyrgyzstan: How the Media Can Combat Extremism Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 14 October 2016 Citation / Document Symbol RCA 798 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Kyrgyzstan: How the Media Can Combat Extremism, 14 October 2016, RCA 798, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58299bce4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. IWPR and the OSCE partnered last month to host a conference exploring the media's role in countering extremism in Kyrgyzstan. Some 100 officials, media professionals, university lecturers and students from across the country took part in the September 28 event. Kyrgyzstan's state policy on religious affairs for 2014 to 2020 calls for broader cooperation between the media, civil society and public authorities in counteracting extremism. Bishkek has been struggling to find an adequate response to extremist propaganda, particularly in the poorer areas of the south. So far, at least 500 Kyrgyz nationals have travelled to fight with radical forces in Syria and Iraq. Ainura Temirbekova, deputy minister of culture, information and tourism, said that the dissemination of extremism via the internet was of particular concern. The state was well aware of the limited use of simply blocking problematic websites, Temirbekova said, adding, "Police measures of fighting against an ideology and prohibiting certain information from being disseminated, as many countries have experienced, have only had a temporary effect. "Most often governments that prohibit and restrict, for example, the internet, are deluded that everything is under control. But unfortunately often it's not true," Temirbekova said. One issue is that Kyrgyzstan is a secular state, although there has been growing interest in religion in recent years. So religious practise remains relatively novel in this post-Soviet country, meaning many ordinary citizens remain unaware of the exact difference between faith and extremism. This may put them even at more risk. A survey by the Bishkek-based Expert Consulting Agency showed that only 9.6 per cent of traditional and online Kyrgyz media content offered a consistent approach to covering religion, extremism and terrorism issues. The study, which ran from January till June 2016, showed that most coverage was either sensational or superficial. Elina Karakulova, head of the local Internews network, agreed that editors had to do more to regulate reporting quality and develop journalistic ethics. Zakir Chotaev, deputy chairman of the state commission for religious affairs, also highlighted the important role played by the media. "Even the public authorities see all events in Kyrgyzstan through the media media outlets help us respond properly and resolve problems coming from the religious sector," he said. Begaim Usenova is head of the Media Policy Institute, a Kyrgyz NGO specialising in legal issues. She said that state actors and the wider society still had "difficulties in understanding the mission and the role of media in combating extremism". Since 2015, IWPR has been working with the interior ministry's department for counteracting extremism, the state commission on religious affairs, the Muftiyat, and local scholars to combat radicalisation. As part of its three-year Investigative Journalism to Promote Democratic Reform project, funded by the European Union, IWPR also organised a series of lectures in universities in Bishkek and Osh. IWPR Central Asia director Abakhon Sultonnazarov said a long-term, nationwide project focused on countering extremism in Kyrgyzstan was now badly needed. "Online and mobile services have to be used [to connect] with the young and urban population, whereas TV, radio and print media have to be used to reach older generations and rural audiences," he concluded. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Another Blow to Kazakstan's Press Freedom Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Zhanna Baitelova Publication Date 17 October 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Another Blow to Kazakstan's Press Freedom, 17 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58299d854.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Kazakstan has experienced yet another blow to press freedom with the conviction of a well-known father-and-son pair of journalists on fraud charges. On October 3, Seitkazy Mataev and his son Aset Mataev were sentenced to terms of six years and eight months and five years respectively. Both were found guilty of fraud, while Seitkazy was also found guilty of tax evasion and had property seized. In addition, they were fined more than 500 million tenge (1.5 million dollars). Seitkazy was the head of the Kazakstan's Journalists Union and the National Press Club, as well as former press secretary to the president. Aset was the director of the KazTAG news agency. A 164-page long indictment issued against them in February listed multiple charges against them including defrauding the state of 312,9 million tenge (942,000 USD) and dodging 216,9 million tenge in tax. The prosecution said that they had accepted state grants to support the production of news about government affairs. KazTAG produced the material, but placed it behind a paywall. This was ruled to be an improper use of state funds. However, many observers saw the entire case as an attempt to not only silence the journalist but also take over their property. The Almaty buildings that housed the National Press club and the House of Journalists - both owned by Seitkazy - were confiscated following the ruling. From the start, proceedings were fraught with legal violations. The initial court hearing, which was scheduled for August 23, was suspended when 61-year-old Seitkazy was hospitalised with hypertension. Nonetheless, the trial continued without allowing him time to fully recover. He was taken to hospital by ambulance several times during proceedings. Kazakstan ratified the UN's International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (ICCPR) in January 2006. This recognises and protects a right to justice and a fair trial, particularly equal treatment, enough time to prepare one's defence and an opportunity to communicate with one's lawyer. A gravely ill defendant cannot exercise this privilege. And article 23 of the Kazak Criminal Code guarantees equality between the defence and prosecution, with the court tasked with remaining objective and impartial. Yet Judge Akbulat Kurmantaev denied the defence's request to question the 52 witnesses who appeared in court. All the witnesses were, in any case, drawn from the ranks of the government, the parliament, local councils, state-owned media companies and other official bodies. Addressing the court, Seitkazy said that the allegations against him were the work of lawmaker Nurlan Nigmatulin, the former head of the presidential administration, and Talgat Tatubaev, a senior official in the Anti-Corruption Service. He said that they had explicitly warned him to refrain from campaigning journalism or face prosecution. "Nigmatulin told me at a meeting at the presidential administration, 'Give up KazTAG, and we'll stop everything.' [He meant] stop the legal case and release us from criminal prosecution. But he also told me that they would seize [my] buildings in Almaty and the Journalists' House in Astana," Seitkazy said. After KazTAG published the full text of his statement on September 28, both Nigmatulin and Tatubaev denied the accusations. Violations during the trial undoubtedly entitle the Mataevs to appeal to the UN Human Rights Committee. Their most recent report on Kazakstan included a number of troubling instances of abuse, and the Mataevs' case will be another blow to the state's image. Seitkazy was a prominent figure in Kazak journalism, a signatory to every public statement protesting the poor treatment of Kazak journalists. His Journalists Union also worked tirelessly for the rights of Kazak media. This year, in honour of the country's 25th anniversary of independence, the union established an award for outstanding achievements towards the development of Kazak civil society. Seitkazy also created the legendary National Press Club, which hosted innumerable speakers including opposition politicians. It always provided a platform for everyone, without exception. It was miserable to see how, on the same day the Mataevs' trial began, the top two floors of the National Press Club building in Almaty were demolished. Almaty's State Architecture and Construction Control Department said that they had been added illegally, although there are plenty of other similar multi-storied buildings in the city. What was also sad to witness was how the Mataevs' case drew attention from international human rights organisations but failed to resonate inside the country. Apart from a very few media professionals, no one spoke up in their defence or protested the harsh verdicts. This says a great deal about the current state of the media landscape here. This year, Kazakstan ranked 160th out of 180 states in the Reporters without Borders Freedom of the Press index. The Mataevs' case should - and will - lower Kazakstan's score further. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Azerbaijan's Flawed Healthcare System Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 19 October 2016 Citation / Document Symbol CRS 828 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Azerbaijan's Flawed Healthcare System, 19 October 2016, CRS 828, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58299dc81.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. A spate of high-profile allegations of medical malpractice, which has led to several fatalities, has served to increase many Azerbaijani's already jaundiced view of their country's public health system. Most citizens have little faith in Azerbaijan's healthcare, even though life expectancy has markedly improved over the past quarter of a century. The average lifespan rose from 60 years for men and 66 years for women in 1990 to 69 years for men and 76 years for women in 2015, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Maternal mortality dropped from 64 to 25 per 100,000 live births over the same period, while the mortality rate of children under five fell from 20 per 1,000 children to seven. Yet in spite of these positive developments, the perception is quite different. Many ordinary people distrust doctors and medical institutions, reporting experiences of corruption and malpractice in the medical sector. Media reports of recent incidents have spurred public debate over substandard care. In June alone, seven deaths in hospitals across the country were widely presumed to be the result of medical negligence, although a subsequent official enquiry found evidence of misconduct in only two cases. On June 21, two babies of a set of triplets born prematurely in the Salyan district in the southeast died. A week later, the third baby died as well. The relatives say the babies died because they were not put into an incubator for preterm children in a timely manner. The incubator did not work because there was no electricity in the hospital. "What century do we live in? Why does the hospital not have a generator in case of a power outage," the grandmother said. On June 25, six-month old Salim Lachinov, who was suffering from an intestinal obstruction, died after surgery at the Central Hospital in Zagatala. His parents said their baby was a victim of negligence, although the hospital said the child had been gravely ill and they had done all they could to save him. That same day, 82-year-old Tarlan Aliyeva, a diabetic, was to have her gangrenous left leg amputated at the Angiology and Microsurgical Centre in Baku. Instead, her right, healthy leg was amputated by mistake. The left leg was amputated a few days later. A month later, she died. On June 26, 35-year-old Lumu Veyisova underwent a gallbladder operation in an emergency hospital in Sumgayit and died on the operating table. The 81-year-old surgeon, Jafar Guliyev, whose hand was seen to be shaking during the operation, nicked an artery causing her to bleed to death. Then on June 30, three-year-old Arzu Gurbanli died in a private clinic in the city of Sumgayit after an adenoma operation. In response to this series of deaths, the ministry of health created a special commission. Guliyev was dismissed and the chief doctor of the hospital where he had been working was reprimanded, a ministerial spokesperson told the Azerbaijan Press Agency (APA). The ministrys press secretary, Liya Bayramova, defended the fact that Guliyev was still operating at his advanced age. "The doctors have to go through certification every five years, and during this time their level of performance is established. If a doctor has a scientific degree, a name held in high regard and ability to work, then the contract with him can continue regardless of age. Jafar Guliyev, despite his advanced age, was certified. How this came about should be for the commission to find out," Bayramova told IWPR. A criminal case was also opened against the surgeon who amputated Aliyeva's leg on charges of causing grievous bodily harm through negligence. He faces a fine of 500 manats (300 dollars) or six months in jail. In the other cases, the commission concluded that no negligence was involved. WIDESPREAD MISTRUST Khadija Hajili, a doctor and a member of the opposition Republican Alternative movement (ReAl), said that medical staff were often able to act with impunity. "Doctor's negligence often goes unpunished," she said. "The second reason is the lack of independent experts and mandatory health insurance. Citizens faced with doctors' negligence simply cannot prove it. "On the other hand, the ostensibly free medical services make patients dependent on public hospitals. In private clinics, the service is expensive. In the state [clinics], one has to [bribe] doctors informally but less than private ones [cost]. And if people had insurance, they would have the opportunity to be treated where they want," Hajili continued. The main reason for the sorry state of public health in Azerbaijan was endemic corruption, she concluded. "At [Azerbaijan's] Medical University, as in all other state universities, students pay bribes for good grades. At health facilities, [medical] personnel pay bribes to get a job, and then they take bribes from the patients to again pay a bribe to stay in this job. All this causes mistrust in the healthcare system of the country," Hajili said. However Galib Aliyev, chairman of the Association of Physicians of Azerbaijan, argued that the central problem was a lack of effective management within the Azerbaijani health system. He said that 70 per cent of the budget was spent on equipment, clinics and the construction of new hospitals, while only per cent went towards paying the salaries of medical personnel. "Doctors' salaries in Azerbaijan are three times less than unemployment benefits in Europe," he said. The average salary of a public hospital doctor ranges between 130 - 450 manats (80 to 277 US dollars), depending on qualifications. Aliyev said that low salaries were the main reason why doctors and nurses often violated medical ethics. "As a result, people lose confidence in the whole system. Clear legislation is needed, according to which the work of doctors will be closely evaluated, and they will carry responsibility for their negligence. In 2008, our organisation developed a draft law entitled doctors code and proposed it to parliament. But parliament has still not considered it," he told IWPR. In 2012 - the only year for which figures are available - the ministry of health recorded 235 cases where people were prosecuted for public health violations. Of these criminal cases, 52 were connected to maternity hospitals and pre-natal clinics. Meanwhile, the government is planning to introduce compulsory health insurance in two districts of the country next year as a pilot project. The aim is for citizens to receive high-quality medical care while creating a competitive environment among public hospitals and eliminating unofficial payments. "We are going to implement this process in stages," Zaur Aliyev, director of Azerbaijan's state agency for compulsory medical insurance under the cabinet of ministers, told the Azerbaijan Press Agency (APA). "This process will cover all the country after the hospitals in Mingachevir and Yevlakh districts make use of compulsory health insurance. It will be introduced in most parts of the country in 2018." However, there are some doubts whether the governments efforts will go very far. "Since the late 1990s, this question has been discussed. But its introduction has been dragging on," said Azer Ismayil, an advisor to the chairman of the opposition Musavat party. "I think during the time of the oil boom the resolution of this problem should have been a priority for the government. How far it will be possible to implement mandatory health insurance now, when the country is going through an economic crisis, I do not even know," he said. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Tajikistan: Family Rehoused After IWPR Report Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 20 October 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Tajikistan: Family Rehoused After IWPR Report, 20 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58299e054.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. A Tajik family who had been waiting to be rehoused for more than 30 years has been promised new accommodation following the broadcast of an IWPR programme about their plight. The extended Ayubov family had been waiting for decades to receive a plot of land in the village of Kavshduzon, in the Hissor district. Father-of-six Shamsiddin Ayubov, originally from the village of Morteppa, was moved to Kavshduzon in 1986 to construct a Soviet state-owned farm. In 1989 he was allocated a 600-square-metre plot of land that he had to share with another family. As a worker in the communally-owned local vineyard, Ayubov was eligible to apply for his own plot of land. Keen to move his growing family into their own property, he registered and waited in vain for one to come up. "Some people who hadn't been officially registered for a plot of land already got one. Some of them were even born after we had moved to this place," Shamsiddin's wife Azizbi Ayubova told IWPR. She added that local authorities had advised them to pay into the Hissor district development fund when they first registered. They duly invested all their savings, but there was still no movement on their case. Ayubova's son, Abdukarim Ayubov - himself now a father-of-five - told IWPR that he made 20 written and oral applications to the local authorities without receiving a response. (Listen to the story in Tajik and Russian here). After the IWPR report was broadcast in May, local authorities made staff changes in the department responsible for dealing with public queries on land. The Ayubov family was contacted shortly after. A source in the local government's real estate committee told IWPR that the Ayubovs would be allocated 600 square metres of land after the end of the grape harvest in November. IWPR radio programmes are broadcast on national partner radio stations in local languages in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakstan. Apart from helping hold local authorities accountable, they also serve as a valuable source of information. Dushanbe resident Rustam Soliev called the IWPR office in the Tajik capital to thank staff after learning from a piece on local radio that TB treatment was free in the country. (Listen to the story in Tajik and Russian here). He explained that he had been buying expensive black-market medication for his TB sufferer son, without realizing that he could get the same treatment for free from the state. "My son has been sick for almost a year. I spent more than 70 per cent of my salary on drugs only,' he said. "It means that I was cheated. Thank you for opening my eyes. Now having listened to your report, I am aware that I can demand free medication," Soliev said. Many listeners also contacted IWPR's Dushanbe office after a radio report on new regulations for names of newborns. Legislators had banned first names of Arabic origin and surnames with Slavic endings. Newborns must be named according to Tajik cultural traditions, with formal application made to justify the use of any foreign names. (Listen to the story in Tajik and Russian here). "[This law] appears to attack Tajik citizens," said Mariya Zaharova told IWPR. "It's a pity. Every individual has a right to call one's child as he or she wants. But our authorities don't think so. It's a real shame." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting FGM Uncovered in Georgia Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Aida Mirmaksumova Publication Date 4 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol CRS 830 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, FGM Uncovered in Georgia, 4 November 2016, CRS 830, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829a2064.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. An IWPR investigation has discovered that hundreds of girls from the ethnic Avar community in eastern Georgia are being forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). The Georgian government has pledged to investigate following the revelation that girls in the villages of Tivi, Saruso and Chantliskure in the Kvareli district, which has a large Avar population, are being cut in childhood. "We are Muslims. We fast during Ramadan. We observe our Islamic customs. Circumcision is also our custom. We cannot do without it," said Naida, a woman from Saruso village. Her name, like the other villagers in this story, has been changed. Georgias constitution guarantees every person freedom of religion and belief, but it also enshrines the right to a healthy life. Moreover, the international convention for the protection of childrens rights, to which Georgia is bound, also applies. The Georgian authorities told IWPR that they had no prior knowledge of this practice and that no local NGOs or human rights bodies had reported that FGM was being carried out anywhere in the country. Georgians generally know very little about the Avar community, a native ethnic group in the Caucasus that was historically based in the mountainous part of the Russian republic of Dagestan. As a result of trade relations with the neighbouring Georgian district of Kvareli in the 18th century, some Avars settled there and around 3,000 of their descendants remain today. Although isolated from their homeland and living in a remote area of Georgia, the Avars have staunchly preserved their own culture and traditions, including the Avar language, their cuisine, wedding and funeral rites and religious customs. As a rule, Avars marry only within their own community. Amina Magomedova, a resident of Saruso, has been performing the procedure for the past 20 years. She does not remember how many girls she has cut, but "there were very many," she said. "Muslims perform circumcisions on boy and on girls. I only do girls," Magomedova said. When boys were circumcised, they are taken to the district hospital where a surgeon will operate on them. For girls, the procedure is done at home. The skin is cut with scissors and the wound sometimes cleaned with neat alcohol. "At the tip of the clitoris is a black dot, this is what I cut off. This is what I was taught by my mother-in-law. She was experienced and did this for everyone in the village. But I do not do this on strangers, only on people I know," she said. "With boys it is more difficult, that is why a doctor should do the work. With girls only an incision is made. Yes, blood flows, but it is not terrible. They can put on their knickers right away and go," Magomedova said. In August, a report published by the Legal Initiative for Russia NGO revealed that tens of thousands of Avar women and girls had undergone FGM in Dagestan. Nadia, from Saruso village, said that she was offended by the media outrage that followed. "When I read the comments on Facebook, I was hurt," she said. "Some laughed at us, some mocked us. I answered them to not make fun of our customs, but rather preserve their own. We are Muslims and we do this according to Muslim custom. I am not ashamed of it, I keep my faith." The origin of the practice of FGM in Dagestan is unknown, explained Saida Siradjudinova, one of the reports authors and a doctoral student of political science and ethnic policy at the North Caucasian Academy of Civil Service in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. "The ethnographer Yuri Karpov has attributed female circumcision to pre-Islamic customs but this is only his hypothesis. It would be wrong to reference only that. There is no exact source explaining how female circumcision arose in Dagestan. The tradition moved to Georgia with [the Avars] who settled there," she said. According to Legal Initiative for Russia researchers, there was no uniform standard in Dagestan for FGM. "Options and forms of operations on the genitals depend on the experience of the women who carry them out, the wish of the village women who bring the girl to this procedure, and even on the district," the report said. Three of the four types of FGM defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO), are applied in Dagestan. They are incision and bloodletting, removal of a piece of the clitoris, and the removal of the clitoris and the labia minora. In Saruso, an incision is performed that must bleed. By contrast, in Tivi and Chantliskure, the tip of the clitoris is cut off. "There is a small piece, like a seed. It is then thrown away," said a resident of Tivi. Naida's cousin Zaripat has three daughters. The two older ones have already undergone FGM. Zaripat was reluctant, but her mother-in-law Muslimat insisted - although she later mourned the decision. "When I saw how they were crying, I regretted what I had done. What for? Would they really not be Muslims without it," the girls grandmother said. "Only the people in the village (would) have wanted to know why we did not have the girls circumcised," Muslimat continued. "They said, 'It has to be done, we are Muslims.' But if I had not done it, I would have worried that they were not circumcised and not pure Muslims." Beyond religious reasons, Avars say that FGM also serves to change a women's personality. "They say a woman is less temperamental after circumcision and does not have affairs," one of the village women said. However, some families are refusing to go along with the tradition. "This is done so that the girl does not need a man in bed," said Tivi resident Imaniat. "But if there is no interest in family life, what kind of married life will they have? Just living together? No, I will not circumcise my daughter." Imaniats family lived in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, before moving to Tivi a couple of years ago. She argued that female FGM had little connection to Islam. "One mufti said it is done so that there is no debauchery on the female side. But it is the man who makes the first step towards this debauchery. The woman, the weaker sex, submits to him. There is a book of God - the Koran - it does not say there that it is a duty for a girl to be circumcised," Imaniat said. Indeed, the Mufti of Georgias Muslims Administration, Yasin Aliyev, also noted that the Koran said nothing about such an obligatory procedure. FGM appears limited to the local Avars, with Georgian Muslims from other ethnic groups refraining from the practice. "Some nations do it according to their national traditions, but not according to Islamic law Maybe the circumcision of girls has something to do with the national customs of the Avars, then it is a different matter," Aliyev said. "The Koran does not say that circumcision is a duty," he added. "To become a Muslim, one can say the shahadah [declaration of faith] and follow the precepts of Islam. Circumcision is not necessary to do this." Quite apart from the psychological trauma, Paata Imnadze, the scientific director of the National Centre for Disease Control in Georgia, noted severe physical risks associated with FGM. "If the circumcision procedure does not take place in a sterile environment, there is always a high risk of various diseases: purulent infection, tetanus, hepatitis, blood poisoning," he said. "Treating the instrument with spirit does not give any guarantee of sterility and does not protect from serious illness." Nino Datoshvili, a gynaecologist and radiologist, listed further problems. "Cutting off the clitoris is very dangerous. It can lead to complications. For example, there may be bleeding, scar hypertrophy or complications in the healing process. There is also a chance of an infection, and then it can begin to fester. Any operation, even a small and insignificant one, should be held in special cabinets under sterile condition," Datoshvili said. Magomedova, who cuts girls in Saruso, said that such risks were exaggerated. "Before the operation, I turn to Allah and ask in Avar that all will turn out well," Magomedova said. "For many years, there have been no cases of girls dying from blood poisoning in the village after circumcision." However, United Nations agencies make clear that FGM is a violation of human rights and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. The Georgian authorities said that they were unaware that FGM was being carried out in the country. Georgias ministry of health told IWPR that it was the first time they had heard about FGM being carried out on Georgian territory. "We are not aware that there is such [a practice] here," a spokesperson said. "None of our departments working in Kakheti has informed us. If someone turns to us for help, it will probably be possible to carry out checks. But so far, no complaints have been received." A spokesperson from the human rights committee of Georgias parliament told IWPR that they would now investigate. "We cross-checked your information in the reports of local and international human rights organisations, institutions and the office of the public defender, but such facts are not mentioned in them. But, in spite of this, the public defender has expressed his preparedness to carry out monitoring in the villages of the Kvareli district specified by you and to provide us with the relevant information." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Armenia's CSTO Disappointment Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Arshaluis Mghdesyan Publication Date 7 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol CRS 830 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Armenia's CSTO Disappointment, 7 November 2016, CRS 830, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829a24a4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Armenia has been left frustrated by the outcome of the most recent summit of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), with analysts warning that the country's position has been seriously weakened. The grouping of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan adopted a collective nine-year security strategy when it met in the Armenian capital Yerevan on October 14. It also decided to set up a joint crisis response centre for the exchange of information on common threats, including terrorism. Details on both have yet to be forthcoming. However, Armenian expectations that they would be handed the post of CSTO general secretary - as mandated by the rotation mechanism enshrined in the organisations charter - were disappointed. Yerevan's hopes that member states would also agree a firm joint position on the Nagorny Karabakh dispute following the uptick in violence there last April were also thwarted. The question of the rotation was removed from the summit's agenda with no reason given and will now be discussed when the leaders of the member countries meet in St Petersburg in December, Armenian president said Serzh Sargsyan after the summit. This postponement caused concern among Armenian experts, especially in the wake of the most serious fighting in Karabakh since the 1994 ceasefire. "The rotation of the CSTO general secretary was a test of the competence of the organisation that it did not pass," said Styopa Safaryan, founder and head of research at the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA). "This organisation cannot guarantee the security of Armenia," he continued. "The aggravation of the situation in April in the zone of the Karabakh conflict and the numerous armed incidents on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border have clearly demonstrated this. For these reasons, Armenia has nothing to [benefit from] this organisation." Criticism of the CSTO in Armenia rose after the outbreak of hostilities with Azerbaijan in early April. In particular, it was directed against close ally Russia, Azerbaijan's main weapons supplier. "There was no due reaction from the CSTO when Armenia was on the brink of full-scale involvement in a war with Azerbaijan What kind of collective security can we talk about, which the CSTO should allegedly provide?" continued Safaryan, adding that Armenia should review its relations with the CSTO. A further disappointment was the CSTO's non-committal statement regarding the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. Member states spoke only in general terms about the importance of resolving the Karabakh issue by peaceful means, referring to the agreement reached between the heads of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Vienna and St Petersburg after April's hostilities. Analysts argued that appointing an Armenian to the post of secretary general would have given Yerevan greater weight regarding the Karabakh issue. "First of all, it would strengthen the military component of the CSTO, the importance of which for Armenia, with its problem of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, is difficult to overestimate," Sergey Minasyan, deputy director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, told IWPR. "In addition, Armenia, in all likelihood, [would have] tried to push through issues related to regional security, in particular to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. I think that Yerevan would have also tried to put the question of rejecting the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan by the member countries, in particular Russia," he said. Military-technical cooperation between Armenia and Russia is at a high level, with more than 50 bilateral contracts and agreements. Yerevan and Moscow have also joined their air defence systems in the region and formed a joint command, which includes the Russian military base in Armenia and certain contingents of the Armenian army. Around 5,000 military personnel are stationed at the 102nd Russian Military Base in Gyumri, Armenias second largest city. Former minister of defence Vagharshak Arutyunyan argued that Russia was in fact the main guarantor to prevent the outbreak of an all-out conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Azerbaijan cannot start a full-scale war, since all issues boil down to military cooperation with Russia, and should not allow for war to break out in the region," he told IWPR. "According to its military doctrine, Russia can use nuclear weapons in the case of aggression against itself or its allies. So, we are under the nuclear umbrella, which Azerbaijan and Georgia do not have." This Russian presence "also ensures the security of Armenia together with Armenian armed forces," Arutyunyan continued. The situation is complex, however, as Armenias defence policy is not only oriented towards Russia but also involves cooperation with NATO. Unlike neighbouring Georgia, Armenia does not intend to join NATO; as a member of the CSTO, this would be out of the question. Russian experts had their own explanation for the rotation mechanism remaining in limbo. "Apparently, Armenia has not carried out due work on coordinating its candidate with the rest of the CSTO member states, which led to such a result," said Alexander Krylov, president of the Scientific Society of Caucasiologists. Although the name of the Armenian candidate for the post of general secretary has not been officially confirmed, three former and current military figures have been mentioned in the local media. They were the national security council secretary and former chief of the general staff of the armed forces Yuri Khachaturov as well as former defence ministers Harutyunyan and Seyran Ohanyan. Ohanyan has publically denied these reports, saying that even if he received such a proposal, he would reject it. The other two have neither confirmed nor denied these rumours. Meanwhile, a government reshuffle has caused controversy after Vigen Sargsyan, former chief of the presidential administration, was named Armenia's minister of defence. Sargsyan, who is not related to the president, has significant experience in the field of diplomacy and governance. He has a masters degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy of Tufts University and is also a graduate of the Russian St. Petersburg State University with a specialty in personnel management. However, he is a civilian, which caused some disquiet in the ranks of the military. The president told senior army officers that, according to the constitution, the militarys number one should be the chief of general staff, not the minister of defence. "The minister should deal very little with the everyday routine activities of the troops," he said. Minasyan interpreted Vigen Sargsyan's appointment as a move to put the defence department under the direct control of the president rather than as a sign of a change in policy. "It's not the preference of one person but the general security entourage and the setup of interests determines the defence policy of the country," he told IWPR. "In this regard, the Armenian-Russian military-technical cooperation was, is and will be a priority for both countries. Here one should not expect any significant changes." Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Syria: Developing Computer Skills Takes Top Priority Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Maha al-Ahmad Publication Date 12 October 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Syria: Developing Computer Skills Takes Top Priority, 12 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829a2ca4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Abdalla works at a radio station in Kfar Nabel named Radio Fresh. The 30 year-old covers events in Syria's liberated areas, and is keen to have his voice heard by the outside world. "Learning good computer and internet skills became my top priority," said Abdalla. At a training course at the Royah Centre for Community Development he was taught how to produce TV and radio reports and send them to various news agencies via the internet. "Before the revolution, the internet was closely monitored by the government and people couldn't make much use of it," he said. "Now, however, both computer and internet skills have become essential." The high demand for these skills led 27 year-old accountant and computer expert Alaa to approach the Royah centre in Kfar Nabel. Alaa offered to teach courses at the centre along with its director Yasir, an English language teacher and computer programmer. Together they designed a number of training courses, and now teach classes of up to 50 students. Each training course runs for three months and is held two days a week. "The whole idea only required a few computers and some relevant books. We easily managed to acquire both and we now run a variety of courses," Alaa said. "We teach computer skills such as Office - Word, Excel and PowerPoint - and using the internet, email and search engines. We run social media courses, where we teach students how to set up accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube," he continued. "We teach students interested in developing media skills how to edit videos, the principles of photography and Photoshop, and the principles of producing radio and TV reports. "And we also run advanced training courses on digital protection and encryption, and the risks of having a computer or account hacked." Alaa believes that all these courses are essential to allow people in liberated areas to communicate with the outside world. He told Damascus Bureau that the Royah centre currently receives no financial aid and relies on the modest support of local organisations such as the Sadad Association, which provided them with a venue and equipment. Women's training centres in Kfar Nabel have also been focusing on developing internet and computer skills. The Mazaya Women's Centre in Kfar Nabel offers such training to both its staff and external applicants. "The training courses we run are very beneficial to our employees," said Abeer, who works as computer trainer at the centre. "Staff learn how to create spreadsheets, organise files, compile reports and use the internet to download useful material." Like many other aspects of life, delivering training in opposition-held areas is riddled with hardship. "The most serious difficulty my college faced was the bombing," said Ahmad, a 27-year-old from Maraat al-Numan who has been studying at the Shine Institute. This college has been bombed twice; once following its launch in November 2015, and again a month later. Shine offers a wide variety of courses including basic computer programming, digital sciences, computer maintenance, computer networks, mathematics, economy, project management and Arabic and English language. Courses run for nine months, after which students are awarded an internationally recognised professional certificate. "There is amazing talent when it comes to internet and computer skills in liberated areas, and many computer-literate people volunteer to teach these courses for free," Ahmad said. But he added that he believes that fear of another attack on the institute has discouraged many students from enrolling. Maha al-Ahmad is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Kfar Nabel, Syria. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting Training a New Generation of Teachers Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 12 October 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Training a New Generation of Teachers, 12 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829a3424.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Usama al-Sheikh was a student at Aleppo university when the Syrian revolution erupted. During the early days of the uprising, the 20 year-old continued to travel from his home town of Maarat al-Numan to Aleppo for lectures. As the situation deteriorated, government roadblocks and checkpoints were set up along his route. Al-Sheikh's long commute became too dangerous and he was forced to abandon his education. "I had to choose between risking my life on a daily basis, or abandoning my undergraduate studies," he told Damascus Bureau. Fortunately for al-Sheikh, another opportunity appeared. "An institute for training teachers was founded in Idlib, and I was offered a fresh opportunity to study and earn a certificate that would later help me secure a job," he said. The institute was established by the free Syrian directorate of education in 2013. Its main goal was to train teachers to staff schools, ensuring that children residing in the governorate of Idlib were granted their right to an education. So far the institute has opened branches in the towns of Jarjanaz, Al-Baro and Harim, all of which offer two-year courses. A range of subjects are taught, including teaching, science, mathematics, Arabic, English and French. "All staff members who teach at the institute hold university or postgraduate degrees, and have background experience in teaching," Abdul Rahim, who lectures at the institute, told Damascus Bureau. "The curriculum was designed by special committees. It was a lengthy process that took almost a full year to deliver," the 45 year-old said. According to Jamal al-Shahoud, head of the free Syrian department of education, the institute was created for students who had been forced to drop out of university, or who had graduated from opposition-run secondary schools. "The past few years brought about a regression in Idlib's education sector, and one of the main reasons was the shortage in teachers," he continued. "After Idlib was liberated, the government responded by expelling large numbers of civil servants and teachers who sympathised with the revolution. "Many others were detained or killed, which forced the majority of those remaining to flee to safer areas," 46 year-old al-Shahoud said. The brain drain directly impacted students, leading the education department to launch this new project. "The initiative has granted students an opportunity to pursue a specialist degree, and find suitable jobs," explained al-Shahoud. "As teachers they will be able to provide children with an education, which will save them from the clutches of ignorance and illiteracy. "This is our way of standing up to those who are trying to destroy their dreams." The institute operates under exceptional circumstances. One major concern is the constant shelling, which puts great pressure on staff and students. Another challenge is funding. The education department's resources are limited, which means it relies on registration fees and donations from humanitarian organisations to cover running costs. Nevertheless, the institute saw its first class of 300 male and female students graduate in 2015. It secured jobs for the top 50 graduates in a variety of schools, and has been holding recruitment campaigns across the governorate for all other teachers. The most recent campaign secured jobs for 1,171 teachers. Umm Shadi's daughter was one of those employed by the department. "My daughter finished high school just as the revolution started," the 45-year-old explained. "Out of fear for her safety, her father forbid her from going to university, as it would involve travelling to regime-held areas. "My daughter had always been a top student and was distraught at the idea of not continuing her studies. When the teaching institute opened she immediately enrolled, and has now obtained her degree and teaches at one of its schools." Umm Shadi said that the institute had provided her daughter with a new vocation as well as the means to earn a decent income. Copyright notice: Institute for War & Peace Reporting UNHCR concern over illegal return of 10 Syrian Nationals from Greece Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 21 October 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR concern over illegal return of 10 Syrian Nationals from Greece, 21 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829c92a4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] UNHCR is seriously concerned by the illegal return of Syrian nationals from Greece to Turkey. According to the information we have received, a group of 91 people arrived on the island of Milos on 14 October. The group was subsequently transferred to a Reception and Identification Centre on the island of Leros, where they formally expressed to the responsible authorities their will to seek asylum in Greece. Among the group, were 10 Syrian nationals who were transferred to Kos and subsequently readmitted by plane to Adana, Turkey without due consideration of their asylum claims. UNHCR has sought clarification with the Greek authorities about the incident. UNHCR is also concerned about a separate incident involving a group of 131 people who arrived in the Peloponnese on 8 October. UNHCR is seeking information about the whereabouts and legal status of 27 of them who were taken to an unknown location. UNHCR and their legal representative have been denied access to these 27 individuals. Mosul: Low-level displacement in northern Iraq and Syria, UNHCR focus on continued preparations Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 21 October 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mosul: Low-level displacement in northern Iraq and Syria, UNHCR focus on continued preparations, 21 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829c9734.html [accessed 2 November 2022] In Iraq, and with the military offensive on Mosul still unfolding, UNHCR is so far seeing modest levels of displacement. Our focus remains on the intensive and continuing push for more protection and shelter support. The numbers of recorded displaced remain modest, with UN data showing that 3,900 people (650 families) were displaced from Mosul and Al Hamdaniya districts. These people have been transported to a nearby reception centre in the village of Al-Hood where they are being helped. In addition, 240 people (40) families were displaced from Makhmur district, east of Mosul, were transferred to a reception centre (Debaga) yesterday. UNHCR has established an additional five camps, ready to shelter 45,000 people, and a further 11 camps are planned with capacity for 120,000 people. With full funding and readiness, UNHCR would be able to provide shelter support inside and outside camps for 600,000 people and we are appealing to donors for this additional help. We are in the process now of organizing airlifts for next week for 7,000 family tents to Iraq from warehouses in Dubai and Amman. In Syria , UNHCR and its partners are also finalizing preparations to be able to provide emergency assistance for families fleeing Mosul. Reception capacity is being reinforced at the Al Hol camp to the east of Al Hasakeh. Arrangements are being made for 15,000 individuals. Eventually we hope to have 50,000 places available. Currently at Al Hol, UNHCR is providing support to 5,512 Iraqis (4,600 of whom have arrived since April) and 912 who are newly arrived in recent days. We are ensuring that when peoples reach Al Hol we are able to accommodate them and provide them with needed shelter and life-saving assistance. Further north at Qamishly, we have sufficient food and supplies in place for 50,000 people. Work is being done with UN and NGO partners to ensure that all services are running and that sufficient water, sanitation, health and protection services will be available at Al Hol. UNHCR is also reinforcing its presence in Al Hassakeh governorate with a new field office in Hassakeh City to ensure an effective response. Funding So far, 48 per cent, of UNHCR's Mosul budget requirement of US$196.2 million has been provided, but there remains urgent need for further funding to prepare for possible larger-scale displacement. Beyond shelter, UNHCR plans to meet the core relief needs -- blankets mattresses, plastic sheeting, kitchen sets, hygiene sets and jerrycans - of the most vulnerable, as well as the winter needs of the vulnerable. Shanghai facing big diabetes problem From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-11-14 02:46 ONE third of Shanghais residents over 35 are diabetics or on their way to developing diabetes, which has become a serious public health issue, the Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention said ahead of the World Diabetes Day today. The incidence of diabetes among local adults over 35 years old has doubled from 2002 to 17.65 percent now. It means that about 2 million diabetes patients are living in the city, reflecting a strong challenge for health authorities to manage and control the disease. Another challenge confronting the authorities is that 16.51 percent of residents over 35 are prediabetes, which means their glucose level is higher than healthy people but they are not yet suffering from diabetes. However they are likely to develop diabetes if they do not manage to control it. To combat the disease, the city government included diabetes prevention and control in its community-based chronic disease management program for long-term supervision and intervention. Since 2004, all neighborhood health centers have started to educate the people on diabetes, screen those at risk and put in place a patient management system. A new round of diabetes prevention and control system by 2017 will screen 1 million residents with risky factors, while leading hospitals will train community doctors on proper diabetes management, said Dr Jia Weiping, president of Shanghai No. 6 Peoples Hospital and chief of the diabetes program. By end of 2016, the program is slated to have screened over 300,000 people with risky factors. So far 630,000 patients have been taught how to manage diabetes. UNHCR makes new aid delivery push in Yemen, welcomes 72-hour ceasefire Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 21 October 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR makes new aid delivery push in Yemen, welcomes 72-hour ceasefire , 21 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829c99e4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] In a new aid push, UNHCR is delivering emergency supplies to more than 125,000 displaced people, including in the embattled southern town of Taizz. Aid distributions have been part of the humanitarian response since Yemen's conflict began in March 2015, but access has often been difficult and UNHCR welcomes this week's ceasefire, which is not linked to the aid push. The opportunity to get help to people in need in hard-to-reach, conflict-affected areas is particularly important. We hope the ceasefire lasts and leads to resumed peace talks and more such opportunities for aid to get through. UNHCR plans to reach more than 125,000 individuals under the aid push. Already this month and prior to the ceasefire we have reached some 12,309 people (in Al Hudaydah, Amanat Al Asimah, Amran, Hajjah, Sa'ada and Sana'a governorates). An additional 21 convoys are on the move or being prepared for Taizz as well as five other governorates (Ibb, Amanat Al Asimah, Amran, Hajjah and Al Hudaydah) governorates. These areas are host to 65 per cent (1.427 million people) of Yemen's 2.21 million conflict-displaced population. The aid UNHCR is delivering is non-food aid. Included in it are tarpaulins, sleeping mats, blankets, kitchen sets and buckets for hygiene and sanitation. Shelter repair kits will help about 25,760 people. Much of this assistance had either been prepositioned in UNHCR's warehouses in Sana'a and Al Hudaydah governorates or shipped to Al Hudaydah port through recent deliveries totalling 1,475 tons. The latest aid push follows weeks of preparation for the movement of convoys. UNHCR has been advocating with parties to the conflict for regular, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access to those most in need. Humanitarian operations in Yemen are still constrained by the conflict, which has left 21.2 million people (more than 80 per cent of the population) in need of help. Much vital infrastructure has been destroyed vital the economy devastated. Amid this situation shelter has emerged as a key need for displaced Yemenis, along with food and drinking water. Most of the uprooted, some 62 per cent, are being accommodated by overstretched local communities while others stay in rented accommodation or in makeshift arrangements, including public or abandoned buildings and informal settlements, at risk of harm and with little or no protection. The majority of those forced to flee their homes have been living in displacement for an average of at least 10 months amid deteriorating conditions. Those in informal settlements or collective centres are struggling in under-resourced and overcrowded conditions. Others living in rented premises are at risk of eviction or extortion. Local host communities are buckling under the strain of caring for so many people for so long. The devastating conflict in Yemen has left more than 2.2 million people internally displaced and forced some 180,500 people to flee to other countries in the region. There are also 278,034 registered refugees and asylum seekers in Yemen, mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia. Singapore: Halt imminent execution of Nigerian man convicted of drug-related crimes Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 13 November 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Singapore: Halt imminent execution of Nigerian man convicted of drug-related crimes, 13 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829d2c14.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Singapore government must grant clemency to a Nigerian man set to be executed for drug trafficking next week, Amnesty International said. Chijioke Stephen Obioha will be hanged on 18 November unless President Tony Tan commutes his death sentence, which was imposed as the mandatory punishment for trafficking. "Singapore is a week away from brutally ending the life of Chijioke Stephen Obioha for a crime that international law and standards make clear should not be punished by death," said Josef Benedict, Amnesty International's Campaigns Director for Southeast Asia. "Time is running out for President Tan to step in and prevent this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment from being carried out. He must use his power to grant clemency before it is too late." Chijioke Stephen Obioha was found in possession of more than 2.6 kilograms of cannabis in April 2007, surpassing the amount of 500 grams that triggers the automatic presumption of trafficking under Singapore law. Under Singaporean law, when there is a presumption of drug possession and trafficking, the burden of proof shifts from the prosecutor to the defendant. This violates the right to a fair trial by turning the presumption of innocence on its head. Drug-related offences do not meet the threshold of the "most serious crimes" to which the use of the death penalty must be restricted under international law. International law also prohibits the imposition of the death penalty as a mandatory punishment. Amnesty International opposes the use of the death penalty outright, regardless of the type of crime. "The death penalty is unacceptable under any circumstances, but the fact that the defendant's right to a fair trial, in particular his right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, have been violated makes this case especially distressing," said Josef Benedict. "It is a reminder of the pressing need for Singapore to immediately re-impose an official moratorium on all executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty, and commute all existing death sentences." Chijioke's family members, who live in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, have been unable to travel to visit him in Singapore and have had limited ability to assist him. Throughout the proceedings, they have received sporadic and often delayed updates, including when a legal representative was removed from the case. Chijoke's brother Anthony described his sibling as "hard-working and educated" and told Amnesty International it was an "unforgettable shock for the family" to learn of his arrest. "A lot of financial and physical effort has been made by our family towards his defence but due to lack of funds restricting our access to Singapore, it was difficult to carry on with his desire towards [hiring] a defence lawyer [of his choice]," Anthony Chijioke said. "He had a lot of government-appointed defence counsellors but he wasn't satisfied with their efforts, and the family were not satisfied with their level of communication with us. We were kept in the dark for a very long while." Background Chijioke Stephen Obioha's appeal against his conviction and sentence was rejected in August 2010. After the rejection of his clemency appeal in April 2015, his execution was set for 15 May 2015, but was stayed a day earlier to allow him to apply for resentencing. His family was only informed on 25 October 2016 that he had withdrawn his application for resentencing earlier in the year, following legal advice that he would not qualify. Consequently, the Court of Appeal lifted the stay of execution, which is now set for 18 November. Chijioke Stephen Obioha has appealed once again for clemency from the President, the only person with the power to commute his death sentence. As of today 103 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes and 141 are abolitionist in law or practice. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Newspaper's financial director denied medical treatment in prison Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 14 November 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Newspaper's financial director denied medical treatment in prison, 14 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829d36a4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is very worried about the health of Faiq Amirov, the imprisoned financial director of the leading opposition daily Azadlig, and calls for his immediate release and an end to the government's harassment of the newspaper. Held on absurd charges since 20 August, Amirov is now in a critical condition, his lawyer reported on 9 November. He has not been given appropriate food for the chronic stomach ailment he suffers and has lost 20 kilos. His lawyer's request for Amirov's transfer to a centre with medical facilities has gone unanswered. "Not only is Faiq Amirov's detention completely unjustified but he is also being denied the medical treatment he badly needs," said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. "This situation speaks volumes about respect for human rights in Azerbaijan. We are extremely concerned about Amirov and we reiterate our call for his immediate and unconditional release. At the very least, he must be given the care that his state of health demands." Amirov's arrest has allowed the government to create new, additional problems for Azadlig, which had already been forced to suspend publication as a result of various manoeuvres designed to throttle it economically. Without Amirov's signature, Azadlig has been unable to interact with its bank, which has illegally refused to recognize the appointment of a new financial director. As a result, the company that prints Azadlig has not been paid and has stopped working with the newspaper. Police investigators have meanwhile questioned a dozen persons who placed opposition party messages, advertisements, greetings or messages of condolences in Azadlig, asking them whether they paid the newspaper for these services. Their apparent aim is to bring a criminal charges against Azadlig, accusing it of publishing disguised advertising or commissioned articles, but they have yet to find anyone willing to testify against the newspaper. Those questioned have also been warned that providing any material assistance to Azadlig would be regarded as "supporting the enemies of the people." "This kind of harassment is not new," Azadlig editor Ganimat Zayid said. "It's just a new attempt to eliminate our newspaper. This is not the first time we have had to suspend publication but we have never given up. The sole reason for Faiq's arrest was the fact that he is our financial director. They have closed the purse strings." Amirov was detained in the course of a wave of arrests of alleged sympathizers with the movement in nearby Turkey that is led by Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric regarded by Turkey's government as the mastermind of last July's failed coup attempt. The police planted the books about the Gulen Movement's philosophy that were "found" in the trunk of Amirov's car at the time of his arrest, Amirov says. They are anyway not banned in Azerbaijan and well known figures close to the government even helped to write them. Azerbaijan is ranked 163rd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index. Seymour Khazi, a well-known Azadlig reporter who has been in prison for more than two years on trumped-up charges, was nominated for the 2016 RSF-TV5 Monde Press Freedom Prize. Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Title Suggested issues and questions to be adopted at the 63rd session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in relation to the Eighth periodic report submitted by: Belarus Publisher Equal Rights Trust Publication Date June 2015 Country Belarus Cite as Equal Rights Trust, Suggested issues and questions to be adopted at the 63rd session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in relation to the Eighth periodic report submitted by: Belarus, June 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5829d96c4.html [accessed 2 November 2022] Colombian gov't, FARC rebels sign new peace deal 2016-11-13 20:46 Humberto de la Calle (R), chief negotiator of the Colombian government, shakes hands Ivan Marquez, chief negotiator of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), after signing a revised peace agreement in Havana, Cuba, Nov. 12, 2016. The Colombian government and the FARC on Saturday signed a new peace deal after nine days of intense negotiations in Havana. (Xinhua/Joaquin Hernandez) HAVANA, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Colombian government and the country's largest guerrilla group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- on Saturday signed a new peace deal after nine days of intense negotiations in Havana. In a joint statement issued by the two sides and presented by the representatives of the peace process' guarantor countries -- Cuba and Norway, the government and the FARC said they "have reached a new definitive peace agreement, with changes, corrections and modifications provided by the different sectors of the Colombian society." "We invite the whole of the Colombian society and the international community to support this new peace accord. Peace cannot wait any longer," the Norwegian representative, Dag Nylander, said during the reading of the text, along with his Cuban colleague, Ivan Mora. Ivan Marquez, chief negotiator of the FARC and his counterpart from the government, Humberto de la Calle, signed the document at a formal ceremony presided over by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. The initial peace agreement was rejected by a slight margin in an Oct. 2 referendum in Colombia. The vote sent both sides back to the negotiating table, with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos insisting a new deal be readied as quickly as possible. Those against the first agreement reached after nearly four years of negotiations are mainly conservatives led by former hardline President Alvaro Uribe, who said it didn't go far enough to hold the rebels accountable for past crimes. Last week, Uribe and former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who also criticized the first deal, gave Santos a list of over 500 proposed changes to 57 different issues. [ The new agreement will not be put to a referendum vote, like the one that sank the previous deal, but will be submitted to congress for approval, the Caracas-based TV news network Telesur reported earlier. The two sides aim to put an end to five decades of fighting that has left more than 260,000 people dead and displaced millions of others since 1964. Morgan County Election Board reviews financial records The Morgan County Election Board met Friday to review the campaign finance reports of local candidates running for office. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... SUVs propel Chinas auto sales by 20.3% From:Agencies | 2016-11-11 10:44 China's auto sales soared 20.3 percent in October from a year earlier, lifted by surging demand for sport-utility vehicles, an industry group said yesterday. Dealers sold 2.3 million cars, minivans and SUVs in the worlds biggest auto market, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Total vehicle sales including trucks and buses climbed 18.6 percent to 2.6 million units. Sales growth plunged last year, slamming global brands that look to China to drive revenue. They rebounded after Beijing suspended a sales tax, though growth is expected to drop back to single digit after the tax cut expires at the end of the year. Strong demand in lower-priced market segments has helped Chinese automakers recover market share from bigger, richer global rivals. Octobers SUV sales rose 43.3 percent year on year to 896,000 units. Sales of Chinese-brand SUVs increased 60.4 percent to 557,000, expanding the Chinese share of that market by 6.6 percentage points to 62.2 percent. Sales of sedans rose 10.1 percent to 1.2 million, while those of Chinese-branded sedans grew 8.3 percent to 243,000. Total auto sales for the first 10 months rose 15.4 percent year on year to 19.1 million. Chinese passengers wait for buses and taxis on a road in heavy smog in Xi'an, northwestern China's Shaanxi province, Dec. 24, 2013. A case of brazen environmental fraud has shaken trust in China's air quality data and raised doubts about the adequacy of its anti-pollution programs. On Oct. 21, three senior environmental officials in northwestern China's Shaanxi province were detained on suspicion of tampering with an air quality monitoring station to falsify reports, state media said. The incident in the Chang'an district of Xi'an "highlights the need for the authorities to show zero tolerance toward any deception concerning air quality monitoring data and ensure those responsible pay a high price," said the Beijing News. According to China Daily, the officials allegedly made a duplicate key to gain access to monitoring equipment, which they covered with yarn to filter out pollution. "It is thought the trio began tampering with the equipment in February, in a bid to artificially improve the district's air quality readings, so as to avoid punitive action," the official English-language paper said. Several other reports said that five officials were involved. Details of the case in Shaanxi's smoggy provincial capital suggest that the violation was particularly blatant, since it involved environmental officials and a monitoring station "directly administered by the Environmental Protection Ministry." Employees at the station allegedly deleted surveillance video "to ensure that inspectors would not see their actions," The New York Times said, citing the initial report by the provincial paper Chinese Business View. The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) did not respond to requests for comment, but within days, China Daily reported that the agency had dispatched 10 teams of inspectors to check the performance of 20 provinces following periods of poor air quality and winter smog in northern regions. News of the inspections was followed by an announcement from the cabinet-level State Council that China will conduct its second national census of pollution sources, but not until December 2017. Results will be released in 2019, the MEP said, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Attempt to restore confidence The statements appear to be aimed at assuring the public that the government is doing something about collusion between environmental officials and industrial interests, while trying to restore confidence in reports that show improved air quality readings despite frequent bouts of lung- choking smog. On Oct. 20, Xinhua reported that the average density of the finest smog-forming particles, known as PM 2.5, had decreased by 11.3 percent in the first nine months of the year in seven northern provinces. But the reported concentrations were still more than double the density considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO). The claim of improvement came one day after PM 2.5 readings in six downtown districts of Beijing spiked to more than five times the average provincial levels, reducing visibility to less than one kilometer (0.6 miles). On Monday, Beijing environmental officials said that average PM 2.5 levels had dropped 8.6 percent in the first 10 months of the year, but the density was again more than twice as high as WHO safe standards. Last week, the MEP said smog had covered over 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) in northern regions. Some cities reported visibility of less than 100 meters (109 yards). On Saturday, meteorological authorities issued the second smog alert of the week for northern regions, citing an "unfavorable weather condition for not properly dispersing air pollutants," Xinhua said. Aside from the weather, the government has blamed corrupt officials and industrial practices for the problem. On Oct. 21, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said it had punished 1,124 officials for dereliction of duty and 838 other individuals for corruption related to environmental protection since the start of 2015. On Oct. 25, state media reported that MEP inspectors had found "several problems causing pollution, including frequent illegal discharges from coke and steel plants." Xinhua later named Yutai Coking Co. in northern Hebei province as one of several companies that had falsified data to avoid fines for excessive pollution. A traffic police officer wearing a face mask directs vehicles on a road in heavy smog in Xi'an, northern China's Shaanxi province, Feb. 2, 2014. Credit: ImagineChina How big is the problem? While the tampering incident in Xi'an may be an egregious violation, it does not answer the questions of how widespread the incidence of environmental fraud in China may be and how big a problem it is. Daniel Gardner, a Smith College history professor in Massachusetts and a senior fellow at Columbia University's Center for Sustainable Development, sees signs that the central government has known that fake data has been a serious issue for some time. "I suspect that the urge to massage pollution figures at the local level is not uncommon," Gardner said by email. "This would explain why both the newly revised Environmental Protection Law and the recently amended Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law single out for punishment local officials found guilty of falsifying pollution data," he said. The Xi'an case is notable because officials allegedly subverted MEP safeguards. It also demonstrates the strength of ties to local sources of pollution despite the risks of defying central authority. A statement by the recent Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee's sixth plenary session suggests that punishment for the falsification could be harsh. "The CPC (Communist Party of China) opposes any act of duplicity or double-dealing, and it will not tolerate deception, exaggeration, hiding the truth, or reporting only good news while holding back the bad," said the statement issued on Oct. 27. But the threat of severe penalties may also be a source of motivation to cheat. Gardner notes that some local officials who have failed to meet environmental targets have been brought before the MEP in Beijing since late 2014. "It goes without saying that no local official is eager to be summoned to Beijing," he said. "It's not a big leap to suppose that the environmental officials in Xi'an ... were doing what they could to ensure that their city's pollution levels did not attract Beijing's attention." Although the focus has been on local officials, the central government may share responsibility for the fabrications by continuing to set relatively high economic growth targets while demanding air quality improvements at the same time. Lines of authority As in other aspects of environmental enforcement, the government has chosen to deal with the data fraud problem by redesigning lines of authority to loosen the ties of officials to local interests. In the wake of the Xi'an scandal, China Daily reported that efforts to free air quality monitoring stations from local government control are "almost complete." The MEP has been in the process of separating 1,436 monitoring stations from the supervision of provincial, city and county environmental bureaus, shifting their operations to private companies that report directly to the MEP. The government introduced a similar program last November to make independent commercial entities responsible for preparing environmental impact assessments (EIAs) that are required for significant projects and construction. The rule followed a central government investigation that found "widespread trading of money and influence" in preparation of EIAs, including "kickbacks for helping companies obtain easy approval during the assessment process," China Daily reported earlier this year. The government has also been trying to eliminate falsification of economic data at the local level for the past several years by requiring enterprises to report production figures directly to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It remains to be seen whether the experiments with independent commercial entities in EIA preparation and air quality monitoring will be effective in reducing corruption and increasing the accuracy of pollution reports. In the Xi'an case, the violations took place at a monitoring station that was already under the direct administration of the MEP. Gardner said the outsourcing to independent companies is a reflection of Beijing's mistrust of local environmental bureaus. The transfer of control may also be needed to establish greater credibility in the government's air quality claims. "I read the very public coverage of the MEP's displeasure with Xi'an officials as a pronouncement by the ministry that it intends to rein in the autonomy of the local environmental bureaus and make them more directly answerable to the MEP's priorities and policies," Gardner said. Myanmar soldiers examine the area around a crater from a landmine explosion on a bridge in Maung Nama Taung village of Maungdaw township in western Myanmar's Rakhine state, Nov. 12, 2016. Nearly 30 attackers were killed and 18 arrested in weekend clashes with national army troops in western Myanmars volatile Rakhine state where soldiers have been accused of abusing Rohingya Muslims and setting their homes ablaze, government media reported on Monday. The area has been under heavy security since Oct. 9 when nine officers were killed in an attack on three guard stations along the border with Bangladesh, which many officials have blamed on local insurgents backed by a militant Islamic group. One of the attackers was injured in the clash with the military column in Maungdaw township in the northern part of the state, according to local media reports on Monday. When the same military unit on Sunday found about 50 burned houses in Gwason village, seven villagers attacked it with machetes, prompting soldiers to shoot six of them dead, according to reports in government media and the military newspaper Myawaddy. The military column also discovered 60 burned houses in the townships Dargyizartaung village on Sunday where about 20 villagers attacked them with machetes and wooden clubs. Soldiers opened fire in defense, killing 19 of them, the reports said. Three more bodies were found in the vicinity of the two villages, the reports said. Some reports by international news agencies, however, put the total number attackers killed at above 30, and quoted residents who said the Rohingya villagers who died were unarmed. The number of dead in the villages and other details of the clashes cannot be independently verified because Myanmars military has not permitted news organizations or other monitors, domestic or foreign, to operate in the Maungdaw area. Muslim residents flee Ko Aung, the administrator of Kyeinchaung village, where communities of different religions live, said the weekend clashes caused many Muslims to flee the villages, and about 90 households had returned as of Monday. The military column had to open fire because armed villagers tried to attack them with machetes and clubs, he said. Eighteen armed villagers were arrested. Zaw Tun, director of Wan Lark Rural Development Foundation, an NGO that is providing food to displaced people in Maungdaw township, said that the fighting is preventing aid workers from reaching some villages. We have been helping internally displaced persons (IDPs) with food mainly, he said. Because of the fighting these days, getting help to IDPs has been delayed. Normally, we are allowed to go and help IDPs, but because of the fighting these days, we cant go into some villages. Local residents have told Zaw Tun that though security in Maungdaw is adequate, villagers are concerned for their safety, and most of them want to move to safer places. When we go to the villages to help the villagers, we have to ask security guards to help us, he said. We cant go to some places to help IDPs now, but the authorities have told us that they will allow us to go to these places as soon as security has cleared them. Religious and ethnic tensions in Rakhine have surged since the Oct. 9 attacks, the worst tension since communal violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in 2012. Reported by Min Thein Aung for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. A Tibetan monk jailed for over four years for activities opposing Chinese rule has been freed in poor health after suffering torture in prison, sources say. Lobsang Sangye, formerly enrolled in Sichuans restive Kirti monastery, was released on Nov. 12 from Mianyang prison near Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu and taken back to his family home in Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) county, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service. His relatives were informed of the release, but when his brother and other relatives went to receive him, they were not allowed to accompany him home, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Instead, Chinese security personnel returned him next day to his home in Ngabas Choejema village. While detained, he was subjected to torture, as a result of which he now suffers from memory loss and poor health, the source said. Detained several times before 2012, Sangye was last taken into custody for selling photos of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and short videos of the Dalai Lamas teachings, RFAs source said, adding, He was also accused of involvement in a self-immolation protest against Chinese policy in Tibet. Sangyes detention in August 2012 came a day after the self-immolation deaths of Kirti monk Lobsang Kalsang, 18, and an ex-monk named Damchoe, 17, at a site near the eastern gate of Kirti monastery, sources told RFA in earlier reports. Kirti monastery has been the scene of repeated self-immolations and other protests by monks, former monks, and nuns opposed to Chinese rule in Tibetan areas. Authorities raided the institution in 2011, taking away hundreds of monks and sending them for political re-education, while local Tibetans who sought to protect the monks were beaten and detained, sources said in earlier reports. Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. Xi calls for strong, modern military logistics From:Xinhua | 2016-11-11 09:40 Chinese PresidentXi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), speaks at a CMC meeting on logistics, in Beijing, capital of China. The meeting was held from Wednesday to Thursday in Beijing. (Xinhua/Li Gang) BEIJING, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping has called for the building of strong and modern logistics forces that will guarantee the realization of the Chinese dream as well as the dream of a strong army. Xi, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), made the remarks at a CMC meeting on logistics held from Wednesday to Thursday. Xi praised the logistics forces' contributions to the country's revolution, construction and reform periods, urging logistics staff to strengthen a sense of responsibility to achieve "leapfrog development" and secure a foundation for the construction of a leading military. "As the international military competition situation experiences profound changes, and national interests and military missions develop, logistical construction is becoming an increasingly crucial factor that affects wins or losses in battle... and occupies a key place in the development of the Party, the country and the military," Xi noted. "We must build a logistics force in which everything exists for fighting a war. It must always remain true to the fundamental purpose of helping win a war," Xi said. Stressing strategic planning and guidance, Xi called for more efforts to research logistics theories and innovation while solving problems that hold back logistics development. The president urged Party committees and military commanders at all levels to attach great importance to military logistics work, with a focus on the reform of logistics policies and optimization of structures and distribution. Xi called for scientific and economic management of logistics work, urging military funds and resources to be subjected to centralized and unified management, allocation and use. According to Xi, more efforts should be made to use state-level resources and enlist the help of local governments as well as social groups and individuals to develop a series of innovation projects that cater to both military and civilian uses. Since the CPC's 18th National Congress in late 2012, Xi has attached great importance to logistics work. Xi met with attendees of a PLA meeting on logistics in November 2013. In September 2016, Xi conferred flags to joint logistics units as the CMC established a joint logistics support force. Xi asked logistics staff to push forward their work in line with the requirements of comprehensive and strict Party governance. Xi also called for efforts to prioritize ideological and political construction and remain determined in fighting corruption in the army and clearing up the bad influence of Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou. The president urged the military to stay clear-minded and safeguard the authority of the CPC Central Committee and the command of the CPC Central Committee and the CMC, asking them to strengthen intra-Party supervision. Xi also urged efforts to build strong logistics forces by fostering high-quality talent. CMC vice chairmen Fan Changlong and Xu Qiliang attended the meeting. WASHINGTON -- RFE/RL Turkmen correspondent Soltan Achilova has been assaulted a second time, following an attack last month that rights advocates said was an attempt to silence her reporting. Achilova, 67, was in a rehabilitation center near Archman, northeast of the capital, Ashgabat, for health reasons on November 8 when two women approached her in the cafeteria, yelling This is the one who takes pictures and pours dirt on Turkmenistan. Earlier that evening, in an attack Achilova believes was meant for her, an elderly woman staying in the same facility was knocked to the floor by two unknown women who shouted while beating her, This is for your taking pictures. The attack came one day after Human Rights Watch issued a statement decrying an October 25 assault on Achilova, saying Achilovas ordeal was clearly yet another orchestrated attempt to silence a critic. There is every indication that these are deliberate attempts to punish our correspondent for doing her job in Turkmenistan, said RFE/RL President Thomas Kent. These attacks violate Turkmenistans international obligations and its own constitutional commitments to respect independent media, and as such must be immediately condemned by the government and stopped. Achilova was questioned by four police officers and threatened with arrest after taking photos of long queues at a state-owned store in the capital city Ashgabat on October 25. After she was released by police several hours later, three men and a woman in plain clothes caught up with her, demanded she delete all the photos, and then attacked her, snatching her bag and her camera away. Achilovas mobile phone has not worked and shes had no Internet connection since last weeks attack. Attacks on RFE/RL correspondents in Turkmenistan, one of the worlds most closed societies, have intensified over the past two years. Saparmamed Nepeskuliev, a video journalist who contributed to the Turkmen Service, was sentenced to three years in prison in September, 2015 on narcotics charges that rights advocates believe were fabricated and brought in retaliation for his images capturing economic hardship and crumbling infrastructure in the countrys western region. In December 2014, Achilova was questioned by unidentified men in civilian clothing under circumstances similar to those of this latest incident, as she interviewed people waiting to purchase fresh meat that had suddenly became available in shops around the country. An Afghan official says the suicide bomber who killed four Americans inside the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan was a former Taliban member working there. The attacker was identified as Qari Enayatullah, a resident of Laghmani village of Bagram district, district governor Haji Abdul Shukur Quddusi said on November 13. He said Enayatullah had joined the reconciliation process in 2008. Quddusi said he was not aware of what job he did at Bagram or how long he had been there. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the November 12 attack on the Bagram airfield, just north of Kabul. The Pentagon said two U.S. service members and two American contractors were killed. Sixteen U.S. service members and one Polish soldier were also injured. In the wake of the attack, and another on the German consulate in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul closed its doors on November 13 as a "temporary precautionary measure." Based on reporting by dpa and the BBC Air strikes in northern Syria have killed at least 23 people as government forces continue to attack areas held by opposition groups. Officials said at least four people were killed after air strikes in western parts of Aleppo Province on November 13. It was unclear who had carried out the air strikes in the area, where Syrian and Russian warplanes routinely make bombing raids. The town of Atareb was also hit by air strikes, as was a border crossing in the Kurdish-held Afrin region in the northern part of the country, where several others were reported killed. Meanwhile, rebel forces reportedly shelled a government-held district in the city of Aleppo. Government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have reportedly recently recaptured areas in eastern Aleppo that were previously lost to rebel forces. The government siege of eastern Aleppo, which is being aided by Russian forces, has left an estimated 275,000 people besieged and with no means of getting food, water, or medicine. While air strikes on eastern Aleppo city have been reduced in recent days, attacks on rebel-held areas of western Aleppo Province have continued. In the northern Idlib Province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Aleppo Today media group said air strikes killed a mother and her four children on November 13. The Syrian civil war began in 2011 and has killed at least 250,000 people while forcing millions of others to flee their homes. Based on reporting by AP and rudaw.net BRUSSELS -- European Union foreign ministers have given the green light to draw up a new "comprehensive agreement" on closer ties with Azerbaijan. Meeting in Brussels on November 14, the ministers adopted a mandate for the European Commission and EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini to negotiate the deal. The new agreement would replace the 1996 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement that has regulated the political relationship between Brussels and the oil- and gas-rich country to date. The deal will be less detailed than the Association Agreements the EU has signed with three other Eastern Partnership countries -- Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. Fundamental rights, trade issues, and energy cooperation are likely to feature in the talks that are expected to last more than two years. Armenia started negotiations with the EU on a new political agreement with the EU in December 2015. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Donald Trump's foreign-policy approach is "phenomenally close" to that of Vladimir Putin; and Trump says he wants to have a telephone conversation with Putin soon. But how will the Trump-Putin relationship work out in practice? On this week's Power Vertical Briefing, we look ahead to U.S.-Russian relations in the age of Trump. Joining me are Senior RFE/RL Editor Steve Gutterman and Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague. Also on the Briefing, we discuss the fallout from the victories of pro-Moscow presidential candidates in Moldova and Bulgaria. Enjoy... NOTE: The Power Vertical Briefing is a short look ahead to the stories expected to make news in Russia in the coming week. It is hosted by Brian Whitmore, author of The Power Vertical blog, and appears on Mondays. Bulgaria faces political uncertainty following the resignation of the country's prime minister after results showed his party losing badly in the country's presidential runoff. Boiko Borisov's move early on November 14 came after official results showed pro-Moscow Socialist candidate Rumen Radev, a former air force commander with no political experience, winning the November 13 poll. "We accept the will of the people and we congratulate those who have the support of the majority of the voters," said Borisov late on November 13 hours after polls closed. Nearly complete election results announced early on November 14 showed Radev winning 59.4 percent of the vote, compared to 36.2 percent for the candidate of the ruling center-right GERB party, Tsetska Tsacheva. GERB has dominated Bulgarian politics over the past decade. Borisov himself was reelected in 2014. Radev called the result "a negative vote for the government that leads to a new political situation." Radev won the first round of voting, held on November 6, with 25.44 percent, but failed to secure an overall majority. Analysts said Radev was able to tap into anger among average Bulgarians over corruption among the country's political class. He also called for tough measures to prevent an influx of migrants amid a wave of Euroskepticism across Central and Eastern Europe. During his election campaign, the 53-year-old Radev called for better ties with Russia, potentially putting the Black Sea state at odds with its European Union and NATO allies. Radev, who once studied at the U.S. Air War College in Alabama, has pledged to maintain Bulgaria's place in NATO but also has said "being pro-European doesn't mean being anti-Russian." Nonetheless, Radev's calls to lift EU sanctions on Russia for the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine, including its support of separatists there and its illegal annexation of Crimea, have many analysts wondering whether Bulgaria will now move closer to Moscow. 'No Shortage Of Drama' In his victory speech, Radev reiterated his support for scrapping the sanctions and also praised U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for "seeking more dialogue" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It gives strong hope for a peaceful solution of the conflicts in Syria and in Ukraine, and reducing confrontation," Radev added. "General Radev's victory represents the unfolding of a pro-Russian scenario in Bulgaria so that the country supports Russian interests in the EU and NATO," political analyst Antoniy Galabov told the AFP news agency. Outgoing President Rosen Plevneliev, a vocal Kremlin critic, warned on November 13 that Russia was trying to "destabilize Europe" by financing anti-EU ultranationalists in eastern states like Bulgaria. In nearby Moldova, a pro-Russia candidate declared victory in that country's presidential election, also on November 13. Igor Dodon has pledged to restore trade and political relations with Moscow, which became strained after Moldova signed a trade association agreement with the European Union. Despite promised reforms, graft and poverty still plague Bulgaria, the EU's poorest member state. At the same time, public anger has also grown over thousands of migrants currently stranded in in the country. "Bulgaria needs a new face, someone who defends national interests instead of always saying 'Yes' to the European Union and the United States," businessman and Sofia resident Assen Dragov, 39, told AFP. The Bulgarian president's role is largely ceremonial but the incumbent is nonetheless a respected figure and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Radev is due to take office on January 22 for a five-year term. His first job will likely be to call early elections this spring. Political analyst Dimitar Bechev told AP that "there will be no shortage of drama in Bulgaria over the coming months, to be sure, but it will be driven by local forces, not the geopolitical contest between Russia and the West." With reporting by AFP and AP At least eight people have been killed and about 20 wounded by two separate suicide car bomb attacks against police checkpoints in Fallujah, Iraq. The November 14 attacks in the city to the west of Baghdad are the first there since Iraqi government forces recaptured Fallujah from Islamic State militants in June. Both car bomb attacks were in the central part of the city. The attacks came as Iraqi government forces -- together with allied and Sunni tribesmen, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and Shiite militia groups -- continue to battle IS militants in and around the IS-controlled northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP A suicide attack in central Iraq has killed at least six people, officials say. The Interior Ministry said the bomber blew himself up in the town of Ain al-Tamr on November 14 after security forces killed five of his accomplices and surrounded him in a house. Six other people were wounded in the blast. Ain al-Tamer is located 50 kilometers west of the Shi'ite shrine city of Karbala. The Islamic State (IS) group said in a statement that it had planned to target Shi'a, police, and army personnel as Iraq's Shi'ite majority were preparing to mark the end of a 40-day mourning period for the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson. IS militants also targeted Ain al-Tamer in late August, killing 18 people. Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini says the European Union will not change its policy towards Russia even if the United States were to alter its position under the administration of incoming president Donald Trump. She said the EU has "a very principled position on the annexation of Crimea and the situation in Ukraine" that was not going to change "regardless of possible shifts in others' policies." Mogherini made her comments after a special EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on November 13 to discuss the results of the U.S. presidential election. Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised concerns that he may soften U.S. policy toward Moscow and perhaps ease economic sanctions against Russia. The EU has also imposed economic sanctions against Russia over its involvement in Ukraine. Mogherini added that Brussels continues to have "effective dialogue" with Russia on many international issues, including the Iranian nuclear deal. She said the nuclear deal --- which was signed last year -- is a multilateral agreement endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution and that it is in the interest of Europe and the UN to guarantee that the deal is "implemented in full." Trump said during the presidential campaign that it was a "terrible" deal that only benefitted Iran and that he would "tear it up" if he were elected president. Mogherini said British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson did not attend the foreign ministers' meeting for political reasons. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was also absent. With reporting by TASS CHISINAU -- Hundreds of people took to the streets of Moldova's capital on November 14 after a pro-Russia politician was declared the winner of the country's presidential runoff election. With 99.9 percent of the votes counted, Igor Dodon won 52.3 percent of the vote in the November 13 poll. Maia Sandu, who ran on an anticorruption ticket, took 47.7 percent. Dodon vowed to be a president to all Moldovans and said he would seek good relations with the country's neighbors, Romania and Ukraine. He also said he wanted to restore ties with Russia, which placed a trade embargo on Moldovan wine, fruit, and vegetables in 2014 -- arguing that the products failed to meet health and safety standards -- after Moldova signed an Association Agreement with the European Union. Dodon's election to the largely ceremonial position -- executive power will ultimately be in the hands of the prime minister and legislature -- took place the same day a pro-Russia candidate won the same post in Bulgaria, prompting questions whether Eastern Europe may be tilting back toward Moscow amid a growing wave of euroskepticism. Later on November 14, hundreds of mostly young Moldovans marched to the offices of the Central Election Committee in Chisinau, shouting: "Down with the mafia!" With police looking on, the protesters, many waving Moldovan flags, were peaceful. Speaking to RFE/RL on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Brussels, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto expressed hope that Moldova would "continue the path regarding European integration." "The success of the Eastern Partnership program depends greatly on how we can continue cooperation," Szijjarto said. Analysts say that the 41-year-old Dodon, who described himself as a traditional Moldovan with conservative values, tapped into popular anger over the approximately $1 billion that vanished from Moldovan banks before the 2014 parliamentary elections. The fraud, which took place under the watch of a pro-EU government, is seen as harming the reputations of pro-Western politicians. Dodon says he wants to scrap a law adopted by parliament that obligates taxpayers to reimburse the $1 billion lost in the fraud, although experts doubt he will be able to keep the pledge. During the campaign, Sandu, a former education minister who heads the Action and Solidarity Party, said Moldova would have a more prosperous future in the EU. Sandu needed a high turnout to hope to win, and the final turnout of 53.3 percent was less than she had hoped. Moldovans voting in Britain, Ireland, France, and Italy lined up for hours and ballot papers ran out. Sandu said the elections had been badly organized and demanded that electoral officials resign. "Hundreds of people were not able to vote," she said. "Hundreds of citizens that traveled a long journey, that waited in the cold and rain, were not able to vote. Moldovan authorities didn't respect the constitutional right of Moldovan citizens...to be able to vote." Sandu also complained about the high number of people who voted in breakaway Transdniester, a pro-Russia region where a reported 9,000 people cast ballots. People residing in Transdniester, which has proclaimed itself an independent country, usually boycott Moldovan elections. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which deployed monitors for the election, said balloting was held in a "competitive" atmosphere, with "fundamental freedoms" respected. The OSCE noted, however, that "increasing polarized media coverage" leading up to the vote had "detracted from the process." "The more intense campaign in the lead-up to the second round succeeded in mobilizing a greater number of voters and offered an opportunity for citizens to express their choice," said Arta Dade, the special coordinator and leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission. "This underlines a desire for continued civic mobilization, and I encourage the newly elected president to support the reforms needed to restore public confidence in state institutions." Dodon told Russian broadcaster Rossiya 24 in a phone interview on November 14 that voters "united and voted for friendship with Russia, for neutrality, for our Orthodoxy, for the country's union." "Very serious combat is ahead, but we are ready for this combat," he said, referring to parliamentary elections that he wants to bring forward to next year rather than wait until 2018. On November 13, Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the government and new president would need to work together in the country's best interests, adding that its path toward greater EU integration "cannot be reversed." Russia imposed trade restrictions on Moldovan agricultural exports after it signed the political and trade agreement with the European bloc in 2014. Moscow fears Moldova moving closer to the European Union, a reaction that has drawn comparisons to its opposition to Ukraine's efforts to tighten ties with the bloc in 2013. Russia also has thousands of troops stationed as part of a disputed military presence in the mainly Russian-speaking territory of Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova following a short war that killed several hundred people. Russia still keeps a contingent of troops in the breakaway region, ostensibly as peacekeepers. Sandu has called for Russia to withdraw the troops. Dodon's Socialist Party wants to scrap the EU agreement in favor of joining a Eurasian economic union dominated by Russia -- a position that has backing in Moldova where many have suffered financially from the goods embargo and a broader economic downturn. In October, an ambassador from one EU member state, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Dodon had privately told diplomats his party would not discard the EU accord. Poland says it will build a new territorial defense force of 53,000 volunteers by 2019 in order to guard against threats from Russia. Defense Minister Atoni Macierewicz said on November 14 that the force will be similar to the U.S. National Guard in that it is comprised of civilians who undergo military training. Macierewicz said the force would deter Russia from seizing Polish territory by infiltration, as it is accused of having done in eastern Ukraine. "It is also the best response to the dangers of a hybrid war like the one...following Russia's aggression in Ukraine," Macierewicz said, giving Moscow's illegal annexation in 2014 of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula as an example. Military experts say hybrid warfare is a tactic employed by Russia that uses deception rather than a formal declaration of war. Based on reporting by AFP and PPA Polish prosecutors on November 14 began the exhumation of President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash in Russia in 2010. They are examining his remains as part of a renewed investigation into the crash near Smolensk in western Russia that killed 96 people -- including Kaczynskis wife, Polands top military leadership, and the governor of Polands central bank. An investigation by Polands previous, centrist government ruled that the crash of the governments Soviet-made TU-154 airplane in heavy fog during an attempt to land was the result of pilot error. But Kaczynskis twin brother, Jaroslaw, has said an onboard explosion could have caused the crash. Prosecutors also want to determine whether there was a mix-up of remains during burial and whether the bodies were described correctly in previous investigations. They say Russias refusal to return the plane wreckage is a critical obstacle. Jaroslaw Kaczynskis nationalist Law and Justice Party unseated the centrists in 2015 elections. Based on reporting by Reuters and AP U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 14 discussed battered bilateral ties between their countries in the first phone call between the two men since Trump's election last week. Trumps team said in a statement that Putin called him earlier in the day and congratulated him on his November 8 win against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and that the Republican president-elect is "very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia." "During the call, the two leaders discussed a range of issues including the threats and challenges facing the United States and Russia, strategic economic issues, and the historical U.S.-Russia relationship that dates back over 200 years," the statement said. The Kremlin said earlier on November 14 that Putin and Trump both agreed that the current state of relations is "extremely unsatisfactory." Putin told Trump in the call that he was ready to have a dialogue on the basis of "mutual respect" and "nonintervention into each others internal affairs," the Kremlin statement said. It added that Putin and Trump had agreed to work to "channel bilateral relationships into constructive cooperation." Relations between the two sides have deteriorated sharply over Russias illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory in 2014, its backing of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The outgoing administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has imposed several waves of sanctions against Russia over its role in Ukraine's conflict -- punitive measures that have enraged Moscow. Since Trump's election, Russian officials have voiced optimism that his administration could roll back the Ukraine-related sanctions Obama has issued by executive order. The national emergency that Obama declared in connection with Crimea's seizure and illegal annexation by Russia serves as the foundation for sanctions. The executive order declaring that emergency is set to expire in early March. Trump, who is set to succeed Obama in January, said repeatedly during his campaign that he wants to mend the frayed ties between the two countries. He also said he might think twice about defending NATO allies unless they increase their defense spending. Trumps statements about Russia -- including positive words about Putin and the suggestion that he may recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea -- triggered criticism from political opponents and some in his own party that he was advocating an appeasement policy with Moscow. His comments about NATO, meanwhile, have sparked fear in Europe, where some have called for the European Union to bolster its own common defense plan. Eastern European members of NATO that were previously under Moscows domain during Soviet times -- such as the Baltic nations -- have voiced particular concern over Russian expansionism in Ukraine and potential Kremlin designs on their territory. That prompted the outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama on November 14 to reassure NATO allies that Trump has indicated strong backing for the alliance, despite his statements during the election campaign. Obama said he and Trump had a useful and "free-flowing conversation" when the two met at the White House last week following Trump's election victory. Asked what he would tell foreign leaders about Trump's faith in the alliance, Obama replied: "There is no weakening of resolve when it comes to America's commitment to maintaining a strong and robust NATO relationship." Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on November 14 advised NATO countries worried about Trumps commitment to the alliance that they should talk to members of Trump's incoming administration. Carter said he could not speak for Trump's incoming administration, but urged NATO partners to take advantage of the opportunity to air their concerns with Trump's team. "The only thing I would say is, engage with the new administration," Carter said. "Work with them. Stay committed to the values and the principles that we have stood for. We're much better at protecting ourselves if we can find a way to work together." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on November 13 that "this is no time to question the partnership between Europe and the United States," and that "going it alone is not an option." With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, TASS, and Interfax A senior Russian senator says Russia and Iran are in talks over an arms deal worth around $10 billion. Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense and security committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, said on November 14 that the potential deal would see Moscow deliver tanks, artillery systems, planes, and helicopters to Tehran. Ozerov was speaking in the Iranian capital during a parliamentary visit. In October, Russia announced it had completed the delivery of S-300 air-defense missile systems to Iran, despite concerns from the United States and Israel. The delegation from Russia's Federation Council was expected to discuss in Iran expanding economic ties, regional cooperation, and ways to help implement bilateral agreements signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rohani in August. Based on reporting by TASS and Reuters A Russian hacker who was convicted for his leading role in one of the largest data thefts in U.S. history has been released from prison after serving most of his 12-year sentence. Vladimir Drinkman was released from a Pennsylvania jail on October 28, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told RFE/RL. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not respond to an RFE/RL request for comment on whether Drinkman had been turned over for deportation, a process that can take up to several months. Drinkman's lawyer, Igor Litvak, declined to comment. RFE/RL could not immediately reach Drinkman. Drinkman was a key member of a criminal hacking group that penetrated major U.S. corporations, including Heartland Payment Systems, which at the time it was breached in 2008 was one of the biggest U.S. payment-processing firms. The Heartland attack -- the largest breach in history at the time -- cost the payment company more than $200 million in losses. Varonis, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, ranks the attack on Heartland among the 10 largest data breaches of all time. Chuck Brooks, a cybersecurity expert and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said the Heartland hack was a "wake-up call" for the payments and financial industries to enhance their cyberdefenses. He said the breach led to stronger security policies, including a better understanding by CEOs and CFOs of the threats to business sustainability and reputation. "After the breach, many companies added more stringent data and security policies, including encryption, multifactor authentication, and monitoring of systems and networks," Brooks told RFE/RL. Heartland also later established the Payments Processing Information Sharing Council (PPISC), which serves as a forum for banks and payment processors to share information about breaches and compliance issues, he noted. In addition to breaking into Heartland, the hacking gang also breached Nasdaq OMX Group, 7-Eleven, JC Penney, JetBlue Airways, and others, according to prosecutors. In total, they stole the data of more than 160 million credit cards, leading to more than $300 million in damages. Greg Hunter, a Virginia-based lawyer who has represented cybercriminals from the former Soviet Union, said the Heartland case demonstrated the sophisticated evolution of Russian-speaking hackers. "This was the beginning of specialization," Hunter told RFE/RL. "Rather than an individual hacker spending a lot of time stealing credit card data and then trying to monetize it, you had guys specializing in breaching the security apparatus of a site, others selling the data." The appearance of hacker forums was critical to the phenomenon of a division of labor, he said. Hacker sites "allowed these guys to find each other and work together. A guy who breaches banks could just focus on that, knowing he could find others to either help him know what to get and how to use it, or just buy his services outright," Hunter said. Several of the most commonly used forums where hackers bought and sold stolen credit card data and traded tips included Cardplanet and Direct Connection. A Russian man, Aleksei Burkov, was extradited from Israel to the United States and later pleaded guilty in 2020 to U.S. charges related to his oversight of those forums. He was deported to Russia last year. According to U.S. court filings, Drinkman and another co-conspirator, Alexandr Kalinin, specialized in penetrating network security and gaining access to the corporate data systems. Drinkman along with a third man, Roman Kotov, also focused on mining the networks to steal valuable data. Another Russian man, Dmitry Smilyanets, then sold the stolen credit card information on forums for $10 to $50 each and distributed the proceeds of the scheme to the others, according to prosecutors. Kalinin and Kotov, both of whom are Russian citizens, are believed to still be in Russia. Drinkman was arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012 at the request of the United States, along with Smilyanets. While Smilyanets cooperated with U.S. authorities and arrived in the United States a few months after his arrest, Drinkman fought his extradition for more than a year. Ultimately, Drinkman pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, including time served since his arrest. It is one of the harshest sentences given to a Russian hacker. Drinkman served a total of 10 years and four months, or 86 percent of his sentence. U.S. federal prisoners earn credit each year for good behavior and typically serve 85 percent of their sentence. Smilyanets was sentenced to just time served, or less than six years, and currently resides in the United States, where he works as a cyberthreat intelligence analyst. He declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL. Moscow says it is ready to work fast to repair relations with Washington now that Donald Trump has been elected U.S. president. "The Russian side is ready, without wasting time, to begin the work to fix the current state of relations with the U.S., which have been taken to a crisis, a deadlock by the outgoing administration," the TASS news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on November 14. But Ryabkov said Russian officials knew little of Trump's policy plans, and recognized that there was a difference between his election campaign pledges and the policies he would implement once in office. "We shall be judging by deeds, not by signals or promises," he said. Moscow's relations with Washington and its Western allies have plunged to levels of acrimony unseen since the end of the Cold War following Russia's military seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and an ensuing war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists. Trump has said he "would have a very, very good relationship" with Russian President Vladimir Putin and also asserted that he would be better at negotiating with Putin than President Barack Obama has been. Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS ON MY MIND So we woke up today to news that two more countries -- Bulgaria and Moldova -- have elected pro-Moscow presidents. Vladimir Putin's policy of using active measures, corruption, and disinformation to restore influence among Russia's former satellites is working for the time being. A new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes that "Russia has cultivated an opaque web of economic and political patronage across the region that the Kremlin uses to influence and direct decision making." Corruption, it appears, is the new communism. And it may yet prove just as damaging to the countries of Eastern Europe. IN THE NEWS Igor Dodon, Moldova's pro-Russia Socialist Party leader, has claimed victory in the country's presidential election over pro-European candidate Maia Sandu. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has announced he will resign after Moscow-friendly Socialist party candidate Rumen Radev won the country's presidential election. Russian authorities say they have arrested 10 alleged members of the Islamic State militant group and accused the group of planning simultaneous terrorist attacks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a desire to hold a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the near future. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN that Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump are alike in being pragmatic and focused on solving problems. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini says the European Union will not change its policy towards Russia even if the United States were to alter its position under the administration of incoming president Donald Trump. A delegation from Russia's upper house of parliament has begun a two-day visit to Iran, led by the Federation Council's speaker, Valentina Matviyenko. Iran's deputy minister of petroleum for international affairs and commerce says a delegation of Russian oil and gas companies will visit the country this week for talks about possible oil contracts. LATEST POWER VERTICAL PODCAST In case you missed it, the latest Power Vertical Podcast, Brave New World, looks at how the election of Donald Trump will change the geopolitical equation in the post-Soviet space. NEW POWER VERTICAL BRIEFING On this week's Power Vertical Briefing, we look ahead to how Russian-American relations might develop under Donald Trump, as well as the fallout from the victories of pro-Moscow presidential candidates in Moldova and Bulgaria. Joining me are Senior RFE/RL Editor Steve Gutterman and Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague. WHAT I'M READING Putin And Trump Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague has a piece in Foreign Policy explaining why the Kremlin probably isn't all that thrilled about a Trump presidency. "The Russian president has gotten a lot of mileage out of his 'craziest man on the world stage' shtick. In a Trump White House, he may have met his match," Galeotti writes. In Republic.ru (formerly Slon.ru), Georgy Neyasky and Yevgeny Karasyuk also look ahead to the Trump-Putin relationship. In The Guardian, Shaun Walker looks at how the "macho vs. macho" relationship between Trump and Putin could develop. The Telegraph has a piece on what it describes as a brewing diplomatic crisis between the United States and the United Kingdom over Trump's plans to forge close relations with Russia. "Influence over Ukraine and an abandonment of U.S. missile defence would be the Kremlins key priorities in Europe, though it is unclear what Putin could offer Trump in return," Walker writes. In an editorial, The New York Times warns of the dangers of going soft on Putin's Russia. In a commentary for The Daily Mail, historian, author, and political commentator Anne Applebaum argues that Trump will put Putin first -- and Britain last. The Kremlin's Playbook The Center for Strategic and International Studies has a new report out looking at Russia's "playbook" for influencing Central and Eastern Europe. "There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russias economic engagement with the region expanded significantly," the authors write. Two close allies in Ukraine of Georgias former President Mikheil Saakashvili have resigned from their posts, just days after Saakashvili himself stepped down from his post as the governor of Ukraines Odesa region. Yulia Marushevska, the head of the Odesa regions customs service, and Ukraines National Police Chief Khatia Dekanoidze announced their resignations on November 14. Marushevska, who headed Odesas customs service since October 2015, said she was resigning because of what she said was sabotage by President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman of her anticorruption reform efforts. There was no immediate comment from Poroshenko or Hroysman about Marushevskas allegations. Dekanoidze said she was resigning because she had not been given enough powers to carry out radical reforms within Ukraine's police forces. Dekanoidze said she had "failed to root out corruption" within Ukraines law-enforcement bodies because of her limited powers. She said police reform would only work if the courts and prosecution service were also reformed. Based on reporting by The Kyiv Post and 112UA West Warwick High School Seniors Steve Lucier, Ivan Goretoy, and Brook Young who will participate in the Thanksgiving Food Drive. The students will help build 50 baskets for families in need this holiday season. With stagnant salaries, a shrinking number of recruits, more responsibilities and unfilled vacancies at the Virginia State Police, the agency is facing a critical juncture in its nearly 100-year history, Col. W. Steven Flaherty told a legislative committee last week. We really feel like our backs are up against the wall right now, Flaherty said during a presentation to the Joint House and Senate Transportation Committee that laid bare the agencys struggles with attrition and hiring and called for a dedicated source of funding to avoid the fluctuations of the states general fund. Flaherty said the Virginia State Police budget has been slashed by more than $100 million since 2006 and that the agency is losing about a dozen troopers a month to other law enforcement agencies both in the state and elsewhere that pay more. Virginia state troopers start at $36,207, lower than the average of 30 state police agencies surveyed by the department, said Flaherty, who is superintendent of the agency. That figure is also lower than the starting salaries of the Richmond, Chesterfield County, Henrico County, Virginia Beach and Winchester police departments, among others, according to his presentation Thursday. Its unconscionable what were paying our state police officers, said Sen. David W. Marsden, D-Fairfax. Its also a problem in other state agencies. ... The approach we take is that whatever is left over, thats what well put into raises, as opposed to building that into the front end of the budget. Compounding the problem, veteran troopers are often making the same as those who just started because of salary compression, the product of years without raises. Folks now are kind of looking around and saying, Why do I stay? he said. All of that is weighing pretty hard on our employees. When Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced a projected $1.5 billion revenue shortfall last month that killed the prospect of raises for state employees, including state police, Flaherty said he had nine resignations hit his desk the following Monday. They dont see any light at the end of tunnel, said M. Wayne Huggins, former state police superintendent and executive director of the Virginia State Police Association, which represents about 2,300 current and retired troopers. We are well aware of the budget demands in Virginia, Huggins added. At the same time, we believe that governments first responsibility is to provide core services. And we are the core of the core services. ... No other service can function without public safety. Im not saying were better than everyone else. We are uniquely and necessarily different. Flaherty and Huggins back an as-yet unsuccessful piece of legislation introduced during the past three General Assembly sessions by Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr., R-Grayson, a former state trooper, that seeks to provide additional funding for the department through a $1.25 increase in vehicle registration fees over a decade, projected to raise a total of $127 million. There are some who see a fee increase, irrespective of the purpose, as a tax increase, Huggins said. There are some who are reluctant to support it for that reason. ... Nobody disagrees with the magnitude of the problem. That would be enough to fill vacancies, hire more troopers, and address the compression and starting salary problems, Carrico said. However, even if that passes what has proved to be a reluctant General Assembly, state police and other employees have a right-now problem, Carrico said, namely the raises that were to go into effect in December. Huggins, who was superintendent from 1994 to 2000, said what his membership is most eager to see is that the legislature, which reconvenes in January, comes up with a long-term solution, even if it takes several years to implement, not a Band-Aid. That would at least give troopers something to plan their lives around. I was dealing with many of these issues 20 years ago. These are not problems that have just come up overnight, he said. Were not going to get out of this problem in a year. Its going to take some time. What were asking is to put a plan in place. The Charles City County Sheriff's Office is warning senior citizens about a phone scam. According to the sheriff's office, several seniors in the county have received telephone calls around 2 a.m., telling them come outside. The calls are from a blocked number, and the recipients are called by their first name when they answer the phone. Richmond police have identified the victim in a fatal shooting Sunday in the city's Elkhardt neighborhood. Police were called about 4:30 a.m. Sunday to the 1400 block of Ivymount Road for a report of a shooting. There officers found Jovante R. Jackson, 25, of the 2900 block of North Parham Road, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. Jackson was taken to a local hospital, where he died. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Major Crimes Detective Kevin Hughes at (804) 646-3917 or contact Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000 or at www.7801000.com. Submit tips to GUN250 about persons illegally possessing guns by texting Crime Stoppers at 274637, then using the keyword GUN250 followed by the tip. Rewards up to $250 possible. The university notified Dr. Art Kellermann he won't continue as the health system's top administrator. The university gave him the option to resign, but it's unclear if he will do so. Virginia State Police are looking for suspects after a gunman opened fire on a car traveling on Interstate 64 in Hampton over the weekend. The shooting happened about 1 a.m. Sunday on eastbound I-64 at the Pine Chapel Road overpass. According to police, a 2005 Lexus was traveling on I-64 east when a dark or burgundy vehicle pulled along the drivers side and fired at the vehicle, hitting it multiple times. The adult male driver of the Lexus and two adult male passengers were taken to Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, police said. One of the men suffered life-threatening injuries. A fourth passenger wasn't hurt. A Henrico County man was indicted on a manslaughter charge Monday in a fatal shooting at a party in early 2014. Henrico Commonwealths Attorney Shannon Taylor announced that Joshua David Jackson, 21, was indicted by a Henrico Circuit Court grand jury on charges of involuntary manslaughter, shooting into an occupied dwelling and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Jackson is accused of fatally shooting Ronnie Winstead Jr., 20, during a Jan. 12, 2014, party at a residence in the 2800 block of Lito Road. Police said at the time that officers found Winstead in a nearby yard in the 2100 block of London Court when they responded to a 1:15 a.m. call of shots fired. Winstead, who was shot in the chest, was declared dead at the scene. He lived in the 200 block of Carleigh Court in Henrico. Jackson is being held in the county jail pending his next court appearance. NEW YORK (AP) Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of PBS' "NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff and a veteran journalist who moderated two vice presidential debates, died Monday of cancer, the network said. She was 61. A former reporter for The New York Times and The Washington Post, Ifill switched to television in the 1990s and covered politics and Congress for NBC News. She moved to PBS in 1999 as host of "Washington Week" and also worked for the nightly "NewsHour" program. She and Woodruff were named co-anchors in 2013. She moderated vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008 and authored the book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The president on Monday praised Ifill for informing today's citizens while also inspiring a young generation of journalists. "I always appreciated Gwen's reporting, even when I was on the receiving end of one of her tough" interviews, Obama said. Ifill took a leave from "NewsHour" for a month this spring for health reasons, keeping details of her illness private. Her health failing, she left "NewsHour" again shortly before an election night that she and Woodruff would have covered together. "Gwen was a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change," said Sara Just, PBS "NewsHour" executive producer. "She was a mentor to so many across the industry and her professionalism was respected across the political spectrum. She was a journalist's journalist and set an example for all around her." NBC News' Pete Williams, a former colleague, struggled to keep his composure Monday when announcing Ifill's death on MSNBC. "She had so many awards in her office you could barely see out the window," Williams said. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said he was a member of the Maryland state legislature when Ifill worked for the Baltimore Evening Sun. "She always demonstrated thoughtful intelligence, determination to uncover the facts, and an innate talent for knowing what truly interested the public," Cummings said. Shortly before moderating the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin in 2008, Ifill brushed aside concerns that she might not be fair because she was writing a book about Obama. "I've got a pretty long track record covering politics and news, so I'm not particularly worried that one-day blog chatter is going to destroy my reputation," she told The Associated Press then. Amid criticism from professors and students asking that she not use the universitys founder as a moral compass, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan is defending her use of a Thomas Jefferson quotation. Quoting Jefferson (or any historical figure) does not imply an endorsement of all the social structures and beliefs of his time, such as slavery and the exclusion of women and people of color from the university, Sullivan said in an online response Monday to a letter signed by 469 faculty members and students. But Sullivan acknowledged the universitys complicated Jeffersonian legacy and endorsed their right to object to her choice of the quotation she used in her message last week calling for unity and civility after the presidential election. By coincidence, on this exact day 191 years ago November 9, 1825, in the first year of classes at U.Va. Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that University of Virginia students are not of ordinary significance only: they are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country, and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes. I encourage todays U.Va. students to embrace that responsibility, Sullivan wrote last week. In her response to the letter, Sullivan said that words have power and quoting any person is to acknowledge the potency of that persons words. In my message last week, I agreed with Mr. Jeffersons words expressing the idea that U.Va. students would help to lead our Republic. He believed that 200 years ago, and I believe it today, she said. Jefferson scholar Peter S. Onuf said by email that he endorses Sullivans response but not the sentiments in the letter. We need to engage with Jefferson, not to pretend that this complex, deeply flawed figure did not exist or has nothing to say to us, said Onuf, the emeritus Thomas Jefferson professor of history at U.Va. and senior research fellow at Monticello. Jefferson is easily the most quoted person at U.Va. his words are melded to fit almost any scenario on campus. But the slave-holding third president is under increasing scrutiny as the university prepares to celebrate its bicentennial next year and launch a major fundraising campaign. That sentiment was expressed in the letter to Sullivan drafted by Noelle Hurd, an assistant professor of psychology. Though we realize that some members of our university community may be inspired by quotes from Jefferson, we hope to bring to light that many of us are deeply offended by attempts of the administration to guide our moral behavior through their use, the letter stated. The letter noted that Jefferson was deeply involved in the racist history of this university and cited other memorable Jefferson quotes, such as that blacks are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind. We would like for our administration to understand that although some members of this community may have come to this university because of Thomas Jeffersons legacy, others of us came here in spite of it, the letter states. For many of us, the inclusion of Jefferson quotations in these e-mails undermines the message of unity, equality and civility that you are attempting to convey. Lawrie Balfour, a politics professor who signed the letter, told The Cavalier Daily that they were grateful that Sullivan responded to anxiety following the election but felt it was the wrong moment to turn to Jefferson because of recent incidents of identity-related hate speech. Virginias general fund revenues rose 3.4 percent in October over October 2015, driven mostly by payroll withholding taxes, according to the McAuliffe administration. The general fund is the part of the budget over which the governor and lawmakers have discretion. It is made up mostly of income and business taxes and goes toward services such as education, public safety and health care. This months report is encouraging news as we continue to overcome the effects of sequestration and our historic over-reliance on federal spending by growing and diversifying our economy, Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in a statement. While we are headed in a positive direction, we still have some difficult decisions to make to close a revenue shortfall in the fiscal year 2018 budget. How will Trump supporters react if he loses? asked The Washington Post before the election. The question was repeated ad nauseam across other platforms, and the answer was implied: They might refuse to accept the result, and riot or worse. The ugly and sometimes violent spasms of outrage that spilled into the streets after last Tuesday not to mention the pre-election torching of Republican Party offices in North Carolina are therefore more than a little ironic. Here in Richmond, vandals have defaced monuments and the state Republican Partys headquarters. In Chicago, a man was yanked from his car and beaten as onlookers shouted, Dont vote Trump! Arson and assault broke out in Oakland. The disturbing reactions were leavened by unintentionally funny ones such as the Cry In organized by the delicate snowflakes of the student body at Cornell. Nevertheless, there is an important lesson to take away. Liberals frequently warn about potential eruptions of right-wing violence as Nancy Pelosi did in 2009 or blame conservatives for violent episodes they had no connection to, as The New York Times and many others did after Jared Loughners shooting rampage in Tucson in 2011. Yet most episodes of mob violence from the 1999 Seattle protests against the WTO to last years riots in Baltimore are either consciously left-wing or, at the least, untethered to any conservative political philosophy. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. LYNCHBURG Tom Garrett s win last week in the 5th Congressional District officially kicked off the race to replace him in the states 22nd Senate District. However, two Republicans have been campaigning for months in expectation of the Buckingham Republicans victory over former Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Jane Dittmar, a Democrat. Once Garrett officially announces his resignation as a state senator, Gov. Terry McAuliffe can call a special election, a contest likely to be held the same date as one to replace Rep.-elect Donald McEachin in the 9th Senate District. McEachin, a Democrat, won the newly redrawn 4th Congressional District seat Tuesday. With the 2017 General Assembly convening Jan. 11, the campaign for the 22nd District seat will be particularly short if a Democrat steps in. No Democrats have publicly announced their candidacy for the Republican-leaning district that includes Fluvanna and Buckingham counties and a portion of Louisa County. Lynchburg-area attorney Mark Peake and Goochland County Supervisor Ken Peterson met the recent filing deadline to seek the Republican nomination for Garretts state senate seat at an upcoming party convention. David Ball, who had announced his candidacy in August, did not meet the registration deadline with the district committee, said Daniel Bradshaw, chairman of the Republican Committee for the 22nd Senatorial District. Weve got two great candidates. I think either one of them would make an excellent senator to replace Tom Garrett, Bradshaw said. Im wishing both of them the best of luck in their fight to secure the nomination. Bradshaw said he expects about 400 Republican activists to attend the convention. Peake and Peterson have been working in the periphery of the presidential and congressional campaigns to round up delegates for the convention, set for Dec. 3. The location has not been set yet. Those interested in participating in the convention must apply as a delegate with their local committee. The race is Peakes second run for the seat. Garrett defeated him and three others for the Republican nomination in 2011 before taking down Democrat Bert Dodson, 58 percent to 42 percent. Ive been assuming Tom would win since January, and Ive been running since January like Tom would win, Peake said. As soon as we issued the call declaring that we would have a convention to pick the nomination to replace Tom, Ive been running as hard as I could to prepare for the convention. To win a nominating convention, candidates must generally convince people to register as a delegate with their local unit. Then, they turn to getting their delegates to the one-day electoral event. Ive been spending quite a bit of time in each of the jurisdictions, getting to know the district, seeing whats on their minds, Peterson said. Its been a real positive experience. Garrett said he would not be endorsing a candidate. I want to be very clear on the record that every candidate in that field I think would do a good job, Garrett said. I have no desire to get involved. Peake and Peterson both have spent the past several months visiting unit committee meetings, trying to sell themselves as the best candidate. We need an outspoken, conservative leader whos willing to stand up for conservative principles, Peake said. I think thats what Tom Garrett did, and I think the people of the 22nd are looking for someone who will fight for those principles like he did, and Im committed to doing it like he did. Peterson touts his experience in corporate finance and his record as a Goochland supervisor. He was re-elected to his second term in 2015. Its a strong, solid conservative voting record, Peterson said. I think the delegates in general would prefer to see a voting record as to listen to campaign promises. After losing last week to Garrett, Dittmar said she hasnt decided yet whether shell run again for political office in the future. Ive just given myself permission to get some rest and some R&R through the end of this month and then kind of look at my wide-open horizon and see what the future holds, she said. Dittmar added that her campaign team is continuing to collect all the data and work they compiled throughout the race to help the Democratic nominee in 2018 hit the ground running in the 5th District. The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress contributed to this story. Only after an investigation by The Roanoke Times exposed gaping due diligence failures did Virginias lead economic development agency institute safeguards to shield state taxpayer money against bad deals, according to a report released Monday by the General Assemblys watchdog agency. Starting in July 1995, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership operated for more than 20 years without a formal due diligence process to protect the state from fraud and loss, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission wrote in a 132-page report. That approach changed after the newspapers investigation, published Jan. 17, the commission said. Protocols suggested more than four years earlier were enacted and a committee began meeting weekly to vet projects, including a review of companies credit ratings and reports, legal histories and financial statements. None of that happened in the case of Lindenburg Industry, a company owned by Chinese nationals that received $1.4 million in state taxpayer money to start a catalytic converter plant in Appomattox. The factory never opened. Officials at the partnership recommended approval of the grant largely basing their faith in the project on a website filled with text and photos pulled from the web pages of an unrelated company. The site listed a physical address in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where, the newspaper found, the company had never been located. The unaffiliated company had issued a cease-and-desist demand over the lifted copy and pictures. Following the newspapers report on the failure of VEDP staff to validate the legitimacy of the company, the agency created formal due diligence procedures, the commission said. Research staff at VEDP proposed those steps in September 2011 the same month Martin Briley was named the agencys next CEO but they never were enacted, according to the report. Briley recommended approval of the grant to Lindenburg and gathered in October 2014 with company representatives and Gov. Terry McAuliffe in Beijing, where, the governor later said, he closed the deal. Formerly the top economic leader in Prince William County, Briley is one of four state officials with ties to the Lindenburg deal whove lost or departed their jobs since spring. He left his post in March. Maurice Jones, the former state secretary of commerce and trade, in September started a high-paying job at a New York-based nonprofit group chaired by a McAuliffe ally. A project manager at the partnership and his boss also are out. Both the partnership and McAuliffe cited Brileys departure when asked about the legislative commissions findings. VEDPs Board of Directors recognized major shortcomings and the need for marked change and improvement and took significant action in March 2016 to replace the President and CEO, the agency said in an emailed statement. VEDPs recent reorganization addresses many of the issues identified in the JLARC report, including new structure, new management and new operational procedures. While on a marketing mission to the Pacific Rim, McAuliffe said in a news release Monday that the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report shows we have a responsibility to strengthen the management and accountability structure at VEDP so that it can meet its full potential as a driver for economic growth. The governor credited VEDP with having taken several steps to increase oversight and accountability leading up to this final report. The VEDP board is also in the process of hiring a new Chief Executive Officer, who I hope will bring a new culture of accountability and strategic oversight to the organization. These are good first steps; however, it is clear that much more needs to be done. A phone message left for Briley at his home was not returned. Over the last 10 years, VEDP has awarded $384 million in grants, demonstrating what the state watchdog described as mixed performance. Almost half of 133 completed projects under the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund a pool of development grant money controlled by the governor and administered by VEDP did not meet all of their contractual requirements. More than a third missed their jobs targets. Nearly the same share fell short on wages. Formerly known as the Governors Opportunity Fund as it was called when the Lindenburg package was approved the program provides the states chief executives with photo opportunities and the chance to tout jobs. McAuliffes news release responding to the commission report cited economic growth as his top priority, reiterating a constant theme from the Executive Mansion and, before that, the campaign trail. Programs in which companies are reimbursed for capital investments or other costs tied to job creation have fared far better, according to the commission. Roughly two weeks after closing the deal in Beijing, McAuliffe and the cameras turned out in November 2014 in Appomattox for the Lindenburg announcement. The company collected the Governors Opportunity Fund grant in March 2015 following the media event during which McAuliffe handed company CEO Yunshan Stella Li a large cardboard check, symbolic of the money to come. Officials approved another $1.17 million from the state tobacco commission for Lindenburg. That payout never came. Along with Briley, gone from VEDP are Warren Hammer, the project manager on the Lindenburg deal, and his immediate superior, Michael Lehmkuhler, the former vice president of business attraction. Both officials names appear in more than 2,000 pages of VEDP emails obtained by The Roanoke Times as part of its Lindenburg investigation. In addition to trusting the website populated with misleading information, partnership officials neither sought nor reviewed financial statements for Lindenburg, a newly formed Virginia limited liability company. The company pledged to invest $113 million and hire 349 workers to establish the converter plant in struggling Appomattox. But the project scarcely budged. Finally, as bills piled up, the deal crumbled. The partnership asked for its money back in December 2015 but so far has received nothing. State police are investigating. A VEDP civil case against Lindenburgs Charlotte, North Carolina-based site consultant is pending. Lindenburg purchased the former Thomasville furniture plant in fall 2014, with company officials making the final arrangements on the deal from Beijing at about the same time as the meeting with McAuliffe. Development Advisors Inc., the companys site consultant, exercised a lien on the plant, effectively killing the project and leading to the factory being auctioned off in December. VEDP is seeking the $859,000 the consultant says its due under the auction. The agency claims the consultant failed to fulfill the obligations of a performance agreement with Lindenburg. Development Advisors has filed a response challenging the legal validity of VEDPs claim. If there has been one exceptionally clear trend during the US Presidential campaigns of 2008, 2012 and 2016, it is that the population of the world's biggest diamond and jewelry market has changed and is continuing to do so rapidly. At the time that De Beers launched its famous 'A diamond is forever' advertisement, following the end of the Second World War, the United States was an overwhelmingly white country, and even more so regarding income and wealth. Although white Americans still make up the bulk of the country's population of around 325 million, this group's birthrate has declined in recent decades and now stands at an average figure of about 1.8%. Meanwhile, the numbers of minority groups have grown, with the Hispanic and Asian populations showing a particularly strong growth rate. It is now estimated that the U.S. Hispanic population numbers in excess of 45 million, an increase of more than 2% over 2012, while the Asian population has grown to more than 20 million, with a growth rate of 2.9%. U.S. births have been the primary driving force behind the increase in the Hispanic population since 2000 and that trend continues, while growth in the Asian American population has been fueled primarily by immigration. Fully 74% of Asian adults in 2012 were foreign born according to Pew Research Center analysis of Census data, and international migration accounted for about 61% of the total change in the Asian American population from 2012 to 2013. Meanwhile, African-Americans continue to represent a significant percentage of growth in the U.S. population, according to a Nielsen report. Having grown 21% between 2004 and 2014, the U.S. African-American population is currently at 46.3 million, or 14% of the total U.S. population, according to the most recent U.S. Census information. Not surprisingly, marketers of jewelry along with the retail sector are taking a closer look at what this could mean for sales. Which are the new strategies required for the U.S. retail jewelry sector? What are the differences, if any, between the jewelry taste of minorities and the traditional jewelry choices seen since the end of the Second World War when De Beers launched its generic diamond promotion efforts worldwide? Of course, the traditional, white, sector of the population, descended from European countries, remains the majority and is still the wealthiest part of the population. But it is not a group that can really be counted on by retailers in the coming 20-30 years. And that has implications not just for the advertising and marketing industries, but also for jewelry designers who will need to start providing younger designs with an ethnic bent. A report from the Pew Research Center projects that immigration will propel the U.S. population total to 438 million by 2050, from around 325 million today. Along with this growth, the racial and ethnic profile of Americans will continue to shiftwith non-Hispanic whites losing their majority status. With little immigration and low fertility, the non-Hispanic white population is projected to edge from around 200 million now to 207 million by 2050, while the three other major racial and ethnic groups will see much more growth, rising from around 95 million in 2015 to 228 million in 2050. The share of Non-Hispanic whites is slated to slip from 67 percent to 47 percent over the 45-year period. Indeed, they would decline in number by 2050, if not for immigration. People of Hispanic descent account for 15 percent of the population, approximately 45 million people. And in spite of the poor state of the economy in recent years, the size of the jewelry market among them has grown considerably due to the sheer numbers of consumers. And Hispanics typically enjoy shopping and save less than the non-Hispanic white population. The market is far too big for jewelers not to pay special attention to this segment of the population, but it also is far too diverse for a one-size-fits-all approach. While much media and political attention goes to the social problem of millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who may not be in a position to spend on luxuries like jewelry for a long time, their numbers are overshadowed by tens of millions of legal immigrants and families who trace their roots in the United States back generations and may have few culturally Hispanic markers other than their family names and the same kinds of sentimental ties to the Old Country that characterize Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and other ethnic groups. For MVI Marketing, a jewelry consulting group that has completed a general study of the Hispanic retail jewelry market since 2005, this question of acculturation is even more important than categorizing Hispanic consumers by country or region of origin, with all that the differences between Mexican, Central American, Cuban, Dominican, South American and Spanish cultures imply for retail buying behavior. The main ethnic focus of the survey was on consumers with Mexican heritage. Courtesy of By Ali Zifan MVI President Liz Chatelain said the survey divided the Hispanic market into three broad categories of acculturation - Newcomers, bicultural, where they have a foot in both countries, and people who identify themselves as Americans with Hispanic heritage and are very acculturated. These three groups shift in what they buy, who they buy from and how much they are willing to spend, Chatelain said. For example, there is the question of loyalty to retail brands. People who come to America have more appreciation for luxury brand names. As they grow more acculturated, their loyalty shifts and they become more willing to look at diverse brands. As Hispanic consumers become more adjusted to mainstream American culture, they become more diamond-oriented, but are not necessarily willing to spend more, she added. [Hispanic immigrants] dont necessarily come to America with the idea of the diamond engagement ring as a given, but wanting to be as Americanized as possible. They want to fit in, to assimilate, so they want the ring. Some retail jewelry chains, like southern Californias Don Roberto, specialize in serving immigrants and those with low-to-medium levels of acculturation. A lot of it is on credit, Chatelain said. For the un- or low-acculturated consumer, thats a bonus, because it helps them establish credit. Thats a benefit not to be taken lightly for a segment of the population that has suffered a good deal from the down economy of recent years. Daniels, another southern California retail jewelry chain known for serving Hispanic consumers, aims at more acculturated consumers, and its president, David Sherwood of Sherwood Management, warned of the danger of stereotyping Hispanic consumers. When we look at our customers, we segment them by needs and age, but not by whether they are Hispanic or not, he said. There is no Spanish cut of diamonds, there is no Spanish clarity. The Hispanic customer likes the finest cut of diamond, just like anyone else. Sherwood acknowledged that first-generation immigrants may come from the Old Country with certain buying habits and expectations, but he said other jewelry chains such as Don Roberto and La Curacao are set up to serve their needs. But thats true if its a Hispanic, Chinese or Korean customer. They are more used to a different way of doing business. But our customers are second generation or later. Chatelain stressed that brand loyalty is weaker among acculturated consumers of Hispanic heritage. Among all respondents to MVIs survey, the most popular venue for buying fine jewelry was department stores, the choice of 39 percent. But the findings are more interesting when broken down by level of acculturation, with only 12.4 percent of consumers with a low level of acculturation choosing to shop in regional or national retail jewelry chain stores, a level that rises to 18.7 percent for the bicultural and 27 percent of those with a high level of acculturation. The most popular fine jewelry chain store among all respondents was Kay Jewelers at 32 percent, though again the more acculturated they are the more they shop there, closely followed by Zales at 30 percent, Gordons at 14 percent, Piercing Pagoda at 13 percent and Helzberg Diamonds at 11 percent. Courtesy of By Ali Zifan Jewelers of whatever size seeking to serve Hispanic consumers start with the important advantage that many Hispanic cultures connect jewelry purchasing to all kinds of special occasions. The quinceanera, or 15th-birthday party for girls, is one well-known life event, but births, 21st birthdays, high school and college graduations, golden and other significant wedding anniversaries, and even Easter can be jewelry buying occasions. Earrings are popular gifts, as are crosses set in pendants or earrings and religious medals for Easter and other religion-themed occasions, Chatelain said. The problem remains that the retail jewelry trade in general neglects the Hispanic market, failing to educate this important group of consumers even on such basics as the four Cs. Almost 41 percent [of the survey respondents] said they are extremely unfamiliar with the four Cs, 22 percent are somewhat unfamiliar and only 18 percent are somewhat or extremely familiar. Only 10 percent of low-acculturated people understand the four Cs. As a consequence, many survey respondents said they buy even bridal jewelry at mass marketers like Wal-Mart, because they dont really have a good knowledge of diamonds, Chatelain said. I believe theyre not spending as much as they would if they knew more. The industry is missing out. The diamond message is that the Hispanic consumer is not knowledgeable enough, so they are not comfortable buying and investing large amounts of money in this product category. No one takes time to educate them on the four Cs; [survey respondents] didnt even know that insurance is available for jewelry. The good news is that self-purchasing is growing among Hispanic consumers, and that coupled with jewelry-buying traditions for special occasions and the burgeoning size of the Hispanic population can mean a growing market. But it wont grow without effort. We havent done as good a job as we could, Chatelain said. Meanwhile, Phil Lempert from research Nielsen says the way to connect with Hispanics is to address them as young, passionate, and family-driven since their growth rate is three times that of the U.S. population overall. Some 55 million U.S. Hispanics already comprise 17 percent of the nation, and that number is seen growing to 52 million by 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Two-thirds of the Hispanic population are under age 35, and they're 10 years younger on average than the U.S. populace overall, so their lifetime spending value makes them a target for marketers. Their collective buying power is expected to grown by more than $400 billion to around $1.5 trillion. They are proud to be seen as consumers, says Lempert, and are aspirational consumers. They have money and like to spend it, whether they need it or not. They buy on impulse and live in the moment. They spend on things they value, he noted. He advocates creating a value proposition for Hispanic consumers not just for your product, but for your brands and for your company. Companies need to demonstrate that they care and that Hispanics are important to them. That proposition is not necessarily simple, however, as glance at the language element demonstrates. Around 83 percent of Hispanics, or 35 million, speak some Spanish at home; 76 percent of U.S.-born Hispanics aged five to 17 speak Spanish at home; and 87 percent of all Hispanics say it is "very or extremely important for children and grandchildren to speak Spanish." By our Israel correspondent Abraham Dayan G.V. Sreedhar, Chairman of the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) since 2015, was associated with the organization since its inception. He is also the Past President of the Jewellers Association, Bangalore [JAB]. Under his guidance, GJF successfully launched the unique Jewellers Identification Card (JID). In parallel with this, G.V. Sreedhar is an honorary Board Member of the Gem & Jewellery Skill Council of India (GJSCI); President of The Avenue Road Commercial Association (TARCA) in Bengaluru; and an Approved Valuer of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). In an interview with Rough & Polished, G.V. Sreedhar gives his opinion on a gamut of issues in the gems and jewellery industry in India, including the recent Goods and Services Tax (GST) proposed by the Indian government. How is the Indian gems and jewellery sector doing right now; and what are the challenges being faced currently. For the benefit of our readers, can you give us an overview of the industry and its growth prospects in the coming years? The industry is growing quite well and demand has increased due to drop in gold price as well as the good monsoon this year. The major challenge we see for the industry is the proposed rate of GST at 4%, which will act as a major setback for the industry, as this will result in drop in tax compliances and revenue and will also encourage smuggling. We have proposed GST at 1.25% to the Government and our representation contains details of various issues that needs to be addressed in the GST legislation. Apart from this, there are many more challenges faced by the industry, such as PAN card limit, custom duty, which needs to be reduced to 5%, and many more. GJF is actively representing these issues to the Government. How successful has the domestic sector been, returning to normal after an obvious loss due to the long strike earlier this year? Some members feel that the domestic market should be represented by ONE organization while dealing with the Government, whether Central or State. Whats your take on this? Normalcy has returned to the industry. With the upcoming festive season, we predict a rise in demand by at least 20% as compared to the previous year. On behalf of the industry, GJF is representing all domestic related issues and suggestions to the Government, since we represent over 300,000 jeweller community and have affiliation with more than 100 jewellery associations and federations. The same has also been acknowledged by various government officials and ministers, considering GJF as an apex body of the gems and jewellery industry. With nothing positive coming out from the strike, have the Indian jewellers now accepted the excise duty structure by the government on the whole? Or are there any more issues that the GJF is planning to take up with the government? The strike that went on for 45 days and the loss of business was the only negative impact of the excise duty. The industry is not averse to taxation, but it is the application of rules and regulations that were not suitable. However, with the help of the High Level Committee (HLC) report, the industry has obtained a big relief. Almost all recommendations of the HLC were accepted by the Government. In fact, the entire Excise Norms were for the first time drafted for the gems and jewellery industry based on the recommendations by the HLC. This has never happened before in any other industry. Recently, the Income Tax Department carried out raids at over 60-70 jewellers across the country for tax evasion and were asked to declare their additional gold stock. Has the Income Tax Department jumped the gun, as the deadline to declare undisclosed income is Sept. 30? Your comments. GJF has been actively promoting the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) to its members through SMS, emailers, social media, word of mouth. Being a compliance driven federation, we always promote ethical business practices in business. We need to understand that we have a Government that wants to walk the talk, and the gems and jewellery industry should play a very important role in the progress of the nation. How useful is the latest mobile app by GJF, and what has been the response from the industry members? Any more new GJFs initiatives in the offing for the Indian gems and jewellery sector? We have launched the first phase of the mobile app, which has information about GJF and the events we do to promote the industry. It also has a members directory, which helps the members to network and connect amongst the industry peers. In todays fast moving digitalization, this was a very necessary step from GJF. The response is very good, wherein many of our members have downloaded the app and are using it on a daily basis. Soon, we shall be adding many more features in the app. GJF has taken up numerous issues faced by the gems and jewellery sector with the Government of India like pan card issues, excise duty, smoother transit process for the gems and jewellery parcels and many more. Have all these issues been addressed and solved as of today and what is the status now? The excise duty issue has been completely resolved by the Government, wherein the report of HLC was unanimously accepted by Government departments. This has provided huge relief to the industry. GJF is representing to the Government on the PAN card, custom duty issue wherein the original rate of 2 Lakh and above and 10% still stands. We are hopeful that the Government will very soon bring in some amendments in these rules as well. Gold prices are going up and may see a further rise in the coming days. Will this affect the demand for gold jewellery / coins, given that gold is traditionally purchased during the ensuing festive seasons including Akshaya Tritiya, Diwali, etc.? The rates are in fact dropping. We foresee a good demand this festive season. The wedding season will also provide a spike in the demand for gold jewellery. With the increase in disposable income, and gold being a product that helps sail in through financial times will always be a preferred option for the customer to buy and invest. This Diwali, we are hopeful to achieve 20% more sales as compared to the previous year. Over the years what changes have you seen in India with regards to consumption of diamond jewellery? In terms of the quality of diamonds, does the demand differ region-wise? Please give us an overview... The gems and jewellery industry is unique in nature, wherein the customer tastes differ from state to state. For example, customers based in Delhi will generally prefer light weight designs with diamonds, whereas a customer in Kerala will prefer the traditional designs with less diamonds. Which makes it easy to say that demands of diamonds also differ as per the state and the preference of the customer. How important do you think millennials are in the overall drive for jewellery sales, in both plain gold and colour stone or diamond studded? Should promotional activities be structured keeping this section of buyers in mind, as eventually they will be the big spenders in the future? Your opinion. Millennials are extremely important as they will be the decision makers in the future. In fact, many in the industry have already realized this and design their communication tools targeting this audience. In the gems and jewellery industry, there has been a huge transformation as well, many brands have started using various platforms, such as social media to promote their products. What is the current condition of the e-commerce jewellery business in India? Do you see future good growth in this space, given that there have not been many new entrants of late? Is online jewellery business mostly patronized by younger generation who purchase entry level jewellery, and high-end jewellery can never find buyers online? Your views. The e-commerce platform is flourishing across the segments. This platform will grow, but it also depends upon the value and service that one has to offer. With Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modijis vision of digitalization, it is a good opportunity for jewellers to benefit and take full advantage of the technology that is available to us. High end jewellery also finds buyers online. There are many online real estate portals that are doing good businesses, then why not jewellery? I am sure we have a huge potential to explore this medium and offer the best service at value for money. Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished WGC: Global gold demand up 28% y-o-y in Q3 The World Gold Councils latest Gold Demand Trends report reveals that gold demand (excluding OTC) in the third quarter of 2022 hit 1,181 tonnes, up 28% year-on-year. Strong demand pushed the year-to-date total to its pre-COVID levels. Gold... Karo Mining to raise $50m to develop Zim platinum project Tharisa, the platinum group metals (PGMs) and chrome co-producer, says its subsidiary Karo Mining has opened a fixed income note offer to raise $50 million to be listed by way of introduction on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX)... Newfield recovers 1,180cts from Tongo Newfield Resources produced 1,180 carats from the processing of both underground and surface bulk samples at its Tongo mine in Sierra Leone during the quarter ended 30 September 2022. Global demand for natural diamond jewellery grows in H1 De Beers Global demand for natural diamond jewellery in the first half of 2022 grew by an estimated high single-digit figure compared with the first half of 2021, according to a report released by De Beers. It said in its Diamond Insight Report 2022 that growth... By SA Commercial Prop News Brandhouse warehouse in Germiston, Phase II Development. Image gallery Nedbank Corporate Property Finance continues to show its commitment to the countrys commercial and industrial property sectors by providing loan to the value of R151 million for the expansion of Brandhouse warehouse facilities in Germiston. The approval of R151 million in funding for the expansion of the warehouse facilities reflects the confidence that one of SAs largest property finance institutions has in the stability and future of south africas industrial property sector. The loan, which was granted to the Zenprop Group, will fund the development of Brandhouse II, which comprises additional warehouse space for this leading South African premium alcohol beverage company, as well as over 700m2 of offices, and additional hardstand and parking capacity. In total, the extensions will increase the Brandhouse facilities in Elandsfontein, Germiston by over 24 000m2 the required increase in space resulting from the companys success and expansion in the South African market. Brandhouse (Pty) Ltd is one of the leading premium alcohol beverage companies in South Africa offering consumers an unrivalled portfolio of spirits, beer and ready-to-drink (RTD) brands. The company has been operating in the South African market since July 2004. In South Africa, Brandhouse operates in four mega-regions, each headed up by a general manager. These regions are: Western Cape and PE, Kwazulu Natal and East London, Inland (North) and Inland (South). Brandhouse currently employs more than 900 permanent employees in South Africa, and is present in all major metropolitan areas as well as many smaller regional centres. According to Ken Reynolds, Regional Executive for Nedbank Corporate Property Finance in Gauteng, the decision to grant the loan was not a difficult one to make given the outstanding reputation of the Zenprop Group and the long-standing relationship it has with the bank. In addition to the extensive experience of the Zenprop management team, the excellent location of the warehouse development, and a strong, well-established tenant to support the lease, Reynolds explains, the group and its various subsidiaries have partnered with Nedbank Corporate Property Finance on numerous successful developments in the past, including similar warehouse facilities and office buildings in Riverhorse Valley and Woodmead Office Park. Reynolds points out that the latest loan facility reflects Nedbank Corporate Property Finances commitment to understanding its clients business models and industries while partnering with them in the long-term to offer innovative finance options designed to help ensure their sustainable success and growth. Its a philosophy that he says lies at the heart of Nedbank Corporate Property Finances own success and has played a key role in its achievement of a significant share of the commercial and industrial property finance market across all regions in South Africa. The Nedbank Corporate Property Finance strategy has always been absolutely client centric, so while we obviously pay due cognisance to the risks and potential of the developments we finance, a key factor is always our assessment of the people behind the development, he explains, which is why we have managed to develop such exceptional partnerships with solid SA property groups like Zenprop, whose values and business practices so closely mirror our own. Reynolds points to these strong client partnerships as key to the sustained growth of the Nedbank Corporate Property Finance business during times of economic difficulty. By combining this client commitment with an in-depth understanding of the markets in which we operate, Nedbank Corporate Property Finance has achieved a level of robustness and reliability that large, high profile clients like Zenprop really appreciate, he concludes, which allows us to continue to strengthen our relationships with these vital commercial and industrial property market stakeholders, not just for the benefit of their businesses, but for the future of the South African property industry as a whole. A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the Several local companies successful in Best of the Best awards Police Commissioner, Fuiavailiili Egon Keil, has been released after he was detained in a police cell this morning. Asked for a comment, he declined. At the Police station though, he joined his family and they left without saying a word to the waiting media. The Commissioner was arrested from his office by other Police officers this morning. It was his first day back at work, after charges against him in relation to the wrongful arrest of a member of the public last year, were dismissed by the Supreme Court last week. His arrest and the new charges against him were confirmed by Acting Police Commissioner, Samoa Mulinuu Mulinuu. He told the Samoa Observer the Commissioner is facing more than 10 firearms-related charges. Details soon. WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) A powerful earthquake struck New Zealand's South Island early Monday, killing at least two people, damaging buildings and infrastructure, and prompting emergency services to warn people along the coast to move to higher ground to avoid tsunami waves. The magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck just after midnight in a mostly rural area that's dotted with small towns. Near the epicenter, it opened up snaking fissures in roads and triggered landslides. It caused damage in Wellington, the capital, more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the north and was also strongly felt in the city of Christchurch to the south. Residents said the shaking went on for about three minutes, and was followed by a number of strong aftershocks. Police said one person died in the small coastal town of Kaikoura and another in Mt. Lyford, a nearby ski resort. The quake completely cut off road access to Kaikoura, said resident Terry Thompson, who added that electricity and most phones were also down in the town of 2,000, a popular destination for tourists taking part in whale-watching expeditions. Thompson was out of town but managed to reach his wife by cellphone during the night before her phone died. "She said the glass exploded right out of the double ranch-slider," he said. "The neighbor's chimney was gone, there were breakages and things smashed everywhere." His wife helped a 93-year-old neighbor and a tourist into her car and drove to higher ground, he said. "They stayed in the car all night but couldn't sleep," Thompson said. "They're all very, very tired and concerned about the state of their property." Prime Minister John Key said waves of about 2 meters (6.6 feet) hit the coast but the tsunami threat had since been downgraded to coastal warnings. He said authorities had no reason to believe the death toll would rise above the two reported fatalities. "On the very best information we have at the moment, we think it's only likely to be two. But of course there are isolated parts of the country which we don't have perfect eyes on, so we can't be 100 percent sure," he said. Key said officials had decided not to declare a national emergency because the nation's regions were able to adequately cope with the situation. The quake temporarily knocked out New Zealand's emergency call number, 111, police reported. In Wellington, it collapsed a ferry loading ramp, broke windows and caused items to fall from shelves. It also forced hundreds of tourists onto the streets as hotels were evacuated. Australians Paul and Sandra Wardrop and their children Alexander, 15, and William, 12, were on the 10th floor of the Park Hotel when the shaking began. "We felt that the building was going to collapse," Sandra Wardrop said. "You could hear the sounds of the building shaking and see cracks appearing in the walls, in the plasterwork in the bedroom." The family was among dozens of people who took shelter in the capital's parliamentary complex, which threw open its doors. It was William's 12th birthday, and while he didn't get to tour Wellington as planned, he did get to meet Key, who visited the displaced tourists. New Zealand, with a population of 4.7 million, sits on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes are common. Monday's quake brought back memories of the magnitude-6.3 earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011, destroying much of the downtown area and killing 185 people. That quake was one of New Zealand's worst disasters, causing an estimated $25 billion in damage. However, although Monday's quake was stronger, its epicenter was deeper and much farther from major urban areas. Location, depth and other factors beyond magnitude all contribute to the destructive power of an earthquake. Authorities in Wellington were urging people who work in the city's central business district to stay home on Monday. Officials said some large buildings were showing signs of structural stress, and the quake would likely have caused a mess in some buildings. The city's suburban rail network was shut while crews checked tracks, bridges and tunnels. New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management reported that a tsunami wave struck at about 1:50 a.m. and warned residents living in low-lying areas anywhere along the country's east coast to move to higher ground. There was confusion about the tsunami threat throughout the morning. The ministry initially said there was no threat but later wrote on Twitter "situation has changed - tsunami is possible" before reporting that a tsunami had hit. When the quake hit, Christchurch resident Hannah Gin had just sat down in her living room to watch a replay of the national rugby team's weekend match against Italy when her house started shaking. Upstairs, her mother let out a scream. The 24-year-old is accustomed to quakes in the temblor-prone region, so she said she sat calmly and waited, figuring the rumbling would stop in a few seconds. Instead, she said by telephone, the shaking went on and on for at least three minutes, according to the clock on her phone. The quake was far less violent than the one that struck Christchurch in 2011, Gin said, adding that there was no jarring up and down or side to side, just a long, rolling sensation. But it went on for much longer than the typical quakes that strike the area, she said. She was less concerned about running for cover than she was about vomiting from the motion sickness, she said. "I could hear the sliding door sliding back and forth, and we've got washing hanging up and I could see the washing moving," Gin said. "It just kept going and going." She said her house, which was damaged in the 2011 quake, did not appear to have sustained any new damage Monday. She also said she had heard from many of her friends who live in the city, and all were safe. "As far as I know, everyone's fine," she said. "We're all just really shaken." The quake was centered 93 kilometers (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS initially estimated it had a magnitude of 7.4 before revising it to 7.8. It said the quake struck at a depth of 23 kilometers (14 miles), after initially putting the depth at 10 kilometers (six miles). Earthquakes tend to be more strongly felt on the surface when they are shallow. A lot has been said, written and debated lately about the economic use of customary land to advance the development of Samoa. In fact, the most recent development was the launch of a policy paper by the Customary Land Advisory Commission (C.L.A.C.) last month. From what weve been told, the Commission, chaired by Seamalepua Oloialii Ailuai was tasked to review all laws affecting customary land and make recommendations to Cabinet on how and whats needed to facilitate, encourage and promote economic use of customary land. At the launch, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi stated that utilising customary land will stimulate the economy. In assuaging fears about the possible alienation of customary, Tuilaepa said there is nothing to worry about. In fact, he reminded that land was given by God for everyone to work in order to serve their families, village and country. I hear many people talking about (land) being given by God but they sit on it and dont do anything about it, Tuilaepa told a room full of matai from all over Samoa at the launch of the policy. He criticised people who do not utilise their land and yet make a big deal when a neighbor plants a yam on the boundary. But you were lying around not working the land that had overgrown invasive grass on it while other people wanted to work in it, Tuilaepa said. I want to say this again that there can be and will be no alienation of customary lands as specifically required by the Constitution. Well thats good then, isnt it? If we are to take everything the government says at face value, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about. But it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge that nagging feeling that this plan could perhaps be the final straw that really breaks the camels back if we are not careful. Back in 26 October 2016, we cautioned against the use of customary land warning in an editorial titled Without land, were all dead. We believe the concerns expressed then are as relevant to whats happening now, despite the persistent reassurance from the government that we have nothing to worry about. In 2012, we told you a story. Once upon a time, there lived a man named Jeffrey Lee*. Mr Lee was a senior custodian of a large estate in a country about five hours by plane from Samoa. One day, a French energy company sought to activate its mineral lease to extract tonnes of uranium from Mr. Lees land. He could have been a millionaire. But he wasnt. Instead of accepting millions in mining royalties, Mr Lee rejected the offer. He converted the land into a national park so that future generations of his country could enjoy their natural habitat. When reporters asked him why he refused the big money offer, Mr Lee responded; When you dig em hole in that country, youre killing me. Money dont mean nothing to me. Country is very important to me. Mr. Lee would be a rarity these days. You see, in this day and age where the only thing on peoples mind is money, money, money and more money, nothing is what it seems. Most things we see around us are a lie. They are packaged in such a way where we can be misled and often we are. Yet once the gloss and the novelty wears off, we find that some things are quite poisonous, theyre deadly. Thats how we see the plan to use customary land. We understand where the government is coming from. Implemented well, the plan is potentially sound. In some cases, it could well help some families out of hardship and struggles. But that is not guaranteed in all cases. And this is the worry. In 2012, former Member of Parliament for Faasaleleaga No, 2, Papalii Lio Masepau asked some very pertinent questions. Said he: What about fifty years from now? What about a hundred years from now? Where will the future generations of this country go? Talofa e! At that time, another M.P. for Faasaleleaga No 3, Tuileutu Alavaa Voi, made a point that should never be lost in these discussions. Samoa is a small country, he said. If twenty acres is leased from one village, and then another twenty from another village and so forth, in the end thats a very large amount of land. If all the land is leased today, what about tomorrow? Its a point that wasnt lost on Faleata West MP, Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi. As a member of the Opposition party then, Lealailepule cautioned: By the end of seven years, all the customary land in Samoa would have been leased. Whether Lealailepule still maintains this position now that he has switched allegiances to the government, we dont know. But former M.P. Aveau Niko Palamo reminded Parliament that customary lands are treasures that belong to families and anything that threatens the ownership of such land, should be considered carefully. Our customs, culture and land is our inheritance. It belongs to our people, said former Salega M.P., Afualo Dr. Wood Salele. With the power that the government possesses, its probably a fait accompli that whatever it sets its mind on would be implemented including the customary land plan. But we should not be silent. We owe it to the future generations of this country to be that voice of dissent, even if it makes us the least popular. Ladies and gentlemen, lets think one more time about Mr. Lees words. He said: When you dig em hole in that country, youre killing me. Money dont mean nothing to me. Country is very important to me. Heres the thing, land is a spirit. It is the heartbeat of a people. It is the core of who we are. When God Almighty navigated our ancestors to these shores, he didnt gift them a five star hotel or a flash plane for their perseverance on the water. He blessed them with abundant, fertile land. And that blessing is meant to be passed from generation to generation. Looking at the way we are going at the moment, one day our children will wake up to find that they no longer have an inheritance. Theyll find that someone has sold that inheritance to the highest bidder for a few lousy tala. We repeat, without land, we are as good as dead. *The story about Mr Lee was taken from Creative Spirits Australia. Police Commissioner, Fuiavailili Egon Keil, was arrested and charged yesterday morning when he returned to work. Uniformed Police officers turned up at the Commissioners Office in the morning, with fresh charges and took him into a Police cell. Yesterday was his first day back at work, after charges against him in relation to the wrongful arrest of a member of the public last year, were dismissed by the Supreme Court last week. But his arrest and the new charges against him raised widespread alarm when the news filtered out quickly. The Acting Police Commissioner, Samoa Mulinuu Mulinuu, confirmed Fuiavas arrest and the charges. He told the Samoa Observer the Commissioner is facing more than 10 firearms-related charges. Samoa said the Commissioner is facing one charge of incite and procure to murder pursuant to section 105 of the Crimes Act 2013. The charge stemmed from an alleged incident during one of the Police drug raids in 2015. Fuiava is also facing ten charges in connection to firearms. One firearm-related charge is in connection to an AK47 the Commissioner allegedly authorised to be used by the Tactical Operation Unit (T.O.S) Only the Commissioner can authorise the use of firearms to carry out a police raid, said Samoa. This is only when there is high risk at an area they are about to raid but raid in public places and other villages, we dont need weapons. We feel that members of the public are not safe right now, if we keep on using weapons to carry out the work. The Commissioner is scheduled to appear in Court on 28 November 2016 to face the new charges. Yesterday, Fuiava was detained for a couple of hours. When he was finally released in the afternoon, he declined to comment when he was approached. At the Police station, family members and supporters had gathered there to find out what was happening. Asked if the charges against Commissioner Fuiava were personally motivated, Samoa Mulinuu said no. We are just doing our job in accordance with the law, he responded. The Acting Commissioner added that the Police believe they have sufficient evidence to prove the charges. It was an order from the Minister to carry out this investigation, he said. The Commissioner holds a higher ranked position so the authorization for the investigation has to come from someone higher. In this case, it was the Minister. An attempt to get a comment from the Minister of Police, Sala Fata Pinati, was unsuccessful. The Samoa Observer was told he was not available as he was busy trying to sort out the developments at the Police. In the meantime, Samoa said they were surprised when the Commissioner turned up to work yesterday. We were supposed to inform him at home about the charges against him this morning (yesterday) but he turned up for work, said Samoa. Last weekend when the charges against him which led to his first suspension were dropped, Fuiavailili told the Sunday Samoan he was keen to return to work. There have been a lot of personal attacks on me throughout this whole month but I tell you I dont hold a grudge, he said. I just want to get back in there and do what I was supposed to be doing within the confines of the law and doing something that will make us proud. "The organization is not mine, the laws are not my views but I am just there to implement whatever should have been done in the past. I got paid to come into the Samoan Police to do a job and Im going to do it. All I know is Im trying to do good in that organization. Reports that an emergency Cabinet yesterday had resolved to suspend the Commissioner pending the hearing of the charges could not be confirmed at press time last night. A Police officer, who is a member of the Tactical Operations Squad (T.O.S) who attempted to stand up for Police Commissioner, Fuiavailili Egon Keil, yesterday has been charged. Constable Sivelio Lui will appear in Court on 30 November 2016 to answer to a charge of insulting words. The charge was confirmed by Acting Police Commissioner, Samoa Mulinuu Mulinuu. Constable Lui is accused of swearing at some of the Police officers who turned up to arrest Fuiava from his office. Samoa confirmed there were differences between the Tactical Operation Unit and the General Police Division when the Commissioner was charged. He declined to comment on reports there was fight. It has all been sorted out now, he said. Weve managed to clear things up with them. A police officer who spoke to the Samoa Observer said Lui attempted to stand up for the Commissioner. He said Mr. Lui is one of the Commissioner Fuiavas men and when they were there to arrest him, he tried to interfere. The Samoa Observer approached the officer in charge of the General Policing yesterday, Samau Luatimu, to see if Constable Lui has been suspended. He said the decision would have to come from the Acting Police Commissioner. In the meantime, the Samoa Observer understands there was an emergency Cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss the mattter. Constable Apaula Taeu-Matamu is one of 13 members of the Samoa Police Services Domestic Violence Unit (D.V.U). Taeu-Matamu and her colleagues Constable Terry Glory Fiu and Constable Michael Tiai are representing Samoa in a workshop in Nadi, Fiji on understanding gender, violence against women and laws related to gender-based violence. Taeu-Matamu has been in the Domestic Violence Unit for the past six months, so she embraces the training as an opportunity to learn about the dynamics involved in violence against women. The knowledge and skills that I will take from this training will greatly assist me in performing my duties as a law enforcer and an investigator in dealing with matters of domestic violence, she says. Taeu-Matamu and Fiu are part of a cohort of 30 police officers from 11 Pacific countries who are attending a two-week training workshop to help them understand violence against women and to deal with such cases. The Police Regional Training Program is funded by the Australian Federal Police and facilitated by the Fiji Womens Crisis Centre. It aims to equip officers with a thorough understanding of gender dynamics, the causes of violence against women and the relevant laws designed to combat gender-based violence. Taeu-Matamu says for many survivors of domestic violence in Samoa, reporting it to the police or through the media is not always easy. She says it takes a lot of guts for these women to actually go to the media which can actually be a double-edged sworn in Samoan society. Blaming the victim was prevalent, with women who share their experiences of violence through the media often coming under immense criticism and ridicule. She says there was often lots of talk about her and not focused on the violence that happened to her or the perpetrator. She says learning about the issues surrounding domestic violence, such as power and control dynamics of men over women, will help in her role in the DVU. For Constable Terry Fiu, the workshop by the Fiji Womens Crisis Centre is the first time in his four years in the unit that he has undergone such training. Fiu, the youngest member of the DVU, says violence against women is a big problem in Samoa and while awareness about the issue is taking place, he believes such awareness should be a continuing process. He also appreciates being able to hear from and discuss with other Pacific officers about how they work, the challenges the face and how they handle cases of violence against women in their countries. The workshop runs from 7-18 November and is being held at the Hexagon Hotel in Nadi, Fiji. Members of Parliament have voted to establish a Samoa chapter of the Global Organisation of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (G.O.P.A.C) in Apia. The decision was made during an Integrity Workshop conducted by the UN Pacific Regional Anti-Corruption (UN-P.R.A.C) Project and G.O.P.A.C last week. The workshop was opened by the Speaker of Parliament, Leaupepe Toleafoa Faafisi who encouraged parliamentarians to increase their exposure to best practice accountability policies. During the workshop the Speaker received a letter from Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi announcing that Samoa would begin the process to sign the UN Convention Against Corruption. Lizbeth Cullity, UN Resident Coordinator & UNDP Resident Representative, said: The UN agencies are ready to assist the Government and Parliament of Samoa as they work to strengthen their integrity institutions. Parliamentarians endorsed a constitution and a steering committee for G.O.P.A.C Samoa, with Taefu Lemi Taefu as chair, Gatoloaifaana Amataga Gidlow, vice-chair, Lenatai Victor Tamapua, (the Associate Justice Minister) treasurer and Ili Setefano Taateo Tafili as secretary. G.O.P.A.C Oceania chair John Hyde praised the commitment of Samoas Parliamentarians in wanting to ensure they were well prepared to undertake their oversight responsibilities. Samoas parliamentarians now join their colleagues in Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati and Tonga in activating GOPAC chapters, said Mr. Hyde. Newly elected G.O.P.A.C Samoa chair Taefu Lemi Taefu said Samoa has much to gain by signing up to U.N.C.A.C and strengthening even further the great work that integrity bodies in Samoa are already doing. Cook Islands Justice Minister and G.O.P.A.C Cook Islands chair, Nandi Glassie, spoke to Samoas parliamentarians about his countrys engagement with U.N.C.A.C and capacity building for MPs since the Cooks signed onto U.N.C.A.C in 2011. UN-P.R.A.C is a Joint U.N.D.P United Nations Organisation U.N.O.D.C project supported by Australias Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (D.F.A.T). Framed around U.N.C.A.C and Sustainable Development Goal 16 (Governance, Justice and Anti-Corruption), UN-P.R.A.C aims to support Pacific Island Countries to strengthen their national anti-corruption legislation and policies, as well as institutional frameworks and capabilities to effectively implement U.N.C.A.C. G.O.P.A.C is a worldwide alliance of parliamentarians working together to combat corruption, strengthen good government, and uphold the rule of law. GOPAC has 58 national chapters on six continents. G.O.P.A.C supports its members efforts through original research, global anti-corruption capacity building, and international peer support. Earlier, the HC had declared that the VCs can continue in their posts until removed by the Governor after getting their explanations for the show cause notice. An opposition Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, has called for a Commission of Inquiry to investigate what he describes as a mess inside the Ministry of Police. Following the arrest of Police Commissioner, Fuiavailiili Egon Keil yesterday, Olo said an Inquiry is long overdue to clean up the system. These internal fights between police officers have been going on for a long time, Olo told the Samoa Observer. The Member of Parliament is worried that members of the public can no longer feel safe in the hands of Police. How can they investigate people and go out to deal with the public if they cannot deal with their internal issues? Just like the Samoan saying, fix what is happening within your home before you go out fixing other peoples problems. The division within the police force is something that should not be taken lightly, he added. Olo compared the situation to that of an historical event in the political history of Samoa where a Cabinet Minister was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy between two fellow H.R.P.P. members. If we do not fix this someone might die from it, said the M.P. We all know what happened in the past about the Minister who was murdered. We should never forget about the past and if this problem is not fixed people will die from it and the government has done little to resolve it. From his observation, Olo said the Minister in charge, the Prime Minister and Cabinet should be blamed. They knew about it from years ago, he said. This is not new in the Ministry of Police. How many times have we seen anonymous letters from police officers in the past about internal matters at the Ministry? All those letters were addressed to the Minister and the Prime Minister and all they did was brush them aside without really looking into the things that were raised. The writers of those letters were not gossipers as they said. They were trying to alert the leaders of our country of the internal issues that they did not see and only heard rumours of. The Minister in charge should have done something about it and take the accusations seriously instead of falling asleep and not doing his job to fix the internal issues of his Ministry. Olo said it is disgraceful to see Police officers turn on each other. It is such a disgrace that these internal issues are making headlines internationally, he said. Its a reflection of bad leadership from the Ministry, the Minister and the government. I mean we have a Parliament with more than three quarter membership held by the Human Rights Protection Party. I cannot believe it if not one of them is aware of these internal issues. Its either they are all asleep or just being ignorant. On the other hand, Olo said if the Police Commissioner was suspended through a Cabinet directive (F.K.) the reinstatement should also come from them. He alleged that the reinstatement of Fuiavailiili was done solely by the Prime Minister without the consent of Cabinet. How can you make a decision in one case based on a FK and another made by FP, said Olo. Now that is what you call fiapule for him (Tuilaepa) to make the decision on his own and that decision is causing problems with Police. Asked to explain what F.P stands for, Olo said it means Faaiuga Palemia which translates, decision by the Prime Minister. An email sent to the Attorney General, Lemalu Hermann Retzlaff was not responded to at press time. Lemalu is overseas and the email was also forwarded to Acting A.G., Noumea Loretta Teueli. She did not respond. It was not possible to get a comment from the Minister of Police, Sala Fata Pinati last night. Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi is overseas. He left on Friday last week for Morocco. The Office of the Attorney General has been asked to file a statement of defense in a hearing where the government has been taken to Court for ordering the eviction of families from Sogi. The hearing has been prompted by the Tokuma family who is seeking an interim order from the Supreme Court to stop the government from ordering them off the land they claim is rightfully theirs. Representing the family is lawyer, Pau Tafaogalupe Mulitalo. He said the Attorney General has requested for a final adjournment to file a statement of defense. Pau added they are ready to proceed but will now wait until 21 November when the hearing resumes. The family is also asking the Court to stop S.L.C. and any other government agents or staff from interfering directly or indirectly with members of the Tokuma family regarding surveying and evaluation works or any other matters related to land. According to Pau, the Ministry of Public Enterprises is one of the respondents because it is in charge of all the public bodies and in relation to other development that involves land in Sogi. The Tokuma family claims that the land they live on now in Sogi was gifted to their predecessor Turore Tokuma by the then Commissioner of Crown Estates of Samoa who was also the Public Trustee and a member of the Legislative Council of Samoa, the late Percival Ernest Patrick in the 1920s. Turore Tokuma was a driver and was treated as a member of the household of Mr. Patrick. The family also claims the gifted land they now occupy was given to their predecessor and his wife and children in recognition of his service, loyalty and compensation for the execution that almost killed Mr Tokuma for the crime he did not commit. The Tokuma family is arguing that their continuous occupation of the same land was endorsed by the first Prime Minister of Samoa, Mataafa Fiame Mulinuu. The deed through his words reaffirmed lawful ownership and occupation of the land by the Tokuma family when Mataafa said your mother and children can live on the land where you are now as the government cannot afford to pay your father, claim the family. Every second of our lives, we encounter threats to our health and very existence. Nearly all the time, we defeat these threats without even being aware of them. We are surrounded by dangerous bacteria, viruses and parasites. They swarm in the air. They lurk on the things we touch. They reside on our skin and in what we eat and drink. Standing between us and destruction is our immune system. And as modern science finds out more about this sophisticated network of defenses, the system is increasingly seen as an ally that can vanquish diseases far afield from its best-known role of fighting infections. Advertisement Otherwise fatal cancers are now being defeated by therapies that tap into the immune systems powers. These include checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that unmask the disguise cancerous cells use to evade immune surveillance. Checkpoint inhibitors can rescue people from cancer when other treatments have run out of effectiveness. One of those so rescued was Rikki Rockett, the drummer from Poison, who was treated this year at UC San Diego. Rikki Rockett, drummer from the band Poison, describes his joy at being put into complete remission from tongue cancer with immunotherapy, preserving his ability to talk to his children. In another advance that has received much publicity in recent years, genetically engineered immune cells called T cells home in on molecular signals emitted by cancerous cells and destroy them. While these are currently custom-made for each patient, newer research aims to produce off-the-shelf engineered T cells to lower cost and deliver therapy faster. Promising drugs to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis are advancing through clinical trials, including one from Receptos, a San Diego company purchased last year for more than $7 billion. And future applications of immune system treatments hold even more dazzling promise. Inflammation of the hearts blood vessels causes arteries to narrow and predisposing them to blockage, said Mitchell Kronenberg, president and chief scientific officer at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. That is a reaction by immune cells, white blood cells called macrophages, Kronenberg said. So heart disease is in part at least, a problem of chronic inflammation, and chronic inflammation is caused by the immune system. Klaus Ley, one of the institutes scientists, is researching whether the inflammatory response can be averted by a vaccine. Testing in mice indicates that the vaccine works, and Leys team is working on translating this finding into a human vaccine. Chronic inflammation also contributes to neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimers, Kronenberg said. So the functioning of the immune system is pervasive. Its really quite amazing. Keeping germs out And as with most features of your body, you probably dont think about your immune system much unless it fails to do its job. A breach of these defenses results in infections in the skin, in internal organs and circulating throughout your blood. Usually, the damage is minor and is easily repaired. Most of the harmful microbes in our environment are excluded by physical barriers, said Dr. Victor Nizet, a UC San Diego expert on infectious diseases. The first line of defense is skin, which covers nearly all the bodys external surface area. Your skin is watertight, Nizet said. You can go swimming in a pool without exploding, so you can imagine that a microbe, which is much larger than a water molecule, is going to have a challenge to find its way deeper in the body. The rest of the body is protected by mucosal surfaces that cover the inside of the nose, the lungs, the beginning and end of the digestive tract, and other portals into the body. Mucus traps microbes so they can be removed from the body, Nizet said. In your respiratory tract, your mucus is being moved by little hairs called cilia, he said. That moves the entrapped microbes upwards imperceptibly, and we swallow them and get rid of them all the time. During pregnancy, a mucus plug forms around the cervix, blocking microbes from entering the uterus. Mucus also contains antimicrobial peptides, which are small protein fragments, in addition to large proteins called antibodies. The main antibody in mucus is called immunoglobulin A, which broadly attacks bacteria. It also contains lysozyme, an enzyme which destroys the cells walls of some bacteria. Finally, certain specialized cells of the immune system lurk in mucus that detect and destroy germs. These general-purpose warriors include white blood cells known as mast cells and macrophages, which actually digest bacteria and other cells, including our own damaged or dead cells. Collectively, these all form part of what is called the innate immune system, a generalized defense against a broad spectrum of infectious threats, Nizet said. It is complemented by a second part the adaptive immune system, which produces specific defenses against particular threats, such as strains of bacteria or viruses. Flexible defense Antibodies provide the adaptive immune systems signature defense. They are Y-shaped molecules equipped with ends that fit onto particular molecular targets like a lock and key. These ends can be configured in innumerable ways, each one formed to bind to just one target. They can directly destroy or neutralize microbes. They can also indirectly destroy the target by marking it for attack. Some antibodies, such as immunoglobulin A, provide a more generalized defense, and can be considered a bridge between the adaptive and innate immune systems. But the kind of antibodies generated against such infections as the flu, are far more attuned to each individual pathogen. When you recover from these infections, its because your immune system has taught special white blood cells called B cells how to make antibodies against that infection. Vaccines increase the immune systems ability to ward off infections, by giving them a taste of the infectious agent. Its weak enough that it doesnt cause disease, but strong enough to cause an antibody response that can stop an infection before it takes hold. Smallpox, for thousands of years one of the most deadly disease facing mankind, was eradicated through vaccination. Polio has also been rendered nearly nonexistent through a global vaccination program. But flu viruses arent so easily stopped through vaccination. Immunity from seasonal vaccines doesnt last, because flu viruses mutate rapidly, said Dr. David Spiro of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Viruses also make decoy sites that attract the attention of antibodies, Spiro said. These decoy sites arent necessary to the virus ability to infect, but they draw attention away from the virus unchanging conserved regions that are essential to its infectious abilities. The annual flu vaccine can prevent infection if its well-matched to the circulating strain, said Spiro, chief of the Influenza, SARS and Related Viral Respiratory Diseases Section, part of the agencys Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. But because it takes months to prepare the vaccine, a strain thats not included in the vaccine can unexpectedly arise and become widespread. The 2009 flu pandemic was caused by a flu strain that was markedly different than those seen in recent years, Spiro said. However, there was far less illness among the elderly than expected. It turned out that the strains conserved regions were like those of a strain that had appeared many decades ago. This provided a natural experiment indicating that vaccination targeting conserved regions should be able to protect against superficially different strains. That knowledge has encouraged efforts to develop a broadly protective flu vaccine that could protect over multiple years, Spiro said. It may not meet expectations of a universal flu vaccine, that could wipe out virtually all strains. But it would be better than what we have now. And in the case of HIV, most of those infected never make antibodies that can keep the virus in check. But antiviral medications can do that, converting HIV and AIDS from a fatal disease into one that can be be managed. A small percentage of those infected with HIV do make effective antibodies and control the virus on their own. Their immune systems have lucked into the right antibodies that neutralize HIV. Today, much of HIV research is devoted to understanding how this neutralizing response might be prompted by vaccination. Wrong target Autoimmune diseases have both genetic and environmental components, said Thomas Esch, an autoimmune specialist at the same agency. People who have relatives with these diseases are at greater risk of developing them as well, said Esch, chief of the Autoimmune and Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases Section within the agencys Autoimmunity and Mucosal Immunity Branch. A number of medications now on the market provide relief by depleting aberrant immune cells involved in autoimmune diseases, Esch said. This exposes patients to the chance of getting infections. So doctors must watch the drug dosage and the patients health to avoid this. Such drugs dont cure the diseases; when patients stop taking them, the symptoms tend to recur. One potential cure is to reset the patients immune system by extracting immune cells, wiping out much of the patients immune system with chemotherapy and then reinfusing the cells. The goal is to give the reconstituted immune system another chance to recognize the body as self, producing tolerance. In many reports, a number of people have had long-term remissions, Esch said. Whether theyre truly tolerant takes longer to assess. La Jolla-based DiaVacs is developing a therapy for the autoimmune disease type 1 diabetes. It uses technology licensed from the University of Pittsburgh and Baxter that targets dendritic cells. These are the orchestra leaders of the immune system, said Alan Lewis, president and CEO of DiaVacs. They can activate immune cells which attack the beta cells, but what were trying to do is the opposite, to suppress these dendritic cells from doing that, Lewis said. Weve been able to do that using antisense molecules. The antisense compounds block proteins involved in activating T effector cells, which attack the beta cells. This converts the dendritic cells into immunosuppressive dendritic cells, Lewis said. Our approach is take cells from the patient, manipulate them with antisense, then inject them back into the patient, Lewis said. The cells are injected through the skin near the pancreas. They enter the lymphatic system and end up in the pancreas. This localizes the effect, avoiding systemic immunosuppression, Lewis said. We have some clinical data on that program, which shows a positive start, Lewis said. Another program, which uses the Baxter technology, adds the antisense compounds to microspheres to be injected into the same region.These microspheres get phagocytosed by the dendritic cells in the skin, and they migrate through the lymphatic drain system, Lewis said. We havent got clinical data for that one, but weve got very good animal data. Pump it up While autoimmune diseases are caused by an immune system attacking cells it shouldnt; in cancer the problem is just the opposite. The immune system is tolerating aberrant cells it should be attacking. Cancer cells use many methods to evade immune attack. Solid tumors may be too shielded for immune cells to reach. Cancers may also secrete molecules that inhibit immune attack, or they may even actively recruit immune cells to their own defense. An early success of immune therapy for cancer came from using monoclonal antibodies engineered to target molecules present on cancer cells. This is an example of passive immunotherapy, said Ivor Royston, M.D, a founding father of San Diegos biotechnology industry. Active immunotherapy describes treatments such as engineered T cells that attack cancer on their own, said Royston, a biotech investor and oncologist who co-founded Hybritech, San Diegos first biotech. Hybritech used monoclonals for diagnostics, including the first test for PSA. Hybritech was sold to Eli Lilly in 1986, and Royston along with other Hybritech executives went on to found more biotechs. After cancer diagnostics with monocloncals, the next logical step was to develop passive immunotherapies, he said. The first monoclonal cancer drug to be approved was Rituxan in 1997. It was developed by Idec Pharmaceuticals, which Royston also co-founded. Rituxan was first approved for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and then for other blood cancers and the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis. All of these diseases have in common dysfunctions of B cells, the cells that make antibodies. Rituxan attacks a target found only on B cells, causing their destruction. Although both normal and cancerous B cells are destroyed, patients can survive without them. There is some concern that Rituxan may increase the risk of infection, but its effects are reversible. When Rituxan is discontinued, blood-forming stem cells replenish the B cell population. Idec came close to collapsing after its first cancer therapy, a customized immune treatment proved to be too expensive. But Rituxans promise led to a partnership with Genentech that saved the company. Rituxan became a blockbuster, and other monoclonal cancer therapies followed suit. Idec merged in 2003 with Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen. Future of cancer therapy The idea of using the immune system to fight cancer originated more than 100 years ago, with Dr. William Coley. He noticed that some cancer patients experienced dramatic remissions after recovering from infections. He reasoned that the immune system, roused by the infection, had also detected the cancer. Coley devised a cocktail of bacterial toxins called Coleys toxins. The method worked inconsistently, and it was abandoned with the advent of radiation therapy. But the concept enjoyed a renaissance in recent decades, as it became clear that cancer was far from being eradicated. Since the immune system normally destroys the bodys aberrant cells, it seemed reasonable that charging up the immune system might work. Coleys toxins was a form of therapeutic vaccination, and biotech researchers sought to improve upon the concept by using substances from actual tumors. Royston ventured into active immunotherapy with CancerVax, a Carlsbad company that developed a vaccine against melanoma. The goal was to wake up the immune system to recognize the cancer. The vaccine, Canvaxin, used allogeneic irradiated cancer cells. Clinical testing of the vaccine failed, creating a personal and financial disappointment for Royston. But research continued. Today, there is one therapeutic cancer vaccine on the market, Provenge, an autologous treatment for metastatic prostate cancer. Other cancer immune therapies now on the market include checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that unmask cancer cells, along with genetically engineered immune cells that kill cancer. The latter, CAR T cell therapy, is an autologous treatment, made from T cells taken out of the body, genetically engineered, then reinfused into the patient. Biotech companies are researching allogeneic CAR T cell treatments that can be produced in mass quantities and therefore cheaper, and also immediately available. Peter G. Schultz, president of The Scripps Research Institute, leads a team that is researching a refinement of CAR T cell therapy. This approach uses peptides that serve as a bridge between the CAR T cell and the target cell, allowing control of the response. Existing CAR T cell treatments run the danger of creating an uncontrolled immune response that can kill the patient. Royston said hes optimistic for more great progress against cancer. It makes a lot of sense to me that you would start clinical trials of cancer vaccines to give along with checkpoint inhibitors, and that I think is going to be the next big breakthrough immunotherapy, Royston said. A cancer patient could be treated in several steps, he said. First, surgery to debulk the tumor to a small amount. Maybe at that point you can give a vaccine along with a checkpoint inhibitor to eradicate any tumor we cant see, Royston sad. That may have a big impact on survival in the future. bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1020 The chief executive of San Diego cybersecurity start-up PacketSled has resigned after election night posts on social media about assassinating President-Elect Donald Trump. Matt Harrigan, who founded PacketSled in 2013, wrote the comments on his Facebook account as election night unfolded. The account has since been deleted, but his comments were copied and posted on Reddit, another social media site. On Monday, PacketSled issued a statement on its website saying Harrigan had been placed on administrative leave. The company announced today that it had accepted Harrigans resignation and is searching for a replacement. PacketSled takes recent comments made by our CEO seriously. Once we were made aware of these comments, we immediately reported this information to the Secret Service and will cooperate fully with any inquiries. These comments do not reflect the views or opinions of PacketSled, its employees, investors or partners. Harrigan posted "I'm going to kill the president. Elect," according to the Reddit copy of his Facebook comments.. When a friend responded You just need to get high, Harrigan wrote Nope, getting a sniper rifle and perching myself where it counts. Find a bedroom in the White House that suits you, (expletive.) I'll find you." When warned by a Facebook friend that he might get a visit from federal authorities, Harrigan replied Bring it secret service. On Sunday, Harrigan turned to Twitter to apologize, saying his comments were meant as a joke. https://twitter.com/mattharrigan/status/797911562543468546 My humble apologies that a flawed joke has become public/out of context, he said. My poor judgement (sic) does not represent the views of @packetsled. He followed with a second tweet. Customers, investors or the officers of PacketSled, I have no malicious intention toward the #POTUS and apologize to all for my lack of judgement (sic) and offensive commentary. I wish you all well. The U.S. Secret Service is aware of Harrigans social media posts but otherwise declined to comment, said David Murray, special agent in charge in San Diego. Efforts to reach Harrigan and PacketSled were unsuccessful. Harrigans Facebook account is no longer available. Harrigan is well known in the cybersecurity community. He is credited with inventing the practice of network penetration testing in Kevin Poulsens New York Times best selling book Kingpin. Harrigan was named to the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence board of directors in October. On Monday, the non-profit group cut ties with him and the company. The San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence is no longer affiliated with Matthew Harrigan and PacketSled. said a spokesman. His views expressed recently on social media do not reflect those of our diverse organization. Making threats to a presidential candidate can result in prosecution, as a La Mesa man found out in 2009. Walter Bagdasarian was convicted of two charges of threatening then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in an online message board on Oct. 22, 2008. He used a racial epithet when referring to Obama and then wrote, He will have a .50 cal in the head soon. About 20 minutes later he wrote, shoot the (epithet). Others on the message board were alarmed and contacted the Secret Service, which investigated. Agents searched his home and found a half-dozen weapons. At his trial, his lawyer said that Bagdasarian did not intend for the online rants which included emails and other postings to be taken seriously. The lawyer also contended the writings were protected by the First Amendment and noted that Bagdasarian later apologized on the same website. But prosecutors with the U.S. Attorneys Office countered that simply making the threats made him guilty, and that they should be taken seriously because they were so specific. Bagdasarian was eventually sentenced to two months in a halfway house. However, in 2011, a divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction. The majority ruled that there was insufficient evidence for someone to conclude Bagdasarian meant to kill Obama, or that he intended the statements to be taken as threats. Both elements are needed to prove the charge of making a threat against a presidential candidate. PacketSled makes root-cause cybersecurity software that detects where a cyberattack is coming from, what files are being targeted and which devices are being impacted, among other things. The city of San Diego, which provides a test-bed for local cyber security start-ups, has used PacketSled for about two years. The personal comments recently posted by PacketSled CEO Matt Harrigan on a social media site will be handled by PacketSled internally, said a city spokesman in a statement. Meanwhile, the city will continue to work with PacketSled, and we trust that they will continue to provide exceptional service as they resolve their issues. The company raised $5 million in a first round of venture capital funding in July, led by San Diegos Keshif Ventures, with Blu Ventures and JHS Ventures participating. Efforts to reach lead investor Keshif Ventures were unsuccessful. Staff writer Greg Moran contributed to this report mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com; Twitter:@TechDiego 760-529-4973 Friday, Amazon will open its first college-based pickup location in San Diego at the University of California San Diego, further solidifying the e-commerce giants offline presence in the region. Housed inside the university bookstore and dubbed Amazon@UCSanDiego, the new package pickup facility spans 2,800 square feet, and is accessible to both students and the general public. The location is the 18th of its kind opened in the U.S. since 2015, and only the second in Southern California. Amazon also has a staffed pickup site at California State University, Long Beach. All Amazon shoppers can choose to ship to the La Jolla center (after online activation) during the online checkout process, but Prime members meaning those who pay annually to participate in the e-tailers subscription program can choose free, same-day shipping on some items. The facility will also have staffers on hand for questions and will allow for returns. Advertisement Amazon@UCSanDiego will begin receiving packages this Friday, November 18, when it will also host an opening event and reception at 11 a.m. Once packages arrive, customers will receive a special code that unlocks an on-site locker when scanned at the facility. The university shipping center appears to be part of Amazons grander plan to recruit young adults to join Prime. The company already offers a discounted rate to students under the Prime Student program, which includes similar perks streaming video, two-day shipping and music for around $50 per year, after a free six-month trial. In addition, Amazon says the newest pickup spot will help ease shipping complications for UCSDs nearly 34,000 students. It can be especially difficult for college students to get the things they need in a fast and easy way, particularly with college mailrooms being overloaded, an Amazon spokesperson said. Amazon@UCSanDiego is a way for us to better serve UC San Diego students, faculty, and staff so they can easily and safely pick up their packages at times that are convenient for them. The staffed location also marks the Seattle companys growing interest in Southern California and San Diego, in particular, where Amazon opened its second-ever brick-and-mortar bookstore, Amazon Books, earlier this year, and is also hiring engineers for a local development center. jennifer.vangrove@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1840 Twitter: @jbruin There was the crackle of gunfire, a pause, and then more shots. Then came an eerie, nighttime silence. Following a furious gun battle between rival gangs in a Stockton, Calif., neighborhood Friday night, only one person was struck an innocent, 57-year-old father who was talking on the phone in his home before he was killed. We got multiple 911 calls saying theres people shooting at each other and right now we have no suspect information. No motive, no other victims, said Stockton police Officer Joe Silva. All we know is that there was a gun battle involving several different shooters. Advertisement The barrage of gunfire could be heard clearly on security camera footage that Stockton police posted on Facebook. Investigators believe more than 50 rounds were fired in the exchange and said several cars were hit by stray bullets. One of the rounds pierced a window of a nearby house and struck Sor Rith, whose son told KCRA that his father was standing up and on the phone when he was the hit. Riths wife found her wounded husband. He was on the ground, and she tried putting pressure on his chest but he was already gone, said the couples son, Cam Rith. The shooting took place about 7:50 p.m. in the 800 block of W. Ponce De Leon Avenue, just a few doors down from Riths home, Silva said. The area is known for gang violence, he said. I hope this senseless gang violence ends, Cam Rith said. I lost my father. To the people who did it: Get a life, get a job, stop killing each other. The shooting is the second time in recent months that an innocent bystander has been killed by gunfire in Stockton. In September, a 3-year-old girl was fatally struck by a stray bullet as she rode in a car with her family. Joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. Crews set out early in the morning Monday to battle a brush fire on the edge of the Angeles National Forest in Tujunga Canyon that ended up scorching 44 acres, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. The fire was reported to have burned about a quarter of an acre by 5:30 a.m., officials said, and grew to about 10 acres within two hours as it raced uphill through drought-parched grass and brush in the 13000 block of Little Tujunga Canyon Road. Advertisement City and county firefighters rushed to the area to battle the flames. No structures were reported threatened or damaged, said Supervisor Michael Pittman of L.A. County Fire. U.S. Forest Service and county helicopters dropped water on the flames. With about 200 firefighters combating the blaze, the fire was 50% contained by 1:30 p.m. and its forward progress had stopped, the U.S. Forest Service said. Firefighters were working overnight to mop up and monitor the smoldering remains from the blaze, according to the Forest Service. The cause of the fire was under investigation. Joseph.serna@latimes.com For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter. ALSO UC and Cal State will consider the first tuition hikes in six years American Apparel files for bankruptcy again and sells its brand to Gildan If Obamacare is repealed, California has the most to lose putting the insured on edge UPDATES: 7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with officials downgrading the fires size to 44 acres. 1:30 p.m.: This article was updated to report new acreage and containment numbers. 9:35 a.m.: This article was updated to report new acreage and containment numbers. 8:25 a.m.: This article was updated with the fires new estimated size. This article was originally published at 6:30 a.m. Retired San Diego Superior Court Judge Allan Preckel, shown here in this 2009 file photo, says an aide to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis lied at a parole hearing for a convicted police killer last year. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune) (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune) The state Parole Board is investigating if a top aide to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis made false statements at a parole hearing last year for the killer of San Diego police Officer Archie Buggs. The inquiry, which has been underway for months, focuses on statements made by Jesse Navarro, a public affairs officer for Dumanis and a former San Diego police officer. He was a friend and patrol partner of Buggs, who was shot to death on Nov. 4, 1978, by Jesus Cecena. The investigation centers on statements Navarro made at the Aug. 25, 2015, parole hearing for Cecena. Retired San Diego Superior Court Judge Allan Preckel, who as a deputy district attorney prosecuted Cecena and his accomplice, accused Navarro of lying to the board when he said the two officers had numerous prior confrontations with Cecena and that he had made many threats to kill them. Preckel, known for being a meticulous, detail-oriented prosecutor and judge, said in a January letter to Gov. Jerry Brown those statements are absolutely false. He said he had no recollection of any such evidence, and insisted that if it existed he would have used it to prove a critical element in the case. The controversy has pitted Preckel against the District Attorneys Office, which sent a stinging rebuttal to Brown defending Navarro, and saying Preckel was badly mistaken and that his accusation that Navarro was lying was shameful. Cecena, who has served 38 years of a life sentence, has been recommended for parole by the board twice in 2014 and again last year. Brown reversed that decision both times, concluding Cecena still posed a threat to the public if released. He is scheduled for another hearing in February. By then the investigation into Navarros statements should be concluded. San Diego police Officer Archie Buggs, left, is shown with his partner, Jesse Navarro, a former police officer and now aide in the District Attorneys Office. Buggs was fatally shot in 1978. (Handout photo) (Handout photo ) The controversy is the latest turn in the case of Cecena, who shot Buggs to death on Nov. 4, 1978, during a traffic stop just after 1 a.m. on Skyline Drive. He was 17 years old and a member of a San Diego street gang. The killing is still remembered among local law enforcement and others. Last year, a petition seeking to rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Paradise Hills after Buggs collected support Preckel himself signed it but the school board selected a different name. Navarro, who has worked as a community relations and public affairs officer for Dumanis since 2003, did not respond to a request for comment on the controversy. He referred questions to district attorney spokeswoman Tanya Sierra, who issued a statement saying the office has researched Preckels accusation and determined Navarro has been truthful and consistent in his statements to the Parole Board. The statements were made at a hearing at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, where Cecena, now 55, is incarcerated. Navarro was there at the request of Buggs family to offer their opposition to any release. He challenged Cecenas contention that the killing was not premeditated. I will tell you that time and time and time my friend, my partner Archie Buggs, had a lot of confrontations with the inmate in regard to his violent demeanor, Navarro said, according to a transcript of the hearing. We ended up having to detain him and arrest him. And I will I couldnt count the number of times that the inmate made a threat and made a promise to Archie and to myself that one of these days, one of these days I will kill both of you. At that point, Commissioner Terri Turner interjected, Well, we dont have any evidence on the record of that. Before allowing Navarro to continue she added that we dont have anything in the record that indicates hes had previous confrontations with any officers mentioned. The commissioners granted Cecena parole that day. Under state law, the governor reviews all parole grants for inmates serving life sentences. On Jan. 15, Brown reversed the board, saying he believed Cecena was whitewashing his involvement in the crime and could not give a credible explanation of why he gunned down Buggs. The governor also referred to Navarros statements, which were not made under oath. Brown said his concern that Cecena was minimizing his crime could be further bolstered if Navarros testimony was accurate. He noted Cecena denied having any prior run-ins with Buggs. Brown ordered the board to conduct an investigation to determine if Navarros statements could be corroborated. Preckel said he first learned of Navarros comments when he read a story about the parole in The San Diego Union-Tribune. Ten days later, he sent a four-page letter to Brown, headlined in bold, False Statements by Jesse Navarro. District attorney aide Jesse Navarro, right, is shown with Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano on Aug. 15, 2016, at the memorial service for slain San Diego police Officer Jonathan De Guzman. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune) (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune ) He wrote that the key issue in the case was proving the killing was premeditated, which would secure a first-degree murder conviction and a life sentence. He said he reviewed all documentation about any contacts Cecena and his accomplice, Jose Arteaga, had with law enforcement, ran down leads and found no evidence of any contacts. Preckel also said he spoke with Navarro frequently about Buggs work habits and practices in the field. I am confident I inquired about any prior knowledge he and Buggs had of the defendants, he wrote. Even assuming I didnt directly ask, I cant believe Navarro would not have spontaneously shared such critical information with me. The jury ultimately convicted Cecena of premeditated first-degree murder. Preckel said he would have used evidence of a prior threat by Cecena to prove it, if it had existed. He said it did not. In a recent interview with the Union-Tribune, Preckel said he was interviewed by two parole board investigators about his letter. He was adamant that Navarros statement are wrong. Its just complete and utter poppycock, he said. I went through all the records looking for any and all documentation. There was absolutely nothing there to suggest the paths of either suspect had crossed the paths of either of those officers. He said he is sure because prosecuting Buggs killers was the seminal case of my career and one whose details he remembers chapter line and verse. But Navarro and the District Attorneys Office said in a detailed reply to Brown that Preckel is mistaken. In a sworn declaration sent to Brown in response to Preckels letter, Navarro said he cant exactly recall if he told the prosecutor of the prior contacts. He said he was under strict direction to at the trial and court proceedings to not volunteer any information unless I was asked, and he followed those instructions. Although I cannot remember whether I specifically told Judge Preckel about Cecena's prior threats to us, and I was more focused upon not volunteering any information as instructed, I would have to think I probably did mention it to him, he wrote. The DAs Office, in its response to the governor, also included a statement from Assistant District Attorney Jesse Rodriguez, the No. 2 official in the office, vouching for Navarro. Rodriguez told a district attorney investigator he had known Navarro since 1982, and Navarro has been very consistent with his statement that Cecena threatened to kill him and his partner. The office also said that over the years Navarro had told Buggs mother and sister of the threats, and the sister confirmed that recently. Navarro said that in 1978 some interactions between police and suspects were often handled informally, meaning no written record of the detention or arrest was made. For minor violations, Navarro said, offenders would be taken to the police station where parents were called to pick them up all off the books. Three San Diego police officers who were on the force at that time were also contacted by the district attorney investigator. They said there were times when contacts with juveniles were handled informally. But they also said department policy at the time called for documenting such contacts. Preckel said the assertion that Navarro was constrained from telling him about prior contacts and therefore withheld information he said applied to the pivotal issue of premeditation was ludicrous. I stand behind everything I wrote in my letter to the governor, the retired judge said. Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs, who heads the unit that handles parole cases, said Navarro was unfairly attacked. Hes been telling people about it for 30 years, Sachs said. He feels he probably mentioned this stuff to Preckel. The 2015 parole hearing was not the first time Navarro made the claim of prior threats, records show. In a letter to Brown in 2014, protesting the first time parole was granted to Cecena, Navarro wrote he had arrested Cecena on more than one occasion. In that letter, he said he recalled a struggle that he and Buggs had with Cecena, and that once he was subdued and arrested Cecena threatened to kill one of them. Tracy Lum, Cecenas parole lawyer, said she believes there is no proof backing Navarros statements. The lies told by those close to the story is a last-ditch effort to keep him in custody, Lum said. Its unclear when the investigation into Navarros statements will be finished. Neither the Parole Board nor Browns press office would comment, citing the ongoing probe. Twitter: @gregmoran greg.moran@sduniontribune.com A robbery suspect was shot and wounded by a sheriffs deputy after a short pursuit Monday morning in Encinitas, authorities said. The man, identified as 53-year-old Robert Parkin of Encinitas, is expected to survive. Advertisement Deputies were alerted shortly before 5:30 a.m. to an armed robbery at El Pueblo, a Mexican restaurant on Birmingham Drive, just east of Interstate 5, said sheriffs homicide Lt. Kenn Nelson. As the deputies were en route to the eatery, which shares a building with a gas station at the freeway on-ramp, they received updated information from dispatch about the suspect. He was described as a white man carrying a silver handgun. The man, who was wearing a black helmet, was seen leaving the restaurant on a blue motorcycle, Nelson said. Less than five minutes after the deputies received that information, they spotted a person fitting that description in the area of Santa Fe Drive and El Camino Real. The deputies tried to conduct a vehicle stop, but the motorcycle rider kept going, prompting a short pursuit. The rider crashed on El Camino Real at El Camino Court, but got up and ran up the driveway, a hill into a condo complex. One of the deputies chased after him, leading to a confrontation about 100 feet from the crash site, Nelson said. The deputy, whose name has not yet been released, fired several shots at the suspect, hitting his lower body more than once. The deputies administered aid until paramedics arrived, and the suspect was then taken to a hospital. His injuries were not considered life-threatening, Nelson said. A gun and cash believed to have been taken in the robbery were found at the scene where the confrontation and shooting occurred. As of late Monday morning, the site of the shooting remained behind yellow caution tape as investigators continued to gather evidence at the scene. Nelson said the deputy involved in the confrontation was not wearing a body camera during the encounter. Breaking News dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @danalittlefield Detectives are still trying to determine what prompted a gunman to shoot a City Heights family, killing one member and taking another hostage, before being fatally shot by a San Diego police officer Sunday night. Police Capt. Brian Ahearn said investigators spent Monday interviewing witnesses to the shootings, which occurred outside an apartment complex on Marlborough Avenue south of University Avenue. The violence began about 9:15 p.m. Sunday when two men one the suspected shooter got into a fistfight in a courtyard at the complex, police said. At some point, the suspect went to his vehicle, grabbed a gun and chased down the street the man he had fought. Advertisement The suspect returned to the complex and started firing. 1 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 14 SDPD investigators collect evidence and photograph the crime scene Monday morning where an SDPD officer killed an armed suspect holding a woman hostage Sunday night outside a City Heights apartment who earlier had shot four people during a fight, including the hostage, authorities said. One of the victims later died at a hospital. (Peggy Peattie / San Diego Union-Tribune) Four people were hit. The suspect then grabbed one of the victims, a woman in her 20s, by the hair. He put her in a headlock and started pulling her toward his car, authorities said. When officers arrived a short time later, the man, also in his 20s, pointed a black gun at the woman. An officer ordered the man to drop his weapon, but he refused, Ahearn said. Instead, he made several threatening statements, saying he would either hurt the officer, the woman or both, the captain said. The officers were faced with a conflict situation with an armed suspect who had already shot multiple victims and who had taken a victim hostage, Ahearn said. We do train for this, and we hope for a peaceful resolution. But there are times when the officers are left with no choice but to use deadly force. This was one of those occasions. One officer, a 12-year veteran of the department, fired a single shot that killed the suspect, who was near a vehicle about a half block south of University. The man dropped the gun he was holding as he fell to the ground, Ahearn said. Officers got the woman to safety, and she was taken to a hospital with unspecified injuries. Two of her family members were also taken to a hospital, where one of them died. One victim chose not to be transported, despite being shot, Ahearn said. The victims ranged in age from their 20s to their 60s. The captain did not specify each persons injuries, but said one was shot in the head, one was struck in the abdomen and one had a grazing wound. Investigators do not yet know the relationship between the gunman and the victims. A neighbor said the woman who was taken hostage lived with family members who occupied two adjacent second-floor apartments in the complex. No officers were injured in the shooting. The officer who fired was wearing a body-worn camera, and it was turned on. A police helicopter also was overhead at the time. The officer is obviously very traumatized about what happened, Ahearn said. Search the Union-Tribunes database of fatal police shootings in San Diego County since 1980 Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman went to the scene Sunday night and could be seen talking to detectives. Officers closed Marlborough between Wightman Street and University as they began to talk to witnesses and gather evidence. A woman who lives in a neighboring apartment building said she was in her kitchen when she heard a disturbance at the complex next door. The woman did not want to be named because she is afraid for her safety. She said she thought the noise was coming from a party because disturbances at the adjacent complex are rare. She knew something was wrong when she heard residents yelling, No!, over and over. She said she ran outside and saw a young woman who lives at the complex standing between family members and a man whom the witness did not recognize. She said she saw the man grab the young woman by the hair and start to drag her away. She said she also saw a black handgun in the mans hand. The witness said she ran back to her own apartment and told her husband to call 911. A short time later, she heard gunshots. Marlborough is lined on one side by apartments and on the other side by a strip mall. Several people were at a nearby coin-operated laundry when the shooting occurred. Some said they heard multiple gunshots and then saw patrol cars racing to the area. Tony Arambula, who lives nearby, said he heard five to eight gunshots in what sounded like a shootout. It was fast, he said, with the last shot sounding more like a rifle. I stepped out and saw the helicopter going around, and knew something happened. Police have identified the suspected shooter and the family member who died, but will not release their names until next of kin have been notified. Staff writers Teri Figueroa, Dana Littlefield and Pauline Repard contributed to this report. karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com UPDATES: 3:50 p.m. Monday, Nov. 14, 2016: This article was updated with additional details. This article was originally published at 10:25 p.m. Nov. 13, 2016. The cost of a stormwater system replacement and repair project that led local business owners in La Jolla Shores to protest ongoing construction last week is $4.6 million over its original budget and a year behind schedule, city officials say. Estimated costs for the Avenida de la Playa infrastructure project were listed as $6.8 million in the City of San Diegos 2014 budget. This years city budget now lists the projects total anticipated funding at $11.4 million. Costs for the project are higher than expected because the city had to redo much of the work. Construction that began in 2013 to replace various components of the storm drain system was almost finished when the brand new infrastructure failed during a storm early this year, causing flooding and a sinkhole that destroyed a section or recently-resurfaced street at the western end of Avenida de la Playa. Advertisement Emergency funds had to be activated from the city because they spent millions of dollars already, Angie Preisendorfer, president of the the La Jolla Business Association and owner of Rusty Boardhouse on Avenida de la Playa, said. Its just watching incompetence and nobody is accountable. City spokesman Scott Robinson said via email to The San Diego Union-Tribune, The city is currently investigating the cause of the failure and will seek reimbursement from responsible parties. The city hired a different engineering firm to design the replacement and repairs for the system that failed, Robinson wrote. For now, taxpayers are footing the bill to fix the faulty infrastructure. Regardless of who ultimately pays, La Jolla Shores is in for months of construction as crews replace the faulty system components, repair streets and finish storm drain work. Residents and business owners are losing patience with the seemingly-endless construction. About 50 people gathered last week for a sit-in to protest the newest round of work in the area of Avenida de la Playa and El Paseo. The U-T asked the city for information on the cost of the project at that time, and it was unavailable. The budget figures were released later. Business owners said they had asked the city to delay the disruptive construction until the end of the holiday shopping season, but the city declined because the area needs a working storm drain system before the start of the rainy season. morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com Donald Trumps election last week instantly triggered wide speculation about what it would mean for the federal government and for America. But the implications for California are also far-reaching. On climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown has already made clear that he and other state leaders wont be dissuaded from pursuing their aggressive agenda regardless of what the Trump administration wants. Trump has called climate rules draconian and climate change a hoax. On immigration, its unclear whether Trump believes some of the extreme things he said on the campaign trail about immediately deporting anyone who is not authorized to be in the United States. That would have a huge impact on the Golden State, which is believed to have the nations most unauthorized immigrants. When it comes to agriculture and education, Californians could be in for other dramatic changes. Advertisement On Thursday, the Fresno Bee reported that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, a longtime Trump supporter and a member of his transition team, might be in the running for a top post in national security or agriculture. If the Central Valley congressman becomes secretary of agriculture, he would be in a position to act on his strongly held beliefs that environmental regulations are excessive, and that activists care more about obscure fish than farmers. Hes repeatedly championed bills to divert water from environmental uses to farmers that have passed the House only to die in the Senate. This editorial board is more concerned about preserving the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta than Nunes. But we certainly agree with Nunes that California needs far more reservoirs so it can stop wasting water and better weather future droughts. If the greatest champion of Central Valley farming suddenly has much more clout, thats more likely to happen. It is on education, however, that Trump could have a profound effect on California. When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers dodged a bullet. After a Supreme Court hearing on the Friedrichs v. CTA lawsuit in January, Scalia and four other justices appeared poised to rule that CTA members and by implication all government union members could not be compelled to pay union dues or fees that were used for purposes they didnt like. The CTA expected to lose the right to compel teachers to pay such dues. In 2014, it saw this as a not if but when scenario. Instead, after Scalias death, the court deadlocked on the Friedrichs case, giving unions a reprieve. As president, Trump seems certain to appoint a Scalia replacement with Scalia-style views. The result, eventually and to Californias benefit, could be a CTA and CFT with less money and less influence over Sacramento. We are deep admirers of individual teachers. But their unions often use their clout to win policy fights that value job protections and pay over student learning. CTA and CFT allies, starting with Gov. Brown, have crippled efforts to gauge the performance of teachers, schools and school districts to the point that California may risk losing federal funds by refusing to have simple assessment metrics required by the Every Student Succeeds Act, the 2015 law that replaced the No Child Left Behind Act. Brown justifies this retreat from accountability by suggesting trendy reformers who like metrics dont know what works. Thats just not true. Massachusetts has the best public schools in the nation, thanks to its 1993 Education Reform Act, which holds students, teachers and administrators accountable for their performance. Our state needs such comprehensive reform. If the CTA and CFT lose their sway over Sacramento, Donald Trump will have changed California. See also: Congratulations, President Donald Trump. Time to look beyond the election. Obama strikes just the right tone on President-elect Trump What are people protesting at these anti-Trump rallies, exactly? In stories readers are seeing daily on the migrant crisis in Europe, the words migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are being used. Whats not being used is immigrants, a word commonly seen in local stories. New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and BBC primarily use the word migrants in reporting on the happenings in Europe. So whats the difference among the words? Advertisement I grabbed Websters and looked up migrate and immigrate. There didnt seem to be much of difference, but in talking to two reporters and a professor, I learned more about the depth of the words and their meanings. Websters said migrate is to leave ones country and settle in another. Also to move from one region to another ... to harvest seasonal crops. Immigrate is to come into a new country or region or environment, especially to settle there. Synonym to migrate. (Emigrate is leave ones country or region to settle in another. You rarely see this word in a news story, since most angles are people coming into a country or countries.) I needed some perspective on the words. Tatiana Sanchez, the U-Ts immigration reporter, said immigrants are willingly settling in a country. She said migrants are more associated with refugees, or they are workers moving from job to job with seasons. L.A. Times reporter Alexandra Zavis, whos covering the European crisis, explained why the word migrants is used, not immigrants, in reports on the subject. Migrant is a broad term that includes refugees and those moving for economic reasons. We have been using the term in our reporting about the crisis in Europe because many of these people are still on the move, and some may wish to return home one day. Immigrant refers to those who have moved to a foreign country with the intention of settling there. Zavis wrote about the descriptions of those flooding into Europe in an article Sept. 11 and the importance the meanings play in the crisis. Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orban, contends that the overwhelming majority are economic migrants and not refugees, she wrote. Refugees, Zavis wrote, are people who have been forced to flee their countries because of the threat of persecution or armed conflict, and because they have no protection from authorities at home. Migrants may leave for any number of other reasons, including to find work, get an education and better themselves. The term can be applied to refugees, but not all migrants qualify as refugees. Thats a crucial issue in Europe now with so many fleeing war in Syria. Zavis notes refugees are entitled to asylum under European Union law; migrants are not. SDSU Professor Enrico Marcelli, a demographer who studies unauthorized immigration, provided a breakdown of the descriptions. Migrant is the broadest term and is commonly used in Europe, he said. It simply means someone who is in the process of relocating to another country or place, or someone who has already moved. Under the umbrella term migrant you have refugees and asylum seekers who are being forced to flee to save their lives. Then theres immigrant. That means a migrant who has moved from one country to another, or is in the process of doing so, he said. This word also has a legal meaning in the United States, which is why immigration scholars often prefer the word migrant. Technically immigrants in the U.S. are legal permanent residents or those with a so-called green card. Then ... there are adjectives sometimes attached to either word, such as illegal, undocumented or unauthorized. (Marcelli uses unauthorized immigrant, which is also the U-Ts style). Another category of immigrants (or international migrants) is temporary visitor, those holding visas. Lastly, there are immigrants who have become U.S. citizens. Now I can see why migrant is used for the European crisis. I also believe immigrant is the correct term for local stories because the context in most of those articles is people willingly leaving their countries to settle in the U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa continued to lead Democratic challenger Doug Applegate Tuesday as elections officials in two counties resumed counting remaining ballots. According to the Secretary of State, Issa had 51 percent of the vote while Applegate has 49 percent. The Vista Republican held a 4,630-vote advantage as of mid-day Tuesday, according the states tally. At one point the gap appeared considerably narrower because the Secretary of States totals did not include the latest results from Orange County. The 49th Congressional District includes portions of both San Diego and Orange counties. Advertisement Issa leads with 60.7 percent of the vote in Orange County, home to about 25 percent of the districts voters, while Applegate is ahead with 52.9 percent in San Diego County where the remainder live. Orange County has released inconsistent information since the Nov. 8 election. The registrar initially said 410,480 mail-in and provisional ballots were left to be counted after polls closed, but overnight changed the estimate to 404,397. The estimate was revised as ballots were counted, said Neal Kelley, spokesman for the Orange County registrars office. The reason for that is because on election night its a stack estimate, which is like estimating a barrel full of nickles. This is like running it through a coin counter, he said. Also, Orange County reported major progress in reducing its backlog of uncounted ballots. Around 37,000 ballots had been totaled between Nov. 9 until Monday morning, but since then a total of 116,522 were counted, a near tripling of progress, its own website shows. That number already is outdated, and even more ballots have been counted, and an update is expected later Tuesday night Kelley said. They are well beyond that point in their effort and are close to beginning to count the 108,000 provisional ballots, the last step in the tallying process. The results, however, are accurate, he said. After polls close, the Sort-A-Saurus and 300 workers deliver results Issa late Wednesday expressed confidence that his Election Day lead would hold as the remaining ballots are tallied. Applegates campaign, in turn, released a statement saying the race was too close to call with hundreds of thousands of ballots left to count. Election Videos On Now Banners opposing President Trump hanging nationwide On Now Without evidence, President Trump calls for major voter fraud investigation On Now LA 90: President Trump revives stalled oil pipelines. But will they really get built? On Now Gov. Jerry Brown calls for truth and civility On Now White House spokesman Sean Spicer on EPA media blackout On Now Conservative Colorado judge emerges as a top contender to fill Scalia's Supreme Court seat On Now HUD suspends FHA mortgage insurance rate cut an hour after Trump takes office On Now What Trumps Obamacare executive order does On Now President Trump's Inauguration Speech On Now Obama brings Biden to tears, awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 Johns Creek, GA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/14/2016 -- Founder and CEO of leading plastic surgery center in Georgia, Luna Plastic Surgery, receives the distinguished award for the category of Best Plastic Surgeon for Tummy. Luna Plastic Surgery and Medical Spa is proud to announce that Dr. Patricia Yugueros is the winner of Best Self Atlanta's "Best of 2016" contest in the category of Best Plastic Surgeon for Tummy. This award places Dr. Yugueros in the top tier of plastic surgeons in Atlanta, Georgia. Her business will be featured in the December of Best Self Atlanta's Best of 2016 issue. Best Self Atlanta is a leading magazine that provides a wealth of information, resources, and tools to help readers reach their full potential through self-improvement. It provides readers a guide to Atlanta's top doctors and plastic surgeons as well as experts in the field of health, beauty, food, and overall wellness. The "Best of" contest is a yearly award based on a vote of trust, reliability, and exceptional performance from clients, patients, customers, peers, friends, family, and the Best Self Atlanta reader community. Winners of this distinguished award are recognized for their top-quality service in their respective fields. About Patricia Yugueros, MD, Luna Plastic Surgery Dr. Yugueros is an experienced plastic surgeon specializing in different cosmetic surgery procedures, such as breast augmentation, facelift, mastoplexy, blepharoplasty, and abdominoplasty or tummy tuck. She completed her medical degree in Cali, Colombia and received extensive training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She has held the position of Chief of Plastic Surgery at the Emory Johns Creek Hospital for the past five years. In addition to her strong background in cosmetic medicine, Dr. Yugueros is a member of several scientific organizations, such as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. She is also an American Board of Plastic Surgery diplomate. She has authored and contributed to several scientific articles and books, covering topics in the field of Plastic Surgery. She is a recipient of many prestigious awards, and recently the award for Best Plastic Surgeon for Tummy by the Best Self Atlanta Magazine. To learn more about Dr. Yugueros as well as the Luna Plastic Surgery and Medical Spa, please call 678-892-7820. You may also send your inquiries about their different cosmetic procedures through email at info@lunaplasticsurgery.com. Media Contact: Aesthetic Brand Marketing Michelle Hartwell E-mail: mhartwell@aestheticbm.com Website: www.aestheticbrandmarketing.com Luna Plastic Surgery Location: 6335 Hospital Parkway, Suite 216, Johns Creek, Georgia 30097 Telephone No.: 678-892-7820 Website: http://www.lunaplasticsurgery.com [MANILA] Citizen scientists, amateurs or members of the public who voluntarily engages in scientific work, already contribute a great deal to environmental science, but they still have the potential to do much more for regional and global assessments of biodiversity, says a study published in the journal Biological Conservation (3 November). We have seen a wide range of participants being able to make really important contributions, including student groups and local community members, notes Mark Chandler, lead author of the study and director of research at the non-profit Earthwatch Institute, and who also identifies several key pathways to tapping citizen scientists to collect data. Ideally, that data then becomes accessible to the community and to the larger world so that so we have the capability of doing metadata analysis and looking for larger regional patterns. Elisabeth Holland, Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development For instance, research institutions may work with local communities to help monitor biodiversity on habitats and species that the volunteers care about such as forests, species they hunt for food, economic or cultural reasons; the locals often have good knowledge of the diversity where they live. The use of global apps for electronic devices such as iNaturalist or eBird with urban people or groups, park managers, and tourists can be promoted to help capture photographic records and species in certain locations. Support may be extended to local groups and institutions to increase their capacity to develop citizen science programmes, says the study. This local support will be essential, it explains, to scaling up local efforts via citizen science portals and data repositories in addition to increased technical expertise. The study adds that part of this investment in citizen science may be in a small number of institutions that can help manage, assess and share the data. There are also regional biodiversity observation networks that could be useful. In order to ensure security and safety, Chandler says, there may be a need to first assess what likely risks occur and set boundaries around no-go areas because of the high risk. You also need to have a trained team ready to manage problems should they arise, he explains. When the data comes in, it needs to be vetted by a local expert and if the data collectors are willing, shared locally and globally through organisations, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Elisabeth Holland, director of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development in Fiji, says that some countries in the Pacific already have citizen science programmes, but that they can be scaled up and expanded across the region. For instance, in Vanuatu, local community members are collecting precipitation measurements which if expanded to other countries in the region would be very useful because we have a very sparse network of meteorological measurements that help us describe climate change, says Holland. Having a more formalised network would also be useful because it would help collect the data in a single place and would make it more accessible, Holland tells SciDev.Net. Ideally, that data then becomes accessible to the community and to the larger world so that so we have the capability of doing metadata analysis and looking for larger regional patterns. This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk. The scientists discovered the world's tallest tropical tree on Borneo island with a towering 309 feet height. It breaks the record of the previously world's tallest tropical tree known as yellow meranti, which is about 294 feet in height. They found the new world's tallest tropical tree while mapping the jungle of Sabah. The team used a lidar technology on board a plane. They also discovered other 49 similarly high trees around. The world's tallest tropical tree belongs to the Shorea genus. On the other hand, the species is to be determined yet. There are about 196 species of Shorea. They stand in southeast Asia, from Northern India to Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia. In Borneo, there are about 138 species of Shorea and 91 of them are endemic to the island. Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University announced the new record of the world's tallest tropical tree at a Heart of Borneo conference on Nov. 10. He told Mongabay that this tallest tropical tree and the 49 runners-up are truly phenomenal expressions of the power of nature. Asner further said that conservation needs inspiration and these sentinels of the Bornean jungle provide that to humans. He added that this discovery is a gift to science, to the people of Sabah and Borneo and to the world. Asner used the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) over Sabah forests on board the plane. This maps the animal habitat, canopy biodiversity and carbon stocks. Asner said that this technique relies on the 500,000 laser shots per second. It gives a very detailed 3D view of the forest canopy down to the ground level. He added that they digitally process and comb the 3D data for the tallest trees. This is also the same data that they use to gauge how much carbon is stored in the tropical forests. The flight was funded by the U.N. Development Programme and film director James Cameron. It is one thing to live in the same house as your parents long after you should be moving out, but it seems that dinosaurs took living with other generations to the next level by sharing space with lagerpetids -- animals that are thought to have lived long before dinosaurs were even thought to have walked the earth. The journal Current Biology showed that these ancient animals and their ancestors may have coexisted for a while. This revelation, according to The Los Angeles Times, could even shed light on their differences when they emerged, evolved and spread as dinosaurs. Fossils of two small dinosaurs and tow lagerpetids were discovered in Southern Brazil, in a town called Sao Joao do Polesine, including a partial lagerpetid and a partial sauropodomorph (a group of dinoasaurs including sauropods like Apatosaurus). This showed that dinosaurs and lagerpetids lived together relatively late -- around the end of the Triassic age 228 million to 201 million years ago. However, the new specimen found were taken from one of the world's oldest rocks with dinosaur fossils, which stretched to up to 237 million years ago. This proves that dinosaurs and their precursors actually lived alongside each other, effectively proving that the rise of the dinosaurs was actually gradual, and not a fast overtaking of animal over time as scientists initially thought, Max Langer of Brazil's Universidade de Sao Paulo told Phys.org. In fact, the two groups of animals probably even shared the Earth for as long as 30 million years, Max Cardoso Langer, co-author of the study and a paleontologist from the University of Sao Paulo noted. "We previously thought that once dinosaurs appeared, they sort of out-competed and drove the other animals like lagerpetids to extinction, and now we know that they were living side by side." The devastating death of Cecil the Lion has affected many. The worst news is, the killer has faced no charges as the Zimbabwe High Court drops all charges. In the previous reports last July 15, Cecil the Lion was shot with a bow and arrow from his home in the Hwange National Park. The lion then was left to bleed and eventually loses his life. Upon hearing the news, thousands of people reacted and called for justice and stop the animal trophy hunting. Walter Palmer, the U.S. dentist who killed the lion, went into hiding after the death of the lion. He received numerous death threats and many people are protesting outside of his office in Bloomington, Minnesota. However, on Friday, the court ruled that the professional hunter guide who organized and allows the trip. Theo Bronkhorst will face no criminal charges. His lawyers argued the charge of "failing to prevent an illegal hunt" was the too vague answer that even though he had violated National Parks regulation, it does not count to a criminal offense, according to The Inquisitr. As for Walter Palmer, his charges have been dropped in October 2015. Cecil the Lion was wearing a GPS collar as he was part of the research conducted by the University of Oxford. The park rangers were monitoring his movements. Back then the GPS is still with him when he was shot and caused his life. Cecil the Lion was a famous animal in Zimbabwe. Tourists from all over the world are looking forward to seeing him as part of the safari tour. After the death of Cecil the Lion, the animal conversation charities in the region have been flooded with donations. The Conservation Wildlife Fund funds the conservation and community projects with a voluntary duty of $10 a night in rooms at the park, according to The Independent. Now, in Africa, the population of the lions has decreased to just 25,000. It is due to a lot of factors that include animal poaching. The 450 lions reside at the Hwange National Park. FLORENCE, S.C. -- The old Heafner Tire building on South Irby Street in Florence has burned down. At 10 a.m., nearly seven hours after answering the call on Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, Florence firefighters are continuing to work the scene. Irby Street South is shut down in both directions near the Drs. Bruce & Lee Foundation library. No injuries have been reported. West Florence, Howe Springs and Windy Hill firefighters assisted at the scene. Flames have been extinguished, but smoke continues to rise from what is left of the building, a few blocks south of downtown Florence. It is across from the Zoning and Planning Commission building on Irby Street and next to the old Krispy Kreme doughnuts building. The call came in at approximately 3:17 a.m., Florence Battalion Chief Steven McCormick told the Morning News. FLORENCE, S.C. When Marvin Owen returned to his hometown in 1983 to work as a programmer for what was then known as Computer Dimensions, the burgeoning software company had six employees and 60 clients. Today, ACS Technologies employs 390 people 270 in Florence and has 50,000 clients all over the country. Globally, it has clients in 16 countries across Europe and Asia and has 250 clients in Canada that use software for churches designed, tested and produced on the companys Dunbarton Drive campus. We put Florence on the map as far as the church world, said Owen, the companys 61-year-old president. Its kind of unique for a small town like this. Just getting started Owen earned a computer science degree at Furman University and recalls using an IBM 1130 computer that was only available to students after 10 p.m. when the school was done for the day. Solving math problems and playing chess matches on the keypunch computer stoked his desire to learn more and helped him decide on a career in programming. He also saw the need to gird his technical know-how with a structured sense of the business world and earned an MBA at Wake Forest University. After grad school he found working for a multi-faceted consulting firm out of Charlotte to be less than ideal. It was very high pressure, he said, and overly aggressive. While he did have several solid years of learning various computer systems and how they interfaced with hospitals, he decided he wanted to change jobs and started looking at what might be open back in the Pee Dee. I thought, let me check my hometown, he said. I saw Computer Dimensions and called at the right time. They wanted someone to run the programming side they were just getting started. Founded by Harris Rogers, Tom Rogers, Billy Campbell, and the Rev. Iverson Graham, the tech start-up looked at a churchs database and the bookkeeping side of things to develop what was known as an automated church system, which soon became the name ACS. It struggled at times, but Owen said the founders believed in the company and provided key financial backing in lean times. By the mid-'80s it was financially stable and it kept growing, Owen said. For the longest time it was organic growth, selling to churches. A series of acquisitions in the 1990s expanded the companys brand recognition and reach with offices in Arizona, Washington state and a regional hub in Greenville with 10 programmers. Our original mission was to provide software for churches, pastors and the computer person thats still the mission today, he said. There are some schools that ACS Technologies count as clients, but 95 percent of its customer base is churches. Its a niche market, he said, but with 320,000 churches in America, its a big market. With service to 70 different denominations, ACS is known now as a leading provider able to provide constant support as the robust marketing and sales arms works to explain the newest cloud-based product, Realm. Its another great growth opportunity moving to the cloud. With our new product, 4,000 churches are using it and were getting more market share. A great culture Owen considers himself a service guy, who loves taking care of churches, with his church, Central United Methodist, among the many local clients. Hes enjoyed working with churches, calling them good customers and nice people who pay their bills and are friendly." Its good to work with good people, he said. Just serving churches and doing the work of the church building the kingdom. He noted that many employees worked for churches before coming aboard ACS. Creating the right culture at ACS has helped strengthen the many bonds that hold each department together. Its a great culture," Owen said. "Its like a big family and we support each other. Four of our employees were flooded out of their homes (during Hurricane Matthew) so were holding fundraisers. Ensuring the companys continued success means hiring the right people who support the mission, nurture the environment and give folks the opportunity to grow, he said. The employees we have make us successful. Any problem comes up they jump on and take care of it, he said. We enjoy working tougher as a team. Among the many long-term employees of the company, performance assurance coordinator Vanessa Hanna has been with ACS for 19 years. Our goal for every interaction is to wow our clients. We are on the front lines and mediocrity is not an option, she said. This is what I teach. This is what I believe. FLORENCE, S.C. When Kesue Nicely prepared her classroom this year, it was an entirely different experience than in years before. This year, Nicely is teaching at Dewey Carter Elementary School in Florence rather than her native Jamaica. The whole thing with doing a search for work overseas was that I wanted something different, Nicely said. I was working in a small school, and I love my school, but I wanted something different; I wanted to see if the classrooms were really like what they show on the television. I wanted to see if I could bring what I know from Jamaica into another setting and (also) learn something new. Florence was not the only place she received an offer. I was searching the internet, all over the world, Nicely said. I applied for jobs all over, and I got an offer from the Middle East, but my mother didnt want me to go because she was scared. She was thinking that if anything should happen and I am in the U.S., I can just hop on a plane and come home. Nicely is one of 12 international teachers hired by Florence School District One for the 2016/2017 school year. She said she has enjoyed her experience so far, but it has come with an adjustment period. Im used to teaching all of the subjects, Nicely said. In Jamaica, I teach art, music, math, science, everything. Here I only teach two subjects: ELA (English language arts) and social studies. I still find myself sometimes teaching math. I always tell my students that everything is connected. Nicely said she was drawn to teaching after having had a great teacher in third grade. I realized that I could change some persons, maybe not everyone but some, not just academic but otherwise, Nicely said. After being in the classroom for so long, I realized it doesnt matter how good or great of a teacher you are, some students are just not academically inclined. Thats just life. Sometimes we get overwhelmed just giving students academics, and we fail to see that they are so good at something else and we shut that down. Using students gifts is a key to making a connection with them, she said. We have students good at sports, at singing, and instead of using that to help them academically, we actually close them out of it and use it as a punishment, Nicely said. We tell them that if they dont make this, they cant do that. I believe in learning through discovery. If they are active participants in their learning, it is better. When we have the students do things that they are involved in, they learn from teachers and the other students. Using technology to bridge the physical divide, Nicely wants to facilitate that peer-learning process by having Jamaican students Skype with students in Florence. The students in Florence can see what the classrooms in Jamaica look like, Nicely said. How they are the same, how they are different. The students over there can ask them questions, too. Nicely hopes to expand the Skype conversation in the future. Hopefully next year if I am here, I can do one and get the whole community involved, Nicely said. I know that there are children here with different backgrounds, and I would love to get the parents involved. Have the students dress up with clothes from their culture, have their flag and have a cultural parade or something. It ties in with social studies, with immigrants and how they got here. Another initiative Nicely has pioneered at Dewey Carter is a Culture Club. She said she hopes to teach the student participants about her native country, possibly even teaching them a dance in time for a December performance before Christmas. FLORENCE, S.C. Andrew Raines had one goal in mind for his Eagle Scout project: to listen. For six months, Andrew interviewed World War II veterans to share their stories. He was approached with the idea by Scoutmaster Tim Fisher, who was inspired by Mary Davidson, the librarian at Central United Methodist Church. She had known for a while that we had lots of World War II veterans in the church and had been wanting to do it for a long time, Andrew said. It had always been an idea that she had given to Mr. Fisher, and every year he would ask someone to do it. When it was finally my turn to do the Eagle Scout project, I was the one to take it up. The combination of Andrews respect for veterans and love for history made him the perfect candidate for the job. It also proved to be a good bonding experience for Andrew and his father, Charlie Raines. My dad has instilled a love for history in me; weve watched all kinds of documentaries, read books, I think w eve watched 'Saving Private Ryan' like 50 times, he said while laughing. It was a good project for me and my dad. He came to every interview and asked questions, too. Andrew estimates that he has spent 280 hours interviewing, transcribing and editing video from the project. In total he spoke with eight veterans, both of World War II and subsequent wars. The Eagle Scout project is supposed to take a lot of your time and effort, but this one really has, he said. I feel very accomplished. I feel proud of it, not in a prideful way but in a good way. I feel proud that Ive gotten to give these men a voice for their time in service. Andrew tells the story of tail gunner Frank Stokes, who flew 51 missions out of Italy bombing German oil fields and other strategic targets. The casualty rate of crew members was very high, and Stokes had many close calls, including one where his plane was hit by flack and filled with more than 200 holes. The plane then caught on fire as the crew was bailing out. Another interview with P51 pilot Bob Garey explains his time on the beach of Iwo Jima just two days after the Marines landed. He talks about what life was like living in a foxhole for more than a month. Army Private Paul Rung recounts the storming of the beach of Normandy on D-Day. He says the two days spent on the beach before reaching the top of the hill felt like a month. He was eventually captured on the frontlines by the Germans while trying to help a wounded comrade and was a Prisoner of War before U.S. forces liberated him. Some veterans were a bit hesitant to talk about their experiences when Andrew first approached them, but all eventually decided to share their stories. You realize, these men, as theyre telling these stories, some of them have to pause, some of them get glassy-eyed as theyre talking," Andrew said. "You can see that they really do feel the things that happened there. Its a lot of emotion that they havent been able to get out until now. A lot of them had stayed quiet. The completed project is comprised of written transcripts from the interviews and footage on DVDs. They will be made available to the public at the Central United Methodist Church library. From November next year, Thomson Celebration will be moving to its new homeport of La Romana in the Dominican Republic. All-inclusive ships TUI Discovery and new addition TUI Discovery 2 will join Thomson Celebration and will sail out of Bridgetown, Barbados and Montego Bay, Jamaica respectively. Thomson Celebrations move to the Dominican Republic means Thomson Cruises customers now have more opportunities to team their cruise holiday with a beach stay, with Thomsons 5T Sensatori Resort Punta Cana, which was a new addition for summer 2016, among the properties added to the portfolio. The addition of this island retreat also means new itineraries, and stops in St Lucia, Grenada, Antigua, St Maarten and Martinique. Guatemalas port Santo Tomas de Castilla is introduced on new itinerary on TUI Discovery 2, as well as Nassau in The Bahamas as part of a repositioning cruise. A Havana overnight stop is also part of the mix. TUI Discovery will visit new ports of call St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Direct Thomson Airways flights now take Thomson Cruises customers to the Caribbean from Cardiff, Doncaster Sheffield, East Midlands, Glasgow, Newcastle and London Stansted airports, joining existing flights from Birmingham, Manchester and London Gatwick. Thomson Dream will move to homeports of Santa Cruz, Tenerife and Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in November 2017 to explore the Canaries with new port of call Porto Santo, as well as its New Years Eve visit to Funchal, Madeira for its famed fireworks display. Thomson Majesty and Thomson Spirit will both embark on their last sailings in November 2017 before they leave the Thomson Cruises fleet. Thomson Spirit will be based in Limassol, Cyprus and will head off for the last time on November 15, 2017, while Thomson Majesty will leave its homeport of Malaga, Spain for its final sailing on November 19. Richard Sofer md Thomson Cruises said: 'Were really excited about the introduction of the Dominican Republic as Thomson Celebrations base for next winter. This is the first time well have had three ships in the Caribbean.' The company held its 7th annual success meet in Mumbai on 15 October, with captains, employees, families and friends attending. The event was themed around the Arabian Nights with shi sha tents and then switching later to a casino nights theme. Among those in attendance were DNV GL, Lloyds Register, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement and Fleet Management, with guests from Singapore, Dubai, Qatar and Sri Lanka flying in. The evening included special dance performances and inhouse performances, and the finale was Alphards inhouse fashion show with over 100 employees from Alphard maritime in India, Dubai and Singapore. Since it was founded in 2009 Alphard has expanded into seven different business lines including agency, maritime security, and diving and underwater services. With massive slips cutting off vital road and rail infrastructure at the top of the Shaky Isles South Island, feeder shipping is leading the relief effort to get stalled freight moving. Pacifica Shipping ceo Steve Chapman said inquiries have gone through the roof, reminiscent of the aftermath of a 2011 earthquake in Christchurch which left 185 dead and saw coastal shipping play a pivotal role in the recovery. "We're trying our best to find capacity on our own network as well as alternative options using the international coastal services that ply trade between the [North and South] islands," said Chapman. New Zealands imports are typically shipped to Auckland near the top of the North Island before being trucked or transported by rail to the South Island via a ferry service across the notorious Cook Strait. However, severe damage to ports in the capital Wellington and in Picton on the tip of the South Island have stalled freight. Centreport in Wellington remains closed. Worse still are the main state highways and main trunk rail line from Picton to Christchurch which, if not buckled or fractured, have completely disappeared under massive rock falls and landslides. In some parts of the rail network, the tracks have been pushed completely off their footing and are now sprawled across the state highway. "The weeks ahead are a worry. Logistics these days is governed by the just-in-time ethos," Road Transport Forum chief executive Ken Shirley told stuff.co.nz "For a lot of these fast moving consumer goods, a couple of days will mean there will be shortages. There are a myriad of specialised products and basic food items. Everything you can think of is moved on a truck. It just highlights how dependent we are on the movement of freight." Chapman said it took about four days to land goods by sea from Auckland to Lyttelton (near Christchurch) which included 48 hours sailing time and additional time loading and offloading. With just two confirmed fatalities, shaken New Zealanders feel like they have dodged a bullet given that the massive quake hit at 12.02am local time and the epicentre was in a rural area near Culverden, a small farming community about 100km north of Christchurch. But the economic toll, not to speak of the emotional impact following in the wake of a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch in 2011, is unquantifiable as the clean up begins. Prime Minister John Key has already estimated the repair bill for devastated road and rail infrastructure as at least NZ$2bn ($1.41bn). Key says the damage in the Kaikoura region, a whale watching town just over 100km northeast of Culverden, is worse than he thought with power, water and sewerage services down. The NZ Army has been deployed and the Royal NZ Navy multi role vessel HMS Canterbury is en-route from Auckland to evacuate 1100 stranded tourists in the cut-off region. "It's just utter devastation, I just don't know...that's months of work," Key told TV One after flying over the area in an NZ Air Force helicopter with Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee. Its hard to believe that the bill is going to be less than a couple of billion, he said. Meanwhile, three passenger ferries are among ships anchored in Wellington harbour with the capital citys Centreport closed for inspections. Logs are strewn around the port, there are reports of damage to terminals and a bridge at KiwiRails InterIslander Ferry terminal had collapsed in to the sea. CentrePort operations are suspended until further notice while further inspections are undertaken on the port during daylight hours today. Said ceo Derek Nind. We have sustained damage to buildings and the port and also some liquefaction and differential settlement in places. Stuff.co.nz reported that shipping workers were forced to flee the Kings Wharf freight shipping terminal in Wellington after cracks began appearing and water spurted up from beneath them during the 7.5 quake. "It was just panic stations," said a man who did not wish to be named. "Water was coming up from the wharf, we had about five seconds to evacuate." The KiwiRail passenger ferry Kaiarahi was berthing in Picton when the quake struck. It quicky retreated out to sea with the 225 passengers kept aboard for 11 hours before the vessel was able to dock. Picton port authorities have now cleared one berth for use though the terminal has sustained damage and remains closed. Several miles from the bustling restaurants and nightlife of Baltimore's Inner Harbor lies Anchorage #5. It's a trapezoidal chunk of the Patapsco River, a marine parking lot really, just west of the Key Bridge where ships wait to offload U.S.-bound cargo. For nearly two months, a Maltese-flagged asphalt carrier named the Newlead Granadino and its crew have been stranded at Anchorage #5 in a kind of legal and maritime limbo. The 368-foot ship and its crew of 14 Filipinos, three Romanians and a Greek cook, have been unable to move since the engine broke down on Sept. 20. The U.S. Coast Guard impounded the ship, saying it was a hazard to navigation. But the owners back in Malta have told the Coast Guard they don't have the $1 million needed to get it seaworthy. "They can't go anywhere because they have certain repairs they have to do," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Jasmine Mieczala. "They are going to be stuck there until they can make those repairs." With no money and no way to fix their ship, the crew can't leave. Most of them do not even have U.S. visas that would allow them to go ashore and find a hot meal, hotel or a flight home. Those that can leave, won't, because they would then forfeit their wages for the past few months - wages that they may never get. For the first several weeks after their stranding, life on the ship became a bit desperate. They were forced to drink water from the ship's air conditioning system and ran short of food. RELATED: A Deadly Blast Shows the Dangers of Ship Graveyards In recent days, their life has improved, according to the Rev. Mary Davisson, director of the Baltimore Seafarers Center. She's visited the ship twice at the invitation of the Romanian captain. "We were delivering some items needed such as basics like toothpaste and shampoo and soap," Davisson said. "We also brought some homemade cookies and Halloween candy." Davisson said the crew has gotten some pre-paid phone cards and are able to talk with their family members. They also spend a lot of time watching television (with rabbit ears) when they aren't trying to keep the ship running. "I sat and talked with the crew," Davisson said. "I let them know that a lot of people in Baltimore were thinking of them and praying for them. They said they weren't looking for a handout, they were looking for justice." Justice may be a long time coming for this crew. NewLead Holdings, the ship's owners, are based in Greece. Elisa Gerouki, a spokeswoman for NewLead, said the ship's breakdown has left the company facing unexpected costs, but said the firm remains in control of the situation. NewLead says it's working with a French bank that holds a mortgage on the ship to reach a resolution, the Baltimore Sun reported The owners also are facing a lawsuit over another NewLead ship that was seized by maritime authorities in Australia earlier this year for problems that included two vertical cracks in the hull plating and "no functioning safety management system," according to TradeWinds, a shipping industry publication. Davisson said the crew didn't ask her for money, even though they haven't been paid recently and are supporting families back in the Philippines. Getting stranded in a foreign port with no way home is an occupational hazard for commercial sailing crews, according to Douglas B. Stevenson, director of the Center for Seafarers' Rights in New York. His group provides legal help to sailors who have been financially stiffed, including several crews from the Hanjin Shipping group. RELATED: In the Heart of the Sea: Fact And Fiction The South Korean firm owns 97 container ships but has struggled in recent months and entered bankruptcy in September. That move stranded hundreds of crew members in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Victoria, B.C., Shanghai, Singapore and other ports around the world. "Because they are in bankruptcy, ports weren't allowing ships to come in and offload cargo," Stevenson said. "They had to be paid up front. When those issues resolved, ships came in and we went to check on the crew." At least the Hanjin ships were seaworthy. The Newlead Granadino crew is facing an uncertain future. Some Baltimore charities are pitching in to help the stranded sailors, but Davisson says the captain isn't looking to host visitors. "They are out in the middle of the harbor," Davisson said. "But it's not that everyone should go out there and offer rides ashore. They need time to do their work." In the meantime, the Seafarer's group has set up a Facebook page to take donations to help the crew. How long will the ship stay in Baltimore harbor? "As long as it takes," said the Coast Guard's Mieczala. "I've been told it could take several months to get the parts they need to make the repairs. The owners of the ship seem to be experiencing financial difficulty and that's where some of the issues come from." WATCH VIDEO: What Laws Apply In International Waters? Weird and scary events happen during and around full moon nights, many studies show. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation; but researchers have some intriguing theories as to why the moon may wield so much power. Naysayers over the years have tried to discount the moon's influence on animals and humans, and yet evidence continues to mount that Earth's satellite, which will be just 216,486 miles away from us on November 14, could affect the entire animal kingdom, even when we can't directly see its glow. The consequences "are not due to the moon per se, but rather stem from a built-in clock, which may have evolved" in humans and other animals, Michael Smith of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden told Seeker. RELATED: Baby Moon-Birthing Collision Slapped Earth Sideways In a study published in Current Biology, Smith and his team investigated how lunar phases affect human sleep patterns. The researchers found that, during a full moon, people average 20 minutes less sleep and take five minutes longer to fall asleep, on average. "However, REM sleep (during which most dreaming occurs) was actually longer around new moons, rather than being shorter around full moons," Smith said, adding that most of the test subjects - who were all healthy 1830-year-olds - experienced 30 minutes more of REM sleep during such nights. As for the theorized "built-in clock," he explained that humans and other animals have multiple biological clocks that serve a variety of functions. The best known is the circadian clock, which helps regulate our sleep-wake cycle. "Anyone who's suffered from jet lag has experienced firsthand the effects of desynchronizing this 'body clock,'" he said, adding that other internal clocks are tied to seasonal rhythms. "Lunar clocks have been demonstrated to exist in some species, so it is plausible that they also exist in humans," he continued. "Evolutionarily, such a clock would serve to regulate behavior around the moon, perhaps accounting for differences in nocturnal light." It is suspected that our early human ancestors took advantage of the extra light to increase everything from beneficial food foraging to mating. A number of studies show that some animal predators, such as bobcats, become more active during nights with high lunar illumination versus others. Another big cat, the lion, is greatly affected by the moon's phases, suggests a PLOS ONE study led by renowned lion expert Craig Packer. Packer, who is based at the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences, and his colleagues analyzed nearly 500 documented lion attacks on Tanzanian villagers that occurred between 1988 and 2009. More than two-thirds of the attacks were fatal, with the lions consuming their victims. The expectation might be that lions attack more just before and during a full moon, but the researchers found just the opposite. "Predators see far better than us on moonless nights, but their advantage disappears on bright moonlit nights," Packer told Seeker. "However, after a few bright nights before the full moon, they are hungrier beginning the first night after the full moon, and those are the most dangerous nights for us, since we are mostly active in the evening rather than in the very early morning." The discovery could help to explain why many humans fear the dark and why other traditional nighttime hunters, such as wolves and even domesticated cats, seem to vocalize more during and after full moon periods. Lunar phases could also influence shark predation. Notably, "The 12 Days of Terror" in 1916, where five sharks killed four people and wounded one other in waters off the New Jersey coast, happened during a nearly full moon high tide. An intriguing piece of evidence is that a tributary associated with a vacation hotspot there had maximum salinity then, perhaps facilitating the arrival of larger predatory sharks like great whites or bull sharks. More seabirds appear to be preyed upon by sharks and seals during full moon nights as well, Takashi Yamamoto, now at Nagoya University, and colleagues suggest in an Animal Behavior study. Yamamoto and his team tracked birds called streaked shearwaters and found that these marine birds flew for longer periods and landed on water more frequently on nights with a full moon. Some were able to feast on greater food as a result, but others wound up as someone else's dinner. Yamamoto explained to Seeker, "When birds are sitting on the water's surface at night with a full moon, it shades moonlight passing through into the sea, so predators might be able to detect seabirds using such shades." RELATED: Undiscovered Moons May Lurk in Our Own Solar System There is also a sexier side to full moons. Each year, stimulated by the faint blue light of a full moon, thousands upon thousands of corals engage in a mass spawning across a wide stretch of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Researchers at the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies discovered that extremely light-sensitive receptors known as cryptochromes in coral permit lunar tracking. Humans have these too, operating as part of the circadian system and possibly the theorized 'lunar clock.' Corals aren't the only animals increasing in number during full moons. Lunar phases appear to influence jellyfish swarming and mating, such as during predictable moon and temperature-driven cycles in waters off the coast of Israel, University of Haifa scientists have found. Further, University of Tokyo researchers led by Tomohiro Yonezawa found that spontaneous - not induced - births among genetically similar dairy cows happen more often during near full and full moon periods than at other times. Yonezawa said that he and his team "are excited to do further research because the findings should eventually lead to discoveries that can be generalized to human births." There are still many mysteries about the moon's power over us and other animals. Part of the problem in understanding the moon's impact is that this satellite, with its 1,079-mile-wide radius, is omnipresent. Here on Earth, we cannot escape it, even if we travel to the remotest parts of the planet or try to block out its bright glow. Japan's economy has been struggling for decades. Due to an aging population and fewer people working, they're now facing their second recession in two years. As a solution to this, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for more women to join the workforce. But Japanese society has long upheld the tradition of women caring for the home and children, while men work to earn money. What does this shift mean for the future of women in the country? Today's Seeker Daily video has more on what life is really like for women in Japan. Check out Discovery GO! Learn More: Wall Street Journal: Lack of Workers Hobbles Japan's Growth NPR: Will More Day Care Help Boost Japan's Sluggish Economy? CNN: Japan's program to boost senior women in work is a dud Name and title: Jarret A. Schlaff, co-founder and CEO Pingree Mfg & Project Boots on the Ground Years business has been open: 2 What is one interesting job you held before owning/running your own biz: In 2009 I worked for Sen. Carl Levin in Detroit supporting veterans with their disability claims. I was introduced to the maze called the VA that veterans have to navigate and fight through to get the support they deserve. Favorite book: It's a tie between Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell Advice for new non-profits: Anything is possible. Remind yourself at least once a day what you're committed to and what's possible because of you and your team's unique contribution. Embrace relationships as your primary currency and since we're all in this together, seek out opportunities to amplify the people, groups, and organizations around you doing good work without expecting anything in return. It's been nearly two years since a chance meeting on the streets of downtown Detroit left Jarret Schlaff inspired and searching for a way to help empower homeless veterans. What resulted is Boots on the Ground , the nonprofit arm of Pingree Manufacturing. The boot-making organization employs and benefits veterans, focusing on worker well-being rather than profit margins.After months of wrangling designs and logistics, Schlaff and his line of multipurpose urban utility boots, Boots on the Ground, opened its first round of pre-sales on Friday Veterans Day. With only 500 pairs available and around 2,000 orders already pledged, the first round of boots should go fast. Luckily for those interested in purchasing a pair, a successful first round of sales means that Boots on the Ground will be able to keep manufacturing and selling their boots well into the future.Schlaff started Boots on the Groundand its parent company, Pingree Manufacturing, named after former Detroit Mayor Hazen S. Pingreeout of a desire to address the difficulties many U.S. veterans face in finding employment. Currently in its beginning stages, Boots on the Ground employs two veterans on a part-time basis; more opportunities for employment will open up as the non-profit grows. All of the boot material is made in the United States, including many Detroit-made materials, and the ultimate goal is for all of the materials to be made in Detroit and in a sustainable way.The idea for Boots on the Ground arose out of a chance encounter. Schlaff was walking around downtown Detroit when he got in a conversation with a veteran seeking employment. Though he may have been homeless, that veteran was more than qualified for employment, possessing a master's degree in engineering. Inspired by their meeting, Schlaff decided he would help that man and others like him."We want to create these jobs, we want to create employment for veterans. What can be handmade, what can we make? And I literally said this in a conversation, I said, what can be the boots on the ground in Detroit?" Schlaff says, snapping his fingers as the thought is triggered. "And then I said: boots."Armed with good intentions but a lack of know-how, Schlaff began to research manufacturing boots. He was told it couldn't be done. Production would have to occur abroad if they were going to keep the boots affordable. But thanks to some helpful partnerships along the way, Schlaff figured out how to make Boots on the Ground happen. He put about $10,000 to $15,000 of his own savings and an additional $15,000 from donations into the project, he says. Schlaff estimates that Boots on the Ground has also received nearly $250,000 in in-kind services.In starting Boots on the Ground, Schlaff says he's encountered a chicken-and-egg scenario. While there's been plenty of interest in the concept, Schlaff hasn't had the funds to get it off the ground. He's turned away investors because he doesn't want to give away equity and control. Also, investors haven't been incredibly interested in a worker-owned company that puts the emphasis on employee well-being over profit margins.So Schlaff figured out a way to do it himself. Once the first round of 500 boots sell, Schlaff will take that money and operate Boots on the Ground full time, moving into a manufacturing facility connected to the Avalon Bakery building on Bellevue Street.Instead of investors, it's been local partnerships that have helped Boots on the Ground get up and running. A storage facility in Pontiac has donated space. A retired engineer from Chrysler with a passion for shoes and a workshop in his basement offered his assistance. Southwest Solutions, Michigan Veterans Foundation, and local VFW halls are among those who have partnered with the organization. Bates Footwear of Rockford has acted as a sort of mentor, and without asking for anything in return."How do we find a way? It's allowing for the best kind of collaboration, which is that relationships are our main currency. It's been a lot of volunteers, a lot of people seeing an opportunity to support our work without necessarily a return on funds," says Schlaff."We've gotten where we are because of the relationships we've built. It's inspiring." The Craft Cafe Detroit is off to a fast start. The "sip and paint" party venue opened last June on Mack Avenue, just blocks from city's eastern border with Grosse Pointe Park, and it's already turning away customers as some parties reach capacity. But that's a good problem to have.While owner Candice Meeks is considering a move to a bigger location, she says she wants to keep the Craft Cafe in the neighborhood. Its location is part of the reason for its success."The location at Mack and Phillip, there's nothing like this in our community," Meeks says. "You have to drive downtown and pay for parking or drive out to the suburbs for this kind of fun. We need to keep something like this in the neighborhood."Craft Cafe Detroit hosts a variety of celebrations, from birthdays to bachelorette parties. Guests can bring their own food and drinks while Meeks leads the party through a painting session. Subjects are pre-sketched onto each person's canvas, allowing them to paint along while Meeks teaches different techniques like blending colors. She also offers vision mirrors, where guests create collages on mirrors and then seal them with a clear coat finish.Other parties include Eat | Paint | Drink, where refreshments are provided, and monthly date nights, where couples paint together.Meeks credits a number of small business programs that helped her get off the ground. She graduated from ProsperUs Detroit , where she met her current landlord. Meeks was also the recipient of a $4,000 technical assistance grant from Motor City Match . She says she plans on using the grant money to help with marketing and website construction costs."Going through those programs really gave me a platform to open my own business," she says. The Craft Cafe Detroit is located at 14600 Mack Ave. It's open Tuesday through Friday, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Press Release November 14, 2016 Hontiveros: Suspension of writ of habeas corpus will lead to more abuses, add to the growing climate of impunity PASAY CITY - Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros on Monday said that President Rodrigo Duterte's plan to suspend the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus as a response to the country's worsening drug problem and lawlessness would lead to more abuses. Hontiveros also said that the suspension of the writ would contribute to the growing climate of impunity brought about by the thousands of unresolved extrajudicial killings. The Senator explained that the privilege of the writ grants a person the right to report or question an unlawful detention or imprisonment before a court. She said that during the Marcos regime, the suspension of the privilege of the writ led to arbitrary arrests of members of the political opposition and citizens. "Dangerous idea" "The president's suggestion to suspend the privilege of the writ, despite the explanation of his spokespersons that it was merely an 'idea,' is dangerous in itself. It is the seed of undemocratic rule similar to the Marcos dictatorship," Hontiveros said. Hontiveros also said that the President, under the 1987 constitution, can only suspend the privilege of the writ in cases of invasion or rebellion, and when public safety requires it. "The government kept on saying that the country is safer now. However, the President's plan to suspend the privilege of the writ negates this narrative. It only adds to the fear and anxiety of the public," Hontiveros said. "Learn to trust democracy" The senator urged President Duterte to maximize the government's democratic institutions in promoting his public order and safety agenda. "The President must learn to trust our democratic processes. Proper law enforcement, including standing behind the protection of human rights and observance of the rule of law are the best methods to ensure public safety," Hontiveros concluded. Press Release November 14, 2016 Legarda: 2017 Budget Will Help Deliver Change Filipinos Want Senator Loren Legarda today said that the proposed 2017 National Budget worth P3.350 trillion will help deliver the change that Filipinos want. "Our proposed 2017 budget sets bold plans to meet not just today's needs, but one that looks beyond 2017, one that contributes to delivering long-term solutions to the country's long-term problems," said Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, during her sponsorship speech on the proposed 2017 General Appropriations Act (GAA). Stressing that the budget is the lifeblood of the nation, Legarda said government must ensure that the resources allocated to deliver programs are not only spent, but also spent well. She noted that as of June 30, 2016, total unobligated allotments under the 2015 GAA amount to P156.98 Billion. The said amount is only valid until the end of 2016. "Our budget is our investment for the future. It is supposed to construct new mass transport systems, new airports, road systems, and schools. They are supposed to fund services for the sick and poor; provide electricity to our people; and build irrigation for our farmers," said Legarda, explaining that the unspent amount could have built 678,662 decent houses for the poor; 29,276 kilometers of farm-to-market roads; more than 215,000 classrooms with toilets and furniture; or could have put more than three million students through university. "Underspending simply means missed opportunities. We wish to encourage that we all work together and provide the people what is due them. We are proposing a budget that provides a disincentive to hoard funds by limiting executive discretion to impound funds, in accord with the decision of the Supreme Court. This budget will also clearly define the conditions under which savings may be declared, compliant with the decision of the Supreme Court," she explained. One of the general provisions in the proposed budget is setting a One-year Availability timeframe of Appropriations under the 2017 GAA to instill a sense of urgency among government agencies in utilizing their budget to the last peso. The Senator stressed that the proposed budget for next year seeks to deliver results and ensure the delivery of services and benefits that will be felt by all Filipinos. "The highest poverty incidence in the country is in Mindanao and this budget takes a conscious effort to address that. Meanwhile, as a people's budget for real change, P1.345 trillion or 40% of the entire budget is being proposed to deliver social services that will address the most basic needs of our people," said Legarda. P151.5 billion is being proposed to fund health services, including the hiring of doctors, midwives and nurses to service the needs of our poorest communities in the country; build more hospitals; and procure medicines. Rehabilitation centers for drug dependents will be built as part of government efforts to find a lasting solution to our war on drugs. Funding for education is set at the level of P699.95 billion to finance the construction of classrooms, hire more teachers, and procure instructional materials; while P78.7 billion is set to support a comprehensive social investment package in the form of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, targeting 4.4 million eligible beneficiaries in 2017. The 2017 budget also provides social pension to all indigent senior citizens, age 60 and above. A leap in infrastructure spending is one of the priorities of the 2017 budget given its indispensable role in poverty reduction, raising productivity, and in spreading the benefits of economic growth. P860.7 billion pesos for infrastructure development, equivalent to 5.4% of our GDP, is provided under the budget for next year. Meanwhile, the Senate amendments include: P3 billion increase in the Philhealth budget so that all Filipinos will now be covered by the universal healthcare program, while indigent patients will not have to pay for anything in government hospitals under the No Balance Billing (NBB) policy; P2 billion Irrigation Fees Subsidy in the budget of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) so that irrigation service fees will no longer be collected by NIA from farmers' associations; and encourage enrolment in Science, Technology, Education, Agri-fisheries and Mathematics (STEAM) programs by supporting the grant of scholarships to students enrolled in priority courses in all State Universities and Colleges (SUCs). The Senate also proposed P388 million for the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology to support a humane correctional system, and another P163 million for the Bureau of Corrections to increase prisoners' daily subsistence allowance. Moreover, in honor of our centenarians, the Senate has allocated P100 million for their one time cash grant. Legarda also said that the budget adheres to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating the adverse effects of climate change, promoting peace and justice for all, and protecting the environment and biodiversity. It also provides funds needed for the integration and mainstreaming of Philippine arts and culture in the country's educational system, as well support for the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA). In conclusion, the Senator underscored the fact that Congress holds the power of the purse. "It is an empty power, however, if the purse strings are drawn tight by the government's failure to spend all of its funds judiciously. The budget bill puts our people at the front and center of our agenda. It aims not just to create growth, but ensures that everyone benefits from the growth we will create together." Press Release November 14, 2016 Senate fails to adopt resolution expressing opposition to burial of former President Marcos at Libingan With eight affirmative votes, six negative votes and six abstention, the Senate failed to adoptd today a resolution expressing opposition to the burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Senator Ana Theresia "Risa" Hontiveros Baraquel, who filed Senate Resolution 86, said that allowing the former President to be buried at the Libingan would only cause divisiveness and reopen old wounds, especially since the country is in the process of providing reparations to the Martial Law victims. "Former President Marcos should not be allowed to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, given findings of crimes involving moral turpitude as well as the human rights violations that occurred during his administration," Hontiveros said in her resolution. Along with Hontiveros, Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III, Senate President Pro-Tempore Franklin Drilon and Senators Paolo Benigno "Bam" Aquino IV, Leila de Lima, Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan, Grace Poe and Joel Villanueva voted for the adoption of Resolution 86. Senate Majority Leader Vicente "Tito" Sotto III and Senators Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan II, Richard Gordon, Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, Emmanuel "Manny" Pacquiao, and Cynthia Villar voted against adopting the resolution while Senate Majority Leader Ralph Recto and Senators Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara, Maria Lourdes "Nancy" Binay, Chiz Escudero, Sherwin Gatchalian, Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri abstained from voting. "My plea is for the rule of law. My plea is that we send the right message and the right message is for the people who are not in favor to speak up here and say, 'We are against it.' For those who are in favor, whatever they want to do. But, to vote as a Senate sends a very bad signal that the Supreme Court (SC) seems to be a Marcos court," Gordon said as he explained why he voted against the adoption of the resolution. Likewise, Sotto, Lacson and Recto cited the SC ruling. "The Supreme Court had already ruled that it is legal to bury former President Marcos at the Libingan ng Bayani and said that there is no grave abuse of discretion. I respect the decision of the Supreme Court. But having said that, I believe that former President Marcos is not a hero. Perhaps he can be buried there because he was a former president and a former soldier," Recto said. "We have debated the issue for the last 30 years. We have been divided between the Aquinos and the Marcoses. Tama na. We have to put it at rest so we can concentrate on the Filipinos," Escudero said. Drilon and De Lima said they voted yes because the Senate has the right to express its sentiment as a political institution. "On the dismissed petition, the SC said that this was a political decision. The Senate as a political body has every right to express its sentiment, especially on a political decision. It is not a disrespect for the SC. We place ourselves on the record. Let history judge us after this day," Drilon said. The Libingan is a resting place for Filipino soldiers, war veterans and citizens considered as heroes and martyrs, according to Resolution 86. It was created to honor the memory of brave the Filipinos who fought for freedom so the present generation may remember and emulate their legacy. The resolution cited the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Regulation "The Allocation of Cemetery Plots at the LNMB issued on April 9, 1986, which allows former Presidents to be buried at the Libingan except for those "who were dishonourably separated, reverted or discharged from the service and those who were convicted of an offense involving moral turpitude." A jury in the case of Hilaw v. Estate of Marcos, the resolution pointed out, had found the estate of defendant Ferdinand Marcos liable to 10,059 plaintiff for the acts of torture, summary execution and disappearance. "The testimonies of the plaintiffs revealed that during Martial Law period, of which the former President was the architect, human rights violations included but were not limited tobeatings while blindfolded, "the dry submarine" where a plastic bag was placed over the detainee's head producing suffocation, use of a detainee's hands for putting out lighted cigarettes, use of flat-irons on the soles of a detainee's feet, forcing a detainee while wet and naked to sit before an air conditioner often while sitting on a block of ice, stripping, sexually molesting and raping female detainees, electric shock where one electrode is attached to the genitals of males or the beast of females and another electrode to some part of the body, usually a finger, Russian roulette and solitary confinement while handcuffed or tied to a bed," the resolution said. "This conviction should suffice to disqualify former President Marcos from being remembered in history as a hero, and from lying beside those who have demonstrated extraordinary heroism and valor in the service of the country," Hontiveros said in her resolution. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate More than most buildings, contemporary museums are designed with two aims. The idea is to make a memorable visual statement while displaying art in appropriate and flattering ways. The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, which opened Sunday at UC Davis, faced a third architectural challenge, the most difficult task of all to triumph over a setting where it really shouldnt be. Even though the result feels labored, its a welcome addition to our cultural scene. In a year where big buildings have grabbed so much attention, we should never forget that small works of ambition are equally vital. The new facility is at the southern edge of UC Davis, closer to Interstate 80 than the large campus central quad. Its part of the grandly named Gateway District, which also includes the universitys visitor center and the Mondavi Center for the Perfoming Arts. Where the visitor center and Mondavi Center are fairly standard boxes, the art museum announces itself with an enormous white metal canopy that extends past the new structure on all sides and slides down to cloak the spacious entry plaza. The museum itself is just 30,000 square feet, with walls of gray ribbed concrete and gently curving glass. The roof covers 50,000 square feet in all, with the steel frame holding 952 perforated aluminum Vs lined up in grids of varying shape and width. At the very least, the canopy serves to filter and soften the sharp Davis sunlight. But there are larger aims as well, according to architect Florian Idenburg of SO-IL, the New York firm that designed the museum with the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. The team was brought together in 2013 by Whiting-Turner, the construction firm that built the $30 million facility. We wanted to create something that has a strong presence, Idenburg said this week. It needed to announce itself to the highway but also to the campus. Then theres the artistic flourish that helped get the team the commission an evocation of the agricultural landscape beyond Davis, with its precise rows of orchards and annual crops. That agrarian concept helped the architects and contractor win the 2013 competition, but visitors wont likely grasp the symbology of whats overhead. The canopy feels like what it is, a manufactured system, from the thick white columns required for seismic reasons to the heavy frame necessary to hold the triangular aluminum beams arranged in quilt-like patterns above the plaza. What the canopy does instead, exquisitely, is bring the structure within it to life. The alternating bands of shade and light shift as the sun moves overhead, a monochromatic and constantly changing tattoo. Another satisfaction is found at the plazas edge, where the glass walls are a deceptively effortless delight. The goal is to blend inside and out, one of those oft-stated architectural virtues that rarely work. Here, though, the use of low-iron glass does away with most of the reflections. And the supple curves feel as though they were poured into place rather than installed the opposite of the hard-working canopy. Once inside the structure you realize how snug the Manetti Shrem Museum really is, and how seriously it wants to be a campus resource. Paul Chinn/The Chronicle There are only 10,000 square feet of formal galleries, one-tenth the amount added to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this year. Theres also 6,000 square feet of educational space, including a classroom that doubles as a gallery of items from the museums permanent collection. Except for the classroom gallerys wood floors and solemn green paint, the exhibition spaces come with the smooth concrete floors and white walls that are the norm these days. While youre in them, look up: The mesh metal ceilings add a beguiling contrast with an open texture that allows faint glimpses of the duct work above. Subtle touches like this are where the architecture hits its stride. Small pleasures in a small setting, a refreshing departure from the immensity of SFMOMA or even the reborn Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in downtown Berkeley. In some ways, the biggest disappointment at UC Davis is the museums location. With a parking garage on one side and asphalt on three others, the background noise of I-80 a constant din, the newcomer feels like an isolated destination. It should be in the heart of the campus, like the temporary metal compound that housed much of the art department when it made its name in the 1960s with instructors that included such now-acclaimed artists as Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Arneson, and a self-proclaimed spirit of defiant provincialism. Instead, its part of an institutional district aimed squarely at outsiders. The landscape design by Lutsko Associates does its best to provide a buffer with mounds and high grasses; the classrooms and studio spaces will help bring students down to the area. But at least for now, Manetti Shrem stands apart. Worth a detour on the drive to Sacramento or Tahoe, if not a destination in and of itself. John King is The San Francisco Chronicles urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron REMOVE THIS This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hundreds of students from about a dozen Oakland high schools ditched the classroom for the streets Monday to show their discontent with the election of Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States in the fourth day of school walkouts around the Bay Area. Students congregated at the Fruitvale BART station Monday just before noon and then marched with their peers in a demonstration against Trump, police militarization, mass incarceration and gentrification. They were also protesting to maintain sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants and to protect lands of native people. We hope to get our rights and just get our freedom. We want less racism, stop the violence, all of that, said Salvador Briseno, a 14-year-old Coliseum College Prep Academy student. Students have staged protests large and small across the Bay Area since Trumps election last week. The daytime demonstrations have usually preceded rallies that have lasted late into the night on the streets of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, some of which have turned destructive and violent. Oscar Calderon, 21, who works with a Latino youth group and helped organize the walkout, said Mondays demonstration was the result of students from about a dozen different schools coordinating together far more than the protests last week. Some students had left their classrooms at CCPA, Golden State Prep, Alternatives in Action High School, Aspire Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, Castlemont High School, Madison Park Academy and Oakland United High School right when school started, while others were planning to walk out later in the day. John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified School District, said that Monday would be the final day for students to have leniency for skipping class, though disciplinary actions for truancy have yet to be decided. Discussions about the election will continue in classrooms and through town hall meetings and assemblies, he said. The protest was entirely student-led and not sanctioned by the school, Sasaki added. Carla Franco, also a 14-year-old student at CCPA, said Trumps characterization of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals couldnt be further from the truth. Her parents came here seeking a better life, Franco said, and now she like families across the country are worried about their relatives and friends being deported. "I feel like most people tell us, Why does it matter? He became president already, she said. We just want him to know we don't support what he's said about us. We feel like it's better to unite as people and show them we don't support him. Kate Dillon, 30, a resource teacher at the school, said administrators did not sanction the walkout but also didnt stand in the way of students who wanted to leave. Students in sixth and seventh grades were told they were too young to participate, Dillon said. We don't want Donald Trump, said 18-year-old Keziah Tokes of Dewey Academy. We need someone to represent the black and brown community, especially in politics. The government and white supremacy doesn't represent us. Oakland students werent alone in their walkouts. Students from high schools around the Bay Area joined in on the protest by marching out of their classrooms throughout the day. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. About 200 to 300 Menlo-Atherton High School students in Menlo Park took to the streets about 1:30 p.m. to share their dissatisfaction over Trump. They made marched to Highway 101, but quickly retreated after officers said they would be arrested if they entered the freeway, said Nicole Acker, a spokeswoman for the Menlo Park Police Department. Our responsibility is to keep the protesters safe and make sure they are obeying the rules of the road, Acker said. Nearly 150 students from Redwood High School in Larkspur also walked out of classes at the same time. Emily OBrien Meyer, a 15-year-old student at Redwood High School, said the atmosphere was tense as anti-Hillary Clinton protesters threatened to beat kids up for not supporting Trump. It got a little heated, OBrien Meyer said. Im not sure [the protests] will achieve anything besides showing how we feel. Hes going to be president, no matter what. Rafe Swan/Getty Image The Stanislaus County Sheriffs Department said Sunday that a suspect involved in the shooting and killing of one of its deputies is now in custody. David Machado was detained in Tulare County Sunday afternoon after being on the run from authorities, the department said on Twitter. The killing took place Sunday morning, when Deputy Dennis Wallace arrived at the Fox Grove fishing access point near Hughson to check on a suspicious car and person in the area, according to the Sacramento Bee. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The racist graffiti painted on the walls at Edison Elementary School in Alameda over the weekend was gone, but parents and students refused to let the hateful message linger in anyones mind Monday as they lined the school walkway to greet all families with a warm welcome. The racist tags appeared overnight Friday in five places on the school building and were removed Saturday morning. Police are investigating, said school district Superintendent Sean McPhetridge. The crime was one of hundreds of racially charged incidents reported across the country after the election of Donald Trump, including the waving of the Confederate flag at the Veterans Day parade in Petaluma and the painting of the words Heil Trump and a swastika near a San Diego bus stop. I think our country and our kids are seeing whats going on all over the place, said Alameda school board member Gray Harris. It isnt an isolated incident. As a response, the community wanted to make sure no one felt the sting of hate-filled ideas. Everyone is welcome, stickers and signs read. The Alameda school district had already been promoting that message across the city in response to concerns raised over LGBT curriculum presented in city schools. They had boxes of pins and stacks of placards. After the word of the graffiti spread over the weekend, parents and community members decided to reinforce the message with signs and mass welcome committees at several schools. This was something peaceful and happy and not scary, Harris said. No rally, no march. Just Hi, Good morning. Fifth grader Ryan McCalmont stood along the entryway at the school just after 8 a.m., holding a handmade sign with the word hate crossed out above, Fight against oppression. It just means you fight against people who are being oppressed by the government or stuff, the 10-year-old said. Like anyone being mean to someone because of the color of their skin and stuff. The graffiti was a bad thing, but Ryan saw the gathering and the message on his sign as a response to anyone who thinks that mindset is acceptable under a Trump presidency. His friend, Elliot Cevallos, also 10, held a rainbow-colored, school mascot-inspired, Love each otter sign, and smiled as he looked at the turnout of dozens of people to greet students. I think its just special because you get to tell the people, like, just because Trump won, you cant start treating people like that, he said. Its a peaceful way to protest and I think thats really cool. Ryans mom stood nearby, watching her son, saying the graffiti shook her, but that the community stood strong. I was concerned, she said. But were planting the seeds with kids that hopefully will last a lifetime. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Getting a 5-year-old to try a bowl of very green tabbouleh salad isnt always easy. But kindergartner Jera Flenaugh was game to taste the chopped parsley, tomato and bulgur dish during lunch at Glenview Elementary in Oakland last week. It tastes like not-hot salsa, said Jera, her smile missing a front tooth as she put a sticker under the Loved it column on a poster set up in the cafeteria to tally student votes. It was awesome. Conducted once a week, these taste tests are part of what makes the Oakland Unified School District a national model for farm-fresh school food. Up to 80 percent of the produce it serves comes from nearby farms, and some of its pasta and meat brands are commonly seen on Whole Foods shelves. As a sign of its commitment, the Oakland school board is now expected to adopt the Good Food Purchasing Policy, which is basically a pledge to buy fresh, healthy and sustainable food. Its something we can measure ourselves by, said Jennifer LeBarre, director of student nutrition services for the district, which has focused on getting food sourced from within 250 miles since starting a farm-to-school program in 2008. With that, weve been able to achieve double-digit decreases on our carbon footprint. Part of the impetus for Oaklands farm-to-school program is funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Obama administration, so its unclear what will happen to such grants in the next, Republican-led administration. Advocates of progressive school food policies are concerned there will be a rollback of programs serving low-income communities. The Good Food Purchasing Policy that the Oakland district is adopting is like the LEED certification the green rating system for buildings for school lunches. The term good food in this context doesnt apply to taste alone; it denotes food that meets certain standards for animal welfare, nutrition, fair labor, sustainability and support of the local economy. Institutions following the Good Food Purchasing Policy receive star ratings when they work with producers that meet standards in those five categories. Michael Macor/The Chronicle In our current food system, we have very few suppliers that would be able to meet all five of those definitions, said Alexa Delwiche, executive director of the Center for Good Food Purchasing. But baseline standards can apply to only 10 percent of the food purchased in the district, so changes can start small. The program was created in Los Angeles in 2012 and is being used by its school district, the countrys second-largest. San Francisco Unified has also signed on, but hasnt begun analyzing its purchases, a process Oakland started in 2014. Other Bay Area districts, such as Sonoma Valley Unified and Novato Unified, also have ambitious farm-to-school programs, but for a much smaller student population than Oakland. Oakland is such a great model, said Sheila Golden of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, which connects farms to institutions and communities, and recently recognized Oakland Unified for its program. Theyre one of the biggest districts doing the things they do. Which raises the question: How does a district where 73 percent of students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, serving 6 million meals a year, manage to buy organic, local food? All on a $1.25-per-meal budget? In some cases, it actually saves money. LeBarre was surprised to find Sacramento delta brown rice at half the price of the national brand she had been using. The district also gets a competitive price on the food-service line of whole-grain pasta from Oaklands Community Grains, now being used in dishes like torchiette, a type of twirly noodle, with chorizo and greens. Meat and fish require more creativity, said Oakland Unifieds farm-to-school coordinator Alexandra Emmott, but it helps that most of the food is made in-house. The nutrition staff augments ground meat from Mindful Meats, an organic supplier of pasture-raised beef from Marin and Sonoma, with beans for its chili and beef tacos, to get the USDA-required 2-ounce serving of protein per lunch. Its the less-meat, better-meat philosophy, Emmott said. Oakland Unified also buys grenadier, a bycatch of the local black cod industry that is normally wasted, from Montereys Real Good Fish. Some local universities declined to buy the fish, saying $5 a pound was too expensive compared with farmed tilapia from China, said Maria Finn of Real Good Fish, while Oakland Unified found a way to serve it sparingly in fish tacos. Oakland has 84 schools and 20 child care centers serving 38,000 students 21,000 lunches a day, along with breakfasts and suppers at some locations. There are 30 on-site working kitchens where food is made fresh, but lunches are presented in plastic-wrapped trays similar to airplane meals. Michael Macor/The Chronicle Its also impossible for individual farms to deliver produce to so many sites, which is part of the reason the district is building a central processing kitchen thats due to open in the 2018-19 school year. It will be able to receive a larger variety of seasonal vegetables, like butternut squash, to be peeled and chopped, then sent to individual schools, where staff will finish cooking it. The commissary, financed by a bond measure voters passed in 2012, will do away with 80 percent of the packaged meals served at the schools, LeBarre said. But those changes dont happen overnight. For example, kitchen staff received training to handle raw chicken because the district now buys raw drumsticks from Marys Free-Range Chicken in the San Joaquin Valley, known for its animal welfare standards. Before, the district served only precooked chicken. The training was to help shift the operations from a heat-and-serve model to a fresh-prep model, said Chris Smith of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, which funded it. Creating demand for sustainable products on a district-wide level can have a huge impact, especially at Los Angeles Unified, which is the largest purchaser of food in the city and serves 650,000 meals daily. It recently signed a $20 million contract for antibiotic-free chicken. However, when districts want to change vendors, they need to go through a lot of paperwork required by the USDA. The Center for Good Food Purchasing can help with that, but Smith is concerned that it could make the process even more burdensome. Whats challenging for people to realize is the level of complexity thats needed to improve school food, said Smith. The good outcomes are clear and self-evident better student performance and public health, an improved local economy, and obviously, the environment. Regardless of the potential benefits, the kids still have to like the food. Not all the Glenview kids were on board with tabbouleh. DEEsgusting, said kindergartner Sophia Hallin. Because it had too much spicy, and I hate spicy. But overall, the latest addition to Oakland Unifieds farm-fresh menu got more thumbs up than down. It will likely be served in school cafeterias in the very near future. Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan The blanket of dense fog that covered the Bay Area Monday morning is expected to dissipate just minutes before the supermoon will be closest to Earth, forecasters said. The National Weather Service issued a dense fog advisory estimating that the fog will sweep throughout the Bay Area until 9 a.m. A great adventure starting a timeless stream across a mighty span. The Chronicles front page from Nov. 13, 1936, covers the opening of the Bay Bridge and the 75,000 automobiles estimated to have crossed the bay in a new way that day. The bridge that couldnt be built stands achieved today before an astonished world, one of the stories read. Conceived in genius, born of a mighty vision, and christened by the faith of its builders, this infant Atlas whose broad back is bared to the needs of the new civilization, takes place among the great things of earth as the twenty-seventh wonder of the world. Thats quite an introduction from The Chronicles Earle Ennis, but its not the only testament to the historic day in the Bay Area. The photo on the front page shows the happiest drivers ever to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Bay Bridge. When this was written, motor cars by the tens of thousands were droning their way, three abreast in each direction across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the story by Floyd Healey read. Waving hands, shouting to one another, blaring their horns in a furious cacophony, motorists on four wheels, three and two, were glorying in the thrill of being the first, or among the first, to cross the longest bridge ever built. The Bay Bridge had been decreed by Emperor Norton decades earlier, and residents of the Bay Area and beyond had longed for a span to connect the East Bay and San Francisco. Not only is the great white span a miracle of engineering skill and foresight, a gargantuan conveyor of traffic, and an unparalleled epic of construction, but it is also a dramatic link between the traditions of the past and the hopes of the future, Ennis story read. Think that was an overwhelming helping of engineering enthusiasm? Just wait until they witnessed the Golden Gate Bridges opening six months later. See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspapers history. Chronicle Covers highlights one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken and producers Kimberly Chua, Michelle Devera and Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke (Click to enlarge) They came to Lake Merritt to hold hands with strangers, joining together as a cathartic force to push back against racism, sexism and the backlash against gay and Muslim communities. They created a human chain around the 3.4-mile perimeter of the Oakland lake, occasionally clapping. At one point, people chanted, We reject the president-elect. Im here to show my support for those who are now feeling vulnerable, said Emily Reisman, 29, a doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz who drove 90 minutes to attend the event. Its really a wonderful idea. The lake is heart shaped. It sends a strong message. Around the Bay Area, thousands of demonstrators have expressed angst or worse about Donald Trump winning the presidential election. Rallies in Oakland have at times become destructive, but Sundays event at Lake Merritt and another one in San Francisco were peaceful. Organizers in San Francisco purposefully picked Golden Gate Park to foster a family-friendly atmosphere Sunday afternoon. Among the hundreds of marchers were many families with strollers and children carrying signs and chanting against what they see as hateful rhetoric used by Trump and his many supporters. Some held signs reading Love Trumps Hate, Thank you, Hillary and Make American Human Again as they made their way along John F. Kennedy Drive toward Ocean Beach. Were here reinforcing that we will not stand for hate. We will not stand for misogyny, said march organizer and San Francisco resident Sarah Bacon. Many people dont feel safe in their environment, and I dont think the president-elect has made any indication that he wont do what he said hes going to, she said, referring to Trumps inflammatory rhetoric during the presidential campaign. Every night since Trumps election, protesters in the Bay Area and around the country in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., have taken to the streets, sometimes in violent demonstrations. As darkness fell in San Francisco, several hundred protesters gathered for a second rally and marched down Market Street toward the Embarcadero, blocking the busy intersection at Fifth and Market as they held a sit-down protest. Stand up, fight back, shouted the demonstrators. Not my president and stop shopping, join us, they yelled as shoppers downtown snapped pictures on their smartphones. One man on a skateboard shouted get off the street as the crowd swelled to as many as 400 people and marched down Market toward the Ferry Building. Youre nothing but a bunch of ... crybabies! he yelled, adding a vulgarity made famous in a Trump video. The man, Charles Brown, 19, of Newark, later explained that although he doesnt support the president-elect, he was duly elected and should be given a chance. Weve got to deal with what weve got, Brown said, admitting that he did not vote. This is giving him the publicity that he wants. Last week, Trump floated the idea that protesters were paid, saying on Twitter, Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair! Scott Murphy was aware of the accusation as he walked with his wife while pushing his 2-year-old daughter in a stroller through Golden Gate Park. Their sign read, I am a professional American. I replied to Trumps tweet with, Youre going to have tremendous protests the best. Believe me, Murphy said. Some senior advisers to the president-elect amplified Trumps remark Sunday, dismissing the thousands of demonstrators as professional and paid protesters, and they urged top Democrats to call for calm during the transition. I think that the president of the United States, Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, Bernie Sanders, perhaps, others can come forward and ask for calm and ask for a peaceful transition and ask their supporters, which are masquerading as protesters now many of them professional and paid, by the way, Kellyanne Conway, Trumps campaign manager, said on Fox News Sunday. Reisman, the UC Santa Cruz student, scoffed at the claim. Im losing money to be here, she said, adding she spent about $40 in gas to drive to Oakland. People from all walks of life joined hands Sunday around Lake Merritt. Some sang John Lennons Imagine. Others exchanged contact information. Several people said that the Lake Merritt event was the first time they have been in a protest and that it gave them hope that others felt as upset as they did about the election. Architect Nina MacKenzie said it was inspiring to look across Lake Merritt and see like-minded people lined up in every corner of this lake. To me, it embodied a small heart in the landscape that Oakland cared about all the people that Trump may not care about today, said MacKenzie, a volunteer for the event. Diane Johengen, a retired nurse from Berkeley, said the Oakland event was her first demonstration and that she came to Lake Merritt because she was so upset about the election results. It was a real slap in the face to women, Johengen said. She said she voted for Clinton and found it profoundly disturbing that Trump was elected when she found him lacking qualifications for the job. The woman who envisioned the Lake Merritt event did not picture the thousands of people who would attend when she created the Facebook invite. Somatic psychotherapist Allison White at first thought only her friends would come. The Facebook invite went viral, with more than 8,000 people on the social network saying they would go. There is strength in numbers, said Miquela Fox, 41, of Benicia, a contract administrator at a construction firm. The world needs to see most of the world does not approve of this man as president. Organizers of the Golden Gate Park march asked participants to wear safety pins a symbol of solidarity and safety in a gesture that was first adopted in England after the Brexit vote to leave the European Union. My vision for the future is pretty bleak, said Candy Mitchell, who carried a sign reading Environment, Human Rights, Respect, Global Relations ... Seriously! While many in the Golden Gate Park march were focused on Trumps divisive language during the campaign, Mitchell said she was concerned about the president-elects policies, something that was largely ignored during the venomous campaign. Im fearful of Republican majorities in both houses I dont see a lot of checks and balances there, she said. Its hard to have hope when you see Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin coming back to life. Demonstrations against Trump have not ceased since the New York billionaire delivered his victory speech shortly before midnight California time Tuesday. Hundreds of high school students walked out of class and took to the streets in the East Bay and in San Francisco during two days of peaceful protests. In the evening, groups have persistently gathered at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland. Protesters there clashed with police Wednesday night, while some spray-painted businesses and smashed windows. Thirty people were arrested, and three officers were injured after being pelted with bottles and rocks. Chronicle staff writer Peter Fimrite contributed to this report. Evan Sernoffsky and Wendy Lee are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky, @thewendylee Cmon. Its been almost a week. Its time to unfurl out of the fetal position, stop moaning to your Facebook friends, and go do something positive if youre seething or freaked out or scared by the prospect of President-elect Donald Trump. Its got to be more than street protests and candlelight vigils outside a BART station. Those feel cathartic while the pain is still raw, but longtime organizers say it is time to move beyond the grief and anger stage. Besides, as a bold political statement, the rest of the world looks at a street protest in San Francisco the same way it does rain in Seattle: Doesnt that happen every day there? Instead, organizers are urging anti-Trumpers to join the Resistance. So what to do? And where to start? Two senior advisers to Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign including San Franciscan Becky Bond are here to offer you a road map. On Tuesday, their new book, Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything, drops. It was supposed to be a step-by-step blueprint for how to organize volunteers when you have little money in other words, the Sanders campaign. And to be sure, Bond and co-author Zack Exley, who was the first organizing director at MoveOn.org, salt the book with anecdotes from the Sanders campaign. Yeah, they lost the primary to Hillary Clinton, and Bond acknowledges that some people are going to be asking, What can the people who lost tell you? But the Berners started with 3 percent name recognition and bupkis in the bank. Then, with the help of smart, tech-savvy organizers like Bond and Exley (and a coherent, appealing message that appealed to Americans who are hurting), built it into an volunteer-driven organization that made 75 million calls, sent 8 million text messages, and held more than 100,000 public meeting on behalf of the Bern. But Rules isnt a memoir. Its an organizing document the next chapter to renowned grassroots organizer Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals book that inspired a community organizer named Barack Obama and intended for anyone. And it arrives in time to be the perfect antidote for Democrats crushed by Clintons defeat. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle Bond and Exley thought it would be a road map for how to be the loyal progressive opposition to Clinton. How to hold her accountable to do the right thing on climate change, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and criminal justice reform. Then something happened that made lot of people roll into a weepy balls. We thought that on Nov. 9, people would be thinking that, Whew, we dodged a bullet with Trump, said Bond, a longtime progressive organizer who in her pre-Sanders days was political director at Credo Mobile, the San Francisco telecom that is a big progressive donor. Now were realizing that people are in pain. Theyre afraid. And they want to know what to do. Heres what not to do, Bond said. Dont wait for some big advocacy organization or political party to tell you what to do next. We saw how effective those organizations were last week. Some organizations are already leveraging Trump fears into a fundraising tool. The Sierra Club posted a Facebook message the other day that said, End of Paris Climate deal. End of the EPA. End of Federal Clean Energy. More drilling. More coal. More pipelines. Lives destroyed. Wildlife bulldozed. And so much more. The next four years will be decided by how hard we fight right now. We must stand together like we never have before. We need you to make a donation right now so we can put everything into action. You could do that. Or you could take action for free on an issue of your choosing. Bond explains how to start. Make a list of people you know who want to change things. At least 15 or so or as many as 100. Invite them to a meeting an in-person meeting, not an online one. Start talking about what you want to do to create the country you want to live in. Yes, that sounds vague, but Revolutionaries explains how to structure a meeting so you can eventually sift a sharp idea out of your gathering. After the group decides what to focus on, ask for leaders to step up and take on some of the initial organizing. Its OK if only, say, three hands go up in a room of 15. Others will soon follow. Think big, Bond says. Sanders caught on because he was proposing big ideas free college tuition, a ban on fracking instead of incremental ideas. Big ideas create big enthusiasm. And if theres one thing we learned from Tuesdays election, it is that Clintons incrementalism didnt generate enough enthusiasm. Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle Heres a few ideas that Bond riffed to help people start thinking: Disrupt the DNC: There will be an election for a new Democratic National Committee chair soon. Sanders, soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and MoveOn.org have lined up behind Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn, who is expected to officially announce his candidacy Monday. Ellison is African American, co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus and the first Muslim elected to the House. His selection as DNC chair would be symbolic, given that Trump has called for the complete ban on Muslims entering the United States. If youd like to see Ellison clean DNC house, then heres an example of what even a small local group could do: Pressure House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to back Ellison. So far, Pelosi hasnt picked a candidate. Protect your Muslim neighbors: Trumps presidency has many people concerned about deportations or reprisals against Muslim citizens or immigrants. With the election of state Attorney General Kamala Harris to the U.S. Senate, Gov. Jerry Brown must appoint her replacement. Have your group target Brown and urge him to pick an AG who will refuse to enforce any future deportation orders from the federal government. Then continue to pressure that AG to hold the line. There are a million different ways to channel that rage or sorrow or fear you feel now. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested volunteering for a nonprofit whose work you might think will be threatened by the new administration, like Planned Parenthood. But the most important thing is to do something. You can either lie down, you can whimper, you can pull up in a ball, you can decide to move to Canada, Warren said on MSNBC. Or you can stand your ground and fight back. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli T20 World Cup: I Am Hopeful That India Will Play Final - Sourav Ganguly Praises Rohit Sharma And Co WATCH: Virat Kohli Spends Time With KL Rahul in Training Session, Advices Him to Adjust Few Things IND vs BAN: Dinesh Karthik Pull up Pretty Well in Training Session, Will Take Final Call on Him Tomorrow - Rahul Dravid T20 World Cup: Jos Butler, Alex Hales Help England Cruise Past New Zealand People find it hard, says Frank Perry, to talk about Capitola without using the words cozy. Or nestled. Perry is a Capitola expert hes curator of the towns fine little museum so well take his challenge. Well try to talk about this pretty beachside burg (population 10,000) next door to Santa Cruz without saying either word. But its hard. Tucked into a curve of coast where Soquel Creek enters Monterey Bay, Capitola is kind of, well, you know. Only 2 square miles, and with the even more compact Capitola Village at its heart, this is one of those walkable little towns where every corner seems to have something that makes you smile. Even its name does that. Heres a theory: The worlds best places are named after fictional women. Take California, named for Amazon Queen Califia in a 16th century Spanish romance. As for Capitola, it gets its name from The Hidden Hand, a wildly popular 19th century novel by one E.D.E.N. Southworth that featured a cross-dressing, adventure-seeking heroine, Capitola. Almost from the start, Capitola was a town built on fun, luring visitors from San Francisco and San Jose to swim, sun and stay. (Mostly these visitors arrived by train, which explains the looming presence of the tall, long, creosote-brown wooden train trestle thats Capitolas answer to Paris Eiffel Tower a landmark visible from almost everywhere.) Even now, the town has a slightly unreal, musical comedy feel. Look in one direction and its charming jumble of New England-y cottages makes you think Carousel. Look in another and the 1920s pastel facades of the beachside Venetian Court take you to the Mediterranean of Mamma Mia. Thronged in summer, Capitola shows a quieter but equally pleasurable side come fall. There are fewer crowds and easier parking, but still lots of good places to eat and shop and wander. And, above all, theres that incomparable setting: a tidy little valley where Soquel Creek meets Monterey Bay. You know cozy. Nestled. Morning Any great beach town needs a great breakfast joint, and Capitola has two. Now in its fourth decade, Gayles Bakery and Rosticceria is as essential a part of Capitola life as the Pacific. The only stressful thing about Gayles is deciding what to order. If you want a full-on breakfast, go for a frittata or egg and bacon croissant. Then there is the incomparable array of Gayles baked goods. Is morning too early for caramel apple bread pudding? Of course not. What about the adorable-looking lemon chiffon beehive cake? Like, all of it? Maybe. Another excellent breakfast option is the Avenue Cafe. Housed in a sweet little blue cottage, it offers start-your-visit-right sustenance with a slight Mexican accent: pancakes and omelets, yes, but also chilaquiles and huevos rancheros. Breakfast is served all day here, so if you hit town a little later than you planned, youre still in luck. Now for shopping. As youd expect, Capitolas rich in beach-oriented retail. Capitola Beach Co. has everything stylish suits, shorts, sunglasses you need for a day by the sea, and it offers surf and paddle-boarding lessons. Around the corner, Xandra Swimwear showcases fashion-forward one-pieces and bikinis, some edgy enough that they seem to have been inspired by Game of Thrones: Westeros meets Cabo San Lucas. If youre more inclined to long, romantic beach strolls while wearing natural fibers, check out the Stella Mitchell Boutique and its nicely curated selection of men; and womens clothing jeans, shirts, sweaters and jewelry. Up the street, in the shadow of the train trestle, Charley and Co. offers home accessories everything from candles to cocktail kits in a stylish cottage. And back near Gayles, Many Hands Gallery has a vibrant collection of paintings, pottery, photography and sculptures created by Capitola and Santa Cruz-area artists. Midday Time for lunch. You dont have to be a Parrothead to like Margaritaville the bay views, the chile verde and enchiladas and the margaritas (classic to jalapeno) will please anybody. Also good for informal Mexican (fajitas, burritos) is El Toro Bravo. For dessert, the Village Grill and Creamery has well over a dozen flavors of Santa Cruzs own Mariannes Ice Cream. Enough said. Afternoon Capitola is justly proud of its history and its architecture, and a great way to get a handle on both is to visit the small but fascinating Capitola History Museum, open afternoons Thursdays-Sundays. Housed in a building that looks like a little red schoolhouse (although it isnt), the museums currently hosting an engaging exhibit of early 20th century Capitola photographs taken by Norwegian immigrant Ole Ravnos. Here, too, you can pick up a copy of the Capitola Self-Guided Walking Tour. Follow its dotted-line paths and youll see the town at its most quirkily charming. Favorite stretches include the walk along Esplanade to admire the near-identical sextuplet Victorians known as the Six Sisters, then on past the Venetian Court to Capitola Wharf walk to the end for knockout views of town and Monterey Bay. For a glimpse of some of the grandest homes in town, follow the steep stairs from Camino Medio up to the top of Depot Hill and Cliff and Grand avenues. Evening When its time for an end-of-day drink, you can take advantage of Capitolas small but enjoyable wine scene. Armida Winery is the Capitola outpost of the Healdsburg-based winery: $10 lets you taste some excellent Zins and Sauvignon Blancs, and maybe their signature skull-and-crossbones-labeled red blend, Poizin. Across the street, Cava Capitola serves wine and beer and often has live music, as does Its Wine Tyme, on Capitola Avenue. A short drive north from Capitola Village, Pelican Ranch Winerys tasting room has an adventurous roster of reds and whites, including a hard-to-find Pinotage. And suds lovers rejoice: Right next door is a first-rate small brewery, Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, which produces highly regarded, mostly Belgian-inspired beers. For dinner, Paradise Beach Grill does coconut-and-macadamia-encrusted ahi tuna and bacon-wrapped filet mignon with a lovely bay view on the side. And if youre looking for a dramatic first impression, the towns most famous restaurant, hillside-hugging Shadowbrook, is hard to beat: You ride a cable car down to the dining room overlooking Soquel Creek. Once there, you can choose from entrees like braised osso buco and blackened lamb; theres a famously vast wine list, too. IF YOU GO Gayles Bakery and Rosticceria: 504 Bay Ave.; (831) 462-1200; www.gaylesbakery.com Avenue Cafe: 427 Capitola Ave.; (831) 515-7559; www.avenuecafecapitola.com Capitola Beach Co.: 131 Monterey Ave.; (831) 462-5222; www.capitolabeachcompany.com Xandra Swimwear: 116 Stockton Ave.; (831) 515-7330; www.xandraswimwear.com Stella Mitchell Boutique: 110 Monterey Ave., Suite 100; (831) 515-7590. Charley & Co.: 401 Capitola Ave.; (831) 687-8873; www.charleynco.com Many Hands Gallery: 510 Bay Ave.; (831) 475-2500; www.manyhands-capitola.com Margaritaville: 231 Esplanade; (831) 476-2263; www.margaritavillecapitola.com Toro Bravo: 123 Monterey Ave; (831) 476-1553; www.eltorobravorestaurant.com Village Grill and Creamery: 104 Stockton Ave.; (831) 479-8888. Capitola Museum: 410 Capitola Ave.; (831) 464-0322; www.cityofCapitola.org/Capitola-museum Armida Winery: 103 Stockton Ave.; (831) 462-1065; www.armida.com Cava Capitola: 115 San Jose Ave.; (831) 476-2282; www.cavacapitola.com Its Wine Tyme: 312 Capitola Ave.; (831) 477-4455; www.itswinetyme.com Pelican Ranch Winery: 102 Kennedy Drive; (831) 426-6911. www.pelicanranch.com Sante Adairius Rustic Ales: 103 Kennedy Drive; (831) 462-1227; www.rusticales.com Paradise Beach Grille: 215 Esplanade; (831) 476-4900; www.paradisebeachgrille.com Shadowbrook: 1750 Wharf Road; (831) 475-1511; www.shadowbrook-capitola.com Protests continued to disrupt areas of San Francisco on Sunday evening, shutting down parts of Market Street as crowds walked down the thoroughfare. Several hundred protesters marched toward the Embarcadero, blocking the busy intersection at Fifth and Market as they held a sit-down protest. "Stand up, fight back," shouted the demonstrators. "Not my president" and "stop shopping, join us," they yelled as holiday shoppers downtown snapped pictures on their smartphones. One African American man on a skateboard shouted "get off the street" as the crowd swelled to as many as 400 people and marched down Market toward the Ferry Building. "You're nothing but a bunch of ... crybabies!" he yelled, adding a vulgarity made famous in a Trump video. The man, Charles Brown, 19, of Newark, later explained that although he doesn't support the president-elect, he was duly elected and should be given a chance. "We've got to deal with what we've got," Brown said, admitting that he did not vote. "This is giving him the publicity that he wants." The Market Street protests followed peaceful demonstrations in both Golden Gate Park and Lake Merritt in Oakland against President-elect Donald Trump during the day. BERKELEYSIDE: A man in his 50s who went up to Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley while election returns were playing on a screen Tuesday evening shouted racist and homophobic phrases at two students, according to the University of California Police Department. The man then spat at them with spittle landing on one of the students. UCPD is classifying this as a hate crime. It wasnt easy keeping up with the marching bands and baton twirlers, but Dawnn Price-Yanez wasnt about to let her daughter get out of her sight. There she is, Price-Yanez yelled, pointing at a marcher with an embarrassed grin as she jogged, two American flags blowing in her hair, next to the Oakland Military Institute contingent in San Franciscos 97th annual Veterans Day Parade on Sunday. Thats my daughter! She was one proud parent among thousands of patriotic citizens, tourists and diners at outdoor cafes who lined the streets at Fishermans Wharf Sunday for the big hup-two-three-four in honor of the folks who fought for this country. The throngs waved tiny American flags, cheered and clapped under bright sun and clear blue skies as the ensemble passed Pier 39, marched by folks with chowder and crabmeat dripping off their chins along Jefferson Street and headed toward the reviewing stand near Aquatic Park. The marchers were led out at 11 a.m. by the U.S. Marine color guard and rumbling Harley-Davidsons driven by members of the motorcycle club the Violators. The only incident occurred about 20 minutes after the parade started when a member of the color guard fainted and needed medical attention. The parade was moved to Fishermans Wharf from Market Street last year after several years of paltry attendance. The change of venue appears to have been a success, drawing hundreds of out-of-towners away from the crab tanks and curio shops to see the spectacle. Its fun. I like it, said Remi Bagiriski, 33, of Poland, who rushed back from viewing the Golden Gate Bridge so he could show his 3-year-old son, Maciek, a bit of American-style military pride, along with a few fire trucks. Weve only seen (Veterans Day parades) in cinema, so when we heard about it we came right down, Bagiriski said, as his son giddily raced around the sidewalk looking for a better view of the parade. He likes the firemen. Their uniforms are the most exciting thing for him to see. But not all of the parade watchers were tourists. Shaun Supanich, 51, of San Francisco, said he has been coming to the Veterans Day Parade in San Francisco every year since his father, a submariner, took him when he was 6. Veterans are important to the United States. We owe our veterans a lot, said Supanich, clapping as the parade passed. They may not always get the results we want, but they fight for our freedom. Tony Jones, 60, of San Francisco came out in honor of his late father, an Army veteran who fought in Korea and Vietnam. These people fought for our liberty, Jones said. I came out to show my appreciation. World War II Navy veteran Myron Perry, 90, of Livermore said he thought about how scared he was during the invasion of Okinawa as he motored along the parade route in an antique fire engine. I dont think it ever goes away, said Perry, who also served in the Korean War. You can take the man out of the Navy, but you cant take the Navy out of the man. The parade featured several dozen participating groups, ranging from local marching bands to law enforcement organizations, as well as junior ROTC units from several city high schools and leather-vested veterans from Bay Area motorcycle clubs. Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite Google defeats Truman Fake news is a real headache for Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook. The latest: Googles search engine came under fire Monday for highlighting an inaccurate story from the pro-Donald Trump site 70news claiming that he won the popular vote in last weeks election; a link to the site appeared at or near the top of Googles influential rankings of relevant news stories for searches on the final election results. Meanwhile, Facebook has been under fire for how false news stories that it helped to spread could have influenced the election. Does charity begin at Apple? Apple is making it easier for people to give to charities by expanding its Apple Pay payments service to nonprofits, including the American Red Cross and the United Way. Apple Pay can speed transactions because people dont have to re-enter card and contact information, though people need to enable the service first. PayPal paying piper for picking pols Politics may make strange bedfellows, but it also leads to a lot of get-out-of-my-bed, fellas. Take San Joses PayPal, which got flack and threats of boycotts from conservatives in April even getting a story on Breitbart because it veered away from expanding to North Carolina because of a state law that targeted gays. Now it is one of 12 companies being boycotted by a new group called the DJT Resistance because co-founder Peter Thiel (who left the company when eBay bought it in 2002) and big investor Carl Icahn backed Donald Trump. The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techbriefing Perella Weinberg Partners agreed to combine with Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. to form an investment bank with more than $12 billion in assets under management. The combined firm, with more than 650 employees, retains the Perella Weinberg name and will be led by its CEO, Robert Steel, and Chairman Joseph Perella, the companies said Monday without disclosing terms. Alexandra Pruner, previously chief financial officer of Tudor Pickering, will have that role at the new firm. Aaron Hood, who was CFO under Steel, will become co-head of the combined companys asset-management business along with Tarek Abdel-Meguid. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate At a time when a new administration seems poised to challenge the countrys climate-change consensus, PG&E Corp. tapped an executive, Geisha Williams, who has led its clean-energy push as its new chief executive and president. Williams is currently the president of Pacific Gas and Electrics electric utility, which provides energy to millions of Californians. She had recently played a key role in handling the planned shutdown of PG&Es Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and oversaw PG&Es shift to getting nearly 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Williams, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant, is the first female, Hispanic CEO of a company PG&Es size, said Tony Earley Jr., the current president and chief executive. Earley, who returned from retirement to run PG&E in 2011, has held the top role for about five years. He will step down from his current position in March and lead the companys board of directors as executive chairman. Earley said Williams will continue PG&Es move toward clean energy sources while improving the reliability of an aging grid. In the future, were going to have to integrate more rooftop solar, more electric vehicles, and shes just the one to help us do that, Earley said. Williams will also have to continue monitoring the energy systems safety and repairing the public trust that was severely shaken by the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, which took eight lives, destroyed dozens of homes and cost the company millions of dollars. In August, the company was convicted on criminal charges of obstructing an investigation and violating safety laws. We will never forget the lessons that we learned as a result of San Bruno, Williams said. Its really caused us to focus on safety with a laser-like sort of manner. Theres always more work to be done. At the same time, Williams must signal to the companys investors that growth is back with the trial behind them, said Travis Miller, an analyst with Morningstar Inc. Wall Street will also look to Williams to continue the San Francisco companys move toward renewable energy, Miller said, especially when it comes to growing demand for once-niche energy services like charging stations for electric cars. Theres a lot of opportunity to respond to customer demand for new products and new services, Miller said. Its going to require a lot of work and coordination with regulators and politicians to be able to find ways they can serve customers best. Williams joined PG&E in 2007 after a 24-year career at Florida Power & Light Co. She was promoted to her current role of president in 2015, after becoming executive vice president of electric operations in 2011. As a woman and a minority, her promotion sends the right message to other Bay Area businesses, said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. To have a woman as its leader, and especially a Latina, says that theres a ladder up for women and for minorities, and thats very, very exciting news, Wunderman said. The current president of the gas division of PG&Es utility subsidiary, Nick Stavropoulos, will take on an expanded role there, becoming sole president and chief operating officer for both gas and electric. In his new role, Stavropoulos will effectively take on Williams current responsibilities of managing the electric arm, as well as continued oversight of the gas business. President-elect Donald Trump has openly favored relaxing clean-energy standards put in place by President Obama and removing the United States from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change. While that has raised questions of how energy distributors might be affected, his power to regulate utilities at the state level is limited. More important for PG&Es financial future under Williams will be how the utility continues to work with state regulators in California on clean-energy initiatives, Miller said, as well as replacing and maintaining its existing gas and electric systems. California, one of the largest energy markets in the country, is also one of the most if not the most highly regulated, which can make it difficult to turn a profit, Miller said. Williams needs to put in place a plan that addresses all of the issues in California related to renewable energy and next-generation utility redevelopment, Miller said. Its critical that the utility works with regulators to find ways to create profitable growth for investors. If PG&E cant get investors and regulators on their side, its going to be a very difficult go of it. Were very committed ... to make sure the energy that we are delivering to our customers is as clean as it can be, said Williams, while acknowledging theres more work to be done. On the gas side, the company has emphasized replacing large amounts of piping throughout PG&Es aging system that pumps gas to Californias homes and businesses, Earley said. Williams will have to continue that work. PG&Es stock closed at $58.15 as markets closed Monday, down half a percentage point on the days trading. PG&E reported earnings of $391 million, or 77 cents per share, for the third quarter Nov. 4, set back by millions in expenses related to the companys early-August conviction on criminal charges stemming from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosions. Earnings fell short of Wall Street projections of $1.10 per share for the third quarter. From the third quarter in 2015, profits increased 26.1 percent and revenue was up 5.7 percent. Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley We all understand that Canada is a neighboring country, but why must all of the election-sick Americans move there? Air New Zealand is offering a pretty sweet deal for those wanting to get away from all the election drama by giving Americans the opportunity to fly one-way for just $399. The offer flies to Auckland from select cities including Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York City is included, but with an upped rate are $874. BOSTON As a surge of students from China begins to level off, many U.S. colleges are expanding recruiting efforts in the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America in part to boost budgets that have come to rely on tuition dollars from international students. The number of Chinese students at U.S. colleges rose from 62,000 a decade ago to 328,000 last year, and they still make up 31 percent of all international students in the U.S., but growth is slowing. On Monday, the Institute of International Education released federal data showing that the number of Chinese students at U.S. colleges grew by 8 percent last year, the smallest uptick since 2005. Some schools are bracing for a decline, citing Chinas sluggish economy and sharper competition from colleges in Australia and other countries. For a variety of factors, were seeing a slowdown in Chinese enrollment, said Todd Maurer, a California analyst who advises schools and education companies on trends in Asia. I think were seeing the last years of double-digit growth. Colleges seek international students partly to boost campus diversity, but they also bring a financial perk. Most schools dont offer scholarships for international students, and charge them full tuition costs. Losing foreign students could hurt college budgets, especially at a time when some public universities are struggling with long-term drops in state funding. Stephen Dunnett, vice provost at the University at Buffalo, said many colleges worry they depend too heavily on revenue from Chinese students. They would be severely hurt if there was a contraction, he said. Theres no Plan B. Theres no other country that would send students in those numbers. Buffalo is among many universities that have expanded global recruiting efforts in part to hedge against a possible decline from China. Along with continued work in China, Dunnetts office has turned its attention to growing countries such as Vietnam and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. This year, the University of Massachusetts Amherst made its first recruiting trip to Mexico and also bolstered its work in Singapore and Vietnam. Instead of sending recruiters to China this year, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania focused on India and sent admissions officials to South America for the first time in about a decade. Other schools are exploring whether there could be a boom from sub-Saharan Africa. Nations such as Uganda, Ethiopia and Angola have growing youth populations and middle classes, two of the factors that U.S. colleges look for, but some say the regions governments dont offer enough funding to help students study abroad. Other countries where U.S. schools see recruiting promise include Cuba, Nigeria, India and Iran. A 70-year-old Half Moon Bay accountant, who was arrested after authorities said he pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from a Peninsula pizza chain, denied any criminal wrongdoing Monday. Mark Christopher Sturm said his arrest Thursday at his bookkeeping outfit in Half Moon Bay stemmed from a dispute regarding money due to his company. There was a client dispute, and that one client went to the D.A. thats it, he said when reached by telephone Monday. Sturm, though, declined to give specifies about the dispute, saying only, It has to do with invoices that were collected by way of basically an electronic transfer. The client, Zorbas Pizza, hired Sturm to do accounting, payroll and tax work. When the company conducted a recent audit, it discovered he had pilfered $55,000 from the companys bank accounts, San Mateo County sheriffs officials said. At the same time the business which operates restaurants in San Mateo, Millbrae and South San Francisco discovered the cash missing from its bank accounts, it also learned that Sturm had not paid $60,000 in required state and federal payroll taxes, officials said. Sturm was arrested at his office, Mark Sturm MBA Inc., on Capistrano Road in Half Moon Bay on Thursday after the Sheriffs Office obtained an arrest warrant. He was subsequently charged with one count of felony embezzlement by the San Mateo County district attorneys office. Sturm has since bailed out of Maguire Correctional Facility in Redwood City on $100,000 bond. He is due back in San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City on Dec. 13 for his arraignment. Anyone who believes they were victimized by the accountant is asked to call the San Mateo County Sheriffs Office at (650) 259-2314. Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky By Deepak Chopra, MD Donald Trump is causing unprecedented anguish and turmoil at this moment, on a scale not experienced since 9/11. Those who keenly feel this anguish are wracked by the prospect of a President-elect who succeeded through a con job that began years ago with the lie of birtherism. Trump continued along the same course, honing the untruths that fired up the shadow side of human nature, inciting resentment, hostility, and prejudice. According to assiduous fact-checkers at the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton deserved four Pinocchios seven times for telling an outright falsehood, while Trump deserved 59 Pinocchios. Lets accept that the worst things about Trumpism are true. The outrageous smear campaign that he ran committed a terrible wrong against Hillary Clinton. To expand his base, Trump went beyond the seamy collection of Southern racists, religious fundamentalists, ill-informed and uneducated whites, gun fanatics, and reactionaries who are the base of the right wing, to embrace the deeply committed haters in the alt-right. Its fully justifiable to be repelled by all of it. In fact, unless we gaze directly at the truth of the situation, we would beguile ourselves with denial, which is self-defeating. Trump is forcing a new story down Americas throat, and since everyone believes their own story, the appearance of a strong man who promises that only he can fix societys ills causes great inner distress. Id venture that this is the real cause for Trumps victory and our anguish. He smashed the liberal progressive story of Obama and the Democrats but simultaneously smashed the conservative story of establishment Republican conservatives. He did this with a bludgeon, using stark declarations that captured everyones attention, either pro or con: I am a winner. I cannot lose. My rivals are puny and incapable of standing up to me. Through my greatness I can make America great again. We are all in danger from outsiders and criminals who hate this country. Only I tell the truth, or when I chose to say anything else, it becomes the new truth. By constantly changing his positions, by ignoring any norm of fact-based reality, and demolishing the rational arguments mounted against him, Trump relied on pure personal will. The fact that this was enough for victory depended on one simple thing: the stories he demolished were too weak to survive. With millions of families losing their homes in the Great Recession and job opportunities either vanishing or being reduced to part-time work at low pay, the progressive America is already great message of Obama-Hillary Clinton rang hollow. The malefactors who recklessly created the downturn and ruined so many lives were not punished; in fact, they continue to be rewarded with power, influence, and money. At the same time, the establishment conservative message had led to total obstructionism, and for people desperate to be heard and helped, politicians harping on smaller government and worn-out social issues also rang hollow. The time was right for "a plague on both your houses" outsider. Into this confused and divided situation, Trump brought a wrecking ball, and what convinced millions of people to vote for him wasnt a belief that he was ready to be President or had the right temperament for the jobexit polls found that even among his supporters, only around 35-38% believed either thing. He succeeded by transcending the old stories, embracing risk and uncertainty, and preaching the very old story that problems are solved by putting a strong man in charge. Its a narrative that worked for Julius Caesar and the Emperor Charlemagne as well as Hitler, Stalin, military juntas, and banana republic dictators. If watching the social fabric unravel led voters to gamble on a raging outsider, how do we cure the anguish that envelops us now? We begin, I think, by noticing how quickly media pundits and professional politicians moved to accept what has happened. The reason is that pundits and politicians make their living telling stories and playacting. They both are in the business of selling their words and sticking to the persona that words construct. Words have power solely in our minds. The very people who were totally wrong about Trump or totally opposed to him will survive and thrive by adopting the necessary mindset. I am not being cynical, only pointing out that the roots of our anguish, as of our social divisions, exist in consciousness. On either side of the social divide, both sides think they are right. They deeply believe in the stories created in consciousness. Without a story to latch onto, theyd feel adrift, lost, confused, helpless, and vulnerable. At this moment, with their story smashed to bits, anyone who believes that bad people have suddenly prevailed, that right and righteousness must hold fast and fight back, will only prolong their own anguish. Activism based on anger and self-righteousness doesnt lead to anything but deeper divisions and discord. This is hard to face because it sounds like the counsel of despair. It isnt. Nor is it appeasement, since we accepted at the top of this post that all the ugliness of Trumpism is real. The deeper truth, however, is that divided societies reflect inner divisions. When Freud spoke of civilization and its discontents, he was making the same point: on one side is the civilized mind with its rationality and higher values, on the other the lower mind, or unconscious, with its anger, fear, and aggression. Freud believed that the unconscious could be brought to the surface, exposed to the light of reason, and therefore cured. But the worlds wisdom traditions disagree. They argue that only by transcending the divided mind, by finding and holding on to the pure, unified consciousness that lies beyond all divisions, including right and wrong, us versus them, light against darkness, can human nature finally realize a state of peace, love, and truth. At this radical moment, when anguish is being felt for all the right reasons, we need to accept that they who won are celebrating in the name of righteousness, too. Its inevitable on any battlefield that God is on our side is the belief of either enemy. No matter how deeply you feel the darkness of the world right now, the attitude we must adopt is sobriety, which I define as a clear-eyed vision about reality. Sobriety is devoid of self-pity, resentment, and blame. It takes responsibility and refuses to give away self-power to anyone else. Sobriety means you dont buy into second-hand opinionsweve just learned the bitter lesson of accepting what experts tell us just because it accords with our wish-fulfillment. In all sobriety, each person can choose to end his or her own anguish, by realizing that inner division has caused every misery in history as iron-clad belief systems clashed for no reason except to defend a story. No matter which story wins or loses, they all are a mixture of truth and untruth, reality and fiction, selfishness and altruism, faith and superstition, wish-fulfillment and rational thought. So why not give up the whole business of living by stories? Only when a person wakes up to this choice does wisdom begin to take hold. Wisdom isnt hidden or secret. The ability of the mind to transcend its own conflict and confusion lies at the heart of spiritual teachings East and West. For myself, there is no other route beyond Trumpism and the anguish it is causing. By waking up, we wont become aloof, indifferent, passive, or fatalisticquite the opposite. The forces of light are nothing but the forces of wakefulness, and their power comes, not from fighting the darkness, but from the inner strength, intelligence, truth, creativity, and purpose that exist in pure consciousness, our source. Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Clinical Professor at UCSD Medical School, researcher, Neurology and Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. www.deepakchopra.com President-elect Donald Trump turned heads when he said he is "fine" with same-sex marriage in a wide-ranging interview with CBS's Leslie Stahl broadcast Sunday night on "60 Minutes." Trump dodged a question on his personal view on the issue, saying that's "irrelevant," and then added with confidence, "It's done." "These cases have gone to the Supreme Court," Trump said. "They've been settled. And I'mI'm fine with that." On the campaign trail, Trump flip-flopped on his views on gay rights and gay people. He initially opposed House Bill 2, the law forcing transgender people in North Carolina to use public restrooms (in government buildings) that do not correspond with their gender identity. "Leave it the way it is," Trump told Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" show in April. "North Carolina, what they're going through, with all of the business and all of the strife and that's on both sides you leave it the way it is. There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic punishment they're taking." Trump later said that he supported North Carolina leaders on House Bill 2 in an interview with the News & Observer at a rally in Raleigh in July. "The state, they know what's going on, they see what's happening, and generally speaking I'm with the state on things like this," he said. "I've spoken with your governor, I've spoken with a lot of different people, and I'm going with the state." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When Stuart Thornton moved to California in the mid-90s, he took a job at Upper Crust Pizza in Santa Cruz. The worst part of that era wasnt living in a cubbyhole apartment sleeping three to a room, storing clothes in the kitchen cabinets or using the oven as the heater. It was that he was such a poor remedial dough prepper. The other workers would shake their heads, he says. My pride didnt mind being a dough guy; I just wanted to be decent at it. Ultimately the pizza worlds loss would be culture, music and travel writings gain. Thornton moved on to become a Big Sur Station ranger aide, then a film critic and a longtime music writer for the Monterey County Weekly. He continues to sleuth out rising music acts, but no matter the genre, he has an abiding intuition for off-the-beaten-path stuff thats about to go big. He just has great instincts, says Joe Burnett, a local condor naturalist who often joins Thornton on surfing and record-shopping trips. Of late, Thornton has taken to writing Moon Travel Guides, including Moon Coastal California, Moon California Road Trip and Moon Monterey and Carmel (with Santa Cruz enjoying a fat chapter). Here is his guide to Surf City. Mark C. Anderson is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com A few favorites Akira Sushi: Its worth traveling the short distance from downtown Santa Cruz to the Seabright neighborhood artfully decorated skateboard decks hang on the walls, and inventive sushi rolls include ingredients such as skirt steak, truffle salt, honey and tempura broccoli. They also do double happy hours every day (4-6 p.m. and 9:30-10:30 p.m.) 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. 1222 Soquel Ave., (831) 600-7093, http://akirasantacruz.com Kuumbwa Jazz Center: The joint enjoys atmospheric acoustics, intimate seating and professional staging plus impressive food like wine-braised short ribs and pitchers of beer brought to your seat. That, on top of the inspired booking that ranges well afield from world-class jazz into Americana and world music, make KJC a singular venue. A no-hassle way to take in music you wont forget, says Thornton. 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. (831) 427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org Tickets from $15. Picnic Basket: Thornton calls this discovery an antidote to Beach Boardwalk food. From the oft-changing seasonal menu of avocado-chicken-pickled onion salads and ham-Cambozola baguettes, he often aims for the simple and rustic sandwiches like the Reuben with El Salchichero pastrami. The ingredients are basic, but really good, he says. 7 a.m.-9 p.m. daily, 125 Beach St., Santa Cruz, (831) 427-9946, www.thepicnicbasketsc.com Davenport Landing Beach: The stiff breeze makes this a windsurfer destination in the afternoon, but surfers reign in the mornings. Beyond the lighter crowds, it boasts breaks on either side of the beach, a sea cave on the north end (accessible at low tide) and beautiful bluffs. This little beach combines the rugged beauty of the Central Coast with a stretch of sand worthy of SoCal, Thornton says. Open sunrise to sunset, Davenport Landing Road, off Cabrillo Highway, Davenport, www.scparks.com Pono Hawaiian Grill: Tacos Moreno and Taqueria Vallarta are common draws for Thornton post-surf especially when budget is a concern but this place wins with lomi lomi salmon ceviche, Korean short ribs and the popular poke bar with 15 types, including an ahi-onion-avocado-seaweed salad-kimchi number, plus regular live music guests with distinct island styles on weekends. I talked to a lot of locals putting together various travel books, Thornton says. And they are fired up on this place. Lunch and dinner daily. 120 Union St., Santa Cruz, (831) 426-7666, www.ponohawaiiangrill.com Logos Books & Records: Must-visit downtown institution Santa Cruz Bookshop never fails to present a number of items Thornton feels compelled to buy. But its Logos across the main drag (Pacific) that draws him for a hunt through used vinyl. The ever-shifting selection is scattershot and pretty sweet, the type of variety that invites, and rewards, investigation. Discounted new books, used books and more, too. 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 1117 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, (831) 427-5100, www.logosbooksrecords.com Verve Coffee Roasters: Youthful bustle gives this Wave City original which has since spread to Los Angeles its name-appropriate vivacity. Of the three outposts for the sown-in-Santa Cruz startup, Thornton goes for the downtown Pacific Avenue over the Seabright and Eastside locations. Its just a great place to sit by the window and watch the Santa Cruz menagerie, he says. 6:30 a.m.-9 p.m. daily, 1540 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, (831) 600-7784, www.vervecoffeeroasters.com Seacliff State Beach: About 20 years after Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk got its start in 1907, the Cal Nevada Co. bought a mothballed concrete ship, the Palo Alto, towed it to Seacliff State Beach in Aptos and built it into an amusement destination with a dance floor, swimming pool, restaurant and pier. That has all since closed, the pier excepted, but the view remains unique, and fishermen love the spot. The beach, meanwhile, welcomes camping, biking, hiking, RVs, windsurfing and geocaching, among other activities. I dont think theres another shipwreck like this along the whole California coast, Thornton says. 8 a.m. to sunset, 201 State Park Drive, Aptos, (831) 685-6442, www.parks.ca.gov The Crepe Place: The real revelation in Santa Cruz, according to Thornton, is this funky restaurant with a room for performances up front thats been known to draw national bands on top of strong local and regional touring acts. Memorable scores include J. Mascis, Black Angels and Hiss Golden Messenger. Up soon: Birdhouse (Nov. 14) and Baby Gramps (Nov. 21). 11 a.m.-midnight Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-midnight Saturday-Sunday. 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Tickets from $3, (831) 429-6994, www.thecrepeplace.com LONDON Prosecutors were finally able to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Monday about a possible sex crime in Sweden six years ago. They did not comment on the closed-door proceedings at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where Assange has lived for more than four years to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly to the United States. The long-delayed interview is expected to continue Tuesday and perhaps extend beyond that. Assanges version of events, and a possible DNA sample, will shape Swedish prosecutors decision on whether to charge him. The questioning was being led by an Ecuadoran prosecutor in the presence of Swedish prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a Swedish police investigator. Swedish officials are seeking information related to allegations of sexual misconduct made by two Swedish women Assange met in 2010. Some of the alleged misconduct is no longer being investigated by police because of the statute of limitations. Assange is, however, being questioned about the possible rape of one of the women who complained to authorities. He has not been indicted or charged but is the subject of an international arrest warrant. Prosecutors say no immediate decision on the future of Assanges case will be made. They also said no public statements will be provided after the questioning. Assanges Swedish defense lawyer, Per Samuelsson, complained that he has been barred from the hearing. Im not on the list of persons that Ecuador has drawn up and allowed to be present, Samuelsson told the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. An Ecuadorean lawyer has taken up this question as a formal issue in the introduction of the hearing. Assange has denied wrongdoing and says he fears being extradited to the U.S. because of his WikiLeaks work. It isnt known if he faces a secret grand jury indictment in the U.S. The sex crime allegations were made shortly after Assange and WikiLeaks became well known worldwide for releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government documents. One Swedish woman said Assange intentionally damaged a condom and pinned her down while having sex. A second woman said Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep. In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. A Swedish investigation into the crimes was opened, then dropped for lack of evidence, and then started again as prosecutors sought to question Assange about possible molestation and rape. By then Assange was in Britain, making it harder for Swedish prosecutors to question him. They sought an international arrest warrant for him that was issued in November 2010. Assange surrendered to police in London and was freed on bail, receiving support from a wide range of celebrities including filmmakers Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. He then moved into the Ecuadoran Embassy in London in June 2012, putting him out of reach of British authorities. BRUSSELS Top European Union diplomats called Monday for more robust European defense and a greater European voice in world affairs as Donald Trump whose isolationist, protectionist promises have worried many in Europe prepares to assume the U.S. presidency. With many questions surrounding Trumps policy plans, EU foreign ministers agreed at talks in Brussels on the need to strengthen Europes role in world affairs until the future of trans-Atlantic relations becomes clearer. In a first concrete step a day after the anniversary of the deadly Paris attacks in which 130 people died last year, the ministers signed off on a sprawling new security and defense plan. But the plan is a far cry from the idea of an EU army with a military headquarters that was criticized by some EU partners at NATO. It identifies Europes main tasks as responding to external threats, building the security resilience of partners outside the EU and protecting the 28-nation bloc and its citizens. This is a qualitative leap in the European Unions security and defense, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters after the meeting. She said work on taking it forward would begin within weeks. Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said, I think there is a realization this is a strategic moment for Europe right now. We are surrounded by autocratic, assertive or fragile countries. That means we have to take more of our own responsibilities. In another move Monday, the ministers reaffirmed their support for the Iran nuclear agreement, which Trump has branded the worst deal in the world and vowed to renegotiate. They said the European Union reiterates its resolute commitment to the part of the action plan that EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany agreed upon with Iran. The plan includes lifting nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions and engaging with the private sector and economic operators, especially banks, to promote growth in trade and investment. While campaigning, Trump called the pact a lopsided disgrace and railed against its time-limited restrictions on Irans enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trumps exact plans are vague, though, and renegotiating a deal Iran and other partners are happy with would be difficult. But perhaps Europes most pressing problem is to understand how Trump wants to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and destabilizing role elsewhere in Ukraine. Any signal from Trump about a warming of U.S. relations with Russia is likely to embolden already-reluctant countries like Germany, Italy and others to push for an end to the sanctions regime. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisted Monday that Trumps presidency could be a moment of opportunity for Europe. Johnson, who championed Britains exit from the EU, said Trump is a deal maker and I think that could be a good thing. MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi troops entered a town south of Mosul on Sunday where Islamic State militants had destroyed artifacts at a nearby ancient Assyrian archaeological site, while special forces fended off suicide bombers during a cautious advance into the northern city. The push into Nimrud was the most significant gain in several days for government forces, potentially opening up the area for teams to assess the damage done to the famed ruins just outside the town. Troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city and the biggest urban area under Islamic State control, as part of an offensive launched last month. The special forces have advanced the farthest so far, and hold a handful of districts on the citys eastern edge. But their progress has slowed in the face of fierce resistance in dense urban neighborhoods full of civilians. The operations commander said troops took Nimrud, 19 miles south of Mosul, after heavy fighting. It was unclear if they had liberated the nearby 13th-century B.C. archaeological site, which Islamic State destroyed with explosives according to videos they released. The 9th division of the Iraqi army has liberated the town of Nimrud completely and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings after the enemy suffered heavy casualties, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Raheed Yar Allah said in a statement. The late 1980s discovery of treasures in Nimruds royal tombs was one of the 20th centurys most significant archaeological finds. The government said militants, who captured the site in June 2014, destroyed it the following year using heavy military vehicles. Video footage released by the jihadis at the time showed bearded men hammering, bulldozing and ultimately blowing up parts of the ancient Iraqi treasure, ripping down huge alabaster reliefs depicting Assyrian kings and deities. They claim the artifacts promote idolatry and violate their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law. In Mosul itself, the special forces said they have cleared the Qadisiya and Zahra neighborhoods. Over the past week they have inched forward slowly, trying to avoid casualties among their troops and civilians as suicide bombers in armor-plated vehicles charge at them from hideouts in densely populated areas. The only weapons they have left are car bombs and explosives, said Iraqi special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi. BAGHDAD Suicide bombers targeted two major cities in Iraq on Monday, striking security forces in the Sunni city of Fallujah and Shiite pilgrims in the holy city of Karbala in the countrys south, killing at least six people in each attack. The bombings are an apparent attempt by the Islamic State group to strike back as government troops advance on their stronghold in the northern city of Mosul. The Sunni militant group claimed responsibility for both bombings. In Fallujah, the attack was carried out by twin suicide car bombers in the city center the first such incidents since Iraqi forces in late June declared it fully liberated of Islamic State militants after a monthlong operation aided by U.S.-led air strikes. Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan said one of the Fallujah bombers killed two policemen and wounded 17 people, including nine civilians. They hit a security checkpoint, he said, adding that traffic had been heavy in the area and around 10 vehicles including an ambulance had been damaged. The second bomber killed four people, including two policemen. Islamic State claimed responsibility, posting videos online of the bombers before the attack, their faces masked and brandishing assault rifles. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State, in January 2014. Since the group was driven out, families have begun returning to the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Earlier in the day, a suicide bombing targeted the sacred Shiite city of Karbala, killing at least six civilians in an attack also claimed by Islamic State. According to Maan, the ministry spokesman, six suicide bombers tried to sneak into Karbala from its western outskirts but security forces detected and killed five of them. The sixth attacker broke into a house in the citys Ayn al-Tamer neighborhood, where he detonated his suicide vest, killing six people and wounding another six, Maan said. The attack came as hundreds of thousands of faithful Shiites have been walking to Karbala to commemorate the seventh century death of Imam Hussein, prophet Muhammads grandson and an iconic Shiite martyr. The city, where Imam Hussein and his brother are buried, is located 55 miles south of Baghdad. On Sunday, pilgrims are expected to converge on the city for the climax of a 40-day mourning period, known as al-Arbaeen. PARIS Less insouciant, more policed France is a changed place since Islamic State extremists killed 130 people in the countrys deadliest attacks a year ago. Fearing its becoming more divided, too, survivors and victims families marked Sundays anniversary of the violence by pleading for national unity. Tourism is hurting, armed forces roam streets and France is still under a state of emergency that rights groups call abusive and ineffective and that the prime minister now says may be extended yet again. We always have this fear that weighs heavily in our hearts. We always try to be careful. And every time we pass by here, we think of them, said Sabrina Nedjadi, paying respects Sunday at two cafes in her diverse eastern Paris neighborhood targeted in the attacks. At midday, hundreds of balloons were released to honor the memories of the victims; at dusk, paper lanterns were released into the Canal Saint Martin, bearing red, white and blue lights representing the French tricolor. While French warplanes are targeting Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the state of emergency at home allows broadened police powers to search homes and monitor communications. But it could not prevent further attacks on France over the past year, including a truck rampage in Nice by a man claiming allegiance to Islamic State. Yes, terrorism will strike us again, Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned this weekend The International Federation for Human Rights warned in a recent report: France is now in a situation where an exceptional regime is becoming permanent, in the name of combatting terrorism. But there is little evidence that this approach is working and it comes at a cost to fundamental rights. As silence descended Sunday on Paris for a series of commemorations, the son of the first victim of the attacks spoke out for tolerance in the face of hate. Manuel Dias, an immigrant from Portugal, was killed by a suicide bomber outside the national stadium during a match Nov. 13, 2015. Under heavy security, President Francois Hollande unveiled a plaque in his memory Sunday near the Stade de France. Dias son Michael said his father was living proof that integration is possible, necessary to end such violence. Mourners, tourists and residents streamed to the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed by three attackers who also took hostages. The concert hall reopened Saturday night with a concert by Sting. BEIRUT Turkish warplanes on Monday struck Islamic State positions in and near the northern Syrian town of al-Bab while Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters inched closer to the town, one of the extremist groups largest remaining strongholds in the country, Turkish state media and Syrian activists said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks Syrias civil war, now in its sixth year, said the air strikes and the shelling killed three people and wounded 30 others. The stepped-up campaign by Turkey comes after Ankara first sent ground forces into northern Syria during the summer, pledging to clear the border area both of the Islamic State group and the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, which it views as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Since then, Turkish troops and opposition fighters allied with them have captured wide areas along the border with Turkey, cutting off Islamic State fighters in their self-declared caliphate from the rest of the world. They have also captured dozens of towns and villages in northern Syria. Turkeys Anadolu news agency reported 15 air strikes in al-Bab on Monday, saying they destroyed two command centers, an arms depot and two buildings used as headquarters. Also, the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said Turkey-backed opposition fighters captured three villages on Monday northwest of al-Bab and another village northeast of the town. The observatory confirmed that four villages near al-Bab were taken, adding that the Turkey-backed fighters have captured 29 villages in the al-Bab area over the past week. The push has helped Turkish troops and opposition fighters inch closer to al-Bab, where a long battle with the Islamic State group is expected to take place soon. Also Monday, Syrian government warplanes struck the last functioning hospital in the town of Atareb in northern Syria, wounding some staff members and knocking it out of service, according to the observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group. The Russian military, meanwhile, accused militants in Syria of having used chemical weapons against Syrian government troops in the city of Aleppo. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said about 30 Syrian soldiers from the elite Republican Guards were poisoned in the attack, which he said occurred in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo late on Sunday. The Russian military also announced that one of its fighter jets based on a Russian aircraft carrier near Syrias shores crashed on a training mission but the pilot survived. What a Trump Presidency Means to New Mexico As President-elect Donald Trump moves into transition mode and starts naming key staffers, folks in New Mexico are beginning to speculate how the billionaires national policies will impact the state. KOB compiled a list and around school vouchers, immigration, taxes, term limits and federal jobs. And the folks at the Santa Fe New Mexican talked to experts who say from Trumps White House. Still, small business owners about their prospects for the next four years. Protesters Arrested in Santa Fe Just like in other parts of the country, on Saturday afternoon to express their anger over Donald Trumps election. SFR's Stephen Hsieh was on the Plaza and watched Santa Fe police officers arrest at least three vocal dissenters. Pearce Opposes Mass Deportations US Rep. Steve Pearce, the only Republican in New Mexicos Federal Delegation, isnt a fan of President-elect Donald Trumps plan to build a wall along the southern border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Instead, Pearce told Michael Coleman at the Albuquerque Journal that Health Care Companies Brace for Change Enrollment in the states health exchange may be surging ahead of 2017, but Steve Sinovic reports, New Mexico health care companies and clients are early in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Johnson Moving On After Election Now that Gary Johnsons campaign for the White House and other elected offices in the future is over, hes . This time, Johnson is planning to pedal his bike 3,000 miles along the Continental Divide from Canada to New Mexico sometime next June. Sanchez Considers Libel Lawsuit Milan Simonich reports that Sen. Michael Sanchez, who was defeated by a Republican newcomer backed by Gov. Susana Martinez, is considering against Advance New Mexico Now for distributing a campaign mailer that falsely accused him of taking a trip to Hawaii at taxpayers' expense, among other things. Pot Legalization One Step Closer Columnist Steve Terrell writes that marijuana legalization measures passing around the country and the Democrats' takeover of the New Mexico House could mean legalization is to passing in New Mexico. But dont count on the governor to sign any bill into law. Instead, the best option is still allowing residents to vote on a constitutional amendment. Ski Resorts Prepare to Open Several of New Mexicos ski resorts are around Thanksgiving with man-made snow. Now they have to hope temperatures cool down enough to keep it frozen. Santa Fe Reporter The 7.5 magnitude earthquake in the upper South Island that killed two people and triggered tsunami warnings disrupted the port operations of at least four cities. Port operations in Napier, Wellington and Christchurch were all hit by the quake, centred near Hamner Springs in the Hurunui district, which has also cut power across parts of the lower North Island and upper South Island, disrupted rail and ferry services across the country and shut down the capital's CBD. The Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management says there is still a tsunami marine and beach threat from Napier to north of Dunedin, Cook Straight coastal areas and the Chatham Islands, but has lifted its warning for other regions. Christchurch's Lyttelton Port Co, which embarked on a long-term redevelopment plan after the 2011 earthquakes, has re-opened some operations, receiving and delivering freight and cargo including logs and cars, and hasn't found any major concerns in its inspections so far, it said in a statement on its website. "The railway line south of Christchurch is open, as is the Rolleston to Christchurch route. However, the Christchurch to Port route remains closed and we are awaiting further updates from KiwiRail," it said. Napier Port closed while the tsunami warning was in place, and the sole boat in port, a fishing vessel, was sent out to the harbour, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "Operations resumed early this morning and we are monitoring the wave activity closely," she said. "Our engineers are undertaking a full assessment of our infrastructure, including hydrographic surveys of the inner port and shipping channel, and early indications are that the port has not sustained any damage." State-owned rail operator KiwiRail, which runs the inter-island ferry service, says Wellington's ports have sustained damage, though council-owned operator CentrePort, which was damaged during the 2013 quakes centred in the upper South Island, has yet to comment, and Timaru's PrimePort evacuated staff in the early hours of the morning, according to a Timaru Herald report. Dunedin's Port of Otago said it hasn't faced any disruptions from the quake or tsunami warning, while Bluff-based South Port New Zealand wasn't immediately available for comment. BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Air New Zealand issues Performance Rights Heartland announces new Director of Heartland Bank GEN - Agreements in Principle to Issue New Shares Geraldine McBride steps down from Sky Board Sky ASM 2022 South Port NZ Ltd - Results of 2022 Annual Meeting November 2nd Morning Report AIA - Auckland Airport announces executive team change South Port NZ Ltd - 2022 Annual Meeting ENS - Rights Issue Offer Document Debenture holders of collapsed finance company Capital + Merchant will find out by the middle of next month the timing of any further distributions following the settlement of a long-running court claim against the firms trustee Perpetual Trust. A confidential settlement of the case, first filed by the receivers KordaMentha in August 2012, was reached just as the claim was due to be heard in the High Court at Auckland today. The receivers Brendon Gibson and Grant Graham said in a short statement that the only disclosures to be made will be included in mandatory statutory reporting and they have no further comment due to the confidentiality terms of the settlement. The court action was funded by litigation funders, Australia-based Litigation Lending Services. In their last six-monthly report in August, the receivers said if the claim succeeded, the litigation funder will be the first party to be paid from the proceeds. In addition to being repaid the amount it spent funding the litigation, the funder will also receive an undisclosed portion of the settlement and will take some time to know if investors will receive any return, the report said. Perpetual Trusts payout is covered by insurers. The claim for $94 million in damages alleged a breach of the trustees duty of care. The finance companys legal advisory firm Stace Hammond had already settled with the receivers for an undisclosed sum with the payment held in trust pending the outcome of the Perpetual case. Capital + Merchant collapsed in 2007 owing 7500 investors $167 million, and interest has been accruing on the debentures since the start of the receivership nine years ago. Receivers reports show the litigation funders have contributed a total of just over $1.3 million between mid-2013 and May this year. They also show the first receiver Grant Thornton was paid a total $1.85 million in fees until they resigned in March 2013 while receivership payments since the second receiver KordaMentha took over total $1.9 million when around $1 million in legal fees is included. The finance companys former auditor BDO Spicers has already agreed to an $18.5 million settlement with the firms liquidator, the Official Assignee. In their August report, the receivers said they were closer to making a distribution of $10 million, their share of the BDO Spicers payout, after settling some claims with first-ranking creditor Fortress Credit Corp and Perpetual Trust. Perpetual Trust was owned by Pyne Gould Corp at the time of the firm's demise but the trustee business has since been sold to interests associated with Andrew Barnes and is now part of the Perpetual Guardian Group that is planning to list in Australia and New Zealand by the end of this year in a $150 million initial public offering. Former Capital + Merchant directors Wayne Douglas and Neal Nicholls and chief executive Owen Tallentire were jailed for fraud in 2012 for what the Court of Appeal later called theft on a grand scale. BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Air New Zealand issues Performance Rights Heartland announces new Director of Heartland Bank GEN - Agreements in Principle to Issue New Shares Geraldine McBride steps down from Sky Board Sky ASM 2022 South Port NZ Ltd - Results of 2022 Annual Meeting November 2nd Morning Report AIA - Auckland Airport announces executive team change South Port NZ Ltd - 2022 Annual Meeting ENS - Rights Issue Offer Document Whats new? Unlike Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac Banking Corporation, which are already operating at close to optimum levels, National Australia Bank and ANZ Banking Group have been weighed down by problematic exposures to regions and markets that have been generating a sub-par return (and in some instances actual losses). However, it has been their ability to address these shortcomings during a period when top-line growth is limited that is now resonating with investors. Case in point is ANZ Banking Groups latest full-year results, which featured a headline statutory profit of $5.7 billion that represents a 24 percent decline on the previous corresponding period. While this is obviously not an ideal outcome for shareholders, after stripping back the layers, we view ANZ Banking Groups FY16 results as a necessary stepping stone to improved and more sustainable earnings down the track. From our perspective, the broad drivers of ANZ Banking Groups FY16 results comprised (i) a good performance from the banks domestic businesses, and (ii) the significant reshaping of the banks institutional business, with a particular focus on low yielding assets and improved productivity in Asia. This of course is not dissimilar to what National Australia Bank is seeking to achieve by selling low returning assets to create a simpler, better capitalised and more balanced bank. Adjusting for the $1.1 billion of specified items that were reported in FY16, we note that ANZ Banking Groups underling performance through the period was not nearly as bad as the headline numbers suggest. While ANZ Banking Group still reported a 2.5 percent decline in pro-forma FY16 profit, this represents a marked improvement on the 18 percent decline in cash profit and 24 percent decline in statutory profit. The other key point to note about ANZ Banking Groups FY16 results is that while the banks cash profit was lower during the period, the impact that this had on net capital generation was negligible. This was due largely to credit risk-weighted asset reductions (excluding foreign exchange impacts) of $12 billion in ANZ Banking Groups institutional business. This of course adds support to ANZ Banking Groups CET1 ratio and ability to distribute 60-65 percent of cash earnings as dividends. Outlook While it seems reasonable to expect managements transformation plans for ANZ Banking Group to crimp near-term earnings, we expect the strategy to ultimately pay dividends for shareholders. Not unlike National Australia Bank, we expect ANZ Banking Groups decision to optimise its operating structure and credit exposures to deliver incremental gains in ROE over the next several years, with this likely to translate to a higher per share metrics (i.e. book value and earnings multiple). Price Based on consensus earnings estimates for FY17, ANZ Banking Group is trading on 11.7 times and offering a dividend yield of 5.9 percent. While noting the near-term earnings risks, we view the implied payout ratio as comfortable. Furthermore, we note that ANZ Banking Groups overall investment case is supported by the stocks technical set-up, with our analysis suggesting the recent share price gains will continue to press on toward a confluence of resistance at $29.80 per share. Summary We believe that the near-term risks associated with ANZ Banking Groups exposure to the Asian region have been factored in to the banks share price. Furthermore, on a medium-term view, we believe that ANZ Banking Groups future growth prospects are arguably superior to its major peers, with this based on the view that the bank has a strong competitive position in Australia and New Zealand and an early mover advantage and more recently optimised exposure to Asia. James Lennon is a senior analyst at investment research and funds management house Fat Prophets. To receive a recent Fat Prophets Report, CLICK HERE Disclosure: ANZ is held in the Fat Prophets Concentrated Australian Share and Australian Share Income models. Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The latest results season has proven better-than-feared on both sides of the Tasman New Article is coming soon! Hardening up - James Hardie Decmil Group - The Ducks are lining up Spark New Zealand: Taking Something Off The Table Vocus Communications Amcor Apple QBE Insurance Hot stock - Domain Holdings Australia Unit: Detachment 14, 372d Training Squadron Location: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), Alaska Mission: To train and inspire the Airman of Americas Last Frontier. Vision: Provide field training and training support that makes a lasting difference. Motto: Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow Staff: 15 Active Duty Personnel What We Do: 372nd Training Squadron, Detachment 14 is located at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in north Anchorage, Alaska and provides formal advanced skills training to the Airman of the 3rd Wing primarily for the fifth generation F-22 Fighter. The students of yesterday here at the 3rd Wing are rapidly becoming the leaders of tomorrow who are fully capable of providing top cover for America. Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Williams, a resident F-22 Egress instructor who has taught 58 students throughout the past year, shares his vision of how our students are becoming the next generation of leaders, and why our mission is essential to an Airmans career. He states, training is the essence of transformation, and todays preparation determines tomorrows achievements. With over 400 students and 9,000 instructional hours taught throughout the various AFSCs here at Det 14 during the year, the transformation throughout JBER is evident, and the achievements are even more discernable. Master Sgt. John Hughes, Det 14 Production Superintendent, says Not only have our students provided America the capability of intercepting 192 Russian aircraft, but have also proven that they are capable of deploying worldwide at a moments notice to fight the war on terrorism with their expertise gained here at the detachment. I am very proud of the cadre of Det 14 as they not only impart expert advanced F-22 skills training but also mentor students at various points in their Air Force career and provide them with information that may not reach them in the day-to-day launch-recovery grind of the flight line, said Senior Master Sgt. Clinton Stapleton, detachment chief. The bottom line, as Tech Sgt. Michael Owen Aerospace Ground Equipment Instructor puts it, Our mission is to sharpen the skillsets of the Air Force Expeditionary Warriors through specific and rigorous training programs. TOKYO: Amid India's efforts to woo investors, Japanese industry has sought early passage of the amended Land Acquisition Bill and further relaxation of "restrictions" on foreign financing in certain sectors to ensure "free and smooth" corporate business activity by its companies in India. The recommendations have been made in a joint report of 'India-Japan Business Leaders Forum' 2016 which was presented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe here on Friday. The Japanese Inc has also suggested reforms in the tendering processes in the infrastructure sector in India by introducing and expanding use of a comprehensive evaluation system, allowing one company bids and some other measures. "The business communities of India and Japan will continue to cooperate in strategic areas such as the promotion of economic partnerships, improvement of the business environment, and infrastructure development, and on issues of a global scale. "In so doing, they will cooperate with the governments of both nations from a business standpoint to ensure that the Indian and Japanese economies will grow together and continue to act as growth engines in the global economy," the report said. In its recommendations, the report said, "In India, free and smooth corporate business activity, including by Japanese companies, requires the development of systems for the prompt and smooth introduction of a GST and the steady implementation of the Agreement between Japanand the Republic of India on Social Security. "In addition, the following are also essential: the early passage of a bill for amendment of land acquisition laws; the organisation, streamlining and international conformity of permanent establishment (PE) taxation, transfer pricing taxation, standards and certification systems, and intellectual property systems; further relaxation of restrictions on foreign investment and financing in the distribution sector and other sectors; and appropriate levels of service taxes in industrial complexes, etc." The report added that the business leaders of the two countries "strongly urge the Indian government to step up its approaches on these issues and the Japanese government to cooperate in their improvement." To ensure "fairness, transparency, and predictability" in administrative procedures in India, they called for the establishment of an Administrative Procedure Act and the simplification and expedition of the various procedures. The Act would provide for common rules concerning procedures for penalties, etc by administrative bodies and the procedure for establishing Administrative Orders, said the Forum in its report. Regarding national taxes, an Act on General Rules for National Taxes should be established, and similar state legislation should be enacted in each state for regional taxation, it further recommended. The joint forum report referred to projects like the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC) as symbols of the cooperation between India and Japan and called for the continued advancement of infrastructure development, including roads, railways, ports, airports, electric power and smart grids, water treatment, and industrial complexes. At the same time, it said, Business leaders of Japan and India, from the stand point of promotion of development of high quality infrastructure through public private partnership, asks Indian government to implement the following: "Introduction and expanded use of a comprehensive evaluation system in tendering process to reduce life cycle cost and to correctly evaluate technological value; rationalisation and optimisation of risk and role sharing between public and private sectors in public private partnership (PPPs) projects including provision of government guarantees; allowing of one company bids when deemed necessary; and implementation of tenders in a whole and thorough way per each project." Welcoming the civil nuclear cooperation agreement, the joint business forum said stronger engagement is needed between Japan and India in high-technology areas, based on an agreement between the two countries in the area of defence and security. "Strengthening of India-Japan economic cooperation through Japan-India Special Strategic and Global Partnership must be implemented based on free and open trade and investment framework. The result would enhance the economy of Asia and Pacific region, which would in turn contribute toward sustainable growth of the world economy," the report said. "Business leaders of India and Japan recognise that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) would contribute toward expansion of regional production network and strengthen supply chains through not only liberalisation of trade and investment but also through integration of rules of origin and introduction of regional cumulative rules," it added. The forum said these measures would contribute toward fulfillment of Modi's "Make in India" policy. "For this purpose, RCEP should be concluded swiftly, in a comprehensive manner with setting high standards. Business leaders of the two countries agreed to continue in taking joint initiatives toward this end," it said. Read Also: Dell EMC, Pi Datacenters Announce Strategic Partnership Reliance Group Invests $12 Mn In Realty Firm Square Yards BENGALURU: Aiming to put a ban on black money across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently demonetized the 1,000 and 500 Rupee notes with a highly confidential approach. While addressing the nation, Modi stated that the work of producing new currency notes to track down the source of black money started six months before the official announcement, and it was indeed a secret mission. Six months back, Modi government informed the RBI to be preparedfor this bold initiative to curb black money. As replacing over 23 billion currency notes was expected to be a daunting task, Modi instructed RBI that the information about this secret operation should not be leaked in any manner, not even among his own Cabinet. The main motive behind stopping the transaction of black money was to uplift the countrys economy in an unexpected and smart way. Visualizing success, he knew that the people would be forced to use only the legal methods of transaction networks, which would also streamline the process of taxation in the country. Reports suggest that the officials that were a part of the demonetization process were effectively notified about the mission with papers printed in the same press where the Union Budget papers were printed; mastering a high level of secrecy. Moreover, as the Prime Minister addressed, his Cabinet members were not even allowed to leave the room. Lastly, with this move e-commerce enterprises and banks have seen a drastic surge in the economic growth. Read Also: Many UN Members Favour UNSC Permanent Seat For India Give Me 50 Days To Weed Out ill-Gotten Wealth: Modi UNITED NATIONS: India's bid for a permanent seat in a reformed UN Security Council has received a strong support from many UN member states, including the UK and France, who emphasised that the the world body's top organ must reflect the emergence of new global powers. More than 50 speakers shared their suggestions, perspectives and concerns over reform of the 15-nation UNSC during a General Assembly session here last week. "Many favoured bolstering representation for such emerging powers as Brazil, Germany, India and Japan. While some spotlighted the progress made in recent years through the intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform process, others voiced deep frustration that more had not yet been achieved," a summary of the November 7 meeting posted on the UN website said. Among the large number of nations supporting a permanent seat for India and other emerging powers like Brazil and Germany were two veto-wielding permanent members of the Council, the United Kingdom and France. UK's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said at the session that Britain believes in a modest expansion in the permanent and non-permanent categories is the approach that the UN member states should collectively pursue. The increase in membership should be such that it balances representation with effectiveness. Rycroft reiterated his country's support for permanent seats for Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, alongside permanent African representation. Referring to British Prime Minister Theresa May's visit to India last week, her first bilateral trip outside Europe since taking office, Rycroft said she discussed "that very issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi." "Our support is steadfast, and I look forward to working through all available avenues to reach the more representative and more effective Council that we seek," he said. France's Deputy Permanent Representative Alexis Lamek said his country wished to see the Council reflect the emergence of new world powers, for which it supported the candidacies of Germany, Brazil, India and Japan and the increased representation of African countries in both the permanent and non-permanent membership. The five permanent members should also refrain from using the veto in cases of mass atrocities, a commitment that France had already made, he said. German ambassador to the UN Harald Braun, speaking on behalf of the G4 Group of Brazil, India, Japan and Germany, said Council reform was an urgent matter, saying the Council must be rendered fit-for-purpose in order to face the current global challenges of peace and security. He added that all regions must be adequately represented to ensure legitimacy and effectiveness. During the session, India's Ambassador to the UN Syed Akbaruddin, in a stinging criticism of the Security Council, had said that the 15-nation body is "stuck in its own time warp and politics." He had also lamented the "never-ending carousel of discussions" on UNSC reforms saying "it is time to break the impasse" to urgently reform the UN body that is "unresponsive" to the current global situation. Read Also: India, Japan Sign Landmark Civil Nuclear Agreement Modi Holds Wide-Ranging Talks With Abe BHUBANESWAR: Cash-starved people continued to queue up outside ATMs in Odisha even as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said there is no need to panic as enough cash in small denomination is available in banks. "Small denomination currency notes are available in required numbers. People have no reason to panic," a statement issued by the RBI, Bhubaneswar, said. The bank advised people not to hoard money. "As there is no shortage of money in RBI and other banks, there is no reason to keep additional notes in house. People can get money when they need it," said RBI Assistant General Manager R C Bal. "We have asked all banks to cooperate with people and meet their requirement," said RBI GM R P Mohanty. Sources said that about 3,000 of the total 6,028 ATMs in the state are not operating. Those which had cash ran dry within a few hours. People complained that banks gave them soiled and mutilated notes in exchange. "I got a bundle of Rs 50 from UCO Bank's CRP Square branch here. Of 100 notes, 12 were damaged. When I drew attention of the authorities, they asked me to take 2,000 notes instead," said a customer. Asked about the mobile banking facilities in tribal- dominated areas proposed by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the RBI General Manager said: "We have not started it yet. But the people can take help of Bank Correspodents (BCs) in getting their notes exchanged. (Reopens CAL4) People faced inconvenience in buying essentials like milk, fish and vegetables due to non-availability of notes of small denomination. Many said that shop owners are not accepting new 2000 notes. When his attention was drawn to the problem, Mohanty said the RBI counter gives 2,000 note and the rest are of small denomination. At several places, daily wage earners were made to stand in queue as their employers paid them old 500 or 1,000 notes. "I did not go to work for two days as the employer denied giving small denomination notes. For how many days can I sit idle? Therefore, I agreed to accept the old notes," said Sukanti Singh, a resident of Saliasahi slums. Like Sukanti, many daily wage earners stood in the line to exchange old 500 and 1,000 notes. Black Money Special Investigation Team Vice Chairman Justice Arijit Pasayat said the Centre took a bold step to demonetise 500 and 1,000, but the problems people are facing could have been avoided. Read Also: India's Nominee To Be Re-Appointed To UN Joint Inspection Unit Many UN Members Favour UNSC Permanent Seat For India WASHINGTON: Two-term Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the first ever Indian-American to be elected as a state Governor, is among the shortlisted candidates for Trump's Cabinet, according to a media report. If appointed, 45-year-old Jindal will be the first ever Indian-American to be included in the president's cabinet and second ever to be elected to the US Congress. As per the news report in The Wall Street Journal, Jindal is being considered for the position of Secretary of Health along with Ben Carson. His name also figured in the list of Politico whereas it was absent in the Buzfeed's list of potential Cabinet members of the Trump administration. Both Carson and Jindal are former Republican presidential candidates. While Jindal, after dropping out of the race, endorsed Senator Ted Cruz for presidency, Carson supported Donald Trump, the winner of the US presidential elections. Jindal, who has been keeping a low profile after dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, did not respond to queries on his possible Cabinet position. On the other hand, it is almost certain that Carson would be a part of the Trump's Cabinet. Trump, in the past, has indicated Carson to be his first choice for the position of Heath Secretary. Jindal has served as a principal adviser to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush Administration, during which he excelled with his administrative and management skills and later on went on to be elected to the House of Representative for two-terms and thereafter as Louisiana Governor twice. In 2015, he expressed his desire to run for the US presidency but dropped out of the race early this year following low polling among a crowded GOP aspirants of 17 candidates. During the primaries, Jindal was highly critical of Trump and his policies. Read Also: At Least Three Indian-Americans Win State Assembly Elections Future of U.S. with Donald Trump as its 45th President Source: PTI As soon as we landed on the Sasaab airstrip we noticed a vast difference between the terrain in Samburu and Maasai Mara. Whilst the dominant colour in the Mara had been lush green with sweeping hill sides, Samburu was a rusty red colour with dusty sands and a more arid landscape. Something new and exciting to explore with different animals indigenous to the area. As with most safari lodges, days begin early and we left our tent just after the sun rise. A pick-me-up of coffee and biscuits was enough for us to start our day and we headed to our safari vehicle to meet our guide Eric and our tracker. Sasaab Lodge, part of The Safari Collection, is actually located close to the Buffalo Springs National Reserves and it take around half an hour to get to the gates of the Samburu National Reserve and a further half an hour to get into the park and find the denser population of animals. For this reason there is only one game drive a day at Sasaab in the morning, and in the afternoon theres an activity more local to the lodge. The first animal that we saw was an elephant, as you know the gentle giants are my favourite animal and though wed seen a fair few on safari it still filled me with utter joy to see one. The herd was so much bigger than any wed seen in the Maasai Mara and they came so close Soon we were surrounded and it was time for some elfies (elephant selfies) As I mentioned, in my post about the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, elephants are affectionate creatures and intertwining their trunks is like a hug. Though Eric got a little nervous as this huge guy approached the car So we drove off in search of more animals. As well as being home to Africas big five, the area is also home to the Samburu Special Five which are found rarely anywhere else in Africa. The Gerenuk antelope above, with its characteristic graceful long neck is one such animal. Our next exciting spot was this beautiful pride of lionesses; it was such a thrill to be so close to such majestic creatures. Who affectionately nuzzled each other. Samburu is also famous for being one of the areas where conservationists George Adamson and Joy Adamson raised Elsa the Lioness, who featured in the iconic book and film Born Free. Virginia McKenna, who played Joy in the movie, and her husband and co-star Bill Travers subsequently set up the Born Free Foundation. The Born Free Foundation is a conservation and animal rights organisation established to help wild animals. Born Free Kenya does excellent work to protect the animals against poaching, offering education and working with local communities and partners to raise awareness of animal welfare. Even more specifically to Northern Kenya is the Ewaso Lions project an organisation set up to conserve Kenyas lions and other large carnivores. The main goal of the project is to promote a coexistence between wildlife and people using education to guide long term conservation. Ewaso Lions works closely with key partners, such as Sasaab Lodge, in order to promote conservation and run the project successfully. Conservation is absolutely paramount to the ethos of The Safari Collection and the team is totally committed to the preservation of Kenyas beautiful wildlife and landscape and to supporting these valuable projects. And was I scared to be that close to lion bearing its teeth? Well, a little bitbut I had absolute trust in Erics knowledge of animal behaviour and instincts and I knew we were in good hands. At 9.30am it was time to stop for breakfast and Eric found a beautiful spot by the Ewasu river and away from the lions! Our fantastic tracker started laying out some delicious fruit, cakes and museli And then our surprise Eric whipped out an oven and started making fresh pancakes on the stove! As the delicious smells emanated from Erics cooking area, I took a moment to enjoy my coffee. Honestly, I cant tell how peaceful and relaxing it is to enjoy your morning cuppa in the wilderness, not a single sound or another person apart from our little group in sight. 75% of the staff at Sasaab are employed from local community, this not only helps the local economy but allows the guests to understand more about cultural traditions. Our guide Eric and our tracker are both Samburu people and keen to tell us more about their local customs which really enhanced the experience for us. Born into a traditional Samburu family of eight children, Eric spent his childhood tending to goats and livestock but chose the path of attending college and gaining a hotel management degree and a certification as a guide and he has worked at Sasaab now for eight years and knows every little corner of the bush it seems. You should definitely come hungry to a bush breakfast (and we were having been up since 6am!) as well as the mini al fresco buffet and pancakes, Eric also prepared a full cooked breakfast. There is something so wonderfully incongruous about sitting down in the middle of nowhere and eating a fry up! Full and happy, it was back in the car to continue our safari. There are three types of giraffe, the Maasai Giraffe that wed seen in the Mara Triangle, the Rothschild Giraffe that wed encountered a Giraffe Manor and finally these guys pictured above and below. The reticulated giraffe is one of the Samburu Special Five and can only be found here in Northern Kenya, Somalia and Southern Ethopia. The giraffe itself is characterised by a beautiful regular pattern of polygons on the skin and is easily differentiated from the more common Maasai giraffe. Another member of the Special Five is a the Grevys Zebra which has a white belly and more rounded ears that is unique to its species. When Eric asked me what animal Id most like to see, the answer was easy. Id never seen a cheetah in the wild, either in Kruger Park or in Maasai Mara. Of course, he became determined to spot one for usand he did. We saw this beautiful creature lying in the shade of a tree And soon spotted this whole coalition of cheetah cubs. Its was truly magical to see cheetahs in the wild and they are beautiful creatures. Sadly the cheetah is very much becoming an endangered species with less than 7000 left in the wild. Its for this reason that The Safari Collection have become involved in the Mara Cheetah Project, set up to monitor threats to cheetahs in the Maasai Mara. As well as the wonderful morning safaris, a stay at Sasaab really allows you to see the cultural side of Samburu. The staff arranged for us to visit a local village to learn more about their customs and way of life. Eric was extremely well placed to tell us about a Samburu village, having been bought up in one himself. The Samburu tribe are actually related to the Maasai but are even more traditional and strict about adherence to their culture. Interestingly we learnt that there are 42 languages spoken in Kenya and the Samburu and Maasai both speak the Maa language though with a different dialect and speed. Ive never been to such an authentic tribal village before and it was really interested to see their huts built with mud, grass, fabric and in some cases dried cow dung. We even had the chance to step inside one of the huts and see exactly how the Samburu live. The people also rear herds of livestock, sometimes cows and sheep but here we saw mostly goats which wondered freely through the village, herded by the children. The staple food of the tribe is corn, milk and blood but they also eat meat on special occasions. Like the Maasai, the Samburu people wear brightly coloured shukas and the women wrap themselves in beautiful long traditional beads which are not only decorative but inform other members of the tribe about status and relationships. The Samburu women do most of the work around the village and maintain the houses, collect water and vegetables and care for the children while traditionally the men look after the cattle. Singing and dancing is an important part of their culture and we were treated to a sample from a group of children from the village. But I had a soft spot for this little girl with a sense of humour who mocked my photo-taking! Community outreach is incredibly important to The Safari Collection and Sasaab provides support to the Samburu people both in term of health care and education, for example a partnership with Medical and Educational Aid to Kenya has led to the treatment of over 10,000 patients with eye and vision problems around Sasaab and sister lodge Solio. UK Dental Charity SmileStar have consulted over 3,000 patients at The Safari Collection wilderness lodges and operated on over 1,000. Educational partnerships have provided scholarships for Kenyan children, a program for school meals and the Team Talk initiative to empower girls through sport. The Safari Collection is also dedicated to educating the Samburu people in the issue of FGM, AIDS and gender-based violence through a partnership with the charity S.A.F.E Kenya. It was incredible to hear more about the valuable work that The Safari Collection is involved with, a company dedicated to the conservation of the surrounding areas as well as the highest of hospitality. Have you ever been on safari? PIN FOR LATER: Our accommodation was complimentary on an all-inclusive basis. We covered the costs of transfers and park fees. On Trump and climate, America is split in two by these demographics Posted on 14 November 2016 by dana1981 The world is shocked that America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president. Exit polls show that the country is sharply divided on Trump along the same lines as its sharp divisions on climate change. Political ideology was the single strongest determining factor in the election. 90% of Republicans voted for Trump, while 89% of Democrats voted for Clinton. Ideology is also the primary factor associated with acceptance or denial of human-caused global warming, as climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained eloquently in this video: Race was the second-clearest determining factor in the presidential election. Trump won white voters by 21 percentage points; Clinton won minorities by 53 points. Minorities are also far more likely to accept and be concerned about climate change than white Americans. As Samantha Bee explained, white Americans bear responsibility for electing Donald Trump: The urban/rural divide was the third-strongest determining factor in the presidential election. Clinton won urban voters by 24 points; Trump won rural voters by 28 points. In many cases, cities are leading the way in taking action to curb global warming. Fourth, voters younger than 45 went for Clinton by a 12-point margin, while older voters preferred Trump by 11 points. Voters under the age of 30 voted for Clinton by an 18-point margin. Similarly, young Americans are far more likely to be concerned about climate change than older Americans. Finally, there is a gender gap, though its smaller than many expected. Despite accusations from 15 women that Trump groped, kissed, or assaulted them, and a recording of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, he only lost the female vote by 12 points the same margin by which he won the male vote, and approximately the same margin by which Obama beat Romney and McCain among women. White women even favored Trump by 10 points, and white women without a college degree by an astonishing 28 points. Basically, Trumps misogyny didnt dissuade women from voting for him. They normally favor Democratic presidential candidates by a margin of about 20 points more than men. Thats also the margin by which American women are more concerned about climate change than men. How did America elect Barack Obama and then Donald Trump? Its important to remember that as with Al Gore in 2000, more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than her victorious opponent. Al Gore received about a half million more votes than George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton will likely receive over a million more votes than Donald Trump. Bush and Trump were elected because of the antiquated electoral college system. Nevertheless, the popular vote was closer in 2016 than in 2012 or 2008. Republican voters were willing to forgive Trumps many disqualifying flaws. They didnt care about his constant lies. Eighty-one per cent of evangelicals voted for Trump despite his long history of immoral behavior. But many voters werent willing to overlook the media-generated, Russian hacker-assisted, FBI director-amplified, faux scandal of Clintons emails. And much of Clintons support was concentrated in areas like my home state of California, where she won by over 28 points, while enough rural white Trump voters were distributed across swing states to give him narrow victories and winner-take-all electoral college votes. Trump won four states with a total of 75 electoral college votes (Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan) by margins of 1.3 points or less. Its the same reason why Republicans control a large majority in the House of Representatives despite receiving more than a million fewer total votes than their Democratic opponents: rural, white, Republican voters are more widely geographically distributed than urban Democratic voters. America has become a minority-ruled country, that minority being rural white Republicans. Ultimately, explaining the election result is simple Republicans voted for Trump and Democrats voted for Clinton. Clinton received more votes, but Trump won most of the states in which the vote was close. Trump won in areas with less educated, older, whiter populations with fewer immigrants. In these isolated, insulated regions, people fear their way of life is vanishing, and theyre largely right. The US isnt a coal burning, manufacturing country anymore. Trump promised to change that, but he cant, and his policies will hurt his voters. America is changing and its not the fault of Democrats or immigrants, but Trump made them scapegoats and made empty promises to turn back the clock. Democrats need to find a way to connect with and help these groups who feel the government isnt on their side. What does this mean for the Earths climate? As John Abraham wrote last week, now that the Republican Party controls the US government, they own climate change. For years, America was the country most to blame for obstructing international efforts to curb climate change. Our senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. President George W Bush refused to take any action to cut US carbon pollution. Senate Republicans blocked the cap and trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives in 2009. Finally, over the past four years, the US has taken action and shown leadership in tackling climate change. As a result, humans had a slim chance of keeping global warming below the dangerous 2C limit. Trump and congressional Republicans have vowed to reverse that progress. The energy page of Trumps official presidential transition website focuses on extracting and burning lots and lots of fossil fuels and scrapping Obamas climate plans: We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan Trump has already appointed a climate denier who wants to dismantle the Clean Power Plan to lead the EPAs transition. If the Republican party continues on this path, the costs and suffering from intensified heat waves, floods, droughts, and hurricanes, sea levels engulfing coastal cities, etc it will be on the GOP. What do we do now? In the meantime, we must continue trying to break through Republican politicians science denial. Many Republican policymakers are rumored to accept human-caused global warming in private; we have to change the political climate so that this isnt a disqualifying position for a party leader to take in public. There is no reason that Republicans have to deny climate science and reality; in fact, theyre the only major political party in the world that does, and most of their voters support climate action. We can donate to and volunteer to help bipartisan climate groups like Citizens Climate Lobby, which is working with policymakers from both parties to build the political will to solve the climate problem. These groups are now more important than ever. Click here to read the rest #Itaewon tragedy Yoon pays 3rd visit to mourning altar for Halloween crush victims President Yoon Suk-yeol paid his third visit to a mourning altar for victims of the Halloween crowd crush Wednesday. Yoon has kept his public schedule to a minimum since the tra... #law Gov't proposes law lowering criminal age limit by 1 year to 13 The justice ministry on Wednesday put up a pre-legislation notice about a law revision on lowering the age of criminal responsibility by one year from the current 14, officials sai... 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A. Brown, Fadden The Trump victory does not presage a populist lurch to our political right. It does not even invalidate the established science of climate change. What it may indicate is reaction to a public policy shortfall in providing for the benefits of globalisation, liberalisation and free markets to be adequately distributed, for adjustments to be smoothed, or for the costs to be adequately mitigated. The answer is not in neo-protectionist reversal of these necessary policies. Rather it needs complementary measures. Australia's clunky tax and transfer system has so far afforded better mitigation than the US has managed, if imperfectly. But it may be approaching its limits. Education, training and engagement must be central elements of longer-term policy. More is called for, and this is where political leadership must focus. Mike Hutchinson, Reid Why can't all the pundits who managed to get it so badly wrong with the US presidential race now just shut the heck up and stop banging on about it? They've obviously lost all credibility to make any further comment! The real story is that we are now living in an era where consumers of news would rather think for themselves than swallow someone else's narrative. Michael Crowe, Hawker Andrew Leigh spoke recently in Parliament about his response to Donald Trump's election. I think the message he needs to take away is that Labor needs to start listening to its natural supporters and start leading from the opposition benches. The messages about humane treatment of refugees, freedom to marry, support for the environment, action to reverse climate change, fair support for those who need it, support for education according to need, and fair taxation of the rich are the issues that need action. This is not the time for a 'unity ticket' about anything. It is possible to lead from behind, but it takes brains. Good luck. Lynne Bean, Watson Defence Day defence I refer to Aaron Lane's scornful comments about the Defence Day in the article "Public Service Fails Fairness Test" (November 12, p18). About 15 years ago Defence asked its employees to work an extra five days a year as part of bargaining over a wage increase. One outcome was employees agreed to the extra five days' work and got Defence Day each year. Defence Day doesn't accumulate like sick and annual leave. If it's not used, the entitlement expires. It requires the boss's approval to be absent. All reasonable, and far removed from Mr Lane's over excited assertion "you just take a day off when you feel like it." Paul Keating and John Howard drove hard to implement enterprise bargaining in the Public Service. Employees now experience a wide variation in wages and conditions . Given Mr Lane's fondness for the "pub test", I suggest he get down to his local and ask whether or not Public Service employees doing very similar work should have widely different pay and conditions. Adrian Wellspring, Narrabundah LDA report buried It would appear the Auditor General's report on the Land Development Agency has been buried; nobody has been sacked nor were any concerns referred to the police. The government's action of splitting the LDA and creating an authority to oversight the resulting agencies is a joke; there will be an increase in Public Servants required, promotions of the staff involved in the concernsand a greater difficulty for the government to oversight the outcomes. Ed Dobson, Hughes Ultimate deterrent Don't be fooled by the admonitions by Messrs Turnbull and Dutton over the "one-off" US refugee transfer. Thanks to unexpected luck in the US election they are now working with US officials to threaten all our future regional prospective refugees with a guaranteed bounce to America. We never had such ultimate deterrent before, the only issue with it being how many human rights conventions it breaches that Australia is signatory to. Alex Mattea, Kingston Prowse absence disturbing Archbishop Christopher Prowse's decision not to attend the Marist Healing Ceremony breaks my heart as a Catholic. Once again, thanks to Damien De Marco for standing up. He is an amazing person full of love, joy and compassion. I have seen Damien fight on through mental pain and isolation because of his abuse and then rally for all victims of church child abuse. He is a true leader in the values of Christ. For Christopher Prowse to say he couldn't attend as it was Marist-specific and he is waiting for the royal commission to conclude is beyond disturbing . He then issues a press release to apologise and asks "sincerely for forgiveness from those whom I have offended". Forgiveness is not found in a press release. Forgiveness is found in reaching out to those you deeply hurt. Forgiveness is found in facing the Trinity and examining our deeds and thoughts and being truly contrite. I fully support Damien De Marco's call for Archbishop Prowse to resign. Laurence Byron, Gundagai Archbishop Christopher Prowse begs forgiveness ("Catholic archbishop apologises over Marist no-show", November 13, p4). That old Catholic mantra. Again. Doug Hodgson, Pearce The Liturgy of Lament at Marist College on the evening of November 10 was reported in the Canberra Times on consecutive days ("Marist College pledges 'never again"', November 11, pp2-3, and "Archbishop stays away from healing ceremony", November 12, p3). The second day's report was critical of Archbishop Prowse for his non-attendance and the Archbishop has subsequently apologised for that. I was among those gathered for what was a very moving ceremony. I stayed afterwards and interacted with quite a few of the people, many of whom I have known for a long time. Those with whom I spoke felt the ceremony was a good start in the healing process. Nothing will take away the pain or the lives lost and many questions will remain unanswered. But please God, some light will begin to shine through the darkness as it did on Thursday evening. Marist College has pledged "never again" will it allow such terrible abuse. (Bishop) Pat Power, Campbell Post-apocalyptic plans Under the ACT government's so-called master plan for Woden, it tore up, trees and all, an ugly but reasonably useful car park in Furzer Street for a stark and exposed concrete folly that attracts not even skateboarders. Next door it installed a barren paddock so embarrassingly ugly and pointless no one's allowed to go there even if they wanted to. I do sense a logic, though, in this post-apocalyptic design. It all matches the hulking, derelict Albermarle and Alexander buildings across the road. Matt Gately, Rivett Library peace lost A couple of weeks ago I visited the public library in Woden. The internet computers are in the middle of the ground floor, with not even any partitions around them. Right next to them were 50 children with their mums/dads and strollers running around, shouting, screaming and singing. The lady leading them was using a microphone and amplifier. Really! Is this really what we want and need our libraries to be like? Some time ago libraries were peaceful, quiet places with "quiet please" signs, where you could go to concentrate and focus on the intellectual task at hand. They were a very valuable public resource that enhanced our community's advancement, wellbeing and productivity. Today, libraries are nothing more than just another noisy and distracting public space. Peter Nielsen, Calwell Economic realities Robyn Coghlan (Letters, November 8) laments the course content of economics degrees. World peace was also claimed as a byproduct of "economics", but this deplorable remembers the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when we were on the brink of a nuclear war. In the school playground there was sombre speculation about Britain's intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities and whether "we won't feel a thing" was true. Our streets went awfully quiet as everyone was inside glued to the BBC waiting to see what Khrushchev and Kennedy would inflict upon us. Throughout all this my father is trotting around, bright, chirpy and optimistic. He observed WW3 is unlikely because all the politicians, generals, bankers, arms financiers, aristocracy and elites will die too or face an excruciating slow death when they leave their radiation shielding bunkers. That is a rational interpretation of the economic reality never mentioned in the textbooks. Ronald Elliott, Sandringham, Vic Talent will be lining up It was interesting to read how the public service is searching for visionary leaders of the future ("Public service on lookout for visionary leaders of future", November 11, p12). It's positioning alongside the report on the Senate inquiry into the bargaining debacle with the public service (same page) stood out. No doubt these super talented recruits will be beating a path to the public service door, this generous and caring employer, who has managed to stonewall for three years, trying to reduce employment conditions and delay minimal wage justice. R. Richards, Weston So the APS will be looking for future leaders who are "visionary, influential, collaborative, enabling and entrepreneurial". What a pity that few, if any, of these attributes can or will be found in any of their present or future political masters of the APS! Paul E. Bowler, Holder TO THE POINT HYPOCRITES, PERHAPS? I wonder how many of the Americans protesting against the election of Donald Trump actually voted. Brian Bell, Isabella Plains CAUSE FOR PAUSE Roger Dace and Gerry Murphy (Letters, November 13) may care to consider that had they got the president that the majority of Americans voted for, the protesters might not be feeling so aggrieved. Rachael Thew, Geneva, Switzerland PILE ON THE SPINACH The article "Australians predict bleak outlook with new leader" (November 12, p41) reminded me of the relevant advice of a hero of my early childhood, Popeye the Sailor Man. His favourite saying was "things are never so bad that they couldn't be worse". Peter Baskett, Murrumbateman, NSW BROTHERS IN QUALMS? Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how Boris Johnson is beginning to look more and more like an unkempt version of Donald Trump, while imploring us all to "give the man a go". Alan Hume, Burrill Lake, NSW TRUMPED-UP TURNBULL To paraphrase UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, "Malcolm Turnbull is Donald Trump with a more refined voice". John Passant, Kambah SUGAR-COATED POISON Watching Donald Trump's change in behaviour and language since he has become the US President-elect, reminds me of the Groucho Marx quote, "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing, and if you can fake that you've got it made". Ian De Landelles, Murrays Beach, NSW The snake-oil salesman outplayed the city slicker. Hugh Smith, Deakin LIGHTWEIGHTS ONLY Further to Allison Pearson's thoughtful article ("The next female candidate is decades away", November 11, p19): considering the qualities US voters apparently value when electing their president, perhaps Kim Kardashian or Pamela Anderson should have a go? Anne Laisk, Weston THINK, THEN WRITE Leesa Hicks was sitting in a central Wellington hotel messaging her family back home in Canberra when the cupboards started to shake. Minutes later, the doors and drawers of the fifth-floor room were slamming violently "like a poltergeist in a horror movie". "A wine glass flew out and smashed on the floor and coffee cups smashed inside the drawer," she said, recalling the effects of the 7.8 magnitude quake that hit South Island of New Zealand and killed at least two people on Sunday night. "Light fittings shook and my bed was heaving and rolling from side to side with me on it". A report overseen by Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris highlights the potential gains of greater sharing of financial data. Credit:Andrew Meares The sheer quantity of data being created every day is staggering. IBM has estimated the amount of digital data generated in 2002 now gets created every two days. Some of this is us sending pictures and videos to each other on WhatsApp it is fun but probably has little economic value. However, the growing pile of financial data clearly has value, and a growing number of businesses want to get their hands on it. In banking, there is an argument that more sharing of information such as electronic payments or account balances between businesses could benefit customers, because it would boost competition and cut prices. The Commission's report fell short of saying banks should be forced to share more of the information they hold about customers, but left little doubt that we can expect greater sharing of our financial information in the future. Even if the banks don't want to share much of the data they hold, the huge amount of public online information about people is opening up other ways for lenders to assess borrowers. Some US businesses assess loan applicants by looking at their social media activity, for instance. The Commission's argument is that over the long term, the proliferation of such data helps address the "information asymmetry" between lenders and borrowers. That refers to banks and other lenders charging relatively safe borrowers higher rates than necessary, because they can't be sure about their creditworthiness. "The digital age new data sources and increased technical capacity to analyse existing and new data is transforming the financial sector, bringing with it innovation, competitive pressures, more efficient decision making by financial service providers and more empowered consumers," the report says. Even so, the benefits of cheaper finance need to be weighed against the clear risks from financial corporations analysing ever-growing piles of data on their customers. One risk is that more financial data leads to "spamming" of customers with unsolicited credit offers that are not in customers' interests. Another obvious risk is the potential for privacy breaches. But perhaps the most worrying risks created by the data revolution are in insurance. Whether it is tracking their customers' exercise habits through Fitbits, or monitoring driving habits with cars' on-board computers, insurers are also tapping into vast amounts of data on their customers. The carrot for consumers is the prospect of lower premiums for the lower-risk customers. Insurers are already offering deals whereby consumers can get a cheaper policy if they show they're doing more exercise, through a Fitbit, or cheaper cover for safer drivers. However, big data is also going to mean more consumers are going to find they are uninsurable. A Monday report from the Actuaries Institute says big data has made insurers so good at spotting risks that it will soon create policy headaches for governments, because prices for some highest-risk consumers will be unaffordable. This is already the case if you're trying to get flood cover in the highest-risk areas. Policies in some flood-prone parts of Queensland became so unaffordable after the 2011 floods that the state government was forced to intervene and build levies to protect towns. Genetic testing, which is becoming far cheaper and is expected to grow in popularity, is even more problematic. National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Thorburn's pay packet rose to $6.7 million last financial year after the bank unloaded a swag of poorly performing overseas businesses in order to lift returns. The bank's annual report, published on Monday, showed Mr Thorburn's remuneration increased by $1.2 million from the previous year, mainly because of performance rights granted as part of his bonus. It comes after a year in which the bank floated United Kingdom lender Clydesdale Bank, which had long been a drag on profits, while also reaching a deal to sell 80 per cent of its life insurance business to Japan's Nippon Life. Mr Thorburn has instead vowed to plough more capital into the higher-returning Australian retail and small business banking markets and its New Zealand business. A woman from Coffs Harbour is facing more than 35 years in a United States jail after being accused of being involved in one of the biggest insurance frauds in Californian history. Kirsten Wallace was due to face a Los Angeles court early on Tuesday after being charged on Thursday with multiple counts relating to the alleged fraud of $US176 million ($233 million) involving drug rehabilitation centres. A mugshot of Australian Kirsten Wallace following her arrest in US on significant fraud matters. The California Department of Insurance alleges Ms Wallace, who was the chief financial officer of the Community Recovery company which ran about 20 rehab centres, and company owner Chris Bathum were involved in "an elaborate conspiracy" to defraud patients and insurers. Prosecutors will allege Ms Wallace and Mr Bathum, who is also being investigated for sexually assaulting patients, stole patient identities, bought health insurance policies for patients without their knowledge and continued to bill insurance companies for treatment after the services were completed. Can anyone explain the BOM website weather forecasts? asks Tess Osborne of West Pymble. "Apparently on Tuesday, Sydney can look forward to '0mm of possible rainfall' yet there is a '10% chance of any rain'. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday look better (maybe), also with '0mm of possible rainfall' but only a '5% chance of rain'. I've tried, in vain, to get my head around this for a while and where else to ask for clarification than C8?" "Why is it that every time an astronomical phenomenon is predicted (think Leonid & Orionid meteor showers and super moon) Sydney comes up with a cloudy night?" From Vivienne Mackenzie of Port Hacking. UNOFFICIAL: from Lt Col Paul Hummerston at Dept of Defence: "Unfortunately Ron Wessel may be slightly in error. While Igor Sikorsky was born in Imperial Russia, he emigrated to America in 1919 and developed his helicopters there." Similar from several others. Last year for summer I bought a pair of XXL casual shorts made in Cambodia for Kmart, reveals Peter Bower of Naremburn. "Last week I bought a new pair in a different colour but was pleased this season I only needed an XL. When I got the tape measure out and measured them this year's XL was absolutely identical to last year's XXL. Climate change, clever marketing, a shrinking universe - or what?" Paul Duncan's mention of religious proselytisers, [C8] reminds me of the Seventh Day Adventist caller who was invited in for coffee. When asked what he would like to talk about replied: "I don't know. I've never got this far before." From Keith Ridler-Dutton of Killara. In the echo chamber of flattery and self-congratulation that frequently passes for government in Australia, Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton have being hailed in certain quarters for their "statesman-like" asylum-seeker resettlement plan. This one-off deal with the United States will see refugees from the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres settled in America, with Australia (in return) permanently settling a number of refugees from Central America. Typical of the government's parsimony regarding information about asylum-seeker operational matters, Mr Turnbull did not say how many of the 1600 refugees on Manus and Nauru would go to the US. Nor did he venture any reassurance that the deal would survive the accession to the White House in January of Donald Trump, a man whose views on Muslim immigration are sceptical to say the least. In so far as the Manus and Nauru detainees have been in an impossible legal limbo for three years, the deal is to be applauded. However, the prospect of imminent liberation will be tinged with bitterness about the months and years that have been lost, never to be regained. And many may harbour suspicions that their being kept in limbo was a deliberate strategy of successive Australian governments to deter prospective asylum-seekers from journeying here. Even allowing for the difficulties and sensitivities of identifying (and negotiating with) a third country to accept Australia's "unwanted" asylum-seekers, the three years it took to concoct this deal suggest conscious foot-dragging. Not even offers by New Zealand to resettle up to 150 asylum-seekers from Nauru, nor the April injunction of the Supreme Court of Papua New to close the camp on Manus immediately, appeared to elicit any signs of urgency within the Turnbull government about ending the farce. The inquest into the disappearance of Matthew Leveson is occupying the attention of the media and the community. It has raised some important issues for the justice system in NSW as well. We know Leveson disappeared in September 2007 having last been recorded in the company of his lover, Michael Atkins. Atkins has been tried and acquitted of his murder or manslaughter. Atkins could be retried only if "fresh and compelling" evidence came to light and both the Director of Public Prosecutions (or the Attorney-General) and the Court of Criminal Appeal considered it appropriate for a retrial to occur. Leveson's parents, family and friends remain unknowing about his fate and that is a heavy burden to bear. Even accepting that he is dead, no body has been found, no last resting place is able to be chosen and final farewells cannot be made. One has great sympathy for their position and the justice system must support them. One week earlier the French-born woman SOE agent Andree Borrel, alias Denise, had been parachuted into France to prepare for Suttill's arrival and to be his courier. Posing as brother and sister, the pair travelled around a large part of northern France to start building their network, and they were joined by the wireless operators Gilbert Norman, known as Archambaud, and Jack Agazarian, known as Marcel. His father Raymond had been introduced to Major Francis Suttill, whose codename was Prosper, after Suttill had been parachuted into France on October 1, 1942 near la Ferte-sous-Jouarre in the Ile-de-France region. Artaud was probably one of the last survivors of the brave men and women who worked in the British Special Operations Executive-sponsored Resistance circuits during the Second World War. Robert Artaud, who has died aged 90, was a member of the French Resistance group known as the Physician circuit. Under Suttill the Physician circuit did much to undermine the German occupation of France during the Second World War, before it was betrayed. As a teenage boy young Robert helped his father on several operations. The first occasion, which took place on the night of November 17/18, 1942, was the first of several dozen "parachutages", codenamed Physician 1 and organised by Suttill after a local gamekeeper had suggested a suitable location for a drop of arms and sabotage material. Raymond Artaud helped to hide the parachuted containers in a nearby ditch, while Robert was posted as lookout. The containers were collected the next day by the Artauds, in a lorry normally used to carry the contents of septic tanks, and taken to a Paris-bound barge. One of the last operations in which the Artauds took part was on the night of May 13/14, 1943: an attack on an alcohol distillery in the Artauds' small home town of Etrepagny, in the Eure, Normandy, where six million litres of alcohol were reported to be stored ready for shipment to Germany. The Artauds, father and son, carried out the reconnaissance of the storage tanks to establish the routine of the nightwatchman, and Robert kept lookout while the charges were placed. Unfortunately the time fuses in use at that stage of the war were not very accurate, and the explosion took place two hours later than planned when the night-watchman had only just returned to the safety of his hut. On the old game show Let's Make a Deal, contestants were presented with a choice: the prize sitting in front of them, or whatever was behind Door #2. Could be a new car, could be a toothpick. There was no way to know unless they took the gamble. In last week's election, a near majority of Americans chose Door #2. And we still have no idea what's behind it. Donald Trump's longest-standing view on any foreign policy issue is his 30-year anger at Japan for supposedly free-riding on its US alliance. Credit:AP Donald Trump, now President-elect, is a wild-card president. Just about anything could happen in the next few years. He could build a bipartisan coalition to fix infrastructure and education, provide new training opportunities for low-skill workers and promote a less interventionist foreign policy. He could just as likely transform the federal government into a weapon against First Amendment and minority rights, making good on his threats against the press, his vow to register Muslims, his plan for a deportation squad. Because you're reading the opinion section of the paper you are (by definition) part of the elite. You're probably doing (relatively) well out of the current system. You're not the sort of person "the Donald" was trying to reach. His message was designed to pierce through the waffle and routine that envelops our normal way of doing business and the heavy patina of routine encrusting society. He did this twice. First, Trump wrested the Republican nomination away from the money and power represented by the Bush dynasty; then he wrestled the presidency away from the incumbency and networking of the Clintons. He may be a billionaire but he's an outsider. He harnessed a mood of anger that was seething through the electorate. Trump's key message was to insist there has to be another way. The so-called "international democratic consensus" isn't working. Inequality is surging while growth has stopped. Traditional fiscal and monetary policies have failed. Politicians and bureaucrats keep moving the levers only to suddenly discover they're not connected to anything. That's why Britons voted to exit the EU and we almost tipped out yet another PM a couple of months ago. Staying the course no longer cuts it as policy. Keep perceiving this angst as nothing other than a right/left struggle and you'll founder to understand what's happening. The message was that Trump represented a repudiation of business as usual. That's why he represents a challenge. Either attempt to understand why he will be the next president or retreat into a welter of despair and condemnation. Embrace change! New paths will open up. I spoke to former Chinese foreign minister Li Xhaozing, at the ANU's China in the World Centre even as the final votes were being counted. In an enigmatic statement he commented he knew Clinton and she'd invited him for Christmas at the White House. He then went on to insist that the South China "belonged" to Beijing. Exactly how Trump will deal with many international issues is equally mysterious, but the point is the world has changed. Australia can't continue navigating it's old path: the sheriff has gone into retirement and there is no job for a deputy anymore. It's time to find our own way forward. He was the hero of the left who became the champion of the right, held up as both saviour and betrayer often at the same time. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks stormed to notoriety in 2010 with the largest confidential document leak in modern history, the cable dump blighting those leading the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars and those at the bastion of global power. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange looks likely to remain at the Ecuadorean embassy Credit:AP Conservative commentators called for "traitor" Assange now languishing in Ecuador's London embassy to be jailed for putting America's security, and its security forces, at risk. But with the release of emails from those within the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign which laid out DNC attitudes towards the Bernie Sanders campaign, as well as interactions with a media already viewed with suspicion views on Assange began to shift. Bill Shorten will announce a new emphasis on local employment on Tuesday, as Labor moves to protect Australian jobseekers from being replaced by overseas workers brought in by employers under skilled migration visas designed to fill holes in the labour supply. Amid growing public suspicion of free trade, free capital movements and the loss of jobs abroad, the Opposition Leader will announce a policy designed to force employers into more rigorous advertising to find and then train Australian workers before being able to recruit from abroad. He will argue that there is a "worrying rise" in the number of jobs going to foreign workers when locals are available. Every Australian prime minister from John Howard onwards should be investigated for crimes against humanity in relation to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, according to a group of international lawyers. The group of seven British, American and Australian lawyers, which includes high-profile barrister and refugee advocate Julian Burnside, has petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate the treatment of asylum seekers by successive governments, beginning with John Howard's. A 52-page communique names Mr Howard, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, claiming they have knowingly breached the Rome Statute of the court. "Those breaches involve the indefinite detention of asylum seekers who have committed no offence and regardless of their age or health or sex," the communique states. "The breaches also include forcible removal of asylum seekers to Pacific Island countries where they are detained and seriously mistreated, for the stated purpose of 'stopping the boats': that is, deterring people from seeking asylum in Australia." Malcolm Turnbull's "ring of steel" asylum seeker arrangements designed to buttress his new US resettlement deal could be weakened by Labor, Greens and crossbench opposition to a proposed lifetime visa ban on post-2013 boat arrivals. The Prime Minister warned that Labor "vacillation" would quickly become a marketing opportunity for people smugglers eager to convince desperate asylum seekers that the resettlement of the Manus Island and Nauru refugees represents a lowering of Australian resolve. With the Nick Xenophon Team and others also likely to vote against the visa ban, crossbench uncertainty adds to the raft of unknowns about the separate US transfer agreement, including suggestions it will be swiftly vetoed by the incoming Trump administration. The resettlement of offshore detainees in the US has been welcomed by all sides of politics, but the Prime Minister's hopes of imposing an Australian lifetime visa ban on any of those refugees ever returning looks like going down. The Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker-Bowles, hired a team of female bodyguards to accompany her on a recent three-day tour of Middle East. During an official visit to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and al-Ain, together with Prince Charles last week, Camilla was escorted by a security detail made up of five local women, according to Clarence House. The Duchess of Cornwall was accompanied by female members of the UAE Presidential Guard for her tour of the Middle East. Credit:Instagram/@clarencehouse When visiting dignitaries are not in town, Shaima al-Kaabi, Basima al-Kaabi, Hanan al-Hatawi, Nisreen al-Hamawi and Salama al-Remeithi make up part of the United Arab Emirates' Presidential Guard, which has more than 50 women in its ranks. This year Shaima al-Kaabi, Hatawi and Hamawi all scaled Mount Everest. Other women have started donating to the organisation, which Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States promised during his campaign he would stop funding. Perry, the daughter of two Protestant Christian pastors, donated $A13,000 last weekend to Planned Parenthood a nonprofit organisation that provides reproductive health services for women, including affordable birth control and access to safe, legal abortion. In the midst of anti-Trump protests, people who support the reproductive rights of women have started making donations to the cause, including pop star Katy Perry. Perry, one of Hillary Clinton's biggest supporters, said Planned Parenthood had helped provide the sexual education that her "sheltered upbringing" had not provided. Katy Perry was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton throughout her Presidential campaign. Credit:Daniel Acker "I am making a public donation to Planned Parenthood for the teenage me who made several visits to first a clinic in Santa Barbara and then Los Angeles, CA to educate myself on my sexual health, a subject I had little to no information on because of my sheltered upbringing," she wrote. "I had no idea how things worked down there, and had no idea how to make a plan for them. Planned Parenthood educated me on my body and my reproductive health, so that I could focus on my dreams and using my voice until I knew the timing was right for me to make a plan to have a family ... Without this education, I may have had a different life path. Vice President-elect Mike Pence is the man spearheading the campaign to defund Planned Parenthood. The governor of Indiana and staunch evangelical Christian is a strong anti-abortion advocate and in 2007 he sponsored an amendment to block funding to the organisation. The City of Sydney Council has threatened to refuse to hand over $47 million to the Baird government for the city's new light rail line because it believes the project is failing to live up to what was promised. Following meetings with property owners on George Street and developers, Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore said it had become clear that "adequate results" had not been reached in a number of critical areas across the entire 12-kilometre route. "What we are expecting is a sensitive urban project, not a heavy rail, suburban railway through the heart of a global city [along George Street]," she told Fairfax Media. "It is not just about cutting a ribbon for the next state election. We just want what we thought we were getting." Mike Baird says he will continue to pursue the state's council amalgamation agenda following the Nationals' disastrous showing in the Orange by-election on Saturday. Local opposition to the planned merger of Blayney, Cabonne and Orange councils was credited with being partly responsible for the comprehensive swing away from the Nationals, which also claimed the leadership of Troy Grant. The merger of those councils has been delayed following a legal challenge, and there is a similar situation with another 10 councils across Sydney and NSW. It was a moment almost seven decades in the making. As the moon rose over Sydney on Monday night, it was at its closest point to earth since 1948. But for some, it didn't live up to expectations. The proximity produced what's known as a "supermoon", with the moon appearing larger and "significantly brighter" in the sky just after 7pm - for those lucky enough to see it. Deputy Premier Troy Grant has announced he will quit as leader of the NSW Nationals a day before facing a spill motion in his party room following a disastrous showing in the Orange byelection. The announcement has prompted deputy Nationals leader Adrian Piccoli to declare he will not re-nominate for the position, ensuring there will be a new leadership team after MPs meet on Tuesday. In a statement on Monday, Mr Grant said: "As a result of the Nationals candidate for Orange, Scott Barrett, facing an uphill battle to hold the seat, I have informed the NSW Nationals leadership team that at tomorrow's party room meeting I will be standing down as leader of the NSW Nationals. "It has been an incredible privilege to serve in that role and lead a team whose sole focus is to serve the people of regional NSW," he said. More than a few eyebrows were raised when Troy Grant rocketed to the position of Deputy Premier and leader of the NSW Nationals in October 2014. The former Dubbo police inspector who entered Parliament three years earlier had served as hospitality, gaming, racing and arts minister for just six months before vaulting into the top job after Andrew Stoner's sudden resignation. The appointment saw him take the extra portfolios of tourism and major events, trade and investment and regional infrastructure and services. The following April, after a reshuffle, Grant took on the roles of minister for justice and police, minister for racing and minister for the arts, while retaining responsibility for gambling and alcohol policy. The electorate of Lockyer, between Ipswich and Toowoomba, would be the "jewel" in One Nation's crown, a political expert says. And One Nation leaders believe they could win up to a dozen seats in the next Queensland Parliament. Outgoing member for Lockyer Ian Rickuss has announced he will retire at the next state election. The seat was held by One Nation's Bill Flynn until Mr Rickuss won in 2004 as a member of the National Party. A multi-million dollar grant has been awarded to the University of Queensland to establish a facility that will visualise cancer in 3D to better target and fine-tune cancer treatments. The Australian Cancer Research Foundation awarded University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience with a $2.3 million dollar grant on Monday evening to improve testing for cancer treatments. The facility will house three microscopes capable of producing high resolution 3D images. Credit:Anjanette Webb The grant will establish an ACRF cancer ultrastructure and function facility at the IMB that will house three state-of-the-art microscopes to give researchers a chance to look at cancer cells in real time. IMB deputy director of research Jenny Stow said the microscopes, which cost about a $1 million each, used lasers or electron beams to create a 3D image. The company plies a rewarding trade in selling "stickers", the cartoons that users often send to each other instead of text messages, but has also moved beyond this, becoming more than simply a messaging app. As well as talk to friends, Line users can order taxis, make restaurant reservations and play games via the app. While many Western consumers still rely on web browsers, in Asia the chat app is the main gateway to the internet. Takeshi Idezawa, Line's chief executive, left, said: "Perhaps in America and Europe, chat apps are often a single application and maybe it's difficult to imagine how users would connect to other services, but in Asia it's quite popular. "We think that the demand for browsers is on the decline. On the other hand there's such an influx of so many smartphone applications that it's really difficult for users to choose which one to use. We're not just replacing smartphone apps but we're also the alternative to phone and email." Idezawa calls Line a "portal", a gateway to other services, all accessed via Line, in the same way that web portals such as Yahoo and Altavista emerged in the early days of the internet and, for a time, were hugely successful. While for PCs portals were eventually made obsolete by Google's search engine, on the smaller screen the idea is gaining traction again as consumers are bamboozled by the confusing array of millions of apps on offer. Controlling these portals can be a lucrative affair, and apps in the West are now adopting Line's strategy. Facebook's Messenger service this year allowed developers to put their own games, customer service channels and artificial intelligence "bots" on the service. These can be used to receive flight information, get news updates or order pizza within the app itself. David Marcus, who runs Facebook Messenger and claims 34,000 developers have built programs for the app, says: "If you take someone to a messenger conversation rather than taking them to a mobile website or getting them to download an app it performs the objective [of the business] much better. "For users it's a much better experience because Messenger is bound with identity [from your Facebook profile], you don't have to identify yourself every time you have a new interaction on your phone, in an app, on email or over the web." Marcus says there have been "millions" of conversations between users and businesses on Messenger, but admits that "it takes a while to create the ecosystem." Apple's iMessage app adopted a similar strategy with a major revamp earlier this year that allows users to send money and book restaurant tables within the app, and WhatsApp is expected to follow this in the coming months by opening up to businesses. But while these ideas are in their early stages, Line has been doing it for years; Idezawa describes the company as "ahead of the curve". In many Asian markets, the smartphone is the first computer that many people owned, meaning services have been developed for the mobile from the ground up, rather than on the PC first. In Japan, the smartphone took a long time to catch on, so internet-equipped "feature phones" continued to be popular, allowing text-based interfaces such as Line to thrive. Idezawa believes the idea will spread across the world. "We think it's a general need and a global trend that people want to do everything from a chat interface," he says. However, the company is not planning an assault on western markets, having retreated after a largely unsuccessful push to break into Europe and the US a few years ago, and Idezawa dismisses reports it is considering a bid for Vine, the Twitter-owned video app that could be a springboard into the US, as "purely a rumour". He attributes Line's success in its core markets, and the struggles of its Silicon Valley rivals to understanding the local culture and adapting their services in response: "Whereas a lot of companies that come from Silicon Valley look at creating value across the globe, at Line we focus more on respecting and valuing each market's culture and localising to allow that diversity." For example, Line provides a tailored news service in each of its countries and sells different sets of cartoon stickers in separate markets. The app has not been without its setbacks. As well as falling flat outside Asia it was blocked in China two years ago as part of Beijing's wider crackdown on foreign internet services, although the company does have a lucrative line selling merchandise there. User growth has also slowed down in recent months, part of the reason why, when Line eventually floated this summer, it did so at a lower valuation than it expected to set two years ago, when the company had laid the groundwork for an IPO before shelving its plans; (Idezawa says it had needed to develop its portal strategy to prove itself to investors). Garbage truck driver Bonny Walia was most of the way through his 10-hour shift in Melbourne's city centre when the call of nature came. At about 7am on a cold Sunday morning in June, Mr Walia felt the need to go to the bathroom but he felt he couldn't stop and find a public toilet because he had a lot of bins to collect and it was hard to find somewhere to park his truck. A garbage truck driver who lost his job after succumbing to a call of nature in a Melbourne laneway has got his job back. Credit:Gabriele Charotte But by 8.30am, the need had become so pressing for the garbage truck driver of at least eight years' experience that he parked his truck by the roadside, and wandered down a lane to urinate. That lane, according to his employer Citywide, was overlooked by apartments. There will be a heavy focus on park-and-ride commuting at the three new stations, with almost 2000 new parking spaces to be built, including 1000 at Mernda's planned town centre alone. John Holland has been selected to build the rail extension. Work will begin in 2017 and the line is set to open in 2019. The government said the project would crete 3000 jobs during construction. Mr Andrews said the rail extension would provide Melbourne's outer north with badly needed public transport. "The Mernda rail extension will change people's lives for the better creating work for thousands of people, and connecting one of Australia's fastest growing communities to employment, education and the rest of Victoria," Mr Andrews said. Joseph 'Pino' Acquaro ignored the Calabrian mafia's code of silence, known as omerta. For this, the 'Ndrangheta wanted the Melbourne lawyer dead. So when the father of three was gunned down outside Gelobar, his Brunswick gelateria, on March 15 it looked like a gangland hit. After all, a $200,000 contract had been put on his head about a year before. But what if the 54-year-old had another, independent, enemy, with a motive to kill? This person has emerged as the main suspect for the murder. Pet rabbit owners are being warned a spike in mosquitoe numbers could lead to hundreds of deaths of the animal this summer. Heavy rain and flooding in Victoria has created perfect breeding conditions for the insect, which can carry diseases myxomatosis and calicivirus. Lort Smith Animal Hospital services head, with rabbits Shadow and Thunder. Credit:Joe Armao Myxomatosis can kill a rabbit within in two weeks of infection, causing swollen eyes, ears and genitals. Meanwhile, calicivirus, which has no cure, kills almost all rabbits that come into contact with it. A not-so-dainty $80,000 donation helped hot pot lord mayor Robert Doyle fry his competitors in the recent Melbourne City Council race to become lord mayor. The donation, from restaurant group Dainty Sichuan, was by far the largest single corporate donation in the recent local government elections held across Victoria. Dainty Sichuan restaurant chain owners Tina Li and Ye Shao donated $80,000 to Robert Doyle's lord mayoral campaign. Credit:Angela Wylie It came after Cr Doyle said he would not take donations from property developers for his re-election campaign as lord mayor of Melbourne. The Age contacted Dainty Sichuan, to ask why the donation to Cr Doyle's campaign had been made. Staff at the chain's Lonsdale Street restaurant said that owners Ye Shao and Tina Li were both travelling overseas and could not be contacted. A $6 million taxpayer-funded scheme to cut the number of quad bike deaths and injuries by paying farmers to retrofit rollover protection bars could cause more harm than good. In July this year the Andrews government announced it was offering $600 rebates to install the bars, which form a single hoop behind a rider's head, in a bid to lower the worrying number of fatalities and injuries linked to the bikes. Rebates of $600 are on offer for farmers installing rollover bars. Credit:Justin McManus But the WorkSafe Victoria scheme has left the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries so alarmed about the potential consequences it has written to the government challenging it to hand over any scientific evidence showing bars, also known as crush protection devices, are effective. The problem, as extensive testing and computer simulations have shown, is that the devices can cause the bikes to bounce and slam down with even greater force when rolling. Teenage inmates were heard yelling and screaming as they were driven out of the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre in Parkville, after it was revealed they would be locked up in adult prison. The detainees were also heard banging on the windows of a prison van as authorities transported them out of the centre on Monday afternoon, hours after riot police stormed one of the buildings. The damage bill from the riots is expected to reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. The prisoners are as young as 15 and many are yet to have their charges addressed in court. The troubles continued throughout the afternoon on Monday, with a group of teenagers barricaded in the justice centre's roof cavity. A woman was thrown more than 80 metres when she was killed by a drunken driver in a hit-and-run crash in West Melbourne. Tanami Nayler, 24, was heading to her friend's house about 2.15am on July 30, when a car driving about 152 km/h ran a red light and struck her as she walked across a pedestrian crossing on King Street, court documents say. She was killed instantly, her body striking a traffic pole and being flung a further 10 metres before coming to a halt in the middle of another intersection. The Sydney woman had been in Melbourne for the weekend to celebrate her recent promotion at work. Before summer has officially begun Perth firefighters have been obliged to rush to a fire started by a discarded cigarette butt in Perth's southern suburbs. The fire was started near the brand-new $3.4 million Bibra Lake Adventure Playground, a major regional playground with extensive infrastructure that opened to great fanfare on Saturday. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services received a triple-0 call about 9.20am, when the temperature was already pushing 30 degrees, about a small scrub fire near the playground. "As soon as we sat down we saw some mums looking at smoke," said a mother who visited the playground on Monday morning. Some of the mums started leaving. It was straight across the road from the playground." One of the five men accused of murdering Patrick Slater during a post-Australia Day brawl at the Esplanade Train Station has indicated through his lawyer he may change his plea. Five men - Clinton Mead, Dylan Anthony, Robert Pickett, Christopher Birdsall and Stefan Mead - and three boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are accused of attacking Mr Slater, 26, with star pickets, screwdrivers and rocks in the early hours of January 27. The three boys could join the men at an estimated five-week trial in 2017, with the adult accused and their lawyers appearing in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on Monday to discuss setting a trial date. All five men have pleaded not guilty to the charge, but on Monday Dylan Anthony indicated through his lawyer, Simon Freitag, he had made a plea offer to the prosecution on October 4. The man accused of luring two children away from a North Perth child care centre and sexually assaulting them has appeared in court on unrelated domestic violence charges. Vincenzo Mule, 53, has been charged with the sexual assault of two children in April, a four-year-old girl and five-year-old boy. Vincenzo Mule has had his domestic violence charges adjourned until child sex attack charges have been heard. He is accused of luring the children away from an out-of-school child care centre, sexually assaulting them in front of each other, and then dumping them in Hyde Park on April 19. However, when Mr Mule was first arrested by police on April 20, it was for allegedly breaching of a violence restraining order and setting fire to a car and property linked to his former partner - acts which police claim occurred on April 16. Two women have died in two separate crashes on WA roads on the weekend. A 26-year-old Coolbellup woman died after her Holden Jackaroo lost control rolling a number of times while travelling east along Boscabel-Chittinup Road in Changerup, 250 kilometres south of Perth around 5.30pm on Sunday. Two women have died on WA roads on the weekend. The woman was thrown from the car and died at the scene. Bangkok: Fierce fighting has escalated in Myanmar's western Rakhine state where satellite imagery shows the destruction of hundreds of Rohingya Muslim homes. Myanmar's government said eight people died and 36 were arrested in the latest clashes between the Myanmar army and what the government claimed are Rohingya militants. Human rights groups accuse the military of killing, raping and burning the homes of Rohingya, a minority of almost one million people in Buddhist majority Myanmar. New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had identified a total of 430 destroyed buildings in three districts of Maungdaw from an analysis of high-definition satellite imagery recorded between October 22 and November 10. Wellington: New Zealand emergency services and defence personnel began evacuating hundreds of tourists and residents from a small South Island town amid more strong aftershocks on Tuesday, a day after a powerful earthquake killed two people. The 7.5-magnitude tremor struck just after midnight on Sunday, destroying farm homesteads, sending glass and masonry toppling from buildings in the capital, Wellington, and cutting road and rail links throughout the northeast of the ruggedly beautiful South Island. As aftershocks continued to rattle the region, emergency services cordoned off streets in Wellington and evacuated several buildings due to fears one of them might collapse. The town of Kaikoura, a popular base for whale-watching about 150 km north-east of Christchurch, the South Island's main city, was completely cut off by massive landslips. London: Six years after he was first accused of rape Julian Assange has given a full statement to a Swedish prosecutor, in a marathon session at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, London. However he was almost upstaged by his own cat who made her own fashion statement in the embassy windows wearing a collar and striped tie, while her owner faced his questioners. Assange complained that his Swedish counsel Per Samuelson had not been invited to attend the interview though he did have an Ecuadorian counsel. "This clear breach of process did not stop Assange cooperating fully (he) felt compelled to participate," his lawyers said in a statement but added "these irregularities will be raised in a formal setting in the near future". Steve Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, navy officer, filmmaker and arch-conservative media entrepreneur, is quickly emerging as Trump's top counsellor. Credit:AP "If you've seen the president-elect since the election, he's taken a very measured tone," Mr Miller said in an interview with CNN's New Day. "He's made it very clear that he's going to get to work for the American people right away and that he's moved past the election. What I think is frustrating is when we see so much news coverage... on the issues that divide us following the election. I think that's irresponsible." President-elect Donald Trump with his new chief of staff Reince Priebus. Credit:AP Mr Trump's naming of Mr Bannon and Mr Priebus signalled his aggressive agenda and set up what could be a battle within the White House between the populist, outsider forces that propelled his winning campaign and the party establishment that dominates Washington. In appointing Mr Priebus, 44, Mr Trump has brought into his White House a Washington insider who is viewed as broadly acceptable by vast swaths of the party, and he signalled a willingness to work within the establishment he assailed on the campaign trail. But Mr Trump sent an opposing signal by tapping Mr Bannon, 62, who has openly attacked congressional leadership, taking particular aim at House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who recommended Mr Priebus for his new job. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Mr Trump said in a statement. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." The Bannon announcement came as Trump highlighted some of his first priorities in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes, vowing to "immediately" deport up to 3 million immigrants who are in the country illegally after he is inaugurated and to simultaneously repeal and replace President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. He also repeated his remark that he knows more about the Islamic State than US generals do, saying, "I probably do, because look at the job they've done." Mr Trump's top two advisers could help him achieve different objectives. Mr Priebus could help Mr Trump notch early legislative victories in a Republican-led Congress and ingratiate himself with the insiders he claims to loathe but who dominate his transition team. A longtime lawyer and Wisconsin political operative, Mr Priebus will work to smooth over residual friction from a campaign during which a number of Republicans refused to endorse Mr Trump, reversed their endorsements or stepped away from him after a 2005 tape surfaced in which Mr Trump is heard saying that he could force himself on women because he was a "star." Mr Bannon will be the other voice on Trump's shoulder: He helped shape Trump's message on the campaign trail and relishes combativeness. The former Navy officer and investment banker has said the campaign was the American version of worldwide populist movements such as the British vote to sever ties with the European Union. Mr Bannon's appointment drew sharp criticism from political operatives on both sides of the aisle who see Mr Bannon as being too close to the alt-right and white nationalism. Breitbart has published stories with headlines stating that women faced with harassment online should "log off" and that taking birth control makes women "unattractive and crazy." The site called Kristol a "renegade Jew" in 2015. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-watch group, blasted the choice of Bannon and cited Breitbart headlines that included a call to hoist the Confederate flag weeks after shootings at a black Charleston church and another that said that political correctness "protects Muslim rape culture." Mr Bannon was charged with misdemeanour domestic violence against his former wife more than 20 years ago; the charges included trying to prevent a victim or witness of crime from reporting, inflicting injury and battery. Mr Bannon was never convicted and the case was dismissed. His former wife also accused him of making anti-Semitic remarks, according to a court statement obtained by the New York Daily News. Mr Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich blasted the idea Sunday that Mr Trump's campaign catered to the alt-right, calling it "garbage." In a statement, Mr Bannon said he and Mr Priebus had a "very successful partnership" on the campaign trail. "We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda," Mr Bannon said. Mr Priebus gave a preview of some of the administration's policy priorities. "I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism. He will be a great president for all Americans," Mr Priebus said. The personnel announcement comes as the contours of the Trump administration are starting to take shape and as he and his team pivot from campaign rhetoric to the nuts and bolts of governing. Mr Trump and his advisers continue to paint a mixed picture of what the administration will look like, and they have been giving answers often at odds with Mr Trump's campaign rhetoric, which included pledges to fully repeal the ACA and get Mexico to pay for a wall along the Southern border, and crowd chants of "Lock her up!" about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. On undocumented immigrants, Mr Trump said on 60 Minutes that his administration will "get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million. We are getting them out of our country, or we are going to incarcerate. But we're getting them out of our country; they're here illegally." The remarks are another sign of retreat from Mr Trump's vows throughout much of the presidential campaign to remove all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. By focusing on criminals only, Mr Trump would be mirroring current Obama administration priorities, and experts say his numbers are highly inflated. Loading Given an opportunity to tick a series of policy boxes, Mr Trump was a different man, revealing himself as equivocal on key policy positions that were absolutes in the course of the campaign that he won so stunningly. The single issue on which he gave absolutely no ground was abortion on which he restated his undertaking to fill the existing Supreme Court vacancy with a judge who will cut down the historic 1973 Roe v Wade decision by which abortion became legal in the US. President-elect Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech on election night, flanked by his running mate Mike Pence (left) and the man appointed to serve as White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus. Credit:AP "I think Rove v Wade will be overturned and [the abortion issue] will go back to the states, but it's a long way to go." Asked how women who wanted an abortion would manage, Mr Trump responded: "Well, they'll perhaps have to go ... they'll have to go to another state." Hilary Clinton says she believes Russia's cyber-attacks are attributable to a "personal beef" with Vladimir Putin after comments she made as secretary of state that Russia's 2011 elections were rigged. Credit:AP On to the wall on the Mexican border. It turns out that he'll be OK with some sections being a fence and instead, as promised repeatedly, of setting up a "deportation force" to round up as many as 12 million undocumented migrants in the country, he now says the first objective will be to secure the border and deport those with criminal records but here Trump muddied the figures, claiming there are 2 million to 3 million criminal migrants in the country, when migration think tanks estimate the number to be more like 700,000. The president-elect argued that once all that migration business had been attended to, he'd address the issue of the remaining millions, who were "terrific" people. Mr Trump's defence of "traditional" marriage during the campaign was a cause of great disquiet in the LGBT community, but in the 60 Minutes interview he argued that same-sex marriage was a done deal the Supreme Court decision validating same-sex unions had settled the matter "and I'm fine with that". Throughout the campaign the entirety of Obamacare was to be repealed, but since spending 90 minutes with US President Barack Obama last week, he now wants to retain coverage for pre-existing conditions and the right of children living with their parents to be covered by the parents' insurance until age 26. Surprisingly, or maybe not, in the wake of winning the election, some who the campaigning Trump had cast as the very worst demons now are not such bad people Hillary and Bill Clinton, the Obamas and the former presidents Bush were referred to with a sentiment that could be described as fondness. Mr Obama was "very smart, nice and had a great sense of humour"; the Clintons were "good people", he didn't "want to hurt them" and there was a list of greater policy issues ahead of "locking her up"; and the animosity against his two Republican predecessors seemed to have dissipated as he acknowledged that the Bushes had phoned to congratulate him. Even Jeb Bush, who had challenged him for the nomination, was "a nice guy". But a possible exception is FBI chief James Comey, whose intervention in the campaign derailed a Clinton campaign which analysts, with near unanimity, judged to be heading towards victory. He did not rule out asking for Mr Comey's resignation. Instead, he answered: "I'm not sure. I would have to see he may have some very good reasons for doing what he did." It rained all day the day that Elvis Presley died And only a legend can make it do that! ... He gave me my first leather jacket And taught me how to comb my hair just right in a filling station bathroom It was Elvis that gave you a rubber on prom night And told you that you looked real sharp - Tom Waits, State Theatre, Sydney, May 2, 1979 Tom Waits told the people at the State Theatre that evening 37 years ago a legend never died but just taught you everything he knew. He was performing the American dream for a world where few then dared dream what life could be. In the American century, the US was the beacon for a better life created by decency, generosity, openness and a willingness to change. Along the way, Americans came to be regarded by many as the nicest people on Earth. Knights errant, admired, envied, clever, yet sometimes reviled, their confidence, generosity, decency and panache seemed to make the world a better place. Where they went, the world followed. They walked on the moon. They created rock 'n' roll, surfing, the internet, iphones, the Salk vaccine, McDonald's and the Bomb. They saved the world. Twice. They gave many of us in Europe, Asia and Australia our lives. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser PHILIPSBURG:--- As a former Member of Parliament, I must say that our ancestors must be turning over in their graves with the type of leadership and cooperation we displayed during our St. Martin Day Celebration by boycotting the peoples celebration. France and Holland must be smiling to see the recent dispute between the French and Dutch local Government where they fighting over the border lines in which is documented and written in the Dutch Side cadastre registry. There is a court case decision on this. The Captain Oliver dispute where the judge based on the French documents said that the water rights is owned by the Island Government of St. Maarten. The restaurant and marina are located on the Dutch side while the hotel is on the French side. The electricity is also provided by the French side. It is a unique situation and I dont see why the two governments cant sit down and come to an agreement to upgrade the marina. I would advise anyone who wants to know their local history that they must get in contact with the former Director of Cadaster Andre Patrick who has a wealth of knowledge and documents about this Captain Olivier situation and other historical landmarks. My simple advice to our Government Leaders is to sit down as adults and regulate our border, immigration issues and Captain Olivers situation for the people of St. Martin/St. Maarten before France and Holland has to step in and regulate our own affairs and rewrite our history which is already written and documented. We have to start governing our own affairs and respecting each others rules and laws. I dont understand how can the French Gendarmes trespass on the Dutch side property and we cant enforce our laws to protect our people based on our already written history. How can we teach the next generation of our local history which is already written and documented when we ourselves act like we dont know our own history and protect and preserve our landmarks? In closing, St. Maarten Day has passed and the Council of Ministers sent their message. So what is the next step which is going back to the first step of sitting down as true Representatives of the people and come to a solution of respecting each others rules and laws of governing our unique island of St. Martin/St. Maarten. We have to start making firm decisions and governing in the general interest of our people. Former MP Maurice Lake St. Joe County floats site for relocation of Portage Manor residents The county plans to sell Clay Township Park to the township for a nominal fee, rather than continue to lease it. Angela Peterson, a SLED agent in charge of the investigation, speaks during the Michael Slager trial at the Charleston County court in Charleston, S.C., Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. Slager, a white police officer is accused in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist. Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city. Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea Illustration of CYGNSS small satellite, which will be used to improve hurricane forecasting. The Trump campaign's space policy advisers suggest that such missions should be carried out by other agencies. WASHINGTON NASA used a briefing about the agency's next Earth science mission to also emphasize the importance of that research in general, given concerns the next administration may seek to slash funding for it. A Nov. 10 briefing at NASA Headquarters about the upcoming launch of the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission featured an introduction by Thomas Zurbuchen, the new associate administrator for science, who talked not about the mission itself but about NASA's Earth science work in general. "NASA's work on Earth science is making a difference in people's lives all around the world every day," he said. "Earth science helps save lives. It also helps grow companies and creates an awareness of environmental challenges that affect our lives today and tomorrow." While making no direct reference to politics, he made those comments less than 36 hours after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declared victory in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump's space policy platform, which came into focus only in the final weeks of the campaign, called for reducing funding for Earth science in favor of exploration missions. A space policy framework laid out by Robert Walker, a former congressman and the Trump campaign's space policy adviser, at an Oct. 26 meeting of the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) included plans to "redirect NASA budgets towards deep space achievements rather than Earth-centric climate change spending." "NASA should be focused primarily on deep space activities rather than Earth-centric work that is better handled by other agencies," Walker and Peter Navarro, another campaign adviser, wrote in an Oct. 19 commentary, saying that NASA has been "reduced" since the Apollo era into an agency that focuses on space station operations and "politically correct environmental monitoring." That campaign position is shared by a number of Republican members of Congress, who in recent years have criticized what they believe is an overemphasis on Earth science work that could be done by other agencies. "Since the end of the last administration, we have seen a disproportionate increase in the amount of federal funds that have been allocated to the Earth science program, at the expense of, and in comparison to, exploration and space operations, planetary science, heliophysics, and astrophysics," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate space subcommittee and a former 2016 presidential candidate, in a March 2015 hearing about NASA's budget. Appropriators in the House in particular have sought to cut spending on NASA's Earth science programs. In its fiscal year 2017 budget request, NASA sought $2.03 billion for Earth sciences, an increase of more than $100 million from what it received in 2016. While a Senate bill would provide NASA with nearly all that amount, House appropriators cut Earth science funding by nearly 20 percent in their bill. A final 2017 appropriations bill has not been passed by Congress, but could be taken up during a lame duck session that begins Nov. 14. However, Congressional efforts to cut Earth science funding have been largely unsuccessful in recent years. Appropriations for Earth science have tracked closely to the agency's request, even as those budgets grew from $1.66 billion in fiscal year 2013 to $1.92 billion in 2016. Those budgets have helped support the development of missions like CYGNSS, a constellation of eight small satellites scheduled for launch Dec. 12 on a Pegasus XL. The satellites will detect GPS signals reflected off the oceans in tropical regions, using the amount of scattering of the signals to calculate the roughness of the oceans and thus the wind speeds at the surface. That data, scientists said at the Nov. 10 briefing, can be used to improve hurricane forecasting by providing more data and in a more timely manner than possible with other satellites or hurricane-tracking aircraft. "CYGNSS is a tool that will provide us 24/7 coverage of the tropical cyclone zone, and it will improve our knowledge of how hurricanes grow so that we can better prepare and protect the people in the path of each hurricane as it comes," said Christine Bonniksen, program executive for the mission at NASA Headquarters. NASA also emphasized the low cost of this mission, which takes advantage of advances in smallsat technologies. Bonniksen estimated the total cost of the CYGNSS mission, including launch and operations, at $162 million. A mission that supports weather forecasting, though, could be the sort of mission that a new administration believes would be better performed by an agency like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That could mean transferring money from NASA to NOAA or other agencies to take on those missions, rather than redirecting the money within NASA to other science or exploration efforts. "In general, what I'd say is a lot of these missions that NASA is now doing are probably more appropriately done by NOAA," Walker said at the COMSTAC meeting last month. "There would have to be some budget adjustments in order for NOAA to assume those kinds of responsibilities." NOAA, though, has usually relied on NASA for support developing and operating missions, including those funded by NOAA itself, such as traditional weather satellites. That would make any transfer of missions or other responsibilities more difficult than simply shifting funding. Prior to the election, Zurbuchen was optimistic about continued support for NASA's Earth science programs. "NASA has true bipartisan support, and there's not many agencies that can say that right now," he said at an Oct. 31 roundtable with reporters. "The way I think about Earth science in general is that it is easy to see how it affects us on a day-to-day basis." "I believe that Earth science is part of my portfolio, a really important part of the portfolio," he added. "That view I will bring to the Hill with me." This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. In "Arrival," which premiered Nov. 11, 2016, twelve large, smooth, stone-like ships appear in the sky at twelve locations around the world, and it's not immediately clear where they're from or who is on board. The opening scenes of the new sci-fi film "Arrival" cover familiar territory, as we see enormous spacecraft hovering over cities on our troubled planet Earth. But soon the film reveals that it's not going to be like other alien movies. The spaceships have no weapons. Our hero is a linguist. Cerebral narrative puzzles take shape. A procession of subtle and intriguing ideas ultimately blossom into a story of profound insight and hope. "Arrival" is the best sci-fi movie of the year because it does what science fiction does best: It encourages thoughtful conjecture and lateral thinking. It asks us to project our hopes and anxieties out to some notional event horizon, then see what develops. In the choppy wake of this terrible and divisive election season, it's the one movie you should take the time to see, and process and talk about afterward. Warning: There are some moderate spoilers ahead, but nothing much past what you can see in the trailers, and I'll stay far away from the film's central mystery. Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. government to communicate with the aliens. Twelve spaceships ovoids that suggest seed pods, significantly have descended over countries around the world. The aliens show no signs of aggression, but the world's nation-states respond with varying defensive postures, scrambling jets and aiming weapons at the ships. Banks is partnered with mathematician Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who hopes that the language of numbers will help in establishing contact with the aliens. Each day, the ships' portals open briefly and Earth sends its various delegations aboard. Inside the ship, director Denis Villeneuve creates a minimalist marvel of art design, an extradimensional space with sideways gravity. It feels like a prehistoric cave, those sacred spaces where our species first experimented with language and art. We see the aliens, eventually, but they're cleverly obscured and the visuals underline a storytelling strategy used throughout the film. "Arrival" isn't really interested in the aliens; it's interested in our reaction to the aliens. How will we reach out to this new entity, this ultimate Other? What will we choose to communicate, and how? In the end, "Arrival" is all about communication. "The language we speak determines how we think," Louise says, referencing a fierce debate in the field of linguistics. Without spoiling too much, the aliens present us with a new kind of language, a new way to communicate. It's a language that imparts meaning directly, does not represent sound or speech, and is not bound by time. RELATED: Sending Messages to Aliens: Could It Kill Us? It's so nice to be treated as an adult by a science fiction movie. This is a film that asks us to think, and presents delicious mysteries concerning ideograms, palindromes, game theory and the significance of the number 0.083. It's said that providence moves in mysterious ways, as does Hollywood, and the timing of "Arrival" is auspicious. The film addresses that nagging suspicion, perhaps you're familiar with it, that the promise of the Digital Age is fading fast. Our precious devices and networks aren't bringing us closer together. They're driving us apart. We sit in public spaces, staring into the tiny screens in our palms. We gather in online cliques and echo chambers with those who share our history and opinions. Despite our space-age communication technology, we're not talking to each other not really. We're projecting digital versions of ourselves. We aren't connecting in the important ways. We're fractured and divided, as evidenced by the world's escalating conflicts and even our own domestic elections and referendums. Thoughtful science fiction like "Arrival" can help us approach this existential dilemma from a sideways vector. As a genre, as a mode, sci-fi provides us with the opportunity to think laterally about ideas and issues. Movies are one of the ways we process change, as a culture, on some unknowable level of collective consciousness that transcends rationality and intent. When a movie like "Arrival" comes along, we should pay attention. We're telling ourselves something. Originally published on Seeker. Astronauts from NASA's Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs take part in the ribbon cutting for the new Heroes & Legends attraction at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Nov. 11, 2016. CAPE CANAVERAL Astronauts from four branches of the U.S. military spent Veteran's Day at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday (Nov. 11), attending the launch of a public attraction devoted to honoring America's spaceflight pioneers. James Lovell, who served as a Navy Captain; Buzz Aldrin, who was a U.S. Air Force Colonel; Walt Cunningham, who was also a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps; and Bruce Melnick, who is one of only two astronauts to hail from the U.S. Coast Guard, joined more than 20 other military and civilian astronauts at a ceremony and ribbon cutting for the new "Heroes & Legends, featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame" exhibit at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. "It is no coincidence that we chose to celebrate the grand opening of Heroes & Legends on this day, Veteran's Day," said John Zarella, a former CNN news correspondent who served as the master of ceremonies. "Many, many of our astronaut heroes are also members of the United States Armed Forces, but not only that, they have all served their country as members of NASA's elite astronaut corps, each one willing to undertake extremely dangerous missions to advance scientific study to benefit all of humanity. [Photo Gallery: Astronauts' Adventures Come Alive in 'Heroes & Legends] Intended as the first stop after guests enter the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Heroes & Legends focuses on the early years of U.S. human spaceflight to explore the concept of heroism. The 37,000 square foot (3,440 sq. m.) attraction marries cutting-edge technology with immersive visual effects, authentic astronaut artifacts and interactive exhibits. "This great big attraction also has a great big name 'Heroes & Legends, featuring the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, presented by Boeing. That is because this attraction tells the story of many, many people not only the astronaut heroes whose daring missions are brought to life inside these walls, but also the countless people and companies who worked behind the scenes to enable those missions to happen," said Therrin Protze, chief operating officer of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Protze delivered his remarks standing in front of the post-modern-inspired facade of the new exhibit, which features a towering bas relief of America's first astronauts, NASA's original Mercury 7. "It was the six surviving Mercury astronauts who were the first to conceive a place where space explorers would be remembered," said Dan Brandenstein, an Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee and chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. "I can only imagine how proud and humbled they'd have been, not only to see themselves immortalized on this wall, but to see the legacy of spaceflight that they all created." The opening ceremony for Heroes & Legends at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, Nov. 11, 2016. (Image credit: collectSPACE.com) "I'm certain that Heroes & Legends far surpasses anything that they would have imagined," said Brandenstein. Heroes & Legends is the first attraction at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to bear the name of its corporate sponsor, Boeing, which now comprises the companies that built the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft showcased in the exhibit. "I think it is appropriate going into our next 100 years as a company ... that we look back at the heroes that got us to this point," said John Elbon, the vice president and general manager of Boeing's Space Exploration division. "We are excited to partner with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on this Heroes & Legends attraction." The goal of Heroes & Legends, as described by the Visitor Complex, is for the public to gain a renewed sense of pride and more indepth understanding of the qualities of heroism represented by NASA's pioneering astronauts and why they deserve admiration and respect. "I think it is important as you tour this exhibit to remember all of the dedication and the hard work that it took for those of us who were involved in the astronaut program," said Charlie Duke, who in 1972 became the tenth man to walk on the moon. "Hopefully, it will be an inspiration to you and your grandkids and your kids." Take a photo tour of Heroes & Legends, featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, at collectSPACE. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. 'Supermoon' Rising over Albuquerque Ben Lawry During November's full "supermoon," the moon came closer to Earth than it has been since 1948. The moon was at it's biggest and brightest on Monday morning (Nov. 14). Photographer Ben Lawry captured the supermoon rising over Albuquerque, New Mexico on Sunday (Nov. 13) at 5:30 p.m. local time. [Supermoon November 2016: When, Where & How to See It] Monday's 'Supermoon' Sets Photographer BG Boyd captured the supermoon at its largest while rising Monday morning (Nov. 14) over Tucson, Arizona. 'Super Duper Moon' Photographer Chris Cook took a self-portrait with what he called the "super duper full moon" on Sunday (Nov. 13). 'Supermoon' vs. Full Moons Bill Hood This image by Bill Hood compares the size of the supermoon with the other full moons from 2016. Hood shot the moon photos with a Nikon D750 camera and Nikon 200-500mm lens. 'Supermoon' Sets in California David McNew/Getty Images The supermoon sets behind a group of fishermen at Redondo Beach, Calif. on Nov. 14. Almost-Super Moon Rises Over NYC Skyline Gowrishankar L. Amateur astrophotographer Gowrishankar L. created this timelapse image of November's nearly-full moon rising behind New York city's Freedom Tower on Saturday (Nov. 12). He set up his camera at the Hudson River waterfront in Jersey City, New Jersey and took 10 photos at 3-minute intervals to create this composite. California 'Supermoon' Linda Shafer Photographer Linda Shafer shot the rising supermoon on Sunday evening (Nov. 13) in Ramona, California. "The moon came up big and quick," she told Space.com. 'Supermoon' over Manhattan Photographer Stan Honda caught this photo of a West Jet airplane flying in front of the supermoon after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York on Nov. 13. 'Supermoon' over Sonoran Desert November's supermoon rises over the Sonoran Desert in the western U.S with Saguaro cacti in the foreground. Birds Photobomb a Waning 'Supermoon' Luciano Tsiros Luciano Tsiros was surprised to find a flock of birds in his supermoon photos. "I found out about the birds only when I loaded the memory card in my computer to work on the pictures," Tsiros said. "Since the Moon was pretty high and shutter speed was at 1/1000th of a second the chances of taking this kind of picture on purpose are pretty slim." 'Supermoon' Gazers Get Splashed Maxim Senin A pair of moon-gazers admire the full supermoon over calm waters at Redondo Beach, California, just before a rogue wave splashed the lovely couple, photographer Max Senin told Space.com. Did the supermoon's effect on the ocean tides cause the wave that soaked the innocent beach-goers? Maybe, or maybe not. This month's full moon came the closest to Earth that it has been since 1948. Skywatchers and astrophotographers flocked to see the big, bright moon in all of its glory Sunday night (Nov. 13). The full supermoon peaked this morning (Nov. 14) at 8:52 a.m. EST (1352 GMT), but it will still look "super" for about a day after its maximum. So if you haven't seen it yet, there's still some time to go check it out. [Supermoon November 2016: When, Where & How to See It] But just in case you aren't able to see the supermoon, Space.com has you covered. You check out awesome photos of the supermoon by Space.com's superfans in our supermoon photo gallery. Photographer Chris Cook took a self-portrait with what he called the "super duper full moon" on Sunday (Nov. 13). (Image credit: Chris Cook www.cookphoto.com Photographer Chris Cook took a self-portrait with what he called the "super-duper full moon" in the background on Sunday evening in Eastham, Massachusetts. Cook said that as the moon was rising, "it didn't look any bigger than other moonrises, but once it got higher in the sky later that night it did seem larger than a full moon at apogee," or the point in the moon's orbit at which it is farthest from Earth. This image by Bill Hood compares the size of the supermoon with the other full moons from 2016. Hood shot the moon photos with a Nikon D750 camera and Nikon 200-500mm lens. (Image credit: Bill Hood) The difference in size between the supermoon and other full moons can be difficult to see it only appears about 14 percent larger than usual. To offer some comparison with other full moons, photographer Bill Hood created the composite image that's shown above. In some other photos, the supermoon did appear much larger than an ordinary full moon. With other objects serving as points of reference in a supermoon shot, the moon can look huge! [How to Photograph the Supermoon: NASA Pro Shares His Tips] Photographer Stan Honda caught this photo of a West Jet airplane flying in front of the supermoon after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York on Nov. 13. (Image credit: Stan Honda Photographer Stan Honda captured this photo of a WestJet airliner flying across the face of the supermoon after it took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York on Nov. 13. Honda took the photo from Central Park in Manhattan at 4:50 p.m. EST, while he was taking pictures of the moon along with members of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York and students from his night-sky photography class. Honda said that he had not intended to take photos of airplanes when he set out to photograph the supermoon; timing was simply on his side. "The moon had just cleared the top of the building when I saw a plane flying towards the moon," he said. "I waited until the plane was just entering the disk and tripped the shutter." Photographers waiting for a chance to get out and photograph another big and bright full moon need not wait long. December's full moon will also be "super" albeit less super than November's full moon. [3 'Supermoons' for of 2016 - NASA Explains | Video] Editor's note: If you have an amazing skywatching photo you'd like to share with Space.com and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please send your photos to our staff at spacephotos@space.com. Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. Until Sept. 11, 2001, that is, when it all started again. Belligerent Islamists attacked the capital of freedom, New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The terror has continued unabated since then. Fear now reigns more than ever, but it is not just the fear of terror. And it is also not as much the fear of losing freedom, as it was in the past, but the fear of freedom itself. This is the paradigm shift that paved Donald Trump's way to the White House. The two fears always exist simultaneously in Western societies. Freedom is enjoyed and feared, freedom is defended and fought, and freedom is expanded and limited. It is merely a question of which fear dominates in a society, and of which current is in power. Alone with Their Fears The fear of freedom can take many shapes. There is also a fear of one's own freedom, but it is usually a fear of the freedom of others. French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said: Hell is other people. If they are free, one might add. If they are free enough to cross borders and look for new places to settle. If they are free enough to export their goods and therefore compete with goods from other countries. If they are free enough to fight for their equal rights, as women, as homosexuals, as non-whites. White men, especially older white men, are viewed as Trump's kingmakers. His support among this group was especially high in the election. It was undoubtedly a mistake to leave these men, and the women who think like them, alone with their fears -- to not take them seriously enough. Long-smoldering fears generate rage, especially against those who are accused of doing nothing to allay those fears, in other words, the establishment, both in politics and the media. For the first time, the Internet has provided this rage with an echo chamber, allowing it to reach a broader public and to magnify the voices of the fearful and the angry. When Donald Trump placed himself at the head of this movement of fury, he found the support he needed to become president. He is now expected to limit freedoms, including free trade and immigration. Many Americans, especially members of minorities, once again fear for their freedom, but this time the threat comes from within. They fear that they will face greater discrimination against their cultures and ways of life under a Trump presidency. The entire drama can be encapsulated in this sentence: That which is unique about the West -- freedom -- is perceived as a threat. A crisis couldn't be more fundamental than that. It has also reached European democracies, where fear and rage are spreading, and for the same reasons as in the United States: immigration, globalization and free trade, in particular. But when it comes to the trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement TTIP, Americans, who the Europeans fear, are apparently even more fearful than the Europeans. But neither Europeans nor Americans need to worry anymore: Trump will likely put an end to TTIP. In Western Europe, the fearful and the angry haven't yet managed to push one of their representatives into the office of prime minister or president, although that could happen in Austria's presidential election in early December. America was long the benchmark for the West. But if Trump governs as he promised he would during the campaign, the land of the free will abdicate its role as leader of the free world. Then, it will be Europe's turn. The continent must resist populism, with a smart mixture of taking fears seriously and confronting the rage, but without curbing freedoms. Drifting Apart And it is high time Europe places a stronger emphasis on the European Union. This has been said and written thousands of times already, but perhaps the Trump shock will help to ensure that it finally happens. Unfortunately, Europe is in the worst shape in decades. The British are leaving the European Union, partly out of fear of the freedom of others, the freedom to settle in Great Britain. Many governments are stressing divisive rather than unifying issues. European countries are drifting apart. In a certain sense, they could long afford to do so. In the 100 years during which the United States was the protective and leading power of the West, its allies have led a relatively comfortable existence. They had the luxury of only half-heartedly pursuing the European idea, because the Americans were there. Each country maintained its own special relationship with the United States, and everyone depended on its weapons and resolve in the event of an emergency. Now, Europe will likely have to provide for its own security -- and this in times of a Vladimir Putin, a Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an Islamic State that exists in Europe's neighborhood. The leaders of the West, minus America, face monumental tasks ahead. They are tasks for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She represents a strong country and she has a strong moral foundation, as she demonstrated in the refugee crisis. She doesn't have to be a Woodrow Wilson, but she should become a decisive leader of Europe. If she doesn't, it will mean that she has not recognized the signs of the times. James joins H&H from the ANM Group, where he was Head of Estates. He has also worked in private practice as a Senior Land Agent and trained at the Valuation Office Agency in England before continuing his career in Scotland. He is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS), a RICS Registered Valuer and has now lived and worked in Scotland for over 20 years. The H&H Group took over Newton St Boswells and Wooler Auction Marts when it acquired John Swan PLC last year. This created the UKs biggest livestock auction mart business and significantly increased the Groups presence in Southern Scotland and Northumberland. In his new position, James will be introducing the services that H&H Land and Property can offer to the agricultural community across these areas, together with opening the new Scottish headquarters at the H&H mart based in Newton St Boswells, where H&H Insurance also has a base. Commenting on his new role, James said: I am delighted to be joining one of the UKs most progressive rural and agricultural businesses, to establish a viable business model for H&H Land and Property in Scotland. Initially I will be heavily involved in raising our profile by engaging with local contacts and offering them information on the high level of service that we can provide within our field of expertise, namely the rural property market and agricultural sector. I would like to encourage an open line of communication, consistent with having a qualified and progressive team of property experts who can be trusted to deliver a highly professional service at a reasonable cost. In addition, I will be approaching key professionals to introduce ourselves and explain our breadth of experience and to highlight the services that we offer. In addition, the companys brand new, top of the range 6R Series tractor (which is being officially announced at the end of November) will be making its UK show debut. New XUV & HPX Gator utility vehicles are now available ex-factory fitted with Datatags CESAR security marking and registration system as standard, with models from the range also on show at Peterborough. Alongside the new 5R, 6R and 8R Series tractors will be a number of developments linked to the Operations Centre in MyJohnDeere.com, the companys dedicated precision farming website portal. The MyJobsConnect Premium service includes MyJobsManager and MyLogistics apps for farm, contract and fleet managers, and a MyJobs app for operators. All of this new technology is designed to improve performance and uptime as well as lower operating costs, especially when paired with other FarmSight systems such as AutoTrac automatic steering and John Deere Section Control for sprayers and spreaders, utilising the newly designed StarFire 6000 satellite receiver. FarmSight services and support are now widely available from John Deere dealers throughout the UK and Ireland. A special ConnectedMachine display at LAMMA will highlight the benefits of JDLink connectivity for both new and older machines, using features such as Remote Display Access, Wireless Data Transfer and Service Advisor Remote to increase productivity and reduce operating costs. The integration of intelligent solutions with farm equipment is a key element of John Deeres FarmSight approach, says John Deere Limited marketing manager Chris Wiltshire. Over the last six years or so, the number of AutoTrac activations has almost trebled. This reflects the rapidly growing demand for tools that can enhance machine utilisation, optimise the logistics chain and provide support for the decision making process on farm. Our LAMMA display will show how simple it can be to keep track of your machinery fleet, get advice on seed and fertiliser rates or spray requirements and monitor machine productivity by working together with, and being connected to, your dealer, adviser and other suppliers. Also featured at LAMMA, the new 8R Series flagship 8400R 400hp tractor offers six per cent higher pulling capacity compared to the 8370R model. This will enable operators to pull wider implements in the field, to increase productivity and maximise total fluid efficiency. By converting 91 per cent of its rated horsepower, the 8400R has been designed to set a new industry benchmark with regard to pulling performance. The tractors new John Deere 9-litre Stage IV compliant engine develops up to 450hp with Intelligent Power Management (IPM). In addition, the e23 transmission with Efficiency Manager delivers a reduction in fuel consumption of up to two per cent compared to the officially tested and proven fuel efficiency of the 8370R. The two models, which have been completely restyled to offer excellent service access, have been extensively renewed and upgraded to meet the requirements of the most demanding contractors, livestock and mixed farmers. Simon Nichol, Head of Hay & Forage and Crop Production Product Management, said: The new Roll Baler models are designed to operate in a wide range of conditions, delivering consistently high bale quality even when working with heavy grass, dense hay or large dry, brittle straw swaths. The new models dramatically increase performance in bale quality, durability, reliability and ease of operation and share many advanced features with the Roll Baler 135 Ultra that is in a class of its own. Consistently high bale quality and high productivity The Roll Baler 125 models feature the latest pick-up, which was introduced on the Big Baler and Roll Belt balers. At 2.3 m, it is 300mm wider than in the previous model. The 5 tine bars with double cam drive and the adjustable suspension deliver ultimate feeding capacity and best-in-class pick up efficiency. The improved roller windguard, also adopted from the Big Baler range, ensures perfect feeding of very small or heavy windrows and is available with a choice of removable fixed or swivel wheels. That can be stowed on the pick up for transport, and remains under 3m wide when the pick-up wheels are installed. The new models feature a new drop floor which is operated from the comfort of the tractor cab. The unique pivot design lowers the floor by 120mm at the front and 60 mm at the rear, making it far easier and quicker to clear a blockage without any losses. The knives lower automatically when the drop floor is lowered. The optional Rotor declutch system ensures fast unplugging even in extreme conditions. The operator can manually select the option of operating with 10 knives or the full 20, switching from the two settings without having to stop for sharpening. The consequent reduced service time results in greater productivity. As the bale nears completion, the knives can be retracted for the final layer, leaving a smoother surface and improving the bales integrity for wrapping. When not in use, the knives are automatically raised every time the bale chamber is opened. This action ensures the self-cleaning of the knives bank. The all-new advanced roller design with 10 notches reduces crop losses in dry conditions and provides a perfect grip in all conditions, ensuring superior bale density every time. The new film wrap on the Roll Baler 125 Combi (also featured on the Roll Baler 135 Ultra) is unique to New Holland: it has a positive hydraulic feed that can be set to pre-stretch the film to ensure a tight, secure and reliable wrap every time thanks to the bundle arms. The system works with plastic or net with a roller up to 1400mm wide, and 3 rollers can be carried on board. The wrapper speed is 20% higher than in the previous model, dramatically increasing productivity. The result is a consistently perfect bale shape, proven improvement in the quality of silage, fewer layers of wrap required as the same material wraps and seals, and its easier for transport and storage. The system can also operate with a combination of film and net, resulting in greater versatility. On the single Roll Baler New Holland introduces the DuckbillTM net wrapping system, which is 20% faster; easy net loading from the side with 1 active and 2 stock rolls; and over-the-edge net wrapping. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD A 5-year-old girl who police say was abandoned by her father in a busy New York City bus depot Monday morning pointed authorities to a grisly discovery at the familys new Glenbrook apartment. Stamford police found the body of the girls mother the victim of an apparent homicide inside one of the units at the Courtland Glen Cooperative, Capt. Richard Conklin said. The womans husband 32-year-old Elmer Gomez Ruono was last seen on surveillance footage at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, Conklin said. Gomez Ruono was seen entering the terminal with his daughter after they got off a bus, likely from Stamford, Conklin said. Lt. Tom Barcello, a spokesman for the Stamford Police Department, said Gomez Ruono is a person of interest in the investigation. Barcello said police are considering it a murder investigation even though the womans death has not yet been ruled a homicide. The womans identity was not released Monday. Conklin said she was a Guatemalan native in her 30s who moved with her husband and daughter to the Stamford apartment just days ago from New Jersey. The family celebrated their move with a party Sunday night at the Courtland Avenue apartment with family and friends, Conklin said. But the apartment turned into a crime scene sometime early on Monday, Conklin said. Conklin said there were signs of a struggle around the body. The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner investigated the scene and will determine the cause of death. Port Authority spokesman Joseph Pentangelo said the girl was found on the second-floor concourse in the midtown bus terminal shortly after 10 a.m. Monday. Commuters alerted Port Authority Police after seeing the girl alone for an extended period of time. The girl was unharmed and in good physical condition. The girl, who speaks little English, told Port Authority Police her father said to wait there until he came back, but he never did. The girl also said her mother may have been taken to the hospital. Stamford police were notified, but the girls mother was not at Stamford Hospital. The girl then provided enough directions to lead police to the familys new home near the corner of Courtland and Maple Tree avenues, where they found the womans body in the third-floor apartment, Conklin said. We know very, very little because they only moved here within the last day or two from New Jersey, Conklin said. We are struggling to come up to speed on this very rapidly. Stamford police released a photo of the womans husband, who is described as 5-foot-8 and about 140 pounds. He has long black hair, with a medium build and medium complexion, police said. Anyone with information on Gomez Ruonos whereabouts can call investigators at 203-977-4421. Staff writer Nelson Oliveira contributed to this story. Jnickerson@scni.com STAMFORD For more than a decade, the city has been ranked among the nations safest, but it has felt less so in the last five months. There have been 25 shootings since March, mostly on the West Side and South End, with at least seven victims. All survived, and all appear to have been targeted in what police say are turf and drug feuds. But the flying bullets also frighten those who are not targeted. People need to be more mindful of human life, said a South End woman who heard shots the night of Aug. 15 and awoke the next morning to find two bullet casings by the stairs leading to her front door. The latest incident occurred Friday on the West Side. Residents told police they heard what could have been shots just after midnight Friday, though no one called 911.The homeowner notified police after finding two bullets lodged in the front door that afternoon. The incident that most concerned innocent bystanders occurred Aug. 17, when 12 shots were fired on the South End near Ludlow and Cedar streets, just outside the new Harbor Point development. It was a nice night, and a lot of people were outside. A group was watching a free movie in a park at Harbor Point. One bullet pierced the wall of a home. In that incident, though, police made headway, Assistant Chief James Matheny said. They apprehended a 17-year-old with a criminal history and seized a semiautomatic handgun that was reported stolen in North Carolina. That arrest was significant, Matheny said. There are two firearms that we believe have been used repeatedly in these incidents, and we think we recovered one during that arrest. With the patrol division working the hot spots in marked cars, the West Side where the gun violence began in a feud between Spruce Street and Connecticut Avenue residents has mostly quieted down, Matheny said. We know the groups that are at odds with each other. Some of the individuals are not in the picture anymore, he said. We are focusing on guys known to carry guns and do drugs. If we get them with a sizable narcotics package, that takes them off the street. Several people involved in the gun violence have been arrested on narcotics charges. We would prefer the gun charges, too, but well take the drug arrests. Saber-rattling The same approach is being used on the South End. Some Stamford guys are coming back to try to do business there. We know who they are, Matheny said. But with all the new development, the South End isnt what it was five, 10, 15 years ago. The problems are in a much more concentrated area. We think we are slowing this down. Department resources are geared toward tying all this up, he said. Its not large, organized groups doing this. Its a relatively small group of guys, often firing guns as saber-rattling, Matheny said. Stray rounds are terrifying. We get it. We are as fearful as everyone else. We are not complacent. We have lived through this in the city and we dont want to return to it. Back in 1993, when Stamford was much less safe, bullets flew between warring drug gangs. That July, one gang attacked the other at Southfield Village, a West Side housing complex. They opened fire on 70 people in the courtyard, including 15 children at a birthday party. A 7-year-old child, Jasmine Merced, was killed. Police recently enlisted the help of state and federal law enforcement, Matheny said. The mayors office called the states attorney and hes on board, he said. That allows us to call the federal agencies and say, The city is with us, the court is with us. The feds then are more likely to get involved, which we want because they can bring more serious charges in arrests. They are putting together a task force, Matheny said. Shells in the street In the meantime, police have followed trails of bullet casings. Besides the incidents on Friday and on Aug. 17, there have been five other shootings this month. On Aug. 15, nine shots were fired from three different guns on Atlantic Street near Lipton Place on the South End, not far from the train station. On Aug. 7, there were three incidents shots were fired around 2:30 a.m. from a black Honda outside the Discovery Cafe on Stillwater Avenue on the West Side; shots were fired around 7 p.m. into a crowd standing at Richmond Hill Avenue and Spruce Street on the West Side; and shots were fired around 10 p.m. at Pacific and Ludlow streets, one of the South Ends few remaining problem pockets, according to police. On Aug. 4, five bullet casings were found at Woodland Place and Pacific Street on the South End after police responded to reports of shots fired about 10:20 p.m. No bystanders have been caught in the crossfire, but seven targeted people have been hit: A 22-year-old Connecticut Avenue man with a criminal history was shot in the chest May 10 after leaving a party on Liberty Street. Two teens were struck by bullets May 28 outside the La Quinta Inn and Suites on Harvard Avenue. A New Haven man and a Bridgeport woman were shot in their car June 19 after they were followed from the Sweet Water nightclub on Greenwich Avenue. A 24-year-old man with a criminal history was shot in the shoulder July 20 near Southwood Avenue and Montauk Drive. A 24-year-old Pound Ridge, N.Y., man was badly injured in a shootout with two other people July 22 at Henry and Cedar streets. Code of silence The victims have mostly refused to cooperate with police. Matheny called it a street code of silence. Whats more difficult to understand, he said, is why residents who are not part of the feuding groups do not call police. In the Aug. 17 incident, we heard after the fact that there were a lot of people at an outdoor event, that people were scared. But we did not get a lot of calls for shots fired, Matheny said. We are getting less and less of that as time has gone on. I dont know the reason why. Maybe people are relying on someone else to make the call because they are fearful. But the 911 call can be confidential. We will never put anyone at risk. We will not show up at your door and say, Hey, did you call police? You dont have to leave your name. Just get us moving in the right direction. If you call as its happening, thats most helpful. Toward that end, police are extending a hand. They have a long list of requests for the departments Community Outreach Program, in which officers meet with residents at churches and other gathering places. A more informal program, Coffee with a Cop, began this summer. Were banking on community outreach, Matheny said. I can say with 100 percent certainty that calls from residents make a huge difference in the way we do business. Matheny, who moved to the city when he was 9 and still lives here, said residents should remember: Stamford is remarkably safe. When his young-adult daughter and son say they want to go to a West Side restaurant or a South End event, he does not discourage them. I have no problem sending my own, he said. These are short-term rashes of crime that, traditionally, we have been able to deal with effectively. angela.carella@scni.com; 203-964-2296; stamfordadvocate.com/angelacarella I NSURANCE heavyweight Axa slimmed further today by shedding consultancy and broker unit Bluefin to a US rival. It will sell Bluefin to broker Marsh, an arm of US-listed giant Marsh & McLennan, for 295 million. Bluefin, which has offices around the UK, will merge with Marshs broker division, called Jelf, after the deal completes early next year. That will create a company with 2500 employees across 80 locations, giving it a huge battalion of salespeople selling insurance to UK small firms. The sale marks the latest exit from the UK market for Axa after it sold pension business Sunlife to Phoenix and savings platform Elevate to Standard Life in summer. Axa is exiting several areas in the UK to focus on more-profitable units like wealth management and its main insurance lines. It has become increasingly apparent that Bluefins ability to achieve its potential would be better served under a new parent, Axa UK chief Amanda Blanc said. P ressure was on Monday mounting on Dominic Chappell as deadline day dawned for the recently arrested serial bankrupt to lodge evidence in an attempt to prevent his Retail Acquisitions venture going bust. Monday is the cut-off date for Chappell to submit evidence to a High Court judge to stop BHSs administrator, Duff & Phelps, seizing control of Retail Acquisitions the vehicle Chappell used to buy BHS from Sir Philip Green for 1. Duff & Phelps wants to put it into administration so it can investigate the money lent to the company from BHS. Retail Acquisitions is understood to have borrowed 8.4 million from the retailer, 2.4 million of which Chappell claims has been paid back. Duff & Phelps are interested in a 1.5 million loan from the retailer which was allegedy used to pay off a mortgage on a house owned by his parents. Chappell is working with law firm David Rubin & Partners. Both were unavailable for comment. Chappell has confirmed that he was arrested by HM Revenue & Customs earlier this month over allegations of unpaid tax amounting to 500,000 owed by Chappells company Swiss Rock. The 49-year-old led Retail Acquisitions, which bought BHS from Greens Arcadia in March 2015. It failed 13 months later with a 571 million pension deficit. MPs have voted to strip Green of his knighthood. Nick Hood of restructurer Opus Business Group Services said of BHS: Even hard-bitten insolvency experts are finding it difficult not to wonder what on earth might happen next. Paul George of the Financial Reporting Council on Monday said that the body has told MPs there is scope for a governance code for large private companies, which has been called for in the wake of BHSs collapse. O h, the irony. A year or so ago at a Conservative Party fundraiser, Simon Gordon saw the chance to lobby the then-Home Secretary Theresa May over the tech company he founded to help the police crack down on petty thieves. But the future PM gave him short shrift. I cant talk now, my bags been stolen, she fumed, wearing the flustered look hed seen on dozens of similar victims in Londons landmark Gordons Wine Bar, which inspired him to set up Facewatch in the first place. The handbag eventually turned up in a bathroom, he recalls. Simon Gordon is not your typical tech entrepreneur. Hes 60, he didnt have his big idea until well into his fifties and he lives in Hampshire, not hipster Hackney or Shoreditch. The chartered accountant made his money in insurance, rising to become finance director of Skandia UK. But he suffered bouts of depression and finally quit more than a decade ago for a stint running the familys eponymous wine bar in Villiers Street next to Embankment Tube station. The hostelrys doors have been open for 126 years, but it gets scarcely any of his time these days. Were not in the dark caverns of the bar, sharing a nice red, but in Facewatchs offices around the back. Gordon is hunched over his laptop, showing off his pride and joy. The idea for Facewatch came from the frustration he felt when trying to report petty crime, and the rigmarole of the police having to come and pick up CCTV footage and wade through it themselves. His system allows edited footage to be emailed straight to the police, and lets businesses and the public share intelligence. I realised just how inefficient the whole process was, he says. His goal is not tech for the sake of tech, but trying to reduce crime. The amount that supermarkets lose to shoplifting is ludicrous in his view, and he reckons Facewatch could save a big retail chain 30 million a year. Gordon is about to embark on the next stage of evolution, combining Facewatchs data on light-fingered customers with a new age of advanced face-recognition cameras. Hes planning a UK launch in the next couple of months after a successful pilot in Brazil that was three years in the making. We are right on the cusp of a major revolution in the way crime is prevented and detected, because we are going to have thousands of cameras all going back to the cloud, where it is analysed and compared to Facewatch watchlists, and then the alerts will go back to the business. Isnt all a bit Big Brother? Gordon says the system will only share in a proportionate manner under the Data Protection Act. He adds: To be on there, there has to be evidence that youve committed a crime and that you continue to be a threat. One of his advisers is former MI5 head Jonathan Evans, who was a friend of a friend; the potential interest of such a system to the security services is obvious.If you read about any kind of terrorism incident, anywhere in the world, it says they were involved in local crime prior to that, Gordon says. But theres no scary tie-up were not financed by MI5 or anything. Its just me trying to stop low-level crime. Were trying to create we will create a global business which could be one of the biggest things to come out of the UK for years Google, Facebook, that sort of size. He has his eye on joining the unicorn club of companies with a $1 billion valuation. Another adviser is James Macpherson, one of the most senior UK figures at fund giant BlackRock. Gordon has put everything into it including his house every penny I ever saved and still owns more than half the company. Hes been burning through cash but reckons the company will be producing eight-figure revenues within three years. At that point, hell be looking to retire, maybe selling to a US company. Weve created this thing making little money but investing a lot of money over six years and now weve reached the stage when we can turn it into products, he declares. Shoplifters, beware. D onald Trumps drive to rebuild Americas creaking infrastructure is long overdue. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated a few years ago that a repair programme of everything from roads and airports to sewage pipes would cost $3.6 trillion (2.9 trillion) by 2020. The question is who is going to pay for it? Increasing spending will be popular with the US Congress but set against that are concerns over the huge hike required in national debt. Given the sharp cuts in corporate tax the new President has in mind, income will be crimped in the short term. More than ever, it is a case of matching public works with an injection of private money. Previous presidential efforts to boost infrastructure have seen too little of the cash distributed at state level actually reaching the crumbling highways in most need. Bringing in outside investors might keep these renewed efforts honest. The irony is that international financiers would clamour to get a slice of prestige rebuilding work in California or Chicago. But welcoming sovereign wealth funds and the like to the country to bankroll this activity does not fit with Trumps protectionist stance. Hefty import tariffs on goods arriving from China and elsewhere will further sour the mood. One star-spangled lever he can pull is immediately cash-generative. Some of the largest US corporations, including Apple and Google-owner Alphabet, have parked a small fortune offshore rather than paying 30% tax to bring it home. Trump has proposed charging a one-off 10% tax to get the funds back in the country. With the best part of $2 trillion sloshing around the globe, that will yield a handy $200 billion. Some of the rest could be directed at key projects if the Presidents particular brand of patriotism rubs off on captains of industry. Here is where Trump differs from other business leaders, who are frequently frustrated that politicians dont understand them. Presented with a windfall, most would reward their own shareholders rather than invest. The risk-taking Trump knows the economic value of putting up new hotels and casinos but he also has an intimate knowledge of bankruptcy proceedings that shows the risks he takes do not always pay off. The other problem he has is who will pour the concrete? Now the US unemployment rate has fallen below 5%, there is little slack in the workforce. Even when the jobless queue is longer, construction projects are powered by migrant workers. Just the same as in the UK, hopes of a building boom do not square with closing borders. Can do better is message to funds Infrastructure was also on the menu at TheCityUK Mansion House dinner last Tuesday, just hours before Trump was declared victorious. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling reeled off Heathrow, HS2 and the road schemes he has on the go before referring to a partnership he would like to strike with the City presumably an oblique invitation to pick up the bill. Financiers might feel more disposed toward raising cash for all that spadework if the Government had put its back into plotting the way ahead for the Square Mile post-Brexit. Nevertheless, there is an irony in that there are over 4.3 trillion of assets overseen in the UK, much of them in London, but when it comes to getting projects paid for, there is a coughing and shuffling of feet as the hat gets passed round. Of course investors must scour the globe for the best returns but too few have followed the Legal & General example of funding assets in the UK to match where most of its liabilities lie. The truth is that asset managers are in the doghouse and have an awkward few weeks ahead. First of all, the Financial Reporting Council was on Monday naming and shaming managers who are performing poorly against its stewardship code, which was meant to encourage greater involvement in the performance of their investments. The bigger concern is the Financial Conduct Authoritys probe into the industry. Initial findings are due any day now into the areas of management fees, transparency, profitability and competition at the retail and institutional level. While banks have become almost uninvestable in the zero interest-rate environment, fund managers have enjoyed a rising markets tide. But attempts to demystify costs and performance for clients including pension fund trustees have been slow going. FCA boss Andrew Bailey is far more measured than his predecessor Martin Wheatley. He knows now is not the time to up-end a world-leading industry and significant net exporter, especially with Brexit and foreign takeovers in the air that could erode Londons position anyway. The Investment Association got its retaliation in early, reminding critics over the summer that asset managers purchase two-thirds of corporate bonds and 40% of IPO equity issuances. Still, the industry can do better and not just by bankrolling ministerial good works. I doubt if Sir Philip and Mike Ashley were invited to tonights Guildhall dinner for City grandees. But theyll be a heavy presence in the room as Theresa May warms up her business-bashing rhetoric in the wake of the US election. When she cites the publics anger at executives who game the system and work to a different set of rules, we know exactly who shes talking about. The trouble is that, while Green and Ashley fit the bill for being greedy and uncaring in the publics mind, such corporate characteristics did not spur the main resentments of Trump voters. The greatest anger among those communities here and in the US that May describes as the overlooked is that big employers have outsourced skilled jobs abroad and become too close to government elites. Say what you will about our two pantomime villains of retail, theyre guilty of neither of those charges. The unemployment and low wages angering supporters of Trump, and for that matter Ukip and Marine Le Pen, are the by-products of the globalisation which generations of businesses and governments have welcomed. And, for all the anger that it generates in those who suffer from it, globalisation is here to stay. Unravelling the systematic global shift in the way goods are made and services delivered is too big a task for any government on a five-year term. If Trump doesnt already know it, he will soon learn. May is perhaps a step ahead: far easier to demonise a tiny minority of businesspeople than admit shes at the whim of far greater global forces than herself. W hen Playtechs bosses mapped out plans on Wednesday to bolster its financial arm with acquisitions, investors probably did not think they would have to wait only five days for the first deal. The FTSE 250 company, which specialises in gambling software including for online bingo and poker but has been growing its financial division, has bought Consolidated Financial Holdings, a technology and clearing provider for contract-for-difference brokers, for up to $120 million. It will initially pay $43 million for 70%. It has the option to buy the whole business after 2018. The total price will be capped at $120 million. The FCA has approved the deal, which will come as a relief after last years agreed takeovers of Plus500 and Ava Trade fell through amid regulatory scrutiny. UBS analyst Tal Grant today revealed that at the capital markets day last week, management unveiled plans to buy B2B businesses rather than more consumer-facing companies such as its two previous targets. Investors welcomed the news, sending the shares up 28p, or 3.2%, to 910.5p, valuing Playtech at close to 3 billion. Equities continued to yo-yo after Donald Trump was elected US President last week, this time in the right direction for the bulls, with the FTSE 100 up 73.25 points to 6803.68. Investors appear to like the less-controversial character who has addressed the media since winning, said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets. Irish support services group DCC was the best blue-chip performer, surging 475p, or 8%, to 6510p after revealing full-year profits will be better than analysts had pencilled in. The strong first-half results were accompanied by a deal to buy French gas business Gaz Europeen for just shy of 100 million. Marks & Spencer, up 9p at 336.2p, looked sharper after Citi upgraded to buy, becoming the latest broker to predict a turnaround for the beleaguered retailers shares. Better-than-expected annual results from farming group Carrs lifted its shares by 3.5p to 142p. Revenues were down 4.2% at 315 million, but pre-tax profits rose 2.8% to 14 million. Among the small-caps, another discounted share placing to raise 8.35 million left Philippines gold miner Metals Exploration, whose main investors are the Candy brothers, 0.29p cheaper at 5.59p. Oil minnow Angus Energy shone on its AIM debut, trading up at 6.7p after raising 3.5 million in a float at 6p per share. The company is the largest stakeholder and operator of the Brockham oilfield, which is next to Horse Hill, better known as the home of the Gatwick Gusher well. While Horse Hill is years away from production, Brockham is already producing oil. W e're going to need a new word for omnishambles. This handy political term back in the balmy days when a political cock-up was a New Labour spin team in meltdown is quite inadequate to describe the chaos that Donald Trumps election victory is already bringing. Washington insiders report that there are at least three bitterly warring factions within the leadership team and theres no evidence that the President-elect had even reviewed any of the binders of policy and personnel proposals produced by the team. The terms under which he bought Chris Christies shrivelled soul have been unilaterally renegotiated. The first of Lord knows how many lawsuits is coming to trial before the month is out. And nobody has a clue what his actual policies will be. One moment hes whining about the protesters against him, the next praising their passion. An hour with the outgoing President and he changed his tune on Obamacare. One moment hes threatening to throw Hillary in jail; the next hes praising her public service. Hes changed his tune on his Muslim ban. He was going to deport millions of immigrants and then he wasnt and now he is again because he goes to television studios and stuff comes out of his mouth. He has changed his tune on the wall, which is now, apparently, going to be more like a fence. (He should exchange notes with Israel. They have a wall that pretends to be a fence; hes going to have a fence that pretends to be a wall.) Cross fingers that when the Pentagon sits him down for The Talk hell change his tune about Nato and the trousers of dwellers in the Baltic republics will unbrown themselves just a little. He does not have a flaming clue. He does not have a clue about what he doesnt have a clue about, and he couldnt care less. There is reason, though admittedly very qualified reason, to be encouraged by this. Rather than being hellbent on a programme of immiseration and racial oppression, President Trump may not have much of a policy on anything. He was desperate to win the presidency because hes a maniacal narcissist, but he has little or no interest in governing. As his political history shows, hes not an idealogue. His only project is Donald Trump. He has a tiny attention span, no discernible principles, and he is not only indifferent to the truth, he is immune to the faintest flicker of embarrassment when it comes to self-contradiction. Donald Trump: Is the President-elect already breaking campaign promises? Im certainly not saying that this makes him a sensible candidate to run a whelk stall. But it means that he might not have the gumption to be properly evil. Therell be more flip-flops than on the beach outside his Mar-a-Lago resort. It seems quite plausible that most of his energy in office will be frittered on persecuting TV comedians who make fun of him. Its his babysitters, then, who are going to matter: he bears the imprint of the last bottom that sat on him. And heres where the encouragement evaporates. Because the bottoms that will be sitting on him are the worst bottoms on Earth. Trump grinning goonishly in a gold-plated lift with that utter melt Nigel Farage is the least of it. God help us. Were all doomed. Gangnam Balls continues with his ballroom blitz Unique style: Ed Balls and his partner Katya survived another week on Strictly / BBC/Guy Levy It has been an upset like no other. A sinister figure of fun suddenly looks set to win a competition for which he has no previous experience or qualifications, on the back of a massive and unexpected popular vote. Experts have raised their voices in objection and been shouted down because weve had enough of experts. Everyone called it wrong. And now it looks like its happening. But seriously: Gangnam Style? The creatures outside looked from clown to politician, and from politician to clown, and from clown to politician again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. We have good reason to poo-poo the polls Weve read a lot in the past few days about the uselessness of political polling. And, heaven knows, weve enjoyed watching Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium eating a supersized portion of humble pie after predicting a Clinton victory with 99 per cent certainty. But we read a lot about the uselessness of polls in the aftermath of the Brexit vote and, before that, following David Camerons overall majority. What went wrong with the polls? has become the all-purpose headline for the modern age. We might as well be honest: were never going to stop treating polls as if they mean something and pollsters as if they have something to tell us. This is for reasons of journalism, not political science. Polls give us something to write about before elections. We dont care if theyre accurate: when wrong, they give us something to write about after elections too. A principled decision to ignore them would completely shoot the fox. As Kipling wrote: The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,/ And the burnt Fools bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire. * The comedian Amy Lames appointment as Londons night czar does look a bit rum. When the creation of the role was announced in August, Sadiq Khan said the tsar would chair the London Night Time Commission a serious body consisting of politicians, police, venue owners and officials involved in the night-time economy. That job will now be given to a separate official, also paid from public funds. Miss Lame who fundraises for Labour and vigorously supported Mr Khans mayoral campaign will instead earn 35,000 a year for a two-and-a-half-day week as what Mr Khan calls a much-needed ambassador for the city after dark, and will apparently be forming an action plan. We must see it as a sign of his integrity that Mr Khan is prepared to appoint the best person for the job even if it looks to outsiders like cronyism. Two friends whose website sells products made by womens organisations hit by funding cuts have launched a fashion range to support the groups. Sarah Beckett, 26, and Sophie Slater, 25, are behind Birdsong, which sells wares from 17 groups across the country and gives them much of the proceeds. Ms Beckett, who lives in Twickenham, said: Most of our groups have been hit by funding and are struggling. They make amazing products which they can earn good money from, but often they dont have the time or the manpower to set up a website or go to lots of markets to sell their goods. The duo work with five London groups including the Heba Womens Project, which sells jackets on the site and has been commissioned to make the fashion range. It has been teaching migrant women to make clothes on Brick Lane for 25 years but last year its rent was tripled and local authority funding cut. Birdsong also works with two elderly knitting groups in Enfield and Kingston, Mohila, a group of migrant women selling clothes in Tower Hamlets, and Sweet Cavanagh, a team of ex-addicts who make jewellery in west London. The founders realised the need for the site in 2014 while taking the Year Here social work qualification. Ms Beckett said: I worked with the knitting group we now support in Kingston via Age Concern. They were making these jumpers and selling them for next to nothing. Knitwear is so valuable and fashionable. But they dont know how to make a website. Thats where the idea came from. She and Ms Slater got several projects on board and launched the site within a week. They have now raised 100,000 via crowdfunding which will be used for their expansion. They have made 12,000 directly from sales for the groups, which has been used to fund Living Wage employment, IT and English classes, counselling, new furniture, facilities and volunteer expenses. Ms Slater said: Everything has been done on a shoestring, so it is nice to have a bit of breathing space and make some decisions about the future. F rancesco Mazzei has hated food waste since he was a child. Growing up in Calabrese, the Italian chef started worked at his uncles gelateria when he was 8 years-old to earn extra pocket money. Besides the obvious draw of ice cream, the best thing was the respect for the food, not to throw anything away. Now 43, Mazzeis appetite for using up every last scrap has not abated. Us chefs, were very picky on how we use food he says. And if you know what youre doing its actually hard to waste anything After his stracciatella-scooping years, Mazzei left Italy for London. Here, he has worked with the capitals most notable restauranteurs, from Alan Yau to Corbin and King. In 2008 he opened the critically adored LAnima in Hoxton, and last year he was snapped up as chef patron for the opening of Sartoria, Savile Rows only restaurant, and purveyors of what Grace Dent called the best tiramisu in London. While Sartoria is modern Italian in fare, hints of a chef keen to minimise food waste shine through. The menu features pickled vegetables a failsafe way of using old carrots - cured marrow bones, broth made from chicken carcasses and anchovy butter-bathed pasta sprinkled with roasted breadcrumbs, one of Mazzeis favourite ways to serve old bread (beautiful breadcrumbs! he enthuses). To Mazzei, leftovers are the opposite of waste: theyre wonderful, delicious toys to play with. He describes meals that can be made out of produce others might bin as beautiful. Cooked pasta, for instance. Although Mazzei laughs that leftover linguine never happens to me, he suggests that those without his Italian appetite chuck eggs into it, mozzarella, put it in oven overnight. Its even more beautiful than before. At the Evening Standards Food Waste Cook Off tomorrow, hell be doing something similar with leftover risotto and roast lamb, turning them into delicious lamb arancini coated, of course, in some of those beautiful breadcrumbs. Our Food For London Campaign What is it? This 1.3 million-plus initiative seeks to redistribute surplus food to tackle food poverty. What are we doing? 1. Backing the scale-up of The Felix Project our flagship charity - which picks up surplus produce from food suppliers and delivers it to charities that provide meals for those in need. 2. Awarding grants of up to 20,000 each to charities, community groups or social enterprises tackling food waste and/or using fresh food to address food poverty. Applications have closed. Who are our backers? We have raised over 1 million for Felix, including from Citi, Sainsburys, Lush founders Mark and Mo Constantine, Uber and the Felix Byam Shaw Foundation, which has pledged to match money raised for Felix with up to 750,000. The 320,000 grants programme is funded by Citi, D&D London and the Dispossessed Fund. How you can help The Felix Project is looking for more food suppliers, especially supermarkets, food wholesalers and catering companies. Please email: Daisy@TheFelixProject.org We try to use as much as we can, he says of kitchen practise at Sartoria. When were peeling carrots, potatoes, we keep all the skin and use for broth. Everything else the stuff that might not be as pretty - goes straight into staff meals. In fine dining we only use the best produce, its just that the customer has to have the best part of it. The staff has the same quality food as the customer, we just use the parts that arent as good-looking. Its tempting to apply for a job. At Sartoria, Mazzei is obliged to adhere to regulations which means any food past its use-by-date is thrown out. But its a different story at home. Yoghurt, cheese, vegetables. You dont chuck them, just use them. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with something old. His family have to toe the food waste line. Im paranoid when I go in the kitchen, he laughs. I always look in the rubbish bin, if theres more than two bags in there, I go mad! Mazzeis keen to impart the importance of minimising food waste to his son and daughter too. Buying a beautiful chicken from the market with his kids on a Saturday is, he says, a great exercise in teaching them to value the whole animal. Well have a roast for lunch, then keep all the leftover meat. With the bones, we make a stock, make a minestrone to use during the week. Then the leftover meat, we make kebabs, with mozzarella, vegetables, avocado. Mazzeis voice races as he reaches his enthusiastic conclusion. Thats three meals out of one chicken! And the taste is absolutely beautiful! @franklymccoy Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESGoingOut A s a child growing up in London during the nineties, I remember the sheer joy of cooking tacos at home. Not the real things. God no. These were those horrid shells, which at the time were a revelation. Mexican food was not something you could eat out, so we sat around the kitchen table piling fried mince, salad, cheddar and sour cream into these curious cases, like actual Mexicans or so we thought. A few years later in my early twenties, I travelled to Mexico and discovered that this food of the future was a very sad version of the original. Feasting on soft corn tortillas laden with smoky pulled pork or spicy chipotle beef and topped with macerated onions, queso fresco, fresh herbs, hot sauce and lime was dramatically more epic. Today London is a different place. Thanks to pioneers like Wahaca founder Thomasina Miers and food importers Cool Chilli, decent Mexican food is readily available. Now its the tacos that are taking over and set to become the next big thing. Breddos: Taco toppings will include fried fish and steak tartare Breddos Tacos (one of my favourite street food vendors) open their first restaurant on Goswell Road in Clerkenwell imminently. Inspired by traditional Mexican and Poncho (Mex-American) cuisines, it will serve tacos morning, noon and night. Kick off with Austin-style tacos, the big breakfast of Texas, and then feast on their mighty baja fish or masa fried chicken tacos. Owners Nud and Chris have assured me they have a few surprises up their sleeves for the opening, including a sea urchin with burnt chilli salsa taco. Corazon: Mexican comfort food in Soho Heading west to Soho, Corazon is promising Mexican comfort food when it opens on Poland Street. Expect rich barbacoa tacos made with 12-hour slow roast lamb rib, neck and shoulder, doused in a pasilla rub and served with a tangy tomatillo salsa. And on the weekends, hauevos benedict tacos stacked high with ham hock hash, caramelised onions, eggs and green chilli hollandaise. Also getting in on the action are the Hart brothers. These two dont mess around when it comes to food trends. They launched Barrafina in 2007, bringing Londoners an authentic tapas bar at a time when the alternative meant sitting in a naff dining room at La Tasca and mopping up oily food, the whole time quietly thinking do those cool, clever people in Spain really eat this? 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants 1 /41 30 must-try dishes in London restaurants Bone marrow on toast with parsley salad at St John Not only has this dish kicked off countless wonderful meals over the course of St Johns 25 years, but it also gets credit for putting British cooking back on the global culinary map. Roasted bone marrow, coaxed out onto toast, cut perfectly with salad of parsley, shallots and capers. A nose-to-tail revolution, and utterly divine. Whole turbot at Brat Tomos Parrys talents with a turbot first came to feverish acclaim at Mayfair restaurant Kitty Fishers, but they are now the star attraction at his Michelin-starred solo spot. This whole fish grilled Basque-style, over hot coals and in a specially designed cage softens as if it has melted, and is basted at the table in an emulsion made with its own juices. Benjamin McMahon Marinara at 50 Kalo di Ciro Salvo Superlatives should be used in moderation but heck it, this might just be Londons best pizza. This under-the-radar London iteration of a Naples pizzeria serves an unrivalled marinara: just tomato sauce, oil, garlic and oregano. No need for any more with a sauce this good and a base so fine and perfectly charred, you can stop mourning your cancelled Italian holiday at first bite. Luciano Furia Clay pot baked pork and crab glass noodles at Kiln When we say Kiln is one of the hottest spots in town, we mean it hang over the counter at the Thai barbecue and youre not far out of range for the odd flame. Baking in the heart of the swirling heat is this must order: shimmering glass noodles, coated with a silky sauce enriched with fatty slicks of Tamworth pork belly and improbably unctuous crab meat. Lamb chops, Melabes Perhaps because its quietly tucked in among its unassuming neighbours down on the wrong end of High Street Kensington, Melabes is often overlooked by Londons food lovers. An unwarranted shame, as this partly Middle Eastern, partly Mediterranean set-up is really very good; it is somewhere to pick and choose from bits and pieces, and put a meal together yourself. The lamb chops, which come all smokey and burnished from the grill, are perfect; pink as a Vegas sign inside, but the fat all soft and dripping and delicious. A must, whatever the order. Steak tartare imperial at Bob Bob Ricard Theres Press For Champagne buttons, lobster in your mac and cheese and anything that stays still long enough gets gilded there is no point in going small at Bob Bob Ricard. Steak tartare is a luxurious pick at the best of times, but the Imperial upgrade here comes with a dollop of caviar even without the finishing touch, the tartare itself is one of the best in the capital. Bacon naan at Dishoom Londoners spent decades believing bacon in a bap with some ketchup (or brown sauce, but lets not have that argument now) couldnt be beaten and then Dishoom came along. This breakfast sandwich fills a fresh naan with bacon, a slathering of cream cheese, a luxurious tomato and chilli chutney, coriander and an oozing fried egg if you feel so inclined. Hangover be gone. Cacio e pepe at Padella Five years ago, you would have thought anyone queuing for pasta in London to have lost their minds this dish changed that. The starlet of Padellas much coveted is this plate of pici hand-rolled fat worms of eggless pasta with a mirror-shine sauce of parmesan cheese and pasta. Simple but unrivalled and itll set you back just 6. Jamon croquetas at Barrafina A dish like this should be elusive it is far too easy to eat seven portions of croquetas in a single sitting, which is why we presume Barrafina makes you queue. Very sensible. As the crunchy coating gives way to the oozing centre, enriched with the flavour of Spanish jamon (the best ham in the business), were already planning our next visit. Biang biang noodles at Xi'an Biang Biang Noodles There are oodles of noodles in the capital, but Guirong Weis triumphant take is one of the finest. First finding followers at her north London restaurant Xian Impression (soon to reopen for dine-in, but not yet), the dish of has inspired a whole spin-off restaurant in Spitalfields. Thick, hand-pulled, chewy noodles soak up all the spice and zing of the special sauce they swim in very special indeed. Souffle Suissesse, Le Gavroche Le Gavroche the street urchin is perhaps not for everyone. It is a Mayfair time machine, a reminder of how things were done once upon a time. Fortunately, it happens that how things were once done was very well indeed, and lunch or supper here is a masterclass in traditional French luxury (and often, happily, includes very large glasses of wine). Staff make the place, anyone who has been gently teased by the twins pretending to be each other will know. A tendency towards the old ways does mean the cooking offers little in the way of evolution or revolution, but new, after all, isnt always better. Michel Roux Jrs cheese souffle, baked on double cream, stuns, so overwhelmingly tasty, utter decadence that clings to the taste buds. Buttermilk Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Around the Cluck / 12:51 James Cochran found his signature dish early on, but its good it should stay with him for the rest of his career. While he has chops, and can do more beyond, theres something special in the way he works with his chicken; hotly spiced, gorgeously crispy, beautifully soft on the inside. A long-standing favourite and, though 12:51 cant operate as it did before, there are tables at his new project Around the Cluck, which is operating out of the same site. Breakfast at Hawksmoor Guildhall Your Full English is not full in comparison to the Hawksmoor breakfast at the steak connoisseurs Guildhall restaurant. The mind-boggling two-person spread swaps bacon rashers for an entire smoked chop, serves its bubble and squeak with short rib, puts trotter meat into its baked beans, and adds grilled bone marrow to all the usual trimmings. Cauliflower shawarma at Berber & Q Its not often that the main event at a barbecue restaurant is the veg, but Berber & Q have achieved just that. The cauliflower shawarma here is cooked on their flaming grill until softened and charred, before being doused liberally in tahini, pomegranate molasses, coriander, pomegranate seeds and a scattering of dried rose petals. BBQ Butter Chicken Wings at Brigadiers Brigadiers is a bold, boisterous sort of place: a labyrinthine City dining room, packed to the rafters with beer and Indian food that is indisputably gutsy. But arguably its finest moment comes in one of its smallest packages these chicken wings may be diminutive, but are mightily spiced, deftly charred and dripping with ghee-fuelled succulence. Beef brisket bun at Smokestak David Carters Shoreditch restaurant occupies itself by giving the entirety of Kansas City a run for its money on a daily basis. The star turn at this lauded barbecue restaurant is its beef brisket bun the meat is soft and juicy, riddled with its fats in the centre, while charred and treacle-like on the outside, paired perfectly with pickled chillies. To remember it is to salivate, we assure you. Snails, LEscargot LEscargot is one of Sohos old aristocrats and in its grand, beret red dining room there is always a mischievous sense of fun perhaps because it is still such a smart, suited, chandeliered place, and people are often drinking themselves rather silly. The clue to good eating is in the name; the snails come still clinging to their shells and submerged in their butter and parsley sauce. Dive in; you will emerge stinking gloriously of garlic. It wont matter a jot; roll on the red wine and settle in for a long, comforting night. Confit potatoes at Quality Chop House Yes, there are some high quality chops on offer at this 150-year-old Clerkenwell restaurant but blimey, leave room for the chips. Fine slices of potato are stacked into architecturally sound wedges, and confited until shatteringly crispy on the outside and devastatingly soft in the centre. They have been much imitated in recent years, but never bettered. Smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis Jeremy Lee cooks many things to a legendary level at Quo Vadis his pies could so easily have also made this list but he gets the nod here for his unrivalled take on the fancy sandwich. Smoked eel, horseradish cream and Dijon mustard, served with red onion pickle a combination so popular Lee says he nearly ran out of eel on post-lockdown reopening. Classic bao at Bao London has buns in abundance, but we still bow down to the fluffy superiority of Bao. The Taiwanese restaurant has become a cross-town favourite, thanks to its pleasingly pert rice buns (they are genuinely very pert, no crassness intended) and carefully considered fillings. The classic order comes filled with braised pork, fermented veg, coriander and a dusting of peanut powder. Carol Sachs Potato and roe, Core by Clare Smyth Clare Smyth has a knack that must infuriate other chefs; she is able to take the simplest of ingredients say, a single carrot and a smattering of lamb mince do something devilish with it and charge rather a lot for it; so good are the results, though, that few mind. Smyths sorcery is perhaps best witnessed with her signature, the potato and roe. It is simply a potato on a plate in a little sauce, but then it is also perhaps the best potato dish in the world; it has this wonderful salty richness, a certain seaside intenseness. It is glorious; so too is the smoked chicken that tends to come as an amuse bouche. Youll be treated here. Omelette Arnold Bennett Dont worry, no Arnolds were harmed in the making of this dish. Alongside impeccable service and an arguably perfect dining room, you could add another highlight to your breakfast at The Wolseley by ordering this creamy, haddock-filled dish, named for the writer who inspired its creation while staying at the Savoy. Fish pie, J Sheekey Long an actors favourite, J Sheekeys glamour has never lost its lustre. Its kept its regulars and charmed newcomers with a menu that plays the greatest hits of fine dining favourites. Seafood is Sheekeys thing; simply done sole is beautiful here, crab comes three ways, brill brushed in butter has a meatiness thats beyond satisfying. The fish pie is famous though, and rightly so; beneath the flaking pastry is a sea of cream, mustard and white wine, in it bobbing cod, haddock and salmon. It is simple but never fails; it does on its own for lunch, but is a failsafe at supper, too. John Carey The Ari Gold at Patty & Bun Theres a cheeseburger on every high street in the capital but not all of them are created equal. Patty & Bun has got the classic combination down to a tee with its curiously named Ari Gold burger: a fat, 35-day aged patty is served medium rare, and topped with gooey American cheese, smokey house mayo and tangy pickled red onions. Xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung Few dishes in the capital have been known to cause queues of four hours. Thats exactly what the world-famous xiao long bao dumplings did when top Taiwanese restaurant group Din Tai Fung first opened in Covent Garden. An intricately folded out layer (made by chefs trained for at least 18 months) gives way to succulent meat and a broth you could take on by the bowlful. Pig's trotter, the French House Upstairs in the Soho local, Neil Borthwick is quietly running one of the areas best kitchens. He orders in particularly good oysters, does brilliant things with brill and with his pigs trotter, has a dish that is rich and fatty, but with a beautiful salty cut that makes it madly moreish. The menu tends to change often upstairs in the French, but have this if its on. That little dining room is somewhere to go in early for lunch and stay until late, eventually spilling down into the pub below, to drink pints they do pints now, not just halfs all while merrily reliving the joys upstairs. Peter Clark Dover sole with crab butter at Bentley's Oyster Bar and Grill There are so many delights at Bentleys, its tricky to pick a single one. This could so easily have been a plate of rigorously sourced oysters, the fish pie, the decadent Royal seafood platter (pictured). It is however, the Dover sole that wins. A sublime piece of fish always, expertly cooked without fail choose it either filleted with beautiful crab butter, or grilled and whole for a simple pleasure. Over in the City, Corrigan does similarly brilliant things with lobster at Daffodil Mulligan. Ragu, Lina Stores Sohos Lina Stores the pasta bar, not the longstanding Italian deli it comes from is the sort of restaurant one longs for; small, fun, friendly, not too pricey. They do small plates of near perfect pasta; their ragu, whether lamb or veal, is a gem. A good ragu is hard to find too often theres too little meat, or meat not cooked for long enough but here, they spend the time over it, cooking slowly, carefully. No restaurant can compare with a Nonna, but Lina gets gratifyingly close. Porterhouse steak, the Guinea Grill London is not short of steakhouses, but the Guinea does not number among them. A pub a proper one it is tucked down a Mayfair sidestreet, away from everything and yet still perpetually busy. Besides the small bar is a dining room that looks much as it must have done when the likes of Sinatra was in (or Bette Midler, or Kylie, or Regan, or, or, or), where theyve served prime Aberdeen Angus cooked on a smoking hot grill. The Guinea is all about having a good time pints, red wine, brandies, the lot but they cook beautifully, and their handling of a good piece of beef is second to none. Puree de pommes de terre, Le Comptoir Robuchon The late Joel Robuchon may have been the most decorated chef of his and perhaps any other era, but his signature stayed humble mashed potato. Until youve had it, it is hard to believe it could be quite so good; mash, after all, is mash. No matter the scepticism, it will always surprise; it is almost silly that so little could taste of so much. A side, it will match almost everything on the menu; of which, the lamb with aubergine on the menu of classics is extraordinarily good. Destined for success the new venture sees the boys move into Mexican street food and after a 15-year stint running nightclubs in Mexico City, its something they know a thing or two about and feel that theres now a real appetite for here in the UK. El Pastor opens on the side of Borough Market on December 12. Similar to a shawarma, the meat for an el pastor taco is cooked using an upright grill or trompo. The pork is marinated in spices and orange juice, cooked slowly and shaved onto little corn tortillas. As well as these bad boys, youll be able to feast on a small but sweet section of fish, veggie and meat tacos, including a slow-cooked short rib beef taco. Like the ramen explosion last year and before that our obsession with luxed-up burgers, get ready people, its taco time! Visit standard.co.uk/restaurants for the latest news and reviews from Londons food scene. John Gregory-Smith is a chef, cookbook author and food and travel writer. Follow him on Twitter @mightyspice and Instagram @johngs Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout I f you were in any doubt that Christmas was just around the corner, all you need to do is switch on your TV. Now its November, high street retailers have rolled out their festive ads, just in time to persuade us to part with lots of cash before December 25. But who won that battle of the ads this year? Could John Lewis hold off competition to be crowned the undisputed king of capturing the nations hearts, or has Waitrose managed to pip them to the post this Christmas? Here, we run-down the best Christmas adverts of this year so you can cast your vote. Waitrose TODO: define component type brightcove Waitroses 90-second advert tells the heart-warming tale of a death-defying robins epic journey to share a mince pie with a feathered friend Viewers waited with baited breath as they watched the Scandinavian robin fly across mountains and perilous seas to come to the UK where a young girl had left out a treat for the birds. Fans have been quick to praise the advert for its originality, hailing it one of the best Christmas adverts of the year, while noting that the brand has taken a leaf out of sister company John Lewis' book, with a heart-wrenching festive campaign. Gemma Jarrett said: So @waitrose have made me cry this SUnday morning with their Christmas advert #robinmadeit Sainsburys Sainsbury's Christmas 2016 advert Hot on the heels of John Lewis, Sainsburys joined the Christmas advert battle with a stop frame animation style film. The joyful ad tells the tale of a dad who creates toy versions of himself so he can be with his children at Christmas, and features Carpool Karaoke presenter James Corden signing an infectious musical number called The Greatest Gift For Christmas is Me. Already Tweeters are declaring that Sainsbury's has stolen the show with its musical Christmas ad, which follows on from last year's hit Mog the Cat film. M&S M&S 2016 Christmas Ad- Christmas with love from Mrs Claus M&S put a modern spin on the character of Mrs Claus, who sets out in the 3-minute clip to save a little boys Christmas. The boy, Jake, who lives in London, accidentally ruined his sisters shoes playing with the family dog and asks Mrs Claus to find her a new pair. The glitzy, Hollywood-style advert has won legions of fans on Twitter who took to the platform to gush about the highly-anticipated campaign. User Rhiannon Miller, wrote: "M&S has taken the role of 'Christmas ad that makes me cry' this year #siblinglove. Christmas gift ideas for girls- in pictures 1 /16 Christmas gift ideas for girls- in pictures Scroll for our pick of the best gifts for girls... Code-a-pillar Arrange and rearrange these cute Caterpillar segments to tell the Code-a-pillar how to move. Whether its to move forward, left or right or even dance, children will learn to problem-solve through experimentation. Features lights and sounds too. 40, Smyths, Buy it now Hatchimals This interactive magical creature hatches from an egg you nurture how cool is that? Raise your Hatchimals through three different stages of life and teach it to walk, talk dance and play games! 60, Toys R Us, Buy it now Barbie 3 Storey Townhouse This Barbie Townhouse has four rooms and a rooftop lounge and comes complete with furniture and accessories. Its the perfect hangout for Barbie and friends and will ensure lots of storytelling fun. 71, Amazon, Buy it now Zoomer Hedgiez These super cute hedgehogs are acrobatic and love to perform and play! They flip, curl, roll and do somersaults too. With brush-able fur and light-up eyes, the Hedgiez is sure to become a treasured cuddly pet. 35, Smyths, Buy it now 3Doodler Start Essentials Pen Set Bring drawings to life in 3D form with this starter set. The pen enables you to draw using colourful eco-plastic strands that set in seconds without the need for hot components. Great fun thats mess free! 50, Toys R U,Buy it now Pottery Cool Clay Studio Let your kids get Arty Crafty with this Pottery Cool Clay Studio and make Pencil Holders, Jewellery Holders, Smart Phone Speakers and more. The set comes with tools and paints for decoration too. 33, Argos, Buy it now VTech Kidi Super Star If you have a budding star in the making then this would be perfect for them to sing their heart out. This clever machine removes the vocals from any song allowing the kids to be the star of the show on Christmas day! 42, Smyths, Buy it now Amazon Fire Kids Edition Designed to be kid-friendly with a robust case and controlled access to age-appropriate websites the Amazon Fire Kids Edition is the perfect tablet for Christmas. Whats even better is the 2-year guarantee that will replace the tablet for free if it gets broken. 100, Amazon, Buy it now Microscooter Create your own unique Microscooter with 110,000 colour combinations. Theyll be sure to stand out from the crowd and the envy of all their friends! 90, Micro Scooters, Buy it now Gel-a-Peel Design and create your own fashion accessories to peel and wear! With 24 design templates and 5 Gel-a-Peel colour tubes this is sure to guarantee hours of crafty fun. 25, Argos, Buy it now LOUVEA non gender Long Sleeve Tee A non-gender super cute long sleeve tee featuring Ducie the Cat. 22, LOUVEA, Buy it now John Lewis John Lewis Christmas Advert 2016 - #BusterTheBoxer The behemoth of Christmas adverts surprised fans this year by plumping for an upbeat, feelgood ad rather than the tearjerkers of years past. The two-minute clip features Buster the Boxer as he looks longingly at foxes, badgers, squirrels and hedgehogs bouncing on a trampoline before finally bounding over on Christmas morning and getting his turn. Fans found similarities between the advert and the current political climate in the UK and the US following Donald Trump's Presidential win, hailing the advert as just the tonic we needed after such a turbulent year. Christmas gift ideas for her - in pictures 1 /29 Christmas gift ideas for her - in pictures Scroll to see our Christmas gift ideas for her... Shutterstock Christian Louboutin Beauty Trouble in Heaven Parfum Known for his signature red soles, the renowned shoe designer recently expanded his beauty range with a trio of womens perfumes. The provocative Trouble in Heaven is a daring choice offers notes of iris, patchouli and amber and is the headiest of the three. Ideal for everyday wear, the scent is housed in a show-stopping glass bottle. 215, Selfridges, Buy it now The New French Couture: Icons of Paris Fashion by Elyssa Dimant Is there a style-conscious lady on your list? Treat your favourite fashionista to new a coffee table read that will feed her addiction. One of the best fashion books published this year, Elyssa Dimants colourful read focuses on modern-day French couture and provides a rundown of its biggest contributors, from Dior and Chanel to Balenciaga and Hermes. The stunning imagery ought to keep her glued to every page. 60, Amazon, Buy it now Bella Freud Cashmere 1970 Jumper If youre looking to spoil her with cashmere, then this uber-chic knit from London-based fashion designer, Bella Freud, is just the ticket and is a favourite of Kate Moss and Alexa Chungs. The cosy crew neck comes in a soft pink hue and is adorned with 1970 intarsia. Team with flares to channel you inner seventies girl. 390, Bella Freud, Buy it now Charlotte Tilbury Dreamy Look In A Clutch Nailing one of Charlotte Tilburys signature looks just got easier with this fabulous makeup kit. Inside the clutch-shaped box youll find five products for creating a glamorous evening look, which include a full-sized Legendary Muse eyeshadow palette, a mini Legendary Lashes mascara and the Kardashian-approved Hot Lips lipstick in Secret Salma. A USB with a helpful video tutorial completes the generous bundle so youll have no excuse for looking less than amazing. 90, Charlotte Tilbury, Buy it now Harry Rocks Entwined Initials Disc Bracelet Nothing says thoughtful more than personalised jewellery. We adore pretty much everything from the handmade jewellery collection by Harry Rocks, but this dazzling disc bracelet is our favourite. Not only can you have up to 4 initials engraved, but there are also options to mix metals and choose from two disc sizes. Allow 2-4 weeks for delivery. 80, Harry Rocks, Buy it now Elemis Sweet Orchid Glow Candle If theres one thing girls on the go appreciate, its a pampering night in. Once youve turned up the slow jams and run a bubble bath, complete the setting with this comforting candle from Elemis, which comes in an elegant decorative jar. Its sweet scent comes from Oriental Orchid, Jasmine and Sandalwood. 25, Look Fantastic, Buy it now Waterford Rebel Blush Decanter Tis the season to be jolly so let them drink gin. Crafted with metal and crystal, this gorgeous decanter comes straight from Waterfords punk-inspired Rebel collection and is topped with a stud. The colourful piece will brighten up her area in no time, and shell be pleased when everyone is asking for gin at the party. 120, Waterford, Buy it now M&S Rosie For Autograph Pure Silk Revere Collar Pyjamas Look forward to cosy nights in this pure silk pyjama set in festive red. Available in nine sizes, the comfy nightwear sits right on the ankle and comes in a regular fit. Theyre perfect for lounging in on Christmas Day, supermodel-style. 99, Marks and Spencer, Buy it now Laurent-Perrier Brut Champagne and Montezuma Truffle Set As chocolate is one of the best ways to a girls heart, this truffles and champagne gift is a safe bet. As well as a bottle of Laurent-Perrier Brut Champagne, the luxurious red-and-white box features a pull-out draw filled with an assortment of booze-infused chocolates from Montezumas. 60, John Lewis, Visit site Kate Spade New York Portable Bluetooth Speaker with Cover Perfect for the glamorous party girl on your list, this handy speaker will compliment her living space as well as her style. It offers wireless connection to any Bluetooth device, comes in a lightweight size thats easy to keep in your bag and comes with a striking magnetic cover. 99.95, John Lewis, Visit site Nails Inc Prosecco Is Always The Answer Gift Set It doesnt get more festive than this sparkly cosmetics bag and Nails Inc duo. Ideal for the nail fanatic, the adorable set includes a Gel Effect polish in the delicate nude shade, Colville Mews, as well as the brands glittery Snowglobe Polish in New Globe Walk. 20, John Lewis, Buy it now Karl Lagerfeld Karl Kadeau Miniaudiere No womans closet is complete without an eye-catching clutch for those dressy occasions. Karl Lagerfelds dazzling minaudiere comes in the perfect size for your key essentials and will jazz up any LBD or plain outfit. Inspired by a gift-wrapped box, the glitzy design is complete with magnetic snap closure and a detachable silver chain strap. 130, Very Exclusive, Buy it now Skinnydip x Zara Martin Kitty Headphones Is she cray for cats? These copper-toned headphones from Skinnydip, designed in collaboration with British model and DJ Zara Martin, deliver crisp sound quality and feature a thin metal band with kitten ears. 35, Urban Outfitters, Buy it now Slip Silk eye mask We all know a girl who loves sleep more than life itself. Give her the gift of the ultimate beauty sleep with this luxurious eye mask made from high-grade mulberry silk. Available in five other shades, its lightly cushioned to feel snug against your face and can me matched with Slips silk pillowcase. 34, Net a Porter, Buy it now Laurence Dacade Pete Embroidered Velvet Ankle Boots These killer boots are for the fashion-forward female who doesnt settle for anything less than fabulous. The intricate embroidered style is everywhere this season, and Laurence Dacade's pull-on velvet design comes in a versatile burgundy hue that will make every outfit pop. 615, Net a Porter, Buy it now Whittard Cosy Hot Chocolate Gift Whats a chocoholic to do on a cold winters day? Make a big ol cup of cocoa, of course. 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This fancy appliance can whip up a variety of hot or cold coffee-based drinks at the touch of a button, with the choice of 4 different sizes and 2 strength settings. 169.99, Currys, Buy it now Lidl Lidl Christmas 2016 advert An unexpected frontrunner to this years Christmas ad battle was affordable supermarket Lidl, which challenged peoples perceptions of the affordable chain by taking a sceptic shopper down to its turkey farm. Rather than giving us a giggle or tugging at our heartstrings, the Christmas ad is a continuing narrative featured in its its previous #lidlsurprises adverts, which saw Sharna go off to see beef cattle in Scotland in July. Unlike last year's comical School of Christmas ad, Lidl went big on championing British farmers, as well as appealing to the public's desire for ethical produce. Were you moved to tears by Waitrose or in stitches watching John Lewis' Buster the Boxer dog? Tell us which advert gets your vote... TODO: define component type apester @eslifeandstyle A s technology evolves ever more rapidly, scientists are turning their attention inward, investigating how to stall the ageing process and treat physical impairments. The latest tech marvel might sound like the work of science fiction, but bionic eye implants could soon give millions of people the chance of seeing again. Tests are already underway on several retinal prosthesis systems that promise to restore perfect vision to their wearers, and if successful, they could become a solution to the genetic eye disorder retinitis pigmentosa. The artificial organs work by linking the gap between light entering the eye and the optic nerve, which is responsible for communicating images to the brain so we can process what we are seeing. The most promising device comes from Second Sights artificial iris. So far it is the only US FDA-approved device on the market, and its creators believe it is poised on the cusp of commercialisation. Dubbed the Argus II, the device is worn like a pair of sunglasses. The glasses work by capturing images with a tiny camera and sending them to a handheld, connected computer. The computer then processes the data and transmits it wirelessly to an electronic device implanted on the retina, and the brain interprets the rest. The Argus II provides electrical stimulation of the retina to induce visual perception in blind individuals A three-year clinical trial proved that the so-called bionic eye was effective in treating certain vision disorders and in a world-first, scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles last month managed to implant the visual stimulator chip into the brain of a 30-year-old woman. The patient, who had been totally blind for seven years, reported that she saw coloured flashes, lines and spots when signals were sent to her brain from a computer. During six weeks of testing, the patient consistently saw the exact signals the scientists sent to her visual cortex, the section of the brain which usually receives images from the optic nerve. According to a statement released by the University of California, the patient suffered no significant adverse side effects in the process. Another up-and-coming piece of technology comes from Melbournes diamond-electrode bionic eyes. The tech, if successful, could help those with the most incurable blindness to recognise facial expression and read large print. Currently beginning preclinical testing in Melbourne, the design uses man-made diamond electrodes inside a diamond case to stimulate the retina at the back of the eye, so messages can be sent to the brain and interpreted visually. In a global race to be the first to introduce the tech to the market, lead researcher Dr David Garrett said that his teams device is different from the rest because it is fully wireless and the diamond casing would never erode in the body. The only issue with optical tech? It will cost you. Wired reports that having your eyes fitted with the Argus II will cost between 80,000 and 100,000 in total - although that cost is being reduced as development continues. The best apps for Londoners 1 /16 The best apps for Londoners Zip car Join, reserve, unlock and drive it really is that simple. The capitals preferred car clubs app gives 24/7 access to cars and vans in your neighbourhood and lets you extend or cancel reservations on the go. Free Uncover Sick of being stuck on waiting lists? You need Uncover, which redistributes cancelled reservations at some of the capitals top restaurants, including The River Cafe and Nobu. Not for planning freaks, though tables typically become free at 40 minutes notice. Free Uber So popular its become a verb, this private driver service has revolutionised travel in the capital. Its speedy and affordable, making it a welcome alternative to the night bus. Free Santander Cycles Launched this summer, the official app for Boris fifth child can be used to search for nearby docking stations and check bike availability. Theres also a journey planner featuring easy, moderate and fast routes to satisfy all cycling tribes. Free Plume Air Report This new app has been downloaded by 3,000 Londoners. Sensors gathering air pollution data submit updates every hour, resulting in a scale that ranges from fresh to extremely polluted. Free Nightcapp Heres an app that will have booze hounds raising their glasses. NightCapp is a map that pinpoints more than 1,500 London watering holes that stay open past 11.30pm. It also shows users when a bar is about to close by highlighting it in orange. Better get moving. Free Money Dashboard An award-winning budget planner, this helps you keep track of personal spending across multiple accounts, pay off credit cards and even makes suggestions on how to manage your finances better. Free Her Promising to introduce women to a lesbian that hasnt slept with any of your friends, this revamped dating app includes queer-themed news and blogs, upcoming event notices and an improved algorithm-matching system. Free FoodMood This new startup, which reckons its Tinder for food, pledges to narrow down your choice of lunchbreak destinations. Hit yum or yuk on photos of dishes in your area. Juvenile, but strangely addictive. Free Daily Yoga This offers more than 50 yoga sessions, as well as a database of 500 yoga poses. Suitable for all levels, programmes include yoga aimed at specific areas of the body and weight loss. Namaste to that. Free Coffee Meets Bagel Billed as the anti-Tinder, this new kid on the block delivers just a single match to users once a day. Coffee Meets Bagel uses Facebook profile information to recommend suitors based on friends of friends. Neither coffee nor bagels are included. Free. Bristlr Do you have a beard? Perhaps youd like to stroke one on a regular basis? This can be arranged. Unlike other dating apps, Bristlr is unashamedly all about hooking up the hairy with the hairless. Theres even a beard-rating option for aficionados. Free Think tanks are also predicting that beyond healing blindness, bionic eyes could also help us to buy superhuman properties. In the future, artificial eyesight could help us to be able to see heat, identify gases by sight and maybe even look through walls. Scientists are not ruling out the idea that the tech could one day allow you to zoom in and out of your field of vision, record what we see and automatically sync your vision to the net. The technology is still in its infancy, but the significant recent breakthroughs mean that were probably not too far from being able to treat the 39 million blind people the World Health Organisation reports are currently living worldwide with visual impairment. Still, it may be several decades before we can post Instagram pictures with a blink of the eye. Follow us on Twitter: @eslifeandstyle A dating expert has launched a site specifically for people who wear glasses, or have a thing for those who do, in a bid to bring the sex back in to wearing specs. Charly Lester, 33, said she was inspired to create her app SPEX as she was conscious of her own glasses when meeting new dates. Ms Lester, who lives in Richmond, said: I wear glasses, and when I go on a first date I usually wear contacts as I am a bit embarrassed about them. But I realised some people actually really like glasses and some people even say they find it their partners most attractive feature. With so many specialist dating apps out there including ones for those who voted Remain in the referendum or for those who like Pokemon Go I realised there wasnt one for glasses. SPEX, launched last month, was created in partnership with M14.industries the team behind Bristlr, the app for people who have a thing for facial hair. Currently it is just a website, called SPEXdating.com, with the app in development. As with many apps, a user profile is created using Facebook but can be edited to show as much or as little information as the user likes. All users must fill in profile information including age, location, height and whether they wear glasses or like people who do. If they do wear glasses, the user must answer the question: I think my glasses make me look... using just five words. It will be free to look through profiles, or message people on the site and the app. However, just like Bristlr there will be premium features which you can access for 4.80 a month. Colin Firth is a specs man / Dave Benett Ms Lester, who entered the dating industry after writing her hugely successful blog 30 Dates, said: Wearing glasses is nothing to be ashamed of. Whether you wear them to look more intelligent, for geeky chic, or simply because youre too lazy to use contact lenses, I think your specs look sexy and I know other people do too. We want to put the sex back in to wearing specs. Famous wearers of spectacles have included Eva Longoria, Colin Firth, Karlie Kloss, Melanie C, Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway and Brad Pitt. Ms Lester founded the UK dating awards in 2014 in a bid to celebrate those doing good work in the industry which remains unregulated, with this years ceremony taking place on Thursday. She has also launched awards for Europe and for the US. Follow Lizzie on Twitter @LizzieEdmo D uring uncertainty, humans find solace in reversion. When the world is galloping at a frenzied pace, and the future is opaque and unknowable, our behaviour becomes instinctive and animal. Instead of considered criticism we moan and beat our breasts; instead of focusing we are wild-eyed and unhinged. And instead of taking a measured hand to our baser instincts, we toss off without restraint. After all, if the worlds f**ked, we might as well get on the f**king programme. For since the announcement of the US election result, London has been on heat. Cast adrift by the frightening will of a disenchanted American electorate, we are seeking safety in the arms (and genitals, mainly genitals) of other people. One 26-year-old Londoner reports that since Wednesday morning Tinder has been re-enlivened with viable options. The US election is excellent Tinder fodder, he confirms. Everyone wants to commiserate. Its the ultimate unifier. Another says her election party felt a bit like a school disco, with couples cuddling up on sofas, pawing at each other. One girl went to bed in spent despair at 3am, shortly after Florida was announced, her boyfriend trailing after her. But instead of sleeping, they found themselves knocking around. I couldnt sleep, she says baldly. And something about the tension of the evening made it kind of exciting. Conversely, there are some for whom love does not trump hate others are co-opting some of their feelings about Donald Trump (specifically, hatred) and channelling them into furious hate sex with exes (like one 26-year-old Londoner who found herself making eyes at an ex at an election night party). Ultimately, when youre maddened to distraction about the state of the world, theres something gratifyingly destructive about grabbing someone whom you despise and wrestling with your anger by wrestling with each other. Donald Trump embraces his wife Melania (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) / Getty Images Humans typically greet disaster with hedonism. Bad days, bad weeks, bad dates: all are judged suitable excuses to take ourselves down with uncontrolled energy. Been dumped? Get smashed. Dumping someone? Youll need Dutch courage for the unpleasant monologue. When Arsenal wins, you wake up face down in a Firezza pizza; when Arsenal loses you end up face down in a casino, a cleaner vacuuming around your prostrate form. Furthermore, after this year, Londoners have form for fatalistic dissipation. As many have remarked on social media, the UK foreshadowed Trump with its own political meltdown when we voted for Brexit and duly, those first few dissolute weeks after the vote became known as Fuxit. Might as well have another drink, were leaving the EU, youd say ruefully, no one calling you up on this mystifying non sequitur. Thousands join 'March for Europe' Brexit protest For it didnt feel like a non sequitur as far as you were concerned, the two were tangled inextricably. The capital was stunned and stung, and pubs teemed with the gormless and aghast, everyone drinking far more than they should and having wretched, rueful conversations about what the hell was going to happen now. In the first fortnight you were invited to three End of the World parties; you attended all with the solemn, civic duty of a visiting royal. Indeed, even the anti-Brexit protests over the summer felt carnivalesque: hordes of young people, many wielding bottles and tins, dancing through the streets, obstinate, furious and contrary. Over the weekend, many attended another round of End of the World parties. Some opted for big boozy dinners that melted from early evening into the small hours of the morning, taking the minds of the guests with them. At some point, someone played Bruce Springsteen and wept unironically for the death of the American Dream. Bars including Kansas Smittys on Broadway Market offered free shots of bourbon to its customers. Others just did it themselves: a 24-year-old Londoner confesses hes been drinking on and off ever since Wednesday morning. On the morning of the result I had a glass of wine, he admits. I didnt know what else to do. He went to a blow-out in Whitechapel on Friday evening. Some of the post-apocalyptic parties are more glamorous, though: last Thursday, fashion designer Stella McCartney threw one at Abbey Road Studios, where guests included Kate Moss and Neneh Cherry chucked back tequilas and tried to pretend none of this was happening. Donald Trump President-elect Protest - In pictures 1 /20 Donald Trump President-elect Protest - In pictures Protesters reach Trump Tower as they march against Republican president-elect Donald Trump in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Thousands of anti-Donald Trump protesters shut down 5th Avenue in front of Trump Tower as New Yorkers react to the election of Trump as president of the United States Spencer Platt/Getty Images A Donald Trump pinata is burned by people protesting the election of Republican Donald Trump as the president of the United States in downtown Los Angeles, California Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Protesters march along Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower Julie Jacobson/AP Thousands of protesters march down 2nd Avenue in Seattle, Washington Karen Ducey/Getty Images People attend a candlelight vigil after Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, in Washington, DC Michael Reynolds/EPA Demostrators protest on top of a bus outside of the Trump Tower John Gress/Getty Images Police make a line to prevent protesters from marching in Oakland, California Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Protesters carry a paper head of President-elect Donald Trump during a protest in front of City Hall in Los Angeles Keith Birmingham/The Pasadena Star-News/SCNG via AP A man tries to remove "Kill Trump" graffiti as demonstrators riot in Oakland, California Noah Berger/Reuters Protesters demonstrate on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower Julie Jacobson/AP Demonstrators gather during a protest against President-elect Donald Trump outside the City Hall building in Los Angeles, California Eugene Garcia/EPA Demonstrators block the street during a protest outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower following President-elect Donald Trump's election victory in Manhattan, New York Andrew Kelly/Reuters People participate in a protest against the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in New York, Alba Vigaray/EPA Students at the University of Texas at Austin lead a protest down to Congress Bridge in Austin, Texas Joshua Guerra//The Daily Texan via AP But to return to the f**king point why has this new revolution resulted in sex, specifically? After all, Trump is an extraordinarily unlikely talisman for a new mood of lust. He is slimy and odious; he has a thatch of faux hair suspended about an inch above his scalp, and the small, adipose hands of a poorly rendered waxwork. He is, patently, revolting and his image is everywhere. In theory, this should counter even our strongest instincts to shag away the misery: the mere knowledge that such a man exists, let alone is now set to be the next leader of the free world, should be a convincing turn-off. Partly, the reaction could be consistent with historic reactions to chaos. After both the First and Second world wars, birth rates in both the UK and US spiked: in 1920, roughly 1.1 million babies were born in the UK, a statistical anomaly. More recently there are quasi-anecdotal reports that Hurricane Sandy, which roared through the US eastern seaboard in 2012, might have set off its own spike: two New Jersey hospitals reported 34 per cent and 20 per cent increases in births about nine months after the storm. Certainly, when youre armoured inside your apartment during a power cut, shagging is a (relatively) low-risk distraction. Unrest: Many of Americans are unhappy at Mr Trump's victory / AP Photo But and bear with me there could also be something specifically about the Trump phenomenon thats conjuring this blue mood. Undeniably, the whole Trump circus is trashy: brash and bright, uncompromising and top shelf, and XXX-rated. It is latex and wipe-clean and sinful. Compare and contrast the pneumatic Babes for Trump Instagram (10.7k followers) with the clean, sincere documentation of the official White House photographer, Pete Souza. The Obamas are peerless and angelic; Trump is the low-rent replacement. Its art house versus pornography: guilty pleasures have the upper hand after stretches of good behaviour. Perhaps Trumps evil functions as a sort of fetish. If youre a real pervert, you could be in for a fun four years. Donald Trump - In pictures 1 /112 Donald Trump - In pictures President Donald Trump takes the oath of office as his wife Melania Trump holds the bible and his son Barron Trump looks on, on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC Getty Images Acceptance speech Republican president-elect Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to the crowd during his acceptance speech at his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of 9 November 2016 in New York Getty Images Little Trump Donald Trump pictured when he was 4 years old Donald J Trump/Instagram The Trump Princess Donald Trump waves to reporters in 1988 with his first wife Ivana as they board their yacht 'The Trump Princess' in New York AP Donald Trump stands next to one of his three Sikorsky helicopters at New York Port Authority's West 30 Street Heliport in 1988 Out on the town Trump and his first wife Ivana arrive at a social engagement in New York in December 1989 AFP/Getty Images Surviving at the top Trump followed up his successful book The Art of the Deal with Surviving At The Top in 1990 Random House Meeting the King of Pop With Michael Jackson in 1990 FilmMagic Taking a break with Miss Universe contestants Donald Trump meets Miss Universe contestants during a break in rehearsals in the Imperial Ballroom at Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas in 1990 Miss Universe Organization via AP Genie of the lamp Donald Trump stands next to a genie lamp in 1990 as the lights of his Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort mark its grand opening in Atlantic City AP Marla's wedding day Donald and Marla Trump at their wedding in 1993 AP Donald Trump with daughter Ivanka at a Harley Davidson Cafe Event, New York City on 9 October 1993 Rex Features New arival Marla and Donald Trump leave St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida with their newborn baby girl, Tiffany on 14 October 1993 AP Behind the lens Donald Trump takes a picture of Bridget Marks in 1993 after interviewing her for Playboy magazine's 40th anniversary playmate in New York AFP/Getty Images Top Trump New York real estate giant Donald Trump poses in his Trump Tower office on a giant letter "T" on 08 May 1996 AFP/Getty Images New love interest Donald Trump and Melania arrive for VH1's Divas Live concert at the Beacon Theater in New York City on 13 April 1999 Getty Images Toasting in the New Year Donald Trump and Melania toast the new year during Trump's gala bash in 2000 The Sun-Sentinel/AP Wax work A wax replica of Donald Trump stands ready to be put on display at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, New York City in 2000 Madame Tussaud's/Getty Images Rebuild call Donald Trump talks in 2005 to reporters where he presented a proposal that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center be rebuilt in New York Reuters Cracking prformance Amy Poehler, Tracy Morgan, Donald Trump, Seth Myers, Maya Rudolph perform on Saturday Night Live in 2002 Rex Features 'How To Get Rich' Donald Trump poses with a copy of his new book 'How To Get Rich' during a book signing on 24 March 2004 at Barnes and Noble in Lincoln Center in New York Getty Images Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka (left) and girlfriend Melania Knauss (right) attend the "Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century" Costume Institute benefit gala on April 26, 2004 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City Getty Images Fired up figure Donald Trump poses with the new Donald Trump 12-inch talking doll 29 September 2004 at the Toys "R" Us store in New York City Getty Images Olympic flame Donald Trump carries the Olympic flame during Day 15 of the Athens 2004 Olympic Torch Relay on 19 June 19, 2004 in New York Getty Images Donald Trump on The Celebrity Apprentice (2005) Rex Features Anyone for golf? Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at the Old Course in St Andrews where he was meeting with the media to answer questions regarding Trump International Golf Links on 28 April 2005 in St Andrews, Scotland Getty Images Hollywod star Donald Trump, billionaire developer and producer of NBC's "The Apprentice," with his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, pose for a photo after he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in 2007 AP In the Highlands U.S. property mogul Donald Trump gestures 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 on 27 May 2010 Reuters Donald Trump plays a round of golf after the opening of the The Trump International Golf Links Course in Scotland in 2012 Getty Images Family time Donald Trump, Barron Trump and Melania Trump attends Trump Invitational Grand Prix Mar-a-Lago Club at The Mar-a-Largo Club on 04 January 2015 in Palm Beach, Florida Getty Images Officially in the running U.S. Republican presidential candidate, real estate mogul and TV personality Donald Trump poses with his family after formally announcing his campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination during an event at Trump Tower in New York on 16 June 2015 Reuters Love, life and laughter Donald Trump sits with his wife Melania Trump while appearing at an NBC Town Hall at the Today Show on 21 April 2016 in New York City. Getty Images Thumbs up Donald Trump speaks on the last day of the Republican National Convention on 21 July 2016, in Cleveland, AFP/Getty Images Don't cry for me ... Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds babies at a campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado on 29 July 2016 Reuters Donald Trump eating KFC on his private jet in August 2016 Is this really the Oval Office? Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump views a replica of the Oval Office on a tour of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 30 September 2016 Reuters Women for Trump Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump kisses a "Women for Trump" placard during a rally at the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport in Lakeland, Florida on 12 October 2016 AFP/Getty Images In debate Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speak during the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, America on 09 October 2016 AP Love your country The future is orange: Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump hugs a U.S. flag on 24 October 2016 Reuters U.S. President-elect U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at his election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S. on 09 November 2016 Reuters 60 Minutes Donald Trump and wife Melania being interviewed on 13 November 2016 by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes 60 Minutes/CBS At The Whiie House US President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office of the White House on 10 November 2016 EPA Kiss-story 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 09 November 2016 in New York Getty Images Person of the Year U.S. President-elect Donald Trump poses on the cover of Time Magazine after being named its person of the year, in a picture provided by the publication in New York on 7 December 2016 Time Magazine Meeting Kanye U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and musician Kanye West pose for media at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York on 13 December 2016 Reuters First Press Conference President-elect Donald Trump stands with his son Eric Trump (left) daughter Ivanka and son Donald Trump Jr. (right) on 11 January 2017 Reuters US President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington,Virginia 19 on January 2017 AFP/Getty Images Big shoes to fill: US President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania arrive to attend an inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on 19 January 2017 AFP/Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania arrive for a VIP reception and dinner with donors in Washington on 19 January 2017 AP British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump walk along The Colonnade of the West Wing at The White House on January 27, 2017 in Washington, DC Getty Images Pope Francis walks along with US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump during a private audience at the Vatican in May 2017 AFP/Getty Images US President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes in March 2018 AFP/Getty Images Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump walk to a joint news conference at Chequers in July 2018 Reuters US President Donald Trump takes the hand of Prime Minister Theresa May as they enter Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire in July 2018 PA A six-meter high cartoon baby blimp of US President Donald Trump is set to fly as a protest against his visit July 2018 AP Activists inflate a giant balloon depicting US President Donald Trump as an orange baby during a demonstration against Trump's visit to the UK in Parliament Square, London July 2018 AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump with The Queen in July 2018 AP German Chancellor Angela Merkel deliberates with US president Donald Trump on the sidelines of the official agenda on the second day of the G7 summit on June 9, 2018 in Charlevoix, Canada Getty Images President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island in Singapore on 12 June 2018 Evan Vucci/AP U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018 Reuters US President Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on 18th October 2018 AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian posed for a photograph together at the White House meeting Donald Trump/Twitter A White House staff member reaches for the microphone held by CNN's Jim Acosta as he questions U.S. President Donald Trump during a news conference in November 2018 Reuters President Donald Trump looks over tables of fast food for the the college football playoff champion Clemson Tigers in the State Dining Room of the White House in January 2019 Reuters US President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un following a meeting at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi on February 27, 2019 AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump (left) with Nigel Farage when they met met face-to-face on 2nd March 2019 PA/White House President Donald Trump smiles at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, after signing a proclamation in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House in Washington, Monday, March 25, 2019 AP US President Donald Trump (L) First Lady Melania Trump (C) and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe' Akie Abe (R) watch a sumo battle during the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo on May 26, 2019 AFP/Getty Images President Donald Trump gestures after receiving a prayer at McLean Bible Church on 2nd June 2019 AP US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump make their way to board Air Force One on 2nd June 2019 AFP/Getty Images Donald and Melania Trump arrive at Stansted Airport on 3rd June 2019 AP President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are pictured ahead a meeting in Helsinki on July 16, 2018 AFP/Getty Images Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg watches as Donald Trump enters the United Nations to speak with reporters on September 23, 2019 Reuters Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during a welcoming ceremony at the NATO leaders summit in Watford on December 4, 2019 Reuters President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020, in Milwauke AP US president Donald Trump delivers a speech at the Congres center during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, on January 21, 2020 AFP via Getty Images US President Donald Trump speaks during the first presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio AFP via Getty Images A car with US President Trump drives past supporters in a motorcade outside of Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland AFP via Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump works in the Presidential Suite while receiving treatment after testing positive for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland via Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a phone call with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley October 4, 2020, in his conference room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Not shown in the photo also in the room on the call is Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Reuters Donald Trump walks out of hospital after receiving treatment for Covid-19 AP Mr Trump boards Marine One to return to the White House after receiving treatment for coronavirus AP Donald Trump stands on the Truman Balcony after returning to the White House from hospital Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump removes his mask upon return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on October 05, 2020 in Washington Getty Images Obviously this is not to deny or make light of the fact that he is a venal, unpleasant piece of work. Ultimately, however nasty you might like your sex life, youre not going to like his brand of nasty when he is inaugurated on January 20 and this all becomes wincingly real. But for now, in the intoxicated aftermath, as the world unbridles irrevocably and we anticipate further chaos though remain unsure what form it will take we will be going at each other like zealots committed to the religion of sin. So if you are going to use the collapse of the worlds pre-eminent democracy as an excuse for a shag, there are, obviously, rules. Firstly and crucially, dont do anything that makes anyone else uncomfortable: you should not be grabbing anyone by the crotch unless they explicitly ask you to. Be careful with Americans you might find out they voted for him (unless thats what youre into) and you might also find out they are so miserable that they find your pragmatism in the face of disaster to be a grave insult to their national honour. Indeed, be sensitive to the many people who are taking this far, far more seriously than you. Do not swap notes about your favourite post-apocalyptic op-ed pieces as pillow talk (or worse, as dirty talk). Do not suggest watching Newsnight to get yourself in the mood. And do not trust anyone who suggests that one or either of you dress up as Trump. There is perversion and then there is abomination. This is the winter of our discontent and its going to be a f**king long ride. Follow Phoebe Luckhurst: @phoebeluckhurst D iverse and dynamic, the nations of Asia offer numerous opportunities for both business and pleasure. And thanks to its centrality within the region and Singapore Airlines regular shuttle services to other major capitals and cities Singapore is the ideal base for no-hassle business travel within Asia. BANGKOK With modern megamalls, hotels and conferencing facilities just minutes from golden-spired temples and bustling markets, Bangkok is a place that wears its contradictions proudly. Just two hours 25 minutes by air from Singapore, the city benefits from a huge range, many of which offer outstanding value. KUALA LUMPUR Less than an hours flight from Singapore, Malaysias space-age capital is a tasty proposition for business and not just because of its spectacular food scene. An easy 40-minute transfer by taxi from the international airport, KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre), the citys main business hub, is home to a number of international hotels and Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. JAKARTA Indonesias vibrant capital is the economic motor that powers the rest of the nation a dynamic metropolis with a lively bar, restaurant and retail scene. Much of the action is centred on the Senayan area, home to the Indonesian stock exchange, conference venues and new hotels, and just a 30-minute ride from the citys Soekarno Hatta International Airport. HONG KONG Outstanding venues, easy international connections (including six Singapore Airlines flights to and from Singapore per day) and a stunning location makes Hong Kong a favoured choice for business. Another string to its bow is its nightlife, which offers a dizzying array of choice. Singapore Airlines the worlds most awarded airline and its regional wing SilkAir, operate flights to 99 destinations in 34 countries. Fly Business Class to Bangkok from 1,970pp, Kuala Lumpur 2,065pp, Jakarta 2,060pp and Hong Kong 2,315pp. Promotional fares are available until 30 November 2016 for travel from London Heathrow until 30 June 2017. Subject to availability. Fares shown may differ due to currency and fuel surcharge fluctuations. Full fare conditions are available on singaporeair.com A n Uber driver who knifed his wife to death after trawling the internet for "the most painful place to stab someone" has been convicted of murder. Jose Leonardo, 56, was on trial at the Old Bailey accused of killing mother-of-three Maria Mbombo, 52, at their home in Belsize Park, west London, on May 18. Prosecutor John Price QC told jurors Ms Mbombo died at the scene after suffering multiple stab wounds. He said there was no dispute that Leonardo killed her, but he has claimed it was manslaughter by "loss of control". Leonardo was found guilty of one count of murder, but cleared of one charge of perverting the course of justice. Killed: victim Maria Mbombo was pronounced dead at the scene by police who raced to her flat in Belsize Park The couple met in Holland in 1988 and moved to north-west London in 1993. At the time of her death Ms Mbombo was working as a cleaner while the defendant was a driver for the car hire app Uber. At nearly midnight on May 18, the couple's 23-year-old son Carl Mbombo called 999 in tears and paramedics arrived to find him trying to resuscitate his mother on the floor of a bedroom. The victim, who was wearing a white top and black knickers, was covered in blood and had been dead for "some while", Mr Price said. She had been alone with the defendant until her children returned home shortly before the 999 call, the court heard. Police and forensic officers at the scene in Belsize Park / Nigel Howard Earlier that afternoon, the defendant's mobile phone was used to search Google for "can I survive stab in the eye" and "most painful place to stab someone". The defendant was in his flat with his dead or dying wife for an hour or so as his other son Jacques, 27, banged on the door and screamed to get in. After slipping out, Leonardo tried to buy a bottle of beer in a nearby convenience store but was refused. The shopkeeper noticed blood on his jacket and asked "what's that?" and Leonardo allegedly replied: "Just call the police." Officers arrived to find Leonardo wearing a white vest drenched in blood and murmuring "my wife is dead". Mr Price told jurors: "For all his statements of grief to the police officers at the hospital, the defendant, who will have been with her in their home whilst she slowly died, did nothing to summon help." Leonardo will be sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey at 10am on Tuesday, with his minimum term to be determined. Detective Inspector Simon Deefholts of the Homicide and Major Crime Command said: "Leonardo has never revealed the exact events of that day in Maitland Park Villas and tried to claim in his defence that he lost control before launching the attack. "However, our investigation revealed that Leonardo had a history of violence towards Maria, including another incident where Maria sustained three knife wounds while on a visit to Belgium in March 2016. "No offences were reported to police in the UK but it is clear that Leonardo was a violent man who could not control his temper. "Domestic violence should not and cannot be tolerated. The Met has a robust policy on dealing with domestic abuse and an extensive network of partner agencies to provide on-going practical support. Wherever we identify barriers to reporting domestic violence, we will endeavor to break them down and safeguard those in violent or abusive relationships." G ordon Semples devastated family have paid tribute to the much-loved policeman after his killer was convicted at the Old Bailey. PC Semple was strangled during a Grindr-organised sex party in Southwark by bondage-obsessed banker Stefano Brizzi. After murdering the policeman with a leash, Brizzi attempted to dispose of the evidence by cutting up the body and trying to dissolve parts of it in an acid bath. Speaking after Brizzi was found guilty of murder on Monday, PC Semples family said the details of what happened to him were still insurmountably upsetting. They said in a statement: Gordon was a loyal and much loved long term partner, brother, brother in law, uncle, cousin and friend to all. We were devastated when the news broke of Gordons murder and the circumstances which are still incredibly hard to deal with. It is still insurmountably upsetting. At Gordons funeral we met many of his friends and work colleagues - we were proud to hear how fondly they thought of Gordon, they said. Gordon will be sadly missed by our family. Gordon we miss you so much, may you rest in peace. Final journey: Gordon Semple exiting Blackfriars station on his way to meet Brizzi / PA Chief Superintendent Peter Ayling from the Met Police said after the verdict: The details of Gordon's murder have shocked and traumatised his partner, family, friends and colleagues. The responding officers and all those involved in the investigation into Gordon's death have been affected by it, made all the worse by knowing he was a colleague. "Sadly, it is clear from the investigation that Gordon, a man who had dedicated the last three decades of his life to policing London, was behaving on duty in a way that no police officer should. Gordon held a position of trust, and he broke that trust. "However, nothing should distract from the actions of Stefano Brizzi and the blame for Gordon's death lies firmly with this man. A killer whose cold calculated actions are so grotesque they are beyond comprehension. A very dangerous thug who smashed into a young woman in a hit-and-run after a street brawl in south London has been jailed. Nigel Kedi, 23, ploughed into the 24-year-old victim before fleeing the scene in Elephant and Castle. Kedi was caught on CCTV just before the crash taking part in the 10 to 15-person fight on Elephant Road. He then ran down the pedestrian as he made off from the scene - an act which he initially claimed to police was in self-defence. Officers launched a search for Kedi, from Lowry Road, Dagenham, and spotted the car on New Kent Road. The crash happened in Elephant Road after a street fight / Google Street View The woman was rushed to hospital but her injuries were not life threatening. Kedi pleaded guilty to attempted grievous harm, affray, dangerous driving, failing to stop at the scene of a collision and driving with no insurance following the incident on Saturday, June 4. He was jailed for a total of four years and was also banned from driving DC Michael Esangbedo, the officer in the case for Southwark CID, said: "Kedi is a very dangerous man and he is now off our streets. He had no choice but to plead guilty due to the CCTV evidence. His sentence reflects the gravity of the offences and I am relieved that the victim was not badly hurt." A judge at Inner London Crown Court sentenced him to four years for the attempted GBH, 18 months for the affray and 18 months for dangerous driving. Two other people were arrested and charged in connection with the incident. A 21-year-old man was arrested and charged with affray, assault on police and possession of class B drugs. A 27-year-old woman was arrested and charged with possession of class A drugs. Both will appear at court at a later date. A right wing nationalist repeatedly said "Britain First" as he shot Labour MP Jo Cox three times and stabbed her in the street, the Old Bailey heard. Thomas Mair, 53, ambushed the mother-of-two as she arrived for a regular surgery with her Batley and Spen constituents in June this year. Prosecutor Richard Whittam QC told jurors Mair had planned the attack in advance and carried out the murder because of his "strong political and ideological interests". Jurors at the Old Bailey were told Mair had researched the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, serial killers and right wing politicians in the days prior to killing Ms Cox. He had also used his local library to research Ms Cox, fellow Yorkshire MP William Hague, and Ian Gow, an MP murdered by the Provisional IRA. A court sketch of Thomas Mair in the dock / PA "She was brutally murdered by one of her constituents, this defendant, Thomas Mair", said the prosecution. "It was a cowardly attack by a man armed with a firearm and a knife. "Jo Cox was shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds. "During the course of the murder Thomas Mair was heard by a number of witnesses to say repeatedly Britain First." During the attack, a pensioner, 77-year-old Bernard Kenny, tried to save the 40-year-old MP and was also stabbed by Mair, it is said. Mr Whittam said the shocking attack, on June 16 in Birstall, West Yorkshire, came just a week before the EU referendum. He said Ms Cox had been a vocal Remain campaigner, having first been elected as an MP a year earlier, and had spoken in Parliament of "her joy at representing a diverse community". Ms Cox was attacked just before 1pm as she arrived in Market Street, Birstall, for a planned surgery meeting. "The murder took place whilst she was performing her role as a Member of Parliament", said Mr Whittam. "Thomas Mairs intention was to kill her in what was a planned and pre-meditated murder for a political and/or ideological cause. "The firearm used was a .22 weapon that had been adapted to be used as a weapon to kill. He also used a dagger-like knife." Paramedics tried to save the MP's life but she died less than an hour later. Mair, of Lowood Lane in Birstall, denies murder, causing grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon. The trial continues. T he man who murdered PC Gordon Semple has been likened to a "Jekyll and Hyde" character, a respectable facade hiding the monster within. Stefano Brizzi was a respected and intelligent City worker by day who was ultimately seduced by the dark world of chemsex, bondage, and crystal meth until he turned into a killer. On Monday, he was facing life in prison after being convicted of murdering the policeman before cutting up his body and trying to dissolve it in acid. Brizzi built a successful career as a computer programmer, and had been lauded for his work at a 70,000-a-year job for financial giant Morgan Stanley. But he ultimately threw his career away, as he was lured deeper into the gay chemsex scene and became hooked on crystal meth. Stefano Brizzi, 49, has been charged with the murder of Met PC Gordon Semple / Facebook By the time he killed PC Gordon Semple, Brizzi was also addicted to bondage sex and torture for pleasure, spending most of his waking hours trawling the Internet for willing partners for his dark sexual fantasies. The Italian 50-year-old was raised in a devout Catholic family in the Tuscany region of Italy, with a priest for an uncle and an older brother and sister who were regular churchgoers. Brizzi, however, did not fit in. He realised he was gay when he was 15, and found neither his family nor the local community did accepted his sexuality. CCTV: Stefano Brizzi was seen inspecting a bucket to dispose of Gordon Semple's body / PA "It was the 80s and my family did not have the necessary understanding of what homosexuality was about, nor the means to understand it", he told the court. When news of his arrest broke, Italian journalists spoke to his childhood friends who were shocked at what Brizzi had become. Marco Ravaiani said the man he knew was "non-violent", a vegetarian, and "mystical", adding: "I cannot imagine him in the role of murderer." Another friend said Brizzi had been troubled by "bigoted" attitudes towards homosexuality and faced a "bumpy ride" in search for acceptance. "It was not easy to live freely without being judged for your homosexuality", they said. "I remember Stefano as a very sensitive boy who could not find peace within himself." Brizzi studied classics and philosophy at the University of Florence, which came to light in the witness box as he discussed topics like comparative religions, classics, and philosophy. He moved to London in 2010 in search of more liberal attitudes towards his personal life, learning about meditation, Buddhism, and spirituality in his spare time. "Being a guy living in a Catholic country in a Catholic family, there were contradictions in my life which I have tried to reconcile in me", he told the jury. However, his search for knowledge and a way to reconcile his Catholic upbringing with his way of life led him to the Satanic Bible and darker literature. Brizzi landed a plum job with Morgan Stanley in 2012 and won awards for his work as a web developer, but by February last year he had fallen into the grip of crystal meth addiction. He took drugs regularly on the gay sex scene, and said he first took a puff of crystal meth from a friend and quickly found himself addicted. Like his hero, Breaking Bad's Walter White, Brizzi went from a respectable member of the community, lauded for his achievements, to being immersed in the criminal underworld. The Italian press likened him to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, contrasting his idyllic Catholic upbringing and successful career with the horrific discovery in April that he was a drug-addicted, bondage loving killer who may even have turned cannibal. T hree people were arrested after a diabetic woman died at a slapping therapy workshop in a country hotel, it has emerged. Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, died at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire on October 20 where she was taking part in the session. The workshop is understood to involve controversial paida lajin therapy, which sees patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly. Wiltshire Police said two men, aged 53 and 51, and a 64-year-old woman were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and later released on bail. A force spokeswoman said: "Police were called to an address in Seend in the early hours of October 20 following the sudden death of a woman. Country retreat: an inquest into the death of Mrs Carr-Gomm was opened last week / Getty Images "We are currently treating her death as suspicious and inquiries are ongoing. "Three people, a 64-year-old woman, a 51-year-old man and a 53-year-old man, have all been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and have since been released on bail pending further inquiries. "A post mortem examination has been carried out but the results were inconclusive. We await further toxicology tests." An inquest into the death of Mrs Carr-Gomm, of Lewes, East Sussex was opened and adjourned last week. In a previous blog entry, Mrs Carr-Gomm described attending a lajin course in Bulgaria and said "the results are totally astonishing and encouraging". "After an initial sharing we began with administering paida on ourselves and on others in pairs or groups of three," she said. "At the end of the first session large areas of my body were bruised and blue which indicated that a lot of 'sha' or poisoned blood and toxins had been released." T wo men were subjected to shocking homophobic abuse as they held hands in a London street in the early hours of the morning. The victims, aged 28 and 26, were walking along Villiers Street, in Charing Cross, when a man shouted vile homophobic slurs at them, police said. The suspect continued to his tirade of abuse as the pair crossed the Jubilee footbridge towards Lambeth around 2am on Saturday, August 13. One of the victims videoed the alleged abuser on his phone. Police have now launched an appeal to find the man in the footage. He is described as a slim, white man, aged in his early 30s. He was wearing a black top, dark hooded jumper, jeans and trainers at the time of the attack. PC Emma Rogers, from Westminster CID, said: "This is a shocking incident that has left both victims very distressed. We are keen to identify the man in the footage so we can speak to them about the incident. We would also urge anyone who witnessed the incident to contact us." No arrests have been made and enquiries continue Anyone with information or any witnesses are urged to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. A lorry driver has been arrested after a pedestrian was killed on a busy roundabout in east London. The 45-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs after the crash shortly after 9am on Monday morning. He has been taken into police custody. The crash happened at the Charlie Brown Roundabout along Southend Road in Woodford Green. The pedestrian, a woman in her 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene. A Met Police spokeswoman said: "Officers attended along with the London Ambulance Service, the London Fire Brigade and London's Air Ambulance. "Formal identification awaits and a post-mortem examination will take place in due course. "Next of kin have not yet been informed." Southend Road was closed westbound and officers remain on scene. P olice officers in Kingston have caused a social media storm with their attempt at the latest craze to sweep the country the mannequin challenge. In a bid to raise awareness for the Mets Christmas charity project, officers did their best frozen poses as a camera swooped around the bizarre scene. The surreal clip shows officers in a police van, one inspecting a bike and two seemingly plain-clothes officers apprehending a man drinking tea. It ends with two officers frozen as one is trying to teach the other a dance move. The teacher is none other than PC Dan Graham, also known as the worlds best dancing cop, who found fame in May when a clip of him dancing went viral online. Frozen: the clip features PC Dan Graham AKA the 'world's best dancing cop' / Kingston MPS Kingston Police spokesman Sebastian Ellis told the Standard: "This year we wanted to raise awareness of our Christmas Tree Appeal. Having seen the mannequin craze catching on around the world we saw a great opportunity to join in and spread the Christmas appeal message. "There are children in London that may not receive a gift at Christmas this year, so we want to change that, but we need your help. "If you would like to donate a gift, please visit our website and choose your local police station. You can also donate via our Just Giving page." Mannequins: the craze has swept the world / Kingston MPS The clip has proved popular online already, garnering over 10,000 Facebook views and 500 'likes'. Users have labelled it "brilliant", with one adding: "your social media team deserve a medal". The mannequin challenge requires participants to imitate mannequins and stay absolutely still while music plays in the background. Meanwhile, someone with a camera weaves in and out of the group, capturing the dramatic poses. Participants then upload the video to their social media channels with the hashtag #MannequinChallenge. Various celebrities have had a go, including Adele, comedian Kevin Hart, Michelle Obama and the members of Destinys Child. For more information on the Met's Christmas appeal and to donate visit the Christmas Tree Appeal page. W ikileaks founder Julian Assanges cat was spotted wearing a shirt collar and a candy-striped tie at the Ecuadorian embassy. Clad in the bizarre collar, the pet cat was photographed peering from a window at the embassy shortly after Swedish authorities arrived to quiz Mr Assange. The cat first appeared at the window of the Knightsbridge building wearing a plain collar as the worlds media arrived to report on the interview. After keeping watch on the crowd outside, the animal left the window and later returned apparently dressed up for the reporters. Julian Assange's cat sits at the window of Ecuador's embassy (REUTERS) / Reuters The Swedish authorities were at the Embassy on Monday seeking information relating to an allegation of a serious sexual offence made against Mr Assange, which he denies. He believes that if he leaves the embassy he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks. A man takes a photograph of the cat belonging to Julian Assange / PA Representatives from the Swedish prosecutor's office and the Swedish police will be present while questions are put to Mr Assange by an Ecuadorian official today. The cat was a gift from his children earlier this year and has its own twitter account @EmbassyCat. Its Twitter bio says he lives with Mr Assange and is "interested in counter-purrveillance". A Swedish prosecutor arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy to quiz Julian Assange today - a day after Pamela Anderson delivered a tray of food to the WikiLeaks chief. Deputy chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and Swedish police investigator Cecilia Redell will sit in on a question session led by an Ecuadorian prosecutor in a bid to end the four year deadlock that has kept him a refuge inside the Knightsbridge building. Ms Isgren arrived in a large people carrier at 9.30am and paused briefly for photographs on the steps of the embassy but made no comment. Mr Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador and has been living inside the embassy for over four years. The Swedish Prosecution Authority said last week that Ecuador had granted a Swedish request for assistance after years of negotiation. Pamela Anderson delivered a tray of food / Danny Martindale/GC Images Prosecutors also plan to ask Assange to consent to providing a DNA sample. Swedish officials are seeking information related to an allegation of a serious sexual offence made by a Swedish woman. He denies the allegations and says he fears being extradited to the U.S. because of his WikiLeaks work. Yesterday the actress Pamela Anderson delivered a selection of vegetarian treats to Assange ahead of the interview. A deal agreed between Swedish and Ecuadorian authorities means that the Swedes questions will be put to Assange by the Ecuadorian prosecutor. The Swedes will be allowed to ask for clarification of the responses, but not to put any fresh questions. Loading.... His answers will be transcribed and sent to the Swedish authorities. S adiq Khan today called for an end to the politics of fear and division after Donald Trumps US election victory. The Mayor pledged to fight against negative politics from seeping in and damaging community relations in diverse cities like London. He warned fellow city leaders to focus on uniting communities to prevent their citizens from feeling left behind, disconnected or ignored. As he addressed global mayors at City Halls first social integration conference, he urged them to concentrate on building bridges not walls amid fears a wave of voter dissatisfaction would lead to the election of right-wing parties across the West. It came as Mr Trump spoke out for the first time about the demonstrations against his election victory that are sweeping the United States amid concern over whether he was fit to be President, telling Americans: Dont be afraid. Mr Khan is understood to be concerned that the US election, following on from the Brexit vote, has shown how fractious relations between communities in the West have become, with hundreds of millions feeling cut off from the political debate. He warned that failing to bring those communities together risked losing the argument to the divisive political forces gaining pace in many countries across Europe and the world. In his opening remarks, Mr Khan said: We have seen major political upheaval around the world in recent months, with the EU referendum here in the UK and the presidential election in the US. This has shown how politics is becoming more and more polarised with whole communities in cities across the world feeling increasingly disconnected and estranged from national politics. Thats why now, more than ever, we need to build a strong sense of social solidarity within our cities - a renewed sense that we are united as neighbours and citizens. In the US, Mr Trump sought to dial down his hard-line right-wing reputation in his first television interview since his election triumph last week. The 70-year-old President Elect told US news show 60 Minutes that he was shocked to hear reports that his supporters have harassed blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and gay people. Speaking from his Trump Tower penthouse, he said: Im very surprised to hear that because Im trying to bring this country together. I am so saddened to hear that. And I say: stop it. Quizzed about how Muslims are terrified about the consequences of his surprise win and that African-Americans think theres a target on their backs, Mr Trump said: I think its horrible if thats happening. But he added: I think its built up by the press because, frankly, theyll take every single little incident that they can find in this country, which couldve been there before. He also expressed disappointment the LGBTQ community was expressing fears over his election, describing himself as you know, a supporter. Mr Trump said he had no regrets about the negative tone of his campaign, stating sometimes you need a certain rhetoric to get people motivated. With his wife, future First Lady Melania, at his side for part of the interview, the property billionaire hinted he was as surprised as everyone else by his victory over Hillary Clinton. I realised that this is a whole different life for me now, he confessed. He is not planning to take the 320,000 presidential salary and has suggested he may not live at the White House full-time. Mr Trump also softened his stance on some of his campaign policies - pledging to keep popular elements of the Obamacare health care system and suggesting his notorious wall along the border with Mexico might in some places resemble a fence. He also denied he would challenge US laws allowing same sex marriage as had been settled by the Supreme Court and he was fine with that and admitted that despite fierce criticism of the Washington elite he would need them for his transition team. But more ominously for liberal critics he suggested any Supreme Court justices he would appoint would be pro-life and pro-guns. He will stick to plans to deport at least two million undocumented immigrants with criminal records as soon as he takes office in January. L ondoners hoping for a glimpse of the supermoon may be left disappointed as forecasters predict it will be obscured by clouds tonight. The moon will appear brighter and larger in the night sky than it has done in 68 years thanks to a phenomenon known as perigee, scientists say. The rare marvel happens when a full moon coincides as its orbit is closest to the earth. Many stargazing Londoners captured stunning photos of the giant moon as it lit up the sky over the city on Sunday night. But people hoping to spot the moon again over London could miss out as meteorologists forecast a blanket of cloud over much of the south east. Met Office spokesman Graham Madge said there is not a brilliant chance of getting a view of the supermoon anywhere in the UK - but it doesnt look particularly good for London. Blurry: The view through the clouds over Bermondsey on Sunday night. / @Scandic_Voice Scotland and the north of England is the best place to be to see the natural wonder where the chance of a break in the cloud is higher. Mr Madge said: Its doubtful cloud cover will be 100 per cent so while people will stand a chance seeing it in the south and east, the chances are lower than in the north. But for Londoners determined to see the supermoon, Mr Madge says the best time is probably later in the night. There will be a band of rain moving through as we get towards dusk and that rain should start easing which may encourage breaks in the cloud. There may be a chance in the small hours, it may be clearer but at the moment according to our charts its all white. Despite the breathtaking photos taken by some Londoners on Sunday night, other peoples efforts were thwarted by the cloud. Social media user Kristina posted on Twitter a picture of the supermoon over Bermondsey with the caption: Quite cloudy so cant see that much. Another user posted a photo of the moon over London slightly obscured by cloud. A teenager who turned her life around after suffering from anger problems has been nominated for a Princes Trust award. Shannon Beecher, 18, was adopted at the age of six but retained contact with her birth parents. When her father died she began feeling withdrawn and started self-harming. Her dyslexia meant she also struggled at school which left her feeling angry and unwanted until she joined a Princes Trust course. Shannon, of Crystal Palace, said: I blamed myself for everything; for being put into care, for being unlovable, for being argumentative and angry towards myself and others. Her adoptive mother decided to enrol her on the Fairbridge Princes Trust programme which aims to rebuild confidence and motivation among disadvantaged young people. Through the programme she was offered a work placement as an English teacher at a kindergarten in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. She then joined the Get Started With Music course and represented the Trust on the red carpet at the National Celebrate Success Awards where she interviewed patrons including magician Dynamo and Professor Brian Cox. She also chatted to the Queen and Prince Charles at an event celebrating National Womens Day. Shannon said: Without the Princes Trust I genuinely wouldnt be here today as I was in such a dark place, but now I feel like I am a person who is worth something. Today she is a Young Ambassador for the Trust and wants to volunteer abroad as a marine conservationist. She has been shortlisted for a Princes Trust and TK Maxx & HomeSense Celebrate Success award in the Delta Air Lines Rising Star category. Nat Pieper, Delta Air Lines senior vice president Europe, said: Congratulations to Shannon for making it to the final of this years London and South East Celebrate Success awards. I am always blown away by what these young people have achieved and I look forward to meeting Shannon and the other finalists at the ceremony. Shannon will attend the gala ceremony at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on Thursday. B osses have a golden opportunity to make their mark on Brexit, says the new head of a top London business group. Jasmine Whitbread, who will start at London First next month, said business chiefs had a unique moment to push their plans on the single market and immigration while things are in flux. The former chief executive of Save the Children International said she would play a full role in putting pressure on the Government because there was real concern that the reality of Brexit so far was chaotic. In an interview with the Standard, Ms Whitbread said: Is there a plan and if so when are we going to be consulted on it? If there isnt, how and when is that going to be developed? Im a great believer that with challenge comes opportunity. In flux, things are changing. This is a golden opportunity for business not to wait to be invited but to get together and set out their proposals. She revealed concerns that the Government was not clear or transparent enough on the Brexit negotiations, adding that it was time for business to stop reading tea leaves and step in. Ms Whitbread joins London First after a decade at Save the Children, although she started off in the corporate sector with Rio Tinto, later working for a software company in Boston before volunteering in Uganda. She believes business has a responsibility to society as well as to the economy, saying: You should be able to do business and do good at the same time. Its really inspiring when business people come together and use their clout and influence. Since leaving Save the Children at the end of last year, she has been meeting London Firsts members who produce a quarter of the capitals GDP and include Barclays, M&S and KPMG to discuss priorities. Have business chiefs raised eyebrows at a charity executive getting the job? People generally do tend to want to pigeonhole, said Ms Whitbread, who lives with her husband in London, has two children at university, sits on two company boards and has long been a champion for gender diversity. Its too easy to give somebody a label and be done with it. N early half of Londoners too young to vote in the EU referendum are depressed about their futures, a survey has suggested. Forty-four per cent of young people from the capital and Essex aged between 11 and 17 feel very or fairly negative about their prospects following the vote to leave the EU, the poll revealed. And nearly three quarters are even more fearful for the countrys prospects, with 67 per cent feeling very or fairly negative about Britains future. The survey, by the Jack Petchey Foundation, showed that 82 per cent of young people in London wanted to remain in the EU, with 68 per cent of the young people questioned believing Britains reputation around the world has been damaged by the referendum result and their opportunity to study, work or travel in a different country reduced. Forty-six per cent of people surveyed admitted they have even considered leaving Britain in the future to live elsewhere as a result of the vote. Asked what the most important issues were for them in the referendum, the respondents chose education opportunities and a strong economy as the most popular choices. However when asked what the main issues presented by politicians were, reducing immigration was the top answer - with 73 per cent of the children picking this and only 15 per cent citing it as an important issue to them. A worryingly high 65 per cent of the 2,000 children surveyed had heard, or knew people who had heard hateful comments since the referendum. Nearly a third had remarks from other young people they knew, and over a third heard them from adults they did not know. Joseph Pascoe, 16, urged politicians to listen to the concerns of young people as they try to secure a deal with EU leaders. He said: The EU referendum was the biggest political decision taken in my lifetime. It will affect the future of my whole generation. But just like everyone else under 18 I didnt get any say. This was the first chance we got to tell people what we think. I found it worrying that 45 per cent of young people said they are thinking of leaving the UK. Politicians need to take our views on board when they negotiate Brexit because everyone has a stake in our country. Please dont ignore a whole generation. Trudy Kilcullen, CEO of the Jack Petchey Foundation, said young peoples concerns needed to be considered. She said: As a foundation were are concerned about motivating people and bringing inspiration and hope, and what is massively worrying is that young people are concerned about their future. We want to see politicians from both sides of the referendum debate hearing the voice of young people. The large number of young people who have heard hateful comments is also concerning. We need to support youth workers and teachers to try to reduce that. A bid by Jeremy Corbyns supporters to gain control of the London Labour Party suffered a major blow after a Left-winger failed to be elected to a key post. Barrister Ellie Reeves, a centrist candidate, saw off a challenge from lawyer Niamh OBrady to become vice-chairwoman of the London Labour Party regional board. Ms OBrady had welcomed support from a local Labour party in the capital as a step towards a board supporting [Jeremy] Corbyn. Before the vote, Ms Reeves believed that the Unison union was going to back her but claimed its support was withdrawn hours before the ballot after the Unite union, led by Len McCluskey, allegedly intervened. The maternity rights campaigner, who is married to Labour MP John Cryer and is the sister of former shadow Cabinet member Rachel Reeves, was stunned by her win on Saturday. Nearly 85 per cent of the constituency Labour parties in London backed her and Unison abstained. Afterwards, Ms Reeves said: It was a victory, not just for me but for ordinary members. From what I can gather, Unite tried to block my election. But the members fought back against that and won. However, Unite denied that union bosses, including Mr McCluskey, had had any involvement in the vote or that any pressure was applied on Unison. A spokesman said: In Unite, these matters are decided in the London region and in full consultation with sister unions. Ms Reeves lost her seat on Labours National Executive Committee this year and her win, by 55 per cent to 44 per cent, of the London post was welcomed by centrist Labour MPs. Labours deputy leader Tom Watson, who has clashed with Jeremy Corbyn over his leadership, tweeted: Congratulations Ellie. An excellent result for a very worthy candidate. Jim Fitzpatrick, MP for Poplar and Limehouse, said: It demonstrates that Unite do not control the London Labour Party. The regional board has influence over which wing of the party has sway in the capital because it has a say in resolving disputes over council candidates. F ears that popular London hospitals face closures were seized on by campaigners in the Richmond Park by-election today. Acute services at Kingston Hospital, which serves the west London battleground, were among potential cuts highlighted in an analysis by the Kings Fund think tank. Cuts to hospitals, A&E units and maternity units are being drawn up in 44 areas nationwide under cost-cutting programmes called sustainability and transformation plans (STPs). In south-west London the STP is considering cutting one of five sites, with St Georges, Croydon, Kingston, Epsom and St Helier in the crosshairs with St Helier the most vulnerable. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: Millions of pounds of cuts are happening because the Tories have cut more from the NHS budget than needed. Former MP Zac Goldsmith, running as an anti-Heathrow independent, said: I recently met the chair and chief executive of Kingston Hospital who are very clear that they do not foresee any reduction of acute beds. If there were ever a threat to the hospital, I would be leading the campaign against it. N umber 10 has rubbished claims Nigel Farage will serve as an intermediary between Donald Trump and the Government, reportedly insisting "it is categorically not going to happen". The Ukip leader hinted that ministers are sounding him out about dealing with Mr Trump after he became the first British politician to meet the incoming Republican President since his shock election victory. Following the meeting Mr Farage said he would act as a bridge between Downing Street and Mr Trump if called upon to do so. And in a swipe at No 10 officials who have dismissed his links to the business tycoon, he added: "It would appear that the apparatchiks in Downing Street keep saying very negative things about me. I'd have thought that's just a little bit short sighted, frankly. US Election: New president Donald Trump in numbers "I would have thought, in the national interest, they perhaps ought to bury their personal enmity towards me and we ought to have a constructive conversation." Mr Farage also revealed that members of the president-elect's inner circle were concerned about unflattering comments made by British Cabinet ministers, though Mr Trump told him he had a "nice" phone call with Prime Minister Theresa May. Nigel Farage praises 'silverback gorilla' Donald Trump for 'dominating' Hillary Clinton "He said he had a nice conversation, although some of his team had reservations about what members of the Cabinet have said during the election," Mr Farage told the Daily Telegraph. The pair met at Trump Tower in New York and spent over an hour discussing the president-elect's victory, global politics and the status of Brexit, according to Ukip. However Downing Street has since played down the significance of the Ukip leader's meeting with Mr Trump. A spokesman for Mrs May said that No 10 "has been consistent that Mr Farage has no role" in the Government's relationship with the incoming US administration. Round-up of Trump's most infamous comments in the run-up to his presidency Meanwhile Senior Conservative Crispin Blunt also rubbished the claims. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said it is "completely implausible" Mr Farage would take up such a role, telling BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "I think there's a fantastic opportunity actually for a decent relationship for the United Kingdom with the new administration - and no need for Nigel." S adiq Khan has revealed some of his friends suffered vile racist abuse after Britain's vote to leave the EU. But the Mayor insisted that people should not be labelled as bigots purely because they voted for Brexit or US President-elect Donald Trump. Mr Khan told how friends of his were called the 'N-word' and slurs such as 'p***' in the weeks after the referendum. The Remain campaigner said the social and political divisions stirred up by the debate around EU membership have caused him concern. Speaking to the website Politico, he said: Whereas it was not uncommon when I was growing up to hear the p word or the n word or the y word, depending on whether you were Asian, Afro-Caribbean or Jewish, my kids have never been racially abused in that way. "But friends I have spoken to of my age post-Brexit have heard the p word or the n word or the y word Ive got mates who were called the n word or the p word in the week or two after Brexit. Sadiq Khan was critical of comments made by Donald Trump / REUTERS Mr Khan also criticised Trumps comments on Muslims in the US campaign, accusing him of making both Britain and America less safe and playing into the hands of the extremists. But the Mayor of London added: "Dont call people racist because they decided to vote for an alternative, radical path. Try to understand the concerns theyve got an try to address them. He said liberal parties in Europe and the United States need to find a way of better getting through to angry voters who feel they haven't benefitted from open trade and globalisation, or risk losing them permanently to populist candidates or parties. Following the Brexit vote, Mr Khan said his focus is now on trying to protect Londons position as an international financial, commercial and cultural center. He has been a leading voice against a so-called hard Brexit, with a key concern being access to the single market for British business and the City of London. He said: Weve got to make sure the government has a clear plan but telegraphs that it has a clear plan to give reassurance to businesses and others. "Ive had no complaints about the access Ive had or how receptive the secretaries of state have been toward me, but the proof is in the pudding. D efence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon today warned EU leaders that loose talk of an EU army risks undermining Nato at a time of heightened world tension. The senior Cabinet minister urged his European counterparts only to back military moves that bolster the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. He issued the warning after European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker argued after Donald Trumps election as US president that the EU could not rely on America in the long term for its security and so needed a new start in defence up to creating a European army. But Sir Michael said: Britain will only support proposals to strengthen European security that complement Nato, not duplicate it. That means doing more to improve Nato-EU co-operation on cyber, hybrid threats, and maritime security. But loose talk of an EU Army risks undermining Nato and we will go on opposing this - backed up by many other member states. Britain commits two per cent of GDP to military spending and Sir Michael, speaking before a meeting of foreign and defence ministers in Brussels, urged other EU nations to do the same. His remarks were echoed by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who warned against undermining the fundamental security architecture that has looked after us for 70 years. He also said the election of Mr Trump represented a moment of opportunity for Britain and for Europe. There is a lot to be positive about and it is very important not to prejudge the president-elect or his administration, he stressed. Its up to us and everybody totake things forward in a positive way. Donald Trump is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it could also be a good thing for Europe. A premature baby died after a hospital refused to give life-saving treatment because the parents only had out-of-date banknotes. The newborn was denied medical help by doctors who refused to accept the parents 500 rupee notes. India is facing a money crisis after the countrys prime minister banned two of its banknotes as part of a crackdown on corruption. The 500 and 1,000 rupee notes were scrapped from circulation overnight sparking economic chaos as thousands of people queued at banks in a bid to get rid of the expired money. Chaos: Long queues outside banks as people queue up to deposit their expired notes. / AFP/Getty Images The premature baby died in Mumbai after the hospital refused to accept the notes, The Times reported. Three others reportedly collapsed and died while queuing outside banks to exchange their savings, while some have reportedly committed suicide because they could not get any of the new notes. Rupees: The new currency notes of 2,000 rupees which are replacing the scrapped banknotes. / AP The crackdown on corruption, tax evasion and funding of terrorism was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. He said: Black money and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty. Banks are giving citizens 50 days to swap their old notes for new ones. Many of the countrys services, including hospitals, are allowed to still accept the old currency notes but there is reportedly widespread confusion. W hile around the world there was a collective gasp of horror from liberals at Donald Trumps election, there were some glimmers of optimism in Brussels. Federalists such as the European Parliaments Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, suggested that perhaps, with an isolationist America, the European Union could fill that void on the world stage, and the shock result might prove a wake-up call for the bloc to forge even deeper unity. But it has only taken a few days for such hopes to crumble. Last night, the 28 EU member states could not even agree on holding a special meeting to discuss the result in the US. The German government and the EUs foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, called a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, but not everybody was convinced. Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said he would be giving it a miss, calling it completely premature and complaining about hysterical statements in Europe about Trumps election. Britain too said it would not be sending Boris Johnson, with a Foreign Office spokesman saying we do not see the need for an additional meeting to discuss the results of an act of democracy. France too declined to send its foreign minister. This disagreement over a simple meeting is another illustration of the many challenges facing the EU. There are crises on so many fronts: the economy, migration, and Brexit to name a few. With each new emergency, the EU appears more divided, and disillusionment and anger at Brussels flourishes. And one of the key concerns is that Mr Trumps election will embolden the other populists striving to take advantage of this disillusionment, from the Austrian far-Right, who are hoping their candidate will become president on December 4, to Marine Le Pen and her Front National vowing to replicate Mr Trumps success in French elections next year. Analysts warn that a Trump presidency poses many other threats to the EU, from the economic blow of his expected withdrawal from trade negotiations, to concerns about his commitment to defending Europe in the event of any Russian aggression. Rather than making Europe stronger, it seems, the US election result is simply the latest in a long line of crises. A n Australian man who was cleared of killing his Tinder date has said in a TV interview he often records nights out just in case something happens. Gable Tostee, 30, was acquitted of the murder of 26-year-old New Zealand woman Warriena Wright, who plummeted to her death from his 14th floor apartment balcony. Mr Tostee had made secret audio recordings on his phone which captured an argument between the pair as well as the balcony fall. The audio records Mr Tostee saying: Youre lucky I havent chucked you off my balcony. If you try to pull anything, Ill knock you out. In a controversial TV interview following the not guilty verdict, Mr Tostee said he often records nights out. Fell to her death: Warriena Wright He told Australia's 60 Minutes programme: I used to go out quite a lot drinking, I don't have the best memory when I drink. "It's better off having something and not needing it than needing it and not having it." Mr Tostee was found not guilty of both murder and manslaughter of the tourist after four days of deliberation by the jury. The carpet layer, who was paid $150,000 or 90,000 to take part in the TV interview was asked whether he was heartless and why he locked Ms Wright on the balcony, the BBC reported. He said: "(The altercation) was a lot, lot closer to the balcony door, and it was wide open, and it was the logical option at the time. Asked if he was heartless, he said: "When you put it that way, when that's all you say about a person, with no insight or explanation, you know, the media can make people think what the media wants people to think." Mr Tostee was also asked to explain why he called a lawyer rather than an ambulance or the police immediately after the fatal balcony fall. He said: Nobody is trained for a situation like this. It's like being hit by lightning. There is no right or wrong way to proceed from there. "What had happened had happened, and there's nothing an ambulance could do to change that." The bizarre TV interview and reported payment sparked controversy in Australia with viewers hitting out at Mr Tostees seeming lack of emotion. A four-year-old girl accidentally shot herself and her mother in the head after she picked up a handgun from her parents' nightstand. Police say the bullet went through the girl's cheek before hitting her sleeping mother in the back of the head. The incident, which happened in Indianapolis at about 8.30am on Sunday morning, was described by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department as an "unfortunate tragedy". The father of the girl told officers he and his fiancee were asleep when he was woken up by the sound of the gunshot. He added his two-year-old son was in the room, but was not hurt. Both the girl and her mother were rushed to hospital for treatment. The girl is said to be in a stable condition, while the mother's condition is unknown. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department later tweeted: "Curious kids and loaded guns have deadly consequences. Please secure your firearms and store out of reach of your little ones." B rendan Dassey, who was made famous by the Making A Murderer documentary, is finally being released from prison after 10 years. The 27-year-olds murder conviction had already been overturned this year but he remained in jail pending an appeal by prosecutors. He had been originally found guilty of the first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse in 2007. Mr Dassey was accused of murdering Teresa Hallbach in 2005 alongside his uncle Steven Avery, with the crime later made the subject of hit Netflix series. The show cast major doubts on the investigation and verdict and generated huge public interest in the case. And on Monday, US Magistrate Judge William Duffin ordered that he should be released from prison while waiting for the prosecutions appeal case. Mr Duffin ruled in August that investigators tricked Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Ms Halbach. The state has appealed that ruling. Dassey's supervised release was not immediate and is contingent upon him meeting multiple conditions. He has until noon on Tuesday to provide the federal probation and parole office with the address of where he planned to live. Dassey was 16 when Ms Halbach died. E ddie Redmayne was stopped by security while travelling to the US because he was carrying his characters magic wand. The Oscar-winning actor, who plays Newt Scarmander in the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts, ran into trouble when he was asked to explain what the long, pointed item was. I brought it because I felt like it would be reassuring to have Newts wand, he told AOL Build at the weekend. But then we were coming through customs and I suddenly realise that a wand looks like a really sharp, scary object and then to try and explain it to a customs person, I was like, "Have you seen the No?" That was a bit disastrous. Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scarmander ( Warner Bros) / Warner Bros Luckily, the 34-year-old was allowed to bring the magical prop into the country and presumably back to the UK with him, when he touched down at Heathrow on Sunday night. Redmayne also revealed that he carries around a case similar to Newts in real life, causing fans to think that hes been copying his character. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - Trailer 3 He said: This is a case I use in life and now when Im traveling Im like, "Do I take the case with me?" Cause now people are going to think, "Oh you were cast as Newt Scamander who has a case and now you walk around with a case Redmayne recently admitted that he used to get some funny looks while practicing his lines for the film on the London underground. Sometimes wed have almost War Horse-style puppets for the rehearsal. But it varied, and sometimes it just involved having little Pickett the Bowtruckle, who is a stick insect, and he would be on my hand, he told Time Out. Id be on the tube in London, imagining talking to this thing, and suddenly realise Im being stared at. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hits cinemas on November 18. Prince Williams speech, in front of the great and the good of the West End, kickstarted a night recognising some of our finest stage talent. Billie Piper was named best actress, Ralph Fiennes was crowned best actor and Sir Kenneth Branagh received the Lebedev Award for his season of plays at the Garrick. The prince told the stars assembled at the Old Vic in Waterloo that he was delighted to present Sir David with the Beyond Theatre Award for his contribution to broadcasting. Dame Shirley Bassey and Ralph Fiennes / Dave Benett Praising Sir Davids deep concern for the natural world, William also lauded his work as a BBC executive, when he commissioned shows including Monty Pythons Flying Circus. William said: The recipient of this particular award is a man who has shaped the culture of this country and the way we look at the world. Other winners included Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, which won the best play award with Hiscox, official arts partner, the Good Chance Theatre, which claimed the Editors Award for its work in the Jungle refugee camp in Calais, and Glenn Close, who won best musical performance. Last nights event was co-hosted by Sir Elton John, who performed Circle Of Life from The Lion King, and Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, who also paid tribute to Sir David as the honorary grandfather to the whole blue planet. Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 Winners & Ceremony- In pictures 1 /48 Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 Winners & Ceremony- In pictures Sir Ian McKellen (L) and Sir Patrick Stewart perform at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Billie Piper, winner of the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress Dave Benett Prince William, Duke of Cambridge presents an award to Sir David Attenborough during The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at The Old Vic Theatre Stuart C. Wilson - WPA Pool/Getty Images Glenn Close accepts the Best Musical Performance award for "Sunset Boulevard" Dave Benett Dame Shirley Bassey and Ralph Fiennes dance at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards after party Dave Benett Ophelia Lovibond and Dominic Cooper at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards after party Dave Benett John Malkovich, winner of the Milton Shulman award for Best Director, poses with Sheridan Smith (L) and Ruth Wilson Dave Benett/Getty Images Tom HIddleston and Sir Kenneth Branagh, winner of the Lebedev Award Dave Benett Playwright Jack Thorne, presenter Maggie Smith, director John Tiffany and actress Noma Dumezweni, accepting the Best Play award with Hiscox for "Harry Potter And The Cursed Child", pose onstage at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Sir Elton John performs Dave Benett Timothy Sheader, winner of the Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award For Best Musical award for "Jesus Christ Superstar", Elizabeth Hurley, Dame Joan Collins and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber Dave Benett Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Elton John and Tom Hiddleston attend the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Sir Ian McKellen (L) and Sir Patrick Stewart perform at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Elizabeth Debicki poses in front of the winners boards at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Sir David Attenborough, Evgeny Lebedev and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, attend the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Rob Brydon speaking during The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards PA Helen McCrory (L) and Charlene James, winner of the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright Dave Benett Ralph Fiennes, winner of the Best Actor award Dave Benett James McAvoy (L) and Billie Piper, winner of the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress Dave Benett Ruth Wilson Dave Benett Sheridan Smith Dave Benett Mark Rylance speaks onstage at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards, recognising excellence from across the world of theatre and beyond Dave Benett Sir Ian McKellen (L) and Sir Patrick Stewart perform at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Sir Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hiddleston attend the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Tyrone Huntley, winner of the Emerging Talent Award in partnership with Burberry Dave Benett David Furnish and Elizabeth Hurley Dave Benett Pete Malkin (L) and Gareth Fry, winners of the Best Design award for sound design on "The Encounter" Dave Benett/Getty Images Dame Shirley Bassey Dave Benett Clara Paget and Amber Le Bon Dave Benett Dita Von Teese Dave Benett Glenn Close, winner of the Best Musical Performance award for "Sunset Boulevard", Dave Benett Dominic Cooper and Ophelia Lovibond Dave Benett Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and Glenn Close Dave Benett Lily Donaldson Dave Benett Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Sonia Friedman Dave Benett Tom Hiddleston and Sir Kenneth Branagh, winner of the Lebedev Award, pose onstage at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Fiennes, named best actor for his title roles in The Master Builder and Richard III, thanked the Old Vic and the Almeida, the two theatres which staged the shows. As Piper accepted the Natasha Richardson Award for best actress, for the title role in Yerma, she paid tribute to director Simon Stone, saying she would work with him again in a heartbeat. The play, described by Evening Standard chief theatre critic Henry Hitchings as devastatingly good, sold out at the Young Vic and produced queues around the block as people tried to get their hands on a return ticket. It is rumoured to be in line for a West End transfer. Accepting his award, Sir Kenneth praised the enthusiastic, necessarily critical and engaged voice of the Evening Standard and told the audience that theatre matters. Highlights: Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 He said: There has never been a greater need to have great stories in great theatres for large audiences, to entertain, to divert, and also to know that we and they are not alone. Close, whose appearance in Sunset Boulevard was her West End debut, said the show was a once in a lifetime experience and praised the orchestra of the English National Opera who supported her on stage at the Coliseum. She said: It was a combination that made for an extraordinary revelatory experience for me. "On top of that was the amazing response from our audiences that proved every night we had connected emotionally in some very profound way, so it was a huge honour to be here and I hope to come back again some time to the theatre in London. Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 - In pictures 1 /48 Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 - In pictures Ruth Wilson poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Sheridan Smith poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Orlando Bloom signs autographs and takes selfies with fans at The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Joan Collins and Elizabeth Hurley at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards the Old Vic London Zak Hussein/SilverHub Billie Piper attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre, London Ian West/PA James McAvoy poses on the red carpet as he attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Lily Donaldson attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett/Getty Images Dita von Teese and attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Elizabeth Hurley poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Dame Kristin Scott Thomas arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Helen McCrory attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Sir Patrick Stewart, Glenn Close and Sunny Ozell arrive at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Elizabeth Debicki arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Michael Gambon poses on the red carpet Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images The Duke of Cambridge attends with Evgeny Lebedev at the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Orlando Bloom attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards h Ian West/PA Amber Le Bon attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Zak Hussein/SilverHub Sheridan Smith poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images MyAnna Buring attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Ruth Wilson attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Glenn Close arrives at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards, Dave Benett/Getty Images Tuppence Middleton attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Ellie Brown attends The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at The Old Vic Theatre John Phillips/Getty Images Ellie Bamber attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett/Getty Images Mary Portas attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre, London Ian West/PA Sir Patrick Stewart and Sunny Ozell arrive at The 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett/Getty Images Ophelia Lovibond poses on the red carpet as she attends the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images Ralph Fiennes arrives at The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at The Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett Emily Berrington attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Kenneth Branagh and Lindsay Brunnock attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatr Ian West/PA Sophie Melville attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA John Malkovich attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Dave Benett Glenn Close and Andrew Lloyd-Webber attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards Ian West/PA Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Amber Riley attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Dave Benett/Getty Images Aoife Duffin attending the The London Evening Standard Theatre Awards held at the Old Vic Theatre Ian West/PA Among the other guests at the 62nd London Evening Standard Theatre Awards were the cast of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, who raced across town when the curtain came down at the Palace Theatre to see playwright Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and star Noma Dumezweni, who was representing JK Rowling, accept the prize for best play. Tiffany said the show had kept him sane over the past 18 months. Highlights from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2016 - London Live He added: Its a show about the perils of isolation, its a show about unity, its a show about family and its a show about love. Other winners included Closes fellow Hollywood star John Malkovich, who received the Milton Shulman Award for best director for Good Canary at the Rose Theatre Kingston, Jesus Christ Superstar, which won the Radio 2 audience award for best musical, and No Mans Land at Wyndhams, which was named best revival. The stars of that show, Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, entertained the audience with a skit which featured Sir Ian as a pantomime dame. Tyrone Huntley received the emerging talent award in partnership with Burberry for his performance as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, while Charlene James received the Charles Wintour Award for most promising playwright for Cuttin It, about female genital mutilation. Gareth Frys work with Pete Malkin on The Encounter at the Barbican won best design. Awards presenters included Elizabeth Debicki, Tom Hiddleston, Helen McCrory and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, who was joined by her son Joseph Olivennes. Dreamgirls star Amber Riley performed. T he Simpsons creators have acknowledged the fact that they predicted Donald Trumps presidency and theyre not too happy about it. In the first episode to air since the US elections, Bart Simpson can be seen scrawling being right sucks on the chalk board during the opening credits. The Simpsons updates its 2000 prediction of a Trump Presidency... #TheSimpsons, the shows official Twitter account posted on Monday. The show bizarrely predicted that Trump would one day be President way back in 2000, while presenting an insane vision of a future America. The Simpsons predicted President Trump 16 years ago as a warning to America During the episode, in which Lisa becomes President in the year 2030, she discusses the fact that shes just taken over from President Trump. Weve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump, she says while sitting in the Oval Office. Simpsons writer Dan Greaney admitted that it was a worst nightmare scenario and was supposed to be a warning to America. It was a warning to America, he told The Hollywood Reporter. That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. Donald Trump on The Simpsons (20th Century Fox) / Fox It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane. "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." Show creator Matt Groening said that Trump was used for the joke as he was the most absurd placeholder joke name that they could come up with. We predicted that he would be president back in 2000 but (Trump) was of course the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and thats still true, he said. "Its beyond satire." 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To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. Preliminary results from Sunday's presidential runoff in Moldova shows Socialist Igor Dodon is the winner and Moldova's next president for the next four years, according to Moldovan media. Dodon reportedly garnered 814,000 ballots, which is more than 50 percent of the valid ballots. After the processing of 96.83 percent of the vote reports, Dodon is the winner, with 55.17 percent of the votes. His challenger Maia Sandu of the Action and Solidarity Party got 44.83 percent, according to rise.md. Socialist Igor Dodon, 41, has been an MP since 2009. He was also prime minister and minister of the economy. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics of the State Agrarian University and the Management Faculty of the Chisinau School of Economics. In 2009, he won an MP seat on the tickets of the Communist Party of Moldova. In November 2011, he left the party to join the Socialists, whose national leader he became the same year. Moldova's Publika public television broadcaster says Dodon ran against Dorin Chirtoaca in the 2011 local elections for the Chisinau mayor's office, losing the race with slightly over 49 percent. In 2012-2014 he organised periodic protests demanding Chirtoaca to resign. In March 2012, Dodon's group voted Nicolae Timofti in the office of Moldova's president. Later on, Dodon said he regretted his vote for Timofti. Dodon speaks Russian, English and French. He was born in Sadova, Calarasi district. He is married, with three children. agerpres. General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar stated on Monday that crimes against the environment represent a priority for the Public Ministry, adding that a launching of a new concept is wanted, titled "green justice", which supposes, amongst others the creation of a specialized magistrates network. "It is, in fact a priority for some time now, I have also announced it through the activity project that I have presented to the Superior Council of Magistracy (CSM) in April this year. The crimes against the environment represent an important priority of the Public Ministry, and the conference which will be organized tomorrow (on Tuesday - e.n.) will be endorsed by the Public Ministry, alongside the Legal Research Institute of the Romanian Academy. The event will be attended by prosecutors general colleagues from all the Appeal Courts in the country and representatives of several ministries, among which the Environment Ministry also," Lazar stated at the headquarters of the CSM. According to him the "green justice" concept assumes the creation of a network of magistrates, who are specialized in this area. The Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the "Academician Andrei Radulescu" Legal Research Institute of the Romanian Academy will organize on Tuesday, in Bucharest the national conference with international participation on the following topic "The environment and forest fund defense though criminal law," the release of the Prosecutor General's Office reveals. According to the quoted source, based on the specialized theoretical analysis and practical assessments in the area, the event proposes to make a radiography of the environment and forest crimes, to identify the inadequacies and deficiencies of criminal response and to propose concrete and feasible solutions to the existing problems. Agerpres Consolidated 9 months 2016 9 months 2015 % Gross turnover USD 2,570,588,065 3,095,936,836 -17% EBITDA USD 121,131,016 90,982,383 33% Net result USD 20,875,440 14,808,352 41% Rompetrol Rafinare, member of KMG International, registered a consolidated net profit* amounting to 20.8 million USD in the first 9 months of 2016, up by 41% compared to the same period of 2015. The consolidated operating result (EBITDA) registered, as well, an increase, by 33% in the first 9 months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, to over 121 million USD. The companys positive results have been supported by the production processes optimisation programs, the increase of the share of white products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene) in total finished products, as well as by reducing the operating costs, process which started in 2014 and continued successfully in 2015 and 2016, among the most important being the reduction in the steam and power consumption. Rompetrol Rafinarescontinuous performances have been achieved following investments supported by KMG International and its sole shareholder, the national oil and gas company in Kazakhstan, KazMunayGas, in order to increase the processing capacity of the Petromidia refinery, its flexibility, as well as in modernizing the industrial facilities, which amounted to over 1.4 billion USD starting 2007, the moment of the acquisition, saidYedil Utekov, general manager Rompetrol Rafinare. The evolution of the financial indicators was as well positively influenced by the refining margins, which have improved in 2016, and in the first 9 months of the year the gross margin was 10% higher than in the same period of last year. Given a production for Petromidia refinery of over 3.8 million tons of raw material in the first nine months of 2016, the sales of the refining division marked a 4% increase on the internal market, while the export sales have decreased due to lower market demand. In the first 9 months of 2016, through its refining and petrochemical divisions, the company exported a total quantity of products of over 1.7 million tones, mainly to partners in the Black Sea region. Rompetrol Rafinare is the largest oil products exporter in Romania and the second exporter at the national level. Through itsoperations, Rompetrol Rafinare continued to be an important contributor to Romanias state budget, paying over 951 million USD in the first 9 months of 2016. The Group KMG International paid, starting with 2007, over 13 billion USD to Romanias state budget. Rompetrol Rafinares main shareholderis the group KMG International, the Romanian state holding 44.69% of the shares. Holding shares in Rompetrol Rafinare is automatically reflected in the companies the enterprise controls, directly and indirectly. Rompetrol Rafinare operatesPetromidia refinery, Vega refinery and the petrochemicals division. Rompetrol Downstream operates the gas station network and the Rom Oil warehouse network. The refining segment Financial 9 months 2016 9 months 2015 % Gross turnover USD 2,041,303,683 2,650,853,966 -23% EBITDA USD 69,204,250 58,897,972 17% Net result USD (5,885,812) 43,083,891 N/A Operational Processed raw materials kt 3,883 4,114 -6% Fuel sales internal market kt 1,378 1,319 4% Fuel sales export kt 1,495 1,736 -14% Note: The refining segment comprises the results of the company Rompetrol Rafinare (which operates the Petromidia and Vega refineries). The EBITDA operating profit on the refining segment amounted to 69.2 million USD in the first 9 months of 2016, up by 17%, compared to the same period of last year. The quantity of raw material processed by Petromidia refinery was 3.89 million tons in the first nine months of 2016, down by 5.3% compared to the same period of last year, due to the controlled shut down of the production units between August 22 September 18, for technical and mechanical works necessary for operating in safety conditions. The refining capacity was 80.48% in the first 9 months of 2016, down by 7% compared to the same period of last year. Vega refinery processed a total quantity of raw material of over 256 thousand tons in the first 9 months of 2016, up by 1.67% compared to the same period in 2015, when 252 thousand tones were processed. The refining capacity of Vega platform was 103.5% in the first 9 months of 2016, up by 1.7% compared to the same period of last year. The petrochemicalssegment Financial 9 months 2016 9 months 2015 % Gross turnover USD 131,479,056 158,558,671 -17% EBITDA USD 4,924,742 (7,754,995) N/A Net result USD (3,201,220) (23,430,201) N/A Operational Processed propylene kt 87 91 -4% Processed ethylene kt 48 49 -2% Total sales Kt 137 145 -5% Starting with 1 January 2014, the petrochemical activity was taken over by Rompetrol Rafinare SA, being fully integrated on the propylene, utilities and logistics flow. The total polymers production of the petrochemicalsdivision was of over 108 thousand tones in the first 9 months of 2016, down by 5% compared to the same period of last year. The total quantity sold by the company on this segment was at 137 thousand tones, in the first nine months of 2016, down by 5% compared to the same period in 2015. The petrochemicals segment is the only producer of polypropylene in Romania, constantly increasing the market share of the secondary products categories. Its dynamic development strategy ensures the company a competitive position on the internal market, as well as on the regional one, in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea area, and the Central and Eastern Europe. The distributionsegment Financial 9 luni 2016 9 luni 2015 % Gross turnover USD 1,638,122,732 1,773,205,945 -8% EBITDA USD 46,786,728 42,591,760 10% Net result USD 31,846,583 8,644,896 268% Operational Fuel quantities - retail kt 475 464 2% Fuel quantities - en-gross kt 851 760 12% Sold GPL quantities Kt 197 202 -3% Note: The distribution segment includes the results of Rom Oil, Rompetrol Downstream, Rompetrol Quality Control, Rompetrol Logistics and Rompetrol Gas subsidiaries. On the distribution segment, the operating result EBITDA amounted to 46.7 million USD in the first nine months of 2016, up by 10% compared to the same period of 2015. In the first nine months of 2016, the gross turnover on the distribution segment of over 1.6 billion USD decreased by 8% compared to the similar period in 2015, due to lower international quotations for oil products. In the first nine months of 2016, the Platts quotations (FOB Med Italy-mean), in reference currency, USD, were, on average, 24% lower for gasoline and 28% lower for diesel. The excise duties remained at the same level as 2015, for both gasoline and diesel, thus the prices of Rompetrol in its stations decreased by 12% for gasoline and by 15.5% for diesel in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. The fuels sales registered a significant growth on the en-gross segment (+12% in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same period of last year), while the retail sales have increased by 2% in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. At the end of September 2016, Rompetrol Downstreams distribution segment contained 729 points of sales, including its own stations, partner stations operated by the client and dealers and mobile stations. KMG Internationals retail activities are carried on in over 1,000 fuel distribution points, held and operated in countries such as Romania, Georgia, Bulgaria, Moldova. KMG International, through Rompetrol Downstream, continued to modernize the existing stations, the investments up to this moment amounting to over 7 million USD. Missouri's top insurance regulator will postpone a public hearing on the Anthem-Cigna merger, a tie-up that could leave the St. Louis area with fewer insurance carriers to choose from. The Missouri hearing, set for Thursday, Nov. 17, will be postponed because of the federal court case that starts Nov. 21, in which antitrust regulators are trying to block the mega-merger that they have said would stifle innovation and drive up prices for consumers across the country. No date has been set for the postponed Missouri hearing. The same experts and representatives will be needed to testify or assist in the federal case, according to filings with the Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration. The Missouri hearing would have given the department the opportunity to question insurance representatives and opponents about the merger and its effects. The department held a similar hearing over the other mega-insurance merger between Aetna and Humana. The department later ruled against the Aetna-Humana merger, barring the two from selling certain plans in Missouri if the deal were to go through. St. Louis Universitys redevelopment plan for nearly 400 acres in midtown and neighborhoods around it calls for demolishing 12 structures, revamping Chouteau Avenue and selling residential land for new houses near a planned new $550 million hospital. Gone would be the last Pevely Dairy building and the Missouri Belting building, both owned by SLU, near the southwest corner of Chouteau Avenue and Grand Boulevard, according to a copy of the plan obtained by the Post-Dispatch. The buildings, which some preservationists had sought to save, would be replaced by a major new educational facility, SLUs plan says. Perhaps more important to preservationists, the iconic Firmin Desloge tower along Grand Boulevard appears safe for now. The plan doesnt call for tearing it down, but the wrecking ball is coming for the medical building just behind the tower. After SLU linked up with provider SSM Health last year, some worried that the 15-story French Gothic Revival building could be demolished to make way for a new St. Louis University Hospital. The hospital building, built in 1933, now houses offices. The current medical building just behind it opened in 1988. The planned demolitions are only part of the authority SLU and SSM are seeking from the city. The university, which led the effort, is asking the city for powers similar to that granted to the successful Cortex technology district and the Washington University Medical Center Redevelopment Corp. In the works for months, the plan would give the university significant authority just as investors and institutions are poised to transform portions of midtown and neighborhoods to the south. Between SSMs planned new St. Louis University Hospital, redevelopment of the former Federal Mogul site north of Highway 40 (Interstate 64) and a rehab of the old Armory on the south side of the highway, the university anticipates at least $787 million in development during the next several years. But SLU is preparing to guide development for years more beyond those early projects. Just to the west is the successful Cortex redevelopment area, which recently announced plans for a new hotel, parking garage, apartments and lab and office building. Like Cortex, SLU and SSM hope to remake the former industrial corridor along Highway 40 into a mixed-use employment and population hub focused on medical and technology businesses. While the plan contains details of some early redevelopment, it mostly calls for broad mixed-use and nonresidential mixed use development north of Chouteau Avenue. This plan, some would say, is somewhat vague, but thats because we dont know what all the possibilities are, said SLU chief financial officer David Heimburger. The St. Louis Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval of the plan Monday evening, and it next heads to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. If approved, the St. Louis Midtown Redevelopment Corp.s board would be made up of three SLU representatives, an SSM representative and an independent planner, according to the plan. Tax abatement to assist developers would be controlled by the new redevelopment corporation, and developers hoping for incentives would have to win its blessing. North of Chouteau Avenue, SLU is asking for the power to grant up to 25 years of tax abatement: 10 years of full abatement and 15 years at 50 percent abatement, the maximum allowed. Lower amounts are called for south of the road, where SLU and SSM own most of the buildings. Alderman Jeffrey Boyd, a planning commission member, wondered whether 25 years of tax abatement is too much considering the high interest in land near Cortex. The city has said it is working to better manage its use of tax breaks to maximize revenue. I would just think that some of those values are already there and 25 years is not even necessary, Boyd said. SLU officials emphasized the city would be able to review its tax abatement policies after 15 years to determine whether the amount that St. Louis Midtown Redevelopment Corp. can offer should be adjusted. Nor is the redevelopment corporation seeking eminent domain authority, although the city could still acquire properties through a separate measure. In the neighborhood north of Park Avenue, SLU actually plans to sell its real estate mostly vacant lots where houses once stood to encourage new residential development. Between 60 and 80 single-family houses could be built in the neighborhood. Heimburger said SLU and its partners would hire a staff to coordinate development projects and promote the area, as Cortex and other redevelopment corporations have done. Part of the area encompasses a site that has come up as a candidate for a new soccer stadium being pushed by prospective Major League Soccer ownership group Foundry St. Louis. But SLU officials said they have only had preliminary discussions and MLS executives dont appear interested in touring the midtown site. Another group, MLS2STL, is pursuing a downtown site. We would love to sit down and talk if a franchise group had an agreement with MLS and was interested in SLUs land, Heimburger said. But we have no agreements, no nothing. Marc Lazar, a St. Louis business owner who has built a career storing rare wines for wealthy customers around the country, was arrested and charged with two felony counts of selling liquor without a license. Lazar, 39, who lives in the Central West End, is the founder of Domaine Storage, a wine storage company based at 3300 Samuel Shepard Drive in Grand Center that has five U.S. wine storage facilities stretching from Napa Valley to New Jersey. On Domaines website, Lazars bio says he has guided the purchase and sale of over $100 million of rare wines in a 15-year career. Domaine added storage of collectible automobiles at its St. Louis facility last year. Lazar was arrested Wednesday by St. Louis police and charged with two felony counts of selling wine without a license on two occasions. His attorney, Bill Margulis, said Lazar posted a $25,000 cash-only bail Thursday and was released. Margulis declined to comment on the charges other than to say that his client denies the allegations. The St. Louis circuit attorneys office did not return calls seeking comment about the arrest. In its probable cause statement, the circuit attorneys office stated: The defendant routinely emails offers to sell wine to Missouri residents. Neither the defendant nor any of his entities, subsidiaries, or subordinates are licensed to sell intoxicating liquor in the state of Missouri. The next hearing in the case is slated for Nov. 28. Lazar is a registered sex offender. In 2005, he was convicted of first-degree statutory rape of a victim under the age of 14, and statutory sodomy, both felonies. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but a judge suspended execution of the sentence and Lazar was placed on five years probation. Dear Dr. Roach My wife and I have been taking glucosamine and chondroitin for several years for arthritis. We have found it to be very beneficial. Our ages are 80 and 82. In a recent consumer magazine, there is an article about pain, including a paragraph about glucosamine and chondroitin. The article is negative about taking this supplement because of its side effects. The last sentence reads, The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons doesnt recommend glucosamine or chondroitin. What are your recommendations regarding these supplements? D. and J.R. Answer The data on glucosamine and chondroitin, which many people use for pain from osteoarthritis, is mixed. I reviewed the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons website on these supplements, and find that I generally agree with its recommendations. Its noted that many people get pain relief from taking them (often in combination), and that side effects are few. It is also noted that there is little good evidence that the supplements reverse joint damage from osteoarthritis. The academy is concerned, as I have been, that there is no testing or analysis of supplements by the Food and Drug Administration, and that a recent consumer laboratory found that almost half of supplements labeled glucosamine/chondroitin did not contain the labeled amount of ingredients. I would point out that many people get a benefit because they expect to get a benefit. This phenomenon is known as the placebo effect. I am a proponent of using this effect in an ethical way. To me, this means informing a patient of the likelihood that a treatment will be effective (whether medication, supplement, surgery or other treatment) relative to no treatment or to placebo treatment, when that is known. If a treatment is known to be no better than placebo, that needs to be disclosed. However, since the effectiveness of placebo at reducing symptoms may be as high as 30 percent, many people still will get better with a placebo. In my opinion, treatment that is only as good as a placebo or, as in this case, perhaps marginally better than placebo should be considered only if the risk of side effects is low, if the cost to the patient is low and, above all, if the patient is informed about the treatments effectiveness relative to placebo. A placebo is unethical when there are other effective treatments not offered to the patient. Dr. Roach regrets that he is unable to answer individual letters, but will incorporate them in the column whenever possible. Readers may email questions to ToYourGoodHealth@med.cornell.edu or request an order form of available health newsletters at 628 Virginia Drive, Orlando, Fla. 32803. Health newsletters may be ordered from rbmamall.com. The city of Jennings has agreed to pay $4.7 million to reimburse 2,000 people who were jailed for unpaid traffic tickets. But most of the people who are owed money have yet to fill out claims, say the lawyers who filed the class-action suit. Jennings agreed in July to pay the sum to people who were jailed for unpaid court fines and fees between February 8, 2010 and Sept. 16, 2015. The amount to be paid to individuals is based on how many days they spent in jail, estimated to be $400 per day if all 2,000 people file a claim. But with a Nov. 24 deadline looming to file a claim in the case, the lawyers in the class-action suit say only 20 percent of the members of the class-action suit have filed claims. In a news conference on Monday, lawyers with the nonprofit law group ArchCity Defenders and St. Louis University School of Law said $3.5 million will be split among the claimants regardless of how many come forward. Some who are entitled to a payment may have missed the notice in the mail because it looked like junk mail, they said. Activists with Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment have been knocking on doors to convince people to fill out the claims. The remaining $1.2 million will be split between the law groups who represented the plaintiffs; a few hundred thousand will be donated to a foster home for homeless teens established by former Jennings School District Superintendent Tiffany Anderson. A man was arrested for allegedly accelerating his truck through a group of people during a peaceful protest of President-elect Donald Trump at the University of Central Missouri last week. Nathan Leavy, 21, of Warrensburg, who is not a student at the university, was arrested in connection with the Thursday incident. It happened while dozens of mostly black student protesters were peacefully demonstrating against Trump and the racial climate on the Warrensburg campus, about 185 miles west of St. Louis. That same night, someone threw a firecracker into a crowd of protesters. The university's public safety department will pursue charges of assault against the Johnson County man for unsafely accelerating his pickup truck through a crowd of people who were crossing the street. It will also pursue charges of obstruction of law enforcement for fleeing the scene. Another person was questioned about menacing behavior in a vehicle near some of the protesters in a campus parking lot. That person, who is also not a student, has not been arrested. No injuries have been reported from these incidents. Both people have been banned from campus. The public safety department is still investigating reports of the fireworks. Anyone with information is asked to call the department at 660-543-4123. University President Chuck Ambrose said he's encouraging students, faculty and staff to participate in a day of silence Wednesday. It's a day to avoid social media and negativity and instead focus on in-person relationships, Ambrose said. He plans to participate, too. ST. LOUIS A St. Louis man has been charged with robbery in an attack on a Cherokee Street shopkeeper who was beaten and left in critical condition last month in an alley near his business. Danny Barnett, 34, of the 3400 block of Iowa Avenue, was charged with second-degree robbery on Sunday. He was ordered held with bail set at $20,000, cash-only. Police say Barnett attacked a man in an alley near Cherokee Street and Ohio Avenue, not far from where Barnett lives, shortly before noon on Oct. 25. The family identified the victim as Huan Le, 64, who has a retail business at Cherokee and Ohio. Le had been walking for exercise because he recently had finished a first round of chemotherapy to treat cancer, according to his son, David Le. The older man came to America in 1979 as a refugee from Vietnam. Barnett punched Le and knocked him to the ground, and then took cash and credit cards, police said in court documents. Le had broken bones and was initially in critical condition after the attack. A GoFundMe account was set up with a goal of $1,000 to help pay Les healthcare costs. The site shows supporters pledged more than $14,000. ST. LOUIS Authorities have identified a man found fatally shot Friday night in a neighborhood near Calvary Cemetery. Andrew Wesley, 39, was shot around 7 p.m. on the 5000 block of Emerson Avenue, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The shooting location is about three blocks southwest of Calvary Cemetery and on a street between the Walnut Park East and Mark Twain neighborhoods. Wesley lived in the 5200 block of Wren Avenue, about a half mile away from where he was found fatally injured. Authorities had no information about a suspect. Aerosmith will embark on the European leg of their final tour next year, which includes a stop-off in Dublin in June. The rock legends - who have been around for a remarkable 45 years, at this point - recently toured in South America, with Steven Tyler saying: "Aerosmith just got done ripping through South America like true ambassadors of rock...The band is unstoppable right now and in Europe, we're going to keep doing what we do best... Let The Music Do The Talking...Living On The Edge, and living to rock another day." They'll play Dublin's 3Arena on June 14th, 2017. Tickets are from 89.50 - 109.50 not including booking fee, and go on sale this Friday, November 18th, from usual outlets at 9am. Three school districts say they will end out-of-school suspensions in the next two years for preschoolers through third-graders and instead use social workers, behavioral health specialists and other services to reduce the need to discipline students. The announcement was made Sunday at an assembly at Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School for the Break the Pipeline campaign, an effort spearheaded by Metropolitan Congregations United to eliminate what it calls the school-to-prison pipeline. Maplewood-Richmond Heights promised to ban suspensions for young students in the next school year. Normandy and Ladue promise to ban them by the 2018-2019 school year. Even elementary school students are suspended for infractions that can range from failing to follow instructions to throwing chairs. Some experts say that out-of-school suspensions are not effective discipline in that they punish, but do not remedy the cause of the misbehavior, which often comes from trauma or poverty endured by students. On top of that, a UCLA study released last year showed that Missouri has the biggest racial disparity when it comes to suspensions. Some experts say that out-of-school suspensions cause students to lose instruction time, fall behind further in their academic careers and become more likely to become incarcerated at some point in their lives. When we remove them from the place, when we tell them they dont belong, the impact of that decision stays with them, said Felicia Pulliam, director of policy and community engagement at FOCUS St. Louis, a regional public policy foundation. Maplewood-Richmond Heights has already had some wraparound services in place for years, such as Joes Place, a shelter for male homeless students to stay; and a student success center, where staff work with struggling students. The district is also conducting anti-racism staff training and racial equity audits of each of its schools, said Katie Kaufmann, vice president of the school board. Meanwhile, Normandy is working on improving academics to reduce the need for discipline by implementing project-based learning and small-group instruction. If kids are engaged, then we reduce the likelihood of kids misbehaving, said Candice Carter-Oliver, an assistant superintendent for Normandy schools. The district is also working to fill students basic needs by having washers and dryers in all schools, helping pay utility bills and partnering with Beyond Housing to address unemployment and housing security, Carter-Oliver added. The district has trauma-informed training for staff, behavioral specialists from Barnes-Jewish in half of its schools, and a partnership with Parents as Teachers to stress early intervention for not just students but also their families. St. Louis Public Schools is the only area district that has banned suspensions for a certain section of students. The district is three months into its ban on suspensions for preschoolers through second-graders. But the ban has been difficult to implement, said Stacy Clay, a deputy superintendent for the district, at Sundays event. The reality is that we are challenged with keeping these students from their own behaviors, let alone other students who are in the building, Clay said. He said that in a building of 300 students, it was hard to dedicate resources such as social workers and counseling to the one or two students. We have certainly tried to address some of the broader issues of poverty and trauma, Clay said. But the reality of the school structure does not make it particularly easy to offer these additional services. He asked the audience for help in pressing for more funding for early childhood education and social-emotional programs for students and their families. Although more districts are now running early childhood programs, many are limited partly because there is no dedicated source of state funding for them. Seventeen other districts in St. Louis and St. Charles counties also sent representatives to Sundays event and said they would look at reducing suspensions for young students in the future. Two Ladue Horton Watkins High School students were disciplined last week after one student suggested that black students should go to the back of the bus. The incident happened on Thursday afternoon, when two male students were boarding a school bus that was fairly full. They were chanting, Trump, Trump, Trump, said Susan Downing, spokeswoman for the school district. The chanting escalated to the point where one of the students suggested that African-American students should sit in the back of the bus. That clearly upset people on the bus, Downing said. The next morning, school officials interviewed the students involved and reviewed school bus tapes of the incident. The two boys were disciplined. The district cannot say who the students are or how they were disciplined because of federal student privacy laws. But Downing said that in situations like this, suspension would not be an unusual punishment. This is not something we are taking lightly at all, she said. This is not what we stand for in our district and it's time to react to that and make sure that we know who we are, what's expected and what we stand for as a school community." District officials are currently weighing options for constructive ways students and community members can discuss and react to what happened. Organizations like the NAACP, HateBrakers and Ladue Cares have reached out to the district for possible collaborations, Downing said. The district has already been working on its own tolerance initiatives. High school staff underwent diversity and equity training on Election Day last week. The middle school started hosting a program called Courageous Conversations this school year about what its like to be a parent to African-American boys. On Sunday, it was announced that the district also promises to ban suspensions of preschoolers through third graders by the 2018-2019 school year. Suspensions as a whole disproportionately affect students of color. Its not as if were just learning that these are conversations that need to be had, Downing said. Editor's note: A prior version of the story incorrectly said that more than one student suggested that African-American students should go to the back of the bus. CHARLESTON, S.C. The trial of a fired white South Carolina police officer in the shooting death of a black motorist entered a third week Monday with prosecution witnesses testifying the officer's initial account of the shooting differed from dramatic cellphone video seen widely on the internet. Michael Slager, who turned 35 on Monday, faces 30 years to life if convicted of murder in the shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott as Scott ran from an April 2015 traffic stop in North Charleston. The trial is being heard by 11 white and one black juror. Over the weekend, another predominantly white jury deadlocked in another police shooting after a traffic stop. Prosecutors will decide within the next two weeks whether to retry former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing in the July 2015 shooting 43-year-old Sam DuBose. Levi Miles, who works as an investigator for Slager's original attorney David Aylor, testified Monday that state investigators interviewed Slager several days after the shooting. The interview took place in Aylor's office. During that interview, Miles testified he played the part of Scott as Slager and he demonstrated for the state agents how the two men wrestled before the shooting. He demonstrated again Monday, getting on the floor of the courtroom as he re-enacted Slager's account. Miles testified that, according to Slager, Scott got control of the officer's stun gun and pointed it at Slager. Miles testified Slager said the two men were close together at the time of the shooting. The interview occurred before Slager had seen a cellphone video taken by a bystander that shows Scott falling to the ground dozens of feet away from Slager after being shot five times in the back. Aylor dropped his representation of Slager once the video became public and Slager was charged with murder. Also at the initial interview in Aylor's office was Angela Peterson, an agent for the State Law Enforcement Division. Peterson said that Slager said the two men wrestled over the Taser and Scott came at the officer with the stun gun. She said Slager told investigators he was scared, fatigued from chasing after Scott and worried that if he was hit by the stun gun Scott would get his service pistol. Peterson said Slager described getting up off the ground, shuffling to his left and Scott starting to turn away as Slager started firing. Children cast members during rehearsals for Stratford Musical Theatre Company's production of The King and I East meets West when the King and I is brought to life at Warwick Arts Centre by the Stratford Musical Theatre Company (SMTC) this week. The hit Rodgers and Hammerstein musical which has been enjoyed by audiences for more than 60 years and features well known songs such as Shall We Dance, Getting to Know You and Whistle a Happy Tune. Set in Siam in 1862, widowed English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens and her young son arrive at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, having been summoned by the King to serve as tutor to his many children and wives. Anna and the King struggle to find common ground as they battle to keep hold of their individual traditions and values. But they eventually grow to understand and respect each other, and discover a love that neither can admit. SMTC chairman Phil Ingle said: We are very excited to be performing for the first time at the renowned Warwick Arts Centre, where some of the best new and established shows have performed. We know this wonderful venue will help to make The King and I one of our most memorable musicals to date. Directed by Wendy Miller and supported by musical director Simon Kemp and choreographer Julie Bedlow-Howard, the show runs from Tuesday to Saturday (15th to 19th November) at Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry. Tickets, ranging in price from 9 to 18 are available from Warwick Arts Centre on 024 7652 4524 or at www.warwickartscentre.co.uk Stifel analyst Thomas Shrader weighed in on Puma Biotechnology (NYSE: PBYI) after the company's San Antonio abstract is out and the diarrhea rate for the complete CONTROL trial looks about twice what was indicated in the early look (27% (n=133) vs. 16% (n=50)). Shrader commented, "This is somewhat disturbing as this abstract was likely submitted some time ago and the company just presented the older data last week. This abstract data was likely embargoed, but it still seems strange to our ears. In addition, attempts to make the loperamide prophylaxis more manageable seem not to have worked as well as the original, more cumbersome, regimen. The actual Grade 3 diarrhea rate seems manageable as this is breast cancer and the treatment benefit in HR+ patients is compelling, we believe (Exhibit 1). In addition, our KOL calls have indicated that hospitalizations due to diarrhea are the biggest issue for approval and Grade 4 diarrhea events were zero in all arms of the trial. In addition, an experimental arm (n=16) adding a non-absorbed steroid budesonide showed a very manageable Grade 3 diarrhea rate of 12.5% with 24 more patients to go. Based on mid-day trading, this looks like an over reaction in the stock to us." The firm maintained a Buy rating and price target of $88.00 For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Puma Biotechnology click here. For more ratings news on Puma Biotechnology click here. Shares of Puma Biotechnology closed at $50.40 yesterday. (Updated - November 14, 2016 1:53 PM EST) OPEC nations began a final diplomatic push to secure a deal on oil cuts, according to Bloomberg. Qatar, Algeria, and Venezuela are in shuttle-diplomacy to secure a deal. Iran an Iraq are considering proposals but so far there is no agreement. Saudi Arabia is ready to cut production but only if four requirements are met. Entercom Communications Corp. (NYSE: ETM) today announced that Steve Fisher will be stepping down as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Company effective February 28, 2017. Thereafter, Mr. Fisher will provide consultative services to the Company. Mr. Fisher, age 64, has served as the Companys Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since 1998. The Company has retained Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm, to help identify a successor. David J. Field, Entercoms President and Chief Executive Officer commented: Steve has been an outstanding leader at Entercom, playing a major role in our success over the 18 years he has been with the Company. He has been involved in many aspects of our growth and development and made a meaningful impact on our operational efficiency and effectiveness. I have greatly valued his strategic insights and his financial and business acumen. We have been extremely fortunate to have him on our team for so many years and are grateful to him for all of his outstanding contributions to the Company. Mr. Fisher commented: After 18 years, the time felt right to move on. Entercom is a great company with a superb team and an exceptionally strong balance sheet that leads the industry. I am proud to have been a part of this winning team over the years. Marsh, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies (NYSE: MMC), announced that it has reached agreement with AXA Group to acquire Bluefin Insurance Group Limited (Bluefin), a subsidiary of AXA UK plc. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017. Founded in 2008, Bluefin has approximately 1,500 colleagues based in 45 locations around the UK, providing guidance on creating insurance solutions to over 150,000 businesses and individuals. In addition to insurance broking, it also operates an extensive broker network and growing Managing General Agent business. On completion, Marsh will combine Bluefin and Jelf into a single business unit to be led by Phil Barton, CEO of Jelf, and a management team drawn from both firms. This unit will bring together two leading community brokers with complementary regional offices across the UK, serving over 250,000 clients in 80 locations. It will also include around 400 network broker members as well as a strong affinity and digital offering. The combined business will be one of the UKs leading insurance brokers for mid-size and SME companies, offering a compelling proposition through its commitment to high quality technical advice, bespoke products and distinctive services including claims consultancy and risk management. It will also provide intelligent risk insights that will enable companies to address emerging risks such as cyber, as well as people-related issues through a strong employee benefits team. We want to make sure that businesses of all sizes are getting the very best risk and insurance advice to help them navigate the uncertainties of todays environment. Bringing the Bluefin and Jelf teams together will give us a great platform to do just that, said Mark Weil, Marshs CEO for UK & Ireland. We are investing in new policies, products and analytic tools to help businesses make informed choices on how best to manage the risks they face. Under Rob Organ, Bluefin have built a fantastic business and we look forward to welcoming him and his colleagues to the firm. Mr Barton added: Since Marshs acquisition of Jelf last year we have been able to deliver the value and expertise that comes from being part of a global firm to our clients while maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit were known for. By combining Bluefin and Jelf, we will now have the footprint and capabilities to provide better client service to companies of all sizes across the UK. Robert Organ, CEO of Bluefin, commented: This announcement is great news for our clients and colleagues and gives Bluefin a strong, long-term owner from which to grow. Clients will benefit from access to unrivalled global expertise, delivered locally and our colleagues will have expanded career opportunities in a major broking business that puts them and their clients first. Together with colleagues in Jelf, we will present a leading risk and insurance offering to businesses and individuals across the UK. We are very happy to be able to agree to this transaction with Marsh, said Amanda Blanc, CEO of AXA UK & Ireland. As market dynamics have evolved and our own strategy has progressed, it has become increasingly apparent that Bluefins ability to achieve its potential would be better served under a new parent. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bluefins teams for their great contribution over the years. Merck (NYSE: MRK) announced results from multiple analyses at The Liver Meeting 2016, which provide additional evidence supporting the use of ZEPATIER (elbasvir and grazoprevir) 50mg/100mg tablets in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype (GT) 1- or GT4-infected patient populations, including those who receive opioid agonist therapy (OAT), are infected with chronic HCV GT1b, use proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) or have moderate kidney disease. Work remains to be done in the communitys efforts to reduce the global burden of chronic hepatitis C, and Merck is committed to pursuing this goal, said Dr. Eliav Barr, senior vice president, global clinical development, infectious diseases and vaccines, Merck Research Laboratories. Our clinical development program continues to yield meaningful evidence for ZEPATIER in specific patient populations. C-EDGE CO-STAR: Interim Results from the Three Year Follow-Up (3YFU) Trial (Abstract #871) The CO-STAR Three Year Follow-Up (3YFU) Trial is an observational cohort study to evaluate chronic HCV reinfection and injecting risk behaviors in patients who were treated with ZEPATIER during the C-EDGE CO-STAR study. C-EDGE CO-STAR is a Phase 3 clinical trial including patients with chronic HCV GT1, GT4 and/or GT6 infection who are on OAT (methadone and buprenorphine). The study does not exclude patients who are actively using drugs with high abuse potential. Primary efficacy and safety results from C-EDGE CO-STAR were previously presented at The Liver Meeting in November 2015. Interim results presented today are from the ongoing 3YFU study. The median time from the end-of-treatment (EOT) in the C-EDGE CO-STAR study to the first visit as part of the 3YFU study was 330 days (range: 206-485). Of the 199 patients in the 3YFU study, 108 (54%) reported any drug use (non-injecting or injecting) in the past six months, 40 of whom (37%) reported injection drug use in the past month. At the first visit in the 3YFU study, two individuals (1%) tested positive for evidence of HCV, suggesting that chronic HCV reinfection was uncommon among patients on OAT in the first year following treatment with ZEPATIER, despite ongoing drug use. GT1b Integrated Analysis (Abstract #874) A retrospective integrated analysis of data from 11 Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in the clinical development program for ZEPATIER was conducted to evaluate its efficacy in patients infected with GT1b, the most common chronic HCV genotype globally and the second-most common in the United States. The analysis included 1,070 patients with chronic HCV GT1b infection who received ZEPATIER for 12 weeks, including: patients who were treatment naive or had prior experience with peginterferon alfa/interferon and ribavirin (RBV), with or without an NS3/4A protease inhibitor; those who were compensated cirrhotic or non-cirrhotic; and those with or without HIV-1 co-infection. The analysis showed 97 percent of patients (1040/1070) achieved sustained virologic response 12 weeks after the completion of therapy (SVR12, considered virologic cure). Of the patients who did not achieve SVR12, 15 were virologic failures (1%) and 15 patients were lost to follow-up (1%). Rates of SVR12 were consistently high regardless of patient characteristics, including prior treatment experience (97%, 212/219), presence of compensated cirrhosis (99%, 188/189) and HIV-1 co-infection (94%, 51/54). Serious adverse events occurred in 3 percent of patients (35/1070) who received active treatment, and 2.9 percent (3/105) of those who received placebo in studies that included a placebo arm. Pooled Analysis in Patients with Self-Reported PPI Use (Abstract #869) This post-hoc analysis of patients with chronic HCV GT1 and GT4 infection in six studies in the Phase 3 clinical program for ZEPATIER assessed SVR12 among patients who self-reported concomitant use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). Pharmacokinetic interactions leading to reduced drug concentrations have previously been reported for some HCV NS5A inhibitors when given concomitantly with PPIs. Overall, 12 percent (162/1322) of patients in the post-hoc analysis who received ZEPATIER reported baseline use of PPIs. Of those patients, 96 percent (155/162) achieved SVR12, compared to 97 percent (1129/1160) of patients without PPI use, suggesting that PPI use was not a predictive factor in achieving SVR12. This abstract received Presidential Poster of Distinction recognition at The Liver Meeting 2016. Pooled Dataset Analysis in Patients with Moderate Kidney Disease (Abstract #889) This integrated analysis of data from the Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical development program for ZEPATIER was conducted to evaluate its impact on renal function, including in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage 3 (estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR] less than 60 and greater than or equal to 30 mL/min/1.73m2).1 The safety and efficacy profile of ZEPATIER in patients with more severe renal disease was described in the C-SURFER study, presented at the International Liver Congress in April 2015 and subsequently published in The Lancet by Roth et al. The analysis included 32 patients with stage 3 CKD and 1,657 patients with eGFR greater than or equal to 60 mL/min/1.73m2 who were treated with ZEPATIER with or without RBV for 8 (n=91, 5%), 12 (n=1238, 73%), 16 (n=211, 12%), or 18 (n=149, 9%) weeks. Among the 32 patients with stage 3 CKD, kidney function improved or remained stable in 38 percent (12/32) and 63 percent (20/32), respectively, at the end of treatment. About ZEPATIER (elbasvir and grazoprevir) 50mg/100mg Tablets ZEPATIER is a fixed-dose combination product containing elbasvir, an HCV NS5A inhibitor, and grazoprevir, an HCV NS3/4A protease inhibitor. In the United States, ZEPATIER is indicated with or without ribavirin (RBV) for treatment of chronic HCV GT1 or 4 infection in adults. ZEPATIER is not indicated to treat chronic HCV GT6 infection. ZEPATIER was approved in the United States on January 28, 2016, and is also approved in the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Switzerland, with additional regulatory approvals anticipated. Selected Safety Information about ZEPATIER ZEPATIER is not for use in patients with moderate or severe hepatic impairment (Child Pugh B or C). ZEPATIER is also not for use with organic anion transporting polypeptides 1B1/3 (OATP1B1/3) inhibitors (e.g., atazanavir, darunavir, lopinavir, saquinavir, tipranavir, cyclosporine), strong cytochrome P450 3A (CYP3A) inducers (e.g., carbamazepine, phenytoin, rifampin, St. Johns Wort), and efavirenz. If ZEPATIER is administered with RBV, healthcare professionals should refer to the prescribing information for RBV as the contraindications, warnings and precautions, adverse reactions and dosing for RBV also apply to this combination regimen. Elevations of alanine transaminase (ALT) to greater than 5 times the upper limit of normal (ULN) occurred in 1% of subjects, generally at or after treatment week 8. These late ALT elevations were typically asymptomatic and most resolved with ongoing or completion of therapy. Healthcare professionals should perform hepatic lab testing on patients prior to therapy, at treatment week 8, and as clinically indicated. For patients receiving 16 weeks of therapy, additional hepatic lab testing should be performed at treatment week 12. Patients should be instructed to consult their healthcare professional without delay if they have onset of fatigue, weakness, lack of appetite, nausea and vomiting, jaundice or discolored feces. Healthcare providers should consider discontinuing ZEPATIER if ALT levels remain persistently greater than 10 times ULN. ZEPATIER should be discontinued if ALT elevation is accompanied by signs or symptoms of liver inflammation or increasing conjugated bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, or international normalized ratio. The concomitant use of ZEPATIER with certain drugs may lead to adverse reactions or reduced therapeutic effect due to drug interactions. Certain strong CYP3A inhibitors may increase the plasma concentration of ZEPATIER, leading to possibly clinically significant adverse reactions. Moderate CYP3A inducers may decrease the plasma concentration of ZEPATIER, leading to reduced therapeutic effect and possible development of resistance. Coadministration of ZEPATIER with these drugs is not recommended. Physicians should consult the Prescribing Information for potential drug interactions. In subjects receiving ZEPATIER for 12 weeks, the most commonly reported adverse reactions of all intensity (greater than or equal to 5% in placebo-controlled trials) were fatigue, headache and nausea. In subjects receiving ZEPATIER with RBV for 16 weeks, the most commonly reported adverse reactions of moderate or severe intensity (greater than or equal to 5%) were anemia and headache. Selected Dosage and Administration Information for ZEPATIER (elbasvir and grazoprevir) ZEPATIER is a single tablet taken once daily. The recommended dosing is 12 or 16 weeks with or without RBV, depending on HCV genotype, prior treatment history and, for patients with genotype 1a infection, presence of certain baseline NS5A resistance-associated polymorphisms. See Prescribing Information for ZEPATIER for specific dosage regimens and durations. Refer to RBV prescribing information for RBV dosing and dosage modifications when ZEPATIER is given with RBV. To determine dosage regimen and duration of ZEPATIER for genotype 1a patients, testing for the presence of virus with one or more baseline NS5A resistance-associated polymorphisms at positions 28, 30, 31, or 93 is recommended prior to initiating treatment. Hong Kong (PRWEB) November 14, 2016 Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific, a leading provider of industry specific business solutions built on Microsoft Dynamics, will be holding a lunch and learn event entitled Re: Imagine Retail with Cloud Technology jointly with Microsoft and Hitachi Data Systems Ltd. The event will be held on November 16th, 2016, at the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel, Hong Kong. Sandeep Walia, President of Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific will discuss how the fast-changing world of retail, e-commerce, mobile devices and omni-channel proves to be a challenge among traditional brick and mortar retailers. With the emergence of mobile devices and ubiquitous access to the internet, more and more consumers are choosing to do their business online or through mobile commerce. The Re: Imagine Retail with Cloud Technology lunch and learn event aims to show how Microsoft Dynamics provides cloud based optimized solutions that adapts to the rapid changes in the retail industry. The event will center on the different retail and marketing trends that will help companies adjust to the demands of its customers and edge out competitors. The presentation will provide a comprehensive look at Retail Business Intelligence, Loyalty management, and Omni-Channel Retail, and see how Microsoft Dynamics tackles these with a single cloud based solution. "Microsoft Dynamics' comprehensive and flexible architecture with Hitachi Solutions' deep, tried and tested implementation capabilities provide a differentiator to any retailer looking to Re:Imagine their business." said Sandeep Walia, President, Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific. For more on information on the Re: Imagine Retail with Cloud Technology, please visit this link: http://bit.ly/2dJ5UGg. --- About Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. helps its customers to successfully compete with the largest global enterprises using powerful, easy-to-use, and affordable industry solutions built on Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics CRM enhanced with world class Business Analytics, and Portals and Collaboration. Recognized as the Microsoft ERP Partner of year in 2015 and 2015 and Microsoft Partner of the Year in Asia Pacific in 2015, Microsoft CRM Global Partner of the Year in 2014 and the 2014 Dynamics Global Outstanding Reseller of the Year, Hitachi Solutions Group provides global capabilities with team members in Japan, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, in Asia Pacific and offices in North America and Europe. For more information, please visit: http://apac.hitachi-solutions.com/. About Hitachi Solutions, Ltd. Hitachi Solutions, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the core IT Companies of Hitachi Group and a recognized leader in delivering proven business and IT strategies and solutions to companies across many industries. The company provides value-driven services throughout the IT life cycle from systems planning to systems integration, operation and maintenance. Hitachi Solutions delivers products and services of superior value to customers worldwide through key subsidiaries in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, China, and Asia Pacific. For more information on Hitachi Solutions, please visit: http://www.hitachi-solutions.com. About Hitachi, Ltd. Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society's challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal 2015 (ended March 31, 2016) totaled 10,034 billion yen ($88.8 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com. Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/11/prweb13847110.htm Milwaukee, WI, USA (PRWEB) November 14, 2016 PhishLine, a leader in empowering decisive action against social engineering and phishing threats for enterprise security teams, has announced a partnership with Master Concept, a leader in Cloud Security Services delivery across Asia, headquarted in Hong Kong. Security Awareness guidance is being issued by leading Asian financial regulators, such as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Center for Financial Industry Information Systems (FISC) in Japan. This guidance comes at a time when the need for taking information security awareness to the next level is paramount. Central to meeting these demands is an ability to use real world social engineering simulation and training to objectively drive organizational change. Customers across Asia require a modern, results-driven approach that provides a new level of definitive metrics. "With expertise across Asia and offices in Hong Kong, Macau, Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, Master Concept is well placed to service the growing PhishLine presence in Asia," said Mark Chapman, PhishLine President & CEO. "Coupled with a long history of bringing new and innovative security services to market, our partnership with Master Concept represents a great opportunity to serve clients in Asia who are seeking to achieve a new level of visibility and metrics around security awareness." Derek Chan, CEO at Master Concept, comments: "With Security Awareness now being a standard part of Enterprise Security Programs, working with PhishLine allows Master Concept to enhance our delivery of market leadership to our customers in this growing space." About Master Concept Master Concept, founded in 2003, is an award-winning cloud integrator that brings an innovative and proven approach to how organizations explore, evaluate, architect and implement technology towards cloud computing. Learn more at http://www.hkmci.com or contact us directly at: +852 3589 6700. About PhishLine Headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, USA, PhishLine empowers the world's most complex organizations to provide targeted and relevant security awareness and anti-phishing behavior management training. PhishLine's unique approach to security training allows security awareness mangers to choose from thousands of security awareness training resources, while aligning the training with live-fire social engineering tests. The goal is clear: Provide Information Security Professionals with the tools, resources and measurement capabilities needed to overcome the ever-increasing challenge associated with social engineering and phishing threats. To learn more about why Fortune 100 and Global 2000 companies value PhishLine's thought leadership in the areas of social engineering, phishing and risk management, visit http://www.PhishLine.com. Media Contacts: Rudy Cifolelli, VP of Sales rudy.cifolelli(at)phishline(dot)com Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/11/prweb13845448.htm By Paul Sandle and Guy Faulconbridge LONDON (Reuters) - Prosecutors on Monday questioned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for four years, in an investigation into allegations that he committed rape in Sweden in 2010. Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing a flood of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, fled to the embassy for fear that, if extradited to Sweden, he could be sent on to the United States and face a long prison term there for leaking U.S. secrets. Swedish Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren spent around four hours in the embassy, where she posed questions through an Ecuadorian prosecutor, before leaving without making comment. Ecuador, which helped Assange avoid extradition by granting him asylum after he fled to its London legation, agreed to help Swedish prosecutors question Assange, who has denied the rape allegation. "Today, after six years of offering his statement to the Swedish authorities, Julian Assange has finally been afforded the opportunity to do so," WikiLeaks said in a statement. But it complained that Assange's Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, was not notified or summoned to attend the session, and his absence was "a clear breach of process". A member of Assange's legal team, Melinda Taylor, said procrastination on the part of Swedish investigators had denied Assange any right to clear his name. "As a result of six years of delays and over four and a half years of illegal and arbitrary detention, Mr Assange is today faced with (a) Hobson's choice: either he gives a statement in which his health, memory and psychological state are severely impeded, or, he is denied once more, an opportunity to be heard," she said by email. The 45-year-old Australian has refused to go to Sweden for questioning, saying that would expose him to further extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks continues. In 2010, WikiLeaks published thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents in what became one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Assange made international headlines in early 2010 when WikiLeaks released classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. EMBASSY QUESTIONING Under conditions agreed by Ecuador, Isgren and a police investigator asked questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will then report the findings to Sweden, which will then decide whether to continue the investigation. Samuelson, Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he had been barred from the meeting. "Ecuador refuses to let me in and insists that the questioning will continue without my presence, against my client's wishes to have me there," he told Reuters. While Assange's Ecuadorean defense lawyer appeared to be present, Samuelson said he still hoped to be admitted if the interview continued. "But a good chunk of questioning has already taken place as far as I understand," he said. A Swedish appeals court decided in September to uphold Assange's arrest warrant, saying a strong public interest argument outweighed a case to set it aside based on the lengthy deadlock and a previous lack of impetus in pursuing the case. Assange's request to have the warrant overturned came after a U.N. panel assessed in February that his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy amounted to arbitrary detention, and said he should be let go and be awarded compensation. Even if Sweden drops the investigation, however, Assange could be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain. (Additional reporting by Peter Nicholls and Daniel Dickson; editing by Mark Heinrich) SID, Serbia/TOVARNIK, Croatia (Reuters) - A group of migrants scuffled with police on Monday as they tried to enter Croatia from Serbia and continue their way towards Western Europe. Some 100 migrants broke a Serbian police cordon and tried to enter Croatia across fields, but were stopped by police forces from both countries who encircled them in the no-man's-land, Reuters witness said. The migrants, largely from Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to local media, marched for two days on the highway some 125 km (80 miles) from the Serbian capital Belgrade and arrived at the border on Sunday evening. They said they did not want to return to reception centers in Serbia, complaining about living conditions, and demanded free passage to Western Europe. Croatia's Interior Minister Vlaho Orepic said on Sunday Croatia would not allow illegal entry to the migrants. Serbia's Interior Minister Nebojska Stefanovic said his country would not allow the migrants to block highways and border crossings to cross into "another country which would not take them." According to the U.N. refugee agency, around 6,400 migrants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are registered in Serbia, but local non-governmental organizations say the number is close to 10,000. (Reporting by Fedja Grulovic; Writing by Igor Ilic in Zagreb; Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) A filled ballot box is seen during a presidential election at a polling station in Chisinau, Moldova, November 13, 2016. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich By Alexander Tanas and Alessandra Prentice CHISINAU (Reuters) - A pro-Russian candidate for president of Moldova has won the race, preliminary results showed on Sunday, following a campaign in which he vowed to slam the brakes on seven years of closer integration with the European Union. With 98 percent of votes counted, online results showed Socialist candidate Igor Dodon had won 54 percent, and his pro-European challenger, Maia Sandu, had just under 45 percent. Dodon's win is in part a reflection of a loss of trust in pro-European leaders in the ex-Soviet state of 3.5 million, which was plunged into political and economic crisis after a corruption scandal came to light in late 2014. "I am president for the whole country, for those who voted for me and those who voted against," Dodon said in a short briefing to journalists. In another potential blow to the European Union brand, Bulgaria - which also held a presidential vote on Sunday - elected a pro-Russian candidate by a large margin, according to exit polls. The president in Moldova is more than just a figurehead: he or she can return laws to parliament and dissolve the assembly in certain situations. Dodon's promise to pursue closer ties with Russia rather than the European Union is in direct conflict with the pro-European stance of the current government. Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the two sides would need to work together in Moldova's best interest. "This includes key reforms needed for the country's modernization and continued EU path, which cannot be reversed," he said in emailed comments after polls closed. Squeezed between Ukraine and EU member Romania, Moldova signed a political and trade agreement with the European bloc in 2014 that damaged its ties with Moscow, which imposed trade restrictions on Moldovan farming exports. Dodon's Socialist party wants to scrap that agreement in favor of joining a Eurasian economic union dominated by Russia - a policy backed by many Moldovans who have suffered financially from the goods embargo and broader economic downturn. "He's got experience and knows that now is not the time to be turning a back to Russia, while she (Sandu) only looks to Europe," said pensioner Tatiana, declining to give her last name. The banking scandal in Moldova involved the looting of $1 billion - the equivalent of an eighth of its economic output, highlighting the scale of corruption in Europe's poorest nation. Moldovans believe members of the pro-EU elite were complicit. "Local partisans of the West or EU have not only performed weakly but have performed perversely," said William Hill, a former head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Moldova. "And this has gone a long way to discrediting popular faith in the ideals of the West and the prescriptions of the EU or the U.S. as effective medicine for what ails their societies and their economies." In a sign of the waning enthusiasm for the EU, just 30.9 percent of Moldovans would currently support joining as a full member, compared to 44 percent favoring the Eurasian Customs Union, a survey by Moldova's Institute for Public Policy showed in October. (Writing by Matthias Williams and Alessandra Prentice; editing by Jane Merriman and Mary Milliken) U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 10-Q [X] QUARTERLY REPORT UNDER SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 For the quarterly period ended SEPTEMBER 30, 2016 [ ] TRANSITION REPORT UNDER SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 Commission file number: 0-54892 INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) Nevada 27-1781753 (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation or Organization) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 2501 West Burbank Blvd., Suite 201, Burbank, CA 91505 (Address of Principal Executive Offices) (Zip Code) Registrants telephone number, including area code: (818) 260-9370 Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Exchange Act during the past 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes [X] No [ ] Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes [X] No [ ] Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company. Large accelerated filer [ ] Accelerated filer [ ] Non-accelerated filer [ ] Smaller reporting company [X] Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes [ ] No [X] State the number of shares outstanding of each of the issuers classes of common equity, as of the latest practicable date: As of November 10, 2016, the issuer had 26,296,868 shares of its common stock issued and outstanding. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I Item 1. Condensed Unaudited Financial Statements 3 Item 2. Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations 10 Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 14 Item 4. Controls and Procedures 14 PART II Item 1. Legal Proceedings 15 Item 1A. Risk Factors 15 Item 2. Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities and Use of Proceeds 15 Item 3. Defaults Upon Senior Securities 15 Item 4. Mining Safety Disclosures 15 Item 5. Other Information 15 Item 6. Exhibits 16 Signatures 17 2 PART I FINANCIAL INFORMATION ITEM 1. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. INDEX TO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS Condensed Balance Sheets as of September 30, 2016 (unaudited) and December 31, 2015 4 Condensed Statements of Operations for the Three and Nine Months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 (unaudited) 5 Condensed Statements of Cash Flows for the Nine Months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 (unaudited) 6 Notes to the Condensed Financial Statements (unaudited) 7 3 INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. BALANCE SHEETS September 30, 2016 December 31, 2015 ASSETS (Unaudited) Current Assets: Cash $ 5,982 $ 40,485 Accounts receivable, net of allowance for doubtful accounts - 158,482 Inventory - 503,946 Prepaid consulting - 16,324 Prepaid and other assets 16,449 67,748 Total Current Assets 22,431 786,985 Deposit 3,500 10,161 Property and equipment, net - 35,300 Total Assets $ 25,931 $ 832,446 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLERS' (DEFICIT) Current Liabilities: Accounts payable $ 713,845 $ 522,100 Other payables and accruals 223,161 223,615 Product returns & allowances 223,313 609,770 Accrued compensation 411,431 226,556 Due to an officer 27,443 3,253 Notes payable 332,427 370,671 Total Current Liabilities 1,931,620 1,955,965 Total Liabilities 1,931,620 1,955,965 Stockholders' (Deficit): Common Stock par value $0.001 300,000,000 shares authorized, 26,296,868 and 26,296,868 shares issued and outstanding, respectively 26,298 26,298 Additional paid in capital 13,506,140 13,506,140 Accumulated deficit (15,438,127) (14,655,957) Total Stockholders' (Deficit) (1,905,689) (1,123,519) Total Liabilities and Stockholders' (Deficit) $ 25,931 $ 832,446 The accompanying notes are an integral part of these unaudited condensed financial statements. 4 INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (unaudited) For the Three Months Ended September 30, For the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 2016 2015 Revenues $ 28,239 $ (115,335) $ 202,841 $ 1,761,693 Costs of goods sold - (5,887) (503,946) (904,180) Gross margin 28,239 (121,222) (301,105) 857,513 Operating Expenses: Compensation expense 65,750 71,522 197,750 187,521 Advertising and promotion - 14,639 52,407 577,743 Professional fees 11,020 14,276 53,520 84,551 Licensing expense - 6,501,715 - 6,501,715 General and administrative 30,608 179,681 172,621 749,174 Total operating expenses 107,378 6,781,833 476,298 8,100,704 Loss from operations (79,139) (6,903,055) (777,403) (7,243,191) Other Income (Expense): Interest expense (1,715) (15,332) (3,941) (19,148) Amortization of debt discount - (20,228) - (50,029) Loss on conversion of debt - - - (226,811) Gain on derivative liability - (1,277) - 47,022 Loss on disposal of property and equipment - (17,034) (20,461) (17,034) Gain on extinguishment of debt 8,242 - 19,635 2,788 Total other income (expense) 6,527 (53,871) (4,767) (263,212) Loss before provision for income taxes (72,612) (6,956,926) (782,170) (7,506,403) Provision for income taxes - - - - Net Loss $ (72,612) $ (6,956,926) $ (782,170) $ (7,506,403) Loss per Share, Basic & Diluted $ (0.00) $ (0.26) $ (0.03) $ (0.29) Weighted Average Shares Outstanding 26,296,868 26,300,868 26,296,868 26,027,706 The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed financial statements. 5 INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited) For the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 2015 CASH FLOW FROM OPERATING ACTIVITES: Net loss $ (782,170) $ (7,506,403) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash used by operating activities: Deferred compensation 16,324 101,982 Shares issued for service - 22,350 Depreciation 14,839 30,283 License fees paid with warrants - 6,501,715 Consulting paid with options - 8,406 Loss on disposal of property and equipment 20,461 17,034 Loss on inventory 499,861 - Gain on extinguishment of debt (19,635) (2,788) Loss on conversion of debt - 226,811 Amortization of debt discount - 50,029 Gain on derivative liability - (47,022) Changes in Operating Assets and Liabilities: Accounts receivable 158,482 (101,137) Prepaids & other assets 57,960 (4,933) Inventory 4,085 (535,443) Accounts payable 211,381 376,121 Product returns & allowances (386,457) - Accrued expenses 184,420 187,186 Net Cash Used in Operating Activities (20,449) (675,809) CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES: - - CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES: Advances from officers 49,405 5,000 Repayment of officer advance (25,215) (4,100) Proceeds from notes payable 36,843 776,199 Payments on notes payable (75,087) (99,864) Net Cash (Used) Provided by Financing Activities (14,054) 677,235 Net Increase (Decrease) in Cash (34,503) 1,426 Cash at Beginning of Period 40,485 196 Cash at End of Period $ 5,982 $ 1,622 Cash paid during the year for: Interest $ - $ - Franchise and income taxes $ - $ - Supplemental disclosure of non-cash activities: Stock issued for conversion of debt $ - $ 298,000 The accompanying notes are an integral part of these unaudited condensed financial statements. 6 INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. NOTES TO CONDENSED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS September 30, 2016 (Unaudited) NOTE 1 ORGANIZATION AND DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS Insynergy Products, Inc. (formerly Insynergy, Inc.) (the "Company") was incorporated in the State of Nevada on January 26, 2010 to engage in Direct Response marketing of consumer products with the goal of producing sales through television and/or retail. NOTE 2 - SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES Basis of presentation The Companys unaudited condensed financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (U.S. GAAP). The preparation of financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Actual results may differ from those estimates. The accompanying unaudited condensed financial statements reflect all adjustments, consisting of only normal recurring items, which, in the opinion of management, are necessary for a fair statement of the results of operations for the periods shown and are not necessarily indicative of the results to be expected for the full year ending December 31, 2016. These unaudited condensed financial statements should be read in conjunction with the financial statements and related notes included in the Companys restated Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended December 31, 2015. Use of estimates The preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Significant estimates include the estimated useful lives of property and equipment. Actual results could differ from those estimates. Reclassifications Certain reclassifications have been made to the prior year financial information to conform to the presentation used in the financial statements for the nine months ended September 30, 2016. Recently issued accounting pronouncements The Company has implemented all new accounting pronouncements that are in effect. These pronouncements did not have any material impact on the financial statements unless otherwise disclosed, and the Company does not believe that there are any other new accounting pronouncements that have been issued that might have a material impact on its financial position or results of operations. NOTE 3 INVENTORY As of September 30, 2016, the Company has no inventory. As of December 31, 2015, there was $131,759 of finished goods and $372,187 of work in process inventory. Inventory is carried at the lower of cost or net realizable value. Management has recognized that all the existing inventory no longer has any commercial value and has therefore written all remaining inventory down to zero resulting in a loss on inventory impairment of $373,512, which has been recorded to cost of goods sold. NOTE 4 PRODUCT RETURNS AND ALLOWANCES The Company recorded an allowance for estimated customer returns of $223,313 and $609,770 for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 and the year ended December 31, 2015, respectively. The allowance was based on multiple criteria, including type of store, history of returns, length of time since product was sold to the customer and inventory remaining with customer (if known). Use of these criteria resulted in different percentages being applied to different customers. The allowance will be evaluated and adjusted accordingly on a quarterly basis 7 September 30, 2016 Amount to apply reserve against Reserve % Reserve Recognized in 2016 Reserve 9/30/2016 Pending return $ N/A N/A $ 140,962 - 140,962 Customer type 1 395,353 20% 79,071 (52,714) 26,357 Customer type 2 163,434 20% 32,687 (21,791) 10,896 Customer type 3 343,620 35% 120,267 (80,178) 40,089 Customer type 4 150,262 10% 15,026 (10,017) 5,009 $ 1,052,669 $ 388,013 (164,700) 223,313 NOTE 5 NOTES PAYABLE During the year ended December 31, 2015, the Company received short term loans from three creditors for a total of $354,000. The loans are uncollateralized, non-interest bearing and are due on demand. During the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company added $1,400 to the balance due and repaid $35,000 for a balance due as of September 30, 2016 of $320,400. The Company also has financing loans for its product liability and Director and Officer Insurance. The product liability was cancelled in April 2016. As of September 30, 2016, and December 31, 2015 the loans have a balance of $12,017 and $16,671, respectively, they bear interest at 5.99% and 6.7% and are due within one year. NOTE 6 COMMITMENTS & CONTIGENCIES The Company currently occupies office space in Burbank, California. The Company signed a three-year lease starting January 1, 2016. Current lease payments are $3,425 with yearly increases. The lease required a deposit of $3,500 which was paid on December 10, 2015. Minimum lease payments over the next three years are as follows: Year Amount 2016 $ 41,097 2017 42,330 2018 43,596 Total $ 127,023 Investment Agreement On July 9, 2014, the Board of Directors approved an investment arrangement with an individual. Per the terms of the agreement the investor has transferred $150,000 to the Company for which he is now entitled to the following. $1 per unit sold through all retail outlets including online and retail shopping shows until the investment is paid back in full. Once the original investment is recouped the investor shall then receive a 2% royalty in perpetuity on all future retail sales of the fitness product. The investment remains with the Company and is disclosed as an accrued liability on the balance sheet. This agreement is currently being renegotiated. NOTE 7 RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS As of December 31, 2015, the Company owed its officers $3,253 for cash advances and expense reimbursement. During the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the officers advanced the Company an additional $49,405 and were repaid $25,215, for a balance due of $27,443. The advances were used to pay for general operating expenses. They are uncollateralized, non-interest bearing and due on demand. NOTE 8 STOCK OPTIONS For the nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015, $16,324 and $32,648 has been amortized to expense, respectively, for the vesting of options. A summary of the status of the Companys outstanding stock options and changes during the periods is presented below: 8 Shares available to purchase with options Weighted Average Price Weighted Average Fair Value Outstanding, December 31, 2015 1,000,000 $ 0.27 $ 0.20 Issued - - - Exercised - - - Forfeited - - - Expired 1,000,000 - - Outstanding, September 30, 2016 - $ - $ - Exercisable, September 30, 2016 - $ - $ - A summary of the status of the Companys outstanding stock warrants and changes during the periods is presented below: Shares available to purchase with warrants Weighted Average Price Weighted Average Fair Value Outstanding, December 31, 2015 51,000,000 $ 0.23 $ 0.186 Issued - $ - $ - Exercised - $ - $ - Forfeited - $ - $ - Expired - $ - $ - Outstanding, September 30, 2016 51,000,000 $ 0.23 $ 0.186 Exercisable, September 30, 2016 51,000,000 $ 0.23 $ 0.186 Range of Exercise Prices Number Outstanding 9/30/2016 Weighted Average Remaining Contractual Life Weighted Average Exercise Price $0.23 51,000,000 8.87 years $ 0.23 NOTE 9 GOING CONCERN As reflected in the accompanying financial statements, the Company has an accumulated deficit of $15,438,127 at September 30, 2016, had a net loss of $782,170 and net cash used in operating activities of $20,449 for nine months ended September 30, 2016. The Company recognizes its cash position does not support the Companys daily operations. Management is analyzing future potential opportunities for the business including the potential of a restructuring. The Company has been unable to raise additional funds and may need to scale back operations. This raises substantial doubt about the Companys ability to continue as a going concern. NOTE 10 SUBSEQUENT EVENTS Management has evaluated subsequent events pursuant to the requirements of ASC Topic 855, from the balance sheet date through the date the financial statements were issued, and has determined that no material subsequent events exist. 9 ITEM 2. MANAGEMENTS DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS The following information should be read in conjunction with our financial statements and related notes thereto included in Part I, Item 1, above. We also urge you to review and consider our disclosures describing various risks that may affect our business, which are set forth under the heading "Risk Factors," below. Forward Looking Statements Certain matters discussed herein are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-Q involve risks and uncertainties, including statements as to: our future operating results; our business prospects; our contractual arrangements and relationships with third parties; the dependence of our future success on the general economy; our possible future financings; and the adequacy of our cash resources and working capital. These forward-looking statements can generally be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as we believe, anticipate, expect, estimate or words of similar meaning. Similarly, statements that describe our future plans, objectives or goals are also forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties which are described in close proximity to such statements and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Shareholders, potential investors and other readers are urged to consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included herein are only made as of the date of this Form 10-Q, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Plan of Operations Insynergy Products (Insynergy) was a company with experience in commercializing consumer products through commercial and infomercial production development. The corporate goal was to develop intellectual property (IP) internally or via a license from a third party; however, due to the inability to raise funds the Company has abandoned this strategy. The Board of Directors is cognizant of the Companys limitations. The Company currently has no revenue from current operations, with liabilities exceeding its assets. Management is analyzing new potential growth paths and the potential for a restructuring; however, there is still substantial doubt about the Companys ability to continue as a going concern. In the third quarter of 2015, we entered into a license with Mr. Ross Sklar of The Starco Group. Insynergy secured the exclusive license to a broad body of novel products and technologies. Results of Operation for the Three Months Ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 Revenues For the three months ended September 30, 2016 the Company recorded revenue of $28,239 compared to negative revenue of ($115,335) for the three months ended September 30, 2015. In the current period we recognized $82,350 of revenue from the accrued product returns and allowance account. This revenue is not from sales in the current period. It is from sales made in 2015 and held in reserve in the event of subsequent returns (Note 4). This was offset by $34,300 reversal of a sale recognized in the prior quarter. In the prior period the negative revenue was due to a mark down program for the Plumbers Hero at two major retailers. Cost of goods sold was $0 compared to $5,887 of cost of goods sold in the prior period. Operating Expenses For the three months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred compensation expense of $65,750 compared to $71,522 for the three months ended September 30, 2015; a decrease of $5,772 or 8%. 10 For the three months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $0 in advertising and promotional expense as compared to $14,639 for three months ended September 30, 2015. In the prior year there was spending on promotional activities for the Plumbers Hero. There have been no such expenditures in the current period. For the three months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $11,020 in professional fees compared to $14,276 for the same period in the prior year. Professional fees are mainly for accounting, auditing and legal services associated with our quarterly filings as a public company. The decrease is due to decreased audit fees. For the three months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $30,608 in general and administrative expense as compared to $179,681 for the same period in the prior year; a decrease of $149,073 or 82.9%. In the prior year there was $80,740 of non-cash expense for stock based compensation. Other Income and Expense For the three months ended September 30, 2016 we had total other income of $6,527 compared to total other expense of $53,871 for the same period in the prior year. For the three months ended September 30, 2016, the Company recorded interest expense of $1,715, which was offset by a gain on forgiveness of debt of $8,242. For the three months ended September 30, 2015 we had interest expense of $15,332, a loss on disposal of property and equipment of $17,034, amortization of debt discount of $20,228, and a loss in the fair value of the derivative liability of $1,277 Net Loss For the three months ended September 30, 2016 we realized a net loss of $72,612 as compared to $6,956,926 for the same period in the prior year. In the prior period our cash and non-cash expenses were far greater than in the current period as discussed above, including non-cash licensing expense of $6,501,715. Results of Operation for the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 and 2015 Revenues For the nine months ended September 30, 2016 the Company recorded revenue of $202,841 compared to revenue of $1,761,693 for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. In the current period, we recognized $164,700 of revenue from the accrued product returns and allowance account. This revenue is not from sales in the current period. It is from sales made in 2015 and held in reserve in the event of subsequent returns (Note 4). This was offset by $34,300 reversal of a sale recognized in the prior quarter. The nine months ended September 30, 2015, saw much of our sales for Plumbers Hero. Cost of goods sold was $503,946 compared to $904,180 of cost of goods sold in the prior period. In the current period $373,512 was a result of the impairment of all remaining finished and work in process inventory of Plumbers Hero. Operating Expenses For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred compensation expense of $197,750 compared to $187,521 for the nine months ended September 30, 2015; an increase of $10,229 or 5.4%. The increase is due to increased salaries for officers. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $52,407 in advertising and promotional expense as compared to $577,743 for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. In the prior year there was substantial spending on promotional activities for the Plumbers Hero. There have been no such expenditures in the current period; however, we did recognize $52,059 that was previously in prepaid expenses for promotional activities that will no longer be completed and for which there will be no refunds. 11 For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $53,520 in professional fees compared to $84,551 for the same period in the prior year. Professional fees are mainly for accounting, auditing and legal services associated with our quarterly filings as a public company. The decrease is due to decreased audit fees. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company incurred $172,621 in general and administrative expense as compared to $749,174 for the same period in the prior year; a decrease of $576,553 or 76.9%. In the prior year there was $132,738 of non-cash expense for stock based compensation. Other Income and Expense For the nine months ended September 30, 2016 we had total other expense of $4,767 compared to $263,212 for the same period in the prior year. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company recorded interest expense of $3,941 and a loss on disposal of property and equipment of $20,461, which was offset by a gain on forgiveness of debt of $19,635. For the nine months ended September 30, 2015 we had interest expense of $19,148, a loss on conversion of debt of $226,811, and as a result of the convertible Promissory Note with KBM Worldwide, Inc., we recorded amortization of debt discount of $50,029 and a gain on derivative of $47,022. Net Loss For the nine months ended September 30, 2016 we realized a net loss of $782,170 as compared to $7,506,403 for the same period in the prior year. In the prior period our cash and non-cash expenses were far greater than in the current period as discussed above, including non-cash licensing expense of $6,501,715. Liquidity and Capital Resources As reflected in the accompanying financial statements, the Company has an accumulated deficit of $15,438,127 at September 30, 2016, had a net loss of $782,170 and net cash used in operating activities of $20,449 for the nine months ended September 30, 2016. Net cash used in financing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $14,054 compared to $677,235 provided by financing activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. The Company now recognizes its cash position does not support the Companys daily operations. Management is analyzing future potential opportunities for the business including the potential of a restructuring; however, there is still substantial doubt about the Companys ability to continue as a going concern. Obligations and Commitments During the year ended December 31, 2015, the Company received short term loans from three creditors for a total of $354,000. The loans are uncollateralized, non-interest bearing and are due on demand. During the nine months ended September 30, 2016, the Company added $1,400 to the balance due and repaid $35,000 for a balance due as of September 30, 2016 of $320,400. The Company also has a financing loan for its Director and Officer Insurance. As of September 30, 2016, the balance on this loan is $12,027. Critical Accounting Estimates and Policies The preparation of financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities of the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Note 1 to the Financial Statements describes the significant accounting policies and methods used in the preparation of the Financial Statements. Estimates are used for, but not limited to, contingencies and taxes. Actual results could differ materially from those estimates. The following critical accounting policies are impacted significantly by judgments, assumptions, and estimates used in the preparation of the Financial Statements. 12 We are subject to various loss contingencies arising in the ordinary course of business. We consider the likelihood of loss or impairment of an asset or the incurrence of a liability, as well as our ability to reasonably estimate the amount of loss in determining loss contingencies. An estimated loss contingency is accrued when management concludes that it is probable that an asset has been impaired or a liability has been incurred and the amount of the loss can be reasonably estimated. We regularly evaluate current information available to us to determine whether such accruals should be adjusted. We recognize deferred tax assets (future tax benefits) and liabilities for the expected future tax consequences of temporary differences between the book carrying amounts and the tax basis of assets and liabilities. The deferred tax assets and liabilities represent the expected future tax return consequences of those differences, which are expected to be either deductible or taxable when the assets and liabilities are recovered or settled. Future tax benefits have been fully offset by a 100% valuation allowance as management is unable to determine that it is more likely than not that this deferred tax asset will be realized. The Company follows paragraph 605-15-25 of the FASB Accounting Standards Codification for revenue recognition when the right of return exists. The Company will recognize revenue when it is realized or realizable and earned. The Company considers revenue realized or realizable and earned when all of the following criteria are met: (i) The seller's price to the buyer is substantially fixed or determinable at the date of sale, (ii) The buyer has paid the seller, or the buyer is obligated to pay the seller and the obligation is not contingent on resale of the product. If the buyer does not pay at time of sale and the buyer's obligation to pay is contractually or implicitly excused until the buyer resells the product, then this condition is not met., (iii) The buyer's obligation to the seller would not be changed in the event of theft or physical destruction or damage of the product, (iv) The buyer acquiring the product for resale has economic substance apart from that provided by the seller. This condition relates primarily to buyers that exist on paper, that is, buyers that have little or no physical facilities or employees. It prevents entities from recognizing sales revenue on transactions with parties that the sellers have established primarily for the purpose of recognizing such sales revenue, (v) The seller does not have significant obligations for future performance to directly bring about resale of the product by the buyer, and (vi) The amount of future returns can be reasonably estimated. The Company records an allowance for sales returns. The allowance is based on multiple criteria, including type of store, history of returns, length of time since product was sold to the customer and inventory remaining with customer (if known). The allowance will be evaluated and adjusted accordingly on a quarterly basis Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements We have not entered into any off-balance sheet arrangements that have or are reasonably likely to have a current or future effect on our financial condition, changes in financial condition, revenues or expenses, results of operations, liquidity, capital expenditures or capital resources and would be considered material to investors. Recent Accounting Pronouncements In November 2015, the FASB issued ASU No. 2015-17, Balance Sheet Classification of Deferred Taxes. The new guidance requires that all deferred tax assets and liabilities, along with any related valuation allowance, be classified as noncurrent on the balance sheet. This update is effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2016 and interim periods within those annual periods. The Company does not anticipate the adoption of this ASU will have a significant impact on its consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows. In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842). The guidance in ASU No. 2016-02 supersedes the lease recognition requirements in ASC Topic 840, Leases (FAS 13). ASU 2016-02 requires an entity to recognize assets and liabilities arising from a lease for both financing and operating leases, along with additional qualitative and quantitative disclosures. ASU 2016-02 is effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018, with early adoption permitted. The Company is currently evaluating the effect this standard will have on its consolidated financial statements. 13 In March 2016, the FASB issued ASU 2016-09, Improvements to Employee Share Based Payment Accounting, to simplify several aspects of the accounting for share-based payment transactions, including the income tax consequences, classification of awards as either equity or liabilities, and classification on the statement of cash flows. The guidance will be effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2016 and interim periods within those annual periods. Early adoption is permitted, including adoption in an interim period. The Company is currently evaluating the impact of the adoption of this newly issued guidance to its consolidated financial statements. The Company has implemented all new accounting pronouncements that are in effect. These pronouncements did not have any material impact on the financial statements unless otherwise disclosed, and the Company does not believe that there are any other new accounting pronouncements that have been issued that might have a material impact on our financial position or results of operations. ITEM 3. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK Not applicable to smaller reporting companies. ITEM 4. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures We maintain disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act) that are designed to be effective in providing reasonable assurance that information required to be disclosed in our reports under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the rules and forms of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on that evaluation, they concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2016. The following aspects of the Company were noted as potential material weaknesses: - timely and accurate reconciliation of accounts - lack of timely document preparation - lack of segregation of duties - complex accounting transaction expertise - lack of corporate documentation In designing and evaluating disclosure controls and procedures, management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute assurance of achieving the desired objectives. Also, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. 14 Changes in Internal Controls Based on that evaluation, our Chief Executive Officer and our Chief Financial Officer concluded that no change occurred in the Company's internal controls over financial reporting during the quarter ended September 30, 2016 that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the Company's internal controls over financial reporting. PART II - OTHER INFORMATION ITEM 1. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS There are not presently any material pending legal proceedings to which the Company is a party or as to which any of our property is subject, and no such proceedings are known to the Company to be threatened or contemplated against it. ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS We are a smaller reporting company as defined by Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and, as such, are not required to provide the information under this Item. ITEM 2. UNREGISTERED SALES OF EQUITY SECURITIES AND USE OF PROCEEDS None. ITEM 3. DEFAULTS UPON SENIOR SECURITIES None. ITEM 4. MINING SAFETY DISCLOSURES Not applicable. ITEM 5. OTHER INFORMATION. None. 15 ITEM 6. EXHIBITS Part I Exhibits No. Description 31.1 Chief Executive Officer Section 302 Certification 31.2 Chief Financial Officer Section 302 Certification 32.1 Section 1350 Certification Part II Exhibits No. Description 3(i) Articles of Incorporation, as amended August 13, 2015 (Incorporated by reference to exhibit 3(ii) to Form 8-K, filed August 20, 2015) 3 (ii) Bylaws of Insynergy Products, Inc. (Incorporated by reference to exhibit 3.2 to Form S-1, filed January 31, 2010) 101.INS XBRL Instance Document 101.SCH XBRL Taxonomy Extension Schema Document 101.CAL XBRL Taxonomy Calculation Linkbase Document 101.DEF XBRL Taxonomy Extension Definition Linkbase Document 101.LAB XBRL Taxonomy Label Linkbase Document 101.PRE XBRL Taxonomy Presentation Linkbase Document 16 SIGNATURES In accordance with the requirements of the Exchange Act, the Registrant caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized. INSYNERGY PRODUCTS, INC. Dated: November 14, 2016 By: /s/ Sanford Lang Sanford Lang Chief Executive Officer By : /s/Rachel Boulds Rachel Boulds Chief Financial Officer 17 Exhibit 31.1 CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER I, Sanford Lang, hereby certify that: (1) I have reviewed this quarterly report on Form 10-Q of Insynergy Products, Inc.; (2) Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report; (3) Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the registrant as of, and for, the periods presented in this report; (4) The registrant's other certifying officers and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) and internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f)) for the registrant and have: (a) Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the registrant, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared; (b) Designed such internal control over financial reporting, or caused such internal control over financial reporting to be designed under our supervision, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles; (c) Evaluated the effectiveness of the registrant's disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based on such evaluation; and (d) Disclosed in this report any change in the registrants internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the registrants most recent fiscal quarter (the registrants fourth fiscal quarter in the case of an annual report) that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the registrants internal control over financial reporting; and (5) The registrant's other certifying officers and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the registrant's auditors and the audit committee of registrant's board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent functions): (a) All significant deficiencies in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the registrant's ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and (b) Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting. Dated: November 14, 2016 /s/Sanford Lang Sanford Lang Chief Executive Officer Exhibit 31.2 CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER I, Rachel Boulds, hereby certify that: (1) I have reviewed this quarterly report on Form 10-Q of Insynergy Products, Inc.; (2) Based on my knowledge, this report does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading with respect to the period covered by this report; (3) Based on my knowledge, the financial statements, and other financial information included in this report, fairly present in all material respects the financial condition, results of operations and cash flows of the registrant as of, and for, the periods presented in this report; (4) The registrant's other certifying officers and I are responsible for establishing and maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e)) and internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Exchange Act Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f)) for the registrant and have: (a) Designed such disclosure controls and procedures, or caused such disclosure controls and procedures to be designed under our supervision, to ensure that material information relating to the registrant, including its consolidated subsidiaries, is made known to us by others within those entities, particularly during the period in which this report is being prepared; (b) Designed such internal control over financial reporting, or caused such internal control over financial reporting to be designed under our supervision, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles; (c) Evaluated the effectiveness of the registrant's disclosure controls and procedures and presented in this report our conclusions about the effectiveness of the disclosure controls and procedures, as of the end of the period covered by this report based on such evaluation; and (d) Disclosed in this report any change in the registrants internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the registrants most recent fiscal quarter (the registrants fourth fiscal quarter in the case of an annual report) that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the registrants internal control over financial reporting; and (5) The registrant's other certifying officers and I have disclosed, based on our most recent evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, to the registrant's auditors and the audit committee of registrant's board of directors (or persons performing the equivalent functions): (a) All significant deficiencies in the design or operation of internal control over financial reporting which are reasonably likely to adversely affect the registrant's ability to record, process, summarize and report financial information; and (b) Any fraud, whether or not material, that involves management or other employees who have a significant role in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting. Dated: November 14, 2016 /s/Rachel Boulds Rachel Boulds Chief Financial Officer Exhibit 32.1 CERTIFICATION PURSUANT TO SECTION 906 OF THE SARBANES-OXLEY ACT OF 2002 Pursuant to section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (subsections (a) and (b) of Section 1350, Chapter 63 of Title 18, United States Code), the undersigned officers of Insynergy Products, Inc., a Nevada corporation (the "Company"), do hereby certify, to the best of their knowledge, that: 1. The Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ending September 30, 2016 (the "Report") of the Company complies in all material respects with the requirements of section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and 2. The information contained in the Report fairly presents, in all material respects, the financial condition and results of operations of the Company. Dated: November 14, 2016 /s/Sanford Lang Sanford Lang Chief Executive Officer Afghanistan's parliament has voted to dismiss two more cabinet ministers, bringing the total number to five in two days. The lower house of parliament, also known as Wolesi Jirga, removed the transportation and education ministers on Sunday. Poor performance of the two ministries was the reason for the dismissal. Finance Minister Eklil Hakimi was the only minister on Sunday to survive the vote. Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani and two other ministers were dismissed on Saturday. Gul Padsha Majidi, a member of parliament, said the assembly, which has a constitutional right to dismiss ministers, might hold votes on as many as eleven more ministers, adding, "This is our right and we will use it and will not let the government politicize this process." A joint parliamentary commission announced last week that it intended to grill the ministers over their failure to spend the development budget. The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) of Afghanistan says a significant part of the budget might have been embezzled. The parliament's dismissal of the ministers came despite pleas made by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah to halt the votes. Mirdad Najrabi, the chairman of the parliament's security commission, said President Ghani and Abdullah had told the lawmakers that "their decision will deal a huge political blow to the government at this critical time and urged them to stop the process." The government does not favor confrontation with the parliament over the issue of dismissals, according to a statement released by the presidential office. However, the parliament's decision is respected, the statement said. Afghanistan's power-sharing unity government was formed following the disputed 2014 presidential election. It has since been weakened by infighting between rivals. Sri Lanka Mission hosts side event on Youth and Sustainable Development Goals View(s): UNITED NATIONS The Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York hosted a side event entitled Youth Boosting the Promotion and Implementation of the SDGs on 10th November 2016 at the UN Headquarters. The event, which focused on the role of the youth in boosting the promotion and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, was co- sponsored by the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the Earth Charter International (ECI). The event was attended by a large number of youth, members of the civil society as well as representatives from the New York based Permanent Missions. The side event, which was held as an interactive panel discussion, focused on the unique role that youth can play in realising the vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; the obstacles that young people expect to encounter in playing that role; and how to solve those obstacles so that youth can realize their full potential to advance the Sustainable Development Goals. The panel consisted of Dr. David Nabarro, UN Secretary-Generals Special Adviser on the 2030 Agenda, Ambassador Sabarullah Khan, Deputy Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, Ms. Saskia Schellekens, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-Generals Envoy on Youth and Ms. Sofia Garcia of SOS Childrens Villages. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Maher Nasser, Director, Outreach Division of the United Nations Department of Public Information. Delivering his remarks, the Deputy Permanent Representative, Ambassador Sabarullah Khan, stated that as Sri Lanka is poised to implement the 2030 Agenda at national level, it has kept women, youth, children and persons with disabilities at the centre of its national plans, in keeping with the Agendas key vision leaving no one behind. He said youth has a unique role to play in realizing the SDGs and that the Government of Sri Lanka is well aware of this role. He added that the foremost role that youth can play in supporting the achievement of SDGs would be to bring its message to a larger global audience. Ambassador Khan observed that Sri Lanka had seen the positive effect of mobilizing youth in this awareness campaign. He said that though there are several obstacles that affect the full involvement of youth in realizing the SDGs, those obstacles could be overcome by empowering youth through education, skills development and focus on innovation. Ambassador Khan added that Sri Lanka has developed inclusive strategies on promoting education and skills training for youth. He further stated that having realized the importance of skills development for youth, Sri Lanka was instrumental in declaring 15 July as the World Youth Skills Day. UN Secretary-Generals Special Adviser on the 2030 Agenda Dr. David Nabarro stressed the universality of the 2030 Agenda, and emphasized that young people must be part of sustainable development. He too emphasized the significance of youth as carriers of the message of the SDGs to the world, and the instrumentality of the new technology in that process. Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-Generals Envoy on Youth Saskia Schellekens thanked Sri Lanka for the prominent role it plays at the United Nations in advancing youth issues. She also stressed the importance of raising awareness of the SDGs and mobilizing youth for that purpose. Ms. Schellekens added that it is imperative to strengthen the Ministries of Youth as a means of empowering youth. Ms. Sofia Garcia of SOS Childrens Villages spoke on the importance of including young people in the decision making structures in respect of the SDGs. The side event also saw the launching of the new mobile app Mapting, an interactive app developed by two youth representatives from the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the Earth Charter International (ECI), which aims at educating and engaging youth on the Sustainable Development Goals. The role of the Attorney General of Sri Lanka and the Rule of Law View(s): The following is an edited version of an oration delivered by former Attorney General Palitha Fernando, PC at the BMICH on November 7 to commemorate the third death anniversary of C.R. de Silva, former Attorney General and chairman of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. At the very outset, I wish to express my profound gratitude to the organisers of the C.R. de Silva memorial oration, for honouring me with the invitation to deliver the first oration. Mr. de Silva was a person with whom I had been associated for over four decades. He was a young school boy at Royal College, Colombo when I first saw him in 1968. Ever since, my admiration for him has grown as in the case of anyone who knew him closely. In him, within a seemingly rough exterior, there was a passionate humane personality whose unselfish generosity was well known. He was a great leader, anyone would like to emulate. I always was of the view that he was a leader who was behind his men. Even as a young school boy, I was not impressed with the phrase that one should lead from the front. I felt it was an obsolete phrase that would fit only those who sought violence as a mode of resolution of disputes. Mr. De Silva, I thought, was always behind his men, which I believe is a quality of a great leader. I found support for my thinking from no less a person than President Nelson Mandela: President Mandela has said: A leader is like a shepherd. He always stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind. I thought I would speak on the Role of the Attorney General of Sri Lanka and the Rule of Law; with special reference to the Criminal Justice System. I thought of that topic for two reasons. Firstly, as Mr. C.R. de Silva was the 24th Attorney General of Sri Lanka himself, and during Mr. De Silvas tenure as Attorney General, he made all endeavours to uphold the Rule of Law; and, secondly, since it is a current topic. Punitive powers of Commissions It is an important aspect of the Rule of Law, that persons should be tried, convicted and punished by the normal courts and not by tribunals specially established for that task. That was one reason why the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption was conferred with only investigative powers. The Criminal Justice Commission established to inquire into offences committed during the 1971 Insurrection and foreign exchange violations was conferred with punitive powers, and the activities of the Commission and regrettably the Commissioners came under heavy criticism on this basis. When I was Attorney General, I had the honour of delivering, the K.C. Kamalasabeyson Memorial Oration, in memory of the 23rd Attorney General of Sri Lanka, an equally honourable gentleman. When I delivered that oration, I had to carefully weigh and consider each word I uttered as I was then the incumbent Attorney General. Today, as I stand here before you to make this presentation, I am a retired public servant, and I feel free to express my views without restraint. In that presentation I said: Indeed there would be no Rule of Law, if law abiding citizens live in constant fear of being preyed upon by the thief and the murderers with no protection of the law enforcement authorities. Stringent laws to deal with law breakers therefore, would itself, be a formidable safeguard against abuse. However, it would be equally necessary that there be sufficient protection and effective remedies against the abuse or misuse of such authority by the Executive or Law Enforcement Officers. (This, I believe is a statement of Lord Denning, the source, I was unable to quote.) I thought I would quote that passage, to show that the view I hold today, I held even when I was the Attorney General of Sri Lanka. I always thought that the Rule of Law essentially protected the rights of law abiding citizens, and whenever there was a danger of their rights being transgressed, the law should come hard on the transgressors, of course, within the limits of the law. It is in that context that I would be dealing with the Role of the Attorney General of Sri Lanka (AG) in enforcing the Rule of Law. The AG of Sri Lanka is the Chief Law Officer of the State and performs a function in respect of the implementation of the law, uncontrolled by any authority. The AG is the only authority, other than, of course the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption who can decide whether a person should be indicted for an offence or not. Neither the President, nor any member of the Government or even the Supreme Court could lawfully direct the AG to file or to refrain from filing an indictment against any person. Whenever the Supreme Court finds that certain Police Officers have violated the fundamental right guaranteed by Article 11 of the Constitution, by torturing any person, the order is conveyed to the AG to consider indicting the suspect, if the AG is of the opinion that the material disclosed the commission of an offence in terms of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Punishment Act, No. 22 if 1994. There has never been a direction to AG to file indictment. It is the exclusive prerogative of the AG to decide on the material submitted to him by the investigators, whether a person should be indicted or not. It is said that the AG exercises a quasi -judicial power in this respect. There cannot be any supervision by any Executive Authority over the power of the AG to institute proceedings against a person before the High Courts. The decision to indict a person is taken by the AG on a careful and objective analysis of the facts and law, free of any prejudices or influences. There has been only one instance where the decision of the AG to indict a person had been challenged by way of a Fundamental Rights application. The Court did not find fault with the decision of the AG to indict the suspect on that occasion. The fact that a person is acquitted after trial does not in any way indicate that the decision of the AG to indict was wrong. The decision to indict is taken after a careful analysis of the material available on paper. The ultimate outcome of the trial depends on many other matters including the advocacy of Defence Counsel and the independent decision of the presiding Judge or the Jury over which the AG has no control. Nolle Prosequi and its abuse The AG enjoys the right to enter a Nolle Prosequi in respect of an offender, which was a right enjoyed even during the period of the British rule. This is a right that has come as a practice enjoyed by the AG and the AG alone. The only legal provision that statutorily recognises this right is where it is provided in the Code of Criminal Procedure Act that the entering into a Nolle Prosequi is a right that the AG cannot delegate to any other officer of the Department. Usually, in Sri Lanka, Nolle Prosequi entered by the AG is accepted without question. The Nolle Prosequi in Sri Lanka is entered by the AG on reasons of policy, though in his opinion, the material justifies a criminal prosecution. The right of the AG to enter a Nolle Prosequi should not be confused with the power enjoyed by a prosecuting officer to withdraw an indictment or any charges therein. The prosecuting officer is entitled to seek the permission of court to withdraw an indictment at any stage of the proceedings, and such withdrawal is possible only if Court, for reasons recorded, permits the application of the prosecuting officer. Court can always refuse an application by a prosecuting officer to withdraw an indictment already filed in court. That is why I have constantly expressed the view that no allegation can be made against the AG for the withdrawal of any indictment before court. The prosecutor will have to convince court that his application is based on substantial ground. It is only then that the prosecuting officer would be entitled to withdraw the indictment. Sometimes it has been said that indictments against certain individuals were withdrawn by the AG due to political influence. However, those statements are made on the misconceived notion that the AG is entitled to withdraw an indictment on his own. The only way the AG can discontinue a prosecution before the High Court, independent of the presiding Judge, is where he enters a Nolle Prosequi. In recent times, to the best of my knowledge, there have been no instances where a Nolle Prosequi was entered by the AG. All withdrawals of indictments filed before court were with the approval of the presiding Judge. With the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, the AG is appointed by the President, on the recommendations of the Constitutional Council. This is a move to ensure that the President has no exclusive authority in the appointment of the AG, who, as I stated, exercises a tremendous amount of authority in the enforcement of the law which sustains the Rule of Law. Unlike in most other Commonwealth Jurisdictions, the AG of Sri Lanka does not exercise any supervisory control over Police investigations, which is considered to be the function of the Director of Public Prosecutions, an office that existed under the Administration of Justice Law, but was later abolished. However, in the interests of justice, AG, as the Chief Law Officer of the State, has intervened, and advised the Police in respect of ongoing investigations, either at the request of the of an aggrieved party or the Police or on his own initiative, where it is thought that the intervention of the AG was necessary in the interests of justice. Advice of AG On numerous occasions, our courts have held that the Police should seek the advice of the AG in the case of complicated investigations before arresting or proceeding to institute action before the Criminal Courts. When the late Mr. Tyrrel Gunatilake was the DIG in charge of the Criminal Investigations Department, he insisted that the investigators be in close contact with the officers of the Attorney Generals Department in order to ensure an efficient investigation in the interests of justice. This practice is followed up to date by the Criminal Investigations Department. The Criminal Investigations Department, sometimes refers the file to the AG after recording the 1st complaint, seeking advice as to whether it discloses a matter that needs further investigation. When I was a junior officer of the Department, there was a circular directing us to advise on such files within two weeks of receipt. By this method, a great deal of cases which did not need any further action were closed with the 1st complaint. We decided that most such matters were civil transactions and that no criminal offence is disclosed. Though the power to supervise police investigations is not conferred on the AG like in the case of the Director of Public Prosecution, AG has over the years, based on judicial pronouncements and the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure Act, stepped in where intervention was necessary in the interests of justice. The AG of Sri Lanka, over the years, has commendably performed this function, intervening wherever the intervention of the AG was required in the interests of justice. The Code of Criminal Procedure Act specifically authorizes the AG to advise the Police on complicated investigations on the request of the Police or on his own initiative. In Sri Lanka we have had a greater link with the Police and had played a prominent role in the institution of prosecutions. The Attorney Generals Department established a Non Summary Unit in 1998, but it was abolished in 2009. My personal view is that, that unit should be re-established and the AG should take greater control over the prosecutions in the Magistrates Courts. When Ms. Navanethem Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Sri Lanka in 2014, met me as the Attorney General of Sri Lanka, and I explained to her the role played by the Attorney General in respect of Police investigations into sensational crimes. A few days before her visit, or during her visit, there had been an attack on the residence of a journalist, which was given wide publicity in the media. While I was explaining to her the role of the AG to ensure fair and just investigations she interrupted me and said, Mr. Attorney General, I have read in the media about an attack on the residence of a journalist, what action do you hope to take about it ? Without any response to that question, I turned to my officer in charge of administration and requested that the file I had opened the previous day, be sent to me immediately. It was brought to my chambers during the interview and I gave the whole file to her. It was a file opened on a paper cutting, with a minute from me to the Criminal Division, instructing that the file be opened immediately. The file contained a minute from me to a senior officer to take immediate action to get in touch with the police and to ensure impartial and expeditious investigations, and to keep me informed of the progress. Having read the file, her immediate and spontaneous response was, I must commend you for this. Petitions from the public The Department of the Attorney General has also a special unit called the MP Unit, which entertains petitions from the public seeking intervention of the AG where there is abuse in the process of law enforcement. In addition, an Attorney at Law, usually is entitled to make a representation to the AG on behalf of his or her clients, where the intervention of the AG is necessary, in the interests of justice. Such communications from Attorneys at Law, were entertained at any stage of the investigations. The communications were entertained from suspects as well as victims of crime. The purpose was to ensure that the enforcement of the law was not abused so as to defeat the interests of justice. The enforcement of the law to its optimum efficiency, requires a coordinated effort by all those involved in the law enforcement process. The Judiciary, the Official Bar, the Unofficial Bar and the Police Department play important roles in this process. Out of all such agencies, the role of the AG and his Department is of utmost importance. I would, without the faintest hesitation state that the AG plays a pivotal role in the whole process. As I pointed out earlier, the delay involved in the judicial process is not due to the fault of any party. It is an inbuilt delay that nags the litigant. The AG is the only authority, who could legitimately intervene to ensure that justice is meted out where it is necessary. Recently when my good friend, Retired Senior DIG and Attorney at Law, Leo Perera passed away at the Police Hospital, I have been informed that the Medical Officers firmly requested the Police that no arrest should be made without the material first being submitted to the AG. I was personally informed by the Medical Officers that they were able to take that firm stand due to the instructions to the police by the AG that the material should be submitted to the AG before an arrest of a Medical Officer where a patient dies under the care of such Medical Officer. In the instructions sent to the Police, it is specifically stated that it did not apply to cases of suspected illegal abortion. Where a patient dies while being treated by a Medical Practitioner, whether the evidence discloses a case of criminal negligence that warrants, an arrest is a complicated issue a police officer would not be competent to decide. If the suspect Medical Practitioner is arrested on the basis of the first complaint and he or she is remanded for the purpose of further investigations, that would cause irreparable damage to a person who may be totally innocent of any offence. The Private Medical Officers Association made representations to the AG since a Medical Practitioner had once been arrested and that had caused much concern to the members of the Association. There is no doubt that the instructions of the AG is convincing proof of an instance where the intervention of the Chief Legal Officer of the State has strengthened the Rule of Law, leaving no room for abuse of the process. The Criminal Justice System in any country should be ruthlessly efficient in its pursuit of violators of the criminal law. Law abiding persons within the territory should be ensured of the protection of the law. No room should be left for offenders to believe that the law is incompetent to deal with them and that deficiencies of the law would provide them with ample opportunity to violate the law with impunity. The culture of impunity for whatever reason must be replaced with a culture of accountability. Those who are guilty of violating the law should be dealt with through a transparent, fair and expeditious process. Strength of the Rule of Law Equally important however, it would be, to ensure that abuse of the process for whatever reason, does not result in the incarceration of innocent persons with no expeditious remedy. If that is the case, it is tragedy to be mourned, and should be avoided utilising all the strength at our command. That in my view, sums up the purpose and the strength of the Rule of Law. The role of the AG of Sri Lanka in achieving this objective cannot be underestimated under any circumstances. The AG is an impartial and independent officer who exercises an authority that permits him to grant expeditious and efficient relief that cannot be secured from any other authority. Let me refer to two incidents that occurred during my tenure as the AG that demonstrates the role AG can play in ensuring the protection of the Law to innocent persons. A Chief Legal Officer of a Bank, met me around 4.00 p.m with several of her legal officers in the company of Mr. Yuwanjan Wijayatilake, PC., the then Solicitor General. Her complaint was that a police station conducting investigations into an over payment is due to arrest two young clerks of the Bank without any evidence of being concerned in the commission of a criminal offence. I, immediately, through the Police Post, got in touch with the Senior DIG of the area and informed him of the situation and instructed that early the next day, the investigating officer with a Senior Police Officer should meet me with the notes of investigation, and that no arrest should be made until I decided on the material. Early next morning, with the notes of investigation, the investigating officers were present at the Department, and I opened a file and specially allocated it to a very senior officer of the Department, to go through the material and report to me that very day. Within one hour, the senior officer of the Department met me stating that there wasnt even an iota of evidence. I addressed a letter to the Senior DIG under my hand, informing of my decision having perused the material, and requesting the investigations be proceeded with, but no arrests should be made without the AG considering the material. The second incident was where a young Magistrate, who was not a Sinhala Buddhist, called me one afternoon, and all that he told me was I cannot sleep tonight. He then told me that a young Buddhist Priest was produced before him under the Antiquities Ordinance on a charge that he had committed an offence of tampering with an archeological site. He said from the moment he saw the Priest he felt he was a saint, I am sure what he meant was an Arahath. What the Priest had done was to clear a small area in the forest and put up a small hut where he meditated. The Magistrate said, I had no jurisdiction to grant bail and I am with a heavy heart. His request was to look at the material and decide whether an offence under the Antiquities Ordinance is disclosed. He said the Officer in Charge of the investigating Police Station has already been directed to meet me with the notes of investigation. The following morning a file was duly opened and allocated to a senior officer who reported back that there is no material to show that any damage was caused to an archeological site, or that there was evidence of the commission of an offence. The discharge paper went that very day under my name and a copy was faxed to the Magistrate. The Priest was duly discharged the very day. I thought that I would refer to these two incidents, since this was a method adopted by the late Mr. C.R. de Silva when he was Head of the Criminal Division. Wherever there was a deserving case where the intervention of the AG was necessary, Mr. De Silva took bold steps to intervene. While thanking you all for your presence on this occasion, let me conclude expressing my confidence that the role played by the Attorney General over the years would serve to strengthen the Rule of Law with greater intensity in the years to come. (Visite full text of the C.R. De Silva memorial Oration). UPDATED: The beach and marine threat, which was issued by the Ministry of Civil Defence earlier this morning, has been lifted for Bay of Plenty. Group Controller Clinton Naude says people in coastal areas should continue to exercise caution. "The seas will remain unsettled for sometime yet so at this stage we are still recommending people stay out of the water and off the beaches." People in coastal areas should: Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities) Stay off beaches and shore areas Do not go sightseeing Share this information with family, neighbours and friends Further updates will be provided on Bay of Plenty Civil Defence Emergency Managements Facebook page www.facebook.com/BOPCivilDefence and website www.bopcivildefence.govt.nz . Earlier: A beach and marine threat, which was issued by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management for the east coast of the North Island earlier this morning, still exists for Bay of Plenty. For residents that chose to evacuate its safe for them to return to their homes. A resident in Katikati reported feeling the 7.5 earthquake just after midnight. Another resident says their blinds in their house were shaking and ornaments hanging from the ceiling were swinging. Bay of Plenty group controller Clinton Naude is urging the community to exercise caution around beaches, estuaries, rivers and streams. "The unsettled seas may still cause changes to currents, tides and wave patterns. We will continue to monitor the situation throughout the morning. People in the coastal areas should: Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities) Stay off beaches and shore areas Do not go sightseeing Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates Follow instructions of local civil defence authorities Regular updates will be provided on Bay of Plenty Civil Defence Emergency Managements website www.bopcivildefence.govt.nz and on www.facebook.com/BOPCivilDefence. As the situation evolves, more information will be available. Meanwhile, police continue to work with other emergency services and support communities in response to the earthquake which occurred just after midnight. One casualty has been reported at a collapsed property in Kaikora. Police are also trying to access a property at Mt Lyford north of Christchurch where a further casualty has been reported, which is believed to be a fatality. Police districts in the North and South Island are working with fire and civil defence to check areas where damage has occurred. Wellington City Council has advised people not to travel into the city this morning. Police warn that anyone who does intend coming into the city could experience delays on the motorway as train services are currently suspended. The Chatham Islands and the coastal areas between Blenheim and Banks Peninsula are still prone to a marine and land threat. #eqnz MCDEM (@NZcivildefence) November 13, 2016 Some roads in the city may not be accessible, and diversions may be in place. Police urge everyone in the affected areas to continue to listening to advice from the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, as well as local Civil Defence services. Police expect to have a fuller picture of the situation as it gets light. The Police 111 service is working normally for anyone who wishes to report an emergency. All schools from North Canterbury to Wellington are closed, including early childhood education centres. State Highway 1, between Christchurch and Picton is closed. KiwiRail has suspended all train services. Christchurch Airport is still open. Scholars urge closer innovation ties between China and the UK Updated: 2016-11-11 15:49 By Dai Tian in Oxford(chinadaily.com.cn) China and the UK must learn from each other and collaborate to improve innovation, scholars and business leaders said at a forum at the University of Oxford on Thursday. The Oxford Sino-UK Innovation and Development Forum attracted more than 160 representatives from academia and commerce. Fu Xiaolan, director of the universitys Technology and Management Center for Development, said technology is changing the way in which value and profits are created, and noted that it will have a profound impact on the economy and wider society. Despite the opportunities that technology creates, it also poses challenges, such as difficulty in re-employment and risks a "lost generation" and political instability, Fu said. "Technical progress now moves faster than policy and regulation," explained Fu, who is also a governing council member of the UN Technology Bank. "We need a policy-planning mechanism to ensure inclusive growth and multi-stakeholder participation." David Burghust, managing director of Oxford University Innovation, a subsidiary of the university that specializes in IP commercialization, called for more cooperation between the two countries. "We now look actively in China for IP licensing, and some of our spinouts have Chinese backing," said Burghust, who is based in Hong Kong. He added that the institution has set up a joint venture in Jiangsu province. Stian Westlake, executive director of Nesta, a British independent innovation foundation, said the UK needs to improve its knowledge infrastructure and highlight the countrys edge. The forum was organized by the TMCD and the Institute of Science and Development at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinas national think tank. Former Katikati resident Rebecca Fisher is among those woken sharply at just after midnight by this mornings 7.5 earthquake. She lives on the fifth floor of a six-storey apartment building in the Wellington suburb of Mount Cook. It struck just after midnight, and the aftershocks pretty much havent stopped since, she says. So we havent really slept. Despite the severity, Rebecca says there hasnt been much damage where she lives. We just had an ornament fall off and break, which didnt happen in the previous Christchurch quakes. So weve taken everything down that might fall. Like most people in the city, shes been told not to come into work, partly as a safety precaution, but also due to the CBD being a bit of a mess. Theres masonry and glass on the ground in the CBD, and what looks to be liquefaction down at the wharf, she says. Like the September 2010 quake in Christchurch, the timing means a more dire disaster was averted. Its lucky it wasnt at 12 oclock during the day, it would have been a lot worse. Tauranga MP Simon Bridges says his flight to Wellington this morning was half-empty. Coming from the airport into the city, the streets were very empty in comparison to normal. My staff are here in the Beehive because weve got to deal with some of the transport issues down in the worst affected areas of Kaikoura and Hamner and around there, but they barely got any sleep last night. It was one of the worst shakes theyve ever felt. He says the lifts arent working, and theres a lot of shelving in his office badly out of shape. As Minister of Transport I have a lot of model aircraft and quite a few of those are broken and on the floor. Simon wants to acknowledge all the people affected and the workers in what is a very trying time in the lower North Island and much of the South. My heart goes out to those affected families, who have lost loved ones, and to those who are trying to get over this and literally pick up the pieces. Theres going to be a lot of work thats going to need to be done. I encourage those who are involved to stay safe and look after each other at this time. Civil Defence Responds Civil Defence reports the tsunami threat has been downgraded. There is still a marine and beach threat in place from Napier to north of Dunedin, Cook Strait coastal areas and the Chatham Islands. For those who evacuated, please check whether or not an evacuation order is still in place for your area before heading home. For the remainder of New Zealand there is no threat. There have been two confirmed fatalities. Injuries have been reported in Canterbury, and Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Groups have reported evacuations in Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson/Tasman, Wellington, Manawatu/Wanganui and the Chatham Islands. The number of injuries and evacuees are not known at this time. Transport has been disrupted including state highway one between Blenheim and Picton is closed. State Highway 6 between Blenheim and Nelson and State Highway 7 between Springs Junction and the Waipara are also closed. Several bridges on the state highway network are reported as damaged and closed, while Hanmer Springs is cut off. Rail networks in the lower North Island, and between Christchurch and Picton, are closed. All InterIslander ferries have been cancelled today. Damage has been reported in the Canterbury, Blenheim and Wellington regions, including widespread damage and building collapses reported in Kaikoura. Electricity outages have been reported in Wellington and Manawatu/Wanganui. Were you or a family member caught up in the quake too? Share your photos and experience on our Facebook page, or in the comments below. The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) says a local state of emergency has been declared in Kaikoura and Hurunui. A tsunami warning (marine and beach threat) remains in place from Wellington to Banks Peninsula. The threat for all other regions has been lifted. All previous threat regions will experience unusually strong coastal currents for some time. Areas under Marine and Beach Threat can expect unusually strong currents and unpredictable water flows near the shore. This means a threat to beach, harbour, estuary and small boat activities. The severity of currents and changing water flows will vary within a particular coastal area and over the period this warning is in effect. People in coastal areas from Wellington to Banks Peninsula should: 1. Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities) 2. Stay off beaches and shore areas 3. Not go sightseeing 4. Share this information with family, neighbours and friends 5. Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates 6. Follow instructions of local civil defence authorities. Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management director, Sarah Stuart-Black says the 7.5 earthquake at 12.02am near Culverden was initially centred under land, so science experts and the Pacific Tsunami Warning System assessed it as a no tsunami threat. This was a complicated quake where the fault rupture under land appeared to have continued some distance offshore. "A sea level gauge picked up a change in wave height which was then determined to be a tsunami threat by the tsunami expert panel and the GeoNet Duty Officer. She says with local source earthquakes its important people know the warning signs and take action immediately as there may not be time for official notifications. Its really heartening to see so many people who felt the long or strong quake took the decision to move up hill or inland. "They listened to their radios, followed the advice of civil defence and emergency services and heard warnings from neighbours and took the right action. Sarah contact with Kaikoura had been difficult, but she says police had confirmed reports of two deaths, injuries and building collapses in the region. Civil Defence and Emergency Management groups across the country are sending people to the region to help. Search and rescue are on the ground and Defence is doing an aerial inspection so we can get a full picture of the help that is needed. She says teams in Marlborough were door knocking in the Ward and Seddon regions to check on people. In Wellington, pedestrians and motorists are advised to stay out of the CBD and a severe weather warning for strong winds and heavy rain had been issued for later today. If its safe for you to stay in your home, then do so. Look after your neighbours and loved ones and remember there will be aftershocks. Stay vigilant. In your local areas check with your local Civil Defence and Emergency Management people. For earthquakes: Expect aftershocks and remember to drop, cover and hold. Look after yourself and get first aid if necessary. Help others if you can. Assess your home or workplace for damage. If the building appears unsafe get everyone out. Use the stairs, not an elevator and when outside, watch out for fallen power lines or broken gas lines. Stay out of damaged areas. Listen to the radio for updated emergency information and instructions. Do not overload phone lines with non-emergency calls. Text friends and family to see if they are OK. Building assessments should be undertaken before buildings are opened for normal use, particularly in areas which experienced strong shaking and CBD areas of Wellington, Christchurch and Blenheim. For tsunamis: Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities) Stay off beaches and shore areas Do not go sightseeing Share this information with family, neighbours and friends Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates Follow instructions of local civil defence authorities. If beach threat is forecasted for your area, take appropriate evasive action The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, local civil defence emergency management authorities and scientific advisors are closely monitoring the situation. The odds are better than Lotto that were going to cop a tsunami at some stage. And its not going to be nice. Prophet of doom, scaremongerer? Neither, says Gary Benner, who is developer of the tsunami alert system called Tsunado. During normal times its just a radio, says Gary. But in the event of a disaster situation like a tsunami, it will let you know in no uncertain terms. Gary says hes a realist with a genuine desire to save lives. The Bay of Plenty Civil Defence Management Group has the same genuine desire. But the group and Gary are at odds over how best that can be done. The Ministry of Civil defence and Emergency Management is exploring a national public alerting system using mobile phone technology. We support a national system in addition to our current local and regional text alert and email update system, says Emergency Management Bay of Plenty group controller Clinton Naude. Therefore, at this stage we are not pursuing the Tsunado alert system. Gary says cellphones cant be relied on to be alerting devices. But his Tsunado can be relied on. And I would be extremely disappointed with my life if I woke up one morning to find my family in Papamoa had been washed away by a tsunami of the Aceh scale because we werent prepared. He refers to the 2004 tsunami that killed 230,000 people and injured half a million when 30 metre waves swept ashore through Asia. And Gary says what happened at 4.37am, Friday, September 2, this year here in the Bay of Plenty should be warning enough. In my view that was a near miss. A quake 7.1 on the Richter scale, north-east of Te Araroa rattled a sleeping Bay of Plenty. It was the worst quake to hit the North Island for 20 years, but we slept on through. A 30cm tsunami warning fizzled, but Gary says we should learn from that. If the volatile Kermadec Trench, the wave generator, had triggered a slightly different earthquake it could have thrown up a tsunami of Aceh proportions, says Gary. Travelling at 600 km/h, it could dump on Papamoa and Mount Maunganui within 50 minutes. What would we do, how would we react if that happened in the dead of night? A report commissioned for the Bay of Plenty Regional Council suggested the worst-case scenario could kill up to 900 people and cause $54 million worth of damage. The 2004 event caused Gary and his colleagues to spend 12 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars researching the technologies, trialling prototypes and pursuing funding. Their answer was the Tsunado Alert Radio, which uses broadcast radio. The most rugged and reliable method of communication proven over decades, says Gary. And he says when used with Freeview and Sky satellites, theres blanket coverage for the entire country. But Gary claims to have run into an immovable wall of indifference and inertia with the Tsunado system. He claims in 2014 it got unanimous support from regional civil defence organisations. But since then nothing. To clarify, says Clinton. We havent changed our minds, we only ever trialled this technology. But Civil Defence is thinking differently to Gary its looking at alert systems based on cellphones. "There is a difference between alerting and information, says Gary. Cellphones arent alert devices because they can be switched on to silent at night or switched completely off. And nature doesnt always bring on its wrath during the day. And who, he wonders, would respond to a text message in the middle of the night? Gary says mobile phone technology is fragile. In a real-life disaster scenario, its almost always been found cellphones fail quickly and become an ineffective means of communication. And the cell towers that send these messages often go down. The Emergency Management Group says all forms of technology are risky to one degree or another. And thats why its important people understand natural warning signs for a local source tsunami, like an earthquake that lasts more than a minute and is strong enough to knock you off your feet. Head inland or to higher ground. And it recommends having a battery-powered radio in your survival kit. Exactly, says Gary. When all else is failing in a disaster situation, broadcast radio and satellite systems dont have the same vulnerabilities. They keep on transmitting. Once activated the Tsunados radio speaker can be automatically turned on to a broadcast radio message or a text message displayed on-screen. Gary says people need to be alerted and they need good, clear information to act on. People will respond quickly only if they trust what they are hearing, particularly in the middle of the night. Tsunado alert radios have a managed power system so when running on battery they only turn on to receive alert messages. That allows them to last 5-10 days without recharging. Emergency services had previously tried to communicate using sirens, but even if people hear them, they dont communicate the necessary information of what to do, says Gary. The Callaghan Institute bankrolls technology and product research and development; and in 2013, in a vote of faith, gave Gary $255,000 matching finance to complete the Tsunado system. It helped develop a central warning activation system we call Tsunado Central. This manages the whole alerting process, and allows emergency managers from all regions to set up and configure alert profiles. This includes who needs to know, what is to be said, and where the messages need to go. Gary says his company has done everything to say this is a good way to help save lives. But if something happens and people die, thats the worse thing for me that a difference could have been made, and no one took it up. The car is painted a strikingly beautiful metallic blue with a white racing stripe down the center. The second car ever to be built on Ferraris production line and supposedly one of only 39 ever produced by the company, the 250 GTOs were produced between 1962 and 1964. It also holds the distinction of being the first such car to be raced in the 12 hours of the prestigious Sebring race in Florida in 1962. It is a beautiful Ferrari, the Holy Grail of classic cars, and it has a great racing history having finished sixth overall at Le Mans and first in class at Sebring, Talacrests John Collins told The Telegraph newspaper. According to Collins, he has already had one offer for the car and expected to receive interest from many more potential buyers. In May 2012 the 1962 250 GTO made for Stirling Moss became the world's most expensive car in history, selling in a private transaction for $38,115,000 to US communications magnate Craig McCaw. Sedella, where the man was arrested. :: SUR A 56-year-old British man was arrested for drug trafficking in the Axarquia town of Sedella last Thursday. A European arrest warrant was issued by a court in St Albans in the UK in 2014 after 3.7 tonnes of cannabis resin were seized from a lorry transporting furniture from Malaga to Essex in the same year. The man was responsible for the transportation contract at the time. The Brit was caught in the vicinity of his property in Sedella by National Police officers who had been sent to the town on advice that he might have been in the area. Trafficking class B drugs of this quantity can carry a prison sentence of 14 years. The outcome of a court hearing in Madrid is not yet known and it is unclear as to whether the man has been extradited back to the UK or not. Local firms use M&A route in German move Updated: 2016-11-14 07:55 By Yu Ran(China Daily) A man works at the plant of Shimge Pump Industry Group Co Ltd in Wenling, Zhejiang province. [Photo/China Daily] More Chinese companies are using mergers and acquisitions of German ventures to grow their markets in Europe, while the German groups for their part are attracted by the prospect of making moves into the booming Chinese market. As one of the groups seeking to expand its overseas business through the takeover route, Shimge, the Zhejiang-based listed company, bought two foreign pump firmsWita Wilhelm Taake GmbH in Germany and Hel-Wita Sp. z o.o. in Poland in September for 13.5 million euros ($14.7 million), and is sniffing around for takeover targets in the US. "It's quite difficult for us to expand business in foreign markets, especially in Europe, where there is a concentration of major and mature industrial leaders. We acquired those local companies for their advanced technology, experienced staff members and existing market," said Zhang Yongqing, the strategic advisor of Shimge Pump Industry Group Co Ltd. Meanwhile, Goodbaby Group, China's biggest manufacturer and retailer of baby-care products, has already gone down a similar road with its international M& A strategy. In 2014, the company, based in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, made its first acquisition of Cybex GmbH. The takeover of the German brand of premium car seats meant a wider exposure in Europe and its entry to the high-end car-seat marketplace. "We are keen to offer high-quality and updated products, with cutting-edge design and technology for consumers, by acquiring advanced and creative brands to speed up the innovation," said Liu Tongyou, the company's vice-president and chief financial officer at the German-China Forum for Investment and M&A 2016 in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. In the same year Goodbaby Group bought US group Evenflo Co Inc. The large manufacturer of infant consumer products, including car seats and feeding bottles, was acquired for $143 million and represented a move forward in the US mid-class market. Currently about 70 percent of Goodbaby's business has been switched to international markets including Japan, North America and Europe, while the remaining 30 percent is from China. Lifted by the central government's strategy, more Chinese companies have stayed with their strategy of investing and purchasing overseas companies. Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce show that Chinese companies completed a total of 521 acquisitions worth $67.4 billion this year in 67 countries and regions covering 18 industries. The amount has already surpassed last year's total of $54.4 billion. In particular, M&A deals done by Chinese companies in Germany keep surging. A total of 37 acquisitions of German companies were completed in the first half of this year, against the total amount for 2015 of 39. One of the highlights was the Midea's 4.5 billion euro purchase of industrial robot maker Kuka. "More Chinese companies are willing to purchase small and medium-sized German family businesses for their experience and technology while German companies also need investments to pull them out of the economic slowdown," said Zhang Ning, senior associate of CMS, a global law firm covering services in 34 countries. However, there are failed examples. Statistics from consultancy PwC show that over 50 percent of overseas acquisitions failed. The report from the Ministry of Commerce also found out that only 13 percent of the overseas projects were making profits. "It is essential for companies to carry out a detailed examination of the firms into their background, financial condition and tax issues with the support from experienced law firms to avoid purchasing a failing project," said Zhang, who every week meets dozens of Chinese clients wanting to acquire German companies. Maximilian Foerst, Zeiss' president of South Korea, France and China. [Photo provided to China Daily] Having been Zeiss' president of South Korea, France and China, Maximilian Foerst, has proved himself as an effective leader by presiding over a period of rapid revenue growth in all those regions during his tenure. China was the sixth biggest market for Zeiss when Foerst came to China eight years ago and now it's the third biggest market for the company. He modestly attributed their success to those companies always providing innovative products and outperforming the competitors. "China, by far, is the most dynamic market for Zeiss. Even though the country is seeing a slowdown in the economy, there is still substantial growth potential," said Foerst. He said he believes that a healthy economy cannot keep a double-digit growth in the long run and the reform China is undertaking currently is good for its sustainable development. "China cannot always rely on cheap labor to compete with foreign counterparts even though the labor advantage has helped the country's economic development in the past," he said. "Eventually, the country needs to strengthen innovation, which is what the Chinese government is encouraging right now." The word "innovation" is not new for the Oberkochen-headquartered German company which focuses on optics-related research and manufacturing. "Our company is built on innovation," said Foerst. Up to 11 percent of the company's employees are working in R&D and more than half a billion euros ($544 million) is invested in the sector annually. A staff poses with an ExoLens on a mobile phone at the Zeiss booth on the Photokina, the world's largest fair for imaging in Cologne, Germany, September 20, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] In China, it's the same. "We valued innovation a lot since the company's establishment," said Foerst. "To be closer to our customers, we established our China innovation center in 2012 in Shanghai. Currently, there are 50 engineers, of whom 98 percent are Chinese and focusing on products for expanding the Medical and Microscopy markets," he said. "Chinese engineers bring their understanding of local market requirements and the potential of the local supply chain. We hire people in the center who can turn innovative ideas into customer-oriented products," he added. "I try to help our employees realize their ideas in the company and provide them with the support to do so," said Foerst. "We do not tell them exactly what to do, as in this way they have the freedom to be innovative in achieving their targets. We recruit employees who like this type of environment, to enable both the company and the employees to be more successful at the same time." In Zeiss' 170 year's history, it has contributed to the general advance of scientific development by offering not only high-quality microscopes but innovation in many other areas. As Zeiss has continued to forge its deep relationship with progress, Foerst himself has had a deep relation with the company. He joined the company as project manager of Zeiss Group Internal Consultant in Germany in 1995 and spent more than 21 years with the company in different business units and regional markets. He said there are three main factors that determine business success. "These are how you train people, how you focus on people and how you interact with your customers. All the success we achieved in China has related to how we invested in our team to enable them to better support and interact with our customers," he said. Facing fierce competition for skilled employees in the market, Zeiss nonetheless has a much lower employee turnover rate compared with the average. Many people in Zeiss Germany have been working in the company for over 30 years. The company's global employee turnover is as low as 4 percent. In Shanghai where Zeiss China's headquarter is located, the city's annual employee turnover rate is 17 percent while Zeiss China's turnover figure is just 7 percent. "People stay with us because they see our company and their personal success in the future," said Foerst. "We are a very stable company with stable management." Zeiss is not publicly listed and the Zeiss foundation controls the company, which has given it an advantage for long-term planning and investment in high-end technologies, which may not always be conducive to short-term profit returns. Even so, Zeiss is in fact a very profitable company. For the first six months of the 2015/2016 fiscal year to March 31, the company realized a 5 percent year-on-year revenue increase to 2.3 billion euros, according to the company. Foerst said his group will keep investing heavily in China, focusing on areas that the local market needs. The company has major business segments including semiconductor manufacturing, industrial metrology, microscopes, medical technology and vision care. UAE, China ideal places for youths to advance careers: survey Updated: 2016-11-14 11:09 (Xinhua) DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China are the most preferred emerging-market countries among young people who would like to live abroad to advance their careers, a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey presented Sunday showed. In the survey whose findings were presented in a media briefing, the two Asia countries ranked as the most preferred emerging market countries, in 11th and 12th place, respectively, ahead of the Scandinavian countries, all other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries and Singapore. The United States, United Kingdom and Canada led the list. The survey was released on the occasion of the opening day of the two-day WEF annual meeting of the global future councils, the brain storming session with over to the WEF in Davos. The survey, organized by the Global Shapers team of the World Economic Forum, surveyed around 20,000 millennials aged 18-35 about a wide range of issues concerning business, the economy, politics, technology and values. Respondents from 187 countries and territories took part in the survey, with most coming from China, the United States and India. "The UAE's appeal lies in the enviable fact that the country is increasingly synonymous with an attitude that nothing is impossible," said Adeyemi Babington-Ashaye, Head of the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum. "The UAE combines excellent opportunities for young people and start-ups with a competitive economy and sends a clear signal that, if you want to build the future, come and build it in the UAE." As a whole, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) respondents were among the most optimistic about the future impact of technology on jobs, a factor which may explain the attractiveness of countries in the region such as the UAE, said the WEF in an e-mailed statement. Chinese aircraft manufacturer launches internet-based, global 'Moore Cloud' platform Updated: 2016-11-14 11:15 (Xinhua) LOS ANGELES - COMAC America Corporation has launched the "Moore Cloud Civil Aviation Technology Solutions platform," an internet-based virtual R&D, technical consulting and technology transaction online platform. "This is one of our explorative initiatives. The internet-based R&D platform will first aim to solve talent issues we are facing for researching and developing C919, and the future wide-body aircraft project," Jin Zhuanglong, chairman of the Board of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), told Xinhua. According to COMAC America Corporation, the new platform focuses on building an internet-based and global platform for civil aviation technology transaction, virtual R&D and technical consulting. The project aims to connect project resources and human resources in both China and the United States. "Moore Cloud" platform has three-stage missions. In the short-term, about one to three years, the new platform will support COMAC Series and provide quick and accurate technical consulting services. COMAC America Corporation plans to solve 5 percent of outsourced R&D demand in the first year. Mid-term mission in about three to five years, the project aims to expand to civil aviation industry both home and abroad; And the long term mission in about five to 10 years, the project intends to extend to high-end complex system industry, and strive to build a COMAC civil aircraft "Virtual R&D Platform." The day COMAC America Corporation launched Moore Cloud platform is on Singles' Day, China's annual online shopping extravaganza on Nov 11. Seen by many as China's version of Black Friday in the United States, Singles' Day has grown into a huge battle for market share among Chinese e-commerce companies. The most eye-catching event is Alibaba Group's Global Shopping Festival. According to the company, sales on its platforms hit a record 120.748 billion Chinese yuan ($17.8 billion) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the 24-hour event on Friday. "It is amazing how much Internet has changed our life," Ye Wei, executive director and president of the COMAC America Corporation told Xinhua. A refresh of Apples flagship laptop, the MacBook Pro, likely will be the highlight of an event scheduled for this Thursday at the companys headquarters in Cupertino, California. The update to its flagship MacBook line couldnt come at a more critical time. Apple has been under increasing pressure from Dell, Lenovo and others in this space and needs to up its game considerably lest it be accused of neglecting notebook users and customers, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Apple will make a play for corporations at the event by focusing on specific business class qualities in the new products. That would emphasize the value the company has gained from its partnership with IBM, King told TechNewsWorld. But frankly, he added, Apple needs to make a far better case for the benefits its products offer to corporate customers than it has in the past. OLED Touch Bar One of the new features likely to grace the MacBook Pro is an OLED touch bar above the keyboard, which reportedly will be similar to the butterfly keyboard found on the 12-inch MacBook. The bar would perform a variety of functions for example, display notifications, identify open apps, and control parts of the operating system. As cool as the bar sounds, its overall impact on the laptop will be minimal, maintained Jeff Orr, senior practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research. Maybe theres some productivity efficiencies that can be gained by it, but its not going to fundamentally change the product offering, he told TechNewsWorld. More USB-C Ports The new MacBook Pro also is expected to have four USB-C ports. Apple has been losing market share because it hasnt kept its MacBooks up to date, particularly on the port side, said Bob ODonnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research. Thats a big issue with USB-C becoming a standard port, he told TechNewsWorld. Now the MacBook will have all standard ports in a way that we havent seen for quite some time from Apple. With the addition of the USB-C ports, some ports may be dropped. Could one of the ports targeted for elimination be the headphone jack, already scrapped from the iPhone 7? I dont think they will, because most people plug in external speakers through the headphone jack, said ODonnell. However, they could make a philosophical statement by taking it out, he added. Apples rationale for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 was to provide a great experience thats wire and cable free, and to save space within the unit, Orr noted. Those arent motivators for doing that with the MacBook, he said. Whats more, Mac owners may not be ready for such a change. After the release of the iPhone 7, Orr said he heard Apple customers remark, At least I can still use my audio products on my Mac. Thunderbolt 3 Forecast The addition of more USB-C ports on the MacBook also could mean Apple is ready to embrace Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt is a hardware interface developed by Apple and Intel. The first two generations of the technology connected devices to a computer through a Mini DisplayPort, but Thunderbolt 3 uses a standard USB-C port. Im expecting updated MacBooks with modular features enabled through ThunderBolt 3 over USB-C, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. This can enable even thinner designs but with the ability to connect to much higher performance graphics and storage if desired, he told TechNewsWorld. iMac and 5K display Some other features Apple watchers expect to see in the new MacBook Pro are a fingerprint scanner, which would facilitate the use of Apple Pay from the laptop; the addition of AMD graphics; and up to 2-terabyte solid state drives. There are rumors that Apple will offer the laptops in a variety of new colors, such as space gray, silver, gold and rose gold. A new 13-inch MacBook Air with USB-C ports also might be introduced. Its been rumored that Apple could announce some new iMacs and a 5K display as well. While not total discounting those possibilities, highly regarded Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities indicated they are highly unlikely. However, even if those products were announced at Thursdays event, they wouldnt be ready for shipping until next year, he noted. Maybe Apple is planning another event for that time that would be for all its desktop models: the iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro. Years ago, I worked as one of Rev. Robert Schullers body guards (it was something to do on Sundays, I wasnt particularly religious) and one of his sayings was when given lemons, make lemonade. Personally, I wasnt excited about either presidential candidate, but I actually think Trump could be a better technology candidate than Clinton would have been. That is because she just didnt seem to fundamentally get why a personal email server was a huge security breach, nor how classifications actually work. That was during a time when the nation was under a massive cyber threat and still is. After the election, I looked into which candidate best used technology and which one seemed to have a better grasp of what is needed. You might ask why I waited until after the election, and that is because my best example didnt exist until 10 days ago and wasnt disclosed until last week. Ill close with my product of the week: the BlackBerry DTEK 60, which is the best secure phone currently in the market. It blends an Android user experience with what is arguably the best security solution in the general market. The Role of Analytics Ironically, in both the first and second Obama elections, the president trounced his Republican rivals largely by using a very experienced and very effective analytics team. Sadly, that competence didnt transition with him into office. However, his team set the standard during the elections. That was particularly fascinating to watch during the second election, against Romney, because youd think, given that analytics is a business tool, Romney would have been better with it. While Obama deployed a small experienced team, Romney used two companies that cost far more and didnt have election experience. Thus Romney entered the final days of his failed campaign thinking he was going to win just like Clinton did. During the final 10 days of the campaign, Trump pivoted his analytics effort to better target his limited resources, unlike Clinton who had a much larger budget. Until last week, the use of analytics was one of the big annoyances for me in this campaign. Both sides seemed to know that the polling data was worthless, and Clinton surely had access to Obamas campaign resources. Trump supposedly ran casinos, which live or die largely on analytics. Yet neither seemed to be able to spell analytics. In the end Trump fixed his problem, and that likely bodes well for his term. Now I can certainly argue that part of the reason Trump fixed it is because he didnt like the results he was seeing, and the reason Clinton didnt is that she did. Regardless of the reason, Trump did pivot to ensure the quality of the information he was given and he has shown a tendency to reuse things that work for him. Ill hope that isnt just a fluke. Given that the foolish war in Iraq was largely the result of bad, biased, and corrupted intelligence, any move to assure the accuracy of data is a critical one. The Cybersecurity Issue I missed this completely until I got a report from the ITIF on Trumps technology positions. I was clearly unimpressed with Clinton, thanks not only to her use of a private email server, but also her seeming inability to grasp how big a problem a mistake like that was. Trump seemed just to want to use that event to advantage, though, and also didnt seem to grasp the true gravity of it, nor be very articulate on cybersecurity. It appeared both candidates were clueless. Apparently, I missed a meeting. While Trump has few positions, he actually has a strong one on cybersecurity. He has argued that the U.S. has obsolete cybersecurity capabilities and is falling behind other countries, according to the ITIF, and both of those observations are correct. He has argued that cyber has to be part of our thought processes. He also has promised to enforce stronger protections against Chinese hackers and that U.S. responses will be swift, robust and unequivocal. While Id personally like to omit the Chinese part of this a response strategy should apply to anyone, not just China but it is a solid step in the right direction. Trump doesnt have a lot of positions, which suggests the ones he does have will get the greatest focus. The fact that he calls out cybersecurity so prominently is a good sign. Peter Thiels Influence Peter Thiel largely stood alone in the tech industry in his support of Donald Trump during the campaign. He clearly has his detractors, but from a standpoint of understanding the market, there are actually few better. Thanks to his unwavering support, hell have Trumps ear better than any identified resource that Clinton had. Mark Cuban was in Clintons camp but, unlike Thiel who spoke on technology, Cuban was positioned mostly as a billionaire who didnt like Trump. Both by nature of the topic and how he was used (and frankly, Cuban is a bit of a gadfly) Thiel should have a bigger positive impact on Trumps use of technology than any identified person in the Clinton camp. That is strange, given that Silicon Valley supported Clinton almost unanimously. However, particularly in tech, quality always trumps quantity, and there seemed to be no technical depth on Clintons side, which suggests that like Obama, she would have disappointed in this regard. Wrapping Up The U.S. currently leads the technology market, and it has been painful to watch the last two presidents largely ignore both promoting it and using it effectively. South Korea, Singapore and even China are using technology more effectively than the U.S. is, making those countries far more competitive. This is the part of Trumps winning message that both annoys and excites me. We have the tools to make the country a more efficient, safer, and far better place to live and work, but our leaders often dont even seem to understand the basics of those tools, and seem far more focused on sticking it to their rival party than sticking it to a rival nation. There is at least a chance that Trump will take a different approach, because he isnt a politician. At this point, Ill take that chance to form a foundation for hope and given that we dont really have a choice, use that as the foundation of my support for the new president. This is another thing I dont get. With all of the security risks we have coming from criminals and countries, both domestic and international security should be a higher priority for all of us. Last time I looked at the cost of identity theft, the estimate was a whopping $250K and nine man-months of work. Thats months, and only an average, yet we mostly take security as more of an annoyance than a requirement. Weve largely had to trade off fun and attractive against secure for, well, ever. That changed with the DTEK60 which is a surprisingly attractive phone from BlackBerry. Like the LePro3 I reviewed last week, this phone both uses the 820 class of chipset from Qualcomm and the current-generation Android operating system. This phone trades off the bigger battery of the LePro3 for a more svelte look, which is my only objection, because BlackBerry used to be known for massive battery life. Still, it will run most iPhones into the ground, so the battery life isnt bad. Ive gone up to two days in normal use without charging. On spec, it will go 24 hours in mixed use. It has a Quad HD 5.5-inch OLED, which is pretty much the new ideal size right now. BlackBerry DTEK60 In appearance, this phone has glass both front and rear, and it easily is the best-looking BlackBerry on the market. Ive been checking the BlackBerry forums, and there are tons of complaints on this phone because it only works with GSM vendors like T-Mobile and AT&T and not Verizon or Sprint (yet). Apparently there is a significant amount of lust for this thing among BlackBerry users. The DTEK60 has a back-mounted fingerprint reader, which is critical for a secure phone. It has a nice 21-MP back camera and 8-MP front camera, and it uses both a USB-C port and a traditional headphone jack. (Im surprised how annoyed iPhone users are about losing that jack. I hear that complaint from them almost daily). As youd expect, this phone has the full suite of BlackBerry features from secure boot (preventing against rootkits) and BBM, the companys secure messaging platform. It works incredibly well with Exchange, and my full set of Android apps loaded fine and worked. It even has a programmable physical button that Ive set to activate the camera and make me a tad quicker on the picture-taking draw. This is the second Qualcomm 820 series phone Ive tested, and if these things are representative of the class, an upgrade was certainly worth it. Im a long-time BlackBerry user, and this is the best damned BlackBerry Ive ever used, and one of the best phones Ive ever tested. However, the big thing is that in a hostile world, this could well keep you safe. Im a big fan of safe, so the BlackBerry DTEK60 is my product of the week. Microsoft is facing investigations into alleged anti-competitive practices after Eugene Kaspersky filed complaints with Russian and EU watchdogs over Windows 10. The anti-virus developer claims the Defender security software that comes bundled with the OS tramples over similar third-party products. Kaspersky says his biggest issue with Microsoft is the fact that the company has cut the amount of time given to developers for Windows compatibility testing from two months to six days. Should Windows 10 detect incompatible security software, the operating system will shut it down and run Defender instead. In a lengthy blog post, titled "That's it. I've had enough!," Kaspersky wrote that this is a deliberate tactic on Microsoft's part to stop people using third-party anti-malware programs. Microsoft, on the other hand, says the shorter time is due to it releasing more builds at an increased frequency. In his complaint, Kaspersky asks regulators to force Microsoft to "provide new versions and updates of Windows to independent developers in good time so they can maintain compatibility of their software to Windows." Kaspersky also wants Windows to inform users that their security software is incompatible and will be removed before an upgrade takes place, rather than after the upgrade is complete - which is the case now. Even when a program is compatible, warnings will appear informing users that Defender is off - along with a button to turn it back on. Once it is activated, third-party products are disabled. Kaspersky says that both developers and Windows users suffer because of this behavior. Anatoly Golomolzin, deputy head of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), said that Microsoft has "unjustified advantages" when it comes to pushing people toward Defender, and his agency will be investigating the matter. "Our task is to ensure equal conditions for all participants on this market," he said. Microsoft said in a statement that it hasn't yet received a notification from FAS. The company didn't comment on the EU complaint. Amazon on Monday morning announced the expansion of Amazon Home Services, the service that lets shoppers hire local professionals to help out with all sorts of around-the-house tasks. Amazon in late 2014 quietly launched a service that would let shoppers hire installation professionals when purchasing applicable products (hire someone to mount that new TV on the wall, for example). The company rebranded the service in 2015 and expanded its reach to include handyman-type jobs in a bid to compete with similar offerings from Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, Handy, Thumbtack, Facebook Professional Services and others. Today's expansion brings Amazon Home Services coverage to these additional 20 metro areas: Santa Rosa, CA; Ventura County, CA; Boulder, CO; Greater Bridgeport, CT; New Haven, CT; Brevard County, FL; Cape Coral, FL; Sarasota, FL; Indianapolis, IN; Ann Arbor, MI; Raleigh, NC; Trenton, NJ; Las Vegas, NV; Cleveland, OH; Allentown, PA; Lehigh Valley, PA; San Antonio, TX; Milwaukee, WI; Richmond, VA and Hampton Roads VA/NC. Angie's List is considered to be the market leader in the local professional-for-hire industry but as TechCrunch highlights, the company has found itself in choppy waters as of late. After turning down a $512 million acquisition offer from IAC subsidy HomeAdvisor last year, Angie's List is now laying off employees and considering alternative strategies. The e-commerce giant hasn't poured a lot of marketing dollars into its Home Services division, instead electing to more or less let it grow organically - a strategy that appears to be paying dividends. Since the rebrand last year, Amazon says the number of service providers it has attracted has increased more than 1,500 percent. Nish Lathia, General Manager of Amazon Home Services, says customers can now search over 1,200 unique services from qualified handymen in more than 60 professions. Image courtesy Angie's List Zebra and quagga mussels, the best known Great Lakes invaders, reduce the ability of native mussel species to move, feed and breed. Authorities have already come up with several means to deal with these invasive mussel species that have been spreading in bodies of water across the U.S. Officials have provided decontamination services to boat owners and resorted to using special chemicals such as liquid potash to eliminate infestation of these invasive species in bodies of water. Now, Montana is trying a new strategy to deal with these pests. The state has trained dogs to pick out the scent of the zebra and quagga mussels to identify them before they can infest a new area. Mussel-Sniffing Dogs Just like their counterparts that have been trained to sniff out bombs, the dogs have been trained to use their sense of smell to detect adult mussels. Once they smell these mussels, the dogs bark to inform their trainer of the presence of the invasive species on the hull of the ship. The dogs are deployed to boat-inspection areas, where they ensure any ship that enters the domain does not carry the unwanted creatures. After scientists discovered mussel larvae in a reservoir in Montana, three dog teams were sent to other lakes in the state to assess the shoreline and see if any more of these invasive species managed to slip into the area. The dogs would jump into the boats with their handlers to be transported to distant shores, where they would sniff out the invasive species of mussels under the rocks and along shorelines. "These dogs are accurate and efficient at boats," said Cindy Sawchuk, whose dog named Hilo helps search for the invasive mussels at Lake Tiber in Montana. "This is like a new application of that skill." Detecting the invasive species can be challenging because of their small size. The larvae, for instance, are microscopic but the dogs are able to find the mussels even if these are still as small as a seed. Threats Posed By Invasive Mussels Invasive species pose threat to biodiversity because they are capable of causing extinction to native animals and plants as they compete with native organisms for limited resources. Invasive species also cause economic harm. The zebra and quagga mussels, for instance, have already cost the country billions of dollars in attempts to locate and eliminate them over the past three decades. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An aspiring weatherman in Kentucky has been charged with arson after he allegedly started a wildfire and then uploaded the video on Facebook. The 21-year-old Johnny Mullins admitted to the crime of starting the wildfire, according to the local police chief. Starting A Wildfire For Facebook Views "It's really too bad because he's not a bad kid he's just misguided," said Jenkins, Kentucky police chief James Stephens. Mullin likes making Facebook videos and then having people follow him as he does his "weather forecast," Stephens said. He called the videos as his "Weather Outlook" segments. "So that's pretty much why he did what he did. He enjoyed the attention he got from the Facebook stuff," Stephens added. Mullins has received charges of second-degree arson. Requests for comments did not receive any response from Mullin. The Price Of Facebook Attention Ever since social networks started, users have been craving to gain attention from other users. Mullins is certainly not the first user to have wanted to get the attention of others on Facebook, but his actions certainly warranted criminal charges. "He didn't realize how much danger he was putting other people in," said Stephens. Wildfires, while possibly starting out very small and tame, can intensify into uncontrollable flames at a moment's notice, What Mullins did in order to gain views on his Facebook video was largely irresponsible, as it would have endangered not only him but the rest of the people living in his community. It is not clear, however, how much damage was caused by the wildfire that Mullins started. Wildfires In The Southeast The wildfire that Mullins started was just one of the at least 30 wildfires that have started in the region since Nov. 4. More than 5,000 firefighters from all over the country are helping to put out the flames. In Tennessee, a firefighter was hospitalized due to carbon monoxide poisoning after helping extinguish a fire in White County. A man from the state was also charged for starting fires and vandalism which caused damages worth over $250,000 outside of Chattanooga. In Harlan County, also in Kentucky where Mullins was charged, a teenager was also arrested for arson last week. Other Wildfire News It was reported back in June that due to the El Nino phenomenon, there could be more cases of wildfires in the Amazon rainforest this year. Spikes in the number of wildfires in Alaska around the same time were also suggested to be contributing to the worsening state of global warming. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Kickass Torrents (KAT) owner Artem Vaulin had filed a motion to get the charges against him dismissed, but a U.S. court rejected it. The torrents world continues to shake and it's in deep waters, just like Vaulin. The KAT owner was arrested in Poland back in July and charged with copyright infringement in the United States The U.S. court firmly denied the motion, arguing that KAT has been serving as a "flea market for infringing" content, Christian Daily reports. KAT was among the world's biggest torrent sites and Vaulin's arrest was among the first signs of trouble, which didn't take long to materialize. Kickass Torrents shut down, followed by Torrentz' demise, shaking the torrent scene to the core. Vaulin keeps fighting though and he got a powerful ally on his side: Ira Rothken, the lawyer who managed to keep Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom free for years. Torrents Are Not Copyrighted Material In seeking to get the charges dismissed, Vaulin's legal defense team argued that torrents are not copyrighted material and KAT operated similarly to Google, indexing BitTorrent files instead of other search results. Since torrent files are not illegal, operating a torrent search engine should not be illegal either, the defense team argued. Despite Rothken's compelling argument, however, the motion did not achieve its goal and the U.S. refused to drop the charges against Vaulin. The court dismissed the arguments, denied Vaulin's motion to dismiss his indictment and argued that KAT helped users grab infringed content. KAT Functioned Like A (Lucrative) Flea Market For Infringing Files "These indexed files enabled users to obtain copyrighted content from other users, including from the defendant's own servers," the court argued in an 18-page response [pdf] shared by TorrentFreak. "KAT therefore functioned like a (lucrative) flea market for infringing movies, television shows, video games, music, and computer software." U.S. attorney Zachary Fardon went as far as to compare Vaulin's motion for dismissal with a drug dealer's wish to get immunity because "he never touched the drug." Conspiring With Aiding And Abetting Copyright Infringers Fardon added that Vaulin operated KAT and the website included features that purportedly encouraged users to commit copyright infringement. Vaulin may not be the one who committed the copyright infringement, but he and his associates, now co-defendants, may still face charges of conspiring with aiding and abetting those KAT visitors who did commit copyright infringement, Fardon further said in his final argument. It remains to be seen how things will pan out, but it seems like a long road ahead. In the meantime, the torrent world continues to shake, with more torrenting sites facing trouble. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Steel industry to focus on high quality products Updated: 2016-11-14 16:06 By YANG ZIMAN(chinadaily.com.cn) A worker at a steel factory in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province, August 10, 2016. [Photo/VCG] Foreign companies will be encouraged to participate in the reorganization of Chinese steel companies, under a plan to cut crude steel production released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The development of iron and steel (2016-20) plan, released Monday, states that Chinese steel companies must be further internationalized through equity sharing and holding, to improve product quality and management. Chinese steel companies will be encouraged to build production and processing bases in key markets for the Belt and Road Initiative that have good natural resources and market potential, and are also home to high-speed train and power projects. Foreign companies are invited to join China to undertake projects in countries along the belt road. Under the plan, the amount of crude steel capacity in China is to be cut by up to 150 million tons, to less than one billion tons by 2020, as demand for the product drops. Any project that aims to expand steel production capacity will be banned. Xin Guobin, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the steel industry must adopt intelligent manufacturing to reform itself. "We have overcapacity in low-end products while the high quality products are still lacking. The Chinese economy needs more sophisticated steel products for more technology-oriented industrial development," said Xin. The domestic consumption of crude steel is expected to be 650-700 million tons by 2020, less than the estimated output of 750-800 million tons. The plan also requires energy consumption in the steel industry to be reduced by more than 10 percent while major pollutants must be cut by more than 15 percent. The biggest 10 steel companies are predicted to make up about 60 percent of the industry by 2020, up from the current 34 percent. The number of steel companies is to be reduced as efforts are concentrated on building high-quality steel bases in Zhenjiang Port (Guangzhou) and Fangchenggang Port (Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region). Companies with high ratio of liabilities to assets must prioritize debt reduction. A new international study revealed on Monday good news for the planet amid looming uncertainty on the climate change policies of President-elect Donald Trump. Worldwide carbon emission levels did not increase in 2015 and remained flat for the third year in a row in 2016, said climate researchers from the Global Carbon Project and the University of East Anglia (UEA). In fact, carbon dioxide emissions from industry and burning fossil fuels are expected to rise a meager 0.2 percent in 2016 from 2015 levels. This meant that worldwide emissions flattened to 36.4 billion metric tons, making 2016 the third consecutive year with negligible change, researchers said. Temporary Blip Or Permanent Trend? The authors of the study believe it is far too early to conclude that the world has reached a peak in carbon emission decline. They said it is unclear whether the flat carbon emission level is a temporary blip in numbers or a permanent trend. However, some experts are optimistic, saying the dip in numbers could be the "turning point" they have hoped for. Professor David Reay from the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, said that to fight against climate change, the bonds between carbon emissions growth and economic gains must be broken. "[H]ere we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen," said Ray. Plot Twist: Slowdown Is Driven By China The biggest surprise, however, came in the source of worldwide carbon emission slowdown, which scientists attributed to the decrease in consumption of coal in China since 2012. Coal is a huge source of carbon dioxide emissions. "So far the slowdown has been driven by China," said Glen Peters, co-author of the study. Peters said China's climate change policies would become the dominant force in the future because the country accounts for almost 30 percent of global emissions, followed by emissions from the United States. The report said Chinese carbon dioxide emissions decreased 0.7 percent in 2015 and are estimated to dip 0.5 percent in 2016. While researchers noted that energy statistics from China have been plagued with inconsistencies, they said the reductions in emissions still offer hope that the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases can deliver ambitious reductions. Looming Uncertainty By contrast, carbon dioxide emissions in many countries continue to rise, the report said. In India, emissions rose 5 percent in 2015. Furthermore, the pro-coal policies of President-elect Donald Trump could put the climate action course set by his predecessor Barack Obama into danger. Trump has called climate change a "hoax" and has mentioned pulling out the United States out of the Paris climate change accord. He has also pledged to scrap Obama's Clean Power Plan, which was designed to lessen carbon pollution in the country. Meanwhile, Peters believes the growth of carbon emissions in the coming years will depend whether climate and energy policies can establish and lock in new trends, and more importantly, push for consistency to reach the goals of the Paris agreement. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Dutch Innovator Turns Air Pollution Into Jewellery | TechTree.com Dutch design project Studio Roosegaarde is known for the mesmerising Icoon Afsluitdijk (Gates of Light), sustainable dance floor, and installations at Netherland's Schiphol airport. However, lead by Daan Roosegaarde, the studio's biggest innovation is a giant outdoor air purifier called Smog Free Project. After a successful trial in Rotterdam, the Smog Free Project has arrived where it is needed the most. Placed in the heart of Beijing, this 23-feet machine sucks-up the pollutants in the air. Using the ionisation technology, the giant air purifier cleans 30,000 m3 per hour. The Smog Free Tower collects more than 75% of the PM2.5 and PM10 airborne smog particles and releases clean air in 360 degree. The collected pollutants are then compressed and turned into jewellery such as ring and cufflinks. These products are priced at 250 euros (approx Rs 18,000). By buying one of these items, you can donate 1000m3 of clean air. Daan Roosegaarde claims that numerous trips to China prompted him to build this machine. The Smog Free Project is a part of Daan's bigger idea 'Landscapes of the Future', which uses technology to improve the quality of life in urban environments. Considering the latest report that lists Delhi as the most poluted city in the world, there is a good possibility that the Smog Free Project will soon be showcased in India's capital city. According to UNICEF, in some neighbourhoods of Delhi, the pollution hit 999 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter, which is way beyond the safe limit for humans. TAGS: Pollution Abatement Samsung Will Acquire Harman To Enter The Connected Auto Market | TechTree.com Korean technology giant Samsung is planning to buy Harman International Industries. The deal is said to be worth around $8 billion. Harman has over 30 million vehicles currently equipped with its connected car and audio systems. Hence, the move will help Samsung enter the currently glowing connected car solutions market. Last year Harman sold over billions of dollars of products in the connected car section. Moreover, its relationships with automakers will also come in handy for th Koreans. Samsung promises to enhance Harman's product line-up with its top-notch screen technologies, UI/UX expertise, and security solutions. The American company has brands such as JBL, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, AKG, Lexicon, Infinity, and Revel under its umbrella. The company also licenses Bowers & Wilkins and Bang & Olufsen brands for automotive. The acquisition will also aid the Korean brand to deliver large-scale audio and visual solutions at concert halls and stadiums. Samsung will gain access to Harman's 8,000 software designers and engineers with expertise in IoT (Internet of Things). Once the deal is closed, the Harman will operate as a standalone subsidiary. Its current CEO Dinesh Paliwal, will continue to lead the company. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. However, Samsung will have to wait for regulatory approvals on the deal. TAGS: Samsung Electronics Disruption for the Better Emerging Challenges and Trends Empowering Initiatives and Collaborating SACRAMENTO, Calif. Tech leaders face a new barrage of challenges and opportunities with every new development. Some technologies spur reactive action and force uncomfortable changes, while others can be shaped into positive outcomes that better services the business of governing.How those in command of state assets and operations react to new developments make all the difference. This was the topic of discussion for one group of panelists the Techwire California Industry Forum* Tuesday, Nov. 8.With no way to stop the flood of new technologies, government has turned to embracing them as a tool for positive change. Connected devices and the ability to analyze enormous amounts of data empowers agencies to tap into hidden opportunities and better tailor the services they provide.From the perspective of CalCloud Project Director Scott McDonald, connected devices and the constant evolution of analytics capabilities put the state in front of a substantial opportunity, but the shift is also forcing cultural change.The exponential growth of connectivity between people and devices, it really is changing the way we look at IT, he said. There is the expectation that we are going to move faster, really time-to-market per se. Were going to really streamline how we get these systems out a lot quicker. But at the same time, we really have to address the security behind this thing too Data analytics, which has been largely accepted as a cant-live-without tool for government everywhere, also creates the need for qualified interpreters to digest the information. This inherently prompts cultural and organizational changes.As Franchise Tax Board CIO Cathy Cleek contends, the transformation process is as much about people as it is about the technology. While she recognizes change can breed fear, she acknowledges that it also creates learning opportunities that should not be ignored.We as leaders, when we are trying to transform, people want to put a bad news label on it, she said. Some of the situations that are hard at first, you learn your best lessons.The key, she added, is leadership and the ability to direct despite the obstacles and opposition.Amid a sea of potential challenges, Scott Gregory, chief of the state's Office of Digital Innovation, said he prefers to view them through the lens of opportunity in different stripes, all while recognizing the end goal of serving the state and its citizens more effectively.When I look at challenges this may sound a little cliche, but I look at them as opportunities in work boots, he joked. "I think that we always have to be recognizing [that] at the end of the day, the folks that pay our salaries, the people we serve that we are all collectively working to make California better.Though Gregory said he is cautious of the trends and buzzwords that fly around in the technology space, he is optimistic for advances being made in open data, data-driven decision-making, and hybrid and fully open source solutions.Weve taken a monumental step forward in engendering a new sort of approach to leveraging open source technology in the state, he said. We released the very first-of-its-kind California Innovation Lab, so that is giving individuals and organizations an opportunity to leverage open source technology to solve real-world problems.Cleek agreed and said data analytics holds the solutions to many of the problems facing agencies throughout the larger state enterprise. The ability to better target issues holds promise in areas like social services, fraud prevention and overall service delivery, she said.She also looks toward artificial intelligence as a potential for government to capitalize on the rapidly advancing technology, especially as it relates to high volume citizen-to-government operations.One potential application, Cleek said, is in call centers where incoming calls far outnumber the ability to answer them in a timely manner.Every call center I have ever worked with gets more calls that they can answer," she noted, "and I just think it is really exciting what we may be able to use artificial intelligence to answer people's questions.Regardless of the perceived barriers to innovation, the panel concurred on the importance of partnering throughout all levels of the enterprise. For Gregory, engaging beyond the executive levels of the organization is key to the success of any tech-centric initiative. While he said he engages at the top rungs of the ladder, he also said the production-level staff or as he explained it, the people doing the heavy lifting are almost more critical to any project.Cleek said that at the Franchise Tax Board, she leverages three stages of on-boarding for stakeholders for her projects. The first is knowing key problems partners are facing, second is leveraging deputies to help convince decision-makers, and third is keeping the conversation based around tangibles.One area where partnerships have been successful is the sharing of data between state and federal agencies. In her role at the Franchise Tax Board, data sharing between agencies like the IRS and Department of Motor Vehicles has helped the agency to improve operations, such as finding the correct information for citizens that owe the state money.I think a lot of time in government we all have the same customers," she said, "so lets share the data if we can use it to help each other." Local pension funds will be allowed to invest in stocks Updated: 2016-11-14 08:03 By Li Xiang(China Daily) Pensioners gather for a Peking Opera-based group activities at a pension center in Yanjiao, Hebei province. [Photo/China Daily] Low returns on bonds and deposits, plus aging population, raise questions whether they will be able to pay obligations China will likely officially allow pension funds to be invested in the stock market within this year, with analysts saying the move will help boost market confidence while the long-term impact on risks will only gradually appear in the coming years. The first batch of provincial governments will be able to sign contracts with the National Council for Social Security Funds within this year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said earlier. Under the contracts, the NCSSF, a national social security reserve and a major institutional investor, will invest and manage the funds on behalf of the local governments. The value of China's pension funds stood at 3.99 trillion yuan ($600 billion) at the of end of last year, according to official data. Regulations allow a maximum 30 percent of the fund's total net assets to be invested in securities, including stocks. Gao Ting, head of China strategy at UBS Securities, said that the actual amount of capital entering the market initially will not be large and as a typical medium- to long-term funds, the impact on market risk preference is likely to gradually appear in the next few years. Gao added that the pension funds will likely have real estate and healthcare as their preferred sectors. For years, China's pension funds could only be invested in low-yield bank deposits and treasury bonds. Between 2008 and 2015, the average rate of investment return by pension funds was only 2.9 percent. The rapidly aging society in China also poses challenges for the management of the pension funds, sparking concerns on whether the funds would be sufficient to support the aging population. The government has been reforming the regulations on pension funds, including broadening the permitted investment channels and granting greater investment flexibility. In 2012, the central government initiated a pilot program to allow the NCSSF to manage the pension funds on behalf of local governments. Guangdong and Shandong provinces have already received regulatory approval to entrust their pension funds, worth about 200 billion yuan, to the NCSSF for investment in the domestic capital markets. It is estimated that about 240 to 300 billion yuan will initially enter the market, accounting for less than 1 percent of the overall capitalization of the A-share market. "The short-term effect will be minimal given that the initial amount of capital will be limited. But, it will help boost investors' confidence and will be positive for big-cap stocks," said Dai Kang, an analyst at Huatai Securities Co Ltd. The Venezuelan president described the day with his Colombian counterpart as fruitful, intense and extensive. | Read More Duterte open to support Chinese-backed FTAAP: official Updated: 2016-11-14 17:35 (Xinhua) MANILA - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is open to support free trade deals, including the Chinese-led Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Monday. Leo Herrera-Lim Sr., a senior assistant of the DFA-Office of International Economic Relations made the remarks during the briefing in Malacanang, the presidential palace, of President Rodrigo Duterte's attendance in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru later this week. "I think for the Philippines and President Duterte, he's been open to anything that contributes well to the Philippine economy. So we are not closing the door on any economic integration or free trade because I think we understand that free trade by itself penetrates the greater population," he said when asked if Duterte is keen on joining the FTAAP being pushed by China. He said the only thing that Duterte would like to see is that any free trade agreement would not disadvantage any of the sectors in the country. During the 2014 APEC summit in Beijing, APEC member economies pushed forward the process of the FTAAP by sketching out a historic roadmap. China has been pushing for the FTAAP and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). "RCEP is still alive," Lim said. Duterte will join other 20 APEC leaders in the APEC Summit on Nov 19-20. Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton Americans must decide on Wednesday morning. And Asia is watching carefully because the policies and approaches of whoever wins the competition will have important repercussions. No matter who wins this most dramatic presidential election race ever, there will be strong implications on the world, Thailand included. The Republican Party has, arguably, been becoming increasingly anti-free trade since the Tea Party began putting pressure on Congressmen. Bank of America recently released a survey of small US business operators which found they are worried about the impact of policies concerning employment and private investment. For the medium term, a Trump victory would mean a radical change in tax, fiscal and trade policies, the latter of which would likely lead to more protectionism. A Trump presidency would likely reduce the role of the US in Asia, which could affect trade activity in the region, said SCB EIC. Trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) In order to benefit from Asias enormous growth potential, President Obama negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in order to promote wider free trade. But this landmark deal is now likely to be watered down at best or even scrapped, by whoever wins the presidency. I think Hillary Clinton will be preferable for Thailand in the long term based on their trade policies, said Charl Kengchon, managing director of Kasikorn Research Center (K-Research). Mr Charl expects Mrs Clinton will not reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, rather modifying it before signing to avoid damaging her reputation. In winning the Democrat nomination, Clinton had to be seen to be skeptical of trade deals including the TPP, which she helped introduce. On the other hand, Isara Vongkusolkit, chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said Thailands trade is likely to be negatively affected if Mr Trump wins the election, given his radical campaign policies. Wiboonlasana Ruamraksa, the commerce permanent secretary, said Mr Trumps policies, particularly concerning tax incentives, personal and corporate income tax cuts to convince US companies to stay at home and create more jobs, import tariff hikes and opposition to the TPP agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement, would lead to protectionism. But as a result, an agreement could be reached later than expected, benefiting Thailand as a late participant in the deal. But Mr Trumps view on free trade agreements has always been negative, especially those concerning China and Mexico, which he claimed have caused Americans to lose a lot of jobs. If Trump really cancelled the free trade agreement with China, it would definitely affect Chinese exports to the US, indirectly affecting Chinas imports of raw materials from Asean, including Thailand, said Mr Charl. Politics and geopolitics : tough on China stance could hurt Thailand Both U.S. presidential candidates are promising to be tough on China. This can, arguably, simply be seen as political rhetoric. This could hurt Thailands position, as the military government is increasingly shifting its foreign policy from a US-centered position to mostly Chinas friendly. Nearly all candidates for decades have played this tough card in elections but once in power, no president can ignore the might of Chinas economy and its international influence. A Clinton victory would result in a more hawkish foreign policy, and more support for NATO, than from Trump. With something for everybody, Thailands booming tourism industry shrugs off coups, political upsets, natural disasters, even occasional bombs. Depending on who you ask and how you count, Thailands tourism sector accounts for somewhere between 12% and 18% of the economy, and continues to grow, employing some 6.2 million people directly and indirectly, which is about 16% of the workforce. In 2015, after a 10% drop in arrivals amid the political shenanigans of 2014, the kingdom earned $44.6 billion from resurgent tourism. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, that placed it in sixth place on the global tourism league table by gross revenue ahead of Germany and Japan. The target set for 2016 was $69 billion in revenue from 33 million arrivals that is nearly ten times the number who arrived for 1987s Visit Thailand Year, widely considered a marketing triumph at the time. As the number of tourists soars, their profiles have changed dramatically. With over 8 million of its citizens expected, China has become the kingdoms largest source market, leading a dramatic shift away from traditional markets like Europe, Japan, and the US with higher per capita yields. The figures are dizzying, but what do they do mean and is it all good news? Panel Discussion 7 pm, Wednesday November 16, 2016 at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand Penthouse, Maneeya Center Building 518/5 Ploenchit Road (connected to the BTS Skytrain Chitlom station) Patumwan, Bangkok 10330 Tel.: 02-652-0580 Web Site: http://www.fccthai.com Dr Bert Bow-Thai van Walbeek, is a 45-year tourism industry veteran who first arrived in Thailand in 1985 as a hotelier. He is a member of the marketing committee of the Thailand Incentive & Convention Association (TICA) and was founder and first president of the Thailand Chapter of Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE). Among numerous career highlights as an adviser to governments on tourism policy, marketing, and crisis management, van Walbeek chaired the Tourism Authority of Thailands marketing working group for recovery after political violence in May 1992, which produced The Word, Our Guest campaign. Sa-nga Ruangwattanakul is an adviser to the Khaosan Road Business Association, which he chaired for two years. With more than 25 years experience in the tourism sector, Sa-nga is also the chief executive of Buddy Group which has bars and restaurants in the vicinity of Khaosod Road. Imtiaz Muqbil is one of the best known travel trade correspondents in Asia-Pacific. He has reported from Thailand since 1980 with Travel Trade Gazette Asia, becoming its chief correspondent. He edited Issues & Trends, the monthly publication of the Strategic Intelligence Centre of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) for eight years until 2006, and wrote the Travel Monitor column in the Bangkok Post for 20 years until 2012. He launched Travel Impact Newswire in August 1998 at the dawn of the era of email news delivery dawned. Roy Howard worked on the launch advertising campaign for Thai Airways International in late 1959, and became the airlines first advertising manager working alongside FCCT founder Jorges Orgibet. Roy founded Travel Publishing Asia in 1982, which for many years produced Thais inflight magazine, Sawasdee, and a number of regional publications, including Asian Meetings & Incentives. He has spent the past two years editing Thailand Tourism, The Early Days, a large format book about how tourism in Thailand grew from less than 100,00 tourists in 1960 to todays 32 million plus. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission The East Baton Rouge Parish school system had a decent financial cushion prior to the August floods, but the millions its costing to repair flood damage is using up much of that money. The pre-flood picture was made clear earlier this month as part of the school systems annual audit, covering the fiscal year that ended June 30. The school system ended the 2015-16 fiscal year with $59.2 million in the bank available for emergencies. Thats $16.8 million more than the reserves it was predicting back in April and $9 million more than the amount the school system had at the end of the prior fiscal year. The flooding forced an immediate draw on that $59.2 million: Ten schools and four administrative buildings were severely damaged. Twin Oaks Elementary was repaired and reopened Oct. 10, and the former Prescott Middle, now a charter school, returned to that campus, though its only been partially repaired. The initial damage estimate, released days after the flood, was $50 million at a minimum. The final price tag is likely to be substantially more. Adonica Duggan, a spokeswoman for the school system, said just cleaning up and remediating the flooded buildings is costing between $25 million and $35 million. Replacing 68 flooded school buses and repairing others cost another $9 million, she said. The costs of repairs and renovations, a process known as build back, is going to cost yet more, but how much more is not clear. Now that we have identified architects, we can expect to have preliminary numbers on costs for repairs of damaged sites within the next 60 to 90 days, Duggan said. The school system is getting some money to help cover these costs. Its flood insurance claim is netting $10 million. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is authorized to reimburse flood damage costs up to 90 percent. FEMA, however, has complicated rules about what it will pay for and what it wont, so its unclear how close to 90 percent the school system will get. Also, FEMA reimbursements can take months or even years to come through, which has been the experience of New Orleans public schools since 2005s Hurricane Katrina. The parish School Board is set to approve its annual audit, done by the firm Postlethwaite & Netterville, when it meets Thursday. Since 2010, the school system has cut its budget annually because of a mix of tight state funding, a variety of expenses and growing competition from charter schools that have drawn money and students from the parish system. That budget-tightening, plus conservative revenue forecasting, has allowed the system to maintain its financial reserves. This school year, for instance, class sizes have increased substantially in middle schools. Alternative schools have also been merged and health insurance premiums for many employees and retirees are set to go up in January. During the 2015-16 school year, the school system overall took in $590 million and spent $585 million. The general fund, which accounts for 74 percent of spending, didnt fare as well, with spending growing almost 3 percent, while revenue grew only half as much. The general fund is the systems primary source of unrestricted money to pay for operating expenses, to finance new initiatives or to cover emergencies like the recent flooding. Freddy Smith, an auditor with Postlethwaite & Netterville, said the school system needs to keep working to prevent future deficits. A deficit is generally not good, Smith said. But this deficit is better than what you budgeted for. And you have sufficient fund balances to cover it. Charter schools remain a big cost driver. The cost of in-house and independent charter schools grew by $4.6 million in 2015-16 from the prior year. Costs are expected to grow substantially in the future as new charter schools come online and existing ones continue to grow. There are other warning signs in the audit. An accounting change requires the school system to include its employee pension liabilities as a cost on its books. Just two years ago, before the change, assets outweighed liabilities to the tune of $257.3 million. Now, with estimated pension costs figured in, liabilities outweigh financial assets by $265.4 million. And a spot review of the the school systems federal Title 1 antipoverty program found problems. A change in accounting rules required auditors to look at the accuracy of student graduation records. There was some missing documentation with respect to students who have left the system, Smith told the board. Auditors clear many cases in EBR graduation report, but most records missing An auditing firm hired by the East Baton Rouge Parish school system has re-examined hundreds This is not the first time problems in graduation records have caused issues. The auditing firm previously conducted an extensive review of graduation records in 2014 in the wake of an investigation by the Louisiana Department of Education. The investigation occurred after a student was allowed to graduate despite being short a required course credit. This years audit also noted a phishing scheme in which the school systems chief business operations officer in May wired $46,500 to an online con artist; the system has managed to get back all but $10,000 of the missing money but the perpetrator remains at large. Postlethwaite & Netterville also conducted a separate audit of those wire transfers and turned up no evidence that any school employees were part of or benefited from the fraud. Despite the black marks, the auditors have issued an unmodified opinion saying the school systems basic financial statements are sound. The school systems finance office this year again received a certificate for excellence in financial reporting from the Chicago-based Government Finance Officers Association. Gov. John Bel Edwards questioned the value of public school letter grades, criticized how teachers are evaluated and said he has concerns about a newly-approved overhaul in teacher training. The governor made his comments to a joint meeting of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents and the Louisiana Association of School Executives. Letter grades and other key public school policies are undergoing reviews by the state Department of Education and a rival panel named by Edwards, which is set to make its initial recommendations next month. Edwards said labels assigned to public schools and districts are "not that fair." He said he has long questioned the value of the grades since, years ago, a school his children attended in Amite that provided top-flight education was rated "F." "That has colored my perspective," said Edwards, a former member of the House Education Committee. Louisiana public schools and districts are assigned school performance scores, and corresponding letter grades, based mostly on how students fare on key tests. Results of this year's performance are set to be released later this month. How to revamp Louisiana public school letters grades a bubbling controversy Controversy began brewing Monday on how far the state should go to revamp the way long-debat Backers contend the marks give parents and other taxpayers an easy way to see how schools are doing. But the governor said a study done by the University of Colorado concluded that the grades only reflect the level of poverty in schools. How grades are calculated is one of the key topics of an ongoing state review of public school policies. In another area, the governor disputed a key premise behind annual teacher evaluations. Part of how teachers are evaluated is linked to the growth of student performance. Edwards, who made his comments Monday, questioned how exams can be used to both measure student achievement and shed valid light on teacher performance. "So we just need to restore common sense to what we are doing," he said. The annual reviews, which have sparked controversy for years, have been advisory only in recent years during the state's move to tougher academic standards. Stephen Waguespack, president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, criticized Edwards' comments. Waguespack, a former top aide to ex-Gov. Bobby Jindal, said under former Govs Mike Foster, Kathleen Blanco and Jindal "the state has been on a 20-year march to reform our education system." "I worry that in recent months we are starting to reverse that, and I think it is a big problem," he said. In a third area, the governor said he has concerns about a new teacher training policy approved last month by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. BESE narrowly endorses overhaul in teacher training In a sweeping change, Louisiana's top school board Tuesday voted to overhaul the ways teache Under the new rules, prospective teachers will have to spend one year in the classroom, working with a veteran teacher mentor, before they meet degree requirements. That is more than double the current benchmarks. Backers say the change will address concerns from many teachers that they were ill-prepared for the classroom. Edwards said that, while additional preparation makes sense, the plan may cause students to pursue other degrees and enter the classroom through easier paths, such as alternative certification. The growing alternative certification movement allows undergraduate holders who want to teach to earn a certificate in 12-18 months from universities or organizations. He said costs of the overhaul are another worry, a comment echoed by other critics of the new policy. Backers say the changes can be done for $7.5 million in the first three years and that $67 million in federal grants and other assistance is also available. Edwards also downplayed his differences with state Superintendent of Education John White, who he vowed to replace during his 2015 bid for governor. The governor said White, who works for BESE, is working in good faith to help students. However, Edwards said there are sometimes "fundamental differences" with the superintendent that have to be hashed out. White's department is in the midst of a nearly year-long review of school policies sparked by a federal law called the Every Student Succeeds Act. Edwards named his own advisory panel to do a review, sparking predictions that the two would clash on possible changes in letter grade calculations and other issues. He said he expects agreement on the two studies in some areas. "I don't believe we are fundamentally opposed," the governor said of his panel and the department review. "We are not fighting this big war." Edwards praised public school gains, including the state's 77.5 percent high school graduation rate and a 3.5 percent improvement among black students. The price of going to a public college or university in Louisiana is going up again for students starting school in the coming weeks. President-elect Donald Trump's surprise win means Louisiana public schools will enjoy new flexibility and more freedom in ongoing plans to revamp classroom operations for the next school year, officials said. Education leaders also said they expect less federal involvement on issues like transgender students' access to school bathrooms, which sparked nationwide controversy, and how Louisiana allocates vouchers, which was challenged by President Barack Obama's administration. "He is supportive of giving states more say versus the federal government on what is going on in education, which I think is fantastic," said Jim Garvey, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and also a Republican. However, public schools were not a key topic of Trump's campaign. Education was well behind immigration, trade and health care as hot-button topics for most of the campaign. Officials of both parties said much of what the incoming president wants to do about education is sort of a black box. "I just think it is far too early to judge what he will do, if anything," said former Senate Education Committee Chairman Conrad Appel, R-Metairie. The lone exception, Appel said, is he thinks Trump's win means federal education dollars will arrive in Louisiana with fewer strings. State Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, a veteran member of the House Education Committee, also said it is hard to tell how education will fare. "I think we would be jumping the gun to say anything would be done that would be detrimental to public schools," she said. Trump did propose a $20 billion federal plan to expand school choice for low-income students. It resembles Louisiana's program to aid low-income students attending troubled public schools by issuing vouchers to attend private schools. The Republican president-elect talked about scaling back or even shuttering the U.S. Department of Education. Trump also blasted Common Core, but new rules allow Louisiana and other states to have the final say on the new benchmarks in reading, writing and math. Where the incoming president will have an effect, officials said, is likely by giving states more room to overhaul school policies in time for the 2017-18 school year. State Superintendent of Education John White and others have led a state review of school rules to comply with a 2015 federal law called the Every Student Succeeds Act. One of the key issues is how to change the way controversial public school letter grades are calculated. How to revamp Louisiana public school letters grades a bubbling controversy Controversy began brewing Monday on how far the state should go to revamp the way long-debat One spending regulation that has come under fire, and may be dumped by Trump forces, would essentially require schools to make wholesale changes in who teaches where, which some GOP leaders have called overreach. "I think there are some elements of the (Every Student Succeeds Act) regulations that you would imagine the Republican administration will take a hard look at," White said. Brian LeJeune, president of the Louisiana Association of Superintendents, said the state's review of how to revamp public schools should slow after Trump's victory. Plans call for the state's top school board to sign off on a plan for federal review early next year, possibly in March. LeJeune said that, while a Hillary Clinton win likely would have kept the Every Student Succeeds Act mostly intact, no such assumption exists after Trump's victory. "We would like to see things slow down," said LeJeune, who is superintendent of the Jefferson Davis School District in southwest Louisiana. Others have said Trump's win could mean a new timeline for states to come up with plans and how those plans are reviewed by federal officials. "Our timeline has been governed not by the federal government so much as to have a plan in place at the beginning of the school year rather than the middle of the school year," White said. Trump's win will mean changes for the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on school discipline and other issues, according to Education Week magazine. Student suspensions is a hot topic in education circles, including disparities in the number of white and black students tossed out of classrooms. In May, the U. S. Department of Education and the U. S. Department of Justice issued "Dear Colleague" letters that said public schools must allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their chosen gender identity. That sparked criticism from 32 state House members and the state's congressional delegation. Eva Kemp, state director of Democrats for Education Reform-Louisiana, said her group was disappointed by Tuesday's results. In an email, Kemp said "the simple fact is that nobody knows what a Trump presidency will hold." She also said Trump's $20 billion proposal would be financed with dollars stripped from the U. S. Department of Education, robbing the agency of dollars for vital student services. House Education Committee Chairwoman Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette, said she views Trump as a backer of school choice, including vouchers and public charter schools. Landry said he was encouraged to hear that former GOP presidential contender Ben Carson has been mentioned as a possible secretary for the Department of Education. "Carson backs accountability and high standards," she said. White said federal officials have a limited effect on public schools. "The thing about education is that most education issues are addressed by the states, not the federal government," White said. "The federal government is a small player in the funding and education planning aspect." The cold, hard reality is setting in for TOPS recipients this week. They are receiving letters from colleges and universities reminding them that the popular scholarship program will only cover about 40 percent of their spring tuition. The Taylor Opportunity Program for Students has traditionally covered full tuition for all students who reach mid-level academic benchmarks, including a 2.5 GPA and a 20 on the ACT. But this year, because of state funding shortfalls, the $300 million program was not fully funded, and recipients of the award will be forced to pay up this January. "We constantly hear legislators state how they want to keep their word and they don't want to break promises to business and industry, but now they're breaking their promises to these kids," said Thibodaux resident Kevin George, the father of an LSU freshman. "There are more things that could have been done to fully fund TOPS and a majority of legislators said, 'No, we're not going to do that.'" Letters are going out to Louisiana's TOPS recipients this week from various schools to remind them that they will be on the hook for almost 60 percent of their semester bill. "From the moment you joined our LSU Tiger family, we have together been committed to your success, up to and beyond graduation," an LSU Student Aid official wrote in a letter to students. "The recent legislative reductions to TOPS may affect this shared goal. Where TOPS previously paid for LSU tuition in full, the current amount of funding for the spring 2017 semester will be $1,559.76." That leaves LSU's TOPS students on the hook for $2,172, plus fees. At Southern University, students who received the award will still owe $1,447. At the University of New Orleans, they'll owe $1,772 and at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, they'll owe $1,573. During the most recent Legislative session, law makers only funded about 70 percent of the TOPS program, which is the first time in its history it wasn't fully funded. The program was cut because the state was reeling from a $1.6 billion deficit. In an attempt to soften the blow, legislators passed a provision which "front loaded" the TOPS awards, so the fall semester awards were 93 percent covered, while pushing the burden of the total cut to the spring semester, which generally start in January. Some lawmakers said this would allow recipients time to get student loans to cover the difference, if they needed it. But school officials held out hope that additional dollars would be found later in the year to fully fund the program. That scenario is unlikely, as state officials are now warning that more mid-year cuts could be coming, as the state faces a more than $300 million deficit. Louisiana Higher Education Commissioner Joe Rallo said there's no reason to believe that TOPS can be saved for this year. But he's more concerned that now it will continue to be sacrificed in the future. "Unless things turn around in our budget, I don't see TOPS going back to what it used to be sadly," Rallo said. "Once you've broken through that barrier it becomes easier to chip away at." In the meantime, Rallo said, other states are capitalizing on Louisiana's misfortune by recruiting its students with attractive out-of-state merit scholarships. But at least one Louisiana public university promised to absorb the cost of the TOPS cut and keep student scholarships whole. At Northwestern State University, which has about 2,400 TOPS recipients, the school will take a $3.5 million hit to cover the spring shortfall. "We view this as a commitment to students," said Northwestern State University president Jim Henderson. "They chose to come to Northwestern State or a Louisiana university based on the promise of TOPS and we're doing everything we can to uphold that promise." But most TOPS students won't be that lucky. Alex Gissel, an LSU junior, said when he started school he'd budgeted what he would owe for the next four years based on the "promise" of what the state would give him for TOPS. "We're a middle class family. This means we're going to have to take loans out," Gissel said. "My parents have had to work overtime to pay for my college and so have I. I may be in debt by the time I leave." Can't see the video? Click here. A woman yells as she takes part in a protest against President-elect Donald Trump, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016, in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) In electing Donald Trump to the presidency, many voters expressed their anger over Washington gridlock. But the bad news, as journalist Craig Fehrman wrote in a recent article for the politics website fivethirtyeight.com, is that even state government is becoming more politically divided. Although Fehrman doesn't mention it, Louisiana lately has been an exception to the rule, and might serve as a model for Washington on how to bridge the partisan divide. Last year, voters elected Democrat John Bel Edwards governor, making him the only Democratic governor in the South. Despite losing the Governors Mansion, Louisiana Republicans maintained both houses of the Legislature. The election results seemed like a prescription for acrimony and stalemate. Edwards first year in office hasnt been easy, and partisanship remains a reality at the State Capitol. Even so, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to get things done, and in a deeply red state, Edwards approval ratings are high. How did it happen? Facing a huge budget crisis, state leaders on both sides of the aisle compromised. The governor and lawmakers agreed on a painful mix of tax increases and budget cuts to keep the state solvent. The budget is still fragile, and a new, $313 million shortfall means more cuts are on the way. The states fiscal outlook isnt pretty, but it would have been even worse without the difficult dealing across party lines. Edwards lowered the partisan tone early by appointing a Republican rival in the governors race, Jay Dardenne, as his commissioner of administration. Meanwhile, Edwards answered a series of public crises this summer's shootings in Baton Rouge and flooding throughout Louisiana seeking civic unity, not partisan advantage. That spirit of cooperation is fragile, and the hard choices ahead for Louisiana make renewed partisan rancor a distinct possibility. There might be good lessons here for Trump. The president-elect should go beyond party in building his administration. And he should answer crises as a call to the common good, not a play for partisan gain. This isnt a dramatic way to govern, but Americans have had enough drama this year. What theyd like is a government that works. One story line to emerge from Louisiana's Senate runoff pairing is that the contest between Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell and state Treasurer John Kennedy is something of a replay of last year's gubernatorial election. Campbell has the support of Gov. John Bel Edwards, and shares not only his Democratic affiliation but his economic populism and his conservative views on guns and abortion. Kennedy is backed by Edwards' vanquished opponent, outgoing U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a political ally ever since Vitter recruited him way back when to become a Republican and challenge Democrat Mary Landrieu. Operatives who worked on both sides of last year's contest are back this year too. But if much is the same, a whole lot more is different. Campbell doesn't share some of Edwards' attributes, including the West Point resume that he played up during the campaign and that seemed to resonate with voters. Kennedy doesn't have some of Vitter's weaknesses, most glaringly the prostitution scandal that Edwards skillfully exploited. But the more important factor is that a Senate seat is simply not a governorship. State politics seem to become more like the national version each year, but Louisiana government still hasn't achieved full-on partisanship. That's not just due to custom, but practicality. Budget issues tend to drive state government, and if Louisiana's voters support Republican austerity up in Washington, there's reason to believe that many of them balk at it closer to home. Last year the business community, not just advocates for low-income residents, supported Medicaid expansion. The vast middle class clearly wants to preserve fully-funded TOPS college tuition scholarships, which as I've written before, could have come right out of Bernie Sanders' playbook. Former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who ran an ideologically rigid administration with an eye towards his own failed presidential run, left office as one of the least popular governors in the nation. Up in Washington, it's a different story, and in recent years, Louisiana voters have turned Senate elections into referenda on the national parties. Indeed, the last two Republicans to win office, Vitter and Bill Cassidy, campaigned almost exclusively on their opposition to President Barack Obama. Obama may be leaving but, particularly after the presidential election we just survived, partisan emotions are still running high. Something pretty dramatic would have to happen for those feelings not to determine the identity of Louisiana's new U.S. senator. Buckman collection in spotlight at London auction Updated: 2016-11-14 07:39 By Ming Liu(China Daily) Bernard Buckman visits China as a personal guest of Vice-Premier Wang Zhen in 1979. Photos provided to China Daily The prominent auction houses Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams may have all hosted sales during Asian Art in London - an annual 10-day extravaganza ended on Saturday in the British capital - but there is a small auction house that's set to make a big splash among the heavyweights. On Monday, Chiswick Auctions will host a sale featuring the entire collection of Bernard Buckman, a key figure in Sino-British trade relations during the second half of the 20th century. Buckman traveled to China multiple times - most notably in 1979 as a personal guest of Vice-Premier Wang Zhen - and the Englishman's 120-strong collection reflects someone who was both an enterprising businessman and keen patron of the arts. It also offers a window into China during a time when it was just opening up to the world. "Buckman went to China every year from 1953 and more frequently after around 1962," says Lazarus Halstead, Chiswick Auction's head of Asian art. "He was communicating with top government officials. No (other) Westerner had that level of access." Buckman's collection runs the gamut from snuff bottles, jades and scholarly items to paintings and furniture, with price estimates starting from around $120 and going to $36,000. Baton Rouge man with lengthy rap sheet arrested as accessory in New Orleans triple murder, fire New info in Old Jefferson triple murder, fire: Uncle with lengthy rap sheet arrested Some describe it as "like floating through space". Others describe it as "a blissful swim in the ocean". Floating has officially arrived in Canberra thanks to siblings Sarah and Chris Tisdell, and so far hundreds of Canberrans have climbed into the tanks at Astral Float Studio to press mute on life for an hour. Lil Tisdell tries out one of the float tanks at Astral Float Studio. Credit:Karleen Minney Floating involves exactly that: hopping into a huge tank (2.3 metres long by 1.4m wide) and laying down in 1000L of water infused with 350kg of Epsom salt. No matter what you weigh, you'll float. When the lid of the tank closes, it's the ultimate in sensory deprivation. You can't see, hear, smell, touch or taste anything. It's just you and your mind, alone for an hour. But he also brought youthful vigour, European swagger and wide-ranging enthusiasm to the institution, overseeing the restoration of several classic Australian films, and a collaboration with international best-selling musician Gotye, whose sound and light installation brough more than 100,000 visitors to the archive's art deco headquarters. During his time at the helm here, he steered the archive through tough financial times, which involved a sharp reduction in staff and funding, and cutting the signature weekly screening program at Arc Cinema. Mr Loebenstein will return to his native Austria to head up the Austrian Film Museum, where he worked prior to moving to Canberra five years ago. The search is on for a new director of the National Film and Sound Archive, with the announcement Monday that chief executive Michael Loebenstein has resigned. Speaking to Fairfax Media shortly after gathering staff together to announce his departure, Mr Loebenstein said he was confident he would be leaving the archive "in good shape". "I would never even have considered accepting an offer or even toying with the idea of going back to Europe if I had felt that I would let the NFSA or the larger sector of our Canberra collecting institutions down," he said. "And while the hardship in a way still continues because we are seeing government appropriations and the efficiency dividend is really weighing heavily on all of us there, I think we are more stable than we were a couple of years ago. "I think that the organisation has gone through a process of renewal where we managed to take the best of the old days sort of people with the vast experience of decades and the ethos and the passion, and combine it with new and young and energetic people who've come in over the last years, so I must say I'm most sentimental these days." He said the NFSA had emerged as a leader in the digital collecting realm. You've probably never bought a product with a 'Made in Canberra' sticker on it. But that will change if two of Canberra's most successful visionaries get their way. Duncan Amos (left) and Phil Preston, of Red Robot Industries, believe Canberra is the perfect place to start a product-based business. Credit:Karleen Minney Phil Preston and Duncan Amos are setting up a creative innovation hub in Fyshwick in early 2017, with an exclusive focus on manufacturing. The new Fyshwick premises will be home to their own hugely successful photo booth manufacturing business - Red Robot Industries - but also a central place for people with big ideas to access a range of "design" professionals under one roof. "We want to have a creative space where we have a lot of highly skilled people all under the one roof - so when someone comes along with a product idea they'll basically have access to people who can help them every step of the way," Preston said. Taking a selfie in Queanbeyan? Don't forget to use the new Snapchat filter. Featuring the "iconic" suspension bridge and a blue flowing font inspired by the Queanbeyan River, the new filter is now available on popular messaging app Snapchat and ready to be used by residents and visitors to the city. The new filter. Credit:Lib Ferreira Snapchat launched globally in 2011 and to date more than four million Australians have signed up for an account. The app allows users to take and send time-limited photos and videos to friends and family. A 'filter' is a border, decoration or augmented reality effect you can place over your photo to anchor yourself to a specific location, give yourself cute animal features or change the sound of your voice. The new Queanbeyan filter was the concept of proud 2620 resident Brent Hunter, who was disappointed that Canberra, Young and Cowra had their own filters and Queanbeyan didn't. Brendan Smyth was asleep in his room on the sixth floor of the Museum Art Hotel on Wellington's waterfront when the 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck just after midnight on Sunday night. He knew what to do - drop, crawl and hang on, and that's exactly what he did as the hotel rattled around him, the mini bar emptying its contents to the floor, crockery and glasses falling from surfaces, the television falling to the floor and a crack appearing from one side of a window to the other. Andrew Barr with Brendan Smyth, Canberra's Commissioner for International Engagement; Smyth's appointment lacked transparency, the auditor has found. Credit:Rohan Thomson Mr Smyth, Canberra's Commissioner for International Engagement, was leading what was to be a 92-strong delegation of Canberra business people, academics and others to the first Canberra Week in Wellington. The event was cancelled, but ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr took off for Wellington at 11am on Monday as planned and will stay until Wednesday. Bugs, flowers and rodents on your plate Updated: 2016-11-14 07:39 By Erik Nilsson in Kunming(China Daily) Silkworm chrysalises. Pumpkin blossoms. Bamboo rats. Bon appetit! Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming, is a place where honeybee pupae, locusts, caterpillars, dragonflies and bamboo worms are deep-fried. Alive. The cooking method adds crispiness to already-crunchy exoskeletons. (Diners will discover sour ants live up to their namesake.) Things that wriggle, squirm and flutter are deprived of food for a few days before becoming meals themselves. That's to purge their digestive tracts before they're piled onto plates and snapped up with chopsticks. The tradition of enlisting insects for menus started among local ethnic groups over two millennia ago. For ancient hunter-gatherer communities, creepy-crawlies provided a foodstuff solution that was lying around - or, perhaps more accurately, writhing, scuttling and flying about. Foraging continues as a legacy, rather than a caloric necessity, and many residents earn livings netting wild bugs bound for tabletops. They sell their small swarms to markets and restaurants. The flowers commonly eaten in the city, however, come from farms. Japanese-banana blossoms are flicked into stir-fries. Chrysanthemum petals speckle cold walnuts and diced cucumber. Roses are mashed into a sweet paste that's sheathed by flaky pastry crusts. Bamboo rats are relatively rare among the local-ingredients list that many outsiders deem "exotic". But they are lurking in certain kitchens throughout the city. That said, Kunming offers plenty of fare for the less - you could say - adventurous. It's known for its varied gastronomic legacy, as the capital of China's most ethnically diverse province. Ghost chicken (guiji), for instance, takes its name from the history of ethnic Jinpo ancestral worship. Cold, boiled chickens were easy to schlep to shrines - and are delicious when drizzled with lime, chilies, garlic, mint and basil. Indeed, spicy, sour and complex persist as the strongest impulses of most dishes in Kunming's cornucopia of distinct cuisines. Wandoufu's ingredients list is itself a mouthful - pea-meal chunks, carrot strips, chopped cilantro, sesame seeds, sweet soy sauce, pear vinegar, ginger water, garlic water, brown sugar, oil chilies and fried peanut powder. Yunnan roast duck is the less-celebrated cousin of the globally acclaimed Peking recipe - but, some would argue, equally delectable. Its status is plausibly less a question of taste than a quirk of geography, since the dish hails from outside of the national capital. (It has been inscribed on the provincial-level intangible cultural-heritage list and is awaiting an answer on a State-level application.) That said, any visitor will discover Kunming's cuisine flavors a culture that stays with you - wherever you come from and wherever you're going. (China Daily 11/14/2016 page22) Shareholders in $11.5 billion commercial property company, Goodman Group must this week be wondering just how good its chief executive Greg Goodman is. The board is proposing to deliver him a bonus of as much as $16 million on top of his already hefty salary of more than $6 million. Indeed a proposal for the company's top executives to share in a bonanza of $142 million in shares none of which will need the approval of shareholders when they meet on Thursday is a stretch even though the management has done a good job. It seems that Goodman has managed to skirt the spirit of the law that requires shareholders to vote on the remuneration report at the annual meeting. Investors will be asked to approve the part that deals with short term incentives that's easy because the company has decided not to award any. The shareholders didn't like the generous long-term incentive payments last year and protested with "no" votes ranging between 30 and 40 per cent. Apart from the pain, grief and suffering, road trauma costs NSW about $8 billion per annum. According to Transport for NSW, speed-related fatalities comprise 42 per cent of the deaths on our roads. The shocking news uncovered by the Herald last week that up to 16 people have been killed in underused point-to-point speed camera zones since the cameras were installed, demands road safety be stripped from Roads Minister Duncan Gay's portfolio. Road safety is the natural enemy of mobility. That the minister for mobility (roads) is one and the same minister for road safety is as absurd as the minister for mining being the minister for the environment. The NSW government should let Gay do what he's good at: building roads. We should emulate the successful Victorian system by moving road safety to a separate ministry where there's an economic imperative to reduce road trauma. I find keepsakes and photos in these boxes. Memories of who I was and where I came from. A place that almost seems imaginary now. Here are pictures of me with family back home. Most of that family I don't speak to anymore. Most of them voted for Trump. Their support of Trump went beyond politics for me. Some readers may remember the article I wrote in May when I discovered that my mother was a Trump delegate. With my mixed-race husband and daughter, I could not reason with the cognitive dissonance of letting people into my life who support a man that embraces the endorsement of the KKK and gives hate groups a megaphone in governing a nation. And so I contribute to the divide out of hopeless resignation.I come across a photo of myself at age five in a sundress, roller skates and a cape, my mother kneeling beside me, and our dog squeezing in for the photo. I miss what I didn't know then. I miss believing in everyday heroes and the goodness of people. While I look at this photo I mentally transpose over it images I've seen in the news lately. Protest marches in the streets of my country: violence, people burning effigies of Trump, people screaming at each other. Are these my fellow Americans? They're more foreign to me than any immigrant I've met. In Detroit the day after the election, a group of elementary school children started chanting in the cafeteria at lunchtime to a table of Latino kids, "Build That Wall! Build That Wall!" Some of the Latino kids started crying. Is this the "Great America" Trumpians will build? To them I say there is nothing great, decent, or justifiable about racial profiling and violating a person's civil rights. You are no fellow American of mine. The successes of the Brexit campaign in Britain and Donald Trump's march to the White House have understandably buoyed the leaders of populist and generally far-right political parties in Europe. Until now, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, has been seen more as a disruptive influence than genuine chance in next year's presidential election. But Mr Trump's win has changed that, and Ms Le Pen hailed his triumph as heralding "the emergence of a new world". But why has it taken until now for much of the world's media to catch on to this change of mood? Anything, it seems, is possible as the political certainties of the West disintegrate in the face of the voter insurgency that led to Donald Trump's victory. Credit:AP The chance of Britain leaving the EU was considered virtually non-existent by pollsters, pundits and media. But while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe, outside London, almost 60 per cent of the English voted to leave. Mainstream English media, based almost entirely in London, had no clue as to the feelings of people in the Midlands and north. Similarly, in America, the media were not alive to what was happening outside the big cities. The New York Times said that "Tuesday night's misfire was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery and betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs." Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have contributed to the party's marginalisation in recent years. Credit:Bloomberg Democrats need to understand that, and they need to move past a complacency for which the Clintons bear considerable blame. It's hard to overestimate the couple's stranglehold on the party its think tanks, its operatives, its donors for the past two decades. Most top Democrats had vested interests in the Clintons, and energy that went into supporting and defending them didn't go into fresh ideas and fresh faces, who were shut out as the party cleared the decks anew for Hillary in 2016. In thrall to the Clintons, Democrats ignored the copious, glaring signs of an electorate hankering for something new and different and instead took a next-in-line approach that stopped working a while back. Just ask Mitt Romney and John McCain and John Kerry and Al Gore and Bob Dole. They're the five major-party nominees before her who lost, and each was someone who, like her, was more due than dazzling. After election day, one Clinton-weary Democratic insider told me: "I'm obviously not happy and I hate to admit this, but a part of me feels liberated. If she'd won, we'd already be talking about Chelsea's first campaign. Now we can do what we really need to and start over." Obama, too, contributed to the party's marginalisation. While he threw himself into Clinton's campaign, he was, for much of his presidency, politically selfish, devoting less thought and time to the cultivation of the party than he could and should have. By design, his brand was not its. Small wonder, then, that its fate diverged from his. He anointed Clinton over Joe Biden, though Biden had more charisma and a better connection with the white voters who ultimately supported Trump. Had Biden been the nominee, he probably would have won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote (which Clinton indeed got). And had Bernie Sanders been? Michael Bloomberg would almost certainly have jumped into the fray, sensing unoccupied territory in the political centre, and an infinitely saner and more capable billionaire might well be our president-elect. Democrats bungled a terrific opportunity to retake the Senate majority by ignoring the national mood as they picked their candidates. A party that prides itself on looking out for the little guy went with the biggest names it could find. That happened in Wisconsin with Russ Feingold, in Indiana with Evan Bayh and in Ohio with Ted Strickland, all of whom were defeated by Republicans who couldn't be tarred as insiders or as emblems of the status quo because the Democrats had just as much mileage on them. Republican Senator Rob Portman, of Ohio, campaigned as the outsider and the underdog, and he ended up beating Strickland, the state's former governor, by more than 20 points. Like Feingold and Bayh, Strickland could hardly claim the mantle of revolution. In contrast, Democrats had success in a House district in Central Florida that didn't initially appear to be promising turf by running Stephanie Murphy, a 37-year-old first-timer, against John Mica, 73, who had been in Congress for nearly a quarter-century. "Change" was Murphy's mantra, and, like Trump, she used it to turn inexperience into an asset. A party that keeps the White House for eight years customarily suffers losses elsewhere, as if the electorate insists on some kind of equilibrium. That happened under Bill Clinton and again under George W. Bush but not to the extent that it has happened under Obama. His presidency will end with Democrats in possession of 11 fewer Senate seats (depending on how you count), more than 60 fewer House seats, at least 14 fewer governorships and more than 900 fewer seats in state legislatures than when it began. That's a staggering toll. While the 2016 race for governor in North Carolina remains undecided, the settled contests guarantee the GOP the governor's office in 33 states: its most bountiful harvest since 1922. What is missing from this conversation, however, is recognition that skilled trades remain the superstructure on which the rest of our economy relies. We don't often talk about the importance of skilled trades, but the fact remains that these skills are the backbone of our economy. Our economy needs to diversify if we are to compete globally now, and into the future. A jobs report from 2015 found 85.5 per cent of apprentices were in full-time employment six months after completing their training, in comparison with only 68 per cent of bachelor degree graduates achieving the same outcome Credit:Jessica Shapiro We have been hearing a lot lately from leaders in politics, education and the business sector about the innovation boom and the need to grow our knowledge jobs. Thanks to a record infrastructure pipeline, construction-related trades are booming and employers are crying out for skilled workers in these areas. We're also seeing emerging sectors, like advanced manufacturing, marry traditional trade activities with higher level, technology-related skills. We need a reliable pipeline of workers to fill these jobs who will build and maintain the hospitals, railways and machines of the future. The problem is that our apprenticeship system is broken and the flow of young, job-ready, skilled workers is at a drip when we need it to be a flood. Apprenticeships, for so long the mainstay of our future skilled workforce, are in decline. In the March 2016 quarter, for example, the total number of Australians undertaking an apprenticeship or traineeship declined 10.2 per cent compared with the same period in 2015. Increasingly, young people, their parents and, often, their advisers at school, do not see an apprenticeship as a desirable career pathway. On the other hand, employers complain about a lack of job readiness and adaptability on the part of workers who are starting out in their trade. As a result, rather than take on apprentices, employers are increasingly resorting to skilled migration and other band-aid solutions. We need to solve this mismatch between what young people want from their careers and the skills employers are looking for by fixing our apprenticeship system. Global temperatures for the first nine months of the year are running at about 1.2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, closing in on the 1.5-2 degrees warming target agreed to in Paris, the World Meteorological Organization said in a separate report. The Hazelwood power station in Victoria. So why are temperatures still rising? Driving the rise in temperatures is the increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Those levels are continuing to rise even as emissions from energy and industry have flat-lined for three years. The CO2 increase was about 3 parts per million last year - the highest since records began - and 2016 is likely to be at least as fast, CSIRO researchers said last month. The most recent spurt is the result of other CO2 sources increasing but also natural variability, as the globally significant El Nino event peaked in 2015. During El Nino years, wind patterns shift in the Pacific, reducing rainfall in regions such as Indonesia and Australia. Not only is there less take-up of CO2 by plants during such years because of the hotter and drier conditions, but forest fires can be larger. The Indonesian fires alone were estimated to releasing about 16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each day in October 2015 - or more than the entire US economy, while they lasted the World Bank estimates. A switch away from El Nino to La Nina conditions in the Pacific should slow the rise of CO2 concentrations from natural sources in the next year to so. Still, it may not be long before human contributions again pick up, researchers said. Economics v politics Still, signs that Chinese and American emissions from fossil fuels are dropping will give some heart to those worried that a Trump presidency in the US will unwind efforts to curb such pollution and also prompt other nations to reduce their ambition. Donald Trump has said he would "cancel" America's support for the Paris deal and encourage more coal, gas and oil production. US emissions fell 2.5 per cent in 2015 and are forecast to drop another 1.7 per cent this year. Dr Canadell said the President-elect's pledge to revive the coal industry would likely run up against lower-cost gas supplies, while renewable energy costs continue to decline. "Even if you take the foot off the climate policy pedal, you won't change the trend because it's being driven by economics," he said. The tale of China is also one of sinking emissions - down 0.7 per cent in 2015 and likely to drop another 0.5 per cent this year - although the drivers are less clear. "It is hard to say whether the Chinese slowdown is due to a successful and smooth restructuring of the Chinese economy or a sign of economic instability," said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a co-author of the study. "Nevertheless, the unexpected reductions in Chinese emissions give hope that the world's biggest emitter can deliver much more ambitious emission reductions". If Chinese emissions stabilise, global growth may return as additional pollution in developing countries such as India exceeds cuts in the US, European Union and elsewhere, Dr Peters said. "In fact, the emission pledges in the Paris Agreement lead to growth in global emissions of up to 1 per cent per year until 2030," he said. India's emissions from fuel use and industry rose more than 5 per cent last year, and are likely to continue to increase as India looks to double domestic coal production by 2020, the Global Carbon Project said. (See chart below of major nations' emissions.) The Turnbull government has pledged to cut Australia's 2005-level emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030, and last week ratified the Paris accord. Record heat The latest report by the World Meteorological Organization said the record global warmth so far in 2016 included India and Russia reporting their hottest January-September periods. Boosted by the El Nino, the rate of increases in global sea-levels has surged, rising 15 millimetres during the November 2014-February 2016 period. While sea-levels are "remained fairly stable" since February as the El Nino in the Pacific faded, the recent increase was a marked acceleration from the post-1993 trend of 3 to 3.5mm per year, the WMO said. The extent of Antarctic and Arctic sea ice is also currently running at record low levels for this time of year, researchers say. Loading The ABC and "elite media" are to blame for distracting people from the government's focus on economic growth, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, at pains to emphasise that he is in touch with the concerns of real people. Grilled by the ABC's Leigh Sales on 7.30 about the persistence of Coalition MPs seeking to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the Prime Minister agreed that the issue is not a priority for the electorate. "How many Australians do you reckon sat around on Saturday night and said: 'Geez, you know what I am really worried about? Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act'," Sales asked on Monday night. "Well it isn't a subject on everybody's lips, I can assure you of that but it is, it raises, there are important issues relating to free speech but you're right, it is not the big issue Leigh, is the one that I spent eight weeks of the election campaign talking about which is the economy, it is about jobs and growth," Mr Turnbull said. Washington: Canberra's get-out-of-jail card on the future of the hundreds of Australia-bound refugees on Nauru and Manus Island may have a very short shelf-life, with the head of a prominent US anti-immigration think tank warning: "This is the kind of thing the Trump administration will nix on Day 1." At the weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull revealed a "one-off" deal with Washington, under which, for 1800 detainees in the Australian operated detention facilities, resettlement in the US would be an alternative to returning to their home countries or remaining in Nauru indefinitely. Washington has not confirmed the deal publicly. But, after a brutal US election campaign, in which "illegal" immigration was the most bitterly contested policy, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the influential Centre for Immigration Studies, predicted a "firestorm" of opposition from anti-immigration activists. "It's so difficult to justify," he told Fairfax Media. "I don't expect any Republicans will defend it. I can't see a lot of Democrats defending it either. My sense is that when the word gets out on this, it'll be dead on arrival." Ivana Trump has expressed an interest in taking a role under her ex-husband's presidency. Speaking to the New York Post on Sunday, the president-elect's first wife said she would like to be appointed as the US ambassador for the Czech Republic. "I will suggest that I be ambassador for the Czech Republic," she said. "[That] is where I'm from and my language and everybody knows me." Prowling an otherworldly underworld Updated: 2016-11-14 07:39 By Erik Nilsson in Kunming(China Daily) The Bat Cave is host to stalactites that curl like claws since they've been windswept by breezes for eons. Erik Nilsson/China Daily Jiuxiang is a portal to the realm beneath ours - that is, not only below the Earth's surface but also deep into our subconscious. Locals view the cavern complex's formations like a Rorschach test, identifying the shapes of mythical beings, everyday objects and everything in between in the stalactites, stalagmites and columns. White Elephant Cave, for instance, takes its appellation from its perceived resemblance to said pachyderm. Its entrance is believed to look like a key - the loophole of which unlocks sunrises every morning. It's spanned by a natural bridge, upon which a man appears to pore over a book while facing a tortoise. The aerosol that wafts from where the river jets into the cave below imbues the scene with a misty mystique and occasionally paints rainbows. It doesn't take much imagination to see the Fairy Paddies, a 100-square-meter terrace of flowstone pools that tumble 10 meters from their highest point. The geological park claims it's the world's largest such formation. Some pools created by the rock dams are big enough to bathe in. Others are "microscopic", signage says. The Fairy Party Hall is occupied by a huddle of columns likened to a mingling of deities. One stalactite is said to resemble a hanging roast duck - perhaps slung for their divine feast. The Jade Flowers are neither jade nor flowers but rather merely resemble blooms made from the mineral. And the "teeth" that jut from the mouths of caverns make it seem as if you're walking into the jaws of Earth itself. Faced with a president they probably didn't vote for, Twitter users have found solace in an unlikely place: Barack Obama and Joe Biden's friendship. Since the president and his VP met with their successors, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, on Thursday, social media has been awash with imagined scenarios between the pair, as they prepare to hand over the keys to the White House. The memes, which have been popping up on Twitter and Facebook, feature Biden thinking of pranks he and Obama could pull on Trump. "Obama: Did you replace all the toiletries with travel size bottles? Biden: He's got tiny hands Barack, I want him to feel welcome here," one reads. Following in the footsteps of Australia's "I'll ride with you" social media movement after the Lindt Cafe siege, some Americans are wearing safety pins to stand in solidarity with immigrants and other minorities. As anti-Trump protests around the county continue, the campaign encourages those wanting to fight against intolerance to wear a safety pin on their jackets and shirts to show solidarity with women, the LBGTQ community and groups alarmed by Donald Trump's election win and the vitriol both he and some of his supporters displayed during the gruelling campaign. The movement is an American interpretation of what many Britons did in the aftermath of the shock Brexit decision. "So I have an idea similar to #ridewithme to help protect those eing [sic] abused as result of Brexit referendum - but I need your help," @cheeahs, the Twitter user who launched the trend, said back in June. The body of a man has been found at a construction site at Homebush in Sydney's west, police say. A man phoned triple zero about 4.45am on Tuesday to say the body was lying in the bucket of an excavator at the construction site on Park Road. Police and paramedics arrived and confirmed the man had died. They set up a crime scene, and are investigating the cause of the man's death. The man has not been formally identified. A suspicious fire has ripped through a former NRL star's pub, gutting the building and triggering a police investigation. Emergency services called to former North Queensland, Parramatta and Canberra player Jason Smith's Toowoomba pub about 11.30pm on Sunday saw large flames dominating the entire top floor. Former NRL player Jason Smith's Mill Street Tavern has been badly damaged by fire. Credit:7 News/Twitter No one was inside the Mill Street Tavern at the time and it took eight fire crews an hour to control the blaze. A Queensland Fire and Emergency spokeswoman said the hotel was still smouldering about 8.30am on Monday. Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has again rejected claims the social network affected the US presidential election, saying it is "extremely unlikely" news hoaxes changed the outcome. Ensnared in a string of content controversies in recent months, Facebook is insisting it is a technology company, not a media firm. But scrutiny of the site has heightened since the surprise election of Republican Donald Trump, with critics alleging the site helped spread lies via fake news stories and hoaxes. Zuckerberg vehemently defended the network against such criticism at a news conference on Thursday and then echoed the same stance in a post late on Saturday, though he said the company would do more to prevent fake news. Such hoaxes represent a sliver of content shared on Facebook and because they are not limited to partisan views or politics, it is unlikely they could have changed the election's outcome, Zuckerberg said. When Glenn Seymon's bike was snatched out of his front yard this year he didn't expect to see it for sale on Gumtree. After the distinctive $3500 Cervelo Soloist 2008 road bike was snatched from the front of his Pascoe Vale home in July, he did everything he could to get it back he reported the theft to police, he put out flyers in his local area and lodged its details on a new database of stolen bike reports. "It was heartbreaking," he said. "I had used the bike to ride through the Alps so I had an emotional attachment to it." The head of a gang who had others kidnap and repeatedly bash a man over a drug debt has been jailed for five years and four months. Chris Patris, a 47-year-old man with reported links to the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang, had associates take the victim to a house in Officer, where the man was bound and beaten in a garage and assaulted in the kitchen on May 13 last year. Gang boss Chris Patris reportedly has links to the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang. Credit:Rohan Thomson County Court judge Michael Bourke said the victim was kidnapped and then beaten over a perceived drug debt worth thousands of dollars. At one point two men drove the victim in Patris' white Holden Statesman towards Traralgon, where it was suggested the victim could direct the men to others who owed money, Judge Bourke said. A fisherman has drowned after falling off Mordialloc Pier in wild weather in the early hours of Monday morning. The man, who was fishing on the popular pier fell into the water and while other nearby fishermen desperately tried to rescue him using nets and poles, they were unable to save him. Despite the tragedy - and the wild weather - there were still fisherman on Mordialloc pier on Monday morning. Credit:Penny Stephens His body was found in water at the pier, off Beach Road, just before 3am. His death comes after the bureau yesterday issued strong marine wind warnings for areas including Port Phillip Bay, western coasts and Gippsland. The federal government is set to announce that it has come to an agreement with the Andrews government on how to spend the money that was to be used to fund the now scrapped East West Link project. But there is anger about the announcement - the first the Andrews government learned about the "agreement" was when the Herald Sun tweeted its front page on Monday night. Federal Transport Minister and Victorian MP Darren Chester is expected to announce $1.5 billion of federal funding for a range of road projects, including a $1 billion upgrade of the Monash Freeway and other projects such as the M80 ring road, and $690 million for rural and regional roads. Mr Chester has agreed to hand over the $1.5 billion but, despite releasing the funds, he told radio station 3AW on Tuesday morning he still hoped a future Victorian government would build the East West Link. A Perth man accused of murdering Mitchell Finnerty and attempting to kill two others during a triple shooting will be released from prison after state prosecutors dropped all charges. Brock Johnston, 27, was previously charged with the murder of young father, Mitchell Finnerty, 23, and attempted killing of Coffin Cheaters bikie member Pellegrino Mule and his son, Mark outside a Banksia Grove house in April. Mitchell Finnerty and his newborn son. Credit:Facebook On Monday, state prosecutors discontinued the charges in the Supreme Court of Western Australia due to having "no reasonable prospects of prosecution". Mr Johnston had previously indicated he would fight the charges. Trump to move on 'criminal' immigrants Updated: 2016-11-14 14:14 (chinadaily.com.cn) US President-elect Donald Trump said on CBS' 60 Minutes program on Sunday evening that he will deport millions of "criminal" undocumented immigrants immediately after he assumes office in January. "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million; we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told 60 Minutes. "But we're getting them out of our country; they're here illegally." US House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said that a plan to forcibly remove undocumented immigrants from the country is unlikely. "We are not planning on erecting a deportation force. Donald Trump is not planning on that," Ryan said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. Trump's plan to rein in illegal immigration could change, with him backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the border with Mexico. Trump was asked on 60 Minutes if he would accept a fence in some spots. "For certain areas, I would, but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate," Trump said. "There could be some fencing." China Daily USA posted a Xinhua story about Trump's immigration comments on its Facebook page, which generated a variety of responses. Why is "criminal" in quotes? And why the politically correct term "undocumented immigrants"? They're ILLEGAL ALIENS, which makes them CRIMINALS. Try to be an illegal alien in China and see what that gets you," wrote one commenter. "Then get all the European Americans out. Native Americans are the first Americans, everyone else is here illegally, according to their sacred law," another posted. "A windfall for rich high-paid immigration lawyers. This will be no easy task and cost trillions." "Just give the man time to do what he thinks don't talk bad on him. I think he is going to do a very good job. I am a black man. I think a lot of him." "They are destroying their country only to reside in other nations. Mr President you are right." "Deport him immigrants offer more than he ever will and they are welcome here." "He is following the laws we already have." Trump and his advisers already have signaled he may hedge on some of his other major campaign promises, including healthcare and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, his Democratic presidential campaign opponent. In other political news on Sunday, Trump named Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and conservative media owner Stephen Bannon as his top strategist, two men who represent opposite camps in the the GOP. In bringing Priebus and Bannon into the White House, Trump is making overtures to both traditional Republican circles and the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Priebus has ties to GOP congressional leaders, particularly Ryan. Bannon previously ran the Breitbart.com website, which has been highly critical of Republican leadership, including Ryan. Bannon was given top billing in the press release announcing the appointments, a curious arrangement given that White House chief of staff is typically considered the most powerful West Wing job. Together with Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the triumvirate will lead Trump's transition and help guide his presidency. "I am thrilled to have my very successful team continue with me in leading our country," Trump said. On trade, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he hopes Trump will drop his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal. The 12-nation TPP, which doesn't include China, became a contentious issue during the US election campaign, with critics saying it would cost American jobs. The deal has been signed but not ratified by US lawmakers. Kerry denied that the TPP was intended to create an economic bulwark against China's rise in the Asia-Pacific. "It's not about China," he said on Sunday. "The United States welcomes the peaceful rise of a great nation like China; we've said that directly to President Xi (Jinping)." Kerry said he and President Barack Obama are "deeply committed" to the deal but would not try to push it through a "lame duck" legislative session before Trump takes over. Trump also was back on Twitter on Sunday. During a four-hour spree, he criticized The New York Times and talked about GOP stalwarts who congratulated him, saying that critics and GOP rivals John Kasich, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush had sent well wishes. "Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the Trump phenomena,'" Trump wrote to his 14 million Twitter followers. Former presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush also sent their "best wishes on the win. Very nice!" Also on Sunday, Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid should be careful in a "legal sense" about characterizing Trump as a sexual predator. When asked whether Trump was threatening to sue Reid, Conway said no. But Adam Jentleson, Reid's deputy chief of staff, said Trump is "hiding behind his Twitter account and sending his staff on TV to threaten his critics". Agencies contributed to this story. A Perth mum has posted a squeamish and disgusting video of maggots crawling over what she says are Coles Frankfurters, which she only had just fed to one of her kids. Fiona Van Dam said she bought the pre-packed sausages from a Coles store in Pinjarra late last week. The footage, which she posted on Coles' Facebook page, shows the mother-of-six peeling back the Frankfurters to reveal maggots crawling around a sandwich she had made for one of her children. "If you have a weak stomach I strongly suggest you don't watch the video," she said. London: Marine Le Pen, the far-right French leader hopeful of a strong showing in next year's presidential election, has defended borrowing from a Russian bank to fund her party and promised closer ties between the Elysee Palace and the Kremlin if she wins next May. There are growing fears of Russian interference in the vote, after Donald Trump's relationship with the Kremlin and Russia's alleged role in hacking the Democratic party's email server were hot topics in the US election. Foreign policy experts told Fairfax that Russia would benefit from "chaos" in Europe and a weakened NATO and EU, and it was not clear how far it would go to exploit the opportunities offered by next year's presidential elections in France. Ms Le Pen admitted in 2014 that her party borrowed 9 million ($12.9 million) from a Russian-owned bank. Russia has also reportedly lent money to Greece's Golden Dawn, Italy's Northern League, Hungary's Jobbik and the Freedom Party of Austria. Gwadar, Pakistan: Pakistan's prime minister and army chief welcomed on Sunday the first large shipment of Chinese goods through the renovated port of Gwadar, part of a trade link between western China and the Arabian Sea. The deep-water port in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan is key to the $US46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that also encompasses roads and energy projects. A Pakistan Navy ship berth at Gwadar port. Credit:Anjum Naveed "Pakistan is located at the intersection of three engines of growth in Asia - South Asia, China and Central Asia," Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said at a ceremony on Sunday. "CPEC will help in integrating these regions into an economic zone offering great opportunities for people of the region as well as investors from all over the world." Washington: US president-elect Donald Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with House Speaker Paul Ryan could help secure early legislative victories. In selecting Mr Priebus, Mr Trump passed over Stephen Bannon, a right-wing media provocateur. But the president-elect named Mr Bannon his senior counsellor and chief West Wing strategist, signalling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Mr Bannon and a continuing disdain for the Republican establishment. The dual appointments - with Mr Bannon given top billing in the official announcement - instantly created rival centres of power in the Trump White House. Mr Bannon's selection demonstrated the power of grass-roots activists who backed Mr Trump's candidacy. Some of them have long traded in the conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages of Breitbart News, the website that Mr Bannon ran for much of the last decade. Monday 05 September, 2016 Reliable information reaching Biafra writers desk has it that the life of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indi... Description On Monday, Nov. 14 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Chipotle Mexican Grill will host a fundraiser in support of the Long Island chapter of the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America across all Long Island Chipotle locations. When customers dining at any of these locations mention the fundraiser at the register, Chipotle will donate 50 percent of the proceeds to the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America. And p.s.? This may also be the best Thanksgiving turkey we've ever made. Will is 100 percent right. The onion gravy in this dish -- which isn't even mentioned in the recipe name! -- is one of the most addictively delicious things we've eaten in a long time. "Seriously," Will said. "On meat, on toast, on oatmeal. On everything short of, like, a peanut-butter sandwich. No, actually that would also be delicious." During our Fakesgiving dinner, our friend Will uttered those words to Zach as he dug in to this French Onion Turkey Breast with its delectable onion gravy. We said this last year , but Cooking Light absolutely knocked it out of the park again this year in their Thanksgiving coverage. While some other magazines seemed to pull back a bit this year (Saveur doesn't have a Thanksgiving issue out), Cooking Light went big. They've seemingly got as many Thanksgiving recipes as all the other food mags combined. And tons of them sound really delicious. If all you served at Thanksgiving this year were Cooking Light dishes, your guests would be plenty happy. Anyway, we settled on this French Onion Turkey because we liked the idea of that spice mix. Honestly, the gravy was an afterthought: "Oh, this'll also make some onions we can serve with it." Bittens, we don't want to be overly dramatic, but: THIS ONION GRAVY IS THE KEY TO FINDING TRUE HAPPINESS. Making them, however, is not an exercise in happiness. The recipe calls for 5 pounds of sliced onions. Since this was the only turkey we made for Fakesgiving this year, we tripled this recipe. Uh-huh -- that means we peeled and vertically sliced 15 pounds of onions. That's roughly 42 cups. We sliced and sauteed the onions (Step 1 in the recipe) on Saturday, and roasted the turkey on the bed of onions on Sunday. The onions soak in all the glorious drippings from the turkey while it cooks. Then, while the bird rests, you reduce the onion gravy, flavoring it with cream sherry and thickening it with a little flour. The onions reduced and reduced and reduced. We ended up with about a third of the volume we started with. As they cook down, the gravy takes on a rich golden brown color that just gets more and more intense. The finished turkey was truly delicious. People raved about it. And when's the last time anybody actually raved about a Thanksgiving turkey? The spices are perfect. One thing you don't get with this recipe is an Instagram-worthy whole roasted turkey. To that we say: Who cares? The trade-off here of perfectly cooked, tender, juicy turkey is completely worth it. (Sorry we don't have a good photo of the turkey itself; we ran out of time in the last-minute rush to get all the food on the table.) But, again, the gravy is the secret star of this show. In fact, this gravy was probably the single best thing we served in the entire meal. Its deep, savory flavor and rich, velvety texture is one of those special things that makes you close your eyes and sigh with contentment. Like our friend Will, you'll want to eat it on everything. More: French Onion Turkey Breast Cooking Light (November 2016) Subscribe to Cooking Light Nutritional information available at Cooking Light (This photo: Jennifer Causey/Cooking Light) Active time: 40 mins Total time: 2 hours 40 mins Serves 12 INGREDIENTS 1/4 cup olive oil 5 pounds vertically sliced yellow onions (about 14 cups) 1/4 cup chopped fresh thyme, divided 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided 1/2 cup dry white wine 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 (7-lb.) skin-on, bone-in fresh or frozen turkey breast, thawed 3 cups unsalted chicken stock (such as Swanson) 1/2 cup cream sherry 3 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley DIRECTIONS Preheat oven to 425F. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high. Add onions; saute 6 minutes. Reduce heat to medium. Stir in 3 tablespoons thyme and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook 10 minutes. Add wine to pan; cook 10 minutes or until onions are browned. Spread onion mixture in bottom of a roasting pan. Like Hillary Clinton and her fateful deplorables comment, Oprah Winfrey knew she stepped in it after tweeting a hopeful message about Donald Trumps presidency earlier this weekto the vocal dismay of the internet. Everybody take a deep breath! the media mogul tweeted on Thursday to her 34.8 million followers, posting a screenshot from Trumps White House meeting with the outgoing President Obama. Hope Lives! The tweet did not go over well. Winfrey gamely acknowledged her misconstrued optimism Sunday afternoon in Beverly Hills during a Q&A with Golden Globe-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay. The duo sat down to discuss the Selma directors Netflix documentary 13th, a searing look at the racially-fueled cultural and institutional lineage linking slavery to the modern-day business of mass incarceration. I couldnt breathe after the election, Winfrey told the packed audience at the Peltz Theater at the Museum of Tolerance in Beverly Hills. She said she and DuVernay, executive producers together on DuVernays acclaimed OWN series Queen Sugar, called each other Tuesday night as the election results sank in and sat holding their phones in stunned silence. The next morning Winfrey, who endorsed Clintons campaign in June, tuned in to CNNs coverage of President-elect Trumps historic meeting with President Obama. Instead of the kind of antagonism Trumps campaign had levied during the election, she was surprised to see the two men sitting civilly together. By her estimation Trump even seemed humbled, Winfrey later told the Associated Press. I was expecting tension, awkwardness, and strain, Winfrey explained Sunday. When I saw them sitting together and I actually took a picture of the screen, it said, President-elect Trump: Honored To Meet Obama. And President Obama was being so gracious. I heard Donald Trump say, Hes a good man. I heard Donald Trump say, Im going to be seeking his counsel. I literally went, I can breathe now. My mistake, and this is what I know to be true, is that you can never talk about everybody, she added. Dont talk about What you should do. You can only speak for yourself. What I should have said was, I just took a breath. What I said was, Everybody take a breath#HopeLives. I thought to say, Civility Livesbecause this was more civil than I expected it to be. I was talking about the transition of power, said Winfrey, who joked to DuVernay that shed be keeping her opinions on Trump to herself after the uproar her single tweet caused. Not, Take a deep breath about everything. No. Not at all. DuVernay is back in the Oscar conversation two years after her celebrated civil rights drama Selma earned a Best Picture nomination and took home the Oscar for Best Song. Shes currently directing Winfrey in the Madeleine LEngle adaptation A Wrinkle In Time for Disney, a high-profile project that marks the first time any woman of color has helmed a $100 million movie. 13th, available now on Netflix, is one of the streaming platforms Best Documentary Oscar hopefuls this yearand, like Selma, arrived with an urgent sense of relevance in a tumultuous time in America. Winfrey and DuVernay agreed that neither are quite ready to say the words President Trump or President-elect Trump out loud. Later in the evening, Trump appeared on 60 Minutes promising to deport probably two million, it could be even three million undocumented immigrantsmany of whom will be identified, Trump has promised, on the basis of their criminal records. But in a country where African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites and African Americans and Hispanics account for 58 percent of the incarcerated population, the question of how America and the federal government have come to define criminality is central to DuVernays galvanizing documentary. When TrumpI cant call him President yet, cant say Mr. yet Im in the Museum of Tolerance, Im trying to be tolerant, said DuVernay, drawing laughs and applause. When he goes on 60 Minutes tonight its been previewed that hes going to talk about criminals and deportation. The whole idea of what is criminal, how crime and race are used to further certain ideas, agendas, policies, for profit, for political gain, for power once you see this, you wont hear those words the same way again so we wont react to them the way we have, which is with complacency and to go right over it. Stocks for the private prison industry rose by over 50 percent the day after the election, DuVernay said, so folks are betting on the fact that he will not just continue but increase that part of the business. We call it the prison industrial complex because it is an industry, it is a business, it is a profit center... Everything that we talk about in this film, under him and the policies that hes advocated, will continue or worsenunless we demand something different. Both Winfrey and DuVernay searched for positivity as they looked toward the future, asked by fans via social media what next steps 13th encourages America to take. The film, Winfrey, urged, is a wake-up call. I think a lot of us whove been apathetic or just not very focused on the levers of power have to now be very tuned in to this, and every aspect of the things we say we care about as forward-thinking progressive people, offered DuVernay. We dont have forward-thinking progressive people in power any more across any of the branches of government. Its going to take those of us who believe in this to make our voices known, be loud about it, and never give up. Its going to be a long four years hopefully just four. Donald Trumps White House will have two bossesone a longtime Republican operative with deep ties to the establishment, the other a nationalist, alt-right provocateur with an ax to grind. It could be a historic team of rivals. Or it could be a nuclear-grade catastrophe. Trumps transition team announced late on Sunday afternoon that Stephen Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News who once described the site as the platform for the Alt-Righta racist, anti-Semitic, and misogynist movementwill team up with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus to head the White House. Priebus will be chief of staff, and Bannons title will be chief strategist and senior counselor. The press release listed Bannons name first but said the two men will work as equal partners. Its difficult to imagine that these equal partners will work in harmony. Bannon has dedicated his life in right-wing media to undermining people exactly like Priebusand, in some cases, to attacking Priebus himself. Bannon is commonly described as a political street fighter and seems to relish his new image as a dangerous, white nationalist-supported bigwig. He is credited with engineering much of the extreme mud-slinging and stunts in the final stretch of Trumps presidential run. But Priebus is no shrinking violet, either, with extensive experience building formidable political machines. Ive known Reince a long time, Rep. Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, told The Daily Beast. This is exactly what Mr. Trump needs to move his agenda forward. This was an excellent choice. Operatives in Wisconsin give Priebus significant credit for the full Republican takeover of Badger State politics. Wisconsin used to be bluer than blue and is considered the birthplace of the modern progressive movement. But over the past 10 years or so, Republicans have made rapid and deep inroads in the state, taking over the governorship and both branches of the state legislature, as well as one of its U.S. Senate seats and five of its eight congressional seats. Scott Walker , the states governor, shepherded through the legislature a series of anti-union measures that dramatically weakened organized labor in the state. Priebus chaired the Wisconsin Republican Party when that takeover was first getting off the ground, from 2007 to 2011. Since then, he and other Badger State Republicans have risen to some of the most powerful positions in the Republican Partynone more notable than Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House. Ryan and Priebus have known each other since the late 90s, when Priebus was a Kenosha County activist and Ryans congressional career was just beginning. The pairs political fortunes rose in tandem, and theyve been friends for about two decades. Some Republican operatives credit Priebus for Trumps never formally endorsing Ryans populist primary challengereven when Ryan distanced himself from Trump, which clearly irritated the reality star-turned-president-elect. And its that relationship that might be at the heart of the future problems between the two co-bosses. Because while Priebus has always been Team Ryan, Bannon and Breitbart have doggedly worked to undercut the speaker of the House. In 2010, for instance, Breitbart author Dan Riehl criticized Priebus for using stock phrases like diversity and clerking for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Bannon himself ripped into the RNC in an interview with Bloomberg last August. Sean [Spicer] wanted us to partner up on one of the [Republican] primary debates for $350,000, Bannon told Bloomberg. I said, Sean, Im not paying you 350 grand to associate Breitbart News with a failed brand like the RNC. And in a conversation on Breitbarts SiriusXM radio show on Nov. 2, 2015, Bannon told fellow conservative talk radio host Mark Levin that he didnt think Priebus was particularly tough. What kind of political party is so absurdly suicidal as this, Levin said. Ill tell you what kind. Its led by a manIll just tell ya. You ever hear this guy talk? Not impressive, Bannon replied. I dont think the consulting class and the donor class want that, Bannon added later in the episode. I think they want guys like Reince Priebus to take their orders. Reince Priebus is a fine gentleman but were talking about a heavy duty job. In private, Bannon is even more pointed in his criticism of Republican Party leadership. Leadership are all cunts, he emailed one of his top deputies in December 2014. Bannons backstory is also much stranger and much darker than his new Trump administration colleague Priebus. Bannon spent years in Hollywood pursuing his filmmaking and documentarian aspirations, fueled by a love for such artists as legendary Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein and the influential Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. (His time as a raging conservative in the vast liberal stronghold of Hollywood included co-writing a Shakespearean hip-hop musical about the 1992 L.A. riots.) But over the past year as the head of Breitbart, Bannon and his team have turned the popular right-wing website into a haven for relentlessly pro-Trump propaganda and coverage. Breitbart was so loyal to Trump during the election that it even took the campaigns side when then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski lied about bruising Michelle Fields, then a Breitbart reporter. And Bannon has long bragged privately about his influence in the Trump presidential campaign, even before officially hopping aboard late this year in the final big campaign shakeup. Im Trumps campaign manager, Bannon wrote to a friend on Aug. 30, 2015 in emails leaked to The Daily Beast. Dont u ever read breitbartits trump central. (Bannon went on to tell his friend why he liked Trump so much: Trump is a nationalist who embraces [Sen. Jeff Sessionss] immigration plan.) And as Bannon, who has previously branded himself an anti-establishment Leninist, prepares to begin his new job in the Trump White House, he is also poised to serve as Trumps direct line to the European ultra-right wing. The ex-Breitbart honcho has a particular affinity for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands (PVV), all of which have earned glowing coverage on Breitbart. [Steve] has long wanted to work with all of those [far-right] parties, but that was only in promoting them with Breitbart, a source close to Bannon told The Daily Beast. Now he has the power of the White House to do it. When Donald J. Trump becomes leader of the free world in January, one of his closest advisers will be a man who for years has acted as the ringleader for the racist alt-right and has long desired to help craft a populist, right-wing takeover worldwide. And to make things even more alarming, Bannon wants to obliterate the Republican Partyat least, the Republican Party as we know it. Its just that now he gets to do it while working in the Executive Branch. We [at Breitbart] dont really dont believe there is a functional conservative party in this country, he said at a National Press Club conference in 2013. We certainly dont think the Republican Party is that. with additional reporting by Gideon Resnick President-elect Donald Trump may have time to tweet, but is far too busy, his lawyers argue, to stand trial. The 69 days until inauguration are critical and all-consuming. President-Elect Trump must receive daily security briefings, make executive appointments (ultimately, thousands), and establish relationships with appointees, members of Congress, governors, and foreign leaders, Trumps lawyers argued a motion filed to a California federal court. The case in dispute, Low v. Trump University, is a federal class-action lawsuit alleging consumer fraud and elder abuse against Trump University. The eponymous real-estate seminar program, former students complain, promised that Trumps secretshanded down by Trumps "hand-picked" instructorswould make them rich. Instead, the former students say, Trump University was merely a scheme to bilk the poor, the naive, and the elderly out of tens of thousands of dollars, taught by hucksters who had never even met Donald Trump. One of three separate lawsuits against Trump University, and one of 75 total pending legal actions involving the soon-to-be president, the case is scheduled to begin on November 28, six years after the initial complaint was filed in 2010. Several of the class members, including 74-year-old case namesake Sonny Low, are elderly. Regardless, on Saturday, Trumps lawyers filed a motion to delay the trial to sometime after the presidential inauguration. Concerning whether Trump might be equally absorbed in the duties of a sitting president after the inauguration, the lawyers claim he is not seeking to delay the case indefinitely, or even until the end of his term. On Monday, lawyers for the students responded in opposition to Trumps request to delay, writing in court papers, This trial, like so many Trump University student-victims credit-card bills, is past due. President-Elect Trumps life is only going to get more complicated and unpredictable as time goes by, they wrote. Additionally, they noted that Trump has already recorded 10 hours of sworn testimony on video and provided hundreds of pages of briefs and exhibits that represent his position. The students lawyers argue that Low will turn 75 years old before the trial date and has multiple medical issues. Memories fade, peoples health degrades, and with each passing month, plaintiffs face a greater challenge, they wrote. This was not the first delay sought by Trumps counsel. Trump has requested his trial date be moved to after the July Republican National Convention and later until after the election. The California judge overseeing this case, U.S. District Gonzalo Curiel agreed to the postponement, but denied a later request that the date be moved once again, this time because of a scheduling conflict involving one of Trumps lawyers. The Court has repeatedly accommodated Defendants requests with respect to scheduling trial, Judge Curiel wrote in his denial. Judge Curiel was pulled into the campaign when then presidential nominee Trump told two interviewers that the Trump University case against him was unfair, namely because Curiel's Mexican heritage (he was born in Indiana) supposedly made him prejudiced against Trump, who had promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Last week, Judge Curiel tentatively ruled against banning Trumps statements, speeches, and tweets made during the campaignincluding the remarks made about Curiel. He also decided Trumps favorite defense of Trump Universityevaluations showing a 98 percent student approval ratewould not be allowed at trial, explaining that initial satisfaction did not prove or disprove the whether Trump had misrepresented his seminars as a university and his salesmen as handpicked instructors. "It would be wise, Curiel said at last weeks hearing, for the plaintiffs, for the defendants, to look closely at trying to resolve this case given all else thats involved. Whether President-elect Trump will heed Curiels advice is yet to be seen. Trump has publicly railed against the Trump University plaintiffs and announced his refusal to settle. I dont settle lawsuits, he told an Arkansas crowd in February. Probably should have settled it, but I just cant do that. Mentally I cant do it. Id rather spend a lot more money and fight it...Hey, would have been much easier if I settled. Would have probably been cheaper, but I dont care. The former senior CIA officer who championed waterboarding hopes President-elect Donald Trump will bring back harsh interrogation methodsand bring the CIA back into the business of interrogating terrorist suspects. We have to be able to capture terrorists. We have to be able to interrogate them. We dont do that anymore, said Jose Rodriguez, who led the CIAs clandestine service during the Bush administration. A Trump supporter, Rodriguez said he didnt want to lead the CIA, though he has been named as a possible pick. But he does want to bring back some form of now-illegal interrogation measures, like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other so-called enhanced interrogation methods approved by the Bush White House to question terrorist suspects in the wake of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11. Then Rodriguez would move beyond those controversial techniques, which President Obama has called torture. Enhanced interrogation techniques are well known to the enemy and we would have to come up with something else, he told The Daily Beast, though he declined to describe what that might entail. He also wants the Trump administration to block current cases against CIA employees who carried out the program. Trump said during the presidential campaign he would bring back waterboarding and much worse. "These savages are chopping off heads, drowning people. This is medieval times and then we can't do waterboarding? Trump said a week before the election. Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks emailed Monday that she had nothing to add on how the president-elect might make good on that campaign promise, which likely require introducing new legislation to change U.S. law. Congress banned the Bush-era methods back in 2005, and Obama issued an executive order when he took office in 2009 that commanded all government employees to use only interrogation techniques set out in the U.S. Army Field Manual. We tortured some folks, after 9/11, Obama told reporters shortly after taking office. We did some things that were contrary to our values. Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a torture ban making Obamas order law. The single most critical step that he could take unilaterally would be to simply repeal [Obamas executive order on the subject] in order to revert back to the coercive practices instituted in the early days of the Bush administration, said Georgetown University security studies expert Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault in an email to The Daily Beast. A repeal of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and the 2015 amendmentor a replacement of those lawswould require the compliance of the Senate, specifically the 60 votes required to overcome a possible Democratic filibuster, she added, which she wrote about in the nonpartisan Lawfare blog. Such a move would face international censure from bodies like the International Committee of the Red Cross. The prohibition of torture, and all forms of ill-treatment, is absolute everywhere and at all times, ICRC spokeswoman Anna Nelson said Monday. It is strictly forbidden by international human rights law, U.S. jurisprudence, the United Nations Convention against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions... Torture is morally reprehensible and it should be permanently repudiated by all nations. Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden an outspoken NeverTrumperexpressed doubt the CIA would welcome a return to the interrogation mission. "This is not the agency disowning its past because it truly believes that these techniques worked and saved lives, Hayden emailed The Daily Beast. Rather, it is based on the sense of betrayal at the agency for having followed previous direction in good faith, and then having that overturned by a subsequent administration. Rodriguez said that sense of betrayal is part of why he has no desire to return to Washington. I would not want to go back to government even as director of CIA, Rodriguez said Sunday. I served my country for 31 years, and the last six-and-a-half were especially challenging. I think I fulfilled my duty, I did my part. But he does want Trump to unleash the CIA again to interrogate terrorist suspects, and grant them new powers beyond what the military is allowed to do. The Army Field Manualis totally inadequate for a premier agency like the CIA to interrogate high level terrorists, said Rodriguez, calling interrogation the easiest and best way to gain intelligence. A landmark Senate Intelligence Committee report into the program detailed stomach-churning methods such as instances of force feeding hunger-striking detainees rectally, and concluded that no actionable intelligence was produced by the methods. They worked. Of course they worked, Rodriguez countered. That Senate report is a farce. Its a lie, its like Obamacare, its not true. Since then, CIA officers and contractors who carried out the practice have faced lawsuits one of them still ongoing, which Rodriguez would like to see the new Trump administration shut down. Rodriguez himself was investigated by the Justice Department for three years for destroying video tapes of CIA interrogations of two al Qaeda detainees, but not prosecuted. Rodriguez said the ugly visuals of the interrogations, if ever made public, would endanger American lives. Now Rodriguez and then-CIA General Counsel John Rizzo both face questioning under oath as part of the ACLUs civil suit against two CIA contract psychologists who helped design the program. A judge has ordered the trial to go ahead next June. Rodriguez said he hopes the Trump administration would use the secrecy defense that the Obama administration used to block earlier cases against CIA employees who carried out such interrogations though he said they declined to block later cases. This administration could end it if they wanted to but they dont because politically and ideologically, theyagree, that the employees should be prosecuted, he said. And Obama helped the ACLUs case by publishing more information about it. They released the legal justification for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, thereby making it public, basically giving up a blueprint of what its all about, Rodriguez added. ACLU lawyer Hina Shamsi said that having all that information now public is the real reason the Obama administration cant use a secrecy defense to block further disclosures, especially thanks to the Senate Intelligence Committees lengthy report into the subject. The government cannot hide behind secrecy when the information needed to litigate the case is already public, Shamsi told The Daily Beast on Sunday. Neither this administration nor any other would have a legitimate legal basis in seeking to block this lawsuit from going forward. Shamsi said the ACLU stands ready to fight any moves to reinstate harsh interrogation methods of any type. Torture is always unlawful and if the Trump administration seeks to return to it, we stand ready to challenge a return to torture, which has deeply damaged both victims as well as the United States national security and standing in the international community, she said. Updated, 11/14/176: This article has been corrected to reflect that former CIA general counsel John Rizzo did not repudiate the interrogation program. The How to Handle Your Family Around the Holidays piece has been so done to death that parodies of the genre almost seem tired. A quick Google search of the phrase produces over 300,000 results, some of which lead to Oprah dot com. It seems like everybody in America has, for years, had this one racist uncle who is so painfully unwoke that dealing with him for even an afternoon presents a renewing annual dilemma. Boy, should we feel silly now. This year promises to be beyond any advice a blog post or servicey magazine column can offer. For most of those celebrating it, a post-Trump-election Thanksgiving 2016 is going to be the least celebratory Thanksgiving ever. Its going to be a bad Thanksgiving for families with divided voting records, of course, a sort of Facebook: The Musical, but only with shouting and right in your living room. There will be storm-outs. There will be no-shows. There will be finger-pointing and blame thrown around like confetti. There will almost certainly be spit or other bodily fluids placed in a shared entree that only those with the same political affiliations as its chef were told about. Why is only Aunt Denises family eating our sweet potatoes, Mommy? Because Aunt Denise cast a protest vote for Jill Stein, angel. And if Aunt Denise loves the environment so much then Im sure a little organic spit wont hurt her. But even families with homogenous voting records are going to have a rough time of it this year. Families in blue states that spent last year sparring about Hillary versus Bernie will flatten their mashed potatoes and carve their Tofurkeys in stony silence, a room full of people who feel as if they were on Nov. 8 sentenced to four-year prison terms that begin in mere weeks. Our orange president-elect may as well be an orange jumpsuit cut to size. Its all over. The drinks will be sad-drinks, the toasts will be Heaven Help Us toasts. The children of second-wave feminists who are visiting home for the first time post-election will look into the eyes of their mothers and see a sadness in them that they cannot remedy. It will be the gutting sort of helplessness that comes when one envisions their mother being bullied or abandoned or unloved as a little girl. Somebody will point out that the family dog will not live to see the first female president, and that will, for a reason that half of the people in the room understand, cause a torrent of sobs. The other half will instruct the crying people to stop crying, and then there will be a whole fight about that, too. Families comprised of people who arent in the Trump camps favored groupsMexicans, Muslims, Jewish people who arent Jared Kushner and family, immigrants, LGBTQ familiesare going to experience an even grimmer Thanksgiving, faced with the horrifying possibility that the President Donald Trump administration might actually follow through on his campaign promises come January. Their fearand their disappointment with their fellow citizenswill have a shape, the shape of Donald Trumps curiously formed mouth. The shape of Mike Pences head. The shape of a swastika plastered on a college dorm bathroom on Nov. 9, the shape of the n-word spelled out on a handwritten sign, hastily written in magic marker on a scrap of cardboard on the way to the Trump rally. Conservative families, if they werent lockstep Trump fans, might have a tough time parsing the thrill they got from watching Hillary Clinton lose from the nibbling fear they all have that Donald Trump doesnt know and has never known what the hell hes doing. The mans never even served as a member of the city council, one family member might say, three domestic beers deep (because, come on, beer is beer), hes never served on law enforcement or in the military and now hes the commander in chief and hes got the nuclear launch codes. Shut up and watch the Lions lose, another will say. Dread will roll into the room like a San Francisco fog. But the most uncomfortable Thanksgiving might happen in Trump Tower itself. Push aside, for a moment, public demands to refuse to seek a place of empathy with Trump voters and seek instead empathy with President-elect Donald Trump. Imagine how you would feel if you started running a campaign, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom-style, in an attempt to get as much profit as possible from a public comprised mostly of suckers. Imagine if you tried to flop, as hard as you could, with a plan built right into your loss to found a media company that would further suckle the teats of your adoring fans in perpetuity. Imagine a haphazard campaign based on idiotic social media braying and pants-off call-ins to Morning Joe that ended up beating the greatest political strategists money could buy. Imagine if after all that, your worst-laid plans led you to the White House, to the presidency, to a job where you are expected to work for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and move from your gilded sky-womb on Fifth Avenue into an old house in Washington, DC. Imagine having to pay attention to people for minutes, even hours on end. Imagine having to listen. Youve never had to listen. Imagine how horrible that would feel, knowing you had to spend the next four years listening to things that arent people cheering for you or the sound of your own voice amplified on large speakers. Now imagine a whole family of people who cant believe you actually did it, that this guy, the one who can barely keep a sentence together, the one who relates to every other place that is not New York based on whether or not he owns property there, is going to be the leader of the free world. This guy is going to be the president. Thats a lot to chew on in addition to Trump brand steaks. Barron has to switch schools. Melania has to do more than take an elevator to pop into Gucci and pick up a new pussybow top. Ivanka has to make friends in D.C. Eric and Donald Jr. will get less time off to travel to Africa to kill large animals. By then, it should all be sinking in. What I wouldnt pay to be a fly on that Dean & DeLuca-catered sweet potato pie. Faced with the most anti-Muslim politician in American history, a number of prominent progressives are backing countrys first Muslim-American Congressman to lead the party through their first contentious years with the Trump administration. Rep. Keith Ellison, who co-chairs the House of Representatives progressive caucus, has already lined up some major endorsements ahead of his expected Monday formal announcement that hell be running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. It would be a tremendous signal. He is the first Muslim elected to Congress in the history of our country, against someone who has talked about banning Muslims from our country, and who has made appeals and pandered to the Islamophobes in our society, Rep. Andre Carson, the second Muslim-American elected to Congress, told The Daily Beast (Carson has not yet endorsed in this race). Ellison, a Catholic who converted to Islam, has tried to downplay his faith and the role that it plays in his duties as a lawmaker, but has retained close ties with his religious community. He himself always said hes not the American Muslim congressman, hes a congressman who happens to be an American Muslim, said Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations. If you have the opposition party headed by an American Muslim, facing off against the party headed by the person who has done the most in history to mainstream Islamophobia, then it is the supreme irony," American Muslim groups were quick to swing behind the Minnesota congressman, pointing out that his selection would be an antidote to the anti-Muslim environment that has erupted over the Obama years. This would be a great opportunity, for the first Muslim Congressman, said Oussama Jammal, the Secretary General of the US Council of Muslim Organizations. It sends a message that Muslims in this country are part and parcel of society, and yes, they can lead a major political party in this country, and being a Muslim is nothing less than anyone else who can serve in this capacity. If selected by the DNC to lead the party through the first years of the Trump presidency, it will also be a signal from the left that, rather than shifting to the center, the next four years will be a time of an absolute, in-your-face contrast with the Trump presidency. In some ways this move has already begun, with the street demonstrations that have broken out in the immediate aftermath of Tuesdays vote. The Democratic Party must be tolerant, inclusive, and progressivenot just in words, but in action. Our contrast with the White House must be stark, said Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Bill de Blasio and Sen. Harry Reid. Ellison has a lot of credibility in the progressive community from his progressive caucus colleagues, to local elected officials, to the Bernie fans. He could really help Washington Democrats get a clue. Prominent members of the left have already stepped forward to endorse the congressman, even before he has formally entered the race: Sen. Harry Reid, the outgoing Senate minority leader; Sen. Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader; Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive standard bearer in 2016; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who many see as the futures progressive standard bearer. MoveOn.org, an activist group on the left, has also endorsed. At 53 years old, Ellison is younger than many of the other candidates mentioned for the job, such as Howard Dean (67 years old)meaning his selection would be a sign for younger Democrats about their role in the partys future. Over the past few years, the Democratic Party has seen their bench of young, rising stars fizzle out: Democrats with potential national appeal, such as Jason Kander, Alison Lundergan Grimes and Wendy Davis have all lost prominent statewide races, for example. Ellisons selection could be a counterpoint to this. Many are still reeling from the primary and deeply distrustful of the insiders who ignored them or worse, blatantly put their thumbs on the scale, Katz said. As for some of the other candidates, whats the definition of insanity again? As a midwesterner with a diverse background, Ellison is uniquely placed to help recover from the Democrats dismal showing on Election Day, Carson said, and is able to understand rust belt problems, the issues of the poor and the concerns of rural Americans. Keith is a friend of mine. Ive found him to be very thoughtful, very smart, a very hard worker. Hes proven himself as a leader of the progressive caucus. He has shown that he is connected to progressive values, Carson said. Ellison has also proven to be prophetic, predicting Trumps rise and election over a year ago. Anybody from the Democratic side of the fence who is terrified of the possibility of President Trump better vote, better get active, Ellison said on ABCs This Week in July 2015, to laughter from the assembled panel. This man has got some momentum, and we better be ready. He might be leading the Republican ticket," In an interview with that same show on Sunday, the Minnesota Congressman stressed that his candidacy is going to be about the broader outlook for the countryand didnt mention his religion once. The most important criteria for a DNC chair is going to be vision, Ellison said. This is not about one person; this is about millions of people all working together to protect and advance the interests of working Americans. Thats what its really about: vision and the ability to mobilize and inspire people at the grassroots. But if Ellison is selected to lead the Democratic Party, it will be as much for the vision he outlines as the unspoken signal it sends to his fellow Muslims and other minorities, his supporters hope. It is a powerful message that will be sent at a time after such a horrific campaign, Jammal said. And it will help all of the minorities right now that are scared to death. For nearly eight years, President Obama massively expanded his authority on national security issues: on the prosecution of whistleblowers, secret surveillance courts, wars without congressional authorization, and drone campaigns without public oversight. During this time the left, with the exception of some civil liberties groups, remained largely silent. But now this entire apparatus is being handed over to Donald Trump, a president with a penchant for authoritarianism, who will no doubt point to Obama as precedent to justify the continuation, and perhaps broadening, of these national security excesses. Many Americans were willing to invest broad power in the presidency because they trusted the president. But obviously the powers that we invest outlast any particular president, and now those powers are available to Trump, said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. That was a profound mistake on the part of the Obama administration and Americans generally. A President Trump is unlikely to roll back any of the powers of the presidencyin fact, as a candidate, he did everything he could to suggest that the person who occupies the Oval Office had magical powers to fix the economy, destroy ISIS, and suppress crime. Part of Trumps appeal was that he promised to be the kind of president Americans think a president can be a combination of God and Superman, said Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and a prominent Never Trumper during the campaign. Those opposed to Trumps presidency have already begun street protests in anticipation of highly controversial term. Just wait until they realize what expanded powers Obama administration is leaving for him. We should have built the system of a Trump in mind instead it relies on the good faith and judgment of the people in charge, Jaffer said. President Obama is not only leaving behind a set of wars across the Middle Eastin Iraq, in Syria, and in Afghanistanbut also the precedent that a president can engage in these wars without Congressional authorization. President George W. Bush got the United States into two big wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but with both wars he went to Congress and got specific authorization President Obama did not do that, said Chris Anders, the deputy director at the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. The United States has been taking very significant military action without Congress ever declaring war or authorizing the use of military force it upended the constitutions delegation of authority to declare war to Congress alone, and Congress allowed that to happen. While Obama ended the use of torture, he has continued to use drone strikes against terrorists abroadauthorizing hundreds of strikes that have killed thousands of terrorists, according to estimates cited by The New York Times. The Obama administration has built a legal infrastructure for targeting killing that is not subject to any meaningful oversight by other branches, said Jaffer, who is the author of the book The Drone Memos. His administration also targeted and killed American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, justifying this because he was an al Qaeda jihadist who was a top propagandist and recruiter for the group. Civil liberty advocates criticized the move, arguing that there had been no judicial process or trial to determine his guilt before the strike occurred. The Obama administration has set a whole series of precedents by targeting American citizens and then claiming the courts have no role to play in evaluating the lawfulness of the killings, Jaffer said. To make things worse, the administration then engaged in a drawn out battle with the ACLU and the New York Times to prevent its internal legal justifications from being released. It took years for a federal court to release a secret government memo that the Obama administration had tried to keep from the public. It shouldnt have to be the case that the ACLU or media organizations need to sue the government to get basic legal documents on the governments view of what the law means, that no government should have a body of secret law on national security matters, including on what authority the president is claiming to kill a United States citizen without trial, Anders said. The precedent of secret laws and legal justifications hidden from the public preceded President Obama, Anders added, but he has not taken the transparency to heart that we would hope to see in a president. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly went after the press: accusing them of being rigged and unfair, pointing out particular reporters he didnt like during rallies, and promising to open up libel laws to more easily sue news organizations. Obama has left him a chilling legacy to continue with regard to the Fourth Estate. In an unusual move, his Justice Department subpoenaed the telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press to track down a leak. And it investigated a Fox News reporter as a probable co-conspirator in another national security case in order to get his emails and phone records. The Obama administration also used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers who shared secret information with reporters more often than all previous administrations combined. It wouldnt be surprising to see a crackdown to prosecute whistleblowers. The Trump administration without question would be able to say, well, the Obama administration did this all the time. And thats indisputably true, said Chris Calabrese, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Trump will also have unprecedented snooping abilities that the United States built up after the 9/11 attacks. As president, Trump will inherit powerful, global surveillance systems that has the capability to tap into sensitive communications for millions of people, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And much of it continues to be secret. What the Obama administration did was normalize a lot of the surveillance that was started under the Bush administration gathering lots and lots of information, not just about foreigners but about people in the United States. The controls that they put together were at the executive or agency level that can be wiped away, Calabrese said. Weve built these huge data collections apparatuses after 9/11, and now were relying on the goodwill and the decency and honesty of intelligence officials to make sure theyre not misused, he added. Many constitutional scholars and politicians on the right have spent the last eight years rallying against the Obama presidency, arguing that he had overstepped his powers, especially with regard to national security. But this is now likely to yield to protests from the left, with the same criticisms applying to Trump. For eight years Republicans have complained that the presidency was too powerful, that President Obama ruled like a dictator, and that the powers of the presidency needed to be curbed, Nichols said. My guess is that theyre not going to be very serious about that principle. With the shoe on the other foot, the left may soon realize how terrifying some of the presidents authorities can be. If you are concerned about overreach of executive authority, and the only thing that was keeping your concerns at bay was that President Obama had that authority [its] going to come back to bite people in the rear, because now a President Trump will rely on those same authorities, said Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security law. Thanks, Obama. A New Mexico private prison discriminated against a Satanist inmate, confiscating her clothing and calling her the devil herself, she claims in a new lawsuit. Monica Lujan has practiced Satanism since she was a child, her lawyers say, but the chaplain of the New Mexico Womens Correctional Facility punished her for her beliefs. After being booked for low-level drug offenses, the prison allegedly confiscated nearly all of Lujans belongings, leaving her with one pair of underwear, and no bedding for four months. Im going to confront the devil herself! a prison chaplain allegedly yelled after Lujans repeated requests for a Satanic bible. A practicing member of the Church of Satan since she was 13, Lujan had made Satanism a central part of her life. The religion, her lawyers explain in the suit, does not promote belief or worship of Satan as a literal being, but rather a metaphor for the individual. The practice calls on believers to participate in group rituals with other Satanists. But the prospect of a Satanic gathering was too much for some corrections officers, Lujan said. When she arrived in August 2013 at the New Mexico Womens Correctional Facility, a prison run by the private Corrections Corporation of America, Lujan reportedly asked for a copy of the Satanic bible. Her repeated requests were denied every time. Lujan also reportedly asked to practice rituals with other Satanist inmates, as her religion dictates. Again, her requests were rebuffed. A prison chaplain and a corrections officer told Lujan that the New Mexico Department of Corrections prohibited the practice of Satanism, her suit reads. But Satanism is explicitly written into the Department of Corrections inmate rights policy. Satanism is one of the prison systems 19 officially recognized religions, along with Pagan faiths like Asatru and Wicca, the departments own documents show. These guidelines allow corrections officers to provide inmates with essential religious materials including religious texts like the Satanic bible, unless they are denied for security reasons, New Mexicos inmate rights policy reads. Practitioners of Native American religions, for example, are allowed ceremonial pipes and pitchforks. Asatru adherents are allowed a strong cardboard model of Thors Hammer (up to 12 inches tall). But after Lujan filed an official complaint demanding her right to worship, corrections officers allegedly continued to deny her bible, this time on the grounds that it was a security threat. Lujans already-tense relations with the prison chaplain turned toxic. Allegedly calling Lujan the devil herself, the chaplain stormed Lujans cell berating her in front of her neighbors and doubling down on his claim that Satanism was prohibited behind bars. He demanded she never ask him to officially recognize Satanism again. Then the searches started. Supposedly on the chaplains orders, Lujan was stopped and searched five times in the prison hallways. Finally a raid on Lujans room revealed what corrections officers described as contraband: a drawing of a pentagram, a prayer book, and a photocopied segment of the Satanic bible, which came as a gift from another inmate. Allegedly in retaliation for keeping Satanic artifacts, corrections officers seized the rest of Lujans property. They confiscated her shampoo, soap, coffee, sanitary napkins, bedding, and nearly all her clothing, leaving her with a single pair of underwear. Officers also seized Lujans legal documents, including letters from her defense attorney. If Lujan protested, one officer allegedly told her, she could be placed in solitary confinement for her remaining four months at the prison. Lujan stayed out of solitary. But for her final four months behind bars, she lived without even the bare essentials, washing her one pair of underwear in the shower every day while her clothing remained confiscated. Even after her release, Lujan says none of her possessions have been returned. Lujan is not the first Satanist to claim discrimination at the hands of the New Mexico Department of Corrections. In 2014, a Satanist filed a $140,000 suit against the state, accusing corrections officers of restricting his right to worship. Lujan, who is represented by the New Mexico ACLU, is suing for unspecified damages. The New Mexico Department of Corrections, which did not return The Daily Beasts request for comment, told a local ABC affiliate that it allowed Satanists the same rights as people of other faiths. We recognize multiple religions, that includes holy days, property inmates are allowed to have, and how they practice that religion, spokesperson Alex Sanchez said. But Lujans legal team said Satanists arent feeling the acceptance behind bars. Defendants subjected Ms. Lujan to illegal retaliation that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in their chosen religion, her lawyers wrote. Everyone has seen the 1983 version of Scarface with Al Pacino playing Cuban drug dealer Tony Montana. But the original 1932 version starring Paul Muni as an Italian gangster named Tony Camonte is just as good and in some ways better. For starters, the first movie is much more political. It explicitly says that its intention is to mobilize the public to fight organized crimein particular Italian organized crime. They leave out the Democratic machines in New York City, Chicago, and Boston, which shows that even then few understood that the people watching your pocketbook were skimming off some of what was inside. The styles in the 1932 version, directed by Howard Hawks, are an awful lot better than those in the later version directed by Brian De Palma. To be a little crude here, both versions have Tony, the gangster, attracted to stylish women who would not be confused with Sofia Vergara. The point must be that these crude, vicious men favor women whose bodies are slender and elegant rather than the showgirl curves that one would expect. In both versions, Tony has a sister--called Cesca in 1932 and Gina in the 83 moviewho have the same kind of exquisite figures and stylish clothing. In both cases, big brother doesnt want his sister taking her male companions from the hoodlum pool. However, one of the sexiest movie scenes of all time happens in the beginning of the earlier Scarface: Johnny Lovo is Camontes crime boss. Camonte lusts for both Lovos position and his girlfriend, Poppy. As Camonte leaves Lovos apartment, Poppy bends over so he can see the luscious outline of her buttocks. There is a big difference between the style and quality of the clothes in the two versions. Pacino goes for the Florida white suit look, but his suits are too big and look cheap, and he never wears a tie. The suits have built up shouldersprobably because Pacino has no shoulders of his own. Throughout the movie, Montana looks like an off-duty croupier. Paul Muni, who was built like a light heavyweight and has a strong physical presence, wears tight double-breasted suits and garish ties. Camonte talks proudly of his new clothes, but his suits are usually light colored, which sends a message, because all the classy guys in that era of cinema wore dark-colored suits. The cops in Scarface 1 are honest and wear dark suits; the corrupt cop in Scarface 2 tries to dress like Tony. I knew a lot of big drug dealers in the 80s, and they all wore high-end Italian clothing. If their suits had looked or fit like Tony Montanas, their tailors would be swimming with the dolphinsface up. Montanas shirts are ordinary while Camontes have a look specific to the time: no collar stays. Collar stays are put into shirt collars to make them stay in place. The collars in Scarface 1 are long and pointed and are very soft looking, with the points of the collars very close together. The tie knots are long and narrow (a look I like). There are lots of wide-striped shirts in Scarface 1. The shirts in Scarface 2 dont deserve to be talked about. Everyone wears pocket squares in Scarface 1, and theyre shoved into the breast pocket so that they flop over the pocket. It looks effeminate. In Tonys case, the hankie contrasts with the large and brutal scar on his face just above the pocket. The scar is shaped like a cross. I have not a clue as to whether there is some meaning to that. The topcoats and hats in Scarface 1 are gorgeous. Always very dark, with dark buttons, the topcoats are double breasted and have the buttons placed high, so when they are buttoned they cover the throat nicely. The collars also look intimidating when flipped up. But its the hats that do it (well, its the bending over scene that does it for me). Everybody wears hats. if you look at man wearing a fedora today, the brim is almost always turned up in the back. In movies from the 30s and 40s, they are turned down. Don't ask me why. The crowns are higher in Scarface 1 than they are now and the brims are wider. The combination makes a man walking with his hands in his pockets look like a destroyer cutting through the sea, which is the idea. All the actors in Scarface 1 wear dressing gowns over pajamas. They favor big paisleys. Poppy wears a white negligee and does wonders for it. If you are going to kill or be killed for woman, Poppy is the one. The angels of Portland appeared after the riot, bearing graffiti remover, acetone, scrubbers, gloves, and garbage bags. They immediately put whatever they had to work, showing their own kind of greatness with labor that was its own sweet reward. Many of them shared the sentiments of those who were shocked and dismayed by Donald Trumps victory in the presidential election. All of them were propelled by the feeling that had filled the college student who had organized them, Jacob Dahlberg of Portland Community College. He had been doing his homework when he looked up to see a live news feed of the rampage by vandals who had broken away from Thursdays otherwise peaceful anti-Trump protest in that Oregon city. I just couldnt believe my eyes, Dahlberg recalled to The Daily Beast. I knew there was going to be some sort of need for people to take action. The 26-year-old computer-science and business major searched online for anybody who was organizing volunteers to help repair the damage. He saw nothing. So, I just created an event page that has now gone viral, he said. He soon had 2,000 followers for an event he dubbed Portland Cleanup Volunteer Effort. Then he composed a description that read: Lets clean up this city and show the Portland Spirit. I will be at Tanner Springs Park to offer a hand needed to help clean up Portland. A peaceful protest was hijacked and turned into vandalism and that is not what Portland is about. We will show kindness and love to all and keep Portland GREAT! He set the time and place to assemble as 8 a.m. Friday at Tanner Springs Park. He hopped a bus early the next morning to arrive downtown a half-hour beforehand at one of the sites he had seen trashed on the live feed. He conducted a damage survey as he worked his way up what had been the route of the march. He thereby had a notion of the magnitude of the task when he joined a troop of volunteers in the park at the assigned hour. They concluded that time and supplies would not allow them to address immediately everything that needed doing. What we tried to focus on was getting rid of the profanity and threats and stuff like that, Dahlberg later said. Everybody set to work. A good laugh came with a message from a volunteer at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Burnside Street: MLK & Burnside Trump is my homie lol can we get that too The others kept on after Dahlberg had to leave for his job at a Sephora store at noon. He returned that night as the vandals went at it again. He was back out there Saturday morning with more damage to repair. The other volunteers included 21-year-old Stephanie Pettro, who is studying bioresource research at Oregon State University in Corvallis. She had also watched the rampage online. We have to make this right, she recalled thinking. Pettro had planned to spend the day with her mother, Heather Pettro, in Corvallis. They instead drove the 85 miles to Portland with paint remover and microfiber gloves, plus a knife for scraping. They started on words scrawled with a silver paint pen across the side of a building. I believe it was a motel, Stephanie recalled. It had the words Kill Trump written. The paint remover did the job. She proceeded on to some concrete where somebody had left a message with purple spray paint. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It was harder to get spray paint out of concrete, thats for sure, she later said. I got the word Fuck, but definitely not Trump. She had better luck with the same words on a steel utility box, taking before and after pictures that showed she had removed every trace of the vandalism. She then returned to the more challenging concrete. My hands are pretty sore from it, she said afterward. It was very tough on my hands. I actually have spray paint stuck to my skin. Pettro noted that she did not vote for Trump and quickly added that the outcome of the election in no way justified the destruction. She further noted that any political differences meant nothing among the volunteers. When we were all cleaning it up, it didnt really matter how or what we voted, she sad. Also out there was 21-year-old Vee Reyes, who is on her way to becoming an underwater welder. She was accompanied by her mother, Lilia Garcia, and sister, Mia Ortiz, and the sisters boyfriend, Marco Garcia. Reyes was particularly shocked by the graffiti on the trees. That got me, like, why the trees? she later said. Trees are life. Trees are the reason why were breathing. Without trees, there would be no life on earth. They took due care as they commenced to remedy what seemed a sacrilege. For the trees, we didnt use any chemicals, she reported. We have little scrubber thingies. They managed to get both Fuck and Trump off the trees. They then let loose with the chemicals on a stone wall, sisters and mother, working together. We got most of it off, she said. It was a tough one. Reyes was very clear in her views regarding the vandals. Theyre making us look like horrible people destroying things, she said. They dont now what theyre fighting for, just breaking things, destroying. Theyre making it worse for everyone. She was grateful for an opportunity to help undo the damage. It was an honor helping out with my family, she said. I felt so good. She posted photos of them at work, all smiling. Beautiful family doing beautiful things together, somebody rightly commented. Another post was meant for all the angels of Portland: These are the heroes who come out and clean up the aftermath of the irresponsible destruction. How we love you and your example to make America safe for our families and loved ones to reside. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and the example you have set are those I want my children and grandchildren to aspire after! Its the most important battle in the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State to date: the fight to retake Mosul, the terror groups Iraqi capital. But so far, the U.S. military does not know how many ISIS fighters have been taken prisoner, a senior defense official explained to The Daily Beast. Iraqs security forces have allowed the U.S. military to interview fewer than a handful of detained fighters under Iraqi control since the Mosul offensive began in mid-October, a U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast. The official could not say if any of those detainees were captured before the Mosul offensive, or after it began. We do occasionally get access to detainees that the Iraqis capture, a second defense official said. But its rare. Iraqi officials have said hundreds of ISIS fighters have died so far in the three-week-long battle; U.S. officials estimate a smaller number have fled. It is those fleeing forces that evade capture that are a potentially lost source of intelligence for the U.S. and its alliesand an opening for ISIS fighters to creep back into Mosul, U.S. officials concede. Asked by The Daily Beast whether the U.S. military knew the number of ISIS fighters that had been captured, the first official replied, Nope. In contrast, the U.S. military during its last war in Iraq had access to thousands of Iraqi prisonersand the intelligence they provided. But observers said the lack of detainees this time around reflects an ISIS eager to fight. And it shows the limits of a war in a city littered with bombs and tunnels, and home to hundreds of thousands of civilians. You cant do these capture operations in the middle of the urban warfare. Its too dangerous. We didnt capture many people in the [U.S.-led] Fallujah battles of 2004, James Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010-2012, explained to The Daily Beast. Jeffrey said the lack of the detainees who could provide intelligence is the cost of not having U.S. troops involved in frontline combat, who could hold suspected ISIS fighters, even temporarily, to interrogate them. Some of that intelligence would be helpful not for [learning about] longer term ISIS plansthe frontline fighters are unlikely to know about such strategic aimsbut for specific intelligence on the fight for Mosul itself, said Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Human Rights Watch offered a more troubling explanation for the lack of reported detainees, saying it believes that Iraqi and Kurdish forces have detained at least 37 men from areas around Mosul and Hawija suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State and that government officials have not allowed those detainees to make outside contact. Human Rights Watch spoke to 46 relatives and witnesses, who described how security forces took the men from checkpoints, villages, screening centers, and camps for displaced people. Most said that they did not know where the men are being held and all of them said that the men have not been able to contact them while in detention, the group said in a statement. In the war against ISIS in Mosul, the number of fighters detained is the dog that doesnt bark. ISIS repeatedly has urged its troops to fight to the death, declaring anything short of that punishable by execution. On the other side of the battlefield, neither the Iraqis nor the Americans, for their own reasons, are eager to hold detainees. And if HRW is correct, some Iraqi forces dont want to say how many detainees they are holding. The status of detained ISIS fighters is something I have never heard come up in a briefing with the Iraqis, the second defense official said about briefings between the U.S. and Iraqi military. To be sure, both Iraqi and Kurdish forces have arrested hundreds of fighters but what it is less clear is how many have remained in custody. One Kurdish official told The Daily Beast that Kurdish forces alone had detained hundreds of militants, but could not say how many remain in their custody, adding that any suspected ISIS fighter would be handed over to the Iraqis. Since most suspected ISIS fighters are Iraqis, they are not considered prisoners of war but detainees in their own country. There are international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war but each nation decides how to treat its own criminals. And therefore it is up to the Iraqi government if it will expend resources to bring a case against a prisoner through its tenuous court system. Releasing or mistreating those in custody, for some, are easier alternatives. The U.S. military has agreed to notify the International Committee of the Red Cross within two weeks of taking a detainee in Iraq, but it is not clear if the Iraqis have made a similar agreement with the ICRC. Given the seemingly limited number of ISIS fighters captured, the war against ISIS increasingly appears to end with death or flight. When roughly 100 ISIS fighters launched a surprise attack last month on the Iraqi city of Rutbah, for example, half the ISIS fighters involved were killed in the 36-hour battle, U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian told The Daily Beast. Most of them were killed in place. Some of them were trying to escape the city and were struck by coalition airstrikes, Dorrian told reporters during an Oct. 28 briefing. With ISIS fighters either fleeing or dying, U.S. hopes to glean intelligence through the fight to retake Mosul will hinge on information discovered in documents and electronic files, not through prolonged interrogations. And if enough ISIS fighters are able to flee, as they have so far in Mosul, that could stoke fears among Iraqs Sunni population that the terror group could return, making it harder for Iraqs central government to gain the confidence of the population needed to retain control of the city after the battle ends. The issue of fleeing ISIS fighters is an indicator of whether local Sunni Arabs or alleged former ISIS fighters feel that their security and interests will be protected by the force that defeats ISIS. If they dont believe it, they have no incentive to remain in the territory cleared of ISIS or to disarm and re-integrate, Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. There could be more ISIS detainees in the weeks ahead, as Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters start the block-by-block clearance of Mosul, Pentagon officials said, as it will be much harder for ISIS militants to flee in that urban environment. Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces first reached the city borders last week. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hinted at the possibility of increased detainees in his comments last week, when he called for ISIS fighters in Mosul to surrender or die. There are Iraqi detention centers set up south of the city for such detainees, Pentagon officials said, but no indication the Iraqi forces could handle a large number of detainees. We will close in on [ISIS] from all angles and God willing we will cut the snakes head. They will have no way out and no way to escape, al-Abadi said on state television, while dressed in combat fatigues. The belief that ISIS will not surrender has led local forces to conclude that the only way to defeat ISIS fighters is to kill them, Pentagon officials concede. After all, no one is pushing Iraqi security forces to grab fighters that could be laden with explosives and prepared to kill Iraqi troops in suicide missions. Moreover, taking detainees slows down operations and such detainees demand housing, food, and eventually a judicial process. The U.S. troops joining local forces in the push against Mosul are only there in an advisory role, Pentagon officials have said. And the U.S. has largely gotten out of the detention business in Iraq after a sordid history during the 2003-2011 occupation. Photos of U.S. troops humiliating and mistreating prisoners held in Abu Ghraib become some of the most defining images of a U.S. presence that fell far short of its promise be liberators for Iraqis living under Saddam Husseins regime. At its peak in 2007, there were roughly 50,000 Iraqi detaineeshalf of whom were held by American forces. In 2015, the U.S. military acknowledged building a makeshift detention center for high-value ISIS detainees, but so far has only admitted to holding one such person: suspected ISIS chemical-weapons expert and Iraqi national Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who was captured by U.S. special-forces commanders in February; U.S. officials did not acknowledge al-Afaris capture until a month later. Officials said then that al-Afari provided so much intelligence, it led to additional strikes on the terror groups chemical-weapons facilities. The best-known ISIS detainee was Umm Sayyaf, who was captured during a May 2015 raid that targeted her husband, Abu Sayyaf, a top-level ISIS operative who oversaw gas and oil operations. Umm Sayyaf was initially held by the U.S., but was handed over to Kurdish authorities in August. Like al-Afari, U.S. officials said she provided a tremendous amount of intelligence about internal ISIS operations and its detention of American citizen Kayla Mueller, who according to ISIS, died in February 2015. Perhaps thats one reason why ISIS has been so forceful in urging its fighters to not be captured. ISIS declared to its fighters that surrendering is a crime punishable by death. And there is evidence the terror group has followed through on that charge. Earlier this month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights received reports that ISIS killed 50 of its own militants at the Ghazlani military base in Mosul for alleged desertion. Less than a week after the historic 2016 election, President Obama will hold a press conference before departing on his final foreign trip. The trip will enable President Obama to reassure the nation's allies, assuring a continuation of U.S. foreign policy and amicable relationships despite some of President-elect Trump's incidiary statements. Questions will likely come up about reports that Trump appeared unfamiliar with the duties of a U.S. president while meeting with his predecessor last week at the White House. Obama claimed the pair had an excellent discussion about the office, and the two appeared cordial during the press portion of the event. The press conference will also be the presidents first since the election, in which Donald Trump roundly defeated Hillary Clinton, for whom Obama vigorously campaigned. How to Live Stream President Obama's Press Conference: The White House press room website will be live-streaming the event, which is set to begin at 3:15 p.m. ET. You can watch the presser live below: Luke 19.41-44 And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. I've been taking us through a preterist reading of the gospels, keen to trace out the eschatological imagination of Jesus.Why?I've mentioned how liberal and conservative Christians tend to pick and choose their way around Jesus. Liberals thrill to Jesus' message of love and care for the "least of these." Conservatives, by contrast, point out that Jesus liked to preach about hellfire and brimstone.Two Jesuses, pick your flavor.Our preterist reading of the gospels helps us overcome this liberal/conservative divide.Specifically, as we've seen, Jesus was preachingmessages.On the one hand, Jesus was preaching the advent of the kingdom, but an "upside down" kingdom that eschewed the "will to power" that was motivating the violent impulse to overthrow the Romans. The kingdom, Jesus said, was already available, but in humble and small ways. The kingdom comes when we welcome children, care for the least of these, forgive each other and bless our enemies. This is how the reign of God is established on earth. And this is the material that liberals tend to focus on in the gospels.And yet, this kingdom proclamation was being proclaimed by Jesus at a time of crisis. If Israel heeded Jesus' message it would be spared and saved. Israel would fulfill her vocation, to be a light and blessing unto the nations, a city set on a hill that would call the nations to Zion and the worship of God. But if Israel rejected its vocation and persisted in its "will to power" it remained under the thrall of Satan and would only bring bloodshed, darkness and violence to earth. Israel would self-destruct.And so Jesus sounded the alarm and gave dire warnings. These warnings grew in intensity and urgency as opposition to Jesus mounted, culminating in Jesus' lamentation over Jerusalem in the last days of his life.This is the material of judgment that threads all through the gospels, the material conservatives grab to point out that Jesus routinely talked about a place called "hell" where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth.But with our preterist reading of the gospels we see this material regarding judgment in a different light. The "Judgment Day" Israel was facing wasn't some personal moral accounting that individuals have to face after death to determine if they are bound for an eternity in a place called heaven or hell.Israel's "Judgment Day" was, the moment of choice upon hearing Jesus' gospel message. Salvation and the kingdom of God was available today, right here and right now, in our midst. Repent and believe the good news, or face the dark and dire consequences.That was John the Baptist's message. And that was Jesus' message.All this is neatly summarized in the gospel of Luke in Jesus' lamentation over Jerusalem:Jesus was Israel's judgment day, the time of her visitation. As promised by the prophets, YHWH had returned as the Good Shepherd to gather up the lost and scattered sheep of Israel. The Sower was sowing His seed and some of that seed was falling on good soil. The prodigal sons in the far country, the tax collectors and prostitutes, were returning home. As promised by the prophets, the glory of YHWH had returned to tabernacle among His people. From Cana onward, the wine of the wedding banquet was beginning to flow. The kingdom of God had come.But Israel refused to learn the things that make for peace. And in refusing peace Israel would now face enemies who would tear the nation down.That was the choice, and it remains the choice.Learn the things that make for peace or walk the path toward cataclysm.This is how you avoid the liberal/conservative picking and choosing to appreciate the whole of Jesus' message.Jesus was both/and, prophet of love and peace and prophet of apocalyptic doom. WORKSHOPS! Join me for Photography for Knitters & Crafters workshops, IPhone-ography Workshops, or Leveling Up Your Words & Images for Social Media Programs Grounded due to COVID-19 restrictions. I'll be back to teaching in person when we're all safe to gather again. Invite me to speak to your guild , or teach at your shop sometime in the future! .Happy to work with you to make a program that fits just right. Belvedere releases limited RED charity bottle Belvedere and musician John Legend have launched the 2016 campaign (Belvedere)Red #Makethedifference. The collaboration will see a limited-edition design on Belvedere's bottles. The campaign began in September, and is aiming to peak for World Aids Day, December 1, 2016, with release of the designs. John Legend brings his artistic style to the campaign, curating a unique program to Make The Difference. Together with Belvedere, he established the values that serve as the foundation of the campaign: unity, security, support and change. These four values embody the collective sentiment for all those joining the fight against HIV/AIDS. To bring these powerful tenets to life, John Legend collaborated with Esther Mahlangu, a celebrated Ndebele artist from South Africa, whose vibrant and powerful artwork will be seen throughout the #Makethedifference campaign. In support of the (Belvedere)RED campaign, John Legend is featuring his new single Love Me Now. The anthem main theme encourages people to love now and give now due to the uncertainty of tomorrow. John Legend says: Ive always enjoyed working with (RED). When Belvedere presented this opportunity to help support a product that I would already buy and that was going to help save lives, I thought it was a great idea. I was so excited when I saw Esthers design for the bottle: I think its beautiful and it marries her aesthetic with the aesthetic of Belvedere, it connects it to the culture and to the people were trying to help. Available from September at select retailers around the world, Belvedere donates 50% of its profits from every bottle sold to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. Belvederes global advertising campaign, digital activations and targeted efforts are in on-premise establishments as well as retail stores in over 35 countries. In the UK, the limited-edition bottle can be purchased from Sainsbury's at an RRP of 38 for 70cl, the same price as the original bottles. Online retailers such as The Whisky Exchange are also stocking the bottling. The limited-edition will run until mid-late January. 13 November 2016 - Sam Coyne The Drinks Report, editorial assistant In creating the new international architecture, best have China on your side America accounts for just 15% of global emissions. A four year Trump term alone won't wreck the climate. The Paris Agreement contains national plans from nearly every country in the world, and it was created in a bottom up way to withstand exactly the kind of turbulence caused by a Trump presidency. We now have international architecture in place and the rest of the world isn't simply going to let one man trash their planet. China in particular is unlikely to let America simply walk away from its commitments unscathed. On Friday in Marrakesh the Chinese representatives were very clear that they remained committed to action on climate change and expected America to do so too. China, as well as being the largest foreign owner of US debt, not to mention a global superpower, can exact considerable political and diplomatic pain on the States. If Trump wants to get anything done on trade and terrorism or any other number of international issues, he won't be able to act like a rogue state on climate. It is now a geopolitical issue of the highest magnitude and one of the few areas where there is such international consensus. It's also likely we will get a different President Trump to the rabble rousing Republican candidate on the campaign trail. Once in office Trump will have different responsibilities, not just to generate headlines and get elected but to protect the American people. Trump, and his children advisors, Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric, are on record urging President Obama to deliver action on climate change in 2009 as part of a letter from business leaders in the New York Times. As a businessman Trump has already recognised the advantages of clean energy, let's hope in office, business trumps political partisanship. It would be ironic if having called for Obama to show global leadership on climate change it was Trump who squandered it. Hold Trump to account - but don't paint him into a corner! It's also worth remembering that during the first Presidential debate, Trump denied calling climate change a Chinese hoax. That concession was drowned out by his opponents pointing to his self-contradicting tweet saying otherwise. But if he is no longer claiming to be a climate change denier, let's note that and hold him to account not paint him into a corner. Although Obama deserves much credit for his leadership unlocking the international efforts on climate change in the face of Republican opposition, it's worth noting that Democratic administrations have been far from perfect domestically. The Dakota Access Pipeline has continued under Obama's watch and coal, oil and gas licenses are being sold on public land. And this ties in to the main reason Trump's presence on the scene may not be such a disaster: the fierce opposition he inspires. He has already been a useful catalyst for climate urgency, the Paris Agreement was the fastest international treaty to come into force due to the fear of a Trump Presidency. No longer can countries, businesses and the public sleepwalk into complacent oblivion, assuming catastrophe will be averted just because a climate change believing Democrat is in the White House. Not only will this light a fire under nation states, those of us who care about the environment will realise we must now do our bit to ensure the gains of recent years are not lost. The certainty of unswerving global opposition If you're looking for something practical to do you can join the campaign writing to your bank calling them to stop investing your money in fossil fuel companies and instead shift it to renewables. You can join civil society organisations that campaign on climate change and help countries suffering its consequences. And (in the UK) you can engage your MP. Already the language from BEIS Secretary of State Greg Clark praising renewables is more positive than his predecessor Amber Rudd. Donald Trump is soon to become one of the most powerful people in the world. But even he cannot alter the laws of nature. Climate change will continue under his watch and he'll be held responsible for his actions to deal with it. The world is a different place from eight years ago. The economics have changed, the geopolitical consensus has changed and Trump will face unswerving opposition if he tries the self-sabotage of climate destruction. Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid and is a New Voices contributor to The Ecologist. He can be followed on twitter at @wareisjoe. We have worked to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other Obama trade agreements for more than five years. We were part of the 'movement of movements', the largest coalition ever opposing a corporate trade agreement, which stopped it. It included all sorts of activists who work on human rights, worker rights, the environment, climate change, Internet freedom, health care, food safety and more. People told us stopping the TPP was impossible. Even after the election of Trump, people still told us we could not win, the corporations wanted this and they would get it. But, after years of work, the impossible became the inevitable and the TPP is dead. Even before the election the TPP was near death. Years of people working to stop it made TPP stand for 'Toxic Political Poison'. First, the movement exposed the TPP which the Obama administration had sought to keep secret while it negotiated a global corporate coup with the aid of hundreds of corporate lawyers, executives and lobbyists. The movement organized spectacle protests that drew attention to an agreement being secretly negotiated. People across the country organized leafletting, teach-ins and visibility actions. There were national and global days of action, and there were Twitter storms and memes on Facebook. The more people knew about TPP, the less they liked it It became impossible to hide the TPP. The secret was exposed. Once exposed, the movement educated people about what it contained. Wikileaks and others leaked portions of the document. As more was exposed, it became less popular. The movement conducted national call-in days that garnered hundreds of thousands of calls to Congress. When we went to Congressional offices, phone calls coming in on the TPP were constant. When fast track was being considered in 2015, we built an encampment on Capitol Hill for three weeks. We worked across the political divide with Tea Party and conservative Republicans who shared our concerns about the trade deficit, lost jobs and loss of sovereignty. The battle over fast track trade promotion authority slowed the progress of the TPP. It took years longer to get fast track than the administration had hoped. One compromise that the administration made to get fast track was to publish the TPP text after it was completed so the public and members of Congress could read it. Again, the more people read about it, the less popular it became. These political battles also showed the risk associated with the TPP. John Boehner, the former Speaker of the House, lost his job because of how he twisted arms to get votes for fast track and how he punished Republicans who exposed fast track. Members fought back against these tactics and Boehner's career was quickly ended. He may have won fast track for Obama, but lost his place in Washington, DC. A message was sent to all elected officials: be careful with the TPP; it is politically toxic. K-9 Officer Rousey and her partner and handler at the Rocky Mount Police Department, Chris Shelton, will be featured on the first episode of Cesar Millans new show, Dog Nation. Dog Nation involves Millan, a professional dog trainer, and his son, Andre, traveling around the country to highlight different organizations that are doing great things with dogs, Shelton said. The first episode will feature the Throw Away Dogs Project, which is the group that found Rousey in February and rescued her from a shelter. Rousey and Shelton travelled to Philadelphia for a week in September to show Millan and Andre what the Throw Away Dogs Project is all about. The project rescues, rehabilitates and relocates stray dogs so they can be put to use as police K-9 working dogs. Rousey and I conducted a narcotics detection demonstration for the show, Shelton said, and I can also be seen handling another Throw Away Dog Sting, a Belgian Malinois in a patrol demonstration for Cesar and Andre. Rousey, a German Shepherd, was abandoned as a puppy and was turned over to an animal rescue organization in Pennsylvania. She was discovered by the Throw Away Dogs project. Shelton got her around the first week of February at no charge to the department. We had 10 weeks of training, and she did excellent in school, Shelton said. She was at the top of her class, in my opinion. Rousey serves with the RMPD in narcotics detection. She is trained to search cars, buildings, schools and other operational areas. She also is trained to track missing persons. If an elderly person or a child goes missing, Rousey is trained to track them and find them, Shelton said. Rousey and Shelton started basic K-9 school through the Roanoke Police Department on Feb. 8, and on April 11, Rousey was certified for narcotics detection and tracking. She graduated April 30 from the Roanoke Police Academy. The first episode of Dog Nation will air in late winter (February or March) on National Geographic Wild (NatGeoWild). The Rev. Vandel Muse didnt write anything down on paper to read at this years Veterans Day service in Rocky Mount. Some life experiences, you never forget, he said. Muse was one of two speakers to address attendees of this years service, held Friday morning in Franklin County Veterans Memorial Park. Muse, pastor of Beulah Missionary Baptist Church in Boones Mill for 33 years, was raised in Penhook and said he was almost scalded to death at the age of 1. The doctor said I wouldnt make it, but I had a praying mother, he said. By the grace of God, Im still here. In 1968, Muse was drafted into the Army at the age of 25. I was afraid about going into the Army and about going to Vietnam, he said. Muse completed his basic training at Fort Bragg, N.C., scoring a perfect 500 on his physical training test. Muse was sent to Vietnam and when he came back home, he didnt like himself or anyone else. I didnt know why, Muse said. I was in one piece physically, but I was a mess mentally. He was suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). I had it bad and I didnt know how to deal with it, he said. In 1978, I got saved and it was the best thing to happen to me besides meeting my beautiful wife, Florine Gray Muse, he said. She helped me a lot. I was still in a bad way. My temper was messed up. Mused praised the VA (Veterans Administration) for setting up a program for veterans with PTSD. I went through their anger management program and learned how to manage my anger, he said. The VA also helped him and other veterans get compensation for their service, allowing him to make it through hard financial times. Thank God for the veterans who were willing to put their lives on the line that this country could be a better place to live, he said. Muse referenced Psalm 46, which reads God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. He encouraged anyone struggling to allow God to be their refuge and strength. I guarantee God will bring you through, said Muse. He is the reason Im here today. I dont know what the future holds, but I do know who holds the future. Muse served in the United States Army from 1968-1972 in Germany and Vietnam. He is a retired construction worker and is the past moderator of the Pigg River Baptist Association. He and his wife of 30 years have eight grown children. Vietnam veteran Dr. James Crawford was the second speaker during the ceremony and, like Muse, said he suffered from PTSD. Crawford said he was a military brat, attending 15 different schools before graduating high school. He attended five different colleges before earning a bachelors degree. I didnt even enter medical school until I was 31, he said. Crawford enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1968 as a combat medic and served in Vietnam and in the Berlin Brigade in Germany. After witnessing a lot of trauma, including the death of comrades and commanders, Crawford came home and suppressed it all and didnt talk about it. At one point, Crawford had a bad reaction watching a movie that brought back horrible memories. I felt sweaty, I got dizzy and had a watery mouth, he said. I rolled out of my seat onto the aisle and I was flashing for the first time in my life about the scenes I had experienced. I realized I needed to do something about the things deep inside me that I had suppressed. Crawford sympathized with family members who have had the war brought home to them in difficult ways. He encouraged them to understand their veteran and to try to get them help if needed. Like a feather, we get blown around by fate, he said. Theres a lot of uncertainty, but we can blow that feather towards our faith or in the direction we want it to go in. Its important to remember your family and country and to bless and endorse and do everything we can to keep this country great and make it even greater, he added. Crawford became a nurse and a physicians assistant before graduating from LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, La., on a Navy scholarship. In 1989, Crawford left the Navy and joined an anesthesia practice in Roanoke. He is now part of a 55-person anesthesiology group at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Its important for us to continue to support our vets and others who are trying to get an education and achieve their goals, Crawford said. Crawford was married to his wife, Phyllis, for 42 years before she lost her battle with cancer in 2010. They had two grown children. During the service, Herman Chaney, senior vice commander of the VFW Post 10840, presented 92-year-old WWII veteran Rex Johnson with a lifetime membership to the post. The Franklin County High School Air Force JROTC presented the colors at the annual service, and World War II veteran SSgt. Harry Coates led the Pledge of Allegiance and placed the wreath at the monument. Selah Wright, youngest member of the Wright Kids, sang the National Anthem. Pastor Ron Coleman of Henry Fork Church of the Brethren gave the opening prayer, and Charles Wagner, charter park commission member, gave the welcome remarks. Lt. Col. (ret.) Larry Moore and B.W. Wright Jr., charter member and chairman of the commission, introduced the guest speakers. Special music was presented by The Wright Kids of Rocky Mount and FCHS JROTC member McKenna Hamrick. Wright gave the closing remarks and Pastor Eddie Hawks of Woodlawn Baptist Church gave the blessing of the food and benediction. Whenever you encounter a veteran, give them the respect and honor they deserve, Hawks said. Theyll appreciate the thoughtfulness of it. Coates released a dove and the FCHS Air Force JROTC retired the colors. Taps was performed by FCHS Marching Eagle Band member Dijuan Gilbert. Immediately following the service, lunch was served to all veterans (active and inactive) and their families at Woodlawn Baptist Church. The luncheon was hosted by church members and staff. Podcast: Who comes out ahead in the Charlie Jones vs. Iowa football reunion? This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NORWALK Its not that Julia Contacessi didnt like her day job. Her career in marketing utilized her creativity and her desire to collaborate with other people. But as she moved up in the ranks, she lost that creative aspect she so badly yearned for. So, with the support of her husband, she quit four years ago to pursue her true passion. Now a full-time artist, shes had to get used to her new life outside an office. I like to paint big, Contacessi said. Painting large is daunting, but its a lot of fun. Your whole body is involved because you have to move around the space. I used to sit behind a computer for eight hours. Theres a lot of artists that believe movement of creating art is part of art itself, and I think so too. Contacessi works in the realm of the abstract, inspired by the coast. The colors she uses are typically soft, cut by metallic notes that invoke images of shorelines and the white water of cresting waves. I want to feel calmed and welcomed when I look at a work, Contacessi said. People put my work in their homes and your home is your sanctuary. I want to be a calming experience that soothes your soul. Contacessi, a Shelton native who has lived in Norwalk for more than a decade, was exposed to art early in life. Her mother is an art teacher, which introduced her to the world. Following high school, she went to art school at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where a heavy focus is placed on helping students actually get jobs doing art thats how she got into marketing. More Information Editor's note: This is the second story in a new series titled "Follow the Lead," which profiles interesting people and traces their connections in the community. Norwalk artist 5iveFingaz, the series' first subject, worked with Julia Contacessi and recommended her to The Hour. See More Collapse I was a child of the late 70s, Contacessi said. My mom was home with crafts and games, and I think thats kind of how I got started. My family was really supportive when I decided to go to art school. Along her path to life as a full-time artist, Contacessi met fellow Norwalk artist 5iveFingaz. They worked together at a local marketing firm and became close friends. We first met in 2004, she said. We worked a ton together, I babysat his dog. Weve always stayed connected and now hes doing really interesting things. When shes not painting, Contacessi is living up to her Italian heritage, hanging out with her family, making food, talking about food or planning for the next time theyll all get together. Her grandfather immigrated from Italy and purchased land in Shelton, turning it into a dairy farm. He worked in a local factory while Contacessis grandmother ran the farm. In the 1950s, a developer swooped in to purchase the land, but Contacessis grandfather kept two acres for himself as well as an additional two acres for each of his children. So, thats where Contacessi grew up. Amid a large, growing family, next door to all her relatives. I loved that, Contacessi said. If I didnt like what my mom was cooking, Id go next door to my aunts house and wed always have big family dinners. We still do that sometimes. Shes made sure to carry on that tradition too. Every night, Contacessi sits down with her husband and son to enjoy a family dinner. Her mom is usually there too. One of the unexpected perks of changing her path four years ago is a freedom to leave her basement studio any time she wants to enjoy that family time. Family is really important to me, Contacessi said. At the end of one dinner, were usually planning the next one. My mother lives in Norwalk now and we usually eat with her four or five times a week. So weve kept that going. KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt One of the more popular themes dominating media and social media in the last week have been fears that Americas multicultural project will be reversed, and exhibited by increased prejudice and discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. One protester in Chicago told The Washington Post: Its a bad time to be a Muslim or an illegal citizen in this country. Given reports of antagonism against Muslim Americans, these warnings probably have some legitimacy. Yet the liberal brand of multiculturalism promoted by the Left has its own prejudices against Islam, though they are often manifested in less explicit ways. These prejudices, often founded upon principled rejections of core tenets of Islamic belief, are however just as damning, if not more so, though they be less worthy of catchy protest slogans or provocative headlines. The 2016 war comedy-drama Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a biopic of news reporter Kim Barker and her book, The Taliban Shuffle suggests how this is so. The movies protagonist is an American journalist increasingly dissatisfied with her domestic beat. Her boss proposes a tour in Afghanistan, which, after seeing another female journalists eloquent reporting from Kabul on the nightly news, seems an irresistible, if dangerous, option. Thus proceeds the protagonists on-the-job crash-course in all things military, Afghanistan, and expatriate culture. One of the most palpable themes in this professional coming-of-age story is the main characters deepening understanding of, and appreciation for, Afghanand by extension, Muslimculture. There are heart-warming scenes of her developing a platonic relationship with her Dari interpreter. There is her experience at her interpreters wedding, where she dances without restraint in the females-only side of the reception alongside other women dressed in beautiful saris. And so on. Is this not the positive fruits of true multiculturalism, entering into anothers world to better understand and appreciate a foreign paradigm? Maybe but scratch a little and the deeper contradictions become more apparent. Take, for example, her trips accompanying US soldiers on patrol to Afghan villages. In one such village, a U.S military-built well is repeatedly destroyed, presumably by the Taliban. Except the American journalist discovers, following a surreptitious encounter with a host of Burqa-clad Afghan women, that the female villagers are the real culprits. They have been throwing old, Soviet-era bombs into the well so that they can continue their long-standing tradition of going down to the river to collect water. This, she discovers, is the only place where women are able to be themselves, talk freely, and escape the burden of their oppressive, patriarchal society. Other similar scenes likewise deride Afghan and Islamic culture for their views and treatment of women, embodied most tangibly in the burqa. I am no defender of the burqa, nor many Islamic mores regarding women, but these episodes reflect an interesting dilemma. Yes, the multiculturalist affirms, Islamic culture is to be validated and respected. No, the same multiculturalist argues, Islamic cultures perspectives on women, exemplified in the demeaning, oppressive burqa, must be rejected. This is because, the multiculturalist presumes, all women would of course find such clothing backwards and degrading. Except, a cynic might counter, for all those Muslim women making headlines for willfully and proudly donning the burqa in Western countries. The multiculturalist/secularist worldview emphasizes tolerance and respect towards foreign cultures, while at the same time aggressively demanding that those same cultures accept the central tenets of the globalized, secular paradigm. On the one hand, the Wests meritocratic elite have a certain obsession with the exotic, unknown qualities of foreign culture, commonly expressed through appreciation for music, clothing, and food. However, they simultaneously censure those cultural traits at odds with the secularist definition of man and the world, particularly as it relates to gender and sexual ethics. Consider again the movies portrayal of Western women flaunting their sexual freedom. Upon arriving in-country, the protagonist meets the journalist heroine she had seen on television back in the USA. In their very first conversation, the latter asks the protagonist for permission to sleep with her handsome New Zealand security guard (she finds the gruff, bearded American security guys too boorish). Much of the movie exemplifies this tenor, where Western women, always in short supply in Kabul, are the ones able to wield power in sexual relationships. As it is crassly put, a woman who would be a 4 back home is a 10 in Afghanistan. The ignorance of unmarried Afghan men towards women and sex is meanwhile mocked, presumably because of their parochial religious views regarding sexuality and marriage. The message from the technocratic, progressive elite to Islam becomes increasingly clear: You can keep your exotic clothing, but please ditch repressive garb like the burqa or hijab. You can keep the call to prayer in Arabic five times a day, since that represents a sexy unknown, but you need to stop believing any of the Qurans absolutist, intolerant content regarding sexuality. In effect, Islam is only allowed to be Islam on the Wests progressive, secularist terms, conditions that are likewise increasingly forced upon Christianity. The freedom of multiculturalism amounts to a noose pulled tighter and tighter around dissenting opinions. Progressives love shwarma, music with a Middle Eastern vibe, henna on the hands, etc. It makes them feel of the world. It makes them believe that they are participating in a global era defined by tolerance and acceptance. They dont want to be viewed as provincial or parochial (except, of course, when they do buy local!). Yet these various elements of culture are not really the most essential or fundamental parts of culture. Consider American culture. For the most part, we dont eat, dress, or play the same kind of music as our ancestors of three or four generations past. What, truly, is American food, clothing, or music? The answer of 1916 or 1816 is quite different from that of 2016. Culture reduced to food, clothing, and music is of less value because it is so fluid and impermanent. Religion, in contrast, leaves a far more indelible stamp on a cultures philosophy, morals, and social norms. These are the aspects of culture most difficult to uproot, most stubbornly resistant to change. Look at Australia, where a largely areligious society is in the midst of a bitter debate over legalizing gay marriage. The Christian religion, considerably weakened and distantly removed from the majority of Aussies lives, is a significant reason for this strange circumstance. Moreover, recent Western efforts to promote LGBT causes in Indonesia and Uganda have met stiff resistance, driven largely by Muslim and Christian leaders. The secularist/multiculturalist project has been hard at work in the West, reducing Christian holidays to meaningless exercises in materialism, often with increasingly blatant sexual overtones. Think, for example, of trashy Halloween outfits and the sexual, Christmas-themed escapades of the film Love Actually. It has done this by affirming the most unimportant accidents of religious customcandy, costumes, and the likewhile censuring the beliefs and ideology that fostered those practices. Yet not satisfied with subverting only its own cultures religious faith, it must now conquer every other culture, including that of Islam. Yes, its almost certainly true that progressives do not present the kind of immediate, tangible threat to individual Muslims that others have evinced in recent days. I doubt we will see political liberals defacing mosques or intimidating Muslims any time soon. Counterintuitively, however, this may be because those who perpetrate such irresponsible acts, in a certain respect, bear more regard for Islam than those of the progressivist camp. This is because many progressivists view religion, be it Islam, Christianity, or anything else, as a political tool to be appropriated to serve their ideological agendaa fact demonstrated palpably in the recent revelations about anti-Catholicism among many political elites. In contrast, conservatism respects religion as maintaining certain non-negotiable beliefs that if excised would undermine, and perhaps destroy, a particular belief system. It is true, in the case of Islam, that many such conservatives argue, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, that the intrinsic beliefs of Islam present an existential threat to what remains of a Christian Western culture. This is certainly a real threat to Islam and its ability to exist peaceably in the West. But is it as fundamental of a threat as the progressive multiculturalist project? Those who adhere to this ideology pay lip service to tolerance and respect of Islamic religion and culture, while subtly (and often not-so-subtly) demanding Muslims abandon core principles of their religion in order to participate in the multiculturalist project. Islamjust as Christianity before itis allowed a place in the progressivist, pluralist society, only to the degree to which it is willing to commit doctrinal suicide. Those American Muslims so threatened by recent events should carefully consider who, exactly, poses the more significant threat to the ability of Muslims to participate in a pluralist society. Otherwise Muslims may become, like so many Christians before them, pliant cogs in the machinery of progressivist ideology. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now. Editors Note: The featured image is 20081023Islam by islamicus is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 . Marc Mero, founder of Champion of Choices, presented a powerful presentation on positive choices at Grand Island Central Catholic Middle/High School on Nov. 7. This being his first trip to Nebraska, Marc has also shared his captivating journey with audiences worldwide (one of 255 for the year of 2016). As a former WWE wrestling champion, Marcs compelling message brought personal reflection, laughter and tears and most importantly personal transformation as he presented topics of bullying, peer pressure, substance abuse and suicide prevention to our students, parents, staff, faculty and community members. Students were reached at a high level and inspired to treat themselves and others with respect, dream big, achieve goals and cherish relationships. As an inspirational speaker and author of How to be the Happiest Person on the Planet, Marc shared his wisdom, faith and discovery of whats truly important in life. To see him live and in person and to listen to his message not once but twice was something I will never forget. He brought a positive message of making the right choices, hope and inspiration to GICC and the community. Meros website has a video, A Mothers Love, that is very heart touching and is well worth watching. This presentation would not have been made possible without the support and donations from Grand Island Association for Child Abuse Prevention, GICC Middle/High School, GICC Development Foundation and other anonymous donors. A special thank you goes out to GICCs principal, Kristen Klein, for allowing this motivational presentation to be held at Grand Island Central Catholic Middle/High School. Thank you to Jared, Mr. Meros production manager. Last but not least, thank you to my co-chair, Dori Bush, for all your help, support on this memorable undertaking we made the right choice! So, now what? That is the question some people are asking when it comes to higher education after one of the longest and most contentious presidential elections in American history. The question comes up not only because of the results, but also because higher education is facing one of its most grave situations in its history due to, among other things, decreasing funding, exorbitant student debt and bad press. So what can we expect in the months and years to come based on the platform and statements issued by the leaders of the upcoming administration? Here is a sample. Diminishing funding: The president-elect has already stated that, "If the federal government is going to subsidize student loans, it has a right to expect that colleges work hard to control costs and invest their resources in their students. If colleges refuse to take this responsibility seriously, they will be held accountable." What he fails to take into account is that because of diminishing state support most public colleges and universities have seen increasing tuition and fees as their only option. The blame game played by many state politicians has worked very well. They blame college administrators for the increasing costs, not themselves for dramatically cutting state funding. Intervention in the financing of private colleges: Trump has made threats of ending the tax-exempt status of colleges and universities with large endowments. He has stated that colleges need "to spend endowments on their students, not themselves . They need to use that money to cut the college debt and cut tuition, and they have to do it quickly." This is one of the favorite lines of attack by the party of the upcoming administration. In order to divert their own responsibility regarding the lack of funding from the public sector, they blame private colleges and universities for the cost of college. The problem is that most of the money in those endowments is earmarked, meaning the college is contractually obligated to use it for specific purposes according to the wishes of the donors. And most of those endowments are in the form of scholarships for students anyway. The government cannot mandate that colleges break their contracts with donors. Terminating the tax-exempt status of private colleges will only further undermine their ability to receive donations, many of which are destined to help students with low financial resources. More scam universities: For-profit institutions, such as the now defunct Trump University, are the main source of student debt, using federal funds to operate on a clear scheme of corporate welfare. They will probably increase in numbers and size under a Trump administration due to a relaxing of federal regulations on them. In fact, the day after the election their value on the stock market rose dramatically. Increased regulations of day-to-day operations: Trump has said colleges could save money by eliminating the "tremendous bloat" in their administrations. Although there has been an increase in the number of administrators in higher education, that has been in response to both federal and state mandates to comply with laws enacted at both levels. Conservatives have been increasing oversight of the everyday operations of higher education institutions by enacting intrusive laws that require more compliance. These regulations, in turn, require more administrators to oversee them. Will the upcoming administration reconcile their repulsion for more government regulations with their desire to intervene in the daily affairs of colleges? Student debt: Although the president-elect has stated that he will establish repayment of student debt based on income (something generally backed by Democrats and Republicans alike), he has provided few details. Not only that, given that such a plan would require federal funding, where is that money going to come from when he has already announced an increase in military spending and tax cuts that will, most likely, balloon the national debt? Diminishing number of international students: Many public colleges and universities have looked to the enrollment of more international students to, in part, make up for the loss of state funding. After the 9/11 attacks, the number of international students coming to the United States decreased by 25 percent and took several years to rebound to previous levels. Now we will have a president who has used xenophobic statements to refer to people from other countries. The climate created by those statements will result in a dramatic decrease in the number of international students, and with it a devastating effect on the finances of many public colleges and universities. Worsening race relations: Within 48 hours after the election results were announced, numerous racial incidents were reported on campuses across the country. Physical attacks on Muslim students, a proliferation of depictions of nooses, white students in blackface, some chanting white power, and xenophobic and other bigoted chalkings have multiplied at an alarming rate. If the climate over race relations was bad before the elections, it is going to get worse now that the new administration is clearly against anything that may resemble political correctness. Sexual attacks: One of the worst kept secrets on campuses is the large number of sexual attacks against women. The main legal instrument to combat such assaults is Title IX, a portion of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972 that states (in part) that: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Trump has been very explicit in promising to weaken the enforcement provisions of this law and of his desire to eliminate the government branch in charge of its enforcement, the Department of Education. What should we do to ameliorate these effects? That will be discussed in this very column next week. Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. is a writer and college professor with leadership experience in higher education. He can be contacted through his website at: http://www.aromerojr.net The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and not the Intelligencer. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Simon Tay and Chen Chen Lee (The Jakarta Post) Singapore Mon, November 14, 2016 When Indonesias President Joko Jokowi Widodo meets Singapores Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, it will be their first ever bilateral retreat. There will be plenty to discuss between the leaders of the two countries. Both are making efforts to cooperate, yet as with all neighbors there can be points of difference. A closed-door retreat, away from the glare of publicity, can help develop trust. Many sensitive issues are up for discussion including cooperation against terrorism but three areas bear special emphasis. The first is Indonesias economy and the role of foreign investors. Indonesia is growing at some five percent this year, with Singapore its largest foreign investor. In 2015, FDI from Singapore was US$5.9 billion, and a further $7.1 billion is estimated to have been committed by Singapore so far this year. The Jokowi government is seeking increased and higher-quality investment to create jobs and achieve economic growth beyond the resource sector. As such, Indonesia recently opened up 49 more sectors to foreign investment. However, red tape and signs of protectionism continue, and Jakarta needs to go further to actively court foreign investors. Singapore can play a role in this. This will be highlighted when the two leaders officiate at the opening of the new Kendal Industrial Park, led by SembCorp Development from Singapore and the Indonesian company, PT Kawasan Industri Jababeka. This project is potentially the most significant industrial collaboration between the two countries since the 1990s, when what is now the Batam, Bintan and Karimun Free Trade Zone began. Moreover, the Kendal project in Semarang will be built in the most populous area of the country, linking foreign investors to existing domestic supply chains. This could have positive knock-on effects for Indonesias domestic economy and spur development in areas outside Jakarta. Another notable Singaporean effort comes from UOB Bank, which is using its regional network of investors to promote investment in sectors prioritized by Indonesias 20152019 National Development Plan. To ease business entry, the bank is working closely with BKPM, Indonesias investment agency. Investors who come through the bank can apply for a Principle License in Singapore, without having to go through red tape in Jakarta. Licenses can be obtained within 10 working days, much more quickly than in the past. The Jokowi administration is reforming the economy to be more efficient and developing the infrastructure and policies to encourage industrialization. Singapores hub position will allow it to participate in this reform on a win-win basis. Another area for discussion is the tax amnesty program begun by the Jokowi administration. Despite initial doubt, the first phase that ended in September achieved considerable success. Rp3.6 quadrillion ($276 billion) in assets was declared, almost 90 percent of the initial target. There have been suggestions in Indonesia, however, that there is resistance to the tax amnesty from some quarters in Singapore. Singapore has denied such allegations, but speculation may resurface as the program continues. After all, the amnesty extends to all offshore assets, and about 70 percent of the Rp952 trillion of offshore assets declared so far was kept in Singapore. State tax revenue is under pressure from weak commodity prices and lower export earnings. This makes the tax amnesty a key initiative to increase revenues and enable more state investment for infrastructure and other essential spending. For Singapore, the financial sector must meet global standards on transparency and align with the upcoming global initiative to exchange information, guard against money laundering and prevent terrorist funding. In their discussions, the two leaders should not only clear up any lingering doubts on this issue; they should also build trust and agree on stronger lines of communication, both among key ministers and between them directly. A third issue that should be discussed privately between the leaders is transboundary haze pollution. Last year, the region saw one of the worst episodes of haze to date, due to the burning of some 2.6 million hectares of forest and peatland. This year, Indonesias concerted efforts and favorable weather conditions have led to much clearer skies. According to Global Forest Watch Fires, fire alerts from June to October 2016 fell 92 percent compared to the same period last year. President Jokowi has displayed a tough personal stance towards the issue. After investigations into 15 companies suspected of causing fires in Riau were terminated in July 2016, the President ordered that these cases be re-opened. Indonesian police have arrested more than double the number of individuals in forest fire cases this year as compared to last year. The government is also responding faster to fires, with early fire detection leading to the declaration of a state of emergency in six Indonesian provinces. One critical initiative is the newly established Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG). BRG has the ambitious goal of restoring 2.2 million hectares of degraded peatland by 2020, while ensuring sustainable livelihoods for local communities. At a meeting organized in Jakarta two weeks ago by leading Indonesian non-governmental organizations, nationwide efforts to restore peatlands and prevent fires were presented. These efforts must be implemented and sustained into the future. It is clear that Indonesia is trying to do more, and there are areas where external support can greatly assist. But cooperation on this issue can be sensitive, and much will depend on the tone set by the leaders. For Singapore, this should begin with an increased appreciation of the efforts the Jokowi administration is making, as well as an understanding that Indonesia must take the lead in directing and coordinating international support. Ties between Indonesia and Singapore have gone through ups and downs, and there is no doubt that future issues may trigger different responses. With the Jokowi government entering its second year and Singapore planning its own leadership renewal, this is an important time for the leaders to sit down and exchange views. The aim should be to build not only personal rapport, but enduring channels for clear communication. *** Simon Tay is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), an independent and globally ranked think tank, and Chen Chen Lee is the SIIA director for policy programs. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. For more information click here. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Last month the government finally completed a long-overdue amendment to the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law. Alongside a few improvements to fix a vague defamation clause, there is an addendum worth noting: the clause for the right to be forgotten. The ITE Law now allows citizens to request a court order to have information that compromises their privacy or unjustly damages their reputation removed from the internet. This clause is said to adopt a European approach to data privacy protection. The legal concept of this right is rooted in French law, which recognizes the right of oblivion allowing the rehabilitation of an ex-convicts reputation. The EU expanded its scope to cyberspace and granted individuals within EU jurisdiction with the right to prohibit search engines from linking to unwanted personal content. Since its introduction in Europe circa 2014, the right to be forgotten has ignited a debate over the right to privacy vis-a-vis the freedom of speech two exigent issues in the digital age. Similar contention has now arisen in Indonesia. While Communications and Information Technology Minister Rudiantara claims the addendum is an improvement for the previously unacknowledged rights of personal data, this sentiment does not resonate with civilian groups. The Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) fears that the regulation will be misused, for instance by those who are running for office and hiding a criminal record a matter of public importance. The Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers) has denounced the new law as impeding press freedom as it gives the government greater authority to suppress information. These are perfectly reasonable concerns. The Indonesian regulation goes beyond that of Europe in limiting access to information. In Europe, the law is specifically designated to search engines not original websites to avoid conflict with the right to freedom of the press. Thus, more accurately, it is the right to delist. In contrast, the Indonesian law entails the compliance of all content providers including digital apps and foreign news sites. Meanwhile, a concrete mechanism to keep freedom of the press intact remains absent. Not only is the rule detrimental to legitimate journalism, its workability is also dubious. The ITE Law obliges individuals to have a court order to seek removal. The complex procedure and poor bureaucracy for accessing the court system let alone the questionable credibility of our law enforcers cast doubt on the feasibility of exercising this right, particularly for ordinary citizens. What about the situation in Europe? There, the ruling compelled Google to launch a channel where residents can file a direct request (with Google granting approval). Although this approach is criticized for outsourcing authority to private corporations, Google appears to apply the rule to protect privacy. Based on Googles Transparency Reports, around 95 percent of granted requests have concerned the removal of unwanted private information on social media as opposed to only 5 percent comprising public records regarding political figures or serious crimes. It is also interesting to note that the issuance of the right to be forgotten in Europe was triggered by a case Gonzalez v. La Vanguardia where a private citizen filed a complaint against a newspaper to delete online news about his past bankruptcy. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) refuted his claim against La Vanguardia but ordered Google to remove the news link from its search results. Lets take a closer look at the ITE Laws amendment process. Intriguingly, the right to be forgotten clause appears to lack a legal precedent; it may even appear to be out of the blue. To my knowledge, Indonesia has had no precursor parallel to that of the Gonzalez case. Furthermore, the issue of the right to be forgotten is barely touched on in the ITE bills academic draft. Rudiantara has only stated that the inclusion of the clause is from a House of Representatives proposal. According to the House, the purpose of duplicating the European approach is to accommodate peoples interests and protect privacy. If that is truly the case, why impose a convoluted mechanism to exercise that right? Besides, the government should have conducted a public assessment to establish the extent of any necessity to adopt such a regulation. The governments case on its version of the right to be forgotten is unconvincing. The unprecedented rule, along with complicated procedures, raises valid suspicion about its impartiality and viability. It seems to me that the adoption of this clause is in favor of the elites interests, instead of those of lower-income groups. To ensure justice, it is imperative to draw clear boundaries between privacy and public interest. The internet should remain a prime channel to provide transparency of public information, including that of politicians who occupy public office and hence are tax-funded. Also, there must be no room at all for powerful human right abusers to erase accessible reports of their crimes. The careless design of the 2008 ITE Law, with its vagueness, should be a lesson learned. Without careful deliberation, the amended ITE Law will likely end up in the same hole misguided in principle and unworkable in practice. In other words, borrowing Jonathan Zittrains term, such a law is a very bad solution to the real problems. *** Aulia Nastiti is a 2016 Arryman Fellow in equality development and globalization studies at the Buffett Institute, Northwestern University, the US. --------------- We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. For more information click here. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 University student Azka A. Silmi, who created the search engine Geevv.com, will reportedly donate 80 percent of its advertising revenue to social programs. Azka, who is studying fiscal administration at the University of Indonesia (UI), recently told kompas.com in Jakarta, This is a social search engine, not a local search engine. The concept of Geevv is that it operates with a unique mechanism: every word typed into the search field box is automatically converted into a donation of Rp 10. This amount was determined from the distributed value between the potential number of advertisements and the potential number of Geevv users, minus projected operational costs. This mechanism has been put into practice for at least three months, since the site launched its beta version on Sept. 26. (Read also: 12-year-old Indonesian boy to enter top Canadian university) In addition to observing public response and feedback, the search engines beta version is earmarked to attract as many users as possible. So far, 200,000 users have accessed Geevv to both browse and donate. The pay per click and pay per view methods will be used to determine donations, which will be allocated to health, educational and poverty-eradicating programs, based on advertising revenues. Azka, who is working with UI psychology student Andhika Deni Prasetya to develop Geevv, said that they would soon conduct the social programs. We dont want to make this [social assistance program] a mere campaign. (mra/kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Police have arrested 15 people in connection with an attack at Oikumene Church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan. National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said police were still investigating possible links between the 15 people and the alleged perpetrator, identified as Juhanda, 32. We suspect they are connected and have communication links with the perpetrator, Juhanda, Boy said on Monday, as reported by kompas.com. He added, however, that no evidence had been found yet showing that the 15 people were part of the group conducting the attack. (Read also: Jokowi orders police to probe Samarinda church attack) The status of the 15 people was still that of witnesses in the case, Boy said. He explained police still had seven days, according to the Terrorism Law, to question them before either naming them suspects or releasing them. In 2012, Juhanda was jailed for three-and-a-half years for a bomb attack plot in South Tangerang, Banten. Police alleged he spent three days making Molotov cocktails in his home in Samarinda before throwing them at the church. Four children suffered serious burns in the attack. One of them, a three-year old girl, died on Monday at the hospital. (jun) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian revealed on Monday that Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama would present a Quran interpretation expert from Egypt in a case screening on Ahoks alleged blasphemy to be held on Tuesday. Whoever has been reported in the case [Ahok] may present [experts]. If he wants to present [an expert] from Egypt, no problem, Tito said at the polices Mobile Brigade unit headquarters in Depok, West Java, as reported by kompas.com. The Quran expert from Egypt will be among 20 experts from various backgrounds, such as religion, law and language, who will make statements in the case screening. (Read also: Police retract plan to televise case screening of Ahok blasphemy allegation) A case screening is the stage in a crime investigation before the police decide whether to name a suspect. At least 11 people who reported Ahok to the police for alleged blasphemy will make statements as well as the governor in the case screening. Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent, was reported to the police after a video clip, which showed him citing a verse from the Quran in an event in Thousand Islands regency last month, went viral. He has repeatedly apologized, saying he never intended to insult Islam or the Quran. On Nov. 4, thousands of protesters staged a rally demanding the government prosecute Ahok for the blasphemy. The rally ended in violence after two police vehicles were set on fire. (jun) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama launched on Monday a campaign post, which will receive reports and complaints from residents on city-related matters. Since Monday morning, dozens of Jakartans have gathered at the post, which is located at Rumah Lembang on Jl. Lembang, Menteng, Central Jakarta. Residents want to report problems related to land certificates, clean water, poor road infrastructure and traffic jams to the incumbent governor running in the Jakarta gubernatorial election. Ahok has promised to follow up on the complaints via Qlue, a mobile app through which users can file reports on problems in the city. We will pass it on to Qlue, just like how other people process their public complaints. Some people said they wanted to file a complaint but they didnt know how to use Qlue, he said on the sidelines of the launch event at Rumah Lembang. During the event, several people took the opportunity to take a picture with Ahok. Some others conveyed their support for the governor, who is facing legal pressures over alleged religious blasphemy. I dont agree if Bapak [Ahok] drops out from the race. You have to promise me that you will keep moving forward whatever the situation is, said Afni, a resident of Sunter, North Jakarta, to Ahok. Ahok is scheduled to meet Jakartans at the post from Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. before then continuing on to campaign in areas across the city. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has said he will accept whatever result the police come to in their investigation into his allegedly blasphemous remarks. I believe the police are professional. Whatever the police decide, I will accept it, even if I am named a suspect, Ahok said during an event at his campaign team headquarters in Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Monday. The governor further said that he hoped that if the police named him a suspect, they would deliver his case to the court immediately. I hope the case can be immediately handled, where people can witness a live trial [from television]. I believe I'm not guilty, he said. Ahok has apologized to the public, especially to Muslims, for sparking off anger by citing Surah Al Maidah: 51 during a visit to Thousand Islands regency in September. He said he had never intended to insult either the Quran or the ulema. Responding to the open case screening at the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) scheduled for Tuesday, Ahok said he had not yet decided whether or not he would attend. I don't know. I haven't received any notice about the screening," he said. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama says he will continue to carry out blusukan (impromptu visits) during his campaign although several groups have prevented him from campaigning in certain areas due to his alleged blasphemy. The non-active governor has said that the groups were not locals of the areas where they had confronted him. Weve seen that people who have expelled us and put up banners rejecting [our campaign] are actually not the residents of areas where they have staged their protests, said Ahok at his campaign teams headquarters Rumah Lembang on Jl. Lembang, Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Monday. Ahok refused to claim that the protests were organized, however. The incumbent candidate said he would let the police investigate the protests he and his running mate, deputy governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, were facing. Ahok further said that to become a governor he needed 50 percent plus one vote. He said he was aware that he could not secure 100 percent of the vote because of the people who had taken issue with his alleged blasphemy. During a campaign stop in Rawa Belong, West Jakarta, on Nov. 2, Ahok was rushed to safety by security personnel after several people protested his visit and accused him of committing blasphemy. The incident left one of his aides hospitalized. In the latest incident on Nov.10, Ahok had to cancel a visit in Kedoya, West Jakarta, after a group of people claiming to be local residents rejected his visit for the same reason. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) New York, United States Mon, November 14, 2016 Immigrants, their advocates and others opposing a Donald Trump presidency continued to protest Sunday, speaking out against the president-elect's support of deportation and other measures. Organizers in Manhattan carried signs in English and Spanish saying things like "Hate won't make us great," and chanted, "We are here to stay." More than 1,000 people joined the march that started mid-afternoon and extended into the evening. It was the latest in days of demonstrations across the country, and even throughout the world. Protests were held Sunday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and more cities. Several hundred protesters Sunday marched around Philadelphia's City Hall and then down Market Street to Independence Mall, carrying signs and chanting "Donald Trump has got to go!" and "This is what democracy looks like." In Los Angeles, a few hundred people gathered outside CNN's Los Angeles headquarters, and in San Francisco, hundreds of people, including many families with children, marched from Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach chanting "Love trumps hate!" On Saturday, an estimated 8,000 marched through downtown. On Sunday, about 800 people marched through the state capital of Sacramento and hundreds others formed a human chain around the nearly 3.5-mile perimeter of Oakland's Lake Merritt. Rallies in Oakland have at times become unruly, but those who came to the lake held hands and chanted, "We reject the president-elect." In Oregon, police said they arrested 71 people late Saturday and early Sunday during anti-Trump protests downtown. The Portland Police Bureau said most protesters were cited for disorderly conduct and failing to obey an officer. Demonstrations also took place internationally. On Saturday, a group of Mexicans at statue representing independence in Mexico City expressed their concerns about a possible wave of deportations. One school teacher said it would add to the "unrest" that's already in Mexico. About 300 people protested Trump's election as the next American president outside the US Embassy near the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mostly, the demonstrations were peaceful. However, in Portland, Oregon, a man was shot and wounded Saturday morning during a confrontation. Police arrested two teenagers in the shooting. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rod McGuirk (Associated Press) Canberra Mon, November 14, 2016 The Australian prime minister on Monday confirmed that he did not tell President-elect Donald Trump that the United States had agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing at Australia's expense in Pacific island camps. In announcing the deal on Sunday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not say whether he had discussed it with Trump during their telephone conversation on Thursday. "We deal with one administration at a time and you don't discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration," Turnbull told Nine Network television. Turnbull could not say whether the refugees would be resettled before the Trump administration takes over on Jan. 20. The numbers and timing would be decided by the United States. The Obama administration had agreed to resettle refugees among almost 1,300 asylum seekers held at Australia's expense on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Another 370 who came to Australia for medical treatment and then refused to return to the islands would also be eligible. Trump has called for a moratorium or tight restrictions on Muslim immigration. Most of the asylum seekers are Muslims from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Turnbull said negotiations on the deal began with a conversation he had with President Barack Obama in January. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the United States had "agreed to consider referrals" from the United Nations refugee agency on Australia's refugees. "We are going to work to protect vulnerable refugees around the world, and we'll share that responsibility with our friends in the regions that are most affected by this challenge," Kerry told reporters in New Zealand. Australia refuses to resettle any refugee who has arrived by boat since the date the tough policy was announced on July 19, 2013. Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house boat arrivals and has been searching for countries that will resettle them. Few refugees have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia because most hope that Australia will eventually take them in. Any refugee who refuses to go to the US would be given a 20-year visa to stay on Nauru, a tiny impoverished atoll with a population of 10,000 people, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said. The Refugee Council of Australia, an advocacy group, welcomed the deal as a vital first step in ending the indefinite detention of asylum seekers on the islands. The London-based rights group Amnesty International accused Australia of taking "an extreme step in shirking responsibility." US Department of Homeland Security officials are expected in Australia this week to begin assessing refugees. Turnbull said the most vulnerable refugees would be given priority. "Our priority is the resettlement of woman, children and families," Turnbull said. "This will be an orderly process. It will take time. It will not be rushed." Refugees who arrive in the future would not be sent to the United States, he said. "We anticipate that people smugglers will seek to use this agreement as a marketing opportunity to tempt vulnerable people onto these perilous sea journeys," Turnbull said. "We have put in place the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed." Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said ships had been positioned to turn boats back to Indonesia if asylum seekers attempt to reach Australia in the hope of being sent to the US. No people smuggling operation has successfully delivered asylum seekers to Australia by boat since July 2014. Turnbull announced at Obama's Leaders' Summit on Refugees in September that Australia would participate in the US-led program to resettle Central American refugees from a camp in Costa Rica. Australia would also increase its refugee intake by 5,000 to 18,750 a year. Turnbull said at the time that the agreement to resettle Hondurans and Salvadorans was "not linked to any other resettlement discussions" involving Australia's refugees getting to the US Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said some refugees on Nauru were "hopeful" of resettlement in the United States, but were frustrated by the lack of details. There seemed no short-term hope for asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, a male-only camp holding 873 men. "There are some people who if the United States is offered to them, certainly they will take it," Rintoul said, adding that several would prefer Australia where they have family. Rights groups have been scathing about conditions on the island immigration camps. Two asylum seekers set themselves on fire on Nauru this year and two local men have been convicted of murdering an Iranian asylum seeker during a 2004 riot at the Manus Island camp. ___ Associated Press writer Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Bank Indonesia (BI) launched a special office on Monday to facilitate the development of the financial technology ( fintech ) sector in an effort to ensure that the burgeoning industry would benefit society and work hand-in-hand with the countrys financial system. We have come to the conclusion that technological innovation is inevitable. With the rapid changes, regulations should not try to precede innovation, but it should stay close to innovation, the central bank governor, Agus Martowardojo, said prior to the inauguration of the BI fintech office in Jakarta. The central bank said that its fintech office would handle four major duties: facilitating the exchange of ideas and information; presenting the latest information of fintech development through regular meetings with authorities and international institutions; assessing and mapping the risks of business models and implementing the so-called regulatory sandbox; and providing one-stop services to help fintech players understand regulatory policies. As part of the assessment function, the BI fintech office is introducing an initiative called a regulatory sandbox. The initiative can be seen as a laboratory where startups and regulators assess a business model before launching it for customers, Agus said. Currently, there are about 120 fintech players operating in Indonesia, of which 56 percent are engaged in the payment, clearing and settlement business. According to online statistics portal Statista, the value of fintechs financial transactions in Indonesia would reach US$14.5 billion in 2016. (win/hwa) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam, Riau Islands Mon, November 14, 2016 Most traders at two major business centers in Batam, Riau Islands, decided to halt activities on Monday following a call from a local group to put pressure on the regional authorities to abolish a mandatory land rental fee charged to local residents. Many stores in Nagoya and Batam Center remained shut on Monday as their owners said they had received leaflets asking them to temporarily close their businesses in support of a campaign to demand the abolition of the so-called Authority Mandatory Annual Fee (UWTO). We were afraid to open up our store as we were asked to halt operations for the next three days, Komar, who owns a fruit store in Nagoya, told The Jakarta Post. The UWTO refers to mandatory annual fees charged by the Batam Indonesia Free Trade Zone Authority (BP Batam) to those occupying land in the industrial region. The fees will be then allocated to support infrastructure and public facility development. In response to the situation, Riau Islands Police said they were questioning two activists from the Peoples Alliance to Challenge the UWTO (Geram) for allegedly distributing the leaflets and disrupting economic activity in the area. We have asked store owners to resume their activities, as the police will guarantee their security, Riau Islands Police spokesperson Adj. Sr. Comr. S Erlangga said. (hwa) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Munir Ahmed (Associated Press) Gwadar, Pakistan Mon, November 14, 2016 Pakistan's top civil and military leaders on Sunday opened a new international trade route by seeing off a Chinese ship that will export goods to the Middle East and Africa from the newly built Gwadar port in insurgency-wracked Baluchistan province. The first convoy of Chinese trucks carrying goods for sale abroad arrived in Pakistan a day earlier through newly constructed roads which link China's northwestern Xinjiang region with southwest Pakistan. China is building a network of roads and power plants under a project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC, which is expected to absorb US$46 billion in Chinese investment in the coming decades. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the country's powerful army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif traveled to Gwadar to see off the Chinese ship. The premier said the Chinese-funded multi-billion dollar project will play a significant role in improving Pakistan's economy and raising the national standard of living. In speech to a gathering of diplomats, civil and military leadership, Nawaz Sharif vowed to provide best the possible security to all foreign investors. He said that CPEC will benefit for 3 billion people in the region. "The Enemies of CPEC are enemies of Pakistan," he said. Amid security concerns for foreign workers, the Pakistani army has created a special force to guard the new trade routes and the port, which is located in the same province where a Saturday blast at a Sufi shrine killed more than 50 people. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group and Pakistani officials said it was partially aimed at harming the Chinese-funded projects in the southwest and elsewhere in the country. Sunday's ceremony provided the rare sight of the prime minister and the army chief sitting together and smiling. Relations between Pakistan's civil and military leadership have been publicly strained for months. A prominent newspaper reporter recently published an article alleging tensions between the government and army over the country's counter-terrorism strategy. The article prompted accusations from the army that details had been leaked by the government, and Prime Minister Sharif launched an investigation into the issue. China and Pakistan have long maintained close political and military relations, based partly on mutual antipathy toward neighboring India. The Gwadar port is located on the Arabian Sea and it occupies a strategic location between South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. The port is also located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, just outside the Straits of Hormuz. China is seeking convenient and reliable access to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Chinese ships now use the Strait of Malacca, a narrow passage between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia. The proposed new route would give China access to the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The Indonesian branch of US-based Citibank saw its net profits rise in the third quarter of this year despite the ongoing global economic downturn and sluggish domestic demand. The banks net profits surged by 64 percent year-on-year (yoy) to Rp 1.9 trillion (US$142.32 million) during the January-to-September period, according to a statement issued on Sunday. The profit growth was mainly driven by a 15.5 percent yoy increase in net interest income to Rp 3.05 trillion, along with a 2.79 percent yoy hike to Rp 1.51 trillion in its fee based income. These results reflect the strong momentum of our business, both in institutional banking and consumer banking, said Citibank Indonesia CEO Batara Sianturi in the statement. The bank introduced some initiatives for its institutional and consumer banking businesses in the third quarter, namely Citi Virtual Card Accounts (VCA) for treasury and trade solutions, Citi Priority for wealth management as well as Citi Indonesia Facebook to support the digitization of its cards and retail banking. However, it saw its loans decrease by 7.3 percent annually to Rp 39.07 trillion in the first nine months from Rp 42.1 trillion in the same period last year. The deceleration in loans was in line with data from the Financial Services Authority (OJK) that show that overall lending in the Indonesian branches of foreign banks dropped by 6.61 percent yoy to Rp 253.1 trillion as of August. Bank Indonesia (BI) deputy governor Erwin Rijanto attributed the situation to falling foreign-denominated, or forex, loans, which only grew by 2 percent yoy as of July. This is closely related to global economic conditions. We see that a lot of companies with high exposure to forex loans have temporarily reduced their credit demand. Some of them even decided on early termination of their loans, he said recently. The drop in global commodity and oil prices as well as weak trade are among the factors impacting the banking industry, particularly on forex loans, which are mostly utilized to support the financing of exports and imports. This portion of forex lending is also particularly big in Indonesian branches of foreign banks as they are supported by their overseas headquarters. Meanwhile, Citibank Indonesias report also show that its third-party funds declined by 6.6 percent yoy to Rp 5.25 trillion from January to September. Despite the decline in the third-party funds, Batara said the bank managed to grow the portion of current accounts and savings accounts (CASA) consisting of low-cost funds to 73.9 percent of its total third-party funds. The increase in CASA helped jack up its net interest margin (NIM) to 6.1 percent from 5.3 percent in September last year. With an increase in revenue, the bank managed to improve its cost-to-income (BOPO) ratiowhich measures efficiencyto almost 80 percent in the third quarter of this year from 91.2 percent a year ago. The latest performance was translated into an increase in return on assets (ROA) to 4.4 percent from 2.7 percent in the same period last year, while its return on equity (ROE) rose to 16.5 percent from 10.6 percent. The banks capital adequacy ratio (CAR) also increased to 29 percent in the third quarter of 2016, from 25.3 percent in the same period last year. As we enter the final quarter of 2016, we believe that the progress we have made in the past three quarters will enable Citibank Indonesia to accelerate its growth imperative and commitment to its stakeholders, Batara said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riza Bernabe (The Jakarta Post) Bangkok Mon, November 14 2016 The entry into force of the Paris Agreement on Nov. 4 marks an important milestone in the long journey to address the climate crisis. Ninety four countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, ratified the agreement barely a year before it was adopted in Paris in 2015. This is indicative of the growing pressure on all parties, especially on governments, to find a solution to this global challenge. However, while this is a positive and welcome development, it is only a first step. The real challenge lies in ensuring that Paris agreement is able to avert catastrophic climate change and enhance climate resilience, especially among the poor and most vulnerable. The agreements entry into force comes a few days before the climate meeting the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech, Morocco. The COP22 is being pitched as a conference of action and implementation as its main task is to set the rules on how to implement and chart progress on what had been agreed in Paris. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 Protection of cows will be part of the duties of the police and the military as the government is looking to prevent female cows from early slaughter and to mass inseminate them to increase their population in order to reach the cattle import-free goal by 2025. To reduce imports and to be able to export, Indonesia should have at least 42 million cows, according to the Agriculture Ministry. However, the early slaughter of productive cows, aged two to eight years old, caused the cow population to drop to only 12.3 million in 2013 from 14.8 million in 2011, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) show. The practice is rampant across the country, even though article 86 of Law No. 41/2014 on cattle and animal health forbids it and carries a sentence of three years imprisonment and a fine of up to Rp 300 million (US$22,471). Small farmers often slay their cows early when they have an urgent need [for money], Agriculture Ministry livestock and animal health director general I Ketut Diarmita said in a telephone interview on Friday. To tackle the problem, the ministry is planning to cooperate with the police and military to prevent early slaughter. Weve been talking to them to create a monitoring system, Ketut said, adding that the monitoring would likely begin next year. The ministry might also buy the small farmers cows and place them in a state-run balai ternak (livestock hall) spread across seven provinces. However, it has limited funds to buy the cows, especially after its 2017 budget was reduced to Rp 23.9 trillion from Rp 27.6 trillion in 2016. Part of the budget, Rp 1.1 trillion, will be used to inseminate 4 million cows and heifers starting January. As many as eight million doses of frozen semen and liquefied nitrogen will be distributed to 7,000 private and state inseminators across the country. Small farmers can obtain the insemination package from state inseminators for free, while big farmers will need to pay a certain amount for the package from private inseminators. The success rate of the new breeding program called UPSUS SIWAB or the mandatory breeding program is estimated to reach 75 percent, which would result in three million pregnant cows. The ministry will evaluate the results in 2018, the year the calves are expected to have been born. Indonesia has been dependent on imports to fulfill the population demand for beef, setting an import quota of cattle at 600,000 this year and an expected 700,000 next year, mostly from Australia. Meanwhile, the ministry claims to have started planting 13 hectares of grass and legume and will build water reservoir regions, as well as provide vaccines, to guarantee the health of the cows. Nutrition should be ensured as 30 percent of the population has reproduction problems, 60 percent of which comes from malnutrition, Ketut said. To help increase the population number, owners of feedlots are also required to import one breeder cow for every five imported cattle, while cooperatives must do the same for every 10 imported cattle, as stipulated by ministry regulation No. 49/2016 on cattle imports. Separately, Cow and Buffalo Breeders Association (PPSKI) chairman Teguh Boediyana said approximately one million productive cows are slaughtered every year. He urged the government to monitor the practice on the field so that the breeding program would not end in vain. ------------------- To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Protection of cows will be part of the duties of the police and the military as the government is looking to prevent female cows from early slaughter and to mass inseminate them to increase their population in order to reach the cattle import free goal by 2025. To reduce imports and to be able to export, Indonesia should have at least 42 million cows, according to the Agriculture Ministry. However, the early slaughter of productive cows, aged two to eight years old, caused the cow population to drop to only 12.3 million in 2013 from 14.8 million in 2011, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) show. The practice is rampant across the country, even though article 86 of Law No. 41/2014 on cattle and animal health forbids it and carries a sentence of three years imprisonment and a fine of up to Rp 300 million (US$22,471). Small farmers often slay their cows early when they have an urgent need [for money], Agriculture Ministry livestock and animal health director general I Ketut Diarmita said in a telephone interview on Friday. To tackle the problem, the ministry is planning to cooperate with the police and military to prevent early slaughter. Weve been talking to them to create a monitoring system, Ketut said, adding that the monitoring would likely begin next year. The ministry might also buy the small farmers cows and place them in a state-run balai ternak (livestock hall) spread across seven provinces. However, it has limited funds to buy the cows, especially after its 2017 budget was reduced to Rp 23.9 trillion from Rp 27.6 trillion in 2016. Part of the budget, Rp 1.1 trillion, will be used to inseminate 4 million cows and heifers starting January. As many as eight million doses of frozen semen and liquefied nitrogen will be distributed to 7,000 private and state inseminators across the country. Small farmers can obtain the insemination package from state inseminators for free, while big farmers will need to pay a certain amount for the package from private inseminators. The success rate of the new breeding program called UPSUS SIWAB or the mandatory breeding program is estimated to reach 75 percent, which would result in three million pregnant cows. The ministry will evaluate the results in 2018, the year the calves are expected to have been born. Indonesia has been dependent on imports to fulfill the population demand for beef, setting an import quota of cattle at 600,000 this year and an expected 700,000 next year, mostly from Australia. Meanwhile, the ministry claims to have started planting 13 hectares of grass and legume and will build water reservoir regions, as well as provide vaccines, to guarantee the health of the cows. Nutrition should be ensured as 30 percent of the population has reproduction problems, 60 percent of which comes from malnutrition, Ketut said. To help increase the population number, owners of feedlots are also required to import one breeder cow for every five imported cattle, while cooperatives must do the same for every 10 imported cattle, as stipulated by ministry regulation No. 49/2016 on cattle imports. Separately, Cow and Buffalo Breeders Association (PPSKI) chairman Teguh Boediyana said approximately one million productive cows are slaughtered every year. He urged the government to monitor the practice on the field so that the breeding program would not end in vain. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam Mon, November 14, 2016 Dozens of people under the banner of the Peoples Information Center (Lira) gathered on Sunday at Aspirasi Park in Batam, where scores of refugees have been staying for months, and threatened to burn their tents. The Lira crowd visited the park at noon and ordered the refugees to leave their tents and assemble in one place. Aksa Halatu, the leader of the Lira group, asked the refugees to follow him so his friends could dismantle and burn the tents. However, the mob was prevented from burning the tents by volunteers from Batam University and nearby police officers. The Lira members then went to the Batam Immigration Office to air their grievances. Ayu, one of the volunteers defending the refugees, said she and her friends had heard about Liras plan to kick out the refugees. After we heard about it, we contacted the police. The refugees are illegal, but Liras actions are unacceptable, she said. The refugees are in a state of panic right now, Ayu said. Aksa, known in Batam as a member of the Democratic Party, said Lira wanted the refugees out of the park to keep the area clean. Illegal houses are demolished everywhere; why are these refugees not evicted as well? Aksa said. Batam Immigration Office head Teguh Prayitno said his office regretted Liras actions. I told them, evacuating [people from] the park without providing replacement [accommodation] is not the solution. I dont know why they became emotional, Teguh said. Teguh said his office would discuss relocating 102 refugees to another place. Relocating 100 people is not easy. They are not chickens; we have to pay attention to their rights, he said. Soleh Waziq, 28, a Sudanese refugee, said he was afraid that the mob would try again to kick them out. We fear they will come again at night. Who will help us? We also do not want to stay here." Soleh said he had been living in a tent for six months because he did not know where else to go. The Batam Immigration Office said there were 280 migrants at the Kolekta Hotel in Batam and 61 in an immigration detention center. (evi) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lauren Rumble (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 A billion brains depend on the actions governments and partners take now. The worlds best scientists have recently confirmed that greater investments are needed to promote childrens cognitive capital. Cognitive capital refers to the economic benefits resulting from investing in the evolving brains of children. Nobel Laureate James Heckman says that early investments yield the greatest returns: a dollar spent during prenatal and early childhood yields 7 percent to 10 percent more than investments at older ages. During the first years of life, one thousand brain cells connect every second. These connections define a childs capacity to learn and regulate impulses and emotions. They influence the ability to solve problems and relate to others. To capitalize on these investments we need to secure nutrition, healthcare as well as safe and loving families for all children. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 JAKARTA: Actress and musician Titi Rajo Bintang officially tied the knot with taxi businessman Adrianto Djokosoetono on Saturday, kapanlagi.com reported. The akad nikah (wedding ceremony) of the star of the film Rayya, Cahaya di Atas Cahaya (Rayya, Lights upon Lights) was held at the house of the grooms parents in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, on Saturday morning. The media was not allowed to cover the ceremony. A family representative who refused to be named said Titi would not be available for interview. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung Mon, November 14 2016 Indonesia is planning to modernize its volcano monitoring system next year to better manage disasters caused by volcanic activities. The country is home to at least 127 active volcanoes. Forty percent of the people live in vulnerable areas, the nations Geological Agency head Ego Syahrial said in Bandung on Friday. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Simon Tay and Chen Chen Lee (The Jakarta Post) Singapore Mon, November 14 2016 When Indonesias President Joko Jokowi Widodo meets Singapores Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, it will be their first ever bilateral retreat. There will be plenty to discuss between the leaders of the two countries. Both are making efforts to cooperate, yet as with all neighbors there can be points of difference. A closed-door retreat, away from the glare of publicity, can help develop trust. Many sensitive issues are up for discussion including cooperation against terrorism but three areas bear special emphasis. The first is Indonesias economy and the role of foreign investors. Indonesia is growing at some five percent this year, with Singapore its largest foreign investor. In 2015, FDI from Singapore was US$5.9 billion, and a further $7.1 billion is estimated to have been committed by Singapore so far this year. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Evan A. Laksmana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 Republican candidate Donald J. Trump is now President-elect of the United States of America. These are not easy words to type, let alone digest and be excited about. We should be clear-headed, nevertheless, in our assessment of what a Trump presidency could mean for Indonesias foreign policy and our bilateral relationship. At this point, however, we are nowhere near to a complete picture of what President Trumps foreign policy will look like. After all, his campaign rhetoric was filled with wild, under-developed positions and incoherent contradictions. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Jerusalem Mon, November 14, 2016 An Israeli committee on Sunday approved a bill that if adopted would legalize outposts built without government permission in the West Bank, territory Palestinians demand for their future state. It still needs to pass several stages before it can be adopted. A first reading is expected in parliament on Wednesday. "The state of Israel today began an historic process of regulating the settlements in Judea and Samaria," Cabinet minister Naftali Bennett, head of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, that promoted the bill said, using the biblical names for the West Bank. The bill was in part meant to stop the looming evacuation of the Amona outpost. The Supreme Court has ruled it was built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished by Dec. 25. Amona's fate threatens to destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line coalition. Amona is the largest of about 100 West Bank outposts built without permission but generally tolerated by the government. These are in addition to 120 settlements that Israel considers legal. In 2006, Israeli police demolished nine homes at Amona, setting off clashes pitting settlers and their supporters against police and soldiers. Several dozen trailers have remained. Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, condemned the bill calling it "a legal stunt designed to legally sanction takeover of Palestinian land in the West Bank. " Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war and built settlements there soon after. The Palestinians and the international community consider both settlements and outposts illegal or illegitimate and an obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 Despite the seemingly robust investment coming from China, the government claims it has not forgotten Japan and stresses that its foreign investment and trade policies are not all about China. China beat Japan to secure the contract for Indonesias first high-speed railway project connecting Jakarta and Bandung in West Java. Furthermore, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping five times since the former was elected president in late 2014. Meanwhile, Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, previously agreed to become Indonesias e-commerce advisor and may continue to do so. This series of events, and several others, may suggest that Indonesia has shifted its economic orientation more toward China, the worlds second largest economy, from its traditional partners, including Japan. The government, however, strongly dismisses this notion. There is a perception that we have only made deals with China recently, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said after a meeting at his office recently. But investments from Japan are still larger than those from China, he added, trying to reassure those concerned that Japan remained Indonesias priority partner. Japanese investments are indeed larger than Chinas and the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Japan to Indonesia is set to reach between US$3.5 billion to $4 billion by the end of the year, according to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Nonetheless, data from the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) show that Japan and China do appear to be locked in a tight race. While Japan has consistently put itself on the list of top three foreign investors and places in second position as of September, China has crept up over the past two years and has entered the big league as well. China even trailed behind Japan at number three in terms of realized foreign investment in the first nine months of 2016. The government, however, is inching closer to signing major agreements with Japan, a move that will strengthen the latters investment dominance. The agreements will see Indonesia reach financial closure from Japan for the deep-sea port development project in Patimban, West Java, in early 2017. The project is among various national strategic projects that will generate more ease in the distribution of goods shipped into the country. As much as US$1.7 billion in foreign loans are expected to be channeled into the project and the Indonesian government will also provide an additional $595 million to finance it. The Patimban Port will be located about 70 kilometers from the Karawang Industrial Estate in West Java. It will have a container capacity of 1.5 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) once it is partly completed by 2019 and then 7.5 million TEUs by 2027, which is half the capacity of Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta. Luhut said Japan would be involved in managing Patimban once it was completed, which is a plus in the governments view as the Japanese are expected to transfer their knowledge in port management to their Indonesian counterparts. Luhut said the government would expedite the settlement for all administrative problems in the project, including ones related to spatial planning (RTRW) within the next two weeks. During that two-week period, the government will also formulate a financing scheme for another strategic project, a railway line connecting Jakarta to Surabaya in East Java. The government recently offered Japan the opportunity to take part in the railway project, estimated to cost Rp 102 trillion (US$7.64 billion). However, other countries will participate as well in the bidding process, including rival China, thus opening up the possibility of another round of heated competition. Theres a preference for Japan [to be chosen for the railway project], Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said. Budi added, however, that Japan would still have to meet all the requirements set by the government. The new railway line will enable trains to run at 165 kilometers per hour and will shorten the travel time between Jakarta and Surabaya to around six hours from the current time of 13 hours. The project is slated to begin construction by the end of 2017 and is expected to be completed by late 2019. (wnd) Several Japanese investment projects in Indonesia 1. Coal-fired power plant Batang Location: Batang, Central Java Value: Approximately US$4.2 billion Status: Ongoing 2. Coal-fired power plant Cirebon Location: Cilegon, Banten Value: Approximately US$460 million Status: Planned 3. Coal-fired power plant Tanjung Jati B expansion Location: Jepara, Central Value: Expected 500 billion yen Status: Ongoing 4. Coal-fired power plant Lontar expansion Location: Lontar, Banten Value: Approximately US$450 million Status: Ongoing 5. Gas-based facility and coal-based power plants Medan Location: Medan, North Sumatra Value: Approximately US$250 million Status: Ongoing 6. Patimban deep-sea port Location: Subang, West Java Value: Approximately US$3 billion Status: Planned 7. Mass Rapid Transit Jakarta Location: Jakarta Value: Approximately $1.4 billion Status: Ongoing Source: Various sources compiled by The Jakarta Post to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Despite the seemingly robust investment coming from China, the government claims it has not forgotten Japan and stresses that its foreign investment and trade policies are not all about China. China beat Japan to secure the contract for Indonesias first high-speed railway project connecting Jakarta and Bandung in West Java. Furthermore, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping five times since the former was elected president in late 2014. Meanwhile, Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, previously agreed to become Indonesias e-commerce advisor and may continue to do so. This series of events, and several others, may suggest that Indonesia has shifted its economic orientation more toward China, the worlds second largest economy, from its traditional partners, including Japan. The government, however, strongly dismisses this notion. There is a perception that we have only made deals with China recently, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said after a meeting at his office recently. But investments from Japan are still larger than those from China, he added, trying to reassure those concerned that Japan remained Indonesias priority partner. Japanese investments are indeed larger than Chinas and the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Japan to Indonesia is set to reach between US$3.5 billion to $4 billion by the end of the year, according to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Nonetheless, data from the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) show that Japan and China do appear to be locked in a tight race. While Japan has consistently put itself on the list of top three foreign investors and places in second position as of September, China has crept up over the past two years and has entered the big league as well. China even trailed behind Japan at number three in terms of realized foreign investment in the first nine months of 2016. The government, however, is inching closer to signing major agreements with Japan, a move that will strengthen the latters investment dominance. The agreements will see Indonesia reach financial closure from Japan for the deep-sea port development project in Patimban, West Java, in early 2017. The project is among various national strategic projects that will generate more ease in the distribution of goods shipped into the country. As much as US$1.7 billion in foreign loans are expected to be channeled into the project and the Indonesian government will also provide an additional $595 million to finance it. The Patimban Port will be located about 70 kilometers from the Karawang Industrial Estate in West Java. It will have a container capacity of 1.5 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) once it is partly completed by 2019 and then 7.5 million TEUs by 2027, which is half the capacity of Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta. Luhut said Japan would be involved in managing Patimban once it was completed, which is a plus in the governments view as the Japanese are expected to transfer their knowledge in port management to their Indonesian counterparts. Luhut said the government would expedite the settlement for all administrative problems in the project, including ones related to spatial planning (RTRW) within the next two weeks. During that two-week period, the government will also formulate a financing scheme for another strategic project, a railway line connecting Jakarta to Surabaya in East Java. The government recently offered Japan the opportunity to take part in the railway project, estimated to cost Rp 102 trillion (US$7.64 billion). However, other countries will participate as well in the bidding process, including rival China, thus opening up the possibility of another round of heated competition. Theres a preference for Japan [to be chosen for the railway project], Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said. Budi added, however, that Japan would still have to meet all the requirements set by the government. The new railway line will enable trains to run at 165 kilometers per hour and will shorten the travel time between Jakarta and Surabaya to around six hours from the current time of 13 hours. The project is slated to begin construction by the end of 2017 and is expected to be completed by late 2019. (wnd) ____________________ Several Japanese investment projects in Indonesia 1. Coal-fired power plant Batang Location: Batang, Central Java Value: Approximately US$4.2 billion Status: Ongoing 2. Coal-fired power plant Cirebon Location: Cilegon, Banten Value: Approximately US$460 million Status: Planned 3. Coal-fired power plant Tanjung Jati B expansion Location: Jepara, Central Value: Expected 500 billion yen Status: Ongoing 4. Coal-fired power plant Lontar expansion Location: Lontar, Banten Value: Approximately US$450 million Status: Ongoing 5. Gas-based facility and coal-based power plants Medan Location: Medan, North Sumatra Value: Approximately US$250 million Status: Ongoing 6. Patimban deep-sea port Location: Subang, West Java Value: Approximately US$3 billion Status: Planned 7. Mass Rapid Transit Jakarta Location: Jakarta Value: Approximately $1.4 billion Status: Ongoing Source: Various sources compiled by The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ina Parlina and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 After visiting the headquarters of the armed forces, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has continued to reach out to influential groups in the country in response to the growing political and social tensions following the mass rally in Jakarta on Nov. 4. The President spent his weekend taking part in events held by three Islamic parties in the ruling coalition; namely the National Awakening Party (PKB) on Saturday, as well as the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) on Sunday. The moves have been seen as a bid to maintain the nations unity, and consolidate the political parties in the government coalition, which secures more than 65 percent seats in the House of Representatives. PKB, PAN and PPP account for around 24 percent of seats in the House. United we stand, divided we fall, Jokowi stressed when he made a speech to thousands of PKB members and clerics gathered at the a prayer for the nation event. On Nov. 4, more than 100,000 people flocked into Central Jakarta to demand that Jokowi push for the prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama alleged on blasphemy charges. We all must accept the fact that God created diversity and plurality and our constitutional system recognizes and protects such diversity and plurality, Jokowi continued. It is our responsibility to uphold it. The President made similar comments at a PPP event, which was a national meeting for party clerics, insisting that the legal process against Ahok would go forward and he would not interfere in the process. [The police] were working on the legal process even before the rally. Now the legal process is ongoing. So, be patient, he said. Although many believe the rally was partially motivated by a desire to undermine Ahoks candidacy in next years gubernatorial election, the impact has inevitably gone beyond the Jakarta election. Observers say it has also affected the political landscape at the national level especially after the protests were used by those seeking to undermine Jokowis administration. We need better synchronization between the government and political parties within the ruling coalition. We lacked coordination when the rally happened. Where were the government parties? Some of them, indeed, joined the rally, said senior Golkar Party politician Agung Laksono, who now chairs the partys board of experts. He said the government needed to have a joint secretariat to consolidate coalition parties, similar to that during former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonos administration. Unlike Golkar, which is the second-largest party in the coalition after Jokowis Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the PKB, PAN and PPP openly participated along with other protest groups in the Nov. 4 rally. Despite their positions as pro-government parties, the PKB, PAN and PPP are rivals to Jokowis PDI-P in the Jakarta election. While the PDI-P supports the Ahok-Djarot Syaiful Hidayat ticket, the three Islamic parties have joined forces with the Democratic Party to endorse Agus Harimurti, the son of Yudhoyono. In response to rumors that a larger-scale demonstration will be held should Ahok avoid legal charges, Jokowi said he hoped there would be no more demonstrations. Its a waste of energy, he said after the PKB event on Saturday. When asked about the Presidents concerns, however, PPP chairman Muhammad Romahurmuziy said, [demonstrations] are not aimed at fracturing the nation. We have the right to express our opinion. He claimed he would remain loyal to Jokowis administration. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 President Joko Jokowi Widodo has urged the police to investigate Sunday's attack on the Oikumene Christian Church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan. I have received the report from the police and I have ordered the National Police Chief to enforce the law firmly, Jokowi said after attending a national leadership meeting of the National Mandate Party as reported by kompas.com. He added he had also asked the police to question the perpetrator thoroughly. Earlier in the morning, the perpetrator threw Molotov cocktails at the church, injuring at least four children. Members of the church chased the perpetrator and managed to catch him before handing him over to the police. The police said that the perpetrator, identified as Johanda alias Jo Muhammad Aceng Kurnia, 32, was a former terrorism convict. Johanda, a resident of Sengkotek, Samarinda, was once sentenced to three and a half years in prison for a bomb plot in Serpong, South Tangerang, Banten, in 2012. (jun) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 A church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, suffered minor damages and four infants were injured after a handmade bomb, reportedly a molotov cocktail, thrown by a former convicted terrorist linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, exploded on Sunday. The incident has put the nations security under greater scrutiny as the attack occurred during a period in which the nations stability still hangs in the balance due to recent religious tension in Jakarta. It was the second time this year a convicted terrorist launched attacks, raising concerns over the countrys lenient terrorism regulations and remissions system that reduced the convicts prison term. The Samarinda attacker and former convicted terrorist, identified as Johanda, alias Jo Bin Muhammad Aceng Kurnia, carried out the attack at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday as members of the congregation of Oikumene church were about to conclude their prayers. Four toddlers aged two to three years playing at the church compound were injured and rushed to a nearby hospital for immediate treatment. President Joko Jokowi Widodo said he had ordered National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian to fully investigate the attack and bring the perpetrator to justice. I have made the instruction to the National Police chief to handle the law enforcement firmly and investigate the perpetrator thoroughly, Jokowi said on Sunday. The West Jakarta District Court sentenced Johanda to three years and six months in May 2011 for his involvement in a plot to blow up the Center for Science and Technology Research (Puspiptek) complex in Serpong, Banten, the site of a nuclear reactor, and Christ Cathedral Church in Gading Serpong, also in Banten. (-/-) Johanda was released on parole after receiving sentence cuts during the celebration of Idul Fitri festivities on July 28, 2014. He has been arrested and detained at the Samarinda Police office, National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafly told The Jakarta Post on Sunday. Previously, the offender in the notorious Thamrin terror attack on Jan. 14 in Jakarta, Sunakim, was supposed to have remained in prison until 2017 on terrorism charges, but the Law and Human Rights Ministry shortened his sentence by two years, which allowed him to receive parole in August 2015, five months before he attacked police officers and killed four civilians in January 2016. Johanda was also released in July 2014 after receiving four months remission from the Ministry for showing good behavior while serving time in prison. Samarindas attack has also raised concerns over the ministrys deradicalization program for terrorism prisoners at penitentiaries across the country because as soon as Johanda was freed, he directly joined an East Kalimantan branch of the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) a terrorist faction in the country that supports IS. The recidivists also reportedly had links to Anshori groups in East Java, a province currently under the supervision of the National Police due to indications that the radical group would purchase firearms from the Philippines. Spokesman from the Law and Human Rights Ministrys Directorate General of Penitentiaries, Akbar Hadi, said there was no guarantee that convicted terrorists who had been released from prison would not repeat the same offence and, thus, it was important for members of society to welcome them after their respective releases so that the convicts would not feel alienated. Akbar said all terror convicts released from prison should have been under the supervision of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) and the National Police. It could be that he becomes radicalized again after returning to society, Akbar told the Post. This is subject to post release monitoring problems that must be solved by the ministry and the BNPT, terrorism expert from the University of Indonesia Ridwan Habib said, adding that deradicalization programs launched by the BNPT and the ministry in prisons were ineffective. This kind of attack repeats itself in the same way. We have seen the Thamrin attack, which was carried out by a recidivist, and if we look back we will find many cases like this, Ridwan said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The Jakarta administration is planning to turn a 600-meter stretch of the Krukut River along Jl. Kali Besar Timur and Jl. Kali Besar Barat in West Jakarta into a clean river with a public park, inspired by Cheonggyecheon creek in Seoul, South Korea. The head of the Kota Tua Zone Management Unit (UPK Kota Tua), Norviadi Setio Husodo, said recently that renowned architect Budi Lim had designed the river to become a tourism attraction. It is inspired by the creek in South Korea, Norviadi told The Jakarta Post. He referred to Cheonggyecheon, a modern public recreation space in downtown Seoul, South Korea. We want the river area to become a new space so visitors are not centered in Fatahillah Square, he said. Illustration of Kali Besar Park in Krukut River along Jl. Kali Besar Timur in West Jakarta by PT Budi Lim Arsitek.(Courtesy of UPK Kota Tua/File) According to a concept document received by the Post on Monday, Jl. Kali Besar Timur will be turned into Kali Besar Park. PT Budi Lim Arsiteks presentation said the concept would make the river into an area of inhabitation, recreation, and education. The Kali Besar revitalization will reportedly involve calming down the road, meaning that the currently straight road would be altered so it was windy to reduce the speed of the vehicles to 12 to 15 kilometers per hour without traffic. The riverbanks will be turned into an urban park and water farm and leaf-shaped floating pontoons will be installed along the river. Illustration of Kali Besar Park along Krukut River along Jl. Kali Besar Timur in West Jakarta by PT Budi Lim Arsitek.(Courtesy of UPK Kota Tua/File) To clean the smelly and polluted river water, Lim will install a filter so the water flowing into the Kali Besar Park area will be clean. Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama said the project would not use the city budget, but would be funded using Rp 270 billion (US$20 million) in compensation payments from the Sampoerna Strategic building owners after they increased their floor area ratio. To make way for the river revitalization, the city administration relocated about 400 street vendors along Jl. Kali Besar Timur to Jl. Cengkeh. The street vendors have seen their income plunge in the new location, which receives no foot traffic, but the city administration has promised that the revitalization would eventually reach Jl. Cengkeh and visitors were expected to come to the street vendors in the future. (jun) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan, North Sumatra Mon, November 14, 2016 Immigration authorities in Medan, North Sumatra, have reported the arrest of a long-time Malaysian fugitive accused of corruption crimes in his country. Malaysian national Mohamad Khaizad bin Hashim had reportedly been hiding in Indonesia for one year to avoid arrest by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), formerly known as Anti-Corruption Agency. Mohamad Khaizad, a resident of Selangor, Malaysia, allegedly entered Indonesia illegally in November 2015 using falsified identity documents. Immigration Office head Lilik Bambang Lestari said his office had become aware of the Malaysian corruption fugitives presence after reports from people living around him in Medan in the beginning of October. He said that during his stay in Indonesia, Mohammad Khaizad had hid in two different places, namely Medan in North Sumatra and Bireuen in Aceh. Lilik said people in his neighborhood had become suspicious about the Malaysian national who had an Indonesian ID card, and they therefore filed a report with the Immigration Office. Following up their reports, we carried out an investigation until we discovered that he was a Malaysian corruption fugitive wanted by that countrys anticorruption agency, Lilik said in a press conference on Friday evening. He said Mohamad Khaizad was arrested at his home on Jl.Glambir V, Medan Helvetia district, Medan, at 10 a.m. local time on Nov. 9. The immigration investigators made the arrest based on a fingerprint match of their suspects and a set of prints they received from Malaysian authorities. During his time hiding in Indonesia, he changed his name to Khairul Anam, said Lilik. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The Communications and Information Ministry is encouraging people to have digital signatures as a protection for all electronic transactions. We have been relying on barcodes or QR codes, user names, passwords and tokens, but those things have not given us a legal insurance because they cannot give integrity assurance for documents and electronic transactions, Herry Abdul Aziz, an expert on technology at the ministry said in a workshop in Yogyakarta on Monday. Herry said digital signatures would give a legal guarantee equal to handwritten signatures. Digital signatures would also encourage a paperless system. He said to implement digital signatures, the government would prepare a regulation and rigid standards for operating procedures. If the usage of digital signatures is not spread well across Indonesia, the people would find it difficult to use them, he said as quoted by Antara news agency. He said the registration, verification and release of digital signatures for people would be facilitated by a platform, the Online Verification System (SiVION), which could be accessed through sivion.id. Riki Arif Gunawan, the head of the information technology security subdirectorate at the ministry, said the implementation of digital signatures had been regulated in the law on information and electronic transactions. The obstacle is the low awareness among the people. The legal basis has been available, he said. (evi) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 A new regulation aimed at setting a fixed feed-in tariff for geothermal power is about to come, clearing uncertainties for investors. However, a lack of accurate data on geothermal reserves in existing fields seems to have curbed investor confidence and impeded price negotiations. Geothermal energy, the Earths internal heat, which can be harvested to generate consistent power, produces zero greenhouse gas, making it the perfect alternative to replace fossil fuels. Sitting on the ring of fire, Indonesia is said to have massive potential in geothermal reserves in almost 330 fields across the nation. The governments estimates, in a report published in 2013, cited around 29 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal potential. However, the countrys geothermal sector has remained sluggish with only 1.5 GW of geothermal power produced since the first geothermal power plant in Garut, West Java, in 1982. The government has since set an ambitious goal to increase the national geothermal capacity to 7,155 megawatts (MW) by 2025, which would make Indonesia the largest geothermal energy producer in the world. PLN in its business plan (RUPTL) has set a target of increasing geothermal-based power to 6,150 MW by 2025. If successful, the state-owned electricity company will see almost a quarter of all its electricity production, an estimated 42,485 gigawatts per hour (gWh), come from geothermal resources. However, a problem appeared as PLNs business plan cited a 2007 report by West Japan Engineering Consultants, Inc., which states that there are 9 GW of exploitable potentials in 50 existing geothermal fields. A 2010 report by Castlerock Consulting argued that there were inconsistencies in the past studies of Indonesias geothermal potentials, leading to an overestimation of existing reserves. Castlerocks detailed field-by-field assessment suggests that a total of only 3,435 MW will be established by 2020. The lack of accurate data on the geothermal potentials has discouraged banks from handing out loans to companies that have won the geothermal tenders in Indonesia. Thus, many investors must rely on their equity before they can receive loans for the explorations. The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys geothermal energy director Yunus Saefulhak said that it was the government who ideally conducted the thorough exploration in the fields, before putting them on auction. Due to a lack of funds, the government could only rely on geological, geophysical and geochemical tests to estimate the geothermal reserves. We all know that it costs around US$10 million for drilling one exploration well, and even we dont have a warrant [for any reserve finding]. The government just does not have enough funds to drill the 330 potential reserves, he told the Jakarta Post. A joint report by the ministry, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank has estimated that it takes $4 billion in equity and $9.5 billion in debt finance just to produce 3 GW of geothermal power, assuming a 30 percent equity and a $4,500 selling price per kilowatt (kW). What the government can do amid the limited condition, Yunus continued, was to lure investors appetites into the geothermal potentials by issuing a new regulation that establishes a fixed price depending on the real capacity found after the exploration. Soon the government will issue a regulation on a fixed feed-in tariff based on an appealing internal rate of return [IRR] starting from 5 MW to 220 MW. So during the auction, companies will no longer have to propose a price, and will only need to propose their exploration commitment and the amount of funds they are willing to invest, he said. Currently, ministerial regulation No.17/2014 stipulates the price ceiling of electricity from geothermal energy at 10.4 to 29 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) depending on the capacity. Room for negotiation is available but mostly ends up into months and even years of talks. The impending regulation is expected to boost investors eagerness to bid on the countrys fields, especially amid drama within the PLN and Italys Enel Green Power, both of which were warned to pull out of the bidding race on Chevrons two Indonesian geothermal assets. Indonesian Geothermal Association chairman Abadi Poernomo claimed that many domestic and foreign investors had decided to opt out of bidding on the countrys geothermal fields as they were waiting for the new regulation to be issued. Many companies have had past experiences where they discovered a lower proven reserve from the governments initial estimate in a field that they won. Thus, they demanded tariff renegotiations with the PLN. The problem is that there are only two base load power plants the coal-fired and the geothermal power plants. Thus, the geothermal power plant is always compared to coal, which is much, much cheaper despite environmental costs, he said. However, unlike coal, which is dependent on the global market, the geothermal feed-in tariff is fixed for the whole 30-year contract, with only an additional fee encompassing 25 percent of the operations cost. The new regulation is reportedly to include a retroactive tariff with prices that will be adjusted based on proven capacity. Abadi, who is also a member of the National Energy Board (DEN), said he was also working with the ministry to prepare a regulation on the assignment of preliminary surveys and exploration for the geothermal sector. It will allow the government to hire geothermal consulting firms through a limited auction to gather more accurate data in the fields. This data could slightly decrease the prices as it would minimize a companys risk, Abadi said. BMI Research, a subsidiary of Fitch Group, appraised the governments move to reshape the regulation on geothermal power, and expected that well-established domestic geothermal industries would be attracted due to their expertise in developing geothermal power capacity. In particular, US and Japanese firms will likely have a strong foothold in the market as they look for international contract opportunities amid a slowdown in their domestic geothermal markets, BMI Researchs head of power and renewables Georgina Hayden said. ------------------- to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 A new regulation aimed at setting a fixed feed-in tariff for geothermal power is about to come, clearing uncertainties for investors. However, a lack of accurate data on geothermal reserves in existing fields seems to have curbed investor confidence and impeded price negotiations. Geothermal energy, the Earths internal heat, which can be harvested to generate consistent power, produces zero greenhouse gas, making it the perfect alternative to replace fossil fuels. Sitting on the ring of fire, Indonesia is said to have massive potential in geothermal reserves in almost 330 fields across the nation. The governments estimates, in a report published in 2013, cited around 29 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal potential. However, the countrys geothermal sector has remained sluggish with only 1.5 GW of geothermal power produced since the first geothermal power plant in Garut, West Java, in 1982. The government has since set an ambitious goal to increase the national geothermal capacity to 7,155 megawatts (MW) by 2025, which would make Indonesia the largest geothermal energy producer in the world. PLN in its business plan (RUPTL) has set a target of increasing geothermal-based power to 6,150 MW by 2025. If successful, the stateowned electricity company will see almost a quarter of all its electricity production, an estimated 42,485 gigawatts per hour (gWh), come from geothermal resources. However, a problem appeared as PLNs business plan cited a 2007 report by West Japan Engineering Consultants, Inc., which states that there are 9 GW of exploitable potentials in 50 existing geothermal fields. A 2010 report by Castlerock Consulting argued that there were inconsistencies in the past studies of Indonesias geothermal potentials, leading to an overestimation of existing reserves. Castlerocks detailed field-by-field assessment suggests that a total of only 3,435 MW will be established by 2020. The lack of accurate data on the geothermal potentials has discouraged banks from handing out loans to companies that have won the geothermal tenders in Indonesia. Thus, many investors must rely on their equity before they can receive loans for the explorations. The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys geothermal energy director Yunus Saefulhak said that it was the government who ideally conducted the thorough exploration in the fields, before putting them on auction. Due to a lack of funds, the government could only rely on geological, geophysical and geochemical tests to estimate the geothermal reserves. We all know that it costs around US$10 million for drilling one exploration well, and even we dont have a warrant [for any reserve finding]. The government just does not have enough funds to drill the 330 potential reserves, he told the Jakarta Post. A joint report by the ministry, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank has estimated that it takes $4 billion in equity and $9.5 billion in debt finance just to produce 3 GW of geothermal power, assuming a 30 percent equity and a $4,500 selling price per kilowatt (kW). What the government can do amid the limited condition, Yunus continued, was to lure investors appetites into the geothermal potentials by issuing a new regulation that establishes a fixed price depending on the real capacity found after the exploration. Soon the government will issue a regulation on a fixed feed-in tariff based on an appealing internal rate of return [IRR] starting from 5 MW to 220 MW. So during the auction, companies will no longer have to propose a price, and will only need to propose their exploration commitment and the amount of funds they are willing to invest, he said. Currently, ministerial regulation No.17/2014 stipulates the price ceiling of electricity from geothermal energy at 10.4 to 29 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) depending on the capacity. Room for negotiation is available but mostly ends up into months and even years of talks. The impending regulation is expected to boost investors eagerness to bid on the countrys fields, especially amid drama within the PLN and Italys Enel Green Power, both of which were warned to pull out of the bidding race on Chevrons two Indonesian geothermal assets. Indonesian Geothermal Association chairman Abadi Poernomo claimed that many domestic and foreign investors had decided to opt out of bidding on the countrys geothermal fields as they were waiting for the new regulation to be issued. Many companies have had past experiences where they discovered a lower proven reserve from the governments initial estimate in a field that they won. Thus, they demanded tariff renegotiations with the PLN. The problem is that there are only two base load power plants the coal-fired and the geothermal power plants. Thus, the geothermal power plant is always compared to coal, which is much, much cheaper despite environmental costs, he said. However, unlike coal, which is dependent on the global market, the geothermal feed-in tariff is fixed for the whole 30-year contract, with only an additional fee encompassing 25 percent of the operations cost. The new regulation is reportedly to include a retroactive tariff with prices that will be adjusted based on proven capacity. Abadi, who is also a member of the National Energy Board (DEN), said he was also working with the ministry to prepare a regulation on the assignment of preliminary surveys and exploration for the geothermal sector. It will allow the government to hire geothermal consulting firms through a limited auction to gather more accurate data in the fields. This data could slightly decrease the prices as it would minimize a companys risk, Abadi said. BMI Research, a subsidiary of Fitch Group, appraised the governments move to reshape the regulation on geothermal power, and expected that well-established domestic geothermal industries would be attracted due to their expertise in developing geothermal power capacity. In particular, US and Japanese firms will likely have a strong foothold in the market as they look for international contract opportunities amid a slowdown in their domestic geothermal markets, BMI Researchs head of power and renewables Georgina Hayden said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 The Attorney Generals Office (AGO) has seized shares worth Rp 820 million (US$63,000) in agriculture company PT Bakrie Sumatra Plantation (UNSP) from graft convict Gayus Halomoan Tambunan. The AGOs Asset Recovery Center conducted the seizure of assets belonging to convict Gayus Tambunan, AGO spokesperson M Rum said on Saturday as reported by kompas.com. Rum said the shares had been sold through a transaction on the Indonesia Stock Exchange and the proceeds had been transferred to the state treasury. Gayus, who was a former low-ranking tax officer, was sentenced in 2010 to six years imprisonment and fined Rp 1 billion for corruption and money laundering. A subsequent appeal and judicial review of his case was rejected by the Supreme Court, where his sentence was actually increased to eight years. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura Mon, November 14 2016 The taskforce on human rights in Papua has made slow progress in resolving alleged abuses in Papua and West Papua provinces, largely as a result of the Attorney Generals Office (AGO), which has persistently disagreed with the approach of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). The taskforce was initially set up by then coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister Luhut Pandjaitan on Oct. 25, 2015, with a one-year mandate. It was hoped the taskforce could help ease the problems that had bedevilled many human rights cases in the countrys easternmost region. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 Where is Pak Ahok? Please come again with Pak Ahok, said residents of Cakung in East Jakarta to the surprise of Djarot Saiful Hidayat, Jakartas deputy governor and gubernatorial candidate, while he was campaigning in the densely-populated area on Sunday. They were referring to Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 Where is Pak Ahok? Please come again with Pak Ahok, said residents of Cakung in East Jakarta to the surprise of Djarot Saiful Hidayat, Jakartas deputy governor and gubernatorial candidate, while he was campaigning in the densely-populated area on Sunday. They were referring to Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama. Oh, is Pak Ahok allowed to come? asked the candidate. Of course! said the excited residents. Both Ahok and Djarot have confronted animosity from people during their campaign stops in several areas due to the governors controversial remarks in reference to a Quranic verse that Islamic hard-liners have deemed blasphemous. As the electability of the Ahok-Djarot ticket continues to be threatened, their political backers have begun to worry. Two of four political parties supporting the ticket may distance themselves from the beleaguered incumbent should he be charged with blasphemy. As pressure on the National Police to charge Ahok intensifies, party elites in the Golkar Party and the NasDem Party have voiced concerns over a possible electoral backlash if they keep supporting the governor, who has vowed to stay in the race despite his present legal quagmire. Last Friday, NasDem chairman Surya Paloh, an influential figure within President Joko Jokowi Widodos administration, said his party would evaluate its support for Ahok. If [Ahok] is named a suspect then we will carry out two kinds of evaluations, a legal and moral evaluation. [We need to consider] our morality as a party that supports [him], Paloh told reporters. A day earlier, Golkar patron Aburizal Bakrie warned his partys rank and file that the party could lose public support if it failed to address Ahoks blasphemy case accordingly. I know our party supports Ahok [in the Jakarta election] and that is its final decision. But we have to show firmly that the person we are supporting is also not allowed to insult religion any religion, not only Islam. Religious blasphemy is a serious matter, he added. Golkar and NasDem are not able to formally withdraw their support for Ahok though, as such a move would be considered illegal. The 2016 Regional Election Law stipulates that leaders of political parties that withdraw their support for a candidate whose candidacy has been validated by the General Elections Commission (KPU) may be criminally charged. If found guilty, they could be sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of between Rp 25 billion (US$1.8 million) and Rp 50 billion. We still support Ahok because the Regional Election Law does not allow us to back out from our support, NasDem executive Irma Suryani Chaniago told The Jakarta Post. Nevertheless, losing Golkars and NasDems political backing would still deal a blow to Ahok, who needs all the help he can get to weather the political storm he is now facing. The former Belitung regent, who claims to have been pressured by certain parties to drop out of the gubernatorial race, has said he would rather go to jail than quit. Jokowi has ordered the National Police to follow up on the blasphemy allegations against Ahok, his former deputy when he served as Jakarta governor, and has promised Muslim leaders that he will not protect him. The latest survey by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) shows that while he remains the frontrunner, Ahoks electability has dropped from 31 percent in October to 25 percent on in November. In March, Ahoks electability was at 59 percent. LSI researcher Adjie Alfaraby said the blasphemy allegations contributed to Ahoks declining electability, with 73 percent of 440 respondents in the survey saying Ahoks remarks in Thousand Islands regency in September were a mistake. Political analyst Hendri Satrio of Paramadina University said parties behind Ahok did not want to lose support from Muslims. When they decided to support Ahok, they only considered Ahoks strong chance [of being reelected]. Now they are afraid to lose Muslim voters, Hendri said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The Jakarta Police have arrested a man for allegedly masterminding scams targeting partygoers by setting up a bogus website. Jakarta Police mobile detective unit head Adj. Sr. Corm. Budi Hermanto said the suspect, identified as 31-year-old Lasellomo, or Omo, and his friends had set up a bogus website that resembled that of the Djakarta Warehouse Project (DWP), the nation's biggest electronic dance music (EDM) festival. We arrested him in Parepare, [South] Sulawesi, Budi said, as quoted by tribunnews.com on Sunday evening. Budi said the police were still expanding the investigation and seeking to arrest other suspects. Like the original website, djakartawarehouse.com, the bogus website, www.dwp2016.com, offers would-be participants tickets for the event, to be held next month at the Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta. Budi said Omo and his group had cashed in hundreds of millions of rupiah from misled partygoers, who transferred money to their bank accounts in the hope of getting tickets. (hwa) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The Islam-based United Development Party (PPP) has recommended that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people be "cured" of their sexual orientations in a program covered by the Social Security Management Agency (BPJS). We recommended to the government that an LGBT healing program could be covered by the BPJS, PPP deputy chairman Tamam Achda said during the partys national leadership meeting at the Haj Dormitory Building in East Jakarta on Monday as reported by tribunnews.com. Tamam did not mention details about the treatment that would be used to "heal" LGBT people. (Read also: Indonesian psychiatrists label LGBT as mental disorders) The World Heath Organization does not consider homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism to be psychiatric disorders. Tamam said the party also suggested the government should pass a law on LGBT people, making their actions criminal offenses. The PPP called on the public, including educational and religious institutions, to be aware of LGBT issue. We also warn family institutions to be aware and to protect young generations from the dangers of LGBT [orientations], he added. (jun). Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Semarang, Central Java Mon, November 14, 2016 President Joko Jokowi Widodo and his Singaporean counterpart Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong agreed to boost economic cooperation between the two countries during their first Leaders' Retreat in Semarang, Central Java, on Monday. In the meeting, Jokowi praised Singapore as "one of Indonesias key partners in trade and investment", while Lee said bilateral relations between the two nations were in good shape". After the meeting, Jokowi and Lee are set to inaugurate the Kendal Industrial Park on the outskirts of Semarang. It is expected that the industrial park will create about 4,000 jobs in Semarang and Kendal. "So it's a win-win outcome for Singapore and Indonesia," Lee told a press conference after the bilateral meeting. Singapore's investment in Indonesia amounted to US$7.1 billion between January and September this year, increasing by 44 percent from the same period last year. Jokowi also told Lee that the Indonesian government would continue to carry out economic and legal reforms in a bid to create a more competitive economy. The two leaders also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in tourism, which could open up new possibilities to develop new tourist destinations in Indonesia. The meeting was initially scheduled for August but was postponed after Lee suffered from a sudden drop in blood pressure. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14, 2016 The man who attacked the Oikumene church in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, spent three days making the Molotov cocktail he threw at the Christian house of worship on Sunday, a police official has said. The perpetrator made [the bomb] at his home, located behind a mosque on Jl. Cipto Mangunkusumo. He made it alone, National Police spokesman Ins. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said on Monday as reported by tribunnews.com. Boy revealed that the perpetrator, identified as Johanda, 37, used fertilizer, sulfur, charcoal and alcohol to make the bomb. The materials are easy to find in the market, he said, adding that police had searched the house and had found several goods, including a laptop and a cell phone, which would be examined further. (Read also: Kalimantan church bomber linked to IS movement) Boy said Johanda learned how to make rudimentary bombs when he joined a militant training camp led by Dul Matin in Aceh from 2009 to 2011. The perpetrator threw a Molotov cocktail when the congregation had just finished Sunday mass. One child, Intan Olivia Marbun, 3, died on Monday morning at Abdil Wahab Sjahranie General Hospital in Samarinda as a result of injuries she suffered in the attack. Three other children were injured and they are presently being treated at the hospital for burns injuries. (jun) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Josefhine Chitra (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, November 14 2016 On Nov. 9, 1989, the voice of the German people helped demolish the Berlin Wall. Fast forward 25 years, and 279 electoral colleges in the USA have just elected Donald J. Trump as their 45th president, who ironically might soon build a wall to repel immigrants from Mexico. For the majority of Americans who chose Hillary Clinton through popular voting, Trumps victory has left them in disbelief, shock and upset. After the ugly campaign run by Trump, it is very understandable that some people anticipate that the Trumpocalypse will unfold shortly. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jonathan Lemire and Laurie Kellman (Associated Press) Washington Mon, November 14, 2016 President-elect Donald Trump made his first two key personnel appointments on Sunday, one an overture to Republican circles by naming GOP chief Reince Priebus as his White House chief of staff, the other a shot across the bow of the Washington establishment by tabbing Breitbart news executive Stephan Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor. The two men had made up the president-elect's chief of staff shortlist, and while Priebus received that job, Bannon's post also is expected to wield significant clout. The media executive with ties to the alt-right and white nationalist movement was given top billing in the press release announcing their appointments. Trump's hires were, at first glance, contradictory, though they fit a pattern of the celebrity businessman creating a veritable Rorschach test that allowed his supporters to see what they wanted. Priebus, who lashed the RNC to Trump this summer despite some intraparty objections, is a GOP operative with deep expertise of the Washington establishment that Trump has vowed to shake up. He has close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite. "I am very grateful to the president-elect for this opportunity to serve him and this nation as we work to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism," Priebus said in the statement announcing his appointment. Bannon, meanwhile, helped transform the Breitbart news site into the leading mouthpiece of the party's anti-establishment wing, which helped fuel the businessman's political rise. Ryan has been one of his most frequent targets. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory," Trump said. "Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again." Neither Priebus nor Bannon bring policy experience to their new White House roles. Chiefs of staff in particular play a significant role in policy making, serving as a liaison to Cabinet agencies and deciding what information makes it to the president's desk. They're often one of the last people in the room with the president as major decisions are made. Trump's adult children, who serve as influential advisers to the president-elect, are said to have been concerned about having a controversial figure in the chief of staff role and backed Priebus for the job. In announcing the appointments, Trump said Priebus and Bannon would work as "equal partners" effectively creating two power centers in the West Wing. The arrangement is risky and could leave ambiguity over who makes final decisions. Trump has long encouraged rivalries, both in business and in his presidential campaign. He cycled through three campaign managers during his White House run, creating a web of competing alliances among staffers. Priebus is a traditional choice, one meant as an olive branch to the Republicans who control both houses of Congress as Trump looks to pass his legislative agenda. Ryan tweeted, "I'm very proud and excited for my friend @Reince. Congrats!" Ryan made no mention of Bannon in that tweet, but earlier told CNN that he didn't know Bannon but "I trust Donald's judgment." The Bannon pick, however, is anything but safe. Under Bannon's tenure, Brietbart pushed a nationalist agenda and became one of the leading outlets of the so-called alt-right a movement often associated with white supremacist ideas that oppose multiculturalism and defend "Western values." John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign, tweeted, "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant, America." Bannon, who became campaign CEO in August, pushed Trump to adopt more populist rhetoric and paint rival Hillary Clinton as part of a global conspiracy made up of the political, financial and media elite, bankers bent on oppressing the country's working people a message that carried Trump to the White House but to some, carried anti-Semitic undertones. An ex-wife of Bannon said he expressed fear of Jews when the two battled over sending their daughters to private school nearly a decade ago, according to court papers reviewed this summer by The Associated Press. In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Mary Louise Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he "didn't want the girls going to school with Jews." A spokeswoman for Bannon denied he made those statements. The appointments came after a day in which Trump's tough-talking plan to rein in illegal immigration showed signs Sunday of cracking, with the president-elect seemingly backing off his vow to build a solid wall along the southern US border and Ryan rejecting any "deportation force" targeting people in the country illegally. Though Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" in an interview airing Sunday night that his border wall might look more like a fence in spots, one thing didn't change from his primary: the combative billionaire took to Twitter to settle some scores. During a four-hour spree, Trump gloated about establishment Republicans congratulating him and savaged The New York Times for being "dishonest" and "highly inaccurate." "The @nytimes states today that DJT believes 'more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.' How dishonest are they. I never said this!" Trump tweeted late Sunday morning. But in a March interview with the Times, Trump was asked whether he would object to Japan acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, which it does not now have. He replied, "Would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that's the case." Trump also told "60 Minutes" he would eschew the US$400,000 annual salary for the president, taking only $1 a year. ___ Lemire reported from New York. AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Brussels Mon, November 14, 2016 Top EU diplomats are calling for more robust European defense and a greater European voice in world affairs as Donald Trump whose isolationist, protectionist promises have worried many on this side of the Atlantic prepares to assume the US presidency. With many question marks around Trump's foreign policy plans, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels agreed Sunday night on the need to strengthen Europe's role in world affairs until the future of trans-Atlantic relations becomes clearer. The top diplomats will join defense ministers Monday to discuss cooperation with NATO, whose future is uncertain after Trump suggested that Washington could abandon its NATO commitments, which include mutual defense in case of an attack. "The European Union is a superpower," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. She said the discussions Monday are not about an "EU army" as such, but about "a European Union security and defense that becomes more credible than it is today, more effective than it is today." Noting EU defense activities already in place supporting anti-smuggling operations and UN peacekeeping, she said, "We have a lot of potential that we don't utilize yet. There is a need to strengthen our security profile. It's what our citizens need." Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Trump's election is "a possibility for the EU to go further. We need to enhance our capacity in defense and security." "The EU needs to find a way to have its voice heard in the search for political solutions ... and ensure that it's not simply a conversation between Washington and Moscow, so that we can have the EU really at the table," he said. Perhaps the European's most pressing problem is to understand how Trump wants to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and destabilizing role elsewhere in Ukraine. Any signal from Trump about a warming of US relations with Russia is likely to embolden already-reluctant countries like Germany, Italy and others to push for an end to the sanctions regime, diplomats said. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisted Monday that Trump's presidency could be a "moment of opportunity" for Europe. Johnson, who championed Britain's exit from the EU and skipped Sunday night's foreign ministers meeting, said Trump "is a deal maker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it can also a good thing for Europe. I think that's what we need to focus on today." Others EU diplomats said they should focus instead on problems closer to home, such as the refugee emergency and economic issues. NATO's secretary-general appealed Sunday for trans-Atlantic unity and warned that "going it alone" wasn't an option for either Europe or the US "We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation. This is no time to question the value of the partnership between Europe and the United States," Jens Stoltenberg wrote in Britain's Observer newspaper. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Associated Press) Bangkok Mon, November 14, 2016 Myanmar's government says 34 people were killed after they attacked government troops in western Rakhine state over the weekend, but villagers belonging to the Muslim Rohingya minority say the victims were unarmed civilians. The government has been conducting counterinsurgency operations since nine police officers were killed in attacks last month on guard posts along the border with Bangladesh generally blamed on Muslim insurgents. Tensions have been high in Rakhine since fighting in 2012 between Buddhists and Muslims. The government said in a statement Monday that 28 people described as violent attackers were killed on Sunday. An earlier statement said six attackers died on Saturday, in addition to two government soldiers. Human rights groups accuse the army of abuses against the Rohingya minority, including killings, rapes and burning of homes. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Straits Times) Mon, November 14, 2016 The results of the presidential election in the United States should not jeopardise Singapore's good defense relationship with the country, said Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen. Singapore has traditionally had strong institutional ties with the US, and has worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations to strengthen defense ties between both countries, he noted on Sunday. "President-elect [Donald] Trump was voted in and he will be the president, and we have to work with the administration to maintain the good ties that we had," Ng said. "Our defense policy starting point is what works the best for Singapore. We are a small country and we know that what big powers do will affect not only Singapore, but the entire region and indeed the world." During his presidential campaign, Trump had made remarks implying that America's allies - including those in Asia - were not pulling their weight. His win sparked fears that a diminished US presence in the region would be quick to follow, with implications for security and stability. Ng said that Singapore will continue to work with the US as it does with other countries in the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus framework. These include China, India, Japan and South Korea. "Our relationship with other countries, whether it's the US or China, is to have a mutually beneficial relationship," he said, adding that Singapore is not dependent on any one country. He gave examples of how Singapore has worked closely with the US and welcomed their planes and ships into its bases where interests align, such as on the issue of counter-terrorism. "I would say that we've been doing a lot for our defense partners like the US... and I don't see that as any reason why we should diminish our defense ties with the US," he said, adding that Singapore takes the same approach towards its other defense partners. "We make sure that our relationship is one based on mutual benefits; we help each other out." This article appeared on The Straits Times newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Viet Nam News/ANN) Hanoi Mon, November 14, 2016 Vietnam will continue with its reform process to improve business and the investment environment to support enterprises and negotiate other agreements regardless of whether US president-elect Donald Trump thwarts the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), according to the Minister of Trade and Industry Tran Tuan Anh. Trump, who opposes the TPP trade pact, has won the US presidential election, and several experts believe that the Republican victory would put an end to this trade agreement. The minister told the press on the sidelines of the ongoing National Assembly that Vietnam was consistent with its point of view and policy in the international integration. The TPP was one of the free trade deals that Vietnam had agreed to participate in, but it would proceed with other free trade agreements (FTAs) to create opportunities for companies to fuel economic growth. The minister said it was too early to forecast the future of TPP, and the country was ready for integration with or without it. If the TPP agreement continued to be implemented favorably, it would bring several benefits to Vietnam in various sectors. The countrys key export products, such as textile, garment, footwear, and seafood, would likely gain breakthroughs in export value to the US, Japan and Canada. On the other hand, if the TPP was not approved, Vietnam still had other export markets, Anh added. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh stated at the Vietnam Summit 2016 in Ho Chi Minh City early this month that with Vietnam signing the TPP agreement, the country hoped to intensify trade ties with Asia-Pacific countries and create more business opportunities for Vietnam and the other TPP members. Therefore, Vietnam looks forwards to the ratification of the trade deal by all member countries, including the US. He said if the TPP was not passed due to any reasons, it would be considered a setback, as countries spent much time and effort on the negotiation process. He, however, also noted that besides the TPP, Vietnam had concluded FTAs with several other partners, such as the European Union and the Eurasia Economic Union. Vietnam and other ASEAN nations are preparing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership FTAs. In addition, members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are negotiating an FTA in the region. Moreover, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai stated at the summit that 10 FTAs, including Vietnam as a signatory, had come into force. One FTA will come into effect soon, and several others are on the negotiating table. Hai stressed that with or without the trade deal, Vietnams economic policy towards international integration would remain unchanged. Hai said before negotiating the TPP, Vietnam had taken part in multilateral organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). The domestic business environment has been improved, and the nation has stepped up investment restructuring, encouraged the private sector and strengthened management of public debt to pursue sustainable growth. According to economist Ngo Tri Long, in the global trend, no country can stand alone. Vietnam should prepare the best plan to deal with worst possible scenarios and should not totally depend on the TPP. In another development, Japans lower house of parliament on Thursday passed the contentious free trade deal. President Barack Obama championed the 12-nation, deal saying it would enable the US to set the global trade agenda in the face of the increasing Chinese economic clout. Besides Japan and the US, the TPP includes 10 other countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. If it were to come into full force, it would account for an enormous 40 percent of the global economy. This article appeared on the Viet Nam News newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Istanbul Mon, November 14, 2016 Turkey has issued a travel warning for its citizens about going to the United States, citing violent protests following Tuesday's contested presidential election as well as increasing verbal and physical attacks and harassment of an "anti-immigrant" and "racist" nature. In a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry's website Saturday, it said the anti-Donald Trump demonstrations "occasionally featured acts of crime and violence" and noted that security forces had detained many demonstrators. (Read also: Trump reacts as protests surge in cities across country) It says "based on demonstrators' social media posts, it's clear the demonstrations will likely continue for some time." Turkey earlier this month criticized a U.S. decision to order family members of employees posted to the Istanbul Consulate to leave because of security concerns. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu insisted that Istanbul or Ankara was "not more unsafe than any U.S. state." For the moment, the shareholders of the Village View Co-op, one of the neighborhoods biggest bastions of affordable housing, have ended privatization talks. [EV Grieve] The Department of Education blocked a reporter from attending a school leadership meeting at P.S. 15 on the Lower East Side. Courts have ruled that the meetings must be open. [New York Post] People at Lambs Church on the LES felt conflicted about the presidential election, agreeing with Donald Trump on abortion but having problems with the president-elects immigration schemes. [WNYC] State Sen. Daniel Squadron wrote an open letter to Donald Trump. [Daily Beast] Former Lower East Side Assemblyman Sheldon Silver blocked mixed martial arts fighting in New York. Once he was toppled, the sport won quick approval from the State Legislature. Now MMA has a new champion: Donald Trump. [New Yorker] A judge tells a resident of the Whitehouse Hotel that 23 lawsuits against the owners of the building are enough. [New York Post] More on the demise of the Jewish heritage mural on East Broadway. [Tablet] A profile of actor Edgar Oliver, who now lives on Attorney Street but was a longtime resident of the East Village. Oliver is wrapping up a stint in a one-man play called Attorney Street. [New York Times] I wonder why I am enjoying being so invested in this show because I wouldnt say its making me happy, per se -my friend L, from a gchat during the 11 days that Sherlock was back on the air [Dont worry: there are no concrete spoilers for any of Sherlock series 3 here.] Last week I published a piece here about the history of Sherlock Holmes, and about how its contextualized by the new series of Sherlock or maybe its the other way around. I went through a number of books and scholarly articles and revisited the original stories and put together a measured argument. I had the good fortune to be able to attend the premiere at the British Film Institute with other journalists in December, and I watched all three episodes over the past few weeks with a critical eye, studying the reactions of the British press as each of them was aired. I discussed the essay with writers and editors, working to maintain a cool, judicious distance from the source material. I put together a long, (hopefully!) thoughtful piece that I was proud of, and one that I hoped did Sherlock, and Sherlock Holmes more broadly, some justice. This, then, is the B-side. Diary of a Crazed Fangirl. Thats reductive, though, and perhaps even a bit sexist. Diary of a Reasonably Intelligent Adult Woman Driven Slightly Insane by a Television Show Shes Grown Attached To. Maybe I should just lift the best line from my friend Ls inadvertent chat-poem, and call it, Sherlock: I Wouldnt Say Its Making Me Happy, Per Se. This is the story of one person in one fandom, but its likely got hints of your story, too, if youve ever been involved in this sort of thing. Id hope that it resonates if youve ever really loved something that you havent created the Id-kill-for-you kind of love of a work of art that inspires others to say things like, Whoa, whoa, slow down, its just a book. Ive written about fandom, specifically fanfiction, here before twice, actually. First, to try to debunk the general anthropologists discover a wild tribe of porn enthusiasts on the Internet tone that accompanied approximately 90 percent of the Fifty Shades of Grey coverage that mentioned the series origin. Second, to try to debunk the idea that Kindle Worlds, Amazons commercially-licensed fanfic project, was anything that literally anyone in fan communities actually wanted. I actively joined the Sherlock fandom only a year ago and when I say actively, I mean I officially left my previous fandom (it was dying, quickly the show was over and the smartest voices were moving on and besides, I only have space for one fandom at a time in my brain and/or heart) and embraced the show full-on, allowing it to colonize my tumblr dash and AO3 bookmarks page and a fair portion of my idle thoughts. In the beginning, it can be a bit like a new relationship you hope to find a way to slip it into conversation with your friends, and then realize too late that you are bringing it up way too often. (This happens, too, when I work on original fiction; stories are stories, and if the characters get you, youre done.) I have been joining the fandoms of various books and television shows since the 90s. I know how this works. And I knew the exact moment I was stepping into something dangerous with this one, because falling for a show with three episodes every two years does terrible things to your mind. Theres a special kind of desperation that unifies hardcore Sherlock fans, and you can see it in the speed at which memes turn silly there are only so many times you can go over every scene of a six-episode run with even the finest-toothed comb. You talk yourself in circles; you build wild headcanons based on slivers of hints from the writers two men whove stated outright that they often lie to throw people off the scent. This is all part of the fun the miserable, miserable fun. The cast and crew appear to be hyper-aware of the obsessive interest and thats unsurprising, because after all, Sherlock is helmed by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, a pair of men so obsessed with both the stories and the long century of paper and screen adaptations that their Sherlock Holmes fanfic is the show itself. The BBC capitalize on the event culture, in Moffats words, thats grown around the show there was a wild morning in November when fans were, at the bequest of the shows creators, scouring the streets of London forsomething. (In the end, it was a hearse, an empty hearse, with the air date of the premiere spelled out in flowers, driven past key locations from the show. I stopped by one of the waiting points, the North Gower Street stand-in building for 221B Baker Street, on my way to UCL. When I had to leave after 15 minutes, I felt a strange sense that I was betraying something.) By some stroke of miraculous luck, my professional life and my fan life physically intersected in the final weeks of the year. I managed to get a press invitation to the premiere, and had a mild heart attack as I was checking in and saw Stephen Moffats curly head gliding past a long queue of deerstalker hats fans whod been waiting for return tickets, some of them, it was rumored, since the night before. At the pre-screening reception, I made a friend, a financial journalist about my age. I really love this show, she told me. I nodded vigorously. But I would never wait all night to get a ticket! she went on. My vigorous nodding slowed to a gentle bob. Would I? Id considered it. But I had taken an easier option because that privilege was available to me. I looked around the room and puzzled at this collection of people. We were journalists; we were fans; perhaps we were that kind of fan, but we werent announcing it. This complicated dynamic would carry over into the post-screening Q&A, where Caitlin Moran (whom I generally love, incidentally), engaged in a classic Moran-style fuck-up, forcing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to read a passage from a John/Sherlock fanfic. It wasnt particularly explicit but it was romantic and sexual, to be certain, and it was abundantly clear that neither the actors nor anyone in the audience including those of us who read this stuff in our spare time wanted this read aloud onstage. She apologized profusely, but the incident set the tone for the strange interplay that would mark the weeks that followed, between the shows makers and its fans, from casual to hardcore, and the critics observing and trying to explain what they didnt fully understand. The three episodes aired over the span of 11 days here in the U.K., each of them pulling in about a third of the British viewing public and millions more abroad, through legal means or otherwise. Moffat wanted an event, and he got it, three times over. It felt like every British person on my Twitter feed had a 140-character review. Public opinion appeared to sway wildly from week to week, and newspapers seemed to be hunting for controversy, publishing positive reviews and then countering them with takedown pieces, highlighting the most polarizing voices and muting more nuanced views. They do that with everything these days, you say. Theyre just looking for clicks. Yes: we are in agreement! But there is something to be said for placing so much anticipatory weight on a television show: nothing can be all things to all people, and Sherlock felt smothered by the weight of nine million expectations. Tons of people loved it, and were put off by negative criticism; tons of others threw up their hands and said, This is not what I signed up for. This is not my show. Others still urged people to calm down: its just a TV show after all. But to say this diminishes the importance of storytelling in our lives, in whatever mode. Its hard not to get invested in stories, and in characters, that we love. Thats what people do. As a critic and as a person who wants to see this show continue to be made, I felt I had a vested interest in the critical and public reactions, respectively. But at my core, I am a fangirl. I read and write fanfiction (never published; I hate WIPs), and I obsess. Ive always obsessed. A lot of fan activity these days happens on Tumblr, and the Sherlock community there fractured around divided opinions, too though they somehow never managed to align with those of the rest of the world. We all want different things from the things we love; were all inevitably disappointed in some way. Mixed reactions in fan communities are par for the course transmedia scholar Henry Jenkins pinpointed something key when he wrote that fan fiction emerges from a balance between fascination and frustration. One of the biggest criticisms leveled at Sherlocks writers this time around was an accusation of fan service that the fourth wall was being pecked away at, sometimes outright shattered, and elements were added with a knowing eye focused on fans, particularly the vocal group that the show has attracted. Within the fandom, some fans agreed and took this accusation to heart, while others felt they werent being serviced enough, or at all. Emotions ran high, and vitriol sprung up; I spent 11 days feeling far more tense than I should have. I took long walks along the Thames, and even went to church a few times to clear my head. (Its worth noting here that a lot of fan communities are most vocally female, and I dont think that the Sherlock fan community is any exception. It felt like there was a special criticism being leveled at female fans of Sherlock, silly fangirls, that sort of thing, dismissed as a group of people who like watching Benedict Cumberbatch ruffle his hair (cmon guys, this is clearly all humans, ever) or people who welcomed the fair amount of screen time being devoted to character development in these three episodes. Somehow these were female desires being imposed, despite the three men writing the scripts. Theres an analogy in here to modern fiction, in men refusing to read books marked as feminine in some way, that sort of thing, but I can hold onto that one for another day.) Ive always been a lurker eager to consume fan works and conversations but hesitant to join in. This time around, I was joined by two fellow lurkers, R and L, friends from college who love the show but have mostly kept their spiraling meta-analyses inside their heads. We let it all out, the kind of avalanche of analysis and reaction a lot of us have after reading a book or seeing a movie with friends, but for days on end. We had a lot to say: thousands of words across nearly a hundred emails. We all process stories by talking them through, trying to balance rationality with emotional response. We scrutinize; we flail and squee. And in our little group of three, we split. R, the one whos been with the show the longest, wavered, hating most of the first two episodes but finding more to like about the third. In the end, she walked away wholly disheartened with the show. There were absolutely lots of great scenes in this series but to me they dont fit together, she wrote in one of her final emails. And though Im inclined to try and rationalize I dont know if theres a point because the heart of it is that I just dont trust the showrunners anymore. L and I wound up on mostly the same page: largely happy with the show but fairly unhappy with all the dissatisfaction and the unending dissections. The normal pains of absorbing new material were amplified by the speed at which the series aired, and the length of the episodes themselves. It was tiring: I wrote, on the eve of the finale, Oh God I just want tomorrow to be over so I can stop having a mild heart attack and we can get back to fanfiction. I was looking for someone to make sense of it all, and had the good fortune to come across Anne Jamison shortly after the first episode aired, via some very smart women who write some very smart fanfiction, and, I learned and shouldnt have been at all surprised to see, some very smart critiques (aka meta) of the show. Jamison is an academic who participates in the Sherlock fandom, amongst others; her latest book, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World came out late last year. I got my hands a copy and promptly devoured it. It should be noted that, post-Christmas 2013, this is the first book Ive actually fully read in electronic form; is it that experience, or something in way it is written and pieced together (guest contributions interwoven with a strong, linear narrative from Jamison herself) that makes it feel very new? Im liable to say its the latter she writes in the introduction: The desire to host this conversation leaves Fic somewhere between monograph and edited collection. It might help to think of it as a tour through a curated exhibit that Ive arranged and guided and shaped. Its also likely that the subject matter has a hand in this: Jamison writes of fanfiction working in many directions, from the traditional author/reader relationship to more lateral connections, fanfic writers and readers working across genres and preferences and even source material to create webs based, above all, on taste: what we want to read, and love reading, a vast network of influences and references and experimentation and quick, constructive feedback. A utopia sometimes. At the very least, a way of sharing stories that feels refreshingly organic, and one that continues to evolve in fascinating ways with technological shifts in communication. The resulting portrait of the long and varied history of fandom with a specific emphasis on fic, and, oh, what a delight to see some fanfic Ive read and loved analyzed like any other good work of literature is a picture of the wide-open spaces in between. Books and television shows and movies inherently leave gaps; whether we choose to linger over them, to explain them away, or to work fill them in, is our right as consumers of art, and as fans. But its easier to see what fans get from the creators of art than what they really deserve. I wrote to Jamison and asked if she could help me puzzle out what had happened with Sherlock series 3: why was it so divisive, and what about the fans in all of this? What did she think of the ideas about challenges to the fourth wall? From my perspective viewing Sherlock as a very high quality, very clever, very well-written fan work this show has always challenged the fourth wall, she wrote in response. Their mission statement is to mess with canon and to redefine it as inclusive if they feel like it. They are not writing the kind of reverent, in-universe missing case or missing scene pastiche that has long been popular with Sherlockians. Throughout the episode-run, there was so much talk about how the show had changed and those who didnt like those changes insisted it was for the worse. Jamison draws up what I think is a great analogy: If you *loved* the early Beatles, theres no guarantee youre going to love Abbey Road, because the band had gotten to a very, very different place musically and personally. I dont think its unreasonable of people to want more of what they love, and not to have it changeBut obviously, there were more Beatles fans who were happy to see the band grow and go in new directions, even if they preferred some over others. And thats exactly what happened with Sherlock. She continues: I think Sherlock *is* fanservice but I think that the creators themselves are the fans they are servicing. They couldnt make this show if they werent incredible Sherlock Holmes fans. Sherlock is in the enviable position of being event television that people will tune in for. They can afford not to play it safe. By going over familiar ground with Sherlock Holmes and by doing so few episodes, they buy the opportunity to do very new things in television. Just like fanfiction writers always do people will tune in for the characters and read something more experimental than they might otherwise because theres enough there to make them feel at home. Jamison helped me sort out some of the thorniest bits that lie at the heart of the shows specific problems in relation to its fans there are gendered issues at work here, for one, questions of representation, perhaps reasons why the broader universe is ripe for those coming from, and looking for, the spaces in between. (I think your sense of gender discrimination, though, and gendered storytelling, is spot-on, she wrote. Part of the problem is that somehow narratives about feeling have become coded as feminine. That wasnt the case in [Arthur Conan Doyle]s day.) Weve put the full (long) conversation up over on her tumblr if youre interested. Funnily enough, while we were exchanging e-mails, an incident similar to the Moran fanfic fiasco cropped up, this one concerning Amanda Abbington, the casts newest regular, and her objection to fan art depicting her partner, Martin Freeman. Jamison has smart things to say on that, too. The Hiatus has begun again, and the British public has moved on with their lives. Hell, they probably moved on the Monday after the finale aired, perhaps after a chat at the proverbial (or literal? Is that still a thing?) water cooler. (The Daily Mail wrote an amazing blustery article that morning saying Sherlock was full of liberal bias, and we all had a much-needed laugh.) Its been a few weeks now, and the fans remain, because fans always remain, and will continue to turn over the text in new and surprising ways. Some people have abandoned the show, Im sure, but new fans are probably tentatively stepping through door as I write this. People will try to explain away their confusion, and if they cant rationalize it, well, they can fix it, too. The fanfiction has begun. I feel less of a need for long, drizzly walks along the Thames at least not for this stuff, anyway though I am slightly wary about going through another round of event television again. On the other hand, I really cannot wait to see whats coming next. I certainly cannot wait another two years. Please, please, for the love of God, not another two years. About a week ago, my friend L sent a beautiful meditation on the meaning of the show in her own life, which, after all of this, she still loved with reservations, of course. Spending time thinking and writing about Sherlock is on one level a form of escapism. Its a place where I can let my mind do some gymnastics while Im waiting in line at the bank or washing the same cup for the hundredth time at work. But its not just any place where Im mentally doing just anything. In the tradition of the science fiction and fantasy novels that I love best, Sherlock deals with a lot of ideas and issues in a manner that is indirect enough that it is not obvious and preachy, yet they are still realized in a compelling wayCertain lines or plot points act like catalysts for things that are already going on in my head. Much of it comes from the magic of these characters, the Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that have endured and been re-imagined and reinvented for over a century. A lot of it comes from the universe created by Moffat and Gatiss, and still more from the combined chemistry and individual performances of Cumberbatch and Freeman. For whatever reason, I find that this environment is a wonderful place to grow the seeds of these big thoughts in the semi-privacy of my own brain. I get invested in this stuff too, certainly; fictional characters from both high and low culture have always occupied prime seats in my mind (palace). In the end, these are just stories, which is what were after most of all, I suppose a way to contextualize our own stories, the ones we tell ourselves to make sense of things. Anything thats both beloved and serialized has to deal with the disconnect between the stories that its creators want to tell and the stories that fans, from the casual on up to the obsessive, want to see. For me, I suppose its like any addiction Im so grateful for everything we get, and then, when the dust settles, I just want to see more. There is a weirdly fitting coda to all of this: I was working to finish this essay in a coffee shop in Central London a few evenings ago, and my computers battery ran out just as I typed the word showrunners. I sighed and took off my headphones and shut my laptop. And then I heard a very familiar laugh: I looked around and did a genuine double take, because Mark Gatiss was sitting about 10 feet away, chatting with a friend. I tried not to freak out. I was paralyzed: a devoted fan and the creator of said fans interest just a few feet apart in a random cafe and where the hell was the fourth wall (made of impenetrable brick) that I needed to keep me from rushing over and making a fool of myself? I didnt, dont worry. Too shy or too scared, or maybe, to put a more positive spin on it, too considerate of a private individual having a conversation to interrupt. After he left, the man at the next table turned around and said, Was that Mycroft!? So much more than that, I wanted to tell him. I nodded instead. Theres a metaphor in all of this, somewhere. Paul Schrader, famous for writing classics The Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and for rarely playing safe, delivers this insane and bawdy mix of crime and comedy that is Dog Eat Dog. The film sees Nicholas Cage take up the role of ex-con Troy, whos fresh out of prison and who, together with friends Mad Dog (Willem Dafoe) and Diesel (Christopher Matthew Cook) sets out to do dirty jobs to survive, before stooping low enough to kidnap a baby. The movie, based on a book by Eddie Bunker, in itself is a nihilistic, borderline comedic crime thriller, full of pure cynicism, gratuitous violence and sex, that would have you wondering if watching a dog actually eat another dog would have actually proven a better choice. The movie will treat you to an hour and a halfs worth of gratuitous violence, sexuality, and utter glamorisation of drug use and the bad boy archetype. The actors and script succeed in portraying the main characters as morally reprehensible as possible, without necessarily going out of its way to give us a moral conclusion. What we see on the screen is what we perceive, and the finale leaves something to be desired, a feeling that there should have been another scene or more dialogue to give further context. The story focuses so much on character building that it forgets to make us sympathise with them. Troys long-lasting friendship with Diesel and Mad Dog is only glossed over in the beginning of the movie, making us feel like were that new person whos intruding into a years-long friendship group. Although we watch more character-building scenes rather than plot-related ones, they are mostly superficial, characters enjoying themselves, and its only at the end that we get treated to more serious ones. Instead of going deeper into why, for example, Mad Dog took a fall for Troy only for him to waste it with an attempted violent escape, the audience gets treated to multiple shots of the three main guys getting it on with prostitutes. In this movie, the plot takes the backseat, as the interpersonal relationships take the spotlight, quickly turning into the highlight. And it doesnt waste its time starting on with the gore. The first scene is a strong start, but mainly because of the shock value and the way it is shown. Coke-addled ex-con John Aloysius McCain, aka Mad Dog, is seen snorting cocaine at his ex-girlfriend Sheila's place. She comes home with her daughter, and adamantly refuses to let him stay (what happened between them is never actually clear). They fight until she finds his stash of Japanese porn and he goes so crazy he murders both of them in cold blood. And goes back to snorting. What really makes the scene stand out is the brilliant cinematography and the way surroundings and light are used to convey deeper meanings. When they're fighting, Sheila is bathed in deep pink hues, which mainly come from the interior of the house itself, while Mad Dog is a much more clinical and miserable blue. The soft light eventually reaches him but its only when he kills Sheila and her daughter. And this time the light has a redder hue than the pinkish from before a colour that is much more emotional and unhinged. However, what the scene lacks is the emotional depth required to make us care about spilled blood, which only comes after establishing at least a little bit why we should root for a character. This pattern continues on through the entirety of the movie, before fizzing out like a disappointing firework at its finale, which although grand and beautifully shot, makes us really ask: so what?. In addition, there arent any big female roles in the movie. The movie doesnt pass the Bechdel test, nor is it made to do so. The women in the movie are only represented through their relationship to the main three characters. Mostly dumb prostitutes simply around to look sexy and fail at geography, drunk girls they pick up at bars, and a hysterical ex whos only there to yell at Mad Dog and splutter blood. Lastly, the movie isnt big on sending out any message greater than the sum of its scenes. There are mentions of gun control issues, as well as police brutality but they're simple, throwaway lines. It does, however, manage to convey an important notion, albeit a bit unsuccessfully: that it is incredibly hard to get back into society after spending a long time behind bars. If shoot-outs, fights and sex scenes are your thing, go for it. Dog Eat Dog is worth seeing at least for the gorgeous cinematography and the developed, though non-sympathetic characters. Dog Eat Dog is out in the UK this Friday. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and one of Europes largest cities. Although Catalonia is so so much more than what traditional travel guides make it out to be, Barcelona truly is the reason Catalonia is often visited - especially thanks to the capital's cultural and leisure attractions. >>> Book your winter adventure now and receive 20% off with promo code WIN16 - visit www.generatorhostels.com >>> Aside from the beaches and the sunshine, which speak for themselves in being a point in favor for a place to visit, Barcelona has breathtaking art and exquisite gastronomy to offer. However, having visited Barcelona a couple of times already, first with school and then with family, on my eventual return to the Ciudad Condal, I want to make sure that I find something that's slightly different from the usual attractions, or at least new. I've put together a compilation of new things to do in Barca. First things first, the city is the perfect destination for culture vultures and in the past year the city has yet upped its game. Top cultural cultural locations to visit are the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and the Picasso Museum, a key reference for understanding the formative years of Pablo Picasso. The Museum of Catalan Modernism is also great to go see, dedicated entirely to Barca's home-grown art-nouveau movement. I personally adore the fact that city overall is bejeweled with all sorts of architectural gems pertaining to the heritage bequeathed by Gaudi, including Sagrada Familia and Casa Mila. What's I'm especially looking forward to are the freshly re-opened attractions that haven't been in the guides before. For example, the Torre Bellesguard, built by Antoni Gaudi, has only recently been set available to the public as yet another example of fantastic architectural skill. To follow, my personal favorite from the books so far, the Art Nouveau site of Hospital de Sant Pau by architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner: a hospital built like a city precisely produced with such attention to aesthetic that it was thought the beauty of the surroundings could enhance the healing process of the patients staying there. 2017 too has a lot to offer when it comes to artistic attractions, with four venues adding to the list of sites to set foot on. Antonio Gaudis first major construction - dating back to 1883-1888, Casa Vicens - is to become a museum. Last but not least, after over a hundred years of being closed to the general public, the Casa Terradas, better known as the Casa de les Punxes because of its six spiky towers, opened its doors to the public this summer. No matter how amazing the architecture scene, what's a trip to Catalonia without checking out the food?! A combination of 2,000 years of cultural history and anthropological heritage, along with the experimental passion of the citys present day chefs has formed this reputation, and enabled Barcelona to become the first Gourmand city outside of France in 2002. Foodies can enjoy visiting the markets, including La Boqueria, to pick up the freshest of produce. Similarly, there are many food tours visitors can enjoy around the city, for example a Tapas tour, a wine tour or a paella tasting session. I've also been told that a new must see gastronomic venue is the 2016-launched Opera Samfaina, the new multisensory experience where you can visit different bars and eat foods from all sorts of menus while watching lyrical performances and stunning art. Make sure to book quickly though, because it's apparently quite busy so far. Nonetheless, on a more practical note, although Barcelona is a relatively cheap location for tourists, traveling is seldom economic. 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Soldiers have killed scores and arrested many more in their hunt for the attackers, who the government claims are radicalised Rohingya militants with links to overseas Islamists it has not named. Also during the weekend, strong evidence emerged in the form of satellite photos that Myanmar security forces are literally using scorched-earth tactics, burning entire villages to the ground in the escalated anti-Rohingya campaign. The photos, released by Human Rights Watch, are before-and-after views of three villages in embattled Maungdaw district. The claims of a previously unknown Rohingya crisis, along with credible reports of grave rights abuses by the security forces have piled international pressure on Myanmars new civilian government. There now are questions about the ability of the government headed by Aung San Suu Kyi to control the military. The leader has not been heard from in days, and criticism has mounted at her refusal to speak out for protecting the Rohingya - whom she calls Bengalis. The satellite photos appear to show that entire villages in Maungdaw have been put to the torch recently, with 430 buildings, mostly homes and farm buildings, destroyed. Photo analysts say the buildings seem to have been burnt to the ground. This has raised suspicions that the army and police have launched campaigns against entire Rohingya villages. The latest images were taken on Nov 10 and were released yesterday (Nov 13). Brad Adams, Human Rights Watchs Asia director, said the new photos showed widespread destruction that was greater than we first thought. Burmese authorities should promptly establish a UN-assisted investigation as a first step toward ensuring justice and security for the victims, he said in a statement. The military and government have rejected allegations that troops have burned Rohingya villages. They have accused insurgents of lighting the fires and burning their own villages. HRW says it identified 430 buildings, mostly homes and farm buildings, destroyed in three villages of Maungdaw district in Rakhine state, all of them likely burnt to the ground. The state has sizzled with religious tension ever since waves of violence between the majority Buddhist population and the Muslim Rohingya left more than 200 dead in 2012. More than 100,000 people, mostly Rohingya, were pushed into displacement camps by the bloodshed and have languished there ever since. Rights groups say they face apartheid-like restrictions on movement and have repeatedly called on Suu Kyi to carve out a solution. But Buddhist nationalists at home viciously oppose any move to grant them citizenship, claiming the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite their long roots in the country. Days of apparent calm were shattered on Saturday (Nov 12) when the army said six attackers and two soldiers were killed during a series of coordinated ambushes that were only beaten back with the help of helicopter gunships. The toll then jumped yesterday following further clashes. In a statement late yesterday, Myanmars military said 22 attackers armed with swords were killed near Dar Gyi Zar village yesterday morning after they charged at soldiers. Six other insurgents were killed during clashes elsewhere in the state yesterday, the statement added. Authorities have heavily restricted access to the area, making it difficult to independently verify government reports or accusations of army abuse. On Saturday evening, Rohingya activists uploaded a graphic video showing the corpses of eight people dressed in civilian clothes, including a small baby. The videos shooter, speaking in Rohingya, said the victims died that day near Dar Gyi Zar village, with some showing bullet wounds. The resurgence of violence in western Rakhine has deepened and complicated a crisis that already posed a critical challenge to the new administration led by Ms Suu Kyi. Activists have launched a petition at Change.org calling on the Nobel Peace Prize committee to recall her prize, awarded in 1991 for opposing military regimes. Read original story here. Mistress hunters on a mission CHINA: Dont get mad, get your opponent to surrender voluntarily: when Mrs Wang discovered her husband had been cheating on her for several years, she called in an elite team of Chinese mistress hunters. Chinesesex By AFP Sunday 13 November 2016, 03:00PM Shu Xin founded the company Weiqing or protector of feelings to help persuade mistresses to end extra-marital relationships. Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP Rather than seek a divorce which could have hit her social and financial standing she hired a specialist to earn the other womans trust, and then persuaded her to end the extra-marital relationship. It was a long-standing affair, but once the mistress hunters were called in, it was over within two months. Wang said she paid between 400,000 and 500,000 yuan (B1.74mn-B2.61mn) for the service. I think it was worth it, Im satisfied, she added. So much so, she is now thinking of becoming a hunter herself. That way I can help women protect their families and their rights, she explained. The company Wang used, Weiqing or protector of feelings has 59 offices across the country, and offers free legal advice and lectures. Its founder Shu Xin said he has 300 agents at his command. My goal is to prevent divorces, he said at his upmarket Beijing headquarters. Every year we save some 5,000 couples. The mistress hunters are mostly women and are all psychology, sociology or law graduates. They spend three years learning the ropes before being sent out into the field, where they pose as neighbours, cleaners or even babysitters. Ming Li, 47, has been doing the job for three years. Im older than these mistresses, in general, so they listen to me, she said. If the mistress goes to a park, to the supermarket or to work, Ill happen to meet her. And even if she is a stay-at-home sort of person, I can claim Ive got a leak in my apartment and ask for her help, she said. We always find a way to initiate contact. One time, I pretended to be a fortune teller, and the mistress asked me to tell hers. Obviously, I already knew all about her from the wife, so it was easy to leave her dumbfounded and exhort her to leave the husband. It was one of our most quickly resolved cases. Chinese divorce rates have surged from 1.59 per 1,000 people in 2007 to 2.67 in 2014, according to the most recently available civil affairs ministry figures far higher than in Europe, with France at 1.9 and Italy at just 0.9. In Beijing, official statistics show 73,000 couples divorced in 2015 almost three times the number nine years previously. The reasons? The liberalisation of morals, tensions related to differences between the husbands and the wifes income, incompatible personalities, said Zhu Ruilei, a divorce attorney at Beijing-based law firm Yingke. But also the desire to pursue personal dreams is stronger than it used it be. According to a study by dating site Baihe.com, at least one party has been unfaithful in half of Chinese first marriages. The survey found that more than 21 per cent of first time husbands have had a mistress, and a similar number 20% of wives have had a lover. In nearly 9% of first marriages, both partners have cheated. Today being unfaithful has become easy, especially with the internet, said Pan Xingshi, who runs an online advice company, referring to the popularity of Tantan, Chinas equivalent of Tinder. But mistresses are still poorly regarded in the country, where having children out of wedlock remains socially taboo. They are known as xiaosan, a derogatory term meaning a third person of lower rank than a wife. Sometimes they fall victim to violent vigilantism. In June, a video went viral showing a naked girl being attacked by a group of women. She was suspected of being the mistress of one of the womens husbands. Mistresses are global. But specifically in China they are kept women: the husbands, often rich, pay for luxury apartments, cars and luxury products, explained Weiqing chief Shu, a former journalist. Some women do not want to divorce out of fear of getting into financial difficulty. They just want to get rid of the mistress. Thats where we come in, said Shu. It is an expensive process: the mistress hunters often have to rent similarly pricey accommodation and buy high-end jewellery and clothes as they try to forge a friendship with their targets. We are paid a lot. But we also risk losing a lot too, because if we fail then we repay the entire amount, explained Shu, who says his mistress hunters sent 8,552 women packing in 2014 0 some husbands have more than one. Under Chinese law the activities of Weiqing and similar firms are not illegal, said Zhu, the lawyer, adding that they serve a purpose. But there were also many problems, he added: Invasion of privacy, the relationship between the mistress and the investigator is based on deceit. There is the risk that peoples feelings get hurt. Mistress hunter Ming has a solution for that: Sometimes I help the mistress find a boyfriend, she said. Its my way to bring her happiness. Phuket police arrest driver suspect in Patong tuk-tuk boss murder PHUKET: Police say they have arrested the man who drove the motorbike used in the street slaying of Patong tuk-tuk boss Sakol Srisompotch in Kathu late last month. tourismpatongpolicehomicidetransportdeathcrime By Tanyaluk Sakoot Monday 14 November 2016, 05:54PM Police have the motorbike they believe was used in the slaying of Mr Sakol. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot Police at Kathu Police Station go through the stages of the attack with the motorbike used in the murder pulled up alongside Mr Sakols tuk-tuk. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot The 28-year-old suspect, who police declined to name, was taken into custody in the northern province of Mae Hong Song on Friday after a warrant for his arrest was issued on Oct 31, Kathu Police Deputy Chief Investigator Lt Col Amponwat Seangreung told The Phuket News today (Nov 14). The suspect is now at Kathu Police Station, Col Amponwat confirmed. The driver was arrested in Wiang Nuea subdistrict, in the Pai district of Mae Hong Son province. We found him on Nov 11. He went there to marry his northern girlfriend, he said. He now faces the charge of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to illegally obtaining a firearm and conspiracy to bringing a gun into a public area without permission, noted a Facebook post by Kathu Police today. He has denied the charges, but he is undergoing due process now anyway, Col Amponwat told The Phuket News this afternoon. Speaking briefly with The Phuket News today, Kathu Police Chief Col ML Pattanajak Jakkapan also declined to name the suspect. We have apprehended five suspects. That is all we can tell the media for now, he said. Asked how many suspects were believed to be involved in the murder, Col ML Pattanajak said, We might have more. Mr Sakol, 58, was shot dead in the early hours of Oct 25, when his assailants reportedly rode up on a motorbike in front of the Phuket Villa housing complex on Phra Phuket Kaew Rd in Kathu just before 3am and unloaded a hail of gunfire into the cab of Mr Sakols tuk-tuk. He died at the scene. Mr Sakol was the President of the Patong Tuk-Tuk Club. His rival, Wattana Dam Nawakeaw, 38, who heads the KT Tuk Tuk Taxi Service group now faces charges of conspiracy to murder Mr Sakol. (See story here.) Wattana, along with 20 other drivers in his group, were operating in the same area of Patong where Mr Sakol operated. His arrest came quickly, and after police discovered a diary kept by Mr Sakol. (See story here.) Police have also arrested 17-year-old male who police named only as Thong and by Nov 3 had a third suspect in custody. With the driver now in custody, the fourth suspect arrested with Col ML Pattanajak saying police have five in custody remains a mystery with police not revealing any details of his or her arrest. At last report, four suspects remained at large, including the gunman and the driver. It appears that three suspects now remain at large. (See story here.) Phuket policemans son shot dead allegedly over B500 debt PHUKET: A policemans son was shot dead in Khao Kaew yesterday night (Nov 14) in what has been said was a dispute over a B500 debt. crimedeathpoliceviolencetransport By Eakkapop Thongtub Monday 14 November 2016, 11:10AM A friend of the victim, Yutranan Jitchareon, 21 (left), speaks to police at the scene of the shooting. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub Maj Col Natthaya Suwanpong of the Phuket City Police was informed by staff from Mission Hospital at 7:30pm yesterday that a man, named as 21-year-old Thanapon Chusawad, had died while being transported to the hospital following a shooting incident close to British International School, Phuket (BISP). A friend of the victim, Yutranan Jitchareon, 21, told police that he and Mr Thanapon had gone to an areas close to BISP to discuss with a debt collector a B500 debt they owed. The debt collector arrived at the meeting point in a white Toyota. Mr Yutranan told us that he and Mr Thanapon told the driver of the vehicle that they were unable to pay the B500 debt so he pulled out a gun and shot Mr Thanapon in the left side of his chest. Mr Yutranan and Mr Thanapon ran around to the other side of the car and the driver shot again, this time missing and hitting the cars side view mirror. The driver of the vehicle then sped away along Soi Hanfarang towards Theppkasattri Rd and Mr Yutranan carried Mr Thanapon to their motorbike. They then got a passing motorist to take them to Mission Hospital but Mr Thanapon died of his injuries before arrival, Maj Col Natthaya said. Maj Col Natthaya later learned that Mr Thanapon was the son of Sen Sgt Maj Sawai Chusawad an investigating officer based at Patong Police Station. Police have been told the identity of the shooter and are now hunting for him to question him over the incident. Phuket tourists split over virgin beaches: Poll PHUKET: The recent revelation by Phuket Governor Chockchai Dejamornthan that he will start taking steps to have all beaches in Phuket cleared of vendors and returned to virgin status has received a mixed reaction among expats and foreign visitors in an online poll by The Phuket News. opinionpatongtourismenvironmentnatural-resourcescorruptionmarine By The Phuket News Monday 14 November 2016, 10:09AM More than 40% of respondents called for beach vendors to be allowed to return. Photo: The Phuket News / file Currently, the 10% zones are the last bastions where vendors may work at selected beaches in Phuket, and were introduced by Phukets previous Governor, Chamroen Tipayapongtada. However, the beach rules in Phuket specifically apply only in Phuket. The 10% rule does not apply anywhere else in Thailand, not even in Khao Lak, just one hours drive north of Phuket, or even on Phi Phi or elsewhere in across the bay in Krabi. Gov Chockchai last month explained that his understanding was that local authorities had no legal right to allow any vendors on the beaches, and that he would have them removed. To this, The Phuket News asked readers in an online poll, Do you support Gov Chockchais plan to clear Phukets beaches of all vendors? The poll, which ran for two weeks, concluded at midnight last night as Phuket begins to enter its annual tourism high season. Of note, 80% of respondents to the poll were expats or foreign visitors to Phuket. Only 14% agreed with Gov Chockchais stance, voting Yes, all beaches in Phuket should be clear of all vendors. However, a further 34% called for the Governor to clear the beaches of vendors, but allow tourists to bring their own sun loungers. In contrast, 41% of respondents called for a return to Phukets past, voting, No, allow vendors back on the beaches, which worked well for tourists for years. The current status of allowing vendors to occupy 10% of the beach at selected beaches gained the least support, with 12% of respondents voting, No, leave the 10% rule in place it is the best solution so far. To see the full poll results, click here. If your preferred response was not available, feel free to express your opinion in the comments section below. To see the results of our previous poll, which asked, Is the Thai lottery worth playing?, click here. If you have a suggestion for a poll, email execeditor@classactmedia.co.th with Poll suggestion in the Subject line. Phuket Yacht Haven, Galileo maritime academy form strategic alliance PHUKET: Phuket Yacht Haven Marina and Galileo Maritime Academy have signed an agreement whereby a university-style campus is to be built and developed at Yacht Haven Marina to provide advanced international training for crew of superyachts, commercial shipping and offshore oil and gas facilities. marinetourismeconomics By Press Release Monday 14 November 2016, 02:43PM Anthony Gould, Chairman and Director of Galileo, exchanges contracts with Jean Phataraprasit, Deputy Managing Director of Phuket Yacht Haven, who joins the Board of Galileo Maritime Academy. Also pictured are key executives of both Galileo and Phuket Yacht Haven. The new Galileo campus opened last Monday (Nov 7) for its first training course based at Phuket Yacht Haven with an international student group from Sweden, France and Tunisia. The Galileo facilities include a student residence, offices and training centre, an advanced fire-fighting school, a marine-engineering school, survival craft and rescue boats and training yachts and tenders based in the marina. Phuket Yacht Haven has become a major investor in Galileo and a strategic partner to expand the range of training services and facilities such that Galileo remains the leading centre for maritime training in the region. This alliance with the family behind Yacht Haven Marina and other major marine developments in Thailand is seen as key to maintaining Galileos rapid growth in the world market for first-class training and certification of seafarers. Galileo is the only maritime academy in the Asia-Pacific region to be accredited by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) of the UK Department for Transport and to be approved to issue MCA certificates of competence to seafarers. Police struggle to identify body found at Phuket fishing port PHUKET: Police have yet to identify a rotting corpse of a man found in the water off Rassada Pier yesterday (Nov 13), and yet to determine whether or not the man may have been murdered. Monday 14 November 2016, 03:14PM The body was in an advanced state of decay when it was found in the water near Rassada Pier yesterday (Nov 13). Photo: Tor Rescue 419 Lt Surachat Thongyai of the Phuket City Police was informed of the gruesome discovery at about 7am. The remains were in an advanced state of decay, Lt Surachat explained. I believe the body is of an Asian man and that he died about 15 days before his corpse was found, but it is very difficult to find any distinguishing features that will help to identify him, Lt Surachat told The Phuket News today (Nov 14). There is a black mark on the left wrist that is not a tattoo. We believe it may be birthmark. Also, the man was dressed in blue-and-red sport shorts with a dark coloured long-sleeved shirt, he said. The body has been sent to Vachira Phuket Hospital in the hope of determining a cause of death and to try to identify any distinguishing marks that may help to identify the man, Lt Surachat noted. One witness said that he saw what he thought was a body in the water near the pier on Saturday (Nov 12), but as he was not sure whether or not it was a body, he did not report it, he added. Police are continuing their investigation in the hopes of discovering who the man was and whether he might have been murdered, Lt Suchart said. Police to arrest Israeli suspects son BANGKOK: Police are seeking an arrest warrant from the Central Juvenile and Family Court for the son of an alleged Israeli killer for colluding in the murder his father has been charged with, helping to hide the body and stealing credit cards and documents that belonged to their alleged victim. crimedeathhomicidepolicesexviolence By Bangkok Post Monday 14 November 2016, 09:16AM Shimon Biton was arrested and charged with the murder of an Israeli man on Saturday (Nov 12) in a raid on his home in Bang Bua Thong district of Nonthaburi. Photo: Thanarak Khunton Susak Prakkamakul, Commander of Nonthaburi Provincial Police, said Shimon Bitons son told investigators that he acknowledged his father had killed a man. However, Bitons son, 17, did not witness the murder, according to Maj Gen Susak. He was speaking yesterday (Nov 13) after a meeting with Bang Bua Thong police investigators who are now overseeing the case after it was transferred to them from the Crime Suppression Division (CSD). Investigators had asked the court to issue an arrest warrant for Bitons son, who is a minor, Maj Gen Susak said. According to police, Biton killed a former Israeli police officer and hid the dismembered body parts inside a wall following a heated argument over a woman. Biton was nabbed during a raid on Saturday (Nov 12) on his rental home after the CSD had been asked by the Israeli embassy to search for Eliyahu Cohen, a 63-year-old man who was reported missing last Wednesday (Nov 9) from a condominium in Bangkoks Bang Phat district. Mr Cohens relatives earlier lodged a complaint with the Israeli embassy about his disappearance. During the raid on Bitons house in the Phattharawan housing estate in Nonthaburis Bang Bua Thong district, police discovered body parts they believed belong to Mr Cohen inside a wall. Police found three black bags after noticing a stench and knocking two bricks from a wall which they said looked out of place. The bricks were covered with cement. An initial investigation found the first bag contained a head with a severe cut down the middle; the second contained a left leg with a black sock; and the third, the largest bag of the three, contained parts of the torso and a right leg. Biton, who was in the house during the raid, allegedly told police he killed Mr Cohen on Wednesday out of jealousy after discovering his girlfriend had been involved in an intimate relationship with the victim. However, police are not convinced jealousy was the cause of the murder. Jirapop Phuridej, Superintendent of CSDs Division 1, said Biton admitted killing Mr Cohen after several hours of interrogation. The suspect initially denied the accusation. Mr Cohen, Biton and his son had met at a restaurant on Khao San Road. According to investigators, Biton frequently borrowed money from Mr Cohen. Officers also found money was withdrawn from the victims account and spent in Nonthaburi. Samut Ketya, deputy superintendent (Inquiry) of Bang Bua Thong police station, said investigators had questioned four witnesses including Biton and his son. They found nothing suspicious in the two other witnesses accounts. Read original story here. Supermoon vigils set to honour the King NATIONWIDE: People are invited to light candles to mourn the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej tonight (Nov 14) when a full moon coincides with the Moons closest approach to Earth in 68 years. culturedeathweatherenvironment By Bangkok Post Monday 14 November 2016, 09:56AM Todays supermoon, weather permitting, will look something like this large moon rising over Wat Phra That Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai last year - only larger. Photo: AFP The Moon will be 356,511 kilometres from Earth today, creating a supermoon that also coincides with the Loy Krathong Festival, according to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (Narit). The institute has arranged three key observation sites in Chiang Mai, Nakhon Ratchasima and Chachoengsao. Other groups also will hold activities across the country where telescopes will be provided for spectators. According to Narit, people in Chiang Mai are invited to attend the candlelight vigil for the King at the plaza in front of Central Festival Chiangmai in Muang district tonight. Narit Deputy Director Saran Poshyachinda said the full moon will be the closest to Earth it has been since Jan 26, 1948. The Moon on today will look 14 per cent larger than it looks at its farthest distance from Earth and 30% brighter. The Moons elliptical trajectory brings it close to Earth every month, but not always as a full moon, Mr Saran said. The Moon only orbits closer to Earth as a full moon every 13 months and the next occasion will be on Jan 2, 2018 when it will be 356,656km from Earth. In Chai Nat, a large moon and an array of stars were clearly visible before sunrise yesterday (Nov 13). People are hoping the sky will be clear tonight to observe the supermoon. Meanwhile, a crowd of black-clad mourners arrived at Sanam Luang yesterday, where they queued to pay homage to King Bhumibol at the Grand Palace to mark the one-month anniversary of his passing. Authorities expected crowds larger than normal arriving to mark the occasion. People were allowed to enter the Grand Palace at 5am, though mourners started queuing on Saturday night. Security measures were stringent during the event, with military and police patrolling areas around Sanam Luang. The Interior Ministry yesterday brought 3,000 people from Uttaradit, Lop Buri, Nong Khai and Samut Prakan to pay respects to the King. The Ruam Duay Chuay Kan Sam Nuek Rak Ban Kerd Foundation brought 101 Paka-Kyaw Karen hilltribe people from tambon Na Sai of Lamphuns Li district to pay homage to the King. This was part of the foundations activities to bring people living in areas developed under the royal projects to pay their respects. To better manage the arrival of mourners, the governments peace command centre sought cooperation from the Interior Ministry to keep people suffering from congenital and communicable diseases out of the groups it will bring to Sanam Luang. The Public Health Ministry has also been contacted to send provincial medical teams to take care of people travelling to Bangkok. Siriraj Hospital and the navy held activities yesterday to honour King Bhumibol at the hospitals statue of Prince of Songkla, Mahidol Adulyadej the Prince Father. Activities included performances of music written by the King as interpreted by the Royal Thai Navy Orchestra. The Thai Journalists Association also held an event to pay tribute to the King. Read original story here. Tens of thousands turn out for Phuket mass mourning ceremony PHUKET: More than 20,000 people attended the mass ceremony at Phromthep Cape on Saturday (Nov 12) to mark 30 days since HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej passed away on Oct 13. By The Phuket News Monday 14 November 2016, 10:33AM Phukets commercial fishing fleet took part in the sail-past. Photo: PR Dept Rear Admiral Charoenpol Koomrasee of the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command took part in the mass candle-lighting ceremony. Photo: PR Dep More than 20,000 people attended the mass ceremony at Phromthep Cape on Saturday (Nov 12) to mark 30 days since HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej passed away on Oct 13. Photo: PR Dept More than 20,000 people attended the mass ceremony at Phromthep Cape on Saturday (Nov 12) to mark 30 days since HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej passed away on Oct 13. Photo: PR Dept Joining the occasion to honour the life of the late HM King Bhumoibol were more than 89 boats, including Phukets commercial fishing fleet, taking part in a mass sail-past, led by ships from the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command, based at Cape Panwa. All ships, fishing vessels and private yachts taking part in the sail-past were decorated with the Thai national flag and adorned with lights. Leading the mass candle-lighting ceremony at 6pm were Phuket Governor Chockchai Dejamornthan and Rear Admiral Charoenpol Koomrasee of the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command. As part of the ceremony, attendees joined together in singing of the countrys national anthem and the Royal Thai Anthem. FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2013, photo, a group of asylum seekers hold up their identity after landing in Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. The United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing in Pacific island camps in a deal that is expected to inspire more asylum seekers to attempt to reach Australia by boat, officials said on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016. (Eoin Blackwell/AAP Image, via AP, File) In this Nov. 11, 2006 file photo, Richard Grenell, left, walks with John Bolton, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, right, to a Security Council meeting on an Arab-backed draft resolution condemning the Israeli military offensive in Gaza at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The incoming president is considering Richard Grenell as United States ambassador to the United Nations. If picked and ultimately confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first openly gay person to fill a Cabinet-level foreign policy post. Grenell previously served as U.S. spokesman at the U.N. under former President George W. Bush's administration. (AP Photo/Osamu Honda) Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra has become a popular face in America, especially after her role in television series Quantico. Her portrayal of Alex Parrish, a CIA officer, has won her tremendous response and fame. However, the actor, had to face a startling but funny experience recently in New York when she was scolded by an elderly lady, who apparently didn't recognise her. Talking to the ABC channel, Priyanka explained how she was asked to go away when she tried to help the woman who seemed to have been struggling with her bags. "There was this one old lady who was walking with a lot of bags. And she was trying to put stuff into her car. I said, 'Oh Let me help you.' She was like, 'What, you don't think I can do this myself?' I was like, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry'," said the actor. Priyanka is presently busy shooting for the second season of Quantico. She will soon be seen in Baywatch which will mark her Hollywood debut. She will play opposite Dwayne Johnson in the film which also stars Zac Efron in a pivotal role. Terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to demonetise high value currency notes as "startling and bold", Chinese official media has said it is "far from enough" and India may "look at ideas" from China's crackdown against corruption which has shown "efficiency". Modi in "a startling and sudden move" demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes to "demonstrate that he is truly up for a fiercer fight against black money and corruption", an op-ed article in the state-run Global Times said. "Modi means well and his decision was made based on the reality in India, since most illegal business in the underground economy is cash-only, and 500 and 1,000 rupee notes constitute over 80 per cent of all cash circulation in India. Nevertheless, we can hardly count on the new rule to fully root out corruption," the article titled 'Beijing offers clues for Modi's new anti-corruption moves' said. Since Modi assumed office, he has carried out a number of measures to crack down on black money, corruption and tax evasion. However, many of them are believed to be "without teeth and can't begin to scratch the surface of the problems he faces", it said. India's new policy to scrap high value notes is considered a "risky, but a bold and decisive step", it said. "And yet, delivering a corruption-free country requires more than banning currency notes. The key should be reforming systems. In this regard, New Delhi might need to look for ideas from Beijing," it said, referring to the massive anti- graft campaign carried out by President Xi Jinping in which over a million officials at different levels were punished. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party in 2012, during which Xi was elected as its general secretary, and taking over as the President and military chief launched the anti-graft campaign which also attracted criticism that he used it effectively to consolidate his power emerging as the most powerful Chinese leader after party founder Mao Zedong. "Over the years, China promoted anti-corruption laws, improved the supervision system, deepened judicial system reforms and adopted measures to make sure the system is transparent," it said without referring to criticism about the campaign. "For instance, China's foreign ministry has lately published information about the families of 12 senior officials on its website in an effort to fight against corruption through familial networks by improving transparency. These steps are taken to ensure that achievements made in the struggle against corruption can be consolidated by laws and systems," it said. China is still on its way toward building a comprehensive anti-corruption system. But "compared with India, Beijing's method has already shown its efficiency", it said. "More time is needed to see whether Modi's new policy will turn into a huge blow against corruption in India. The hard truth is that the corrupt and fraudulent won't just conduct shady deals by using cash, but with gold, real estate and overseas assets. "Corruption can be bred in a variety of ways. Blocking the circulation of large currency bills is without question far from enough," it said. US president-elect Donald Trump has named two top advisers to his administration, tapping Republican party chairman Reince Priebus as his new chief of staff and his campaign CEO Steve Bannon as chief strategist and senior counsellor. "Steve and Reince are highly qualified leaders who worked well together on our campaign and led us to a historic victory. Now I will have them both with me in the White House as we work to make America great again," Trump said in a statement on Sunday. The campaign statement, which listed Bannon's role first, referred to the two men as "equal partners", CNN reported. "Bannon and Priebus will continue the effective leadership team they formed during the campaign, working as equal partners to transform the federal government, making it much more efficient, effective and productive," the statement said. Priebus is among the longest serving chairmen of the Republican party, and has generally been popular amid different factions within the party. He is largely credited with building the ground game that elected Trump and with helping to unite his party after a divisive primary that resulted in many Republicans shunning Trump's nomination, according to sources. House speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had urged Trump to pick Priebus, a source told CNN. Trump's son-in-law and top advisor, Jared Kushner, has also said privately he is supportive of that decision. After the announcement, a spokesman for Ryan said the speaker was pleased by the decision. "The speaker is very happy for his friend and ready to get to work," said Doug Andres, his spokesman. Donald Trump's victory in presidential polls may deter or restrict international students coming to the US for higher education and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds to the American economy, experts have warned. After a caustic presidential campaign and Trump's vows to limit immigration, build a Mexican border wall and force Muslims to register, experts in higher education sector are bracing for a backlash among students who see the US as a less welcoming destination. Surveys of international students conducted during the presidential campaign suggested that many would be less interested in coming to the US if Trump were to become president. For example, a survey of 40,000 students from 118 countries conducted by the international student recruiting companies FPP EDU Media and Instead found that 60 per cent said theyd be less inclined to come to the US if Trump were to win, compared with just 3.8 per cent who said theyd be less inclined if his opponent Hillary Clinton won. The number of international students at US colleges and universities has hit a record high, but experts suggest that Trump's election may slow the growth of this market and threaten the estimated USD 35 billion it adds annually to the American economy. For the first time, the number of international students at US universities exceeded a million last year, according to new figures from the Institute of International Education. The total of about 1,044,000 was up 7 per cent from 2014-15. China and India remained the top two sources of international students, but Saudi Arabiabolstered by a government-funded scholarship programmepassed South Korea to pull into third on the list. "I think America is going to continue to welcome international students, international students are going to continue to want to come here, we will continue to want to send American students abroad as students and cultural ambassadors. I think that international educational exchange is part of the fabric of many societies, including ours," said Allan E Goodman, the president and CEO of the Institute for International Education. The Seattle-based marketing company Study in the USA also surveyed 1,000 prospective international students on the election. Of 975 responses, 639 said theyd be more likely to study in the US if Clinton were to win, while just 91 said theyd be more likely to come if Trump were elected. "Due to Trumps very explicit racist remarks, I would not feel very comfortable studying in the USA," one respondent said. If the rise of post-Brexit anti-foreigner attacks in Great Britain is any indication, the experts say, Trump's presidencyand its possible policy implicationscould lead international students to look elsewhere for their educations. Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, meanwhile, have all increased international recruiting. Mangalajodi in Odisha is one among 132 villages situated on the shore of the Chilika, Indias largest lagoon. During the late 1990s, it was famous for being a haven for migratory birds, and infamous for the people who poached them. Dead birds were in demand in the village, thanks to dhabas frequented by those who wanted a taste of the exotic. The villagers would snare, poison or shoot the birds, and sell them along with their eggs at a high price. Poaching was so lucrative that some villagers earned as much as Rs 40,000 a month. At the turn of the millennium, poaching birds became so widespread that their numbers began dropping drastically, affecting the ecosystem. That was when activists and government officials stepped in to take corrective measures. One such activist was Nanda Kishore Bhujabal, who ran Wild Orissa, an NGO working to conserve wildlife in the state. He began educating villagers about the effects of poaching on the ecosystem, but the villagers paid no heed at first. But Bhujabal persisted and ultimately convinced them that poaching was bad. A student from the village, Niranjan Behera, and a few of his friends soon joined the movement. They formed a bird protection committee, comprising people who wanted to put an end to poaching in Mangalajodi. Thanks to their efforts, a lot of villagers decided to bid poaching goodbye. But they had a problem: finding an alternative means of livelihood. To help the villagers, activists and officials at the Chilika Development Authority and the forest department decided to join hands. The initiative was so impressive that everybody wanted to extend cooperation, said Ajit Kumar Pattnaik, conservation expert and former head of the CDA. The villagers formed the Mahavir Pakshi Suraksha Samiti under Bhujabals Wild Orissa, which was supported by the state government, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Indian Grameen Services (IGS), a not-for-profit company focusing on making livelihoods sustainable. The villagers were educated about migrating avian fauna, so that they could act as guides for tourists and bird enthusiasts. The major challenge was to create alternate livelihood opportunities for the local communities by establishing Mangalajodi as an ecotourism destination, says Sanjib Sarangi of IGS. Once the visitors started coming, things fell in place. Mangalajodi is now a classic model of conservation and livelihoods working hand in hand by using ecotourism as a key driver. The villagers now stand guard, even at night, to keep the wetlands and birds in Mangalajodi out of harms way. It was a tough decision for me to give up poaching, as I used to make good money by selling birds and their eggs, said Kishor Behera, a villager. But I realised that this was not a good livelihood option. The CDA gave us a monthly stipend of Rs 500 to encourage us [to stop poaching]. Finally, we took an oath in front of the goddess Kalijai not to kill birds. According to ornithologist Bikram Grewal, Mangalajodi is far ahead of other wetlands in the country in terms of the richness of the habitat, the number of birds it hosts, and the proximity at which one gets to see the birds. November to December is the peak season, when as many as 3,00,000 birds descend on the village. From ruffs, godwits and plovers to sandpipers, bluethroats and grey-headed lapwings; from pintails and ruddy shelducks to whiskered terns, river terns and gulls, Mangalajodi is now a paradise for birds. But the tribe has a long way to go The chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, Likud MK David Amsellem, surprised many when he called for the abolition of the cabinet-approved plan for an egalitarian prayer area near the Kosel. Amsellem and some of the committees members on Tuesday, 7 Cheshvan were given a tour of the area, accompanied by representatives of Reform and Conservative Jewry. This is why the chareidi members of the committee did not participate, not wishing to be part of an event that includes Reform and Conservative officials. The Hiddush organization, with roots to the Reform Movement, lashed out at Amsellem for his statement, issuing the following statement. Prime Minister Netanyahu must not continue tolerating such contempt for (and humiliation of) Diaspora Jewry and the largest Jewish religious streams at the hands of those who serve in his Government Coalition. Hiddush strongly rejects the words of Interior Committee Chairman MK David Amsalem (Likud) who declared that With all due respect to the Americans and American Jews, they cannot be influencing what goes on here. Let them get insulted if they want. Theres nothing wrong with that; while voicing his opposition to the Governments very own Western Wall Agreement, made in partnership with the Reform and Conservative movements, and the Women of the Wall. MK Amsalems brazenly contemptuous attitude towards US Jewry denies the unique, special bond between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel one which embraces the identity of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. Indeed, Amsalems words undermine the strategic interests of the State, which turns regularly to American Jewry for financial and political support while spitting in their faces and rejecting the validity of their Jewish identities. The Prime Minister himself committed very publicly to ensuring that all Jews Reform, Conservative and Orthodox feel at home in Israel at the 2015 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, DC. Given this, Netanyahu must demand that the members of his Likud Party and his Coalition Government cease laying destructive mines along the delicate bridge that joins Israel and Diaspora Jewry. Else, PM Netanyahu clearly stands guilty of doublespeak, and is actually supportive of the missiles being launched by his Government at the Jewish communities of the Diaspora. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) As part of the 10th annual Israel Day at the New York Stock Exchange, the America Israel Friendship League honored four pioneering Israeli women who have flourished in their respective field. Inbal Orpaz of top Israeli business publication, The Marker, moderated and spoke to the women on a plethora of their experiences in the professional world and how they have contributed to the US Israel relationship in doing so. Honorees Tzameret Fuerst, Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Circ MedTech, which developed PrePex, an FDA-approved device for HIV protection; Karen Haruvi, SVP Global Generic Business Development and Alliance Management for Teva Pharmaceuticals, Ltd.; Noa Raviv, acclaimed fashion designer and artist; and Liat Mordechay Hertanu, Co-Founder of 24me. Were very honored to be here. I cant tell you how good we feel when we walk down Broad Street here in Lower Manhattan and see the Israel flag flying on top of the New York Stock Exchange for Israel Day, said Kenneth Bialkin, Chairman of the America Israel Friendship League. Today is such an important day, as we showcase Israeli innovation and what the country exports to the NYSE and to the world. Its the 10th time that the NYSE has opened up its doors for us and we couldnt be more appreciative of it. Not only are we recognizing these outstanding companies at Israel Day, but the event is also honoring four Israeli women leaders, because Israel, like the United States, celebrates its gender diversity. The day is an example of just a few of the common traits both countries have, said Daneilla Rilov, Executive Director of the America-Israel Friendship League. Photo: Consul General of Israel in New York Dani Dayan and AIFLs Israel Board Chairman, Ambassador Dan Gillerman at Israel Day on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo credit: Shahar Azran) Residents of Yishuv Ofra, located in the Benjamin Regional Council district of Shomron, are stepping up efforts to save nine homes, which have been ordered destroyed by Israels High Court of Justice. Shai Ben-Yosef, who heads the Yishuv Ofra action committee remains optimistic while admitting time is running out regarding efforts to prevent the destruction of nine homes in the Shomron community. Ben-Yosef told the dati leumi Srugim website another protest is planned for Sunday 12 Cheshvan during which participants will call to accept the report released by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy and accept the bill to legalize Amona. The Levy Committee, headed by late Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, called to legalize outposts in Yehuda and Shomron because they do not violate international law as some believe to be the case. They are also calling to accept the bill which hopes to bypass a High Court ruling compelling the expulsion of over forty families from Amona and to dismantle the community, which is located adjacent to Ofra. The bill has already been approved by the Ministerial Law Committee. They call out to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to act first to save Amona, which has to be destroyed by the end of December 2016 as per the High Court ruling. They gave until February 2017 to find a solution to save the nine Ofra homes, which have also been ordered destroyed as the High Court accepted petitions stating the nine homes and Amona were constructed on private Palestinian land. It is added the residents of Amona were offered to relocate to new homes at the governments expense but they refused, insisting Amona will not fall again. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio seems to condone violence in an email he fired off this morning. De Blasio whose administration is under multiple federal investigations says he is inspired by the action people are taking. He also says that he has a lot of tools at his disposal to protect the values and needs of the vast majority of New Yorkers, and is prepared to use them. This is the same Mayor that encouraged the Black Lives Matter terrorist organization. The same mayor that cozys up to the biggest racists in the nation such as Obama, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and most of all Al Sharpton. The same Mayor who hates the members of law enforcement. the same Mayor who taught his son to be careful when dealing with police. Not a WORD is mentioned about the raging hate that these protesters are showing. De Blasio slammed Trump when the video emerged in the campaign that had him making crude remarks about women, yet not a WORD about the TENS OF THOUSANDS of signs being held up across New York City and around the country with the most vile and filthy language imaginable. Not a WORD about the chants used in EVERY SINGLE anti-Trump protest that uses the most explicit language possible. Not a WORD about the smashing of store windows, destroying public and private property at these violent protests. Not a WORD about the burning of American flags around the country. Not a WORD about the hundreds of swastikas and vile anti-Trump graffiti scrawled around the county. Yet this is a man who has the audacity to send an email asking for money in his upcoming election. Not that this will ever make it to City Hall, but if it does, let the race-baiting De Blasio know that he is a one-term Mayor. He will never be reelected. Progressive Liberals havent yet realized that the reason Trump won was precisely because of such protests and people like De Balsio. The De Blasio Administration is involved in no fewer than five separate inquiries involving at least six different federal, state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Four of these investigations are focused on possible violations of criminal law. The people are fed up and will do everything in their power to ensure that this corrupt racist will never be reelected to a second term. Shimon Gross Queens HERE IS THE EMAIL FROM DE BLASIO: In the days since President-elect Donald Trumps victory, a lot of people have asked me whats next for New York City. Ive talked to many families who have lost hope, and even more who are desperately concerned about whats going to happen to their loved ones or their health care once Donald Trump is sworn into office. The first thing I would tell people is that our energy, activism, and passion are needed more today than ever before because the best chance we have of moving forward is together. And as the largest and most diverse city in the country, New York has an obligation to lead the way. And we have. Over the past few days, I have been inspired that in the midst of adversity our city has made the choice to engage rather than to resign ourselves and walk away. People across the country have seen your messages of hope, love, and support taped to the walls of the Union Square subway station. Theyve watched as youve peacefully made your voices heard outside of Trump Tower. I want you to know that you are not alone. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to protect the values and needs of the vast majority of New Yorkers, and I am prepared to use them. We will stand up to any attempt to deport people in our city, take away health insurance from the poorest among us, or undermine the reproductive rights of women. Now, that will probably make us a target of Trump supporters in our upcoming re-election. While he only received small pockets of support in New York City, much of it came from people who are prepared to spend a lot of money to defeat us next year. And if this election taught us anything, its that we must be prepared for everything. So thats why I need to ask: Make a $3 contribution to our re-election campaign as a way of saying you are more committed than ever to fight to protect the values we share. As a city, we showed up on Tuesday. Though turnout plummeted across the country, more New York City residents voted in 2016 than in 2012. But regardless of who won, the work of democracy and building a more just and equitable society was always going to have to continue long after Election Day. I am glad that we are in that fight together, because that is the only way we will succeed. In solidarity, Bill de Blasio Mayor, New York City NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of YWN DO YOU HAVE AN OPINION YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE POSTED ON YWN? SEND IT TO US FOR REVIEW (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Ashkelon City Hall was one of many taking part in The Shabbos Project, which was hosted worldwide this past Shabbos, Parshas Lech Lecha. Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni was distanced from his office for a period of time after being arrested and since his return to work, he is moving closer to Yiddishkheit. He now makes sure to daven three times daily and is often seen attending religious events as well has having become a regular visitor to Uman, to the tziyun of Rav Nachman ZTL. Hence, Mayor Shimoni was more than pleased to have his city officially play a role in The Shabbos Project in the hope of bringing in others to at least participate in this one annual Shabbos. In the background of events, despite the mayors enthusiasm over his newly-found Yiddishkheit, there is a growing number of concerned residents who feel the city is turning chareidi, as has occurred in other cities around Israel. The city pool was recently closed on Shabbos and there was a community slichos event in the city sport center for children, not to mention giving grants to avreichim instead of students and a hachnasas Sefer Torah, all with the assistance of City Hall. They feel the mayor is becoming an ardent supporter of frum-sponsored events while ignoring other city needs and services. Some residents accuse the mayor of ignoring other matters as the city is becoming dirtier and traffic and other issues are being ignored. They feel the mayor is too concerned with religious events and he has stopped addressing many other significant responsibilities including jobs and needs of the non-religious community in the city. They explain the mayor has every right to become frum and to support his new life but on his own and using private funds, not at the expense of the city and its residents. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday 12 Cheshvan, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed his support for the bill sponsored by MK Moti Yogev that seeks to silence the loudspeakers of minarets of mosques that all too often disturb nearby Jewish and Arab residents alike. He said the bill would move to the Ministerial Law Committee due to its importance, explaining people of all religions are bothered by the loud volume of the mosques that area heard all hours of the day or night. Mr. Netanyahu stressed that while Israel remains committed to freedom of religion, it also must protest all its citizens from unacceptable levels of noise. Mr. Netanyahu stated Today, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation will consider draft legislation on limiting the magnitude of noise from public address systems in houses of prayer in Israel. Muslims, as well as Jews and Christians, also suffer from this. I cannot count the times, they are simply too numerous, that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer. Israel is a country that respects freedom of religion for all faiths. Israel is also committed to defending those who suffer from the loudness of the excessive noise of the announcements. This is how it is in many European cities and in many places in the Islamic world, where the loudness of the announcements is limited out of consideration for the populace as a whole. I support similar legislation and enforcement in the State of Israel. As reported, supporters of the bill headed by Jerusalem Councilman Aryeh King protested outside the Jerusalem apartment of Shas leader Aryeh Deri, asking Deri and his Knesset colleagues to support the bill. King used his Facebook page to post This is a wakeup call to Aryeh Deri, as they blasted the sounds of the mosques outside Deris Har Nof apartment. Shas MK Yigal Guetta responded to Bayit Yehudi MK Moti Yogev explaining they were thinking about supporting the bill until Aryeh King turned it into a political matter, now calling on all Shas members to oppose it. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) European Union foreign ministers will gather Sunday to discuss the impact of Donald Trumps election on trans-Atlantic ties and whether it will complicate relations with an increasingly belligerent Russia. At informal dinner talks in Brussels, well away from the media, the ministers will debate how many of Trumps campaign announcements like isolationist positions on security, his rejection of international trade pacts and refusal to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin might translate into real policy. Before the talks, NATOs secretary-general appealed for trans-Atlantic unity and warned that going it alone wasnt an option for either Europe or the U.S. Before the dinner, EU diplomats were at a loss to explain Trumps stunning victory or understand yet what it might really mean. Giovanni Grevi, senior fellow at the European Policy Centre think tank, said that cooperation between Europe and the U.S. will not become impossible, but it will become much more difficult. Donald Trump has been putting America first in defining his foreign policy and it seems he is taking a very transactional approach to international affairs. This is very likely to apply also to trans-Atlantic relations. He will value Europeans in so far as they can match his priorities, Grevi said. Given Trumps clear opposition to major trade pacts, EU officials are all but certain that the massive Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, will have to be renegotiated, if any life remains in the project at all. With the new president-elect we dont really know what will happen. There is strong reason to believe that there would be a pause in TTIP, that this might not be the biggest priority for the new administration, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said Friday. Perhaps the most pressing problem though is to understand how Trump wants to deal with Putin. The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and destabilizing role elsewhere in Ukraine. Some of those measures, including asset freezes on individuals and organizations, come up for renewal in January. EU leaders are due to discuss them at a summit in Brussels on Dec. 15-16, but any signal from Trump about a softening of U.S. relations with Russia is likely to embolden already-reluctant countries like Germany, Italy and others to push for an end the sanctions regime, diplomats said. The EU foreign ministers will meet again formally on Monday, to discuss strained ties with membership candidate country Turkey, the conflict in Syria and Libya, and defense cooperation with the NATO military alliance. Writing in Britains Observer newspaper, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insisted that Europe and the U.S. must work together in the face of security challenges. Stoltenberg appeared to be responding to Trumps criticism of NATO during his campaign. The president-elect has suggested that Washington could abandon its NATO commitments, which include mutual defense in case of attack. We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation. This is no time to question the value of the partnership between Europe and the United States, Stoltenberg wrote. Meanwhile, Britain distanced itself from the European meeting, suggesting it intends to take a different approach to Trump. Officials said Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who has told his EU counterparts to snap out of the general doom and gloom and collective whinge-o-rama following the U.S. election result would skip Sundays talks. We do not see the need for an additional meeting on Sunday because the U.S. election timetable is long established, the Foreign Office said in a statement. We will work with the current and future administrations to ensure the best outcomes for Britain. (AP) The Islamic State group is increasing its presence in Pakistan, recruiting Uzbek militants, attracting disgruntled Taliban fighters and partnering with one of Pakistans most violent sectarian groups, according to police officers, Taliban officials and analysts. Its latest atrocity was an attack Saturday on a Sufi shrine in southwestern Pakistan that killed at least 50 people and wounded 100 others. The group said in a statement that a suicide bomber attacked the shrine with the intent of killing Shiite Muslims and issued a picture of the attacker. When IS circulated a photograph of one of the attackers in last months deadly assault on a police academy in southwestern Baluchistan province, two Taliban officials told The Associated Press that the attacker was an Uzbek, most likely a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. More than 60 people, most of them police recruits, were killed in that Oct. 26 attack when three assailants battled security forces for hours before being killed or detonating their suicide vests. The Taliban officials, both of whom are familiar with the IMU, spoke on condition of anonymity because their leadership has banned them from talking to the media. Authorities initially said the police academy attack was orchestrated by militants hiding out in Afghanistan and blamed Pakistans virulently anti-Shiite group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But IS later claimed responsibility and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi spokesman Ali Bin Sufyan said they partnered with IS to carry out the assault. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the extremist group has adopted the name the Islamic State in Khorasan a reference to an ancient geographical region that encompassed a vast swath of territory stretching from Turkmenistan through Iran and Afghanistan. IS in Khorasan has set up its base in Afghanistans eastern Nangarhar province, and while it has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, it remains unclear whether there are direct operational or financial links between the two. According to police, Afghan officials and IS media outlets, the majority of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan are Pakistani nationals, mostly from the tribal regions. Disgruntled Taliban fighters from Pakistan and Afghanistan have joined along with foreign fighters, mainly from central Asia. The groups leader until his death in July in a drone strike was Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former Pakistani Taliban commander. IS has never acknowledged Khans death, which was confirmed by both the Afghan and U.S. militaries. Counterterrorism officials in Pakistan say that IS has begun reaching out to local militants through its rich social media presence. They are inspiring the like-minded youth in Pakistan through their strong social media propaganda, said Junaid Sheikh, a senior counterterrorism commander in the southern city of Karachi. There is evidence that militants of other organizations like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Al-Qaeda in the Subcontinent and other Sunni extremist organizations switched their ideology toward Daesh and acted like their activists, he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. The recruitment of Uzbek militants is particularly worrisome and a significant threat to our national security, he added. He said Uzbek fighters have carried out numerous major attacks in Pakistan, including a 2011 attack on a naval base and a 2014 attack on the Karachi Airport. Local militant groups provided the intelligence to carry out the attacks, he said. A resident of Afghanistans Nangarhar province who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution said he spoke with two Iranian Islamic State members late last year. Unlike the Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, the resident, who fled to Pakistan after his home was overrun by IS fighters, said the foreign fighters were friendly and engaged with local residents. One Iranian fighter said he was recruited for his computer skills, the resident said. Previously, Uzbek insurgents normally allied with the Pakistani and Afghan branches of the Taliban, having sworn allegiance to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar. However, many Uzbek fighters split from the Taliban and declared allegiance to IS last year after it was revealed that Taliban officials had hidden the fact that Mullah Omar had died two years earlier. A senior police official in Pakistans eastern Punjab province, where several militant groups are headquartered, said the IS group is firmly entrenched in Pakistan and its roots are growing stronger as it aligns with Pakistans Sunni Muslim extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The official also said that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had largely relocated from Punjab to Baluchistan province in the face of a major military campaign. Pakistani Taliban factions that have sparred with the parent Pakistani Taliban have tended to express public support for ISIS, said Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the U.S.-based Wilson Center. I could certainly envision collusions materializing between disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters now aligned with ISIS, and Uzbek militants with preexisting ties to the Pakistani Taliban. Either way, at the end of the day, all of these terrorists are cut from the same cloth ideologically and so we should never rule out operational partnerships. (AP) Isaac Yedid Esq. & Raymond Zeitoune Esq. A common assumption is that if you enter a nursing home, Medicaid will immediately take your house to pay for your care. In reality, that is not exactly true. Below are three common scenarios: 1) If you are married, your spouse is always allowed to stay in the house as long as he or she lives. However, after both spouses die, certain States will sometimes put a lien on the home. If that happens, the State will make a claim for the amount they have paid out in Medicaid benefits. This claim would then usually be paid from the proceeds of the house sale after both spouses have passed away. With proper legal planning, this can sometimes be avoided. 2) If your spouse dies while you are still living in the nursing home, Medicaid may demand that you sell the home and use the proceeds for your nursing home costs. Again, depending on the circumstances, you can sometimes preserve the family home. Each situation is different. For example, if a son or daughter is living in the home and provided two years of care to the nursing home resident, this child can sometimes be given the home as a gift to avoid a forced sale by Medicaid. This is usually referred to as the child caretaker exception. Unfortunately, the Medicaid caseworker will not always let you know about this rule. Another exception is if you have a permanently disabled child. In that situation, the home can usually be given to that child, without adverse Medicaid consequences. 3) If you enter a nursing home and do not have a spouse living in the home, Medicaid will allow you to keep the house for approximately one year. After approximately one year, you must list the home for sale, unless one of the exceptions, such as the child caretaker rule applies. When the home sells, the proceeds must generally be used for your nursing home care. If you die before selling the home, the State will usually put a lien on the home. If that happens, the State will make a claim for the amount they have paid out in Medicaid benefits. The good news however, is that through proper legal planning, you can sometimes preserve the entire value of the home for future generations. Even in cases where Medicaid demands that you sell the home, there are often ways to preserve a portion of the sale proceeds for your family. Attorneys who specialize in Medicaid planning are constantly contacted by concerned loved ones and family members wondering when is the right time to prepare for Medicaid planning. The answer is that it is never too early or too late to discuss the planning options available. Below is one example of the many types of calls attorneys receive every day where attorneys advise clients that Medicaid planning is an option right now. SCENARIO: Mrs. Cohen is an 81-year- old widow experiencing short-term memory loss. She is still able to live alone in her own home. Her income is $750 a month; she has a home worth $735,000 and other assets of approximately $60,000. She heard from a friend that she should give away all her assets now to her kids just in case she would ever need to go to a nursing home. Her friend told her that so long as she gives everything away more than five years before moving to nursing home, shell be able to qualify for Medicaid without having to spend down any of her assets. Unfortunately, there are many problems with the advice Mrs. Cohens friend gave her. First, Mrs. Cohen may need nursing home care in less than five years. Due to this large transfer being made within the five year look back period, she will now be ineligible for Medicaid and will have no funds to pay for her own care. Once the money and house are transferred to her children, those assets actually belong to the children no strings attached. Even if the children are trustworthy, and would be willing to give the money back if Mrs. Cohen needed nursing home care, once the assets are in their names, the assets are subject to their creditors. One of the children could be sued or go through a divorce. Since the assets are in the childrens names, a lawsuit, tax problems, or a divorce could easily wipe out moms life savings, as well as leave her without her home. Also, keep in mind that Mrs. Cohen may never need nursing home care. Rather, she may need to make a move to an assisted living facility. Medicaid does not always cover the cost of care in an assisted living facility. Therefore, its important that Mrs. Cohen hang on to her assets while shes still relatively healthy so she can have the freedom and independence to pay for the level of care she needs when she needs it. In this scenario, we would advise Mrs. Cohen to get the proper estate planning documents in place so her children could act on her behalf in the event of incapacity, and to avoid probate in the event of her death. Depending on the family dynamics and Mrs. Cohens prognosis, we may advise some type of gift trust planning. Each situation is unique, so you should consult with a qualified elder law/trusts & estates attorney to go over your best options. The attorney will advise you on the best options available to you which will allow you to use Medicaid to cover the cost of medical care without depleting assets. In addition, planning in advance is a good option because the penalty period will likely expire before you may need to be admitted to a nursing home. Medicaid planning allows you to protect your familys assets from being used to pay for your medical and nursing home care by justifying the need to receive Medicaid in the future to cover those expenses. The attorneys at Yedid & Zeitoune, PLLC have a combined 20 years of legal experience at top New York City law firms and are ready to assist you in all your legal needs. Let us help you prepare for you and your familys future. May we all only know of happiness amen! _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ The attorneys in the Corporate Practice Group and the Tax Practice Group at Yedid & Zeitoune have over a combined 20 years of legal experience and are ready to assist you with all your corporate/tax needs. Isaac Yedid, Esq. and Raymond Zeitoune, Esq. Yedid & Zeitoune, PLLC 1172 Coney Island Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11230 Phone: (347) 461-9800 Fax: (718) 421-1695 Email: [email protected] NYC Office By Appointment Only: 152 Madison Avenue, Suite 1105 New York, New York 10016 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mayors and governors from 26 cities around the world, including Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, Salzburg, Odessa and Lviv, will visit Yad Vashem on Tuesday, 14 Cheshvan. These leaders are visiting Israel as part of the 31st International Mayors Conference in Jerusalem. The Mayors will tour the Holocaust History Museum, participate in a memorial ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, visit the Childrens Memorial and sign the Yad Vashem Guest Book. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Israels High Court of Justice on Monday, 13 Cheshvan 5777 rejected a request from the state to extend the deadline for the evacuation and expulsion of Amona, in the Shomron. The community of approximately forty families is slated for destruction as per a High Court ruling no later than the end of December 2016. Having failed to reach a solution to the matter and in light of the adamant refusal of Amona residents to be relocated elsewhere, the state petitioned the court seeking a half-year delay in the implementation of the decision. Justices Naor, Hayut and Melzer responded by rejecting the request, insisting on compliance with its ruling to destroy Amona by December 25, 2016. The ball now moves to the Knesset after the Ministerial Law Committee on Sunday, 13 Cheshvan, unanimously passed the Normalization Bill intended to circumvent the High Court demolition order for Amona. The bill is on the agenda to be presented in Knesset on Wednesday, 15 Cheshvan for a vote. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has expressed opposition to the bill, which he feels will lead to legal action against Israel in the international forum and possibly the International Court of Justice in The Hague. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Police say theyve arrested a New Jersey resident whos accused of pushing a man onto Manhattan subway tracks, where he was injured by a train. The New York Police Department says three men were highly intoxicated when a member of the group was pushed during an argument Sunday morning. Police said Monday that Aaron Clary of Newark turned himself in and has been arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter and assault. There was no immediate information on an attorney who could comment on his behalf. Mike Allison suffered head and foot injuries when he was pinned under the train at West 18th Street in Chelsea. (AP) Top EU diplomats are calling for more robust European defense and a greater European voice in world affairs as Donald Trump whose isolationist, protectionist promises have worried many in Europe prepares to assume the U.S. presidency. With many question marks around Trumps foreign policy plans, EU foreign ministers agreed Monday at talks in Brussels on the need to strengthen Europes role in world affairs until the future of trans-Atlantic relations becomes clearer. The top diplomats were set to join defense ministers later to discuss cooperation with NATO, whose future is uncertain after Trump suggested that Washington could abandon its NATO commitments, which include mutual defense in case of an attack. The European Union is a superpower, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. She said Mondays discussions were not about an EU army as such, but about a European Union security and defense that becomes more credible than it is today, more effective than it is today. Noting EU defense activities that are already operating, like anti-smuggling operations and U.N. peacekeeping, she said, We have a lot of potential that we dont utilize yet. There is a need to strengthen our security profile. Its what our citizens need. We are in an uncertain world, and it has not started with the election of Mr. Trump, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. But Europe must not wait for others decisions, it must defends its own interests that is to say the interest of Europeans and at the same time reaffirming its strategic role on the global level. His Belgian counterpart, Didier Reynders, said Trumps election was a possibility for the EU to go further. We need to enhance our capacity in defense and security. The EU needs to find a way to have its voice heard in the search for political solutions and ensure that its not simply a conversation between Washington and Moscow, so that we can have the EU really at the table, he said. In a first move Monday, the ministers reaffirmed their support for the Iran nuclear agreement, which Trump has branded the worst deal in the world and vowed to renegotiate. They said the European Union reiterates its resolute commitment to the part of the action plan that EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany agreed upon with Iran. The plan includes lifting nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions and engaging with the private sector and economic operators, especially banks, to promote growth in trade and investment. While campaigning, Trump called the pact agreed last year a lopsided disgrace and railed against its time-limited restrictions on Irans enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trumps exact plans are vague though, and renegotiating a deal Iran and other partners are happy with would be difficult. But perhaps Europes most pressing problem is to understand how Trump wants to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and destabilizing role elsewhere in Ukraine. Any signal from Trump about a warming of U.S. relations with Russia is likely to embolden already-reluctant countries like Germany, Italy and others to push for an end to the sanctions regime. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisted Monday that Trumps presidency could be a moment of opportunity for Europe. Johnson, who championed Britains exit from the EU and skipped Sunday nights foreign ministers meeting, said Trump is a dealmaker and I think that could be a good thing for Britain, but it can also a good thing for Europe. I think thats what we need to focus on today. Others EU diplomats said they should focus instead on problems closer to home, such as the refugee emergency and economic issues. NATOs secretary-general appealed Sunday for trans-Atlantic unity and warned that going it alone wasnt an option for either Europe or the U.S. We face the greatest challenges to our security in a generation. This is no time to question the value of the partnership between Europe and the United States, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg wrote in Britains Observer newspaper. (AP) Israel Police on Monday afternoon 14 Cheshvan called on the public to assist in locating a missing person, 20-year-old Jerusalem resident Shira Tribalesi. She was last seen on Sunday morning leaving her home. She has brown hair, blue eyes and wears reading glasses. She was last seen wearing a turquoise dress and a white shirt with a brown and white embroidery under the dress. Anyone with information is asked to call 100 or the Moriah station at 02-568-3234. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Residents were shocked to find hateful anti-Jewish graffiti scrawled in Ramapo on Monday morning. Rockland County Legislator Aron Wieder condemned the horrendous act of bigotry. Wieder, who is the Chair of the Public Safety Committee told YWN that its not the first time this has happened. The incident this morning was at Carteret Dr & Conklin Rd in Pomona, on the border of Clarkstown and New City. The graffiti appeared on a sign announcing that a home was for sale leading some to believe that this was a warning to homeowners not to sell their homes to Jews. Police are investigating the incident. (Charles Gross YWN)